Sunday
Sep152013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Another climate splash in the Mail on Sunday
Sep 15, 2013 Climate: Models Climate: Sceptics Climate: Surface David Rose has a big splash in the Mail on Sunday, covering a leaked version of the Summary for Policymakers, Nic Lewis's report on the Met Office model and taking a well-aimed potshot at Bob Ward to boot.
They recognise the global warming ‘pause’ first reported by The Mail on Sunday last year is real – and concede that their computer models did not predict it. But they cannot explain why world average temperatures have not shown any statistically significant increase since 1997.
Update on Sep 15, 2013 by
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill
The Met Office has issued a holding response to the Mail article. Significantly, no mention is made of Nic Lewis's criticisms of their model.
Reader Comments (177)
Just listened to part of a speech given by Ed Davey
"People go to bed wearing life jackets because of rising sea levels"
I'm speechless.
Maybe they should pitch their tents at high tide......it would save an uncomfortable night
The game is up as I predicted a few months ago. My view is that climate science is roughly at the same stage as physics was in the C18th and is consequently bollocks.
I also have a mature professional approach to this which I don't reveal here.
From the Mail title, "Global warming is just HALF what we said...". Why should anyone even believe that much?
Sure, it might, possibly, be correct. But the Met Office has pulled in its horns, and issued a reduced, and truncated, forecast of another 5 years effectively zero warming. As skewered by Steve macIntyre at Climate Audit. (That's not a personal criticism of Richard Betts on my behalf: He has a very difficult job.)
Some others are expecting even less than no warming. We shall see.
Surely, this means that 97% of scienists got it wrong!
Bob Ward does not seem to have tweeted at all since he sent this 24 hours ago, still smarting about Rose's spread last Sunday.
Bob Ward@ret_ward24h
Why are @DavidRo21545155 and @MailOnline so afraid of telling readers the truth about climate change?
Perhaps he got more than he wished for.
David Rose's article is what is known in the trade as a Gish Gallop.
A large number of supposedly significant, but actually dubious statements are presented one after another to give the illusion that one's case is overwhelming.
eSmiff says-
"My view is that climate science is roughly at the same stage as physics was in the C18th and is consequently bollocks."
I think of it as a form of the ultraviolet catastrophe for climate science.
Re: EM
A lot like the release of the IPCC report then.
Entropic man, and what you have written may well be a case of projection.
Rather than spend hours demolishing the whole Gish Gallop, I'll just deal with his headline point.
"Yet the leaked report makes the extraordinary concession that the world has been warming at only just over half the rate claimed by the IPCC in its last assessment, published in 2007.
Back then, it said that the planet was warming at a rate of 0.2C every decade – a figure it claimed was in line with the forecasts made by computer climate models.
But the new report says the true figure since 1951 has been only 0.12C per decade – a rate far below even the lowest computer prediction."
AR4 actually said-
"The linear warming trend over the 50 years from 1956 to 2005 (0.13 [0.10 to 0.16]°C per decade) is nearly twice that for the 100 years from 1906 to 2005."
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/mains1.html
Note that, pause and all, the difference between AR4 and the claimed AR5 leak is from 0.13C per decade in 2007 to 0.12C per decade in 2013.
If David Rose's first point is a false straw man, how much faith can anyone put in the rest?
Keep up the good work David Rose. The more this stuff is out there the harder it will be for the IPCC clowns to pretend it is otherwise.
@ eSmiff: "My view is that climate science is roughly at the same stage as physics was in the C18th and is consequently bollocks."
My view is that mainstream climate science is a *what if* scenario: what if feedback is positive?
Soon to be a minority pursuit.
(That's not a personal criticism of Richard Betts on my behalf: He has a very difficult job.)
No he doesn't ! Whatever gave you that idea? He just uses the useless climate models to guess what the physical (not physics) effects will be. If he is wrong sans faire rien. It costs him nothing. Good salary, no pressure, plenty of jollies to useless conferences around the world and a great pension. What not to like?
Sep 15, 2013 at 1:49 PM | Unregistered Commenterentropic man
Why don't you learn to read before typing your endless rubbish. AR5 !!!!!!!!!
Sep 15, 2013 at 12:55 PM | Stacey
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I guess that Ed Davey has yet to read the article in the Daily Mail,
I just posted this on WUWT:
For British readers, I note that Ed Davey is still sprouting his usual nonsense. He is arguing* that the climate can’t wait for Tory unity on green issues. I guess that he is not aware that the IPCC are rolling back on Climate Sensitivity and that accordingly matters are less urgent, and the one thing we can do is wait a bit.
The prudent thing would be to immediately halt all green initiatives. After all the USA has been the most successful country at reducing its CO2 emissions and it did not sign up to Kyoto. The experience of the USA strongly suggests that if you are serious about reducing CO2 then the best way to achieve this is to increase dependancy on gas. The case for shale in the UK is overwhelming if one wishes to reduce CO2 emissions.
However, given the pause we can now afford to delay taking action, and insead wait and see what the next 10 years informs us. If temperatures do not increase, even more so should they fall, we will know that the case for AGW has been very much over hyped and that Climate Sensitivity is even lower than even the latest papers are suggesting such that the need to take any action is unlikely.
Ed Davey needs to get with the latest research and needs to consider the implications of the pause, or is he just intent on increasing the number of old and vulnerable people killed each year (I would say murdered) as a result of the UK government energy policy and the needless and grossly reckless increase in energy cost pushing millions of people needlessly and avoidably into fuel poverty. When interviewed by Andrew Neil, he suggested that his policies were 'no regret' policies. I take it that he does not regret being a party (indeed a prime mover) to the murder (I will not sanitise it with expressions of ‘collateral damage’ or ‘killing’, when it is the direct and foreseeable result of policy – it is rightly to be clasified as murder and nothing less) of thousands of people who have been forced into fuel poverty. How this man sleeps at night, I do not know.
[*amended BH]
Because his remit appears to include defending the indefensible. A bit like Entropic Man.
chris y on Sep 15, 2013 at 1:40 PM
"I think of it as a form of the ultraviolet catastrophe for climate science."
Brilliant!
Re: EM
From the same AR4 report:
There is David Rose's 0.2C per decade.
The Met Office has issued a rather half-hearted response.
Most of it is just background waffle.
They say their Hadgem2 model is fine, because its ECS is within the IPCC range - nice circular argument.
http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2013/09/15/met-office-in-the-mail-on-sunday/
Sep 15, 2013 at 1:05 PM | michael hart
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The Met Office envisage that sometime within the next 5 years there will be an ENSO event and hence some short lived warming coupled with that natural phenomena, but apart from that no warming.
If they are correct that there will be no warming until after 2017 we will have some 38 years of satellite data showing no first hand correlation between temperatures and CO2 9ie,m no linear increase in temperature broadly corresponding to a broadly linear increase in CO2 levels), and merely a one off and isolated step change in temperature not brought about by CO2 but rather the product of ENSO. The satellite data will increase the case that Climate Sesitivity is so low that it cannot be measured within the limitations of the sensitivity, resolution and errors of our best temperature measurement devices.
Scientists should already be asking themselves the following questions:
1. what if there is no resuption of warming within the next 5 years.
2 what if there is no resuption of warming within the next 10 years
3 what if temperatures if over the next 5 years we see a fall in temperature.
4. what if temperatures if over the next 5 years we see a fall in temperature
What would this tell us about Climate Sensitivity.
I say that because although AR5 is scheduled to be published later this month, in reality it will not be judged until the next climate conference in 2015. So what if by then, there is no further warming.
Further, in Rio, China indicated that it would take no action before 2020. That being the case, what if by then there is no further warming? How will China react if by then, we see some cooling?
When you project the future, you need to consider what the future will look like. Are the model outputs going to further depart from reality? Will the gulf between projections and reality widen? Will all the models have dropped out of the condfidence band? Consideration should be given to this now.
It's worth adding that the IPCC claim in AR5 for observed warming in the past 15 years - 0.05C per decade with an error bar range that goes down to minus 0.05C, ie a cooling trend - is just a quarter of the forecast and supposedly observed 0.2C per decade mentioned in AR4, and a sixth of the 0.3C per decade projected way back in the 1990 FAR. It's also less than half the 0.12 observed trend since 1951.
If anything, the Mail on Sunday understated the extent of the IPPC's previous errors.
Further to my post at 02:44pm, in view of the strength of comment, perhaps I should have linked an article on excess winter death rates/premature winter deaths. See for example:
http://straightstatistics.org/article/academics-wrangle-over-fuel-poverty-and-winter-deaths
commenting on an article published in The Independent - see http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/fuel-poverty-deaths-three-times-higher-than-government-estimates-7462426.html
Similar stories have continued to appear in the newspapers - see: http://www.independent.co.uk/money/spend-save/24000-die-in-winter-as-fuel-poverty-climbs-8372461.html
Accordingly, I do not consider it to be contentious that UK energy policy is directly resulting in premature deaths brought about by fuel poverty. In my opinion such result was foreseeable and such result is reckless. The politicians that have put the UK energy policy in place with resultant increase in energy costs have shown a complete and utter reckless disregard for the safety and well being of a sizeable number of the citizens of this country.
There is some pressure for reform of the NHS arising out of the needless and premature death rates in many of the hospitals. Similar pressure should be brought to bear on politicians to rectify the suffering caused by their energy policy. In my opinion, those responsible for the hardship and deaths should be held to account. There should be prosecutions and those responsible should be pushed to justify the stance that they have taken since there is a case to answered as to whether this amounts to gross dereliction of public duty/public office.
TerryS
David Rose says specifically "the new report says the true figure since 1951 has been only 0.12C per decade"
That matches my AR4 quote ""The linear warming trend over the 50 years from 1956 to 2005 (0.13 [0.10 to 0.16]°C per decade)..."
Your reference is to another part of AR4 discussing rates of change since 1990. My point stands. Nowhere in AR4 does it claim that the 0.2C per decade applies over the last 60 years. That would require a temperature rise since the 1950s of 1.2C globally. The actual figure from the GISS graph 5 year averages is from anomaly -0.05
in 1951 to 0.6C in 2007. This is an increase of 0.65, or 0.11C per decade.
David Rose's claim is not valid. At best it is journalistic excess. At worse, he is deliberately misinterpreting AR4.
It would be fair turnaround to revisit the old IPCC plot of global temperature, with superimposed linear trends over the most recent 100, 50, 30 and 15 years, to clearly demonstrate the slowing of temperature rise that the models predicted all along...or something.
Because his remit appears to include defending the indefensible. A bit like Entropic Man.
Sep 15, 2013 at 2:45 PM | Unregistered Commentermichael hart
Yes, but I doubt either of them finds it difficult. After all, an archbishop has no problem in espousing their religious beliefs.
Paul Matthews -
Thanks for the link to the Met Office's response. It says, inter alia, "when HadGEM2-ES is evaluated against many aspects of the observed climate, including those that are critical for determining the climate sensitivity, it has proved to be amongst the most skilful models in the world." I wonder if Dr Betts could expound upon this, because on the metric of average surface temperature (which has somehow become the default metric), it is, as the UKMO admit, at the extreme high end of models.
David Rose -
I think "entropic man" has a point. As you write above, the comparison should be recent temperature rise vs. AR4 (or earlier) predictions, rather than since 1951. The long-period trend is not affected much by the recent change, partly because of the sheer number of years compared to the recent pause, and partly because the ordinary-least-squares calculation weights the changes in the middle of the period higher than those of the ends.
MO:
It is amomgst the most skilful of models, none of which has been shown to have any skill. How do the MO measure skill?
Don't miss this related commentary in Nature Climate Change, on discrepancies between observations and models over the past 2 decades:
Overestimated global warming over the past 20 years
David Rose
I note the large error bar you quote. Remember that at the long term warming rates around 0.12C per decade under discussion it takes around 20 years for a warming trend to emerge from the background noise at 95% significance.
Over longer periods such as the last 60 years it is possible to be statistically confident that the temperature is increasing.
At the lower rate of change suggested by the 21st century measurements, the uncertainty means that for some years yet it will be impossible to say with high statistical significance which way the temperature trend is going.
Paul,
Agreed. Most of the MO post sets the stage by largely rehashing what Rose has already written in his article.
Also agree with Stephen Richards. Climate modelers do not seem to have had a 'tough job'. There are no penalties for getting the wrong answer. On the other hand, there are penalties for getting the 'wrong' answer.
There may be systemic reasons behind this. After all these advances, are climate modelers still crude enough to not predict evolving temperatures with some accuracy? I don't think so. Between models and run-conditions, there have to be Darwinian forces at play.
Suppose, as an example, that a model predicted the present-day temperatures course of the past 15 years or so, correctly in the past., say starting 1998. It would have been summarily dismissed and thrown out. Models, more precisely the stated and unstated assumptions behind it, that predicted warming at the same pace, would have survived.
What we have on our hands could very well be the end-result of such an evolutionary process. What is more, on the policy front, there are enough forces drawing support from the precautionary principle to sustain model outputs that are really jacked-up. Even if eminent climatologists would protest, for example, a 10C model as being scientifically implausible, its perceived societal value in eliciting alarm and reactionary measures would be high enough that it would be retained.
A good question therefore would be: Were there models that consistently produced low rates of temperature rise. What internal processes did they represent best? What about models that show a temperature rise but at a relatively slow rate? Additionally, it would be a mistake to average these models with those producing high rates of temperature rise as they represent fundamentally different creatures. But I suspect that has been done.
I believe what we're witnessing is a retreat to prepared positions. The war is a long way from over. Myles Allen doesn't see the worth of the IPCC, but in some senses the sceptics do, because what we have is written evidence provided by the scientists concerned that they have made assumptions and forecasts that are plain wrong. If I was in that position I'd want the IPCC abandoned and to go back to a simple "97% of scientists ya di ya di ya" so the narrative could be changed to suit the observations without the irksome task of making forecasts and having to pretend they're correct when they quite clearly aren't.
entropic man. Give up; you're beginning to sound desperate, a bit like fast-fingers himself. How far are you going to keep moving the goalposts? AGW is rather like the parrot.
Harold, Phillip, yes, the 'skilful' claim caught my eye. These are the people who predicted 0.3C rise from 2004-14.
Also their arctic ice prediction made in June is looking less accurate than the WUWT one!
entropic man-
The key question (to me, at least) is not whether there has been warming over the last century or demi-century. Luke-warmers agree with that statement. What is more important is whether the increase in the coming century is going to be dangerously large, or modest. In this regard, models -- which we are told are our best method for prediction -- have proven to be inaccurate. Hence, my money remains on the "modest" side.
Skiphil
Unfortunately the authors have chosen the large El-Nino year of 1998 as the starting point for their later case and a fairly typical year, 1995, for their first case. This would lead to a reduction in measured rate of change to 2013 even if the long term warming trend remained constant.
The commentary following the paper was more useful, as part of the ongoing discussion of how to translate the uncertainties of the science into policy advice for politicians, not noted for their ability to work with uncertainty.
Decadal rates are useless when the system is doing different things in different decades and doesn't follow the Gregorian calender.
richard verney
You need a refresher course in "Yes, Minister"!
The Minister is there to protect his department and ensure its continued status within government by justifying its existence and if possible increasing its budget.
Davey is a PPE man so he knows damn all about climate other than what his officials tell him. (Unless, of course, he has bothered to do some research of his own like many of us on here have done but since he has been rather busy scrambling up the greasy pole I doubt this has been a priority). The sense of panic in DECC at the moment must be almost tangible. If half of what is being touted comes to pass his entire department will cease to exist with Energy, if Cameron has any sense, being sent either DEFRA or Trade and Industry — hopefully the former where Paterson is in charge.
So unless Davey keeps churning out the DECC line the bloodbath will be enormous — taking Deben and his Committee with it incidentally.
the key question, first raised iirc by GWPF's David Whitehouse, is what kind of (miraculous) mechanism has kept world temps CONSTANT all these years, whatever else's been happening.
If AR5 can't say, it's a pile of wasted PDF files (hopefully nobody will kill any tree because of it).
entropic man (Sep 15, 2013 at 3:51 PM), I don't understand the reason for your negative comment: didn't they simply chosse the two extremes 1993 (I assume 1995 was your typo) and 1998 to illustrate their point?
HaroldW
Statistical analysis of the data gives 95%+ significance for warming over the 20th century.
For the 21st century we've too short a run of data to be sure what's happened so far. Forecasting what will happen is subject to at least four main uncertainties.
1) The variability of existing data, and therefore in our starting temperature.
2) The uncertainty in human behaviour; how much CO2 and areosols will we produce, how much deforestation will we do, how will our population change, etc.
2) How will the climate respond to our changes?
4) What future events will modify the climate? These could include volcanoes, from small to temporary such as Pinatubo up to possinble supervolcanoes such as Yellowstone. There are also possible impacts, such as the one which looks increasingly likely to have caused the Younger Dryas. Long term cycles are also possible, such as the PDO and AMO. So are changes in solar insolation.
Some of these can be included in our forecasts. Others, by definition are unpredictable. Models are not a perfect indicator, but give some indication of the range of possible outcomes and their probabilities based on those aspects of the climate system which are predictable.
My own view of the models is that they work well within their limits. The recent mismatch between the 21st century record and the predictions made ten years ago are due to short term variations in solar and human activity (solar insolation and aerosols) which were not predictable at the time the models were running. I note that the most recent models do better than the earlier ones, as the state of the art improves.
For now it is moot. For all the hot air and speculation going on here, the only true test will be to look back at the temperature record from 2100.
For all the author's keenness to quote figures to so many decimal places, to pluck values out of various papers to impress us all with his scientific credentials, this little paragraph shows how EM has little understanding of systems and how to model them.
And I am not even going to explain why. You get it or you don't, and EM doesn't. Despite the wonderful climate-speak.
Sep 15, 2013 at 3:25 PM | HaroldW
On your note to David Rose:
I did not realise that the temperature analysts apply weights to emphasise the influence of mid-range data points. I have often used least squares curve fitting and always write my own ad hoc programs. In my ignorance of modern heavy-metal statistics I have simply followed the method’s inventor, Gauss, and have never used other than uniform weights: w=1 throughout. That assumption is of course hundreds of years out of date, by now.
What would be the reason for weighting the data? Why should mid-range values be more credible than those at either end? A simple example from climatology would be useful, if you have one.
I am familiar with Runge’s phenomenon when applying a high order polynomial to equispaced data but that is unavoidable isn’t it? In any case it should not occur in a straight-line curve-fit and I should have thought that an unbiased w=1 would then be correct, knowing nothing else about the measurements.
Sep 15, 2013 at 3:19 PM | entropic man
What is the current definition of local climate? I thought it used to be the local weather, averaged over the most recent 30 years, not 60.
Please note that even if the rise was statistically significant, 0.12C per decade is not enough to trigger any CO2 reduction.
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
David Salt
Sorry, my typo.
Look at the GISS graph. 1993 is well below the trend line of the 5-year average and 1998 well above. One will give a much flatter slope than the other, regrdless of any possible change in the long term trend.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif
The main thrust of the paper agrees with my comment to HaroldW, that the CPIM5 models did not include 21st Century phenomena such as increased cooling by aerosols, reduced insolation and vulcanism. Nor did it anticiate the flat/negative ENSO.
Well, when this stuff starts appearing in the Mail, something is going on. Its very dangerous to prophesy doom because if it doesn't appear on cue, public opinion will turn against you in a heartbeat. Very interesting Newsnight on Friday which had a guest openly sceptical about global warming. Would not have happened a couple of years ago. The 'pause' is being openly talked about now.
Here is a recent article by Naomi Klein where the realisation is dawning that the greens have been completely stuffed. Something I told Monbiot and others 5 years ago. The rifles have been cocked and the shooting is about to begin.
***
Well, I think there is a very a deep denialism in the environmental movement among the Big Green groups. And to be very honest with you, I think it's been more damaging than the right-wing denialism in terms of how much ground we've lost. Because it has steered us in directions that have yielded very poor results. I think if we look at the track record of Kyoto, of the UN Clean Development Mechanism, the European Union's emissions trading scheme – we now have close to a decade that we can measure these schemes against, and it's disastrous.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/sep/10/naomi-klein-green-groups-climate-deniers
See also
Inhofe To Boxer: 'We Won, You Lost, Get A Life' (VIDEO)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/20/inhofe-to-boxer-we-won-yo_n_365465.html
What is the current definition of local climate? I thought it used to be the local weather, averaged over the most recent 30 years, not 60.
Sep 15, 2013 at 4:31 PM | Mark Well
30 years of local weather does indeed define the local climate.
In the context of this thread, David Rose's (mistaken) headline point was to claim that IPCC had nearly halved its stated warming rate for the last 60 years between AR4 in 2007 and AR5 in 2013.
TerryS and David Rose then moved on to discuss references in AR4 to warming rates over the last 13 years.
With us all jumping around discussing different timescales, no wonder it is getting confusing.
Re: EM
David rose says:
The quote I gave from AR4 does say this.
You might not agree with him then comparing it to the decadel rate from 1950 onwards (I don't either), but AR4 did claim that the warming rate was 0.2C per decade.
Jiminy cricket
Why not move beyond the insult and explain to me how a computer model can do a Mystic Meg and anticipate events unpredictable at the time of its run.