JoNova

A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).


The Skeptics Handbook

The Skeptics Handbook II

Climate Money Paper


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GoldNerds

The nerds have the numbers on precious metals investments in Australia and North America



Dr David Evans: Four fatal pieces of evidence

Dr David Evans lays out four crucial pieces of evidence, and calls for a debate with Prof Andrew Pitman. But the evidence is so unarguably strong for skeptics, we know that the name-calling-team-who-want-our-money will do anything to avoid a public debate. If the evidence is “overwhelming” why are they so unwilling to explain it?  — Jo

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Submission to the Inquiry into Carbon Tax Pricing Mechanisms

Dr David Evans

20 September 2011

Dr David Evans consulted full-time for the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005, and part-time to the Department of Climate Change from 2008 to 2010, modeling Australia’s carbon in plants, debris, mulch, soils, and forestry and agricultural products. Evans is a mathematician and engineer, with six university degrees including a PhD from Stanford University.

Global warming has become a scam. Let me explain how it works.

It has superficial plausibility. Yes, global warming is occurring. Yes, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and levels are rising. And yes, every molecule of carbon dioxide we emit causes some global warming.

Many non-scientists think that proves the case, but it doesn’t. In particular, it doesn’t rule out the possibility that carbon dioxide is merely [...]

Monckton Tour Dates

The Australian 2011 Monckton Tour

A Carbon Tax will

BANKRUPT AUSTRALIA

THE SCIENCE DOES NOT JUSTIFY IT

Viscount Christopher Monckton will explain why. Dr David Evans and Jo Nova will accompany him in Sydney and Newcastle

[...]

Climate Commission Report Debunked

Scientific audit of the Climate Commission Report “The Critical Decade – Climate science, risks and responses”

May, 2011

Bob Carter, David Evans, Stewart Franks, William Kininmonth

PART I – INTRODUCTION, DISCUSSION & CONCLUSIONS

For PART II – SCIENCE AUDIT see the Full PDF file of Part I & II

Also posted at Quadrant Online, May 30, 2011

INTRODUCTION

The Key Messages[1] summary of The Critical Decade[2] opens with a ringing statement of hyperbole:

Over many decades thousands of scientists have painted an unambiguous picture: the global climate is changing and humanity is almost surely the primary cause. The risks have never been clearer and the case for action has never been more urgent.

This declaration establishes two things. The first sentence signals that the report is committed to repeating the conclusions of the 4th Assessment Report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC)[3], conclusions that are essentially reliant on computer modelling and lack empirical support. And the second signals that the report is long on opinionated analysis and political advocacy but devoid of objective risk analysis.

These same characteristics apply to the [...]

Scary Exaggerations Unfounded

GUEST POST: Dr David Evans and Professor Bob Carter

Their Latest Scary Forecast

The latest from the Climate Commission is very, very scary:

[I just love this graph. It's so over-the-top, it's like a "Pepsi-climate" ad -JN]

They reckon we have to stabilize carbon dioxide emissions immediately or we’ll fry. But these forecasts are based solely on what are essentially the same faulty climate models as in 1988, and are similarly exaggerated.

Their Earlier Scary Forecast Was Bunk

U.S. government climate scientists started the climate scare with a forecast  to the U.S. Congress in 1988 which was based on climate models. Here it is, with the actual temperature that eventuated later added in red:

Hansen, 1988, forecast, projection, compared to UAH 2010

Source

[...]

David Evans, Carbon Accounting Modeler, Says It’s a Scam

Dr David Evans’ address to the Anti-Carbon-Tax rally, Perth Australia, 23 March 2011.

Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen.

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

Let’s set a few things straight.

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

Let’s be perfectly clear. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and other things being equal, the more carbon dioxide in [...]

Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt? The public might not understand the science, but they do understand cheating

The public might not understand the science, but they do understand cheating

Dr. David Evans 7 Nov 2010

[A series of articles reviewing the western climate establishment and the media. The first and second discussed air temperatures, the third was on ocean temperatures, and fourth discussed past temperatures, the fifth compared the alleged cause (human CO2 emissions) with the alleged effect (temperatures), the sixth canvassed the infamous attempt to “fix” that disconnect, the hockey stick, and the seventh pointed out that the Chinese, Russian, and Indian climate establishments (which are financially independent of the western climate establishment) disagree with the western climate establishment about the cause of recent global warming and the eighth showed how government institutional and funding pressures created the consensus among western climate scientists. The ninth showed the evidence that the amplifying feedbacks, responsible for two-thirds of the model warming projections, are not present in reality—and that the lame response of the establishment was to miscolour a graph to mislead us into thinking those feedbacks [...]

Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt? Part 10: Gore Orwell

 

The public might not understand the science, but they do understand cheating

Dr. David Evans 19 October 2010

[A series of articles reviewing the western climate establishment and the media. The first and second discussed air temperatures, the third was on ocean temperatures, and fourth discussed past temperatures, the fifth compared the alleged cause (human CO2 emissions) with the alleged effect (temperatures), the sixth canvassed the infamous attempt to “fix” that disconnect, the hockey stick, and the seventh pointed out that the Chinese, Russian, and Indian climate establishments (which are financially independent of the western climate establishment) disagree with the western climate establishment about the cause of recent global warming and the eighth showed how government institutional and funding pressures created the consensus among western climate scientists. The ninth showed the evidence that the amplifying feedbacks, responsible for two-thirds of the model warming projections, are not present in reality—and that the lame response of the establishment was to miscolour a graph to mislead us into thinking those feedbacks were [...]

Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt? Part 9: The Heart of the Matter and the Coloring-In Trick

This point is THE critical one. It was the first point raised in the Skeptics Handbook, developed in the Second Handbook; the point that Dr Glikson had no reply to; the point that tripped up Will Steffen, Deltoid, and John Cook. As a modeler there was the moment in August 2007 when David saw the graphs below and said, emphatically: This is it. It’s over for the climate models. –JN

 

The public might not understand the science, but they do understand cheating

Dr. David Evans 19 October 2010

[A series of articles reviewing the western climate establishment and the media. The first and second discussed air temperatures, the third was on ocean temperatures, and fourth discussed past temperatures, the fifth compared the alleged cause (human CO2 emissions) with the alleged effect (temperatures), the sixth canvassed the infamous attempt to “fix” that disconnect, the hockey stick, and the seventh pointed out that the Chinese, Russian, and Indian climate establishments [...]

Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt? Part 8: Do Most Western Climate Scientists Believe Global Warming is Man-Made?

The public might not understand the science, but they do understand cheating

Dr. David Evans 19 October 2010

[A series of articles reviewing the western climate establishment and the media. The first and second discussed air temperatures, the third was on ocean temperatures, and fourth discussed past temperatures, the fifth compared the alleged cause (human CO2 emissions) with the alleged effect (temperatures), the sixth canvassed the infamous attempt to “fix” that disconnect, the hockey stick, and the seventh pointed out that the Chinese, Russian, and Indian climate establishments (which are financially independent of the western climate establishment) disagree with the western climate establishment about the cause of recent global warming.]

Click to download a pdf file containing the whole series

Yes, But It’s Murky

Photo adapted from Youxue Hong Wikimedia

The vast majority of scientists in the western climate establishment believe in the theory of man-made global warming (but not Chinese, Russian, or Indian climate scientists, as noted). But [...]

Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt? Part 7: Other Climate Establishments Disagree

The public might not understand the science, but they do understand cheating

Dr. David Evans 6 October 2010

[A series of articles reviewing the western climate establishment and the media. The first and second discussed air temperatures, the third was on ocean temperatures, and fourth discussed past temperatures, the fifth compared the alleged cause (human CO2 emissions) with the alleged effect (temperatures) and the sixth canvassed the infamous attempt to “fix” that disconnect, the hockey stick.]

Click to download a pdf file containing the whole series

The western climate establishment consists of the climate science research bodies in the western world, and their climate scientists. The leading organizations are the IPCC of the United Nations, the CRU in Britain, and GISS and NOAA in the United States. Personnel move around within the establishment, getting funding from the same sources, collaborating on projects, and publishing in the same journals.

There are other climate establishments in this world, and [...]

Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt? Part 6: The Hockey Stick

I know the Hockey Stick is old news to most blog readers here, but it’s easy to forget that the people reading the mainstream news (ie: most of the West) have no idea of the scale of the audacity involved. Up until the 1998 MBH paper came out, it was widely understood that there was a Medieval Warm Period, indeed there were hundreds of papers available at the time. The Hockey Stick Graph completely rewrote everything, yet was accepted and widely promoted without anyone so much as asking for the data… until, of course, McIntyre and McKitrick tried. It will do down in the annuals of science as one of the most egregious examples of “the not-so-scientific” method. — JoNova

The public might not understand the science, but they do understand cheating

Dr. David Evans

6 October 2010

[A series of articles reviewing the western climate establishment and the media. The first and second discussed air temperatures, the third discussed ocean temperatures, the fourth discussed past temperatures, [...]

Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt? Part 5: CO2 Emissions Versus Temperature

The public might not understand the science, but they do understand cheating

Dr. David Evans

6 October 2010

[A series of articles reviewing the western climate establishment and the media. The first and second discussed air temperatures, the third discussed ocean temperatures, and the fourth discussed past temperatures.]

Click to download a pdf file containing the whole series

Notice How They Never Directly Compare Temperature With Human Emissions of CO2?

According to the man-made theory of global warming promoted by the western climate establishment, the recent global warming is due to human emissions of greenhouse gases, which are dominated by carbon dioxide (CO2).

So let’s compare the alleged cause (human emissions of CO2) with the alleged effect (temperature).

Human emissions of CO2 have been estimated from historical data for the period 1751 (before the industrial revolution) to 2007 for the major sources—coal, gas, and petroleum use, cement production, and gas flaring—by the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center within the US Department of Energy. (The cumulative figures below extrapolate to 2010 using average annual emissions for the previous 14 years.)

[...]

Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt? Part 4: Past Temperatures

The public might not understand the science, but they do understand cheating

Dr. David Evans

6 October 2010

[A series of articles reviewing the western climate establishment and the media. The first and second discussed air temperatures, the third discussed ocean temperatures.]

Click to download a pdf file containing the whole series

They Don’t Tell You: The Current Global Warming Trend is Over 300 Years Old

A Scene on the Ice by Hendrick Avercamp, circa 1600

Satellite data only goes back to 1979, and global land-thermometer records only go back to 1850. Before that we have to resort to “proxies”, which are various natural phenomena from which temperature can be deduced. As we go further back in time, the errors and uncertainties increase.

[...]

Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt? Part 3

There are two strong points here:

The Argo system is state of the art, and public property. Yet the most recent Argo Data of ocean temperatures is virtually impossible to get. We could assume that if it showed definitive warming, we’d see those graphs on breakfast cereal packages. Ocean temperatures trump everything. Where is that warming? The same people who are paid to analyze the data sets are the ones who also manage them: they decide who has access. It’s a system without external independent checks, and the lack of audits makes for a loophole big enough to drive a planetary body though. — JN Part 3: Ocean Temperatures

The public might not understand the science, but they do understand cheating

Dr. David Evans

6 October 2010

[A series of articles reviewing the western climate establishment and the media. The first and second articles discussed thermometer tricks with air temperatures.]

Click to download a pdf file containing the whole series

Measuring Ocean Temperatures Properly

Measuring ocean temperature globally is harder than it sounds. But it is crucial to understanding climate, because most of the heat in the climate system [...]

Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt? Part 2

The establishment barks “cherry-picking” at skeptics who claim a particular year was cold, or quiet, or less stormy, but where are the caveats when the mass media churns out record single “hot year” headlines as if they matter: 2010 is hottest year EVER!

What’s not obvious is that breaking those records depends on the data set. According to satellite data there have been no “hottest year ever” records since 1998, though as it happens, NASA doesn’t seem too keen on using data recorded from space. Go figure.

With ground stations, every single station requires hand-made “adjustments” and many stations are ignored completely. The results from ground stations are “interpreted” to cover anything from zero kilometers right up to 1200 km. I guess, only a God of Science would know which thermometer has that magic-1200-gift. Meanwhile, the satellite records are a massive collection of data recorded continuously 24/7, year after year and covering all round the globe, land and sea.

Part II of this series is about those “adjustments” and the different data sets.

– JN

Part 2: Air Temperatures

The public might not understand the science, but [...]

Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt? Part I

For months now, behind the scenes, David and I have discussed just how powerful questions can be. Sometimes it’s not what you know, but what you ask that makes the most powerful point.

For his Heartland presentation last Friday, David delivered a themed compilation of example after example of the Western Climate Establishment allowing mistakes, errors or biases to accumulate — each factor on it’s own might be hard to pin down, but the sum total of actions (and inactions) forms a wholly consistent pattern.

This is Part I. These photos speak for themselves, but as far as I know, they haven’t been assembled in one web page before and David stopped waiting for me to get the time to annotate them and has helpfully used red arrows so even the less technically minded will “get” the implications.

You don’t need to have a PhD to know that the thermometers used to measure global warming are not placed well. There are at least Two Great Burning Questions here:

Burning Question 1:

NOAA is a $4 billion dollar agency. If they were determined to get the most accurate, reliable measurements possible would they leave so many sensors [...]

A simple proof that global warming is not man-made

Guest post by Dr David Evans PDF at sciencespeak.com

Now that ClimateGate has buried the fraudulent hockey stick for good, it is easy to prove that global warming is not man-made: just compare the timing of our carbon dioxide emissions with the timing of global warming.

Human Emissions of Carbon Dioxide

Emissions of carbon dioxide by humans are easy to estimate from our consumption of coal, oil, and natural gas, and production of cement:

Figure 1: Carbon emissions by humans. Source: Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center.

The vast bulk of human emissions occurred after 1945, during post-WWII industrialization. Half of all human consumption of fossil fuels and cement production has occurred since the mid 1970s.

[...]

Ocean temperatures: the new bluff in alarmism

There has been a change in direction by the alarmists, as shown by their new “Synthesis Report.” The independent scientists noticed it during the Wong-Fielding meeting.

The alarmists have abandoned air temperatures as a measure of global temperature, because the air temperature graphs are just too hard to argue with (like the second figure below, from the Skeptics Handbook). Instead they’ve switched to ocean temperatures, which they often disguise as ocean heat content (a huge number like 15×10²² Joules sounds much more scary than the warming it implies of 0.003° C/year).

All three pages of the Synthesis Report that deal with ‘evidence’ are about factors or trends that tell us nothing about whether or not the warming is due to carbon emissions. If God put the galaxy in a toaster, sea levels would rise, ocean heat content would increase, and ice would melt.

Notice how the graph above from the Synthesis Report that came out this month doesn’t include the last six years of data? Carrier pigeons from the remote worldwide network of Argo buoys make it back to base eventually, but the world’s leading team of climate researchers seem to have trouble googling “argo”. Not coincidentally, measurements [...]

Climate: bull or bear?

Just as the great bull run that could have no end, ended, another unthinkably big bubble quivers. Technical indicators are quietly being tripped that suggest the bull run in global temperatures may be toying with a reversal. Could another large human institution dependent on complex models be headed for it’s ‘Lehman Bros’ moment? [...]

Global warming: a classic case of alarmism

This is a Guest Post by Dr David Evans

The big temperature picture. Graph and insight from Dr Syun Akasofu (2009 International Conference on Climate Change, New York, March 2009).

The global temperature has been rising at a steady trend rate of 0.5°C per century since the depths of the little ice age in the 1700s (when the Thames River would freeze over every winter; the last time it froze over was 1804). On top of the trend are oscillations that last about thirty years in each direction:

1882 – 1910    Cooling 1910 – 1944    Warming 1944 – 1975    Cooling 1975 – 2001    Warming

In 2009 we are where the green arrow points, with temperature leveling off. The pattern suggests that the world has entered a period of slight cooling until about 2030.

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