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Tom Curtis at 08:35 AM on 20 January 2016There is no consensus
TheRobin @728, I have addressed Duarte's criticism elsewhere. The upshot is that even if we allowed his criticisms as being entirely valid, and removed from the study all papers to which it applies, it would only reduce the consensus to 96.8%. That reduction ignores that several of the papers on Duarte's list were classified as 4, and therefore did not contribute to the consensus value; and that no doubt there were opposite errors were papers supporting the consensus were excluded or classified as 4 (both of which are known to have been the case). Ergo the 96.8% represents a generous overestimate of the impact of taking Duarte's criticism into account.
It is astonishing how consistently critics of Cook et al (2013) fail to estimate the impacts of their criticism on the 97%; and how consistently the impacts are negligible at best. There is a reasons why Duarte's criticism will not make it into peer review - but will be endlessly bandied around by those for whom rhetoric is more important than analysis.
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Tom Curtis at 08:24 AM on 20 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Digby Scorgie @44, in the short term economic inertia ensures there will be more CO2 emissions. Consequently the information about zero emissions is relevant with respect to long term targets for emission reductions only. It is sometimes said that we need only reduce emissions by 50% with the assumption that the rest will be taken care of by the factors that currently remove about 50% of emissions from the atmosphere, but that is not correct. Even emissions as low as 10% of current values will ensure near constant atmospheric composition by balancing the reduction in CO2 overtime by natural drawdown. The result would be a further warming equal to about half of the warming todate over time. Emission rates of 1% of current values will probably ensure a slow long term rise in CO2 levels, with a consequent slow rise in temperatures. This will not be harmful in the short term because of the slow rate of temperature increase, but in the long term can easilly push temperatures in which the tropics are seasonally uninhabitable (not just uncomfortable, but literally uninhabitable). Further, even zero net emissions will not stop further sea level rises (although they will limit there scope).
All of this is important because it means we should be aiming, within 35 years (or 50 years on the outside) to reduce total human emissions to zero. It does not suggest we can plausibly reduce human emissions to zero in a year or even 15 years.
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Rob Honeycutt at 07:55 AM on 20 January 2016Ted Cruz fact check: which temperature data are the best?
Sorry, I wasn't actually trying to be sarcastic. I was just having some fun. It wasn't intended to be at your expense, but rather for your enjoyment.
The secret hint is, the book Tamino is selling in the sidebar is his own book.
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barry1487 at 07:52 AM on 20 January 2016Ted Cruz fact check: which temperature data are the best?
knaugle,
Put 'Tamino is statistician' into your search engine. You should find your answer somewhere in that list.
(shwiff!) [dive roll]
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knaugle at 07:15 AM on 20 January 2016Ted Cruz fact check: which temperature data are the best?
Regarding #10, I wasn't trying to invite sarcastic stuff. Problem is if I don't know who someone is, not even the slightest hint, I'm inclined to be suspicious and the TAMINO site is suspect in my book. Though considering what Michael Mann has gone through, not proclaiming one's identity to the blogiverse is understandable.
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Rob Honeycutt at 06:49 AM on 20 January 2016Ted Cruz fact check: which temperature data are the best?
And Eli Rabett is really... (thwip!)... Aaaaagh!
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Ted Cruz fact check: which temperature data are the best?
Tamino is a statistician who has written a lot about global warming.
His blog is here, and the blog post containing the graph that compares RATPAC and RSS is here. -
Rob Honeycutt at 06:46 AM on 20 January 2016Ted Cruz fact check: which temperature data are the best?
Tamino's identity is one of those closely held open secrets that everyone is aware of. He's a statistician named...(thwip) ACK! ...Poison...dart...to...the...neck.
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Digby Scorgie at 06:32 AM on 20 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Andy
I reread your blogpost. I think I have it now:
If emissions of carbon dioxide are suddenly cut to zero, the delayed warming resulting from the inertia of the system is almost exactly balanced by the cooling resulting from the declining concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide. For at least the short to medium term the average global temperature therefore remains approximately constant.
But in the real world, even if action is taken to begin limiting emissions, carbon dioxide will continue to rise above 400 ppm although at a decreasing rate of increase. After some time the concentration will reach a maximum and then begin falling. Right?
The implication is that in the short term we'll still suffer from a rising global temperature and a worsening climate — enough to cause the collapse of global civilization? Don't know. And if it collapses, will fossil-fuel use fall drastically? I should think it would.
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knaugle at 06:18 AM on 20 January 2016Ted Cruz fact check: which temperature data are the best?
So WHO is tamino? The link/site gives no indication who or what is behind it.
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TheRobin at 05:40 AM on 20 January 2016There is no consensus
Has anyone looked at the rebuttal from José Duarte regarding Cook's 97% consensus paper? (http://www.joseduarte.com/blog/cooking-stove-use-housing-associations-white-males-and-the-97)
He makes quite a good case about various biases being in the methodology along with pointing out how the claimed standards have not been met in various ways.
From what I can tell he makes a pretty compelling case that the 97% consensus is way overstated as a result of those errors.Moderator Response:[RH] Please inform us when Duarte gets his rebuttal through peer review and we can discuss it at that time.
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Brandon R Gates at 04:46 AM on 20 January 2016Surface Temperature or Satellite Brightness?
Kevin, Thanks for setting me straight as well as for your further explanations, and of course the article itself which has helped me better understand a number of other things regarding uncertanties in all temperature anomaly time series.
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AuntSally at 01:34 AM on 20 January 2016Ted Cruz fact check: which temperature data are the best?
Alright, let me rephrase. In the video, Judith Curry asserts satellite data (presumably mid-trop MSU) is "the best data we have." I'm looking for a resource that clarifies her statement. Am unable to find, from her, a more detailed explanation of this statement. Anyone know what her reasoning is (presumably she has her reasons for this assertion).
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Joel_Huberman at 00:51 AM on 20 January 2016Satellite record is more reliable than thermometers
The graphic says that 2.3% of global warming is going into the atmosphere. In the context of satellite measurements, it would be useful to know what percent of warming is going into the lower portion of the atmosphere where people live and where standard thermometers are located, and what proportion is going into each of the atmospheric layers measured by satellites. Since atmospheric density decreases rapidly with altitude, I suspect that mid- and upper-troposphere measurements represent extremely small portions of the heat capacity of our total Earth system. But I'd like to see the numbers; I'm not able to calculate them myself.
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Kevin C at 00:44 AM on 20 January 2016Surface Temperature or Satellite Brightness?
I've made the following changes to the article to address the issue of the HadCRUT ensemble not including all of the uncertainies (as far as I can).
Figure 3 and 4 captions now include the following additional text:
The HadCRUT4 ensemble omits some sources of uncertainty: I estimate the spread in the trends should be increased by 7%.
Neither the Hadley or RSS data are global in coverage, both omitting a large area of the Antarctic and a smaller region of the Arctic, however differeng in other regions. The uncertainty is therefore only evalauated for the region covered. I've changed:
The UK Met Office assesses all these sources of uncertainty and uses them to produce an ensemble of 100 possible versions of the temperature record (Morice et al. 2012). By looking at the variation between members of the ensemble, we get an indication of the uncertainty in the record.
to:
The UK Met Office assesses these sources of uncertainty and uses them to produce an ensemble of 100 possible versions of the temperature record (Morice et al. 2012). By looking at the variation between members of the ensemble, we get an indication of the uncertainty in the record over the region covered by the observations. (Additional sources of uncertainty including changes in coverage and partially correlated errors slightly increase the uncertainties.)
Since neither record is global in coverage, discussion of the new infilled record and its effect on the uncertainties is irrelevant. I've removed the following sentences:
In 2010 the main difference between the records was due to differing coverage of the poles (Hansen et al. 2010). When Robert Way and I modified the HadCRUT4 record to account for incomplete coverage, we found that the corresponding uncertainties were reduced by about a factor of 2 (Cowtan & Way 2014, section 6.1). So we expect that the new infilled HadCRUT4 record from the Met Office will reduce the uncertainty in the surface temperature record.
and:
Combining the effects of coverage and the sea surface temperature corrections, the uncertainty in the surface temperature record is unlikely to change very much.
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Kevin C at 21:15 PM on 19 January 2016Ted Cruz fact check: which temperature data are the best?
Is it due to differences in compensating for satellite drift or satellite temperature
That's exactly it. The RSS ensemble is constructed from different plausible values for each of the model parameters and adjustments required to construct the satellite record from the raw brightness data.
The spread of the RSS ensemble is an indication of the uncertainty in those adjustments.
However there is a second source of uncertainty: Not only are there uncertainties in the parameters used within a particular reconstruction method, there are different methods. So there is a second source of spread which can be measured (if rather more crudely) by comparing products from different groups (and arguably different versions from the same group in some cases).
Both of these apply both to the surface and satellite record, which is why having multiple versions is useful. Having an ensemble spread for the individal methods is also important, but currently only Hadley and RSS provide these.
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ryland at 20:00 PM on 19 January 2016Ted Cruz fact check: which temperature data are the best?
The comment is made "On the other hand, different groups processing the same raw satellite data arrive at very different estimates of the warming trend in the atmosphere." I just don't understand why processing of the same data gives different results. Is it due to differences in compensating for satellite drift or satellite temperature or something else altogether? And is RSS more correct because those results agree more closely with surface stations? But as there is considerable emphasis on the fact that satellite and surface stations are not measuring the same thing is this a valid conclusion? I do apologise for this display of naivety/ineptitude/ignorance call it what you will. but I would be grateful if someone could explain why these differences occur. One further question, why use all the data if some are apparent outliers?
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Richard Lawson at 19:46 PM on 19 January 2016Ted Cruz fact check: which temperature data are the best?
What is the reason for the divergence between RSS and RATPAC that happens around 2013? There is pretty good agreement before that time.
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Kevin C at 19:31 PM on 19 January 2016Surface Temperature or Satellite Brightness?
Brandon: The 2sigma for the RSS ensemble is 0.067C/decade, so about 50% higher than the value from the paper. The 95% range would correspond to a 4sigma range, which leads to a similar conclusion.
Mears (2011) only included data to 2009. The 2sigma spread of the ensemble I plotted on that period is 0.059C/decade, which explains a part of the discrepancy. I am assuming that the remaining difference comes from the ensemble I plotted being from a later revision, but I'll ask Carl Mears.
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BBHY at 18:42 PM on 19 January 2016Ted Cruz fact check: which temperature data are the best?
As I see it, the Ted Cruz type folks view this as a Perry Mason episode. Although the accused has 20 points of evidence indicating guilt, Perry always finds the one piece of evidence that refutes it all, shows his client is innocent and reveals the real murderer. They see themselves as Perry, and CO2 as the falsely accused. They think all they need to do is declare something about sunspots or cosmic rays and that will prove that CO2 is innocent.
The problem with that line of thinking is that while it makes for great TV courtroom drama, that is not how science works. There are many different, independent lines of evidence supporting the finding that excess CO2 in the atmosphere is warming the planet, and no single piece of contrary evidence can refute them all. Most of the contrary evidence doesn't even hold up to close examination.
We know with great certainty that CO2 absorbs infrared heat radiation. Nobody has proposed any mechanism that can possibly prevent CO2 from absorbing infrared heat radiation, and thereby causing the planet to warm. But even if they found such a mechanism, they would then still have to show how some other mechanism is warming the planet, with exactly the same characteristics as excess CO2. There is no known mechanism with such characteristics. So, that's two impossible tasks right there. But they continue to try to show that all the different temperature readings of the surface, ocean and air temperature are somehow wrong, that the measurements of heat flow into and out of the Earth are somehow wrong, and how the climate models are somehow wrong. how measurements of solar radiation are somehow wrong, etc. There is simply no single piece of contrary evidence they can possibly find that can refute all these different lines of evidence implicating excess CO2 as the cause of the warming of our planet.
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David Lewis at 16:52 PM on 19 January 2016Ted Cruz fact check: which temperature data are the best?
Wouldn't the Argo float data indicating an almost steady rise in ocean heat storage be the most significant indicator that the planet is heating up? Its physics, isn't it?
A bit of a shift in heat distribution in the ocean takes place, i.e. El Nino, and a major shift in global surface temperature results. The ocean is a big dog and average global surface temperature, or even less, average mid tropospheric temperature, are tiny tails.
The only thing that could account for the ongoing accumulation of heat in the oceans is that there is a planetary energy imbalance.
Running satellite data through a model to compute average global mid troposphere temperature is basically irrelevant compared to this, no matter what it says.
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Digby Scorgie at 14:32 PM on 19 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Andy
I should've read your blogpost yesterday, but I've done so now. I think I now understand what you mean. Let's see if I can summarize correctly:
If we boost carbon dioxide to 400 ppm and hold it steady at that level, there is a delay before the climate system reaches equilibrium. The average global temperature rises to a certain level and then stabilizes there.
If we add excess carbon dioxide so as to boost the level to 400 ppm but then stop adding any more, natural processes immediately start removing some of the excess carbon dioxide. The concentration of carbon dioxide decays exponentially (looking at the shape of the curve), but the average global temperature stops rising any further.
(Damn, now I don't understand why the temperature doesn't also fall, after a delay, in the latter case also. I'll have to reread your post!)
In the real world we cannot just stop our emissions all at once, but the sooner we start cutting emissions the better. Do I have that right?
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Eclectic at 14:16 PM on 19 January 2016Ted Cruz fact check: which temperature data are the best?
J. Curry, judging by her website, relies upon a large amount of smoke & verbiage [ not "smoke & mirrors"! ] to cast a rather dense haze over the AGW topic. "Smoke" is the appropriate term, because the approach resembles the Haze of Uncertainty cast by Big Tobacco, for so many decades, to obscure the public's clear vision of the realities.
Cui bono? (as the lawyers would say). Money is always worth looking at ~ AFAIK no money is passed to her directly . . . unlike Dr Soon & a few others on the Silver Spoon of Heartland Spinstitute and suchlike hidden-donor propaganda machines. However, it is said that funds are paid into a company that she is closely associated with ~ and of course those funds would be used for expenses only (we would like to think!).
More importantly, in the cui bono line : for some types of personality there is a great attraction in notoriety ; in being seen as a maverick. I should imagine that this is quite a large factor, for those (handful) of real climate scientists who are turning a blind eye to the actual evidence.
And then, there's those all-expenses-paid trips for presenting testimony to Senate committees etcetera. All grist, for those who prefer 15 years of fame ( rather than the clichéd "15 minutes" ). Lights, cameras . . . and disinformation!
Moderator Response:[PS] Multiple comments policy violations. Let's drop this and stick to science.
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Bob Loblaw at 13:08 PM on 19 January 2016Surface Temperature or Satellite Brightness?
hank:
Does this help?
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Nick Palmer at 09:04 AM on 19 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Andy. In the last few years, almost under the radar, the potential of agricultural, pasture, forestry and horticultural soils to resquester carbon that they have lost over the last couple of hundred years has has been increasingly recognised.
I have checked the maths myself and there truly seems to be sufficient capacity to at least offset all current emissions but also, some say, sufficient to actually start drawing "ppms" of carbon back out of the atmosphere.
Here's an intro...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2015/12/04/fe22879e-990b-11e5-8917-653b65c809eb_story.html -
AuntSally at 09:02 AM on 19 January 2016Ted Cruz fact check: which temperature data are the best?
What. In the world. Is going on with Judith Curry? Does anyone have any insight into her perspective? Christy and Spencer are well known to be down the path of right wing religious zealotry... but what's the story with Curry?
Moderator Response:[PS] Please stick to science.
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uncletimrob at 08:03 AM on 19 January 2016Ted Cruz fact check: which temperature data are the best?
Thanks. The last sentence says it all!
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Brandon R Gates at 07:08 AM on 19 January 2016Surface Temperature or Satellite Brightness?
Kevin,
I'm reading through Mears et al. (2011), and find Table 2 reports 2-sigma trend uncertainty estimates for TLT as 0.044 K/decade, whereas Figure 4 of this note puts the 95% CI for RSS TLT at about 0.13 K/decade. Explanation for that nearly 3x difference is not readily apparent to me from reading the paper as both calculations appear to be estimating the same thing. Could you please explain my error in understanding and/or give a justification for the difference in estimates?
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hank at 04:23 AM on 19 January 2016Surface Temperature or Satellite Brightness?
Is there a map of where around the planet the balloon measurements have been made over the past 15-20 years? Do those data points get matched closely with satellite data points for the same location/date/time? I've been wondering if the dramatic change in air quality over India and China during that period makes any difference in how the atmosphere looks to the satellites. If the balloon and satellite data match up, that would rule that speculation out. (I know, this amounts to a "please prove me wrong" but speculation is all I have.)
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tmbtx at 02:21 AM on 19 January 2016A Response to the “Data or Dogma?” hearing
It's great to see these posts on the satellite methods and their uncertainty. I've trying to find some intermediate-level explanations of how it works and now I've got them. Nice, and thanks.
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hankspage at 02:05 AM on 19 January 2016A Response to the “Data or Dogma?” hearing
As a structural engineer I don’t claim to be any kind of expert in climate science. However it has become my favorite subject and the one thing I am most concerned about for my children and grandchildren. Therefore I do a lot of reading about the subject. Also as a structural engineer I don’t get to fudge the numbers based on my political beliefs or the results would be catastrophic.
The subject of the pause in warming during this century has been completely aggravating to me. Living in East Texas I am completely surrounded by deniers that use this argument constantly. So I made a simple excel spreadsheet which showed the ‘degrees per decade’ rate of temperature from each year to 2015 using the NASA data at ‘http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt’ starting at 1975. At the year 2008 the number started getting very high since the time frame was so small and the temperature for those years was increasing rapidly. But before that the average degrees per decade increase was 0.273. The lowest rate of increase for the entire 40 year period was using 1998 which showed a rate of 0.124 degrees/decade because the temperature for 1998 was so high. If you use 1997 the rate is 0.206 and if you use 1999 the rate is 0.263 degrees/decade. This is the definition of cherry picking and went a long way towards debunking the argument of my peers that there had been no increase in temperature this century.
I have a feeling the satellite data would show the same results. -
One Planet Only Forever at 01:10 AM on 19 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Glenn,
My response to your leaky boat example is:
What if you need to mobilize a group of people to plug the leak you are aware of, but everyone else is enjoying the dance party and maybe a little drunk? Add the likelihood that a few popular loud-mouths who say very appealing things that keep the partires focused on their good-time because they want to party to continue (they know about the leak and understand the importance of plugging it, but do not want it done at the expense of the Party they are enjoying, or do not want it done because the are profiting rapidly at the gamblig tables and think they gave a great hand to win the pot before he real tragedy becomes so apparant to everyone taht it shuts the party down).
Now, instead of the boat case which has everyone on the boat in personal peril, which is a very different case than climate change, the case is a group of partiers who decide to enjoy something personally enjoyable but potentially very damaging like starting fires. And they initially did it without thinking about the potential for the fire to get out of control so they were starting them anywhere that suited their interests in havig a better time. And you are one person trying to get the partiers to stop lighting those fires because of the chance they could get out of control and cause massive damage to others. But again a few smooth talking personally profiting marketers who understand the risk want the partying to continue because they are making a killing selling things to cook on the fires to all the intoxicated and party addicted revellers. Introducing a fire extinguisher will not be very succeessful.
Now extend the scenario to a case where none of the partiers believe there is any chance that they personally will suffer any of the consequences of their partying (and they are likely correct that they personally will not suffer serious consequences). How likely are you to be able to develop a technological answer to the problem that does not 'stop the unacceptable aspects of the party' sooner than the partiers are willing to shut it down.
That last case is the scenario we face. More responsible technology alredy exists. It existed 30 years ago. The partiers enjoying the party the most refuse to change how they party, because it would not be 'as enjoyable' and the liou-mouth people who understand the need to change the party behaviour will continue to appeal to keep the party going until they personally see that they will get even more popularity and profitability from changing the way the paty is enjoyed (and those people will never try to figure out how to 'ensure that everyone on the plant and far into the future can enjoy the party' (there is no money in that and it is hard work and some people will not like you).
The Promoters of unsustainable and damaging party activity need to be kept from succeeding, even if they have revved up a grand party with lots of people enjoying their good time at the expense of everyone else (and wanting to continue to enjoy their party as oblivious as possible to the damage they are doing ... because understanding that would be a real Buzz-Kill.)
So my point is that the technological solution envisioned to 'solve the problem' may not be possible (because it has to satisfy the people at the top of the party pyramid that they will be even better off).
The technology needed has existed for a long time. However, in many cases the answer is a dramatic reduction of energy consumption by the activities of the wealthiest. And anyone who won't dramatically reduce their energy consumption by choosing to pursue the lower impact ways of profiting or doing things, giving up on what they understand is an unacceptable way of enjoying their life, may need global humanity to give them the motivation for a hard-reboot of their 'life perspective'.
A significant price on carbon would be a 'hard-reboot' and is clearly contrary to the interests of the promoters of the currently most popular way to party. It has been known for decades that it would be required. That massive price on carbon is clearly the best technological solution, if you consider develoments of new financial and socioeconomic arrangements 'Technology'. And if technology is considered to be the way things are done then indeed changes to the financial and socioeconomic system are 'technological developments'.
And I would propose that it is most likely that such technological developments will create the most rapid change of human activity. And I would even suggest that the technological development you refer to 'limited to mechanical things' relies on the socioeconomic changes occurring (will not be popular without the socioeconomic changes). Without the socioeconomic changes it is possible that no level of 'mechanical technology' will be able to change the way the most fortunate among huamanity choose to try to get away with "Enjoying Their Partying".
Back to my previous comment. The ability of the people who have undeservingly become wealthy and powerful to abuse misleading marketing to keep the Party going the way they want is the real problem, and needs to be worked on more aggressively than 'mechanical technological development'.
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Tom Curtis at 00:21 AM on 19 January 2016The Quest for CCS
wili @39, see here. With zero emissions, CO2 concentrations falls (through achieving equilibrium of pCO2 in the ocean) at approximatly the same rate that feedbacks cause a rise in temperature to the Equilibrium Climate Response for a given concentration. Because the rates are approximately equal, the net effect is that temperatures would remain approximately constant even with feedbacks taken into account. In the longer term, the rate of fall after ocean pCO2 equilibrium, further falls due to rebuffering the ocean, and chemical weathering approximate in rate the slower temperture rise to the Earth System Reponse, ie, the long term temperature response due to slow feedbacks like retreat of ice caps. The net effect is shown in this diagram:
It should be noted the errors in these estimates are quite large, and the data is consistent with either slightly rising temperatures, or slightly falling temperatures with constant emissions. More likely, temperatures will slightly rise at some times, and slightly fall at others due to the rates and relative strengths of the responses not always precisely conciding.
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wili at 23:27 PM on 18 January 2016The Quest for CCS
"in a zero-emissions world, CO2 concentrations would fall" ??
I thought in your piece www.skepticalscience.com/Macdougall.html , that figure 3 shows that temperatures in fact won't fall in a zero-emissions world (except under very optimistic assumptions about sensitivity) because even a partial inclusion of some of the permafrost feedback will at least counter the CO2 absorbed by the oceans. And that was back in 2012.
Have these calculations changed for some reason, or am I missing something?
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Tom Curtis at 21:34 PM on 18 January 2016Tracking the 2°C Limit - November 2015
angusmac @41, I am not going to respond formally to your post until it is clear that it will not be deleted for its rather egregious posting under the wrong topic. If it is so deleted, by all means repost in on the correct thread. If you feel there is some part of the discussion that asolutely belongs on this thread, you can then link to that repost and highlight briefly only what is relevant, and why it is relevant to the OP here.
I will note that it is extraordinary in science to only make criticism on weblogs (which is where you will find the criticism of Marcott et al), and to expect a more formal response by Marcott without demanding a more formal critique by the science assassins "climate auditors" represents a stunning hypocrissy.
Moderator Response:[PS] Can I suggest that any discussion relating to Marcott et al be conducted in this thread? I dont intend to delete the angusmac comment since it obviously involved some effort to construct and isnt totally offtopic, but I would appreciate responses in more suitable threads.
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angusmac at 19:15 PM on 18 January 2016Tracking the 2°C Limit - November 2015
Rob Honeycutt@39 & Tom Curtis@32
Rob, I agree that the conversation has veered off course for this comment thread but I do wish to make the following comments regarding Marcott et al (2013) that are relevant to baselining preindustrial temperatures:
- Marcott et al state that their results indicate that “global mean temperature for the decade 2000–2009 [HadCRUT3] has not yet exceeded the warmest temperatures of the early Holocene (5000 to 10,000 yr B.P.).” Therefore, if we were to use their reconstruction, we would be near to the Holocene peak.
- 80% of the Marcott et al proxies are derived from marine archives and consequently would underestimate global land-ocean temperatures. Consequently, the Marcott et al results should be adjusted upwards for an apples-for-apples comparison with land-ocean temperatures, as suggested by Glenn Tamblyn@9.
- Proxies tend to have multi-decadal to centennial resolutions and should not be compared directly with annual instrumental temperatures. Kaufman et al (2013) consider this by presenting the most recent 30-year period (1983-2012) from HadCRUT4 as shown by the star in Figure 2. However, a good case could be made for using a longer period for the instrumental mean when comparing it with proxies that are of centennial resolution e.g., Marcott et al (2013).
Figure 2 (Kaufman et al, 2013)Tom, I had thought that the uptick at the end of the Marcott et al reconstruction would provide a good correlation with instrumental temperatures but Marcott et al stated that their 1890-1950 warming was “probably not robust.” If it is not robust then why show it?
Further research indicated that there had been criticism of the paper, which resulted in a Q&A blog by Marcott et al in RealClimate which stated that, “the 20th century portion of our paleotemperature stack is not statistically robust, cannot be considered representative of global temperature changes, and therefore is not the basis of any of our conclusions.”
“Not robust” is an understatement when you compare Figure S3 from Marcott et al (2013) with Figure C8 in Marcott’s PhD thesis (2011). This comparison shows that there are differences in the two reconstructions in general and, in particular, the last 500 years shows completely different results. For example, there is an uptick in Figure S3 in the 2103 version and no uptick in Figure C8 in the 2011 versions (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Extracts from Figure S3 (Marcott et al, 2013) and Figure C8 (Marcott, 2011)
A difference of approximately 0.8 °C in the two versions of the reconstruction is presented in Figure 1 – yet they use the same proxies. Marcott et al do not address this significant difference by their “not robust” statement.
Regarding the criticism of their paper, it is very unusual to address such criticism in a weblog, as done by Marcott et al. It is normal scientific practice to address criticism in clarifications/corrigenda to the original paper in the pertinent journal because this allows a technical audit on the veracity of the paper. Not having done so certainly casts doubt on the robustness of the last 500 years of the reconstruction and perhaps even the entire paper.
In light of the above discrepancies in Marcott et al (2013), I would not recommend it as a reasonable paleo reconstruction.
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Andy Skuce at 19:07 PM on 18 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Digby
To keep concentrations constant at 400ppm would require continued emissions, albeit at a much lower rate than today's. These emissions would be required to make up for the CO2 that would continue to be taken up by the oceans and biosphere. In such a low emissions/constant concentration world, temperatures would continue to rise.
On the other hand, in a zero-emissions world, CO2 concentrations would fall and the temperature would remain roughly stalled.
Neither scenario is plausible in the very near future. We have a long way to go before we stabilize concentrations and further still before we reach zero or negative emissions, which we will need to halt the rise in global temperatures.
Check out the link I posted in #33 above. It's not very intuitive.
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Brandon R Gates at 17:48 PM on 18 January 2016A Response to the “Data or Dogma?” hearing
Thank you for posting this follow-up. I offer a critique of following paragraph:
“Model input errors” and “different variability sequences” require a little further explanation. Let’s assume that some higher extraterrestrial intelligence provided humanity with two valuable gifts: a perfect climate model, which captured all of the important physics in the real-world climate system, and a perfect observing system, which reliably measured atmospheric temperature changes over the last 18 years. Even with such benign alien intervention, temperature trends in the perfect model and perfect observations would diverge if there were errors in the inputs to the model simulations,[h] or if the purely random sequences of internal climate oscillations did not “line up” in the simulations and in reality (23, 24, 30, 32-36).
It is my understanding, going all the way back to Lorenz (1963), Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow [1] that the more appropriate way to think of the weather/climate system is that it would NOT diverge from previous behavior if all the initial inputs were exactly the same. "Purely random" evokes the concept of a stochastic system where there is no such guarantee by definition.
I understand that what Drs. Mears and Santer mean by "purely random" is that with the the real system, which is massive and complex, we do not have the observational fidelity OR computational ability to reliably predict short-term climate trends (i.e., weather) in advance due to the sensitivity a deterministc system has for initial conditions — therefore, it behaves as an "effectively random" system for the purposes of exactly timed, very precise prediction of future states.
However, because it is an almost completely deterministic system, we can at least theoretically hope after the fact to suss out a causality chain for the various modes of internal variability and/or pertubations in external forcings which do contribute to constant change even absent our influences. I think this is a distinction which separates our argument from the magical thinking of the "climate is always changing (and nobody knows why)" crowd ...
... not that many of them see it that way since Lorenz (1963) is often abused as "proof" that climate cannot possibly be projected or predicted over the long-term because ... chaos.
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[1] http://eaps4.mit.edu/research/Lorenz/Deterministic_63.pdf
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Ceist812534 at 17:45 PM on 18 January 2016A Response to the “Data or Dogma?” hearing
Cruz should have also been questioned on why he would use a graphic from "Steve Goddards" blog. Tony Heller even boasts about it on his blog (see "Ted Cruz used my graph").
The 'hasn't warmed in 18 years etc" graph is Lord Monckton's deceptive graphic that does the rounds of contrarian blogs.
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Digby Scorgie at 17:43 PM on 18 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Andy
You pinpoint what I don't understand. Suppose for the sake of argument that one can expect an average global temperature of two degrees above pre-industrial when carbon dioxide is at 400 ppm. And suppose also that it takes 25 years for the temperature to rise to the two-degree level after carbon dioxide hits 400 ppm. Why then, will this not occur if one suddenly stops adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere?
Glenn and OPOF
You've given me a lot to think about that I unfortunately don't have time to respond to at the moment. I'll try later.
I see that, still, nobody has noticed my sneaky final comment! Suppose global civilization (not regional) does actually collapse by 2040. What will be the effect on fossil-fuel use? Will it fall a lot?
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Glenn Tamblyn at 15:31 PM on 18 January 2016The Quest for CCS
OPOF
Yes and no. Is technology the answer? To what problem?
If you are in a boat that is unsound and sinking, your long term answer, your strategic answer is to get the boat to dry land. But if it is sinking too quickly you need a short term, tactical answer, something to plug the leaks so that you can make it to shore.
Technology may not be 'the answer' as you say in the longer term and we need to rethink how we do things. But in the short term we either shut off our entire energy supply and head back to the Dark Ages in which case your rethink becomes moot.Or we do nothing while just working on the rethink and we go back to the Dark Ages anyway as serious climate change knocks everything down and again your point is moot.
Or we do some technological stuff so we still have energy and not too much climate change and thus don't return to the Dark Ages, then/as well we implement your change.
Now can we put off your change till later while focusing on the short term technological fix? If we try for your change will peoples short term push-back against it also prevent the implentation of the tech fix? Will most people freely embrace your change - I will but I may not be representative - or will they need some spur to do so.
Personal view, and it is probably negative, and a bit cynical, is that your change is absolutely needed, but it won't happen until most people have had the living beejeesus scared out of them by what is happening. Then they will clamor for all the change to happen overnight.
A good first step might be changes that reign in the use of the media to promote the entire consumer society dream-machine. Getting control of the media out of the hands of business would be a powerful first step.
Nothing wrong with advertising (to make known) that company X sells product Y - " Hi, we are General Motors and we make cars. If you need a car come to one of our 'car-buying-places' and see if you like any of ours". Thats it. Not one iota more.
But if you want to do more, to 'pitch' your product, sorry, you will have to wait until a potential customer visits your 'car-buying-place'
Step 1, shut down Madison Avenue. Imagine a life, a world, where we only see an advertisement if we go looking for them. We never ever see unsolicited ads, in any context, ever!Give it a generation and how does our thinking start to change?
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Glenn Tamblyn at 15:08 PM on 18 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Digby, I am not saying I think commercial developments will change emission levels, quite possibly they won't. But if anything is going to surprise us I think it is that.
And anything that significantly changes emission levels is by definition a change to BAU.
Will this be enough. No. But it might buy time to do more.
As for civilisation collapsing by 2040, I tend to agree with Andy. Later this century is quite possible. 2040 I think it is more likely we are seeing the starting phases of a collapse. If a collapse were to occur, it won't happen overnight. It would be protracted over many decades.
Past civilisational collapses took time and they were more local. What we might see in a 2040 timeframe is a start to the breakdown of the links of globalisation with our societies reverting more to regional civilisations. Then each of those regional societies experiencing collapses at differing paces through the rest of the century and beyond.
And we would only really talk of a collapse of civilisation as a whole if all the regions collapse. Countries with good food supply to population ratios, local raw materials supplies, cultural diversity and good education will fare better.
So Europe & North America, Perhaps China (although it's population is a big stressor), perhaps Russia, Argentina, may fare better. My country of Australia may not fare as well. We tick many of the boxes but we would need to re-establish an industrial base to be more self-sufficient. And the USA's current internal cultural divisions may be it's biggest single weakness and vulnerability.
Governments have extraordinary emergency powers when times get tough. So regional civilisations might still survive even if they aren't as democratic. -
One Planet Only Forever at 07:26 AM on 18 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Digby and Glenn, Your discussion has gotten me thinking.
What is needed is a change of attitude in Humanity, not technological development.
Hopefully, the global acceptance of thoughtful considerate rigorously developed understanding will prevail sooner and quicker. Humanity could rapidly achieve the required results if the biggest impacting people simply changed their mind and accepted that they did not deserve their developed perceptions of prosperity and superiority.
My MBA training decades ago and my observations of what has been going on based on living and working in Alberta, combined with reading the presentations by others of what I do not personally observe has led me to the conclusion that technological development is not an 'answer to anything'. It is a 'result'. It is a development resulting from human desires.
Technology is the 'result of choices made about the application of development of better understanding'. And right now the focus is clearly on technology related to pursuits of popularity, profitability and perceptions of prosperity. That focus develops higher technology toys and benefits for wealthy people (and weaponry and security measures) without any conscientious responsible limits on development to ensure it is not contrary to the advancement of humanity to a lasting better future for all.
And the marketing push for 'more impressive toys' affects the choices made regarding the types of better understanding that are pursued. It also affects how that new learning is 'marketed' (shared and promoted). Research that is focused on potential popularity and profit can be a distraction from research into better understanding how to advance humanity to a lasting better future for all.A particular area of research that lacks funding (because its results are highly likely to be contrary to the developed interests and desires of many wealthy and powerful people) is research into why the current socioeconomic system has developed so much damaging and unsustainable activity. The answer is almost certain to be that the system encourages the development and success of attitudes and actions that can be understood to be unacceptable, but are easily made popular and very profitable (for as long as can be gotten away with).
So, technological development is not 'the answer'. Socioeconomic change is the answer. How quickly that change occurs is anybodies guess.
The biggest improvement will occur when the people personally responsible for the most impact change their mind and limit their pursuits of profit and pleasure to actions that are clearly understood to develop toward a lasting better future for a robust diversity of life on this planet.
If all of the currently wealthy and powerful people who do understand this (and I am almost certain that they all do understand it), stopped fighting against it becoming the guiding force of global humanity then improvement could develop very rapidly, because there would be no barriers or distractions.If all of the wealthy and powerful will not change their minds (a very likely case), then another path to success is the conscientious responsible wealthy and powerful people collectively working to ensure the gamblers who try to prolong their ability to get away with unacceptable actions quickly become losers. This will take longer and be a slower change.
The efforts to terminate the success of the irresponsible callous pursuers who have become wealthy and powerful (or want to become wealthy or powerful that way) is the current path. And we are at the low end the scale regarding the rate change of limiting the damaging successes of people who choose to be callous greedy people. Many powerful wealthy nations still elect leaders who are clearly not a conscientious as they know they should be, because they do not want to be, or do not need to be, conscientious when being responsible would be contrary to popular profitable interests and the unsustainable perceptions of prosperity and superiority that such interests can create.
It is clear that the conscientious and responsible among the wealthy and powerful need the support of the general population. The general population needs to desire conscientious responsible leadership focused on developing a lasting better future for all. That transition of the general population to support such leadership is the biggest challenge, because it is very easy to impress people with scientifically developed marketing appeals to greed and intolerance. In addition to being a big challenge, that change of attitude, not technological change, must be accomplished if humanity is to actually advance to a better future.
The bottom line is that the focused needs to be on understanding the unacceptable power of misleading marketing. Effectively addressed that damaging development, the power of deliberately misleading appeals to vanity, greed and intolerance, is essential. And that objective relates to far more than the developing better understanding of climate change. It relates to all of the pointless and likely to be damaging distractions developed by socioeconomic pursuits of 'impressions of advancement and superiority'.
The technology for humanity to live is a sustainable part of the robust diversity of life on this amazing planet already exists. The lack of popularity and profitability of that attitude is the problem. And that attitude problem will not be solved by technological development.Skeptical Science is clearly targeting the right issue. It is one of many efforts striving to figure out how to raise awareness of the steady stream of unacceptable developments that have been produced, promoted and prolonged in the current global socioeconomic experiment.
What is obvious is that the experiment is not producing the 'claimed' results. And the arguments that 'better results will develop if there is more freedom for people to do whatever they want' clearly are not based on a rational conscientious evaluation of what is going on.
The failure of the 'freedom' experiment and the development of better understanding regarding its failure will lead to changes of attitude. That is why some powerful wealthy people are drumming up opposition to 'leadership guided by thoughtful considerate rigorous developed understanding'.
Some wealthy powerful people have a lot to lose if the socioeconomic political game actually changes. Developing better understanding of what is required to advance humanity is almost certain to be contrary to the interests of many wealthy and powerful people. And humanity has no real chance of advancing until those undeserving people among the wealthy and powerful change their mind or fail to succeed.
There are many books out there presenting information along those lines, including Naomi Klein's "This Changes Everything", but so many more. The likes of Shakespeare and Dickens wrote about unacceptable developed attitudes and the required changes. Even many Greek and Chinese philosophers were pointing this out. And it is embedded in almost every religious text.
At some point that understanding has to become the guiding force for humanity to actually advance. But people will have to get over the belief that they can do whatever they please. And that will require limits on the effectiveness of misleading marketing. It is all about the marketing.
Marketing that fully presents the best understanding of something is obviously 'better', except in the minds of those who want to benefit from marketing.
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Magma at 06:13 AM on 18 January 2016A Response to the “Data or Dogma?” hearing
A good, informative post. Mears in particular must become frustrated seeing his work constantly misrepresented.
With respect to ongoing research, I wonder if a series of high-resolution measurements in the 53-57 GHz band from an airborne microwave spectrometer (vertical looking up, vertical looking down and horizontal) under measured conditions of temperature, pressure and humidity might allow improved deconvolution of the satellite data. Most of the emission curves in the papers I've looked at have a very simplified, idealized look to them. (Maybe this has already been done, but if so I've missed it.)
As an aside, I think 48 references in a short blog post must be close to some kind of record. -
Andy Skuce at 05:58 AM on 18 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Digby, I'm not at all familiar with the work of Aled Jones, so I shouldn't comment. Nevertheless, claims of societal collapse on a global scale in 25 year's time seem implausible to me. Certainly, regional crop failures could lead to collapse in already unstable countries and the effects of that collapse could spread regionally, beyond the country's borders. The unfolding tragedy in Syria provides a model of this.
I think it's important to distinguish between the inertia of the climate system and the inertia of the global economy. I wrote a blogpost sometime ago that tried to clarify this. The climate system will actually respond quickly to any change in GHG concentrations and if, by some miracle, we could stop all emissions today, then global warming would stop very soon. The problem is, we can no more easily stop our emissions tomorrow than we could stop breathing or eating. To immediately shut down fossil-fuel consumption certainly would lead to global societal collapse.
It was Hemingway, I think, who wrote about the way people go bankrupt: slowly at first, then quickly. When you look at social revolutions in the past, they too show long periods of slowly simmering inaction followed by periods of rapid, revolutionary change. Looking back, the question "what took them so long?" often springs to mind.
I'm hoping that the Paris agreement marks a turning point between the 21-year slow phase and a much faster rate of decarbonization over the years to come. It had better.
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Jonas at 19:48 PM on 17 January 20162016 SkS Weekly News Roundup #3
>Environmental change rate unprecedented
When will #peakdestruction be reached?
How many species and humans will earth be able to carry from then on? -
Digby Scorgie at 19:35 PM on 17 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Glenn
You're implying that, notwithstanding the inertia of the climate system, cutting fossil-fuel use in the next few years will be sufficient to cause a significant deviation from the business-as-usual path. But will it? Not being a climate scientist, I don't know.
Assuming the world model used by Aled Jones is accurate, any change would have to take effect well before 2040. It has to stop the climate becoming so much worse than it is now that food production suffers. Andy, can you help?
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Glenn Tamblyn at 17:27 PM on 17 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Digby
Not so sure I agree that only modest reductions are likely before 2040 although that is certainly possible. The wildcard in this is the continuing drop in prices for solar, wind and batteries and the potential for serious scaling up when critical mass is achieved.
For example, Tesla hace built their Giga factory and are considering more. What happens when/if the economics are such that every car manufacturer reads the tea leaves and decides that they need to get into electric cars big time, pronto. Every car company starts building multiple battery factories and retooling their factories. Its a significant investment sure but on the scale of what car companies spend to bring each new model to market now it isn't out of the ball park.
If they decided it was the right thing to do and was urgent, they could switch 1/2 their model range to electric in 10 years.Similarly, how far off is it before all new build power generatiion is renewables. In 2014 it was 1/2 of all new capacity. Chile recently held an auction for some capacity, open to all technologies equally. Renewables scored the lot.
You might be right. But the next 5-10 years will tell. Either we will see a major shift started, not particularly driven by governments. Or we wont. -
Digby Scorgie at 14:42 PM on 17 January 2016The Quest for CCS
Let me get this straight. We need to decarbonize by about 2050. This requires drastic reductions in fossil-fuel use, beginning soon. Use of CCS, with or without BE, would help.
If we focus on the next 25 years (to 2040), I suspect that, to be realistic, there will be only a small reduction in fossil-fuel use. Also, from all I've read about CCS, I conclude that any help in that department will also be small.
But, considering only the next 25 years, does it matter? As I understand it, geophysical inertia ensures a delay of 25 to 50 years before average global temperatures reach the level expected for 400 ppm of carbon dioxide. We have another 0.5 degrees of warming locked in.
Now, over the course of the previous 25 years there has been a marked increase in extreme weather events. These have already had an adverse effect on food production, including in North America. During the next 25 years we can expect these events to become more frequent and intense, leading to even greater damage to food production. In effect, in the near term we will not be able to deviate from the business-as-usual scenario.
Meanwhile, the global population continues to increase, implying a greater demand for food, even as the supply is falling. Global civilization might not survive this. Indeed, I see that Aled Jones and his Global Sustainability Institute predict a collapse of global civilization by 2040.
It seems that Jones and company use a souped-up version of the world model used for "Limits to growth". The model is supposed to be good just for near-term predictions, but I imagine they couldn't resist running it to 2040. The predicted collapse surprised them, but this scenario seems to me all too plausible.
I conclude that any action taken on fossil-fuel use and CCS will not have much effect on the climate for the next quarter century. During this period the worsening climate might well result in the collapse of global civilization.
What intrigues me is the possibility that, if global civilization does collapse before 2040, the result will be the drastic fall in fossil-fuel use that we couldn't otherwise manage ourselves. The planet will have done the job for us.
Please feel free to pick holes in the above scenario.
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Mothra at 05:15 AM on 17 January 2016Climate's changed before
I usually offer deniers an analogy with forest fires.
Forest fires are often caused by lightning, a natural cause.
Does that mean that forest fires are ONLY caused by nature? Of course not. [Smokey the Bear has been telling us that for years.]
Forgive me if that's old and familiar to you.
I appreciate your website, it's excellent.
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