Death knell for AGW
- Thread starter Walter
- Start date
Myth of Consensus Explodes: APS Opens Global Warming Debate
"Considerable presence" of skeptics
The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming "incontrovertible."
In a posting to the APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,"There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution."
The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity -- the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause -- has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling. A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.
Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chairman of the New England Section of the APS, called Monckton's paper an "expose of the IPCC that details numerous exaggerations and "extensive errors"
In an email to DailyTech, Monckton says, "I was dismayed to discover that the IPCC's 2001 and 2007 reports did not devote chapters to the central 'climate sensitivity' question, and did not explain in proper, systematic detail the methods by which they evaluated it. When I began to investigate, it seemed that the IPCC was deliberately concealing and obscuring its method."
According to Monckton, there is substantial support for his results, "in the peer-reviewed literature, most articles on climate sensitivity conclude, as I have done, that climate sensitivity must be harmlessly low."
Monckton, who was the science advisor to Britain's Thatcher administration, says natural variability is the cause of most of the Earth's recent warming. "In the past 70 years the Sun was more active than at almost any other time in the past 11,400 years ... Mars, Jupiter, Neptune’s largest moon, and Pluto warmed at the same time as Earth."
"Considerable presence" of skeptics
The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming "incontrovertible."
In a posting to the APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,"There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution."
The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity -- the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause -- has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling. A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.
Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chairman of the New England Section of the APS, called Monckton's paper an "expose of the IPCC that details numerous exaggerations and "extensive errors"
In an email to DailyTech, Monckton says, "I was dismayed to discover that the IPCC's 2001 and 2007 reports did not devote chapters to the central 'climate sensitivity' question, and did not explain in proper, systematic detail the methods by which they evaluated it. When I began to investigate, it seemed that the IPCC was deliberately concealing and obscuring its method."
According to Monckton, there is substantial support for his results, "in the peer-reviewed literature, most articles on climate sensitivity conclude, as I have done, that climate sensitivity must be harmlessly low."
Monckton, who was the science advisor to Britain's Thatcher administration, says natural variability is the cause of most of the Earth's recent warming. "In the past 70 years the Sun was more active than at almost any other time in the past 11,400 years ... Mars, Jupiter, Neptune’s largest moon, and Pluto warmed at the same time as Earth."
You really don't believe this tripe, do you? In 1967 Global Warming was a hot topic and agreed upon by the top scientists and meteorologists of the time. Now with the help of money from 'Roo lobbyists opinions have changed. I can smell the b.s. coming through my monitor.
Believe nothing of what you read, half of what you hear and all of what you can see!
No smoking hot spot
David Evans | July 18, 2008
I DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.
FullCAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology and satellite data. I've been following the global warming debate closely for years.
When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.
The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.
But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts:
1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.
Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.
If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming. If we had found the greenhouse signature then I would be an alarmist again.
When the signature was found to be missing in 2007 (after the latest IPCC report), alarmists objected that maybe the readings of the radiosonde thermometers might not be accurate and maybe the hot spot was there but had gone undetected. Yet hundreds of radiosondes have given the same answer, so statistically it is not possible that they missed the hot spot.
Recently the alarmists have suggested we ignore the radiosonde thermometers, but instead take the radiosonde wind measurements, apply a theory about wind shear, and run the results through their computers to estimate the temperatures. They then say that the results show that we cannot rule out the presence of a hot spot. If you believe that you'd believe anything.
2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed) but there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming.
3. The satellites that measure the world's temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980). Land-based temperature readings are corrupted by the "urban heat island" effect: urban areas encroaching on thermometer stations warm the micro-climate around the thermometer, due to vegetation changes, concrete, cars, houses. Satellite data is the only temperature data we can trust, but it only goes back to 1979. NASA reports only land-based data, and reports a modest warming trend and recent cooling. The other three global temperature records use a mix of satellite and land measurements, or satellite only, and they all show no warming since 2001 and a recent cooling.
4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect.
None of these points are controversial. The alarmist scientists agree with them, though they would dispute their relevance.
The last point was known and past dispute by 2003, yet Al Gore made his movie in 2005 and presented the ice cores as the sole reason for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming. In any other political context our cynical and experienced press corps would surely have called this dishonest and widely questioned the politician's assertion.
Until now the global warming debate has merely been an academic matter of little interest. Now that it matters, we should debate the causes of global warming.
So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions.
In the minds of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn't noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved.
If there really was any evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming, don't you think we would have heard all about it ad nauseam by now?
The world has spent $50 billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. Evidence consists of observations made by someone at some time that supports the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory.
Dr David Evans was a consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005.
David Evans | July 18, 2008
I DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.
FullCAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology and satellite data. I've been following the global warming debate closely for years.
When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.
The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.
But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts:
1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.
Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.
If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming. If we had found the greenhouse signature then I would be an alarmist again.
When the signature was found to be missing in 2007 (after the latest IPCC report), alarmists objected that maybe the readings of the radiosonde thermometers might not be accurate and maybe the hot spot was there but had gone undetected. Yet hundreds of radiosondes have given the same answer, so statistically it is not possible that they missed the hot spot.
Recently the alarmists have suggested we ignore the radiosonde thermometers, but instead take the radiosonde wind measurements, apply a theory about wind shear, and run the results through their computers to estimate the temperatures. They then say that the results show that we cannot rule out the presence of a hot spot. If you believe that you'd believe anything.
2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed) but there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming.
3. The satellites that measure the world's temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980). Land-based temperature readings are corrupted by the "urban heat island" effect: urban areas encroaching on thermometer stations warm the micro-climate around the thermometer, due to vegetation changes, concrete, cars, houses. Satellite data is the only temperature data we can trust, but it only goes back to 1979. NASA reports only land-based data, and reports a modest warming trend and recent cooling. The other three global temperature records use a mix of satellite and land measurements, or satellite only, and they all show no warming since 2001 and a recent cooling.
4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect.
None of these points are controversial. The alarmist scientists agree with them, though they would dispute their relevance.
The last point was known and past dispute by 2003, yet Al Gore made his movie in 2005 and presented the ice cores as the sole reason for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming. In any other political context our cynical and experienced press corps would surely have called this dishonest and widely questioned the politician's assertion.
Until now the global warming debate has merely been an academic matter of little interest. Now that it matters, we should debate the causes of global warming.
So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions.
In the minds of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn't noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved.
If there really was any evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming, don't you think we would have heard all about it ad nauseam by now?
The world has spent $50 billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. Evidence consists of observations made by someone at some time that supports the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory.
Dr David Evans was a consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005.
[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]What global warming? [/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]'In a letter to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon 13 top scientists including one Nobel Prize winner, pointed to the fact that while CO2 levels have continued to rise, global temperatures have fallen, dramatically contradicting the claim that CO2 levels cause global warming. They wrote that the UN Climate change Panel "must be called to account and cease its deceptive practices - Policies based on False science must be ended.''[/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]Read more ... [/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]'In a letter to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon 13 top scientists including one Nobel Prize winner, pointed to the fact that while CO2 levels have continued to rise, global temperatures have fallen, dramatically contradicting the claim that CO2 levels cause global warming. They wrote that the UN Climate change Panel "must be called to account and cease its deceptive practices - Policies based on False science must be ended.''[/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]Read more ... [/FONT]
They should know better than that. Climate sensitivity is the rate of temperature change given a perturbation, or forcing of some quantity. The sensitivity doesn't change because it's carbon dioxide. One watt of extra solar forcing is the same as one watt of extra carbon dioxide forcing. I'd like to see the low ball measurements Monckton comes up with. Those numbers are calculated by analyzing past climate changes and factoring in feedbacks. He probably used:
a) high cloud forcing, and
b) low albedo, water vapour and lapse rates
Shifting of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation from its warm mode to cool mode assures global cooling for the next three decades.
Don J. Easterbrook, Dept. of Geology, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA
Addressing the Washington Policymakers in Seattle, WA, Dr. Don Easterbrook said that shifting of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) from its warm mode to its cool mode virtually assures global cooling for the next 25-30 years and means that the global warming of the past 30 years is over. The announcement by NASA that the (PDO) had shifted from its warm mode to its cool mode (Fig. 1) is right on schedule as predicted by past climate and PDO changes (Easterbrook, 2001, 2006, 2007) and is not an oddity superimposed upon and masking the predicted severe warming by the IPCC. This has significant implications for the future and indicates that the IPCC climate models were wrong in their prediction of global temperatures soaring 1°F per decade for the rest of the century.
Figure 1. Cooling of the Pacific Ocean and setting up of the cool-mode PDO. Sea surface temperature anomaly in the Pacific Ocean from April 14-21, 2008. The anomaly compares the recent temperatures measured by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) on NASA’s Aqua satellite with an average of data collected by the NOAA Pathfinder satellites from 1985-1997. Places where the Pacific was cooler than normal are blue, places where temperatures were average are white, and places where the ocean was warmer than normal are red. The cool water anomaly in the center of the image shows the lingering effect of the year-old La Niña. However, the much broader area of cooler-than-average water off the coast of North America from Alaska (top center) to the equator is a classic feature of the cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). The cool waters wrap in a horseshoe shape around a core of warmer-than-average water. (In the warm phase, the pattern is reversed). Unlike El Niño and La Niña, which may occur every 3 to 7 years and last from 6 to 18 months, the PDO can remain in the same phase for 20 to 30 years. (NASA image by Jesse Allen, AMSR-E data processed and provided by Chelle Gentemann and Frank Wentz, Remote Sensing Systems. Caption by Rebecca Lindsey, adapted from a press release from NASA JPL).
Instead of a rise of 1°F during the first decade of this century as predicted by IPCC climate models (Fig 2), global temperatures cooled slightly for the past nine years and cooled more than 1°F this year (Fig 3). Global cooling over the past decade appears to be due to a global cooling trend set up by the PDO cool mode and a similar shift in the Atlantic. The IPCC’s prediction of a 1° F warming by 2011, will require warming of about 1° F in the next three years and unless that happens, the IPCC models will be proven invalid.
Figure 2. IPCC predicted warming.
Figure 3. Measured cooling.
As shown by the historic pattern of PDOs over the past century (Fig. 4) and by corresponding global warming and cooling, the pattern is part of ongoing warm/cool cycles that last 25-30 years. Each time the PDO mode has shifted from warm to cool or cool to warm, the global climate has changed accordingly. In 1977, the PDO shifted from cool mode to warm mode (Fig. 4) and set off the global warming from 1977 to 1998, often referred to as the “Great Climate Shift.” The recent shift from PDO warm mode to cool mode is similar to the shift that occurred in the mid-1940’s and resulted in 30 years of global cooling (Fig. 4). The global warming from ~1915 to ~1945 was also brought on by a mode shift in the PDO (Fig. 4). Every indication points continuation of the PDO patterns of the past century and global cooling for the next 30 years (Fig. 4). Thus, the global warming the Earth has experienced since 1977 appears to be over!
Figure 4. PDO indices, 1900-2008 with predictions to 2040.
Don J. Easterbrook, Dept. of Geology, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA
Addressing the Washington Policymakers in Seattle, WA, Dr. Don Easterbrook said that shifting of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) from its warm mode to its cool mode virtually assures global cooling for the next 25-30 years and means that the global warming of the past 30 years is over. The announcement by NASA that the (PDO) had shifted from its warm mode to its cool mode (Fig. 1) is right on schedule as predicted by past climate and PDO changes (Easterbrook, 2001, 2006, 2007) and is not an oddity superimposed upon and masking the predicted severe warming by the IPCC. This has significant implications for the future and indicates that the IPCC climate models were wrong in their prediction of global temperatures soaring 1°F per decade for the rest of the century.
Figure 1. Cooling of the Pacific Ocean and setting up of the cool-mode PDO. Sea surface temperature anomaly in the Pacific Ocean from April 14-21, 2008. The anomaly compares the recent temperatures measured by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) on NASA’s Aqua satellite with an average of data collected by the NOAA Pathfinder satellites from 1985-1997. Places where the Pacific was cooler than normal are blue, places where temperatures were average are white, and places where the ocean was warmer than normal are red. The cool water anomaly in the center of the image shows the lingering effect of the year-old La Niña. However, the much broader area of cooler-than-average water off the coast of North America from Alaska (top center) to the equator is a classic feature of the cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). The cool waters wrap in a horseshoe shape around a core of warmer-than-average water. (In the warm phase, the pattern is reversed). Unlike El Niño and La Niña, which may occur every 3 to 7 years and last from 6 to 18 months, the PDO can remain in the same phase for 20 to 30 years. (NASA image by Jesse Allen, AMSR-E data processed and provided by Chelle Gentemann and Frank Wentz, Remote Sensing Systems. Caption by Rebecca Lindsey, adapted from a press release from NASA JPL).
Instead of a rise of 1°F during the first decade of this century as predicted by IPCC climate models (Fig 2), global temperatures cooled slightly for the past nine years and cooled more than 1°F this year (Fig 3). Global cooling over the past decade appears to be due to a global cooling trend set up by the PDO cool mode and a similar shift in the Atlantic. The IPCC’s prediction of a 1° F warming by 2011, will require warming of about 1° F in the next three years and unless that happens, the IPCC models will be proven invalid.
Figure 2. IPCC predicted warming.
Figure 3. Measured cooling.
As shown by the historic pattern of PDOs over the past century (Fig. 4) and by corresponding global warming and cooling, the pattern is part of ongoing warm/cool cycles that last 25-30 years. Each time the PDO mode has shifted from warm to cool or cool to warm, the global climate has changed accordingly. In 1977, the PDO shifted from cool mode to warm mode (Fig. 4) and set off the global warming from 1977 to 1998, often referred to as the “Great Climate Shift.” The recent shift from PDO warm mode to cool mode is similar to the shift that occurred in the mid-1940’s and resulted in 30 years of global cooling (Fig. 4). The global warming from ~1915 to ~1945 was also brought on by a mode shift in the PDO (Fig. 4). Every indication points continuation of the PDO patterns of the past century and global cooling for the next 30 years (Fig. 4). Thus, the global warming the Earth has experienced since 1977 appears to be over!
Figure 4. PDO indices, 1900-2008 with predictions to 2040.
“Consensus” on Man-Made Warming Shattering
By Dennis Avery Saturday, July 19, 2008
The “consensus” on man-made global warming may have received a mortal wound.
Physics & Society, The journal of the 46,000-member American Physical Society, just published “Climate Sensitivity Revisited,” by Viscount Christopher Monckton. Monckton is an avowed man-made warming skeptic, and former science advisor to the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. (If you want to see the science, click here )
Viscount Monckton contends that the climate alarmists have mistakenly pre-programmed their computer models with equations that overstate the earth’s sensitivity to CO2 by 500 to 2,000 percent—thus creating a senseless First World panic that itself threatens the future of society.
Physics & Society says: “There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution. Since the correctness or fallacy of that conclusion has immense implications for public policy and for the future of the biosphere, we thought it appropriate to present a debate within the pages of P&S.”
The journal then offers both the Monckton paper and a response by David Hafemeister and Peter Schwartz, of the California Polytechnic Institute. P&S also issued an open invitation to “further contributions from the physics community.”
It had to happen. Too much evidence has mounted against CO2 as a cause of the modern warming. Sea ice is expanding globally, not retreating (especially in the Antarctic). The oceans have stopped rising, and actually started to fall; that might be because they “stopped warming 4–5 years ago” according to NASA, based on data from the 3,000 new Argo floats now scattered world-wide. The number and intensity of hurricanes, cyclones, and tornadoes hasn’t increased. Rain has returned to Australia, reminding us again it is naturally the driest continent on earth.
The crowning blow: After nine years of non-warming, the planet actually began to cool in 2007 and 2008 for the first time in 30 years. The net warming from 1940 to 1998 had been a miniscule 0.2 degree C; the UK’s Hadley Centre says earth’s temperature has now dropped back down to about the levels of 100 years ago. There has thus been no net global warming within “living memory”!
The current cooling doesn’t mean another Ice Age is looming. There is massive global evidence of a 1,500-year warming cycle, going back 1 million years. It may be driven by the slightly varying distance between the earth and the sun. The sunspot index has had a 79 percent correlation with the earth’s thermometer record since 1860, during this time, the temperature correlation with CO2 is a dismissive 22 percent.
NASA’s Jason satellite tells us the Pacific Ocean has entered a cool phase. Historically, these have lasted 25–30 years. After that, there may be some additional warming. However, the 1,500-year cycles typically shift abruptly; we should already have most of this one’s warming. When we’ll get the inevitable cooling? Probably centuries from now.
The warming debate is far from over, but an actual debate looks likely. Reputations and huge bundles of cash have been bet on man-made warming, including billions in government funding for climate research. The UN’s reputation—and perhaps its future—are on the line.
The American Physical Society itself has issued a statement: It stands by its belief that human-emitted CO2 is “changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the earth’s climate” and notes that Physics & Society is not peer-reviewed. Nonetheless, the debate is finally and openly joined, after 20 years of the Greens proclaiming humanity’s guilt for wrecking the planet as beyond sane discussion.
Now, we look forward to a full-scale exploration of the science. We have heard quite enough from the computers.
By Dennis Avery Saturday, July 19, 2008
The “consensus” on man-made global warming may have received a mortal wound.
Physics & Society, The journal of the 46,000-member American Physical Society, just published “Climate Sensitivity Revisited,” by Viscount Christopher Monckton. Monckton is an avowed man-made warming skeptic, and former science advisor to the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. (If you want to see the science, click here )
Viscount Monckton contends that the climate alarmists have mistakenly pre-programmed their computer models with equations that overstate the earth’s sensitivity to CO2 by 500 to 2,000 percent—thus creating a senseless First World panic that itself threatens the future of society.
Physics & Society says: “There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution. Since the correctness or fallacy of that conclusion has immense implications for public policy and for the future of the biosphere, we thought it appropriate to present a debate within the pages of P&S.”
The journal then offers both the Monckton paper and a response by David Hafemeister and Peter Schwartz, of the California Polytechnic Institute. P&S also issued an open invitation to “further contributions from the physics community.”
It had to happen. Too much evidence has mounted against CO2 as a cause of the modern warming. Sea ice is expanding globally, not retreating (especially in the Antarctic). The oceans have stopped rising, and actually started to fall; that might be because they “stopped warming 4–5 years ago” according to NASA, based on data from the 3,000 new Argo floats now scattered world-wide. The number and intensity of hurricanes, cyclones, and tornadoes hasn’t increased. Rain has returned to Australia, reminding us again it is naturally the driest continent on earth.
The crowning blow: After nine years of non-warming, the planet actually began to cool in 2007 and 2008 for the first time in 30 years. The net warming from 1940 to 1998 had been a miniscule 0.2 degree C; the UK’s Hadley Centre says earth’s temperature has now dropped back down to about the levels of 100 years ago. There has thus been no net global warming within “living memory”!
The current cooling doesn’t mean another Ice Age is looming. There is massive global evidence of a 1,500-year warming cycle, going back 1 million years. It may be driven by the slightly varying distance between the earth and the sun. The sunspot index has had a 79 percent correlation with the earth’s thermometer record since 1860, during this time, the temperature correlation with CO2 is a dismissive 22 percent.
NASA’s Jason satellite tells us the Pacific Ocean has entered a cool phase. Historically, these have lasted 25–30 years. After that, there may be some additional warming. However, the 1,500-year cycles typically shift abruptly; we should already have most of this one’s warming. When we’ll get the inevitable cooling? Probably centuries from now.
The warming debate is far from over, but an actual debate looks likely. Reputations and huge bundles of cash have been bet on man-made warming, including billions in government funding for climate research. The UN’s reputation—and perhaps its future—are on the line.
The American Physical Society itself has issued a statement: It stands by its belief that human-emitted CO2 is “changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the earth’s climate” and notes that Physics & Society is not peer-reviewed. Nonetheless, the debate is finally and openly joined, after 20 years of the Greens proclaiming humanity’s guilt for wrecking the planet as beyond sane discussion.
Now, we look forward to a full-scale exploration of the science. We have heard quite enough from the computers.
NEWS ALERT: Exxon funded Hudson Institute and Dennis Avery's Scientific Spin on Andes Glacier Study
14 Jun 06
The recent opinion piece by Dennis T. Avery of the Hudson Institute is a great example of the PR spin and misinformation campaign being used in the climate change debate. His latest claims are almost as outrageous as his conclusion that organic food is more dangerous to eat than food produced using chemical pesticides.
In Avery’s piece: Some Inconvenient Glaciers, Avery claims that a study published in the June, 2006 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is further proof that: “… the Andes glacier study not only links glacial advances and retreats with the sun, but emphasizes that the earth’s glaciers have often retreated–and even disappeared–during past centuries, long before humans built cars and smokestacks.”
At first glance Avery’s conclusion sounds reasonable, but that is always the nature of well manufactured spin.
What Avery fails to point out is that while the study acknowledges that the varying temperature of the sun has caused glaciers to melt in the past, it concludes that when you couple these temperature variations with the realities of man-made global warming, our glaciers are in some very serious trouble.
Here are is a quote from the abstract of the Andes glacier study:
“These results highlight the sensitivity of highaltitude tropical regions to relatively small changes in radiative forcing, implying even greater probable responses to future anthropogenic forcing.”
Translation: glaciers are sensitive to small changes in temperature and global warming will make all of this glacier melting even worse.
And from the conclusion:
“It is likely that this mechanism also may serve to amplify the effects of warming trends, irrespective of their origin, which raises concern that global warming will adversely affect highaltitude tropical montane regions.”
Translation: changes in sun temperature happen and global warming is making this all the worse.
Also from the conclusion:
“Conservative estimates of net anthropogenic greenhouse-gas radiative forcing for the next 50 yr surpass that of solar forcing in previous centuries, implying that profound climatic impacts can be predicted for tropical montane regions.”
Translation: estimates of the increase of man-made greenhouse warming will cause much higher temperatures than anything caused by changes in sun temperature and this will impact already sensitive glaciers.
Now we here at the DeSmogBlog know that “think-tanks” like the oil-backed Hudson Institute already has many pre-concieved notions about the science behind global warming, but this is blatant misrepresentation of the conclusions of a scientific conclusion.
14 Jun 06
The recent opinion piece by Dennis T. Avery of the Hudson Institute is a great example of the PR spin and misinformation campaign being used in the climate change debate. His latest claims are almost as outrageous as his conclusion that organic food is more dangerous to eat than food produced using chemical pesticides.
In Avery’s piece: Some Inconvenient Glaciers, Avery claims that a study published in the June, 2006 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is further proof that: “… the Andes glacier study not only links glacial advances and retreats with the sun, but emphasizes that the earth’s glaciers have often retreated–and even disappeared–during past centuries, long before humans built cars and smokestacks.”
At first glance Avery’s conclusion sounds reasonable, but that is always the nature of well manufactured spin.
What Avery fails to point out is that while the study acknowledges that the varying temperature of the sun has caused glaciers to melt in the past, it concludes that when you couple these temperature variations with the realities of man-made global warming, our glaciers are in some very serious trouble.
Here are is a quote from the abstract of the Andes glacier study:
“These results highlight the sensitivity of highaltitude tropical regions to relatively small changes in radiative forcing, implying even greater probable responses to future anthropogenic forcing.”
Translation: glaciers are sensitive to small changes in temperature and global warming will make all of this glacier melting even worse.
And from the conclusion:
“It is likely that this mechanism also may serve to amplify the effects of warming trends, irrespective of their origin, which raises concern that global warming will adversely affect highaltitude tropical montane regions.”
Translation: changes in sun temperature happen and global warming is making this all the worse.
Also from the conclusion:
“Conservative estimates of net anthropogenic greenhouse-gas radiative forcing for the next 50 yr surpass that of solar forcing in previous centuries, implying that profound climatic impacts can be predicted for tropical montane regions.”
Translation: estimates of the increase of man-made greenhouse warming will cause much higher temperatures than anything caused by changes in sun temperature and this will impact already sensitive glaciers.
Now we here at the DeSmogBlog know that “think-tanks” like the oil-backed Hudson Institute already has many pre-concieved notions about the science behind global warming, but this is blatant misrepresentation of the conclusions of a scientific conclusion.
An inconvenient ruling
Tuesday, 22nd July 2008
The ever wise (and droll) Philip Stott says it all here about the eye-opening media spinning of the Ofcom ruling on the Channel Four documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle. As Philip notes, the only thing that matters is that Ofcom ruled the programme did ‘not materially mislead viewers so as to cause harm or offence’ in claiming that man-made global warming was the biggest scam of modern times. And haven’t the truth-deniers gone just nuts over this, complaining that the programme got off on a ‘technicality’ – some technicality! – inflating the relatively minor issues on which Ofcom did find against it out of all proportion (given the huge number of heavy-weight complaints it received which it rejected), and claiming that Ofcom’s criteria were inadequate (not a complaint one would have heard from them had the ruling gone the other way).
Desperate stuff from desperate people – because the game is up for them, and they know it. The fabled ‘scientific consensus’ (not) is melting faster than Arctic ice. The latest scientist to acknowledge his error in having previously swallowed the scam is Dr David Evans, a former consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office, who says hewrote the carbon accounting model that helps measure Australia’s compliance with the Kyoto Protocol. Now, however, he has written in The Australian:
But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming...There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts:
1) The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it...
2) There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None...
3) The satellites that measure the world's temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980)...
4) The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect...
Until now the global warming debate has merely been an academic matter of little interest. Now that it matters, we should debate the causes of global warming. So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions. In the minds of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn't noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved.
There is now overwhelming evidence that the claim of man-made global warming is indeed a swindle – not least the fact that, despite the continuing rise in carbon dioxide, the climate has not warmed for the past ten years and indeed has even cooled for the past five. This is an inconvenient truth which was never forseen by those latter-day seers, the computer modellers who gave us Kyoto on the basis that they could predict the climate’s future; and it also suggests that even if the world’s ice is melting year by year at an unprecedented and otherwise inexplicable rate (in itself untrue) a warming climate demonstrably cannot be the cause.
<SPAN>Numerous reputations – of those indeed who still cling to that infamous ‘consensus’ – are now set to go down the pan. No wonder the stakes were so high for them over the Channel Four programme. But it’s all too late. The carbon cat is out of the bag. The economy of the developed world has been distorted with food prices going through the roof, while good people have been vilified, their professional reputations trashed and their careers jeopardised -- all in the cause of a quasi-religious inquisition which it becomes ever clearer has as much basis in actual science as the drowning of witches in the Middle Ages. These people should never be trusted on anything ever again. We must not let them get away with it.
Tuesday, 22nd July 2008
The ever wise (and droll) Philip Stott says it all here about the eye-opening media spinning of the Ofcom ruling on the Channel Four documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle. As Philip notes, the only thing that matters is that Ofcom ruled the programme did ‘not materially mislead viewers so as to cause harm or offence’ in claiming that man-made global warming was the biggest scam of modern times. And haven’t the truth-deniers gone just nuts over this, complaining that the programme got off on a ‘technicality’ – some technicality! – inflating the relatively minor issues on which Ofcom did find against it out of all proportion (given the huge number of heavy-weight complaints it received which it rejected), and claiming that Ofcom’s criteria were inadequate (not a complaint one would have heard from them had the ruling gone the other way).
Desperate stuff from desperate people – because the game is up for them, and they know it. The fabled ‘scientific consensus’ (not) is melting faster than Arctic ice. The latest scientist to acknowledge his error in having previously swallowed the scam is Dr David Evans, a former consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office, who says hewrote the carbon accounting model that helps measure Australia’s compliance with the Kyoto Protocol. Now, however, he has written in The Australian:
But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming...There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts:
1) The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it...
2) There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None...
3) The satellites that measure the world's temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980)...
4) The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect...
Until now the global warming debate has merely been an academic matter of little interest. Now that it matters, we should debate the causes of global warming. So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions. In the minds of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn't noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved.
There is now overwhelming evidence that the claim of man-made global warming is indeed a swindle – not least the fact that, despite the continuing rise in carbon dioxide, the climate has not warmed for the past ten years and indeed has even cooled for the past five. This is an inconvenient truth which was never forseen by those latter-day seers, the computer modellers who gave us Kyoto on the basis that they could predict the climate’s future; and it also suggests that even if the world’s ice is melting year by year at an unprecedented and otherwise inexplicable rate (in itself untrue) a warming climate demonstrably cannot be the cause.
<SPAN>Numerous reputations – of those indeed who still cling to that infamous ‘consensus’ – are now set to go down the pan. No wonder the stakes were so high for them over the Channel Four programme. But it’s all too late. The carbon cat is out of the bag. The economy of the developed world has been distorted with food prices going through the roof, while good people have been vilified, their professional reputations trashed and their careers jeopardised -- all in the cause of a quasi-religious inquisition which it becomes ever clearer has as much basis in actual science as the drowning of witches in the Middle Ages. These people should never be trusted on anything ever again. We must not let them get away with it.
Royal Society releases statement on Swindle Ofcom Ruling
21 Jul 08
The UK's Royal Society, one of the oldest and most prestigious scientific bodies in the world has released this statement today on the Ofcom ruling that the "Great Global Warming Swindle" television movie misrepresented the views of some of the world's most distinguished scientists:
Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society said: "TV companies occasionally commission programmes just to court controversy, but to misrepresent the evidence on an issue as important as global warming was surely irresponsible. 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' was itself a swindle. The programme makers misrepresented the science, the views of some of the scientists featured in the programme and the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
"The science of climate change is complex; however the weight of scientific evidence shows that global warming caused by human actions is happening now, and is set to continue. There is certainly a need for ongoing debate on climate change and on what we are going to do to tackle it but this programme made little or no contribution to that debate."
21 Jul 08
The UK's Royal Society, one of the oldest and most prestigious scientific bodies in the world has released this statement today on the Ofcom ruling that the "Great Global Warming Swindle" television movie misrepresented the views of some of the world's most distinguished scientists:
Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society said: "TV companies occasionally commission programmes just to court controversy, but to misrepresent the evidence on an issue as important as global warming was surely irresponsible. 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' was itself a swindle. The programme makers misrepresented the science, the views of some of the scientists featured in the programme and the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
"The science of climate change is complex; however the weight of scientific evidence shows that global warming caused by human actions is happening now, and is set to continue. There is certainly a need for ongoing debate on climate change and on what we are going to do to tackle it but this programme made little or no contribution to that debate."
Tripe. Not true at all. A warming troposphere and a cooling stratosphere is a very clear signature of greenhouse gases. It's called radiative cooling.
Oh, except for basic radiative physics, though that would depend on what you call 'significant.' The planet would be -18°C without greenhouse gases, instead we have a balmy 14°C. I call it significant when it selects species for extinction due in large part to the human 'signature.'
No they don't. They still show positive warming trends. For UAH it's still +0.028°C/decade, even with the recent cool spell. Trends aren't measured on 7 years. That's because internal variability will swamp whatever signal you might find in such a short time span. Seriously, the shortest solar cycle is about 11 years +/- 2 years, the ENSO cycle can be anywhere from 3 to 8 years, the PDO is 20-30 years, and many more cycles exist.
And measuring a yearly temperature is the sum of all twelve month anomalies, not a single monthly anomaly.
Who wrote this crap?
Right, due to orbital forcings. The amplifying effect of greenhouse gases is a feedback in the carbon cycle on earth, which in this case responds to a perturbation. Only now that perturbation isn't here, ie. the earth isn't tilting out of wack, or approaching the nearest path on it's ecliptic. Which makes the current perturbation (proliferation of stored carbon sources) a unique event in Earth's climate history. A greenhouse molecule is still a greenhouse molecule, it doesn't matter how it gets in the atmosphere.
What a bunch of certifiable crap. Do you ever turn on the part of your brain that asks questions Walt? You're nearly as bad as Quandary.
All you have is assertions which is why you guys don't know when your @$$ is owned LMAO. "Evidence? Who needs evidence when I have my own opinion?"
You two should go study the koran with eanassir.
You two should go study the koran with eanassir.