Who Are You Going To Believe – The Government Climate Scientists or The Data?

We check the main predictions of the climate models against the best and latest data. Fortunately the climate models got all their major predictions wrong. Why? Every serious skeptical scientist has been consistently saying essentially the same thing for over 20 years, yet most people have never heard the message – here it is, put simply enough for any lay reader willing to pay attention.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/26/the-skeptics-case/

progressiveslol wrote on Feb 27^th, 2012 at 5:55pm:

Who Are You Going To Believe – The Government Climate Scientists or The Data? We check the main predictions of the climate models against the best and latest data. Fortunately the climate models got all their major predictions wrong.

Did they? Give us some examples.



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Every serious skeptical scientist has been consistently saying essentially the same thing for over 20 years, yet most people have never heard the message

Well most people have heard the message from every serious scepical scientist but some choose to ignore it for some reason. I should add that Anthony Watt is not a serious sceptical scientist.  He's not even a scientist in fact.


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– here it is, put simply enough for any lay reader willing to pay attention. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/26/the-skeptics-case/

That's not the sceptics' case, and it doesn't represent the views of any "serious sceptical scientist" that I'm aware of. It contains a lot of .... untruths. The person who wrote this does not deserve the descriptor of sceptic. A more appropriate term is "blatant liar" and I'll explain why in this post. Scientist are by nature sceptics. So he needs to correct the Title. It should read "The Liars' case"


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The government climate scientists and the media often tell us about the direct effect of the CO2, but rarely admit that two thirds of their projected temperature increases are due to amplification by feedbacks.

Rarely admit?????? That's where blatant lie comes in.  How about "openly publicise?

"The Physical Science Basis" from IPCC Working Group I devotes a whole chapter to this:

Chapter 2: Changes in Atmospheric Constituents and in Radiative Forcing

He then goes on to argue that Hansen's predictions were wrong using temperatures plotted on a monthly basis (Watt's up with that!? ) when he should be using something like 15 year running averages to monitor actually changes in climate compared to predictions. It's a very fallacious argument where he's taking advantage of natural short term cycles when everybody who knows anything about climate is aware that these exist, and generally smooth out short term variations using the techniques previously described.

Now if you want the view of real sceptics, here it is:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Hansen-1988-prediction.htm

The summary:


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If we take into account the slightly lower atmospheric greenhouse gas increases and compare the observed versus projected global temperature warming rates, as shown in the Advanced version of this rebuttal, we find that in order to accurately predict the global warming of the past 22 years, Hansen's climate model would have needed a climate sensitivity of about 3.4°C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2.  This is within the likely range of climate sensitivity values listed as 2-4.5°C by the IPCC for a doubling of CO2, and even a bit higher than the most likely value currently widely accepted as 3°C. In short, the main reason Hansen's 1988 warming projections were too high is that he used a climate model with a high climate sensitivity, and his results are actually evidence that the true climate sensitivity parameter is within the range accepted by the IPCC.

Anthony Watt has no university qualifications and no climate credentials other than being a radio weather announcer. He probably has a good microphone voice, but that's about it.

Who are you going to believe:

Scientists   

or

Random bloggers on the take from oil barrons.

From Anthony Watt's Site:


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The skeptic’s view. If the CO2 level doubles, skeptics estimates that the temperature increase due to that extra CO2 will be about 1.1°C × 0.5 ≈ 0.6°C.iv

OK, so if we use that climate sensitivity of 0.6 instead of about 3, and apply that to the graph, the orange line represents where that prediction takes us.

If these guys think Hansen's prediction was bad, then  their stated climate sensitivity produces a prediction that's 10 times worse. (fail)

You would also think that the esteemed highly qualified radio announcer would have worked out that particular chestnut by now.  Of course that would make him either breathtakingly dumb... or a liar.

Which one do you think he is?

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muso wrote on Mar 2^nd, 2012 at 9:15am:

From Anthony Watt's Site: Quote: The skeptic’s view. If the CO2 level doubles, skeptics estimates that the temperature increase due to that extra CO2 will be about 1.1°C × 0.5 ≈ 0.6°C.iv OK, so if we use that climate sensitivity of 0.6 instead of about 3, and apply that to the graph, the orange line represents where that prediction takes us. If these guys think Hansen's prediction was bad, then  their stated climate sensitivity produces a prediction that's 10 times worse. (fail) You would also think that the esteemed highly qualified radio announcer would have worked out that particular chestnut by now.  Of course that would make him either breathtakingly dumb... or a liar. Which one do you think he is?

You are way off. I dont think they did a prediction on temperature, but they did come up with a sensitivity.

If they were to come up with a temperature, they would not make the MISTAKE that you and the other catastophers come up with by only pointing to CO2 as the climate driver or changer.

They would come up with all the drivers (as much as is possible) and have CO2 with a sensitivity of 0.6.

They would not do what you have shown utter lack of commonsense and only used CO2 as a representation of temperature change.

progressiveslol wrote on Mar 2^nd, 2012 at 1:15pm:

muso wrote on Mar 2nd, 2012 at 9:15am: From Anthony Watt's Site: Quote: The skeptic’s view. If the CO2 level doubles, skeptics estimates that the temperature increase due to that extra CO2 will be about 1.1°C × 0.5 ≈ 0.6°C.iv OK, so if we use that climate sensitivity of 0.6 instead of about 3, and apply that to the graph, the orange line represents where that prediction takes us. If these guys think Hansen's prediction was bad, then  their stated climate sensitivity produces a prediction that's 10 times worse. (fail) You would also think that the esteemed highly qualified radio announcer would have worked out that particular chestnut by now.  Of course that would make him either breathtakingly dumb... or a liar. Which one do you think he is? You are way off. I dont think they did a prediction on temperature, but they did come up with a sensitivity.

What do you think Climate sensitivity means? It's an empirical factor that includes all forcings and feedbacks. It means change in temperature for a given rise in carbon dioxide (bearing in mind that it's a logarithmic relationship).

Of course you have to apply all other feedbacks and forcings (including those that are independent of atmospheric CO2). Those include solar irradiance, aerosols, soot, volcanic emissions etc. The attribution of these feedbacks is covered in Chapter 2. They are not ignored as you claim below (highlighted). The net effect of those has been demonstrated to be slightly negative, Forcings and feedbacks are reported in Watts per square metre. A forcing of 1.5W/m2 gives us a temperature increase of 1 degree (of course you need to apply a reference timeframe) That forcing  has the same effect whether it's coming from a change in solar irradiance or an increase in water vapour.

So you can easily take a value of climate sensitivity and calculate what the expected rise in temperature would be on top of these natural factors, given a long enough time-frame to allow for equilibrium.  That's the whole point of climate sensitivity.


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If they were to come up with a temperature, they would not make the MISTAKE that you and the other catastophers come up with by only pointing to CO2 as the climate driver or changer. They would come up with all the drivers (as much as is possible) and have CO2 with a sensitivity of 0.6.

Hang on though, Dave's study quotes a climate sensitivity based on CO2. The water feedback, which is the major feedback follows the atmospheric CO2. By using the term climate sensitivity, you accept that relationship.

It's obvious that as temperature goes up, average water concentration in the atmosphere goes up too, and water vapour is a greenhouse gas which adds to the effect. However Dave is claiming a negative feedback, giving an overall climate sensitivity that doesn't come close to the actual experience of the last 50 odd years. 


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They would not do what you have shown utter lack of commonsense and only used CO2 as a representation of temperature change.

Again, you fail to understand the term climate sensitivity. It has a very specific meaning in this context.

I'll try to edit this over the next couple of days with illustrations from Dave Evans' (The self-proclaimed rocket scientist) paper. 

Dave's article says:

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xviii In particular, we have not quoted results from land thermometers, or from sparse sampling by buckets and XBT’s at sea. Land thermometers are notoriously susceptible to localized effects –

Satellite data was notoriously susceptable to Dr Roy Spencer (UAH)
discarding the higher values from the dataset. The datasets used in this article are the doctored ones.  It seems an appropriate term.

More from the rocket scientist:

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Figure 1: The climate models. If the CO2 level doubles (as it is on course to do by about 2070 to 2100), the climate models estimate the temperature increase due to that extra CO2 will be about 1.1°C × 3 = 3.3°C.i

OK, so a doubling of CO2 gives causes a radiative forcing of 3.7 W/m2, which in equilibrium would cause 3°C (plus or minus 1.5°C) of global warming. On the face of it, the actual results  for the industrial period are only about 1/4 of that, however they don't account for ocean heat uptake. So the temperature rise experienced does not reflect equilibrium conditions. You arrive at a climate sensitivity of around 1.5 degrees based on recent historical data. Taking into account equilibrium factors, we get to  a result of 3 degrees. (that's a more lengthy explanation) The single factor that causes most uncertainty is the cooling effect of aerosols.

There is a German paper that was written about 3 years ago. I'll try to find that some time over the next few days. It explains all the factors in some detail much better than I could. (give me a week or so) It also shows a probability graph against various climate sensitivities.

muso wrote on Mar 2^nd, 2012 at 3:28pm:

There is a German paper that was written about 3 years ago. I'll try to find that some time over the next few days. It explains all the factors in some detail much better than I could. (give me a week or so) It also shows a probability graph against various climate sensitivities.

Rahmstorf 2008. I can't attach it because it's too big, but it's a really good and relatively non-technical  paper. I don't think it's available on the web.

He wrote it as a response to an article by Lindzen. Here is what he said in the summary.


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When was confronted with the polemic presented by Lindzen (in this volume), my first reaction was a sense of disbelief. Does Lindzen really think that current models overestimate the observed global warming sixfold? Can he really believe that climate sensitivity is below 0.5°C, despite all the studies on climate sensitivity concluding the opposite, and that a barely correlating cloud of data from one station, as he presents in figure 2-3, somehow proves his view? Does he honestly think that global warming stopped in 1998? Can Lindzen seriously believe that a vast conspiracy of thousands of climatologists worldwide is misleading the public for personal gain? All this seems completely out of touch with the world of climate science as I know it and, to be frank, simply ludicrous.

The file Rahmstorf2008.pdf (467 KB) is too large. The maximum allowed filesize is in KB: 250

OK, the reason I couldn't find it was that I was looking for a paper. It's taken from a book, but is still peer reviewed. Here is the URL:

http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Book_chapters/Rahmstorf_Zedillo_2008.pdf

The good thing about that spiel if that it summarises the science pretty well. As I've said before, if you want to argue against a certain position, you first need to understand what the position is, otherwise you're wasting your time. 

Well this is a very good start, so if you read things on blogs that say things like "they don't take any other factors into consideration apart from CO2" you can check the validity of such statements against this publication.

It's called a strawman - a dishonest tactic that starts with misrepresenting the position of an opponent.

Now that article from Dave Evans is actually not bad in that a lot some of the technical detail is correct. However it is wrong in specific crucial areas. The central paradigm is negative feedbacks.  He bases this on the work of Lindzen. The problem is that the overwhelming majority of studies show a climate sensitivity clustered around 3, not 0.6, and it doesn't take a lot of technical knowledge to calculate this out for yourself.