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Simple Pocket Calculator Model Outperforms Complex Climate Models

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I don’t know if someone has seen this item on Phys.Org, or not. One of my most strident objections to global warming is the failure of climate models to actually ‘model’ what temperature has done over the last twenty years. Here’s this simple program that gets it right.

As one of the authors put it:

Dr Matt Briggs, “Statistician to the Stars”, said: “A high-school student with a pocket scientific calculator can now use this remarkable model and obtain credible estimates of global warming simply and quickly, as well as acquiring a better understanding of how climate sensitivity is determined. As a statistician, I know the value of keeping things simple and the dangers in thinking that more complex models are necessarily better. Once people can understand how climate sensitivity is determined, they will realize how little evidence for alarm there is.”

The two graphs are worth the visit.

Then there is this:

The new, simple climate model helps to expose the errors in the complex models the IPCC and governments rely upon. Those errors caused the over-predictions on which concern about Man’s influence on the climate was needlessly built.

Among the errors of the complex climate models that the simple model exposes are the following –
The assumption that “temperature feedbacks” would double or triple direct manmade greenhouse warming is the largest error made by the complex climate models. Feedbacks may well reduce warming, not amplify it.

The Bode system-gain equation models mutual amplification of feedbacks in electronic circuits, but, when complex models erroneously apply it to the climate on the IPCC’s false assumption of strongly net-amplifying feedbacks, it greatly over-predicts global warming. They are using the wrong equation.

As they say, “Junk In, Junk Out.”

One last quote:

Once errors like these are corrected, the most likely global warming in response to a doubling of CO2 concentration is not 3.3 °C but 1 °C or less. Even if all available fossil fuels were burned, less than 2.2 °C warming would result.

The crony capitalists must be squirming.

Comments
skram:
“the prestigious Science Bulletin (formerly Chinese Science Bulletin)” is indeed a joke. With an impact factor of 1.365, this journal is dangling at the bottom of the academic food chain.
Maybe he didn't publish it in the PNAS because the "Climatistas" wouldn't allow it. You know, censorship. I'm not going to respond to any of your further comments because there is not talking to someone with your mindset. But, if you get out of line---which you haven't so far---it will be time for you to "skram." IOW, I'll delete the comments.PaV
January 29, 2015
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Me_Thinks: You've still not answered my question. Do you know how silly it looks pointing out all the "errors" of Monckton's paper when, at the same time, his model is in line with actual temperatures, and the IPCC models are not?PaV
January 29, 2015
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Me_Thinks: Here's what Monckton says in response. I lifted this from a blog.
Oops! One wrong equation caused the climate scare RED FACES all round among the profiteers of doom. A wrong equation that falsely triples the tiny direct warming caused by doubling CO2 concentration has been discovered and exposed in a major peer-reviewed paper just published in the Science Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, one of the world’s top learned journals. No rogue equation, no climate crisis. The equation seems quite harmless. Here it is: ?G_t=(1-?_0 f_t)?^(-1) It says the amount by which climate scientists multiply the direct warming from, say, CO2 to allow for “temperature feedbacks” – changes to the climate because it has warmed that make it warm still further – is equal to the reciprocal of 1 minus a third of the sum of all the feedbacks. They say the feedbacks, measured in Watts per square meter of the Earth per Celsius degree of direct warming, add up to 2. So the equation tells them to multiply by 3. Just 1 Celsius degree of warming from doubling CO2 in the air suddenly, wrongly, becomes 3 degrees. A non-event becomes a crisis. James Hansen – the former director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (who once said anyone who questioned his math should be tried for “high crimes against humanity”, for which the penalty is death) – had lifted the rogue equation, the Bode system-gain relation, from a 551-page tome by R.W. Bode about feedback amplification in electronic circuits, published 70 years ago. Hansen, and the tiny handful of other climate scientists who realized the rogue equation came from electronic circuitry, had assumed it would work for all kinds of dynamical systems from electronic circuits to the Earth’s climate. But it doesn’t. It applies only to certain systems whose output (in a circuit, the voltage) does not operate to bring the system back into balance after an overload. But in the climate rising temperature restores the balance between incoming and outgoing radiation. Warming acts against the feedbacks. It damps them down. Also, in a circuit, when the feedbacks reach a threshold value the current suddenly changes direction and goes around the circuit the other way. A positive current instantaneously becomes a negative current. In process engineers’ jargon, the current flicks from the positive to the negative rail. But in the climate rising feedbacks cannot flick temperature down when they were driving it up just before. Why does this matter? Because it means the true warming from a doubling of CO2 concentration is not 3 or 5 or 10 Celsius. All the scare stories have been wrong from the get-go. Scientists came up with these exaggerated predictions because, and only because, they were using the wrong equation. Take the misplaced equation out of your computer model – as the paper by four leading researchers in the Science Bulletin demonstrates – and the climate “crisis” melts away. And it’s the only thing that will melt away. Just three months ago, the world had more sea ice than for 35 years. Also, despite record increases in CO2 concentration, there has been no global warming for 18 years 3 months. Now we know why. Not a single red cent need have been spent on making global warming go away. But in Paris this December world leaders – unless they and their advisers read the Science Bulletin – will approve a savage global-government treaty that will give the unelected UN unprecedented powers to tax and regulate elected governments in the name of Saving The Planet from Thermageddon. And all because of one wrong equation.
PaV
January 29, 2015
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Me_Think... So? In a world of no objective morals or ethics is he not doing what we all ought to be doing? Whatever it takes to survive...... My point to you is this..... refute the science first then the man, your list of ramblings has NOT refuted the science, its only a charge sheet against his character! I can also make a charge sheet against yours if you like?Andre
January 29, 2015
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I took the liberty of copying this from a blog where Monckton's science was questioned-----and where those responding to him were, as we would expect, disrespectful and childish.
I am scathing of some of the nastier as well as sillier comments here because I have discovered by experience that my hammering back at those who have no constructive points to make is noticed by unprejudiced third parties (not paid-up partisans like the Once-Upon-A-Time fairy), who enjoy seeing the intellectual feeble-mindedness of the climate Nazis (as an eminent climate researcher has called them) bluntly exposed. Back to the science. There has been no global warming for 18 years 3 months (RSS monthly global mean surface temperature anomaly dataset, October 1996 to December 2014). Sea-ice extent globally reached a satellite-era maximum three months ago. Sea ice was supposed to have disappeared in the Arctic summer by 2013, according to Al Gore. It didn't disappear (University of Illinois Cryosphere Today). Droughts were forecast, but the area of the Earth under drought has fallen for 30 years (Hao et al., 2014). Hurricanes and typhoons have neither increased in frequency nor intensity nor duration nor fraction of property value in harm's way damaged (Accumulated Cyclone Energy Index, Florida State University). Lives lost from weather events worldwide are declining (Prof. Will Happer, Princeton University). Area of the Sahara has shrunk by 300,000 km2 in 30 years owing to the greening of areas previously arid (Nicholson, 1981). Snow-cover extent in the Northern hemisphere shows no real change in 35 years (Cryosphere Today). Sea level fell from 2003-2009 and has barely risen in the past decade (Aviso Envisat; GRACE satellites). Just about every prediction of disaster made by the climate Communists has failed to come to pass. The few disasters that have happened (Sandy, Haiyan) were not caused by global warming - for the good and sufficient reason that for well over a decade, and perhaps two decades, there has not been any). Naturally, I was curious to find out why all the lurid predictions of the profiteers of doom had not come to pass. I spent several years looking at the models, talking to the modelers, consulting climate scientists in many specialisms and on both sides of the debate. It was curiosity that led me to construct my own admittedly very simple model. That model does not purport to replace the general-circulation models, but I should not be surprised if in future years it proves to be closer to the truth on global temperature trends than they, for one good reason. I have no financial interest in pushing the science in one direction or another, as the climate Communists do. I am not in an academic institution where the cloying pressure from the far Left to be "politically correct" - which in my experience means scientifically incorrect - is overwhelming. I have no interest in advancing a political view about the climate. I am genuinely curious as to why so many people on the climate-Communist Left have been so easily herded into thinking the same way, as though they had been assimilated by the Borg. In fact, let us call them the Borg from now on. They act like robots with a single, unthinking hive mind that defers to the collective (now excitingly rebranded the 97% consensus). They spend large amounts of time and very large amounts of money denigrating the reputations of those of us who dare to ask questions about the climate-Communist party line. They call me all manner of names and hurl all manner of insults as a substitute for addressing the scientific argument that they have long lost. And when I give as good as I get they burst into tears and rush behind Nanny's skirts and suck their thumbs and wail pathetically. Well, by now you will have appreciated that the Borg are not going to succeed in Assimilating me. If there are genuine scientific arguments against the concepts described in my paper, I shall be happy to hear that they have been organized into a proper mathematical and physical form as a comment or letter to the editor of Science Bulletin. I shall then reply in a proper mathematical and physical form, and the attempted rebuttal (if any) and my refutation of it (if I can refute it) will be published in the same issue of the Bulletin, in accordance with standard academic practice. Frankly, that would be a less babyish approach than that to which I have been subjected here. Now that the gauntlet has been thrown down, let us see whether a proper scientific challenge can indeed be mounted to our modest paper which is so very strongly rooted in what the proprietor of this blog calls "mainstream science" that at the time of writing his only criticism of note is that the material in the paper is plagiarized - i.e., used without due acknowledgement. I have dealt with that absurd allegation firmly and clearly. Let us see if there are any proper, adult, scientific challenges to what our paper puts forward.
PaV
January 28, 2015
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PaV @ 18 They cherry picked and showed result that came close to their model.
.. these projections in the FAR back then weren’t done with general circulation models. They were done with an energy balance model for the atmosphere coupled to an ocean model that consisted of two boxes. Coupled ocean-atmosphere GCMs were still considered to be too much in their infancy to be used for projections of transient climate change in 1990. Similarly in Figure 6, Monckton et al. again compare measurements only to the scenario from the FAR with the strongest forcing. They also use projections from the paper by Hansen et al. 1988 [3]. They again select only the scenario A, the one with the strongest forcing for the comparison. As for the measurements, Monckton et al. use the HadCRUT4 trend of the surface temperature over the last 63 years. A past trend is compared to future projections. This isn’t a valid comparison, because the combined climate drivers have had a specific variability over the past century, which can’t be just assumed to be the same in the future. Then they use the RSS satellite data set of recent 17 years for a comparison to surface temperature data, which is also wrong, since the satellite data are for the lower troposphere, not for the surface. One also wonders why the authors have specifically chosen the RSS data in the figure. It’s not the only satellite data set.
Me_Think
January 28, 2015
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Andre @ 17, The Science behind the paper has been refuted in comment #3. Check out the 'lead author' credentials:
1. Monckton claimed to be a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Al Gore and the IPCC because he supposedly sent the IPCC a letter pointing out something that needed to be corrected in a draft report. At one point he said the claim to be a Nobel laureate was all a joke. 2. Monckton claimed that he has developed a cure for Graves’ Disease, AIDS, Multiple Schlerosis, the flu, and the common cold. This is no joke–he actually filed applications to patent a “therapeutic treatment” in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013. 3. Monckton lied about his personal circumstances to sell more of his Eternity puzzle, and admitted it. 4. Monckton represented himself to members of the U.S. Congress as a member of the U.K. House of Lords (the upper house of Parliament.) When people started pointing out that he doesn’t appear on the official list of members, however, he started saying that he is a member “without a seat or vote.” 5.John Abraham pointed out a large number of examples where Monckton cited scientific literature that actually refuted his points, or the authors of the papers said that Monckton had misinterpreted their results. 6.Monckton cited statistics about variations in the amount of incoming solar radiation to come to exactly the opposite conclusion from the authors he cited. 7.Lord Monckton totally botched his discussion of ocean acidification, revealing that he doesn’t understand ocean circulation, the significance of pH in aqueous systems 8.Monckton tended to erroneously use local temperature records in place of global ones, which is another thing he was criticized for in the Times. 8.Alden Griffith showed how Monckton has cherrypicked data when discussing trends in Arctic sea ice extent. 9.Lord Monckton made up data on atmospheric CO2 concentration and global mean temperature that he claimed were IPCC predictions. The CO2 projections were similar to the real ones, but significantly corrupted, and the temperature projections were the product of inputting the corrupted data into an equation not meant for this purpose. This has been addressed several times by Gavin Schmidt, John Nielsen-Gammon, Lucia Liljegren 10. He attacked mainstream estimates of climate sensitivity by a misapplication of the Stefan-Bolzmann equation. 11. He frequently uses an IPCC equation for the EQUILIBRIUM temperature response of climate models to calculate TRANSIENT temperature response. 12. Monckton has threatened to instigate academic misconduct investigations and/or libel suits against several professors who have exposed his misrepresentations including Naomi Oreskes,John Abraham,Scott Mandia. etc etc etc
More Here with links to relevant issues in the text Me_Think
January 28, 2015
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Me_Thinks: I haven't read through all of your criticisms of their model. Just answer me this: who got temperatures right, and who got them wrong? Can you answer that question?PaV
January 28, 2015
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Piotr And your display here is what we've had to put up with for years, dismiss the source (creationist, ID'er, opposing views) because if you do, you don't have to deal with the actual science. We know this tune, time to change the beat!Andre
January 28, 2015
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Piotr I'll explain........ They are not really climatologists......... iow, "no true Scotsman" The Chinese journal is not really the equivalent of nature... iow "no true Scotsman" So instead of assessing the actual evidence, which you should do, as you are the claimed critical thinker, you dismiss it on your no true Scotsman fallacy. Sloppy to say the least. Try this trick! Refute the science first not the source, which is not what you're attempting here! I call that anti-intellectual, you?Andre
January 28, 2015
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I don't see what "no true Scotsman" has got to do with it.Piotr
January 28, 2015
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Piotr Again, no truer Scotsman? Again?????Andre
January 28, 2015
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LOL, according to the press release (by Briggs), the Science Bulletin is
...the Orient’s equivalent of Science or Nature, one of the world’s top six learned journals of science.
Perhaps "the paper's lead author", His Lordship, inspired this Oriental hyperbole. He himself calls it "the Orient's equivalent of Nature", as he "fires back" on critics: http://www.climatedepot.com/2015/01/25/monckton-fires-back-point-by-point-rebuttal-at-warmist-critics-of-new-peer-reviewed-study-shoddy-rent-a-quote-scientists/Piotr
January 28, 2015
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SKRAM I do have to protest! In this world where we have come to celebrate mediocrity, is everything not prestigious these days?Andre
January 28, 2015
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SKRAM There are lies, lies and more lies. But impact factor does not make a journal prestigious because the impact factor itself is deeply flawed, I've given two reasons do you need more?Andre
January 28, 2015
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Andre, The piece in phys.org states that the paper has been published in a prestigious journal. Impact factor is a good way to check whether a scientific journal is prestigious. This one certainly isn't. I am not arguing whether a high impact factor is good or bad.skram
January 28, 2015
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And impact factors are bad for science, 2 reasons really.... 1.)They discourage negative findings Littner, Y., F. B. Mimouni, et al. (2005). “Negative results and impact factor: a lesson from neonatology.” Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 159(11): 1036-1037. 2.) They favour consensus science...... Jefferson, T., C. D. Pietrantonj, et al. (2009). “Relation of study quality, concordance, take home message, funding, and impact in studies of influenza vaccines: systematic review.” BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.) 338.Andre
January 28, 2015
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Let me make another observation. Phys.org publishes brief synopses of research articles. I had one of my own research papers highlighted there. A journalist affiliated with phys.org contacted me about the article, I answered her questions on the phone, and she wrote a piece that was published on phys.org. Under her byline. This piece, curiously, has no byline. Instead, at the bottom, it says "Provided by Science China Press." This is not an article written by a journalist. It's a PR piece. And "Lord" Monckton as the first author? That's priceless! I'd like to know what he contributed to the article.skram
January 28, 2015
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"the prestigious Science Bulletin (formerly Chinese Science Bulletin)" is indeed a joke. With an impact factor of 1.365, this journal is dangling at the bottom of the academic food chain. For comparison, the impact factor of the US analog—the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences—is 9.809. PNAS is a prestigious journal. Science Bulletin is not. To put things in perspective, here are impact factors of the journals published by the Nature Publishing Group.skram
January 28, 2015
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Poitr No truer Scotsman heh?Andre
January 28, 2015
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...two maverick climatologists... Willie Soon is actually a astrophysicist, primarily, though he does prefer to publish in the area of atmospheric physics.Piotr
January 28, 2015
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...the prestigious Science Bulletin (formerly Chinese Science Bulletin)... It's a joke, right? A bunch of people with poor credentials or no credentials at all (a journalist, a statistician, and two maverick climatologists on ExxonMobil's payroll) help a Chinese journal with an IF of just above 1 to start a new era under a new name. China is the world's largest producer of excess CO2, by the way. I'm particularly delighted to see Lord Monckton among the authors. He's so deluded that he believes he has a seat in the House of Lords and "the status of Nobel Peace laureate". They could have waited till the April issue.Piotr
January 28, 2015
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The Chinese Academy of Science, which co-publishes the journal, forcefully distanced itself from the Heartland Institute in 2013 after the think-tank used the fact that the Academy had translated one of its reports to suggest broad support for its climate-skeptic views. They have used the 1969 zero Dimension energy balance Model used in conceptual study - it is not a 'new' model.In fact they have just rewritten the Roe (2009) derivation of the model. Moreover, From The Carbon Brief:
"I'm particularly concerned about three aspects at least in this study. First, they use temperature variations over the last 800,000 years as a constraint, but of course the feedbacks in a world with whole continents covered by snow and ice are very different from a world today."
"[The new] model asserts that there has been no warming below the surface layers of the oceans over the past few decades.
The entire premise for accusation that IPCC uses Bode System gain is wrong. IPCC does not use the Bode system gain model at all ! More from: Dr. Jan Perlwitz docs
First, that a temperature change between glacials and interglacials of 6 Kelvin, despite Milankovitch forcing, indicated that the feedbacks in the climate system were small. The authors just postulate this, as if this was self-evident. But it is not self-evident. The globally and annually averaged Milankovitch forcing between glacials and interglacials is smaller than 0.5 W/m2 [1] (for comparison, radiative forcing to CO2-doubling is about 3.7 W/m2. The second argument in the paper for a small positive or even net negative feedback, which the authors also use to postulate an upper limit of 0.1 for a parameter that is called “loop gain” and that prescribes the net magnitude of the feedbacks, is simply absurd.
cherry picking from IPCC report, as done by the 'simple model', is not science:
these projections in the FAR back then weren't done with general circulation models. They were done with an energy balance model for the atmosphere coupled to an ocean model that consisted of two boxes. Coupled ocean-atmosphere GCMs were still considered to be too much in their infancy to be used for projections of transient climate change in 1990.
Similarly in Figure 6, Monckton et al. again compare measurements only to the scenario from the FAR with the strongest forcing. They also use projections from the paper by Hansen et al. 1988 [3]. They again select only the scenario A, the one with the strongest forcing for the comparison.
As for the measurements, Monckton et al. use the HadCRUT4 trend of the surface temperature over the last 63 years. A past trend is compared to future projections. This isn't a valid comparison, because the combined climate drivers have had a specific variability over the past century, which can't be just assumed to be the same in the future. Then they use the RSS satellite data set of recent 17 years for a comparison to surface temperature data, which is also wrong, since the satellite data are for the lower troposphere, not for the surface. One also wonders why the authors have specifically chosen the RSS data in the figure. It's not the only satellite data set.
Me_Think
January 28, 2015
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Just like evolution, climate change has to be true. What is wrong with you IDiots?Mung
January 28, 2015
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Real climate models are complex things that consider a variety of variables. One of the facts is that water vapor (also known by the very technical term "clouds") is MUCH more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than CO2, and the models don't attempt to show cloud cover moving and changing on a daily and seasonal basis. At the same time, the effectiveness of CO2 is known to be nonlinear: doubling the concentration has practically no additional effect. There is also the FACT that CO2 is PLANT FOOD. The current CO2 concentration in our atmosphere is at the LOW end for supporting plant growth worldwide. CO2 increases are DIRECTLY related to increased growth of trees in tropical jungles and the vast forests of North America and Siberia. So the tiny increases at the end of the 20th century did WONDERS for rebuilding the forests. The LAST thing humanity wants to do is REDUCE CO2 in the atmosphere. There is also the problem that there are always errors in the data sets available, and the specific weather stations that report temperatures vary from year to year. Etc., etc., etc. See "Climate of Extremes" by Patrick J. Michaels. So there is as much work in scrubbing the raw data as there is in tinkering with your model. Everybody changes the data. Real climatologists openly explain what they changed and why. What the Warmists have repeatedly done is systematically adjust the data sets and grossly overstate the effects of CO2 (to the exclusion of ALL other gases) to produce a desired shift upwards, and then refuse to allow other climatologists to see the data they actually used. This has meant that non-Warmists have regularly complained that they can't get their models to produce results anywhere near what the Warmist models do. This is NOT the work of "crony capitalists". This is the work of the same kind of "scientists" in academia that promote Darwinism. There are HUGE amounts of GOVERNMENT money sloshing around in grants given to teams whose climate models produce scary results. So, as with Evolutionists, only approved Warmists are allowed to speak at conferences or be quoted by The Mainstream Media. The international conspiracy to create a World Government Carbon Control Board has apparently died because too much of the fakery has been exposed. But the US Government remains hellbent on installing Carbon Control boards for the purpose of collecting VAST amounts of new taxes and fees while choking off the production of electricity: the Feds are coming for YOUR air conditioner. If you want to read about real Climate Change, try "The Long Summer" by Brian Fagan. Fagan doesn't attempt to explain WHY temperatures and rainfall patterns suddenly changed 5,000 years ago. He simply documents that they DID. The shift to warmer, milder weather over Europe and the Mid-East corresponds to the rise of Civilization. Fagan then shows what happens when Earth's climate goes through a cooling phase in "The Little Ice Age". Warmer is MUCH better than Cooler.mahuna
January 28, 2015
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