Dr. Patrick Michaels: IPCC Forecasts are Incorrect

TESTIMONY OF PATRICK J. MICHAELS TO THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT, COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, U.S HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, NOVEMBER 17, 2010

Thank you for inviting my testimony. I am a Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies at the Cato Institute and Distinguished Senior Fellow in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University. This testimony represents no official point of view from either of these institutions and is tendered with the traditional protections of academic freedom.

My testimony has four objectives

1) Demonstration that the rate greenhouse-related warming is clearly below the mean of climate forecasts from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that are based upon changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations that are closest to what is actually being observed,

2) demonstration that the Finding of Endangerment from greenhouse gases by the Environmental Protection Agency is based upon a very dubious and critical assumption,

3) demonstration that the definition of science as a public good induces certain biases that substantially devalue efforts to synthesize science, such as those undertaken by the IPCC and the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP), and

4) demonstration that there is substantial discontent with governmental and intergovernmental syntheses of climate change and with policies passed by this House of Representatives.

Climate change is nothing new, even climate change induced by human activity. What matters is not whether or not something so obvious exists, but to what magnitude it exists and how people adapt to such change.For decades, scientists have attempted to model the behavior of our atmosphere as carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are added above the base levels established before human prehistory. The results are interesting but are highly dependent upon the amount of carbon dioxide that resides in the atmosphere, something that is very difficult to predict long into the future with any confidence. It is safe to say that no one—no matter whether he or she works for the government, for industry, or in education—can tell what our technology will be 100 years from now. We can only say that if history is to be any guide, it will be radically different from what we use today and that therefore projecting greenhouse gas emissions so far into the future is, to choose a word carefully, useless.

One thing we are certain of, though, is that the development of future technologies depends upon capital investment, and that it would be foolish to continue to spend such resources in expensive programs that will in fact do nothing significant to global temperature.

Fortunately, despite the doomsaying of several, we indeed have the opportunity to not waste resources now, but instead to invest them much further in the future. That is because the atmosphere is clearly declaring that the response to changes in carbon dioxide is much more modest that what appears to be the consensus of scientific models.

Testimony Objective #1: Greenhouse-related warming is clearly below the mean of relevant climate forecasts from the IPCC

Figure 1 shows the community of computer model projections from the IPCC‘s midrange scenario. Observed changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations correspond closer to this one than to others. You will note one common characteristic of these models: they predict warmings of a relatively constant rate. This is because, in large part, the response of temperature to changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide is logarithmic (meaning that equal incremental increases produce proportionally less warming as concentration increases), while the increase in carbon dioxide itself is a low- order exponent rather than a straight line. This combination tends to produce constant rates of warming.

The various models just produce different quasi-constant rates. Divining future warming then becomes rather easy. Do we have a constant rate of warming? And if so, then we know the future rate, unless the functional form of all of these models is wrong. And if this is wrong, scientists are so ignorant of this problem, that you are wasting your time in soliciting our expertise. {see remainder of testimony here}

...An additional and important discrepancy between the models and reality extends into the lower atmosphere as well. In the lower atmosphere, climate models expectations are that the degree of warming with increasing greenhouse gas concentrations should be greater than that experienced at the surface, with the lower atmosphere warming about 1.4 times faster than the average surface temperature. Despite claims that observations and models are in agreement (Santer et al., 2008), new analyses incorporating a large number of both observational datasets as well as climate model projections, clearly and strongly demonstrate that the surface warming (which itself is below the model mean) is significantly outpacing the warming in the lower atmosphere—contrary to climate model expectations. Instead of exhibiting 40% more warming than the surface, the lower atmosphere is warming 25% less—a statistically significant difference (Christy et al., 2010).

Dr. Michaels also concludes, "Consequently EPA‘s core statement (as well as that of the IPCC and the CCSP), “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG [greenhouse gas] concentrations”, is not supported."

Whoops: Global Warming Decreased Floods

From the annals of The Settled Science, a peer-reviewed paper published today in Water Resources Research shows that flooding over the past 450 years in Germany was highest during "colder periods of the Little Ice Age when solar activity was reduced." On the other hand, the IPCC claims the sun has nothing to do with climate change and that 'man-made' global warming will increase floods worldwide. This paper corroborates other research showing floods are 10 times more likely during global cooling periods vs. global warming periods. 


WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH, VOL. 46, W11528, 16 PP., 2010
doi:10.1029/2009WR008360

A 450 year record of spring-summer flood layers in annually laminated sediments from Lake Ammersee (southern Germany)

Authors: Markus Czymzik, Peter Dulski, Birgit Plessen, Ulrich von Grafenstein, Rudolf Naumann, Achim Brauer

Abstract: A 450 year spring-summer flood layer time series at seasonal resolution has been established from the varved sediment record of Lake Ammersee (southern Germany), applying a novel methodological approach. The main results are (1) the attainment of a precise chronology by microscopic varve counting, (2) the identification of detrital layers representing flood-triggered fluxes of catchment material into the lake, and (3) the recognition of the seasonality of these flood layers from their microstratigraphic position within a varve. Tracing flood layers in a proximal and a distal core and correlating them by application of the precise chronology provided information on the depositional processes. Comparing the seasonal flood layer record with daily runoff data of the inflowing River Ammer for the period from 1926 to 1999 allowed the definition of an approximate threshold in flood magnitude above which the formation of flood layers becomes very likely. Moreover, it was possible for the first time to estimate the “completeness” of the flood layer time series and to recognize that mainly floods in spring and summer, representing the main flood seasons in this region, are well preserved in the sediment archive. Their frequency distribution over the entire 450 year time series is not stationary but reveals maxima for colder periods of the Little Ice Age when solar activity was reduced. The observed spring-summer flood layer frequency further shows trends similar to those of the occurrence of flood-prone weather regimes since A.D. 1881, probably suggesting a causal link between solar variability and changes in midlatitude atmospheric circulation patterns.

Received 7 July 2009; accepted 9 August 2010; published 17 November 2010.

Related: Recent worldwide droughts have also been mild compared to other periods over the past 500 years:

Remarkable new paper on the influence of the sun on global warming

From Greenie Watch: Paper located here
It is by De Jager and Duhau. Page 99 onwards is probably the most interesting part. I haven't been able to download any part of it and Google does not know of it but it is a chapter in a book about global warming in the 21st century. The authors are students of what goes on in the sun, with particular reference to solar cycles. They find that solar activity has a large influence on earth's temperature, with only a third of one degree of global warming over the last 400 years NOT predictable from solar activity. And that component could well be due to errors of measurement on the ground.

Of greatest interest, however, they say that we have just finished a grand maximum of temperature and are now headed downhill for a grand minimum -- with a forecast drop of around 4 degrees this century. That's roughly the inverse of what the IPCC predict (a median rise of about 4 degrees) Given the high degree of correlation between solar activity and terrestrial temperature that the authors report, their prediction is many orders of magnitude more reliable than the output of the chaotic IPCC models that discount any influence from the sun. So global cooling here we come!

Breaking: NYT publishes climate article that quotes skeptics

Quotes I never expected to see in a New York Times mostly-alarmist climate article on the ice sheets:

Global warming skeptics, on the other hand, contend that any changes occurring in the ice sheets are probably due to natural climate variability, not to greenhouse gases released by humans...

Strictly speaking, scientists have not proved that human-induced global warming is the cause of the changes. They are mindful that the climate in the Arctic undergoes big natural variations. In the 1920s and ’30s, for instance, a warm spell caused many glaciers to retreat.

John R. Christy, a climatologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville who is often critical of mainstream climate science, said he suspected that the changes in Greenland were linked to this natural variability, and added that he doubted that the pace would accelerate as much as his colleagues feared.

For high predictions of sea-level rise to be correct, “some big chunks of the Greenland ice sheet are going to have to melt, and they’re just not melting that way right now,” Dr. Christy said.

However, in typical New York Times fashion, the article

1. Fails to mention that glaciers have been melting and sea levels rising since the peak of the last ice age 20,000 years ago, which is helpful to perpetuate the myth that this is a man-made phenomenon.
2. Fails to mention that the claim below of accelerated melting based on GRACE satellite data was recently debunked by a paper published in Nature Geoscience.
3. Claims that sea level rise is accelerating and that sea levels will rise "perhaps" 3 feet by 2100, even though the recent scientific literature shows that sea level rise has decelerated 44% since 2005 to a rate of 7 inches per century and also decelerated in the latter half of the 20th century. 

November 13, 2010
As Glaciers Melt, Science Seeks Data on Rising Seas
By JUSTIN GILLIS

TASIILAQ, Greenland — With a tense pilot gripping the stick, the helicopter hovered above the water, a red speck of machinery lost in a wilderness of rock and ice.

To the right, a great fjord stretched toward the sea, choked with icebergs. To the left loomed one of the immense glaciers that bring ice from the top of the Greenland ice sheet and dump it into the ocean.

Hanging out the sides of the craft, two scientists sent a measuring device plunging into the water, between ice floes. Near the bottom, it reported a temperature of 40 degrees. It was the latest in a string of troubling measurements showing that the water was warm enough to melt glaciers rapidly from below.

“That’s the highest we’ve seen this far up the fjord,” said one of the scientists, Fiammetta Straneo.

The temperature reading was a new scrap of information in the effort to answer one of the most urgent — and most widely debated — questions facing humanity: How fast is the world’s ice going to melt?

Scientists long believed that the collapse of the gigantic ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica would take thousands of years, with sea level possibly rising as little as seven inches in this century, about the same amount as in the 20th century.

'The Greenhouse Effect in Wonderland'

A scientist writing for an Italian climate blog has 2 recent posts illustrating 7 reasons why the laws of physics have been used incorrectly to describe the so-called greenhouse effect. Most of these points have been repeatedly covered here, but for those interested in another refutation added to the now more than 30 from other scientists who have dis-proven conventional greenhouse theory, here are the 2 posts (use Google translation):

Part 1
Part 2 

From the conclusion of Part 2 "The Greenhouse Effect in Wonderland" (Google translation + editing):

To summarize, here are the fundamental physical laws that the greenhouse effect theory violates, or poorly applies:

- 1st law of thermodynamics (it is impossible to create new energy from "back radiation")

- 2nd law of thermodynamics (colder bodies such as the atmosphere cannot raise the temperature of the warmer bodies such as the Earth's surface)

- Failure to use the carriers in the calculation of heat flow (a heat flow input can never be added to an output, but must be subtracted)

- Non-use of the Poynting vector (when two opposing heat fluxes EM waves are opposite, they have two directions of opposite propagation, and one must use vector analysis)

- Entropy (all exchanges of heat on Earth and the atmosphere require entropy to increase, which is incompatible with a hypothetical "greenhouse effect" -which requires entropy to decrease in order for heat to flow from cold to hot)

- Disregard for negative feedback of "cloud forcing" (makes no sense consider only the effect of heat retention of clouds, humidity and CO2, when these "greenhouse gases" are also an obvious sunshade of incoming solar radiation (45% LWIR), the effect of which exceeds heat retention)

- Boltzmann constant and Kirchhoff's law applied incorrectly (you can not apply the Boltzmann constant to rotating solids such as the planets and satellites, because the experimental data show that such simplistic calculations are incorrect).

McKitrick's 2nd Take-Down of Alarmist Deutsche Bank Report

Deutsche Bank’s Green Politics
The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 13 November 2010


In relation to climate change issues, two recent initiatives on the part of the Deutsche Bank Group give grounds for concern.

(1) In September, the Bank's 'Climate Change Advisors' issued a document entitled Climate Change: Addressing the Major Skeptic Arguments: it was authored by three climate scientists at Columbia University. In an editorial introduction, the Bank's Global Head of Climate Change Investment Research describes it as “a balanced, detailed and expert assessment of the scientific case for climate change that will help investors navigate these extremely complex issues”.

The document's claims to accuracy as a navigational guide were promptly put in question by Ross McKitrick, one of the 'skeptics' supposedly disposed of within it. McKitrick's paper, entitled Response to Misinformation from Deutsche Bank, is dated 12 September. It identifies and spells out an array of errors and misrepresentations.

In response, the authors of the document have now put out a new text which supersedes the original. In this new version they have added a three-page Response to McKitrick where they admit to a few 'mischaracterizations' and offer amended versions of three sentences that they acknowledge to have been misleading. However, the original wording of these faulty sentences remains unchanged and unfootnoted in an unaltered main text: McKitrick has described this behaviour as 'unsporting', while others might characterise it as unprofessional.

In a second piece, dated 8 November, McKitrick has responded to the revised report. In this paper he extends and reinforces his critique. Viewed together, his twin presentations appear as unanswerable. As a guide to investors, or indeed for any other purpose, the document is worthless.

It would be interesting to know whether the Deutsche Bank officials who sponsored and approved this deeply flawed initiative took the precaution of submitting a draft for expert review to persons not already firmly convinced that the 'skeptics' have been refuted.

Looking at the list, it would seem that so such person is to be found among the eminent individuals who make up the Deutsche Bank's Climate Advisory Board: all appear as people who are (to quote a nice phrase from Clive Crook) 'precommitted to the urgency of the climate cause'. A more representative Board, spanning a wider range of opinions. might have taken more trouble to ensure that any published work issued under its auspices would measure up to professional standards.

(2) In the recent Californian elections, voters were invited to accept or reject Proposition 23, which would have placed strict constraints on the state government's plans to introduce further curbs on CO2 emissions. A few days before the vote, a Financial Times report noted that:

'Sixty-eight big investors, managing $415bn in assets, have united to urge Californians to vote against efforts to roll back the state's carbon legislation ... Signatories include ... Deutsche Bank Climate Advisers ...'

If this report is correct, it would seem that its Climate Advisory Board took a strong position on the Bank's behalf on a controversial political matter.

As its website confirms, Deutsche Bank is fully is committed to Corporate Social Responsibility. How far its current handling of climate change issues can be judged to be responsible is open to debate.

Professor David Henderson is the Chairman of the GWPF's Academic Advisory Council. His latest publication on climate change issues has just appeared in the quarterly Newsletter of the Royal Economic Society.

No Cause For Alarm Over Sea Level Or Ice Sheets

The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 11 November 2010

By Professor Cliff Ollier, School of Earth and Environment, University of Western Australia

John Le Mesurier’s recent article in On Line Opinion, “The Creeping Menace”, re-hashes the alarmism about rising sea levels. Much has happened, however, since Al Gore scared the world with visions of metre high seas flooding New York.

First, there is still no proof the Earth is experiencing “dangerous” warming. Temperatures have levelled off since 1998. Many measuring locations are also located in unsuitable areas. Furthermore, the methodologies of averaging temperature are inconsistent and full of problems. This is why “Global Warming” was replaced as a slogan by “Climate Change” (nobody denies that climate changes), and more recently by “Climate Disruption” (which is impossible define or prove).

Second, the increased temperature is supposed to increase sea level mainly by melting the ice-caps, which is impossible. Thermal expansion of the oceans seems to be of little consequence at present because the satellite measurements show the oceans are cooling. Le Mesurier gilds his picture with a few asides on “extreme climatic events” in general and hurricanes in particular. Recent studies, however, show no increase in hurricane activity in the last 40 years.

With regard to sea level, I have come to the view the IPCC and Australian Bureau of Meteorology, run by CSIRO, are unreliable sources of data after critically assessing their statements on this subject for some time. Direct studies of sea level are showing only small rises. You can see the sea level data for yourself for the United States and a few other countries here. Most stations show a rise of sea level of about 2mm per year, but note the considerable variation even within a single state.

Models depend on what is put into them. For example, a 2009 report by the CSIRO for the Victorian Government’s Future Coasts Program on The Effect of Climate Change on Extreme Sea Levels in Port Phillip Bay based its model on temperature projections to 2100 of up to 6.4 degrees. That is the most extreme, fuel intensive, scenario of the IPCC and implies unbelievable CO2 concentration levels in 2100 of approximately 1550 parts per million (expressed in CO2 equivalent). Usage of all known fossil fuel reserves would only achieve half of this and continuation of the current rate of increase in concentration levels would result in only 550ppm by 2100.

Global Warming & High CO2 Levels Increased Diversity

1. maybe this is why hothouse operators increase CO2 levels by 3-4 times to increase plant growth up to 50%
2. CO2 levels 2.5 times today's levels & far above Hansen's "safe level" of 350 ppm with temperatures 3-5C higher than today clearly didn't cause a "tipping point" and actually increased diversity

Tropical Forest Diversity Increased During Ancient Global Warming Event

pollen and spore taxa from the PETM

 ScienceDaily (Nov. 11, 2010) — The steamiest places on the planet are getting warmer. Conservative estimates suggest that tropical areas can expect temperature increases of 3 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. Does global warming spell doom for rainforests? Maybe not.

Carlos Jaramillo, staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and colleagues report in the journal Science that nearly 60 million years ago rainforests prospered at temperatures that were 3-5 degrees higher and at atmospheric carbon dioxide levels 2.5 times today's levels.

"We're going to have a novel climate scenario," said Joe Wright, staff scientist at STRI, in a 2009 Smithsonian symposium on Threats to Tropical Forests. "It will be very hot and wet, and we don't know how these species are going to react." By looking back in time, Jaramillo and collaborators identified one example of a hot, wet climate: rainforests were doing very well.

Researchers examined pollen trapped in rock cores and outcrops -- from Colombia and Venezuela -- formed before, during and after an abrupt global warming event called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum that occurred 56.3 million years ago. The world warmed by 3-5 degrees C. Carbon dioxide levels doubled in only 10,000 years. Warm conditions lasted for the next 200,000 years.

Contrary to speculation that tropical forests could be devastated under these conditions, forest diversity increased rapidly during this warming event. New plant species evolved much faster than old species became extinct. Pollen from the passionflower plant family and the chocolate family, among others, were found for the first time.

"It is remarkable that there is so much concern about the effects of greenhouse conditions on tropical forests," said Klaus Winter, staff scientist at STRI. "However, these horror scenarios probably have some validity if increased temperatures lead to more frequent or more severe drought as some of the current predictions for similar scenarios suggest."

Evidence from this study indicates that moisture levels did not decrease significantly during the warming event. Overall results indicate that tropical forests fared very well during this short and intense warming period.

"The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute celebrates '100 Years of Tropical Science in Panama' starting this year," said Eldredge Bermingham, STRI director. "Today, our scientists are working in more than 40 countries worldwide. We have the long-term and global monitoring experiments in place to begin to evaluate scenarios predicting the effects of climate change and other large-scale processes on tropical forests."

Journal Reference: Carlos Jaramillo, Diana Ochoa, Lineth Contreras, Mark Pagani, Humberto Carvajal-Ortiz, Lisa M. Pratt, Srinath Krishnan, Agustin Cardona, Millerlandy Romero, Luis Quiroz, Guillermo Rodriguez, Milton J. Rueda, Felipe de la Parra, Sara Morón, Walton Green, German Bayona, Camilo Montes, Oscar Quintero, Rafael Ramirez, Germán Mora, Stefan Schouten, Hermann Bermudez, Rosa Navarrete, Francisco Parra, Mauricio Alvarán, Jose Osorno, James L. Crowley, Victor Valencia, and Jeff Vervoort. Effects of Rapid Global Warming at the Paleocene-Eocene Boundary on Neotropical Vegetation. Science, 2010; 330 (6006): 957-961 DOI: 10.1126/science.1193833

New Retreat from Global Warming Data by Australian Gov Bureau

Article by John O’Sullivan and Val Majkus (via email from John O'Sullivan)

Global warmers in full retreat as Aussie experts admit growing doubts about their own methods as new study shows one third of temperatures not reliable.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) admits it was wrong about urban heating effects as a professional statistical analysis by Andrew Barnham exposes a BOM claim that “since 1960 the mean temperature in Australia has increased by about 0.7 °C”; the BOM assertion has no empirical scientific basis.

Barnham, who spent 8 years working in emerging South Asian economies building high volume transaction processing systems, applied a high-tech statistical technique very different from an earlier well-publicized probe by fellow Aussie, Ken Stewart on his blog, Ken’s Kingdom.

Stewart grabbed headlines in what became known as the Australiagate controversy after his findings were featured on popular science blog, Watts Up With That. Stewart exposed dubious BOM adjustments to temperature data that bore little or no resemblance to actual or raw past temperatures.

Like Stewart, Barnham paid particular attention to BOM’s methodology in addressing what is known as the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHI), a proven phenomenon whereby thermometers measuring temperatures in towns and cities become unduly influenced by extra ‘background’ heating from buildings, road surfaces, machinery, etc. It’s in the UHI adjustments that the greatest discrepancies appear to lie.

Gore Pocketed ~$18 Million from Now-Defunct Chicago Climate Exchange

Although the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) collapsed and shut down this week, Al Gore's Generation Investment Management LLP pocketed approximately $17.8 million on it's 2.98% share of the exchange when it was sold to the publicly traded Intercontinental Exchange a mere 6 months ago. According to news reports, the brainchild of the exchange, academic Richard Sandor, founded the exchange with a foundation gift of $1.1 million, and pocketed $98.5 million for his 16.5% share of the CCX. This would place the value of Gore's firm's stake at almost $18 million. Note Gore is the founder, chairman, and largest shareholder in Generation Investment Management LLP. Barack Obama was on the Joyce Foundation Board when it provided the funding to establish the CCX. Maurice Strong, founding head of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), precursor to the IPCC, was a CCX board member.

Collapse of Chicago Climate Exchange Means a Strategy Shift on Global Warming Curbs

By Ed Barnes Published November 09, 2010 | FoxNews.com

The closing this week of the Chicago Climate Exchange, which was envisioned to be the key player in the trillion-dollar "cap and trade" market, was the final nail in the coffin of the Obama administration's effort to pass the controversial program meant to combat global warming.

"It is dead for the foreseeable future," said Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and the Environment with the Competitive Energy Institute, which had fought the measure.

That assessment was echoed by environmentalists as well.

"Economy-wide cap and trade died of what amounts to natural causes in Washington," said Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, which had supported the plan.

The CCX was set up in 2000 in anticipation of the United States joining Europe and other countries around the world to create a market that would reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. Under the system, factories, utilities and other businesses would be given an emissions target. Those that emitted less fewer regulated gases than their target could sell the "excess" to someone who was above target. Each year, the target figures would be reset lower.

The Exchange was the brainchild of Richard Sandor, an economist and professor at Northwestern University, and it was modeled after a successful program that was launched in 1990 and helped control acid rain in the Midwest. It was initially funded by a $1.1 million grant from the Joyce Foundation of Chicago, and President Obama was a board member at the time.

After the Democrats won the White House, the House and the Senate in 2008, businesses and investors flocked to the exchange, believing Congress would quickly approve the program. And it almost happened.

The House of Representatives passed a bill proposed by Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts, which would have made cap and trade law. But the Senate couldn't muster the votes, and everything went downhill from there.

"When those that voted for the measure in 2009 went home on July 4th after the vote, they met widespread outrage among their constituents," said Nick Loris, an analyst with Heritage Foundation. Conservatives renamed the idea "cap and tax," and they began an assault on the program.

In the last week, following the Nov. 2 Republican takeover of the House of Representatives, the slide became an avalanche. Investors in CCX, including Sandor and former Vice President Al Gore, sold the exchange to a company involved in commodities trading.

Sale records show that Sandor cleared more than $90 million for his 16 percent stake in the company.

Meanwhile, the White House has dropped all references to cap and trade from its web site; and, unlike the heralded climate summit in Copenhagen last year, a 10-day meeting in Mexico beginning Nov. 29 on the next steps to battle global warming has not even mentioned publicly by the administration.

"The pieces of the puzzle just kept breaking off," Loris said. "And Obama has given up on it.”

But both Loris and Ebell say that isn't necessarily cause for celebrating.

"I would like to have a party and say we won, but the truth is were are still in the middle of it," Ebell said. "The problem is now that the administration changed strategy and is using existing laws and regulations, like the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act and EPA regulations to implement its agenda. And unlike the cap and trade effort, it is much harder to get the public excited about rule changes."

"Obama will try a piecemeal approach," Loris said. "And they have a much better chance of becoming law than cap and trade ever did.”

Republicans in the new Congress, for their part, will try to pass a law "to stop all regulation of greenhouse gases using existing legal authority," Ebell said. "And we are pretty sure we can get 60 votes in the Senate on it."

Gord Replies to Comments

UPDATE: Commenter 'Gord,' source of the analysis in the post originally here entitled Why 'Science of Doom' doesn't understand the 1st Law of Thermodynamics, was away from email for a few days and unable to respond to claims in the discussion. I unfortunately misinterpreted that he had dropped out of the discussion and therefore took it down with a "mea culpa." Gord is now back and thus I have put the discussions back up to allow further debate.

Although this debate is irrelevant to AGW for the reasons below, there is merit to continuing the discussions for those interested.

The Science of Doom 'thought experiment' does not prove anything relevant to the Kiehl/Trenberth (K/T) Earth energy budget or the earth/atmosphere system as claimed since

1. The atmosphere cannot behave as both an ideal gas and as a solid PVC blackbody (Science of Doom said elsewhere on this site, "...I realize you are right. As my example is made out of PVC and the atmosphere is made out of gas the example shows nothing useful.")
2. Limitation of conduction and convection by PVC has no relevance to the radiative transfer budget of K/T, which Science of Doom claims is supported by his thought experiment
3. The energy source  ["sun"] should be located outside the sphere
4. The energy source should be intermittent ["day & night"], not continuous. Better yet, the source could be continuous outside the sphere as long as the sphere continously rotates.

The K/T Earth energy budget shows

1. The incoming solar radiation (the only energy source) is 342 Wm-2
2. The earth surface radiation is 390 Wm-2, i.e. 48 Wm-2 more than the only energy source.
3. Another 102 Wm-2 is being lost from the earth surface via evapotranspiration and convection that is not limited by PVC or anything else, and conduction is not a part of the budget. Thus, we now have an energy source of 342Wm-2 creating 492 Wm-2 leaving the earth surface even without limiting convection and conduction as in the SoD example. An additional 30 Wm-2 is reflected from the Earth surface for a new total of 522 Wm-2 leaving the Earth surface.
4. Even if greenhouse gases could behave like a mirror, they cannot add energy to the system, and explain how

342 Wm-2 in becomes 522 Wm-2 out

Why conventional Greenhouse Theory Violates the 1st Law of Thermodynamics

U Mass thinks greenhouse gases can add energy to the system

And this explains why Earth energy budgets that don't incorporate greenhouse gases at all do balance whereas the K/T budget is described by it's creator Kevin Trenberth as "a travesty" that doesn't balance.

Magazine: 'Americans are Losing Faith in Climate Change'

Good Magazine laments in the latest issue that "Americans are Losing Faith in Climate Change," stating,

The ever-controversial topic has become increasingly politicized in recent years, with thousands of different theories and statistics circulating at any given moment. It is in this polarized environment that Americans form their opinions of climate change, and its importance as a legitimate threat to the future of life on our planet. Here we look at how these views have shifted over the last decade, and where Americans stand today on the issue of climate change.

"Faith" is a good choice of words by the magazine, expressing the religious nature of AGW and lack of scientific evidence.

Paper: Medieval Warming Period Hotter than Present in most Regions

A recently published book, Climate Change and Variability, features a chapter titled "A Regional Approach to the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age," by Fredrik Ljungqvist. The author finds the presently available paleoclimate data do not support the assumption that late 20th century temperatures exceeded those of the Medieval Warming Period in most regions. He finds that the conclusions of the IPCC were based on "too few proxy records or [have] been based on instrumental temperatures spliced to the proxy reconstructions." The author concludes that the claim of Michael Mann and the hockey team that the MWP was restricted to the North Atlantic region "can be rejected." From the conclusion,

Analysis: Serious Flaws in the IPCC Process

A new SPPI paper illustrates serious flaws in the IPCC assessment process using the "GlacierGate" example, including plagiarism from non-peer reviewed sources with false attribution to different sources, and authors who "are allowed to cite whatever sources they wish and write whatever they wish within a wide scope, safe in the knowledge that their work will not be checked, save by reviewers whose comments they can ignore with impunity."

Scientific American Poll: 81% think the IPCC is Corrupt, with Group-think & Political Agenda

'Scientific' American may regret taking their recent opinion poll on the state of climate science given the eye-opening results cast by their "scientifically literate" readership. With a total of 5190 respondents, a consensus of 81.3% think the IPCC is "a corrupt organization, prone to group-think, with a political agenda" and 75% think climate change is caused by solar variation or natural processes vs. 21% who think it is due to greenhouse gases from human activity. 65% think we should do nothing about climate change since "we are powerless to stop it," and the same percentage think science should stay out of politics. When asked, "How much would you be willing to pay to forestall the risk of catastrophic climate change?," 76.7% said "nothing."

Poll results hidden here

Climate of Change?
1. Should climate scientists discuss scientific uncertainty in mainstream forums?
No, that would play into the hands of the fossil-fuel lobby. 3.0% 157
Yes, it would help engage the citizenry. 90.1% 4,673
Maybe—but only via serious venues like PBS's the NewsHour and The New York Times. 6.9% 358
answered question 5,188
skipped question 2

2. Judith Curry is:
a peacemaker. 69.1% 3,585
a dupe. 7.6% 392
both. 4.3% 224
I've never heard of her. 19.0% 987
answered question 5,188
skipped question 2

3. What is causing climate change?
greenhouse gases from human activity 30.9% 1,602
solar variation 33.1% 1,718
natural processes 75.8% 3,934
There is no climate change. 6.2% 320
answered question 5,188
skipped question 2

4. The IPCC, or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is:
an effective group of government representatives, scientists and other experts. 18.0% 932
a corrupt organization, prone to groupthink, with a political agenda. 81.3% 4,220
something to do with Internet protocols. 0.7% 36
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5. What should we do about climate change?
Nothing, we are powerless to stop it. 65.4% 3,394
Use more technology (geoengineering, carbon capture and storage). 16.7% 865
Use less technology (cars, intensive agriculture). 5.8% 303
Switch to carbon-free energy sources as much as possible and adapt to changes already underway. 29.5% 1,528
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6. What is "climate sensitivity"?
the degree to which global temperature responds to concentrations of greenhouse gases 32.6% 1,692
an unknown variable that climate scientists still do not understand 52.2% 2,708
the phrase on which the fate of human civilization hangs 0.6% 30
all of the above 14.6% 758
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7. Which policy options do you support?
a carbon tax 15.1% 781
cap and trade (a price on carbon via an overall limit on emissions paired with some form of market for such pollution permits) 8.5% 441
increased government funding of energy-related technology research and development 38.8% 2,015
cap and dividend, in which the proceeds of auctioning pollution permits are rebated to taxpayers 6.6% 343
keeping science out of the political process 65.1% 3,375
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8. How much would you be willing to pay to forestall the risk of catastrophic climate change?
a 50 percent increase in electricity bills 3.8% 195
a doubling of gasoline prices 5.5% 286
nothing 76.7% 3,981
whatever it takes 14.0% 726
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Review of Holocene 'Climate Optimum' shows Temperatures 2°C hotter than Present

A new peer-reviewed paper Climate change between the mid and late Holocene in northern high latitudes reviews 110 temperature proxies of the past 6000 years in the northern high latitudes and finds "A large majority of the here investigated temperature reconstructions indicate that temperatures were warmer at the mid-Holocene [6000 years ago] compared to the preindustrial period [500 years ago], both in summer,winter and the annual mean. By taking simple arithmetic averages over the available data, the reconstructions indicate that the northern high latitudes were 1.0°C warmer in summer, 1.7°C in winter and 2.0°C warmer in the annual mean temperature at the mid-Holocene (6000 years ago) compared to the recent pre-industrial." The paper also notes (p. 6) that the temperature change via proxy reconstructions from years 1501 to 2000 "appears to be only ~0.05°C for the Northern Hemisphere as a whole according to data from Mann et al (2009)." [that is not a typo - the paper states five one-hundredths of one degree change from pre-industrial 1501 AD to the year 2000]

Therefore, annual northern hemisphere temperatures during the Holocene 'Climate Optimum' 6000 years ago were ~1.95°C hotter than at the end of the 20th century. The "hockey team" of Michael Mann et al has claimed that prior warming periods were localized to the European Arctic, but this extensive review shows the current warming is not unprecedented, not localized, and was greatly exceeded in the recent geologic past. 

Note: the Corrigendum of this paper contains the updated figures above.

New Paper Says There's Little Empirical Evidence for AGW

A new peer-reviewed paper published in Theoretical and Applied Climatology points out that there little empirical evidence for AGW, and that "At best, the empirical evidence for human impact on  climate change...is based on correlational research." One of the first principles of science is that "correlation does not equal causation," but as this paper shows, the IPCC essentially equates correlation with causation without consideration of alternative theories that could potentially falsify the AGW theory. In addition, the paper is critical of the IPCC "cherry-picking" data to confirm AGW while ignoring contradictory data, and the use of a "consensus," stating "if reaching consensus were really the hallmark of sound science, the scientific theories of Galileo, Copernicus, Darwin, and many others would never have seen daylight" and "scientists need to make a living, and they will not bite the hand that feeds them, an argument used by some advocates of AGW who claim that climate skeptics are sponsored by “Big Carbon”. Therefore, consensus must be dismissed as a defining feature of science."

Selected excerpts from the paper:

Briefly stated, the major shortcoming of the verification criterion is that it allows only experience to decide upon the truth or falsity of scientific statements (Popper 1965: 42; see Rapp 1975). Popper's most important contribution to the debate was to state that every scientific theory should be able to list counter-examples which, if found in reality, disconfirm (“falsify”) the theory. This is the principle of falsification. In the case of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), the theory should list one or more counter- examples that could (potentially) disconfirm the theory. This listing of potential falsifiers appears to be missing in the present debate on AGW. In fact, some skeptics in the debate on AGW point out that all natural climatic disasters are used as evidence (verification) for the human impact on climate, whereas evidence that a post WWII global warming is absent in, e.g., the Greenland Ice-Core Bore Record [see related graph below] is ignored as falsifying evidence (see, e.g., Dahl-Jensen et al. 1998; Feldman and Marks 2009). Needless to say that a methodologically sound theory would encompass all available evidence and not “cherry-pick” those pieces of evidence that confirm the theory while ignoring those that do not.

Unfortunately, when a theoretical phenomenon such as AGW becomes a global political program, it soon becomes vulnerable to methodological fallacies in the realm of social and political science. Leaving aside the quality of used data and methods, the IPCC report aimed at reaching a consensus. Consensus is recognized by some social scientific method- ologists as the defining feature of social science (Swanborn 1996; Feyerabend 1987). However, if reaching consensus were really the hallmark of sound science, the scientific theories of Galileo, Copernicus, Darwin, and many others would never have seen daylight. Also, there is no guarantee that majorities will reach sensible opinions.

Finally, scientists need to make a living, and they will not bite the hand that feeds them, an argument used by some advocates of AGW who claim that climate skeptics are sponsored by “Big Carbon”. Therefore, consensus must be dismissed as a defining feature of science. The IPCC recognizes the limitation of consensus by adding the phrase ‘and much evidence’ when it makes statements as in, e.g., “there is high agreement and much evidence that with current climate change mitigation policies and related sustainable develop- ment practices, global GHG emissions will continue to grow over the next few decades” (IPCC 2007: p. 7, italics added). We must therefore discuss the sources of evidence that are used to formulate the many causal statements on AGW issued in the report.

The quality of all scientific research depends of course, on the quality of the data that are being processed. Regardless of the quality of the (statistical) model used for analysis, if bad data are fed to the model, then the result of the analysis will be bad. This principle is known as garbage in–garbage out. In other words, if the data that are fed into climate models are open to dispute, then so are the projections of these models. In the scientific (i.e., peer- reviewed) literature, several authors have expressed doubts about the quality of the analyzed data and the possibility to derive at valid inferences on human impact on global warming (e.g., Jaworowski 1994; Soon et al. 2004; Michaels 2008; Pielke et al. 2007).

For instance, if the AGW hypothesis is to be confirmed, data are required that quantify the amount of human produced CO2  as separated from the amount produced by other sources (e.g., volcano's) and as separated from the amount of CO2  dissipated in oceans for a time span that covers theoretically justified time lags (perchance in the order of centuries). An “aggregate” causal variable that combines radiative forcing of greenhouse gasses, anthropogenic sulfur emissions, and radiative forcing of solar irradiance cannot provide “direct evidence that, since 1870, human activity is largely responsible for the increase in global surface temperature” (cfr. Kauffmann et al. 2006: 225, 250).

In order to scientifically corroborate the AGW hypothesis, the present focus on verification of the AGW hypothesis should shift towards a focus on its falsification.

...in adopting Swanborn's (1996) “regulative idea of striving after truth by consensus within the scientific community over research results”, we are always in danger of replacing the purpose of science (knowledge) with a by-product of science (consensus in the form of “common sense”).
Theor Appl Climatol DOI 10.1007/s00704-010-0355-y

A methodological note on the making of causal statements in the debate on anthropogenic global warming

Jarl K. Kampen

Accepted: 4 October 2010

Abstract: At best, the empirical evidence for human impact on climate change, more specifically, the anthropogenic global warming (AGW), is based on correlational research. That is, no experiment has been carried out that confirms or falsifies the causal hypothesis put forward by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that anthropogenic increasing of green house gas concentrations very likely causes increasing of the (mean) global temperature. In this article, we point out the major weaknesses of correlational research in assessing causal hypotheses. We further point out that the AGW hypothesis is in need of potential falsifiers in the Popperian (neopositivistic) sense. Some directions for future research on the formulation of such falsifiers in causal research are discussed. Of course, failure to find falsifying evidence in empirical climate data will render the AWG hypothesis much stronger.