Guest post by David Middleton
A very thoughtful column by Ross Pomeroy at Real Clear Science…
Is Climate ‘Lukewarmism’ Legitimate?
To many, prominent writers Matt Ridley, Ross Douthat, and Oren Cass are a baffling bunch. They are the visible proponents of the position that climate change is real, manmade, and occurring as predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), yet it does not yet constitute a worrying or catastrophic problem. They are “lukewarmers.”
So what do we make of these climate change moderates, who do not hold the invalid, unevidenced opinions of those who deny the scientific consensus, yet at the same time, do not ascribe to the apocalyptic scenarios espoused by climate alarmists and the accompanying solutions to avert them?
As far as I can tell, lukewarmers’ views are legitimate. The mountains of evidence present in the most recent IPCC assessment report, comprising more than 9,200 peer-reviewed studies, cannot simply be cast aside as the product of a conspiracy or a statistical fluke of climate models. If lukewarmers accept the science, they are on solid ground.
[…]
To his credit, lukewarm New York Times columnist Ross Douthat agrees. “Every lukewarmer, including especially those in positions of political authority, should be pressed to identify trends that would push them toward greater alarmism and a sharper focus on the issue.”
In other words, they must recognize some level of evidence that will cause them to change their views. If they don’t, they have proven themselves not to be lukewarm moderates but dogmatic deniers.
“Every lukewarmer, including especially those in positions of political authority, should be pressed to identify trends that would push them toward greater alarmism and a sharper focus on the issue.”
This is not a one-sided question. It should also be asked, “What trends would push a lukewarmer towards lesser alarmism and a sharper focus on the issue.”
For this lukewarmer, there is a level of evidence that would cause me to change my views. This would be some level of evidence above…
Almost every catastrophic prediction is based on climate models using the RCP 8.5 scenario (RCP = relative concentration pathway) and a far-too high climate sensitivity. RCP 8.5 is not even suitable for bad science fiction. Actual emissions are tracking closer to RCP 6.0. When a realistic transient climate response is applied to RCP 6.0 emissions, the warming tracks RCP 4.5… A scenario which stays below the “2° C limit,” possibly even below 1.5° C.
Note that the 2σ (95%) range in 2100 is 2° C (± 1° C)… And the model is running a little hot relative to the observations. The 2016 El Niño should spike toward the top of the 2σ range, not toward the model mean. I am working on a more detailed post on this and “Gavin’s Twitter Trick,” that I hope to post later this week – So I won’t be responding to comments about the hotness of the models in this thread.
Ross Douthat had an excellent column on this in the New York Times (of all places)…
Neither Hot Nor Cold on Climate
Ross Douthat JUNE 3, 2017
LIKE a lot of conservatives who write about public policy, my views on climate change place me in the ranks of what the British writer Matt Ridley once dubbed the “lukewarmers.”
Lukewarmers accept that the earth is warming and that our civilization’s ample CO2 emissions are a major cause. They doubt, however, that climate change represents a crisis unique among the varied challenges we face, or that the global regulatory schemes advanced to deal with it will work as advertised. And they raise an eyebrow at the contrast between the apocalyptic, absolutist rhetoric with which these schemes are regularly defended and their actual details, which seem mostly designed to enable the globe’s statesmen to greenwash the pursuit of economic and political self-interest.
More specifically, lukewarmers look at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s official projections and see a strong likelihood that rising temperatures will drag on G.D.P. without leading to catastrophe. They look at the record of climatological predictions and see a pattern in which observed warming hugs the lower, non-disastrous end of the spectrum of projections. And they look at the substance of the Paris accord, which papered over a failed attempt to set binding emission rules with a set of fine-sounding promises, and see little to justify all the anguish and despair over Donald Trump’s decision to abandon it.
[…]
Although, I do take issue with is this statement:
Lukewarmers accept that the earth is warming and that our civilization’s ample CO2 emissions are a major cause.
The Earth’s average surface temperature has warmed since the 1600’s and our CO2 emissions have played a role in that warming. Relative to the total carbon flux, our emissions are hardly “ample” and 20-30% doesn’t strike me as a “major cause.”
And I would also take issue with Mr. Douthat’s answer to his own challenge:
I’ll answer that challenge myself: My own alarm over climate change has gone up modestly since the Obama-era cap-and-trade debates, as the decade or more in which observed warming was slow or even flat — the much-contested warming “pause” — has given way to a clearer rise in global temperatures.
If you chart this spike against the range of climate change projections, it brings the trend up into the middle of climatologists’ scenarios for the first time in some years. Maybe that will be temporary and it will fall back. But the closer the real trend gets to the worst-case projections, the more my lukewarmism will look Pollyannish and require substantial reassessment.
The 2016 El Niño spike didn’t bring “the *trend* up into the middle of climatologists’ scenarios.” The bottom of the 2σ range is the P97.5 case, 97.5% of the model runs resulted in more warming than P97.5. The model mean is the P50 case, 50% of the model runs resulted in more warming than P50. The top of the 2σ range is the P02.5 case, 2.5% of the model runs resulted in more warming than P02.5. A major El Niño spike should spike from P50 toward P02.5, not from P97.5 toward P50. For a discussion of this nomenclature see The Good, the Bad and the Null Hypothesis.
Lukewarmerism is well-grounded in science and economics. I suppose it could even be viewed as a climatological version of Pascal’s wager. Matt Ridley also has an excellent article on Lukewarmerism…
MY LIFE AS A CLIMATE LUKEWARMER
Published on: Tuesday, 20 January, 2015The polarisation of the climate debate has gone too far
This article appeared in the Times on January 19, 2015:
I am a climate lukewarmer. That means I think recent global warming is real, mostly man-made and will continue but I no longer think it is likely to be dangerous and I think its slow and erratic progress so far is what we should expect in the future. That last year was the warmest yet, in some data sets, but only by a smidgen more than 2005, is precisely in line with such lukewarm thinking.
This view annoys some sceptics who think all climate change is natural or imaginary, but it is even more infuriating to most publicly funded scientists and politicians, who insist climate change is a big risk. My middle-of-the-road position is considered not just wrong, but disgraceful, shameful, verging on scandalous. I am subjected to torrents of online abuse for holding it, very little of it from sceptics.
I was even kept off the shortlist for a part-time, unpaid public-sector appointment in a field unrelated to climate because of having this view, or so the headhunter thought. In the climate debate, paying obeisance to climate scaremongering is about as mandatory for a public appointment, or public funding, as being a Protestant was in 18th-century England.
[…]
Update:
Marlo Lewis has provided a handy list of the range of opinions that come under the “lukewarmer” label. I subscribe to each of these in some form or to some degree:
“In general, I would describe a ‘lukewarmer’ as someone who:
– Thinks anthropogenic climate change is real but very far from being a planetary emergency
– Takes due notice of the increasing divergence between climate model predictions and observations and the growing body of scientific literature challenging IPCC climate sensitivity estimates.
– Regards the usual pastiche of remedies — carbon taxes, cap-and-trade, renewable energy quota, CO2 performance standards – as either an expensive exercise in futility or a ‘cure’ worse than the alleged disease (depending how aggressively those policies are implemented).
– Is impressed by — and thankful for — the immense albeit usually unsung benefits of the CO2 fertilization effect on global agriculture and green things generally.
– Recognizes that poverty remains the world’s leading cause of preventable illness and premature death.
– Understands that plentiful, affordable, scalable energy (most of which comes from CO2-emitting fossil fuels) is essential to poverty eradication and progress towards a healthier, safer, more prosperous world.”
Update 2:
The main point of my article was to draw attention to how ad-hominem, vicious and personal the attacks on lukewarmers now are from the guardians of the flame of climate alarm. Though I had a huge and overwhelmingly positive response, I could not have wished for a better example of my point than some of the negative reactions to this article. An egregious example was the death threats I received from a Guardian contributor and Greenpeace “translator”, Gary Evans.
On 21 January The Guardian published an article by Dana Nuccitelli, specifically criticizing me. The article was illustrated with a picture of the severed head of a zombie. Beneath the article appeared the following comment from “Bluecloud”:
“Should that not be Ridley’s severed head in the photo?”
[…]
Other Lukewarmers like Dr. Pat Michaels, Chip Knappenberger, Dr. Judith Curry, Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr. John Christy are routinely subjected to similar ad hominem attacks from the “guardians of the flame of climate alarm.”
So… If you are a fellow Lukewarmer… What evidence would push you toward alarmism? What evidence would push you toward rejecting human impacts on the climate as being less than a rounding error? (Note: I view the impacts as only being slightly larger than a rounding error).
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A trend in climatologically relevant time frames would change my mind.
A contrived ten year graph, as offered in a recent essay, ain’t even close.
Floods, storms, droughts, sea level rise…and especially temperatures, rely on massaging numbers to justify the hype.
Honest numbers…the scariest thing that the climate consensus has.
I do seem to fit the criterion for being a “lukewarmer”. I have commented in other forums that my acceptance of a changing climate and that human activities probably do have an impact even align me with the consensus position of 97% of climate scientists.
For me to go from a “lukewarmer” to an alarmist, there would need to be observations backing model projections that demonstrated that the current warming trend would continue past the climbing out of the current ice age. Among the items entailed in this would be climate models that could post-dict the cooling from the late1940s to the 1970s, the warming from the late 1970s to the late 1990s, AND the global warming hiatus.
Given: the global temperature is rising.
I don’t see anything near catastrophe in the historical data on flood/draught, hurricanes, fires, tornadoes, etc, even though the globe has been warming for decades now.
So what is it exactly is that Lukewarmers have to fear?
2 degrees warmer, with randomly scattered and time-variable spots around the globe that slightly warmer or slightly cooler? This hypothetical outcome does not motivate me to run out and spend $100 trillion on measures that do little do reduce global warming, while at the same time, sentences the poorest among us to a continued life of subsistence, poor health and misery. Show me the benefit that outweighs those costs.
One thing I don’t see being addressed here is the claim that warming greater than 2°C will be catastrophic. I’m not sure it would be. It seems to me that a little warming has far more benefits yet they are almost never discussed especially by the alarmists and MSM.
The biggest scare they have is sea level rise. If the increase in average temperature comes as a result of increasing minimums then storms will not be as strong as they operate of the different temperatures of adjacent air masses. Warmer weather bring more rain so any claims of increasing drought can’t really be true. If there’s more rain then there should be more floods.
So sea level and flooding are the biggest scares pitted against all of the increases in agricultural productivity and mild weather that comes with more CO2 and a warmer world.
It’s not a piece of information, a chart or data set that will convince people, it’s debate. If the world is going to end from more CO2 in the atmosphere, the climate consensus people should be more than willing to debate competent lukewarmers or skeptics and either win the debate or at least make a very good case for the alarm. “The debate is over” position has done nothing but harm to the consensus position outside of a narrow bubble of people who are already convinced or will benefit from climate policies. Most people see refusal to debate as arrogance or fear of losing on a fair discussion of the issues. Either way, it loses votes.
I take no exception to anyone who believes or rejects the lukewarmist position if they reject the prosposterous green alarmism doing so much damage, but there is a question I’d like to ask the excellent David Middleton and the lukewarmers.
As we know that for much of Geological history the atmosphere has had between 2,000 to as much as 7,000 ppm CO2 and that temperature at the higher figure seems to have been no more than 4C greater, how does that match the kind of sensitivity postulated by the lukewarmers?
The Earth has never gone into a true uncontrolled greenhouse , which presumably would be a one-way trip for life. I know the effect of CO2 diminishes as the window it operates in saturates, so do any of the sensitivities suggested by the lukewarmers show a consistency with the relatively small increases to much larger ppm numbers of the Jurassic, etc ?
Would the answer to this question suggest a validation of the lukewarm position or not ?
First… The periods with very high atmospheric CO2 levels were generally warm.
On a geologic time scale, climate is controlled by First and Second Order processes. These are the big drivers.
From a human history perspective Third Order processes dominate. Fourth Order processes, which include human contributions, become a factor on the scale of 10’s to 100’s of years.
Prior to the Quaternary, you really can’t compare past climates to the present because the oceans and continents were configured in a substantially different manner.
However, all of the evidence indicates that the climate is relatively insensitive to CO2… even if you assume that all of the warming since 1850 was due to an enhanced greenhouse effect (which is an unrealistic assumption).
http://www.searchanddiscovery.com/documents/gerhard/images/fig01.JPG
David, I think the above graph showing 1st through 4th order effects is nonsense. Why? For practical purposes, all of the heat content of earth is in the oceans. The oceans heat and cool the atmosphere, not the other way around. Thus, solar induced ocean heat content is a first-order effect. THe 33K attribution to the atmospheric temperature typically given to greenhouse gases is misplaced.
Since solar insulation is pretty much constant, the only way to warm or cool the oceans would be to change how easily the oceans transfer their heat to the atmosphere.
Thus the temperature of the atmosphere strongly influences the temperature of the water.
MarkW,
Think you mean insolation. Maybe an autofill error. If so, please excuse my pedantry.
In your first plot, one can see the complete lack of correlation between CO2 and temperature. There are many periods of anti-correlation. That plot runs contrary to the claim that CO2 forces warming.
You state;
Your plot does not strongly support that contention. for example:
(i) in the period 80Mys before present temps were some 8 deg C warmer, yet CO2 was only around 900 to 1200 ppm;
(ii) In the period 270 My before present temperatures were a little below 9 degC warmer, and CO2 was around 1800 to 400 ppm. The peak temperature coincides with about 400 ppm.
(iii) In the period 440 Mys before present, temperatures were around – 2 to – 2.8degC and yet CO2 was as high as 4,200 to 4,500 ppm.
(iv) CO2 was at its highest around 525 Mys before present, but whilst temperatures were warm at around + 3 to 4 degC, this is significantly cooler than the +6, +8 and even +9 degC seen in earlier times when CO2 was lower.
I agree with the majority of the points you make in your comment, apart from your assessment of what the first plot shows. But of course one must bear in mind your caveat before reading too much into matters 9as well as the general limitation of proxies and the wide error bounds that always accompany proxies):
Prior to the Oligocene, the Earth was much warmer than it is today except for the Pennsylvanian (Upper Carboniferous) ice age, when CO2 was around 400 ppm.
The only clearly defined high CO2 ice age, during the Ordovician, was significantly warmer than either the Pennsylvanian or Quaternary (present day) ice ages.
A possible high CO2 ice age occurred during the Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous. Although the evidence only clearly supports ephemeral glaciation.
There’s not a strong correlation between CO2 and temperature change over geologic time because plate tectonics and astrophysical forces were also major factors.
280-400 ppm CO2 yields a minuscule warming effect, relative to other forcing mechanisms.
280-5,000 ppm is a whole different story.
I love Valentia in SW Ireland, no UHI. 0.42 degs C a century. I can live with that.
If ‘Lukewarmism’ is simply defined as pushing the alarmism off beyond one’s lifetime, but still exploiting the issue for funding and political agenda, then no.
If it is defined as simply acknowledging C02 has some effect – possibly even a non-trivial effect – on the climate, then yes.
The difference is alarmism and exploitation, and if you’re not standing against these – clearly and publically – then you are part of the problem.
Good point
A grand total of nobody defines “lukewarmism” as you do.
I to have a degree in geology (1968) with some archaeological background also. I know that there were periods in the past with atmospheric CO2 levels many times the current, and the planet’s life thrived. I also recognize that in the more recent past, those CO2 levels fell dangerously close to what some would call extinction levels. All of this has occurred without any help from our species. As a young man during the 70’s glacial scare, I spent quite a bit of time studying the various claims, and at that time thought that maybe man’s transgressions against nature could have some sort of evil effect, but soon got over that.
Didn’t pay much attention at all to the current warming “threat” until someone posted MM’s hockystick a few years back on a forum I spend some time on with the “look, –we’re all going to die ” hysteria. One look at that graph was all it took for me to know something just didn’t look right, so, in order to refute the claim with some backing, I started looking into what it was all about. That’s when I found WUWT, and discovered just what an educational tool this blog is. I appreciate how even handed the variety of articles posted is, and have come to understand the predictability of the comments.
The one thing that bothers me is this concept of a “global climate”. I’d always thought of climate being more of a local, or regional thing. After all, the climate of Antarctica is nothing at all like the climate of the midwest US, or the Mediterranean coast, or the Mongolian plateau. And of course, that regional climate does change over time. Personally, I don’t think this heated argument about global warming has anything at all to do with the future of the planet–it’s going to do whatever it wants, irregardless of H.sapiens doings. Seems to me to be a bit arrogant to think so. I’m pretty sure that man can influence the climate through his activities–clear cutting forests for agriculture, creating huge bodies of water by damning river systems, raising local humidity (and allergies) by moving to the desert SW and dragging your well watered and manicured green lawn with you, but that isn’t squat in the grand scheme of things. I look at the burning of fossil fuels as just a stored source of solar energy, and if the resultant CO2 is actually warming the planet a little, so much the better. I was raised in PA, but live in Texas for one reason–shorter milder winter. Cold is not nice.
I suppose the one thing that would take me from my ho-hum lukewarming perspective towards the climate alarmist side would be the influence on the climate of a whole out nuclear war. But then if that happens nothing much we can do about it except that the earth has survived such catastrophes in the past, and (unless we blow the whole damn rock to bits) will do so again, and again until such time the sun swallows us up. H.sapiens, whither we cause our own or not, will follow every other species into extinction when the time is right.
I find it very interesting that there are several boxes now into which one can put individuals who have different views on the very complicated issue of Climate. Perhaps it would be a good idea to start at the very beginning and consider some of the foundation stones upon which the idea of AGW (or CAGW). I propose we could start sorting peoples opinion out at an early stage by a rigorous application of SCIENCE.
(Pause for signs of applause or mutterings of “not again”)
Lets start with some basics. 2 simple science questions:
1) Can a cool object transfer energy to a warmer object and thus make it hotter via radiation?
2) Is it correct to add via simple math the radiative fluxes from 2 independent sources and use the resultant sum to determine the temperature of the sink via the SB equation?
This should be useful as the primary sorting mechanism. Obviously those giving the SCIENTIFICALLY INCORRECT answer can be binned straight away. Clearly the reject bin is going to be pretty huge.
The interesting spaces to watch will be those where the reject bin is SMALLER than the retained bin.
Which space does WUWT fall into?
Reverend,
The answer to your first question is that the more agitated atoms in a hot object will transfer some of their kinetic energy to a colder object that is in direct contact. If they are separated by a perfect insulator, no conduction will take place.
All objects above absolute zero temperature radiate IR EM, which can be thought of as photons, capable of being captured by objects not in direct contact. What is important is the relative intensity and wavelength of the photons/waves emitted by your hot and cold bodies, which contribute to the net gain or loss of energy. However, another consideration is the dispersion of absorption with wavelength. If the cold body is essentially transparent at the wavelengths at which the hot body is transmitting, little to no warming will occur. This is essentially the situation with visible light going through the atmosphere. However, if the cold body is strongly absorbent, its temperature will be increased, which is the case for IR from the Earth being absorbed in the upper atmosphere. Now, for the last situation, which is the essence of your question, the Earth radiates into space, and it cool as it loses photons. However, if the upper atmosphere captures some fraction of the outgoing IR, it will be prevented from leaving the Earth system. Therefore, the Earth will not cool as much as it might have in the absence of the absorber. This should be evident primarily as an increase in temperature of the absorber. That absorber is initially acting as a time delay, with some increase in its total radiation as a result of the T^4 relationship between temperature and radiated energy. So, there will be an increase in the amount of energy radiated to space. At the same time, photons are directed back at the Earth because the atmosphere radiates in all directions. These ‘reflected’ photons are effectively photons that weren’t able to escape ninto space. Most materials on Earth (especially water) absorb IR energy. Therefore they are captured on their ‘return’ trip. The net result is that not all radiated photons are capable of escaping and the fraction increases as the concentration of the absorbers (primarily H2O and CO2) increases. So, it isn’t that a cold object is warming a hot object, it is that a cold object isn’t allowing the hot object to cool as much as it would in the absence of the absorbers.
1) Yes
2) Yes
“So… If you are a fellow Lukewarmer… What evidence would push you toward alarmism? What evidence would push you toward rejecting human impacts on the climate as being less than a rounding error? (Note: I view the impacts as only being slightly larger than a rounding error).”
Well, first is evidence of how much CO2 warms Earth.
My assumption is that doubling CO2 will cause less than 1 C of warming.
BUT I was lukerwarmer when I thought a doubling of CO2 could cause as much as
3 C of warming. So if a doubling of CO2 causes 2 or 3 C, I will be wrong and very surprised
and maybe more doubt about being lukewarmer [mainly because I will have been proven wrong and obvious that causes more doubt.
But since the time I once thought CO2 could cause 3 C of warming [about +20 years ago] I have learned more and become more skeptical. And Climategate certainly had an effect of upon my views of the criminality involved with “global warming”.
But a basic problem with alarmism is we have a cold ocean, we have warm surface but very cool ocean. Or what is well known is that we are living in an icebox climate- which is average ocean temperature [the entire volume of ocean] is cold plus we have polar ice caps. Or cold ocean and ice caps = icebox climate.
So simple question is what is needed to make our cold ocean to be warmer.
So when the oceans get to be near 5 C, I might become alarmed.
But even if alarmed, the governments are incompetent. They have proven they can’t even reduce CO2 emission and spent trillions of dollars of tax payers money not doing this.
So being alarmed won’t make join the bandwagon of having a totalitarian governing body- which is the whole purpose of the lefties.
So for real purpose of global warming, the government would have to prove they much more competent they they have been. Which is probably close to impossible.
I have respect for the so-called Lukewarmers only because they have inoculated their thoughts, like most sentient humans, in the fact that humankind has some intrinsic and superior place in the cosmos . ” Man is all-important”. “Man can control his environment”. Finally, “Man’s emissions can influence the climate”.
This is the human condition. Lukewarmists have no empirical evidence for their CO2 claims. Indeed, as most admit it is a “belief”. Or , “I think” so and so.
If there is one area man could change the climate, it would be from the changing the earth’s geography. CO2 has not been proven to do anything except feed our plants.
I won’t go so far as calling these well-meaning Lukewarmers losers or any other epithet. No more than I would call out someone having a different religion from another’s a loser. It is the human condition.
The only thing they have is that CO2 is a GHG in the lab. That’s it.
From this fact, they conclude, ergo, more of it in the air must cause warming. But it hasn’t been shown to do so, nor is their conclusion inescapable, given how complex is the climate system, with multiple feedback effects. Over much of the planet, water vapor already swamps out CO2’s absorption bands.
So far, more CO2 has been a good thing, and more is liable to be even better.
If it absorbs IR in the lab, it will absorb IR in the wild.
Physics don’t change based on the location of the molecule.
Even in the places where there is lots of water vapor, there are still bands for CO2 to absorb, and there are a lot of places where water vapor isn’t close to saturation.
I wouldn’t call the lukewarmer position “illegitimate” – it is not facially absurd, blatant political manipulation like the CACA hysteria – but since not even anthropogenic CO2 increase has been established beyond a reasonable doubt it must at this point be considered probably incorrect.
I said this elsewhere: put those charts with spikes of highs and lows into a more realistic setting. Provide a chart that shows a month-by-month 10 year chart, as well as a chart that shows a month-by-month 100 year time frame, include the same changes in mean temperature on both of them, and you will find that the temperature “spikes” disappear into nearly flat lines.
I challenge anyone to do this. The real problem is lack of room on a computer screen. Even a 10-year chart like that requires a space nearly the width of a 10×10 foot room.
If these charts were transferred into a more realistic view, the alarm bells might stop ringing. If they did not stop, there has to be an awfully good reason. If just that 1960 to 2015 chart up above were spread out like that, the compressed spacing disappears into a flat line.
richard verney September 25, 2017 at 12:54 pm
‘The signal is completely lost in the noise of natural variability.’
There. That is truth right there. That the entire cannon of WUWT boffins (and there are many) cannot agree amongst themselves on CO2 sensitivity says to me that the science is so not settled that it’s a joke to claim it is. If any signal cannot be definitively determined (and again, it hasn’t been, see IPCC 3C +/- 1.5C) then it’s game over as far as I’m concerned.
Activist BS on the other hand is highly detectable.
I’m a “do nothing” luke warmer. In other words, I believe we should do nothing in response to climate change. We don’t need to have regulations to control CO2 output or any other anthropogenic driver. Let technology and the inevitable inflection point in global fecundity take their course. It’s all good. My rationale is the anthropogenic drivers are less than half of the total. Not worth worrying about.
I would say, we should do nothing, or at most very little, to try to *prevent* climate change.
We should do whatever we have to do in *response* to climate change.
If we weren’t wasting so much money trying to stop climate change, there’d be a lot left over to mitigate the bad effects of climate change. Assuming we ever find some.
David
Your view is that
Whilst, you may well be right, I have so many issues with this view.
First, I do not consider that there is any evidence that withstands the ordinary rigours of scientific scrutiny that would convinces an objective scientist to accept that there has been any warming post 1940. That does not mean that there has been no warming since then, but simply that there are so many issues with the time series temperature sets that the position is uncertain, and it requires remeasurement.
In fact, it is quite clear that the warming post 1940 is entirely the artifact of human adjustments made to the data sets. One only has to look at the temperature reconstructions of the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and today to see that that is the case. Steven G@ddard has a lot on this, so I shall not repeat it. Of course, all the adjustments made to the record could be legitimate and correct, and which case there has been warming, but then again, the adjustments may not be correct and the apparent warming may simply be an artifact of adjustments and biases causes by station drop outs, biasing from rural to urban, biasing towards airport stations, equipment changes etc. such that factually there has been no warming at all,
Second, if there has been warming, your attribution is simply a guess. It may be a reasonable guess, but a guess it is, nonetheless. Man may be responsible for 10% of the warming, 30%, 50%, 70% or even 100% of the warming. The attribution is simply not known. We cannot say with certainty whether it is zero or 100%. I do not consider that even on the balance of probabilities that a firm % figure can be ascribed. To do so, is nothing more than guesswork, and hence unscientific.
We do not know whether whatever caused the cooling between 1940 to early 1970s (which in the mid 1970s was thought to be around 0.5 to 0.6 degC of cooling) has continued at the same or even greater rate of cooling through to today, but manmade CO2 emissions gradually increasing from 1950 have first completely offset this cooling and lately more than overcome it producing all of the observed warming. It could be that at the moment there is some natural cycle that is producing a negative forcing of around 0.18 degC per decade cooling but manmade C02 emissions have overcome this and are now producing a warming of around 0.18degC per decade warming. I do not consider that to be the position, but it cannot be ruled out.
Whilst i would put Climate Sensitivity, if any at all, at no more than 0.8degC per doubling, because of the poor quality of our data sets and the high error margins that they must possess, I do not consider that we can rule out the possibility that Climate Sensitivity is as high as about 4 degC per doubling. In fact, the fact that the IPCC still clings to an upper range of 4.5degc per doubling is an indictment on the poor quality of data available to us, and the wide error bounds that attach to that data.
But I maintain that on the evidence available to us, we cannot demonstrate that there is any Climate Sensitivity whatsoever to CO2. For that reason, Climate Sensitivity could be zero This ought to be the scientific position, and the IPCC ought to put them lower bound for Climate sensitivity at zero.
The fact that we have been unable to narrow the bounds of Climate Sensitivity these past 30 or so years, again demonstrates how appallingly inadequate our data sets are.
I have no problem with lukewarmers who consider that rising levels of CO2 brings more benefit than harm, or that a warmer world will not be catastrophic. Those would appear to be very legitimate and reasonable views to hold. But I do have a problem with lukewarmers who accept in the absence of good quality evidence that CO2 leads to warming since this gives some measure of acceptance and credence to a science which is devoid of scientific rigour and standards, and which is nothing more than a cargo cult.
I don’t really disagree with any of this. The radiative forcing effect, sans feedbacks, of a doubling of CO2 works out to around 1 C. All of the evidence points to the feedbacks being somewhere between strongly negative to slightly positive. So… yeah… The sensitivity could very well be zero.
But might you have a problem with thinking the radiative forcing is zero?
I would, since it is direct contradiction to the science.
The radiative forcing is >0. The net effect, including feedbacks, could be 0.
It seem to be pretty universal that anyone self selecting as a lukewarmer is a “Why it IS carbon dioxide” believer.
I would love to find a few lukewarmers who believe CO2 does nada and discuss their alternative theories. Are there any out there?
You’re wrong Varny:
It’s possible the average temperature has not changed since 1940 … or since 1880.
But it’s likely the average temperature has changed, since our planet is not in thermodynamic equilibrium.
Given the bias of the people who collect the surface temperature data, I suspect the warming has been overstated … but the surface data are not global, so allow a lot of “infilling” and “adjustments”.
It’s still possible climate sensitivity to CO2 is ZERO.
Nothing has happened to the average temperature since 1940 to suggest anything unusual happened to our average temperature (that could not be caused by natural variations of an ever changing climate) … except for warming in the Arctic.
“So… If you are a fellow Lukewarmer… What evidence would push you toward alarmism? What evidence would push you toward rejecting human impacts on the climate as being less than a rounding error? (Note: I view the impacts as only being slightly larger than a rounding error).”
As one of the first Lukewarmers and the person who popularized and defined the term in a fairly rigorous manner I would say the following.
I defined Lukewarmer as a position that believes.
1. C02 is a GHG. Increasing it will warm the planet, not cool it, all other things held equal.
2. Doubling C02 will cause between 1.5C and 4.5C of warming, all other things held equal.
3. IF you are offered an over/under bet that ECS = 3C, take the Under bet.
4. Climate change science suggests we should be concerned ( not alarmed) and
should look first for no regrets actions we can take.
Since then folks have bastardized the postion to mean the warming is nothing to be alarmed about,
or that the warming will be slight etc etc etc.
comes two questions:
1. What will make me change being a luke warmer? Well, if more an more evidence shows
That the OVER BET is more likely, then I would take the over bet. That would mean
evidence from both paleo and observational estimates of ECS.
2. What would make me an alarmist? I dont recognize this as an interesting question.
There’s no reason to being alarmed in any case. One’s concern might increase,
but there is no reason to be alarmed about the climate problem or the fix. Higher temperatures
and Higher taxes, both concerning, neither a cause for alarm. Alarm is a reaction to a
short term threat.
1. Agree.
2. More like 1.0 to 1.5 C.
3. Agree.
4. Maybe… At least concerned enough to keep an eye on it.
Warming caused by CO2 is unknown.
Simple lab experiments provide no real data.
Feedbacks are unknown.
The warming in the second half on the 20th century blamed on CO2 looks almost exactly like the “natural” warming in the first half of the century.
There is no evidence to prove whether increasing CO2 has caused ANY warming in the past.
Therefore any guess of warming caused by CO2 in the future is wild guess.
But you provided a guess.
Why?
That’s why lukewarmers are losers — they will guess the future average temperature when they do not have sufficient knowledge of climate change to make that guess.
They do realize the ‘CO2 will cause runaway global warming’ belief is a fantasy, backed by almost no science.
The obvious “answer” is that today’s scientists do not understand climate change, and do not know the effect of adding CO to the air based on what has happened since 1940.
Based on the simple laboratory experiments, CO2 rising at 2 ppm a year has been harmless, and is likely to remain harmless in the future.
I like rigour. Steven, would you say that “CO2 is a GHG” is a universally applicable property of the gas which will be true everywhere in the universe, for example on other rocky planets with a gaseous atmosphere containing a bit, a fair amount, a lot or even (heaven forbid) almost 100% CO2 concentration?
You’re right to take the under, since 3 degrees C per doubling is clearly wrong. No surprise, since it’s without any physical basis and entirely evidence free.
Average CO2 during the Cretaceous was more than six times its “preindustrial” level, ie some 1700 ppm. The continents were nearing their present positions. Yet mean temperature during that long period was only about four degrees higher. If ECS were as much as three degrees C per doubling, then mean temperature should have been seven or eight degrees hotter, especially since there was so much volcanism and oceans were so much warmer than now.
PS: Even “Father of GCMs” Manabe’s 2.0 degrees C per doubling can now be seen to be too high, but a lot more realistic than Hansen’s fantastic WAG of 4.0, also from the 1970s.
I like to think that I coined the phrase, “Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.” I never heard anyone else say it before I did.
I also came up with the idea for satellite navigation in cars… I just didn’t get around to figuring out how to actually implement my idea.
😎
It seems like there should be a “5” or even a “6” and “7”.
5. Natural and living processes thrive on and remove CO2 from the air.
6. We don’t really understand enough of how all this works together.
7. So, what should we do to solve a hypothesized Man-made problem?
“2. Doubling C02 will cause between 1.5C and 4.5C of warming, all other things held equal.”
In other words, taking the IPCC position is the lukewarm position?
Despite all the evidence that has shown conclusively that the IPCCs sensitivity estimates are an order of magnitude too high?
Hey! We got Mosh to actually post in complete sentences! Don’t disrupt the Karma… 😉
David Middleton September 25, 2017 at 3:37 pm
I like to think that I coined the phrase, “Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.” I never heard anyone else say it before I did.
Sorry to burst your bubble but Frank Robinson was quoted saying it in Time magazine in July 1973, supposedly also used by Johnnie Carson on the tonight show in the 60s too.
I was a Mets fan… So I never listened to anything any Baltimore Oriole ever said… Except for Earl Weaver. And… How do you know Johnny Carson didn’t steal the phrase from me?
A key part of the lukewarm view in my mind is the conviction that, at the present time, the cure is in all probability worse than the disease. With that in mind, the one significant change that has any real likelihood of happening before I am not capable of changing my mind any longer would be a significant breakthrough in low/zero carbon energy. If the cost of change becomes minimal (or better yet, profitable) then the case for change becomes overwhelming.
Of course, part of my lack of concern in the first place is a confidence that if solutions do exist they will ultimately be found. So you could certainly argue that acknowledging that such a solution has been found wouldn’t really be changing my position.
Not sure which group I fit in other than “skeptic”.
But I do think that the idea of “groups” and the question posed and what would it take to spur one group to “action”, just shows that this is politics and not actual science.
In this Layman’s opinion, political goals/financial gain is what drives (and funds) the “warmist”, not science.
As for the rest, well, that’s usually those interested in the science.
(Sometimes those opposed to the political goals behind the “warmist”.)
Personally, this Layman has seen nothing but headlines and hype that justifies any political action to limit Man’s CO2 emissions that could prevent CAGW or “Climate Change”.
Agree on the “groups” point. It’s arguments between those who believe in different things – “My religion is the RIGHT one because….” What we should be doing is forcing the CAGW/AGW crowd to test all their beliefs against proper science. It’s is highly distracting and wasting energy to have to also force “lukewarmers” to do the same. I might have a huge success and even manage to convince Roy “I have an experiment” Spencer that most of his “proofs” are bunkum but that gets us nowhere in reversing this AGW madness.
It’s like I need 2 armies now. one to fight AGW and one to fight Lukies. Now I know why John (Qualified Cartoonist and Na2i costume tester) has to be so proactive with respect to censorship. He needs to just fight on ONE front.
If, as seems likely from the empirical data, equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) is below 1 C/doubling then global warming is harmless.
That is easy to demonstrate, since an increase in 1 C would require 400 ppmV more CO2 to be added to the atmosphere and 1 C more would require another 800 ppmV to be added. Thus a 2 C rise would require 1,200 ppmV more CO2 than today.
Since the last ice age pCO2 has risen about 120 ppmV. So to get 2 C more out of CO2 we’d have to add another ten times as much as we have emitted in all our recorded history.
The same people used to be hysterical about peak oil, which was supposed to happen by 1990 or 2000 or 2010 or whenever. If peak oil is supposed to be happening now how exactly are humans going to find ten times as much carbon to burn?
And that only increases temperature by a mostly harmless 2 C if ECS is 1 C/doubling. Which is a big if (my estimate using HadCET is less than 0.7 C/doubling).
That is what “luke warmism” means: CO2 is harmless, get on with your lives and stop destroying civilization with your stupid green religion.
It’s a Douglas Adams sort of thing.
‘Mostly harmless’?
Or ‘So long and thanks for all the fish’?
My denier rating is “Mostly Harmless”… LOL!
Personally, I like the line about the Vogon constructor ships…
“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11128-the-ships-hung-in-the-sky-in-much-the-same
No one could convolute simple concepts as well as Douglas Adams!
Yes but it’s even better than that, if ECS is zero or negative we can burn as much fossil fuel as we like with impunity. All of it. As fast as we like.
Of course we can do it sensibly, taking account of pollution by careful design of the systems. I guesstimate we probably have 200 – 500 years worth of fossil fuel left which should be plenty of time to get something else going (salt reactors?) for when it does run out/become too expensive to extract.
This scenario looks like fantastic news for the planet. No worries, cheap energy and as a bonus a huge number of lefties will have their brains explode (judging by the response I receive when I spell out this Good News scenario!).
A win-win-win scenario… 👍👍
Even if ECS is as high as 1.0C, we could still burn as much as we want without bad consequences.
The small amount of warming being created would be entirely beneficial.
Even higher ECS’s such as 2 or 3C wouldn’t be a problem because in reality we can’t burn as much as we want, since it is a limited resource. We would run out of fossil fuels long before temperature increases started going past the beneficial levels.
A commonsense view would be something like this. Lot’s of people in science are getting in a flurry about the effects of CO2 emissions, lot’s of others are saying it’s all bollocks. But most are saying the earth is getting warmer and man-made emissions are having some effect even if we don’t agree what it is or on what the actual mechanisms are, and most also agree we don’t have enough good quality data anyway so we cannot model it well enough to predict with confidence the effects of changing man-made influences. Neither can we even predict with certainty the damaging effects and beneficial effects of a change in temperatures that is consistent with empirical data. So how about we spend a moderate amount of money, not on enabling one side of the debate but on a) improving the quality of data available to all sides of the debate; b) researching further the areas of greatest uncertainty, c) developing alternatives to fossil fuel energy sources on a moderate scale without harm to economies and without overlays of Socialist desires to impoverish rich countries by transferring their wealth to the third world, and d) waiting to see what occurs over a reasonably well known natural cycle of periodicity (22, 60?) years having set up intensive monitoring in critical locations and of critical factors for this purpose.
It’s affordable, it removes the uncertainty. But it will take time because the natural cycles are long. So it will annoy the people impatient to be proven right within the short timeframes of their career progressions. Good because that will reduce heir ability to manipulate politics and economics, which being climate scientists they know little about.
And if world temperatures suddenly shoot up proving CAGW, we will have much greater ability to deal with it since we won’t have wasted trillions barking up the wrong tree and impeding economic development, health in developing countries etc and we will have greatly improved the science base with better data.
A quibble.
“And if world temperatures suddenly shoot up proving CAGW,..”
That wouldn’t prove anything as to the cause, Man or nature or, if both, to what degree of either.
Yes but it would mean that the initial assumption of ‘don’t panic until I get there’ was a bit hasty. So regardless of cause something needing money would need to be done assuming this sudden rise on temperature had visible impacts, even if it s only to move people to dry land! And the better science base would enable your questions to be answered better than they can be today.
Replying to myself: it was partly tongue in cheek but there is a serious question here. What would be the areas climate research money should be spent on in order to improve data quality and reducing the greatest uncertainties? Suggestions please. imagine you are now in charge of the climate research budget of the world. What would you spend the money on?
Beer and pizza.
Beer and pizza! No! we’d have to divert all that research money into healthcare! wile you wait and watch, do lot’s of exercise, and earn lot’s of money doing something else.
Maybe there’s already been too much “Beer and pizza”?
The CO2 and methane produced has skewed the results? 😎
Obviously you need a world wide surface temperature measuring network.
Or the next ice age might catch you on the hop
Or spend a much smaller amount of money testing the theories relating to the “It’s NOT carbon dioxide” view. IF we can show scientifically and robustly that the AGW theories are completely wrong, and if we can show that the atmosphere does not work anything like we think we can leap into the new paradigm rapidly.
Now I know many of you think this is JUNK. So what. TEST IT. A proper bit of scientific research into the gravito-thermal effect. If you are right and it is indeed all BOLLOCKS then we can move on, cross it off the list, put it in the dusbin.
We can probably do a 10m vertical column of argon set of experiments for the low £millions. A trivial drop in the ocean of world expenditure on CO2 mitigation. Irrespective of the result, positive or negative, I think it will be money well spent to finally, after all these years, properly test the ideas of Loschmidt.
Is it “Lukewarmism” or “Lukewarmerism”? I think it’s important to have the correct “…ism”
It’s a neologism… Let’s ask Mosh how it’s spelled.
Criminy, I just had two posts dissapear into the ether. Have I hit my daily limit?
I once owned a weimaraner named Luke, is that close enough?
Don’t tell me the dog breed w e i m a r a n e r is on the verboten word list?
Let me try that again, though the loss of immediacy lessens the affect:
I once owned a w e i m a r a n e r named Luke, is that close enough?
I am still waiting for some clear scientific proof that the relatively tiny emissions of CO2 by human activity, compared to natures giant resources, has any detectable effect on the World’s Climate. There may be more CO2 around, but where is it coming from and what exactly is it doing except make plants happy?
“So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.”
Revelation 3:16 KJV
I hope not.
Dang, 40 years of tithing, down the tubes.
“What evidence would push you toward rejecting human impacts on the climate as being less than a rounding error?”
A negative water vapour feedback.
Which is a real possibility!