The CCC abandons science

Brian Hoskins and Steve Smith, advisers to the Committee on Climate Change, have written (yet another) riposte to David Rose's article in the Mail on Sunday. This is crazy, crazy stuff:

A chart of observed global temperatures against climate model outputs is the main evidence provided in the article. It claims that the chart “blows apart the scientific basis” for reducing emissions. This is simply incorrect, and reveals a misunderstanding of what the chart shows – a pattern of observed temperature over the last sixty years within the range of model outputs (see detailed notes below).

As Rose correctly notes in the version of the graph published at the Mail, it is only the final few years of the graph that are predictions, but Hoskins and Smith are actually asking us to draw comfort from a hindcast!

With accurate models we would expect about 3 years of observed temperature in the past 60 to be below the 90% range and 3 years above it. The observed temperature behaviour is consistent with model outputs, even during the last 15 years of negligible temperature increase, when temperatures have remained within the 90% range.

It's a similar story when Hoskins and Smith move onto climate sensitivity, with much attention devoted to climate models and to studies based on long-term temperature records, which even the IPCC says are extraordinarily uncertain.

Then there is this:

Other work (PDF) indicates that aerosol pollutants which cool the climate may be offsetting greenhouse gas warming less than previously thought. Since this slightly reduces the amount of underlying warming that can be attributed to greenhouse gases, it too suggests the most extreme future projections are less likely, while still keeping most of them in play.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it the aerosols that were supposed to have prevented warming taking off at the predicted rates in the past? And now their influence is slight?

And what about all the empirical and semi-empirical studies that suggest that ECS is around 1.5degC? Forster and Gregory? Aldrin et al? Ring et al? There's only this:

But while it is true that recent studies based on temperature observations question the very highest model projections of warming, even if confirmed, these would not justify a wholesale downward revision of the range as argued in the article.

It's hard to take seriously someone who prefers models to empirical observation - as I've pointed out before, this is the basis of the scientific method. It's harder still to not to contain one's ridicule at someone who argues that the output of models should be taken into account when they do not include the latest figures for a key forcing, when they have proven entirely incapable of predicting anything, and the output of which is on the verge of falsification in an extraordinarily short space of time. But when that someone - Hoskins - has gone on record as saying that the models are "lousy" but still insists that they have a part to play in assessing climate sensitivity, you really have to wonder whether this is a scientific argument at all.

Comments

[rhoda]

John, if they have termination criteria they are not going to admit what they are. Especially if models running 'impossibly low' are more subject to termination than those running high. I tend to question why they don't terminate the whole model's participation in the ensemble if it is persistently wrong. Would this be against the modeller's code of ethics? Would they be loth to reject the favourite model of one or other national met office for political reasons?

[Don Keiller]

Climate Cretins say that a warming Arctic leads to a colder Europe

Jennifer Francis, research professor with the Rutgers Institute of Coastal and Marine Science.

According to Francis and a growing body of other researchers, the Arctic ice loss adds heat to the ocean and atmosphere which shifts the position of the jet stream – the high-altitude river of air that steers storm systems and governs most weather in northern hemisphere.
“This is what is affecting the jet stream and leading to the extreme weather we are seeing in mid-latitudes,” she said. “It allows the cold air from the Arctic to plunge much further south. -- Guardian: Scientists Link Frozen Spring to Dramatic Arctic Sea Ice Loss.

So Jennifer what caused the cold winters of the 1960s and '70s?
Excess Arctic ice?

The mind boggles.

[Alecm]

PS @Entropic man, the Amazon pyrometer measures only in the AW, 8 to 14 microns. It is filtered to eliminate the variability of water vapour emission so that if you have very low humidity, when the water GHGs go below self-absorption, the measured temperature is still roughly correct.

This misunderstanding of physics in Climate Alchemy is a big problem.

[nTropywins]

Thinkingscientist

I am reminded of this - "'Observations collated at the Met Office Hadley Centre and the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit indicate that the rate of increase in global average surface temperature between 1975 and 1998 was similar to the rates of increase observed between 1860 and 1880 and between 1910 and 1940 (approximately 0.16 C° per decade).' per Lord Hunt of King's Heath"

Perhaps one of the interesting things about this is that the rate of increase in the period 1975 to 1998 was not greater than the earlier periods. With all that extra 'forcing' from manmade CO2 one would have expected the car driven by CO2 to out accelerate the cars driven by natural variability. I raised this on an earlier thread as a question for Richard Betts. He did not respond. So we are left with the conclusion it is inexplicable. Or magic? A bit like the way natural variability has been able to magically counter exactly the 'forcing' of CO2 over the last 15 years.

So now we know. The climate is governed by magic.

[Mike Jackson]

How many times does it have to be repeated? This is not, never was a scientific argument.

Thank you, bill. Welcome to my little club! I've been saying just this for the best part of 20 years.
Ever since the early 90s the Greens have been using the initial scare about global warming as a useful peg to hang their Back to the Middle Ages philosophy on. The main proponents of the global warming meme have never — repeat never — behaved in a way that suggests they believe one single word of what they are spouting.
They are the heirs of Ehrlich. Just as mad, just as dangerous, and just as wrong.

[richard verney]

Mar 27, 2013 at 8:48 AM | thinkingscientist
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Until one knows and understands everything there is to know and understand about natural variation, one cannot begin to assess climate sensitivity. In simple terms, this is because until natural variation is fully understaood one cannot seperate climate sensitivity from the noise of natural variation.

All we can say is that natural variation is stronger than climate sensitivity. Proof:

1. No significant warming brought about by climate sensitivity these past 15 to 22 years (depending upon which temperature data set is used) such that natural variation has had an equal and opposite effect.
2. The 1940 to mid 1970s cooling which meant that natural variation was not simply equal to climate sensitivity (the late 1930s marked the start of the rampant manmade CO2 emissions) but overcame it, ie., natural variation created a stronger downwards forcing than the upward forcing of climate sensitivity to CO2.
3. The paleo record which shows periods of cooling occuring after very high CO2 levels. Whatever the forcing was due to climate sensitivity, in the paleo record, natural variation was able to create an even greater effect.
4 The rate of warming in the 1920 to 1940 period when there was no significant increase in CO2 forcing was equal if not faster than the rate of warming in the late 1970s to late 1990s warming.

[Alecm]

@Mike Jackson: 'They are the heirs of Ehrlich. Just as mad, just as dangerous, and just as wrong.'

Now Erlich FRS.........

[Lord Beaverbrook]

Time is limited for the CCC, the change in attitude in the political classes is becoming more apparent the closer we get to election time. The news of David Milliband leaving UK politics to persue his agenda with an American charity conjures up images of rats leaving a sinking ship for some reason. I foresee a lot of nashing of green teeth in the coming years, unfortunately their convictions have placed the country in a worse position than it needed to be to face the future and the whole sorry episode may get overwritten in historical context by European financial and political events. Historically speaking of course at the end of many major civilizations there were always the abundance of religious lunatics.

[not banned yet]

"The sea ice is going rapidly. It's 80% less than it was just 30 years ago. There has been a dramatic loss. This is a symptom of global warming and it contributes to enhanced warming of the Arctic," said Jennifer Francis, research professor with the Rutgers Institute of Coastal and Marine Science.

But Jennifer - aren't we near Arctic max at this time of year?:

http://noconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/arctic-sea-ice-area.png

And it doesn't look 80% of the 1980 value to me? See if you can tie the words and pictures together:

http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=winter-history;sess=

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/mar/25/frozen-spring-arctic-sea-ice-loss

[Steve]

The piece that amused me was:

"Like all scientists, we always take a sceptical stance, testing each assertion against the evidence and ensuring proper peer review of every important finding."

We are all sceptics now, and, of course, proper climate change peer review is the clinching argument. What planet does he live on?

[Latimer Alder]

@rhoda

You say

' I tend to question why they don't terminate the whole model's participation in the ensemble if it is persistently wrong. Would this be against the modeller's code of ethics?'

I think it is against the Union of Climatologists job protection scheme. Once you're in, you're in for life.

The sad part is that I think the next few years will see a big 'non-voluntary' reduction in climate change research and its associated hangers-on all over the world. The discussion in UK, Germany and USA is beginning to move out of the blogosphere and becoming more central to general political debate. I cannot see that the generous funding and hugely indulgent unthinking acceptance of whatever junk they come up with will be allowed to survive much longer.

Today we see the Labour Party lining up to criticise the government. UKIP are already firmly sceptical. The DT has called for the repeal of the CCA. The Daily Mail (scorned by the chatterati, but very influential in 'Middle England') heaps more and more ridicule upon DECC and greenism. And the plan is for the ratchet effect of increasing green taxes to wind up every year for the next twenty...allowing an annual reminder of just how much they are..and how futile the gesture politicking these 'acts of petty virtue' (c. McIntyre) really are.

The tide is turning. It was at its peak in Copenhagen - until it snowed and Pres. Obama was shown the door. For a couple of years it was pretty static. But now it is gathering momentum downwards. My feeling is that if we look back in a few years, we may we see this year's cold spring as a milestone along the way. A time when the general assumption that 'the greens are good people with a good cause - maybe a little misguided in their tactics' began to turn to a much darker and less charitable opinion of all three.

You and I have both seen what happens when a juggernaut suddenly runs out of steam and collapses under its own weight.The aftermath is bloody and unpleasant. Many of the participants will face 'career transitions' at ill-timed points in the lives.. .I see nothing better for climatology in the future.

[Rich]

A variation on a couple of earlier posts: the fact that the actual temperatures stay within the 95% error range is presented as evidence that model outputs are "consistent with" the actual temperatures. But what is the probability that the actual temperatures fall below the mean model output fourteen times in a row? Would a process control engineer declare the system still in control? (I'm not a process engineer).

[Mike Jackson]

richard verney
Yes, yes, yes! Everything you say is correct — with one conceivable proviso, namely that CO2 is in any way relevant to temperature.
The big elephant in the room is increasingly that CO2 does not have the characteristics assigned to it — and this is nothing to do with arguments about back radiation or black bodies or the greenhouse effect or sky dragons or anything else.
Observations and historical evidence, which you quote succinctly in your four paragraphs, are all very busy pointing in the direction of climate doing what climate does, ie varying over a series of cycles some more or less predictable, others less so, and without any need to assume that a beneficial trace gas can now — even when it has never in the life of the planet done so before — create the extreme conditions that are being postulated.
As AlecM pointed out in one of his previous incarnations the eco-activists assumption that CO2 drove temperature was blown apart in 1997 when it was finally established that CO2 increase lagged temperature increase by more than half a millenium and they have been handwaving ever since trying to convince everyone that it works both ways.
The AGW argument is less "it must be CO2 because we can't think of anything else" than "it must be CO2 because our 'Back to Methuselah' philosophy requires it to be."

[John Shade]

9:37 AM rhoda re termination of models

I think there is explicit termination , or censoring of entire model runs. For example, in the vain hope of improving forecasts, those models which 'least-best' fit an historical record, might be discarded. I say 'vain' because as far as I know, this turns out not to help much at all - the forecasts are still not much use to man nor beast.

. “Culling models that poorly simulate observational data, or deemphasizing their weight in a multi-model ensemble is a commonly applied approach to constrain the spread of modeling uncertainty (Wang and Overland, 2009; Boe and others, 2010). Subsetting GCMs aims at reducing the breadth of uncertainty among ensemble models and to purportedly improve the GCMs collective forecasting proficiencies. The basic premise underlying the concept of subsetting assumes that models that demonstrate better proficiency in simulating observations may be better models for projecting future conditions, but there is no guarantee that such models actually possess better long-term extrapolations (Gleckler and others, 2008). Given the wide range of raw model results, however, culling those models that grossly misrepresent observation s is a reasonable step toward excluding less reliable projections. “

Source: http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2010/1176/pdf/ofr20101176.pdf
2010 report of US Geological Survey about Arctic sea ice (Open-File Report 2010–1176)

The CCC is not alone in abandoning science in favour of model-worship. The ancients did it with increasingly complex sets of epicycles. We do it with increasingly complex GCMs bearing the burden of the TOA forcing wheeze to illustrate the presumed overall impact of CO2 and other things, with the modern refinement of being able to discard those models (and those model runs?) that fail to behave in the right ways under this burden.

Some ancients also went about sacrificing a few people to help get better 'projections' for all. We have sacrificed hundreds of thousands using bio-fuels to raise their food prices, and thousands in the UK alone using windfarms to raise their energy prices.

Still, it doesn't seem to work.

But what else can the CCC do but hold on grimly to the faith despite the intransigence of the weather gods. Are the computer gods, as the CCC must presume, more powerful and shall they win in the end? I think they will end up in the same museum as the epicyclers myself, but I speak as a mere heretic.

[Ripper]

Mar 27, 2013 at 12:21 AM | Unregistered CommenterSleepalot

It has become a joke now with the extremes of the past "disappeared" from the record.

Old newspaper archives are a treasure trove.

Try as I might i cannot find the maximum of 117.7(47.61C)measured at the Adelaide observatory in 1939

History of the Adelaide observatory

Then We have this great map of NSW in 1939 where the some of the records mentioned have also been double plus good "disappeared".

[Bob Tisdale]

James Evans: I enjoyed your "Hubrisocene", so I posted about it:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/a-new-climate-epoch-the-hubrisocene/

Regards

[Martin A]

(...) I have no issues though with feedback(s).
Mar 26, 2013 at 11:35 PM Martin Reed

I have no issues with feedback in control systems nor in electronic amplifiers, where precise calculations of the effect of feedback on response time, output impedance, steady-state error and so on are possible and correspond closely to the measured values of such performance measures.

However, I'd be grateful for a succinct quantitative explanation of "a feedback"
(© Climate Science™) with a few simple formulas analogous to the A/(1 + AB) formula familiar to anyone who has analysed feedback in electronic amplifiers.

I know that the idea is that increased warming due to increased CO² causes additional warming due to H²O ("a positive feedback") but I've never seen it briefly and quantitatively explained.

[geronimo]

MartinA: "I know that the idea is that increased warming due to increased CO² causes additional warming due to H²O ("a positive feedback") but I've never seen it briefly and quantitatively explained."

It's as though they, the climate science community, have hi-jacked words used in other disciplines and used them to describe a different phenomonem. In biology positive feedback is something that makes things bigger, so in some senses I can see the use of positive feedback to describe the retained heat adding to the heat of the sun. Having said that there are two problems I have:

1. As mentioned on rhoda's positive feedback and at the risk of boring people there is empirical evidence that water vapour retains heat, and CO2 doesn't very much. I refer, of course to comparing the night time temperatures in desert (no water vapour, 400ppm CO2) which can drop by 30C from the day time temperatures, and the tropics (lots of water vapour, 400ppm CO2) where temperatures drop in single figures. First off these observations would indicate that CO2 doesn't retain much heat. Then we come to the daytime temperatures in the tropics, they rise back to the few degrees they dropped over night, so although the water vapour is retaining the heat, it doesn't seem to be adding to it when the generator is turned back on in the morning.

2. The second problem for me stems from my (hazy) recollection of feedbacks in electrical circuits, there is always a control in the feedback loop in the form of an attenuator, which allows the designer to keep the output to that desired by the design. No such attenuator is apparent in the climate system (except perhaps for clouds, but as the IPCC pretty much ignores the effects of clouds, we will too). So without the "attenuator" in the feedback loop we have a theory that says:

1. CO2 increases
2. Temperatures increase;
3. Water vapour increases (as does CO2 through ocean degassing)
4. Temperature increases further;
5. Water vapour increase further;
6 Temperature increases further...

You get the idea, it won't stop until the Earth becomes a boiling cauldron. And it doesn' t matter where the initial heat came from, whether CO2 triggered it, or some warm water from the oceans, that process would continue. As it clearly hasn't happened before then it's difficult to ascribe the tag "positive feedback" to water vapour.

[Alecm]

[O/T]

[Mike Jackson]

... although the water vapour is retaining the heat, it doesn't seem to be adding to it when the generator is turned back on in the morning...

geronimo
I noticed a similar comment from you the other day but didn't have time to pick up on it then. Would I be showing my ignorance if I suggested that one possible explanation is that since water vapour delays upward radiation at night (by whatever mechanism) a similar mechanism operates during the day to delay downward radiation?
Seems logical to me, at least at first sight.

[Bishop Hill]

No more radiative physics please.

[TC]

TC
Is it not possible for one or more suitably qualified contributors to BH to produce and submit to the CCC a detailed critique of the Hoskins/Smith "advice"?
________________________________________________________________________________

Presumably the answer is no. Would it not be a good idea to put a refutation of Hoskins/Smith on the record (copied to David Rose)? Surely there are contributors to BH who have suitable credentials to put forward a well-founded critique.
________________________________________________________________________________

I was rather hoping that someone would act on my suggestion. Instead all I can see is various ramblings (albeit interesting in some cases) which do not really get to the heart of the matter, viz. exactly why the stance taken by Hoskins/Smith lacks any real substance and presented in a format that could be put before the CCC (to put them on notice that they are being badly advised) and copied to the news media. Unless skeptics start mounting effective challenges to the other side at every opportunity, there's no chance of winning the war (at least not until it becomes obvious in about 20 years time that they've got it all wrong). Endless discussions on this forum will get nowhere because no-one is taking any notice at present.

[Hed]

David Whitehouse sticks it to the CCC

http://www.thegwpf.org/committee-climate-change-mail-sunday/

ouch!

[Maltesertoo]

@ TC on Mar 27, 2013 at 1:46 PM

"......because no-one is taking any notice at present"

The planet has been giving notice to the AGW scammers for 17 years. And skeptics have been eager to debate the science for many years but the warmists keep avoiding discussion like the plague

[thinkingscientist]

In response to those who responded to my post, thanks and I concur with everything said. Consider this:

Lets divide up the last 100 years or so approximately as:

Period 1 1910 - 1940 Warming
Period 2 1940 - 1980 Cooling
Period 3 1980 - 1998 Warming
Period 4 1998 - 2012 Static

According to the IPCC AGW-CO2 should started to have become important around 1940 ie at the end of period 1. IPCC agrees period 1 warming is natural. This is a 30 year period.

For Period 2 IPCC says there should be AGW-CO2 warming but another factor (also man-made) called sulfates, or aerosols or some such caused cooling that was stronger than AGW-CO2 warming. This is a 40 year period.

For Period 3 IPCC says the warming is caused by AGW-CO2. This is an 18 year period.

For Period 4 the AGW proponents are saying that AGW-CO2 warming is being cancelled out by some natural cooling process. This is so far a 16 year period.

Note that about a 17 year period period is the minimum for a statistically significant finding at the 95% confidence interval so both Period 3 and 4 are marginal for statistical significance.

We know that natural variability must continue unabated throught all periods.

For the interpretation of the data according to AGW-CO2 proponents we must believe the following model:

Period 1 - Natural warming
Period 2 - AGW-CO2 warming plus greater natural cooling
Period 3 - AGW-CO2 warming only with no natural effects at all
Period 4 - AGW-CO2 warming with exactly balancing natural cooling

According to this model, there could be no natural warming processes occuring at all since the Period 1 ending in 1940. Is that likely? The only subsequent natural effect would have been cooling?

Or we could just pose a model that says its all natural and the AGW-CO2 effect is negligible. Anything else is starting to look more and more absurd with every year that passes. The emperor has got no clothes and now everyone is starting to see it.

[TC]

@ TC on Mar 27, 2013 at 1:46 PM

"......because no-one is taking any notice at present"

The planet has been giving notice to the AGW scammers for 17 years. And skeptics have been eager to debate the science for many years but the warmists keep avoiding discussion like the plague

Mar 27, 2013 at 2:14 PM | Maltesertoo
_______________________________________________________________________________

Agreed but now it's beginning to look like they're really on the backfoot. That's the time to go for the jugular!

Interesting to see David Whitehouse's response flagged up by Hed. I wonder if he actually copied it to the CCC, Hoskins & Smith as they surely cannot ignore the fact that he's shot them down, can they?

[Sleepalot]

My appologies to readers - I made a mistake on Holar Hornafirdi. Updated graph here -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7360644@N07/8596115306/in/photostream

[Alexander K]

My nemesis at high school was a robust little bully - smaller than me, dumber than me, but the horrible little psychopath was indeed 'robust'.
I know what 'robust' means, and I am convinced most post-modern scientists do too, but they misuse the word deliberately.

[Martin A]

If it's not too late to say so, I too have always found the Climate Science™ term "forcing" to produce a feeling of revulsion.

I am used to definitions like "force = mass × acceleration". I looked at the IPCC definition (one of them) and thought "WTF does that mean?".

"The radiative forcing of the surface-troposphere system due to the perturbation in or the introduction of an agent (say, a change in greenhouse gas concentrations) is the change in net (down minus up) irradiance (solar plus long-wave; in Wm-2) at the tropopause AFTER allowing for stratospheric temperatures to readjust to radiative equilibrium, but with surface and tropo-spheric temperatures and state held fixed at the unperturbed values"

Science of Doom has recently posted pages on the notion. Wonderland, Radiative Forcing and the Rate of Inflation

In the opening paragraphs, SoD says:

"The value of radiative forcing (however it is derived) has the same usefulness as the rate of inflation, or the exchange rate as measured by a basket of currencies (with relevant apologies to all economists reading this article).
(...)
The good news is, when we get the results from a GCM, we can be sure the value of radiative forcing wasn’t actually used. Radiative forcing is more to inform the public and penniless climate scientists who don’t have access to a GCM."

I get the feeling that SoD is also not over-impressed with the notion of "radiative forcing".

[michael hart]

The elevation of models over observation is not unique to climate science. But is probably worse simply because many of the observations may never be possible, and what is possible takes too long.

Modelling results in many areas of chemistry has been cheaper than doing it in the laboratory for a long time, with variable results. Protein folding is still beset with the problem that the model will always leave the rails at some point if it is not explicitly prevented from doing so.

Put another way, obviously 'wrong' results are discarded. What constitutes 'wrong' is in the gift of the researcher's interpretation and judgement. The constraints are provided by knowing, a priori, what the 'correct' answer should look like! Just because it is done by a computer algorithm does not change this.

The handmaiden of the growth in available computing power should always be the knowledge that it also enables more wrong answers to be generated more quickly.

[ducdorleans]

@ not banned yet (Mar 27, 2013 at 8:30 AM)

thanks for that link ... a priceless document ... :-)

comparable to the minutes of Galilei's trial, or, more recently, to the Dents and Glassmans of the Dow 35000 by 2010 (or something ...)

quite some laughs in the pipeline ...

[Jon]

' I tend to question why they don't terminate the whole model's participation in the ensemble if it is persistently wrong. Would this be against the modeller's code of ethics?'

The models, policy based "science", are made and funded to support the political established UNFCCC. To get back to science based policy we need to get rid of the UNFCCC?

[David Whitehead]

It is not a scientific argument - it is a political one. Have you ever seen this sort of posturing and blather over ( say for example) The Taxonomy of the Jurassic Stromatoporoids? Debates and disagreements about Catastrophic Anthropogenic Warming, Climate Change and such like are not scientific debates - they are a dialectic conflict between scientific and political advocacy.