Ronald Bailey Refuted On Evidence for Man-Made Climate Change?

Roy Spencer and Christopher Monckton school me on climate change

Dreamstime

Last week, I wrote an article asking, "What Evidence Would Persuade You That Man-Made Climate Change Is Real?" Let's just say that it provoked some readers a bit. Now some participants in the climate change science controversy are explaining how I misinterpret or misunderstand what is going on. For the convenience of Reason readers I link to a couple below.

University of Alabama in Huntsville climatologist Roy Spencer posted his response in, "Answering Ron Bailey's Question" earlier this week. I briefly respond in the comment section to Spencer. I will mention that I intend to hold those predicting rapid warming to their prognostications:

…with regard to the falsifiable predictions I cite – I intend to hold them to it, e.g., if global average temperature is not rising at a rate +0.25 per decade by 2020 that will strongly tend to discredit the more catastrophic projections of future warming.

I do ask:

I am curious – if GMT does begin a sustained rapid ascent in the next few years such that the long term trends projected in the models begin to look plausible – how would that bear on your views about man-made contributions to climate change?

Next comes Christopher Monckton over at Watts Up With That with his reponse "How to Convince a Climate Skeptic that He Is Wrong."

First, Monckton is against the "tax gobblers" - by which he means those who want to use a "climate crisis" to justify the expansion of government. We agree. Please note that I began by stating in the subhed of my article: "Scientific evidence does not mandate any particular policy." Let's say it again: Progressives are flat out wrong when they try to claim that man-made warming necessarily implies adopting their preferred economic policies. That was one of the main points I was trying to make in my article.

In one response Monckton asks:

Is CO2 concentration rising to dangerous new levels?

No. Mr Bailey says CO2 concentration is 30% higher than the 800,000-year peak. So what?

Again, there are no definitive answers, but a new study in Nature Climate Change, "Causal Feedbacks in Climate Change" reports that the researchers …

…demonstrate directly from ice-core data that, over glacial–interglacial timescales, climate dynamics are largely driven by internal Earth system mechanisms, including a marked positive feedback effect from temperature variability on greenhouse-gas concentrations.

Whether or not such increases will become "dangerous" depends upon how high climate sensitivity, the temperature reponse to doubling atmospheric carbon dioxide, turns out to be. An issue that I have pointed out is still unsettled science. 

Monckton even mocks me from being wrong about the number of glaciers:

Actually there are more than 160,000 of them and nearly all of them are in Antarctica…

He could have clicked on the article from which I derived (and rounded) the figure to which I linked:

The World Glacier Inventory (WGI) which has extensive metadata on 132,000 glaciers and ice caps (WGMS and NSIDC, 2012). I also use the Global Land Ice Monitoring from Space (GLIMS) database which has glacier outlines and some metadata for 96,000 glaciers and ice caps (Armstrong et al., 2012). Finally, I use the newly compiled Randolph Glacier Inventory v2 (RGI) which contains, primarily, 170,000 glacier outlines with little additional metadata for each record.

 

Grinsted

Map of glaciers from article above.

Folks, as I have said, my best judgement is that the preponderance of the evidence - not beyond a reasonable doubt - suggests that man-made global warming could become a significant problem later in this century. Given my ideological commitments I would much prefer (and do hope) to be wrong. As noted, I intend to monitor the predictions made by those who think warming will be rapid and dangerous. If they fail, believe me, I will happily report those failures.

In any case, I link to these two responses as a reader service as a convenience for those interested in this discussion.

Hat tip Steven King.

Comments

[Scarecrow Repair]

O Bailey, art thou having some fun here?

Will all the popcorn add to global warming?

[Russell]

As an alternative to this fish slapping match , < a href +" http://rabett.blogspot.com/201.....eve-koonin" here's an actual NASA climate scientist fisking the spin of the Chief Scientist of British Petroleum

[Dweebston]

if GMT does begin a sustained rapid ascent in the next few years

I can't speak for GMT but as a resident of New Mexico I can assure you MTZ is accelerating rapidly the older I get.

[WTF]

Why ignore the fact that the predictions of sustained rapid warming from 20 years ago have already failed? Why does this not already falsify the hypothesis?

[LynchPin1477]

Presumably the new models and predictions incorporate new information. In other words, they can learn from past mistakes.

[Old Man With Candy]

Presumably the new models and predictions incorporate new information. In other words, they can learn from past mistakes.

It's a little-known fact that there is no Latin word for "ad hoc."

[JFree]

Actually the IPCC report from a few years ago implied that the climate models have a big embedded fudge factor. I forget what it was called then. But basically the bigger the deviation of reality from the models, the bigger the fudge factor will grow. And if, by chance or choice, climatologists predict that the fudge factor grows by less than it actually does; then they can actually claim a higher degree of certainty over time that 'humans are causing climate change'.

Personally I find it funny. Kind of like chimps pounding on a piano and pretending that the resultant sound is a great concerto.

[Enough About Palin]

Why do you hate Charles Ives?

[Old Man With Candy]

That wasn't Cage?

[Homple]

Wonderful models. They predict everything right after it happens.

[Raston Bot]

The Arctic sea ice extent is keeping their hopes of human suffering alive.

Goddamnit, Arctic sea ice extent, why can't you be like the Antarctic sea ice extent!?

[Suthenboy]

I don't think you understand how this works.

You make a prediction that is falsifiable. Long before it can be falsified you make another prediction. You wait a bit, but before the first one can be falsified you make yet another prediction. By the time the first prediction is falsified no one remembers or cares about it.

We are causing climate change that will turn the southeast US into a desert.

We are plunging the world into another ice age. By the turn of the century (2000) north america will be buried in ice.

Global warming will cause a billion deaths by the year 2012.

The entirety of polar ice will be melted and seas will rise 300 feet by....uh I don't remember when that was supposed to happen.

See how that works? We are all discussing temp rises in the future and not all of the failed ones of the past.

The sky is always falling, it just never hits the ground.

[Dweebston]

We've already lost the war to feed humanity. Mass starvation will be the chief characteristic of the 1970s.

[Marty Feldman's Eyes]

My high school chemistry teacher, in the mid-80s, told us that by the year 2000 we wouldn't be able to go outside without protection because of the ozone layer disappearing.

[R C Dean]

So, IOW, if GMT suddenly starts confirming CAGW hypotheses, will that change my mind about CAGW?

It would be a good start. But this is kind of question-begging, don't you think?

"If new facts come to light that prove me right, will you agree with me?"

Let's stick with the real data, not fantasy data.

[Dweebston]

Timezones. I'm being silly.

[Kaptious Kristen]

I gotta OT this, my apologies...

Comcast apparently has been triggered and othered and microagressed against.

I liked Poor Decision Making Rob Lowe the best.

[Kaptious Kristen]

(plus I had no idea Rob Lowe was a conservative)

[Timon 19]

He is?

[Kaptious Kristen]

Apparently.

[Timon 19]

I dunno. Seems like he's at most a waning Hollywood liberal who makes a few noises about conservative issues over time.

He worked for Dukakis. Dukakis!

[Kaptious Kristen]

He's hard to pin down, but he's made it very clear he's a fiscal conservative and regards conservatives as more logical than liberals.

[Timon 19]

I did see that (the logical part). Which is not a commonly-held position on the left by any means.

[Kaptious Kristen]

But he's also a Duke fan, so, you know.

[Timon 19]

Ew.

I don't get all the people talking about wind degrading their picture. I can get through the entire winter with zero problem, unless seriously heavy rain happens. So that makes spring and part of fall sort of an issue, but only for short durations. And of course our July frog-stranglers that are over as soon as they start.

Wind is NEVER a problem. Snow is not a problem. Only really heavy rain to the southwest.

[Kaptious Kristen]

I have cable (Cox, and they're awesome), so I wouldn't know.

[Timon 19]

I have TWC for internet only, and while it's reliable as hell, their customer service is inexplicably terrible. Worse than ineffective. And as a major technology provider, they have a terrible website that doesn't support easy credit card info changes (you lose a month of auto-pay every time ANYTHING changes with your CC).

[The DerpRider]

My absolute favorite is when he's shooting dice and says watch the kids watch is the step dad's problem now. Hilarious.

[AlmightyJB]

I love those commercials

[AlexInCT]

The shoulder shaking and hooting and hollering that follows the dice roll right after that comment are just priceless too...

[Dweebston]

The hatred heaped on Comcast is understandable but at the same time lamentable. Critics seem to think deep-sixing Comcast will improve internet service rather than further consolidating it. But argue that maybe the field should be less regulated, you may as well be accused of drowning kittens in a bathtub.

[Suthenboy]

Holding people to their falsifiable predictions who have a fifty year long perfect record of failed predictions has a very predictable outcome.

[BiMonSciFiCon]

Erlich's going to get it right this time, I swear!

[adolphowisner]

My Aunty Mackenzie recently got a nearly new blue Toyota Venza by working part time online... website here ????????????? http://www.jobsfish.com

[Aloysious]

Thanks, Bailey. I appreciate this kind of article; lots of grist for the (mental) mill.

[BigT]

"Given my ideological commitments I would much prefer (and do hope) to be wrong."

Why does one impact the other?

Even if I believed in AGW and tipping points, I would not be advocating socialist policies. Would you? Is your understanding of economics, freedom, and incentives so shallow?

[Ron Bailey]

BT: Precisely my point. However, if it is a problem, then what should be done - nothing or something - becomes an issue. But the fact that is a problem doesn't tell one what policies should be pursued.

[Idle Hands]

It does to the people advocating for it. The result of these types of debates is always greater taxes, less freedom, the creation of a larger problem or a greater expansion of the current one. You just become a useful cog in the collectivist machine.

[mtrueman]

"The result of these types of debates is always greater taxes, less freedom"

I agree. So the challenge for libertarians is a solution that leads to less carbon emission, less tax and more freedom. Any ideas?

[Suthenboy]

Yeah. Carbon emissions have met or exceeded what was called for 10 years ago all on their own due to technological advances alone. Back off and let the market handle it.

Also, plant trees. How many have you planted lately?

[mtrueman]

I planted some cabbages yesterday. And that was only in the comments at Reason.

[Sevo]

Suthenboy|4.9.15 @ 1:46PM|#
"Yeah."
mtrueman lies constantly and admittedly. You may as well argue with the chimp in the monkey house.

[mtrueman]

Some cabbages refuse to stay planted.

[NotAnotherSkippy]

What problem? What is the perfect amount of CO2 in the atmosphere?

[mtrueman]

"What problem?"

The problem you refer to in your post of 1:08 pm.

Do you believe there is an ideal amout of CO2 in the atmosphere? You're asking the wrong person.

[NotAnotherSkippy]

What post at 1:08pm do you think I made? You are the one claiming we need to reduce CO2, so you have to tell me what the "right" amount is.

[mtrueman]

"so you have to tell me what the "right" amount is"

You have to get over the fact that there is no right amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Do you really need to be convinced of this?

[NotAnotherSkippy]

Oh my dear sweet God. How did I miss this gem? Are you telling me that the correct amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is 0? Oh that's precious. That's awesome. Are you truly that stupid?

At 180ppm plant growth stops. Would you care to guess what happens after that?

Even assuming we had magic plants that could grow without CO2, do you have any idea what the surface temp of the planet would be? Here's a hint: remember to layer up.

[mtrueman]

"Oh my dear sweet God"

No need to be so formal.

[Beautiful Bean Footage]

Do you believe there is an ideal amout of CO2 in the atmosphere? You're asking the wrong person.

Then Sierra tango foxtrot uniform.

[DesigNate]

Well, there's always the option of not fucking over our economy because China and India are where we were 50 years ago (emissions wise). Especially since we've already reduced our emissions levels to pre-Kyoto, if I'm not mistaken.

Another solution would be to ban anyone advocating for carbon taxes/CO2 exchanges from traveling on anything that emits carbon dioxide. That isn't necessarily a "libertarian" solution though.

[mtrueman]

Instead of global warming, if only the problem was called American Warming. We'd have already arrived at a solution.

[DesigNate]

That's funny, cause it always seems that the AGW proponents expect America to pony up the cash or slash their emissions first.

In fact, the President explicitly demanded it like last week.

[mtrueman]

"cause it always seems that the AGW proponents expect America to pony up the cash or slash their emissions first."

May I be the first to congratulate you on your victimhood.

So I still haven't seen a libertarian solution that reduces taxes and emissions and increases freedom. Whining, yes. Solutions, no.

[BigT]

But the fact that is a problem doesn't tell one what policies should be pursued.

Man is the ultimate adaptable species. That is what makes man the dominant species on the planet. Any impacts of climate change - AGW or the much more likely coming decades of cooling - should be dealt with as they arise. All the impacts will be slow to occur and won't be sudden disasters of biblical proportions despite what the Chicken Littles of AGW predict.

The proper policy is to ignore all the hype and deal with what really happens. To date every 'measurable' effect is lost in the noise of natural variation.

[mtrueman]

"if I believed in AGW and tipping points, I would not be advocating socialist policies"

If there are non socialist policies meant to deal with the issue, I haven't seen them. I have seen many here holding out for some innovative source of energy that will pull our chestnuts from the fire, but from what I've read of Ron, I think he leans towards socialistic, centrally planned solutions like greater reliance on nuclear generation, carbon sequestration, and geo-engineering.

If you did believe in AGW, what policies if any would you advocate?

[Idle Hands]

Nothing. It's a problem that will take care of itself.

[mtrueman]

"Nothing"

And I thought prayer would be the answer. Never again will I underestimate the desire to avoid taking responsibility for our actions.

[NotAnotherSkippy]

Nuclear only appears socialist because government and greentards like you have distorted the market so severely.

[mtrueman]

How many nuclear power stations do you think need to be built?

By the way, does the oil industry appear socialist to you? Does the Carter Doctrine ring a bell? I've yet to see a libertarian here repudiate it.

[NotAnotherSkippy]

I'm not claiming any need to be built. And generally the oil industry is not socialist. The Carter Doctrine is irrelevant, but you're good at that.

[mtrueman]

"The Carter Doctrine is irrelevant"

Yet another libertarian who refuses to repudiate the Carter Doctrine. This place is full of them. Irrelevant? I guess as long as you don't have to pay for it, ie don't pay any taxes to the US government, you might have a point.

[DesigNate]

It's self evident to most anyone that's posted here a while that we are a pretty non-interventionist crowd. And since Carter wasn't a libertarian president, no one really sees the need to defend or repudiate his doctrine of military intervention to protect our national interest in the Gulf.

*It's fucking stupid to get caught up in any wars over there as everyone usually comes out a loser.

[mtrueman]

"our national interest in the Gulf"

It is the Persian Gulf we're talking about here. You have a national interest there? Are you Persian?

[DesigNate]

Nice.

Not only are you disingenuous enough to try and make it sound like I think we have national interest there, even though that part is immediately preceded by his doctrine (obviously Carter's), but you completely ignored the part where I repudiated such.

Class. Act.

[mtrueman]

Sorry if I misunderstood you. I thought you thought you thought you had a national interest in the Persian Gulf, notwithstanding your feelings for Carter and his Doctrine. Anyhow, I assume you see where I am going with this line of questioning. A multi decade, multi billion dollar commitment to safe-guarding the supply of oil from a foreign land sounds mighty socialistic to me, even though the benefactors style themselves as capitalists, even to greentards like me.

[R C Dean]

If there are non socialist policies meant to deal with the issue, I haven't seen them.

Isn't "every man for himself" a policy?

[mtrueman]

"Isn't "every man for himself" a policy?"

I suppose it is. Unfortunately, it doesn't play to man's strengths which is the unique ability for huge numbers of people to act in concert to achieve some given goal. I don't understand why libertarians are so willing to ignore our most potent tools hand in favour of solutions such as do nothing. I have still yet to see a proposal that reduces taxes and emissions and increases freedom. Unless libertarians can come up with something along those lines, they have nothing of value to add to the conversation.

[jay_dubya]

youre not exactly tge standard bearer of conversational relevance mtrueman

[mtrueman]

I've managed to have kept you reading. How about a proposal to reduce emissions and taxes and increase freedom? Still nothing? Food trucks? More guns & drugs? Anything?

[MJGreen]

If they fail, believe me, I will happily report those failures.

Uh-huh, unless they threaten your invites to cocktail parties!!

Thanks for this, Bailey. I'm glad you got some serious, in-depth responses to your question.

[I. B. McGinty]

Ron, maybe you can do some research and post an article on this. Most of the conversation (from what I can tell) about global warming and climate change seems to be centered around surface data, which represents the surface and not the atmosphere. Could you find a study that examines actual atmospheric data (radiosondes, etc.) to see if there is actual warming or cooling at 850mb, 500mb, 300mb, etc.? I know this dataset will be limited to the last 60-70 years, but it should be brought out in the discussion.

[NotAnotherSkippy]

Satellite records do that. Go to the UAH site. Spencer has also posted some radiosonde data.

[Cytotoxic]

One point that Bailey made in his article was weak. Shrinking glaciers: they've been doing that since the end of the last ice age.

[Dweebston]

Why do you hate polar bear cubs, Cyto?

[NotAnotherSkippy]

Bailey's right on this. Glacierss ebb and flow even during an interglacial. Right now they are ebbing. 500 years ago they were flowing.

[Tommy_Grand]

If you ask the unskeptical: "What evidence would prove to you that GW aka climate change is either not very dangerous (to the human population) or dangerous but natural?"

about 80% say: "nothing! because it IS very dangerous and it IS man made."

about 15% give a variant of "I will stop believing when all, and i mean ALL, the top liberal academic "climate experts" explicitly admit that they have been dead wrong for essentially their entire careers"

about 5% say: "I will consider the evidence. If climate conditions are basically unchanged in 25-30 years, i will admit that there may not have been an imminent climate-change emergency, but, regardless, we MUST undertake drastic changes asap because the odds are very, very strong that -- to stop the impending, global, man-made climate change disaster -- we must act NOW."

[Tony]

Evidence that contradicts current near-universally accepted evidence. Same with anything else, whether the earth is flat, etc.

[Suthenboy]

Bullshit.

Empirical observation that you are seeing right now isn't convincing you that you were wrong twenty years ago when you believed in global warming. More evidence will not make any difference either.

[Tommy_Grand]

Tony,

When we discuss "near universal acceptance," I ask good mook mafia POPULISTS: What % of hard working Americans do you mean when you say "near universal acceptance?" The self described POPULISTS roll their eyes at me and type: "OMG!! The fact that a 95 million fat, white, red state hillbillies, half of whom lack college degrees of any kind or, at BEST, hold state college credentials, doubt the imminent catastrophic danger posed global warming aka climate change, is IRRELEVANT. More than 90 percent of the peeps who count are convinced."

100+ million Americans doubt that human action has warmed the globe 1 degree in the last 60 years. Their view certainly may be DEAD WRONG, but its existence undermine the whole "universal acceptance" bit...at least for those of us who do not limit our consideration to what people who work DC believe.

[Eggs Benedict Cumberbund]

His near universal acceptance is based in the discredited Cook paper.

[Tony]

An alarming number of Americans believe in angels too; of course I'm referring to what experts and their peer-reviewed research shows.

Mass ignorance is a problem for all sorts of reasons, one of which is the claim that markets are efficient and solve problems like this all by themselves.

Educated adults would revise their ideology in light of the facts. Of course that's not what usually goes on around here.

[Eggs Benedict Cumberbund]

Tony you don't understand doubling sensitivity/H20 feedback, even argued against in a hilarious but moronic attempt to bolster your own little CO2 cargo cult.

You don't understand falsification nor do you really know what a null hypothesis is.

You are way over your depth here. You are just repeating the Cook/97% meme that has been thoroughly discredited. So just shut the fuck up. For you to even mention education in your posts regarding CAGW is just about the most moronic thing you have ever asserted on these boards.

[Tony]

Good thing I stumbled upon H&R where the real experts hang out.

Computer geeks and engineers should never talk about science. It's so painful to behold.

[Beautiful Bean Footage]

Yeah and neither should trolls who get paid by OFA to fuck up threads.

[Eggs Benedict Cumberbund]

But you don't understand science so how would you know if it's painful or not. Really, your rant about H20 feedback a few weeks ago was fucking hilarious please do more of that.

What real difference do you think there is between a design engineer building a jet engine and a some sort of research scientist?

Again you have no clue regarding the hard stuff that grown ups do for a living.

[Tony]

What real difference do you think there is between a design engineer building a jet engine and a some sort of research scientist?

Someone building a jet engine doesn't really even need to know if the earth is round or flat. I don't know why they are more prone to being creationists and climate change deniers. It's one of the mysteries that have haunted me since college. Some say it's because they actually never learn how to do science, just how to apply their Aspy brains to some productive tinkering. Doesn't stop them from claiming they know more about science than actual scientists. Doesn't stop them even when all the actual scientists are against them, not to mention middle school physics.

[DesigNate]

It's so much easier when you're just allowed to execute them, amirite?

[Tommy_Grand]

Tony is quite right that many, many Americans think angels exist. Perhaps the majority of Americans believe in angels. I'm not sure, but I must agree that LOTS of regular folks believe in angels despite a total lack of scientific proof. Even President Obama said "Christ's birth made the angels rejoice and attracted shepherds and kings from afar. He was a manifestation of God's love for us." Maybe he's right, too. Personally, I'm skeptical.

Yet, I believe in Charlie's Angels?

[Xeones]

Because science is a popular democracy.

[Tony]

Well it's not whatever bullshit rightwing conspiracy theorists crap out.

[AlexInCT]

The left politicized science and now pretends that the fact nobody respects or believes these cunts predicting the end of the world because of all the lies, cheating, and bullshit anymore, but the problem is everyone else?

Science is not political. It is not defined by consensus. For something to be a scientific fact it must be reproducible and true all time. The first time it fails, you are back to the drawing board to try again.

There is no other scientific discipline where the priesthood in charge has gotten so much wrong, and yet, still demands the peasants remain faithful to the idiotic cause. You AGW true believers are nothing but a failed cult which keeps moving the end of the world date so you can keep shoveling the same shit.

Woe humanity if you ever convince enough sheep with your lies. The evil that your kind will do to save the world will far outstrip even your worst doomsday predictions. Stalin and Mao will be rolling in their graves with jealousy.

[Tony]

Accusations devoid of facts come pretty fucking cheap. What reproducibility do you think we are lacking? We're taking measurements and writing them down. Not just once, but by many people and by many means. You don't know the first thing about this subject, you're just lashing out and calling names. You have lost this debate, not that there ever was one, and you're acting as a typical sore loser moron. I'm sorry for you and for the people around you.

[widget]

Whatever, we're further away from colonizing Mars than we were in 1969.

[Kaptious Kristen]

The alphabet soup surrounding climate change (or whatever the fuck it's called this week) is worse than the government.

[kbolino]

...demonstrate directly from ice-core data that, over glacial?interglacial timescales, climate dynamics are largely driven by internal Earth system mechanisms, including a marked positive feedback effect from temperature variability on greenhouse-gas concentrations.

The most that can be proved is correlation, not causation. Since we don't have "a detailed history of the Sun from 1Mya to today" it's kind of hard to look at the ants dying and rule out the microscope we can't see. This is like the morons who say "poverty is causally linked with obesity". No, poverty is causally linked with malnutrition and starvation. People who have some but not a lot of money might spend a disproportionate amount of it on food, but that's not causality.

[kbolino]

I will freely admit that is not the best analogy and is just something I wanted to rant about.

[Eggs Benedict Cumberbund]

There is also a new study by Nic Lewis, Judith Curry, et al, that shows estimates of doubling sensitivity to be much lower than the IPCC lets on.

Bailey is just cherry picking studies that fit his predisposition. It's confirmation bias all the way down.

[Tony]

Someone who cites Judith Curry and Nic Lewis to the exclusion of everyone else doesn't get to bitch about other people cherry picking.

[Eggs Benedict Cumberbund]

Its an addition to the already cited papers...dipshit. "There is also..."

Which is kinda my point, there is credible science of both sides, thus the skepticism.

[NotAnotherSkippy]

Peter Stott et al 2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 014024 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/1/014024

Otto et al Nature Geoscience 6, 415?416 (2013) doi:10.1038/ngeo1836

Aldrin et al Environmetrics 2012;23: 253?271

You are in way over your head.

[Tony]

May be, but at least I'm not cherry picking and confirmation biasing all over the place. You could produce a pristine study by the most credible experts that says CO2 isn't in fact a greenhouse gas. It would still only matter in the context of all the rest of the science out there. You people are fucking idiots.

[Russell]

How dare Reason < A href =" http://vvattsupwiththat.blogsp.....-will.html" contradict my shirtmaker !

Ron is challenging the bona fides of a Viscount whose title dates back all the way the Vice-Presidency of Richard Nixon

[morganovich]

so, how does one have global warming without the warming?

http://wattsupwiththat.com/201.....uary-data/

the NOAA said:

"The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.""

we are WAY past that.

it's over 18 years for the RSS.

we can now hit 15 years even excluding the huge super el nino of 1998.

they did lay out what would falsify their models, then, it happened. yet they pretend their confidence in the predictions went up.

this is fraud, pure and simple.

and this is actually worse than it looks.

we have a CO2 level that is higher than their highest case.

we have temperature below what was their lowest case (based on CO2 actually dropping).

so, you get high case input, low case output and claim the model works?

nope.

straight from ar5:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/201.....us-a-poll/

[Eggs Benedict Cumberbund]

This is all true. Trenberth also said basically the same thing. But you see we read about this on a denier blog so that negates their obviously damning testimony.

[Hal_10000]

There's a certain comfort in seeking Monckton trot out the same long-debunked talking points, deceptive graphs, incomplete studies and general horse manure he's been dragging out for the last twenty years. It would be nice if he could up with a original piece of baloney.

[NotAnotherSkippy]

Well he's still learning to turn data sets upside down by studying Mann.

[Jackand Ace]

Well, thanks for posting. I enjoyed reading Spencer's response. It always amazes me that whoever opines on climate, their motives are always questioned. And we all do it.

Not sure if you followed this, but I guess American Physical Society released a draft to its membership on its new statement regarding climate, looking for feedback from them. And the draft was put online. I note that Judith Curry was singing their praises initially when skeptics such as she were asked to take part in the process, but now that the draft signals a reiteration of all APS concerns as stated in 2007, she has nothing but bad things to say about the process, as well as their motives.

http://judithcurry.com/2015/04.....te-change/

It only gets more heated...global temperatures and climate debate. Guess that only got reinforced for you this past week.

[julenochoa]

"my best judgement is that the preponderance of the evidence - not beyond a reasonable doubt - suggests man-made global warming could become a significant problem later in this century." But that is a ludicrously weak proposition: even the staunchest denier of warming could assert it. Anything is logically possible, so obviously this could be so. No evidence whatsoever is required to assert it so why are you pretending evidence has got something to do with it? Indeed, you haven't even got the probabilities right, since the probability of any proposition of the form 'possibly X' where X is a logical possibility, is 1. So this proposition is well beyond a reasonable doubt. This kind of weaselling with the word 'could' is a tactic of the alarmists, who seek by it to insinuate a far stronger proposition, that it is probably that man-made global warming WILL become a significant problem later in this century. So which is it: are you merely asserting logical possibilities, in which case no one should be disagreeing with you, or asserting something significant?