Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
The IPCC press release IPCC takes decisions on future work dated 17 February 2015 begins:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has taken a series of decisions to make its reports more accessible and involve developing countries more closely in its work.
The decisions, following a review of the future work of the IPCC over the past year and a half, pave the way for the IPCC to prepare its next cycle of reports, which will be initiated by elections for a new Bureau and Chair in October 2015.
āWe have taken stock of our future. We have been through a detailed process to examine how to continually improve our work, to make it as relevant and useful as possible, not only for government policymakers but for society at large,ā said Acting Chair Ismail El Gizouli.
Further along they write:
It also decided to continue preparing comprehensive assessment reports every five to seven years, which also cover regional aspects of climate change, taking into account the work of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in determining its future reports and their timing.
Let me make a couple of predictions about the content of the 6th Assessment Report (AR6).Ā If emissions of greenhouse gases continue to increase as expected, theĀ IPCCĀ will basically tell us once again:
- Global surface temperatures will rise
- So will sea levels
- Droughts will occur in some places and floods in others, but they’re not sure where
- Climate will change
And there will continue to be few to no changes in the wide uncertainty ranges.
What an incredible waste of money!!!Ā We got the message after the first report.Ā Assuming those continuously unchanging predictions are correct, those tens of billions of research dollars would be better spent on adaptation.
Bob, you say: “those tens of billions of research dollars would be better spent on adaptation.” In general, I agree, but you don’t mean to imply that the IPCC is spending those billions, surely? I mean, they don’t even undertake research beyond reviewing the literature.
Not the IPCC but the idiotic governments following suit curbing developmen….. emissions senselessly
Richard Treadgold says: “In general, I agree, but you donāt mean to imply that the IPCC is spending those billions, surely?”
It was not my intent.
“The science is settled”, the climate science community and activists keep telling us. If it is settled, then taxpayers surely don’t need to keep funding the repetitive, uninformative research that allows the IPCC to function.
Hmmm. I foresee an open letter to some politicians in the near future.
Bob,
Sounds like you’ve compared the cost of mitigation to cost of adaptation and found the latter to be most cost-effective. Care to share with us the assumptions and calculations that went into those projections? Why haven’t the (supposed) uber-accurate physical models your reserved assessments are based upon been trumpeted from the rooftops?
Brandon Gates: “Sounds like youāve compared the cost of mitigation to cost of adaptation and found the latter to be most cost-effective.”
But Bob doesn’t mention mitigation or adaptation. No, it doesn’t sound like that at all. Neither does he mention costs. He does refer, however, to the documented purpose of the IPCC, which is expressly to research a scientific description of climate change, which is explicitly unnecessary if the “science is settled”. The IPCC is specifically prohibited from transgressing into policy areas. Pay attention.
Richard Treadgold,
You quoted the relevant bit about adaptation YOURSELF in your lead post: What an incredible waste of money!!! We got the message after the first report. Assuming those continuously unchanging predictions are correct, those tens of billions of research dollars would be better spent on adaptation.
Ok, while we’re quoting chapter and verse, in which AR does the exact phrase “the science is settled” appear?
lol. Well, I note that you avoided answering the actual question I posed to Bob. Funny how people with no answers to properly skeptical questions can’t even remember what they themselves have written, innit.
Brandon Gates,
Yes, how foolish. My apologies. I saw adaptation in the context of the IPCC spending ‘billions’, which of course they don’t, but also I was addressing only Bob’s response at 6:07 pm and your comment. Your requesting the details of a comparison with mitigation seemed a different subject, but it was my mistake.
I’m unaware of the phrase ‘the science is settled’ appearing in anything other than alarmist writing, though I believe a few actual scientists might have spoken itāsuch as Dr James Hansen. Nonetheless, it’s a widely used phrase. If it were not patently untrue it would indeed mean no further research was necessary.
It’s slightly regrettable that I’ve slightly sidetracked a discussion of how to arrest the UN/IPCC juggernaut, which rolls relentlessly on using our money to infiltrate our society in ways unsuspected by most people, and plans further radical changes, installing all the while and everywhere an unelected, global bureaucracy.
I earnestly pray a pox on all their houses, but we need more practical strategies than that, and these discussions are a good forumāwhen they’re not derailed by confusion or anything else.
Brandon Gates says: “Sounds like youāve compared the cost of mitigation to cost of adaptation and found the latter to be most cost-effective.”
Brandon, thanks for noting what I need to clarify in an upcoming post. If you’re not aware of it, reducing greenhouse gas emissions will not stop rising sea levels.
Brandon Gates says, “Ok, while weāre quoting chapter and verse, in which AR does the exact phrase ‘the science is settled’ appear?”
I never said that phrase appeared in an IPCC assessment report. I wrote: “‘The science is settled’, the climate science community and activists keep telling us.”
@BGates
Yeah sure. You could always find people to come up with a report for for anything you want. If you pay them well enough they will be glad to spend years on producing a a nicely formatted report with colorful graphs.
To use the report you suggest requires ignoring the ideologically driven assumptions, wild ass guesses at estimated costs, and unsupported claims of how much and effects of reducing CO2 that went into it. In other words calculating hard $ costs is ridiculous endeavor. But if you’re paying, go for it. I on the other hand prefer common sense which favors adaption which seems to have progressed humanity fairly well to this point.
So I throw out the imaginary report and the disingenuous attempt at derailing the intent of the article, and clarify for you that the IPCC is an expensive waste of time, money and energy. I would go further than the article and say it is a harmful waste of time, money and energy.
Richard Treadgold,
No apology required, I think perhaps I owe you one for laying on the snark a bit too thickly — I accept that you made an honest mistake. Bob understood what I was asking, and has answered: mitigation won’t help re: sea level rise (so burn baby burn). Which is a damn surprising and curious response for reasons I’m going to sleep on before addressing.
I don’t exactly go out of my way to advertize, but I’m seriously not a fan of the settled science meme. Yet, the only memory I have of a leading climatologist saying it is — I think — Kevin Trenberth, and he qualified it. He is eminently misquotable in that his direct bluntness is all to easily stripped of context. I happen to like the direct blunt part a lot, but I do take care to pay attention to the nuance. And across the board, I rue the spinsters who either cannot read or simply don’t care to do an honest job properly representing the inevitable sound bites to which all matters of large public import are necessarily reduced.
So I’ve been musing how often it is that I read climate contrarians who have had zillions of years experience working directly with corrupt and inefficient gummint agencies as the thing which primarily, or at least significantly, informs their views of the science itself. I can’t identify with that because my experience is the exact opposite — I’ve logged more man-years at Fortune 500 (and two or three Fortune 100) office buildings than I can count on two hands. They’re tremendously useful to me for putting bread on my table and in my checking account, but every bit as inefficient and corrupt as the horror stories I hear from public sector veterans working for comparative slave wages.
Basically, I don’t buy the argument that some other, perennially unspecified, form of large-scale human organization isn’t going to generate a lot of red-tape and smelly bullshit. Global problems require coordinated global solutions, no two ways about it. Bitching and moaning about “infiltrating our society” is doubly unconvincing to me because we’re already selling the flipping farm to China both publicly and privately, no UN “coercion” required.
Two things I keep in mind about how the government of the US is supposed to work:
1) One person, one vote as opposed to votes weighted according to percent ownership.
2) Anything is better than Somalia, even, I think, dystopian corporatocrasies — but if push comes to shove for damn sure I’ll be lobbying for option (1).
We don’t get to solve this problem the way we’d all like. Same as anything and everything will always be.
Brandon Gates March 3, 2015 at 7:45 pm
Bob,
Sounds like youāve compared the cost of mitigation to cost of adaptation and found the latter to be most cost-effective. Care to share with us the assumptions and calculations that went into those projections?
I believe Bob was around when “How Much Would You Buy? by Willis Eschenbach / March 13, 2011”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/13/how-much-would-you-buy/ was posted.
From EPA’s estimates of cost and effectiveness, it worked out to Their estimate of US$7 trillion divided by 0.00375Ā°C gives us ā¦ wait for it ā¦ US$1,900 trillion dollars for each measly degree of cooling.
Was that you posting under the R. Gates name at that time?
If you got it from the first report them why fight the facts? Anyway, the more precise the science the better options and focus in making decisions that concern the future of the societies. That’ll cost less than not observing and not acting sooner.
It’s not surprising when you consider there’s no connection between our emissions and sea level rise.
Not knowing any ‘climate contrarians’, I cannot comment. I have no view of climate science that differs from my view of any other science, although I question some climate alarmist claims which in several years of asking have never been answered. For example, how does the atmosphere significantly warm the oceans?
I agree. We should discuss those one day. Meanwhile, it has not been demonstrated that climate is a global problem in the sense that its causes lie at our own door.
I don’t see the connection between climate activism and China. Complaining about the UN agenda is not ‘unconvincing’ just because we’re ‘selling the farm to China’. I complain because the climate is not the reason for the infiltration. Selling the farm is beside the point.
In November 2010, Professor Dr Ottmar Edenhofer, a German economist and co-chair of the IPCC Working Group III, gave an interview in which he said: “But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the worldās wealth by climate policyā¦ One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy any more, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.”
Then there’s a comprehensive CFACT article quoting a wide range of sources who confirm the ‘real’ nature of the anti-emissions brigadeāto gain control of our lives.
I agree with this. It explains why international agreements take time to arrive at and also why installing a ‘committee’ to handle the job makes no difference to the difficulties encountered, with this one proviso: that no extremist clique gets control of the committee, for then they can have their way if most others have nodded off.
But our main difficulty is that there is no climate crisis caused by man’s actionsāneither now nor foreseeable.
Bob,
I’m aware that you think ENSO is the main culprit. I’m not aware that you’ve ever satisfactorily explained how a quasi-periodic oscillation with an average frequency of far less than a decade can drive any multi-decadal secular trend in anything. Even “extended weather events” need to get energy from somewhere.
You’ll note that I was equally careful to not explicitly say that you had. I have to say; one does wonder why it would be an issue for the IPCC to ask more money to continue gathering research and summarizing findings when their published statements do not include, to my knowledge, that the science is completely settled.
DD More,
Thank you for the link. I quote Willis: First, the cost ā¦ truth is, no one knows.
Which is more or less my point.
The short answer is that calculation is completely bogus because it is comparing apples to oranges and is dodgily sourced. Long, very very long, impossibly waaaayyyy too long, detailed breakdown follows.
Here’s what the “EPA figures” linked to by Willis has to say:
http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=3ede3e93-813f-4449-97e6-0d6eb54fbc9e
Jobs/Economic Impact: EPA has called the consequences of regulating greenhouse gases under the CAA āabsurd,ā affecting 6.1 million sources, introducing $78 billion in annual costs, causing āat least a decade or longerā of permit delays, āslow[ing] construction nationwide for years,ā introducing burdens that are administratively āinfeasible,ā āoverwhelming,ā that will āadversely affect national economic development,ā while impacting sources ānot appropriate at this point to even consider regulating.ā55
Ref 55 is again … not … and EPA document, it’s called “Petitionersā Motion for Partial Stay of EPAās Greenhouse Gas Regulations, 15 September, 2010”, and the link is busted, but I think this is the relevant document: http://www.eenews.net/assets/2010/09/16/document_gw_02.pdf
pp 50-51 of that document reads:
EPA Estimates Permitting Costs Of $78 Billion Annually Although EPA has never estimated the cost of a construction freezeāonly that it ācould adversely affect national economic development[,]ā id.āor the costs to millions of sources of implementing BACT if they somehow obtained a permit, id. at 31,534, EPA has estimated that the administrative cost of so many permits would amount to $78 billion annually. RIA at 18.32 A construction freeze would cause irreparable harm to investment, jobs, and tax revenue.
So there’s our alleged $78 billion. Note 32 reads:
This estimate is a result of its estimates that each Title V permit currently costs $46,350, RIA at 35, and each PSD permit costs $85,000. 75 Fed. Reg. at 31,534. EPAās estimate would actually be significantly higher, but it estimated that the largest subset of these newly covered sources, residential and commercial sources, would only incur a cost of $59,000 per-PSD permit and $23,200 per Title V permit. Id. EPAās reduced estimate is based on EPAās unsupported speculation that permits will be simpler for smaller residential sources, id ., even though such sources present particularly novel questions due to the unprecedented nature of GHG controls and control technology for such small sources. See, e.g., Harned Dec. Ā¶Ā¶ 12-13.
At this point, you may be asking yourself when we’re going to get to the actual mitigation costs? Or indeed an actual EPA document?
Me too.
Poking around google a bit, it turns out that one Linda M. Chappell, PhD of the EPA is the source of the “absurd” comments, which all apparently stems from a 2010 EPA document with her named as lead author: http://www.epa.gov/ttnecas1/regdata/RIAs/riatailoring.pdf
REGULATORY IMPACT ANALYSIS FOR THE FINAL PREVENTION OF SIGNIFICANT DETERIORIATION AND TITLE V GREENHOUSE GAS TAILORING RULE
…
[pp 7-8]
We are also including in this action a rule that no source with emissions below 50,000 tpy CO2e, and no modification resulting in net GHG increases of less than 50,000 tpy CO2e, will be subject to PSD or title V permitting before at least, April 30, 2016. This is because we are able to conclude at the present time that the administrative burdens that would accompany permitting sources below this level will be so great that even the streamlining actions that EPA may be able to develop and implement in the next several years, and even with the increases in permitting resources that we can reasonably expect the permitting authorities to acquire, it will be impossible to administer the permit programs for these sources until at least 2016. Further, we are establishing an enforceable commitment that we will (i) complete a study by April 30, 2015, to evaluate the status of PSD and title V permitting for GHG-emitting sources, including progress in developing streamlining techniques; and (ii) complete further rulemaking based on that study by April 30, 2016, to address the permitting of smaller sources. That rulemaking may also consider additional permanent exclusions based on theāabsurd resultsā doctrine, where applicable. This tailoring rulemaking is necessary because without it, PSD and title V would apply to all stationary sources that emit or have the potential to emit more than 100 or 250 tpy of GHGs beginning on January 2, 2011. This is the date when EPAās recently promulgated Light Duty Vehicle Rule (LDVR)1 takes effect, imposing control requirements for the first time on carbon dioxide (CO2) and other GHGs. If this January 2, 2011 date were to pass without this tailoring rule being in effect, PSD and title V requirements would apply at the 100/250 tpy CO2e potential to emit (PTE) applicability levels provided under a literal reading of the CAA as of that date. From that point forward, a source owner proposing to construct any new major source that emits at or higher than the applicability levels (and which therefore may be referred to as a āmajorā source) or modify any existing major source in a way that would increase GHG emissions would need to obtain a permit under the PSD program that addresses these emissions before construction or modification could begin. Similarly, title V would apply to a new or existing source exceeding the 100 tpy applicability level in the Act, if the source did not already have a title V permit. Under these circumstances, many small sources would be burdened by the costs of the individualized PSD control technology requirements and permit applications that the PSD provisions, absent streamlining,require. Additionally, state and local permitting authorities would be burdened by the extraordinary number of these permit applications, which are orders of magnitude greater than the current inventory of permits and would vastly exceed the current administrative resources of the permitting authorities. Permit gridlock would result with the permitting authorities able to issue only a tiny fraction of the permits requested.
So that’s pretty much the full TL;DR context for the “absurd” comment. If there’s a $78 billion figure in that document, for the life of me I cannot explicitly find it. This is a really stupid goose chase, I give up.
Back to the original Senate document:
EPA Rules Have No Direct Environmental Benefit
One might expect that these costs would at least be offset with meaningful environmental benefits. Yet EPAās own analysis shows thatās not the case. Estimating the impacts on global temperatures of the agencyās mobile source rule, EPA concluded: āBased on the reanalysis the results for projected atmospheric CO2 concentrations are estimated to be reduced by an average of 2.9 ppm (previously 3.0 ppm), global mean temperature is estimated to be reduced by 0.006 to 0.0015 Ā°C by 2100.ā65 This amount is so miniscule it canāt even be measured by a ground-based thermometer.
Reference 65 is quite a bit more straightforward:
āLightāDuty Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards and Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards,ā EPA Response to Comments Document for Joint Rulemaking, April 2010 ( http://www.epa.gov/oms/climate/regulations/420r10012a.pdf ).
So we’ve got a $78 billion/year number I can’t source, but which purports to be a total mitigation cost even though by all appearances it comes from documents only discussing permit fees on the order of several tens of millions per year as far as I can tell. And that grossly inflated, dubiously sourced $78 billion is being compared to a mitigation benefit from ONLY ONE SECTOR, namely the corporate surface vehicle fleet.
Unnnnnbelievable.
For an actual EPA analysis which does balance the cost/benefit estimates see: http://www2.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2014-06/documents/20140602ria-clean-power-plan.pdf
p ES-21 (p 46 of the .pdf)
Table ES-8. Summary of Estimated Monetized Benefits, Compliance Costs, and Net Benefits for the Proposed Guidelines ā 2020 (billions of 2011$)
Basically compliance costs range from $4.3-7.4 billion/year, estimated net benefits from $20-50 billion per year. I believe that the compliance costs are US-only and net benefits are calculated as the worldwide positive impacts of a US-only mitigation scheme.
So, it looks to me like some Inhofe staffer nudged a decimal point on the compliance costs.
To put things in perspective, US GDP was $15.5 trillion, $4.3-7.4 billion of that is 0.03-0.05%. Copying Willis’ cute trick of multiplying that out by 90 years: 2.5%-4.3% of one year’s GDP for 90 years of mitigation … a far cry from 50ish percent.
Keep in mind, we don’t really know — but people being sloppy with decimal places and not comparing total mitigation benefits with total mitigation costs isn’t exactly helpful. It is, however, quite illuminating.
Nope, he’s a different guy. Though he shares my old man’s first (and my middle) initial, he’s no known relation either.
Richard Treadgold,
Well there’s got to be some heat coming from somewhere:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/idata_grs.png
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/idata_ant.png
And all that water has to go somewhere:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/isl_global.png
Not to mention thermal expansion:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/itemp2000_global.png
Not a pause in sight. What are you holding?
It’s a term warmunists I know use when they’re feeling less belligerent than usual or don’t presently enjoy home-field advantage.
The short answer is that the Sun warms the oceans, the atmosphere affects the rate at which oceans dissipate the absorbed energy.
Yeah, I get it that 2100 is a bit further out than this year’s 10-K.
That wasn’t the connection I was attempting to make.
Isolationist policies have a history of not working out too well. It’s an increasingly dumb policy choice in an ever-globalized economy.
Well as usual I can’t track down the original source because google ranks the hits to the panicky “ZOMG the socialists are coming” right-wing news outlets. First hit: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/11/18/un-ipcc-official-we-redistribute-worlds-wealth-climate-policy
Well wait, here it is in the original German: http://www.nzz.ch/aktuell/startseite/klimapolitik-verteilt-das-weltvermoegen-neu-1.8373227 The link to the GWPF Engrish translation is dead. Nice. Anyway … here’s the full extent of the conversations as published by Newsbusters:
(NZZ AM SONNTAG): The new thing about your proposal for a Global Deal is the stress on the importance of development policy for climate policy. Until now, many think of aid when they hear development policies.
(OTTMAR EDENHOFER, UN IPCC OFFICIAL): That will change immediately if global emission rights are distributed. If this happens, on a per capita basis, then Africa will be the big winner, and huge amounts of money will flow there. This will have enormous implications for development policy. And it will raise the question if these countries can deal responsibly with so much money at all.
(NZZ): That does not sound anymore like the climate policy that we know.
(EDENHOFER): Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War. Why? Because we have 11,000 gigatons of carbon in the coal reserves in the soil under our feet – and we must emit only 400 gigatons in the atmosphere if we want to keep the 2-degree target. 11 000 to 400 – there is no getting around the fact that most of the fossil reserves must remain in the soil.
(NZZ): De facto, this means an expropriation of the countries with natural resources. This leads to a very different development from that which has been triggered by development policy.
(EDENHOFER): First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.
I myself have been saying for some time now that caring for the environment NEEDS to be primarily an economic concern because we FREAKING DEPEND ON IT for all of our activities, which does include making money. I’m not the stereotypical “save the cute furry animals” environmentalist — my priorities begin with my own species. Every time, all the time.
If you don’t want any gummint entities “controlling” your personal life, check out Somalia on your next holiday.
Define “extremist clique”.
Declaring it does not make it so. My beliefs are based on decades of meticulous research combined with my basic education in the first principles of physics. Your comments don’t read like those of someone who views climate science the same as all others, but rather someone who does not like the proposed solutions. There isn’t a damn thing I can say that will change that, but I’m happy to discuss literature with anyone.
@ Brandon Gates…. actually there are quite a few studies that compare the costs of mitigation to adaptation. It is much more reasonable to adapt than to try to mitigate, and cost effective. ( Being that there is actual global warming, your graph on the Antarctic is puzzling from the standpoint that ice is at record level alone) Currently 20 % of funds for aid is used for mitigation. For people living at the subsidence level, small changes can be catastrophic. The best way of handling climate change, either good or bad, is to get people out of poverty. Which in itself is a worthy goal. And that is dependent on cheap available power.
And in my opinion, the IPCC is a waste of money simply because they are overlooking far reaching examples of climate changes that happened from other variables. Notably colder climate which is devastating to humanity. In fact the greatest progress humanity has achieved has been during this warming period from the 1850’s (the end of the LIA) till now.
rishrac,
Yes, countless. Try picking which one is correct. Take your time.
Scratch that, you’ve already decided.
I broke a personal rule in that post: never discuss Antarctic land ice decline …
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/idata_ant.png
… without also pointing out that Antarctic sea ice extent increase …
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/iS_ice_extenta.png
… so there you go. Annoyingly the units are not comparable, the reason as I understand it is that Antarctic sea ice thickness is not well-constrained. For purposes of my argument re: sea level change, sea ice extent is all but a non-factor.
That all said, I agree, it’s puzzling that the only major ice mass currently showing a positive multi-year trend is the stuff floating on the Southern Ocean.
I don’t consider it a foregone conclusion that mitigation spending must result in a reduction of other forms of aid. In fact, I think it would be wrong for that to be the policy — morally and economically.
I agree with you. I consider it the First World’s moral and fiscal imperative to not raise the Third World’s energy costs via mitigation policies. How to do mitigation and not price Africa out of the market will be difficult.
A popular sentiment which is patently false. The whole reason you know anything about the MWP or LIA, or that Milankovitch and Vostok are practically household names to climate buffs is because pre-human climate change is absolutely NOT being ignored. It’s absolutely essential to do paleo studies as the control for how the system reacts to natural forcings absent our influence.
Very much, no, the IPCC does not “overlook” changes from “other variables”: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch1s1-4-2.html
NOAA devotes an entire section of their website to paleoclimate, a fantastic resource for a data-junkie such as me: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/paleoclimatology-data/datasets
I’ve never seen it disputed in literature that rapid cooling would not be devastating.
I’ve seen it argued in literature that the Holocene, being the most stable 10,000 years in the past million, cannot be discounted in terms of success of our species. When asked what the optimal temperature of the globe for humanity is, one answer I give is the Holocene mean. Slightly cooler, a degree or two, seems not good. Slightly warmer seems not a problem. What I know of ~2 degrees warmer, e.g. the Eemian, predates human civilization of the types during warmer periods over the past several thousand years, but estimates are that the Eemian interglacial saw sea levels 6-8 m higher than present.
I’m certain that wouldn’t be a good idea. Fortunately for us, even the most dire of IPCC nightmare scenarios don’t call for that kind of sea level rise by 2100 since that much ice would take quite a while to melt. Conversely, once melting, it takes a while to stop it. Hence “irreversible”.
There are other less certain, but plausible risks to consider. At sufficiently high local temperatures and humidity, heat stress reduces labor output. Sustained wet bulb temperatures above 35C are fatal, so there is a hard do-not-cross line for warmer being better. In much the same way as drinking too much water will upset your electrolyte balance and kill you, more warmer equals more better does have an upper limit.
Finally, the word “recovery” to me means “return to a previous level” or perhaps “reversion to a long term mean trend”:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
That’s more than just a “recovery”. The relative slopes before and after the LIA are especially compelling. As well, “recovery” is not a causal mechanism, only a description of a trend. I give two of the ones I consider most likely contributors:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/itsi_wls_ann.png
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/ico2_monthly.png
NASA GISS includes others since 1880 for perspective:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/RadF.gif
Brandon Gates,
I agree. Nice graphs, though their sources are unspecified, but what I said (remember?) was: “there’s no connection between our emissions and sea level rise.”
Greenland ice mass reduction: trivialāplease provide some context.
Antarctic ice mass reduction: trivialāplease provide some context.
Global sea level rise: rate unchanged for over 100 years.
Ocean thermal expansion: you cite upper ocean mean temperature from 1955 to 2014 (?) but show no connection between that and our emissions. Not to mention that even a casual glance shows a distinct lack of correlation between your graphs of global sea level and global upper ocean mean temperature, which, oddly, you present to exemplify ‘thermal expansion’.
Then, surprisingly, you say: “Not a pause in sight” but I didn’t mention a pause. I’m holding nothing (mysterious question).
Please remember that I asked: “how does the atmosphere significantly warm the oceans?”
What do you mean? Atmospheric temperatures have not risen significantly for about 20 years, so the measure of global warming is being shifted by the alarmists from the mean temperature of the lower atmosphere to the heat content of the oceans. That means, apparently, that, even if the global mean surface temperature is not rising, global warming continues, because the heat content of the oceans is rising. But for that to be our fault means that our atmospheric emissions are causing the oceans to warm independently of the sun.
Even though the lower atmosphere is not getting warmer, the presence in it of our fossil fuel emissions is causing the oceans to warm. Strange, but true. But how does it happen? Physics seems to be against it, since warm air rises, leaves the vicinity of the ocean surface and cannot warm it. The only remaining possibility, of the radiative effects from the carbon dioxide we emit, promises only the most meager warming.
Also, against this theory are many papers showing how atmospheric temperature is governed by water and land temperature. Not that the air governs the temperature of the land and water over which the air passes, except over short distances.
So, to repeat: what is the connection between human emissions and global warming?
I might mention that, given this point remains unanswered, all other allegations of anthropogenic global warming remain inconsequential.
Thank you for verifying that Edenhofer revealed the mismatch between environmental reality and global warming policy.
You ask me to define ‘extremist clique’: Any clique. I would remove the UN to reduce the perturbations between the nations.
Quite so. Nor does declaring a climate crisis make it so. It is yours to justify, not mine to refute.
The quantity that has not risen significantly for about 20 years is the linear trend. It lacks properties of a measure but a temperature possesses these properties. Thus, to call this quantity a “temperature” is false and misleading.
You raise the straw man of the linear trend and then boldly knock him over, but we are unmoved.
No, the quantity that has not risen significantly for about 20 years is the global mean surface temperature. All the major temperature teams report similar results on this, but if that’s not correct you might like to tell us the truth of it. However, although interesting, the progress of what we are pleased to call the ‘temperature’ of the earth (which as a matter of plain fact does not exist) does not concern me.
This alleged anthropogenic global warming threatens my wallet and my freedoms and, by extension, the wallets and freedoms of everyone else, and yet, patently, it has not been demonstrated. So my questions remain:
1. How does the atmosphere significantly warm the oceans?
2. What is the connection between human emissions and global warming?
Richard Treadgold:
Historical temperatures are facts to which the statistical definition of “significance” does not apply. Thus, your claim that “the quantity that has not risen significantly for about 20 years is the global mean surface temperature” is a contradiction in terms unless your definition of “significance” is non-statistical. If it is the latter then the reader needs to know what you mean by “significance” to determine whether your claim is true. Please clarify.
Richard Treadgold,
The first one from Wikipedia cites its sources: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
Supporting literature and tabulated data for the GISS forcings image are here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/
All the rest are hosted on KNMI, with references, and may be obtained from the monthly climate indices page: http://climexp.knmi.nl/selectindex.cgi
I remember what you wrote and ignored it when I read it the first time because you are wrong. The relationship between emissions and temperature was established in 1896 by Svante Arrhenius from first principles of then-known radiative physics AND empirical observation: http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/1/18/Arrhenius.pdf
His estimate for ECS ranged from 4.95 K/2xCO2 at low latitudes to 6.05 K/2xCO2 at high latitudes, figures which have since been revised down due to subsequent empirical observation. He under-estimated future emissions. On balance, the planet did not warm as much as he predicted, but warm it did. He was correct on the direction, and well inside an order of magnitude on his estimate of the response to observed forcing, something I consider a phenomenal success considering the state of technology at the time and the relative dearth of observation from which he based his conclusions.
You don’t accept the connection? Fine, just say so. But it is patently false to assert that no connection to emissions and warming has been made by the thousands of subsequent works in published literature, and egregiously so when what you really mean is “I don’t believe the evidence as presented”.
If there is no connection to rising temperatures and human activities, where the additional energy must be coming from somewhere. I have in hand a casual physical mechanism corroborated by observed correlations which were predicted well in advance. You’ve supplied no alternative explanation, no documentation, nothing whatsoever useful other than arguments from personal incredulity and what looks like a setup to an appeal to ignorance along the lines of, “it isn’t x, so it must be some other y even though I can’t tell you what y is”.
Back to the GISS forcings page:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/NetF.gif
Note that the estimated net forcings are roughly linear in trend until about 1970. Further consider that the oceans, and by extension landed ice, response to external forcings lag atmospheric response because of thermal inertia due to seawater having 4x the heat capacity of the atmosphere, and even the uppermost layers of the ocean far out-massing air.
This is from the IPCC’s TAR so it’s a bit dated, but it’s what ranked highest in the google search, plus it’s in HTML not .pdf:
In the only global analysis to date, Levitus et al. (2000) finds the ocean has stored 20×1022 J of heat between 1955 and 1995 (an average of 0.5 Wm-2), with over half of this occurring in the upper 300 m for a rate of warming of 0.7Ā°C/century. The steric sea level rise equivalent is 0.55 mm/yr, with maxima in the sub-tropical gyre of the North Atlantic and the tropical eastern Pacific.
From Jevrejeva, et al. (2006) via KNMI …
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/igsl.png
… rate of sea level rise from 1860 through 2000 is 1.7 mm/yr, so about a third of that rate is attributable to thermal expansion by these figures. There are, to me, obvious non-linearities in the system, so simple regressions eventually break down (I know from investigating the data myself) but for first approximations of net influences, linear regressions are the beginnings of a compelling story. Converting forcings in watts per square meter to three physical dimensions in oceans and ice is one big monkey wrench. The 4th dimension of time is the next one. For that, I like Bintanja (2008): http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v454/n7206/abs/nature07158.html
Paywalled, but the model output data, which go back 3 million years, are available from NOAA: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/paleocean/by_contributor/bintanja2008/
The takeaway from that study I often comment on is that on geological time scales the lag between surface temperature response and deep ocean temperature response is on the order of a thousand years, and that the surface equilibrium response to natural external forcings are about 6 to 1 relative to the deep oceans.
Since at least Petit (1999) we’ve understood that there are a lot of lead and lags going on, with all the attendant herky-jerkies expected from a massive system that couldn’t possibly evenly distribute energy instantaneously, nor be expected to reach equilibrium at the same rate:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Vostok_Petit_data.svg
In sum, eyeballing the plot and declaring, “the correlation breaks HERE” when “HERE” is on the order of decades is, well, silly. Next you’re going to tell me that you didn’t say where the correlation broke down because … that’s what you do. To wit:
Well I have my known prejudices in this “debate” and you’re apparently (to me) running a script I’ve seen zillions of times, and not just on this issue. The way it goes is:
1) There’s no evidence that what you are saying is true.
2) What “evidence” you provide breaks for some trivial and not well-specified (ie, ambiguous) reason.
3) [Implication: you’re a gullible believer who is full of crap.]
4) I didn’t say you were a gullible believer who is full of crap, I’m just asking questions here.
I have been wrong about you once before, but my pattern recognition harwiring is howling at me right now. Pre-apologies if I have again rushed to judgement.
And there it is: 20 years called significant when centuries and millennia are known to literature as relevant time scales. As an added bonus: the speculations about motives and the pejorative label of alarmists. I’ll now sit back and wait for you to provide evidence of what exactly goes on in other peoples’ minds. Take all the time you need to produce it. In the meanwhile, I remain happy to discuss what the both of us can read in black and white or see in data, or look up in terms of pre-Gore basic physics.
Why should that be a problem? Short of mass transfer into space, the only way for accumulated solar energy from the oceans to completely leave the system is through the atmosphere. Sun warms the oceans, atmosphere affects the rate at which the oceans cool. Perfectly sound physical concept according to my understanding. Unless you accept that first, no amount of evidence showing that actually happening is likely to convince you because the uncertainties in those estimates are indeed quite large relative to the observed magnitude of the changes.
An every day example: go outside on a clear sunny day with ambient “room” temperature, little wind, in shirt sleeves. Wait 5. Then put on a light jacket. Wait 5. Your core temperature will stay roughly constant since you are a “warm-blooded” mammal, but your skin temperature will change appreciably. You might begin to sweat a little as your body attempts to maintain 35 degrees C internal temperature. If your shirt is light colored and the jacket is dark, you may feel warmer as well due to the albedo change. But one thing is all but certain: in 10 minutes on a clear windless day, solar output has not changed enough to be a factor in your skin temperature change inside that jacket relative to not wearing it.
Your argument is not logically conclusive. It’s not logically wrong either. It can only be settled by understanding as much of basic physical processes as possible and taking many many observations and measurements. I have not done that work, others have. What I think I understand about their arguments, and evidence for them, is consistent with the basics I studied decades ago.
Think conservation of energy. What goes up must come down. Despite what you say below, you have not ruled out all the possibilities by far. As well, you still have not offered any causal mechanism for how the oceans have been observed to warm except for maybe the Sun, but have done little else to substantiate that hypothesis. Which is not a bad one in and of itself, but it wants demonstration by citation, evidence and calculation just as I have been providing you to support my own position.
From whence these calculations of promise? Again, not a citation in sight, only simple assertions.
Which paper(s). Ambiguity will get you nowhere. Please make a citation, and, even better, point to the specific text which supports your conclusions. I myself know of several papers that discuss ocean/atmospheric couplings, see again Bintanja (2008). The abstract reads in part: Here we use a comprehensive ice-sheet model and a simple ocean-temperature model11 to extract three-million-year mutually consistent records of surface air temperature, ice volume and sea level from marine benthic oxygen isotopes12. Although these records and their relative phasings are subject to considerable uncertainty owing to limited availability of palaeoclimate constraints, the results suggest that the gradual emergence of the 100,000-year cycles can be attributed to the increased ability of the merged North American ice sheets to survive insolation maxima and reach continental-scale size.
So they’re more focused on ice sheet response to insolation, but the data demonstrate the lead/lag and magnitude of relative ocean/atmosphere temp. response.
Which is why I ask: how is it you think the oceans have been warming? The data show a nearly constant rate of ocean heat content buildup since the ’50s. The atmosphere is more erratic, but shows the same trend. Perfectly consistent when you’ve got two dynamic fluids interacting with each other, and one of them is far more massive with a 4x higher heat capacity. There’s lots of COLD water in the ocean depths. When the state of vertical circulations favor more cool water at the surface coming up from below — i.e. negative ENSO, PDO, AMO phases — it’s glaringly obvious to me that there will be an amplified cooling response in the atmosphere at the boundary layer.
I answered the point the first time you asked it, and have been expanding on it ever since. With citations to literature. There is a difference between my not giving answers, and you not accepting the ones I have given.
Thank-you for your interpretation of his remarks.
Why are not nations cliques in and of themselves according to your (non)definition?
Har har. I am well-acquainted with my duty of proof in both the debate and scientific contexts here, and normally accept that duty. I become less willing to do so when my interlocutor signals that his or her mind has already been made up with evidently fallacious reasoning, as witnessed by statements such as: āthereās no connection between our emissions and sea level rise.ā
There’s no way evidence can substantiate a negative proposition, rendering your own assertion empirically non-falsifiable. IOW, it’s impossible for you to hold up your end in an evidence-based debate. Therefore your main remaining options are to:
1) Appeal to ignorance.
2) Apppeal to motive.
3) Appeal to emotion.
4) Appeal to personal incredulity.
5) Equivocate.
6) Build strawmen and attack them.
7) Demand evidence while being unable or unwilling to supply any (otherwise known as shifting the burden of proof).
Which is “pretend” skepticism and bad-faith “debate” in my book. Now, I’ve told you that I’m open to discussing how you think the oceans are warming in a way that does not involve the “insulating” properties of IR-active atmospheric gasses. Echoing your words above, “I might mention that, given this point remains unanswered, all other allegations of non-anthropogenic global warming remain inconsequential.”
And if I may offer a bit of unsolicited advice, careful with that axe you’re swinging, she’s dual-bladed.
Brandon Gates:
You state that “the relationship between emissions and temperature was established by…” This statement is mathematically improper. It is mathematically proper to state that there is a relation from the change in the logarithm of the atmospheric CO2 concentration to the change in the equilibrium temperature. ECS exists if and only if this relation is a linear functional relation. The proposition that it is a linear functional relation is not testable in view of the lack of observability of the equilibrim temperature. Thus, ECS is scientifically and logically nonsensical.
Terry,
My statement was incomplete. I agree that yours is more so, but if we must be truly precise, the relationship is the natural log of the ratio of CO2 concentration, with the denominator being any non-zero value one chooses. 280 ppmv as the “pre-industrial” value is common, but not required. There are also several constants to consider as well.
I don’t understand why that should be. The Stefann-Boltzmann relationship is that the thermal radiation emitted by a warmed body varies with the 4th power of its temperature, multiplied by a constant. That’s anything BUT a linear relationship.
Yeah, we’ve had that discussion before over at Briggs’ place. IIRC, I asked you how you’d do it and got no answer.
Schrƶdinger’s cat may or may not disagree with you.
Brandon:
The purported linear functional relation is Y = ECS * X where Y is the change in the equilibrium temperature and X is the change in the logarithm of the CO2 concentration. This relation is linear in Y and X though it is not linear in X and CO2 concentration. If this relation exists then every pairing of a value for X with a value for Y falls along a straight line and ECS is a constant. Thus, Y = ECS * X is a linear functional relation.
I’m going to assume that your are familiar with the mathematical idea of a “relation” and the mathematical idea of a “functional relation.” It is conceivable that the relation from X to Y is a functional relation but is not linear. It is also conceivable that this relation is not functional. We cannot test the conjecture that this relation is a linear functional relation because the numerical value of the equilibrium temperature cannot be observed. Thus, this conjecture is unscientific. Nonetheless it is the basis for the alarm that has been sounded over CO2 driven global warming.
If you disagree with my assessment of this situation please provide details. I am currently in the dark regarding the point or points of disagreement. If you feel that Schrodinger’s cat is pertinent kindly explain the pertinence.
Terry Oldberg,
Brandon:
Your argument appears to be based upon an application of the equivocation fallacy that exploits the polysemic nature of the words “science,” “scientific” and “scientist” in the literature of climatology.
Use in making an argument of a word that changes meaning makes of this argument an “equivocation.” One of several properties of an equivocation is that it appears upon superficial examination to be a syllogism but isn’t one. As it isn’t one it is logically illegitimate to draw a conclusion from an equivocation. To draw such a conclusion is an “equivocation fallacy.”
In the literature of global warming climatology, applications of the equivocation fallacy are common (http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=7923). Inadvertent application of this fallacy can be avoided through disambiguation of terms in the language of the argument such that each term is monosemic. If you’d like we can pause to disambiguate “science,” “scientific” and “scientific” and then proceed with the debate. To do so would make it possible for us to draw logically legitimate conclusions from arguments.
Wow, I really botched the blockquotes in that one. The first block of text just under “Terry” before the first blockquote tag also does not belong.
Terry Oldberg,
I respect the concept of avoiding ambiguity in terminology as a way toward clear communication. What I don’t respect are arguments along the lines of: X is not a valid process because it does not fit some specific definition of Y. I call that the “dictionary fallacy” or as it is otherwise known, “argument by definition”:
http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallacies/27-appeal-to-definition
Using a dictionaryās limited definition of a term as evidence that term cannot have another meaning, expanded meaning, or even conflicting meaning. This is a fallacy because dictionaries donāt reason; they simply are a reflection of an abbreviated version of the current accepted usage of a term, as determined through argumentation and eventual acceptance. In short, dictionaries tell you what a word meant, according to the authors, at the time of its writing, not what it meant before that time, after, or what it should mean.
By all means feel free to define your terms for clarity in communication. However, to argue that the IPCC simplified expressions for radiative forcing, and by extension, ECS to a doubling of CO2 is “unscientific” is to insist that your definition is the only one which is acceptable. I’ve already given you an example which I think fails your test of “scientific”: the simultaneously precise position and velocity of particles subject to quantum effects is presently deemed unknowable by the Heisenberg uncertainty inequality.
Further, your ultimate complaint is that the failure to be scientific makes IPCC publications unsuited for policymaking. Surely you are not suggesting that everything used in policy decisions be based solely on scientific practice according to your definition of that word?
Brandon:
You are guilty of having erected a straw man and knocked it down. While you claim that I “insist” that my “definition is the only one which is acceptable,” what I actually advocate is disambiguation that accomodates what ever definitions are in use. This is accomplished by assigning a different term of reference to each definition making each term used in making an argument monosemic. We could, for example, use the term “science-a” in reference to “a theory that coveys information to a policy maker about the future outcomes from his/her policy decisions” and the term “science-b” in reference to “a theory that conveys no such information.” Y = ECS * X is among the latter theories. As it conveys no information to a policy maker it is worthless for the purpose of making policy.
Terry Oldberg,
I apologize if I have misinterpreted your argument. However, you lead not with the disambiguation argument but what I see as an implicit definition of what constitutes scientific: ECS exists if and only if this relation is a linear functional relation. The proposition that it is a linear functional relation is not testable in view of the lack of observability of the equilibrim temperature. Thus, ECS is scientifically and logically nonsensical.
Feel free to define your terms.
I believe I understand that part of your argument perfectly well, but I’ll restate to make sure: If a proposition is not falsifiable by direct observation, its truth can never be evaluated, hence it is useless for making policy decisions.
I don’t see a need to invoke any definitions of “science” or “scientific” to make that argument, or any argument. At risk of building more men of straw, I believe what you are doing when you make the equivocation argument is saying that policy makers are being sold a bill of goods by people who have slapped lipstick on a pig and then go on to insist that it’s no longer a pig.
Brandon:
For avoidance of the equivocation fallacy one need not assign a unique definition to each term of an argument e.g. assign a unique definition to “science.” However it is helpful for one to assign a unique term to each definition of an argument. To do so is to eliminate the possibility of an “equivocation,” that is an argument in which a term changes meaning in the midst of this argument. Upon superficial examination, an equivocation looks like a syllogism (argument having a true conclusion) but isn’t one. Thus, one cannot properly draw a conclusion from an equivocation. To draw such a conclusion is an “equivocation fallacy.”
The UN has announced that it intends to “turn the (Green Fund) tap on in 2015”. So far the UNGCF has received $10B+ in pledges with $3B being pledged by the US.
http://news.gcfund.org/
http://www.trust.org/item/20141204232229-6wev7/
Here’s my draft of the 6AR:
http://www.judithlevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/images-51.jpeg
Thanks, Gary.
Gilda, we miss you.
You beat me to it. A true classic. “Never mind”. Gilda and Jane played off each other great in some of those skits.
I would have thought much of the ongoing expense was in measuring the various quantities (ie various temperatures, sea level, gravity anomolies and so on) we analyse to try to come to grips with how the earth works. I’m all for continuing to do that.
Much of the ongoing expense is in data molestation, pseudodata creation via running model ensembles, and deleting emails.
TimTheToolMan, thank you too for noting what I also need to clarify in an upcoming post.
Many of the metrics already monitored are required for weather, adaptation and other research. Assuming the global warming/climate change science is settled, we no longer need the countless climate model hindcast-based attribution studies to tell us that greenhouse gases contributed to global warming, or the attribution studies to tell us that manmade greenhouse gases played a role in weather events, or the climate model-based studies that project future climate with such great uncertainties that they are basically valueless. Even decadal predictions from climate models have no value. They only tell us that global temperatures might rise a little or they might not.
It’s pretty hard to derail a gravy-train
Here’s my draft of 6AR:
And in conclusion, ”It’s worse than we thought.”
The IPCC adds a ludicrous imprimatur on the pseudo science of AGW used to “justify” their contributors outrageous budgets.
An old saying, comes to mind, “take out the head and the body dies”.
BTW who WILL be the permanent head of this most ignominious international body?
Kelvin Clime. (He has many degrees in hot air.)
cnxtim
This is actually a very interesting question from the perspective of which CAGW weenie wishes to be leading the parade as this whole academic & political fraud continues to come unglued?
I suppose it is possible that some egotistical and totally blind CAGW big-shot (Al Gore comes to mind) could jump in, convinced his “aura” will save the world. However, I suspect the odds favor some reasonably obscure scientists (aka: virgin sacrifice).
In the words of Warren Buffet: “you never know who’s swimming naked until the tide goes out”.
The 6th assessment may occur a few years into a significant cooling trend – it could actually be entertaining, to watch them tie themselves into bizarre contortions as they try to demonstrated they predicted this all alone.
+1 although an IPCC assessment and entertaining don’t go to together well.
AR5 was hilarious entertainment, and AR6, if it occurs, can only be even more hilarious. This will be true even if there is no “significant cooling trend”. For this reason, I still doubt that there will be an AR6. I expect them to announce that since the broad outlines of the science have survived through five revisions, and only little nuances remain to be discussed, there is no point in these major definitive documents. They will be replaced by something like an ongoing series of much less dramatic bulletins. This will make it easier to avoid a huge amount of embarrassment and continue to conduct a furtive retreat accompanied by strident denials that they are retreating. A significant cooling trend would make it even more likely, almost certain I would say, that there will be no AR6.
And despite the temperature not cooperating, we will be told that with 99% confidence humans are heating the earth.
No problem by the ‘magic ‘ of AGW cooling is also ‘proof’ of their claims . Don’t laugh they have already done it .
A much more interesting question , and one they cannot answer is , what would disprove it ?
Are you kidding? Have you not seen all that snow caused by Global warming?
Like the Energizer Bunny, eating up our energy and money.
Same Ole, Same Ole. Must perpetuate what has been done in case people forget. After all,by the UN’s informal polling, climate change ranks 16th out of 16 issues that concern people.(UN āMy Worldā Poll)
It would be interesting to see topics that poll lower than Global Warming (aka climate change, whatever); ya know, stuff like:
17) how old will Madonna be when she stops running around naked?
18) why don’t days of the week occur alphabetically? Same for months of the year?
19) what color dress will what’s-her-name wear at the Oscars?
20) when will quantum astrology get the professional recognition it so richly deserves?
The usual nonsense
Let us see if Senator James Inhofe can do smoothing about this nonsense?
“Believe It or Not There Are Plans for a 6th Assessment Report from the IPCC”
And the 7th and the 8th and the 9th and the 30th and the 100th.
IPCC is providing a lot of money to Global Warming money so it will continue like every bureaucracy.
Thanks, Bob. I agree with your assessment of the IPCC assessments.
Their hands are tied their feet shackled, they have to follow their mandate to look only at the influence of humanity on climate change. They also have a culture that tends to minimize natural causes for climate change; therefore neither the Sun or our ocean circulations are considered.
They do admit papers on ocean circulations, but as consequences, not causes, of climate change. This is the root of the failure of IPCC-approved science, represented by the Global Circulation Models.
Would you walk away from your high paying career if you could choose not to?
People who work in business get paid if they solve problems.
People who work in government don’t get paid if they solve problems.
In fact, if you work in government and solve problems you will soon find yourself looking for another career, as you will be universally disliked by your co-workers for making them look bad. they will start talking behind your back about what a bad person you are, disruptive to the work-force, such that you will be asked to leave.
the most important part of government work is to talk about the problems you are solving, and to continue talking about these problems you are solving, while never ever moving from “solving” to “solved”.
Mustn’t “findings” be reported?
I mean, I read daily about new “findings”.
There’s lots of finders gathering all of the “findings”.
Sure they report their “findings” individually but the IPCC is “findings central” and needs to gather up the heap and weigh it for us.
If nothing else at least that will help us be prepared for additional findings.
There cannot be too many “findings”.
We cannot get enough findings.
So the more finding of findings the better for finding more findings.
And so on.
How much finding can a finder fine if a finder could find findings.
If I find some findings myself should I send them to the professional finders?
It’s a self-licking ice cream cone. The IPCC exists for its own benefit. Beyond a worthless report, it will help justify the billions of
expenditureswaste on super-computer runs for another 100 or so GCM model simulations to make up the CMIP 7 ensemble.Tweaks and model revisions are certainly already underway… gotta justify that expenditure.
“… (IPCC) has taken a series of decisions to make its reports more accessible and involve developing countries more closely in its work.”
Translation: We are starting to get significant push back and resistance in the developed world, so we are expanding our efforts with the developing world to maintain our base.
Those wonderful lavish parties they have, the COP, are reason enough to keep going.
They want to train developing countries to fasten themselves onto the economies of first world countries and drain them dry.
I think the plan is to get each country, in isolation, to imagine a bogeyman cause for each and every natural calamity, which calamity can be ‘offset’ with a wheelbarrow of money.
The implicit assumption is that all ‘developing countries’ are as corrupt or corruptible as the ‘Western democracies’.
Don’t be surprised when the newspapers in the Third World publish the truth about CAGW that the western press doesn’t have the guts to.
(IPCC) has taken a series of decisions to make its reports more accessibleā¦. Translation.. we’re gonna spend millions on propaganda
The UN Groundhog emerged from his den and predicted we need to fund another six billion years of climate change.
IPCC’s AR reports are ultimately simply tools to perpetuate a Leftist political agenda, not for the dissemination of scientific truth.
Certainly there is some good science contained in these reports, but if it runs counter to the CAGW agenda, it’s merely spun, ignored or explained away in the Executive Summary, which is the only section politicians and the MSM are concerned about.
If there is an AR6 report, it will likely be the last because in 5~7 years, the discrepancies between CAGW projections vs. Reality will be so annoyingly huge, Global Warming will certainky be in the middle stages of disconfirmation, and my well be a joke worthy of ridicule by 2020.
Once CAGW falls, it’s rapid demise will surprise many people.
You left out the prediction of $100, 000, 000, 000.00 per year will keep the problem away…
Let’s just spell it out: The goal of the I.P.C.C. is that, “THE GRAVY TRAIN SHALL LIVE ON IN PERPETUITY.”
It is IPCC pandering to itself. Nothing strange there.
This 6th assessment, say it comes up zero, seems that will be better than the nothing they have so far.
“U.N. Climate Science Math”
We are all Russians now like the time from the real Pravda.
We gather together to make jokes on what Pravda printed each day and drink enough to go to sleep each night.
Having been employed in the Research Labs of a former large US multi-national corporation (in the top 20 on the Forbes list in the 1990’s, now bankrupt and not even in the top 500) I Once remarked that we would all be better served to “pile all the research dollars in the parking lot and ignite them, since we would all get a nice warm feeling, and the end result would be the same”.
Of course, my career “trajectory” at that employer suddenly experienced a “downward acceleration, aka it crashed and burned”. I found a “life boat” in a spin-off and exited “stage left” a decade or so before they declared bankruptcy.
Sure, let’s burn through a couple billion more dollars on the IPCC, heck, there just has to be a rabbit down in the bottom of that hole, it JUST HAS TO BE THERE, let’s keep digging….. Oh, wait a second, I think I see a big floppy rabbit ear, DIG FASTER EVERYBODY, we almost have it…….. Oh wait, it’s just an old rotten tree root….
Cheers, KevinK.
When will we see the millions of climate refugees?
When polar bears fly?
When Canada becomes inhospitable due to growth of an ice sheet. I give it about 250 years +/- 3,000yrs.
IPCC is the ultimate bureaucracy – thousands of office workers, all beavering away. An humourist (Parkinson was his name, I think) once stated that, given enough funds, “work will expand to cover the time and availability of workers”. Let us keep on laughing – it is actually funny.
Is that not the principle upon which the state sector/public sector relies upon.
Most of what the state/public service does is unnecessary. All governments are way too big and bloated, but this is a way of providing employment but unfortunately at the expense of those who in the private sector generate real money, and real wealth creating moeny is foreign revenues.
If they wanted to improve their work they could have implemented all the recommendations of the IAC review. You know, like the one that recommended they sack Pachauri.
Pachauri needs more time to spend with his families.
The IPCC will develop regional climate projections?
Bizarre as it gets.
What are you talking about? AR6 is already written: “We are Double-Secret-Probation sure that humans are destroying their grandchildren’s Earth!”
The temperature measurements can be adjusted. The decline can be hided. The averaged temperature in range of 0.5C can be manipulated by choosing other measurement set (choosing stations). I am not sure how mach of manipulation potential already is used and where is manipulation upper limit.
Therefore if in next years there will be not significant cooling, then agony if AGW hystery and discrediting of true/real science will continue.
Come the year 2100, “science” will make the amazing discovery that water actually freezes at 2 deg C.
“… involve developing countries more closely in its work.”
What does this mean? More focus on blackmailing developed countries to pay “guilt money” to doubtful regimes? Has the IPCC realized that their glory is somewhat faded in the western world, and wants to drum up fresh support from the third world, maybe in exchange for more influence in the UN system as a whole?
With a former leader like that, who knows what extra-scientific subjects might be the subjects of the next twenty COP meeetings?
Got it in one.
IPCC? or, are they just words from the the ‘combo’, the
Northern Pondia alliance of Socialist America-western communist blocWashington – EU bureaucracy/corporate hospitality and hotel industry?My prediction for AR6
‘Natural variation dominates the climate cycle with a man induced element approximating to .5c per century’
summary for policy makers – ‘The Oceans will boil’
Well, you know….some technological realities come into play here. Just like any juggernaut (or even a mighty ocean liner) it takes time to turn it around, let alone stop it. But turning off the money supply that fuels it would speed things up.
Angela Merkel, POTUS, David Cameron, Tony Abbott: are you listening?
AR6 will also give them the opportunity to move up a level from “high confidence” in their predictions to “awfully high confidence”.
When āThe science is settledā, why IPCC waste public money? First let IPCC accept the fact that āThe science is not settledā to proceed further and apologize to the public on this. If IPCC stick to their “The Science is settles”, then close the office of IPCC and divert the money for upliftment of the global poor.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
The temperature records and charts, regional weather, etc are like a mirror. They reflect the person back looking at them.
A skeptic will look and see many possibilities, many questions but no certainties. A bureaucrat will see a good way to make a living, a politician will see a way to harvest votes, a scientist their next grant, a warmest will see a misguided humanity despoiling, plundering, pillaging, ravaging, and ransacking the planet.
Temperature records, the perfect mirror.
UN bodies , of which the IPCC is one, have two main aims . Keep themselves in business and grow .
So I have no issue with believing ‘There Are Plans for a 6th Assessment Report’
No AGW , no IPCC it really is that simply .
In other news Turkeys publish research ‘proving ‘ eating poultry will kill you.
Here is what the UN really wants: Execution of Agenda 21, read http://green-agenda.com
Yes, and they have openly announced that it’s not about temperature but about wealth redistribution. I don’t see how they can pull it off though.Why would any large democratic industrial country think they could get away with taxing their citizens for being successful and give the money to the UN to distribute to underdeveloped countries in the guise of reparations? Right now average Joe citizen in the US has been led to believe this is a conspiracy theory even though it’s now being advertised by the UN and the current administration in the US. I don’t even understand how the US gets away with the carbon tax. Was there a vote that I missed?
From today’s Daily Mail.
“Into the deep: The optical illusion in the seas off Mauritius that appears to show Indian Ocean vanishing in an ‘underwater vortex’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2978568/Into-deep-Stunning-pictures-taken-Mauritius-create-underwater-vortex-optical-illusion-Indian-Ocean.html#ixzz3TPuQ8v9y
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How long before this is used as a proof that the “excess heat from global warming” is disappearing to the bottom of the ocean?
Adaption? Education seems more appropriate. Now that meaningfully accurate climate simulations can be dome on a pocket calculator we can avoid the big computers.
Also common sense is more available in developing countries so involving them more will help everyone.
If they’re “finding” nothing new (and they won’t) then the IPCC 6th assessment is a complete waste of money, Brandon. ANY use of the money is better, and that includes adaptation should it become necessary.
Sure, the nuts and bolts of the paper may include references to a couple of new studies, but ultimately the Summary for Policymakers is going to read exactly the same as it always has.
@ConTrari
…āā¦ involve developing countries more closely in its work.ā
What does this mean? More focus on blackmailing developed countries to pay āguilt moneyā to doubtful regimes?…
No. It means MORE trips to the Maldives, the Bahamas, Bali etc…
Translation: We’re on the gravy train and we’re gonna ride it to the end of the line.
So I guess now anyone who does not agree with dealing with climate by using adaption instead of pretending we can manipulate global climate we can call an evolution denier.
Hi Bob! I agree there will be “few to no changes in the wide uncertainty ranges” , they will be more certain than ever that it is all man’s fault and they need to have control of every aspect of a person’s life to be able to save said person. Oh and everyone must send all their money to the UN and the UN will give each person back what “they need.” …. let the counting begin..”one for you, ten for me..oops us, one for you ten for….” with their methods everyone being equal means they and their ilk are more “equal” than all others.
Cheers!
Joe
As long as there are taxpayers and ratepayers to plunder via the Global Warming scarecrow, there will be IPCC reports. They’re cheap to produce, they have a giant profit margin. There will be enough “scientists” willing to make more of them – most of the work is done by Greenpeace and student grunts anyway.
(tr.) “We are assessing the damage.”
(tr.) We’ve not been sufficiently successful at holding the world spellbound, so we’re going to turn up the propaganda. On your dime, of course.
Sounds to me like it will be written to rope in more developing nations in order to put pressure on developing nations should they want to opt out. Nothing but maintaining a power play position in the face of no evidence that CO2 is causing us problems.
I favor spending a few billion on genuinely scientific research on global warming. This is something that we have not yet gotten for our money.
Step 1: Remove the head of the organisation
Step 2: Install someone more compliable
Step 3: Do what you like
Step 4: Wait a while
Repeat steps 1-4 as needed.