Top Scientists Say Modern Climate Change is ‘Natural Variability’
A commentary titled “‘Just don’t panic – also about climate change’” by Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt appearing at German site achgut.com tells us there’s no need for panic with respect to climate change, as leading scientists dial back earlier doomsday projections.
No warming until 2050
Vahrenholt claims a negative Atlantic oscillation is ahead of us and the expected second weak solar cycle in succession will reduce anthropogenic warming in the next 15-30 years.
He cites a recent publication by Judith Curry, who sees a pause in the temperature rise until 2050 as the most likely scenario.
Vahrenholt and Curry are not alone when it comes to believing natural-variability-watered-down warming is in the works.
Also, IPCC heavyweight Jochem Marotzke from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg takes a similar stand in a publication in the Environmental Research Letters.
In the paper, Marotzke concludes that all locations examined show “a cooling trend or lack of warming trend” and that there is “no warming due to natural cooling effects” and that in calculations up to 2049.
The researchers find “a large part of the earth will not warm up because of internal variability.”
Distancing from alarmists Schellnhuber, Rahmstorf
And recently The Max Planck Institute Director Marotzke said in an interview with Andreas Frey of the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung (FAZ) that there was no need to panic, thus clearly splitting from the doomsday scenarios put out by his alarmist colleagues Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber and Stefan Rahmstorf.
In the FAZ interview, Marotzke also said there was no need to worry that the port city of Hamburg would be flooded in 2100: “Hamburg will not be threatened, that is totally clear.”
Areas not going to be wiped out
Marotzke then told the FAZ that the fears that children have today for the future are not absolutely well-founded, and that entire areas are not going to be wiped out, as often suggested by alarmists.
Sensational French models
When asked why the French issued a press release warning of worse than expected warming, Marotzke said:
“We thought, my God, what are you doing? Because it is very unlikely that the true climate is as sensitive as shown in the new models.”
When asked by the FAZ why the French had put out such dramatic numbers, Marotzke said: “I don’t know,” adding that the climate models are highly complex. “Too many calculation steps overlap, and sometimes we ourselves are amazed at what we do not understand.”
Speaking up against alarmist models
Vahrenholt summarizes the growing doubt by scientists such as Curry and Marotzke over the use of alarmist models:
One gets the impression someone is speaking out against the alarmist use of models. Perhaps Jochem Marotzke is aware that with the warming coming to an end in the next 30 years, model alarmists (Schellnhuber: “We only have 10 years left“) will have unpleasant questions to answer.
When society realizes that the climate modelers have exaggerated in order to make a political difference, we will know who misled the politicians.”
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Tom O
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Where did the title of this article come from? There is nothing in the article that really says that. What I read – granted I did not hang on every word – was that natural variability would prevent anything happening until 2050, at which time the anthroprogenic warming would start again. Excuse me if I don’t see this as saying anything about natural variability driving climate change, only in that it is “interrupting” anthroprogenic driven climate change. Yes, said it twice for emphasis.
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Andy Rowlands
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I agree with Tom, the article mentions anthropogenic warming, which I had understood to be a myth.
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geran
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Yes, this article is from “Lukewarmers”. The tip-off was the mention of “Judith Curry”.
Lukewarmers believe in the GHE, but they claim it is not as bad as predicted.
That makes them half-right….
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Andy Rowlands
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Very true Geran. I know Greg Wrighstone, and we’ve discussed this at length. His calculations show if the greenhouse effect is real, we’ve already had 78% of any possible warming, so there is an upper limit on how much more warming there could be. I disagree with him about CO2 causing warming, but agree with him on just about everything else.
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Herb Rose
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Hi Andy,
The GHGT is based on a premise that atmosphere is heated by the surface of the Earth. In order for the contention that the gases in the atmosphere do not absorb energy from the sun they must amend the law of thermodynamics to : All object absorb radiated energy except the nitrogen, oxygen, and argon in the atmosphere.
Herb
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Charles Higley
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Anthropogenic warming = getting under the bedclothes at night and enjoying the warmth.
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Andy Rowlands
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Haha brilliant Charles, good one 🙂
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Fellows,
You and PSI might read ‘North Dakota’s Geologic Legacy’, 2016, by John P. Bluemle. Bluemle was a North Dakota state field geologist who had the unique opportunity, at the beginning of his career, to examine the fresh excavations for the Intercontinental Ballistic sites then being installed in the eastern part of the state. But these sites were only the beginning of his 42 year career as a field geologists who traveled the entire state, camping with his family during most summers as he gathered the evidence about which he writes..
The evidence of glaciers which occurred after, say 1500 years ago, cannot be questioned. Hence, it would seem a good exercise for those who, computer model how the climate might change in future, now model how these relatively recent glaciers might have formed and then melted. For accurate history is always a fact. and what existed now is an observed fact.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Roger Higgs
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The Sun drives climate and sea level, but there’s a lag of decades due to ocean thermal inertia. The strongest solar Grand Maximum in 10,000 years just ended (1937-2004). Corresponding (ocean-lagged) warming will continue until about 2050. The corresponding three-metre sea-level rise is already ‘locked in’. CO2 is irrelevant. Here’s proof in two slides (5 minutes) …
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341078096
This is not rocket science.
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James
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Are you sure you actually read Marotzke’s paper?
Literally the first paragraph of the introduction states that, whilst there is a chance we might observe global cooling in the next few decades, ‘conversely, we could also observe a decade of accelerated warming that overshoots what we would expect due to the current emissions’, and later in the paper (page 6) the authors detail how ‘all locations, besides the Southern Ocean and the North Atlantic Ocean are much more likely to warm, than cool, demonstrating the role of increasing greenhouse gases (the forced response).’ You seem to have neglected to mention this in your article.
The paper goes on to clarify that the difference between warming and cooling trends is due to the phenomenon of internal variability, a chaotic process and therefore one very difficult to predict accurately. The authors are clear that in mid-term time scales, climate predictions are far more model dependent i.e. human activities such as greenhouse gas emission play a bigger role in determining warming effects. Again, you haven’t addressed this in your article.
As a side point, is not a chaotically determined climate just as bad as a warming one? A lot of the things we humans rely on, for instance growing food, depend on reliable climates and weather across the years. If internal variability interacts with human processes such as GHG emissions in such a way as to make our climatic conditions random, that in itself will have disastrous effects on our societies, regardless of whether the outcome is warming or cooling.
Far from affirming your belief that climate change isn’t a problem. what this paper actually tells us is that we need to urgently understand the impact of human activity on the atmosphere, and that by far the safest course of action is to reign in those activities that destabilize the climate.
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