https://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/06/answers-on-climate-change

Answers on climate change

June 29, 2009



Assessment of Minister Wong’s "Written Reply

to Senator Fielding’s Three Questions on Climate Change"

by

Bob Carter, David Evans, Stewart Franks and William Kininmonth



Background

Emissions trading legislation, such as the “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme” (CPRS) bills that are currently before Parliament, rest upon the assumption that human greenhouse emissions, especially carbon dioxide, (i) are pollutants, and (ii) are causing dangerous global warming. Neither of these assumptions are supported by empirical evidence, and both have been under scientific challenge for many years by a large body of qualified and independent scientists.

Cognisant of these facts, Senator Steve Fielding has posed three direct questions to the Minister for Climate Change, Senator Penny Wong, in order to clarify whether or not evidence exists that human carbon dioxide emissions are causing dangerous global warming, as alleged by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Minister Wong agreed to address these questions, first, through discussion at a meeting held between the Senators, ourselves and ministerial science advisors Professor Penny Sackett (Chief Scientist) and Professor Will Steffen (Director, ANU Climate Change Institute); at this meeting, an 11-page background presentation was made by Drs. Sackett and Steffen. And, second, by form of written reply, which was provided to Senator Fielding on June 18th.

We provide in this paper an assessment of Minister Wong’s written reply to each of Senator Fielding's three questions. A more exhaustive paper covering these questions, and other issues arising from the meetings between Senator Fielding and Minister Wong, is covered in the paper titled "Minister Wong’s Reply to Senator Fielding’s Three Questions on Climate Change – A Commentary".

Suggested reading for those alarmed.
Alarmists need not bother.

https://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/06/answers-on-climate-change

Grendel - I could answer the loaded questions in a similar way to how you answered my wife beating question to you.

They are carefully loaded, carefully engineered questions.  

And just in case you didn't understand the first time, it's not the messengers that are alarmist, it's the message that's alarming.

Don't shoot the messenger.

Grendel wrote on Jul 1^st, 2009 at 10:50am:


Mate, your mind is so firmly closed off from reality that your communication is uni-directional - outwards only; in data communications terms you are stuck in uniplex mode with the transmit line permanently on. 

I don't answer for your benefit, because I know you're not listening. I answer because somebody might intercept the garbage that you cut and paste and wonder - "I wonder if that could be true".

You don't answer questions Muso.

You preach the religion.  I see you have 1 follower at least.

Personally I like to keep an open mind.  Hence the need to post information you'd like to see buried.

2. Natural variability in air temperatures

2.1. The government asserts that “at time scales of around a decade, natural variability can mask the atmospheric warming trend caused by the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases”.

2.2. It is widely agreed that there is considerable natural variability in air temperature on decadal timescales and longer. It is the IPCC who have previously denied the effect of natural variability.

For example, the 2001 Summary for Policymakers claimed, based on computer model simulations, that the climate system has only a limited internal variability. In turn, this claim was, and is, used to underpin the argument that carbon dioxide forcing is the only plausible explanation for the late 20th century warming trend.

For the government to now invoke natural variability as an explanation for the elapsed temperature curve is to destroy the credibility of their previous arguments for carbon dioxide forcing.

2.3. The government also claims that “in terms of the climate system as a whole, only about 5 percent of the warming since 1960 has taken place in the air”.

2.4. Using the Hadley CRU temperature record, the rise in air temperature since 1960 has been about 0.5oC. Translating the 15x1022 J of additional heat in the upper 700 m of ocean since 1960 into a temperature rise, we find that this corresponds to an increase in upper ocean temperature of only 0.15oC.

Thus, using these metrics, air temperature increase since 1960 has been more than three times greater than ocean temperature increase.

4. Ice, snow and frozen ground

4.1. The government describes a number of regional changes in ice and snow distribution, and comments, without citation, that “overall the amount [global implied] of ice, snow and frozen ground has declined”.

4.2. So far as we are aware, no accurate inventory exists of the worldwide volume of modern ice and snow, let alone over the millennial history that is required in order to judge whether observed modern changes are unusual. As Idso & Singer (2009, p. 136) note, “global data on glaciers do not support claims made by the IPCC that most glaciers are retreating or melting”.

In the absence of such historical records, descriptions of melting ice in particular areas are indicative only of a negative precipitation:melt mass balance in those areas, and circumstantial so far as global change or the cause of melting are concerned. In attributing areas of melting to a human greenhouse effect, the government is making the common error of failing to distinguish between the occurrence of warming and the identification of its cause.

4.3. As the government notes, different trends occur in different areas. For example a post-2000 retreat of Arctic sea-ice parallels a similar melting that occurred in the 1930s, whereas at the same time sea-ice around Antarctica has increased to an all time high of >1 million km2 above the long-term average. Apart from the small region of the Antarctic Peninsula there is no evidence of warming over Antarctica and the Southern Ocean.

4.4. The latest available data indicates - in the context of the large annual cycle of variation, and the observed decline during 2007 and 2008 - no global trend in sea-ice cover. Arctic sea ice extent today is similar to that in 1979, when satellite observations commenced, and at the same time sea-ice cover around Antarctica is currently enhanced in area.

4.5. Finally, there is no particular reason to view contemporary values of sea-ice cover as representing a climatic ideal.

Historical records point to much less sea ice over the Arctic Ocean during the 1920s and 1930s, and to several prior openings of the Northwest Passage. And, of course, Greenland was much warmer in the 10th and 11th centuries when there were approximately 3,000 individual settlements and farmlets. As the cold of the Little Ice Age set in thereafter, none of these settlements survived beyond 1550 and some sites remain frozen today.

The Government already answered that natural variability can mask the overall trend over a period of about 10 years.

Quote:


To say that is totally laughable.  Have they actually checked the IPCC website?

IPCC WG1 reports have chapters entitled: 7: Observed Climate Variations and Change (1990); 3: Observed Climate Variability and Change (1996); 2: Observed Climate Variability and Change (2001); 6: Paleoclimate (2007).