Anthony Watts:
I was tipped off to this paper by a Tweet from SkS Reichfurher John Cook, and I started on writing a rebuttal, but discovered The Hockey Schtick had already done a complete job, so I’ve reposted it here. -Anthony
The Hockey Schtick writes: A new paper published in a journal called “Climate Risk Management” claims a ridiculous degree of “certainty” of 99.999% that global warming over the past 25 years is man-made. The claim is made based upon climate models already falsified at confidence levels of 98%+.
According to the authors,
“there is less than a one in one hundred thousand chance of observing an unbroken sequence of 304 months [25.3 years] (our analysis extends to June 2010) with mean surface temperature exceeding the 20th century average.”
Fundamental problems with this claim [which is basically the falsified IPCC attribution claim of 95% certainty on steroids] include:
There is no statistical difference between the rate of warming over the 27 years from 1917-1944 and the 25 years from 1975/1976 to 2000:
Not being able to address the attribution of change in the early 20th century to my mind precludes any highly confident attribution of change in the late 20th century.” – Judith Curry
- “climate models are not fit for the purpose of detection and attribution of climate change on decadal to multidecadal timescales.” -Judith Curry
- Statistically significant global warming of the surface stopped 19 years ago and in the troposphere [which climate models claim should warm faster than the surface] global warming stopped 16-26 years ago
- Over 40 excuses for the 18-19 year “pause” in surface warming indicate that natural climate variability is far greater than climate models simulate, and is capable of overwhelming any climate influence of CO2
- Much of the warming of the past 25 years may be artificial due to urban heat island effects and extensive up-justing of temperature records long after the fact
- The paper uses climate models falsified at confidence levels exceeding 98%, thus the assumptions and conclusions derived from models are invalid
- The models also did not predict the 18-19 year “pause” in global warming, thus are not valid to determine attribution to natural vs. anthropogenic causes
They left out one word…. 99.999% certainty global warming Hysteria over the past 25 years is man-made
Yeah, well what about that .001%? As long as they are making it up, why not 100%?
@Bill: The .oo1% says, “Yes we’re 100% certain, but we want to claim open mindedness”
Somebody is looking for more grants from this administration. I guess the funds ran out on studying the private parts of water fowl!