I wrote the following post on Climate Audit:
A great article, but I’m not sure I agree with you assertion about the IPCC blaming natural variation.
The way I see it is as follows. If the scale of natural variation is of sufficient magnitude to counter all the predicted warming then it must be similar in magnitude.
However, if the scale of natural variation is that large, then it is a prime candidate for much of the change in the 20th century and therefore as natural variation is a good candidate for much of the warming, then much less should be attributed to man-made warming.
So, not only does this mean natural variation is as large as man-made warming was predicted to be … but the actual (not predicted) amount of man-made warming must be smaller.
As a result of the combination of these two it is more than likely that most of the warming is due to natural variation.
Steve McIntyre’s response was to cut the above, leave the comment praising the article and leave the following:
A great article, but I’m not sure I agree with you assertion about the IPCC blaming natural variation.
snip
Steve: Sorry about the snip, but your speculation is a diversion from the points of the article. I don’t agree with your point but dont wish to debate it at this time. As to IPCC blaming natural variability for the discrepancy between models and observations: read their own words quoted in the post.
I have now asked him to remove the entire comments as it is unfair to leave me appearing to disagree with something he has edited to suggest is a “good article” without allowing me the means to back up my argument.
You’ve been honored. You’re not blooded until zambonied by the Maestro.
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I wonder whether Steve has lost sight of the woods for the trees. His whole article is about proving the data does not fit the predictions. That is a minor issue, the bigger issue is that even if they did, the fact the warming is the same scale as the natural variation proves that they are at least the same size or that natural variation is larger – because the bigger natural variation the smaller will be the man-made component.
Unfortunately Steve seems unable to get beyond the most simplistic view of natural variation – a simplistic view that as far as I can seen totally underestimate the scale of natural variation – one he seems to share with the climate academics and which has led them down this false trail toward failed predictions.
Steve keeps his view of climate and politics to himself. If it’s any consolation, I agree with you about natural variation. For even more consolation, he’s deleted some of my best stuff.
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I would very much like to hear your best stuff.
I feel sorry for Steve because when I have made the effort, what he writes is extremely good, but even with a suitable background & the will to read his work I struggle to understand what he is trying to say. E.g. one article took me 4 hours of work to condense it down to something I could put on my blog – he doesn’t exactly facilitate a “cut and paste” approach to spreading his work.
Indeed, it was only many years after climategate & far too late that I as a sceptic who had an interest in understanding his work finally understood that the real crimes that had been committed had been “revealed” by Steve.
I don’t know Steve but I think that he is trying to undermine the quality of the models because irrespective of what he thinks as an individual, he knows that the IPCC has made its previous arguments based on the array of models available for analysis. Hence his focus on the quality of the statistics and the underlying biases of the observed results from the models.
At root IPCC is deeply flawed. It’s time that politicians realised that and withdraw its funding.
John, Steve is doing an excellent job critiquing the models used to understand the climate.
But he is not seeing the wood for the trees: a model used to understand the climate has a whole different set of quality requirements from one used to predict the climate as a basis for policy.
There was (apparently) unanimous agreement at the Royal Society meeting last year that the climate models were not fit for purpose as a basis for policy. So, all Steve is doing is proving that models everyone knows are useless for policy makers are even worse.
Instead, I presented a very simple argument that says that natural variation is likely to be equal in scale to human induced change OR LARGER. This is a predictive model … it doesn’t ask the question: “how do we explain available climate data”. It asks the question: “what is our best estimate of the known and unknown elements of the climate signal.”
To recap: the climate models are an assertion of what is believed to be known about the climate. Using the simple equation from measured data that:-
DATA = KNOWN + UNKNOWN
Because we have seen no net change (DATA=0) then we can say:-
KNOWN ~= UNKNOWN.
However we can also say that any future models have to be scaled down in magnitude so
SCALE (Current Models) < SCALE (previous models)
Or
SCALE (current KNOWNS) < Scale (previous "KNOWNS")
From which (ignoring the potential circular logic as it comes to the same conclusion) we can say taht
current KNOWNS < UNKNOWNS
John, I finished your reply, and realised that it was time I presented this argument more fully as an article. Four hours later I have published it. Thanks for the comment.
on the end is all decided by the politically corrupt media – Anthony Watts and similar are not interested in wining the debate, but in prolonging it forever