Tuesday
Oct102017
by 
Josh
Josh 'Daring to Doubt' Tony Abbot GWPF Annual Lecture 2017 - Cartoon notes by Josh
;)
Click image for larger version
Tony Abbott, former Prime Minister of Australia, gave an excellent GWPF annual lecture last night.
The text of the lecture is on the GWPF website here and the video is below.
Reader Comments (150)
Erm.. no, you can’t; demanding proof of a negative is usually consider bad science, as it is rarely possible – which is why no-one demands proof that ghosts do not exists, or UFOs are not real, or that homeopathy does not work. That you should make such an assertion does throw into question your own logic, Mr Clarke, and does provide more evidence that you are merely the mouth-piece of a group; a mouth-piece that has not bothered having his comment vetted by those who would have caught that faux pas.
As to “natural cycles,” one only has to look at the cyclical nature of the climate since the end of the last ice age, some 12,000 years ago, when (to simplify) temperatures rose to the Holocene Optimum, fell again, rose to the Minoan Warm Period, fell again, rose to the Roman Warm Period, fell into the Dark Ages, rose to the Mediæval Warm Period, fell into the Little Ice Age, and are now rising again. Quite why you cannot see the cyclical nature of that is anyone’s guess… Though it could be seen as the fingerprint of someone who is either incredibly gullible, or has something to gain from supporting a massive, trillion-dollar scam.
RR,
When I said surface temperature of the planet I was referring to an estimate of a global average, not at every location on the surface.
This is not true. Global average surface are higher now than they were 20 years ago.
Natural doesn't mean "magic". That it has changed in the past due to factors that we regard as natural does not mean that the changes today are somehow natural, rather than anthropogenic. If anything, it's our understanding of past changes that provides confidence in our understanding of what is causing changes today.
Um, I was responding to Martin's request to prove a negative - that global warming was not a result of natural cycles -
and I pointed out that it was an ill posed question (and thus by implication, not good science).
Thanks for repeating my point.
(PS there is only one of me. Many people think this a good thing.)
aTTP & Phil Clarke
If nothing is wrong with the science, why are the Computer Models overheating, and with such consistency?
I don't think Abbott and Trump want to promise more taxpayer funds to scientists that take decades to admit mistakes.
But that is not true.
ATTP, so you can provide no proof? Do you not find that ridiculous?
Martin,
I don't really know how to explain this any more clearly, but science isn't about "proof", but about testing hypotheses. One is that we would expect to see a change in the outgoing spectrum. This is indeed observed. Also, we'd expect a changing in the downwelling flux at the surface. This is also observed. There is plenty of other evidence, but this is only a blog comment, and it is getting late.
I disagree ATTP, Science is about proving Hypotheses. The proof I want you to provide is that the insignificant warming we've seen can't be due to natural cycles. Please admit that you can't come near to proving this. Come on, it should be simple.
Martin,
Popper would say that science is about rejecting (disproving) hypotheses, rather than accepting (proving) them, but I'm not a fan of appealling to Popper. However, what we can do is show that we can't come up with a physically plausible scenario in which most of the observed warming is natural, rather than anthropogenic.
I'll admit that I'm pretty confident that I couldn't do so to your satisfaction.
Martin,
Please provide proof of your 'natural cycles' hypothesis.
If you fail to comply I will label you ridiculous.
HTH
While you're at it, Martin
Could you please furnish us with your top 5 proven hyotheses?
Would it not be ridiculous if you could not?
Waiting..........
Phil Clarke & aTTP
The hypothesis has been tested. The models programmed with the theory have failed to confirm the original fears.
How much more taxpayer funding should Climate Science expect, when it can't identify and correct its own mistakes? If CO2 could be a problem, why does Climate Science NEED more taxpayer funding, to downgrade the fears?
All Trump (and possibly Abbott) has to do, is adjust the Climate Science Funding Knob.
Waiting..........
Oct 18, 2017 at 10:31 PM | Phil Clarke
What about testing the hypothesis that without funding climate science, many of the world's problems can be fixed.
We can wait for 20+ years before deciding if it was right, or mostly right. There will be no need to respond to any criticism for 20+ years.
@Oct 18, 2017 at 7:56 AM | Unregistered Commenter Phil Clarke
Of course I am aware of the Niwa report that you refer to in some detail but the salient issue is that the observed sea level rise that I refer to is real. There is no reason to believe that its rate will change over the next 100 years.
I have observed at close hand the sea level in the Otago harbour over the last 45 years. If it has changed at all in level its rate is imperceptible. Further I have asked the local Iwi who have lived in this area and still have villages here close to the water line. Same story. Their observation goes back several hundred years.
While Niwa and the BoM of Australia both ‘toe the party line’ as per the IPCC the observations do not bear this alarmism out.
The alarmism is political for obvious reason as is the support for this alarmism by those folk who can profit from this. There are plenty of examples of this commercial motivation here in this country as indeed I am aware of in the UK.
The graph is self explanatory.
Niwa Data
View of Otago Harbour at present.
Otago habour – Walk/cycleway – (19-10-17)
ATTP
"This is not true; the evidence does not suggest this. For example, even though orbital oscillations can trigger change, what actually drives the changes are changes in albedo (ice sheets) and changes in greenhouse gases (mainly CO2). "
That isn't even sophistry. It's just grandiose drivel. How can you teach students with such a mind ?
Roughly 70% of the earth's surface is water and we have no temperature record for it beyond the relatively recent past. So the concept of global temperature is just nonsense.
Clarkie, When I say proving hypotheses I mean validating them by observation such as gravity and relativity whose validity can be demonstrated repeatedly by experiment. This is not true for AGW and climate change which can only be shown in models that are programmed to show it.
Regarding proving that natural cycles are the cause of the recent insignificant warming that is completely up to you to do because unless you can demonstrate that this wasn't the case then you can't show that it was caused by AGW. In this case you do have to prove the negative.
Ah, so you don't mean 'proving' then.
Good example. The theory of relativity explains gravity wonderfully well (and replaced Newtonian mechanics), and provides testable predictions. At the same time Quantum mechanics theory explains the other fundamental forces wonderfully well. But unfortunately when QM and relativistic effects become large enough, they disagree.
In other words, I asked you for what you requested from me, a proven hypothesis, and your example is actually an example of two unproven and incompatible hypotheses. Using your semantics, Newton's laws of motion were 'proven' - until they weren't. Such is science.
So it is impossible to prove that the warming is not a result of natural cycles. It is also impossible to prove it is not due to invisible leprechauns or the spaghetti monster. Just a silly debating point, in other words.
But here is a list of some of the predictions made by climate models, that were validated by subsequent observations:
That the globe would warm, how fast, and how much.
That the troposphere would warm and the stratosphere would cool.
That nighttime temperatures would increase more than daytime temperatures.
That winter temperatures would increase more than summer temperatures.
Polar amplification (greater temperature increase as you move toward the poles).
That the Arctic would warm faster than the Antarctic.
The magnitude (0.3 K) and duration (two years) of the cooling from the Mt. Pinatubo eruption.
They predicted a trend significantly different and differently signed from UAH satellite temperatures, and then a bug was found in the satellite data.
The amount of water vapor feedback due to ENSO.
The response of southern ocean winds to the ozone hole.
The expansion of the Hadley cells.
The poleward movement of storm tracks.
The rising of the tropopause and the effective radiating altitude.
The clear sky super greenhouse effect from increased water vapor in the tropics.
The near constancy of relative humidity on global average.
That coastal upwelling of ocean water would increase.
And so on and so forth. Remove manmade GHG forcing from the models and they fail to match observations. 'Natural Cycles' ? No.
But Phil. Many of those "predictions" don't require warming by additional CO2, or are wrong, or are correct but the quantified predictions are incorrect.
For example
1. The world was already warming (and at similar rates) well before anthropogenic CO2 could have had any influence. The models certainly do not predict how much or how fast temperatures rise.
2. Yes the troposphere warmed and the stratosphere cooled, but not anywhere to the degrees predicted by models.
and on and on.
The entire edifice of CAGW stands on very weak foundations (as far as I can judge) and continuously has to be jacked up by booster statements like your latest.
Supertroll: 1. The world was already warming (and at similar rates) well before anthropogenic CO2 could have had any influence. The models certainly do not predict how much or how fast temperatures rise.
No, there was a cooling trend from the 1940s which was reversed around about 1975, the subsequent warming trend shows no sign of abating.
The first IPCC assessment report published in 1990 projected warming between 0.1C and 0.2C / decade depending on how forcings evolved (Scenarios B & C - see the report for the detailed projections). Actual trend since 1990 (using NASA data) was 0.189C/decade. Similarly James Hansen's scenario B from 1988 (the 'most plausible') predicted the 2016 anomaly pretty accurately. To choose but two.
More here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/climate-model-projections-compared-to-observations/
Phil. " predicted the 2016 anomaly pretty accurately. To choose but two." Don't you ever worry about all those predictions that didn't? Every time I look at a spaghetti graph I see it as a demonstration of failure. To cherry pick the occasional success is not good science, but then what do I know - I'm only a stamp-collecting geologist?
I chose the IPCC 1990 projection as (nearly) the earliest and the best expression of the art at the time. IF you confine yourself to the IPCC ensembles (the CMIP project) the observations have never strayed outside the spread occupied by 95% of the models. They have done a pretty impressive job, not perfect but then by definition a model cannot be so. Certainly the characterisation 'The models certainly do not predict how much or how fast temperatures rise.' is unjustified as, by and large, they did.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DKLepOlX0AA2Pm_.jpg
RR,
No, that is a somewhat twisted interpretation of what I'm suggesting. I'm simply pointing out that the changes in the past that were clearly not anthropogenic are not somehow evidence that the changes now aren't anthropogenic. If anything, the physics is the same. If you increase atmospheric CO2 (whether through natural causes, or anthropogenic) it will - all else being equal - cause surface temperatures to rise. The study of past changes actually strengthens our understanding of what is causing changes today, rather than undermining it.
ATTL. "The study of past changes actually strengthens our understanding of what is causing changes today, rather than undermining it."
Utter rubbish. If CO2 variations are the master control then changes in CO2 should be a foreword predictor of temperature changes or occur concurrently. As I discussed earlier in this thread, during glacial cycles changes in temperature foreshadow CO2 changes (particularly within glacial episodes) indicating that CO2 changes are rather weak controls. So rather than strengthening the present day dogma, it undermines it.
ATTP, why is there no historical record of temperature variation following variation in CO2, I have seen no evidence of this.
Please answer how we go into ice ages when temperature and CO2 are at a maximum and come out of ice ages when CO2 and temperature are low. Would you not say that this absolutely rubbishes the notion that CO2 causes temperature rise.
I'll ask again, how can you guys prove AGW when you can't eliminate natural variation as a cause. There is nothing unscientific with proving a negative and you have to do it to validate the very weak AGW hypothesis
Why do you say that current conditions are in any way unprecedented in terms of amplitude and rate of rise when that is patently untrue?
More here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/climate-model-projections-compared-to-observations/
Oct 19, 2017 at 11:10 AM | Phil Clarke
Do you still consider the Hockey Team as reliable and trustworthy scientists, even after their approved models have been acknowledged as "overheating"?
So, something, let us say a change in insolation due to the slightly elliptical orbit, causes a mild warming of the planet. This warming triggers a release of CO2, mainly from the oceans. The increased CO2 enhances the greenhouse effect, causing more warming. The further warming triggers more CO2 to be released, and so on until a new equilibrium is reached or the intial forcing turns negative.
It should be clear that in this scenario the CO2 curve will lag the temperature curve as the initial warming came before the CO2 release.
Also important to note that this release and reabsorbtion process occurred over thousands of years. At no point in the known history of the planet have hundreds of Gigatonnes of CO2 been released into the atmosphere over a few decades. This is why CO2 concentrations are now >30% higher than the range they have occupied for at least 800,000 years.
Measurements from orbit show that outgoing radiation has declined in exactly the parts of the spectrum where CO2 and other GHGs absorb. All that retained energy must be going somewhere.
But hey, maybe its natural cycles.
Phil, surely you don't believe that utter crap? I really thought that you might have had a clue but your just a propagandist. Please don't ever accuse any sceptic of not understanding the science when you don't have a clue yourself.
You haven't answered my questions, you can't answer them and these were just a couple of many that you would have no answer for.
Martin.
Nobody could answer your question.
Regards.
Incidentally, the amplification of weak orbital forcing was mentioned in Lorius et al 1990, so this knowledge is at least a quarter-century old. Jeff Severinghaus posted this in 2004
Source
Phil,
Indeed.
Interesting quote. I discussed that issue in this post. The comment by Eric Steig is worth reading.
Acknowledged by who, GC? You?
ATTP, thanks.
So at a minimum there are papers dating back a quarter century, 5 or more posts on prominent blogs and a video explaining the lag of CO2 behind temperature on glacial/interglaciatial timescales.
The archetypal zombie myth. How long before it crops up again?
Oct 19, 2017 at 1:29 PM | Phil Clarke
Why Jeff Severinghaus does not think much of Mann, and his skills
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/28/a-response-from-jeff-severinghaus-on-why-the-trees-dont-make-good-thermometers-after-1950-i-did-indeed-feel-at-the-time-that-mike-mann-had-not-given-me-a-straight-answer/
A response from Jeff Severinghaus on why the trees don’t make good thermometers after 1950 – “I did indeed feel at the time that Mike Mann had not given me a straight answer. “
James Padgett / November 28, 2011
I had a brief email exchange with Professor Severinghaus about Steve McIntyre’s recent poston his discussion with Mann and others about the divergence problem. I post it without comment, with permission and without emphasizing any of his words:
Dear James,
This is fascinating. I had no idea these emails were in the public domain.
In general Steve has gotten most of this right. There really is a problem
with the trees not being sensitive to temperature after about 1950. My
current best guess is that the higher CO2 since then has caused greater
warming at night (which is corroborated by minimum temperature trends,
since minimum temperatures usually occur at night). Trees respire more
at higher temperature, so they lose carbon when nights are warmer
than average. So their ring width has not increased as much as it would
have if the warming had been uniformly distributed over the diurnal cycle.
I think this is all published now so it should be possible to set the whole
record straight. But I did indeed feel at the time that Mike Mann had not
given me a straight answer. So if there is a response written, it won’t be
one defending Mike.
Jeff
Cheers,
James Padgett
Phil.
"It should be clear that in this scenario the CO2 curve will lag the temperature curve as the initial warming came before the CO2 release".
Clever that, but I) explain why the delay should be as long as 800 years, but more importantly, 2) why should temperatures fall thousands or tens of thousands of years before any declines in CO2. If high CO2 enhance temperatures and are the most important control, why didn't the continued high CO2 greenhouse effect continue to keep temperatures high? You can't have the greenhouse effect operating at glacial to interglacial transitions, but the same high levels of CO2 inoperative during interglacial to glacial transitions and the first halves of glacial episodes. Or can you in your universe?
The archetypal zombie myth. How long before it crops up again?
Oct 19, 2017 at 1:49 PM | Phil Clarke
Do you mean Gergis 2012 resurfacing as Gergis 2016? Thanks for reminding me.
So guys, CO2 is the driver of all temperature change at the moment but isn't during the onset and recovery of ice ages or at any time recorded by the Vlostok ice cores.
You really are making this up aren't you. I guess that both ATTP and PC are both members of the AGW industry and rely on it for their living. It is the only possible explanation for such corruption of both science and logical thought.
aTTP: so you do accept that there have been changes in the past that were not anthropogenic. So, what is so different about the present change that cannot be seen in the other occasions? (And – please – do not tell us that, this time, it is yoomans wot r doin it.) Surely, the simple application of Occam’s Razor should point out that it has happened before so, what is to stop it from happening again, especially when we do not fully understand the reasons why it happened before?
But.. but… but…haven’t we been assured that this never really happened, and such claims that the world was cooling have been air-brushed out and it was really warming? Are you telling us that we have been lied to (again)?!Isn't this the simple truth ????
April 2017
Dr ( Duane) Thresher is among the elite of computer climate modelers. He has performed extensive work in climate proxy modeling at the University of Alaska and the Alfred Wegener Institute, Germany. He earned his PhD in Earth & Environmental Sciences (climate modeling/proxies) from Columbia University and at NASA he worked for Dr. James Hansen, the father of global warming, and Dr. Gavin Schmidt.
Dr Thresher offers his step-by-step guide below:
1. It is fundamentally mathematically impossible for climate models to predict climate.
Chaos Theory’s Butterfly Effect is usually described as the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Japan resulting in a hurricane in the Atlantic. This is not artistic hyperbole, this is mathematical reality.
Climate is a quintessential example of this phenomenon.
Unless climate models do the absolutely impossible and account for even a butterfly’s wings flapping, particularly when they are initialized, and then calculate with infinite precision, they can not predict climate.
Climate models are just more complex/chaotic weather models, which have a theoretical maximum predictive ability of just 10 days into the future. Predicting climate decades or even just years into the future is a lie, albeit a useful one for publication and funding.
Qualified climate modelers know all this but almost all won’t publicly admit it out of fear for their careers.
2. Climate proxies are far too inaccurate, unreliable, and sparse to prove anything about past global climate, e.g. that it was colder.
Climate proxies are things like tree rings and ice cores. Given old methods and instruments, even historical climate measurements have to be considered climate proxies.
They are called climate “proxies” because they are substitutes for real climate measurements. Obviously, there are no instruments in these climate proxies so how is it done? The climate measurements have to be inferred from loosely-related characteristics of the proxy, e.g. temperature from tree ring widths. This usually involves primitive modeling or misuse of statistics. It is thus inaccurate and unreliable well beyond what is required for the conclusions drawn.
Climate proxies are very sparse. A single measurement often has to represent thousands of square miles or more, particularly in remote ocean regions, and is usually not representative of that area (e.g. sampled trees are not chosen randomly) or doesn’t even have a knowable bias. A single temperature for the Earth averaged from these measurements is meaningless and absurd.
The reason for using climate proxies is that there is nothing else, which is not a good reason … unless you have to get published or funded.
3. Scientific consensus is not proof of global warming, just publication and funding bias.
Scientific consensus = all published research shows global warming.
Climate model/proxy research that does not show global warming will not get published or funded because of:
Non-publication of negative results (no global warming found)
Fearful self-censorship
Conflict of interest (a need to get results, regardless of validity, that further careers)
Corrupt fanatical unqualified “working” scientists
Censorship by established scientists in a fundamentally-flawed peer review process (peers are all-too-human competitors)
Corruption of climate science overall
http://principia-scientific.org/top-nasa-climate-modeler-admits-predictions-mathematically-impossible/
The archetypal zombie myth. How long before it crops up again?
Oct 19, 2017 at 1:49 PM | Phil Clarke
For Phil Clarke's benefit, here it is again (includes two cartoons by Josh)
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/08/08/zombie-science-the-worst-example-of-climate-data-torturing-ever-withdrawn-gergis-2012-becomes-gergis-2016/
Phil Clarke was really impressed with Gergis 2016, and introduced it here:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/discussion/post/2617002
Latest Hockey Stick
"Actually, it is the Gergis Australia study, Joelle and her team have corrected the various issue and resubmitted the study and it has been reviewed and accepted, in the face of the usual denier unpleasantness.
Conclusion:"Overall, we are confident that observed temperatures in Australasia have been warmer in the past 30 years than every other 30-year period over the entire millennium (90% confidence based on 12,000 reconstructions, developed using four independent statistical methods and three different data subsets). Importantly, the climate modelling component of our study also shows that only human-caused greenhouse emissions can explain the recent warming recorded in our region."
Add it to the list.
Jul 11, 2016 at 10:46 PM | Phil Clarke"
All of that "Science" to support Mann's Hockey Stick, and the long list of followers, obtaining money by deceit.
Which is what Abbott was referring to. Taxpayers should not be paying for it.
http://joannenova.com.au/2017/10/politicians-shocked-at-the-power-crisis-waiting-in-the-australian-electricity-grid/
"Did some politicans just wake up? The news today is that our Energy Minister may realize Australia is conducting a wild experiment with our electricity grid, and may have managed to convince other Australian federal politicians of the risk."
Did they watch Abbotts talk?
@Oct 19, 2017 at 1:29 PM | Unregistered Commenter Phil Clarke
It seems to me that Phil might benefit by reading this pdf - it might let him understand that he is chasing a chimera.
It will be seen that there is no correlation whatsoever between carbon dioxide concentration and the temperature at the earth’s surface.
Co2 in the atmoshere is wholly beneficial
@Oct 20, 2017 at 12:34 AM | Unregistered Commenter golf charlie
Nope Golf, they are up the creek without the proverbial.
The Ockers are running around like ‘headless chooks’ – mainly because they screwed up on understanding co2. They stupidly started relying on wind and solar. They shut down their dispatchable coal plants – oh dear!
Check this out.
Aussie Energy Crisis
https://skepticalscience.com/Does-high-CO2-in-past-contradict-CO2-warming.html
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/03/can-we-make-better-graphs-of-global-temperature-history/
@Oct 20, 2017 at 8:56 AM | Unregistered Commenter Geoff
Yes they do seem to be in disarray. Some weeks ago I did this animation. It draws attention to the stupidity of the SA state government closing down its LAST source of dispatchable electric energy. Power cuts ensued and they were forced to draw from Victoria.
South Australia – poster child for Energy Crisis
Phil, as would be expected your link doesn't actually work. Are you ever going to get anything right?
Left-click and highlight the URL with your mouse.
Right-click and select ;Goto ...'
Works fine for me.
Phil..... Are you ever going to get anything right?
Oct 21, 2017 at 9:42 AM | Martin Mason
He spends too much time at skeptical science and Real Climate to learn anything real about science, or climate, or scepticism
Phil I can't do that only copy the link and paste. Doing that it doesn't work. Shame really as I could do with a laugh.
yudyokemo e3d3fd1842 https://motiontoken.tech/tercnontnamen