Ross McKitrick's presentation to FOS

Our 11th annual luncheon with Dr. McKitrick was very successful and the attendees said the presentation was excellent. Only people who did not attend the presentation wrote critical comments in letters to the newspapers. The last line of Dr. McKitrick’s abstract says, “Policy makers and stakeholders need to be aware of these developments to avoid making long term plans based on assumptions that look increasingly unlikely to be true.” We offered complimentary tickets to all of Calgary’s city Councillors and the Mayor. Few politicians attended and some said “never send information or email to me again”. The Mayor has given $300,000 to Pembina Institute whose recommended policies have all but bankrupted Ontario, and is trying to destroy Alberta’s oil and gas industry.
The climate models have greatly diverged from the observations, indicating that they are too sensitive to greenhouse gas emissions. Climate modellers have to both reduce the sensitivity to greenhouse gases and increase the effects of natural climate change to bring the models back into line with the observations.
The Integrated Assessment Models used to estimate the social cost of carbon are tuned to the faulty climate models, not to reality. The IAMs assume that hurricanes get stronger and more frequent with warming, but in fact there has been a 40% decline in accumulated cyclone energy since 1998. They predict that warming reduces crop yields, assuming that warming causes more droughts and that farmers would not change the strain of crops to sow in response to warming. But the data shows global drought intensity is declining slightly and farmers in Canada are hoping for a warm spring and summer. IAMs assume that warming is harmful to health, but thousands of Canadian ‘snowbirds’ go to southern states in the winter to escape the cold.
The Financial Post reported May 29 that the cold, harsh winter has “copped off as much as 1.5 percentage points from GDP growth” of the US economy, which contracted at a 1.0 percent annual rate during the first quarter of 2014. The USA Q1 2014 temperatures were 1.4 degrees C colder that the average Q1 temperatures of the 21st century to 2013 according to HadCRUT4 data. This evidence strongly contradicts the AR5 WGII recently published report which states, “global annual economic losses for additional temperature increases of ~2°C are between 0.2 and 2.0% of income.” Warming would be very beneficial for Canadians.

Steven Mosher says:
May 30, 2014 at 2:53 pm
I agree Steve, there is undoubtedly wasted efforts on both sides. My personal take on Ross’ presentation is that it is totally logical and can be accepted from both or indeed all ‘sides’ – at least those that are still ‘scientifically’ driven. But what struck me is that this presentation is a collection of info that is/was well known but put together at just the right time (after the long ‘pause’) for it to be listened too.
The arguments about the divergent models have fallen on deaf ears for the last half decade or so – hopefully (from Ross’ lecture) some of the less fanatical warmists can actually ‘see’ that now, and indeed, realise it’s time to put their favourite ‘Precautionary Principle’ boot, on the other foot. i.e. see that it is more prudent and precautionary to ‘wait’ before invoking ‘wrong’ policy or direction when clearly, the current ‘explanation’ is not working……kind of what many skeptics (who don’t believe in CAGW) have been saying for years,(me included)!!
What I liked about Ross’ presentation was that there was very little opinion and the use of the ‘official’ IPCC data! – he basically demonstrated his point entirely using the alarmists ‘pet’ data and subsequently applied sensible logic in how to move forward.

Mosher, you should be smart enough to know that if you concentrate your efforts to one battle front, you will soon find yourself surrounded. Give your myopic head a shake.

Let’s see ” Commentary on puzzling things in Life, Nature, Science, Weather, Climate Change, Technology, and Recent News…”
Mr Mosher, how has this site lost “focus”,?
How?

Claudius has just been stabbed by the ‘envenom’d foil’ he created himself: the sensitivity factor, which is a whole-cloth invention of the AGW gamers, is turning out to have fatal consequences because it’s way too high in the models, and demonstrably so.

I just sent the following LTE to the Calgary Herald:
“In trying to discredit Ross McKitrick’s rebuttal of the blame-humans-for-climate political push by saying McKitrick is religious thus not scientific, Jack Dale should be careful what path he takes. (Reference your May 23, 2014 issue.)
Most climate alarmists believe the views of humans taught by Marxism, an ideology so contradictory and disproven it can only be accepted by blind faith.
Indeed climate alarmists deny that their theories have been disproven by reality, and choose to ignore specific errors in their models that people have pointed them to. There has been no statistically significant change in average climate temperature for 16 years, the rate of sea level has changed little in 150 years, water vapour is decreasing contrary to assumptions in models, and temperatures at middle altitudes are not increasing as models claim they will. Alarmists falsely claim consensus, apparently re-defining the word to mean group-think within their circle, ignoring thousands of solid technical papers by others and tens of thousands of scientists signing petitions in opposition to alarmistm. They avoid discussion of alternative theories for climate change, and often politick against questioners by pressuring scientific journals to not publish critical papers.
I urge Jack Dale and other true believers to look in their mirror and ask why they are so eager to blame humans for what is obviously natural variation.”
At least two people, including the editorial page editor, have already supported McKitrick:
http://www.calgaryherald.com/technology/Math+doesn/9877139/story.html
http://www.calgaryherald.com/opinion/op-ed/Corbella+Pause+global+warming+upsets+religious+believers/9848202/story.html