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)
Super Matt cartoon in the Telgraph. Two polar bears sitting on a bit of ice reading a paper with the headline "Global Warming" and one saying to the other "Can't Ed Miliband forbid global temperatures to rise?"
As Lovelock said, scientists today are a shower of grovelling, dumb, little wage slaves with zero integrity. You can get them to say anything you want.
That "at least 30 years law" is a shameful lie.
Not only are 30 years about the worst timeframe possible if it matches a PDO/AMO half cycle,
but in previous reports, shorter trends were presented frequently and prominently, such as 1979-2005 (26 years) in AR4, nicely fitting the warm PDO/AMO half cycle.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/tssts-3-1-1.html
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch3s3-2-2.html
A 15 year trend 1998-2013 would then be even less biased, spanning about equally over warm and cold PDO phases.
...The pause is apparently being written off as insigificant, a result of the 1998 start date chosen. If true I will be truly gobsmacked....
As far as I understand the graphs, the pause issue is not a matter of the duration. It's a matter of the TREND. The question is whether the models are making the right predictions. If they're not, their predictions will move further and further away from the observations.
This is what we have noticed happening. There was a little excitement several months ago, when the observational trend fell out of the bottom of the model prediction range. Since then, the observational trend has continued to drop relative to model predictions. Just which point the 'pause' started at is pretty irrelevant.....
The other interesting point to remember is that the 'global warming' issue is NOT solely about the science. This is a POLITICAL move, driven by green activists primarily intended to apply a halt to man's technological advance. If some aspects of the science support this, they will be used. If some aspects don't, they won't be. We must not lose sight of the fact that the IPCC is a political process, and in a political process it is perfectly normal to exaggerate your advantages and diminish your opponents. Science doesn't work like that, of course, so there is a discontinuity - as a lot of scientists connected to the IPCC process are currently finding out.
As an aside, it may be noted that attaining eminence in and running the big scientific establishment bodies, such as the APS and the Royal Society, is a POLITICAL process. This explains why these bodies support the Global Warming scam. The science is NOT the primary issue for the 'great and good' - following the political trend is the main driver...
Slightly off-topic, but there was also an article on Brownwars shenanigans in the Arctic, with various protestors to be held in Russian jail for up to 2 months, awaiting charges of piracy. As they were trying to board a rig in international waters, against the wishes of those on board the rig, I think that they definitely have been engaged in piracy. Piracy was one of the last crimes in the UK to have the death penalty; I wonder what the situation is in Russia…
One final point: they were protesting against the rig drilling for oil and gas – but the boats they were in were not rowing boats, each having large outboard motors! Ha! Hypocrisy writ large!
Ed Davey on the BBC. "urgent action needed... sceptics....Flat Earth Society....most robust piece of science in history...."
I need better blood pressure pills.
These IPCC reports would have far more credibility if the politicians kept their noses out of the drafting procedure.
If it is meant to be a scientific document, it doesn't need political input!
Translation: the gravy train just got a new lease of life...
Sep 27, 2013 at 10:53 AM | Dodgy Geezer
That is, in a nutshell, a cracking good comment.
BBC News to Ed Davey - What about the increasing number of doubters? Ed Davey - Well once those people hear what the scientists have to say they will have to put their doubts aside [.... and they've been very naughty boys ....].
Ed has spoken. Dare anybody question it now?
They had their chance. This was the line in the sand. It's clear fraud now. Everyone whose name is on this, every journalist and activist who pushes it needs to know they will be held accountable by the future.
If you're going to speak up, scientist insiders, the next few months are your last chance, or your career will go down the toilet when this whole thing is flushed away. Forget the pols and activists, they'll twist and turn their way out. You'll be left holding the baby, "Well," they'll say, "We were only acting on what the scientists told us. They said it was 97% certain! Who are we to doubt them?"
Apart from the usual climate-fixated organs of the MSM, it's being barely reported. Looks like a dead cat bounce to me ...
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/armageddon-report-no-5/
Pointman
Radical Rodent,
I worked with someone who used to do long cargo routes on the oil tankers, and he said they were often boarded by Somalian pirates. Company policy was to lock yourself in the engine room until they'd gone, they didn't carry arms and were told not to protect the ship. The pirates would kill anyone they got their hands on.
He said the Russian cargo ships had a different policy. They did carry weapons, but due to ammunition shortages, when they caught a bunch of pirates at gunpoint, they'd stand them in one of the life-rafts, fill the raft with concrete, and drop it into the sea. Whether this deterred the pirates or not I don't know, but those particular pirates were not going to bother anyone again.
Just a story, but the person who told me didn't tend to exaggerate.
Here lies CAGW
Born 1990
Died 2013
R.I.P.
If 30 years is a reasonable time period then the past 30 years has seen a fall in the rise of temperature - why?
"No best estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity can now be given because of a lack of agreement on values across assessed lines of evidence and studies."
Note how they made that sentence so hard to read. In the middle of an addling report, it would go unnoticed.
In a broader sense, the sheer length of the ARs has always been a tactic, one well understood in business. I recall John Beddington being asked "Have you read the report [AR4]?" and he replied "What? It's 3,000 pages long!" He was then Chief Scientific Officer to the government. If there was anyone anywhere who might have been expected to read it, it was he. But it is, of course, unreadable.
Given the statement that Britain, a relatively small emitter, is due to suffer cooling as a result of AGW, why would any UK Government continue with a regressive climate tax that will bring misery and worse to the elderly and poor sections of the population?
TBYJ (Sep 27, 2013 at 11:23 AM):
Your friend was not exaggerating, but is now out of date. Armed guards are now being carried on many ships crossing the Arabian Sea (where the Somalian pirates are); they are also on many ships off the West African coast. The general idea in both those situations is to retreat to a citadel (usually the steering flat). Piracy is still a problem in the Malacca Strait to South China Sea area, but the boarding there is primarily to steal; in the Arabian Sea, the intention is to take the ship and crew as hostage (there were about 20 ships still being held at my last check, about 2 months ago), and treatment of any hostages can be unpleasant. I have seen a video photo-montage of Russians recovering a held vessel; the pirates’ ending was not pleasant. I have also heard of one case where the pirates were caught by Russians before taking the ship, to be handcuffed into their boat, which was then blown up and sank.
Having said all that, while it does highlight that the life of a seaman is not all carousing in port, it has very little to do with the latest IPCC report…
Hilariously the BBC has this article today http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24280831 describing how a skeptical user of a computer model (the only skeptic in his team) ended up saving the world from nuclear holocaust
Oh dear, they could have told the truth. Just be patient because nature isn't playing ball. The pause is now in the MSM and it will only get more difficult to explain the longer it continues.
Having read the SPM, I think there's little else to do today other than to sit back and let the warmists beam their smugness and 'have their day'. Regardless of the science and level of integrity behind it, the document is a masterpiece - of spin. Its like the final statement of a brilliant prosecution lawyer. It would take a very brave politician to say they don't accept its conclusions. The propaganda machine is on a role.
This is their last hurrah. Let them have it. By the time of the next AR, they won't be able to do it any more.
Snotrocket: "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 ...."
Was that actually real? I thought I was asleep and having a particularly distopian nightmare. I was waiting for whichever Toady hack it was to ask him what would happen when the Chinese and the Russians refuse to play ball, but oddly enough that question never came.
It will be interesting to see what sort of reception it gets in the MSM over the weekend. I am sure Booker and Rose are not going to let the great British public be hoodwinked. And the Murdoch machine has been showing signs of opposition to the climate change bollox. No longer do the warmists have the MSM securely in their corner.
And let us hope that the failure of the MO's UKCP as highlighted by Lewis and Jewson is also given the media attention it requires.
I don't think it'll be interesting at all. Predictable and laughable, but not interesting.
If you live in the UK this is excellent news.
In 2006/7 the UK was told to prepare for the onset of an inevitable "Mediterranean Climate".
Well if you did prepare, rejoice! All was not in vain! In 2013 we are told our climate will cool!
Enjoy the "inevitable" warmth!:-)
The IPCC has yet again tried to pull off an immense hoax by packaging it inside a pseudo-scientific report.
They did this 6 years ago with AR4 which had at its heart the claim that aerosols 'making clouds more reflective' hid CO2-AGW. To do this they substituted Sagan's incorrect aerosol optical physics for Twomey's more correct version when he had warned there was an unknown second optical effect.
This is large droplet in rain clouds scattering light much more effectively than small droplets - it's why thunderclouds are very dark underneath and why Venus has high albedo. This is why Sagan got the Venusian atmosphere wrong and started the CO2-AGW scare for us.
This time the IPCC is trying to scare us with the ocean heat content argument. The claim that this is from the extra 'back radiation' from more CO2 is the scientific equivalent of bollocks because IR causes more evaporation, not temperature rise.
In reality, the extra ocean heating has been from the burst of Asian aerosol pollution making clouds less reflective so more SW energy enters the oceans and it is SW that does the heating.
Correct the physics mistakes and there is virtually zero CO2-AGW and the aerosol effect has stabilised hence no more warming. Don't let this intergovernmental posse of confidence tricksters and their unscientific hacks fool you yet again.
Comment by Ross McKitrick at WUWT
"SPM in a nutshell: Since we started in 1990 we were right about the Arctic, wrong about the Antarctic, wrong about the tropical troposphere, wrong about the surface, wrong about hurricanes, wrong about the Himalayas, wrong about sensitivity, clueless on clouds and useless on regional trends. And on that basis we’re 95% confident we’re right."
Summed up perfectly!
Update on Sep 27, 2013 by Registered CommenterBishop 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.
No it's true but please do not use "gobsmacked". It is the most vulgar phrase to come out of the 90s.
AlecM
"This time the IPCC is trying to scare us with the ocean heat content argument. The claim that this is from the extra 'back radiation' from more CO2 is the scientific equivalent of bollocks because IR causes more evaporation, not temperature rise."
Interesting you say this. I've been looking at IR heating of food, milk in particular. A good thesis is Krishnamurthy 2006. It's best to look up the name and "infrared heating" because the link is a bit long to post and looks like one of those temporary ones.
Anyway pages 134 to 138 are the results of heating a small milk sample to inactivate S. aureus bacteria. He uses some serious power densities (2kW/m2 in some cases). What is interesting is that rapid heating occurs at the surface but then there is a temperature gradient over the sample. It is enough to reduce efficacy of inactivation
Here's a great quote:
From p138
"Infrared radiation mainly heats a thin layer of milk sample from the surface, because of its poor penetration capacity.
Therefore, it is vital to know the effect of volume on inactivation of S. aureus. In general, an increase in the sample milk volume resulted in lower inactivation as infrared radiation can not penetrate deep and heats up only a few millimeters below the surface of the milk sample."
So for all that "heat hiding in the oceans" theory, nevermind the first 700 m, the heat has to make it past the first few metres to find a way down, even if this were possible through some strange mixing process. At very low power W/m2 incident power densities that's a tall order. And we haven't even considered thermal losses at the air-water/air-land interface.
A short and robust comment, emphasising the political nature and purpose of of the IPCC: :
"Despite the guff, no proof on man-made climate change"
www.thecommentator.com/article/4192/despite_the_guff_no_proof_on_man_made_climate_change
When I were a lad it was normal to publish a scientific paper, and then write a summary for the press. The media don't seem to think it odd that a whole hoo-haa is made of the SPM which is published before the report that it is supposed to summarise, rather than simultaneously, or ideally after the main paper is available. (Who after all needs to see the real data when we can read what the policy makers want us to read?)
No matter. Let them have their day. Six years after AR4 and the extraordinary coverage it had, it lies in ruins, regarded as a travesty. I suspect the AR5 will weather no better, and will be dust inside two years.
Well the Telegraph have had a mild swipe at the alarmists
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/10336853/We-need-to-cool-things-down-over-climate-change.html
I liked this bit
and this
Amazed at the BBC coverage here in Canada. An attempt at balance with interviews with Peiser, Tamsin and Lomborg, to present a dissenting view to the alarmist camp, that would not have happened even one year ago. On the other hand the extreme left wing CBC used their chief meterologist to hand wave and spout the usual mantras with a view soft ball questions from the interviewer to cover the pause and uncertainty.
I am *shattered*.
Here is a quick view from me. Hope to write a blog post over weekend.
I was interviewed fpr BBC Breakfast (7:10am), BBC World (2:15pm), BBC News Channel (2:45pm?), BBC Five Live (5:05pm) and BBC1 News (6pm and 10pm - i.e. now!, pre-recorded).
The BBC seemed to specifically be asking me because of my blog name (All Models Are Wrong). They'd start "so we heard there's a problem with the models...?".
So I think you can be sure the BBC specifically wanted to cover the limitations of climate models.
I managed to mention our efforts to talk to sceptics about their concerns on all but BBC World and BBC1 News. The latter almost implied I was one. ("Some people sceptical about the models.." - cue me talking about how we can't fully test them).
Hope you feel this was a good representation of the "we try to listen to sceptics" approach.
@ Radical Rodent
"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."
My surname's Edwards, though the presenters called me Dr Tamsin :)
Yes, sulphur dioxide gas from industrial pollution and volcanic eruptions combines with water vapour in the air to form sulphate particles that reflect some of the sun's radiation (and have complicated effects on clouds too). It only compensates part of the CO2 effect though. In my view sulphate particles are too often ignored in discussions of forcings, but it's not a controversial statement to say they exist and have a cooling effect (hence "global dimming"), I think?
My boss once asked to be a reasonable voice representing the department at an important meeting.
I replied 'fvck off and die'.
From the Guardian, following climategate. James Lovelock's excoriating view of the lying, dumb, little scumbags who do modern climate science.
on CRU scientists
I was utterly disgusted. My second thought was that it was inevitable. It was bound to happen. Science, not so very long ago, pre-1960s, was largely vocational. Back when I was young, I didn't want to do anything else other than be a scientist.
They're not like that nowadays. They don't give a damn. They go to these massive, mass-produced universities and churn them out. They say: "Science is a good career. You can get a job for life doing government work." That's no way to do science.
I have seen this happen before, of course. We should have been warned by the CFC/ozone affair because the corruption of science in that was so bad that something like 80% of the measurements being made during that time were either faked, or incompetently done
on computer models
I remember when the Americans sent up a satellite to measure ozone and it started saying that a hole was developing over the South Pole. But the damn fool scientists were so mad on the models that they said the satellite must have a fault. We tend to now get carried away by our giant computer models. But they're not complete models.
They're based more or less entirely on geophysics. They don't take into account the climate of the oceans to any great extent, or the responses of the living stuff on the planet. So I don't see how they can accurately predict the climate.
on predicting temperatures
If you look back on climate history it sometimes took anything up to 1,000 years before a change in one of the variables kicked in and had an effect. And during those 1,000 years the temperature could have gone in the other direction to what you thought it should have done. What right have the scientists with their models to say that in 2100 the temperature will have risen by 5C?
The great climate science centres around the world are more than well aware how weak their science is. If you talk to them privately they're scared stiff of the fact that they don't really know what the clouds and the aerosols are doing. They could be absolutely running the show.
We haven't got the physics worked out yet. One of the chiefs once said to me that he agreed that they should include the biology in their models, but he said they hadn't got the physics right yet and it would be five years before they do. So why on earth are the politicians spending a fortune of our money when we can least afford it on doing things to prevent events 50 years from now? They've employed scientists to tell them what they want to hear.
on scientists
Sometimes their view might be quite right, but it might also be pure propaganda. This is wrong. They should ask the scientists, but the problem is scientists won't speak. If we had some really good scientists it wouldn't be a problem, but we've got so many dumbos who just can't say anything, or who are afraid to say anything. They're not free agents.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/mar/29/james-lovelock?
Global warming advocacy was created by a crazy, anti science nut called James Hansen. He revealed himself by endorsing an extreme eco fascist book by Keith Farnish, a man in the Monbiot, Kingsnorth anti civilisation axis. He also appeared in a British court supporting acts of eco terrorism.
Farnish writes
The only way to prevent global ecological collapse and thus ensure the survival of humanity is to rid the world of Industrial Civilization .
Hansen's review reads
Keith Farnish has it right:, time has practically run out, and the 'system' is the problem. Governments are under the thumb of fossil fuel special interests - they will not look after our and the planet's well-being until we force them to do so, and that is going to require enormous effort. --Professor James Hansen, GISS, NASA
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Times-Up-Uncivilized-Solution-Global/dp/190032248X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265053838&sr=8-1
Farnish also wrote
Unloading essentially means the removal of an existing burden: for instance, removing grazing domesticated animals, razing cities to the ground, blowing up dams and switching off the greenhouse gas emissions machine. The process of ecological unloading is an accumulation of many of the things I have already explained in this chapter, along with an (almost certainly necessary) element of sabotage.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100023339/james-hansen-would-you-buy-a-used-temperature-data-set-from-this-man
Budding eco terrorists released thanks to 'evidence' of anti civilisation extremist, James Hansen.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/sep/11/activists.kingsnorthclimatecamp
Right wing extremist, George Monbiot endorsed the actions of protesters who sabotaged Scottish mine equipment and encouraged future similar action. In a national newspaper.
But while the government undermines its own targets, some people in Scotland are putting its climate change policy into effect. The Scottish camp for climate action has declared war on opencast coal mining. Yesterday people associated with it did what the government should have done years ago, and cut the conveyor belt used to carry coal from the Glentaggart pit in Lanarkshire to the local rail terminal.
Now they propose to take on other pits, as well as Scotland's biggest coal-burning power stations. They have chosen the right targets. Coal is the dirty word that threatens to destroy attempts at Copenhagen in December to prevent climate breakdown. If governments won't take it on, we must.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/aug/07/monbiot-scotland-climate-policy
Tamsin
Thanks for posting. Perhaps one day proper scientific debate will be allowed to be resumed, but today is all about agenda politics and public messaging.
In charge of the GISS temperature record, we had unabomber wannabee, James Hansen. In the Hadcrut corner, at one time was the completely barking mad Sir John Houghton
In an interview Sir John Houghton gave to The Sunday Telegraph in its "Me and My God" slot on September 10, 1995. As a fervent evangelical Christian, Sir John claimed that global warming might well be one of those disasters sent by God to warn man to mend his ways ("God tries to coax and woo but he also uses disasters"). He went on: "If we are to have a good environmental policy in the future, we will have to have a disaster".
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7280369/What-the-weatherman-never-said.html
Followed by Phil Jones whose emails was stolen from his compooter and Chief Inspector Alan Partridge of Norfolk CID who could not find no one, nowhere, nohow who has done this terrible thing to the nice science man through the internet wires.
These are the great pillars of rationality who are forecasting climate catastrophe.
In October 2000 Mike Hulme founded the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.
From page 326 of the book., Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity, he writes
"The idea of climate change should be seen as an intellectual resource around which our collective and personal identities and projects can form and take shape. We need to ask not what we can do for climate change, but to ask what climate change can do for us.".
Hulme then goes on to suggest that all climate change arguments should include at least one of the following four "myths" (being a motivational story).
1. Lamenting Eden - To give the idea that the world was stable until man turned up. And we broke it.
2. Presaging apocalypses - Where you should use phrases like "impending disaster" and "tipping point". This is despite having the knowledge of such predictions (as Hulme states) but should because it "capitalizes on the human inbuilt fear of the future."
3. Reconstructing babel - Appealing to our fear of advancement and technology. As though anything modern is inherently bad.
4. Celebrating Jubilee - Balancing the cosmic unfairness of the world where well off inherently make this worse for the poor and the balance should be readdressed every 25 years or so.
This is the insanity we are up against, not the 'reasonableness' of Tamsin Edwards.
Tamsin Edwards (Sep 27, 2013 at 10:05 PM): apologies for misinterpreting you and your argument – I was seriously distracted at the time by a dog, a cup of tea and hair-straighteners. To tell the truth, the BBC puppets did manage to paint you as one of the hand-wavers, so, once more, apologies for being suckered into their charade (and my own lack of attention to detail).
Thanks, Radical Rodent.
(Hope the dog now has lovely straightened locks.)
Here are all the clips of my interviews that I have so far: BBC IPCC interviews
- Brief clip on BBC1 News at Six and News at Ten
- Slightly longer clip on BBC Radio 4 The World Tonight (they extracted this from the 15-20min interview I did for BBC1 News - and didn't tell me they had!)
- Long interview with Ed Hawkins on BBC 5 Live Drive
All refer to sceptics, wrongness of models etc.
Tamsin, your models have been falsified by nature. Everything else is just conversation....