Friday, August 16, 2013

IPCC doubles down: 95% sure on AGW while unable to explain why there has been no warming over past 16 years



According to Reuters, the new draft of the IPCC AR5 claims "it is at least 95 percent likely that human activities - chiefly the burning of fossil fuels - are the main cause of warming since the 1950s." "That is up from at least 90 percent in the last report in 2007, 66 percent in 2001, and just over 50 in 1995." However, all of these fatuous figures are pulled out of the air to support the IPCC ideologies and not based upon any statistical analysis or science. Meanwhile, they can't explain why there has been no global warming over the past 16+ years:
"An IPCC draft says there is "medium confidence" that the slowing of the rise is "due in roughly equal measure" to natural variations in the weather and to other factors affecting energy reaching the Earth's surface. 
Scientists believe causes could include: greater-than-expected quantities of ash from volcanoes, which dims sunlight [there haven't been any recent major eruptions]; a decline in heat from the sun during a current 11-year solar cycle [after claiming in past that such variations could not affect climate]; more heat being absorbed by the deep oceans [why wasn't it absorbed at the same rate in the past?]; or the possibility that the climate may be less sensitive than expected to a build-up of carbon dioxide [now we're talking!]
"It might be down to minor contributions that all add up," said Gabriele Hegerl, a professor at Edinburgh University. Or maybe, scientists say, the latest decade is just a blip."

Experts surer of manmade global warming but local predictions elusive

Source: Reuters - Fri, 16 Aug 2013 01:43 PM
Author: Reuters
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* At least 95 pct likely man causing warming - draft study
* Harder than expected to predict near-term local impacts
* Temperatures risk breaching U.N. ceiling, despite slowdown
By Environment Correspondent Alister Doyle
OSLO, Aug 16 (Reuters) - Climate scientists are surer than ever that human activity is causing global warming, according to leaked drafts of a major U.N. report, but they are finding it harder than expected to predict the impact in specific regions in coming decades.
The uncertainty is frustrating for government planners: the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the main guide for states weighing multi-billion-dollar shifts to renewable energy from fossil fuels, for coastal regions considering extra sea defences or crop breeders developing heat-resistant strains.
Drafts seen by Reuters of the study by the U.N. panel of experts, due to be published next month, say it is at least 95 percent likely that human activities - chiefly the burning of fossil fuels - are the main cause of warming since the 1950s.
That is up from at least 90 percent in the last report in 2007, 66 percent in 2001, and just over 50 in 1995, steadily squeezing out the arguments by a small minority of scientists that natural variations in the climate might be to blame.
That shifts the debate onto the extent of temperature rises and the likely impacts, from manageable to catastrophic. Governments have agreed to work out an international deal by the end of 2015 to rein in rising emissions.
"We have got quite a bit more certain that climate change ... is largely manmade," said Reto Knutti, a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. "We're less certain than many would hope about the local impacts."
And gauging how warming would affect nature, from crops to fish stocks, was also proving hard since it goes far beyond physics. "You can't write an equation for a tree," he said.
The IPCC report, the first of three to be released in 2013 and 2014, will face intense scrutiny, particularly after the panel admitted a mistake in the 2007 study which wrongly predicted that all Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035. Experts say the error far overestimated the melt and might have been based on a misreading of 2350.
The new study will state with greater confidence than in 2007 that rising manmade greenhouse gas emissions have already meant more heatwaves. But it is likely to play down some tentative findings from 2007, such as that human activities have contributed to more droughts.
Almost 200 governments have agreed to try to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, seen as a threshold for dangerous changes including more droughts, extinctions, floods and rising seas that could swamp coastal regions and entire island nations.
The report will flag a high risk that global temperatures will increase this century by more than that level, and will say that evidence of rising sea levels is now "unequivocal".
For all that, scientists say it is proving harder to pinpoint local impacts in coming decades in a way that would help planners.
Drew Shindell, a NASA climate scientist, said the relative lack of progress in regional predictions was the main disappointment of climate science since 2007.
"I talk to people in regional power planning. They ask: 'What's the temperature going to be in this region in the next 20-30 years, because that's where our power grid is?'" he said.
"We can't really tell. It's a shame," said Shindell. Like the other scientists interviewed, he was speaking about climate science in general since the last IPCC report, not about the details of the latest drafts.
WARMING SLOWING
The panel will try to explain why global temperatures, while still increasing, have risen more slowly since about 1998 even though greenhouse gas concentrations have hit repeated record highs in that time, led by industrial emissions by China and other emerging nations.
An IPCC draft says there is "medium confidence" that the slowing of the rise is "due in roughly equal measure" to natural variations in the weather and to other factors affecting energy reaching the Earth's surface.
Scientists believe causes could include: greater-than-expected quantities of ash from volcanoes, which dims sunlight; a decline in heat from the sun during a current 11-year solar cycle; more heat being absorbed by the deep oceans; or the possibility that the climate may be less sensitive than expected to a build-up of carbon dioxide.
"It might be down to minor contributions that all add up," said Gabriele Hegerl, a professor at Edinburgh University. Or maybe, scientists say, the latest decade is just a blip.
The main scenarios in the draft, using more complex computer models than in 2007 and taking account of more factors, show that temperatures could rise anywhere from a fraction of 1 degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) to almost 5C (9F) this century, a wider range at both ends than in 2007.
The low end, however, is because the IPCC has added what diplomats say is an improbable scenario for radical government action - not considered in 2007 - that would require cuts in global greenhouse gases to zero by about 2070.
Temperatures have already risen by 0.8C (1.4F) since the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century.
Experts say that the big advance in the report, due for a final edit by governments and scientists in Stockholm from Sept. 23-26, is simply greater confidence about the science of global warming, rather than revolutionary new findings.
SEA LEVELS
"Overall our understanding has strengthened," said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor at Princeton University, pointing to areas including sea level rise.
An IPCC draft projects seas will rise by between 29 and 82 cm (11.4 to 32.3 inches) by the late 21st century - above the estimates of 18 to 59 cm in the last report, which did not fully account for changes in Antarctica and Greenland.
The report slightly tones down past tentative findings that more intense tropical cyclone are linked to human activities. Warmer air can contain more moisture, however, making downpours more likely in future.
"There is widespread agreement among hurricane scientists that rainfall associated with hurricanes will increase noticeably with global warming," said Kerry Emanuel, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"But measuring rainfall is very tricky," he said. (Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

18 comments:

  1. I'm 100% sure the IPCC is lying

    https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/08/16/im-100-sure-that-the-ipcc-is-lying/

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  2. Thanks Dan that reminds me I need to repost your work

    Best regards

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  3. "Scientists believe causes could include..."

    Wait a minute.
    Wasn't anthropogenic CO2 the MAIN driver of 'global warming' aka 'climate change'?
    I have been branded a heretic whenever I pointed towards natural causes......

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  4. It's really incredible. Some extra comments of mine about the proposition and the confidence level, and especially about the comparison of the treatment of confidence levels in the IPCC vs in particle physics:

    The Reference Frame: 95% in IPCC vs HEP

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    1. Thanks, I agree with your justifiably harsh critique

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  5. What is funny is their short term predictions - for example, the "five year plan" turned out to be completely false for predicting warming. So now they switch to the "hundred year plan" so that no one involved will be alive to explain the ridicule when it too falls flat.

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  6. I love how a "decline in the heat from the sun" can supposedly explain lack of warming, but the Warmists state that an increase in heat from the sun doesn't explain warming.

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  7. http://sppiblog.org/news/report-indicates-ipcc-ignore-facts-and-failed-predictions-to-claim-better-results

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  8. http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/08/20/leaked-draft-climate-report-struggles-with-drop-in-warming/

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  9. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/20/when-somebody-hits-you-with-that-new-ipcc-is-95-certain-talking-point-show-them-this/

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  10. Now as I enter the twilight of my life, it amazes me how there have always been those that cry that man has destroyed the environment, it was, is now, and always will be "too late" to stop the havoc that evil (i.e. capitalist) people cause the planet.

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  11. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2398753/Why-HAS-global-warming-slowed-Scientists-admit-dont-know-why.html#ixzz2cbnplsZi

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  12. UN Scientists Who Have Turned on the UN IPCC & Man-Made Climate Fears — A Climate Depot Flashback Report

    http://www.climatedepot.com/2013/08/21/un-scientists-who-have-turned-on-unipcc-man-made-climate-fears-a-climate-depot-flashback-report/

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  13. Are you people pretending that the warming from CO2 (some in the pipeline because of the length of time it takes to warm most of the oceans since they do not receive direct sunlight energy) would today be strong enough to overcome natural variation mostly due to the high-energy capacity oceans mixing? Of course temps go up and down, but look at the multi-decade and centennial patters in the 1700s 1800s and then 1900-1950 and 1950-2000 and see how those shifts upward match the CO2 levels in the air (eg, see keelingcurve.ucsd.edu and the BEST temperature climate graphs).

    The current models (especially the ocean mix components) might be off some, but it is *expected* that temps will leave the 95% confidence range 5% of the time even if the models are perfect (and we know they are not perfect), so why are people shocked when this prediction is met? It's supposed to be met! We are supposed to see decade-long or more negligible gains and drops every so many years. That is predicted by the models. See the up-down escalator at skepticalscience. We are not getting rid of natural selection. The IPCC values are average of many computer runs, so half the time temps will be above and half the time below average. Walking these models back decades shows that pattern.

    BTW, there is no global WMP at any year/decade people can precisely pick. The wide range of proxy values for any year you pick shows why the averages lie near zero.. leading to the hockey stick effect and explaining why red noise behaves similarly to these up and down temps from the past 1000 years (excluding the last century). Oh, and CO2 can both lead and lag temperature rises. I don't know why someone pretended otherwise. Never before mankind have fossil fuels likely been burned in significant amounts, of course, so the leads would not be seen too much. Anyway, I hope one day to see a credible skeptics formula/program that comes anywhere in the ball part of the job current models do in predicting historic temperatures. I know Spencer tried his hand at it and came up with an exponential formula (!) which predicted trillions of degree difference when the formula was walked back just 1000 years, never mind 100 million years. That is sloppy science, but keep believing!!!

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    1. "Anyway, I hope one day to see a credible skeptics formula/program that comes anywhere in the ball part of the job current models do in predicting historic temperatures."

      Uh, here's several that outperform the IPCC models and achieve far better correlation than CO2 to temperature:

      http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/01/climate-modeling-ocean-oscillations.html

      http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/08/simple-climate-model-outperforms-ipcc.html

      http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/04/new-paper-shows-how-natural-ocean.html

      http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/05/new-paper-finds-remarkable-correlation.html

      http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/06/paper-finds-50-of-warming-over-past-30.html

      and many others.

      CO2 does not cointegrate with temperature and therefore is not the cause of temperature

      http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2012/11/new-paper-finds-data-do-not-support.html

      Temperature leads CO2 on all timescales, short, medium, and long

      http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/search?q=humlum

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    2. I looked at the first link and the associated paper by Gray.

      On the webpage, I saw no physics based model nor a model that can predict the future. I only saw an effort at correlation that uses 3 data sets (not 1, btw, since CO2 is just 1) and requires hindsight to calculate so cannot be applied to the future. Hindsight is 20/20.

      CO2 has gone up basically in one direction. This adds a steady contribution to the natural variability. We can see this effect to be very slight in the 1700s, small in the 1800s, and noticeable in the 1900s. The climate models can be applied way back in time to match prehistoric temp ranges, and they do a decent job bounding temps 95% of the time from 1970s forward (where we have very precise temps).

      As concerns correlation, the changes in any given year for CO2 have a weak effect on temp during a small time interval. Air temp variability (oscillation) is largely dominated by the oceans and can be seen in the PDO, etc. These more closely match the ups and downs of the air temp (natural variability) so will have a much higher correlation than will the yearly steady rising CO2.

      However, when it comes to guessing steady state or the future, CO2 defines the region around which natural variability will oscillate, and this can be calculated without worrying about the ups and downs of natural variability. We need focus on the energy added to the system and this is largely defined by a near constant sun irradiance and steadily rising CO2. Lots of math has been done to support this.

      Gray dismissed climate science results going back decades and provided his own assertion without any of the extensive mathematics that is required or referencing papers that would do so on his behalf. He simply believes: lots of H2O in the lower layers is not that important because slightly dropping H2O in the upper layers is more important and so CO2 will have small effect. He never calculated anything to substantiate the belief nor attempted to disprove those who have done the calculations using different techniques. He makes assumptions about current models and judges them based on current measurements (like slightly dropping h2o in upper troposphere) without realizing that the models are primarily focused on future "average state" and not as much on short-term transients. And to perhaps avoid having to show much math, he simply argues that climate models can't be all that accurate because of numerical integration (quantized computation) errors that add up on each iteration. Of course, he did no analysis of this hunch. In particular, keeping in mind the "average state" goals, he seems to have missed the same point being missed here that while the average of the models can be off on the precise weaving and bobbing of the temp (ie, it is impossible at this time to predict the weather more than some days out), climate science primarily concerns itself with long term impact changes, eg, such as that temps will be oscillating several degrees higher in 100 years.

      We are a ways off from predicting precisely on local areas with precision, but we can make strong statements about average temps. Anyone disagreeing has to come up with a physical model that makes predictions on the future and then mathematically show how it beats the current models in some way. Merely correlating data points after the fact is itself useless to making meaningful statements about 2100.

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  14. Dr Judith Curry:

    JC comment: there is an implicit expectation that the IPCC’s confidence level will increase with each assessment report. Hence the ‘leaked’ 95% confidence level for attribution from the forthcoming AR5 report, in spite of reduced accuracy of the climate models relative to the last 15+ years of observations and apparent lowering of the climate sensitivity bound to 1.5C.

    http://judithcurry.com/2013/08/26/i-know-im-right/

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  15. http://www.trendingcentral.com/the-upcoming-ipcc-report-mann-made-cluelessness/

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