Friday
Sep272013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill AR5 open thread
Sep 27, 2013
This is an open thread for anyone wanting to discuss the Summary for Policymakers. We gather that it was only approved an hour ago but that journalists were issued with a press release shortly before 8am UK time. Suggestions of a reining back on the alarm.
Update on Sep 27, 2013 by
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill
Headlines seem to speak of 2°C warming by 2100. If true this is a big reining back from AR4 which was talking of 1-4°C.
If rumours are correct, the pause is not part of the headlines.
Update on Sep 27, 2013 by
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill
The pause is apparently being written off as insignificant, a result of the 1998 start date chosen. If true I will be truly gobsmacked.
Reader Comments (95)
Just heard on Sky News: 'the heat is being absorbed by the cold ocean currents.' And in answer to criticism of models: 'if you buy a Picasso, you do not worry about a few specks of paint.'
Sir Mark Walport is convinced. (Today Programme)
How about this comment, reported at
http://www.thegwpf.org/ipcc-britain-cool-gulf-stream-slows/
[My emphasis]
2007 IPCC report:
"Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely [90 percent confidence] due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations
Now here is the statement from the fifth IPCC report:
"It is extremely likely [95 percent confidence] that human influence on climate caused more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951−2010."
Did you spot one differences? The 2007 IPCC statement focused on human greenhouse gas emissions, while the 2013 statement pertains to all human influences on the climate. This includes the cooling effect from human aerosol emissions (pollutants that scatter sunlight).
Can anyone confirm the exact meaning of “Most” of the observed increase. If the IPCC now think it is "extremely likely" that "more than half" of the increase is due to human influence, does this mean that they now accept up to 50% of global warming could be due to natural causes.
The climate doomsday cult's latest 'scientific' gospel got mentioned several times on ABC News24 several times this morning among other stuff. Maybe it'll get a few more mentions tonight and tomorrow, but I reckon some reporters are waking up to the fact that we are not going to get fried, drowned or otherwise obliterated any time soon or in a century.
There may be a reining back on alarm in the report itself...but there is certainly a ramping up on the BBC and the Guardian. Looked at from a cultural and sociological viewpoint it is fascinating, but , God, it is wearisome to read and listen to.
The BBC and the Telegraph are telling us that GB will now get colder as a result of global warming.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10337064/IPCC-report-Britain-could-cool-if-Gulf-Stream-slows.html
Will this mean that snow will no longer be a thing of the past? I guess we failed to be alarmed by the dire warnings that our climate would become a Mediterranean one.
There is so much work to be done. Not only do I feel ineffectual but also just plain TIRED. Thanks to all you guys who still have the juice and the will to carry on.
A personal view but now mostly on paper and quantified scientifically and in engineering terms.
There has been AGW - from Asian aerosols reducing cloud albedo. It stopped in about 2000.
CO2 climate sensitivity <0.1 K because the Earth's atmosphere self-regulates. the IPCC 'consensus' is juvenile junk science.
Most CO2 emissions are natural, the 3% from humans is unimportant because natural processes are adapting to sequestrate the excess, driven by the irreversible thermodynamics of the OLR. This has been ignored by the IPCC but ultimately controls the lot.
Going to be an unproductive day for those who have jobs and contribute to this blog!
BBC R4 is begrudgingly allowing more sceptical questions, but hits them with a barrage of 'more certain than evers.'
It seems there's a clear dichotomy between that oh-so certain line and the lack of warming, pause, failure of models etc. The line that the oceans are now after all this time of land-based warming exclusively capturing warming and sending it to the sea bed is pure, evidence-free nonsense.
But the IPCC take-home message is clear; 'it's worse than we thought'.
The gravy train rolls on.
How long is climate science going to be allowed (unlike any other science) to take refuge in 'must-be' - as in, nothing else explains global warming so it must be CO2; and, there's no where else the missing heat can be, so it must be in the deep ocean. From a scientific perspective that seems pretty feeble. When its being ramped up into a basis for public policy, surely its just ridiculous?
The thing about the IPCC is that is very difficult to estimate just how stupid these scientists and policy makers are going to look in another 5 or 10 years when global average temperatures will be lower than today (and they will be unable to adjust anymore for UHI as they have exhausted that trick already). Time for an old cartoon:
modernparents.jpg Update - it's gone, now a 404. Sorry.
Here is my assessmemt of climate chage:
I am 95% certain that global warming will vanish with the sunspots. 97% of the blokes in the pub agree with me.
Here it is
http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/WGIAR5-SPM_Approved27Sep2013.pdf
I thought it was on at 1100am UK time but appears to have started:
http://www.ipcc.ch/news_and_events/multimedia.shtml#.UkU7TNKnpQQ
Today: The BBC said they searched the UK for a sceptic scientist and found none. They fielded two warmists and the debate blamed impartiality in the media for the problem of sceptism, saying that Steve Jones was right, sceptics should not be given airtime.
Early days, but if this sentiment gains legs we could see the BBC giving up all pretence of impartiality.
I'm hiding today. For me it's the equivalent of a child's birthday party. We have to let them have their fun today, running amok, screaming at each other, and feeling sick by the end of the day with all the excitement. Let them have their fun, in the coming months and years there is going to be scant fun for them, as they retreat, handhold by handhold, as more and more papers report low ECS and the temperatures continue to plateau. Let them have their fun, they are intellectual infants, after all.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the climate refuses to change much, and the globe refuses to warm.
lapogus and Longstaff:
Yes, It's a peak not a pause.
OK, we got it mostly wrong for a quarter of a Century but we now know we're right! Trust us......
The AR5 Summary for Policymakers report contains no occurrences of the terms “sun”, “Pacific Decadal Oscillation” or “Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation”. Strange that, since these are the main drivers of the climate system. I suppose they didn’t want to confuse the policymakers.
Gosh, I hate to agree, but I do think the 1998 start date is cherry-picked. Looking at the graph I'd say 2004 is the correct start date. Not to worry, will just take longer...
TheBigYinJames
A very perceptive analogy. Couldn't agree more.
Well, it's Thermogeddon day today on Radio 5, and yes, the pause is of no significance whatsoever.
Meanwhile...
14 November 2010, Otto Edenhofer, co-chair of IPCC Working Group III
“The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War…. one must say clearly that de facto we redistribute the world’s wealth by climate policy…. One has to rid oneself of the illusion that international climate politics have anything to do with environmental concerns.”
From the report
And yet the are now more certain than ever about the way the earth will respond to rising CO2.
Fudge factor has entered the critical zone.
Good morning all R4 listeners. So who else noted the pat on the back given to the Today program by the Science Spinner for not giving the "debate" a "false balance" (should that be false conscious).
OK, so who can give us some names of "Scientists working in the field in the UK" who have a sceptical view. Lets give Horrorbin some help.
To help with interpretation here is AR5's likelihood scale:
Virtually certain 99-100% probability
Very likely 90-100% probability
Likely 66-100% probability
About as likely as not 33 to 66% probability
Unlikely 0-33% probability
Very unlikely 0-10% probability
Exceptionally unlikely 0-1% probability
Here on ABC's The Drum the first question to the doomsday cult's preacher from CSIRO, a Reverend Pep Canadell, was why scientists were not 100 percent certain of human influence on climate as opposed to only 95 percent certain. Presumably that question was meant to demonstrate some journalistic skepticism. That segment lasted for five or six minutes and it was squeezed between a chat about boat people and Aussie budget news. I guess we don't think much about our children's future any more. Tsk, tsk, tsk!
TBYJ
If it had been demonstrated – by Mother Nature, no less – that your life's work had been most likely (95% confidence) a total waste of time and that your livelihood was at risk, you too could be forgiven for "running amok, screaming and feeling sick..."
@BH
"If true I will be truly gobsmacked"
Oh, surely not ... if you are, what on earth did you expect ?
Gecko, what they mean is
"No best estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity can now be given because we'd have to admit it was lower than we said last time".
Rumours about the pause being described as insignificant seem to have been wrong. In fact there seems to be very little mention of the pause.
I don't understand why you'll be "gobsmacked". This is the IPCC.
The last line of the BBC's report:
"For the future, the report says that projected warming for the end of this century is likely to exceed 1.5C, relative to to the period 1850-1900. "
How much of that warming have we had already? A little over half a degree? I can't see anyone getting panicked about 1C warming from now to the end of the century.
p. 11: "There is low confidence in cloud and aerosol processes in the models". So how the hell can there be higher confidence in the validity of the models?
2C by 2100? Exactly what the treaties wanted. We're safe!!
NZ Willy, starting in 2001 will do: Wood for Trees, Hadcrut4gl 2001-present
IPCC/AR5 would resurrect the Phlogiston Theory if they thought it could explain the pause.
Jack Savage
You say;
'There is so much work to be done. Not only do I feel ineffectual but also just plain TIRED. Thanks to all you guys who still have the juice and the will to carry on.'
The trick is to realise we are dealing with the worlds largest supertanker whose crew has only just realised that their charts MIGHT be wrong. There are those in this and other sceptic blogs who have come to believe that the notion of AGW is finished and will become demoralised to realise that at present the course is steady and engines are still set to 'full ahead.'
It will be a long process to make the supetanker crew aware they need to change course let alone for that to be effected.
tonyb
Just read the BBC's report:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24292615
"[A] pause in warming over the past 15 years is too short to reflect long term trends."
"[S]ince the 1950s, many of the observed changes in the climate system are 'unprecedented over decades to millennia'.
"Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth's surface than any preceding decade since 1850."
The implications seem to be that 60 years of observations is enough to make 'scientists' 95% sure, yet the most recent 15 years (a mere quarter of the 60 year period) should be disregarded as this does not 'reflect long term trends'.
However, 160 years is enough to extrapolate millennia of climate changes.
Surely, there have been lots of previously unobserved changes in the climate system over the last 60 years, because it's only in recent decades that it's been *possible* to observe them. Otherwise, I'd personally like to see the satellite measurements and computer models from 1850 onwards for comparison.
Guardian girl Fiona reports far less press than last report and the only protestors seem to be sceptcs.
For reasons that I cannot understand the word 'purblind' has popped into my head this morning. Mrs Dolphinhead, who I tend to defer to on such matters, said there is no such word but I see that one of its meanings is 'Slow in understanding or discernment; dull'
WTF
I have written a few first thoughts
https://ipccreport.wordpress.com/2013/09/27/summary-for-policymakers-published/
Listening to Toady at 6:15 this morning I was driven to full wakefulness by the mad theories of Jeremy Leggett from a 'company' called Solarcentury - the UK's 'largest solar electric company' (so no vested interst there then...Look him up here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Leggett ) who said we should be leaving all 'carbon' in the ground, and that if the likes of BP and Shell won't do so 'we' (the Government, I guess he meant) should 'stop them'.
TBYJ's analogy is spot on. The IPCC are like children in the playground, running around crying wolf:
"It is still going to get warmer, and colder, and drier and wetter, and it is all our fault, and we may not all die before tea-time, but most of us are still going to die not long after supper..."
I am off to buy a bag of coal for the office stove.
"2C by 2100? Exactly what the treaties wanted. We're safe!!"
About as scary as being savaged by a dead sheep. There will be untold benefits for the UK, and think what all of that lovely plant food will do!
Unfortunately, however, the sun may have other ideas...
So. Now we know. Warble Gloaming is all the fault of humans. It must be true, as I saw it on the BBC Breakfast Show.
Two things I did notice was that the temperature rose during the interview itself – at the start, it was 0.8°C since the beginning of the 20th C; at the end it was 0.9°C. Should we be getting alarmed? The second point was that we were assured by Tamsin…erm, whatever… that what was causing to hiatus was pollution from burning coal! So, now you have it – coal smoke causes global cooling. If there ever was a stronger case for reopening coal-fired power stations, that has to be it. However, while the two BBC puppets on the Breakfast Show did ask some pertinent questions, the conclusion of the article was fully on-message.
And… and… it was stated that we should quite categorically consider time spans of no less than 30 years as being relevant. Well, since 1945 there was 30 years of cooling; 1975 to 1998 is not 30 years, no matter how imaginative an accountant you are, so, on the words of the “experts” presented, there can have been no significantly rapid warming in the latter half of the last century.
Remember, this report is a culmination of vested interests. Scientists who have their funding to safeguard, politicians and advisers who cannot be seen to have been wrong and the activists who need a cause. The real significance is the fact that people have heard it all before and do not believe it any more. As Phillip Stott used to say ( where is he these days) it is a consequence of "presentism" each one looking after his own job or pension. Whatever the fanfare today the din will die down quickly this time - nobody surely expected a mea culpa. The IPCC's days are numbered.
Dropped in briefly on the press conference webcast, at random:
- There are more Chinese scientists than ever before involved in the IPCC process. Err... good.
- The team had "only had 6 hours sleep in the last two days..." so that sounds like the calm & orderly workings of settled science.
- The "Big Red Scary Earth" graphic duly flourished.
- Lots of model graphs, as you'd expect.
- A question on which of the future scenarios we were currently closest to following was fobbed off with a reference to total historical carbon emissions being more important. I suspect that might be hiding an inconvenient disconnect between current CO2 and temperature trajectories.
- I'm not good at remembering numbers, bot I got a general impression that the scary numbers were generally being dialled back a bit, but not the rhetoric.
Looking forward to to the autopsy!
Maximum sea level rise of 68cm by 2100. I am getting my water wings on now!
Jack Savage (Sep 27, 2013 at 8:33 AM) has a point; I sometimes feel that we are trying to persuade the township that the levee is as high as it needs be, as the flooding has stopped. The BBC et al continue to insist that we build it ever higher, committing all resources to that while the rest of the town crumbles behind us. With your figures, Roger Longstaff (Sep 27, 2013 at 8:59 AM), you must be right. Let’s take a break, and have a glass of wine and a cigarette while we still can.
Pages of waffle about radiative forcings (estimated to 0.1 Wm-2), yet they admit that they still do not understand the effects of clouds and aerosols. In other words they do not know if the missing heat is in the deep oceans or in deep space.
Incredible!