'Naysayers Guide to Global Warming.

[Iceberg]

The difference between the AGW theory and the likes of Newton etc is that back then we went through the Age of Enlightenment, we are nolonger in that Age as the basics fundamentals are now know and agreed.

"So far the prediction models have proved to be wildly in the wrong so is it fair to argue/challenge that it's premature to say that the science linking human CO2 to GW is undeniable, undesputeable?

That really is the jist of the thread in a nutshell."

Only in the mind of a true sceptic :blink: .

The IPCC said that it was very likely not 100% likely. Nobody argues that's it's undeniable, undesputeable.

This is whether the sceptics really lose IMO rather than arguing the science they build up these straw men, knock them down and then claim an important victory.

BTW has anybody a reference to a piece of Peer reviewed science in the last 2/3 years which does not in some way support the AGW theory.?

[Devonian]

Making stuff up or misleading the public? Depending on which way you look at that, there could be truth in both those cases.

The IPCC and other mortals have said there is a link between human CO2 emissions and GW. People can take that at face value if they want. Others clearly believe the findings/theory are to be challenged. You only have to very quickly glance at the GW sceptic links thread to see some of these challenges.

It was mentioned yesterday that the main quality of a good theory is that it can explain observed facts and make accurate predictions. So far the prediction models have proved to be wildly in the wrong so is it fair to argue/challenge that it's premature to say that the science linking human CO2 to GW is undeniable, undesputeable?

That really is the jist of the thread in a nutshell.

:blink:

"So far the prediction models have proved to be wildly in the wrong" What?

Lets see you evidence of what models from anytime in the last 20 years where 'wildly wrong' wrt, say, 2007 or 2000-2005. I think the models I've followed for a decade or two have done rather well.

Edited March 6, 2007 by Devonian

[Iceberg]

I'll tell you what should effect credibility. A theory that over two decades has had millions in public and private monies ploughed into dozens of institutions, 1000s of researchers, that has bought the most high-tech infrastructure ever known to mankind into its service. But which, despite every thing science has thrown at it, has been constantly wrong in its predictions, and has had to significantly water-down the severity of its initial claims in the light of new facts.

Not only are this theory's supporters undeterred by its inverse propotion of cost / results they maintain the theory is still very credible; undoubted, unchallengeable truth. In fact, now at all the money and work on the theory proves a concensus exists in science.

With an absolutely straight face they say their conclusions are indeed supported by the premise by more than a hair-width while their less glamarous meterological collegues slave over the same supercomputers and fail to predict the next week's temperature to within a margin of error these guys are 100% confident to use in a future they know they'll be long dead/retired by, by the time issues of their credibilty come knocking.

Maybe.

Head and sand come to mind but.....

The IPCC has proved consistantly wrong, in that it has erred on the side of caution and underestimated the effects of AGW.

Sorry forgot the thread title so will restrain myself.....

[parmenides3]

Making stuff up or misleading the public? Depending on which way you look at that, there could be truth in both those cases.

The IPCC and other mortals have said there is a link between human CO2 emissions and GW. People can take that at face value if they want. Others clearly believe the findings/theory are to be challenged. You only have to very quickly glance at the GW sceptic links thread to see some of these challenges.

It was mentioned yesterday that the main quality of a good theory is that it can explain observed facts and make accurate predictions. So far the prediction models have proved to be wildly in the wrong so is it fair to argue/challenge that it's premature to say that the science linking human CO2 to GW is undeniable, undesputeable?

That really is the jist of the thread in a nutshell.

:blink:

It seems that the thread is becoming another 'debate' one; I have tried to stay out of it, but in response to the above, and claims elsewhere that there is yet to be a succeful prediction of warming made by a climate model, there is an interesting post here: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/01/14/onc...eling/#more-110

The section on the prediction is about half-way down the page.

I'll try to attach the graph; it shows the three-scenario predictions made in 1988 by Jim Hansen's team at GISS. The scenario which came to pass was the middle one, more or less (it is well explained in the link). The black line shows actual temperature observations since the original graph was published. This would seem to indicate that the model output was pretty much bang on - not 'wildly in the wrong'.

I have avoided commenting on Mondy's hard work in providing links, as it would be unfair to him to offer a critique on this thread. I would recommend, though, to anyone with an open mind, that they have a look at some of the material on the blog I linked to above, and compare the comments made there with the claims made in some of the links.

I'm still trying not to interfere...

:)P

Edited March 6, 2007 by parmenides3

[memories of 63]

I'll try to attach the graph; it shows the three-scenario predictions made in 1988 by Jim Hansen's team at GISS. The scenario which came to pass was the middle one, more or less (it is well explained in the link). The black line shows actual temperature observations since the original graph was published. This would seem to indicate that the model output was pretty much bang on - not 'wildly in the wrong'.

Looking at the graph, I don't see how you can say scenario B is the one being followed. The current data suggest either Scenario B or C at the moment, the only scenario it may be possible to discount is scenario A

[Mondy]

"So far the prediction models have proved to be wildly in the wrong" What?

I think the models I've followed for a decade or two have done rather well.

1.

A new report on climate over the world’s southernmost continent shows that temperatures during the late 20th century did not climb as had been predicted by many global climate models.

This comes soon after the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that strongly supports the conclusion that the Earth’s climate as a whole is warming, largely due to human activity.

http://speckblog.com/index.php/?p=719

2.

Finally, the UN's predictions are founded not only on an exaggerated forcing-to-temperature conversion factor justified neither by observation nor by physical law, but also on an excessive rate of increase in airborne carbon dioxide. The true rate is 0.38 per cent year on year since records began in 1958. The models assume 1 per cent per annum, more than two and a half times too high. In 2001, the UN used these and other adjustments to predict a 21st-century temperature increase of 1.5 to 6C. Stern suggests up to 10C.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...lit/nwarm05.xml

3. Infact about 1,230,000 resuts found for 'global warming models wrong'

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=global+wa...tart=0&sa=N

[Devonian]

It seems that the thread is becoming another 'debate' one; I have tried to stay out of it, but in response to the above, and claims elsewhere that there is yet to be a succeful prediction of warming made by a climate model, there is an interesting post here: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/01/14/onc...eling/#more-110

The section on the prediction is about half-way down the page.

I'll try to attach the graph; it shows the three-scenario predictions made in 1988 by Jim Hansen's team at GISS. The scenario which came to pass was the middle one, more or less (it is well explained in the link). The black line shows actual temperature observations since the original graph was published. This would seem to indicate that the model output was pretty much bang on - not 'wildly in the wrong'.

I have avoided commenting on Mondy's hard work in providing links, as it would be unfair to him to offer a critique on this thread. I would recommend, though, to anyone with an open mind, that they have a look at some of the material on the blog I linked to above, and compare the comments made there with the claims made in some of the links.

I'm still trying not to interfere...

:)P

Actually, there is a pinned thread dedicate to sceptic views - it's been left alone by most people, so I think this thread and posts are open to debate.

'Open mind' is one of a series of excellent climate related blogs

3. Infact about 1,230,000 results found for 'global warming models wrong'

And people claim that sceptical viewpoints are being suppressed :blink:

Edited March 6, 2007 by Devonian

[parmenides3]

Looking at the graph, I don't see how you can say scenario B is the one being followed. The current data suggest either Scenario B or C at the moment, the only scenario it may be possible to discount is scenario A

Scenario A is the one where GHG emissions were halted by 2000. B is broadly the scenario which describes what actually happened from 1988-present, C made different assumptions. Though scenario B is the approriate one, it can be seen that at times, if anything, the model may have slightly underestimated the impacts on an annual basis. As a trend, however, it provides a reasonable fit with the observed data. Reading the link is probably easier than my poor explanation.

:)P

Mondy: (happy birthday for friday, btw) 1: 'the Antarctic is not the whole world'. See 'Open mind'. 2. Monckton again! A slight error. the models use estimates based on updated data from observations. If the 'forcing to temperature' conversion factor is wrong, then you can't balance the global heat budget, and that's just one comment on this claim. He's also conveniently overlooking the fact that the IPCC has six different scenarios based on what humans choose to do over the coming decades, which use different estimates for rate of CO2 emissions growth, amongst other things.

:)P

Edited March 6, 2007 by parmenides3

[Mondy]

I have avoided commenting on Mondy's hard work in providing links, as it would be unfair to him to offer a critique on this thread. I would recommend, though, to anyone with an open mind, that they have a look at some of the material on the blog I linked to above, and compare the comments made there with the claims made in some of the links.

I'm still trying not to interfere...

:)P

Yep. I'm not entirely sure how this thread is panning out now. Tit-for-tat exchanges again, reminiscent of most other threads containing agw/Co2 themes.lol. Kinda going round in full circles.

What to do?...what to do? :blink:

[parmenides3]

Yep. I'm not entirely sure how this thread is panning out now. Tit-for-tat exchanges again, reminiscent of most other threads containing agw/Co2 themes.lol. Kinda going round in full circles.

What to do?...what to do? :unsure:

Try my recent post on 'alternatives..' thread?

:)P

[Mondy]

Awwww..do I have to? :unsure: :lol:

[Devonian]

Yep. I'm not entirely sure how this thread is panning out now. Tit-for-tat exchanges again, reminiscent of most other threads containing agw/Co2 themes.lol. Kinda going round in full circles.

What to do?...what to do? :unsure:

You have your dedicated thread - no one is interfering with it. I think it's reasonable to deem this thread 'open'.

[parmenides3]

Awwww..do I have to? :unsure: :lol:

Somehow, someway, I'm going to get you to admit that you're not really as cynical as you paint yourself. What's your response to the graph, BTW?

:)P

[Mondy]

Somehow, someway, I'm going to get you to admit that you're not really as cynical as you paint yourself. What's your response to the graph, BTW?

:)P

What do i make of the graph?

It's estimates, projecture, scenarios inter-twined with a smoothed observation. After the observation stops it's all hypothetical. Am i to believe that?

Cynical? Not really, i should've added it was a jokey last reply.

[parmenides3]

You miss the point. The graph was produced (without the black line) in 1988, by the GISS GCM (model). In 1988 they estimated how the temparature would change. The record of the last 19 years (actually, it may be 18 on the graph) since it was first published shows a close match between the orignal estimate and the actual outcome. You claim that no models have predicted anything yet. This one did. The future? We'll leave that aside for the time being. Your response?

:)P

[Admiral_Bobski]

Yes, this thread seems to be going back over old ground again - not that there's anything wrong with going over old ground, unless nothing new is coming out of it... The debate will no doubt start afresh on Thursday/Friday after the Channel 4 programme! I agree with Devonian that it isn't really necessary to keep this a "believer"-free zone (for want of a better phrase!) - the skeptics links thread is pinned and has many counter-argumentative links in it. A debate's no fun when everyone agrees!

Maybe we should start at the beginning and answer OON's question:

Ok...back to basics. WHY would anyone make this stuff up or mislead us?

Perhaps different people have different views on this - my own view is that Man-Induced Climate Change was first seriously suggested in the 19th Century, and seemed like a plausible scientific scenario (as did the Steady-State Theory of the Universe, not trying to draw parallels). The idea later became popular when various scientists found that their studies seemed to support this notion, despite other studies which neither disproved nor backed up this assertion. Over time, for a variety of reasons including social and political situations, the AGW bandwagon grew (perhaps it expanded in the heat!...Joke...! :unsure: ). Finally you end up with a complicated situation. There are people who still believe the theory because they are inflexible (like those who still cling to Steady-State Theory), there are those who are subconsciously biased towards it (media and, possibly, peer-pressure reinforcing the idea in their minds), there are those who have a vested interest in it (governments and the UN)...

The point is, the original idea of AGW was, I believe, a scientifically noble theory that attempted to attribute climate's variability to measurable phenomena - not least being mankind's activities. The complexities of climate were not known at the time (and many of the subtleties involved are still not known today) - although Occam's Razor says that the simplest explanation is most often the correct explanation, it doesn't really take into account the fact that sometimes things are just too darned complicated to have a simple explanation!

Originally, there was no attempt to deceive, there was no significant bias, there were only legitimate attempts to understand the world in which we live. Over time, with gaining support, the bias has increased, there is a degree of deception (not necessarily from scientists, but deliberate "spin" on behalf of the media and governments) and the argument is cloudier than ever.

More later :lol:

C-Bob

[VillagePlank]

Well, Scenario B seems to be within 0.35C (at a quick glance) on it's worst case historical basis - which isn't too bad - actually I think it's rather good; especially when it can be seen that this error is not cumulative.

What are the stipulations between the three scenarios?

Edited March 6, 2007 by VillagePlank

[parmenides3]

VP: the article explains it well: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/01/14/onc...eling/#more-110

C-Bob; have you read Spencer Weart's page?: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html

:)P

[VillagePlank]

Yup; learnt to read! Apologies . . . .

Scenario A was described as “on the high side of reality”, because it assumed rapid exponential growth of greenhouse gases and that there would be no large volcanoes during the next half century. Scenario C was described as “a more drastic curtailment of emissions than has generally been imagined”; specifically, greenhouse gases were assumed to stop increasing after 2000. The intermediate Scenario B was described as “the most plausible,” having continued growth of greenhouse gas emissions at a moderate rate, and it sprinkled three large volcanoes in the 50-year period after 1988, one of them in the 1990s. Scenarios A and C were meant to generate some idea of upper and lower limits of possibility.

From here

. . . so based on B, and accepting a 0.35C error, if we considered it in favour of those arguing against we can say that it is entirely possible, given model output compared to observed temperatures, that the temperature until 2020 will not exceed the Eemian interglacial and the Altithermal drought; this of course, takes the maximum observed negative error and subtracts it from the highest value in scenario B.

Edited March 6, 2007 by VillagePlank

[Mondy]

You miss the point. The graph was produced (without the black line) in 1988, by the GISS GCM (model). In 1988 they estimated how the temparature would change. The record of the last 19 years (actually, it may be 18 on the graph) since it was first published shows a close match between the orignal estimate and the actual outcome. You claim that no models have predicted anything yet. This one did. The future? We'll leave that aside for the time being. Your response?

:)P

Point taken now. So, the GISS GCM model is the only one to show a close match?

Look, if the GFS (super weather model) can't predict a low pressure system off the coast of Ireland dropping 15mbs than it progged, which occured 2 days ago, while it was no more than 12 hours out, why should i believe any model projecting future temperature hikes when the uncertainty in them has already been mentioned, not least by the IPCC.

Edited March 6, 2007 by Mondy

[Devonian]

Point taken now. So, the GISS GCM model is the only one to show a close match?

Look, if the GFS (super weather model) can't predict a low pressure system off the coast of Ireland dropping 15mbs than it progged, which occured 2 days ago, why should i believe any model projecting future temperature hikes when the uncertainty in them has already been mentioned, not least by the IPCC.

C'mon, Mondy, you know the difference between weather and climate :unsure: :lol: .

[Mondy]

C'mon, Mondy, you know the difference between weather and climate :lol: .

Let's try this then:

If we all held our fridge/freezer doors open for three days, the maths goes something like this ( :lol: )

A=Area of coverage

Av= Average (expected) chill factor

E=Effect of AxAv

A^Av^E=Time of cool!

Jeez, i really am losing it! :unsure: :lol:

Right, i'm on a weeks hols and I intend to enjoy them, not ruined by petty exchanges which includes me being no better than others ( ). I'll see you all back here in a few days ( or few hours) where hopefully a new thread will be started in honour of The Great Global Warming Swindle..

[Admiral_Bobski]

VP: the article explains it well: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/01/14/onc...eling/#more-110

C-Bob; have you read Spencer Weart's page?: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html

:)P

Yes, I've read bits and pieces of it in the past. It's an impressive piece of work, but the bias is evident and his derision for speculation over solar influences is obvious from the tone of his writing.

It's a tough area to tackle - it's only really in the past 20 or 25 years that we've made any great leaps in our understanding of the sun (John Gribbin's book Stardust is highly recommended!). It's hard to make many conclusive statements when the subject is not well understood (and it certainly wasn't in the 1970s, a time-period which is a focal point for Weart's discussion).

Whether any of the proposed solar mechanisms did in fact produce a noticeable effect on global climate was still no more than speculation

Here's an example of pot and the kettle, though (I'm not singling out Weart, but using a quote slightly out of context to support a point). Pro-AGW arguments claim that "deniers" take local effects and make them out to be global (effectively - as in the case of the MWP and LIA debate). Yet these same people argue that individual solar mechanisms can't have a significant effect on Earth's climate... Possibly not, but how about a whole bunch of solar mechanisms, all doing their own things, all reinforcing one another - surely that could have some bearing on Earth? But the argument is always that "this" mechanism isn't strong enough, and nor is "that" mechanism, never "but these two mechanisms working in tandem may have some effect...

I'll be back!

:unsure:

C-Bob

[parmenides3]

Point taken now. So, the GISS GCM model is the only one to show a close match?

Look, if the GFS (super weather model) can't predict a low pressure system off the coast of Ireland dropping 15mbs than it progged, which occured 2 days ago, while it was no more than 12 hours out, why should i believe any model projecting future temperature hikes when the uncertainty in them has already been mentioned, not least by the IPCC.

No; most of the the other top-end GCMs show comparable results, but GISS is the longest running, therefore the easiest to compare to actual data over a reasonable time period.

The debate over climate model reliability in relation to weather forecasting model reliability is not straightforward. The most common response given is that weather models are dealing with chaotic systems, where initial value errors and/or slight changes in conditions lead to large scale divergence over time, whilst climate models are dealing with (mathematically) non-chaotic systems. The idea is that climate operates in patterns which can be related to observation and can be parameterised in such a way that they can replicate the real patterns by adjusting the principal variables in a way which conforms to known physics. (I think that's about right).

But then I note that a new paper from the ECMWF is working on a linkage between NWP and climate modelling (by introducing more accurate initial values they hope to improve the skill level of the GCMs), so it isn't so easy to distinguish as it might appear. As far as 'why should i believe...', if the model (in the case above, the GISS A) has been shown to have already accurately anticipated change over a 15 year period, it might increase your confidence in the model's ability to forecast within the right range, at least.

Though there may be a number of reasons why this happens to be the case, I would also point out that, as time goes on, the main GCMs are getting closer to each other in terms of projections of future warming, and the reasons for the variations from one model to another are often well-understood; for example, there are often slightly different assumptions made about climate sensitivity, which effects the down-the-line results. Most of the 'uncertainty' about future temperatures from the models is not so much a function of them disagreeing with each other, as it is of the uncertainty about how much more 'Doh a dumb swear filter got the better of me* we are going to emit over the next twenty years.

I believe that around 28 climate models are in operation around the world at the moment, of which the IPCC 'output' section uses about 8, the ones with the best track records. Not one of these models has forecast/projected that the climate is going to stabilise or cool over the next 100 years. As I say, there may be reasons why this is so, but it is, nonetheless, the case.

:)P

VP: if the term is acceptable to climate scientists, it'll do for me, though I agree it's a misnomer, it refers meaningfully to a familiarly understood concept.

It is possible to change the question to; 'Does the presence of CO2 in the atmosphere serve to prevent the loss of energy in the form of heat to space?' is this adequate? It might also server to help you C-Bob, with your question. Perhaps they amount to the same thing. I imagine I was intending to refer to the climate of the world as we know it - ie, the one in which life is at least possible, which has the present broad chemistry that has developed over time.

:)P

Edited March 6, 2007 by parmenides3

[The Penguin]

BF, I think that's as nicely measured a response to a question as I've seen here for some time. Clear, serious and informative.

The next bit will be interesting.