Michael Bastasch
9:16 AM 09/20/2017
A climate model expert told The Washington Post there would be “extra eyes really scrutinizing” a new study claiming climate models predicted more global warming than has been observed this century.
And he was right.
Climate scientists have rushed to criticize a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, which found that less warming in the early 20th Century suggests it’s slightly easier — though still difficult — to meet to goals of the Paris accord.
One would think climate scientists, especially those alarmed about warming, would see this as positive, but prominent researchers were quick to express their skepticism of results questioning the integrity of climate models.
Penn State University climate scientist Michael Mann told Seeker he was “rather skeptical” of the research. Mann doubted meeting the Paris accord goal of keeping future warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times was impossible without “highly speculative negative emissions technology.”
University of Reading climate scientist Ed Hawkins said media headlines “have misinterpreted” the new study that questioned models relied on by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Hawkins contributed to the IPCC’s major 2013 climate report.
“A recent study by Medhaug et al. analysed the issue of how the models have performed against recent observations at length and largely reconciled the issue,” Hawkins wrote in a blog post.
“An overly simplistic comparison of simulated global temperatures and observations might suggest that the models were warming too much, but this would be wrong for a number of reasons,” Hawkins wrote.
Berkeley Earth climate scientist Zeke Hausfather said the models matched observed global temperatures “quite well.”
A quick reminder that, reports in British tabloids notwithstanding, climate model projections agree quite well with observed temperatures. pic.twitter.com/7NxGUlBkFu
— Zeke Hausfather (@hausfath) September 20, 2017
Study authors, however, contend the models and observations diverged in the past two decades during what’s been called the “hiatus” — a period of roughly 15 years with little to no rise in global average temperature.
“We haven’t seen that rapid acceleration in warming after 2000 that we see in the models. We haven’t seen that in the observations,” study co-author Myles Allen, a geosystem scientist at the University of Oxford, told The Times on Monday.
“The models end up with a warming which is larger than the observed warming for the current emissions. … So, therefore, they derive a budget which is much lower,” study co-author Pierre Friedlingstein of the University of Exeter said, according to The Washington Post.
The study seemed to confirm claims made by scientists skeptical of catastrophic man-made global warming claims that models were showing more warming than actual observations.
For example, Cato Institute scientists Patrick Michaels and Chip Knappenberger have noted the climate models have been over-hyping warming for decades.
Climate scientist John Christy of the University of Alabama-Huntsville has shown climate models show 2.5 times more warming in the bulk atmosphere than has been observed.
Follow Michael on Facebook and Twitter
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
This is what the scientists say exactly – and of course it is published in The Guardian, the best newspaper for coverage of environmental issues:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/21/when-media-sceptics-misrepresent-our-climate-research-we-must-speak-out
Interesting that the Guardian chose to suppress comments on that article. I wonder why?
Standard policy by most major newspapers on controversial topics.
Ivan, yes, standard yellow journalism; shut out cogent rebuttals based on peer review publications, national and international data bases, historical records.
Yet you are allowed to give your best bias here… ????
David A
That’s the beauty of a blog, relative to an owner controlled media outlet.
You are allowed to make the statement you did.
Is not a blog an owner controlled media outlet?
Damage control. They were naive in conceding where the error was to explain the new calculations, but they say The Times did an accurate reporting, and what The Times says is pretty clear.
“The worst impacts of climate change can still be avoided, senior scientists have said after revising their previous predictions.
The world has warmed more slowly than had been forecast by computer models, which were “on the hot side” and overstated the impact of emissions, a new study has found. Its projections suggest that the world has a better chance than previously claimed of meeting the goal set by the Paris agreement on climate change to limit warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
The study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, makes clear that rapid reductions in emissions will still be required but suggests that the world has more time to make the changes.
Michael Grubb, professor of international energy and climate change at University College London and one of the study’s authors, admitted that his past prediction had been wrong.
He stated during the climate summit in Paris in December 2015: “All the evidence from the past 15 years leads me to conclude that actually delivering 1.5C is simply incompatible with democracy.” He told The Times yesterday: “When the facts change, I change my mind, as [John Maynard] Keynes said. It’s still likely to be very difficult to achieve these kind of changes quickly enough but we are in a better place than I thought.”
The latest study found that a group of computer models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had predicted a more rapid temperature increase than had taken place. Global average temperature has risen by about 0.9C since pre-industrial times but there was a slowdown in the rate of warming for 15 years before 2014.
Myles Allen, professor of geosystem science at the University of Oxford and another author, said: “We haven’t seen that rapid acceleration in warming after 2000 that we see in the models. We haven’t seen that in the observations.” He added that the group of about a dozen computer models, produced by government institutes and universities around the world, had been assembled a decade ago “so it’s not that surprising that it’s starting to divert a little bit from observations”. Too many of the models used “were on the hot side”, meaning they forecast too much warming.
According to the models, keeping the average temperature increase below 1.5C would mean that the world could emit only about 70 billion tonnes of carbon after 2015. At the present rate of emissions, this “carbon budget” would be used up in three to five years. Under the new assessment, the world can emit another 240 billion tonnes and still have a reasonable chance of keeping the temperature increase below 1.5C.
“That’s about 20 years of emissions before temperatures are likely to cross 1.5C,” Professor Allen said. “It’s the difference between being not doable and being just doable.”
Professor Grubb said that the fresh assessment was good news for island states in the Pacific, such as the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu, which could be inundated by rising seas if the average temperature rose by more than 1.5C.
Other factors pointed to more optimism on climate change, including China reducing its growth in emissions much faster than predicted and the cost of offshore wind farms falling steeply in Britain. Professor Grubb called on governments to commit themselves to steeper cuts in emissions than they had pledged under the Paris agreement to keep warming below 1.5C. He added: “We’re in the midst of an energy revolution and it’s happening faster than we thought, which makes it much more credible for governments to tighten the offer they put on the table at Paris.”
The Met Office acknowledged yesterday a 15-year slowdown in the rise in average temperature but said that this pause had ended in 2014, the first of three record warm years. The slowing had been caused by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a pattern of warm and cool phases in Pacific sea-surface temperature, it said.
The Times”
They can’t take back what they said. They just don’t like that people can connect the dots and remember what they have been saying all along. Their “Oops!” moment at the reaction is just added fun.
“They can’t take back what they said. They just don’t like that people can connect the dots and remember what they have been saying all along.”
Exactly! And laypeople have no idea which graph is more accurate, too often they’ll just trust the “official scientists.”
Without firmly established model predictions of actual temperatures to compare to the record, they’ll just wiggle around some parameters and claim they were right all along. This is a typical tactic of pseudo-scientific movements, especially eco-scares.
The Guardian is the best newspaper for lining the bottom of a birdcage. Except it’s hard to tell when it’s covered with birdshit because it comes covered with that anyway!
Fascinating how you define best, as that which agrees with you most completely.
Then again, that’s how trolls usually think.
Troll: (in folklore) an ugly cave-dwelling creature depicted as either a giant or a dwarf.
Strange how some climate sceptics like to use kiddies language to disrespect those who disagree with them. Perhaps because the language reflects the fantasy of their own fairy-tale beliefs.
ivan, let’s be mature about this. Nanny nanny, boo boo, I’m rubber you’re glue, to infinny plus two!
Although it’s almost impossible to read on the graph in the tweet, it does mention “Includes 109 runs from 38 RCP45 models.” From a bit of Google searching, the RCP appears to stand for Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5, and Wikipedia says “Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) are four greenhouse gas concentration (not emissions) trajectories adopted by the IPCC for its fifth Assessment Report (AR5) in 2014.”
So what the graph is actually showing is how well models from 2014 or after have predicted the past back to 1970 when they already knew the observed temperature the model needed to produce. A models accuracy can only be verfied if it predicts and matches the unknown. Of course a model created from past data will match data from the past. And notice how the most recent observed temperatures, the ones most likely not known when the model was created, swing wildly from one edge of the model band to the oppisite edge in very little time.
Now if the same graph had been from models created in 1970 and showed that those past models had accurately predicted temperature after their creation up until the present, that might say something about the quality of the model. But using 2014 or later models for a graph of 1970-2017 data says nothing about the ability of those models to predict the future.
And their scary predictions are based upon RCP 8.5 pathway!!
But ‘RCP 8.5 Pathway’ sounds so cool and technical. I bet if I said it a few times in public it’d make me sound smart and knowledgable.
From the Abstract: https://tinyurl.com/y9noqmgn
That 66% of Earth system model members reminds me of this awesome Burgundy’s quote:
66% is the new 97%.
Adjust the measured data enough and your model predictions will match “measured” data quite well.
They had to do that, and move particulates to an unsupportable cooling affect.
Proof that garbage in only gets garbage out, when it cannot show that the increased CO2 by Humans has NOT increased Global Warming or Climate Change as they predicted. If the global temperatures have not heated with the CO2 increase the models are failures. Vindicating that CO2 has little to no effect as they have been alaming the population for decades that it does. Proving again that this is all just a political scam to harm capitalism at the root of all technological advances that started with our use of Fossil Fuels in the Industrial Age. That these so called “scientists” are turning on their own – that say their predictions have been wrong – is typical in the modern progressive/liberal/Democratic Socialist of the last century… Either march in Lock Step or you will be demonized and ostracized as a Denier.
Sorry “…than it does.” not “…that it does.”
These days it’s garbage in for gospel out.
Send in the clowns
I’m confused. So these models all predict El Nino and La Nina and eruption of Mount Pinatubo? It seems like past observed ocean temperatures input as boundary conditions into the model. So an atmospheric response to ocean anomalies is produced. Doesn’t it just show that oceans control the global thermostat?
“published in the journal Nature Geoscience”
Just because it’s in Nature doesn’t mean that is is wrong.
Are there extra eyes really scrutinizing papers that say ‘it’s worse than we thought’?
This graph is outright lie, the years after time x never showed anything like it. It is an hind cast not future model runs. They have hind cast them fairly often to try a match observations and the temperature range increase fits scenario C. The hind cast also reflects scenario C after it was run. Scenario C = warming much lower than expect because we have not even reduce emissions to match this outcome, so no C in CAGW thank you very much.
https://twitter.com/hausfath/status/910454958998224897/photo/1
Nearly 1c increase from 1979? (no chance, wrong)
Satellite shows about 0.3c to 0.4c increase until now.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/plot/rss/trend/plot/uah6/plot/uah6/trend
Con artists have adjusted the surface to show 0.5c to 0.6c until now.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1979/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1979/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1979/plot/gistemp/from:1979/trend
Warming from 1979 only about 0.1c per decade averaging all 4.
The misinformation in that chart is absolutely awful and typical of con artists with alarmist agenda.
Yes, and it is worse then that…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/09/21/scientists-go-after-the-media-for-highlighting-a-study-showing-ipcc-climate-models-were-wrong/comment-page-1/#comment-2616144
Yes, and it is worse then that…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/09/21/scientists-go-after-the-media-for-highlighting-a-study-showing-ipcc-climate-models-were-wrong/comment-page-1/#comment-2616144
Leaders of a faith, and who do very nicely out of being so , rush in to attack ‘heretics’ that challenge the dogma of the faith , very old story indeed.
Dueling three-card monte is pseudoscience, modellers need to give ACTUAL TEMPERATURE PREDICTIONS that can ACTUALLY BE CHECKED.
The most famous one it all started from is here and it was way off.
Satellites warmed 0.3c-0.4c since 1979 and surface 0.5c-0.6c since 1979.
Even on Hansen 1988 there’s no actual temperatures given, plus they claim Hansen’s scenarios don’t refer to emissions (even though they’re clearly labelled as such in the written Congressional testimony).
Statistical projections, whether linear or non-linear, are NOT modeling and should never be presented as such. These fabrications increase in error as a function of the time scale based on the aggregate input error. In the case of “climate models” that means that the chart is inaccurate the moment the time and temperature scales are selected.
We are always told “listen to the scientists, trust what they say”. (Ed Begley Jr, Bill Nye, Barack Obama, Al Gore, Richard Branson, Leonardo di Caprio, Prince of Wales, to name a few celebs that are actively promoting the CO2 scare)
Now suddenly we are not supposed to listen to scientists. At least not to the ones that authored that very inconvenient paper.
People like Michael Mann have too much to lose. They will fight each and any type of opposition tooth and nail with their allies in the Media. Huge amounts of money are at stake, not to mention reputation and job security.
“Sorry” seems to be the hardest word…….as per Dellingpole, who brilliantly exposed this situation a day or so ago.
This new paper will come in handy for Mark Steyn’s defense, if it ever comes to a trial date in the case that Michael Mann sent Steyn’s way back in 2011.
Not a single one of those named people has ever demonstrated any mathematical, logical or scientific knowledge whatsoever!
If there are any readers here that don’t regularly follow JoNova’s blog, you might want to check out her latest post for a slightly different spin:
http://joannenova.com.au/2017/09/latest-belated-admission-the-models-were-too-hot-is-all-pr-and-politics-nothing-to-do-with-science/
Zeke clearly has no shame. Very deceitful.
The models match the surface record exceptionally well. Cue the posting of graphs comparing surface temperature projections with satellite measurements from an outlying dataset of temperature up at the same elevation as Mount Everest. Or faux conspiracy theories about every weather service in the world tampering with their historical records…
SST data sets are rubbish. Even Phil Jones admitted this:
Tom,
The issue Ray alludes to is that in addition to the issue
of many more drifters providing measurements over the last
5-10 years, the measurements are coming in from places where
we didn’t have much ship data in the past. For much of the SH
between 40 and 60S the normals are mostly made up as there is
very little ship data there.
——
it’s not a conspiracy theory; it’s a conspiracy fact. They conspired to dodge FOIA requests and delete emails. It’s all there in their own words.
Better than that, here is the ‘observed linear decadal temperature change at surface, 9 km and 12km, between 20oN and 20oS, since January 1979’ (climate4you):
http://www.climate4you.com/images/EquatorSurface300hPa200hPaDecadalTempChange%20BARCHART.gif
Wow, the blended comparison is outright fraud. Complete lies. There has been very little warming since 98 and the models project 2.5 times the observed temperature. this is fact. It takes enormous Hubris to lie openly in the media like that. Either that or he feels ‘protected’ by the establishment agenda.
The study is no big deal…it just moves the Goal Posts out so that they can’t be proved wrong for another 20 years, but before that can occur they will move the Goal Posts out another 20 years.
My prediction (sorry, projection) for the end of the century is that folks alive then will be wishing temperatures were 1.5 degrees above what they were in 1850. Just as likely for the climate to go cold again as to keep warming.
But, but, but they used so many qualifiers for the agw climate priests and gatekeepers.
The reason why model simulations closely match the temperature record is that the temperature record has been overwritten by model simulations.
All this tells us is that we are dealing with pure state fascism.
Zeke Hausvazer is a new Goebbels.
Fair dinkum I just don’t know where these guys were when Statistics Classes were on?