CLIMATE is complex and represents exactly the kind of system that cannot be modeled with any accuracy. At least that is according to Kesten Green, a forecasting expert at Monash University, Australia. Dr Green argues that a key question when trying to predict future climate is to ask: Can we do better than assume future temperatures will be the same as current temperatures?
In the following paper, based on a presentation to be given at the second international Climate Conference in New York later today, Dr Kesten explains that there is no scientific basis for the United Nation’s International Panel on Climate Change forecasts of global warming.
Climate change forecasts are useless for policymaking
By Kesten C. Green, J. Scott Armstrong, and Willie Soon
EVEN as we struggle with serious global financial and economic difficulties, some people believe manmade global warming is a real problem of urgent concern. Perhaps this is because, almost every day, media outlets quote “experts” who predict that soaring temperatures, rising sea levels, increasing storms, prolonged droughts and other disasters will result from human activity.
NASA scientist James Hansen claims “death trains” carrying coal are putting our planet “in peril.” If we continue using hydrocarbon energy, he predicts, “…one ecological collapse will lead to another, in amplifying feedbacks.” He further forecasts that only by eliminating coal-fired power plants and other sources of carbon dioxide can we prevent the collapse.
The situation recalls a 1974 CIA report that concluded there was “growing consensus among leading climatologists that the world is undergoing a cooling trend”… one likely to cause a food production crisis. Dr. Hansen would probably appreciate the frustration those CIA experts must have felt when Congress ignored their forecasts and recommendations.
If it makes sense to enact measures to reduce CO2 emissions when experts forecast warming, then surely it also makes sense to emit extra CO2 when experts forecast cooling. Or perhaps not.
Perhaps any link between climate change and carbon dioxide is not so strong or important. Consider the historical record.
The tiny fraction of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased through the twentieth century. And yet, during that time, global average temperatures rose till about 1940, fell till about 1975, rose again till 1998, and then dropped away again. It is not surprising, then, that despite claims “the science is settled,” thousands of scientists disagree with forecasts of dangerous manmade global warming.
History again provides useful guidance. Back in 1860, scientists used observations and mathematical modeling to predict the existence of planet Vulcan in an orbit 13 million miles from the Sun. More observations of the planet and extensive debate followed. Finally, the science was settled. The model was wrong. Planet Vulcan does not exist.
Climate change is a complex problem that has generated a similarly heated debate Reliable data exist only for the last three decades, whereas climate changes occur over decades and centuries. Not surprisingly, there are rival theories.
What is the status of experts’ forecasts in such a situation? Scientific forecasting research has shown that experts aren’t able to provide accurate predictions in this kind of complex and uncertain situation. It doesn’t matter whether experts present their forecasts as certain outcomes, detailed scenarios, expectations, likelihoods or probabilities. Or that the forecasts are the product of hard thinking by many highly qualified experts, or even of mathematics or computer simulations. The expert forecasts are nonetheless worthless.
This lack of credible climate forecasts matters, because proposed policies – including taxing carbon emissions and cap-and-trade regimes – will increase energy prices, cause major wealth transfers, and cost jobs. It would be immoral to impose such punishing policies on the basis of dodgy forecasts.
Fortunately, proper forecasters know how to do better. Global average temperatures vary up and down over short and long periods, without apparent pattern — and our current knowledge about what causes temperature and other climate changes is speculative and incomplete. Thus, the first question a bona fide forecaster would ask is: Can we do better than assume future temperatures will be the same as current temperatures?
The forecasting model based on this assumption is called the “no-change” model, and studies have shown it is often difficult to beat. The model predicts that global average temperatures in each of the next 100 years will be the same as the previous year’s temperature.
When this model is applied, starting in the year 1850, the differences between the forecasts and global temperature measurements turn out to be quite small. For example, for temperature forecasts for 20 years in the future, the average difference turns out to be 0.18°C (0.32°F). For forecasts for 50 years into the future, the average error was 0.24°C (0.43°F).
These are temperature differences that a normal human being would have trouble detecting and are well within the range of natural variation. The evidence clearly suggests that the no-change model is the obvious one for public policy makers to use.
Policymakers, however, have tended to defer to the projections of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Perhaps it isn’t surprising that they should prefer projections that governments have paid billions for, over forecasts from a free and simple model. But how do the IPCC projections perform?
The IPCC first projected a global warming rate of 0.03°C per year in 1992. The errors of the IPCC projection over the years 1992 to 2008 were little different from the errors from the no-change model, when compared to actual measured temperature changes. When the IPCC’s warming rate is applied to a historical period of exponential CO2 growth, from 1851 to 1975, the errors are more than seven times greater than errors from the no-change model.
The models employed by James Hansen and the IPCC are not based on scientific forecasting principles. There is no empirical evidence that they provide long-term forecasts that are as accurate as forecasting that global average temperatures won’t change. Hansen’s, and the IPCC’s, forecasts, and the recommendations based on them, should be ignored.
It would be irresponsible and immoral of policymakers to impose the heavy burden of costly anti carbon-based-energy policies, in the absence of any credible evidence that those burdens will result in net benefits to man, beast or tree.
**************************
Dr. Kesten Green is a Senior Research Fellow with the Business and Economic Forecasting Unit of Monash University in Australia. Dr. Scott Armstrong a Professor at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Willie Soon is a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Well Kesten and Willie better tell those on the Chicago Future Exchange.
“these are temperature differences that a normal human being would have trouble detecting and are well within the range of natural variation.” – at this point I threw up !
This might be true for a forecast for a single year but for policy purposes a longer time frame is needed. Is it also true that “the next ten years will be like the last ten years” works reasonably well? Or is a linear trend better. Since the IPCC extrapolations are approximately extensions of linear trends I think a linear trend would mostly do as well as the IPCC models. The problem comes when a new cycle begins, which is probably where we are now. I think any method of ten year projections would do badly in that case.
If you want an example of the unpredictability but potential alarmism of all things to do with weather and climate, the BoM have been giving a predicted path to Cyclone Hamish and mostly getting it wrong which is what you’d reasonably expect.
Meanwhile, the ABC [atmospheric black cloud] and other MSM are having a wonderful reign of terror with the alarmism of it all.
It’s not much more than average trade wind conditions on the CQ coast but we’re hearing about 200kph winds and phenomenal seas.
Where would we be without ’em?
“these are temperature differences that a normal human being would have trouble detecting and are well within the range of natural variation.” – at this point I threw up !
Geez, Luko! I woulda thought your stomach could handle more than that.
The only thing I could personally vouch for in the last 50 years is the lack of cyclones and the way my grass grows a lot faster.
Not enough to make me chunda, but then my wife always said I was an insensitive type.
Great article! In the theoretical sciences–as opposed to the descriptive sciences–prediction is the coin of the realm. The highfalutin computer models simply do not deliver the goods. Numbers that come out of a machine are not the word of God. Garbage in, garbage out. It couldn’t be plainer than that.
” at this point I threw up !”
Gee, Luke, at last! Much of your drivel has almost caused the same affect in me.
Meanwhile, have you, SJT etc looked at Jen’s Cohenite posting on the community home re the Climate Sceptics Party – a world first giving good science countering your (and Gore’s) drivel.
It is here: http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/03/introducting-the-climate-sceptics-a-new-political-party/
and here: http://www.climatesceptics.com.au/
And hot from the impartial PR press via Nature Geoscience, just in time for the Copenhagen IPCC alarmist conference beginning tomorrow, is a report from leading Australian experts on ocean acidification; lead author, Will Howard, said a comparison between today’s shelled sea-life and their pre-industrial ancestors shows that the epigones have 30-35% less shells. Dr Wells is next going to do a comparison between todays supermodels and their pre-industrial counterparts where he expects to find similar results; Howard blames CO2 induced acidification and concludes the women of today, like modern crustaceans, can’t take the piss and go into a sulky decline at the thought of just a bit of a CO2 blowtorch to the the belly.
Luke’s throwing up is his subconscious reaction to the fact he might be out of a job after the QLD elections – his AGW agenda is part of the GFC problem – a chronic misuse of taxpayer funds for political purposes. Unfortunately his scientific qualification (Bsc. Hons in geology) wont’ mean much in the market place – because there aren’t any at present.
All this post confirms is that AGW is a political agenda misusing science.
Tell you the truth Louis we’ve been arguing for so long now – I’ve sorta lost track of what it was about? Louis can we be friends.
Hey Cohers – you started it. Speaking of Nature GeoScience did you see – NOX from the Bog !
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v2/n3/abs/ngeo434.html
and
Kick-starting ancient warming – pp156 – 159
E. G. Nisbet, S. M. Jones, J. Maclennan, G. Eagles, J. Moed, N. Warwick, S. Bekki, P. Braesicke, J. A. Pyle & C. M. R. Fowler
doi:10.1038/ngeo454
Rapid global warming marked the boundary between the Palaeocene and Eocene periods 55.6 million years ago, but how the temperature rise was initiated remains elusive. A catastrophic release of greenhouse gases from the Kilda basin could have served as a trigger.
Anyway – what else can one do now that climate forecasting is dead except play the music – this one is for Louis – (I thought the support singer as a nice lass too) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5PN04vwblw
Luke,
second report from Bob Carter in NY now here: http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/category/community/
Luke, “… at this point I threw up!”
I’d first check to see if the Ms had a hand in that, you know, bringing forward the redundancy, helping you dodge, errrr, bullets.
BTW are climate models as good as financial models or rather, can you build a model in your spare time.
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hal/Papers/how.pdf
With little gems such as “there’s nothing like a fallacious arguement to stimulate research.”
Speaking of predictions I read that Bonnie Prince Charles, described as an “asset” to AGW, has predicted “irreversible damage from climate change” within 100 months; 100 months sounds a lot more dramatic than 8 years and 4 months, but in any event it is a comfort after the venerable Prince’s last prediction about “grey goo”. What I will miss the most when this neurotic, ideological mish-mash bites the dust is the florid hyperbole, the garish, cheap hollywood style doomsaying and ponderous bloviating by the leading lights of AGW; and what leading lights they are; the vegan head of IPCC, chubby cheeked little Jimmy, the inverse of the alarmingly expanding Gore [commensurate with his bank balance], “100 meters” Williams, Tim SO2 Flannery; life will be so boring; what will you do luke, not being in such esteemed company anymore?
I saw a reference the other day to somebody being “Dagenham”. Dagenham is two stations down the line from Barking. Seems like that might describe Bonnie Prince Charles.
Cohenite,
I’m not sure where I read it but it appears the Royals, collectively, hang out for the good old days and quarantining vast nature reserves around the world which Prince Philip, in his capacity as patron of the WWF can visit whenever he pleases, with no hoi-polloi to disturb him.
Same here – we are regimented and “privilged” to enter into a national park or some other alienated land – but the people supervising it, the state, have free run.
It’s an easy extrapolation to see that the nationstate run by the bureaucrates with their tamed political masters, is heading in the same direction of feudal times.
It seems we hoi-polloi have become slaves of the state, and judging from the appalling outcomes of the education system here, as well as the dysfunctional wage system where getting the dole means more money in your pocket than fruit picking, means that when the state robs peter to pay paul, it will always have the support of paul.
where on earth did you get that idea?? An apple picker up at Standthorpe at the moment can get $20 a bin and 4 bins a day is common. That’s $400 for 5 days. The dole pays around half that per week.
Quoting Green:
“The [“no change”] model predicts that global average temperatures in each of the next 100 years will be the same as the previous years temperatures.”
Is it April 1st already?
” The IPCC first projected a global warming rate of 0.03C per year in 1992. The errors of the IPCC projection over the years were little different from the no-change model when compared to actual measured changes. When the IPCC warming rate is applied to a historical period of exponential CO2 growth,from1851-1975,the errors are more than seven times greater than the errors from the no-change model.”
Why would you apply a forward projection from conditions in 1992 to data from 1851-1975? Why describe CO2 growth during the period 1851-1975 as “exponential”, when it wasn’t? Why is Green scared of post-1975 data? What are the real implications of the Vulcan episode?
Green’s paper is a failed model of an paper.
Nick; apply your considerable intellect to a critique of the pro-AGW science, just for balance, and you might get a bit of traction around here; start with where Koutsoyiannis went wrong since we’re on the theme of predictions.
cohenite,you silky charmer, the flaws of pro-AGW science are all out in the open, along with its considerable strengths. How else would you survive? If you can call it surviving…
Janama
“The fruitpicking also taught me a number of lessons. Firstly, welfare and high taxes discourage hard work. You can earn more through welfare than as a fruitpicker. The federal government started to tax us at 15% once we passed $600. Why would anyone work when they can earn more through welfare? To illustrate this point, my friend’s older brother earned more through Centrelink payments at home than we did working in the fields.”
Full article at http://www.henrythornton.com/article.asp?article_id=5635
“…. the flaws of pro-AGW science are all out in the open, along with its considerable strengths. How else would you survive? If you can call it surviving…”
Meanwhile we are in a cooling trend of 7 years.One that none of those crack IPCC climate models predicted back in 2001.
Forecasting climate skills are indeed unparalled.
LOL
I’m glad that forecasting experts are taking an interest. It all goes back to David Hume (18th century), and the perils of induction. William Whewell (1840) gave us ‘the consilience of inductions’ and Karl Pearson and Ron Fisher (early 20th century) gave us the valuable tool of statistical induction. However, statistical induction is subject to much misuse, as a scan through any refereed journal will show. Statistics is a rigorous discipline, not to be dabbled in by those with only Stats 100 or similar. ‘Climatologists’ seem unaware of consilience. Claiming to foretell the future is, or should be, a criminal offence. Go for it, Dr Green … I like the name too.
Louis – how can some one on centerlink’s $240 plus maybe $60 rent assistance per week – i.e $300/week max earn more than your fruitpicker who was earning $800 for 5 days picking?
Climate denial machine exposed?
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/03/06/morano-leaves-inhofe/
Janama
I don’t know but that is the distinct impression one gets from David Jonson’s article and as people of his age are acutely aware of where money comes from, and how to bludge off the taxpayer, makes this interesting.
Where I live at present alot of business’s are looking for labour, the Chicken outlet is after teams, and all the while one sees young people being idle, listening to their MP3’s or cell phones, and clearly the dole must be the better alternative.
I had to pick bananas in 1991 at $10 per hour, 5:30 AM to 1:30 PM in Kununurra during the wet, and when I was offered work as a geo for a Korean Opal dealer, he offered $8-50 per hour. The ‘nana job crashed because a cyclone trashed one of the blocks.
So this might be worth following up with another comment to Henry methinks.
Luke, you better stop that, it causes hair to grown on your palms.
Luke: “I’ve sorta lost track…”
Hey, Luke, Tell us something that we didn’t know!
“…..of what it was about? Louis can we be friends.”
Are you kidding?
“….I thought the singer as a nice ass too”
Were you at the Samedi Mardi Gras?
Well Louis – I’ve been on the dole and I picked apples and grapes to get off it. On the dole you just go backwards, your car and appliances need repairs you can’t afford, your cloths wear out and you can’t replace them, your teeth go untreated and your whole life deteriorates. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
Unfortunately fruit picking is only suitable for someone on the road, i.e. the grey nomads etc, because if you maintain your residence, plus pay the caravan parks for acommodation while picking it eats into your profit margin to make it hardly worth while as you say. It’s not that they don’t pay enough, it’s that you have to maintain two residences because it’s part time work. But you do get fit as David says.
Janama
Getting fit is true! First month was trying but I’ll see if I can more details on this bit.
Janama
I forgot – I was on the dole as well in 1991, and you are right – so how the heck do those young people do it?
Dole bludgers Inc hey. Been wondering where the term came from.
There was a time when a couple of Tallebudgera Creek campers from down south decided to give up their regular flathead dinners, and so joined the Southport job seekers queue before dawn to earn a few bob.
One was a kiwi farmer with a mil or two in the bank between settling properties. The other was recouping from double hernia opps and officially unemployable till his comp was settled.
Then, as expected some guy in a limo rolled up looking for able bodies for a day or two.
His project was private property bank stabilization in a new canal i.e opening a meter wide wall footing ditch, to be dug by hand between tides. Only two in the queue could find their gumboots in time.
IMO fruit picking over the range would have been a sweet copout.
I was apple pickin in 2000 Louis – and I’m a couple of years older than you 🙂
Janama
I mean how do young people manage to live off the dole if it’s that low?
Some group together, share rent etc and get by. Some of the girl’s have babies and live off the additional child benefits. Parenting payment is around $530/fortnight.
Actually I think most of them, the ones you see hanging around, stay at home with their parents looking after them.
Janama
That’s my take on it as well – and as they say, if your rob Paul to pay Peter, the Peters of this world will always support you. Cynical I realise, but what else?
Getting back on top…weatherman can’t predict weather a few days ahead in an exact manner, how are they going to predict a long term trend? I know, I know…weather and climate are not the same thing. Where did that rhetoric come from?
Each year, we in the banana belt of Canada get ensconsed in Arctic Air. It’s a weather front that moves south from the Arctic, bringing cold Arctic air, and it lodges itself right over cities like Vancouver, that normally have a mild winter. That sets the rest of Canada off on a hoot, laughing hysterically at us softies on the coast.
This recent Arctic Air episode was supposed to last till Monday and clear off. I have never seen it do that. It can hang around for a couple of weaks, meaning the weather people don’t know how those systems work. If they were honest, they’d simply tell us they had no idea when it was going to clear off, but if they were that honest, they’d probably be out of a job.
Here in Vancouver, we have 4 distinct seasons, although you’d be hard pressed to define the difference sometimes. Winter and summer are easy to define. In winter, it rains a lot and it’s damp and cool. Occasionally we get set upon by Arctic conditions and things can get miserable for a couple of weeks. You can usually count on any cold weather to clear off in a couple of weeks but this year has been different. Summer here is normally two months of good weather with a few rain showers, but it’s warm. June is variable and warmish, and the Pacific tends to be stormy, whereas September is warm half the month at least, and the warmth is extended for a couple of week during an Indian Summer.
Spring feels different than Fall (Autumn), mainly becuase it’s going from warm to cold rather than cold to warm. Also, vegetation is dying rather than renewing itself. Weather-wise, there is a difference but it’s more a visual sense than anything else. March can have cold spells, but April usually brings T-shirt, warm weather, although you can suddenly get blasted with a rain shower. May is usually a good month but it can still be a little cool for camping even at the end of May.
Climate change is simply not an issue here. It’s always the “same old, same old”. The oceans are at the same level relatively as witnessed by the tidal marks on the seawall and there’s no sense of an imminent rise in sea level. Rainfall is the same as it has always been, and if anything, we are getting more snow and cold this year than normal. Overall, in Vancouver, you’d never know anything was different if you didn’t watch TV or read the papers. I noticed nothing out of hand climate-wise throughout the 1990’s and the early 2000nds, even though ’98 was supposed to have been a whopper for heat.
So where’s all this ‘global’ climate change? What is the IPCC seeing that I’m not seeing? It’s seem obvious they are refering to local climate conditons as a global phenomenon, just as they do with global warming itself. The entire planet has not warmed and that is not global warming.
Obviously dyslexia is setting in. That should read ‘Getting back on topic’.
Gordon,
John Sununu pointed out at the Heartland Conference that GCM’s are predestined to produce warming in exactly the same way that the Club of Rome’s computer model was designed to produce catastrophic results. The Club of Rome simulation was pretty simple and easy to work out what was being done, but the current GCMs are so complex that no one can really figure out is being coded.
We know the current GCM’s are predestined to show warming because of the basic assumption of climate sensivity.
The IPCC is a political organisation and its agenda goes back to a 1975 conference organised by Margaret Mead and Kellogg, a climate scientist. Well worth checking up on I would think.
Well, I have had a go at it anyway!
see FORECAST MEAN GLOBAL TEMPERATURE TRENDS FROM 2009 TO 2050
http://www.holtonweather.com/global.htm