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The Bore Hole

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2040 Responses to "The Bore Hole"

  1. This report looks compelling. It will take some time to follow all the references and attempt to understand the exact processes before I can make any defensible comment.

    In the mean time I would like to ask 3 things:

    1. What is your team’s estimated average temperature for 2013?
    2. What is your team’s confidence in this estimate (+/- x%)?
    3. When will your team have actual instrument measurements and raw data available for 2013 to see if the estimate and confidence agree?

  2. I would of though ocean heat content / sea level would be a far more robust metric to gauge global change, particularly if modern values are stitched on the end.

    What is shown here grossly over the top IMO. For example, how does today’s sea level compare with 5000 BP, given that the temperature is supposed to be around the same as today (according to the graph).

    Where is the relationship which clearly describes the time lag between sea level rise and temp over the last 13,000 yrs? Without this evidence its just hand waving..

  3. When the adjustments and homogenization to the surface station temperatures build in half the reported “warming trend” (effectively lowering values of past data), and when the newer data do not show a warming trend, how can you be so completely certain that a CO2-induced warming trend exists?

    When the number of large hurricanes and large tornadoes in the U.S. (statistics that were reasonably good even when there were no satellites and when population was lower and/or less developed in various regions–so don’t require development of special indices that attempt to estimate the number of tornadoes/hurricanes that were not counted) has decreased over the past 50 years, how can you state with such utter certainty that hurricane and tornado intensity are increasing?

    When there are alternative explanations for arctic ice melt (historical writings that suggest natural periods of very rapid decline, ever-increasing levels of soot that can cause and accelerate melting), how can you be so certain that the cause is CO2-induced?

    Why is your certainty so high that you call people who are skeptical “deniers”?

  4. Ok. I’ve got it now.
    There is no mismatch, the models are just fine.

    I wonder why Gavin took the trouble to write this post.

    Gavin should apologize for rising doubts and giving fodder to the denialists.

  5. 111
    Kevin McKinney says:
    18 Sep 2013 at 7:47 AM

    “We’ve seen about .8 C warming so far, and there is robust data showing weather responding to that small change in ways that are already quite expensive in blood and treasure”

    “My personal informal estimate is that extreme weather events over the last decade which at least are more probable under future regimes have cost in excess of 100,000 lives and $100 billion US”

    Why do you think the human race would do better if we reverted to the temperatures of the little ice age?
    Is that what you would like to see?

    The human race seems to be doing very well with the current warmer temperatures, agricultural output at an all time high etc etc.

    Also a lot of the talk and concern about ‘Extreme’ weather events has arisen during this century. It seems the more temperatures do not follow predictions. the more this is raised.

    As there has been no increase at all in global temperatures this century, what mechanism precisely is driving this purported effect?

    Alan

  7. MARodger (17Sep 2013 at 6:33AM) @ 22 writes

    If C02 is considered as that driver (not a ridiculous idea in principle, although it is more complicated than that as intimated @19) how much forcing and thus how much temperature rise could we expect from our CO2 emissions by, say, 1900 or 1940?

    On the back of a fag packet. From the graph presented by Scripps Institute CO2 measured from ice cores had risen 20ppm by 1900 or 16% of the CO2 rise to date. By 1940 35ppm = 30%. The forcing per ppm is greater at lower CO2 levels and the slower rate of CO2 rise would mean more of the forcing was potentially balanced by temperature rise. But, ignoring that, a simple pro rata rise per ppm yields +0.13C (1900) +0.24C (1940).

    There seems to be some inconsistency here. According to CDIAC data ( http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_glob.html ) TOTAL carbon emissions from 1750 were as follows

    1750-1900 12 GtC
    1750-1940 48 GtC

    Currently, Carbon emissions are 8-9 GtC per YEAR. The net effect of this is an increase in CO2 of around 2ppm in the atmosphere which implies (even if all emissions remained resident) that the increase above pre-industrial levels up to 1900 was no more than 3ppm and was just 12ppm up to 1940. If CO2 levels increased by more than this then it must be due to reasons other than human activity.

    Using the Myhre et al formula to estimate CO2 forcing we have

    1900 0.06 w/m2
    1940 0.22 w/m2
    2012 1.67 w/m2

    So, if CO2 were totally responsible for the temperature rise since, say 1900, the increase between 1940 and 2012 should be about 7 times the temperature increase between 1900 and 1940.

  8. The population bomb fear is a myth. It has been a myth for two hundred years. It ranks with Peak and Limits2 for fundamentally flawed. The population growth of the 20th century – interrupted by pandemics, global wars, and multiple challenges – produced the greatest life expectations for the greatest number of humans in all history. It will continue to do so. The danger isn’t the number of humans; the danger is what the number of humans do.

  9. #235 Susan Anderson

    “If it weren’t important to get all sorts of people unable to appreciate scientific rigor, I’d just let it go.”

    Er, why exactly is it important to get all sorts of people unable to appreciate scientific rigor?

  10. Marcott et al is a great study for showing how temperatures varied over the past 11,000 years. However, the original paper states that its uptick at the end, dated 1950 is ” not robust” – and shoukd not therefore have been plotted. The arguments in this post for concluding rates of change as observed in the 20th C were ‘unlikely’ to have ocurred previously are weak, unscientific and come across as seeming just convenient.

  11. Very entertaining. Why have the alarmists swapped from the traditional method of measuring temperature (degrees C) to Joules?

    The answer is explained in this article written by a climate scientist:-
    http://www.livescience.com/28248-deep-ocean-warming.html

    The ocean is heating myth is based on measurements taken in the 1980s and 90s by ships dangling thermometers at the end of a cable in to ocean abysses, and then repeating the exercise in the 2000s. What did they find. Well in the Southern (Antarctic) Ocean, a warming of 0.03C per decade and in other ocean abysses, a warming of 0.003C per decade. Clearly, this miniscule warming is well within the margins of error. However, if you convert miniscule warming from degrees C to Joules, extrapolate for the entire ocean and scale things, you get a much more alarming picture.

    Still waiting for explanation of:-

    1. Why the ocean decided to absorb heat from 1998
    2. Why it is expected that this miniscule heat speculated as being distributed across the entire ocean volume, would suddenly give up it’s heat, thereby reappearing in the global surface record.

    Your graph of ENSO events is also highly misleading. ENSO events aren’t measured in years as well you know. The last La Nina ended 15 months ago, yet we’ve had a recovery in global sea ice area and no increase in surface warming.

    http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml

    The wheels have come off the AGW wagon, which is why the media are now on your case

  12. Well if the meme is now that mans contribution to the greenhouse effect is that we are now and will in the future, cause increased energy input into the oceans which is being distributed there rather than immediately coming out to heat the troposphere, why should we be concerned?

    Given the total energy content of the oceans, the result could only ever be minimal overall warming of that part of the ocean that exchanges energy with the troposphere.

    Energy enters the ocean in a highly organised form and becomes disorganised as it is distributed. The Laws of Thermodynamics mean that this energy cannot just reorganise itself and emerge in concentrated pulses. It seems to me that once distributed it is going to take centuries to re-emerge and that cannot be a problem for the troposphere and man.

    Are we to expect that from now that this situation is to continue? What would cause this process to change in the future? Indeed what caused the energy to be absorbed in the first place, rather than exchanging quickly with the troposphere?

    This fast exchange is what was caused the prediction of rapid warming of the troposphere this century after all.

  13. “only source of heat”?

    Thermal vents, undersea volcanoes, the “millions of degrees” that Al Gore says exists 2 kilometers down?

  16. They are finally admitting that they were wrong. It’s now well known this phenomena is related to the sun, and if you look at the correlation between sun spot activity and temperature on the planets orbiting it you will see a very convincing connection. Whereas that’s not the case for temperature and CO2. So why are we paying so much for ‘carbon tax’?

  17. by what stretch of the imagination do the warmers on planet earth profess to us all to have such noble wisdom as if the temperature meter has replaced the alchemist’s magic staff of old ? you are not with the information nor will it be easily attained for earth core mantle data or internal mechanics of the sun to know when the sun itself is more intense and creating a warmer earth. you see the evidence of warming and ignore the source of it — all for money and grants. Have you no shame earth warmers ?

  18. Thankfully this will be the last IPCC report. The errors in the report, when it is released later, will ensure that the process becomes so discredited that the IPCC will be disbanded.

  19. I am wondering what the right winger response will be.

    I think the IPCC has lost the plot, refusing to accept that the current models don’t come close to the actual temperature rises. Our models suck, and until we fix them all the policy responses predicated on them are useless.

    That’s a left-winger response, as I’ve voted Labour all my life.

    I suspect by “right winger” you mean “people that disagree with me”. Please don’t confuse the two. Not every person who thinks the IPCC report is rubbish is a right winger. Not every right winger thinks the IPCC report is useless.

  20. Ever increasing human CO2 emissions have resulted in over 15 years of no warming. The models have proven unreliable. However, the situation is more urgent and climate “scientists” are more sure now than they were 6 years ago?

    This is what I see reading between the lines, “We better hope we see some real warming soon or the jig is up”.

  21. I’m curious to see whether climate change will now be taken sufficiently seriously that those climate scientists who still refuse to make their weather data, climate data and climate models freely available (such as the UK Met Office and Meteo France, but also many others) will now do something for the planet, and make that data freely available. That would be a huge step forward for the many people who are trying to understand and adapt to climate variability and change. Come on guys, no more excuses, it’s time to do the right thing.

  22. 1. There is clearly cause for concern. The really worrisome stuff for me are the large warming scenarios, 3 and 4 ° C and beyond. I don’t know what level of probability to assign to them. Even at low probabilities, they change the math a lot, the economic math.

    2. I’m puzzled by the tone of this post, the partisanship, the smearing of skeptics, the ascribing of nefarious motives to those who disagree. It’s completely superfluous, and strange for a science blog. I wish you guys would let the science speak for itself instead of constantly going political and attacking skeptics in advance. Scientists should never be in the business of taking such a hard line against dissent — it will increase our error rate. Even with a 95% confidence level — or perhaps because of it — I want to see skeptics, ecologically.

    There are controversies around science where the truth is known to a far greater degree of certainty than AGW. For example, vaccines and autism — there’s zero evidence for a general link. Climate science is not there yet, not nearly as simple as running some large-scale biomedical studies. 95% is pretty far along, but I’d want to be at 99.x% before I started treating skeptics like loons.

    3. Related to the above, warming doesn’t logically imply a policy response. At all. It’s a non-sequitur to say “it’s happening, therefore we must act.” Acting is very, very expensive, and potentially harmful. There’s a cost in mitigating. There’s a cost in not mitigating. There are competing views and analyses about the comparative costs. There are competing philosophies of justice and rights, and what exactly we owe future generations or people who live on coasts. It’s definitely not a self-evident thing, or a thing where all rational minds must reach the same conclusion. This is certainly not a domain for climate scientists, beyond offering the climate science. This is economics and philosophy, and a lot of “skepticism” is probably grounded in those things.

  23. “von Storch’s contention is highly problematic because he doesn’t bother to even give enough data that his study could be replicated”
    Following in the hallowed footsteps of plenty of climatolgists eh Ray?
    Interesting that my pointing out that emmissions at Scenario A levels have resulted in temps at Scenario C levels gets snipped.

  24. There is a subtle difference between the SPM for AR4 and AR5.

    AR4: Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.

    AR5: 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.

    Is this an implicit acceptance that up to half of observed temperature rise since 1951 is (could be) due to natural processes ? The last 6 years show several best estimates of ECS nudging down from 3C towards 2C.

  25. What discrepancy between observations and models?

    LOL. You are the true deniers.

  26. Sea level rise of 98cm with 17% probability of greater
    Seriously, this assessment is no longer science. Is everyone buying that assessment
    Is there any independent thought

  27. Hello,

    I wanted to query you about your statement “Antarctic sea Ice has been losing Mass”

    In 4.2.3.7 of the final draft we find “There are still inadequate data to make any assessment of changes to Antarctic sea ice thickness and
    volume”

    Also earlier in the Cryosphere section it is stated quite clearly that Antarctic sea ice extent is slowly increasing.

    Could you point me to the evidence from ar5 that backs up your claim?

  28. There was a fairly steep, persistent decline in temps for 10 years. How do the models align with that?

  30. prokaryotes, ” Thanks Victor for the overview, but please don’t hyperlink to WUWT, part of this is the reason why WUWT is listed on many climate related search queries at Google. Use a link shortener instead. The misjudgement and the debunked claims from WUWT should be used to derank WUWT at Google.”

    Why are you so afraid. If WUWT was a book, would you have us burn it?

  31. JesusR,
    I was on the opposite side of your argument, and often branded a “denier,” for believing so. The so-called nuances have turned out to be larger than that, and have resulted in a lowering of future estimates. It does not change the overall message, but it does temper those who claimed that the climate was accelerating or spiralling out of control. Much of that was based on the short-term trends since the start of the satellite era. Ironically, they have been tempered by the short-term trend following the turn of the century. Consequently, many scientists have gone back to looking at the long term, and acknowledging several other factors or “nuance”s that can significantly affect the climate in the short term. Misreading these short-term variations as shifts in the long-term trend has led to wild and erroneous future predictions.

  32. You remaining believers don’t know that it was a “maybe”consensus, a consensus of nothing!
    It’s sickening watching you climate blame believers rationalize a 30 year old “maybe” consensus to a CO2 death wish for our children and billions of other helpless children. Why did you goose stepping believers work so hard and be so determined to believe in this misery anyways?
    Science has NEVER said a crisis was anything beyond a “could be” climate crisis and in 30 years science has NEVER said or agreed it WILL be a crisis so why are YOU saying it will be when science has not?
    Science didn’t commit a hoax; YOU remaining believers did!
    WANTING this misery to have been real at the individual’s level was the real crime.
    *Canada killed Y2Kyoto with a freely elected climate change denying prime minister and nobody cared, especially the millions of scientists warning us of unstoppable warming (a comet hit).
    *Occupywallstreet now does not even mention CO2 in its list of demands because of the bank-funded and corporate run carbon trading stock markets ruled by politicians.
    *Not one single IPCC warning says anything beyond “could be” and not one warning says; “inevitable” or “eventual”.
    *Not one single IPCC warning isn’t swimming “maybes”.

  34. Magma,
    Yes, the Mauritsen figure shows the influence of starting conditions, similar to the Curry blog. The issue is model tuning, and emphasis the different visual effects of matching the models with different starting points. Compare these two graphs

    http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/10/1/1380599335494/ProjvsObs450.jpg

    http://skepticalscience.com//pics/DvDFmodel-data.png

    The starting point, or baseline, yields two rather different perspectives on the same data.

  36. I earlier asked how serious 0.065 degrees of ocean warming over 45 years was in the greater scheme of things.
    My comment seems to have disappeared, but there are nevertheless three replies to it. All however are non-responsive to the actual question.

  37. Oh,looking at the effects not causes of an assumed to be real crisis? You fear mongers are sickening.

  38. Let me guess.They’ve endured extreme cold and hardship to make a film saying the arctic has recovered and all appears normal.

  39. Fred Magyar, no where in the world has the pH dropped almost a half of log. You should stop the alarmism and kill a few starfish.

  40. The NSF is a fascist enterprise according to Chicago Economist Bill Parker.

    “To understand why the whole bizarre business continues to thrive, follow the money. It will lead you straight to the treasuries of state and federal governments, where academia constitutes an important player in the fascistic enterprise coordinated by politicians in office and their appointed bureaucrats at agencies such as the National Science Foundation.” – Bill Parker – The Independent Institute.

    http://blog.independent.org/2013/10/08/thinking-is-research-too/

    Know the enemy.

  42. Why should sea level not be correlated with atmospheric temperatures?

    We’ve had a 17 year period of no rises in one, but the claims are for a rise in levels?

  43. Climate blame was a lazy copy and paste news editors dream come true and has done to journalism what those naughty naughty priests did for religion and 30 years of this needless CO2 panic will be judged in history as a war crime with you clowns in the watch towers. Nice work girls.
    Not once in 30 years of CO2 “research” did any of you story passers ever mention the undeniable fact that science only agreed it could be a crisis and never said it will be. A consensus of nothing is a consensus of “maybe”. Thanks for nothing.

  44. Oh what a tangled web we weave, Gavin, when we attempt to justify an increase in the IPCC confidence that recent global warming has been driven by increasing CO2 concentrations.
    It was so much easier 10 years ago when you could dismiss a comment on the divergence between the Hanson projections and the actual temperatures with an airy “we are proceeding steadily up the “B” line”.
    Or when the suggestion that there has been a step change in temperature trends around the turn of the century could be dismissed as “nonsense”.
    How can the comparison of model projections since 1983 with the HadCrut4 surface and UAH lower troposphere temperatures (See Roy Spencer’s chart) be anything other than “failure on an epic scale”?
    I noticed that Nate Silver in “The Signal and the Noise” looked at the issue. He comments that “if temperature changes are purely random and unpredictable, the chance of a cooling decade would be 50%, since an increase and a decrease in temperatures are equally likely”.
    This suggests a good method of testing for trends without the problem of start-points, non-linearity, and temperature persistence. But where could we find enough decades to test the idea? The Central England Temperature record covers 34 decades, from the end of the first decade in 1679.
    The results are illuminating, at least from my sceptical point-of-view.
    The first 22 decades, to 1889, show 10 warming and 12 cooling decades, randomly scattered, with negligible overall change.
    The next 6 decades to 1949 are all warming as temperatures climb out of the Little Ice Age, from about 9.1 to 9.6 degrees C.
    For the last 6 decades, to 2009, we are looking for the impact (or non-impact) of exponentially increasing CO2. There are 3 warming decades and 3 cooling decades.
    Now, admittedly, the temperature increases in the last two decades were significantly greater than any previous, taking the decadal averages above 10 degrees for the first time. The average temperature in the decade ending 2009 was 10.4 degrees C – (the millennium step again?)
    My own prediction is that, as temperatures fail to increase over the next five years, attention will turn to Ray Ladbury’s “bite” – the resonant absorption of outgoing radiation by CO2 and H2O in the radiation spectrum viewed from space. (Page 129 of Petty’s Atmospheric Radiation, Hank). If the bite fails to expand significantly, so that the average emission elevation does not rise, the absurd near certainty attributed to this “science” will have to be modified, at best.

  45. This post is a comment on Ray Ladbury’s dismissal of the temperature pause, 157, since it failed to make it into the relevant IPCC report thread.

    Oh what a tangled web we weave, Gavin, when we attempt to justify an increase in the IPCC confidence that recent global warming has been driven by increasing CO2 concentrations.

    It was so much easier 10 years ago when you could dismiss a comment on the divergence between the Hanson projections and the actual temperatures with an airy “we are proceeding steadily up the “B” line”.

    Or when the suggestion that there has been a step change in temperature trends around the turn of the century could be dismissed as “nonsense”.

    How can the comparison of model projections since 1983 with the HadCrut4 surface and UAH lower troposphere temperatures (See Roy Spencer’s chart) be anything other than “failure on an epic scale”?

    I noticed that Nate Silver in “The Signal and the Noise” looked at the issue. He comments that “if temperature changes are purely random and unpredictable, the chance of a cooling decade would be 50%, since an increase and a decrease in temperatures are equally likely”.

    This suggests a good method of testing for trends without the problem of start-points, non-linearity, and temperature persistence. But where could we find enough decades to test the idea? The Central England Temperature record covers 34 decades, from the end of the first decade in 1679.

    The results are illuminating, at least from my sceptical point-of-view.

    The first 22 decades, to 1889, show 10 warming and 12 cooling decades, randomly scattered, with negligible overall change.

    The next 6 decades to 1949 are all warming as temperatures climb out of the Little Ice Age, from about 9.1 to 9.6 degrees C.

    For the last 6 decades, to 2009, we are looking for the impact (or non-impact) of exponentially increasing CO2. There are 3 warming decades and 3 cooling decades.

    Now, admittedly, the temperature increases in the last two decades were significantly greater than any previous, taking the decadal averages above 10 degrees for the first time. The average temperature in the decade ending 2009 was 10.4 degrees C – (the millennium step again?)

    My own prediction is that, as temperatures fail to increase over the next five years, attention will turn to Ray Ladbury’s “bite” – the resonant absorption of outgoing radiation by CO2 and H2O in the radiation spectrum viewed from space. (Page 129 of Petty’s Atmospheric Radiation, Hank). If the bite fails to expand significantly, so that the average emission elevation does not rise, the absurd near certainty attributed to this “science” will have to be modified, at best.

  46. O-o-kay. Let me rephrase the question: what is the most commonly accepted definition of the “C” part of CAGW, if the remaining three letters mean “Anthropogenic Global Warming”?

  47. Ray Ladbury’s (57) view of scientific falsification is interesting. As Einstein said, “thousands of observations may support a theory, it only takes one to disprove it”
    Ray’s approach, supported by some invented probabilities, is different:
    “The significance of the event which the denialists trumpet as their one solid piece of evidence is really only evidence of their delusion”.
    In other words, it is not enough for sceptics to point to contradictory evidence, we must disprove the theory itself.
    The IPCC seem to agree with Ray (or vice versa) because their “confidence” in the validity of AGW theories has increased from 95% % to 97%, despite the failure of the AGW models.
    I noticed that Nate Silver in “The Signal and the Noise” looked at the issue. He comments that “if temperature changes are purely random and unpredictable, the chance of a cooling decade would be 50%, since an increase and a decrease in temperatures are equally likely”.
    This suggests a good method of testing for significant trends without the problem of start-points, non-linearity, and temperature persistence. But where could we find enough decades to test the idea? The Central England Temperature record covers 34 decades, from the end of the first decade in 1679, and it is a god proxy for the Northern Hemisphere temperatures.
    The results are illuminating.
    The first 22 decades, to 1889, show 10 warming and 12 cooling decades, randomly scattered, with negligible overall change.
    The next 6 decades to 1949 are all warming as temperatures climb out of the Little Ice Age, (when the Thames froze) from about 9.1 to 9.6 degrees C.
    For the last 6 decades, to 2009, we are looking for the impact (or non-impact) of exponentially increasing CO2. There are 3 warming decades and 3 cooling decades.
    Now, admittedly, the temperature increases in the last two decades were greater than any previous, taking the decadal averages above 10 degrees for the first time. The average temperature in the decade ending 2009 was 10.4 degrees C. But to attribute that 20 year temperature increase to a CO2 increase which began with the industrial revolution is a stretch, Ray, would you not agree?
    If the global atmospheric CO2 content continues to increase exponentially, as it will, and temperatures remain static, how many reports must pass before the IPCC reduce their confidence in AGW?

  48. The Facts That News Editors Never Mention:
    *The climate change consensus was a 30 year old consensus of “maybe” and NEVER has science agreed or said any crisis WILL happen inevitably.
    *Occupywallstreet does not even mention CO2 in its list of demands because of the bank-funded and corporate run carbon trading stock markets ruled by trustworthy politicians.
    *Not one IPCC warning explains the tropical fossils under both polar caps that prove this climate of today has obviously happened before and is not “new” or “unique”.
    *Not one IPCC warning isn’t drowning in “maybes” and “could bes” and “likelys” and…..
    * The polar bear was indigenous to as far south as Minnesota upon settlement but called the yellow bear because it retained its summer coat longer, but still the same bear.
    *Science gave us the pesticides that they denied for decades as being toxic and made environmentalism necessary in the first place after they apparently poisoned the planet with their evil chemicals.
    *Smog “alerts and advisories and watches” are NOT measurements of smog, just predictions that smog “could” possibly happen within the next 36 hours and most of the great lakes area hasn’t had a smog warning day (actual smog) in close to 10 years now.
    *Canada killed Y2Kyoto with a freely elected climate change denying prime minister and nobody cared, especially the millions of scientists warning us of unstoppable warming (a comet hit).
    *Only lazy copy and paste news editors are saying a crisis will happen as science has never said any crisis will happen, only could.

  50. Let’s see…an insurance company benefits from crying chicken little so they can increase rates for the next twenty years. And they’ve taken part in this study to push the “company” line. Sure, no conflict here folks. Move along…move along…