Here’s a character test on climate scientists and some of the media. It tells us much how concerned they are about truth, and how willing they are to be gullible fools, to have manners, decency, to milk even the most vaporous wisp of evidence into a national headline. Credit to Simon Turnill and The Australian which put the news on the front page today. At least one paper is working to correct the record.
Character is destiny. Can people who do not care about the truth be trusted on any issue?
How bad were those threats? What threats?
According to Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim, the 11 documents “do not contain threats to kill” and the other “could be regarded as intimidating and at its highest perhaps alluding to a threat”. [The Australian]
What kind of evidence does a climate scientist need to issue a press release?
Answer: none at all.
How important is accuracy to our climate scientists?
How reasonable, rational and accurate are climate scientists like Will Steffen, Andy Pitman, David Karoly? Billions of dollars depends on their judgement, and what we find as we study the evidence, is that knowing what we know now, and quoting their own words, they either set out to deceive the public in order to smear those who disagree with them, or their judgement is seriously questionable — almost delusional. Our Chief Scientists admits he did not read the email threats himself before doing all those media interviews. What ho? He’s been caught here, but he also admits he does not know the evidence for climate change either. He trusts the opinion of these same scientists who either have little integrity or are completely irrational.
The evidence suggests they lack scruples and honesty. The serial exaggerators hide the data. When asked to provide examples they post weak excuses and try to prevent people seeing the evidence.
Remember that even if real death threats turn up (and I sincerely hope they don’t), nothing after the fact can change the truth that climate scientists like Will Steffen Andy Pitman, David Karoly felt no obligation to tell the Australian taxpayers the whole story. They are happy to stoop to smearing opponents. It’s more proof that they have no evidence, and resort to smears to win sympathy and distract the public from their vaporous case.
For the record: How 11 rude emails became a national media blitz
After receiving 11 rude emails, the ANU scientists issued media alerts calling them “death threats”, saying that they were so serious they’d moved the scientists to safer locations, they were switching to unlisted home numbers, deleting social media profiles that had been defaced. It was “intolerable” and they were shaking with fear.
After being asked via FOI to provide the “death threats” they hid them, improbably claiming their were privacy issues, and the release of 11 crude emails (with details redacted) may “endanger the life or physical safety of any person”.
Pathological exaggerators? Lets quote their exact words:
Will Steffen, head of the Climate Institute and paid thousands of dollars to advise on billion dollar policies, appears unable to tell the difference between a bad mannered email and a direct threat of violence. Just how good is his judgement on the finer points of feedback loops in complex models?
Professor Will Steffen, of the Australian National University’s Climate Change Institute, said some were direct threats of violence, while others were ”simply very nasty emails with veiled threats in them that what might happen to us in a very general way”.Canberra Times
The serial exaggerators tossing baseless ad hominem smears then called for a “logical public debate” about the science.
Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University, Professor Ian Young, said staff should not have to put up with such behaviour. “Professor Young says the outrageous behaviour [of receiving 11 rude emails] has left the scientists shaken.” “These are issues where we should have a logical public debate …” [ABC]
Prof David Karoly, of the University of Melbourne’s school of Earth science took the opportunity to suggest the 11 rude emails could be an organized campaign:
“It is clear that there is a campaign in terms of either organised or disorganised threats to discourage scientists from presenting the best available climate science on television or radio,” he said.
According to Andrew Macintosh, the 11 emails were an acceleration of a campaign running for years (What? Perhaps there was one email 5 years ago, and another 18 months ago? That bad eh?)
“Andrew Macintosh, associate director of the ANU Centre for Climate Law and Policy, said the scientists had been targeted for years but it had worsened. ”I received a few a couple of years ago. It was three letters, with pictures of dead animals and print cut out from newspapers. There was a variety of ways I was going to die. They were going to shoot me, gut me and so on. Since then I’ve had lots of abusive emails and phone calls.” [ canberra times]
Instead of informing Canberran’s that the ANU had not reported the rude emails to police, journalist Eamonn Duff at The Canberra Times phrased it as such: “Federal police said they were aware of the issue.” A hired PR agent could hardly do better.
Not surprisingly Julia Gillard blamed Abbott:
Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the plunge in debate should be blamed on the Opposition’s preparedness to ”abuse scientists”. canberratimes
Have the 1990 IPCC predictions been proved completely, unarguably and utterly wrong? Yes.
They predicted that if our emissions stayed the same, temperatures would rise by 0.3 C per decade, and would be at the very least 0.2, and the most 0.5. Even by the most generous rehash of the data, the highest rate they can find is 0.18 C per decade which is likely an overestimate, and in any case, is below the very least estimate, despite the world’s emissions of CO2 continuing ever higher.
Climate Scientist Matthew England called that “very accurate”. Since when did 0.18 = 0.3? (Shall we call it “climate maths”, or just call it wrong?) The IPCC had a whole barn wall to aim at, and a battalion of government funded gold plated AK-47s to hit the target, but they still missed.
The un-Skepticalscience page uses a pea and thimble trick to argue the IPCC 1990 predictions were right (“Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: IPCC FAR”). As usual John Cooks site looks “technical” but uses complexity to hide the way they redefined the prediction in order to pretend it wasn’t wrong. Excuses excuses. Intellectual wordsmiths who bore you to death.
The un-Skepticalscience page essentially says that GHG forcing was lower than the IPCC predicted. So if you allow for the fact that the IPCC got the future concentration of CO2 wrong, then, hey, really their models are “very accurate”. Figure that estimating the concentration of atmospheric CO2 is far simpler chemistry and much less complex than getting the whole kit and caboodle of a climate model to work. If the IPCC don’t even know how big the sinks and sources of CO2 are, why would anyone trust them to get a multivariate equation with clouds, rain and ocean-turnover right?
Here’s how you can spot the pea-and-thimble trick in the un-SkepticalScience site:
1/ There is no direct quote of the IPCC prediction.
2/ The IPCC used the term “prediction” — but unskeptical science repeatedly used the term “projection”. They even retitle graphs.
3/ They didn’t use the original captions on the graphs, instead writing their own.
4/ The IPCC talked of “emissions” leading to a temperature rise. Skeptical Science talks of “radiative forcing”. (A clue, emissions are measured in gigatons, not in W/m2. The SkS page is discussing something other than the main point.)
But if you were a casual reader you wouldn’t know that unless you bothered to be skeptical, and go to the source to check.
Let’s quote the IPCC Prediction:
“If emissions follow a Business-as-usual pattern
Under the IPCC Business as Usual emissions of greenhouse gases the average rate of increase of global mean temperature during the next century is estimated to be 0.3C per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2C – 0.5C)” [IPCC FAR summary]
Note the wording is a prediction about “emissions” leading to warming. Radiative forcings are a subpart of the big picture, but “Business As Usual” means emissions as usual (and for 1990), not final CO2 ppm values “as usual” or radiative forcings “as usual”. We judge the prediction by the terms they set, not post hoc ignoring the parts that fail, cherry picking something they accidentally may have got right, and then calling it all “very accurate”. It’s not even a tiny bit “accurate”. The world has been warming for 300 years, so to say it will keep warming is the most obvious forecast, and that’s what happened. The favourite horse won.
Sometimes the IPCC gets it right (accidents do happen)
The IPCC actually thought that sticking with “100% of 1990 emissions” would lead to 390ppm Co2 or so by 2012. But our emissions were 25% higher by 2012, so you’d think atmospheric CO2 would be higher too. But no, in the end result was… accidentally, 390ppm. See Fig 4 FAR summary page xvii.
Fig 4 IPCC FAR summary. Note the words “100% 1990 emissions” which was supposed to lead to CO2 levels reaching 390ppm by 2010. (Click to enlarge and see the 2012 prediction point marked)
The game is up when everyone knows the only way out is printing money, because then everyone knows inflation is coming, and the bun-fight begins. Everyone wants the wage rise, the payment now, and to buy the commodities that they won’t be able to afford tomorrow. Price tags begin that rising spiral. I don’t think we are on the verge just yet, but it can’t be that far when someone like Murdoch is broadcasting it.
Rupert Murdoch tweets:
@rupertmurdoch
Governments worldwide have borrowed 100 trillion last ten years. Defaults inevitable sometime soon. Means crash, hurting rich and poor.
@rupertmurdoch
Of course markets stay high with central banks printing huge sums, inflating everything except jobs.
The only question that matters then, is are they “printing”, and how long have we got?
US Money Base Figures
This is the US money base, starting in 1918.
You can see the moment Lehman Brothers went under. It’s that “bend”.
..
That graph again, logarithmically, so we can put the last 90 years in perspective. Remember the oil crisis, the Vietnam War, the 1987 crash, LTCM, and the dot com burst? They don’t rate.
The depression and World War II — they did rate — and you can see below, that this latest “bump” is… err, steeper. (Don’t we all feel good about that eh?) If you are looking at these graphs for the first time and feeling queasy, good news, you might be sane. If you wonder why I’m not leaping up and down, pointing out that the current monetary hiccup is worse than World War II fergoodnesssake, where some 400,000 US citizens died, it’s only because we’ve been watching this trainwreck for three years. (See Helicopter Ben at work, Nov 2008)
Even if you aren’t in Australia, you can’t help but find the Australian Parliament the best reality TV show on the box anywhere.
The background: Our Leftie Labor Government was elected with a roughly equal tally of seats as the right leaning coalition, in late 2010. It was such a knife edge, one Labor seat was won by just 400 votes (Corangamite). There were five independents, who would normally be as important as the wallpaper in the House, but suddenly had supreme power. Our PM Julia Gillard did deals to remake the entire national economy with the one Green member of parliament, promising everything he wanted and more for his vote, even though he would rather walk on glass that vote “right”. (And some say she’s a good negotiator?) She won the support, with deals, platitudes, and pork barreling promises of three of the other four independents — two of whom who were representing rural, conservative electorates, so they did exactly what the members of their own seats didn’t want (those same voters voted very conservatively in the Senate). The whole schmozzle of our hung Parliament is balanced on a knife edge. If only one independent switches support from Labor to the opposition, it’s all over.
Labor’s governing has been so flagrantly awful I’ve heard a story that a Labor branch leader got annoyed that people were suggesting Gillard was as bad as the infamous Whitlam government. (Whitlam et al were so bad they were “sacked” by a governor general in an unprecedented constitutional crisis). The Labor supporter thought Whitlam didn’t deserve to be put in the same category, “he had more class”.
Last week we finished some YouTube versions explaining the skeptical case. These grew out of the interview we did with Nick Minchin and Anna Rose for the ABC documentary I Can Change Your Mind. They are what we would have said, if we’d been editing the documentary :).
In the interview we were on a mission to show the evidence the ABC won’t show — and of course, true to form, the ABC did exactly that, and didn’t show it. As David often points out, the mainstream media have never shown this data anywhere in the world, ever, even though it is extremely relevant, from mankind’s best and latest instruments, from impeccable sources, and is publicly available. Not to mention that billions of dollars of public policies depend on getting this right either.
This is a strictly no-budget approach to organize the message for those on the web who prefer to see video’s rather than read papers. Here are three YouTube’s by David Evans, thanks to Barry Corke (for the filming and editing). I hear that one I did will be ready sometime.
A little background. When the documentary interview happened in our kitchen, we noticed something interesting. We felt the film crew, a producer and two camera people (dressed trendy, mainly in black, straight from Ultimo central casting) arrived expecting to find paid hacks, or slow moving ideologues who struggled to get a grip. It’s not that they said that of course, they were pro’s. But they had been hearing for years how we are evil shills for big tobacco and oil interests who were cynically only in it for the money. We stress they were professional and polite, and this isn’t in any way a complaint about them, but it was a distinct sense we had.
Then the interview happened. For two hours we presented evidence, determined to show graphs from respectable sources like NASA, photographs of actual thermometers, and had answers to absolutely everything and then some with details of scientific stuff like feedbacks and clouds. I took the predictable ad homs about funding, and turned the tables completely — we were the unfunded volunteers working for professional and patriotic duty against a wall of billions of dollars, while they lost data, hid methods, and called us names. I suppose they noticed we were a tad passionate, not cynical shills. Meanwhile Anna Rose came armed with print outs from DeSmog or Exxon secrets or some such and clearly had no idea of the science beyond the rudimentary: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, CO2 levels are rising, and it’s getting warmer, so how can you be a skeptic? (What’s a feedback?) She lived and breathed the postmodern view of science (climate scientists are the new Pope).
Sometime during this process the documentary crew started treating us with respect. After the interview, they even wanted to speak to us, not just the perfunctory things the situation demanded. We felt we had … changed their minds. Ok, we don’t hold any illusions it lasted long, and I suspect many audio and camera guys are closet skeptics to start with. Once they were back in ABC world among their friends and People Who Know Best, we are confident they went back to viewing us as untermenschen deceiving scum. But just for a moment there, some minds were changed.
The skeptical cameraman recording it all for us, Barry Corke, had a good view of the whole proceedings because once he set up his cameras he just sat back and watched. We asked him afterwards, and he had noticed the same phenomenon. And that’s where the idea of these YouTubes was born — if it worked on battled hardened culture warriors working for the ABC, perhaps the public might like to hear what we said?
No, this isn’t footage from the ABC documentary I Can Change Your Mind — that’s a very large file, and we are trying to condense it so it can appear in a complete but manageable form. Soon.
Bottom line: On Q&A Nick Minchin said the IPCC predictions were wrong. Matthew England said “Not true” their 1990 prediction was “very accurate”. But the IPCC predicted 0.3C per decade, and we got at most 0.18C per decade. (Forster and Rahmsdorf 2011 ) How is is “very accurate” when the result is below their lowest estimate?
Oceanographer Matthew England owes Nick Minchin an apology. Will Tony Jones correct the record on Monday?
How strange is this debate where politicians know the science better than the “scientists”?
The ABC Q&A program shows they have no interest in pursing the truth on climate change. The panel was, as always designed to push an agenda. Five believers, with a sixth in the audience, faced two skeptics. No skeptical scientists were invited to attend, let alone sit in the front row with a mike, like England who was called in so the warmists could get the last word on the science without fear that a skeptic might disputing their version of events. We can’t allow people to damage the faith of those duped ABC viewers.
Nick Minchin claimed there is a major problem with the warmists theory, that the predictions of the IPCC were wrong, because we have had rising CO2 in the last decade or more but “we haven’t had the commensurate rise in temperatures.”
Matthew England claims Minchin is wrong
“What Nick just said is actually not true. The IPCC projections from 1990 have borne out very accurately.” Source Q & A (36:30 mins)
Hmmm. Could “very accurately” be an exaggeration? Or is it possible England was getting his IPCC predictions mixed up? No. He really does mean the 1990 report, and he repeats the claim that the decadal trend fits.
“The projections are now 22 years old and the temperature record that we have does bounce around for year to year but that decade to decade progression that of warming that Megan just mentioned have occurred …”
The predictions from the IPCC First Assessment Report show England is wrong
Policy Makers Summary, Working Group I, page xxii.
Their prediction was that if we continue to emit CO2 at present rates the world will warm at about 0.3°C per decade, so by 2025 the world will have warmed by 1°C. That was looking 35 years ahead and we are now 22 years into that prediction. The world should be about 0.6°C warmer now than in 1990.
The lowest possible prediction is for a 0.2°C rise per decade.
Were CO2 emissions “business as usual”? No they were higher
The CO2 emissions (black dashed line) are equivalent to the highest projected by the IPCC. So the temperature should have risen faster than their lowest estimate.
Atmospheric CO₂ concentrations recorded at Mauna Loa (black dashed line) and as projected under six IPCC emission scenarios (coloured lines) (IPCC Data Distribution Centre)
Was warming since 1990 even close to the predicted 0.3°C per decade? No.
Foster and Rahmstorf 2011 looked at five temperature series and calculated trends from 0.14°C to 0.18°C per decade, lower than the 0.2°C per decade trend which marks the absolute bottom of the IPCC prediction. They are sympathetic to the IPCC aims. These values are as good as it gets for England. He fails.
Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) confirmed in 2010 that the decadal trends for the last 150 years peak at 0.16°C per decade.
According to the satellite data (the best and only source of unbiased data) the temperature trends in the last two decades was not even close to those predicted by the IPCC. For most of the last 20 years the temperature was well below the lowest predicted warming of 0.2°C per decade predicted for the “business as usual” plan. Look for yourself: the climate models and Matthew England are wrong, and Nick Minchin is right.
Figure 4: Predictions of the IPCC’s First Assessment Report in 1990, compared to the subsequent temperatures as measured by NASA satellites (UAH Data). Graph by Dr David Evans
England was given a free kick at Minchin, who had no scientific support at the event at all
Minchin, undeservedly had to wear the false “correction” on national television. To put things right, to show the ABC is interested in the truth rather than just being an advertising agency for the government they need to correct the record.
In response to the ABC doco I Can Change Your Mind, the believers of man-made global warming are out attacking with logical fallacies, cherry picking deceit, and the usual barking mad irrelevant lines about tobacco and AIDS. Desperate eh?
Never before in one day on one post have I enjoyed responding to Mr Unskeptical himself (John Cook), as well as Stefan Lewandowsky (aka Lysenko-strikes-again) and Clive-break-democracy-Hamilton.
Cook is from the University of Queensland, and he runs the ambush site “Skeptical Science” (where even the name of the site is misleading, and where he dutifully parrots the government scientists).
John Cook
His litany of logical errors continues:
He’s still resorting to namecalling with a term he can’t define scientifically. Which paper do we deny John? You’ve had two years to find it, and you still can’t come up with anything better than papers which cheat by changing color schemes, or which use wind-shear instead of thermometers to measure temperature?
He’s clinging to that consensus, when evidence is what matters. The fallacy is known as argument from authority — but in science, authority is trumped by data. In contrast, I keep referring to 3,000 ocean bouys, 6,000 boreholes, and 28 million weather balloons that support the skeptics. The heat is not in the upper troposphere (the hot spot is missing), which wipes out the amplification and most of the warming in the climate models. Then there are the 900 or so peer reviewed papers that support the skeptical case.
His reasoning is so weak he thinks writing about tobacco funding and HIV will help us understand the climate. This is not just reasoning by analogy, but reasoning by unrelated events.
Cook still hauls out the discredited ad homs about funding, despite the fact it takes cherry picking extraordinaire to ignore that the funds to believer scientists outnumbers the funds to skeptics by 3,500:1, and the profits from climate trading vastly outweigh the losses the fossil fuel companies might take if the world took the alarmists seriously. Ever noticed how numerous and slick all those warmist pieces are on tv, newspapers, magazines, websites etc — and how sparse and homemade the media presence of skeptics in comparison? Who’s got the big budget, John?
“97 percent of climate experts say man-made global warming is a major threat”
The correct response: “So? The satellites, ocean buoys, and weather balloons disagree.”
The alarmists may have “experts”, but the skeptics have the data.
How do you find the truth about some disputed point in science? You find the most authoritative source of information. The vital thing that makes science different to a religion is that there are no “Gods” of science. There is no expert who is infallible. The highest authority in science is the measurements and observations. Here is the hierarchy of authority in climate science:
Data (empirical evidence)
Climate scientists
Other scientists
Lay people.
For most of the last few centuries, science has been supreme over politics for settling the truth in matters pertaining to the physical world—empirical evidence beats anyone’s say-so.
But the modern political approach is to ignore that top level. To most warmists and the public who “believe in climate change” (as they so misleading say), the hierarchy is:
Climate scientists
Other scientists
Lay people.
The way the climate scam works is for the like-minded western bureaucracies to be the only employers or funders of climate scientists—which eliminates most of the competition that would otherwise keep them scrupulously honest. While peer review (like the IPCC process) is treated as equivalent to the bible, it’s more like a report of a committee meeting (one that dissenters were not invited to). The government climate scientists use the peer review process to block criticism or alternative theories from being officially heard—as they were caught doing in the Climategate scandal. The mainstream media go to the climate scientists as their ultimate source of authority, and propagate their opinions to the public. Very neat.
It is a loophole in the modern world. The process is called “science”, but works like a religion. The media repeat what the experts say, but are silent about much of the data, how it is collected, and what it means. The public wrongly assumes the conclusions were audited or checked by competing scientists and that journalists asked the scientists hard penetrating questions. It all gains the veneer of rigorous analysis. The public don’t complain when they are asked to pay for it all. An excellent con.
The warmist’s view is more like the hierarchy in the days of the Pope v. Galileo, which, on pain of death by government, was:
The Pope
Papal scientists and theologians
Lay people.
Of course, with the printing press and the subsequent reformation and enlightenment emerged the familiar hierarchy that brought great technological strides for mankind:
Data (empirical evidence)
Scientists
Lay people.
But now the regulating class, the bureaucrats and the mainstream media, have lopped off that vital top layer and inserted their own layer of bought-and-paid-for scientists instead.
This is what we have free speech for. This excellent video says it all.
Ponder as you watch: could you imagine a production like this coming from anywhere else but the Land of The Free? (Think Spain, Sweden or France? Weep, that the land of the Magna Carta was not the obvious source or even a likely contender. Could we really see this video coming out of Berlin or Beijing, or more to the point, Sussex, or Liverpool? The tragedy…)
Yes, this video is so good I’m posting it here even though every other libertarian, freedom loving, and just plain sane blogger will post it too and I hate being repetitive. Yes it’s that good.
For an example of modern government propaganda, wait til you see this: Your Carbon Price (No really, go spend 30 seconds there to try to guess what this production would have cost.)
I’ve never seen a website so slickly designed, so smooth to the point of oozing graphic designer dollars with every rollover. As I watched it, I was seeing our national productivity being buried under Gucci-layers-of-gloss-red-tape. It kept asking me private questions “your name” etc as if the spelling of “Jane”, “Joe” or “John” makes any difference to my carbon footprint (my name is Noneof Yourbusiness). Bring out the sick-bag as Dellers would say.
If regulators tie up the people in enough paper chains they eventually become as strong as steel bindings. “YourCarbonPrice” takes our money to tell us we might “earn” $2 – $5 dollars a week to help the country clean up polluters while we take cold showers, sell the second fridge, and smile with delight at being a “good citizen”. What more could we ask for? A George Orwell fridge magnet?
And watch the sycophantic supporters rush to slap their logo on the propaganda tool.
If I had a Choice mag subscription, I would write to protest today. They support this schmuck with a logo that says “Choice — the people’s watchdog”. Wait for it, now Choice have become expert Climate Analysts. They’ve road-tested exactly one theory offered by the monopolistic sellers, ignored the test results, the competitors, they’ve downplayed the costs, uprated the benefits, and they think this “serves” the public? Their brand name moniker should should read “Choice — the government’s lap-dog”.
Poor Choice mag editors. They still think that government science is uncorrupted.
Watch the propaganda turn the cost of $3000 per worker into 2 cents on a milk bottle
This only hits those nasty polluders …
…and even if they do pass on some of their costs, it is only cents!
We are just 40 odd comments today from the 100,000th lucky commenter!!! Wait for it, we’ll be sending you on a world tour, a dinner for two, I might just post the Grand Winner both Skeptics Handbook I and II 🙂
Kerry Lutz
And for those who would like some weekend listening I did an interview with Kerry Lutz at the Financial Survival Network. (It’s 15 or 20 minutes). The overlap between skeptics of government science and skeptics of government money grows more obvious. We ranged through climategate to ad hominen arguements, the art of rhetoric, the regulating class, blaming “free markets” for the failures of unfree ones and spanish solar panels among other things. It was 11pm for me, somehow I could (mostly) string the words together.
PS: The comments counter is on the right hand column under “statistics”. (99,982…)
UPDATE: A Winner!
OK. Doing the numbers behind the scenes, it appears (!!!) Bob Malloy hit the big 100k, with Redc being mere seconds behind. So I’ll send books to both of you. Unless I’m wrong, I think Bob pipped redc for the title. (Gee Aye deserves an honorable mention for comment 99,999 and 100,002).
Note that as I write this, the stats are
115,590 Comments
100,023 Approved
0 Pending
15,567 Spam
That spam number are just the ones in the spam queue right now (approx 14 days worth).
But (Egad) we missed the really Big clock-over where the total spam hit *1 million*.
“Akismet has protected your site from 1,103,728 spam comments already.”
So there’s the real victor of blog comments – the bots. 90% of comments are spam. Thank goodness for the Askimet filter. You can see why, when your comments disappear into the filter, they will never be seen again unless you ask our starring wonderful dedicated and wise moderators to fish them out (support AT joannenova.com.au). I stopped checking the spam filter in August 2009.
This propaganda has already set us back two decades, …
… there is a very public record of who has been lying to the public and who hasn’t – and it’s time to start using this information to make the liars and shirkers pay.
Let’s take a page from those Tennessee firemen we heard about a few times last year – the ones who stood idly by as houses burned to the ground because their owners had refused to pay a measly $75 fee.
We can apply this same logic to climate change.
We know who the active denialists are – not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies. Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay. Let’s let their houses burn. Let’s swap their safe land for submerged islands. Let’s force them to bear the cost of rising food prices.
They broke the climate. Why should the rest of us have to pay for it?
Dear Steve,
I’ve got great news for you, all you have to do to avert a global catastrophe is to find peer reviewed papers that support the models. I’ve been asking for two years, three months and four days, and no one can find one that suggests CO2 will cause much more than 1 degree of warming at most.
On Jan 2nd 2010: I asked “Is there any evidence?“ Do read it, because lots of things you’ve been told are evidence, are not. We want results from instruments (not opinion polls) — things like ice cores, weather balloons, satellites, or lake sludge, heck… it could even be stuff from dead insects, dust, bits of rock, broken beach shells. Whatever. But only the real deal matters. Simulated evidence does not count. No models.
If you find it (and good luck) do rush, send it to Real Climate, the IPCC and the Goddard Institute of Space Studies too. The evidence is overwhelming, but they can’t find that paper either.
Sincerely,
Jo-the-former-Green
PS: If you have some worthless Pacific Islands in grave danger of disappearing, I’d like to buy them.
Which caring environmentalists are trying to save the world through carbon credits? That would be the Banksters. Watch how the banks are working to “fix” the free market, via intervention and regulation, and milk the system to maximize profit. The so called capitalist pigs are really working in the style of the Soviets.
How sick is the EU carbon market? “It’s a dead man walking” according to Johaness Teyssen, chairman of EON.
Carbon permits plunged to a record after European Union data showed emissions from factories and power stations in the region fell more than expected last year amid milder-than-normal weather.
EU carbon for December dropped 11 percent to close at 6.34 euros ($8.45) a ton, the biggest loss since April 28, 2006 on the ICE Futures Europe exchange in London. The previous low was 6.38 euros on Jan. 4. Power-industry emissions dropped to 2009 levels, said Matteo Mazzoni, an analyst for NE Nomisma Energia Srl in Bologna, Italy.
“That is the elephant in the room,” he said today by e- mail. “And then, of course, you have stagnating industrial production.”
But wait. Isn’t “lower industrial output” what the system was supposed to create? Isn’t that the aim — to reduce those evil carbon emissions?
The Verified Emissions Data (CED) released by European authorities showed a 2.4 per cent drop in emissions in 2011, nearly twice the fall expected by analysts. A variety of explanations was given, including unusually warm weather and the economic downturn, but what surprised some analysts was the 3.1 per cent fall in emissions from the power sector when a 1.6 per cent increase had been anticipated, particularly after the closure of nuclear power stations in Germany.
In fact, German emissions fell 1 per cent overall, and emissions from its power sector were down 1.9 per cent. Fossil fuel generation in France slumped 11 per cent. Analysts said because France had completed only 25 per cent of its data, the fall could be greater.
But it was never about the environment, and instead of being pleased, for carbon market players, the price has become too low to make a difference to the environment to make a decent cut, and to help their $200 billion renewable investments thrive.
Some people claim that I mislead people. But it seems they are the misled — not by me, but by their own heroes.
In the Skeptics Handbook I wrote:
“The greenhouse signature is missing
If Greenhouse gases are warming the earth we are supposed to see the first signs of it in the patch of air 10 kilometers above the tropics. But this “hot spot” just isn’t there.
Weather balloons have scanned the global atmosphere but could find no sign of the predicted “hot-spot” warming pattern that greenhouse gases would leave.”
Sources: Sources: (A) Predicted changes 1958-1999. Synthesis and Assessment Report 1.1, 2006, CCSP, Chapter 1, p 25, based on Santer et al. 2000; (B) Same document, recorded change/decade, Hadley Centre weather balloons 1979-1999, p. 116 , fig. 5.7E, from Thorne et al., 2005
With all the benefits of hindsight, it stood up extremely well. (Damn, but I did do a good job 🙂 )
There are claims I should not call it a “signature”, but here’s how it is: The top alarmist researchers called it a fingerprint or a signature, the graph explicitly states that the hot spot is the pattern caused by “well mixed greenhouse gases”, and basically, if you think it’s misleading to talk about fingerprints of greenhouse gases in climate models, then you’ll have to take that up with people like Ben Santer, not me.
1. The top science reports call it a fingerprint or signature
Go to the sources I quote in the Skeptics Handbook (see here). The CCSP Chapter 5, mentions “fingerprint” or variant of that, not just once, but 74 times. If you think that’s being deceptive, then email the authors (that would be Santer, Thorne, Hansen, Wigley et al…see below). The IPCC also mentions “signature” in the text leading up to the hot spot page, Assessment Report 4.
Let’s quote the IPCC (Chapter Nine, page 674) right in front of a version of the predicted hot spot graph (see below).
These figures indicate that the modeled vertical and zonal average signature of the temperature response should depend on the forcings. The major features shown in Figure 9.1 are robust to using different climate models.
The IPCC certainly wants you to know the signature is “distinct”:
The simulated responses to natural forcing are distinct from those due to the anthropogenic forcings described above.
2. Look at the original graph.
Compare the pictures, read the caption. The experts tell us that the models predict different causes will give different patterns. The hot spot graph is listed as “simulations of the vertical profile change due to” … wait for it… “Well mixed Greenhouse gases“. The other likely causes are predicted to make different patterns.
What kind of organization receives all its funding from one source, then claims to be “independent?” (Yes, spot another GONGO idea).
The Conversation trumpets that it is “Independent” but it’s funded with $6 million from … the Government. As Tim Blair said “it’s a baby ABC“. (A Government organized “non government” organisation).
The Conversation gets 20,000 readers a day (apparently). According to the Alexa Stats, I single-handedly get about half the global traffic they do. They have an entire nation of university staff to help write stories. I’ve had ten guest authors and have written over 700 posts myself.
(If what they do costs $6 million, does that mean my site is worth $3m? Am I grossly underpaid, or are they grossly overpaid?)
This is another example of the self-growing-cycle of big-government. The site is dominated with stories that favor statist-big-government policies. They break laws of logic and reason, claim that experts are writing, but we non-experts working from home can point out the errors of those with professorships in our spare time, and with no PhD.
Consider the wit and wisdom of one Stefan Lewandowsky — who writes as a Professorial Fellow of a misnamed topic called “cognitive science”. If ever you needed evidence that the science of psychology was not the same as the science of physics, look no further. Lewandowsky is case study number one in reasons to eject the School of Psychology back to the Faculty of the Arts.*
When another scientist impersonated someone else, stole documents, possibly created a fake document, and published it all online, Lewandowsky argues this is morally all OK and it passes The Conversation’s editorial bar. He compares the lies to allied efforts to conceal the D-Day landing in World War II. So the morals of science and war are equivalent? Perhaps Lewandowsky has not noticed the two fields have slightly different aims?
Science is solely for the pursuit of truth, so he who uses lies (or specious ad homs) cheats himself and all those who fund or follow him. Deceit may win a war, but it won’t help humanity master the atmosphere.
Lewandowsky also thinks that anyone who disagrees with the government is mad, just like in the old Soviet Union. It all fits.
Presumably he lectures with these same ethical standards too — thus leaving a trail of students who think that if their research is for “the greater good” (and whose isn’t?) then it’s OK to steal or fake results? Is that the aim of The University of Western Australia — to fake their way to higher knowledge? Is cheating on exams any different? Would you hire one of Lewandowsky’s students?
What is science when cognitive scientists talk of “climate denial machines”? Dear Stephan, can you define that term scientifically, or even in plain English? Which “climate” is this machine denying? Can you name a single person who denies we have a climate, or that is it changing? Have you any empirical evidence to back up that claim, or it is just the dribbling speculations of a delusional cult-fan who gets promotions and status, not through reason or evidence, but by being the most active sycophant of a grant-winning theory?
Lewandowsky’s writing on The Conversation is not just ethically infantile (war = science), it’s sloppy and unresearched too. He claims that “According to the Heartland Institute, “junk science” is the research that has linked tobacco to lung cancer”, not realizing that Heartland have never claimed that tobacco doesn’t cause cancer. Perhaps Heartland’s position of assessing studies, different diseases, ages of death and odds ratios is a bit too old fashioned for Stefan? He demonizes them by oversimplifying what they do to the point where he speaks untruths. Heartland are mostly concerned about getting evidence on the issue of second hand smoke, and on the equity of cigarette taxes that go far beyond recouping costs of healthcare for smoking related illness. Their approach is far more scientific than Lewandowsky’s, which involves making inaccurate sweeping statements on topics he knows little about. It is indeed unresearched activist statements like his that are the “junk science” noble groups like Heartland oppose, and Heartland do it to serve the public, with volunteered funding. On the other hand, Lewandowsky uses funding extracted from the public by threat of force to offer us illogical, poorly studied, unreferenced and confused arguments in order to justify squandering more funds taken from the public. Wonderfully moral of you Stephan. Quite the parasite on the public purse.
Clouds cover an enormous 65% of the planet and are responsible for about half of the sunlight that is reflected back out to space.[i] The effects of clouds are so strong that most of the differences between IPCC-favoured-models comes from the assumptions the models make about clouds. Cloud feedbacks are the “largest source of uncertainty”.[ii] Numerous studies show models project wildly different results for clouds, and yet few could correctly simulate clouds as recorded by satellites.[iii] One researcher described our understanding of cloud parameters as being “still in a fairly primitive state.” [iv]
Sunlight that travels 150 million kilometers can be blocked a mere 1km away from the Earth’s surface and reflected back to space. The situation is complicated though, because clouds also slow the outgoing radiation — which has a warming effect. In general lower clouds are thicker and have a large cooling effect, while higher clouds are thinner and tend to trap more heat than they reflect (i.e. net warming). Observations show the cooling effect of clouds dominates the warming effect. (Allen 2011[v]) which means that, in general, more clouds means more cooling.
Clouds provide negative feedback
When cloud changes have been measured, measurements show that, in the short term, as the world warms cloud cover tends to increase.[vi] ,[vii] Satellites monitor the radiation leaving the top of the atmosphere. During 15 strong swings in temperature, Spencer et al 2007[viii] showed the high ice clouds decreased, allowing more radiation to escape to space. Spencer found a strong negative feedback and concluded that the net effect of clouds is to cool the ocean-atmosphere system during its tropospheric warm phase, and warm it during its cool phase. That is, clouds moderate or dampen temperature movement in either direction. Tropical clouds buffer the world somewhat from sharp temperature shifts.
…
Other researchers have found positive feedback when analyzing clouds, but usually focused on a small region of the globe, not on the whole tropical band where the most important effects take place. If clouds provide negative feedback, they will moderate any man-made climate changes.
How could clouds not cause climate change?
It seems hard to believe but the IPCC (and Andrew Dessler in particular) assume clouds respond to climate change, but can’t cause climate change. In other words, they assume there are no other factors which could change cloud cover (and which would therefore force the global temperature up or down). It is well known that assumptions are the mother of all foul-ups, and this one reeks.
Clouds might not just be a negative feedback instead of a positive one, they might be a forcing factor themselves, making all the estimates of climate sensitivity incorrect.
The IPCC models assume that clouds change in response to temperature, so they are a “feedback”.[ix] In other words, they categorically rule out any possibility that some other factor might change cloud cover, which would in turn, warm or cool the Earth. (Why? Just a convenient assumption.) But if ocean currents or wind patterns changed, that would affect evaporation and cloud formation. If cloud seeding nuclei rose or fell, that too would affect the number of clouds and potentially change our weather.
There is plenty of evidence that other factors affect clouds, and thus could be driving global temperatures, not CO2. For example, cloud seeding particles are formed by cosmic rays[x] which in turn are affected by the solar magnetic field[xi] [xii]. This would explain why river flows correlate with sunspot activity.[xiii] ,[xiv] Sunspots occur when the solar magnetic field is active. Fluxes in the heat content of the ocean, and sea levels also correlate with the solar cycle.[xv] Even 200 years ago, the connection between the sun and wheat prices was notable.[xvi]
Spencer & Braswell use the most simple of models to show that unaccounted forcing factors would make it impossible for the global climate models to estimate feedbacks, and calculate climate sensitivity. [xvii] [xviii] [xix] They demonstrate that clouds can be a forcing factor as well, and that the IPCC climate models significantly overestimate warming.
Spencer & Braswell demonstrate that it’s very difficult to find definitive feedback signals in a dynamic system that is never at equilibrium. The only feedback they can calculate in their 2008 and 2010 papers is negative and means a climate sensitivity of about 0.6°C for a doubling of CO2, though it’s only applicable over short time-frames. They demonstrate the near impossibility of establishing climate sensitivity over long time frames. But if climate sensitivity to CO2 is as low as they find, and dwarfed by potential cloud forcing, it would mean no postponed effect from CO2. We have had all the effect there is and there will be no stored heat lying dormant to cause future climate change. This would explain Trenberth’s concern, expressed in the CRU e-mails, that the pro-global warming scientists “can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t”.
Spencer & Braswell’s 2011 paper confirms the difficulty in sorting out what is feedback and what is forcing, finding that it is not possible with current methods to separate the two. Neither the most nor the least sensitive models could predict the changes in energy before or after changes in temperature.
[i^] IPCC, Assessment Report 4, 2007, Working Group 1, The Physical Science Basis, Chapter 8. [PDF] Page 610 8.3.1.1.2 “The balance of radiation at the top of the atmosphere”
[ii] IPCC, Assessment Report 4, 2007, Working Group 1, The Physical Science Basis, Chapter 8. [PDF] Page 636 8.6.3.2 “Clouds”
[iii] Zhang, M.H., Lin, W.Y., Klein, S.A., Bacmeister, J.T., Bony, S., Cederwall, R.T., Del Genio, A.D., Hack, J.J., Loeb, N.G., Lohmann, U., Minnis, P., Musat, I., Pincus, R., Stier, P., Suarez, M.J., Webb, M.J., Wu, J.B., Xie, S.C., Yao, M.-S. and Yang, J.H. 2005. Comparing clouds and their seasonal variations in 10 atmospheric general circulation models with satellite measurements. Journal of Geophysical Research 110: D15S02,
[iv] Randall, D., Khairoutdinov, M., Arakawa, A. and Grabowski, W. 2003. Breaking the cloud parameterization deadlock. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 84: 1547-1564.
[v] Allan, R [2011] Combining satellite data and models to estimate cloud radiative effects at the surface and in the atmosphere. University of Reading [Abstract] [Discussion]
[vi] Croke, M.S., Cess, R.D. and Hameed, S. 1999. Regional cloud cover change associated with global climate change: Case studies for three regions of the United States. Journal of Climate 12: 2128-2134
[vii] Herman, J.R., Larko, D., Celarier, E. and Ziemke, J. 2001. Changes in the Earth’s UV reflectivity from the surface, clouds, and aerosols. Journal of Geophysical Research 106: 5353-5368
[viii] Spencer, R.W., Braswell, W.D., Christy, J.R., Hnilo, J. (2007). Cloud and radiation budget changes associated with tropical intraseasonal oscillations. Geophysical Research Letters, 34, L15707, doi:10.1029/2007/GL029698. [PDF]
[ix] IPCC, Assessment Report 4, 2007, Working Group 1, The Physical Science Basis, Chapter 8. (see 8.6.3.2) [PDF]
[x] Kirkby, J. et al. (2011) Role of sulphuric acid, ammonia and galactic cosmic rays in atmospheric aerosol nucleation, Nature 476, 429-433 (2011). | Article
[xi] Svensmark, H. 1998. Influence of cosmic rays on earth’s climate. Physical Review Letters 81: 5027-5030. [Discussion CO2Science]
[xii] Svensmark, H. and Friis-Christensen, E.: Variation of cosmic ray flux and global cloud coverage – a missing link in solar-climate relationships, J. Atmos. Sol. Terr. Phys., 59, 1225–1232, 1997.
[xiii] Mauas, P., Flamenco, E., Buccino, A. (2008) “Solar Forcing of the Stream Flow of a Continental Scale South American River”, Instituto de Astronomı´a y Fı´sica del Espacio, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Physical Review Letters 101 [http://www.iafe.uba.ar/httpdocs/reprint_parana.pdf])
[xiv] Alexander, W., Bailey, F., Bredenkamp, B., van der Merwe, A., and Willemse, N. (2007) Journal of the South African Institution of Civil Engineering, Vol. 49 No 2 [PDF]
[xv] Shaviv, N.J. (2008) Using the oceans as a calorimeter to quantify the solar radiative forcing. Journal of Geophysical Research 113: 10.1029/2007JA012989. [CO2 Science discussion]
[xvi] Herschel, W. 1801, in Philosphical Transactions of the Royal Society, London, 265 and 354. (See here, and here)
[xvii] Spencer, R., and W.D. Braswell. (2008). Potential biases in feedback diagnosis from observations data: a simple model demonstration. Journal of Climate, 21, 5624-5628.
[xviii] Spencer, R.W., and W.D. Braswell, (2010), On the diagnosis of radiative feedback in the presence of unknown radiative forcing, J. Geophys. Res, 115, D16109
[xix] Spencer, R. W.; Braswell, W.D. (2011) On the Misdiagnosis of Climate Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance, Remote Sens. 2011, 3, 1603-1613. [PDF]
The IPCC say feedbacks amplify CO2’s warming by a factor of about three.
Without the amplification from positive feedback there is no crisis
So being nice people, let’s assume it’s warmed since 1979 and assume that it was all due to carbon dioxide. If so, that means feedbacks are …. zero. There goes that prediction of 3.3ºC.
Feedbacks are the name of the game. If carbon dioxide doesn’t trigger off powerful positive feedbacks, there was and is no crisis. Even James Hansen would agree — inasmuch as he himself said that CO2 would directly cause about 1.2ºC of warming if it doubled, without any feedbacks (Hansen 1984).
Consider the warming from1979 to 2007, when we measured temperatures using satellites and not corrupted and adjusted land thermometers. Douglass and Christy (2008) point out that, given how much CO2 levels increased in that time, the warming only amounts to what the IPCC scientists predict we should get from CO2 alone, from the direct effect of CO2, and not from the effect of CO2 plus positive feedbacks.
The warming trend expected from CO2 without any feedbacks at all is 0.07 ºC/decade. The trends from the UAH satellites are 0.06±0.01ºC/decade. Since the two figures are almost the same, no one needs a super-computer to tell them that this implies that the sum of all feedbacks (and the sum of all fears) is zip, nada, nothing.
Furthermore, this study likely overestimates the effect of CO2. There is clearly a 60 year cycle of warming and cooling due to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and the 28 year study period was the steepest part of that 60 year cycle. Hence, trends over longer periods are likely to be smaller, which implies that feedbacks are negative.
Thus the upper bound on climate sensitivity (the temperature rise when CO2 doubles) from the last three decades of warming is about 1°C, and that’s assuming all the warming is due to CO2 increases and not due to other factors like solar magnetic effects, cosmic radiation, ocean current oscillations, or geomagnetic forces. Which is much less than the IPCC median estimate of 3.3°C.
(I’m revisiting older important papers and setting up resource pages, largely thanks to Tony Cox’s prodding. In this post I found it interesting that Lindzen’s work, which was so controversial because it proved the IPCC is wrong, was in many ways merely confirming earlier results. — Jo)
Guest Post: Tony Cox and Jo Nova
Satellite measurements agree with the ocean heat content measurements. As the Earth warms, more radiation escapes to space.
If feedbacks are positive (as the IPCC estimates), then as the Earth warms the amount of energy being radiated to space will shrink (thus warming the Earth even further). If feedbacks are negative, as the Earth warms more energy will radiate away.
Multiple studies show that feedbacks are negative.
Lindzen and Choi analyzed short periods of warming looking for changes in the outgoing long-wave radiation leaving from the top of the atmosphere. The satellite observations show, repeatedly, that as the Earth warms, the climate system shifts and lets more of the infra red or long-wave energy out to space.[1],[2] It’s like a safety release valve. This means that the system has negative feedbacks (like almost all known long-lived or stable natural systems). The changes dampen the effects of extra CO2.
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The lowest possible prediction is for a 0.2°C rise per decade.
(Gee Aye deserves an honorable mention for comment 99,999 and 100,002).
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