A regular contributor to this blog, Anthony Cox, also known as Cohenite, examines the scientific evidence presented in the two most recent reports from the CSIRO and BOM: the BOM Annual Climate Summary 2011 and State of the Climate Report – 2012.

Cohenite is not a scientist, but he is interested in the evidence.

Download Cohenite’s note as a pdf here: http://jennifermarohasy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/BOM-CSIRO-article.pdf

The economic gravitas to the government’s proposed economics measures to solve AGW are provided by their go-to man, Professor Ross Garnaut. Garnaut does come with some impressive economic academic credentials from ANU and the University of Melbourne. Garnaut also has considerable experience in private industry and is chairman of Lihir Gold, the New Guinea based gold-mining company.

In 2008 former PM Rudd engaged Garnaut to prepare an Interim Report to support the then Rudd government’s intention to introduce an ETS to solve AGW. With Rudd no longer PM, the current government under PM Gillard has commissioned Garnaut to provide updates to his 2008 Interim Report to justify the Gillard government’s intention to introduce a carbon tax to solve AGW; make of that what you will.

This article looks at Garnaut’s second update [there is a link to a critique of Garnaut’s first update below]. Garnaut’s second update looks at the science supporting AGW. This science shows warming over the recent period. That much can be agreed with, but just about everything else Garnaut’s science says, how much warming and particularly what has caused that warming, is problematic and subject to strong contrary scientific evidence. So, when Garnaut boasts in the press “I was right about climate change” that is a hollow boast.

Perhaps realising that his scientific foundation is shaky Garnaut begins his update by invoking the decidedly un-scientific consensus argument in support of AGW. Garnaut does this by only conceding that “a small number of qualified scientists who publish in credible outlets maintain the view that human activity is small among the factors driving global warming.” This is obviously untrue as there are many scientists now rejecting AGW. The sceptical scientists have now been increased by the group of 35 genuine climate scientists and 36 additional researchers who recently sent an Open Letter to the United States Congress expressing their view that climate change is “not the horrendous environmental threat they and others have made it out to be”.

These sceptics would agree with Garnaut when he observes that “uncertainty in the science is generally associated with the rate and magnitude rather than the direction of its conclusions.”

But like the first review where he attempted to use theological arguments of Pascal’s wager to justify policy prescription, Garnaut shows he is not a scientist by attempting to apply a legalistic criteria “beyond reasonable doubt” to scientific uncertainty.

The burden of proof in AGW is not only to show an effect of human CO2 emissions on climate, but to show that effect may cause serious harm.

Most limits on environmental pollutants are set (1) above detection levels, at levels that are (2) practically achievable, and (3) where harm is likely. Concern over barely detectable levels incapable of being measured is for unrealistic perfectionists.

Thus while many sceptics would agree with the central proposition that the Earth has been warming, it is the level of potential harm, and the existence of practically achievable solutions that determines if any action should be taken.

Even the central proposition of the mainstream science – that most of the global warming since the mid 20th century is very likely due to anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gas concentrations – does not necessarily entail harm, or actions of any kind.

Garnaut also mentions “weaknesses in the execution of the scientific mandate”, as were pointed out in the review of the International Panel for Climate Change [IPCC] by the InterAcademy Council [IAC] which found the standards of certainty used by the IPCC to be inappropriate.

But he says nothing of leading studies by Professor McKitrick’s team and Professor Koutsoyiannis’s group which found gross deficiencies in the capacity of the climate models. He just kicks the can down the road stating that “bigger and better climate models are being developed in the joint project between the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO”. In fact the best Garnaut can say about the models he relies on is that they do not make forecasts or projections but instead create “scenarios” which “are developed on the basis of expert judgements to provide plausible descriptions of how the future might unfold”. How is that not a prediction?

Garnaut argues like a lawyer arguing a case for a client on the dock, not like a scientist as imagined by Nobel-prize winning physicist Richard Feynman who says in his famous speech ‘Cargo Cult Science’.

“The idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.”

 “It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty – a kind of leaning over backwards.”

 “You should report everything that you think might make it invalid – not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results.”

 All great scientists understand they must argue both sides of the case, as they know it takes only one contradictory bit of observed evidence, a white swan, to disprove a hypothesis. The point is illustrated by the example used by Karl Popper. If your hypothesis is that all swans are black and you send out 100 assistants who return with 99 black and 1 white swan it does not mean your hypothesis has a 99% certainty of being proved. In fact it has been disproved to a certainty of 100%.

An example of Garnaut’s one-sided lawyering is seen in Box 5, reporting that Breusch and Vahid’s [B&V] update of their 2008 paper confirm a statistical warming trend. (Garnaut claims in a footnote the update is available at a website http://www.garnautreview.gov.au, but as of writing this website did not exist.)

B&V’s findings are cautious and lead to weaker conclusions: (1) the level of significance is 95%, which is generally considered the bare minimum level of confidence in hard sciences; (2) there are many mechanisms that could have generated the trend including increasing solar intensity, decreasing gamma-ray flux, urban heat influence, aerosols, and internal climate cycles; and (3) the temperature trend had a break or sudden increase in 1976, noted by many other researchers, that argues against a harmful long-term trend in temperature for reasons offered in a paper by Stockwell.

B&V fall over backwards to invalidate, but Garnaut’s one-sided perspective omits relevant information.

Further, Garnaut does not mention that the Australian surface temperature record is currently subject to an application for review, and Garnaut’s preferred global temperature, GISS is subject to an FOIA claim as requested information has not been forthcoming.

Garnaut also does not mention that GISS is an outlier among the temperature records and that the trend in the more reliable satellite measurements is lower, as John Christy’s team show in 2 papers. Garnaut ignores the work of McShane and Wyner which shows that modern temperatures are not exceptional.

Garnaut’s Figure 3 purports to show changes in observed global temperature since 1970 are consistent with the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios [SRES] from the IPCC [which in turn contradicts Garnaut’s claims such changes have been underestimated!]. Figure 3 is attributed to a publication (Rahmstorf 2011) which, again, cannot be checked as it is not listed in Garnaut’s references. It actually descends from a modified but incorrectly described Figure 3 in the Copenhagen Synthesis Report, originally published in Science by Rahmstorf et.al. (2007). If Rahmstorf et.al. (2007) had not been criticised for its incorrect statistical analysis by Stockwell and McIntyre, Garnaut may still be using Rahmstorf’s figure to argue that changes have been underestimated, as he did prominently in his first interim report.

Contrast this comedy of errors with the figure Dr John Christy uses to show that current temperatures are far below the “scenarios” or predictions made by models.

Other indicators such as ocean warming also confound Garnaut’s increased concern about the increased effects from AGW. Most of the Earth’s climate-relevant heat resides in the upper ocean. This heat has only been accurately measured since 2003 with the employment of the Argo flotation devices, and ocean heat has fallen since accurate measurements began. That is a big white swan.

In fact all of Garnaut’s areas of concern which he alleges show a worsening AGW effect have either been declining or increasing at a decreasing rate since either 1998 or 2003 as can be seen in a recent joint MET and NOAA The State of the Climate report. More white swans.

Garnaut’s other concerns are also shedding their black plumage as these scientists ignored by Garnaut show:

1. The super greenhouse gas, methane, has its rate of increase declining as leading expert Dr Dlugokencky shows despite an increase in 2007 probably due to natural factors

2. Nature is not losing the battle against human CO2 [section 2.3.2]. Dr Knorr’s seminal paper shows the percentage of human CO2 in the atmosphere has not changed over the last 150 years.

3. Dr Essenhigh’s paper shows that CO2 hangs around for much less time than the IPCC claims reducing its long-term warming effect.

4. Cyclones and hurricanes and extreme weather is not increasing as Dr Ryan Maue’s site shows.

5. Garnaut ignores these scientific insurance papers which contradict his claim that insurance statistics support AGW.

6. Garnaut then pokes around the Great Barrier Reef [GBR], an AGW icon if ever there was one and therefore a suitable topic for raising alarm. Garnaut relies on the work of professor Hoegh-Gulberg who has a prediction record comparable to Professor Flannery’s. Garnaut should have spoken to Professor Peter Ridd who is more sanguine about the robustness of the GBR, checked with the CSIRO which looks at genuine human effects on the GBR and what is an alternative explanation for reef bleaching.

7. Garnaut says the Black Sunday bushfires were consistent with a warming world [Box 8]. Unfortunately they were also consistent with a deplorable lack of bushfire prevention and mitigation and, in respect of urban temperatures, the Urban Heat Island effect.

8. Incredibly Garnaut refers to the Amazon as evidence of AGW. Amazongate confirmed IAC’s findings that nearly 50% of the IPCC sources were not scientific.

Garnaut concludes his science with a definition of “Dangerous Climate Change” and the possibility of tipping points. There is no doubt climate history has evidence of sudden climate changes. But the connection of these changes with CO2 is unsupported. Perhaps that is why in Garnaut’s Figure 9 Professor Will Steffen left out the CO2 history that follows temperature.

Garnaut is an economist in favour of market-based mechanisms to reduce carbon emissions. It’s ironic that the only market proven alternative to hydrocarbons for providing base-load electricity – nuclear – is completely insensitive to carbon price, because nuclear power generation is effectively illegal in Australia!

The recent tragic events in Japan have already provided ammunition for AGW supporters to oppose nuclear power and promote AGW. Like Garnaut they ignore the facts: the damaged reactor was the 40-year-old Fukushima plant, which had superseded technology, was badly sited and was due to be decommissioned; the modern reactors survived the biggest Earthquake Japan has had and new generation nuclear and thorium reactors will be even more resistant to nature.

Earthquakes are certain but the science and consequences of AGW problematic. Garnaut worries about the lack of public acceptance for his scientific evidence. Who can blame them; they have real things to worry about.

***********

Professor Ross Garnaut’s first update to his 2008 review on AGW is critiqued here.

Dr David Stockwell is an environmental scientist and researcher with many published papers to his credit. He also runs the environmental and science blog, Niche Modelling.   Cohenite is a regular commentator at this blog.

Lewandowsky’s fulminations against sceptics continues a sinister trend in the AGW debate with a number of prominent AGW supporters casting aspersions about the moral legitimacy of scepticism and calling for sceptics to be jailed or prosecuted or at the very least banned as Senator Bob Brown advocates for leading sceptic Andrew Bolt.  However,  Lewandowsky’s diatribes go beyond legal and political action and calls into doubt the sanity of the sceptical position.

This is serious, for merely questioning the ‘science’ of AGW one now faces the opprobrium of having one’s mental ability questioned.

Lewandowsky has been very active, having several articles published at the ABC’s Unleashed. His most recent one is  cunning.  Apparently realising that the old stand-by of arguing from authority is not having any success in converting an increasingly cynical public, Lewandowsky has attempted to directly involve the public in the scientific process of validating the evidence for AGW. This process is described in his latest ABC article:

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/43020.html

Because Lewandowsky is an award winning statistician and uses statistics in this latest paper another award winning statistician, Dr David Stockwell, thought having his sanity queried was worth the risk of highlighting the egregious statistical errors of Lewandowsky’s article.

While prepared to publish Lewandowsky’s offensive opinion, the ABC refused to publish the following rebuttal: 

Lewandowsky and the Statistics of Global Warming

Professor Lewandowsky says: “Statistics, when done properly, provide a robust and revealing tool to understand reality.”

He is right; statistics can help us understand the why and how of our physical world; good statistics can even help us prepare for our future. Have the statistics of anthropogenic global warming [AGW] helped us understand our physical world and helped us prepare for our future?
Lewandowsky warns us that “Single events carry little information” and to use single events to prove AGW is untrue is “cherry-picking”. In Lewandowsky’s opinion, one cold British winter [actually there have been three] does not a summer make. Rather it is the long-term changes which prove AGW, the reduction in the Arctic ice-cap, the rising seas and the increasing temperature.

This is true. The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change [IPCC] says that a minimum of 30 years have to be taken into account before any conclusions about changes in the physical reality of climate can be made. But the Arctic ice-cap was smaller in the 1930’s, and warmer, according to researcher Professor Petr Chylek. Sea levels have been rising for the last 10 thousand years, since the current interglacial or warm period began, at rates of increase much more rapid than the rates of today. And temperature has been increasing in the modern era since 1850, well before AGW is supposed to have begun.

This is the point about statistics; they are only as good as the information or data: the raw numbers. “Cherry picking” a section of data is not the only way of corrupting a statistical analysis; omitting or changing the data can do it as well. For instance Lewandowsky says “the Arctic icecap has shrunk by an area roughly equivalent to the size of Western Australia since 1980”. It sounds bad doesn’t it? It must be AGW. But this is the statistical technique of omission. What the Professor has not mentioned is that the Antarctic has increased in size since 1980 by an area roughly equivalent to two Western Australias. So, overall ice levels have increased.

Lewandowsky used two graphs to prove that the full range of data will reveal the truth and allow people to so readily see the trend that they can predict the future. The two graphs show identical data but with different headings; one an imaginary share price and the other the official temperature record of the IPCC, NASA GISS.

Even if we accept the NASA GISS temperature record as accurate the important issue is whether CO2 caused the trend. CO2 alone can’t have. CO2 has been increasing during the 20th Century at a constant rate but the temperature anomalies show many periods with cooling. Is it “cherry-picking” to focus on these cool periods?

No.  And for two reasons. Firstly, some of the cooler periods are longer than 30 years and so represent a climate period. It is legitimate to regard a cooler period as a contradiction to AGW and that some other factor is affecting the climate.

Secondly, Lewandowsky has not considered that there may be a better statistical explanation for the temperature record; choosing an inferior explanation is hard to justify. In fact there is a better explanation than CO2.

The better explanation is the Sun. One measure of the Sun’s influence on the Earth’s climate is called the Total Solar Irradiance [TSI]. TSI is a measure of the absolute intensity of solar radiation, integrated over the entire solar irradiance spectrum incident on the Earth’s atmosphere, that is, the sunlight reaching the atmosphere. Proxies of TSI such as sunspots go as far back as 1600. Figure 6.5 of the last IPCC report, AR4, shows the derived variations in TSI over this period according to a number of studies.

How can a comparison of whether TSI is a better explanation than AGW for the temperature anomalies of NASA GISS be done?

It can be done through statistics. Dr Jeffrey Glassman has compared the correlation between TSI and the temperature record over the 20th Century and found a 90% correlation. By comparison meteorologist Joseph D’Aleo calculates a statistical correlation between CO2 and temperature of only 42%.

Both the science of the Sun and AGW are supposedly well established yet the amount of money being invested in AGW is vastly greater than that being spent researching the Sun with less than half the statistical justification. This may be good business but it is not good science.

Lewandowsky says that for statistics to be effective one should use “All the data, for the entire globe, and for all available years.”

But Lewandowsky has not met his own criteria of “All the data”. The NASA GISS record is NOT the complete temperature record of AGW. The complete record is much longer.

Take Michael Mann’s hockey-stick.  The hockey-stick is a 2000 year temperature record based on dendro-climatic or tree-ring data. The hockey-stick purports to show an even temperature until the 20th Century when temperature increases at the same time as CO2.

 We have already seen that TSI is a better statistical explanation for the 20th Century but what is the best explanation the rest of the 2000 years?

The best explanation is not CO2. A new paper which was published with the honour of occupying the entire edition of a major research journal, The Annals of Applied Statistics, shows this. The paper is by two expert statisticians, Blakeley McShane and Abraham Wyner, who show the hockey-stick is based on flawed statistics and the Medieval Warm Period [MWP] was as warm and probably warmer than today.

In the spirit of Lewandowsky’s study we showed his graphs to David Stockwell’s school-age daughters who also thought the trend would be up. However, when the girls were shown a 2000 year temperature record consistent with McShane and Wyner’s analysis, they extended the graph downwards. The conclusion? Perception of trend direction depends on the duration examined.

More importantly, when asked if this was a good way to predict the future global temperature of the planet they said “Of course not!” Smart girls.

McShane and Wyner’s study is a major contradiction to AGW. Real data, and a variety of statistical methods, including those relied on by AGW proponents, fail to show anything unusual about the present temperature; and that includes Lewandowsky’s record extremes which the IPCC has shown to have occurred nine times over the last 1000 years.

With the past and the present statistically defeated for AGW what can AGW do? As Lewandowsky shows, like any fortune teller, it looks to the future where, statistically, anything is possible.

Predictions are the stock in trade of AGW.  All the AGW experts have used statistics to tell us what the future climate will be. The results have been statistically improbable in that they have been wrong at both the short term and the long term. For instance, in the short term the MET, England’s national weather service, has predicted mild winters from 2008; the winters have been some of the coldest in the last century. In 2005 the MET predicted a cold winter; it was mild.

In Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology [BoM] and CSIRO have predicted on the basis of climate model projections that the severity and intensity of droughts will double by 2050. David Stockwell has published a peer-reviewed statistical comparison of their models with the observations, which shows droughts decreasing over the last century, while the models showed droughts increasing last century.  The claim of an increasing drought trend in Australia was based on invalid model simulations. This is a classic case of the statistical method of garbage in, garbage out.

In 2007, CSIRO and BoM scientists Power and Smith published a paper claiming that due to increasing greenhouse gasses the Southern Oscillation Index [SOI] has shifted to a permanently lower level. This echoed a claim by NASA scientist Jim Hansen that one of the consequences of AGW might be permanent El Niño (hot, dry) conditions, leading to persistent droughts in Australia. However in a 2008 paper Professor Neville Nicholls showed that the change in the SOI was not statistically significant and the apparent decrease was largely due to a run of El Niño events during the late part of the 20th Century.

The recent strong La Niña (cool, wet) and high SOI conditions contributing to flooding in Australia has shown Nicholls’ statistical analysis is correct. Despite comments by prominent AGW scientists like David Karoly, Ian Lowe and Tim Flannery these are entirely natural conditions; the flood records for Queensland show that in the past, before AGW began, there were bigger and regular floods. As Professor Stewart Franks notes natural variability is creating the weather not AGW.

Lewandowsky in his study has gone to the public, for vindication. One can only hope his study instructions were not as forthcoming as the condemnation in his article of the “damn liars” who “deny climate science”.

The general public is the ultimate arbiter and that is as it should be in a democracy. Science and statistics are the handmaidens of public decision making and they should be transparent and honest, “crystal clear” as Lewandowsky says. If they aren’t then the numbers will not stack up.

The numbers of AGW don’t stack up and Lewandowsky’s test subjects will be left to decide whether lies, damned lies OR statistics best describes AGW.

“There is clear evidence that our climate is changing, largely due to anthropogenic greenhouse gases.  The Fourth Assessment Report, produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007, states that global warming is ‘unequivocal’ and ‘most of the observed increase in globally-averaged temperatures since the mid-20th Century is very likely due to the observed increase in greenhouse gas concentrations’.

There are multiple lines of evidence in the report showing that the earth’s climate system is warming.  These include increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.  The report represents the international consensus on climate change science in literature that has been extensively peer-reviewed and published in scientific journals.  The report can be found at: www.ipcc.ch/ .

These IPCC conclusions have been further supported by recent reports that provide updated assessments of climate change science.  The Australian Academy of Science published ‘The Science of Climate Change: Questions and Answers’ in August 2010, explaining how human activities are influencing climate, and providing an overview of the present state of climate change science.  The report can be found online at:  www.science.org.au/reports/ClimateChange2010-highres.pdf

In addition, the US National Academy of Sciences released the report ‘Advancing the Science of Climate Change’ in May 2010, which concludes that “Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for—and in many cases is already affecting – a broad range of human and natural systems”.   It is available at: http//americasclimatechoices.org/panelscience.shtml .

In September 2010 The Royal Society (UK) released ‘Climate Change: A summary of the science’, which concludes that, “There is strong evidence that changes in greenhouse gas concentrations due to human activity are the dominant cause of the global warming that has taken place over the last half century.”

In March 2010 Australia’s premier climate research agencies, the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, produced a snapshot of Australia’s climate over the past 100 years, available at: http://csiro.au/resources/StateoftheClimate.html .  The snapshot notes that all of Australia has experienced warming over the past 50 years with the mean temperature rising by 0.7C since 1960.

[You claim] that 97 percent of the scientific community does not support the theory of climate change science.  Recent research (published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science) has found that 97-98 per cent of the most actively publishing climate researchers support the tenets of climate change as outlined by the IPCC 2007 Fourth Assessment report.  The research also found that the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers who are unconvinced of human induced climate change is substantially below that of those who support the IPCC.

The robustness of climate change science is underpinned by the peer review process.  Peer review is the process of allowing science to be reviewed prior to its acceptance for publication by peers in the field who judge the competence, significance and originality of the research.  These scientists then challenge or support these results with peer-reviewed articles of their own and over time a consensus builds around the observations that explain the science most successfully.   Without a peer review system publication of research findings would be arbitrary and more easily influenced by personal, social or political agendas.

The consensus within the mainstream science community is that climate change is real, currently being observed and will have significant future impacts if no action is taken to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

Thank you for bringing [your] concerns to my attention.

Yours sincerely, Greg Combet

[End of letter sent to one of Mr Combet’s skeptical constitutents on November 19, 2010]  

Anthony Cox, Secretary of the Climate Sceptics Party, penned the following response:

“Combet has written a superficially clever letter. It justifies by exclusion; the mechanisms of exclusion are authority and consensus; validity is thus defined by designation from above and from ‘below’ by group acceptance of the authoritative pronouncements. This is a closed loop with each part of the loop vindicating the other; the loop is an attempt to create a priori knowledge by reliance on the authoritative source and the group acceptance. People who do not accept the authority or who are not part of the group acceptance have no validity and are at best ignorant of the knowledge of the ‘loop’.

The ‘loop’ is profoundly unscientific because it ignores Richard Feynman’s maxim of scientific proof:

The exception proves that the rule is wrong. That is the principle of science. If there is an exception to any rule, and if it can be proved by observation, that rule is wrong.

As I will show each of Combet’s examples of authority and consensus are contradicted by observed exceptions and his justification for the government’s measures to combat AGW is therefore flawed.

Paragraphs 2 and 3 of the letter refer to the ultimate source of authority, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPPC] and its 4th report, AR4. There are 2 key points from AR4 relied upon by Combet. The first is the standard of certainty of the IPPC’s conclusions about AGW: that “most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid 20thCentury is very likely due to the observed increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.”

The IPPC’s standards of certainty were recently audited and found deficient by the InterAcademy of Science [IAC]. The IAC found that these standards were inappropriate and exaggerated. In an article co-authored by David Stockwell and myself the implications of the IAC’s findings were examined:
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/29880.html

The salient point about the IAC’s findings is that if the IPPC’s standards of certainty are wrong then that means the scientific basis of those standards is problematic: if “mid-20th Century” warming is NOT “very likely” due to “the observed increase in greenhouse gas concentrations” then the basis of AGW is compromised.

The IAC is an internationally recognised source of scientific expertise. For Combet to ignore its findings shows that he is either getting bad advice or ignoring good.

Combet’s second IPPC key point is his assertion that AR4 uses “climate change literature that has been extensively peer-reviewed and published in scientific journals”. Combet also reiterates the prominence of the peer review system in creating the “robustness” of the “climate change science” in the second last paragraph of his letter. His reliance on the peer review system generally and in particular its use in AR4 is ill-informed. For instance, the science sources in AR4 have been audited:
http://hro001.wordpress.com/2010/04/14/uns-climate-bible-gets-21-fs-on-report-card/

The audit found that 21 of AR4’s 44 chapters had 59% or less of their official sources non peer-reviewed; in many of those instances organisations such as Greenpeace or the WWF were the source. Overall no chapter of AR4 had their scientific sources entirely peer-reviewed and the high concentration of references from groups with a green ideology means that the scientific credibility of AR4 was severely diminished.

The idea that AR4 represents a consensus of scientific opinion has also been found to be flawed. In the crucial chapter 9 of AR4 from which Combet extracts his first key point that “mid-20th Century” warming is “very likely” due to “the observed increase in greenhouse gas concentrations” the number of contributing scientists is crucial. Claims of up to 2500 scientists supporting this statement have been made. A detailed analysis of these claims has been made by Tom Harris and John McLean:
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7553&page=0

[A more detailed analysis by John McLean is here:http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/McLean_IPCC_bias.pdf]

Harris and McLean note that only 5 independent scientific reviewers contributed to the vital chapter 9.

Dr’s Hulme and Mahoney from the University of East Anglia also reject the idea of a mass consensus supporting AGW, describing any such claim as disingenuous:
http://www.probeinternational.org/Hulme-Mahony-PiPG%5B1%5D.pdf

The Hulme and Mahoney disavowal was particularly appropriate since the e-mail scandal was based on the CRU unit at East Anglia. The e-mails demonstrate that the peer-review system extolled by Combet is a deeply flawed system with active and hostile interference of scientific dissent by prominent pro-AGW scientists. A full discussion of the efforts to censor this dissent is in Dr John Costella’s review of the e-mails:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/climategate_analysis.pdf

Combet in his 4th paragraph claims that other reports support AR4. He refers to the Australian Academy of Science [ACS] August 2010 report. The report is well credentialed with the usual who’s who of Australian AGW involved, David Karoly, Matthew England, Michael Bird, Mike Raupach, Steven Sherwood and Kurt Lambeck doing the introduction. Despite this blue blood of AGW science the first information page features striking errors:
http://www.science.org.au/reports/climatechange2010.pdf

Box 1 for instance asserts:
“However, evidence going back up to 20 centuries does not show changes in global temperature resembling those that have taken place in the last 100 years1-3”

The references for this are of course Briffa and Mann. This is reprehensible. The recent McShane and Wyner paper has comprehensively contradicted the Mann and Briffa hockey sticks:
http://noconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/aoas1001-014r2a0.pdf

Nor is there any mention of the Wegman report which revealed the deep flaws in Mann’s study and the controversy about Mann’s data and methodology. These are egregious oversights.

The errors continue with a reference to Arrhenius’s experiment:
“The response of the climate system to human causation was foreseen by scientists more than a century ago 4”

Arrhenius was a genuine scientist, but his so called proof of the influence of “carbonic acid” or CO2 was wrong in several profound ways. Firstly, he confused radiative loss with convective loss because he believed the glass container was impermeable to radiation. Arrhenius also did not understand that CO2 did not transmit radiation but in fact absorbs and reemits it for no net gain. Arrhenius’s experiment to test CO2’s heating properties used radiation limited to 9.7 microns, which is the wavelength at which water vapour is active, and at 100°C; he was unaware that CO2’s active thermal spectrum is at 14.77 microns and that radiation at such temperature is not representative of Earth’s radiative spectrum.

This mistake with Arrhenius is compounded with a further error by ACS’s report in Box 2; there it is declared that water vapour is responsible for about ½ of the greenhouse effect. This is a basic mistake and contradicts the research and conclusions of premier climate scientists.

Ramanathan and Coakley, in their 1978 research, show that water vapour has 2 ½ times the greenhouse effect that CO2 has. Their results show the relative greenhouse values of the greenhouse gases by the ‘simple’ technique of measuring the variation in radiation leaving the Earth when the various gases are removed:
http://scienceofdoom.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/ramanathan-coakley-1978-role-of-co2.png

As can be seen if water vapor is taken out there is a 25% increase in the radiation. And if we take out CO2 it is a 9% effect. Since the greenhouse effect of the other gases is negligible water vapor is not ½ of the greenhouse effect but nearly 75%. Professor Lindzen puts the greenhouse effect of water vapor and clouds at 98%:
http://eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/153_Regulation.pdf

The issue of water vapour is absolutely essential to AGW. The ACS shows this in Figure 1.1 with feedbacks from increasing water vapor amplifying the initial warming from CO2. This problematic feedback has been seriously challenged by a recent paper written by one of Australia’s and the world’s leading climate scientists, Garth Paltridge. Paltridge’s paper is based on thousands of radiosonde measurements of water vapour taken since 1958 by NOAA. Paltridge found water vapour had declined at mid to high atmospheric levels:
http://www.theclimatescam.se/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/paltridgearkingpook.pdf

AGW has hit back at Paltridge in the form a new Dessler paper which contradicts Paltridge’s findings:
http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/Dessler2008b.pdf

Paltridge’s reply to Dessler and an analysis of Dessler’s paper has been done by Jo Nova:
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/11/dessler-2010-how-to-call-vast-amounts-of-data-spurious/comment-page-1/#comment-125477

There are then, two crucial aspects of the Paltridge/Dessler debate which have been ignored by the ACS report. The first and most obvious is that there is a debate. There is no mention in the ACS report about the basic contradiction between Dessler and Paltridge.

The second aspect is that there has been recent research which tends to support Paltridge. If Dessler is right and more water vapour is occurring at the mid levels of the atmosphere then this would support a fundamental prediction of AGW, the Tropical Hot Spot [THS]. AGW says that with CO2 induced warming extra water will be evaporated, especially in the Tropics, with a rapid warming produced in the mid levels of the atmosphere due to the presence of the extra water vapour [see Figure 9.1(c) AR4]. This would create a THS.

Whether a THS exists or not has been subject to intense debate; this debate now seems to have resolved against the THS with the publication of a paper by McKitrick, McIntyre and Herman:
http://rossmckitrick.weebly.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/mmh_asl2010.pdf

McKitrick et al show that the models are wrong and that there has been no temperature increase consistent with a THS. This is a groundbreaking paper published in a top climate science journal but the ACS has not referred to it. Not only does McKitrick’s paper remove one of the tenets of AGW but it gives support to a strong argument against another tenet in the form of Paltridge’s work.

Combet then refers in his 5th paragraph to the US National Academy of Sciences. This report is a farrago and a source for the erroneous AGW claim that the indices of AGW are worsening.

This is readily contradicted by a cursory examination of the NOAA report issued a month later. The NOAA report examines 7 indicators of AGW and presents them graphically. Six of the indicators show decreases since either 1998 or 2003 while the 7th indicator, sea levels, shows a declining rate of increase since 2003:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2010/pr20100728.html

Despite this spokespersons for Combet and indeed Combet himself continue to claim that AGW is worsening. Yet the evidence is plain that this is not true.

In his 6th paragraph Combet refers to The Royal Society report. This report has been strongly critiqued by Dr Goklany:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/01/the-royal-society-still-embarrassing-science/

As Dr Goklany notes The Royal Society report basically relies on IPCC conclusions without even referring to some of the provisos contained in AR4. In short it is a “me too” charade.
Combet completes his list of supporting reports with reference to CSIRO and BoM’s State of the Climate report [SOC]. Combet says:
“The snapshot notes that all of Australia has experienced warming over the past 50 years with the mean temperature rising by 0.7C since 1960.”

This is a misrepresentation. In an exhaustive analysis Ken Stewart shows that all temperature records in Australia have been adjusted upwards by as much as 0.4C:
http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2010/05/12/the-australian-temperature-record-part-1-queensland/

For a summary of this analysis see http://joannenova.com.au/2010/09/australian-temperatures-in-cities-adjusted-up-by-70/

Many of the particular site locations which are used to calculate state and national records have shown, in their raw, unadjusted data, declines in temperature over the 20thC.
Basically the SOC has not used all the data at its disposal, which in climate science terms, means they have cherry-picked data to get their results. This is particularly obvious with the SOC pronouncements about rainfall declining in Australia during the 20thC which was based on data only from 1960! David Stockwell examines the faults with the SOC here:
http://landshape.org/images/StockwellCSP.ppt.pdf

Combet winds up his letter with a reference in the 3rd last paragraph to “recent research” finding “that 97-98 per cent of the most actively publishing researchers support the tenets of climate change as outlined” by AR4 and have more “relative climate expertise and scientific prominence” than sceptics. This is a dreadful statement. It relies on this paper by Anderegg, Prall, Harold and Schneider:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.full.pdf+html

At one level Schneider’s ‘result’ is inevitable for reasons described by Stockwell and Cox [ibid] in response to a demand by Clive Hamilton to restrict AGW sceptics’ access to publication at the ABC to a ratio of 39:1 in favour of pro-AGW articles:
“Hamilton’s ratio is based on a consensus-proving, peer reviewed paper co-authored by Stephen Schneider. This paper lines up scientists into good and bad or “climate deniers”. The first great flaw with this paper and the consensus generally is that it ignores the vastly disproportionate funding of science which is predicated on AGW being real compared with the pittance provided to sceptics. Educational institutions, government departments and official science bodies like the EPA, IPCC and CSIRO have concentrated their research, publications and training on the basis AGW is real. AGW has become the Zeitgeist and the consensus idea is part of the truth creation of that prevailing mood rather than a reflection of scientific validity which is independent of social context”

More generally, however, the consensus and authority arguments are the antithesis of scientific endeavour as enunciated by Richard Feynman. The system which Combet relies on to provide his authority and consensus is riven with faults and corruption; it is undermining the integrity of science. It will take a brave man to question the direction of the AGW debate.

Combet, who lives by the ocean, is obviously not such a man.

*********
First published at the Climate Sceptic’s blogspot, republished here with permission: http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com/2011/01/youre-so-wrong-wrong-greg-youre-so.html

Clean coal is the process of trapping carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal to prevent those emissions from entering the atmosphere. Local expert John Harborne, in a recent article, notes that the energy cost of trapping the emissions is almost equal to the energy produced from burning the coal and the area required to store the trapped emissions exceeds the area of the mined coal. 

For its part the Federal government has introduced the Renewable Energy Target [RET] to combat the alleged problem of AGW. The RET mandates that twenty per cent of base-load energy must come from renewable energy [RE] by 2020. The Greens support this and with the fallacy of clean coal now revealed are demanding that all base-load energy come from RE.  

The two main types of RE are solar and wind power. According to Professor Gary Willgoose the main form of solar power will be private residence solar panels. This is not a source of base-load power but the cost of these panels will impact on base-load power costs. They will do so because the cost of the panels will determine the cost of carbon emissions. A recent article by journalist Mark Davis shows that each solar panel will save twenty six tons of carbon dioxide emissions over 20 years at a net cost of $9000. This works out at $350 per ton. With the amount of carbon dioxide emissions being limited by government legislation this means the price of power from carbon emitting sources will have to increase by $350 per ton of emissions to enable the cost of the panels to be competitive. This will be achieved either by direct pricing to consumers or through subsidies paid by tax-payers.

In addition, most of the solar panels are imported from China. China is still expanding its fossil fuel energy network so coal power from Australia will be used to build the Chinese solar panels. There will therefore be no net saving of carbon dioxide emissions from the greater use of solar panels in Australia.

Wind power is also unlikely to be able to supply base-load power. Wind power is intermittent and to replace the twenty per cent or six mega watt of coal power with RE will necessitate the construction of twenty mega watt of wind capacity. Over twelve years this will mean two wind towers per day will have to be built at a cost of $34 billion. But even with this large oversupply of potential wind power there will be times when no power can be supplied by wind. Two studies by Dr Tom Quirk and Peter Lang showed that power from where the wind is blowing cannot be transferred to wind-free areas because wind-free conditions are usually simultaneously widespread over most areas of Australia.

The position of the Greens is that computer modeling shows that the construction of RE will be an economic and employment bonanza. But we do not have to rely on modeling to see whether this is true. Over the last decade many other countries have invested in RE. Spain and Germany have both invested in solar power and now have high unemployment and national debt. Both countries are continuing to invest in fossil fuels and Germany in particular is investing in nuclear power. A similar situation exists in Denmark which had invested heavily in wind power.

In fact nuclear power is the only feasible and proven alternative to fossil fuels. France has had the bulk of it power from nuclear for over thirty years and has the cheapest power costs in Europe. Nuclear power is cheaper than any other power source except coal and natural gas. The fourth generation Fast Integral Reactors are ninety nine percent efficient and produce small amounts of low radioactive, non-weapon grade waste. Fifth generation reactors will be ninety nine point nine per cent efficient and run on thorium as well as uranium. The efficiency of this power would mean that Australia’s resources of thorium and uranium could provide base-load power to the world for centuries.

The coal industry must either dispute the science of AGW or concede that the continued use of coal will acerbate AGW.  The Greens and Government must abandon their opposition to nuclear power. By limiting RE to solar and wind and excluding nuclear, the government and the Greens will be condemning Australia to a drastically reduced standard of living and far less prosperous future.

Cohenite lives in Newscastle.

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Notes and Links

Cartoon by Nicholson from “The Australian” newspaper: www.nicholsoncartoons.com.au .

The John Harborne link is;

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8408

The Mark Davis link is;

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/energy-smart/touched-by-sun-stroke-20090605-byim.html

The Tom Quirk article is here;

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8559&page=0

The Peter Lang article is here;

http://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/peter-lang-wind-power.pdf

A discussion of the Baseload Fallacy in respect of wind power by Peter Lang is here;

http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/08/13/wind-and-carbon-emissions-peter-lang-responds/

Professor Gary Willgooses’s details are here;

http://www.newcastle.edu.au/school-old/engineering/our_staff/profiles/willgoose_garry.html

Professor Willgoose made his comments about solar panels in an ABC interview on the 19/8/09 morning session in Newcastle.

1. The world is warming

The first conclusion is that the world has been warming since 1850. This is generally correct but what Professor Raupach et al. don’t mention is the warming follows a particularly cold period called the Little Ice Age [LIA] which ended in 1850. The correlation of a decline in solar activity with the LIA is well established with various measures of solar activity showing an increase at the same time as the world warmed after 1850.

Professor Raupach et al. say that most of the warming since 1850 has happened since 1950. This is incorrect. The temperature data from both the official English agency, HADCRUT, and the land-based American temperature agency, NASAGISS, show an increase in temperature from 1910 to 1944 which is equivalent to the temperature increase from 1976 to 1998.

It is also problematic whether the temperature increase from 1976 onwards can be attributed to AGW. Two recent studies by Australian scientists throw doubt on AGW being a cause. The first is by John McLean, Christopher de Freitas and Robert Carter. They show that over the last 50 years from 1958 to 2008 the majority of the temperature trends, both warming and cooling, are from natural variation in the form of the Southern Oscillation Index which is a proxy for El Nino and La Nina climate patterns.

The second study is by David Stockwell. Dr Stockwell shows that the increase in temperature over the twentieth century occurred in the short interval between 1976 and 1978 and was due to the transition from a cool, La Nina dominated period called a negative Pacific Decadal Oscillation [PDO] to a warm, El Nino period called a positive PDO. Dr Stockwell also found a probable reverse transition in 1998 after which time world temperatures have declined consistent with the new negative PDO

2. Sea levels are rising

Professor Raupach et al. also refer to rising sea levels and increasing ocean heat content [OHC] as confirmation of temperature increase. In the recent reply by Senator Wong to Senator Fielding’s questions about temperature, Professor Steffen, a co-author of the article with Professor Raupach, stated that the increase in sea level rise and OHC was accelerating. This is incorrect. The sea level has been measured accurately by satellite since 1992. The satellite data shows a slight annual increase. Since 2005 this rate of increase has declined. This is simply shown by averaging the full data history and then showing how much each annual increase is above that average, or anomalous.

Recent studies by Ishii and Kimoto, Domigues, Willis and Loehle all show a decline in OHC since 2003. Even the official measurement from the National Oceanographic Data Center [NODC] shows no rise since 2003. In 2003 the more accurate measuring devices called ARGO were introduced replacing the less accurate ones.

None of the indices, atmospheric temperature, sea-level increase and rising OHC, support the theory of AGW. This means the increase in carbon dioxide during the twentieth century cannot be said to be the dominant cause of the warming which has occurred.

3. Tipping points

The third conclusion and prediction that “business as usual”, unchecked AGW will lead to temperature increases of up to six degrees and “climate tipping points” must be regarded as unsubstantiated alarmism, unsupported by any climate science, since it is well established that every extra carbon dioxide molecule has much less effect on temperature. Such computer based predictions have already been tested and found wanting. In his study Professor D. Koutsoyiannis and colleagues found that the IPPC’s computer predictions in its first report about future climate from 1990 to 2008 had a success rate of only one in eight, or about twelve per cent. This is not much better than random.
4. Warming is irreversible

The article’s fourth conclusion, that heating cannot be reversed for many centuries, is also problematic because OHC is already declining and if there is no increase in OHC there is nothing to sustain the predicted future heating.

Furthermore, for Professor Raupach and his co-authors to begin by claiming there is an overwhelming consensus of thousands of scientists who support the theory of anthropogenic global warming [AGW] is pure politics. Even if this were true it does not prove the science supporting AGW is valid. It only requires one fundamental disproof of a scientific theory for that theory to be invalidated.

In conclusion, the science is not settled and contrary to the claims of Professor Raupach et al. the available evidence does not support the theory of AGW.

Cohenite lives in Newcastle, Australia

**************

Notes and Links

Climate change poised to feed on itself, by Michael Raupach and John Church, CSIRO; David Griggs, Amanda Lynch and Neville Nicholls, Monash University; Nathan Bindoff, Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-operative Research Centre; Matthew England and Andy Pitman, University of NSW; Ann Henderson-Sellers and Lesley Hughes, Macquarie University; Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, University of Queensland; Roger Jones, Victoria University; David Karoly, University of Melbourne; and Tony McMichael and Will Steffen, Australian National University.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/climate-change-poised-to-feed-on-itself-20090731-e4gi.html?page=-1 
The Sydney Morning Herald
August 1, 2009
 
Read more from Cohenite here: http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/author/cohenite/

is based on an ideological animosity towards material prosperity; people like Australia’s Clive Hamilton have been critiquing materialism for some time; hatred of capitalism follows because it is the best vehicle for producing material prosperity; since capitalism is based on private ownership of property and means of production this explains the merging of ecotism and socialism; with centralised, non-individual economic control lip service can be given to preserving nature; but as I have shown in ‘The 10 Worst Man-Made Disasters’, the worst examples of environmental despoilation have been in non-capitalistic societies.

Still, the defining characteristic of the green is misanthropy; it is ridiculous for any green supporter to claim that it is only fringe fanatics who espouse drastic reductions in human population, or even eradication; such people as John Holdren, James Lovelock and Gus Speth are mainstream greens and have clearly enunciated programs for reducing population. The irony is of course that material prosperity is the best check on population as most Western nations show.

Prosperity is also the best for nature as Bjorn Lomborg shows but there comes a point when it has to be said that the interests of humanity diverge from the idea of pristine nature. The idea of pristine nature is terribly elitist and decadent; only a person nurtured by an advanced, unnatural culture could develop a non-utilitarian aesthetic about nature which dominates survival exigencies; how could it be otherwise; if one was living the sustainable life based on natural dictates one would be too busy doing what had to be done to survive to bother about that tree or that koala. This aspect of green ideology is both hypocritical and unrealistic; it is also as good an example of cognitive dissonance as a human could produce.

Cohenite lives in Newcastle, Australia

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This series ‘Defining the Greens’ been archived here: http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/tag/philosophy/

A series on ‘What is Wilderness?’ is here: http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/tag/wilderness/

Read more from Cohenite here, including ‘The 10 Worst Man-Made Disasters’: http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/author/cohenite/

The picture was taken yesterday at Agnus Water, Central Queensland, by Jennifer Marohasy. Click on the image for a larger and better view.

Jay Leno has a good response to this;
“According to a new U.N. report, the global warming outlook is much worse than originally predicted. Which is pretty bad when they originally predicted it would destroy the planet.”

The question is, is there any evidence to support the worsening D&G?

Professor Chris Field was recently reported on the ABC doing D&G about an increase in fossil fuel emissions, but this quickly died when the penny dropped that the main increase in emissions was coming from China and India, not to mention the fact that temperature was declining concurrently.

With increased emissions insufficient to sustain the D&G could the peer-reviewed literature provide justification? Peer-review is the life-blood of AGW and lo-and-behold it was apparent that the D&G was backed up by several new and recycled papers. 10 of these papers which offer ‘evidence’ for the D&G are discussed. All of them exhibit the usual defects of pro-AGW papers; reliance on modeling regardless of contradictory or non-existent ‘real-world’ data.

1. Warming of the Antarctic ice-sheet surface since the 1957 International Geophysical Year
Eric J. Steig et al [including Michael Mann].

http://holocene.meteo.psu.edu/shared/articles/SteigetalNature09.pdf

This paper is an instant classic and template for future virtual science projects. Forget the prior AGW orthodoxy of a cooling Antarctic; forget the latest British Antarctic Survey report showing cooling due to ozone depletion [which is no longer declining]; forget cooling in the satellite data and the AWSs and manned stations; forget the geological distinction between the Western Antarctic Peninsula [WAP] and the rest of Antarctica; forget the volcanoes; forget the Thomas, Marshall, McConnell [2008] paper which shows snow cover in the WAP doubling since 1850; forget the expanding sea-ice and ice cover over 95% of Antarctica. The real problem with Steig et al is Mann and PCA [RegEM]; insufficient principle components and inappropriate weighting of those used. The same old methods, the same old tricks, the same old faux reality.

2. Water vapor climate feedback inferred from climate fluctuations, 2003 – 2008.
A.E. Dessler, Z. Zhang, P. Yang
http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/Dessler2008b.pdf

Dessler et al say specific humidity, “q” is increasing as a factor of increased temperature, “Ta”, and the increased “q”, is a “strongly positive” feedback. There are only 2 problems; NOAA and NCEP data show declining “q” at mid and high altitudes; secondly, increased “q” at the surface is most likely not even a feedback but a cause of temperature [Spencer and Braswell]. Then there is the problem of decreased pan evaporation [Roderick et al, 2007] which means the increased “q” must come from the oceans. Sea surface temperature has been neutral or declining for almost 2 years; http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/sst_oct_nov_dec.jpg

3. An analysis of the independence of clear-sky top-of-atmosphere outgoing longwave radiation on atmospheric temperature and water vapor.
A.E. Dessler, P. Yang, J. Lee, J. Solbrig, Z. Zhang, K. Minchswaner

http://gesa.tamu.edu/people/faculty/dessler/Dessler2008.pdf

Dessler has a second shot at D&G and he concludes that the surface temperature, Ts, atmospheric temperature, Ta, and “q” combine, primarily in the tropics, to decrease outgoing long-wave radiation [OLR]. Dessler calls this the “super greenhouse effect”. Unfortunately neither “q” or Ts or Ta are increasing. Also the decrease in OLR is problematic with Professor Lindzen noting there has been an increase in OLR;

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/30/lindzen-on-negative-climate-feedback/

This elegant synopsis by Professor Lindzen was critiqued by Chris Colose. Too bad Chris didn’t read p33 of this;

Richard Lindzen, Beyond Models-using physics to assess climate sensitivity, attribution, and the relevance of both to alarm.

http://portaldata.colgate.edu/imagegallerywww/3503/ImageGallery/LindzenLectureBeyondModels.pdf

We will just have to wait for the ‘super-doper greenhouse effect’.

4. How declining aerosols and rising greenhouse gases forced rapid warming in Europe since the 1980s
Rolf Philipona, Klaus Behrens, Christian Ruckstuhl

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008GL036350.shtml

Prolific Professor Philipona is a leading exponent of back-radiation and consequent temperature and humidity effects. Here he argues the rapid increase in temperature since 1980 is due to aerosol dimming ceasing, with a consequent increase in short-wave forcing. Some problems; the study covers Switzerland and a bit of Northern Germany, an area about the size of Al Gore’s backyard. Aerosols are assumed to have only a cooling effect and humidity only a warming effect; the temperature trends from the 25 Switzerland and 8 German sites have anomaly ranges from 0.56C and 0.87C respectively yet there is no consideration of UHI influence; long-wave down radiation [LDR] is derived from absolute humidity, Uabs, yet short-wave net radiation cloud effects are equated with LDR cloud effects [Table 1]; how can the top and bottom of clouds be equivalent? Read Clausius and Heinz Thieme instead.

5. Consistency of modeled and observed temperature trends in the tropical troposphere.
Santer, B.D., et al [including G.A. Schmidt and S.C. {wind-shear} Sherwood]

http://www.realclimate.org/docs/santer_etal_IJoC_08_fact_sheet.pdf

This paper is one of the great obfuscations from a champion cherry-picker. Fig 9.1[c], AR4, p675, unambiguously predicts a tropical hot spot [THS] from increased ACO2 warming of the surface. Santer et al finds it using a “global” weighting function, T2lt, derived from a synthetic [sic] base, T2, with an error margin of 0.0 – 0.5CPD, which means no warming at all would still produce a THS. A crescendo of Santer support followed based on increased humidity [not happening], changes in the moist adiabat and a rising tropopause. The THS is not hotter, it’s taller. This height issue was rebutted by Spencer and Christy’s response to Fu et al. Finally, the non-existent THS was rationalized by Tim Lambert as a signature of surface warming from any source not just ACO2. The only problem with this is an equivalent solar forced THS requires a 2% increase in insolation. Now that’s hot [thanks Birdie].

6. Temperature trends derived from Stratospheric Sounding Unit radiances: The effect of increasing CO2 on the weighting function.
Keith P. Shine, John J. Barnett, William J. Randel

http://acd.ucar.edu/~randel/2007GL032218.pdf

The other side of the coin to a THS is a cooling Stratosphere. Keith Shine and the lads claim to have found it, again riding on the well-worn back of model corrections of incorrect data. After corrections to the CO2 weighting function Keith finds Stratospheric temperature trends ranging from – 0.4K decade-1 to + 0.4K decade-1. Yep, Keith found nothing.

7. Is the climate warming or cooling?
David R. Easterling, Michael F. Wehner

http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/csi/images/GRL2009_ClimateWarming.pdf

The previous Keenlyside et al effort predicted masking of underlying AGW due to SST driven natural variation. Unfortunately, when the ENSO is removed from temperature trends there is no post 2000 underlying AGW;

http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/10/temperature-trends-and-carbon-dioxide-a-note-from-cohenite/

Easterling and Wehner revisit this trainwreck of an idea to prove that future cooling will still have underlying AGW. Their null hypothesis [NH] really settles the matter. The NH is that there will be an “equal percentage of statistically significant positive and negative trends” [p6]. This is high order virtual reality; the concept of the 100 year flood explains why. Pacific Decadal Oscillation [PDO] climate phases have greater probability of floods during a negative phase during which time [about 30 years] there may be several 1 in 100 year floods. During the positive, El Nino dominated PDO phase there will most likely be no 1 in 100 year flood.

The same principle applies to temperature. Positive PDOs will have increasing temperature trends and vice-versa for negative PDOs. The paper doesn’t consider ENSO at all apart from an admission that it is not modeled well [p6]. Table 1 shows more positive temperature trends in the 20thC. This was due to positive PDO dominance not, as the paper claims, AGW. Still, it’s a great title.

8. Decadal-Scale Temperature Trends in the Southern Hemisphere Ocean.
Sarah T. Gille

http://www-pord.ucsd.edu/~sgille/pub_dir/i1520-0442-21-18-4749.pdf

The issue of ocean warming is crucial for AGW but problematic. Sarah puts her hand up for warming and produces this gem;

“Overall, the results indicate that the Southern Hemisphere ocean has warmed substantially since the 1930s. Some 80% of this warming is concentrated south of 30 degrees S where it is evident at all depths. Observations are also sparsest in this latitude range. Estimates of the exact amount of warming that has occurred therefore depend on the details of the assumptions made about temperature trends in regions where no observations are available” [p4761] Priceless.

9. Role of water vapor feedback on the amplitude of season cycle in the global mean surface air temperature.
Qigang Wu, David J. Karoly, Gerald R. North

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008GL033454.shtml

Speaking of Dr Karoly this little bit of virtual science; Dr K equates seasonal variation in Surface Air Temperature with water vapor feedback “since both are subject to the same feedback process” of downward long-wave radiation. The same problems with Dessler, Philipona and Santer apply. You would be excused in thinking they are reading from the same book.

10. Declining Coral Calcification on the Great Barrier Reef
Glenn De’ath, Janice M. Lough, Katharina E. Fabricius
Science. Volume 323, pp116 – 119; 2 January 2009

http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/01/global-warming-unlikely-reason-for-slow-coral-growth/?cp=all

Coral is one of the ‘Koala Bear’ emotive images of AGW. This study found coral growth from Great Barrier Reef [GBR] samples increased 5.4% between 1900 -1970, but declined 14.2% from 1900 – 2005; the culprit, ACO2. Professor Hoegh-Guidberg started waving his hands and Premier Bligh promised action on the coral and got elected. More salient facts: Dr Alina Szmant noted that studies on coral decline used hydrochloric acid, not CO2, to lower the pH of water, so conclusions about the role of CO2 were premature; John McClean and Warwick Hughes noted there had been no temperature increase from 1982 to the present along the GBR; in fact, in June 2007 record low temperatures caused extensive bleaching of GBR coral; Professor H-G began hand-waving again and the culprit, again, ACO2. The good news is, according to Dr Guillermo Diaz-Pulido, the coral has recovered and expanded; the culprit… Perhaps Dr De’ath’s conclusions from his earlier study, that further data on the “links between environmental change and effects on coral growth” is needed, should have informed this study.

In Conclusion:  There is no evidence in the PR literature that AGW is worsening, or exists for that matter.

The media have seriously let the public down in its presentation of AGW, basically parroting Wong, Rudd, Turnbull, Brown et al, who basically parrot Hansen, Gore and the IPCC. Hopefully, with a political party presenting an alternative viewpoint not only will the media pick up its game and start doing some investigative and transparent reporting about the gross deficiencies of AGW, but, as well, the disparate groups fighting the malaise of AGW will have a banner organization to continue their fight against AGW, and the obscene amounts of money being thrown at it, in a unified fashion.

Given TCS’s arrival it is appropriate to reexamine the flaws and dearth of evidence to support AGW. Unlike “Climate Change”, which is the new, deceitful term used by alarmists, AGW does conform to Popper’s falsification principle; Climate Change is not a scientific theory because it cannot be disproved; the climate is always changing and nothing disproves it. But AGW is promulgated on the basis of definite assumptions; these assumptions can be examined for flaws and defects.

1st flaw: that increases in atmospheric CO2 cause increases in temperature. AR4 states [p666] that a doubling of CO2 will cause a temperature increase of 3C. CO2 increased ~ 30% from 1900 – 2000. According to AGW theory temperature should have increased ~ 1C; temperatures actually increased 0.4C. But this 0.4C does not represent the influence of CO2; a solar forcing [SF] must also be deducted. TAR gives a SF of 0.4C, AR4 a SF of 0.12C. Using AR4 0.28C is left. But the influence of ENSO must also be deducted. Douglass and Christy have calculated an ENSO temperature effect of 0.288C with an R2 correlation of .864. Both of these values are confirmed in other studies. McLean and Quirk give a value to the La Nina/El Nino transition of 1976 of 0.3C [see fig 4 and p4], while Joe D’Aleo attributes an R2 between ENSO and temperature of .85. When the ENSO temperature effect of 0.288C is deducted from 0.28C there is no CO2 effect.

2nd flaw: given the failure of CO2 to be an adequate heating agent AGW created the “Enhanced Greenhouse”[EG] concept [see AR4 FAQ 3.1]. EG allows for natural temperature increases with [anthropogenic] increases in CO2 following the temperature increase and causing an increase in atmospheric water vapor, with the increased water vapor in turn causing extra heating. Indeed CO2 does seem to follow temperature over medium geological time spans;

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7193/fig_tab/nature06949_F2.html

But this ‘following’ relationship neither supports EG or AGW for 3 reasons;
(i) CO2 does not follow temperature in the way predicted by EG. Frank Lanser has shown that for equivalent atmospheric concentrations of CO2 [and presumably vapor] temperature can be both increasing and decreasing;

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/30/co2-temperatures-and-ice-ages/#more-5392

Furthermore, the rates of temperature increase and decrease for equivalent concentrations of CO2 are also different.
(ii) Even if H2O vapor was increased by CO2 [which is contradicted by NOAA data from 1949] Spencer and Braswell have shown that increased H2O is not only not a positive feedback but may not be a feedback at all. That is, it is H2O which affects temperature and CO2, not the other way round.
(iii) Over the short term CO2 doesn’t follow temperature at all;
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/MSUCRUvsCO2.jpg
Nor does it in the long-term;
http://www.junkscience.com/images/paleocarbon.gif

3rd flaw: if the EG is problematic does that mean the basic greenhouse concept is suspect? CO2 and other GHG’s are photoluminescent; they absorb and reemit radiation in the long-wave spectrum. Is this photoluminescent property sufficient to produce the 33C increase above the temperature that a planet such as Earth would have without an atmosphere containing GHG’s? Arthur Smith’s classic piece says it is;

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0802/0802.4324v1.pdf

The 33C greenhouse effect is subject to a logarithmic decline in the photoluminescent effect;

http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/9652/logwarmingillustratedkn7.png

But there are profound contrary views to this; Dr. Heinz Hug’s paper shows that the greenhouse effect of CO2 is maximized at 10 metres with maximum asymptocality at 357 ppm so that further increases in CO2 have no effect on temperature. Gerlich and Tscheuschner, who Smith wrote his paper in response to, argue that there is no greenhouse effect, while Heinz Thieme argues against backradiation, a crucial aspect of both the greenhouse and the EG. Thieme has also argued against the concept of the greenhouse and presented an alternative view about the thermodynamic properties of the atmosphere being consistent with the mass and composition of the atmosphere and consequent atmospheric pressure;

http://www.geocities.com/atmosco2/atmos.htm?200820

Smith has addressed the issue of pressure in his response to the comments on his paper [at 15/10/2008; 12.49pm];

http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/10/proof-of-the-atmospheric-greenhouse-effect-arthur-smith/#comment-66797

Smith compares Earth with Venus and says the GHG’s produce a tropopause which is pushed higher as GHG’s increase. But he misses a couple of crucial points; firstly, there is no evidence the tropopause on Earth is going higher with increased GHG’s; secondly, Venus’s atmosphere warms bottom up with SO2 and H2SO4 from the constant volcanic activity increasing the density and temperature of the atmosphere; on Earth, H2O reduces density by being instrumental to vertical convection which removes from the surface the incoming heat from the sun; Chilingar, Khilyuk and Sorokhtin have confirmed this in their paper;

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15567030701568727

4th flaw: the AGW atmospheric model has no empirical evidence; the AGW atmospheric model is semi-opaque and infinite as described in Spencer Weart’s paper;

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument/

Basically Weart says extra CO2 traps IR in layers which raise the point at which the IR can finally escape from the atmosphere. This process, amongst other things, should produce a Tropical Hot Spot, as predicted by Fig 9.1(c), AR4. Despite much obfuscation and vitriol against sceptics of this prediction, no THS has been found. The most profound critique of the AGW model, however, has been found in Miskolczi’s finite semi-transparent atmospheric model. This model was based on an empirical LBL flux analysis of the atmosphere which showed no Top-of-atmosphere imbalance and no surface to immediate atmosphere discontinuity; both of these characteristics are essential to AGW

5th flaw: AGW asserts that anthropogenic CO2 [ACO2] is both long-lived in the atmosphere and entirely responsible for the increase in atmospheric CO2 [FAQ 2.1, AR4]. The basis for this assumption by AGW that the CO2 produced by human emissions can be distinguished from natural CO2 is the isotopic distinction between different CO2 molecules; fossil fuel burning releases 12C CO2 and this should decrease the proportion of natural 13C isotope in the atmosphere; there are a number of things wrong with this theory:
(i) Delta 13C atmospheric ratios have been historically overestimated;

http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/ESEF3VO2.htm

Professor Segalstad has also shown that natural forms of CO2 have similar isotopic values to fossil fuel emissions and the C12/C13 ratio can therefore be disrupted naturally.
(ii)Dr Steve Short’s work on Cyanobacteria suggests that they may preferentially consume C13 CO2 thus altering the C12/C13 ratio
(ii) With the isotopic distinction problematic the issue of how much natural and ACO2 is entering and remaining in the atmosphere can be looked at. Fig 7.1 of AR4 shows the total of all natural and anthropogenic emissions of CO2;

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter7.pdf

Fig 7.1 shows the total emissions are 218.2Gt; the anthropogenic contribution is 1.6 + 6.4 = 8Gt; which is 3.67%. For ACO2 to be entirely responsible for all CO2 increase none of this 3.67% can be reabsorbed. Table 3 of the US Department of Energy report shows that 98.5% of all emitted CO2 is reabsorbed;

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/FTPROOT/environment/057304.pdf

If 98.5% of CO2 is reabsorbed then 1.5% accumulates. Since ACO2 cannot be distinguished from natural CO2 the amount of ACO2 accumulating and contributing to the increase in CO2 is 3.67% of 1.5% which is 0.055%; a miniscule amount. So, even if CO2 did have a warming effect, as AGW predicts, the anthropogenic contribution to this warming would be negligible.

The TCS website is;

http://www.climatesceptics.com.au/

Join now and have a say in your future.

**************

This is a guest post by Cohenite, who lives in Newcaste, Australia.

The anthropogenic global warming (AGW) paradigm is that interference with nature will inevitably produce disastrous results.

Danish Statistician Bjorn Lomborg is castigated for even suggesting there has been progress in humanity’s living conditions and the destruction of nature to achieve this, on balance has been worthwhile.

AGW does not contemplate any benefit from any compromise or destruction of nature. We are continually informed by AGW advocates that progress using carbon energy sources will lead to “tipping points”, “dangerous heating”, “dangerous climate change” and “irreversible damage to the Earth” through “runaway greenhouse”.

But AGW remains unverified.  As climatologists Demitris Koutsoyiannis, David H. Douglass and John R. Christy have shown the general circulation models (GCM’s) have failed. As well, the atmospheric model of AGW has been refuted by climatologists Ferenc M. Miskolczi, Roy Spencer and William D. Braswell.

Given these failures, AGW maintains traction in three ways:

1. It includes within its brand real environmental problems which have nothing to do with AGW; as such AGW has become a catch-all phrase for every environmental concern, real or imagined.

2. It relies heavily on the precautionary principle, the “what-if” threat which appeals to base fears and guilt.

3. AGW sources its cause in western society, with its materialism, waste and use of unsustainable energy forms as the preferred agents. In this respect AGW is anchored by a critique of western society with that critique mired in green aesthetics and values (see James Lovelock, Clive Hamilton, Maurice Strong, Charles Birch and James Gustave “Gus” Speth).

AGW sceptics acknowledge that man’s progress can cause environmental damage.  But most sceptics recognize there are two standards for measuring this damage. The first is that which is adopted by green values and AGW; this is damage to a pristine natural template (PN) and disruption of an environmental equilibrium. Extreme exponents of this criterion not only critique western lifestyle but the validity of human existence. The second method of measuring this damage is in terms of the welfare of humanity. The criterion for this is what benefits humanity rather than what preserves PN. From this perspective, with population increasing and despite tremendous technological advance (which has kept Thomas Malthus and Paul Ehrlich at bay) sustainability, or a steady state, non-interference with PN, cannot be achieved without an erosion of living standards.

Former Newcastle and now Murdoch University academic and pro-AGW supporter, Glenn Albrecht, said that the only human society remotely sustainable was ancient aboriginal custom. Mega fauna aside, the point is, human progress has been at the expense of PN, and sustainability and PN are 2 sides of the one coin.

There is an ideological lacuna between the two criteria, which this blog post is not concerned with. The purpose of this post is to present ten environmental disasters caused by man which have nothing to do with either AGW or western society. These disasters demonstrate that AGW is a distraction from a proper analysis of those incidents where man disrupts PN. It is only on the basis of an evaluation of real environmental issues such as these 10 that proper decisions and choices about future human intrusion into PN can be made.

1. Communism in the USSR – Chernobyl and Aral Sea etcetera

This was the cause of the greatest and most sustained anthropogenic disruption of PN. As professor Mnatsakanian explains, “Clean air, water, and a pristine environment were considered free goods without value. So polluting them was acceptable”. Certain kings of capitalism were prone to similar sentiments.  Lang Hancock’s infamous statement that you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs comes to mind. But for collective, ideological indifference to PN, corruption of science (Lysenko), sheer human suffering and culmination in the iconic anthropogenic ecological catastrophe, Chernobyl, USSR communism takes the ‘cake’. A visit to the Aral Sea anyone?
Disruption of PN 7, Progress, 0

2. East Germany – Coal Furnaces etcetera

If USSR communism has been humanity’s worst disruption of PN, than East Germany was its pin-up boy. The brown lignite coal furnaces are still going (accounting for 11.6% of all energy in 2007, sustainables were 6.7% with biomass three quarters of that) and East Germany was responsible for the green apocalypse story of the 1960’s-1980’s, acid rain.  This is indeed a heavy price for some gold medals.
Disruption of PN 6, Progress 0

3. Communist China – Air pollution etcetera

The biggest Asian Tiger of them all. Some would say its ecological problems are due to its capitalist tendencies but they would be wrong. China’s accountability is as opaque as USSR communism. 750,000 Chinese die each year due to air pollution demonstrating the stark distinction between real air pollution and CO2 “pollution”.
Disruption of PN 5, Progress, 3

4. The Iraqi Marshes – Drained

After his defeat in Kuwait, Saddam evened a few scores by draining the 9,000 sq km’s of the Southern Marshes, reducing them to 760 sq km. The destruction of such a large body of water had devastating consequences for PN. Since Saddam’s overthrow the marshes have rejuvenated. There is little man can do to PN which is irreversible.
Disruption of PN 4, Progress 0

5. The Kuwaiti Oil Wells – Burned etcetera

Before draining the Southern Marshes Saddam set fire to over 700 Kuwaiti oil fields while simultaneously dumping 10 million barrels of oil into the Gulf. This exceeded the Exxon Valdez spill 20 fold. The consumption of oil by the flames was over one billion barrels for the first seven months. The fields were not extinguished for three years. Probably three billion barrels went up in smoke; about 10% of what the world uses in a year. According to AGW temperature is going up about 0.3C PD or 0.03C per year. Saddam by himself increased the temperature by 0.003C.
Disruption of PN 4, Progress 0

6. Indonesian land-clearing

The Australian Conservation Foundation says the emissions from Indonesian land-clearing are five times Australia’s total emissions. This clearing is occurring because of transmigration and/or for palm oil production destined for biodiesel, and/or timber mainly for Asia pulp and paper, and/or subsistence farming.  The main problem is the method of clearing by burning, which makes Indonesia the world’s third highest carbon emitter.
Disruption of PN 4, Progress 2

7. Amazonian land-clearing

The Amazon is 5.7 million sq km, 75% of the Australian land area. Since 1970, 1/6 of the Amazon has been cleared, mainly for beef, and increasingly for ethanol. Clearing a rainforest to grow ethanol creates a carbon debt 17-420 times the carbon benefit of that ethanol replacing fossil fuels. Ethanol grown on already cleared land has little or no carbon debt. The green dilemma: to clear or not to clear.
Disruption of PN 4, Progress 2

8. DDT

DDT is an iconic example of the clash between the ‘PN and human progress by keeping nature at bay’ dichotomy. It also demonstrates the “Sword of Damocles” aspect of every application of human technology. There are still unresolved questions including: Was DDT losing its efficacy and creating resistant bugs when it was banned; or did banning/reducing DDT use cause more deaths?
Disruption of PN 4, Progress 3.

9. New Guinea

New Guinea is the quintessential PN, second only to the Amazon in extent and variation. A 2009 study will determine whether its glaciers are retreating. Many of its peoples live according to Albrecht’s maxim of sustainability. OkTedt showed how Progress through development of New Guinea’s vast mineral wealth should not be done. Will the Lihir Island resource be a reasonable compromise between PN disruption and Progress?
Disruption of PN 4, Progress 3

10. Bhopal

Bhopal caused over 4000 deaths and half a million casualties due to severe air pollution by MIC gas. India was keen to have western technology. Union Carbide compromised standards to an extent it couldn’t do at its equivalent plant in West Virginia. The Indian and regional Madhya Pradesh governments were complicit in this. There have been no more Bhopal’s. Can we learn by Bhopal and have progress without such disasters?
Disruption of PN 3, Progress 4

The question remains, regardless of whether AGW is a false threat, is any disruption of PN acceptable if the prevailing value is that PN should be preserved, and only a minimalist lifestyle be tolerated?

Cohenite lives in Newcastle, Australia.