Climate case built on thin foundation.
John McLean
September 09, 2008

ROSS Garnaut made it clear in his interim report that his climate change review takes as a starting point - not as a belief but on the balance of probabilities - that the claims made in the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are correct.

Had he made even a cursory examination of the integrity of those IPCC claims he would have found a very troubling picture.

The IPCC encourages us to believe that about 2500 climate scientists supported the claim of a significant human influence on climate. It fails to clarify that the claim was made in chapter nine of the working group one contribution and that the contributions of working groups two and three were based on the assumption that the claim was correct. The first eight chapters of the WG1 contribution were mainly concerned with climatic observations and the authors expressed no opinion about the claim made in chapter nine, and chapters 10 and 11 assumed the claim to be correct. The entire IPCC thesis therefore stands or falls on the claims of just one chapter.

We are also led to believe that chapter nine was widely supported by hundreds of reviewers, but just 62 IPCC reviewers commented on its penultimate draft. Only five of those reviewers endorsed it but four of the five appear to have vested interests and the other made just one comment for the entire 11-chapter WG1 contribution.

As is the normal IPCC practice, chapter nine has co-ordinating lead authors, who are responsible for the chapter as a whole; lead authors, who are responsible for sections of the chapter; and contributing authors, who provide their thoughts to the lead authors but take no active part in thewriting.

The IPCC procedures state that the authors at each level should reflect a wide range of views, but this is not true of chapter nine.

The expansion of the full list of authors of each paper cited by this chapter reveals that 37 of 53 chapter authors form a network of people who have previously co-authored scientific papers with each other: or make that 38 if we include a review editor.

The two co-ordinating lead authors are members of this network. So are five of the seven lead authors. Thirty of 44 contributing authors are in the network and two other pairs of contributing authors have likewise co-authored scientific papers.

In other words, the supposedly 53 independent voices are in fact one dominant voice with 37 people behind it, two voices each with two people behind them, and perhaps 12 single voices. A closer check reveals that many of those 12 were academic or work colleagues of members of that larger network. One lead author was from the University of Michigan, as were three contributing authors, two of whom were not members of the network. Another lead author was associated with Britain's Hadley Centre, along with eight contributing authors, one of whom was not included in that network of co-authors.

All up, the 53 authors of this chapter came from just 31 establishments and there are worrying indications that certain lead authors were the superiors of contributing authors from the same organisation. The very few viewpoints in this chapter might be alleviated if it drew on a wide range of references, but among the co-authors of 40 per cent of the cited material are at least one chapter author.

Scientists associated with the development and use of climate models dominate the clique of chapter nine authors and by extension the views expressed in that chapter.

Perhaps the increase in the processing power of their computers has increased their confidence in the software they have been nurturing for years. Imagine, though, the consequences were they to imply that the accuracy of the models had not improved despite the extra funding.

These models are said to require a human component to reasonably match historical temperatures and the modellers claim that this proves a human influence on climate, but the human factor is an input so a corresponding output is no surprise. A more plausible reason for the mismatch without this influence is that the models are incomplete and contain errors, but of course chapter nine could never admit this.

Garnaut didn't need to evaluate the science behind the IPCC's claim to find that its integrity is questionable and that the report's key findings are the product of scientific cronyism.

The IPCC has misled us into believing the primary claims were widely endorsed by authors and reviewers but in fact they received little support and came from a narrow self-interested coterie of climate modellers.

We should now ask what else the IPCC has misled us about and why Garnaut, a skilled academic, so blithely accepted its claims.

John McLean is a climate data analyst and a member of the Australian Climate Science Coalition.

Quote:

We should now ask what else the IPCC has misled us about and why Garnaut, a skilled academic, so blithely accepted its claims.

Garnaut's job was to only work out the cost on the Government's review on climate change. He is an economist, not a climate change expert and wasn't required to scrutinise the validity of the findings.

Well mantra b4 you jump at shadows you should look at the veracity of the facts first.

http://www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/other/Labohm-What_is_wrong_with_the_IPCC.pdf

An experiment that hints we are wrong on climate change

Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist, says the orthodoxy must be challenged

When politicians and journalists declare that the science of global warming is settled, they show a regrettable ignorance about how science works. We were treated to another dose of it recently when the experts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued the Summary for Policymakers that puts the political spin on an unfinished scientific dossier on climate change due for publication in a few months’ time. They declared that most of the rise in temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to man-made greenhouse gases.

The small print explains “very likely” as meaning that the experts who made the judgment felt 90% sure about it. Older readers may recall a press conference at Harwell in 1958 when Sir John Cockcroft, Britain’s top nuclear physicist, said he was 90% certain that his lads had achieved controlled nuclear fusion. It turned out that he was wrong. More positively, a 10% uncertainty in any theory is a wide open breach for any latterday Galileo or Einstein to storm through with a better idea. That is how science really works.

Twenty years ago, climate research became politicised in favour of one particular hypothesis, which redefined the subject as the study of the effect of greenhouse gases. As a result, the rebellious spirits essential for innovative and trustworthy science are greeted with impediments to their research careers. And while the media usually find mavericks at least entertaining, in this case they often imagine that anyone who doubts the hypothesis of man-made global warming must be in the pay of the oil companies. As a result, some key discoveries in climate research go almost unreported.

Enthusiasm for the global-warming scare also ensures that heatwaves make headlines, while contrary symptoms, such as this winter’s billion-dollar loss of Californian crops to unusual frost, are relegated to the business pages. The early arrival of migrant birds in spring provides colourful evidence for a recent warming of the northern lands. But did anyone tell you that in east Antarctica the Adélie penguins and Cape petrels are turning up at their spring nesting sites around nine days later than they did 50 years ago? While sea-ice has diminished in the Arctic since 1978, it has grown by 8% in the Southern Ocean.

So one awkward question you can ask, when you’re forking out those extra taxes for climate change, is “Why is east Antarctica getting colder?” It makes no sense at all if carbon dioxide is driving global warming. While you’re at it, you might inquire whether Gordon Brown will give you a refund if it’s confirmed that global warming has stopped. The best measurements of global air temperatures come from American weather satellites, and they show wobbles but no overall change since 1999.

That levelling off is just what is expected by the chief rival hypothesis, which says that the sun drives climate changes more emphatically than greenhouse gases do. After becoming much more active during the 20th century, the sun now stands at a high but roughly level state of activity. Solar physicists warn of possible global cooling, should the sun revert to the lazier mood it was in during the Little Ice Age 300 years ago.

Climate history and related archeology give solid support to the solar hypothesis. The 20th-century episode, or Modern Warming, was just the latest in a long string of similar events produced by a hyperactive sun, of which the last was the Medieval Warming.

The Chinese population doubled then, while in Europe the Vikings and cathedral-builders prospered. Fascinating relics of earlier episodes come from the Swiss Alps, with the rediscovery in 2003 of a long-forgotten pass used intermittently whenever the world was warm.

What does the Intergovernmental Panel do with such emphatic evidence for an alternation of warm and cold periods, linked to solar activity and going on long before human industry was a possible factor? Less than nothing. The 2007 Summary for Policymakers boasts of cutting in half a very small contribution by the sun to climate change conceded in a 2001 report.

Disdain for the sun goes with a failure by the self-appointed greenhouse experts to keep up with inconvenient discoveries about how the solar variations control the climate. The sun’s brightness may change too little to account for the big swings in the climate. But more than 10 years have passed since Henrik Svensmark in Copenhagen first pointed out a much more powerful mechanism.

He saw from compilations of weather satellite data that cloudiness varies according to how many atomic particles are coming in from exploded stars. More cosmic rays, more clouds. The sun’s magnetic field bats away many of the cosmic rays, and its intensification during the 20th century meant fewer cosmic rays, fewer clouds, and a warmer world. On the other hand the Little Ice Age was chilly because the lazy sun let in more cosmic rays, leaving the world cloudier and gloomier.

pt1

Of course there is opposition to the IPCC - and plenty of people don't know what to believe anymore, but one of the reasons the Rudd government was voted in was because he was going to take climate change seriously - first by signing Kyoto and this meant taking affirmative action.

Garnaut was employed by the Government to estimate the cost of an ETS and advise on how best to instigate it.  He's not being paid to find as many faults as possible in the IPCC and back up the critics.

pt 2

The only trouble with Svensmark’s idea — apart from its being politically incorrect — was that meteorologists denied that cosmic rays could be involved in cloud formation. After long delays in scraping together the funds for an experiment, Svensmark and his small team at the Danish National Space Center hit the jackpot in the summer of 2005.

In a box of air in the basement, they were able to show that electrons set free by cosmic rays coming through the ceiling stitched together droplets of sulphuric acid and water. These are the building blocks for cloud condensation. But journal after journal declined to publish their report; the discovery finally appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society late last year.

Thanks to having written The Manic Sun, a book about Svensmark’s initial discovery published in 1997, I have been privileged to be on the inside track for reporting his struggles and successes since then. The outcome is a second book, The Chilling Stars, co-authored by the two of us and published next week by Icon books. We are not exaggerating, we believe, when we subtitle it “A new theory of climate change”.

Where does all that leave the impact of greenhouse gases? Their effects are likely to be a good deal less than advertised, but nobody can really say until the implications of the new theory of climate change are more fully worked out.

The reappraisal starts with Antarctica, where those contradictory temperature trends are directly predicted by Svensmark’s scenario, because the snow there is whiter than the cloud-tops. Meanwhile humility in face of Nature’s marvels seems more appropriate than arrogant assertions that we can forecast and even control a climate ruled by the sun and the stars.

The Chilling Stars is published by Icon. It is available for £9.89 including postage from The Sunday Times Books First on 0870 165 8585

I HEARD RUDD LAST WEEK TALKING ABOUT DROUGHTS AND CLIMATE CHANGE AND BLAMING HOWARD FOR ALL OF IT AS USUAL...  JUST WHERE IS THE CREDIBILITY IN ANY OF IT.

HE IS USING JUNK SCIENCE AS A FACTUAL BASIS.

I really hate it when the sceptics say" oh its cold in sydney this year climate change must be a lie " they are either poorly informed or not able to understand, this copy and paste in laymans words explain it quite well.
By Yankee Rose-
"In fact my understanding is that it's because whereas the entire planet is slowly warming, that does not translate 1:1 at a local level. Some areas (like Australia) are predicted to heat up faster than the average, whereas others (like northwest Europe) are predicted to cool down if the thermohaline current collapses (currently northwest Europe is 9C warmer than the average for that latitude, partially because of that warm ocean current. If it slackens, it would get colder up there)."

And here is a link to explain what the thermohaline current is.

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/thc/

I hope that helps with those confused , it makes sense if you try and understand , although I suspect there are a few who dont want to understand.

lol
Gee you think people don't understand that?

probably a better excuse than being in total denial though eh?

Grendel wrote on Sep 9^th, 2008 at 11:02am:

lol Gee you think people don't understand that? probably a better excuse than being in total denial though eh?

No ,I think most people do understand ,its the denialists ,like yourself ,that is the problem.
Gee I would have thought you'd have had at least one cut and paste to refute my post ,Grendel, you are slipping a bit.

I'm not the one in denial athiest.

No proof of what you believe exists.

Grendel wrote on Sep 9^th, 2008 at 11:53am:

I'm not the one in denial athiest. No proof of what you believe exists.

And your PROOF that it dosn't.
I didn't know you were a scientist, I take my beliefs from the MAJORITY of scientists who say its true, there are always a small number of people who for some reason dont understand or dont want too.

You don't read too well either do you?

wrote on Sep 9^th, 2008 at 12:00pm:

Grendel wrote on Sep 9th, 2008 at 11:53am: I'm not the one in denial athiest. No proof of what you believe exists. And your PROOF that it dosn't. I didn't know you were a scientist, I take my beliefs from the MAJORITY of scientists who say its true, there are always a small number of people who for some reason dont understand or dont want too.

Plenty exists, you just don't want to believe any of it becouse it dosn't suit your politics.
I note it dosn't stop the climate change sceptics believing in god, and where is the proof of him?

Athiest - it was a bit cooler at my house this morning.   :-)

Also heard the antarctic or arctic ice had increased by 30% recently !!!!!!

wrote on Sep 9^th, 2008 at 9:55am:

I really hate it when the sceptics say" oh its cold in sydney this year climate change must be a lie " they are either poorly informed or not able to understand, this copy and paste in laymans words explain it quite well. By Yankee Rose- "In fact my understanding is that it's because whereas the entire planet is slowly warming, that does not translate 1:1 at a local level. Some areas (like Australia) are predicted to heat up faster than the average, whereas others (like northwest Europe) are predicted to cool down if the thermohaline current collapses (currently northwest Europe is 9C warmer than the average for that latitude, partially because of that warm ocean current. If it slackens, it would get colder up there)." And here is a link to explain what the thermohaline current is. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/thc/ I hope that helps with those confused , it makes sense if you try and understand , although I suspect there are a few who dont want to understand.

Sprint, please read above post and link.

PS, how come you're the global mod? where's fd?

Hmm
seems the old stupidity remains
and the problem of keeping on topic.

I'm not of the Right and this is about science NOT politics unless you are a Greenie.
The test of religious belief is FAITH not Proof.
(CARE TO PROVE GOD DOESN'T EXIST?)

Now if you'd just like to POST ONE PIECE OF PROOF RE ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING etc, etc, etc...  you'll be pleased to know you'd be the first.  NOT even the IPCC which espoused claims from a small group of scientists and misleads the public into thinking it was many claim to have PROOF.

Grendel wrote on Sep 9^th, 2008 at 5:09pm:

Hmm seems the old stupidity remains and the problem of keeping on topic. I'm not of the Right and this is about science NOT politics unless you are a Greenie. The test of religious belief is FAITH not Proof. (CARE TO PROVE GOD DOESN'T EXIST?) Now if you'd just like to POST ONE PIECE OF PROOF RE ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING etc, etc, etc...  you'll be pleased to know you'd be the first.  NOT even the IPCC which espoused claims from a small group of scientists and misleads the public into thinking it was many claim to have PROOF.

I see the new name hasn't improved the brain, carry on we need a bit of a laugh.

Squippy?

Still incapable of answering questions or presenting facts?

Grendel wrote on Sep 10^th, 2008 at 9:04pm:

Squippy? Still incapable of answering questions or presenting facts?

Yea, Ive missed making you look like an idiot,boofy.

Quote:

(CARE TO PROVE GOD DOESN'T EXIST?)

Oh magoo, you've done it again.

Of course prove the non existence of mythical creatures that live in people's imaginations is problematic.
Can you prove that an invisible purple homosexual frog is not using you as his sex toy?

On the other hand, if we indulge your delusional god concept, I could easily prove he is a total prick.

mozzaok wrote on Sep 11^th, 2008 at 5:46pm:

Quote: (CARE TO PROVE GOD DOESN'T EXIST?) Oh magoo, you've done it again. Of course prove the non existence of mythical creatures that live in people's imaginations is problematic. Can you prove that an invisible purple homosexual frog is not using you as his sex toy? On the other hand, if we indulge your delusional god concept, I could easily prove he is a total prick.

Yes God sure has some explaining to do.

Like why does he allow Global Warming in the first place ;)

Thats not to mention all the wars/corruption/and violence that befall the innocent.

You people have serious hangups...

Oh and OG...  don't complain about people being off topic when your a champ at it yourself...  see last post.

Can't say I've missed your brilliant reparte Squippy...  and Mozz you have certainly dropped way down in my approximations.

Don't expect me to keep injecting a bit of life in this dull and almost dead site if the standard on offer is so pathetic.

It's nice to see you haven't lost your charm beowulf.  Of course it's a bit dull at the moment - but it has its lively moments.

How excited can anyone get about climate change anyway?

But I will point out that this line on your quoted article is incorrect.


Quote:

We should now ask what else the IPCC has misled us about and why Garnaut, a skilled academic, so blithely accepted its claims.

He didn't, although it was assumed he did.  Garnaut has aimed for a very low emissions target and thrown in some scepticism which should make the disbelievers very happy.

As usual mantra got the bull by the tail..  I didn't start it.

and you are wrong.  Garnaut does believe the IPCC report and his latest effort is a response to reality instead.

And this site has been slooooooooooow etc for a lot longer than just now and on lots of topics.

I was complimenting you beowulf - some of us have missed getting into arguments with you.  Here's a way to speed things up - moderate the multiculturalism forum.  That way you can delete off topic posts and challenge those you think are slow.  I don't think it's had a moderator since DT (young one) left.


Quote:

and you are wrong.  Garnaut does believe the IPCC report and his latest effort is a response to reality instead.

Yes you are right after all - darn.  But I said this a few months ago that we can be very positive about Garnaut's report because it's going to open up a huge industry for Australia in alternative technologies - if Rudd agrees.


Quote:

Professor Garnaut called for a "massive increase" in Australia's investment in low-emission technology research, development and commercialisation, to $3 billion a year. "Australia has the opportunity to play a leadership role in funding and co-ordinating a major global effort to develop and deploy carbon capture and storage technologies, and to transfer those technologies to developing countries." And not just developing countries. Australia's current environmental challenges represent a tremendous opportunity to create sustainable technologies that will not only improve our environmental situation, but which we can market to other developed nations for mutual benefit. These solutions could come from anywhere. http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,,24200508-17785,00.html

Grendel wrote on Sep 11^th, 2008 at 8:49pm:

You people have serious hangups... Oh and OG...  don't complain about people being off topic when your a champ at it yourself...  see last post.

Whos OG?      

And excuse me for just a moment whilst I slip out...and give myself a good biff round the ear.

Quote:

and Mozz you have certainly dropped way down in my approximations.

Sh1t, I must be really bad now then, I used to just be a moron, an idiot, a racist, a bigot, and a few more I cannot recall.

It must be old age, for most people it just creeps up, but the b@stard snuck up and mugged me, I can feel the heat in my head from the brain cells frying. ;D

mozzaok wrote on Sep 12^th, 2008 at 6:17pm:

Quote: and Mozz you have certainly dropped way down in my approximations. Sh1t, I must be really bad now then, I used to just be a moron, an idiot, a racist, a bigot, and a few more I cannot recall. It must be old age, for most people it just creeps up, but the b@stard snuck up and mugged me, I can feel the heat in my head from the brain cells frying. ;D

dont forget "fryboy"..

Grendel wrote on Sep 9^th, 2008 at 11:53am:

I'm not the one in denial athiest. No proof of what you believe exists.

Grendel you don't need proof to justify taking evasive action. Only an idiot would set the bar that high. We don't do it in our personal lives because we understand risk management intuitively. For some reason that intuitive understanding gets thrown right out the window by climate 'sceptics' such as yourself.


Grendel wrote on Sep 9^th, 2008 at 5:09pm:

I'm not of the Right and this is about science NOT politics unless you are a Greenie.

That's an odd claim to make seeing as you started this thread on the environment board of a politics forum. So tell me Grendell, what makes you think this is an appropriate forum to demand people explain all the science to you?

Grendel wrote on Sep 11^th, 2008 at 8:49pm:

You people have serious hangups... Oh and OG...  don't complain about people being off topic when your a champ at it yourself...  see last post. Can't say I've missed your brilliant reparte Squippy...  and Mozz you have certainly dropped way down in my approximations. Don't expect me to keep injecting a bit of life in this dull and almost dead site if the standard on offer is so pathetic.

So, this is the standard of the much heralded beowulf.?

Duh, what a let down.

lol

Dont need much of a standard to participate here Aussie...  your ad hom proves that.