Belief in the truth of a theory is inversely proportional to the precision of the science. At least that is what someone called Harris once said.
Modern climate science theory seems to be a case in point with imprecise extrapolation from often poorly understood variables to what have become generally accepted General Circulation Models which many scientists claim can predict future climate.
But do the leading climate scientists, in particular the United Nation’s IPCC scientists, really believe in this theory?
Not really.
As their last big report was being assembled, The Fourth Assessment Report published in 2007, lead authors who asked what they really thought by way of a questionnaire.
Climate scientist Ann Henderson-Sellers then pulled together these responses for a workshop held in Sydney in October 2007.
Following are some of the responses from the climate scientists which fall into the category of ‘Serious inadequacies in climate change prediction that are of real concern’:
“The rush to emphasize regional climate does not have a scientifically sound basis.
“Prioritize the models so that weaker ones do not confuse/dilute the signals.
“Until and unless major oscillations in the Earth System (El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) etc.) can be predicted to the extent that they are predictable, regional climate is not a well defined problem. It may never be. If that is the case then we should say so. It is not just the forecast but the confidence and uncertainty that are just as much a key.
“Climate models need to be exercised for weather prediction; there are necessary but not sufficient things that can best be tested in this framework, which is just beginning to be exploited.
“Energy budget is really worrisome; we should have had 20 years of ERBE [Earth Radiation Budget Experiment] type data by now- this would have told us about cloud feedback and climate sensitivity. I’m worried that we’ll never have a reliable long-term measurement. This combined with accurate ocean heat uptake data would really help constrain the big-picture climate change outcome, and then we can work on the details.
“[Analyse] the response of models to a single transient 20th century forcing construction. The factors leading to the spread in the responses of models over the 20th century can then be better ascertained, with forcing separated out thus from the mix of the uncertainty factors. The Fourth Assessment Report missed doing this owing essentially to the timelines that were arranged.
“Adding complexity to models, when some basic elements are not working right (e.g. the hydrological cycle) is not sound science. A hierarchy of models can help in this regard.”
So here, in the words of leading climate scientists who are part of the so-called consensus, we have recognition that there are some major problems with the climate theory on which many of the world’s governments, including the Australian government, are making major interventions into our lives and our economies.
Interestingly the issues raised by the IPCC scientists are similar to those often discussed at this blog, including the issue of cloud feedback and climate sensitivity. There have been recent major breakthroughs in this area by Dr Roy Spencer a so-called climate change skeptic who’s research findings, if incorporated into the climate theory of the IPCC, could significantly improve it and also perhaps go some way to helping develop a more scientifically sound basis for regional climate.
Roy Spencer’s website with links to his key published scientific papers is here:
http://www.weatherquestions.com/Roy-Spencer-on-global-warming.htm
[Thanks to Luke Walker for the link to the opinion of Ann Henderson-Sellers with the quotes from the lead authors of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.]
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Not one of these responses questions the link between CO2 and warming. They relate to how large the changes will be and how to reflect the global change locally.
If you take the time to read the IPCC reports you will notice the use of probability distribution functions to scientifically quantify uncertainty.
It was Luke Bsc Hons who posted the site on a previous thread, which I read with great interest and drew the same conclusions.
What an appalling indictment of the process and competence of the scientists involved, that only now they can reveal their true opinions.
Lets hope that greater transparency and honesty is forthcoming from any further expenditure of public funds by anyone anywhere.
Cohenites previous response is well written and worth repeating as well
“…. you will notice the 3 comments which follow this quite sanctimonious article are all suitably condemning;
IMO, there is a yawning (luke often yawns when he has been out-argued) gap, a cognitive dissonance, between the attitudes of the officials of AGW and the lack of understanding by them of the economic and social consequences which would flow from the implementation of the AGW prescribed measures.
All of which is aggravated by the fact that AGW is based on a totally failed theory which not only has contributed to the current economic meltdown, but which has undermined the reputation of science and provided a distraction from real environmental issues as described in the thread about animal extinctions above.
One hopes that, at the very least, the UN and in particular, the IPCC, will have its reputation eventually and deservedly shattered after this disgraceful exercise in zealotry and egotism runs its course.”
So I suppose David that the scientific quantification of uncertainty excuses all the other failings, misrepresentations and falsehoods foisted upon a gullible public, and used for personal gain by peope like Gore.
Hi Jen
RE The truth of Harris
I think this is your man: Roy Harris is Emeritus Professor of General Linguistics in the University of Oxford
His web page http://www.royharrisonline.com/
and on truth http://www.royharrisonline.com/getting_at_the_truth.html
Geoff Brown
I just can’t wait for Andrew Lloyd Webbers take on “Climate Change – the musical”. Perhaps with Mitzy Gaynor singing, “I’m gonna wash that CO2 right out of my coal and send it on its way”.
Seriously, this is the kind of back channel leaking of the truth that marks the beginning of the key conspirator’s attempts to reinvent themselves as always being sceptic. The fact that the “leak” came to us via Luke can be regarded as supporting evidence.
Let me add another point: Unless they can predict the random SST variabilty (not oscillations) at coastal upwelling points, regional GCMs will have little to no value.
“Not one of these responses questions the link between CO2 and warming. They relate to how large the changes will be and how to reflect the global change locally.
If you take the time to read the IPCC reports you will notice the use of probability distribution functions to scientifically quantify uncertainty.”
I really wonder how this topic could have the introduction it has. Scientists question things, that’s why they like doing research. Science, especially leading edge science, is always dealing with the uncertain. That’s what makes it interesting.
That the introduction takes the spin it does only confirms to me that the author has not really put in the work to find out what the science is, and what it claims.
SJT…
It’s Socratic Irony, remember?
“Belief in the truth of a theory is inversely proportional to the precision of the science.”
So the more people who believe Harris’ statement, the less likely it is to be true. Sounds fair.
““Prioritize the models so that weaker ones do not confuse/dilute the signals.”
Some models are more capable than others. (As you would expect). Assign more authority to the models that do a better job. Simple logic, I would have thought. That’s the whole idea of having seperate teams out there, trying different lines of technology to see which one works best.
““The rush to emphasize regional climate does not have a scientifically sound basis.”
The demand is for regional climate answers, because that is what individuals are interested in. “How will this affect me?”. The resolution of the models is not good enough yet to be too specific beyond a certain point, and even then it could be asking too much if you want every regional prediction to be correct. That’s not going to happen either.
SJT,
Pray tell – which GCM’s predict the future better than others?
And how do you know?
TheWord.
No climate model predicts the future, nor do they claim too. It’s a strawman claim of Jennifers.
Models don’t predict the future. They are ‘scenarios’ that will never eventuate as the scenario can never exactly match reality. It’s just that everyone: politicians, activists and especially scientists, act exactly as if they did predict the future. This is obvious to everyone.
NT, if that’s the case, just what the bl@@dy hell are these emission trading schemes based on? Fresh air, or nothing quite so tangible.
There are times the bull just gets too deep.
Hasbeen,
I know it’s difficult to understand but no model ever claims to predict the future. They are simply there as an aid to decision making. No one can predict the future, BUT we can take good guesses at it.
Models are used all the time in all levels of Government and the private sector.
“BUT we can take good guesses at it”
We can also make BAD predictions from them.
We could just sit around pretending we know nothing about the world, and do nothing, too
Models – of any sort – are notoriously poor at predicting the future. If they do so, it’s either dumb luck or because nothing unexpected happened (yet). Making predictions from them has an even worse track record.
Just ask a hedge fund manager. Six sigma events happening all over the place. Are climate modellers smarter than the maths geniuses earning mega-bucks at global investment firms? Doubt it – or they wouldn’t be stuck doing GCM’s.
Remember Long Term Capital Management (LTCM)? According to one of its estimates, the firm would have had to wait 10-to-the-30th days—several billion times the life of the universe—to experience a 50% loss of capital.
Yet, the AGWers are certain that bad things are gonna happen. They just know it!
NT; Will is Lost in Space, but if you expect to be taken seriously you should not make utterly falicious statements like “no model ever claims to predict the future.” This is gibberish; the “Exceptional Circumstances Drought report from the CSIRO along with its spin-off incantation, “The Summary of climate change impacts: Hunter Region” which was breathlessly and reverentially reported in the local Fairfax rag, does exactly that, make predictions; this is the essence of any scientific theory or hypothesis, which is what AGW purports to be; a statement of cause and effect and then verification through observation; Stockwell has revealed the falsity of the CSIRO report, as have various other people, notably Warwick Hughes, who has been looking at the forecasts by BoM and CSIRO for years; you might as well be looking at entrails, preferably those belonging to IPCC scientists, as rely on the GCMs; Koutsoyiannis, Douglass and Christy and Stockwell have shown that the predictive ability of the computers is zilch.
Now real science such as that done by Stewart Franks and his associates has found that ENSO and IPO provide good predictive correlation with forecasts of climate related emergencies such as floods and bushfires; these predictions tend to be more reliable because they deal with real cause and effect scenarios not the disproved CO2/enhanced greenhouse rubbish of AGW.
Ok Cohenite,
calculate the total anomaly for ENSO from 1879 to 2007 and tell me what it means :0
What a load of rubbish. Models don’t predict the future. They make approximations as to what to expect.
Now before you start telling me to sum all the ENSO anomalies, tell me, what do you mean by “predict the future”?
“Not one of these responses questions the link between CO2 and warming.”
Do you have evidence for that link?
Evidence that makes the effect so strong as to NOT be beneficial?
David. You are an idiot mate. Show up under your own name. You are creating money on fractional reserve. You are making implied claims that you cannot back. Your fingers are typing cheques that your brain cannot cash.
“that the predictive ability of the computers is zilch”
well I guess we should just give up now!
You take yourself far to seriously Cohenite.
Well, since the models don’t predict major oscillations in the Earth climate system, and most estimates of climate sensitivity don’t take this into account either, one must conclude that Don Easterbrook is onto something……
NT; I don’t know what you mean by ENSO anomaly; how can ENSO be an anomaly? As to predictions, what about what I said about Franks? And do you always have to become personal? I don’t take myself seriously; I’m a lawyer for christsake.
As I understand it, Don Easterbrook starts with the assumption that the cycles of the past might continue in the future.
That’s an eminently sensible starting point. However, you need to heavily caveat it, by saying (a) we don’t fully understand the past cycles; and (b) past experience is no guarantee of future performance. As a result, hundreds of billions of dollars should not be wasted and billions of people should not panic, based on predictions of the next ice age or a future hothouse.
Cohenite, I was kidding . You actually started it with this statement:
“…but if you expect to be taken seriously you should not make…”
I was just making a joke.
You don’t what I mean about ENSO anomalies, remember what Bob Tisdale told me to do? Every month they measure the Nino1, 2, 3, 4, and 3.4 anomalies, that way they can determine whether or not we are in an El Nino, La Nina or neutral state… I thought you knew all that. We discussed it at length in a previous post.
I don’t know what Franks has done… If he has found a good correlation then that’s great. that doesn’t make it predictive though, as we know that ENSO is unpredictable… We can attempt to predict it, but we won’t ever be 100% perfect. This is why I asked what you meant by “predict the future”. In my mind predicting the future means you get it exactly right (but then that raises the question “How exact?”).
My Sister in Law is a lawyer too. Corporate Law. She’s actually a nice person.
NT
“We could just sit around pretending we know nothing about the world, and do nothing, too”
If we are not sure what to do, wait and see and, doing nothing is the best option.
(please don’t quote me the precautionary principle, it’s a crock most of the time)
NT,
You’re pushing sh*t up hill with your ‘models don’t predict anything’ statement. You’d be laughed out of the room if this was a room… Yes, the IPCC states that they don’t predict anything, in order to cover themselves, but everyone knows they are forecasting the future nonetheless, especially the IPCC.
TheWord,
Comparing climate models to economic or market models is fallacious. If such a model worked at prediction, everyone would use the model, market behaviour would change, and what the model predicted would cease to be relevant. Market forecasting models are by their nature impossible. Climate models on the other hand are ‘merely’ very difficult.
My understanding of what Bob was saying is that if you have a sequence of El Nino without a compensating sequence of La Nina your temp trend will be upwards, without the need for allocating a storage or pipeline capacity; this is consistent with Trenberth; I wasn’t sure where there was an anomaly, equivalent to how we commonly regard temp anomalies which are referenced to a nominated base period; what Franks has done is reduce the probability of such things as floods of varying degrees of severity to essentially an insurance assessment risk basis; his comments on the notion of “1 in 100 year flood estimates” are particularly revealing because, as he says , from the viewpoint of LaNina/El Nino oscillation the concept is meaningless if there is a 4 times greater chance of such an event occuring in a La Nina dominated period than in an El Nino period; the paper is in The Australian Journal of Emergency Management, vol 21 No 2, May 2006, p52; it is on the web but the url is too long.
Models are used all the time in government and the provate sector – hmm – both economic activity and climate cannot modelled on first principles.
This means that methodologies that are used are really nothing more than technically sophisticated prophesysing. More impressive than chicken entrails or crystal balls, computer graphics are just 21st century variations of witchcraft.
Will
“but everyone knows they are forecasting the future nonetheless,”
Really? Everyone knows…
I think you need to define what you mean by predicting. I see prediction and forecast as very different, and you seem to mixing the terms. I think this whole discussion is basically about what it means to ‘predict’.
Johnathon, the problem is when you do know something, but pretend you don’t.
Cohenite,
“My understanding of what Bob was saying is that if you have a sequence of El Nino without a compensating sequence of La Nina your temp trend will be upwards, without the need for allocating a storage or pipeline capacity”
Yes that was my eventual understanding too, but it wasn’t what he asked me to calculate, nor was it really part of the ensuing discussion.
So how would you define “predict the future” as I think we all have differing views and I think this is the source of disagreement here.
NT: “Really? Everyone knows…”
Well, you’re pretending you don’t… Everyone else does.
NT: “I think you need to define what you mean by predicting.”
Let’s not play with words, we all know what prediction means. Your whole line of argument has been a word game. You’re capable of far more intelligent discussion than this (I know, I’ve read it), please move on and not flog a dead horse…
Will, a word game is what I attempting to not do. It is boring
People here are claiming that they predict the future, despite assertions from the IPCC that they don’t.
I am not going to discuss this until people decide what they mean by ‘predict the future’.
NT; a classic example of how AGW and IPCC has made a prediction is that a troposhere hot spot will be produced with CO2 interception of upward LWR.
Well yes, that’s part of the theory. But currently there is nothing adequate to test it.
So when you say “predict the future” the specific timing of the event is not important? I don’t believe they gave it a specific time condition.
NT,
“I am not going to discuss this until people decide what they mean by ‘predict the future’.”
If all this AGW is not about predicting the future, than what on earth are our politicians doing with ETS?
Yes I read some of the IPCC documents and they are forecasting, predicting future climate.
This is what it boils down to me, I don’t mind the “science” types arguing about esoteric notions relating to climate in a 100 years, go on already, argue away, but when it comes to my hard earned to go towards some pie in the sky scheme, I want to know that THEY know what they are talking about and so far I am not convinced, that they do.
Will,
Re: market vs. climate models, I see your point, however I don’t necessarily agree with your conclusions. It may be valid in a strictly theoretical sense, however we don’t know, because we’re not certain whether climate models are just very hard, or actually impossible. I say impossible, because I don’t believe the future can be predicted. But, then someday, someone may come along and figure out a way to do that. For the moment, however, it can’t be done.
We can say that the market and the climate are not exactly alike and, therefore, you can differentiate them in numerous respects. However, whether one is fundamentally knowable is a big call.
Regardless, given our present capacities, in a practical sense the analogy is sufficient. It’s also handy, because there are so many countless examples of computer and other market forecasting models which don’t, in fact, work. The main objective is to get people thinking about what is and is not possible, given our current state of knowledge, rather than to provide a perfectly twinned system.
It is the author of the article Jennifer referenced, “The IPCC report: what the lead authors really think”, not Jennifer, who is responsible for the initial employment of the word PREDICT or some form thereof in this thread.
http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/opinion/35820
Since the uses of that word are attributed to the authors of the IPCC AR4, then the argument over its use is for naught.
The PREDICT word is also used in the title of the upcoming “Bulletin of American Meteorological Society” article (in press) by Doherty, S. J, Bojinski, S., Henderson-Sellers, A., Noone K., Goodrich, D., Bindoff, N. L., Church, J., Hibbard, K.A., Karl, T. R., Kajfez-Bogataj, L., Lynch, A.H., Mason, P.J., Parker, D.E., Prentice, C., Ramaswamy, V., Saunders, R.W., Simmons, A.J., Stafford Smith, M., Steffen, K., Stocker, T. F., Thorne, P. W., Trenberth, K., Verstraete, M.M., Zwiers. I haven’t checked all the names but I recognize a few as being authors of AR4. This article is among the references for Jennifer’s linked article and its title is “Lessons learned from IPCC: developments needed to understand and PREDICT climate change for adaptation”. Emphasis added by me.
TheWord,
If the Earth’s climate is an emergent property of the system it will not be predicted.
Try predicting a kitten from the quantum mechanical properties of carbon, oxygen,
nitrogen, hydrogen atoms etc.
I see NT is busy rearranging goal posts.
NT, regarding our discussion a few threads ago: In my original comment to you at 8:35PM on October 5, my suggestion was to calculate the running total of NINO3.4 data, not total. In my next comment at 8:46PM, I illustrated how to calculate a running total, not total. You needed to calculate the running total in order to plot it. That’s why you went through that step. Later, it was you who elected to report the sum of the NINO3.4 values. I didn’t ask for it.
Eyrie,
Yes, agreed. In the absolute sense of the word, you would need a perfectly programmed computer capable of containing every bit of information in the atmosphere (and acting on the atmosphere), operating in real-time, in order to predict it. A practical and close-enough-to-theoretical impossibility.
Having said that, I don’t deny that we can say “something” about physical systems and the likelihood of what might occur, without completely understanding them. That “something”, however, is less certain the further out into the future we go and the more complex the event/system we are discussing.
What I want the AGWers to admit is how complicated and uncertain all of this is and how extremely, incredibly unlikely it is that we could ever say, with an accuracy of less than one degree per decade, what the temperature might be in 100 years, even if nothing “unusual” happened.
Graeme, David is entitled to an alias and his opinion. I think he has made a valid point: the respondents did not challenge this central tenet of AGW theory.
The IPCC is a political organization formed before man made global climate change was demonstratable for the specific purpose of examining the potential and effects of man made climate change.
If they didn’t find climate change in their reports followed by disasterous consequences they would be forced to recommend their dissolution.
When is the last time any of us in the world saw a government organization recommend even its own slight downsizing?
http:///noconsensus.wordpress.com
TheWord
It isn’t the science but the message which drives them.
Jeff Id seems to have nailed it as well – touche.
Eyrie: “TheWord,
If the Earth’s climate is an emergent property of the system it will not be predicted.
Try predicting a kitten from the quantum mechanical properties of carbon, oxygen,
nitrogen, hydrogen atoms etc.”
Emergent properties cannot be predicted – as you noted.
(Google wll catch this and score sceptics another plus).
Let’s take the argument back, one notch: AGWers say that CO2 will warm the Earth a good few degrees (on average, of course) by the end of the century.
Now, that’s a whole lot simpler than saying your computers can model the entire climate for a century, isn’t it?
Alright…why?….how?
What do you say, NT, SJT, etc? “Oh, don’t worry about it – we all know you’re going to die – just trust us about when and how that might happen! [Think Ball of Flames, rather than Asleep in Bed, by the way.]”
You all are just so damn certain that you’re 100% right about your viewpoint. Doom – global – unavoidable, unless we revert to cavemen within 2 or 3 years.
I truly hope you are young, because it would be a waste for you to reach an advanced age, yet still not have the critical thinking capacity to distinguish between reality and hysteria.
Cohenite says “Now real science such as that done by Stewart Franks and his associates has found that ENSO and IPO provide good predictive correlation with forecasts of climate related emergencies such as floods and bushfires; these predictions tend to be more reliable because they deal with real cause and effect scenarios not the disproved CO2/enhanced greenhouse rubbish of AGW.”
I just laughed and laughed.
(1) real science? and as if nobody else has ever looked at these issues
(2) good predictive correlation – ROTFL for many reasons – LMAO
(3) and the baseline of those indices themselves is changing due to AGW and is becoming an issue … hee hee
Luke: Re cohenite above, I reckoned a while back he was up to his neck in Lavoisier stuff. Pity about Mrs C though, they both loose their originality by going all the way with such a narrow view of climate science. No more first class support needed at home hey,
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/climate-change-most-recent.php
BTW imo that Franks “Australian” article is full of holes and is not backed by either climate or hydrology science as published. Recall too, imo this place is just a clearing house for would be science writers and not to be confused with the real stuff.
You give me the willies luke; when you first used your smart-alec acronyms, LMAO and ROTFL, I wasted valuable time researching such ‘climate phases’.
If you read my comment, I don’t deny others have looked at these issues, but they do so on the pretext that ACO2 is the player, and accordingly, come up with nonsense; Franks is not so constrained and produces good predictive results; get it SUPNIT?
“Graeme, David is entitled to an alias and his opinion. I think he has made a valid point: the respondents did not challenge this central tenet of AGW theory.”
Which respondents are you referrring to the ones making posts herein, or the original IPCC lead authers.
The latter are clearly indicating the high level of uncertainty and the extent of what they dont know that is highly relevant to policy makers.
I bet the extent of this uncertainty has not been conveyed to policy makes anywhere–and it doesnt appear in any of the SPM’s, and certainly not expressed with such clarity.
As for the former I would have thought that Cohenite,Tisdale et al have punched a big hole in it.
David is of course perfectly entitled to his pseudonym but as likely as he is public official the reason is understandable.
gavin” “BTW imo that Franks “Australian” article is full of holes and is not backed by either climate or hydrology science as published”
Perhaps that’s because he is telling us about the holes in the climate/hydrology science as published.
“good predictive results” eh? with the IPO? LOL – you can predict it in advance can you?
In fact you wouldn’t have much on IPO without AGW researchers.
What proportion of rainfall is explained by ENSO?
Why do farmers when polled decry the level of ENSO skill. e.g. look at the last Las Ninas?
And you might ponder the impact on predictive power if there is an underlying trend in your index base i.e. impact of a changing Walker circulation or a warming Indian Ocean for SST schemes.
hmmmm … willies indeed …
Malcolm – AHS is far from a climate change denialist. Indeed she was one of the first that pondering a change in the Pacific mean state by AGW. What she is raising is the limits of predictive precision at a regional level and level of inter-annual or decadal skills. And she is advocating the climate research community redouble their efforts. See the difference between destructive and constructive criticism.
And indeed the Hadley Centre are now researching in major programs many of the issues of criticism that AHS has raised.
Yeah, well luke, my dud theory is much less of a dud theory than your dud theory; as I mentioned, with Frank’s comment about ‘ one in 100 year flood’, the issue is about risk management; however, this is not the PP risk management nonsense that Wong and Garnaut rabbit on about; Franks observes:
“In particular, Franks and Kuczera (2002) demonstrated that a major shift in flood frequency (from low to high) occurred around 1945. Previous authors have noted that the mid-1940’s also corresponded to a change in both sea surface temperature anomalies as well as atmospheric circulation patterns (Allan et al., 1995), suggesting large-scale ocean-atmospheric circulation patterns are linked to the Australian climate.”
Franks goes onto note that the risk of a flood of average historical extent is 17% during an El Nino period and 76% during La Nina; he says that;
“Given that ENSO events can now be detected several months prior to their peak impact period, the opportunity exists to use climate variability insights to more accurately predict the chance of climate related emergencies occurring in the forthcoming season or year.”
Compare that perfectly reasonable and measured conclusion based on good scientific enquiry with the hysterical and apocalyptic dud pronouncements made, and continuing to be made by those scientific bodies spruiking the AGW line.
Nice diversion – but back to it – yes all well known how the stats get partitioned up – all that doesn’t equate to “good predictive results”. Indeed given your sceptical attitude you should look into it 🙂 You might find the base is changing and that might cause you some concern. This is how some of us have come to the AGW problem.
Bob, you need to learn the difference between a running total and a running mean. I reported my results to you and even when I said they were nonsense and what you had told me to do didn’t make any sense you carried on telling me I didn’t understand. The problem is that what you told me to do and what you wanted me to do were entirely different things. And it was strange that you didn’t notice that my results were so ridiculous. I told you results I had for 4 or 5 years and commented that they didn’t make sense. Why did you not notice?
Johnathon Wilkes. I amd prepared to discuss the “predicting the future” claim, but we need to agree on terms. Otherwise it’s pointless. I will accept any definition of “predicting the future” you like, just give me one.
Cohenite, you didn’t give me your “predicting the future” definition. Hav you realised that what you claimed was predicting the future on the part of the IPCC actually wasn’t predicting the future?
Bob, this is what you asked me to do:
“NT, just in case I wasn’t clear: To calculate the running total of the data, the value of each subsequent year is added to the prior year total, as illustrated in the following table. I hope the table makes it through in one piece.
Year …… NINO3.4 (deg C) …… NINO3.4 Running Total
1871 ………. -0.42267………………….. -0.42267
1872 ………. -0.76575………………….. -1.18842
1873 ………. -0.76925………………….. -1.95767
1874 ………. -1.2345……………………. -3.19217
Regards.
”
That is what I did, and the result I got was garbage. I explained to you why I thought it was garbage. I then went and found the ‘recipe’ as you described it and the recipe was nothing like what you’d asked me to do.
NT; it’s not garbage; lookie here;
http:bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/04/is-there-cumulative-enso-climate.html (// excluded)
Bob had graphed 6.8% of the running total; the point is the curve is a match for the temp anomaly trend at any %; the % he has chosen synchronises the trends; if you hark back to Barry Moore’s graph showing SST, land and UAH temp trends it is apparent that there is little oceanic lag; this is confirmed by Trenberth et al and DC who both find a lag of 3-4 months; this means the spot sight % Bob has allocated to the running ENSO total is about right, although, no doubt, this may require some fine tuning on the basis of what temp response to ENSO is appropriate; now that is a relevant issue; and I might add, if you want to isolate an AGW forcing figure based on CO2, ENSO must be calculated first and then deducted from the temp data; this, of course, is what DC, Trenberth and Lucia have done, with less than satisfactory results for AGW.
Cohenite.
What Bob asked me to do and what Bob seem to be different things.
What he really wanted me to do was make a running total of the mean of each year.
But still this is garbage, why would the El Nino and La Nina’s of the early Twentieth Century still be a factor? Why should they be weighted evenly with the El Nino and La Nina just passed? It’s a very superficial analysis.
The correlation you see is to be expected. You are comparing Global temps to the SST of a large area (which is used to construct the global temp).
That should read “What Bob asked me to do and what Bob did seem to be different things.”
I am also intrigued as to why he never noticed – I gave him my results as we went. Why didn’t he notice when I told him I had a running total of 71 for 1941?
NT; the El Nino and La Nina of the early 20thC are only a factor for trend analysis; if you are suggesting that there is a residual temp effect from them, then certainly that is not what I understood Bob to be saying and it certainly is not what I am saying; you seem to be having trouble distinguishing between a temp response at the time which plays a part in establishing a temp trend, and the continuation of that temporal effect, which doesn’t happen.
Got you now Cohenite.
That was a good clear explanation.
I think what Bob needs to do is actually define what he is doing by summing the yearly averages. He does acknowledge that in the first line.
” At present, I will consider this an oddity or curiosity until someone figures out how and why this works.”
To me, adding yearly averages makes no sense. The graph that results may look like the temp increase (when you multiply it by 0.068) – but that doesn’t imply that there is anything significant there.
As I pointed out earlier the Nino 3.4 anomaly forms part of the Global temp anomaly, so effectively you are taking a subset of the Global temp – looking at it’s ‘trend’ (or whatever a running total of means is) and saying “Wow, what an interesting coincidence. They seem to follow the same trend.”
It’s not that amazing.
You are still missing some aspects; if a series of El Nino are not followed by a series of or strong La Nina that upward trend will continue; as well, with a large El Nino, the 1976 and 1998 ones, there will be a large step-up in the temp trend; to this extent these are residual effects which Bob is addressing; you can’t have it both ways; either there is an ENSO imput into temp trends or there isn’t; what are you saying? Keenlyside says the ENSO is so large it overcomes the ACO2 signal; Trenberth, DC and Lucia have all removed ENSO and found either slight +ve CO2 signals or -ve ones; are they wrong?
Yes, of course there is an ENSO signal in the global Temp. The SST is used in calculation of the Global temp. Sea Surface Temperature defines whether we are in an El Nino or La Nina. As I said it’s not surprising.
I don’t know if they’re wrong. But I don’t see that it proves anything. ENSO is a product of Sea Surface Temperature, Sea Surface Temperature is part of your Global Temp. By removing the ENSO signal you are just taking a chunk out of your data. Thus all you are doing is comparing the rest of world data to the SST in a region of the Pacific.
It would seem that your argument is that the anomaly in SST (the ENSO signal) is caused by something that is not related to CO2. This has not been demonstrated and doesn’t sound right to me. If CO2 is warming the air would it not slow the cooling of the ocean and thus make the oceans warmer?
I think the problem is that you don’t believe in an Enhanced Greenhouse, so any ENSO anomaly must be caused by some other factor. I accept the ENhanced Greenhouse, so the prospect of more contribution to the trend from ENSO is not surprising. It would seem to be expected (hence why CSIRO and BOM see Australia getting drier).
Gawd give me strength; FAQ 3.1 of AR4 defines the enhanced greenhouse; I’ll quote the relevant parts;
“Adding more of a greenhouse gas, such as CO2, to the atmosphere intensifies the greenhouse effect, thus warming Earth’s climate. The amount of warming depends on various feedback mechanisms. For example, as the atmosphere warms due to rising levels of greenhouse gases, its concentration of water vapour increases, further intensifying the greenhouse effect. This is turn causes more warming, which causes an additional increase in water vapour, in a self-reinforcing cycle. This water vapour feedback may be strong enough to approximately double the increase in the greenhouse effect due to the added CO2 alone.”
This is a dismal and outrageous fabrication; let’s assume that H2O vapour does increase as a response to CO2 increase; Spencer and Braswell’s new paper shows the erroneous bias by IPCC in the direction of +ve feedback from H2O vapour; even AR4 admits at the Executive Summary to Cp 2 that they have very low understanding of clouds; which is what water vapour does when the surface boundary heats up and evaporation takes the H2O vapour to the condensation level, with rain releasing the latent energy and scrubbing the CO2 out of the atmosphere; clouds, the natural response to increased H20 vapour, are not a +ve feedback.
But the fact is H2O vapour is not increasing with the increased CO2 levels; RH is falling drastically, notably at the 300hPa level, the characteristic emission level (CEL): CEL levels of RH have declined nearly 25% since the late 40’s; the 300hPa level is crucial because that is where surface-boundary air is carried convectively; here the optical depth is near 1 and emissions can depart the atmosphere relatively unimpeded; with less RH this process will be accentuated because there is less H2O vapour to intercept the emitted IR. Given this how on Earth can the enhanced greenhouse effect be anything at all?
Cohenite
Because the models tell us so, therefore it must be right.
Interestingly, burning coal and oil could be generally expressed, using methane as a simple example
Ahem, somthing happened and continuing,
CH4 + 2O2 ==> CO2 + 2H2O
Human emission of CO2 from burning coal, oil and natural gas, must produce water.
Yes Cohenite, I know you don’t like the Enhanced (or any) Greenhouse Effect. That’s very nice for you. Can you see that this is actually the root cause of our dispute. That any other disagreements we have actually come down to this one issue. This is why the ENSO effect is not a surprise for me, but is for you.
Tell you what, give me time and I’ll go and look at the RH stuff. Must admit haven’t looked at it in great detail.
Saw some bad theatre last night… URGH
Saw some bad theatre…..well, don’t lurk at Deltoid!
This is right Louis; so why is RH falling? Obviously the air going into the atmosphere is not dryer than the atmospheric air, and obviously some sensible heat must have been transferred to the atmosphere via the production of the AH2O; but this has been compensated for by the decline in latent heat with RH falling. Atmospheric recycling has adjusted I guess.
Cohenite: Thanks for helping to clear up NT’s misunderstandings. When I read his 10:44am and 11:03am comments last night, I went off like a cannon and cranked out a five-page rebuttal, which picked apart each sentence of his replies, with cross references between threads, links, etc . I then put it aside for the night. I have subsequently whittled it down and removed most of the anger, and when I have cut it to less than one page of single-spaced text, I will post it.
Thanks again.
I think it is easy to assume there is both:
– a GHG signal in the rising temps (0.1C per decade);
– an ENSO-induced signal in the rising temp trend (+/- 0.5C depending on the strength and the sign of the ENSO index – no accumulation is necessary).
Throw in a -0.5C for one full year for the three big volcanoes and you have a pretty good map to the global temperature trend.
Bill Ellis: Consider the possibility that there is no discernable AGW signal. Large ENSO events create step changes in global temperature, a point that is clearly visible in the global temperature record after the 97/98 El Nino. The running total of NINO3.4 values being discussed that mimics global temperature anomaly COULD illustrate that each change in the NINO3.4 temperature creates a step change in global temperature, one that’s proportional to the magnitude of the ENSO event. As I’ve said before, it’s something that needs to be evaluated.
Bob, didn’t mean to cause you anger. Just send it all, I won’t be offended.
However, I don’t see any significance in what you are doing. And you state as much on your web page.
All you seem to be doing is taking a subset of the global temp anomaly and saying that the it causes the global temp anomaly.
“As I’ve said before, it’s something that needs to be evaluated.”
This is true, and many people have said it.
NT: In looking back at the October 5 thread, part of our communication problem has to do with the lag created by time zones. This is evident in the time that you posted your comments and the time of my responses to them, and vice versa. That aside:
You state on this thread, “What Bob asked me to do and what Bob did seem to be different things.” I asked you to create and graph a running total of monthly or annual NIN3.4 data. That’s all. I find nothing wrong with my later description or with my table that illustrates a running total. Refer to the following discussion from Data Base Journal. Their table under the heading of “Running Total On Each Record” and mine, which you have copied and reposted above, are fundamentally the same.
http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mssql/article.php/3112381
You complained about my failure to react to the values you presented. I did not respond to your values because it was the shape of the curve I was interested in. I wrote in the next sentence, after asking you to create a graph of the running total of NINO3.4 data, “Let me know what the curve looks like.” It should have looked like the global temperature anomaly curve but to the wrong scale. Like this:
http://i28.tinypic.com/1zv4vpt.jpg
I accept responsibility for not being clearer on that point; i.e., that it was the shape of the curve that was important. But I did respond to your October 6 @ 10:53am comment by going through the process of how the curve came about, about the selection of a scaling factor, and I provided illustrations of the scaled running total.
In my “October 6, 2008 at 8:36pm” comment to you on the October 5 thread I posted multiple graphs of the running total. If your graph (which you didn’t post) and my graphs (which I did post) were so different, (as revealed by your numerous complaints on this thread) how would I have noticed your results were so “ridiculous” if you hadn’t posted your graph or hadn’t clearly commented about the differences between the graphs that I linked and the one you had created?
Your comment that tweaked me most was this: “Bob, you need to learn the difference between a running total and a running mean.” I know the difference. My error was providing you with a running mean of the running total of NINO3.4 data, not a running mean of NINO3.4 data that you asked for. You could have asked for the correction at that point, after I provided you the wrong smoothed data set, but you didn’t; you chose to phrase your comment the way you did and post it not on the appropriate thread but on this one.
You wrote on this thread, “The correlation you see is to be expected. You are comparing Global temps to the SST of a large area (which is used to construct the global temp).” No. I am NOT comparing SST anomalies for the NINO3.4 region to global temperature. I’m comparing a running total of NINO3.4 anomaly data to global temperature anomaly data, using a scaling factor from a Trenberth et al paper that accounts for the global temperature response to ENSO events.
And again, in your most recent comment (October 11, 2008 at 6:21 pm) you state, “All you seem to be doing is taking a subset of the global temp anomaly and saying that the it causes the global temp anomaly.”
Let me rephrase the effect once more. El Nino and La Nina events are known to impact global temperature. A running total of NINO3.4 SST anomaly data simulates the step change responses over time to each change in NINO3.4 SST anomaly. By multiplying that running total by a coefficient of the known global temperature response to changes in NINO3.4 SST I am very simply simulating the expected global temperature response to the variations in NINO3.4 SST anomalies. When I then compare that scaled running-total curve to global temperature anomaly data, my running total of NINO3.4 SST anomalies correlates very well with time-series global temperature anomaly data. This is not a simple comparison of a global temperature subset to global temperature. It’s also far from a coupled-GCM evaluation. But it does illustrate an effect that, to my knowledge, has not been explored to any detail.
You included the following in your most recent comment, “I don’t see any significance in what you are doing.” Then you should have left it at that. If it has no significance to you, if it means nothing to you, why did you spend so my time commenting about it on this thread? You’re the person who introduced it to this thread by joking about it, which I had no problem with, BTW. We both had agreed to drop the topic on the former thread. But you’re the person who on this thread continued to harp on it, to denigrate the effect, and to blame me for your misunderstandings. That’s what angered me.
This whole thing began because I commented on the October 5 thread in response to your comment to Cohenite about El Nino trends. The ultimate mistake I made on the earlier thread was to ask someone else to create a graph of a data set, when I already had a copy of the graph. Much of this could have been avoided had I simply posted it myself right from the get go. Lesson learned on my part. Had we not gotten side tracked with that discussion I would have also been happy to note that the running total also answers your question to Cohenite, “Have there been more El Nino’s than La Nina’s”? The answer is yes. The upward climb over time by the running total also indicates that the frequency AND magnitude of El Ninos exceed the frequency AND magnitude of La Ninas.
Thanks Bob, I think we are clear now.
It would seem that only 18 months ago the economic models of all European governments were predicting in their linear, deterministic manner that “Europe is currently enjoying an economic upswing,” and that growth forecasts are “positive”. See http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12341574
No doubt these models were used to calculate the costs of the predictions of the linear, deterministic climate models of the IPCC and the costs and benefits of the various schemes under consideration to ‘reduce’ atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Maybe Stern’s model was of the same genre.
Maybe the Commonwealth Treasury’s models are also of the same genre. Garnaut’s would have been, too.
Funny how abysmally wrong the models were over a time frame of no more than 18 months, more likely just a few months.
I wonder when the economists advising governments will shed their hubris, demonstrate just a tinge of humility before nature and admit that their models are, as Douglass North might say, unsound. Their models show that they don’t ‘model’ the real economy; they model some highly simplified representation of it which is demonstrably unreal!
At the same time as the economic models are demonstrating their stunning ‘merit’ in relation to global (and regional) financial and economic events, the IPCC’s models cannot model the behaviour of the planets atmospheric oscillations such as El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO), the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO), the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the Atlantic Multdecadal Oscillation (AMO), the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) and the Arctic Oscillation (AO).
They cannot replicate the Great Pacific Climate shift of 1976 that has had a significant role in the warming of the 1980s+.
They cannot replicate the role of the variable rotation of the Earth in warming and cooling the planet.
They do not represent accurately the role of the Sun.
They cannot replicate the last ten years of global atmospheric and oceanic temperatures.
As Demetris demonstrated, they cannot replicate the planet’s regional temperatures of relatively recent times past.
And yet here in Australia and in other OECD countries, governments are making key policy decisions solely on the basis of these models as advised by relevant officials.
In Australia at least one can say with confidence that there has been a very serious failure of governance.
How could this happen?
A lot is to do with the relevant expert agencies not carrying out due diligence type examinations of the IPCC’s processes, reports, data and models-in-use.
A lot is to do with relevant Commonwealth agencies adopting a hegemonic approach to their advisory task when the nature of that task requires a pluralistic approach.
But a lot is to do with governments not requiring higher standards of rigor and balance in the work of relevant agencies and not seeking a diversity of sources of competing advice as is done routinely in most other policy areas.
Ultimately governments carry responsibility for the failure of policy, but agencies should assist as much as they can to prevent such failures by providing governments with frank and fearless advice.
This is not happening in this area of policy. Even worse, relevant agencies do their level best to make sure that governments hear only one voice: the voice of the IPCC.
Now is the time for governments to call on the experts to whose voices they have refused to listen. The evidence is simply overwhelming that this should now be done.
Richard,
But they won’t for no lefty, of whatever reddish hue, will ever admit to fault. Hence the witch-hunts, inquisitions over history to find the guilty.
The fiscal mess is the result of consensus economics – and no different to consensus science.
It’s left-brain vs right-brain.
Does this mean its biologically hard-wired and therefore no contradictory fact will change the belief in a dogma?
Okay I just built a little monthly temperature model which does a very good job of matching the monthly Hadley Centre data.
Starting in 1940
Model = -0.15C + (0.2 Nino3.4 Anomaly Index Lagged 3 Months – no smoothing or accumulation) + (0.08C per decade GHG Global Warming) + (-0.3C for 18 Months for the 3 big Volcanoes)
Very good match to the Monthly Hadley Dataset
The monthly ups and downs are very strongly correlated with the Nino 3.4 anomaly (of 3 months prior). The coefficient of 0.2 is equivalent to a +/- 0.7C increase from the strongest El Ninos (1997-98 for example) and La Ninas.
There is no need to accumulate the Nino Index as it seems to track the monthly Hadley Centre global temperature numbers much closer without any accumulation – just a 3 month lag.
The -0.15C constant is required just to match the time period modeled with Hadley’s baseline of 1961 to 1990.
The model is within +/-0.1C for at least half of the record but does go off track by as much +/- 0.4C for periods of time. The basic monthly variation is mostly preserved in these time periods but the baseline of the model is a little too high or low for periods of time. But that is very good for modeling a monthly temperature dataset.
Global Warming = 0.08C per decade
Monthly Global Temperature Anomaly = 0.2 * Nino 3.4 Anomaly lagged 3 Months = + 0.7C for the 97-98 El Nino
The El Ninos of 1986 to 2006 are as much responsible for the rising temp trend of late as are GHGs.
Bill Ellis: Why would the CO2 contribution be constant? The anthropogenic component has increased exponentially over the 20th century. The natural contribution varies as a function of SST.
Seems as though your model also fails to account for other natural and anthropogenic forcings. Under natural, you’re missing the AMO, which Real Climate says accounts for most of the warming during the latter part of the 20th Century, and you’re missing the North Pacific Residual (calculated the same way as the AMO, and it’s not the PDO). You’re missing solar, which is said to explain up to 25 to 70% of the rise in temperature over the 20th century.
On the anthropogenic side, land use change is said to account for 20 to 50% of the change in 20th century temperatures. You’re also missing other anthropogenic greenhouse gases such as methane.
GISS has a curve of anthropogenic forcings they used for their Model E. That could help.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/RadF.txt
Model E data available here:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelE/transient/climsim.html
BUT
I discussed a few problems that I could see right off the bat with the GISS Model E here:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/09/giss-model-e-climate-simulations.html
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/09/giss-model-e-climate-simulations-part-2.html
To Bob T. – The logarithim relationship of GHGs to temperature means the temperature increase should have been roughly constant over this period. The growth rate of CO2 has been mostly constant at about 0.5% per year (although that rate has increased a little over the period.) Offsetting that would be the drop off in the growth rate of Methane which has almost flatlined now.
GISS’s GHG forcing increases at roughly a linear rate (although there is a bit of a peak in 1988 when the rate of CO2 growth was the highest.)
I think that says using a constant GHG temperature increase is fine.
There may be other ocean circulation indexes which could improve the model (I said it sometimes goes off track a little.)
But I just did this for myself – mainly I wanted to see if the recent El Ninos could drive the temperature increase trend up to the numbers the warmers like to take credit for.
The trend is just a linear least squares regression and even a half circle gives a positive trend by linear regression.
Somebody should replicate my work and see if they can improve on it. I was going to go back to 1871 which is when the newest Nino3.4 index starts but it is too much work to transpose another 70 years from a calendar across tab dataseries.
Bill Eliis: Now consider this GISS conflct. As noted above, the operators of the Real Climate website (some of whom are employees of GISS), state that the AMO “is believed to describe some of the observed early 20th century (1920s-1930s) high-latitude Northern Hemisphere warming and some, but not all, of the high-latitude warming observed in the late 20th century.”
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=38
Yet the GISS Model E doesn’t take the AMO and other natural variations in SST into account as you can plainly see in the GISS Model E Climate Simulations links I provided above. They attempt to duplicate the global temperature anomaly curve without the natural SST cycles.
Funny how they contradict themselves.
Richard Mackey: Thank you. The points I have been trying to make here are well articulated in your post. The AGWers, however, will probably ignore it. [Incidentally, those convinced that a coming global cooling can be predicted {unless they argue simple mean reversion} will probably ingore it, as well.]
Bob Illis: Nice, simple model, with tolerances down to 0.08C per decade – wow! That’s impressive accuracy. Who needs a supercomputer and a billion dollars worth of grant money? So, what happens next? How does one decide which inputs to your model occur, the order, frequency and magnitude?
The AGWers would have us believe they’ve got it nailed for the next 100 years, to accuracy approaching your 0.08C. They know all of the inputs and all of the effects. After modelling for them all, the one variable which overwhelms everything else is the one which is: (a) tiny in amount; (b) argued to be increasing in a more or less linear and predictable fashion; and (c) being calamitously increased by humans.
I’m feeling doomed, already!
NT Drooled:
“What a load of rubbish. Models don’t predict the future. They make approximations as to what to expect.”
Actually, the modellers themselves tell us that the models “PROJECT CLIMATE BASED ON SCENARIOS.”
If real life does not match the scenario the model run is probably pointless. Of course, they have never been validated for any of these imaginary scenarios either.
Basically, pointless and useless other than to keep a bunch of mostly healthy people employed who could be digging up areas, that have been polluted, for reclamation!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Bill Ellis: I similarly created a series of spreadsheets that compared global temperature anomaly data to the effects of known natural forcings, and I also added the impacts of oceanic oscillations.
http://i34.tinypic.com/o8yoeg.jpg
I had completely opposite results. Anthropogenic greenhouse gases were not needed to duplicate the global temperature anomaly curve from the 1960s to present. Discussed here:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/07/ocean-cycles-volcanic-aerosols-and.html
Funny how people can go though similar processes but come up with totally different results.
Dear all
The clue is to work out the energy source for the El Ninos.
One thing debating the effects of these anomalies, another working out their physical cause.
“Large ENSO events create step changes in global temperature, a point that is clearly visible in the global temperature record after the 97/98 El Nino. The running total of NINO3.4 values being discussed that mimics global temperature anomaly COULD illustrate that each change in the NINO3.4 temperature creates a step change in global temperature, one that’s proportional to the magnitude of the ENSO event. As I’ve said before, it’s something that needs to be evaluated.”
A gradual change, at the rate AGW is happening, is always going to be overshadowed by the immediate jumps caused by El Nino and volcanoes.
Yet after each jump, up or down, the gradual rise in temperature is there.
No doubt the AGW nutters will have noted the early onset of Winter in many areas of North America or that the Artic Sea Ice melt did not match or exceed last year’s melt.
Here in Northern Europe we have had a miserable ‘cold’ summer – no heatwave in UK since July ’06.
We know water covers most of our planet and besides the Sun has the biggest impact on climate, e.g. Gulf Stream stops Western Europe from freezing over.
Surely, if AGW alarmists bothered to ‘engage brain’ they might just work out that the behaviour of the Sun (its impact on our magnetic field and cloud formation) and Ocean circulation (+ the outgassing/ingestion of CO2) has the largest impact on climate.
CO2 plays a very minor role in warming, and our share of that bit part role is pathetically small.
So AGW nutters, please all move to a small island where you can continue to create scare stories whilst the rest of us carry on living in the real observable, measurable world where evidence subject to proper peer review rules the roost not hokum pokum!
SJT said:-“Yet after each jump, up or down, the gradual rise in temperature is there.”
So, if the temperature moves up, it’s rising, and if it moves down, don’t worry – it’s still rising!”
Anybody seen any volcanoes around recently? There’s a distinct and unexplained decline in temparature going on, at the moment. (Oh, that’s right: it’s “weather”, not “climate”. In climate terms, the temperature always goes up.)
SJT: Read that paragraph you quoted again. You missed the point.
People – pleased find the time (you’ll need it) to read what I believe is a seminal ‘paper’ addressed to John McCain that is quite brilliant in it’s demolition of the AGW scam:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/an_open_letter_from_the_viscou_1.html
Icecap melting at breakneck pace :
” Alarming new data finds that Greenland’s icecap continues to retreat faster than ever”
News from Greenland :
http://sermitsiaq.gl/klima/article60011.ece?lang=EN