Bishop Hill Note it: POST
Feb 3, 2012 Climate: other The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology has published a briefing paper on weather and climate. I've had a quick glance, and this caught my attention.
Natural forms of climate variability are likely to be the main influence on the UK’s climate over the next few decades.
Who knew?
This seems really interesting to me in the context of the ongoing scrap over the plateauing of temperatures. If the claim in the POST paper is correct (the citation is to this paper by Hawkins et al), then that presumably means the plateauing could continue for decades, or even morph into a decline, and we would still be faced with arguments that temperatures are rising and that we only have 24 hours left to save the Earth.
Bishop Hill
Having had a look at the Hawkins paper, I think maybe POST has got the wrong end of the stick. Here's what he says:
Using data from a suite of climate models we have carried out a quantitative assessment of the contributions to uncertainty in predictions of regional temperature change. We have estimated the contributions to the total prediction uncertainty from internal variability, model uncertainty and scenario uncertainty. For lead times of the next few decades the dominant contributions are internal variability and model uncertainty.
Bishop Hill
No, I'm wrong. Ed tweets that POST are interpreting him correctly. A few decades coming in which natural variability swamps AGW.
Reader Comments (63)
Can these people not see the logical flaw. How can you decide between dangerous global warming that is swamped by natural cycles for decades and global warming that is not as severe as the models predict? And which is the more reasonable stance?
And haven't we been told, again and again by scientists, activists, pressure groups and the BBC that the effects are real, dramatic, that we live in a rapidly warming world (don't we Mr Black and Shukman?) and now advice to parliament is that it might not warm more than it has for decades!!!
And doesn't this advice contradict completely the predictions by the Met Office for a rapid resumption in significant warming (two record breaking year in the next three).
This subject, or rather the extreme end of it, is falling apart.
The Hawkins abstract is good and it should really make policymakers take a break to reconsider what they are doing based on current information.
"Furthermore, we find that model uncertainty is of greater importance than internal variability."
and
"Our study also highlights the importance of targeting climate science investments on the most promising opportunities to reduce prediction uncertainty."
etc
We have been told time and time again that anthropogenic CO2 is the dominate climate forcing.
What mechanism allows anthropogenic climate forcings to take a break for a few decades?
We may see a decrease in temperature, but that does not mean the earth is not warming, very Orwellian.
That begs an answer to the famous question, where has all the heat gone?
Bob Ward let loose on Excell....and he doesn't understand statistics or when he is just measuring noise, and hasn't heard about how to treat errors properly.
Embarasing.
http://www2.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/Media/Commentary/2012/February/anthropogenic-global-warming-1997.aspx
Fig 1 is completely disingenuous.
Modelling has been going on prior to 2000 and observations have consistently failed to match "projections".
So we move the goalposts forwards to 2000, "hindcast" with the benefit of actual observations, then
reiterate.
Bingo another 10+ years of Zombie life for the "models"
Health warning on GCM's:
"However, all physical processes occurring at scales smaller than the
resolution must be approximated, usually with an average value. In
the real climate system, there is a two-way interaction between small-
and large-scale processes so this approximation is an important
source of uncertainty in GCM simulations."
From POST, "Natural forms of climate variability are likely temporarily to enhance or to mask the gradual global warming this century."
More hidden heat that may go missing in time.
"uncertainty in predictions of regional temperature change."
is this only for "regional temerature changes"? Does this not apply globally then?
Is he suggesting modelled regional changes will/could be swamped by internal variability, model uncertainty and scenario uncertainty, but globally the modelled temperature will still be warming, or something else?
I don't understand the logic, or for that matter, what on earth he really is saying.
Seems like he has supplied a reference to order?
Maybe Ed can pop by and explain exactly what he is saying?
Oh how convenient - the CAGW line will be that we won't be able to discern the anthropogenic signal in amongst all that natural variation, yet it's the anthropogenic component that means we're going to hell in a handcart.
I thought the Nobel Laureate Richter could tell by simply eyeballing a chart what was going on. So, he'll be able to tell us it's incontrovertible that natural variation swamps the anthropogenic, will he?
Bish, this is for the UK. The claim is that globally the 'signal' is already clear but locally it isnt. Globally, fluctuations average out so the signal is clearer. I think that's what they mean.
Here is the (literal) money quote:
"The government’s Chief Scientific Advisor, Sir John Beddington, recently examined options for funding climate modelling and advice.14 A key conclusion of this review was “that a step-change increase in supercomputing capacity...would be required..."
Cash, cheques or money orders accepted, of course.
My (layman) reading of this is that the forecasts are not worth the paper their written on.
"Natural forms of climate variability are likely to be the main influence on the UK’s climate over the next few decades."
So we're not too expect that the model predictions for a warmer couple of decades will be fulfilled.
This pesky climate variability: wasn't that understood at the time the models were tuned, and wouldn't that have led to wider bands of uncertainty?
And, if the consequences of human activity are to be masked in this way for a couple of decades (in which, incidentally, greenhouse gas emissions are forecast to rise steeply), then any moderately sceptical soul will begin to wonder how the climate boffins could be so sure that the greatest part of late 20th century warming was as a result of human activity rather than these "natural forms of climate variablity".
It really is becoming increasingly difficult, if not impossible, not to conclude that 97% of climate scientists and modellers are just not making it all up as they go along.
In what other field(s) do 'scientists' combine the output of multiple differently-parameterised models, and claim that the result is somehow more accurate than any particular model, by the "magic of averages"?
Or are they appealing to a "consensus of the models"?
The seldom-read SPM of the SREX report (author: IPCC) said last November:
oops...wrong closure of the blockquote...
"Human activities, including burning fossil fuels, release GHGs to the atmosphere. As a result, the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) has increased from 280 parts per million (ppm) in 1850 to 390 ppm in 2011. The concentration of other GHGs has increased by an amount equivalent to around 75 ppm of CO2. GHGs trap energy that would otherwise escape into space and so increase the amount of energy in the climate system. They are very likely to have caused much of the observed increase, of around 0.5°C, in globally averaged surface temperature over the last 50 years."
ALL increase in atmospheric CO2 is the result of human activities - really? All of it?
GHG's "trap" energy. Don't they absorb and re-emit radiation, with reducing capacity on a log scale?
They are "very likely" to have caused much of the observed increase, of around 0.5°C, in globally averaged surface temperature over the last 50 years. Direct quotes from IPCC are not science.
Freeman Dyson spelled out the problem many years ago in this interview...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTSxubKfTBU&feature=related
...with the relevant statements between 1:18 and 2:47.
And people wonder why he's a CAGW skeptic!
Paul - who made that claim and where?
Paul
Ah, yes. I thought I was missing something (but see Mac's comment at 3:44)
IPCC - Natural Variability To Dominate Weather Events Over Coming 20-30 Years:
IPCC SREX Summary for Policymakers
Approved Text - Subject to Copy Edit
18 November 2011
D. Future Climate Extremes, Impacts, and Disaster Losses
"Projected changes in climate extremes under different emissions scenarios generally do not strongly diverge in the coming two to three decades, but these signals are relatively small compared to natural climate variability over this time frame. Even the sign of projected changes in some climate extremes over this time frame is uncertain."
From IPCC SREX Summary for Policymakers (18 November 2011, pg. 9)
http://ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/
Lots of nonsense, propaganda and outright lies in that report, plus unreferenced assertions and weasel words.
For example: "It is also likely that the sea ice has become thinner." Likely? It either has or it hasn't - state the facts. Note, no reference given for this weasel-worded assertion.
"Although ocean measurements are limited...it seems that ocean heat content has continued to rise over the past decade." It seems that? More weasel words. It either has or it hasn't - the 'limited' ocean measurements indicate that it HASN'T, so what they are saying is that it seems that it must be rising even though we haven't measurements to back the claim. Nor can they make a reference (references could be made, but they would contradict the assertion!)
What about this classic: "Further evidence is provided by century-scale GCM climate projections which suggest energy has moved from the surface and upper ocean to the deep ocean over the past decade." Evidence, note - GCM climate projections, which are simply projections of our own prejudices, are EVIDENCE. These embodiments of our prejudices 'suggest' things even when there is no data to support them, for the paragraph continues "However, there are too few measurements from the deep ocean to confirm these results, or to be sure which physical mechanisms are important."
OK, so we haven't any measurements that confirm these assertions, and we haven't a clue what physical mechanisms are involved AND YET we have 'evidence' of what is 'likely' going on that 'seems' to confirm our prejudices.
This is religious fanaticism of the worst kind. Let's not worry about the facts, what matters is the power of our beliefs. We can believe anything is 'likely' or 'seems to be so' when we ignore those stubborn facts. After all, the embodiment of our beliefs in models provides evidence far better than real data ever could.
So, let's scratch the surface, and what do we find? I note that the co-author Dr Jonathan Wentworth (who should be ashamed of himself for this drivel) who works for our Parliament sits on the Public and Policy Committee of the British Ecological Society, which has an advocacy role, and Dr Wentworth is involved in the 'fellowships' that the BES sponsor at our parliament. Is it acceptable that briefing notes for our legislature from within the Houses of Parliament themselves should be prepared by someone working for advocacy groups, and people funded as interns by advocacy groups?
The BES lobbies parliament for all sorts of Climate Change legislation, including the Climate Change Act, where it stated "The BES commends the Government’s leadership in bringing forward the world's first national legally binding targets aimed to mitigate climate change...the BES suggests that the proposed statutory target for reducing CO2 emissions in the UK should be increased to at least 70% for 2050."
Thanks to the BES we have ruinous legislation, and they have their 'plants' working on official Houses of parliament advice to our policymakers. Could it be any worse?
Sounds to me as though the 'Team' have taken a beating and now the reserves have been sent forward with less assurance and even less science.
The end is nigh!
"globally the 'signal' is already clear but locally it isn't"
Neatly sidestepping the ferocious cold in Europe and Russia - especially where they've stopped logging the temperatures. -5C forecast for Madrid tonight!
Re: SFT
I suspect that the GCMs have no idea where the energy is so they have simply "parameterised" it to stick it where the sun don't shine (deep ocean).
Maurizio, see for example the Intro to Hawkins & Sutton 2011:
Apparently, some Warmists are always looking for CO2's "signal." Could someone tell me if this concept of "the signal" has an interpretation in empirical terms? I take it that when someone refers to the signal they mean that they have teased some finite value for CO2's contribution out of their magical statistics. Am I wrong on this?
The Bishop's take seems to be the right one. When Warmists begin talking about natural variability they treat it as some theoretical item whose extent will remain unknown until it has been incorporated into the CAGW theory. Of course natural variability comprises just the ranges of climate variables for which we have evidence. (Sometimes I think that Warmists are trying to impose a literal reading of "Genesis" on the rest of us.)
A bet which has intrigued me is the one climate modeler James Annan made with two Russian solar physicists in 2005 - Galena and Vladimir (their last names escape me) bet $10,000 that 2012-2017 would be cooler than 1998-2003.
At the time of the bet Annan boasted that it was easy money. Natural variability may reduce his bluster.
lapogus
"It really is becoming increasingly difficult, if not impossible, not to conclude that 97% of climate scientists and modellers are just not making it all up as they go along."
One too many negatives..?
I don't recall UKCIP saing anything like this (or UKCP09). Perhaps Rchard Betts can clarify.
Ah, yes - the output of climate models as "data"
I can almost hear Dr. Pielke (Sr) scream!
The fight goes on.
That's the fight to hang onto the "green" tax revenue for the government (Of any flavour!) and to continue the demonisation of private transport for the hoi-polloi!
Perhaps someone can help me. Here's an extract from the POST note:
Well, "the last 50 years" were 1962-2011 and, during that period, (according to HadCRUT data) global temperature increased by 0.39 deg C and (according to NOAA data) atmospheric CO2 by 74 ppm. So, at first sight, the note’s "very likely" seems at least plausible. But the record for the previous 50 years appears to undermine that: for 1912-1961, the same sources indicate a temperature increase of 0.52 deg C (significantly greater than for 1962-2011) and a CO2 increase of only 18 ppm (considerably less). That suggests to me that increased CO2, far from being “very likely” the cause of increased temperature, in reality has little to do with it.
Am I missing something?
(Incidentally, these data also indicate that the common claim that global temperatures are accelerating is wrong.)
"Apparently, some Warmists are always looking for CO2's "signal." Could someone tell me if this concept of "the signal" has an interpretation in empirical terms? I take it that when someone refers to the signal they mean that they have teased some finite value for CO2's contribution out of their magical statistics. Am I wrong on this?"--Theo Goodwin
You're correct. The signal they're looking for is a significant deviation from some "norm" as defined by global average past temperatures over a certain period. That period is almost always determined ad hoc to tease out the results they're sure MUST BE THERE, lurking within one of the noisiest data sets imaginable. This accounts for such endless and utter nonsense as Michael Mann's hockey stick. They have simply fooled themselves into thinking the signal, if it exists, is large enough to be seen on a decadal scale. It's not, which is why they must invoke phantom positive feedbacks, etc, to make their case. Pathetic, verging on monstrous.
The money shot highlighted on page 2 of the paper:
Predictions of regional climate change for the next few decades are characterised by high uncertainty, but this uncertainty is potentially reducible through investments in climate science.
I'll translate. We have no idea what's going on but give us more money and we'll spend it but it's very likely we won't be any the wiser after we've spent it.
James P (Feb 3, 2012 at 5:24 PM)
Yes, that's what I thought just after I posted it - well spotted!
This is pretty much what Lindzen said way back when about the impact of doubling CO2 levels - the effect would be hard to distinguish from the variation due to other factors in the climate system. Are we to deploy PRAVDA reading skills to deduce from this briefing paper that the official line may now have changed? Are the alarmists to be written out in due course? Has the relentless refutation of them by Mother Nature done what the calm, cool, and concentrated reasoning of Prof Lindzen failed to do for them? Will they say whoops we were so wrong, he was right all along? Not a snowflake's chance in an alarmist hell. I may be reading too much into this report of the briefing paper. But even if it does signal a huge change of tack, that will not by itself clean up the mess the alarmists have made in education, in politics, and in numerous scientific institutions. A lot of eggs were broken there to make, for example, the foul omelette of the Climate Change Act - to adapt a phrase of Lenin's. All for 'the cause' though, so who cares about the mental wellbeing of the children, the manipulation of the political class, and the corruption of science?
Can we expect more reports like this with possibly complementary purposes?
1) Maintain political and financial support for as long as possible in the face of inconvenient evidence??
And/or,
2) Try to gradually prepare the public and politicians over a period of years for the backtracks and climb downs which may be forced upon CAGW devotees?
In its "State of the Climate in 2008" report, the NOAA said about climate computer models:
"The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate."
Translation: A flat trend in global temperatures for 15 years is all that is required to say the models are incorrect. We are now approaching a 15 year trend (since 1998 El Nino) of flat global temperatures and thus also approaching the disqualification of the current global climate models according to these "experts" back in 2008.
Now we have other climate experts desirous of moving the goal posts of verification out a couple more decades. Do they hope to be safely retired and pensioned off by then?
For quite awhile on this blog and others I have tried to engage our friends from the Met Office on the reconciliation of their published Decadal Forecast/Predictions against the actual observational data. So far it appears that to them this is not an issue that deems a comment.
Could the content of the post note possibly hold a clue as to why?
It seems to me that the first action of failed apocalyptic predictioneers is to move the date forward...
This seems to me the beginning and end of the whole piece. Couched in weasel-words that cannot be faulted but make backtracking look less obvious, and less offensive to the old guard. I get the feeling that the politicians herewith accept that it's time to massage scientzy-speak towards letting-go AGW... gently, without actually making it plain that that's what they are doing.
John Shade: "A lot of eggs were broken there to make, for example, the foul omelette of the Climate Change Act - to adapt a phrase of Lenin's."
Was it really Lenin's? No, nor Trotsky's. They picked up the phrase from a 1921 speech by Nikolai Bukharin, but he had purloined up from a phrase used in the French Revolution. It goes back in French to Napoleon and back to Robespierre in 1790, "On ne fait pas d'omelette sans casser des oeufs" and "On ne peut pas faire des omelettes sans casser les oeufs". It found its way into English in the nineteenth century, for example Robert Louis Stevenson in his historical novel 'St Ives' (set in 1813) about Capitaine Jacques St. Ives, a Hussar in the Napoleonic wars wrote "My dear Miss Flora, you cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs". So, when the Russian Communists used the phrase they were echoing a sentiment and saying of the French Revolutionaries in the Russian context.
The Russian emigre and radical anarchist Emma Goldman returned to Russia in 1919 and was disillusioned with the outcome of the Bolshevik revolution. She wrote in 'My disillusionment in Russia' (1924) "In support of this contention he cited Bukharin's statement to the effect that "a revolution cannot be accomplished without terror, disorganization, and even wanton destruction, any more than an omelette can be made without breaking the eggs." But it seems not to have occurred to my critics that, though the breaking of the eggs is necessary, no omelette can be made if the yolk be thrown away. And that is precisely what the Communist Party did to the Russian Revolution. For the yolk they substituted Bolshevism, more specifically Leninism..."
Sorry, I'm having one of those pedantic days...
@ScientistForTruth
"Sorry, I'm having one of those pedantic days..."
Not at all. I quite like it.
You may want to know that I re-posted your earlier comment (4.45 pm) to a thread at Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy. I described it as 'pretty ordinary, run of the mill de-bunking' that one gets to read in climate skeptic blogs.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/02/02/a-case-study-of-the-tactics-of-climate-change-denial-in-which-i-am-the-target/comment-page-4/#comment-476337
I hope you don't mind.
In New Zealand, the Ministry for the Environment Climate Change Office has a variation:-
"Short term periods with little change or even decreases in climate parameters are likely to be expected from natural variability. For example, after analysis of surface temperature records and climate model data, Easterting and Wehner (2009)‘ state: “Claims that global warming is not occurring that are derived from a cooling observed over such short time periods ignore this natural variability and are misleading"." - Dr Vera Power Manager, Science and Evaluation.
E&W09 (a lightweight paper it should be said) also state in 'Is the climate warming or cooling?':-
"....the climate over the 21st century can and likely will produce periods of a decade or two where the globally averaged surface air temperature shows no trend or even slight cooling in the presence of longer-term warming."
"...periods of a decade or two"? How many of these "periods'? There's less than 9 decades left between now and 2100, not much time for the "longer-term warming' to exert an influence.
Thanks ScientistforTruth for tracking down the oft repeated 'omelette' quote. How appropriate that a Frenchman should have originated this useful culinary metaphor.
The other famous one, 'a revolution is not a dinner party' came from Chairman Mao. Like the French, the Chinese also take their cuisine seriously. Not that there was a lot of cuisine for the masses during either's revolution.
On topic, how useful it is to swing between 'the world is frying' and 'natural variability' depending on whether the model predictions are working out or not. Heads I win, tails you lose. And this is meant to be science?
Where are Richard and Tamsin (is it me or does this look a likely name for a punchy TV show about global warming entitled "Hot off the Model" or something punchier) when you want them. To my cynical eye I'm seeing a retreat, but it's a tactical retreat, it's saying, "Yes, wer're going to have less warming, but don't take that as evidence that we're not causing global warming and keep taking the medicine in the meantime."
Clearly anybodymore scientifically knowledgeable (like an O-Level in physics) than our political masters would thumb through the AR4 SPM and see the claim that there was an increase of 0.5C in the latter part of the 20th century and that it was 90-100% caused by humans and therefore had a 0-10% chance of being caused by natural forcings and begin asking serious questions of these "coronary heart surgeons", such as why are the dentists running rings round you on your diagnosis and prognosis of 20th century heart disease?
@John Shade Feb 3, 2012 at 8:30 PM
euuuw ... let me try that again
@John Shade Feb 3, 2012 at 8:30 PM
Speaking of "the cause" and the mental well-being of the children ... did you see Donna's post today (well, yesterday, already, in your part of our supposedly "endangered planet"!)
Proselytizing to Toddlers
It seems to me that there is no depth to which those who are dedicated to "the cause" will not sink.
P.S. Bish, I know I can post on threads (except Unthreaded) if I skp preview post ... which results in my failure above. Any word from squarespace on what they are doing to address this?