Evidence that humans are responsible for global warming hits ‘gold standard’ certainty level

An article from Apple news notes:

OSLO – Evidence for man-made global warming has reached a “gold standard” level of certainty, adding pressure for cuts in greenhouse gases to limit rising temperatures, scientists said on Monday.

“Humanity cannot afford to ignore such clear signals,” the U.S.-led team wrote in the journal Nature Climate Change of satellite measurements of rising temperatures over the past 40 years.

They said confidence that human activities were raising the heat at the Earth’s surface had reached a “five-sigma” level, a statistical gauge meaning there is only a one-in-a-million chance that the signal would appear if there was no warming.

Five F@##%^ sigma dude!

Of course it’s from good ol’ Back Alley Ben Santer, :

Benjamin Santer, lead author of Monday’s study at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said he hoped the findings would win over skeptics and spur action.

“The narrative out there that scientists don’t know the cause of climate change is wrong,” he told Reuters. “We do.”

Not to be outdone in the shouting of hyperbole, we have Peter Stott:

Peter Stott of the British Met Office, who was among the scientists drawing that conclusion and was not involved in Monday’s study, said he would favor raising the probability one notch to “virtually certain”, or 99-100 percent.

Here is the verbatum conclusion from the article at Nature Climate Change

Because of this confluence in scientific understanding, we can now answer the following question: when did a human-caused tropospheric warming signal first emerge from the background noise of natural climate variability? We addressed this question by applying a fingerprint method related to Hasselmann’s approach (see Supplementary Information 1). An anthropogenic fingerprint of tropospheric warming is identifiable with high statistical confidence in all currently available satellite datasets (Fig. 1). In two out of three datasets, fingerprint detection at a 5σ threshold — the gold standard for discoveries in particle physics — occurs no later than 2005, only 27 years after the 1979 start of the satellite measurements. Humanity cannot afford to ignore such clear signals.

0 0 votes
Article Rating

Discover more from Watts Up With That?

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

254 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
David Wells
February 26, 2019 3:10 pm
Sweet Old Bob
Reply to  David Wells
February 26, 2019 4:08 pm

I see…. RCP 8.5 …..
I’m convinced…. NOT!

DMA
February 26, 2019 3:11 pm

If the recorded rise in atmospheric CO2 is not responsive to the recorded changes in emissions (https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/12/19/co2responsiveness/), how can someone detect a fingerprint of the emissions in the temperature record that certainly has not followed the CO2 rise very well.

Dave Fair
Reply to  DMA
February 26, 2019 5:00 pm

Read the methodological description. They adjust the TMT with lower Stratospheric data.

Rick K
February 26, 2019 3:11 pm

Obviously, they’re on the “nobrainium” standard…

Bryan A
Reply to  Rick K
February 26, 2019 8:02 pm

Perhaps they have been huffing too much nobrainium

Linda Goodman
February 26, 2019 3:17 pm

Step up the alarmist bulls*it to back the ruinous Green New Deal against the MAGA agenda – can’t have an eco-fascist world government with a thriving American economy mocking its insanity.

n.n
February 26, 2019 3:19 pm

So, we’re back to Anthropogenic Global Warming. Catastrophic if you’re a politician, or green as in naive.

Gerard
February 26, 2019 3:21 pm

Ben Santer has form. He singlehandedly changed the 1995 IPCC report to indicate a human signal in the climate when other scientists had concluded that there wasn’t one.

Dave Fair
Reply to  Gerard
February 26, 2019 5:17 pm

As immortalized by then Senator Harry Reid, “It worked, didn’t it?”

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Gerard
February 26, 2019 5:50 pm

Good point. People ought to do a search on Santer and read about how he singlehandedly distorted a UN climate report to make it look like humans were causing the Earth’s climate to change. Now, here he is making these same kinds of claims.

The shameless dishonesty in climate science is just beyond belief I guess when there is money and power involved all that honesty goes out the window.

maarten
February 26, 2019 3:22 pm

Scientific mumbo-jumbo to fake some degree of credibility for laypeople…

Rud Istvan
February 26, 2019 3:25 pm

This latest Santer nonsense can be easily refuted in several ways, including by his own recent paper on CMIP5 modeled versus ‘real’ tropical troposphere hotspot—finding (after an erroneous correction) only a 2x discrepancy rather than the UAH 3.5x discrepancy. Wrong is still wrong.

Reply to  Rud Istvan
February 26, 2019 3:35 pm

As an unintended result they didn’t highlight and ignored, Santer’s seasonal heartbeat paper showed clear evidence the previously claimed tropical mid-troposphere hotspot was non-existent in the observational data.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6399/eaas8806

ScienceABC123
February 26, 2019 3:27 pm

“over the past 40 years”

A 40 year data set is hardly the history of climate on Earth.

Joel Snider
February 26, 2019 3:27 pm

So – I guess lying bullshit is the ‘gold standard’.

February 26, 2019 3:30 pm

This is a red herring issue meant to distract from the above relevant question on sensitivity.
It has been said over and over, but I suppose it needs to be said again:

The only relevant scientific question is: What is the climate sensitivity to increasing CO2?
The observational data after 39 years is that the sensitivity is in the vicinity of 1.6 (+/- 0.5) K per CO2 doubling.

It is totally irrelevant for policy (and thus action) that there is now a model determined fingerprint with 5-sigma confidence in anthropogenic-attributable global scale warming.

From Wiki:
A red herring is something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important issue. As an informal fallacy, the red herring falls into a broad class of relevance fallacies. Unlike the straw man, which is premised on a distortion of the other party’s position, the red herring is a seemingly plausible, though ultimately irrelevant, diversionary tactic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring

Joel Snider
Reply to  Joel O'Bryan
February 26, 2019 3:41 pm

You’re not wrong – but it’s hard to fit that on a bumper sticker.

That’s why guys like Chuck Schumer (just today) stick to their one parrot-line: ‘Climate Change is Real.’

damp
Reply to  Joel Snider
February 26, 2019 4:02 pm

“Climate Change is Real, Therefore I Steal,” is the whole thought.

John Tillman
Reply to  Joel Snider
February 26, 2019 4:11 pm

Hence the counter bumper sticker:

CACA is a Crock!

Dave Fair
Reply to  John Tillman
February 26, 2019 5:23 pm

CACA is Shit

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  Dave Fair
February 26, 2019 7:16 pm

Dave Fair
CACA Happens!

Dave Fair
Reply to  Clyde Spencer
February 26, 2019 8:00 pm

As my wife observed about Obama’s transgender bathroom edicts, his legacy is in the crapper (along with alarmist CACA).

Urederra
Reply to  Dave Fair
February 26, 2019 11:45 pm

Google translate program (Spanish to English) would agree

Reply to  Joel O'Bryan
March 4, 2019 12:02 pm

So climate sensitivity to increasing CO2 is a warm AMO?

Earthling2
February 26, 2019 3:30 pm

Most skeptics don’t say humans haven’t been responsible for some fraction of the warming since 1850 or 1950. It would be really hard to say we didn’t with a straight face while we are going on 7.5 Billion people on the planet along with land use change and UHI. Which begs the question if everyone agrees that UHI and land use change is contributing to that fraction, then not all the blame can be put on CO2 for the remaining fraction for which we really don’t know how much is also due to long term climate cycles and natural variation coming out of the LIA since 1850. It would only be a wild guess by anyone that it might be 50-50 that the human component of warming, but I would be willing to live with that concept that humans have added a 1/2 degree C since 1850.

And then the other honest question we have to ask about this slight beneficial warming the last 170 years is whether it is bad to have things a little warmer. Isn’t it really in the scheme of things an insurance policy on some black swan weather event that would freeze our cereal crops in the mid lattidudes NH, leaving humanity in a real lurch for a few years while we recovered from that? Or what if the last 30-40 years was the warm side of a longer term climate cycle that now sees things cooling off a 1/2 degree over the next 30-40 years? Wouldn’t this smidgeon of a little extra warmth just tide us over until the next warming spell in 30-40 years?

We have to keep firing on all cylinders if humanity is going to prosper with 8-9 Billion people and we always prosper more when it is warmer than colder. In any event, there definitely shouldn’t be the level of wild alarmism that certain political groups within science/acedemia, politics and media are promoting against present day mankind. The best thing we can do is to keep gathering credible data and ensure it isn’t molested by people and groups with an agenda. And plan for adjusting to any climate change that comes our way the next 30-40 years because in the end that is all we can really do anyway. Being prepared and hardeng our infrastructure would be a much better expenditure of our resources than squandering a lot of monies down a black hole of socialist Marxist nonsense.

Reply to  Earthling2
February 26, 2019 4:26 pm

You pretty much nailed it. The Earth has had much higher levels than we have today and survived quite well.

So what the real cause for alarm here? That the human race might have to adapt? And because of that we need to try and change the Earth? We can’t even control the weather. How in Pete’s name are we going to control the climate, especially as a human race spread out all over the globe?

If the Earth *is* warming and all we have done with a little extra CO2 is shortened the time frame to adapt, then why all the whining about trying to stop the need to adapt? That adaptation will have to happen no matter what we do. Better off getting on with it than fighting it! Tell the millionaires with prime beachfront properties that the long term prospects for that property isn’t good. Tell the farmers in Kansas and states north to get ready for having two tomato crops per year instead of just one. Buy stock in Trane and Lennox.

Gamecock
Reply to  Earthling2
February 26, 2019 7:01 pm

‘It would be really hard to say we didn’t with a straight face while we are going on 7.5 Billion people on the planet along with land use change and UHI.’

We are ants. Take a plane ride. Look at earth from 35,000 feet. We are nothing.

WXcycles
Reply to  Gamecock
February 26, 2019 10:36 pm

I’ve thought the same thing many times, fly across Australia and look down for 4 or 5 hours. You’ll see nothing but a wilderness full of plants and animals in their billions. Humans are completely insignificant on this landscape. If you spot a town or road consider yourself lucky, there are almost none to be seen. The plants inhale CO2, the animals exhale CO2. Yet the idiot greenies, who pretend to ‘care’ about the ‘environment’, call what the actual environment naturally does, “carbon pollution”!

New-Speak much?

Earthling2
Reply to  WXcycles
February 27, 2019 5:56 am

But if you fly over the entire sub-continent of India or much of China, or continental USA/Europe, it would be a completely different picture than flying over the outback of Australia. While we don’t really know how much the feedback loops are with CO2, or even if the net could be cooling as some here suggest, there is no doubt that much of our land use change or UHI is accumulative to thermal warming. We literally have million of square miles of urban development, and it does soak up and retain heat helping in making winter temps a bit warmer, as well as night time temps a bit warmer. So much so, that it may have contaminated the thermometer readings of the weather stations the last 100 years as humanity has grown exponentially, even if they are located outside of the UHI area, but still located within the massive land use changed area we have engineered. This could actually be much of the temperature increase we are recording the last 100 years, which would really make CO2 even more redundant as the cause of global warming. This really does need more study and acknowledgement by both sides of this debate.

I think we want to be as honest as possible about all possible causes of warming, and if we do, we see that CO2 is getting the most blame while it may actually be the least of our concerns regarding any actual manmade warming. Plus CO2 is actually the most benign thing to happen as we see from increased plant growth across the planet that feeds 7.5 billion of us presently. I think it is disingenuous to state that we are ants in the scheme of things if we view ourselves from 35,000 feet. Humanity as a whole is much more significant than that and for the most part, it is mostly beneficial as compared to the opposite when we are in the depths of a full blown glacier advance for 70,000 years, and CO2 is approaching extinction levels and much of the planet is a dry, stormy and windy desert.

Frederick Michael
Reply to  Earthling2
February 26, 2019 8:18 pm

Exactly!

So what if we’ve proved that mankind has raised global temperature.

Prove that it’s not a good thing.

Toby Nixon
February 26, 2019 3:35 pm

We are not surprised that computer models designed to show that global warming is primarily caused by human activity do, in fact, show such a “fingerprint”. They were designed to do so. So what?

Chuck
February 26, 2019 3:38 pm

Do these people lie awake at night thinking up ways to ratchet up their alarmist rhetoric? There seems to be no upper limit as to what they can come up with.

February 26, 2019 3:44 pm

An even stronger human hand in the Eemian?

https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/12/21/eemian/

February 26, 2019 3:47 pm

Between this crap and the betrayal of British democracy demonstrated in Parliament today over Brexit, I believe I’m witnessing the steady decline of the western world into CAS (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Socialism).

I was confident Trump was the beacon of democracy, free expression and free trade but it seems even he may not be able to stop the collective suicide of multiple nations determined to embrace an ideology which has failed everywhere it has been tried.

The Marxists will not stop until they have destroyed everything worth anything. Our children and grandchildren are indeed in danger.

Reply to  HotScot
February 26, 2019 5:50 pm

HotScot.

With respect, I sadly have to disagree with you. the Marxists will not stop until they are in complete control. The destruction of everything worth anything is just collateral damage, and a feature of Marxism (& socialism in general), not a bug.

High Treason
February 26, 2019 3:50 pm

The tone of urgency is a clear sign this is a desperate plea to BELIEVE-like it is a religion. Alas, it is to be expected at the end stage of a propaganda campaign. As the narrative is falling apart(the models are only in agreement with themselves, not the raw untampered data), the desperate measures come out-blatant inventions out of thin air, appeals to authority, punitive measures against contrarian opinion and finally execution of those that refuse to believe the lies.
We laugh at the BS shoved down peoples’ throats under totalitarian regimes and like to kid ourselves that we have outgrown such superstitious nonsense and witch hunts.
Time to look in the mirror-have humans evolved in to dung beetles? Only a dung beetle should be able to swallow that much BS. Even dung beetles do not chase their BS down with Kool aid.

brent
Reply to  High Treason
February 27, 2019 3:05 am

The Climate Apocalypse Cult went public in 1988 with James Hansen’s testimony to Congress, and shortly thereafter Crispin Tickell convinced Margaret Thatcher to make a famous speech touting Climate Alarm
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/02/11/was-climate-change-alarmism-always-about-fears-of-overpopulation/#comment-2623744

If instead of the above, the Politicians had said it was absolutely urgent to formulate a Political Position and prepare for a Biblical Apocalypse, everyone would have understood what was going on, and it would have been clear that it was in violation of the US 1st Amendment

Nik
February 26, 2019 3:51 pm

Is that gold chemically FeS2?

mike the morlock
February 26, 2019 3:54 pm

Hey guys I found out how they did it!
look!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKHRmTpMG-M

Brilliant of them.

michael

observa
Reply to  mike the morlock
February 26, 2019 4:16 pm

“Hey guys I found out how they did it!”

You mean to tell me they have their gold fingers all over it. LOL

Reply to  mike the morlock
February 26, 2019 4:17 pm

Had to be done!

Allen Cichanski
February 26, 2019 4:09 pm

One of the greatest tragedies of these modern times is that we have NO ONE who has the scientific skills and good sense of a Richard Feynman. Just a bunch of arrogant and ignorant imbeciles out for grant money and fame. God help this nation and this planet. The inmates are in charge of the asylum.

StephenP
Reply to  Allen Cichanski
February 27, 2019 12:31 am

We have Jordan Peterson

Chris Wright
Reply to  Allen Cichanski
February 28, 2019 3:58 am

I’ve thought that many times.
It’s a tragedy for science – and the whole world – that Richard Feynman died so young.
Chris

February 26, 2019 4:12 pm

The US is no longer on the “gold standard”. That’s why the $$ saved no longer have the buying power they did when you saved it. A dollar saved a decade ago is not worth what what it was today.
Inflation.
Sort of the opposite of these claims.
Deflation.
We’re supposed to forget what their “gold standard” claimed a few decades ago!?
(Anybody remember that old saying, “Don’t take a wooden nickle.”?)

February 26, 2019 4:15 pm

Here’s the major problem with that paper: “In the 1970s, there was recognition that GCM simulations yielded both signal and noise when forced by changes in atmospheric CO2 or other external factors18. The signal was the climate response to the altered external factor. The noise arose from natural internal climate variability.

Santer et al.,’s description implicitly assumes that GCMs inhere a perfect physical model. They do not.

GCM simulations produce signal, noise, and error. The error part is known to be so large (≥ 100 W/m^2), it swamps any possible signal.

GCMs don’t reveal anything about future climate. They are incapable of resolving any effect (if any) of CO2 emissions. They are unable to detect, reproduce, or predict any human influence on the climate.

There is no statistical method that will fix that problem.

Bob Greene
February 26, 2019 4:18 pm

They’ve made the assertion without any data presented. Science by press release.

Sheri
Reply to  Bob Greene
February 26, 2019 5:43 pm

I noticed that. I’d kind of like to see the math they used for the 5 sigma level. Physicists share. Why aren’t these guys sharing? Oh….wait……

Reply to  Sheri
February 26, 2019 6:37 pm

Sheri, there’s a supplemental information document (pdf) that gives the mathematical approach.

They compare CMIP5 climate model RCP 8.5 simulations with the three tropospheric temperature trends (RSS, UAH, and NOAA STAR).

However, none of the CMIP5 air temperature projections include any notice of model calibration error. That is, the physical simulation errors that show up when model calibration runs are compared with observations.

CMIP5 model calibration errors are hundreds of times larger than the thermal perturbation caused by CO2 emissions. It is impossible that CMIP5 models can resolve any CO2 effect at all on air temperature, assuming there is one and it’s detectable.

Also, none of the usages of satellite temperature take any note of their systematic measurement error, estimated to be ±0.3 C (even UAH assumes they subtract away, despite that they’re ±).

So, the entire ±3σ/±5σ is nothing more than an egregious exercise in utterly false precision. In which Nature (London) stupidly participates.

Dave Fair
Reply to  Pat Frank
February 26, 2019 7:56 pm

CMIP5 models begin their ‘projections’ in 2005. The results are highly inaccurate from then to now, using UAH6 as a comparison. Hell, they can’t even get their 2000-2005 hindcasts right!

From what I can tell, they use stratospheric temperatures to adjust each of the three satellite TMT series. The only one they can’t make jump up and bark is UAH6. Ha! Mears and NOAA even roll over and show their bellies for their ideological masters. [Just got back from the dog park.]

Moose
February 26, 2019 4:19 pm

Spaceball One has gone to plaid.

February 26, 2019 4:21 pm

In Australia, the fraud has been identified by M/s Nova generally and M/s Marohassy in particular. Simply put if the records for discussion commence on 1890 we have global cooling and we use the BOM preferred start date of 1910 we have global warming. The ‘Federation’ drought as it was called was responsible for deaths and misery of the likes that we have never seen since. Its significance is conveniently ignored as the quality of the base level data was deemed inadequate. Therefore to rely on satellite data from the last 40 years fails at the first hurdle of using less than at least a 100 years to cover the cyclic nature of the climate/weather.
The BOM forecasts for the 3 months of northern Australian summer were for below average rainfall. No mention of the severe flooding that eventuated and no warning. These Australian agencies need to lift their game.

Verified by MonsterInsights