Global Climate Models

Computer climate models are constructed based on scientists’ best estimate of how the climate functions. Inputs are identified and weighted, interactions among them are delineated in the code and outputs are iteratively fed back into the next run of the model. Graphs of these annual outputs can be built and displayed. The results of the runs are then compared against the actual observation in the real world to see if the models are correct. If they are correct the models are said to be validated and we can have some confidence that their projections into the future can be accepted. If Mother Nature does not corroborate the test runs of the models then they are said to be invalidated. When that happens and we hate it when that happens science says: modify or abandon the theory upon which the models are based. More inputs can be identified and included. The weightings given to each variable can be adjusted and the runs repeated. However, until the output agrees Mother Nature the theory behind the models cannot be considered to be accurate. No one knows the future and until we have validated climate models we cannot claim to know what that future will be like.We have no time travellers who can go there and report back.

Modern climate models give a starring role to CO2 as a main driver of climate change. Is this headline billing justified or should CO2 be relegated to a bit part in the climate drama? It is important to know the answer to this question because political and economic policies based on a false theory will lead to expenditures on solutions that waste precious resources.

So what has been happening in the world of climate models? Do the experts who construct and run them yet know what they are talking about? Do they closely track reality?.

A recent study of 73 different climate models (there are 73 because different models use different inputs and weight them differently. This is what is meant by ‘settled science’) that plotted the expected behaviour of the Earth’s temperature with the actual measurements of temperature discovered that all of them exaggerate the warming that has actually occurred. They all expected and projected a warmer world than we have experienced to date. CO2 based models are thus invalidated as accurate crystal balls. Under the assumption that CO2 is the thermostat controlling the planet’s temperature the models failed to anticipate the slower temperature rise which has morphed into a plateau and more recently a decline.  Anyone can extend a trend. We all learned how to do that by secondary school. The real genius is the one who can predict a bend in the trend. Our CO2 based climate models have failed to do that.

But CO2 based models are not the only hypothetical models in existence.There are climate models that give more weight to solar influences that track the planet’s temperature more closely than those that cast CO2 in the lead role. There is now a competition in the scientific marketplace for making sense out of the chaotic system that constitutes our planet’s climate. And the solar theories are in contradistinction to the CO2 based models and forecast not a warming world but a cooling one. They suggest that we prepare for cold not warmth.

Will we become human fricassee or a frozen dinner?

Do humans drive the climate or does the sun control our destination? Or could it be the computer that runs the models? Humorously, the climate models give different results depending on what type of computer they are executed. The models seem fraught wih inaccuracies of all sorts.

Mother Nature seems to have rendered her decision and she is a CAGW denier. Can we jokingly conclude that CO2 has caused warming to stabilize?

The CO2 based climate models imply that the polar regions should warm more quickly than elsewhere and that extreme weather should become more frequent and severe as CO2 continues to accumulate unabated into the atmosphere. Neither of these trends has been found in reality. In fact, with some forms of extreme weather the trend is actually down as evidenced by the lack of landfalling major hurricanes in the Us over the last 7+ years. The folks at ClimateDepot.com have put together a special report on extreme weather that examines the peer reviewed literature and details the unforeseen lack of an incase in severe weather around the world.

The CO2 based models  project a ‘hot spot’ in the tropical troposphere about 8-10 km in altitude that has also failed to materialize.

Climate sensitivity is the magnitude of the response of the average global temperature to a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere. This assumes, of course, that CO2 has a positive effect on temperature. The IPCC climate models have reported a climate sensitivity of between 2 and 6C. The IPCC AR reports document a climate sensitivity that keeps declining as time goes on. The settled science of climate sensitivity is settling down to a less scary scenario as cli sci matures.

A couple of studies that have come out after the cut-off date for submissions to the fifth IPCC advance report on the climate have arrived at values for climate sensitivity of half a degree and zero degrees. As the ‘settled science’ has progressed climate sensitivity to CO2 is slowly being relegated from that of the star to the role of a bit player in the drama or perhaps CO2 is not even in the play at all. But if these two papers don’t make it into the impending AR5 report we will have to wait another 5 to 7 years for the update that is known now. Government policy formulated on research that is not up to date can be dangerous and expensive endeavour.

Contrary to a major assumption of CO2 based climate models the sensitivity of the climate to a doubling of CO2 in our atmosphere has been grossly exaggerated and is nothing to worry about.

Mother Nature seems to have rendered her decision and she is a CAGW denier. Can we jokingly conclude that CO2 has caused the improvement in severe weather even as CO2 concentration has continued to grow unabated.

With climate models unable to make predictions that stick and a lack of ability to simulate the known climate of the past the search is on for factors that may have been missed in the formerly ‘settled science’ of climate change.

Weather watchers among the populace seem to have caught on that something is wrong with the consensus on climate change. They are noting the Mother Nature is in disagreement.

Warmist scientists who don’t like the way skeptics refer to evidence that doesn’t support the consensus narrative have taken to mockingly burning that evidence.

Can the complete collapse of CAGW be far behind?

German journalists have clued in to the fact the climate scientists have veered off the search for evidence in defense of an indefensible position and realize that climate scientists have embarrassed their discipline. The unexpected temperature plateau has become so obvious that even the NYT has acknowledged it as well as The Economist.

In a bid to save the CAGW agenda alarmists are associating every negative happening they can find or conjure up in their heads as a result of global warming. It would be quite humorous were it not for the seriousness that this issue be resolved in accordance with what is going on in the real world. The reputation of science is at stake. These are desperate times indeed for alarmists in search of converts.

Some people are seeing through the nonsense. This is encouraging.

If the proponents of a solar centered theory of climate change are correct we should be preparing for a colder world not a warmer one. The reduction of solar activity during solar cycle 24 is expected to continue with an anticipated even quieter solar cycle 25. Cold consequences are far more devastating to humans than would be those from a naturally warming world.

CO2 has been mislabeled a pollutant. Pollutants usually cause harm. But CO2 is an invisible trace gas that is essential to life on this planet. Perhaps it is this knowledge possessed by the public that has prompted the change is discussing carbon dioxide(CO2) as a pollutant and instead its demonizers now refer to it as carbon. In marketing their anti-CO2 policy they realized that demonising plant food would be a hard sell.

Do we owe CO2 an apology?

CO2, an invisible trace gas essential to life on Earth, is plant food. We exhale CO2 and help to feed the flora. In return they slip us oxygen of which we are rather fond in a mutually beneficial and amicable symbiotic relationship.

Bonus: plants grow better, stronger, faster because of the increasing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Apart from that CO2 has no redeeming features

We need to stop all activities aimed at decreasing human emissions of CO2.

CO2 is green. We need more of it not less. CO2 has been exhaled during the creation of this post. No living thing was harmed. Some even liked it. Let the plants dance.

Has CAGW Jumped The Shark?

Possible candidates for CAGW ‘jump the shark’ moment:

Y2Kyoto: I'll Miss Lloyd's of London - Small Dead Animals   h/t  Tom Nelson

Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!

Ernst & Young, 2008 - Climate change tops insurance risk list

Lloyds of London, 2013 - Climate change ranks 32nd in business risk

Below "piracy".

When insurance companies downgrade CAGW as a risk to the bottom of the heap the game is up. This is the definitive ‘jump the shark’ moment for CAGW. The public has already placed CAGW on the bottom of the heap.

Insurance companies have a monetary incentive to exaggerate the dangers of CAGW in order to allow them to charge higher insurance premiums for their coverage. Apparently, using whatever method insurance companies use to rank ‘business risks’ has led the famous Lloyds of London to drop CAGW to a more realistic risk location.

Another possible candidate, which occurred earlier in CAGW history, was the migration from Global Warming to Climate Change. This allowed all bad weather to be blamed on the addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere via the burning of fossil fuels. not just the warming events that were becoming less common as the world began to cool. When you can blame the latest storm, flood, drought, wildfire, hurricane or tornado on human induced CO2 atmospheric additions nothing can disprove CAGW. This is a definite ‘jump the shark’ moment. Falsification of theory must be possible in science or you have ‘jumped’ the shark’. Warmist wailing about each bad weather event becomes so predictable that the public sees it as a joke.

Climategate, which exposed the collusion of a cabal of climate scientists and their efforts to prevent contrary studies from seeing the light of day in the pal reviewed literature, is another possible candidate. When the game is up you have jumped the shark.

Repetition of false ‘facts’ which become known to an alert public is another possible candidate. Claiming the Arctic sea ice is melting when it isn’t becomes obvious with the continued failure of Arctic rowers such as those in 2011, 2012 and 2013 to complete their initially stated journeys. The CAGW paradigm suffers another blow from first hand observations of Mother Nature.

Repeated false forecasts with continual recasts of the dire results becomes stale after awhile and people stop listening and start laughing at the incompetence of the ‘expert scientists’. This does not enhance personal reputations or the reputation of science in the mind of the public. Forecasts of an ice free Arctic in the summer have continued to fail. CO2 in the Arctic does not appear competent to trap the ‘heat’ of the midnight sun in summer.

Rising seas swamping coastal communities is another false forecast with sufficient lead time to allow the unconcerned public time to laugh.

Warmists abandoning ship is another sign that CAGW has jumped the shark.

And how will this false climate crisis end?

My guess is that some form of carbon tax (it was all about getting money out of you) will be enacted at some point after which politicians will drop the subject. The MSM will not notice that no noticeable change in the weather ensued. Or the politicians will get lucky with their timing and the world will enter a cold period. Problem solved. New problem: global cooling. And round and round we go and where it stops nobody knows. Scientists seeking funding are always up for a new crisis to study. The MSM loves a good scare story. Politicians love to be the heroes.

Will the next generation be sucked into this charade? Who needs tickets?

POTUS Calls Mother Nature A Liar

Mother Nature calls the POTUS a denier.

With all the ad hominems flying among CAGW alarmists and skeptics is it any wonder that the truth is sacrificed on the altar of a political agenda(21). There is a lot at stake. Truth in science versus the government largesse gifted to green initiatives. Lots of green thrown at green plans could be lost if the opinion of Mother Nature is considered in the debate.

Hence CAGW skeptics are called deniers, flat earthers and anti-science in an attempt by alarmists to claim the moral and scientific high ground. Mis-characterize your opposition as stupid, backward, supporters of conspiracy theories and you condemn them with guilt by association. You disassociate yourself from them and present yourself as angelic. Verbal magic.

The POTUS goes on about the need to reduce  ‘carbon’, meaning, carbon dioxide pollution. Alarmists no longer say carbon dioxide or CO2 when talking about pollution. They want to associate carbon with evil and realize that people may be too smart to accept CO2 as a pollutant because they know that CO2 is plant food. It is harder to sell plant food as a pollutant but if they talk about carbon the association to something good like plant food is disconnected in the human mind. It is a marketing tool designed to win adherents to a political cause rather than an accurate representation of the real world thus betraying their angelic status. Substituting carbon for carbon dioxide is seen as a winning strategy and politics is all about winning. The truth be damned. It is no coincidence that science is about truth. Alarmists are all about marketing.

The POTUS has no time for climate change deniers and flat earthers. Does this mean he has no time for Mother Nature?

Mother Nature is going to make the POTUS resemble an idiot. She will have the POTUS look like he believes that too much human induced CO2 both warms and cools the planet. CO2 is bipolar like that. It can flip from its warming function to its cooling function depending on whether the weather is warming or cooling. No matter what the weather is doing it is CO2’s fault. And since we emit CO2 that makes it our fault. Pogo politics. As long as the blame can be pinned on the witches, er, humans, alarmists have a clear path to wreck the economy and make their crony capitalist  friends rich.

The POTUS does not care how stupid he appears. He will cite studies that support his viewpoint and ignore those that don’t. And yet, in science, all viewpoints are allowed on the table to be reconciled with contemporary theory. This is how science arrives at the truth about our world. It is the interaction between competing viewpoints from which the truth is distilled in science. In politics competing views are suppressed. Only the preferred one is allowed on the table.

The POTUS has subsidized green ‘solutions’ such as wind, solar and electric vehicles via grants, loans and subsidies to his campaign contributors. Many of them have simply taken the money and run folding their uneconomic businesses after a few months of qualifying operations. Others must continue to receive subsidies as they cannot compete in the marketplace without them. When the subsidies disappear so do the industries they spawned. Other governments in Europe have been finding out how expensive the subsidies can become and are now cutting back. Their gravy train is drying up while the POTUS continues on his merry way oblivious to the real world around him. The captain of the ship of state has lost his GPS.

The POTUS says the world is warming faster than expected while Mother Nature reports temperatures have flatlined for the last 17 years and have been decreasing for the last decade. Billions of dollars have been poured into Global Climate Models(GCMs) to simulate the workings of the climate. And the results have been less than stellar. The GCMs give a starring role to CO2 and overestimate its effect on the future climate. Mother Nature has her own idea as to what the average temperature of the Earth should be and she is tracking lower than the most optimistic GCM. It makes CO2 suspect as a main driver of climate change which in turn makes all the activities we have done to lower our CO2 emissions as totally unnecessary.

The POTUS says the weather is becoming more extreme as CO2 fills the air while Mother Nature shows him only three hurricanes in his first term - the lowest of any president. Is it surprising that this is not a talking point for the POTUS? Do you find it strange that the POTUS does not talk about the fact that Mother Nature has not sent a hurricane to Florida for over 7 years - the longest period of absence in the record? Do you find it strange that the POTUS does not talk about the fact that Mother Nature has not sent a major (cat3+) hurricane to the mainland of the US in over 7 years - an abnormally long time.

The POTUS tries to raise our fears by citing the forest fires raging in parts of the country without also putting them into context and reporting that Mother Nature’s pyrotechnics have been rather subdued as 2013 is one of the quietest seasons on record. Smokey the Bear is grateful.

The POTUS can rightfully lament, as do we all, the destruction in Moore, Oklahoma by a powerful tornado earlier this year but 2013 is also a quiet year for tornadoes. While all destructive storms are to be decried, from an historical context, Mother Nature has been extraordinarily kind to us by keeping her twisters to a minimum.

While extreme weather today may seem more costly it is because there are more of us and we have more stuff that can get in the path of a storm. But our improved technology, such as satellites and doppler radar, allow us more lead time to get out of the way so that the number of lives lost due to extreme weather is way down.

Mother Nature can be a powerful force for destruction. It is to be wished that some day we can give her something for her PMS( powerful monster storms) to calm her down. At this time we are at her mercy and can only adapt and rebuild after we take a hit.

Mother Nature is a CAGW denier. Obama is a reality denier. And Americans can tell the difference.

CO2 Bird Killer

h/t Tom Nelson

But of course: As cold weather continues to kill Minnesota birds, warmist Laura Erickson blames CO2: "this freakishly cold spring is consistent with predictions for a steadily warming planet"

Laura's Birding Blog: A very hard spring for birds

This year’s exceptionally cold spring is exacting a toll on many birds.

...

We can never blame any particular weather event, or any individual seasonal weather pattern, on climate change, but ironically, this freakishly cold spring is consistent with predictions for a steadily warming planet. Insurance companies are being squeezed by the huge upsurge in weather-related claims, but overall, people seem to feel either complacent or impotent to do anything about how much carbon we continue to squander. Some people have told me they’re just not going to worry about this sort of thing anymore because there’s nothing we can do about it anyway...Every distressed warbler I see reaffirms my commitment to protect these plucky little wanderers and the world we share.

We have no doubt that climate change can have a negative effect on animal populations. Darwin knew this a long time ago. He thought it essential to evolution.

Bolding is mine. Do people listen to themselves when they speak?

Let’s warm up to cool down. The cold will lead to warmth. Warmth produces cold. A is not-A.

Ok. And since increasing CO2 causes the world to warm therefore increasing CO2 also causes the world to grow cold. CO2 is bipolar.

CO2 is a magical gas. Left out of this scenario is the mechanism by which CO2 ‘decides’ to make it a warm or cold spring. Does it flip a coin? Is it PMS? We must know in order to make a successful prediction of future climate. Spring 2012 in the US was warm. Spring 2013 in the US was cold. Britain had a chilly and wet summer of 2012. In summer 2013 the Brits have experienced a heatwave. CO2 does it all.

CO2 is indecisive. Or it likes to experiment. What will it be like in 2014? We have no idea. But whatever weather we get the Global Climate Models(GCMs) predicted it and you are to blame. CO2 will decide when the time comes. Just look out your window. Whatever you see is what CO2 decided you should see.

We must reduce CO2 emissions to return CO2 to normal from its current psychotic state.

CO2 will trap heat if it damn well pleases and if it doesn’t it won’t. CO2 is a part time heat trapping gas. Like many in this economy it can’t get a full time position.

CO2 is fickle.

It had a perfect opportunity to trap the summertime assumed heat that caused the Arctic sea ice extent to reach a record low and it didn’t do it. We could have had a warm winter in 2012-2013 instead of the cold and snowy one we received. It had a perfect opportunity to trap the summer 2012 heat from the US drought and heatwave but it didn’t do it. All those triple digit temperature days wasted on CO2. All we got was a cold and snowy 2012-2013 winter and spring. CO2 didn’t do its job and animals and people lost their lives in the cold.

CO2, a heat trapping GHG, that can’t trap heat.

CO2, alarmists are counting on you. You are taxing their abilities to spin your behaviour in support of their political agenda. It would be so much easier if you were consistent from year to year.

Alarmists put you in charge of the climate and you let them down. People will stop believing the alarmists. People will begin to laugh at those who say CO2 is to blame for everything.

How can Al Gore continue to convince people of CAGW when you won’t trap the heat?

You may have to be replaced.

Ok, maybe not. What would become of the ‘settled science’? It might be harder to sell then.

You must trap the heat. It is the only way. Skeptics are becoming even more skeptical. Warmists are jumping ship to the SS Skeptic. Debates are happening. Horrors! The people will hear.

You have forced alarmists to become even more Apocalyptic, if that is possible.

You must live up to their billing for you. You are the star in the greatest drama the world has ever seen.

CO2 - it’s YOU. You are the ONE.

You must save us by destroying us. Destruction is Construction. Live it.

Wow. All that from the death of a few birds (RIP) due to cold weather. Like that hasn’t happened before.

We owe CO2 an apology.

CO2, a trace gas essential to life on Earth, is plant food. We exhale CO2 and help to feed the flora. In return they slip us oxygen of which we are rather fond in a mutually beneficial and amicable symbiotic relationship.

Apart from that CO2 has no redeeming features

We need to stop all activities aimed at decreasing human emissions of CO2.

CO2 is green. We need more of it not less. CO2 has been exhaled during the creation of this post. No living thing was harmed. Some even liked it. Let the plants dance.