Just like the Strategic Management playbook Sam:-

Scenario Planning

“Scenario planning is not about predicting the future. Rather, it attempts to describe what is possible. The result of a scenario analysis is a group of distinct futures, all of which are plausible. The challenge then is how to deal with each of the possible scenarios.”

“Some of the benefits of scenario planning include:

* Decision-makers are better able to recognize a scenario in its early stages, should it actually be the one that unfolds.”

http://www.netmba.com/strategy/scenario/

As I see it, the correct application of the precautionary principle in the present context of uncertainty is to assume that catastrophic warming, catastrophic cooling and a long period of relative stasis are all three EQUALLY likely (until someone can definitively demonstrate that one scenario is overwhelmingly certain). This would mean that we plan for ways to deal with any one of the three possibilities — and place increasing reliance on engineers, architects and town-planners to safeguard against the worst that is probable — in either direction. We dare not abandon plans for the improvement of the human condition in a mild, hot or icy future. There is nothing wrong with wanting a clean environment and ameliorating our promiscuous use of materials. But hysteria is never a good motive for anything.

At any rate, I would strongly advise global warming enthusiasts not to apply their predictive powers to the stock exchange (driven by another impossibly complex set of power functions).

We must beware these millennial panics. The world will not necessarily end in a year that is a multiple of one thousand, or one hundred just because we have ten fingers.

i) Long term trend of increasing surface temperatures, for at least the past 150 years
ii) Theoretical support for a warming effect as greenhouse gas concentration increases
iii) Long term trend of increasing ocean heat content
iv) Decline in Arctic sea ice since 1979, with record minimum in 2012
v) Melting of glaciers and ice sheets
vi) Sea level rise since 1961
vii) Results from climate model simulations
.
Summary: The highest quality green evidence is the long term temperature record and theoretical support for greenhouse warming. However, these provide only indirect support for P1. The highest quality evidence directly supporting P1 is ocean heat content and Arctic sea ice, although the utility of this evidence in support of P1 is associated with quality issues, confounding factors, and short length of record. The green evidence arguably provides support for the proposition that the anthropogenic greenhouse effect has not stopped; however the green evidence provides relatively weak direct support for P1 (primarily ocean heat content and sea ice, which are associated with significant uncertainties).

# # #

>”i) Sea level rise since 1961″ – No green evidence there.

>”[OHC] quality issues, confounding factors, and short length of record”

Major bone-of-contention: 0 – 700m ARGO-era OHC, UKMO (-ve) vs NODC (+ve):-

http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/figure-7.png

>”vii) Results from climate model simulations” – ‘Fraid not:-

http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/christy-fig.jpg?w=808&h=622

Not looking good for green

‘Pause’ : Waving the Italian Flag

Posted on October 17, 2012 | 874 Comments

by Judith Curry

[...]

The implications of the 16 year plateau are this:

a) the IPCC detection arguments rely on a clear separation between the signals from forced climate change and natural internal variability. Numerous climate model analyses find that it is very unlikely that a plateau or period of cooling extends beyond 15-17 years in the presence of anthropogenic global warming.

b) failure of the climate models to predict a >17 year plateau raises questions about the suitability of the climate models for detection and attribution analyses, particularly in terms of accounting adequately for multidecadal modes of climate variability

c) comparison of the observed temperature trend with the IPCC projection of 0.2C increase in the early 21st century raises issues about the models’ reliability in terms of sensitivity to external forcing and ability to deal with natural internal variability

[...]

Italian Flag analysis

[Proposition] P1: There is significant (or discernible) evidence of anthropogenic global warming over the past 16 years

[...]

Green (evidence for):

[...]

Red (evidence against):

i) No significant increase in surface temperature since 1997
v) Growth of glaciers and ice sheets
vii) Failure of climate models to provide a consistent and convincing attribution argument for the warming from 1910-1940 and the plateau from the 1940′s to the 1970′s
viii) No increase since 1997 in atmospheric heat content from UAH, RSS
.
Summary. The red list provides strong direct evidence against P1, in the form of the plateau in surface temperature and atmospheric heat content.

[..]

White (uncertainties, unknowns):

[...]

Summary: the white part of the flag is frankly pretty dominant here, with the net impact of these uncertainties acting against the green evidence.

Conclusions

[...]

Given that we are in the cool phase of the PDO and a strong El Nino is unlikely for the next decade, the plateau may continue for at least another decade. Latif has made this argument, whereas most other ‘establishment’ scientists seem either puzzled by the pause or don’t expect it to continue beyond the expected 15-17 year period.
.
And if the PDO and solar factors are sufficient in strength to counter the anthropogenic warming, then we need to ask the question as to how much of the warming in the 1980′s and 1990′s were ‘juiced’ by the warm PDO and transition from cool to warm AMO, plus a solar max.
.
With the IPCC focus on anthropogenic forcing, these other issues have received insufficient scrutiny. The main ‘war’ with skeptics is over detection and attribution. The skeptics have raised some valid issues (notably the PDO/AMO and solar); I hope that the ‘pause’ will stimulate some systematic reconsideration of attribution arguments.

http://judithcurry.com/2012/10/17/pause-waving-the-italian-flag/#more-10215

Re “1990′s were ‘juiced’” (possibly), Wild et al 2012 (introduced up-thread) shows that the CMIP5 models do not parameterize solar anywhere near observations.

Quoting in regard to solar SW:-

Observed changes at 23 BSRN sites since early 1990s: 23 longest BSRN records (totally 306 years) covering period 1993-2010 [18 years, page 47]:
20 stations with increase (11 significant)
3 stations with decrease (0 significant)

Change: 2.7 Wm-2/decade

CMIP5-simulated changes at 23 BSRN sites since early 1990s [page 48]:
Max. model slope (MIROC): 2.1 Wm-2/decade
Minimum model slope: -2.7 Wm-2/decade

Mean model slope: 0.5 Wm-2/decade

http://www.gewex.org/BSRN/BSRN-12_presentations/Wild_FriM.pdf

1990s ‘juiced’ by PDO/AMO/Solar? I think so – Temp/PDO+AMO+Sunspot integral correlation 0.96.

Another lesson is that debates over forecasts and uncertainty often overshadow knowledge that is far more certain. Paul Somerville and Katharine Haynes of Macquarie University note wryly that “no action has yet been taken against the engineers who designed the buildings that collapsed and caused fatalities, or the government officials who were responsible for enforcing building code compliance.”[6]

The real tragedy of L’Aquila may not be that scientists led the public astray with their bumbled discussion of predictive science but, rather, that our broader obsession with predictions blinds us to the truths right before our eyes.

>>>>>>>

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/22/pielke-jr-on-lessons-of-the-l%CA%BCaquila-lawsuit-comparisons-to-lessons-learned-on-nws-forecast-falures/#more-72835

Couldn’t be more relevant to the current climate science situation.

NINO3.4 looks OK. Sure it’s not just oscillating normally (we know you’re busting for an El Nino)?

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/monitoring/nino3_4.png

>”…maybe the clmate really is changing….”

Yep, it is. Get used to a La Nina dominated climate for a while, just like ENSO was 1950 – 1976:-

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/ts.gif

BTW, I too read the entire article looking for reference to the actual index but instead found Andy’s quote. One look at the ENSO index and it’s just a case of what goes around comes around.

In the end, though, everything hinges on learning, unambiguously, how sensitive the climate is to greenhouse gases. Sceptics believe it is not particularly so. But the fact is that, without the data, no-one knows for certain

The sad thing is that I had to read through this entire piece of content-free drivel before getting to the money quote

Thanks