NOTE: This op-ed is apparently too hot for some editors to handle. Late last week it was accepted and posted on politix.topix.com only to be abruptly removed some two hours later. After several hours of attempting to determine why it was removed, I was informed the topix.com editor had permanently taken it down because of a strong negative reaction to it and because of “conflicting views from the scientific community” over factual assertions in the piece.
Fortunately, some media outlets recognize a vigorous scientific debate persists over humanity’s influence on climate and those outlets refuse outside efforts to silence viewpoints that run counter to prevailing climate alarmism. My original piece follows below.- Craig Idso
Guest essay by Dr. Craig D. Idso
The release of a United Nations (UN) climate change report last week energized various politicians and environmental activists, who issued a new round of calls to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Some of the most fiery language in this regard came from Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who called upon Congress to “wake up and do everything in its power to reduce dangerous carbon pollution,” while Secretary of State John Kerry expressed similar sentiments in a State Department release, claiming that “unless we act dramatically and quickly, science tells us our climate and our way of life are literally in jeopardy.”
Really? Is Earth’s climate so fragile that both it and our way of life are in jeopardy because of rising carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions?
In a word, no! The human impact on global climate is small; and any warming that may occur as a result of anthropogenic CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions is likely to have little effect on either Earth’s climate or biosphere, according to the recently-released contrasting report Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts, which was produced by the independent Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).
This alternative assessment reviews literally thousands of peer-reviewed scientific journal articles that do not support and often contradict the findings of the UN report. Whether the subject is the effects of warming and rising CO2 on plants, animals, or humans, the UN report invariably highlights the studies and models that paint global warming in the darkest possible hue, ignoring or downplaying those that don’t.
To borrow a telling phrase from their report, the UN sees nothing but “death, injury, and disrupted livelihoods” everywhere it looks—as do Senator Boxer, Secretary Kerry, and others. Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts demonstrates that life on Earth is not suffering from rising temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels. Citing reams of real-world data, it offers solid scientific evidence that most plants actually flourish when exposed to both higher temperatures and greater CO2 concentrations. In fact, it demonstrates that the planet’s terrestrial biosphere is undergoing a great greening, which is causing deserts to shrink and forests to expand, thereby enlarging and enhancing habitat for wildlife. And much the same story can be told of global warming and atmospheric CO2 enrichment’s impacts on terrestrial animals, aquatic life, and human health.
Why are these research findings and this positive perspective missing from the UN climate reports? Although the UN claims to be unbiased and to have based its assessments on the best available science, such is obviously not the case. And it is most fortunate, therefore, that the NIPCC report provides tangible evidence that the CO2-induced global warming and ocean acidification debate remains unsettled on multiple levels; for there are literally thousands of peer-reviewed scientific journal articles that do not support a catastrophic, or even problematic, view of atmospheric CO2 enrichment.
Unfortunately, climate alarmism has become the modus operandi of the UN assessment reports. This fact is sad, indeed, because in compiling these reports, the UN either was purposely blind to views that ran counter to the materials they utilized, or its authors did not invest the amount of time, energy, and resources needed to fully investigate an issue that has profound significance for all life on Earth. And as a result, the UN has seriously exaggerated many dire conclusions, distorted relevant facts, and omitted or ignored key scientific findings. Yet in spite of these failings, various politicians, governments, and institutions continue to rally around the UN climate reports and to utilize their contentions as justification to legislate reductions in CO2 emissions, such as epitomized by the remarks of Senator Boxer and Secretary Kerry.
Citing only studies that promote climate catastrophism as a basis for such regulation, while ignoring studies that suggest just the opposite, is simply wrong. Citizens of every nation deserve much better scientific scrutiny of this issue by their governments; and they should demand greater accountability from their elected officials as they attempt to provide it.
There it is, that’s my op-ed. It’s what some people apparently do not want you to read. While the over 3,000 peer-reviewed scientific references cited in Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts are likely more than sufficient to establish scientific fact in a court of law, they are not sufficient to engage the real climate deniers in any debate. The rise in atmospheric CO2 is not having, nor will it have, a dangerous influence on the climate and biosphere. But don’t take my word for it, download and read the report for yourself (available at www.nipccreport.org). Compare it with the UN report. You be the judge!
Dr. Craig D. Idso is the lead editor and scientist for the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).
Moshpit kindly illustrates another ‘fact’.
He illustrates that for a certain type of lukewatery clones it is necessary to label the NIPCC authors clowns. N’est ce pas?
John
Mr Mosher is right of course: the fact that there is no discernible evidence that increased CO2 levels have led to catastrophic events so far does not in itself prove that increasing CO2 levels may not lead to such catastrophes in the future.
My problem with his argument is the implied ‘non sequitur’. The fact that you cannot prove the above simply does not imply that increasing CO2 levels will ‘as a matter of fact’ lead to catastrophes.
The atmosphere is well-stirred by convection. Other than diminished water vapor, it maintains a relatively consistent composition to the troposphere. Even if it did not, however, and remained low in the atmosphere, it would function as a source warming the surface. The pertinent question is, as always, what harm would this cause and is it easier to mitigate or adapt?
Steven Mosher says:April 20, 2014 at 8:48 am
“How did those clowns deduce from no evidence that there would be little effect”
So Steven, please explain how the clowns at the IPCC deduce from NO EVIDENCE that there WOULD be an effect (by warming).
The benefits of more CO2 are manifest, and proven by experiment.
David, maybe. Wouldn’t be my first mistake, won’t be my last. I read this:
and it sounds like the sort of things we criticize when AGW supporters don’t meet these standards, at least to me.
Actually, my problem is that with all of the alarmism, with politicians calling for immediate action in the name of science (where they do not understand the uncertainties btw, and where mainstream organizations cheerfully perpetuate that regardless of the protests of guys like Dr. Richard Tol), one can argue that what’s needed isn’t for the opposition to act like objective scientists. The opposition should act like opposition, maybe? If there’s a faction distorting the science to push an agenda, what’s wrong with the existence of a faction pushing back without rigorous regard to the science, I wonder. Maybe there’s lots wrong with it, but I still wonder.
I’m thinking out loud, and I’m saying things I could (and probably will) find problems with. But sometimes I wonder how objective anyone can be with the enormous weight of the mainstream pushing one conclusion. The playing field isn’t level. It’s hard to not lean against that, even if leaning against it isn’t justifiable on objective scientific grounds.
By the way, I firmly believe that “We Are All Bozos On This Bus”. (Show me where the steering wheel is.)
Just keep pushing.
The bigger the resistance, the earlier we reach it’s breaking point.
Push, push, pusch and don;t forget the real culprits, the banksters.
The warmists are only the useful idiots.
Any discussion with them is a loss of time.
Steven Mosher says:
April 20, 2014 at 8:48 am
I wonder how the clowns who wrote the NIPCC scientifically determined that there will be little effect in the future? how’d they do that? I read the NIPCC. I saw no experiments that proved there would be little effect. I saw no statistical analysis in that report that proved there would be little effect. And they explained why you could not use models to project the effects.
How did those clowns deduce from no evidence that there would be little effect.
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Steven, how about this assessment, my e-mail to the president: http://wp.me/p3JfLw-2
John Kerry is literally, an idiot.
I’m afraid Mosher is right. Here are some observations as well as a model result.
Here is one I missed for Mosher.
Mosher, pay attention. Sometimes we have to look much further back. We don’t know how warm it will get in 2100 but let’s for the sake of argument say 3C. Even here there are benefits and the biosphere was not destroyed. PS So far the failed projections of the IPCC points to mild warming.
‘The human impact on global climate is small’ oh, no it isn’t!
Co2 I find you guilty as charged!
How can small amounts of co2, influence global warming?
‘Dr Karl who joins us from the ABC studios in Sydney…[yes co2 is causing the global warming thing]…Anthony from Leeds…{what percentage is global warming a natural cycle or helped by human…it’s my belief that it’s just a percentage man made and a percentage natural cycle}…[while we humans have been on this planet…the normal state of the climate is an ice age…100,000 years of ice age and then 20,000 years of none ice age…the water to make this ice come out of the oceans…this is the normal state of affairs, you can walk from the British Isles to Europe…the co2 levels are the highest in the last 650,000 years. They are rising faster than any time in the last 3 million years…but we are causing an extra…the co2 levels…we have taken the levels from 280ppm to 380ppm (not current levels) so that is a difference of 100ppm…or 1 part per 10,000, but people have said how come, can 1 in 10,000 have any effect what so ever. But if we take a moderately large male they weigh 100Kg which is 100,000 grams, so 1 part per 10,000 of that is 10grams… if you were to give that person…10 grams of morphine they would be dead…so you can see the argument that’s given, the change in co2 level is only 1 in 10,000, so minuscule is a ridiculous argument… it is very easy to…with small forces]’
So listen for yourself :-
Steven Mosher talks about clowns and models. Clowns are supposed to make you laugh not the models. Since Mosher loves his failed models I want him to have a laugh and cheer up.
In ten years time it will be exactly 200 years since Fourier in a “Paper” of 1824 on page 140 wrote:
“The heat of the sun, coming in the form of light, possesses the property of penetrating transparent solids or liquids, and loses this property entirely, when by communication with terrestrial bodies, it is turned into heat radiating without light.”
Well, he writes more about it than just that but just that should be enough to bear out the gist of the article above. But it also bears out the claim that there is indeed a so called Greenhouse Effect (GHE). But a GHE that has got very little (or nothing) to do with the so called “Infra Red Back Radiation” (IRBR).
Fourier continues, still on page 140: “This distinction of luminous and non-luminous heat, explains the elevation caused by transparent bodies. The mass of waters which cover a great part of the globe, and the ice of the polar regions, oppose a less obstacle to the admission of luminous heat, than to the heat without light, which returns in a contrary direction to open space.
I happen to believe that we “lost” vital climate understanding” with the advent of Arrhenius’s theory some years later in 1896.
Did Mosher just imply that the onus is on us to prove their doomsday scenario is wrong? I thought he was smarter than that.
Sen. Barbara Boxer Is a Complete Idiot, regarding Anything to Do with Climate. She somehow thinks that excessive CO2 equates to AGW.
RMB says: “…Surface tension is not a powerful force but it is powerful enough to block heat passing from the atmosphere into the ocean….”
I’ve asked you more than once to provide some scientific evidence that surface tension affects heat transfer between a heat source and a liquid surface. I’m open to the concept, but you have not responded, and continue to repeat your unsupported assertion. Please produce the equations, the charts, the formulae, the graphs, or be silent. If this continues, people may confuse you with Mosher. 🙂
This is a reply to jorgekafkazar. If you can get hold of a double sink, rig them identically, depth of water etc. Get a heat gun which operates at 450degsC. Apply heat to basin 1 uncovered for about 15mins and you will get a rise in temp of about 6degF. Get something like a baking dish and float it on basin2. Again apply heat to surface of the baking dish for 15mins and you will get a temperature rise of 48degsF.
This is my interpretation of what is happening. The heat being applied is fierce and fan forced. The temperature in basin1 rises 6degs after 15mins at 450degsC. I believe that the only reason that it rises at all is due to the fan forcing simulating weight and “fooling” the surface into believing it is no longer the surface for very brief periods and it absorbs a miniscule amount of heat given the heat being applied.
In the case of basin 2 the temperature rises a much more credible 48degsF. I say that the object floating on the surface kills the surface tension underneath and allows the heat to flow as it would into an upside down pan.
There is very little point in us entering into an argument over this at this time. What I would like everybody to do is get a heat gun and try heating the water through the surface. Should you succeed I want to know how you did it and where I’m going wrong but you won’t succeed.
The warmist guys put forward a proposition that the sun’s rays heat co2 and the warmth increases the evaporation rate at the surface and that releases even more ghgs into the atmosphere but they didn’t test the hypothesis. You can’t store heat on this planet and you can’t build heat on this planet so there is no such thing as AGW.
One more thing. I have had it put that the reason that the water does not warm is that it is evaporating rapidly and the heat is being removed. If that was the case my kitchen would be full of steam and it ain’t.
To sum it all up as far as the ocean is concerned radiation yes physical heat no. rgds RMB
Notice how UNEP, PRME, and other UN affiliated groups have become Senior Advisors pushing the Sustainability Literacy Test on education all over the world.
http://www.sustainabilitytest.org/en/substainability_home Have your students take the test indeed.
The 2014 equivalent of proper belief in the dialectic. No wonder these bureaucrats are in a hurry to implement before more frigid winters break through even the most carefully erected mindsets.
FYI
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/04/20/Winter-is-coming-and-we-will-wish-for-global-warming
In light of the spirit of sceptically assessing the statements that are made by anybody in the name of science, what do you make of the fact that the organisation behind the report is funded by conservative groups and energy corporations? Me personally, it would make me suspect that they collected information with a conscious bias.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heartland_Institute#Funding
Well, I guess in Steven’s world, the fact that the sky has never fallen before nor is it falling now doesn’t prove that it COULDN’T fall sometime in the future. The chicken little theory of global warming.
id8 says:
April 20, 2014 at 11:30 am
Well, there’s Thomas Huxley, crica 1870:
“The great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”
Ugly, not inconvenient. But, the same gist.
Reblogged this on Nevada Life and commented:
I am not a fan of reblogging in any way but this is something I believe strongly about. Global Warming is a world wide lie… Accepted as truth. And whom is the father of lies?
To call people clowns is not a good look anywhere to try and prove an argument and is just plain rude and not needed or convincing to anyone reading it!