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Dry ice sublimates at -107 F, your thermometer will probably freeze solid! This experiment will not show what you expect even when preformed correctly; there will be no measurable differences in the temperature, even if you make the boxes out of infrared transparent salt; this experimental result is at least 2 centuries old. Even Al Gore with all of his resources, couldn't make it show what he wanted without chicanery

Her comments, in an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, seem certain to ignite a furious academic row. She said this affair had to be compared to the notorious âClimategateâ(TM) scandal two years ago.

She's accusing him of "hide the decline". ie. He shows continuing warming through the last decade whereas most credible analysis shows that the average global temperature hasn't warmed and may have cooled slightly.

That's neither here nor there, since it has been widely demonstrated that if you actually plot his data, you will find that there has been no warming for the last ten years, contrary to the statements he has made to the press:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/29/uh-oh-it-was-the-best-of-times-it-was-the-worst-of-times/

Now the denialists are denying the denialists' study because it conflicts with denialism! LOL!

Actually when I first read about this study, I thought it didn't contribute anything new, and was just repeating past experiments under Koch funding to rule out any possibility of bias due to TEH GLOBAL AGW CONSPIRACY!

But this study is actually based on a much more robust data set than any other before in history, so it at least more concretely proves the observed warming record:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204422404576594872796327348.html

Since the Russian heat wave was determined by NOAA to not be related to Glowbull Warming, that makes real proof that this "new" analysis is just more of the same old political panic-mongering bullshit.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/19/noaa-on-the-russian-heat-wave-blocking-high/

Because that's the real issue that most skeptics have been questioning of late. Anyone who isn't an idiot knows that the earth's climate is ALWAYS changing (and always has been).

Well, I don't like to call these prominent 'skeptics' idiots (those are your words, not mine), but they certainly have considered this to be questionable: Roy Spencer, Steve Macintyre, Joseph D'Aleo & Anthony Watts,

But even the "skeptics" were willing to accept the findings of the Berkeley study. Watts had famously promised “I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.“

...Unless of course the Berkeley study proved them wrong that is. Watt's is now back peddling: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/20/the-berkeley-earth-surface-temperature-project-puts-pr-before-peer-review/

Because that's the real issue that most skeptics have been questioning of late. Anyone who isn't an idiot knows that the earth's climate is ALWAYS changing (and always has been).

Well, I don't like to call these prominent 'skeptics' idiots (those are your words, not mine), but they certainly have considered this to be questionable: Roy Spencer, Steve Macintyre, Joseph D'Aleo & Anthony Watts,

But even the "skeptics" were willing to accept the findings of the Berkeley study. Watts had famously promised “I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.“

...Unless of course the Berkeley study proved them wrong that is. Watt's is now back peddling: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/20/the-berkeley-earth-surface-temperature-project-puts-pr-before-peer-review/

Yeah, because Watts would never blog about climate research that hasn't been published and peer-reviewed.

Climate skeptic goalposts recede faster than the glaciers.

Yeah, because Watts would never blog about climate research that hasn't been published and peer-reviewed.

Climate skeptic goalposts recede faster than the glaciers.

how smug of you. 2 sec google work hit this http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/08/the-surfacestations-org-paper-accepted/

Being that you are the arbiter of who qualifies as a scientist, perhaps you would like to share your qualifications to such. Any published peer-reviewed scientific work to back yourself up?

Isn't the correct procedure to wait until something is peer reviewed before comment - remember Cold Fusion? According to Anthony Watts, a well-known climate skeptic, there are several errors in the paper mainly to do with comparison of different data timelines and siting of temperature record stations.

Most climate skeptics agree that the world is undergoing "climate change" the larger question is whether humans should do anything about it.

Because that's the real issue that most skeptics have been questioning of late.

Yeah, Anthony Watts says in his little whine:

The issue of “the world is warming” is not one that climate skeptics question, it is the magnitude and causes.

Which confuses many of his slavish followers who keep trying on the "no warming since 2000" bullshit. He has to gently correct them a couple of times.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/20/the-berkeley-earth-surface-temperature-project-puts-pr-before-peer-review/#more-49601

But see also:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/20/the-berkeley-earth-surface-temperature-project-puts-pr-before-peer-review/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/24/nasa-notes-sea-level-is-falling-in-press-release-but-calls-it-a-pothole-on-road-to-higher-seas/

"The sea level was going up at about 3 mm per year. In the last year it fell about 6 mm. So that’s a change of about a centimetre of water that NASA says has fallen on land and been absorbed rather than returned to the ocean. But of course, the land is much smaller than the ocean so for the ocean to change by a centimetre, the land has to change about 2.3 cm.

To do that, the above map would have to average a medium blue well up the scale and it’s obvious from the map that there’s no way that’s happening. So I hate to say this, but their explanation doesn’t hold water "

Continuous ad hoc special pleadings when observations don't match predictions is the sign of cargo cult science :)

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/23/the-texas-centered-drought-versus-1918-1956-and-1934/

Take a closer look at the regional nature of 2011 and the much larger nature of the 1930s, and then spot the outlier :)

We are well within the forecast temperature envelope. But models do significantly underpredict current sea level rise rates.

You've got a temperature envelope on realclimate that could *cool* ever 10 years and still fit! Really? That's what you're going to hang your hat on?

And now that current sea level rise rates have been shown to mismatch the models, what is your next step?

a) assume the models are falsified, and start from new assumptions;
b) come up with an ad hoc special pleading to explain away the contrary observation.

I'll assert that you end up with B, not because it's particularly unreasonable, but because you've failed to come up with strictly falsifiable hypotheses - a GCM is made up of dozens of moving parts, and some completely disjoint primary assumptions. What we need is a clear list of all the primary assumptions, and what observations would falsify those assumptions.

What I have essentially said is that we can measure the temperature change over time and we know how the human caused forcings have varied over time. The total natural forcings can be determined from those two items.

We may understand how certain human activity has varied over time, but we have no reasonable chance of knowing which of those activities are forcings of any measurable magnitude. UHI, soot emissions, CO2 emissions, agriculture patterns, water policy and water management, and probably thousands of other human activities have all changed over time, and in some cases, we might even have decent measurements or estimates of it...but to understand the magnitude and sign of any of those assumed forcings, or even the total of those assumed forcings? That's a stretch.

An interesting post that might help speak to the idea of small forcings: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/04/the-1-solution/

And it is likely (P>70%) that the natural forcings have decreased in the last 50 years.

Not sure if I understand what that means - are you saying natural variability has changed in the past 50 years? Or are you trying to say that natural variability over the past 50 years would have been negative on the temperature scale?

How would you falsify either of those assertions?

On the other hand, as you increase atmospheric CO2, plants need less water and can grow in areas they couldn't before.

We've already demolished your "theory" that temperatures have been falling.

The expected warming trend for the past 15 years hasn't been there, period. You were open to the idea of a lower trend than predicted, for two solar cycles, would falsify your hypothesis. Let's wait another 9 years, and then talk.

The medieval warm period isn't even worth mentioning because it was a regional effect, not a global one,

False. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/29/the-medieval-warm-period-a-global-phenonmena-unprecedented-warming-or-unprecedented-data-manipulation/

As soon as you demonstrate what benefit we could have had if it had gone up .64C in the past 50 years.

Argument by "you first?" Really? If you can't quantify any damage that has occurred over the past 50 years due to .32C temperature rise, why should I believe that there's going to be damage in the next 50 years if we have .32C temperature rise?

I'm more than happy to admit both benefit and harm are pure speculation - are you?

The natural forcings have been decreasing at about -0.05C/decade in that time.

Speculation. There are myriad natural forcings we don't have any reasonable quantification for (which is really part of the problem).

Hurricane activity is a regional effect that is not directly linked to global temperature. They also are not modeled in global climate models.

Okay, so we'll admit that "catastrophe" as measured by world wide cyclonic activity increase isn't going to happen because of increased average global temperature...I was trying to help you with some possible quantitative harms you could measure, but so far, I don't see any.

Note that real scientists admit there are both positive and negative consequences

Really? Skeptical science? And a bunch of papers on regional effects rather than global ones? Really?

Look, until you're able to *quantify* on a global scale what you mean as harm, you've got nothing but hand waving there. Modeled catastrophes, particularly on a regional level, do not reflect reality on a global level.

Put another way, if you're going to assert that there is a 5.74% increase in heatwave deaths, and then only look at 1989-2000 and only at 50 cities, you're not going to get much credibility. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/19/some-facts-about-deaths-due-to-heat-waves/

"In an article entitled, “The impact of global warming on health and mortality,” published in the Southern Medical Journal in 2004, W.R. Keatinge and G.C. Donaldson of Queen Mary’s School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of London note:

“Cold-related deaths are far more numerous than heat-related deaths in the United States, Europe, and almost all countries outside the tropics, and almost all of them are due to common illnesses that are increased by cold.”

“From 1979 to 1997, extreme cold killed roughly twice as many Americans as heat waves, according to Indur Goklany of the U.S. Department of the Interior,” Singer and Avery write. “Cold spells, in other words, are twice as dangerous to our health as hot weather.”"

Also see: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/18/the-deadliest-us-natural-hazard-extreme-cold/

We've already demolished your "theory" that temperatures have been falling.

The expected warming trend for the past 15 years hasn't been there, period. You were open to the idea of a lower trend than predicted, for two solar cycles, would falsify your hypothesis. Let's wait another 9 years, and then talk.

The medieval warm period isn't even worth mentioning because it was a regional effect, not a global one,

False. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/29/the-medieval-warm-period-a-global-phenonmena-unprecedented-warming-or-unprecedented-data-manipulation/

As soon as you demonstrate what benefit we could have had if it had gone up .64C in the past 50 years.

Argument by "you first?" Really? If you can't quantify any damage that has occurred over the past 50 years due to .32C temperature rise, why should I believe that there's going to be damage in the next 50 years if we have .32C temperature rise?

I'm more than happy to admit both benefit and harm are pure speculation - are you?

The natural forcings have been decreasing at about -0.05C/decade in that time.

Speculation. There are myriad natural forcings we don't have any reasonable quantification for (which is really part of the problem).

Hurricane activity is a regional effect that is not directly linked to global temperature. They also are not modeled in global climate models.

Okay, so we'll admit that "catastrophe" as measured by world wide cyclonic activity increase isn't going to happen because of increased average global temperature...I was trying to help you with some possible quantitative harms you could measure, but so far, I don't see any.

Note that real scientists admit there are both positive and negative consequences

Really? Skeptical science? And a bunch of papers on regional effects rather than global ones? Really?

Look, until you're able to *quantify* on a global scale what you mean as harm, you've got nothing but hand waving there. Modeled catastrophes, particularly on a regional level, do not reflect reality on a global level.

Put another way, if you're going to assert that there is a 5.74% increase in heatwave deaths, and then only look at 1989-2000 and only at 50 cities, you're not going to get much credibility. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/19/some-facts-about-deaths-due-to-heat-waves/

"In an article entitled, “The impact of global warming on health and mortality,” published in the Southern Medical Journal in 2004, W.R. Keatinge and G.C. Donaldson of Queen Mary’s School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of London note:

“Cold-related deaths are far more numerous than heat-related deaths in the United States, Europe, and almost all countries outside the tropics, and almost all of them are due to common illnesses that are increased by cold.”

“From 1979 to 1997, extreme cold killed roughly twice as many Americans as heat waves, according to Indur Goklany of the U.S. Department of the Interior,” Singer and Avery write. “Cold spells, in other words, are twice as dangerous to our health as hot weather.”"

Also see: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/18/the-deadliest-us-natural-hazard-extreme-cold/

We've already demolished your "theory" that temperatures have been falling.

The expected warming trend for the past 15 years hasn't been there, period. You were open to the idea of a lower trend than predicted, for two solar cycles, would falsify your hypothesis. Let's wait another 9 years, and then talk.

The medieval warm period isn't even worth mentioning because it was a regional effect, not a global one,

False. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/29/the-medieval-warm-period-a-global-phenonmena-unprecedented-warming-or-unprecedented-data-manipulation/

As soon as you demonstrate what benefit we could have had if it had gone up .64C in the past 50 years.

Argument by "you first?" Really? If you can't quantify any damage that has occurred over the past 50 years due to .32C temperature rise, why should I believe that there's going to be damage in the next 50 years if we have .32C temperature rise?

I'm more than happy to admit both benefit and harm are pure speculation - are you?

The natural forcings have been decreasing at about -0.05C/decade in that time.

Speculation. There are myriad natural forcings we don't have any reasonable quantification for (which is really part of the problem).

Hurricane activity is a regional effect that is not directly linked to global temperature. They also are not modeled in global climate models.

Okay, so we'll admit that "catastrophe" as measured by world wide cyclonic activity increase isn't going to happen because of increased average global temperature...I was trying to help you with some possible quantitative harms you could measure, but so far, I don't see any.

Note that real scientists admit there are both positive and negative consequences

Really? Skeptical science? And a bunch of papers on regional effects rather than global ones? Really?

Look, until you're able to *quantify* on a global scale what you mean as harm, you've got nothing but hand waving there. Modeled catastrophes, particularly on a regional level, do not reflect reality on a global level.

Put another way, if you're going to assert that there is a 5.74% increase in heatwave deaths, and then only look at 1989-2000 and only at 50 cities, you're not going to get much credibility. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/19/some-facts-about-deaths-due-to-heat-waves/

"In an article entitled, “The impact of global warming on health and mortality,” published in the Southern Medical Journal in 2004, W.R. Keatinge and G.C. Donaldson of Queen Mary’s School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of London note:

“Cold-related deaths are far more numerous than heat-related deaths in the United States, Europe, and almost all countries outside the tropics, and almost all of them are due to common illnesses that are increased by cold.”

“From 1979 to 1997, extreme cold killed roughly twice as many Americans as heat waves, according to Indur Goklany of the U.S. Department of the Interior,” Singer and Avery write. “Cold spells, in other words, are twice as dangerous to our health as hot weather.”"

Also see: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/18/the-deadliest-us-natural-hazard-extreme-cold/

Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Roemer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100, 363-406.

http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/141453-scientists-put-aside-politics-and-focus-on-climate-science

http://www.servirglobal.net/tabid/409/Article/497/nasa-to-focus-more-on-studying-climate-change.aspx

http://articles.latimes.com/1994-03-03/local/me-29585_1_animal-science-curriculum

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/29/yale-to-greens-abandon-climate-change-focus-on-energy/

Fair enough - we've got near 15 years so far, so we can possibly falsify this in what, 9 more years?

We've already demolished your "theory" that temperatures have been falling. We demolish it 3 times a week. Temperatures are only falling if you pick outlier years as your starting and ending points or just plain ignore the data. Temperatures have been climbing steadily. Humans are responsible for significantly more than half of that.

Sorry, I can't let that one slide - asserting that the null hypothesis should be that warming is unequivocally bad for the biosphere and humanity is unjustified. At the very least, we can assert that a warmer world leads to more arable land and more plant life, and more support for all life - and we can look at the Medieval Warm Period and the Holocene optimum as evidence of that.

Didn't we just go through this one as well? This is more proof that you're not interested in reality, you're just trying to convince people who don't know the science that you could be right. First, you're assuming that because the word "optimum" is there, that somehow conditions world wide would be better that it is now. And to some extent you are right, but not because of temperature, because of stability. The climate was stable during the Holocene Optimum, and somewhat cooler than it is now. There was also an increase in humidity that restricted the growth of desert regions. There is no reason to believe the erratic climate we're creating will result in any wide spread benefits both because there won't be stability. There also won't be uniform increases or decreases in temperature across the globe. The medieval warm period isn't even worth mentioning because it was a regional effect, not a global one, so overall heat and moisture flows were probably not significantly different from the usual patterns.

Strict scrutiny applies here. Put another way, just take the past 50 years, where we've observed a warming trend of about .13C per decade...so a little over .5C for the past 50 years. Asserting humans are responsible for half of that, we've got what, about 0.32C in the past 50 years?

You haven't been paying attention. The natural forcings have been decreasing at about -0.05C/decade in that time. That makes humans responsible for 0.18C per decade in your estimate. Currently that's more like 0.23C per decade.

Now demonstrate what benefit we could have had if global average temperature had not gone up .32C in the past 50 years.

As soon as you demonstrate what benefit we could have had if it had gone up .64C in the past 50 years. In either case, it's beside the point. I don't need to prove the a hand grenade will damage a tank to show that a 500 pound bomb will.

As an example, we could look at crop yields: http://www.worldclimatereport.com/archive/previous_issues/vol3/v3n9/feature.htm

That's funny, because that article pretty convincingly shows that something besides climate was driving crop yields from 1950 to 1997. I know you're not stupid enough to miss that.

Or, we could look at cyclone activity: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/26/global-hurricane-activity-at-historical-record-lows-new-paper/

Nothing at Watts' site should ever be confused with objective science. It's often real science reported in a biased manner to make a point that isn't supported by the data. Hurricane activity is a regional effect that is not directly linked to global temperature. They also are not modeled in global climate models. They depend on small scale details of winds and ocean surface temperatures. Gr

In other words if CO2 continues to rise, but temperatures drop for an extended period of time, that would falsify anthropogenic global warming. Two solar cycles without warming, or with cooling would kill it.

Fair enough - we've got near 15 years so far, so we can possibly falsify this in what, 9 more years?

The second doesn't really need to be falsified until someone provides a reason (theory or model) that indicates there is a possibility that rapid climate change over much of the earth would be a good thing.

Sorry, I can't let that one slide - asserting that the null hypothesis should be that warming is unequivocally bad for the biosphere and humanity is unjustified. At the very least, we can assert that a warmer world leads to more arable land and more plant life, and more support for all life - and we can look at the Medieval Warm Period and the Holocene optimum as evidence of that.

Strict scrutiny applies here. Put another way, just take the past 50 years, where we've observed a warming trend of about .13C per decade...so a little over .5C for the past 50 years. Asserting humans are responsible for half of that, we've got what, about 0.32C in the past 50 years?

Now demonstrate what benefit we could have had if global average temperature had not gone up .32C in the past 50 years.

As an example, we could look at crop yields: http://www.worldclimatereport.com/archive/previous_issues/vol3/v3n9/feature.htm

Or, we could look at cyclone activity: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/26/global-hurricane-activity-at-historical-record-lows-new-paper/

I'm more than happy to entertain any other metrics you'd choose to use, but we need to be specific here.

More interesting notes on testability of GCMs:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/02/testing-testing-is-this-model-powered-up/

But testing of scientific models does not require that a model be able to predict everything, merely that it makes testable predictions.

So, if your climate model predicts that one and one equals two, which is a testable prediction, we're supposed to then assume that the untestable prediction that at a specific CO2 level we will get a specific amount of warming over a specific time period that will cause catastrophe for mankind it the planet is true?

If your scientific model predicts something specific regarding increased human CO2 emissions, and the resultant average atmospheric temperature over a specific period of time, and gives us some error bars, what are you going to say when reality diverges from your predictions? Will you abandon your model entirely, or insist on a never ending stream of ad hoc special pleadings?

My point is this, and I'm not sure if you've quite understood it - GCM models which start with the assumption that CO2 drives global average temperature have no observations which could falsify their assumption that CO2 drives global average temperature. Sure, there are observations that could falsify their assumptions of say, cloud albedo, or radiative transfer properties of certain gases, but the big elephant in the room you're ignoring is that no matter how many minor falsifications are possible within a GCM, the big grand daddy of "CO2 drives temperature" is held sacrosanct, and all other features of the model are considered tweakable.

Prove me wrong by succinctly stating what observations of CO2 and global average temperature, over any time period you'd like to specify, would overturn the assumption that CO2 drive global average temperature.

The null hypothesis is the hypothesis of no change--and nobody seems to be crazy enough to claim that climate is unchanging.

You're completely misunderstanding the null hypothesis - it is not the "no change" hypothesis. Let's say you have a hypothesis "smoking causes lung cancer". The null hypothesis is not "there is no change in smoking" or "there is no change in lung cancer". The null hypothesis is "there is no causal relationship between smoking and lung cancer".

It's almost like you're saying it's *impossible* to have a null hypothesis for a changing climate - that it is *impossible* for climate science to actual be *science*.

The null hypothesis is that CO2 (or any other climate factor) does not have a causal relationship to global average temperature. It is not that "climate doesn't change" (heck, that doesn't even mention CO2, or any other factor at all!).

Let's go over your cite:

1) That the globe would warm, and about how fast, and about how much.
- no mention of error bars, or which models failed to meet their error bars, nor any admission that warming could happen anyway

2) That the troposphere would warm and the stratosphere would cool.
- no indication that natural warming would not also have the same effect

3) That nighttime temperatures would increase more than daytime temperatures.
- no indication that natural warming would not also have the same effect

4) That winter temperatures would increase more than summer temperatures.
- no indication that natural warming would not also have the same effect

5) Polar amplification (greater temperature increase as you move toward the poles).
- no indication that natural warming would not also have the same effect

6) That the Arctic would warm faster than the Antarctic.
- no indication that natural warming would not also have the same effect

7) The magnitude (0.3 K) and duration (two years) of the cooling from the Mt. Pinatubo eruption.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/27/spencer-on-pinatubo-and-climate-sensitivity/
- only tells us we can be accurate in predicting the effect of a volcano, not that anthropogenic CO

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/01/icy-skepticism-hits-slashdot/

Obviously, there are some people who already live very close to the water line, for whom any increase in ocean level whatsoever will be a problem,

That's just not true. Tides come in and out every day, and tidal levels at various points next to the water line are incredibly different - the assertion that a .01mm rise in *average* global sea level will have anything to do with the experience of a natural harbor in North Carolina is ludicrous.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/02/the-tides-they-are-a-changin/

No, as a scientist, I do not base my judgements on faith, but on how well a hypothesis is able to make testable predictions and how well those predictions are borne out.

Looking over your list of predictions, I'll note that none of them seem to predict a specific level of CO2 and a specific temperature :) Their most interesting prediction was Pinatubo, but the error bars on that were pretty off FWIW - http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/29/prediction-is-hard-especially-of-the-future/

Put another way, if *any* of those list of say, 17 predictions had been incorrect, would you then admit that the whole basis for the AGW/CAGW hypothesis has been falsified? Be honest with yourself.

And I am even less by those who try to excuse their failing by the statistically illiterate insistence that their ideas are a "null hypothesis" and therefore exempt from the type of scrutiny to which real scientists subject their scientific hypotheses.

Both you and KeensMustard seem to have this projection problem - the argument you're making is *exactly* the critique being leveled at you. Why do you consider AGW/CAGW the null hypothesis? Why do you want to exempt that hypothesis from strict scrutiny? Why won't you make a falsifiable hypothesis statement you're willing to defend?

If you think I'm doing a bad job at doing so for the ideas you believe I'm trying to advocate, show me how you do it as a good example. "If I see and over the next years, my AGW theory is wrong" - expand as you wish.

If I had a casino, I'd love to have you for a customer.

And you as well :) You've walked into the casino and insisted that you've got a model that will let you beat the system. Things apparently are "unprecedented", and so you're able to make incredibly precise predictions about what the roulette wheel roll will be after 100 rolls from now :)

the projected increase in average temperature next year is much smaller than the variance of annual average temperature.

I'l take that one further - the project increase in average temperature over the next 50 - 100 years is much smaller than the natural variance of annual average temperature :)

Obviously, there are some people who already live very close to the water line, for whom any increase in ocean level whatsoever will be a problem,

That's just not true. Tides come in and out every day, and tidal levels at various points next to the water line are incredibly different - the assertion that a .01mm rise in *average* global sea level will have anything to do with the experience of a natural harbor in North Carolina is ludicrous.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/02/the-tides-they-are-a-changin/

No, as a scientist, I do not base my judgements on faith, but on how well a hypothesis is able to make testable predictions and how well those predictions are borne out.

Looking over your list of predictions, I'll note that none of them seem to predict a specific level of CO2 and a specific temperature :) Their most interesting prediction was Pinatubo, but the error bars on that were pretty off FWIW - http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/29/prediction-is-hard-especially-of-the-future/

Put another way, if *any* of those list of say, 17 predictions had been incorrect, would you then admit that the whole basis for the AGW/CAGW hypothesis has been falsified? Be honest with yourself.

And I am even less by those who try to excuse their failing by the statistically illiterate insistence that their ideas are a "null hypothesis" and therefore exempt from the type of scrutiny to which real scientists subject their scientific hypotheses.

Both you and KeensMustard seem to have this projection problem - the argument you're making is *exactly* the critique being leveled at you. Why do you consider AGW/CAGW the null hypothesis? Why do you want to exempt that hypothesis from strict scrutiny? Why won't you make a falsifiable hypothesis statement you're willing to defend?

If you think I'm doing a bad job at doing so for the ideas you believe I'm trying to advocate, show me how you do it as a good example. "If I see and over the next years, my AGW theory is wrong" - expand as you wish.

If I had a casino, I'd love to have you for a customer.

And you as well :) You've walked into the casino and insisted that you've got a model that will let you beat the system. Things apparently are "unprecedented", and so you're able to make incredibly precise predictions about what the roulette wheel roll will be after 100 rolls from now :)

the projected increase in average temperature next year is much smaller than the variance of annual average temperature.

I'l take that one further - the project increase in average temperature over the next 50 - 100 years is much smaller than the natural variance of annual average temperature :)

Yet nobody has been able to come up with such a model that does not predict a problem with future warming as a result of CO2 increase.

You're mixing things up there a bit, so let's be clear - there may be models which predict increased warming as a result of human CO2 releases. None of these models predicts that this is a *problem* - that's a subjective and speculative judgement.

Second of all, again, you're not fighting a competing model - you're fighting the null hypothesis that there is not a causal relationship between CO2 levels and temperature levels.

Again, it would be easy to disprove this: just show me a model that can hind cast and that does not predict future warming.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/18/trenberths-missing-heat-look-to-the-deep/

Apparently we now predict periods of cooling during warming "hiatus" :)

Again, though, it's not models we're fighting against - it's the null hypothesis of no causal relationship.

This year doesn't seem too unusual or alarming:

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent_L.png

More info:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/

Two points:

1) even if additional CO2 doesn't make much of a difference, I'll assert that any difference it makes is positive (since the same thing could really be said about the most simplistic formulation of AGW - yes, additional CO2 has a positive temp impact, even if it's only .000001C/century);

2) evidence shows that it does have a big impact: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/29/plants-gobbling-up-co2-45-more-than-thought/

Wow, cool reference - although possibly not as airtight as the press release:

“It’s at least plausible that the 3.2 billion year old oil we found did in fact have an abiotic origin.” — Roger Buick, 2008 (Buick was one of the authors of the paper you referenced)

As for adding to the total CO2 in the atmosphere, I'll argue one that it's not really an "outside source" (that would be more like shipping CO2 from the planet Venus), it's part of the terrestrial carbon cycle. Now, the point could be made that somehow we're significantly disrupting the carbon cycle, but given the comparable amount of CO2 processed by say, insects versus the entirety of humanity and all of its activities including farming, I don't see us as being particularly significant.

Second, it seems that rainforests love the CO2 we're dumping:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/29/plants-gobbling-up-co2-45-more-than-thought/

See other reply for the stock debunking of this canard

Sorry, I missed that - you've got a stock reply that refutes the well established scientific phenomenon of increased plant growth with increased CO2? Really?

How does that debunking match against science? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/29/plants-gobbling-up-co2-45-more-than-thought/

That posed by Tyndall. Of course.

Tyndall did not make any statement that human CO2 was going to cause a specific amount of warming over a specific time, nor did Tyndall assert that that warming would be catastrophic for humanity or the biosphere.

I'm more than happy to accept Tyndall's findings of spectrums of absorption by gases - asserting that the consequence of that is that we must de-carbonize our energy supply immediately is a whole nother thing entirely.

That being the case, the counterintuitive assertion made by denialists of a specific magnitude (trivial to no effect) will need a very strong, falsifiable hypothesis indeed.

The null hypothesis is that climate changes naturally, as it did for all the years before humanity, or industrialization. No particular falsification is necessary for the null. Further, there is a distinction between asserting that we don't know the specific magnitude, and asserting that the specific magnitude will be trivial or of no effect.

In either case, though, since the difference would only be in magnitude, what would you start off with as your falsifiable hypothesis statement? I'm assuming that if you can construct one for any arbitrary result, you'd use the same formulation for an arbitrary result of significantly less magnitude.

Nobody rational is going to dispute that Tyndall observed an effect that differed between gases. But nobody rational is going to blindly accept that the consequence of that is that the science is settled and the time for action is now. You've got a higher standard to live up to than just an appeal to authority.

"Thus, the radiative effect of changes in cloud cover or properties is highly sensitive not only to cloud type (height, optical thickness, extent) but also to the time of year and time of day at which the changes in cloud properties take place. This is of importance in assessing cloud climate feedbacks which contribute substantially to uncertainty in climate prediction"

Well, clearly Spencer is quite the thought leader for regurgitating what was already discussed decades earlier by Ramanathan. Unfortunately for poor misunderstood Spencer, he has used the following words when defending his paper: "(the) weak positive cloud feedback diagnosis will suddenly turn into a negative feedback diagnosis. I’ve done it, and it is what Lindzen and Choi did in their recently published paper, which resulted in a diagnosis of strongly negative feedback."

You are suggesting that what Spencer claims in the media is not supported by his paper. On that we can agree.

So who is right? You?

Clouds also appear to be a small positive feedback rather than a negative feedback.

Not according to the latest research: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/20/new-peer-reviewed-paper-clouds-have-large-negative-feedback-cooling-effect-on-earths-radiation-budget/

or the author of the very paper that you cite above?

I was surprised that this paper was linked to cloud feedback since, as you mention, it attempts to quantify the well known influence of cloud on Earth’s radiation budget (at the top of the atmosphere, at the surface and within the atmosphere and also during day and night) and does not attempt to diagnose cloud feedback.

Of course you believe that you are right and the author is wrong. You are truly broken.

Sorry, I completely missed the part where you said, "If one observes an increase in CO2 over 10 years, but does not observe a similar increase in temperature, my hypothesis is falsified."

I'm sure it was just eaten up by an intarweb monster somewhere...or maybe it's hiding with the rest of the missing heat at the bottom of the ocean :)

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/20/pielke-sr-on-that-hide-and-seek-ocean-heat/

Not according to the latest research: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/20/new-peer-reviewed-paper-clouds-have-large-negative-feedback-cooling-effect-on-earths-radiation-budget/ [wattsupwiththat.com]

You make yourself look like a bit of a dolt when you site Watts as an authority. The paper in question says nothing at all about feedbacks. This paper is on the net radiative effect of clouds. The conclusions are not surprising and confirm the consensus view. Watt's obviously doesn't know what a feedback is. (Do you?)

Come now. That's a ridiculous assertion to make. The ice caps are far colder than -6F! Moreover, the extra heat will increase water vapour, which will increase cloud cover, which will reduce incoming solar radiation. The IPCC assume clouds are a +ve feedback, but now we've had 3 papers in a row showing that they aren't (Lindzen & Choi, Spencer and now Allan). Moreover, the cooling effect of clouds is something like 17 times the magnitude of the warming affect of the back-radiation assumed to contribute to warming. This is new science (published only the other day). It's completely ignored by the models. It's completely ignored by scientists like Trenberth. It's completely ignored by the catastrophists and I have no doubt it will be completely ignored by you as well.

But, as this argument continues, scientists are doing some excellent work. At CERN (the CLOUD experiment) particularly. Showing how cosmic rays increase the frequency of CCN. More work to do, but if this can account for even a 1% change in cloud cover, it can account for much of the Earth's internal variability over the medium term.

So no, the jury is still out. The science isn't "in". The consensus is wrong and it will slowly fall apart as people peel off to start getting back to what they were doing before; not producing propaganda for the Environmental movement and their various financial interests (including Goldman and Enron, with their trading desks), but proper science motivated by a desire to answer questions and enrich Humanity with knowledge.

Imagine where we'd be if the first chemists said "we can't know anything until we know everything."

Imagine where we'd be if the first chemists said "fire, earth, air, water - the science is settled". :)

If you assume that water vapor, cloud and other effects are linearly dependent on CO2 levels in a narrow range of temperatures, then from modeling the past climate you can determine the climate sensitivity to CO2 without determining the size of each of the feedback mechanisms.

You can't assume that. You need to come up with a falsifiable hypothesis statement, and explicitly state what observations would falsify those assumptions. That's the way the science game is played.

Clouds also appear to be a small positive feedback rather than a negative feedback.

Not according to the latest research: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/20/new-peer-reviewed-paper-clouds-have-large-negative-feedback-cooling-effect-on-earths-radiation-budget/

But when you talk about all these factors you seem to be thinking that water vapor, clouds, and temperature could suddenly change without cause.

Far from it, I understand that all of these things have changed due to natural causes the entire history before mankind existed, and understand that our default null hypothesis should be that those same natural causes are what drive current observed climate changes.

Large cloud formations not predicted by the model that cause cooling would be a failure of the model (not to mention unlikely) that, if stable decade to decade, would refute global warming.

You're not being precise. Global warming happens. It has happened in the past, and will certainly happen in the future, and even large cloud formations could be asserted as an ad hoc special pleading that preserves your original intent of "human CO2 is what caused warming in the 20th century". Whether or not any given period of global warming can be attributed to a specific factor is the question. The fact that you can't specify what your falsifiable hypothesis statement is means that any straw man put up (i.e., human CO2 is responsible for .01C/decade warming, .02C/decade warming, etc, etc) can be objected to. Do me the favor of being specific in your falsifiable hypothesis statement, and we can skip the part where I have to read your mind.

Of course, but there is no known factor that matches the profile of climate change other than CO2 increase.

That's an argument from ignorance - just because we don't have a specific explanation for you, doesn't mean that your explanation is the truth. Without specifying what your falsifiable hypothesis statement is, you've essentially created a hypothesis that can match *any* profile that is observed. This is a weakness in a hypothesis, not a strength.

Obligatory Popper cite: http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/popper_falsification.html

"The most characteristic element in this situation seemed to me the incessant stream of confirmations, of observations which "verified" the theories in question; and this point was constantly emphasize by their adherents. A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page confirming evidence for his interpretation of history; not only in the news, but also in its presentation — which revealed the class bias of the paper — and especially of course what the paper did not say. The Freudian analysts emphasized that their theories were constantly verified by their "clinical observations." As for Adler, I was much impressed by a p

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/05/new-sea-level-page-from-university-of-colorado-now-up/

In fact, it's actually flattening. Remember, this is supposed to be the hottest 10 years in the last 10,000 or whatever.

This may have to with additional Antarctic accretion, or a reversal of thermal expansion driven by the La Ninas. But it seems likely that the current sea level regime will not change a whole lot as long as we have an isolated polar continent -- we are still firmly in the grip of the Antarctica-driven glaciation cycles that began some tens of millions ago. So long term, I'm much more worried about massive new glaciers forming in, say, Canada and Norway, than whether we lose some in Greenland. Cold has generally been a much harsher foe to humankind than warmth.

If you removed all greenhouse gases from the atmosphere the oceans would freeze, probably to the equator. That's how big an effect the atmosphere has on oceans.

So, 100% nitrogen atmosphere you think would freeze the oceans? I think the problem with that thought experiment is that water would evaporate and thereby put more GHG (water is the most powerful one) back in even if you magically removed all water from the atmosphere. Case in point - ice caps on mars growing and shrinking.

You could never sustain a 50% increase in albedo. The clouds would quickly precipitate out in the cooling atmosphere.

Aren't clouds already precipitated? That is to say, aren't they just floating droplets of solid and liquid water? Now no doubt, clouds are tricky (sometimes they warm, sometimes they cool), but since we don't clearly understand all the drivers of that variation, it's difficult to ignore the large error bars that creates.

And where did you get that 0.001C number? Does it have any basis in reality?

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/06/energy-content-the-heat-is-on-atmosphere-vs-ocean/

Heat capacity of ocean water: 3993 J/kg/K
Heat capacity of air: 1005 J/kg/K

energy content of the atmosphere is – 1005 *5×1018 kg =5 x1021 Joules/Degree Kelvin
Energy content of the ocean is – 3993 *1.4×1021 =5.6×1024 Joules/Degree Kelvin

If you were to transfer enough ocean energy directly to the atmosphere to create 4 degrees of atmospheric warming, how much would that change the average temperature of the Earth’s water?

0.001 Degrees C of ocean temp change

The direct impact is this: Delta F = 5.35 * ln(C/C0)W/m^-2, And yes, measurements confirm it.

No, they don't - it's dubiously calculated from spectral properties that are measured:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/16/new-paper-from-lindzen-and-choi-implies-that-the-models-are-exaggerating-climate-sensitivity/

If Lindzen is correct that sensitivity is 0.7C per doubling of CO2, the corresponding change in forcing should be

delta F = (1.2)(delta T) = .84 W/m2 = 1.2*ln(2)

thus the “IPCC formula” “should be” approx.

delta F = 1.2*ln(C/Co)

A far cry from the current “IPCC formula” of delta F = 5.35*ln(C/Co)

Theory, meet reality :)

Your statement was wrong. So go ahead and try again.

You keep saying I'm wrong, and then dodge showing me what you think is *right*. I'll try again after I see you try at least once :)

Try reading http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/07/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-my-initial-comments-on-the-new-dessler-2011-study/ The RealClimate response is so full of holes, it's hard to take seriously :)

No, they needed to address the existing evidence which contradicted their work.

Sounds like a double standard - there's lots of existing evidence against the hockey stick, or various multi-meter sea level rise predictions, but nobody has expected people writing papers with the warmist point of view to fully address existing critiques to their work.

If there is strong support for a hypothesis "A" and you write a paper saying "not-A", it needs to contain some explanation for why all those previous papers were wrong and you're right

Wasn't that the entire *point* of Spencer's paper? He was challenging hypothesis "A" *with* his paper.

How would you falsify the hypothesis that adaptation is cheaper than mitigation?

Well, at the simplest level, I'd look for comparative societies in the past - but the problem in regards to CO2 is that we have no confidence, whatsoever, that mitigation is even possible. So the *first* thing I'd have to come up with is a falsifiable hypothesis that mitigation is *possible*.

How would you falsify the hypothesis that mitigation is even possible?

If you were living in the projected path of a hurricane, would you demand a lab experiment to show that it was going to hit before agreeing to evacuate?

Of course not. But if I was living in an area that experienced hurricanes, and someone demanded that I plan to evacuate ten years from now in July for two weeks, I'd demand a falsifiable hypothesis showing this kind of long term planning is necessary or accurate, or, I'd just wait for an actual storm with an actual predicted track was being observed by our satellites.

I refer you (again) to IPCC AR4.

Like this: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch8s8-3-2-2.html

"It is likely that the relatively poor Southern Ocean simulation will influence the transient climate response to increasing greenhouse gases by affecting the oceanic heat uptake. When forced by increases in radiative forcing, models with too little Southern Ocean mixing will probably underestimate the ocean heat uptake; models with too much mixing will likely exaggerate it. These errors in oceanic heat uptake will also have a large impact on the reliability of the sea level rise projections. See Chapter 10 for more discussion of this subject."

Sounds like they have very little idea as to where sea level is going to be in 200 years, at any point in the globe.

Yes, we both agree that climate's not weather and that long-term regional/global climate models don't make accurate local weather predictions. Neither do local weather models make long-term global climate predictions.

What I think we disagree on, and please correct me if I've misunderstood you, is that *weather* matters to humans, *climate* does not. A human never experiences the average global temperature, or even "climate" - they experience *weather*. In the same way, phone numbers are used by humans, but average phone numbers, either for geographic areas, or averaged for a family over time, are *not* usable (or even useful).

so while (say) a 1m sea-level rise might not seem like much, it's going to vastly increase the frequency of catastrophic events -- for instance, your hundred-year floods may now be ten-year floods.

That's an assertion, not a fact. What kind of falsifiable hypothesis would you put forward regarding frequency of catastrophic events?

Some information on Bangladesh: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/03/bangladesh-the-poster-child/

"Flooding disasters are seasonally the result of excessive run-off, and occasionally due to unfortunate

if you want a peer-reviewed rebuttal, you'll have to wait (but not much longer) for it to get through GRL's publication pipeline...

Which is actually quite a feat - the warmists seem to have fast tracked a rebuttal without even offering Spencer et. al. a chance to respond to critiques.

I'm happy that the science is sufficiently settled for action to be warranted now.

So, I take it you *do* then subscribe to a belief of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming? Or that you're at least of the belief that a warmer world is a worse world than a colder world, and any actions now would not cost more than say, adaptation to a warmer world?

We're already up to CO2 concentrations not seen for 20 million years -- do you really think that's not going to have an effect?

Any gas measured in parts per million will have a very minor effect. Furthermore, there is no clear correlation of CO2 to temp (over the 20 million year time scale) - http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/09/co2-report-estimated-to-be-highest-in-15-million-years/

I'm still not sure that I get your meaning (surely large-scale changes in climate -- i.e. the more knowable ones -- are more important to humanity that small-scale ones?).

Let me give an example - we experience large scale climate changes called "seasons". In general, these promise fairly significant changes over periods of months. However, the details of each experienced season can be dramatically different in different places, with some summers starting early, some winters starting late, etc, etc. You could measure the start/stop of each season over say, the past 150 years, averaged across the entire northern hemisphere. Now that information is going to be generally useless to a midwestern farmer, who needs to know what the temperature in his neck of the woods is going to be the day he's planting, not just some average statistic. That information is going to be generally useless to the northeastern sailor, who needs to know if there is a storm coming on the days he has planned to voyage from Maine to Virginia.

Put another way, a large scale flood that devastates a region is not climate, it's weather. A hurricane is not climate, it's weather. A tornado is not climate, it's weather. A drought is not climate, it's weather (put another way, it is the lack of weather).

So far, the spatiotemporal specifics of weather events that actually effect human scale lives have defied prediction beyond the shortest scale (days). Now, one day, perhaps GCMs will be able to predict a storm formation fifteen months, or even fifteen years out, down to the square mile, but as it stands, they are notoriously unable to represent any human important events.

As it stands, neither average global temperature nor CO2 levels provide any sort of useful information on specific regional climate. I will, however, give a caveat that many of the ocean oscillations (ENSO, PDO, etc), which have been modeled and used by forecasters for important generalizations such as regional drought/precipitation conditions, provide some useful information on a scale greater than an individual weather event. The predictive capability of these large scale ocean oscillations are on an order of magnitude greater than any predictive capability of CO2 or average global temperature though.

If you truly believe that average global temperature has no relevance, why on earth are we discussing a paper about it?

This paper is about whether or not you can judge CO2 as a forcing or a feedback (and when).

If you truly believe that average global temperature has any relevance, please let me know any practical action any human can take based on knowing that this year's average global temperature w

yes, we should do what you suggest, only do it with a technology that works.

Problem solved.

Interesting. After some searching.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/24/breaking-news-cern-experiment-confirms-cosmic-rays-influence-climate-change/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/25/some-reactions-to-the-cloud-experiment/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD

I hadn't heard about this.

Interesting. After some searching.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/24/breaking-news-cern-experiment-confirms-cosmic-rays-influence-climate-change/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/25/some-reactions-to-the-cloud-experiment/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD

I hadn't heard about this.

Sounds like the cat is out of the bag on this one. A testable falsifiable hypothesis was formed, experiments were conducted, and the results look like they're going to revolutionize all existing climate models, and quite possibly whatever pre-CLOUD "consensus" existed.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/25/some-reactions-to-the-cloud-experiment/

"Although they never said so, the High Priests of the Inconvenient Truth – in such temples as NASA-GISS, Penn State and the University of East Anglia – always knew that Svensmark’s cosmic ray hypothesis was the principal threat to their sketchy and poorly modelled notions of self-amplifying action of greenhouse gases. In telling how the obviously large influences of the Sun in previous centuries and millennia could be explained, and in applying the same mechanism to the 20th warming, Svensmark put the alarmist predictions at risk – and with them the billions of dollars flowing from anxious governments into the global warming enterprise. –-Nigel Calder, 24 August 2011"

http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/

So when we have increasing CO2, but recovering sea ice since 2007, what does that do to your hypothesis?

option 1) oops, I'm wrong. MightyMartian apologizes for the unnecessary alarm.

option 2) ooh, wait, I've got an ad hoc special pleading about this particular refutation!

Care to wave your hands a bit more? :)

http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/05/picking-cherries-and-hot-fudge.html

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/24/breaking-news-cern-experiment-confirms-cosmic-rays-influence-climate-change/

http://landshape.org/enm/phase-lag-of-global-temperature/