It’s unfortunate that I don’t have time for blogging cause I’m sure there is some easy math to play with in this article by Michael Mann. The article is essentailly “climate porn” for believers who are still praying for the end of the world. In it, even he admits that temperatures aren’t rising, although he stays away from recognizing that climate model gods have failed him. The intent of the article seems to be to move the bar of absolute global doom – apparently because the last bar was missed.
![sandwich-board-man-warns-us-of-impending-doom[1]](https://noconsensus.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/sandwich-board-man-warns-us-of-impending-doom1.jpg)
Who could have guessed that in pre-apocalyptic earth, end of the worlders would have created such lucrative and easy jobs for themselves.
The title of the article was originally – False Hope. The text of the article leads us to the understanding that we have false hope that the world WON’T end, that hope being given to us by the fact that the world ISN’T warming as the hundred-plus billion dollar climate sandwich board industry predicted. None of those problems have reached the level where “Scientific American” is concerned about their own credibility, as they have prostrated themselves before that particular climate god so many times in the past that the practice of publishing climate based nonsense from the right people is reflexive at this point.
The new signpost of doom is planted by Mann, firmly in the soil at 2036 with this improved title.
Earth Will Cross the Climate Danger Threshold by 2036
Interestingly, Mann was able to write climate sensitivity levels far lower than I would have expected without himself being called a “denier”. There are plenty of contoversial statements in the article starting with this one which I challenge anyone to provide proof of:
Most scientists concur that two degrees C of warming above the temperature during preindustrial time would harm all sectors of civilization—food, water, health, land, national security, energy and economic prosperity.
I believe most actual “scientists” would say the opposite. Rather two C would be beneficial from food, water, health, land, etc perspectives. This national security nonsense is for the purpose of collecting money from that government channel and exists for no other reason. However, I don’t have proof of more scientists claiming 2C is good for humans than Mann’s fabricated claim that MOST scientists believe it will be bad. At least in my case I admit it.
The Two C by 2036 claim is most interesting because that is only 22 years away and we have only warmed about 0.8C since 1950 i.e. THE global warming years. Despite the pause, which he admits actually exists in this article, Mann is predicting a MASSIVE increase in global warming trend over the next 22 years of 0.6C/decade! Of course he does it by using a 3C climate sensitivity that other climate scientists have found to be over 2X what observations show. I think that even 3C puts him more toward the lower middle range of the now known to be defective climate models.
To my wonder, I found that for an ECS of three degrees C, our planet would cross the dangerous warming threshold of two degrees C in 2036, only 22 years from now. When I considered the lower ECS value of 2.5 degrees C, the world would cross the threshold in 2046, just 10 years later [see graph on pages 78 and 79].
The article is far more entertaining than I have written here but that is all I have time for at the moment. Feel free to copy your favorite bits below.
the Air Vent 
Global warming continues unabated,….
…the earth has experienced exceptional warming over the past century,….
It is difficult to determine an exact value of ECS because warming is affected by feedback mechanisms, including clouds…
The IPCC based the lowered bound on one narrow line of evidence: the slowing of surface warming during the past decade… (17 years in a decade? Who knew?)
Let us hope that a lower climate sensitivity of 2.5 degrees C turns out to be correct. (And if it is too high?)
M Simon said
March 22, 2014 at 9:09 am
Part of that “exceptional warming” occurred before CO2 was deemed to be a problem, ne c’est pas? And is recovery from the Little Ice Age not a Occam’s Razor style default hypothesis?
Since when is actual data considered a “narrow line of evidence” versus Playstation modeling?
Well I was following Jeff’s suggestion and quoting my favorite parts.
Captain Obtuse here. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Thanks, Jeff, for your part in disclosing and continuing to pursue the unfolding drama of Climategate emails since Nov 2009.
I am convinced this drama began sixty-four years earlier, in the final days of WWII when StalIn’s USSR troops captured Japan’s atomic bomb facility at Konan, Korea on 24 Aug 1945, following its first test explosion on 12 Aug 1945:
http://www.my-jia.com/The_Flight_of_the_Hog_Wild/Atlanta_Constitution_David_Snell_atomic_bomb_Korea.htm
https://sites.google.com/site/naziabomb/home/japan-s-a-bomb-project
Frightened world leaders probably decided to take totalitarian control of society after reading the last paragraph of Aston’s 1922 Noble Lecture:
“Should the research worker of the future discover some means of releasing this energy in a form which could be employed, the human race will have at its command powers beyond the dreams of scientific fiction; but the remote possibility must always be considered that the energy once liberated will be completely uncontrollable and by its intense violence detonate all neighbouring substances. In this event the whole of the hydrogen on the earth might be transformed at once and the success of the experiment published at large to the universe as a new star.” (12 Dec 1922)
Re: omanuel (Mar 22 11:30), Thread bomber.
In Feb of 1878 the HADCRUT4 anomaly hit 0.403C
67 years later, in August of 1945 the anomaly hit 0.362C
And 62 years later in Jan 2007 it supposedly hit 0.829C
But the anomaly is only .503C as of Jan 2014.
So my guess is that around 66 years after 2007 the temperature might be .4C warmer than 2007 for a few months and then end up .1C warmer.
The idea of it being 2C warmer in 2036 is ludicrous.
22 years after the 1878 peak it was .4C colder
22 years after the 1945 peak it was .4C colder
22 years after the 2007 peak it will be .4C …. pretty much the same temperature as it is now.
Lukewarmers notwithstanding, ECS is indistinguishable from 0. EFS (feedbacks) > ECS, and will always overwhelm it.
Jeff, I know you are busy but I, and others I’m sure, would love to see you perform some mathematical jiu jitsu on “the second greatest (James Hansen being “number 1′) climate scientist’s” mathematical and statistical assumptions for this fluff piece.
I would love to spend a few minutes. Just plotting his scientifically predicted trend on the end of measured data should be enough to reject the thing. It’s just another mannian hockey stick.
Jeff – you said “. . . and we have only warmed about 0.8C since 1950 i.e. THE global warming years.”
Are you sure that shouldn’t be 1850 or even 1750?
There isn’t supposed to be any CO2 based warming until recent years. Aerosols are said to suppress CO2 based warming of prior years. You can definitely argue the point, I don’t have much of an opinion either way.
It’s just that the number since 1950 is closer to .4
And 0 since 1998.
I took the average of best temps since 1950 and got about 0.9 but I guess that is only land temp. We have a long way to go!
Yeah, theory and other evidence suggests that using land only is going to exaggerate the magnitude of the change.
Land only has a much higher trend than ocean. You are definitely right about that.
I know Mann has been advising the good folks at SkS for a while. Now it seems to have rubbed off on him. This huffing sounds more like a Dana Nuccitelli post than anything else, complete with handwavy, sciency-sounding methods without any meat, viz. “I recently calculated hypothetical future temperatures by plugging different ECS values into a so-called energy balance model.” And there’s a pretty graph obtained by torturing said model. [By “meat”, I mean replicable details. For example, the asymptotes in his graph are reached very quickly; whatever EBM he’s using seems to have little difference between TCR and ECS.]
As for Jeff’s concerns that warming has to reach the improbable rate of 0.6 K/decade to make Mann’s date with doom, well, clearly Jeff is not up on the “facts”. According to the graph, the trajectory of ECS=3K (which generates the headline claim) already is at +1.3 K and is rising 0.3 K/decade. Jeff, please keep up! By the way, the current temperature anomaly, even with Mann’s “faux pause”, is at +1.1K somehow.
My favorite part: the contrast within the article itself. Deep within what would normally be the “evidence” portion of the article is the assertion that “Most scientists concur that two degrees C of warming above the temperature during preindustrial time would harm all sectors of civilization—food, water, health, land, national security, energy and economic prosperity.” Somehow the 2 degC level morphs into “a threshold into environmental ruin” in the lead paragraphs. And in the graphic, it is the more sedate statement that “Scientists and policy makers commonly say that the world has to keep atmospheric CO2 levels below 450 ppm to avoid two degrees C of warming.”
“Most scientists concur that two degrees C of warming above the temperature during preindustrial time would harm all sectors of civilization—food, water, health, land, national security, energy and economic prosperity.”
This is an interesting statement. Because it may well be that most scientists are convinced of this notion. The problem is that they wouldn’t have a clue what they are talking about. I’m not being cheeky. This is not a question for scientists to answer. At best it might be a question for economists. And in point of fact, most economists, ie people who would actually have a clue what they are talking about, would almost certainly concur that many “sectors of civilization” would not be effected at all by a warming of 2 degrees.
Most of our economic activity takes place in-doors. This sounds like a silly point, but evidently it needs to be stressed.
So I struggle to think where Mann get’s this notion from.
The closest I can think of is that there are studies-specifically a meta study by Richard Tol-of the economic effects of global warming, that suggest that at about 2 C above present condtions, the effects just start to become net negative. If this is what he is thinking of, he’s described it in a curious way. None, or very few of the studies in Tol’s meta-analysis would go so far as to suggest that every effect is negative after 2 C. If Mann has read that into the study he has misunderstood it. More over, it would be worth pointing out that this “threshold” is the threshold above which warming becomes net harmful at all, not some point at which it becomes a significant. In other words the point at which we stop benefiting from warming.
Lastly, this threshold does not reflect a widespread agreement among the studies analyzed, ie a “consensus,” rather it reflects the central tendency of the studies analyzed. In some studies the “threshold” above which we cease to benefit is higher, if one exists at all.
I don’t think that most scientists are convinced of 2C being bad. I think that most think 2c is still beneficial and I’m not just saying that because it is what I think.
Scientifically, if we had 2c of warming and didn’t measure it, I’m certain we wouldn’t even know about it.
You’d know because of shifts in what grows in your area. I guess you could argue that this is still a form of “measuring”.
Do you think we could pick it up when the year to year variance is already so high? There is 2C between here and the south edge of Indiana and not much difference in plants or birds. I’m just not certain that anyone will really notice.
Four warmest years in Indiana
201201 – 201212 55.1°F
192101 – 192112 55.0°F
199801 – 199812 55.0°F
193101 – 193112 54.2°F
And Last year
201301 – 201312 51.2°F
Not if someone engineers more weather resilient crops.
Which will happen, if it is actually necessary.
“Not if someone engineers more weather resilient crops.
Which will happen, if it is actually necessary”
Nature usually takes care of that as needed.
I think people might ‘notice’ but only in the sense that they’d be saying “I’m sure daffodils are coming out earlier than they did when I was a child…”
Not even economists. Engineers and farmers could discuss a 2.0o increase with some reasonableness. But if they are processing alarmist premises as their go by’s, then it would be a gigo analysis.
Farmers would almost certainly think far too narrowly about the effects on crops, and probably overestimate the negative effects. Engineers would probably have the same problem “Oh, this or that bridge couldn’t handle 2 degree hotter weather blah blah blah.” A good economist is exactly what you want to estimate the impact on society, because society pretty much is commerce.
A lot of people don’t get that. They think society is Government.
For anyone wondering about the “Most scientists concur..” meme, here’s an alternative view from the Met office’s Richard Betts – “Most climate scientists* do not subscribe to the 2 degrees “Dangerous Climate Change” meme (I know I don’t).”
Further discussion of this can be found here: http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/11/9/dangerous-climate-change.html
I’ve realized something else, too. Mann claims a consensus of scientists that a warming of 2 degrees above pre-industrial would be “bad for everything.”
Remember the study by Tol I mentioned? That’s 2 degrees above present levels. In other words about a whole degree higher than Mann puts the threshold! This is kind of a big deal. The 2 degrees per doubling line doesn’t hit that threshold until after 2100. 2.5 degrees per doubling doesn’t hit that level until about 2080-ish.
Jeff said:
“Of course he does it by using a 3C climate sensitivity that other climate scientists have found to be over 2X what observations show.”
This illustrates the weakness of our position. Even the brightest among us such as Jeff Id and Richard Lindzen tacitly accept the notion that a doubling of CO2 will affect global temperature significantly.
Jeff, you are a wizard with “R’ so how can it have escaped your notice that the Keeling curve and global temperature are quite likely to be going in opposite directions unless one cherry picks start and end dates?
Hard evidence and basic physical chemistry supports the notion that temperature drives CO2:
http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/10/co2_acquittal.html
The high resolution ice core data shows CO2 following temperature. Jay Severinghaus, Thomas Stocker and other prominent “Climate Scientists” worked on the EPICA ice core studies (Luethi et al., Jouzel at al.) so they know the truth but won’t admit it in public:
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2013/05/04/the-dog-that-did-not-bark/
Severinghaus tied himself in knots when he tried to explain why temperature leads CO2 in Antarctic ice core studies:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-lag-between-temp-and-co2/
I beg you to stop discussing the sensitivity constant per doubling of CO2 as if it had any validity.
Thanks for the kind words. The problem is that I don’t agree that the sensitivity of CO2 is a non-value. I don’t know the number but the 1.3/doubling seems pretty consistent in observation based papers from Nic’s work. That is a near zero feedback level of sensitivity and it would take centuries to do anything bad to the environment. CO2’s present decorrelation to the temp curve isn’t proof of a lower than 1.3 sensitivity yet and we start with something like 1.1 so it will take a negative climate response to go below that. Until the data shifts, we’re stuck with the problem.
I don’t think we have much chance to stop from emitting that CO2 either way but if that number is accurate, we are looking at the reality that global warming doom nonsense will continue for several more decades (cause temps will continue to rise) and will likely cost many trillions of dollars worth of useless economic damage with near zero effect on the outcome.
You hit the nail on the head with that last paragraph. Let’s hope that Mother Nature with her wicked sense of humor decides to deliver a modest drop in temperature over the next decade!
While “R” has me completely baffled I am having fun with FEA programs at the moment, trying to find out what the average temperature of an airless Earth would be. Then we would know whether the GHE was 33 K, 134 K or something in between. My money is on 91 K.
Over on Tallbloke and “Digging in the Clay” we are chipping away at Arrhenius’ false hypothesis:
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2014/03/23/challenging-arrhenius-again/
Apologies for the shameless self promotion but it has some relevance to this thread.
Gallopingcamel,
Some of us skeptics become almost as fanatical as the believers in global warming after realizing that the AGW debate is a moral issue – which may decide the survival of mankind.
http://orach24463.wordpress.com/2014/03/25/geologic-record-shows-sun-not-co2-drives-climate-change-models-meaningless/comment-page-1/#comment-1271
We may be deceiving ourselves, but I agree with most of your conclusions.
There can be no correlation found between temperature data and carbon dioxide, because it cools only by about 0.1 degree. You need to come to grips with the new 21st century paradigm shift in climate science based upon the gravito-thermal effect.
This is how absurd the old 20th century paradigm of greenhouse radiative forcing gets. They claim that you can work out Earth’s surface temperature by adding together the radiative flux from both the Sun and the colder atmosphere, and then bunging this total value into the Stefan-Boltzmann equation and out pops your answer 287K or 288K. Well it might well do if you fiddle the back radiation and then use the emissivity value instead of the absorptivity.
But there’s absolutely no physics to support the calculations. When you consider that about 70% of the surface is a thin transparent water layer, it is obvious that the solar radiation which mostly (like over 99%) passes through this layer into the thermocline is not what is determining the temperature of that thin surface layer. In fact the mean temperature of the thermocline is obviously less, and the mean temperature of all the ocean water is less again.
Oh, and the back radiation doesn’t even enter the surface layer – it just raises electrons between quantum energy states momentarily, and then those electrons immediately emit another photon which climatologists think is energy coming from the kinetic energy in the surface molecules, but it’s only electro-magnetic energy from the back radiation being thrown back in their red faces.
That 255 Kelvin quoted by respectable climate scientists is supposed to be what Earth’s temperature would be “sans atmosphere” It is the bastard child of good mathematics and a bad understanding of the properties of matter.
It is precisely correct for any black body in Earth’s orbit that is a thermal superconductor. Real objects are much colder because they conduct heat poorly:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/03/15/one-of-our-spacecraft-is-missing-diviner-lunar-radiometer-website-mia
The arc of phony prophets seems to follow a predictable, boring arc.
Now the faux prophet is drawing yet another line of no return. There is nothing based in reality to support his claim about where temps are going in thirty years, except he will be dead and unaccountable (he should fervently hope) for his life choices.
I think that some things are better ignored and here I refer to Mann, the politician. How would one reply to the very unscientific and vague statement that the consensus amongst scientists is that bad things will happen when the mean global temperature increases by 2 degrees C? First of all one would have to be very specific about the timing of that threshold occurring and second be very clear that the detrimental effects that follow are well established and further that those effects are based on the world as we currently know it and not what might exist when that threshold is reached.
TTCA: Crops have been engineered already for shorter/cooler and drier/hotter growing seasons and based on GMO advances it does not take a leap in faith to think that that approach cannot be successfully applied to climate changes. I do not have your faith, however, in economists to get these calculations right and keep their advocacy biases at bay.
I don’t have any such faith. I said a good economist.
Even if there are lots of negative consequences for AGW, and even if they do accelerate above some temp range (both are plausible), the idea that there exists a clear, bright-line danger threshold at a particular delta-T seems rather fishy for a complex system like the climate and for something as diverse as the world. (Not to mention knowing what that threshold is if it does exist.) Mann drawing a line in the sand looks more like policy activism than science.
The damage papers are the weakest part of climate science. I’ve not read one which was any more than anti-industrial fear mongering by politicians pretending to be scientists.
Mann drawing a line in the sand is indistinguishable from lines drawn in the sand by faux prophets throughout history. And they have all been erased by their failure and the passage of time.
Mann is lying in this article. I heard him say a few years ago that he agreed that warming in climate models is ‘vastly overstated’. “I have a reputation out there of being some sort of climate alarmist, but I think there is a missing negative feedback.’ While not as obvious, he repeated the reasoning in his book, that there is a long-term negative feedback to global warming, suggesting Cane’s thermostat hypothesis. Note that having a large Medieval Warm Period would ague against this conclusion, as he is arguing there was a negative feedback in the tropics at that time. The article makes no such mention, or even of ENSO modeling being a big uncertainty.
Good day my family member! I need to say that benefits and drawbacks awesome, fantastic published including nearly all significant infos. I have to find further discussions this way .