so is this article saying that the models predicted trends would indicate a continuous creep upwards in terms of global temperatures, but the authors observations is that it rises in spurts and plateaus? kind of like tipping or trigger points?

A bit like tectonic forces building up and then being released in a burst i.e. earthquakes?

If so, it could be another nail in the coffin of the "no warming for the last 16 years" argument.

What it suggests to me is that we may not have as long to adapt as we may currently think to mitigate the impacts of Climate Change.

And if you get your information from the MSM in Australia you may be lulled into thinking it's not a problem.

The simple fact is that there have been five cooling periods since 1970.

Here is the graph proving it:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/SkepticFrame.jpg

Let's have the facts and the theories without mumbling or waffling. As an educated person, I understand how a model or theory describes an ideal situation, and how the real world is a lot more complicated. I also know that we didn't invent the computer or fly to Mars by confusing the ideal and the real. Gilding the lilly or fudging the numbers does not inspire confidence, but rather breeds suspicion. It also gives the hyperbolists an anthill to make a mountain from.

Choo choo Pachauri now declares that even though global been temperature has been flat for two decades, it would now take thirty or forty years of flat to prove the IPCC charlatans.
However, I remember in 1972 Stephen Schneider was off his nut about the coming ice age. Maurice Strong got himself appointed to the UN and Hubert Lamb, head of what became the IPCC was adamant the ice age was on its way. Strong blamed this on carbon dioxide. Five years later the reversed. and five years after that the nutcase that is James Hansen was disabling air conditioners at a senate hearing while babbling about global warming, caused of course by a harmless odorless race gas called carbon dioxide. It didn't take thirty of forty years for the climastrology industry to smell the gold in them thar CO2 hills. And you call that science?

Ahhh... lateral thinking.

Now that we've got computers doing the grunt work we've got time to be creative and explore solutions for wicked problems.

These type of graphs look like money charts to me.

There's the breaking and continuation of highs and lows, pullbacks, fast and hard down movements. The spikes of volatility are consistent with manipulation by businesses that pollute.

A lot of people lose money betting on money charts because... though they may know which way the market will go... they will get stomped along the way.

There's no denying the movement is up and it is a matter of which time frame is in play.

The only thing preventing the fast transition to clean energy is the vested interests towards coal. The money movers and shakers are more addicted to the profit and power available from business as usual.

To be effective... cooperation, incentives for participation and compliance with agreements are necessary. One incentive is clear, objective, common goals for action: a timetables and targets approach.

Renewable energy generation is already cheaper per megawatt hour than
construction of new fossil fuel power stations and investment in new renewable energy is outstripping new fossil fuel energy investment substantially.

Renewables can now trounce fossil fuels such as coal and gas for electricity
generation - and without subsidies.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance's (BNEF) Sydney analysis team has determined electricity can be supplied from a new wind farm at a cost of $80/MWh; far cheaper than the $143/MWh from a new coal plant or $116/MWh from a new baseload gas plant, including the cost of emissions under Australia's carbon pricing scheme.

Even without the carbon price, wind still beats new coal by 14% and new gas by 18%.

"The perception that fossil fuels are cheap and renewables are expensive is now out of date", said Michael Liebreich, chief executive of BNEF. "The fact that wind power is now cheaper than coal and gas in a country with some of the world’s best fossil fuel resources shows that clean energy is a game changer which promises to turn the economics of power systems on its head," he said.

As for solar PV, it will really shine in 2020 when it too will also be cheaper than new coal and gas when carbon prices are factored in say BNEF's boffins.

Kobad Bhavnagri, head of clean energy research for BNEF in Australia, says it is very unlikely new coal powered plants will be constructed in Australia as they are now too expensive compared to renewables and even baseload gas "may struggle to compete".

"By 2020-30 we will be finding new and innovative ways to deal with the
intermittency of wind and solar, so it is quite conceivable that we could leapfrog straight from coal to renewables to reduce emissions as carbon prices rise," he said.

Mr Bhavnagri points out while new wind is cheaper than building new coal and
gas, it still cannot compete with old facilities that have already been paid off; so policy support is still needed for construction of renewable energy facilities.

Big Energy is starting to see the light - RenewEconomy's Giles Parkinson
reported on Wednesday that the owners of the Collinsville coal-fired power station in northern Queensland, Ratch Australia, are considering shuttering the facility and replacing it with a large-scale solar farm.

In South Australia, a campaign to replace Port Augusta's ageing brown coal power stations with base load solar thermal power has received solid support not just from the community, but also the company that owns the coal plants.

Electricity from the wind, sun, waves and biomass drew $187 billion last year
compared with $157 billion for natural gas, oil and coal, according to calculations by Bloomberg New Energy Finance using the latest data.

Accelerating installations of solar and wind power plants led to lower equipment prices, making clean energy more competitive with coal.

“The progress of renewables has been nothing short of remarkable,” United
Nations Environment Program Executive Secretary Achim Steiner said in an
interview. “You have record investment in the midst of an economic and financial crisis”.

The findings indicate the world is shifting toward consuming more renewable
energy.

And while I've got space...

Monetary policy is perceived as so misunderstood that it is too easy for bankers and their media talking heads to oppose a given proposal and
confuse the issue with the public. Another problem is that monetary solutions
typically have long lag times before they have an effect, and the money
doesn't always get to where it was intended.

So, here's another approach that achieves the same results as the path and is more comprehensible to the average person and, therefore, likely to gain public support and be more difficult for the banksters and their friends to oppose.

I'm referring to a more direct fiscal action... the financial transaction tax.

It is the best political and ideological, as well as economic, tool with which to oppose the nonsense of austerity deficit cutting that can ravage economies.

I would propose a people's fiscal approach in the form of a robust financial transactions tax... a tax on financial speculation by investment banks, hedge funds and other finance institutions that can raise billions to pay for policy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_transaction_tax

http://robinhoodtax.org.au

A 1% speculative financial transaction tax in Australia is doable and affordable considering the industry money flow.

Better to tax the trillions of dollars wealthy investors and their corporations are hoarding and keeping on the sidelines and for the government to directly and immediately inject the tax revenue back into the economy, where it has the biggest bank for the buck. That's where the alternative idea of a financial transaction tax comes in.

A financial transaction tax today is a growing reality, with significant momentum underway right now in Europe.

So, let's tax the corporations and all those speculators.

There is no better way to collect tax than where the money is.

For every loser there's a winner. Those that are winning in a money environment are causing terrible trouble. Global Financial Crisis for example.

Imagine no personal income tax.

Given that everybody has an opinion and opinions are either right or wrong or in progress... and we are talking money... aren't we no different than players at a casino?

What if the financial transaction tax has two components.

An employer financial transaction tax and an employee financial transaction tax with no personal income tax.

A tax that replaces all taxes with a single tax on every transaction in the economy. Like being able to accrue and carry entitlements from employer A to employer B to employer C.

The goal is to significantly improve economic efficiency, enhance stability in financial markets, and reduce to a minimum the costs of tax administration... assessment... collection... and compliance costs.

The word imagine by nature will evoke an emotion that will lead to your own thoughts.

These are my thoughts and you can read more at https://sites.google.com/site/theopert
thoughts on issues that are affecting my life... enough to write and publish.

I am seriously considering setting up a counseling service for grieving climate scientists.

1. Denial
2. Demands to come to grips with the fundamental non-linearity of climate change
3 Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Anger
6 Grief
7. Acceptance

Forget about reading up on thermodynamics, for the moment, read When Prophecy Fails, about what happens in doomsday cults when the world does not end. The article could have been written by reference to that and similar studies.

I am most suspicious of modellers and stats wallahs who make cast iron predictions regarding the operation of the real world. A few years back some were adamant that there simply could not be a 15 year period in which a clear pattern of warming would not be observed... just couldn't happen. Then 16. Then 17....

These "absolute assurances" were based on the theories of statistical sampling techniques rather than the actual science of big things we barely understand.

Their efforts are - apparently - some sort of attempt to deal with the cherry picking of timeframes to massage the data into flatter lines... so starting from the hottest year available for example and claiming therefore that the underlying trend does not exist or is insignificant.

But these statistical assertions suggest we know far more than the science actually does about the operations of large scale complex systems like oceans and how all these factors interact. That these absolute statements are coming from statisticians rather than folks doing the actual science should be enough of a hint.

Stats is for analysing data - not for telling complexity to simple itself down or implying that we know what the data will be doing and for how long.

Numbers are great workhorses - but even the best of horses don't push waggons very well at all.

Thanks a lot for the analysis Roger, especially the charts. I always think that making inference on climate change from sixteen or seventeen years of data is unacceptable. We don't point to a short term rise or fall in temperature in such short period and conclude the earth is cooling or warming. From my observation of your charts and elsewhere, changes in temperature consists of two components, a long term linear trend (either positive or negative) and short term movements (due to seasonal influence, and occasional sporadic events...) characterized by the ups and downs of the temperature around the former. I notice also there is interaction between the latter on the former.
Statisticians' search for the former is incomplete in statistical models that are complex but include only the linear trend while ignoring the latter. The first obvious reason is the interaction of the two as mentioned above. The second reason is the exclusion of relevant variables, or the inclusion of irrelevant variables, in statistical models tends to exert bias in the estimated parameters on other model variables. A third reason – with regard to the use of seventeen years of data - is this small set of data may be collected over an upward part or over a downward part or turning part of a climate cycle having periodicity much larger than seventeen years. For this reason, scientists especially climatologists always pay tremendous efforts to collect temperature and greenhouse gas data over a time period very much longer than seventeen years. Therefore, one often comes across data sets collected over few centuries have been used in literature for analysis and for making important inferences on the relationship between climate changes and carbon pollution from human consumption of fossil fuels. Proper analysis of climate change data is very difficult and complicated from the data collection stage to model building and estimation. Plausible conclusions on the anthropogenic aspect of global warming cannot be based on just seventeen years of data, but on data covering a much longer time period and on results from models covering both long and short term trends in temperature with sophisticated nested hypothesis tests before taking action to exclude or include trend and/or any other explanatory variables in the analysis. I agree with your conclusion that "by ignoring non-linearity and projecting future climate change as simple trends, orthodox science is doing us a great disservice."

Roger Jones,

>"News Corporation sells roughly 70% of the newspapers in metropolitan Australia, and its readers are subject to this kind of fudging on a regular basis. It’s no wonder some “approved” scientists are frustrated."

Do you believe that others have a right to be frustrated too? The climate science establishment or orthodoxy, or whatever we should call it, has been misleading the public and policy makers for decades. They have been exaggerating the amount and consequences of warming and when asked questions they frequently obfuscate and resort to emotion to avoid dealing with the questions asked. They 'believe’ AGW is a serious problem and believe that their belief justifies them exaggerating and scaremongering (like James Hansen calling coal trains ‘Death trains’). The scientists mislead the policy makers so the policy makers, not knowing any better, make policy decisions based on the misinformation they have been given by the activist climate scientists. The Climate Institute grossly misled the Multi-Party Committee on Climate Change.

Our ideologically Left government has implemented carbon pricing in Australia. This is bad policy. It will not survive, not just because the Coalition will repeal the legislation (rightly, IMO), but more importantly because the world is most unlikely to implement carbon pricing. Nor should it for many reasons. Here are two (of many):

1. We have no idea of the ‘damage function’ (the net damages caused by warming). The damage function is highly uncertain (and probably exaggerated to the high side). Every time I ask about the damage function people prefer to talk about temperatures and climate sensitivity. They avoid talking about the damage function or they want to talk in emotive terms and cannot translate into costs and benefits.

2. Global carbon pricing is most unlikely to be implemented. Policy makers know that unless a carbon pricing scheme is implemented globally the cost penalty to the participants would be huge. Everyone knows this so we’ll make lots of noises of support and do nothing. Nordhaus (2008), p198, http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/Balance_2nd_proofs.pdf says:

“Complete participation is important because the cost function for abatement appears to be highly convex. We preliminarily estimate that a participation rate of 50 percent instead of 100 percent will impose a cost penalty on abatement of 250 percent.”

In other words, if only 50% of emissions are included in the carbon pricing scheme, the cost penalty for the participants would be 250%. The 50% participation could be achieved by, for example, 100% of countries participating in the scheme but only 50% of the emissions in total from within the countries are included, or 50% of countries participate and 100% of the emissions within those countries are included in the scheme (i.e. taxed or traded).

What level of participation could realistically be achieved and what would be the compliance cost? Consider that the compliance cost would increase rapidly as we try to incorporate more and more sources.

The assumptions that underpin the economic analyses used to justify carbon pricing are academic; they are appropriate for an academic exercise but they are unrealistic, impracticable and highly unlikely to be achieved in the real world. Here are some of the assumptions:

• Negligible leakage (of emissions between countries)

• All GHG emission sources are included (all countries and all GHG emissions in each country)

• Negligible compliance cost

• Negligible fraud

• An optimal carbon price

• The whole world implements the optimal carbon price in unison

• The whole world acts in unison to increase the optimal carbon price periodically

• The whole world continues to maintain the carbon price at the optimal level for all of this century (and thereafter).

If these assumptions are not met, the estimated benefits of carbon pricing cannot be achieved.

Do you know of an objective analysis of the probability that a legally binding international agreement (Treaty, Protocol, whatever) can be agreed, implemented and maintained (ramped up across all 195 countries in unison) for 100 years or until greenhouse gas emissions are reduced to a sustainable level?

It always puzzled me that Lord Stern and Ross Garnaut, two eminent economists, were relied upon by Governments to advise them on climate change, particularly when they had shown no prescience of the GFC which was in their field.
It also concerned me that a multivariate phenomenon was expected to give a largely linear outcome, that could be expected to be endlessly extrapolated.
If the latest findings of a period of a largely static temperature lead to a loss of hubris in the prophets of climate change doom, and to research that seeks a more sophisticated explanation of the dynamics of climate change then I welcome it.
It is indeed unfortunate when Government websites about the climate are forced to "update" the science as the result of natural climate variability.
Before climate scientists make their next bold prediction, could I suggest that they watch a few reuns of "Get Smart" and note when he says "Would you believe ..."

Those are our theories and models and if they don't work...well, we have others.

What a farce. If a listed company misled people and cooked the books the way climate catastrophists do people would go to gaol. When you think about how much taxpayers money has been blown on grants for broken and deceptive models and theories, maybe similar penalties should be imposed on these carbon con-artists. They certainly need to be held to account for their incompetence and downright dishonesty.

All this "I don't understand science, therefore no-one else understands science ( or needs to understand science)" is the lazy logic of the bullies who pick on nerds in High school.
It is so easy to write for such an audience, but do try this arrogance on with a few engineering students, who also graduate with a "science" degree.
Pandering to number dunces, when instead they ought to have a size ten boot up their backsides, allows the lazy idocy to persist and grow.
Scientists are a little bit reserved, they should get the Engineering professions to start backing them up.
For those who doubt the assertions about engineering professions also being scientists, that is why engineering degrees are four years long to basic science's three.
If the number dunces persist in their casual disrespect of of the intellectual efforts required to acquire a science or engineering education then it is time for then to be "educated".
I, for one, am sick of these bling festooned, post-modernist pimps for mental mediocrity dominating and denigrating the market place of ideas with their facile stupidity and ignorance, all dressed up as "opinion".
Give it a break, morons.
Come back when you've developed some intellectual muscle.
You are polluting the debate.

The Australian, and particularly Mr Lloyd, have been doing this for a long time: ie cherry picking data and using it out of context. The question should be who is directing the attack on the science and why at The Oz?

Readers might like to read the summary of the science of climate change by the Australian Academy of Science at http://www.science.org.au/policy/climatechange.html
As the Academy is made up of 420 leading Australian scientists from across all disciplines, it is hard to argue that they are biased in favour of climate scientists.
It is fairly plain that climate change is non-linear. If we consider the melting of the Arctic Summer Ice to 50% of what it was around 30 years ago, accompanied by a rise of around 2 degrees Celsius.
The 30 year reduction in the Arctic Summer Ice is equivalent to around half the size of Australia. See http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2012/10/poles-apart-a-record-breaking-summer-and-winter/
The North West Passage (north of Canada) has opened up for the first time in recorded history and so has the North East Passage [Northern Sea Route] (north of Russia), something which was never even contemplated a few decades ago.
These are clearly non-linear changes and probably related to the so-called thermohaline circulation of the oceans.

The science of climate change is too complicated for me, so from a self centered point of view I just ask myself the following questions. 1. If we believe the scientists and follow their recommendations and they turn out to be wrong,
What will be the adverse affects on me?. Lowered pollution, Newer and sustainable forms of energy, more jobs. better health. I think I can cope with that.
2, If we believe the deniers and follow their recommendations and they turn out to be wrong, what will be the adverse affects on me? OH shit!!!!.
3. What motives do the scientists have? Highly educated and motivated people working for very varied bodies from meteorology to NASA. Skeptics to their core, yet there is massive consensus among them. There is no financial advantage in them supporting the science of global warming and it is certainly not the message that government employers want to hear.
4. What motives do the deniers have? Most are supported by energy industry financed think tanks who see thier massive profits threatened by sustainable energy. The mass media who depends financially on big business and the energy industry have to do there bidding to make a profit. I might be simple but I know who I would believe.

Let me reread this article again, it does not appear to be of the quality I am used to at the conversation. Are "quotes" or italics missing from the text ? have any reviews being made of this ?

I understood the climate contrarians used lower temperature observations from satellites to mistakenly suggest the earth was cooling when in fact it demonstrates the heat is trapped and note re-radiating as much. Does this article contradict this ?

How does one hide behind warming trends ? A trend is a statistical summary of past observations and may be projected into the future. How does someone hide behind these ?

"likely to be a little lower than predicted" is lower than predicted, not lower temperatures.

Climate scientist have been dealing with highly non linear processes and trying to extract long term signals for decades. This article (or was it the Australian Newspaper ?) seems to suggest that this is something new.

I am seriously confused and it is not a normal state for me.
Please clarify.

Roger Jones,

You have been answering questions from those who share your beliefs but have not responded to my comment and question I posted yesterday about the ‘damage function’ and the probability that centrally planned and controlled policies advocated by climate activists are likely to succeed. You didn’t mention you’d consider it and get back to me. I am left guessing why that might be. Some comments in your article suggest you are of Left ideological persuasion so I wondering if that might be a reason for not replying to my comment.

I have read “Beyond the mean: valuing adaptation under rapid change” and made some comments (see below).

I agree with many of the statements you make. Who couldn’t because they are mostly motherhood statements. I realise this is a statement of intent. But I am seriously put off by them many statements that suggest the whole exercise begins from a Left ideological position. I am left wondering why would I trust any of this to be objective? I am also wondering” where will the hard numbers come from on:
• net benefit-damage costs of a sudden climate change?
• probability of occurrence by date (various probability distributions)?
• objective analysis of this risk compared with other risks we face?
• unintended consequences of policies, especially those that waste the world’s; wealth and make us less able to handle other risks?

Here are some comments and thoughts I jotted down as I went through the document (not complete):

>” I’m working with colleagues at the moment on a National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility project called Valuing Adaptation to Rapid Change and we’re looking at the economics of rapid change. Non-linear behaviour in climate driving extreme events has the potential to really hurt us.”

1. What do you mean by “extreme events has the potential to really hurt us.”?

2. What does “really hurt” mean? If you can’t quantify what you mean I would interpret it as unjustified scaremongering. (By quantify I mean put it in context of timeframe, % of GDP, probability compared with other risks and the risks of serious unintended consequences of your proposed interventionist, top-down policies),

3. What do you mean by “have the potential to”? What is the probability?

4. Why should we trust any conclusions you reach given that you clearly driven by ideological beliefs (as is clear from your TC article)?

>“Valuing adaptation under rapid change”

Can you quantify the risk of rapid change (consequences and probabilities)? If the research hasn’t been done on these fundamental inputs, why should we take this seriously?

>“The objective of this study is to develop a robust economic methodology that will support decision-making on adaptation actions and investments ranging from adjustment to transformation. The methodology will explicitly identify and respond to the limitations in current approaches”

I am concerned you are trying to find justification for more government intervention, central planning and top-down control.

>“Identify critical points where the economics of adaptation have not yet integrated key climate science findings and offer improvements.

I understand “Climate science findings” are that severe weather events cannot be attributed to man’s GHG emissions.

> The overall purpose of this workshop is to help understand how the risks of a rapidly changing climate can be managed at the institutional
scale and to explore the policy options needed to support effective responses.”

The words are great. However, I fear the underlying motivation is not just to provide advice, but rather to give support interventionist policies. The reason for my fear is a number of comments in your article.

>” This perception of gradual changes in climate and delayed costs of damage occurring decades into the future presents a large
psychological barrier when dealing with adaptation in the present day.”

This is true. This is how Treasury has justified the ETS. But, if you want to argue there is risk of rapid change you need to provide probabilities of when it will happen, magnitude, and consequence. You also need to recognise (very explicitly) that policies like carbon pricing are the exact opposite of what is needed. You need to say explicitly that wasting the world’s wealth on policies that will not change the climate significantly and will leave us worse off actually make us more vulnerable not less vulnerable. I haven’t seen any of the climate activists admit yet.

Roger, many papers presented on this forum push the idea of some linear upward trend in global temperatures and many of the adherents to the cause that frequent this site have defended these ideas. The signal to noise model that you employ in your 2011 JPR paper is simply a non linear analogue of the linear regression models. Although you impose some break in the non linear trend, that you call steps, the process not unlike the linear models, is a deterministic trend. The problem with fitting non linear deteministic trends is that there is a tendency for overfitting, even if you are not using a quadratic or higher order polynomial, and instead use break points.
In a 2006 Climatic Change paper, economic science aided your cause by introducing cointegration to the tools employed by climate scientists. The technique posits that there is a stationary combination of global temperature and its forcing, which each on their own are (and have been found to be) nonstationary and nondeterministic, or stochastic trends. "Such trends are termed stochastic trends because their movements are generated by the cumulative effects of stochastic changes." - http://economics.harvard.edu/files/faculty/58_2002GB001962.pdf
The presence of stochastic trends implies that deterministic signal-noise models may not be appropriate.

Thanks Prof Jones for this.

As an engineer who has worked on radar and with a love for lasers (including CO2 lasers*) and worked on submarines using a CO2 meter, I so get the global warming part (atmosphere composition blocks/reflects parts of the EM spectrum).

But, even with the help of AMOS who has been wonderfully helpful in recommending me reference material to read, I struggle with the Climate Change part. It is hard, I guess like neurosurgery, so I must take alot on trust of the scientific method and where climatologists and paleo-climatologists have expertise that I find so hard to grasp. With a huge amount of energy we're trapping and will likely to trap, what will be the likely set of results?

*I'd so love to get a denier in front of a CO2 laser .. just in case it doesn't burn them :)