Wednesday
Dec162009
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Two degrees/century still falsified
Dec 16, 2009 Climate: Models Climate: Surface Those who are new to the nitty gritty of the climate debate may not be aware of the sterling work Lucia Liljegren does in monitoring monthly temperature anomalies against the IPCC's last published predictions of warming at 2°C/century.
Lucia is very careful to make her work bulletproof, in terms of avoiding accusations of cherrypicked start points and careful treatment of "weather noise". I think the warmists have stopped trying to poke holes in her results now.
The GISS figures are out for November and Lucia reports that they are highish, at 0.68°C, but not high enough to stop the IPCC's hypothesis from being remaining in falsified territory. I wonder why I don't read this in the newspapers?
Reader Comments (20)
We can but wonder. Mind you, her comparisons are presumably to the all-juiced-up ("adjusted") tempeatures?
You mean a woman! Someone should tell the BBC...
The "warm-mongers" have some new graphs. See: http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1M4mYB/bowmanglobalchange.com/graphics.php
These claim CO2 has NEVER been as high as it is now (or at least in the last 650,000 years)... I suspect this is playing a little fast and loose with the figures and the timeframes.
An amusing report -- given the history of the warm-mongers. In particular, a few days ago Jonathan was good enough to point me to the Science on-line site and the Abstract of S. I. Rasool & S. H. Schneider. Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate, Science, Vol 173, July 171 pp 138-141
That abstract said:
"Abstract. Effects on the global temperature of large increases in carbon dioxide and aerosol densities in the atmosphere of Earth have been computed. It is found that, although the addition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does increase the surface temperature, the rate of temperature increase diminishes with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. For aerosols, however, the net effect of increase in density is to reduce the surface temperature of Earth. Because of the exponential dependence of the backscattering, the rate of temperature decrease is augmented with increasing aerosol content. An increase by only a factor of 4 in global aerosol background concentration may be sufficient to reduce the surface temperature by as much as 3.5°K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease over the whole globe is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age."
As I have noted, I am a life member of AAAS and have been one for over 40 years. So I send an email to them and they explained that all I needed was the nine digits placed between # and # on the mailing label and I was in to the site.
Naturally, I pulled the actual paper which for copyright reasons I cannot reproduce in its entirety here, but I can under the US fair use doctrine reproduce at least some of it. This is their Conclusion paragraph which comes early in the paper:
"We will report here on the first results of a calculation in which separate estimates were made of the effects on global temperature of large increases in the amount of CO2 and dust in the atmosphere. It is found that even an increase by a factor of 8 in the amount of CO2, which is highly unlikely in the next several thousand years, will produce an increase in the surface temperature of less than 20K. However, the effect on surface temperature of an increase in the aerosol content of the atmosphere is found to be quite significant. An increase by a factor of 4 in the equilibrium dust concentration in the global atmosphere, which cannot be ruled out as a possibility within the next century, could decrease the mean surface temperature by as much as 3.50K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease could be sufficient to trigger an ice age! To perform these calculations " (bolding added)
Hum -- Eight fold increase less than 20K (or 20C).
As Marcellus (Hamlet Act I, Scene 4) notes: "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."
I bet you didn't know that Shakespeare was a denier
@Don Pabo: "will produce an increase in the surface temperature of less than 20K. However, the effect on surface temperature of an increase in the aerosol content of the atmosphere is found to be quite significant"> Seems he didn't think that an increase of 20K was at all "significant".
Would someone (with time to spare) be so kind as to point me in the direction of some background to this measurement of temperature anomilies, ie blog entries or links which would help explain what's going on and enable me to get my head round it ?
With the internet allowing unrestricted dissemination of information we don't have to blindly accept what we are told, these are very interesting times. Great blogg.
Dearieme
YOU GOT IT!
And today he moans death and damnation over what? My, my does reality change.
And of course, unsaid is that if we want to counter the effect of CO2, all we have to do is fill the air with coal dust. Not that I am for that at all -- just ask any coal miner about Black Lung.
Off Topic Alert: FoE Used and Abused in Copenhagen.
Am I the only one who feels sorry for FoE activists? They're maybe a pain in the arse and would take us back to the dark ages if they could but they're mostly sincere and well-meaning, if a bit loopy and mis-guided.
Friends of the Earth Scotland Media Release
For immediate release Wednesday 16 December 2009
FRIENDS OF THE EARTH SUSPENDED FROM UN CLIMATE TALKS
Friends of the Earth Scotland arrived at the Bella Center this morning to
take part as official observers in the UN climate change negotiations were
told that they have been excluded from the talks.
Duncan McLaren, Friends of the Earth Scotland Chief Executive, is one of the
delegates denied access despite his official UN and secondary admission
passes.
He is blogging live from the entrance lobby at the conference, where more
than 50 Friends of the Earth International delegates are being held back.
Duncan McLaren said: "We are here trying to do our bit, and now we are not
even allowed to do that. No one from Friends of the Earth International is
being allowed in today, as a result of unspecified "security issues".
"I fear that our outspoken support for the African delegation has sparked
that we will take direct action inside the talks. Sadly it¹s rather typical
of the somewhat paranoid approach to security we have seen this week which
has already led to ever tighter restrictions on the number of NGO observers
allowed in."
Friends of the Earth Scotland is part of Friends of the Earth groups from
around the
world, ranging from Nigeria to Japan to Denmark.
Friends of the Earth International Chair Nnimmo Bassey had the following
statement: "We are surprised and shocked that Friends of the Earth member
groups from around the world and other non-governmental organizations have
been denied access to the negotiations this morning. Our organizations
represent millions of people around the world and provide a critical
voice on behalf of climate justice inside the UN. In effect we are being
expelled from the talks. Its a sad day for climate justice."
Lucia does try to be careful. And after some argument, she does not use language like "not high enough to stop the IPCC's hypothesis from being remaining in falsified territory. ". The reason is that it isn't the IPCC's hypothesis. They projected, subject to scenario's, long term rises, but there's no prediction that could be taken to say that the rise over the last decade would be 0.2C. IPPC projection's themselves have an error range. That's why she uses the phrase "nominal IPCC Trend".
If someone said the temperature would be rising from 2000-2009 by 0.2 C/decade, then yes, that is falsified. But the IPCC didn't.
I would suggest you take a look at todays Daily politics programme (Wednesday). Andrew Neil was on sparkling form putting some very pertinent questions to the shadow climate minister who really seemed out of his league. It strikes me that Neil is the only broadcaster on British television who is willing to ask questions others wouldn't dare. Reading his daily politic blog He certainly refuses to swallow the consensus.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/the_daily_politics/
and here for the blog.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/dailypolitics/andrewneil/
Nick
I'm not sure what your objection is. If I trace the heritage of Lucia's postings on the subject I get back to this
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/ipcc-projections-overpredict-recent-warming/
which shows the CIs for the actual temps and the CIs for the predicted trend. She is taking into account the IPCC's error range already.
You don't seem to be disagreeing with what Lucia has done, but rather with my language. I'm struggling to understand why. 2C/century is what IPCC communicated (see the above link). The fact is that current temperatures look too low for this prediction to be right. I used the term "territory" to imply that this might change in the longer term, but right now it looks too high.
Terry, I am sure you are not a halfwit, and on that assumption may I point you to Climate Audit at climateaudit.org.
On the left hand side of the opening screen, you will find a list of the topics covered. The posts can be dauntingly technical, but I find the comments below often tease out the meaning for the layman.
I also recomend Watts Up With That? at wattsupwiththat.com, much more accessible and amusingly varied. When you find a link to surfacestations.org, follow it to discover exactly what the surface temperature record is based on. That exploration will be something of an eye-opener.
Bishop
Various people, myself included, have argued with Lucia over this, and some sort of stasis has been reached. There are two kinds of error involved. The IPCC summarises model results. These project all kinds of fluctuation, as you can see from the graphs. From this, the IPCC deduces a "central tendency" of about 2C per century. That doesn't imply that in any particular decade the temperature will rise 0.2C. If they were to provide such a prediction (and they didn't) they would add error estimates, probably quite large.
Lucia tests this "nominal 0.2C" against the observed temperatures. These have observed fluctuations, which she models as a random process (she calls it weather noise), and tests whether an estimate of 0.2C for the observed rise would be out of range. She generally finds that it is. But the uncertainty she's testing is about what it is. It does not take account of the uncertainty the IPCC would undoubtedly have attached to "what it ought to be". The models predict variation due to cause - one could call it chaos. It includes ENSO's and PDO's etc. They don't predict these very well, but they do create identifiable fluctuations in the models, which smoothe out in the long term. The IPCC's ranges that they apply to projection diagrams reflect that. If you really want to falsify an IPCC prediction, you have to add the uncertainty of what the trend is to the uncertainty from the models of what, in the short term, is expected.
Incidentally, there's a recent discussion in which she expects that the verdict on falsification will change soon, because of ENSO. That's an interesting conundrum, when falsity can vary over time.
Nick - You stated you criticism very clearly - thanks for posting.
Thanks Jeff.
I've bookmarked climateaudit.org/ and surfacestations.org now and will be having a good read tomorrow.
(the link in Bishop Hill's post looks useful too...it's very late though)
I've been dipping in and out of 'what's up with that' for a week or so now and agree it's very good. I smelled a rat sometime ago regarding alleged AGW and have been doing a little research into it recently. I've got to the stage where nothing really supprises me anymore.
I've noticed the media, particularly the BBC have really gone to town over this last week in trying to bolster the public belief in AGW, perhaps its a sign that the polls which effectively show an increasing number of people believe that the science behind AGW is settled aren't necessarily quite what they are cracked up to be.
Nick
This then means that the worse the models are at predicting the short-term noise - ENSO and PDO and so on - the more difficult it is to falsify them. i.e. if the models are predicting ENSO fluctuations twice as big as those seen in reality then it is correspondingly more difficult to falsify 2deg/century. Am I right?
Dear Bishop and commenters,
This "Nick Stokes" creature - the best thing is to ignore "it" completely.
If you attempt to engage with it, it will just fill up your blog with ever longer pompous, boring screeds of rubbish.
It is a pest on other blogs as well.
Bishop, yes, but that is because the quoted error bars will be larger. You could says that there's less to falsify.
The model projections are quoted as 2C/century or whatever because the predictions of PDO etc are so uncertain that a uniform rate of rise is the best that can be quoted. If they were predictable, the projection would be more complex.
Must have hit a nerve - "Nick Stokes" still did a pompous, boring blah blah but thankfully kept it short this time.
Lay off please