An Honest Climate Debate

Breaking: Another moonwalker is a climate realist

Via Tom Nelson, July 3, 2009

Warming millions good, sceptics’ thousands bad

Andrew Bolt
Herald Sun, July 04, 2009

The ABC’s Emma Alberici yesterday tried to smear Senator Steve Fielding as the dupe of corrupt scientists, paid by Big Oil to deny global warming.

ALBERICI: Bob Ward (above) – a policy director at the London School of Economics – first wrote to ExxonMobil in 2006. He was concerned about the financial support the company provided to climate change deniers…

WARD: They have stopped funding for a number of the groups that have been denying climate change but they haven’t stopped funding them all. Yet they have been telling people that they have stopped all that funding. So I think they should either own up that they are continuing funding for some of these groups or they should keep their promise.

ALBERICI: How many groups and what are the kinds of figures we are talking about as far as sums of money?

WARD: Several hundred thousand dollars a year… These organisations are not informing public debate on climate change, they are trying to mislead people…

Already a couple of things scream out from this report. First, if Fielding’s facts are wrong, then why not simply show why, rather than smear? But if they are right, then what does it matter if Big Oil helped to fund some of the groups publicising the science? All I see here are red herrings.

Second, why does Alberici – who is better than this – stoop to use the term “denier”, which is not only false but a deliberate and disgraceful attempt to align sceptical scientists and politicians with Holocaust deniers?

But here is the most astonishing thing about Alberici’s report. Not only is the money ExxonMobil gives an insigificant fraction of the billions handed out to global warming scientists and spruikers, but it’s also a fraction of the money that Ward’s own Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the LSE got from a global warming evangelist to preach the doomsday gospel:

Jeremy Grantham has given British universities £24m in a bid to save the planet… The British financier, who founded the Boston-based investment fund GMO, which has £55 billion under its management, gave the money to the London School of Economics (LSE) to fund an institute for researching the economics of climate change. A similar amount went to Imperial College London to study climate science.

Altogether, the £24m is one of the largest donations ever made to climate research… So why did Yorkshire-born Grantham do it?

“Because climate change is turning into the biggest problem humanity has ever faced. I wanted to invest my money in places where it might actually help tackle that problem,” said the financier last week…

Which makes Ward a monumental hypocrite.He complains that a few hundred thousand dollars from Big Oil corrupts debate, but says nothing about the more than $20 million his own university gets from Big Warming.

Why did Alberici not mention this?

So here’s the deal for the ABC. Debate the science, but if you must claim that the funding corrupts, at least admit which side gets the most of it.

Scientists call for Royal Commission into Climate Change Science

Via Jo Nova, July 3, 2009

Released today. Four independent scientists respond in detail to the evidence that government scientists claim shows that carbon dioxide causes significant global warming. The real debate continues. After the return fire from the skeptical experts, there was not a single point left standing. ..

“Our conclusions are:

1. that whilst recent increases in greenhouse gases play a minor radiative role in global climate, no strong evidence exists that human carbon dioxide emissions are causing, or are likely to cause, dangerous global warming;
2. that it is unwise for government environmental policy to be set based upon monopoly advice, and especially so when what monopoly is represented by an international political (not scientific) agency; and
3. that the results of implementing emissions trading legislation will be so costly, troublingly regressive, socially divisive and environmentally ineffective that Parliament should defer consideration of the CPRS bill and institute a fully independent Royal Commission of enquiry into the evidence for and against a dangerous human influence on climate.
4. We add, with respect to point 3 that the scientific community is now so polarized on the controversial issue of dangerous global warming that proper due diligence on the matter can only be achieved where competent scientific witnesses are cross-examined under oath and under strict rules of evidence.”…

This is the question of the day: who audits the IPCC?

Can we rely on the peer review process by anonymous unpaid ‘peers’, who are often colleagues on Team-AGW, and who share the same financial incentives as the authors to find that carbon dioxide is the culprit? Can we expect a system that heavily funds scientists to ‘find a link’ between two factors to quickly and efficiently come to a counter conclusion if there is only an insignificant link?

Fossil fuels give human civilization around 85% of all our energy. We have depended on carbon based fuels almost exclusively since someone rubbed two sticks together, even before Homo Sapien became ’sapien’. If fossil fuel emissions causes major environmental problems, yes, of course, we must act, with major force and substantial effort. But to undertake such a massive shift at such major cost based only on the opinion of an unaccountable, unaudited international committee would be negligent.

The Rudd Government must find a way to assess the science. Is a Royal Commission the answer? Is there a better way to independently cross check the analysis, and get a second opinion? What steps can we take to ensure that we actively foster competition between scientific theories?

A patient would ‘get a second opinion’, the Australian Reserve Bank would do it’s own economic analysis before it recommended a major change, so why would our government adopt UN-IPCC dictates without question?

Read the rest here

Batman’s a Scientist

By Chris Horner
Planet Gore, July 1, 2009

Anyone with even a casual acquaintance with the global-warming industry knows that this crowd’s first response to any challenge, of any sort, from any source, is to go ad hominem. When the climate facts are not helpful, ad hom is their way to change the subject. They know what they need to know — that climate legislation is the instrument at hand for long-desired “social change,” and whatever means that are necessary will be employed. To these people, facts and logic are for losers —and often enough, ad hominem is used to conceal the ideologues’ staggering ignorance on the issues (ignorance of the sort that President Obama revealed with his recent claim that carbon dioxide “contaminate[s] the water we drink and pollute[s] the air we breathe” — he said, opening a Perrier and exhaling a sigh).

So when the EPA got caught suppressing the sole substantive report submitted as part of its “internal deliberation” over whether and how to seize the energy sector of the U.S. economy, you knew ad hominem was sure to follow. In the Washington Times story about the suppressed report, we read that a spokeswoman for EPA administrator Lisa P. Jackson — who made the determination that CO2 threatens the world — “noted that the memo’s author, Alan Carlin, is an economist, not a climate scientist.” Funny how people tasked with certain jobs become unqualified only when they are inconvenient.

Carlin is, indeed, a Ph.D. economist from MIT, a degree he obtained after earning a degree in physics from Cal Tech — both of which probably explain why he holds the job of reviewing such proposals. But this reflexive ad hom raises several obvious questions, none more obvious than: What makes Lisa P. Jackson a climate scientist? (She’s a chemical engineer.)

For that matter, who the hell are Barack Obama, Henry Waxman, Ed Markey, Nancy Pelosi, Carol Browner, Al Gore . . . need I continue? They all apparently are perfectly suited to reach informed judgment on the issue. Waxman is a scientist (bachelor’s in political science, UCLA ‘61) like Batman’s a scientist. Freeman Dyson, meanwhile, is “just a physicist.” Clearly, our governmental solons are qualified because they agree that this issue must be ridden to achieve the desired “change.”

Read the rest here

Evidence for a solar signature in 20th-century temperature

By Jean-Louis Le Mouel, Vincent Courtillot, Elena Blanter, Mikhail Shnirman

Via ICECAP
Jun 30, 2009

We analyze temperature data from meteorological stations in the USA (six climatic regions, 153 stations), Europe (44 stations, considered as one climatic region) and Australia (preliminary, five stations). We select stations with long, homogeneous series of daily minimum temperatures (covering most of the 20th century, with few or no gaps).

We find that station data are well correlated over distances in the order of a thousand kilometres. When an average is calculated for each climatic region, we find well characterized mean curves with strong variability in the 3-15-year period range and a superimposed decadal to centennial or ‘secular’ trend consisting of a small number of linear segments separated by rather sharp changes in slope. Our overall curve for the USA rises sharply from 1910 to 1940, then decreases until 1980 and rises sharply again since then. The minima around 1920 and 1980 have similar values, and so do the maxima around 1935 and 2000; the range between minima and maxima is 1.38C. The European mean curve is quite different, and can be described as a step-like function with zero slope and a 1.8C jump occurring in less than two years around 1987. Also notable is a strong (cold) minimum in 1940. Both the USA and the European mean curves are rather different from the corresponding curves illustrated in the 2007 IPCC report.

We then estimate the long-term behaviour of the higher frequencies (disturbances) of the temperature series by calculating the mean-squared interannual variations or the ‘lifetime’ (i.e. the mean duration of temperature disturbances) of the data series. We find that the resulting curves correlate remarkably well at the longer periods, within and between regions. The secular trend of all of these curves is similar (an S-shaped pattern), with a rise from 1900 to 1950, a decrease from 1950 to 1975, and a subsequent (small) increase. This trend is the same as that found for a number of solar indices, such as sunspot number or magnetic field components in any observatory.

We conclude that significant solar forcing is present in temperature disturbances in the areas we analyzed and conjecture that this should be a global feature.

We have also shown that solar activity, as characterized by the mean-squared daily variation of a geomagnetic component (but equally by sunspot numbers or sunspot surface) modulates major features of climate. And this modulation is strong, much stronger than the one per mil variation in total solar
irradiance in the 1- to 11-year range: the interannual variation, which does amount to energy content, varies by a factor of two in Europe, the USA and Australia. This result could well be valid at the full continental scale if not worldwide. We have calculated the evolution of temperature disturbances, using either the mean-squared annual variation or the lifetime. When 22-year averaged variations are compared, the same features emerge, particularly a characteristic centennial trend (an S-shaped curve) consisting of a rise from 1920 to 1950, a decrease from 1950 to 1975 and a rise since. A very similar trend is found for solar indices. Both these longer-term variations, and decadal and sub-decadal, well-correlated features in lifetime result from the persistence of higher frequency phenomena that appear to be influenced by the Sun. The present preliminary study of course needs confirmation by including regions that have not yet been analyzed.

Larger version here. Comparison of the mean squared interannual variation (left column) and lifetime (right column) of the overall minimum temperature data from the US (153 stations), Australia (preliminary, 5 stations) and Europe (44 stations). Europe (bottom row) is shown for the two types of calculation for quick comparison (green curves), and also the magnetic index representing solar activity (blue curve).

Icecap Note: Extending the solar TSI (Hoyt and Willson) and US temperatures up to the present time and adding the ocean multidecadal cycles, we see that relationship continue. It also suggest the current cooling trend as it is similar to the trend down in solar and ocean temperatures in the late 1950s and 1960s. Larger image here.

Funded Arrogance

Via Jo Nova, June 30, 2009

The debate that Senator Steve Fielding started continues, this time between heavyweights in Australian climate science. Yet again, the side with the funding, the power, and the large claims is unable to answer basic polite science questions. The pompous arrogance is evident. Why not just answer the question?

Professor Matthew England’s research teams have received nearly $2.5 million in funding from the Australian government, much of it for studying oceans and climate change. So when we need good answers on the topic, he would be the man. If a school student asked for help, we might expect only a two line reply passing on a link. But when the question comes from one of the most informed climate scientists in the country, with 12 years as head of Australia’s National Climate Centre, and it’s about a graph at the centre of legislative negotiations, it’s inexcusable that the reply was vague, poorly reasoned and didn’t answer the question. All this, in a conversation that England himself started.

If indeed “a Nobel Prize is there for many of the ideas the skeptics champion if only they were true” as England claims, then opportunity is knocking, and England is not answering the door. Instead of pursuing the query with logical analysis, he dismisses it out of hand, with a patronizing appeal to authority. Effectively he says “it can’t be right because the IPCC, or one of my post-docs, would have noticed”.

How could a consensus ever be proven wrong if the main funded analysts start with the assumption that “the consensus must be right”? The only thing England proves is that Australian science is in need of a shake-out.

Read the rest here