I wouldn't put too much weight on Monckton's up coming paper until it's been published and publicly reviewed. I know it's common practice on here for some people to debunk climate scientists, but in reality most of them are not doing work associated with global warming, and those that are aren't all thick as two short planks. I would say that at the moment the balance of probabilities is that the climate scientist community have not made what we used to call an FFCU. (Fundamental Effing Cock Up).

I will say this though as positive feedback is a central plank of the CAGW theory, from what I've seen there doesn't seem to be much understanding of the actual feedback mechanisms. Any electronics engineer will tell you that positive feedback will become uncontrolled if something isn't done in the feedback loop.

Q1. If more CO2 -> increase in temperature -> more water vapour -> more heat ->more water vapour -> more heat, what stops runaway global warming?

Q2. If this scenario is triggered by a 1.2C rise in global temperatures, why haven't we evidenced runaway global warming in the past?

Are these daft questions? Is there a perfectly reasonable answer somewhere I don't know about?

I wouldn't put too much weight on Monckton's up coming paper until it's been published and publicly reviewed.

Hilarious.

Here are the claims he made in his deposition in the Mark Steyn case. I'll let the readers decide whether this is "poor wording" or the words of a charlatan.

Really? This again?

Dr Mann was Lead Author of the IPCC Third Assessment Report ,Working Group 1, Chapter 2 'Observed Climate Variability and Change'

In 2007, the IPCC, as a body, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. At that time, the Chair of the IPCC said "All the scientists that have contributed to the work of the IPCC are the Nobel laureates who have been recognized and acknowledged by the Nobel Prize Committee,"

(I recall no huge outcry or cries of 'charlatan')

Dr Mann (or more likely his lawyer), echoing his boss, said much the same/similar things in three sentences in a legal deposition. Other IPCC contributors made similar claims. When this proved controversial, the IPCC issued updated guidelines about the correct form of words and the deposition was updated.

The prize was awarded to the IPCC as an organization, and not to any individual associated with the IPCC. Thus it is incorrect to refer to any IPCC official, or scientist who worked on IPCC reports, as a Nobel laureate or Nobel Prize winner. It would be correct to describe a scientist who was involved with AR4 or earlier IPCC reports in this way: “X contributed to the reports of the IPCC, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.” The IPCC leadership agreed to present personalized certificates “for contributing to the award of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 to the IPCC” to scientists that had contributed substantially to the preparation of IPCC reports.

And so Dr Mann issued a clarification and the deposition was updated.

Dr Mann is a Fellow of the AGU and the AMS and recipient of the Hans Oeschger Medal of the European Geosciences Union. He has over 200 peer-reviewed papers to his name and currently holds the positions of Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State. (You could always write and tell them they are employing a man of dubious integrity).

I leave it to others to draw a conclusion on whether three now-retracted lawyers sentences are sufficient make him a 'charlatan', or rather make his accusers look just a little petty.

Supertroll

The nice thing about rhetorical questions is that you can imply that your opponent is wrong without having to supply any supporting information. A tactic more appropriate to a political debate than a scientific discussion.

I do have a possible answer. The prevailing wind in Donegal town comes directly off the sea. From the maps Prince Rupert has high ground upwind. Prince Rupert's extra rainfall may be orographic.

I have direct experience of this. I live 40 miles East of Donegal town and the extra rainfall triggered by the Donegal hills gives us the second highest rainfall in the British Isles( behind somewhere in Cumbria).

Your visit to Donegal sounds typical.

Let me share four pieces of West Ulster weather wisdom, only half in jest.

If you can see the hills it is going to rain; if you cannot see the hills it is raining.

If you do not like the weather, wait ten minutes and it will get wetter.

You know that it is Summer because the rain is warmer.

A Donegal man cannot distinguish between the Sun and the Moon because he rarely sees either.

A Prince Rupert man would sympathize. Apart from that 2C temperature difference, which mostly shows in Donegal's milder winters, the two towns sound very similar weatherwise.

The Mann Bradley Hughes (MBH) hemispheric temperature reconstructions, published 1998 and 1999 (that is, 20 years ago), nicknamed the hockey stick, have been challenged, vindicated and reproduced.

The studies were the first of their kind, the hockey stick graphs were widely publicised and became iconic and controversial, attracting extraordinary scrutiny and criticism, including a National Academy of Sciences panel, and a Congressional hearing (at which, by the way, Mann acknowledged they would do things differently if they started again). Various statistical methods and choices were challenged however the only critique deemed worthy of publication (other submissions were rejected by Nature was McIntyre and McKitrick 2005, in GRL, but the criticisms raised there were found to have a negligible impact on the result by several studies, notably Wahl & Amman 2007.. The NAS panel noted some caveats and basically supported the conclusion of anomalous recent global warmth saying The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on ice caps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years.

Every large-scale temperature reconstruction, and there are more than two dozen, including the major PAGES 2K project, of the last 2,000 years falls within the error bars of the original MBH studies.

So they have been vindicated and reproduced. In 2018, literally nobody's career or salary depends on their opinion of these papers, from the last century, and they are but a small part of one line of evidence amongst many that forms the consensus opinion on AGW.

Geronimo: 'Q1. If more CO2 -> increase in temperature -> more water vapour -> more heat ->more water vapour -> more heat, what stops runaway global warming?'

No, G, the first term here in a positive feedback scenario is ANY perturbation in temperature, up or down, should trigger the feedback and run away to the stop, high or low. The mere fact that it doesn't happen, not with any of the acknowledged natural or anthropogenic variations, is enough to place severe doubt on any idea of the presence of positive feedbacks on a system-wide basis. Or a local basis, in my experience of weather.

(And that is more important than discussion of personalities or the rain in British Columbia, at least in terms of the topic, so if that's what everybody wants to talk about start your own topic so I don't have to read it.)

I wouldn't put too much weight on Monckton's up coming paper until it's been published and publicly reviewed.

Hilarious.

Mar 21, 2018 at 9:27 AM | Phil Clarke

We are still waiting for Climate Scientists to prove that CO2 is the Earth's Temperature Control Knob.

Tragic.

97% of Climate Scientists are failures. It is up to them to prove they are not, at their own expense

Hilarious. Schadenfreude perhaps, but if Climate Scientists had addressed the faults and flaws in their work, rather than ignoring them, this could have been rectified 20 years ago.

Climate Scientists sowed the Political wind.

I leave it to others to draw a conclusion on whether three now-retracted lawyers sentences are sufficient make him a 'charlatan', or rather make his accusers look just a little petty.

Mar 21, 2018 at 9:59 AM | Phil Clarke

Yes. He is a charlatan, and clearly his Lawyers trusted Mann too, making them look "careless".

If he has made claims about being a Nobel Prize Winner, in order to obtain pecuniary advantage, I believe that would be Fraud, under UK Law.

If his pecuniary advantage has been at Taxpayers expense, he may need to find some Lawyers who are not quite so careless.

Phil Clarke, are you gaining pecuniary advantage by lying to support Mann's lies?

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/10/07/global-warmings-fake-nobel-claims-bite-the-dust/

"At the end of September, I noticed that Youngstown State University had announced an upcoming November event with “Nobel Prize winner Michael Mann,” a Penn State professor and inventor of the infamous hockey (hokey?) stick graph. I complained to Youngstown State that Mann had not won the Nobel Prize. He was merely one of hundreds of contributors to reports produced by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was the actual Novel Peace Prize winner in 2007. Mann has on multiple occasions falsely claimed to be a Nobelist, including on the jacket of one of his books and in litigation with pundit Mark Steyn."

I wouldn't put too much weight on Monckton's up coming paper until it's been published and publicly reviewed.

Agree :)

I will say this though as positive feedback is a central plank of the CAGW theory, from what I've seen there doesn't seem to be much understanding of the actual feedback mechanisms. Any electronics engineer will tell you that positive feedback will become uncontrolled if something isn't done in the feedback loop.

Not just any electronics engineer, IMHO anyone who Mastered a study at a faculty for Physics, Mathematics & Computer Science should know that.
It doesn't matter what the source of the initial warming is, so we may ignore whether that is a CO2 effect or whatever. The issue is with any positive only feedback loop.
And apparently it is assumed to be a linear positive feedback loop even ... LMAO.

Are these daft questions? Is there a perfectly reasonable answer somewhere I don't know about?

No and IMHO No.

And while I've spotted a few errors in Monckton's epistle, I also noticed that some people who really should know better attacked it for the wrong reasons.

Apart from ignoring the issue with positive feedback (a runaway effect unless at some point a negative feedback kicks in) several people seem to misunderstand feedback.
Monckton is right that such effects work from the whole input, not just a part. Of course usually only a part of the output flows back as input, but that is another matter.
There could be reasons why one calculates the effects of delta's instead of the whole. For example if such an effect only kicks in after a certain point, but more importantly the formula may only be valid in tiny steps (and only for one or a few feedback loops), or only for a certain range.
He starts with delta formula's and then suddenly changes that when going from #2 to #4, without explaining why that would be valid.

Also he seems to be working from a base of 255.4 K, but any feedback via water vapor can only start to kick in after 273.15 K (0 °C, you know H2O?).
By his logic we then get f = 1-273.15/287.65= 0.050. When we use deltas from that corrected base we get f=1-(273.15-255.4)/(287.65-255.4) = 0.45.
Perhaps one could argue that one should start at semi-equilibrium for waterbelt earth, which is at 4 °C. So we start circa 4 K higher. We then get f = =1-(277.15-255.4)/(287.65-255.4) = 0.326.
Interestingly that would mean 1.1/(1-0.326) = 1.63, now where have I seen something similar before?
These kind of calculations seem rather arbitrary and start to get ridiculous quickly.

And he quotes 287.6 K (= 14.45 °C) as the temperature for 1850, which is odd because that is AFAIK almost the average global temperature today (in 2000 ca 287.55 K in 2017 ca 287.65 K). Does he mean today instead of 1850? IDK.

Of course the formula's that he uses, #1 and #2, seem to be nonsense formula. Certainly in combination with some of the 'standard' assumptions that he quotes (like +1.1 °C direct effect of doubling of CO2).
Yet this is indeed fairly standard, see e.g. the reference I give below (which discusses the feedback issues).

As shown, the climate feedbacks are treated as relative contributions to the response compared with the strongly negative Planck feedback. One can define a reference temperature (increase T0) caused by the Planck feedback (about 1.1°C for a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration). The additional temperature response caused by the feedbacks can then be described by ΔT=ΔT0/(1−f) with f=∂T/∂R(∂R/∂α ∂α/∂T) the feedback factor.

It may work in a certain range, but if so: why just in that range? And where is the element that prevents runaway positive feedback? That should be in any formula and can't be made to disappear.
A proper feedback formula would have a normal range with probably a ramp up phase before that and a quick cool down phase at the end (negative feedback starts to kick in noticeably and then overcomes positive).
At it simplest the profile of a reasonable feedback function is a sigmoid or similar, which only looks linear in a restricted part of the middle.

AFAIK any feedback is mostly driven by water. Positive feedback will start no earlier than 273.15 K; you have to understand that the profile of this feedback will be radically different at the outer ranges.
On the cold side we have the range 273.15 - circa? 277 that we can expect to behave differently (because warm-up from Snowball Earth to Waterbelt Earth was fairly quickly).
On the warm side there will also be some point where after the negative feedback from water (i.e Clouds) will start to become more and more prominent. IDK where that level is. Given that there is no hot-spot in the Tropics, we may assume that it is well below the yearly average temperature for the Tropics (which AFAIK is 18 °C = 291.15 K).
Of course like with the start of the normal range, the end will mean that the response start to change ever quickly. Who knows we may have reached the turning point already ...

So perhaps his article is more an April Fools Joke, to tease those who believe in such simplistic odd-ball formula and related assumptions. Odd because they seem meaningless and lead to very unstable results.

At least some people seem to be more aware of the issues, see for an example the reference below:

Feedbacks, climate sensitivity and the limits of linear models. Reto Knutti, Maria A. A. Rugenstein, 2015.

Abstract
The term ‘feedback’ is used ubiquitously in climate research, but implies varied meanings in different contexts. From a specific process that locally affects a quantity, to a formal framework that attempts to determine a global response to a forcing, researchers use this term to separate, simplify and quantify parts of the complex Earth system. We combine new model results with a historical and educational perspective to organize existing ideas around feedbacks and linear models. Our results suggest that the state- and forcing-dependency of feedbacks are probably not appreciated enough, and not considered appropriately in many studies. A non-constant feedback parameter likely explains some of the differences in estimates of equilibrium climate sensitivity from different methods and types of data. Clarifying the value and applicability of the linear forcing feedback framework and a better quantification of feedbacks on various timescales and spatial scales remains a high priority in order to better understand past and predict future changes in the climate system.

4. Are the current concepts of feedbacks and climate sensitivity still useful?
(a) What have we learned from simple models?
Describing a complex system like the climate with a very simple model inevitably means that many factors are ignored, or assumed to be constant. The results above show that the global temperature response to different forcing magnitudes and timescales cannot be fully described with the assumption of a constant feedback parameter λ even in models that ignore long-term Earth system feedbacks (ice sheets, dynamic vegetation, permafrost), non-CO2 forcings, chemistry and land-use change. In our models, the feedback parameter varies by about 50% or more between different forcing magnitudes and over time as the system approaches equilibrium. The concept of a universal constant climate sensitivity as a fundamental climate system property is very likely wrong, even when ignoring many feedbacks and forcings. This could be an explanation—next to model biases in feedback strength—for the questions outlined in §1 (figure 2). The inconsistency of ECS estimates based on the observed warming and those based on GCMs with freely evolving SST evolution could be partly caused by the assumption of a constant λ. The estimates based on the observed warming, which use an effective radiative forcing estimated from GCMs together with the assumption of a constant λ, would be biased low, if λ would, in fact, not be constant but time or temperature dependent, as shown in figure 4b. In the same way, a state and temperature dependency of λ makes the mapping of GCM, palaeo-proxy and short-term observational estimated sensitivities a lot more difficult.

No, G, the first term here in a positive feedback scenario is ANY perturbation in temperature, up or down, should trigger the feedback and run away to the stop, high or low. The mere fact that it doesn't happen, not with any of the acknowledged natural or anthropogenic variations,…

But water vapour feedback has been observed, measured and found to be in line with the models. See Dessler 2009 and others. DOI: 10.1029/2008GL035333

Historically, with no feedbacks, no ice ages or interglacials.

Regarding 'runaway greenhouse', as the result of the enhanced greenhouse effect is a radiative imbalance between emitted and incoming radiation, and the Stefan-Boltzmann Law tells us that emitted is proportional to the fourth power of temperature while the increase in (forcing + feedbacks) is near enough linear, an new equilibrium temperature will in theory eventually be reached (simplified version).

Simulations show, however that other effects will likely kick in, so runaway would not occur even if we were to burn all known reserves of fossil fuels. The same simulations show, however that doing this 'would make most of the planet uninhabitable by humans', which is not much of a comfort.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0019103588901169
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/2001/20120294

Breitbart?

Did you miss the bit about ANY perturbation? You cannot isolate the CO2. And we know uyndisputed FOR SURE that sometimes natural variations are more than the CO2 delta effect. Is that in the models you talk about? It can't be, because their result is wrong by most criteria (that is all except in terms of the result required to keep CAGW alive).

JayJay, you are wrong to say feedback can't happen below 255K, because 255 (a figure I can't accept anyway) is an average. A wet Earth in the kind of insolation we have will ALWAYS have equatorial H2O in liquid and vapour forms. Enough to trigger a runaway, well, every day.

The Rt. Hon. Monckton of Brenchley's model looks very much like the zero-dimensional one in this link:
ATM 623: Climate Modeling - Lecture 3: Climate sensitivity and feedback Brian E. J. Rose, University at Albany

See 3 & 4.

3. Calculating λ for the zero-dimensional EBM
...
4. Climate sensitivity
...
Our estimate of ECS follows directly: ... 1.2 K

One could almost think that he copied this one. To see whether anyone challenges him?
I'm really starting to think that he is pulling someone's leg :)

Hi Rhoda,

JayJay, you are wrong to say feedback can't happen below 255K, because 255 (a figure I can't accept anyway) is an average.

No I meant no positive feedback via water vapor (the main feedback mechanism in AGW) below a certain temperature, and I said 273.15 K, because below freezing there will be little water vapor.

But yes any exact temperature given is rather arbitrary. When global average is at 273.15 there will be areas above and below that. And we'll have water vapor from the area's where the ice has already melted.

Breitbart?

Mar 21, 2018 at 11:20 AM | Phil Clarke

It is more honest about Mann, his lies and the Hockey Stick than RealClimate and Skeptical Science. Read the article in full, and you will realise that you have been trusting liars.

Lying to the gullible is what Climate Science is about. I fell for it once. Why should I trust them now?

I only posted it because you posted this:

"I leave it to others to draw a conclusion on whether three now-retracted lawyers sentences are sufficient make him a 'charlatan', or rather make his accusers look just a little petty."
Mar 21, 2018 at 9:59 AM | Phil Clarke

It makes Climate Science sound desperate. £Billion$ of fraud is not petty crime.

But this is Monckton's modus operandi. Since 2006 he has been putting out articles in which he claims to have found a fundamental flaw in climate science, a flaw that renders the consensus of AGW invalid (all the flaws operate to reduce warming, naturally). The articles are prolix and littered with impressive-looking formulae and references to the literature.

Every single one is wrong. The formulae contain errors and invalid assumptions (eg he took a conclusion that applied over land only and applied it globally on one occasion. Inevitably the papers he references do not say what he wants them to:

Before Tim Lambert of Deltoid fame appeared at a live debate with Monckton, he noticed that Monckton had been quote mining a paper by atmospheric scientist Rachel Pinker and her colleagues by using a figure they calculated for surface solar radiation to stand in for total climate sensitivity. Lambert then played a recording of her letter explaining Monckton's misuse of her work during the debate. However, that didn't stop Monckton from quote mining the paper again in Congressional testimony, which prompted another response from Pinker and co-author Ellsworth Dutton

But debunking all this garbage takes time (and a lie is half way around the world while the truth is still getting its boots on) and even when his claims are disproven, he shifts tack, then simply repeats them later on, limited these days to credulous venues such as WUWT.

In addition to his contribution to climate science, he makes a false claim to be a Nobel Laureate, which apparently renders him no more than a charlatan, according to him he also won the Falklands war, has invented a drug (patent pending) which will cure Graves’ disease, multiple sclerosis, influenza, food poisoning, and HIV and is a Member of the House of Lords (reality:he stood for election, no votes).

In climate science, his aim is clearly to shed doubt, and in this, as in other spheres, he seems to occupy something of an alternate reality to most of us.

Every large-scale temperature reconstruction, and there are more than two dozen, including the major PAGES 2Kproject, of the last 2,000 years falls within the error bars of the original MBH studies.

So they have been vindicated and reproduced. In 2018, literally nobody's career or salary depends on their opinion of these papers, from the last century, and they are but a small part of one line of evidence amongst many that forms the consensus opinion on AGW.

Mar 21, 2018 at 10:01 AM | Phil Clarke

None of them has proved the cause. Why are so many needed? One accurate one would have sufficed, and they do not explain the MWP or LIA, preferring to pretend they did not happen.

They confirm that 97% of Climate Science has been a waste of money.

Steve Milloy writing at Breitbart. Hmmmmm.

Are you now using as evidence of Dr Mann's dishonesty the fact that somebody else described him as a Nobel prize winner?

Bit of a stretch, but as that is all you have ….

Breitbart News Network (known commonly as Breitbart News, Breitbart or Breitbart.com) is a far-right[6] syndicated American news, opinion and commentary[7][8] website founded in 2007 by conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart. The site has published a number of falsehoods and conspiracy theories,[9][10][11][12] as well as intentionally misleading stories.[13] Its journalists are ideologically driven, and some of its content has been called misogynistic, xenophobic, and racist.[14]

From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_News>

Steven J. Milloy was a columnist for Fox News and a paid advocate for Phillip Morris, ExxonMobil and other corporations.

From <https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Steven_J._Milloy>

"Q1. If more CO2 -> increase in temperature -> more water vapour -> more heat ->more water vapour -> more heat, what stops runaway global warming?"

I thought that was the theory of global warming, and why we are always having a last chance to do something before we cross some critical threshold.

ie, randomly googling. This report links to multiple Hansen, Oxford uni, Met Office papers describing tipping points and runaway global warming. So geronimo's positive feedback loop description is the basis if CAGW. Sounds a ridiculously unstable hypothesis to me that I would have thought would be seen in the geological record.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/jul/10/james-hansen-fossil-fuels-runaway-global-warming

Rob, you don't need CO2 if any perturbation leads to a runaway. You just need water if the feedback is positive. Of course, if there is an array of feedbacks which end up net negative, there is no runaway, CO2 or not. Or maybe we are at the top stop already, it just wobbles up and down a bit. We can of course see where the bottom stop is, the ice age. There is no possibility of CAGW absent net positive feedback,

But water vapour feedback has been observed, measured and found to be in line with the models. See Dessler 2009 and others. DOI: 10.1029/2008GL035333

Mar 21, 2018 at 11:17 AM | Phil Clarke

Are you sure you ought to be relying on Dessler 2009?
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/ceres-and-the-shortwave-cloud-feedback/

Are you sure you want to be relying on Andrew Dessler?

Mar 21, 2018 at 12:16 PM | Phil Clarke

Are you disputing the facts about Mann's deceit, contained in that article at Breitbart? If so, which ones?

Using your logic, everything the IPCC has ever produced can be discarded, because of errors, deliberate mistakes and sexual harassment.

If you have nothing constructive to add, why do you keep lying to support liars? If all Climate Science has to offer now, is Smearology, it would be natural for a jury to assume that Climate Science never had anything better.