The Realists Take on Climate Change

Seven part YouTube by Dr. Martin Hertzberg

"Climategate" and Scientific Inquiry, part 1 of 7

A cross examination of global warming science conducted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Law and Economics has concluded that virtually every claim advanced by global warming proponents fail to stand up to scrutiny.

The cross-examination, carried out by Jason Scott Johnston, Professor and Director of the Program on Law, Environment and Economy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, found that “on virtually every major issue in climate change science, the [reports of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] and other summarizing work by leading climate establishment scientists have adopted various rhetorical strategies that seem to systematically conceal or minimize what appear to be fundamental scientific uncertainties or even disagreements.”

Professor Johnson, who expressed surprise that the case for global warming was so weak, systematically examined the claims made in IPCC publications and other similar work by leading climate establishment scientists and compared them with what is found in the peer-edited climate science literature. He found that the climate establishment does not follow the scientific method. Instead, it “seems overall to comprise an effort to marshal evidence in favor of a predetermined policy preference.”

The 79-page document, which effectively eviscerates the case for man-made global warming, can be found here.

Financial Post
LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe the author of The Deniers.

A group of distinguished scientists has issued a report confirming the theory of man-made global warming. Many of those same scientists are now holding their breath, hoping that a major research project in Antarctica will, for the first time, prove the existence of man-made global warming.

To the ordinary non-scientist, these two statements may seem a bit contradictory, but apparently not to the members of the National Academy of Sciences panel charged with reviewing the evidence for climate change and making recommendations for addressing its effects. These scientists, it would appear, are so committed to the ideology of man-made global warming that they are willing to issue a definite opinion in advance of compelling new research that might debunk their conclusion. But then, timing is everything, and the academy's 869-page report, requested by Democrats in 2008, has been issued just ahead of the left's attempt to ram a cap-and-trade bill through Congress.

Predictably, the NAS report confirms findings contained in the much-criticized 2007 IPCC report. The NAS panel believes that climate change is "largely" the result of human factors and that the consequences are even worse than those suggested by the IPCC. The NAS scientists believe that by 2100, sea levels could rise as much as ten times more than previously thought.

That is quite a leap in just three years, but then the NAS panel was charged not just with surveying the scientific literature surrounding global warming -- it was told to arrive at definite policy recommendations, and it was not shy about doing so. Those recommendations include the goal of reducing U.S. carbon dioxide emissions to 64% of current levels by 2050 despite the fact that in the next forty years, America's population will increase to 400 million, and the world will still rely on fossil fuels for most of its energy needs. As the International Energy Agency asserts in its prognosis for 2030, "oil will remain the world's main source of energy for years to come." Regardless of these facts, scientists on the NAS panel believe that a 36% reduction is feasible. They have not pointed out how.

A recent study in Klickitat County, Washington shows that active wind farms in Washington and Oregon kill more than 6,500 birds and 3,000 bats annually.

Biologist Orah Zamora works for West, Inc., an ecological field study company, monitors the Windy Flats project, one of the largest wind farms in the United States. Zamora looks for dead birds and bats that have been severed by the spinning blades of the surrounding wind turbines in order to conduct survey's to observe how wind-power development is affecting birds.

"It's like a crime scene, and you try to figure out what happened," said Zamora. "Sometimes it's really obvious because you can see a slice mark."

These surveys are financed by the wind industry and are mainly concerned with birds like eagles, hawks, and other raptors. Klickitat County is especially a concern because the area has an abundance of prey for these larger birds, hence, they tend to stay in the area. According to the study, these birds are diving for their prey and do not pay attention to the large wind turbine blades that may be in the way.

Cliock source to read FULL report from Tiffany Kaiser

For Immediate Release: June 7, 2010
Contact: David Almasi at (202) 543-4110 x11 or (703) 568-4727
or dalmasi@nationalcenter.org
Judy Kent at (703) 759-7476 or jkent@nationalcenter.org

Senators to Vote on Whether to Cede Congressional Authority to the EPA

Washington, D.C. - Senators will soon consider a resolution to pare back an Environmental Protection Agency plan to regulate greenhouse gases - a plan that would raise energy costs.

On June 10, the U.S. Senate will consider a "resolution of disapproval" regarding a 2009 ruling made by the EPA in late 2009 claiming six greenhouse gases are a threat to public health. This makes these gases -- carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride -- subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act.

"The EPA's endangerment finding endangers our economy and our liberty," said Deneen Borelli, full-time fellow with the Project 21 black leadership network. "The EPA's effort to regulate greenhouse gases will affect virtually every aspect of our economy and our lives. In expert opinion, this will result in higher energy costs and job losses while having -- by their own admission -- virtually no effect on cooling global climate."

This is really very, very good, but politicians will not read it through, it is 79 pages long. It is a lawyer’s examination of the IPCC evidence as in a courtroom. He takes apart the IPCC conclusions and presents other evidence that disproves their insistence on incontrovertible evidence of AGW.

http://www.probeinternational.org/UPennCross.pdf

An example of his approach:

The Ability of Climate Models to Explain Past Climate

The IPCC and the climate establishment have vastly oversold climate models by declaring that such models are able to quite accurately reproduce past climates, including most importantly the warming climate of the late twentieth century. Mainstream climate modelers have themselves explained that climate models disagree tremendously in their predicted climate sensitivity – response of temperature to a CO2 increase – and are able to reproduce twentieth century climate only by assuming whatever (negative) aerosol forcing effect is necessary to get agreement with observations.

One of the main conclusions of the 2007 IPCC report was that the warming over the last 50 years was most likely due to anthropogenic pollution, especially increasing atmospheric CO2 from fossil fuel burning.

But a minority of climate researchers have maintained that some — or even most — of that warming could have been due to natural causes. For instance, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) are natural modes of climate variability which have similar time scales to warming and cooling periods during the 20th Century. Also, El Nino — which is known to cause global-average warmth — has been more frequent in the last 30 years or so; the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) is a measure of El Nino and La Nina activity.

A simple way to examine the possibility that these climate cycles might be involved in the warming over the last 50 years in to do a statistical comparison of the yearly temperature variations versus the PDO, AMO, and SOI yearly values. But of course, correlation does not prove causation.

So, what if we use the statistics BEFORE the last 50 years to come up with a model of temperature variability, and then see if that statistical model can “predict” the strong warming over the most recent 50 year period? That would be much more convincing because, if the relationship between temperature and these 3 climate indicies for the first half of the 20th Century just happened to be accidental, we sure wouldn’t expect it to accidentally predict the strong warming which has occurred in the second half of the 20th Century, would we?

Temperature, or Temperature Change Rate?

This kind of statistical comparison is usually performed with temperature. But there is greater physical justification for using the temperature change rate, instead of temperature. This is because if natural climate cycles are correlated to the time rate of change of temperature, that means they represent heating or cooling influences, such as changes in global cloud cover (albedo).

Such a relationship, shown in the plot below, would provide a causal link of these natural cycles as forcing mechanisms for temperature change, since the peak forcing then precedes the peak temperature.

Click source to read FULL report from Dr. Roy Spencer

Introduction

The climate and with it temperature, is of critical importance to the functioning of society and people's well-being. Because a human generation lasts no longer than 60 years, excluding early childhood and senility, we see only a short period of the courses that climates are taking. So we are inclined to think that the world around us remains in a steady state, that tomorrow is like yesterday. And indeed, the world's climates have been remarkably steady.

But recently, we have been witnessing some warming, while at the same time the awareness arose that perhaps we, ourselves, were the cause of this warming. The obvious culprit is the carbondioxide emitted by industry and our comfortable way of life because it has long been known that it blocks part of the 'thermal' infrared radiation. For example, our 'sister' planet Venus has an atmosphere consisting of carbondioxide, and its temperature is very much higher than expected, measuring over 400 degrees Celsius, more than enough to melt lead. So more and more people became concerned that the same fate, run-away global warming, may befall Earth, or Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW).

It didn't take long before the vast majority of people were drawn into this scare scenario, predicting catastrophes from melting ice caps, rising sea levels, floods, diseases spreading, loss of species, dying corals and sea life, and much, much more. World conferences were organised to jolt politicians into action, which led to the inauguration of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to advise what is happening, how serious, and what to do. In the meantime, the World Wide Web matured, reaching billions of people with millions of pages of scary predictions. There appeared universal consensus (by the 'warmists') that 'the science was settled' and that it was now time for action - very costly action....

Click source to read FULL report from Dr J Floor Anthoni

Three modern myths have been sold to the American people: the promise of a transparent administration (President Obama); the promise of a more ethical Congress (Speaker Pelosi); and the myth of “global warming,” or climate change.

The first two are daily proving suspect and now the third is sinking with greater force than melting icebergs, if they were melting, which many believe they are not.

After spending years promoting “global warming,” the media are beginning to turn in the face of growing evidence that they have been wrong. The London Times recently reported: “Britain’s premier scientific institution is being forced to review its statements on climate change after a rebellion by members who question mankind’s contribution to rising temperatures.”

It gets worse, or better, depending on your perspective. Newsweek magazine, which more than 30 years ago promoted global cooling and a new ice age — and more recently has been drinking the global warming Kool-Aid — headlined a story, “Uncertain Science: Bickering and Defensive, Climate Researchers Have Lost the Public’s Trust.” Newsweek does its best to cling to its increasingly discredited doctrine, but the growing body of contrary evidence only adds to the public’s disbelief.

In Canada, the polar bear — which has been used by global warming promoters to put a cuddly face on the issue — is in danger of not being endangered any longer. CBC News reported that the polar bear’s designation as a “species of special concern” has been suspended “while the government reviews the polar bear’s status and decides whether to renew the classification or change it.”

I asked Ronald Oxburgh, chairman of what may be the most [self-snip] “inquiry” in recent experience, a few simple questions about the terms of reference and documentation of this “inquiry” - an “inquiry” in which, to their shame, Kerry Emanuel, David Hand, Herbert Huppert, Lisa Graumlich, Michael Kelly and Huw Davies, were complicit.

Oxburgh sent me an all-too-academic answer in which he editorialized about all sorts of things while evading or refusing to directly answer my questions. I’ll provide my email, Oxburgh’s answer and then re-examine my questions and insert the answers net of the editorializing.

The net result, as you will see, is that Oxburgh says that they have no documents evidencing the terms of reference of the inquiry or the selection of the eleven papers, no notes, transcripts or other documentation of the interviews with CRU employees and Oxburgh refused consent for panelists to directly provide me with any notes that they might have taken.

Breathtaking.