The global inconsistency of climate science denier, Larry Hamlin, at WUWT

This is rich.

Yesterday I wrote how climate disinformer Larry Hamlin picked out years of hot Junes in the USA and California, as if to argue that global warming isn't worth worrying about because there have been occasional hot Junes in California and the USA in the past. Today he wants to ignore local and go global (cached here).

In the last article I showed how, when you put Larry's USA/Californian June temperatures in the global context, it highlights the ridiculousness of deniers. Early last century the world as a whole was much colder than it is today. This century we're really getting a taste of what's to come. This past few weeks we've been getting a horrific taste of what's to come much more often, with deadly fires, drought, killer heat waves and floods widespread over the northern hemisphere, not to mention the drought back here in Australia. It isn't just hot in California and the USA, it's hot in lots of places as this map of June temperatures shows (from GISTemp).

US-centred climate change denial from the desperate deniers at WUWT

While the distinctly unpresidential Donald Trump is desperate to deny he's in Putin's pocket, his zombie acolytes at WUWT are desperate to deny the world is warming. So much so that they are trying to deny that the weather lately has been quite extraordinary.

There are fires raging in Greece, where at least 74 people are feared dead. There has been a killer heatwave in Japan that broke high temperature records, has claimed at least 77 lives and sent more than 30,000 people to hospital. This follows the tragically disastrous floods that killed upwards of 200 people. Then there was the horrific tragedy in Laos, where monsoon rains led to 5 billion cubic metres of water flowing from a busted new hydro dam, killing who knows how many people and with hundreds missing and leaving 6,600 people homeless. (If the evacuation notice had not been sent out in advance the tragedy may have been even worse.)

In Sweden, which is suffering the worst drought since records began, there are terrible wildfires. In fact, much of Western Europe is facing yet another summer heatwave. In the far north of Finland, of all places, the temperature reached 34.3 C (94 F) the other day!

Confirmation bias affects visual perception at WUWT - on carbon trading in China and the LA Times

Anthony Watts has posted an article by a bloke called Larry Hamlin, which is a stark example of how confirmation bias affects visual perception. Larry is a climate science denying conspiracy theorist who has the occasional "essay" at WUWT.

He wrote about something he read in the LA Times. It was a recent announcement from the Chinese government that it is preparing to set up what will eventually be a nationwide carbon trading program. The article was by Jonathan Kaiman reporting, from Beijing, a news conference of the National Development and Reform Commission in China.

The article set out the timetable, which stated that it would be three years before transactions begin (my emphasis):

China’s carbon market will initially apply only to the power-generation industry but will later expand to cover seven other sectors, including petrochemicals, chemicals, building materials, and iron and steel.

The Chinese government will spend a year building a nationwide registration system covering all companies participating in the market, the state-run China Daily reported. It will spend another year testing the system, and actual transactions will begin in about three years.

Larry Hamlin @wattsupwiththat reframes a small win in climate mitigation

As you probably know, when right wing extremists talk about problems that were averted, they often claim there was never a problem to begin with. That applies to lots of things, for example:

• smog, where right wingers would claim that clean air regulations aren't necessary because the smog has disappeared all by itself.
• population, right wingers would claim that family planning education programs and contraceptive devices and hormone pills aren't necessary, because the human population is "only" 7.4 billion, not 12 billion (yet)
• Y2K bug, right wingers would claim there weren't any problems (that they know of), so all the efforts to prevent the problem weren't necessary
• and more, which you can add yourself :)

Many deniers blame "the government" for water shortages from droughts and damage from floods and wildfires, not climate change or human activity. Right wing extremists are loathe to accept any blame themselves. Most will blame government for everything they see as wrong with the world, and take credit for every problem that has been fixed, or falsely claim there was never a problem to begin with.

Heaven forbid a denier giving the US government any credit for the recent dip in carbon emissions from energy use.

Larry Hamlin blunders down under in Antarctica

The rapid increase in the loss of ice in West Antarctica is really eating the heart out of Anthony Watts and his band of science deniers at WUWT. After, what is it, five articles in as many days?  Now there's a sixth (archived here). A shouty rant by Larry Hamlin who is really, really scared by global warming, going by his two latest articles.

You may remember this one from yesterday, where poor Larry was so terrified of the risk of wildfires he could scarcely restrain himself. Well, today it's the ice that's got him quaking in his boots. He's let forth on an article by Damian Carrington in the UK Guardian, which reports on a new study showing that Antarctic ice is disappearing twice as fast as it was a few years ago. (Larry was so overcome by fear that he could only manage a broken link to the article).

This is a bit long, so if you're on the home page, click here to read more...

WUWT misleads deniers: downplays climate change affecting wildfires

Larry Hamlin is an occasional guest denier at WUWT. He's just another WUWT nutter, though his articles hide that fact behind his smooth words. He suits WUWT because he tells the pack what they want to hear. This time he's downplaying the fact that wildfires will become a worse risk as the world heats up (archived here), under a headline:

AP misleads the public, again, saying man made global warming worsens wildfires.

Larry appeals to the scaredy cats

Larry doesn't like it when he gets scared. He knows the denialiti don't like being scared either. That's how he's framed his disinformation.  He even opens his article with the words:

The climate fear media ...

He uses the word "alarmist" five times - making out that there's really nothing to worry about in regard to wildfires. He uses the word "fear" four times. His closing paragraph he continues his "scaredy cat" framing writing:

The climate fear propaganda media have again misled the public with unwarranted alarmist headlines alleging claims which do not reflect what this study of large western U.S. wildfires actually presented. The alarmist media twisted and misrepresented the studies information in an effort to  try and frighten the public into supporting its scientifically unsupported climate fear political ideology. 

What Larry is disputing this time, for a change, is not the scientific research - though he arguably misrepresents that as well. No, it's an article written by Seth Borenstein about the research into wildfires in the USA. The article itself was based largely on the US National Climate Assessment as well as three recent papers. In a departure from the norm at WUWT, Larry links to one of the papers and writes about it as if it's the only one. Seth Borenstein wrote:

In the past three months, at least three different studies and reports have warned that wildfires are getting bigger, that man-made climate change is to blame, and it's only going to get worse with more fires starting earlier in the year. While scientists are reluctant to blame global warming for any specific fire, they have been warning for years about how it will lead to more fires and earlier fire seasons.

Larry doesn't agree and writes:

While the climate alarmist press loudly proclaim that “man made climate change is to blame” for these findings the actual study is much more circumspect about what the contributors are that could be impacting the results.

Even in the abstract to this study other factors are identified that the authors believe contribute to these results including the impacts of invasive species and consequences of past fire management practices in addition to changes in climate and in particular increasing drought severity. 

Yes, there are other factors that contribute to wildfires as Larry points out, not just climate change. Nevertheless, one of the main factors that's most concerning as global warming kicks in is higher temperatures combined with drier vegetation.  Here is the abstract to the paper to which Larry refers:

Over the western U.S. and in a majority of ecoregions, we found significant, increasing trends in the number of large fires and/or total large fire area per year. Trends were most significant for southern and mountain ecoregions, coinciding with trends toward increased drought severity. For all ecoregions combined, the number of large fires increased at a rate of seven fires per year, while total fire area increased at a rate of 355 km2 per year. Continuing changes in climate, invasive species, and consequences of past fire management, added to the impacts of larger, more frequent fires, will drive further disruptions to fire regimes of the western U.S. and other fire-prone regions of the world.

One of the factors cited is "continuing changes in climate". It's not the only factor by a long shot, but it will become increasingly important as time goes by.

Dumb deniers

Sometimes you are reminded of just how dumb deniers can be. Many of them would never have been exposed to wildfire. Most would live in cities and all they'd see is smoke when it blows their way. What do they think happens when lightning or an arsonist strikes, or when sparks from an angle grinder, train or powerline ignite vegetation? Do they think that even on days where there are catastrophic fire conditions, there won't be any greater risk from fire than the same thing happening when it's cooler and wetter?

Here is an excerpt from a recent paper on wildfire in the USA. It is from scientists with the US Forest Service and the University of California, Jay D. Miller and Hugh Safford:

Our results suggest that the positive trend in percentage of high severity in YPMC in our study area is due to two factors: 1) an increase in the percentage of high severity in large fires, and 2) the absence of years without any large fires after 1993. The second factor is important because we found that large fires had a significantly greater percentage of high severity in YPMC forests than did small fires. More years with large fires and increasing areas of high severity over the 1984 to 2010 period are consistent with observed increases in the number of large fires across the western US that have increasing percentages of high severity with increasing annual areas burned, and predictions of more large fires due to climate change (Westerling et al. 2006, Lenihan et al. 2008, Westerling and Bryant 2008, Littell et al. 2009, Lutz et al. 2009).

I'm not sure what they mean by their first point, which reads as if the cause causes the cause. However their work suggests that there is an increasing trend in high severity fires in some regions, which is consistent with what is expected as global warming kicks in.

Fires in south eastern Australia

There are some parallels between south-eastern Australia and California. Both would be considered among the regions most at risk of devastating wildfires. In a 2007 paper looking at fire danger in south eastern Australia as climate change progresses, scientists found that:

The number of ‘extreme’ fire danger days generally increases 5-25% by 2020 for the low scenarios and 15-65% for the high scenarios (Table E1). By 2050, the increases are generally 10-50% for the low scenarios and 100-300% for the high scenarios.

The authors also looked at "very extreme" and "catastrophic" fire danger days and found that under high scenarios, by 2050 there'll be a four to five-fold increase in frequency at many sites. In regard to "catastrophic" fire danger days, the authors found that "Only 12 of the 26 sites have recorded ‘catastrophic’ fire danger days since 1973." By 2050, some sites will have "catastrophic" days every three years or less.

I'd say the 2003 Canberra fires and definitely the 2009 Black Saturday fires in Victoria were both "catastrophic" conditions.

Even more worrying (if the scaredy cat deniers paid it any attention), the authors warned that the fire season is going to get longer:

Taken together, the model results suggest that fire seasons will start earlier and end slightly later, while being generally more intense throughout their length. This effect is most pronounced by 2050, although it should be apparent by 2020. 

This is what happens when there are too many fires all at the same time and resources are stretched too thinly. Local firefighters were fighting a fire two valleys away and couldn't get back in time to contain this one.

Are high severity fires getting worse in the Sierra Nevada?

In contrast to the above two studies, there is this paper by Chad T. Hanson,C and Dennis C. Odion that suggests that there has not been an increase in "proportion, area or patch size" of high severity fire in the Sierra Nevada conifer eco-region.  These findings don't necessarily conflict with the paper by Miller and Safford, which found differences between the occurrence of high severity fires in different regions and different mixes of vegetation. My reading is that one of the main points being made by Hanson and Odion is that fire can affect ecosystems in a bad way. Another is about fire management. Some extracts:

A better understanding of spatiotemporal patterns in fire regimes is needed to predict future fire regimes and their biological effects. Mechanisms underlying the lack of an expected climate- and time since fire-related trend in high-severity fire need to be identified to help calibrate projections of future fire. The effects of climate change on high-severity fire extent may remain small compared with fire suppression. Management could shift from a focus on reducing extent or severity of fire in wildlands to protecting human communities from fire.

And from their conclusion, in which they refer to incorrect predictions of "plenty of suitable habitat" and biodiversity:

Finally, our results suggest that predictions that there will be ample, or excessive, high-severity fire, and plenty of suitable habitat for biota dependent on natural early-successional conditions created by fire (Stephens and Ruth 2005), or a diversity of vegetation age classes created by high-severity fire, may be incorrect. Post-fire early-successional habitat appears to be an important conservation priority, but it is not protected as such (Hanson and North 2008; Hutto 2006, 2008). Moreover, many natural forests have been replaced by even-aged, single species tree plantations or modified by silvicultural activities so that they will not function as post-burn habitat for some species (Hutto 2008). Increased recognition of the relative scarcity and ecological importance of burned forest habitats can improve protection of b diversity (Lindenmayer and Franklin 2002; Lindenmayer et al. 2004; Swanson et al. 2011). 

It's complicated

Like with most things, there are different factors that contribute to fire severity and area burnt, as well as to post-fire "recovery". For example, in my home state of Victoria, priority is given to protecting towns and buildings (and commercial forests). That means that when fires burn in national parks they can be left to burn not just because they are in such inaccessible terrain but because native forests are not currently valued (by the powers that be) as highly as privately-owned property. The effort is put into containing the fires so they don't spread to areas inhabited by people - with greater or no success depending often on the fire conditions. (Catastrophic conditions make it virtually impossible to contain wildfires.) The scars on our native forest landscape devastated by very severe fires in the past decade bear testament.

Here is a paper by Gill, Stephens and Cary that discusses some of the problems and policy implications of wildfire management. It covers issues such as prescribed burning (fuel management), property protection, as well as the impact of fires and wildfire management on air and water quality, biodiversity, social and economic assets and more.

From the WUWT comments

Not many WUWT readers are interested in wildfires. Like I suggested, probably few of them have experienced any up close and personal.  Here are some of the comments to Larry's "scaredy cat" article.


Joel O'Bryan says:

May 19, 2014 at 10:53 pm
Grant proposals to study natural climate variability impacts on western wildfire potentials won’t get a high panel score with John Holdren whispering into the NSF’s ear. Grant proposals to study Western Wildfire potentials as a response to projected Climate Change are much more likely to get a better score. If you were a academic researcher needing tenure and a grant, which would you chose? The incentives are obvious with the current political climate.
political
Time for ^climate change.

Leigh says:

May 19, 2014 at 11:40 pm
Funny that.
We’re getting the same BS studys here in Australia.
The warmies are just changing places and dates on their studys.
Otherwise its word for word on the studys done here.
Some wag earlier this year had a thought bubble that there was this giant invisible cloud of CO/2. That works its around the world increasing the ferocity of bushfires where ever it settles over.
Seems like its moved from Australia to America.
I heard it had turned up in Italy not long ago or was that Greece.
It really is becoming quite tedious.
Lets talk about the global warming that froze America…..

aussiepete says:

May 20, 2014 at 4:40 am
What are the trends in deliberately/accidentally lit fires, numbers of campers and miles of power lines over the last few years? Vandalism generally and graffiti in particular has exploded in recent years, therefore, is it not reasonable to assume that it would be the same with arson ? I do not have a degree so i guess i’m not qualified to ask these questions or even have these thoughts.Nonetheless my instincts tell me that an increase of 0.8 of a degree will not lead to spontaneous combustion.

Aussiepete might be interested in reading about fires that get started in haystacks!

MattS doesn't know much about the climate and vegetation differences across the USA and says:

May 20, 2014 at 6:33 am
Why is this such a big problem in the western states and not the rest of the US?
Because the federal government owns and manages most of the land in the western states, but has relatively little land in the mid-west and eastern states.

elmer reverts to an "algore is fat" type comment and says:

May 20, 2014 at 10:17 am
The fact that these fires were set on purpose and that the doomsayers use these fires to push their global warming propaganda kinda makes me wonder, where was Al Gore when these fires were set?

LogosWrench says something unintelligible:

May 20, 2014 at 10:28 am
The wildfires are man made and I believe they a few people in custody but it aint for CO2.

Chad Wozniak says that all forests should be razed and covered in concrete, or similar:

May 20, 2014 at 11:03 am
The increase in wildfires is attributable very specifically to environmentalist extremism, which has interfered with prudent forest management practices (such as thinning underbrush and removing dead trees) and with natural fire cycles which are much less destructive than the fires resulting from environmentalist practices.

---

Dennison, P. E., S. C. Brewer, J. D. Arnold, and M. A. Moritz (2014), Large wildfire trends in the western United States, 1984–2011, Geophys. Res. Lett., 41, 2928–2933, doi:10.1002/2014GL059576.

Miller, Jay D., and Hugh Safford. "Trends in wildfire severity: 1984 to 2010 in the Sierra Nevada, Modoc Plateau, and southern Cascades, California, USA." Fire Ecology 8, no. 3 (2012). doi: 10.4996/fireecology.0803041

Bushfire weather in Southeast Australia: recent trends and projected climate change impacts. Melbourne, Australia: Bushfire CRC, 2007.

Hanson, Chad T., and Dennis C. Odion. "Is fire severity increasing in the Sierra Nevada, California, USA?." International Journal of Wildland Fire (2013). http://www.californiachaparral.org/images/Hanson_and_Odion_Fire_Severity_in_Sierra_Nev_2014.pdf

Gill, A. Malcolm, Scott L. Stephens, and Geoffrey J. Cary. "The worldwide “wildfire” problem." Ecological applications 23, no. 2 (2013): 438-454. http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/stephens-lab/Publications/Gill%20et%20al.%202013.pdf

Judith Curry, the hero of deniers at WUWT, complains about facts

Judith Curry is being hailed as a hero by all the climate science deniers at wattsupwiththat (archived here).  What has she done now to deserve their accolades?  Well, according to Larry Hamlin, she's written to plead not to let facts get in the way of a good yarn.  He loves it that she wrote:

With regards to climate science, the biggest concern that I have is the insistence on ‘the facts.’ 

Facts, what facts? We don't need no stinkin' facts!

Was Judith claiming that we shouldn't insist on the facts?  No.  Writing "the facts" in quotation marks is her way of raising her uncertainty demon again.  Judith trades on people not understanding what uncertainty means to scientists.  It is measured. Judith knows that, to her target blog audience (and that of Anthony Watts), uncertainty equates to "scientists don't know nuffin'". Whereas in reality it means scientists know the range. It's a way of defining limits. Judith trades on ignorance.

Judith continues:

This came up during my recent ‘debate’ with Kevin Trenberth. I argued that there are very few facts in all this, and that most of what passes for facts in the public debate on climate change is: inference from incomplete, inadequate and ambiguous observations; climate models that have been demonstrated not to be useful for most of the applications that they are used for; and theories and hypotheses that are competing with alternative theories and hypotheses.

Unfortunately Judith doesn't elaborate on this at all. She leaves it hanging.  She doesn't point out that the hypothesis that the greenhouse effect doesn't happen is fatally flawed. She doesn't describe any "alternative theories and hypotheses".  I wonder why? We can only surmise whether she is trying to say argue against any or all of the following facts:

• FACT: CO2 is a greenhouse gas and more of it causes global warming
• FACT: CO2 is already at a level never before experienced by Homo sapiens
• FACT: When CO2 rose rapidly and a lot in the past it precipitated a major extinction event
• FACT: Earth is warming very rapidly in a sustained manner, with no sign of let-up
• FACT: Arctic sea ice is melting at a very rapid pace, faster than was predicted
• FACT: The oceans continue to build up heat, as does the surface
• FACT: Unless we curb CO2 emissions, Earth could warm by more than six degrees in a very short time, much shorter than it has warmed in tens of millions of years
• FACT: Going by past earth history, this would result in a major extinction event
• FACT: If we let surface temperature rise by ten or twelve degrees, large areas of earth would be intolerable to humans

Which of these facts does Judith dispute, if any? She doesn't say (her full article is archived here).

Here are some facts in chart form:

From the WUWT comments

As you'd expect, WUWT-ers aren't interested in facts. Not one of them asks which facts Judith is referring to. They just applaud her for implying that the facts are wrong.

philjourdan says, without a hint that he's joking:

April 22, 2014 at 5:10 pm
I read them all on her blog. I sense a lot of frustration on her part. She sees her chosen profession being destroyed in the name of expediency. And even then, the alarmists are trying to parrot Mann and tar he for the simple reason she is for good science. She remains a warmist. But more than that, she is an ethical scientist, and that goes against the grain of “the team”.

Vaughan Pratt points out that Judith displays a lack of professional ethics and contempt for her chosen profession (excerpt):

April 22, 2014 at 5:21 pm
Of the thousands of department chairmen in the US, which of them have expressed an even lower opinion of their colleagues’ understanding of their field? 

Niff says that scientists don't always say what's on their mind - he may have a point with some people, but they are probably wise to not lose their temper too often with disinformers like Judith.  Just keep informing the public about the real facts and what it means for the future.  (If Judith is being muzzled, she's doing a good job of hiding the FACT):

April 22, 2014 at 5:31 pm
..and we sceptics are accused of denying the science…? What Dr Curry demonstrates is that the alarmists not only deny the science, they obfuscate it, muzzle alternative perspectives and castigate those who would speak out. Utterly despicable. 

tancred hopes to wake up one morning and find that the sun hasn't risen, or that the earth hasn't warmed and says:

April 22, 2014 at 5:50 pm
The term “scientific consensus” should be anathema to anyone with an appreciation of the methods of science — and aware of the long history of wise certainties widely agreed among the learned which eventually were debunked as complete nonsense.

Steve in SC doesn't think much of Judith's intellect, but frames his opinion carefully and says:

April 22, 2014 at 6:50 pm
Judy is smarter than the average bear.

garymount boasts that he's an extremist fake sceptic and doesn't let his mind get polluted by half truths let alone mainstream science and says:

April 22, 2014 at 8:01 pm
I do not read Luke warmer websites. 

Larry Hamlin argues that Judith's disinformation campaign is very important and shouldn't be trivialised. That's one reason why I've written about it:

April 22, 2014 at 8:47 pm
Dr. Curry’s rational and comprehensive assessment of the flawed and distorted climate alarmist positions addressed in her essay’s is an extraordinary example of leadership and openness to objective scientific analysis free from the the political ideology which drives much of the alarmist agenda. Those who chose to try and divert her powerful message with misleading and trivial comments that completely fail to comprehend the major emphasis of her posts appear to be merely attempts at creating unwarranted distractions from her primary and completely justified message.

Same old, same old from WUWT deniers

There's not been much happening in the climate denier blogosphere worth writing about with some exceptions, which I'll address in a future article.

Anthony Watts is copying and pasting some stuff from WUWT deniers like Larry Hamlin and paid disinformers like Pat 'n Chip, wailing that "all the models are wrong".  The same nonsense that Anthony wheels out when he runs out of ideas for new material.

It's nothing new.  They are trading on the false idea that global warming has stopped.  I guess they figure that they need to get in while they can because the slow down in global surface temperatures won't last.  And if the anticipated El Nino eventuates and it follows the pattern of previous ones, then next year would be hotter than any previous El Nino year, which would make it the hottest year on record. Hotter even than 2010. Which would mean the deniers would have to write about something else altogether to try to persuade the public that:

• global warming isn't happening, or
• if it is it's not bad, or 
• if it is bad, we'll adapt, or 
• if it is bad, some of us will adapt and
• if it is bad and some of us manage to adapt, it won't cost much to adapt, or 
• if it is bad and some of us manage to adapt and it does cost a lot to adapt then taxpayer's shouldn't have to pay to adapt - or 
• something.

I'm a bit too busy to go through their articles and arguments line by line, so I'll just put up a couple of charts that highlight the problem we are facing.  First, earth is still getting hotter as seen in multiple ways:

Next, we're not even close to cutting CO2 emissions yet.  And time is running out:

Adapted from IPCC AR5 WG1

Finally, from WGIII Summary for Policy Makers, the longer we wait the fewer options we'll have:

Delaying mitigation efforts beyond those in place today through 2030 is estimated to substantially increase the difficulty of the transition to low longer‐term emissions levels and narrow the range of options consistent with maintaining temperature change below 2°C relative to pre‐industrial levels.

From the WUWT comments

You'll all have read the empty protests, like those archived here and here before.  I won't bother picking holes in them - the IPCC reports themselves do that.  Here are some choice comments from the WUWT deniers to Pat 'n Chip's article (archived here):


Latitude opts for the fantastical climate hoax conspiracy theory favoured by many science deniers and says:

April 16, 2014 at 6:10 pm
Why do so many people discuss the science or computer models…without first acknowledging they are all based on fraudulent temperature records that have been fudged.
Even if they had invented the perfect model…they would never know it….because the models are all tuned to temp histories that have made the past colder and the present warmer….to show a faster rise in global warming…

They cooked their own goose with this one…they will never get an accurate computer model…with out first admitting they cooked the temp record

SIGINT EX is, I think, trying to be clever or funny or something and says:

April 16, 2014 at 7:42 pm
IPCC Titanic.
Do not trust the … “Captain” !
The “Watch Maker” turned “Ship Designer” on 2nd Deck standing by the spiral staircase and looking at the Ship-clock and glancing to his Swiss Chronograph on his wrist … knows !

Joel O'Bryan opts for ethno-religious imagery and says:

April 16, 2014 at 9:29 pm
This analysis is devastating to the “CO2 is evil” CAGW believers.
Ayatollah Al “Jezeera” Gore will issue a Fatwah against this blasphemy any day now.

Bob Greene's intuition is off.  Climate models are geared for long range not short range.  In the short term, random weather fluctuations can dominate. In the long term, these even out.  And like many others, he seems to be held in thrall by the mighty dollar and says:

April 16, 2014 at 9:15 pm
Results of 108-114 models were compared to actual temperatures. The models give a wider spread of results (0.4°C) for shorter time periods (Fig. 1 a and b) and a narrower spread for the longer time period. This seems to be intuitively wrong if the models had any capability to match reality.

Models that don’t work so large numbers are used to create reality. How many wrongs do you have to use to make a right? The ensemble doesn’t do too well at matching reality. It’s total gibberish. How many billion dollars were poured down this rat hole? And they give advanced degrees and nice tenured professorships for this?

norah4you says something about "courses to learn".  It looks as if she could do with some "learning" herself:

April 16, 2014 at 9:59 pm
Had been better had IPCC sent their so called experts on courses to learn by understanding Theories of Science what they forgot to learn during attending same courses once upon a time….

Peter Miller brings up the subject of satellites and says:

April 16, 2014 at 10:40 pm
And let’s not forget our gratitude for the satellites which measure global temperature, for they have kept the statistics reasonably honest for the past 35 years. Prior to the late 1970s, the manipulation/torture/homogenisation of temperature data has run riot, especially the GISS numbers.

Without the satellites acting as the police, the IPCC models would have undoubtedly been shown to be ‘correct’. 

Not a bad note to end on. Let's compare the two satellite records of lower troposphere temperatures (UAH and RSS) with that recorded below on the surface (HadCRUT4 and GISTemp). Click for larger view: