Share this...



Now that global temperatures have not risen in 15 years, a number of scientists find themselves having great difficulty coming to terms with that new reality.

The Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) claims that the latest prognoses confirm the model forecasts. Photo source: Max Planck Gesellschaft

The Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) in Hamburg is no exception. For years the institute insisted that the man-made climate catastrophe was real and happening now. Today it finds itself scrambling for a backdoor. “Otto et al” is that back door.

The MPI-M recently issued a press release with interesting revelations about the now famous “Otto et al” paper, to which its two directors contributed.

When we read the MPI-M press release, we quickly discover that this Otto et al paper is actually just the latest in speculative crystal-ballwork – the results have little value other than to provide a desperately needed face-saving opportunity for accepting a lower CO2 climate sensitivity.

The problem that climate science is having today is that it finds itself clashing with the fundamental rule of science itself. Richard Feynman once said on how science works:

1. Guess

2. Compute consequences

3. Compare to actual observations

If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make a difference how beautiful your guess is. It doesn’t make difference how smart you are, the person who made the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with experiment, then it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.”

Today we know that warming has stopped, and so that means the computed climate consequences are in disagreement with the observations, thus showing that the MPI-M’s earlier “guess” is wrong. Do they accept that today?

No. The MPI-M refuses to admit that “the guess” is wrong. What it does instead that it redefines the scientific approach used in the Otto et al study and in its press release. For the MPI-M the new rule of science is:

1. Guess

2. Compute consequences (with computers)

3. Compare to other newly computed consequences

And you keep computing new consequences until you get agreement! This is what the 2 scientists at the Max Plank Institute together with the team of scientists led by Otto have done, and nothing more.

The MPI starts its press release by telling readers not to be fooled by the warming pause (my emphasis):

Global warming continues to baffle climate scientists, but one thing is sure: Over the next decades the average mean temperature on Earth will increase, even if the increase in the years from 2001 – 2010 was much slower than the decade before. This is backed up by prognoses from an international team of scientists led by scientists at the University of Oxford, of which both directors Jochem Marotzke and Björn Stevens of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology were a part. Using the current climate data, the scientists have newly calculated how much the air and Earth’s surface will have warmed up as soon as the CO2 concentration in the air doubles.”

And later in the press release (my emphasis):

Jochem Marotzke is part of a team of the world’s most renowned climate scientists who have taken the most recent development of the surface temperature into account in order to forecast how the Earth will heat up from the greenhouse effect, foremost from carbon dioxide (CO2). These prognoses confirm that the climate models correctly forecast global warming trend over multiple decades, that is until the middle or the end of the 21st century. There is no wise reason for calling off the alarm.”

This is pure quackery. At the MPI, prognoses confirm forecasts?

MPI-M postpones warming, will take hundreds of years

The MPI press release also says that we are going to have to wait a lot longer than we first thought for the real warming to hit:

Because the climate has a very high thermal inertia and the oceans warm up only very slowly, it’s going to take some time before the effects of the greenhouse gases completely take hold. A warming from the greenhouse effect will be amplified by numerous feedbacks, and weakened by a few processes. Only when this complicated interaction quiets down will the climate come to a stable condition. This long-term reaction by the climate is called equilibrium climate sensitivity (ESC) and is calculated by climate scientists. It is the final temperature increase that comes from a doubling of CO2 concentration, and will probably occur first after a few hundred years.”

Remember that this press release was written by two scientists, Marotzke and Stevens, who participated directly on the Otto et al study.

So we are going to have to wait decades, maybe even centuries before the real warming hits. That’s what Otto et al says, they tell us. There aren’t any observations to check if that forecast is reliable, but the MPI-M says they have a new forecast, it agrees with the models, and so the theory is correct.

The press release adds:

Using these values, the scientists calculate with 90% certainty that the near-surface atmosphere will warm 0.9°C – 2.0°C with at doubling of CO2 content; most probable is a temperature increase of 1.3°C.”

They used the 90% certainty claim in the past, and wound up totally wrong. Now they are claiming it once again, based on computer prognoses, and not on observations. This is the SOP of charlatans, and not scientists.

There’s more in the press release, especially with respect uncertainty. Basically they are saying that the “90% certainty” is fraught with lots of uncertainty. More tomorrow.