Bishop Hill A declaration of orthodoxy
Apr 3, 2015 Climate: sensitivity When a mainstream climate scientist comes up with some findings that go against the narrative of impending catastrophe they usually feel obliged (or are obliged by others) to take steps to distance themselves from the implications - hiding them, issuing declarations of orthodoxy, or saying something rude about dissenters.
We saw something of this in Bjorn Stevens' recent paper on aerosol forcing, with the implications for climate sensitivity left to one side. Yesterday, however, Stevens went futher and issued a declaration of his absolute global warming faith.
Many scientists (myself included) believe that a warming of more than 2ºC from a doubling of the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide is consistent with both my new study and our best understanding. Some insight into our reasoning can be found in a number of excellent blogs reporting on a workshop on Earth’s Climate Sensitivities, which I co-organized just last week, e.g., http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/04/reflections-on-ringberg
So contrary to some reports that have appeared in the media, anthropogenic climate change is not called into question by my study. I continue to believe that warming of Earth’s surface temperatures from rising concentrations of greenhouse gases carries risks that society must take seriously, even if we are lucky and (as my work seems to suggest) the most catastrophic warming scenarios are a bit less likely.
The full statement is here.
Reader Comments (131)
Our probably pusillanimous aliquot of previously fossilized CO2 is not injected irreversibly, but even if it were it would simply mean a higher set point at which we would enter the relatively rapid phase of glaciation.
And realistically, we're not likely to get more than two or four more degrees of padding on that set point. Look upon the biome as a polar bear seeking seals to add to the fat layer for the winter(hiber) season.
Can we burst enough hydrocarbon bonds to survive the next hundred thousand years?
Well, yeah; we're much more technologically advanced than when we did it before.
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I believe we are seeing a scientific community, not just the climate science community, that through a combination of hubris, ignorance and arrogance, has given support to a motley bunch of Communist, Environmentalists, Malthusians and Progressives, in their attempts to variously make the rest of humanity follow their creeds. They have done this by enthusiastically pushing the meme that humans are causing the planet to heat up, and they have consistently overstated their confidence and exaggerated the outcomes. Now with the observations telling us that there will probably be no excessive heat or catastrophic consequences they have very little room for manoeuvre so there are really only two options. Bluff it out and hope the penny doesn't drop with the politicians and the public before they retire, or move to option 2 which is to say that it probably won't be as bad as we thought, but it could still be bad. Again buying time
Meanwhile we, the public, have had to fork out £bns on useless and expensive energy solutions, take a hit in our energy bills and watch our manufacturing jobs being transferred to China.
One thing for sure we have a generation of senior scientists who an absolute disgrace to the philosophy and methods of science.
Bunny, the biome, as we speak, is recruiting previously unknown negative feedbacks to the rise in atmospheric CO2. This inevitable. If necessary, man can devise a means to draw CO2 out of the atmosphere, perhaps some carbon based life form. Giant trees are so quaint, and entlified.
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Also, by the way, Bunny, I appreciate your reference about anthroCO2 forestalling glaciation. I'll believe it when I see it.
I suspect it depends upon CO2 persisting longer than I expect it to, for the biomic feedback reasons I mention above. Nonetheles, were it true, what a wonderful outcome, the prevention of glaciation! We should get on with the work, and given the presumed long life of anthro CO2, we should eventually be able to calibrate our atmospheric CO2 level to a nicety.
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Geronimo @ 2:47 -- Hear hear!
Eli
So says David Archer, quoting himself. He also assumes "an initial typical interglacial level of CO2" of 280ppm.This is the sort of circular reasoning and dubious programming that we've been discussing on the 'Pollution Problem' thread.
He assumes 280ppm when there is evidence that this figure is largely conjectural and based to a great extent on the figure that is "understood" to obtain at the start of the 19th century and he then refers to a model (apparently of his own devising) which appears to be an outlier as far as CO2 persistence is concerned.
So you're right when you say that "there are those that differ" but whether you are anywhere near the mark with "tend to know a lot about the question" is open to dispute.
Either way, we have more important concerns than the state of the earth's putative climate 400 millennia down the line.
kim, to answer your earlier question, the real Ken Rice only comes out to interact in profile-elevating encounters - the Bish, Matt Ridley, Nic Lewis etc
Apr 3, 2015 at 9:04 PM | ...and Then There's Physics
"If there is one thing about which we can be virtually certain, it's that the rise in atmospheric CO2, since the mid-1800s, is anthropogenic."
You are wrong. But, one issue at a time. You are wrong about the so-called "mass balance" argument. It is utterly fatuous.
And,
" Okay, maybe I'm not that surprised."
No, I expect you move through life in a sort of hazed-out bliss, imagining that you have a grip on the facts, never digging deep enough to unsettle your self-absorption.
And Eli and ATTP etc etc are so worried about the use of fossil fuels that they are both off the grid 100% and dont own or use cars right..?????
Oh..of course..
So your the same as us..but you just pretend you care about the environment.
I have yet to find even one $CAGW$ who actually does what he preaches..beyond parody..as usual..
Attp to Nic 12.49
If i mght please butt in, Ken, do you realise the stupidity of your question to Nic, the what if you are wrong slant?
Here is Nc doing work to establsh a relation between climate temperature change and GHG.
You ask, what if he is wrong?
Attp, the main feature of AGW is an assumption that more GHG will heat the atmosphere. It underpins all that follows.
What if YOU are wrong?
That is the more fundamental question. So please try to answer it.
Note that we scientists stll wait to see a single, accepted, replicated, mathematical paper that shows any quantitative, useable link between Ghg and temperature in the whole, real atmosphere.
Climate scientists, if they knew the answer, would by now have claimed fame that their paper was the Beethoven 9th Symphony equivalent.
Why, as Steve McIntyre asked back about year 2006, is there no such seminal paper?
Geoff
Now Eli, a happy bunny to be sure, and a chocolate Easter to all, would be happy to reply to the many confusions and accusations above, but, alas, the owner of the Hill does surely slow walk Eli's posts, so there must indeed be long lapses. Still occasionally amusing to drop by. Ta
>"Does anyone know who has said that Stevens' findings call AGW into question?"
Patrick Michaels and Paul Knappenberger
"This basically eliminates the possibly of catastrophic climate change—that is, climate change that proceeds at a rate that exceeds our ability to keep up. Such a result will also necessarily drive down estimates of social cost of carbon thereby undermining a key argument use by federal agencies to support increasingly burdensome regulations which seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
If this Stevens/Lewis result holds up, it is the death blow to global warming hysteria."
http://www.cato.org/blog/you-ought-have-look-climate-sensitivity-environmental-worries-are-trending-downward
Of course we all know Mr.Rice, that for balanced views we have to go to your own blog, aTTP, where nobody is banned and there's a free flow of information of all kinds and viewpoints and where people respect each other opposed views.
Let me translate for those that don't understand nursery school third person bunny talk: “I have no answer to the comments that Kim and Mike Jackson make above, so I'll pretend that the Bish puts my own comments into the moderation hole (but then apparently gets up at 03.16 in the morning to release them).”
Apr 5, 2015 at 3:39 AM | Richard C (NZ)
No. There's a fundamental difference between CAGW and AGW.
DaveS
Good point. The Climateers are now trying to conflate the two and need to be watched carefully. Steve McIntyre first drew our attention to their shenanigans with peas and thimbles and their fondness for fudge.
Those are two things they are experts at. Probably the only two things they are expert at.
Our little wabbit is a Professor of Chemistry at Howard University Washington DC called Halpern. Washington is 5 hours behind us so his last post was at 10.16PM EST, and clearly came onto the thread without interference.
To be fair if I haven't signed in my posts don't appear immediately I just get a message saying my post has been submitted. If I refresh the page my posts appear on the new page. So I suggest Eli clicks a paw on the refresh button.
I find I have to go out if the thread and then come back in to it before I Can see any posts I've just added.
Mailman
It frequently happens to me too. The wabbit is just hoping it's due to the Bish so that, like aTTP, it might give him an opportunity to criticise the site.
As responding to the likes of Rice and Rabbit involves the use of words that a lady should not consider using, I prefer to stay out of such discussions (though, sadly, do succumb rather too often).
Also, it could be considered a waste of everybody else’s time reading any responses, let alone the vacuous comments themselves. In short: DNFTT. Or, to be very unladylike: DNFTFT!
Radical Rodent -
Assuming that the additional "F" in the initialism stands for "fine", I fail to understand why you consider it unladylike.
;)
Certainly not "Fine", HaroldW; closer to ... er... "Flaming"...
**blush**
For those having problems findng past works on BH, some devices will keyword search only pages 50 comments long..For the blog here, 3 pages are used on my tablet. I have to move to each page in turn for each new search.
Geoff.
I think Attp should be allowed one comment per thread, if anyone wants to reply then they can go to his Blog.
So no ban on Attp but it will soon become obvious he is a hypocrite as he bans all the replies on his blog but this blog's threads are not hijacked.
R. "I don't talk up CAGW in order to get funding" Betts, doesn't talk up stuff !
That's why he (Helen McGregor & Doug McNeall) retweeted G Schmidt Mar 28
"Any interest in a joint INTERNATIONAL op-ed on the importance of not muzzling govt scientists? "
Schmidt has tweeted10 times about scientists being muzzled always about ONE COUNTRY Canada and mostly about an allegation dating back to 2013
I don't see signs that there a vast international muzzling of scientists, except of anti-alarmist ones that Schmidt & Co do seem to want suppressed.
Mousey might be interested in the OCO-2 DAC going live. The shifts in patterns since the first observations in October and November were exactly what was expected based on previous satellite data, just as Eli said here.
As to the strange commenting system, not a problem, a feature. Who knew
What if skeptics and lukewarmers are wrong? What indeed. The question is badly posed on many levels. For example it obviously applies only to people that want drastic and long lasting changes, otherwise any astrologer and fortune teller could make use of it.
It's also to counterbalance with the certainty that alarmists have been ruining the world already, from deforested areas for palm oil cultivation or windfarms to orthodoxy taking hold of what was a science. The list could continue.
Most ethical questions wrt climate change are however untreatable BECAUSE of the unbridled alarmism espoused by one side (in the mild version of Betts or the raving loony variety of attp): since there is no limit to the death and destruction they include among the possibilities for the future, there is no ethical limit for any of the solutions proposed to fight those possibilities.
It's the Dick Cheney attitude to WMDs. When the scenarios include total annihilation as one potential future, one feels obviously justified to do anything, including killing innocents and in general disregarding any notion of humanity. Slippery slope indeed.
Find me anybody who doesn't believe at least some of the climate change predictions have been exaggerated and I'll see a person ready to strangle me if they'll ever thought it'd help in preventing the world burning.
Rabett: as I have said elsewhere – so, subsistence farmers outstrip industrialised countries in the production of CO2! Who knew?
(Dang! Just submitted to temptation, again! Remember your mantra, Radical: “Don’t rise, don’t rise… Ommmmmmm…” But it does come to something when evidence of CO2 production clearly shows that a lot of CO2 is not from fossil fuels, yet revelation of the evidence seems to be to support the idea that it does come from fossil fuels, even when it does not… It's enough to make anyone's head hurt.)
Maurizio
"since there is no limit to the death and destruction they include among the possibilities for the future, there is no ethical limit for any of the solutions proposed to fight those possibilities."
Very well put. That also sums up the Green attitude to just about everything!
Eli
If the commenting is too slow for you, just register...
He couldn't do that, jamesp. It might suggest he's giving the site credibility and all the claque would be after him like a pack of hounds.
The occasional snide remark is OK but registering means you're serious and that would never do.