Bishop Hill David Kennedy on climate sensitivity
Jul 18, 2013 Climate: sensitivity While on the train on the way down to London on Tuesday, I found myself reading David Kennedy's evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee inquiry into Carbon Budgets. Kennedy, readers are no doubt aware, is the chief executive of Deben's Committee on Climate Change.
Kennedy's remarks on climate sensitivity are, well, extraordinary:
If it was true that climate sensitivity estimates are now half what they were two years ago, that would raise a question. Is it still appropriate to be on this path, or should we take our foot off the pedal? On that specific issue I can tell you there is not any new evidence that makes us think differently about climate sensitivity. Some people would have you think that is the case, but if you look at the science, there is not a fundamental shift on that important issue of climate sensitivity, and I would not expect the IPCC, when it reports in October, to say the range for climate sensitivity has shifted significantly. Let’s see what they say. I would not expect them to say it has shifted. That is one of the things that will feed into our review, so we will be looking at the IPCC report before we do a report on the science and the international context in November, but the other thing is the call for evidence asks the specific question: is anything different, particularly on climate sensitivity as well as some of the other key things?
"..not any new evidence that makes us think differently about climate sensitivity"? Now that is a brazen statement if ever I saw one.
Reader Comments (22)
Brazen statement? I think you mean lie.
The church has decreed that the scientific concensus is that the Sun does indeed go round the Earth and so misinformation from heretics will be accepted!
Slightly OT but of interest to BH readers. Special guest star "Dr. No".
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/17/the-met-office-hide-the-decline-starring-doctor-no/
http://climateaudit.org/2013/07/17/more-met-office-hypocrisy/
But he's probably right about the IPCC report. It doesn't matter what science is out there, if it's not in the report it doesn't exist.
Sounds like the fix is in.
AR5 will say, "Business as usual."
"...so we will be looking at the IPCC report before we do a report..."
Towards the end of Jurassic Park -the movie which was set at a time when the CO2 levels were, uhm, circa 2000 ppm (yes, two thousand parts per million)- a banner which reads "Dinasours rule the world" is set loose and falls to the ground. It is all for dramatic effect of course.
Today, with CO2 levels less than 400 ppm and as I read someone of some importance saying "...so we will be looking at the IPCC report before we do a report...", I see a banner above his head that states "climate scientists rule the world". That banner too shall fall soon.
It's worth noting that the next IPCC report is their last ace. They’ll be hoping that by the time the impact of it is wearing off, the climate will have obliged by warming up. It gives them 5 or 6 years of ‘but the report says’. They’re not planning another one and instead will try to maintain the momentum with ocean acidification reports or weather studies on extreme parts of the planet.
For some relevant commentary, you might try here.
Apparently the IPCC "response to new evidence is little more than sticking their fingers in their ears and singing 'la la la I can't hear you'". If they do "brazen it out", Kennedy is at least proven right on that part of his statement.
He is rigth . the chances of the IPCC saying they got it wrong are zero , the chances of them saying its worse than we thought , and so keeping the gravy train rolling , very good indeed.
The sensibility issue is only based on model runs and as we know models can be, and it seems always are, wrong.
The actual real time science shows atmospheric CO2 increases occur AFTER surface temperature rises with a 800-1000 year delay. This is due to outgassing from the oceans as the water temperature increases.
Climate sensitivity is one of the panoply of unverified and untestable notions cooked up by "climate science".
Its distinctive feature is that even AGW skeptics (or, at least, 97% of them) believe in it and think it is worth discussing.
"Climate sensitivity is one of the panoply of unverified and untestable notions cooked up by "climate science".
Its distinctive feature is that even AGW skeptics (or, at least, 97% of them) believe in it and think it is worth discussing."
Jul 18, 2013 at 11:11 AM | Registered CommenterMartin A
---------------------------------------------
I usually bite my tongue pretty hard and say nothing, Martin.
"Climate-sensitivity" is an abstraction of the models and not a measurable physical quantity. In essence it is an attempt to take what the models predict will happen, and reduce it down to a single simple number.
I think most of us have a weakness for liking out concepts and numbers to be simple, but reality doesn't always grant us that.
I read this Kennedy stuff and I just think - "brick wall".
Thanks for the link. I read through the whole thing. It is fascinating in a horrible sort of way, like watching a wounded animal die. Agreed, the comments on sensitivity are breathtaking. Nonetheless, Kennedy may yet come to regret making this claim: "If it was true that climate sensitivity estimates are now half what they were two years ago, that would raise a question. Is it still appropriate to be on this path, or should we take our foot off the pedal?" The quote is worth preserving.
For those who have not read it, the evidence he reported suggested that emissions of CO2 rose by three percent in a year. Immediately converted to a fall of one percent, by discounting the effects of the "cold winter" and noting a move from gas to coal (here is a typo in the Report, but I think he meant this). Frankly, it seems unwise to pin significant policy choices on the hope that winters are not cold.
Keep on message...
Keep on message...
Keep on message...
I'm agreeing with TinyCO2 too much for my own good these days. They're going to lean heavily on the next IPCC report for the next 5 years or so, therefore its important for them to only let compliant papers in again, to perpetuate the "latest scientific thinking" on this.
No matter what happens in the next five years, "the latest scientific thinking" will be there to support their increasingly outlandish claims.
They really do think that if it's not "in the report" then it can't be true.
Consider the next IPCC report as the £32,000 ‘failsafe’ point in a game of ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’
I'm sure their thinking runs that if they can get everything potentially damaging or contradictory removed from the next report they can publish safely. Then, in the next five years it doesn't matter what happens, what evidence in no matter how scientifically convincing or accepted comes along. The faithful be able to point to the fifth report and say, “Ah, but this is the current state of the science. This is very interesting new information and we will include it in the sixth report, but until then we can't do anything. This is how modern science works. Very sorry."
And in the meantime all attempts to stop the gravy train will be referred, by politicians and activists, to the ‘consensus’ of the fifth report.
Meanwhile all the criminals will be planning their exit strategies.
Freeman Dyson
First, the computer models are very good at solving the equations of fluid dynamics but very bad at describing the real world. The real world is full of things like clouds and vegetation and soil and dust which the models describe very poorly.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/letters-to-a-heretic-an-email-conversation-with-climate-change-sceptic-professor-freeman-dyson-2224912.html
Who you gonna believe, Freeman Dyson or right wing crazy Matt Diddley ?
If you want understand the impact of weather events, read Roger Pielke Jr, not a lying little rat like David Kennedy.
Anyone who has cosy discussions with Lord and Lady Muck about climate sensitivity is playing for the other side.
I think I'd need to be stuck on a train or a plane to read through that Environmental Audit Committee transcript. I dipped into it here and there, and from the depths of my dismay I could not help but wonder what a Lewis Carroll or a Jonathan Swift might do with this material as a trigger. Then I noticed the sun was still shining, and the garden beckoned. I am resolved to be more serious and conscientious on some other day, but right now 'I'm out' as they say on the Dragons' Den.
The IPCC brazen?? Why would anyone ever think otherwise, they've behaved that way for the last decade at least.
Remember when it was discovered by real scientists that the Himalayas were NOT going to disappear by 2035, as per the last IPCC report? Most of the glaciologists' community was taken aback, and started a movement to get things right. The head of the IPCC, however, Mr. Pauchari, called the findings that the Himalayan glaciers weren't disappearing by 2035 "Voodoo science." Until he couldn't credibly say that any more.
Pauchari didn't say, "Let's look into it." He brazenly maintained, by his statement, than anyone finding anything wrong in the IPCC report must himself or herself be wrong, must be spreading voodoo science.
Can anything top that for brazen?
The IPCC is not a scientific organization, it is a political one, with political goals and operating in a political fashion. It wants the world to take on climate change, and to share their alarmism. It doesn't want to hear backtalk, it doesn't want to hear and won't listen to legitimate issues raised by legitimate scientists, and will smear anyone that gets in its way, if it can. That's the way politicians deal with opposition, not the way science should work.
Here’s David Kennedy at the Frontline debate to launch a new Greenpeace website:
Kennedy is, by his own admission, a storyteller.https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20121002_bf
Praying for high Climate Senitivity his job is riding on it