This is Hansen et al’s end of year summary for 2009 (with a couple of minor edits). Update: A final version of this text is available here.
If It’s That Warm, How Come It’s So Damned Cold?
by James Hansen, Reto Ruedy, Makiko Sato, and Ken Lo
The past year, 2009, tied as the second warmest year in the 130 years of global instrumental temperature records, in the surface temperature analysis of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). The Southern Hemisphere set a record as the warmest year for that half of the world. Global mean temperature, as shown in Figure 1a, was 0.57°C (1.0°F) warmer than climatology (the 1951-1980 base period). Southern Hemisphere mean temperature, as shown in Figure 1b, was 0.49°C (0.88°F) warmer than in the period of climatology.
Figure 1. (a) GISS analysis of global surface temperature change. Green vertical bar is estimated 95 percent confidence range (two standard deviations) for annual temperature change. (b) Hemispheric temperature change in GISS analysis. (Base period is 1951-1980. This base period is fixed consistently in GISS temperature analysis papers – see References. Base period 1961-1990 is used for comparison with published HadCRUT analyses in Figures 3 and 4.)
The global record warm year, in the period of near-global instrumental measurements (since the late 1800s), was 2005. Sometimes it is asserted that 1998 was the warmest year. The origin of this confusion is discussed below. There is a high degree of interannual (year‐to‐year) and decadal variability in both global and hemispheric temperatures. Underlying this variability, however, is a long‐term warming trend that has become strong and persistent over the past three decades. The long‐term trends are more apparent when temperature is averaged over several years. The 60‐month (5‐year) and 132 month (11‐year) running mean temperatures are shown in Figure 2 for the globe and the hemispheres. The 5‐year mean is sufficient to reduce the effect of the El Niño – La Niña cycles of tropical climate. The 11‐year mean minimizes the effect of solar variability – the brightness of the sun varies by a measurable amount over the sunspot cycle, which is typically of 10‐12 year duration.
Figure 2. 60‐month (5‐year) and 132 month (11‐year) running mean temperatures in the GISS analysis of (a) global and (b) hemispheric surface temperature change. (Base period is 1951‐1980.)
There is a contradiction between the observed continued warming trend and popular perceptions about climate trends. Frequent statements include: “There has been global cooling over the past decade.” “Global warming stopped in 1998.” “1998 is the warmest year in the record.” Such statements have been repeated so often that most of the public seems to accept them as being true. However, based on our data, such statements are not correct. The origin of this contradiction probably lies in part in differences between the GISS and HadCRUT temperature analyses (HadCRUT is the joint Hadley Centre/University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit temperature analysis). Indeed, HadCRUT finds 1998 to be the warmest year in their record. In addition, popular belief that the world is cooling is reinforced by cold weather anomalies in the United States in the summer of 2009 and cold anomalies in much of the Northern Hemisphere in December 2009. Here we first show the main reason for the difference between the GISS and HadCRUT analyses. Then we examine the 2009 regional temperature anomalies in the context of global temperatures.
Figure 3. Temperature anomalies in 1998 (left column) and 2005 (right column). Top row is GISS analysis, middle row is HadCRUT analysis, and bottom row is the GISS analysis masked to the same area and resolution as the HadCRUT analysis. [Base period is 1961‐1990.]
Figure 3 shows maps of GISS and HadCRUT 1998 and 2005 temperature anomalies relative to base period 1961‐1990 (the base period used by HadCRUT). The temperature anomalies are at a 5 degree‐by‐5 degree resolution for the GISS data to match that in the HadCRUT analysis. In the lower two maps we display the GISS data masked to the same area and resolution as the HadCRUT analysis. The “masked” GISS data let us quantify the extent to which the difference between the GISS and HadCRUT analyses is due to the data interpolation and extrapolation that occurs in the GISS analysis. The GISS analysis assigns a temperature anomaly to many gridboxes that do not contain measurement data, specifically all gridboxes located within 1200 km of one or more stations that do have defined temperature anomalies.
The rationale for this aspect of the GISS analysis is based on the fact that temperature anomaly patterns tend to be large scale. For example, if it is an unusually cold winter in New York, it is probably unusually cold in Philadelphia too. This fact suggests that it may be better to assign a temperature anomaly based on the nearest stations for a gridbox that contains no observing stations, rather than excluding that gridbox from the global analysis. Tests of this assumption are described in our papers referenced below.
Figure 4. Global surface temperature anomalies relative to 1961‐1990 base period for three cases: HadCRUT, GISS, and GISS anomalies limited to the HadCRUT area. [To obtain consistent time series for the HadCRUT and GISS global means, monthly results were averaged over regions with defined temperature anomalies within four latitude zones (90N‐25N, 25N‐Equator, Equator‐25S, 25S‐90S); the global average then weights these zones by the true area of the full zones, and the annual means are based on those monthly global means.]
Figure 4 shows time series of global temperature for the GISS and HadCRUT analyses, as well as for the GISS analysis masked to the HadCRUT data region. This figure reveals that the differences that have developed between the GISS and HadCRUT global temperatures during the past few decades are due primarily to the extension of the GISS analysis into regions that are excluded from the HadCRUT analysis. The GISS and HadCRUT results are similar during this period, when the analyses are limited to exactly the same area. The GISS analysis also finds 1998 as the warmest year, if analysis is limited to the masked area. The question then becomes: how valid are the extrapolations and interpolation in the GISS analysis? If the temperature anomaly scale is adjusted such that the global mean anomaly is zero, the patterns of warm and cool regions have realistic‐looking meteorological patterns, providing qualitative support for the data extensions. However, we would like a quantitative measure of the uncertainty in our estimate of the global temperature anomaly caused by the fact that the spatial distribution of measurements is incomplete. One way to estimate that uncertainty, or possible error, can be obtained via use of the complete time series of global surface temperature data generated by a global climate model that has been demonstrated to have realistic spatial and temporal variability of surface temperature. We can sample this data set at only the locations where measurement stations exist, use this sub‐sample of data to estimate global temperature change with the GISS analysis method, and compare the result with the “perfect” knowledge of global temperature provided by the data at all gridpoints.
| 1880‐1900 | 1900‐1950 | 1960‐2008 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meteorological Stations | 0.2 | 0.15 | 0.08 |
| Land‐Ocean Index | 0.08 | 0.05 | 0.05 |
Table 1. Two‐sigma error estimate versus period for meteorological stations and land‐ocean index.
Table 1 shows the derived error due to incomplete coverage of stations. As expected, the error was larger at early dates when station coverage was poorer. Also the error is much larger when data are available only from meteorological stations, without ship or satellite measurements for ocean areas. In recent decades the 2‐sigma uncertainty (95 percent confidence of being within that range, ~2‐3 percent chance of being outside that range in a specific direction) has been about 0.05°C. The incomplete coverage of stations is the primary cause of uncertainty in comparing nearby years, for which the effect of more systematic errors such as urban warming is small.
Additional sources of error become important when comparing temperature anomalies separated by longer periods. The most well‐known source of long‐term error is “urban warming”, human‐made local warming caused by energy use and alterations of the natural environment. Various other errors affecting the estimates of long‐term temperature change are described comprehensively in a large number of papers by Tom Karl and his associates at the NOAA National Climate Data Center. The GISS temperature analysis corrects for urban effects by adjusting the long‐term trends of urban stations to be consistent with the trends at nearby rural stations, with urban locations identified either by population or satellite‐observed night lights. In a paper in preparation we demonstrate that the population and night light approaches yield similar results on global average. The additional error caused by factors other than incomplete spatial coverage is estimated to be of the order of 0.1°C on time scales of several decades to a century, this estimate necessarily being partly subjective. The estimated total uncertainty in global mean temperature anomaly with land and ocean data included thus is similar to the error estimate in the first line of Table 1, i.e., the error due to limited spatial coverage when only meteorological stations are included.
Now let’s consider whether we can specify a rank among the recent global annual temperatures, i.e., which year is warmest, second warmest, etc. Figure 1a shows 2009 as the second warmest year, but it is so close to 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, and 2007 that we must declare these years as being in a virtual tie as the second warmest year. The maximum difference among these in the GISS analysis is ~0.03°C (2009 being the warmest among those years and 2006 the coolest). This range is approximately equal to our 1‐sigma uncertainty of ~0.025°C, which is the reason for stating that these five years are tied for second warmest.
The year 2005 is 0.061°C warmer than 1998 in our analysis. So how certain are we that 2005 was warmer than 1998? Given the standard deviation of ~0.025°C for the estimated error, we can estimate the probability that 1998 was warmer than 2005 as follows. The chance that 1998 is 0.025°C warmer than our estimated value is about (1 – 0.68)/2 = 0.16. The chance that 2005 is 0.025°C cooler than our estimate is also 0.16. The probability of both of these is ~0.03 (3 percent). Integrating over the tail of the distribution and accounting for the 2005‐1998 temperature difference being 0.61°C alters the estimate in opposite directions. For the moment let us just say that the chance that 1998 is warmer than 2005, given our temperature analysis, is at most no more than about 10 percent. Therefore, we can say with a reasonable degree of confidence that 2005 is the warmest year in the period of instrumental data.
Figure 5. (a) global map of December 2009 anomaly, (b) global map of Jun‐Jul‐Aug 2009 anomaly. #4 and #2 indicate that December 2009 and JJA are the 4th and 2nd warmest globally for those periods.
What about the claim that the Earth’s surface has been cooling over the past decade? That issue can be addressed with a far higher degree of confidence, because the error due to incomplete spatial coverage of measurements becomes much smaller when averaged over several years. The 2‐sigma error in the 5‐year running‐mean temperature anomaly shown in Figure 2, is about a factor of two smaller than the annual mean uncertainty, thus 0.02‐0.03°C. Given that the change of 5‐year‐mean global temperature anomaly is about 0.2°C over the past decade, we can conclude that the world has become warmer over the past decade, not cooler.
Why are some people so readily convinced of a false conclusion, that the world is really experiencing a cooling trend? That gullibility probably has a lot to do with regional short‐term temperature fluctuations, which are an order of magnitude larger than global average annual anomalies. Yet many lay people do understand the distinction between regional short‐term anomalies and global trends. For example, here is comment posted by “frogbandit” at 8:38p.m. 1/6/2010 on City Bright blog:
“I wonder about the people who use cold weather to say that the globe is cooling. It forgets that global warming has a global component and that its a trend, not an everyday thing. I hear people down in the lower 48 say its really cold this winter. That ain’t true so far up here in Alaska. Bethel, Alaska, had a brown Christmas. Here in Anchorage, the temperature today is 31[ºF]. I can’t say based on the fact Anchorage and Bethel are warm so far this winter that we have global warming. That would be a really dumb argument to think my weather pattern is being experienced even in the rest of the United States, much less globally.”
What frogbandit is saying is illustrated by the global map of temperature anomalies in December 2009 (Figure 5a). There were strong negative temperature anomalies at middle latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, as great as ‐8°C in Siberia, averaged over the month. But the temperature anomaly in the Arctic was as great as +7°C. The cold December perhaps reaffirmed an impression gained by Americans from the unusually cool 2009 summer. There was a large region in the United States and Canada in June‐July‐August with a negative temperature anomaly greater than 1°C, the largest negative anomaly on the planet.
Figure 6. Arctic Oscillation (AO) Index. Positive values of the AO index indicate high low pressure in the polar region and thus a tendency for strong zonal winds that minimize cold air outbreaks to middle latitudes. Blue dots are monthly means and the red curve is the 60‐month (5‐year) running mean.
How do these large regional temperature anomalies stack up against an expectation of, and the reality of, global warming? How unusual are these regional negative fluctuations? Do they have any relationship to global warming? Do they contradict global warming?
It is obvious that in December 2009 there was an unusual exchange of polar and mid‐latitude air in the Northern Hemisphere. Arctic air rushed into both North America and Eurasia, and, of course, it was replaced in the polar region by air from middle latitudes. The degree to which Arctic air penetrates into middle latitudes is related to the Arctic Oscillation (AO) index, which is defined by surface atmospheric pressure patterns and is plotted in Figure 6. When the AO index is positive surface pressure is high low in the polar region. This helps the middle latitude jet stream to blow strongly and consistently from west to east, thus keeping cold Arctic air locked in the polar region. When the AO index is negative there tends to be low high pressure in the polar region, weaker zonal winds, and greater movement of frigid polar air into middle latitudes.
Figure 6 shows that December 2009 was the most extreme negative Arctic Oscillation since the 1970s. Although there were ten cases between the early 1960s and mid 1980s with an AO index more extreme than ‐2.5, there were no such extreme cases since then until last month. It is no wonder that the public has become accustomed to the absence of extreme blasts of cold air.
Figure 7. Temperature anomaly from GISS analysis and AO index from NOAA National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center. United States mean refers to the 48 contiguous states.
Figure 7 shows the AO index with greater temporal resolution for two 5‐year periods. It is obvious that there is a high degree of correlation of the AO index with temperature in the United States, with any possible lag between index and temperature anomaly less than the monthly temporal resolution. Large negative anomalies, when they occur, are usually in a winter month. Note that the January 1977 temperature anomaly, mainly located in the Eastern United States, was considerably stronger than the December 2009 anomaly. [There is nothing magic about a 31 day window that coincides with a calendar month, and it could be misleading. It may be more informative to look at a 30‐day running mean and at the Dec‐Jan‐Feb means for the AO index and temperature anomalies.]
The AO index is not so much an explanation for climate anomaly patterns as it is a simple statement of the situation. However, John (Mike) Wallace and colleagues have been able to use the AO description to aid consideration of how the patterns may change as greenhouse gases increase. A number of papers, by Wallace, David Thompson, and others, as well as by Drew Shindell and others at GISS, have pointed out that increasing carbon dioxide causes the stratosphere to cool, in turn causing on average a stronger jet stream and thus a tendency for a more positive Arctic Oscillation. Overall, Figure 6 shows a tendency in the expected sense. The AO is not the only factor that might alter the frequency of Arctic cold air outbreaks. For example, what is the effect of reduced Arctic sea ice on weather patterns? There is not enough empirical evidence since the rapid ice melt of 2007. We conclude only that December 2009 was a highly anomalous month and that its unusual AO can be described as the “cause” of the extreme December weather.
We do not find a basis for expecting frequent repeat occurrences. On the contrary. Figure 6 does show that month‐to‐month fluctuations of the AO are much larger than its long term trend. But temperature change can be caused by greenhouse gases and global warming independent of Arctic Oscillation dynamical effects.
Figure 8. Global maps 4 season temperature anomalies for ~2009. (Note that Dec is December 2008. Base period is 1951‐1980.)
Figure 9. Global maps 4 season temperature anomaly trends for period 1950‐2009.
So let’s look at recent regional temperature anomalies and temperature trends. Figure 8 shows seasonal temperature anomalies for the past year and Figure 9 shows seasonal temperature change since 1950 based on local linear trends. The temperature scales are identical in Figures 8 and 9. The outstanding characteristic in comparing these two figures is that the magnitude of the 60 year change is similar to the magnitude of seasonal anomalies. What this is telling us is that the climate dice are already strongly loaded. The perceptive person who has been around since the 1950s should be able to notice that seasonal mean temperatures are usually greater than they were in the 1950s, although there are still occasional cold seasons.
The magnitude of monthly temperature anomalies is typically 1.5 to 2 times greater than the magnitude of seasonal anomalies. So it is not yet quite so easy to see global warming if one’s figure of merit is monthly mean temperature. And, of course, daily weather fluctuations are much larger than the impact of the global warming trend. The bottom line is this: there is no global cooling trend. For the time being, until humanity brings its greenhouse gas emissions under control, we can expect each decade to be warmer than the preceding one. Weather fluctuations certainly exceed local temperature changes over the past half century. But the perceptive person should be able to see that climate is warming on decadal time scales.
This information needs to be combined with the conclusion that global warming of 1‐2°C has enormous implications for humanity. But that discussion is beyond the scope of this note.
References:
Hansen, J.E., and S. Lebedeff, 1987: Global trends of measured surface air temperature. J. Geophys. Res., 92, 13345‐13372.
Hansen, J., R. Ruedy, J. Glascoe, and Mki. Sato, 1999: GISS analysis of surface temperature change. J. Geophys. Res., 104, 30997‐31022.
Hansen, J.E., R. Ruedy, Mki. Sato, M. Imhoff, W. Lawrence, D. Easterling, T. Peterson, and T. Karl, 2001: A closer look at United States and global surface temperature change. J. Geophys. Res., 106, 23947‐23963.
Hansen, J., Mki. Sato, R. Ruedy, K. Lo, D.W. Lea, and M. Medina‐Elizade, 2006: Global temperature change. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 103, 14288‐14293.
The IPCC cited the WWF report, which in turn cited the Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology (WGHG) of the International Commission for Snow and Ice (ICSI). the New Scientist duplicated the error. The relevant passage in the WWF report is
“In 1999, a report by the Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology (WGHG) of the International Commission for Snow and Ice (ICSI) stated: “glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the livelihood (sic) of them disappearing by the year 2035 is very high”. Direct observation of a select few snout positions out of the thousands of Himalayan glaciers indicate that they have been in a general state of decline over, at least, the past 150 years.
The prediction that “glaciers in the region will vanish within 40 years as a result of global warming” and that the flow of Himalayan rivers will “eventually diminish, resulting in widespread water shortages” (New Scientist 1999; 1999, 2003) is equally disturbing.”
Its a tangled web, but John Nielsen-Gammon unweaves http://tinyurl.com/yc5hzwl
Its worth remembering that ‘the IPCC report’ is not a single monolith but consists of detailed reports from three Working Groups, plus technical summaries for Policymakers. This statement about the Himalayan glaciers occurred in the WG2 report on ‘Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability’. It does not appear in any of the executive or policymaker summaries, and the report of Working Group I – the Physical Science (where there are glaciaologists aplenty) does not mention it either in the Chapter on Glaciers or Regional Projections. Perhaps this explains why this ‘dynamite’ error on one page out of 3000, went unnoticed for 2 years?
This is not to excuse the inaccuracy, it is surely embarassing for the IPCC and for Pachauri who attacked critics for their lack of peer-reviewed sources. Tim Lambert has examined how it came to be published and its clear from the review comment trail that the authors did not follow their own procedures correctly. http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/01/a_beat_up_of_himalayan_proport.php
So what is happening to the Himalayan glaciers? http://www.thehindu.com/2007/04/10/stories/2007041001520900.htm
Gavin:
But mostly they are not. You can do the spatial correlations for yourself -it doesn’t have to have an r^2 of 1.0 to be useful. – gavin
I agree, cells with those kinds of temperature differences are rare. But I think that the assumption – even if it is mostly true – can lead to very large differences in outcome when applied to the globe. For example, look at GISS 2005 as compared to HadCRUT 2005 in figure 3. GISS looks like it is much more smoothed. That shouldn’t make a difference, but sometimes it does. Look at the lower center of the HadCRUT 2005 chart and you can see many more cooled cells than in the same area of the GISS chart. In theory, it would seem like such an effect would cancel out when taken across the globe. But that doesn’t seem to work at the poles. For example, look at the last 2 lines of grid cells at the bottom of GISS 1998 and again the same cells at GISS 2005. There has been a dramatic coversion of cool cells to hot cells. And yet, if you look at the southernmost part of the HadCRUT charts for the same periods, the change is not nearly so dramatic. But that large expanse going from cool to hot in those two rows is mostly due to just a very few cells.
Now compare that to the US, which actually seems to have become cooler over the same period of time, there is no extrapolation magnification effect for those cells, like there is at the poles. I think that is more evidence of what I explained in #278. It seems to me that the difference between GISS and HadCRUT is an extrapolation and interpolation artifact, not a real world temperature difference. I don’t know if this is true for all years. But it certainly looks to be true when comparing 98 and 05.
It just occurred to me about the Himalayan glacier issue — this sort of disproves what the denialists constantly claim about climate change science being overfunded, and everyone in it for the big bucks.
It seems if there were enough funding, then a better expert on Himalayan glaciers would have been been available for input on page 493.
I mean if we can put a man on the moon and fight two wars simultaneously, we ought to be able to adequately finance science to study perhaps the greatest threat to the earth’s biosphere we’ve ever faced, outside of all out nuclear war. You’d think.
And what about those missing temp areas on the anomaly maps? Climate science sure does need a lot more funding, and any claim that it has too much is quite laughable.
[Response: Actually you are over-estimating enormously. First, the fact is that temperature anomalies have very high spatial correlation at the monthly and annual scale – that is to say that if Montreal is having a cold winter, than so is Toronto and Quebec City. For the monthly scale, the number of spatial degrees of freedom is around 60-100 in each hemisphere. Thus if they were well placed you could get away with ~200 stations for the globe in order to get a good estimate of the mean anomaly (within 0.05 deg C say). But there are many more than that so that they can provide good checks on each other. You can check this by simply dropping half the stations and seeing whether you get basically the same number. – gavin]
There’s quite a difference in climate between Montreal Toronto and Quebec City. I live 25km north of the city of Montreal. The difference in average winter temps just between the south shore and north shore is about 2 C. They are about only 50km apart.
Besides, NASA never really explained why they dropped 5000 thermometers from the mean temperature calculation. More resolution is always better than interpolation.
[Response: You aren’t paying attention. It is the anomalies that are similar – not the absolute climate. That is, if Montreal is 1 deg C above normal, then it is likely that Toronto and Quebec City will be around 1 deg C above normal too. And NASA didn’t ‘drop’ any stations. Please read Peterson and Vose (1997) to get a clue about how the GHCN data was put together. – gavin]
Don Shor,
“There have been four IPCC reports, next one is number five.
None of them have been perfect. The next one won’t be either.
This is how science works”
It`s not the mistakes that are the problem, it`s the response to them that discredits the IPCC.
Kevin:
“But the graph also shows that the coverage difference can account for the difference in the global value–and demonstrates that the global value is robust to those differences.”
Kevin, the differences can vary by more than a bit. In the cases in figure 3, it looks like the differenes have more to do with the algorithms used to provide coverage than it does to the actual differences of temperature in the areas not covered. I explain that in #278 and #302.
Lynn: #296
“Of course, if the errors are unbiased and unsystematic then they would tend to cancel each other out.”
I was thinking that they should also. But as I pointed out to Kevin, above, that it looks like it’s not always the case. Even on a global scale.
JH: For the time being, until humanity brings its greenhouse gas emissions under control, we can expect each decade to be warmer than the preceding one.
RalphieGM: Yet your article brought out NO evidence that supported this conclusion – ya kinda threw that thought in there at the end. And that’s what makes me skeptical – its called jumping to conclusions.
BPL: Here are the mean global annual temperature anomalies for each decade in the NASA GISS record:
1880s -0.25
1890s -0.26
1900s -0.27
1910s -0.28
1920s -0.16
1930s -0.03
1940s 0.04
1950s -0.02
1960s -0.01
1970s 0.00
1980s 0.18
1990s 0.32
2000s 0.51
Looking at that progression, I think any reasonable person would conclude that “For the time being, until humanity brings its greenhouse gas emissions under control, we can expect each decade to be warmer than the preceding one.”
> Tilo Reber:
> … that large expanse going from cool to hot in those two rows
> is mostly due to just a very few cells.
Well, no. Look up local records; check the result from the analysis. That large expanse going from cool to hot is what happened in the actual world.
RS: We can and should wait until the science is in (and it isn’t) before making any decisions on climate change.
BPL: It was essentially all in by 1990.
RS: The situation is not as urgent as you make it out to be.
BPL: If the prospect of the complete destruction of human civilization within 40 years is not “urgent,” what would you call it?
Ibrahim: Maybe you should take a look at the PDO.
BPL: I have. It accounts for about 4% of the temperature variation from 1900 to 2000. Want the details?
There’s a forest for the trees aspect to the 2035 Himalayan glacier statement. The 2035 statement was not referenced to a peer-reviewed journal, illustrating the importance of academic citations.
Some of those citations:
http://www.grid.unep.ch/glaciers/pdfs/references.pdf
Full report:
http://www.grid.unep.ch/glaciers/
Central Asia:
http://www.grid.unep.ch/glaciers/pdfs/6_9.pdf
If we discard any informal statements made, not supported by academic citations, the 2035 disappears but so does every silly “glaciers are growing” claim. We’re left with the rapid net glacier loss observed in the Himalayas and the world.
Deech,
I’m a liberal Democrat, not a Randian. A situation like I describe for Gilles might get him through the ten years or so when the big population crash is happening. After that, the various enclaves can spread out and real societies can form again from the few hundred million or so people left around the globe, if it’s that many. I was describing a life raft, not a working society.
Tom S (#254),
Gavin is correct that none of this appears in the Synthesis Report or a Summary for Policy Makers (which is where it could have had political import).
The line quoted by NYT does appear in the ‘Technical Summary’ of the IPCC Working Group II report. The TS has merely been “accepted” by the working group but “not approved in detail”.
Specifically, the line appears twice in the TS, once on p. 49 (blissfully unquantified), and once on p. 59 (quantified as “shrinking from the present 500,000 km2 to 100,000 km2 by the 2030s”).
Lynn #282 and Kevin #290, note that the latter figures appear to be part of the goof-up. There aren’t 500,000 km2 of glaciers in the Himalayas – that’s the area cited for glaciers and ice caps worldwide (excluding Greenland and the Antarctic). If the source of of that projection has been correctly identified as Kotlyakov (1996), then the projection actually refers to the change in the total area of the extrapolar glaciation of the Earth, not the Himalayas, and by 2350, not the 2030s.
The IPCC should issue a corrigendum. Better yet, an update with recent research on Himalayan glaciers. Better yet, an update on everything to do with melting ice, including the Arctic…
Syl …
A glaciologist caught the error, reported the error, and the IPCC has said “yes, it’s an error, oops, our bad”.
How does this response discredit them? They forgot to say “Al Gore is fat”, or what?
> It`s not the mistakes that are the problem, it`s the response
Whose response?
The IPCC’s response is easy to find.
It looks reasonable so far, and is continuing.
You can look it up.
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aipcc.ch+himalayan+glacier
Finding the problem, discussing the problem, publishing a response, and correcting the next report.
Which of these do you think was a mistake, and why?
Or — are you perhaps reading some other statement about the response somewhere? From some other source, telling you something second hand?
If so what’s your source? Why do you consider it reliable?
Hank: #308
“Look up local records;”
Which local records? If there are local records, then why aren’t they being used to produce gridcells in HadCRUT.
By the way Hank, why did some of the GISS cells become cooler when the HadCRUT cells were masked off. Why did the extrapolation process for GISS produce a temperature difference of +7.1C in cells that were actually present for HadCRUT3.
“It`s not the mistakes that are the problem, it`s the response to them that discredits the IPCC.”
I think you misspelt “the skeptics”…
re 289, of course, since the landed title of “Lord” (as opposed to the current normal use of the word to mean : member of the House of Lords, which Monckton managed NOT ONE VOTE to get a seat on…) is actually a downgrade by two levels from Viscount.
So Chris (as he’s affectionately known) being called “lord” is actually a bit of a downgrade. And that’s why he’s even more pleased at having ALL title removed from his name. That’s an even bigger downgrade, therefore is better.
Don: “Funny how there’s never a black eye for the denialist talking heads like Monckton [etc]
What’s your point?”
The point is you’re awful ready to down people who say AGW is real yet surprisingly reticent when they’re saying that it’s wrong.
This is called “evidence of bias in reporting”.
Syl says: 19 January 2010 at 3:42 PM
“It`s not the mistakes that are the problem, it`s the response to them that discredits the IPCC.”
Syl, not to go totally meta here but stop for a moment and ask yourself, is the response you’re thinking of from IPCC, or is it possible that you’re thinking of conclusions regarding IPCC’s response that are actually an interpretation suggested to you by somebody else? What actually is the response by IPCC? Does it discredit IPCC? How much?
Barton Paul Levenson says: 19 January 2010 at 4:31 PM
BPL, may I respectfully suggest that “complete destruction of human civilization within 40 years” is a somewhat controversial and distracting assertion and affords a ripe target for swerving discussion in a counterproductive way?
Even so few as 100,000,000 persons would afford us most of the beautiful and almost all of the ugly features we’re pleased to lump together and term as “civilization”; many people living 400 years ago considered themselves members of a civilization. It would actually be a better number for the long run, though getting there would be unacceptably horrific over period less than several generations.
How about “dramatic degradation of the overall human condition” or “significant degeneration of civilization”?
CM says: 19 January 2010 at 5:04 PM
“Better yet, an update on everything to do with melting ice, including the Arctic…”
Yes, forthcoming in any case. Doubters should be careful what they wish for.
dhogaza: #314
A glaciologist caught the error, reported the error, and the IPCC has said “yes, it’s an error, oops, our bad”.
No, they were told that they very likely had an error long ago and they refused to look into it until it became very public and until there was no longer any way to deny it.
http://www.canada.com/technology/climate+report+Scientist+warned+glacier+forecast+wrong/2455973/story.html
284 Doug Bostrom,
Thanks for the thoughtful discussion.
Maybe I am a little more cautious about assuming things than you might be.
About a year ago I was raising similar questions and the sort of answers I got from real modeling folk, I believe, were not completely assuring. It seemed that most of the climate models depend on the Monterey ocean model and there is some kind of interface with that. The Monterey ocean model is not easily penetrable, but I looked at the data definitions and dimension statements said to be used in that analysis, and from that I concluded that lower depths were not included. I could not be sure whether there was a serious attempt to account for vertical mixing due to wind or not. At the time I was putting my point in reference to hurricanes which create very large waves and hence, substantial vertical mixing. I believe it was Gavin who said they treat hurricanes as Poisson events, which seems reasonable, though the mechanism of vertical mixing was not clarified. I understand climate modelers are busy folk, so getting ignored on further questions seemed understandable.
The process is more general than just with hurricanes. Any wind makes some waves and waves cause a circular motion of water particles in a vertical plane. The circular motion extends to a depth that is about equal to the wavelength, wave peak to wave peak. That takes water downward, though not to a great depth. From there the various internal waves and currents take over and get things into the thermohaline circulation system, including things like the Gulf Stream and the Pacific Current.
I don’t think anyone claims to know what makes El Nino warm currents.
But the key point about vertical mixing being a function of wind which is a function of temperature differences, land to sea, is that increase of surface temperature will stimulate the process whereby heat is taken into the deeper ocean, where there is a lot of capacity for that heat.
Now comes along the NOAA data curve which shows that something has happened to greatly increase heat in the oceans. That seems to have significantly exceeded the amount of heat that the climate models predicted. That seems notable to me.
319 Completely Fed Up says:
19 January 2010 at 5:38 PM
Don: “Funny how there’s never a black eye for the denialist talking heads like Monckton [etc]”
“What’s your point?”
“The point is you’re awful ready to down people who say AGW is real yet surprisingly reticent when they’re saying that it’s wrong.
This is called “evidence of bias in reporting”.
How could my comments at realclimate possibly have you come to any conclusion about what I think of AGW deniers? Once again, you seem to think I’m a denialist or skeptic.
I reply to the topics posted here by the blog owners. How am I “surprisingly reticent” about anything? I haven’t seen a thread topic of “Monckton’s Views Are Nonsense.” Should there be one, I would go look at the particulars of Monckton’s views and might comment on them. Until then, I — like you and others — am replying to the topic at hand. Which, in this case, is Dr. Hansen’s article.
Quit assuming stuff about me.
“No, they were told that they very likely had an error long ago and they refused to look into it until it became very public and until there was no longer any way to deny it.”
Rubbish.
Be sure to read the article. And thanks, Tilo Reber, this article actually confirms my confidence in the process.
http://www.canada.com/technology/climate+report+Scientist+warned+glacier+forecast+wrong/2455973/story.html
What the article actually contains:
“PARIS – A top scientist said Monday he had warned in 2006 that a prediction of catastrophic loss of Himalayan glaciers, published months later by the UN’s Nobel-winning climate panel, was badly wrong.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report said in 2007 it was “very likely” that the glaciers, which supply water to more than a billion people across Asia, would vanish by 2035 if global warming trends continued.
“This number is not just a little bit wrong, but far out of any order of magnitude,” said Georg Kaser, an expert in tropical glaciology at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.
“It is so wrong that it is not even worth discussing,” he told AFP in an interview.
The triple-volume Fourth Assessment Report is the scientific touchstone for political action on climate change.
Destruction of Himalayan glaciers by 2035 was questioned in a report by Britain’s Sunday Times, which said the reference derived from a news article published in 1999 and had failed to be scrutinized by the IPCC.
Kaser suggested the initial error originated from a misreading of a 1996 Russian study or from findings on a handful of glaciers that were mistakenly extended to apply to the whole region.
In either case, he suggested, the fact that it found its way into the report underpinning global climate negotiations signalled the need for a reform of the way the IPCC collects and reviews data.
“The review community has entirely failed” in this instance, he said.
Kaser was a lead author in Working Group I of the IPCC report, which dealt with the physical science of climate change.
Its conclusions — that climate change is “unequivocal” and poses a major threat — remain beyond reproach, he said.
The prediction for the Himalayan glaciers was contained in the separately published Working Group II report, which assessed likely impacts of climate change.
More specifically, the chapter focussed on an assessment of Asia, authored by scientists from the region.
“This is a source of a lot of misunderstandings, misconceptions or failures,” Kaser said, noting that some regions lacked a broad spectrum of expertise.
“It is a kind of amateurism from the regional chapter lead authors. They may have been good hydrologists or botanists, but they were without any knowledge in glaciology.”
Kaser said some of the scientists from other regional groups took heed of suggestions, and made corrections ahead of final publication in April 2007.
But the Asia group did not. “I pointed it out,” he said of the implausible prediction on the glaciers.
“For a reason I do not know, they did not react.”
But blame did not rest with the regional scientists alone, Kaser added.
“I went back through the comments afterward, and not a single glaciologist had any interest in looking into Working Group II,” he said.
The head of the UN climate panel, Rajendra Pachauri, told AFP his organization would look into the matter.
He has already vowed to probe the so-called Climategate affair involving hacked email exchanges among IPCC scientists that skeptics say points to bias.
The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment, scheduled for release in 2013, will probably be adjusted to avoid such problems, said Kaser.
“All the responsible people are aware of this weakness in the Fourth Assessment. All are aware of the mistakes made,” he said.
“If it had not been the focus of so much public opinion, we would have said ‘we will do better next time.’ It is clear now that Working Group II has to be restructured,” he said.
There will still be regional chapters, but the review process will be modified, he added.”
This is very informative. However, being an electrical engineer turned business person, it pains me that almost nobody I know will take the time to read this kind of piece. And even if they did, they would likely be so overwhelmed by the complexity that they would give up or be unable to properly assess the importance of the information, or worse.
Beyond doing the research, the biggest thing the scientific community can do to help educate people on climate change is simply to use words and concepts that people can understand. I reject the idea that it’s someone else’s job to make the translation, because then it becomes a question of “do you trust the translator” instead of getting a “clean channel” into the information. People tend to trust scientists…until they say things which are too hard to understand. Then they lose interest and trust whoever translates the scientist’s findings in a way that aligns with their ideology or is most entertaining.
The most effective visionaries and leaders in any field are able to take complex ideas and make them accessible to the majority…the common man/woman. Because let’s face it…it’s the common man/woman who votes, lobby’s their representative, buys things, invests, runs companies, talks to other common men/women, writes editorials, and makes a difference.
I’m wondering if anyone’s read The Psychology of Climate Change Communication: A Guide for Scientists, Journalists, Educators, Political Aides, and the Interested Public – an interesting perspective developed by Columbia University’s Center for Research on Environmental Decisions.
Barton Paul Levinson
I didn’t really understand the kind of situation you describe : is it a likely situation to happen to most of us if nothing is done ? or a likely situation to happen in the best case? or a personal advice of what I should do, whereas other people living would be much worse (but how?)
In any case , I think I would better let the farmers do what they know the best – grow vegetables and food- and pay them with the money earned with what I know the best – maybe teach their children or something like that.
In any case, what do you think would be the consumption of fossile per capita per year in the world you describe ?
Doug Bostrom says, “Even so few as 100,000,000 persons would afford us most of the beautiful and almost all of the ugly features we’re pleased to lump together and term as “civilization”…”
A decrease of population to ~100,000,000 is not the threat. Rather, it is 9-10 billion people competing for resources on a planet with productive capacity degraded to the point where supporting 1 billion is a challenge. I rather suspect that those in danger of being voted off the island would not be sanguine about the prospect.
There have been only a few instances in human history where our population actually decreased. None of them were much fun. It is rare that only one of the horsemen shows up for the party.
Jim Bullis, Miastrada Co. says: 19 January 2010 at 5:49 PM
Further to those musings, here’s something quite interesting, both reading-wise as well as in terms of practical benefit to research.
http://climateprediction.net/content/thermohaline-experiment
The experiment description is quite informative in a general way. For myself, I learned that our ocean is not a “lump”, it is a “slab”, among other things.
The link also affords an opportunity to donate idle CPU time for running models.
RE BPL
As am I (and a Presbyterian, to boot). I was guilty of veering a bit and I apologize if you thought I might be referring to you. I was speaking more of those in the “skeptical” camp who for various reasons embrace selfishness as a life view; a view that is at odds with both biology and religious faith, IMHO.
For me the “life raft” description conjured up medieval manors. Hopefully some centers of learning can be preserved as well. Pacem.
I have “read” (mostly noting claims and counter-claims)through No.323, and taking for granted that a very high proportion of comments came from knowledgeable professionals, I find myself wondering whether this outpouring about an issue that certainly is relevant to the continuance of biological life on this planet is susceptible to a clear summarization of historical “facts”, current trends, and plausible assumtions for conditions of, say, the next century. This distillation would be formatted such that it is intelligeble to a seriously-interested, but lay, readership. It seems pointless for the cohort of climatic scientists to simply wrangle among themselves, for the sake of personal ego or to bone up for their next peer-reviewed journal article, which, in turn, will only be read by them. If this is not possible one wonders how many “Towers of Babel” exist in today’s world.
Dave Abood says: 19 January 2010 at 6:25 PM
“I’m wondering if anyone’s read The Psychology of Climate Change Communication: A Guide for Scientists, Journalists, Educators, Political Aides, and the Interested Public – an interesting perspective developed by Columbia University’s Center for Research on Environmental Decisions.”
Not me but I will now. Thank you.
Ray Ladbury says: 19 January 2010 at 6:27 PM
“There have been only a few instances in human history where our population actually decreased. None of them were much fun. It is rare that only one of the horsemen shows up for the party.”
Is there a precedent in recorded history? I’m not sure but I take your point. Granting BPL degeneration squared.
Gavin: But mostly they are not. You can do the spatial correlations for yourself -it doesn’t have to have an r^2 of 1.0 to be useful.
TR: I agree, cells with those kinds of temperature differences are rare. But I think that the assumption – even if it is mostly true – can lead to very large differences in outcome when applied to the globe.
BPL: TR, will you TAKE A FREAKIN’ STATISTICS COURSE? Your ignorant comments are getting to the level of “embarrassingly obtuse.” When are you going to lose the warped idea that variations affect the mean MORE than the the individual case?
Hank Roberts,
Here is the IPCC`s initial response. Totally dismissing critics. Even calling it Voodoo Science.
http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/health/pachauri-calls-indian-govt-report-on-melting-himalayan-glaciers-as-voodoo-science_100301232.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/29/climate-science-2009
[Response: You are conflating two separate issues. The Indian Govt. report is odd, and has some very strange statements in it, and it too was not peer reviewed. It neither mentions IPCC nor the 2035 claim, and so cannot be assumed to be a critique of the error highlighted above. I wouldn’t have gone as far as Pachauri in criticising it, but what is needed here is proper science, not more grey literature. – gavin]
Tilo said:”No, they were told that they very likely had an error long ago and they refused to look into it until it became very public and until there was no longer any way to deny it.”
Who is “they”? The Asia impact group, which had no experts on glaciology? By a panel member of IPCC who was an expert?
Moral of the story: The only effective auditing can be done by real experts who publish in the field, not (to pick a random example) mining consultants or economists with experience in “statistics”.
Dave Abood says: 19 January 2010 at 6:25 PM
“The Psychology of Climate Change Communication: A Guide for Scientists, Journalists, Educators, Political Aides, and the Interested Public”
It’s online! Practical advice, based on actual research, w/cites. What a breath of fresh air. Thanks again.
Recommended reading.
HTML:
http://www.cred.columbia.edu/guide/
PDF version:
http://www.cred.columbia.edu/guide/downloads.html
Doug Bostrom (332) — Regarding population declines, try W.F. Ruddiman’s “Plows, Plagues and Pertoleum”, cointinuing with “1491”. There is an abundant literature.
320: BPL, may I respectfully suggest that “complete destruction of human civilization within 40 years” is a somewhat controversial and distracting assertion and affords a ripe target for swerving discussion in a counterproductive way?
BPL: No, because I believe that’s what’s going to happen. Furthermore, your assertion that “Even so few as 100,000,000 persons would afford us most of the beautiful and almost all of the ugly features we’re pleased to lump together and term as “civilization”; many people living 400 years ago considered themselves members of a civilization.” is incredibly foolish, for the following reasons:
1. All the easily available metal, fossil fuels, wood, cropland and rangeland will be used up. We will not achieve a civilization comparable to our own again for at least a thousand years, I would say.
2. Life 400 years ago chomped the hog. Infant mortality was sky-high–do you want to live in a society where chances are most of your kids will die before age five? Queen Anne got the best medical care in England, for Christ’s sake, yet her 17 pregnancies resulted in four miscarriages, seven stillborn babies and six sons and daughters who died as kids.
Want to live in a city without working sewers?
How about a village where you have to kill people who want to steal your crops–or where gangs of such people break into your house, rape you and your wife, and then kill you? I know it happens in Bed-Stuy and Detroit, too, but not as a rule. But life was like that along the European coast during the whole Viking period. Or during the breakdown of the Roman Empire… or the Caliphate… or the Chinese Empire… or the Empire of Timbuktu…
Sure the Renaissance civilization thought it was civilized. I, personally, would have been upset with the Witch Trials, religious wars, the vast plague which wiped out most of South America… shall I go on?
Would you enjoy doing without flush toilets? How about doctors qualified to treat your child if he or she comes down with appendicitis? Want to try removing his or her appendix yourself, with a kitchen knife and no anesthetic?
If you’ve never lived in a feudal society, please don’t think it was like “The Lord of the Rings” or some sword & sorcery fantasy. Life sucked for everybody but the nobles, and it even sucked for them. They just didn’t realize, until a particular war or famine hit, just how badly it sucked.
Gilles: I didn’t really understand the kind of situation you describe : is it a likely situation to happen to most of us if nothing is done ? or a likely situation to happen in the best case?
BPL: Best case. The worst case will be if you live in a big city when the trucks and trains bringing in food stop coming, or on the coast when a big storm hits, or any food-growing area where you suddenly can’t grow food any more.
Gilles: In any case , I think I would better let the farmers do what they know the best – grow vegetables and food- and pay them with the money earned with what I know the best – maybe teach their children or something like that.
BPL: You’re assuming a functioning society with a marketplace. Drop that assumption. It won’t exist for years. You can go into teaching once people once again care about educating their kids, rather than finding food for them, or pimping them out to get food.
Gilles: In any case, what do you think would be the consumption of fossile per capita per year in the world you describe ?
BPL: Nearly zero, since the infrastructure for acquiring and distributing it will be gone. People in places like Pennsylvania and Kentucky will be able to burn easily accessible coal for a while–a year or so.
Deech,
Pacem, frater, I did mistakenly think you meant me. BTW, I’m also a Presbyterian (PCUSA).
But seriously–people have no bloody idea how bad it’s going to be to live in the world of 2050 AD. The survivalists think it’ll be this cool adventure. No. There’s no adventure in starving to death or dying of cholera.
Charles Raguse says: 19 January 2010 at 6:59 PM
It’s helpful to understand there’s little or no wrangling about the main salient feature of AGW by actual scientists. The kvetching you see here is noise mostly contributed by laypersons (including yours truly).
For an idea of where we might be headed, you may wish to look here:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html
Although Weart’s title suggests his piece is all about history, understanding the fundamentals of the science, where those lead and possible inferences from the entire body of investigation gives you a reasonable shot at prognostication. Certainly without that background it’s not possible to do any prediction.
Is there some reason why you refuse to address the claims made on John Coleman’s blog?
http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/40749822.html
These seem to be the most damaging claims and you seem to want to ignore them.
[Response: They are not damaging, they are just stupid. See the ‘Unforced Variations 2‘ post for some discussion and suggested reading. – gavin]
Tim Jones #280:
Actually the obvious red flag is citing WWF, not exactly an academic research lab. The bigger surprise to me is with thousands of hostile readers looking for reasons to attack the IPCC, this has taken so long to surface.
On the bigger picture, we have two competing sides:
professional scientists backed by amateur PR
amateur attacks on the science backed by professional PR
Who do you think is winning?
In the latter category I increasingly count real scientists like Lindzen, because their science is increasingly amateurish. Even if you don’t accept this point, you see the problem. What climate science really needs is a PR firm good enough to take on the denial argument. The denial argument is founded on one thing, and one thing alone: causing doubt about the authenticity of the science by any means necessary. If the science can’t be shown legitimately to be wrong (in the case of the Himalayan glaciers, let’s be thankful if the most dire predictions are wrong), then confuse the public about what the scientific claims really are, create distrust of science in general and look for reasons to attack climate scientists personally. The last is why such a big deal is made of issues like the CRU emails and the hockey stick. Even if Mann et al. had made the sort of errors claimed in the hockey stick case, the worst you could have said about their results is they got lucky and the errors cancelled out because they matched so many other reconstructions. However by pinning the entire credibility of the field on one person who was cornered and made to look bad by persistent attacks, the perception is created that the whole field is flaky.
This is not new stuff. The same exactly was done with tobacco, asbestos, the ozone hole and to a lesser extent (less of a threat to commercial interests) HIV-AIDS. It continues to disappoint me that professional journalists and editors are so easily taken in (“fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” — and this is the 5th time at least).
So: anyone keen on hiring some professional PR?
Doug, Globally, human population has grown consistently since the Toba Catastrophe when we are thought to have been reduced to fewer than 20000 individuals.
Locally, there have been significant declines–Europe in 542 and again from about 1350-1420, and parts of Africa saw significant declines associated with slavery and colonialism (especially the Congo). Plague, Famine, Death and War. Fun times, huh?
> taking for granted that a very high proportion of comments
> came from knowledgeable professionals …
> … the cohort of climatic scientists to
> simply wrangle among themselves
Oh, lord, no. When people are wrangling, that’s not what’s happening here.
Look at the right sidebar under Contributors; those are climatologists sponsoring the site. The “inline responses” — in square brackets, recent ones listed separately in the right sidebar — are comments by the Contributors.
Some few other commenters here are scientists, some of them climate scientists; they’ll have real names, likely links to web pages or lists of publications, and will be findable if you search Google Scholar for their work.
Anyone else is almost certainly just another reader. I’m one of those.
After a while, regular readers can and do reply to new people with pointers for questions answered before. Some people post what they believe or want to believe; some of us try to help them (or more likely other later readers) look up the published science, to check their beliefs.
A wrangle is almost a guarantee that the participants are _not_ climate scientists. We try not to let those blow up; usually a pointer to a reference, or the buttons for FAQ or Start Here at the top of the page, are enough to get someone started reading and questioning what they thought they knew and asking smarter questions.
Watch for the rare occasion when Gavin or one of the other contributors tells someone ‘Good question!’ and explains. Those are the good times.
re #325 Doug Bostrom,
Thanks for trying with the link. However, it did not work for me.
If this link discusses modeling of the ocean as a “lump” or a “slab,” this does not suggest much perception of the 3D nature of the oceans. Certainly the thermohaline part of the process is key, but the vertical transport is also important.
I add to my last. The Monterey ocean model is said to be the model that is used by all the climate models. That is an important fact in itself. These would be the folks at the Naval Postgraduate School who are certainly knowledgeable, but I worry at single source info as a basis for world actions. Hopefully, there is a lot of collaboration.
Barton: #333
“Your ignorant comments are getting to the level of “embarrassingly obtuse.” When are you going to lose the warped idea that variations affect the mean MORE than the the individual case?”
Barton, when are you going to try to comprehend what other people are saying instead of jumping up and down in ignorance. I never said what you think I said, and I never thought it. When I say, “But I think that the assumption – even if it is mostly true – can lead to very large differences in outcome when applied to the globe.”, I’m talking about Hansen’s assumption when he says “The GISS analysis assigns a temperature anomaly to many gridboxes that do not contain measurement data, specifically all gridboxes located within 1200 km of one or more stations that do have defined temperature anomalies. The rationale for this aspect of the GISS analysis is based on the fact that temperature anomaly patterns tend to be large scale.”. What I was not talking about where the large individual adjacent grid box differences that I pointed out to Gavin.
The way in which Hansen’s assumption is used means that there are cases where very few samples are extrapolated to very large areas. This is done to an extent in the Arctic that it strongly effects the global outcome. Now go back and read the rest of what I said in #278 and #302. Then, if you want to attack me, at least do it based upon what I said, not what you hope I said from an out of context reading.
248
Bart Verheggen says:
19 January 2010 at 8:39 AM
Richard Steckis (230),
“Your number 3 is especially off the mark. We are used to making decisions in the face of uncertainty every day. Ideally, a decision should be based on the available information, with its inherent uncertainties. ”
It is not off the mark at all. Available information is insufficient to make an informed decision. Trying to tackle climate change (which is the height of human arrogance) will cost western economies trillions of dollars and bring the western economic system to it’s knees. If we are going to do that then we had better have more than uninformed risk management to go on.
[Response: Alarmist much? – gavin]
Could it be that the Arctic melting is sending tons of cold water to the sea, thus lowering the North Hemisphere winter temp ? Add this to the weakening of the Gulf Current, and you get an extreme winter.
250
Ray Ladbury says:
19 January 2010 at 8:45 AM
Steckis,
1. You are confusing statistical probability (95% confidence) with scientific interpretation.
Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot does this even mean? Most of the scientific interpretation is based on probabality–for instance, there is a better than 95% probability that CO2 sensitivity is greater than 2 degrees per doubling. ”
No there isn’t Ray. have a look at http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F2009JCLI3461.1 they estimate that climate sensitivity is probably overestimated. And you completely misinterpreted my statement about scientific interpretation and probability. Evolution (which we interpret as the most likely explanation for the existence of life on the planet) has no probability attached to it for there has been no empirical study of evolution as such, just a accumulation of evidence from scientific study most of which had no statistical analysis attached those studies.
[Response: Great! Jump on the next paper that apparently claims that climate sensitivity is negligible (which it doesn’t) despite the fact that all of the other papers that said what you think is the same thing have been debunked already. Are you not starting to see a pattern here? – gavin]
“2. The IPCC is not conservative times 1000 because many scientists who disagree with an interpretation are ignored.
Bullshit. Unless by “many” you mean to include scientists with zero expertise in climate science. 97% of actively publishing climate scientists agree with the consensus. What is more, the dissenters offer nothing in the way of coherent interpretation of the science. And clear evidence of the conservatism of the IPCC is found in the toned down language of the summaries relative to the technical documents.”
You are not still hanging on to this Oreskes study as evidence of consensus are you. the 97% figure is total BS. By the way what about the IPCCs latest conservative times 1000 reference to the dissapearing glaciers in the Himalayas. They referenced gray literature and not peer reviewed science on that one. How conservative is that?
[Response: Don’t be ridiculous. Until last month you didn’t even know about this claim, and so you can hardly turn around and suggest that this was the consensus that everyone was talking about. – gavin]
“3. We can and should wait until the science is in (and it isn’t) before making any decisions on climate change.
What science, specifically, do you contend is missing? (Careful here, Steckis, it’s only fair to warn you that I’m baiting a trap with this open-ended question.)”
Most of it. Whilst you physicists keep concentrating on radiative physics and not on the climate system as a whole. The climate system is a complex amalgam of interactions between the lithosphere, oceans, atmosphere, cryosphere with inputs from chemical, biological and physical processes which are all interacting. Radiative physics is just the basis not the answer. After all Ray, if the science is in then why do we have an IPCC at all. Their job would have been done.
“4. The situation is not as urgent as you make it out to be.
And you base this on what other than your usual wishful thinking? Dude, we’ve got methane bubbling out of swamps in Siberia. We’ve got the second warmest year on record occurring at the end of a prolonged solar minimum! We’ve got the ocean acidifying. And we’ve got a problem that requires us to completely revamp our energy infrastructure to solve it. How is that not urgent?”
The usual scaremongering tactics of methane bubbling from swamps (which it does as a matter of course). Second warmest year on record (so what?). A two year solar minimum is not a prolonged one (by the way have you not heard of thermal inertia?). The Dalton solar minimum went for about four decades. You bring up the good old ocean acidification crock. If you think that the biota cannot adapt to changes in ocean pH then you know nothing about biology, ecology and geology. No. We do not need to revamp our energy infrastructure to solve anything (again, human arrogance in thinking we have the power to change climate). Global warming is finished for the moment. The next 30 years will be a period of little or no warming.
“Uh, no. She’s saying that when your gut and the science are on the same side, you should probably listen.”
She is not saying that at all. She is saying ignore the science and go with the precautionary principle (which should not apply in this case).