Global Warming Concensus Broken

[IntLibber]

Sorry -

But in that case you are arguing that CO2 forcing is likely to be stronger than they predict, since an unmodelled cooling forcing => other forcings must lead to more warming for the same effect?

Or if you agree with me that the climate models are physical, and not fitted at all to the global temperature then an unmodelled cooling would cause estimates to revise downwards. The problem with this is that broadly they think their models match current temperatures, and this cooling influence has been around for some time, so we are left then with the models consistently underestimating the real temperature.

The treassuring point here is that any significant extra forcing will get added in to the models as they become more sophisticated, so the mater will resolve itself.

Best wishes, Tom

No, I'm saying that as the sun quiets down as it is, the atmosphere contracts to lower altitudes, and this compounds cooling by causing a clouds at lower atltitudes than before to be more effective at reflecting heat back to space. This effect isnt in current climate models.

Nor is the effect of cosmic rays triggering more high altitude cloud formation, which also increases cooling from increased albedo.

Both of these effects are separate from the basic change in irradiance from maxima to minima.

[TallDave]

It's hard to understand how they can go around claiming "scientific consensus" when the mechanism by which CO2 is supposedly warming the Earth clearly isn't happening.

Hell, they still haven't adequately explained why CO2 lags temperature increase by 800 years historically. The most plausible explanation is that CO2 is released from warming oceans, but that's as problematic for the Al Gore crowd as the UAH data.

In fact, it's possible all the warming observed by reliable sources (i.e. satellite and SST data, not Hansen's well-cooked GISS numbers or the Met's cherry-picked "reconstruction" fantasy) is explained by El Nino.

[djolds1]

It's hard to understand how they can go around claiming "scientific consensus" when the mechanism by which CO2 is supposedly warming the Earth clearly isn't happening.

Because there is more involved than science. Far, far more. IIRC climate science budgets in the US c. 1990 were ~ 100 million. Today, 5 billion dollars. Even factoring in inflation, that's a huge jump. Stoping that gravy train for scientific idealism is a poison pill to swallow.

Then extend it. What does certainty of global warming justify? Alternative energy, biofuels, ecological awarness campaigns, huge regulation and taxation schemes that can be financially gamed, etc. Hundreds of billions of dollars now, poised to become trillions of dollars in the next few years.

This is not just science. It is wealth and power at the highest levels.

One of the ironies is that when AGW does implode, it will probably shatter the credibility of institutional science and possibly science in general. AGW is a huge issue, and it has tripled down on its scientific credentials. Large fractions of the scientific community have given it their seal of approval and bet their careers on it. When AGW loses credibility, the credibility of organized science (and funding therefore) goes with it.

Duane

[tomclarke]

Talldave:

I find some of the anti-AGW arguments reminiscent of creationsit arguments against evolution. "It can't explain ...", "There is a hole in the theory, therefore it is wrong".

when the mechanism by which CO2 is supposedly warming the Earth clearly isn't happening

I think what you mean is not this, but that the global temperature rise forced by CO2 is smaller that the AGW people think. That is a vaild matter for scientific debate - it is not however clear (note the wide range of predictions in the latest IPCC report). If you gain your information from anti-AGW web-sites and news articles (there are many such) you will think it clear. If you follow both positions (what the pro-AGW & anti-AGW people say), check their responses to each other, you get a different picture.

Hell, they still haven't adequately explained why CO2 lags temperature increase by 800 years historically.

There is no need to explain this adequately - though there are good guesses. The Climatologists would be unscientific if they stated something as certain where there are many possible reasons. Same argument could be applied to evolution:
"Hey, they have not even worked out how the first self-replicating genome came into existence".

The most plausible explanation is that CO2 is released from warming oceans, but that's as problematic for the Al Gore crowd as the UAH data.

There are many uncertainties about future global temperatures. However we have the last 10K years relatively stable, and it would be strange for that to change now other than as reseult of anthropogenic change. Equally we know precisely how much we have increased CO2, and can model that effect.

There is sytill much disagreement about how large an effect the CO2 increase has on global temperatures. The evidence for this primarily comes from physics models not a retrospective fit to past global temperatures. I agree there are many problems with the global temperature record, and with its use to "prove" global warming. But this is aq political issues. The science is distinct and desreves to be debated scientifically and carefully - with challenge and counter-challenge untilm the uncertainties are fully understood. That is the process the climatologists (who are not a single politically motivated group) are engaged in. Anyone who things their sciencfe is wrong can join the debate with their own models and argue it.

I wonder how many of the posters on this thread who argue against GW are say climatologists are all incompetent or fraudulent have read for themselves in detail what they say?

as a starting poing - look at the IPCC fourth report FAQ (section 8.1) on "how accurate are climate models?"
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html

Best wishes, Tom

[tomclarke]

I note that many of the responses of this thread are essentially political. Eitehr claiming that climatologists are essentially politically motivated, or making political comments about consequences of the perception of AGW.

There is a place for this politics, but it is not my concern. I am interested in getting to the bottom of the scientific question - how certain can we be about future temoeratures and their dependence on CO2 emmissions (and other anthropomarphic effects)?

There is no place for politics when debating this. And no expectation that the answer is a simple one.

Best wishes, Tom

[MSimon]

Tom,

It will go down the tubes as CO2 keeps rising and temperatures fall.

If we are at the end of an interglacial it will be worse.

If CO2 levels lag temperature rise by 200 to 800 years (as ice cores show) and are the result of ocean warming and the latest heating period started in 1850 then a time of rising CO2 with falling temperatures is inevitable.

BTW when taxes are involved a subject is political. How can it be otherwise?

Also note there was once a consensus that margarine was good and butter was bad (I never bought into that. I don't like margarine. I do like butter).

Note: I think more warming would be good. I'd pay lower heating bills. I wish I believed the warming theories were true and that government did nothing.

[tomclarke]

At the risk of being very boring here is an extract from the IPCC4 report:

Since the TAR, developments in AOGCM formulation have
improved the representation of large-scale variability over a
wide range of time scales. The models capture the dominant
extratropical patterns of variability including the Northern and
Southern Annular Modes, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the
Pacific-North American and Cold Ocean-Warm Land Patterns.

What evidence do we have that this is wrong?

Also IPCC4 states that the current expected amplification from atmospheric H2O/clouds in models is typically 50% (1.5) and fairly well established. There is then a greater variation in how models deal with amplification caused by cryogenic changes (melting of ice-sheets). And it does say that uncertainties in cloud modelling remain.

Where does the quoted idea that GW models have pushed H2O amplification up to 3-4 come from? I imagine this is conflated with overall amplification. As more accurate models of ice-sheet behaviour are incorporated estimated overall amplification might have gone up?

Simon was saying <1 versus 3-4 as possible estimates for the H2o amplification figure. Well 1.5 is not so far from < 1, and I expect < 1 to be wishful thinking!

Best wishes, Tom

[MSimon]

Let us take politics out.

Why hasn't the PDO and other ocean effects been subtracted out of the past record yet? That is one confounding factor that can certainly be removed from the past record from 1500 to the present given available records.

The PDO has been known for 10 years. Surely the funders would be interested in clearing that from the record. (well unless they were politically motivated and they fear it would reduce the warming trend to insignificance).

You see I do not believe the science has been depoliticized.

[tomclarke]

Simon -

Well we are agreed that more data will be fascinating - and while a few years colder temperatures may affect politicians if they are result of different solar radiation they do not change the long-term issue or the climate models.

Physics affects my heating bills - but I don't argue for different science of house U factors etc just because it would be nice to have a house that required less heating!

Best wishes, Tom

[tomclarke]

IPCC4 certainly considers PDO as one cause of current perceived warming:
In the Pacific, the long-term warming is clearly evident, but punctuated
by cooler episodes centred in the tropics, and no doubt linked to the
PDO. The prolonged 1939–1942 El Niño shows up as a warm
interval. In the Atlantic, the warming from the 1920s to about
1940 in the NH was focussed on higher latitudes, with the SH
remaining cool. This inter-hemispheric contrast is believed to
be one signature of the THC (Zhang and Delworth, 2005). The
subsequent relative cooling in the NH extratropics and the more
recent intense warming in NH mid-latitudes was predominantly
a multi-decadal variation of SST; only in the last decade is an
overall warming signal clearly emerging. Therefore, the recent
strong warming appears to be related in part to the AMO in
addition to a global warming signal (Section 3.6.6). The cooling
in the northwestern North Atlantic just south of Greenland,
reported in the SAR, has now been replaced by strong warming

It is I agree political spin that recent US/UK warming is all due to GW - there are other effects and the climatologists do not claim it. In any case regional warming is not the problem.

[MSimon]

Where does the quoted idea that GW models have pushed H2O amplification up to 3-4 come from?

From the IPCC.

http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2 ... ne-is.html

We can observe a couple of things. First, the IPCC’s estimate of the amount of warming due to CO2 directly via the greenhouse gas effect has actually been going down over time. (Note that there are those, like Richard Lindzen, who suggest these numbers are still three times too high given that we have not observed a difference in surface and lower troposphere warming that greenhouse gas theory seems to predict).

Second, you will see that the IPCC’s overall forecasts of climate sensitivity have been going up only because their estimates of positive feedback effects have gone way up. The IPCC assumes that feedback effects multiply warming from CO2 by three. And note that the IPCC’s forecasts of feedback effects trail those of folks like James Hansen and Al Gore.

So how confident are we in these feedback effects? Well, it turns out we are not even sure of the sign! As Monckton writes:

The feedback factor f accounts for at least two-thirds of all radiative forcing in IPCC (2007); yet it is not expressly quantified, and no “Level Of Scientific Understanding” is assigned either to f or to the two variables b and κ upon which it is dependent….

Indeed, in IPCC (2007) the stated values for the feedbacks that account for more than two-thirds of humankind’s imagined effect on global temperatures are taken from a single paper. The value of the coefficient z in the CO2 forcing equation likewise depends on only one paper. The implicit value of the crucial parameter κ depends upon only two papers, one of which had been written by a lead author of the chapter in question, and neither of which provides any theoretical or empirical justification for the IPCC’s chosen value. The notion that the IPCC has drawn on thousands of published, peer-reviewed papers to support its central estimates for the variables from which climate sensitivity is calculated is not supported by the evidence.

[MSimon]

You know maybe we are doing the wrong thing. If water vapor is such a hazard perhaps that is what we should be controlling.

Burning Methane has to be the worst thing we can do. It not only increases CO2 in the atmosphere it increases the amount of water vapor.

We need to tax all those steaming cups of coffee into unaffordability. Burning coal is safer. Coal powered cars!!!!!!!

[MSimon]

IPCC4 certainly considers PDO as one cause of current perceived warming:
In the Pacific, the long-term warming is clearly evident, but punctuated
by cooler episodes centred in the tropics, and no doubt linked to the
PDO. The prolonged 1939–1942 El Niño shows up as a warm
interval. In the Atlantic, the warming from the 1920s to about
1940 in the NH was focussed on higher latitudes, with the SH
remaining cool. This inter-hemispheric contrast is believed to
be one signature of the THC (Zhang and Delworth, 2005). The
subsequent relative cooling in the NH extratropics and the more
recent intense warming in NH mid-latitudes was predominantly
a multi-decadal variation of SST; only in the last decade is an
overall warming signal clearly emerging. Therefore, the recent
strong warming appears to be related in part to the AMO in
addition to a global warming signal (Section 3.6.6). The cooling
in the northwestern North Atlantic just south of Greenland,
reported in the SAR, has now been replaced by strong warming

It is I agree political spin that recent US/UK warming is all due to GW - there are other effects and the climatologists do not claim it. In any case regional warming is not the problem.

So where are the numbers Tom? Why aren't the various ocean thermal oscillations subtracted out?

[MSimon]

Tom,

The science is politicized in a very simple way: control of which studies and experiments gets funded.

[tomclarke]

I think the PDO has much less effect on global temperatures than on NH US/Europe temperatures. And there are a whole load of effects of different timescales that could be subtracted so why just this one.

I agree there is politics in the IPCC report. But not that the scientists will do other than follow the science and make the best predictions possible. the models considered (lots of them) made widely varying predictions about future temps and about CO2 sensitivity. As more data becomes available and more accurate modekls run, so the ensemble will change. if youa re right the models will move towards the unworrying end. But I don't count on it!

Also I think the IPCC report is pretty fair, except maybe some of the uncertainties are glossed over in the summary n order to present a politician-friendly overall summary. I don't think the science is consistently biassed. Whereas I am quite sure that most of the anti-GW arguments are highly politically biassed and the work is done with an a-priori aim of disproving AGW.

I would not preclude some pro-GW scientists being bad, some being prejudiced - just as in any other field.