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Alarmed |
Doubt | Awakening |
Evidence | IPCC vs Science |
Corruption? | Science
of greenhouse gases | Cosmic
Rays | CO2 follows temp
CO2 is Innocent | Junk
details | Medieval Warm Period |
Infamous Hockey Stick | Urban
Heat Islands | Solving the
Problem | More info |
Glossary

This is a personal story as well as a skeptics' primer.
I taught myself the science because it was vital, in order
to understand such an important issue about which there have
been serious charges of misleading people in the science itself.
Nobody is sponsoring me. Were it not for what I now know is
bad science that they support, I would be working with Transition
Towns. Checking contradictory sources, and continuing to question
evidence, became essential to discovering the truth.
Science, Method, Climatology, and Forgetting the Basics
is a straight introduction by Ric
Werme, an engineer long familiar with Climate Science.
It's scientific but simple and very readable. Another good
introduction is by James
Peden, a first-rate scientist with a track record as atmospheric
physicist. Here are several
other excellent introductions. More exist. Take your pick.
Here is an excellent, brief Skeptics'
Handbook. Nobody could say, after looking at any of these,
that scientists skeptical of manmade global warming are either
kooks or crooks, or that there is a consensus - as Al Gore
claimed.
If you have evidence to query or improve anything here -
please contact me, or join our science
workshop and Forum.
I've done my best but I'm still learning and would like to
build a real "consensus" of good science. Curiously,
after the science seemed officially "agreed", more
and more evidence has been arising that contradicts "manmade
global warming".
I became alarmed
by seeing An Inconvenient Truth
In September 2007 I became very concerned about global warming
after seeing Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth.
He showed a graph which is a "hockey stick" shape,
showing a millennium of steady global temperatures, followed
by a dramatic temperature rise as the twentieth century progressed.
A second graph shows CO2 levels rising inexorably from 1958
when Keeling started CO2 measurements. Al Gore showed the
temperature "hockey stick" together with Keeling's
compelling zigzag graph, to demonstrate how the two had risen
together. He then showed disasters worldwide, including
Hurricane Katrina, which are all apparently getting worse
as temperatures rise. He said
- "Our CO2 emissions were the cause of
the rising CO2 levels, since nothing else could have caused
this.
- And the rising CO2 must have caused these
temperature rises, since, again, there was nothing else."
A study by Naomi Oreskes appeared to prove that a complete
consensus of scientists were portraying a very serious picture
- threatening our whole future - unless we drastically lower
our carbon dioxide emissions, and unless we act quickly. It
seemed there was no serious scientific dissent from Anthropogenic
Global Warming (AGW) - and it seemed
the issue was urgent.
The message was reinforced for me by top NASA scientist James
Hansen describing catastrophic levels of polar ice melt. I've
always checked evidence - but all my checks seemed to confirm
it. As I live on the Somerset levels, a huge area as flat
and low as Holland, the picture hit home. Holland would disappear
completely in this new Noah's Flood. How are we to cut back
CO2 soon enough? Cope with disaster? What are we bequeathing
our children? How can I begin to wake people up?
That month, I changed from back-street thinker to 200% committed
activist. I discovered Transition Towns, which are developing
positive, creative ways to live with an energy-depleted future
in the face of Peak Oil and Global Warming. I read many science
websites, which all told me that those who still denied Anthropogenic
Global Warming were ignorant, in denial, or in the pay of
big oil. I found clear answers to all the skeptics' issues.
I got to learn the chief skeptics' names.

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It was all
open to fair debate at well-regarded websites
like Skeptical
Science. Or so it seemed.
Then I heard a scientist who doubted AGW, and
I started to wonder. His scientific
paper showed serious evidence for doubt. He
had an outstanding track record of scientific
environmental work. But this was only one paper,
not even published or peer-reviewed.
However, I started to look at evidence afresh.
I found the graph [left], standard data, showing
that global temperatures have not risen
in the last decade, despite steadily rising CO2
levels. |
|
What's up doc? temperatures
falling despite CO2 rising..?
I noticed doubts in the AGW forums that I'd passed over before.
I noticed unexplained anomalies in the most basic data.
IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel for Climate
Change) use the following graph showing global temperature
rise from 1860 to now. Their original bright red/blue vertical
bars are actually highly distracting, so I've toned them all
down to pale gray. This way you notice the temperature rises
steeply from 1910 to 1940 when CO2 output was far lower; moreover,
temperature decreases inexplicably from 1940 to 1970. The
vertical bars change from "BLUE" to "RED"
as they cross a "zero" line.

|
No convincing explanations are
offered for any of this by the IPCC. Yet one would
expect to find clear answers to such obvious queries
right at the top of all the official FAQ's about
Climate Change.
I realized that the zero line and the red-blue
bar colours have no meaning whatsoever scientifically...
... but psychologically the effect is vey powerful.
It distracts the eye from the anomalies to the
temp rise=CO2 rise correlation, and it suggests
the rise will continue dramatically. It prepares
the mind... |
|
...for the splice of this 150 years' thermometer record onto
a millennium of "proxy" temperature measurements,
that produced the "hockey stick".
This icon was used prominently by IPCC 2001. I started Googling for
evidence of other views on AGW - still trying to avoid the
"baddies" in the pay of "big oil"... I
found this Gallup poll - it is out of date - but does it still
suggest there wasn't the consensus among scientists that Al
Gore claimed when he made his film? Here's a 2006
poll...
|
Let's just check
that big global temperature rise
<-------
...where's it gone
recently?
I thought it was
rising...
...well, this is
what scientists have been saying isn't it?...
...what scientists? |

|
|
Help! but the nineties
were the warmest years of last century? What, 1930's were
warmer? ah, that was just the US! No, it was also true in
Bodo, Norway... and oh my goodness, it was even warmer, according
to the oxygen isotope records, in the Medieval Warm Period...
even warmer in the Roman Warm Period... even warmer in the
Minoan Warm Period. Is there other evidence for this, like
Roman remains under recent glaciers? Greenland buildings still
buried in permafrost? well, yes, there is...
Oh no! Al Gore has portrayed a totally misleading
picture!
Suddenly there opened up a cascade of doubts over Al Gore's
claims of scientific consensus over global warming, and the
"hockey stick" graph that he used in An Inconvenient
Truth (AIT). Al Gore maintained that CO2 is driving temperature
change now, and he neatly implied that the geological records
showed that CO2 has always driven temperature changes. In
fact, the records show that CO2 lags behind big temperature
changes by around 800 years - but on a geological time scale,
this lag is so small that you don't see it unless you look
close. See also short video.
Gore made claims of "extreme conditions" - serious
sea level rise, serious droughts here, serious floods there,
more tornadoes, more serious hurricanes like Katrina, glaciers
melting fast, ice-sheets cracking up, the Gulf Stream shutting
down, heatwaves killing people ...and other "plagues"...
(tropical diseases spreading, lakes drying out, polar bears
dying out) already happening and likely to getting worse,
...as a result of global warming. He calls carbon dioxide
a pollutant. I discovered that...
... every single claim
of An Inconvenient Truth can be refuted as cherrypicking,
false, or otherwise critically misleading,
as has been shown particularly well by "35
Errors in AIT" by Lord Monckton, "Falsehoods
in Gore's AIT" by William Johnson, "Unmasking
AIT" by William Kininmonth, and "Convenient
Fibs" by Prof. Rossiter.
Here was weighty, informed evidence on all counts
against Al Gore, that I could not refute - however
much I might try. Suddenly - there was a mass
of evidence that contradicts every single claim
for Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). |
 |
|
The Emperor's New Clothes
Everywhere I now looked, I was seeing the evidence differently.
How could I have been so mistaken before? Was I really that
mistaken? How could Al Gore be so mistaken? How could he have
slipped through the checks and balances of Science, if he
really was that misleading or misled? How could so many worthy
scientists be so mistaken? Perhaps, if I looked harder, I'd
find that science did have answers after all? For a while
I bounced uncomfortably from one side to the other as challenge
after challenge appeared. AGW? Yes!! No!! Yes!! No!! Every
time I dug deeper, I found bad science, and more and more
proof of no AGW. But what does this say about those who have
promoted an empty, misleading, expensive science where the
prime evidence disappears in every direction? Could scientists
say they had been deceived or pressured? Did any experience
a "Damascus" awakening? How was I going to avoid
being trashed and ignored as just another skeptic shill of
"big oil", another gullible newcomer, another dangerous
heretic who cannot deal with the real science? But I'm not
alone - I found articles like "how
can so many be so wrong?" and "discrimination
& job loss" and "confessions
of an ex-IPCC reviewer" and "alarmist
tactics & funding" and "Wikipedia
disinformation" and "I
devoted six years to carbon accounting" and "The
Green Inquisition" and saddest of all "The
Lynching of CO2 - the Innocent Source of Life".

|
The"hockey stick"
was given great prominence in IPCC 2001; it was
used by Al Gore; and has recently been resuscitated.
It shows temp. rising dramatically after 1000
years of supposedly little change. It denies the
very existence of the well-known Medieval Warm
Period - see here
(Monckton's list of 19 papers), here
(Loehle's study with non-dendro proxies) here
(Idsos' ongoing project), and here
(67-page paper). .
It was discredited by the US National Academy
of Sciences and by the Wegman Committee as having
"a validation skill not significantly different
from zero". |
|
Many scientists started out believing there
was a serious greenhouse warming effect
from rising CO2 levels, and that the
increase in CO2 levels was due to our emissions. There
seemed to be nothing else that could have caused such dramatic
recent temperature rises; nothing but us that could have caused
CO2 levels to rise. But many scientists are doing U-turns
like I did, when they see evidence that doesn't fit CO2 as
driver of temperature. CORRELATION DOES
NOT PROVE CAUSATION OR EVEN CONNECTION.
***************************************
Let's look at the science
and evidence for ourselves...
Peek at the skeptics' issues that Skeptical
Science has rebutted: a blog with reasonably courteous
debate, unlike many AGW blogs where ad hominem abounds
and anti-AGW's get excluded. But... peek
at Climate
Skeptic which has rebutted all of New
Scientist's rebuttals of skeptics' issues...

|
We can make wise choices instead
of idiotic choices by learning the true science
ourselves. Knowledge is power. Many official "experts"
have not noticed, or have ignored, fundamental
anomalies in the science that are
right under our noses. Let's look further...
...here [left] is a comparison of
CO2 and temperature through the whole of Earth
history .
The present CO2 level (black line) is a tiny fraction
of what it has been in the past, even after life
had blossomed. See how high CO2 has been. See
how it doesn't fit temperature fluctuations (grey
line) at all. So suddenly it does, now?
H'mm... |
|
Temperature (surface, troposphere, stratosphere,
Arctic, and Antarctica)
Below left is a map of surface temperature anomalies.
Land temperatures fluctuate more than sea temperatures. Anomaly
signifies a temperature different from "normal";
thus the red areas on Antarctica only indicate some lessening
of the cold; they do not indicate warmth; moreover, most of
Antarctica has cooled. H'mmmm...
Below centre, for approximately the same period, are temperature
anomalies for the troposphere (region of clouds)
and lower stratosphere (above the
clouds). Unlike the surface temperature anomalies picture,
the troposphere shows a balance between warming and cooling,
while the lower stratosphere has been cooling a lot. Note
the strongly cooler areas over Antarctica. Here is a good
example of the difficulties of interpreting data. People confuse
temperatures taken at the surface with data from higher altitudes.
Place, height, and time span, can be critical.
Polar temperature anomalies Polar
data over the last 27 years has been collected by NOAA satellites
[47]. Both polar regions have many important
anomalies we need to understand, beyond the media hype - I've
now done a page on polar issues.
Antarctica: overall, this huge continent has
cooled, unlike the rest of the world, and its icecap has grown.
The warming spots may be due to volcanic activity. The highest
anomaly in Antarctica is around the Antarctic Peninsula and
Ross Ice Shelf, which is where the well-publicised melting
occurred. There may be a very good reason why Antarctica cooled
as the rest of the planet warmed - Antarctica's behaviour
is strong evidence for Svensmark.
The Arctic is different again. Its sea ice has
always been subject to huge fluctuations, and the media claims
of "unprecedented!" situations are all untrue. The
only "unprecedented" factor is the satellite temperature
records we have kept since 1979. Anecdotes and history and
earlier science from Greenland, Alaska, and northern Canada
should not be dismissed. Used rightly, polar evidence can
help us.
IPCC dogma trumps the
evidence of Science
Sir John Houghton, first co-chair of the IPCC, said, “Unless
we announce disasters no one will listen” and “The
impacts of global warming are like a weapon of mass destruction”.
He claimed that it kills more people than terrorism. The IPCC
role was supposedly to “assess on a comprehensive, objective,
open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic
information relevant to understanding the scientific basis
of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts
and options for adaptation and mitigation.” But the
scientific reports were edited, and IPCC made the Summary
for Policymakers, published before the science, the most important
part of their reports.
Ben Santer rewrote the principal conclusions of the IPCC's
1995 report:-
- Where it had once said there was no discernible
human influence on climate, it was rewritten to say there
was now a discernible influence. This was done without reference
back to the scientists who had originally submitted their
final draft reaching precisely the opposite conclusion.
IPCC 2007 says:-
- Warming of the climate system is unequivocal,
as is now evident from observations of increases in global
average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of
snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.
- ... Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most important
anthropogenic GHG. Its annual emissions grew by about 80%
between 1970 and 2004.
- ... Most of the observed increase in globally-averaged
temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due
to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations.
It is likely there has been significant anthropogenic warming
over the past 50 years averaged over each continent (except
Antarctica).
and now we hear in the media that "nearly
all climate scientists would agree with
three propositions":-
- First, the climate
is in a warming trend.
- Second, that
most of this warming trend is down to human emissions of
greenhouse gases.
- And third, that
if emissions continue to rise then the result will be continued
warming which will become damaging to human society.
But
- "nearly all scientists"
seems misleading - (a) what about 31,000 scientist who signed
the Oregon Petition (b) there are stories here,
and elsewhere, of suppression of evidence contradicting
"manmade global warming" by threatening funding
withdrawal, etc, where scientists remain silent.
- "First",
(a) the warming trend was only 1970-2000;
- (b) we need to exclude urban
heat island effect and there is evidence that UHI has
doubled apparent warming.
- "Second",
(a) temperature has levelled off and may have started to
fall, but CO2 has continued to rise steadily;
- (b) CO2 rise fits sea surface
temperature rise far better than it fits the rising
curve of our emissions.
- (c) we appear to have long ago reached the
saturation level of the CO2 greenhouse effect.
- (d) The Sun's output has been higher than
it has been for centuries. The CUMULATIVE solar influence,
both radiant and magnetic, could explain why temperature
rise continued even after solar power lessened, and why,
after a little longer, land temperatures are now falling.
Sea change should be even slower.
- "Third"
- if CO2 is innocent, this fear is meaningless.
- Monckton
and Spencer
and others show there is no evidence for "runaway tipping
points".
And in fact
- If CO2 were driving temperature with a "runaway
tipping point", surely the seas, containing 50 times
the atmospheric CO2, would have exploded millions of years
ago, since they would be one big source of fizzy water,
releasing more CO2... causing more temperature rise... releasing
more CO2...
Let's get the basic CO2 figures: let's list our CO2 emissions
alongside the natural planetary CO2 flux. Seas have 50 times
as much CO2 as is in the air. We can unpack the details later
(under CO2 follows temp and Lynching
of innocent CO2):
All the President's
Men
I was now thoroughly disconcerted. I'd found evidence that
upset everything - apparently. But all the evidence I'd found
had supposedly been "dealt with" by New Scientist,
Gristmill, Royal Society etc in their "answers to skeptics".
With so much insistence that "manmade CO2 emissions are
responsible for global warming", I could not be sure
that I had found enough key evidence until I'd doubly checked
both sides of each issue - prosecution AND defence,
plus prosecution's answers to defence AND defence's answers
to prosecution. This fourfold level of investigation
was the real eye-opener.
| I now found myself
keeping company with the very skeptics I had been
encouraged previously to ignore. "Monckton
of Brenchley? he's long been discredited by real
climate scientists, he's not even a scientist
himself, but his scientific language fools the
Telegraph readers. Get real". Indeed, Al
Gore "discredited" Monckton - but Monckton
replied in considerable detail, and when I
read it all, the evidence obliged me to credit
Monckton highly, and to discredit Al Gore.
The diagram here suggests how a
cycle of anxiety and propaganda could yield inordinate
power to a few scientists, politicians, media
and businesses in collusion. This comes from an
interesting history
of AGW in the UK. You don't need to believe
that most scientists are corrupt. This is simply
a suggestion of how corruption could have grown.
Positive feedbacks supporting imagined
risk of global warming -----> |

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|
What doubled my sense of horror was to realize the extent
to which even scientists are following bad science without
the ability, or realization of the need, to check the basics
for themselves. They only have the science-lookalike pieces
that seem to explain away all the skeptics' issues, thereby
suggesting that skeptics must simply be in denial and in Exxon's
pay pocket. We need a primer
that non-scientists can enjoy yet scientists can check; that
does not "divide and rule" - separate non-scientists
from scientists trapped in a dozen specialist niches, unable
even to check each other.
The worst realization was discovering "brownshirt"
activists who have gotten into positions of power and try
to suppress all dissenting views, often vilifying, in ways
that are untrue, misleading, unjustified, the small number
of skeptics who speak up. I never thought I would be thankful
that the
Great Global Warming Swindle could still challenge
orthodoxy. It's not my cup of tea. But its director now has
my admiration, for standing up to Bob Ward, ex-manager in
"policy communication" for the Royal Society, who
fought fanatically
to try to suppress the Swindle DVD. Many examples
contribute to an angry divisiveness, where there are faults
on both sides. Dr Vincent Gray's insider's
descriptions of the IPCC gave me much-needed evidence of an
IPCC serially intent on devaluing natural causes of climate
change. But he can write badly, with spurious polemics, science
nearly as badly validated as the IPCC science, and religious
issues, which make him an easy target for AGW
repudiation, on grounds (often hidden and not-so-hidden
ad homs) that his science is muddled, etc - while ignoring
his vital valid points.
Now all the major scientific bodies
support AGW; scientists cannot get funding, support,
peer reviews, promotion, publication, or even
fair
mention in Wikipedia if they do not toe the
"consensus" line. Here's
a real example, whose conclusion contradicts its
own evidence - but supports AGW---->
Climate "skeptics" tell "horror
stories" of suppression. This situation
was already pretty well in place when Naomi Oreskes
found a "consensus" among scientists.
To check the invalidity of this census, read Benny
Peiser's original challenge AND dig out his response
to his detractors who rubbished his challenge. |

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How a false "science-lookalike" may have built
up is an important study. I don't think anyone fully understands
it as yet. See also Spencer
Weart and Prof
Segalstad, as well as Courtney.
The concern started innocently. Then in the '70's Thatcher
cut research funding except for pro-AGW research. I suspect
this started the rot. Then in the '80's and '90's Big Business
funded the attempt to "scientifically" deny AGW.
But with growing levels of apocalyptic fears, the scales tipped
again, and now all businesses give lip-service to AGW and
will no longer fund skeptics; there are claims
that AGW science gets effectively 2000 times the amount of
funding that skeptics get, despite continuing AGW
cries that skeptics get "oil funding!" But scientists
are speaking
up. And if we clear the tsunami of bad science, we may
find that a tiny core of good science has been growing too.
The heart of the science
controversy - IPCC and greenhouse gas effects
Skeptics say that the CO2 greenhouse effect is grossly overestimated,
has already reached its maximum level like opaque water, and
does not have any serious "amplifying" effects threatening
to tip the planet into runaway heating. The main greenhouse
gas is water vapour, but this is much harder to quantify or
predict.
Monckton wrote a very readable
article "Climate
Chaos? Don't believe it" for the UK Daily
Telegraph. Key extracts:
I'll show how
the UN
• undervalued the sun's effects on historical
and contemporary climate,
• slashed the natural greenhouse effect,
• overstated the past century's temperature
increase,
• repealed a fundamental law of physics
• and tripled the man-made greenhouse effect...
The UN adjusted the maths and all
but extinguished the sun's role in today's warming.
Here's how:
• The UN dated its list of "forcings"
from 1750, when the sun, and consequently air
temperature, was almost as warm as now. But its
start-date for the increase in world temperature
was 1900, when the sun, and temperature, were
much cooler... [It] estimated that the sun caused
just 0.3 watts/m2/sec of forcing since 1750. Begin
in 1900 to match the temperature start-date, and
the base solar forcing more than doubles to 0.7
watts. Multiply by 2.7, which the Royal Society
suggests is the UN's current factor for climate
feedbacks, and you get 1.9 watts – more
than six times the UN's figure.
• Next, the UN slashed the natural greenhouse
effect by 40 per cent from 33C in the climate-physics
textbooks to 20C, making the man-made additions
appear bigger.
• Then the UN chose the biggest 20th-century
temperature increase it could find. In the US,
20th-century temperature went up by only 0.3C.
AccuWeather, a worldwide meteorological service,
reckons world temperature rose by 0.45C. The US
National Climate Data Centre says 0.5C. Any advance
on 0.5? The UN went for 0.6C...
• Even a 0.6C temperature rise wasn't enough.
So the UN repealed a fundamental physical law.
Buried in a sub-chapter in its 2001 report is
a short but revealing section discussing "lambda":
the crucial factor converting forcings to temperature.
The UN said its climate models had found lambda
near-invariant at 0.5C per watt of forcing. You
don't need computer models to "find"
lambda. Its value is given by ...the Stefan-Boltzmann
law, not mentioned once in the UN's 2001 report,
[yet it is] central to the thermodynamics of climate...
The bigger the value of lambda, the bigger the
temperature increase the UN could predict. ...Lambda's
true value is just 0.22-0.3C per watt. In 2001,
the UN [doubled] lambda to 0.5C per watt. A recent
paper by James Hansen says lambda should be 0.67,
0.75 or 1C: take your pick. Sir John Houghton,
who chaired the UN's scientific assessment working
group until recently, tells me it now puts lambda
at 0.8C: that's 3C for a 3.7-watt doubling of
airborne CO2. Most of the UN's computer models
have used 1C. Stern implies 1.9C. On the UN's
figures, the entire greenhouse-gas forcing in
the 20th century was 2 watts. Multiplying by the
correct value of lambda gives a temperature increase
of 0.44 to 0.6C, in line with observation. But
using Stern's 1.9C per watt gives 3.8C.
|
|
• Finally, the UN's
predictions are founded... on an excessive rate
of increase in airborne carbon dioxide. The true
rate is 0.38 per cent year on year since records
began in 1958. The models assume 1 per cent per
annum... In 2001, the UN used these and other
adjustments to predict a 21st-century temperature
increase of 1.5 to 6C. Stern suggests up to 10C.
A simple global model shows that temperature will
rise by just 0.1 to 1.4C in the coming century,
with a best estimate of 0.6C, well within the
medieval temperature range and only a fifth of
the UN's new, central projection.
Schmidt of RealClimate
rudely dismissed Monckton's "Cuckoo Science".
Monbiot
then claimed in The Guardian to have
"discredited" Monckton, quoting Schmidt.
Monbiot wrote "[Monckton's] claims about
the Stefan-Boltzmann equation have been addressed
by someone who does know what he's talking about,
Dr Gavin Schmidt of Nasa's Goddard Institute for
Space Studies..." But...
Monckton wrote
Chuck
it Schmidt which rebutted every detail of
Schmidt's "Cuckoo Science".
Monckton made the science clear, removing the
insulting language with which Schmidt's dismissal
is peppered; and showed, moreover, that Schmidt
himself had not grasped the matter properly.
“The Earth is not a black body!”
Schmidt wrote, implying that Monckton had failed
to grasp this elementary point.
Monckton wrote in reply:
My article and the supporting calculations
took full and explicit account of the fact that
Earth/troposphere emissivity is not 1 (for a blackbody)
but ~0.6 (the Earth being a badly-behaved greybody).
Schmidt had seen the supporting calculations,
because he later mentions the “M climate
model”, to which my article did not refer
by name. Schmidt ought to have known that the
Stefan-Boltzmann radiative-transfer equation,
often miscalled the “blackbody” equation,
is in fact capable of representing not only blackbodies
(emissivity 1) that absorb and, by Kirchhoff’s
law, emit all radiation, but also whitebodies
(emissivity 0) that reflect all radiation, and
all graybodies in between. Schmidt here erroneously
implies that this fundamental climate equation
applies to blackbodies only. A fourth-rate zoologist
in the UK lifted this unfortunate implication
from Schmidt’s blog without checking it,
and repeated it in a UK newspaper, which was obliged
to print an article correcting this and other
schoolboy errors arising from Schmidt’s
blog on the following day. |
|
Schmidt still has no reply
to Monckton's rebuttal of his "Cuckoo Science".
This is of key importance. Had Schmidt been able to reply,
he would not have passed up this opportunity to prove a key
issue of the AGW thesis, and to silence opposition.
Schmidt, in his July 2008 Real Climate "rebuttal"
of Monckton's July 2008 APS
paper, refers to Monckton's "previous attempt"
as if his "Cuckoo Science" rebuttal had disproved
and silenced Monckton, which we can see was not the case.
Monckton thus stands vindicated.
Here is the heart of the IPCC greenhouse gas science - and
how AGW science has handled it. It's easy to wave equations
or computer models in someone's face to say they prove something.
But it's not so easy to fool someone who is a scientist or
statistician, or has an eye for fraud, or has actually studied
Climate Science. If the greenhouse effects of CO2 have been
calculated incorrectly and much higher than the IPCC /UN figures
dictate, the whole "greenhouse" basis
of Anthropogenic Global Warming comes unstuck - and the credibility
of the IPCC - and the expensive possibility of "fixing"
nonexistent problem by reducing CO2 emissions.
*************************************************
Fresh air at last
with Svensmark et al

|
It was hard work to
extract myself from a mire of contradictory "science"
claims, from colleagues I now believed were seriously
mistaken if not knowingly fraudulent, and from
a lot of self-doubt. But the polar bears are fine
after all [9].
Eventually I was ready to investigate the work
of Svensmark et al. Reading "The
Chilling Stars" was like climbing a mountain
and suddenly finding oneself emerging from rain,
wind, and poor visibility, into clear, sunlit
pastures above. This new
science really fits the whole of earth history,
and can explain all the many twentieth-century
anomalies with a single factor. Simple and beautiful.
Svensmark and others are showing, inch by inch,
an unremitting correlation between the level of
cosmic rays and the quantity of low cloud. By
increasing Earth’s albedo, or whiteness,
more solar energy lost by reflection. Black warms;
white cools. Now over the last 100 years, the
Sun’s magnetic flux increased by 230%, in
addition to its sustaining a TSI “high”
longer than it has done for 8000 years. The high
TSI heated the huge ocean reservoir gradually,
and the high solar magnetic flux lowered the level
of cosmic rays. Less rays, less clouds, more warmth.
Data fits theory pretty well, and all this suggests
that after all, the Sun is a prime driver of temperature
changes. New experiments are starting to give
an idea of how the cloud-forming mechanism could
work.
Svensmark's material has been rubbished [15].
But in one instance that looks suspiciously typical,
he was simply not allowed the normal space to
defend his science when it was attacked by Laut
in 2003, and Damon and Laut in 2004 [16].
Actually he has written very fair rebuttals
of both Laut's papers.
Svensmark responded to point out mistakes in
Laut's science and fallacies in his rebuttals
of Svensmark's science, and to point out his discourteous
language. As I've seen many times now, discourteous
and dishonest responses, and onesided reporting,
can keep people away from good science. You have
to read all sides' answers to each other. When
I checked Svensmark's own website I found a serious
bias in Wikipedia in that it mentions Laut, but
omits to mention Svensmark's reply to Laut. Also,
see [57] re Lockwood & Frohlich's
dissent. |
 |
|
Here (above left) is a graph from Earthshine Projects, of
recently-available measurements for the change in albedo.
Again, the pattern correlates well with recent temperatures
(rising with falling albedo worldwide, falling with rising
albedo) and this correlation bears out the Antarctica anomaly.
Climate Science now makes
sense! CO2 follows temperature, now as always!
Having got the bad science out of the way, the real science
starts to look simple and beautiful. But - this is a young
science!! A lot of "climate skeptics" have strong
hunches about how the true science works, but the basics are
not 100% proven (or they may be proven to a small number who
can grasp the science involved, but are unclear to most of
us), and much warm discussion is happening (join our Forum
to help develop good ways to handle key points that are unresolved,
if you like!). Ah, perhaps this is one reason why it has been
possible for authoritarian "green" alarmists to
come in with rogue "certainties" about "disasters
ahead!" Jackboot-easy answers for people who dislike
"not being sure"...
To me, this would seem to be the way climate works:

|
THE
SUN warms the planet. Tiny variations in
its output have a big cumulative effect. Its heating
effect is around 24,000 times greater than what
humankind generates today. |

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|
- GLOBAL TEMPERATURES rise overall
with increased total solar irradiance (TSI),
and fall locally with increased "albedo"
- whiteness - from ice and from cloud cover
- and from occasional volcanic eruptions.
- OCEAN CURRENTS act like huge,
slow messengers whose varying cycles strongly
affect land temperatures (lower panel, right,
no.3).
- CLOUD COVER varies significantly
according to the solar magnetic flux (lower
panel, left). Clouds reflect significant warmth
into space.
- THE
SUN'S RECENT ACTIVITY between 1940 and 2000
was at a higher level than has been seen for
11,500 years. This is why temperatures rose
up to the year 2000.
- THE SUN'S VERY RECENT ACTIVITY:
Solar output has fallen again (no sunspots at
present!), and the earth is now cooling,
slowly and with variations, but unmistakeably.
- WARM OCEANS: But the oceans may
still be warming overall, in slow recovery from
the Little Ice Age (Akasofu).
The oceans, at 70% of the earth's surface area,
and with significant depth, are still outgassing.
They are great reservoirs that take a long time
to heat and a long time to cool. Geological
records show CO2 lagging temp. by around 800
years.
- CO2 AND OCEANS: Oceans release
huge quantities of CO2 as they warm in the tropics,
and absorb huge quantities of CO2 as they cool
at polar latitudes. The oceans hold 50 times
as much CO2 as is in the air.
- ATMOSPHERIC CO2 therefore increases
greatly with only a tiny overall increase in
sea surface temperature - and stays in the atmosphere
for only a few years, not the many years that
the AGW thesis needs.
- OUR ANNUAL CO2 EMISSIONS are tiny
(c.3%) in comparison with the huge CO2 flux
out of, and back into, the oceans and the terrestrial
vegetation and "leaf water".
- CO2 AND THE BIOSPHERE: If the
ocean temperature rose by only 1ºC, atmospheric
CO2 levels would rise another 150 ppm by Endersbee's
actual graph figures. However, by the "atmospheric
pipe effect" the 150 ppm MEASURED rise
of CO2 represents an increase in CO2 "PRESSURE",
and the extra CO2 is absorbed by vegetation
by photosynthesis and by coral etc by calcification.
Endersbee's graph suggests that natural "biosequestration"
will absorb all manmade CO2, and that increasing
CO2 is due to - warmer oceans. However, his
statistics are a little questionable - this
is one of the many areas where people are still
investigating reasonable "hunches"
and trying to explain and coping with being
shouted down. See our CO2 "science
workshop" page where we are trying
to clarify the evidence on key issues.
- Ocean science and climate science
are still in their infancy, or not well-known,
and seriously mistaken or unproven, unlikely
claims have been loudly repeated as fact.
|
|
| Taken from Josh Hall's post here
(scroll down to 11.38am) [48],
these graphs show a high "fit" for temperature-leading-CO2
but only a very low "fit" for CO2-leading-temp.
These graphs are explained further here.
Click on pics to see originals. Macrae
describes the same proof.
Below, centre, we see the extremely high correlation
between sea surface temperature and CO2 level
- independent of time - strongly suggesting that
CO2 levels fluctuate globally with sea temperatures.
|
 |

|
|
Temperatures correlate to the sun and oceans far better than
to CO2 (Joe
D'Aleo, below right). Dr
Glassman shows the strong correlation between the solubility
of CO2 and the CO2/temperature link, as shown in the Vostok
ice core data - as we would expect - and this too is irrespective
of time.
| Shaviv
and Svensmark: High correlation between cosmic
rays and cloud. See the varying correlations in
the other graphs.
The solar input is clearly significant, but modulated
over time by the oceans. |

Lance Endersbee: such a high correlation
between CO2 and SST suggests that SST must
drive CO2 levels. But the stats are over a very
short time frame. Original article here.
|
(4)
Put them all together for the best fit.
(3) Correlation with the ocean currents is even
better.
(2) TSI (Total Solar Irradiance) fits much better
and explains the mid-century dip.
(1) CO2 has a low "fit" with a
century of temp records. |
 |
|
Paleo records show that CO2 lags about 800 years behind temperature
rise and fall in recent Ice Age change times; this seems to
fit the 800-odd years cited
as the long thermohaline ocean cycle. Revisit the video.
At times CO2 levels have been far, far higher than today;
some of those times have been ice ages.
Segalstad,
Jaworowski,
Glassman
and Anthoni
- the lynching of innocent CO2

|
The greenhouse gas properties
of carbon dioxide are well-known and well-measured.
CO2 is opaque to some InfraRed wavelengths. The
question is: do serious GHG effects
actually come into play if present CO2 levels
change? The simple answer is, no.
Many dedicated scientists have been
concerned about greenhouse gases, from Arrhenius
in 1896 on. And for many years, suggestive evidence
mounted as the temperature went up and up. Increased
solar activity was not noticed, so our CO2 emissions
seemed a likely culprit - to a superficial scientist
who forgot Henry's Law, the size of the oceans,
and the power of the biosphere; who ignored all
the studies showing the short lifespan of CO2
in the atmosphere; and who failed to consider
or measure the GHG "saturation" effect,
the point at which higher levels of CO2 would
make little or no difference to its net GHG effect. |
|
There appears to be no observed "feedback loop"
of greenhouse effects amplified by CO2 increase. On the contrary,
as CO2 rose, water vapour fell (below left). Yet water vapour
is a far more powerful greenhouse gas, and this change more
than balances any possible GHG effect due to CO2. And, although
at near-maximum greenhouse effect already (below right), CO2's
effects as a greenhouse gas have been grossly overestimated
by IPCC - see Monckton demonstrating IPCC's
serial fudging of GHG science and Segalstadt demonstrating
serial
falsification of CO2 science.

|
Carbon
sequestration arises from an ignorant and arrogant
inversion of Science. It is
* robbery from the biosphere
* costly yet has zero effect
* disempowering the West while China and Russia
profit.
Fewer people have understood this
fundamentally bad science and bad handling of
data, than know about the "hockey stick".
|

|
|
IPCC arranged their presentations to fit an alarm picture.
But here are the facts, and an attempt to elucidate the science:
- We are emitting 3-4ppm (6-8Gt)
carbon dioxide each year, perhaps 2% of the
total annual CO2 flux.
- CO2 levels have been rising at
around 1.5ppm, or 3Gt p.a. since Keeling's records
started in 1952
- CO2 levels are around 380ppm (=750Gt)
now.
- The total
annual CO2 flux is huge but just how
big? - maybe 220 Gt p.a. (Holmen
2000), maybe 150 Gt p.a. (IPCC
SAR) (or more if one includes leaf water
and rain water?) - between
one third and one fifth of the total atmospheric
CO2 - or more.
|
 |
- Henry's Law says that CO2 is in
balance between the atmosphere and the oceans
in approx. ratio 1: 50
- This applies
to our emissions although the average ocean
mixing rate may be of uncertain speed - only
one fiftieth could remain longterm in the air.
One of many places where the real science may
be known to just a few; or may not be known
as yet for certain - but such science brings
little funds and may be difficult to grasp...
- Since the measured CO2 rise of
1.5ppm p.a. is so much higher than the 0.035ppm
p.a. that would ultimately remain airborne from
human emissions,
this surely alerts us to look for a second cause
of CO2 rise.
- In my humble opinion,
it is mostly coincidence that the rising CO2
(from 1952) is of a similar pattern to our emissions
rise, smaller, and with a high "smoothed"
correlation - the atmospheric rise averages
out at 46% the emissions rise. Correlation
does not prove causation; but
to explore the significance of this correlation,
read our science
workshop page & join the forum.
- AGW said "We KNOW
we have caused the CO2 rise." They butchered
good science to fit this, inventing
a "buffer effect" to overrule Henry's
Law. If this were
real, we could never have fizzy drinks!
- This is what happens when one
starts down the slippery path of unchecked fantasies:
to "prove" their bad science, IPCC
had to invent more bad science: they now need
CO2 to remain in the air for 50-200 years, which
we can see, from the size of the annual flux,
is ridiculous.
- Segalstad lists 35 studies based
on 6 different factors, which give lifetimes
of between 2 and 12 years.
- AGW also ignored the science showing
that CO2 greenhouse effects are logarithmic
and levelling off.
- AGW - and "townies"
behind computers - tend to forget the massive
area and volume of the oceans that outgasses
vast quantities of CO2 with the slightest temperature
change - equivalent to 150ppm for 1ºC temp
rise at average sea surface temp. The Greenpeace
CO2 cycle ignores the oceans!
- AGW do not include the "blotting-paper"
effect of the biosphere: increased
CO2 levels enable vegetation to grow more, usefully
and naturally sequestering extra CO2,
as the biosphere has always done in response
to millions of years of erupting volcanoes.
- AGW also fails to consider the
subtle oceanic balance, where more
ocean CO2 enables more CaCO3 to be precipitated
into corals and mollusc shells.
|
| IPCC has constructed a
false dogma, extending the work of Callendar (1949)
Bolin & Eriksson (1959) and Siegenthaler &
Oeschger (1987) who were already building up a false
thesis of global warming effects through our CO2
emissions, while ignoring the size of the oceans,
Henry's Law, GHG saturation, and the biosphere of
both land plants and sea animals. |
 |
|
See also my CO2 flux
page - where we are gradually resolving basic CO2 science
issues. For current CO2 skeptics' info, see CO2
Sceptics. Taking the oceans as the driver of CO2 levels,
Dr Glassman relates the solubility of CO2 to temperature,
as shown in Vostok ice core records, and to atmospheric pressure.
Dr
Floor Anthoni explains the "atmospheric pipe effect"
whereby the level of CO2 works in practice like pressure on
vegetation to grow more. Prof
Segalstad describes the incremental development of bad
science. Prof
Jaworowski shows another part of the fraud: the ice records
used for recent CO2 levels are known not to be reliable proxies.
Then to add insult to injury, the unnaturally depressed ice
records were spliced onto Keeling's CO2 records - by losing
83 years.

|
Another serious source of CO2
records is Beck's
collection from 1800 to 1955 when Keeling's CO2
records began (visible in lower right-hand corner).
This has different problems to the ice records
- neither at present are comparable to Keeling.
The old records are being examined with great
thoroughness, by Beck
and others
- yet Keeling's son would simply like to see this
evidence suppressed
as "junk science". Yet Beck's work suggests
the old CO2 records have a high level of accuracy
and significance. |

|
The capacity of
plants
to take up CO2: This animation
of satellite data suggests the huge Eurasian
biosphere soaks up CO2 each summer. Since plants
depend on CO2 to live, and thrive on raised levels
of CO2 in greenhouses, the benefit of slightly
raised CO2 seems plain common sense - but in the
current AGW scare, this seems to have been forgotten,
though NASA
may be admitting the effect a little reluctantly.
This
graph shows how wrong Al Gore is to call CO2
a pollutant. Any studies seriously suggesting
otherwise are clearly in AGW's pay pocket.
Ocean
life also benefits
from increasing CO2 - both plants
(photosynthesis) and animals with calcium shells
- at the moderate levels actually involved. |
|
More scare stories and
bad evidence we can almost certainly reject:
- Dangerous ocean acidification is - a scare
story - see here
and here.
- Dangerous sea
rise levels is another scare story. Sea
levels have been rising, but only by the tiny amount that
corresponds to thermal expansion, and even this
may have stopped.
- The big global ice sheets, whose melting would
raise sea levels, are not melting - quite the opposite.
But local effects in Greenland and the
Antarctic peninsula are often taken to represent global
patterns, and the effects of ocean currents and volcanic
activity in these areas have been ignored or forgotten.
- CO2 does not have an amplifying effect on
temperature rise: this is just bluster
for which there is no evidence.
- Aerosols cause local effects eg smog; the
true global effects are far less certain.
- Greenhouse gases: the above graph shows HOH
more than balancing CO2. Despite our knowledge of the absorption
spectra that cause greenhouse effects in closed experimental
situations, our understanding of the total effect in the
atmosphere is still not good enough to claim any clear knowledge.
Methane is doing its own thing; there is serious evidence
casting doubt on the CFC link to the ozone hole; etc
- Serial distortion of data has happened, or
is seriously suspected, concerning the greenhouse-gas maths,
the "hockey stick" of 1000 years' global temperatures,
the CO2 ice core records (see below)...and...
- ... the Urban
Heat Island effect. This causes local heating and serious
distortion of temperature records. Skeptics claim - with
considerable evidence - that it has not been anything like
adequately compensated for.
Let's look at the most well-known flaw trail...
The strange story of the
missing Medieval Warm Period
IPCC 1996 had this picture [below,
upper left] showing the Medieval Warm Period (MWP). The
MWP is well-known to historians as well as to scientists.
 |
Anthropologists and archaeologists
are aware of the MWP from Viking
settlements in Greenland. They know from things
like places inhabited, plants cultivated. The
Schnidejoch pass in Switzerland [Svensmark &
Calder, The Chilling Stars] was used
regularly in Roman and in Medieval times; the
pass has only just reopened. But AGW devalues
"anecdotal" and historical evidence
in favour of "proxy" temp. measurements.
In 1998 a study by Huang et al was published
of over 6,000 borehole records of the last 20,000
years, from which temperature proxies were read.
Here is the last millennium [lower left], strikingly
similar to the IPCC 1996 graph. The world experienced
a medieval warm period that appears to dwarf recent
changes. |

|
|
CO2
Science has studied many people's work on the MWP. Craig
Loehle wrote a paper
showing all the available studies that show the MWP, and another
paper that summarizes over 20 papers that challenge the use
of tree-ring measurements for proxy temperature measurement.
Tree-ring proxies were used to produce the original hockey
stick - but these tend not to show the MWP - perhaps
because they measure moisture not temperature. For all
other proxies (that do not have other interference factors)
tend to show the MWP. Monckton
lists 19 recent studies that clearly show the MWP. The Sargasso
Sea [below left] demonstrates a MWP and a Roman warm period
that were both warmer than now; this, and the centre map of
locations of MWP studies, show the MWP as global and not just
local to Europe.
There is evidence that
IPCC wanted to erase the Medieval Warm Period from visibility...
..to show a sudden, never-before-seen temperature rise which
might have horror effects... floods... droughts... tornadoes...
IPCC 2001 (Third Assessment Report) replaced
the IPCC 1996 graph (showing the MWP) with the "hockey
stick" which tidily removes the MWP, and visually emphasises
"we must have caused recent global warming" - "the
likes of which never happened before". Iain Stewart (BBC)
says that skeptics want the MWP restored, because they do
not want to face the truth about current manmade dangers.
H'mmm....
See the visual prominence the Hockey Stick was given. It
was reproduced six times altogether through the IPCC report.
Yet the independent reports that show the MWP far outnumber
and outweigh the work by Mann and a small coterie who replicate
a limited and suspect range of data. Monckton
writes "The UN says the [hockey stick] graph is not important.
It is. Scores of scientific papers show that the mediaeval
warm period was real, global and up to 3ºC warmer than
now." The Hockey Stick, widely circulated by the UN,
amplified in people’s minds by Al Gore’s visually
hypnotic film, has overlaid traditional and well-proven knowledge
with propaganda, that there never was a significant Medieval
Warm Period. Funny thing is, Al Gore himself mentions the
Medieval Warm Period in his 1992 book Earth in the Balance...
How unfortunate that he forgot to mention the other MWP experts
in his film, or any of the plentiful evidence of temperatures
higher in the past than today... By my understanding of the
term, this is fraudulent misrepresentation.
McIntyre
and McKitrick broke the "hockey stick"
- the fraudulent temperature graph
He was blocked, again and again, and in the end used the
Freedom of Information Act to obtain material. It became apparent
that one proxy record, that of bristlecone pine, had been
given prominence 390 times the weighting of the rest - because
it had the key data that could be shaped into a hockey-stick
[above right]. Some of the other data had simply been buried
in a file marked "censored". Read Ross
McKitrick's paper of the extraordinary story. Longer histories
of the malfeasance used to enable the hockey stick to get
published and accepted, are told by Bishop
Hill and Monckton
of Brenchley.
Even before Al Gore filmed An Inconvenient Truth
after Katrina in 2006, McIntyre & McKitrick had published
refutations of the hockey stick, in 2003 and 2005. Their work
was subsequently supported by the Wegman report (2006) for
the US House of Representatives, and by a report of the National
Academy of Sciences in the US. Dr. Wegman is one of the world's
most eminent statisticians; his report found that the graph
had “a validation skill not significantly different
from zero”. But unfortunately, bad MSM reporting of
the NAS report has given the impression that NAS approved
the hockey stick.
One of the longterm thermometer records that exists [above
right], Central England temperatures from 1611
to now, shows no "hockey stick" rise for the whole
twentieth century - there is only a little,
very recent temperature rise.
Recent work by Jeff
Id [above left] is a superb demolition of
the validity of the statistical process invoked
in using proxies by selection ... the past is automatically
diminished in comparison with the present... making a hockey
stick... Notice the family resemblance to both the original
Hockey Stick and the Luminous Spaghetti graph - subdued MWP,
slowly dipping, then kick up to a current high - a resemblance
not shared with a single one of Monckton's
19 studies and clearly not with Loehle's
18 studies (see cumulative graph above).
Steve McIntyre now runs Climate
Audit which deservedly won the 2007 award for Best Science
Blog. It provides crucial audits of more and more bad IPCC
statistics and associated bad practice, and shows real science
at work. But Steve cannot get stuff peer-reviewed or published
in the old, formal sense; he has become an embarrassment to
the establishment.
IPCC 2007 abandoned the original
hockey stick in favour of - another hockey stick. Pressure
had been put on HS authors Mann et al, by McIntyre and McKitrick.
The IPCC 2007 "spaghetti" graph [below left] looks
quite different - but actually it's virtually the same hockey-stick
dressed up with only minor concessions... Look: (a) the data
is from a limited set, procured by only a limited circle including
the original Hockey Stick authors; (b) the MWP is still devalued
way below what so much other evidence suggests, (c) the graph
still uses the same unholy splice of data – thermometer
for the twentieth century and questionable proxies for earlier,
without proper checks on the reliability of the proxies.
Now IPCC (via Mann et al) has constructed another Hockey
Stick [some prelim. auditing work - below right]. Despite
no tree-ring temp. proxies, the latest model bears every sign
of the original flaws: cherrypicking proxies that are already
suspect... the bad maths that automatically produces a hockey
stick... And to add insult to injury, BBC has been parading
the original hockey stick as if it had never been discredited
by top statistician Wegman (Iain Stewart, Climate Wars).
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