Stern Review – Technical Appendix

AS both David H’s observe, the Stern Review is expected next month. Their science views are summarized here. I may post some headnotes at a later time, but it’s an interesting browse and some of you may wish to comment on it specifically.

This entry was written by Stephen McIntyre, posted on Sep 24, 2006 at 11:17 AM, filed under News and Commentary. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

14 Comments

  1. David H
    Posted Sep 24, 2006 at 2:06 PM | Permalink

    Thanks Steve.

    May I add the link from the Lavoisier Group that gave a good critique to Sir Nick’s Technical Annex piece at:

    Click to access stern6.pdf

    Climate Prediction as a serious science dates back to Hanson’s presentation to Congress in 1987 not to Fourier in 1827. CRU started in 1972 and Hadley in 1988. Do not let the spin doctors rewrite history.

  2. fFreddy
    Posted Sep 24, 2006 at 2:48 PM | Permalink

    The assertion that :

    The rate and scale of 20 century warming has been unprecedented for at least the past 1,000 years.

    is now justified by reference to :

    International ad hoc detection group (2005) Detecting and attributing external influences on the climate system: a review of recent advances, Journal of Climate 18:1291-1314

  3. jae
    Posted Sep 24, 2006 at 2:58 PM | Permalink

    Looks like Figure A2 might be using Mann’s reconstruction, without mentioning Mann (I note he is not referenced anywhere in the article). The source is simply listed as IPCC 2001(one might like to know WHERE in IPCC 2001). It also looks to me like the model has not tracked the instrumental record very well. Wonder what the correlation is.

  4. David H
    Posted Sep 24, 2006 at 3:11 PM | Permalink

    Not sure I follow you fFreddy.

    I use Adobe to search for “has been unprecedented for at least the past 1,000 years” and it’s not in the paper. Nor is the single word “unprecedented”. Is one of us looking at the wrong paper?

  5. fFreddy
    Posted Sep 24, 2006 at 3:46 PM | Permalink

    David, I’m looking at the one Steve linked to; page 1, para 2, sentence 3, and footnote 3.
    You’re right, that search doesn’t work. I guess there is a carriage return at the end of the line.

  6. David H
    Posted Sep 24, 2006 at 4:05 PM | Permalink

    Sorry fFreddy. Now I understand. You mean Stern’s paper!

    But that is exactly what I was pointing out.

    Sir Nick like so many politicians feels free to rewrite what the scientists said. The scientists made the measured cautious statement on page 1294 col 2 penult para of their paper “Thus, proxy-derived series suggest that twentieth century warming is unique in the last millennium for both its mean value and probably for its rapidity of change.”

    That wouldn’t scare anyone. So out goes “suggest” and in comes “unprecedented”. “Probably” gets dumped and a millennium is just not long enough.

    The real question is this. I count 14 co-authors. Did none of them notice this revision to their conclusion? Are we to take acquiescence as consent? All that is necessary for…………..

  7. TCO
    Posted Sep 24, 2006 at 6:39 PM | Permalink

    They don’t talk at all about positive effects. Even if they think negative ones outweight positive ones, to not even mention them seems either dumb or tendentious.

  8. StuartR
    Posted Sep 25, 2006 at 6:52 PM | Permalink

    “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses scenario-based analysis to..
    translate into an increase in global average temperature of 1.4 – 5.8°C
    and sea level rise of 9 – 88cm over the period 1990 — 2100 (Figure A2).”

    Seems to be the basic position of this report.

  9. StuartR
    Posted Sep 25, 2006 at 7:08 PM | Permalink

    This final paragraph means nothing whilst it seems trying to convey something vaguely ‘Gore’ like in its’ authority

    “While uncertainty remains a central issue in climate change projections, scientists
    continue to make significant advances in understanding the climate system. The
    use of supercomputers means that climate models are able to use increasingly
    detailed representations of these processes. Recent approaches have
    investigated physical uncertainties in the climate system by varying parameters
    within climate models and running ensembles of these models. Each resulting
    model is weighted according to its ability to simulate current climate, and
    weighted models are combined to produce frequency distributions of temperature
    (and other variables) for a given increase in concentrations.”

  10. David H
    Posted Oct 20, 2006 at 2:51 AM | Permalink

    This is a BS warning. The Stern Review will be published 30th October and our PM, Tony, has already started hyping it. “We have 10 to 15 years to save the world!”

    Does anyone have any references to any serious peer reviewed study (rather than model predictions) for this business of “tipping points”?

  11. David H
    Posted Oct 20, 2006 at 2:56 AM | Permalink

    Oops! Link to Tony’s dire warning is this.

  12. Jean S
    Posted Oct 20, 2006 at 4:04 AM | Permalink

    re #11: I wish they do all the interviews outside during the summit: Lahti currently +2C. After the summit they should go to Lapland for skiing. Most of the Lapland is supposed to get some (more) snow tomorrow.

  13. Steve Sadlov
    Posted Oct 20, 2006 at 10:40 AM | Permalink

    RE: #12 – It looks to be quite ice bound in the Barents Sea this season, unlike last season, where there was a lot of open water.

  14. Steve Sadlov
    Posted Oct 20, 2006 at 10:47 AM | Permalink

    RE: #13 – I think I was right about some extent measurement problems pertaining to the Kara Sea. Check it out – looks like there have been a series of bogus too-low measurements for a few weeks running:

    http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.7.html