Plenty of argument by assertion and follow up caveats to point and laugh at in this editorial piece from ‘Nature’, which attempts to cover Rajendra Pachauri’s incompetent arse. No discussion of the 12% rise in co2 since 1990 occurring along with a rise in global temperature five times smaller than their central estimate. About the only thing I like about this editorial is the word they use for the cessation of warming over the last 15 years (expected by the MET office to continue for the next five years at least). Rather than the expectation laden word ‘pause’ or ‘hiatus’, they describe the 15 year cessation of global warming as a ‘plateau’. Plateaux, more often than not, are found at the high points in Geographical relief, rather than partway up a bigger hill. Look at Tibet for example. A few spiky bits just upwards out of the Tibetan plateau, but they are just brief pinnacles which descend again to the average level. I expect we’ll see a couple of spikes in temperature caused by El Nino events over the next decade which will briefly embolden the warmists, but I also expect the following La Nina events to leave us cooler then before.
Image courtesy of CartoonbyJosh.com
“greenhouse gases are altering Earth’s climate. No serious politician on the planet can now dispute that.”
“Unfortunately, one thing that has not changed is that scientists cannot say with any certainty what rate of warming might be expected.”
“The IPCC has a crucial role in this process and must remain the central authority on global warming”
“but the current report should be its last mega-assessment.”
More climate models are running increasingly sophisticated calculations, and coordinated experiments are bolstering our understanding of the results.
warming that would result from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels is expected to be judged as 1.5–4.5 °C exactly what it was in the report of 1990.
The IPCC’s fifth assessment will provide a comprehensive analysis of policy options and the scientific basis for the next round of climate negotiations, which are scheduled to come to a head in 2015. What is missing from these talks is not science but political ambition, which is ultimately a reflection of public support. The IPCC has a crucial role in this process
Absent from next week’s report, is recent and ongoing research on the rate of warming and what is — or is not — behind the plateau in average global temperatures that the world has experienced during the past 15 years. These questions have important policy implications, and the IPCC is the right body to answer them. But it need not wait six years to do so.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
One thing I find very sad about this whole “showdown” is the lack of any foresight. Science can’t predict the future, but lets as a hypothesis assume that Nature and the IPCC is right. What exactly do they propose to do about it ? How can they save humanity from its own folly ? Of course they don’t address that problem directly because the conclusions are truly awful. Before the industrial revolution the population of the Earth was less than 1 billion people. It would have to return to that figure to live sustainably. You can’t escape this fact.
Behind all Ecogreen ideology is birth control. Population control is a euphemism. And not for any but the red, brown and black, as white is going backwards throughout the world and the yellow took the required draconian step thirty years ago.
This is but one of many hidden consequences to the Ecogreen ideology. I often wonder if its promoters, like David Suzuki, understand the world their calls would create, or whether they really don’t support what they say like all totalitarians, only saying what they need to have popular excitement and get the power to do what they want. Which is kept secret.
Scientists of the the 19th & 20th century created the modern world. We owe everything that we now take for granted to them. One of the unsung heros is Thomas Crapper who invented the water closet (WC). Imagine a world without bathrooms existing just over 100 years ago ?
For some strange reason we now have 21st century post-normal science predicting the end of the world unless we return to some imagined pre-exiting nirvana.
Attempts to revise the IPCC into a regional climate authority or the like will come a cropper even faster than its ludicrous global ambitions. What else does it have to fall back on? Nothing …
“More climate models are running increasingly sophisticated calculations, and coordinated experiments are bolstering our understanding of the results.”
Right, we now know that the results are complete BS. Previously we just suspected it.
Off topic, major Typhoon about to meet Hong Kong and PRC special economic zone, where a great deal of manufacturing takes place. Probably do damage Taiwan and Philippines.
Taping up windows, etc. Severe warning already issued.
From what I saw this is going to be a test of high rise. Flooding, they have designed for a degree. Underground has ramps into stations and huge halls which are shelters. Any of the amazing bamboo scafolding, we shall see,
JMA maps http://www.jma.go.jp/en/typh/
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1312965/hong-kong-braces-worst-storm-34-years-typhoon-usagi-closes
If this is severe will be spun.
warming that would result from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels is expected to be judged as 1.5–4.5 °C exactly what it was in the report of 1990.
But did the UN-IPCC bother to tell nature?
I believe we are now witnessing the initial stages of IPCC disintegration. The statements made in this Nature press release are in logical contradiction with each other… How can you boost the confidence level from 90% to 95% that humans were altering climate, when current theory cannot explain the recent 15-year long ‘temperature plateau’, while at the same time the uncertainty of projected warming has increased?
Also, notice that the confidence level grew from 66% in 2001 to 95% this year over the same period, when there has been no measurable warming!? … This is simply laughable at best and an insult to people’s intelligence at worst …
The methodology of post-normal science allows only the expert stakeholders who have actually done the work to assess the level of confidence! I seem to recollect that Turnbull estimated that there were 40 -50 in this category – not many to persuade and almost all of whom earn their bread from high confidence in alarm. Remember too that PNS does not seek truth but power! As I keep harping on – the issues are not scientific but political. Laissez-faire verses Control (as always).
I prefer to call PNS post-natural science. This is not at all connected with the study of nature – it goes beyond empirical science to manipulate the belief systems of politicians by masquerading as science and adopting her mantle of authority; while all the time undermining science and replacing her wisdom with myths and superstitions. It is as if the Enlightenment had never happened.
PNS studies not empirical evidence about the climate; instead it studies the network of power with the intent of colonising it with plausible tales that lead to ever more control and oppression of individuals in the name of of the community, state, humanity, the future – or whatever! Yes, PNS really believes in life after death and that future generations will punish us if our heritage is not to their liking! ‘Potty’ is the word for it!
off-topic but I cannot see another relevant thread:
Australia has had a change of government. Tim Flannery, also known as the flim flam man has been sacked from his job as Climate Commissioner, and the same for Will Steffan and David Karoly, among others. The Climate Commission has been abolished, with the incoming government deciding to take advice from the Dept of the Environment instead. The wasteful authority that was set up to dish out money for wasteful green projects has also been abolished.
The new Prime Minister, Tony Abbott has asked for the preparation of legislation that will overturn the carbon tax. This will take time to dismantle. Until July next year the new Prime Minister faces a hostile Senate.
However, I do hope this is the beginning of the end of this scam.
The IPCC was never the central authority. It was merely a documenter of literature.
I said this over at Climate Audit recently, apologies for being the stuck record in the room – and over long.
I’m the pessimist about institutional behavior. Institutions like the IPCC do not change, or change their positions willingly. Most institutions will willingly: explode, implode, or slide into complete irrelevance rather than change their fundamental position. A few have learned to appear to tap-dance around what is currently expedient [maybe you can think of some], but that is merely a symptom a deeper and degenerate institutional behavior – loss of clear operating principles.
In so far as most science seems to have been co-opted by large bureaucratic institutions: like the IPCC, there will be no improvement in the situation until either the institution, or the people running them, who ever that may actually be [and I don’t necessarily mean that in the conspiratorial sense], expire. I wait breathlessly for news of them meeting the yawning grave.
More recently I said at blog-sweet-home in regards to the EPFL Affair [suitably modified for today’s context]:
The IPCC is along established institution. All *long established* institutions share a common phenomenology – they serve to protect mediocrity and stifle genuine innovation – absolutely, 100% in all times and places throughout history. An institution MAY be created for some original purpose as an innovative impulse, usually that of of an exceptional innovator, that institutional purpose inevitably becomes self-perpetuation, rather that innovation once that innovator leaves the scene. The decline sets in soon after.
Of course some institutions are created for the express purpose of creating or perpetuating an orthodoxy, the case with the IPCC in my opinion.
Spengler has a new essay at AsiaTimesOnLine where he discusses, in the light of his recent death, economist Ronald Coase’s notion of the Firm.
Its supposed to be all about lowering everyone’s transaction costs. Spengler later corrects, or extends, Coase’s theory of the Firm.
The IPCC has become indistinguishable from Coase’s and Spengler’s Firm.
Corporate controllers, love to put clownish mediocrities like Rajendra Pachauri’ in charge when the survival of the institution can be propped up without regards to its fitness to sustain its own existence, they are so much easier to control than some one of genuine ability.
We were given a perfectly legitimate set of reasons to put the IPCC out of business in 2010, this was not done. We are being given another perfectly good reason today, but nothing will be done, and we will all continue to have to dance to the tune no matter how decrepit the orchestra.
W^3
@w.w.wygart,
You define the institutional aspect of AGW social madness rather well. When tulips were the focus of Dutch madness, there was not a governemnt complex pushing the tulip mania. Even eugenics was less organized. Ths social madness of AGW, on the other hand, is bolstered by governments and NGO’s worldwide.
Pierre Gosselin writes:
This Spiegel piece is tantamount to yet another cruise missile direct hit on alarmist climate science. The alarmist climate science bunker appears to have finally been breached. Now even IPCC scientists are abandoning ship.
The AR5 has not even yet been released and already it’s facing Cat 5 hurricane headwinds from major global media outlets. Keep in mind that Spiegel used to be as warmist as they came. Now they are as non-consensus as they come.
Continue reading…
The gig is up, my friends. It really is disintegrating.
– See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2013/09/23/spiegel-climatologists-face-inconvenient-truth-germans-are-losing-their-fear-of-climate-change/#sthash.YG1b9hVN.dpuf
From the Spiegel article:
“In climate research, changes don’t count until they’ve been observed on a timescale of 30 years,” claims one delegate participating in the negotiations on behalf of German Research Minister Johanna Wanka of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).”
So the CDU is still palming people off in this tried and trusted fashion… 😉
“In climate research, changes don’t count until they’ve been observed on a timescale of 30 years”.. claims Minister Johanna Wanka
I couldn’t have expressed it better myself !
It’s still 1633 and man is the centre of all things. So the sun revolves around the earth and climate change is caused by man because what else could be so important and powerful as man.
Oh and it also happens that it fits my economic and political agenda that man causes everything.
Besides in thirty years I won’t be here to worry about it.:-)
michael hart says:
September 23, 2013 at 9:32 pm
From the Spiegel article:
“In climate research, changes don’t count until they’ve been observed on a timescale of 30 years,”
So the warming that persisted for 21 years between 1977 and 1998, “doesn’t count.”
What’s all the fuss about, then?
Ned: Agree, an insult to people’s intelligence.
TB: “Now even IPCC scientists are abandoning ship.”
Ah… a nice logical answer to how the IPCC confidence jumped from 66% to 95% when the opposite should have occurred. 😉
Hi TB.
““greenhouse gases are altering Earth’s climate. No serious politician on the planet can now dispute that.””
You’re correct to question certainty, 95% confidence isn’t the same as 95% certainty. Certainty is an absolute and confidence is a political index.
““The IPCC has a crucial role in this process and must remain the central authority on global warming””
I think you’ve missed the ‘logic’ in this statement.
The IPCC was set up by the WMO on the behest of the UN for a panel of ‘assessors’ to ‘manage’ Climatology (per se). Being a political organisation, the UN seems to have ‘co-opted’ a non-political ‘WMO’ into the construction of a ‘tool’ for politic manipulation. Strong words, I know, but this is just an observation of the outcome.
A ‘unified policy’ can’t exist if the IPCC is disbanded! Need I say more?
“More climate models are running increasingly sophisticated calculations, and coordinated experiments are bolstering our understanding of the results.”
Science ‘knows’ that chaos can’t be modelled, but ‘policy makers’ may well be duped.
“The IPCC’s fifth assessment will provide a comprehensive analysis of policy options and the scientific basis for the next round of climate negotiations, which are scheduled to come to a head in 2015. What is missing from these talks is not science but political ambition, which is ultimately a reflection of public support. The IPCC has a crucial role in this process”
Wake up TB! This is an ‘admission’ that the IPCC is ‘managing’ “public support”!
Other posts to this thread mention “the Firm”. Interesting etymology. A ‘firm’ was established by means of the ‘management’ of ‘out-workers’ into the environment of a ‘factory’ (latterly [share markets included] a ‘firm’, or PLC, Ltd, etc.). The logic to this was that ‘out-workers’ (employees working from their own individual environments) could be influenced by a co-operative environment that would enhance their productive capacity in a ‘factory’ where the ‘environment’ can be ‘controlled’. Thus, ‘management’ became a ‘valid’ ‘occupation/job title’ for the ‘enhancement of product output’.
IMHO, the IPCC ‘manages’ the ‘science’ to ‘policy makers’!
This is undemocratic because ‘the science community’ can’t be democratised! Each ‘scientist’ holds an ‘opinion’ that’s ‘unique’ and can’t be forged into a ‘consensus’! Where would we be if Copernicus ‘conformed’?
Best regards, Ray.
suricat’s post leads me to think of a corallary:
Climate may not well modeled, but politicians can be well manipulated.