As President Obama today announces a series of onerous, unilateral new regulations to try to limit carbon emissions, a leading climate scientist is acknowledging that the lack of warming over the past 15 years contradicts 98 percent of the climate change models, and that another five years of static temperatures will force scientists to completely revamp the theory.
In an interview with Der Spiegel, one of Europe’s major news outlets, German climate scientist Hans Von Storch said the failure of climate change models is a “puzzle” that presents “a serious scientific problem.”
So far, no one has been able to provide a compelling answer to why climate change seems to be taking a break. We’re facing a puzzle. Recent CO2 emissions have actually risen even more steeply than we feared. As a result, according to most climate models, we should have seen temperatures rise by around 0.25 degrees Celsius (0.45 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past 10 years. That hasn’t happened. In fact, the increase over the last 15 years was just 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) — a value very close to zero. This is a serious scientific problem.
Von Storch estimated that the lack of warming conforms with less than two percent of climate change forecasts, and that 98 percent predicted more of an increase in temperature. If this continues, it will be ruinous for the current forecasting models.
If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models. A 20-year pause in global warming does not occur in a single modeled scenario. But even today, we are finding it very difficult to reconcile actual temperature trends with our expectations.
Von Storch agrees that there is man made global warming – his research has even provided evidence of the link – though he has expressed concern that some scientists are over-hyping alarm about the consequences. Now he says the explanations for the problems with the models can only be that either greenhouse gases have less of an effect on the climate than feared or that the models fail to sufficiently take into account fluctuations in temperature due to natural causes.
Obama’s speech today at Georgetown University will lay out bold measures for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, strategies that presuppose a significant effect by humans on the climate. With Congress having balked at acting on many of the emissions reduction proposals Obama supports, the president will lay out a series of plans using unilateral executive action to limit emissions from power plants and vehicles, while lavishing new money on energy efficiency projects and international climate change mitigation efforts.
Storch’s comments, however, suggest it may still be too early for draconian steps that adversely impact the economy, especially when the U.S. economic recovery is at such a fragile juncture.
H/T to Ace of Spades.