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.
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Holy Schniky’s CrapMan! …we got a Quintuple Sigma in Sector Seven! SitRep at a Level BFD! Get the FBI, CIA, DOD,OSS, MIS, MAD, WAM, BAM and OMG all on the Crap-Talkie Stat!
THEY DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING!
Sorry for shouting, but this stuff drives me crazy! This announcement is akin to announcing that more water is flowing down the Mississippi now than it did in August and then arguing that we must dump all of our resources into building massive Arks for all of humanity!
Sure…the data indicates that it is warmer now than 40 years ago. Does anyone seriously doubt that? Is anyone saying that is not the case? We also believe that it has been warming for at least 200 years. Neither statement says anything about how much it has warmed or why, or even if it is a bad thing!
Claiming that the warming is now a ‘Gold Standard’ measurement, and then jumping to an immediate call to stop burning fossil fuels is just nuts! They have added absolutely nothing to the debate, while pretending that they have just one it!
Why are they not called on this immediately and ridiculed endlessly? Why does this foolish argument go unchallenged? Why is this press release not met with a yawn and a huge ‘so what’?
Since they could not distinguish between human influences and natural influences before 2005 does this then prove that all climate scientists who said that humans were influencing global temperatures prior to this data did not have a clue what they were talking about or does it mean that they were all just lying to us?
They still can’t distinguish between them the Hasselmann’s approach simply makes an assumption there is no proper attribution in the process.
That is the bit left out it is gold standard on something but we have no idea exactly what.
Funny, innit, how the more their science fails, the more “certain” they become of it. Cognitive dissonance at its finest.
So… how are they wrong?
Specifically?
The Hasselmann approach is a dog with some horrific problems that is ignored, and then to boot when programmed it is not even code implemented properly. Besides lots of errors the most stupid part of the analysis is the attribution which can’t be easily done because of knowledge of the composition and amplitude of climate variability and the lack of exact forcings for each operator.
However none of that you are really interested in because you were just asking a stupid question to troll with, now go back under your rock.
“So… how are they wrong? Specifically?”
For one thing, they used the worst-case RCP8.5 computer model of the Earth’s atmosphere, the most unrealistic of the computer models. The real world isn’t close to looking like RCP8.5. So naturally, these climate alarmists use it to make things appear as bad as possible.
I can hear it now outside some congressional office: AOC and the Scared Little Girls will have “human fingerprint” as part of their new climate lexicon.. Ben Santer woke them up to new possibilities..
They used models built with non-validated assumptions. Hence, nothing they found actually applies to Earth. It only applies to their virtual models and their assumptions.
What’s even funnier is they need to significantly adjust their data to even get that close to RCP8.5 assumptions. The real takeaway is they are obviously desperate.
Alarmism is backed by science like money is backed by the gold standard.
==========================
Ive examined their methodology and will be blogging on this in the morning.
Bravo, Roy, looking forward to it.
Bravo, Roy, looking forward to it.
With any good lie, there shoudl be an element of truth.
Yes, CO2 has been known to be a greenhouse gas since this property of CO2 was discovered by Thydall in 1823.
The physics show CO2’s ECS has a maximum limit of around 1.2C, and with negative feedbacks from increased cloud cover from higher ocean temps, could reduce CO2’s ECS to as low as 0.6C…
From what I’ve read, greenhouse gas warming from water vapor and CO2 add around 33C to earth’s average surface temperature, with water vapor (@ur momisugly30,000ppm) contributing 30C and CO2 (@ur momisugly400ppm) contributing just 3C of the total…
Since CO2 forcing is logarithmic per doubling, and that it has doubled 8 times to get to 400ppm, CO2’s ECS could be as low of around 0.4C/doubling (3.0C/8 doublings).
CAGW hypothesizes ECS @ur momisugly 3C per doubling, which would give 24C total CO2 forcing , which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever… If that were true, water vapor, which absorbs almost the entire LWIR spectrum and is at 30,000pm, could only account for 9C of greenhouse gas warming to CO2’s 24C…. I’m not buying it…
CAGW is a joke, which is known fact with a certainty of 5 sigma.
If quoted correctly, it’s very interesting that Ben Santer now wants to “win over skeptics”. That’s quite a turnaround from the man who, as you reminded us, previously just wanted to meet with skeptics/climate-auditors “in a dark alley”.
I wonder what has caused him to half turn away from the dark side.
I also wonder whose narrative he is referring to, because we certainly still don’t see it widely reported in the legacy media.
The other aspect that also never changes, is that not only does he know everything there is to know about the Earth’s climate, he also apparently knows all the socio-economic consequences, and what we have to do about it. Maybe some day somebody in the legacy media might care to ask him what he figured out first: The problem or the solution.
Ben (Shaman) Santer
If one then goes back into the ‘post-modern science’ from which the imperative to decarbonise originates, several cans of worms are waiting. I fear that when this whole enterprise collapses, as certainly as the tulip bubble evaporated in 1637, there will be a backlash against trust in science that will herald a dark age in which scientists are routinely regarded as untrustworthy shamans. My concern is that the integrity of science is under great threat and that my own subject, engineering, will get caught in the backlash, even though engineers have been among the most vociferous critics of the projects of imminent global catastrophe caused by humans
Snip
How will humanity extricate itself? One can hope that the accumulation of failed predictions over the next two decades will burst the bubble. The world academies cannot be asked to sit in judgment on the misconduct, as they will be in the dock. The UN is also hopelessly compromised
http://www.thegwpf.com/hubris-the-troubling-science-economics-and-politics-of-climate-change/
This book was a tour de force !! Thank you !!
Besides the over arching clueless hype the article, the articles it’s drawn from have many problems. So 5 sigma is a red herring. Dupont went for 6 sigma processes in their chemical plants. HA! beat that. 10 times better, and they make more money doing it and don’t take many grants from the government.
Other issues- a casual search turns up much climate research on the temperature series is “models all the way down”.
All the temperature series, I’m pretty sure Wm. Briggs might agree, have some many problems that they can’t be effectively analysed with statistics. And even if you get something that seems valid, it’s not a prediction. Statistics can’t do that. Models do that.
All the climate models are chaotic and take fine tuning to hold together for 10 years, much less 100. Even if they do the cumulative error in the calculations blows up to 100% in as few as 10 iterations, much less years.
Many of the papers, as mentioned, do experiments with models, trying capture the variability in their results. With careful tuning they can get a group of models to generate less variability than just one. Since the models have only limited basis in reality they have no relevance to a climate with many additional variables. They can calculate certainties and uncertainties to their hears content but none of it bears on the climate. The current weather models are reasonably effective for 2-3 days. Beyond that they start to lose it. The predicted snowstorm may be rain and two days late, but it’s still helpful to know something else is likely coming at you.
Yeah, but what Santer knows is that his rubbish will grab the headlines and any sensible refutation will not. And we all know, whatever is in the headlines is the “new” reality for the population in general and the vote-seeking politicians in particular. We need someone with a high public profile to call out the scam and keep at it until the media can no longer ignore it.
President Trump’s climate group will be hard at it, Paul!
I hope some reporter asks Happer about Santer’s “human fingerprint”.
5 sigma certainty and 0 sigma accuracy. How does that work?
It will be interesting to see McKitrick’s take on this.
Isn’t it impressive how Climate Crisis Central can blanket the world with a scary message, with enough variety in titles to disguise the robotic repetition? Yet just reading the headlines already suggests to anyone with critical intelligence what is false about this alarm. Let me list some of the obvious flaws before digging into this issue.
1. It’s a projection from a climate model, not a finding from observations.
2. It is based on highly uncertain supposed mechanisms.
3. It presupposes CO2 concentrations 3 times the present level.
4. The possible effect will occur after almost all readers will be dead of natural causes.
5. It claims a runaway warming “tipping point” which the earth has suppressed until now.
6. It contradicts the logic of a warmer world increasing the hydrology cycle with more clouds and precipitation.
7. It stokes fear of “hothouse earth” when presently we are slowly emerging from “severe icehouse earth.”
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2019/02/26/clouding-the-climate-issue/
Sorry, I meant this comment for the cloud tipping point thread.
5 sigma demonstrating what exactly? That there has been some amount of warming over the last 40 years? Or is it the last 27 years? And this means…we have to do…what?
Is it land use? Is it pollution? Is it CO2? OR…is it still mostly natural and they just don’t understand a complex chaotic natural system as well as they think they do?
Are they REALLY suggesting they understand natural variability so well that they can pin point EXACTLY how much warming is caused by humans? WOW. Just…WOW. These people are either fools or liars.
The ‘gold standard’ claim they make is that a human influence on climate has been detected beginning in 2005. So what? What does it mean? What is the level of man’s influence on the climate? What are the drivers other than man’s, their impacts?
This is jumping up and shouting “You’re guilty!” Of what, they don’t say. Santer’s intent of grabbing headlines is met, though. He is a particularly shifty liar.
You’ll just be wasting your time; Santor has never been wrong … not once.
He has not even ever made a mistake.
He has never misplaced his keys, never bought the wrong size belt, never had to retie his tie, and has never placed his right foot in his left shoe.
He is infallible. To suggest otherwise is, deservedly, asking for a punch in the nose.
Their Pokemon played the “gold standard” attack. You just can’t beat that one. Time to shut down WUWT.
Oops. That’s a mistake. Unless they really mean “virtually certain” as opposed to “real world certain.” Then that’s different but not nearly as persuasive.
They found a tropical hotspot? Where is it?
I believe they claim detecting man’s fingerprint on seasonal changes in tropospheric temperatures. I don’t understand how they are able to claim that. Anybody know anything?
Interesting thought. Ask an alarmist which is a larger temperature difference, five degrees Kelvin or five degrees centigrade. If they don’t know tell them it’s obvious they don’t understand what the hell they’re trying to talk about. This should take care of at least 70% of the useful idiots (5 sigma certainty on this). 😉
Evidence that human cities are responsible for global warming hits gold standard certainty levels!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/20/the-science-of-the-urban-heat-island-effect-is-pathetic-and-misleading/
the U.S. led team…..
Sadly,
I do not think that means what it used to mean.
One of these things is not climate-change research – can you spot which one is not?
“ … “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. …”
—
What can you expect of fraudulent anthrophobic absurdists masquerading as true-blue ‘scientists’, who think “climate change” data will come from satellite observations any time in the next 200 years.
Alternatively, field-observations data shows this:
Scientists Present New Artifact Evidence From An Arctic Island That Was 5-6°C Warmer 9000 Years Ago
http://notrickszone.com/2019/02/25/scientists-present-new-artifact-evidence-from-an-arctic-island-that-was-5-6c-warmer-9000-years-ago/
5 to 6 deg C due to natural variability ebb and flow alone.
“Humanity cannot afford to ignore such clear signals”
Indeed.
As I said to Mosher the other night – correlation does not imply causation (why do supposedly scientific literate people need to be reminded of this?). The only situation I’m aware of where a correlation is assumed to prove causation is that of smoking and lung cancer simply because the risk of contracting lung cancer is raised by 3000%, a simply staggering number.
The true gold standard of proving causation is a randomized controlled trial with hundreds to thousands of test subjects. There’s only one earth and it’s obviously multi-factored and horribly confounded so it’s impossible to actually perform the “gold standard” RCT on the effect of CO2 on earth’s temperature. Anyone claiming we know for certain is either a liar, a science illiterate or hopelessly conflicted.
“Anyone claiming we know for certain is either a liar, a science illiterate or hopelessly conflicted.”
You need to embrace the full range of available conjunctives. The simple three letter word “and” can do so much for you.
“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.”
I find it difficulty to believe that someone with a college degree, let alone a PhD, could be so dense as to make an argument that is so illogical. A level of confidence that something beyond random distributions about a flat mean is warming the planet says nothing about the cause of such warming.
Moreover, the idea that you could scientifically identify a “fingerprint” of human-induced warming is equally silly. Fingerprints are useful only to the degree that you can demonstrate their uniqueness, i.e. that no one else shares a given person’s fingerprint. There is no such thing as an “anthropogenic fingerprint” of warming and there never will be because you can never test the efficacy of such “fingerprints. Science-by-analogy is the hallmark of junk science
Does anyone have a link to the original “5-sigma” fingerprint article in Nature Climate Change? I’ve looked at the contents of the latest issue and I’m not seeing it …
w.
However, I did find the following, which made me feel much better …
w.
Not so much for me. Call me a cynic, but I see this as nothing more than an obvious plea for a reliable stream of “research” funding, and that given the current climate (pun absolutely intended) it will likely be successful. Stupidity shouldn’t be rewarded.
See the tweet from Gavin here:
https://twitter.com/ClimateOfGavin/status/1100362469535612928/photo/1
source:
https://motls.blogspot.com/2019/02/five-sigma-proof-of-man-made-climate.html