!– expertise field is broken on staff.niwa so commenting out this expertise section for now
–

Commenting out expertise section: priceless!

Very instructive and very clear for the uninitiated too (me). I think I remember seeing that post but didn’t think much about it at the time, not having been exposed to Bayesian analysis anywhere else then.

I addressed disproving AGW in my comment above before I saw your link. I think I was getting to the same place as David’s summation but not in those Bayesian terms obviously. My reasoning didn’t necessarily reject AGW though “…the very existence of a credible counter-theory is a major dilution of AGW if not outright disproof”

My recourse to David’s accumulation theory was purely coincidence.

By “push down” do you mean push the peak to the left in distribution curves? I saw the curves by Nic Lewis somewhere at BH that I’m thinking of but I can’t find them again to provide a link for reference. This from AR5 will do though:-

https://www.e-education.psu.edu/drupal6/files/meteo469/lesson05/IPCCSensitivity.gif

>”AGW is basically a theory that proposes that increased CO2 levels will cause the earth to warm above pre-industrial levels.

But AGW is not the ONLY theory offering an explanation for post-industrial warming. I’d agree with your problem with AGW disproof IF there were no other theories to consider and we were only considering AGW therefore ECS becomes a valid concept and performance measure. And IF we accept the IPCC’s radiative forcing curve without question. But for example, accumulation theory as documented by David Stockwell adequately explains post industrial warming without recourse to GHGs. Stockwell:-

“…the 20th century temperature rise can be explained by the accumulation of an above average solar forcing of 0.1 W/m2 in the ocean over the period”

http://vixra.org/pdf/1108.0004v1.pdf

That one alternative theory alone effectively provides a counter-theory to AGW for the 20th century at least. It remains to be seen I suppose if it also provides a null for AGW in the 21st century but the very existence of a credible counter-theory is a major dilution of AGW if not outright disproof.

>’I don’t accept that AGW violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. I think that has been well and truly put to bed.”

By whom? Within climate science only? By physicists world-wide (are physicists even interested in AGW outside climate science)?

For my part, I’m inclined to defer to physics applications that are entropy specific, outside climate science, and for more critical applications than climate science e.g. this paper from the Entropy journal:-

‘Infrared Cloaking, Stealth, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics’

http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/14/10/1915/pdf

Quoting page 1918:-

2.2. Second Law of Thermodynamics
[...]
Perhaps the most natural and experiential version is due to Clausius: No process is possible for which the sole effect is that heat flows from a reservoir at a given temperature to a reservoir at a higher temperature. In the vernacular: heat flows from hot to cold, not vice versa. Other statements of the second law invoke thermodynamic efficiency, the most popular of which states there are no perfectly efficient heat engines or refrigerators. In other words, all spontaneous natural, technological, or industrial processes generate waste heat. Though simply put, these statements are profound because they assert that work (organized energy) degrades inexorably into a disorganized, less useful form: thermal energy (heat). In other words, there is a “thermal tax” to be paid on every macroscopic transaction in nature.

End quote.

This snippet “……(organized energy) degrades inexorably into a disorganized, less useful form: thermal energy (heat).” encapsulates for me the process of initial solar radiation input => terrestrial output of solar input => atmospheric output of terrestrial input in turn from solar input => terrestrial output of atmospheric input in turn from ……….and so on. The initial solar radiative energy input intensity is progressively degraded down the EM spectrum and conversion of radiation to other forms of energy occurs as the process goes on so that atmospheric DLR is an ineffective surface heating agent at the end of it all especially when radiation-material “tuning comes into play. In this instance, AGW does not violate the 2nd law but the 2nd law effectively counts against AGW.

It’s the Clausius version where the contention arises when people only look at the system in question as two reservoirs, one warmer (the surface) than the other (the atmosphere). I’m adverse to that simplification for a number of reasons that I wont go into, preferring instead the overall system of sun-earth-space and the thermodynamic efficiency application above.

Also from that paper:-

2.2. Second Law of Thermodynamics (page 1918)

The second law has been called “the supreme law of nature” [38]. It has been verified in countless experiments, and arguably no law has been better tested. Nonetheless, over the last 15 years, the second law has come under unprecedented scrutiny. More than 60 mainstream journal articles, monographs and conference proceedings have raised dozens of theoretical and experimentally-testable challenges to its universal status—more than the combined total during its previous 160 years history [5–11,39–96].

And,

Conclusions (page 1932)

For now, the road to SL-IRSM is uncertain. First, although the second law appears vulnerable from a theoretical standpoint, the ultimate proof of its violability can only (and is still yet to) be provided by experiment alone. Even then, the technical feasibility of SL-IRSM is an entirely separate issue. Still, as this study attempts to demonstrate, the high stakes of second law subversion seem to warrant a thoughtful look over the horizon. Given the many theoretical challenges and the good outlook for experiments, this author predicts that the first experimental violation of the second law will be recognized within the next five years, in which case the heat will most certainly be turned up on IRSM.

http://landshape.org/enm/david-evans-on-greenhouse-gas/

The CSIRO Mk3.6 RCP6.0 #1 and #2 2000 – 2012 performance is nowhere near UKMO HadGEM3 hindcast performance. And take a look at the mugs analyzing the projections in comments!

Looking at the simulation runs vs observations:-

http://www.met.reading.ac.uk/~ed/bloguploads/hiatus.gif

First, the trend of HadCRUT4 is rising since 1998 as shown in Ed’s smoothed graph (must be less than 7 yr smoothing) but the 7 yr smoothed inflexion is at 2002. From 2002, the trend of HadCRUT4 is falling:-

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/trend

Secondly, neither of the simulations – #1 or #2 – mimic 1990 – 2012 observations any where near reality. #2 red is ridiculous. #1 blue is the better of the two up to 2012 but there’s no climate drivers to justify the level from 2012 onwards (as Rog alludes) – it’s just Foster and Rahmstorf over again.

These people are queuing up to hang themselves now.

It will make for strange bedfellows (a variation on Pete’s euphemism here) if the dangerously warm faction of the NZ Royal Society personified by Kieth Hunter is forced to “jump into bed with” (Pete again) long established luke-warmers (Watts, Nova, Lindzen) and those pragmatists pointing to much lower CS (you Andy?) by temperature levels of a non-alarming nature.

That would reduce the debate to a two-sided affair again pitting luke-warmers newly joined of necessity by ex-warmists and the pragmatic against the previously unrecognized coolists (for want of a better identifier). Can’t wait. Or is all over then because that could never happen given the identities involved?

What was the on-topic topic in this post again? Oh yes, CO2 is a good thing.

What will the simulations do next?
Posted on January 18, 2013 by Ed Hawkins

Recent conversations on the recent slowdown in warming has inspired an animation on how models simulate this phenomenon, and what it means for the evolution of global temperatures over the next few decades.

http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2013/what-will-the-simulations-do-next/

Rog Tallbloke gets in early in comments

Hi Ed,
Model runs with different ‘weather’ conditions demonstrating that “a slowdown in warming is not inconsistent with future projections.” doesn’t tell us anything about the future evolution of surface temperature on our planet. This is because the model doesn’t represent the physical reality of the way the Earth’s climate operates.

AGW is basically a theory that proposes that increased CO2 levels will cause the earth to warm above pre-industrial levels.

For this to be not true, one or some of the following would have to be true
- the energy balance measurements are wrong.
- there is no energy imbalance
- the incoming energy does not warm the Earth, at least to a noticeable degree. i.e the radiation-centric theory is overwhelmed by other factors such as convection etc

..and maybe others

I don’t accept that AGW violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. I think that has been well and truly put to bed.
Given that AGW is normally expressed in terms of climate sensitivity (S) to a doubling of CO2, we typically express the AGW theory as a probability distribution function (pdf) that shows a probability that a certain value of S is true, between zero and an arbitrary large number

Years or decades of no warming would (or should) push down the pdfs for S so that the average values are lower. Given the statistical (Bayesian) nature of climate predictions, the concept of AGW being true or false doesn’t really exist.

Of course, if S is centred around a value of 1 or somewhere less than 2 (as has been suggested by Nic Lewis and other studies too) then AGW becomes an academic curiosity and little else

One would think so.

One has a Sir Humphrey feel about this.

By the way, this cryptic NIWA page doesn’t give a lot away. One wonders what is afoot?

http://www.niwa.co.nz/people/keith-hunter

Yes debatable, but I don’t know how even the luke-warm position can be upheld if there is no continued warming evident to take future ENSO-neutral levels above the ENSO-neutral level of the current regime being typified by the 2012 average. The GHG forcing from rising GHG levels must – if AGW is valid – be identifiable as even a minor trend over and above what can be attributed to natural variability even though a one or two decade standstill is said by AGW proponents to be somehow consistent with AGW.

The next 5 years have yet to play out of course but I note that even for the last decade Hansen ,Sato and Ruedy have gone for La Nina minimums as evidence of what I’m describing as required for the next 5 years if AGW is even a valid but luke-warm phenomenon. Their conclusion doesn’t hold up well though just looking at GISTEMP let alone looking at other series.

Compare the 4 La Nina minimum events since 1998:-

RSS (no warming in the minimums there, cooling in fact)

http://junksciencearchive.com/MSU_Temps/RSSglobe.png

GISTEMP (only the 2011/12 event was warmer, the other 3 were at the same level)

http://junksciencearchive.com/MSU_Temps/GISSglobal.png

>”I haven’t paid much attention to the Dragon’s argument. Do they claim that the GHE is non-existent?”

Slayers, not Dragons Andy. CO2 is the Sky Dragon in their book ‘Slaying the Sky Dragon’.

There’s no such claim overtly stated in PSI “About” or “Mission Statement” etc but PSI is a venue in which arguments refuting GHE can be documented and published because there’s nowhere else that makes that undertaking. No journal would risk the controversy of publishing such papers and peer-review would take forever or not at all anyway once The Team got involved.

So you have to go to the PSI publications to get to refutation of GHE e.g. Alberto Miatello’s review:-

http://principia-scientific.org/publications/PSI_Miatello_Refutation_GHE.pdf

Or Dr Pierre Latour’s articles in ‘Latest News’:-

http://principia-scientific.org/component/search/?searchword=Dr%20Pierre%20R.%20Latour&searchphrase=all&Itemid=149

>”If so, what of this energy imbalance that we keep hearing about?”

You’ve got me there, can’t answer for them. You would have to communicate directly with someone appropriate at PSI for an answer from their perspective. Could be a worthwhile exercise. I do however get these 3 results by searching PSI for “imbalance”, 2 of which are about Joe Postma papers so he’s probably the one to direct the question to:-

http://principia-scientific.org/component/search/?searchword=%20imbalance&ordering=newest&searchphrase=exact

That’s about as far as I can take this PSI-related part Andy.

>”It is not unreasonable to assume, however, that sensitivity to CO2 should be somewhat revised downwards.”

One would think so.