This is a repost from the Powerline Blog of an article summarising the implications of the piece published by ‘The Economist’ a couple of days ago, which recognises the serious problems the co2 driven climate theory faces:
Steven Hayward: Climate Change Endgame In Sight?
In my Weekly Standard cover story about the fallout from the “Climategate” email scandal three years ago, I offered the following question by way of prediction:
Eventually the climate modeling community is going to have to reconsider the central question: Have the models the IPCC uses for its predictions of catastrophic warming overestimated the climate’s sensitivity to greenhouse gases?
The article then went on to survey emerging research (U.S. government funded!) casting doubt on high estimates of climate sensitivity, along with alternative explanations on some climate factors, such as “black carbon.” The question in my mind the time was how long this would take to begin to break out into the “mainstream” scientific and media world.
That day appears to have arrived. The new issue of The Economist has a long feature on the declining confidence in the high estimates of climate sensitivity. That this appears in The Economist is significant, because this august British news organ has been fully on board with climate alarmism for years now. A Washington-based Economist correspondent admitted to me privately several years ago that the senior editors in London had mandated consistent and regular alarmist climate coverage in its pages.
The problem for the climateers is increasingly dire. As The Economist shows in its first chart (Figure 1 here), the recent temperature record is now falling distinctly to the very low end of its predicted range and may soon fall out of it, which means the models are wrong, or, at the very least, that there’s something going on that supposedly “settled” science hasn’t been able to settle. Equally problematic for the theory, one place where the warmth might be hiding—the oceans—is not cooperating with the story line.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings.
“Eventually the climate modeling community is going to have to reconsider the central question: Have the models the IPCC uses for its predictions of catastrophic warming overestimated the climate’s sensitivity to greenhouse gases?”
Unfortunately, eventually is still a long way down the road. Unless a miracle occurs the IPCC will publish the following bullet-point conclusions (among others) in next year’s AR5, and short of another miracle the MSM and all the other AGW faithful will once again swallow them whole:
“AR4 concluded that warming of the climate system is unequivocal. New observations, longer data sets, and more paleoclimate information give further support for this conclusion. Confidence is stronger that many changes, that are observed consistently across components of the climate system, are significant, unusual or unprecedented on time scales of decades to many hundreds of thousands of years.”
“Analyses of a number of independent paleoclimatic archives provide a multi-century perspective of Northern Hemisphere temperature and indicate that 1981–2010 was very likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 800 years.”
Globally, CO2 is the strongest driver of climate change compared to other changes in the atmospheric composition, and changes in surface conditions. Its relative contribution has further increased since the 1980s and by far outweighs the contributions from natural drivers. CO2 concentrations and rates of increase are unprecedented in the last 800,000 years and at least 20,000 years, respectively.”
“Development of climate models has resulted in more realism in the representation of many quantities and aspects of the climate system, including large scale precipitation, Arctic sea ice, ocean heat content, extreme events, and the climate effects of stratospheric ozone.”
“Various feedbacks associated with water vapour can now be quantified, and together they are assessed to be very likely positive and therefore to amplify climate changes. The net radiative feedback due to all cloud types is likely positive.”
“It is extremely likely that human activities have caused more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature since the 1950s. There is high confidence that this has caused large-scale changes in the ocean, in the cryosphere, and in sea level in the second half of the 20th century. Some extreme events have changed as a result of anthropogenic influence.”
“Many aspects of climate change will persist for centuries even if concentrations of greenhouse gases are stabilised. This represents a substantial multi-century commitment created by human activities today.”
800 years ago was about the peak of the MWP; it peaked cooler than the Roman Optimum, which was cooler than the Minoan, which was cooler than the Holocene Optimum. Notice an unfortunate trend, anyone?
You can always trust The Economist to tackle the taboos no one else wants to touch. There may have been a strict editorial line at one time but at heart they are pragmatists. That means that realism eventually prevails, although in this case ‘eventually’ is the operative word.
No doubt AR5 will be aimed at keeping up the spirit of the co2 gullible, though as we’ve seen in the pre-release, the worse than useless IPCC is starting to show internal doubts. However AR6 in 2020 (?) should arrive just as we reach the long awaited solar minimum by which time the deluded IPCC may well be in complete dissaray. As we approach 2027 the risible IPCC if it still exists will be a very different animal by then.
It doesn’t matter what the loonatic politicians do, aside from the economic destruction and harm done to families lives, they will have no impact on the rate of growth of co2 as anything the West do to reduce their co2 output will be dwarfed by other countries increasing theirs, and meanwhile temperatures will start heading downwards regardless.
The naive, shallow and irresponsible mainstream media will have changed sides much earlier and will be howling about the ineffectiveness of the Huhne sticks and the destruction brought to our environment and economy, but mostly they will be broadcasting fear of a new ice age. In that, they will actually be right, it’s just a matter of when.
The co2 climate fraud game isn’t over yet, the fools still have the upper hand for now, but the sceptics can already see that they will win. We have a half strength solar high, a prolonged solar cycle, AMO on the way to going negative, and sunspots about to go absent possibly for tens of years. There can be only one result, prolonged cooling and the dissolution of the co2 religion.
Of course the co2 faithful could still pull a rabbit out of a hat, so to speak. With temperatures stagnating and co2 climbing, if temperatures were to now start climbing, it would then look as if co2 led temperature and that co2 therefore drove temperatures. Hmm…
From Watts up With That
A rare pic of Hansen, Pachauri, Mann and Schmidt all together here [taxpayer is on left].
Genius
J Martin
Doesn’t matter either way. Having been set up specifically to study human impacts on climate the IPCC is never, ever going to conclude that there are no significant human impacts on climate regardless of what the science says.
Since CAGW isn’t about science, it’s about politics, (money, power and jobs), the apparatus set up to administer policy to tackle climate change isn’t going to be swept away by something so slight as evidence against it.
I’ve expected it to be renamed energy security, environmental responsibility, or something, a few cosmetic changes, and then business as usual.
As a child I was taught by my unfortunate indoctrinated parents a whole stack of nonsense about the end of the world, Armageddon, Judgement, The Kingdom, all passionately believed in, and all 100% silly piffle. So the feel of this human-caused climate variation panic is familiar to me. “How long, I wondered, can this thing last?” If, indeed, it is over, and we are no more to be shouted at by Green Party fascist nutcases, and sanity is restored at last, I can die in peace!
Kon Dealer: one picture is worth far more than a thousand words.
Cyrusquick: you speak for me! I’ve given up the notion of dying in peace, but just knowing it will end is some comfort.