I was at a meeting earlier this week and was talking to one of the coordinating lead authors of the recent IPCC working group 1 report on the physical science of climate change. He remarked that he was quite surprised that how little substantive criticism the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report had received since its release just about one year ago.
The reason, he thought, was that the skeptics were "in the room" with the writing team. What he meant was that the scientists writing the report knew that the denial machine would go over the report with a fine tooth comb looking for any "gotcha" mistakes to use to discredit the IPCC. Because of that, the IPCC report was extremely carefully worded so as to make virtually every statement in the report bulletproof.
In fact, it is quite amazing to me that essentially none of the IPCC documents produced over the last 18 years has been found to contain any substantive errors. The trolls, of course, will come out with their litany of "errors" that the IPCC contains (I suspect a few will appear in the comments to this post), but when you look closely, the trolls are almost always misrepresenting the IPCC's statements.
In fact, that's the most common attack on the IPCC: make the claim that the IPCC said something ridiculous (which it didn't actually say), then disprove that ridiculous statement, and then use that as evidence that the IPCC's reports cannot be trusted. "The IPCC says that 2 + 2 = 5, but that's just hogwash. We know that 2 + 2 = 4. Thus, climate change is a hoax." Yeah, right.
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Comments View as Flat
WWAGD?! Posted 11:58 am
15 Feb 2008
Too Embarassing
The IPCC Report is too embarrassing for any self-respecting scientist even to criticize.
It will go down in history as the biggest joke ever written.
I actually plowed through a bit of the mess but ended up tossing it in the waste bin.
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BlckWallaby Posted 1:13 pm
15 Feb 2008
IPCC fourth assessment report
I think it is true to say that the 2007 IPPC report is an overall improvement over 2001. For instance the expunging of the infamous hockey stick from 2001, and inclusion of some data showing some evidence of a Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age which were previously "cancelled" with the hockey stick. Thus, there is now a hint this time-around that maybe the current warming is not unprecedented. Of course certain IPCC lead authors still like to try and scare us, and deliberately withhold important information that would make things look less bad than they hope they are.
For instance, in the claim of unprecedented ice melting in Greenland, they fail to mention and mediate on the instrumental record showing that Greenland was warmer in the Early 1900's. (although ice-melt was not recorded back then)
As Jabailo mentions, to plough through the whole 1600 pages of WG1 alone, apart from WG2 and WG3, is a massive job, and it is not easy to find all the stuff that has been left-out or obfuscated. Max Manacker has been diligent in this area, and when he returns from his break, perhaps he can comment on this better than most.
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Tasermons Partner Posted 2:19 pm
15 Feb 2008
Not to criticize...
The IPCC Report is too embarrassing for any self-respecting scientist even to criticize.
Uh, jabailo, the reason why no self-respectin' scientist will criticize the report is 'cause nearly all of 'em agree with it. More than 1,000 well-respected scientists got together to write it after all...that's more than have ever written/contributed to any single report...on any issue...ever...in the entire history of humankind.
So you'll forgive me if I don't hold your level of scientific knowledge on the subject as high as I do that of over 1,000 highly-regarded scientists with degrees and awards from almost every prestigious and well-known university and scientific organization.
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cce Posted 2:30 pm
15 Feb 2008
Points
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John A Posted 3:52 pm
16 Feb 2008
Dessler in a different universe to the rest of us
In fact, it is quite amazing to me that essentially none of the IPCC documents produced over the last 18 years has been found to contain any substantive errors.
No of course not. In Andrew Dessler's universe the Hockey Stick was not obviously and completely debunked, its inner workings shown to be the result of bad statistics, bad math and bad data, a conclusion made by multiple independent investigators.
Back in the real world, Andrew Dessler is simply delusional if he believes that the IPCC's reports contain no errors. All of the multiproxy studies quoted in the latest IPCC report similarly fail statistical tests for significance, and most, if not all, use the Hockey Sticks PC1 or the tainted and unreliable Sheep Mountain bristlecone pine proxy that even the NAS Panel said should be avoided.
But at least as far as delusionalists go, Dessler is one of the happy kinds.
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cce Posted 3:08 am
17 Feb 2008
In the real world
"In practice, this method, though not recommended, does not appear to unduly influence reconstructions of hemispheric mean temperature; reconstructions performed without using principal component analysis are qualitatively similar to the original curves presented by Mann et al. (Crowley and Lowery 2000, Huybers 2005, D'Arrigo et al. 2006, Hegerl et al. 2006, Wahl and Ammann in press)."
"Subsequent work has carried out very similar analyses with principal components replaced by much simpler methods like simple averaging and has arrived at essentially very similar reconstructions. So the committee reviewed that and other statistical issues that had been identified in that first analysis and while finding that the issues are real but that they had a minimal effect, not a material effect, on the reconstruction.
"[Mann et al's methods] were all quite reasonable choices. I think in some cases a lot of subsequent, hard work by others in following up on that have showed that some of those choices could have been made better, but they were quite plausible at the time. I would not have been embarrassed by that work at the time, had I been involved in it and I certainly saw nothing that spoke to me of any manipulation or anything other than an honest attempt at constructing a data analysis procedure." -- Peter Bloomfield
"I have no cause to think that there was anything inappropriate, professionally." -- Jerry North
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cce Posted 3:20 am
17 Feb 2008
A major error
One major error from the First Assessment Report that reverberates to this day, was the use of HH Lamb's temperature reconstruction for Central England to represent "Global Temperature Variations of the last 1000 years." This was the graph used in "The Great Global Warming Swindle." It's used in Singer and Avery's "Unstoppable Global Warming." It's used all over the internet by a great variety of skeptics.
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Andrew Dessler Posted 4:44 am
17 Feb 2008
Thanks, JohnA
As I said in my original post, the trolls love nothing more then to misrepresent what the IPCC said. If JohnA took the time to actually read the IPCC, he would see that the IPCC Third Assessment Report concluded that it was "likely" that today's temperatures were warmer than the MWP. The word likely denotes a 66% confidence level, only slightly better than a coin flip. For scientists, this is an extremely low confidence level. In fact, that conclusion, with that level of confidence, remains true today.
This conclusion of the IPCC's Third Report was correct, and was even validated by a National Academy panel (although they use the word "plausible" instead of "likely"). There are great uncertainties and any temperature reconstruction, but the bulk of the evidence makes it more likely than not that today's temperatures are warmer than the MWP.
At any rate, I thank JohnA for making his comment, because it perfectly represents the way trolls misrepresent the IPCC's reports. If they honestly represented the IPCC, they wouldn't have anything to complain about.
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BlckWallaby Posted 1:13 pm
17 Feb 2008
CCE's "Real world"
In your world cce, it is easy to still find supporters of the hockey stick, even though it was so embarrassing to the IPCC that it was expunged in their 4AR 2007 Report. It is also interesting to note that Andrew is apparently not one of those supporters. From memory, your first quote was from WG1 Ch 6 and was part of an incomplete and misleading history obscuring the demise of the hockey stick.
For instance, concerning their citing of UNPUBLISHED (yes, unpublished) Wahl & Ammann 2006, here is one of many critical expert review comments that were typically ignored by the IPCC mediating authors (severely limited by space to show them here)
"The statement "Wahl and Ammenn (accepted) demonstrated that this was due to omission by McIntyre and McKitrick [MM03] of several proxy series used by Mann et al (1998)." Is incorrect and should be deleted on factual as well as procedural grounds (see previous comment). In their paper, Wahl and Ammenn state: "In MM03, the authors describe their results as being developed using the MBH reconstruction methodology, albeit with elimination of a large number of proxy data series used by MBH, [Mann et al] especially during the 15th century." There is no such statement in MM03. Quite the opposite. MM03 reported that some proxy series data said to have been used in MBH98 were not actually used. Subsequently, McIntrye and McKitrick filed a Materials Complaint with the journal Nature. In response to this complaint, Mann et al admitted that 35 series [Note; not individual data points but a whole series] said to have been used in MBH98 were not actually used, but claimed that this did not affect the results. Wahl and Ammenn were able to closely reproduce the original reconstruction when all records were included. However, prior to this, McIntyre and McKitrick (2005a, 2005b) also had reproduced MBH98 results using the flawed principle components method. Wahl and Ammenn reproduced McIntrye and McKitrick (2005a, 2005b), and, in the final version of their paper, also reproduced MM's finding that MBH98 failed rsquared verification.
[Jeff Kueter (Reviewer's comment ID #: 137-68)]"
Most of the dismantling of the hockey stick has centred around the treatment of the proxy data, but in addition, there are five (5) separate falsehoods concerning the treatment of the final 50 years. The most obvious is that whilst the proxy data has a 40-year smoothing filter applied, the instrumental data, (in attention grabbing red), is unsmoothed, and ends with the freak 1998 El Nino spike. Elsewhere, in the same 2001 report there is a graph of smoothed instrumental temperatures, which clearly shows that the 1988 spike is about 25% over trend, (or was it 40%? I'm not sure now), which makes a huge difference in visual impact by virtue of the sharply climbing curve shape that results. Clearly, it was a gross exaggeration intended to scare policymakers, and that graph was sprayed everywhere!.
Again, there is a lack of space to go through the other scientific frauds here, but whatever, the hockey stick was a disgrace to science.
BTW, the inventors of the hockey-stick and their ilk still persist on a hardcore site known as RealClimate, if you are looking for good stirring stuff to feed your addiction.
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BlckWallaby Posted 1:44 pm
17 Feb 2008
CCE's simplistic points
1) The Hockey Stick is in AR4, along with a dozen other temperature reconstructions, none of which show a "MWP" warmer than today.
If you look carefully you can find a pale shadow of the hockeystick buried under some of the spaghetti all with nice pastel colours hard to distinguish. If you look carefully you will see that Esper and Moberg who come from a diffferent club from the manna crowd show a distinct MWP, and the borehole data in particular shows a strong LIA
2) The likelihood that today's temperatures are warmer than the last millennium remain >66%, although it has been extended to 1300 years, instead of 1000 years from the TAR.
Didn't SPM 2007 give a 90% guess?
3) Temperatures in Greenland in the early 20th century were at best the same as they are they today and were the result of decadal changes in ocean circulation, and not representative of global temperature.
You are talking about complex systems which you do not understand. Read Chylek's paper more carefully for a start. Note that increased snowfall above 1500m in Greenland is attributed to Warming. Note that NASA has reported that most of the recent sea-ice melt has not been a consequence of temperature, but of strong unusual North winds blowing the Ice into warmer oceon currents, and a consequent reduction of perrenial ice etc etc etc
Finally, but still briefly, Chylek showed DATA that identified a warmer period, and Box, less thoroughly, "similar" to today, and that these points, even though known to the chapter authors were NOT MENTIONED OR MEDIATED.
That is poor science, not discussing what you don't want to hear.
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Jim Clarke Posted 3:08 pm
17 Feb 2008
Who is misrepresenting who?
First of all, everyone needs to be reminded that the IPCC reports are being used as the primary argument for restricting and controlling global energy use to the detriment of every man, women and child on the planet. I would like to think that those involved would be extra careful in their wording regardless of what the skeptics might say. If the skeptics are responsible for motivating the authors to produce a better document, then we all should be thanking them, not calling them trolls.
Those scientists skeptical of a man-made climate crisis are not so much concerned with finding grammatical or minor math errors. Such trivialities would not invalidate the WGI viewpoint in any way. The IPCC reports represent one theory of climate change and within the context of that theory, they are reasonable; much like models of Earth-Centered cosmologies where elegant and consistent in themselves.
The problem with the IPCC representation of climate change is that it ignores or downplays a great deal of evidence that runs contrary to their theory. Paleoclimate issues have received the most press, but land use changes, ocean cycles and solar influences are all treated as relatively unimportant, despite a great deal of evidence to the contrary. Supporters argue that there is no proof that these other factors are 'significant', forgetting that there is also no proof that CO2 is 'significant'.
Most of the misrepresentation of the IPCC actually goes in the other direction. All the 'ifs', 'possibles' and 'mays' in the IPCC reports are presented as slam dunks by the media and green organizations. The cautious, speculative phrases in the original documents become statements of factual doom in our local newspapers, green websites, cable channel specials and ex-vice-presidential slide shows. These misrepresentations are apparently okay, possibly because they do not undermine the basic world view of the AGW crisis supporters. Accepting these exaggerations without complaint, however, does undermine their credibility.
If skeptics respond to these exaggerated claims, they are accused of misrepresenting the IPCC; while those actually making the `doom-enhanced' statements are not reprimanded in any way!
Finally, AGW crisis supporters love to write about what crisis skeptics think and why they think it; almost always misrepresenting the skeptical viewpoint. Mr. Dessler does a fine job of demonstrating this with the post above!
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BlckWallaby Posted 3:59 pm
17 Feb 2008
CCE's major error
CCE wrote:
"One major error from the First Assessment Report that reverberates to this day, was the use of HH Lamb's temperature reconstruction for Central England to represent "Global Temperature Variations of the last 1000 years." This was the graph used in "The Great Global Warming Swindle." It's used in Singer and Avery's "Unstoppable Global Warming." It's used all over the internet by a great variety of skeptics."
The IPCC in its various reports can only use the best available data to hand to demonstarate what those thousands of scientists want to say at the time.
Dr, Andrew Dessler will tell you that the IPCC only uses peer reviewed information, and that the guesses based on these data, cannot be wrong, since they do not cherry-pick.
As for skeptics using very old or historical interest data, it depends on how white they are. A lot of rationalists are grey, and consider their data very carefully
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cce Posted 4:44 pm
17 Feb 2008
Facts
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John A Posted 7:53 pm
17 Feb 2008
I need no carping about trolling from Dessler
Let's check the dictionary:
Just like Andrew Dessler being a "plausible commentator"
Mann et al 1999 didn't exactly dance around the bushes on their claims. How "likely" did they really think their result was?
Of course those expressions of confidence turned out to be based on false claims made about Mann's exciting new method.
Oh, and then there's the Wegman Report, which Dessler studiously avoids in favor of the NAS Panel's remarkable ability to speak out of both sides of its mouth.
Here's what North had to say when he's in front of Congress under oath with a TV camera pointed at him:
So what does a top-ranked statistician say about Mann and about McIntyre and McKitrick's criticism? Take it away Dr Wegman:
So where does this leave Dessler's claims that there have been no mistakes made in the last 18 years?
I can only describe them as "plausible" and certainly no higher than that. Probably specious as well.
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Andrew Dessler Posted 2:51 am
18 Feb 2008
zzzzzzzzzzzzzz ....
Hockey stick ... yawn ...
The IPCC gave the hockey stick conclusion a low probability of being true by categorizing it as "likely." Given the peer-reviewed literature, there's no reason to think that assessment was in error. In fact, it's still the view of the scientific community. Thus, I still contend the IPCC didn't make a mistake there.
Bottom line: Don't confuse the IPCC with the Mann paper. They are separate entities.
... and Jim Clarke:
Right, Jim. There's no evidence in the IPCC that CO2 is a significant climate forcer. Don't forget: the IPCC also says that 2 + 2 = 5.Permalink
cce Posted 4:23 am
18 Feb 2008
Plausible deniability
"The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on ice caps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years.
"Based on the analyses presented in the original papers by Mann et al. and this newer supporting evidence, the committee finds it plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium."
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11676&pag ...
"'Our conclusion is that this recent period of warming is likely the warmest in the last millennium,' said John M. Wallace, one of the 12 panel members and a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington."
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/06/23/nat ...
"Where we speak of `less confidence,' we're more into level of sort of 2 to 1 odds, which IPCC, they interpreted `likely' as that level, roughly two to one odds or better."
http://video.nationalacademies.org/ramgen/news/isbn/03091 ...
The substantive "error" in the Mann et al (1999) paper was the specific language about the 1990s and 1998, which is a claim that cannot be made based on the resolution of the proxy data. The problem with their PCA method was "not material" and "does not appear to unduly influence reconstructions."
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manacker Posted 5:36 am
18 Feb 2008
Let's bury the hockeystick
In discrediting Mann's hockeystick, Dr. Edward Wegman testified to the US House energy and commerce committee: "Overall, our committee believes that Mann's assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year in the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis."
http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/108/home/0714 ...
He is later quoted to have said "I am baffled by the claim that the incorrect method doesn't matter because the answer is correct anyway. Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science."
Let's bury this bit of bad science.
Max
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BlckWallaby Posted 5:38 am
18 Feb 2008
FACTS according to CCE
It seems that you, cce, have some knowledge of the 2001 and 2007 IPCC reports, and therefore you have no excuse for NOT knowing what THE hockey-stick WAS in 2001. It was a minor modification of that appearing in MBH99 in GRL. AKA Mann et al 1999. It was "screamed" in every conceivable area in the various sections of the 2001 report, as a warhorse. It was NOT included in the 2007 report for obvious reasons that later developed. This was due to the exposure of the gross and multiple falsities of it. Nevertheless, there are still some people who treat it as manna, and deny or don't know the facts. Now let's examine your wisdom on this:
CCE: "The Hockey Stick is in Chapter 6 of WGI, page 467 along with a dozen newer reconstructions." [You mean 4AR or 2007 presumably]... Then you agree that the Hockey Stick is in AR4, was not "expunged," and not a single reconstruction therein shows a MWP warmer than today"
Now that's a bit garbled, but what I actually said, IN PART, and what you misrepresent was:
Black Wallaby: "If you look carefully [in the 2007 report] you can find a pale shadow of the hockey-stick buried under some of the spaghetti all with nice pastel colours hard to distinguish. If you look carefully you will see that Esper and Moberg who come from a different club from the manna crowd show a distinct MWP, and the borehole data in particular shows a strong LIA"
I don't know if this language of mine is complicated, but if you actually look at figure 6.10b and cross reference my words, you should be able to work-it-out....try!
You also wrote:
CCE: "None of the statements that you say were "ignored" is in the final version of chapter 6"
Yes, that is true, for instance, there is no mention of the embarrassing corrigendum in Nature, where Mann was forced to admit that 35 SERIES of data claimed to be used were in fact not used, or that Wahl and Ammann's related claims were false, or the ludicrous use of Bristle-Cone Pines, or the inability to calibrate the proxy data since ~1960, where there is a sharp down-trend, not up-trend as would be expected. (after some 10 years, it is still called "The Divergence Problem" ....unsolved) Need I add more?
If this is to be the standard of debate to be used by you, there does not seem much point in continuing.
When Max Manacker returns from his break, he may have the patience to talk to you about some of your other misrepresentations, but right now, I've lost interest.
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manacker Posted 5:46 am
18 Feb 2008
An update on the MWP and LIA
A more recent study using non-tree-ring proxies from several locations across the globe confirms that the MWP and LIA were "real and global" and that the "MWP was warmer than the late 20th century". http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3025
Max
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manacker Posted 6:40 am
18 Feb 2008
Message to Andrew Dessler on MWP
Hi Andrew,
Some months ago you wrote in a blog message to me:
"As far as the temperature back 1300 years is concerned, the IPCC says it's likely that today is the warmest over that period. As we discussed below, likely is a pretty weak confidence interval, meaning something like a 2 out of 3 chance. The National Academy also reviewed the surface-temperature reconstruction analyses and concluded it was about a 1 out of 2 chance.
There is significant uncertainty in these surface-temperature reconstructions, and it would not surprise many people if the MWP turned out to be a smidge warmer than today. Importantly, that would not change our conclusion that humans are still the dominant driver of today's climate."
This seems like a reasonable way to put it, Andrew.
I cannot understand why the MWP should even be relevant to today's warming situation, since: (a) there was certainly no major human involvement in driving MWP temperatures and (b) unlike during the MWP, the IPCC consensus is that "humans are still the dominant driver of today's climate" (as you put it above).
Everyone knows there was also an earlier warm period during historical times (Roman Optimum). Both the MWP and RO have been confirmed by vegetation and (more rarely) by signs of civilization underneath receding glaciers in the Alps as well as by historical reports throughout the civilized world at the time.
What does all this have to do with today's situation and why is it even mentioned by IPCC?
The whole paleoclimate section in AR4 WG1 could have best been left out, since it only opens the door for critique and controversy and is totally irrelevant to today's situation.
Don't you agree?
Regards,
Max
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Ian Forrester Posted 7:22 am
18 Feb 2008
It is Wegman who has been discredited not Mann
manakcer said: "In discrediting Mann's hockeystick, Dr. Edward Wegman testified."
Just shows you do not know what you are talking about. The truth is the exact reverse of what you are saying, not your muddled version.
Wegman has been totally discredited as a reliable and unbiased critic of anything having to do with AGW.
You should know this. The fact that you go on supporting this biased and in correct information shows that you are not interested in gaining knowledge but are only interested in distributing malicious nonsense.
You should be ashamed of such behaviour.
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John A Posted 9:30 am
18 Feb 2008
O RLY
Wegman has been totally discredited as a reliable and unbiased critic of anything having to do with AGW.
You should know this. The fact that you go on supporting this biased and in correct information shows that you are not interested in gaining knowledge but are only interested in distributing malicious nonsense.
Really? How?
There's not a statistician of any known ability who disagress with Wegman's analysis, so how is Wegman "reliable and unbiased critic of anything having to do with AGW". Even the NAS Panel as I've already quoted had no criticism of Wegman, either stated or implied.
In your fevered imagination anyone who contradicts the Hockey Stick and its conclusions is discredited because they don't follow a party line.
You should be ashamed of yourself, but I've seen enough biased and disgraceful alarmism to know that you don't have any shame.
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John A Posted 9:47 am
18 Feb 2008
Wake up Dessler, the Hockey Stick is dead!
The IPCC gave the hockey stick conclusion a low probability of being true by categorizing it as "likely." Given the peer-reviewed literature, there's no reason to think that assessment was in error. In fact, it's still the view of the scientific community. Thus, I still contend the IPCC didn't make a mistake there.
Really? It appears as Figure 1b in the Working Group 1 Summary for Policymakers, Figure 5 in the Technical Summary, twice in Chapter 2 (Figures 2-20 and 2-21) of the main report, and Figures 2-3 and 9-1B in the Synthesis Report.
Even Al Gore used the Hockey Stick (which he misleadingly referred to as Dr Thompson's thermometer) in his polically biased and flawed climate schlockfest "An Inconvenint Truth" to "prove" that the Medieval Warm Period was insignificant compared to 20th Century warming.
The view of the scientific community is that the Hockey Stick is dead, that its errors invalidate its claims and that Steve McIntyre is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to statistical analysis. Many of the Hockey Team are too petrified of him to even respond to simple requests for data used in their statistical models.
Oh, and just to make things nice and neat, there is no evidence in any ice core record that carbon dioxide rise drives temperature rise or indeed that it has any effect. Rather, the temperature rise precedes any carbon dioxide rise by around 800 years, and has done for as long as we have ice core records.
So a central assumption of the climate models (which cannot predict any climate phenomenon even 1 year in advance) is not supported by any empirical evidence.
Now back to sleep Andrew, where the Hockey Sticks rule the Earth and the IPCC never makes mistakes!
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Ian Forrester Posted 11:21 am
18 Feb 2008
Here is why Wegman is discredited.
He signed a letter that stated that global warming ended in 1998.
From a statistical point that was utter nonsense. Thus he is either a very poor statistician (simple linear regression shows that what he signed was not true) or he is one of the lyin' denyin' band of people who have no regard for the effects of their lies on countless millions of people around the Earth.
Such behaviour is despicable.
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manacker Posted 11:37 am
18 Feb 2008
Wegman is dishonest?
"He [Wegman] signed a letter that stated that global warming ended in 1998."
Guess he checked both the satellite (UAH) and surface (Hadley) records that show a linear trend of 0.06 degrees C over the past decade, with 1998 the warmest year on record in recent history.
Max
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manacker Posted 11:47 am
18 Feb 2008
Figures don't lie...
At the risk of being "despicable" (like Dr. Wegman), let's see if we can detect some statistical climate "trends" and then tie them to AGW.
We'll start with "global average temperature": a statistical number based on weather station readings (some good, some bad), some sea readings from ships and satellites and a bunch of non-transparent manipulations, adjustments, etc. to get a "globally averaged temperature anomaly number". We'll start our record around 1850, when our planet was starting to come out of the Little Ice Age. Guess what? It's been getting warmer since then (thank goodness, who wants to shovel all that snow!). Sure, there was some pretty good warming before there was much CO2 (1910-1945), some significant cooling after WWII when CO2 emissions really started to take off, and then warming since about 1975 (which has started to slow down since 1998, the warmest year in recent history). But we'll figure out some rationalizations for the bumps in the curve that do not match the recorded increase in atmospheric CO2 and ignore the "plateau" over the latest decade. So we've tied warming to CO2.
Now let's do the same for hurricanes. Here we should not start in the early 20th century (when there was a lot of hurricane activity) but rather in 1970 (during a very calm period). We can ignore the historical cycles (approx. every 25 years), which tell a story we do not want to communicate, i.e. strong activity from 1945 to 1969, while temperature was cooling, weak activity from 1970 to 1994, while temperature was rising. But if we start our statistic in 1970, and compare this to the more active years since 1995, we can show a recent increasing trend (when there really isn't one). So now we've tied increased hurricane activity to global warming (caused by CO2, of course).
Sea levels will be our next metric. The record shows this has been going up pretty slowly and steadily (with wide decadal swings) since measurements started way before there was any anthropogenic CO2 to speak of, as the oceans warm up and expand as we are coming out of the LIA. The first half of the 20th century had a higher rate of increase (with hardly any CO2) than the second half (when most of the CO2 was emitted). Because of the wide decadal swings, we need to pick the "just right" starting point, in order show a desired trend (where there really isn't one, just like with the hurricanes). Let's check the numbers and see where we should start our "trend line". Looks like if we compare 1961-2003 with 1993-2003 that should do the trick. (If we had used the most recent decade from 1996 to 2005, this would not be so good, since it shows only around one-third of the 1993-2003 rate and this would not send the desired message.) So we've shown an accelerating rate of sea level rise and tied it to CO2.
Like I said, figures don't lie...
Max
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Jim Clarke Posted 11:55 am
18 Feb 2008
Jumping to conclusions
Mr. Dressler,
Science indicates that, all else being equal, increasing CO2 will tend to warm the atmosphere. The amount of direct warming from a doubling of CO2 on a cloudless Earth has been estimated in the peer reviewed literature to be around 0.8 to 1.6 degrees C (as I recall). Add in the reflectivity of clouds and the number drops. This direct forcing is not significant enough to produce a climate change crisis. I believe that the IPCC agrees with this and also agrees that 2+2=4. I am not saying anything different or mischaracterizing what the IPCC says.
The IPCC makes an argument that there are positive feedbacks that multiply the CO2 effect. While there is some evidence for positive feedbacks, there is also evidence for negative feedbacks, which the IPCC also tends to ignore. Others have provided evidence in the peer reviewed literature that ocean cycles, solar activity and land use changes have played a roll in warming over the last 100 years. Any validity to these arguments reduces the actual affect of increasing CO2. Herein lies the debate.
"There's no evidence in the IPCC that CO2 is a significant climate forcer."
Evidence would imply verification with the real world. The IPCC presents evidence of warming, but does not demonstrate how CO2 explains the warming better than natural cycles in the oceans and sun, and/or land use changes. One does not verify a theory by ignoring the other theories that fit the observations better. I believe religions are particularly good at such machinations, not science.
For those of you who say that the Hockey Stick argument is irrelevant...nonsense! It is crucial. The way the IPCC attempts to verify that the recent warming is CO2 induced, is by claiming that there is no significant natural variability in climate. The hockey stick was supposed to be the physical evidence that supported the theory. Without the hockey stick, (Or more precisely... if the MWP was as warm as today) the argument that most of the recent warming has been natural remains viable.
Those claiming that the Hockey Stick doesn't matter are basically arguing that real world evidence is not required to confirm a theory! This is hardly scientific behavior.
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SammyOwl Posted 12:22 pm
18 Feb 2008
Once again...
Dr. Dessler shows his extreme bias and political subjectivity to this subject. Anyone who wastes their time listening to his rants and self serving sophistry is beyond help. He is not an obective scientist on this issue, why bother with his slanted opinions? Just recite the TAMU litmus test slogans for his department and be done with it.
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GreenMom Posted 12:32 pm
18 Feb 2008
Wow, troll city
Dr. Dessler, I admire your fortitude (and you too, cce). The deniers clearly didn't intend to let you have a weekend off.
I haven't read this much tripe since the last time I saw the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal.
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josullivan58 Posted 12:32 pm
18 Feb 2008
I though manacker was on a break
manacker:
"Like I said, figures don't lie..."
No accurate figures don't lie, but manacker and his sock puppet black wallaby do lie constantly.
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christophersj Posted 2:36 pm
18 Feb 2008
Hey guys
Screw all of this arguing around the edges. I'm looking at the ice core data charts from hundreds of thousands of years in frickin' National Geographic and can plainly see the back and forth dance between CO2 and temperature. One always tipping the other in an exchange.
I'm no scientist but I can plainly see recent anthropogenic CO2 levels pushing the CO2 line higher than anytime in those hundreds of thousands of years.
You pinheads give me one good reason that unprecedented level of CO2 would NOT cause unprecedented levels of heat trapping? Hello?
Also, can you explain why the predictions of earlier IPCC reports concerning temp rise and ice melting were LOWER than what has actually transpired? How does that make for an organization who is just bent on scaring us? They cant even be scary enough to match what's happening!
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cce Posted 2:38 pm
18 Feb 2008
More facts
1)I have no idea what you think I have "no excuse" for not knowing. MBH99 was in the TAR. MBH99 is in AR4. The probability was 66% that recent decades were warmer than the last 1000 years. That is not screaming by any definition of the word.
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cce Posted 3:00 pm
18 Feb 2008
Wegman vs North
There are stastical problems with the Hockey Stick. Both panels concluded that. They were not material. They had no effect on the conclusion. They weren't the result of incompetence and they weren't the result of fraud. The quotations from the NRC report and panel members verify this.
And for Wegman to sign on to the "no net warming since 1998" statement does not lend credence to his impartiality. The AGW signal is less than 0.02 degrees per year. Year to year variability is several times that. No one can look at the last 10 years and conclude that AGW has stopped because of "no net warming."
Other matters:
The direct effect of CO2 is something like 1.2 degrees for doubled levels. The rest is primarily the water vapor feedback. Increase the temperature of the earth, and you increase the moisture content of the atmosphere. As to cloud feedbacks, we have good information on high level clouds and they can't explain the warming. We have conflicting information on low level clouds, and best case scenario, they don't explain the warming either. We have satellite measurements of solar output in the last 30 years with virtually no change other than the 11 year cycle. The ocean does not create heat, the most it can do (on time scales we're talking about) is change the short term climate (el nino/la nino etc) or push energy around the earth. It is not going to somehow change the energy balance of the planet.
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cce Posted 3:02 pm
18 Feb 2008
La Nina
La Nina, that is.
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Jim Clarke Posted 9:53 pm
18 Feb 2008
Other Matters
CCE,
60 years ago, the atmosphere cooled just as humans were really cranking up their CO2 emissions. It happened quickly and in both hemispheres. The IPCC blames aerosols, which makes no sense since aerosols where confined generally to the northern hemisphere and there was no step change in aerosols to match the change in temperature. For the next 30 years, the planet did not warm, despite ever increasing CO2. Suddenly, in the late 1970s, the temperature began to rise. Now, thirty years later, the planet has stopped warming and there is growing evidence that it may be cooling. All of this precisely matches the PDO and has almost no correlation with increasing CO2, other than some curve fitting in the 80s and 90s!
You admit that ENSO events have year to year impacts on global temperature. It has been shown that the PDO strongly impacts ENSO events, with more El Ninos in the warm phase and more La Ninas in the cold phase. So why do you close your eyes to the possibility that the PDO has a significant impact on global temperature over multiple decades? It appears to be about 0.3 degrees C, accounting for nearly half of the warming of the 20th Century. (The Century began at the bottom of the cool phase and ended at the top of the warm phase).
On solar...the atmosphere is generally transparent to most of the solar energy reaching the planet. Unlike increasing CO2 which initially causes an increase in the kinetic energy of molecules in the atmosphere (warms the air), the solar changes would first be felt in the oceans, with the additional energy very gradually dispersing into the atmosphere as regulated by the oceans. One would not expect noticeable changes with the 11-year sunspot cycle, but would likely detect gradual changes over several solar cycles of increasing or decreasing activity, all else being equal.
You state the direct forcing of CO2 as if it where a known fact. It is not, but is generally agreed to be in a certain range. You present the water vapor feedback as if it is well understood and quantified. It is not. Much of what the IPCC presents as speculation and hypothesis is perceived as fact. Again, it is not me that is misrepresenting the IPCC.
Christopher,
The ice cores reveal that temperature increases caused CO2 increases. They also reveal that significant global cooling has always started when CO2 levels were relatively high, making it impossible for CO2 to be the dominant driver of global temperature. Certainly CO2 has an effect, but there is nothing in the ice cores that indicates it is a dominating effect. Quite the contrary!
Also, current global temperature is below the minimum IPCC scenario, no matter which data base you choose. Global sea ice did take a bit of a dip last year, but is now trending pretty close to the average for the last 29 years. Claims that everything is happening faster than the models predicted are simply fairy tales. While there may be a few small regions that have experienced significant warming, most of the planet is not cooperating with the dire predictions of the AGW theory. Areas that have warmed the most are now showing cooling trends!
All that we observe is precisely what would be expected if natural cycles still dominated climate change.
Watching AGW crisis supporters trying to force the observations to fit their theory is like watching Cinderella's nasty step-sisters trying to force their foot into the glass slipper. It is getting embarrassing!
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Andrew Dessler Posted 1:17 am
19 Feb 2008
To Max
You are correct that the hockey stick plot is not a key piece of evidence in attributing today's warming to humans. In fact, the case against anthropogenic CO2 is not based on today's warming being unprecedented (we know it has been warmer in the past) or the rate of today's warming being unprecedented (we just don't know). Rather, the case is built on the data from the last 30 years, were we can eliminate all other causes. See this post for a more thorough discussion of attribution.
Now to the question of whether they should have included the hockey stick at all, I think you can go both ways. On the one hand, you want the report to be as complete as possible. On the other, you probably don't want to put out uncertain science, particularly when people don't read the caveats. If it turns out to be wrong, then you look bad --- even if you said originally that you had low confidence in that conclusion.
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cce Posted 1:29 am
19 Feb 2008
Various
The temperatures in the southern hemisphere have been rising gradually and consistently. There were warm years in both hemispheres centered around 1940 (either coincidentally or not coincidentally during WWII). Most of the "cooling" occurred in the Northern Hemisphere, as expected, and temperatures for the globe during the mid century period were flatter than they were "cooler"
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A3.lrg.gif
The effect of aerosols is immediate, whereas CO2 is cumulative. While CO2 levels were increasing incrementally, anthropogenic sulfur dioxide emissions began increasing exponentially, leveling off in the '70s, and peaking in the late '80s.
ENSO affects the short term climate as energy is transferred between the ocean and atmosphere. ENSO does not affect the long term energy balance of the world.
If solar was increasing, the daytime temperatures would be warming faster than the nighttime temperatures (the opposite is the case) and the stratosphere would be warming instead of cooling. Climate sensitivity has been derived from numerous methods, among them the ice cores and other paleo data, and from modern volcanic eruptions, in addition to simple and complex model calculations. Additionally, we have measured the changes in outgoing longwave radiation from space.
About 1/3rd of the temperature change during deglaciation/glaciation is caused by the change in greenhouse gases, with the another third caused by the albedo changes of ice cover and sea levels and another third caused by vegetation, and atmospheric dust. The temperature changes of ice ages cannot be explained if you remove the GHG component. Ice ages themselves are initiated by orbital changes of the earth which redistribute energy to different parts of the earth at different times of the year, facilitating the buildup or destruction of icesheets on (mostly) North America and Europe, and thus increasing the albedo of the Earth.
The AGW signal is less than 0.02 degrees per year, which is dwarfed by natural variation on short time scales.
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pcarbo Posted 2:45 am
19 Feb 2008
Let me point out a basic flaw in the whole debate
In this debate, we have two parties.
One party uses models to make predictions about climate. The scientists who designed these models hypothesize that they are correct because they are based on a fairly good, global understanding of how weather systems and climate works. They also publish books describing these models. Scientists are also aware of the complexity of the systems they are trying to model, so they don't put too much stock in them (hence, the word "likely").
The other party defends their position by pointing out possible flaws in the models. People belonging to this party publish articles and books bashing the current scientific understanding of climate change.
Notice the asymmetry in the debate: the onus is on one of the parties to develop a scientific understanding of climate. There is no attempt by one of the parties to propose alternative predictive models, and publish scientific articles demonstrating the viability of these models. Once they start doing this, I will take more time to listen to their arguments.
Peter
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christophersj Posted 5:14 am
19 Feb 2008
Jim Clarke not telling whole truth
Jim Clarke,
I see both: I sometimes see CO2 coming before warming and sometimes I see warming coming before CO2 rise. They dance. You are relating only one side of this because you dont want to see a carbon cap and carbon tax and the energy transition.
Relax. Nobody is going to send you to a cave to live. No black helicopters are going to take your guns away. You can choose any color of plug-in hybrid you want!
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manacker Posted 8:28 am
19 Feb 2008
Asymmetry in the debate
It's not quite that simple, Peter.
Yes, "one party uses models to make predictions about climate". Let's call this party "the IPCC scientists". This group contains true climate experts, such as Andrew Dessler, plus some technicians that are not-scientists in the true sense, such as computer modelers, etc.
And the other party looks for flaws in the models and predictions. Let's call this party "the skeptics". This group also contains some climate scientists, like John Christy and Richard Lindzen, but also contains some non-scientists, like some of the blog writers on this site.
There is a third party involved, however. These are the politicians and bureaucrats who, via a sensationalist media, are using the model predictions to frighten the general public into accepting policy changes that will cost them a lot of money (and make a lot of money for some people). This party does not shy away from hyperbole, exaggeration and fear mongering to get support for their political agenda. Let's call this party the "AGW politicians". This group includes Al Gore, (IPCC Chairman) Rajendra K. Pachauri, (UN Secretary General) Ban Ki Moon, (climate scientist turned political alarmist) James E. Hansen, etc.
Another group of politicians, such as US Senator James Inhofe, are the "anti AGW politicians", and some of these may be supported by groups that stand to lose from the proposed IPCC policy changes.
The model predictions show that the proposed IPCC policy changes (carbon cap and trade schemes or taxes) will do almost nothing to resolve the projected virtual climate problem, if it indeed exists. Everyone agrees, however, that they will be very costly for the average person living in the industrially developed world, while some groups (hedge funds, carbon traders, etc.) plus government tax coffers will benefit. Energy trading companies (like the now-defunct Enron) would be among those that stand to make large profits.
And that is why the second party (skeptics) is looking for any flaws, not only in the virtual model projections, but also in the arguments used by the AGW politicians to sell their political agenda.
If it were purely a scientific debate it would be correct to say that it is unfair that "the onus is on one of the parties to develop a scientific understanding of climate" while the other side does not have to live to this same standard. But it is not purely a scientific debate and developing "a scientific understanding of climate" is not the true ultimate goal of the third party, the AGW politicians (who are driving and funding the IPCC scientists).
And that is why the IPCC scientists must be held to a higher standard of scientific accuracy and objectivity than those who question them. The onus of proof is, by definition, on the IPCC scientists, rather than on their skeptics.
There are, of course, some scientific reports by skeptical scientists (far fewer than those published by the well-funded IPCC scientists, of course), and these should be held to the same standard as those published by the IPCC scientists.
Max
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BlckWallaby Posted 9:32 am
19 Feb 2008
More facts according to CCE
By your point Numbers cce:
1) I have no idea what you think I have "no excuse" for not knowing. MBH99 was in the TAR. MBH99 is in AR4. The probability was 66% that recent decades were warmer than the last 1000 years. That is not screaming by any definition of the word.
RESPONSE: Seven or more `Battleships' and a single `Kyak' can all be described as boats, but they are different. The former can be scary, the latter innocuous. The battleships of 2001, were clarioned in every nook and cranny of the various reports, and at podia etc, and had a huge effect of scaring policymakers and media into believing that the current warming was not only unprecedented, but that there was virtually NO VARIATION in the last 1000 years. (Untrue) The kyak version of 2007 (AR4) is barely perceptible, being hidden "amongst the reeds".
2) The Hockey Stick was in AR4. You admit that it was in AR4. Stop saying it wasn't in AR4.
RESPONSE: There are lots of battleships in 3AR, and only a kyak, obscured by other stuff, both visually and in the text in 4AR.
3) If you will look closely, Esper and Moberg are no more prominent than the supposedly "discredited" Hockey Stick, or Mann's 2003 update of it.
RESPONSE: IF you look closely amongst all that spaghetti, you will see that Esper and Moberg show a pronounced MWP. Also the bore-hole data shows a very strong LIA. This compares with a dead-straight "shaft" on the original hockey-stick. The original grossly exaggerated up-turn at the end of UNSMOOTHED instrumental data ending at the 1988 spike is absent. It also has a different smoothing in the proxy data.
4) The corrigendum was to correct the descriptions of the data. It had nothing to do with the calculations that went into the Hockey Stick, nor is it relevent to the findings of the IPCC.
RESPONSE: The omission of 35 SERIES of data (not 35 data POINTS) that were claimed to be used but were not, and which required the intervention of Nature to compel Mann to own-up is not a minor matter. Bad data in = bad result out.
5) The NRC panel disagrees with your assessment of the Wahl and Ammann paper. [Which one BTW?]
RESPONSE: I have not given my assessment of W & A, but have quoted a SINGLE expert review comment which was vindicated by Nature, and ignored by the IPCC. The NRC is not the only source of information.
BTW, you don't offer your wisdom on the ludicrous use of Bristle Cone pines or the serious "Divergence Problem" also ignored by the IPCC.... or the other problems I mentioned.
I get the impression that you must get all this nonsense from reading RealClimate website. This was set-up by the inventors of the hockey-stick, and in the opinion of many rationalists, they are an insult to science.
Oh, and notice Dr, Andrew Dessler's opinions above in a couple of posts concerning the Hocky-stick. Please read them very carefully, and don't put into them what you WANT him to say. While you are at it, why don't you read my earlier post more carefully too? It's a puzzle how you could get it so wrong!
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manacker Posted 2:05 pm
19 Feb 2008
Relevance of the hockey stick
Hi Andrew,
I agree with what you wrote earlier as well as recently:
"You are correct that the hockey stick plot is not a key piece of evidence in attributing today's warming to humans."
I would say that it is a piece of "bad science" that has since been refuted and replaced by better studies that show a somewhat different result. You might word this differently, but you agree that it "is not a key piece of evidence".
But more importantly, what was its intent?
It may have been just to put the current warming trend into perspective.
Or maybe it was to alarm "policymakers" into thinking that we are facing an unprecedented global warming today, which we have never experienced in historical times, and which could lead to disastrous consequences for humanity as well as for many other species on Earth today.
While the scientists who put the hockey stick together (and the peer reviewers that rubber-stamped it) may have been thinking only of the first reason (giving them the benefit of the doubt), it is quite obvious that the politicians who have used it to further their agendas were thinking of the second reason of spreading fear in order to gain support for their political goals.
And I believe that this is the reason why many skeptics like Jim Clarke keep harping on this issue, and why (in my opinion) the IPCC would be well advised to clearly distance itself from the hockey stick, rather than trying to rationalize its way out of its scientific relevance as it has done in the most recent AR4 WG1 report.
Just my thoughts on this, Andrew.
Regards,
Max
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Jim Clarke Posted 12:19 am
20 Feb 2008
Many thoughts
Max,
Thank you for your posts. Your explanation of the hockey stick as a key political weapon was spot on. Still, I think it is a case of sour grapes when scientists say it was never really important to begin with. All theories must be verified by real world evidence to become valid. The hockey stick was presented as real world evidence to help verify that much of the recent warming was man-made and that the AGW theory was correct. Without it, what physical evidence do they have that the current warming is primarily human induced. If warm periods of similar magnitude happened quite naturally in the past, why is this warm period decidedly `unnatural'? (Please, no arguments about the rate of change here. The rate of change during the first part of the 20th century is similar to the last part, and we have no idea about rates of change hundreds and thousands of years ago, as proxy records do not sufficient resolution to determine such things.)
I also agree that in science, the onus of proof falls on the shoulders of those purposing the theory. If scientists claim to be able to produce cold fusion, it is up to them to prove it. It is not up to the skeptics to produce their own cold fusion in a different way!
Still, many skeptical climatologists have a theory of climate change that depends more on pattern recognition than number crunching. (Computers are notoriously bad at pattern recognition, although they are getting better.) They have used this theory to predict a period of global cooling beginning in the early 21st century. Current observations are more in line with this theory than with the AGW theory.
Christopher,
You can stare at the ice core graphs and draw your on conclusions if you want, but I was relying on the conclusions drawn by the peer reviewed studies done on the ice core samples. These studies conclude that there is generally a lag of about 800 to 1,000 years between increasing temperatures and increasing atmospheric CO2. I wasn't telling half of the story, I was just relying on the conclusions of the studies.
Interestingly, there is also a lag when the temperatures are decreasing. This means that for any given temperature X, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 was usually less when temperatures where warming through X and greater when temperatures where cooling through X! From this, one can conclude that higher concentrations of atmospheric CO2 cause cooling, or that CO2 is not a large factor in determining global temperature and is generally overridden by other factors. Since the former explanation makes no physical sense, I prefer the latter.
CCE,
As I mentioned before, the sun heats the surface, not the atmosphere. Urban areas are warmer than surrounding rural areas at night because of the solar energy that is released from paved surfaces after dark. A solar heated surface results in higher nighttime low temperatures; similar to what one would expect with increasing CO2. Both solar and CO2 would lead to indistinguishable results concerning nighttime lows.
Measuring climate sensitivity of any one variable is very tricky. One must have a good understanding of all the other variables involved. Ignoring solar variables in the long term and ocean cycles in the short term is hardly and example of a good understanding of the other variables. Admitting that you really don't know the effect of clouds and the broader water-cycle is also admitting that your estimate of climate sensitivity to increasing greenhouse gases is little more than a guess!
In order to lend weight to that guess one most show how the real world is and always has behaved just as the guess would indicate. This brings us back to my analogy of Cinderalla's step-sisters trying to shove their foot in the glass slipper. They may successfully get a few toes in, but the more they try, the more obvious it becomes that the foot does not fit! Even sprinkling magical aerosols (quantity and effect unknown) doesn't make the slipper go on any easier.
The real world is just not confirming the IPCC guess of climate sensitivity to increasing greenhouse gases. The recent lack of global warming and initial evidence of a cooling trend could be aberrations, but they do not lend weight to the AGW argument. The fact that recent trends are precisely what skeptical climatologist have expected, does lend weight to their argument.
Right now, the real-world `climate momentum' is with the skeptics!
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BlckWallaby Posted 3:15 pm
20 Feb 2008
CCE Just for you
Diurnal temperature of Melbourne Australia.
Since you seem to be quite the scientist, try this one:
Yesterday, (Wed.) the daytime maximum was 24C but during the afternoon it fell to 16C, and during the night, the max was 13C.
The day before, the daytime maximum was 35C, and the night-time maximum was 29C. (Hot)
This weather statement was centred on the ease of sleeping at night, and the night-time minimums were not mentioned in that report.
In a NE suburb close-by to mine, it is usually about 1C cooler, and even 3C cooler after a hot SUNNY day, at night. (Not if overcast and hot)
The big sudden swings in temperature can result from a change of wind direction from southerly to northerly. From the north, it comes from the hot dry inland, and from the south from ocean. This is a CHAOTIC process, almost impossible to forecast more than a few days-out. It is said somewhat in humour, that a butterfly flapping its wings somewhere, thousands of kilometres away may cause such things.
Please work-out for me what you think the diurnal average max temperature for Melbourne was last Tues. & Wed, and tell me if you think it has any relevance to anything in particular.
Thanking you in anticipation, Black Wallaby
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manacker Posted 3:18 pm
20 Feb 2008
Carbon Taxes vs. Cap and Trade Schemes
A commentary to Jim Clarke's post. Where is this all heading?
The Carbon Tax Center (CTC) is a New York based non-profit, non-governmental organization formed in 2007 by economist Charles Komanoff and attorney Dan Rosenblum. This group supports the concept of carbon taxes rather than cap and trade schemes, which are preferred by some other groups, in an attempt to "solve" the perceived global warming problem.
For a link to their thoughts check:
http://www.carbontax.org/issues/carbon-taxes-vs-cap-and-t ...
This group writes:
"Why A Carbon Tax?
The rationale for a carbon tax is simple: the levels of CO2 already in the Earth's atmosphere and being added daily are destabilizing established climate patterns and threatening the ecosystems on which we and other living beings depend. Very large and rapid reductions in the United States' and other nations' carbon emissions are essential to reverse runaway climate change and avert resulting severe weather events, inundation of coastal areas, spread of diseases, failure of agriculture and water supply, infrastructure destruction, forced migrations, political upheavals and international conflict."
Its preference for carbon taxes rather than cap and trade schemes is expressed in:the quotations below:
1. Carbon taxes will lend predictability to energy prices, whereas cap-and-trade systems will aggravate the price volatility that historically has discouraged investments in less carbon-intensive electricity generation, carbon-reducing energy efficiency and carbon-replacing renewable energy
2. Carbon taxes can be implemented much sooner than complex cap-and-trade systems. Because of the urgency of the climate crisis, we do not have the luxury of waiting while the myriad details of a cap-and-trade system are resolved through lengthy negotiations
3. Carbon taxes are transparent and easily understandable, making them more likely to elicit the necessary public support than an opaque and difficult to understand cap-and-trade system
4. Carbon taxes can be implemented with far less opportunity for manipulation by special interests, while a cap-and-trade system's complexity opens it to exploitation by special interests and perverse incentives that can undermine public confidence and undercut its effectiveness
5. Carbon taxes address emissions of carbon from every secctor, whereas cap-and-trade systems discussed to date have only targeted the electricity industry, which accounts for less than 40% of emission
6. Carbon tax revenues can be returned to the public through progressive tax-shifting while the costs of cap-and-trade systems are likely to become a hidden tax as dollars flow to market participants, lawyers and consultants
This rationale for a major tax increase on humanity is based on its own rather exaggerated interpretation of IPCC reports, so it is extremely important that these reports be as accurate and objective as possible and that any exaggerations be questioned critically.
According to the Carbon Tax Center, a tax that grows at an annual rate "equivalent to 5-10% of the `baseline' cost of fossil fuels offers a viable combination of meaningful incentive and opportunity for adaptation". CTC concludes that the proposed $37 per ton of carbon "starter tax", which it equates to around 10 cents a gallon of gasoline, "fits the lower end of that range".
A tax of 10 cents per gallon of gasoline sounds fairly innocuous, so what's the concern? Even if the "starter rate" of $37 per ton quickly grows to a more significant $100 per ton, as the CTC expects, this still only represents around 30 cents on a gallon of gasoline.
To understand the true cost of a $100 per ton carbon tax, however, one has to look at the whole picture, not just the US price of gasoline.
Based on the total CO2 emissions of the USA, a $100 per ton carbon tax would cost US households approximately 158 billion dollars per year in total. The average total cost per household would be around $1700 per year. Roughly half of this ($800 per household per year) would be the direct cost of the carbon tax on direct energy costs (transportation and other energy) and the rest ($900 per year) would be the indirect cost of the carbon tax on the energy component of all products purchased (assuming these costs would all be ultimately passed on to the consumer).
Interestingly, the easily visible direct cost increase for gasoline mentioned by CTC (around 30 cents per gallon) would be the smallest component, since gasoline is already heavily taxed and, thus, quite expensive per unit of carbon emitted. On the other hand, the more hidden direct cost of non-transportation energy (electrical power, natural gas or heating oil) would be increased by over 30%.
On a per capita basis, those living in the USA would pay the highest rate (at $522 per year), while those living in other major emitting nations such as Russia ($327), Japan ($301), the EU ($235), China ($128) and India ($31) would pay a lower rate. On a world total, the tax would amount to $740 billion annually, so that, on average, every human being, man, woman and child, would pay around $110 per year.
In the above calculation, it is assumed that each country would pay carbon tax based on the emissions caused by that country. The indirect carbon tax component of goods produced in China and consumed in the USA, for example, would presumably be passed on to the final consumer, so that the net impact on US households would be somewhat higher and that on Chinese households would be somewhat less. So the tax would end up being sort of like a "sales tax", where the end consumer pays based on his/her consumption of goods that have a "carbon footprint".
Other groups propose carbon caps with an auction on carbon allowances and annually lowering carbon permits rather than taxes, but the net effect is the same.
http://www.newrules.org/de/carboncaps-dividends.pdf
These schemes may be less transparent than a direct carbon tax (as CTC surmises), and there may be more "middle men" (like Al Gore) earning a profit from these schemes (rather than the government tax coffers), but the same person ends up "footing the bill": the consumer.
The argument by groups such as the "New Rules Project" that introducing a "universal dividend" can make carbon cap and trade schemes "ethical, equitable and politically effective" is flawed, because it ignores the fact that the whole scheme must be paid by someone, and that someone will end up being the consumer. Shifting the load away from the less affluent to the more affluent consumer is just a socialistic exercise that does not change anything: in the end effect, it is still the consumer who pays.
Since the whole urgency of "necessity to act now" is based on dubious science to start off with, it is best that we hold off implementing either of these schemes, that (as most people agree) will not resolve the problem in any case (if it even exists), until we can be really sure that the science is sound.
Do we really want to do all this? I don't think so.
Just my opinion, but I welcome comments from those who might disagree.
Max
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BlckWallaby Posted 3:55 pm
20 Feb 2008
The big hockey-stick cover-up
Perhaps one of the worst things that the IPCC authorship did was waffle and obscure its demise. Several expert reviewers requested reduction of the waffle in draft to perhaps a line or two, or its deletion, and/or an outright apology for ever using the hockey-stick. Despite IPCC's common rejection of comments by expert reviewers on many other matters on the grounds of lack of page space, this unusually lengthy yet incomplete dissertation was finally published. Notice that it does not mention any of the things that totally discredited the hockey stick, and some citations are cherry-picked or misrepresented in context. They also chose to include it in the so-called spaghetti graph, which of course was a distortion of collective trend in better treated data
~~~~~~~~~~From Ch. 6, Pg 466 WG1, AR4~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The `hockey stick' reconstruction of Mann et al. (1999) has been the subject of several critical studies. Soon and Baliunas (2003) challenged the conclusion that the 20th century was the warmest at a hemispheric average scale. They surveyed regionally diverse proxy climate data, noting evidence for relatively warm (or cold), or alternatively dry (or wet) conditions occurring at any time within pre-defined periods assumed to bracket the so-called `Medieval Warm Period' (and `Little Ice Age'). Their qualitative approach precluded any quantitative summary of the evidence at precise times, limiting the value of their review as a basis for comparison of the relative magnitude of mean hemispheric 20th-century warmth (Mann and Jones, 2003; Osborn and Briffa, 2006). Box 6.4 provides more information on the `Medieval Warm Period'.
McIntyre and McKitrick (2003) reported that they were unable to replicate the results of Mann et al. (1998). Wahl and Ammann (2007) showed that this was a consequence of differences in the way McIntyre and McKitrick (2003) had implemented the method of Mann et al. (1998) and that the original reconstruction could be closely duplicated using the original proxy data. McIntyre and McKitrick (2005a,b) raised further concerns about the details of the Mann et al. (1998) method, principally relating to the independent verification of the reconstruction against 19th-century instrumental temperature data and to the extraction of the dominant modes of variability present in a network of western North American tree ring chronologies, using Principal Components Analysis. The latter may have some theoretical foundation, but Wahl and Amman (2006) also show that the impact on the amplitude of the final reconstruction is very small (~0.05°C; for further discussion of these issues see also Huybers, 2005; McIntyre and McKitrick, 2005c,d; von Storch and Zorita, 2005).
Since the TAR, a number of additional proxy data syntheses based on annually or near-annually resolved data, variously representing mean.....etc etc
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pcarbo Posted 2:59 am
21 Feb 2008
Re: Asymmetry in the debate
Max,
I admit I was being a bit simplistic for effect.
It is unfortunate that we distinguish between "scientists" and "skeptics"; good science implies skepticism.
It is also unfortunate that skeptics are viewed as being "anti-AGW" (to use your terminology). I'm sure many skeptics (perhaps a majority?) lean toward the conclusions of the IPCC, but rally against outlandish claims, or hyperbole.
I suppose my greatest fear is that in our current political and media environment, hyperbole is the only effective way to get the message out to the public that climate change is a problem we need to (and can!) address, especially when it has to compete with: War on Terror, How Illegal Immigrants are Stealing Your Jobs, etc.
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Jim Clarke Posted 3:02 am
21 Feb 2008
Do we really want to do this?
In answer to Max's question: Yes, there are some who want to decrease the standard of living of every man, women and child on the planet in the name of a climate crisis. They are in the minority, so they must exaggerate the threat to get their way. Of course, the 'exaggeration of threat' is the rational behind every organized act of injustice and evil in the world over the last 100 years and beyond. They all start with a noble cause and then exaggerate the threat to that noble cause.
My litmus test for the legitimacy of any organization or movement is whether or not they are exaggerating a threat. Certainly those calling for immediate action on climate change are hyperbole wizards, using only the most dire scenarios, no matter how unlikely, to further their cause.
(Note to Mr. Dessler: I am not talking about the IPCC here, but about those calling for immediate action. This includes environmental groups, Al Gore, James Hansen and the Chairman of the IPCC, among many others. All use hyperbole and act as if it is the mean!)
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Jim Clarke Posted 5:42 am
21 Feb 2008
Back to the main point
The original article above boasts that no one has found any significant flaws in the most recent IPCC publications, giving the impression that the IPCC is correct about climate change. Not true! The impression is based on the assumption that the theory is entirely correct to begin with. William Briggs, statistician, addresses this in a recent blog entry here:
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/2008/02/18/statistics-dirtiest-s ...
The whole article is worth a read, but here is the most significant paragraph relating to the subject at hand:
"It is important to understand that all results (like saying "statistically significant", computing p-values, confidence or credible intervals) are conditional on the model chosen being true. Since it is rarely certain that the model used was true, the eventual results are stated with a certainty that is too strong. As an example, suppose your statistical model allowed you to say that a certain proposition was true "at the 90% level." But if you are only, say, 50% sure that the model you used is the correct one, then your proposition is only true "at the 45% level" not at the 90% level, which is, of course, an entirely different conclusion. And if you have no idea how certain your model is, then it follows that you have no idea how certain your proposition is. To emphasize: the uncertainty in choosing the model is almost never taken into consideration."
The statements in the WGI report are 'bulletproof' only if you start with the ridicules assumption that all of the assumptions going into the report are absolutely correct and the model is `true'! Mr. Dessler is really boasting that they didn't make any grammatical, clerical, math or continuity errors this time around, which doesn't lend any weight at all to the strength of the AGW argument! Indeed, the statement that "...essentially none of the IPCC documents produced over the last 18 years has been found to contain any substantive errors" is an internal argument. It is essentially proclaiming: "Assuming our model is correct...we have not made any errors!"
Skeptics are, and have always been arguing that the AGW model is not correct and that many of the assumptions that go into the model are inaccurate or just wrong. Not only are their errors of attribution (providing values that are not accurate) there are more errors of attrition. The model does not contain a significant amount of what is actually taking place in the real world. It is only by ignoring all of these things that supporters like Mr. Dessler can proclaim that the reports contain no substantive errors.
Furthermore, the main selling point of the WGI report, in order to be statistically and scientifically accurate, should read "Assuming our theory and model of climate change are correct, and all the assumptions that go into that model are correct despite the large gaps in our understanding of various processes, we have a 90% confidence that our conclusions are true." This accurate statement is considerably weaker than the one being foisted on politicians and the public. While some may understand the implied assumptions, must don't and are being given a false impression of the accuracy of climate change science. This will result in very poor decisions, causing considerable problems while providing no discernable benefits.
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manacker Posted 7:59 am
21 Feb 2008
Direct effect of CO2
CCE wrote (18 Feb): "The direct effect of CO2 is something like 1.2 degrees for doubled levels. The rest is primarily the water vapor feedback."
This is a bit on the high side for CO2 alone. Let's use basic physics to establish the theoretical temperature increase from doubling CO2 levels from 280ppmv, which they were in 1900, to 560 ppmv, which they are projected to be in 2100, assuming there are no natural or other anthropogenic forcing factors (which is obviously not the case).
Arrhenius Law tells us
dE = [alpha] ln ( [CO2] / [CO2] orig ),
where alpha is 5.35 (Myhre et al.)
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/222.htm
dE is change in forcing
using Stefan-Boltzmann:
dT/dE = 1 / (4 [sigma] T^3)
then:
dT = [alpha] ln ( [CO2] / [CO2] orig) / 4 [sigma] T^3)
A doubling of CO2 from 280 to 560 ppmv,
And substituting T = 15 degrees C = 288.16K
dT = 5.35 ln (560 / 280) / (4 *5.6705E-08 * (288.16^3))
or
dT = 0.6833 centigrade for a doubling of CO2
for simplification, let's call that 0.7 degrees C
You can do the same calculation based on the CO2 level of 381 ppmv, as measured in 2006
Then you arrive at a dT of around 0.3 degrees C, by increasing CO2 from 280 to 381 ppmv.
This means there is about 0.4 degrees C warming to be expected from today to the year 2100, if CO2 increases to the anticipated 560 ppmv.
Since the relationship is logarithmic, CO2 will have to double again, to 1120 ppmv for another 0.7 degrees C to result. This might happen by around the year 2400, if current rates of increase continue and we haven't run out of fossil fuels before then.
All of the above assumes that there are no significant natural forcing factors and no positive or negative feedbacks (water as vapor, water as liquid in lower altitude clouds or as solid in higher altitude clouds, etc.).
Max
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manacker Posted 1:43 pm
21 Feb 2008
Message to pcarbo
Hi Peter,
You wrote: "I suppose my greatest fear is that in our current political and media environment, hyperbole is the only effective way to get the message out to the public that climate change is a problem we need to (and can!) address."
My problem with the use of hyperbole to incite fear in order to gain support for a political course of action is the following:
It has been done over and over again throughout history by unscrupulous politicians to justify all sorts of actions.
We do not have to go back to the 1930s and 1940s where horrible actions resulting in WWII and the holocaust were justified by fear mongering.
More recently the invasion of Iraq was justified by frightening the US public with the specter of "weapons of mass destruction" and imminent "smoking gun mushroom clouds"
Now another set of politicians use the specter of "climate tipping points" and "6 meter waves swallowing New York City in the very near future" to sell another political agenda.
Sorry, Peter, no matter how supposedly "noble" the cause, the use of hyperbole and fear mongering to dupe the public into supporting a political agenda is reprehensible.
And even worse, to frighten school children with these scare stories is totally inexcusable.
Max
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manacker Posted 4:27 pm
22 Feb 2008
To Andrew Dessler's IPCC birthday eulogy
Hi Andrew,
In your birthday eulogy to the IPCC you wrote: "In fact, it is quite amazing to me that essentially none of the IPCC documents produced over the last 18 years has been found to contain any substantive errors."
Wake up, Andrew, there have been many substantive errors which have been pointed out, not only in the IPCC representation of observed changes but also in the IPCC model projections for the future.
Whistle blowers, or "trolls" (as you prefer to call them) like Pielke and others have demonstrated some of these errors.
The basic problem is that IPCC has been specifically set up to promote the AGW theory. All data that support this theory are eagerly embraced. Those that do not are glossed over or simply ignored.
Anthropogenic climate forcing factors (primarily human CO2) are being played up while natural climate forcing factors are being downplayed or ignored.
The climate models are set up with programmed in "positive feedbacks" designed specifically to provide alarming results. The theoretical greenhouse impact of less than 1 degree C from doubling atmospheric CO2 (from the year 1900 to 2100) is thereby being exaggerated by a factor of 3 or more. A relatively uneventful 0.6-0.7 degree C temperature increase over the entire 20th Century (as we are emerging from the Little Ice Age) is being escalated to projections of 3 to 10 times this amount over the next century with these hypothetical positive feedbacks, without taking into consideration any negative feedbacks.
Actually existing and projected future sea level changes are being grossly exaggerated.
Ice mass balances in both Antarctica and Greenland are being misrepresented.
Claims are made relating to increased extreme weather events due to AGW that are not substantiated by any real evidence. (BTW your recent blog with the input on Chris Landsea on hurricanes confirmed this, although you had a hard time accepting it).
Claims of future floods, extinctions of species, increases in vector diseases, etc. are made, which have no real scientific basis.
Alarmists (like James Hansen, Ban Ki Moon and Al Gore) use the IPCC exaggerations to go one step further and frighten the world (via the media) with imminent "tipping points", from which our environment, our civilization and our planet will not be able to recover (unless we now endorse draconian carbon taxes or carbon cap and trade schemes, to halt the future emission of GHG).
Face it. This is truly political "junk science", Andrew.
"Climate change" is not a hoax, Andrew, because there is no question that climate is changing (as it always has and always will on this planet), with or without man-made GHG emissions.
The hoax is the IPCC's version of imminently disastrous climate change caused by AGW, which is being misused by politicians to frighten the public into supporting a political agenda.
Face it Andrew, the whole thing smells rotten, and the "IPCC documents produced over the last 18 years" (which you appear to be so proud of) are a key part of the problem.
Regards,
Max
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Black Wallaby Posted 5:07 pm
24 Feb 2008
Compliments to Jim Clarke
Hi Jim,
I enjoyed your diverse and very lucid comments, and can find no fault. Please keep it up; we need to shed the light and try to relieve one of the big political SCARES that stress our lives in the "advanced nations".
Last night I watched on TV a lifetime adventure of some school-kids bussing from a remote village in India some 500 Km to experience boarding an aircraft. The infectious smiles and happiness of these kids and their mentors almost made me cry. They had no fear, for they had a primitive background. The "aircraft" itself was a wrecked Airbus 300, partially removed to a park outside of Delhi by a dedicatee over a period of two years.
Need I say more?
Jim, keep up the good work!
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Black Wallaby Posted 5:20 pm
24 Feb 2008
Max and Jim Clarke
Are you aware of Dessler's latest blog @
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/2/19/222925/715
It is quite busy and interesting
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Black Wallaby Posted 7:22 pm
25 Feb 2008
CCE, wherefore art thou?
Thou hast seemingst gone bereft of wisdom.
Oh, sadly we lack thy infinite clarifications.
Yeh verily thou repondest nixt mine oracles of:
10:15 PM on 20 Feb 2008
10:55 PM on 20 Feb 2008
I am grief stricken, and sore neglected!
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Andrew Dessler Posted 1:22 am
26 Feb 2008
brush off?
Black Wallaby:
Re: Why isn't CCE answering?
Perhaps it is an absence of humility on your part that you fail to see that you have suffered what is known-in-the-trade *(at least over in Australia) as "the brush off".
Smart words. The author should take them to heart.
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Black Wallaby Posted 7:46 am
28 Feb 2008
More Doctor Errata
CCE appears to have stepped out of the debate, and any explanation you or I may have for it is pure speculation.
It cannot be a "brush-off, because that expression means a deliberate act of dismissal. (a recogniable action of clear intent)
It is not possible to lack humility in recognising a deliberate action that is not demonstrable.
Where you were confused on another blog, and lacked humility in recognising it, was that when Chris Castro replied to your Email, it was indeed a "brush-off"
BTW, my plea to CCE to return was intended to be satirical
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Andrew Dessler Posted 7:54 am
28 Feb 2008
underestimation?
I think you underestimate your power to cause people to take deliberate actions to ignore you.
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stockypig Posted 10:45 pm
28 Feb 2008
Red Herring
This entire thread, starting with Mr Desslers first blog, is such a red herring.
There is a very good reason why skeptics or anyone else wouldn't break down the majority of the IPCC report. Simply because most chapters represent scientific observations. There is no reason to question those observations.
The only parts that you might consider questioning, which the skeptics do in fact question, are those parts of the report that interpret the data.
Then the next question obvious question is how on earth you can practically challenge the way the data is interpreted, if you are a skeptic. Well its virtually impossible because it is a closed shop. Hence the vast amount of activity from skeptics in the blogosphere (or whatever you call it).
Another point worth mentioning is that if you bias the reearch from the start (towards proving AGW) that won't necessarily mean that the data presented is wrong (and thus should be challenged). It is more likely to mean that data simply isn't included in the IPCC report that might question the AGW assumption.
So in a nutshell, Mr Desslers first post is nothing more than proAGW propaganda
Stockypig
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Black Wallaby Posted 1:06 pm
29 Feb 2008
Missing Data
Hi Stockeypig,
Yep, it's partly what the IPCC does not cite or discuss, that is part of the problem, not to mention that many lead authors push their own work with clear vested interest
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Black Wallaby Posted 1:53 pm
29 Feb 2008
Dr Dessler, is English your native tongue?
Poor doctor, he makes so many assumptions, and reaches so many wooly conclusions, and this time he further spieled:
"I think you [Black Wallaby] underestimate your power to cause people to take deliberate actions to ignore you."
The history behind this comment is that he is upset because I pointed out to him that an Email he received from professor Chris Castro was clearly a brush-off, (snub) and that he lacked the humility to recognise the blindingly obvious in that case. (assuming what he quoted was true)
Subsequently he has severally quoted my comment back at me, seemingly in retaliation.
This time, we do not know why CCE retired from this blog, (see above), and thus IF a snub was intended, there is no indication of whom it might have been aimed at, and thus no one (including Dessler et al)should be offended by such an unknown act, be it deliberate or otherwise. A brush off or snub has to be percieved as a deliberate act verging on insult, NOT inaction, of unknown reason.
Dr. Dessler:
Have you worked-out what 'brush off' means yet? If not, perhaps study that Email from Chris Castro again, consult my earlier remarks and those of Normalho and Nucbuddy on that blog, and it may dawn on you. Otherwise, please do not hesitate to ask, and perhaps I can give you some more teaching in the English language.
Finally, if my words did discourage CCE, Snaggie, MarkUK and the like to remove themselves from this site, then all to the good. They simply do not contribute anything useful to the debate.
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manacker Posted 5:42 pm
29 Feb 2008
Stockypig is right, Dessler is wrong on IPCC
Hi Stockypig,
You observed: "Another point worth mentioning is that if you bias the research from the start (towards proving AGW) that won't necessarily mean that the data presented is wrong (and thus should be challenged). It is more likely to mean that data simply isn't included in the IPCC report that might question the AGW assumption".
This observation is very astute.
A closer look shows that a lot of "data simply isn't included in the IPCC report that might question the AGW assumption".
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_SPM.pdf
This starts with reports that show observed growth in both the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets over the period 1993-2003, where IPCC claims there were losses over exactly the same time period, which contributed to sea level rise (pp.5,7).
http://bowfell.geol.ucl.ac.uk/~lidunka/EPSS-papers/djw3.p ...
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-11/esa-eas110 ...
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1115356v1
It goes on to make claims of recent accelerated sea level rise (pp.5,7), which is not confirmed by the observed record.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2006GL028492.shtml and http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/inqu/finalprogram/abstract_5446 ... http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2006GL028492.shtml
http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/papersonline/Wunschetal_jcl ...
IPCC then claims a reduction in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the latter part of the 20th century due to AGW (pp.5,6). The actual record shows no such reduction since 1988.
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_anom.php?ui_se ...
Then IPCC states that, "average Arctic temperatures have increased at almost twice the global average rate in the past 100 years. Arctic temperatures have high decadal variability, and a warm period was also seen from 1925 to 1945"(p.7). What IPCC does NOT say, however, is that temperatures in Greenland were higher in the 1930's than they are today, and that the rate of warming in 1920-1930 was about 50% higher than that in 1995-2005.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2006GL026510.shtml
IPCC states that: "Antarctic sea ice continues to show interannual variability and localized changes but no statistically significant average trends, consistent with the lack of warming reflected in atmospheric temperatures averaged across the region".(p.9) This statement glosses over 2006 studies by the National Snow and Ice Data Center that conclude that "Antarctica as a whole is seeing increases in sea ice extent in recent decades" (1978-2006). While temperatures in the relatively small Antarctic Peninsula have shown an increasing trend, the vast majority of the continent has been cooling over the past twenty years, with the conclusion that "continental Antarctic cooling, especially the seasonality of cooling, poses challenges to models of climate and ecosystem change".
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/antarctica_white_paper_fi ...
IPCC uses flawed and since discredited proxy ("hockey stick") reconstructions to claim that temperatures of the last half of the 20th century "are likely the highest in at least the past 1300 years" (p.9), when there is substantial historic and scientific evidence from many parts of the world that confirms the existence of a global Medieval Warm Period (900-1300AD) with temperatures around 1 degree C higher than today, providing direct evidence that the IPCC claim is not true.
http://www.int-res.com/articles/cr2003/23/c023p089.pdf
http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3025
IPCC gives solar forcing a value of only 0.12 W per sq.m. (compared to anthropogenic CO2 at 1.6 W per sq.m.), with the caveat that the "level of scientific understanding" (LOSU) of solar forcing is "low" (pp.4,5). This ignores studies, which conclude that the observed increase in solar forcing "is sufficient to explain most of the observed [20th century] warming" and "much of the warming of the past century can be quantitatively accounted for by the direct and indirect effects of solar activity".
http://www.warwickhughes.com/hoyt/solar.htm
http://www.solarstorms.org/CloudCover.html
IPCC bases its global temperature anomaly and trends on the surface record alone (p.5), ignoring the more comprehensive tropospheric temperature measurements of UAH satellites, which show lower anomalies and lower trends than the surface record, even though the greenhouse effect should show higher temperatures in the troposphere, not on the surface. Compare the official published records: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2 and http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/anomalies/an ...
IPCC claims that discrepancies between the surface and satellite temperature records have been "largely reconciled" (p.5), even though these discrepancies clearly still exist (see above).
IPCC states that the effect of the urban heat island (UHI) effect of exaggerating the temperature anomalies in the surface record are "real but local, and have a negligible influence (less than 0.006 deg C per decade and zero over the oceans) on these values" (p.5). This claim ignores many studies from all over the world, which show that this effect is substantial (median value of 0.06 deg C per decade), not local and would reduce the temperature anomaly by 0.3 to 0.5 deg C. Note: In addition to two studies made for the USA by Karl (1998) and Kalnay/Cai (2003) several studies world wide have been referenced by climate scientist Douglas Hoyt on Roger Pielke's website on March 29, 2006 (comment 16)
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2006/03/23/new-paper-on-so ....
A major problem with the surface temperature record is that surface weather stations have historically been placed where people live (and, hence, want to know what the temperature is). These locations have grown exponentially with increased world population and urban plus economic development, with buildings, concrete and asphalt surfaces, automotive traffic, air conditioners in summer and building heating in winter, etc. All of these factors are listed by NOAA in its U.S. Climate Reference Network classification as contributors to readings that are between 1 and 5 degrees C higher than the actual temperature away from these sources. They have contributed to the UHI distortion, which is not noted in the satellite record, since it covers the troposphere all over the globe, but away from these sources of error. For a good summary on how the UHI effect works see:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/URBAN_HEAT_ISLAND.pdf
Around two-thirds of the weather stations, mostly in remote and rural locations in northern latitudes and many in the former Soviet Union, were shut down between 1975 and 1995, with over 60% of these shut down in the 4-year period 1990-1993. This coincides exactly with a sharp increase in the calculated global mean temperature (particularly in the Northern Hemisphere), giving additional credence for a significant UHI distortion of the surface temperature record. There is good reason to believe that, prior to the breakup of the Soviet Union, these remote Siberian locations systematically reported lower than actual temperatures, in order to qualify for added subsidies from the central government, which were tied to low temperatures, so as this distorted record was removed, it resulted in a spurious warming trend. For a graph showing this correlation see:
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/nvst.html
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/intellicast.ess ...
Finally, meteorologist Anthony Watts has examined close to half of the 1,221 weather stations making up the U.S. Historical Climatology Network and published the results. Of those examined, more than half fall short of federal guidelines for optimum placement. Some examples include weather stations placed near sewage treatment plants, parking lots, and near cars, buildings and air-conditioners - all artificial heat sources which cause spurious higher temperature readings, providing physical confirmation of a root cause for a significant UHI effect on the record.
http://www.surfacestations.org/downloads/USHCN_stationlis ...
Watts gives the example with photographs of two fairly closely located weather stations, both located north of Sacramento. CA: one (Orland, CA) is properly positioned in a grassy area with trees around, while the other (nearby Marysville, CA) is located near an asphalt parking lot with buildings and airconditioning units nearby. A comparison of the official NASA GISS temperature records of the two stations over the period 1981-2005 shows that the improperly sited station shows a spurious increase in temperature of 0.23 deg C per decade higher than the well-positioned station, again confirming a significant UHI distortion.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station ...
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station ...
A 2007 report from Winnipeg, Canada shows that the average low temperature recorded in the center of the city [due to the urban heat island] was 2.7°C warmer and the average high temperature was 1.6 degrees warmer than that recorded at the more isolated and exposed Winnipeg airport location. This study concludes that: "There is a strong case to be made that changes in the locations of measuring stations and the human activities taking place near them [that have occurred] can explain the differences in records [between the surface and satellite temperatures]." "The IPCC have made indecisive attempts at demonstrating that the surface measured data they use is reliable" and "Changes in surface measured temperatures are significantly different to more reliable satellite measurements."
http://www.fcpp.org/main/publication_detail.php?PubID=188 ...
A 2006 study on land use/land cover change effects on temperature trends at rural U.S. weather stations showed that there was no significant temperature trend prior to the period of greatest land use changes; "in contrast, after the period of greatest LULC change was observed, 95% of the stations that exhibited significant trends (minimum, maximum, or mean temperature) displayed warming trends".
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2006GL026358.shtml
The IPCC attempt to counter these many reports has been to refer to studies by Parker (2004, 2006), which found there was no effective difference in global trends if one segregates the data between "windy and calm nights". Note that Parker does not directly measure overall trends in temperature differences between urban and nearby rural stations, (a.k.a. the UHI effect), but makes a comparison based on the trend between "windy and calm nights" (with interpolated wind data obtained from questionable reanalysis). He concludes: "This analysis demonstrates that urban warming has not introduced significant biases into estimates of recent global warming. The reality and magnitude of global-scale warming is supported by the near-equality of temperature trends on windy nights with trends based on all data." Despite this stated conclusion the study does not really demonstrate that there has not been a significant UHI effect, as no direct urban and rural temperature comparisons were made. A review of the Parker study entitled "Surface Air Temperature Trends at Night" concludes that: "Parker's [2004] conclusions, therefore, need further analysis and interpretation before they can be used to conclude whether or not there is an influence of urban warming on the large-scale temperature trends."
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/ptojects/soap/pubs/papers/jo ...
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/publications/pdf/R-302.pdf ...
IPCC states (p.5) that: "The average atmospheric water vapour content has increased since at least the 1980s over land and ocean as well as in the upper troposphere. The increase is broadly consistent with the extra water vapour that warmer air can hold." This claim sounds pretty definite but it ignores studies on global atmospheric water vapor trends from satellite measurements over the period 1996-2006, which show increases in some regions and decreases in others, with the conclusion that "For the whole globe the increasing trend is non-significant when taking into account the 1997/1998 El Nino event, which is seen in the globally averaged data as strong positive H2O amounts from September 1997 to March 1999." http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2005GL025393.shtml
IPCC claims more intense tropical cyclone activity in the latter part of the 20th century, linking this to AGW (p.8). The actual record shows no increase, but a slight decrease, both in the USA and elsewhere, with most Atlantic hurricanes occurring in the 1940's, not "in the latter part of the 20th century".
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/deadly/index.html
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/20070109/20 ...
http://hurricane.atmos.colostate.edu/Forecasts/2007/nov20 ... ...
IPCC makes claims linking AGW with increased droughts, floods, heat waves and other extreme weather events in the late 20th century, claiming a "51% likelihood" that this is true, and then adding the caveat that this is "based on expert opinion rather than attribution studies" (p.8) (in other words, it's an unsubstantiated "50-50 guess" posing as a scientific observation). No comprehensive data are available for extreme weather events on a global scale but, for comparison, the actual record shows there has been no recent increase in US tornado activity due to global warming, but a significant decrease instead, with the worst year for tornado deaths in 1905 when 254 people died and yet there were far fewer people living in the tornado prone areas.
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/killers.html
The above discrepancies just cover the observed actual record to date, without even considering the projections for the future, which are based on computer model studies with built-in positive feedbacks, storylines and scenarios designed to give exaggerated predictions of warming, loss of ice sheets, sea level rise and increased extreme weather events.
So you're spot on, Stockypig, when you write, "data simply isn't included in the IPCC report that might question the AGW assumption".
Regards,
Max
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Black Wallaby Posted 6:51 pm
29 Feb 2008
Gee, That Max
He just mentions the tip of the iceberg
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manacker Posted 3:59 pm
02 Mar 2008
Still going strong?
Yeah, stockypig and BlackWallaby, but as Andrew claims, "The fourth IPCC report is still going strong a year later".
But maybe a little less strong than a year ago.
And who knows about next year? (Watch the sun, folks, which the IPCC ignores.)
Don't want to cause Andrew any anxiety or angst, but time may be running out for his favorite AGW disaster prediction (or "projection", as he prefers to call it), as alarmists like Hansen ratchet up the rhetoric, but the world sees clearly that, in fact, no "disaster" is happening.
Worst of all for Andrew (and Hansen), things seem to be cooling off lately, despite IPCC's dire predictions of an alarming heat wave.
Maybe it will be time to put Andrew, Hansen, and all the other alarmists back into their box and to abandon the IPCC as irrelevant.
But I am sure that there will be another "imminent disaster" to follow this one once it is buried as a hoax, and that others, like Andrew, will be there "crying wolf" all over again.
Max
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Black Wallaby Posted 4:15 pm
08 Mar 2008
To all USA believers of the IPCC
Do you also watch that "Dumbing-Down" FOX NEWS on TV?
BTW, Richard Murdoch is NOT AUSTRALIAN, he changed his citizenship to that of the USA, apparently for commercial reasons
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