The idea that CO2 is the primary driver, aka the Control Knob (Lacis et al Science 2010) prompted some thoughts about the 20th/21st century warming pattern. Clearly the mid-century cooling, just as CO2 emissions were taking off, causes a problem.
HH Lamb: The observed decline of global temperature since 1945 implies some other factor exercising about three times as strong an effect (in the opposite direction) as the CO2 increase. Climate: Present, Past and Future 1972
HH Lamb: But since 1945-50 the global average temperature has fallen again somewhat, despite an even greater production of carbon dioxide by human activity. This suggests a natural climatic fluctuation that is strong enough to outweigh the effect of the increasing amount of carbon dioxide. With better knowledge of the past record of climate, it may become possible to identify the nature of this most recent fluctuation or the entire series of cyclic changes to which it belongs. Weather Climate and Human Affairs 1988
HH Lamb: It is not sufficient to say that this is the ‘greenhouse effect’, the warming associated with the increasing carbon dioxide etc. in the atmosphere, which we have been expecting, unless we can say why it did not show in other, recent periods of years over large parts of the northern hemisphere. Through all the Changing Scenes of Life: A Meteorologist’s Tale 1997
While the adherence to CO2 as the Control Knob, at the expense of really understanding all the factors in play,
HH Lamb: there has been a tendency in recent years to pay too little attention to fluctuations of climate continually occurring throughout Earth history due to natural causes. Climate Fluctuation and the Problems of Foresight 1972
HH Lamb: The observed variations of average temperature over the world since 1880 have sometimes been interpreted as Man-made effects, despite the fact that similar—and also greater—variations occurred before the industrial era, attributable only to natural influences such as we have discussed in this book. Climate: Present, Past and Future, 1977
allows some really creative Science, with the cooling readily explained by increase in SO2 aerosols from Fossil Fuels as the modellers’ answer to this conundrum. This suggests that CO2 is not really the Control Knob, merely a convenient fudge factor for those occasions the modellers cannot think of anything else to explain temperature change, as its effects are easily overwhelmed by other model fudge factors.
Much of the hysterical Climate Crisis stems from two cause:
- the inversion of the Scientific Method, with the alternative hypothesis ‘Warming is anthropogenic’ being elevated to the null hypothesis, as shown in the IPCC charter.
- The pre-eminence of modellers in the nascent Climate Science, whose models lack the spatial resolution to cope with the weather patterns whose changes govern energy distribution and hence temperature across the globe and whose unederstanding of cause and effect is questionable.
HH Lam had warned against the modellers gaining the pivotal role in this science
HH Lamb quoting Schneider & Mass 1975 ‘We hesitate to try to improve the fit of our calculations to the observation by “tuning” the model…With so many free parameters to vary one could fit almost anything to anything…’ Climate History and the Modern World, 1st Edition 1982
HH Lamb: But, because mathematical models can so easily be designed to fit any theoretical concept, it is difficult to obtain fully convincing results by these methods. The coefficient in the equations which represent any empirically found relationship between causes and effects can be changed at will to simulate results that may be convincing enough, and seem to express satisfactorily valid relationships, and yet after a few years turn out not to be a lasting expression of reality Through all the Changing Scenes of Life: A Meteorologist’s Tale 1997
As has been commented on before Climate Science began as a niche discipline, with a limited number of practitioners, and the modellers, with their expensive toys which attracted the funding, became the gatekeepers of Climate Knowledge and they defined, and defended, the paradigm. Their choice of CO2 as the fudge factor to enable their models to at least approximate supposedly accurate empirical observations, themselves running hot
HH Lamb: … to declare a value for the world average or an area average to within some hundredths of a degree centigrade is an unattainable ideal Climate, History and the Modern World 2nd Edition
HH Lamb: There is unfortunately room for error and misjudgement in the preparation of temperature series which attempt to present averages and trends for the whole Earth, a whole hemisphere or even a whole latitude zone. A large number of temperature-observing stations on land are increasingly affected by artificial sources of heat, particularly from urban growth. Weather Climate and Human Affairs 1988
leads to the majority of models still overestimating the already overwarm surface mean global temperatures from HADCRUT, GISS and BEST.
The students of the science, not surprisingly, confirm the mirror paradigm (considering H1 to be H0)
HH Lamb: There are also fashions in scientific work, whereby some theory catches on and gains a wide following, and while that situation reigns, most workers aim their efforts to following the logic of the theory and its applications, and tend to be oblivious to things that do not quite fit. Weather Climate and Human Affairs 1988
This tendency to being a mirror science can be seen throughout modern Climate Science analyses, where cause and effect are frequently reversed, such as the control of ocean temperature by CO2.
Given that the H0 should be warming from natural causes, observed changes lie within natural variability, where the deviations (NOT Anomalies) lie within 3 sigma and we still await Dr Hansens’s temperatures consistently above 3 sigma in most places’ due in the mid 1990s according to his 1988 Congress presentation and paper.
HH Lamb: However, the proposed effect cannot so far be demonstrated, perhaps because it cannot be clearly disentangled from the continual variations of climate due to natural causes…Despite many assertions in the literature of recent years, it is not yet possible to estimate convincingly a limit to the range or the rapidity of natural variations in climate. Weather Climate and Human Affairs 1988
HH Lamb:…. some major climatic changes took place surprisingly quickly… Preface Climate History and the Future 2nd Edition 1985
Despite Professor Mann’s attempt to disprove the existence of natural oscillations, since they did could not be modelled (another inversion of science) the role of ENSO in generating global warming is clear, and does not involve other fudge factors, such as aerosols, to offset the CO2 fudge factor when it does not work.
Using the MEI we can identify the 50 months with the highest MEI values (1871-2021). Looking at these we see a clear pattern:
- There are 16 yrs with at least 1 month in top 50 of the MEI index, 7 pre 1942 ( 1:10 yrs) and 9 post 1982 (1:4.6 yrs), ie frequency of larger events increase.
- 1942-1982 none = mid century cooling (not aerosols)
- 18of the top 20 are post 1982, showing magnitude increasing.
Here is the driver of modern global warming, the mid century cooling and ‘the pause’.
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