August 23, 2018
Dear Friends and Family,
This is Segment 12 of the Climate Change series which builds on the Global Consequences Point and Counterpoint excerpts of Segment 5.
There are two items to recognize in this segment:
The books utilized in this segment are the same as those used in Segment 11. The advocate points are from The Thinking Person’s Guide to Climate Change (2014) by Robert Hanson. The skeptic counterpoints come from two different books, Climate Change: The Facts (2015) and a new edition Climate Change: The Facts 2017. Both editions contain numerous Climate Change essays by a variety of scientific authors. Excerpts from these two books note the book source, the title of the essay, and the essays author. [Note: Most of the excerpts in this segment, both point and counterpoint, come from Dr. Robert Carter’s essay entitled “The Scientific Context”. In his essay he compares the positions of both the IPCC and the NIPCC (Non-Governmental International Panel on Climate Change)].
Segment 13 will be the last segment of the series. Up to this point in the series we have utilized excepts from seven skeptic books and only five from the advocate position. To level out the volume of excerpts, segment 13 will only be an advocate position, wherein you can utilize your accumulated knowledge to accept or reject the points put forth. The excerpts for this segment will come from Climate Change What Everyone Needs to Know by Dr. Joseph Romm. Dr. Romm is known as one of the country’s most influential communicators on climate change and its solutions.
Happy Learning,
Harley
Dear Friends and Family,
This is Segment 12 of the Climate Change series which builds on the Global Consequences Point and Counterpoint excerpts of Segment 5.
There are two items to recognize in this segment:
- If you concluded in Segment 11 that there is no meaningful global warming, then there will be no global consequences. If so, you are fundamentally finished with the series, unless you want to read more for general interest.
- Almost all of the Global Consequences are future predictions based on the IPCC climate change general circulation models. Therefore, a large portion of this segment’s point and counterpoint format focuses on these models.
The books utilized in this segment are the same as those used in Segment 11. The advocate points are from The Thinking Person’s Guide to Climate Change (2014) by Robert Hanson. The skeptic counterpoints come from two different books, Climate Change: The Facts (2015) and a new edition Climate Change: The Facts 2017. Both editions contain numerous Climate Change essays by a variety of scientific authors. Excerpts from these two books note the book source, the title of the essay, and the essays author. [Note: Most of the excerpts in this segment, both point and counterpoint, come from Dr. Robert Carter’s essay entitled “The Scientific Context”. In his essay he compares the positions of both the IPCC and the NIPCC (Non-Governmental International Panel on Climate Change)].
Segment 13 will be the last segment of the series. Up to this point in the series we have utilized excepts from seven skeptic books and only five from the advocate position. To level out the volume of excerpts, segment 13 will only be an advocate position, wherein you can utilize your accumulated knowledge to accept or reject the points put forth. The excerpts for this segment will come from Climate Change What Everyone Needs to Know by Dr. Joseph Romm. Dr. Romm is known as one of the country’s most influential communicators on climate change and its solutions.
Happy Learning,
Harley
CLIMATE CHANGE – SEGMENT 12
GLOBAL CONSEQUENCES – MORE POINT AND COUNTERPOINT - EXCERPTS
INTRODUCTION: Scientists of IPCC and NIPCC (Non-Government International Panel on Climate Change) have reached diametrically opposing conclusions about the hazard posed by human-related CO2 emissions, as summarized below:
WARMING POINT (IPCC): Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and oceans have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased.
WARMING COUNTERPOINT (NIPICC): Neither the rate nor the magnitude of the reported late twentieth century surface warming (1979 – 2000) lay outside normal natural variability, nor was it in any way unusual compared to earlier episodes in the Earth’s climatic history. Furthermore, solar forcing of temperature change are likely more important than is currently recognized, and evidence is lacking that a 2 degree C increase in temperature (for whatever cause) would be globally harmful.
HUMAN-INFLUENCED EMISSIONS POINT (IPCC): The atmospheric concentrations of CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide have increased to levels unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years. CO2 concentrations have increased by 40% since pre-industrial time, primarily from fossil fuel emissions. Human influence on the climate system is clear. This is evident from the increasing greenhouse concentrations in the atmosphere, positive radiative forcing, observed warming, and understanding of the climate system. It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-twentieth century.
HUMAN-INFLUENCED EMISSIONS COUNTERPOINT (NIPCC): No unambiguous evidence exists for adverse changes to the global environment caused by human-related CO2 emissions. In particular, the cryosphere is not melting at an enhanced rate; sea-level rise is not accelerating; no systematic changes have been documented in evaporation or rainfall or in the magnitude of intensity of extreme meteorological events; and an increased release of methane into the atmosphere from permafrost or sub-seabed gas hydrates is unlikely.
COUNTERPOINT SUMMARY (NIPCC): Thoughtful analysis of the IPCC and NIPCC summaries of the scientific literature reveals (1) a lack of empirical evidence for human-caused global warming, (2) that the temperature fluctuations that occurred in the twentieth century fell well within previous bounds and reinforces the fact that (3) the IPCC’s advice about future dangerous warming is entirely predicated upon the accuracy of their speculative computer models.
Source: Climate Change, the Facts: The Scientific Context by Dr. Robert M. Carter
POINT SUMMARY: Some aspects of climate change are expected to unfold in a roughly linear fashion. Computer models, and the changes we’ve seen to date, suggest that many of the regional and seasonal fingerprints of our future climate will be roughly twice as strong for a 2 degree C of global warming as for 1 degree C. On top of these incremental changes, there’s a real risk of even bigger trouble because of positive feedback processes. Although, “positive feedback” may sound like a good thing, in the physical world this process tends to amplify change, pushing conditions well beyond what one would otherwise expect.
Source: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Climate Change by Robert Henson
SPECIFIC CONSEQUENCES:
SEA LEVEL RISE POINT: The IPCC’s 2013 assessment concluded that sea levels by 2081 – 2100 could be anywhere from 10 to 32 inches higher than they were in the period 1986 – 2001. Especially toward the high end, that’s enough to cause major complications for millions of people who live and work near coastlines. Unfortunately, sea level won’t stop rising then, which means coastal areas will have to contend with ever-worsening problems. If emissions continue to rise unabated through this century, the Greenland and/or West Antarctic ice sheets could eventually be thrown into an unstoppable melting cycle that would raise sea level by more than 23 ft. This process would take some time to unfold – probably a few centuries.
Source: Thinking Person’s Guide to Climate Change by Robert Henson.
SEA LEVEL RISE COUNTERPOINT: Many Western governments have a politically popular ideology that argues: There will be tipping points, sea level rises, extinctions and ocean acidifications. This point is not reflected by evidence. In the past, when atmospheric CO2 was up to one thousand times higher than at present, there were no tipping points, no carbon dioxide-driven climate change, and no runaway global warming.
Source: Climate Change, the Facts: The Science and Politics of Climate Change by Dr. Ian Plimer
EXTREME WEATHER POINT: Data show a clear ramp-up in precipitation intensity for the United States, Europe, and several other areas over the last century, especially since the 1970s. When it rains or snows in these places, it now tends to rain or snow harder, over periods ranging from a few hours to several days. Projections from computer models suggest that this trend will intensify in the decades to come. There is a cruel twist to this story. You might expect droughts to diminish on a global basis as rainfall intensity goes up, but higher temperatures not only allow more rain-producing moisture to enter the atmosphere, they also suck more water out of the parched terrain where it hasn’t been raining. Thus, in addition to triggering more intense rainfall, global warming could also increase the occurrence of drought, a seeming paradox that already appears to be taking shape in some areas.
Source: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Climate Change by Robert Henson
EXTREME WEATHER COUNTERPOINT: As the latest IPCC report makes clear; careful studies have shown that, while extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and tropical storms have always occurred, overall there has been no increase in either their frequency or their severity. That maybe because there has so far been very little global warming indeed: the fear is the possible consequence of what is projected to lie ahead of us. And even in climate science, cause has to precede effect: it is impossible for future warming to affect events in the present. The fact remains that the most careful empirical studies show that there has been no perceptible increase, globally, in either the number or the severity of extreme weather events.
Source: Climate Change, the Facts: Extreme Weather & Global Warming by Anthony Watts.
AGRICULTURE POINT: Food, and the lack of it, could be where a changing climate exerts some of its most troublesome impacts for society. While the changes could affect ranching and grazing as well as arable farming, much of the research to date has focused on croplands. Because of longer dry spells, hotter temperatures, and more climatic uncertainty, the 21st century is likely to see major shifts in the crops sown and grown in various regions.
Source: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Climate Change by Robert Henson
AGRICULTURAL COUNTERPOINT: Atmospheric CO2 is not a pollutant. It is a non-toxic, nonirritating, and natural component of the atmosphere. Long-term CO2 enrichments studies confirm the findings of shorter-term experiments, demonstrating numerous growth-enhancing, water-conserving, and stress-alleviating effects of elevated atmospheric CO2 on plants growing in both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. The on-going rise in the air’s CO2 content is causing a great greening of the Earth. All across the planet, the historical increase in atmosphere’s CO2 concentration has stimulated vegetative productivity. There is little or no risk of increasing food insecurity, due to global warming.
Source: Climate Change, the Facts: The Scientific Context by Dr. Robert M. Carter
SUMMARY POINT: Despite the broad expert agreement on the basics of climate change science, deep uncertainty remains over the societal consequences that will result. Predicting these consequences is exceedingly difficult because doing so requires integrating information from complex physical, natural, and social systems. Without a clear picture of what awaits, it is proving too difficult to recognize the seriousness of the risks and too easy to be complacent. The complexity also makes it too easy for pundits, politicians, and interest group to down play the issue.
Source: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Climate Change by Robert Henson
SUMMARY COUNTERPOINT: It is very clear that climate change has done very little harm so far and is doing very little harm today. On balance it has done net good. Most well-informed politicians, journalists and scientists accept that this is the case. So, does the IPCC. They all say the damage will nearly all be in the future. Studies of the “social costs of carbon” and of the economic impacts of climate change on average find that climate change is not yet doing net harm and will only do so when the temperature reaches about 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. The IPCC confirmed this in its latest assessment report. Globally, climate change policy is doing harm, while climate change is doing good. Locally, in the poorest countries, the effect can be even more stark. Here the pain of policy is most acute and the gain of changing the concentration of atmospheric CO2 is most dramatic.
Source: Climate Change, the Facts 2017: The Poor are Carrying the Cost of Today’s Climate Policy by Dr. Matt Ridley
PREDICTING THE WARMUP:
ADVOCATE POINT: Some of the earliest global climate models showed a doubled CO2 sensitivity of around 4.5 degrees F. As more models of varying complexity came online, the range of possibilities was estimated to be 2.7 to 8.1 degrees F. This range – something of a best guess and the time – was cited in a landmark 1979 report on climate change by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. It was held constant by the IPCC in its first three assessments. Most of the major coupled models now show sensitivities within a degree of 5.4 degrees F. (3.0 degrees C) which is the best estimate pegged in the latest IPCC report. The fact that this value hasn’t changed much after nearly 30 years of modeling is testimony to how well modelers have captured the most important processes. A skeptic might complain that the models have simply been tuned to produce the result that people expect. Indeed, modelers have to guard against making so many adjustments to a model that it gets a “right” answer for the wrong reasons. But there’s also a physical rationale behind the 3 degree C number. It’s easy to show that if the atmosphere had no clouds or water vapor, the warming from doubled CO2 would be somewhere around 1.0 – 1.2 degrees C. It is believed that water vapor at least doubles the impact from the extra CO2. This brings the total change into the 3 degree C ballpark.
Source: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Climate Change by Robert Henson.
SKEPTIC COUNTERPOINTS:
Counterpoint 1: In the “Climate Models and Evaluation chapter” of the 2007 IPCC Assessment report; we first examined whether the authors had relied on validated forecasting procedures. We found no references to validation. We then audited the IPCC forecasting procedures using the Forecasting Audit Software available on ForPrin.com. Our audit found that the IPCC followed only 17 of the 89 relevant principles that we were able to code using the information provided in the 74-page IPCC chapter. Thus, the IPCC forecasting procedures violate 81% of relevant forecasting principles. We analyzed the IPCC’s forecasting procedures to assess whether they followed the Golden Rule of Forecasting which requires that forecasters be conservative. This means that they should use procedures that are consistent with knowledge about the situation and about forecasting methods. The Golden Rule is a unifying theory of how best to forecast. We found that the IPCC procedures violated all nineteen of the Golden Rule guidelines that are relevant to long-term forecasting. As the result of these violations, the IPCC forecasts are a product of biased forecasting procedures.
Over the past nearly two decades, atmospheric CO2 concentrations have risen while global temperatures have remained flat. Despite the disconfirming evidence, the IPCC claims have become even more confident about the man-made global warming hypothesis and they continue to forecast dangerous warming. The IPCC’s response is typical of how people tend to react when their forecasts are wrong: by having an even stronger belief that they will be proven correct with more time.
Source: Climate Change, the Fact: Forecasting Global Climate Change by Dr. Kesten Green and Dr. J. Scott Armstrong of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute in Australia
Counterpoint 2: In the early 1970s, an international workshop in Stockholm worked to define the main scientific problems which needed to be solved before reliable climate forecasting could be possible. The workshop defined quite a number of problems but focused on just two. The first concerned an inability to simulate the amount and character of clouds in the atmosphere. Clouds are important because they govern the balance between solar heating and infrared cooling of the planet, and thereby are a control of Earth’s temperature. The second concerned an inability to forecast the behavior of oceans. Oceans are important because they are the main reservoirs of heat in the climate system. They have internal, more-or-less random fluctuations on all sorts of time-scales ranging from years to centuries. These fluctuations cause changes in ocean surface temperature that in turn affect Earth’s overall climate.
The situation hasn’t changed all that much in the decades since. Many of the problems of simulating the behavior of clouds and oceans are still there. Virtually all the scientists directly involved in climate prediction are aware of the enormous problems and uncertainties still associated with their product. How then is it that those of them involved in the latest report of the IPCC can put their hands on their hearts and maintain there is a 95% probability that human emissions of CO2 have caused most of the global warming that has occurred over the last several decades?
Source: Climate Change, the Facts: Uncertainty, Skepticism and the Climate Issue Dr. Garth Paltridge
Counterpoint 3: There are many uncertainties about how climate system elements, such as clouds, will change with global warming, either acting to reduce warming or enhance warming, and these uncertainties in our understanding necessarily find their way into climate models. The models are tuned so that changes in clouds, water vapor, and other elements amplify the relatively weak direct warming from increasing CO2. If the climate system actually acts to dampen such warming, then the climate-model projections of warming could easily be a factor of two times too large. Since it is the feedback effects that largely determine just how much warming an associated climate change model will produce, the uncertainties about their values directly translate into projections of future warming.
Source: Climate Change, the Facts 2017: Satellite-Based Regional and Global Temperature Monitoring by Dr. Roy W. Spencer
Counterpoint 4: In the latest suite of climate models in the scientific summary of the IPCC, the mean sensitivity of surface temperature to a doubling of CO2 is 3.2 degrees C, and the warming rates are clearly too large. There are two independent, but mutually consistent estimates of a revised sensitivity that roughly cut the IPCC’s figure in half and bring it more in line with the observed temperature history. The increase in atmospheric CO2 is a low-order exponential function, while the response of temperature to incremental changes in CO2 is logarithmic. That this sums roughly to a straight line of constantly increasing temperature is very clear from inspection of the most recent suite of climate models. (Note: i.e. the logarithmic aspect was ignored).
Source: Climate Change, the Facts 2017: The Lukewarm Paradigm and Funding of Science by Dr. Patrick J. Michaels
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
GLOBAL CONSEQUENCES – MORE POINT AND COUNTERPOINT - EXCERPTS
INTRODUCTION: Scientists of IPCC and NIPCC (Non-Government International Panel on Climate Change) have reached diametrically opposing conclusions about the hazard posed by human-related CO2 emissions, as summarized below:
WARMING POINT (IPCC): Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and oceans have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased.
WARMING COUNTERPOINT (NIPICC): Neither the rate nor the magnitude of the reported late twentieth century surface warming (1979 – 2000) lay outside normal natural variability, nor was it in any way unusual compared to earlier episodes in the Earth’s climatic history. Furthermore, solar forcing of temperature change are likely more important than is currently recognized, and evidence is lacking that a 2 degree C increase in temperature (for whatever cause) would be globally harmful.
HUMAN-INFLUENCED EMISSIONS POINT (IPCC): The atmospheric concentrations of CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide have increased to levels unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years. CO2 concentrations have increased by 40% since pre-industrial time, primarily from fossil fuel emissions. Human influence on the climate system is clear. This is evident from the increasing greenhouse concentrations in the atmosphere, positive radiative forcing, observed warming, and understanding of the climate system. It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-twentieth century.
HUMAN-INFLUENCED EMISSIONS COUNTERPOINT (NIPCC): No unambiguous evidence exists for adverse changes to the global environment caused by human-related CO2 emissions. In particular, the cryosphere is not melting at an enhanced rate; sea-level rise is not accelerating; no systematic changes have been documented in evaporation or rainfall or in the magnitude of intensity of extreme meteorological events; and an increased release of methane into the atmosphere from permafrost or sub-seabed gas hydrates is unlikely.
COUNTERPOINT SUMMARY (NIPCC): Thoughtful analysis of the IPCC and NIPCC summaries of the scientific literature reveals (1) a lack of empirical evidence for human-caused global warming, (2) that the temperature fluctuations that occurred in the twentieth century fell well within previous bounds and reinforces the fact that (3) the IPCC’s advice about future dangerous warming is entirely predicated upon the accuracy of their speculative computer models.
Source: Climate Change, the Facts: The Scientific Context by Dr. Robert M. Carter
POINT SUMMARY: Some aspects of climate change are expected to unfold in a roughly linear fashion. Computer models, and the changes we’ve seen to date, suggest that many of the regional and seasonal fingerprints of our future climate will be roughly twice as strong for a 2 degree C of global warming as for 1 degree C. On top of these incremental changes, there’s a real risk of even bigger trouble because of positive feedback processes. Although, “positive feedback” may sound like a good thing, in the physical world this process tends to amplify change, pushing conditions well beyond what one would otherwise expect.
Source: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Climate Change by Robert Henson
SPECIFIC CONSEQUENCES:
SEA LEVEL RISE POINT: The IPCC’s 2013 assessment concluded that sea levels by 2081 – 2100 could be anywhere from 10 to 32 inches higher than they were in the period 1986 – 2001. Especially toward the high end, that’s enough to cause major complications for millions of people who live and work near coastlines. Unfortunately, sea level won’t stop rising then, which means coastal areas will have to contend with ever-worsening problems. If emissions continue to rise unabated through this century, the Greenland and/or West Antarctic ice sheets could eventually be thrown into an unstoppable melting cycle that would raise sea level by more than 23 ft. This process would take some time to unfold – probably a few centuries.
Source: Thinking Person’s Guide to Climate Change by Robert Henson.
SEA LEVEL RISE COUNTERPOINT: Many Western governments have a politically popular ideology that argues: There will be tipping points, sea level rises, extinctions and ocean acidifications. This point is not reflected by evidence. In the past, when atmospheric CO2 was up to one thousand times higher than at present, there were no tipping points, no carbon dioxide-driven climate change, and no runaway global warming.
Source: Climate Change, the Facts: The Science and Politics of Climate Change by Dr. Ian Plimer
EXTREME WEATHER POINT: Data show a clear ramp-up in precipitation intensity for the United States, Europe, and several other areas over the last century, especially since the 1970s. When it rains or snows in these places, it now tends to rain or snow harder, over periods ranging from a few hours to several days. Projections from computer models suggest that this trend will intensify in the decades to come. There is a cruel twist to this story. You might expect droughts to diminish on a global basis as rainfall intensity goes up, but higher temperatures not only allow more rain-producing moisture to enter the atmosphere, they also suck more water out of the parched terrain where it hasn’t been raining. Thus, in addition to triggering more intense rainfall, global warming could also increase the occurrence of drought, a seeming paradox that already appears to be taking shape in some areas.
Source: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Climate Change by Robert Henson
EXTREME WEATHER COUNTERPOINT: As the latest IPCC report makes clear; careful studies have shown that, while extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and tropical storms have always occurred, overall there has been no increase in either their frequency or their severity. That maybe because there has so far been very little global warming indeed: the fear is the possible consequence of what is projected to lie ahead of us. And even in climate science, cause has to precede effect: it is impossible for future warming to affect events in the present. The fact remains that the most careful empirical studies show that there has been no perceptible increase, globally, in either the number or the severity of extreme weather events.
Source: Climate Change, the Facts: Extreme Weather & Global Warming by Anthony Watts.
AGRICULTURE POINT: Food, and the lack of it, could be where a changing climate exerts some of its most troublesome impacts for society. While the changes could affect ranching and grazing as well as arable farming, much of the research to date has focused on croplands. Because of longer dry spells, hotter temperatures, and more climatic uncertainty, the 21st century is likely to see major shifts in the crops sown and grown in various regions.
Source: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Climate Change by Robert Henson
AGRICULTURAL COUNTERPOINT: Atmospheric CO2 is not a pollutant. It is a non-toxic, nonirritating, and natural component of the atmosphere. Long-term CO2 enrichments studies confirm the findings of shorter-term experiments, demonstrating numerous growth-enhancing, water-conserving, and stress-alleviating effects of elevated atmospheric CO2 on plants growing in both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. The on-going rise in the air’s CO2 content is causing a great greening of the Earth. All across the planet, the historical increase in atmosphere’s CO2 concentration has stimulated vegetative productivity. There is little or no risk of increasing food insecurity, due to global warming.
Source: Climate Change, the Facts: The Scientific Context by Dr. Robert M. Carter
SUMMARY POINT: Despite the broad expert agreement on the basics of climate change science, deep uncertainty remains over the societal consequences that will result. Predicting these consequences is exceedingly difficult because doing so requires integrating information from complex physical, natural, and social systems. Without a clear picture of what awaits, it is proving too difficult to recognize the seriousness of the risks and too easy to be complacent. The complexity also makes it too easy for pundits, politicians, and interest group to down play the issue.
Source: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Climate Change by Robert Henson
SUMMARY COUNTERPOINT: It is very clear that climate change has done very little harm so far and is doing very little harm today. On balance it has done net good. Most well-informed politicians, journalists and scientists accept that this is the case. So, does the IPCC. They all say the damage will nearly all be in the future. Studies of the “social costs of carbon” and of the economic impacts of climate change on average find that climate change is not yet doing net harm and will only do so when the temperature reaches about 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. The IPCC confirmed this in its latest assessment report. Globally, climate change policy is doing harm, while climate change is doing good. Locally, in the poorest countries, the effect can be even more stark. Here the pain of policy is most acute and the gain of changing the concentration of atmospheric CO2 is most dramatic.
Source: Climate Change, the Facts 2017: The Poor are Carrying the Cost of Today’s Climate Policy by Dr. Matt Ridley
PREDICTING THE WARMUP:
ADVOCATE POINT: Some of the earliest global climate models showed a doubled CO2 sensitivity of around 4.5 degrees F. As more models of varying complexity came online, the range of possibilities was estimated to be 2.7 to 8.1 degrees F. This range – something of a best guess and the time – was cited in a landmark 1979 report on climate change by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. It was held constant by the IPCC in its first three assessments. Most of the major coupled models now show sensitivities within a degree of 5.4 degrees F. (3.0 degrees C) which is the best estimate pegged in the latest IPCC report. The fact that this value hasn’t changed much after nearly 30 years of modeling is testimony to how well modelers have captured the most important processes. A skeptic might complain that the models have simply been tuned to produce the result that people expect. Indeed, modelers have to guard against making so many adjustments to a model that it gets a “right” answer for the wrong reasons. But there’s also a physical rationale behind the 3 degree C number. It’s easy to show that if the atmosphere had no clouds or water vapor, the warming from doubled CO2 would be somewhere around 1.0 – 1.2 degrees C. It is believed that water vapor at least doubles the impact from the extra CO2. This brings the total change into the 3 degree C ballpark.
Source: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Climate Change by Robert Henson.
SKEPTIC COUNTERPOINTS:
Counterpoint 1: In the “Climate Models and Evaluation chapter” of the 2007 IPCC Assessment report; we first examined whether the authors had relied on validated forecasting procedures. We found no references to validation. We then audited the IPCC forecasting procedures using the Forecasting Audit Software available on ForPrin.com. Our audit found that the IPCC followed only 17 of the 89 relevant principles that we were able to code using the information provided in the 74-page IPCC chapter. Thus, the IPCC forecasting procedures violate 81% of relevant forecasting principles. We analyzed the IPCC’s forecasting procedures to assess whether they followed the Golden Rule of Forecasting which requires that forecasters be conservative. This means that they should use procedures that are consistent with knowledge about the situation and about forecasting methods. The Golden Rule is a unifying theory of how best to forecast. We found that the IPCC procedures violated all nineteen of the Golden Rule guidelines that are relevant to long-term forecasting. As the result of these violations, the IPCC forecasts are a product of biased forecasting procedures.
Over the past nearly two decades, atmospheric CO2 concentrations have risen while global temperatures have remained flat. Despite the disconfirming evidence, the IPCC claims have become even more confident about the man-made global warming hypothesis and they continue to forecast dangerous warming. The IPCC’s response is typical of how people tend to react when their forecasts are wrong: by having an even stronger belief that they will be proven correct with more time.
Source: Climate Change, the Fact: Forecasting Global Climate Change by Dr. Kesten Green and Dr. J. Scott Armstrong of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute in Australia
Counterpoint 2: In the early 1970s, an international workshop in Stockholm worked to define the main scientific problems which needed to be solved before reliable climate forecasting could be possible. The workshop defined quite a number of problems but focused on just two. The first concerned an inability to simulate the amount and character of clouds in the atmosphere. Clouds are important because they govern the balance between solar heating and infrared cooling of the planet, and thereby are a control of Earth’s temperature. The second concerned an inability to forecast the behavior of oceans. Oceans are important because they are the main reservoirs of heat in the climate system. They have internal, more-or-less random fluctuations on all sorts of time-scales ranging from years to centuries. These fluctuations cause changes in ocean surface temperature that in turn affect Earth’s overall climate.
The situation hasn’t changed all that much in the decades since. Many of the problems of simulating the behavior of clouds and oceans are still there. Virtually all the scientists directly involved in climate prediction are aware of the enormous problems and uncertainties still associated with their product. How then is it that those of them involved in the latest report of the IPCC can put their hands on their hearts and maintain there is a 95% probability that human emissions of CO2 have caused most of the global warming that has occurred over the last several decades?
Source: Climate Change, the Facts: Uncertainty, Skepticism and the Climate Issue Dr. Garth Paltridge
Counterpoint 3: There are many uncertainties about how climate system elements, such as clouds, will change with global warming, either acting to reduce warming or enhance warming, and these uncertainties in our understanding necessarily find their way into climate models. The models are tuned so that changes in clouds, water vapor, and other elements amplify the relatively weak direct warming from increasing CO2. If the climate system actually acts to dampen such warming, then the climate-model projections of warming could easily be a factor of two times too large. Since it is the feedback effects that largely determine just how much warming an associated climate change model will produce, the uncertainties about their values directly translate into projections of future warming.
Source: Climate Change, the Facts 2017: Satellite-Based Regional and Global Temperature Monitoring by Dr. Roy W. Spencer
Counterpoint 4: In the latest suite of climate models in the scientific summary of the IPCC, the mean sensitivity of surface temperature to a doubling of CO2 is 3.2 degrees C, and the warming rates are clearly too large. There are two independent, but mutually consistent estimates of a revised sensitivity that roughly cut the IPCC’s figure in half and bring it more in line with the observed temperature history. The increase in atmospheric CO2 is a low-order exponential function, while the response of temperature to incremental changes in CO2 is logarithmic. That this sums roughly to a straight line of constantly increasing temperature is very clear from inspection of the most recent suite of climate models. (Note: i.e. the logarithmic aspect was ignored).
Source: Climate Change, the Facts 2017: The Lukewarm Paradigm and Funding of Science by Dr. Patrick J. Michaels
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
| 12_cc_long_global_consequences_more_debate_--_segment_12.pdf |