Climate change: Is it for real?

And if you are a "denier" climate scientist working at a University what are the chances that you will get a grant to do some work to prove that global warming is not a function of atmospheric CO2 concentration. The game is to generate computer model scenarios for the next one hundred years showing a wide range of outcomes (I thought the science was settled ??), then arbitrarily assign a consensus scenario for temperature increase (science doesn't operate on consensus - there is only one correct answer), and then apply the precautionary principle (we gotta do something - the 9 deg C increase might be real). The other problem is that what is proposed won't do anything of significance (low tenths of a deg F over 100 years) but it will reduce economic growth and the ability to address local climate conditions such as fixing the levees in Louisiana (now fixed but too late).

 

Actually really, really good....if you're willing to sell yourself/(your soul) to the right people...the ones who have hundreds of billions of dollars of vested interests in producing and selling fossil fuels.

Like this guy did.....

Work of prominent climate change denier was funded by energy industry
The Guardian
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
21 February 2015
(excerpts)
A prominent academic and climate change denier’s work was funded almost entirely by the energy industry, receiving more than $1.2m from companies, lobby groups and oil billionaires over more than a decade, newly released documents show.

Over the last 14 years Willie Soon, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, received a total of $1.25m from Exxon Mobil, Southern Company, the American Petroleum Institute (API) and a foundation run by the ultra-conservative Koch brothers, the documents obtained by Greenpeace through freedom of information filings show.

According to the documents, the biggest single funder was Southern Company, one of the country’s biggest electricity providers that relies heavily on coal.

The documents draw new attention to the industry’s efforts to block action against climate change - including President Barack Obama’s power-plant rules.

Unlike the vast majority of scientists, Soon does not accept that rising greenhouse gas emissions since the industrial age are causing climate changes. He contends climate change is driven by the sun.

In the relatively small universe of climate denial Soon, with his Harvard-Smithsonian credentials, was a sought after commodity. He was cited admiringly by Senator James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who famously called global warming a hoax. He was called to testify when Republicans in the Kansas state legislature tried to block measures promoting wind and solar power. The Heartland Institute, a hub of climate denial, gave Soon a courage award.

Soon did not enjoy such recognition from the scientific community. There were no grants from Nasa, the National Science Foundation or the other institutions which were funding his colleagues at the Center for Astrophysics. According to the documents, his work was funded almost entirely by the fossil fuel lobby.

"The question here is really: 'What did API, ExxonMobil, Southern Company and Charles Koch see in Willie Soon? What did they get for $1m-plus'," said Kert Davies, a former Greenpeace researcher who filed the original freedom of information requests. Greenpeace and the Climate Investigations Center, of which Davies is the founder, shared the documents with news organisations.

"Did they simply hope he was on to research that would disprove the consensus? Or was it too enticing to be able to basically buy the nameplate Harvard-Smithsonian?"

From 2005, Southern Company gave Soon nearly $410,000. In return, Soon promised to publish research about the sun’s influence on climate change in leading journals, and to deliver lectures about his theories at national and international events, according to the correspondence.

The funding would lead to "active participations by this PI (principal investigator) of this research proposal in all national and international forums interested in promoting the basic understanding of solar variability and climate change", Soon wrote in a report to Southern Company.

In 2012, Soon told Southern Company its grants had supported publications on polar bears, temperature changes in the Arctic and China, and rainfall patterns in the Indian monsoon.

ExxonMobil gave $335,000 but stopped funding Soon in 2010, according to the documents. The astrophysicist reportedly received $274,000 from the main oil lobby, the American Petroleum Institute, and $230,000 from the Charles G Koch Foundation. He received an additional $324,000 in anonymous donations through a trust used by the Kochs and other conservative donors, the documents showed.

Greenpeace has suggested Soon also improperly concealed his funding sources for a recent article, in violation of the journal’s conflict of interest guidelines.

"The company was paying him to write peer-reviewed science and that relationship was not acknowledged in the peer-reviewed literature," Davies said. "These proposals and contracts show debatable interventions in science literally on the behalf of Southern Company and the Kochs."

In letters to the Internal Revenue Service and Congress, Greenpeace said Soon may have misused the grants from the Koch foundation by trying to influence legislation.

Soon did not respond to requests for comment.

As is common among Harvard-Smithsonian scientists, Soon is not on a salary. He receives his compensation from outside grant money, said Christine Pulliam, a spokeswoman for the Center for Astrophysics.

The Center for Astrophysics does not require scientists to disclose their funding sources. But Pulliam acknowleged that Soon had failed to meet disclosure requirements of some of the journals that published his research. "Soon should have followed those policies," she said.

Harvard said Soon operated outside of the university - even though he carries a Harvard ID and uses a Harvard email address.

"Willie Soon is a Smithsonian staff researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, a collaboration of the Harvard College Observatory and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory," a Harvard spokesman, Jeff Neal, said.

"There is no record of Soon having applied for or having been granted funds that were or are administered by the University. Soon is not an employee of Harvard."

Both Harvard and the Smithsonian acknowledge that the climate is changing because of rising levels of greenhouse gas concentrations caused by human activities.

Hilariously ignorant, delusional, made-up nonsense with no connection to reality.

 

First of all, Soon did not receive the money, the university did. Second, Soon did not receive 1.25 million. Third, what Soon received was over a period of years. Forth, government is not funding science to study natural variability, it doesn't fit the agenda. Forth, there were other scientists that co-publish any paper from the university.

Again, this is just an environmentalist smear campaign that really has no basis in fact.

 

The media is complicit as well. The Sac Bee had a front page editorial attacking Dr. Soon a few months ago for similar reasons. IIRC that was based on the NYTimes piece back in Feb. Amusing reading and a great example of the application of the genetic fallacy - if the funding and support for research is "unapproved" then that research is automatically bogus. And of course another example of big gov funding selectively big science. Science ain't what it used to be. But neither are universities.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/u...ate-change-researcher-Wei-Hock-Soon.html?_r=0

 

There go two prime examples of the kind of extreme denial of proven reality that characterizes the denialists.

The money that these fossil fuel industry corporations paid to that corrupt science-whore Soon went directly to him and constituted his only 'salary'. He is not an employee of Harvard, and has only a part-time un-paid position at the Smithsonian Institution, and receives no salary from them. In communications with the oil and coal corporations that paid him, he referred to the papers he wrote and his various performances before Congress as "deliverables" that he was to be paid for.

For years, politicians wanting to block legislation on climate change have bolstered their arguments by pointing to the work of a handful of scientists who claim that greenhouse gases pose little risk to humanity.

One of the names they invoke most often is Wei-Hock Soon, known as Willie, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who claims that variations in the sun’s energy can largely explain recent global warming. He has often appeared on conservative news programs, testified before Congress and in state capitals, and starred at conferences of people who deny the risks of global warming.

But newly released documents show the extent to which Dr. Soon’s work has been tied to funding he received from corporate interests.

He has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers. At least 11 papers he has published since 2008 omitted such a disclosure, and in at least eight of those cases, he appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work.


Document: Funding That Climate Researcher Failed to Disclose

The documents show that Dr. Soon, in correspondence with his corporate funders, described many of his scientific papers as "deliverables" that he completed in exchange for their money. He used the same term to describe testimony he prepared for Congress.

Dr. Soon did not respond to questions about the documents.

The documents were obtained by Greenpeace, the environmental group, under the Freedom of Information Act. Greenpeace and an allied group, the Climate Investigations Center, shared them with several news organizations last week.

The documents shed light on the role of scientists like Dr. Soon in fostering public debate over whether human activity is causing global warming. The vast majority of experts have concluded that it is and that greenhouse emissions pose long-term risks to civilization.

Historians and sociologists of science say that since the tobacco wars of the 1960s, corporations trying to block legislation that hurts their interests have employed a strategy of creating the appearance of scientific doubt, usually with the help of ostensibly independent researchers who accept industry funding

Fossil-fuel interests have followed this approach for years, but the mechanics of their activities remained largely hidden..

"The whole doubt-mongering strategy relies on creating the impression of scientific debate," said Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard University and the co-author of "Merchants of Doubt," a book about such campaigns. "Willie Soon is playing a role in a certain kind of political theater."

Environmentalists have long questioned Dr. Soon’s work, and his acceptance of funding from the fossil-fuel industry was previously known. But the full extent of the links was not; the documents show that corporate contributions were tied to specific papers and were not disclosed, as required by modern standards of publishing.

"What it shows is the continuation of a long-term campaign by specific fossil-fuel companies and interests to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change," said Kert Davies, executive director of the Climate Investigations Center, a group funded by foundations seeking to limit the risks of climate change.

Charles R. Alcock, director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center, acknowledged on Friday that Dr. Soon had violated the disclosure standards of some journals.

"I think that’s inappropriate behavior," Dr. Alcock said. "This frankly becomes a personnel matter, which we have to handle with Dr. Soon internally."

The newly disclosed documents, plus additional documents compiled by Greenpeace over the last four years, show that at least $409,000 of Dr. Soon’s funding in the past decade came from Southern Company Services, a subsidiary of the Southern Company, based in Atlanta.

Southern is one of the largest utility holding companies in the country, with huge investments in coal-burning power plants. The company has spent heavily over many years to lobby against greenhouse-gas regulations in Washington.

Dr. Soon also received at least $230,000 from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. (Mr. Koch’s fortune derives partly from oilrefining.) However, other companies and industry groups that once supported Dr. Soon, including Exxon Mobil and the American Petroleum Institute, appear to have eliminated their grants to him in recent years.

As the oil-industry contributions fell, Dr. Soon started receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars through DonorsTrust, an organization based in Alexandria, Va., that accepts money from donors who wish to remain anonymous, then funnels it to various conservative causes.

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in Cambridge, Mass., is a joint venture between Harvard and the Smithsonian Institution, housing some 300 scientists from both institutions. Because the Smithsonian is a government agency, Greenpeace was able to request that Dr. Soon’s correspondence and grant agreements be released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Though often described on conservative news programs as a "Harvard astrophysicist," Dr. Soon is not an astrophysicist and has never been employed by Harvard. He is a part-time employee of the Smithsonian Institution with a doctoral degree in aerospace engineering. He has received little federal research money over the past decade and is thus responsible for bringing in his own funds, including his salary.

Though he has little formal training in climatology, Dr. Soon has for years published papers trying to show that variations in the sun’s energy can explain most recent global warming. His thesis is that human activity has played a relatively small role in causing climate change.

Many experts in the field say that Dr. Soon uses out-of-date data, publishes spurious correlations between solar output and climate indicators, and does not take account of the evidence implicating emissions from human behavior in climate change.

Gavin A. Schmidt, head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, a NASA division that studies climate change, said that the sun had probably accounted for no more than 10 percent of recent global warming and that greenhouse gases produced by human activity explained most of it.

"The science that Willie Soon does is almost pointless," Dr. Schmidt said.

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, whose scientists focus largely on understanding distant stars and galaxies, routinely distances itself from Dr. Soon’s findings. The Smithsonian has also published a statement accepting the scientific consensus on climate change.

Dr. Soon has found a warm welcome among politicians in Washington and state capitals who try to block climate action. United States Senator James M. Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who claims that climate change is a global scientific hoax, has repeatedly cited Dr. Soon’s work over the years.

Robert J. Strangeway, the editor of a journal that published three of Dr. Soon’s papers, said that editors relied on authors to be candid about any conflicts of interest. "We assume that when people put stuff in a paper, or anywhere else, they’re basically being honest," said Dr. Strangeway, editor of the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics.

Dr. Oreskes, the Harvard science historian, said that academic institutions and scientific journals had been too lax in recent decades in ferreting out dubious research created to serve a corporate agenda.

"I think universities desperately need to look more closely at this issue," Dr. Oreskes said. She added that Dr. Soon’s papers omitting disclosure of his corporate funding should be retracted by the journals that published them.
(source - The New York Times)

 

Another wall of words. Why not just summarize? The earth's temperature is the result of solar radiation. When variations in the earth's temperature are observed it is only logical to look at variations in solar radiation as the first order effect. None of the computer models do this. They treat solar radiation as a 'constant' with insignificant variations and do not consider any lag time effects of solar radiation variations.

 

.....That you apparently can't comprehend and have no rational answer for. So you just ignore the debunking of your previous bogus claims.

Because you obviously know nothing real about this subject and have no idea what you are talking about.

.....and a number of other factors that control how much of the thermal radiation the Earth is receiving from the Sun is able to escape back out into space......the atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (mostly) and the other greenhouse gases being the most important controlling elements.....the Earth’s temperature without the greenhouse effect would not even exceed minus 18°C, whatever minor variations were occurring with the sun.

Carbon Dioxide Controls Earth's Temperature
NASA
10.14.10

Fraudulent drivel! You have no idea what you are talking about.

 

But CO2 concentration does not control the earth's temperature. In the last ~ 100 years - global temperature has increased, decreased, and stayed the same whilst the atmospheric concentration of CO2 has steadily risen. No computer model has shown this temperature variation input with conditions in the past. Running general circulation computer models always shows a steady increase of temperature with increasing time/CO2 concentration. That has not been seen in the historical record. The output from computer models are scenarios resulting from the initial conditions, assumptions, and mechanisms modeled. The outputs are not data, they are estimates. And when the conditions from the 1950 is input none of these computer models come close to matching temperature history record which is real data. Atmospheric CO2 has steadily increased from 316 ppm in 1959 to and 399 ppm in 2014. But global average temperature vs time slope has been positive, negative, and zero at various periods in those years.

Predictions of the general circulation models would be more believable if any of them could match the global average temperature data calculated from initial conditions in 1959. None have been able to do that. Those computer models are obviously missing something and cannot be used as the basis for future policy decisions.

 

Temperatures have steadily climbed over the long term. The world has behaved like the science said it would. That's why the science has such credibility.

The models are quite good. Anyone looking at the actual science instead of conspiracy blogs knows that.

You don't seem familiar with the actual science at all. For example, here's Hansen's old 1988 model. First, note that the 2015 forecast of aroudn +1.0C for scenario B matches the real world very closely. Second, note that the temperature forecast sometimes goes _down_ for short periods, same as the real world. You said that doesn't happen in the models, yet there it is.

 

No they haven't. 1000 years ago temperature was 1 deg F higher than today (medieval warming period). 500 years ago the temperature was 1 deg F cooler than today (little ice age).

What models ?? All the IPCC models show an increasing temperature with an increasing CO2 concentration.

Actually Scenario C (not B) matches the zero global warming since 1998 real data. What happens to this Scenario C after 2019. The trend looks to be decreasing temperature with increasing CO2 concentration (time). Why aren't we focussed on Scenario C instead of the other models ??

 

No, the MWP was a local thing, and even in that local area it was cooler than it is now.

Caused by a drop in CO2, and increased vulcanism, and a cooler sun. None of which are happening now. If such things do happen, it will affect temperature, but those are model inputs, and are not things models can predict.

In general. However, GC models don't predict things like the ENSO cycle or the AMO cycle, which add a cooling or warming signal on top of the general upward trend. That's a whole new layer of complexity. A persistent La Nina in past years masked some of the warming trend, but didn't cause any actual cooling. When the La Nina ended, temps bounced right back up to the rising trend line.

What happens after 2019? We go look at more recent models to find out. It keeps warming.

 

The MWP was a local thing ?? What's the source for that.

Actually Scenario C (not B) matches the zero global warming since 1998 real data. Scenario C assumes a reduction in CO2 concentration at year 2000. In actuality there of course was no reduction but an increase of 10%. All the IPCC models show an increasing temperature but the real data shows no change which matches Hansen's CO2 reduction scenario.

It's clear that the model scenarios have not done a very convincing job of correlating with the actual global temperature data and cannot model inputs as you point out. Then why should we make economic policy which result in reduced wealth creation (ability to respond to climate both locally (most important) and globally) and additionally result in insignificant reductions (based on model calculations) in global average temperature in 100 years. This is the precautionary policy gone amok.

 

Then there is the bias in peer review that so many claim is the 'proof' of AGW because there are more papers on it than dispute it, which in itself is a fallacy.

How a rebellious scientist uncovered the surprising truth about stereotypes

 

This comment made me laugh.

Global warming is real. We've got to stop the fossil fuel madness right now! If the climate model predictions pan out, then by 2020 the global temperature will be 64,204°F and we'll all have drowned - IN MOLTEN ROCK! I'm doing my part. Instead of driving a car to work, I ride my pet Pegasus. And I heat my house with magic bean power! For electricity, I just close my eyes and imagine that there's electricity, and by Jove, there it is! And since agriculture is such a fossil fuel dependent industry, I just eat the air. Mmmmm, tasty, tasty air!

So come on and let's all do our part. Think of the children! FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, WHO'S GOING TO THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

 

That's either Greg Gutfeld or Al Gore.

 

[video=youtube_share;bTM13sI2BFQ]http://youtu.be/bTM13sI2BFQ[/video]

 

Is climate change real? Yes, the only thing constant in climate is change.

Now, since all of this hysteria revolves around model projections, the real question is, are the models real? Well, no, they are models and the true test of science is if if observations follow the hypothesis. So far not so good.

You decide if the models are doing well.

 

Thanks - What's the source for that plot? ^

 

Found something similar:

http://www.eenews.net/assets/2015/03/25/document_pm_04.pdf

 

Yes, according to the CO2 hypothesis the warming is supposed to occur in the troposphere first yet the observed temperature keeps deviating from the model output. It is called the missing hot spot.

 

New paper shows Medieval Warm Period was global in scope

FYI: They didn't model natural variability because they gave it zero impact. Yeah, it warms in models but so far on average, models over-estimate real world warming rate by 3 times since 1979 - 37 years and 4 times over the tropics.

 

That is called "lying". You can post any idiotic title you want to fool the gullible and then attach a link to it, but your link leads to this paper here and it doesn't say anything about the MWP being "global in scope".

Pacific Ocean Heat Content During the Past 10,000 Years
Science
1 November 2013
(excerpts)
Abstract:
Observed increases in ocean heat content (OHC) and temperature are robust indicators of global warming during the past several decades. We used high-resolution proxy records from sediment cores to extend these observations in the Pacific 10,000 years beyond the instrumental record. We show that water masses linked to North Pacific and Antarctic intermediate waters were ~0.9°C warmer during the Medieval Warm period than during the Little Ice Age and ~0.65° warmer than in recent decades. Although documented changes in global surface temperatures during the Holocene and Common era are relatively small, the concomitant changes in ocean heat content (OHC) oare large.

Actually, other research indicates that the MWP was maybe not so warm after all.

Chew on this...

Mild Little Ice Age and unprecedented recent warmth in an 1800 year lake sediment record from Svalbard
Geology
September 18, 2012
Abstract:
The Arctic region is subject to a great amplitude of climate variability and is currently undergoing large-scale changes due in part to anthropogenic global warming. Accurate projections of future change depend on anticipating the response of the Arctic climate system to forcing, and understanding how the response to human forcing will interact with natural climate variations. The Svalbard Archipelago occupies an important location for studying patterns and causes of Arctic climate variability; however, available paleoclimate records from Svalbard are of restricted use due to limitations of existing climate proxies. Here we present a sub-decadal- to multidecadal-scale record of summer temperature for the past 1800 yr from lake sediments of Kongressvatnet on West Spitsbergen, Svalbard, based on the first instrumental calibration of the alkenone paleothermometer. The age model for the High Arctic lake sediments is based on 210Pb, plutonium activity, and the first application of tephrochronology to lake sediments in this region. We find that the summer warmth of the past 50 yr recorded in both the instrumental and alkenone records was unmatched in West Spitsbergen in the course of the past 1800 yr, including during the Medieval Climate Anomaly, and that summers during the Little Ice Age (LIA) of the 18th and 19th centuries on Svalbard were not particularly cold, even though glaciers occupied their maximum Holocene extent. Our results suggest that increased wintertime precipitation, rather than cold temperatures, was responsible for LIA glaciations on Svalbard and that increased heat transport into the Arctic via the West Spitsbergen Current began ca. A.D. 1600.

Just more denier cult ignorance and insanity. Of course scientists include natural variability in their climate models.

The real world observed warming closely matches the model outputs, but the deniers are in demented denial about the actual science and the actual temperatures records, and would rather foolishly fall for the fraudulent myths created by the fossil fuel industry propaganda pushers.

 

I don't think you are even aware that the Pacific covers 1/2 of the world. Go figure.

Thanks for continuing to prove you don't know much about what is going on in climate science. Natural variability is not programmed into the climate models, they assumed all the warming was man made.

The IPCC does not consider natural variability to have much effect.

 

Good thing, too! 'Cause you're wrong....as you are about almost everything you claim when you debate on this forum.

In reality....The Pacific Ocean covers about 1/3 of the Earth's surface

Not that your silly quibbles about the MWP have any significance anyway, to the current CO2 driven, un-natural warming the world is experiencing.

But thanks for continuing to prove you don't know much about what is going on in climate science.....or anything else, apparently.

Mankind's activities have radically upset a delicate, self correcting natural atmospheric balance between the uptake and release of carbon dioxide that had previously kept temperature ranges and other parts of what we call the climate confined within certain boundaries for the last ten thousand years, allowing the human race to develop agriculture, cities and civilization. But now we have destroyed part of the natural CO2 uptake processes (deforestation) and then pumped hundreds of billion of tonnes of fossil fuel sourced carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, raising CO2 levels from the pre-industrial 280ppm to over 400ppm currently, a 43% increase and still rising, pushing CO2 levels higher than they have been in 15 million years, when sea levels were over a hundred feet higher, temperatures were ten to twelve degrees higher, and the world was a VERY different place.

Of course it is. Your denier cult myths are fraudulent and kind of crazy. The scientific climate models try to take every factor into account. At this time, greenhouse gas warming is overwhelming any natural variability so much that it is by far the dominant factor.

They didn't "assume" anything! They discovered, through decades of intensive research, that pretty near all the warming the world has been experiencing IS a result of the elevated CO2 levels.

Right now, the fact is that, compared to the intense and rapid temperature forcing caused by the 43% increase in CO2 levels, the naturally variable factors affecting temperatures are much weaker and are kind of balancing out and not having much effect on the abrupt rise in global average temperatures.

The second part of the AR5 statement characterised the best estimate for the anthropogenic contribution as being close to the observed temperature estimate – i.e. that the anthropogenic trend is around 100% of the observed trend, implying that the best estimates of net natural forcings and internal variability are close to zero.

 

Thanks again for show how little you know. Models do not take solar variability into account. Turns out that is the most important factor in climate.