I get the feeling Matt argues for a model checker, Howard.
Considering the complexity of the task, I doubt he will ever obtain satisfaction. There are lots of states to check in a climate model.
But I’m willing to be surprised. I once thought chess engines would never beat world champions. I was 15, but still.
correction
We have data for the past ten thousand years that has cycled in the same bounds. That is a record of the natural internal variability. We need to have more people working to understand what caused it.
That is what I do.
Segrest –
Production tax credit of 1.8 or 2.1 ¢/kWh from the first 6,000 MWe of new nuclear capacity in their first eight years of operation (the same rate as available to wind power on an unlimited basis).Production tax credit of 1.8 or 2.1 ¢/kWh from the first 6,000 MWe of new nuclear capacity in their first eight years of operation (the same rate as available to wind power on an unlimited basis).
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-T-Z/USA–Nuclear-Power-Policy/
@ Wagathon
“The incredible list of supposed horrors that increasing carbon dioxide will bring the world is pure belief disguised as science. ~Will Happer”
The advocates of more government control over every aspect of our lives by any means will say or do anything–at all–to achieve it. This does NOT imply that they actually believe what they are saying.
Judith it is such a pleasure to read a truly objective thought process on this topic. I really thank you for bringing Matt’s article to us to read. It is clarifying and allows us to see where the flaws in the current process have been better. The logic of the IPCC is a mathematical logic executed in a vacuum. What I mean by that is that significant amounts of information remain highly uncertain that could have a tremendous effect. If the true purpose of the IPCC and climate scientists were to characterize the amount of heat that is attributable to CO2 the first thing would be (assuming a model could not be constructed that was shown to be trivially robust and powerful) would be to put bounds on all the other possibilities. The IPCC itself admits that clouds, oceans and a few other things are very unknown and have considerable possible input. However, I don’t see the focus in the documents of the IPCC or climate scientists in estimating these variables. Possibly this is because the data about these phenomenon are not available prior to 2000 in some cases and 1980 in others or not available at all even now.
The IPCC then attempts to assert their models are robust and that therefore proves the CO2 hypothesis however, an objective look at the models would say that it seems unbelievable the models are robust on the face of them considering the computational complexity and errors in the numerical processes as well as the number of assumptions in the underlying formulas. Each of the assumptions in the models represents a testable experiment that has not been carried out to my knowledge. It is not possible to believe the models are robust by looking at the assumptions and approach. THerefore one can take the position that the models are robust by looking at their results and seeing if it matches reality. This is a much weaker position as then we must look for close matching of new data to model data to be sure that the model is tracking the new data (not the data assumed to be incorporated into the models parameters.) I have not seen an objective study of model facility given some input data used as parameters and data not included that then is predicted to see if the models are able to deal with “new” data but even under this approach the very existence of the other data clouds the surety of the conclusions as the researchers clearly are aware of that data when they constructed the models. The best test is with new data. Unfortunately the “new” data post the creation of most of the models basic outlines and parameter fitting is primarily since 2000 and this data does not show the models in good light. In fact it lends credence to the idea the models are seriously lacking fundamental missing behaviors or have miscalculated the parameters to underlying processes or may be wrong entirely as to the equations underlying the atmospheric response.
Watt has clearly shown that an objective analysis cannot robustly conclude that CO2 is a root cause. There is way too much unknown to conclude we really have any idea why this excursion has happened. The models are not robust to provide any corroboration. Any objective analysis of them would have to be that they are deeply flawed and do not contribute to a solution at this time. Saying we just don’t know may be politically unacceptable but it is the only objective possible answer. If people want to know the answer then they must invest more time and money in studying and collecting data and it may take decades to get sufficient amount of data to accurately state the relative contribution or even the majority cause.
Gavin has said in posts to you that he is 110% sure of the attribution of CO2 to the temperature variance. That is a bizarre statement to me. He seems to base this on the models predictions which clearly is a false way to calculate those probabilities. It has become clear the models were missing ocean capacitance and flows that if true which seems indisputable then the attribution of prior causes in the models starts to come apart. For instance, if ocean flows do represent some of the heat during the modern warming then it implies some of the cooling in the period prior was related to this and then some of the warming prior to that is because of this effect. This means the attirbutions of CO2, aerosols, methane, other things used to explain those variations was wrong. Therefore as you have pointed out that means that even using Gavins “model based” approach to certainty the probability CO2 is the 110% cause of the modern warming is drastically reduced.
The modelers have assumed the “hockey stick” and therefore they then conclude the model is robust except for possibly the recent 15 years. However, as Matt points out it is now clear that the LIA and MWP seem to be real events. The hockey stick has been disproven and the PDO and AMO disturbances clearly show that significant effects exist in cycles in the system in hidden un-modeled variables. This is a serious blow to the models as they must be shown to explain these prior variations before they can assume to robustly model what is happening today. This alone is enough to discount the models entirely. It is impossible to know how much each of these capacitance type or other type inputs have contributed to the results and we are left at the point of saying again it is impossible to ascribe with certainty any number.
I believe this is the only possible objective analysis. Matt has proven this to my satisfaction. It is possibly regretable and politically inconvenient that the result is unsatisfactory. It seems to me the only legitimate argument is that CO2 has some contribution and if we wish to avoid any human contribution then we should take measures to limit human impact. This is a reasonable argument and backed by facts that at least some effect is coming from co2.
“Have you ever wondered why denser gases have a higher volumetric heat capacity; or why VHC = (specific_heat * density)? That’s because they store more thermal energy in the same volume at the same temperature. Isn’t that more intuitive an logical than the reverse claim?”
To be more precise, I mean “denser” in the sense of more moles per volume unit, and hence more pressurized; not because of heavier molecules.
From CA I believe:
1. Marcutt’s original thesis showed no 20th century uptick, but his published article did.
2. The uptick arose from re-dating core tops, without presenting any evidence that this was justified, and from deleting data.
3. The uptick would not exist if the article had used the same data and methods for the last century-odd as for earlier periods. Inter alia, earlier periods are century-plus scale averages; later periods are short-term. This means trends and rates cannot be compared between periods.
4. The article nevertheless implied that the large sharp 20th century uptick was itself robust in the context of the article, since when a different procedure produced a different result, the difference was written off as not robust.
5. Accordingly, Marcott himself used the uptick at time of publication to claim that we had “never seen something this rapid” as recent warming.
6. Now that 1-4 have been pointed out, Marcott claims, contra 5, that the uptick is “not statistically robust” and “cannot be considered representative of global temperature changes”.
7. Marcott also claims that 4 did not mean what it said, but the opposite, i.e. 6.
8. Despite 5, Marcott further claims that the uptick “is not the basis of any of our conclusions”.
Without making judgments re motivation or honesty, one might well ask:
A. If the 20th century uptick was not robust, why was it included in the study?
B. Why were conclusions drawn on the basis of the uptick, including by Marcutt and Shakun, and including in the FAQ?
C. If the paper did not claim exceptional warming, why did Marcutt claim it in public?
D. Imagine the paper had left out the uptick: would the rest of the reconstruction have been published, given its lousy temporal resolution?
E. The now renounced claims of exceptional warming rest on data mishandling and exploiting the inevitably sharper trends inherent in short-term data. If this was not a deliberate attempt to mislead, then why now deny earlier statements (cf. 7 and 8 above)?
Also, RGB at Duke would scold R.Gates for making the “schtick”
“First, the climate now is not warmer than it was in the Holocene Optimum (do not make the mistake of conflating the high frequency, high resolution “2004″ data point with the smoothed low frequency, low resolution data in the curve — even the figure’s caption warns against doing that — for the very good reason that in every 300 year smoothed upswing it is statistically certain that the upswing involved multidecadal intervals of temperatures much higher than the running mean. It is left as an exercise to the studio audience to figure out how to use contemporary high frequency climate data to make a numerically reasonable estimate of how much warmer than the smoothed average peak multidecadal intervals almost certainly were during the warming intervals seen throughout this graph. Goodness, I think it is easily 1+C, isn’t it!”
Like I have said in the past, warmers are pathological.
@R Gates
Re ‘significant’.
I am really, really, really not going to soil my underwear at the idea that the Global Average Temperature (if such a thing exists) has changed in my lifetime from 287.14K to 287.78K.
I’m content for you to play your little games calculating the number of angels that may or may not dance on the head of a pin. But the changes you are so concerned about are trivial and have very limited practical effects.
They are INsignificant. Get a life.
Note that now we are no longer considering the entire history of the earth, we are only considering the changes in magnitude during the modern warming interval. Our excursion direction is up, so we discard the terms for a downward excursion.
Doesn’t the thread get lost here? It is still possible that, even though warming is increasing, it could have increased more had the ocean not acted as a sink for heat. The quoted text is an unsupported logical leap made to simplify the problem, but it may have made it too simple.
The things that drive climate, which is far more important than air temperature, are changing. And this process is not linear, as the processes resultant from a net ongoing energy change due a massive increase in external input (a multi million year change – increase – in lower atmospheric thermal radiation absorption and re radiation, in the sense of our geologically recent evolved “temperate” earth climate and global energy balance is massive) is not linear.
Can anybody translate this? I don’t speak OG Kush.
Heres another way to understand why Matt’s approach is off base.
The climate over the past 100 years is acting exactly how we would expect it to. That is, the Normal operating of the system would be this: When you increase the opacity of the system to IR, you expect ( and it was predicted) that the system would run hotter.
Its not a system acting abnormally. The warming we see is entirely normal, predictable and expected. Add C02 the temp goes up.
How much? THATS the tricky question because you have to separate or allocate or attribute some portion of the warming to GHGs and some portion to other causes.
The climate we see is entirely normal. The warming DUE TO HUMANS is entirely normal and expected.
Theory in the sense of we know that CO2 absorbs certain wavelengths and re-emits it as radiation. Your point I understand is that it is not provable with the data we have now that this radiation is actually contributing to the temperature rise we have seen but I believe that radiation must exist. I may not believe in the models or believe some of the assumptions in the models but I do believe in basic proven physics.
My point is simply a common sense approach which is that if we are causing a large change in some element in the environment prudence would say that until we can prove it is benign or even positive we try to limit the excursion. However, this is a mild opinion in that I would not do anything extraordinary like limit people’s energy supply or drastically change the price of energy in response to that. Given that the excursion cannot be shown yet to have caused any change I wouldn’t spend a lot of money to limit our co2 output but would do what we could at very low cost to limit our output until we understand better the consequences.
I believe that I am more opposed to “liquid dinosaur” because it is a dirty way to produce energy and use energy. That is, it kills people in the production of it, the transport of it and the usage of it. Long term we must move away from limited resources to long term viable resources. I am not saying we should do this overnight but should be working to find alternatives and when they become economically viable put them in place so we can get off what I still think is a primitive way to produce energy.
Like the above argument that co2 doubling in the atmosphere may be benign but until we know if it is or not we should do what we can to limit our output this is a soft goal not a “crisis” must do goal.
I’ve taken a look at the pdf you referenced. It’s too high level.
I would like to see a detailed explanation of how the calculations are done. How does one go from the observation that CO2 is emitted by a natural gas plan to damage to health? Or, is that even part of the health determination? Are health damages for natural gas mainly due to deaths on the job?
Particulates are possibly a more concrete case. So, if we know a certain type of coal plant in southern Pennsylvania, for example, emits some distribution of particle sizes, then how is that distribution used to determine health consequences? It seems that sort of calculation would be little better than climate models.
Obviously, it might take more than one CE post to explain this for just one fuel source. I would like to see this for natural gas.
Steven, natural variability is just our way of saying we do not know why it got colder or warmer or paused.or in other words it is a measurement of uncertainty.
How can we measure uncertainty in the case of postulated climate change?
Easy as you know , you just measure what you predict/expect and the difference with reality, known as unaltered observation is the natural variability or uncertainty.
You mention internal variability casually but this is different to natural variability and might have the effect of confusing people.
Internal variability is a measurable function, surely, like Gate’s volcanoes, when they occur.
Natural variability is when the plot is not explained by the known internal variability either.
Your question,hence is wrongly framed, but answerable in this way.
The warming since 1850 has always been due to known external forcing (the sun) modified by known internal forcing (some big volcanoes, a Siberian meteorite and a minor CO2 rise) and to unknown internal forcing (mainly cloud formation and albedo changes, perhaps some particulates in the air) otherwise known as natural variation.
To pretend or believe that one feature, rising CO2, must produce a temperature rise without taking into account all the possible negative cloud feedbacks this could entail in a chaotic system can only make sense when uncertainty is extremely low.
Ie when you have enough knowledge of the other feedbacks and parameters.
30 years with no smoking gun for the Lindzen’s, Pielke’s, Spencer’s and Curries of this world to believe in, says that there are no convincing arguments yet ,arguments yes convincing no.
Re “…I see the 2 degree limit as rather like a speed limit on a road…” The speed limit is presumably set based on data on traffic fatalities vs. speed limit. I believe the 2 degree limit is based on a bunch of modeled “cost of pollution” measures put into a model going back to James Hansen in the 1980s at a time when our understanding / knowledge base was not well developed at all. And it is based on application of the precautionary principle as laid out in the UNFCCC protocols that said we shouldn’t let lack of knowledge/information be a reason for holding back policy making. “The 2 degree limit, the concept of climate sensitivity (temperature increase for doubling of CO2) etc. are story line type of things to feed the public, government officials and mainstream media and use in Al Gore and Michael Moore climate advocay – sensationalism movies. The limit has never been challenged, changed or updated with new information. Now it is time to do that.
Stefan Rahmstorf wrote:
models reproduce the global temperature evolution over the past 150 years quite well when driven by the known forcings. – See more at:
The most recent two decades of failure do question the quite well and the known forcings
Models reproduce the past because they’re essentially curve fitters. That’s what all those parameters do. They find the best fit to the past.
They have zero predictive value because they don’t get the physics right. Nobody does.
It’s as if you fit the last 150 years with a degree 150 polynomial. Perfect fit for the past, insane prediction for next year.
First time in years that Arctic sea ice has a good chance to get back to average. The large amount of re freeze in the Novaya Zemlya says that this area should outperform this year. Hudson Bay should fill quickly and it all depends on how quickly the ice will reform in the Bering sea.
Arctic Sea ice blog is still using alarmist death spirals and September ice extents from 2012. As Judith graciously links to this site I would hope that Neven reads this and gets off his backside and asks for updates. Some of the graphs by Wipneus were said to not have a physical basis when used at a recent Royal Society Arctic presentation but I doubt that this could be true at a reputable site.
“PayPal Co-Founder is Skeptical of Man-Made Global Warming because many refuse to allow debate on the subject.”
That’s my position, more or less. Two things that I know to be wrong are accepted by the climate clique when they’re obviously wrong. Something’s wrong with the clique.
Anything the clique says is worthless. Right or wrong at random, as if they didn’t matter.
How they get political power is a matter for sociology and the madness of crowds.
