Thursday
Feb062014
by 
Josh
Josh 95% Certain? Yes, we are! - Josh 256
Are we now 95% certain? Yes, we are! Hooray!
Yesterday we heard from UK climate science community about their work on AR5. The event was called "Climate Change 2013 - The Physical Science Basis. The Working Group 1 contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."
I was there to draw some cartoon notes. Here is my favourite.
And here is the note I made when Marcel Crok, also at the meeting along with Nic Lewis, explained exactly what we are all 95% certain of.
.. which is very good news, I think you will agree. We didnt hear a lot of cheering but we did see a lot of graphs, and I made some notes. Click the image for a large readable version.
;)
Reader Comments (19)
For a moment I thought it was Michael Mann and a friend sticking their heads out of the dirt.
Okay my last comment was a bit weak on humour, but it does look like him and he does dwell in lower "muddy places".
There seem to be a lot of people making a good living from the Great Delusion.
Perfect, Josh, perfect.
What is great fun is that they are all somewhat uncertain and, on examination, they are uncertain as to what they are uncertain about.
.9
Superb - on so many levels. Thanks for your efforts.
There is no scroll bar on the pop-up (Firefox).
If that is really what they said, we could be moving into the endgame.
If climate sensitivity is 0.9ºC then all CO2 emissions targets and strategies can be abandoned with immediate effect, and the entire green movement can pack its bags and try to focus on real issues instead.
No amplification or scrolling on firefox.
"at least" 0.9 is about the estimate of the effect of CO2 alone as a greenhouse gas--actually often cited as 1.0 or 1.1 degree C per doubling. This doesn't cause problems, so an additional 2C is added due to increased water vapor from increased evaporation at the higher temps. In other words, this is not much less than the lower limit of 1.5 adopted by all IPCC documents. What counts is the best estimate, which was always 3 dating from the 1979 National Academy of Sciences document, which itself was a compromise between Hansen's 4 and someone else's 2. Then they threw in an uncertainty of 1.5 to get their range from 1.5-4.5.
So it's a little early to celebrate. (However, maybe it is the beginning of the end, or at least the end of the beginning. Let us fervently hope.)
The best of the lot: "I'm getting a signal I can't detect."
Lance Wallace: The other models (besides those from the Hansen group) considered by the Charney panel in 1979, were from Syukuro Manabe and colleagues at NOAA. E.g., this paper.
95 percent certain
Soundbite Science
eight out of ten cats
Shouty Statistics
Yeah very catchy.
Sadly, after reading through this last night (and I don't recommend it) we have a hell of a way to go before we can think about celebrating.
Apparently the BBC should not ask anyone except "professional climate modellers working in the field" to discuss any aspect of climate models. Hats off to Barry Woods and Foxgoose and Shub for their efforts in the comments.
Firefox users, try this:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/storage/WRG1_AR5_cartoon_notes_scr.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1391709059924
There is no scroll bar on the pop-up (Firefox).
Feb 6, 2014 at 11:04 PM | Eric Gisin
Try using the up-down-sideways keys. It works on my machine.
or just use the cursor keys? works for me and amplification.
or just use the cursor keys? works for me and amplification.
Feb 7, 2014 at 9:18 AM | lapogus
Oh, that's what they're called. Yes, it comes back to me now. I must have even less brain than the ecclesiastical uncle claims.
So with what confidence do they predict natural climate variation, which gives them 95% confidence of the occurrence of unnatural variation in the temperature records?
Love the Uncertainty Monster - its expression is JUST perfect...