Taking Keating Seriously

Alexander Rawls • 2 hours ago

Dear Christopher, over the weekend Anthony Watts published my proof in answer to your "option 1" (showing that the available scientific reason and evidence reject the IPCC's AR5 claim of extreme certainty that most post 1950's warming was caused by human activity):
http://wattsupwiththat.com/201...
The argument is pretty simple: the high climate sensitivity necessary for CO2 to explain late 20th century warming is incompatible with the lack of 21st century warming as CO2 has continued to increase rapidly. As a result the theory that most late 20th century warming was caused by human increments to CO2 is on or past the verge of falsification, and this is admitted by leading members of "the consensus." Since the available scientific reason and evidence places this theory on the verge of falsification, that proves that it cannot possibly be extremely certain, as AR5 declares, and your "option 1" criterion is met.
Neither can the IPPC's position be rescued by the various new and highly uncertain speculations that have been forward as to how the current 15+ year "pause" in global warming could possibly be consistent with strongly positive climate sensitivity and a human explanation for late 20th century warming. Since these speculations are highly uncertain they cannot confer certainty. All of this is fully analyzed and documented in my post.
I also have a section on how the IPCC's upping of its human-caused certainty from "very likely" to "extremely likely" is starkly at odds with the evidence it presents (evidence that clearly indicates a decreased certainty for human attribution), and a section on the long history of the IPCC's advancement of claims in its summaries for policymakers that directly contradict the findings of its peer reviewed scientific reports. A look at the political nature of the IPCC is not itself a scientific argument against the IPCC's human-attribution claims but it is helpful , I think, for showing credulous people why they ought to take a more skeptical attitude towards IPCC claims. Stop assuming that these people deserve your trust and it may take the blinkers off regarding their overtly unscientific methods and claims.
I could post the full text of my proof here in one of your comment sections but that would be a major bother for readers who want to scroll past and the numerous quotations might not format correctly in a comment box so I won't do that unless you want me to. Please let me know.
Good on you for engaging with skeptic views. I hope that you are able to learn a lot from it.
Alec Rawls
Palo Alto, CA
P.S. Thanks for your note about the possible coming Challenge II. I believe I have already won your Challenge I but you could alter the terms to create a valid second challenge. I only showed how the human-warming theory fails from its own conflict with the empirical evidence. Another possibility is to show how the empirical evidence points much more strongly to competing theories, which would also make the human-CO2 theory of late 20th century very unlikely, in contradiction to IPCC claims of extreme certainty.
I am past due for an updated summary of how the IPCC is unscientifically ignoring the evidence for the competing solar-magnetic theory of 20th century warming in particular, so I'll be glad to win your second challenge with that. You could call it the "is there a better theory?" challenge.

Taking Keating seriously part 2: the IPCC’s human-attribution claim is prima facie unscientific

Posted on July 26, 2014 by Alec Rawls

Guest post by Alec Rawls (see part 1)
Ex-physics teacher Christopher Keating, who strongly believes that human activity is causing dangerous global warming, is offering $30,000 to anyone who can prove that “claims of man-made climate change” are not supported by the science. What claims? He gives as an example the IPCC’s central assertion that: “It is extremely likely (95-100%) that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.” Easy money (if he would actually give it, but that is secondary). There are several grounds, already laid out by a variety of skeptics, why this claim of extreme scientific certainty is prima facie unscientific.
The climate models that give rise to the IPCC’s human-attribution claim also predicted that the rapid continued rise in CO2 would cause rapid continued warming. After 15+ years of no warming these models are on the verge, or past the verge, of falsification. That is the extreme opposite of certainty, and in a series of desperate attempts to stave off falsification the IPCC’s “settled science” now hinges on a parade of freshly concocted and highly speculative possible explanations for the “pause,” such as Kevin Trenberth’s hypothesis that the warming is hiding in the deepest oceans. Sorry, but if your theory fails in the absence of freshly concocted and highly uncertain further theories then it is not well established and highly certain.
The IPCC’s attribution claim was actually produced, not by a scientific evaluation at all, but by a political process, driven by the representatives of numerous governments that see the demonization and taxing of CO2 as a vast untapped source of tax revenue. As will be seen below, this political influence is well documented. The attribution claim is part of the Summary for Policymakers which has a long history of contradicting the findings of the scientific review. So of course the attribution claim is not scientific, when it is not even arrived at by a scientific process.
Beyond the prima facie case the IPCC “consensus” works deep and profound perversions of the scientific method that require more detailed exposition. That will be part 3, but the overt conflicts with scientific reason and evidence are sufficient in themselves to prove that, given the current state of knowledge, any attribution of most post 1950’s warming to the human burning of fossil fuels must be highly uncertain, the opposite of the IPCC’s assertion of extreme certainty.
Evidence against a hypothesis logically decreases the certainty that it is correct
As climatologist Judith Curry notes: “[s]everal key elements of [AR5] point to a weakening of the case for attributing [post-1950] warming of human influences.” She lists:

■  Lack of warming since 1998 and growing discrepancies with climate model projections
■  Evidence of decreased climate sensitivity to increases in CO2
■  Evidence that sea level rise in 1920-1950 is of the same magnitude as in 1993-2012
■  Increasing Antarctic sea ice extent
■  Low confidence in attributing extreme weather events to anthropogenic global warming

Yet in the face of this buildup of contrary evidence, documented in its own report, the IPCC increased its claimed level of certainty that post-1950 warming was human caused [emphasis added by Curry]:

■  AR4 (2007): “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely (>90% confidence) due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gases.” (SPM AR4)
■  AR5 (2013) SPM: “It is extremely likely (>95% confidence) that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century .” (SPM AR5)

The change in AR5’s attribution claim runs opposite to the evidence it put forward. Going against the evidence is not science. It is anti-science.
The IPCC’s attribution claims are the product of a political process, not a scientific one
Judgments about science issued by a political process could happen to agree with sound scientific judgment. The political nature of the IPCC’s attribution claim does not itself prove that this claim is at odds with the science, but understanding the influence of politics is still very important to understanding the unscientific nature of the IPCC’s claims.
Believers (“consensoids” if one prefers), are often aghast that there are all these skeptics out there who don’t trust scientists. This is particularly true of believers like Keating who are not themselves familiar (see part 1) with the actual points of scientific debate . They are stumped by the “why” of distrust and think it has to be that skeptics are just anti-science. The political nature of the IPCC, and the politicized nature climate science in general, explain the “why.”
Not only is climate science close to 100% government funded but in the United States that government funding is all channeled through funding structures set up by Vice President Gore to finance only those who agreed with Gore’s CO2-centric views. Internationally funding is channeled by the funding structures put in place by Canadian leftist and IPCC-founder Maurice Strong. Is it really hard to understand how a research effort that is 100% politically funded could become politicized?
The IPCC is a politicized body that sits at the top of this heap of politicized science and bends its declarations in an even more politicized direction, especially in the Summary for Policymakers.  As seen above, AR5’s increased certainty of human attribution runs directly counter to the evidence that it presents, but this is just the latest increment of political interference. Where did AR4’s “very likely” claim of human attribution come from, and TAR’s “likely” claim?
It all traces back to the first human-attribution claim in the Summary of the Second Area Report (1995), which ran strongly counter to the scientific report, which was then edited to conform with the politically negotiated Summary. This case was recently discussed here at WUWT by Tim Ball:

An early example of SPM increased alarmism occurred with the 1995 Report. The 1990 Report and the drafted 1995 Science Report said there was no evidence of a human effect. Benjamin Santer, graduate from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and shortly thereafter lead author of Chapter 8, changed the 1995 SPM for Chapter 8 drafted by his fellow authors that said,
“While some of the pattern-base discussed here have claimed detection of a significant climate change, no study to date has positively attributed all or part of climate change observed to man-made causes.”
to read,
“The body of statistical evidence in chapter 8, when examined in the context of our physical understanding of the climate system, now points to a discernible human influence on the global climate.”
As planned the phrase “discernible human influence” became the headline.

This scandal was first exposed in a June 1996 Wall Street Journal op-ed by Frederich Seitz:

In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community, including service as president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report. A comparison between the report approved by the contributing scientists and the published version reveals that key changes were made after the scientists had met and accepted what they thought was the final peer-reviewed version. …
The following passages are examples of those included in the approved report but deleted from  the supposedly peer-reviewed published version:
■  “None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed [climate] changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases.”
■  “No study to date has positively attributed all or part [of the climate change observed to date] to anthropogenic [man-made] causes.”
■  “Any claims of positive detection of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced.”
The reviewing scientists used this original language to keep themselves and the IPCC honest. I am in no position to know who made the major changes in Chapter 8; but the report’s lead author, Benjamin D. Santer, must presumably take the major responsibility.

That shook out information from inside the IPCC, as noted by Fred Singer in another WSJ op-ed:

“IPCC officials,” quoted (but not named) by Nature, claim that the reason for the revisions to the chapter was “to ensure that it conformed to a ‘policymakers’ summary’ of the full report….” Their claim begs the obvious question: Should not a summary conform to the underlying scientific report rather than vice versa?

Santer’s defense of the changes he had made to the peer-reviewed report is highly revealing. He pled that the IPCC rules were designed to allow and even require that the final report be changed in response to political input from governments and NGOs after the scientific report had been completed:

All IPCC procedural rules were followed in producing the final, now published, version of the Chapter 8. The changes made after the Madrid IPCC meeting in November 1995 were in response to written review comments received in October and November 1995 from governments, individual scientists, and non-governmental organizations. They were also in response to comments made by governments and non-governmental organizations during plenary sessions of the Madrid meeting. IPCC procedures required changes in response to these comments, in order to produce the best-possible and most clearly explained assessment of the science.

Okay, so the whole thing is designed from the outset to be a political document not a scientific document, resulting from a political process not a scientific process, and as we well know, politicians tend to have their own strongly preferred conclusions. The environmentalist component is overwhelmingly anti-capitalist (at a UN-backed conference in Venezuela this week: “130 Environmental Groups Call For An End To Capitalism”), and a much broader spectrum of politicians are eager for expanded government revenues and government control, both of which are served by the demonization of CO2.
These same politicians also control who gets scientific funding in the first place, but the IPCC, and in particular its Summaries, are markedly more unscientific still. The history of the IPCC’s attribution claims prove that these politicized judgments have not managed to comport with scientific reason and evidence but have worked persistently to overthrow it. AR5 fits squarely in that train, asserting increased certainty that humans caused most recent warming when the scientific evidence they put forward points to decreased certainty.
The actual scientific question at the present moment is whether the “consensus” climate models have been definitively falsified by the lack of 21st century warming
Even Ben Santer has had to admit that this is the case, putting off claims that the “consensus” models had already been falsified by offering in 2011 a falsification criterion of 17 years with no warming:

Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature.

Santer and his colleagues are leaving themselves some wiggle room by saying “at least,” but they are clearly admitting that at 17 years the models should be near falsification, which is where we are now.
In a 2013 interview with Der Spiegel German climate scientist Hans Von Storch summarized the difficulty that the “consensus” view is now facing:

Storch: If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models. A 20-year pause in global warming does not occur in a single modeled scenario. But even today, we are finding it very difficult to reconcile actual temperature trends with our expectations.
SPIEGEL: What could be wrong with the models?
Storch: There are two conceivable explanations — and neither is very pleasant for us. The first possibility is that less global warming is occurring than expected because greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have less of an effect than we have assumed. This wouldn’t mean that there is no man-made greenhouse effect, but simply that our effect on climate events is not as great as we have believed. The other possibility is that, in our simulations, we have underestimated how much the climate fluctuates owing to natural causes.

Both of these explanations are devastating to the IPCC’s attribution claims, and it pretty much has to be both. If late 20th century warming was not caused by CO2 it has to have been caused by something else, like the 80 year grand maximum of solar-magnetic activity that began in the early 1920’s and ended just about when “the pause” began.
Some solar scientists claim that 20th century solar activity was merely “high” without warranting the “grand maximum” label, but that is a distinction without a difference. Whether “high” or “grand,” since we don’t yet understanding all of the ways that living inside the sun’s extended corona might affect global temperature (and there is the rub, that this understanding is still very immature), 80 years of any high level of solar activity could very well account for most or all of the modest warming over this period.
There could also be purely internal sources of natural variation, unforced by external influences from either mankind or the sun. These could be merely oscillations in how much of the heat-content of the climate system is present in surface temperatures or they could be self-reinforcing processes that alter heat content (see Bob Tisdale’s theory of El Nino driven warming). The deeper problem with the IPCC is the unscientific grounds on which it has dismissed these competing theories.
It claims certainty for its politically preferred CO2-driven theory when the actual evidence points overwhelmingly in the other directions. CO2 is the least likely of the available explanations. There is actually no evidence that feedback effects are even positive. The proclaimed evidence is purely circular (climate sensitivity estimates that are based on the assumption that warming was caused by CO2), making it a classic petito principi, but that is part 3.
For the prima facie case it is sufficient to note that if natural cooling can be responsible for “the pause” it can also be “the cause” (to quote The Hockey Schtick) of late 20th century warming. Keating himself explains “the pause” as a result of natural cooling effects that must at least be similar in strength to the hypothesized human warming effects:

Christopher Keating, June 24, 2014 at 10:37 AM
What I believe I said is that we are in a natural occurring cooling period. In other words, if it wasn’t for us, the climate would be cooling right now. All of the warming above the average (actually, above what it would be without us) is due to the effects of our greenhouse gas emissions.

Somehow it doesn’t dawn on him that if ill-understood forces of natural temperature change can be at least as strong as the hypothesized human effects in the cooling direction then they could also be responsible for the two decades of warming that the IPCC is attributing to human effects, and there goes your certainty.
The two sides of Keating’s “option 1″ are sides of a coin
In addition to challenging skeptics to prove that the lack of scientific support for the IPCC’s extreme certainty that most post 50’s warming was human caused Keating’s “option 1” also asks skeptics to prove the lack of scientific support for the IPCC’s climate sensitivity claim, that:

Climate sensitivity is likely in the range 1.5°C to 4.5°C and extremely unlikely (95-100%) less than 1°C.

These to halves of “option 1″ are sides of a coin. What is driving falsification is the conflict between the high climate sensitivity necessary for the very small CO2 forcing to explain late 20th century warming and the low climate sensitivity necessary for the lack of 21st century warming to be consistent with the continued rapid increase in CO2. If these two sensitivity requirements can’t be reconciled then the theory of human caused warming collapses, and right now, they are very close to un-reconcilable.
“Settled Science” now stands on the strength of one newly concocted speculation after another
To save their CO2-driven climate models from falsification by “the pause,” “consensus” scientists have been offering a string of highly speculative rationales for how human caused warming could still be dominant, even though it is not showing up in surface temperatures. An early example was the 2010 “missing heat” paper by Kevin Trenberth and John Fasullo, described in this UCAR press release:

“MISSING” HEAT MAY AFFECT FUTURE CLIMATE CHANGE
April 15, 2010
BOULDER—Current observational tools cannot account for roughly half of the heat that is believed to have built up on Earth in recent years, according to a “Perspectives” article in this week’s issue of Science. Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) warn in the new study that satellite sensors, ocean floats, and other instruments are inadequate to track this “missing” heat, which may be building up in the deep oceans or elsewhere in the climate system.
“The heat will come back to haunt us sooner or later,” says NCAR scientist Kevin Trenberth, the lead author. “The reprieve we’ve had from warming temperatures in the last few years will not continue. It is critical to track the build-up of energy in our climate system so we can understand what is happening and predict our future climate.”

Nice, a falsification dodge that won’t be falsifiable until we build a more extensive ocean monitoring system, but four years later what little evidence there is about the deep oceans is pointing in the other direction: they are cooling, not warming. .
However that turns out, if the viability of the CO2-dominant theory hinges on a highly uncertain new speculation then the theory itself cannot be more certain than that new speculation. There have been a host of such rescue attempts: that Chinese coal burning is causing the pause, that the Montreal Protocol caused the pause, that volcanic aerosols caused the pause, that a slow down in Pacific trade winds caused the pause, and on and on.
All are highly speculative, thus none can confer any significant level of certainty on the otherwise now highly uncertain IPCC attribution claim. Von Storch again:

 So far, no one has been able to provide a compelling answer to why climate change seems to be taking a break. We’re facing a puzzle. Recent CO2 emissions have actually risen even more steeply than we feared. As a result, according to most climate models, we should have seen temperatures rise by around 0.25 degrees Celsius (0.45 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past 10 years. That hasn’t happened. In fact, the increase over the last 15 years was just 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) — a value very close to zero. This is a serious scientific problem that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will have to confront when it presents its next Assessment Report late next year.

But they didn’t confront it. They ignored this “serious scientific problem” and pretended that their human-warming theory had been strengthened, not weakened, by developments since AR4. This fixed determination to ignore the available reason and evidence is the opposite of science.
The unscientific and anti-scientific nature of the IPCC’s attribution claims is unambiguous. They are asserting extreme and increasing certainty as the foundations of their CO2-dominant theory are on or past the verge of falsification. The only degree of certainty they can legitimately assess is very low. It is certainly not extremely high, and if Keating has any integrity he will admit it.



Response:

When Mr. Rawls called his submission "Taking Keating Seriously" I thought he meant it and would be submitting a serious challenge. I was wrong. I tell people that if they want to be taken seriously by anyone outside of the contrarian community they need to avoid websites such as WUWT. He has proved my point. This was mostly a rehash of other claims that have already been submitted and debunked.

While he might not have taken the challenge seriously, I do and will address each of his claims.

The first thing Mr. Rawls did was to go into how the rise in temperature has stopped. This is such a false argument that I am constantly surprised when anyone makes this claim. Any discussion of global warming means we are discussing the globe. The surface of the globe is not the globe and talking about the average surface temperature ignores 93% of the warming that is taking place - the oceans.

Take one look at this NOAA plot of global heat content here and tell me again about how there has been no warming.

Source: NOAA

Besides this, take a look at this article in Forbes written by a climate scientist and again tell me how there has been no warming.

Or, read this article on RealClimate and tell me how there is no warming.

Or, we could just do it this way. Take a look at the typical plot favored by contrarians when it comes to the average global surface temperature:

Source: Open Your Eyes

What contrarians like to do is start with the 1998 peak and measure from there. Why? Why not 1997 or 1999? The reason is simple, it gives the results you want to get. This is the very definition of cherry picking and I'll show you why.

Let's start with 1998 and go to the peak at 2010. The peak at 1998 is right at +.4 degrees C anomaly and the peak at 2010 is just a smidgen higher, let's call it +.4 degrees C anomaly also. The difference from 1998 to 2010 is zero degrees, So, by picking these two points you can make the claim that there has been no warming since 1998.

But, what if we start with 1997? After all, that is just one year earlier. Well, the value at 1997 is -.1 degrees C anomaly. So between 1997 and 2010 we get an change of +.5 degrees C.  Wait, didn't you just say there has been no warming since 1998? Hmmm.

OK, it must be the data. Let's try that again starting with 2000. After all, that was just two years later than our 1998 starting point and if there has been no warming since 1998 then it shouldn't make any difference. The value for 2000 is -.1 degrees C anomaly again. That gives us a change in temperature of +.5 degrees C again. 

So, the claim that there has been no warming in the last 15+ years is dependent on two things - ignoring 93% of the warming taking place and cherry picking our starting and ending points in defining 'no warming'. 

The reality is, when you examine all of the heat stored in the planet, it has continued to increase - even over the last 15+ years. 

So, that claim of his is completely busted.

Mr. Rawls follows up by stating:

That is the extreme opposite of certainty, and in a series of desperate attempts to stave off falsification the IPCC’s “settled science” now hinges on a parade of freshly concocted and highly speculative possible explanations for the “pause,” such as Kevin Trenberth’s hypothesis that the warming is hiding in the deepest oceans. Sorry, but if your theory fails in the absence of freshly concocted and highly uncertain further theories then it is not well established and highly certain.The IPCC’s attribution claim was actually produced, not by a scientific evaluation at all, but by a political process, driven by the representatives of numerous governments that see the demonization and taxing of CO2 as a vast untapped source of tax revenue. As will be seen below, this political influence is well documented. The attribution claim is part of the Summary for Policymakers which has a long history of contradicting the findings of the scientific review. So of course the attribution claim is not scientific, when it is not even arrived at by a scientific process.

How ironic that he should complain about climate science when he has yet to produce even one bit of science. This entire statement is nothing more than a speech to rally the contrarian troops.

Finally, he says something that at least resemble a submission:

■  Lack of warming since 1998 and growing discrepancies with climate model projections
■  Evidence of decreased climate sensitivity to increases in CO2
■  Evidence that sea level rise in 1920-1950 is of the same magnitude as in 1993-2012
■  Increasing Antarctic sea ice extent
■  Low confidence in attributing extreme weather events to anthropogenic global warming

Yet in the face of this buildup of contrary evidence, documented in its own report, the IPCC increased its claimed level of certainty that post-1950 warming was human caused [emphasis added by Curry]:

■  AR4 (2007): “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely (>90% confidence) due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gases.” (SPM AR4)
■  AR5 (2013) SPM: “It is extremely likely (>95% confidence) that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century .” (SPM AR5)

This list actually does not qualify under the scientific method requirement because all he did was to throw out a bunch of claims without any supporting evidence, but I have allowed that in the past and will allow it here.

The reason why he didn't provide any supporting science is because he doesn't have any. This all a bunch of false arguments contrarians make on websites like WUWT that get the troops all psyched-up. Now, they can all go out and storm the public with a bunch of talking points that have no scientific basis and sound intelligent. That is all it amounts to. Let me address each one in order to show you.

1. OK, so the first point we have already addressed. The planet is storing more heat every year. So this is just a false claim and the scientific evidence is perfectly clear on that one.

2. Climate sensitivity is a measure of how much the climate changes in response to radiative forcing. In other words, we know energy comes in from the Sun and then Earth radiates heat back out into space. A radiative forcing is when those two are not equal. Climate sensitivity is a measure of how much the climate will change as a result of that imbalance. So, if the climate is not sensitive to CO2 that would mean a change in the atmospheric CO2 level would have little effect. But, that means there would also be a low climate sensitivity to other factors such as solar activity, Milankovitch cycles, etc. So, by claiming the climate sensitivity of CO2 is low, they take away the claim that there were natural cycles in the past and today is nothing more than a natural cycle. And, it is well documented there have been cycles in the climate in the past.

Really, if someone argues this point then they undermine the entire premise of the contrarian population that wants to say it is nothing more than a natural cycle. You can't have it both ways. Either there is a robust climate sensitivity or there isn't. You can't claim a robust value for the past and small one for today unless you want to claim the laws of physics have changed.

By making this claim, Mr. Rawls is saying man made global warming isn't real because it isn't as big as what he thinks it should be. But, as false an argument as that is, he is still wrong. The science is pretty clear that estimates for the climate sensitivity are pretty accurate, and getting better.

For instance, the letter Climate sensitivity constrained by CO2 concentrations over the past 420 million years, by Dana L. Royer, Robert A. Berner & Jeffrey Park, Nature 446, 530-532 (29 March 2007) | doi:10.1038/nature05699, states:

Here we estimate long-term equilibrium climate sensitivity by modelling carbon dioxide concentrations over the past 420 million years and comparing our calculations with a proxy record. Our estimates are broadly consistent with estimates based on short-term climate records, and indicate that a weak radiative forcing by carbon dioxide is highly unlikely on multi-million-year timescales. We conclude that a climate sensitivity greater than 1.5 °C has probably been a robust feature of the Earth's climate system over the past 420 million years, regardless of temporal scaling.

Or, Climate sensitivity estimated from ensemble simulations of glacial climate, by Thomas Schneider von Deimling, Hermann Held, Andrey Ganopolski, and Stefan Rahmstorf, Climate Dynamics, August 2006, Volume 27, Issue 2-3, pp 149-163, 16 Mar 2006, which states,

Our results agree with recent studies that annual mean data-constraints from present day climate prove to not rule out climate sensitivities above the widely assumed sensitivity range of 1.5–4.5°C (Houghton et al. 2001). Based on our inferred close relationship between past and future temperature evolution, our study suggests that paleo-climatic data can help to reduce uncertainty in future climate projections. Our inferred uncertainty range for climate sensitivity, constrained by paleo-data, is 1.2–4.3°C and thus almost identical to the IPCC estimate. When additionally accounting for potential structural uncertainties inferred from other models the upper limit increases by about 1°C. 

Any claim that climate sensitivity is decreasing is based on the claim that the global heat content is not going up, which is a false statement. This is a classic example of garbage in, garbage out. If you ignore 93% of global warming, you are going to get a false result.

3. Surprisingly, this claim is actually supporting evidence of man made global warming. What Mr. Rawls is claiming is that there was as much sea level rise over 19 years today as there was over a 30 year period in the past. That is over 60% faster! Here is a plot of sea level rise:

As bad as their claim is, it is still wrong. We can see there was a rise of about 2.9 inches over 30 years (1920 - 1950). That is an average of about .1 inches per year. Today, there was a rise of 2.0 inches over 10 years (1995 - 2005). That is about .2 inches per year, or twice the rate as before (a 100% increase). You would think they would do a little more homework before making that claim.

4. Yeah, so? The Antarctic sea ice is increasing. But, what about the Antarctic land ice you conveniently ignored? Or, the Arctic sea ice? Or, the Greenland Ice Sheet? Or, glaciers all around the world? All of these other places are losing ice at a tremendous, and accelerating, rate. So, we are suppose to ignore all of that and focus on the sea ice in a very isolated and unique climate environment? A small percentage of the planet's surface is suppose to cancel out what is going on with the vast majority of the planet. I know contrarians love this claim, but it is a very false argument to make.

5. Really? NOAA, the National Weather Service and the insurance industry all disagree with you. I would think any rational person would realize that when the insurance industry says its real, its real. Take a look at what is going on in the American Southwest. Stories of extreme weather are being repeated around the globe. Watch the film here featuring climate scientists discussing this topic.

An update on Earth's energy balance in light of the latest global observations, by Graeme L. Stephens, et al.,
Nature Geoscience 5,691–696(2012)doi:10.1038/ngeo1580, gives the surface energy balance as 88 W/m^2 (plus or minus 10 W/m^2) and NASA's latest energy balance poster lists it as 86.4 W/m^2. This means the surface is receiving that much more heat (including back radiation) than it is losing. Multiplying this amount of energy (a watt is a joule/second) times the number of seconds in a year times the number of square meters on the planet gives us 1.4 x 10^24 joules being added to the environment every year. This is the difference between the amount of energy coming in and the amount going out. Using the amount of uncertainty in the quoted figures, that extra energy could be as low as 1.25 x 10^24 joules or as high as 1.58 x 10^24 joules. Some of this will end up as latent heat in the melting of ice and the evaporation of water. The bulk of the rest will go into heating air, land and water.

Somehow, people will look at this number and still claim global warming isn't real. Tell me, what is happening to all of that energy if the planet isn't getting warmer?

Yes, the IPCC did, in fact, up its level of certainty. And, we have just seen an abundance of evidence as to why. The science was overwhelming. Now, its even more so.

Every point submitted by Mr. Rawls in that list failed to support his claims. 

Mr. Rawls then goes into a diatribe about the IPCC. I find it amusing to see how much contrarians hate the IPCC, always without being able to refute the Assessment Reports. All they can do is throw fits, such as the one Mr. Rawls goes into. The beauty of it is how he uses it to even attack me with the statement, "This is particularly true of believers like Keating who are not themselves familiar (see part 1) with the actual points of scientific debate ." Sorry, Mr. Rawls, this is not a debate and it is certainly not science. What is science is the scientific papers used in the IPCC reports. They are listed for anyone to look up and read.

He states,

The actual scientific question at the present moment is whether the “consensus” climate models have been definitively falsified by the lack of 21st century warming

This is a continuation of his diatribe and does not contain anything scientific, only unsupported claims. I have heard so many false arguments about climate models that I wrote a rather extensive posting on the subject that you can read here. In summary, just about everything contrarians say about climate models is false. Some of it is even deliberately falsified, which raises the question of why that would be necessary if the models are as bad as they claim. Models are not climate science, they are merely mathematical tools we use to understand what is going on with what is possibly the most complicated system on the planet. But, there are many other tools we use. Global warming is the reality of nature and is not dependent on our understanding or our models. It will do want it does with, or without, the approval of our models. And, they are much more accurate then contrarians want the public to believe. I reviewed this in depth in my posting I linked above.

The premise that you can base an argument against climate change on models is a false one. And, while we're at it, why don't the contrarians produce some valid alternative models that show their claims are correct? They put a lot of effort into talking about climate models, but you don't see them producing anything that supports them. Why do you think that is? And, why is it they don't want to discuss this question? Hmm.

Mr. Rawls then does something that is completely expected - he misquotes a climate scientist. He states,

Even Ben Santer has had to admit that this is the case, putting off claims that the “consensus” models had already been falsified by offering in 2011 a falsification criterion of 17 years with no warming:

 Here is the abstract from Dr. Santer's paper, Separating signal and noise in atmospheric temperature changes: The importance of timescale, Santer, et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres,
Volume 116, Issue D22, 27 November 2011, DOI: 10.1029/2011JD016263:

We compare global-scale changes in satellite estimates of the temperature of the lower troposphere (TLT) with model simulations of forced and unforced TLT changes. While previous work has focused on a single period of record, we select analysis timescales ranging from 10 to 32 years, and then compare all possible observed TLT trends on each timescale with corresponding multi-model distributions of forced and unforced trends. We use observed estimates of the signal component of TLT changes and model estimates of climate noise to calculate timescale-dependent signal-to-noise ratios (S/N). These ratios are small (less than 1) on the 10-year timescale, increasing to more than 3.9 for 32-year trends. This large change in S/N is primarily due to a decrease in the amplitude of internally generated variability with increasing trend length. Because of the pronounced effect of interannual noise on decadal trends, a multi-model ensemble of anthropogenically-forced simulations displays many 10-year periods with little warming. A single decade of observational TLT data is therefore inadequate for identifying a slowly evolving anthropogenic warming signal. Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature. 

Note the first line where they state they are examining the temperature of the lower troposphere. This is not the global temperature, only the lower atmosphere. This figure does not include ocean warming or melting of ice. And, this paper is actually devastating to the contrarians.What this paper says is we need to use a running-average of at least 17 years. But, contrarians love to pick an average that gives the results they want - typically 5-year to 11-year averages. So, this means anytime you see some claim that uses anything less than a 17-year running-average, it is going to have problems. Guess who makes those kind of claims?

He makes a bunch of unsupported claims at this point that have no relevance on the subject matter (see my comments regarding models above). But, he makes a statement that is so bad I have to address it.

There could also be purely internal sources of natural variation, unforced by external influences from either mankind or the sun.

So, things are just going to spontaneously occur? The world temperature is spontaneously going up without any additional heating? The oceans are spontaneously heating up without any additional heating? The ice all over the planet is spontaneously melting without any additional heating? The weather is spontaneously going wild without any additional heating? The permafrost is spontaneously melting without any additional heating?

I guess he has never heard of the laws of thermodynamics. Let me give you a quick physics lecture: If you don't put gas in the tank the car won't go anywhere.

All of these things need some energy input. If there is no energy input, they are not going to happen. The very fact they are happening is proof positive that extra energy is being put into the climate. Now, if you want to try and have a debate about where that energy is coming from that would be one thing, but to claim all of this is happening without any heat input is just plain bizarre. You could solve all the world's energy needs with this neat, little trick. Just spontaneously make energy as you need it.

He then uses one of my statements in a misguided attempt to support his claims:

Christopher Keating, June 24, 2014 at 10:37 AM
What I believe I said is that we are in a natural occurring cooling period. In other words, if it wasn’t for us, the climate would be cooling right now. All of the warming above the average (actually, above what it would be without us) is due to the effects of our greenhouse gas emissions.

Somehow it doesn’t dawn on him that if ill-understood forces of natural temperature change can be at least as strong as the hypothesized human effects in the cooling direction then they could also be responsible for the two decades of warming that the IPCC is attributing to human effects, and there goes your certainty.

Very bizarre. Why would he state the natural process are 'ill-understood'? The fact is, we have a long ways to go, but we understand quite a bit. And, why in the world would he make the claim that natural processes could be responsible for global warming, except for the fact that it supports his preconceived conclusion? The fact is, there are natural processes at work in the climate and those processes result in a natural cooling trend, not a warming one. The warming trend is all our doing.

He then goes into more conspiracy theories. No science here.

His next target is ocean warming. He uses a WUWT reference as his proof. Watts is a guy that takes money from the Heartland Institute with the directed purpose of undermining climate science. I'll give you a counter reference - one from active climate scientists. The scientific evidence is overwhelming - the oceans are, indeed, warming up. I'm surprised he would even make the claim they are cooling. Again, Mr. Rawls makes claims that are not supported by science.


He concludes (thankfully!) by saying:

The unscientific and anti-scientific nature of the IPCC’s attribution claims is unambiguous. They are asserting extreme and increasing certainty as the foundations of their CO2-dominant theory are on or past the verge of falsification. The only degree of certainty they can legitimately assess is very low. It is certainly not extremely high, and if Keating has any integrity he will admit it.

The only anti-science I have seen here is the drivel Mr. Rawls had the gumption of claiming as scientific evidence. To be concise, there was not even one scientific claim under the scientific method in this submission, so it would fail under that requirement alone. If this was being judged by a panel it would be thrown out. But, I went ahead and reviewed it, as painful as it was. It is a long diatribe of how much he hates the IPCC, occasionally interrupted by false claims that are not supported by any science. As for my integrity, I have lots of integrity and that integrity puts me in a position that I don't have to agree with someone just because he is resorting to bully tactics. Mr. Rawls needs to finish school before he tries to debate climate science with the adults.

This submission did not do anything to prove man made global warming is not real. The best it did was to provide proof that it is real.

In conclusion, Mr. Rawls entitled his posting as 'Taking Keating Seriously' and I thought he would. Unfortunately, he didn't. This submission was childishly simple to debunk.

You did not prove man made global warming is not real.