Why Is Climate Sensitivity So Unpredictable? (new critical review of climate models)

sciencemag.org ^ | 26 October 2007: | Gerard H. Roe* and Marcia B. Baker

[Names Ash Housewares]

Uncertainties in projections of future climate change have not lessened substantially in past decades. Both models and observations yield broad probability distributions for long-term increases in global mean temperature expected from the doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide, with small but finite probabilities of very large increases. We show that the shape of these probability distributions is an inevitable and general consequence of the nature of the climate system, and we derive a simple analytic form for the shape that fits recent published distributions very well. We show that the breadth of the distribution and, in particular, the probability of large temperature increases are relatively insensitive to decreases in uncertainties associated with the underlying climate processes.

[Liberty Valance]

[liberallarry]

None of that is really settled science, and the whole notion of using ice cores for more recent data conveniently ignores the problem of CO2 solubility under pressure.

See the link I posted in #108, You are simply wrong.

I’ve never met anyone who has studied even simple statistics who believes in anthropogenic global warming.

So I gues the "legendary physicist" Freeman Dyson hasn't studied simple statistics or, more likely, all those you've met are even dumber than you are...which would be quite a feat.

Dude, you need to educate yourself.

Let's face it Dude. Education is wasted on you. You are simply uneducable...which is a real tragedy for the rest of us.

[liberallarry]

[liberallarry]

In post #108 you'll find a link to a source which refutes Jaworosky. I'll have more to say on it later (after I've done a lot more research) but it's only common courtesy to advise you of it now

This is a link to a very interesting debate on atmospheric CO2 in particular and global warming in general. It's interesting for a number of reasons
1)Because it covers most of the usual arguments
2)Because it is between two hard-lefties who agree about the evils of capitalism and virtually all others issues except this one. Thus the usual slurs cannot be used.
Alexander Cockburn adopts the positions usually reserved for the right. Why? Well, it's only speculation, but I think he's realized that global warming, and all other environmental positions, are actually very dangerous for the Left. They lead to calls for restrictions on immigration, population reduction, eugenics, etc.

Anyway, I thought you'd all find it interesting.

[ChessExpert]

Your source is “RealClimate.” It has little credibility in my eyes. At first they were just another source to me, but they have earned their low credibility with me in the past.

In this case, they point to scatter of data in early years (with data points from Europe, the North America, and Peru) and suggest this is incredible. They ignore a case of large scatter in later years (around 1940). More importantly, you just don’t throw out data points you don’t like! That is rule numero uno in statistical analysis. In this case, the left appears to be throwing out data points that are inconvenient to their argument. If it weren’t for the “hockey stick,” massaging of recent US data so that the record highs are post 1998, etc., I would have more patience and restraint. As it is, I suspect more liberal BS masquerading as science.

[Robert A Cook PE]

it is evident that the climate system is operating in a regime in which small uncertainties in feedbacks are highly amplified in the resulting climate sensitivity. We are constrained by the inevitable: the more likely a large warming is for a given forcing (i.e., the greater the positive feedbacks), the greater the uncertainty will be in the magnitude of that warming.”

So ...
I take a little change in input, multiple that by an arbitrary but very large factor, and find a very large change in output sometime later in the calculation. This allows me to predict horrible things and get more money, and take tens of trillions in taxes from Americans.

And if I don't like the output, I change the input. Again.

And, if I don't like the resulting report by the IPCC, I merely re-write the IPCC summary and document.

[Robert A Cook PE]

The ice cores uniformly show an 800 year (+/- 200 years) DELAY between the time temperature changes and when CO2 begins to change.....

800 years is clearly visible in the ice records going as far back as 400,000 years, and is a reliable datum.

[Mr Rogers]

From Scientific American:

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Ice cores drawn from Antarctica and Greenland have shown that carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere began to rise at roughly the same time as the vast ice sheets began to melt. But it remained unclear exactly which came first: melting ice and warming seas released more CO2 or more CO2 led to melting ice and warming seas.

By studying sediment cores from the deep Pacific near the Philippines, paleoclimatologist Lowell Stott of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and his colleagues revealed that the temperatures of the deepest seas rose by around 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) at least 1,000 years before sea-surface temperatures. “Even accounting for the uncertainties of the age of CO2, the deep sea warmed substantially before the CO2 began to rise,” Stott says. “The deep Pacific is such an enormously large volume of water that [this warming] reflects the input of a tremendous amount of energy into the global system.”

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=in-hot-water

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These people believe in global warming, and still assert CO2 is causing a rise in temp now - just that it didn’t used to do it: “”This kind of study discusses the natural cycle and could help define the likely positive feedbacks we can expect in the long-term future, [for example] as temperatures warm, the ocean will want to give up more CO2, or rather absorb less,” says climatologist Gavin Schmidt of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies. “But it has no direct impact on attribution of 20th century warming.”*

Spoken like a true believer...but there is ample room for doubt that a CO2 rise precedes temperature change, let alone drives it.

[Robert A Cook PE]

What tracks with all (yes, I said all) of the past temperature changes is cosmic ray intensity (represented NOT by the number of sunspots, but the length of the sunspot cycle). The result is a varying 800 - 2200 years cycle of temperature ups and down that DOES NOT vary as CO2 varies. Higher CO2 levels in the past have NEVER caused increased temperatures, but solar radiation (solar shielding and cosmic ray formation of clouds tracks exactly over every previous temperature change.

LiberalLarry is dead wrong is trying to assign the current high levels of CO2 as the cause of (slightly) higher temperatures - instead, today’s higher CO2 levels contribute between 12 and 26% INCREASED plant growth (depending on species) and food/feed rates of crops per acre, plus longer growing seasons, and more drought-resistance plants (at higher CO2 levels, plants need less water.) Further, using energy (increasing CO2) to produce nitrate fertilizers directly benefits people - lowering CO2 output tortures and kills.

4 times in the past 400,000 years the earth’s temps have been substantially higher than today’s peak of +.5 degrees (by over 3 degrees C each time) and in none of those peaks did the Antarctic nor Arctic/Greenland icecaps melt: as feared by the AGW extremists today.

Weather is (on average) milder with less droughts and fewer hurricanes major storms during warmer periods in the past.

The ocean has varied as much as 480 feet many times in the past - and today’s warming “may” raise it by 18 -24 inches - in the next 200 years. That small increase (assuming it will even happen) is NOT stoppable by changing CO2 emissions, and is largely due to to the increase in water temperature causing the oceans to swell up due to thermal expansion. Kyoto will NOT change temperatures - merely transfer trillions of US dollars to the EU in an Enron-funded, Enron-sourced, UN-dominated tax transfer scheme.

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Now, the sun’s solar cycles are NOT the specific cause of today’s warming, the 11 year sunspot cycle is best described as a symptom of the changes in the sun’s output - visible output has only increased slightly - by about 1/2 of 1 percent. What HAS changed over the 1450 year solar cycle is the solar wind and sun’s magnetic field. As the sun’s magnetic field increases, the shielding it provides from galactic cosmic rays increase, and many fewer cosmic rays strike the earth - thus, there are many fewer interactions between the cosmic rays and the water molecules in the atmosphere. With fewer interactions, there are fewer ionized particles to create the high level cloud precursors. Fewer clouds mean more radiation (IR, visible, and UV) reaches the earth and temps increase. Everywhere.

More clouds = colder temps. Add the 1450 year solar cycle to the permutations from the earth’s orbit and the precession of the north pole around its elliptical orbit and you get the major (Ice Age) drivers with a smaller cycle tracking through each ice age.

CO2 has not affected climate in the past. It is enhancing man’s ability to feed himself now.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Several recent papers and IPCC reports have been edited by AGW extremists/alarmists at the specific (political) direction of the AGW extremists to make a political statement and to increase the public’s fears of GW. More often, it is the internal papers (such as Hansen’s temperature “corrections” and Mann’s 1998 and 2004 temperature graphs and the Madagascar tree data ... (etc.) that actually manipulated the data and the equations to falsify their results.

Now, Hansen (of course) accuses Bush of “editing science”, but Hansen and Gore actually DO IT - which is perhaps the reason they claim Bush has done it..

[Robert A Cook PE]

There is no doubt that parts of the world are getting warmer, but the warming is not global.

Yes. Antarctica is getting colder, and its ice fields are growing substantially thicker, which is reducing the ocean’s rise by detectable amounts. Much (not all) of Greenland is getting colder, and it is increasing ice mass as well.

Other than the polar regions (which are getting colder in violation of the CGM programs, the rest of the world has increased by a grand total of only 1/2 of one degree. Again, in complete violation of what the CGM programs predict. (Actually, I could claim that no CGM program has ever matched any real world measurements at any time, but I won't. )

However, the CGM computer models fail to show this, since they uniformly predict that global warming will worst at high latitudes above the North and South polar circles.

Again - The CO2 CGM programs fail utterly.

Since 1935, the CO2 models have been right for only 27 years of the 72: temperatures were equally high as now in the mid-30’s, then dropped from 1942 through 1972 (30 years), then rose from 1972 though 1998, then have been steady (actually dropping a little bit) since 1998. (I could claim Bush has solved Al Gore’s global warming problem, but you wouldn’t like to be reminded of that....)
So for the last 9 years, there has been NO global warming.

And through this entire period of temps rising, falling, and rising again, CO2 has been rising steadily.

[Robert A Cook PE]

I will merely point out the AGW extremists at realclimate.org have thrown out EVERY measured CO2 value, and substitute a linear extrapolation of the HI measurements from the 1950’s ...

As usual with the AGW crowd, “If the data does not fit the theory we want to present, throw out the data and repeat the theory to the public.”

Claim consensus when there is none, and insult those who disagree with you by claiming they must be paid for - while ignoring the money, grants, TV time, and recognition and magazine space given to those who agree with you.....

[ChessExpert]

Excellent post. I am ready to learn from a real man of science and scientific inquiry.

On a facetious note:

Al Gore has noted the high correlation of carbon dioxide with forest fires. “This proves conclusively,” he declares, “that carbon dioxide causes forest fires. You can see it on my graph, developed by scientist James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies.”

[edsheppa]

Sorry, I don't see the relevance of your reply to my post.

However, about that 800 year lag. What's the relevance to today's conditions when CO2 is increasing, not because of warming (as presumably those charts show), but supposedly due to human activity?

[Robert A Cook PE]

Temps are increasing, but NOT because CO2 is going up.

Total greenhouse gasses (CO2 + methane + water vapor) have increased from roughly 94.3 to 95.0 (CO2 is a very, very small percent of the total greenhouse gas effect.) That has NOT changed temperature.

Cloud cover decreased from 1920 - 1935 -> temps rose measurably, and were equal to (or slightly higher than) today's temps. CO2 was low, about 1/3 less than today's level.
Cloud cover decreased in the 40 - early 70’s -> temps decreased for some 36 years. CO2 was steadily increasing the whole time.
Cloud cover decreased between 70 and 1998 -> temp’s increased again. CO2 was steadily increasing. THIS IS THE ONLY PERIOD WHEN THE AGW THEORIES WORK - They fail at every other time in the past 120 years.
Cloud cover remained constant from 1998 - 2007 -> temps remained constant. CO2 was steadily increasing.

Today’s increasing CO2 levels are fertilizing crops and increasing the feed and food we need by factors of 12% to 26%. They do not affect temperature now, nor have they affected temperature in the past.

You cannot establish how much of today's increase in CO2 is due to man's releases - compared to how much is getting emitted from the oceans as they warm up from the (800 year previous) Little Ice Age. Look at the mass of CO2 required to go from 280 ppm to 380 ppm, then compare it to 35 years of carbon burning (minus the CO2 removed by plant matter.