Reposted from Dr. Judith Curry’s Climate Etc.
Posted on December 23, 2019 by curryja |
by Judith Curry
Is 3 C warming over the 21st century now the ‘best estimate’? A reframing of how we think about climate change over the 21st century, and my arguments for 1 C.
There has been much discussion over on twitter of the new article by David Wallace-Wells: We’re Getting a Clearer Picture of the Climate Future — and It’s n Not as Bad as it Once Looked. ‘This article is interesting for several reasons, especially since Wallace-Wells has been ‘alarmist in chief.’
Simply put, it is now becoming more widely accepted that RCP8.5 concentration/emissions scenario is highly implausible. See my previous post:
A new article by Zeke Hausfather and Justin Ritchie at the Breakthrough Institute is entitled ‘A 3C World is Now ‘Business as Usual‘. Punchline:
“We find that IEA numbers imply that the most likely outcome of current policies is between 2.9-3.4C warming — which is reduced to around 2.7-3C warming if countries meet their current Paris Agreement commitments.
Uncertainties surround this projection, of course. For one, there are uncertainties in the sensitivity of the climate to rising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations that mean emissions expected to produce warming of around 3C could result in warming as little as 1.9C or as much as 4.4C.”
They calculate the amount of warming based on TCRE:
“The amount of warming the world is projected to experience can be pretty closely approximated solely based on cumulative CO2 emissions. This relationship between temperatures and cumulative emissions is referred to as the transient climate response to cumulative carbon emissions, or TCRE. Using the TCRE values developed in the IPCC Special Report on 1.5C (SR15), we can calculate the amount of warming expected over the remainder of the century in our extended IEA scenarios, as well as the uncertainty introduced by the wide range of possible climate sensitivity values.”
“In the figure below we show the amount of warming between the last decade of the 20th century and the temperature of the late 1800s (which is somewhat representative of preindustrial temperatures) for the four RCP scenarios used in the IPCC AR5 and the extended IEA STPS and CPS cases — assuming flat emissions in each after 2040. The width of each bar reflects the 90th percentile range of warming given the uncertainty in climate sensitivity, while the central point represents the average of all the climate models running that scenario.”
This is a nice analysis by Hausfather and Ritchie. Some questions, suggestions and criticisms are outlined below:
Baseline
The 3 C estimates in the paper by Hausfather and Ritchie are based on a baseline period 1880-1900. The canonical rationale is for ‘preindustrial’, which would be mid 18th century, as the Northern Hemisphere was coming out of the Little Ice Age (hardly a climate ‘optimum’). But then, ‘good’ data is available only since the late 19th century.
The rationale for a baseline for manmade global warming in either the 18th or 19th century is that this is when manmade global warming began. There are multiple takes on this, and how much of the early warming was caused by CO2 emissions. Here are some previous blog posts:
- Assessing the causes of early industrial era warming
- Early 20th century global warming
- Modern global warming
The public looks at the 3 C number and thinks it is 3 C more warming from NOW, not since the late 19th century. Warming from NOW is what people care about.
In terms of projecting the amount of warming in 2100, what is the point in going back to 1900, and including all of the 20th century warming as ‘manmade’? It is far simpler to bypass the attribution issues of 20th century warming, and start with an early 21st century baseline period — I suggest 2000-2014, between the two large El Nino events.
In terms of policy, what matters is how much warming we can expect over the 21st century. Yes, the blame game in terms of 20th century warming is useful in terms of motivating people to act on reducing fossil fuel emissions. But at this point, what matters for decision making is how much warming we can expect over the remaining 80 years of the 21st century.
While we complain about the 21st century ‘weather’ and now call them ‘climate disasters’, few of them have plausible arguments for being associated in any way with manmade climate change. Overall the weather in the early 21st century is relatively benign by the standards of the Little Ice Age or even the early 20th century. The slow creep of sea level rise started circa 1860, well before there was significant manmade global warming.
If you start from an early 21st century baseline, you can subtract 1C from the 3C. Simple . . . now we are down to 2C.
TCRE
Nic Lewis wrote a previous post on TCRE: Climate sensitivity to cumulative carbon emissions. Excerpt:
“There are two principal metrics for sensitivity to cumulative carbon emissions. The best known is the transient response to carbon emissions (TCRE). This measures the change in global mean surface temperature (GMST) at the end of a period, typically of the order of a century long, during which CO2 is emitted smoothly. TCRE is stated per 1000 GtC (≡ 1 TtC) emissions, and usually assumes a total of 1000 GtC is emitted. Note that 1000 GtC is the carbon content of 3667 GtCO2.
In CMIP5 earth system models (ESMs), which couple carbon cycle models with atmosphere-ocean global climate models, TCRE ranges from 0.8°C to 2.4°C, with a mean of 1.6°C. The assessment in AR5, which largely mirrors the CMIP5 ESM range, was that the TCRE is likely between 0.8°C to 2.5°C, for cumulative CO2 emissions less than about 2000 GtC, until the time at which temperatures peak. ”
Nic calculated the observationally-based values of TCRE to be 1.05°C.
“The observationally-based TCRE estimate of 1.05°C, although within the AR5 range and the almost identical CMIP5 ESMs model range, is little more than half the level reflected in the central RCP scenario projections in the AR5 SPM.10 chart. Assuming that the 1.05°C estimate is realistic going forward, the IPCC’s chart overstates expected 21st century warming by a factor of approaching two, for all scenarios.”
Yes, there is uncertainty in the observationally-assessed value of TCRE. Similar to the LC18 results, the observationally-based values of climate sensitivity are slightly more than half of the model-derived values.
Lets do math. With a different baseline, we are now down to 2C. Multiply 2C by 0.6 (reduced values of TCRE) to yield a warming of 1.2C.
Natural variability
The IPCC’s 21st century climate change predictions do not include natural variability, they are focused only on manmade climate change. Excerpts from the IPCC AR5:
“With regard to solar forcing, the 1985–2005 solar cycle is repeated. Neither projections of future deviations from this solar cycle, nor future volcanic radiative forcing and their uncertainties are considered.”
“Any climate projection is subject to sampling uncertainties that arise because of internal variability. [P]rediction of the amplitude or phase of some mode of variability that may be important on long time scales is not addressed.”
So . . . does natural climate variability matter for the 21st century climate? Of course it does. The common argument is that natural variability is of small amplitude and we don’t know whether it will contribute to warming or cooling, since we can’t predict it.
Well, is anyone predicting another solar maximum in the 21st century, similar to what we saw in the mid/late 20th century? No . . . rather, there are some predictions for solar cooling in the mid 21st century. Whether there will be a major solar minima in the 21st century is highly uncertain, but the more telling point is that no one is predicting a new maximum. In any event, endlessly repeating the 1985-2005 solar cycle doesn’t seem to be a particularly good bet.
Re volcanoes, the 20th century was quite benign in terms of volcanic eruptions. There were much worse volcanic eruptions in the 18th and 19th centuries. Is there any particular reason to expect the 21st century volcanic eruptions to be as benign as the 20th century. You have to go back to the period 1340-1440 to find another century long period as benign as the 20th century volcanoes.
Now for the multi-decadal and longer ocean oscillations. For the past 25 years, we have been in a regime dominated by the warm phases of AMO. Is anyone predicting that the warm phase will persist through the 21st century? No . . . transition to the cool phase are expected before mid century.
While we can’t predict future solar, volcanic and long term ocean oscillation activity, we can expect multidecadal periods in the 21st century where the external forcing tends towards cooling and also the ocean oscillations support cooling, reduced Greenland ice melt, etc.
Net cooling from natural sources of 0.2C or more is not at all implausible over the 21st century; it is difficult to argue for additional warming from natural sources over the 21st century.
1.2 C minus 0.2 C = 1.0 C
Dangerous?
1.0 C warming for the remainder of the 21st century seems pretty benign. But if you add the ~1.0 C warming since 1890, then we are at 2 C – ‘dangerous’
2C, and then 1.5C, are the touted values of ‘dangerous’ climate change. Some context on ‘dangerous’, and some different perspectives in these previous blog posts:
- What constitutes ‘dangerous’ climate change?
- Did the IPCC AR5 take the ‘dangerous’ out of climate change?
- Redefining ‘dangerous’ climate change
Simply put, in terms of ‘dangerous’ we are looking at extreme weather events, sea level rise and species extinction. I’ve written numerous posts on all of the above, won’t rehash here, other than to point you to the recent IPCC Special Report on Oceans, Cryosphere and Climate, since sea level rise is one issue that is very directly and monotonically linked to warming. Their main conclusion regarding sea level rise:
“Projections of global mean SLR under RCP2.6 result in 0.42 m (0.28–0.57 m; likely range) in 2100. Projections of global mean SLR under RCP4.5 results in0.55 m (0.39–0.71 m, likely range) in 2100. Projections of global mean SLR under RCP8.5 results in 0.97 m (0.55–1.40 m) in 2100.”
If you take out the highly implausible RCP8.5, then we are left with 1-2 feet by 2100, compared to ~7 inch rise in the 20th century. And these values are biased high from climate model simulations that don’t sample the full ‘likely’ range of ECS from the IPCC AR5 – no climate model values between 1.5 and 2.3 C.
The issue of 2 C as ‘dangerous’ is tied to concerns about tipping points, and massive melt of ice sheets that were observed in previous interglacials at comparable temperature. My main response to that concern is a request to paleoclimatologists to sort out what was going in the mid-Holocene ‘climate optimum’, when there is at least anecdotal evidence of much warmer temperatures and higher sea level. (Note re the last 2000 years; I’ve yet see convincing evidence that MBH-style shenanigans have disappeared from PAGES2K, etc.)
Conclusions
1.2 C of additional manmade warming over the remainder of the 21st century isn’t ‘dangerous.’ Yes, there is substantial uncertainty in how the climate of the 21st century will actually play out, and we will undoubtedly be surprised.
But reframing the ‘warming’ with an early 21st century baseline, rejecting RCP8.5 and using more credible values of TCRE goes a long way towards putting manmade global warming into perspective over the course of the 21st century.
That sounds linear.
The climate sensitivity I’m more used to seeing is change in temperature per doubling of CO2, which is logarithmic.
What am I missing? I thought everyone agreed that the temperature response to CO2 is logarithmic.
Re : What am I missing?
Emotion, ignorance and stupidity. Dunning Kruger. Politics. And people who live to have a cause.
We have no meaningful ability at this time to predict weather or “climate,” period. Keep track for a week of how often the “10-Day Forecast” hits even 60% accuracy. In an outdoor profession, I’ve learned not to trust ANY forecast beyond 72 hours–the others I consider guidelines and probabilities at most, and that’s after deducting 30% for hype. Weather forecasting is part of the infotainment biz.
As such, fear sells.
We are grossly ignorant of a large percentage of the variables, so our equations have little meaning. They’re roughly the equivalent of the “Magic 8-Ball” or some fortune-teller at the county fair.
There are only so many photons in the wavelengths that CO2 can absorb (2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers). When you run out photons at these wavelengths it doesn’t matter if it is logarithmic or linear.
But you DON’T run out of photons at those wavelengths (2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers) because the CO2 will re-radiate that energy shortly after absorbing it.
That’s what “radiant” gases do best, ……. radiate energy while the other gasses “absorb/conduct” energy.
And iffen those “radiant” gases are constantly radiating the energy they absorbed ….. then they can’t very well ever be “full up” and not absorbing any more energy ……. or saving it up for later emitting.
The temperature response is proportional to the fourth root of the equivalent forcing from doubling CO2. The equivalent forcing from doubling CO2 is said to be between about 3.5 and 4 W/m^2 which means that doubling CO2 has the same effect on the temperature as in increase in the 240 W/m^2 net solar forcing of between 3.5 and 4 W/m^2. The logarithmic effect is that the next doubling will be about 60% of the last one as it applies to the equivalent forcing and not the temperature whose increase decreases at an even faster rate owing to the T^4 dependence between temperature and W/m^2.
Many get confused by thinking that doubling CO2 is the actual forcing and linear to delta T, since the malformed analysis applied by the IPCC assumes this, yet nothing could be further from accurately representing the systems average or or instantaneous behavior. Doubling CO2 is a change to the system, while forcing is more properly defined as the input to the system, where a change to the system, for example changing GHG concentrations, is EQUIVALENT to some change in forcing. i.e. solar input, while keeping the system, i.e. GHG concentrations, constant.
So much common sense is bypassed by the nonsensical manner in which the IPCC has framed the science, starting with the seriously flawed definitions of forcing and sensitivity which are further obfuscated by an attribute called alpha whose units are W/m^2 per degree. It’s incredible how a false consensus around fake science conforming to an institutionalized conflict of interest can lend so much plausibility to a stated climate sensitivity that obviously violates Conservation of Energy by requiring the next Joule of real (or equivalent) forcing to be many times more powerful then the last one. Rather than the next Joule of forcing resulting in the same 1.6 Joules emitted by the surface as a result of the last Joule of forcing, the IPCC requires the next Joule to result in the emissions by the surface of between 2.2 and 6.6 Joules. Even their lower limit isn’t plausible.
Lipstick won’t help this pig. Even clown makeup can’t hide the many imperfections in the IPCC’s fake science.
Pinheads arguing about angels – all of this CO2 forcing nonsense in my view.
Has any of these idiots making these arcane arguments about “forcing” bothered to consider or calculate the “forcing” potential of any of the following:
Water – solid, liquid and vapor, both in atmosphere and on the ground/oceans???
Reminding these “academics” that the heat capacity of water/oceans is 1000x higher than is the atmosphere? or that water in the atmosphere is 1 or 2 orders of magnitude higher “forcing” than could be CO2?
Regards the heat capacity of oceans vs air – at 1000x higher heat capacity, the oceans only have to drop by 0.001 degree C to raise the atmosphere by 1 degree C!!! This fact alone demolishes the stupid concept of CO2 forcing being some bogeyman….
Phase change – of water – what is the forcing potential of the billions of tons of water that evaporates, condenses and/or freezes daily over the extents of the planet? (~500,000 km³ /yr)
What about the thermal effects of lightning? There’s 1.4 billion flashes per year globally, each releasing a gigaJoule. That’s 1.4e19 Joules annually. Ultimately obtaining it’s energy from a combo of gravity and phase change… which came from the sun…
Gravitational – moon causing tidal bulges – both in water and land? How much forcing is that? (we’re told that tidal bulging causes certain moons around Jupiter or Saturn to have liquid water oceans subsurface due to this tidal bulge heating)
Heat evolution from the earth’s core – especially volcanic rifts mid ocean?
Back to water – clouds in particular – a few percent change in cloud cover is orders of magnitude more forcing than any puny effect of CO2
Etc, etc.
Focusing on only one of a multitude of parameters than can and do have an influence on Climate – and then stating this minuscule parameter taken out of context is the oracle of climate doom or rejoicing – those promoting this fiasco are fools, or nefarious.
There is no common sense anymore, especially in academia. If they are going to drone on about CO2 forcing, put it in context of other obvious forcings that we can calculate. Then it should be apparent that CO2’s contribution is not even discernible amongst the noise of positive and negative forcing components!
Let me provide an analogy for the common sense challenged – an automobile engine/power plant. Arguing that CO2 is the main driver of temperature, is like saying oh my god, the alternator in my car’s engine produces 50 watts of waste heat – my bloody engine is going to catastrophically overheat. When the idiotic analyst ignores that the engine itself produces 50 kW of waste heat at highway speeds and has a perfectly functioning heat dissipation system(s) for this.
To continue the analogy – the alternator as CO2, is an absolutely essential element for the functioning of the power plant as a system. Yes it provides some waste heat, but it is miniscule compared to the overall heat of the system, and if the alternator’s electrical output is removed or made to function at a low enough level, the system will in fact die and no longer function. Likewise CO2 is absolutely the essence of Life, for below 150 ppm, plant life dies – and along with it the entire food chain.
Saying carbon or carbon dioxide is bad or evil, is to say all Life is bad or evil. We are after all carbon based life forms!
co2isnotevil – December 24, 2019 at 5:04 pm
co2isnotevil, …… my question is, …… when was “the last one”, …… at what atmospheric ppm value did said “next doubling of CO2” begin that initiated said “logarithmic effect”?
Did said “doubling” start at 20 ppm, …… or at 50 ppm, ….. or at 180 ppm, ….. or at 400 ppm?
And iffen it started at 400 ppm, does that mean the “doubling effect” won’t occur again until 800 ppm?
Or does it mean that whenever atmospheric CO2 increases by 2 ppm, then that is “double” what it was at 50% ago?
Samuel,
Watts are Joules per second and the last average W/m^2 was the 240’th W/m^2 of post albedo solar energy. The next Joule come from the next W/m^2 which would be the 241’st one. Note that the next Joule is arriving at the same time as the last one, and every other one. Each Joule from each W/m^2 MUST have the same net effect on the average rate of Joules leaving surface which in the steady state is about 1.62 W/m^2 of surface emissions per W/m^2 of forcing.
The ‘official’ start of the first doubling was at the start of the Industrial Revolution when it was about 280 ppm. We are now almost half way to the first doubling. It just happens that the start of the IR happened to coincide with the end of the LIA when the natural cooling reversed, and we all know how confused people get about the differences between coincidence and causality.
co2isnotevil December 25, 2019 at 10:32 pm
So, the next one is arriving at the same time as the last one. Are you talking about scheduled trains or buses?
co2isnotevil, did you think the above up on your or, …… did you plagiarize it from a “climate scientist”?
And “about 280 ppm”, ……. HUH?
What if it was “about 250 ppm”, ……. or “about 380 ppm”, ……. at the start of the Industrial Revolution?
“DUH”, preserved leaf stomata proxies from “the start of the Industrial Revolution” proves that CO2 ppm was close to 400 ppm, ……. NOT 280 ppm.
co2isnotevil, that “280 ppm” CO2 guesstimate is the result of extrapolating the 1958+ atmospheric CO2 ppm count ….. back to the date of “the start of the Industrial Revolution” relative to the 1 to 2 ppm average yearly increase in CO2 as per the Mauna Loa measurements.
And that is the scientific FACT, ……. cheers
Sam,
The point about the next incremental Joule arriving at the same time as all other Joules indicates why the climate system can’t tell the next incremental Joule from the average Joule and supports the requirement that the next Joule must have the same effect as the average one which is the same effect as the last one.
The historic CO2 concentration measurements are more robust then you think. The error is not that CO2 concentrations haven’t been increasing, but is with the fake science that claims increasing CO2 concentrations will cause a climate catastrophe. Arguing that CO2 isn’t increasing is counterproductive as this is equivalent to accepting the IPCC’s fake claims about the effect CO2 has on the temperature.
When the doubling started is cited in IPCC reports and while I agree that when the doubling started and what concentrations it started from is arbitrary, the claimed 3.7 W/m^2 of equivalent forcing said to arise from doubling CO2 is starting from the stated preindustrial CO2 levels. It would be closer to 3 W/m^2 if starting from current CO2 levels.
co2isnotevil,
I could care less about which joule arrived 1st or last …… because it matters not a twit. Your statement of “ and supports the requirement that the next Joule must have the same effect as the average one which is the same effect as the last one” …… is “junk science” or agitprop based, ….. simply because actual, factual science could give-a-crap less about “averages” because they are a “single use calculation” for use as “reference data ONLY” that was derived from a SPECIFIC number set …… that can never be repeated.
If “averages” could be used to determine what the “results” will be next week or next month ……. then “sports” betting would have never become an “obsessive” national pastime.
And just who is ….. “Arguing that (atmospheric) CO2 isn’t increasing”, ….. surely not me. I’ve been touting that ibcreasing “FACT” for the past 25+ years, which is verified by the Mauna Loa Record (HERE).
The “yearly average” increase in atmospheric CO2 is a direct result of the increase in temperature of the ocean surface waters, …….. and has nothing whatsoever to do with near-surface air temps, …. or the summer/winter decomposition of dead biomass in the NH. Even the bi-yearly (seasonal) cycling of atmospheric CO2 is a direct function of ocean water temperature.
Sam,
Don’t you accept Conservation of Energy? How can any one Joule result in any more work than any other given that Joules are the units of work? That’s all I’m saying.
Ocean temperatures are only a minor contributor to CO2 variability. The seasonal variability is correlated to variability in the planet wide biomass which decays into CO2 in the fall and winter while CO2 is consumed in spring and summer by newly emerging flora. The hemispheres are not symmetric and what we observe is the residual.
If the 5 ppm seasonal variability was associated with the approximately 3C seasonal variability in the global average temperature, then the linear 2 ppm increase per year would need to be associated with at least a 1C per year increase!
co2isnotevil – December 29, 2019 at 10:11 am
co2isnotevil, you are in dire need of a “crash course” in biology …. with special emphasis on botany.
“DUH”, planet wide microbial decomposition of dead biomass during the fall and winter is extremely hampered because of the “cold and/or dry” conditions.
co2isnotevil, don’t you really know the primary reason that you own a refrigerator/freezer? And please don’t tell me its only for keeping your beer cold.
Here ya go, co2isnotevil, ….. READ THIS LINK … and then quit posting that crap about “fall and winter” decomposition ……. because 95% of said decomposition occurs in the spring and summer when conditions are warm and wet.
Sam,
Do you realize that less than half of the surface area of each hemisphere gets cold enough to appreciably slow down decomposition in its respective winter? Where I live, it rarely, if ever, freezes, and it’s only wet in the winter.
Why is the arithmetic so hard to grasp? There’s no possible way that a 3C temperature variability results in a 5-6 ppm change in CO2, while a .02C change in the yearly average temperature results in a 2 ppm change in CO2. It’s prima facia absurd.
Once more I will point out that yearly temperatures are not monotonically increasing from year to year, yet CO2 is. Your hypothesis can’t explain this either.
You might also notice that the peak CO2 concentration occurs in January, while if your hypothesis was true, we should see the CO2 peak in the S hemisphere winter since the S hemisphere has significantly more ocean area to absorb and release CO2 as the temperature changes.
co2isnotevil – December 30, 2019 at 11:56 am
co2isnotevil, you don’t have to believe what I tell you.
And you don’t have to believe what the USDA tells you, …. or even what 99% of the world’s Health Departments tell you.
Sam,
You’re acting like an alarmist by answering my falsification tests of your hypothesis with a non sequitur about food safety. In response to such tests, a scientist would need to resolve how ocean CO2 solubility can result in a 3C temperature change causing a 6ppm CO2 increase, while an .02C increase causes a 2ppm increase, which is a 150 times larger response. They would also need to resolve the issue of the temperature not increasingly monotonically from year to year while CO2 does. Unless you can logically support your hypothesis in light of these falsification tests, I’m done here. The normal course of science would be to modify your hypothesis.
co2isnotevil – December 31, 2019 at 12:10 pm
co2isnotevil, I now see what your problem is.
You persist on remaining “stuck on stupid” by promoting your belief that …. ‘CO2 increases/decreases is the driver of temperature increases/decreases’.
No amount of ocean CO2 solubility will result in a temperature change in/of the ocean water.
It is exactly the opposite, …. a change in water temperature is what drives the ingassing/outgassing of CO2.
And for all practical purposes, atmospheric CO2 would have to be above 3% (30,000 ppm) to produce any measurable “warming” of the atmosphere.
So best you “chuck” that 3C temperature figure …… back into the “dark” orifice it came from.
Feedbacks.
Ted,
Do you mean the incorrect application of Bode’s analysis for linear, active amplifiers employing feedback? The climate system is neither linear between W/m^2 and degrees (the inputs and outputs of the feedback model) nor is it an active amplifier which is defined as a circuit with an implicit, infinite source of Joules to provide the output power of the gain block.
Both of these simplifying assumptions are declared in the first paragraph of Bode’s book that’s the sole reference for the feedback analysis that was misapplied to the climate system in order to provide plausibility for what otherwise requires a significant violation of COE. Obviously, Hansen didn’t understand Bode’s analysis before citing it as being representative of the climate system.
Given that the increase in CO2 is near linear since erm 1850 is it? while the vagaries in global temperature increase are quite marked, how can anyone say it’s not natural? When the globe cools the house of cards will collapse.
The one thing for certain is we will in the next few thousand years slip into a glacial period, there is nothing we can do about it at this time and we may be powerless to stop it when it comes. The real answer to changing climate is always adapt or die, quite I would prefer that he human race adapts, because in any case I will be dead and climate will have nothing to do with that.
It really piss me off that our educated idiots think a warmer world would be a problem, where in reality a colder world is the real problem.
If the Milankovitch cycle is determinative, then the cooling period which began some 7,000 years ago will end in about a thousand years: after that, a long period of higher insolation. Be afraid, be very afraid!
An prediction needs to be based on empirical observations, not models. I wouldn’t pay 10 cents for what these unproven models predict. The key word is unproven.
I might get a little confidence in 80-year models when we get a reliable 100-hour weather forecast – say for London, or St.John’s, Newfoundland, Canada.
Completely different problem, completely different models.
They are both broken, but for completely different reasons.
So curious George is right to be suspicious of forecasting…. except he would be wise to be more suspicious because his yardstick is also wrong;
Possibly, but if the 100 hr. models don’t work, a sane person would not trust the 80 yr models
All forecasts are based on models, else they’re definitionally uninformed guesses.
I forecast that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow, because my model of the earth-sun system is sufficiently accurate to make that prediction. Can I tell you what time? Nope, because my model of the earth-sun system isn’t that accurate – I don’t need it to be. But NASA does, so they have a much more precise and a more accurate model.
I predict that if I step on the brake lever while driving 20mph I will slow down and stop. Do I know that the brake cylinder is full? Do I know that the calipers are aligned? That I still have brake pads? No to all, because while I haven’t checked I have lots of historical data – every time I’ve done so in the past it worked, so whether we use my model which is moderately accurate, my cousins model which is exactly accurate (automotive engineer), or my wife’s model (brakes work by magic), they all predict the same outcome.
So don’t try to conflate bad models making wrong predictions with all models make bad predictions. Because trying to make a prediction without a model of how something works means literally guessing – and it can’t even be an informed guess. Brakes work because a leprechaun grabs the wheel to stop it is still based on a model – one involving traction. Even saying that brakes work because they cause a gnome to fart and the air pushes you back is based on a model – one of mass reaction. You’d have to say that brakes work because purple is a lovely color to make a prediction without a model.
I think to understand the increase in terms of how dangerous it is, its necessary to understand how much is an increase in the maximum and how much is an increase in the minimum. Its an important message.
Fewer frosts are good in anyone’s world. A greener earth is good too – until there are fires which are likely to be bigger with the increase in fuel and get blamed on “climate change” as a disastrously bad thing.
That’s exactly something I tweeted today. I have seen no studies of what global Tmin’s have done versus Tmax’s over a long term basis. As you say higher mins would result in fewer heating degree days, longer growing seasons, less energy use, etc. Basically what the southern US has currently.
It is the timing of the first frost and the last frost that really matters.
…I find it amazingly stupid that people in (liberal) Canada gripe and whine about suffering through freezing cold winters but are still terrified about “Global Warming”….. D’OH !
ps….Merry Christmas : )
It seems like once the Mackenzie Brothers put the back bacon on the Coleman, all of Canada, eh, has gone into intellectual retrogression. Sure, it’s a beauty way to go, but other impartial observers think it is a cultural disaster. Remember, 80% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border (no, not the one with Alaska, the southern one).
I remain concerned that we are talking about predictions of tenths of a degree, which is narrower than many of the temperature measurements used to create the models leading to the predictions. Additionally, there are many interactive and confounding variables in the climate system which make such narrow predicting dubious, or maybe just plain scientifically foolish. Consider the great uncertainties of
1. the roles of the oceans as heat sinks,
2. the dominance or lack of importance of several ocean current cycles,
3. the role of clouds in the mix of positive and negative feedback,
4. the question of saturation of absorption of IR energy by CO2 and H2O,
5. the uncertain action of the solar wind (a la Svensmark),
6. the future of particulate pollution by the Chinese and Indian Coal-powered plants,
7. the uncertainty of volcanic activity
8. the continued inability to explain at a predictive level “natural variability”
With so many interactive uncertainties, how then can one presume to make accurate predictions of the climate a hundred years from now?
Exactly right. So how are these supposed “models” to be trusted in the slightest? Of course none of that matters inasmuch as this is a political question and only tangentially a science question. Can one seriously suppose just for the sake of discussion, that if the supposed “cure” for “climate change” somehow lay in smaller, less powerful government, the Left would be so hysterically eager to address the matter? Obviously not.
And speaking of basic uncertainties – why is it that climate “science” can accept estimated centuries-old historic temps values of 10th of one degree C derived from tree rings, yet are absolutely certain of the necessity to “adjust” historic recorded temps taken down from dedicated and monitored instrumental recording stations from only ~ 100 years ago.
Ref: Australian / British / Canadian “adjustments” of historical temps records.
Whats Up With That ?
(FFS)
Most of the temperature data are simply made up. I’m not talking about homogenized and altered data, but data created out of thin air. For example, there were less than 50 thermometers continuously recording data in the entire southern hemisphere for half of the temperature record (1880-1950), with most of those being concentrated in SE Australia. Anyone who thinks scientists can accurately tell us what the hemispheric temperature was during that time is, IMO, a real sucker. The situation is somewhat better from 1950-present, and in the northern hemisphere overall, but not by much.
Nostradamus, my monkey, and his dart board says it is actually going to be -1.0C at the midpoint of the century warming back to where we are now by 2100. Unfortunately both dumba (as we affectionately call him) and I will not be around to validate the end of the century forecast.
Not in this thread. Nevertheless:
“The Technocrat Macron, in France, is reasonably seeking to increase the pension age.”
____________________________________
The pension age is not really the problem. The background is:
European companies close entire departments or send employees of entire departments on short-time work: This increases shareholder returns because there’s less wages to pay to less employees.
Later the departments are rebuilt with cheaper foreign, or younger employees.
The older employees are no longer hired. Many do not receive enough pension and are paid by the taxpayer from the social security fund.
These people then get “long-term unemployed” which means: no longer listed as unemployed in the statistics.
The UK has been through this cycle already. Women born in the early 1950s suffered from moving pensions goal posts at short notice two or three times depending on your view. Men not to the same extent.
Exporting jobs to India, China and so on, Tony Blair’s idea to give the young useless Qualifications, Maggie Thatcher and her war on unions and the traditional heavy industries they worked in, the willingness of governments of all colours to let companies be sold off to the highest bidder with no regard to anything – Cobham this week, has created an economy based on foreign screwdriver factories, zro hours contracts, and food delivery services.
Will Brexit and Boris improve things – I bl**dy well hope so but in the words of Burns addressing the mouse
Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!
It wasn’t Thatcher making war on unions and heavy industry.
It was unions driving heavy industry out of the country via outrageous wage and working condition demands.
I find it fascinating how people actually believe that government has a right to tell industries how they must run businesses.
Ben, when you go to the store, do you go out of your way to pay more for what you buy, or do you look for the best deal that you can get? If you look for the best deal why are you surprised that others do the same?
LOL
The markets correct themselves…
Brrrrrrr
It’s only a matter of time before the global av temp returns to its “normal” range of 10C more than today. A level that it’s been for most of the time since the Cambrian explosion of species 560 million years ago.
Ok so humans evolved in an ice age and may not survive it but millions of species that evolved back then had no problem with that temp, in fact they thrived. Surely human ingenuity will prevail but I’m not sure that the climate activists and their “dumbed down” supporting rabble will allow it.
Humans evolved in a circa 35 to 37 degC climate, as seen in Sudan/Ethiopia, and that is why most of the globe in uninhabitable to us, unless we adapt ourselves, with clothes (the animal skins of old), or adapt our environment, eg., by constructing buildings (the caves of old), and fitting these with central heating (the camp fires of old).
We know that life flourished on a warmer planet and will do so again, should the world warm to the temperatures seen in the Cambrian Period. Given our natural habitat, ie., the warm conditions of tropical Africa, we ourselves will thrive in that warmer world. It will mean that much more of the globe will be naturally habitable to us.
The only issue with Climate Change is the inconvenience of sea level rise, and given that that will inevitably be slow, much of that can be overcome by adaption, and gradual migration to more habitable lands.
I wondered about that. Our current ice age has been lasting for several million years. How do we know that we will return to the “hothouse Earth” of times past? Maybe the ice-cap Earth is the “new normal”? (due to a cooler Sun, cooling interior of Earth, galactic neighbourhood, etc.)
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is spending Christmas vacation in Costa Rica. It’s currently 24C warmer than Ottawa, where Trudeau stays when he’s not vacationing.
Justin advises us all to cut back on carbon fuel usage.
We, the Canadian taxpayer, are paying to heat three homes for Justin: 1) his vacation house at Harrington Lake, 2) 24 Sussex Drive, where his meals are prepared and where there is an indoor swimming pool; and 3) the 22 room Rideau Cottage where Justin sleeps.
Justin is the leading example of the virtue signalling climate crowd who are vacationing in places that are 10 to 30C warmer than their normal residences.
Please remember to turn down your thermostats this Christmas. Justin says so from Costa Rica.
What virtue is Mr. Trudeau signalling?
Not his own.
More than half of Canadians are the ones to blame for electing, and then re-electing, such a fool.
Justin did manage to have the Canadian parliament declare a “Climate Emergency” this year.
If vacationing in Costa Rica is demonstrating an example of Canadian citizens acting accordingly then I am in full support!
Plan to go down myself in February!
We find that IEA numbers imply that the most likely outcome of current policies is between 2.9-3.4C warming — which is reduced to around 2.7-3C warming if countries meet their current Paris Agreement commitments.
How can anyone seriously believe this stuff?
I can’t because the increased OUTFLOW of energy from the planet, continually exceeds the postulated warm forcing of CO2, there can be no more warming from any new increase in CO2 in the atmosphere, it did all it can millions of years ago.
I suppose if everyone that has a back yard (or rooftop) directly exposed to sunshine placed an 8×8 square of white infrared reflective surface (e.g whitewashed plywood, not latex paint) we could probably trigger the next glaciation right away. Every 681 such panels would act the same as as an acre of glacial ice on earth’s albedo (and keep your house a little cooler) The lower the latitude, the more effective it would be.
In Phoenix alone we could create 900 acres of “glacial ice” that way.
..paint all the roads white…and we get snowball earth
roads in North America >
A very deceptive picture, each line is thousands of times wider than any road is.
The reality is that probably less than 0.01 percent of the US is paved.
Painting all roads, parking lots and runways completely white wouldn’t even show up in the rounding error for the Earths albedo.
A study done by a California university, I think it was UCLA by my recollection is hazy, concluded that a combination of reflective pavements and roof coatings would reduce the temperature of Los Angeles by 1 to 2 degrees saving a significant amount of energy.
LA is a densely populated region, with few clouds most of the year.
With the exception of the area around NYC and one or two other cities, the rest of the country is substantially less populous.
Then there are the oceans.
Beyond that, in northern latitudes, both roads and roofs are covered with snow for part of the year.
In all the discussion here or anywhere I have not seen a thermodynamic mechanism of how air with its puny heat capacity will melt ice faster than now. All of the science articles I have read about glaciers has said they melt mainly from the absorption of sunlight. Sea level rise is put forward as the main threat. Since there are prediction of of increased melt there must be some associated mathematics.
Air carries moisture and at the tipping point between glacial and inter-glacial more of the precipitation falls as rain, less as snow.
Rain melts snow and ice, and so called “rain on snow” events often produce rapid melting. There has been lots of research on such — just search — because of flooding and mass wasting. Unrelated is that glaciers naturally exhibit ice calving that puts ice into water that moves into a lower latitude and warmer water.
Point: Ice melts for various reasons so I don’t look for one simple mechanism.
Dear Mike.
You are right. I turned a hairdryer on a tray of ice cubes and I cant see how it melted all the ice in a minute given the puny heat capacity of air, either.
Leo Smith,
That was not a well thought out experiment. The melting of the ice had much more to do with the proximity of the heat source than it did heat capacity of air.
I thought the claim was that IR couldn’t heat water.
It’s not IR that’s melting the ice cubes. It’s direct conduction of heat through very hot air.
Careful what you touch – https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-huawei&sxsrf=ACYBGNSvxdq0f1aOipPeS_7MmTiuuj_X2Q:1578325546581&q=hair+dryer+heat+capacity+intake+vs+output&spell=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi4uqzsqO_mAhXio4sKHa56CDwQBSgAegQIDBAC&biw=360&bih=518&dpr=3
You are making the same mistake that those who point out that CO2 is but a small percentage of the atmosphere are making.
You are thinking that once the air molecule transfers it’s heat to the ice, that’s it. Everything is finished.
In reality, that air molecule transfers it’s heat, then gets heated up again, transfers it’s heat, gets heated up again, over and over again ad infinitum.
ad infinitum? Or until the sun goes down?
Does temperature go to absolute zero when the sun goes down?
If not, then the IR photons keep coming.
So true, same for my driveway, the parts that see little or no sun retain the ice and snow forever as it seems in the winter.
It is basic thermodynamics/heat transfer
Looking at UAH, I see less than 0.1 degree warming between the 1998 and 2016 peaks. About 0.08C in 18 years. That straight line projects to 0.36C, call it 0.4C in the 82 years to 2100.
What Climate Emergency? (Except the fatally flawed models & their predictions.)
UAH doesn’t agree with HadCRUT. The excuse is that the surface warms faster than the lower troposphere. Of course, for that to happen we have to toss out a bunch of atmospheric physics with regard to lapse rates and humidity.
I think we’re at the point where the various alarmist positions are becoming self contradictory.
Isn’t tossing out physics what the climate scientists do best?
So, we still have a poor understanding of normal temperature distributions, and especially the politically convenient global average statistic. We infer the past, assume the present, and predict the future. We indulge with liberal license to fill in the missing links with brown matter. Science has evolved as the art of the plausible, backed with quasi-religious “ethical” fervor, and grand empathetic appeals.
The prevailing presumption in this post is that warming is “dangerous” rather than beneficial.
That presumption is false. Warming is good, cooling is bad. Always been that way, always will be that way.
Global warming is good. That is all that matters.
This is blatant lattitudism. Let me guess; 40N, 50N?
Even the IPCC says that most of the warming will occur in polar regions.
In the tropics, water vapor already saturates the IR wavelengths. More CO2 will have no measurable impact there.
So what happened to the model that only figured in sun spots and volcanoes, then averaged the predictions into 20 year average.
Say what?
Lay off the whisky infused eggnog!
Climate models have no predictive value.
Since its publication, that result has been studiously ignored by climate catastrophists, CO2 warmists, and all the important skeptical blogs except Anthony Watts’ WUWT.
My hat is off to Anthony (and CtM). Once again he showed his exemplary and unusual courage.
As for the rest of these people speculating about climate futures, none of them know what they’re talking about.
Sorry to say, that includes Judith Curry.
Pssst Pat, you’re not wearing any clothes.
Looks like unintelligent snipe is all poor Loydo has left.
Its interesting to note that when James Hansen projected climate change using computational “physics” just before the turn of the century, the best super computers were about one fifty thousandth as powerful as they are now.
And yet Hansen got it “right” as the GCM predictions haven’t changed much.
Feynman once said
The thing is, we’re still not computing future climate because the GCMs simply aren’t capable of it …but we’re not changing our beliefs either and that’s telling. The “cant calculate climate” GCMs are all still homing in on the value believed to be true.
Thanks for that example of how science works sometimes, Tim. Science stumbles from one revelation to another. But, eventually science usually gets it right, as far as that can be determined. We are very far from that point when it comes to climate science.
In order to model clouds, computers need to be 100 billion times more powerful than now.
Regardless of how powerful the computers are, until we fully understand the physics behind them, we are just calculating our best guess a lot faster.
Far better educated people than you have tried to refute the paper, and failed Loydo.
You exhibit no sign of any relevant education at all. Your opinion is worthless.
“Since its publication [that climate models have no predictive value], that result has been studiously ignored by climate catastrophists, CO2 warmists, and all the important skeptical blogs except Anthony Watts’ WUWT.”
And we know why, too, don’t we. They ignore it because if they acknowledge it then all the speculation they have done about the Earth’s climate comes undone, and their life’s work becomes a shambles.
They will ignore your study for as long as they can because they want to continue to instill fear of the Earth’s climate in the hearts of our children for political and personal gain. Your study would prevent them from doing so if knowledge of it were spread far and wide.
The same must be true for satellite measurements, wouldn’t you agree? Certainly for satellite altimetry, probably for temperature measurements.
Satellite temperature measurements aren’t better than to about ±0.3 C.
However that uncertainty is typically ignored. It’s assumed to subtract away in taking an anomaly.
Van Doren says
As I understand it, the satellite measurements are modeled measurements too. To understand what’s seen at the satellite you need to have modeled the atmosphere and how it radiates. However there is a big difference between a relatively instantaneous modeled value in a satellite measurement vs a short term projection such as a weather model vs a long term projection such as GCM.
The models used in satellites might not be perfect but at least they’ll give pretty consistent results at any point in time.
Weather models evolve and chaos soon renders them useless.
GCMs evolve over the long term and there is an assumption their evolution is in the direction of climate even though they may not get specific weather right but this is flawed for many reasons but the easiest one to understand is because they’re not actually based on physics. Sure, some parts might be simplified physics but other parts are straight out parameterised fits…like clouds.
If you add a fit to physics, you get a fit.
Of course the climate scientists cant ever admit to this because its the foundation of their existence.
“Conclusions
1.2 C of additional manmade warming over the remainder of the 21st century isn’t ‘dangerous.’ Yes, there is substantial uncertainty in how the climate of the 21st century will actually play out, and we will undoubtedly be surprised.
But reframing the ‘warming’ with an early 21st century baseline, rejecting RCP8.5 and using more credible values of TCRE goes a long way towards putting manmade global warming into perspective over the course of the 21st century.”
WTF! Why are you going half-way to compromise with this warmist agenda? Where is your evidence that atmospheric CO2 does anything but cool the atmosphere to space and feed vegetation? Why do you even listen to an organisation as corrupt as the UN?
It’s like saying the devil is not all bad.
I’ve heard he plays a pretty good fiddle.
But seriously, what does “warmist agenda” mean in this context?
Are you questioning the rationale of folks trying to determine how Earth’s atmosphere works?
Or are you not fond of the UN’s agenda and that of Extinction Rebellion and the cute hourglass symbol?
We’ll all be dead in 80 years so who cares.
From the article: “Yes, the blame game in terms of 20th century warming is useful in terms of motivating people to act on reducing fossil fuel emissions.”
Assuming it is a good thing to reduce CO2 emissions. I don’t assume that. You shouldn’t either, because there is no evidence showing CO2 needs to be reduced.
Yes, every time we get a new study the ECS/TCS goes lower. CO2 is looking less and less scary as time goes along.
There’s going to be a lot of new skeptics one of these days when they figure out all this CO2 climate alarmism is a bunch of nonsense.
Three links below about the TCRE and carbon budgets constructed from it.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/09/21/boondoggle/
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/11/08/remainingcarbonbudget/
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/05/06/tcre/
‘… how much of the early warming was caused by CO2 emissions …’.
Not much:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1900/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1910/to:1945/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1965/to:2000/trend
CO2 levels are currently rising at a rate of 1ppm per year, that’s 1 addition molecule of CO2 out of every 1 million molecules air per year. PT Barnum couldn’t make this up
1ppm per year, you say.
Interesting.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
Chris, do you have a source for that current rate of 1 ppm? I have checked these and the increases are between 2.2and 2.5 ppm.
https://www.noaa.gov/news/global-carbon-dioxide-growth-in-2018-reached-4th-highest-on-record
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide
~1 ppm + or – 2 ppm. But whether its 1 ppm or 2.5 ppm, my point is, anyone who thinks that will drive the temperature up 3 degrees in one century is out of their minds. Especially when we have CO2 measurement records going back over 200 years that show spikes up to 550 ppm. Don’t be too surprised if we get another one of those spikes out of nowhere before it falls right back down to the 360 ppm range. It will be fun to watch alarmists freak out over both the rise and fall.
I don’t understand all of the technical and science talk included in this article.
I can tell you what I thought I understood after I started following this in the 1990’s. I was lectured that man was polluting the atmosphere with CO2 via his use of fossil fuels and abuse of the land. If the CO2 concentration reached 350 ppm we would reach a tipping point and the earth’s average global temperature would race up uncontrolled. If the average global temperature were to become 2 degree centigrade higher than pre industrial temperatures it would be a catastrophe for humans and the earth as a whole.
We have passed 350 ppm and have not reached or surpassed the catastrophic 2 degrees centigrade increase. Everyone stopped talking about the 350 ppm. Now the talk is about the 2 degree centigrade increase. My understanding is that the average global temperature has already risen 1.5 degrees centigrade from pre industrial times. If that is the case shouldn’t we be three quarters of the way to the end? I some how don’t feel it.
We already know they lied to us about the 350 ppm. I feel pretty confident that the additional .5 degrees centigrade in the coming eight decades is not going to do us in.
Judith Curry’s article seems like an effort to make the hand wavers feel better about their miserable prediction that we are all doomed once we achieve the 2 degree increase, which I am thinking we will. All she is doing is moving the goal post but we will still be 2 degrees warmer than we were in pre industrial times. I can’t see any reason to make the liars feel better about their lies or the mistaken feel better about their mistakes if you prefer.
Having said that I am against wantonly polluting or abusing the earth. The US has made remarkable progress in cleaning up our country, if the rest of the world simply did as much as we have most of our problems would approach insignificance and all our lives would be better.
Long story short we need to force them to fail again.
“My understanding is that the average global temperature has already risen 1.5 degrees centigrade from pre industrial times. If that is the case shouldn’t we be three quarters of the way to the end? I some how don’t feel it. ”
It is my understanding that the “Hottest Year Evah!”, 2016 (which was one-tenth of a degree warmer than 1998, a statistical tie) reached a point that was 1.1C above the 1850-to-present average temperature. The temperatures have currently cooled about 0.4C since the 2016 highpoint, so we are currently 0.7C above the 1850-to-present average.
The year 1934 in the United States was 0.4C warmer than 2016, which would put 1934 right at 1.5C above the 1850-to-present average.
So we have a long way to go even to reach 1.5C above average again, much less 2.0C above average.
After the temperatue highpoint of 1998, the temperatures cooled for many years. My assumption is the same thing will happen after the 2016 highpoint. The temperatures climbed from 1910 to 1940, then they declined from 1940 to 1980, then they climbed again from 1980 to the present where the temperatures did not exceed the levels of the 1930’s, and now we are starting to cool again. President Trump says of the temperatures [paraphrasing], “They go up, and then they go down, and then they go up again”. And that’s what they do All unmodified surface temperature charts show this kind of periodic pattern.
UAH satellite chart:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_November_2019_v6.jpg
“The temperatures have currently cooled about .4 degrees since the 2016 high point…”. So you are saying that we have cooled .4 degrees in three years yet the CO2 levels are still over 400 ppm. What does that tell you about CO2’s greenhouse effect?
“What does that tell you about CO2’s greenhouse effect?”
Well, it tells me that increased levels of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere and atmospheric temperatures are not in sync.
During the time period from 1940 to 1980 the atmospheric temperatures also cooled while CO2 levels increased in the Earth’s atmosphere.
No correlation means . . .
Co2 is not the control knob.
Bob wrote: ” Judith Curry’s article seems like an effort to make the hand wavers feel better about their miserable prediction that we are all doomed once we achieve the 2 degree increase, which I am thinking we will. All she is doing is moving the goal post but we will still be 2 degrees warmer than we were in pre industrial times. ”
From what point is the prediction predicated? 2 degrees from the LIA? 2 degrees since 1850? 1880? 1910? 1979? 2 These are common starting points. Note that these starting points are usually at the end of cooling trend or cool period. What is normal, or is there a normal that isn’t just a statistical construct. All this variation despite co2 concentration. 2 degrees from 280 ppm? 2 degrees from 350 ppm?
My understanding is that the industrial revolution began in the late 1700 or early 1800’s. It is believed that the CO2 concentration was about 280 ppm at that time. I don’t believe we started doing actual real time measurements of CO2 concentrations until 1950 or so. The measurements given for the past were of trapped air bubbles in ice cores from places like Antarctica. Who knows how reliable they are but that is what we have. As for the temperature you must remember they are talking about the average global temperature. We don’t know what the average global temperature is today how could we possibly know what it was over 200 years ago. Today we have very accurate instruments, unlike in the past. The problem is that we have very little coverage of the earth and many land sites are compromised by urban heat island effect. Satellites and balloon measurements are better but we have only been doing them since 1979.
A simple question: What is the optimum global temperature? Come on, you climate scientists, lay your cards on the table.
What is the optimum global temperature?
The optimum for what?
That’s up to the alarmists to define. You are the ones who are proclaiming that any changes are bad.
“emissions expected to produce warming of around 3C could result in warming as little as 1.9C or as much as 4.4C.”
To a non-professional, that looks like a pretty wide range, with the highest value more than twice the lowest. I detect a strong hint of “wild guess” there.
“Wild Guess” is right. There is no evidence CO2 is heating the Earth’s atmosphere. It may be cooling the atmosphere. All these ECS (Estimated Climate Sensitivity) estimates, which are based on how much warmth a doubling of CO2 would cause in the atmosphere, are just wild guesses, and now we are in the process of refining these wild guesses, with no negative feedbacks even considered. They assume CO2 is causing all the warmth based on nothing but assumptions.
Climate Science is a long way from figuring out what CO2 is doing or not doing in the atmosphere. Everything they say is pure, unsubstantiated speculation. The alarmists don’t have one fact to on their side.
Ask any climate scientist to prove CO2 is warming the Earth’s atmosphere. They can’t do it. If they could they would smack down this post of mine in very short order, but they won’t because they can’t. That ought to tell you something. If they had anything other than speculation you can bet they would be rolling it out. I challenge them all the time and every time all we get is crickets from the CAGW promoters. Crickets is all they have. It must really irritate them to be unable to reply to a post like this.
So we are going to get very refined and precise wild guesses?
Yeah, I think the experts have refined it down to close to 1.0C-1.5C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2. A benign number even if you believed in the human-caused climate change speculation.
Current global temperatures cool, and CO2 climate sensitivity numbers are falling. Things are heading “south” for the alarmists! What are they going to do? Why, they will double-down on the wild speculation and scaremongering, is what they will do. It won’t change the numbers, though. The numbers are going against them.
See: Crickets. Alarmists have no answers.
See kids, the guys that are trying to scare you about human-caused climate change can’t answer a simple question about CO2 and the Earth’s atmosphere, yet they want you to be very afraid for your future.
Alarmists are SO predictable. When challenged, they run for the hills! 🙂
That should tell you all you need to know about the sad state of Alarmist climate science.
I think this is the cue for
MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR – and many more of them!
Plus 1 for you.
It has snowed all afternoon here (Christmas day) and right now the storm is lifting, the sun is low in the west, and the iridescence of the low-hanging clouds is red and green. Christmas colors!
Merry Christmas.
Something has been nagging at the back of my mind and It’s taken a while to puzzle it. When I was at school in juniors ’60’ we were taught that the Earth;s core played a part in how warm the planet is. Never see it mentioned, does it play a part? Sorry if it’s a dumb question not my field.
David Hartley, the Earth’s core remains so hot because the heat that is there can only escape very slowly. Extremely slowly. It is effectively self-insulating. The amount of extra “new” heat, which is generated by decay of naturally-occurring radioactive elements, is also very small. Averaged across the whole surface of the planet both of these are very very small compared to the amount of energy received from the sun.
Of course some of the interior heat escapes in “concentrated” form at a few locations like active volcanoes and mid-ocean ridges. Some energy is also dramatically released in earthquakes. While the effect of active volcanoes under some glaciers in places such as the Antarctic Peninsular is possibly significant, the global average effect is still considered tiny. But it is certainly interesting to speculate whether occasional intense bursts of volcanic activity could affect the flow of certain glaciers or maybe trigger ocean currents to change their course or intensity.
Thank you very much for your thoughtful reply reply, very informative.
The usual breathtaking hubris. Current and future policies will have effects remarkably close to zero. Because most of the world is going to continue to use fossil fuels as they see fit, whatever the Hausfathers, graduates from the School of Mosher, or other would-be rulers of the planet, would like to think.
Happy Christmas.
UN water plans from a well known website:
Later:
Having failed to deliver adequate drinking water supplies to the world, UN agencies, hangers-on, and other associated parasites now confine themselves to the modest task of making policies to control the weather and stop humans with inadequate drinking-water supplies from using fossil fuels to improve their lives.
TCR and ECS are the same. Temperature response to a forcing has a lag of about 3 hours, not 3 centuries. Else we would be accumulating heat, day on day, from sun rises 3 centuries ago. We arent.
Ocean heat uptake of warming from CO2 is also impossible, The oceans are 3 C warmer, and longwave cant penetrate water to any real depth and certainly not beyond the cool layer.
Short wave radiation warms the oceans. The temperature of the air regulates how quickly that energy can escape from the oceans.
Yep. The concept of ‘ocean heat uptake’ of IR, heat energy, is a myth, an impossibility. IR can slow the rate at which the sea loses energy, but that energy was from shortwave.
ECS and TCR are three hours apart.
I think the best way to debunk the ‘CO2 acts as a blanket’ fantasy is this:
In the bone dry (no atmospheric humidity) desert areas of the world temperatures can reach 50 dg. C in the daytime.
Shortly after sundown, air temperature falls dramatically, often to subzero levels . Please reply !
The lack of water vapor has a huge temperature effect over deserts, and H2O is the most potent greenhouse gas. At daytime the absence H2O carpet let most of the sun radiation reach the surface. in nighttime the absence of the H2O blanket let more of the heat radiate out. CO2 works the same way, but to much lesser degree.
Thanks,
You say:
CO2 works the same way, but to much lesser degree.
OK, but AFIK it has never been proven that the atmospheres 0,04 pct. CO2 content has any material effect on climate.
You seem to be arguing that unless a blanket is 100% effective, it has no affect.
No, that is evidently not my argument.
But OK, perhaps I should have written : it has never been proven beyond a reasonable, scientific doubt that the atmospheres 0,04 pct. CO2 content has any material effect on climate.
If you think otherwise, perhaps you could provide a link to the proof ?
This climate hysteria is primarily based on 2 things:
1) Climate models based on wildly different assumptions about the earth’s climate, which is basically chaotic, and therefore impossible to model.
2) A model of a fictitious moon-like planet with no oceans. Totally absurd !
Enhanced by the Climate-Industrial-Complex, and the Neo Marxists.
It has been proven that CO2 traps IR energy.
Because of that it has an impact on climate.
As you note, H2O, another greenhouse gas has a big impact.
Likewise, CO2, a weak greenhouse gas also has an impact, a much smaller one.
We can’t pinpoint the impact in the climate record because the impact of CO2 is less than the noise in the system.
Just because we can’t pick a signal out of the noise is not proof that the signal does not and cannot exist.
”It has been proven that CO2 traps IR energy.”
Traps? Where? I would like to see this proof.
CO2 does not trap IR energy. It merely slows the radiation of a small protion of the IR spectrum into outer space.
I read an article last week about solar irradiance measured at various weather stations in the Netherlands and Germany. Since 1980 solar irradiance has increased with 10 to 15 W/m2. This was supposed to be the effect of cleaner air (less aerosols). All data from KNMI climate explorer.
That is far more than the 3.7 W/m2 form doubling CO2 so must have had a considerable effect on the temperature both in the Netherlands and Germany.
More likely because of less clouds. I’ve read some publication that cloud cover went down by some 4-5 percent points during the same period.
We are moving from Climate Pessimum to Climate Optimum conditions, with Greening Sahara, Arab Pensinsula, deserts also greening in Pakistan, India and China…
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Die qualitativ hochwertigen Proxies (etwa Baumgrenzen und pflanzliche oder tierische Spezies) deuten auf deutlich höhere Temperaturen während des Klimaoptimums und vor allem auf weit günstigere Lebensbedingungen als heute.
Der Klima um 1850 (was dumme Menschen aus unerfindlichen Gründen heute als Optimum postulieren) gleicht dagegen eher jenem des Klimapessimums.
Entsprechend war beispielsweise auch die Baumgrenze in den Alpen zeitweise um 200 bis 300 m höher, in Sibirien und Nordamerika lag die Baumgrenze bis zu 300 km weiter nördlich als heute. Gleichzeitig lagen die Wassertemperaturen im nördlichen Indischen Ozean und im tropischen Pazifik .. im Altithermum auf 1 °C über dem heutigen Niveau…
Der bemerkenswerteste Unterschied des Altithermums im Vergleich zu heute war ein deutlich feuchteres Klima in den Wüstengebieten. Es gibt Anzeichen für ganzjährige Flüsse in der Sahara und anderen heutigen Wüsten. Der Tschadsee hatte zu dieser Zeit etwa die Ausdehnung des Kaspischen Meeres. Wie etliche Felszeichnungen aus der Sahara zeigen, gab es zahlreiche Großtierarten wie Giraffen, Elefanten, Nashörner und sogar Flusspferde. Siedlung und Viehhaltung war den Menschen damals in diesen Gebieten möglich. Gleiches wurde durch das feuchte Klima in der Thar (Pakistan) ermöglicht, wo der indische Sommermonsun deutlich stärker ausgeprägt war als heute.[15]
Während des Klimapessimums von 4100 bis 2500 v. Chr., das deutlich niedrigere Temperaturen als das Hauptoptimum 1 aufwies, zog sich die Savannenvegetation abrupt zurück. 3200 bis 3000 v. Chr. wurde das Klima in den Wüstengebieten deutlich trockener, es begann die Desertifikation der Sahara. Die Bewohner der Sahara und anderer werdender Wüstengebiete mussten ihre Lebensräume verlassen und sammelten sich in den Flusstälern des Nils, Nigers, des Huang-Ho (China) und Indus (Pakistan) sowie in Mesopotamien an Euphrat und Tigris.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holoz%C3%A4n
Climate Change greening Sahara desert
https://www.mpimet.mpg.de/fileadmin/communication/Max-Planck-Forschung/PDFs/1104_Die_Wueste_gruent.pdf
(hopefully quick enough to counter the next natural Sahel drought caused by AMO cold phase, due in a few years, but with quadrupled population since last famine)
Fooling people into doing anything is actually bad.
A good question to ask is this:
If the predictions are right and there is about 1.5o of warming likely this century, why will that be a bad thing?
What is more likely, based on the track record 9f climate predictions to date, is that the current predictions are useless for policy makers who want to improve the lives of people.
Sleepy quid pro quo Joe Biden says climate change is a big issue. Need we know more about the stupidity of worrying about global warming?
Sea level rise began before 1860. Sustained rise started around AD 1800.
After the Maunder Minimum depths of the LIA in the 1690s, it rose, then fell again during the Dalton Minimum at the end of the 18th century, but never got as low as during the longer, colder Maunder.
I see where Climate etc is still doing its job of keeping skeptics close to the IPCC corral while allowing them some freedom to roam outside. It’s cunningly done, and I’m not surprised to hear that the lady is now happily ensconced with retired military and intel people. When you want to succeed as controlled opposition, best to have plenty of expert spooks around you.
For temps, instead of an extreme number out of the hat like 3 you get a much less alarming 1 (out of the same hat). Yes, you could be that lucky. Sure the seas will rise, but not as much as the “extremists” claim. Or probably not. You see, there’s lots of uncertainty! And uncertainty is such a “wicked problem”. It’s uncertain why I can’t paddle a canoe at Ephesus where the Roman parked whole fleets. It’s uncertain why the cramped battlefield between sea and mountains at Thermopylae is now a wide plain. Everything’s uncertain…but keep soaking up the IPCC message anyway. They have models, and the models can only get better, right?
So long as people keep reducing those fossil fuel emissions and keep glued to the IPCC and its non-Kardashian models, it doesn’t really matter if the Consensus throws us skeptics a bone or two. And because we’re a bit thick we’re given a formula even we can follow: 1.2 C minus 0.2 C = 1.0 C. So that’s 0.2 (out of the hat) for natural cooling and 1.2 (out of the hat) for our naughtiness. It might be a bad thing…but it’s uncertain how bad. Relax, but don’t relax so much that you stop following the IPCC and the main globo agenda. Stay bad…but stay tuned in.
Let me say it without sarcasm. Climate etc is controlled opposition. It has been from the start. It’s slow poison labelled as lemonade, just for skeptics.
Can someone please list some natural feedback variables that are demonstrable positive in value. As I look around nature all I see is negative feedback systems to keep things in balance. Thanks you in advance.
No, that is evidently not my argument.
But OK, perhaps I should have written : it has never been proven beyond a reasonable, scientific doubt that the atmospheres 0,04 pct. CO2 content has any material effect on climate.
If you think otherwise, perhaps you could provide a link to the proof ?
This climate hysteria is primarily based on 2 things:
1) Climate models based on wildly different assumptions about the earth’s climate, which is basically chaotic, and therefore impossible to model.
2) A model of a fictitious moon-like planet with no oceans. Totally absurd !
Enhanced by the Climate-Industrial-Complex, and the Neo Marxists.
Is the link to the David Wallace-Wells paper the correct link?
And we should keep in mind that this global average temperature we are talking about was derived from a bastardized surface temperature record, so the truth is we don’t really know for sure what an optimum/average temperature might be, and we don’t know where we stand today with regard to such a temperature.
The science of the Earth’s climate definitly isn’t settled. Nearly all of it is speculation of one kind or another. And some of it is fraud.
IPCC Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change
GCM General Circulation Model (many, based on IPCC CO2 assertions)
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These eight links from five authors are all you really need to understand global warming.
My speculation: As the temperature went down into the Little Ice Age, limestone was deposited around the edges of bodies of water. As the temperature has recovered since, the limestone dissolved and added CO2 to the oceans, with a delay of 300-400 years. It was just an accident that this added CO2 coincided with our industrial revolution. Temperature creates CO2, not the other way around. There is proof of that. Read on.
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Pangburn
Shows that temperature change over the last 170 years is due to 3 things: 1) cycling of the ocean temperature, 2) sun variations and 3) moisture in the air. There is no significant dependence of temperature on CO2.
https://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com/
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Connolly father & son
Shows the vertical temperature profile follows the ideal gas laws and is not caused by CO2. Millions of weather balloon scans and trillions of data points have been analyzed to come to these conclusions. One important conclusion is that there is no green house gas effect.
https://globalwarmingsolved.com/2013/11/summary-the-physics-of-the-earths-atmosphere-papers-1-3/
utube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfRBr7PEawY
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Pat Frank
Shows that GCM results cannot be extrapolated a few years, let alone 50 or 100.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2019.00223/full
and
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/10/15/why-roy-spencers-criticism-is-wrong/
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Joe Postma
Shows that the “flat earth model”of the IPCC is too simple. Their real models are built into the GCMs which don’t fit the real data.
https://climateofsophistry.com/2019/10/19/the-thing-without-the-thing/
https://climateofsophistry.com/2019/09/05/real-climate-physics-vs-fake-political-physics/
https://principia-scientific.org/webcast-no-radiative-greenhouse-effect/
Sometimes there’s need for https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-huawei&sxsrf=ACYBGNRnveLXZMDYzo59YCrIt2OiFbZWNg%3A1578324177321&ei=0VATXraYE_HjrgTu_43ADQ&q=robert+heinlein+the+door+into+summer&oq=robert+heinlein+the+door+into+summer&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-serp.
Q: Why do old farmhouses have a door on the 2ⁿᵈ floor without a balcony – into the snow:
https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-huawei&sxsrf=ACYBGNRF6y-ape9Vur8RUFw8XnBULUFILA:1578324674847&q=old+farm+houses+door+2nd+floor+without+balcony+cattle+snow&spell=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwizn9bMpe_mAhVqs4sKHV3iA1AQBSgAegQICRAC&biw=360&bih=518#scso=_y1ITXoyrFsGsrgSKx66oBA19:1240.6666870117188.3333129882812.6666564941406.3333435058594.6666564941406.6666717529297.3333282470703.333333015441895
Someone told the story about Heinlein in winters time having a meeting with his publisher.
He wouldn’t leave alone his cat at home without a door into the summer.
So the white haired dignit senior shone up, as always, with his big briefcase in the bar where he studied his files to prepare for the meeting; ordering bourbon and an extra saucer to his niche.
Pets, dogs and cats weren’t allowed in NY bars. Especially drinking pets.
The bartender never mentioned that Heinlein took the glass while a cat beside him licked from the extra saucer on the bench.