Climate change study had 'significant error': experts (OOPSIE!)

The reason that the weather can be predicted 100 years in advance is that they only plug in one variable, CO2 concentration. All of the computer models are based on the same assumption, i.e. as CO2 levels rise so do temps at a proportional rate. There is no allowance for cloud cover, solar radiation, ocean currents, snow cover, precipitation levels, evaporation rates, wind patterns etc. So given this fact if you can prove that CO2 levels are going to rise by say 200ppm over the next 100 years then the computer will tell you exactly what the corresponding rise in temperature will be over that same period of time and it will be dead on accurate as far as what it has been programmed to provide.

An analogy would be using cloud cover to predict tomorrow’s weather. If you told the computer that for every 1% increase in cloud cover you were going to have a corresponding drop in temperature of .1 degrees and a corresponding increase of precipitation of .25 inches, it could give you a 100% certain prediction of what was going to happen everyday. It might be totally wrong in the real world, but the computer would give you exactly what you programmed it to give you every time. That is what the AGW programs do. They just extend the time frame out 100 years so no one will be around to tell them there wrong.

If these people were so confident in their assertions then why don’t they set up an experiment with the assistance of and in cooperation with some AGW sceptics. Pick 500 locations spaced equally around the around the globe including oceans, set up calibrated thermometers and CO 2 sensors at each of these locations, keep records of the temperature change, while inputting the CO2 levels into their programs. Run the experiment for 15 years and see how close the real temps end up being to the predicted temps. When they are done if the models prove to be fairly accurate then we’ll talk. Other wise go away and leave us alone.

Just getting back to business....

Do We Really Know Earth’s Temperature?

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Errors in IPCC climate science at warwickhughes.com ^ | January 14th, 2011 | Warwick Hughes

Guest article by Pat Frank
We’ve all read the diagnosis, for example here, that the global climate has suffered “unprecedented warming,” since about 1900. The accepted increase across the 20th century is 0.7 (+/-)0.2 C. As an experimental chemist, I always wondered at that “(+/-)0.2 C.” In my experience, it seemed an awfully narrow uncertainty, given the exigencies of instruments and outdoor measurements.

When I read the literature, going right back to such basics as Phil Jones’ early papers [1, 2], I found no mention of instrumental uncertainty in their discussions of sources of error.

The same is true in Jim Hansen’s papers, e.g. [3]. It was as though the instrumental readings themselves were canonical, and the only uncertainties were in inhomogeneities arising from such things as station moves, instrumental changes, change in time of observation, and so on.

But Phil Brohan’s paper in 2006 [4], on which Phil Jones was a co-author, discussed error analysis more thoroughly than previously done. Warwick has posted, and here on the change that occurred in 2005, when the UK Met Office took over for the Climate Research Unit of the UEA, in compiling the global average temperature record. So, maybe Phil Brohan decided to be more forthcoming about their error models.

The error analysis in Brohan, 2006, revealed that they’d been taking a signal averaging approach to instrumental error. The assumption was that all the instrumental error was random, independent, identically distributed (iid) error. This kind of error averages out to zero when large numbers of measurements are averaged together.

To make the long story short, it turned out that no one had ever surveyed the temperature sensors of climate stations to see whether the assumption of uniformly iid measurement errors could be empirically validated.

That led to my study, and the study led to the paper that is just out in Energy and Environment [5]. Here’s the title and the abstract:

Title: “Uncertainty in the Global Average Surface Air Temperature Index: A Representative Lower Limit”

Abstract: “Sensor measurement uncertainty has never been fully considered in prior appraisals of global average surface air temperature. The estimated average (+/-)0.2 C station error has been incorrectly assessed as random, and the systematic error from
uncontrolled variables has been invariably neglected. The systematic errors in measurements from three ideally sited and maintained temperature sensors are calculated herein. Combined with the (+/-)0.2 C average station error, a representative lower-limit uncertainty of (+/-)0.46 C was found for any global annual surface air temperature anomaly. This (+/-)0.46 C reveals that the global surface air temperature anomaly trend from 1880 through 2000 is statistically
indistinguishable from 0 C, and represents a lower limit of calibration uncertainty for climate models and for any prospective physically justifiable proxy reconstruction of paleo-temperature. The rate and magnitude of 20th century warming are thus unknowable, and suggestions of an unprecedented trend in 20th century global air temperature are unsustainable.”

Here’s the upshot of the study in graphical form; Figure 3 from the paper showing the 20th century average surface air temperature trend, with the lower limit of instrumental uncertainty as grey error bars.
Fig 3 from Pat Frank E & E paper
Figure Legend: (•), the global surface air temperature anomaly series through 2009, as updated on 18 February 2010, (data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/). The grey error bars show the annual anomaly lower-limit uncertainty of (+/-)0.46 C.

The lower limit of error was based in part on the systematic error displayed by the Minimum-Maximum Temperature System under ideal site conditions. I chose the MMTS because that sensor is the replacement instrument of choice brought into the USHCN since about 1990.

This lower limit of instrumental uncertainty implies that Earth’s fever is indistinguishable from zero Celsius, at the 1σ level, across the entire 20th century.

“All of the computer models are based on the same assumption, i.e. as CO2 levels rise so do temps at a proportional rate.”

Ummm, no. The models predict that temperature increase will accelerate as CO2 levels rise, because somehow the CO2 will “recruit” water vapor to increase in concentration as well. No one has ever been able to demonstrate real-world evidence for this phenomenon.

Without this key assumption, there could be no alarmism. Even the most pinheaded, brain-washed scientist recognizes that in a single-variable scenario it requires CO2 concentration to DOUBLE in order for a linear increase in temperature. Most non-hysterical scientists have estimated this at around 1 degree C for every doubling.

If we were to undertake an all out effort to burn all the fossil fuel we could we could probably double the CO2 concentration in about 500 years. (If we didn't run out first.)

500 years ago we were huddled around stone fireplaces to stay warm, communicated by courier, and read by candle light or oil lamps. Who knows what form of energy production will be in vogue 500 years from now?

That is why the mouth breathers’ panic is pointless. Whatever change takes place will be gradual, and mankind will do what it always does. ADAPT.

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