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Friday, January 2, 2015

Predictions for 2015

Sou | 9:02 AM Go to the first of 27 comments. Add a comment

At the turn of the year some people make New Year's resolutions, others look back on the year just gone, while others (or the same people) make predictions for the year ahead. I was reminded of this when I read an article on the ABC, about how many predictions are wrong. It didn't discuss the ones that were right.

So here are some predictions in black and white, so you can look back at the end of this year and see what a bad predictor I am :)

This year, there will be:

  • At least one article at WUWT predicting an "ice age cometh"
  • No articles at WUWT looking at all the failed predictions of deniers
  • Nary a peep about Force X and the Notch at Jo Nova's (unless it's from a reader) As William Connolley reports - already failed!
  • Several articles and many more comments on denier blogs about how the poor need coal to better themselves
  • At least one more person banned from HotWhopper, who will end up sending a stream of increasingly incoherent and abusive one-liners (that you probably won't get to read, so that one will be hard to prove one way or another)
  • At least one article written by Anthony Watts himself, of equal or greater absurdity to Russian Steampipes and Airport UHI Disease
  • At least one new scientific paper that will generate more than ten protest articles at WUWT
  • At least one article by David Rose of the Daily Mail, misrepresenting Arctic sea ice
  • Several articles by Judith Curry in which she urges no action to mitigate global warming, illogically - because of "uncertainty"
  • No articles at Judith Curry's blog pronouncing the death of the stadium wave
  • Several articles from Bob Tisdale at WUWT claiming it's not CO2, it's only warming because it's getting hotter
  • A build up of protest at denier blogs as COP21 in Paris draws near.

Feel free to add your own predictions. If I remember (or if I'm reminded) we can look at them at the end of the year.

27 comments:

  1. > Nary a peep about Force X and the Notch at Jo Nova's (unless it's from a reader)

    Tee hee, fail: http://joannenova.com.au/2015/01/is-the-sun-driving-ozone-and-changing-the-climate/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. .. and it contains a candidate quote of the year for 2015 - "the relentless sameness of the watts" ..

      Delete
    2. Man oh man, the flopping around over there is something to behold.

      Nice catch, George.

      Delete
    3. On that page, "Stephen Wilde’s hypothesis is a possible mechanism for the notch-delay theory, in which the TSI drives surface temperatures after a delay of one sunspot cycle (~11 years) and which potentially explains most of the temperature variations over the last few hundred years."

      For some reason that reminded me of the possibly apocryphal story of the 19th century English scholar who hypothesized that the plays of Shakespeare were not in fact written by William Shakespeare, but by someone else named Shakespeare.

      Delete
  2. Steyn et al will finally get the Mann libel case stopped and deniers will crow that Mann chickened out. They will then inform each other of what disclosure would have revealed, in great detail, right down to the "Bwaahahah!"'s.

    Watts will hint at retirement, deferncing the sad ravages of age, but will soldier on for the sake of The Cause. If he should actually topple off his perch, cancel that and substitute "Bwahahah!". (Now that's my idea of snark.)

    More politicians will inform us that they are not scientists nor are they paedophiles. Subsidiary prediction : One of those claims will be believed far more than the other.

    Some trick will be pulled leading up to COP21 and will fall tragically flat - and COP21 won't.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That should be 'referencing' but I'm sure I'll find a use for 'deferencing' one day :) Starting the year serendipitously.

      Happy 2015 to all.

      Delete
    2. Also: The last unicorn will announce that actually there's a large, healthy population of unicorns living under the ice in Greenland. Of all colours.

      Delete
  3. Monckton will threaten several people with libel suits which never happen.

    Monckton will xerox his warming hasn't happened for X years and Y months even when everyone else finally realises that warming has happened in that time.

    Tim Ball will find another quote in Mein Kampf worthy of his time to copy onto a blogpost.

    Bob Tisdale will still be puzzled by simple science.

    El Niño will arrive and make 2015 by far the hottest on record.

    All deniers will admit defeat.

    Some of these things might happen.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "El Niño will arrive and make 2015 by far the hottest on record."

      Even if not:

      1) Throughout the NH winter every cold snap will be met with "so much for AGW" while heat waves in Sou's neck of the woods will be roundly ignored.
      2) First heatwave in the NH summer will cause everyone to suddenly remember that it gets hot here between July and September.
      3) But rather than talk about (2) everyone will remember the SH and say, "look, Antarctic sea ice!"

      I offer my own prediction. WUWTers will continue to heed Roy Spencer's advice, "But, until the discrepancy is resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, those of you who REALLY REALLY need the global temperature record to show as little warming as possible might want to consider jumping ship, and switch from the UAH to RSS dataset."

      That, and Bob Tisdale will continue to find flat trendlines deep in the bowels of every and any dataset which has the misfortune to be abused by his lack of common and basic statistical sense.

      Delete
  4. Hi Sou

    Happy New Year !!!

    Thanks for putting me on your blogroll,
    not sure I will post enough or relevant climate science stuff to warrent it...
    we will see.

    I would predict that the ABCO2 group will scramble to find any reason to reject that 2014 was the record hottest in a few weeks time. Any alternative data or quibble will be invoked.

    Until about June, when it becomes clear 2015 is likely to be hotter!

    izen
    (who for some reason cannot use his wordpress id to post here...sigh)

    ReplyDelete
  5. 2015. The Abbott government has to indicate its pre Paris carbon mitigation targets. Following the shirtfronting of Abbott by climate reality at the G20, the analysis and target setting will now be done by Abbott's own department, The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and not the Department of the Environment. As I understand it, the independent Climate Change Authority is also required to set a target.

    Expect a massive propaganda campaign in the Murdoch Press. And potentially more embarrassment for the Abbott government.

    What is at stake "The Climate Institute’s analysis of Australia’s fair contribution suggests this would require Australia to reduce emissions by 40 per cent on 2000 levels by 2025. The Climate Change Authority’s past analysis suggests 30-40 per cent emissions reductions over the same time frame."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If it's still the "Abbott Government" at the end of the year :)

      Delete
  6. Sou - 2014 has come and gone and there was no El Nino. Even if we disregard 'the obvious problems with his 'theory', Tisdale's El Nino causes global warming hypothesis has failed. Is there value in you covering that?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Rob, the short answer is yes - probably. Not just yet though. (I'm working on that animation - well, thinking about how to work on it :D)

      BTW Bob Tisdale is claiming there is an El Nino happening right now. He is superconfident, unlike the professionals. And he's got to be right, as we are all told so often (by Bob himself).

      However Bob says that's not why it's got so hot lately, he says (again) that "it got hot because it got hot" . Maybe he got tired of being made fun of over his magical ENSOs so he's opted for something simpler. He wrote in a comment:

      The 2014/15 El Nino only account for part of the 2014 spike in sea surface temperatures. The primary cause was the unusual warming event in the eastern extratropical North Pacific…"

      https://archive.today/N6XvK#selection-3537.0-3537.180

      I mean who can argue with the fact that it got hot because it got hot somewhere - or anywhere - or everywhere :(

      I'll wait till the ENSO plays out. BoM is wavering on calling it, but it doesn't quite meet the criteria. (I'm thinking maybe global warming is messing with ENSO.)

      Delete
    2. Oscillations of any non linear system rely on a driving force and a differential in energy states of the system. To even consider that the El Nino La Nina will follow historic trends in a warming Earth where the oceans are at record historic high levels in absolute temperature is wrong. We just cannot predict the stochastic system that seemed to follow a rather unpredictable pattern anyway. All El Nino's and La Nina's were predicted in the past perfectly with hindsight.
      This is another tipping point we have not foreseen. My best guess is we just do not know what will happen based on the past. We are in new territory where we cannot predict with anything close to a moderate certainty.
      My best guess is that the Pacific will be too hot on both sides thus causing the worst scenario i.e the worst symptoms of both El Nino and La Nina without any of the good bits! Bert

      Delete
    3. Sou - it makes me laugh every time you write "the oceans got hotter because they got hotter" because that's exactly what he's saying!

      As for El Nino, it's true that it might still be called, so best to hold off on that one.

      Delete
  7. Predictions on the OAS...

    Nobody at WTFUWT will question (without prompting) as to why the OAS has violated its charter by failing to appoint a board of directors nor a membership committee by 31 Dec 2014. Also they won't question as to why there has been no announcement as to who the Executive director is (ok, we know its Watts but no mention on the site).
    Also an editor was for the journal was supposed to be appointed withing 6 months. Nope, hasn't happened. Will anybody notice?
    Quarterly issues of the journal? Name your price on 4 issues coming out this year.

    Prediction the second...
    Watts will beg for money... and receive despite his history of delivering nothing. Though if OAS goes tits up who knows.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Whoops, sorry. Meant to sign.

      R the Anon

      Delete
    2. You've beaten me to the punch, R the Anon. Victor Venema reminded me of this a little while ago and I've had an article at the ready. I was going to give Anthony a couple more days to get his house in order and make all the grand announcements. You've prompted me to finish up the article and post it.

      Here it is :D

      Delete
    3. No, I did not know about the 6-month period. Just wondered about the long silence of the 4-tweet wonder OAS.

      Delete
    4. Sad :(

      The website hasn't changed since September either as far as I can tell. The only thing is that it's gone from about 27 followers to something like 51. Maybe there'll be a single paper edition of the journal if Evan Jones ever finishes the analysis he's doing for Anthony. I'm wondering if that's the reason he's shifted Tallbloke's blog back into the "good denier blogs" category from the "ratbag" category he consigned it to. Too bad Anthony told Nicola Scafetta where to get off. He's one of the very few who just might (big might) have humoured him with a paper. I can't see people like McIntyre or McKitrick wanting to be associated with it. I'm not sure about Chrisopher Monckton. He doesn't seem too fussy, but I doubt he could write a sciency sounding paper all by himself. The only other people would be the Sky Dragon slayers, who seem to enjoy writing down stuff.

      (Has Pattern Recognition resurfaced yet? Wasn't Christopher Monckton going to buy it out? Or do I have that wrong.)

      Delete
    5. Anthony Watts already wrote that his Watts et al. (2012) manuscript would not be published in the journal of the OAS. That would not be an independent journal. Apparently he would like to become editor himself.

      But the manuscript would fit very well in the Pattern Recognition journal. That seems to be mainly about patterns/correlations found in data that do not have a physical explanation. The mentioned "amplification" of trends on a decadal time scales (but not on smaller ones) is just a description of the pattern, but contains no physics of what is happening with the temperature measurements.

      Delete
  8. A somewhat cooler 2015 for Holland based on 'regression to the trend mean'.

    http://www.weerwoord.be/uploads/111201521425.jpg

    ReplyDelete
  9. That prediction was serious. Sorry for that. Seriously, there will a happy scatter of articles on the miraculous recovery of Arctic sea ice about November.

    Start of this year there will be a spate of analysis of temp measurements in the past having been tweaked downwards in order to display warming to the people. Bob Drivel Tisdale just put in some work to that effect.

    Meantime, Germany is renowned for its exceptionally sunny climate, not so California or Australia: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/02/07/fox_news_expert_on_solar_energy_germany_gets_a_lot_more_sun_than_we_do_video.html .
    Holland, which borders on Germany, alas, we score 3.6% renewable fraction of energy last year (I think), but or because we got Shell or it just always rains in this country.

    ReplyDelete
  10. My prediction: The overwhelming majority of people living a western lifestyle will continue their planet destroying habits despite every sign that they are taking us all to the brink of disaster.

    ReplyDelete

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