We must “move beyond the most common perception that discolored corals are always less healthy,” because “nonlethal (and arguably sublethal) bleaching events are part of a natural rhythm that enables corals to successfully respond to environmental variability” ... Read More
Global Warming and Tropical Cyclones of the Western North Pacific (5 Apr 2011)
In spite of a “remarkable warming,” the authors of this study determined that “the frequency of TC against the background of global warming has decreased with time” ... Read More
CO2-Related Genotypic Variation in White Spruce (5 Apr 2011)
Observations suggest that highly-CO2-responsive genotypes of a wide variety of earth’s plants -- from food crops to lumber crops -- could well be selected to take advantage of their genetic ability to optimize their growth in response to projected future increases in the air’s CO2 content ... Read More
Nine Centuries of Warm-Season Temperatures in West-Central Scandinavia (5 Apr 2011)
Contrary to the worn-out claim of the world’s climate alarmists that the high temperatures of the past couple of decades have been unprecedented relative to those of the past couple of millennia, this impressive April-September temperature reconstruction from west-central Scandinavia tells a much different story for this particular part of the world ... Read More
Growth Responses of Populus euphratica Trees to Concomitant Changes in Groundwater Depth and Atmospheric CO2 Content (5 Apr 2011)
As groundwater depth declines and riparian trees find it more difficult to obtain the water they need to survive, are the positive effects atmospheric CO2 enrichment enhanced or diminished? ... Read More
Humans Are Destroying Earth’s Coral Reefs (5 Apr 2011)
But not in the way climate alarmists want us to believe ... Read More
Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment and the Growth of Corn Under Various Degrees of Water Stress (5 Apr 2011)
Under increased CO2 concentrations, “less water will be required for corn plants than at present.” And since water is already a scarce commodity in many parts of the world -- and will only become more scarce, more expensive and more difficult to obtain in the days and years ahead -- this finding is extremely welcome news ... Read More
Model Assessments of Warming-Induced Changes in the Frequency of Northern Hemisphere Summer Cyclones (6 Apr 2011)
Projections obtained from sixteen state-of-the-art climate models show “little consistency,” indicating that “care is required when interpreting projected changes in summer weather systems” ... Read More
Alaskan Trumpeter Swans in a Warming World (6 Apr 2011)
How did they respond to the increase in temperature experienced between 1968 and 2005? ... Read More
The Terrestrial Carbon Balance of East Asia (6 Apr 2011)
Between 1901 and 2002, modeled Net Primary Productivity (NPP) “significantly increased by 5.5-8.5 Tg C per year (15-20% growth),” and this increase in NPP “caused an increased cumulated terrestrial carbon storage of about 5-11 Pg C,” about 50-70% of which “is located in vegetation biomass.” And, “40-60% of the accumulated carbon uptake of the 20th century is credited to the period of 1980-2002" ... Read More
Are Economic Losses from Extreme Weather Events Increasing? (6 Apr 2011)
Not according to the results of this new study ... Read More
Black Carbon at the Top of the World (6 Apr 2011)
Reducing biofuel sources of black carbon emissions may be an extremely worthy goal ... Read More
The 1470-Year Climate Oscillation of the North Pacific Gyre (6 Apr 2011)
How does it compare with the 1500-year-repeatable Bond events of the North Atlantic? ... Read More
Gavin Schmidt of NASA/GISS quoted in the new issue of Nature Climate Change (4/11) states, "Of all the things that I can do that are important, is allowing reproducibility of my code on somebody else's computer important? No, that's not important."
Gavin has apparently learned nothing about reproducibility and the scientific method from McIntyre, McKitrick, and climategate.
Excerpt from article "Data on Demand," unfortunately no free link available.
For years, some researchers have argued that the evidence for global warming is not nearly as strong as has been officially claimed. The details of the arguments are often technical. As a result, policy makers and other people outside the debate have relied on the pronouncements of a group of climate scientists. I think that is unnecessary. I believe that what is arguably the most important reason to doubt global warming can be explained in terms that most people can understand.
Consider the graph of global temperatures in Figure 1, which uses data from NASA. At first, it might seem obvious that the graph shows an increase in temperatures. In fact the story is more involved.
Imagine tossing a coin ten times. If the coin came up Heads each time, we would have very significant evidence that the coin was not a fair coin. Suppose instead that the coin was tossed only three times. If the coin came up Heads each time, we would not have significant evidence that the coin was unfair: Getting Heads three times can reasonably occur just by chance.
In Figures 2 and 3, each graph has three segments, one segment for each toss of a coin. If the coin came up Heads, then the segment slopes upward; if it came up Tails, then it slopes downward. In Figure 2, the graph on the far left illustrates tossing Heads, Tails, Heads; the middle graph illustrates Tails, Heads, Tails; and the last graph illustrates Heads, Tails, Tails. Figure 3 illustrates Heads, Heads, Heads.
Three Heads is not significant evidence for anything other than random chance occurring. A statistician would say that although the graph shows an increase, the increase is "not significant."
Suppose now that instead of tossing coins, we roll ordinary six-sided dice. We will roll each die three times. If a die comes up 1, we will draw a line segment downward; if it comes up 6, the segment is drawn upward; and if it comes up 2, 3, 4 or 5, the segment is drawn straight across. Figure 4 gives some examples of possible outcomes.
Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace and author of the new book, Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist, states in the interview below, "we do not have any scientific proof that we are the cause of global warming." Moore also explains how the green movement has been co-opted by the political left and has come to support policies which are harmful for the environment and humanity.
Patrick Moore: ...Fluctuations in climate are not “routine”. It is true that there has been an upward trend in global temperature since about 1800 when the Little Ice Age ended. There have been ups and downs along the way. As you know the last upward trend was between 1970-1998. Since then there has been no further rise in temperature, perhaps a slight decline. That is all I said.
The main point is that neither you nor I know with any certainty what will happen next. What goes up tends to eventually come down as has been the case with global climate from the beginning of life. I personally believe that it would be much better in balance if the temperature rose 2°-3°C than if it fell 2°-3°C. “You should know the difference” is condescending. And despite all this it still doesn’t prove that we are responsible for the recent rise in temperature. Temperature has been rising and falling for billions of years and it had nothing to do with us.
Then what does it take to “stop” a trend? What caused the present Ice Age to set on 2.5 million years ago? And what caused the wild fluctuations of massive glaciations that have come and gone many times since then? Were these “routine fluctuations”? Do you believe that CO2 and other greenhouse gasses are always the main factors that cause the climate to change?
Part of the “prevailing data” is that it hasn’t continued to warm over the past decade despite ever-increasing emissions of CO2.
Semi-retired physicist Dr. Daniel M. Sweger has been a research scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, where he was active in a variety of research areas, including cryogenic thermometry, solid state and nuclear physics, and molecular spectroscopy.
Dr. Sweger's new paper, Earth’s Climate Engine (PDF), finds that if carbon dioxide has any effect on climate, it must be negligible. Instead, he finds on the basis of data and theory that water vapor is the dominant influence on climate, and its influence is the opposite of that assumed by the IPCC climate computer models.
From the Executive Summary:
… While models can be useful, the results must be compared to actual measurements, i.e. data. Data is the language of science, but little has been done in that regard with the climate change models.
It is the premise of the author that water vapor is the dominant influence in determining and understanding global climate. Water vapor is much more abundant in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, and its physical properties make it more important as well. During daylight hours it moderates the sun’s energy, at night it acts like a blanket to slow the loss of heat, and it carries energy from the warm parts of the earth to the cold. Compared to that, if carbon dioxide has any effect it must be negligible. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of water vapor on climate.
Detailed calculations and analysis of data from several locations clearly demonstrate that the effect of water vapor on temperature dominates any proposed effect of carbon dioxide. Furthermore, it is clear from the data presented that water vapor acts with a negative feedback on temperature, not a positive one. That is, the data demonstrate that increasing the level of water vapor in the atmosphere results in a decrease of temperature, not an increase as predicted by the climate models. In essence, atmospheric water vapor acts as a thermostat.
These results call into question the validity of using the results of the current general climate change models, particularly as the basis for policy decision making.
ABSTRACT: Higher global demand for biofuels, driven mainly by policies in industrialized countries with the stated purpose of enhancing energy independence and retarding climate change, has contributed to rising global food prices. As a consequence, more people in developing countries suffer from both chronic hunger and absolute poverty. Hunger and poverty are major contributors to death and disease in poorer countries. Results derived from World Bank and World Health Organization (WHO) studies suggest that for every million people living in absolute poverty in developing countries, there are annually at least 5,270 deaths and 183,000 Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) lost to disease. Combining these estimates with estimates of the increase in poverty owing to growth in biofuels production over 2004 levels leads to the conclusion that additional biofuel production may have resulted in at least 192,000 excess deaths and 6.7 million additional lost DALYs in 2010. These exceed WHO’s estimated annual toll of 141,000 deaths and 5.4 million lost DALYs attributable to global warming. Thus, policies intended to mitigate global warming may actually have increased death and disease in developing countries.
Sea Level Rise by the End of the 21st Century (29 Mar 2011)
Evidence points to the absence of tide-gauge data supporting any acceleration in the SL rise trend of the past century. This calls into question the many projections of rates of rise above this trend, which would be required for larger projected total increases due to AGW ... Read More
Changes in Snowfall in the Southern Sierra Nevada of California Since 1916 (29 Mar 2011)
The supposedly unprecedented 20th century rise in air temperature has had no measurable effect on Sierra Nevada snowfall at Huntington Lake ... Read More
Will Burning Fossil Fuels Reduce Baltic Cod Reproduction Rates? (29 Mar 2011)
Global Warming May Reduce the Risk of Heart Attacks in the United Kingdom (29 Mar 2011)
Cold temperatures have a far greater ability to increase the risk of myocardial infarction than warm temperatures ... Read More
Global Warming and Urban Heat Islands (29 Mar 2011)
“Urban warming can be a biasing factor that may contaminate data used for monitoring the background temperature change” ... Read More
Penguins Shown to Be Poor Indicators of Global Warming (29 Mar 2011)
A long-term study of banded vs. unbanded free-ranging king penguins, Aptenodytes patagonicus, concluded that banding has such a negative impact on breeding success that results from studies which include banded penguins should not be used to draw conclusions on the effects of global warming on the Antarctic ecosytem ... Read More
Do Plants in Mountainous Areas Always Migrate Uphill in Response to Warming? (29 Mar 2011)
Temperature is not the all-important factor when it comes to determining how plants will migrate in the face of a suite of multiple climatic factors in a state of flux ... Read More
Availability of Land for Biofuel Production - But That is Only Part of the Story (30 Mar 2011)
Even if there is sufficient land to theoretically meet the world’s need for food and have sufficient land left over to produce such biofuel feedstock that does not mean that such biofuel production will not affect food prices, food availability, and global hunger and poverty rates ... Read More
Japanese Rainfall: Predictions vs. Observations (30 Mar 2011)
Climate model projections of increased Baiu rainfall in response to global warming induced by increasing concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases -- over a period of time when the world’s climate alarmists claim the earth warmed at a rate and to a level that were both unprecedented over the past millennium or more -- are simply not correc ... Read More
Getting to the “Core” of Output Differences as Produced by Climate Models (30 Mar 2011)
Using a simplified atmospheric GCM, Kondrashov et al. (2011) investigate the behavior of the interactions between internal atmospheric dynamic processes depending on how these processes are represented in the model. These dynamics can be represented in a linear or non-linear fashion. This article is an important recent contribution in that it highlights the difficulties climate models still have in just representing the basic observed atmospheric physics in a consistent way ... Read More
C4 Weeds Competing with C3 Crops: Barnyard Grass vs. Rice (30 Mar 2011)
Rising atmospheric CO2 concentration could alter the competition between rice and barnyard grass in paddy fields in favor of rice ... Read More
Extreme Weather: More heat waves or colder and snowier winters? (30 Mar 2011)
Results from this study suggest that “changes in litter inputs under elevated CO2 [slight decreases in nitrogen concentration but sizable increases in biomass] should lead to higher long-term carbon storage in soil,” even “despite higher rates of soil respiration” ... Read More
The Uniqueness of British Columbia’s Medieval Warm Period (30 Mar 2011)
At the province’s Felker Lake, the warmth and dryness of the MWP was the most extreme of the entire Holocene ... Read More
EIA reports a record-setting 5.8-percent decline in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2009
Total U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were 6,576 million metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) in 2009, a decrease of 5.8 percent from the 2008 level, according to Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2009, a report released today by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Since 1990, U.S. GHG emissions have grown at an average annual rate of 0.4 percent. This is the largest percentage decline in total U.S. GHG emissions since 1990, the starting year for EIA's data on total GHG emissions.
"The large decline in emissions in 2009 was driven by the economic downturn, combined with an ongoing trend toward a less energy-intensive economy and a decrease in the carbon-intensity of the energy supply," said EIA Administrator Richard Newell.
Total estimated U.S. GHG emissions in 2009 consisted of 5,446.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (82.8 percent of total emissions); 730.9 MMTCO2e of methane (11.1 percent of total emissions); 219.6 MMTCO2e of nitrous oxide (3.3 percent of total emissions); and 178.2 MMTCO2e of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) (2.7 percent of total emissions).
Emissions of energy-related carbon dioxide decreased by 7.1 percent in 2009, having risen at an average annual rate of 0.8 percent per year from 1990 to 2008. Among the factors that influenced the emissions decrease was a decline in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 2.6 percent. The energy intensity of the U.S. economy, measured as energy consumed per dollar of GDP (Energy/GDP), fell by 2.2 percent in 2009. Year-to-year declines in energy intensity are relatively common. There was also a decline in the carbon dioxide intensity of U.S. energy supply (CO2 per unit of energy) in 2009, caused primarily by a drop in the price of natural gas relative to coal that led to more natural gas consumed for the generation of electricity. Also contributing was an increase in renewable energy consumption, led by wind and hydropower.
Methane emissions increased by 0.9 percent, while nitrous oxide emissions fell by 1.7 percent in 2009. Based on partial data constituting about 77 percent of the category, combined emissions of HFCs, PFCs and SF6 increased by 4.9 percent.
For some reason, people aren't worrying much about global warming these days--even though, as we write, it's 40 degrees out in New York City, far warmer than it was just two or three months ago. Gallup finds that only 51% of Americans worry about global warming even a "fair amount," making it the lowest-priority environmental issue. That is to say, the lowest of the low, as a January Gallup poll found "the environment" the subject that fewest voters--less than a quarter--rated "extremely important."
London's Guardian reports that in the United Kingdom, "greenhouse gas emissions rose by nearly 3% last year, according to government statistics released on Thursday." The story is accompanied by a photo of a snow-covered street with the caption: "Last year's rise in carbon emissions was due to an increase in gas used to heat homes driven by the cold weather."
For some reason, the story doesn't mention the connection between cold weather and the increase in greenhouse gases. We suppose the Guardian doesn't want to alarm its readers. After all, if emissions are rising because of cold weather, that's an act of God, there's not much anyone can do to save the planet.
This strikes us as overly fatalistic. For one thing, we're all going to die anyway, and we lose nothing by facing up to the inconvenient truth. What's more, you never know. With some good old-fashioned Yankee ingenuity, maybe man can come up with a way of making the weather warmer so as to avoid the threat of greenhouse gases.
Architectural Digest reports Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio are among the first in line to receive the new $96,000 Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid sports car. This vehicle features 400 horsepower, 0 to 60 mph in 5.9 seconds, "eco-friendly" leather seating, and your choice of oak, mahogany, or walnut inlays. AD reports this "fantasy car" was only possible due to $529 million in "stimulus money" courtesy of the Obama administration and US taxpayers.
The Fisker Karma, plaything for the rich
The Karma’s interior is a welcome departure from the chrome-and-black scheme found in so many luxury cars. Various shades of leather—produced by an eco-friendly tannery in Scotland—surround key areas of inlaid oak, mahogany, or walnut (the latter salvaged from 2007’s California wildfires). These earthy aspects contrast with the sleek mid-dash and center EcoLucent polymer consoles that cradle the information and entertainment systems—“a very cool effect when they’re lit up at night,” Fisker says.
The Fisker Karma comes late to a luxury market in which rival Tesla Motors is struggling to sell its pricey $109,000 electric roadsters and while relative bargains the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf only sold 281 and 67 vehicles last month, respectively. Most US electricity production comes from coal or natural gas, negating the claimed environmental benefits of plug-in vehicles, not to mention the large amounts of energy required to mine rare earth minerals and in manufacture of the batteries, which die within 6-8 years. Do US taxpayers really need to subsidize the manufacture of luxury sports cars reserved for hypocritical movie stars and the rich?
Spinmeister Michael Mann has fired off a reply to the editor of a newspaper which published an article critical of his work, again claiming his hockey stick graph, one of the most thoroughly discredited papers of the modern age, was affirmed by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS):
"...the National Academy of Sciences, affirmed my research findings in an exhaustive independent review published in June 2006 .."
The NAS report did nothing of the sort, and in fact validated all of the significant criticisms of McIntyre & McKitrick (M&M) and the Wegman Report:
1. The NAS indicated that the hockey stick method systematically underestimated the uncertainties in the data (p. 107).
2. In subtle wording, the NAS agreed with the M&M assertion that the hockey stick had no statistical significance, and was no more informative about the distant past than a table of random numbers. The NAS found that Mann's methods had no validation (CE) skill significantly different from zero. In the past, however, it has always been claimed that the method has a significant nonzero validation skill. Methods without a validation skill are usually considered useless. Mann’s data set does not have enough information to verify its ‘skill’ at resolving the past, and has such wide uncertainty bounds as to be no better than the simple mean of the data (p. 91). M&M said that the appearance of significance was created by ignoring all but one type of test score, thereby failing to quantify all the relevant uncertainties. The NAS agreed (p. 110), but, again, did so in subtle wording.
3. M&M argued that the hockey stick relied for its shape on the inclusion of a small set of invalid proxy data (called bristlecone, or “strip-bark” records). If they are removed, the conclusion that the 20th century is unusually warm compared to the pre-1450 interval is reversed. Hence the conclusion of unique late 20th century warmth is not robust—in other word it does not hold up under minor variations in data or methods. The NAS panel agreed, saying Mann’s results are “strongly dependent” on the strip-bark data (pp. 106-107), and they went further, warning that strip-bark data should not be used in this type of research (p. 50).
4. The NAS said " Mann et al. used a type of principal component analysis that tends to bias the shape of the reconstructions", i.e. produce hockey sticks from baseball statistics, telephone book numbers, and monte carlo random numbers.
5. The NAS said Mann downplayed the "uncertainties of the published reconstructions...Even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions by Mann et al. (1999) that ‘the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium.’
Mann never mentions that a subsequent House Energy and Commerce Committee report chaired by Edward Wegman totally destroyed the credibility of the ‘hockey stick’ and devastatingly ripped apart Mann’s methodology as ‘bad mathematics’. Furthermore, when Gerald North, the chairman of the NAS panel -- which Mann claims ‘vindicated him’ – was asked at the House Committee hearings whether or not they agreed with Wegman’s harsh criticisms, hesaid they did:
CHAIRMAN BARTON: Dr. North, do you dispute the conclusions or the methodology of Dr. Wegman’s report?
DR. NORTH [Head of the NAS panel]: No, we don’t. We don’t disagree with their criticism. In fact, pretty much the same thing is said in our report.
DR. BLOOMFIELD [Head of the Royal Statistical Society]: Our committee reviewed the methodology used by Dr. Mann and his co-workers and we felt that some of the choices they made were inappropriate. We had much the same misgivings about his work that was documented at much greater length by Dr. Wegman.
WALLACE [of the American Statistical Association]: ‘the two reports [Wegman's and NAS] were complementary, and to the extent that they overlapped, the conclusions were quite consistent.’
Mann uses the 5 rules of propaganda in his defense, including the rule of orchestration: endlessly repeating the same messages in different variations and combinations [e.g. the NAS gave my hockey stick a clean bill of health].
By Joseph E. Postma (M.Sc. Astrophysics, Honours B.Sc. Astronomy)
March, 2011
Introduction
This article began as a brief two-page summary of the theoretical development of the “Greenhouse Effect”. After having several discussions with colleagues, it became apparent that its theoretical basis was not widely understood, even though the theory appeared to be believed in implicitly. In a scientific institution it is generally expected that individuals understand the theories they support and believe in, rather than simply being aware of them and believing in them. Therefore it was curious that there seemed to be so little academic understanding of the theory of the Greenhouse Effect, as opposed to simple awareness of it.
Democrats face a moment of truth on regulatory cap and trade.
The Environmental Protection Agency debate lands in the Senate this week, amid the makings of a left-right coalition to mitigate the agency's abuses. Few other votes this year could do more to help the private economy—but only if enough Democrats are willing to buck the White House.
This moment arrived unexpectedly, with Majority Leader Harry Reid opening a small business bill to amendments. Republican leader Mitch McConnell promptly introduced a rider to strip the EPA of the carbon regulation authority that the Obama Administration has given itself. Two weeks ago, Mr. Reid pulled the bill from the floor once it became clear Mr. McConnell might have the 13 Democrats he needs to clear 60.
The votes are now due as soon as tomorrow, and Mr. Reid is trying to attract 41 Democrats with a rival amendment from Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus. The Baucus plan is a political veneer that would exempt some farms and businesses from the EPA maw but at the cost of endorsing everything else. The question for Democrats is whether their loyalties to President Obama and EPA chief Lisa Jackson trump the larger economic good, not to mention constituents already facing far higher energy costs.
The story of how we arrived at this pass begins in 1999, when Clinton EPA chief Carol Browner floated the idea that carbon dioxide could be regulated as a pollutant under the 1970 Clean Air Act and its later amendments. The Bush Administration rejected Ms. Browner's theory, in part because Congress kept rejecting statutory language to that effect.
Several states and green groups sued, and the question reached the Supreme Court in 2006. With Massachusetts v. EPA, a 5-4 majority broadly rewrote the definition of "pollutant," but it also narrowly held that "EPA no doubt has significant latitude as to the manner, timing, content, and coordination of its regulations" (our emphasis). In other words, the Court created new powers via judicial invention but left their use to the discretion of the executive branch.
Dr. Robert Carter is a geologist, environmental scientist and paleoclimatologist at the Marine Geophysical Laboratory, James Cook University, Australia and author of the book Climate: The Counter-Consensus. In the recent lecture below he shows that the 20th century global warming was not unusual and that far greater changes have occurred naturally in the past over as little as 3 years (during the Younger Dryas period). He shows that man's influence upon the climate is a local phenomenon, such as warming due to urban heat islands and cooling due to land use changes such as agriculture, with the net effect unknown. Dr. Carter notes, however, that there is no direct evidence of warming due to CO2 emissions.
Related: Professor Carter in Quadrant Magazine explains some of the technical mistakes of the Australian climate commission:
Assertion: Human-caused global warming is continuing, and we are in danger of seeing it augmented by positive feedback loops.
Reality: There is no direct evidence that the mild warming that occurred between 1979 and 1998 was mostly, or even measurably, a result of human carbon dioxide emissions, despite the pseudo-scientific assertion to that effect by the IPCC.
Second, there has been no global warming at all for the last 15 years despite, the operation throughout of the self-same feedback loops.
Assertion: Industrial carbon dioxide emissions are currently ~300 billion tonnes annually and they need to be limited to ~700 billion tonnes in future to stabilize the temperature at no more than 2 deg. C above the pre-industrial temperature.
Reality: There is no evidence that a 2 deg. C warming (which would take the planet back to about the temperature levels of the Climatic Optimum that occurred about 10,000 years ago) would be damaging for the environment, or for human activities in any substantial way that we couldn’t adapt to.
And, even should natural global warming resume in the future, as it very well may as part of a continuing bounce back from the hostile conditions of the Little Ice Age, there is no certainty that restricting carbon dioxide emissions will do anything to halt the rise. First, because of the diminishing warming effectiveness of every increment of carbon dioxide that is added to the atmosphere, and second because the assumed efficacy of limiting emissions to 700 billion tonnes is a projection of computer models that are known to be faulty.
Assertion: We live today during a long, stable period of climate with no expectable change for the next 20-30 thousand years, and we are now seeing a temperature increase above that due to human carbon dioxide emissions.
Reality: There are three things wrong with this statement. First, the stable period referred to is called the Holocene. The Holocene has already lasted 10,000 years, during which time (i) a long term cooling of 1-2 deg. C has occurred; and (ii) regular temperature oscillations of about 1 deg. C have occurred on multidecadal and centennial time scales, the last of which occurred during the 20th century.
Second, the average length of recent warm interglacials similar to the Holocene is about 10,000 years, implying we are near the end of the climatic optimum that has so favoured the development of human societies. [An alternative view is that of all the recent interglacial periods, the Earth’s current orbital geometry (which is what controls the glacial and interglacial cycles) is most similar to that of an interglacial that occurred about 400,000 years ago, and which lasted for the unusually long period of 20,000 years. The suggestion that therefore the Holocene might similarly continue for 20,000 years or more is a valid scientific debating point, but nowhere near to the certainty that it was presented as.]
Third, we are not seeing any increase in temperature above the long-term Holocene average at the moment, and there is no empirical evidence that the mild warming of the late 20th century had a dominantly human causation.
Assertion: The scientific community is more than 90% sure that we are not seeing a natural warming at the moment; this is as strong a consensus as you will ever get.
Reality: The scientists amongst the Commissioners clearly mix in a different scientific community to the one that I inhabit. I believe that the community that they refer to is the restricted group of scientists who are associated with the IPCC. It is indeed true that the majority of IPCC scientists are convinced that dangerous global warming is occurring, or will occur, and therein lies the problem.
For IPCC scientists hold this belief fiercely at the same time that an intense debate is raging in the wider scientific community, most members of which have a much more balanced, middleground view that goes something like:
Yes, natural climate change and events are definitely an environmental and socio-political hazard, and yes we should prepare better for them and adapt better to them when they occur.
Such a commonsense policy is, of course, not only cost-effective, but is also precautionary against any human-caused change that might occur in the future - but which has not been manifest yet.
Second, and as has been said so many times before, consensus is a political concept that has nothing to do with science. For were the Commissioners to tell us is that there is a scientific consensus that the sun will rise tomorrow, everyone would wonder what was wrong with them that they should choose such peculiar, deliberately non-scientific, language.
Assertion: We do not hear a debate in the scientific community between IPCC-supporting scientists and other, independent scientists because no such debate exists. “There is no debate and there has been no debate for a couple of decades”.
Reality: That credentialed scientists can make statements like this on a public platform is extraordinary. The statement is, of course, false, and reveals far more about its author than it does about the real state of scientific discussion regarding climate change.
Assertion: The Melbourne heat wave in 2009 set a temperature record that was 3 deg. C higher than previously. Similar temperatures will be everyday events by the end of this century.
Reality: This is typical of the sort of nonsensical alarmist statements that are made by persons possessed of a naïve faith that computer models can make predictions about future climate states. They cannot, as even the modelling practitioners themselves concede.
The computer model that yielded the speculative projection regarding future hot days in Victoria was doubtless derived from the same organisation that includes the following disclaimer at the front of all its computer modelling consultancy reports:
This report relates to climate change scenarios based on computer modelling. Models involve simplifications of the real processes that are not fully understood.
Accordingly, no responsibility will be accepted by CSIRO or the QLD government for the accuracy of forecasts or predictions inferred from this report or for any person's interpretations, deductions, conclusions or actions in reliance on this report.
Did you get that?
Assertion: The Great Barrier Reef has experienced about 7-10 bleaching events since 1979. No bleaching events are known before this, and the events result when the ocean temperature SST rises about 1 deg. above the summer long term temperature. If we keep going, the reef will bleach every year by 2030.
Reality: Bleaching events on coral reefs are caused less by regional ocean warming per se than they are by the localised warming that occurs in areas and times of low wind conditions.
Bleaching events have been reported since 1979 because it is only after that date that a network of scientific observers was established on the reef. There is no evidence that any of these events was due to human activity, and to suggest that no similar natural events occurred before 1979 is silly.
In any case, the sea surface temperature of the Great Barrier Reef shows no change over the last 30 years, and the speculation that the reef will bleach every year by 2030 doubtless represents the projection of another of those legendary, and legendarily wrong, computer models.
Chinese scientists have discovered that global vegetation has 'generally increased' since satellite measurements began in 1981, which might lead to the shocking possibility that more CO2 pollution and global warming are good for plants.
Full paper available here. The leaf-area index (LAI) is a satellite measure of the efficiency of photosynthesis or the health of vegetation. This data needs to be adjusted because top climate scientists know global warming and CO2 pollution are bad for plants.
Perhaps this explains why commercial hothouse operators pay for systems to increase CO2 levels to 3-4 times the atmospheric level to make plants grow up to 50% faster.
"The annals of physics are rife with instances in which the majority of scientists agreed on something that turned out to be wrong."
In a recent letter published in the American Physical Society (APS) Newspaper, two physicists state that the scientific organization should stick to scientific matters, and not allow an anonymous faction of members to use the organization for political advocacy on AGW.
APS Should Stick to Scientific Matters
We read with some interest the story headlined“APS Responds to Member Resignation over Climate Change”(APS News, November 2010.) It seems to us that the real question is not whether global warming ideology is a scam or not. The real question is what type of an organization does APS want to be? Since joining APS in the 1960’s we have noted a constant drift from a scientific agenda toward asocially relevantagenda. We believe that APS should limit its activities and publications to scientific matters and avoid political and societal issues altogether. We are not saying that scientists should not be concerned with politics and social issues. They should. It is their duty to do so. But they speak for themselves, according to their own beliefs. APS is on a slippery slope. Once politics and societal issues creep into its agenda scientific integrity will suffer at the hands ofpolitical correctnessand demagoguery. As a trivial example, in APS’s response the following occurs: “...APS notes that virtually all reputable scientists agree with the following observations:...” In science truth is not determined by a majority vote. Words such asconsensusand incontrovertibledo not play a role. The annals of physics are rife with instances in which the majority of scientists agreed on something that turned out to be wrong. (Light propagates through the aether, and the atom is the smallest unit of matter.) We feel that APS should limit its activities to establishing facts and finding the truth by scientific means. Individuals or groups of individuals within the APS membership have every right to express political or policy views as it may affect various funding scenarios, but identification of those individuals who espouse a particular point of view should be explicitly provided. The APS Council, and POPA in particular, should not attempt to speak for the membership as a whole on political policy matters. As a start to move toward openness and transparency, the APS should publish in this newspaper a list of individuals who formulated and wrote the current climate policy statement(s). It is their statement and not necessarily the statement of the APS membership. The APS should also publish on the web the 1600 (or so) members’ commentary statements on the climate issue solicited this past year. Then, we and the public as a whole can begin to see the diversity and divergence of views, knowledge, and expertise amongst physicists in the US. Thomas Wolfram, San Clemente, CA Sam Werner, Gaithersburg, MD
[emphasis added. Both authors are former chairmen of university physics departments]
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