Guest essay by Patrick J. Michaels
Day after day, year after year, the hole that climate scientists have buried themselves in gets deeper and deeper. The longer that they wait to admit their overheated forecasts were wrong, the more they are going to harm all of science.
The story is told in a simple graph, the same one that University of Alabama’s John Christy presented to the House Committee on Natural Resources on May 15.
The picture shows the remarkable disconnect between predicted global warming and the real world.
The red line is the 5-year running average temperature change forecast, beginning in 1979, predicted by the UN’s latest family of climate models, many of which are the handiwork of our own federal science establishment. The forecasts are for the average temperature change in the lower atmosphere, away from the confounding effects of cities, forestry, and agriculture.
The blue circles are the average lower-atmospheric temperature changes from four different analyses of global weather balloon data, and the green squares are the average of the two widely accepted analyses of satellite-sensed temperature. Both of these are thought to be pretty solid because they come from calibrated instruments.
If you look at data through 1995 the forecast appears to be doing quite well. That’s because the computer models appear to have, at least in essence, captured two periods of slight cooling.
The key word is “appear.” The computer models are tuned to account for big volcanoes that are known to induce temporary cooling in the lower atmosphere. These would be the 1982 eruption of El Chichon in Mexico, and 1992’s spectacular Mt. Pinatubo, the biggest natural explosion on earth since Alaska’s Katmai in 1912.
Since Pinatubo, the earth has been pretty quiescent, so that warming from increasing carbon dioxide should proceed unimpeded. Obviously, the spread between forecast and observed temperatures grows pretty much every year, and is now a yawning chasm.
It’s impossible, as a scientist, to look at this graph and not rage at the destruction of science that is being wreaked by the inability of climatologists to look us in the eye and say perhaps the three most important words in life: we were wrong.
This article appeared in TownHall.com on May 29, 2015. Patrick J. Michaels is the director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute.
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Is the Old Faithful about to blow up ?
No, but it does have a bizarre sense of humour.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/YS.gif
Data from NOAA
the inability of climatologists to look us in the eye and say perhaps the three most important words in life: we were wrong.
Jct: Not “we were wrong!” Not “oops!” They used a “trick” to “hide” the decline. That’s no oops. WE LIED! would be better. WE HID THE TRUTH would be good too. But not mere “we were wrong” as any innocently wrong person could mitigate. They lied to hide the truth. Tougher to admit, right?
Except that the alleged “trick” had nothing to do with falsifying the data and everything to do with a technique of plotting recent instrumental data along with the reconstructed data.
It is like a “trick” I use when I enter data into a spreadsheet if the data is all numbers; I use the numeric keypad portion of the keyboard.
Great article and great comments. This is passionate topic, obviously. It is fascinating to me that not one person has taken into account Geo-engineering, HAARP, and the man made manipulation of the weather. Cloud seeding is child’s play (Project Popeye). Even China can make it snow (simply search “China makes it snow”). No conspiracy here, fact.
Now, by reading some comments about how hard it is to admit you are wrong (Tolstoy), or admit that people do bad things, “until I saw it for myself”, I realize there will be a lot of people who will immediately cry foul. Ask yourself, which agenda are you promoting?
Wake up. A mind is like a parachute. It only works if it is open.
I believe they will only say they were wrong when the money stops or they get into real legal trouble. In other words when the poop hits the fan. The question is when did they realize they were wrong or did most of them know it was mostly a scam from the start in the late 80s?
“It’s impossible, as a scientist, to look at this graph and not rage at the destruction of science that is being wreaked …”
Unfortunately it is not only possible, it happens all the time. Human psychology trumps scientific merit any day of the week. The deadly mix of cognitive dissonance (Hell, I’m not wrong); central government money (billions and billions); and a strong dose of ideology (we need green energy; never mind that it won’t do anything for the climate) wins. You hear it every day from the current occupant of the WH and the horde of lackey media twits that carry the water for him.
Which graph would that be?
The graph that looks nothing like the preliminary MCIP5 model outputs?
Or the graph that shows global temperatures from 1996 to 2014 but uses data that does not include the temperatures from the oceans below the surface and the temperatures from the Arctic (poleward of 82.5N) & the Antarctic (south of 70S) regions?
Also, who ever claimed that the models were, or would be, perfect?
Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
In any other area of the ‘sciences’, observations and data would be rigorously checked against the hypothesis and corrected accordingly. Not so in the elite ‘science’ of global warming, climate change, climate disruption, where such discovery is immune and condemned.
Too much money and too many reputations within the climate industry are now at stake, to uphold the most basic of scientific methods – the verification of data.
Sad and dangerous times for all the sciences indeed.
One would think that those making tens of billions a year in profits, each, off of fossil fuels would get some value for the scientists they have put on their payroll to sow doubt about science like the tobacco companies did.
The average tenured geosciences department professor, who could also be considered to be a leader against global warming by many; earned about $120,000 in 2010, so what too much money are you talking about?
Willie Soon’s climate change denier’s work was funded almost entirely by the energy industry, receiving more than $1,200,000.00 from companies, lobby groups and oil billionaires over more than a decade. On top of his listed day job at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics that was also funded by “grants.”
He gets reasonable money to play tobacco scientist doctor, an easy cake walk job. And the best he could come up with was crap like questioning if the Arctic is warming when some of those funding him are greedily eying the potential for resource extraction once the Arctic is ice free in the summer. Followed by the easily disproven, from publicly available satellite & ground data, simpleton BS that the sun is somehow magically involved because no one can prove how it is magically involved given the fact that the solar cycle is acting normally – And he thinks that because no one can prove that the sun is responsible, that somehow they are also not able to prove that it is not responsible.
He gets reasonable money to play tobacco scientist doctor, an easy cake walk job. And he has a degree in something climate related, yet not a peep out of him on the actual science. Not even lame attempts to discredit the science behind determining what the geochemical characteristics of various gasses are and how each source of CO2 has its own different isotopic composition.
He gets reasonable money to play tobacco scientist doctor, an easy cake walk job. And he has a degree in something climate related, yet not a peep out of him on the actual science. Not even lame attempts to discredit the science behind the fact that CO2/AGW linkage was irrefutably proven after it was “found in the spectrum of greenhouse radiation.”
No lame attempts at calling into question the science behind high-resolution FTIR spectroscopy. Because climate scientists now can, by “Using high-resolution FTIR spectroscopy” “measure the exact wavelengths of long-wave (infrared) radiation reaching the ground.” Also, they can now “see that CO2 is adding considerable warming, along with ozone (O3) and methane (CH4). This is called surface radiative forcing, and the measurements are part of the empirical evidence that CO2 is causing the warming.”
He and his ilk need to get on these latest scientific discoveries and make their tobacco scientist doctor forefathers/predecessors/mentors proud. They will also be doing all the criminals who were convicted by FTIR based forensics a very large favor.
And how many Big Government-paid climate “scientists” can you buy for 1.3 trillion in new taxes for Bigger Government, and 31 trillion in Big Finance carbon credits?
Another with no facts. Arguments merely derived via emotion, groupthink, group speak, smear and ad-hom climate catch-phrases designed to shut down dissent and debate. Nice work 😉
RACookPE1978
How many Big Government-paid climate “scientists” can I buy for 1.3 trillion in new taxes for alleged Bigger Government, and 31 trillion in Big Finance carbon credits?
How many engineers would I hire would also be more accurate. The science is settled, I would anticipate for the worst and we do not need more scientists for that. That way if the worst did not transpire we would still be ahead and if the worst does happens we will be ready for it.
That would depend if I were given all the money or if I would have to share it with AGW remediation and/or AGW disaster prevention projects or even with other non-climate related agencies/departments, like the Pentagon, who will try claiming that AGW will also impact them in order to get their hands on some of the money.
How much will it cost to demolish one, or more, of the Rockies and ship the back fill to Florida and raise the entire state, while trying to keep everything intact during the move, up 12 feet? (I read that Chicago had to do something similar over/around 100 years ago.)
Kuni Lemi
Your exaggeration makes no sense – and reveals the depths of your desperation, your exaggerated fears, and a total lack of technical knowledge to discuss any part of the CO2 situation, sea level rise, and CAGW.
Sea level rise might be as much as 20 inches, not 12 feet, if the latest trends continue until 2100 – and that is not likely. World temperatures will be as likely to have fallen by 2100 as to have risen higher than today’s averages – and even more likely to be lower in 2200 or 2300 – than today.
No part of Florida (even Miami) needs to be raised 20 inches, much less 12 feet.
No part of the Rockies needs to be “demolished” in any event to “raise the entire state”: Even the center of the Everglades is higher than 24 inches above sea level. Have you ever read a topographic map of FL? Of the Appalachians? The AL and central FL highlands?
Even back in 1995 the disconnect between thermometers as presented versus the weather balloons and satellite data was already 0.2C. And this was noted at the time. They jumped all over Christie about it, didn’t they?
This marks 20 years I guess. And they THOUGHT they’d shut up everybody about the balloons and satellites.
And now, the models don’t even agree with the thermometers. In the wrong direction – away from being in better alignment with the balloons and satellites.
Climatology seems to be about the only science where data AS MEASURED is twiddled with to give them what they want. In any other science it is called fudging the data and will get someone expelled from jobs, careers, and get papers withdrawn.
How in the hell did they manage that? An entire discipline (almost) completely ignoring the actual data?
Except for the fact that sometimes the twiddling lowers the temperature being measured. Certain regions are cooled. Other regions are warmed. On balance the effect of adjustments is inconsequential. (If there were actually fiddling with the data, you would never have heard about the twiddling in the first place.)
You also forget that the Koch Foundation was the largest funder of a comprehensive study, ran by, at the time, a climate science skeptic, into this very issue.
Here is the money quote:
Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.
But if you really believe deep down inside that the twiddling is responsible for the continued downward trend in the Arctic ice pack, then patent it and sell it to Shell who is chomping at the bit to drill in the now “magically because of this twiddling” ice free portions of the Arctic. (I am sure that the Russians would also be very interested in investing in it.)
P.S. Had they not adjusted for the bias that was created when, in the 50’s/1960, temperature measurements were taken in the afternoon instead of in the mornings, people would be claiming that AGW was a fantasy because they failed to take obvious biases into account.
It is well documented fact, by everyone, science haters included, that MMTS sensors tend to read maximum daily temperatures about 0.5 C colder than LiG thermometers at the same location. Had they not adjusted for that bias, people would be claiming that AGW was a fantasy because they failed to take other more obvious biases into account.
Leftists don’t admit they were wrong.
.
They just stop talking about a subject when they finally realize they are wrong.
.
That’s why they are now silent on past environmental boogeymen such as DDT, acid rain, hole in the ozone layer, etc. etc.
Then they invent a new environmental boogeyman … that must be fought the same way as all the old boogeyman: Slower economic growth, slower population growth, more powerful central government, etc.
Climatology (climate modeling) is not science, because climate models are not data, and without data, there is no science.
Global warming for non-scientists at this blog:
http://www.elOnionBloggle.blogspot.com
We can speak about predicted global warming, about models and patterns, but we must keep in mind human intervention on the oceans and the way that influences climate!
They are still working on the CMIP5 models so they cannot be wrong.
Furthermore, the outputs are off by a tenth, or two tenths, of a degree (sometimes predicting colder temperatures) from the observed temperatures.
And I have yet to see a model predicting a 0.6 degree increase over what was observed after 2014 because the test runs all end at 2013 and as was pointed out: the outputs are off by a tenth, or two tenths, of a degree.
Knowing the CATO Institute, they probably took all the very small variance of all the different models, some not even trying to model the same things, and added them all up to make the red line. Because the model “average” at times is measured in the hundredths of a degree off of what was observed.
What was also observed shows global and regional temperatures that do not make 1998 the “global warming has stopped for the past 15-17 years” goalpost that some have tried to peddle.
@Kumi Lemi “(sometimes predicting colder temperatures)”
– How many, exactly, of the 102 CMIP-5 climate models (models that dictate radical climate and economic policy) predicted “colder temperatures”?
How many out of the 102?
– And of the 102, how many are running too hot and do not, in any way shape or form, resemble real-world-observations?
Most of the model divergence work was done by Climate “Scientists” like John Christy….not the CATO institute.
See Christy’s testimony before Congress about the ‘radical’ divergence between model output and reality:
https://climatism.wordpress.com/2015/06/01/when-will-climate-scientists-say-they-were-wrong/
Correction. See Christy’s testimony here: https://climatism.wordpress.com/2015/05/27/real-world-data-sinks-the-great-global-warming-swindle/
How many models that were never sold as being 100% accurate were off by a few tenths of a degree, up or down you are asking me: I do not know because it was, and still is, not relevant to what I was pointing out.
Government’s base their entire climate policy, not on real world observations, rather what overheated models tell us 50-100 years from now. You don’t think the fact models do not resemble real world data, is a problem for forecasting and future climate policy?
So much for the BS that the chart is the average of 102 IPCC CMIP-5 climate models.
A call the Easterbrook inquiring as to where he got the chart resulted in a “I can’t find it anymore. It must have been removed.”
After some searching, the chart that is the “average of 102 IPCC CMIP-5 climate models” is in fact the output of a SINGLE model, the HadCM3 temperature simulation which depicts individual model global temperature change simulations to greenhouse gas changes only, rather than simulations responding to changes in the total global radiative forcing. It represented model simulations of temperature responses only to greenhouse gas changes, which neglects for example the temperature response to the cooling effects of aerosols.
RACookPE1978
What alleged exaggeration would that be?
I was merely inquiring if you knew what the cost of doing something would be.
If I was going to imply what the sea level rise would be, I would have used the actual long term projection number. Just the partial deglaciation of the Greenland ice sheet, and possibly the West Antarctic ice sheet, could contribute 13 to 20 feet, or more, to sea level rise. So my 12 feet is an understatement.
sorry, but the Picture you show is wrong!
The real T Anomalies are twice as big as shown in the graph in the article, 0,4°C and not 0,2°C
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/oct/01/ipcc-global-warming-projections-accurate
I think we should be happy its not heating as fast as the worst predictions. Still heating though. Scientists will admit they are wrong, when new evidence shows it. I don’t think NASA and a 100 organisations from Norway to China ando Australia are all collaborating in a giant hoax for funding dollars. With no evidence for that, only wild imagination, I find it very hard to believe. Nothing is impossible, but either is big-foot and UFOs.
If you want money, start a business, go into politics. No one does science to make money. That’s laughable. Not as laughable as skeptics, often uneducated in science, with not even a measly degree, pretending to be experts, pretending to know more than thousands of teams of scientists in various disciplines all over world.
When the arrogance of arm-chair experts admit they are not scientists and should stop pretending a giant hoax exists?
http://i.guim.co.uk/static/w-620/h–/q-95/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/10/1/1380599335494/ProjvsObs450.jpg
IPCC AR5 Figure 1.4. Solid lines and squares represent measured average global surface temperature changes by NASA (blue), NOAA (yellow), and the UK Hadley Centre (green). The colored shading shows the projected range of surface warming in the IPCC First Assessment Report (FAR; yellow), Second (SAR; green), Third (TAR; blue), and Fourth (AR4; red). IPCC
Since 1990, global surface temperatures have warmed at a rate of about 0.15°C per decade, within the range of model projections of about 0.10 to 0.35°C per decade.
The first report was over-estimated (seems this thread is based on that graph, and not any subsequent ones). The next one, under-estimated the rate of change. The third and fourth have improved modelling that fits the data.
Here it is in black and white. Keeping up to date is helpful.