This is a continuation of a remarkable thread that has now received 10,000 comments running to well over a million words. Unfortunately its size has become a problem and this is the reason for the move.
The history of the New Statesman thread goes back to December 2007 when Dr David Whitehouse wrote a very influential article for that publication posing the question Has Global Warming Stopped? Later, Mark Lynas, the magazine’s environment correspondent, wrote a furious reply, Has Global Warming Really Stopped?
By the time the New Statesman closed the blogs associated with these articles they had received just over 3000 comments, many from people who had become regular contributors to a wide-ranging discussion of the evidence for anthropogenic climate change, its implications for public policy and the economy. At that stage I provided a new home for the discussion at Harmless Sky.
Comments are now closed on the old thread. If you want to refer to comments there then it is easy to do so by left-clicking on the comment number, selecting ‘Copy Link Location’ and then setting up a link in the normal way.
Here’s to the next 10,000 comments.
Useful links:
Dr David Whitehouse’s article can be found here with 1289 comments.
Mark Lynas’ attempted refutation can be found here with 1715 comments.
The original Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs thread is here with 10,000 comments.
PeterM
Here are two superb examples of “chartmanship” at its best (a skill, which the IPCC has mastered).
The first is the actual TAR presentation of Mann’s “hockey stick”, with late 20th century HadCRUT record and model-based fantasy projections “grafted” on.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3556/3820576014_91c891760f_b.jpg
The second is a similar “fantasy” graph, with scary model-based future milestones inserted.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3082/3162846855_2208f9670f_b.jpg
Enjoy!
Max
Gee Max, how long do you figure we’ve got?
Based on the charts, I’m selling everything I own and moving into a hole in the ground on a mountaintop tomorrow.
Another resonable approach from the UN……….
UN: Insects could be the key to meeting food needs of growing global population
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/01/insects-food-emissions
Brute
The UN certainly is a good source of hare-brained scientific information (all taxpayer-funded, of course).
But it is unlikely that replacing beef or chickens with insect mass will reduce the greenhouse gas load of our planet (even if we assume that this were a desirable thing to do).
Humans are estimated to have a combined mass of 300 million tons.
All farm animals are estimated to have 700 million tons.
Insects represent 1,000,000 million tons, so there would be no shortage.
Problem is, they “respire” just like farm animals or humans. Many of them give off methane, as well.
Having lived in China I have seen insects being eaten (“water beetles” = a form of cockroach, are a delicacy), but I stayed strictly vegetarian during my stay there (with occasional side trips to McDonald’s and KFC when I needed some animal protein).
Max
Jul 31, 2010
Arctic Sea Ice Melt This July Slowest On Record – “Death Spiral” Is Dead
July 2010 melt was the slowest July in the last 9 years.
Here are the numbers for the amount of July-melt in million square kilometers:
Year 6/30 to 7/30
2003 2.25
2004 2.08
2005 2.52
2006 2.11
2007 3.00
2008 2.45
2009 2.81
2010 1.85
It was the first time that July failed to reach 2 million sq. km. Now 2010 is on track to reach last year’s low. So far the Arctic has been cold this summer, one of the coldest summers north of 80N on record.
Brute,
I don’t suppose we’ll ever make a scientist out of you! But even so, I’ll point out, yet again, once more, for the umpteenth time, that you should support your graphs and data with references. Like this one:
which was obtained from this source:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
You’re absolutely correct Pete……………I’ve never claimed to, or aspire to be, a scientist.
I’m a doer, not a dreamer………I build and accomplish meaningful things as opposed to wasting other people’s money on dead end pipe dreams or chasing after coeds on college campuses because I’ve never psychologically matured past the age of 22 years………
The Temperature graph above (#1080) is 80N from the Danish Meteorological Institute.
I suppose in your one track mind the institute must have been bought off by “big oil” or “big coal”.
Hey Pete,
Maybe these Peruvian villagers can purchase some wind mills or solar panels from Al “the sez crazed poodle” Gore or Prince Charles to heat themselves…………as opposed to burning the firewood that’s laying on the ground at their feet…………
I’m certain Gore will personally fly down there in his private carbon spewing jet to offer them discount shares of his “carbon offset” trading scam…………they can help realize Gore’s dream of a carbon free planet……
They won’t be any warmer, but at least they’ll feel good about themselves for helping to keep the planet from getting warmer (and lining Gore’s pockets).
Peru declares state of emergency amid plunging temperatures
Hundreds die from extreme cold in remote mountain villages also struggling with severe poverty
(I’ll just bet that this Silvia Noble person is being paid off by “big coal” to say that the temperatures are cold to discredit the global warming scam lobby).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/01/peru-freezing-weather-emergency
Antarctic melting due to global warming; sea levels may rise
Feb 24, 2010
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/02/antarctic-melting-threatens-worldwide-sea-level-rise/1
NASA says Antarctic sea ice increasing at 100,000 sq km per decade
09.01.09
A recent study by NASA finds that sea ice extent in Antarctica – with more than 90% of the world’s ice – has been increasing in recent decades at an astonishing 100,000 square kilometres per decade
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/feature…
Seems you’ve been following a false prophet Pete. CO2 levels have been rising for the past 22 years and Hansen’s predictions were wrong……….even using his doctored temperature data.
Predictions for annual average global surface temperature and observations from June 1988
1. Scenario A: Continued growth rate in emissions at 1.5% / year.
2. Scenario B: Emissions frozen at 1988 rates.
3. Scenario C: Drastic reductions in emissions in 1990.
PeterM and Brute
Neither of the charts you both posted (1080 and 1081) show anything very startling regarding Arctic sea ice.
Since the latest record started in 1979, the end-July extent lost 19.5% over 25+ years to 2007 (0.8% per year average loss) and has regained about a third of this or 7% in the 3 years since then (2.3% per year average gain).
But these swings appear to be nothing unusual.
Studies show that the ice extent had receded to these levels in the 1950s and then grew back to the most recent high levels in the late1970s, (when satellite records started in 1979), before starting the most recent receding cycle, which reached its low point in 2007.
See: Smolyantsky et al. “Arctic climate variability: 60-year cycles and their consequences” presented at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, November 5-7, 2008
ftp://ftp.whoi.edu/pub/users/mtimmermans/ArcticSymposiumTalks/Smolyanitsky.pdf
The study concludes:
The shrinking/growing cycles seem to lag behind multi-decadal warming/cooling cycles in Arctic temperatures, as reported, among others, by Chylek et al.:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2006GL026510.shtml
These reflect similar multi-decadal warming/cooling cycles as observed in the global HadCRUT record.
These data all raise the questions: have we started a new longer-term cycle of Arctic sea ice recovery, similar to the one observed during the 1950s to 1970s and, what are the causes of the earlier observed cyclical changes?
Max
Brute
From your charts, it looks like Hansen is a pretty lousy forecaster (fortunately).
His temperature forecasts were all major exaggerations.
It is interesting that even his lowest forecast “C”, based on “drastic CO2 reductions starting in 1990”, turned out to be higher than the actual temperature, with “business as usual” (rather than “drastic reductions”).
Conclusion: maybe CO2 has nothing to do with temperature?
This is the same guy that is now warning us of “dangerous” levels of CO2 causing “tipping points” that will lead to “irreversible” and “deleterious” changes in our climate, with resulting inundations of coastlines “measured in meters”, “extinctions of species”, etc., etc.
Yawn!
What a bunch of total rubbish!
Max
Brute,
Several points:
* Your graph is quite hard to understand.
* Its too cluttered with monthly data which is quite meaningless.
* It needs to be brought up to date up 2009 or 2010
* I’m not sure what the relevance of a linear trend going back to 1900 is when the graph starts at 1985
* The colours for GISS, Hadcrut and NOAAA are too close. GISS have maximum for 2005 but that’s hard to see on the graph.
The graph shows a levelling of temperatures this century which is a point you have continually made. Whereas Hansen predicted that temperatures would rise more steeply. It would be good if they remain level or indeed start to fall. However, this can be largely explained by the offsetting effect of a very deep solar minimum, which JH could not have foreseen. Its just a one-off effect and we should see another jump in Global temperatures in the next few years as the effect wears off.
But we’ll see. Would anyone else care to make it interesting by backing their argument that the world will cool in the next few years?
The four-volume final report from the Royal Commission on the Victorian bushfires on 7, Feb, 2009, was released last Saturday, and here follow some extracts from the Summary.
the [italics] are mine for abbreviation or adding clarity.
[authorities] …warned that forests and grasslands were the driest they had been since the Ash Wednesday fires in 1983. [when 75 people died, but escape possibilities were better, e.g. via better roads and onto beaches]
The conditions forecast for 7 February were realised, as were people’s worst fears when fires broke out across the state. Temperatures were nearing 40°C by 11.00 am in many parts of the state and later climbed to the mid-40s. Numerous areas endured record-breaking maximums—including Melbourne, which reached 46.4°C. Strong winds in the morning grew to storm force as the day progressed, and a wind [direction] change moved across the state during the afternoon, [widening the fire fronts from the former flanks] greatly intensifying the fires. The Commission was informed that the CFA and DSE attended or patrolled 316 grass, scrub or forest fires on that day. Of these, the Commission examined in detail 15 fires that caused (or had the potential to cause) the greatest damage. The most serious consequence of the fires was the death of 173 people… …It would be a mistake to treat Black Saturday as a ‘one-off’ event. With populations at the rural–urban interface growing and the impact of climate change, the risks associated with bushfire are likely to increase.
…Nine of the 15 fires the Commission examined were started as a direct or indirect result of human activity; five were associated with the failure of electricity assets, and the causes of four were thought to be suspicious. [A person has been charged over the Churchill fire; 11 deaths, and the very worst fire was caused by a power-line blow-down]
Broader data suggest that about one-third of bushfires in Victoria might be lit by people acting with mischievous or criminal intent. Although the proportion of fires that are caused by electricity infrastructure is low—possibly about 1.5 per cent of all ignitions in normal circumstances—on days of extreme fire danger the percentage of fires linked to electrical assets rises dramatically. Thus, electricity-caused fires are most likely to occur when the risk of a fire getting out of control and having deadly consequences is greatest…
Victoria has a long, sometimes devastating, history of fire. The conditions on 7 February gave rise to particularly destructive bushfires. These very intense fires share some features that set them apart from less intense fires. Very dry fuels and strong surface winds resulted in erratic fire behaviour and the development of strong convective activity capable of lifting firebrands such as burning bark high in the convection column. Strong upper air winds transported burning bark downwind for many kilometres, resulting in long-distance fire spotting.
Spotting was an important factor in the spread of some fires. Firebrands carried by the strong winds spread from one ridge top to the next in areas of broken terrain. They were carried across sparse eaten-out pasture or areas where grass was less than fully cured and might otherwise have arrested the fires’ spread.
Although they varied in their size and impacts, the most severe of the 7 February fires the Commission examined shared a number of features:
• Rapid fire spread followed ignition, which responding crews could not contain.
• Fires crowned in forested areas, which made them impossible for ground crews to control.
• Powerful convection columns were generated above the fires.
• Extensive forward spotting occurred as a result of the fuel type, the weather conditions and the topography.
• Late in the day a wind change altered the direction of fire spread and extended the firefront…
…About 7.7 million hectares of public land in Victoria is managed by DSE. This area includes national parks, state forests and reserves, of which a large portion is forested and prone to bushfire. DSE burns only 1.7 per cent (or 130,000 hectares) of this public land each year. This is well below the amount experts and previous inquiries have suggested is needed to reduce bushfire and environmental risks in the long term…
Hansen prophesized in 1988 that drastic reductions in CO2 were required.
These “drastic” reductions weren’t implemented, and the “global temperature” failed to rise to the temperature level that he had predicted if we had.
In other words, the temperature, (using his own falsified temperature datasets), failed to achieve the level that he predicted even if we had wrecked the world economy by “drastically” reducing CO2 emissions.
The guy is a hack……………
You gullibly bought his line of bullshit……..
Brute,
James Hansen was the first predicted in 1989 that temperatures would soon start to rise above levels of natural variability. And as the rapid warming of the late 90’s showed – he was right!
Now he’s being accused of not predicting the very deep solar minimum that occurred in 2009. You’re right he didn’t predict that and neither did anyone else!
I’d just ask the question: if the results are indeed fabricated as you suggest, why they don’t match exactly the predictions made 20 or more years ago?
They obviously aren’t. The next few years will be important. If temperatures start to climb rapidly as solar cycle 24 finally picks up then James Hansen will be proved correct again.
PeterM
What you state (1091) is not exactly correct, Peter.
Hansen did make projections of future temperature back in 1988, but they were exactly those as shown in Brute’s chart. Refer to p.9347 of Hansen et al., “Global Climate Changes as Forecast by Goddard Institute for Space Studies Three-Dimensional Model”, Journal of Geophysical Research, 1988:
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1988/1988_Hansen_etal.pdf
You will see that Hansen’s models predicted three scenarios (as per Brute’s chart), with a cute shaded area showing “Estimated Temperatures During Allithermal and Eonian Times” (for the scary emphasis that the warmth of the next decades would, indeed, be “unusual” – maybe even “unprecedented” – for 120,000 years)! Wow!
Problem is, it didn’t turn out that way (as Brute’s chart showed).
Hansen told us we would with “business as usual” GHG emissions, i.e. continued growth rate in emissions at 1.5% / year (“Scenario A”) see temperatures 1.15C higher in 2009 than the observed 1960-1980 average.
Even with “ Drastic reductions in emissions starting in 1990” (“Scenario C”) we would see 2009 temperature 0.65C higher than the observed 1960-1980 average.
Let’s see what his (fudged, adjusted, corrected and manipulated) GISS record shows us:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
0.00C 1960-1980 observed average of recorded annual anomalies
0.57C 2009 observed temperature anomaly
Oops!
So the observed increase was less than Hansen’s prediction with “drastic reductions in emissions starting in 1990” and much less than his “business as usual” forecast.
I’d call this a lousy prediction, Peter, despite all the nice words you have just written.
Hansen’s forecast was wrong for two basic rfeaons:
· He grossly overestimated the CO2 climate sensitivity
· He failed to properly include the impact of natural forcing factors, fixating myopically on anthropogenic factors alone.
Beside the major errors in Hansen’s prophesy, it is scientifically unsound to compare annual temperatures of today with reconstructed past averages of several thousands of years (as his “shaded area” trick did).
I’d say it was a classical example of a bit of “scaremongering invalidated by the facts”.
Max
Typo correction “Eonian” should be “Eemian”
Sorry
Bob_FJ
Your in-depth analysis of the 2009 Victorian bushfires states:
Far from “white-washing” AGW as the underlying root cause of the fires, this actually points in that direction.
1. “Human activity” could well have resulted from the intense psychological trauma caused by incessant abnormal (or even “unprecedented”) high temperatures (clearly AGW-related).
2. Couldn’t “failure of electricity assets” have had its root cause in fossil-fuel burning (and hence CO2-emitting and AGW-causing) power stations? The link may not be as obvious as in 1. above, but it is there, nevertheless. High atmospheric CO2 levels are known to cause dizziness and even confusion among humans following repeated inhalation – could the power plant operators not have suffered from this symptom?
3. “Suspicious causes” could point to either 1. or 2., so AGW is clearly also a possible root cause.
I’d say your study has provided validation for the premise that AGW was very likely a principal root cause of the 2009 Victoria bush fires.
I am sure PeterM will agree (as would James E. Hansen).
Max
PeterM
In your 1091 you state that Hansen’s temperature predictions were correct, except for “not predicting the very deep solar minimum that occurred in 2009”.
This is the classical “my forecast was right except for…” syndrome pointed out by Nassim Taleb in his book, “The Black Swan”.
It is a classical after-the-fact rationalization of why a prediction has failed.
Max
PeterM
Back to your 1091 statement that Hansen’s temperature predictions were correct, except for “not predicting the very deep solar minimum that occurred in 2009?.
The difference between Hansen’s prediction and the observed fact was 1.15C – 0.57C or 0.58C (almost as much as the total warming we have seen over the entire 20th century!).
Wow! That’s a lot. And this error in Hansen’s prediction can be attributed to “the very deep solar minimum that occurred in 2009??
But wait!
IPCC tells us that the total natural forcing (from the sun) over the 255 years from 1750 to 2005 was only 0.12 W/m^2, which corresponds to warming of only 0.02C. And “the very deep solar minimum that occurred in 2009? is supposed to have caused 29 times this amount of cooling in just one year?
Ouch!
As a scientist, you must admit that this does not sound very “scientific”. Right?
Max
PeterM
As shown earlier (starting with Brute’s post), Hansen has clearly shown his inability to forecast our planet’s climate.
But why was Hansen’s forecast so poor?
His basic problem is that he tries to do this using climate models.
As the interview with Sir Brian Hoskins points out (“Hide the decline” thread), Hoskins has acknowledged that the “models are lousy” in replicating actual conditions or making realistic projections.
The IPCC started trying to predict future climate changes almost 20 years ago. We have their estimates of climate change from 1990, which were calculated using computer models. So we have 19 years of historical data that we can compare with the predictions from the models made before the data was known. Just as with Hansen’s projections, a comparison of the forecasts with the actual temperatures confirms Hoskins’ evaluation that the “models are lousy”
For reasons why many scientists tell us that the climate models cannot make meaningful predictions see:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/june2007/290607ipcc.htm
Models are particularly “lousy” (to quote Hoskins) in their understanding of
· Clouds
· Evaporation rates
· Precipitation
· Changes in atmospheric water vapor content
· Ocean current oscillations (ENSO, PDO, AMO, etc.)
· Solar variations
These are all key elements affecting our climate
But Hoskins is not the only climate scientist coming to this conclusion.
According to Kevin Trenberth (as cited above), “GCMs assume linearity, which works for global forced variations, but cannot work for many aspects of climate, especially those related to water cycle … the science is not done because we do not have reliable or regional predictions of climate.”
For another example, see Koutsoyiannis et al. “Assessment of the reliability of climate predictions based on comparisons with historical time series”
http://www.itia.ntua.gr/en/docinfo/850/
As Roy Spencer concludes:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/07/how-do-climate-models-work/
In addition there is the problem that systemic biases in the construction of the models or in the assumed inputs lead to outputs that favor warming scenarios.
As Roy Spencer puts it:
So it is no wonder that the model predictions made by James Hansen in 1988 failed so miserably to accurately forecast what has actually happened since then.
And it is no wonder that the even longer-range projections made by IPCC to the year 2100 are just as “lousy”.
Max
Pete,
Why are you making excuses for Hansen? Are you on his payroll?
The “father” of the global warming theory was wrong…….his own temperature datasets and his own writings prove it.
You don’t even carry the intellectual honesty to admit that his prophecies failed when the evidence is in front of you and the source of the evidence is the author of the theory himself.
Are you asserting that the world renowned “climatologist” failed to account for solar variability in his theory regarding the planet’s climate?
Seems quite an important factor to omit from a theory discussing planetary climate……… wouldn’t you say?
All I can say Pete is that it’s a good thing that Hansen wasn’t the director of the Apollo missions…………..the astronauts would have only brought enough fuel to make it (less than) halfway to the moon.
And, I stand corrected……Maurice Strong (arguably) is the “father” of global warming………aka ACH……… (Anthropogenic Climate Hysteria)h/t winterkorn……
Hansen is just another useful idiot.
PeterM
Yeah. Brute is right (1098). There is no point defending Hansens’ lousy forecasting ability with rationalizations.
His “scenario A” represents the “business as usual” approach, which actually occurred from 1988 to today.
On this basis Hansen predicted warming with a linear equation of:
y = 0.0403x + 0.31
or a decadal warming rate of 0.403C per decade, with 2009 reaching a temperature of 1.16C, or 0.85C higher than the 1988 value.
The observed anomaly was only 0.57C, or 0.26C higher than the 1988 value.
So his model-based warming forecast was exaggerated by a factor of 3.3!
No wonder the IPCC models come up with such absurd forecasts for year 2100.
Maybe if we cut their warming forecasts by the same 3.3 to 1 factor, we’ll end up with something that could actually be reasonable (but not very alarming).
What do you think, Peter?
Max
Max,
I would say that 0.4dedC per decade is too high a value. The measured Global warming on sea and land has been more like 0.17deg C per decade in the last 40 years. The land has warmed quicker.
So on that basis we can expect temperature to be 1.7 degC warmer at the end of the century than at the beginning.
Add in the 0.8 deg of AGW which we have already seen , which may be a slight underestimate if you take into account the cooling effect of aerosols, and we’ll see temperatures 2.5 deg warmer at the end of the century if C02 levels are double their pre-industrial value by then, as they may well be.
Will that be the end of it? No. Its a bit like putting a small heater into a large aquarium. Changing the energy balance doesn’t produce the final result instantly. That 2.4 degrees will become over three degrees even if CO2 levels stabilise at twice their pre-industrial level.
That’s the IPCC position. That’s the mainstream scientific position. James Hansen warns about about tipping points. His opinions aren’t universally shared and he himself acknowledges the large range of uncertainty. However, they are possible. For example Prof Stephen Hawking, who although he isn’t a climate scientist is not generally known for muddled thinking or “gullibility” and isn’t on Hansen’s payroll either, has been quoted as saying he was worried the Earth:
“might end up like Venus , at 250 degrees centigrade [482 degrees Fahrenheit] and raining sulfuric acid.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13485170/
So there is a risk attached to letting CO2 levels rise beyond all control. Only a fool would say there wasn’t.