19 thoughts on “Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity”

  2. I wonder if I can get back my two former Ford Broncos and the pickup I had before them? Added to my current SUV that would 30 cylinders…

  3. Oxymoron: (n) 1. Settled Science. 2. Science by consensus. 3. Science by statistical methods. 4. An approach whereupon scientific theory, backed by computer modeling, is the acceptable basis for factual statements rather than the empirical evidence of controlled experiment.

  4. Real headline at sciencealert.com: “Racist Attitudes And Climate Denial Have a Disturbing Link We Never Knew About.”

    Sigh.

    1. Science-flavored clickbait may do far more damage to “science” than any “denial” ever had a chance to.

  5. I’ve never seen anyone (else, besides me) ask a question that is antecedent to that of the value of “equilibrium climate sensitivity” (ECS): is there such a thing as ECS?

    The answer is “no,” so the rest of the palaver about this is wasted breath. The number of known physical drivers of climate is large, and we probably don’t know all of them (since new ones are discovered regularly). They all vary, and do so on different time scales. There is no chance at all for the Earth’s climate to reach a steady state “equilibrium”.

    2. From Wikipedia,

      (Here it should be noted that the term “equilibrium,” though widely used, is a misused; the climate system is far from the situation of a dynamic equilibrium, which requires equal and opposite fluxes on all paths; it is better characterized as a “steady state” or “near steady state.”

      So it really is a BS term. Climate equilibrium isn’t an unchanging state but rather a nearly unchanging state. They are too clever by half.

      Also, Therefore, climate sensitivity depends on the initial climate state

      Which is supposed to be what point in time? And how do all the natural dramatic changes fit into a nearly unchanging state?

      Guess they need to make things needlessly complex because the more people look into things, the less good it looks for AGW alarmists.

      1. It’s a nearly steady state within a range extending from the tropical world inhabited by the mega-therapods to the Snowball Earth that saw almost no open water anywhere.

        Also, today the weather where I live was fair and moderate, with morning lows in the -40s and an afternoon high of 140.

  6. Uses IPCC data and still projects less sensitivity than the “approved” models? The IPCC would have gotten way with more fudging of the data if not for those meddling skeptics.

  7. Thirty years on, how do climate predictions hold up?

    It’s basically a problem of an un-restricted domain. Trying to predict the behavior of a chaotic system. As an example….

    I predict that given a 12 hour time scheme, for any given 11 o’clock it will be 11 o’clock in precisely two time zones on the Earth!
    🙂

    1. I was just going to comment that in that climate debate the other week that Mann referenced a claim by Hanson that turned out to be true. I only skimmed the posts, so didn’t catch the actual prediction.

      Three decades ago, led by Hansen, they made a series of predictions; for the most part these have proved to be spectacularly accurate.

      It turns out that your NewYorker link also doesn’t list any predictions. It does however claim that forest fires in the west as evidence of these unnamed predictions, which is incredibly ignorant but what are the chances the author has ever been in a forest in the west?

      The second link lays out a number of ways that Hanson’s predictions were wrong but then says they were close in a couple areas. Which is what the link Rand posted notes. The least sensational and alarmist prediction was the closest to being accurate but Hanson and other AGW alarmists have been pushing the most sensational and alarmist predictions.

      This is only one prediction, ignored by the alarmist community, and it was the bottom end of a sensitivity analysis not the main prediction. Hanson wasn’t out there saying C was going to happen, he was saying A was going to happen. There have been hundreds of other predictions that have not come true. Picking one Hanson thought was the least likely to happen, isn’t really something to crow about.

      Looking at the charts though, it is remarkable how little fluctuation in temperature there is and how it is well within the range of historical temperature fluctuations.

  9. “Hanson wasn’t out there saying C was going to happen, he was saying A was going to happen.”

    No. A, B, and C were not predictions, they were emissions scenarios, Hansen was certainly not predicting emissions scenarios. The actuality of emissions is closest to B, the actuality of the temperature increase was below B and closer to that projected for emissions scenario C. So yes, the projections were too pessimistic, but that’s how science works. The evidence I’ve seen suggests actual climate sensitivity is lower than some earlier models suggested but it’s still real and still significant.

    It’s imbecilic for anyone to suggest that because the projections weren’t bang on that those doing those earlier sums were morally at fault or dishonest, Hansen’s projections were the most valid available 30 years ago, far more valid than “skeptics” claims whose predictions were that increasing CO2 concentrations would make little or no difference to temperatures, that water vapor feed-back wasn’t real, that temperatures weren’t increasing, that there was an “iris effect” negating GHG forcings. So while Hansen might only get a B+ most of his critics get D’s, their predictions of increases in temperature often in the range of zero to 0.2 C with the increases of GHG concentrations that we’ve seen have been proven to be rubbish, no better than reading tea leaves.

    1. increasing CO2 concentrations would make little or no difference to temperatures
      They haven’t over the past 18 years.

      that water vapor feed-back wasn’t real
      Oh FFS Andrew, really?
      A runaway greenhouse effect involving carbon dioxide and water vapor has long ago been hypothesized to have occurred on Venus. Venus experienced a runaway greenhouse in the past, and we expect that Earth will in about 2 billion years as solar luminosity increases.
      Imbecilic doesn’t begin to cover that.

      that there was an “iris effect” negating GHG forcings
      Clouds Andrew? You’re claiming we know all about clouds’ effect on climate? There are numerous very smart researchers and modelers all over the world who would really like you to let them in on your secret knowledge in this area.

      Accusing Hanson of moral turpitude and dishonesty 30 years ago might have been a stretch, but his behavior since, where he has repeatedly doubled down on his mistakes and attacked anyone who has dared to point them out leaves little else available as a rational explanation.

    2. It’s imbecilic for anyone to suggest that because the projections weren’t bang on

      Uh, they weren’t just not bang on, they were bang off. The vast majority of models that predicted future temperatures have been way way off. Predictions on events like no polar ice caps, mass extinctions, fire tornadoes, and on and on have also been wrong.

      So yes, the projections were too pessimistic

      No, they were too optimistic because they were claiming DOOM and what we got was meh not really a big deal. They wanted the DOOM, they were optimistic it was going to happen.

      that temperatures weren’t increasing

      Skeptics have claimed that there are natural swings in climate and that it wasn’t likely that temperatures would necessarily keep increasing at rates prophesied by the AGW alarmists.

      Skeptic: These temperatures we are seeing are rather small and well with in historical variations. We shouldn’t assume apocalypse decades or centuries out based on the lack of data and understanding of how the climate works, especially since nothing really out of the ordinary is taking place and this is the best time humanity has ever experienced.

      Alarmist: Everything is horrible. We all gonna die.

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