English Translation shared from NoTricksZone ~ctm
What follows is translation of a guest contribution from the Climate Intelligence Foundation in response to a manifesto by 3400 Belgian academics who in lock-step claim “it is five to twelve”. According to them, draconian measures are necessary to save the world.
Hat-tip Dr. Hans Labohm
It’s an as outstanding rebuttal as you’ll ever find, and it follows below in English (NTZ has added the main-point titles in bold).
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Terrifying climate propaganda
Irresponsible misuse of models
Science differs from religion because theoretical claims have to be verified with observations. If model results can predict measurements in advance (which is quite different than explaining them afterwards!) then you can say the model validated and then apply it in practice. But if that is not the case, then you cannot sell the model as truth and using it in practice is irresponsible.
Far more complicated than simple, linear CO2 relationship
The current climate model (‘IPCC model’) systematically yields highly overstated predictions compared to measurements and can therefore not be used to form climate policy – especially if that policy results in extremely high costs and destabilises vital parts of the energy infrastructure.
We are not just saying that. Already some of the most renowned scientists have preceded us (e.g. Freeman Dyson, Frederic Seitz, Robert Jastrow, William Nierenberg), including Nobel Prize winners (e.g. Ivar Giaever and Robert Laughlin). They also argue that the earth’s climate is far too complicated to be explained by a simple one-dimensional CO2 relationship.
Modern warming in large part natural
In the following we will briefly comment on the claims made by the Belgian signatories.
1. The earth is warming up. Worldwide, the average temperature has already risen by about 1°C (compared to the average temperature between 1850 and 1900).”
Yes, the earth is warming up. But that is business as usual. Earth’s history tells us that climate change has always happened. The geological archive shows very nicely that hot and cold periods have alternated regularly. This happened with sudden jerks and jolts, two steps forward and then one step backward.
We really don’t have to go back to the great ice ages. Archaeological information shows that around the year 1000 we knew the Medieval Warmth Period. Back then there was plenty of agriculture in Greenland! And in the golden age we were in the middle of the Little Ice Age. The great Dutch and Belgian paintings show beautiful ice scenes from that cold period. From the end of that small ice age, around 1850, we entered a warming period, of course again with fits and starts. Nothing special. These are the natural movements in the climate system. Soon the temperature will drop again. Ecosystems have always moved along successfully and will do so again now.
“Scientific evidence inconclusive…unsustainable”
2. Almost 100% of the observed warming is due to human activities.”
This certainty is shocking. This is indeed what the IPCC believes. However, the scientific evidence is far from conclusive. It is also highly unlikely that the natural movements would have stopped abruptly after 1850. And that since that time suddenly only man would be responsible for that warming.
But what caused the Little Ice Age, when glaciers expanded en masse? And what caused the Warm Medieval Period? As long as climate science does not have a good answer to such questions, modesty suits us.
Even today nobody understands exactly what the complex interactions are between the sun’s radiation, the dynamic cloud cover, the inhomogeneous earth surface, the energy-rich currents and the water vapour-rich atmosphere. Nor do we know exactly how much human CO2 contributes to global warming. The great certainty that the IPCC wants the world to believe that man is responsible is scientifically unsustainable.
Alarmists the true “climate deniers”…”have been seduced”
3. Already with the current warming of ‘only’ 1°C we are confronted with increasing and stronger weather extremes such as heat waves, droughts and floods. As global warming continues, extremes will become more common. Moreover, when global warming rises above 2 degrees, the chance that global warming will strengthen itself increases enormously. A kind of snowball effect that makes it even warmer.”
The authors and signatories of the letter appear here as the true climate deniers. Downright astonishing. Because the last three relevant IPCC reports (SREX, AR5 and SR15) clearly state that there are no discernible trends in droughts and floods. So there are no more or less than before, and they have not become worse or less bad. The IPCC does state that heat waves are more common in certain areas. But this is also tentative because in the US for example the dust bowl period of the 1930s still dominates all record books.
The fact that the authors allow themselves to be seduced by such exaggerations, which even contradict various IPCC reports, and suggests that their critical scientific view has been clouded by their activism.
CO2 as control knob is delusion
4. Limiting climate change and preventing self-reinforcing feedbacks is highly necessary. To limit global warming to 2 degrees, CO2 emissions must be reduced by about 25% by 2030 and by about 85% by 2050. To stay below 1.5°C, emissions must even be zero net by 2050. In order to be able to achieve this now, far-reaching and structural measures must be taken immediately – NOW. The longer we wait to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the greater the efforts will the needed to keep the warming (well below) 2 degrees.
The success of the climate movement is a simple message: “Human CO2 is the cause of global warming; global warming is causing a catastrophe; if we turn the CO2 knob, everything will be fine again.” But for the above claims there is no proof. How did we get these detailed certainties? The general public is rightly asking the climate movement for hard evidence. There is convincing evidence, also published scientifically, that climate models are hypersensitive to CO2 and therefore generate too much warming. Any future warming by CO2 will therefore be much more gradual than the models indicate. But the forces of nature can also cause a turnaround to cooling.
Bizarre and worrying demands
Since CO2 reduction is very expensive at the moment, and sun, wind and biomass are far from sufficient to supply modern societies with energy, we will have to work on future technologies with which an (ideologically desired) CO2 reduction might become affordable. Nuclear energy is the most likely option. Strangely enough, Belgium plans to close all its nuclear power plants and replace them with gas power plants. This cannot be explained in the context of CO2 policy, and it is bizarre and worrying that nothing is said about this in the open letter. If the authors are really serious about CO2, they should be making a massive plea for keeping the existing nuclear power plants open for as long as possible.
Paris allows emissions to keep rising
5. Current policy measures fall far short of what is needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. CO2 emissions are still increasing worldwide, so we are not emitting less, but more and more every year. The opposite of what needs to be done. Moreover, the proposed policy measures are still miles from what is necessary to drastically reduce emissions, and that applies at local, Belgian, European and global levels. With the proposals currently on the table, the world is heading for more than 3°C warming by the end of the century. That may sound little, but the consequences are enormous.”
The fact that CO2 emissions are still increasing worldwide was simply agreed on in the much applauded Paris Climate Agreement. All countries were there. China and India can and will continue to emit more CO2 until 2030.
Gigantic costs, with literally no impact
If we still insist on CO2 reduction for ideological reasons, we should not close the relatively clean power plants in Western Europe, but the many polluting power plants in Asia. China, for example, is going to greatly expand its polluting coal-fired power stations and turn them into an export product.
What we in the Netherlands and Belgium contribute to CO2 is miniscule, but reduction will cost many hundreds of billions of euros. For example, if we in the Netherlands achieve the target of 49% CO2 reduction by 2030 (more than the authors of the open letter propose), it would result in 0.0003 degrees less warming by 2100 – negligible and immeasurable. And if Belgium closes its nuclear power plants, there would be no other choice but to rely on fossil fuels. That is the reality!
0.05°C less warming for $1 TRILLION per year
6. Action against climate change is much more economically advantageous than not taking action. In the longer term, the costs of inaction are much higher than the investments to reduce emissions. Doing nothing leads to enormous costs, including damage from floods, storms and forest fires. Extreme droughts and resulting food shortages can cause social unrest in many countries and lead to global migration. The transition to an emission-free society, on the other hand, is economically much more advantageous and even creates additional jobs. Moreover, the direct subsidies for fossil fuels worldwide amount to more than 500 billion dollars annually. This amount, or even only part of it, would, for example, facilitate the transition to a carbon-neutral society.”
These are highly dubious claims. The claim that doing nothing will entail much higher costs is but very questionable. The cure can be worse than the disease and we believe that current climate policy is a typical example of this. Bjorn Lomborg calculated, for example, that if all countries honour their voluntary commitments under the Paris Agreement, the temperature effect in 2100 will be only 0.05 degrees Celsius. This is also negligible. According to Lomborg, the policy is already costing USD 1000 to 2000 billion a year, mainly as a result of reduced economic growth. This is a major problem for developing countries. They are still working hard to bring their citizens up to the same level of prosperity as we have in the West.
Green economy in fact leads to net job losses
The suggestions that climate policy will create extra jobs are also misleading. Of course, you create jobs if you put hundreds of billions of public money into the energy transition. However, the question is how many jobs are lost elsewhere and what the net effect is. Experience in Germany and Spain shows that green jobs are extremely expensive jobs and therefore harm the economy. So it is scientifically all very embarrassing what is being claimed here.
Confused academics
7. Knowledge and technologies needed to drastically reduce CO2 emissions already exist. It now requires foremost the political courage to take the necessary structural measures and to fully commit to the transition to a society without greenhouse gas emissions. After all, the transition will only be possible if, among other things, the supply of renewable energy is rapidly and strongly expanded, buildings become power stations instead of energy guzzlers, mobility is reformed, deforestation is prevented here and elsewhere and trees are planted where possible, and if the emissions caused by the enormous livestock population are also tackled. These investments also offer the opportunity for positive change in many other areas. For example, cleaner air and sufficient food and drinkable water for everyone.”
Here climate change and environmental issues are completely mixed up. The confusion caused by these two problems is considerable. Many people who say they are very concerned about climate change actually mean that they are very concerned about the natural environment, such as soot and fine particles in the air and plastics in the oceans. From a historical perspective, the great forces of nature seem to play a prominent role in the change of the earth’s climate, yet in the deterioration of the environment, man is undoubtedly dominant.
Two final comments from the Foundation:
Lost scientific independence “extremely worrying”
a) The greatest value of a scientist is his or her independence. We see that scientists are becoming increasingly financially dependent on government and industry. Political and commercial interests have become an increasingly important part of research. As a result, many scientists have lost their independence. The Belgian manifesto makes this painfully clear once again. That is extremely worrying. Are there still independent teachers to be found today?
The history of science tells us time and again that scientific progress has never gained from consensus, but from stubborn scientists who dared to question existing concepts. It is in the interests of science and humanity that these dissidents do not become silenced, as is currently the case with the IPCC, the public media and commercial lobby groups.
Skepticism is the basis of all scientific progress. People who no longer doubt and are convinced that they are right, do not ask questions but argue. That’s why we aren’t making any headway in the climate debate.
Child being misused by alarmists
b). In Belgium, the climate movement has now also started using children for their ideological cause. A rather peculiar strategy. What children need to learn is to take a critical look at the facts. So what is happening now goes against everything that education should stand for. We are increasingly seeing children being abused to achieve goals.
Who remembers that washed ashore refugee boy on the beach, an image that was frequently used by refugee organisations, or the asylum boy who had a microphone pushed under his nose with TV crew chairman Dijkhoff, or the crying Lili and Howick in the NOS news, etc.? Anyone who wants to be proved right by putting children at the front of their causes is morally reprehensible. Teachers who work in this manner should be deeply ashamed.
Double Hat-tip Dr. Hans Labohm
From the article…..”The fact that CO2 emissions are still increasing worldwide was simply agreed on in the much applauded Paris Climate Agreement. All countries were there. China and India can and will continue to emit more CO2 until 2030.”
And we can be CERTAIN those two countries will decrease admissions starting in 2031….right,,,am I right??
“DUH”, people all around the world would have quickly realized just how devious and dishonest those “signers” of the Paris Climate Agreement truly are …… iffen they hadn’t agreed that CO2 emissions are still increasing ……. simply because everyone knows that atmospheric CO2 ppm quantities are still increasing.
But what those “signers” of the Paris Climate Agreement will not admit to, or tell anyone, ….. is that there is no scientific facts or provable evidence that correlates increasing anthropogenic CO2 emissions …. with the past 60 years of increasing Mauna Loa measured atmospheric CO2 ppm quantities.
And both China and India know that anthropogenic CO2 emissions have no effect whatsoever on the Mauna Loa CO2 measurements ….. and they ain’t about to “hamstring” their booming economy just to appease a bunch of important feeling “money-grubbing” delusionals.
@bullfrex regarding the portion of the article you quoted:
That one jumped out at me, too. When those climate negotiations were taking place, WUWT had several articles on the details of the agreement.
I’ll not go searching for those WUWT posts, but I remember that the former resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave was lauded for his tough negotiating abilities where he cornered China into agreeing to continue to emit CO2 as they wished, with the promise only to evaluate in 2030 whether or not they would continue to increase emissions or start throttling back.
Ol’ Whas-hiz-name really had the Chinese over a barrel… according to news reports of the time. All hail the conquering hero!
Anyone else recalling that or did I hose that recollection?
100+
A great and obvious rebuttal.
But like all the rest it will undoubtedly sink without trace.
Excellent rebuttal to climate alarmism.
double “ll” in intelligence in the title.
And a misplaced comma in
People who no longer doubt and are convinced that they are right, do not ask questions but argue. ”
CO2 seems to be affecting punctuation as well as the climate.
Short and obvious. But the green blob is quasi-religious, and favors the “remedy” for other reasons apart from stopping climate change.
Good stuff, but STILL too much genuflection to the “consensus” memes, like:
“For example, if we in the Netherlands achieve the target of 49% CO2 reduction by 2030 (more than the authors of the open letter propose), it would result in 0.0003 degrees less warming by 2100 – negligible and immeasurable.”
Even that PITTANCE is ONLY if you ASSUME CO2 drives temperature. There simply IS NO EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE that it does so, so we should NOT be assuming it!!
We also should not be allowing the false premise to be perpetuated, that warming temps is a bad thing, in any way at all.
Warmer conditions are more benign, more pleasant, more amenable to life in general and human endeavors and interests in particular.
Warmer world is no disaster, it is great news.
Absolutely! Warming is a good thing and increasing CO2 is also a good thing.
Temperature is regulated by gravity at altitude anyway.
err… no. Gravity cannot ‘regulate’.
Please forward this excellent piece to your AGW friends who still haven’t totally closed their minds! Goed gedaan! Merci encore!
Great post. Very good exposition of the sane view. What the Green nutters and their Leftist allies either miss or don’t care about is the effect on politics. Their extreme positions push many voters to the far fighting Right to stop them
Lesson from the Weimar Republic
Spelling error in your headline. “Intelligence” is misspelled.
Excellent rebuttal. But as HotScot says, it will go unread, or unheeded if read. Human beings are very intelligent, or at least many are, but there seems no way to stop a bad idea whose time has come. People become idiots in groups.
Actually, people are idiots.
We are remarkably good at making up excuses. That usually presents as confabulation.
Why is it that Democrats tend to be CAGW believers and Republicans tend to be skeptics? It’s probably not a difference in their ability to process scientific information.
Humans are deeply irrational while being able to convince themselves, and others, otherwise.
All the more proof that CAGW is an ideology in and unto itself, cloaked up as “science” to provide cover what the politicians want to achieve: central one-world government control over everything, world-wide.
Here in Canada there is not one member of the Lieberal Party of Canada that willsay the words carbon dioxide. Every one of them refer to this precious gas as pollution. This illustrates how goofy this climate discussion has sunk…Bill
Water is every bit as much a pollutant as CO2. It is produced when we burn fossil fuels. If the Liberals are being consistent, they should refer to water as pollution. I can’t think of a good argument for not doing so.
Re: “Human beings are very intelligent, or at least many are, but there seems no way to stop a bad idea whose time has come. People become idiots in groups.”
Great expression and I’ll quote it often! Thx 4 it!!!
Still missing is the solid evidence that (more) CO2 is exceptionally good for the planet and all life – plant and animal, that thankfully exists because of its presence on Earth!!!
“it will go unread ….” that’s why it’s so important for us sceptics to post these links as often as possible in the Comments columns of the national media in all Western countries. It may not result in a significant ‘conversion’ but OTOH may cause some reflection and modification of views — rather than just chat amongst ourselves.
As a castrophist religion, CAGW is not like the self-immolating groups of Jonestown fame. This lot wants to slaughter others. They are more like the Aum Shinrikyo cult who plan to remove the heathen from society as “the cleansing”.
So how will this “removal” play out in the modern age? By denial: denial of energy services, denial of work, denial of food and denial of opportunity. You cannot work, grow food or undergo personal and societal development without energy.
Solve the energy problem (there is one) and all things become possible. Who was it that railed against having copious amounts of cheap energy? That it was “like giving a child a machine gun”? WUWT readers know well who said that.
It is unfortunate that trillions are wasted on anti-CO2 arguments and solutions and so little is spent on original research into sources of fabulous quantities of electrical energy without any harmful effects at all. After all is said, done and exposed, we still have to embark on that investigation as a global society.
I thought so too, before I started college. I told my mother, “There’s still more oil, and I probably could make a career in the oil business, but it will become harder and harder. It’s sort of like taking a sponge, and squeezing it with my hand until it doesn’t drip any more. Now you and I both know the sponge still has more water in it, but it becomes more and more difficult to get it out. That’s what the future Petroleum Engineer will be doing. At some point it will become impractical to get any more oil out of the ground, and that will be the end of my career.” That was 42 years ago. Had I chosen that path, I would still be working in it today, probably getting paid more than I could have imagined. And still I would be finding ways to get more oil out of the ground cheaper than it has been done in the past.
Instead, I chose to go into Solar Engineering! (to this day there still is no degree available anyplace that bears that name). When I did solar (thermal) system designs in college using what was called the F-chart method, I would could design a project with ~9 year simple payback. I thought that’s no problem, the price of petroleum will continue to climb and as it does these systems I’m designing will get (comparatively) cheaper and cheaper. Well, another 38 years has gone by, I have attempted to design systems under all kinds of economic conditions with all sorts of petroleum prices, and I still get ~9 year simple payback, for the best carefully selected best performing applications! I’m guessing here, cuz I don’t know for sure, but I think the use of fossil fuels is so integral to the production of solar thermal systems that the price of construction of a solar system is directly proportional to the price of oil.
Here’s the thing… Fossil fuels are the cheapest energy source available under current conditions, let’s quit fighting it! All kinds of alternative energy sources have been tried, many have successfully produced useable energy, but they have been shelved because they were not economically viable. If (I used to say “..when…”, I no longer believe that applies) the cost of fossil fuels reaches the level where any of those alternative energy sources become viable, then we will have a problem that needs solved, but we have the solution already provided by the rising cost of fossil fuels. It’s the perfect application of circular reasoning!!! but it can’t be refuted because it’s based on reality. And util then, we don’t have a problem.
Now start investigating all of the side deals and special interests involved in the 3400 group.
…and call it WaffleGate
Has anyone yet done a valid study on how much oxygen is returned to the atmosphere just by grasslands alone? Or cornfields? Corn is a domesticated grass, as are wheat, oats, rye, millet, etc.
How many tons of oxygen are released into the atmosphere by growing corn and other grains? Why is this not being measured and thrown at these people?
How many tons of oxygen are released by the carefully manicured grasses on golf courses?? Stop giggling, there is nothing BUT grass there, covering a massive area that is carefully tended by groundskeepers.
How many tons of O2 are returned to the atmosphere by trees in cities, city parks, and suburban areas?
Every cotton-picking lawn on this planet is awash in grasses of various kinds, never mind forest preserves and marshy areas with wetland plants, and no one is paying any attention to any of the O2 return quantities. ALL of those things mentioned return megatons of oxygen to the atmosphere, and this is being ignored by these clowns when it needs to be used to rebut and refute every single one of their ridiculous claims.
I may be mistaken, but I recall reading somewhere that oceanic phytoplankton are responsible for 70% of the photosynthesis on the planet. So, while green lawns do some of the work, the heavy lifting is elsewhere.
Far less than the forests and natural grassland ranges that these artificial environments replaced.
This is not a good place to hang ones hat.
In fact, it is a terrible argument to make.
Unless the fixed carbon in a field of corn is sequestered and kept from decomposing, the net effect on oxygen and CO2 is very close to zero, one way or the other.
The same is true of a forest over long stretches of time, but much of that carbon is sequestered in wood and roots and sometimes in semi-permanent foliage.
Lawns as net oxygen producers, and a CO2 sink?
Come on.
“…forest preserves…” I find that in the grocery aisle, right next to the strawberry preserves? 🙂
How has the “green” movement become associated with CAGW? How have they become the voice of the under-represented photosynthetic community? Why just this morning, tending my garden, its inhabitants whispered to me their dissatisfaction with their “green” representatives, and demanded the oxidation and release of their long buried ancestors.
It’s a great point that for all the warming since 1850 to be the result of mankind that the climate would have had to stabilized itself at that point. Upon what science does THAT assertion rely?
The nature of the climate is such that the possibility of “hard evidence” is excluded. All we will ever have are models. But it’s fair to ask that the models be robust enough to justify whatever spending is proposed. It’s also fair to ask that mitigation plans make coherent sense.
But for those who remain convinced that radical action is needed, I only ask that you show the smallest bit of leadership, and convert your diet include an appropriate balance of insect protein.
“If the authors are really serious about CO2, they should be making a massive plea for keeping the existing nuclear power plants open for as long as possible.”
Indeed. But one thing you never hear about it reducing the CO2 demand ( ie. population).
Lower population will reduce not only emissions, but leaves its reducing mark on pretty much all the other environmental concerns that are being touted such as food security, water useage, meat production, consumer goods, plastics, fish stocks .. and so on.
Why do we never hear from these ‘Green dealers’ and UN ecoleftybureaucrats that the West ought to spend a few billion on contraception rather than solar panels for Africans?
@ Lee
Actually, I was surprised to read a comment by George Monbiot in today’s Times of London stating something very similar:- “The only way to reduce global warming is to reduce the number of people on the planet.”
Moonbat is wrong of course. Global warming will reverse to global cooling regardless of what human population does.
We have more than models.
We have common sense and laboriously obtained proxy records of an inconstant but almost always far warmer Earth.
Lack of warmth kills living things, and at some point life is impossible, despite incredible resilience and adaptability.
Large parts of the globe are beyond the point where lack of warmth has killed every macroscopic living thing, permanently.
For disasters, contemplate the continent of Antarctica, Greenland, and the northern polar region, all covered over every acre in plants and habitat for animals…and the great dying that ensued when the Ice Age descended upon these places and wiped out every living thing, over four million years ago.
All dead, practically sterilized, to this day.
Skepticism is the basis of all scientific progress.
PeopleScientists who no longer doubt and are convinced that they are right, do not ask questions butargue.advocate. That’s why we aren’t making any headway in the climate debate.With the launch of the GND in the USA and ongoing efforts like this one around the world Climate Change (the issue) is being resurrected from the dead. In the 2016 US elections it was a non-issue. Same in the 2018 mid-terms. In my opinion a non-issue is in ways worse than it being a big issue. Non-issues slip along largely out of the public’s attention while misplaced policies and funding continues. Harder to stop.
Our opponents dream of making this THE ISSUE and the lens through which all other issues are viewed. This is what I thought it might be when I came to it in 2009. Like Communism, Climate Change is an alternate version of the past, present, and future. As with Communism the extremism and failures of our adversaries will be our very best tools to defeat them. Said it this morning and will say it again: Thank You for writing it down so that everyone knows what you want. We will make sure they get your message.
“…the earth’s climate is far too complicated to be explained by a simple one-dimensional CO2 relationship.”
The Church of Climate Scientology: The models have to be continually adjusted and have not been good at predicting temperature because the climate system is chaotic, and difficult to model, with thousands of inter-dependent variables, not all of which are even accounted for.
Also, The Church of Climate Scientology: We can create changes in the global temperature by adjusting this one variable.
Quoting from the above article, “Child(ren) being misused by alarmists b). In Belgium, the climate movement has now also started using children for their ideological cause.”
Now this came up in a recent brief exchange on Facebook between myself and a quite “left wing” relative of mine — the lady relative in question is often reposting Guardian articles on various things, including global warming. In this case the article title was:
“Belgian kids march against climate change – why don’t ours, ask Dutch”
I couldn’t resist making a joke in response about how “Dr. Evil” must be right about the Belgians being “evil” while the Dutch were obviously more practical despite Austin Powers dad (or “fasha”) not liking them!
The most interesting thing to come of this was that some girl who apparently lives in Europe (and seemingly a much younger person than either my relative or I) chimed in with:
“Cuz we get letters threatening to take us to court if we don’t go to school. Next.”
My response:
“Thanks for the tip! That would certainly confirm anyone’s reasonable impression of what it means for there to be (from the referenced Guardian article) “Schoolchildren demanding action on climate change (having now) played truant” — ! The virtue signalling elders of hapless children across Europe are just using them to try to make “human caused” global warming seem far more dangerous, or significant, than what it really is — ”
So that all fits together folks, that’s enough for me, although my cousin responded that we should “agree to disagree”, you see how that is.
Are schoolchildren new tribal elders?
Unless they go to Covington High School.
By denial: denial of energy services, denial of work, denial of food and denial of opportunity.
========
What you are describing is the Green New Deal. A living wage for all, even if you don’t want to work, only so long as you tow the party line.
That’s …toe the party line… You’re not hauling or dragging something, you’re staying in line, not venturing away from it. As in …toe the mark. In races, you come up to the line and you put your toe on the line, but not over it! And if you get over the line before the gun goes off, that’s a scratch. You used to get two false starts, on the third, you were thrown out. With that, I saw one race get started 14 times in the 198? Olympics. So they changed it to disqualification after your second scratch, now they have it down to one. Just last summer, Usain Bolt was disqualified from a race he was likely to win, because he false started. So the colloquialism is “…toe the line…”
Belgium has 3,400 climatologists? They are so far ahead …
Curious – so good that you made me hysterical.
I’ve always felt that action against “climate change” and the action we took against fluorinated hydrocarbons for to “heal” the ozone layer is “the new socialism”. If organizations can bully us into taking their recommended actions, they can bully us into doing anything, by controlling “group think”.
Relax. We have plenty of time. It has taken (according to the manifesto) 170 years to obtain just 1° C warming. At that rate, even by 2100 we will have achieved <0.5° C additional warming. Relax, we have plenty of time. There is no proof (as already noted) that CO₂ controls the temperature in the slightest. Just in the instrumental record (a very short record in timescales of this Old Earth) SATs have risen, fallen, moved sideways, all while atmospheric CO₂ levels have steadily risen (if the one measurement from Mauna Loa can be believed), so it seems the CO₂ control-knob theory has been disproven. Relax. We have plenty of time.
Nonetheless, let's continue… of the atmospheric CO₂ increase, we can't tell how much is man made and how much is from natural factors. There was a WUWT article recently showing that the uncertainties in the natural sinks and sources outweigh the amount of anthropogenic CO₂ production. Relax. We have plenty of time. But even worse, the result (according to the IPCC, and I take that as highly suspect, but just so the warmists don't accuse me of pretending warming doesn't exist) we get from the amount of proposed reductions in anthropogenic CO₂ production sum to a grand total of "…only 0.05 degrees Celsius…" less warming by 2100, and "mitigation" efforts to date have cost $ TRILLIONS. For that kind of money, I could buy an air conditioner for every human being on Earth! Installed! And how many more $ TRILLIONS are we supposed to spend? Relax. We have plenty of time.
So, since CAGW is so uncertain, so unsupported by empirical evidence, and in fact likely refuted by unmolested empirical evidence, and mitigation has proven so costly for such insignificant effect, that surely adaptation to any warming, should it occur, would be far less costly and far more effective. Relax. We have plenty of time.
Yeah, 12 years.
Unless the maniacs somehow gain a majority and institute their new green disaster upon us all.
So what are you worried about? If death is upon in just 12 years because of our profligate energy consumption, and it took us 170 years to get to this point, then it’s already too late, there’s no discernible effect we can make in just 12 years, so forget trying to fix anything, let’s party like it’s 1999!!! Over and over again, for 12 years! And when we wake up alive on the dawn of that 13th year at an average temperature roughly the same as it has been for the last 10,000 years (think about it: if the “perfect” temperature for our Earth, as some claim, is 15° C, that’s 288°K, even a 1% (someone in controls tell me quick, how hard is it to control any active system or process to ±1%? How hard is it if you have no clue where the control is?) change in average temperature is only 3° C increase, and that’s twice what SR15 says we’re “allowed”) we can all have a good laugh and go to work like we always do, in our fossil-fuel-fired large displacement internal combustion engine car! There’s no replacement for displacement!
According to Ehrlich most of us died in the famines of the 80’s and 90’s.
A BIG LIE from the Climate “Intelligence” Foundation: “Modern warming in large part natural.”
There are two types of “natural climate variability”: 1) “naturally-forced” variability, caused by volcanic aerosols, changes in solar TSI, and possibly by other changes in solar “activity”. 2) “Unforced” or “internal” variability caused by chaotic fluctuation in ocean currents that redistribute heat between the surface and deep ocean (internally). El Nino (with its slowdown in upwelling of cold water of Equatorial South America) is a classic example of internal variability. (So is La Nina, with an increase in upwelling.) No one believes the roughly 0.3 K of warming and cooling in less than 1 year (!) associated with an El Nino is caused by a change in the radiative imbalance at the TOA. Our spacecraft do not report any such large imbalance during an El Nino. Phenomena like the AMO and PDO are also likely unforced variability, but they occur over decades and we haven’t observed enough oscillations to fully characterize them.
During modern warming (the last half-century), we have good to excellent records about changes in TSI, stratospheric aerosols from volcanos, and other changes in solar activity. Modern warming is NOT “naturally-forced” warming, but could be “unforced” warming or “anthropogenically-forced” warming (mostly rising GHGs), or a mixture of both. (Some believe the current modest trend towards reduced solar activity will slow or reverse current warming in the next few decades, but that hasn’t happened yet.) The 30-year period of warming (about 0.3 K) that ended in 1945 was not anthropogenically-forced or naturally-forced; it is an example of “unforced variability”. The warmth gained during the three decades before 1945 could have been lost by unforced variability during the following three decades, but that period is complicated by the cooling from rising tropospheric aerosols (whose importance AOGCMs probably exaggerate).
How much warming could unforced variability have contributed to warming in the last half-century? Actually that is the wrong question. Unforced variability works in BOTH DIRECTIONS: warming and cooling. An El Nino event consists of about 9 months of warming followed by 9 months of cooling. There are both El Ninos and La Ninas. The right question: How much warming OR COOLING could unforced variability have added to OR SUBTRACTED from forced warming in the last half-century?
The simple answer is we don’t know! a) The IPCC’s models say +/-0.1 K, but there is no reason to believe them. b) The warming ending in 1945 says +/-0.3 K is possible. c) We can look at other climate fluctuations during the Holocene, but they may be a combination of naturally-forced variability and unforced variability. The LIA began and ended during periods with increased volcanic activity and reduced sunspots (though the associated change in TSI is estimated to be only -1 W/m2 and volcanic cooling persists less than a decade.) Did unforced variability play a role in the LIA? The MWP? Earlier cold and warm periods? Possibly.
Let’s pretend that these warm and cold periods were all due to unforced variability – and that naturally forced variability didn’t play any role – as it didn’t during the last half-century How many examples of 1 K of warming or cooling in a half-century do we find in the Holocene proxy record? Due to polar amplification, we need to divide the fluctuations seen in polar ice cores by a factor of two before comparing them to modern fluctuations in GLOBAL temperature. The authors of this post provide NO examples of natural climate variability this large. I have personally personally never seen any such examples elsewhere, but would welcome citations to such examples.
Looking at the entire Holocene, what are the odds that unforced variability happened to contribute more that 0.5 K of warming to the late 20th century at exactly the same time anthropogenic forcing was increasing rapidly? There are 200 half-centuries in the Holocene. How many examples of 0.5 K or 1 K of warming or cooling do you find in this record? The odds of unforced variability being the major cause of the last half-century of warming are NEAR ZERO.
Conclusion: Modern warming is NOT mostly natural. Unforced variability certainly could have added 0.3 K to OR SUBTRACTED 0.3 K FROM the roughly 1 K of warming observed over the last half-century.
What a crock.
For one thing, we have only a rough idea of short term variability in the centuries prior to the modern era.
But the elephant in the room you conveniently choose to ignore is that the records have been adjusted to the point that we have no way to be sure of any of the numbers from before the satellite records begin.
Except to say that prior to WWII, global temperature records are at best a guess and at worst a deliberately manipulated lie, an invention, created for propaganda purposes only, and completely unsuitable for any purpose of science or even of reasonable speculation.
In the one place we do have excellent records dating back over a century, there has been little if any overall warming, and this consists mainly of less cold night time lows, less cold Winters, and less hot Summer days.
Menicholas wrote: “For one thing, we have only a rough idea of short term variability in the centuries prior to the modern era.”
We have isotope data from many ice cores with annual resolution from Greenland and Antarctica for 100 centuries of the Holocene and a century or half-century of instrumental temperature data to calibrate that isotope data. We have dozens of sediment cores from the ocean that contain a variety of isotope and non-isotope temperature proxies for SSTs, which change less that the temperature of polar ice cores. These proxies have been validated by growing or harvesting the organisms that make these proxies at different temperatures. Except in unusual cases, the resolution of sediment cores is roughly a century. If the warming of the last half century were common, all of these records would easily show such events. If the variability experienced over the last half-century had been experienced in the past, we should have detected it. We know about the LIA, MWP, RWP and other examples of “natural variability” from such records. Tree ring widths and advancing or retreating glaciers and tree lines provide additional evidence for warming or cooling that is more difficult to reliably convert into temperature change.
Minecholas wrote: “But the elephant in the room you conveniently choose to ignore is that the records have been adjusted to the point that we have no way to be sure of any of the numbers from before the satellite records begin.”
Since all of these adjustments add only 0.2 degC to warming since 1900 (and less in the last half century), I should have noted such adjustments as a caveat. These adjustment are not an “elephant in the room”, but may occupy an unwarranted amount of space in your judgment. I’ll remind you a group of skeptics (BEST) funded by the Koch brothers independently devised a land temperature record that showed slightly more warming than other groups, UAH and RSS show 0.51 and 0.79 K of warming in the 40 years of their existence – 0.64 and 0.99 K per half-century. Likewise, ARGO shows significant warming in the ocean down to 2000 m. Unfortunately we don’t have long term records showing unforced variability in the temperature in these locations.
Minecholas wrote: “In the one place we do have excellent records dating back over a century, there has been little if any overall warming, and this consists mainly of less cold night time lows, less cold Winters, and less hot Summer days.”
I presume this refers to the continental US (3% of the globe), whose excellent records were spoiled when the volunteers manning stations were told to read their min/max thermometers in the morning, not the evening. Thorough analysis of hourly temperature data shows that this change reduced temperature by about 0.2 degC. The reason is that occasionally very low temperatures are recorded twice: once for the previous 24 h and a second time immediately after resetting for the following 24 h. I have personally analyzed a few months of hourly temperature data and demonstrated to my own satisfaction that this problem exists. (Since Goddard is working with a constantly changing set of stations and since he refuses to work with temperature anomalies or weight his results by area, his posts don’t prove anything to me.)
All you are doing, by your own admission, is picking and choosing what you wish to pay attention to, repeating disproven notions, and declaring the matter settled.
Menicholar: The ODDS of observing near 1 K of global warming in the last half century – when anthropogenic forcing has been rising nearly 4 W/m2/decade – are clearly low based on this historical record. And even lower when you recognize that variability in natural forcing (sun and volcanos) didn’t play a significant role in the last half century. The warming would need to be all unforced/internal variability.
If you can explain why 90% of the last 10,000 years was warmer than it is today, then I’ll take your nonsense seriously.
Until then you are merely doing a very good witch doctor impersonation.
MarkW: “If you can explain why 90% of the last 10,000 years was warmer than it is today, then I’ll take your nonsense seriously.”
Thanks for the challenging comments, Mark. Where has it been “warmer than present” for 90% of the last 10,000 years? And how much warmer?
There was a period called the Holocene Climate Optimum that made SUMMER temperature in the ARCTIC much warmer than today for at least two millennia. This happened because regular changes in the Earth’s orbit delivered more solar irradiation to the Arctic during the summer then than it does today. Today, the Earth is closest to the sun in January, not during summer in the Arctic. This Arctic summer phenomena is not an example of GLOBAL warming.
For example, you won’t find any trace of a Holocene Climate Optimum in this Antarctic ice core:
https://co2insanity.com/tag/c02/
The time scale in the above plot is uncomfortably coarse for saying definitive about 1 degC of warming in 50 years. If one expects two-fold “polar amplification” in Antarctica, then there is one example (8200 ybp) of a 1 degC warming spike in this record. Given that there is only 8K of warming in the last 18,000 years (vs 6 K for the typical estimate of global warming after the LGM), I’m that two-fold amplification is appropriate here. It looks to me like the temperature remained within +/-0.5 K of the mean for 100 centuries.
This skeptical website (https://www.c3headlines.com/ice-core-data/page/2/) shows a variety of records from the last few millennia;
https://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c01675ff4dedf970b-pi
The graph above 500 years in Antarctica without any 50 year warming periods with 2 degC (including polar amplification). It does show a LIA cooler than present, but ending before the Dalton Minimum around 1810.
https://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c016301233ed2970d-pi
This graph above shows the last 4 millennia in Greenland (after the HCO). The average temperature is slightly lower than today (but warmer than the LIA. The range is about +/-2 K. There are a few upward spikes that might be equivalent to polar amplified warming similar to the last 50 years, but these aren’t frequent events.
https://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c01675ff4dedf970b-pi
All of the above records are expected to show more variability than the 20th century of GLOBAL warming because they are records from one particular location. Regional variability is greater than global variability. One solution to this problem is to look at a composite of sediment cores from oceans around the world. The only such record I know of is Marcott (2013), a study that was thoroughly dissected by Steve McIntyre at the link below and in a half dozen other posts – mostly because the analysis created a single point hockeystick that wasn’t present in the original data.
https://climateaudit.org/2013/03/13/marcott-mystery-1/
If we ignore the single point hockey stick issue, Figure 1 shows no sign of ANY half-century warming spikes in the global ocean composite, but one does see a global HCO of modest amplitude. By way of comparison, SSTs have risen 0.65 K in the last half-century. If one believes the Marcott composite, the warming of SSTs in the last half century is totally unprecedented. The problem is that even modest dating error (which Steve discusses) combined with the low time resolution of many ocean cores could cause half-century spikes to be average out. So I’m not sure how much I trust this record.
In any case, IMO it is the job of those ADVOCATING that natural variability is a possible explanation for the last century of warming to collect and analyze an appropriate data set on the natural variability in the Holocene record, and use it to prove that a global warming of nearly 1 K has been observed in 20% or 10% or 5% or 3% or 1% of the 200 half century periods during the Holocene – in addition to the only period with a dramatic rise in GHGs. My amateur analysis is far from perfect, but there is no competing analysis (say from Judith Curry) showing me wrong. If such an analysis is ever done, I suspect the conclusion will be closer to 1% than 20%.
Did you ever hear about UV radiation and changes during the ~11 year cycle ? You kow about the changes in the thermosphere due to changes in UV radiation ?
Obviously not.
Look for Thermosphere Climate Index (TCI)
Krishna: There is certainly evidence of an impact of the solar cycle above the troposphere. Our climate is in the troposphere and the changes higher in the atmosphere don’t reach the surface.
Frank, look at that:
Possible impacts of a future grand solar minimum on climate: Stratospheric and global circulation changes
Further a little collection Are cold winters in Europe associated with low solar activity?”>
Look a bit around for Mike Lockwood or google:
“lockwood troposphere solar activity polar vortex”
Krishna: Thanks for the links. I appreciate the informative and civil discussion. I was aware of the fact that variations in solar UV (which are much larger than variations in TSI) change stratospheric winds and those winds change surface winds (not temperature) in some areas. Surface winds move heat around within the climate system and don’t cause global changes. The abstract of the second article you linked says:
“We show that cold winter excursions from the hemispheric trend occur more commonly in the UK during low solar activity, consistent with the solar influence on the occurrence of persistent blocking events in the eastern Atlantic. We stress that this is a regional and seasonal effect relating to European winters and not a global effect.”
Likewise, the article in your second comment is also about internal change. A weakening or strengthening of the AMOC will have a big cooling or warming effect on Northern Europe and the opposite effect further south.
In 2015, Climate Dialogue hosted a useful debate between a range of expert advocates and opponents of a large role for solar variability in climate, which I haven’t retained very well. Two points I do remember, the biggest published estimated change in TSI associated with a change in solar activity is -1 W/m2, and most estimates are much lower. Facing a possible future of RCP6.0 (+6 W/m2), past changes in solar TSI aren’t going to change much (and save us, if we need “saving”). A non-TSI mechanism is needed. Even if the LIA were mostly caused by a change in solar activity (including a non-TSI mechanism), LIA cooling wasn’t enough to “save” us from the warming projected by the IPCC. IMO, only a low climate sensitivity, adaptation, and new technology can do that.
https://www.mwenb.nl/what-will-happen-during-a-new-maunder-minimum/
Respectfully, Frank
Frank, an other good link to see, what happens during a solar minimum and how it’s linked to our climate:
Response of the AMOC to reduced solar radiation – the modulating role of atmospheric chemistry
In a certain way it’s even a rebuttal to S. Rahmstorfs AMOC statement, only climatechange is responsible to it’s weakening.
RealClimate
I have no idea what leads you to state Our climate is in the troposphere and the changes higher in the atmosphere don’t reach the surface.
Well, Frank, colour me impressed. You’ve obviously worked out how the climate works all by yourself and put all Climate Scientists out of a job.
It must be wonderful to be so absolutely sure of yourself.
What I find fascinating is how absolutely convinced Frank is that he knows each and every single possible natural forcing and exactly how big they are.
Even the IPCC doesn’t claim that kind of certainty.
And even with that huge self certainty, he still can’t explain what caused the Minoan, Roman or Medieval warm periods or the Little Ice Age.
Mark and Zig: I’ve been following climate since before Climategate. After a decade of reading dubious statements about the role of naturally-forced and unforced variability from both sides, I’ve formed an educated opinion, because it is an extremely important subject. The IPCC’s estimate of 0.1 K based on climate models is absurd. Everyone agrees that the 30-year warming period ending 1945 was unforced, but the magnitude is debated because it started with unusually cold temperature. 0.3 K seems reasonable to me, but a smaller value is possible. As I noted elsewhere, the 200 half-centuries of the Holocene is a challenging analysis. The sediment core composite of Marcott (2013) – if right, but I’m skeptical – might be definitive, but I’d be thrilled to read something much better than my amateur analysis. If skeptics believe in unforced variability, they should have the data to prove it!
The Minoan, Roman and Medieval warm periods are only seen in Greenland ice cores with warming doubled by polar amplification. They represent about 2 K of polar-amplified warming. Three events in 10 millennia. And they may have been associated with more solar TSI/activity (which changed trivially in the last half-century according to most authorities.) Willis reports that Fourier analysis of temperature records shows signal for the solar cycle at 11 or 22 years, but others claim that the solar cycle can be seen in sea level rise.
The scientific method is to form a hypothesis and then try your hardest to find data that disproves that hypothesis. Data from space shows me that we can’t trust the feedbacks AOGCMs produce. Data from the Holocene doesn’t provide much support for the unforced variability hypothesis. Advocacy means you only look for data and rational that supports your preconceptions. That is characterized by forgetting that unforced variability could have reduced forced warming as well as increased it. Everyone who ignores this possibility is behaving like an advocate, not a scientist.
If you follow climate science for a longer time, than I must state, you are not informed at all and you followed not the climate science but only what you like about, else you wouldt know that these events took place all over the globe. There exist so many papers about, that it’s difficult not to see them as “follower of the climate science”.
Or you are lying.
Krishna wrote: “There exist so many papers about [naturally forced warming].
Good! Cite one that demonstrates 1 K of GLOBAL warming. Preferably one that isn’t dependent on solar activity, since there hasn’t been a big increase in solar activity in the past half century. One example would be once in 200 centuries.
We only have records quantifying a large Minoan, Roman, and Medieval Warm periods from Greenland ice cores. These phenomena aren’t seen in Antarctic Ice Cores or the global ocean sediment core I linked. We can see evidence for the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods in glaciers in the Alps, but that doesn’t allow us to quantify how much warming occurred there. The IPCC finds evidence for a Medieval Warming Period over most of the global outside Antarctica, but it certainly peaked in difference centuries in different locations. IMO, none of this adds up to clear precedent for unforced variability or even natural variability to have OFTEN produced nearly 1 K of GLOBAL warming in a half-century.
Was it’s appearance beginning a half-century ago merely chance, or did anthropogenic forcing have something to do with it? (Solar forcing was minimal.)
You have to look around here You have a big choice
Or figure just here, click on the balloons
and then later you blather about the “scientific method”. If you are going to employ the scientific method you must begin with the null case, something like, “Everything that happened prior to the existence of humans was entirely natural variability, and everything that has happened since and will happen in the future will also be natural variability. Prove me wrong.” Crickets. All states of the climate and all rates of change in the climate observed with our instruments has happened before, often within that same puny instrumental dataset! Stop wasting my time.
and then later you blather about the “scientific method”. If you are going to employ the scientific method you must begin with the null case, something like, “Everything that happened with the climate prior to the existence of humans was entirely natural variability, and everything that has happened since and will happen in the future will also be natural variability. Prove me wrong.” Crickets. All states of the climate and all rates of change in the climate observed with our instruments has happened before, often within that same puny instrumental dataset! I don’t have to prove anything, it’s the people making extraordinary claims that need to produce proof. Stop wasting my time.
Oops. The first was from my smartphone, it seemed to be saying it hadn’t gone anywhere, so I emailed to myself and posted again from my laptop.
Mods: feel free to delete one or the other.
Krishna: Thanks very much for the links to the MWP. I spent a very long time looking over many of them, without finding what I was looking for. What we have experienced in the last 50 years is nearly 1K of synchronous warming nearly everywhere on the planet. More on land, less in the oceans. What I am looking for is something UNAMBIGUOUS in the past with a similar warming RATE and MAGNITUDE and GLOBAL extent. (Recent warming hasn’t penetrated the Antarctic Plateau.)
Those trying to prove that the MWP was warmer than or as warm as the CWP cite a wide range of CENTURIES for the MWP and difference centuries in different places. The skeptics are partially right: the CWP is not unprecedented in many locations on the planet and a BROAD warmer period often extends for centuries around 1000. Unfortunately, a warm period several centuries long that appears to be less than +1 K in amplitude outside polar regions or +2 K in the Arctic and that doesn’t develop at the same time in many places isn’t a TRUE PRECEDENT for warming over the last half century. Quantitative evidence for the Roman and Minoan warm periods from outside Greenland is more limited than for the MWP.
If one took the derivatives of the best data from different places around the global and lined them up on the same graph, I doubt it would show clear examples of +2 K/century occurring at the same time in many places. Perhaps someday someone will do such an analysis. Steve McIntyre has shredded most attempts to reconstruct hemispheric or global temperature. The “spaghetti” graphs (mostly for the NH not global) that result from overlaying those records show a broad MWP and LIA differing by about 0.5 K. The biggest short-term common deviation in these graphs is a sudden cooling of 0.2-0.5 K between 1325 and 1350 quickly followed by recovery over the next 25 years. This is an interesting precedent for the warming that ended in 1945. A similar fluctuation is often apparent around 1450 after a warm plateau that is sometimes included in the MWP. Both are much smaller events than the last half-century. So is the warming that ended the LIA in the 1800s.
In the case of the AMO, almost all temperature records in and around the Atlantic Ocean have a meaningful signal around 65-year in the Fourier analysis with a common phase. That is what I am looking for. The peak-to-trough amplitude of the AMO is only about 0.3 K. It goes back further in CET. This is the kind of robust signal I am looking for, but it is too small in amplitude. It may account for the “Pauses” in the 1950s and 2000s.
In the case of ENSO, we have seen enough El Nino’s and La Nina’s to recognize their appearance and internal unforced origin. They have made the last half-century of warming appear uneven.
There was a massive 2-3 K cooling in Greenland 8.2 kya (the 8.2 kya event, see Wiki) that has been attributed to draining the large lakes left behind by North American glaciers. However, there is no evidence that it significantly changed temperature elsewhere in the world. REGIONAL climate variability is much higher than global variability. There are lots of smaller warming and cooling events, but they can’t serve as a precedent for the last half-century unless they are synchronous over much of the planet.
There are two competing explanations for the last half-century of warming: the 0.4 W/m2/decade increase in radiative forcing that occurred over exactly this period or hypothesis that a large amount of unforced warming happened to occur at exactly the same time BY CHANCE. If the historical record shows such unforced warming occurring on this scale every 250 years on the average, the unforced variability hypothesis is a reasonable one, but unforced warming and cooling are likely to occur with similar frequency. If the historic record shows no clear precedent or a handful of weak precedents over the 100 centuries of the Holocene, then the unforced warming hypothesis needs to be discarded.
Perhaps a proper analysis will show that proxy records are incapable of providing the robust precedent I am seeking. In that case, we will need to wait a few more decades: If warming does continue at a similar rate, maybe then we will have proof 75-years of nearly 1.5 K warming are unprecedented. And maybe not, it hasn’t happened yet.
Frank, thx for the reply as long version.
You find warmer than now temps f. e. in China Temperature changes over the past 2000 yr in China and comparison with the Northern Hemisphere
You may also have a look at Japan, “Climatic implications of δ13C variations in a Japanese cedar (Cryptomeria japonica) during the last two millenia” with temps higher than today.
For Minoan I found, as I wrote, ad hoc 2 via google 😀
For Roman exist more.
MWP is even documentated for Antarctica 😀
But why try you to find s.t. that you won’t even find now ?!?
What my “problem” is:
First you tell, MWP isn’t present than in Greenland ice cores, so, you got answers, that it isn’t as you said. Your followiing posts asks for deeper digging, arn’t you able to do as I did, ask google or your bookmarks you certainly saved while following climate science ? I have certainely around 2 to 300 bookmarks saved since 2007 I started following climate science from skeptical side. But I also bookmarked alarmistic links for arguments against.
The “global 1k” is only a mean, so you won’t have overall an increase of 1k, there exist datapoints with a decrease in temp, others with an increase of say 2k – so what is really your target ??
Red94ViperRT10 wrote: “and then later you blather about the “scientific method”. If you are going to employ the scientific method you must begin with the null case, something like, “Everything that happened with the climate prior to the existence of humans was entirely natural variability, and everything that has happened since and will happen in the future will also be natural variability. Prove me wrong.””
Great! We agree that our task is to attempt to reject a null hypothesis that the warming of the last half-century wasn’t due to “natural variability”. That is exactly what I have been trying to do.
There are three possible hypothesis that could explain global warming over the past half-century:
1) anthropogenic forcing (mostly GHGs and aerosols) that changes the radiative balance at the TOA,
2a) natural forcing (naturally-forced variability) that changes the radiative balance at the TOA (mostly solar and stratospheric volcanic aerosols), and
2b) unforced or internal variability that is observed in the chaotic behavior of all systems involving fluid flow (most obviously in the currents that exchange heat between the deep ocean and the surface).
Together 2a) and 2b) are referred to as “natural variability”, but we have pretty good data that rules out the naturally-forced variability hypothesis (2a) for most of the 20th century. We know that anthropogenic forcing was too small to cause much of the 30-year 0.3 K warming that ended in 1945, so that warming logically represents unforced (internal) variability. It is logical to assume that events like the warming ending in 1945 occur reasonably often.
The next question is: How often do we observe GLOBAL warming similar to the last half-century in the 100 centuries of the Holocene. When I review the data, I don’t find the Medieval, Roman or Minoan Warm Period to have the same magnitude of warming, rate of warming and global extent as any earlier event. Pick one and let’s debate the data.
The above Warm Periods clearly appear in Greenland Ice Cores with an amplitude of about 2K. Given the existence of Arctic amplification, they are equivalent to global warming of 1 K, which would be precedent for the null hypothesis (2) if these event represented global warming rather than regional warming. These Warm Periods certainly didn’t reach the average Antarctic ice cores as even 1 K of warming. Land proxies of varying reliability show irregular warming over a wide range of centuries in many locations beginning and ending at different times. The best proxies for global warming would be a composite of sediment cores from various oceans. The proxies in these cores are among the most reliable and quantitative proxy records we have. These records allowed us to discover the full extent of ice ages (called Marine Isotope Stages) long before the Vostok ice core was drilled. The problem is that a very thin layer of material in an ocean sediment core can represent many decades and SSTs don’t vary as much as land and especially as much as Greenland. The only composite record of ocean sediment cores I know of is Marcott (2013) and it doesn’t show any significant global temperature change except for the Holocene Climate Optimum and followed by cooling towards the next coming ice age, reaching a minimum during the LIA. These changes are associated with orbital mechanics, a process we understand to be much too slow to account for the warming seen in the last half-century. If you believe this composite of ocean sediment cores, there have been NO GLOBAL warming events similar to the past half-century (+0.64 K in the past half century). The problem is that many sediment cores don’t have the time resolution to pick up events that develop and finish in less than one century. The 30-year warming ending in 1945 would be totally missed by sediment cores (but not ice cores) and sediment cores require about a century for their tops to compact enough to be recovered, so there is little reliable data before 1900.
Frank, you spend a lot of time for your long answers, but in general, you don’t scrap the surface during that time.
You declare, in common with the authors the obove mentioned “arctic outbreaks” as internal variations, while only the cold replaces the warm air than displaced elsewhere so that net there is no change. Seems to be a simple logic 😀
But what states the meteorology ? In general, cooler air slides under the warmer, and in 2m hight, we have first a cooling and the “heat” ascends and will be blown elsewhere and cool down in hight.
But that is not the only aspect of solar activity influencing our cliemate [There is certainly evidence of an impact of the solar cycle above the troposphere. Our climate is in the troposphere and the changes higher in the atmosphere don’t reach the surface.]
When I tell you, ENSO events are directly related to suns activity (not sunspots), what will you think about ? (AMOC link to sun I told about above).
You’ll find links to the work of Theodor Landscheidt (1927-2004), whose name was choiced for the coming solar minimum. He was strongly attacked by PIKadero S. Rahmstorf because of his CO2 critical work, not by rebuttal but personally, in this case a real accolade 😀
El Niño Forecast Revisited
New ENSO Forecasts Based on Solar Model
Find more here:
Papers by Dr Theodor Landscheidt
Link correction
El Niño Forecast Revisited
You lost the argument right at the beginning, “Terrifying climate propaganda
Irresponsible misuse of models” … They will not read another word after that.
Facts do not matter. You cannot use reason and logic to argue someone out of an opinion they did not enter into using reason and logic.
” The earth is warming up. Worldwide, the average temperature has already risen by about 1°C (compared to the average temperature between 1850 and 1900).””
They do know it is 2019 not 1919 right?
Nice succinct rebuttal. But this claim….
2. Almost 100% of the observed warming is due to human activities.”
No ! —- 50% of the observed warming is due to temperature record “adjustments”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/07/06/bombshell-study-temperature-adjustments-account-for-nearly-all-of-the-warming-in-government-climate-data/
https://newlifenarrabri.wordpress.com/2015/03/02/half-of-australias-warming-due-to-adjustments/
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/07/10/100-of-us-warming-over-the-last-20-years-is-due-to-adjustments/
Another major deception: “Bjorn Lomborg calculated, for example, that if all countries honour their voluntary commitments under the Paris Agreement, the temperature effect in 2100 will be only 0.05 degrees Celsius. This is also negligible.”
Bjorn Lomborg calculated that the Paris accord would reduce warming in 2100 by 0.17 degC (not 0.05 degC) assuming that all countries reverted to business as usual in 2030 (the end of the period covered by the agreement). He uses the “business as usual scenario” from the 1990’s Kyoto treaty! In other words, Lomborg assumes that the Green Europeans would completely ignore the threat of global warming after 2030, and their current objective to cut emissions by 80% by 2050. He ignores the shale gas revolution. He expects Chinese emissions to grow another 50% after 2030 (when their current plan is to peak before then). He ignores the fact that China already emits as much per capita as the EU and gets a reducible 70% of its electricity from coal, and could grow their economy without growing emissions like developed countries have been doing for decades. He basically assumed that the world (except for the US, as it turns out) would follow the RCP8.5 scenario between 2030 and 2100. Don’t believe me? Look at the emissions scenarios in the methodology section of his paper:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1758-5899.12295
Lomborg accepts that rising GHGs will cause warming and uses the IPCC’s MAGICC model for predicting warming for a wide variety of scenarios. In Supplemental Figure 4, he shows four scenarios: RCP 8.5, two versions of the Paris INDCs expiring in 2030, and what would happen if emissions remained constant at 2016 levels. I find the latter scenario the most informative, because it is easy to imagine a baseline where the increase in emissions of developing countries was counterbalanced by a reduction in the emissions of developed countries. Neither Kyoto nor the Paris accord (if fully implemented) reached this objective, but it represents what an idealistic world might achieve: According to Lomborg, that is a reduction in FUTURE warming from 3.7 to 2.5 degC. (I subtracted the 1 K of current warming above pre-industrial which everyone agrees has been net beneficial.) That 1.2 degC reduction MIGHT be practical if the developing world makes a serious effort or gets substantial aid (but I’m not optimistic this will happen). Personally, I hope that energy balance models are right about TCR and that warming will be about 2/3rds this much. However, Figure S4 provides an excellent summary of what emissions reductions might achieve. This – not the absurd value of 0.05 degC – provides a realistic view of what might be possible.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1111%2F1758-5899.12295&file=gpol12295-sup-0005-FigureS4.pdf
So, in your view, China is a “developing country”, needing our aid?
Menicholas: Let’s skip the strawman arguments. I said that China has probably reached the state of development where it can grow its economy with dramatic increases in CO2 emissions, just like the US has done for many decades.
India and other developing countries made their INDCs to the Paris agreement contingent on receiving unrealistic amounts of aid from developed countries – fantasies encouraged by the idealists that believe in such non-binding negotiations. And they expressed their commitments in terms of emissions/GDP. If they show strong economic growth, they will emit more CO2 than expected and if they show weak economic growth they have a good reason for failing to meet their objectives too. AGW is going to need get really bad really soon before taxpayers in developed countries OR citizens in developing countries are going to pay for expensive intermittent renewable energy developing countries. Better technology might help, but wind and solar are fairly mature technologies that are unlikely to improve dramatically in the future.
No. I my view, Lomborg’s study was deliberately deceptively designed to make the Paris Accords look ridiculous. Persistent efforts for the rest of the century will significantly reduce global warming. If those efforts resulted in average emissions for the century matching emissions of 2016, Lomborg calculated that future warming would be reduced from 3.7 K to 2.5 K. A non-trivial amount. This reduction may be practical. The other scenarios Lomborg used – a return to 1990 business as usual and RCP 8.5 – aren’t what ANYONE in their right mind expects to be the result of the Paris Accord.
Oh, Belgium!
They must be afraid that enough warming will not allow chocolate to stay in a solid form. I keep mine in the fridge during warm weather.
“In Belgium, the climate movement has now also started using children for their ideological cause. ”
Look at what the Guardian are doing recently. Does the Guardian really consider itself a quality newspaper?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/08/holly-gillibrand-school-strike-climate-action-skipping-class
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/08/global-school-strikes-over-climate-change-head-to-the-uk
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/07/the-guardian-view-on-teenage-activists-look-whos-pulling-the-strings
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/06/children-skipping-school-ruining-planet-strike-climate-change
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/05/belgian-environment-minister-joke-schauvliege-claimed-children-climate-protests-a-set-up
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/03/belgian-kids-march-against-climate-change-why-dont-ours-ask-dutch
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/29/teen-activists-strong-words-for-world-leaders-at-davos
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/25/our-house-is-on-fire-greta-thunberg16-urges-leaders-to-act-on-climate
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/24/school-strikes-over-climate-change-continue-to-snowball
And that’s just in the last 15 days.
Do you think the Guardian might have a political agenda. /sarc off/
I know I shouldn’t, but when you see an open goal with ball at your feet…
Don’t worry, reistance is still alive in Belgium… I just wonder when we’ll all be burnt on a gigantic stake :-/
“This is indeed what the IPCC believes.”
No, this is what the IPCC wants everyone else to believe.
I’m a belgian “climate heretic” for some years now and just feel deeply ashamed on what happens at the moment in my country. I even begin to be ashamed to be just belgian and/or european “citizen” when i see the constantly increasing climate alarmism in european medias.
Propaganda hit’s everywhere, on all levels of the populations, even in kindergarten !! Our politics and their medias are brainwashing a whole people with hysterical claims of coming Apocalypse if “we don’t act NOW”
For weeks now I constantly debunk false claims on medias forums, fighting to show the truth but it seems that Europe has now turned on a new Mystical crusade where no place’s left for common sense or logic…
Just hoping the next coming “Grand minimum will start soon and be reinforced by the ENSO negative switch to come, but also afraid of the human lives toll the cold will take on weakened populations and awfully high energy prices…
Perhaps time to Belxit.
I think we can forget that option. The only way for Belgium to leave European community will just be the total collapse of the system :-/
Exactly. I am a Belgian “heretic” too.
I live in Brussels and have a teenage son in a local school. He has joined one weekend climate march – despite hearing my scepticism for some years! But he has a lot of peer pressure, and I don’t want to impose my views on him. I’d rather use persuasion. One argument from me is the irony that the group who may suffer most from an over rapid decarbonisation is school children in the developing world. They still won’t get the schools and universities built, heated and lit, and they still won’t have electric lighting at home so they can do their homework in the evenings, instead of breathing the remnant fumes of the fires used to cook their evening meal.
All parents got an email from his school recently which outlined its support in principal for the childrens’ climate marches (on Thursdays) but would restrict it. They will allow 2 or 3 per class to attend each Thursday, on a rotating basis, provided the children have parental consent. Needless to say, I told my son I would not give that (but would not (could not) stop him going on weekends if he wants). I was tempted to reply back to the school with my objections – but don’t want to embarass my son.
When he expresses his own concerns, he does the usual thing of conflating all environmental prolems with CC. I say, I agree 100% with reducing our environmental impacts: energy use, water use, plastic waste, etc, but that life-essentail CO2 is not a part of it.
Further on Belgium (my home). I have benefited from its over-generous company car policy. A very high proportion of daily commuters travel in a company car, for which ‘having the money instead’ is not an option. I have little doubt it is to do with boosting the country’s car manfacturing business. All the roads into Brussels are clogged up every day. In parallel, Brussels (and other cities) have introdudced low emission zones and started banning older vehicles. While older vehicles are more polluting, its not balanced to do this while maintaining the generous company car policy. I have known couples who both work for the same company, but both get ‘given’ a car, and drive seperately to/from work!
And the low emissions zones: they help politicians feel smug, while at the same time ensuring a steady stream of new-car buying to replace the older banned ones – also a boost rather than a hindrance to the car industry.