Bishop Hill Walport's presentation
Mar 18, 2014 Climate: Models Climate: Statistics Climate: Surface Climate: WG2 Climate: sensitivity Walport Mark Walport's staff have kindly made available the slides he used in Glasgow. They can be seen here.
As I have suggested previously, the talk was a recitation of the standard case for alarm, but there were many aspects of it that piqued my interest. For example, I noted that while warming up to the first slide he spoke about energy security first, before moving on to climate. Later on in the talk he spoke of the three lenses through which the climate problem had to be viewed and the first of these was again energy security. Is this a new tack? Are backsides starting to be covered? Perhaps.
Throughout the talk, I came away with the feeling that I was being sold something rather than being informed about the realities of climate science. With the climate records so noisy (see below), detection of significant changes is very hard and the predictions of temperature rise and sea-level rise and weather extremes and all the rest of it are therefore based almost entirely on GCMs. Yet where was this fact related to the audience and where was the discussion of the reliability of the models? Talking of an inability to predict the future with "perfect precision" (I think these were the words used) didn't do it for me.
This is the dilemma for the chief scientist. If the hypothesis of catastrophic global warming holds up it's a big deal. CSAs therefore want to push the public into getting behind the policy responses. But the public are not stupid and they know that they are not hearing the story warts and all and until they do they will harbour doubts. But if they are told the truth warts and all they are hardly going to be convinced that there is a cast-iron case. So we get a sales pitch and much crossing of the fingers and the problems with the models are pushed under the carpet.
A few comments on individual slides follow.
The climate science stuff begins at slide 13, with the standard HadCRUt4 graph and its decadal averages. The slide is entitled "Warming of the climate is unequivocal". To my mind this title falls into the category of "true but misleading". Yes the planet has warmed, but almost anyone seeing this slide might assume that we have therefore detected anthropogenic global warming. Since it seems that both sceptics and mainstream scientists seem to agree that the warming to date is indistinguishable from natural variability I think a balanced view on the science would incorporate this observation.
Slide 14 suggested that observations of the climate system are all telling the same story - surface temperatures up, ocean heat up, sea levels up, glaciers down, snow cover down and, erm, sea ice down. Readers here don't need to be told that the last of these is not true, and it must be doubtful whether it is possible to demonstrate a statistically significant change in the others. The question of what meaning can be attached to a group of statistically insignificant trends is an interesting one that I hope Doug Keenan is going to write about for me.
Slide 15, on ocean heat content is interesting, showing a clear pause in the rise at around 2005. I was struck by the comparison with slide 19, which shows no such pause.
Slide 24 says that dry regions of the Earth are going to get drier and wet regions are going to get wetter. It's interesting to compare this statement to the IPCC Summary for Policymakers (Fig SPM.8), which suggests that by the end of the century, many dry regions will have become much wetter - in particular Australia and the Sahara. At the end of the day though, we should observe that the ability of climate models to predict precipitation is even worse than their ability to predict temperature changes. In terms of the government chief scientist informing the public rather than selling them something, it would be fairer to say "we have no idea what effect a rise in global temperature would have on rainfall".
;)
Left: RCP2.6; Right: RCP8.5Slide 28 says we will see more damaging weather extremes. Climate models for years have said we are going to see increases in numbers and intensity of hurricanes, predictions that were closely followed by a drought in hurricane activity. This being the case, I would say it is incumbent on the chief scientist to express a little bit of doubt about such predictions. This again is sales pitch rather than dispassionate analysis.
Slide 34 reproduces AR5's Figure SPM.10, but leaves out the all-important caption that shows that the "historical" figures are not actually observations but a model hindcast. This was discussed in a comment thread at BH last year and, as Clive Best has observed you get a rather different story if you include the real observations.
Reader Comments (67)
Mar 18, 2014 at 3:37 PM - Richard Drake:
'lapogus: But he's open, I feel, to Robin Guenier-style arguments..
What are those arguments? Well this new Discussion post is my basic position - i.e. why we should forget arguments about the science and focus on the policy. If people like Walport were to accept this, the 'CAGW madness (and its accompanying gravy train)' may not quite be ended forever, but they would be severely damaged. And, in debating policy as opposed to science, all the tired shouting about deniers, authority, peer review, consensus etc. would no longer be relevant.
But is it even likely that he would accept this?
Thanks Robin.
I've acknowleged the power of the myriad vested interests who will try hard to make sure he doesn't. But with the Ukraine showdown there is further real-politik to consider. Energy security is not a small issue and realism in one area may just spread to the fact we cannot and will never produce a global reduction in emissions. Not without massive suspensions of democracy at least.
Good luck!
Paul Matthews: I read your post on your blog and the '2/8d' you had with Richard Betts about the table and your assessment of 'confidence'. I thought that RB was being rather picky but I also figured the table you showed was not so easy to interpret.
However, I persevered and realised that something was odd: Terms like 'likely' and 'virtually certain' seemed like non-scientific, subjective predictions. I mean, 'virtually certain' seems the same as saying, 'maybe'; which is the same as saying, 'perhaps not'.
I think what you were trying to show was that AR5 was showing a lower confidence than AR4 (if you left out the 'colder nights'(!)), but I had difficulty in seeing that intuitively. Having said that, I do feel that RB was protesting too much (in the proper way that Shakespeare meant it) and that there was not a lot for him to support in Walport's assessment.
If Arctic and Antarctic Sea ice are to be considered seperately then so should Glaciers that shrink through melting and those that shrink through sublimation.
Similarly models and the real climate should be considered seperately. One can then either take action to pre-empt what the models predict or one take action the deal with what the climate actually does.
One can then quantify the costs and benefits of each approach and then evaluate over time what benefits were actually achieved vs cost and vs the do nothing case.
To guage this one could start by looking back over the last 100 years and decide what actions should have been taken based on what the models indicate and compare to what should have been done to address mitigate real issues eg either dredging rivers because places flood/ not building on known flood plains or believing in models and assuming dryer conditions will reduce floods.
My bet is that the most cost effective approach would have been to tackle real issues. It would also be so in the future, I'd expect, but there would then be far fewer enviro-millionaires.
SoM: are you insinuating there is some ongoing grabbing?
norty.
A'llah Gore would be even a BIGGER billionaire you know, was it not for his altruism regarding saving Gaiia..:))
Mar 18, 2014 at 11:01 AM | Unregistered CommenterDoug McNeall
As not banned yet states can you clarify, preferably quoting sections you are referring to, which bits of AR5 you are referring too.
I see that you are a fellow Southampton Oceanography grad, where I assume you also did your remote sensing. Where did you study atmospheric modeling before joining the Met Office. I found the jump between Southampton and Atmospheric modeling as a postgrad at Reading quite a significant leap (They differ in massive ways due to one being an upside down version of the other)
Doug,
We can grant you good faith, and appreciate your reasonable and civil tone. It is a pleasant change from the typical AGW believer fare.
Just because you say they should not be lumped together does not mean they should not be.
Studies have been produced- and failed- that claimed to show huge trends in Antarctic sea ice due to CO2's evil effects. We are right to point that reality does not agree with those studies.
Frankly the only time I heard about Antarctic ice behaving differently was after the ice started behaving as it has.
This does not, however address what I call the historical illiteracy of the AGW position: Using a few short decades of records to make very broad claims of Arctic ice death spirals, all the while ignoring good historical records showing that this has happened to at least similar extents in the historical past.
So perhaps you should consider how far you are willing to go to meet the skeptics?
I don't know if Doug McNeall has himself read the attribution part of AR5 but surely anyone can clearly notice that you cannot have such low internal+natural variability forcings compared to the large anthropogenic forcing while simultaneously claiming that the current hiatus is due to that selfsame, minute and declining natural variability. Of course if you are a denier of the reality of the pause then ok but you can't then lecture the rest of us on the current state of climate science. We-ve had about 10 or 12 different excuses as to why they couldn't predict it. The only honest one is that they don't have a clue but they certainly didn't expect it.
And that, by the way,is attribution from the climate models which are all divergent from reality so the whole exercise is one of futile, circular argumentation. There is no attribution possible of course from observations because the signal is just not there and it really should have been by now for the hypothesis to continue to be touted so loudly.
James G, +1!
It occurred to me, as I waded through some background reading in an attemp to better understand where Doug Macneil is coming from, that Doug is attempting to 'have a bob each way' or 'covering his arse', to be blunt about it.
The infatuation with models that actually do not model anything with a degree of accuracy that would be useful is rather childish.
I suspect His Worship is on to it; exit strategies are being prepared, particularly as Putin may soon introduce a dose of reality for the green dream-merchants who want to impose technology upon the UK that was proven no longer useful centuries ago.
All,
I don't know who Doug McNeall is, although some of you seem to, but his postings strike me like those of Steve Mosher (and to a certain extent Entropic man); post a few oh yes it is comments then leave and do the same somewhere else. I very quickly start ignoring those comments, it's usually quite easy as they tend to be short. However some of the replies, such as the one by lapogus, can contain useful information. I don't think that was the original intention of the original post so they may well be self defeating as there must be quite a few lurkers who read BH.
There has been no rise in temperature for 15-17 years. Warming rate in the late 20th. Century was the same as that in the early 20th. Century when CO2 was much lower. CO2 is now even higher and warming has stopped. Here, there is no correlation and no causation.
"It's not unusual to have periods of little or no warming, other such periods can be seen in the instrumental record."
These periods of little or no warming can be seen in the in the instrumental record or data from the Earth but not in any Computer Model from the Warmistas , their rise has to be relentless. The Models are junk.
JamesG
You're right except, I think, for one point.
I believe there are two camps within the climate community, those who have set the hare running in the first place (they include Hansen and Mann and probably most of the UEA bunch) and those following on who have taken their colleagues' science largely as read — because why would you behave otherwise if you trust them?
The latter certainly fit into your description of "they don't have a clue but they certainly didn't expect it". I'm not so sure about the former. These are the modellers par excellence and I have a feeling that they always knew or at least suspected that sooner or later there might be a clash with reality. Which is why the plan was (and still is) to get the adaptation/mitigation measures firmly in place before it really turns on them and bites.
Hence the increasingly strident calls to ignore the man behind the curtain and demands for action now even as the climate is evidently not following the script that was written for it.
"When people like Walport talk about energy security, they're trying to kid us that renewables will offer it."
But even he must realise that they don't. The last thing a thinking green (if that's not oxymoronic) will want is for the theory to be tested, as could well happen if Russia turns the gas off.
Hitherto, it's been so much shroud-waving, but soon renewables may face a reality check.
Doug,
It will be a pleasure to read specifics about what you are wiling to grant to the skeptics for the sake of the civility Mr. Walport is calling us to.
"But even he must realise that they don't. The last thing a thinking green (if that's not oxymoronic) will want is for the theory to be tested, as could well happen if Russia turns the gas off."
Two words: Diesel generators.
Bumping Doug McNeall - Please can you supply your AR5 reference to support your second comment on this thread? Thank you.
I just saw Walport on TV telling a committee that while some journalism is way over the top, scientists shouldn't be exaggerating their papers in their press-releases either. I wonder if he would care to do us the favour of looking through his own slideshow to root out or tone down detect those that are 'over-egging the pudding' for the purpose of directing policy. 'Physician heal thyself ' was never more apt.