Gates- it is possible but seems highly unlikely.
At the end of the day, almost all the serious concerns regarding AGW resolve around the rate of sea level rise. If there is a significant acceleration increased concerns will have merit. Now, it seems like mostly religious like concerns.
Seriously Capt WUWT should be an embarrassment to all skeptics even if sometimes good points are made. Almost every scientific paper that is written about has “Claim” in the title. And then what usually follows is some shallow analysis that an expert working in the field would laugh at. And then you have people like Tim Ball encouraging the conspiracy related thinking that is prevalent among the commenters. Not to mention that there are numerous errors made by the commenters that are rarely corrected, reinforcing the posters belief that he is making sense. I don’t know Capt. if you get a kick out criticizing mainstream scientists and their work as well greens, I guess it does make sense to go there.
Joseph
I agree that there are posts at WUWT that take unsupportable positions. How about criticizing what you found wrong with the specific post? There is also a lot of good information available at that site.
“Well, Methane has a short lifetime. The GHG warming really depends on CO2.”
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Yes, methane has a shorter lifetime, but the overall concentrations have been rising right along with CO2 and N2O– thus the net forcing from methane has been rising as well, regardless of the shorter lifetime. Methane is in fact one area that I disagree with the consensus on. I think it will be a more significant issue than many in the consensus crowd currently ascribe it to be. Not catastrophic, but still significant. Recent studies like this are some reasons why:
http://phys.org/news/2014-12-methane-leaking-permafrost-offshore-siberia.html
http://phys.org/news/2014-12-warmer-pacific-ocean-millions-tons.html
I not going to do that here and when you try to do it at WUWT you are ganged up on by several posters and it becomes completely impossible to respond to all of them. Not very satisfying for me..
“And then you showed a chart that talked about the GROWTH rate of forcing. “
Right – a lower rate means deceleration.
“All this will get resolved in the next 5-10 years (unless we get a really big volcano to go off). I tend to think that Sherwood has some strong arguments, and a bit higher ECS (somewhere between 3 and 4C) is more in alignment with the paleoclimate data coming form the mid-Pliocene. ”
The test of whether he has strong arguments is whether or not models are being upgraded to make the changes he would propose.
And if, subsequent to the those changes, metrics improved in hindcasting
Joseph
I suggest that if you have a scientifically accurate point that can be made to show something posted at WUWT is inaccurate, you can post it once there and the point will stand or fail on its merits.
Much of what is posted there is little more than speculation not really worth commenting on. At least they generally do not ban people for commenting in a civil manner.
“The real test of any model is whether it matches observed conditions consistently over time.”
err no.
you need to be more specific as to metric and use case.
“…almost all the serious concerns regarding AGW resolve around the rate of sea level rise.”
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Uh, no. Sea level rise is just one of the “serious” concerns among many.
Here are the top 10 frightening highlights of the National Climate Assessment:
Bigger, more frequent droughts.
Larger wildfires.
Glaciers and polar ice will melt at a faster rate.
The possible reemergence of currently uncommon diseases, such as dengue fever.
A higher risk of heat and respiratory stress from poor air quality.
Deteriorating infrastructure. For example, extreme heat is already damaging roads, rail lines and airport runways.
Water shortages and diminished water quality are more likely.
Food security could be at risk as climate change threatens crops and livestock.
Poverty will likely be exacerbated.
Species will become increasingly extinct as ecosystems are disrupted.
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But thanks for playing!
R Gates, it seems your scepticism is a one-way street
“The real test of any model is whether it matches observed conditions consistently over time.”
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This goes back to a fundamental misunderstanding of models. Cliate Models will always be wrong, and if they are exactly right over an extended period, they will have been so heavily “curve fitted” that they are no doubt not telling you much. Real systems as complex as climate have natural variability that no model will follow exactly. What a good model will have is similar natural variably or “wigglyness”, but the natural variability “wigglyness” of the model will never match the real world, except occasionally by accident. What models should be is right over the long-term. They will tell us where the climate is generally headed, but can never tell us the exact path.
Rgates
Thanks for your kind comment.
As a follow up to ‘the long slow thaw’ which covered the period 1539 to the start of the instrumental record in 1649 I am writing a piece called ‘ tranquility, transition and turbulence’ covering the period from around 1200 to around 1400 . To that end I got for Christmas ‘ the illustrated chronicles of Matthew Paris’ a monk who lived from 1200 to 1259 . I have quoted his pieces before as they cover the 1257 volcano we are both interested in.
I have difficulty in finding information for the period from 1400 To 1539 as much material was lost during the reformation in 1539 .
Coincidentally the autograph manuscript of Paris’s works is held in the library of my sons university Cambridge. It seems to have arrived there in the years immediately after the dissolution aroumd 1539 when britains aristocracy looted the church’s treasure trove of manuscripts. That is fortunate in this instance as in the years immediately prior to his death Paris rewrote his annals, removing his very rude and forth right opinions of the pope and other dignitaries, no doubt worried he would not get into heaven.
However a monk had made a copy of paris’s work and this one was never rewritten so we have to this day the latters scandalous opinions.
Anyway, in this book we have a strange reference to 13 february 1247when there was apparently an earthquake in England, for the first time since 1133. for three months the rides barely ebbed and flowed, and There followed a long spell of unseasonable wintry stormy cold wet weather that lasted until 11 July. I can’t trace any notable volcanos to this period but perhaps there was.
Tonyb
‘Perturbed-physics ensembles offer a systematic approach to quantify uncertainty in models of the climate system response to external forcing. Here we investigate uncertainties in the twenty-first century transient response in a multi-thousand-member ensemble of transient AOGCM simulations from 1920 to 2080 using HadCM3L, a version of the UK Met Office Unified Model, as part of the climateprediction.net British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) climate change experiment (CCE). We generate ensemble members by perturbing the physics in the atmosphere, ocean and sulphur cycle components, with transient simulations driven by a set of natural forcing scenarios and the SRES A1B emissions scenario, and also control simulations to account for unforced model drifts.’
We get a broad range of results from a single model where the input parameters are varied systematically within feasible limits.
‘Various remotely sensed cloud properties are combined to investigate their impact on the top of atmosphere upwards radiative flux (SWUP) over the Southern Ocean, where climate models indicate a strong negative cloud shortwave feedback. Our calculated SWUP is verified against CERES data from 2007-2008 and shows low biases and R²>= 0.96. Our analysis tests the relative significance of seasonally varying cloud properties to SWUP and allows insight into how they interplay to form a negative climate feedback. Low cloud fraction reaches a maximum and droplet effective radius (re) a minimum in summer, which combine to increase SWUP during this season, relative to the annual average; re decreases account for 4-5 W/m² of extra SWUP, increases in low cloud fraction account for an extra 8-10 W/m². However, summertime SWUP is decreased due to decreases in the liquid and ice water paths of low clouds (by 5-10 W/m²) and phase transitions from ice to liquid (by 2-4 W/m²). Wintertime increases in liquid water path cause an increase in SWUP of up to 10 W/m². We hypothesize that the cloud climate feedback in models may be biased positively due to the under representation of cloud ice, thus weakening the negative optical depth feedback due to ice transitioning to liquid. Depending upon re, our estimate of the feedback effect of such transitions varies by a factor of 2-5, highlighting the importance of a more comprehensive understanding of aerosol and cloud processes in this region.’ http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~dennis/McCoy_etal_JC_2013.pdf
‘The global coupled atmosphere–ocean–land–cryosphere system exhibits a wide range of physical and dynamical phenomena with associated physical, biological, and chemical feedbacks that collectively result
in a continuum of temporal and spatial variability. The traditional boundaries between weather and climate are, therefore, somewhat artificial.
The large-scale climate, for instance, determines the environment for microscale (1 km or less) and mesoscale (from several kilometers to several hundred kilometers) processes that govern weather and local
climate, and these small-scale processes likely have significant impacts on the evolution of the large-scale circulation
The accurate representation of this continuum of variability in numerical models is, consequently, a challenging but essential goal. Fundamental barriers to advancing weather and climate prediction on time scales from days to years, as well as longstanding systematic
errors in weather and climate models, are partly attributable to our limited understanding of and capability for simulating the complex, multiscale interactions intrinsic to atmospheric, oceanic, and cryospheric fluid motions. ‘ http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2009BAMS2752.1
Cloud is a result of these complex, multiscale interactions – and I would suggest that cloud narrative needs to be constrained by observation. But significant changes in cloud in future are likely to be driven by changes in ocean and atmospheric circulation.
A decrease in cloud cover in the last warming period – a step change at the last climate shift – and relatively unchanged since.
“R Gates, it seems your scepticism is a one-way street.”
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Skepticism does not mean I don’t hold a position as being more likely than another. I think it is more likely than not that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow. I think it is more likely than not that a large rock dropped above my foot will likely fall and cause me pain. It is more likely than not that the Human Carbon Volcano is altering the Earth’s climate system (as well as other things that humans are up to, like land use). And though I think all these things are more likely than not, I entertain all evidence to the contrary will equal passion and dispassion.
Steve writes- “And if, subsequent to the those changes, metrics improved in hind casting”
Can you please elaborate regarding the relationship between the accuracy of various models in hindcasts vs. their performance in matching observed conditions? I was not aware that GCM’s that performed better in the hindcasts necessarily have demonstrated better actual performance.
“err no.
you need to be more specific as to metric and use case.”
Lol–needing more specific metrics to measure performance of an individual model doesn’t make the general point less valid.
ChrisM, how dare you call me “stupid” for quoting from a site you recommended in the first place ! What the hell is wrong with you!
You said “Almost all those taxes and fees in Europe are to pay for the renewable energy obligations, so thank you for confirming my point.”
How long did it take you to figure out building things cost money?
Then you said “And note they are projected to significantly rise over the next five years.”
“Note” ? Note where?
You close by saying “If the opposition to the transmission lines is only a small group of NIMBYs, why are they having to totally revise the plans?”
DUHH …. Because they want to be nice to the small group of NIMBYs.
ChrisM, rather than being nice, you seem to like not being nice. It certainly was not nice of you to call me “stupid” for quoting from a cite you recommended. Not only was it not nice, you made yourself look stupid. You should be both ashamed and embarrassed. I hope you can find a way to redeem yourself.
Again
“The real test of any model is whether it matches observed conditions consistently over time.”
Again. That is not “The real test”
The real test depends upon the metric and the use.
First a model is not an “it”. Models produce a large number of output files.
There are thousands of possible metrics, if not more.
Second “observed conditions” are not “it”. which observed “condition”
Third, “consistently over time” what do you mean by consistently? over what time frames? every second?
in other words, general assertions are empty, chest pounding, crap
Gates
It is NOT a misunderstanding of models or modeling.
Models need to demonstrate a reliable accuracy sufficient for their purpose over the timescales being considered. GCM’s need to show reasonable accuracy over time for the characteristics they are designed to model.
If a model does not demonstrate reasonable accuracy in matching observed conditions it should not be relied upon. Relying upon any model without it having a good history of matching observed conditions within consistent margins of error is very risky. Matching a hindcast is really nothing more than a part of a GCM’s development.
