Recently Dropping Global Temperatures Demonstrate IPCC Claims are Impossible

Guest Opinion: Dr. Tim Ball

When you put the claims of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in perspective, you get a very different picture that defies logic. I decided to do this because of their recent hysterical claims in Special Report 15 (SR-15) designed to frighten and bully the world into completely unnecessary and enormously expensive environmental and energy policies. Charles Steele summarized their claims and proposed policies in his article, “Climate Doom Ahead? Think Twice,”

“…we have only twelve years to avert climate catastrophe and calls for a fundamental transformation of society and end to the use of fossil fuels. Endorsing it is a critical step towards adopting it, and adopting it would change virtually every element of civil society as we know it today.”

Steele notes that,

“It’s less a scientific report and more a political platform, driven by ideology, not science.”

I agree. Even some members of the IPCC admit it is not about climate but involves an excuse for ideological actions such as a transfer of wealth. However, the majority of the IPCC and its proponents would disagree. They would claim the concern and demand for action are based on science set out in the AR5 Working Group I Report, The Physical Science Basis. Well, let’s examine what they say.

My comments in regular type follow the IPCC claims in italics.

1. Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history. Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems. {1}

The first sentence is a non-sequitur and represents a classic form of introduction to deception. Human influence is not clear because human production of CO2 is within the error of the estimates of two major natural sources, the oceans, and rotting vegetation. You cannot separate human production from the noise of non-human production and variability. Obviously, anthropogenic emissions are the highest in history. If you have a constantly increasing level, the highest levels are the most recent. The second sentence is unprovable. If you don’t know the baseline, that is the impact of climate change before the human impact, then you cannot determine any trend. Consider just one example. There is more total forest in the world than existed in the past. America has more trees than existed 100 years ago. How do they know? Besides, it depends on what time in the past you choose. For example, there are many more than existed 20,000 years ago at the peak of the last glacial period.

2. Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen. {1.1}

This is another form of introduction to a deception that starts with a false premise. Even a brief look at any historical climate record shows equivocal and even greater periods of warming than those between 1950 and 2018. Just look at the Antarctic ice core record from Petit et al.

Remember, they subjected this curve to a 70-year smoothing, so much of the variability was eliminated. Despite that, there is great variability over short periods. Then consider the Central England Temperature curve from 1659-2018. There is nothing extraordinary in the 359-year record when compared to the 68 years from 1950.

The IPCC assert with 95% certainty that 95% of the temperature increase since 1950 is due to human CO2. The problem is if that is true then the record cold temperatures occurring now cannot occur. If the IPCC claim is correct the only way such record cold can occur is if the CO2 level decreased. However, it is the IPCC who tell us it continues to increase.

The fallacy of the IPCC claims is in the continual changes of temperature that occur every day. The Sun rises, and the temperature begins to increase as the solar angle increases. There is no increase in CO2, just as there is no decrease when temperatures begin to decline as the Sun sets. If CO2 is the dominant factor in temperature increase as the IPCC claim, then it should be a major influence on the daily temperature, but there is no such evidence.

As usual, the mainstream media reports that 2018 is the sixth warmest year on record even before the year is over. This is not surprising or significant because the highest temperatures must occur at the end of a warming period. The most reasonable period to consider for this warming trend is from the nadir of the Little Ice Age in the 1680s or over the last 338 years.

The media reported on front pages all over the world the IPCC 2001 Report that drove the world into warming hysteria because they said temperatures rose 0.6°C in approximately 120 years – an increase not possible without human CO2. Why aren’t they reporting with equal vigor that in just two years from February 2016 to February 2018 the global average temperatures fell by 0.56°C? If the IPCC claim about the dominant role of CO2 post-1950 is correct, then that warming simply cannot happen.

3. Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have increased since the pre-industrial era, driven largely by economic and population growth, and are now higher than ever. This has led to atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide that are unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years. Their effects, together with those of other anthropogenic drivers, have been detected throughout the climate system and are extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. {1.2, 1.3.1}

Here is another typical form of introduction designed to set the stage for the falsehood that follows by making a statement that appears absolute because of its unjustified certainty. They neglect to say they limited the ‘greenhouse gases’ to CO2, which is approximately 4% of the total. Yes, human greenhouse gas emissions are higher than ever, but you cannot substantiate the claim of their impact if you don’t know how much water vapor, the most important and abundant greenhouse gas by far, there is, or how it varies over time. The claim that levels of carbon dioxide and methane are unprecedented in the last 800,000 years is only true if you ignore the severe problems and limitations of the ice core measures and ignore the 90,000 19^th century CO2 readings that show much higher levels. It is not true if you extend the record back to 280 million or 600 million years then the levels are among the lowest. All of this is only valid in their claims if you assume that a CO2 increase causes a temperature increase. However, that is not true in any of the records. Indeed, the lack of correlation between CO2 and temperature in the geologic record contradicts their claim more dramatically. The Ordovician Ice Age, approximately 432 million years ago, occurred when CO2 levels were over 4000 parts per million.

4. In recent decades, changes in climate have caused impacts on natural and human systems on all continents and across the oceans. Impacts are due to observed climate change, irrespective of its cause, indicating the sensitivity of natural and human systems to changing climate. {1.3.2}

This is another classic introduction that appears authoritative, but in fact, is what the English call “Stating the bleeding obvious.” In all decades throughout Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history, climate change caused impacts on natural systems. It is disingenuous and wrong to separate human systems because we are part of the natural system. This is another example of the false assumption that humans are not natural that I wrote about before. The entire comment is an insult to the intelligence. It is a statement of environmental platitudes that says absolutely nothing – in other words, it is purely political. Despite that, production of the IPCC Reports costs millions, and the unnecessary policies, based solely on their falsehoods, cost trillions.

The saddest part of all is a horrible irony. All this waste of time and money to create a lie and inflict completely unnecessary policies at great cost, pain, and damage, is only possible because of successful and wealthy economies based on burning fossil fuels. Paradoxically, the IPCC acknowledges this by saying the less successful economies need financial help to succeed. What do the less successful economies want? The ability to burn fossil fuels. These are the insane actions of politically misguided, ideologues with tunnel vision. It is time to stop the insanity.