Is there any weather inconsistent with the the scientific consensus on climate?
January 1st, 2008Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
Two years ago I asked a question of climate scientists that never received a good answer. Over at the TierneyLab at the New York Times, John Tierney raises the question again:
What behavior of the climate system could hypothetically be observed over the next 1, 5, 10 years that would be inconsistent with the current consensus on climate change? My focus is on extreme events like floods and hurricanes, so please consider those, but consider any other climate metric or phenomena you think important as well for answering this question. Ideally, a response would focus on more than just sea level rise and global average temperature, but if these are the only metrics that are relevant here that too would be very interesting to know.
The answer, it seems, is “nothing would be inconsistent,” but I am open to being educated. Climate scientists especially invited to weigh in in the comments or via email, here or at the TierneyLab.
And a Happy 2008 to all our readers!
January 1st, 2008 at 6:56 am
Dr. Pielke, since so much of your writings seem consumed with the problem of separating science from politics, why in the world would you associate yourself with John Tierney, a Ayn Rand type libertarian, who seeks every opportunity to attack scientists whose critiques he interprets as undermining his own free market ideology. Before he began his column in the science section of the Times, he wrote an op-ed for the paper that was far more ideologically driven than any other regular contributor. By being linked with him, you undermine your own credibility.
January 1st, 2008 at 8:37 am
lproyect- Thanks for the warning, however, here at Prometheus we tend to follow that old-fashioned notion that ideas should be evaluated on their merits. Efforts to smear by association or political leanings usually means that one probably has no good substantive (counter)arguments to offer.
January 3rd, 2008 at 11:19 am
I read the ranting over at the NYT. But, this is a fair enough question, and everyone ought to be able to give an answer. I base mine on the trend in GMST. I wrote up something longer, but the short of it is:
If we fail to reject the time rate of change in GMST is zero at a confidence level of 5% using sufficient numbers of data to give a statistical power of at least 90%
then, I would consider this empirical proof that the world is not warming.
Of course, we need to do the test correctly, accounting for serial autocorrelation etc. But basically, that’s it. If there is no positive trend, the world is not warming.
January 4th, 2008 at 3:22 am
Perhaps the reason you have not received an answer to your question is that it was perceived as rhetorical. I certainly thought it was when you first asked.
Just curious, but did you directly ask any climate scientists or just post the question on your blog?
However assuming that it was not rhetorical…
1)On a simplistic level the answer is nothing. Because of random fluctuations anything could happen. Just as it would take more then 5 or 10 rolls of the dice to prove a set is not loaded, it would take more then 5 or 10 years to disprove AGW. But you already knew that.
2)The evidence for existence and seriousness of AGW has increased significantly over the years. This resulted in a stronger and more uniform consensus. There is also a range of opinion on how serious the effects are, and there is a lot of doubt about specifics. If the evidence does not continue to increase then doubts about the seriousness of AGW will increase among scientists. 10 years of a global cooling trend, slowing the rate or reversing melt of most glacier, continued recovery of arctic sea ice, all would seriously undermine the concern of AGW. Scientists do respond to evidence. There would still be some sounding the alarm and some continuing to deny humans have any effect on climate, but overall the center of opinion would shift dramatically. But you already knew that.
3)Something could happen that significantly shifted our understanding of the climate response to forcing. I don’t know what that would be, but one could imagine that for some reason the oceans suddenly increased the CO2 uptake significantly, or there was some other non-linearity resulting in much slower rate of temperature increase. The climate sensitivity may turn out to be on the very low end of the current estimates. Doesn’t seem very likely to me but it could happen. If it did the concern about AGW would decrease significantly. But you probably already knew that too.
4)Something could also happen that shows that the computer models neglect something unknown non-linear feedback and are completely useless. The computer models are very complex and a potential source of big error. The climate message I got from this years AGU, was that things are changing much faster then expected and are likely to be much more serious then we thought. This may change but if the models are wrong they may be seriously under predicting the changes. The basic physics however is strong. Many specifics are still very uncertain (e.g. Hurricane response, rate of sea level rise). But you already knew all of this too. If something happens that indicates the models are both inadequate and over predicting change then the consensus would shift. Perhaps your question was what could that be. I have no idea what that could be.
I could only get through a fraction of the responses at Teirney Labs but there are a couple of good answers among the vast majority of crap.
Nosmo
January 6th, 2008 at 5:09 am
Patrick Johnson writes in by email (we’re upgrading the site soon, I promise!);
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Almost the first thing I learned after learning that all was not well with Climate Science is that it has a very efficient propaganda machine* that has a finely-tuned polemic, to wit: Global Climate (and note the singular) is an oh-so delicately balanced meta-system, and Homo Industrius is mucking with it, to the peril of all the world’s inhabitants. Thanks to relentless vetting by the rationalists, the public has become somewhat more sophisticated, and newspaper accounts now routinely add the disclaimer that of course, no single event can be ascribed to AGW. But the message is still persistent: We have destabilized The Climate – Biblical floods, instant deserts, plagues of locusts, cell phone service outages in St. Cloud, MN . . . it’s the AGW, stupid.
Very slick.
*Note that I wrote “machine,” not “conspiracy.” These things seem to take on a life o their own – Distributed Intelligence, Swarm Intelligence. Something like that.
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January 6th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Yep, it’s also called inertia…
http://www.suppressedscience.net/inertiaofscientificthought.html
January 8th, 2008 at 5:01 am
Fantastic question, Roger! It gets at the crux of what is science vs. what is advocacy. Science is falsifiable.
In his long rambling comment above, Nosmo failed to give the obvious answer–If the real-world data diverges so drastically and persistently from IPCC projections, that no other conclusion is possible except that IPCC projections are based upon a failed hypotheses.
Sad, but typical of “consensus science” true believers.