A far from settled science! In fact – Climate Science may well be a discipline but it is a long, long way from being a science.
But the bottom line is that when “the observed trends are pushing down, whereas the models are pushing up” and “the mismatch between rising greenhouse-gas emissions and not-rising temperatures is among the biggest puzzles in climate science just now. “ it is time to stop fudging the models and to start examining the assumptions in the models again.
An important article and a “Must Read” even if I would take exception to their uncritical and naive acceptance of the effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
OVER the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar. The world added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all the CO₂ put there by humanity since 1750. And yet, as James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, observes, “the five-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade.”
Temperatures fluctuate over short periods, but this lack of new warming is a surprise. Ed Hawkins, of the University of Reading, in Britain, points out that surface temperatures since 2005 are already at the low end of the range of projections derived from 20 climate models (see chart 1). If they remain flat, they will fall outside the models’ range within a few years.
The mismatch between rising greenhouse-gas emissions and not-rising temperatures is among the biggest puzzles in climate science just now. It does not mean global warming is a delusion. Flat though they are, temperatures in the first decade of the 21st century remain almost 1°C above their level in the first decade of the 20th. But the puzzle does need explaining.
The mismatch might mean that—for some unexplained reason—there has been a temporary lag between more carbon dioxide and higher temperatures in 2000-10. Or it might be that the 1990s, when temperatures were rising fast, was the anomalous period. Or, as an increasing body of research is suggesting, it may be that the climate is responding to higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in ways that had not been properly understood before. This possibility, if true, could have profound significance both for climate science and for environmental and social policy. ……..
………… So what does all this amount to? The scientists are cautious about interpreting their findings. As Dr Knutti puts it, “the bottom line is that there are several lines of evidence, where the observed trends are pushing down, whereas the models are pushing up, so my personal view is that the overall assessment hasn’t changed much.”
Two interesting articles today and perhaps they presage the return of some sanity to the ludicrous, Canute-like attempts to try and control climate. The first is in Die Welt (which is usually a most politically correct adherent of global warming dogma) about the nonsense that the Greens have wrought in German policy (by Sebastian Lüning and Fritz Vahrenholt reported by P. Gosselin). The second is a leader in the Telegraph calling for the repeal of the Climate Change Act in the UK.
NoTricksZone: Germany’s Energiewende [energy transition over to renewables] is being watched closely in foreign countries. Already bets are being made on whether the expensive experiment is going to work. Meanwhile increasing numbers of international experts are expressing serious doubts. In the March 20th print edition of German national daily Die Welt, Daniel Wetzel reports on a survey by the World Energy Council in an article titled “The Energiewende is an international flop”. An online versionof the report is now available and bears the watered down title: “Other countries disdaining the Energiewende”:
Worldwide doubt about the success of the German Energiewende is growing. International experts are sure that the German economy is weakening. This is the finding of a survey from the World Energy Council. […] A rapid short-term shutdown of nuclear power plants along with unlimited subsidies for renewable energies: In Germany this has been viewed as the silver bullet for energy policy since the Fukushima accident. However in Europe and globally, there’s hardly a nation that views the German ‘Energiewende”’ as worth copying. These are the findings of the German section of the World Energy Council in 23 member countries, made exclusively available to Die Welt. […] The rising doubt is possibly related to the unexpectedly rapidly rising electricity prices in Germany, which are having a dissuasive effect. Stotz believes: ‘Obviously one has to be able to afford an energy transition.’ (Read more at Welt Online).
In a commentary appearing at Die Welt titled, “Germany, the odd one out”, Daniel Wetzel pleads for more prudence, and rejects climate alarmism as the most important argument for an Energiewende:
Also the necessity to rapidly end the use of fossil fuels no longer appears as urgent as it was just a few years ago. Indeed, in the meantime, fear of climate change appears to have evaporated worldwide. Global warming has been taking a break for over 10 years, and politicians in many countries appear as if they would rather await a good explanation for this phenomenon before again making the fight against climate change a high priority. Quite apart from this: one other large industrial country has just succeeded in reducing its per capita CO2 emissions to levels of the early 1960s. The best in the class when it comes to climate politics is the USA. Thanks to fracking technology in natural gas drilling, they have been able to switch off dirty coal power plants.”
“The Tory part of the Coalition is beginning to recognise some painful truths, but it is time for the Coalition to tear up its energy policy before the lights go out” says The Telegraph:
…… Because of a misguided faith in green energy, we have left ourselves far too dependent on foreign gas supplies, largely provided by Russian and Middle Eastern producers. Only 45 per cent of our gas consumption comes from domestic sources. All it takes is a spell of bad weather, and the closure of a gas pipeline from Belgium, to leave us dangerously exposed, and to send gas prices soaring. Talk of rationing may be exaggerated, but our energy policy is failing to deal with Britain’s fundamental incapacity to produce our own power.
…… It is time for the Coalition to tear up its energy policy before the lights really do go out. The first priority must be to repeal the Climate Change Act of 2008, with its brutal, punishing targets: ……… But green technology – in its current incarnation, anyway – is just too inefficient and expensive to meet our energy needs. In some of the worst weather for more than 30 years, green power still only provides a tiny fraction of our energy needs. Solar power is of limited use in our cold, dark, northern climate. And wind power isn’t much better – cold weather doesn’t necessarily mean windy weather.
…….. He will know that American gas prices have plummeted, thanks to the US embracing the shale gas revolution. ………. Our energy problems have been deepened by the greener-than-green Liberal Democrats, with their seeming stranglehold on the Cabinet post of Energy Secretary. ………….
There is some good news, however. As we report today, government sources have said that wind power subsidies are to be cut again. This is a move in the right direction and we very much welcome it. It is to be hoped that there will be more such announcements, and concrete actions, from a government that has neglected a fundamental duty – to keep the lights on, energy affordable and our houses warm.
known in particular for his statistical critique, with economist Ross McKitrick, of the controversial hockey stick graph, which shows a sharp, and arguably unprecedented, increase in late 20th century global temperature.
He is at his sleuthing best again and Science will soon have to retract this new “hockey stick” paper
A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years, by Shaun A. Marcott, Jeremy D. Shakun, Peter U. Clark and Alan C. Mix, Science 8 March 2013: Vol. 339 no. 6124 pp. 1198-1201 DOI: 10.1126/science.1228026
This paper is apparently based on Marcott’s PhD thesis but the thesis contains no hockey stick!
By the time the paper was published a hockey stick had appeared. In the most generous interpretation the paper was “modified” to fit in with global warming dogma before being published in Science. A less generous – but more likely – interpretation is that this is just fraud instigated probably by the global warming pundits who were the reviewers of the Science paper.
Marcott, Shakun, Clark and Mix did not use the published dates for ocean cores, instead substituting their own dates. The validity of Marcott-Shakun re-dating will be discussed below, but first, to show that the re-dating “matters” (TM-climate science), here is a graph showing reconstructions using alkenones (31 of 73 proxies) in Marcott style, comparing the results with published dates (red) to results with Marcott-Shakun dates (black). As you see, there is a persistent decline in the alkenone reconstruction in the 20th century using published dates, but a 20th century increase using Marcott-Shakun dates. (It is taking all my will power not to make an obvious comment at this point.) Figure 1. Reconstructions from alkenone proxies in Marcott style. Red– using published dates; black– using Marcott-Shakun dates.
The media went bonkers in reporting the Marcott paper and this diagram will now go down in infamy:
This scandal is causing much attention ( here and here) but there is a deafening silence from the authors, from Science and from the – no doubt – anonymous reviewers.
I cannot draw but I have a clear image of a lone McIntyre battling against the Hockey Sticks. Perhaps a Josh can do justice to the image in my head.
Piers Corbyn is not the most popular figure in “scientific” circles and is probably detested among “main-stream” weather pundits. He just seems to get his forecasts right more often than conventional weather-men do, but he does not reveal his methods and this causes many to dismiss him as a lucky charlatan. They prefer to consider him an astrologer rather than a colourful but serious astrophysicist who might actually be considering the correct parameters. That he might also be making some money from his commercial weather forecasts is even more galling to some.
Weather Action: Our forecasts, which have independently proven peer-reviewed significant skill – unlike all others in the field – are based on our revolutionary Solar-Lunar-Action-Technique (SLAT) which is increasing in scope and skill as our researches advance.
But I like that he gives due importance to solar effects. And his track record in forecasting cannot be denied and I am inclined to take him rather seriously in spite of his use of horribly garish colours in his presentations. His results if not his methods are getting some attention in Parliament.
“MIA fingerprint now overwhelming” – astrophysicist
“March 10th 1947** was the day of the thaw ending the late snowy cold winter of 1947 in Britain & Europe and there was a giant sunspot group at the centre of the solar disc. This year, three magnetic (22yr) solar cycles later, solar activity has been generally very low and this day marked deep cold” – heralding more snow, on 12th , when snow-blizzards hit S/E England (Pic Folkstone) as WeatherAction forecasted in detail 25 days ahead (see map). “This is further evidence of the inevitable plunge – from now – into the new Mini-Ice Age we warned of some years ago”, said Piers Corbyn, astrophysicist of WeatherAction.com, March 10th. “The CO2 story is over. It has been pointing the world in the wrong direction for too long. The serious implications of the developing MIA to agriculture and the world economy through the next 25 to 35 years must be addressed.”
Prof. Peter Ziegler (b. 1928) is a Swiss geologist and Titular Professor of Global Geology at the Geological-Paleontological Institute, University of Basel. He is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and the Academia Europaea. His presentation on the “Mechanisms of Climate Change” from February this year is pretty self-contained and self explanatory and my comments would only be superfluous.
Climate change during industrial times can be fully explained by natural processes
During the last 550 Million years major natural climate changes involved large fluctuations in temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentrations
Apart from orbital forcing and the distribution of continents and oceans, variations in solar activity and the galactic cosmic ray flux controlled climate changes during the geological past and probably still do so
Despite rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations we may experience during the coming decades a serious temperature decline akin to the Maunder Minimum due to decreasing solar activity
There is overwhelming evidence that Temperature forces the Carbon Cycle and not vice-versa, as postulated by IPCC
IPCC underestimates the effects of direct and indirect solar climate forcing but overestimates CO2 forcing by assuming unrealistic positive temperature feedbacks from a concomitant water vapor and cloud increase
The IPCC consensus on anthropogenic CO2 emissions causing Global Warming cannot be reconciled with basic data and is therefore challenged
The anonymous disseminator of the Climategate emails (Climategate and Climategate 2.0) has been dubbed Mr. FOIA in the blogosphere. He still remains anonymous but he has now released the password for the large email dump he released under CG2.0. The password has been released to some selected bloggers in the hope that they will have the time to sift through them, leave out any personal or irrelevant indiscretions and focus on the unprofessional and unethical manipulations of data by the “climate science” clique/hierarchy that was first revealed in Climategate.
We shall no doubt be hearing much over the next few weeks as this “crowd-sourced” analysis of the emails proceeds.
Mr. FOIA has probably achieved more than any other single individual in applying some brakes to the runaway train that was the global warming orthodoxy before Copenhagen. There is much speculation as to the identity of Mr. FOIA and my current speculative summary of his profile is:
not resident in the US or UK (>99%)
unlikely (<30%) to be usually resident in one of the old Commonwealth countries (Australia, Canada, S. Africa, India, N. Z., ….)
probably (>99%) not a native English speaker but with a formidable command of English
has possibly (>60%) been assigned to the University of East Anglia for some time (any faculty)
may have been (c. 30%) temporarily assigned to the CRE of the UEA
high probability of being resident in Europe (>70%)
could possibly (>30%) be originally from Scandinavia/Baltic States/N. Europe
has spent considerable time in the IT/programming fields (>99.9%)
IT experience perhaps only as support for his mainstream activities (>60%)
probably (>95%) male
probably (>75%) “white”
probably (>80%) aged under 50
probably (c. 80%) now agnostic/humanistic
probably (>50%) brought up as a Protestant/Lutheran
probably (> 50%) prefers wine to beer
probably (>50%) prefers beer to whiskey
probably (>60%) prefers soccer to baseball
probably (>80%) does not play golf
A photograph of Phil Jones – one of the Climategate stars – in his office from Tom Nelson’s blog. I can see why FOIA requests are far too time consuming for him! A good thing that the science is settled. If only Phil had learnt to use Excel.
Phil Jones in his office with his data. Good thing the science is settled.
The NOAA/NASA Solar Cycle Prediction Panel is puzzled. They don’t know if we are reaching solar maximum or whether another little peak could be on its way which would shift solar maximum for SC24 to 2014 from 2013.
And should we compare SC24 with SC14 or should it be SC5?
This Sciencecast video is a good summary of what we don’t know:
Landscheidt’s prediction is that this Minimum will last till 2060 so we can expect low sunspot activity for the next 4 sunspot cycles (till SC28).
Landscheidt’s predicted solar minima
The Sc24 – SC5 comparison looks like a repeating pattern but it would be wrong to assume that the Sun cares about this and it will surely continue to keep us perplexed as it does its own thing.
SC24 compared to SC5
The Big Picture is persuasive – even if we don’t really know what the sun is upto and even less about how the Earth dances to the Sun’s music.
Recent solar activity (Wikipedia) showing the Maunder and Dalton minima
by Ole Humlum, Kjell Stordahl and Jan-Erik Solheim
Highlights:
Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging 11–12 months behind changes in global sea surface temperature.
Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging 9.5–10 months behind changes in global air surface temperature.
Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging about 9 months behind changes in global lower troposphere temperature.
Changes in ocean temperatures explain a substantial part of the observed changes in atmospheric CO2 since January 1980.
Changes in atmospheric CO2 are not tracking changes in human emissions.
Fig. 5. 12-month change of global atmospheric CO2 concentration (NOAA; green), change in global surface air temperature (NCDC; blue), land surface air temperature (NCDC; yellow) and ocean surface air temperature (NCDC; red dotted). All graphs are showing monthly values of DIFF12, the difference between the average of the last 12 months and the average for the previous 12 months for each data series.
P. Gosselin at No Tricks Zone is quite right in pointing out the enormous political problems in now admitting that the global warming hypothesis which has been accepted dogma for 3 decades may not be correct after all.
The big question now circulating through the stunned European media, governments and activist organisations is how could the warming stop have happened? Moreover, how do we now explain it to the public?
His recent posts got me to making the parallels between the AGW climate “scientists” and Lance Armstrong.
Both
have posed as heroes “saving” the world / sport
have promoted dogma based on lies for many years,
have made fortunes in the process,
have lied and cheated to maintain the initial fraud,
have attacked and tried to destroy those who would disclose their fraud,
have – on the side – led to some good work along the way (in cancer research and in many disciplines connected to climate), and
will come out of the cesspit smelling of roses
I wonder if the Nobel Peace Committee could revoke their decision and if Al Gore and the IPCC could be stripped of their Nobel prize? They can both afford to give the money back.
The k2p blog 