Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute has just issued the latest “Climate B.S.* of the Year Awards”. (* B.S. stands for “Bad Science,” of course.) Our pals Roy Spencer, Rush Limbaugh, and the field of Republican presidential contenders figure prominently.
Posted by: Barry Bickmore | January 5, 2012
Pacific Institute: Climate B.S.* of the Year Awards
Posted in Climate Change
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Here’s the summary:
http://pacinst.org/press_center/press_releases/climate_bs_award_2011.html
By: sailrick on January 5, 2012
at 9:08 pm
Barry,
I read Gleick’s post. You really can’t be serious here. Please see my comment I made to his article.
Dear Peter Gleick,
Is this why no warmists I can find will publicly debate the facts?
Go spend five minutes and Google the IPCC 2007 “emissions scenarios”. Now google the land based temperature graph from HADCRUT, GISTEMP, UAH, and RSS. If you go to Woodfortrees.org they can average it for you. Now superimpose the IPCC’s 2007 emsission scenario modeling against the actual, hard data.
Guess what? The 30 year average is 0.15 C per decade, but the last decade was 0.12C per decade which means warming is slowing down, not accelerating. Additionally, the IPCC states that if we keep all emissions at 2000 levels to expect warming of 0.1C per decade. Well, everyone agrees emissions are significantly greater now than in 2000 and were at 0.12C, just barely above what IPCC predicted for “no additional output”!
On top of that, 0.12C per decade rate is amazingly short of the A1FI (fossil fuel intensive scenario) which we live in now which predicts 4C rise (0.4C per decade on average)
We’re not even close!! So, regardless what you think about Spencer/Braswell et al, and you can talk about models and theories all day long, but in the REAL WORLD,the warmists are getting CREAMED with predictions of doom and gloom. I liked your link to skepticalscience–really impressive source of unbiased information! LOL!!
Game, set, match.
By: Scott on January 6, 2012
at 10:22 am
Scott,
No, the reason no “warmists” will debate you is because we consider it a waste of time to debate someone who cannot understand the fact that standard climate models DO predict the global mean temperature will chaotically go up or down for several years at a time. The average over a few decades should be about what is predicted, but a single decade of data tells us jack squat.
It is also a waste of time to debate someone who cannot understand the idea of “error bars”. The IPCC doesn’t just produce projections–they also put error bars on those projections, and so far we are within those error bars.
It is also a waste of time to debate someone who cannot understand the fact that, supposing the models don’t have all the details right, so they predict that warming is faster than actually happens over the next few decades, the END RESULT–i.e., the “climate sensitivity”–is constrained by paleoclimate data. And it appears that there is very little chance that the climate is so insensitive to GHG inputs that we don’t have to worry about curbing our emissions.
In other words, it’s usually a waste of time to debate someone who isn’t interested in the truth, but is instead only interested in confirming his prior beliefs.
By: Barry Bickmore on January 6, 2012
at 11:17 am
Barry, please refer to the IPCC summary for policy makers. I’ll make it easy for you by providing the link.
Click to access ar4-wg1-spm.pdf
The “error bars” you refer to for scenario A1F1 are the “likely range” or are there some other “error bars” only you are privy to? Any way, the likely range is 2.4-6.4C at 2100. The error bars for A2 are 2.0-5.4C at 2100. Anything that is close is B1 scenario at 1.1-2.9C and that is assuming a renewable energy dependent society and very little fossil fuels, which is not happening now–anyone knows that–unless you count hundred of government beurocrats jetting off to exotic places every few years to attend another vacation– I mean climate change conference. We’re not even in the error bars. Please make sure you know your facts before assuming I don’t know mine.
You state,
“supposing the models don’t have all the details right, so they predict that warming is faster than actually happens over the next few decades, the END RESULT–i.e., the “climate sensitivity”–is constrained by paleoclimate data.”
Pray, do tell, when will the paleo record catch up with the models? Every year that goes by without accelerated warming, rising sea levels, antarctic warming, tropospheric warming, malaria epidemics, hurricanes, massive population migrations, tornados, and generalized death and chaos leaves that much less time for “superacceleration” before we get to 2100 and for the IPCC’s precious models to be correct. And we both know that neither of us will be around then…
All one needs to do is look at the vast amount of predictions about today by individual warmist scientists and IPCC from the past decade to realize virtually none of them have come true. And no, I don’t need a PhD in climatology to present THAT to an audience.
By: Scott on January 6, 2012
at 12:08 pm
Scott, how about organizing a debate in Bangkok, especially the areas just ravaged by flooding? I’d like to see how you get to convince your audience that the ‘rising sea levels’ are just a figment of their imaginations.
You can spin, you can play with words, you can make up numbers, but at the end of the day, the laws of physics care not a whit for your rhetorical tricks.
— frank
By: frank -- Decoding SwiftHack on January 6, 2012
at 1:18 pm
Frank, your killing me! so terrible floods in earth’s past don’t count because AGW wasn’t around then. The problem with you folks is you don’t take a look at history, history, history!! Let’s all wring our hands over modern flooding without taking it in historical context! Compare number of floods in history with current stats before you start cherry picking current events before you can even come to the podium, dude.
Colorado State U. Tropical meteorology project authors Klotzback and Gray, state:
“We are discontinuing our early December quantitative hurricane forecast for the next year and giving a more qualitative discussion of the factors which will determine next year’s Atlantic basin hurricane activity. Our early December Atlantic basin seasonal hurricane forecasts of the last 20 years have not shown real-time forecast skill even though the hindcast studies on which they were based had considerable skill”
Wow, they both must have taken the brutal honesty class that was offered but nobody at the IPCC attended.
By: Scott on January 6, 2012
at 2:08 pm
Scott, as I said, just go organize a debate in the flood-ravaged areas of Bangkok, and see how well your ‘arguments’ are going to wash. Tell your ‘captive audience’ that the abnormal flooding they just experienced was an illusion created by the “IPCC” and has nothing to do with “gorebull warming” and after all we must pay attention to “history”. Tell your audience.
If you don’t like Bangkok, how about setting up a debate the coastal areas of Bangladesh? You can stand knee-deep in the water while showing your audience your precious collection of quotes and graphs showing how everything is completely fine and dandy.
Go on. Do it.
— frank
By: frank -- Decoding SwiftHack on January 6, 2012
at 2:31 pm
All right Frank, as long as get to debate you. When do you want to go?
By: Scott on January 6, 2012
at 2:37 pm
Scott, I’ve been wanting to travel to Bangkok on board Al Gore’s private jet. If you can locate and show us this elusive jet, let me know.
— frank
By: frank -- Decoding SwiftHack on January 6, 2012
at 2:57 pm
Scott,
You can find the range of model output in figures like this one:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-10-5.html
We’ve been pretty close to the A2 emissions scenario so far, so that’s a good one to look at. Notice how the individual models (which have been subjected to 3-year averaging) go up or down for several years at a time, but over time the average is upward.
Also, my point was that the SPEED of the changes is more uncertain than the FINAL RESULT, which is what the paleo record can best help us address. So your question about WHEN the system will “catch up” to the paleo results misses the point.
So let me reiterate a few points.
1) The observed climate evolution is so far pretty consistent with the model results, if you look at long enough time periods and don’t neglect the error bars.
2) The paleoclimate record indicates that the range of possible final outcomes is consistent with the range of model projections.
3) People who deny points 1 and 2 don’t know what they’re talking about.
By: Barry Bickmore on January 6, 2012
at 1:21 pm
Barry states:
1) The observed climate evolution is so far pretty consistent with the model results, if you look at long enough time periods and don’t neglect the error bars
a. Sorry Barry, I’m looking at A2 error bars and with best guess at 3.4C and range of 2-5.4C Our trend is NOT currently within those error bars. SORRY. And who’s to say we’re not “pretty consistent” with year 2000 constant scenario? We’re at 0.12C per decade average right now.
2) The paleoclimate record indicates that the range of possible final outcomes is consistent with the range of model projections.
a. And we’re certain that the paleoclimate record will tell us that previous climate catastrophes in the historic past were due to natural causes, but any future catastrophes are most certainly caused by mankind. Right. How are those attribution studies coming along?
So your question about WHEN the system will “catch up” to the paleo results misses the point.
a. And you’re saying it’s ok to spend trillions right now because I make a reasonable assertion that “misses the point”?
3) People who deny points 1 and 2 don’t know what they’re talking about.
a. Nothing like sweeping generalizations/accusations to prove your point. I rest my case.
By: Scott on January 6, 2012
at 2:35 pm
Scott, you’re arguing that ‘current climate catastrophes aren’t caused by humans, and besides they don’t exist, and besides they’ll cost a lot of money to fix’.
That certainly sounds like “B. S.”.
Barry’s right. You’re not interested in debate; you’re not interested in the truth; you’re only interested in avoiding the truth.
— frank
By: frank -- Decoding SwiftHack on January 6, 2012
at 2:51 pm
Scott,
You seem to be assuming a constant rate of change over the whole century, whereas the models project a gradually increasing rate. I’m talking about the range of model projections over the first decade of the 21st century, not some average trend over the whole century.
By: Barry Bickmore on January 6, 2012
at 3:19 pm
Scot,
You did an admirable job up to then but the moment you mention money (as in “it’s ok to spend trillions”) you show that your objections have more to do with your economic ideology than science. As Barry mentioned earlier looking at a single decade (or even 15 years) is pretty meaningless.
By: riverat (Dave) on January 8, 2012
at 2:06 am
“Sorry Barry, I’m looking at A2 error bars and with best guess at 3.4C and range of 2-5.4C Our trend is NOT currently within those error bars. SORRY.”
Not only does Scott fail to understand the difference between linear temperature change and non-linear temperature change over the century, he also fails to understand interannual variability and how that makes it rather difficult to determine a long-term trend from several years of data.
By: MMM on January 10, 2012
at 9:48 am
Dr. B
For the good of our movement, please remove this “Scott” character’s posts and take away his privileges. A child, looking for clarification of man-made global warming, could easily wander on to this site and be damaged forever after reading and verifying the details of his writing. This kid could go away not worrying at all about the doomsday you and I know awaits earth. Please, for the sake of the planet, dis-allow him from posting like RealClimate would do or change his posts to reflect the truth as we know it the SkS has on several occasions.
xoxoxo,
dz
PS… I nominated your site for Best Science category – 2012 Bloggies.
By: Die Zauberflotist on January 8, 2012
at 10:02 am
DZ,
Tut, tut!!! I refuse to give in to your demands that I assail the principle of FREE SPEECH. No matter how thick Scott makes himself seem by, e.g., plotting a straight line between recent temps and those projected for 2100 and claiming that represents the projected slope for all decades in between, he still has the ABSOLUTE RIGHT to express his ill-informed opinions on everyone else’s blog. In fact, I submit that he is a folk hero in the tradition of Gerard Finneran.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=finneran
Your request is denied, sir, and if you make such a request again, I shall denounce you in a self-righteous manner.
By: Barry Bickmore on January 8, 2012
at 9:16 pm
Looks like “Die Zauberflotist” is some weird combination of a strawman, sockpuppet, and concern troll. Um… a strawman trollpuppet?
— frank
By: frank -- Decoding SwiftHack on January 9, 2012
at 9:01 am
Oh, DZ is ok. He doesn’t take himself that seriously. Is suspect he would find it amusing to be called a “trollpuppet.”
By: Barry Bickmore on January 10, 2012
at 2:39 pm
Surely he has the RIGHT to ask, though, Barry!
And Scott has the RIGHT to talk complete bollocks, but this in no way means that he has the RIGHT to demand your help doing so.
By: Wow on January 10, 2012
at 6:56 am
And Die Zauberflautist seems to fall for the general line that Scott and others like him go for.
First and foremost, there is no ‘movement’. None at all. There is only science.
Second. This movement idea often seems to link up with the ‘debate’ question. I still fail to understand how one can debate facts. Debates are contests of strength and agility in opinion and persuasion. Facts are selectively cited and disputed in order to support an argument or to refute an opponent. This is a highly contrived arrangement used in politics and law. It has no place in science.
As for the wider global warming issue, debates do have their place in considering options for flood protection, emissions reduction, taxation or other cost spreading mechanisms, changing building regulations for fire, storm and flood resilience, insurance regulation and the like.
But no debates on facts. None.
By: adelady on January 9, 2012
at 8:09 pm
There’s a denial movement, adelady, though.
By: Wow on January 10, 2012
at 6:57 am
Hi adelady,
Be careful about the “facts” rhetoric, because it can backfire. Science isn’t just about “facts”–because any scientific theory also involves a heavy dose of interpretation. There is always a chance that some other interpretation of the facts will turn out to work better, even if we haven’t thought of it, yet. The problem is that most people think of science as “just the facts,” so all you have to do to poison the well against a perfectly reasonable theory is show that it involves some interpretation/grey areas/etc.
By: Barry Bickmore on January 10, 2012
at 8:36 am
Yeah, yeah, I know, Barry.
But we both also know that the ‘facts’ that many people want to debate are well beyond any scientific data or analysis. They’re generally looking to dispute basic physics of gases or cherry pick temperature graphs. And, getting back to my previous point, they don’t distinguish between science and policy.
So when you think you’re discussing glacier retreat, you suddenly find ‘facts’ being advanced about grasping scientists earning $$$$$s or the gubmint taking away your lightbulbs.
Insisting on a clear distinction between the science and the variety of policy options is a bit of an uphill struggle when people like Scott say things like
“Is this why no warmists I can find will publicly debate the facts?” as he did above.
By: adelady on January 10, 2012
at 5:26 pm
Read. Weep.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/pip/2011GL050226.shtml
By: Scott on January 11, 2012
at 2:32 pm
I read it. Please tell us in your own words why you think this is so significant, Scott.
By: Barry Bickmore on January 11, 2012
at 3:09 pm
Look, I know your biases, with your blog and everything, and with the likes of Dana 1981 and Frank, et. al. you’ve got the cool-aid gang hanging around to put in their two cents, but GRL is a surprising choice, since it is arguably a “top tier” journal. These guys are suggesting “skeptic” levels of warming here. 1.3-1.8C is definitely “skeptic” range, and surprisingly (to warmists, at least) that this fits into Dr. Spencer’s range (and Dr. Michaels range) of prediction quite nicely. Ten years ago this would have been heresy. I think stating on this blog that Dr. Spencer got something right would be considered heresy.
Please refer to Dr. Michaels treatise
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2012/01/10/mann_go_ape/
On top of that you derided me for not knowing anything about “error bars” then when I pointed out the problem with temp trends v. models from 2007 IPCC and how we are outside those error bars you somehow move the goalposts and now state that we shouldn’t expect warming to be linear. And of course there is no response from you when I mention the fact that current trends have been very close to zero additional output from 2000 levels as quoted by IPCC (0.12 v. 0.1C).
Tell me then, if trends are now “non linear” because they fall underneath the confidence intervals, then why on earth did IPCC even bother to graph most scenarios in a linear fashion? I guess that’s not all that important, because, hey, Frank says nobody can prove Al Gore has a personal jet and we all know that because we can’t prove it, that seals the deal for AGW. One point for Frank!
I’m a doctor. I work in applied sciences, just like engineers. I’ve told you previously that we in applied science have to deal with being wrong at least some of the time. But we learn from our mistakes and improve for the next time. Climatology is a theoretical science. For some reason, they think that if they’re wrong, everyone will hate them, so they have to keep up this front to show everything’s good. I suppose that’s fine, but the longer you all wait to admit there are some major flaws, the worse it’s going to be on the field of climatology. But I seriously doubt the type of humility I and other applied scientists face daily will be used by the climate community until their hand is forced.
By: Scott on January 13, 2012
at 1:28 am
So Scott, first you say “Read. Weep.”, then when you find we aren’t actually weeping you complain that we aren’t weeping like we’re supposed to?
— frank
By: frank -- Decoding SwiftHack on January 13, 2012
at 7:42 am
Scott:
Um, “nobody can prove Al Gore has a personal jet” is just a euphemistic way of saying ‘we skeptics are making crap up’, is it not?
— frank
By: frank -- Decoding SwiftHack on January 13, 2012
at 7:57 am
Scott,
How did I “move the goalposts”? You said we’re outside the error bars, and my response was that you are not reporting the error bars that the IPCC actually projected. It appears to me that you are taking the error bars at 2100 and fitting straight lines between that and the present (or the year 2000, or whatever). This is not how the IPCC did it, and in fact their projected response is quite nonlinear, so you are knocking down a strawman.
Here’s an analogous situation. You tell a patient that their cancer will gradually progress for several months until they die, but it will get much worse, much faster, at the end. Then I come along after a couple months and tell your patient that you must be wrong, because his symptoms don’t seem to be progressing very rapidly. At that rate, he has at least 5 years to live!
You say:
“And of course there is no response from you when I mention the fact that current trends have been very close to zero additional output from 2000 levels as quoted by IPCC (0.12 v. 0.1C).”
What part of the following didn’t you understand?
“[W]e consider it a waste of time to debate someone who cannot understand the fact that standard climate models DO predict the global mean temperature will chaotically go up or down for several years at a time. The average over a few decades should be about what is predicted, but a single decade of data tells us jack squat.”
I even gave you a link to an IPCC graph that shows this.
As for Pat Michael’s abuse of the Gillett paper, Dana already beat you to the punch.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/patrick-michaels-serial-deleter-of-inconvenient-data.html
When I read the paper, I said to myself, “Why would anyone think this is so significant?” When I read Dana’s piece, I said, “Oh yeah, Pat Michaels has been deleting inconvenient data AGAIN.)
By: Barry Bickmore on January 13, 2012
at 8:10 am
And why is it that this one model is right and all other models wrong?
By: Wow on January 12, 2012
at 8:50 am
And the lead author on that paper also appears as an author on others, such as
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v4/n2/full/ngeo1047.html and
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI3900.1
We can read. And then we read the citations. And then ….?
You might rub your tired eyes, I suppose.
By: adelady on January 11, 2012
at 9:39 pm
So this is Scott’s method of “debate”, eh?
Mindlessly parrot hyperlinks and factoids he got from someone else, ignore everyone else’s questions and responses, and then when he’s shown to be full of bull, simply keep very quiet while he throws out another piece of nonsense elsewhere?
Scott, so where’s Al Gore’s private jet, that bugbear of many a ‘skeptic’?
— frank
By: frank -- Decoding SwiftHack on January 12, 2012
at 10:46 am
I’ve never understood the frantic calls for spoken debate of a subject that fills millions of sheets of paper and has been explored by tens of thousands of nerds over the course of decades. Combine that with the fact that spoken debates favor liars. Think about it. Apart from lawyers and politicians, who uses debate professionally? If it were a reasonable means to arrive at anything approximating truth, those two groups would avoid it like the plague.
No, a call for debate on science is primarily made by fools or liars. All other times they are both.
By: pough on January 12, 2012
at 10:45 pm
Pough says, “Combine that with the fact that spoken debates favor liars.”
Wow, Pough, let’s hope you never have to have to hire a lawyer to defend you in court.
By: Scott on January 13, 2012
at 12:48 am
Yeah, Pough. How dare you smear the good name of lawyers!
By: Barry Bickmore on January 13, 2012
at 12:54 am
Lawyers have a good name? 😉
— frank
By: frank -- Decoding SwiftHack on January 13, 2012
at 7:49 am
Well, there’s got to be one, hasn’t there..?
By: Wow on January 13, 2012
at 8:22 am
Are you agreeing with me or disagreeing? I can’t tell.
By: pough on January 14, 2012
at 6:59 pm
Oh wait. You’re changing the subject, using humor in a disparaging way. That’s a common rhetorical trick, used by liars – I mean, debators.
Climate science is and has been already debated the proper way – in journals. The fact that it’s managed to do so well in an arena where things are carefully checked and folksy charm means nothing is why you’re so desperate to get it out into a different one; one where accuracy causes eyelids to droop and meaningless insults (with humor, of course – must be perceived to be the nice one) win the day.
By: pough on January 16, 2012
at 3:04 pm
Barry, you can disparage Dr. Michaels all you want, but reality is, (which I’m sure dana1981 is loathe to admit) is temperature estimates for doubling of CO2 are exaggerated. Even Dana stated in his post, “their higher TCR (approximately 1.7 to 2.5°C) seems more likely to be correct.” I’m sure he must have been unhappy to have to admit that given that this is from someone who is not a known skeptic and published in a reputable journal. When the party line has been 3C for doubling of CO2 the past several years, this is quite a development.
You state:
“Why would anyone think this is so significant?”
Well, I guess if you really paid attention to the orthodoxy 3C estimate, and how this study virtually cuts this in half, you would realize this is pretty big. but I’m not totally convinced that you excited about any new changes in modeling studies, as long as the orthodoxy has it’s way.
I appreciate your attempt at comparing this to cancer, but please realize, our advice to patients with cancer comes from years of research on previous cancer patients (and from being wrong). And even at that, many patients don’t follow the pathway that one would assume from printed guidelines. It’s because we’re dealing with an organic system, which is certainly what the climate system entails. You’re trying to apply inorganic constraints to an organic system.
By: Scott on January 13, 2012
at 12:37 pm
Scott, this is exactly what I’m talking about. See below.
If anything, the “orthodox” value for climate sensitivity is 3 °C for doubling CO2. This is based on quite a bit of paleoclimate evidence over different LONG timescales. Actually, they don’t give just one value; they give a range. The “most likely” range for climate sensitivity given by the IPCC is 2-4.5 °C, and it’s almost certainly above 1.5 °C. So if some study comes up with a value above 1.5 °C, but not above, say 6 °C, climate scientists would shrug and say that’s pretty consistent with what other methods have produced, so let’s hope the lower values are more correct! Most of Gillett’s range (1.3-1.8 °C) is above 1.5 °C, so this study would (except for one nasty little detail) fall into that sort of category–not statistically distinct from what others have found, but still on the low end.
But here’s the nasty little detail. “Climate sensitivity” is by definition an EQUILIBRIUM value. That is, if you double CO2, and then after all the feedbacks have time to kick in, and the ocean has time to come to a sort of steady state in terms of how fast the heat in the upper ocean is getting mixed down deeper, what will the surface temperature anomaly be? That’s the climate sensitivity. Gillett and Co. were not talking about that. They were talking about the TRANSIENT CLIMATE RESPONSE at a certain point in time (2100), which would certainly not be in equilibrium in any climate model of the IPCC scenarios. In other words, Gillett and Co. were talking about HOW FAST the Earth will heat up, whereas climate sensitivity addresses WHAT THE FINAL OUTCOME WILL BE. Would it be important if the TCR is lower than the standard projections? Yes! But that just buys us some time–it doesn’t necessarily change how much the Earth will end up warming in a geologically very short time period.
So what you are doing is comparing two numbers without regard for WHAT THOSE NUMBERS REFER TO.
This is really basic stuff, Scott. What your posts tell me is that even given your science background, which would make it easier for you than most others, you have not bothered to expend the intellectual effort needed to get your head around the basics of climate science. That’s why you glom onto studies like this that are actually saying something quite different than what you take them to mean.
And that’s why nobody will debate you. As far as I can tell, you aren’t influencing many people. So why would I let myself get sucked into a “debate” with some guy who isn’t having any discernible impact, and who obviously hasn’t bothered to study the subject in any depth?
By: Barry Bickmore on January 13, 2012
at 1:33 pm
Barry, since you say a decade doesn’t do “jack squat” for telling if emissions scenarios are junk, please see my post regarding IPCC’s 1990 statements. Is 22 years enough time for feedback mechanisms to start kicking in? Or are we still talking transient climate response since 1990? How much lag are we talking about?
“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.”
Kevin Trenberth
Amen.
By: Scott on January 13, 2012
at 2:39 pm
Scott,
Before I address your out-of-context quotation of Kevin Trenberth (just like Jerald and Sandra Tanner–aren’t you proud!) and your quotation of 1990 IPCC projections, why don’t you address the issue at hand?
That is, do you acknowledge that Gillett et al. were talking about something other than climate sensitivity, and that you were wrong to compare them directly?
Because honestly, you can look up all this stuff you brought up on Skeptical Science, so I’m not inclined to discuss this with you any more if you can’t stop jumping topics like a fundamentalist.
By: Barry Bickmore on January 13, 2012
at 3:49 pm
Yeah, I’m kind of getting tired of it too. OK, I used an equilibrium term for a dynamic measure. I was wrong on that. But I’m curious, IPCC has about 3C warming at 2100. If you look at A2 emissions scenario, it’s 3.4C best estimate at 2100. One would have to conclude whether you’re looking at the “steady state” temperature hundreds of years later or a dynamic temp at a certain date, you’re still at around 3C at the end of the century, with sometime before that a doubling of CO2. I am assuming that IPCC is suggesting that we will reach a doubling of CO2 and a steady state by 2100 in order to make this work?
Are we not talking about climate sensitivity here? And is not my other posts related directly to climate sensitivity? And yes, TCR does take into account climate sensitivity on shorter time scales. So all of my recent posts have to do with climate sensitivity and the IPCC’s utter failure to this point to get it right. Jumping topics?
Have a great weekend Barry.
By: Scott on January 13, 2012
at 5:57 pm
Scott, the fact that you can’t even discuss just one friggin’ scientific paper without going all ‘IPCC this, IPCC that’ says more about your grasp of reality (i.e. none) than it says about scientists’ work.
Yeah, I know you want to keep up the idea that IPCC is some sort of Tower of Barad-dûr that churns out evil ‘scientists’ and evil ‘results’. But the fact is that IPCC doesn’t produce science; rather, the IPCC’s work comes from scientific work done elsewhere.
If you can’t even get this basic fact right, then why should anyone trust what you say about matters of science?
— frank
By: frank -- Decoding SwiftHack on January 14, 2012
at 2:14 pm
Hi Scott,
That’s a good question. If CO2 is the only forcing for the A2, then by 2100 the TCR isn’t too far behind the equilibrium model response. I suspect that the projected overall forcing (including all the other factors) is higher, but I don’t have that data.
By: Barry Bickmore on January 15, 2012
at 5:50 pm
Pop quiz…(I’ll give the answers at the end)
Q
a. Who said, “Our judgement is that: global mean surface air temperature has increased by 0.3 to 0.6 oC over the last 100 years…; The size of this warming is broadly consistent with predictions of climate models, but it is also of the same magnitude as natural climate variability. Thus the observed increase could be largely due to this natural variability; alternatively this variability and other human factors could have offset a still larger human-induced greenhouse warming. The unequivocal detection of the enhanced greenhouse effect is not likely for a decade or more.”
b. Who said, “Based on current models, we predict: under [BAU] increase of global mean temperature during the [21st] century of about 0.3 oC per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2 to 0.5 oC per decade); this is greater than that seen over the past 10,000 years; under other … scenarios which assume progressively increasing levels of controls, rates of increase in global mean temperature of about 0.2 oC [to] about 0.1 oC per decade.”
c. Who said,”under the IPCC business as usual emissions scenario, an average rate of global mean sea level rise of about 6 cm per decade over the next century (with an uncertainty range of 3 – 10 cm per decade), mainly due to thermal expansion of the oceans and the melting of some land ice. The predicted rise is about 20 cm … by 2030, and 65 cm by the end of the next century.”
A: IPCC First assessment report, 1990 (22 years ago)
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/MSL_global_trendtable.html
If you average all stations that end (last year) at 2010, you get just over 1mm per year trend. For all stations at all times the trend is 0.77mm/yr. And look Ma! no cherry picking the Southeastern US like Michael Mann did! Hmmmmmmm. We’ve got a lot of sea level rise to get to 20cm by 2030. We’ve got 18 years to go to get to 2030. Are those error bars kicking in yet?
By: Scott on January 13, 2012
at 2:09 pm
Sorry Scott, but climate science isn’t about playing with words, climate science is about figuring out the truth about the world (and words are just a way to express that truth).
And the fact that you can write something like
shows you’re not interested in the truth, not one bit. Really, why can’t you just friggin’ admit that so-called ‘skeptics’ are making things up?
— frank
By: frank -- Decoding SwiftHack on January 14, 2012
at 2:04 pm
And neatly saving all the work that anyone has to do to identify the important features of the Gillett paper …. whaddya know, Skeptical Science has done it for you.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/gillett-estimate-human-and-natural-global-warming.html
Note especially Gillett et al’s own caveats on using their results.
By: adelady on January 13, 2012
at 5:05 pm