Tuesday
Sep212010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill L'Institut Turgot on le rapport Montford
Sep 21, 2010 Climate: CRU Climate: Oxburgh Climate: Parliament Climate: Russell For the French speakers among you, the Brussels-based liberal think-tank L'Institut Turgot discusses my GWPF report on its blog. (That's liberal in the old-fashioned sense of the word).
Reader Comments (28)
Surely they got the translation of 'trick' correctly:
I should add:
Good spot Patagon. The word they should have had is "ruse" according to my dictionary. Quite a good fit, as it usually has connotations of sleight-of-hand, but if one (or Oxburgh) looks hard enough, one can find an innocent meaning.
The French report wrongly states that Mike Mann wrote to Jones boasting about his "trick ... to hide the decline". It was in fact Jones who sent a message reporting he had at last been able to reproduce "Mike's Nature trick... to hide the decline.
I must say, I love automatic translators. Babelfish, in this case.
In one place, it translates the acronym CRU as BELIEVED, and in others as VINTAGE. Yes, in all caps, no doubt because the original is so formatted.
Although I may get in trouble with the French authorities to suggest that East Anglia has a "grand cru" institution.
The Institut Turgot moved to Paris most of its activities four years and a half ago.
This must the French version of IPCC: 'Groupe Intergouvernemental d’Experts sur l’Evolution du Climat (GIEC)'. The French version is perhaps a little bit more misleading than the English one.
A more descriptive title is:
PR Machine to Produce Summary Reports Following Required Template for Policy Makers Meanwhile Distracting Thousands of Scientists to Publish Any Old Stuff in the Bulky Main Reports Which Few Others Will Ever Read.
That does lack a bit of snappiness. Futerra won't hire me now. But wait! Here is my second attempt:
Policy-Led Evidence-Machine Utilising Computer Models Rigged to Give CO2 a Leading Role in Climate and Thereby Facilitate the Dismantling of Industry Worldwide as per the Vision Revealed to Maurice Strong
Still not quite right. Might try it French in case a more memorable sequence of initials emerges...
Patagon, David S
'Astuce' seems a fair translation IF 'trick' means 'trick of the trade'. 'Hide the decline', however, bears only one interpretation.
"Utilising Computer Models Rigged to Give CO2 a Leading Role in Climate"
Sep 22, 2010 at 9:56 AM | John Shade
I find claims like this to be rather strange and very paranoid. Like most other scientists, climate scientists go to school, to university, and then on to work in their chosen field. Thousands of climate scientists all over the world do this, and their results are pretty much the same.
For these models all to be rigged and compromised, would require a global conspiracy and corruption. It's clearly not for funding - there's money to be made in disproving AGW, not reproving it. So at what point do these university leavers all decide to abandon their principles and integrity, and join a global conspiracy to rig climate models?
It's clearly impossible. Does that really not occur to you?
"For these models all to be rigged and compromised, would require a global conspiracy and corruption. "
ZDB, there is no need for conspiracy where group think incompetence will suffice. The evidence you seek is in the quote, to compromise the model, all they need do is "Give CO2 a Leading Role in Climate".
It's clearly impossible. Does that really not occur to you?
Grand CRU: French for great growth, ala "Ze 'Ockey Stik".
Mon dieu, I feel a touch of the 'Allo 'Allo! is coming on.
Herr Mac. This is very serious! The Gestapo is only insured for third party!
ZDB, if you really believe what you have written, then I do think you may be near an epiphany re the alarm-scam on climate. I suspect that where you talk of 'thousands', you will find 'dozens', and that the deep politicisation that is apparent in the IPCC has damaged the fledgling 'climate science' in many ways, and has led to a great deal of mischief-making in many quarters. Part of the damage is due to understating the crudities and uncertainties and disagreements in computer models of climate.
I have put together (below) a few easy-to-find, easy-to-read references that may plant a seed or two of doubt in you, and encourage you to investigate this area further. My own search for anything at all convincing for the case that humans are or will cause alarming changes to the climate has so far been fruitless. I would be interested to hear of references you may have that would encourage me to think differently.
(1) Source: http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/climate-co2-sensitivity-overestimated
'More plainly put, making simplifying assumptions about nature has led to an over estimation of carbon dioxide's impact on temperature. As experienced modelers will tell you, simplifying assumptions can be the death of any simulation. Here is more proof that the climate models used by the IPCC and other climate researchers don't have a chance in hell of getting future climate change correct. The closer science looks at the real world processes involved in climate regulation the more absurd the IPCC's computer driven fairy tale appears. Instead of blithely modeling climate based on hunches and suppositions, climate scientists would be better off abandoning their ivory towers and actually measuring what happens in the real world.'
(2) Source: http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/26850
'So they ignore many variables and admit they know little about the ones they study. It is a total abrogation of scientific and social responsibility to let these results form the basis for draconian and destructive energy and environmental policies. They shouldn’t have won a Nobel Peace Prize. They couldn’t have won a Science Prize.'
(3) Source: http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2010/08/13/is-jim-hansens-global-temperature-skillful-guest-weblog-by-john-christy/
'The result suggests the old NASA GCM was considerably more sensitive to GHGs than is the real atmosphere since (a) the model was forced with lower GHG concentrations than actually occurred and (b) still gave a result that was significantly warmer than observations.'
(4) Source: http://www.videnskab.dk/composite-4862.htm
'"Climate models are not good enough to describe the dramatic climate changes that occurred during past ice ages. We can not therefore expect that climate models can predict what will happen in the future, "says Professor Peter Ditlevsen, who led the study.'
(5) Source: http://thegwpf.org/the-observatory/1240-new-carbon-cycle-data-casts-doubt-on-climate-models.html
'The researchers found that the rate at which plants and microorganisms release carbon dioxide changes little with temperature variations. This is in contrast to earlier investigations that suggested a three or fourfold increase in carbon dioxide production at quite modest temperature changes. According to one of the researchers, Markus Reichstein, “Particularly alarmist scenarios for the feedback between global warming and ecosystem respiration thus prove to be unrealistic.”
The measurements also contradict another assumption used in climate models: that the respiration of the ecosystems in the tropics and temperate latitudes is not as temperature sensitive as higher latitudes. This does not seem to be borne out by these FLUXNET observations. “We were very surprised that different ecosystems react relatively uniformly to temperature variations."'
(6) Source: http://nofrakkingconsensus.blogspot.com/2010/06/ipcc-says-climate-prediction-impossible.html
'On page 85 of their excellent book, Taken By Storm: the Troubled Science, Policy, and Politics of Global Warming, Christopher Essex and Ross McKitrick call our attention to an astonishing line in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2001 Assessment Report:
The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.'
(7) Source: http://nofrakkingconsensus.blogspot.com/2010/06/how-many-ipcc-scientists-say-so.html
'Claims such as ‘2,500 of the world’s leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate’ are disingenuous. That particular consensus judgement...is reached by only a few dozen experts in the specific field of detection and attribution studies; other IPCC authors are experts in other fields.'
(8) Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/14/freeman_dyson_climate_heresies/
'British-born physicist Freeman Dyson has revealed three "heresies", two of which challenge the current scientific orthodoxy that anthropogenic carbon causes climate change.
"The fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated," writes Dyson in his new book Many Colored Glass: Reflections on the Place of Life in the Universe, published on Wednesday.
He pours scorn on "the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models".
"I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry, and the biology of fields and farms and forests," writes Dyson.'
(9) Source (pdf): http://icecap.us/images/uploads/BALLComputerModels.pdf
'This and similar statements are based on the unproven hypothesisthat human produced CO2 is causing warming and or climatechange. The evidence is based solely on the output of the 18computer climate models selected by the IPCC. There are a multitudeof problems with the computer models including the fact that everytime they are run they produce different results. The final result is an average of all these runs. The IPCC then take the average results of the 18 models and average them for the results in their Reports. Tim Palmer, a leading climate modeler at the European Centre forMedium - Range Weather Forecasts said “I don’t want to underminethe IPCC, but the forecasts, especially for regional climate change,are immensely uncertain.” This comment is partly explained by the scale of the General Circulation Models (GCM). The models aremathematical constructs that divide the world into rectangles. Size of the rectangles is critical to the abilities of the models as the IPCCAR4 acknowledges. “Computational constraints restrict the resolution that is possible in the discretized equations, and some representationof the large-scale impacts of unresolved processes is required (theparametrization problem). “ (AR4 Chapter 8. p.596.)'
OT!
Sorry, too priceless to pass up:
Samoan clerics finger homosexuals over global warming
Alert Print Post commentRetweetFacebookShock at conference on climate change and creativity
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/21/climate_change/
Sep 22, 2010 at 12:19 PM | John Shade
*sighs*
*bangs head against desk until unconsciousness. comes round. continues typing*
John - your 'tips' are extreme bias source selection, totally ignoring the body proper of climate science, and in some cases, actual distortion of the intention of the authors.
It's no wonder you can only find a few dozen climate scientists - it seems you're only looking for science in highly partial denier sources.
Again, and again, and again, I find that contributors to this supposedly sceptical blog, in fact restrict their reading to a tightly focused body of partial, often low quality work, which is by and large swallowed whole, and uncritically. Climate science proper, is either ignored, or select parts are passed around and picked at, with each loose stitch held up in glee, as though the whole garment had unravelled.
Still - let's do this:
(1) 1st and most important check. Is it, just like all other disciplines of science are advanced, a published peer reviewed paper? Nope. So why are you including it if it's not good enough for that? What is it then? An unreviewed posting on a highly partial blog that starts with "It is well known that carbon dioxide cannot directly account for blah blah blah". It's just a terrible source to use.
(2) 1st and most important check. Is it, just like all other disciplines of science are advanced, a published peer reviewed paper? Nope. So why are you including it if it's not good enough for that? What do we know about Tim Ball? For starters, he's a former Geography teacher and doesn't work in climate science. He's also part of an energy industry lobbying group. We'll leave that one there.
(3) 1st and most important check. Is it, just like all other disciplines of science are advanced, a published peer reviewed paper? Nope. So why are you including it if it's not good enough for that? In fact, I quite like Pielke, but this is still just a guest post on his blog, from the denier-friendly huntsville. And also deals with the old NASA GCM.
(4) No idea - I don't speak whatever scandic-looking language it is in.
(5) 1st and most important check. Is it, just like all other disciplines of science are advanced, a published peer reviewed paper? Nope. So why are you including it if it's not good enough for that? In fact, it's from that motherlode, the GWPF. I'll be careful on this one, as I know I'm here by good grace, and there are close financial ties. Let's just say it's a blog entry on a highly partial website. Oh - and update which you'll all love - Jo Abbess actually deals with this one quite well. She's also a highly partial blogger only, but her take on the science is quite good.
(6) 1st and most important check. Is it, just like all other disciplines of science are advanced, a published peer reviewed paper? Nope. So why are you including it if it's not good enough for that? In fact, this one is just a risible piece of quote-mining on yet another highly partial blog.
(7) 1st and most important check. Is it, just like all other disciplines of science are advanced, a published peer reviewed paper? Nope. So why are you including it if it's not good enough for that? Not only is it the same shonky blog as (6), you've also twisted your own denier comment, to make it appear like they're talking about all denier science rather than an IPCC report.
(8) 1st and most important check. Is it, just like all other disciplines of science are advanced, a published peer reviewed paper? Nope. So why are you including it if it's not good enough for that? In fact, this is Freeman frikkin' Dyson, who in his field, and in his time, is astonishing. On climate science - much less so. Look - I'll leave you to look that one up on either of the links on the RC wiki.
(9) 1st and most important check. Is it, just like all other disciplines of science are advanced, a published peer reviewed paper? Nope. So why are you including it if it's not good enough for that? Frankly, I saw it was another Tim Ball and abondoned it there.
So what have you actually done except waste half my afternoon? You've not actually posted any climate science. I did admittedly work very fast flicking through that lot, so I might have missed a couple of tricks, but it just appears to be total tripe. Not one proper, published, peer-reviewed paper amongst the lot. You could sum it up as blog rantings without being too far from the truth.
You claim never to have found anything to convince you of AGW. Well if that's representative of the kind of thing you're looking at, then it's because you're running headlong away from climate science with your hand over your ears shouting "la la la la".
For crying out loud. Don't look at the blogs that criticise AR4, look at the report itself and look at the referenced papers behind it.
You clearly need to start again, from scratch, on your climate science. I would in all honesty recommend the following places - most reference the papers proper behind them:
NASA
The Met Office Website.
The Royal Society (they're actually a bit more ambiguous so you'll like them)
National Academy of Science
The rest of the IPCC
CRU
National Academy of Science (most of the ones all over the World, although I'm thinking of the states)
The Nobel Society
Oxford University
Even Wikipedia, if you really must.
I'm actually quite angry that the two times on this site now that I've actually bothered to look at the links and the science people have led me two, it has been a total and utter waste of time. Don't kid yourselves that you're open minded sceptics on this site, you're not. To exclusively dwell on a tiny body of low-quality, very incoherant work, whose only uniting theme should send alarm bells clanging, namely, that it is in direct opposition to the work of 97% of experts in the field, is close minded, and rather gullible.
So, not even one reference from you ZDB to explain why you believe. Not one. Just the disguised ad hom of the 'not peer-reviewed' attack (when I'd picked those links to be accessible for you) followed by the equally stale 'appeal to authority' feint. Well, I guess I was mistaken in giving you the benefit of the doubt about your having some substance.
Don't feed Zdb
Climate modellers are archetypical group-thinkers. They want to produce the same results; they don't want to be outsiders. They share code; if one makes the assumption that water vapour feedback is positive, they all assume it. Hence they all produce models that don't reflect reality (as MMH2010 showed). I've seen it all before.
The subject of this thread is the Turgot report. Please can we keep things on topic.
Seems to me that unless a paper is peer reviewed by CRU or its' associates then the paper is irrelevant and as it seems these associates together with CRU have been peer reviewing each others papers then ZDB will get only one answer that is worth him/her considering.
Frankly it's enough for me simply to view the world around me and compare it to the forecasts I was given by the media from the mid 90's and fortunately the forecasts have been wildly inaccurate. One minute it's going to be incredibly hot but instead we get lots of rain, then they claim that the summers will be cooler but the Winters will be warmer but instead we get a decent summer and a snowy winter.
Sorry Zebedee you haven't been following. If we were as openminded as the paragons of virtue like RealClimate or Deltoid, or indeed CiF, you would have been banned long ago.
If you knew anything about the CRU emails, you would know that there has been a small but effective collaboration to abuse the peer review process in both directions, ie to get "good guys"' stuff in and to keep "bad guys"' stuff out - Phil Jones has admitted as much. And the IPCC report was 42% non peer reviewed science, so don't get carried away about peer review. Pachauri doesn't care, and nor did his editors.
So far as your list of the great and the good is concerned, reading through the emails, you will find that NASA, the CRU and the Met Office are not as independent as you would have us believe, and further research will show you that the NAS has been utterly misrepresented as endorsing Mann's work. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, a group of 5 retired politicans, who claim no particular expertise in this field. Oxford University is not in any way monolithic, and I know of a number of seriously competent Oxford physicists who think that GCMs are, quite frankly, a crock. And if you knew anything at all about Wikipedia, you would know all about the adventures of the Stoat, William Connolley, who embarked on a single handed campaign to eliminate the Medieval Warm Period so that the public thought that Mann's work was a good match for contemporary climate observations. So people here will be unimpressed and actually quite amused by your selection of the great and the good, what is known as an "appeal to authority".
It's not a global conspiracy - that's a straw man argument that the likes of Deltoid and RealClimate like to throw at their opponents - so much as groupthink exacerbated by enormous financial and emotional incentives. You only have to look at Goldman Sachs' involvement in emissions trading to see what is going on. Capitalism as a whole looks like a conspiracy from the outside, until you understand how it works. Then self-interest and human nature do the rest.
Sorry Bish to go back to ZDB above despite your request. The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, to which I have referred before, has an interesting file in it's blog. It may not answer ZDBs request for peer review on the entries above, BUT, it does provide a link to 750 Peer Reviewed papers refuting CAGW. (The heading is for 750 papers, but the total is now up to 800).
ZDB,
Try this for size:
http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=648&Itemid=1
And if you want to come along to this well balanced blog where anyone can have their say, please address the argument, not the person.
Peter Walsh
Andrew - feel free to delete this as it is still off topic, despite your request, but I would appreciate the opportunity to reply to John as I have done a lot of fruitless running today at his suggestion.
John Shade
Stop wriggling and trying to pretend that appeal to peer-review is a disguised ad hom. When medicinal chemists have a new drug with possible health benefits, they don't whack it on a blog, they submit it for publication, before which, their peers review it. If, after publication, flaws in their work are found, then these flaws will be illustrated through the same process.
You can make all the accusations you wish about medicinal chemists being a gang of mates, or having financial or governmental pressures, in fact, homeopaths do. So do cranks. But the system, whilst not perfect, is the best system we have, and most medicines and treatments which reach the public, work.
The same is true for other branches of science, including climate science. The only reason you would try and dismiss this process, is for analagous reasons to the problems that homeopaths and cranks have with medicinal science. Namely, that it doesn't work in their favour.
There are actually a few denier papers that have made it through peer-review, so you can't argue that it is a closed system against them. Although I'm not going to point you to them if you don't know them.
As for appeal to authority, I have no interest in it. I've pointed you to some good starter locations for learning about real climate science. You can take your pick of whichever ones you fancy.
If you'd like me to just start listing actual climate science papers, I'm more than happy to. But I can't really see what that would achieve for you.
What I do know, is that to suggest the list you gave me represented real science of worth, well, I won't finish that. It's not complimentary.
Incidentally, quoting the names of different types of arguments does not mean you have identified them correctly, or invalidated my responses. You haven't.
@JohmShade: To be fair you know the IPCC modellers have distanced themselves from "predictions", a little disenguously to be fair because they don't it bruit about when the MSM publish hysterical nonsense:
Here's Kevin Trenberth:
Dr. Kevin Trenberth, Head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Nature
"I have often seen references to predictions of future climate by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), presumably through the IPCC assessments (the various chapters in the recently completed Working Group I Fourth Assessment report can be accessed through this listing). In fact, since the last report it is also often stated that the science is settled or done and now is the time for action.
In fact there are no predictions by IPCC at all. And there never have been. The IPCC instead proffers what if projections of future climate that correspond to certain emissions scenarios. There are a number of assumptions that go into these emissions scenarios. They are intended to cover a range of possible self consistent story lines that then provide decision makers with information about which paths might be more desirable. But they do not consider many things like the recovery of the ozone layer, for instance, or observed trends in forcing agents. There is no estimate, even probabilistically, as to the likelihood of any emissions scenario and no best guess.
Even if there were, the projections are based on model results that provide differences of the future climate relative to that today. None of the models used by IPCC are initialized to the observed state and none of the climate states in the models correspond even remotely to the current observed climate. In particular, the state of the oceans, sea ice, and soil moisture has no relationship to the observed state at any recent time in any of the IPCC models. There is neither an El Niño sequence nor any Pacific Decadal Oscillation that replicates the recent past; yet these are critical modes of variability that affect Pacific rim countries and beyond. The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, that may depend on the thermohaline circulation and thus ocean currents in the Atlantic, is not set up to match todays state, but it is a critical component of the Atlantic hurricanes and it undoubtedly affects forecasts for the next decade from Brazil to Europe. Moreover, the starting climate state in several of the models may depart significantly from the real climate owing to model errors. I postulate that regional climate change is impossible to deal with properly unless the models are initialized."
Or Jim Renwick:
“But the credibility of these computer model predictions took a significant hit in June 2007 when Dr. Jim Renwick, a top UN IPCC scientist, admitted that climate models do not account for half the variability in nature and thus are not reliable. "Half of the variability in the climate system is not predictable, so we don’t expect to do terrifically well," Renwick conceded."
ZDB, you are a loquacious and excitable person. I do not care to have any further exchanges with you, and that happily will also respect the Bishop's request re this thread.
When Warmista attack --- RICHARD BLACK - BBC !!!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2010/09/something_new_and_not_altogeth.html#comments
I think Richard may need some positive moral support, his chums are getting nasty..
(NOTE - I am not being sarcastic)
I've just posted that this is not unknown, ie sceptic alerts, monbiot, halls of deniar shame etc, linked with MP's and a little bit closer to home...
let see if the BBC print it..
I've been deemed 'off topic' in tha last few days at the BBC........... (ie 'removed' several times)
Hopefully, my second BBC post will give Richard some moral support...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2010/09/something_new_and_not_altogeth.html#comments
(1st not published yet, being 'moderated')
Richard may I explain why I think this has happened, until recently the 'warmista' side as you call it, has perceived the BBC to be culurally pro CAGW or AGW and a safe media 'AGW consensus' pair of hands...
I think anyone who watched the pre-Copenhagen BBC media coverage would agree with this.
Something many people, me included would agree. The BBC seem oblivious, it is a cultural thing...
Rember in the Climategate emails, Michael Mann, of Al Gore's inconvenient truth ' hockey stick graph, founding memebr of the PRO man made website, you quote often - RealClimate....
His first thought, after reaading Paul Hudson's article - whatever happened to Global Warming....
What was his frist thought, it wasto contact Richard Black at the BBC, as he does a good job..
(I could quote the email directly, or even link to it, but I;m sure the BBC couldmange it themselves... They DId investigatethe emails after all, didn't they?)
So, evidence that the percetption from the PRO-AGW side, was that the BBC was a gatekeeper on AGW consensus....
Thus, they are likely to turn quite nasty....
(ie Roger Harrabin's - Al Gore experience)
CAGW Extremists (and the use of deniar by them) show how extreme they ALLWAYS were....
No abuse by anyone should be tolerated, or acceptable, howver CRITICISM is perceive by some as abuse... try to ignore, REPORT any abuse, but please try to listen to criticism.
Bish
Since you requested that this thread re-focusses on the Turgot report, perhaps you could ask Zed to take it to Unthreaded unless it's germane? This goes for all future topics too.
Anyone wishing to engage can then do so over there without disrupting the current thread.
Zed: as I tried to explain some weeks ago in the 'uncertainty' thread, the problem with climate science is uncertainty mis-represented as 'fact'. Believe it or not, this irritates climate scientists (and not just Judith Curry).
For example, see Andy Lacis' IPCC review comment on the SPM for AR4 WG1:
‘There is no scientific merit to be found in the Executive Summary. The presentation sounds like something put together by Greenpeace activists and their legal department. The points being made are made arbitrarily with legal sounding caveats without having established any foundation or basis in fact. The Executive Summary seems to be a political statement that is only designed to annoy greenhouse skeptics. Wasn't the IPCC Assessment Report intended to be a scientific document that would merit solid backing from the climate science community - instead of forcing many climate scientists into having to agree with greenhouse skeptic criticisms that this is indeed a report with a clear and obvious political agenda. Attribution can not happen until understanding has been clearly demonstrated. Once the facts of climate change have been established and understood, attribution will become self-evident to all. The Executive Summary as it stands is beyond redemption and should simply be deleted.’
http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/7798293?n=17Andrew Lacis
Dr Lacis is a colleague of James Hansen: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/staff/alacis.html
The recent IAC review of IPCC working practices criticised the IPCC for exactly this sort of 'group-think'.
The key problem is of course the true climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2. There are lots of other estimates, all with papers to back them. Here is a representative sample:
Hansen 1993 – 2 to 4C
Forest 2002 – 1.4 to 7.7C
Knutti 2005 – 1.5 to 6.5C
Shaviv 2005 – 1.3/1.6 to 2.5C (depends on verification of cosmic ray influence on cloud formation)
Hegerl 2006 – 1.5 to 6.2C
Annan 2006 – 2.5 to 3.5C
Chylek 2007 – 1.3 to 2.3C
Tung 2007 – 2.3 to 4.1C
Schwartz 2008 - 0.9 to 2.9C
Bender 2010 – 1.7 to 4.1C
I'm winging it here, so please don't bite my head off if I've quoted the wrong year for one or two of these.
As you know, the uncertainty about climate sensitivity is uncertainty about the net aggregate effect of feedbacks.
But when we consult AR4 on what has been done to reduce this uncertainty as factored into the various GCMs it tracks, this is what we find:
'A number of diagnostic tests have been proposed [...] but few of them have been applied to a majority of the models currently in use. Moreover, it is not yet clear which tests are critical for constraining future projections [of warming]. Consequently, a set of model metrics that might be used to narrow the range of plausible climate change feedbacks and climate sensitivity has yet to be developed.' [IPCC AR4 WG1 section 8.6 p640.]
This is not exactly 'settled science', is it? Nevertheless, that seems to get lost in the general enthusiasm to present a higher climate sensitivity as established fact.
So rather than a conspiracy amongst 'all' climate scientists, there is a politicised climate lobby (with the IPCC very much at the fore) filtering the science to de-emphasise uncertainty and project climate alarmism. Hence the indefensible use of the Mannean Hockey Stick as a sales tool in the TAR (and widely elsewhere) over the last decade.
I have some sympathy with what you say here, but you are far from free of unexamined bias yourself. Like many, many others you project certainty about uncertainty, which is both unscientific and provocative. Once both 'sides' start doing this, the signal is very quickly overwhelmed by the noise.
Finally, your incessant use of the term 'denier' is profoundly offensive. Please do not bother to regurgitate the usual justifications. It is a filthy, loaded term, and my respect for you will rise when you cease using it.
Dominic
Zed: a minor point, but you come down from a height on John Shade early on in the thread for not citing from the PRL, but to be fair his first point does stand up. The relevant papers are both from Science 13 August 2010:
Terrestrial Gross Carbon Dioxide Uptake: Global Distribution and Covariation with Climate (Beer et al.)
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/329/5993/834
Global Convergence in the Temperature Sensitivity of Respiration at Ecosystem Level (Mahecha et al.)
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/329/5993/838
His point (5) is also supported by the PRL but as it references the same two papers as point (1) it is redundant.
Dominic