Guest post by Pat Frank
Readers of Watts Up With That will know from Mark I that for six years I have been trying to publish a manuscript with the post title. Well, it has passed peer review and is now published at Frontiers in Earth Science: Atmospheric Science. The paper demonstrates that climate models have no predictive value.
Before going further, my deep thanks to Anthony Watts for giving a voice to independent thought. So many have sought to suppress it (freedom denialists?). His gift to us (and to America) is beyond calculation. And to Charles the moderator, my eternal gratitude for making it happen.
Onward: the paper is open access. It can be found here , where it can be downloaded; the Supporting Information (SI) is here (7.4 MB pdf).
I would like to publicly honor my manuscript editor Dr. Jing-Jia Luo, who displayed the courage of a scientist; a level of professional integrity found lacking among so many during my 6-year journey.
Dr. Luo chose four reviewers, three of whom were apparently not conflicted by investment in the AGW status-quo. They produced critically constructive reviews that helped improve the manuscript. To these reviewers I am very grateful. They provided the dispassionate professionalism and integrity that had been in very rare evidence within my prior submissions.
So, all honor to the editors and reviewers of Frontiers in Earth Science. They rose above the partisan and hewed the principled standards of science when so many did not, and do not.
A digression into the state of practice: Anyone wishing a deep dive can download the entire corpus of reviews and responses for all 13 prior submissions, here (60 MB zip file, Webroot scanned virus-free). Choose “free download” to avoid advertising blandishment.
Climate modelers produced about 25 of the prior 30 reviews. You’ll find repeated editorial rejections of the manuscript on the grounds of objectively incompetent negative reviews. I have written about that extraordinary reality at WUWT here and here. In 30 years of publishing in Chemistry, I never once experienced such a travesty of process. For example, this paper overturned a prediction from Molecular Dynamics and so had a very negative review, but the editor published anyway after our response.
In my prior experience, climate modelers:
· did not know to distinguish between accuracy and precision.
· did not understand that, for example, a ±15 C temperature uncertainty is not a physical temperature.
· did not realize that deriving a ±15 C uncertainty to condition a projected temperature does *not* mean the model itself is oscillating rapidly between icehouse and greenhouse climate predictions (an actual reviewer objection).
· confronted standard error propagation as a foreign concept.
· did not understand the significance or impact of a calibration experiment.
· did not understand the concept of instrumental or model resolution or that it has empirical limits
· did not understand physical error analysis at all.
· did not realize that ‘±n’ is not ‘+n.’
Some of these traits consistently show up in their papers. I’ve not seen one that deals properly with physical error, with model calibration, or with the impact of model physical error on the reliability of a projected climate.
More thorough-going analyses have been posted up at WUWT, here, here, and here, for example.
In climate model papers the typical uncertainty analyses are about precision, not about accuracy. They are appropriate to engineering models that reproduce observables within their calibration (tuning) bounds. They are not appropriate to physical models that predict future or unknown observables.
Climate modelers are evidently not trained in the scientific method. They are not trained to be scientists. They are not scientists. They are apparently not trained to evaluate the physical or predictive reliability of their own models. They do not manifest the attention to physical reasoning demanded by good scientific practice. In my prior experience they are actively hostile to any demonstration of that diagnosis.
In their hands, climate modeling has become a kind of subjectivist narrative, in the manner of the critical theory pseudo-scholarship that has so disfigured the academic Humanities and Sociology Departments, and that has actively promoted so much social strife. Call it Critical Global Warming Theory. Subjectivist narratives assume what should be proved (CO₂ emissions equate directly to sensible heat), their assumptions have the weight of evidence (CO₂ and temperature, see?), and every study is confirmatory (it’s worse than we thought).
Subjectivist narratives and academic critical theories are prejudicial constructs. They are in opposition to science and reason. Over the last 31 years, climate modeling has attained that state, with its descent into unquestioned assumptions and circular self-confirmations.
A summary of results: The paper shows that advanced climate models project air temperature merely as a linear extrapolation of greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing. That fact is multiply demonstrated, with the bulk of the demonstrations in the SI. A simple equation, linear in forcing, successfully emulates the air temperature projections of virtually any climate model. Willis Eschenbach also discovered that independently, awhile back.
After showing its efficacy in emulating GCM air temperature projections, the linear equation is used to propagate the root-mean-square annual average long-wave cloud forcing systematic error of climate models, through their air temperature projections.
The uncertainty in projected temperature is ±1.8 C after 1 year for a 0.6 C projection anomaly and ±18 C after 100 years for a 3.7 C projection anomaly. The predictive content in the projections is zero.
In short, climate models cannot predict future global air temperatures; not for one year and not for 100 years. Climate model air temperature projections are physically meaningless. They say nothing at all about the impact of CO₂ emissions, if any, on global air temperatures.
Here’s an example of how that plays out.
Panel a: blue points, GISS model E2-H-p1 RCP8.5 global air temperature projection anomalies. Red line, the linear emulation. Panel b: the same except with a green envelope showing the physical uncertainty bounds in the GISS projection due to the ±4 Wm⁻² annual average model long wave cloud forcing error. The uncertainty bounds were calculated starting at 2006.
Were the uncertainty to be calculated from the first projection year, 1850, (not shown in the Figure), the uncertainty bounds would be very much wider, even though the known 20th century temperatures are well reproduced. The reason is that the underlying physics within the model is not correct. Therefore, there’s no physical information about the climate in the projected 20th century temperatures, even though they are statistically close to observations (due to model tuning).
Physical uncertainty bounds represent the state of physical knowledge, not of statistical conformance. The projection is physically meaningless.
The uncertainty due to annual average model long wave cloud forcing error alone (±4 Wm⁻²) is about ±114 times larger than the annual average increase in CO₂ forcing (about 0.035 Wm⁻²). A complete inventory of model error would produce enormously greater uncertainty. Climate models are completely unable to resolve the effects of the small forcing perturbation from GHG emissions.
The unavoidable conclusion is that whatever impact CO₂ emissions may have on the climate cannot have been detected in the past and cannot be detected now.
It seems Exxon didn’t know, after all. Exxon couldn’t have known. Nor could anyone else.
Every single model air temperature projection since 1988 (and before) is physically meaningless. Every single detection-and-attribution study since then is physically meaningless. When it comes to CO₂ emissions and climate, no one knows what they’ve been talking about: not the IPCC, not Al Gore (we knew that), not even the most prominent of climate modelers, and certainly no political poser.
There is no valid physical theory of climate able to predict what CO₂ emissions will do to the climate, if anything. That theory does not yet exist.
The Stefan-Boltzmann equation is not a valid theory of climate, although people who should know better evidently think otherwise including the NAS and every US scientific society. Their behavior in this is the most amazing abandonment of critical thinking in the history of science.
Absent any physically valid causal deduction, and noting that the climate has multiple rapid response channels to changes in energy flux, and noting further that the climate is exhibiting nothing untoward, one is left with no bearing at all on how much warming, if any, additional CO₂ has produced or will produce.
From the perspective of physical science, it is very reasonable to conclude that any effect of CO₂ emissions is beyond present resolution, and even reasonable to suppose that any possible effect may be so small as to be undetectable within natural variation. Nothing among the present climate observables is in any way unusual.
The analysis upsets the entire IPCC applecart. It eviscerates the EPA’s endangerment finding, and removes climate alarm from the US 2020 election. There is no evidence whatever that CO₂ emissions have increased, are increasing, will increase, or even can increase, global average surface air temperature.
The analysis is straight-forward. It could have been done, and should have been done, 30 years ago. But was not.
All the dark significance attached to whatever is the Greenland ice-melt, or to glaciers retreating from their LIA high-stand, or to changes in Arctic winter ice, or to Bangladeshi deltaic floods, or to Kiribati, or to polar bears, is removed. None of it can be rationally or physically blamed on humans or on CO₂ emissions.
Although I am quite sure this study is definitive, those invested in the reigning consensus of alarm will almost certainly not stand down. The debate is unlikely to stop here.
Raising the eyes, finally, to regard the extended damage: I’d like to finish by turning to the ethical consequence of the global warming frenzy. After some study, one discovers that climate models cannot model the climate. This fact was made clear all the way back in 2001, with the publication of W. Soon, S. Baliunas, S. B. Idso, K. Y. Kondratyev, and E. S. Posmentier Modeling climatic effects of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions: unknowns and uncertainties. Climate Res. 18(3), 259-275, available here. The paper remains relevant.
In a well-functioning scientific environment, that paper would have put an end to the alarm about CO₂ emissions. But it didn’t.
Instead the paper was disparaged and then nearly universally ignored (Reading it in 2003 is what set me off. It was immediately obvious that climate modelers could not possibly know what they claimed to know). There will likely be attempts to do the same to my paper: derision followed by burial.
But we now know this for a certainty: all the frenzy about CO₂ and climate was for nothing.
All the anguished adults; all the despairing young people; all the grammar school children frightened to tears and recriminations by lessons about coming doom, and death, and destruction; all the social strife and dislocation. All the blaming, all the character assassinations, all the damaged careers, all the excess winter fuel-poverty deaths, all the men, women, and children continuing to live with indoor smoke, all the enormous sums diverted, all the blighted landscapes, all the chopped and burned birds and the disrupted bats, all the huge monies transferred from the middle class to rich subsidy-farmers.
All for nothing.
There’s plenty of blame to go around, but the betrayal of science garners the most. Those offenses would not have happened had not every single scientific society neglected its duty to diligence.
From the American Physical Society right through to the American Meteorological Association, they all abandoned their professional integrity, and with it their responsibility to defend and practice hard-minded science. Willful neglect? Who knows. Betrayal of science? Absolutely for sure.
Had the American Physical Society been as critical of claims about CO₂ and climate as they were of claims about palladium, deuterium, and cold fusion, none of this would have happened. But they were not.
The institutional betrayal could not be worse; worse than Lysenkoism because there was no Stalin to hold a gun to their heads. They all volunteered.
These outrages: the deaths, the injuries, the anguish, the strife, the malused resources, the ecological offenses, were in their hands to prevent and so are on their heads for account.
In my opinion, the management of every single US scientific society should resign in disgrace. Every single one of them. Starting with Marcia McNutt at the National Academy.
The IPCC should be defunded and shuttered forever.
And the EPA? Who exactly is it that should have rigorously engaged, but did not? In light of apparently studied incompetence at the center, shouldn’t all authority be returned to the states, where it belongs?
And, in a smaller but nevertheless real tragedy, who’s going to tell the so cynically abused Greta? My imagination shies away from that picture.
An Addendum to complete the diagnosis: It’s not just climate models.
Those who compile the global air temperature record do not even know to account for the resolution limits of the historical instruments, see here or here.
They have utterly ignored the systematic measurement error that riddles the air temperature record and renders it unfit for concluding anything about the historical climate, here, here and here.
These problems are in addition to bad siting and UHI effects.
The proxy paleo-temperature reconstructions, the third leg of alarmism, have no distinct relationship at all to physical temperature, here and here.
The whole AGW claim is built upon climate models that do not model the climate, upon climatologically useless air temperature measurements, and upon proxy paleo-temperature reconstructions that are not known to reconstruct temperature.
It all lives on false precision; a state of affairs fully described here, peer-reviewed and all.
Climate alarmism is artful pseudo-science all the way down; made to look like science, but which is not.
Pseudo-science not called out by any of the science organizations whose sole reason for existence is the integrity of science.
Quoted from Michael Kelly at Climate Etc.:
Vapour pressure deficit? Seriously? The principal “feedback” mechanism for CO2-induced global warming was to have been increased water vapor pressure (i.e. relative humidity, humidity ratio, or whatever you want to call it). Water is the most potent greenhouse gas, with the broadest IR absorption bands, and is present in 100 times the concentration of CO2. Global warming was supposed to have increased that concentration. If, instead, the concentration of water vapor is decreasing, that means that there is no global warming.
I’m not saying that a decrease in water vapor pressure disproves global warming theory because the latter predicts an increase. What I am saying (and Nick Stokes will throw a fit here) is that a significantly less humid atmosphere shows that the the energy balance of radiation in/out of the earth is actually decreasing, even if air temperature increases slightly.
The entire global warming premise is that there is an imbalance in the amount of radiant energy delivered to Earth by the Sun and the amount of radiant energy lost by the Earth due to thermal radiation. The difference shows up as an increase in atmospheric temperature, and thus we have the concept of “global warming.”
That would be true if and only if there were no water on Earth. In that case, the air temperature would be directly related to the difference between incoming and outgoing electromagnetic radiation. The presence of water complicates the situation tremendously. At the very least, it decouples the air temperature (which is virtually always the “dry bulb” temperature) from the actual energy content of the atmosphere. Enthalpy is the correct term for the atmospheric energy content, Nick Stokes (frankly ignorant) objections to the contrary notwithstanding. And the energy associated with the water vapor content of the atmosphere dwarfs the dry air enthalpy. That’s why I have stated repeatedly that if we don’t have both “dry bulb” and “wet bulb” temperature readings versus time, we have no hope of determining whether the Earth system is radiating less energy into space than it receives from the Sun.
Yet now some “scientists” are stating that we have a [water] vapor pressure deficit due to “climate change”. Well, that can mean only one thing: the world is cooling in a big way. The minuscule temperature anomaly (if there actually is one) from the 1800s reflects a trivial amount of energy difference between incoming and outgoing EM radiation. A big drop in relative humidity reflects an enormous increase in outgoing EM radiation. There is no other way to explain it.
I have a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. My original specialty was rocket propulsion. I assure you that rocket people know more about energy than anyone else on earth, given that it governs every aspect of rocket propulsion. But a heating, air conditioning and ventilation (HVAC) engineer knows more than any of these climate “scientists.” Ask an HVAC engineer about the First Law of Thermodynamics when considering humid air. You’ll find that the climate “scientists” are like high school dropouts in their understanding of the subject.
I have a mechanical engineering degree and my first years of work were in the HVAC industry. Michael Kelly I think is quite correct re levels of understanding that mechanical engineers have regarding energy compared with other scientists. Please know that one of the most experienced and senior climate modellers from Oz is (or was, he may have retired now) a straight distinction level mechanical engineer who by the end of 3rd year told me he was going to get into meteorological modelling. Unfortunately he was so smart and confident that he would have run rings around anyone who brought up the issues that Pat Frank has addressed. I am hoping that I will bump into him one day and get to ask him questions about the models that never seem to be answered by the climate scientists.
I hope you do, and publish whatever you find in this forum.
BTW, as a kid I had a cousin who, unfortunately, we used to tease by calling him “4 Eyes.” Then he got glasses, and we teased him by calling him “8 Eyes.” Hope that isn’t you.
You’re right, this has been an abject disaster for our young people. I have young people in my life who’ve decided not to have children because of this pending doom! So sad.
Thanks for the glimpse of hope.
Keep writing, great stuff!
Also, there is another little realized fact – 95% of the annual atmospheric emission is completely natural. However modelers use ALL of the Co2 in their calculation. Humans only emit 5% of the annual Co2, so the models should only use 5% of it. What would THAT do to the models?? What would the models do if the 5% was eliminated – what if we emitted zero Co2? Nothing would change, that’s what.
I did not read the whole study but I understood that the error in temperature predictions disappears into the huge annual error of cloud forcing of +/- 4 W/m2 compared to the annual forcing of 0.035 W/m2 by GH gases. Just looking into these figures makes it clear that this kind of model has no meaning in calculating future temperatures. What is the error of cloud forcing in the GCM’s temperature projections? If it is that much, it should ruin the error calculations of these models right way.
Cloud forcing in the climate models is for me very unclear and questionable property. If the could forcing effects are known with that accuracy, the common sense says that throw it away. For me it looks like that actually the IPCC has done so (direct quote from AR5):
“It can be estimated that in the presence of water vapor, lapse rate and surface albedo feedbacks, but in the absence of cloud feedbacks, current GCMs would predict a climate sensitivity (±1 standard deviation) of roughly 1.9 ⁰C ± 0.15 ⁰C.”
If the IPCC does not use cloud forcing in its models, then it is not correct to evaluate their models as if cloud forcing is an integral part of their models? I do not love the IPCC models but for me it looks like a fair question.
Antero, wrote about this both in the climate chapter of ebook Arts of Truth and in several essays including Models all the way Down and Cloudy Clouds in ebook Blowing Smoke. There are three basic cloud model problems:
1. A lot of the physics takes place at small scales, which are computationally intractible for reasons my guest posts on models here have explained several times. So they have to be parameterized. IPCC AR5 WG1 §7 has some good explanations.
2. The cloud effect is much bigger than just TCF (albedo). It depends on the cloud altitude (type) and optical depth. Makes parameterization very tricky.
3. The. Loud effect also depends on Tstorm precipitation washout, especially in the tropics. WE thermoregulator and Lindzen adaptive iris are two specific examples, neiternin the models.
“If the could forcing effects are known with that accuracy, the common sense says that throw it away. For me it looks like that actually the IPCC has done so” – However, the cloud forcing is NOT known with any degree of accuracy, are complex and large. Too large to be ignored, and several mechanisms of NEGATIVE feedback of clouds may be larger than the modelled warming! The models require a water vapour positive feedback to produce the required alarmist results, yet ignore the negative feedback from clouds that should occur given the models unfounded assumptions on increased RELATIVE humidity.
Ms McNutt is still hoping to be White House Science Advisor to President Pocahontas to continue the climate scam.
Dr. Frank, your conclusion regarding CO2’s capacity to heat something it’s IMHO correct.
Thermodynamics tells us what specific heat is and that it is a property. Thermodynamics also says that the energy required can be in any form. The specific heat tables for air and CO2 do not say anything about needing to augment with the forcing equation.
If climate science is correct then calculating Q = Cp *m * dT from the tables is wrong for CO2 or air if IR involved.
Anthony’s CO2 jar experiment demonstrated that increasing the ppm of CO2 did not cause the temperature to increase.
Pat
You said, “It … removes climate alarm from the US 2020 election.” Would that were so! In an ideal world it would be. Unfortunately, humans are not rational. I wish you were right, but I don’t think history will bear your prediction to be valid.
Congratulations on getting your work published. You will now probably need a large supply of industrial-strength troll DEET.
The Climate Modelling community and the insanely expensive supercomputing centers they employ is a lot like NASA’s Mars Manned Space program, they are simply a jobs program for engineers and scientists. No climate model run has any external value outside of the paychecks it supported. Just as no human in our lifetime would survive an 800-day round trip to Mars, NASA in its true Don Quixote fashion charges ever on-wards like it’s not problem to worry about today as the spend billions on the task that will never happen.
These political realities (government jobs programs) is exactly the same problem the US DoD faces everytime it needs to do some base realignment for always changing technology and force structure… Congress (the politicians) stops them cold. These programs eventually become self-licking ice cream cones, that is, they exist for their own benefit with no external benefit.
It is the very same serious problem we face that President Eisenhower warned of almost 60 years ago (November 16, 1961) when he expressed concerns about the growing influence of what he termed the military-industrial complex.
Today, that hydra snake has grown a new head, and far more lethal to economic prosperity and individual freedoms than the first. The Climate-Industrial complex, driven by the greed of the “Green” billionaires funding a vast network of propaganda outlets and aligned with the ideological Socialists for political power is threatening the economic life of the US and the actively seeks to destroy any constitutional limits on Federal power and eliminate liberties the People of the USA have enjoyed for for 240 years.
The science academies yes have been destroying science now for 30+ years with their genflection to ethical destruction committed by climate science, but a far bigger threat is emerging as the driving force. The “In the Tank” podcast also posted this morning by Anthony, the panel discussed this drive to socialism and the threat we now face from the Left and Democrats to long cherished freedoms.
I have worked for successful hedge fund for 20 years. I have seen many models come across my desk that are suppose to be able to predict the markets. The vast majority fail. This in general has made me skeptical of predictive models that try to predict inherently chaotic systems. Systems that have feedback are chaotic systems.
Edit note:
Dead URL.
The last hypertext link at the end of this Essay http://multi-science.atypon.com/doi/abs/10.1260/0958-305X.26.3.391 embedded in “It all lives on false precision; a state of affairs fully described here, peer-reviewed and all.”
Target not found.
Yes, sorry, Joel. I embedded a by-passed URL by careless mistake.
The correct URL is: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1260/0958-305X.26.3.391
Multi-Science was sold to Sage Publications. So all the URLs changed.
The same incorrect URL is in the second “here” link in this sentence: “The proxy paleo-temperature reconstructions, the third leg of alarmism, have no distinct relationship at all to physical temperature, here and here.”
Apologies.
It must be that the more they taught statistics, the worse it got. Basics that anyone can understand, that is if you have the basics. From the paper.
“It is now appropriate to return to Smith’s standard description of physical meaning, which is that, “even in high school physics, we learn that an answer without “error bars” is no answer at all” (Smith, 2002).” Smith must have learned that somewhere.
The earliest I ever saw claiming that (certain) theory did not have to be verified was in an ecology paper dated 1977. Not all are so honest, but it happens now and then like when good papers like this one here get published nowadays. As Fran says above simulation is all over science. Imagination is great though.
Global average surface air temperature is regulated by gravity.
Earth’s atmosphere is not a closed system and is not enclosed within IR reflective glass.
Excellent work, Dr. Frank. No doubt, worldwide, there are millions of non-academic, non-publishing but well-trained scientists, engineers, and many others in similar technical fields that will readily see the compelling sense of your work. WUWT is greatly appreciated for its openness to such important contributions.
Thank you Pat,
I have skimmed through your paper and it looks very good ,
Climate models are trash as they all run hot .
Why ? because if rubbish or junk science are the parameters that they are based on ,the errors will always skew the conclusions upwards.
I will stick to my prediction that the doubling of CO2 increase the temperature by .6C +/- .5C .
What a lot of people do not want to know is that GHG emissions from fossil fuel between 1979 and 1999 were 25% of all GHG emissions and from 1999 till January 2019 were 37% of all GHG emissions .
That is 62% of all GHG emissions in the last 40 years.
Last year global coal production exceeded a record 8 Billion tonnes emitting up to 22 billion tonnes of CO2 during combustion , and 60 million tonnes of methane during extraction .
The world is definitely not burning up.
CO2 is not and will never be the driver of temperature here on earth .
Graham
“I will stick to my prediction that the doubling of CO2 increase the temperature by .6C +/- .5C .”
I’ll stick to my prediction that the doubling of CO2 will increase the “globally averaged” temperature (as meaningless as that is) by ZERO degrees, as CO2 doesn’t “drive” the Earth’s temperature at all; its effect has always been, and remains, PURELY HYPOTHETICAL. The mistaken “attribution” of CO2 as the “cause” of rising temperatures ignores natural climate variability, which is poorly understood and for which we simply lack adequate data to quantify much less attribute to all of the specific “drivers,” all of which are not even known, and ignores the fact that rising CO2 levels are CAUSED BY rising temperatures, as in they’ve got the cart before the horse.
Hi Everyone,
Regrets, but I put in a by-passed URL for my “Negligence …” paper, towards the end of the essay, in the sentence, “It all lives on false precision; a state of affairs fully described here, peer-reviewed and all.”
The correct URL is: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1260/0958-305X.26.3.391
Apologies for the mistake, and sorry about the inconvenience.
Fixed
That’s wonderful! Thank-you, Anthony. 🙂
Dr. Frank- Congratulations on getting this paper published. I took the time to read it before commenting. I spend a 35+ year career in engineering working in labs doing all kinds of measurements and tests. I taught dozens of engineers and technologists the basics of metrology, calibration and proper determination and expression of measurement uncertainty.
I think you have done an excellent job of showing just how far off the rails climate science got when they mistook computer model results for data. I think what you have shown is that Dr. Judith Curry’s “Uncertainty Monster” is not only real, but is more Godzilla like than a mere gremlin.
Still with the number of activist “scientists” who have invested their careers and credibility in climate catastrophisim, there is unlikely to be any turning back. I’m sure they are preparing their ad homs. And, of course, no politician, bureaucrat, or rent-seeking renewable energy advocate will ever admit the the trillions already invested and committed has been wasted. Only time and real world serious harm and hardship will ultimately bring the scam to a bitter and brutal end.
Thanks, Rick. I appreciate that you read the article before commenting.
You’re a knowledgeable professional, expert in the field of measurement and physical error analysis. For that reason, I consider your report a critical review. Thank-you for that.
We’ll see how this plays out. If the paper goes up the political ladder, there may be beneficial consequences.
But you’re right about the investment of academics in the climate-alarm industry. With any luck, they’ll all be looking for work.
I especially like the sinking realization to be faced by all the psychologists and sociologists who opined so oracularly about the minds of skeptics. Their pronouncements are about to bite them. One hopes for that day. 🙂
The AGW conjecture sounds plausible at first but upon closer examination one finds that it is based on only partial science and is really full of holes. This article and the paper expose many of these holes but most people are not capable of and have not carefully examined the details. To most, they learn about AGW in a general science context where AGW is presented as science fact where in reality it is science fiction. They believe that AGW is true because the science text book they had in school said that it was true and they had to memorize that AGW is valid in order to pass a test. For many, science is an assemblage of “facts” that they had to memorize in school so really claiming that some of those “facts” are wrong is equivalent to blasphemy which is to be ignored by the faithfull.
Al Gore, in his first movie, proudly shows a paleoclimate chart showing temperature and CO2 for the past 600,000 years. The claim is that based on the chart, CO2 causes warming, that CO2 really acts as a temperature thermostat. Mankind’s use of fossil fuels has greatly increased CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere so warming is sure to follow. The first thing that jumps out at one is that if CO2 is the climate thermostat that it is claimed to be then it should be a heck of a lot warmer now then it actually is. One should also notice that past interglacial periods like the Eemian, have been warmer than this one yet CO2 levels were lower than today. An even closer look at the data shows that CO2 follows temperature and hence must be an effect and not a cause. The rationale is very simple. Warmer oceans do not hold as much CO2 as cooler oceans and because of their volume, it takes hundreds of years to heat up and cool down the oceans. So there is really no evidence in the paleoclimate record that CO2 causes warming and if Man’s adding of CO2 to the atmosphere caused warming it should be a lot warmer than it is today. Al Gore’s chart shows that CO2 has no effect on climate but, no, people have not been buying that and have stayed religiously with Al Gore, the non-scientist’s explanation of the data.
Then there is the issue of consensus with regard to the validity of the AGW conjecture. The truth is that the claims of consensus are all speculation. Scientists never registered and voted on the validity of the AGW conjecture so there is no real consensus. But even if scientists had voted, the results would be meaningless because science is not a democracy. The laws of science are not some form of legislation. Scientific theories are not validated by a voting process. But even though this consensus idea is meaningless, many use it as a reason to accept the AGW conjecture. In many respects we are dealing with a religion.
Without even looking at the modeling details, the fact that there are so many in use is evidence that a lot of guess work has been involved. If the modelers really knew what they were doing they would by now have only a single model or have at least decreased the number in use but such is not the case. Apparently CO2 based warming is hard coded in so in trying to answer the question of whether CO2 causes warming, the climate models beg the question and are hence totally useless. Then there is the fact that the modelers had to use what they refer to as parameterization which are totally non-physical so that their climate simulation results would fit past climate data. So the simulations are more a function of the parameterization used and the CO2 warming that is hard coded in then how the climate system really behaves. At this point the climate models are nothing more than fantasy, a form of science fiction.
Then there is the issue of the climate sensitivity of CO2 which should be a single number. The IPCC publishes a range of possible values for the climate sensitivity of CO2 and for more than two decades the IPCC has not changed that range of values so they really do not know what the climate sensitivity of CO2 really is.yet it is a very important part of their climate projections. So all these claims of a climate crisis because of increased CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere are all based on ignorance but the public does not realize this.
I appreciate the work done in this article and paper to further show that the climate simulations that have been used to predict the effects of increased CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere, are worthless. It is my belief that all papers that make use of such models and climate simulations be withdrawn which a true scientist should do but I doubt that such will happen.
Yes, the fact that so many models are used and they are all averaged to an Ensemble Mean should tell even the dullest of undergrad science and engineering majors that there are serious flaws on methodological approaches within the climate modeling community.
And the problems grow exponentially from there for climate modeling.
It Cargo Cult pseudo science all the way down in the Climate modeling community.
William Haas,
Great comment.
I only wanted to add, since you were on the topic of the IPCC, that as the GCM projections have veered further from what has been subsequently observed, the confidence level that the IPCC gives to their assessments of future temperature have steadily ratcheted up.
Simply stated, the more wrong they have proven to be, the more they are sure they that are correct.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/01/02/national-climate-assessment-a-crisis-of-epistemic-overconfidence/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/02/unwmo-propaganda-stunt-climate-fantasy-forecasts-of-hell-on-earth-from-the-future/
http://www.energyadvocate.com/gc2.jpg
The IPCC’s confidence levels are nothing more than wishful thinking to support their fantasy. The level of confidence is fictitious and having to quote a level of confidence means that they really are not sure and that what they are saying may really be incorrect. We are roughly at the warmest part of the modern warm period and temperatures are for the most part warmer than they have been since the peak of the previous warm period. So what? One would expect such to be the case. It has nothing to do with the conjecture that mankind has causing the warming. Apparently they claim that the we have not seen increases in surface temperature that have been happening during the warmup from the Little Ice Age since the warm up from the previous cooling period, the Dark Ages Cooling period. But one would expect this and it has nothing to do with whether Mankind is causing global warming. I can tell you with highest confidence that the number of two is equal to itself for most values of 2 This whole confidence thing is nonsense.
This may be to simplistic but it seems to me that all the models are just “if” and “then” projections. If you start with such and such then the result will be whatever. When you change the such and such starting point the whatever result changes.
What I have never seen is a calculated probability of each of the starting points actually happening.
Tom, what got me interested in the subject of Global Warming was a 2001 luncheon lecture to a group of retired managers (most with science PhDs) by an emeritus Prof from the U of Rochester who was assisting his friend Richard Lindzen from MIT on some climate studies. (To my shame I cannot remember the Professors name.)
To your point, what really caught my attention was the Professor’s diagram of the logic chain (“ifs” and “thens”), many in series. that would be necessary to come to a conclusion of Catastrophic Global Warming, and where he then placed “generous” probability values at each link. We could of course all follow the simple math to calculate the probability of the outcome.
This article and paper by Pat Frank is the most impressive thing that I have ever seen on WUWT and that is setting the bar very high.
This is the sort of monument of thought that will finally bring an end to the true-believing Climateers, and their political crusade against Science. Pat Frank has the courage and determination to advance against the foe fearlessly for the truth.
Not fearlessly, Nick T. 🙂 But it had to be done.
Thanks for your high compliment. 🙂
You’re only brave if you feel fear, and overcome it.
I sent this to my U.P. 1st District Congressional Representative’s Communications Director stressing that Gen. Bergman needed to read it. Unlike most members of Congress he knows which end the round goes out of.
I think we have a couple of experts to hear from yet………
Hmmmmm….
“They have utterly ignored the systematic measurement error that riddles the air temperature record and renders it unfit for concluding anything about the historical climate, .”
You can use the temperature readings by looking at distributions of trends but the min/max readings at stations is not a intensive property. The temperature of the instrument might be but its not just responding to the heating and cooling of the surroundings. Its responding to the air mass moving. An average of evenly spread sites that pepper the globe might still give a useful indicator but reconstructing the global temperature as if its an intensive property in order to emulate such an average is merely allowing a systematic error to be introduced. That’s why there needs to be a constant criticism of the adjustments made over the decades.
I’m honored to have this published here. Now the challenge is getting people to understand it. As you have demonstrated, accuracy and precision are difficult for people to get their heads around. Most believe it to be the same when it is not.
And that is the difference with a distinction.
Then there will be the inevitable spin and empire protectionism.
Somebody with a name like Mann’s will declare the paper erroneous, and give some convoluted but incorrect, explanation that sounds authoritarian. It will be regurgitated by the social media trolls as if it were truth, in a bid to stamp out the threat.
We are in a war. Let’s start fighting like it.
I mentioned in another article that it is that the climate war the Left wants to fight is directly compared to WW2-like mobilization of the domestic economy to “fight AGW,”
Rationing is what was imposed by the US Government in WW2. Families got ration books with price controls imposed to buy all of everyday life’s essential’s to prevent hoarding in the face of shortages due to diversions of manpower, raw goods, and materials to the overseas war efforts and sending aid to allies.
Bernie Sanders and many of the other candidates have embraced this WW2 like re-structure the entire Western society based on market capitalism to one based on a Marxist “utopia” mentality. In the “In the Tank” podcast you posted this morning, the panel discussed the role of “incentives” versus “bans.” But the path is undeniable what the Socialists want — rationing of essentials like foods, gasoline, everyday household items, just like WW2. Then what they can’t ban outright (food) they’ll also make ungodly expensive with taxes. Then just like in Orwell’s 1984, the only people eating meat are the political elites and by extension only the most politically connected rich.
All this sounds just like North Korea, Cuba, and today’s Venezuela were all the once pets (dogs and cats) and any other animals are disappearing and then reappearing on the dinner tables of starving families.
Just as the Green Socialists are trying to “brainwash” the public into economc suicide in the name of climate change, we need to show them waht this means to everyday lives.
Climate Change radical policies: Unaffordable gasoline and rationing what is available, rationing of food, limited choices at the grocery stores on everything from fresh produce to meat and dairy products, inevitable breadlines, unaffordable vacations for the middle class. RV’s boats, ATVs, the middle class can kiss those good-bye if Bernie and his band of idiots assume political control of the US.
All so Tom Steyer and his evil ilk of “green” billionaire energy investors can get even richer in the energy transformation that destroys everything the middle class has achieved over the last 100 years. And as every economist has recognized, it is the middle class where the wealth exists to be reaped by the Socialists and “Green energy” billionaires.
The Late Charles Krauthammer was once asked why he left medicine and pursued a career as a political columnist writer at the WaPo. His response was one I’ll always remember.
Krauthammer replied, (paraphrasing) “A country can get a lot of things wrong, and still prosper. Its banking system, its health care system, its agriculture system, transportation, energy, its education system; all these things that are terribly important, all can be horribly mismanaged and a nation can still muddle through them, correcting them along the way, and yet still produce a prosperous middle class.
But a country that gets its political system wrong, it is ultimately fated to destruction. Every historical example of socialism proves this to be the case. Screw up your political system with true socialism, and the country is lost.”
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We cannot lose this battle for our political system the threat the Democrat’s srint to Socialism brings and the uncorrectable devastation that would cause for everything the US has always represented to its people and to the world.
The Fight Is On.
Thanks, Anthony. The honor is mine, now as in the past.
So, a fun question: any reaction from your local crew? 🙂
Am there for you and him on the front lines. And also know a weaponized thing or three.
Anthony … you bring up an important point … ‘getting people to understand it.’
The other ‘side’ has a huge machine churning out rebuttal and defenses and the like … writing usually (overly) simplistic ‘explanations’ targeted to the masses.
I think that is one of the biggest challenges – writing to explain these important findings in a way that lay people can understand.
WUWT does a better job at it than just about anywhere, and the discussion is invaluable, but it is the everyday person we have to learn how to reach, educate and inform.
Someone will inevitably come forth with the standard statement, “There are so many errors here that I hardly know where to begin.” And then they will proceed to weave a fantastic, sophist, pseudo-intellectual rebuttal with lots of references that lead to fundamentally irrelevant papers, but it looks good, so, hey, it will be convincing to many.
I would call it an impending sophist $#!+ show about to happen.
Simple.
Precision is putting all the bullets through the same hole in the paper.
Accuracy is making that hole in the center of the target.
Lonny: “Precision is putting all the bullets…”
Snowflake: “AAAAUGH! EVIL GUN NUT MASS SHOOTER! HELP! HELP!”
I think we need a somewhat different simile.
“Precision is slicing the tofu into exactly even pieces. Accuracy is slicing only the tofu, not the fingers.”
Lol. Unmentioned, but still a factor is resolution. The finer you can make your measurements, the easier it is to make accurate and precise experiments; provided your experiments are immutable to how the system is measured.
Well, if you insist…
Resolution is the difference between using a knife to cut your tofu, and a wire cheese cutter.
But asking the poor dears to take in three concepts at once is rather harsh.
ROFLMAO, WO
I’m minded to paraphrase Benjamin Disraeli
Collectively, mainstream climate scientists appear to lack a single redeeming defect…
Holy Carp!
TOFU???
No, I’ll stick with what I wrote, thanks. :o)
We might as well say precision is getting all the brown stuff, and accuracy is getting it in the middle of the paper.
No thanks. I like it better the way I first wrote it.
And part of the war effort lies in healing old rifts. Heller comes to mind. And in general, the effort will be enhanced by considering additional axiomatic critiques right here in the test grounds then by leaving them out in the vacuum https://youtu.be/aqEuDnqxtv4
The only certainty about the climate change issue is the degree to which public policy responses will converge toward socialism.
If correct, this is the equivalent to Goedel’s Incomleteness Theoroms to the current theories of “climate change science”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems
Yup, that is a great analogy.