By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
When The Times, a Murdoch paper previously slavish in kow-towing to the Party Line on climate, leads with a story picked up from the more healthily skeptical Daily Mail to the effect that climate scientists have admitted “the threat of global warming is not as bad as previously thought”, one’s first instinct is to cheer.
In the climate debate, though, it pays to read the small print. Official climatology does not usually admit its many errors: instead, we are ordered to obey the “consensus”, as the Party Line is these days rebranded. On reading the headlines, I suspected at once that the true purpose of the latest admission, by Millar et al. in the current issue of Nature Geo“science”, is to minimize and thus to conceal the true magnitude of past over-predictions.
Here is how the Daily Mail reported the latest findings:
“The research by British scientists shows that, under the old projections, the world ought now to be 1.3 C° warmer than the mid-19th century average. In fact the new analysis shows it is 0.9-1.0 C° above. Michael Grubb, professor of international energy and climate change at University College London, accepted that the old projections had been wrong.”
There has been just 0.85 C° global warming since 1850, taken as the least-squares linear-regression trend on the HadCRUT4 monthly data. This not particularly thrilling rate it is equivalent to about half a degree per century. Fact-checking this part of Grubb’s statement, then, shows that his 0.9-1.0 C° observed warming since 1850 is on the high side, but not by much.
As we shall see, the Millar paper, in saying official climatology would predict only 1.3 C° global warming since 1850, has greatly understated the warming that would have been predicted. Not by coincidence, in the current issue of Nature Geovoodoo there is also a short paper by Gunnar Myhre, whose 1998 intercomparison between three climate models concluded that the CO2 forcing had previously been overstated by 15%. Myhre’s latest paper says:
“The combined radiative forcing from all well-mixed greenhouse gases [the non-condensers, notably CO2, methane, nitrous oxide and a sprinkling of halocarbons] was 3.1 Watts per square meter in 2015 …”, and just about all of that forcing has occurred since 1850.
To determine how much global warming official climatology would predict in response to 3.1 Watts per square meter of radiative forcing, we shall use the official “zero-dimensional model”. The equation for that model is strikingly naïve. Where w, W are pre-feedback and post-feedback global warming respectively (i.e., “reference sensitivity” and “equilibrium sensitivity”), and where f is the feedback factor,
You may well be startled – indeed, outraged – that the equation official climatology uses to tell us how much warming we’re going to get is as naïve as that. Why are we spending billions a year on IPCC if it all boils down to just that nonsensical equation? Nevertheless, I shall calibrate it to demonstrate that, naïve though it is and wrong though it is, it is indeed what climatology now uses.
If one takes official values for the inputs w, f, the equation duly spits out the official predictions of equilibrium sensitivity W. Vial et al. (2013), relied upon by IPCC (2013) for the official diagnosis of the global warming predicted by the latest generation of computer models, says that about 85% of the uncertainty in equilibrium sensitivity W arises from uncertainty in the feedback sum c, and hence in the feedback factor f, which, in the official way of doing things, is simply equal to c divided by 3.2 Kelvin per Watt per square meter.
In reality, as we shall hope to demonstrate in a learned paper before long, feedbacks have only a small influence on warming, so that the only uncertainty is in the magnitude of the forcing, but our paper proving that fact is still awaiting reviewers’ comments now three weeks overdue. For now, therefore, we shall just do things the official way, though it is egregiously at odds with mainstream science – and with experiments commissioned by us at a government laboratory, which have confirmed in every particular that we have correctly understood the mainstream science and official climatology has not.
Calibrating the official zero-dimensional-model equation proceeds thus. IPCC (2013, fig. 9.43), cites Vial et al. (2013) as having officially diagnosed the feedback sum c from simulated abrupt 4-fold increases in CO2 concentration in 11 fifth-generation models. The 11 models’ mean value for c was 1.57 W m–2 K–1, implying a mid-range estimate of 0.49 for f. Vial also gave the 2 σ bounds of f as the mid-range estimate ± 40%. i.e. 0.49 ± 0.20; and the implicit CO2 forcing, atypically including fast feedbacks, was 4.5 Watts per square meter.
The direct warming w at CO2 doubling in Vial is thus 4.5 / 3.2 = 1.41 C°, about 20% higher than IPCC’s 1.16 C°. Using f = 0.49 and w = 1.41 C°, the zero-dimensional model equation yields an interval of equilibrium sensitivities W of 2.0-4.5 C° in response to doubled CO2, as shown in bold type in the table. Since the values the equation determines from official inputs are near-perfectly coextensive with many published official intervals, the equation is duly calibrated. Like it or not (and you shouldn’t), it is what the Forces of Darkness use.
The only discrepancy is in the central estimate of post-feedback global warming, where the zero-dimensional model predicts 2.8 K and the published official estimates predict 3.3 K.
This discrepancy arises because official climatology occasionally forgets that the curve of the zero-dimensional-model equation is not a straight line but a rectangular hyperbola (see above). Using IPCC’s 3.0 [1.5, 4.5] C° official range of predicted equilibrium sensitivities to doubled CO2, a mid-range estimate f = 0.49 for the feedback factor visibly implies a mid-range estimate of 2.25 C° for post-feedback global warming, not the 3 C° imagined by IPCC, and still less the 3.3 C° that is the CMIP5 models’ mid-range projection.
One can, therefore, determine the implicit mid-range estimate of post-feedback warming in the fifth-generation models by using the zero-dimensional-model equation. Where the direct or pre-feedback warming w in response to doubled CO2 concentration is 1.16 K, and where the post-feedback warming W is predicted to be 3.3 K, as the CMIP5 models predict, the feedback factor implicit in that prediction is 1 – (1.16 / 3.3) = 0.65.
Now we have enough information to determine the global warming that the CMIP5 models would predict in response to the 3.1 Watts per square meter of radiative forcing, from all anthropogenic sources, that Myhre (2017) says has occurred since about 1850. The direct or pre-feedback warming is simply 3.1 / 3.2, or about 1 C°. Using the now-calibrated but dumb official zero-dimensional-model equation from above, the post-feedback warming that he CMIP5 models would have predicted since 1850 is 1 / (1 – 0.65), or 2.75 C°, more than twice the 1.3 C° mentioned in the Millar paper and more than three times the 0.85 C° of global warming that has actually occurred.
For comparison, our corrected version of the zero-dimensional-model equation would have predicted 1.2 C° warming in response to 3.1 Watts per square meter of anthropogenic forcing since 1850, far closer to the 0.85 C° that was observed than official climatology’s 2.75 K.
One could do a similar analysis based on the statement in IPCC (2013) that there had been 2.3 Watts per square meter of anthropogenic radiative forcing since pre-industrial times, implying 2.05 C° global warming to date, or almost thrice the 0.75 C° observed from 1850-2011 according to the HadCRUT4 dataset. Our equation would have predicted 1.0 C°, again far closer to observed reality than the 2.05 C° that the official equation would predict.
Or one could compare IPCC’s central prediction in 1990 that in the 36 years 1990-2025 there would be 1 C° global warming (equivalent to 0.75 C° in the 27 years 1990-2016) with the actual warming of 0.45 C° over the period, taken as the mean of two terrestrial and two satellite datasets. Again, the unsoundly-based official prediction is a substantial exaggeration compared with the observed outturn, but our corrected model comes much closer to the truth, suggesting 0.37 C° warming, far closer to the 0.45 C° that actually occurred than the 0.75 C° that IPCC had predicted.
Professor Myles Allen of Oxford University is cited by the Daily Mail as having said that if the world followed “ambitious” reductions in CO2 emissions there would be even odds of meeting the unscientific Paris aspiration of a Canute-like restriction of global temperature to 1.5 C° above the pre-industrial value, equivalent to 0.65 C° above today’s global mean surface temperature. However, on present trends CO2 concentration will rise from 400 to 650 ppmv by 2100, causing a direct warming of 0.8 C°, with a further 0.2 C° contributed by temperature feedbacks. The 1.5 C° aspiration, therefore, will not be met even using our mainstream equation rather than official climatology’s defective equation.
Unless, that is, Professors Harde and Happer are right that the CO2 forcing, as well as the feedbacks on which our paper concentrates, has been exaggerated. Professor Harde has estimated that it is overstated by 30%; Professor Happer, for a different reason that does not overlap with Professor Harde’s conclusion, says the CO2 forcing has been overestimated by 40%. If both Professors are right, the CO2 forcing has been over-predicted by 82%. If we are also right, then the direct warming this century will be 0.45 C°, with another 0.1 C° from feedbacks. Though there are other greenhouse gases, these are more or less exactly offset by negative anthropogenic forcings, so that, even without any mitigation efforts in this century, the Paris ambition will in reality be met by 2100. And, if the world warms by more than 0.65 C° compared to today, but does not do so till after 2100, the rate of warming will be too slow to be dangerous,. There is now no need for the UNFCCC or for the IPCC. Abolish both.
Official climatology has vastly exaggerated its predictions. Its disfiguring attempts to conceal the true extent of the discrepancy between exaggerated prediction and unexciting observation will fail. That discrepancy is attributable to errors chiefly in the representation of feedbacks in the zero-dimensional and, inferentially, in the three-dimensional models whose outputs the simple equation faithfully reproduces, indicating its efficacy as a black-box diagnostic. Correction of the errors in the official equation generates predictions far less extreme and far closer to real-world observation than the wild exaggerations on the basis of which governmental and intergovernmental entities have hitherto profitably panicked.
Though the Millar paper serves to conceal the true extent of the official exaggerations on which demands for “climate action” have been unwisely based, it is at another level an early crack in the dam that indicates that the entire edifice of nonsense is about to fail. Have courage! The truth that global warming will be small, harmless and net-beneficial will soon prevail over the screeching extremists. The Millar paper is not the beginning of the end, but it is at least the end of the beginning.
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Richard, for water to have an inertial effect I think we agree that it must use the enthalpy of condensation, the change in Cp is simply insufficient then once condensation starts you have clouds which block radiation.
Yes, I think that it was tracking at that boundary condition, but one would need accurate measurements to be sure of that.
No one has answered, so I repeat Grif:
But it is still warming – and at a rate that will produce harmful effects this century.
Isn’t it?
Griff seems to have quit the discussion. Perhaps you can declare the target average earthly outside air temperature of the settled science.
Where I come from +16 °C is the average July temperature. The gang green optimum at the end of the 19th century a.k.a year without summer starved about 10% of my people. If that’s more to your liking, there is plenty of space over there for you and likeminded people. There are even private islands. Perhaps Al Gore, Barack Obama, Richard Branson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Leonardo diCaprio et al move to northern climate and accept it, instead of moving to south and to complain how horriawful it is. But I’m not holding my breath, based on their actions so far pigs will fly first.
Where I am, the month, July, with the highest average of temperatures is 80F/27C and pretty much any year will be between 75F/24C and 85F/29C and given that the month, January, with the lowest average of temperatures is 35F/2C and may be between 30F/-1C and 40F/4C, and local conditions set these; why am I going to worry about an artifact like the GMST, which is not something that exists on Planet Earth, going up 2C from 14 to 16C? /rhetorical
‘But it is still warming – and at a rate that will produce harmful effects this century.’
Unfortunately the warming is coming to an end, so the only harmful effects will come from global cooling.
It absolutely isn’t.
This is an old article but very current: https://www.news.uct.ac.za/article/-2015-02-25-slowing-global-warming-is-like-turning-an-oil-tanker
The point is that we need to act on early evidence that GCW is going to do us in. because acting after it is hurting us will be too late.
There is no problem for us since we would easily survive even if the planet were to be 5 or 8 or even 10 degC warmer than today. there is no problem that we cannot easily adapt to.
Moving 300 miles south will definitely not do us in.
I will most certainly be able to cope with 2 degree change in temperature I will barely notice it, I might have to use my heater a little less in Winter and my air con a little more in summer. Problem fixed.
It isn’t a nice 2 degree increase at your locality on the temp through each season.
It’s a global average temp increase.
this isn’t like a gentle tweak on the thermostat.
“Reallyskeptical” does not seem very skeptical. There is no evidence that it is warming at a rate that will produce harmful effects this century. The warming rate in the first 16 full years of the 21st century, taken as the mean of two terrestrial and two satellite monthly global mean surface temperature datasets, was 0.2 K, equivalent to 1.3 K/century. Not exactly life-threatening.
If “Reallyskeptical” were really skeptical, it would ask the priests of the new religion to tell it what is the ideal global mean surface temperature, and why. Then sit back and watch Them wriggle.
219902619Our sun is entering into a period of decreasing sunspots which can lead to the solar minimum. If the sun reaches that stage, we will have a mini ice age. Look at Europe in the 1600’s
And you will see what the climate is like in a solar sunspot minimum period. CO2 affect has very little influence on the Earth’s temperature IF we have a mini ice age solar minimum.
https://youtu.be/xa53inMYhUk
Of course, paper authors Allen and Millar rightfully call much of MoB’s cut&paste narrative nonsense … and worse.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/21/when-media-sceptics-misrepresent-our-climate-research-we-must-speak-out
No shame.
The snivelingly, furtively pseudonymous “John@EF” is, as usual, lying. I am not mentioned in the Communist paper’s piece – it has learned that it faces legal action if it misrepresents me. Nor is any of the head posting “cut & paste”: where I have used others’ material, I have referenced it explicitly.
This is your echo-chamber cut & paste from the Daily Mail:
“The research by British scientists shows that, under the old projections, the world ought now to be 1.3 C° warmer than the mid-19th century average. In fact the new analysis shows it is 0.9-1.0 C° above. Michael Grubb, professor of international energy and climate change at University College London, accepted that the old projections had been wrong.”
It’s nonsense. 1.3 C° was not the projection – it was always a range. Stop sniveling and try a little honesty for once.
… Allen and Millar’s comment about your echo-chamber cut & Paste BS …
“In fact, the IPCC specifically assessed that temperatures in the 2020s would be 0.9-1.3C warmer than pre-industrial, the lower end of which is already looking conservative. Anyone who had troubled to read our paper would have found this “IPCC AR5 Ch11 projection” helpfully labelled on two of our figures, and clearly consistent with our new results.”
Let’s get the facts first. There has been no measurable change in temperature as the resolution of the current and past measurement apparatus is an order of magnitude greater than the change required by theory. Not to mention spatial resolution, error propagation, process errors i.e. each step in the process is uncalibrated. I could go on.
The temperature record is a hypothetical construct where a large set of assumptions are used to create a data set with lower theoretical uncertainty. We were reminded of this recently with Kip Hansen’s post about absolute temperature and anomalies where Gavin Schmidt proposed how anomalies have uncertainties of 0.05 K whereas absolutes have 0.5K (He may have been speaking abstractly but his point is still valid). How can a derived value have less uncertainty than its inputs?
So when some professor says that things “did” happen or that changes “were smaller” when talking about a the “temperature record” they are talking out their arse.
For once can we stop believing the rhetoric of theoreticians and focus on tangible things that can be verified.
And as such we just do not know.
Lord Monckton, disregard all the climate sensitivities derived from climate models. They are just imaginary. Look at the real climate. Warming since 1850 = 0.85 C from 3.1 W/m^2 GHG forcing. That’s lower than the no-feedback sensitivity = 1 C. It only means the feedback in the real climate (not the imaginary climate in models) is negative feedback. We are being generous here because the 0.85 C warming is not all from GHG. Probably a large part is natural. So it’s not just negative, it’s a strong negative feedback!
In reply to Dr Strangelove, the CO2 forcing is 5.35 ln 2, or 3.7 W/m^2. Divide this by 3.2 K/W/m^2 to give reference or pre-feedback warming of 1.15 K at CO2 doubling. Thus, pro rata, the forcing to give 0.85 K direct warming would be three-quarters of 3.7 W/m^2, or 2.7 Watts per square meter, but according to Myhre (2017) there has been 3.1 W/m^2, from which one would expect 0.95 K direct warming, implying a negative feedback factor (using IPCC’s defective implementation of the Bode formulism) of -0.112. Our own research has indicated that net temperature feedback in the climate cannot exceed +0.12 in any event, and we submit that we have proven it. We are about to discuss our result with experts in control theory to confirm what we have found.
You have to understand what’s actually behind this admission by the warmists. They’re realizing that they’ve set the tipping point to close, that all those dire predictions are about to fail and the global warming gravy train will end for them. What they’ve done is ensure that the scam continues. “OK, it’s not going to kill us that soon but it’s still going to kill us, just you wait and see!” Reminds me of Paul Ehrlich and his book “The Population Bomb” – when his dire predictions failed to materialize he re-issued the book with doomsday 10 years further down the road. Twice.
They’ve just moved the goalposts. Again.
Art, as per my comment at Jo Nova’s on 21st September, I largely agree with you. Is this admission by the alarmists not simply them “getting their revenge in first” before they get a mauling in president Trump’s long overdue due diligence red-v-blue teams assessment of the science? Hence their new paper will allow the alarmists to say that (i) they had reduced their temperature rise estimates and thus no new science had been revealed by the red-blue due diligence assessment, and (ii) carbon dioxide reduction policies should continue as per the Paris agreement. In short, as suggested by several commentators on several blogs, this is all PR and damage limitation by the alarmists.
wATTS: YOU REALLY ARE AFRAID OF SCIENCE.
[SHOUTING IN UPPERCASE such as this comment shows and the other one you’ve made that will not be published isn’t the way to convince anyone. Your approach is not only a violation of blog policy, but also ineffective – mod]
Because of the predictions I didn’t believe the thermometer and refused to fire our Heating. Now I’ve caught cold – in Germanys Autumn.
Your last graphic shows 1990 three times, but the last two should be 1850 instead. — John M Reynolds
Mea culpa
why did the last ice age glaciers melt, and how do we know that?
About 9000 years ago the last glaciers receded from our estate in the strath of Rannoch in Scotland, as geological study of the extensive glacial moraine reveals. Similar studies have been conducted in Yorkshire and elsewhere in the world.
There is no truth in the rumour that the good lord Monckton was found on the estate at that time, exposed by the receding glaciers…
Forrest Gardener is asking the right question. The reason why positive feedbacks have not led to runaway warming, as they would certainly have done if the feedback factor was as high as the 0.65 implicit in the CMIP5 central estimate of 3.3 K Charney sensitivity, is that feedbacks cannot be anything like that strongly net-positive. If our calculations are correct, today’s feedback factor cannot exceed 0.12, less than a fifth of the CMIP5 mid-range estimate.