All posts in category Degenerating Climatology

Increasing Extreme Weather Events?

Over at Cliscep, Ben Pile posted Misleading Figures Behind the New Climate Economy. Ben looked at the figures behind the recent New Climate Economy Report from the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, which claims to be…

… a major international initiative to examine how countries can achieve economic growth while dealing with the risks posed by climate change. The Commission comprises former heads of government and finance ministers and leaders in the fields of economics and business, and was commissioned by seven countries – Colombia, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Norway, South Korea, Sweden and the United Kingdom – as an independent initiative to report to the international community.

In this post I will briefly look at Figure 1 from the report, re-posted by Ben Pile.

Fig 1 – Global Occurrences of Extreme Weather Events from New Economy Climate Report

Clearly these graphs seem to demonstrate a rapidly worsening situation. However, I am also aware of a report a few years ago authored by Indur Goklany, and published by The Global Warming Policy Foundation  – GLOBAL DEATH TOLL FROM EXTREME WEATHER EVENTS DECLINING

Figure 2 : From Goklany 2010 – Global Death and Death Rates Due to Extreme Weather Events, 1900–2008. Source: Goklany (2009), based on EM-DAT (2009), McEvedy and Jones (1978), and WRI (2009).

 

Note that The International Disaster Database is EM-DAT. The website is here to check. Clearly these show two very different pictures of events. The climate consensus (or climate alarmist) position is that climate change is getting much worse. The climate sceptic (or climate denier) position is that is that human-caused climate change is somewhat exaggerated. Is one side outright lying, or is their some truth in both sides?

Indur Goklany recognizes the issue in his report. His Figure 2, I reproduce as figure 3.

Figure 3: Average Number of Extreme Weather Events per Year by Decade, 1900–2008.  Source: Goklany (2009), based on EM-DAT (2009).

I am from a management accounting background. That means that I check my figures. This evening I registered at the EM-DAT website and downloaded the figures to verify the data. The website looks at all sorts of disaster information, not just climate information. It collates

Figure 4 : No of Climatic Occurrences per decade from EM-DAT. Note that 2010-2016 pro rata is similar to 2000-2009

The updated figures through to 2016 show that pro rata, in the current decade occurrences if climate-related events as similar to the last decade. If one is concerned about the human impacts, deaths are more relevant.

Figure 5 : No of Climatic Deaths per decade from EM-DAT. Note that 2010-2016 pro rata is similar to 2000-2009

This shows unprecedented flood deaths in the 1930s. Of the 163218 flood deaths in 6 occurrences, 142000 were due to a flood in China in 1935. Wikipedia’s Ten deadliest natural disasters since 1900 lists at No.8 1935 Yangtze river flood, with 145000 dead. At No.1 is 1931 China floods with 1-4 million deaths. EM-DAT has not registered this disaster.

The decade 1970-1979 was extreme for deaths from storms. 300000 deaths were due to a Bangladesh storm in 1970. Wikipedia’s Ten deadliest natural disasters since 1900 lists at No.2 1970 Bhola cyclone, with ≥500,000.

The decade 1990-1999 had a high flood death toll. Bangladesh 1991 stands out with 138987 dead. Wikipedia No.10 is 1991 Bangladesh cyclone with 138866 dead.

In the decade 2000-2009 EM-DAT records the Myanmar Storm of 2008 with 138366 dead. If Wikipedia had a top 11 deadliest natural disasters since 1900, then Cyclone Nargis of 2 May 2008 could have made the list. From the BBC, with 200000 estimated dead, it would have qualified. But from the Red Cross 84500 Cyclone Nargis may have not made the top 20.

This leaves a clear issue of data. The International Disaster Database will accept occurrences of disasters according to clear criteria. For the past 20-30 years disasters have been clearly recorded. The build-up of a tropical cylone / hurricane is monitored by satellites and film crews are on hand to televise across the world pictures of damaged buildings, dead bodies, and victims lamenting the loss of homes. As I write Hurricane Florence is about to pound the Carolinas, and evacuations have been ordered. The Bhola Cyclone of 1970 was no doubt more ferocious and impacted on a far greater number of people. But the primary reason for the extreme deaths in 1970 Bangladesh was lack of warning and a lack of evacuation places. Even in the Wizard of Oz, based on 1930s United States, in a Tornado most families had a storm cellar. In the extreme poverty of 1970 Bangladesh there was nothing. Now, after decades of moderate growth and some rudimentary warning systems, it is unlikely that a similar storm would cause even a tenth of the death toll.

Even more significant, is that even if (as I hope) Hurricane Florence causes no deaths and limited property damage, it will be sufficiently documented to qualify for an entry on the International Disaster Database. But the quality of evidence for the 1931 China Floods, occurring in a civil war between the Communists and the Kuomintang forces, would be insufficient to qualify for entry. This is why one must be circumspect in interpreting this sort of data over periods when the quality and availability of data varies significantly. The issue I have is not with EM-DAT, but those who misinterpret the data for an ideological purpose.

Kevin Marshall

by manicbeancounter on 12/09/2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Beancounting Methodology, Climate Change, Climate Change Analysis, Degenerating Climatology, Science & Non-science
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Posted by manicbeancounter on 12/09/2018

https://manicbeancounter.com/2018/09/12/increasing-extreme-weather-events/

NOAA Future Aridity against Al Gore’s C20th Precipitation Graphic

Paul Homewood has taken a look at an article in yesterdays Daily Mail – A quarter of the world could become a DESERT if global warming increases by just 2ºC.

The article states

Aridity is a measure of the dryness of the land surface, obtained from combining precipitation and evaporation.  

‘Aridification would emerge over 20 to 30 per cent of the world’s land surface by the time the global temperature change reaches 2ºC (3.6ºF)’, said Dr Manoj Joshi from the University of East Anglia’s School of Environmental Sciences and one of the study’s co-authors.  

The research team studied projections from 27 global climate models and identified areas of the world where aridity will substantially change.  

The areas most affected areas are parts of South East Asia, Southern Europe, Southern Africa, Central America and Southern Australia.

Now, having read Al Gore’s authoritative book An Inconvenient Truth there are statements first about extreme flooding, and then about aridity (pages 108-113). The reason for flooding coming first is on a graphic of twentieth-century changes in precipitation on pages 114 & 115.

This graphic shows that, overall, the amount of precipitation has increased globally in the last century by almost 20%.

 However, the effects of climate change on precipitation is not uniform. Precipitation in the 20th century increased overall, as expected with global warming, but in some regions precipitation actually decreased.

The blue dots mark the areas with increased precipitation, the orange dots with decreases. The larger the dot, the larger the change. So, according to Nobel Laureate Al Gore, increased precipitation should be the far more common than increased aridity. If all warming is attributed to human-caused climate change (as the book seems to imply) then over a third of the dangerous 2ºC occurred in the 20th century. Therefore there should be considerable coherence between the recent arid areas and future arid areas.

The Daily Mail reproduces a map from the UEA, showing the high-risk areas.

There are a couple of areas with big differences.

Southern Australia

In the 20th century, much of Australia saw increased precipitation. Within the next two or three decades, the UEA projects it getting considerably arider. Could this change in forecast be the result of the extreme drought that broke in 2012 with extreme flooding? Certainly, the pictures of empty reservoirs taken a few years ago, alongside claims that they would never likely refill show the false predictions.

One such reservoir is Lake Eildon in Victoria. Below is a graphic of capacity levels in selected years. It is possible to compare other years by following the historical water levels for EILDON link.

Similarly, in the same post, I linked to a statement by re-insurer Munich Re stating increased forest fires in Southern Australia were due to human activity. Not by “anthropogenic climate change”, but by discarded fag ends, shards of glass and (most importantly) fires that were deliberately started.

Northern Africa

The UEA makes no claims about increased aridity in Northern Africa, particularly with respect to the Southern and Northern fringes of the Sahara. Increasing desertification of the Sahara used to be claimed as a major consequence of climate change. In the year following Al Gore’s movie and book, the UNIPCC produced its Fourth Climate Assessment Report. Working Group II report, Chapter 9 (Pg 448) on Africa made the following claim.

In other countries, additional risks that could be exacerbated by climate change include greater erosion, deficiencies in yields from rain-fed agriculture of up to 50% during the 2000-2020 period, and reductions in crop growth period (Agoumi, 2003).

Richard North took a detailed look at the background of this claim in 2010. The other African countries were Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. Agoumi 2003 compiled three reports, only one of which – Morocco – had anything near a 50% claim. Yet Morocco seems, from Al Gore’s graphic to have had a modest increase in rainfall over the last century.

Conclusion

The UEA latest doom-laden prophesy of increased aridity flies in the face of the accepted wisdom that human-caused global warming will result in increased precipitation. In two major areas (Southern Australia and Northern Africa), increased aridity is at add odds with changes in precipitation claimed to have occurred in the 20th Century by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth. Yet over a third of the of the dangerous 2ºC warming limit occurred in the last century.

Kevin Marshall

 

by manicbeancounter on 02/01/2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Climate Change Analysis, Degenerating Climatology, Public Relations and Climate Change
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Posted by manicbeancounter on 02/01/2018

https://manicbeancounter.com/2018/01/02/noaa-future-aridity-against-al-gores-c20th-precipitation-graphic/

Thomas Fuller on polar-bear-gate at Cliscep

This is an extended version of a comment made at Thomas Fuller’s cliscep article Okay, just one more post on polar-bear-gate… I promise…

There are three things highlighted in the post and the comments that illustrate the Polar Bear smear paper as being a rich resource towards understanding the worst of climate alarmism.

First is from Alan Kendall @ 28 Dec 17 at 9:35 am

But what Harvey et al. ignores is that Susan Crockford meticulously quotes from the “approved canon of polar bear research” and exhorts her readers to read it (making an offer to provide copies of papers difficult to obtain). She provides an entree into that canon- an entree obviously used by many and probably to the fury of polar bear “experts”.

This is spot on about Susan Crockford, and, in my opinion, what proper academics should be aiming at. To assess an area where widely different perspectives are possible, I was taught that it is necessary to read and evaluate the original documents. Climate alarmists in general, and this paper in particular, evaluate in relation collective opinion as opposed to more objective criteria. In the paper, “science” is about support for a partly fictional consensus, “denial” is seeking to undermine that fiction. On polar bears this is clearly stated in relation to the two groups of blogs.

We found a clear separation between the 45 science-based blogs and the 45 science-denier blogs. The two groups took diametrically opposite positions on the “scientific uncertainty” frame—specifically regarding the threats posed by AGW to polar bears and their Arctic-ice habitat. Scientific blogs provided convincing evidence that AGW poses a threat to both, whereas most denier blogs did not.

A key element is to frame statements in terms of polar extremes.

Second, is the extremely selective use of the data (or selective analysis methods) to enable the desired conclusion to be reached. Thomas Fuller has clearly pointed out in the article and restated in the comments with respect to WUWT, the following.

Harvey and his 13 co-authors state that WUWT overwhelmingly links to Crockford. I have shown that this is not the case.

Selective use of data (or selective analysis methods) is common on climate alarmism. For instance

  • The original MBH 98 Hockey-Stick graph used out-of-date temperature series, or tree-ring proxies such as at Gaspe in Canada, that were not replicated by later samples.
  • Other temperature reconstructions. Remember Keith Briffa’s Yamal reconstruction, which relied on one tree for the post-1990 reconstructions? (see here and here)
  • Lewandowsky et al “Moon Hoax” paper. Just 10 out of 1145 survey respondents supported the “NASA faked the Moon Landings” conspiracy theory. Of these just 2 dogmatically rejected “climate”. These two faked/scam/rogue respondents 860 & 889 supported every conspiracy theory, underpinning many of the correlations.
  • Smoothing out the pause in warming in Risbey, Lewandowsky et al 2014 “Well-estimated global surface warming in climate projections selected for ENSO phase”. In The Lewandowsky Smooth, I replicated the key features of the temperature graph in Excel, showing how no warming for a decade in Hadcrut4 was made to appear as if there was hardly a cessation of warming.

Third, is to frame the argument in terms of polar extremes. Richard S J Tol @ 28 Dec 17 at 7:13 am

And somehow the information in those 83 posts was turned into a short sequence of zeros and ones.

Not only one many issues is there a vast number of intermediate positions possible (the middle ground), there are other dimensions. One is the strength of evidential support for a particular perspective. There could be little or no persuasive evidence. Another is whether there is support for alternative perspectives. For instance, although sea ice data is lacking for the early twentieth-century warming, average temperature data is available for the Arctic. NASA Gistemp (despite its clear biases) has estimates for 64N-90N.

The temperature data seems to clearly indicate that all of the decline in Arctic sea ice from 1979 is unlikely to be attributed to AGW. From the 1880s to 1940 there was a similar magnitude of Arctic warming as from 1979 t0 2010 with cooling in between. Yet the rate of increase in GHG levels was greater from greater in 1975-2010 than 1945-1975, which was in turn greater than the period decades before.

Kevin Marshall

 

by manicbeancounter on 29/12/2017  •  Permalink
Posted in Arctic, Climate Censorship, Degenerating Climatology, Eco-Fanatics
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Posted by manicbeancounter on 29/12/2017

https://manicbeancounter.com/2017/12/29/thomas-fuller-on-polar-bear-gate-at-cliscep/

Evidence for the Stupidest Paper Ever

Judith Curry tweeted a few days ago

This is absolutely the stupidest paper I have ever seen published.

What might cause Judith Curry to make such a statement about Internet Blogs, Polar Bears, and Climate-Change Denial by Proxy? Below are some notes that illustrate what might be considered stupidity.

Warmest years are not sufficient evidence of a warming trend

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) both recently reported that 2016 was the warmest year on record (Potter et al. 2016), followed by 2015 and 2014. Currently, 2017 is on track to be the second warmest year after 2016. 

The theory is that rising greenhouse gas levels are leading to warming. The major greenhouse gas is CO2, supposedly accounting for about 75% of the impact. There should, therefore, be a clear relationship between the rising CO2 levels and rising temperatures. The form that the relationship should take is that an accelerating rise in CO2 levels will lead to an accelerating rate of increase in global average temperatures. Earlier this year I graphed the rate of change in CO2 levels from the Mauna Loa data.

The trend over nearly sixty years should be an accelerating trend. Depending on which temperature dataset you use, around the turn of the century warming either stopped or dramatically slowed until 2014. A strong El Nino caused a sharp spike in the last two or three years. The data contradicts the theory in the very period when the signal should be strongest.

Only the stupid would see record global average temperatures (which were rising well before the rise in CO2 was significant) as strong evidence of human influence when a little understanding of theory would show the data contradicts that influence.

Misrepresentation of Consensus Studies

The vast majority of scientists agree that most of the warming since the Industrial Revolution is explained by rising atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations (Doran and Zimmerman 2009, Cook et al. 2013, Stenhouse et al. 2014, Carlton et al 2015, Verheggen et al. 2015), 

Doran and Zimmerman 2009 asked two questions

1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?

2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?

Believing that human activity is a significant contributing factor to rising global temperatures does not mean one believes the majority of warming is due to rising GHG concentrations. Only the stupid would fail to see the difference. Further, the results were a subset of all scientists, namely geoscientists. The reported 97% consensus was from a just 79 responses, a small subset of the total 3146 responses. Read the original to find out why.

The abstract to Cook et al. 2013 begins

We analyze the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11 944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics ‘global climate change’ or ‘global warming’. We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. 

Expressing a position does not mean a belief. It could be an assumption. The papers were not necessarily by scientists, but merely authors of academic papers that involved the topics ‘global climate change’ or ‘global warming’. Jose Duarte listed some of the papers that were included in the survey, along with looking at some that were left out. It shows a high level of stupidity to use these flawed surveys as supporting the statement “The vast majority of scientists agree that most of the warming since the Industrial Revolution is explained by rising atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations“.

Belief is not Scientific Evidence

The most recent edition of climate bible from the UNIPCC states (AR5 WG1 Ch10 Page 869)

It is extremely likely that human activities caused more than half of the observed increase in GMST from 1951 to 2010.

Mispresenting surveys about beliefs are necessary because the real world data, even when that data is a deeply flawed statistic, does not support the belief that “most of the warming since the Industrial Revolution is explained by rising atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations“.  

Even if the survey data supported the statement, the authors are substituting banal statements about beliefs for empirically-based scientific statements. This is the opposite direction to achieving science-based understanding. 

The false Consensus Gap

The article states

This chasm between public opinion and scientific agreement on AGW is now commonly referred to as the consensus gap (Lewandowsky et al. 2013)

Later is stated, in relation to sceptical blogs

Despite the growing evidence in support of AGW, these blogs continue to aggressively deny the causes and/or the projected effects of AGW and to personally attack scientists who publish peer-reviewed research in the field with the aim of fomenting doubt to maintain the consensus gap.

There is no reference that tracks the growing evidence in support of AGW. From WUWT (and other blogs) there has been a lot of debunking of the claims of the signs of climate apocalypse such as

  • Malaria increasing as a result of warming
  • Accelerating polar ice melt / sea level rise
  • Disappearing snows of Kilimanjaro due to warming
  • Kiribati and the Maldives disappearing due to sea level rise
  • Mass species extinction
  • Himalayan glaciers disappearing
  • The surface temperature record being a true and fair estimate of real warming
  • Climate models consistently over-estimating warming

The to the extent that a consensus gap exists it is between the consensus beliefs of the climate alarmist community and actual data. Scientific support from claims about the real world come from conjectures being verified, not by the volume of publications about the subject.

Arctic Sea Ice Decline and threats to Polar Bear Populations

The authors conjecture (with references) with respect to Polar Bears that

Because they can reliably catch their main prey, seals (Stirling and Derocher 2012, Rode et al. 2015), only from the surface of the sea ice, the ongoing decline in the seasonal extent and thickness of their sea-ice habitat (Amstrup et al. 2010, Snape and Forster 2014, Ding et al. 2017) is the most important threat to polar bears’ long-term survival.

That seems plausible enough. Now for the evidence to support the conjecture.

Although the effects of warming on some polar-bear subpopulations are not yet documented and other subpopulations are apparently still faring well, the fundamental relationship between polar-bear welfare and sea-ice availability is well established, and unmitigated AGW assures that all polar bears ultimately will be negatively affected. 

There is a tacit admission that the existing evidence contradicts the theory. There is data showing a declining trend in sea ice for over 35 years, yet in that time the various polar bear populations have been growing significantly, not just “faring well“. Surely there should be a decline by now in the peripheral Arctic areas where the sea ice has disappeared? The only historical evidence of decline is this comment in criticizing Susan Crockford’s work.

For example, when alleging sea ice recovered after 2012, Crockford downplayed the contribution of sea-ice loss to polar-bear population declines in the Beaufort Sea.

There is no reference to this claim, so readers cannot check if the claim is supported. But 2012 was an outlier year, with record lows in the Summer minimum sea ice extent due to unusually fierce storms in August. Losses of polar bears due to random & extreme weather events are not part of any long-term decline in sea ice.

Concluding Comments

The stupid errors made include

  • Making a superficial point from the data to support a conjecture, when deeper understanding contradicts it. This is the case with the conjecture that rising GHG levels are the main cause of recent warming.
  • Clear misrepresentation of opinion surveys.
  • Even if the opinion surveys were correctly interpreted, use of opinion to support scientific conjectures, as opposed looking at statistical tests of actual data or estimates should appear stupid from a scientific perspective.
  • Claims that a consensus gap between consensus and sceptic views when the real gap is between consensus opinion and actual data.
  • Claims that polar bear populations will decline as sea ice declines is contradicted by the historical data. There is no recognition of this contradiction.

I believe Harvey et al paper gives some lessons for climatologists in particular and academics in general.

First is that when making claims crucial to the argument they need to be substantiated. That substantiation needs to be more than referencing others who have said the same claims before.

Second is that points drawn from referenced articles should be accurately represented.

Third, is to recognize that scientific papers need to first reference actual data and estimates, not opinions.  It is by comparing the current opinions with the real world that opportunities for advancement of understanding arise.

Fourth is that any academic discipline should aim to move from conjectures to empirically-based verifiable statements.

I have only picked out some of the more obvious of the stupid points. The question that needs to be asked is why such stupidity should have been agreed upon by 14 academics and then passed peer review?

Kevin Marshall

by manicbeancounter on 03/12/2017  •  Permalink
Posted in Arctic, Degenerating Climatology, Ethics, Global Warming, Science & Non-science, Spin (Propaganda), Temperature Data
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Posted by manicbeancounter on 03/12/2017

https://manicbeancounter.com/2017/12/03/evidence-for-the-stupidest-paper-ever/

The Policy Gap in Achieving the Emissions Goals

The Millar et al. 2017 has severe problems with the numbers, as my previous post suggested. But there is a more fundamental problem in achieving emissions goals. It is contained in the introductory paragraphs to an article lead author Richard Millar posted at Carbon Brief

The Paris Agreement set a long-term goal of limiting global warming to “well-below” 2C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to restrict it to 1.5C.

A key question for the upcoming rounds of the international climate negotiations, particularly when countries review their climate commitments next year, is exactly how fast would we have to cut emissions to reach these goals?

In a new paper, published in Nature Geoscience, we provide updated estimates of the remaining “carbon budget” for 1.5C. This is the total amount of CO2 emissions that we can still emit whilst limiting global average warming to 1.5C.

Our estimates suggest that we would have a remaining carbon budget equivalent to around 20 years at current emissions rates for a 2-in-3 chance of restricting end-of-century warming to below 1.5C.

This suggests that we have a little more breathing space than previously thought to achieve the 1.5C limit. However, although 1.5C is not yet a geophysical impossibility, it remains a very difficult policy challenge.

The problem is with the mixing of singular and plural statements. The third paragraph shows the problem.

In a new paper, published in Nature Geoscience, we provide updated estimates of the remaining “carbon budget” for 1.5C. This is the total amount of CO2 emissions that we can still emit whilst limiting global average warming to 1.5C.

In the first sentence, the collective “we” refers to the ten authors of the paper. That is Richard J. Millar, Jan S. Fuglestvedt, Pierre Friedlingstein, Joeri Rogelj, Michael J. Grubb, H. Damon Matthews, Ragnhild B. Skeie, Piers M. Forster, David J. Frame & Myles R. Allen.  In the second sentence, the collective “we” refers to approximately 7500 million people on the planet, who live about 195 countries. Do they speak for all the people in Russia, India, Nigeria, Iran, Iraq, China, Taiwan, North and South Korea, the United States and Australia for instance? What I would suggest is they are speaking figuratively about what they believe the world ought to be doing.

Yet the political realities are that even though most countries have signed the Paris Agreement, it does not commit them to a particular emissions pathway, nor to eliminate their emissions by a particular date. It only commits them to produce further INDC submissions every five years, along with attending meetings and making the right noises. Their INDC submissions are not scrutinized, still less sent back for “improved ambition” if they are inadequate in contributing to the aggregate global plan.

Looking at the substance of the Adoption proposal of the Paris Agreement, section II, point 17 notes gives an indication of the policy gap.

17. Notes with concern that the estimated aggregate greenhouse gas emission levels in 2025 and 2030 resulting from the intended nationally determined contributions do not fall within least-cost 2 ˚C scenarios but rather lead to a projected level of 55 gigatonnes in 2030, and also notes that much greater emission reduction efforts will be required than those associated with the intended nationally determined contributions in order to hold the increase in the global average temperature to below 2 ˚C above pre-industrial levels by reducing emissions to 40 gigatonnes or to 1.5 ˚C above pre-industrial levels by reducing to a level to be identified in the special report referred to in paragraph 21 below;

But the actual scale of the gap is best seen from the centerpiece graphic of the UNFCCC Synthesis report on the aggregate effect of INDCs, prepared in the run-up to COP21 Paris. Note that this website also has all the INDC submissions in three large Pdf files.

The graphic I have updated with estimates of the policy gap with my take on revised Millar et. al 2017 policy gaps shown by red arrows.

The extent of the arrows could be debated, but will not alter the fact that Millar et. al 2017 are assuming that by adjusting the figures and assuming that they are thinking for the whole world, that the emissions objectives will be achieved. The reality is that very few countries have committed to reducing their emissions by anything like an amount consistent with even a 2°C pathway. Further, that commitment is just until 2030, not for the 70 years beyond that. There is no legally-binding commitment in the Paris Agreement for a country to reduce emissions to zero sometime before the end of the century. Further, a number of countries (including Nigeria, Togo, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, Iraq and Syria) have not signed the Paris Agreement – and the United States has given notification of coming out of the Agreement. Barring huge amounts of funding or some technological miracle most developing countries, with a majority of the world population, will go on increasing their emissions for decades. This includes most of the countries who were Non-Annex Developing Countries to the 1992 Rio Declaration. Collectively they accounted for just over 100% of the global GHG emissions growth between 1990 and  2012.

As some of these Countries’ INDC Submissions clearly state, most will not sacrifice economic growth and the expectations of their people’s for the unproven dogma of politicalized academic activists in completely different cultures say that the world ought to cut emissions. They will attend climate conferences and be seen to be on a world stage, then sign meaningless agreements afterward that commit them to nothing.

As a consequence, if catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is true (like the fairies at the bottom of the garden) and climate mitigation reduction targets are achieved, the catastrophic climate change will be only slightly less catastrophic and the most extreme climate mitigation countries will be a good deal poorer. The non-policy countries will the ones better off. It is the classic free-rider problem, which results in an underprovision of those goods or services. If AGW is somewhat milder, then even these countries will be no worse off.

This is what really irritates me. I live in Britain, where the Climate Change Act 2008 has probably the most ludicrous targets in the world. That Act was meant to lead the world on climate change. The then Environment Secretary David Miliband introduced the bill with this message in March 2007.

From the graphic above COP21 Paris showed that most of the world is not following Britain’s lead. But the “climate scientists” are so stuck in their manipulated models, they forget that their models and beliefs of their peers are not the realities of the wider world. The political realities mean that reduction of CO2 emissions are net harmful to the people of Britain, both now and for future generations of Britains. The activists are just as wilfully negligent in shutting down any independent review of policy as a pharmaceutical company who would push one of its products onto the consumers without an independent evaluation of both the benefits and potential side effects.

Kevin Marshall

by manicbeancounter on 27/09/2017  •  Permalink
Posted in Climate Change, Climate Change Analysis, COP21 Paris, Degenerating Climatology, Global Warming, Science & Non-science, UNFCCC
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Posted by manicbeancounter on 27/09/2017

https://manicbeancounter.com/2017/09/27/the-policy-gap-in-achieving-the-emissions-goals/

Nature tacitly admits the IPCC AR5 was wrong on Global Warming

There has been a lot of comment on a recent paper at nature geoscience “Emission budgets and pathways consistent with limiting warming to 1.5◦C” (hereafter Millar et. al 2017)

When making a case for public policy I believe that something akin to a process of due diligence should be carried out on the claims. That is the justifications ought to be scrutinized to validate the claims. With Millar et. al 2017, there are a number of issues with the make-up of the claims that (a) warming of 1.5◦C or greater will be achieved without policy (b) constraining the emissions  

The baseline warming

The introduction states
Average temperatures for the 2010s are currently 0.87°C above 1861–80,

A similar quote from UNIPCC AR5 WG1 SPM page 5

The total increase between the average of the 1850–1900 period and the 2003–2012 period is 0.78 [0.72 to 0.85] °C, based on the single longest dataset available.

These figures are all from the HADCRUT4 dataset. There are three areas to account for the difference of 0.09°C. Mostly it is the shorter baseline period. Also, the last three years have been influenced by a powerful and natural El-Nino, along with the IPCC using an average of the last 10 years.

The warming in the pipeline

There are valid reasons for the authors differing from the IPCC’s methodology. They start with the emissions from 1870 (even though emissions estimates go back to 1850). Also, if there is no definite finish date, it is very difficult to calculate the warming impact to date. Consider first the full sentence quoted above.

Average temperatures for the 2010s are currently 0.87°C above 1861–80, which would rise to 0.93°C should they remain at 2015 levels for the remainder of the decade.

This implies that there is some warming to come through from the impact of the higher greenhouse gas levels. This seems to be a remarkably low and over a very short time period. Of course, not all the warming since the mid-nineteenth century is from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The anthropogenic element is just guesstimated. This is show in AR5 WG1 Ch10 Page 869

More than half of the observed increase in global mean surface temperature (GMST) from 1951 to 2010 is very likely due to the observed anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations.

It was after 1950 when the rate largest increase in CO2 levels was experienced. From 1870 to 1950, CO2 levels rose from around 290ppm to 310ppm or 7%. From 1950 to 2010, CO2 levels rose from around 310ppm to 387ppm or 25%. Add in other GHG gases and there the human-caused warming should be 3-4 times greater in the later period than the earlier one, whereas the warming in the later period was just over twice the amount. Therefore if there is just over a 90% chance (very likely in IPCC speak) of over 50% of the warming post-1950 was human-caused, a statistical test relating to a period more than twice as long would have a lower human-caused element of the warming as being statistically significant. Even then, I view the greater than 50% statistic as being deeply flawed. Especially when post-2000, when the rate of rise in CO2 levels accelerated, whilst the rise in average temperatures dramatically slowed. There are two things that this suggests. First, the impact could be explained by rising GHG emissions being a minor element in temperature rise, with natural factors both causing some of the warming in the 1976-1998 period, then reversing, causing cooling, in the last few years. Second is that there is a darn funny lagged response of rising GHGs (especially CO2) to rises in temperature. That is the amount of warming in the pipeline has increased dramatically. If either idea has any traction then the implied warming to come of just 0.06°C is a false estimate. This needs to be elaborated.

Climate Sensitivity

If a doubling of CO2 leads to 3.00°C of warming (the assumption of the IPCC in their emissions calculations), then a rise in CO2 levels from 290ppm to 398 ppm (1870 to 2014) eventually gives 1.37°C of warming. With other GHGs this figure should be around 1.80°C. Half that warming has actually occurred, and some of that is natural. So there is well over 1.0°C still to emerge. It is too late to talk about constraining warming to 1.5°C as the cause of that warming has already occurred.

The implication from the paper in claiming that 0.94°C will result from human emissions in the period 1870-2014 is to reduce the climate sensitivity estimate to around 2.0°C for a doubling of CO2, if only CO2 is considered, or around 1.5°C for a doubling of CO2, if all GHGs are taken into account. (See below) Compare this to AR5 WG1 section D.2 Quantification of Climate System Responses

The equilibrium climate sensitivity quantifies the response of the climate system to constant radiative forcing on multicentury time scales. It is defined as the change in global mean surface temperature at equilibrium that is caused by a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration. Equilibrium climate sensitivity is likely in the range 1.5°C to 4.5°C (high confidence), extremely unlikely less than 1°C (high confidence), and very unlikely greater than 6°C (medium confidence).

The equilibrium climate sensitivity ECS is at the very bottom of the IPCC’s range and equilibrium climate response is reached in 5-6 years instead of mutlicentury time scales. This on top of the implied assumption that there is no net natural warming between 1870 and 2015.

How much GHG emissions?

With respect to policy, as global warming is caused by human greenhouse gas emissions, to prevent further human-caused warming requires reducing, and possibly eliminating global greenhouse emissions. In conjunction with the publication of the AR5 Synthesis report, the IPCC produced a slide show of the policy case laid out in the three vast reports. It was effectively a short summary of a summary of the synthesis report. Approaching the policy climax at slide 30 of 35:-

Apart from the policy objective in AR5 was to limit warming from 2°C, not 1.5°C, it also mentions the need to constrain GHG emissions, not CO2 emissions. Then slide 33 gives the simple policy simplified position to achieve 2°C of warming.

To the end of 2011 1900 GTCO2e of GHGs was estimated to have been emitted, whilst the estimate is around 1000 GTCO2e could be emitted until the 2°C warming was reached.

The is the highly simplified version. At the other end of the scale, AR5 WG3 Ch6 p431 has a very large table in a very small font to consider a lot of the policy options. It is reproduced below, though the resolution is much poorer than the original.

Note 3 states

For comparison of the cumulative CO2 emissions estimates assessed here with those presented in WGI AR5, an amount of 515 [445 to 585] GtC (1890 [1630 to 2150] GtCO2), was already emitted by 2011 since 1870

The top line is for the 1.5°C of warming – the most ambitious policy aim. Of note:-

  • The CO2 equivalent concentration in 2100 (ppm CO2eq ) is 430-480ppm.
  • Cumulative CO2 emissions (GtCO2) from 2011 to 2100 is 630 to 1180.
  • CO2 concentration in 2100 is 390-435ppm.
  • Peak CO2 equivalent concentration is 465-530ppm. This is higher than the 2100 concentration and if for CO2 alone with ECS = 3 would eventually produce 2.0°C to 2.6°C of warming.
  • The Probability of Exceeding 1.5 °C in 2100 is 49-86%. They had to squeeze really hard to say that 1.5°C was more than 50% likely.

Compare the above to this from the abstract of Millar et. al 2017.

If CO2 emissions are continuously adjusted over time to limit 2100 warming to 1.5◦C, with ambitious non-CO2 mitigation, net future cumulative CO2 emissions are unlikely to prove less than 250 GtC and unlikely greater than 540 GtC. Hence, limiting warming to 1.5◦C is not yet a geophysical impossibility, but is likely to require delivery on strengthened pledges for 2030 followed by challengingly deep and rapid mitigation.

They use tonnes of carbon as the unit of measure as against CO2 equivalent. The conversion factor is 3.664, so cumulative CO2 emissions need to be 870-1010 GtCO2 range. As this is to the end of 2015, not 2011 as in the IPCC report, it will be different. Subtracting 150 from the IPCC reports figures would give a range of 480 to 1030. That is, Millar et. al 2017 have reduced the emissions range by 75% to the top end of the IPCC’s range. Given the IPCC considered a range of 1.5-1.7°C of warming, this seems somewhat odd to then say it related to the lower end of the warming band, until you take into account that ECS has been reduced. But then why curtail the range of emissions instead calculating your own? It appears that again the authors are trying to squeeze a result within existing constraints.

However, this does not take into account the much higher levels of peak CO2 equivalent concentrations in table 6.3. Peak CO2 concentrations are around 75-95ppm higher than in 2100. Compare this to the green line in the central graph in Millar et. al 2017. 

 This is less than 50ppm higher than in 2100. Further in 2100 Millar et. al 2017 has CO2 levels of around 500ppm as against a mid-point of 410 in AR5. CO2 rising from 290 to 410ppm with ECS = 3.0 produced 1.50°C of warming. CO2 rising from 290 to 410ppm with ECS = 2.0 produced 1.51°C of warming. Further, this does not include the warming impact of other GHGs. To squeeze into the 1.5°C band, the mid-century overshoot in Millar et. al 2017 is much less than in AR5. This might be required in the modeling assumptions due to the very short time assumed in reaching full equilibrium climate response.

Are the authors playing games?

The figures do not appear to stack up. But then they appear to be playing around with figures, indicated by a statement in the explanation of Figure 2

Like other simple climate models, this lacks an explicit physical link between oceanic heat and carbon uptake. It allows a global feedback between temperature and carbon uptake from the atmosphere, but no direct link with net deforestation. It also treats all forcing agents equally, in the sense that a single set of climate response parameters is used in for all forcing components, despite some evidence of component-specific responses. We do not, however, attempt to calibrate the model directly against observations, using it instead to explore the implications of ranges of uncertainty in emissions, and forcing and response derived directly from the IPCC-AR5, which are derived from multiple lines of evidence and, importantly, do not depend directly on the anomalously cool temperatures observed around 2010.

That is:-

  • The model does not consider an “explicit physical link between oceanic heat and carbon uptake.” The IPCC estimated that over 90% of heat accumulation since 1970 was in the oceans. If the oceans were to belch out some of this heat at a random point in the future the 1.5°C limit will be exceeded.
  • No attempt has been made to “calibrate the model directly against observations”. Therefore there is no attempt to properly reconcile beliefs to the real world.
  • The “multiple lines of evidence” in IPCC-AR5 does not include a glaring anomaly that potentially falsifies the theory and therefore any “need” for policy at all. That is the divergence in actual temperatures trends from theory in this century.

Conclusions

The authors of Millar et. al 2017 have pushed out the boundaries to continue to support climate mitigation policies. To justify constraining emissions sufficient stop 1.5°C of warming the authors would appear to have

  • Assumed that all the warming since 1870 is caused by anthropogenic GHG emissions when there is not even a valid statistical test that confirms even half the warming was from this source.
  • Largely ignored any hidden heat or other long-term response to rises in GHGs.
  • Ignored the divergence between model predictions and actual temperature anomalies since around the turn of the century. This has two consequences. First, the evidence appears to strongly contradict the belief that humans are a major source of global warming and by implication dangerous climate change. Second, if it does not contradict the theory, suggests the amount of warming in the pipeline consequential on human GHG emissions has massively increased. Thus the 1.5°C warming could be breached anyway.
  • Made ECS as low as possible in the long-standing 1.5°C to 4.5°C range. Even assuming ECS is at the mid-point of the range for policy (as the IPCC has done in all its reports) means that warming will breach the 1.5°C level without any further emissions. 

The authors live in their closed academic world of models and shared beliefs. Yet the paper is being used for the continued support of mitigation policy that is both failing to get anywhere close to achieving the objectives and is massively net harmful in any countries that apply it, whether financially or politically.

Kevin Marshall

Commentary at Cliscep, Jo Nova, Daily Caller, Independent, The GWPF

Update 25/09/17 to improve formatting.

by manicbeancounter on 24/09/2017  •  Permalink
Posted in Climate Change Analysis, COP21 Paris, Degenerating Climatology, Global Warming
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Posted by manicbeancounter on 24/09/2017

https://manicbeancounter.com/2017/09/24/nature-tacitly-admits-the-ipcc-ar5-was-wrong-on-global-warming/

Met Office Extreme Wet Winter Projections

I saw an article in the Telegraph

Met Office warns Britain is heading for ‘unprecedented’ winter rainfall, with records broken by up to 30pc 

Britain is heading for “unprecedented” winter rainfall after the Met Office’s new super computer predicted records will be broken by up to 30 per cent.

Widespread flooding has hit the UK in the past few years leading meteorologists to search for new ways to “quantify the risk of extreme rainfall within the current climate”.

In other words, the Telegraph reporting that the Met Office is projecting that if the current record is, say, 100mm, new records of 130mm could be set.

BBC is reporting something slightly different

High risk of ‘unprecedented’ winter downpours – Met Office

There is an increased risk of “unprecedented” winter downpours such as those that caused extensive flooding in 2014, the UK Met Office says.

Their study suggests there’s now a one in three chance of monthly rainfall records being broken in England and Wales in winter.

The estimate reflects natural variability plus changes in the UK climate as a result of global warming.

The BBC has a nice graphic, of the most extreme winter month of recent years for rainfall.

The BBC goes onto say

Their analysis also showed a high risk of record-breaking rainfall in England and Wales in the coming decade.

“We found many unprecedented events in the model data and this comes out as a 7% risk of a monthly record extreme in a given winter in the next few years, that’s just over Southeast England,” Dr Vikki Thompson, the study’s lead author told BBC News.

“Looking at all the regions of England and Wales we found a 34% chance of an extreme event happening in at least one of those regions each year.”

Not only is there a greater risk, but the researchers were also able to estimate that these events could break existing records by up to 30%.

“That is an enormous number, to have a monthly value that’s 30% larger, it’s a bit like what we had in 2014, and as much again,” said Prof Adam Scaife from the Met Office.

The 30% larger is an outlier.

But over what period is the record?

The Met Office website has an extended version of what the BBC reports. But strangely no figures. There is a little video by Dr Vikki Thomson to explain.

She does say only recent data is used, but no definition of what constitutes recent. A clue lies not in the text, but an explanatory graphic.

It is from 35 years of winters, which ties into the BBC’s graphic from 1981. There are nine regions in England and Wales by the Met Office definition. The tenth political region of London is included in the South East. There could be different regions for the modeling. As Ben Pile and Paul Homewood pointed out in the comments to the Cliscep article, elsewhere the Met Office splits England and Wales into six regions. What is amazing is that the Met Office article does not clarify the number of regions, still less show the current records in the thirty-five years of data. There is therefore no possibility of ever verifying the models.

Put this into context. Northern Ireland and Scotland are excluded, which seems a bit arbitrary. If rainfall was random, then the chance of this coming winter setting a new record in a region is nearly 3%. For any one of nine regions, if data rainfall data independent between regions (which it is not) it is nearly a 26% chance. 34% is higher. But consider the many alternatives ways for the climate patterns to become more extreme and variable. After all, with global warming there climate could be thrown into chaos, so more extreme weather should be emerging as a foretaste of much worse to come. Given the many different aspects of weather, there could be hundreds of possible ways climate could get worse. With rainfall, it could be wetter or drier, in either summer or winter. That is four variables, of which the Met Office choose just one. Or could be in any 1, 2, 3… or 12 month period. Then again, climate change could mean more frequent and violent storms, such as that of 1987. Or it could mean more heatwaves. Statistically, heatwaves records could be a number of different ways, such as, say, 5 consecutive days in a month where the peak daily temperature is more than 5C about the long-term monthly average peak temperature.
So why choose rainfall in winter? Maybe it is because in recent years there have been a number of unusually wet winters. It looks like the Met Office, for all the power of their mighty computers, have fallen for a common fallacy.

 

Texas sharpshooter fallacy is an informal fallacy which is committed when differences in data are ignored, but similarities are stressed. From this reasoning, a false conclusion is inferred. This fallacy is the philosophical/rhetorical application of the multiple comparisons problem (in statistics) and apophenia (in cognitive psychology). It is related to the clustering illusion, which refers to the tendency in human cognition to interpret patterns where none actually exist.
The name comes from a joke about a Texan who fires some gunshots at the side of a barn, then paints a target centered on the tightest cluster of hits and claims to be a sharpshooter.

A run of extremely wet winters might be due to random clustering, or it could genuine patterns from natural variation, or it could be a sign of human-caused climate change. An indication of random clustering would be to look at many other the different aspects of weather, to see if there is a recent trend of emerging climate chaos. Living in Britain, I suspect that the recent wet weather is just drawing the target around the tightest clusters. Even then, high winter rainfall in Britain high rainfall this is usually accompanied by slightly milder temperatures than average. Extreme winter cold is usually on cloud-free days. So, if winter rainfall is genuinely getting worse it seems that the whole global warming thing for Britain is predicted to become a bit a damp squib.

Kevin Marshall

 

by manicbeancounter on 27/07/2017  •  Permalink
Posted in Climate Change Analysis, Degenerating Climatology, Global Warming, Science & Non-science, Spin (Propaganda)
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Posted by manicbeancounter on 27/07/2017

https://manicbeancounter.com/2017/07/27/met-office-projections/

How strong is the Consensus Evidence for human-caused global warming?

You cannot prove a vague theory wrong. If the guess that you make is poorly expressed and the method you have for computing the consequences is a little vague then ….. you see that the theory is good as it can’t be proved wrong. If the process of computing the consequences is indefinite, then with a little skill any experimental result can be made to look like an expected consequence.

Richard Feynman – 1964 Lecture on the Scientific Method

It’s self-evident that democratic societies should base their decisions on accurate information. On many issues, however, misinformation can become entrenched in parts of the community, particularly when vested interests are involved. Reducing the influence of misinformation is a difficult and complex challenge.

The Debunking Handbook 2011 – John Cook and Stephan Lewandowsky

My previous post looked at the attacks on David Rose for daring to suggest that the rapid fall in global land temperatures at the El Nino event were strong evidence that the record highs in global temperatures were not due to human greenhouse gas emissions. The technique used was to look at long-term linear trends. The main problems with this argument were
(a) according to AGW theory warming rates from CO2 alone should be accelerating and at a higher rate than the estimated linear warming rates from HADCRUT4.
(b) HADCRUT4 shows warming stopped from 2002 to 2014, yet in theory the warming from CO2 should have accelerated.

Now there are at least two ways to view my arguments. First is to look at Feynman’s approach. The climatologists and associated academics attacking journalist David Rose chose to do so from a perspective of a very blurred specification of AGW theory. That is human emissions will cause greenhouse gas levels to rise, which will cause global average temperatures to rise. Global average temperature clearly have risen from all long-term (>40 year) data sets, so theory is confirmed. On a rising trend, with large variations due to natural variability, then any new records will be primarily “human-caused”. But making the theory and data slightly less vague reveals an opposite conclusion. Around the turn of the century the annual percentage increase in CO2 emissions went from 0.4% to 0.5% a year (figure 1), which should have lead to an acceleration in the rate of warming. In reality warming stalled.

The reaction was to come up with a load of ad hoc excuses. Hockey Schtick blog reached 66 separate excuses for the “pause” by November 2014, from the peer-reviewed to a comment in the UK Parliament.  This could be because climate is highly complex, with many variables, the presence of each contributing can only be guessed at, let alone the magnitude of each factor and the interrelationships with all factors. So how do you tell which statements are valid information and which are misinformation? I agree with Cook and Lewandowsky that misinformation is pernicious, and difficult to get rid of once it becomes entrenched. So how does one evaluate distinguish between the good information and the bad, misleading or even pernicious?

The Lewandowsky / Cook answer is to follow the consensus of opinion. But what is the consensus of opinion? In climate one variation is to follow a small subset of academics in the area who answer in the affirmative to

1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?

2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?

Problem is that the first question is just reading a graph and the second could be is a belief statement will no precision. Anthropogenic global warming has been a hot topic for over 25 years now. Yet these two very vague empirically-based questions, forming the foundations of the subject, should be able to be formulated more precisely. On the second it is a case of having pretty clear and unambiguous estimates as to the percentage of warming, so far, that is human caused. On that the consensus of leading experts are unable to say whether it is 50% or 200% of the warming so far. (There are meant to be time lags and factors like aerosols that might suppress the warming). This from the 2013 UNIPCC AR5 WG1 SPM section D3:-

It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together.

The IPCC, encapsulating the state-of-the-art knowledge, cannot provide firm evidence in the form of a percentage, or even a fairly broad range even with over 60 years of data to work on..  It is even worse than it appears. The extremely likely phrase is a Bayesian probability statement. Ron Clutz’s simple definition from earlier this year was:-

Here’s the most dumbed-down description: Initial belief plus new evidence = new and improved belief.

For the IPCC claim that their statement was extremely likely, at the fifth attempt, they should be able to show some sort of progress in updating their beliefs to new evidence. That would mean narrowing the estimate of the magnitude of impact of a doubling of CO2 on global average temperatures. As Clive Best documented in a cliscep comment in October, the IPCC reports, from 1990 to 2013 failed to change the estimate range of 1.5°C to 4.5°C. Looking up Climate Sensitivity in Wikipedia we get the origin of the range estimate.

A committee on anthropogenic global warming convened in 1979 by the National Academy of Sciences and chaired by Jule Charney estimated climate sensitivity to be 3 °C, plus or minus 1.5 °C. Only two sets of models were available; one, due to Syukuro Manabe, exhibited a climate sensitivity of 2 °C, the other, due to James E. Hansen, exhibited a climate sensitivity of 4 °C. “According to Manabe, Charney chose 0.5 °C as a not-unreasonable margin of error, subtracted it from Manabe’s number, and added it to Hansen’s. Thus was born the 1.5 °C-to-4.5 °C range of likely climate sensitivity that has appeared in every greenhouse assessment since…“

It is revealing that quote is under the subheading Consensus Estimates. The climate community have collectively failed to update the original beliefs, based on a very rough estimate. The emphasis on referring to consensus beliefs about the world, rather than looking outward for evidence in the real world, I would suggest is the primary reason for this failure. Yet such community-based beliefs completely undermines the integrity of the Bayesian estimates, making its use in statements about climate clear misinformation in Cook and Lewandowsky’s use of the term. What is more, those in the climate community who look primarily to these consensus beliefs rather than the data of the real world will endeavour to dismiss the evidence, or make up ad hoc excuses, or smear those who try to disagree. A caricature of these perspectives with respect to global average temperature anomalies is available in the form of a flickering widget at John Cooks’ skepticalscience website. This purports to show the difference between “realist” consensus and “contrarian” non-consensus views. Figure 2 is a screenshot of the consensus views, interpreting warming as a linear trend. Figure 3 is a screenshot of the non-consensus or contrarian views. They is supposed to interpret warming as a series of short, disconnected,  periods of no warming. Over time, each period just happens to be at a higher level than the previous. There are a number of things that this indicates.

(a) The “realist” view is of a linear trend throughout any data series. Yet the period from around 1940 to 1975 has no warming or slight cooling depending on the data set. Therefore any linear trend line derived for a longer period than 1970 to 1975 and ending in 2015 will show a lower rate of warming. This would be consistent the rate of CO2 increasing over time, as shown in figure 1. But for shorten the period, again ending in 2015, and once the period becomes less than 30 years, the warming trend will also decrease. This contracts the theory, unless ad hoc excuses are used, as shown in my previous post using the HADCRUT4 data set.

(b) Those who agree with the consensus are called “Realist”, despite looking inwards towards common beliefs. Those who disagree with warming are labelled “Contrarian”. This is not inaccurate when there is a dogmatic consensus. But it utterly false to lump all those who disagree with the same views, especially when no examples are provided of those who hold such views.

(c) The linear trend appears as a more plausible fit than the series of “contrarian” lines. By implication, those who disagree with the consensus are viewed as as having a distinctly more blinkered and distorted perspective than those who follow the consensus. Yet even using gistemp data set (which is gives greatest support to the consensus views) there is a clear break in the linear trend. The less partisan HADCRUT4 data shows an even greater break.

Those who spot the obvious – that around the turn of the century warming stopped or slowed down, when in theory it should have accelerated – are given a clear choice. They can conform to the scientific consensus, denying the discrepancy between theory and data. Or they can act as scientists, denying the false and empirically empty scientific consensus, receiving the full weight of all the false and career-damaging opprobrium that accompanies it.

fig2-sks-realists

 

 

fig3-sks-contras

Kevin Marshall

 

by manicbeancounter on 02/01/2017  •  Permalink
Posted in Degenerating Climatology, Science & Non-science, Science - the Boundaries, Skeptical Science, Spin (Propaganda), Temperature Data
Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by manicbeancounter on 02/01/2017

https://manicbeancounter.com/2017/01/02/how-strong-is-the-evidence-for-human-caused-global-warming/

Climate Experts Attacking a Journalist by Misinformation on Global Warming

Summary

Journalist David Rose was attacked for pointing out in a Daily Mail article that the strong El Nino event, that resulted in record temperatures, was reversing rapidly. He claimed record highs may be not down to human emissions. The Climate Feedback attack article claimed that the El Nino event did not affect the long-term human-caused trend. My analysis shows

  • CO2 levels have been rising at increasing rates since 1950.
  • In theory this should translate in warming at increasing rates. That is a non-linear warming rate.
  • HADCRUT4 temperature data shows warming stopped in 2002, only resuming with the El Nino event in 2015 and 2016.
  • At the central climate sensitivity estimate of doubling of CO2 leads to 3C of global warming, HADCRUT4 was already falling short of theoretical warming in 2000. This is without the impact of other greenhouse gases.
  • Putting a linear trend lines through the last 35 to 65 years of data will show very little impact of El Nino, but has a very large visual impact on the divergence between theoretical human-caused warming and the temperature data. It reduces the apparent impact of the divergence between theory and data, but does not eliminate it.

Claiming that the large El Nino does not affect long-term linear trends is correct. But a linear trend neither describes warming in theory or in the leading temperature set. To say, as experts in their field, that the long-term warming trend is even principally human-caused needs a lot of circumspection. This is lacking in the attack article.

 

Introduction

Journalist David Rose recently wrote a couple of articles in the Daily Mail on the plummeting global average temperatures.
The first on 26th November was under the headline

Stunning new data indicates El Nino drove record highs in global temperatures suggesting rise may not be down to man-made emissions

With the summary

• Global average temperatures over land have plummeted by more than 1C
• Comes amid mounting evidence run of record temperatures about to end
• The fall, revealed by Nasa satellites, has been caused by the end of El Nino

Rose’s second article used the Met Offices’ HADCRUT4 data set, whereas the first used satellite data. Rose was a little more circumspect when he said.

El Nino is not caused by greenhouse gases and has nothing to do with climate change. It is true that the massive 2015-16 El Nino – probably the strongest ever seen – took place against a steady warming trend, most of which scientists believe has been caused by human emissions.

But when El Nino was triggering new records earlier this year, some downplayed its effects. For example, the Met Office said it contributed ‘only a few hundredths of a degree’ to the record heat. The size of the current fall suggests that this minimised its impact.

There was a massive reaction to the first article, as discussed by Jaime Jessop at Cliscep. She particularly noted that earlier in the year there were articles on the dramatically higher temperature record of 2015, such as in a Guardian article in January.There was also a follow-up video conversation between David Rose and Dr David Whitehouse of the GWPF commenting on the reactions. One key feature of the reactions was claiming the contribution to global warming trend of the El Nino effect was just a few hundredths of a degree. I find particularly interesting the Climate Feedback article, as it emphasizes trend over short-run blips. Some examples

Zeke Hausfather, Research Scientist, Berkeley Earth:
In reality, 2014, 2015, and 2016 have been the three warmest years on record not just because of a large El Niño, but primarily because of a long-term warming trend driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases.

….
Kyle Armour, Assistant Professor, University of Washington:
It is well known that global temperature falls after receiving a temporary boost from El Niño. The author cherry-picks the slight cooling at the end of the current El Niño to suggest that the long-term global warming trend has ended. It has not.

…..
KEY TAKE-AWAYS
1.Recent record global surface temperatures are primarily the result of the long-term, human-caused warming trend. A smaller boost from El Niño conditions has helped set new records in 2015 and 2016.

…….

2. The article makes its case by relying only on cherry-picked data from specific datasets on short periods.

To understand what was said, I will try to take the broader perspective. That is to see whether the evidence points conclusively to a single long-term warming trend being primarily human caused. This will point to the real reason(or reasons) for downplaying the impact of an extreme El Nino event on record global average temperatures. There are a number of steps in this process.

Firstly to look at the data of rising CO2 levels. Secondly to relate that to predicted global average temperature rise, and then expected warming trends. Thirdly to compare those trends to global data trends using the actual estimates of HADCRUT4, taking note of the consequences of including other greenhouse gases. Fourthly to put the calculated trends in the context of the statements made above.

 

1. The recent data of rising CO2 levels
CO2 accounts for a significant majority of the alleged warming from increases in greenhouse gas levels. Since 1958 CO2 (when accurate measures started to be taken at Mauna Loa) levels have risen significantly. Whilst I could produce a simple graph either the CO2 level rising from 316 to 401 ppm in 2015, or the year-on-year increases CO2 rising from 0.8ppm in the 1960s to over 2ppm in in the last few years, Figure 1 is more illustrative.

CO2 is not just rising, but the rate of rise has been increasing as well, from 0.25% a year in the 1960s to over 0.50% a year in the current century.

 

2. Rising CO2 should be causing accelerating temperature rises

The impact of CO2 on temperatures is not linear, but is believed to approximate to a fixed temperature rise for each doubling of CO2 levels. That means if CO2 levels were rising arithmetically, the impact on the rate of warming would fall over time. If CO2 levels were rising by the same percentage amount year-on-year, then the consequential rate of warming would be constant over time.  But figure 1 shows that percentage rise in CO2 has increased over the last two-thirds of a century.  The best way to evaluate the combination of CO2 increasing at an accelerating rate and a diminishing impact of each unit rise on warming is to crunch some numbers. The central estimate used by the IPCC is that a doubling of CO2 levels will result in an eventual rise of 3C in global average temperatures. Dana1981 at Skepticalscience used a formula that produces a rise of 2.967 for any doubling. After adjusting the formula, plugging the Mauna Loa annual average CO2 levels into values in produces Figure 2.

In computing the data I estimated the level of CO2 in 1949 (based roughly on CO2 estimates from Law Dome ice core data) and then assumed a linear increased through the 1950s. Another assumption was that the full impact of the CO2 rise on temperatures would take place in the year following that rise.

The annual CO2 induced temperature change is highly variable, corresponding to the fluctuations in annual CO2 rise. The 11 year average – placed at the end of the series to give an indication of the lagged impact that CO2 is supposed to have on temperatures – shows the acceleration in the expected rate of CO2-induced warming from the acceleration in rate of increase in CO2 levels. Most critically there is some acceleration in warming around the turn of the century.

I have also included the impact of linear trend (by simply dividing the total CO2 increase in the period by the number of years) along with a steady increase of .396% a year, producing a constant rate of temperature rise.

Figure 3 puts the calculations into the context of the current issue.

This gives the expected temperature linear temperature trends from various start dates up until 2014 and 2016, assuming a one year lag in the impact of changes in CO2 levels on temperatures. These are the same sort of linear trends that the climate experts used in criticizing David Rose. The difference in warming by more two years produces very little difference – about 0.054C of temperature rise, and an increase in trend of less than 0.01 C per decade. More importantly, the rate of temperature rise from CO2 alone should be accelerating.

 

3. HADCRUT4 warming

How does one compare this to the actual temperature data? A major issue is that there is a very indeterminate lag between the rise in CO2 levels and the rise in average temperature. Another issue is that CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas. More minor greenhouse gases may have different patterns if increases in the last few decades. However, the change the trends of the resultant warming, but only but the impact should be additional to the warming caused by CO2. That is, in the long term, CO2 warming should account for less than the total observed.
There is no need to do actual calculations of trends from the surface temperature data. The Skeptical Science website has a trend calculator, where one can just plug in the values. Figure 4 shows an example of the graph, which shows that the dataset currently ends in an El Nino peak.

The trend results for HADCRUT4 are shown in Figure 5 for periods up to 2014 and 2016 and compared to the CO2 induced warming.

There are a number of things to observe from the trend data.

The most visual difference between the two tables is the first has a pause in global warming after 2002, whilst the second has a warming trend. This is attributable to the impact of El Nino. These experts are also right in that it makes very little difference to the long term trend. If the long term is over 40 years, then it is like adding 0.04C per century that long term trend.

But there is far more within the tables than this observations. Concentrate first on the three “Trend in °C/decade” columns. The first is of the CO2 warming impact from figure 3. For a given end year, the shorter the period the higher is the warming trend. Next to this are Skeptical Science trends for the HADCRUT4 data set. Start Year 1960 has a higher trend than Start Year 1950 and Start Year 1970 has a higher trend than Start Year 1960. But then each later Start Year has a lower trend the previous Start Years. There is one exception. The period 2010 to 2016 has a much higher trend than for any other period – a consequence of the extreme El Nino event. Excluding this there are now over three decades where the actual warming trend has been diverging from the theory.

The third of the “Trend in °C/decade” columns is simply the difference between the HADCRUT4 temperature trend and the expected trend from rising CO2 levels. If a doubling of CO2 levels did produce around 3C of warming, and other greenhouse gases were also contributing to warming then one would expect that CO2 would eventually start explaining less than the observed warming. That is the variance would be positive. But CO2 levels accelerated, actual warming stalled, increasing the negative variance.

 

4. Putting the claims into context

Compare David Rose

Stunning new data indicates El Nino drove record highs in global temperatures suggesting rise may not be down to man-made emissions

With Climate Feedback KEY TAKE-AWAY

1.Recent record global surface temperatures are primarily the result of the long-term, human-caused warming trend. A smaller boost from El Niño conditions has helped set new records in 2015 and 2016.

The HADCRUT4 temperature data shows that there had been no warming for over a decade, following a warming trend. This is in direct contradiction to theory which would predict that CO2-based warming would be at a higher rate than previously. Given that a record temperatures following this hiatus come as part of a naturally-occurring El Nino event it is fair to say that record highs in global temperatures ….. may not be down to man-made emissions.

The so-called long-term warming trend encompasses both the late twentieth century warming and the twenty-first century hiatus. As the later flatly contradicts theory it is incorrect to describe the long-term warming trend as “human-caused”. There needs to be a more circumspect description, such as the vast majority of academics working in climate-related areas believe that the long-term (last 50+ years) warming  is mostly “human-caused”. This would be in line with the first bullet point from the UNIPCC AR5 WG1 SPM section D3:-

It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together.

When the IPCC’s summary opinion, and the actual data are taken into account Zeke Hausfather’s comment that the records “are primarily because of a long-term warming trend driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases” is dogmatic.

Now consider what David Rose said in the second article

El Nino is not caused by greenhouse gases and has nothing to do with climate change. It is true that the massive 2015-16 El Nino – probably the strongest ever seen – took place against a steady warming trend, most of which scientists believe has been caused by human emissions.

Compare this to Kyle Armour’s statement about the first article.

It is well known that global temperature falls after receiving a temporary boost from El Niño. The author cherry-picks the slight cooling at the end of the current El Niño to suggest that the long-term global warming trend has ended. It has not.

This time Rose seems to have responded to the pressure by stating that there is a long-term warming trend, despite the data clearly showing that this is untrue, except in the vaguest sense. There data does not show a single warming trend. Going back to the skeptical science trends we can break down the data from 1950 into four periods.

1950-1976 -0.014 ±0.072 °C/decade (2σ)

1976-2002 0.180 ±0.068 °C/decade (2σ)

2002-2014 -0.014 ±0.166 °C/decade (2σ)

2014-2016 1.889 ±1.882 °C/decade (2σ)

There was warming for about a quarter of a century sandwiched between two periods of no warming. At the end is an uptick. Only very loosely can anyone speak of a long-term warming trend in the data. But basic theory hypotheses a continuous, non-linear, warming trend. Journalists can be excused failing to make the distinctions. As non-experts they will reference opinion that appears sensibly expressed, especially when the alleged experts in the field are united in using such language. But those in academia, who should have a demonstrable understanding of theory and data, should be more circumspect in their statements when speaking as experts in their field. (Kyle Armour’s comment is an extreme example of what happens when academics completely suspend drawing on their expertise.)  This is particularly true when there are strong divergences between the theory and the data. The consequence is plain to see. Expert academic opinion tries to bring the real world into line with the theory by authoritative but banal statements about trends.

Kevin Marshall

by manicbeancounter on 30/12/2016  •  Permalink
Posted in Climate Change, Climate Change Analysis, Degenerating Climatology, Public Relations and Climate Change, Science & Non-science
Tagged , , , ,

Posted by manicbeancounter on 30/12/2016

https://manicbeancounter.com/2016/12/30/climate-experts-attacking-a-journalist-by-misinformation-on-global-warming/

Failed Arctic Sea Ice predictions illustrates Degenerating Climatology

The Telegraph yesterday carried an interesting article. Telegraph Experts said Arctic sea ice would melt entirely by September 2016 – they were wrong

Dire predictions that the Arctic would be devoid of sea ice by September this year have proven to be unfounded after latest satellite images showed there is far more now than in 2012.
Scientists such as Prof Peter Wadhams, of Cambridge University, and Prof Wieslaw Maslowski, of the Naval Postgraduate School in Moderey, California, have regularly forecast the loss of ice by 2016, which has been widely reported by the BBC and other media outlets.

In June, Michel at Trustyetverify blog traced a number of these false predictions. Michel summarized

(H)e also predicted until now:
• 2008 (falsified)
• 2 years from 2011 → 2013 (falsified)
• 2015 (falsified)
• 2016 (still to come, but will require a steep drop)
• 2017 (still to come)
• 2020 (still to come)
• 10 to 20 years from 2009 → 2029 (still to come)
• 20 to 30 years from 2010 → 2040 (still to come).

The 2016 prediction is now false. Paul Homewood has been looking at Professor Wadhams’ failed prophesies in a series of posts as well.

The Telegraph goes on to quote from three, more moderate, sources. One of them is :-

Andrew Shepherd, professor of earth observation at University College London, said there was now “overwhelming consensus” that the Arctic would be free of ice in the next few decades, but warned earlier predictions were based on poor extrapolation.
“A decade or so ago, climate models often failed to reproduce the decline in Arctic sea ice extent revealed by satellite observations,” he said.
“One upshot of this was that outlier predictions based on extrapolation alone were able to receive wide publicity.
“But climate models have improved considerably since then and they now do a much better job of simulating historical events.
“This means we have greater confidence in their predictive skill, and the overwhelming consensus within the scientific community is that the Arctic Ocean will be effectively free of sea ice in a couple of decades should the present rate of decline continue.”

(emphasis mine)

Professor Shepard is saying that the shorter-term (from a few months to a few years) highly dire predictions have turned out to be false, but improved techniques in modelling enable much more sound predictions over 25-50 years to be made. That would require a development on two dimensions – scale and time. Detecting a samll human-caused change over decades needs far greater skill in differentiating from natural variations on a year-by-year time scale from a dramatic shift. Yet it would appear that at the end of the last century there was a natural upturn following from an unusually cold period in the 1950s to the 1970s, as documented by HH Lamb. This resulted in an extension in the sea ice. Detection of the human influence problem is even worse if the natural reduction in sea ice has worked concurrently with that human influence. However, instead of offering us demonstrated increased technical competency in modelling (as opposed to more elaborate models), Professor Shepard offers us the consensus of belief that the more moderate predictions are reliable.
This is a clear example of degenerating climatology that I outlined in last year. In particular, I proposed that rather than progressive climate science – increasing scientific evidence and more rigorous procedures for tighter hypotheses about clear catastrophic anthropogenic global warming – we have degenerating climatology, which is ever weaker and vaguer evidence for some global warming.

If Professor Wadhams had consistently predicted the lack of summer sea ice for a set time period, then it would be strong confirmation of a potentially catastrophic problem. Climatology would have scored a major success. Even if instead of ice-free summers by now, there had been evidence of clear acceleration in the decline in sea ice extent, then it could have been viewed as some progression. But instead we should accept a consensus of belief that will only be confirmed or refuted decades ahead. The interpretation of success or failure. will then, no doubt, be given to the same consensus who were responsible for the vague predictions in the first place.

Kevin Marshall

by manicbeancounter on 09/10/2016  •  Permalink
Posted in Arctic, Climate Change, Degenerating Climatology, Science & Non-science
Tagged , , ,

Posted by manicbeancounter on 09/10/2016

https://manicbeancounter.com/2016/10/09/failed-arctic-sea-ice-predictions-illustrates-degenerating-climatology/

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