Wednesday 3 April 2013

Big Puzzles

Treacherous Thermometers

It is now unofficially official.  When The Economist finally acknowledges something as true--whilst previously having persistently argued against it--one can be pretty certain that it's all over, Rover.  So, it's now official that global warming has not occurred now for twenty years.  According to The Australian:
In a lengthy article this week, The Economist magazine said if climate scientists were credit-rating agencies, then climate sensitivity - the way climate reacts to changes in carbon-dioxide levels - would be on negative watch but not yet downgraded. . . . The Economist says the world has added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010, about one-quarter of all the carbon dioxide put there by humans since 1750. This mismatch between rising greenhouse gas emissions and not-rising temperatures is among the biggest puzzles in climate science just now, The Economist article says.

The climate changers are starting to acknowledge that empirical reality is not aligning with their speculations.

 But the fact that global surface temperatures have not followed the expected global warming pattern is now widely accepted.  Research by Ed Hawkins of University of Reading shows surface temperatures since 2005 are already at the low end of the range projections derived from 20 climate models and if they remain flat, they will fall outside the models' range within a few years.  "The global temperature standstill shows that climate models are diverging from observations," says David Whitehouse of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.  "If we have not passed it already, we are on the threshold of global observations becoming incompatible with the consensus theory of climate change," he says.
Paradigm shifts are not linear.  They are complex.  One normal reaction when observational data disagrees with prevailing orthodoxy is to double down.  Support for the prevailing orthodoxy becomes stronger, more querulous and frenetic.  Thus, James Hansen of NASA who has been called the godfather of global warming hypotheses.  Here is a classic double down.:
Another paper published by leading climate scientist James Hansen, the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, says the lower than expected temperature rise between 2000 and the present could be explained by increased emissions from burning coal.
Let's get this straight.  Increased CO2 emissions from burning coal has actually prevented temperatures rising.  Riiiiight.  The bow just got considerably longer.  

Another normal response of the establishment paradigm is to ask for more time, more study, more observations.  So here in The Economist article, as presented by The Australian:
But it does not mean global warming is a delusion.  The fact is temperatures between 2000 and 2010 are still almost 1C above their level in the first decade of the 20th century.  "The mismatch might mean that for some unexplained reason there has been a temporary lag between more carbon dioxide and higher temperatures in 2000-2010. Or it might mean that the 1990s, when temperatures were rising fast, was the anomalous period."

The magazine explores a range of possible explanations including higher emissions of sulphur dioxide, the little understood impact of clouds and the circulation of heat into the deep ocean.  But it also points to an increasing body of research that suggests it may be that climate is responding to higher concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide in ways that had not been properly understood before.  "This possibility, if true, could have profound significance both for climate science and for environmental and social policy," the article says.

There are now a number of studies that predict future temperature rises as a result of man-made carbon dioxide emissions at well below the IPCC best estimate of about 3C over the century.
The Commentariat and the establishment has bought into the global warming paradigm hook, line, and sinker.  That means substantial vested interests are now aligned behind seeing the paradigm stay firmly in place.  Plenty of UN officials for one.   "Green energy" companies needing state funding and taxpayer support for another.  A large gaggle of scientists whose research grant funding relies upon the authenticity of the warming paradigm for still another interest group--not to mention academic reputations.  Media who rely on sensationalism to peddle their wares for yet another.  We expect the old paradigm will die slowly.   The rumble in the climate jungle will go on for a while.  Nevertheless The Economist's volte face, although qualified, is not insignificant. 

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