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David Evans in the Fairfax press: Climate change science is a load of hot air and warmists are wrong

Today in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, for the first time, David Evans has been published in the Op-Ed section. Something is going on in those newsrooms…? This article, below, simply makes the point that the models amplify the direct effect of CO2 by a factor of three and that is where the most important uncertainties lie. This key factor in the debatewhich we cover repeatedly on this blog– has virtually never been made before in these newspapers which are the major dailies for Australia’s two largest cities. Any debate about the effects of CO2 needs to start with the fact that most of the warming in the models comes from amplification of humidity and clouds. If the models were right about water vapor, we would have found that missing hot spot.  —   Jo  PS: The SMH and The AGE have both closed comments already! Have they run out of electrons? Oh my? Or were they afraid the comments looked like a debate?

UPDATE: I’ve just posted that these major dailies have “disappeared” the Muller conversion article too!

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Dr David M.W. Evans

31 Jul 2012

Climate scientists’ theories, flawed as they are, ignore some fundamental data.

Sydney Morning Herald  The Age   WA Today

In the theory of manmade climate change, two thirds of the predicted warming comes from changes in humidity and clouds, and only one third comes directly from the extra carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

The theory assumes that humidity and clouds amplify the warming directly due to CO2 by a factor of three: extra CO2 warms the ocean surface, causing more evaporation and extra humidity. Water vapor, or humidity, is the main greenhouse gas, so this causes even more surface warming.

Not many people know that. It is the most important feature of the debate, and goes a long way to explaining why warmists and skeptics both insist they are right.

The warmists are correct that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and it causes warming, that CO2 levels have been rising, and that it has been warming.

Serious skeptics agree with all that, but point out that it does not prove that something else isn’t causing most of the warming. As a thought experiment, suppose that the main cause of warming was actually Venusians with ray guns. Then all those things would still be true!

The skeptic’s main suspect is the sun. While the sun’s radiation is roughly constant, its magnetic field varies considerably. This field shields the earth from cosmic rays that, according to recent experiments at the world’s premier atom smasher CERN, might seed clouds. Clouds cool the planet, so if the sun’s magnetic field wanes then it might get cooler here on earth.

We scientists can calculate how much warming results directly from an increase in CO2 levels. We know how much CO2 levels and temperature have risen since pre-industrial times, but the warming directly due to CO2 is only a third of the observed warming. The theory assumes no other major influence on temperature changed, so the effect of the CO2 must have been amplified threefold, presumably by changes in the atmosphere due to humidity and clouds.

There is no observational evidence for this amplification, but it is nonetheless built into all the models. Skeptics point out that if the extra humidity simply forms extra clouds then there would be no amplification.

If the CO2 theory of global warming is right, the climate models should predict the climate fairly well. If the CO2 theory is wrong, because there is another, larger driver of the temperature, then the climate models will perform indifferently.

According to the latest data from mankind’s best and latest instruments, from impeccable sources, the climate models are doing poorly.

The first IPCC report in 1990 predicted air temperatures would increase by 0.30°C per decade, and by 0.20°C to 0.50°C per decade at the outside. But according to NASA satellites that measure almost the entire planet 24/7, the trend since then has been 0.17°C per decade at most. The climate scientists ignore these awkward results and instead only quote temperatures from land thermometers, half of which are at airports where they are artificially warmed by jet engines and hot tarmac, and most of the rest are in warming micro-climates like near air conditioner outlets, at sewage plants, or in car parks. Obviously the data from these corrupted thermometers should not be used.

Ocean temperatures have only been measured properly since 2003 when the Argo program became operational. 3,000 Argo buoys roam the oceans, precisely measuring temperatures on each 10-day dive into the depths. Before Argo we used sporadic sampling with buckets and diving darts along a few commercial shipping lanes, but these measurements have such massively high uncertainties as to be useless – given that the expected ocean warming is measured in hundredths of a degree. Since Argo started the ocean temperatures have been flat, no warming at all.

The assumed temperature amplification due to changes in humidity and clouds exhibits itself in all the models as prominent warming about 10km up over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmospheric warming pattern since the 1960s using weather balloons, released twice a day from 900 locations around the planet, many millions of them in total, and no such “hotspot” has been detected. This is direct observational proof that the amplification is missing.

The climate models predict that the outgoing radiation from the earth decreases in the weeks following a rise in the surface temperature, due to aggressive heat-trapping by extra humidity. But analysis of the outgoing radiation measured by NASA satellites for the last two decades shows the opposite occurs: the earth gives off more heat after the surface temperature rises. Again, this suggests that the amplification assumed in the models simply does not occur in reality.

Government climate scientists tend to excuse away these failings, often blaming unmeasured aerosols whose effects are only dimly understood. These excuses wear ever thinner as the CO2 level continues to rise but the temperature plateau of the last 12 years persists.

There are huge vested interests in the theory of manmade climate change. They will soon have to face up to the fact that they have been unwittingly relying on assumed amplification by humidity for most of the predicted temperature increases, and that the amplification is not there in reality.

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About the Author

Dr David M. W. Evans is a mathematician and engineer who consulted full-time for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005. He says he changed from being a warmist to a sceptic after ”evidence supporting the idea that CO2 emissions were the main cause of global warming reversed itself from 1998 to 2006”.

(P.S: if there is anyone who doesn’t know — David is my husband — Jo.)
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