Guest essay by Steve Goreham
Originally published in The Washington Times
On September 23, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is scheduled to release the first portion of its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). AR5 will conclude once again that mankind is causing dangerous climate change. But one week prior on September 17, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) will release its second report, titled Climate Change Reconsidered II (CCR-II). My advance review of CCR-II shows it to be a powerful scientific counter to the theory of man-made global warming.
Today, 193 of 194 national heads of state say they believe humans are causing dangerous climate change. The IPCC of the United Nations has been remarkably successful in convincing the majority of the world that greenhouse gas emissions must be drastically curtailed for humanity to prosper.
The IPCC was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Program. Over the last 25 years, the IPCC became the “gold standard” of climate science, quoted by all the governments of the world. IPCC conclusions are the basis for climate policies imposed by national, provincial, state, and local authorities. Cap-and-trade markets, carbon taxes, ethanol and biodiesel fuel mandates, renewable energy mandates, electric car subsidies, the banning of incandescent light bulbs, and many other questionable policies are the result. In 2007, the IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize for work on climate change.
But a counter position was developing. In 2007, the Global Warming Petition Project published a list of more than 31,000 scientists, including more than 9,000 PhDs, who stated, “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” At the same time, an effort was underway to provide a credible scientific counter to the alarming assertions of the IPCC.
The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change was begun in 2003 by Dr. Fred Singer, emeritus professor of atmospheric physics from the University of Virginia. Dr. Singer and other scientists were concerned that IPCC reports selected evidence that supported the theory of man-made warming and ignored science that showed that natural factors dominated the climate. They formed the NIPCC to offer an independent second opinion on global warming.
Climate Change Reconsidered I (CCR-I) was published in 2009 as the first scientific rebuttal to the findings of the IPCC. Earlier this summer, CCR-I was translated into Chinese and accepted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences as an alternative point-of-view on climate change.
Climate Change Reconsidered II is a 1,200-page report that references more than one thousand peer-reviewed scientific papers, compiled by about 40 scientists from around the world. While the IPCC reports cover the physical science, impacts, and mitigation efforts, CCR-II is strictly focused on the physical science of climate change. Its seven chapters discuss the global climate models, forcings and feedbacks, solar forcing of the climate, and observations on temperature, the icecaps, the water cycle and oceans, and weather.
Among the key findings of CCR-II are:
· Doubling of CO2 from its pre-industrial level would likely cause a warming of only about 1oC, hardly cause for alarm.
· The global surface temperature increase since about 1860 corresponds to a recovery from the Little Ice Age, modulated by natural ocean and atmosphere cycles, without need for additional forcing by greenhouse gases.
· There is nothing unusual about either the magnitude or rate of the late 20th century warming, when compared with previous natural temperature variations.
· The global climate models projected an atmospheric warming of more than 0.3oC over the last 15 years, but instead, flat or cooling temperatures have occurred.
The science presented by the CCR-II report directly challenges the conclusions of the IPCC. Extensive peer-reviewed evidence is presented that climate change is natural and man-made influences are small. Fifteen years of flat temperatures show that the climate models are in error.
Each year the world spends over $250 billion to try to decarbonize industries and national economies, while other serious needs are underfunded. Suppose we take a step back and “reconsider” our commitment to fighting climate change?
The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change is a project supported by three independent nonprofit organizations: Science and Environmental Policy Project, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, and The Heartland Institute. Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.
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So you would trust a bunch of people who are paid handsomely by the UN and green activists groups both of whom actively advocate one-world socialism with an all-powerful government run by “our betters” to tell all us plebes how to “properly” live (eg agenda 21), before you would trust a group run by people who favor individual liberty over all – funding aside. That is rich. Your entire “take-down” of the NIPCC was one giant ad hominem devoid of rational or scientific thought.
Also for your parting shot about incandescent light bulb bans. The answer is the US Congress (among others) with the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 which phases out incandescent bulbs starting with the 100 watt bulb in October 2012 and will end in a phased schedule with the ban of the 40 watt incandescent bulb at some point in the future.
Are you incapable of doing even minor internet resource searching?
I am afraid my previous post is in moderation because I used the common SI derived unit of measure equal to 1 joule per second, which when capitalized is also our host’s last name.
“Is not extremely ironic that an organization which has given its blessing to conclusions and claims that gave rise to – and continue to feed – the “climate wars” should have been awarded a “Peace Prize” of any kind, let alone a “Nobel Peace Prize”?! But I digress …
While scientists – and others – do participate as “voluntary” members of the “author teams” that produce the “products” of the three IPCC Working Groups, they continue to be paid for their IPCC work by their respective institutions and organizations.”
In the last years the norwegian peace prize committee have become more leftist political. Increasingly they are more giving the prize to promote their own leftist agenda. Giving the peace prize to Al Gore, IPCC and later Obama are good examples.
Dear Nick,
In the Copenhagen Diagnosis (available here: http://www.ccrc.unsw.edu.au/Copenhagen/Copenhagen_Diagnosis_LOW.pdf)
it says:
“Are we just in a natural warming phase, recovering from the “little ice age”?
No. A “recovery” of climate is not a scientific concept, since the climate does not respond like a pendulum that swings back after it was pushed in one direction. Rather, the climate responds like a pot of water on the stove:…”
Can you (or your friends) please justify the claim that a recovery is not a scientific concept with regards to the climate.
I’m struggling to find any scientific basis for the claim, and believe (like most climate science) it is simply fabricated by scientific frauds.
Thankyou in advance.
jai mitchell says:
September 10, 2013 at 6:14 pm
[Snip. By now you should know better than to label those you disagree with as “denialists”. — mod.]
Will I be moderated for pointing out that Jai denies reality?
[Reply: Only if it is intended as a pejorative. ~mod]
I see that jai mitchell, Deb Rudnick and Nick Stokes are all getting a well-deserved thrashing here. Their comments all have one thing in common: they emit their personal Beliefs as fact, when they are only opinions; just their beliefs. They lack real world facts proving that catastrophic AGW exists.
jai mitchell says:
“you have absolutely no scientific mechanism that can explain a ‘natural’ variability that is producing the warming that would constitute a ‘recovery’ from the little ice age. Not solar variability, nothing.”
It is clear that you don’t understand the Scientific Method, or the climate Null Hypothesis, or Occam’s Razor, so you end up making unsupportable statements like that. You just don’t understand that skeptics have nothing to prove! Our job is to tear down conjectures and hypotheses, if at all possible. That is how science advances. In this case, it’s easy.
By demanding that skeptics must provide a “mechnaism”, you are in effect demanding that skeptics must prove a negative. But AGW is not our conjecture! It is your conjecture. You own AGW. It is the albatross around your necks. You have produced absolutely zero testable, quantifiable scientific measurements showing that AGW even exists [it may, of course. But if it exists, it is so minuscule that it cannot even be measured, so anyone worrying about something so insignificant is simply being a worrywart, like Chicken Little].
If you ever admitted that catastrophic AGW forms your basic Belief, then like Saul on the road to Damascus, the scales might fall from your eyes: you might understand that empirical observations always trump your beliefs. But there are NO empirical [real world] observations of catastrophic AGW — or of ordinary AGW, for that matter.
Your catastrophic AGW religious belief is completely emotion-based, thus it cannot be logically argued in a scientific forum. It is only science if it can be quantified; measured. That is the key to science. Since there are no testable, quantifiable AGW measurements, you folks fall back on your emotions. Your beliefs. That is all you have. But that is not good enough.
Thank goodness for the comedic talents of Jai Mitchell.
He has a great source of knowledge at his fingertips here at WUWT, yet he’s firmly determined not to learn anything. And to be a showoff about it as well.
Comedy Gold!
jai mitchell says:
September 10, 2013 at 4:35 pm
‘…disclaiming a proven scientific fact that has been known for over 100 years.’
—–
I’m very curious as to which scientific fact you are referring?
OT: Any news about Watts et al 2012? It had been announced a year ago that the paper will be “submitted within weeks”. What happened?
[So, how many other threads are you going to repeat this “Oh by-the-way-off-topic-disruption of other people’s conversations? Mod]
Deb Rudnick says:
September 10, 2013 at 4:46 pm
‘The heartland institute is a conservative/libertarian think tank well known for its position on climate change skepticism and is funded by several other conservative foundations and major corporate players in tobacco, pharmaceutical, and oil and gas.’
—–
You forgot to impeach the Koch brothers!
/sarc
By mass, specific heat capacity of water is 4 kilojoules per kilogram, atmosphere is 1 kj/kg.
A 4 to 1 ratio.
By volume, 1 cubic meter of seawater has a mass 800 times the cubic meter of air above.
So, the heat capacity of seawater is 800 x 4 = 3200 times greater than atmosphere at sea level.
“My advance review of CCR-II shows it to be a powerful scientific counter to the theory of man-made global warming.”
One thing that we demanded from the IPCC and and got was.
1. An open log of all reveiwer comments and the authors respones to them
2. An open process for signing up to be a reviewer.
3. An Errata process whereby mistakes, like glaciergate , can be addressed.
4. No conflict of interest statements by the authors.
So,
1. Can we get all drafts of the report
2. can we get the reviewer comments posted online
3. How come there was no invitation to review
4. Did the authors sign “no conflict of interest” Before they were accepted as authors
There are cycles in nature that happened well before humans started having much of an effect. We don’t know much about why they occurred. Why did temperatures go up during the MWP? Why did they go down during the LIA? Presumably the latter may have had to do with a low sunspot cycle but Leif said awhile back that low sunspot cycle could mean more active sun and the LIA could have been due to volcanic aerosols (he actually was referring to cold events near the Maunder and Dalton minimums). Interesting that even top solar scientists are unsure of even things like this that some think are settled.
But the temperatures were able to return back to more “normal” or average temperatures on their own in the past so it is equally possible they could do so now as well.
Much is made of the MWP possibly not being global,but just northern hemisphere. Then we are told to be very afraid due warming in the arctic and northern hemisphere during recent years. Seems like they just pick any argument that suits them and then use the exact opposite argument when it suits them for a different time period.
Hey Facebook stock is up because its recovering from its IPO low.
There I explained it.
So,
1. Can we get all drafts of the report
2. can we get the reviewer comments posted online
3. How come there was no invitation to review
4. Did the authors sign “no conflict of interest” Before they were accepted as authors
You have a point Steve. One difference, however, is that the IPCC uses taxpayer money and has millions to spend. And has taken a strong advocacy position involving spending even more money. However, I would not mind seeing some of this information. After I read the report itself.
Dr. Judith Curry at Climate etc has a thread on a second excellent book by Donna LaFromboise regarding the IPCC.
Dr. Curry also states the following regarding the IPCC and AR5;
‘When I first saw the list of IPCC Authors for the AR5, I was excited by all the new names including some excellent scientists that are well known to me and whose integrity and honesty I trust absolutely—-A few years ago one said to me how excited he was to be part of the IPCC.—-I ran into another last fall who had become jaded by the process. He said it was a constant struggle between the newcomers who want to ‘tell it like it is’ versus the old hands who are worried primarily about what was said in AR4 and not providing fodder for the skeptics’
My thoughts: Would it not be a wonderful thing if the IPCC lost its prominence by simple attrition of honest and talented scientists while the NIPCC experienced accretion (I had to look up that word) of those same scientists.
Of course Government backing, politics, the Media and money are huge obstacles. Nevertheless, Science, by its nature will someday prevail, and a huge lesson of what not to do will again be learned.
It is clear that you don’t understand the Scientific Method, or the climate Null Hypothesis, or Occam’s Razor, so you end up making unsupportable statements like that. You just don’t understand that skeptics have nothing to prove! Our job is to tear down conjectures and hypotheses, if at all possible. That is how science advances. In this case, it’s easy.
#############
Sadly, that is how skepticism works in philosophy and how the defense works in a court case. But its not how skepticism works in science. Science works to explain. doubt is a tool in science, but in the end if you dont have an explanation you lose to the guy who does have an explanation, EVEN IF his explanation is partial and incomplete.
“The IPCC was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Program.”
=======================================================================
The UN. Politics on a global scale. I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t the UN put Syria on whatever they call their panel on human rights?
Why trust the politicians they put on a science panel?
Jai, Deb and Nick are just following a well establshed strategy by the warmers. If the LIA and MWP exist, then all of the work done by Mann et.al. is invalidated. Consistently dendro-chronology has failed to show these variations, just as it failed to show Mann’s massive temp rise in the late 20th C (thus, Hide-The-Decline). Hence, the LIA and MWP must disappear. Jai isn’t even being particularly original. This lot have been claiming LIA was a European phenomenon for at least the last 10 years despite a ton of evidence to the contrary.
Steven Mosher says:
September 10, 2013 at 8:08 pm
Sadly, that is how skepticism works in philosophy and how the defense works in a court case. But its not how skepticism works in science. Science works to explain. doubt is a tool in science, but in the end if you dont have an explanation you lose to the guy who does have an explanation, EVEN IF his explanation is partial and incomplete.
================================================================
I think you hit on something there. No one loses by trying to honest and finding out they were wrong. But when one takes attempts to prove you wrong personally, where does that leave scientific inquiry or any other kind of inquiry? Look at sue-happy Mann or the Climategate emails, “Why should I give my data when you’ll just try to find something wrong with it?’ or words to that effect.
What genuine good has an inflated ego ever done for anybody?
(Just to be clear, this is not directed at Mosher but his comment spurred it.)
Nick Stokes says:
September 10, 2013 at 5:13 pm
“The global surface temperature increase since about 1860 corresponds to a recovery from the Little Ice Age…”
I keep hearing this – we had it for the umpteenth time from Akasofu. But it explains nothing. It’s in the nature of things that, if you have a period of warming, then before that it was cooler. But if you said, it warmed because it was cooler before (so no need for GHG), people would laugh at you. The fact that you’ve given a name to the cooler period (LIA) doesn’t make it any different.
///////////////////////////
Nick
Please answer the following:
1. Does the temperature increase between 1860 and ~1940 correspond with an increase in CO2 levels during thatb period?
2. If yes, why was there cooling between ~1940 and ~1976 notwithstanding the increase in CO2 levels during that period?
3. Given the increase in CO2 levels between ~1940 and ~1976, if CO2 leads to warming, would you have expected temperatures during this period to (a) rise, or (b) stay about the same (ie., at about the level observed during the mid to late 1930s), or (c) to fall?
4. Given the increase in CO2 levels between ~1976 to say~1998, please explain why the rate of warming during that period was no greater than the rate of warming between say ~1920 to~1940?
5. Given the increase in CO2 levels between ~1996 and ~2012, if CO2 leads to warming, would you have expected temperatures during this period to (a) rise, or (b) stay about the same (ie., at about the level observed during the mid to late 1990s), or (c) to fall?
I put it to you that the temperature record cannot be properly explained without resorting to natural variation, and that being the case there is no logical failure in the submission that what we are simply seeing is a natural recovery trend from the LIA. That statement may not explain the process by which the recovery happens, but does of course explain the event. It is rather akin to asking someone why it is daylight during the day and dark at night and they reply because the sun rises during the day and sets at night. That may not explain the Earth spinning on its axis, but whilst not a full explanation, does explain the observation.
The reality is that we do not understand our climate and how it is driven. Whilst these may not be global events and may be local to just the northern hemisphere and even local to mid to high northern latitudes, we know as fact that there were Minoan, Roman and Medieval warm periods. We do not know why they occurred save that we know that they were not driven by manmade CO2 emissions.
In fact it appears that even before the MWP, there was a wqarm period in Northern Europe around 400AD (which is somewhat before the MWP). How do we know this? Because glaciers are now (ie., late 20th/early 21st century) receding in Norway and as they recede we are finding human artefacts which have been buried by the glacier. See for example
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2408825/Melting-ice-reveals-1-700-year-old-woolly-jumper–experts-say-come.html
Perhaps you would like to explain why it was so warm in Norway some 1700 years ago. I look forward to receiving your explanation on that as well as on the 5 questions above.
Among the key findings of CCR-II are:
· Doubling of CO2 from its pre-industrial level would likely cause a warming of only about 1oC, hardly cause for alarm.
· The global surface temperature increase since about 1860 corresponds to a recovery from the Little Ice Age, modulated by natural ocean and atmosphere cycles, without need for additional forcing by greenhouse gases.
· There is nothing unusual about either the magnitude or rate of the late 20th century warming, when compared with previous natural temperature variations.
/////////////////////////////
The second and third statement are consistent with each other.
However, the first statement is either not consistent with those two statements or is contradictory to them.
My interpretation of these statements is that if the second and third statements are correct, the first statement would appear incorrect. If the first statement is correct then the second and third statements would appear to be incorrect.
I know that the quoted statements are only a summary, but to my mind the summary appears contradictory.
Disingenuous statements are statements made that are known to be incorrect. The warmists have directly and directly promote the green scam lie.
The $250 billion per year that is now being spent on green scams has result in no appreciable reduction in the increase in atmospheric CO2 (there has been roughly $2 trillion spent on the war on climate change). What is the benefit from spending $250 billion/year? Does it make a difference?
A significant world reduction in CO2 emissions would require mass conversion to nuclear power and wartime like rationing of energy and control of ever day life to limit energy use. A reduction of world CO2 emissions of 50%, for example, would require the end of air travel for tourism, the elimination of single family housing, the elimination of private automobile ownership, and so on.
There is no extreme warming problem to solve and spending $250 billion per year on green scams has not significantly reduced the rise in atmospheric C02.
Ignoring reality does not change reality.
Jai,
Call me the apostate, I deny. I acknowledge we have no mechanism, neither do you. I deny. By Bayesian principles it is easier to know what is wrong than what is right. I deny. I cannot understand why anyone would take umbrage at being called a denier. I would be insulted to be cast a believer. I deny. Infidel! That too. Denial is obvious. I deny.
…an oldie, but a goodie: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/30/important-paper-strongly-suggests-man-made-co2-is-not-the-driver-of-global-warming/
An important new paper published today in Global and Planetary Change finds that changes in CO2 follow rather than lead global air surface temperature…
Even Al Gore’s newest Climate Reality Project slides show this trend, which he blows off as “typical variation” etc. blah.