Global Warming

by: Kevin Trenberth
From: The Australian
February 03, 201212:00AM
60 comments

DO you consult your dentist about your heart condition? In science, as in any area, reputations are based on knowledge and expertise in a field and on published, peer-reviewed work. If you need surgery, you want a highly experienced expert in the field who has done a large number of the proposed operations.

The opinion piece “Climate change ‘heretics’ refute carbon dangers” (Wednesday) was the climate-science equivalent of dentists practising cardiology. While accomplished, most of its authors have no expertise in climate science. The few who have are known to hold extreme views that are out of step with nearly every other climate expert.

This happens in nearly every field of science. For example, there is a retrovirus expert who does not accept HIV causes AIDS. And it is instructive to recall a few scientists continued to state that smoking did not cause cancer, long after it was settled science.

Climate experts know the long-term warming trend has not abated in the past decade. In fact, it was the warmest decade on record. Observations show unequivocally our planet is getting hotter. And computer models show that during periods when there is a smaller increase of surface temperatures, warming is occurring elsewhere, typically in the deep ocean. Such periods are relatively common climate phenomena, are consistent with our physical understanding of how the climate system works and certainly do not invalidate our understanding of human-induced warming or the models used to simulate that warming.

Thus, climate experts also know what one of us, Kevin Trenberth, meant by the out-of-context, misrepresented quote used in the opinion piece.

Mr Trenberth was lamenting the inadequacy of observing systems to fully monitor warming trends in the deep ocean and other aspects of the short-term variations that always occur, together with the long-term human-induced warming trend.

The National Academy of Sciences of the US (set up by Abraham Lincoln to advise on scientific issues) and major national academies of science around the world and every other authoritative body of scientists active in climate research state the science is clear: the world is heating up and humans are primarily responsible. Impacts are already apparent and will increase. Reducing future impacts will require significant reductions in emissions.

Research shows more than 97 per cent of scientists actively publishing in the field agree climate change is real and caused by humans. It would be an act of recklessness for any political leader to disregard the weight of evidence and ignore the enormous risks climate change clearly poses.

There is also clear evidence the transition to a low-carbon economy will not only allow the world to avoid the worst risks of climate change, but could also drive decades of economic growth. Just what the doctor ordered.

Kevin Trenberth is a distinguished senior scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research, La Jolla, California. This piece is supported by 38 other US, European and Australian climate scientists, named below:

Richard Somerville, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego; Katharine Hayhoe, Ph.D., Director, Climate Science Center, Texas Tech University; Rasmus Benestad, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, The Norwegian Meteorological Institute; Gerald Meehl, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Climate and Global Dynamics Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research; Michael Oppenheimer, Ph.D., Professor of Geosciences; Director, Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy, Princeton University; Peter Gleick, Ph.D., co-founder and president, Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security;Michael C. MacCracken, Ph.D., Chief Scientist, Climate Institute, Washington; Michael Mann, Ph.D., Director, Earth System Science Center, Pennsylvania State University; Steven Running, Ph.D., Professor, Director, Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group, University of Montana; Robert Corell, Ph.D., Chair, Arctic Climate Impact Assessment; Principal, Global Environment Technology Foundation; Dennis Ojima, Ph.D., Professor, Senior Research Scientist, and Head of the Dept. of Interior’s Climate Science Center at Colorado State University;
Josh Willis, Ph.D., Climate Scientist, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Matthew England, Ph.D., Professor, Joint Director of the Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Australia; Ken Caldeira, Ph.D., Atmospheric Scientist, Dept. of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution; Warren Washington, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research; Terry L. Root, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University; David Karoly, Ph.D., ARC Federation Fellow and Professor, University of Melbourne, Australia; Jeffrey Kiehl, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Climate and Global Dynamics Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research; Donald Wuebbles, Ph.D., Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois; Camille Parmesan, Ph.D., Professor of Biology, University of Texas; Professor of Global Change Biology, Marine Institute, University of Plymouth, UK; Simon Donner, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Canada; Barrett N. Rock, Ph.D., Professor, Complex Systems Research Center and Department of Natural Resources, University of New Hampshire; David Griggs, Ph.D., Professor and Director, Monash Sustainability Institute, Monash University, Australia; Roger N. Jones, Ph.D., Professor, Professorial Research Fellow, Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University, Australia; William L. Chameides, Ph.D., Dean and Professor, School of the Environment, Duke University; Gary Yohe, Ph.D., Professor, Economics and Environmental Studies, Wesleyan University, CT; Robert Watson, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Chair of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia; Steven Sherwood, Ph.D., Director, Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; Chris Rapley, Ph.D., Professor of Climate Science, University College London, UK; Joan Kleypas, Ph.D., Scientist, Climate and Global Dynamics Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research; James J. McCarthy, Ph.D., Professor of Biological Oceanography, Harvard University; Stefan Rahmstorf, Ph.D., Professor of Physics of the Oceans, Potsdam University, Germany; Julia Cole, Ph.D., Professor, Geosciences and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Arizona; William H. Schlesinger, Ph.D., President, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies; Jonathan Overpeck, Ph.D., Professor of Geosciences and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Arizona ; Eric Rignot, Ph.D., Senior Research Scientist, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Professor of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine; Wolfgang Cramer, Professor of Global Ecology, Mediterranean Institute for Biodiversity and Ecology, CNRS, Aix-en-Provence, France.

COMMENTS

Nicky of Perth Posted at 12:57 AM Today

You have to give it to this guy for perseverance against the odds. For years he has been complicit in suppressing any debate on the ‘unarguable’science supporting man made global warming, whilst privately bemoaning the fact that the earth seem to be disobeying the perfect computer models the ‘climate scientists’ had constructed. Now when the funding scam is apparent to even Blind Freddie he trots out a ridiculous analogy in support of a plea not to listen to all these dreadful ‘unqualified’ people (most of whom have better and more relevant qualifications than him) who are finally getting their message of … “Don’t panic, the sky isn’t going to fall in!” … into the media (other than in the Abbott Bashing Corporation). Get a real job Kevin! Learn to live with government grants, because they are going to dry up very quick.

Comment 1 of 62

Flrian of SYDNEY Posted at 1:03 AM Today

Follow the money

Comment 2 of 62

Nicky of Perth Posted at 1:06 AM Today

Correction: the last sentence should have read …Learn to live without government grants, because they are going to dry up very quick.

Comment 3 of 62

Ethan of Sydney Posted at 1:10 AM Today

I must confess I was wrong. I truly believed that spin was only a politicians thing but not, scientists are now becoming spin masters. Sorry, spin PhDs. For sure we don’t consult a dentist for a heart condition but cardiologists are fairly available, climate change scientists are a fairly new invention and most of them a fraud. I remember by the late 90′s those people predicting the sea level to rise 12 cm (120mm) by 2012. Apparently the rise so far was less than 1 mm. An error of 119 mm in a 120 mm prediction is not too bad.

Comment 4 of 62

Peter Clack of Canberra Posted at 1:11 AM Today

This petulence is exactly what we have come to expect on the climate debate from self exalted authorities. First, carbon is the stuff of life, and second, how do you explain the static global temperatures for the last decade?

Comment 5 of 62

Brett Wentworth Posted at 1:41 AM Today

Given your ‘dentist / heart condition analogy’, shouldn’t you – along with all the prominent members of your illustrious list – recuse yourself from any comments regarding trends and interpretations of climate model results? After all, none of you appear to be qualified statisticians.

Comment 6 of 62

David Wilson of Warana Posted at 2:11 AM Today

Typical of the global warming mafia – throw mud at anybody who disagrees. Remember Y2K.

Comment 7 of 62

Nico Posted at 2:17 AM Today

“There is also clear evidence the transition to a low-carbon economy will not only allow the world to avoid the worst risks of climate change, but could also drive decades of economic growth. Just what the doctor ordered.” Really? So the broken windows fallacy doesn’t apply in the area of AGW mitigation? Interesting how this letter attempts to abrade the authors of the previous letter for ostensibly not having any expertise in climate science, while the authors of this letter pretend they are experts in economics and finance.

Comment 8 of 62

Bill Murray Posted at 2:54 AM Today

That list certainly confirms the career-based, industrial nature of climate science. Very impressive. (Coughs: qui bono)

Comment 9 of 62

Phil of Bullcreek Posted at 3:06 AM Today

Years ago when i was very young, people like you were saying the ocean was going to rise by 6 meters due to global cooling. Sea levels have risen and fallen for millions of years by hundreds of meters and will continue to do so for ever more.

Comment 10 of 62

Mick RWC of Adelaide Posted at 4:04 AM Today

Well, what an impressive list! And what a call to authority!! My, my: 39 relevant PhDs. What about the Petition Project at www.petitionproject.org ? 31,487 scientist including 9,029 with PhDs all in relevant fields, hold a view contrary to the one expressed by the distinguished Dr Trenberth. Well? Now what? Square one. There is a solid argument against the so called orthodoxy. It would be unscientific to suggest that the science is settled. Dr Trenberth is being a bit bullish, trying to shut down debate with a call to authority and a headline statement that suggests others don’t have the right to comment. Not so, Dr Trenberth. BTW, do you receive any funds to conduct climate research? Do any of your listed associates? Do you stand to lose significant face if you are proved wrong? Is it possible that due to your previous research findings, being pro-climate change, that you could possibly be closed minded to other contrary views? Judging by your unscientific argument here, I think so. How hypocritical to present an unscientific argument to demand only approved scientists may comment on this very controversial field.

Comment 11 of 62

Bananab of Newcastle of Newcastle Posted at 4:53 AM Today

Well Professor Trentberth, as you are an expert in this field you should be able to answer the following relevant and simple question:- If Australia does reduce its CO2 emissions by 5% by 2020 and all other countries continue to operate as 'business as usual' which appears to be the current situation, by how much will global temperatures be reduced in 2020? I have read that other scientists have calculated the temperature reduction would be in the order of only 0.0004 degrees C which is a miniscule amount for an awful lot of cost and pain. Will you please provide us with your expert opinion. This same question has been posed to Gillard, Combet, Flannery, and many others and they have all wimped out. Perhaps you will have the courage to post an answer.

Comment 12 of 62

Roger Posted at 5:44 AM Today

It is only about 5 years since Brisbanites were told by our own climate expert we were going to run out of water and people spent thousands buying and installing water tanks. I notice his name is not in the list.

Comment 13 of 62

Gassius of Kambah ACT Posted at 5:54 AM Today

No, but if there is no toothache in the first place, why consult a dentist. No expertise is required in this except the ability to read a thermometer.

Comment 14 of 62

ifonly Posted at 6:20 AM Today

“Research shows more than 97 per cent of scientists actively publishing in the field agree”. This figure comes from one of two research papers. Probably http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.full.pdf+html. They found 1400 actively published scientists. Then cut this down to 900 to include only those that publish a lot and then when that wasn’t enough, took the top 50 most published and found the 97% figure. It is a bit like saying that48 of the 50 loudest shouters agree with me.

Comment 15 of 62

janama Posted at 6:24 AM Today

The 97% of scientists number stems from a 2009 online survey of 10,257 earth scientists, conducted by two researchers at the University of Illinois. The survey results must have deeply disappointed the researchers “ in the end, they chose to highlight the views of a subgroup of just 77 scientists, 75 of whom thought humans contributed to climate change. The ratio 75/77 produces the 97% figure. Please show me the temperature record that shows warming since 1997 as all the records I've surveyed (GISS, HudCrut, RSS, UAH) show temperatures are flat. The Argo buoys show ocean temperatures dropping and sea level rise has slowed. Of course all the scientists listed agree with you as they are all on the climate change gravy train and the existence of their well funded departments depends on it.

Comment 16 of 62

GeoffB of Bendigo Posted at 6:28 AM Today

October 12 2009 – Kevin Trenberth e-mailed his colleagues: “Where the heck is global warming? … The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” Now that observations don’t match the models, surely it is time to objectively review the models, the predicitions and his position. But Kevin Trenberth relies on the consensus of 38 scientists to support his position. Consensus is not science – it is more appropriate in politics. As John Maynard Keynes said: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

Comment 17 of 62

Bob of Maclean Posted at 6:40 AM Today

When will these sceintists stop the academic bullying and look at the total picture? Whilst there is no doubt that climate change is real and that humans are contributing it is obvious to any reasonable sceptic that the use of fossil fuel is not the only cause. The Earth is reaching the zenith of the lastest rise in the cycle of temperature and CO2 fluctuation that occurs about once in 100 years. The current rise started about 50,000 years ago and not at the dawn of the industrial revolution as the scientists would have us believe. Several scientists have gone on record in saying that we must reduce CO2 levels in order to stabilise the climate and even reduce temperatures. That is a lofty claim when the creator has not been able to provide a stable climate in at least the last 400,000 years.The analogy with medicine is cute but silly. Pointing the finger at fossil fuel use, without taking full account of the other human contributions and the input of the causes of the cyclic nature of global temperatures is incomplete at the best and lazy at the worst.

Comment 18 of 62

johno Posted at 6:48 AM Today

Yeh, yeh, yeh. We’ve heard all this before. The only scientist we should listen to are the warmerists. If a scientist doesn’t accept the warmerist view of the world, then we aren’t suppose to listen to them. After all, 97 percent of warmerist surveyed believed the warmerist view. Oh, what a big surprise that i! Guess what. I’m not buying that line any more because I know it is crap. The last decade is the warmist on record if you only look at recent data and ignore those times when our planet has been warmer than it is now. Also, for the last 10 to 15 years, global temperatures have NOT increased, they have flatlined. The warming trend predicted in the models has not come about. The models are a complete fiction. These green activists parading as scientist would do well to heed Lincoln advice that you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Times up. We have seen through the con.

Comment 19 of 62

Claude Santucci of Brisbane Posted at 7:08 AM Today

You lot are getting desperate! You can see your grants and sponsorships fading away as the truth about “global warming” (or is it now “climate change”) becomes apparent. Kevin Trenberth is as believable as our own beloved alarmist Flannery of “no more rain” fame. You scientists have betrayed your calling and wrapped yourselves in the stubborn shame of non-science. Your arrogance is breathtaking – where did you get the 97% of scientists figure? Who ran that survey? Shame on you all! Is this garbage why you became scientists?

Comment 20 of 62

spareme Posted at 7:10 AM Today

So the argument comes down to scientists at 10 paces!! Not forgetting of course the computer ‘models’ and the inconvenient truth that there is no empirical evidence supporting the AGW movement. Same old illogical arguments (smoking etc) and the fatuous comment about 97% of scientists.

Comment 21 of 62

Joan Posted at 7:19 AM Today

`And computer models show that during periods when there is a smaller increase of surface temperatures, warming is occurring elsewhere, typically in the deep ocean` What does hard real evidence as distinct from computer model show? And what real evidence is there that Gillard $23 tonne Carbon Tax will change World Climate.

Comment 22 of 62

Rex Posted at 7:24 AM Today

Lot more weight signed on here than in the piece published yesterday. And a major, out-of-context quotation exposed! Ask yourself the question: Even if 97% of climate scientists are NOT completely certain that humans are causing serious global warming, but just strongly suspect it, shouldn’t we be taking action? Or don’t you care about making life potentially much worse for your grandchildren? Would you do this for, say, science with even less certainty, like some suspected environmental causes of disease? I doubt it: you’d be citing the “uncertain” science for every personal ailment – and seeking compensation.

Comment 23 of 62

DJV of Cleveland Posted at 7:27 AM Today

There is no argument that the last decade was the warmest on record. It is just that, within the last decade, and a few years before that, the trend in air temperatures is flat. It is no longer increasing the way it was in the previous decades. Given that CO2 levels apparently are continuing to increase, why has temperature flattened out?

Comment 24 of 62

Graham of Nicholson Posted at 7:38 AM Today

More patronising from the “warmists”. The fact that the alarming predictions have not materialised leaves me and many others deeply sceptical that their future predictions will be any more reliable.

Comment 25 of 62

Wal of Ausie Posted at 7:38 AM Today

This statement, “97 per cent of scientists actively publishing in the field agree climate change is real and caused by humans”, by Kevin Trenberth is clearly false. Yes, climate change is real. It has been a part of the world for four billion years, so please explain how it is “caused by humans”. These people are driven by computer-generated, but unsubstantiated projections and self interest.

Comment 26 of 62

Chris of Sydney Posted at 7:40 AM Today

The “few”? Perhaps once again so much will be owed by so many to those few. Try scientific argument on us rather than appealing to numbers. Also read the “Delinquent Teenager” to see how “climate science” of the masses is put together. The UAH global temperature for Jan 2012 has actually gone NEGATIVE and has not increased for well over a decade. No one disputes that climate changes but how much more time do you need to prove that CO2 is driving it?

Comment 27 of 62

dasher Posted at 7:50 AM Today

He said she said….so the science is settled is it.

Comment 28 of 62

nfw of Queanbeyan Posted at 7:51 AM Today

Not THE climate experts? This is the same mob that said we would be living in deserts by now, the rains would stop, snow would never fall again, polar bears would disappear, etc, etc. The climate changes naturally; has done so for millions of years and will do so until the expanding sun eats the planet. Now that will be climate change! No, it’s about funding from left wing governments, power, politics and egos. They can’t admit they are just wrong. Must be a good life living off the public purse making the right noises for politicians giving out funding etc… What about all THE scientists who say the self-proclaimed experts are wrong? Are they wrong? The so-called experts once knew the earth was flat; it was supported by turtles; the sun revolved around the earth. The IPCC is run by a railways engineer who seems to be able to organise conferences in some pretty swish hotels.

Comment 29 of 62

grater Posted at 7:56 AM Today

And yet, for all your expertise, we are skeptical… Maybe it’s time you looked at yourselves and asked, “Why doesn’t the public trust us?”

Comment 30 of 62

Geoff of Tweed Posted at 7:57 AM Today

An article scratching for traction, the usual ridicule of people who dispute the “Climate Scientists”. the tough battle you guys have is that Global Warming IS NOT HAPPENING. The Polar bears are not dying and the movement in sea levels is minuscule. http://www.bom.gov.au/oceanography/projects/ntc/ntc.shtml Since the mid 1970s CO2 has increased 1 Part in 26,000. Since 2007 CO2 has gone up 1 Part in 83,000 http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/ People read what you print, then look out the window. No wonder you guys are not taken seriously. Economists make weather forecasters look precise. You guys make economists look precise.

Comment 31 of 62

Phaeochromocytoma Posted at 7:57 AM Today

This opinion is simply rubbish. I am a cardiologist and I know that you do not need to be a cardiologist to have the necessary skill sets to be able to read, understand and conclude weather results of trials or observations are statistically significant or simply chance occurrence. Indeed having read the “conclusions” based on studies with “p values of >0.1″ I am amused that these self acclaimed climate scientists have the gall to publish at all. Their claims should rightfully be exposed to wider scientific and academic community who lack a vested interest in the debate. Like cardiologists they should be questioned and asked to justify their results even by dentists! There are many capable minds in many fields that are more than able to give alternate and objective analysis of the data. It ain’t rocket science!

Comment 32 of 62

Gemini of brisbane Posted at 8:11 AM Today

now we would like to hear the other side of the story, and from the thousands of scientists and engineers that refute gw. the facts are that the world is cooling.

Comment 33 of 62

Frank of Sunshine Coast Posted at 8:20 AM Today

This issue has been so heavily thrashed about by both sides of the debate that my confidence in trusting any scientific source on this issue has been greatly eroded. I now consider anyone offering an expert opinion on the vagaries of climate science to be no wiser than modern day witch doctors.

Comment 34 of 62

Troy of Mel Posted at 8:22 AM Today

So when a surgeon is amputating the wrong leg, the nurse is not quilfied to comment?

Comment 35 of 62

Glenn of Townsville Posted at 8:22 AM Today

Nice try, Trenberth, but no goal. This continued frantic promotion of a concocted “danger” reminds me of the Luddites. They failed and so will you. The average person is smarter than you think.

Comment 36 of 62

rob Posted at 8:33 AM Today

Hmmm . . . A lot of the signatories to this response look pretty much like ‘dentists’ to me. Anyone who knows anything about the history of science will know to be fairly careful when any group of scientists claims to possess the authorised and exclusive version of the truth (i.e. that the science is ‘settled’). The more strident these anthropogenic warmists become the more their science looks like ideology.

Comment 37 of 62

Botswana O’Hooligan of Brissie Posted at 8:45 AM Today

Mr Trenberth says it all in his opening paragraph, to whit, do you consult your dentist about your heart condition? Working on that very principle we then must ask ourselves why Ms Gillard took notice of Mr Tim Flannery and Mr Ross Garnaut, the one an expert on small mammals who owns a couple of waterfront properties in NSW, and the other an economist, adviser to the basket case PNG Govt and former director of Lihir Gold who pump millions of tonnes of polluion into the sea each year. Thank you Mr Trenberth, thank you indeed.

Comment 38 of 62

Jack Posted at 9:00 AM Today

How many of those scientists are connected to WWF? WWF asked for UEA to widen the signifigance values on their temperature values. The initial study showed only natural variation, but once widened, then statistically any conclusion was equally valid or wrong and therefore claims of catastrophe were as valid as natural variation. Attacking Trenberth’s conclusion first, there is clear evidence of economic suicide by adopting low carbon strategies. Green jobs is a myth as Spain has discovered. Recent analysis says to leave things alone. Similar to Trenberth’s post normal science, where you fit the data to the conclusion you require, post normal economics ( environmental economics) does the same. The 97% of scientists actively publishing is a lurk. The cadre of climate scientists stacked the publishing journals with their friends, so only their side is permitted to be published.The De Freitas case in New Zealand is a classic example. Trenberth contradicts himself about deep ocean heating. He uses the word typically as a weasel word to include deep oceans, then adjusts the model to show nature is false and the models are real. He was not misquoted but puzzled.

Comment 39 of 62

Justin of Melbourne Posted at 9:18 AM Today

1. Another warmist argument resorting to a show of hands rather than scientific facts. 2. Again there is no argument to counter the lack of empirical evidence for CO2 induced warming and amplification of feedbacks.In fact the justification for his email comment acknowledges the empirical evidence does not exist. 3. Specifically, no comment about the tropospheric hotspot. No comment about the lack of surface warming. No comment about lack of warming in the sea. No comment about escaping radiation into space. No comment about model results grossly exaggerating the past 20 years of climate which failed to materialise. 4. His analogy to the dentist if anything works against him. The idea of a “climate expert” is a bit of a nonsense. Since understanding climate requires expertise in dozens of scientific fields no one person can claim to be truly “expert” as he claims. 5.Simply stating the world is warmer says nothing about the cause of warming which is the real issue. 6. Moreover, as there is consensus about the warming effect of CO2 the real issue is about climate sensitivity, to which he has nothing to say. 7. Another straw-man argument.

Comment 40 of 62

Lukemac of Lara Posted at 9:20 AM Today

Lack of expertise is really a very poor argument put forward, particularly when climate scientist seem happy to freely comment on areas outside their discipline such as economics. Climate science is a multifaceted discipline and at times all encompassing. It covers such sciences as physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology and economics just to name a few. Is the author seriously suggestion that one discipline can gain such overarching expertise in so many diverse fields, that people who have specialised in one of these areas should not be able to comment? I would like to point out how Manna's Hockey stick graph was pulled apart by a mathematician and an economist, experts in their field who trumped the climate scientists. I say before we listen to climate scientist and their computer models that predict the future, make them pass a simple test. Run the models backwards and show they can accurately predict the past in line with the historical record.

Comment 41 of 62

Dr Rebel of Australia Posted at 9:21 AM Today

Once again the “97%” argument. Please provide for true upholders of the scientific method, a falsifiable test of the AGW hypothesis. Currently, AGW is best described as model based pseudoscience. Sceptics have every right to dismiss AGW as such until such time as it presents itself as a credible scientific theory. Falsifiable tests please.

Comment 42 of 62

Unconvinced and chilly reception! of Brisbane Posted at 9:21 AM Today

Thanks for this patronising pap. Explain why East Anglia scientists hid their data, failed to release their data, harassed people who failed to agree with their theories, bullied and rigged editorial boards. Explain why your theory,a simplistic one of CO2 alone, has not worked, that is, why it hasn’t heated up to the degree it should have by now. Explain to us, the public, why you are milking our public taxes of billions for your unfounded theories. Real science is where you make your data publicly available and your results from experiments are endlessly repeatable; that proves a theory, not subterfuge, bullying and hiding data. Oh, and explain why it’s been so cold? Lots of CO@ out there now? Oh, that’s right you all get money to talk about climate and it’s nice to scare people about warming to get more money. Try an experiment, vacuum flask with CO2, leave it in the sun and prove it has some magical heating effect. UNCONVINCED and CHILLY!

Comment 43 of 62

Keith HOOD Posted at 9:34 AM Today

Kevin, as in anything it pays to look at the funding trail, given your role, if there were no warming then you wouldnt be able to access the excessive funding being poured into climate change research or gravy train trips to attend gabfests on it. The peer review process means nothing, as they will only peer review what they choose is acceptabl to them, and generally agree with anything put forward by supporters of their warming faith, regardless how dubious their modelling is and its increasing difference with actual observations. I gather we no longer have to listen to Tim Flannery given he has no qualifications in this field and no doubt you would reccomend the government cut his pay check immediately??

Comment 44 of 62

JP of Sydney. Posted at 9:34 AM Today

What a miserable defense to this new ‘faith’. Words are cheap and you conveniently forget that there are scores of ‘dentists’ and other that support climate change such as flim flam Flannery he isn’t a climate expert yet he is the government representative on climate change. The argument to cut you and you followers down is overwhelming. At least news limited publishes the other side, fairfax would never give those arguing against climate change a paragraph.

Comment 45 of 62

Chris Burges of Brisbane Posted at 9:36 AM Today

“Research shows more than 97 per cent of scientists actively publishing in the field…” The litany of rejecting non-conforming papers from such publications is long and damning, just review the “climategate” emails where reviewers note their combined efforts to prevent contrary opinion getting publication. Reverting to statements like the “warmest decade” etc completely dodge the fact that the models’ predictions are consistently overstating the real world’s temperature profile. Until this major error in the models is rectified, the “97%” has all the strength of a “convenient” truth.

Comment 46 of 62

Stephen Morgan of Runcorn Posted at 9:43 AM Today

Okay…when the last letter came in everybody went “thank goodness for some common sense” and “wow, look at that list of important people”. Well, here’s so much more common sense, from so many more important people, who actually have expertise in the field. It is scientifically nonsensical to not accord this a recognisably higher status than the previous letter. Does it mean that these people are necessarily right, and that the others are necessarily wrong….well of course not. But it does mean that if we are to accept THE SCIENCE of the debate then we need to stop pretending that a minority view that is factually incorrect and uses deception to make a case must not be held in the same regard as peer-reviewed expert knowledge. The ONLY possibly excuse for not doing this is greed. The initial letter talked about following the money; well, when people realise they might have to pay for the luxuries they expect, some of them start thinking with their pockets. Yep, it’s the money alright…but not the money some people imagine!

Comment 47 of 62

Matt of Neutral Bay Posted at 9:55 AM Today

An expert in climate is a bit like an expert in theology; all very inetersting if you accept their assumptions but not much use to the rest of us since they can’t make one iota of difference to the result. Or even tell us with any credibility what the result will be. A cardiologist explains and (usually) heals. A climatologist merely speculates.

Comment 48 of 62

Academic Economist of NSW Posted at 10:00 AM Today

Mate I agree that is why those economists who have so much to say about Global Warming must be outed as having no useful qualifications in this field at all. Indeed the ANU academic economists have no knowledge of how financial markets work, so Garnaut’s report is an absolute fraud on Australians.

Comment 49 of 62

Peter Wardle of Moss Vale Posted at 10:04 AM Today

Yet another attack on the sceptics without any presentation as to why the small portion of carbon dioxide emitted by humans is the cause of climate change. Also a childish comparison of climate sceptics to HIV/aids and smoking/cancer deniers. There is no comparison because the sceptic camp is loaded with people who have studied the data and the science and have thence applied that most rare ingredient; logic. The 97% figure of consensus scientists is totally misleading when fewer than half the 10,000 scientists questioned did not respond and of those that did there was an agreement that humans had “some” influence on the climate. As to the warmest decade on record: the latest Met. office released data shows that there has been no warming of the Earth for the last 15 years. Continued…

Comment 50 of 62

Damien Doyle of Dalgety Posted at 10:04 AM Today

OK lets accepted the concept. If humans are the sole or major cause of climate change we had better seriously reduce the population increase around the world. The forecasts for the size of the Earths population in years to come are terrifying. Wouldn’t it be prudent to make some real committment to reducing the growth of the Eaths population? Every extra person will make a demand on the Earths resources thus contributing to the dilemma. One must also concider the extra CO2 from exhalation. Far fetched? I don’t think so if you accept the concept of global warming.

Comment 51 of 62

Peter Wardle of Moss Vale Posted at 10:05 AM Today

… The scientists listed are either in or associated with the climate modelling fraternity. These models have now been shown to be woefully inaccurate. However, those who have c arrears committed to these models will continue to push their barrows to the end. Empirical evidence is, in the end, the only metric which has any credibility. To date there is no, I repeat NO empirical evidence that the 3-4% of Earth’s carbon dioxide emission produced by the burning of fossil fuels has any influence on the climate whatsoever. The climate models created by humans manipulating assumptions made by humans remains nothing more than a pseudo-science. The climate models created by humans manipulating assumptions made by humans remains nothing more than a pseudo-science.

Comment 52 of 62

norman carter of ivanhoe Posted at 10:05 AM Today

The climate is a NON-LINEAR CHAOTIC SYSTEM. If one was to set a motor boat going without a driver in Port Phillip Bay and predict the point at which it woiuld strike land you would have about the same ds. P.S. The world temperature is exactly the same as it was 15 years ago. people are dying in europe from the cold. queensland is flooding again.

Comment 53 of 62

Stephen Morgan of Runcorn Posted at 10:16 AM Today

My God…some of you are actually serious! You just believe what you want and pay NO attention to what is actually going on. In any and every science there is going to be debate and disagreement – the scientific method is to go with what is best supported by the available facts. What we have in the comments above is essentially “I don’t want it to be true therefore I shall only credit evidence which disputes it”. There is no greater reputability in the evidence provided by the heroes of denial…yet denialists give it 100% of the available credibility. NOT SCIENCE!! To answer grater at 7.56 as to why people are still sceptical; well, one has to consider that with all the evidence available, it is due to dumb ignorance and filthy greed! Really…there just cannot be any other excuse for such a denial of the scientific processes that have been developed over centuries. We are in the presence of the wilful destruction of wisdom!

Comment 54 of 62

David from Gold Coast Posted at 10:31 AM Today

My list of names is longer than yours na na na na na.

Comment 55 of 62

Lawrie Ayres Posted at 10:32 AM Today

97%. The university of Illinois conducted an online survey of 10000 scientists to which it received 3000 responses of which 80% did not support the hypothesis of man made warming. The 3000 was culled until only 77 remained who had submitted more than 20 papers on climate change/ global warming. Of the 77, 75 supported the hypothesis and 2 didn’t hence we have 97% of climate scientists say….. Trenberth said that AGW would manifest itself with a hotspot over the equator trouble is that 30000 radiosondes have failed to find it. The oceans have cooled but now Trenberth and co reckon the heat is in the deepest ocean water where it can’t be measured. You don’t need to be a climate scientist to know that every one of their predictions over the past thirty years has failed to materialise. We still pay Tim Flannery $180000 a year to scare us about droughts and bush fires in the midst of the coolest and wettest year for ages. The climate scam is over and only the deluded and desperate keep clinging like a man clings to a life float in a stormy sea. We could devote the untold billions wasted on this fraud to real problems.

Comment 56 of 62

Helen Armstrong Posted at 10:38 AM Today

Hmm how about Dr Trenberth and his cosignatories read ‘The Delinquent Teenager” – an expose of the very dirty fingernails of the IPCC – to find out just how little of the IPCC report (the climate change bible)was actually written and peer reviewed by scientists?

Comment 57 of 62

Beno of Adelaide Posted at 10:39 AM Today

“more than 97 per cent of scientists actively publishing in the field agree climate change is real” So the only ones we should listen to are those whose ongoing funding and relevance are directly dependent on the continuation of the AGW myth? I imagine somewhere in the vicinity of 97% of real estate agents would still tell us property is booming.. I guess we should blindly follow that advice as well? An individual's sense of self preservation shouldn't be mistaken for misrepresented significance or dressed up as unequivocal fact.

Comment 58 of 62

Peter H Posted at 10:40 AM Today

“Professor of Climate Change” supports climate change – now there’s a surprise. How long does it take for these Government sponsored intellectual bureaucrats to grasp that this whole “science” was created around the proposition that climate change was a “fact” and that their careers were built around exploiting that “fact” to create an argument that would empower the left wing of politics to put the entire human race into a social and economic straight jacket. You might be great scientists, but ultimately this argument is about the politics of a free society having a legitimate interest in remaining a free society.

Comment 59 of 62

sid of buderim Posted at 10:44 AM Today

Sadly another snow job and one that relies on stats the interpretations of which are heavily disputed throughout the scientific community and rely on the ad hommenem argument because something was said by a handful of people , therefore it must be right. If things are so schmick why then do such Doyens as Al Gore resort to ridiculous exaggerations is his much saluted “documentary”, why also did the “emailgates” version 1 and 2 occur; why did EUA and their associates seek to hide so much detail; manipulate the stats and really deliberately seek to mislead the masses. If things are so clear why these lies. Why is it that open debate is not tolerated in our electronic media particularly our ABC. Surely if the science is so settled such a debate between 2 people with opposing views should be welcomed rather than avoided at all costs. Until the scientific community is prepared to be more honest and open then i will remain a sceptic or denielist or whatever unsavory name the wish to point towards me

Comment 60 of 62

bruceS of nsw central coast Posted at 10:52 AM Today

Oh if only it were so. The science in play in regards to Global Warming is Political Science, which was proven by Climategate. For a group of people who reject religion, they sound very much like a Cult. By the way CO2 does not drive warming, it follows it by 200 to 800 years. Now there is an inconvenient fact.

Comment 61 of 62

Ricey Posted at 10:58 AM Today

So should I continue to ignore anything that Ross Garnaut and the Federal Government says because they are not qualified. Scientific consensus does not always match the reality. Prior to Copernicus there was a lot of science / maths to back up the prevailing view that the Earth was the Centre of Universe. Many years ago I majored in Applied Mathematics and I am extremely skeptical of long term predictions made using any climate model. The more complex the model the more impact of chaotic affects. If you vary the initial conditions in the model slightly you may get vastly different results for long term predictions. This is why on the BOM website you do not get predictions beyond 7 days. I am not DENYing that humans are having an influence on the climate. I just beg to differ on the solutions being offered. It is a good thing to modify our reliance on fossils fuels as a risk management strategy to mitigate the shock to the world as the day approaches when we run out. Maybe if we also pushed this aspect we could unite more the Climate Change Deniers with Climate Change Proponents to gradually phase out our reliance on fossil fuels.

Comment 62 of 62

Sun’s coming quietude burns global warmists
By THE WASHINGTON TIMES
-
The Washington Times
7:50 p.m., Monday, June 27, 2011

Reports of imminent climatic catastrophes are turning out to be rather anticlimactic. That’s because rather than heating up to life-threatening levels, new scientific findings indicate it’s more likely the Earth will cool in coming years. That’s bad news for a global-warming industry heavily invested in a sultry forecast.

Cornelis de Jager, a solar physicist from the Netherlands and former secretary-general of the International Astronomical Union, announced that the sun is about to enter a period of extremely low sunspot activity, which historically is associated with cooling trends. Backed by other scientists, he predicted the “grand solar minimum” is expected to begin around 2020 and last until 2100.

The ebb of solar activity is shaping up to resemble what occurred during the Little Ice Age, the period from 1620 to 1720 when sunspot activity diminished and temperatures dropped an estimated 3 degrees Celsius. The era was noted for colder-than-usual winters in North America and Europe, when rivers and canals froze over, allowing for ice-skating and winter festivals. It also resulted in crop failure and population displacement in northern regions such as Iceland. To characterize the impending grand solar minimum as an “ice age” – with glaciers forming at temperate latitudes – would be an exaggeration. The correlation between decreased sunspot activity and falling temperatures means it’s likely to get colder when the sunspots begin to disappear.

Global-warming zealots are steamed. They’ve already cleverly rebranded their movement as “climate change” in order to appear relevant no matter what the thermometer reads, but the recent findings could undermine the basis for their cause. They assert that man-made greenhouse gases – not that big fireball in the sky – are responsible for heating up the Earth and threaten to end life as we know it. After nearly a generation of politically driven growth, countless careers and billions of dollars have been sunk into this fairy tale. Nothing would discredit the story more quickly than tumbling mercury.

Consequently, those invested in global warming have vigorously assaulted the news of an approaching solar minimum with hammer and ice pick. Correlation does not imply causation, they argue, insisting that the Little Ice Age was not caused by diminished sunspot activity but by volcanoes that spewed sun-reflecting clouds into the atmosphere during that era. Tellingly, warmists dismiss skeptics who suggest elevated atmospheric carbon-dioxide is the result rather than the cause of rising temperatures.

Uncertainty about whether human activity could cause the Earth to heat up warrants healthy skepticism, but warmism is rooted in faith, not fact. Peeling back its green disguise, the movement wants to impose globe-spanning environmental regulations with a view toward turning the clock back to the time before the Industrial Revolution. As Al Gore preached in his 1993 book, “Earth in the Balance,” “We must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization.”

The goal of society has always been to improve the human condition and for one generation to leave a better world for the next. Crippling the engines of progress, particularly in the production of affordable energy, will lead not to paradise on Earth, but to poverty and squalor. If it takes a chilly breeze to silence the retrograde movement, Mr. de Jager’s news is welcome indeed.

© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC.

Little Change from Last Month
The global average lower tropospheric temperature anomaly for May, 2011 was just about the same as last month: up slightly to +0.13 deg. C

 
Updated global sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies computed from AMSR-E through yesterday, June 6 (note that the base period is different, so the zero line is different than for the lower tropospheric temperature plot above):

 

 

Climate and Energy Revolt 2011-05-13

By Anders Østervang, First Secretary, Economic Affairs,
Danish Embassy

As the world’s population grows and emerging economies expand rapidly, global demand and competition for energy are set to intensify in the decades to come. This will likely drive up prices of the world’s finite oil and other fossil fuel resources, which are concentrated largely in a handful of politically unstable countries. The International Energy Agency
projects that global energy demand will increase 34 percent by 2035.
In Denmark, we have decided that we do not want to be in that energy race. We want to insulate ourselves from future peaks in energy prices and disruptions in supply, and to invest our money in green, long-term, sustainable sources of energy. Our government has announced its ambition that Denmark should become fully independent of fossil fuels by 2050, and instead meet its energy needs with renewable energy. A detailed, comprehensive strategy for how to get there, “Energy Strategy 2050”, was launched a few months ago—the first of its kind in the world.

The journey toward a low-carbon and energy-efficient society actually started decades ago, during the oil crises of the 1970s. We took it up as a serious challenge to reform our energy model. At the peak, we stopped driving our cars on “car-free Sundays,” and after the crises we kept gas prices high.

We went into the 1973 oil crisis almost 95 percent dependent on foreign oil imports for meeting our energy needs. Since those days, we have broken this spell of dependence by focusing heavily on energy efficiency and energy savings (in industry as well as households); by exploring domestic oil and gas; by diversifying our energy mix; and, increasingly, by investing in renewable energy sources.

As a result, Denmark is now one of the most energy-efficient countries in Europe and a net exporter of energy. We have reduced our oil consumption substantially so that today oil accounts for less than 40 percent of the energy we use overall. Renewables now account for 23 percent of the energy we consume, and for 30 percent of the electricity. Our many wind farms deliver two-thirds of that energy.

Importantly—and with a bearing on the current debate in the United States—we did this while securing economic growth. Since 1980, the Danish economy has grown by almost 80 percent while our energy consumption has remained more or less flat and CO2 emissions have fallen. We have also seen the development of a strong and globally competitive energy efficiency and sustainable energy industry.

A recent report commissioned by WWF shows that Denmark earns the world’s largest share of its national revenue from the clean tech industry, at 3.4 percent of GDP. This is far ahead of China, in second place at 1.4 percent. The clean tech industry now also accounts for more than 13 percent of our exports. Denmark is now a world leader in wind turbine production, and Vestas alone holds a 12 percent share of the global market.

 

On the end-user side, we focused heavily on strict building and appliance efficiency standards, public awareness campaigns about savings in households, and taxes on energy consumption that result, in a way, in the price of energy including the environmental costs of production, use, and disposal.

On the production side, cogeneration of electricity and heat (combined heat and power [CHP]) and district heating have been critical. CHP uses approximately 30 percent less fuel than separate heat and power plants producing the same amount of heat and power. Almost 53 percent of Danish electricity is cogenerated with heat, concentrating emissions at CHP-plants that are equipped with efficient emission-reduction equipment.

 

 

Samsoe and its energy sources

As in Austria, individual communities have helped drive this development. One example is the pioneering island of Samsoe, home to 61,000 inhabitants. In 1997, Samsoe entered a Danish government challenge along with four other islands to cut its carbon footprint and increase production of renewable energy—and won. Afterward, Samsoe decided to continue what it had started and is now entirely self-sufficient. It is even selling surplus energy generated by windmills. It has cut its carbon footprint by 140 percent (carbon emissions are now in effect negative, since Samsoe is selling clean power to other communities).

Samsoe owes much of its success to a model of strong public participation and local ownership. It now attracts thousands of visitors each year from around the world and has become a worldwide showcase for sustainable energy. But our journey is not finished. There is still work to be done to transition fully to a sustainable energy model. With our government’s new energy strategy to phase out fossil fuels, we are continuing to go full steam ahead, so to speak.

Obviously, 2050 is a ways down the road, and policies will need to be adjusted along the way.  2020 will be the first benchmark. If we move ahead according to the strategy, by
2020 we should have reduced our use of fossil fuels by 33 percent relative to 2009 levels and increased the share of renewable energy significantly (33 percent of overall energy consumption and 62 percent in the power sector).

The government will use a range of tools and policies to enhance the use of renewable energy sources in the heat and power sector—such as wind power, biomass, and biogas—while at the same time allowing new sources of renewable energy to develop. For example, large CHP producers will see a streamlined bureaucratic process associated with fuel switching, encouraging a shift from coal to biomass. Smaller energy producers will also be given greater freedom to choose their sources of fuel. This will allow a shift from the use of
natural gas to biomass.

Our transportation sector is almost fully dependent on fossils fuels, accounting for one-third of our fossil fuel use. It will therefore need to see a radical transition in the decades ahead. The government will take a number of policy steps to promote a fleet of green, advanced vehicles and relevant infrastructure in Denmark. However, with technological
advancements and market developments coming rapidly in this area, maintaining
flexibility is critical.

Essentially, in Denmark we see the green trajectory that we have embarked on as a win-win. As we ensure our future energy independence and insulate ourselves from global rising energy prices, we also are demonstrating a responsible and sustainable approach to global resources and climate change and expanding the domestic market for new and innovative technologies and, in turn, export opportunities for Danish companies in a
growing global market for smart energy solutions. While the government’s strategy is fully financed, consumers will likely see moderate increases in their heating and power bills. But you can also look at that as paying an insurance premium against rising fossil fuel costs in the future.

The dubious science of the climate crusaders.

William Happer

The object of the Author in the following pages has been to collect the most remarkable instances of those moral epidemics which have been excited, sometimes by one cause and sometimes by another, and to show how easily the masses have been led astray, and how imitative and gregarious men are, even in their infatuations and crimes,” wrote Charles Mackay in the preface to the first edition of his Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the
Madness of Crowds. I want to discuss a contemporary moral epidemic: the notion that increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide, will have disastrous consequences for mankind and for the planet. The “climate crusade” is one characterized by true believers, opportunists, cynics, money-hungry governments, manipulators of various types—even children’s crusades—all based on contested science and dubious claims.

I am a strong supporter of a clean environment. We need to be vigilant to keep our land, air, and waters free of real pollution, particulates, heavy metals, and pathogens, but carbon dioxide (CO2 ) is not one of these pollutants. Carbon is the stuff of life. Our bodies are made of carbon. A normal human exhales around 1 kg of CO2 (the simplest chemically stable molecule of carbon in the earth’s atmosphere) per day. Before the industrial period, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was 270 ppm. At the present time, the concentration is about 390 ppm, 0.039 percent of all atmospheric molecules and less than
percent of that in our breath. About fifty million years ago, a brief moment in the long history of life on earth, geological evidence indicates, CO2 levels were several thousand ppm, much higher than now. And life flourished abundantly.

Now the Environmental Protection Agency wants to regulate atmospheric CO2 as a
“pollutant.” According to my Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, to pollute is “to make or render unclean, to defile, to desecrate, to profane.” By breathing are we rendering the air unclean, defiling or desecrating it? Efforts are underway to remedy the old-fashioned, restrictive definition of pollution.
The current Wikipedia entry on air pollution, for example, now asserts that pollution includes: “carbon dioxide (CO2)—a colorless, odorless, non-toxic greenhouse gas associated with ocean acidification, emitted from sources such as combustion, cement production, and respiration.”

As far as green plants are concerned, CO2 is not a pollutant, but part of their daily bread—like water, sunlight, nitrogen, and other essential elements. Most green plants evolved at CO2 levels of several thousand ppm, many times higher than now. Plants grow better and have better flowers and fruit at higher levels. Commercial greenhouse operators recognize this when they artificially increase the concentrations inside their greenhouses to over 1000 ppm.

Wallis Simpson, the woman for whom King Edward VIII renounced the British throne, supposedly said, “A woman can’t be too rich or too thin.” But in reality, you can get too much or too little of a good thing. Whether we should be glad or worried about increasing levels of CO2 depends on quantitative numbers, not just qualitative considerations.

How close is the current atmosphere to the upper or lower limit for CO2? Did we have just the right concentration at the preindustrial level of 270 ppm? Reading breathless media reports about CO2 “pollution” and about minimizing our carbon footprints, one might think that the earth cannot have too little CO2, as Simpson thought one couldn’t be too thin—a view which was also overstated, as we have seen from the sad effects of anorexia in so many young women. Various geo-engineering schemes are being discussed for scrubbing CO2 from the air and cleansing the atmosphere of the “pollutant.” There is no lower limit for human beings, but there is for human life. We would be perfectly healthy in
a world with little or no atmospheric CO2—except that we would have nothing to eat and a few other minor inconveniences, because most plants stop growing if the levels drop much below 150 ppm. If we want to continue to be fed and clothed by the products of green plants, we can have too little CO2.

The minimum acceptable value for plants is not that much below the 270 ppm preindustrial value. It is possible that this is not enough, that we are better off with our current level, and would be better off with more still. There is evidence that California orange groves are about 30 percent more productive today than they were 150 years ago because of the increase of atmospheric CO2.

Although human beings and many other animals would do well with no CO2 at all in the air, there is an upper limit that we can tolerate. Inhaling air with a concentration of a few percent, similar to the concentration of the air we exhale, hinders the diffusional exchange of CO2 between the blood and gas in the lung. Both the United States Navy (for submariners) and nasa (for astronauts) have performed extensive studies of human tolerance to CO2. As a result of these studies, the Navy recommends an upper limit of about 8000 ppm for cruises of ninety days, and nasa recommends an upper limit of 5000 ppm for missions of one thousand days, both assuming a total pressure of one atmosphere. Higher levels are acceptable for missions of only a few days.

We conclude that atmospheric CO2 levels should be above 150 ppm to avoid harming green plants and below about 5000 ppm to avoid harming people. That is a very wide range, and our atmosphere is much closer to the lower end than to the upper end. The current rate of burning fossil fuels adds about 2 ppm per year to the atmosphere, so that getting from the current level to 1000 ppm would take about 300 years—and 1000 ppm is still less than what most plants would prefer, and much less than either the nasa
or the Navy limit for human beings.

Yet there are strident calls for immediately stopping further increases in CO2 levels and reducing the current level. As we have discussed, animals would not even notice a doubling of CO2 and plants would love it. The supposed reason for limiting it is to stop global warming—or, since the predicted warming has failed to be nearly as large as computer models forecast, to stop climate change. Climate change itself has been embarrassingly uneventful, so another rationale for reducing CO2 is now promoted: to stop the hypothetical increase of extreme climate events like hurricanes or tornados. But this does not necessarily follow. The frequency of extreme events has either not changed or
has decreased in the 150 years that CO2 levels have increased from 270 to 390 ppm.

Let me turn to some of the problems the non-pollutant CO2 is supposed to cause. More CO2 is supposed to cause flooded cities, parched agriculture, tropical diseases in Alaska, etc., and even an epidemic of kidney stones. It does indeed cause some warming of our planet, and we should thank Providence for that, because without the greenhouse warming of CO2 and its more potent partners, water vapor and clouds, the earth would be too cold to sustain its current abundance of life.

Other things being equal, more CO2 will cause more warming. The question is how much warming, and whether the increased CO2 and the warming it causes will be good or bad for the planet.

The argument starts something like this. CO2 levels have increased from about 280 ppm to 390 ppm over the past 150 years or so, and the earth has warmed by about 0.8 degree Celsius during that time. Therefore the warming is due to CO2. But correlation is not causation. Roosters crow every morning at sunrise, but that does not mean the rooster caused the sun to rise. The sun will still rise on Monday if you decide to have the rooster for Sunday dinner.

There have been many warmings and coolings in the past when the CO2 levels did not change. A well-known example is the medieval warming, about the year 1000, when the Vikings settled Greenland (when it was green) and wine was exported from England. This warm period was followed by the “little ice age” when the Thames would frequently freeze over during the winter. There is no evidence for significant increase of CO2 in the medieval warm period, nor for a significant decrease at the time of the subsequent little ice age. Documented famines with millions of deaths occurred during the little ice age because the
cold weather killed the crops. Since the end of the little ice age, the earth has been warming in fits and starts, and humanity’s quality of life has improved accordingly.

A rare case of good correlation between CO2 levels and temperature is provided by ice-core records of the cycles of glacial and interglacial periods of the last million years of so. But these records show that changes in temperature preceded changes in CO2 levels, so that the levels were an effect of temperature changes. This was probably due to outgassing of CO2 from the warming oceans and the reverse effect when they cooled.

The most recent continental ice sheets began to melt some twenty thousand years ago. During the “Younger Dryas” some 12,000 years ago, the earth very dramatically cooled and warmed by as much as 10 degrees Celsius in fifty years.

The earth’s climate has always been changing. Our present global warming is not at all unusual by the standards of geological history, and it is probably benefiting the biosphere. Indeed, there is very little correlation between the estimates of CO2 and of the earth’s temperature over the past 550 million years (the “Phanerozoic” period). The message is clear that several factors must influence the earth’s temperature, and that while CO2 is one of these factors, it is seldom the dominant one. The other factors are not well understood.
Plausible candidates are spontaneous variations of the complicated fluid flow patterns in the oceans and atmosphere of the earth—perhaps influenced by continental drift, volcanoes, variations of the earth’s orbital parameters (ellipticity, spin-axis orientation, etc.), asteroid and comet impacts, variations in the sun’s output (not only the visible radiation but the amount of ultraviolet light, and the solar wind with its magnetic field), variations in cosmic rays leading to variations in cloud cover, and other causes.

The existence of the little ice age and the medieval warm period were an embarrassment to the global-warming establishment, because they showed that the current warming is almost indistinguishable from previous warmings and coolings that had nothing to do with burning fossil fuel. The organization charged with producing scientific support for the climate change crusade, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), finally found a solution. They rewrote the climate history of the past 1000 years with the celebrated “hockey stick” temperature record.

The first IPCC report, issued in 1990, showed both the medieval warm period and
the little ice age very clearly. In the IPCC’s 2001 report was a graph that purported to show the earth’s mean temperature since the year 1000. A yet more extreme version of the hockey stick graph made the cover of the Fiftieth Anniversary Report of the United Nation’s World Meteorological Organization. To the surprise of everyone who knew about the strong evidence for the little ice age and the medieval climate optimum, the graph showed a nearly constant temperature from the year 1000 until about 150 years ago, when the temperature began to rise abruptly like the blade of a hockey stick. The inference was that this was due to the anthropogenic “pollutant” CO2.

This damnatia memoriae of inconvenient facts was simply expunged from the 2001 IPCC report, much as Trotsky and Yezhov were removed from Stalin’s photographs by dark-room specialists in the later years of the dictator’s reign. There was no explanation of why both the medieval warm period and the little ice age, very clearly shown in the 1990 report, had simply disappeared eleven years later.

The IPCC and its worshipful supporters did their best to promote the hockey-stick temperature curve. But as John Adams remarked, “Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” The hockey-stick curve caught the attention of two Canadians, Steve McIntyre, a mining consultant, and an academic statistician, Ross McKitrick. As they began to look more carefully at the original data—much of it from tree rings—and at the analysis that led to the hockey stick, they became more and more puzzled. By hard, remarkably detailed, and persistent work over many years, consistently
frustrated in their efforts to obtain original data and data-analysis methods, they showed that the hockey stick was not supported by observational data. An excellent, recent history of this episode is A. W. Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion.

About the time of the Copenhagen Climate Conference in the fall of 2009, another nasty thing happened to the global-warming establishment. A Russian server released large numbers of e-mails and other files from computers of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia. Among the files released were e-mails between members of the power structure of the climate crusade, “the team.” These files were, or should have been, very embarrassing to their senders and recipients. A senior scientist from CRU wrote, for example: “PS, I’m getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU
station temperature data. Don’t any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a freedom of information act.”

A traditional way to maintain integrity in science is through peer review, the anonymous examination of a scientific paper by qualified, competing scientists before publication. In a responsible peer review, the authors may be required to make substantial revisions to correct any flaws in the science or methodology before their paper is published. But peer review has largely failed in climate science. Global warming alarmists have something like Gadaffi’s initial air superiority over rag-tag opponents in Libya.

Consider this comment from one of the most respected IPCC leaders, as revealed in the CRU e-mails: “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow—even if we have to define what the peer-review literature is.” And consider the CRU e-mail comment on a journal that committed the mortal sin of publishing one of the heretical papers: “I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this
journal.” Peer review in climate science means that the “team” recommends publication of each other’s work, and tries to keep any off-message paper from being accepted for publication.

James Madison reminds us in The Federalist Papers that “no man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time.” Madison goes on to observe that the smaller the community, the more likely that parties and judges will be one and the same.

Let me summarize how the key issues appear to me, a working scientist with a better background than most in the physics of climate. CO2 really is a greenhouse gas and other things being equal, adding the gas to the atmosphere by burning coal, oil, and natural gas will modestly increase the surface temperature of the earth. Other things being equal, doubling the CO2 concentration, from our current 390 ppm to 780 ppm will directly cause about 1 degree Celsius in warming. At the current rate of CO2 increase in the atmosphere—about 2 ppm per year—it would take about 195 years to achieve this doubling. The combination of a slightly warmer earth and more CO2 will greatly increase the production of food, wood, fiber, and other products by green plants, so the increase will be good for the planet, and will easily outweigh any negative effects. Supposed
calamities like the accelerated rise of sea level, ocean acidification, more extreme climate, tropical diseases near the poles, and so on are greatly exaggerated.

“Mitigation” and control efforts that have been proposed will enrich a favored few with good political ties—at the expense of the great majority of mankind, including especially the poor and the citizens of developing nations. These fforts will make almost no change in earth’s temperature. Spain’s recent experiment with green energy destroyed several pre-existing jobs for every green job it created, and it nearly brought the country to bankruptcy.

The frightening warnings that alarmists offer about the effects of doubling CO2 are based on computer models that assume that the direct warming effect of CO2 is multiplied by a large “feedback factor” from CO2-induced changes in water vapor and clouds, which supposedly contribute much more to the greenhouse warming of the earth than CO2. But there is observational evidence that the feedback factor is small and may even be negative. The models are not in good agreement with observations—even if they appear to fit the temperature rise over the last 150 years very well.

Indeed, the computer programs that produce climate change models have been “tuned” to get the desired answer. The values of various parameters like clouds and the concentrations of anthropogenic aerosols are adjusted to get the best fit to observations. And—perhaps partly because of that—they have been unsuccessful in predicting future climate, even over periods as short as fifteen years. In fact, the real values of most parameters, and the physics of how they affect the earth’s climate, are in most cases only roughly known, too roughly to supply accurate enough data for computer predictions. In my judgment, and in that of many other scientists familiar with the issues, the main problem with models has been their treatment of clouds, changes of which probably have a much bigger effect on the temperature of the earth than changing levels of CO2.

What, besides the bias toward a particular result, is wrong with the science? Scientific progress proceeds by the interplay of theory and observation. Theory explains observations and makes predictions about what will be observed in the future. Observations anchor our understanding and weed out the theories that don’t work. This has been the scientific method for more than three hundred years. Recently, the advent of the computer has made possible another branch of inquiry: computer simulation models. Properly used, computer models can enhance and speed up scientific progress. But they are not meant to replace theory and observation and to serve as an authority of their own. We know they fail in economics. All of the proposed controls that would have such a significant impact on the world’s economic future are based on computer models that are so complex and chaotic that many runs are needed before we can get an “average” answer. Yet the models have failed the simple scientific test of prediction. We don’t even have a theory for how accurate the models should be.

There are many honest, hardworking climate scientists who are trying to understand the effects of CO2 on climate, but their work has fallen under suspicion because of the hockey-stick scandal and many other exaggerations about the dangers of increasing CO2. What has transformed climate science from a normal intellectual discipline to a matter of so much controversy?

A major problem has been the co-opting of climate science by politics, ambition, greed, and what seems to be a hereditary human need for a righteous cause. What better cause than saving the planet? Especially if one can get ample, secure funding at the same time? Huge amounts of money are available from governments and wealthy foundations for climate institutes and for climate-related research.

Funding for climate studies is second only to funding for biological sciences. Large academic empires, prizes, elections to honorary societies, fellowships, and other perquisites go to those researchers whose results may help “save the planet.” Every day we read about some real or contrived environmental or ecological effect “proven” to arise from global warming. The total of such claimed effects now runs in the hundreds, all the alleged result of an unexceptional century-long warming of less than 1 degree Celsius. Government subsidies, loan guarantees, and captive customers go to green companies.
Carbon-tax revenues flow to governments. As the great Russian poet Pushkin said in his novella Dubrovsky, “If there happens to be a trough, there will be pigs.” Any doubt about apocalyptic climate scenarios could remove many troughs.

What about those who doubt the scientific basis of these claims, or who simply don’t like what is being done to the scientific method they were taught to apply and uphold? Publications of contrary research results in mainstream journals are rare. The occasional heretical article is the result of an inevitable, protracted battle with those who support the dogma and who have their hands on the scales of peer review. As mentioned above, we know from the Climategate emails that the team conspired to prevent contrary publications from seeing the light of day and even discussed getting rid of an editor who
seemed to be inclined to admit such contentious material.

Skeptics’ motives are publicly impugned; denigrating names are used routinely in media reports and the blogosphere; and we now see attempts to use the same tactics that Big Brother applied to the skeptical hero, Winston Smith, in Orwell’s 1984. In 2009 a conference of “ecopsychologists” was held at the University of West England to discuss the obvious psychological problems resident in those who do not adhere to the global warming dogma. The premise of these psychologists was that scientists and members of the general population who express objective doubt about the propagated view of global warming are
suffering from a kind of mental illness. We know from the Soviet experience that a society can find it easy to consider dissidents to be mentally deranged and act accordingly.

The management of most scientific societies has enthusiastically signed on to the global warming bandwagon. This is not surprising, since governments, as well as many states and foundations, generously fund those who reinforce their desired outcomes under the cover of saving the planet. Certain private industries are also involved: those positioned to profit from enacted controls as well as financial institutions heavily invested in “green technologies” whose rationale disappears the moment global warming is widely understood to be a non-problem. There are known connections and movements of people involved in government policy, scientific societies, and private industry, all with the
common thread of influencing the outcome of a set of programs and investments underpinned by the supposed threat of global warming.

My own trade union, the American Physical Society (APS), is a good example, but hardly the worst. An APS Council statement issued on November 18, 2007 states: “The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security, and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.” This is pretty strong language for physicists, for whom skepticism about evidence was once considered a virtue, and nothing was incontrovertible.

In the fall of 2009 a petition, organized by Fellow of the American Physical Society, Roger Cohen, and containing the signatures of hundreds of distinguished APS members was presented to the APS management with a request that at least the truly embarrassing word “incontrovertible” be taken out of the statement. The APS management’s response was to threaten the petitioners, while grudgingly appointing a committee to consider the request. It was exactly what James Madison warned against. The committee included members whose careers depended on global warming alarmism, and the predictable result was that not one word was changed. Bad as the actions of the APS were, they were far better
than those of most other scientific societies, which refused to even reconsider extreme statements on climate.

The situation is even more lamentable for the general public, which is fed a constant stream of propaganda by specialists in environmental issues from the mainstream media and well-funded alarmist blogs. Not unlike functionaries of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth in 1984, with its motto “Ignorance is Strength,” many members of the environmental news media dutifully and uncritically promote the party line of the climate crusade.

However, the situation is slowly getting better. Skeptics are more numerous and better organized than before. In a few cases, leading former adherents have publicly and courageously spoken out against the dogma and its core of establishment promoters. The IPCC itself has come under severe criticism by the international scientific establishment for its series of bizarre errors and organizational failings. Under pressure from a dissident group of Fellows, the Royal Society moved to meaningfully moderate its former radically alarmist position on global warming. And perhaps most important of all, public skepticism has increased significantly, and with it has come a major drop in support of the climate
crusade’s attempt to seize control of the “pollutant,” CO2.

I began with a quotation from the preface of the first edition of Mackay’s Extraordinary
Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, and it is worth recalling now a quotation from the preface of the second edition: “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”

In our efforts to conserve the created world, we should not concentrate our efforts on CO2. We should instead focus on issues like damage to local landscapes and waterways by strip mining, inadequate cleanup, hazards to miners, and the release of real pollutants and poisons like mercury, other heavy metals, and organic carcinogens. Much of the potential harm from coal mining can be eliminated, for example, by requirements that land be restored to a condition that is at least as good as, and preferably better than, when the
mining began.

Life is about making decisions, and decisions are about trade-offs. We can choose to promote investment in technology that addresses real problems and scientific research that will let us cope with real problems more efficiently. Or we can be caught up in a crusade that seeks to suppress energy use, economic growth, and the benefits that come from the creation of national wealth.

William Happer is the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton
University.

 

Foreword
The Global Warming Policy Foundation is proud to publish this
dispassionate but devastating critique of UK climate change policies,
and of the alleged basis on which those policies rest, by one of our
trustees, Andrew Turnbull.
What makes Lord Turnbull’s analysis and conclusions particularly
telling is the unique authority he brings to bear on the subject.
Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service from 2002
until 2005, before that permanent head of the Treasury for four
years, and before that permanent head of the Department of
the Environment for four years, Lord Turnbull has had unsurpassed
experience of policy-making at the highest level under governments
of both parties.
His measured verdict provides important lessons which ministers
and senior officials in particular, but also parliamentarians, eminent
scientists and the media, all need to reflect on.
Nigel Lawson
May 2011

 

 

Lord Turnbull
Andrew Turnbull was Permanent Secretary, Environment Department, 1994-98;
Permanent Secretary to the Treasury 1998-2002, Cabinet Secretary and Head
of the Home Civil Service 2002-05. He is now a crossbench member of the
House of Lords.

Summary
The UK Government has put in place an extensive and ambitious set of measures as part
of a programme to reduce CO2 by 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050. This is a unilateral
undertaking, enshrined in a legal duty by the Climate Change act 2008.

This objective is based on the narrative created by the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC), who believe that man-made emissions are the principal driver
of climate change in recent decades; that in the absence of policy response the global
temperature is likely to rise by 3°C by the end of this century (this is derived from a variety
of scenarios ranging from 1.0° to 6.0°C.) [1]

An increase of 2°C has been adopted in international policy debates as a threshold
beyond which serious detrimental impacts will occur such as, e.g. sea level rise, drought,
flood, retreat of glaciers, spread of disease, threat to food supplies etc. CO2 emissions
should be reduced to a level which would prevent that threshold being exceeded. For
the UK, that is held to require a reduction of 80 percent.

Although there is agreement among scientists that global temperatures have been
rising (around 0.8°C in the past 150 years), that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that CO2
concentrations have been rising; that other things being equal a doubling in CO2
concentration would on its own generate about a 1°C increase, there is little agreement
beyond that. Virtually every step in the chain of causation is disputed and even the
basic data on measurements is challenged. There is huge controversy about the relative
contribution of man-made CO2 versus natural forces such as the sun, cosmic rays, clouds
and the oceans. Many scientists would support an alternative hypothesis that the globe
has been on a gentle warming trend since the end of the Little Ice Age around two
hundred years ago, with alternating periods measured in decades of faster and slower
growth, or even periods of moderate decline. Such an alternative view would not justify
the alarmism which characterizes much of the public debate.

The Really Inconvenient Truth is that the propositions of the IPCC do not bear the weight
of certainty with which they are expressed. However, the purpose of the paper is not to
argue that there is another truth which should become the new consensus, but to point
out the doubts that exist about the IPCC viewpoint and serious flaws in its procedures. It is
also to question why the UK Government has placed such heavy bets on one particular
source of advice.

Even if the IPCC scenarios were correct, the impacts are frequently selective and
exaggerated. The economic policy choices being made will not minimize the cost
of mitigation. The paper concludes with a call for more humility from scientists, more
rational reflection from politicians, and more challenge from our parliamentarians.
IPCC Summary For Policy Makers, 2007

The Really Inconvenient Truth
UK Government Policy
The UK Government takes great pride in its framework for climate change. It sees it
as both comprehensive and ambitious, as one of the most an advanced in the world,
providing a platform for moral leadership in global negotiations.
What are the components of this framework?

a) A clear vision of the science which is based on the work of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Driven by man–made emissions of CO2, the
CO2 content of the atmosphere has risen from 280 ppm in the pre–industrial era to
over 400 ppm and, unless checked, will double to around 550 ppm during the course
of this century.

b) This rise in CO2 is the principal cause of the increase in temperature of 0.8°C over the
past 150 years. In the business-as-usual scenario, temperature is projected to rise by
1–1.5° C within the next 50 years, and by around 3° C by the end of the century.

c) If temperature rises more than 2°C, various adverse consequences will ensue,
eg rising sea levels, droughts or floods, increased violence of storms, damage to food
production, the spread of disease etc.

d) To limit temperature change to no more than 2°C global emissions of CO2 need to be
halved. Given their contribution to CO2 to date the developed nations should take
the lion’s share, i.e. reducing their emissions by around 80 percent.

The UK Government has argued for this in climate change treaty negotiations, but in
the absence of any agreement (a legally binding set of international limits now seems
unattainable) it has set its own limits.

The UK Government has created a powerful structure through the Climate Change Act
2008. Its opening clause creates a legally binding obligation:

“It is the duty of the Secretary of State to ensure that the net carbon account for the year
2050 is at least 80 percent lower than the 1990 baseline.”

Taking account of growth in the economy, this means that 40 years from now each unit of
GDP must be produced with only 5 percent of the CO2 it is currently.

The Act then goes on to establish the Committee on Climate Change , whose job it is to set
5-year targets on the way to the final goal, and to report to Parliament on whether the
actions being taken will deliver those targets.

A wide range of instruments has been introduced. At the EU level there are targets for
2020 to reduce CO2 emissions by 20 percent, with an offer to go to 30 percent as part of
an international agreement, and an obligation to produce 15 percent of energy from
renewable sources. To achieve this, electricity generation from renewables will need to
exceed 30 percent. The EU has also set up an Emissions Trading Scheme (the ETS), targets for the efficiency of vehicle fleets and a mandatory component of road fuel to come from biofuels.

At the UK level, numerous other schemes have been set in place including:

• The Climate Change Levy; the Carbon Reduction Commitment; feed-in-tariffs, targets
for wind energy, a carbon capture and storage (CCS) obligation for coal-fired power
stations, and changes in the planning system to speed up replacement of our
nuclear fleet.

• In the pipeline are proposals for a carbon price floor and an energy efficiency
Green Deal.

It will no longer be simply larger energy users who are in the business of carbon reduction
but every firm, large or small, and every household will be affected.

But there is an Inconvenient Truth, and it is not the same Inconvenient Truth of Al Gore’s
film. The Real Inconvenient Truth is that this whole structure is built on shaky foundations and there is controversy about virtually every link in the chain of causation.

One can analyse this agenda at three levels:

• First, the basic science, i.e. the relationship between CO2 and temperature

• Secondly, the impacts, i.e. for any given rise in temperature the real world impact on
sea levels, rainfall, drought etc

• Thirdly, for any given picture of impacts, what are the appropriate economic policies?

The three tiers correspond to the three working groups in the IPCC structure.

What is frequently described as a “consensus” is no such thing. There is a huge controversy
at each level of the analysis. Let us look first at the science. In its Third Assessment (2003),
the IPCC compared its view to an ice hockey stick. For the past thousand years, global
temperatures were presented as fluctuating within a narrow range, possibly around a
slight downward trend. But since the arrival of industrialization, the output of CO2 has risen sharply, producing the sharp rise in global temperatures, the so-called man-made or
Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW).

The Really Inconvenient Truth

This has been challenged on a number of fronts:

• Has the back history being correctly described? Many scientists believe that in the
IPCC’s later reports the fluctuations in the past 1000 years have been wrongly flattened
out, underplaying a Medieval Warm Period (1000 -1350 AD), followed by a Little Ice
Age (1550-1850), and the recovery from it over the last 150 years. This alternative view
indicates that our climate has been variable long before the recent movements in
CO2. Early reports from the IPCC acknowledged these fluctuations but, of course, they
are inconvenient to the AGW believers, one of whom e–mailed another saying ”We
must get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.” Writing the MWP out of the script made it
easier to claim that present temperature levels were unprecedented.

Fig 1 IPCC First Assessment Report (FAR) – 1990 Original IPCC depiction of the MWP and LIA

 

Fig 2 IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR) – 2001
The so-called Hockey Stick got rid of the Medieval Warm Period

Over this period the global temperature has risen by 0.8°C, but unlike the rise in CO2
which has been pretty steady, there have been markedly different phases.

Temperature rose rapidly from 1900–1940 when the CO2 increase was modest,
followed by a small drop in temperature between 1940–70 despite CO2 growth
being particularly strong at this time. Between 1970 and the late 1990s both CO2 and
temperature increased strongly together. Over the past 12 years or so temperature has
been on a plateau despite CO2 continuing to grow.
• Even the history of the last 150 years presents a lot of problems.

Fig 3 Global Temperature Record 1850- 2010
Source: Climatic Research Unit, 2011

Fig 4 Adapted from J. Knight et al., Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc.,
August 2009
The Really Inconvenient Truth
See presentation by Professor Vincent Courtillot at the International Conference on Energy and Climate Berlin 3-4 December 2010
If CO2 were as important as many AGW theorists claim, why has temperature not
followed a steady upward path? Immediately it becomes obvious that the increases
of CO2 and of temperature are poorly correlated and that one needs to bring other
factors into the story such as the sun, clouds and the way heat is stored in, and
distributed around the oceans. So it is very unclear what is the relative contribution of
natural forces and what is man-made. The allocation between anthropogenic
influences and natural influences produced by the IPCC has been strongly challenged.
• One needs to look at climate sensitivity, i.e. the coefficient between CO2 and
temperature. No one questions that CO2 has greenhouse properties. A cubic meter
of air with 550 ppm in it will retain more heat than one with 280ppm. But most scientists
will admit that a doubling of CO2 alone will not produce the 3°C or more that is built
into the IPCC models. The pure CO2 effect for a doubling in concentration is probably
closer to 1°C. So where do the higher figures come from?
• They come principally from what is assumed to happen to water vapour, which is
a much more prevalent and powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. A hotter atmosphere
will hold more water vapour. But does this automatically mean that there will be a
positive, i.e. amplifying, feedback effect? Not necessarily. Low level cloud does have
an insulating property but high-level cloud also has what is known as an albedo effect,
reflecting the sun back into space, which is why cloudy days are cooler. The IPCC
models have assumed but not proven a strongly positive, ie amplifying, feedback, but
have ignored the possibility of negative feedbacks. Some scientists such as Professor
Lindzen of MIT argue that the net effect could go either way.
The problems of measurement are formidable. Even in the era of reliable instruments,
which have been available for the last 150 years, there are problems of aggregation
of individual readings[2] and there are so-called heat island effects where urbanisation
may have affected the time series. But tracing the history back over millennia presents
even greater problems. Efforts are made to splice together records of proxies such
as ice cores, tree rings, ocean sediments and also social history. But the statistical
manipulations of the data required make it possible to achieve almost any result.
Also controversial is the way the IPCC, despite all the difficulties of measurement and
the substantial ‘play’ in the various linkages, has made categorical statements of its
findings. For example, its Fourth Assessment (2007) states:
“Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since
the mid-20th century is very likely (their emphasis) due to anthropogenic
greenhouse gas concentrations.”

In IPCC usage very likely means better than 90 percent chance. Far from being a
consensus conclusion, this has been specifically challenged by many scientists.
To summarise this part of the argument:
The IPCC view, upon which the UK Government has based its policy, and around
which much of the international debate takes place, sees anthropogenic CO2 as
the principal driver of the increase in temperature. It also foresees a substantial
acceleration in temperature change, possibly reaching 3°C by the end of the century.
An alternative view is that there has been a gentle rise in temperature as the world
comes out of the Little Ice Age, with multi-decadal oscillations around the trend. The
increase in temperature by the end of the century is likely to be significantly lower than
foreseen by the IPCC We have experienced a faster phase of temperature rise from
the early 1970’s to the mid 1990’s and we have been in one the slower phases for the
past 15 years or so. In this view both the trend and the fluctuations are largely the result
of natural influences, with CO2 being possibly a modest net addition.

Fig 5

The figure shows that the linear trend between 1880 and 2000 is a continuation of the recovery from the LIA, together with the superposed multi-decadal oscillation. It is assumed that the recovery from the LIA would continue to 2100, together with the superposed multi-decadal oscillation.
This view could explain the halting of the warming after 2000. The
observed temperature in 2008 is shown by a red dot with a green arrow. It also shows the temperature rise after 2000 predicted by the IPCC. It has been suggested by the IPCC that the thick red line portion was caused mostly by the greenhouse effect, so the IPCC’s future prediction is a sort of extension of the red line. For detail, see Syun-Ichi Akasofu: On the recovery from the Little Ice Age.
Natural Science, 2:11 (2010)Charity Commission

The Really Inconvenient Truth
The IPCC view is a narrowly based and over simplified one, concentrating heavily on
the impact of CO2 while downplaying the role of natural forces. David Whitehouse, the
former BBC Science Correspondent, highlighted the difference:
“How many times have you seen, read or heard some climate “expert” or other
say that mankind’s greenhouse gas emissions are largely responsible for the
unprecedented warming we have seen over the past century, and especially over the
past 30 years. It is as if, to some, nature has stepped back, leaving mankind to take
over the climate. In reality, whatever one’s predictions for the future, such claims are
gross exaggerations and misrepresentations. Natural and human climate influences
mingle and even today the natural effects dominate.”
The policy conclusions of these different viewpoints are quite distinct. One sees
calamity just around the corner, producing calls for dramatic CO2 reduction. The
alternative sees changes which are within the capacity of the world to adapt, leaving
time to adopt measured and progressive policy responses rather than one big heave
to solve the problem.
Impacts
I can deal with Level 2 of the IPCC’s work on impacts very quickly. In my view this is where their work is at its shabbiest; lots of dramatic claims about sea levels, melting glaciers, ice, crop yields, extinction of species, eg polar bears. Much of this has been shown to have come from non peer-reviewed material, the so-called grey literature and, worse still, some of it was even drawn from material supplied by green NGOs. The InterAcademy Council (IAC), a collective of the leading scientific academies of the world, produced a report in 2010 which was critical of a number of IPCC’s procedures [3]. It was very critical on the grey literature point, recommending that :
“The IPCC should strengthen and enforce its procedure for the use of
unpublished and non-peer reviewed literature, including providing specific
guidance on how to evaluate such information, adding guidelines on what
types of literature are unacceptable, and ensuring that unpublished and
non-peer-reviewed literature is appropriately flagged in the report.”
There has been a consistent pattern of cherry-picking, exaggeration, highlighting
of extremes, and failure to acknowledge beneficial effects. By and large, humanity
InterAcademy Council Report 2010: Climate Change Assessment. Review of the Processes and Procedures of the IPCC has prospered in the warmer periods. Plants grow faster and capture more CO2 in an atmosphere that is hotter, wetter and more CO2 rich. Cold causes more deaths than heat.
The main cause of more storm damage has been that we have put more people and
property in harm’s way. The fears about the spread of malaria are largely discredited.
The IAC was particularly critical of the IPCC’s Working Group II on Impacts:
“The authors reported high confidence in some statements for which there
is little evidence. Furthermore, by making vague statements that were
difficult to refute, authors were able to attach “high confidence” to the
statements. The Working Group II Summary for Policy Makers contains many
such statements that are not supported sufficiently in the literature, not put
in perspective, and nor expressed clearly”
Let me now turn to Level 3, economic policy.
• The first problem is that policy has been based on a preponderantly warmist view of
the world. Many such as the Institution of Civil Engineers think that too little attention
has been paid to adaptation, i.e. being more resilient whichever way the sum of
natural forces and CO2 takes us, up or down. This warmist view of the world may
explain why we have been underprepared for cold winters.
• A major problem of UK policy is its unilateralism. Our Climate Change Act imposes legal
duties, regardless of what ever else other countries do, or do not do. The UK, producing
only 2-3 percent of world CO2 emissions, can have only a minimal effect on the global
warming outcome. If we push too hard on decarbonisation by raising the price of
carbon through a range of instruments we will suffer double jeopardy. Energy-using
industries will migrate and, if the climate pessimists are right, we will still have to pay to
adapt, e.g. by raising our flood defences. In my view we should concentrate on those
things which have a clear no regret benefit, of which there are many, and advance
into the rest of the agenda only as part of international action. There is furious row in
the EU Commission on precisely this point. The Climate Action Commissioner wants to
go beyond the 20 percent target already agreed and adopt the more ambitious 30
percent target which was proposed only if there were an international agreement,
while the Energy Commissioner is strongly opposed.
The logical economist’s approach is to rank policy responses according to the cost
per tonne of CO2 abated and then work through the merit order, starting with the most
effective. Or, what amounts to the same thing, set a price on carbon and then let the
various technologies – gas, coal with CCS, nuclear, wind, tidal, energy efficiency etc,
fight it out for market share.
But the EU Renewables Obligation is the denial of this logic. One particular set of
technologies, and especially wind, has been given a guaranteed market share and
The Really Inconvenient Truth a guaranteed indexed price, regardless of how competitive it is. The current pursuit of wind power is folly. Its cost per kWh substantially exceeds that of other low carbon sources such as nuclear when account is taken of intermittency and the cost of extending the grid far from where consumers are located. There is a constant confusion between installed capacity for wind and its actual output, which is, typically, about 20-25 percent of the former. There is also the problem that the coldest periods in the UK often coincide with low wind speeds.
There has been in this country initially hostility to nuclear power and now at best
a half-heartedness. The Secretary of State at Department of Energy and Climate
Change has called nuclear a tried, tested and failed technology. It may be that in the
UK historically it has not been as successful as it might have been but it has for 50 years
provided around 20 percent of our electricity reliably, competitively and safely. Just 20
miles from our coast France has produced over 2/3rds of its electricity from nuclear and
regards this as a great success. Clearly events in Japan are raising new questions about
nuclear power. We cannot yet say whether there is a general lesson about current
designs or whether the lesson is about 40 year old designs in seismically active areas.
There is something profoundly illogical in Nick Clegg’s demand that nuclear power can
only go ahead in the UK if it receives no public subsidy whatsoever, while at the same
time promoting huge subsidies for renewables.
The feed-in tariff mechanism is fast becoming a scandal. Those lucky enough to own
buildings large enough on which to install solar panels, or enough land for a wind farm,
have been receiving 30-40p per kwh, for electricity, which is retailed at only 11p. The
loss is paid for by a levy on businesses and households. It is astonishing that the Liberals
who attach such importance to fairness turn a blind eye to this transfer from poor to
rich, running to £billions a year. If you live in a council tower block in Lambeth you don’t
have much opportunity to get your nose into this trough. The good news is that, at last,
the government is beginning to cut back on subsidies to large solar operators, following
the trend set in Germany and Spain.
There is a major new development which fits the description of a disruptive technology,
that is the introduction of new drilling techniques which make it possible to extract gas
from shale. This has dramatically widened the geographic availability of gas, has
produced a massive upgrading of gas reserves and is decoupling gas prices from oil.
There is no peak in hydrocarbons. Gas has the advantage that it produces less than
half the CO2 that coal produces. So we face a happy prospect that we can replace
a lot of coal burning with gas, reduce energy prices, and make a big reduction in
CO2 emissions, albeit not the complete decarbonisation sought by some, achieving in
effect a dash for gas at the global level. Certainly the opportunity cost of renewables
has risen, and perhaps that of nuclear power too.

Another defence of the AGW agenda is the so-called green jobs argument, ie we
should be in the vanguard of adopting green technologies so that we get first mover
advantage as a supplier of these technologies. My view is simple. If a technology can
justify itself without massive subsidy we should build up our research and our skills. But if
a technology exists only by virtue of subsidy we only impoverish ourselves by trying to
build jobs on such shaky foundations.
To summarise on policy:
We should concentrate on those measures which are no regret, which improve
resource productivity, improve security of supply and with it our commercial bargaining
position, and which do not depress living standards. In my book these are stopping
deforestation, raising the energy efficiency of our buildings and our vehicle fleet
(though the effect of greater energy efficiency on CO2 reduction may be limited if
consumption is sustained by lowering the effective price of energy), investment in
nuclear power, an expansion of energy from waste and, if we are going to adopt CCS,
and the economics has yet to be established, it would be better to attach it to new
gas-fired stations rather retrofitting old coal-fired stations. It also means much less wind
and solar energy, and an end to current encouragement of biofuels.
IPCC
At the heart of the present debate is the IPCC. It likes to portray itself as an objective
and independent source of advice on climate change. It is, in fact, no such thing. Its
stated role is:
“To assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the latest
scientific, technical and socio-economic literature produced worldwide relevant to the
understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change, its observed and projected
impacts, and options for adaptation and mitigation.”
A body with these terms of reference is hardly likely to come up with the conclusion that
nature trumps man. If you go to Barclays inquiring about setting up a bank account you
are hardly likely to be advised that you should go to NatWest.
Its key personnel and lead authors are appointed by governments. Its Summary for Policy
Makers may sound like independent scientists speaking frankly to policy makers but,
in practice, the policy makers join the drafting sessions and ensure they get what their
political masters want. This was another concern of the IAC, who commented on the
difference in content between the SPM and the underlying report:
The Really Inconvenient Truth
“The distillation of the many findings of a massive report necessarily results
in the loss of important nuances and caveats that appear in the Working
Group report. Moreover, the choice of messages and description of topics
may be influenced in subtle ways by political considerations.”
There is a structural flaw in the IPCC. Far from being the distillation of the work of 2,500
scientists to produce a consensus, there is a core of 40-50 at its centre who are closely
related, as colleagues, pupils, teachers, reviewers of each other’s work. The IPCC has
failed to operate a rigorous conflicts of interest policy under which such relationships would be disclosed. It has managed to define a very simple AGW message and has sought to prevent alternative voices from being heard. The IAC criticised a tendency not to give
sufficient weight to alternative views.
In my opinion, the IPCC and its current leadership no longer carry the credibility which
politicians need if they are going to persuade their citizens to swallow some unpleasant
medicine. It is therefore regrettable that the UK Government has taken no steps to find an
alternative and more credible source of advice.
Sociology and Politics
Let me conclude with a few remarks on the sociology and politics of the AGW
phenomenon. First there is the change in the nature of science. Great figures of the
past such as Galileo and Darwin did not receive large government research grants and
were not showered with honours. They were driven by curiosity and were prepared to
challenge the established order. Nowadays our environmental scientists have jobs and
research ratings to protect, as well as celebrity and airmiles. There has been a shameful
failure by the grandees of the Royal Society who should have been the guardians of
scientific integrity, upholding its motto “Nullius in verba,” i.e. no one has the final word.
Instead we have seen scientists become campaigners, trying to close down the debate
by claiming that the science is settled, and failing to review rigorously the Climategate
e-mails affair.
There are now plenty of vested interests in the green agenda, whether consultants,
suppliers of green technology or those taking advantage of the economic opportunities.
It is not just the traditional energy suppliers who have positions to defend.
Uncritical adoption of the green agenda by the Conservatives has helped them push
the Blue is Green message as a way of escaping from the nasty party image; but
one suspects that for many in the party the allegiance to the green agenda is more
expedient than committed.
It is regrettable that the UK Parliament has proved so trusting and uncritical of the IPCC
narrative, and so reluctant to question the economic costs being imposed in pursuit
of decarbonisation. It verges on the unconstitutional that the payments being made
under the renewables obligation and feed-in tariffs, and the levies being raised to pay
for them, are routed invisibly through the accounts of the electricity industry rather than
being voted in Estimates or the Finance Bill. I am also disappointed that so many of my
former colleagues in the Civil Service seem so ready to go along unquestioningly with
the consensus.
The media, too, have failed in their mission to challenge and have bought into the
groupthink. It has been left to the blogosphere to provide a platform for different viewpoints.
Where does the religious moralising tone come from? It can be traced back to Chapter 3
of the Book of Genesis. Man was born into Eden in a state of grace, but has damaged his
environment and now must repent and pay for his sins.
To conclude: The purpose of this paper has not been to plump for an alternative orthodoxy
to replace that of the IPCC, but to recognize the major uncertainties that still exist and the
wide range of scientific opinion. We need to acknowledge that there have always been
fluctuations in our climate. Rather that writing natural forces out of the script, we need to
build them into the analysis.
We have witnessed a warming tend in the last 150 years but it has not followed a steady
upward path. We are currently on a plateau. CO2 has probably, ceteris paribus, made a
small positive contribution. Our understanding of the effects of water vapour is still limited and not enough to justify the weight that is put upon it. It is therefore regrettable that the UK Government has chosen to rely so heavily on one source of advice about which
numerous challenges have been made, and whose procedures have such serious flaws.
We need a more eclectic approach and certainly a more modest one. In the words of
President Klaus of the Czech Republic.
“To reduce the interpretation of all kinds of climate change and of global
warming to one variable, CO2, and to a small proportion of that one
variable – human induced CO2 – is impossible to accept.”
From our politicians we need open-mindedness, more rationality, less emotion and less
religiosity; and an end to alarmist propaganda and to attempts to frighten us and our
children. Also we want them to pay more attention to the national interest and less to
being global evangelists.
The Really Inconvenient Truth
Finally we need from our scientists more humility (“Do not claim to be wiser than you are”
Romans 12), and a return to the tradition of scientific curiosity and challenge. We need
more transparency and an end to attempts to freeze out dissenting voices. There
should be more recognition of what they do not know. And acceptance of the Really
Inconvenient Truth – that our understanding of the natural world does not justify the
certainty in which the AGW views are expressed.
Andrew Turnbull
May 2011

The Really Inconvenient Truth
For further information about the GWPF or a print copy of
this report contact:
The Global Warming Policy Foundation
1 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5DB
T 020 7930 6856
M 07553 361717
www.thegwpf.org
Registered in England, no 6962749
Registered with the Charity Commission, n

WSJ EDITORIAL

APRIL 21, 2011

Climate Refugees, Not Found

Discredited by reality, the U.N.’s prophecies go missing

In 2005, the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) published a color-coded map under the
headline “Fifty million climate refugees by 2010.” The primary source for the prediction
was a 2005 paper by environmental scientist Norman Myers.

Six years later, this flood of refugees is nowhere to be found, global average temperatures
are about where they were when the prediction was made—and the U.N. has done a
vanishing act of its own, wiping the inconvenient map from its servers.

The map, which can still be found elsewhere on the Web, disappeared from the
program’s site sometime after April 11, when Gavin Atkins asked on
AsianCorrespondent.com: “What happened to the climate refugees?” It’s now 2011
and, as Mr. Atkins points out, many of the locales that the map identified as
likely sources of climate refugees are “not only not losing people, they are actually
among the fastest growing regions in the world.”

It appears that the assertion was originally made by Professor Norman Myers of Oxford University as far back as 1997 when according to this précis (at the top of the list):

From David Atkin’s “Cover Up: UN Tries To Erase Failed Climate Refugee Prediction” posted in GWPF —

…at least 50 million people could be at risk through increased droughts and other climate dislocations.”

The program’s spokesman tells us the map vanished because “it’s not a
UNEP prediction. . . . that graphic did not represent UNEP views and was an
oversimplification of UNEP views.” He added that the program would like to publish
a clarification, now that journalists are “making hay of it,” except that the staffers
able to do so are “all on holiday for Easter.”

The climate-refugee prediction isn’t the first global warming-related claim that has
turned out to be laughable, and everyone can make mistakes. More troubling is
the impulse among some advocates of global warming alarmism to assert in the
face of contrary evidence that they never said what they definitely said before
the evidence went against them.

These columns have asked for some time how anyone can still manage to take the
U.N.-led climate crowd seriously. Maybe the more pertinent question is whether the
climateers have ever taken the public’s intelligence seriously.

Apr 7, 2011 8:57 PM ET

Carbon warming too minor to be worth worrying about
By David Evans

The debate about global warming has reached ridiculous proportions and is full of micro-thin half-truths and misunderstandings. I am a scientist who was on the carbon gravy train, understands the evidence, was once an alarmist, but am now a skeptic. Watching this issue unfold has been amusing but, lately, worrying. This issue is tearing society apart, making fools out of our politicians.

Let’s set a few things straight.

The whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of the recent global warming is based on a guess that was proved false by empirical evidence during the 1990s. But the gravy train was too big, with too many jobs, industries, trading profits, political careers, and the possibility of world government and total control riding on the outcome. So rather than admit they were wrong, the governments, and their tame climate scientists, now outrageously maintain the fiction that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant.

Let’s be perfectly clear. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and other things being equal, the more carbon dioxide in the air, the warmer the planet. Every bit of carbon dioxide that we emit warms the planet. But the issue is not whether carbon dioxide warms the planet, but how much.

Most scientists, on both sides, also agree on how much a given increase in the level of carbon dioxide raises the planet’s temperature, if just the extra carbon dioxide is considered. These calculations come from laboratory experiments; the basic physics have been well known for a century.

The disagreement comes about what happens next.

The planet reacts to that extra carbon dioxide, which changes everything. Most critically, the extra warmth causes more water to evaporate from the oceans. But does the water hang around and increase the height of moist air in the atmosphere, or does it simply create more clouds and rain? Back in 1980, when the carbon dioxide theory started, no one knew. The alarmists guessed that it would increase the height of moist air around the planet, which would warm the planet even further, because the moist air is also a greenhouse gas.

This is the core idea of every official climate model: For each bit of warming due to carbon dioxide, they claim it ends up causing three bits of warming due to the extra moist air. The climate models amplify the carbon dioxide warming by a factor of three — so two-thirds of their projected warming is due to extra moist air (and other factors); only one-third is due to extra carbon dioxide.

That’s the core of the issue. All the disagreements and misunderstandings spring from this. The alarmist case is based on this guess about moisture in the atmosphere, and there is simply no evidence for the amplification that is at the core of their alarmism.

Weather balloons had been measuring the atmosphere since the 1960s, many thousands of them every year. The climate models all predict that as the planet warms, a hot spot of moist air will develop over the tropics about 10 kilometres up, as the layer of moist air expands upwards into the cool dry air above. During the warming of the late 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, the weather balloons found no hot spot. None at all. Not even a small one. This evidence proves that the climate models are fundamentally flawed, that they greatly overestimate the temperature increases due to carbon dioxide.

This evidence first became clear around the mid-1990s.

At this point, official “climate science” stopped being a science. In science, empirical evidence always trumps theory, no matter how much you are in love with the theory. If theory and evidence disagree, real scientists scrap the theory. But official climate science ignored the crucial weather balloon evidence, and other subsequent evidence that backs it up, and instead clung to their carbon dioxide theory — that just happens to keep them in well-paying jobs with lavish research grants, and gives great political power to their government masters.

There are now several independent pieces of evidence showing that the earth responds to the warming due to extra carbon dioxide by dampening the warming. Every long-lived natural system behaves this way, counteracting any disturbance. Otherwise the system would be unstable. The climate system is no exception, and now we can prove it.

But the alarmists say the exact opposite, that the climate system amplifies any warming due to extra carbon dioxide, and is potentially unstable. It is no surprise that their predictions of planetary temperature made in 1988 to the U.S. Congress, and again in 1990, 1995, and 2001, have all proved much higher than reality.
They keep lowering the temperature increases they expect, from 0.30C per decade in 1990, to 0.20C per decade in 2001, and now 0.15C per decade — yet they have the gall to tell us “it’s worse than expected.”

These people are not scientists. They overestimate the temperature increases due to carbon dioxide, selectively deny evidence, and now they conceal the truth.

One way they conceal is in the way they measure temperature.

The official thermometers are often located in the warm exhaust of air conditioning outlets, over hot tarmac at airports where they get blasts of hot air from jet engines, at waste-water plants where they get warmth from decomposing sewage, or in hot cities choked with cars and buildings. Global warming is measured in 10ths of a degree, so any extra heating nudge is important. In the United States, nearly 90% of official thermometers surveyed by volunteers violate official siting requirements that they not be too close to an artificial heating source.

Global temperature is also measured by satellites, which measure nearly the whole planet 24/7 without bias. The satellites say the hottest recent year was 1998, and that since 2001 the global temperature has levelled off. Why does official science track only the surface thermometer results and not mention the satellite results?
The Earth has been in a warming trend since the depth of the Little Ice Age around 1680. Human emissions of carbon dioxide were negligible before 1850 and have nearly all come after the Second World War, so human carbon dioxide cannot possibly have caused the trend. Within the trend, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation causes alternating global warming and cooling for 25 to 30 years at a go in each direction. We have just finished a warming phase, so expect mild global cooling for the next two decades.

We are now at an extraordinary juncture. Official climate science, which is funded and directed entirely by government, promotes a theory that is based on a guess about moist air that is now a known falsehood. Governments gleefully accept their advice, because the only ways to curb emissions are to impose taxes and extend government control over all energy use. And to curb emissions on a world scale might even lead to world government — how exciting for the political class!

Even if we stopped emitting all carbon dioxide tomorrow, completely shut up shop and went back to the Stone Age, according to the official government climate models it would be cooler in 2050 by about 0.015 degrees. But their models exaggerate 10-fold — in fact our sacrifices would make the planet in 2050 a mere 0.0015 degrees cooler!

Finally, to those who still believe the planet is in danger from our carbon dioxide emissions: Sorry, but you’ve been had. Yes, carbon dioxide is a cause of global warming, but it’s so minor it’s not worth doing much about.

David Evans consulted full-time for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005, and part-time 2008 to 2010, modelling Australia’s carbon in plants, debris, mulch, soils, and forestry and agricultural products. He is a mathematician and engineer, with six university degrees, including a PhD from Stanford University in electrical engineering. The comments above were made to the Anti-Carbon-Tax Rally in Perth, Australia, on March 23.
Posted in: FP Comment Tags: carbon dioxide, Climate change, David Evans, temperature

For a better view of the charts etc: Go to this page—–
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/20/a-dalton-minimum-repeat-is-shaping-up/#more-29779
A Dalton Minimum Repeat is Shaping Up

Posted on December 20, 2010 by Anthony Watts

The sun went spotless yesterday, the first time in quite awhile. It seems like a good time to present this analysis from my friend David Archibald. For those not familiar with the Dalton Minimum, here’s some background info from Wiki:
The Dalton Minimum was a period of low solar activity, named after the English meteorologist John Dalton, lasting from about 1790 to 1830.[1] Like the Maunder Minimum and Spörer Minimum, the Dalton Minimum coincided with a period of lower-than-average global temperatures. The Oberlach Station in Germany, for example, experienced a 2.0°C decline over 20 years.[2] The Year Without a Summer, in 1816, also occurred during the Dalton Minimum. Solar cycles 5 and 6, as shown below, were greatly reduced in amplitude. – Anthony

The Dalton minimum in the 400 year history of sunspot numbers
Guest post by David Archibald

James Marusek emailed me to ask if I could update a particular graph. Now that it is a full two years since the month of solar minimum, this was a good opportunity to update a lot of graphs of solar activity.

Figure 1: Solar Polar Magnetic Field Strength
The Sun’s current low level of activity starts from the low level of solar polar magnetic field strength at the 23/24 minimum. This was half the level at the previous minimum, and Solar Cycle 24 is expected to be just under half the amplitude of Solar Cycle 23.

Figure 2: Heliospheric Current Sheet Tilt Angle
It is said that solar minimum isn’t reached until the heliospheric current sheet tilt angle has flattened. While the month of minimum for the 23/24 transition is considered to be December 2008, the heliospheric current sheet didn’t flatten until June 2009.

Figure 3: Interplanetary Magnetic Field
The Interplanetary Magnetic Field remains very weak. It is almost back to the levels reached in previous solar minima.
Figure 4: Ap Index 1932 – 2010
The Ap Index remains under the levels of previous solar minima.

Figure 5: F10.7 Flux 1948 – 2010
The F10.7 Flux is a more accurate indicator of solar activity than the sunspot number. It remains low.

Figure 6: F10.7 Flux aligned on solar minima
In this figure, the F10.7 flux of the last six solar minima are aligned on the month of minimum, with the two years of decline to the minimum and three years of subsequent rise. The Solar Cycle 24 trajectory is much lower and flatter than the rises of the five previous cycles.

Figure 7: Oulu Neutron Count 1964 – 210
A weaker interplanetary magnetic field means more cosmic rays reach the inner planets of the solar system. The neutron count was higher this minimum than in the previous record. Thanks to the correlation between the F10.7 Flux and the neutron count in Figure 8 following, we now have a target for the Oulu neutron count at Solar Cycle 24 maximum in late 2014 of 6,150.

Figure 8: Oulu Neutron Flux plotted against lagged F10.7 flux
Neutron count tends to peak one year after solar minimum. Figure 8 was created by plotting Oulu neutron count against the F10.7 flux lagged by one year. The relationship demonstrated by this graph indicates that the most likely value for the Oulu neutron count at the Solar Cycle 24 maximum expected to be a F10.7 flux value of 100 in late 2014 will be 6,150.

Figure 9: Solar Cycle 24 compared to Solar Cycle 5
I predicted in a paper published in March 2006 that Solar Cycles 24 and 25 would repeat the experience of the Dalton Minimum. With two years of Solar Cycle 24 data in hand, the trajectory established is repeating the rise of Solar Cycle 5, the first half of the Dalton Minimum. The prediction is confirmed. Like Solar Cycles 5 and 6, Solar Cycle 24 is expected to be 12 years long. Solar maximum will be in late 2014/early 2015.

Figure 10: North America Snow Cover Ex-Greenland
The northern hemisphere is experiencing its fourth consecutive cold winter. The current winter is one of the coldest for a hundred years or more. For cold winters to provide positive feedback, snow cover has to survive from one winter to the next so that snow’s higher albedo relative to bare rock will reflect sunlight into space, causing cooler summers. The month of snow cover minimum is most often August, sometimes July. We have to wait another eight months to find out how this winter went in terms of retained snow cover. The 1970s cooling period had much higher snow cover minima than the last thirty years. Despite the last few cold winters, there was no increase in the snow cover minima. The snow cover minimum may have to get to over two million square kilometres before it starts having a significant effect.
David Archibald
December 2010