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—an hir series—
Historical
and Investigative Research – 7 December 2009 █ Introduction █ Are skeptics defending the oil
companies? No! █ Do skeptics deny the existence
of serious environmental problems that demand our attention? No! █ Are skeptics saying that the
world’s top climate scientists are wrong? No! █ Do skeptics deny global warming
as such? No! █ Do skeptics deny the “greenhouse
effect”? No! █ Do skeptics deny that CO2 is a
“greenhouse gas”? No! █ Do skeptics deny that
atmospheric temperature and CO2 are causally linked? No!
Introduction The anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis
states that human production of
‘greenhouse gases’—and mainly CO2—contributes dramatically to raise the
planet’s mean temperature. This hypothesis has been widely promoted by the
IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), a United Nations body. The IPCC holds that Earth’s natural systems are
quite fragile, and so a warmer planet will be catastrophic for these systems
and the humans who depend on them. To avoid that, the IPCC recommends
shifting energy policy away from burning oil towards ‘renewable energy.’ The
economic cost of doing this will be enormous but, according to the IPCC, the
planet itself is at risk, so we must do it. Perhaps the AGW hypothesis is correct. And perhaps
it isn’t. This is in the nature of a scientific hypothesis. But the IPCC
talks as though no further debate is allowed concerning the AGW hypothesis.
And it claims to speak for the scientific community as a whole. The
mainstream media has strongly promoted this representation. Not only that. Those who express skepticism about
AGW have been pilloried in the media with extreme language—they have been
called ‘deniers,’ which calls to mind Holocaust
deniers. Skeptics have thus accrued a bad reputation, especially with
environmentalists. The following FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
answers some common questions about the skeptics. Most environmentalists
believe that the answer to each is ‘yes.’ Actually, in every case, the answer is ‘no.’ Are skeptics defending the oil companies? No! Do skeptics deny the existence of serious
environmental problems that demand our attention? No! Are skeptics saying that the world’s top
climate scientists are wrong? No! Do skeptics deny global warming as such? No! Do skeptics deny the “greenhouse effect”? No! Do skeptics deny that CO2 is a “greenhouse gas”? No! Do skeptics deny that atmospheric temperature and
CO2 are causally linked? No! _____________________________________________________________ Are
skeptics defending the oil companies? —Answer: No. Some of the biggest corporate promoters of both the
AGW hypothesis and IPCC policy recommendations are... oil companies. Here is The
Economist: “BP—British
Petroleum—is the most prominent corporate advocate of action on climate
change.”[1] And The
Economist again: “Even Exxon
Mobil... appears to accept the need for controls on carbon emissions.”[2] Does this mean, then, that the opposite is true—that
skeptics are necessarily opposed to the oil companies? No, not necessarily. A skeptic may be either for or against oil
companies. Or neutral. Or indifferent. Planetary temperatures either behave as the AGW
hypothesis claims or they don’t. The hypothesis is about Nature, not oil
companies. Therefore, one may love oil companies, or dislike oil companies,
or have any opinion whatever about oil companies, and be skeptical of the AGW hypothesis. _____________________________________________________________ Do
skeptics deny the existence of serious environmental problems that demand our
attention? —Answer: No. Concern for the health of the environment and its
human victims does not commit a person to any particular theory about the
relationship between CO2 and global temperatures. One can be very
worried—even outraged—that the environment is being harmed in dangerous ways
without believing that minute increments of CO2 cause rampant global warming. In my case, for example, I am worried about the
manner in which the rivers and lakes of my country, Mexico, are being daily
polluted. And I am worried that almost nothing is being done about it. I also
believe that one important reason so little has been done is that
environmentalists are all completely focused on the non-issue of global
warming, something that—in my view—they cannot affect. _____________________________________________________________ Are
skeptics saying that the world’s top climate scientists are wrong? —Answer: No. People constantly hear that the UN-based IPCC
(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) supposedly brings together the
world’s top climate scientists, and that supposedly they all agree global
warming is man-made (‘anthropogenic’). They call this the ‘consensus view.’ Lots of people who say this—including many
relatively high-profile environmental activists and bureaucrats at the UN and
other places—no doubt believe it. But it isn’t true. Many of the scientists listed as authors on IPCC
documents actually disagree with their content and have fought to have their
names removed. Some have threatened or taken legal action to achieve this.
Others, with less energy for that, have impotently watched how the IPCC uses
their names to defend a position which they have not endorsed. Many people
listed on IPCC documents are not climate scientists. These issues are discussed in the 2007 documentary The Great
Global Warming Swindle, which interviews top climate
scientists who disagree with the AGW hypothesis.[3]
In Heaven
and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science, Australia’s top geologist
Ian Plimer explains: “Although it is commonly cited that 2500 scientists wrote the IPCC’s Fourth
Assessment report, a head count shows that there were 1656 authors and many
of them were authors of many parts of the Report. Some of them used their
given name in one part, used an initial in another, and used an abbreviation
in another.” It is a bit
shocking to find that people wrote their names different ways so that the
IPCC could count their names two or three times in order to boost the
‘number’ of scientists supposedly agreeing with the IPCC. Plimer continues: “Furthermore, if we investigate the biographies of the 2500 ‘climate
scientists,’ we find that many are not even scientists [let alone climate scientists
– HIR]. To claim that this group of people represents the world’s top
scientists is untrue. It seems that of the 1190 separate individuals who
wrote the scientific part of the report, many were not scientists but were
political and environmental activists.” Plimer also
writes the following: “The social scientist Naomi Oreskes claimed in the scientific journal Science
that a search of the ISI Web of Knowledge Database for the years
1993-2003 under the key words ‘global climate change’ produced 928 articles,
all of which had abstracts supporting the consensus view. Another social
scientist, Benny Peiser, tried to validate this claim, checked Oreskes’
procedure and found that only 905 of the 928 articles actually had abstracts,
and that only 13 of the 905 explicitly supported the [so-called] consensus
view. Some papers opposed the consensus view. Referees and editors of Science
could have done their job and easily checked Oreskes’ claim, as did
Peiser. They did not. Claims of consensus relieve policy bureaucrats,
environmental advocates, and politicians of the need to validate claims or
have any knowledge of science and are used to intimidate those who beg to
differ.” Plimer
points out that the Russian Academy of Sciences completely disagrees with the
IPCC. Moreover, “the 32,000 American scientists who signed the Oregon Petition
expressed serious doubt about the major conclusions of the IPCC. Many surveys
now involve little time and effort as they utilize the click of a computer
mouse. The process for the Oregon Petition involved filling in a printed
document, finding a stamp and envelope, and posting it to the Oregon
Institute of Science and Medicine. The American Physical Society stated: ‘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.’ ”[4] In December
of 2008 the following was reported: “WASHINGTON – A United Nations climate change conference in Poland is
about to get a surprise from 650 leading scientists who scoff at doomsday
reports of man-made global warming – labeling them variously a lie, a hoax
and part of a new religion. The article
cited above quoted the statements of some of the scientists. One, a
Nobel-prize winner, said, “Global warming has become a new religion.” Another
said that the scaremongering concerning global warming is the “worst
scientific scandal in the history.” And so on. The report authored by these
scientists was officially submitted in a US Senate Environment & Public
Works Committee Minority Report.[6] I don’t know whether there was follow through on
this, but the founder of the Weather Channel announced on FOX NEWS in 2008
that he and over 30,000 scientists, many of them professionals of climate and
closely related sciences, had initiated action to sue Al Gore for what they
claim is scientific fraud in his high-profile defense of the anthropogenic
hypothesis.[7] Also in 2008, Vincent Gray, “expert reviewer” for
the IPCC, resigned in disgust and published an exposé of what he claims is
widespread and fraudulent manipulation of data at the IPCC.[8] In his exposé Gray charges that
“dubious observations and some genuine science has been distorted and ‘spun’
to support a global campaign to limit human emissions of certain greenhouse
gases which has no scientific basis.”[9] Gray’s accusations received dramatic support in late
2009 when the Climategate scandal (covered in Part 5)
revealed that the most important IPCC scientists were exchanging emails about
how to twist their data in favor of the anthropogenic hypothesis and how to
censor any skeptics who disagreed with them. In 2010 it was reported that so many Royal Society
fellows were “doubtful in some way about the received view of the risks of
rising CO2 levels,” and were so upset with official Royal Society
pronouncements on global warming that a tremendous controversy had erupted.
The Society was strongly criticized for saying officially that the debate on
global warming “was over.” The controversy was so heated that according to
some of the scientists involved “it might not be possible for the [consensus]
document to be agreed at all.”[10] Apparently the critics were sidelined after all,
because recently the US National Academy of Sciences and the British Royal
Society have come together to say that they basically agree with anything the
IPCC says.[11]
But just as Royal Society statements of support for the IPCC mask a
controversy among British scientists, pro-IPCC statements by the US National
Academy of Sciences likewise mask a controversy among US scientists (we’ve
already seen the Oregon Petition, above). The Russian Academy of Sciences continues to state
that it completely disagrees with the IPCC, and they have stated that “Global
Warming is a Marketing Trick.”[12] And a group of international scientists have formed
the NIPCC (the Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change). These
are scientists from all over the world who denounce the manner in which the
IPCC has distorted the evidence and since 2009 they have been issuing reports
in parallel to the IPCC, specifically refuting IPCC claims. Their latest
report is from 2014.[13] By the way, even the Western political consensus now
appears in doubt. In 2008, Tony Abbott (since 2013 the Australian prime
minister) declared that global warming science was “crap.”[14]
Then, “he resigned from the frontbench in November 2009 in protest against
[Malcolm] Turnbull’s support for the Rudd Government’s proposed Emissions
Trading Scheme (ETS)”—a scheme based on IPCC policy recommendations
(themselves based on the AGW hypothesis). “Forcing a leadership ballot on the
subject, Abbott defeated Turnbull by 42 votes to 41, therefore becoming the
[Liberal] party’s leader and Leader of the Opposition.”[15]
And then Abbott became prime minister in 2013. Immediately, Abbott set about
nixing the post of ‘science minister’ and repealing the Australian
legislation based on IPCC policy recommendations. “Australia’s climate change
action has effectively ground to a halt.”[16] The above is already enough to establish that the
idea of a ‘scientific consensus’ in favor of IPCC claims is at the very least
a wild exaggeration, and perhaps an outright inversion of the truth. So,
given that at least a good many (and apparently a great many) of our
top climate scientists are disputing the anthropogenic hypothesis, to be a skeptic
is hardly to state that our best scientists are wrong. And as we will see in Part 5,
when we examine the Climategate controversy, we now have plenty of evidence
to challenge the view that IPCC scientists are among our ‘best.’ _____________________________________________________________ Do
skeptics deny global warming as such? —Answer: No. There appears to be general agreement that from 1979
to 1998 planetary temperatures rose. Let us stipulate here that they did. The
question then is not whether the Earth has been warming but why.
Some of us believe that human production of CO2 has nothing to do with the
warming and that some other (natural) cause is responsible. Most probably the sun. But we agree that there has
been some warming. However, as I discuss below, there are two wrinkles: 1) There
has been a ‘pause’ in the warming: since 1997-98 global temperatures have
held steady, whereas the IPCC models all predicted runaway warming for this
period. 2) According
to many, the warming that occurred from 1979 to 1998 was modest—nothing to
write home about. There
is a ‘pause’ or ‘hiatus’ in the warming The warming appears to have stopped since 1998 (some
say 1997), coinciding with a decrease in solar activity that nobody disputes.
The prestigious scientific journal Nature has been a major booster of the
AGW hypothesis (see Part 3), but even Nature
now agrees that there has been no warming since 1997-98: Climate change: The case of the missing heat:
Sixteen years into the mysterious ‘global-warming hiatus’, scientists are
piecing together an explanation. Is it
so warm? Contrary to what the IPCC claims, the 1979-1998
warming may not have been much. The data used to argue for a dramatic planetary
temperature increase comes from terrestrial measuring stations. These are
plagued with problems that give the measurements a warm bias, according to a
report by Joseph D’Aleo and Anthony Watts published by the Science and Public
Policy Institute.[17] The satellite data, which do not have these
problems, show nothing but a moderate temperature increase in the period
1979-1998, and therefore no actual global warming for the 20th c. as a
whole. This supports the skeptics who claim that 1979-1998 shows ordinary
cyclical warming—nothing to do with human activity. D’Aleo and Watts write as follows: “Recent
revelations from the Climategate emails, originating from the Climatic
Research Unit at the University of East Anglia showed how all the data centers,
most notably NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] and NASA,
conspired in the manipulation of global temperature records to suggest that
temperatures in the 20th century rose faster than, in reality, they actually
did. This has
inspired climate researchers worldwide to take a hard look at the data
proffered by comparing it to the original data and to other data sources. . . Five
organizations publish global temperature data. Two – Remote Sensing Systems
(RSS) and the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) – are satellite
datasets. The three terrestrial institutions – NOAA’s National Climatic
Data Center (NCDC), NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), and
the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) – all depend on
data supplied by ground stations via NOAA.” [emphasis added] So there are two main ways of computing planetary
temperatures: by using satellites and by using ground measuring stations.
Those who claim there has been dramatic global warming—such as the now
infamous (see Part 5) University of East Anglia Climatic
Research Unit (CRU)—use the surface station NOAA data. How accurate is NOAA? At one time, NOAA was a reliable source of data.
“The world’s surface observing network,” explain D’Aleo and Watts, “had
reached its golden era in the 1960s-1980s, with more than 6000 stations
providing valuable climate information.” But this is no longer true. “Now,
there are fewer than 1500 [stations].” What happened? “Around 1990,
NOAA began weeding out more than three-quarters of the climate
measuring stations around the world. They may have been working under the
auspices of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). It can be shown that
they systematically and purposefully, country by country, removed
higher-latitude, higher-altitude, and rural locations, all of which had a
tendency to be cooler. The
thermometers were marched towards the tropics, the sea, and airports near
bigger cities. These data were then used to determine the global average
temperature and to initialize climate models. Interestingly, the very same
stations that have been deleted from the world climate network were retained
for computing the average-temperature base periods, further increasing the
bias towards overstatement of warming by NOAA.” [emphasis added] By contrast, the satellite data show only a moderate
warming for the period 1979-1998. And yet, explain D’Aleo and Watts, “When
the satellites were first launched, their temperature readings were in
relatively good agreement with the surface station data. There has been
increasing divergence over time, but the divergence does not arise from
satellite errors.” The divergence is easily explained by the biased removal
of terrestrial climate measuring stations in cold areas and the resulting
bias in favor of urban ‘heat islands.’ Because the satellite data do not
suffer from these biases, argue the authors, they can more readily be
trusted. There were warnings of these problems at least as
far back as 2003, when “S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental
sciences at the University of Virginia and former director of the US Weather
Satellite Service,” pointed out that: [Quote from P.R.
Newswire begins here] “The UN-IPCC
science panel... based its conclusions on three major claims. And although
widely publicized, none of them pass muster. They have been or are being
disproved by actual data.” For example: -- The IPCC
claims the 20th century was the warmest in the past 1,000 years. This is
based entirely on a manhandling of the available data. Two Canadian
scientists have just published a detailed audit that exposes a shocking set
of errors; it permits anyone to independently verify their counter-claim. -- The IPCC
claims the climate is currently warming. This is based solely on surface thermometer data. It is
contradicted not only by superior observations from weather satellites, but
also by independent data from radiosondes carried on weather balloons. In
addition, proxy data from tree rings, ice cores, etc. confirm that there is
no significant current warming.[18] [Quote from P.R.
Newswire begins here] When the bias in the surface weather stations is not
enough, the data is simply invented, as happened when some ‘scientists’
invented nonexistent weather stations in the Antarctic with which to claim
that the southern continent had been warming (instead of cooling as the
satellite data show). Among the members of the team that produced this
‘magic’ was Michael Mann, at the center of the Climategate controversy (see Part 5).[19] Important conclusions in the scientific literature
concerning global warming may now be called into question. For example, a much-cited study by Usoskin et al.
(2005) finds that “the long-term trends in solar [activity] data and in
northern hemisphere temperatures have a correlation coefficient of about 0.7
– 0.8 at a 94% to 98% confidence level.”[20] This is very high, and one obvious interpretation is
that solar activity is mostly responsible for global temperatures. But the
authors note that “the last 30 years are not considered, however. In this
time, the climate [i.e. temperature] and solar data diverge strongly from
each other.” This is because, according to these data, solar activity does
not trend upward in the last three decades and yet the temperatures
drastically do. To the authors this means that there is a “marked (or even
dominant) solar effect on climate variability until the middle of the 20th
century,” but “a non-solar origin of the most recent warming episode since
about 1970.” The “non-solar origin” is by obvious implication human activity. Proponents of
anthropogenic global warming have loudly claimed victory on the basis of
these data: the sun does not explain global temperature in recent decades.
But the problem is that in the Usoskin et al. “the terrestrial
climate data we use are the reconstruction
of the northern hemisphere temperature between AD 1000 and AD 1980 by Mann et
al.(1999) (MBH99) and the reconstructions of northern hemisphere,
southern hemisphere, and global temperatures for the period between AD 200
and AD 1980 by Mann and Jones (2003).” In other words, for a reconstruction of global
temperatures Usoskin et al. are relying on the “surface-based
instrumental record.” No wonder that the close correlation between solar
activity and global temperatures disappears in the last 30 years: it was
precisely in the last 30 that, according to the SPPI, surface-based measuring
stations were removed from cold places to give measurements a warm bias.
These kinds of studies need to be redone using the satellite data. I also note that the above reconstructions were done
by the very scientists at the center of the Climategate controversy: Michael
Mann and Phil Jones (see Part 5).
Many in the public believe there has been dramatic
global warming because, explain D’Aleo & Watts, “in monthly press
releases no satellite measurements are ever mentioned, although NOAA claimed
that was the future of observations.” The satellite data do support moderate
warming in the period 1979-1998. But that’s all. Nothing to write home about.
So taking it as a whole, conclude D’Aleo and Watts, “it cannot be
credibly asserted there has been any significant ‘global warming’ in the 20th
century.” Complementary
research by Roy Spencer, a climate scientist formerly at NASA, concludes
likewise that “Most U.S. Warming Since 1973 Could Be Spurious.” His reasoning is as follows. Even if we assume that
there is no bias in the distribution of surface temperature stations, with
the passage of time urban structures have been growing around many of them,
and this will introduce an apparent warming in the measurements because it
amounts to a growth of an urban heat island (UHI) effect around these
thermometers. We cannot know how much of the reported increases in
temperature reflect actual global warming until this spurious warming is
corrected for. But this hasn’t been done.[21] _____________________________________________________________ Do
skeptics deny the “greenhouse effect”? —Answer: No. In a greenhouse the glass (or plastic) roof and
walls allow the sun’s rays in, and these warm the air and other things within
it; but thanks to the roof and walls the heated air cannot be lost by
convection as it normally would (more precisely, heat loss is slower than
heat production). The so-called atmospheric
“greenhouse effect” works differently but appears analogically similar, hence
the name. In the atmospheric “greenhouse effect,” when the sun’s rays bombard
the surface of the Earth, gases in our atmosphere trap some of the infrared
radiation and prevent it from escaping back into space.
This warms the air between the surface and the troposphere.[22] I believe the “greenhouse effect” does happen. But
this does not force me to believe that large-scale changes in the Earth’s
temperature are primarily due to changes in the concentrations of “greenhouse
gases.” It is logically possible for the “greenhouse effect” to do its thing
while other processes move the planetary temperatures dramatically up
and down. Suppose you study my body temperature in the shade
and conclude that burning of calories is mostly responsible. I step into the
sun and my body gets quickly warmer. Why? Because I suddenly began burning
more calories? Nothing forces you to say that. On the contrary, the best
hypothesis for why my body temperature suddenly increased has to do with the
sun’s rays directly hitting my body. And yet recognizing this will in no way
deny that my body burns calories and that calories produce heat. Similarly,
when I say that big shifts in global temperatures do not follow changes in
the relative abundance of certain “greenhouse gases,” but rather some other
process, I am not denying that the “greenhouse effect” happens. As an economist would say, the greenhouse gas
elasticity of global temperature may be very low: perhaps even large shifts
in greenhouse gas concentrations cause only very small changes in global
temperatures, tiny wiggles on the truly important movements. A top climate
scientists puts it like this: “If the current atmospheric CO2 content of 380
ppmv were doubled to 760 ppmv, there would be a minuscule impact on the
radiation balance and the temperature.”[23] _____________________________________________________________ Do
skeptics deny that CO2 is a “greenhouse gas”? —Answer: No. The IPCC claims that planetary temperatures are
extremely sensitive to tiny changes in CO2 concentrations. Or, as an
economist would put it, that the CO2 ‘elasticity’ of global temperature is
spectacularly high: a tiny amount of human-produced CO2 throws the entire
planet out of balance. CO2 is considered one of the gases that contribute
to the “greenhouse effect.” Everybody agrees, however, that water vapor is by
far the most important greenhouse gas, and that CO2’s effect relative to
water vapor is small. Moreover, human production of CO2 is quite small compared
to naturally occurring CO2 production: “Experts estimate annual human
production of CO2 at 23 billion tonnes - less than 3 per cent of nature's
estimated 770 billion tonnes. Annually, nature produces 33 times more than do
humans.”[24] The anthropogenic hypothesis thus requires that a
proportionally very small increment—the human-caused increment—in the global
level of a relatively unimportant greenhouse gas somehow operates a “tipping
point” that puts the “greenhouse effect” into overdrive, causing a dramatic
rise in the planetary temperature. That sounds a bit far-fetched, but that is
precisely what the IPCC claims. As one newspaper puts it: “The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the earth has effectively
developed an allergy to CO2. The effect of a tiny amount of CO2 in the
atmosphere is amplified by water vapour and clouds in a positive feedback
loop which enhances the climate's sensitivity to extra CO2 and causes
‘runaway global warming.’ That is the big Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change hypothesis.”[25] Those who believe, in disagreement with the IPCC,
that human production of CO2 has not caused global warming, though CO2 is
indeed a “greenhouse gas,” incur no necessary contradiction. _____________________________________________________________ Do
skeptics deny the evidence suggesting that atmospheric temperature and CO2
are causally linked? —Answer: No. Those who believe in man-made global warming
routinely refer us to the Antarctic ice-core evidence with which climate
scientists have reconstructed a 650,000-year record of both Antarctic
temperatures and CO2 levels. In fact, they seem quite sure that this is their
most important evidence, and it has become famous with the public thanks to
the efforts, especially, of Al Gore and his movie, An Inconvenient Truth.
Like them, I accept the ice core data, and like them, I believe this data
suggests that atmospheric temperature and CO2 concentrations are causally
linked. The question, however, is: what causes what? For the anthropogenic argument to make sense, higher
levels of CO2 must cause higher temperatures. Should the higher temperatures
(achieved by some other process) be the ones causing higher levels of CO2,
then the relationship will go precisely the wrong way for the
anthropogenic argument. As it turns out, in the 650,000-year record,
Antarctic temperatures always rise first, and then, with an 800-year lag
(give or take), rise the Antarctic levels of CO2. This is the most dramatic
refutation imaginable of the anthropogenic argument’s most basic premise. For
it is simply impossible for rises in CO2 to cause changes in temperature if
the rises in CO2 happen second (the very principle of causality requires
precedence in time). And yet this evidence is usually presented as the
most dramatic in the anthropogenic argument’s favor. ‘Orwellian’ is an adjective reserved for a
media-imposed total inversion of reality, plus indifference to absurdity
equal parts boldness and nonchalance (so powerful in the rash assertion of
its plausibility as to convince the innocent). Loudly
claiming that evidence refuting an argument is the most powerful supposedly validating
selfsame argument, and daring us to disagree, is Orwellian. In Part 2 we take a look at how proponents of the
AGW hypothesis have (not) dealt with the challenge posed by the Antarctic
ice-core evidence. Below
is a table of contents for the whole series.
___________________________________________________________ Footnotes
and Further Reading [1] “Can business be cool?; Companies and climate change”;
The Economist, June 10, 2006, BUSINESS, 1383 words [2] “Cleaning
up”; The Economist, June 2, 2007, SURVEY, 1386 words [3] You may watch
the full movie here: To buy the DVD: To watch a trailer: [4] Plimer, I. (2009). Heaven
and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science. New York: Taylor Trade
Publishing. (pp.20, 452) [5] HEAT OF THE MOMENT;
“Scientists abandon global warming ‘lie’ : 650 to dissent at U.N. climate
change conference”; World Net Daily; Posted: December 11, 2008 [6] http://hatch.senate.gov/public/_files/USSenateEPWMinorityReport.pdf [7] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfHW7KR33IQ [8] ES ‘FALSO’ QUE EL CO2 CAUSE EL
CALENTAMIENTO: Un miembro del IPCC destapa la "gran mentira" del
cambio climático; Libertad Digital; 1 de octubre, 2008 [9] THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON
CLIMATE CHANGE (IPCC): SPINNING THE CLIMATE; by Vincent Gray [10] “Society to
review climate message”; BBC News; 27 May 2010; By Roger Harrabin Environment
analyst. [11] Royal Society and National
Academy of Sciences join to support IPCC: [12] http://notrickszone.com/2013/04/11/russian-academy-of-sciences-experts-warn-of-imminent-cold-period-global-warming-is-a-marketing-trick/ [13] http://www.nipccreport.org/index.html [14] “Town
of Beaufort changed Tony Abbott's view on climate change”; The Australian;
December 12, 2009; by Stuart Rintoul [15] Tony Abbott | From Wikipedia, the
free encyclopedia [16] “Australia's New PM Nixes Science Minister Post at
Worst Possible Moment”; Sept. 20 2013; by Ariel Bogle “Tony Abbott introduces legislation to repeal carbon
tax after ‘Electricity Bill’ row”; ABC.net.au; Wed 13 Nov 2013; By chief
political correspondent Emma Griffiths “Tony Abbott's 'extreme' climate stance sets back
policy decades, critics say”; The Sydney Morning Herald; May 14, 2014; Peter
Hannam and Lisa Cox [17] “SURFACE TEMPERATURE RECORDS:
POLICY DRIVEN DECEPTION?”; Science and Public Policy Institute; January 7,
2010; by Joseph D’Aleo and Anthony Watts [18] Science Behind Global Warming Doesn't Uphold Scrutiny;
NCPA's Experts Available to Discuss Climate Change Science; U.S. Newswire,
October 30, 2003 Thursday, National Desk, 495 words [19] The following was reported in the Sunday
Telegraph: [Quote from Sunday
Telegraph begins here] “...[N]othing
has been more disconcerting... than the methods used by promoters of the
warming cause over the years to plug some of the glaring holes in their
scientific argument. Another
example last week was the much-publicised claim, contradicting all previous
evidence, that Antarctica, the coldest continent, is in fact warming up,
Antarctica has long been a major embarrassment to the warmists. Al Gore and
Co may have wanted to scare us that the continent, which contains 90 per cent
of ice on the planet, is heating up because that would be the source of all
the meltwater which they claim will raise sea levels by 20 feet. However, to
provide their pictures of ice-shelves "the size of Texas'' calving off
into the sea, they have had to draw on one tiny region, the Antarctic
Peninsula - the only part that has been warming. The vast mass of Antarctica,
all satellite evidence has shown, has been getting colder over the past 30
years. Last year's sea-ice cover was 30 per cent above average. So it
predictably made headlines last week when a new study, from a team led by
Professor Eric Steig, claimed to prove that the Antarctic has been heating up
after all. The usual supporters were called in to whoop up its historic importance.
It was made a cover story by Nature and heavily promoted by the BBC. This,
crowed journalists such as Newsweek's Sharon Begley, would really be one in
the eye for the "deniers'' and "contrarians''. But then a good many experts
began to examine just what new evidence had been used to justify this
dramatic finding. It turned out that it was produced by a computer model
based on combining the satellite evidence since 1979 with temperature
readings from surface weather stations. The problem with
Antarctica, though, is that has so few weather stations. So what the computer
had been programmed to do, by a formula not yet revealed, was to estimate the
data those missing weather stations would have come up with if they had
existed. In other words, while confirming that the satellite data have indeed
shown the Antarctic as cooling since 1979, the study relied ultimately on
pure guesswork, to show that in the past 50 years the continent has warmed -
by just one degree Fahrenheit. One of the
first to express astonishment was Dr Kenneth Trenberth, a senior scientist
with the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and a
convinced believer in global warming, who wryly observed "it is hard to
make data where none exists''. A disbelieving Ross Hayes, an atmospheric
scientist who has visited the Antarctic for Nasa, sent Professor Steig a
caustic email ending: "With statistics you can make numbers go to any
conclusion you want. It saddens me to see members of the scientific community
do this for media coverage.'' But it was
also noticed that among the members of Steig's team was Michael Mann, author
of the "hockey stick'', the most celebrated of all attempts by the
warmists to rewrite the scientific evidence to promote their cause. The
greatest embarrassment for the believers in man-made global warming is the
fact that the world was significantly warmer in the Middle Ages than now.
"We must get rid of the Medieval Warm Period,'' as one contributor to
the IPCC famously said in an unguarded moment. It was Dr Mann who duly
obliged by getting his computer-model to produce a graph shaped like a hockey
stick, eliminating the medieval warming and showing recent temperatures
curving up to an unprecedented high. This instantly
became the warmists' chief icon, and made the centrepiece of the IPCC's 2001
report. But Mann's selective use of data and the flaws in his computer model
were then so devastatingly torn apart that it has become the most discredited
artefact in the history of science. The fact that
Dr Mann is behind the new study is, alas, all part of an ongoing pattern. But
this will not prevent the paper being cited ad nauseam by everyone from the
BBC to Al Gore. So, regardless of the science, and until the politicians wake
up to how they have been duped, what threatens to become the most costly
flight from reality in history will roll remorselessly on its way. [Quote from Sunday
Telegraph ends here] SOURCE: The Sunday Telegraph (United Kingdom);
January 25, 2009 Sunday; SCIENTISTS FIND GAPING HOLES IN POLAR ICE FACTS; by
Christopher Booker; 748 words [20] Usoskin, I. G., Schüssler, M., Solanki, S. K., &
Mursula, K. (2005). Solar Activity over the Last 1150 Years: Does it
Correlate with Climate? In F. Favata, G. Hussain, & B. Battrick (Eds.),
13th Cool Stars Workshop. Hamburg. [21] “Direct Evidence that Most U.S.
Warming Since 1973 Could Be Spurious”; March 16th, 2010 by Roy W. Spencer,
Ph. D. [22] “Greenhouse Effect”; Wikipedia [consulted 28
November 2009] [25] “Science cooks the books, driving sensible people to
screaming point”; Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), November 12, 2009
Thursday, NEWS AND FEATURES; Opinion; Pg. 17, 1057 words, Miranda Devine |
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