Global warming follies

Maybe this investigation of IPCC's (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) highly questionable estimation methods, which appear to vastly over-estimate warming from CO2, will finally put an end to the global warming fiasco:

The IPCC and high biased climate sensitivity

The comments are very good -- here are a few that give the gist of the problem, which is basically poor IPCC estimates of how much temperature increase will result from a doubling of CO2. The IPCC estimate is way too high, because it was arrived at by faulty procedures.

Commenter:

Just to shorthand the study because it's pretty long on the technobabble.

The IPCC took eight studies on climate sensitivity of which one (Forster/Gregory 06) was the only study based purely on observational evidence, with no dependence on any climate model simulations, threw said study in their voodoo math machines and basically 2x the results. It then put the study up in the graph with the other studies and basically pulled the “mikes nature trick/hide the decline” game.

Another commenter:

The bone of contention among the better informed has always been about the amplification and seldom about the baseline increase from CO2 sans amplification. 1.1C per doubling is nothing to worry about and everyone knows it. 4C per doubling is something even I would worry about and I don’t worry easily. Fortunately there’s not a shadow of doubt in mind that 4C is a complete fabrication without a shred of empirical evidence behind it while 1C per doubling is quite credible and supported by virtually all the observations and theoretical physics. So, no worries. We’ll run out of fossil fuels before we can pump enough into the atmosphere to even do something as positive as end the ice age. Hopefully we’ll have a replacement source of energy to keep us warm and fed when the glaciers begin their inevitable rapid advance. If not then civilization is going to collapse by ice not fire.

Another:

A year ago people here would be swarming all over this post by now. Nic Lewis, it appears, has pretty much knocked down the central pole of the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming tent, by showing how the IPCC used statistical tricks and mis-applied Bayesian analysis to skew projections of climate sensitivity to CO2, more than doubling the projected sensitivity arrived at by the only instrumental study of this phenomenon, and applying the same statistical measures used for purely modelled projections. It’s hard to get frightened by a likely 1.2 degrees C warming from a doubling of CO2, with diminishing results over that initial doubling due to the exponential relationship between CO2 and radiative forcing. Well done, Mr. Lewis.

Another:

So it is models, all the way down.

That last precisely nails the problem: poorly-specified computer models, where small differences in estimates can make huge differences in predictions. To that add the general problem of measurement error, and you have the prescription for a scientific fun house. In this case, predictions from models were used to trump empirical data! That takes the cake. "Who are you going to believe, my simulation model or your lying eyes?"

Anybody who puts faith in these climate models either (1) has not had experience with computer modeling of real-world events, or (2) are driven by personal interests (financial, political, career, etc.) that override whatever scientific integrity they might otherwise have had.

Byron