Doug Proctor: How can IPCC projections play out in the real world?

Guest post from Doug Proctor who has some interesting questions he’d like some help answering:

I’ve copied this from a comment I made on today’s Tisdale WUWT post wrt IPCC models on hemispheric ice changes. He noted the disconnect between observation and modelled mean outcome, but also addressed the complaint that you “cannot” compare observation to one specific outcome, even if it is the “mean” outcome. I’ve struggled with this idea myself, but also came to understand why: like in an Angus-Reid poll where they say the results are +/- 6%, 19 out of 20 times, there is a poll that would be done, if all polls were done, that gave (1 in 20 times) a result that’s significantly different from the mean, and significantly different from the ordinary noise (the +/- 6% in this example). Though a legitimate retort, it avoids the most important question a questioning mind might ask: does the observation, regardless of what it is, tell us anything about the fundamentals we thought were present, or is the observation truly an aberration? And if an aberration, can we shift from the aberration position (for polls, change the opinions of those polled) to the expected position (at least the mean)?

China Publishes Translation of NIPCC Reports: Maurice Strong’s White Cat Asphyxiates

From Breitbart.com H/T Benny Peiser

Breitbart News can exclusively report on Tuesday night that the Chinese Academy of Sciences has translated and published a Chinese edition of two massive climate change volumes originally published by The Heartland Institute in 2009 and 2011.

The volumes, Climate Change Reconsidered and Climate Change Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report, are chock full of 1,200 pages of peer-reviewed data concerning the veracity of anthropogenic climate change. Together, they represent the most comprehensive rebuttal of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change findings, which have been the basis of the climate change legislation movement across the planet.

Logging for biofuel not Earth-friendly after all. Who would have thought?

From Science Daily:

Using wood for energy is considered cleaner than fossil fuels, but a Dartmouth College-led study finds that logging may release large amounts of carbon stored in deep forest soils.

Global atmospheric studies often don’t consider carbon in deep (or mineral) soil because it is thought to be stable and unaffected by timber harvesting. But the Dartmouth findings show deep soil can play an important role in carbon emissions in clear-cutting and other intensive forest management practices. The findings suggest that calls for an increased reliance on forest biomass be re-evaluated and that forest carbon analyses are incomplete unless they include deep soil, which stores more than 50 percent of the carbon in forest soils.

David Whitehouse: Before And After The Temperature Standstill

Reblogged from GWPF

Before And After The Temperature Standstill

• Date: 11/06/2013 Dr David Whitehouse

The absence of any significant change in the global annual average temperature over the past 16 years has become one of the most discussed topics in climate science. It has certainly focused the debate about the relative importance of greenhouse gas forcing of the climate versus natural variability.

In all this discussion what happened to global temperature immediately before the standstill is often neglected. Many assume that since the recent warming period commenced – about 1980 – global temperature rose until 1998 and then the surface temperature at least got stuck. Things are however not that simple, and far more interesting.

As Steve Goddard has interestingly pointed out recently using RSS data going back to 1990 the Mt Pinatubo eruption in 1991 had a very important effect on global temperatures.

New York Times: “We have lucked out in recent years when it comes to global warming.”

The Grey Lady sings. 

What to make of a Warming Plateau

By JUSTIN GILLIS

The rise in the surface temperature of earth has been markedly slower over the last 15 years than in the 20 years before that. And that lull in warming has occurred even as greenhouse gases have accumulated in the atmosphere at a record pace. As unlikely as this may sound, we have lucked out in recent years when it comes to global warming.

The slowdown is a bit of a mystery to climate scientists. True, the basic theory that predicts a warming of the planet in response to human emissions does not suggest that warming should be smooth and continuous. To the contrary, in a climate system still dominated by natural variability, there is every reason to think the warming will proceed in fits and starts.

But given how much is riding on the scientific forecast, the practitioners of climate science would like to understand exactly what is going on. They admit that they do not, even though some potential mechanisms of the slowdown have been suggested. The situation highlights important gaps in our knowledge of the climate system, some of which cannot be closed until we get better measurements from high in space and from deep in the ocean.

Roy Spencer: the parting of ways

Roy Spencer has been criticised for using a poor representation of a devastating indictment of earth temperature models. In response he has come up with a visually more satisfactory version, as above.

Yep, it’s a travesty, all that money and still the heat has run away, it’s hiding.

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/06/still-epic-fail-73-climate-models-vs-measurements-running-5-year-means/

Nigel Farage: Memo to Davey – “science is never settled”

From Edie:

The environmental movement has become politicised, urbanised and is ‘full of profound deep ignorance’ says UKIP leader Nigel Farage.

In an exclusive interview with edie, Farage says he has been a keen supporter of environmental issues since the late 1980′s but attacked those driving the movement today, claiming that it has turned into an ‘industry’.

“This environmental industry has managed to bully weak minded politicians into making a series of decisions that actually aren’t good for biodiversity, sustainability or the environment,”

says Farage.

Claiming to be an environmentalist, Farage slammed European leaders for lacking the necessary understanding to put effective environmental policies in place.

“Twenty seven prime ministers and presidents of Europe meet for a summit and say something must be done, like banning light bulbs, for example. And then go for new light bulbs that have mercury in them. It’s ridiculous,” he says.

He also criticised Tim Yeo, stating that the chairman of the select committee on climate change was not the right person for the job.

How can a man that is earning £145,000 a year under the renewable energy industry, chair a committee in parliament? Can someone explain that to me?

Yeo, along with Labour’s Barry Gardiner, held a vote today to ensure a target to decarbonise electricity was in place by 2014. Part of an amendment to Ed Davey’s Energy Bill, the green sector, along with several industry associations, called for the Government to vote in favour. However, it received a no vote earlier today.

Tim Yeo: About Turn – Straight Face

Heh, Tim ‘Trougher’ Yeo seems to be backpedalling furiously. “Did I say Global Warming is nearly all human caused? What I meant, of course, is that it could mostly be ‘natural phases’”. H/T @Sourmanarti.  From the Telegraph:

He’s having a Giraffe

The chairman of the Commons Energy and Climate Change committee Tim Yeo MP said he accepts the earth’s temperature is increasing but said “natural phases” may be to blame.

Such a suggestion sits at odds with the scientific consensus. One recent [bogus] survey of 12,000 academic papers on climate change found 97 per cent [of 32% of the biased sample] agree human activities are causing the planet to warm.

Mr Yeo, an environment minister under John Major, is one of the Conservative Party’s strongest advocates of radical action to cut carbon emissions. His comments are significant as he was one of the first senior figures to urge the party to take the issue of environmental change seriously.

He insisted such action is “prudent” given the threat climate change poses to living standards worldwide. But, he said, human action is merely a “possible cause”.

Asked on Tuesday night whether it was better to take action to mitigate the effects of climate change than to prevent it in the first place, he said: “The first thing to say is it does not represent any threat to the survival of the planet. None at all. The planet has survived much bigger changes than any climate change that is happening now.

Chris de Freitas: Rebuttal of Jim Salinger’s wild Alarmist Claims in the NZ Herald

From the New Zealand Herald

Several aspects of Jim Salinger’s op-ed “Climate hurtling towards a hothouse Earth” (Herald 24/5/13) are quite misleading.

It is true most climate scientists would agree that rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to fossil fuel use could affect global climate. The basic physics is there to support this view. But there is no evidence that the putative change would be large or damaging. Output from computer models is not evidence unless model performance has been validated. So far, it has not.

The so-called evidence of minor human-caused climatic change can also be attributed to causes or processes other than those related to the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

What is rarely mentioned by climate alarmists is the incontrovertible fact that adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere has an ever-decreasing effect on global temperature. To illustrate this, compare covering a glass window with very thin paint. The first coat of paint cuts out some light, the second some more; but each subsequent coat has an ever decreasing effect on light shining through.

Ed Davey: Committing Britain to unilateral cuts in GHG emission of 40% by 2030

From EUactiv:

Under the new proposals, to be unveiled by climate and energy secretary Ed Davey today (27 May), the UK would call on the EU to commit to carbon dioxide reductions of 40% by 2030, compared with 1990 levels, rising to 50% if other countries join in with more stringent targets on emissions. World governments are engaged in negotiations on a global climate change deal to replace the Kyoto protocol, with a new agreement to take effect by 2020. The proposals would make the UK the first country to set out its stance on emissions cuts before the next round of talks, in November.

Davey said: “The UK is a global leader in tackling climate change … That is why we will argue for an EU-wide binding emissions reductions target of 50% by 2030 in the context of an ambitious global climate deal and even a unilateral EU 40% target without a global deal.

“This 2030 target is ambitious, but it is achievable and necessary if we are to limit climate change to manageable proportions.”