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UAH atmospheric temperatures prove climate models and/or surface temperature data sets are wrong

Bob Loblaw at 02:38 AM on 14 February, 2024

In the RealClimate post that scaddenp links to in comment 9, Gavin Schmidt makes specific reference to that Spencer claim that climate models do not conserve energy. Schmidt states:

Do climate models conserve mass and energy? Yes. I know this is be a fact for the GISS model since I personally spent a lot of time making sure of it. I can’t vouch for every single other model, but I will note that the CMIP diagnostics are often not sufficient to test this to a suitable precision – due to slight mispecifications, incompleteness, interpolation etc. Additionally, people often confuse non-conservation with the drift in, say, the deep ocean or soil carbon, (because of the very long timescales involved) but these things are not the same. Drift can occur even with perfect conservation since full equilibrium takes thousands of years of runtime and sometimes pre-industrial control runs are not that long. The claim in the paper Spencer cited that no model has a closed water cycle in the atmosphere is simply unbelievable (and it might be worth exploring why they get this result). To be fair, energy conservation is actually quite complicated and there are multiple efforts to improve the specification of the thermodynamics so that the models’ conserved quantities can get closer to those in the real world, but these are all second order or smaller effects.

Note that this statement from Schmidt is in a postscript added three days after the original post. At the top of the postscript, Schmidt states:

Spencer has responded on his blog and seems disappointed that I didn’t criticize every single claim that he made, but only focused on the figures. What can I say? Time is precious! But lest someone claim that these points are implicitly correct because I didn’t refute them, here’s a quick rundown of why the ones he now highlights are wrong as well. (Note that there is far more that is wrong in his article, but Brandolini’s law applies, and I just don’t have the energy).

This is not the first trip to the rodeo on Spencer's work of this sort. There is a pattern.

UAH atmospheric temperatures prove climate models and/or surface temperature data sets are wrong

MA Rodger at 01:34 AM on 14 February, 2024

retiredguy @8,

The essay by Spencer is his usual mess of nonsense dressed up to look like an informed and reasonable account.

Note for instance his second "takeaway":-

Climate models that guide energy policy do not even conserve energy, a necessary condition for any physically based model of the climate system.

This is not a "takeaway" as such but a simply a bold statement supported only by reference to Irving et al (2021) 'A Mass and Energy Conservation Analysis of Drift in the CMIP6 Ensemble', a paper which does not in any way conclude that 'model drift' invalidates the findings of CMIP models as Spencer states it does. Here Spencer is very badly wrong but likely, as with his other egregious mistakes that happen to support his denialist views, he doesn't care and will not correct it.

UAH atmospheric temperatures prove climate models and/or surface temperature data sets are wrong

One Planet Only Forever at 08:42 AM on 13 February, 2024

scaddenp,

I am not personally religious. But I have been open to participating in the activities of a United Church of Canada congregation because my pursuit of learning to be less harmful and more helpful to others is well aligned with their collective understanding and pursuit of reasons to change their mind (and they are open to having people in their congregation who do not share the belief that Jesus was part of the Holy Spirit).

So I know religious people who are also bugged by people who 'claim to be religious' but 'try to benefit by being manipulative and playing loose with the truth'.

The root of the problem in this case is people who claim to be scientific but 'play loose with the truth'. They try to resist learning that they, and people like them, need to 'change their mind'. Many of them, especially more educated ones like Spencer, probably 'know better' than the stories they make up ... which is even worse behaviour.

I will add that many religious people are open to learning about aspects of their developed beliefs that need to be revised. They want their understanding to be consistent with increased available evidence and related improved understanding about what is harmful and how they can be more helpful to others. There may even be a higher percentage of religious-inclined people who are open-minded than there are business-inclined people who are 'open-minded' on climate science matters.

So, I agree that it is shameful for someone like Spencer to 'play loose with the truth' while claiming to be Christian (or any other religious belief group) by presenting a misleading story on a website that claims to be religion-based. Much of the current day understanding of religions pursues limiting harm done and increasing 'helpfulness to others'. The exceptions are people who cherry-pick points and make-up misinterpretations who, in cases like this, are likely business-inclined people hoping to appeal for support. They claim to be <insert religion here> but are clearly just 'playing games in ways they hope they and their tribe will benefit from' - which is shamefully shameless behaviour - but can be very popular'.

UAH atmospheric temperatures prove climate models and/or surface temperature data sets are wrong

scaddenp at 06:49 AM on 13 February, 2024

retiredguy - see here. Always kind of bugs me to see someone pushing overtly Christian worldview being happy to play loose with truth.

UAH atmospheric temperatures prove climate models and/or surface temperature data sets are wrong

retiredguy at 06:44 AM on 13 February, 2024

Any thoughts / comments on the below article by Roy Spencer ?

https://www.heritage.org/environment/report/global-warming-observations-vs-climate-models

At a glance - Evidence for global warming

One Planet Only Forever at 07:28 AM on 4 December, 2023

Paul Pukite,

I like John Mason’s question @26. But would extend it as follows: “...why did you choose to interject on this thread...” the way that you did @2?

Though you have not directly addressed the questions I raised @4 regarding your comment @2, your latest comments appear to indicate an awareness that it was incorrect to state that there was no similar warming in “the middle of the equatorial Pacific” [quote from you @2] (I agreed that it is worthy of being thrown away). But I still do not see indications of awareness that it was also wrong to try to justify that incorrect assertion by misrepresenting the paper you linked @2 with a ‘quote-clearly-out-of-context’.

Making incorrect statements with questionable or made-up justifications and then arguing against attempts at clarification and correction of the incorrect belief is similar to the behaviour of the regular denizens of sites like WUWT and Dr. Roy Spencer.

I wish you luck in your endeavours to ‘constantly learn more about ENSO – constantly changing your mind as you learn more’.

At a glance - Evidence for global warming

One Planet Only Forever at 03:40 AM on 1 December, 2023

Paul Pukite @7,

One has to try very hard to evade evidence and understanding that contradicts a preferred unjustified belief. You appear to have chosen to not address the evidence and understanding presented in my comment @4 that shows that your initial claim @2 is non-sense.

As mentioned by Eclectic @6 sites like WUWT are a swirl of laughable efforts to evade learning about things that contradict 'preferred beliefs'. Do an internet search of "belief vs understanding". There is an important difference. The pursuit of learning to better understand things requires being open to revision of beliefs.

Pursuing a resistance to learning can be popular. Sites like WUWT and Dr. Roy Spencer's are proof of that.

Thanks for giving us all a laugh here without having to venture into the Non-Sense-Land of WUWT and Dr. Spencer's. Admittedly they would be funnier if the type of people they attract did not have any significant influence on leadership actions. But, tragically, popular non-sense can significantly compromise the actions of leaders who are reliant on getting some support from people who are tempted to believe non-sense.

John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist

AB19 at 21:32 PM on 29 November, 2023

I quote from the article introduction:

"It’s a familiar story – the physicist who draws attention for declaring that climate scientists have got climate science all wrong. He (it’s always a ‘he’) was born before color television was invented, usually retired, perhaps having won a Nobel Prize, but with zero climate science research or expertise. William Happer."

I don't know if the writer of the article is a scientist or not but it starts with some rather unscientific viewpoints, namely by suggesting that male, retired physicists are not qualified to comment on climate matters. What does it matter what sex they are or how old they are? In relation to physicists, I don't know about the others in the list given, but William Happer would, I would have thought, certainly qualify to comment on the global warming debate given that if you have watched any of his presentations on this topic, you'll know that his field of research was the absorption of infra-red radiation by CO2 molecular stretches and bends - very apt in the climate debate I would have thought, given that it is precisely CO2 that is being posited as the culprit in current global warming trends. He also openly admits that he was once a climate alarmist until his work led him to believe he was wrong.
I am not a climate scientist- my background is chemistry- but there are certain apparent facts that appear to be ignored in the current debate, namely that we know the earth warmed before about 1000 years ago in the medieval warming period and again about 2000 years ago in the Roman period. These warmings cannot have been due to human activity given that there were no combustion engines or factories around and world population was vastly lower than today. I believe it's also true that in the last ice age the level of atmospheric CO2 was at least 10 times current levels - which according to IPCC thinking ought to have produced a blisteringly hot climate - yet there was an ice age. Whilst not denying that CO2 is x greenhouse gas, these facts do tend to cast doubt on just how potent a greenhouse gas CO2 really is. I believe Dr Roy Spencer, who is a meteorologist not a physicist and also not retired ( though he is male) has similar views to the listed physicists.

There is no consensus

Eclectic at 17:56 PM on 15 August, 2023

Rkrolph @948 , as far as I have seen, Dr Curry has not changed her expressed views in recent years (she has retired academically, but AFAIK still maintains a commercial interest in weather/hurricane season predictions). # I follow her blog most days ~ the blog is slightly redeemed by one or two of the commenters there. The blog is a somewhat more genteel version of WUWT blog.

Unlike Drs Spencer & Christie, and the definitely-emeritus Prof Lindzen, the good Dr Curry maintains a certain amount of vagueness in her speech and presentations . . . implying that she is not quite opposed to the mainstream climate science. Vagueness & a degree of "uncertainty" are her game ~ enough fuzziness for some Plausible Deniability, when someone tries to pin her down now or at a future date. But it is as obvious as an elephant in your kitchen, about which side of the scientific fence she occupies. And this goes down well with the usual group of denialist U.S. senators.

** Up to as much as two-thirds of modern rapid global warming might possibly be owing to "natural variations" or ocean/atmosphere cycles . . . that's the sort of Plausible Deniability she goes for. So no need to take any climate action.

Mr John Stossel is a reporter that has gone over to the Dark Side, years ago. Basically a propagandist. I haven't followed him closely enough to allow me to make a psychiatric assessment.

Climate Science Denial Explained

Eclectic at 23:02 PM on 20 March, 2023

MA Rodger @21 ,

Yes, as I was addressing Foster @11 and @17 , it seemed reasonable to throw in mention of those two scientists who are "icons" of the science-denier crowd at WUWT .

As you know full well, Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer are almost the only climate scientists having enough genuine track record in the field, as to qualify for worshipful attitude from the denialists. (In their desperation to find a respectable scientist who is "on our side" . . . the denialists are reduced to a choice of slim-to-none , compared with the many hundreds of mainstream climate scientists ~ or many thousands, depending on how defined.)

Dr Spencer's tendency is ( I gather secondhand from a Potholer54 video ) to take a religious fundamentalist viewpoint ~ to the effect that "all will be well with the Earth, thanks to divine protection". And Potholer54 relates how - over many years - Spencer has had to repeatedly backpedal from his climate assertions, as the contrary evidence keeps proving him wrong. Even so, at times Spencer gets a bit of flak from denizens at WUWT , because he is not quite politically-correct enough to deny Greenhouse Effect etc.

Both Lindzen and Spencer demonstrate how some well-informed & intelligent men can get it so very wrong, owing to a pigheaded "motivated reasoning" directed by the emotional part of their brain.

Climate Science Denial Explained

MA Rodger at 21:54 PM on 20 March, 2023

Eclectic @20,

The other denier you mention, Spencer, has been described as mixing religion with his science (eg by The Christian Science Monitor). As for him doing actual science, I remember hearing his 2010 book 'The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World's Top Climate Scientists' (thus implying he is not himself a 'top climate scientist') was published with the expectation that the paper presenting the scientific work underlying that grand title would be refused publication. However it was published but, I heard, it has been shown to exaggerated the effect he was proposing, an effect which does exist but as a very minor effect.

Climate Science Denial Explained

Eclectic at 11:30 AM on 20 March, 2023

Foster @17 ,

I hope you found some amusement reading the Anthony Watts article. And reading maybe a few of its attached comments [best to look for ones with a high number of red-color "down votes"]. WUWT currently shows that article as having over 650 comments . . . a Platinum Medal score for a WUWT article, and demonstrating that it is doing well as a Hot Button issue for climate-denialists. Whew !

If you read the comments, you will see a lot of sniping & griping, but very little science at all.

As MA Rodger has touched on, you find prominent denialists such as Dr Lindzen and Dr Spencer who are driven by "motivated reasoning" derived from their emotional religious beliefs that the Divine Entity simply would not permit Earth's climate to depart from the comfortable Garden-of-Eden range.

However, most WUWT regular denialists fall into 3 groups :- the conspiritard/wingnut group ; the science crackpot group ; and the intelligent well-informed ones who neverthelesshave been captured by their own motivated reasoning (a sort of palace coup where emotions displace intellect). But obviously there is some overlap between groups ~ mostly the 1st and 3rd groups.

Foster , I would if I had my druthers, simply leave WUWT & similar sites to fester as they are. Yes, there is an argument that such disinformation sites ought to be "stopped". Undoubtably they deserve that fate. However, they may do more good than harm, by localizing denialists into their own echo chamber where they can blow off some steam . . . and it keeps them off the streets, so to speak.

Models are unreliable

One Planet Only Forever at 13:48 PM on 6 December, 2022

Bob Loblaw @1328,

Thanks for providing even more evidence and reasons to doubt what Spencer produces and the claims he makes-up.

I share the understanding that Spencer does not care about how flawed his analysis is.

I would add that it appears to be highly likely that, long ago, he predetermined that his focus would be on finding ways to claim that less aggressive leadership action should be taken to end fossil fuel use. Spencer's motivating requirement appears to be having the analysis 'results' fit that narrative.

Models are unreliable

Bob Loblaw at 12:33 PM on 6 December, 2022

That is one weird analysis presented by Spencer. I read the blog post OPOF pointed to, and the one linked in it that points to an earlier similar analysis.

I really cannot figure out what he has done. Figure 1 refers to "2-Station Temp Diff.", but there is no indication of how many stations are included in the dataset, or exactly how he paired them up. Is each station only paired to one other station, or is there a point generated for each "station 2" that is within a certain distance? He talks about a 21x21km area centered on each station - but he also mentioned a 150km distance limit in pairing stations. Not at all clear.

There are also some really wonky statements. He talks about "operational hourly (or 3-hourly) observations made to support aviation at airports" and claims "...better instrumentation and maintenance for aviation safety support." He clearly has no understanding of the history of weather observations in Canada. Aviation weather historically was collected by Transport Canada (a federal government department), and indeed the Meteorological Service of Canada (as it is now known) was part of that department before the creation of Environment Canada in the early 1970s. Even though MSC was in a different department, it still looked after the installation, calibration, and maintenance of the "Transport Canada" aviation weather instrumentation. This even continued (under contract) for a good number of years after the air services were moved out into the newly-created private corporation Nav Canada in 1996. The standards and instrumentation at aviation weather stations was no different from any other station operated by MSC. Now, Nav Canada buys and maintains its own instruments, and MSC has ended up going back to many of these locations to install their own instrumentation because the Nav Canada "aviation" requirements do not include long-term climate monitoring. (Nav Canada data still funnels into the MSC systems, though.)

What has changed over time is levels of automation. Originally, human observers recorded data and sent it into central collection points. Now, nearly all observations are made by fully-automated systems. A variety of automatic station types have existed over the decades, and there have been changes in instrumentation.

As for the 3-hour observing frequency? Not an aviation requirement - but rather the standard synoptic reporting interval used by the World Meteorological Organization.

So, reading Spencer's analysis raises large numbers of questions:

What stations?

How many?

Which ones are paired together?

Without this information, it is very difficult to check the validity of the comparisons he is making. Figure 1 has a lot of points - but later in the post he mentions only having four stations in "SE Alberta" (Edmonton, Red Deer, Calgary, and Cold Lake). Does figure 1 included many "within 150km" stations paired to each individual station in the list? Does this mean that within an area containing say 5 stations, that there are 4x3x2 "pairs"? That would be one way of getting a lot of points - but they would not be independent. We are left guessing.

Spencer links to this data source for weather data. I managed to search for stations in "Alberta", and found 177 active on January 1, 2021. It contains six stations with "Edmonton" in the name. Which one is Spencer's "Edmonton" is important. It is almost certainly the International airport south of the city (often jokingly called "Leduc International Airport because of its distance from the city proper), but the downtown Municipal airport is also on the NOAA/NCEI list. The difference in urbanization is huge - the Leduc one has some industrial areas to the east, but as you can see on this Google Earth image, it is largely surrounded by rural land. The downtown airport would be a much better "urban" location. The Leduc location only has "urbanization" to the east - downwind of the predominant west-east wind and weather system movements.

My number of 177 Alberta stations is an overestimate, as the NOAA/NCEI web page treats "Alberta" as a rectangular block that catches part of SE British Columbia. I also only grabbed recently-active stations - the number available over time changes quite a bit. The lack of clarity from Spencer about station selection is disturbing.

As MAR has pointed out, Spencer's four "SE Alberta" stations of Edmonton, Red Deer, Calgary, and Cold Lake make for an odd mix. The first three are all in a 300km N-S line in the middle of the province. Edmonton is 250km from the mountains; Red Deer about 125km, and Calgary about 65km. (For a while, I had an office window in Calgary where I could look out at the snow-capped mountains.) Cold Lake is about 250km NE of Edmonton, near the Saskatchewan border. The differences in climate are strong. Spencer dismisses these factors as unimportant.

Spencer's Table 1 (cities across Canada) suffers from the same problems: not clearly identifying exactly which station he is examining. At least here he says "Edmonton Intl. Arpt".

He does not clearly explain his method of urban de-trending. I followed his link to the earlier blog post that gives more information, but it is not all that helpful. As far as I can tell, he's used figure 4 in that blog post to determine a "temperature difference vs urbanization difference" relationship and then used that linear slope to "correct" trends at individual stations based on the Urbanization coefficients he obtained from a European Landsat analysis for the three times he used in his analysis (1990, 2000, and 2014). Figure 4 is a shotgun blast, and he provides no justification for assuming that an urbanization change from 0 to 10% has the same effect as a change from 80-90%. (Such an assumption appears to be implicit in his methodology.) In fact, many studies in urban heat island effect have show log-linear relationships for UHI vs population of other indicators (e.g., Oke, 1973). Spencer's figure 4 in that second blog post is also for "United States east of 95W". No justification as to why that analysis (with all its weaknesses) would be applicable in a very different climate zone such as the Canadian prairies (Alberta).

His list of 10 Canadian cities also has some wildly different climate zones in it.

Saskatoon? Regina? Both cities of about 200,000 people. Both cities where the airport is to the west of the built-up area. Both areas where most of the weather systems move west to east, so "upwind" is rural.

Grande Prairie? Population about 63,000. What a booming metropolis!

Abbotsford? In the Fraser Valley east of Vancouver. Air masses funnel between the mountains into the valley. No local effects to see here! (NOT!)

St. John's NL Airport? A coastal city. Airport is located on a rocky peninsula about 15-20km wide (E-W), with huge variations in microclimate. Great place to assume nothing else affects "urban heat island". Easy to see on Google Earth. (HTML really badly needs a "sarcasm" tag.)

Spencer should be embarrassed by this sort of analysis, but I doubt he cares. He has the "result" he wants.

Models are unreliable

One Planet Only Forever at 07:13 AM on 6 December, 2022

MA Roger @1326,

Thank you for adding technical details to my 'general evaluation' that Spencer is not developing and sharing genuine improvements of awareness and understanding.

The following part of the Conclusion that I quoted @1325 is a very bizarre thing to be stated by someone supposedly knowledgeable and trying to help others better understand what is going on.

"As it is, there is evidence (e.g. here) the climate models used to guide policy produce more warming than observed, especially in the summer when excess heat is of concern. If that observed warming is even less than being reported, then the climate models become increasingly irrelevant to energy policy decisions."

Spencer is silent about considering aspects of the models that underestimate the warming (those aspects probably deserve as much, and potentially more, consideration). Their narrow focus actually makes their developed analysis 'irrelevant to energy policy decisions'.

In spite of Spencer creating something claimed to dictate that there should be reduced effort to end fossil fuel use, the point remains that the overall global warming and resulting global consequences are the required understanding for Policy Development by any government (at any level).

I have work experience with the development of large complex projects. Planning is done at various stages to establish an expected duration and cost to complete the project. The resulting plans often trigger game-playing by project proponents, especially if the plan indicates that completion will be too late or cost too much for the project to be pursued any further. The game-players try to focus on what they believe are long duration aspects that should be able to be done quicker or higher cost items that should be able to be less expensive. What people like me do, to be helpful to all parties involved, is agree with the narrow-focused project proponents as long as they agree to put the extra effort into re-evaluating every aspect of the project plan, especially the items that could take much longer or cost more than estimated.

People like Spencer are like those project proponents. They seek out and focus on the bits they think help justify their preferred belief rather than increasing their overall understanding to make a more knowledgeable decision.

Discovered inaccuracies in the models may be important to correct. But for Energy Policy development the most important consideration is the overall understanding of the model results, not a focus on selected bits of model results.

Models are unreliable

MA Rodger at 05:23 AM on 6 December, 2022

One Planet Only Forever @1325,

Spencer is not the first to waste his time searching for that mythical archepelago known as The Urban Heat Islands. Of course these explorers are not trying to show such islands exist (they do) but to show the rate of AGW is being exaggerated because of these islands. That's where their myth-making kicks off.

This particular blog of Spencer's is a bit odd on a number of counts. He tells us he is correlating 'temperature' against 'level of urbanisation' using temperature data of his own derivation and paired urban/rural sites, this all restricted to summer months. Yet this data shown in his Fig 1 seems to show temperatures mainly for a set of pretty-much fixed levels of ΔUrbanisation (no more than 5% ΔUrbanisation over a 10-mile square area), so not for any significant changing levels of urbanisation. The data showing these urban records warming faster under AGW that nearby rural stations and thus the actual variation in warming between his paired rural/urban stations is not being presented.

And note his "sanity check" appears to confirm that "homogenization" provides entirely expected results so why is he using his own temperature derivations?

And I'm also not sure his analysis isn't hiding some embarassing findings. Thus according to the GISTEMP station data, the urban Calgary Int Airport & rural Red Deer have a lot less summer warming than the urban Edmonton Int Airport & rural Cold Lake. The data doesn't cover the full period, but it is rural Cold Lake that shows the most warming of the four.

Models are unreliable

One Planet Only Forever at 14:26 PM on 5 December, 2022

This is new information related to the video by Spencer mentioned by EddieEvans @1312 and comments about it since then.

Roy Spencer has a November 19th 2022 blog posting titled "Canadian Summer Urban Heat Island Effects: Some Results in Alberta".

In the conclusion Spencer says:

"The issue is important because rational energy policy should be based upon reality, not perception. To the extent that global warming estimates are exaggerated, so will be energy policy decisions. As it is, there is evidence (e.g. here) that the climate models used to guide policy produce more warming than observed, especially in the summer when excess heat is of concern. If that observed warming is even less than being reported, then the climate models become increasingly irrelevant to energy policy decisions."

That is very similar to the wording by Spencer included in the comment by MA Rodger @1316. It appears to be Spencer's "New Trick" - seeking any bits of data evaluation to make-up a claim about model inaccuracy that is then claimed to mean that "Energy Policy" should be less aggressively ending fossil fuel use.

And the introduction of this blog post by Spencer makes it pretty clear he has made this line of investigation, evaluation and claim-making regarding "Energy Policy" his new focus.

Models are unreliable

Bob Loblaw at 07:31 AM on 29 November, 2022

Eddie et al (comments 1314-1417) on Spencer's video and blog post.

Thanks, MAR, for the link to Spencer's blog post. I followed his link to the NOAA data source, and looked at the numbers. If I grab the June, July, and August monthly values (the standard climatological "summer"), I get the same results: about 0.26C/decade. That checks out. A few things that Spencer does not mention:

The overall trend is not particularly linear.

The r² value is rather low.

The standard error on the slope esitmate is 0.04 C/decade.

Here is a graph of the data:

Continental US Temperatures

The uncertainty on the trend covers some of the model range he provides in the blog post. Two sigma range places the observed trend between 0.17 and 0.35 C/decade.

The model trends also include a level of internal variability. The observations follow a specific pattern of "unforced variations" related to cycles such as El Nino, etc., while individual model runs and models will have different patterns within a specific model run. Over shorter periods, and smaller areas, you need to consider this in making any comparisons. For models, they often get an "ensemble mean" of many runs with different variability - but the observations are still a "single roll of the dice" that can fall anywhere in the range of the collection of model runs and still be consistent with the models.

I see that you have already found the Great Global Warming Blunder post at RealClimate. They also have a couple of other relevant posts:

This one talks about how unforced variability affects model runs.

This one talks about things to consider in comparing models and observations.

Tamino's blog is also a useful place to look whenever statistical stuff comes up. In this post, he points out several aspects of the use of the continental US for data. He covers the non-linearity of trends, the variations in trends in different parts of the US, and points out that the continental US represents 1.6% of the global area (ripe for cherry picking).

In general, Spencer tends to get more wrong than he gets right.

P.S. The preferred abbreviation for SkepticalScience is SkS (for obvious reasons).

Models are unreliable

One Planet Only Forever at 05:59 AM on 29 November, 2022

EddieEvans is justified to question Roy Spencer's work. And I agree with MA Rogers that Spencer's claim that 'what he claims to have discovered about climate models should alter (govern) US Energy Planning Policy development and action' is bizarre.

I do not believe it is necessary to get into the details of what Spencer did. The real question is: How is the 'summer trend in average surface warming of the contiguous USA' relevant to US Energy Planning? The likely answer is "It Isn't relevant".

The rate and total ultimate magnitude of human global warming impacts is the concern. And US Energy Planning needs to be aligned with the USA responsibly leading the rapid ending of harmful impacts (because the USA undeniably led the creation of the problem and is still a per capita leader of the increase of the problem).

Also, it is unlikely that the sea level rise impacts on the USA, or many of the other climate change impacts on the USA, are altered by what the models indicate as the 'trend of Summer surface average temperature in the contiguous USA from 1973 to 2022' vs NOAA data. And "What about the Fall or Winter or Spring values?"

This apperas to just be Spencer 'doing his thing' - creative development of attempts to be misleading about climate science to delay the development of the understanding of, and delay the development of popular support for, the need to rapidly end the harm done by fossil fuel use and other harmful human pursuits of benefit.

Actually, this recent bit about how the models appear to overstate the rate of warming of the 'Summer values' of the contiguous USA is rather weak compared to many of Spencer's 'more subtle distortions and misleading claim-making'.

Models are unreliable

MA Rodger at 20:38 PM on 27 November, 2022

EddieEvans @1314,
The 3-minute video clip linked @1312 in turn referrs to this blogpost by Spencer. The agrument put forward by Spencer is that the summer trend in AGW over the contiguous USA 1973-2022 as measured by NOAA is +0.26ºC/decade, a value he confirms with his own analysis of temperature records (although Spencer also suggests this result may be impacted by the presence of that fantastical archipelago 'The Urban Heat Islands' even though his analysis fails to note their location within the contiguous USA).
Spencer then compares this US summer trend with that of 36 modelled trends** and finds a bit of a mismatch. The models are all showing far more warming for this particular measure according to Spencer. If correct (and that is a big 'if' because Spencer is involved), these modelled trends are sitting in the range +0.28ºC/decade to +0.72ºC/decade and averaging perhaps +0.45ºC/decade.
And so Spencer concludes:-

Given that U.S. energy policy depends upon the predictions from these models, their tendency to produce too much warming (and likely also warming-associated climate change) should be factored into energy policy planning. I doubt that it is, given the climate change exaggerations routinely promoted by environment groups, anti-oil advocates, the media, politicians, and most government agencies.

This all seems a bit of a leap into the realms of purile nonsense rather than the sort of stuff a grown-up climatologist should be doing. I note in Spencer's comment thread somebody says they "checked NOAAs summer temperature for Europe 1975-2022 and got 0.53 deg.C/decade." So if there is "far more warming" showing in these models, for Europe that modelled warming must show a steep trend indeed.
** Spencer doesn't explain his analysis of these models but points to this web engine which might have done it for him, or confused him enough to make his blunderful grand finding. A quick go on the web engine for Tas & SSP2-4.5 (as per Spencer) yields a summer global land model average of +0.33ºC/decade which is pretty close to the NOAA NH summer land average trend (1973-2020) of +0.31ºC/decade.

Models are unreliable

EddieEvans at 19:57 PM on 27 November, 2022

Bob Ludlow, I'm concluding my Spencer search via Real ClimateReview of Spencer’s ‘Great Global Warming Blunder’ to "cdesign proponentsists-the case against "Intelligent Design" and it's not even five in the morning. I mentioned Potholder54 because I believe that I first heard Spencer's name in one of his videos. Now I know, and the redirection to "cdesign proponentsists" and climate change deniers, deceivers sheds more light. I hope I have not transgressed boundaries on SS with this post. I also wonder if RealScience's copyright applies to copying text and posting it on Youtube. I better ask first. Regards

Models are unreliable

EddieEvans at 19:14 PM on 27 November, 2022

Thanks for the reply.

I believe that Spencer's contrarian views go back a long way in the denial business. Potholder54 on Youtube (https://youtu.be/PoSVoxwYrKI) does a lot of work on climate evidence and deniers. He's a geologist and creates helpful videos.

What disturbs me, and the motivation for my post is his following. I'm just nosing about it; it's mental health, reality check thing.

Models are unreliable

Bob Loblaw at 04:47 AM on 27 November, 2022

Eddie:

I have not watched the video you linked to, but this SkS repost of a RealClimate blog post discusses how Spencer has gotten things wrong in the past:

Comparing models to the satellite datasets

Models are unreliable

EddieEvans at 21:06 PM on 26 November, 2022

I'm interested in comments about this Youtube channel's climate deception and denial, especially this video and Roy Spencer's comment about models being wrong. 1:34

https://youtu.be/UFCtkAXhhpA

UAH atmospheric temperatures prove climate models and/or surface temperature data sets are wrong

Eclectic at 04:25 AM on 14 June, 2022

Knaugle , this very issue is addressed by the science journalist "Potholer54" in his latest Youtube climate video. Video dated 19 March 2022, and titled "A close look at Roy Spencer's claims on global warming". (Duration 20 minutes ~ and is number 59 in his climate series.)

The video lacks the usual humorous touch by Potholer54 . . . possibly because it leans more towards discussing Spencer's intransigence - the failure to acknowledge the validity of the mainstream climate science (owing to Spencer's religious fundamentalist belief that the Earth's climate is ultimately under divine control).

UAH atmospheric temperatures prove climate models and/or surface temperature data sets are wrong

MA Rodger at 04:41 AM on 8 June, 2022

knaugle @2,

I would not myself say that UAH TLTv5.6 "showed reasonably close agreement" with anything other than HadCRUT4 which itself showed less warming than other SAT records like GISTEMP.

And while RSS TLTv3.3 showed lower warming than all others back in the day, RSS TLTv4.0 is now showing more warming than UAHv5.6 did.

A comparison between HadCRUT4, UAH TLTv5.6 & v6.0 and RSS TLTv4.0 is plotted in this WoodForTrees presentation. Note how UAH v6.0 diverges over a short period 2000-12 which is symptomatic of a satellite calibration issue, something the UAH folk themselves accuse other satellite records of ignoring.

Models are unreliable

Eclectic at 20:19 PM on 20 March, 2022

BaerbelW @1301 - thank you for adding the latest Potholer54 video to the bottom of the article "Which is a more reliable measure" [linked @1301]. Potholer54's video is 20 minutes long, and (unusually for him) contains only a few humorous remarks.

But I think it is a neat summary of of Dr Spencer's ongoing error-making in measuring AGW's increase ~ and shows how Spencer has gradually changed from a scientific black sheep, into merely a dark gray sheep.

Potholer54 puts Spencer's history into perspective ~ and I find the PH54 videos a very useful source for arguments against denialists. And always useful to be able to quote Spencer's own evidence against denialists !

Noteworthy :- Potholer54's new video has scored 22,000 views in its first 24 hours.

Models are unreliable

Eclectic at 20:06 PM on 20 March, 2022

Bob Loblaw @1302 - thank you. It is a while since I looked at the background info on Dr Roy Spencer. The SkS info on him is from 2012, and the Desmog info goes up to 2017. ( I do see Spencer's UAH monthly chart always gets featured on the WUWT blogsite, and draws many comments of a vacuous sort. Other global temperature charts get little mention there . . . and oceanic warming is almost tabu. )

Spencer has to keep backstepping from his original position of total AGW denial (including the "minimal warming" assertion). And he has stepped even further back since 2017, and is now admitting (quietly) that it is possible the majority of modern warming comes from manmade GH gasses.

No such admission from that other celebrated contrarian climatologist Dr Judith Curry. On her blog [ClimateEtc] her latest article, posted 17 March, titled: "A 'Plan B' for addressing climate change" . . . is classic Curry vagueness. The reader risks almost drowning in discursive verbiage ~ which in essence kind of boils down to: We should be doing nothing to counteract Global Warming because it is all too difficult (and too mild) and should probably be given a priority way, way below all the other problems that we face in this world. (And of course we cannot tackle more than one problem at a time.)

Models are unreliable

Bob Loblaw at 04:50 AM on 20 March, 2022

Although it does not have a place for comments or responses, readers of this discussion who are curious about Roy Spencer's work may also wish to read the information on this page:

https://skepticalscience.com/skeptic_Roy_Spencer.htm

As usual, Desmog also tracks him:

https://www.desmog.com/roy-spencer/

Models are unreliable

Eclectic at 22:55 PM on 19 March, 2022

Out today ~ date 19 March 2022 ~ a new YouTube video

by science journalist PotHoler54

Describing multiple errors with Dr Roy Spencer's [Christy and Spencer] UAH satellite system's tropospheric temperature measurements, errors made over several decades.

In short : Spencer's predictions wrong, and model predictions right.

Not exactly news ~ except I myself had not realised how greatly Spencer's fundamentalist religious beliefs had given a severe bias to his thinking.

(Moderator ~ I'm not sure if there is a better thread for this post.)

2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7

Philippe Chantreau at 10:14 AM on 27 February, 2022

"the content at WUWT seems to be better researched."

That is the funniest thing I have read in a while. People like me who have been following this non-debate for a long time know better.

WUWT is the site where the superbly absurd idea that excess CO2 fell back on Antarctica as carbonic snow was presented, and bitterly defended by the peanut gallery, even after multiple posts showing the phase diagram of CO2 and emphasizing the importance of partial pressure. Finally, someone could beat some sense into Anthony Watts' head, and made him realize that he had better take this off the site if he wanted any appearance of credibility. It is still accessible through the wayback machine, I believe.

The very premise of WUWT existence was the following: there is no warming, it is all an artefact of poorly designed temperature reporting stations, and the whole thing might even be intentional (insert ominous music).

This theory was successfully challenged on multiple occasions: first by a John V, who did a quick analysis of the high quality stations showing no significant difference with the major other datasets. Then, there was the BEST project, led by Richard Muller, who somehow lent credence to the concerns of some so-called "skeptics." At the time this effort was launched, Watts solemnly swore that he woud accept the conclusions. That enthusiasm evaporated (another feedback perhaps?) when the conclusions were released, confirming what the other datasets were already showing. Then, some NOAA researchers published a paper reaching, again, the same conclusions. Then, after much, much time, Watts himself participated in a research paper that essentially redid what the NOAA researchers had done, and reached the same conclusions again, but he pulled a "Spencer" by still making some vacuous argument that, in some way, he could still be right.

Over time, of course, the continued warming forced it to go silent about the very hypothesis that caused its existence in the first place, but there was never any shortage of new spots where other goal posts could be moved. It has now evolved and received help from people who managed to give it a better appearance. Nonetheless, it is still the same motivated reasoning machine that it always was.

CO2 effect is saturated

MA Rodger at 23:19 PM on 13 September, 2021

Eclectic @625,

Of course, there is the point as to whether you should be referring to that paper as Wijngaarden & Happer (2020). Academic work is usually only dated if it is properly published or if it is presented at a conference. Otherwise it would be demoted to being a working paper which is thus not complete and thus not properly dateable. And I would suggest that up-loading a paper onto Cornell University's "free distributon service" arXvi doesn't count as 'publication', it being no-more 'published' than this comment I post here at SkS.

But the proof of the pudding and all that....

Whatever tha nature of a piece of work's origin, it is its usefulness to the science that is the proper measure of it. A look at google scholar for Wijngaarden & Happer (unpublished) 'Dependence of Earth’s Thermal Radiation on Five Most Abundant Greenhouse Gases' shows today just four citations, which is pretty rubbish. And one of those is a reference from a further Wijngaarden & Happer paper posted @arXvi which is but an updated version of the same while accounting for two more GHGs, CF4 & SF6. Of the remaining three, one explicitly styles itself a working paper. (I note its reference list is stuffed full of denialist nonsense: Koonin & Jon-boy Christy, Lewis & Dicky Lindzen, McIntyre & McKitrick & Monckton, Svensmark & Woy Spencer.) The final two citations do initially appear to be by published work. But in tracking down both ♣Pascal Richet (2021): 'Climate and the temperature-CO2 relationship An epistemological re-examination of the ice core message', History of Geo- and Space Sciences, Vol 12, pp97-110. and ♣David Coe; Fabinski, Walter & Weigleb, Gerhard (2021): 'The Impact of CO2, H2O and Other "Greenhouse Gases" on Equilibrium Earth Temperatures' Int J. Atmos. & Oceanic Sci.,Vol 5, Issue 2, pp29-40. I see either a blank space in the pp97-110 page-numbering or the pages pp29-41 taken by another paper. So it appears that the final two citations have failed to gain publication; not so uncommon with denialist works which both these final two citing paper evidently are. (An on-line French version of the first of these two simply presents a common climate myth while a posting of the second's Abstract still visible on a denialist website shows its finding is an ECS=+0.5ºC.)

....turns out to be a large bowl of rather-sticky humble pie.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

michael sweet at 12:26 PM on 4 August, 2021

Engineer Poet:

You continue to waste our time discussing LRNT. I have pointed out to you that I have orders of magnitude more professional experience, professional training and radiation knowledge than you do.

As far as your assertion at 272:

"If it had been Sr-90 you would have had some serious beta burns and some gamma exposure from the decay of excited isomers to their ground states. Further, I'm certain that holding such things in your hands is a violation of safety protocols."

This demonstrates your complete ignorance of radiation. Sr-90 is a low energy beta emitter, not a high energy emitter as I described. I was using the daughter product of Sr-90, Yittrium-90, which is a higher energy emitter. You do not even know about the Cerenkov gamma radiation field which is a big issue with high energy beta emitters.

Strontium-90 has a halflife of 29 years and emits beta particles of
relatively low energy as it decays. Yttrium-90, its decay product, has a shorter half-life (64 hours) than strontium-90, but it emits beta particles of higher energy. source my emphasis

Since I am trained in the use of high energy radiation I was able to safely remove a sample from an unshielded vial containing a curie of Y-90. I got no burns, the exposure on my finger ring was minimal and it is not a violation of safety rules. Internet educated wanna-bees like you don't know what they are talking about.

The rest of your rants just serve to demonstrate that you do not care if nuclear power plants are unsafe. You cut off my point of sea level rise overwhelming the Big Bend power plant site. What about the effect of sea level rise on Big Bend and Turkey Point in Miami? 80% of current nuclear plants in the USA are threatened by floods they were not designed for. You do not care how many people you kill building dangerous power plants.

A consensus does is not the same as a unanamous consensus. We all know there are scientists like Linzden and Spencer who do not agree with the climate change consensus. Similarly, there are wackos like Calabrese who do not agree with the consensus of LRNT. Scientists have had a consensus on using LRNT for over 70 years. The nuclear industry has argued for that to be changed but the data overwhelmingly indicates that radiation causes harm at low doses.

I note that you have only one citation in your entire rant. That is to a paper published in 1958. Perhaps scientists have learned something in the last 60 years. You have produced nothing to answer the 15 points that Abbott made.

France loses money on every watt they generate using nuclear power. They have not paid off the original morgages and have not set aside funds to shut down their reactors. The government subsidizes the power prices to make people think nuclear was a good investment.

It is a waste of my time to respond to the rest of your Gish Gallop. There are to many ignorant mistakes and deliberate falsehoods to respond in a reasonable amount of column length.

2021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #31

One Planet Only Forever at 03:11 AM on 4 August, 2021

Eclectic, It would indeed be amusing to hear the WUWT crowd, especially Dr. Spencer and "The Error-Prone Viscount", attempt to present a rational solid argument justifying not presenting the real satellite data TLT temperature values.

The -26C baseline value for the average TLT makes sense. But the large negative value would trigger questions that could scramble the cognitive dissonance into a flurry of fuzzy attempts to dismiss the clear evidence that satellite data averages are not to be considered to be a rational replacement for the surface temperature averages.

2021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #31

Eclectic at 16:55 PM on 3 August, 2021

One Planet,

it really doesn't matter much, which baseline Spencer uses - since his main monthly publication site seems to be on the WattsUpWithThat* blog.

*Where "The Error-Prone Viscount" ( as science journalist Potholer54 terms Lord Monckton) has already posted another global temperature has paused for 6 years now . . . as per usual.

It is a pity - and absolutely quite inexplicable - that WUWT doesn't ever publish the Spencer UAH TLT graph overlaid with the RSS graph of TLT temperatures.

The WUWTers are frequently complaining how climate scientists mislead the ordinary public by giving temperatures as temperature anomaly figures instead of expressing a real Celsius temperature. Perhaps we can persuade Dr Spencer to chart his UAH TLT temperature figures in simple Celsius figures - where the TLT baseline is about Minus 26C . (If I have correctly understood commentary at RealClimate blog.)

2021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #31

One Planet Only Forever at 15:03 PM on 3 August, 2021

Checked Dr. Roy Spencer's update for the July UAH global average.

He has a new twist for presenting data to make it appear as though the current numbers as not unusually high. He has shifted all the data to be lower relative to the zero line. And he helpfully provides the following:

"REMINDER: We have changed the 30-year averaging period from which we compute anomalies to 1991-2020, from the old period 1981-2010. This change does not affect the temperature trends."

If the change does not affect the presentation of the temperature trends then - Why was it done? Probably to try to make things appear more like he wants them to appear.

The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews

Nick Palmer at 09:33 AM on 23 June, 2021

Just in case you lot are still resisting the idea that the politics relating to climate science have become extremely polarised - in my view to the point where ideologues of both the left and right think it justified to exaggerate/minimise the scientific truths/uncertainties to sway the democratically voting public one way or the other - here's a video blog by alt-right hero and part of the original Climategate team who publicised the emails, James Delingpole basically saying that 'the left' have infiltrated and corrupted the science for the purpose of using political deception to seize power for themselves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=866yHuh1RYM

Deconstruct or follow up Delingpoles' rhetoric elsewhere and you will find a helluva lot of intelligent articulate people who believe that the public's environmental consciences are being exploited by closet socialist forces to deceive them, using 'fear porn', into voting for policies which they otherwise wouldn't consider voting for, in a dark strategy to bring in some form of latter day Marxism. They insinuate this has got its tentacles into climate science which they assert has led to the reality of the science, as presented to the public, being twisted by them for political ends. It's absolutely not just Greenpeace, as I already said, who've 'gone red' to the point where it has 'noble cause' corrupted their presentations of environmental matters and, crucially, the narrow choice of solutions they favour - those which would enable and bring on that 'great reset' of civilisation that they want to see. It's much, much bigger than that.

I think we are seeing a resurgence and a recrystallisation of those who got convinced by Utopianist politics of the left and free market thinkers of the right taught at University - Marxist-Leninism, Ayn Rand, Adam Smith etc. Most of those students eventually 'grew up' and mellowed in time, leaving only a small cadre of incorrigible extremists but who are now, as the situation is becoming increasingly polarised politically, revisiting their former ideologies. In essence 'woking' up. I submit that the real battle we are seeing played out in the arena of climate matters is not between science and denialism of science - those are only the proxies used to manipulate the public. The true battle is between the increasingly polarised and increasingly extreme and deceitful proponents of the various far left and right ideologies and their re-energised followers.

It is now almost an article of faith, so accepted has it become, amongst many top climate scientists and commentators, that 'denialism' is really NOT motivated by stupidity or a greedy desire to keep on making as much money as possible but is rather a strong resistance to the solutions that they fear are just 'chess moves' to bring about the great Red 'reset' they think the 'opposition' are secretly motivated by.

Here's an excellent article by famous climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe identifying those who are 'solutions averse' as being a major factor in denialism. It touches on the 'watermelon' aspect. You can turn a blind eye to what I am saying if you want, but in that case you should also attack Hayhoe too - but don't expect many to applaud you...

https://theecologist.org/2019/may/20/moving-past-climate-denial

Also try this: https://www.thecut.com/2014/11/solution-aversion-can-explain-climate-skeptics.html

https://today.duke.edu/2014/11/solutionaversion

I think some people who fight climate science denialism still have the naive idea that just enlessly quoting the science to them, and Skepticalscience's F.L.I.C.C logical fallacies, will make denialists fall apart. I too used to think that if one would just keep hammering away, eventually they would give up. Anyone who tries this will find that it actually does not work well at all. Take on some of the smarter ones and you will rapidly find that you are, at least in the eyes of the watching/reading/listening public, who are the only audience it's worthwhile spending any time trying to correct, outgunned scientifically and rhetorically. That's why I don't these days much use the actual nitty-gritty science as a club with which to demolish them because the smarter ones will always have a superficially plausible, to the audience at least, comeback which looks convincing TO THE AUDIENCE. Arguing the science accurately can often lose the argument, as many scientists found when they attempted to debate such notorious, yet rhetorically brilliant sceptic/deniers such as Lord Monckton.

I haven't finished trying to clarify things for you all but right back at the beginning, in post#18, I fairly covered what I was trying to suggest is a more realistic interpretation of the truth than the activist's simplistic 'Evil Exxon Knew' propaganda one. In short, most of you seem to believe, and are arguing as if, the science was rock solid back then and that it said any global warming would certainly lead to bad things. This is utterly wrong, and to argue as if it was true is just deceitful. As I have said, and many significant figures in the field will confirm, I've been fighting denialism for a very long time so when denialists present some paper or piece of text extracted from a longer document as 'proof' of something, I always try and read the original, usually finding out that they have twisted the meaning, cherry picked inappropriate sentences or failed to understand it and thereby jumped to fallacious conclusions - similarly I read the letters and extracts that Greenpeace used and, frankly, either they were trying deliberately to mislead or they didn't understand the language properly and jumped to their prejudiced conclusions and then made all the insinuations that we are familiar with and that nobody else seems be questioning much, if at all. The idea that Exxon always knew that anthropogenic climate change was real (which they, of course, did) AND that they always knew that the results of that would be really bad and so they conspired to cover that bad future up is false and is the basis of the wilful misreading and deceitful interpretation of the cherry picked phrases, excerpts and documents that has created a vastly worse than deserved public perception of how the fossil fuel corporations acted. Always remember that, at least ideally, people (and corporations) should be presumed innocent until proven beyond reasonable doubt to be guilty. Greenpeace/Oreskes polemics are not such proof. Their insinuations of the guilt of Big Oil is just a mirror image of how the Climategate hackers insinuated guilt into the words of the top climate scientists.

Here's a clip from my post#18

NAP: "When activists try to bad mouth Exxon et al they speak from a 'post facto' appreciation of the science, as if today's relatively strong climate science existed back when the documents highlighted in 'Exxon knew' were created. Let me explain what I think is another interpretation other than Greenpeace/Oreskes'/Supran's narratives suggesting 'Exxon knew' that climate change was going to be bad because their scientists told them so as far back as the 70s and 80s. Let me first present Stephen Schneider's famous quote from 1988 (the whole quote, not the edited one used by denialists).

S.S. "On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.""

Stephen Schneider, as a climate scientist, was about 'as good as it gets' and he said that in 1988. Bear in mind that a lot of the initial framing to prejudice readers that 'Exxon knew' used was based on documents from considerably longer ago, so what are the activists who eagerly allowed themselves to be swept up in it until no-one questioned it turning a blind eye to? It's that the computer models of the time were extremely crude because computer technology back then was just not powerful enough to divide Earth up into enough finite element 'blocks' of small enough size to make model projections of much validity, in particular projections of how much, how fast and how bad or how good... Our ideas of the feedback effects of clouds and aerosols back then was extremely rudimentary and there were widely differing scientific opinions as to the magnitude or even the direction of the feedback. The scientific voices we see in Exxon Knew tend to be those who were suggesting there was lot more certainty of outcome than there actually was. That their version has been eventually shown to be mostly correct by a further 40 years of science in no way means they were right to espouse such certainty back then - just lucky. As I pointed out before, even as late as the very recent CMIP6 models, we are still refining this aspect - and still finding surprises. To insinuate that the science has always been as fairly rock solid as it today is just a wilful rewriting of history. Try reading Spencer Weart's comprehensive history of the development of climate science for a more objective view of the way things developed...

ExxonMobil spokesperson Allan Jeffers told Scientific American in 2015. “The thing that shocks me the most is that we’ve been saying this for years, that we have been involved in climate research. These guys (Inside Climate News) go down and pull some documents that we made available publicly in the archives and portray them as some kind of bombshell whistle-blower exposé because of the loaded language and the selective use of materials.”

Look at the phrases and excerpts that were used in both Greenpeace's 'Exxon Knew' and 'Inside Climate News's' exposés. You will find they actually are very cherry picked and relatively few in number considering the huge volumes of company documents that were analysed. Does that remind you of anything else? Because it should. The Climategate hackers trawled through mountains of emails - over ten years worth - to cherry pick apparently juicy phrases and ended up with just a few headline phrases, a sample of which follow. Now, like most of us now know, there are almost certainly innocent and valid explanations of each of these phrases, and independent investigations in due course vindicated the scientists. Reading them, and some of the other somewhat less apparently salacious extracts that got less publicity, and comparing them with the 'presented as a smoking gun' extracts from Greenpeace/Oreskes/Supran etc I have to say, on the face of it, the Climategate cherry picks look more evidential of serious misdeeds than the 'Exxon Knew' excerpts. Except we are confident that the Climategate hackers badly misrepresented the emails by insinuating shady motives where none were. Why should we not consider that those nominally on the side of the science did not do the same? Surely readers here are not so naive aas to believe that everyone on 'our side' is pure as the driven snow and all those on the 'other side' are evil black hats?

Here's a 'top eight'

1) Phil Jones "“I’ve just completed Mike’s [Mann] Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s [Briffa] to hide the decline.”

2) “Well, I have my own article on where the heck is global warming…. The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” [Kevin Trenberth, 2009]

3) “I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data’ but in reality the situation is not quite so simple." Keth Briffa

4) Mike [Mann], can you delete any e-mails you may have had with Keith [Trenberth] re AR4? Keith will do likewise…. Can you also e-mail Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his e-mail address…. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.” [Phil Jones, May 29, 2008]

5) “Also we have applied a completely artificial adjustment to the data after 1960, so they look closer to observed temperatures than the tree-ring data actually were….” [Tim Osborn, Climatic Research Unit, December 20, 2006]

6) “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow, even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” [Phil Jones, July 8, 2004]

7) “You might want to check with the IPCC Bureau. I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 [the upcoming IPCC Fifth Assessment Report] would be to delete all e-mails at the end of the process. Hard to do, as not everybody will remember it.” [Phil Jones, May 12, 2009]

8) “If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s warming blip (as I’m sure you know). So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say 0.15 deg C, then this would be significant for the global mean—but we’d still have to explain the land blip….” [Tom Wigley, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, to Phil Jones, September 28, 2008]

Please at least consider the possibility that Greenpeace, who have been deceiving the public about the toxicity and carcinogenicity of this, that and the other for decades (ask me how if you want to see how blatant their deceit or delusion is... showing this is actually very quick and easy to do) were, in a very similar way, and motivated by their underlying ideology, deliberately (or delusionally) misrepresenting innocent phrases to blacken names excessively too.

What Does Statistically Significant Actually Mean?

Bob Loblaw at 06:04 AM on 20 May, 2021

Well, Ado might have a point if the science of global warming was based on nothing more than extrapolating the current temperature trend, but it isn't.

Climate scientists know a lot more than what Ado appears to know, so Ado is engaged in an argument from incredulity dressed in sheep's clothing.

If Ado wishes to learn more about what climate science knows, he can try either of the following:

HIstory of Climate Science (big button near the top of the Skeptical Science home page)

https://skepticalscience.com/history-climate-science.html

Spencer Weart's The Discovery of Global Warming:

https://history.aip.org/climate/index.htm

SkS Analogy 22 - Energy SeaSaw

One Planet Only Forever at 12:42 PM on 11 May, 2021

Evan, I try to learn as I try to help other people understand what is happening. I appreciate your attention to my comments, and your feedback.
I have a few more suggestions for your consideration starting with the last point you made in your comment @16 (potentially only my comments “Regarding 10 years of temperature data being a sufficiently long time to provide a degree of technical rigour” affect what you have presented in your See-Saw item).

I find it helps to expose people to the fuller record of basic data like CO₂ levels and Global Average Surface Temperature. That can help them see how unusual or unnatural the recent values are and that CO₂ and Temperature are related. That is why I recommend looking at the history of Temperature and CO₂ data:

back to 1880 for the surface temperature which shows that one of the biggest See-Saws was a warm bump in the 1940s that many “global warming - climate change” doubters mistakenly believe was Globally warmer than now because it was very warm in parts of the USA (And some people experienced that or knew someone who was alive back then similar to your “Winter recollections”).

back to 1979 for the satellite data (to see that, though satellite temperatures are not the surface temperature, the pattern of temperature is similar)

and back 800,000 years for CO₂ levels, like the animation by NOAA that allows the details of recent decades to be seen along with the final full length record. It shows that:

several 100 to 120 ppm changes happened in the previous ice-ages

the high level of CO₂ of 300 ppm was only reached once in all that time, until recently

for the past 4000 years the CO₂ level has been between 270 and 280 ppm.

CO₂ levels are now at 420 ppm, 140 above the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm, and continues to increase, and indeed an increase of 100 ppm since 1960.

The higher recent rates of warming do indeed over-whelm the impressions of the See-Saw. However, the magnitude of the warming is more important. Even if the decade rate was only 0.10 degrees C, eventually the warming would be clear in spite of the larger swings of the See-Saw.

Regarding how people will perceive a message

There is a diversity of awareness, understanding and perspective. Not everyone will see things the way you intend.

You asked: “Many people feel a difference in winters now than during their childhood (1970's or earlier). Can you tell how old I am? :-)”

What I can tell is how far North you likely live. You are likely part of the small portion of humanity who live north of, or near to, 60 degrees N latitude. The arctic regions have warmed faster than the rest of the global surface. People may legitimately recollect that Northern winters were different decades ago. But global average warming since the 1960s is far less than 1 degree C with non-arctic areas warming less than the average (and there is more warming at night than the daytime. So, people in non-arctic areas may not recall a difference. I was born before 1970 and have lived between 50 an 55 degrees N. In spite of my bias of being aware of the warming and climate change that has occurred, I cannot claim a clear recollection that winters were significantly different when I was younger. So there are likely many people who do not have a legitimate recollection that winters were different decades ago.

Regarding 10 years of temperature data being a sufficiently long time to provide a degree of technical rigour

I do agree you may want to reconsider what you say about the adequacy of a 10 year set of temperature data.

As KR suggests, unless the data has had significant variable influences like ENSO and volcanic impacts scrubbed out of the data, which raises questions about how those impacts are “scrubbed out”, temperature data sets longer than 20 years may be needed to avoid unintended interpretations.

I spent a little time learning about “decades of temperature data using the SkS Temperature Trend Calculator. I looked at the Trend values for sets of 10 years in the GISTEMPv4 and UAHv6.0 TLT data starting in 1979 (everyone can do this to verify the results):

The Satellite data set shows a negative trend for the decades starting in 1987, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004.

There are also many decades where the Positive Trend is less than 1/10th of the 2 sigma range of variability starting in 1980, 1986, 1997, 1999, and 2005 (decades with almost no clear warming, like the set starting with 1997 being 0.015 +- 0.445 degrees C per decade meaning a value range from -0.430 to +0.460, or 2005 being 0.005 +- 0.376 meaning -0.371 to +0.381).

In the Surface Temperature data set only the decade starting in 1987 had a negative trend. There were no decades with a positive trend that was less than 1/10 of 2 sigma.

This may explain why the likes of Dr. Roy Spencer focus on their satellite data manipulations and try to claim the superiority of that data over surface temperature data. That run of values from 1997 through 2005 was a long period of being able to claim that the warming had appeared to have ended even though CO₂ levels continued to increase (the UAHv6 data set trend for the 19 year period of 1997 to 2015 is negative. In the UAHv5.6 data set the longest negative Trend was for the 11 years 1998 – 2009, and in the RSSv4 TLT data set the longest negative trend is the decade starting with 2003). So shorter sets of data, rather than the fuller story, can be the “Friend” of the likes of Dr. Roy Spencer (and updated manipulations of the data can also be “Friendlier to the likes of Dr. Roy Spencer.).

A final point about presenting decade averages

I do like the presentation of the averages of the 70s, 80s, 90, 2000s, 2010s when a graph cannot be shown. And I agree that such a presentation is not improved by adding earlier decades. But I also consider a “moving average” presentation to be better, but it needs to be Graphed (referring to the SkS Temperature Trend Calculator works). The moving average values can’t be described in words the way the decade averages can be. However, the discrete decade averages are a 120 month "moving average" with the data points being every 10 years (on a graph the decade averages would be points in the middle of each decade). As you can see from the investigation I summarized above, any set of 10 years of data can be a Decade average. And when those averages are done for each new month of data the series of points will look like a line (note that Dr. Roy Spencer presents a 13 month moving average because that makes it easier to present the data points. They go on the middle point of the data set – no need to set the graphic up to present a 12 month average between the middle two months of a 12 item data set).

There is no consensus

Bob Loblaw at 05:29 AM on 11 May, 2021

hedron states "Of course, 97% of climate scientists believe in global warming, the field of climate science itself was created by a group of people who believed in climate change".

This, of course, is complete bollocks. Studies into the nature of climate date back at least as far as the 1800s,

If hedron wants to inform itself of the history, it can go to Spencer Weart's The Discovery of Global Warming. Based in its brief posting history here, I doubt that hedron will make the effort, though.

How much has nuclear testing contributed to global warming?

Eclectic at 19:41 PM on 27 October, 2020

Boston745 , your "observations and associations" are just personal anecdotes. Not scientific evidence. They seem to be your "feelings". Contrarians have all sorts of "feelings" ~ often mutually contradictory. That's one of the reasons why they can't get their act together.

Yes, those "qualified scientists" (who are very, very, very few) do deserve to be completely dismissed, since they completely fail to provide any valid evidence to overthrow the mainstream climate science. They talk hot air ~ empty rhetoric.

Instances : Drs Lindzen, Spencer, Curry - failed ideas or vague blather based on religious beliefs. No actual backing from scientific observations. And even they don't bother to advocate "magnetospheres and cosmic rays".

Boston745 , have you other "qualified scientists" who are contrarian enough to disagree with the mainstream science - and what is their substantive evidence that they are right and the mainstream is wrong? And why haven't they published it? Major scientific journals would be enthusiastic & delighted to publish some really cutting-edge ground-breaking stuff ! But the contrarians can't come up with anything valid.

Genuine science exists in the collective summary of peer-reviewed scientific papers in reputable journals - it does not reside in fruitcake blogs such as WattsUpWithThat. (If you wonder why I use the label fruitcake, then just go and read through WUWT. )

Critical Thinking about Climate - a video series by John Cook

nigelj at 12:50 PM on 7 October, 2020

An example of climate change sceptics who give mixed messages might be Roy Spencer, a sceptical leaning climate scientist. He says in his writings that some warming is human caused, but that much of the warming is natural, so he is not in complete denial apparently. Except that he also signed an evangelical declaration on global warming that said "the recent warming is one of many natural cycles through history" (note it didnt say "partly"due to a natural cycle but clearly means its all natural). Refer to his bio on wikipedia. Another sceptic with ever changing views is Judith Currie, depending on her audience.

Models are unreliable

Deplore_This at 04:15 AM on 4 July, 2020

@Bob Lowlaw 1199

Quit with your sanctimonious crap. It certainly doesn’t reflect well on your scientific reputation. I came here stating that I’m a skeptic and wanted a recommendation for university course on GCM, not to believe one person over another.

Judith Curry was the Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at a well-respected technical university and was obviously imminently qualified to get the job. I’m not going to post people’s names on the Internet to satisfy your curiosity.

I looked at the Spencer Weart link and I’m already beyond that level. I have read the IPCC reports.

If you were going to scientifically challenge Judith Curry’s opinions that I referenced you would point to published scientific scrutiny and not just make juvenile comments. The more emotional you become the more you add to her credibility in my eyes.

Regards.

Models are unreliable

Bob Loblaw at 03:05 AM on 4 July, 2020

Deplore_This:

Who tells you she is "credible"? On what basis are they credible?

You have chosen who you are going to believe. That is not the sign of a skeptic. You have bought into the shite they are selling to you. There are lots of places on the internet that will point out the crap you have read that is confirming your bias.

Go read the Spencer Weart link I posted earlier.

Have you read the IPCC reports, or do you just read the comments about the IPCC that you get from your "credible" sources?

I agree with Tom Dayton. You are not here to learn anything.

Models are unreliable

Bob Loblaw at 23:35 PM on 3 July, 2020

Deplore_This:

I am still unsure as to exactly what you expect to accomplish with respect to climate models. So far, it looks like you have a pre-conception that something must be wrong, and you are on a search for details to support that position. I think you may experience a bad case of confirmation bias, if your postings here are an indication.

As has been pointed out, climate General Circulation Models (GCMs) are only a small part of climate science. I suggest that you read Spencer Weart's "The Discovery of Global Warming" to learn more about climate science in general.

https://history.aip.org/climate/index.htm

In addition, you seem to be under the impression that GCMs represent a "single" climate model. They do not. A GCM is a collection of many types of climate-related models that are knit together to provide a comprehensive view of climate - much as the science of climatology has many, many areas of specialization that need to be knit togther to form a full picture. Areas that represent distinct sub-classes of "climate" models include (but are not limited to):

radiation transfer. Much detailed work was done in the 1960s, when the military wanted to make sure that their IR-seeking missiles would hit the intended targets. (HInt: their "target" was not "climate")

atmospheric dynamics (motions). Especially important for weather forecasting. The general field is "Geophysical Fluid Dynamics" (GFD) and atmospheric motion is only one area of application. The same science is used to model air flow on airplane wings, or fluids in pipes or in-ground oil reservoirs, etc. Each application has its own specific issues, so modelling approaches differ - but there is a lot in common.

ocean dynamics. Another application of GFD, Oceans have some different issues from atmospheric motions, though.

Surface energy balance issues. Receipt of radiation, partitioning into evapotranspiration, thermal fluxes (to atmosphere, to soil or water). Effects of surface type, vegetation, etc. Often referred to as "microclimate". (This was my area of specialization when I worked in the discipline.)

soil heat transfer.

cloud physics.

and so on.

And once the climatologists develop their theories, there is the task of finding efficient algorithms to transform the science (usually in some mathematical form) into computer solutions. Generally covered as "Numerical Methods" in the computing science world. Systems of partial differential equations that cah be solved either through finite difference, finite element, or spectral methods. These methods are not unique to "climate science".

No single university course is going to cover the full level of details of every aspect of climate models - or climatology in general. Different groups that develop GCMs make different decisions on which components of which "climate" sub-models will be incorporated, and how they want to code numerical solutions.

These difference approaches lead to different results in detail, but the broad picture is the same: CO2 from fossl fuels plays an important role in current temperature trends.

YouTube's Climate Denial Problem

Eclectic at 12:32 PM on 10 April, 2020

Since the SkS scene is a bit quiet at the moment (a covid-19 effect?) , I take the liberty of doing some more waffling about the notorious WUWT website. So my apologies for this long post.

WUWT claims to be the world's "most viewed site" for global warming and climate change ~ and I have seen no evidence disproving WUWT 's possession of the crown for most popular Climate Denial echo-chamber website status.

As mentioned above, WUWT has a rapid churn of headlines to keep its fans interested & clicking-on frequently. Proprietor Anthony Watts claims WUWT receives no subsidy from the fossil fuel industries ~ I don't know if this was so in its early days, but it could well be so nowadays. (There are of course many ways in which secret sponsors can covertly channel funds indirectly to WUWT or associated entities . . . but that's not immediately relevant to the site's anti-science activities.) Judging by the large range of of on-line advertising at the WUWT site, it seems there is no shortage of dollar income ~ and it also suggests that the on-line advertising agencies have examined & confirmed a high rate of traffic going to the website.

Nigelj and OPOF ~ my earlier wording that many of the regular WUWT commenters "are thick as two short planks" . . . was a colloquialism, and was not meaning that Denialists are of lower IQ than the general population. AFAIK, there is no evidence that Denialists have an average IQ lower than logical thinkers have. Yes, most of the WUWT commenters are "pretty average" [another colloquialism!]. But as always ~ it is not whether you are intelligent but whether you actually use the intelligence you have.

And there are indeed [a few] highly intelligent commenters at WUWT. My favorite is Willis Eschenbach. Very intelligent, and he has a sense of humor I like . . . but despite his analytical skills, he nevertheless has a "Dark Side" twist in his psyche ~ such that he always fails in the end to reach the destination of logical synthesis of the full context of the climate issue. I reckon he has a combination of Motivated Reasoning and Doublethink. Like so many (all?) Denialists, he somehow manages ultimately to suppress seeing the Bleeding Obvious.

# There are certain neurological conditions [often, from stroke] where the brain fails to identify the human face, or other objects. Climate Denialists achieve that status, sometimes wilfully perhaps . . . but eventually it becomes an automatic mental habit to "not see" what their emotions don't want to see.

Nigelj , as I mentioned earlier, it surely must be that the WUWT Moderators allow Nick Stokes as a token example of their "non-discrimination" policy. But there is yet another example ~ Steven Mosher. Mosher does not come from the strong scientific background of Stokes . . . but over the years he has gained his stripes as a scientist (in a de-facto manner). IIRC, Mosher was at first rather climate-skeptical, and joined the original BEST project in a sort of literary capacity. And when the BEST project eventually confirmed the mainstream climate science data, he accordingly "converted" to become a mainstreamer.

As a convert from "skepticism" , Mosher is loathed and hated by the bulk of WUWT commenters. Mosher's style is usually not to go into details on how the OP or fellow commenters have messed up or been stupid . . . but he more often issues a one-liner to point out an error, or he merely says [in effect] : "Sigh. You've gotten it wrong again." Unsurprisingly, this enrages many of the Denialists.

Stokes is hated too, and is hated also because he is unfailingly correct , and the Denialists can find no chinks in his scientific armor ~ not that the Denialists at WUWT would ever change their viewpoint merely because someone publicly proves them wrong !

In the past, WUWT had a system where registered commenters could vote a Like or a Dislike to any post in the Comments column. Run-of-the -mill Deniaist comments sometimes garnered one or two or a handful of Likes. But I always found it amusing to see how every comment by Stokes or Mosher was immediately garnering 20 - 50 Dislikes ! (In a way, it's pity this Like/Dislike barometer got scrubbed.)

# Over my years of observation, there have not really been any other "anti-Denialists" to stay the course in the hostile environment at the WUWT comments columns. Some appear for a little while, then disappear ~ mostly by being censored I think (but doubtless, a few have become tired & disgusted). Yet I also detect a few who (after banning) resurrect themselves under a new pseudonym. However, in recent months WUWT has introduced a new stricter regime of registration to make resurrection far more difficult. ( It also raises your risk of being doxxed.)

And no, I myself don't post at WUWT. The denizens there are largely rabid political ultra-extremists, quite uncharitable to humanity as a whole. There are also some (apolitical or non-partisan) scientific crackpots. But all are hard-core deniers of climate science, and they show zero inclination to become sane.

# If you examine the bulk of WUWT posted articles, you see a strong undercurrent of petulant and childish propaganda slant. Clearly WUWT is essentially aiming at the Lowest Common Denominator of everyday Denialists. (Some Denialist websites exist, which are slightly more high-brow e.g. Judith Curry's and Roy Spencer's .) But for rampant psychopathology, my "vote" goes to WUWT.

My apologies once again for the long post. I hope readers have found elements informative and/or entertaining.

YouTube's Climate Denial Problem

One Planet Only Forever at 07:10 AM on 9 April, 2020

I commented on the recent "A History of FLICC:..." post with what I think accurately describes Deniers (of any improved awareness or better understanding):

People who are less aware, with a related lack of understanding, who are unwilling to learn - including people who have a lack of interest in learning - especially people who sense that learning would require them to change their mind about something they have developed a liking for.

Everyone else, including the most knowledgeable of experts, are:

People who are less aware, with a related lack of understanding, who are interested and willing to learn.

Deniers are not Dumb or Incapable of learning. They lack an interest in learning, maybe because there is so much they learned that would have to be corrected that they are happier to carry on believing what they developed a liking for - no amount of effort to increase awareness or improve understanding will make much of a dent in those types of made-up minds.

Tragically for the future of humanity there is a lot of developed Liking that needs to be corrected but resists being corrected because the corrections would be detrimental to many developed Impressions of Superiority Relative to Others. Massive denial resistance easily Drummed up by misleading marketing appeals to people willing to be easily impressed by it is to be expected.

Sites like WUWT and Dr. Roy Spencer's are like Pied Pipers for people desiring to be misled, not wanting to learn how to be helpful, liking excuses for being harmful. As are all the misleading YouTube bits that this OP is concerned about.

How I try to break climate silence

One Planet Only Forever at 02:40 AM on 12 March, 2020

Regarding my comment @8,

The following set of links are the specific ones I find are helpful, hard to dispute:

... and particularly that increased CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels could become a significant influence: I initially refer to Wikipedia History of climate change science. If there are questions about Wikipedia’s validity, I refer to the SkS History of Climate Science. That is a well-presented alternative to Wikipedia that has matching content and adds reference to “The Discovery of Global Warming” by Spencer R. Weart, and the Timeline webpage on the American Institute of Physics website.

Evidence of recent increase in levels of atmospheric CO2: NOAA Greenhouse Gas Website (also shows trends for CH4, N2O and SF6)

Evidence of recent increase of global average surface temperature: NASA/GISTemp data set, (I refer to the SkS Trend Calculator if the person wonders about other temperature data sets, and I discussion the difference between surface temperature data and satellite data)

Evidence of recent reduction of Arctic, Antarctic and Greenland ice extents and mass: NSIDC, particularly the Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis page.

Rising sea levels due to warming of oceans as well as loss of ice, not just Antarctica and Greenland: NASA Sea Level Change.

Sustainable Development Goals

UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs DESA

SDG Knowledge Platform

1972 Stockholm Conference page of the history of Sustainable Development (part of the SDG Knowledge Platform)

How I try to break climate silence

One Planet Only Forever at 12:03 PM on 10 March, 2020

A long comment with details added for anyone interested.

My starting point, or foundation, is “Try to Help Others and Do No Harm”, with the awareness that Everybody’s actions combine to become the future. And being aware that compromising on understanding and its helpful application, or compromising on the required corrections, is understandably harmful.

I think it is essential for people to learn to be as helpful as possible and as harmless as possible. That means personally expanding awareness and improving understanding and applying what is learned to help develop sustainable improvements, and helping others do that. And voting helpfully, and helping others vote more helpfully, is a key part of that individual action.

Rather than provide examples of what I do I will share the basics of the approach I try to use to help others expand their awareness and improve their understanding and apply that learning to be less harmful and become more helpful. It is a work in progress, but this is its current form. (A recent example would be my comments on the “Silk Road article”).

A bit of personal Background:

I try to stick to the fundamentals of constantly improving awareness and understanding regarding any issue and applying what I learn to try to help others and avoid harm being done or reduce the risk of harm. I learned that was the foundation of being a Good Engineer. And it was reinforced by my MBA education which I pursued out of interest in expanded awareness and understanding to be helpful, not in order to get richer quicker.

My MBA education in the 1980s, and my engineering career, taught me that misleading marketing can be temporarily effective but eventually fails, so Good Managers should not use it. My MBA education also taught me that there were very few case studies of Businesses that were Helpful Good Ethical participants in society. Seems that the pursuit of popularity and profit can compromise good understanding and helpful intentions.

I live in Alberta, Canada. I often encounter people who don’t get climate science and the required corrections of developed human activity. Many appear to resist getting it because getting it would require them to give up beliefs and actions that they have developed a liking for.

What I try to do when given an opportunity to discuss climate change:

The following is an Idealized outline of my approach to a comment that initiates the opportunity to discuss human climate change impacts. I try to follow it to avoid getting sucked into a foundation-less argument. I also try to not ‘match the attitude’ of the person I interact with if they start to get angry. That can be difficult because mimicking is a good thing in an interaction when we are collaborating, but the Fight side of Fight or Flight seems to wire us to mimic the increased aggressive behaviour of the person we are engaged with.

I Start by establishing that:

Everyone’s actions add up to become the future. This is key to inoculate against beliefs that Others should act first, especially that totally incorrect but very common demand that the Chinese and Indian populations are the climate change impact problem, rather than understanding that per-person impacts are the point. It also blocks someone from claiming the freedom to believe and do as they please because one person’s actions are no big deal.

Improved awareness and understanding applied to help develop sustainable improvements and reduce harm done is a Governing Objective. This ties to my primary interest in raising awareness of the Sustainable Development Goals (all of the SDGs), and the key importance of limiting human climate change impacts.

I see little point in further discussion without this fundamental awareness and understanding being established.

I then try to establish the following points of understanding, based on the source information I refer to (I am careful about referring to the IPCC or SkS. Many people seem to have developed an impulsive dislike of the IPCC and SkS, especially in Alberta):

In the 1800s there was the initial development of awareness and understanding that GHGs in the atmosphere increase the temperature at the surface of the planet, and particularly that increased CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels could become a significant influence: I initially refer to Wikipedia History of climate change science. If there are questions about Wikipedia’s validity, I refer to the SkS History of Climate Science. That is a well-presented alternative to Wikipedia that has matching content and adds reference to “The Discovery of Global Warming” by Spencer R. Weart, and the Timeline webpage on the American Institute of Physics website.

Evidence of recent increase in levels of atmospheric CO2: NOAA Greenhouse Gas Website (also shows trends for CH4, N2O and SF6)

Evidence of recent increase of global average surface temperature: NASA/GISTemp data set (I refer to the SkS Trend Calculator if the person wonders about other temperature data sets, and I discussion the difference between surface temperature data and satellite data)

Evidence of recent reduction of Arctic, Antarctic and Greenland ice extents and mass: NSIDC, particularly the Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis page.

Rising sea levels due to warming of oceans as well as loss of ice, not just Antarctica and Greenland: NASA Sea Level Change.

If I get agreement on those fundamentals, I bring up the Sustainable Development Goals and the understood need to achieve all of them through individual action, particularly getting individuals to vote for parties that will try to achieve the SDGs, all of them. And I point out that stopping climate change impacts of human activity is a major helpful action, because more significant human caused climate change makes it harder to achieve almost all of the SDGs.

I then return to discussing the fundamental objective of learning to help develop sustainable improvements and learning to stop harmful actions, tied to knowing that Everybody’s actions add up to the future (negatives if they are harmful). And I try to make the point that there is no neutral position. There is no harmless bystander. Harm is harm. It is not balanced by doing good. A rare exception is trying to help an individual in a way that may harm them – the medical intervention dilemma. Aside from that type of rare Ethical dilemma all other considerations are pretty simple Do No Harm, and Try to Help Others.

How I bring up climate change when given an opportunity to discuss any of the Sustainable Development Goals (there is so much covered by the SDGs that there are many opportunities for this type of discussion):

I use an approach that is similar to the climate change one above:

Start by pointing out that Everyone’s actions add up to become the future. And Improved awareness and understanding ….

Raise fundamental awareness and all of the SDGs, and the history of development of awareness and understanding that resulted in the SDGs: WWI – League of Nations (failure) WWII – UN, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (still a battle to have embraced and honoured by all Leadership) – everything since including Millennium Development Goals and SDGs.

Once agreement of importance of achieving all of the SDGs is established introduce the importance of stopping human climate change impacts because climate change makes achieving the SDGs so much harder.

Regarding how people vote:

I find it challenging to get people I encounter to consider changing their vote. Even if I can get a person to understand and agree that the threat of climate change impacts requires significant corrections of what has developed popularity and profitability, it can be very difficult to get them to change what party they vote for. Many people in Alberta are motivated by the wealth that they have developed a liking for obtaining from the export of fossil fuels combined with the comfort, convenience and enjoyment they can get from using fossil fuels.

The majority of people in Alberta seem to have develop a liking for a certain type of political group based on uncritical identification, particularly just needing to see the Name Conservative or the political position being commented on as Right-wing (that type of party was Alberta’s leadership from 1931 through to 2015, and it returned to power in 2019). The recent time when a non-Conservative party won the leadership happened because there were two well-known Conservative Right-wing parties almost evenly splitting the Conservative/Right-wing votes (though the winning NDP did get a significant number of votes).
And many of those Conservative supporters seem uninterested in investigating the helpfulness/harmfulness of the current set of actions and intentions of the political group they developed a liking for. Their natural inclination is to resist change. And that can be powerful enough to make them resist learning, resist fully correcting or expanding their awareness and understanding. Even getting them to be very concerned about climate change may not be enough to get them to change who they vote for. Some of them seem so ‘identity locked-in’ that they may dislike many of the current actions and plans of the party they developed a liking for, but they will still support it, accepting and making-up poor excuses for the harmful cheating actions and incorrect misleading claims made by Their Party because, well, it is Their Party and they want it to Win, they resist changing their mind (much like sports fans can excuse harmful cheating behaviours by Their Favourite Teams).

I have tried to help them understand that the party they are supporting may have harmfully changed from what they developed a liking for. It may have moved to embrace the support of harmfully self-interested people and that change will damage the Brand they like to identify with. To be fair, many of them probably like their Party because of a harmful self-interest, but they are unlikely to openly admit it.

Based on reading international political news I am quite sure that this also occurs with Right-wing parties and supporters in other nations. You may get them to understand climate science and the identified required corrections, but you are unlikely to get them to vote for a party that is not Conservative/Right-wing. And good luck getting them to succeed in pushing Their Correction Resistant Party to disappoint a significant portion of the Party’s dedicated motivated relied-on voter pool – all those who have a self-interest in personally benefiting as much as possible from the actions of the Party they support, especially the really rich supporters.

I had an intense conversation at work today.

Eclectic at 12:55 PM on 15 January, 2020

Doug_C @17 , the comment by TomJanson (as he rightly points out) was not simply referring to an isolated "bad year" of Australian wildfires in the end-1974 summer. There were many & extensive fires in other years of the 20th Century ~ yet they don't support the denialist case he is desperate to make.

But hilariously, TomJanson seems to have failed to take a careful look at a map of Australia. Perhaps he is too busy himself "fighting fires" on multiple SkS threads at once? ;-)

TomJanson @ 16 /18 , you seem to be basing your opinion on just reading a few headines (WUWT? Murdoch Press with its "183 arsonists" and suchlike flagrant disinformation?)

Yes, the state of NSW is one of the "eastern states" of Australia, and the 1974 summer wildfires did include a section of the well-settled Hunter Valley near the coast. But there were vast areas burnt to the west in NSW ~ which is typical inland terrain, being grasslands / arid lands / unpopulated regions (the "Outback").

The frequency of burning of large areas of "Outback" . . . provides an apples & oranges comparison with the currently famous fires in the populous south-east of Australia. And provides a "statistical camouflage" for desperadoes like Dr Spencer, who really don't wish to properly examine the issues. His is a fine exampe of Motivated Reasoning . . . as is all climate-science denialism.

And I did not say "these fires are completely different". But they are different enough, for it to be wise to learn a lesson from them. For irregular/"noisy" events like major wildfires (in Australia), we have to look at exacerbating factors & underlying causations (of which there are many).

Over the long term, one prominent new factor is Global Warming.

How much can we blame AGW for the extent & ferocity of the fires? At an educated guess, perhaps one-third of it can be blamed on climate change.

# The point is, with the ongoing warming over the next 30 years , it could well be that the AGW factor will grow to become two-thirds contributor to the extent & ferocity of wildfires in the "settled south-east of Australia". (Other regions of the world will have their own problems.)

But the modern wildfires of 2019 are becoming a wake-up call to the local population (and a warning to the rest of the world) . . . and as a consequence to that, the science-denialists are very desperate to propagandize against the obvious AGW connection.

I had an intense conversation at work today.

Eclectic at 23:02 PM on 14 January, 2020

TomJanson , like Barryn56 @ post #8 , has failed to understand the essential differences in 1974 and 2019.

In the 1970's (and 60's and other years) there were frequent very extensive areas burnt ~ mostly grasslands / arid lands / unpopulated regions An apples and oranges comparison with the fires of end-2019.

Dr Spencer and other anti-science apologists try to drown the significant differences, with a flood of misleading statistics. (They are desperately trying to prevent the "sleepers" waking to the new realities of AGW.)

Better analysis is found with Nick Stokes at his moyhu.blogspot and his twitter comments. (For those unaware of Stokes, he is one of the few sane scientists to be found in the comments columns of WUWT ~ he is almost universally reviled & loathed by the Wattupians, because he shows them up for what they are.)

Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

One Planet Only Forever at 09:30 AM on 1 December, 2019

blub @36,

"Give me 10-100Million dollars and i will design a model which will show that cimate correlates with anything you want it to correlate..."

I believe you could try but you would unlimately not be able to sustain any perceptions you create that do not actually match or reasonably explain the robust diversity of observations and information that is available.

Dr. Roy Spencer has repeatedly tried to get 'his interpretation of satellite data to indicate temperatures in the atmosphere, not at the planet surface' to prove that global average surface warming is not happening the way the climate science has determined it most likely is happening at the surface. He has had to correct his interpretation many times when the results of his way of interpretting the data failed to make sense. But he persists in trying to make-up any possible claim that warming is not occurring, or is not significant, or is beneficial even those everyone with increased awareness and understanding of what is going on 'actually knows better'.

Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

One Planet Only Forever at 07:22 AM on 20 November, 2019

Questions regarding Dr. Roy Spencer include:

"Why is he still able to be perceived to be a pursuer and professor of expanded awareness and improved understanding?"
"How is he able to still have his work funded, given the history of misunderstanding he has presented, including the many misleading presentations of the results of his manipulations of satellite data?"

It appears that the developed socioeconomic-political systems have become so corrupted by selfish pursuit of personal interest that Popularity and Profitability have been able to get significant control over "The direction of Thought". And that harmful selfishness is able to drive Thinking away from the pursuit of expanded awareness and understanding and the development of sustainable improvements for the benefit of the future of humanity.

Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

nigelj at 06:09 AM on 20 November, 2019

Roy Spencer is in charge of a group doing upper atmosphere temperature analysis. If his group were the only group doing this there would be a good case to discontinue his funding, given the misleading comments, sour grapes comments, and straw men he comes out with in the quotes mentioned @comment 3. Anyway his comments are also completely unscientific.

Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

One Planet Only Forever at 04:10 AM on 20 November, 2019

The careful deliberate deceiver Dr. Roy Spencer continues to present more evidence of how deliberately deceptive he continues to be.

His take on the 10th anniversary of Climate-gate opens with the following gem: "... the unfortunate truth is that fewer and fewer people actually care about the truth." He relates that to his set-up point that a believer of Truth would be a "...skeptic of the modern tendency to blame every bad weather event on humans".

He follows that misrepresentation set-up with a doozy of Fictional Tale built on his carefully selected bits of Non-Fiction. His New Fable makes the initial Climate-gate Fiction appear almost Non-Fiction (less Fantasy) by comparison.

It opens with the following Fantastically incorrect Fairy Tale claim.

"You see, it does not really matter whether a few bad actors (even if they are leaders of the climate movement) conspired to hide data and methods, and strong-arm scientific journal editors into not publishing papers that might stand in the way of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) mission to pin climate change on humans, inflate its seriousness, and lay the groundwork for worldwide governmental efforts to reduce humanity’s access to affordable energy."

And his fans and the lovers of WUWT will fervently passionately belief the Fairy Tales. That is an expected result of developing a powerful personal interest in benefiting from an understandably harmful and ultimately dead-end activity like fossil fuel use.

Future generations cannot continue to benefit from burning fossil fuels, they are non-renewable. All the future generations get is the increased challenges and harmful results created by what the previous generations 'choose to continue to do'. That Non-Fiction cannot be acknowledged in the Fantasy-Fiction-Filled made-up minds of the likes of Spencer and Watts.

The Sustainable Development Goals are like Garlic or Sunlight to the Vampire-like fantasy beliefs of the likes of Spencer and WUWT.

There's no empirical evidence

MA Rodger at 02:18 AM on 27 August, 2019

billev @385 & 386.

As well as setting out some quite complex questions that could be interpreted in different ways and which could do with being clarified, it would be useful to specifically understand why you say "there appears to be no evidence"?

It occurs to me that this sounds a bit like a passage in the chat Roy Spencer gave at the Heartland shindig at the end of last month. (His grand assertion was "And as we add CO2 the theory says we've reduced the ability of the earth to cool itself by about one percent. That's according to theory not measurements. None of our satellite measurements of any kind are good enough to measure that. It's a theoretical expectation." Of course, as is usually the case with statements from Roy Spencer, it is wrong.)

And as the subject is quite a complex one, it might be better to kick-off discussing it with a clear understanding of what you are actually asking about. Thus, could you explain why you say "there appears to be no evidence"?

Residence Time and Prof Essenhigh

MA Rodger at 03:15 AM on 26 August, 2019

daveburton @35,

It would be better if you could come up with some support for your advocacy of Spencer's silly model rather than presenting unsupported assertions that it is "correct". All we have otherwise is the 'big ocean' which you say must be thus effectively an infinitely large sink. You tell us "Mankind has increased CO2 level in the atmosphere by about 47%. We've increased carbon content in the oceans by only about 0.4%." (Note Roy doesn't reckon to your 47% figure.)

If that was correct that the percentage ocean carbon increase has to match the atmospheric percentage increase (which it doen't), that will have massive implications for a whole lot of stuff. (1) The projections of CO2 levels in the RCP scenarios would be massively revised if Spencer's model were anything like reflective of reality. Now I know Spencer denies that CO2 has any sigificant warming impact on the climate but this CO2 model would give him a brilliant second string to his contrarian bow (and how he needs one, as the other ones have proved pretty useless). (2) The implications for ocean acidification are massive and for fresh water it doesn't bear thinking about. (3) The low CO2 levels of the ice ages will have to be entirely re-thought. If atmospheric CO2 levels drop by a third, there would be 13,000Gt(C) being pumped out the oceans and into .... where? Golly, that's a tricky one!!

Yet (and I note that up-thread I wrongly called it a blog from last year 2018) in the four months since this model was posted (April 2019), I see no reference to it beyond that blog. It didn't even get a posting on the planet Wattsupia (which is a really bad sign!!!) Is Spencer too busy chatting to fellow contrarians at the Heartland Institute (where he seemed to have said nothing about his grand revalation)? So why the silence? My take is that Spencer's model is so embarassing that Spencer hopes it goes away. So, daveburton, you are not helping the reputation of poor old Roy with your insistence that his model is correct (when it patently isn't).

By the way, that long fat tail may be a lot stumpier than Spencer's model implies. The idea that the oceans are sucking up carbon at a rate constant with the level of atmospheric CO2 above an equilibrium of 295ppm(v) doesn't seem to hold over the period 1958-2010. Rather than a constant level of uptake, the rate has dropped by a half from the start of this period (1959-78) to the end of this period (1991-2010). That isn't exactly constant over centuries as Spencer's model assumes.

In truth, daveburton, your words do correctly assess Spencer's model when you say "If you start with a physically impossible assumption, you get a physically impossible result." That is exactly what Spencer's silly exercise in curve-fitting has done.

Residence Time and Prof Essenhigh

Eclectic at 00:19 AM on 26 August, 2019

Daveburton ,

I appreciate your comedic comments about wires and feedbacks. Although they belong in an earlier lesson than Homeostasis 101.

Likewise, Dr Spencer's Simple Model provides farcical amusement, thanks to its disconnect with reality — why yes, its curve fits reality at least in part . . . just as the Aristotelian model of the planets is a moderately good fit to the observed motion of the planets across the night sky, at least in part!! But unlike our Spencer, our Aristotle had a decent excuse for his blunders.

Daveburton, when I mentioned sitting back and observing "another 40 years or so" , I was of course not alluding to the future experience of someone as unimportant as me (or possibly you). Or perhaps you were just pulling my leg about "that", too.

No . . . I was alluding to something far more important: namely the human race. And here we get to the crunch, Daveburton, the really important point about Spencer's far-too-simple-to-be-scientifically-useful model.

# What do you think was the actual underlying reason for Dr Spencer to publicize his strange little "Simple Model".

( Not for comedy, I suspect. Nor for the edification of genuine climate scientists.)

Residence Time and Prof Essenhigh

daveburton at 21:52 PM on 25 August, 2019

Eclectic wrote, "your heated-wire analogy is even wider of the mark..."

It is just a simple example illustrating a general principle. It's how negative feedback systems work. If the removal rate increases with system output level, that's a negative feedback mechanism. A constant forcing input will then result in a plateau at "equilibrium," where the negative feedback has caught up with the constant input.

That's true when the input forcing is energy added to your toaster via electricity, and the negative feedback mechanism is radiative & convective heat loss from a nichrome wire.

It's also true when the input forcing is CO2 added to the atmosphere, and the negative feedback is CO2 removal from the atmosphere via dissolution in the oceans and terrestrial plant uptake.

The principle is true regardless of whether the negative feedback is linear or nonlinear. For the nichrome wire example, there are actually three significant negative feedbacks, all with different transfer functions: radiative heat loss goes up in proportion to the 4th power of the temperature relative to 0K, convective heat loss goes up in approximate proportion to the temperature difference between the wire and ambient air, and the resistance of the wire also goes up with temperature. The fact that all three have different-shaped transfer functions doesn't affect the conclusion: because they are negative feedbacks, a constant input (forcing) must result in a plateuing output, gradually approaching equilibrium.

Eclectic continued, "The design of the Simple Model fits at best tangentially with physical reality."

It fits extremely well for the period for which we have accurate measurements:

Eclectic continued, "nor do we have the luxury of time to sit back and observe another 40 years or so, as the Simple Model diverges from the (complex) real world."

Well, I obviously don't, at my age.

But mankind does have that luxury, and you should not expect Roy's Simple Model to diverge much from reality over the next 40 years. It is the "long, fat tail" (due to increased carbon levels in non-atmospheric reservoirs) which is not modeled by the Simple Model. Regardless of what happens with CO2 emission rates, CO2 removal over the next 40 years will be dominated by the removal mechanisms which the Simple Model models well.

Eclectic continued, "the paleo evidence demonstrates the falsity of Spencer's too-simple Simple Model."

All models are false, but some are useful. Roy's Simple Model is very useful. It is a very good fit to measured reality, and it will continue to be a good fit as long as the CO2 removal mechanisms which are currently most important continue to be most important. When CO2 levels drop below 300 ppmv, and the accumulation of anthropogenic carbon in non-atmospheric reservoirs becomes an important factor affecting atmospheric CO2 levels, then his Simple Model will diverge from reality.

MA Roger wrote, "Yes, the oceans are big. Yes, the oceans contain contain sixty-times the carbon found in the pre-industrian atmosphere (which was in full equilibrium with the oceans). But what has that got to do with your "fact"?"

Mankind has increased CO2 level in the atmosphere by about 47%. We've increased carbon content in the oceans by only about 0.4%.

So, why does that matter? Because it is that accumulation of carbon in non-atmospheric reservoirs that is not modeled by Roy's Simple Model. In other words, his Simple Model assumes the other carbon reservoirs have infinite capacity.

That's a pretty good simplifying assumption, as long as the anthropogenic increase in atmospheric CO2 dwarfs the anthropogenic increase in carbon in other reservoirs. It will diverge from approximating reality during the "long, fat tail," when the anthropogenic increment in atmospheric carbon dioxide no longer dwarfs the anthropogenic increase in carbon in other reservoirs.

MA Roger wrote, "it is very odd that they would ever allow atmospheric levels to remain constant while the ocean absorbed a large constant flux of dissolving CO2."

Atmospheric levels will remain constant when transfer of carbon to the oceans and other carbon reservoirs removes CO2 from tha air as quickly as anthropogenic emissions are adding it. (They're currently removing it only about half as fast as we're adding it.)

MA Roger asked, "Have you actually examined the workings of Spencer's model?"

Of course.

MA Roger wrote, "If you set the future anthropogenic emissions to a fixed value... atmospheric CO2 levels tend to a constant value"

Which is, of course, correct.

MA Roger wrote, "while negative emissions, suck out 15Gt(C)/yr and by AD2191 the atmosphere is entirely denuded of CO2. daveburton, doesn't that strike you as "very odd"?"

Not at all. If you start with a physically impossible assumption, you get a physically impossible result. The only thing I can think of which could possibly remove a net 15 GtC/year from the atmosphere when CO2 levels are below 300 ppmv, is some idiot genetically engineering a fast-growing, fast-propagating C4 tree.

Please don't do that! The Earth doesn't need another K-T Extinction!

Residence Time and Prof Essenhigh

MA Rodger at 20:49 PM on 24 August, 2019

daveburton @32,

Yes, the oceans are big. Yes, the oceans contain contain sixty-times the carbon found in the pre-industrian atmosphere (which was in full equilibrium with the oceans). But what has that got to do with your "fact"?

The ocean carbon content is a complex mix of carbonate species that populate our salty seas. The actual amount of dissolved carbon dioxide in the whole global ocean is a tiny portion of the total, perhaps 200Gt(C), less than a quarter of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is this alone that that the atmosphere directly balances with (this balance achieved only when it appears at the surface).

Given the complex set of carbonate species within the oceans and the complex ocean currents, it is very odd that they would ever allow atmospheric levels to remain constant while the ocean absorbed a large constant flux of dissolving CO2. (When I say "very odd" I mean it is utter nonsense.) And were it not so, the accepted scientific works on the subject would be themselves very odd.

Have you actually examined the workings of Spencer's model? (The spreadsheet of it is linked on this Spencer blogpage) If you set the future anthropogenic emissions to a fixed value (Spencer sets it to 10.109Gt(C)/yr) , atmospheric CO2 levels tend to a constant value:-

CO2[atm-ppm] = 195 + 20 x Emissions[GtC]

So drop emissions to zero and see the pre-industrial CO2 level restored in two centuries. while negative emissions, suck out 15Gt(C)/yr and by AD2191 the atmosphere is entirely denuded of CO2.

daveburton, doesn't that strike you as "very odd"?

Residence Time and Prof Essenhigh

Eclectic at 05:17 AM on 24 August, 2019

Sorry, Daveburton, but your heated-wire analogy is even wider of the mark than Dr Spencer's much-too-simple Simple Model.

The design of the Simple Model fits at best tangentially with physical reality. And 40 years is a short period — nor do we have the luxury of time to sit back and observe another 40 years or so, as the Simple Model diverges from the (complex) real world.

As MA Rodger points out : the paleo evidence demonstrates the falsity of Spencer's too-simple Simple Model.

Residence Time and Prof Essenhigh

daveburton at 00:54 AM on 24 August, 2019

Eclectic wrote, " ...the 500ppm figure that the model indicates cannot be exceeded under Dr Spencer's stated conditions of artificiality."

Dr. Spencer's simple model does not say that 500 ppmv can never be exceeded under any circumstances. But if emissions are held steady at 10 Gt/year, atmospheric CO2 level will level-off at just shy of 500 ppmv.

That should not surprise you. It is a natural result of the historically-verified fact that when CO2 levels go up, so do CO2 removal rates. That simple fact, alone, even without reference to a particular quantified model, ensures that a constant CO2 emission rate must result in a plateau in CO2 level.

Do you have an electric stove or toaster? Even though you keep pumping electricity into the nichrome wires, the temperature levels off, and ceases to rise. That's simply because the rate of energy loss rises with the temperature. So the temperature plateaus as it approaches equilibrium: the level where incoming and outgoing energy flows are balanced.

Since the rate of CO2 loss from the atmosphere rises with the CO2 level, the CO2 level must plateau, as it approaches the level at which the flows of CO2 into and out of the atmosphere are the same.

MA Rodger wrote, "This is plainly nonsense. Where does all this extra carbon accumulate?"

It's not nonsense, it's fact.

The extra carbon migrates to other reservoirs, like the oceans (the biggest), soil, marine sediments, etc. Those reservoirs dwarf the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and, importantly, dwarf the amount of carbon available in recoverable fossil fuels.

MA Rodger wrote, "if humanity restricts itself to pumping 10Gt(C)/year ... continuing year-after-year for ever-&-ever-&-ever..."

Fossil fuels are a finite resource. So we obviously will not (cannot!) continue to emit 10 GtC/yr from fossil fuels "for ever and ever."

Have you never wondered why most people assume CO2 levels won't ever exceed 600-800 ppmv? It's because for CO2 levels to continue to rise at their current rate, CO2 emissions must continue to accelerate — and resource constraints ensure that that can't continue forever. So the rise in CO2 levels must taper off.

What's more, even if CO2 emissions accelerate fast enough to maintain the current growth rate in atmospheric CO2 level, that would mean CO2's climate forcing trend will fall below linear. Since the warming effect of CO2 is logarithmically diminishing, in order to maintain a linearly increasing temperature forcing from CO2, the growth rate of CO2 levels in the atmosphere must increase approximately exponentially.

That is, in fact, what has happened, for the last forty years or so. CO2 emissions have increased so dramatically that CO2 levels have increased on an approximately exponential curve, so the temperature forcing from rising CO2 levels has increased at an approximately linear rate (actually slightly more than linear). You can see that in a graph of log(CO2). Notice how straight the graph is for the last forty years:
https://www.sealevel.info/co2.html?co2scale=2
$CO2 atmospheric dry molar fraction (ppmv), 1800-2019 (preliminary), log scale$

Residence Time and Prof Essenhigh

MA Rodger at 19:03 PM on 23 August, 2019

daveburton @27,

The problem is as described by Eclectic @28&30. Roy Spencer is not renowned for errorless analysis. This 2018 blog of Spencer's you rely on is no more than an exercise in curve-fitting that leads to the ridiculous conclusion that if humanity restricts itself to pumping 10Gt(C)/year of CO2 into the atmosphere (as it did in 2018), continuing year-after-year for ever-&-ever-&-ever, the atmospheric CO2 level will stablise over 200 years at 500ppm(v) CO2.

This is plainly nonsense. Where does all this extra carbon accumulate? And if paleoclimate studies show atmospheric CO2 levels in past eons at 2,000ppm for over a hundred million years, were did the carbon come from to maintain such levels? According to Spencer's model, simply to maintain it at 500ppm over such a period would require emissions upward of 1Zt(C). I'm pretty sure the planet doesn't contain that much carbon!!

You are perhaps correct to suggest that many misinterpret the Airbourne Fraction which is simply a product of our rising emissions. It is not a subject much discussed beyond the Af concept itself. In terms of the draw-down mechanism, Af is a very poor concept to start from. So in Af terms in 2018, that 57% of 2018 CO2 emissions drawn-down out of the atmosphere is better seen as comprising something like a draw-down of 4% of the emissions 2014-18, 2.5% of the emissions 1999-2013, 0.6% of the emissions 1919-98, etc. These approximate numbers I obtain by scaling one of the 1000_cswv plots in Fig 1 of Archer et al (2009) 'Atmospheric Lifetime of Fossil Fuel Carbon Dioxide' which models a single 1,000Gt(C) impulse. The draw-down dynamics under the gradual release of AGW mean these numbers will not entirely match the AGW numbers, but they do well enough as a rough guide.

Residence Time and Prof Essenhigh

Eclectic at 17:43 PM on 23 August, 2019

Yes, thank you, Daveburton, I noticed the 295ppm figure — and also the 500ppm figure that the model indicates cannot be exceeded under Dr Spencer's stated conditions of artificiality.

Curiouser and curiouser, as Lewis Carroll would say. As you know, he ("Carroll") was a mathematician — but even the delightful nonsenses his fertile mind created, had not extended into acronyms like GIGO. He would have had fun with that sort of thing !

Residence Time and Prof Essenhigh

daveburton at 15:09 PM on 23 August, 2019

Thanks, Mr. Moderator!

I'm sorry, I guess trying to post code in-line was just a bad idea. The tiny program is in this archive, as calc_est_co2_removal_rates_v02.pl along with everything else needed to run it under Windows, and some other stuff:

http://sealevel.info/CO2_Residence_Times/allfiles2.zip

Eclectic, Dr. Spencer's simple model is doubtless a good approximation of reality as long as CO2 levels are well above 300 ppmv, which corresponds to atmospheric CO2 levels and removal rates that are known with good accuracy. For CO2 levels below 315 ppmv (dates older than 1958) the numbers get fuzzier.

Did you notice the relatively high "natural equilibrium" level he found (295 ppmv)? That might reflect the anthropogenic additions to larger carbon reservoirs, like ocean and soil, and it might be evidence of the widely assumed "long, fat tail."

Residence Time and Prof Essenhigh

Eclectic at 13:48 PM on 23 August, 2019

Daveburton @27 ,

someone of note once said: things should be made as simple as possible . . . but not too simple.

Dr Spencer has made an interesting exercise in curve-fitting, somewhat resembling the multi-planet atmospheric pressure/temperature curve-fitting that "demonstrated" the non-existence of the GreenHouse Effect. ( To his credit, Spencer has always been scathing about those who claim the non-existence of the GHE. )

For the "simple model", Dr Spencer has also made some peculiar assumptions about the "natural equilibrium" ; about terrestrial biosphere CO2 draw-down ; and about the oceanic contribution ( CO2 solubility, buffering, and overturning currents timescales ).

The Spencer "simple model" is so simple, that it is simply unphysical.

I would like to think Dr Spencer would consider it a waste of your time for you to rest an important argument on such over-simplicity.

Residence Time and Prof Essenhigh

daveburton at 10:31 AM on 23 August, 2019

Trying again, with explicit line-breaks added...

Mr. Moderator, I meant no offense, but I'm not aware of any comment policy that I violated, and I do not understand why you deleted so much of my comment.

MA Rodger, here's where the "about fifty year" practical residence/adjustment time comes from. Well, actually, a number of scientists have independently calculated approximately the same figure, but this is how I did it.

Start with the observation that the rate at which natural systems (oceans & terrestrial biosphere, mainly) remove CO2 from the air is governed chiefly by the CO2 level in the air. When the CO2 level is higher, so is the removal rate. When the CO2 level is lower, so is the removal rate.

Some people think the removal rate is governed by the emission rate, and that it's necessarily "about half" (leaving an "airborne fraction" which is also about half). They are mistaken. There is no physical mechanism by which any of the major contributors to the removal rate could be governed by the emission rate. It is the CO2 level, not the CO2 emission rate, which primarily governs the removal rate.

For the oceans, the removal mechanism is dissolution into surface water per Henry's Law, and then then transport to the ocean depths by currents and calcifying coccolithophores, and complex chemistry which is beyond my ken.

For the terrestrial biosphere it is "greening."

AR5 estimates that the terrestrial biosphere removes about (2.5/9.2) = 27% [p. 6-3] or 29% [Fig 6.1] of anthropogenic CO2 emissions from the atmosphere, each year, and that the oceans remove another 26% [Fig 6.1]. (There are wide error bars on those numbers, but the ≈55% sum has narrower error bars than the two addends have.)

Of course, other things also affect the CO2 removal rate, as is obvious, for example, from the detectable effect of very large volcanic erruptions on measured CO2 levels. But the most important factor governing the CO2 removal rate from the atmosphere is clearly the CO2 level in the atmosphere.

Those numbers are known, with fair precision. For the last sixty years we have very good records of both atmospheric CO2 levels and production/use rates of fossil fuels & cement (from which can quantify the main sources of anthropogenic CO2 emissions).

From those data we can calculate how much CO2 was removed from the atmosphere by natural sinks (oceans, biosphere, etc.), each year.

Since we also know the atmospheric CO2 level each year, we can easily build a spreadsheet, and fit a curve, showing the approximate net rate of CO2 removal as a function of the CO2 level.

Dr. Roy Spencer did that, and found it is very closely approximated by a very simple function, which you can read about here:

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2019/04/a-simple-model-of-the-atmospheric-co2-budget/

Using Dr. Spencer's "simple model," I wrote a tiny Perl program to simulate the effect on atmospheric CO2 level of a sudden cutoff of CO2 emissions. Counting 280 ppmv as "pre-industrial," 63% of the anthropogenic CO2 is gone from the atmosphere in 54 years, and 2/3 is gone in 60 years:

#!/usr/bin/perl

# estimate CO2 removal rate in ppmv/yr as a function of CO2 level in ppmv, 
# per Dr. Roy Spencer's "simple model"
# ref: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2019/04/a-simple-model-
# of-the-atmospheric-co2-budget/
sub removal_rate {
  local($co2level) = shift;
  local($removalrate) = 0;
  local($co2elevation) = $co2level - 295.1;
  local($ratio) = 47.73;
  if ($co2level <= 295.1) {
    $removalrate = 0;
  } else {
    $removalrate = $co2elevation * 0.0233;
  }
  return $removalrate;
}

# SIMULATE DECLINE IN CO2 LEVEL IF EMISSIONS SUDDENLY WENT TO ZERO
$co2level = 410;
$year = 2019;
print "Simulated CO2 level decline, with level starting at 
       $co2level ppmv in $year, and zero emissions:\n";
while ($co2level > 300) {
  printf("$year %5.1f\n", $co2level);
  $year += 1;
  $removalrate = &removal_rate( $co2level );
  $co2level -= $removalrate;
}

Here's the result of a simulation run, with CO2 starting at 410 ppmv in 2019, and zero emissions:

2019 410.0
2020 407.3
2021 404.7
2022 402.2
2023 399.7
2024 397.2
2025 394.8
2026 392.5
2027 390.3
2028 388.0
2029 385.9
2030 383.8
2031 381.7
2032 379.7
2033 377.7
2034 375.8
2035 373.9
2036 372.1
2037 370.3
2038 368.5
2039 366.8
2040 365.1
2041 363.5
2042 361.9
2043 360.4
2044 358.8
2045 357.3
2046 355.9
2047 354.5
2048 353.1
2049 351.7
2050 350.4
2051 349.1
2052 347.9
2053 346.6
2054 345.4
2055 344.3
2056 343.1
2057 342.0
2058 340.9
2059 339.8
2060 338.8
2061 337.8
2062 336.8
2063 335.8
2064 334.9
2065 333.9
2066 333.0
2067 332.2
2068 331.3
2069 330.4
2070 329.6
2071 328.8
2072 328.0
2073 327.3 <== residence/adjustment time (e-folding time) = 54 years (using 280 ppmv as base)
2074 326.5
2075 325.8
2076 325.1
2077 324.4
2078 323.7
2079 323.0 <== two-thirds of the anthropogenic CO2 is gone in 60 years (using 280 ppmv as base)

Of course we know that this simple model would not accurately model the "long, fat tail," with CO2 levels under 300 ppmv. But the point I made previously is that, for practical purposes, that doesn't matter, because we all know that CO2 levels that low are harmless.

'No doubt left' about scientific consensus on global warming, say experts

shoyemore at 16:49 PM on 1 August, 2019

Sam-qc,

Crescenti's letter has had little or no impact in Europe. This was the first I heard of it.

Part of the right and far-right retain climate change denial as part of their DNA, but the recent (relative) success of the Greens in European elections has forced them to dial back. I am not sure if they have the stomach to fight this battle again, which they apparently lost.

The letter reads like a regurgitation of standard boiler-plate denial. I could have been written by Roy Spencer. The inclusion of the name of Fred Switz and the pre-refuted NIPCC Report is a dead giveaway.

However, there is no reason to be complacent. We await the stance of the Johnson UK Government on climate change - his cabinet contains "skeptics", and he has been ambivalent in the past.

'No doubt left' about scientific consensus on global warming, say experts

knaugle at 00:17 AM on 30 July, 2019

Wow! I occasionally peruse Roy Spencer's blog, and he definitely is not on board with the consensus. His latest post is still beating the "urban heat island" and "it's always cold somewhere else" drums. I wonder if he and John Christy are all that remains of the "3%"? It's no surprise the political think tanks like CEI are pushing to not even mention this topic. As I recall it was one of their key talking points 20 years ago, that scientists are all over the map on AGW.

Roy Spencer on Climate Sensitivity - Again

climate_watcher at 17:58 PM on 4 June, 2019

Another Roy Spencer blog post on this topic, posted in our group for climate change news.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2018/04/new-lewis-curry-study-concludes-climate-sensitivity-is-low/?fbclid=IwAR2EU3mgUfELyXzhXEiznTlXGTeMwVK7rV9ZS7jkt-L3kTPo0u9_XWR1bJw

The human fingerprint in the daily cycle

MA Rodger at 18:55 PM on 30 May, 2019

Ddah144,

Your initial comment on this thread @142 made quite an issue of "the moon’s huge day to night temperature swings" which doesn't seem to have been addressed properly. You correctly point out that the massive size of the change in lunar day-to-night temperature is due to the month-long Lunar day. The graph below shows the equitorial lunar temperature and the temperature range remains high all the way from the equator almost to the poles - even at 75º of latitude it has only dropped from a 300K swing to 200K.

Lunar equitorial temperatures

The portion of this lunar graphic of interest when considering the equivalent effect for a 24 Earth-hour rotation would be the 0.8 Lunar-hours centred on the Lunar average temperature. That would suggest a day-to-night equatorial temperature range of something like 80ºC. A more accurate calculation (the graphic below provided by climate skeptic Roy Spencer) shows an equitorial range of about 70ºC, a lot lower than the actual range for a planet with a GHG atmosphere. For instance Singapore has (or more correctly 'had') an average daily maximim of 30.3ºC and daily minimum of 23.5ºC, thus a range of just 7.2ºC.

No-GHG Earth diurnal temperature graph

10 Indicators of a Human Fingerprint on Climate Change

MA Rodger at 02:56 AM on 5 May, 2019

Wilmer_T @100,

The paper you refer to is Varotsos & Efstathiou (2019) 'Has global warming already arrived?', the latest serving from a pair of nonsense-writers. Concerning increased height of the tropopause (fingerprint #9), this is found occurring in climate models and within atmispheric measurements, as shown by Santer et al (2001) cited by the OP above and this finding continues to be observed (eg Xian & Homeyer 2018).

Varotsos & Efstathiou ignore this serious work entirely and instead use UAH TP satellite data to assert there is no increase in tropopause height because there is no increasing trend in UAH TP. The use of such data is mind-blowingly stupid, as worthless as using a twelve inch ruler to measure the width of a human hair. UAH TP does not measure tropopause temperature. It measures a wide range of temperatures from the surface up to 24 km. Thus it is measuring the cooling stratosphere as well as the warming troposphere, two strong signals which will overwhelm entirely any tropopause tempoerature trend. The figure below is sourced from Spencer at UAH.

UAH altitude ranges

The temperature evolution after 2016 suggests hotter future

Eclectic at 12:05 PM on 23 March, 2019

ThinkingMan , it's always worthwhile to step back occasionally and look at the bigger context.

Global surface temperature had been at a fairly flat plateau for (roughly) 5,000 years of the Holocene Maximum ~ which has been followed by (roughly) 5 or 6,000 years of gradual decline (related to the Milankovitch cycle of insolation). Owing to the present relatively-low ellipticity of the Earth's orbit, the next glacial phase is due in 20-30,000 years ~ and may be skipped altogether since the oceans are being unusually warmed by AGW.

The Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period etcetera are only tiny wiggles in comparison to the multi-millennial decline in temperature.

Against this long-term decline, you can see the last (roughly) 100 years demonstrates a temperature rise which is shooting upwards like a rocket. And is now surpassing the Holocene Maximum. IMO it is beyond ridiculous for denialists to assert that our modern-day global warming is the result of a 60-year oscillation in oceanic currents.

Yet that is what some of the (more intelligent) denialists assert. No need to waste your time reading Professor Curry's blog ~ she is still suggesting that "up to" 60% of modern warming could be caused by confluence of oceanic current cycles. Quite marvellous it is, how a giant dose of "Motivated Reasoning" can so completely distort the rational thinking of an educated intelligent person.

You see rather similar bizarre thinking coming from Lindzen & Spencer & others. (And much of the remainder of denialists are still loudly proclaiming that CO2 has zero or negligible Greenhouse effect.)

Next self-paced run of Denial101x starts on March 5

Philippe Chantreau at 04:14 AM on 14 March, 2019

I agree with Eclectic. Feynman is a frequent mention by deniers, although they fail to see how different he was than anyone in their "camp." Feynman was very wary of any kind of certainty or emotional attachment to ideas. He argued that any good scientist is his (her) own worst enemy, and that one should always scrutinize his results, be open to revision or accept that a lot of work was spent on identifying something that was wrong or a dead end. The way that Spencer/Christy handled themselves with the successive corrections required to their work, which were identified and applied by others falls far from these standards, and yet these 2 are among the few legitimate scientists speaking against the consensus; interestingly, their own scientific work that has been subjected to proper scruntiny does not even support their public satements.

Skepticism is the part of Feynman they like, but it requires them to imply that adequate scrutiny and the corresponding scientific approach has not been maintained for literaly thousands of papers to reach the current state of climate science. They try to do that and quickly show that they're full of it. The other important aspect is that Feynman actually was a brilliant physicist, who contributed to the current state of that science. Not one of the very few legitimate scientists speaking against the consensus has a comparable dimension.

Finally, for all his whining against labeling deniers with a pyschological disorder, Prometheus shows some rather shining exmaple of it. He mentions how Feynman denounced the pressures applied by some of the NASA upper management to the whole program, to produce results and launch flights even when risk existed that the real scientists and engineers had identified. This is a clear example of people in position of power, with a strong political component to their role, overriding the judgement of those who actually know what they're talking about. Prometheus would not comment on successive administrations imposing silence on researchers, attempting to suppress or bury results, upper management watering down reports, etc. The most grotesque of all may be the Carolina's legislature attempt to ban the words "sea level rise acceleration." All this happened repeatedly under the Bush administration and has reached unprecedented levels in the current one. It is a blatant example of politics interfering with science, exactly what Prometheus claimed to be wary of, but somehow, that's not where his concerns were. The high quality skeptics he wanted to defend seem to be in ever dwindling supply...

Freedom of Information (FOI) requests were ignored

Bob Loblaw at 02:29 AM on 11 March, 2019

To address the specific quote that Rogue provides in #17:

The quote should be interpreted as an indication that the single "temperature" value provided by the UAH model calculations (based on satellete-measured atmospheric radiation emissions - AKA brightness) are dependent on atmospheric conditions over the layer from the surface to roughly 8km. The value is not equally-weighted for all heights within that range. Spencer's web site shows the weighting for the various model values they produce:

UAH satelltie channel weights (altitude)

97 hours of consensus: caricatures and quotes from 97 scientists

Marathon at 06:30 AM on 21 February, 2019

Magma, The three deniers are John Christy, Richard Lindzen, and Roy Spencer.

Freedom of Information (FOI) requests were ignored

scaddenp at 13:46 PM on 29 December, 2018

UAH is preferred by pseudo-skeptics because it has the lowest rate of warming of the available temperature series and is published by long-time climate skeptics, Spencer and Christie. Note that in past, pseudo-skeptics had been very keen on RSS for the same reason.

I dont think anyone is going to really rush in an say UAH is wrong or inferior. Like RSS, it is a record for tropospheric temperature rather than surface temperature derived from satellite MSU readings. It also has a troubled history - see here for details. It would have more credibility if the algorithms used were properly published as RSS does. The latest version is the joker in pack compared to other temperature series and appears to be also diverging from radiosonde readings. (eg see here). Time will tell.

Climate scientists are in it for the money

Philippe Chantreau at 08:27 AM on 26 December, 2018

AFT, these claims are popular among people sharing a certain ideology. They amount to slightly more than conspiracy theory but not much, and they do not hold up to scrutiny. Virtually nobody arguing that way ever spends the time and effort necessary to determine how much reality underlies these claims.

1) A large amount of research comes from NASA, and it continues to point in the same direction. Another body of research is from the military, i.e. Navy and Air Force. It shows the same as the rest of the evidence, some of it was very early on. Repeated attempts at silencing scientists or suppressing their work have been reported during the Bush administration, it has reached rdiculous proportions under Trump, so the problem is actually the other way around: anti AGW (whatever that may mean) actors actively try to silence researchers and do not fund research because they know that it will show the opposite of what they want to see. The BEST project was a shining example, look it up. Exxon did fund research and it showed the same thing as the research from other sources (see appropriate thread); it is not very surprising that they stopped funding it now, is it? Why would these actors continue to fund research that they know will show exactly the opposite of what their financial interests demand? How much have they actually funded, then suppressed, because it did not serve their interests?

2) The only way to get funding should be to propose quality research that advances knowledge. That is the case for the vast majority of it. Denial motivated research in virtually all the publicized cases ends up of such poor quality that it generates questions on the review process that allowed it through. Multiple cases have been shown to be the results of intentional, organized peer-review hijacking, or the publicity was owed to gross misrepresentation of results, or press releases advertised conclusions that were not supported by the paper. A while ago, it was the infamous Soon-Baliunas, Legates, and a few others are there for your examination. The stream has dried up somewhat lately. Prominent denial voices (Spencer) still can not come up with research that truly supports their publicly voiced opinions.

3) Exactly why would that be? Reviewers are often anonymous, what interest do they have to allow poor quality papers? Scientists tend to try to undermine each other's work far more than people realize. There is seldom better satisfaction than proving a competitor wrong.

These arguments are neve accompanied by specifics. They simply don't hold up. Those who want to be convinced by them simply assume that they are true because it make sense to them, flatters their already held beliefs, and they never bother digging or just exploring the logic of it, as for the first argument. The real problem is this: nobody has a real financial incentive in climate science being correct, including scientists themselves. The effort that societies will have to produce to deal with it, whether they try to mitigate, remediate, or any combination will be enormous. Ask any any climate scientist if they wish climate science was wrong and see what their answer are.

The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

One Planet Only Forever at 01:35 AM on 24 November, 2018

There appears to be confusion due to incorrect conflating of:

Scientific consensus of understanding (development of an emergent truth that is open to correction if substantive new evidence is contrary to the developing understanding).
An individual's helpfulness in efforts to improve awareness and understanding: in the field of understanding, among leaders in society, among the general population.

Individuals are not 'part of the 97% or 3%'. The consensus measure is regarding how much of the 'literature that is a legitimate part of the effort to improve the understanding of an area/field of understanding' is aligned with a developing understanding. As the degree of alignment increases it can be understood that an emergent truth is being established (an understanding that is unlikely to be significantly altered by new investigation in that field of learning).

An evaluation of all of an individual's actions is the basis for determining how helpful they are to the improvement of the understanding and to the increased 'correct' awareness and understanding among leaders and the general population.

While the likes of Judith Curry, Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen may have their names on a specific piece of literature that is included in the 97% side of the climate science consensus evaluation regarding the understanding that human activity is significantly impacting the global climate, that does not make them 'a part of the 97% side'.

Individual merit would be determined by their collective actions regarding the understanding. That evaluation would undeniably indicate that the likes of Judith Curry, Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen are very unhelpful (harmful) to the improvement of awareness and understanding the understanding that human activity is significantly (and negatively) impacting the global climate that future generations will suffer the consequences of and the challenge of trying to maintain perceptions of prosperity that are the result of a portion of humanity getting away with benefiting from the damaging unsustainable burning of fossil fuels (benefiting in ways that do not develop sustainable improvements for the future of humanity - like perceptions of reduction of poverty that cannot be sustained if the damaging impact creation of fossil fuels is significantly and rapidly curtailed like it has to be in order to minimize the damage done to the future generations of humanity).

The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

michael sweet at 00:19 AM on 24 November, 2018

Spencer's papers put him in the 3% that do not agree with the consensus. Regarding Spencer:

"This statement is wrong because it misses the nuance in our study. The "skeptic" papers included those that rejected human-caused global warming and those that minimized the human influence. Since we made all of our data available to the public, you can see our ratings of Spencer's abstracts here. Five of his papers were captured in our literature search; we categorized four as 'no opinion' on the cause of global warming, and one as implicitly minimizing the human influence.

Thus, contrary to his testimony, Spencer was not included in the 97 percent consensus. In fact his research was included in the fewer than 3 percent of papers that either rejected or minimized the human contribution to global warming." source my emphasis

Spencer claims to be part of the 97% since no-one would listen to him is he admitted that he is not part of the consensus. Spencer is not part of the consensus.

The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

Eclectic at 14:30 PM on 23 November, 2018

Philippe, you make a good point about the "disconnect" of Spencer, and his ilk, in respect of their public opinions and their actual scientific work.

If Dr Spencer contributes to the scientific body of knowledge . . . yet he also sacrifices newborn babies to the god Aeolus [god of climate?] . . . then do we classify him as a mainstream [consensus] scientist, or classify him as an anti-scientist [=denialist] ?

IMO, one needs to have both feet in the scientific camp, to qualify as a 97-percenter.

The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

Philippe Chantreau at 13:15 PM on 23 November, 2018

As I recall, there has been a longstanding disconnect between what Roy Spencer's reseach results show and the opinions he communicates to mass media. One can say that his own research does not really support his opinions. Perhaps that's why he figures as part of the consensus. The consensus is one of results more than opinions. AFAIK, Spencer's peer- reviewed papers do not show anything that deviates significantly from the all the rest of the science.

The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

Art Vandelay at 13:12 PM on 23 November, 2018

Eclectic @10, "it would be interesting to hear your reasons for wishing to see a more detailed analysis of climate scientist opinion."

Just curiosity really, because (in my view) the 97% consensus isn't necessarily meaningful if it includes persons with all levels of concern, including almost no concern at all - as is the case with Lindzen & Spencer.

What would be nice to see is a breakdown on level of concern, so that it's immediately apparent what percentage of scientists are: very concerned, reasonably concerned, slightly concerned, etc..

Understanding of course that such a breakdown would probably require some sort of formal survey to be undertaken.

Also of interest would be similar analysis of the opinion of scientists from related disciplines, which could include some earth sciences, physics and mathematics.

Lastly, there does appear to be a correlation with age, with older persons tending to be less concerned about the impacts of climate change, and this appears to hold within the science community too. The implication of this should be an increasing level of consensus over time, even without considering other factors. This of course assumes that a person's level of concern is unlikely to fall with increasing age if it's been established during formative years.

The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

Eclectic at 11:45 AM on 23 November, 2018

Art Vandelay @10 , it would be interesting to hear your reasons for wishing to see a more detailed analysis of climate scientist opinion.

Yes, that is a rather separate matter from the perceptions (of the AGW issue) held by politicians and the man in the street.

But we already know the high-90's consensus opinion of mainsteam scientists. The Cook-et-al 97% figure is already more than a decade behind the times [the study published 2013 but based on cumulative figures from early 1990's onwards]. And we know from human nature, that however thoroughly conclusive the scientific evidence is, there will always be a small percentage of scientists & scientifically-literate people who will continue to "deny" the physical realities (for their own reasons of psychological perversity and/or political extremism). So why analyse the last few percent of these? They won't change. Personally, I think Spencer, Curry, Lindzen & similar, do not qualify to be counted in the so-called 97% majority, because their position(s) are not scientifically logical.

What matters is A/ the science itself, which is revealed in the scientific papers published (and you will have noted how "contrarian" papers are becoming rarer and rarer ~ getting close to zero% ~ and far more importantly, the contrarian papers are entirely lacking in valid counterpoints against the mainstream scientific assessment)

. . . and B/ the education of and opinions held by politicians & the general voters.

The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

Art Vandelay at 09:57 AM on 23 November, 2018

One Planet Only Forever @ 9. I take your points but I'm not convinced that any of those forementioned scientists have too much impact on the public's perception of climate change. Very few people I speak to have heard of Roy Spencer, even if they're aware of satellite based temperature measurements, so I would be suprised if his blog is widely read and influential to any significant extent. Most people's attitudes to climate change are derived from their media channels of choice, which to a large extent is determined by their political leanings.

But still, it's anomalous that Spencer is probably included in the 97% along with several other scientists with profiles in the faculties of climate research, which is why I would personally like to see a more detailed analysis of climate scientist opinion.

The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

One Planet Only Forever at 01:59 AM on 23 November, 2018

Art Vandelay@8,

A more important measure than 'grudging acceptance of climate science to a limited degree' is how helpful a person is to improving the more correct awareness and understanding of climate science in the general population and among leadership.

By that measure Judith Curry, Roy Spencer, Richard Lindzen are dismal damaging failures.

As a case in point, I frequently visit Roy Spencer's site (just for the amusement, but in case he actually presents a meaningfully insightful point).

Roy Spencer spends almost all of his time making up stories to refute the need for the burning of fossil fuels to be curtailed. The lack of validity of his story-telling is consistent. He also spends a significant amount of time creating creative ways to intrerpret satellite data in an attempt to refute that unacceptable warming and climate change is happening (he has been forced to partially correct his misinterpretations of the satellite data many times).

The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

Art Vandelay at 17:27 PM on 22 November, 2018

It should be noted too that Judith Curry, Roy Spencer, Richard Lindzen et al, are all painted as skeptics or "deniers", but are in fact members of the 97% consensus.

Perhaps a more valuable statistic would be one that indicated a percentage of (climate) scientists who hold the view that it's a serious threat requiring urgent, universal remedial action.

IPCC overestimate temperature rise

MA Rodger at 00:07 AM on 6 November, 2018

Samata @65,

The Monckton YouTube video you link to appears to be the 'work' presented in Monckton et al (Unpublished) which remains unpublised because it is total nonsense. You ask for the mathematical errors. There may be many but the central problem Monckton has is his insistence that climate sensitivity can be calculated on the back of a fag packet in the following manner:-

If the black body temperature of a zero GHG Earth is 255K and there is, according to Monckton, enough forcing pre-industrial to add 8K to that temperature directly from those forcings (giving a temperature without feedback of 263K), then if the actual pre-industrial temperature with feedbacks is 287K, the feedback mechanisms have raised the temperature by 24K. Monckton then calculates the strength of these feedbacks as a portion of the full non-feedback temperature (287/263-1) = 0.09. [This, of course, is a big big error.] Thus ECS(Monckton)= 1.1K x 1.09 = 1.2K.

(See Monckton's explanation of his basic method at Roy Spencer's, a climate denier who refutes Monckton's methods).

The big big error is in attributing pro-rata feedback to all the black body warming. It is also an error to run with these back-of-fag-packet calculations all the way to zero LL-GHG (what Monckton calls NOGS) but not as dreadful a mistake as using them pro rata all the way down to absolute zero.

His back-of-fag-packet calculation should be saying that 8K LL GHG-forced warming results in 33K of warming at equilibrium, thus ECS = 1.1K x 33/8 = 4.5K, a value that is high but not entirely implausable.

A more sensible analysis would not consider that ECS is a constant value over such large temperature ranges. And there will be feedback mechanisms operating without LL GHGs being present. But they will bear no resemblance to the feedback mechanisms facing a world at 288K.

The silver lining of fake news

dkeierleber at 03:27 AM on 30 August, 2018

I think this is being oversimplified. It’s a complex issue. It is enticing to dismiss those who mistrust science as being uneducated on the subject. But that leads us to the same dead end of thinking all we have to do is tell the real facts and people will come around to the right way of thinking. Research doesn’t support that view.

As reported here in the past, regarding climate change, the more educated a conservative is the less likely they are to be persuaded by facts. Presentation of science facts drives deniers further into denial. So I don’t think the problem lies with denialist falsehoods. In my experience, climate change denialists are in love with the lamest over-simplifications. How often have you read the comment about how temperatures could have risen in the past if the cavemen had no SUVs to drive? Ever hear any denialist try to use Roy Spencer’s argument about natural variation tied to the Pacific multi-decadal oscillation?

Things are even worse on the economic front. Workers who have been profoundly hurt by supply side fiction insist that the wealthy pay too much in taxes. Educated upper middle class conservatives think the top tax rate in America’s Golden Age (the 2 decades after WWII) was 20%. Trying to explain the idea of a progressive tax to young conservatives shows how our education system has changed over the years. We were too distracted by defending evolution in public education to notice that the curricula on basic economic theory took a wrong turn somewhere. Now it seems the age old divide between property rights and majority rule is becoming an economic war and the rich are winning. That doesn’t bode well for the sanctity of our democracy.

Research has shown physical differences in brain patterns between conservatives and liberals. So part of the problem is that some of us tend to believe those in positions of authority while others tend to ask how they rose to that position.

State of the climate: 2018 set to be fourth warmest year despite cooler start

One Planet Only Forever at 14:21 PM on 22 August, 2018

Mal Adapted,

The likes of Roy Spencer could learn a lot from Sean Carroll's book "The Big Picture" published in 2016. It is an extensive presentation of the developed improved awareness and understanding of what is going on, including how the human mind works.

It was a NY Times Bestseller. However, it did have critics, mainly the angry group of evangelical purists that disliked the way that Carroll explains that our current understanding of what is going on in our Universe does not require an Intelligent Designer, and the way he effectively makes the case that it is unlikely that there is a God-being influencing what is going on.

So the likes of Spencer would not likely learn anything from reading Sean Carroll's book.

As you say, they have already decided not to be open to improved awareness and understanding. They deliberately limit their scientific methods and critical thinking to the defense of the limited worldview they have personally chosen to try to hold on to and defend.

Sadly, scientific investigation and critical thinking can be very harmful when it is applied by people who are not open to a holistic worldview (not liking the understanding presented by Sean Carroll), and who are focused on narrow-minded selfish interests (not interested in more altruistically helping to develop a sustainable better future for humanity).

More people need to develop improved awareness and understanding of what is really going on and strive to help develop a sustainable better future for all of humanity (all of the future generations), rather than seeking excuses for a sub-set of current day humanity getting away with an unsustainable activity that is undeniably harmful to future generations (and harmful to a significant portion of current day humanity).

State of the climate: 2018 set to be fourth warmest year despite cooler start

Mal Adapted at 09:21 AM on 22 August, 2018

nigelj:

According to wikipedia, Roy Spencer who compiles the UAH data is an agw climate change sceptic to some extent, and has strong religious fundamentalist views and has signed declarations that say our climate change is natural.

Well, Spencer signed An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming, which states:

WHAT WE BELIEVE
We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence —are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history.
...
WHAT WE DENY
We deny that Earth and its ecosystems are the fragile and unstable products of chance, and particularly that Earth’s climate system is vulnerable to dangerous alteration because of minuscule changes in atmospheric chemistry. Recent warming was neither abnormally large nor abnormally rapid. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human contribution to greenhouse gases is causing dangerous global warming.
...

Ellipses represent arguments from consequences, boiling down to "mitigation will harm poor people."

IOW, evidence be damned: AGW can't be a threat because God wouldn't allow it. By signing this document, Spencer has publicly announced his determination to fool himself, and IMHO has forfeited all scientific credibility thereby.

State of the climate: 2018 set to be fourth warmest year despite cooler start

scaddenp at 12:20 PM on 21 August, 2018

Well UAH, RSS and STAR use MSU to produce temperature records for lower troposphere (think averaging over lower 4km of atmosphere), whereas the surface records are well surface temperature records. Recent discussions of UAH versus RSS at Tamino.

RSS publish their methods with new release, Spencer and Christy, not so much plus a record of mistakes. See here for some history.

Their history and political leanings however is not a reason to reject UAH. Perhaps a better way is to compare temperatures from RSS and UAH against say radiosonde data (RATPAC). Difficult but doable. See here from David Piepgrass and draw your own conclusions.

State of the climate: 2018 set to be fourth warmest year despite cooler start

nigelj at 08:10 AM on 21 August, 2018

The biggest difference seems to be between the UAH satellite temperature data and everything else particlualry the RSS data.

Its hard to see why there's such a difference between UAH and everything else. Why is Roy Spencer right and everyone else wrong? He would need a compelling reason, so what is it? Does anyone have technical knowledge on it?

According to wikipedia, Roy Spencer who compiles the UAH data is an agw climate change sceptic to some extent, and has strong religious fundamentalist views and has signed declarations that say our climate change is natural.

It hasn't warmed since 1998

MA Rodger at 22:38 PM on 1 June, 2018

guym @400,

I have long pondered the "hiatus" nonsense from contrarians. My take on it is perhaps more clinical than Eclectic @401, and a smidgen shorter.

One of the difficulties we face addessing the "hiatus" is that contrarians define the "hiatus" to mean vastly different things, from silly nonsense from Rose of the Daily Rail (Temp(Jan1996)=Temp(Aug2012) => global warming stopped 16 years ago) to more allegedly-grown-up versions comparing modeled & measured temperatures. Which ever version is used, their take-away is "Global Warming has stopped" or "Models are badly wrong". And any attempt to sensibly address the issue like in the AR5 Box 9.2 or for instance Hansen et al discussing the 'Global Warming Standstill' in 2012 results in a contrarian 'we told you so!!' response which is then grafted onto nonsense by even the more respected of contrarians to beat the "Global Warming Has Stopped!!!" drum (eg ex-clomatologist Judith Curry).

So you really do have to be careful when addressing the issue of the "hiatus" and that means more than using a title that calls it the "Hiatus in Global Mean Surface Warming of the Past 15 Years" as per AR5 Box9.2.

I think the AR5 Box9.2 use of OLS analysis over the period 1998-2012 was poorly contrived. (For the record, the resulting SAT trend roughly doubles if you use 1999-2012, to +0.09ºC/decade, instead of 1975-1996.) What was poor was firstly comparison of 1998-2012 with 1951-2012. The start period should have been roughly 1975, the start of the recent strong AGW. Contrarians who exaggerate the significance of the "hiatus" would be surprised to hear that if you compare 1975-1996 with 1975-2012 you get almost identical trends. The reason for 1998-2012 being so different from the longer-term SAT trend is because the 1998-2012 SAT trend relies on one of those reality-busting steps as in the SKS Escalator. So a second criticism of AR5 Box9.2 is giving credance to the 1998-2012 reality-busting OLS analysis.

SKS Escalator

Simply-put, anybody who (a) supports a "hiatus" 16-years long or (b) uses the "flatness" in surface temperature record to create a 16-year long "hiatus" by for instance saying "I predict we will see continuation of the ‘standstill’ in global average temperature for the next decade" (and good old Judy Curry manages both a & b) show they have departed from truthful analysis of AGW.

I myself feel the way to take command of the "hiatus" is by setting its true length. This analysis of HadCRUT data (usually 2 clicks to 'download your attachment') finds it was just 32 months long. And a message that must always be included in "hiatus" talk - thoroughout these years, AGW did not show any signs of faltering as the Ocean Heat Content data surely demonstrates.

Climate Science Denial Explained: The Denial Personality

Nick Palmer at 09:33 AM on 26 April, 2018

"So your key audience is not the guy you’re responding to, but fence-sitters who may be listening in. There are more silent doubters than vocal deniers; always remember that"

I've always though this in my online denialism rebuttals. I tend not to bother much with the dumbest remarks, which tend to be just a couple of short sentences but I've come to find that the most dangerous, and trickiest to counter, tend to be those who are in the least denial of climate science - the lukewarmers, who believe that climate sensitivity is much less than the vast majority of climate scientists say. To them, the global temperatures won't reach the heights expected by the IPCC position and we may still stay in the Goldilocks zone, where we may still get more benefits from a low rise than disbenefits.

It is my opinion, although I can't prove it, that many of the 'dumb' arguments one sees endlessly used by apparently intelligent educated people in public positions, such as Senators addressing Congress, are, to them, justified political deception. I suspect that their core beliefs are in the 'lukewarmer' views of Lindzen, Spencer etc yet they realise that if they tried to used those arguments to sway the minds of the public, it would backfire. Admitting that greenhouse gases warm the climate, that the planet is warming, that we are having an effect but that a small minority of scientists say it won't come to much, while the majority say it's very risky, is a very weak argument - the ordinary person is well able to make a personal risk assessment. That is why those movers and shakers, who are personally convinced by the lukewarmers, use the couple of hundred simplistic memes as listed and debunked on Skepticalscience.com, to influence the voting public. Ever wonder why Senators and the institutes keep using these memes, that they know for sure have been debunked a thousand times? Remember, these people are really not stupid! it's because the memes work very well at shaking the confidence of the public in mainstream climate science. These short pieces of disinformation are very convincing to the general public, not that they definitvely 'prove' anything but they certainly succeed at creating doubt and uncertainty and those who want to avoid those political moves that mainstream climate science mandates benefit by using the memes to try to prevent those moves happening.

Climate Science Denial Explained: The Denial Personality

Eclectic at 00:32 AM on 26 April, 2018

Leslie @4 , your report of the communication from the "blatant denialist" is interesting yet not so very uncommon.

Quite apart from his being [to quote his own phrasing] "arrogant and foolish" in his unscientific nonsense . . . he is also being arrogant and foolish enough to believe he himself knows the mind of God. He seems unaware of the irony of his stated position.

We see this overweening self-confidence likewise, in Dr Spencer and Dr Lindzen — though Lindzen's self-confidence derives from his ideas of Yahweh rather than Spencer's more modern Christian God. The fundamentalist concept of a rapidly approaching End of Days, does make it a little strange that someone [such as Leslie's correspondent] would bother to spend time communicating with the [probably] inevitably-damned Leslie. (And it doesn't sound like he is seriously attempting to "convert" Leslie.) Also, why bother disputing with Leslie, when (allegedly) nothing much is going on (other than a few relatively minor hurricanes etc) and nothing much could go on, until the obvious-to-all and utterly calamitous events of the Final Days ?

Maybe the guy is suffering from an anxiety that he might not be right after all? Maybe he is worried that he will be left with egg on his face, when the world continues to go gradually pear-shaped (exactly as the real scientists are indicating) and he will finally have to say: "Why hast Thou forsaken me?"

Yes, an interesting case there, Leslie. Wash your hands of him.

Climate Science Denial Explained: Tactics of Denial

michael sweet at 22:08 PM on 19 April, 2018

Art Vandelay,

I do not have a peer reviewed explaination for your question.

I understand that if the sun was stronger it would deliver more energy during the day and heat it up. Since it is hotter, more energy would radiate into space at night so the night time temperature would not increase as much as during the day. (Night time temperatures would increase, just not as much).

With more CO2, the temperature would increase because energy from the sun would radiate to space more slowly. This would have a larger effect at night because night time cooling would be a lot slower. Nigelj's reference appears to be slightly different from mine, his is more authorative.

Spencer Weart's book The history of Global Warming source would have this information.

Climate Science Denial Explained

DPiepgrass at 16:24 PM on 16 April, 2018

Unfortunately greenhouses (or hot cars) aren't ideal examples of the greenhouse effect, because a greenhouse works in part by trapping air so that it can't rise (and be replaced by cooler air that used to be higher in the atmosphere). The glass of a greenhouses also, incidentally, traps infrared radiation the same way greenhouse gases do, but it's easy for a pseudo-skeptic to point to the lack of convection and say "that's how a greenhouse really works - so the planetary greenhouse effect is a hoax."

If I catch someone denying the greenhouse effect, I just point out that most contrarian climate scientists (e.g. Roy Spencer, John Christy, Judith Curry) agree that the greenhouse effect exists. More learned pseudo-skeptics have all kinds of other arguments.

Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist

Tom Dayton at 09:29 AM on 17 March, 2018

Atc, you asked "What I would like to see is how they went from CO2 and temperature correlation to catastrophic man-made global warming." Your assumption is incorrect--there was no "going" from CO2 and temperature correlation. Instead, the projection (not prediction) of increased global temperature as a consequence of anthropogenic increase in global atmospheric level of CO2 was made in the 1800s, many decades before it was even technically possible to measure global atmospheric level of CO2 in that moment in time, let alone historically, and even more decades before the correlation between CO2 level and temperature was observed with high enough certainty. Observation of the correlation eventually added evidence confirming that projection, when the reality of human-caused increase in CO2 came to pass, thereby fulfilling the condition of the projection's scenario.

Please read the post "The History of Climate Science," and post any comments and questions about the history there, not here. I strongly suggest that after you read that post, before posting any questions or comments, that you read the free online version of the book by physicist and climate science historian Spencer Weart, "The Discovery of Global Warming."

Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist

Eclectic at 13:05 PM on 15 March, 2018

ATC @94 , you might benefit from watching the video recording of Dr Giaever addressing a meeting composed of Nobel Laureates & bright young scientists, where he states that (from a cold start) he researched online to gather views & evidence on AGW . . . and he spent only half a day or so gathering information. On the strength of that, he started lecturing the expert climate scientists on how they were all doing it wrong. The video is quite painful to watch, as Giaever (in full lecturing pontification mode) tells the audience how to do science — while himself demonstrating the exact opposite of good scientific thinking.

It must have been an absolutely cringeworthy experience, for the poor audience. But possibly the audience was able to tolerate the debacle — by remembering how sometimes even the most distinguished savants can deteriorate into "going Emeritus". [ NB — the cartoon in post #66, by poster KR ].

Somewhat younger scientists (such as Spencer and Lindzen) appear to have their rational abilities severely compromised by old-fashioned religious concepts (concepts which are condemned by modern religious figures such as the Pope).

Some scientists, such as Dr Koonin, exhibit similar irrationality about AGW science — but their psychological motivation is less clear (to me).

Nevertheless, Atc, with or without obvious causation of their intellectual dysfunction, there is an interesting tiny minority of practising "scientists" who are in full denial of the facts of climate change. Whether influenced by monetary inducement (or the ego-boosting inducements of fame/celebrity in newsprint or the invitations to address Congressional/Senatorial committees) or for reasons of extremist religious attitudes, or from having a perverted contrariness of personality . . . or for a mixture of these reasons . . . we find such people existing !!

Atc, I am slightly surprised that you have not observed such human frailties around you, in your life up till now. The existence of such people, does in no way indicate that there must be some merit in what they say. You can even find intelligent Flat-Earthers !!

Atc, please educate yourself to at least a moderate level of climate science knowledge. You will very soon see why the mainstream consensus position is held by (very close to) 100% of climate scientists. And as you progress through life, I hope you will come to recognize that there will always be a minority of crazies who can never be convinced by truth and logic.

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