Climate
“To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest.”
Stephen Schneider, Discover, October 1989 (p47)
“We’ve learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature’s phenomena will agree or they’ll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven’t tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it’s this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in cargo cult science.”
Richard Feynman 1918-1988
“Attributing global climate change to human CO2 production is akin to
trying to diagnose an automotive problem by ignoring the engine
(analogous to the Sun in the climate system) and the transmission (water
vapour) and instead focusing entirely, not on one nut on a rear wheel,
which would be analogous to total CO2, but on one thread on that nut,
which represents the human contribution.”
Dr. Timothy Ball, Chairman of
the Natural Resources Stewardship Project (NRSP.com), Former Professor
of Climatology, University of Winnipeg
It will without doubt have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years, greatly abated.
(This) affords ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened and give us leave to hope that the Arctic Seas may at this time be more accessible than they have been for centuries past, and that discoveries may now be made in them not only interesting to the advancement of science but also to the future intercourse of mankind and the commerce of distant nations.”
President of the Royal Society, London, to the Admiralty, 20th November, 1817
*****
CLIMATE CHANGE – IS CO2 THE CAUSE?
A 4-part lecture by Australian scientist, Professor Bob Carter
( http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/videos/ )
(Biography:
Bob Carter is a Research Professor at James Cook University
(Queensland). He is a palaeontologist, stratigrapher and marine and
environmental geologist with forty years professional experience, and
holds degrees from the University of Otago (New Zealand) and the
University of Cambridge (England). He has held tenured academic
staff positions at the University of Otago and James Cook University
(Townsville), where he was Professor and Head of School of Earth
Sciences between 1981 and 1999.
Bob Carter’s current research on climate change, sea-level change and
stratigraphy is based on field studies of Cenozoic sediments (last 65
million years) from the Southwest Pacific region, especially the Great
Barrier Reef and New Zealand.
Bob’s research has been supported by grants from competitive public research agencies, espec
Australian Research Council (ARC). He receives no research funding from special interest
organisations such as environmental groups, energy companies or government departments.
Bob writes public science commentary regularly in newspapers such as The Australian, The Sydney
Morning Herald, The Australian Financial Review and the UK Sunday Telegraph. His website carries
copies of many of his research papers and articles, and reading and rationalist links on global warming,
at:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/new_page_1.htm )
************************
Ponder the Maunder
Kristen Byrnes
(Home page)
Introduction
Global warming is an issue of great importance. Let there be no doubt, the evidence is overwhelming: Earth is warming.
The questions that remain are;
1) What is the cause of the global warming? Is it man made atmospheric carbon dioxide? Or is the cause of global warming natural variability?
2) How will politicians spend money while waiting for the answer to question #1?
I will demonstrate that the Earth’s warming climate is a result of natural variance and that man made changes in the warming climate in the last 40 years are negligible at best. I will insert pieces of the puzzle from new scientific studies that were not available or were ignored in previous global warming studies.
I add a possible piece of the puzzle, nuclear weapons testing in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, that may have made a small contribution to cooling at that time.
After reviewing numerous scientific studies and observing data, it is clear that the theory that “man made increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide are causing global warming” is not likely.
I will demonstrate that a negative trend in the El Nino Southern Oscillation (more and stronger La Ninas) from 1945 to 1975 and a postive trend in the ENSO from 1975 to present (more and stronger El Ninos) correlates better with global temperature changes than greenhouse theory. Thus, ENSO is probably the largest contributor to global warming in the past 30 years.
The economic and political climate surrounding this issue has made it nearly impossible for scientists and researchers to objectively view the mountain of recent data.
While I will use much of the available and updated scientific data, I will also interject common sense, something that is seriously lacking in the debate on this issue. For instance, you might notice my use of the one ten-thousandth figure. Were you aware that the total man made CO2 increase in the atmosphere over the last 150 years is just that, one ten-thousandth of total atmosphere?
*************************
http://nzclimatescience.net/
Climate Change Re-examined
JOEL M. KAUFFMAN
Emeritus, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry,
University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, PA 19104-4495
Abstract
Claimed human-caused warming of the Earth to dangerous and
unprecedented levels by human-related emissions of carbon dioxide is contradicted
mainly by a non-correlation of carbon dioxide levels with warming.
Details are given of misleading proxy temperature reconstructions, as well as of
misleading proxy atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Evidence is
presented to show that trepidation about runaway land surface temperatures
should apply only to giant urban heat islands, not to rural areas or oceans.
Evidence is presented for causes in addition to human emissions for changes in
the levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, namely its emission from warming
oceans. Plausible alternative causes of surface temperature change are given as
well, including variations in solar output and cosmic ray intensity.
Keywords: climate change—global warming—carbon dioxide—temperature
proxies—chemical assays—urban heat islands—solar output—
surface—temperature—atmospheric temperature—water vapor—
ocean temperature—IPCC—cosmic rays
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must
be the truth.
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1887
Full essay: climate-change-re-examined.pdf
*************************
http://www.warwickhughes.com/hoyt/scorecard.htm
Greenhouse Warming Scorecard
(Updated 4/2/2006)
The tables below provide a comparison of model predictions with actual observations and provide a yes-no-undetermined score of whether the models are successful or not. Later in listings there are pro and con discussions of various topics and these are not scored.
Scorecard: here
**************************
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/Conf2007/Archibald2007.pdf
The Past and Future of
Climate
David Archibald
A presentation to The Lavoisier Group’s 2007 Workshop
‘Rehabilitating Carbon Dioxide’
held in Melbourne on 29-30 June 2007
The Past and Future of Climate
David Archibald
In this presentation, I will put forward a prediction of climate to 2030 that differs from
most in the public domain. It is a prediction of imminent cooling. And it is a prediction that
you will be able to check up on every day.
I am going to start off by looking at the near-term temperature record, and then go back
successively further in time, looking at the range of temperatures in the historic record and
then the geological record. Then we will examine the role of the Sun in changing climate
and, following that, the contribution of anthropogenic warming from carbon dioxide.
I will finish up combining a solar-driven prediction and the anthropogenic contribution to
make a prediction of climate to 2030.
Full presentation: archibald_past_future_climate_2007.pdf
**************************
http://nzclimatescience.net/
HUMAN-CAUSED GLOBAL WARMING
McCarthyism, intimidation, press bias, censorship,
policy-advice corruption and propaganda
by
Robert M. Carter
James Cook University, Townsville, Australia
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Since 1988 – fuelled by insistent lobbying from special interest environmental, scientific,
political and industry groups – human-caused global warming has become one of the
great political issues of our time. Today’s dominant paradigm is that human emissions of
greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, will produce dangerous warming of the
globe (the Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis; AGW). When tested against
empirical evidence, this hypothesis fails. It maintains its popular sway only because of
the remorseless propagation of climate alarmism based upon anecdotal evidence, and on
unvalidated computer modeling (GCMs) and related “attribution studies”.
This paper describes ways in which the AGW paradigm has achieved its consensus hold
over western political consciousness, and explains how it maintains that status.
AGW supporters exercise strong influence over the United Nations Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and also over what is published in the professional
scientific literature about climate change. Climate rationalists (derogated as “skeptics”)
who seek a balanced discussion on the issue, and greater recognition of the dominant role
of natural climate change, are subject to harassment, intimidation and censorship. Policy
advice to governments through scientific agencies and academies is corrupted by
financial and political self-interest. Public discussion of climate change is greatly
degraded by an unremitting press bias and by lavish NGO-funded propaganda towards
alarmism in the AGW cause.
With the publication of the British Stern Review into Climate Change in late 2006, and
the scheduled release of the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC in early 2007, AGW
alarmism is reaching unprecedented heights. The non-alarmist, rational interpretation of
climate change will prevail through this hysteria, as empirical data come to trump
unvalidated computer model predictions. Thereafter, attention will turn to the real climate
policy problem. Which is the preparation of appropriate response plans for the occurrence
of extreme weather events, as well as for longer term climatic coolings and warmings, in
the same way that we prepare to cope with other natural hazards such as storms,
earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
Attempting to “stop climate change” is an extravagant and costly exercise of utter futility.
Rational climate policies must be based on adaptation.
Full Paper: carter_human_caused_global-warming_20070330.pdf
********************
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/3540/
Thursday 28 June 2007
Digging up the roots of the IPCC
The UN’s all-powerful climate change panel is no straightforward scientific body. It is a deeply political organisation that was born out of disenchantment with progress.
Tony Gilland
Witnessing the intensity of the discussion about global warming today, it is hard to imagine a time when climate change was not a defining feature of social, political and economic life. Today, everything from floods in England to poverty in the Third World is discussed as a product of global warming. Yet it is a relatively new issue, barely discussed until 50 years ago, and established as a significant policy issue only in the past two decades. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which now sits like Solomon over key questions of international development, sovereignty and social progress, was not established until the late 1980s and only in the past 10 years has it enjoyed its exalted status. Yet the IPPC’s most recent set of reports led the UK’s environment secretary, David Miliband, to declare that ‘the debate over the science of climate change is well and truly over’, and ‘what’s now urgently needed is the international political commitment to take action to avoid dangerous climate change’ (1).
So how should we understand the process by which climate science has come to have a defining impact on political life in 2007? On one hand, there is the scientific research that has been conducted, which, most would argue, has strengthened our knowledge of climatic processes and the impact of man-made emissions. On the other hand, the emergence of the science of climate change coincided with strong cultural and political trends, which have interacted with the science and shaped our understanding of the climate change issue in a peculiarly misanthropic way.
Continues here.
**************************
http://nzclimatescience.net/
What is Wrong with the IPCC?
Hans Labohm
November 2007
Summary for Policy Makers
In the international discussion about climate change, which is now going on for almost
twenty years, the IPCC has played a questionable role. From its inception, is has almost
exclusively focused on the AGW hypothesis, while systematically ignoring alternative
hypotheses.
Some main points of criticism of the IPCC include:
- The hypothesis that an increased CO2 concentration in the atmosphere will lead to a
rise in temperature has not been proven and is even at odds with the observations.
- Satellite-based temperature measurements show that the earth has warmed a few
tenths of a degree Celsius between 1979 and 1998. It is not likely that this is caused by
mankind.
- There is still a lack of scientific understanding, required to model all assumed radiative
forcings. The most important one, for which there are not sufficient quantitative
data to date, is the variable impact of clouds.
- Climate models, which are being used to achieve a better understanding of the climate
system, are not suited to serve as basis for predictions. This is, inter alia, related to the
stochastic nature of climate.
- The global climate is very much determined by extra-terrestrial phenomena, of which
the fluctuation of sun activity is the most important.
- Should there still be global warming in the future, for which there are only modelbased
indications, then mankind will not be able to do something about it. Moreover,
also according the IPCC, a modest additional warming (e.g., of 2 degrees Celsius) will
on balance be beneficial for mankind.
- The IPCC has ignored the climate projections of astrophysicists, which suggest global
cooling.
The advent of climate alarmism, fuelled by statements of many prominent politicians and the
media, has no scientific justification. Many catastrophic consequences of climate change,
such as floods and extreme weather events, have been predicted, which are not based on scientific
knowledge. Especially the European governments have opted for a climate policy
which is completely unrealistic and results in a massive waste of scarce resources.
Finally, one should not discount the possibility that the average global temperature will fall
considerably in the near future. This might have harmful implications, as opposed to a modest
rise of temperatures, which on balance will have positive effects.
Full Paper: labohm-what_is_wrong_with_the_ipcc.pdf
*************************
http://nzclimatescience.net/
Why the IPCC should be disbanded
John McLean
November 2007
Introduction
The common perception of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is tone of an impartial organisation that thoroughly reviews the state of climate science and produces reports which are clear,accurate, comprehensive, well substantiated and without bias.
One only needs examine some of its procedural documents, its reports and its dealings with reviewers of the report drafts to discover how wrong this impression is.
The IPCC is not and never has been an organisation that examines all aspects of climate change in a neutral and impartial manner. Its internal procedures reinforce that bias; it makes no attempts to clarify its misleading and ambiguous statements. It is very selective about the material included in its reports; its fundamental claims lack evidence. And most importantly, its actions have skewed the entire field of climate science.
Over the last 20 years and despite its dominance and manipulation of climate science, the IPCC has failed to provide concrete evidence of a significant human influence on climate.
It’s time to call a halt to its activities and here are ten reasons for doing so.
Full Paper: mclean-disband_the_ipcc.pdf
