Earth Day forecasts

I like to go back to when I was in school to see what my teachers told me. My favorites are in red below.

Fifteen Foolish Forecasts: How did environmentalists get it so wrong on Earth Day 1970?

by EDITOR on APRIL 22, 2011

What was once Earth Day has now morphed into Earth Hour and Earth Week. The success of the celebration can only be explained by the fact that no one ever bothers to go back to check the accuracy of the eco-wackos’ past predictions.

For example, the predictions made at the first Earth Day in 1970 were wrong. No, wrong isn’t a strong enough word. They were spectacularly wrong. Let’s cover all the tenses and say they were wrong, they are wrong, and then make our own prediction and say they will be wrong in the future.

Jim Morrison, gone. Elvis Presley, gone. Michael Jackson, gone. But none of them were killed by the environment.

Need proof? Here are some of the hilarious, remarkably wrong predictions made on Earth Day 1970.

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”

• George Wald, Harvard Biologist

“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.” 
• Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist

“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

Leisure suits are gone, but the Earth is still here

“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
• Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University

“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.” 
• Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day

“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….” 
• Life Magazine, January 1970

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.” 
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

Sadly, vegans have outlived the Vega.

“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones.” 
• Martin Litton, Sierra Club director

“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.'”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
• New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day

“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
• Sen. Gaylord Nelson

“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.” 
• Kenneth Watt, ecologist

“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

Today, Earth Day, the eco-wackos will surely get their day moment in the spotlight and their soundbites on the nightly news. They’ll predict a future even grimmer than they predicted 41 years ago.

And they’ll be just as wrong 41 years from now.

Source: Reason.com

history of alarmism

https://realclimatescience.com/2017/04/ten-years-left-to-save-the-planet/

Ten Years Left To Save The Planet!

Posted on April 19, 2017 by tonyheller

Experts say that March was the second hottest month in Earth’s history, and we have only ten years to save the planet.

Global Warming: March Heat Burns Record as Scientists Warn Time Running Out

Tourists at DC’s Cherry Blossom Festival would be surprised to hear that, as March is not normally thought of as a hot month – at least not by sane individuals.

D.C.’s blast of snow stopped the cherry blossoms cold; only half survived. Now what? – LA Times

In the US, March was the 918th warmest month since 1895, averaging 7°C – about 19°C cooler than July 1901.

Globally, temperatures were slightly above average in March, down about 0.6C from a year ago.

UAH Global Temperature Update for March, 2017: +0.19 deg. C « Roy Spencer, PhD

In 1989, the UN warned that we only had ten years to save the Earth from global warming.

Mercury News: Search Results

The global warming scam has been going on for a long time, and there are billions of dollars at stake for the criminals behind it. There seems to be no limit to their desperation and lies at this point.

How government "green" initiatives backfire

An excellent summary of the foolishness of government "green" initiatives.

http://climatechangedispatch.com/every-green-initiative-has-been-a-disaster-says-christopher-booker/

WRITTEN BY CHRISTOPHER BOOKER, DAILY MAIL ON APRIL 13, 2017. POSTED IN LATEST NEWS

Every green initiative has been a disaster says Christopher Booker

What a parable for our times the great diesel scandal has been, as councils vie to see which can devise the heaviest taxes on nearly half the cars in Britain because they are powered by nasty, polluting diesel.

This week, it was announced many diesel drivers will soon have to pay fully £24 a day to drive into Central London, while 35 towns across the country are thinking of following suit. Already some councils charge up to £90 more for a permit to park a diesel car.

The roots of this debacle go back to the heyday of Tony Blair’s government, when his chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, became obsessed with the need to fight global warming.

Although he was an expert in ‘surface chemistry’ — roughly speaking, the study of what happens when, for example, a liquid meets a gas — King had no qualifications in climate science.

On one occasion he famously told an environmental audit committee of MPs that the world was warming so dangerously fast that, by the end of this century, the only continent on earth left habitable would be Antarctica.

His light-bulb moment came when he learned that diesel emits less CO2 than petrol. What a brilliant way it would be to save the planet, he thought, to manipulate the tax system to encourage motorists to make the switch — which millions did.

And here we are 15 years later, being told that, as an unexpected side-effect, more than ten million diesel vehicles on Britain’s roads are chucking out so much nitrogen oxide and other toxic pollutants they are being linked to 12,000 premature deaths a year.

This is only the latest in a seemingly endless flow of examples of supposedly ‘green’ government schemes which, one after another, turn out to have been standing common sense on its head, at a cost which is rocketing up by billions of pounds a year.

There may be other competitors for the title of the greatest scandal in Britain today, but this is so crazy that it is time we all woke up to how damagingly mad it has become.

Nine years ago, MPs voted almost unanimously for then Labour minister Ed Miliband’s Climate Change Act, thus making Britain the only country in the world committed by law to cut its ‘carbon emissions’ by 80 per cent in just 40 years.

Not one of those politicians bothered to wonder how in practice such an absurdly ambitious target could be met: which is why we have since seen successive governments thrashing about trying to adopt one dotty ‘green’ scheme after another.

Last week, I was asked in conversation: ‘Why is it that almost all these green schemes seem to end up as a fiasco?’ To which I replied: ‘You’ve only got one word wrong there. You can leave out the word “almost”.’

The truth is that every single green scheme the politicians have fallen for has proved to be a total fiasco: failing to achieve any of the results claimed for them and costing us more billions with every year that passes.

Consider the scandal of Drax in Yorkshire, until recently the largest, cleanest, most efficient coal-fired power station in Europe.

Now, thanks to an annual half-a-billion pounds of public subsidy, Drax has been switching from burning coal to millions of tons a year of wood pellets.

Absurdly, these are shipped 3,500 miles to Britain from the U.S., where vast acreages of virgin forest are being felled, supposedly to be replaced with new trees that will eventually soak up all the CO2 emitted by burning them.

Unfortunately, a bright spark has just pointed out in a report for a respected think-tank that it could take a replacement tree hundreds of years to grow to maturity — which would be far too long to have any supposed effect on any climate change. (It should be noted that the former coalition energy minister Chris Huhne, having been released from prison for perverting the course of justice over speeding points, became the European chairman of a firm called Zilkha Biomass, which makes its money supplying wood pellets from North America to Europe.)

The bottom line is that a new report has just confirmed that, far from reducing its CO2 footprint, Drax is now emitting more than it did when it was only burning coal.

Meanwhile, why is Northern Ireland going through its worst political crisis since the end of the Troubles? Because of the collapse of its power-sharing government over another green scheme, the Renewable Heat Incentive.

When businesses discovered that for every £100 they paid for wood chips to heat their offices, warehouses and factories, UK taxpayers would pay them £160 in subsidies, not surprisingly they kept their boilers running round the clock as if there were no tomorrow.

When it was discovered that, by 2020, we will have paid those businesses £1 billion — even to heat buildings left empty for years — this created such a scandal that it brought down the government.

That example made headlines, but the same is happening quietly in the rest of the country, too, where owners of large houses openly boast that they are running their boilers flat out, even in summer, to cash in on the racket which gives them a 60 per cent profit on every £1 they spend on wood chips.

Some of that wood is now coming from clearing priceless ancient woodlands, such as a National Trust estate in Cheshire which the charity plans to turn back into open heathland.

Another scandal created under the same scheme is the way canny developers are plonking down large industrial installations called ‘anaerobic digesters’ in the middle of the English countryside, to turn huge quantities of crops into small quantities of methane for the national gas grid.

Official figures show that, thanks to subsidies costing us more than £200 million a year, 131,000 acres of maize are now being grown to feed the anaerobic digesters, on land formerly used for food crops.

Separately, toxic spills of the ammonia that is used in the process have repeatedly poisoned livestock and fish in nearby fields and rivers.

Then there was the dream of ‘carbon capture and storage’, for which Gordon Brown’s government offered £4 billion for companies to come up with a way of removing CO2 from the coal and gas used to make electricity, and then piping it away for burial in holes under the North Sea.

Only one Scottish power station took up the offer, spending £1 billion before it discovered that it didn’t work.

But even though geologists say it can never work, the Government still talks about it as the only way it can allow coal and gas-fired power plants — which still supply more than half our electricity — to stay in business.

Consider, too, the not-so brilliant idea of bribing motorists to switch to supposedly ‘green’ all-electric cars. So far, this has cost us more than £50 million in subsidies, for the mere 50,000 cars which have been sold, at £25,000 or more a time. This is only a fraction of the 26 million cars on Britain’s roads.

And what gets cynically hidden by the authorities is that much of the electricity used to charge their batteries comes, of course, from fossil fuels. Add in emissions from the manufacturing process and, unsurprisingly, these vehicles give out more CO2 than they are claimed to save.

Yet under the latest ‘carbon budget’, a five-yearly environmental plan nodded through by MPs to meet our commitments under Miliband’s misguided Climate Change Act, they still fondly imagine that, within 13 years, 60 per cent of all Britain’s cars will be electric.

The latest wheeze to catch the attention of gullible politicians has been a mega-project to spend £40 billion on six giant ‘tidal lagoons’ around Britain’s coasts, beginning with one in Swansea Bay, to harness the power of the tide to provide ‘clean, green’ electricity.

This seemed so irresistible to David Cameron and George Osborne that they put it in the Tory manifesto at the last election — and the then chancellor even mentioned it in his Budget speech. Only when the figures were looked at more carefully did they realise how little electricity this would produce. Not only that, it would be the most expensive in the world!

The firm behind the scheme asked the Government to agree to give it a uniquely high subsidy. The project will only work, it said, if the power produced could be sold to the National Grid at a staggering £168 per megawatt hour.

This was well over three times the wholesale price of unsubsidised electricity from coal or gas-fired power stations, and would naturally be paid for by every UK householder through green surcharges on our electricity bills.

As a result of such concerns, a report on tidal energy was commissioned from a former energy minister, Charles Hendry. His objectivity can be guessed at when you learn that he is chairman of the world’s largest offshore wind farm project. Unsurprisingly, he was gung-ho for giving tidal lagoons the go-ahead.

But how can ministers justify proceeding with another pipe dream which, according to some conservationists, apart from its ludicrous cost would inflict serious damage on wading birds, eels and other fish?

This is because the building of gigantic stone tidal barriers miles long interferes with the natural ecosystem. Indeed, this disruption to the natural order is a common problem with schemes which are designed to be good for ‘the environment’. When, for example, the Somerset Levels suffered serious flooding in 2014, it emerged that this was not just a freak of nature.

For 18 years, the local rivers and drainage ditches had not been dredged by the Environment Agency, with the deliberate intention of keeping more water flooding out on to the Levels, to provide a habitat for birds and other wildlife.

One former head of the agency, who previously ran the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, had remarked that she wanted to see ‘a limpet mine’ on every one of the pumping stations which — separately from the dredging — were used to pump out the water channels to prevent flooding.

When the lack of dredging led to the inevitable, and the Levels disastrously flooded for the second time in three years, it not only did £100 million worth of damage to homes and businesses.

With bitter irony, it also resulted in the drowning of huge numbers of the birds, badgers and other creatures the conservationists had wanted to save.

Flooding aside, however, by far the greatest environmental damage, at the greatest cost to our household bills, has been done by the £52 billion so far spent on covering vast areas of our countryside and the sea around our coasts with wind and solar farms, which are now adding £5 billion a year to our electricity bills.

Apart from the way these eyesores have come to dominate parts of our landscape, studies have shown the shocking damage the windmills do to birds and bats, including species such as golden eagles, which are supposed to be protected by law.

Research by the ornithological society SEO/Birdlife suggested that each turbine kills between 110 and 330 birds a year, though the RSPB countered this saying that ‘our own research suggests that a well-located wind farm is unlikely to be causing birds any harm’.

(Conservationists claim the wind industry has a vested interest in covering up the true extent of bird deaths.)

And all this is to produce just 14 per cent of our electricity, available so intermittently that if it wasn’t for those remaining CO2-emitting coal and gas-fired power stations stepping in when the wind wasn’t blowing and the sun wasn’t shining, our lights would have already gone out.

Yet to meet that Climate Change Act target, the Government still dreams of closing down all our remaining fossil-fuel power stations, instead relying on ‘zero-carbon’ electricity from renewables such as wind, sun and wood-burning, and a number of new nuclear power stations, which seem ever less likely to be built after wrangles over funding.

Read rest…

Be Social:

• Twitter
• Facebook105
• Google
• LinkedIn8
• Email
• Print
• More

Related

Ex-Chief Scientist: Our Advice To Gov’t On Preventing Global Warming Was WrongApril 6, 2017In "Latest news"

VWGate Threatens To Sink Germany's Climate CrusadeSeptember 24, 2015In "Latest news"

At Last UK Said To Seek End For 2020 Renewables TargetApril 5, 2017In "Latest news"

Trackback from your site.

The Good, the Bad and the Null Hypothesis

This is one of the best summaries of the climate change issue I've seen yet.

From https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/04/17/the-good-the-bad-and-the-null-hypothesis/

David Middleton / 21 hours ago April 17, 2017

Guest post by David Middleton

Introduction

When debating the merits of the CAGW (catastrophic anthropogenic global warming) hypothesis, I often encounter this sort of straw man fallacy:

All that stuff is a distraction. Disprove the science of the greenhouse effect. Win a nobel prize get a million bucks. Forget the models and look at the facts. Global temperatures are year after year reaching record temperatures. Or do you want to deny that.

Source

This is akin to arguing that one would have to disprove convection in order to falsify plate tectonics or genetics in order to falsify evolution.  Plate tectonics and evolution are extremely robust scientific theories which rely on a combination of empirical and correlative evidence.  Neither theory can be directly tested through controlled experimentation.  However, both theories have been tested through decades of observations.  Subsequent observations have largely conformed to these theories.

Note: I will not engage in debates about the validity of the scientific theories of plate tectonics or evolution.

The power of such scientific theories is demonstrated through their predictive skill: Theories are predictive of subsequent observations.  This is why a robust scientific theory is even more powerful than facts (AKA observations).

CAGW is a similar type of theory hypothesis.  It relies on empirical (the “good”) and correlative evidence (the “bad”).

The Good

Carbon dioxide is a so-called “greenhouse” gas.  It retards radiative cooling.  All other factors held equal, increasing the atmospheric concentration of CO2 will lead to a somewhat higher atmospheric temperature.  However, all other things are never held equal in Earth and Atmospheric Science… The atmosphere is not air in a jar; references to Arrhenius have no signficance.

Figure 1. “Greenhouse” gas spectra. http://www.barrettbellamyclimate.com/page15.htm

Atmospheric CO2 has risen since the 19th century.

Figure 2. Atmospheric CO2 from instrumental records, Antarctic ice cores and plant stomata.

Humans are responsible for at least half of this rise in atmospheric CO2.

Bill Chameides, dean of Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, said Spencer’s arguments are what magicians call “ignoratio elenchi” or logical fallacy.”We’ve looked at every possible form of heat, including clouds, and the only source of heat is greenhouse gases,” he said, adding it’s insulting that Spencer would suggest scientists are paid to come to this conclusion. “Scientists make their reputation on debunking theories.”
Spencer said he wrote his book, a New York Times bestseller, because of the economic effects global warming policies have had on the poor. Alternative energy sources, like biofuels, have driven up the cost of food, which hurts people in Third World countries, he said.”Radical environmentalists are responsible for the deaths of millions of people — mostly black Africans,” he said, because they won’t allow those countries to use DDT pesticide to kill mosquitoes, which cause malaria. “And now they’re starving people because of biofuels.”
" data-medium-file="" data-large-file="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3125" src="https://debunkhouse.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/law1600.png?w=720" alt="law1600" style="height: auto; max-width: 98%; clear: both; display: block; margin: 8.39063px auto 0px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding: 5px;">

Figure 3. Natural sources probably account for ~50% of the rise in atmospheric CO2 since 1750.

While anthropogenic sources are a tiny fraction of the total sources, we are removing carbon from geologic sequestration and returning it to the active carbon cycle.

Figure 4. Carbon cycle. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carbon_cycle-simple_diagram.svg

The average temperature of Earth’s surface and troposphere has generally risen over the past 150 years.

Figure 5. Surface temperature anomalies: BEST (land only), HadCRUT4 & GISTEMP. Satellite lower troposphere: UAH & RSS.

Atmospheric CO2 has risen and warming has occurred.

The Bad

The modern warming began long before the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 and prior to the 19th century temperature and CO2 were decoupled:

Figure 6. Temperature reconstruction (Moberg et al., 2005) and Law Dome CO2 (MacFarling Meure et al., 2006)

The recent rise in temperature is no more anomalous than the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age:

Figure 7. Temperature reconstruction (Ljungqvist, 2010), northern hemisphere instrumental temperature (HadCRUT4) and Law Dome CO2 (MacFarling Meure et al., 2006). Temperatures are 30-yr averages to reflect changing climatology.

Over the past 2,000 years, the average temperature of the Northern Hemisphere has exceeded natural variability (defined as two standard deviations from the pre-1865 mean) three times: 1) the peak of the Medieval Warm Period 2) the nadir of the Little Ice Age and 3) since 1998.  Human activities clearly were not the cause of the first two deviations.  70% of the warming since the early 1600’s clearly falls within the range of natural variability.

While it is possible that the current warm period is about 0.2 °C warmer than the peak of the Medieval Warm Period, this could be due to the differing resolutions of the proxy reconstruction and instrumental data:

Figure 8. The instrumental data demonstrate (higher frequency and higher amplitude temperature variations than the proxy reconstructions.

The amplitude of the reconstructed temperature variability on centennial time-scales exceeds 0.6°C. This reconstruction is the first to show a distinct Roman Warm Period c. AD 1-300, reaching up to the 1961-1990 mean temperature level, followed by the Dark Age Cold Period c. AD 300-800. The Medieval Warm Period is seen c. AD 800–1300 and the Little Ice Age is clearly visible c. AD 1300-1900, followed by a rapid temperature increase in the twentieth century. The highest average temperatures in the reconstruction are encountered in the mid to late tenth century and the lowest in the late seventeenth century. Decadal mean temperatures seem to have reached or exceeded the 1961-1990 mean temperature level during substantial parts of the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period. The temperature of the last two decades, however, is possibly higher than during any previous time in the past two millennia, although this is only seen in the instrumental temperature data and not in the multi-proxy reconstruction itself.

[…]

The proxy reconstruction itself does not show such an unprecedented warming but we must consider that only a few records used in the reconstruction extend into the 1990s. Nevertheless, a very cautious interpretation of the level of warmth since AD 1990 compared to that of the peak warming during the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period is strongly suggested.

[…]

The amplitude of the temperature variability on multi-decadal to centennial time-scales reconstructed here should presumably be considered to be the minimum of the true variability on those time-scales.

[…]

Ljungqvist, 2010

Figure 9. Ljungqvist demonstrates that the modern warming has not unambiguously exceeded the range of natural variability. The bold black dashed line is the instrumental record. I added The red lines to highlight the margin of error.

The climate of the Holocene has been characterized by a roughly millennial cycle of warming and cooling (for those who don’t like the word “cycle,” pretend that I typed “quasi-periodic fluctuation”):

Figure 10. Millennial cycle apparent on Ljungqvist reconstruction.

Figure 11. Millennial scale cycle apparent on Moberg reconstruction.

These cycles (quasi-periodic fluctuations) even have names:

Figure 12. Late Holocene climate cycles (quasi-periodic fluctuations).

These cycles have been long recognized by Quaternary geologists:

Fourier analysis of the GISP2 ice core clearly demonstrates that the millennial scale climate cycle is the dominant signal in the Holocene (Davis & Bohling, 2001).

Figure 13. The Holocene climate has been dominated by a millennial scale climate cycle.

The industrial era climate has not changed in any manner inconsistent with the well-established natural millennial scale cycle. Assuming that the ice core CO2 is reliable, the modern rise in CO2 has had little, if any effect on climate.

The Null Hypothesis

What is a ‘Null Hypothesis’

A null hypothesis is a type of hypothesis used in statistics that proposes that no statistical significance exists in a set of given observations. The null hypothesis attempts to show that no variation exists between variables or that a single variable is no different than its mean. It is presumed to be true until statistical evidence nullifies it for an alternative hypothesis.

Read more: Null Hypothesis http://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/null_hypothesis.asp#ixzz4eWXO8w00
Follow us: Investopedia on Facebook

Since it is impossible to run a controlled experiment on Earth’s climate (there is no control planet), the only way to “test” the CAGW hypothesis is through models.  If the CAGW hypothesis is valid, the models should demonstrate predictive skill.  The models have utterly failed:

Figure 14. “95% of Climate Models Agree: The Observations Must be Wrong.” http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/02/95-of-climate-models-agree-the-observations-must-be-wrong/

Figure 15. “Climate models versus climate reality.” Michaels & Knappenberger. https://judithcurry.com/2015/12/17/climate-models-versus-climate-reality/

The models have failed because they result in a climate sensitivity that is 2-3 times that supported by observations:

Figure 15. Equilibrium climate sensitivity: Reality vs. Models. https://judithcurry.com/2015/12/17/climate-models-versus-climate-reality/

From Hansen et al. 1988 through every IPCC assessment report, the observed temperatures have consistently tracked the strong mitigation scenarios in which the rise in atmospheric CO2 has been slowed and/or halted.

Apart from the strong El Niño events of 1998 and 2015-16, GISTEMP has tracked Scenario C, in which CO2 levels stopped rising in 2000, holding at 368 ppm.

Figure 16. Hansen’s 1988 model and GISTEMP.

The utter failure of this model is most apparent on the more climate-relevant 5-yr running mean:

Figure 17. Hansen’s 1988 model and GISTEMP, 5-yr running mean.

This is from IPCC’s First Assessment Report:

Figure 18.  IPCC First Assessment Report (FAR).  Model vs. HadCRUT4.

HadCRUT4 has tracked below Scenario D.

Figure 19. IPCC FAR scenarios.

This is from the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (TAR):

Figure 20. IPCC TAR model vs. HadCRUT4.

HadCRUT4 has tracked the strong mitigation scenarios, despite a general lack of mitigation.

The climate models have never demonstrated any predictive skill.

And the models aren’t getting better. Even when they start the model run in 2006, the observed temperatures consistently track at or below the low end 5-95% range.  Observed temperatures only approach the model mean (P50) in 2006, 2015 and 2016.

Figure 21.  Climate Lab Book. Comparing CMIP5 & observations.

The ensemble consists of 138 model runs using a range of representative concentration pathways (RCP), from a worst case scenario RCP 8.5, often referred to as “business as usual,” to varying grades of mitigation scenarios (RCP 2.6, 4.5 and 6.0).

Figure 22. Figure 21 with individual model runs displayed.

SOURCE

When we drill wells, we run probability distributions to estimate the oil and gas reserves we will add if the well is successful.  The model inputs consist of a range of estimates of reservoir thickness, area and petrophysical characteristics.  The model output consists of a probability distribution from P10 to P90.

• P10 = Maximum Case.  There is a 10% probability that the well will produce at least this much oil and/or gas.
• P50 = Mean Case.  There is a 50% probability that the well will produce at least this much oil and/or gas.  Probable reserves are >P50.
• P90 = Minimum Case.  There is a 90% probability that the well will produce at least this much oil and/or gas.  Proved reserves are P90.

Over time, a drilling program should track near P50.  If your drilling results track close to P10 or P90, your model input is seriously flawed.

If the CMIP5 model ensemble had predictive skill, the observations should track around P50, half the runs should predict more warming and half less than is actually observed. During the predictive run of the model, HadCRUT4.5 has not *tracked* anywhere near P50…

Figure 23. Figure 21 zoomed in on model run period with probability distributions annotated.

I “eyeballed” the instrumental observations to estimate a probability distribution of predictive run of the model.

Prediction Run Approximate Distribution

2006 P60 (60% of the models predicted a warmer temperature)
2007 P75
2008 P95
2009 P80
2010 P70
2011-2013 >P95
2014 P90
2015-2016 P55

Note that during the 1998-99 El Niño, the observations spiked above P05 (less than 5% of the models predicted this). During the 2015-16 El Niño, HadCRUT only spiked to P55.  El Niño events are not P50 conditions. Strong El Niño and La Niña events should spike toward the P05 and P95 boundaries.

The temperature observations are clearly tracking much closer to strong mitigation scenarios rather than RCP 8.5, the bogus “business as usual” scenario.

The red hachured trapezoid indicates that HadCRUT4.5 will continue to track between less than P100 and P50. This is indicative of a miserable failure of the models and a pretty good clue that the models need be adjusted downward.

In any other field of science CAGW would be a long-discarded falsified hypothesis.

Conclusion

Claims that AGW or CAGW have earned an exemption from the Null Hypothesis principle are patently ridiculous.

In science, a broad, natural explanation for a wide range of phenomena. Theories are concise, coherent, systematic, predictive, and broadly applicable, often integrating and generalizing many hypotheses. Theories accepted by the scientific community are generally strongly supported by many different lines of evidence-but even theories may be modified or overturned if warranted by new evidence and perspectives.

UC Berkeley

This is not a scientific hypothesis:

More CO2 will cause some warming.

 It is arm waving.

This is a scientific hypothesis:

A doubling of atmospheric CO2 will cause the lower troposphere to warm by ___ °C.

Thirty-plus years of failed climate models never been able to fill in the blank.  The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report essentially stated that it was no longer necessary to fill in the blank.

While it is very likely that human activities are the cause of at least some of the warming over the past 150 years, there is no robust statistical correlation.  The failure of the climate models clearly demonstrates that the null hypothesis still holds true for atmospheric CO2 and temperature.

Selected References

Davis, J. C., and G. C. Bohling, The search for patterns in ice-core temperature curves, 2001, in L. C. Gerhard, W. E. Harrison, and B. M. Hanson, eds., Geological perspectives of global climate change, p. 213–229.

Finsinger, W. and F. Wagner-Cremer. Stomatal-based inference models for reconstruction of atmospheric CO2 concentration: a method assessment using a calibration and validation approach. The Holocene 19,5 (2009) pp. 757–764

Grosjean, M., Suter, P. J., Trachsel, M. and Wanner, H. 2007. Ice-borne prehistoric finds in the Swiss Alps reflect Holocene glacier fluctuations. J. Quaternary Sci.,Vol. 22 pp. 203–207. ISSN 0267-8179.

Hansen, J., I. Fung, A. Lacis, D. Rind, Lebedeff, R. Ruedy, G. Russell, and P. Stone, 1988: Global climate changes as forecast by Goddard Institute for Space Studies three-dimensional model. J. Geophys. Res., 93, 9341-9364, doi:10.1029/88JD00231.

Kouwenberg, LLR, Wagner F, Kurschner WM, Visscher H (2005) Atmospheric CO2 fluctuations during the last millennium reconstructed by stomatal frequency analysis of Tsuga heterophylla needles. Geology 33:33–36

Ljungqvist, F.C. 2009. N. Hemisphere Extra-Tropics 2,000yr Decadal Temperature Reconstruction. IGBP PAGES/World Data Center for Paleoclimatology Data Contribution Series # 2010-089. NOAA/NCDC Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder CO, USA.

Ljungqvist, F.C. 2010. A new reconstruction of temperature variability in the extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere during the last two millennia. Geografiska Annaler: Physical Geography, Vol. 92 A(3), pp. 339-351, September 2010. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-459.2010.00399.x

MacFarling Meure, C., D. Etheridge, C. Trudinger, P. Steele, R. Langenfelds, T. van Ommen, A. Smith, and J. Elkins. 2006. The Law Dome CO2, CH4 and N2O Ice Core Records Extended to 2000 years BP. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 33, No. 14, L14810 10.1029/2006GL026152.

Moberg, A., D.M. Sonechkin, K. Holmgren, N.M. Datsenko and W. Karlén. 2005. Highly variable Northern Hemisphere temperatures reconstructed from low-and high-resolution proxy data. Nature, Vol. 433, No. 7026, pp. 613-617, 10 February 2005.

Instrumental Temperature Data from Hadley Centre / UEA CRU, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project via Wood for Trees.