This is a discussion thread for ideas and points related to the just released IPCC AR6 WGI report:
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/
Your thoughtful and detailed comments will be helpful in forming future stories on WUWT about the report.
Also, on Twitter, Dr. Roger Pielke Jr has a series of tweets, that is well worth your time to read.
Of course, there’s lots of gloom and doom headlines in the media, which is pretty much how they treat everything these days. For example, the ever-predictable Seth Borenstein with AP never fails to disappoint:
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Code Red for Marxism!
I looked at the Executive Summary, but it has what looks like the Mann Hockey stick graph.
Not impressed.
TS.3.3.3 Relating Different Forcing Agents TS-67 Page110
So the IPCC explains why we could not affect the climate by locking down for climate.
It’s because particulates seeding clouds is so warming that their exclusion counters all the CO2, NOx, Methane etc.
But elsewhere the IPCC says that seeding clouds is a net warming forcing..Curious.
This makes two points obvious.
1) If you believe this report then mitigation is pointless. GHGs are overwhelmed by the effects of particulate emission that we know are dangerous anyway and are seeking to remove. Dust is waste, after al. At the simplest, particulates are inefficient.
2) There was no drop in atmospheric CO2 as measured by Mauna Loa. So if emissions dropped 7% (5.8% to 13%) then the anthropogenic proportion of atmospheric CO2 emissions is so small that at least 5.8% cannot be spotted. A 20th of man’s emissions is nothing compared to the natural emissions. That’s the IPCC’s conclusion.
From a policy perspective, this finding of the IPCC absolves CO2 mitigation from any urgent concern.
Anthony, strategy has to be changed from arguments based in science which the vast majority don’t understand, to the political/economic where the dark side is most vulnerable. The multitude see science arguments as he said, she said. The clincher rebuttal to dissent from the consensus is: “Surely you cant be suggesting that every university, scientific institute, government, NGO, … globally is in a conspiracy!
A better tack is to hammer the political reality on the ground that governments, vested elites, all-in scientists and others know about but won’t talk about.
My best example is to hammer on the fact that non-Western countries who number over 5billion are busy building over 4,000 coal fired power plants over the next 10yrs, with many more in subsequent decades to follow as their best choice for lifting their people out of poverty.
No matter what the West does, CO2 in the atmosphere is going to accelerate and we will see 600ppm CO2 and counting before the end of this century. As Kerry said (open mike) and Biden (slip-up): ‘If we don’t stop this, there is no point in efforts to eliminate fossil fuels.’
This simple fact and its implications are easily understood by all. Scientific arguments, not so much. Moreover, people freed from poverty are going to want a nice house, full of appliances a car in the garage, flights for business and tourism, etc. (think concrete, steel, a mining industry, railways, modern agriculture….). That will put an end to the meme, and silence effective dystopian plans for us all. Thank you Developing World.
“The equilibrium climate sensitivity is an important quantity used to estimate how the climate responds to radiative forcing. Based on multiple lines of evidence21, the very likely range of equilibrium climate sensitivity is between 2°C (high confidence) and 5°C (medium confidence). The AR6 assessed best estimate is 3°C with a likely range of 2.5°C to 4°C (high confidence), compared to 1.5°C to 4.5°C in AR5, which did not provide a best estimate”
So we amped it up rather than look at what might be wrong!!
TS.4.2.3 Interplay Between Drivers of Climate Variability and Change at Regional Scales
TS-81 Page 124
So we have high confidence that internal variability overwhelms the anthropogenic signal in long-term regional mean precipitation changes. This is because they say its emergence is “delayed” or “absent”. There is no evidence given for it being “delayed”, only “absent”. This makes the news reporting of the floods in Germany and elsewhere somewhat discredited. The IPCC do not say they can see an anthropogenic signal in rainfall.
Similarly the IPCC says they are highly confident that any sign of anthropogenic forcing on sea level is too small to be noticed compared to the natural background variation. They also have medium confidence that that signal will be large enough to be observed in the next 80 years. This makes sense.
They have more confidence in the fact that they can see it isn’t than in the opinion that it might be, one day.
TS.4.3.1 Common Regional Changes in Climatic Impact-Drivers
Wind TS-88 Page 131
Contrast with the next page.
Other variables and concurrent CID changes: TS-89 Page 132
So Medium Confidence observation that wind speed is decreasing. But a High Confidence that tropical cyclone peak wind speeds will increase (not an observation but higher confidence)?
“Likely” that tropical Cyclone Intensity has increased. Yet there is “low confidence” in changes in ice storms, severe storms and dust storms because “observations are often short-term or lack homogeneity, and models often do not have sufficient resolution or accurate parametrizations to adequately simulate them over climate change time scales”. So how is that “likely”?
This section is as clear a case of ‘making up the conclusions before looking for any evidence’ as you can get – outside of the Fortean Times.
A case study in pseudoscience.
Mentioning this just for the ironic use of language throughout the report.
TS-91 Page 134
High Confidence in… “large uncertainty”.
I share their High Confidence.
Box TS.14: Urban Areas TS-99 Page 142
Is just silly. It assumes that urban areas will have no changes to coastal defences.
With adequate town planning it won’t.
This is probably correct. But it speaks volumes about the mind-set that says you have “High Confidence” in an “observed warming trend” “having a negligible effect on global surface temperature”.
Observations have a only secondary importance throughout the report, so far.
TS-107 Page 150
Figure TS.4 has this legend,
Ceteris paribus is unstated and unjustified.
This graph contradicts most of the press coverage of this report with respect to sea level rise.
While, in my opinion, a global average temperature is completely without relevance, the Technical Summary on Global Surface Temperature Change, at TS-27 bottom of the page it states:
“Global surface temperature has increased by 1.09 [0.95 to 1.20] °C from 1850–1900 to 2011–2020, and the last decade was more likely than not warmer than any multi-centennial period after the Last Interglacial, roughly 125,000 years ago. The likely range of human-induced warming in global surface temperature in 2010–2019 relative to 1850–1900 is 1.07 [0.8 to 1.3] °C, encompassing the observed warming, while the change attributable to natural forcing is only –0.1°C to +0.1°C. “
In other-words they are asserting that human-influence represents 98.3% of the warming since the 1850-1900 period, this is patently absurd. During the period between 1850-1900 the Earth was just coming out of the Little Ice Age where Earths’ temperatures were well below earlier warm periods. There were no satellites, and thermometers existed over an extraordinarily small portion of the Earth, mostly in a small part of the Northern Hemisphere and not to any significant extent on the oceans. How can it be said that there is any confidence concerning this periods average global temperature is known to within 1o C? How can natural climate influences be essentially denied when the Earth experienced periods of warming (1930’s) then cooling (60’-70’s) all during a period when CO2 was showing a steady rise. If CO2 was the climates thermostat then we would expect consistent temperature increases if there were no other factors to consider.
In that light another possible natural factor that may have been ignored, that may have impacted recent warming is suggested in a recent article in the journal Nature. In its August 5, 2021 issue (Vol 596) an article entitled “Global upper-atmospheric heating on Jupiter by the polar aurorae” by J.O. Donoghue, L. Moore, T. Bhakyapabul, H. Melin, T. Stallard, J.E.P. Connerney & C. Tao is presented. This article suggests that due to Jupiter’s strong magnetic field and aurorae, the temperature of its’ upper atmosphere has been raised from the expected -100o F, due to its distance from the Sun, to 800o F. Couldn’t the Earth be subject to a similar process? While the strength of Earths magnetic field is much less, the fact is that Earth is also subject to more intense radiation from the Sun, per unit area, and since many solar physicists have concluded, from the study of titanium 44 in meteorites, that solar radioactivity increased significantly during the 20th century. If a process similar to Jupiters’ exists on Earth this should be researched for even a small impact could more than account for what is claimed as being from CO2, which if history is to be considered actually lags behind temperature change and does not presage it
Question – what happens if IPCC models are run into the far future beyond 2100? Do they show runaway greenhouse warming?