A Submission to the Australian Senate Investigation into Climate Misinformation

Michael Jonas

When the Australian government set up a “Senate select committee to investigate misinformation and disinformation in climate science and energy”, I didn’t find out until a few hours before the deadline for submissions from the general public. Things were made a little more complicated by the fact that I was travelling overseas at the time, with only a mobile phone to prepare a submission on.

It was a reasonable assumption that the government was not going to let any submission from the public sway them away from their position that anything that even questioned climate “science” was just misinformation or disinformation. So in a sense, sending in a submission was a waste of effort. On the other hand, if they didn’t receive submissions that challenged their position, then they would obviously claim that they were justified when they subsequently brought in legislation banning climate “misinformation” – which surely is their objective (or something like that). I therefore felt that it was important that I send in a submission, and hopefully many others have too.

The submission had to refer to a specific clause or clauses in the terms of reference, but apart from that there were few restrictions.

I have now been advised that my submission has been received, but goodness knows whether anyone in government will actually read it. Anyway, this is it:

– – –

I refer to The Senate Select Committee on Information Integrity on Climate Change and Energy, and specifically to the terms of reference item
(a) the prevalence of [] misinformation and disinformation related to climate change [];

My name is Michael Jonas, I live at Exeter, NSW, my qualification is an MA in Mathematics at Oxford University UK, and I have spent much time over the last few decades investigating climate science from a mathematical perspective. Please note that this is very relevant because (i) climate models are a mathematical construct, and (ii) science is founded on mathematics (it is a well-known maxim in science that if the maths is wrong then the science is wrong).

I have particular expertise and interest in computer modelling, having been involved in the design and development of computer models before the IPCC was created.

My main points:

– Scepticism based on maths or science is routinely dismissed as misinformation.
– This avoids scrutiny where scrutiny is needed.
– Everything should be treated on its merits in open and free discussion.

Misinformation

Scepticism about climate change is routinely classlfied as misinformation by those who promote the mainstream position on climate change. This very conveniently gets them out of having to justify their position in an open and free discussion. The foundations of their position are shaky (see below) and would be exposed in an open discussion. As the US Supreme Court judge, Louis Brandeis, said about exactly this kind of situation in 1913, “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants”.

The simple fact is that a lot of the misinformation about climate change comes from its proponents.

Climate models

As I said above, these are a mathematical construct, so are within my area of expertise. I have examined aspects of the climate models and have documented in a published paper how they are mathematically invalid – their structure is the structure used in the short term calculations of weather models, but mathematically this structure cannot work for the climate. A totally different structure is needed for the longer term nature of climate.
The paper is titled “General circulation models cannot predict climate” and is accessible at

https://wjarr.com/content/general-circulation-models-cannot-predict-climate

From the abstract:

This study draws on Chaos Theory to investigate the ability of a General Circulation Model to predict climate. The conclusion is that a General Circulation Model’s grid-level physical processes and parameterisations cannot predict climate beyond maybe a few weeks. [] The longer the timescale is, the less relevant the grid-level physical processes and parameterisations in a General Circulation Model become. [] A General Circulation Model calculates weather at each time step and this is then amalgamated into a final prediction of climate. This process is back to front. A realistic long term climate model would calculate climate and then weather would be deduced from the climate.

Clouds

Another area that I investigated was the overall behaviour of clouds. The question that I asked myself was: in which part of climate physics are the climate models most likely to be most wrong? The answer was in the behaviour of clouds. Mathematical analysis of the data showed that cloud behaviour was not dependent on CO2, whereas the IPCC reports and the climate models that they are based on all showed cloud behaviour being dependent on CO2. This makes an enormous difference to the models’ outcomes, because about half of all the models’ predicted warming comes from clouds and is attributed to CO2. If instead, as I found, cloud behaviour is independent of CO2, then the predicted warming from CO2 is halved and becomes quite benign. Nothing to worry about at all

My paper is titled “Clouds independently appear to have as much or greater effect than man-made CO2 on radiative forcing”. It is accessible at

https://wjarr.com/content/clouds-independently-appear-have-much-or-greater-effect-man-made-co2-radiative-forcing

From the abstract:

The patterns of behaviour of clouds, both for cloud area and cloud optical thickness, are studied over the period of available data, 1983 to 2017. There was a decrease in cloud cover over the study period, while global surface temperatures increased. The patterns of clouds and temperature indicate that the cloud cover decrease could not have been caused by the increased surface temperature. [] The climate models, which have zero or negative cloud impact on radiative forcing independently from CO2, need to take this into account in order to avoid over-estimating the influence of CO2.

Summary

I find it quite distressing that ideas stemming from genuine mathematical and scientific analyses that cast doubt on the mainstream climate message are routinely dismissed as misinformation, when much of the mainstream climate message could itself quite reasonably be classified as misinformation.

What we need to do to rectify the situation is to stop using the term “misinformation” and instead to have an open and free discussion about all aspects of the climate.

If we can do this, I am confident that we will find that climate change is far less of a threat than it is thought to be, and is actually quite benign.