Bishop Hill Show us your evidence
Jun 13, 2013 Climate: Parliament Climate: Statistics Climate: Surface Lord Donoughue's terrier-like pursuit of the observational evidence that we have experienced warming that is out of the ordinary continues unabated.
Lord Donoughue (Labour): To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have identified any observational evidence for statistically significant global warming, either natural or anthropogenic; and, if so, from what sources any such evidence originated.
Baroness Verma (Whip, House of Lords; Conservative): There is considerable observational evidence that the world has experienced statistically significant warming since the end of the 19th century. This is reported in Section 3.2 of the IPCC’s 4th Assessment Working Group I Report1.
We note that other statistical methodologies have been proposed and it is important that there is an open technical debate on their relevance to climate change analysis in the peer-reviewed literature.
In addition three-dimensional, physically-based climate models have been used to assess the climate’s natural internal variability and its responses to various external factors. Using standard scientific methods, the significance of observed global warming can be determined by testing detected temperature changes against the null hypothesis that they are entirely due to natural factors and have no anthropogenic contribution. The observed warming has been shown to be outside the bounds of natural climate system variability and is not consistent with model simulations that exclude anthropogenic factors, such as emissions of greenhouse gases. This inconsistency has been shown to be statistically significant1,2,3
I have offered the noble Lord a meeting with officials in three previous Written Answers (on: 13 February (Hansard, col. WA 158); 21 March (Hansard, col. WA 170) and 27 March (Hansard, col. WA 237-38) and I re-affirm this offer.
1 IPCC, 2007, Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Averyt, M. Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.
2 Stott, P. A. and Gillett, N. P. and Hegerl, G. C. and Karoly, D. J. and Stone, D. A. and Zhang, X. and Zwiers, F. Detection and attribution of climate change: a regional perspective Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 1,2,192-211,2010.
3 Hegerl, G. and Zwiers, F. Use of models in detection and attribution of climate change. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 2 (4), 570-591, 2011.
Bishop Hill
Lord Monckton says that Santer's 17-year test has been met! (Link)
Reader Comments (67)
Something I've asked before to no avail but seems marginally appropriate here: If there was climate change, would we not see movements of the boundaries of climate types on the Koeppen-Geiger map? Do we see such changes? How much?
(Yes, I've seen the met office's prediction of such changes but it flips though too quickly to spot anything)
I don't want to argue about statistical significance again. That is an argument about statistics, all good fun for stats buffs but not actually about what's happening outside.
I wonder where he is going with this?
My reading of the data is that at the end of the 1990s it was reasonable to claim that warming was unprecedented, particularly if you took data which had been 'adjusted' by the Climate change community. By 2010 it was harder, and it's getting harder all the time as the temperature flatlines, and starts to move down.
But the Team will just keep pointing to earlier papers, or an imagined rise in ocean temperatures, saying that the temperature is still going up...
If you remove the slight rises caused by the ENSO then there has been a cooling since 1880.
Verma: The observed warming has been shown to be outside the bounds of natural climate system variability and is not consistent with model simulations that exclude anthropogenic factors, such as emissions of greenhouse gases.
I wonder if Verma is familiar with the term Circular Reasoning.
I agree with John Marshall.
I agree with David,UK
This model thing is tiresome: just how wrong have they to be to show no skill whatever? The only thing keeping them afloat is the search for the 'missing heat' that the models predicted*.
*Absorbed by black tulips perhaps?
Apart from John Marshall's comment, some people think that the recent warming stopped 22 years ago. I can't see any reason to disagree with either.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/06/09/twenty-two-years-of-no-actual-global-warming/
" The observed warming has been shown to be outside the bounds of natural climate system variability"
How does she justify that? Has she not heard of the MWP and previous warmer periods? I have, and I'm not even a baroness. In fact that statement is demonstrably untrue and whoever sent her out with it knows it. I hope Lord D's next question is to ask her to withdraw or justify that.
Why does the answer contain a reference to models? The question is specifically about observational evidence, but the answer conflates the real world and model world (again...).
I think the more obvious answer is that there is insufficient historical (real world) data to allow 'statistical significance' and 'natural variation' to be reliably assessed - better to state the simple fact that since the beginning of the 20th century, the calculated global average temperature has increased by slightly less than 1 degree C (varying slightly depending on dataset used), and that expert judgement considers this to be a significant change.
Rhoda
iirc, there has been discussion on WUWT over the changes to climate boundaries in the maps produced by NOAA for the contiguous USA, and that these seem to be largely based on expectation rather than occurrence (given that the contiguous US has seen more cyclic change in temperature than long-term increases), so it has upset some of the gardeners and farmers.
Rhoda, I agree:
"The observed warming has been shown to be outside the bounds of natural climate system variability and is not consistent with model simulations that exclude anthropogenic factors..."
is just plain WRONG! I suggest that Lord D goes into battle on this single point - hisorical evidence for the MWP that was certainly warmer than current conditions (eg dairy farming in Greenland). This fact alone proves that the models are useless, and a child of 10 can understand the argument.
If some people act as if computer model outputs constitute observational evidence, living as they do in a virtual world more vivid, more convenient, and more tractable and more manipulable than the real one, who is a mere spokeswoman in the House of Lords to gainsay them?
Excerpts from an anonymous instruction manual
Preliminary:
Code a module quantifying a monotonic increase in global average temperature with increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration
Procedure:
(1) Turn off the CO2 module
(2) Run the program
(3) Call the computed result natural variation
(4) Activate the CO2 module
(5) Run the program
(6) Observe computed global temperatures rising
Conclusion:
Anyone who denies the evidence is a denier
I have just sent Lord Donoughue this link to a very recent lecture by Prof M Salby, which destroys the climate models and IPCC conclusions with hard evidence. Get it out there.
Someone with a more scientific background could usefully post a précis of his paper.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ROw_cDKwc0&feature=player_embedded
The Answer was signed by Baroness Verma, but it would have been written by the Met Office, specifically by Chief Scientist Slingo (as discussed in the Bishop Hill post “Met Office admits claims of significant temperature rise untenable”).
So much for “tea with the enemy”. Scientists like Tamsin Edwards and Richard Betts may well act honorably, but the most politically-influential global-warming scientists in the UK include Julia Slingo and Phil Jones.
Recommendations on how to respond to the Answer would be welcomed and appreciated by Lord Donoughue.
I am 100% enjoying this. Ever since Lord D starting asking these questions, there has been a stream of buzzwords and talking points that expose how hollow and circular the framework of meta-reasoning behind the orthodox position is.
It has to be, because it was a theory borne of a coincident ascendancy in global techono-politic and global temperatures, with ad-hoc construction of narrative points in response to facts (rather than the other way around), and the questions of sceptics.
I am having serious thoughts about why we constantly refer to the “greenhouse effect”. To use a greenhouse is to use a pretty poor analogy; the Earth is not surrounded by a hard shell of “greenhouse gasses”, with air movements and other causes of potential cooling inside strictly regulated. It could be that we are not only barking up the wrong tree, but we are in the wrong garden, in the wrong country – and it is not even a tree!
About 99% of the Earth’s atmosphere (i.e. 20.9% oxygen and 78% nitrogen) is not composed of “greenhouse gasses.” Why not test the idea: find a greenhouse, and remove 99% of the glass, so as to leave a thin web of glass (let us assume this is possible). I doubt you will be able to measure any difference between the “inside” of the greenhouse and outside; however, to “improve” its effectiveness, add 0.05% more glass. Stand back, and watch in amazement as the temperatures soar!
You don’t think someone is trying to sell us a load of snake oil, do you?
Radical, we use GHE because everyone knows what we mean by that, rather than it being a good description of how it works. We've all agreed countless times that it isn't, so no need to go over it again.
I've been trying to follow this saga over at Lucia's Blackboard. It is still not entirely clear to me (and, I think, at least a few others)
a) What question Donoughue is actually asking (or thinks he is asking) and
b) What question the government/met office is answering (or think they are answering).
TBYJ: Thanks. There are millions of examples of stupidly-named things, from texting to Twitter, from the Reformation to the Enlightenment, from Methodism to Postmodernism, from Liberty to the Liberal Democrats, from Climategate to Plebgate. We have surely got beyond this level.
Re: natural variation - one of the good guys at the BBC keeps an eye on it:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/posts/A-typical-British-summer-in-the-making
H/T Tallbloke blog
This is the Phil Jones whose emails were stolen and nobody knew where they went.
The BBC's environment analyst Roger Harrabin put questions to Professor Jones, including several gathered from climate sceptics. The questions were put to Professor Jones with the co-operation of UEA's press office.
Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.
C - Do you agree that from January 2002 to the present there has been statistically significant global cooling?
No. This period is even shorter than 1995-2009. The trend this time is negative (-0.12C per decade), but this trend is not statistically significant.
Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?
An initial point to make is that in the responses to these questions I've assumed that when you talk about the global temperature record, you mean the record that combines the estimates from land regions with those from the marine regions of the world. CRU produces the land component, with the Met Office Hadley Centre producing the marine component.
Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different (see numbers below).
I have also included the trend over the period 1975 to 2009, which has a very similar trend to the period 1975-1998.
So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8511670.stm
I have commented on this on the wuwt site, here
Thank you, TBYJ, but the AGWists seem be fixated on it being a greenhouse; perhaps we should be concentrating on disabusing them of that idea.
Baroness: " I have offered the noble Lord a meeting with officials..."
While we wait for the Mills of the Royal Society to turn re the proposed meeting with the GWPF, perhaps some of the GWPF team might be free to accompany Lord Donoughue to such a 'meeting with officials'?
That's because most of them have a melon for a brain.
The model defence is totally out of date. We now have sufficient new observational evidence since that dubious claim was first made to definitely state that the models are not properly including natural variation which negates that old IPCC/Hadley argument completely. Models never trump observations!
I'd ask that if they exclude these discredited models what then is left to determine statistically significant warming and how do you differentiate natural variation from anthropogenic contributions bearing in mind that the last 16 years have shown no atmospheric warming whatsoever; exactly contrary to all that was previously claimed from model-based studies.
Since they bring up the IPCC, my question would carry a reminder that the IPCC specifically stated that the fingerprint of anthropogenic global warming was to be found in a combined tropical hotspot and a cooling stratosphere; the former does not exist in the observational data and the latter has not happened since 1995, ie 18 years. In any other field of endeavour the hypothesis would have been long ago rejected. That it lingers on with a range of contradictory excuses as to why the models fail, some of which are unphysical, is entirely due to the amount of funding still available for AGW and the dearth of funding for investigating natural variation.
Ian, thank you to the link to the Saby lecture. I can recommend it to everyone.
Jun 13, 2013 at 12:22 PM | Ian Campbell
Many thanks for that link.
Surely Murry Salby’s got it!
A brilliantly convincing lecture, but will the climatologists be able to follow it?
A plague of seventeen year locusts. Sing, cicadas, sing.
===============
If only Prof Salby had added the sunspot record it would have been game, set and match!
Baroness: "We note that other statistical methodologies have been proposed and it is important that there is an open technical debate on their relevance to climate change analysis in the peer-reviewed literature."
Interpretation: "Yes, you caught us on that statistical stuff, that's for sure. Please, please let there be people out there with bigger brains than ours who can do a better job than we've managed so far to pull us out of this mess of our own making."
Problem: There doesn't seem to be anyone with a big brain on their side anywhere in the world. They don't have a Salby or a Happer or a Dyson (or more of that calibre)
June 13, 2013 at 11:07 AM | Unregistered Commenter Rhoda
Rhoda,
I too have a similar question and have been to this website in the past: http://koeppen-geiger.vu-wien.ac.at/shifts.htm
These two graphics seem to tell a story:
http://koeppen-geiger.vu-wien.ac.at/pics/1901-1925.gif
http://koeppen-geiger.vu-wien.ac.at/pics/1976-2000.gif
I don't have the knowledge to interpret that story. But the data to derive those graphs is found in the first link I provided. Maybe somebody else can analyze this?
Didn't chapter 3.2 change a bit between the second order draft and the final version of the IPCC AR4 WG1 report? As I recall there was a bit in the second order draft cautioning about the meaning of statistical significance, which was conveniently disappeared from a paragraph down to one dismissive line in an appendix. The bit in the appendix is linked from chapter 3.2 though, and says (app 3.A, AR4 WG1):
Well indeed. That is pretty much Doug's point, supported by Baronness Verma's own reference, and supported by citations. But the IPCC had to add the following:
First observation: this dismissive bit is speculation; no citation provided, and has no place in a report of this type. Second observation: as Markonis and Koutsoyiannis (ref 1) have shown using the climacogram, long term persistence IS a better fit to historical data (and other climate scientists have also drawn similar conclusions). Arguably long term persistence is a simpler model than AR(1), as it requires fewer terms to define it, and has a sound physical basis (ref 2).
Ref 1. Markonis, Y., and D. Koutsoyiannis, Climatic variability over time scales spanning nine orders of magnitude: Connecting Milankovitch cycles with Hurst–Kolmogorov dynamics, Surveys in Geophysics, 34 (2), 181–207, 2013. link
Ref 2. Koutsoyiannis, D., Hurst-Kolmogorov dynamics as a result of extremal entropy production, Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 390 (8), 1424–1432, 2011. link
RR
“being a greenhouse”
I know what you mean. Anyone who has spent time in both a greenhouse and a polytunnel on sunny days might wonder about the magical IR trapping qualities of glass. Since the warmologists ascribe similar properties to CO2, I often feel this is worth pointing out.
I'm sure that Dr. Richard Betts, or Dr. Tamsin Edwards would like to "Take Tea with the Enemy" to explain the reasons why Lord Moncton's, or indeed, Douglas Keenan's analyses are flawed and why temperatures are still increasing in line with modelled expectations?
@JamesG
...The model defence is totally out of date. We now have sufficient new observational evidence since that dubious claim was first made to definitely state that the models are not properly including natural variation which negates that old IPCC/Hadley argument completely. Models never trump observations!..
Around 1998-2000 the AGW hypothesis was credible. Some of the papers supporting it were provably fraudulent - that's true of any hypothesis. Some of the predictions hadn't been found yet - they might be in the future. But you couldn't argue with the fact that the temperatures were going up
That was actually why the AGW fraudsters went out on a limb and fiddled the historical temperature set - they honestly believed that the temperatures were set to rise and rise, that we needed to take action right away, and that a little creative statistics might be initially necessary to save the world and get politicians moving.There would be no need for that after another 10 years, the temperatures would soon soar and everyone would get the message. The fraud was just a little pump-priming to give us a bit more time - to save the world....
Aha.... the Great Disappointment....
I have always thought that it was imposible to defend the indefensible.
I have to confess that I am becoming less and less certain.
All you appear to require sufficient people to "play blinders" and voila, game set and match.
I think some of the earlier posters may have miscontrued the "outside the bounds of natural variability" claim. It is not that the warming from the C19th is unprecedented (it isn't), but that the natural variability built into the models did not "hindcast" the "observed" temperature rises. This immediately presupposes that the modellers had included all factors in their creations. From the models' performance since it is clear that they had not, therefore the supposition that "natural variability" had been accurately modelled is false. In this case, no inference can be taken on the amount of A in GW.
Tim, you may be right about what the writer (not Verma, evidently) meant. But what was said is untrue, and the noble lord asked for observations, not the mismatch between what happened and what the models say happened. I'd say I didn't misconstrue it, the writer mis-stated it.
Rhoda
Perhaps the loose language in the reply was deliberate, so that whichever untruth (unprecedented, models cover all the bases) Lord D goes after, they will use the answer to the other to confound him. Pea and thimble, eh what?
Rhoda
" The observed warming has been shown to be outside the bounds of natural climate system variability"
How does she justify that? Has she not heard of the MWP and previous warmer periods? I have, and I'm not even a baroness. In fact that statement is demonstrably untrue and whoever sent her out with it knows it...."
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I recently received a response from Michael Fallon MP (currently chief wrangler for the DECC) which contained the following statement:
"We know that the climate has varied naturally in the past but there is compelling evidence that today's warming is linked to human activities. The Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age are often quoted as examples of past temperature changes as large as that of the the late 20th century. But the changes being observed today are global - there is little evidence that either of these periods of temperature change were observed globally, only mainly in parts of the Northern Hemisphere."
Deny, deny, deny. This is the line being peddled by DECC advisers and shows clearly how the ideological blinkers are still firmly in place. I'm putting together a list of papers demonstrating that the MWP was worldwide: but I'm not hopeful it will make a blind bit of difference to the Rt Hon's thinking.
@Mike T I advise you to visit "CO2science" (http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php)
They have a good "MWP" database.
Since models are not "observational evidence", the question was not answered. As a seasoned parliamentarian, no doubt Lord D. knows what to do next.
@Mike T I advise you to visit "CO2science"
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Thanks Don!
I put this in another thread, but it bears repeating here
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SteveW
If you want to know if two years are significantly different look at the 95% confidence limits. If they do not overlap, there is a <5% chance that they are similar.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif
Note the 95% confidence limits icons in green. The 5-year means for the last decade are all significanly higher than any records before the mid-1990s. They are also not significantly higher than later years.
I wouldn't get too excited about that. The variability and 95% confidence limits of the data since 1970 mean that it takes 15-20 years for the long term trend to emerge significantly from the short term noise. The Met Office, GISS or any other competent scientist will agree that there has been no significant warming since the late 1990s. They will also know why.
Those pushing the current campaign in Parliament are either ignorant of this, or deliberately promoting disinformation.
Make up your minds.
Sceptics point to the Medieval Warm period as being as warm as the present and say that Marcott et al is wrong when it shows the same warmth. Let's have some consistency here.
EM, how do they get 95%? This isn't a normal distribution and you would have to prove the stats that apply are appropriate. Basically it's a nonsense unless you believe it. And what was wrong with Marcott wasn'r results per se, but methods. Your 'make up your minds' is a mere argumentative position and inapplicable.
It is very bad form for the Minister to keep offering Lord Donoughue a meeting a meeting just with officials. This is a deliberate attempt to sidetrack.
Courtesy and protocol requires that if a member of Parliament (and a Lord is a member - of the upper house) seeks a meeting, he will be met by a Minister. Sure, officials may be present, and they may do most of the talking, but the point of the protocol is that Ministers should at least hear and see the discussion, and maybe judge for themselves the merits of the case rather than simply accepting the official brief.
Donoughue will not let go of this. He will persist, he will ask further questions contradicting the Minister's replies. And he will not be fobbed off by the offer of a sand-bagging meeting with officials - where the officials get to report to the Minister on what happened in the meeting. (As people will know, Donoughue was chief policy advisor at No 10 to two Prime Ministers, he knows his way around. And I am sure Nigel Lawson is following or is involved in all this.)
As I recall, the Marcott method didn't measure anything post mid-c20th. So it has nothing to say about today's temperatures compared with the WMP. Plus, the technique he used may well not have directed something as relatively short as the WMP.