James Lovelock: environmentalism has become a religion
Scientist behind the Gaia hypothesis says environment movement does not pay enough attention to facts and he was too certain in the past about rising temperatures
Anyone notice the IPCC released their latest scarefest the day before April Fool’s Day? Surely they’re taking the mickey with a large dose of the middle finger thrown in. Playing everyone for fools and not even having the decency of trying to hide it anymore – they need to be disbanded asap.
The DomPost is full of it, and no doubt the other MSM rags are likewise! Yes Magoo I found it ironic that all of this was coming out on April Fool’s Day. If they weren’t so serious you’d think that it really was a joke.
–You’ve developed a reputation as a maverick scientist with contrarian views. Where do you think that comes from?
I think the notion that I always like to oppose the consensus in science is totally wrong. The fact is there’s only one subject that I’ve been controversial, which is climate. I spend maybe 1 percent of my time on climate, and that’s the only field in which I’m opposed to the majority. Generally speaking, I’m much more of a conformist, but it happens I have strong views about climate because I think the majority is badly wrong, and you have to make sure if the majority is saying something that they’re not talking nonsense.
–With a majority of scientists on the other side of this issue, what would it take to convince you to switch sides?
What I’m convinced of is that we don’t understand climate, and so that’s sort of a neutral position. I’m not saying the majority is necessarily wrong. I’m saying that they don’t understand what they’re seeing. It will take a lot of very hard work before that question is settled, so I shall remain neutral until something very different happens
Scoop has Dr Spencer’s article attributed to Kevin Hearle:- and copyrighted to Scoop Media.
‘A voice of Sanity in Climate Science’
Article: Kevin Hearle, Thursday, 3 April 2014, 12:26 pm
Hey, IPCC, quit misusing the term “risk”
The latest report of Working Group II of the IPCC, entitled Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, was approved yesterday. In it, the concept of the “risks” posed by human-induced climate change figures prominently.
Now, I can understand using terms like “possibilities” when it comes to anthropogenic global warming (AGW). It’s theoretically possible that the average warming of the last 50+ years was mostly human-caused, and it’s possible that the slight sea level rise over this time was more human-caused than natural (sea level was rising naturally anyway). But we really don’t know.
And the idea that severe weather, snowstorms, droughts, or floods have gotten worse due to the atmosphere now having 4 parts per 10,000 CO2, rather than 3 parts per 10,000, is even more sketchy. Mostly because there is little or no objective evidence that these events have experienced any long-term increase that is commensurate with warming. (It’s possible they are worse with globally cool conditions…we really don’t know).
But the main point of my article is that the IPCC has bastardized the use of the term “risk”. Talking “possibilities” is one thing, because just about anything is possible in science. But “risk” refers to the known tendency of bad things to happen as a result of some causal mechanism.
Walking across the street raises your risk of being hit by a car. We know this, because it has happened many thousands of times.
Cigarette smoking raises your risk of lung cancer. We know this because it has happened millions of times (and is consistent with other medical evidence that human tissue exposed to repeated injury, anywhere in your body, can result in the formation of cancerous tissue).
But when it comes to climate change, there is no demonstrated causal connection between (A) an extra 1 CO2 molecule per 10,000 molecules of air, and (B) any resulting observed change in weather or climate.
There are theories of how the former might impact the latter. But that’s all.
You cannot use the term “risk” to describe these theoretical possibilities.
The fact that the IPCC has chosen to do so further demonstrates it is an organization that was political in its intended purpose, with the ultimate mission of regulating CO2 emissions, and operates within an echo chamber of like-minded individuals who are chosen based upon their political support of the IPCC’s goals.
Now, you might ask, “Dr. Roy, are you telling me there are NO known risks to adding more CO2 to the atmosphere?”
Well, I can only think of one. There are abundant controlled scientific studies which suggest that more CO2 will cause most vegetation to grow better, with more drought tolerance and more efficient use of water.
If you want to call that a “risk”, fine. But it doesn’t sound like such a bad thing to me, especially given the life-enhancing benefits of access to abundant, low cost forms of energy.
That’s pretty terrible. I just sent them an email pointing this out and suggesting they might like to attribute the article to it’s original author rather than plagiarising it and then trying to copyright something that isn’t theirs.
“The idea that climate change poses an existential threat to humankind is laughable” — Prof. Richard Tol
by Marlo Lewis on April 1, 2014
Climate economist Richard Toll has a provocative op-ed in today’s Financial Times titled “Bogus prophesies of doom will not fix the climate.” [Hotlink]
[…]
Even if one accepts WG2′s estimate that a “further warming of 2°C could cause loses equivalent to 0.2-2 per cent of world gross domestic product,” that is “about as bad as losing one year of economic growth” in half a century, Tol notes. In contrast, since the start of the Eurozone financial crisis, the income of the average Greek has fallen more than 20%. “Climate change is not, then, the biggest problem facing humankind.”
After noting that climate change is not even the biggest environmental problem (indoor air pollution has killed 260 million people — more than all the wars of the 20th century combined, Bjorn Lomborg estimates), Tol points out that the best protection from climate-related risk is economic growth and the institutions that facilitate it:
‘Why the IPCC Report Neglects the Benefits of Global Warming’
It needs catastrophe scenarios.
By Rupert Darwall
[…]
Its [WGII] most eye-catching claim is that negative impacts of climate change on crop yields are more common to date than positive impacts are. This improbable claim finds only the weakest support in the main body of the report, with its qualification that climate change played a “minor role.” It is, the report states, “extremely difficult” to define a clear baseline from which to assess the impact of climate change, and many non-climate factors are often difficult to quantify.
More egregiously, the summary speaks of rapid price increases following climate extremes since the 2007 report. This negligence amounts to downright dishonesty, as the summary omits mention of one of the principal causes of the 2007–08 spike in food prices, which is highlighted in the main body of the report. It was not climate change that increased food costs, but climate policies in the form of increased use of food crops in biofuel production, exacerbated by higher oil prices and government embargoes on food exports.
[…]
A feature of the Working Group II is that it is dominated by by natural scientists, led by Chris Field, a biologist from Stanford. “It is true we couldn’t find very many benefits of climate change,” Field told the Financial Times. “We worked really, really hard to identify every benefit we could find.” But not that hard. As journalist Matt Ridley wrote in the Wall Street Journal in January 2013 on the greening of the planet, analysis of satellite data shows that between 1982 and 2011, 20.5 percent of the world’s vegetated area got greener, while just 3 percent grew browner; the most likely causes are higher temperature, higher levels of carbon dioxide, or both.
I truly hope that this is the end of “climate exceptionism”. In one of the greatest moments of hyperbole the world has seen, former Australian PM Kevin Rudd said in 2007 something like climate change is the greatest moral, political, social problem of our time. During the speech people in 3rd world countries starved to death, Saudi women were prohibited from driving let alone getting an education and many people died of cancer. These problems were apparently insignificant to our PM in the face of climate change.
But of course he was just playing to the furious green masses of that quasi-socialist country. Slowly but surely, the voice of reason is creeping into the debate. We should see global warming as it is. As a minor concern, something which potentially increases risks a long way in the future. As anyone with half a brain can tell you, we must discount predictions about the future 90 years from now because of overwhelming uncertainty.
The IPCC says changes are already happening. And climate change is already making life harder. Is it? Because in almost every respect the year 2014 is the best year to be alive for a human being. So if this is climate change, I say bring it on.
I am very cautious of people who with the utmost certainty say we must act now. Not tomorrow but today. What is the harm in waiting 10-20yrs, allowing the science to develop, the computer models to improve (they are rubbish now) and new observations to accumulate? Surely before rushing into expensive policies and crippling regulations we can wait and see?
Written by Mary A. Nicholas, Canada Free Press on April 02 2014.
Karl Marx has had more impact on the minds of men and women in modern times than almost any other philosopher. One of his great claims about his philosophy was that it was “scientific.” Not “a knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws,” but an ideology that would transform the nature of man. It was a philosophy whose lineage includes terrorism, dictatorships and the ideology of the anti-human environmentalists.
[…]
The red mythologists, now dressed in green, rely on the same type of Marxist “science.” Slithering into towns, cities and academia, just like Marx, they shout Doomsday predictions: this time, not from capitalism,(although some clearly blame capitalism), but from “global warming. Here is just one siren song: “It is not just the overall amount of climate change that will be so devastating to ecosystems, but just as importantly, the rate at which that change occurs. Alongside such drastic reductions in biodiversity, human misery will multiply. Mass migration, droughts, floods, wars, and famine will be endemic rather than periodic features of a greatly constrained human society.” (Chris Williams, Ecology and Socialism, 173) The future will reveal the merits of their arguments….2010..2015…2030…2050. This is nothing but a technique to avoid discussion by removing an argument from the present. It is a matter of record that environmental “scientists” will not debate.
[…]
Object and you would be called a “denier.” Or denied funding. Denied a position in academia. Or if they really get their way, throw you in jail. Or, perhaps there will be liquidations.
The latest prophecy of climate doom is from the mildewed propaganda of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Note the propaganda techniques employed:
a) create fear;
b) state that they consulted 12,000 peer reviewed studies to give it legitimacy. Lenin used this when he referred to the Bolsheviks as the “majority” in contrast to the Mensheviks, the minority; and
c) demonization—Kerry called deniers of global warming “guilty of malpractice.”
In 2007 Vaclav Klaus expressed it clearly: “Freedom, Not Climate, Is at Risk.”
Christopher Booker – “This latest report has aroused markedly less excitement than did its hysterical predecessor in 2007. They have cried wolf once too often.”
‘How IPPC report was ramped up to predict wars, extreme weather and famine… while its authors slept on the job’
By BEN PILE
According to Raj Pachauri, chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), its report last week was its most terrifying yet, portending famine, disease, extreme weather and wars, proving ‘no one on this planet is going to be untouched’.
But a Mail on Sunday analysis shows that the 47-page ‘summary for policymakers’ of a much more detailed 2,600-page document – ‘sexed up’ some of the key findings.
Bish – “I think he makes a very strong case that the Summary for Policymakers is sexed up and I think I see problems here for the reputation of the IPCC’s press office”
Summary
1.0 An Overview of the Greenhouse Effect and the Earth’s Climate
1.1 The ‘Equilibrium Climate’ and the ‘Greenhouse Effect’
1.2 The Dynamic Description of the ‘Greenhouse Effect’
1.3: The Earth’s Climate: Overview
1.4 Climate Energy Transfer
1.5 Asking the Right Quantitative Questions
2.0 The Climate Record
2.1 Surface Temperature
2.2.1 The Temperature Record for the Continental US
2.2.2 Urban Heat Islands: Los Angeles
2.2.3 Air Temperatures in the Lower Troposphere
2.2.4 Land Surface Temperatures from Meteostat Satellite Data
2.3 Sea Level Rise
2.4 Polar Ice Extent
2.5 Glacier Retreat
2.6 US Rainfall
2.7 Hurricanes and Tornadoes
2.8 Extreme Weather Events
2.9 Longer Term Climate Variations: The Effect of Changes in the Solar Flux
3.0 Climate Energy Transfer and Surface Temperature
3.1 The Surface Flux Balance Equations
3.2 The Land-Air Interface
3.3 The Ocean-Air Interface
3.3.1 Energy Transfer in the Pacific Ocean Warm Pool
3.3.2 Global Changes in Ocean Evaporation and Surface Temperature
3.3.3 Climate Change, Ocean Circulation and Plate Tectonics
3.3.4 Solar Activity and Ocean Heating
3.4 The Lower and Upper Tropospheric Reservoirs
4.0 Climate Modeling and Climate Fraud
4.1 Climate Simulation
4.1.1 Model Validation
4.2 Climate Fraud
5.0 Conclusions
6.0 Points for Further Discussion
Acknowledgement
References
Consider this latest installment of the IPCC’s survey of the science. It’s more carefully hedged than its predecessors—and rightly so. There are fewer specific claims about the future that the science can’t fully support or that might turn out to be simply wrong. The emphasis is more on prudent actions to avoid risks, and less on precise predictions about what’s coming if those actions aren’t taken. That’s the approach that the unsettled science of climate change dictates.
Yet look at how Secretary of State John Kerry, for instance, responded to the new publication: “Read this report and you can’t deny the reality. Unless we act dramatically and quickly, science tells us our climate and our way of life are literally in jeopardy. Denial of the science is malpractice…The costs of inaction are catastrophic.”
The new report doesn’t say any of that. The science doesn’t predict a catastrophe that would threaten the American way of life. The most cost-effective responses to the risks of climate change are measured and gradual, not dramatic and quick. And denying the wisdom of Kerry’s call for action isn’t “denial of the science”—because the science by itself can’t say how much to spend on mitigation of, or adaptation to, climate change. That’s a political question.
This week the March temperature data appeared here for example. As I predicted in August 2011, this year (2014) should see the rate of cooling increase a little, but there will be about half a degree of warming between about 2029 and 2059. The expected 500 years of long term cooling will probably start before the year 2100.
So why are we in the middle of a 30 year period of slight net cooling? Because natural cycles control climate – not mankind.
Standard physics tells us why carbon dioxide has no warming effect and water vapour has a significant cooling effect, because it reduces the thermal gradient and thus lowers the supporting temperature at the base of the troposphere.
The Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube confirms what physics tells us, namely that the force of gravity produces a state wherein the maximum entropy (at thermodynamic equilibrium) has both a density gradient and a temperature gradient, because of the effect of gravity acting on molecules when they are in free path motion between collisions.
The whole greenhouse conjecture starts out from a false assumption that the Second Law of Thermodynamics can be ignored and so (they think) isothermal conditions would apply if you removed all the “pollutants” like water gas, droplets and vapour, carbon dioxide and its colleagues from the atmosphere.
>”..this year (2014) should see the rate of cooling increase a little,”
Should, if solar scenarios play out. Depending on whether one subscribes to a mild scenario or a mid-range De Vries/Dalton scenario (e.g. De Jager and Duhau) or a superimposed De Vries/Eddy/Maunder scenario (e.g. Abdussamatov), in any case, solar recession only really began 2009 at the end of the Modern Grand Maximum (peaked in 1986, began early 1950s). But the most significant effects of reduced energy in the sun – ocean – atmosphere system are lagged 10 or 12 or 14 years depending on calculation (Trenberth, Scafetta, Abdussamotov respectively) giving a lagged effect of 2009 + 10 = 2019 or + 12 = 2021 or + 14 = 2023.
Obviously “fast” responses over land (“slow” responses occur over ocean but are more significant due to thermal characteristics and expanse of ocean relative to land) will be perceptible earlier then that in land-only datasets, possibly this year onwards, but significant cooling wont be for some time yet more likely from around 2020 onwards. Ocean heat content (OHC) is still rising on global aggregate according to NODC’s Josh Willis “adjusted” data even though the upper Pacific has lost heat this century. The Indian has been gaining heat (some from the Pacific) enough to skew the global metric. Point is, there wont be much cooling in the atmosphere as long as OHC is still rising or at peak.
In other words, solar levels, although past Grand Maximum peak are still the highest they have been for over 1000 years therefore the ocean is still accumulating energy. The NODC page is a must watch in that respect as a leading indicator of OHC peaking (also see ‘Basin time series fields’ data):
>”So why are we in the middle of a 30 year period of slight net cooling?”
Negative ocean oscillation of the 60 year climate cycle. But the effect is a minor oscillation compared to the 208 year (DeVries) solar energy cycle or quasi 1000+ year cycles (e.g. Eddy)
>”but there will be about half a degree of warming between about 2029 and 2059
Not if the solar recession is still underway. The current solar recession will have taken atmospheric temperatures below present levels by 2029 so it would be warming relative to new lower levels – not current levels. How far below current the new level will be depends on the severity of the recession.
Oceanic oscillation isn’t new energy into the system, it’s merely redistribution of existing system energy. A minor phase change effect will be more than offset (continued cooling) by reduced solar input to the planetary system (i.e. reduced planetary entropy) according to solar cyclicity if the recession is severe. Atmospheric warming by ocean oscillation can’t occur if there’s less energy being introduced to the planetary system by solar initially via the ocean. If the solar recession turns out to be the mild scenario i.e. energy level recedes then increases again within the next 20 – 30 years (improbable), then there could be a warming effect but only relative to the cooler regime post 2020 relative to current levels.
The integral of solar activity + ocean oscillations (PDO+AMO) accounts for 96% (R2 = 0.96) of climate variability. Dr Roy Spencer had a Sept 26th, 2013, post on “our forthcoming paper”:
‘ENSO and PDO Explain Tropical Average SSTs during 1950-2013’
Second link (Dan Pangburn’s model), Figure 1: Measured average global temperature anomalies with calculated prior and projected trends, shows the mild scenario (“assuming sunspots like from 1925 to 1941”) vs severe scenario (“the case of no sunspots which is similar to the Maunder Minimum”):
Note I don’t subscribe fully to Dan Pangburn’s model or prediction method because it doesn’t account for planetary thermal inertia from what I can see (the prediction turns down sharply too soon).
Abdussamatov predicts “the pause” to end about now (2013/14) but his sharp downturn only really commences around 2020. Pangburn has a sharp downturn starting 2005. That didn’t happen we know, apparently because he doesn’t factor in about 14 years of planetary thermal lag.
And no warming at all this century from Abdussamatov (2013) – the Grinch. Solar energy trumps ocean oscillations completely. Duhau and De Jager (2010) correct their earlier 2009 Dalton-type prognosis to a Maunder-type too along with Abdussamatov I’ve just discovered, but they don’t translate that to atmospheric temperature:
4. Forecasting the Next Grand Episode
Earlier, we (Duhau and De Jager, 2009) presented a forecast of solar activity during Schwabe cycle #24 that has just started. We foresaw a late (2013.5) and low (Rmax = 67) solar maximum. This remarkably low solar activity gives rise to the question of the expected longer-term behaviour of the sun’s activity. To answer it we make use of the diagnostic phase diagram as described in Section 2. As a correction to our earlier study (De Jager and Duhau, 2009) we have used the improved aa-data for deriving improved phase diagrams of the Gleissberg cycle. It is presented in Fig. 4 (left) and it shows a remarkable behaviour when compared to those for the earlier periods as the diagram shown in Fig. 4. It represents a perfect correlation between the long-term components of Rmax and aamin. We note that in the year 2009 the Gleissberg cycle exactly hit the origin. In our earlier study it was found that it missed it (see Fig. 1 in De Jager and Duhau, 2009) and so a Regular episode, starting with a short (about a half of a century), Dalton-type minimum was forecasted. The new data, though, lead to the prediction of a Grand Minimum.
James Lovelock: environmentalism has become a religion
Scientist behind the Gaia hypothesis says environment movement does not pay enough attention to facts and he was too certain in the past about rising temperatures
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/30/james-lovelock-environmentalism-religion
I take my hat off to him. It’s reasonable to change your mind when the facts change, but it’s not always easy.
Anyone notice the IPCC released their latest scarefest the day before April Fool’s Day? Surely they’re taking the mickey with a large dose of the middle finger thrown in. Playing everyone for fools and not even having the decency of trying to hide it anymore – they need to be disbanded asap.
The DomPost is full of it, and no doubt the other MSM rags are likewise! Yes Magoo I found it ironic that all of this was coming out on April Fool’s Day. If they weren’t so serious you’d think that it really was a joke.
Freeman Dyson on being a maverick in climate
http://www.wired.com/2014/03/quanta-freeman-dyson-qa/
Scoop has Dr Spencer’s article attributed to Kevin Hearle:- and copyrighted to Scoop Media.
‘A voice of Sanity in Climate Science’
Article: Kevin Hearle, Thursday, 3 April 2014, 12:26 pm
Hey, IPCC, quit misusing the term “risk”
The latest report of Working Group II of the IPCC, entitled Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, was approved yesterday. In it, the concept of the “risks” posed by human-induced climate change figures prominently.
Now, I can understand using terms like “possibilities” when it comes to anthropogenic global warming (AGW). It’s theoretically possible that the average warming of the last 50+ years was mostly human-caused, and it’s possible that the slight sea level rise over this time was more human-caused than natural (sea level was rising naturally anyway). But we really don’t know.
And the idea that severe weather, snowstorms, droughts, or floods have gotten worse due to the atmosphere now having 4 parts per 10,000 CO2, rather than 3 parts per 10,000, is even more sketchy. Mostly because there is little or no objective evidence that these events have experienced any long-term increase that is commensurate with warming. (It’s possible they are worse with globally cool conditions…we really don’t know).
But the main point of my article is that the IPCC has bastardized the use of the term “risk”. Talking “possibilities” is one thing, because just about anything is possible in science. But “risk” refers to the known tendency of bad things to happen as a result of some causal mechanism.
Walking across the street raises your risk of being hit by a car. We know this, because it has happened many thousands of times.
Cigarette smoking raises your risk of lung cancer. We know this because it has happened millions of times (and is consistent with other medical evidence that human tissue exposed to repeated injury, anywhere in your body, can result in the formation of cancerous tissue).
But when it comes to climate change, there is no demonstrated causal connection between (A) an extra 1 CO2 molecule per 10,000 molecules of air, and (B) any resulting observed change in weather or climate.
There are theories of how the former might impact the latter. But that’s all.
You cannot use the term “risk” to describe these theoretical possibilities.
The fact that the IPCC has chosen to do so further demonstrates it is an organization that was political in its intended purpose, with the ultimate mission of regulating CO2 emissions, and operates within an echo chamber of like-minded individuals who are chosen based upon their political support of the IPCC’s goals.
Now, you might ask, “Dr. Roy, are you telling me there are NO known risks to adding more CO2 to the atmosphere?”
Well, I can only think of one. There are abundant controlled scientific studies which suggest that more CO2 will cause most vegetation to grow better, with more drought tolerance and more efficient use of water.
If you want to call that a “risk”, fine. But it doesn’t sound like such a bad thing to me, especially given the life-enhancing benefits of access to abundant, low cost forms of energy.
© Scoop Media
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1404/S00058/a-voice-of-sanity-in-climate-science.htm
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/03/hey-ipcc-quit-misusing-the-term-risk/
That’s pretty terrible. I just sent them an email pointing this out and suggesting they might like to attribute the article to it’s original author rather than plagiarising it and then trying to copyright something that isn’t theirs.
At least it turned up in Google News Top Stories category for a while.
A bit below-the-belt by Kevin Hearle though. I think he put one past Scoop.
Scoop have removed ‘A voice of Sanity in Climate Science’ (Hey, IPCC, quit misusing the term “risk”) article from their website.
Cached here:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:L_1duS1IjnsJ:www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1404/S00058/a-voice-of-sanity-in-climate-science.htm+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=nz
“The idea that climate change poses an existential threat to humankind is laughable” — Prof. Richard Tol
by Marlo Lewis on April 1, 2014
Climate economist Richard Toll has a provocative op-ed in today’s Financial Times titled “Bogus prophesies of doom will not fix the climate.” [Hotlink]
[…]
Even if one accepts WG2′s estimate that a “further warming of 2°C could cause loses equivalent to 0.2-2 per cent of world gross domestic product,” that is “about as bad as losing one year of economic growth” in half a century, Tol notes. In contrast, since the start of the Eurozone financial crisis, the income of the average Greek has fallen more than 20%. “Climate change is not, then, the biggest problem facing humankind.”
After noting that climate change is not even the biggest environmental problem (indoor air pollution has killed 260 million people — more than all the wars of the 20th century combined, Bjorn Lomborg estimates), Tol points out that the best protection from climate-related risk is economic growth and the institutions that facilitate it:
More>>>>>>
http://www.globalwarming.org/2014/04/01/the-idea-that-climate-change-poses-an-existential-threat-to-humankind-is-laughable-prof-richard-tol/
‘Debunking every IPCC climate prophesy of war, pestilence, famine, drought, impacts in one line’
Jo Nova
We could spend hours analyzing the new IPCC report about the impacts of climate change. Or we could just point out:
Everything in the Working Group II report depends entirely on Working Group I.
( see footnote 1 SPM, page 3).
Working Group I depends entirely on climate models and 98% of them didn’t predict the pause.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/04/debunking-every-ipcc-climate-prophesy-of-war-pestilence-famine-drought-impacts-in-one-line/
‘Why the IPCC Report Neglects the Benefits of Global Warming’
It needs catastrophe scenarios.
By Rupert Darwall
[…]
Its [WGII] most eye-catching claim is that negative impacts of climate change on crop yields are more common to date than positive impacts are. This improbable claim finds only the weakest support in the main body of the report, with its qualification that climate change played a “minor role.” It is, the report states, “extremely difficult” to define a clear baseline from which to assess the impact of climate change, and many non-climate factors are often difficult to quantify.
More egregiously, the summary speaks of rapid price increases following climate extremes since the 2007 report. This negligence amounts to downright dishonesty, as the summary omits mention of one of the principal causes of the 2007–08 spike in food prices, which is highlighted in the main body of the report. It was not climate change that increased food costs, but climate policies in the form of increased use of food crops in biofuel production, exacerbated by higher oil prices and government embargoes on food exports.
[…]
A feature of the Working Group II is that it is dominated by by natural scientists, led by Chris Field, a biologist from Stanford. “It is true we couldn’t find very many benefits of climate change,” Field told the Financial Times. “We worked really, really hard to identify every benefit we could find.” But not that hard. As journalist Matt Ridley wrote in the Wall Street Journal in January 2013 on the greening of the planet, analysis of satellite data shows that between 1982 and 2011, 20.5 percent of the world’s vegetated area got greener, while just 3 percent grew browner; the most likely causes are higher temperature, higher levels of carbon dioxide, or both.
More>>>>>
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/374742/why-ipcc-report-neglects-benefits-global-warming-rupert-darwall
Climate change – In the balance
The Economist
A new report from the IPCC implies that “climate exceptionalism”, the notion that global warming is a problem like no other, is coming to an end
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21600080-new-report-ipcc-implies-climate-exceptionalism-notion
guest-sewsenn Apr 3rd, 17:01
I truly hope that this is the end of “climate exceptionism”. In one of the greatest moments of hyperbole the world has seen, former Australian PM Kevin Rudd said in 2007 something like climate change is the greatest moral, political, social problem of our time. During the speech people in 3rd world countries starved to death, Saudi women were prohibited from driving let alone getting an education and many people died of cancer. These problems were apparently insignificant to our PM in the face of climate change.
But of course he was just playing to the furious green masses of that quasi-socialist country. Slowly but surely, the voice of reason is creeping into the debate. We should see global warming as it is. As a minor concern, something which potentially increases risks a long way in the future. As anyone with half a brain can tell you, we must discount predictions about the future 90 years from now because of overwhelming uncertainty.
The IPCC says changes are already happening. And climate change is already making life harder. Is it? Because in almost every respect the year 2014 is the best year to be alive for a human being. So if this is climate change, I say bring it on.
I am very cautious of people who with the utmost certainty say we must act now. Not tomorrow but today. What is the harm in waiting 10-20yrs, allowing the science to develop, the computer models to improve (they are rubbish now) and new observations to accumulate? Surely before rushing into expensive policies and crippling regulations we can wait and see?
http://www.economist.com/comment/2343632#comment-2343632
# # #
>”Slowly but surely, the voice of reason is creeping into the debate”
>”….in almost every respect the year 2014 is the best year to be alive for a human being. So if this is climate change, I say bring it on”.
I don’t think this is what Yvo de Boer meant by “That report is going to scare the wits out of everyone”.
‘Dreams from Their Father’
Written by Mary A. Nicholas, Canada Free Press on April 02 2014.
Karl Marx has had more impact on the minds of men and women in modern times than almost any other philosopher. One of his great claims about his philosophy was that it was “scientific.” Not “a knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws,” but an ideology that would transform the nature of man. It was a philosophy whose lineage includes terrorism, dictatorships and the ideology of the anti-human environmentalists.
[…]
The red mythologists, now dressed in green, rely on the same type of Marxist “science.” Slithering into towns, cities and academia, just like Marx, they shout Doomsday predictions: this time, not from capitalism,(although some clearly blame capitalism), but from “global warming. Here is just one siren song: “It is not just the overall amount of climate change that will be so devastating to ecosystems, but just as importantly, the rate at which that change occurs. Alongside such drastic reductions in biodiversity, human misery will multiply. Mass migration, droughts, floods, wars, and famine will be endemic rather than periodic features of a greatly constrained human society.” (Chris Williams, Ecology and Socialism, 173) The future will reveal the merits of their arguments….2010..2015…2030…2050. This is nothing but a technique to avoid discussion by removing an argument from the present. It is a matter of record that environmental “scientists” will not debate.
[…]
Object and you would be called a “denier.” Or denied funding. Denied a position in academia. Or if they really get their way, throw you in jail. Or, perhaps there will be liquidations.
If the environmental fascists get their way they will increase their control over the production of cars, in spite of the risks with caf√© standards what you can do with your private property; import wolves for ecological balance, in spite of the number of cattle, horses and sheep killed; succeed in brainwashing another generation (common core); enact forced population control; control the foods you can eat. and establish thousands of environmental committees and departments over the world, leading to a totalitarian world government. Their dreams are the same dreams as their father, Marx. A conspiracy theory? On Tuesday, December 21, 2010, at the 16th Conference of the Parties, Mrs. Figueres, its president, said of the Cancun agreement, that it “is a litmus test of global-governance capacity.” (Ms. Figueres’ resume includes an advanced degree from the London School of Economics and states she is “trained and authorized by Al Gore to deliver his presentation, An Inconvenient Truth.”)
The latest prophecy of climate doom is from the mildewed propaganda of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Note the propaganda techniques employed:
a) create fear;
b) state that they consulted 12,000 peer reviewed studies to give it legitimacy. Lenin used this when he referred to the Bolsheviks as the “majority” in contrast to the Mensheviks, the minority; and
c) demonization—Kerry called deniers of global warming “guilty of malpractice.”
In 2007 Vaclav Klaus expressed it clearly: “Freedom, Not Climate, Is at Risk.”
http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/dreams-from-their-father.html
What next?
Shock peer-reviewed paper provides ‘rationale’ for ‘information manipulation’ & ‘exaggeration’ in global warming debate to ‘enhance global welfare’
http://www.climatedepot.com/2014/04/04/shock-peer-reviewed-paper-advocates-information-manipulation-exaggeration-in-global-warming-debate-to-enhance-global-welfare-published-in-american-journal-of-agricultural-economics/
#Richard C,
“Shock peer-reviewed paper…”
Stupefying nonsense masquerading as science. Keep posting them, RC. People here need to know.
>”They’ve cried ‘climate alarm’ too often”
Christopher Booker – “This latest report has aroused markedly less excitement than did its hysterical predecessor in 2007. They have cried wolf once too often.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10746497/How-did-the-IPCCs-alarmism-take-everyone-in-for-so-long.html
‘How IPPC report was ramped up to predict wars, extreme weather and famine… while its authors slept on the job’
By BEN PILE
According to Raj Pachauri, chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), its report last week was its most terrifying yet, portending famine, disease, extreme weather and wars, proving ‘no one on this planet is going to be untouched’.
But a Mail on Sunday analysis shows that the 47-page ‘summary for policymakers’ of a much more detailed 2,600-page document – ‘sexed up’ some of the key findings.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2597907/Green-smear-campaign-against-professor-dared-disown-sexed-UN-climate-dossier.html#ixzz2yAcnngIQ
Scroll down a bit past Tol article
Ben Pile responds to the IPCC’s rebuttal:
IPCC: A Damp Squib
Posted by Ben Pile on April 7, 2014
http://www.climate-resistance.org/2014/04/ipcc-a-damp-squib.html
Bish – “I think he makes a very strong case that the Summary for Policymakers is sexed up and I think I see problems here for the reputation of the IPCC’s press office”
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2014/4/7/no-sexing-up-here-says-ipcc.html
Roy Clark (‘A Null Hypothesis For C02’ presented to US Senate) turned up in ‘Damp Squib’ comments:
http://www.climate-resistance.org/2014/04/ipcc-a-damp-squib.html#comment-306565
Links to his analysis: ‘Climate Model Fail: A Root Cause Analysis’, Roy Clark PhD
http://venturaphotonics.com/RootCause.html
It is extensive e.g. TABLE OF CONTENTS
Summary
1.0 An Overview of the Greenhouse Effect and the Earth’s Climate
1.1 The ‘Equilibrium Climate’ and the ‘Greenhouse Effect’
1.2 The Dynamic Description of the ‘Greenhouse Effect’
1.3: The Earth’s Climate: Overview
1.4 Climate Energy Transfer
1.5 Asking the Right Quantitative Questions
2.0 The Climate Record
2.1 Surface Temperature
2.2.1 The Temperature Record for the Continental US
2.2.2 Urban Heat Islands: Los Angeles
2.2.3 Air Temperatures in the Lower Troposphere
2.2.4 Land Surface Temperatures from Meteostat Satellite Data
2.3 Sea Level Rise
2.4 Polar Ice Extent
2.5 Glacier Retreat
2.6 US Rainfall
2.7 Hurricanes and Tornadoes
2.8 Extreme Weather Events
2.9 Longer Term Climate Variations: The Effect of Changes in the Solar Flux
3.0 Climate Energy Transfer and Surface Temperature
3.1 The Surface Flux Balance Equations
3.2 The Land-Air Interface
3.3 The Ocean-Air Interface
3.3.1 Energy Transfer in the Pacific Ocean Warm Pool
3.3.2 Global Changes in Ocean Evaporation and Surface Temperature
3.3.3 Climate Change, Ocean Circulation and Plate Tectonics
3.3.4 Solar Activity and Ocean Heating
3.4 The Lower and Upper Tropospheric Reservoirs
4.0 Climate Modeling and Climate Fraud
4.1 Climate Simulation
4.1.1 Model Validation
4.2 Climate Fraud
5.0 Conclusions
6.0 Points for Further Discussion
Acknowledgement
References
‘Scare tactics fail climate science, planet’
Clive Crook / Bloomberg
Consider this latest installment of the IPCC’s survey of the science. It’s more carefully hedged than its predecessors—and rightly so. There are fewer specific claims about the future that the science can’t fully support or that might turn out to be simply wrong. The emphasis is more on prudent actions to avoid risks, and less on precise predictions about what’s coming if those actions aren’t taken. That’s the approach that the unsettled science of climate change dictates.
Yet look at how Secretary of State John Kerry, for instance, responded to the new publication: “Read this report and you can’t deny the reality. Unless we act dramatically and quickly, science tells us our climate and our way of life are literally in jeopardy. Denial of the science is malpractice…The costs of inaction are catastrophic.”
The new report doesn’t say any of that. The science doesn’t predict a catastrophe that would threaten the American way of life. The most cost-effective responses to the risks of climate change are measured and gradual, not dramatic and quick. And denying the wisdom of Kerry’s call for action isn’t “denial of the science”—because the science by itself can’t say how much to spend on mitigation of, or adaptation to, climate change. That’s a political question.
http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0001185095
This week the March temperature data appeared here for example. As I predicted in August 2011, this year (2014) should see the rate of cooling increase a little, but there will be about half a degree of warming between about 2029 and 2059. The expected 500 years of long term cooling will probably start before the year 2100.
So why are we in the middle of a 30 year period of slight net cooling? Because natural cycles control climate – not mankind.
Standard physics tells us why carbon dioxide has no warming effect and water vapour has a significant cooling effect, because it reduces the thermal gradient and thus lowers the supporting temperature at the base of the troposphere.
The Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube confirms what physics tells us, namely that the force of gravity produces a state wherein the maximum entropy (at thermodynamic equilibrium) has both a density gradient and a temperature gradient, because of the effect of gravity acting on molecules when they are in free path motion between collisions.
The whole greenhouse conjecture starts out from a false assumption that the Second Law of Thermodynamics can be ignored and so (they think) isothermal conditions would apply if you removed all the “pollutants” like water gas, droplets and vapour, carbon dioxide and its colleagues from the atmosphere.
>”..this year (2014) should see the rate of cooling increase a little,”
Should, if solar scenarios play out. Depending on whether one subscribes to a mild scenario or a mid-range De Vries/Dalton scenario (e.g. De Jager and Duhau) or a superimposed De Vries/Eddy/Maunder scenario (e.g. Abdussamatov), in any case, solar recession only really began 2009 at the end of the Modern Grand Maximum (peaked in 1986, began early 1950s). But the most significant effects of reduced energy in the sun – ocean – atmosphere system are lagged 10 or 12 or 14 years depending on calculation (Trenberth, Scafetta, Abdussamotov respectively) giving a lagged effect of 2009 + 10 = 2019 or + 12 = 2021 or + 14 = 2023.
Obviously “fast” responses over land (“slow” responses occur over ocean but are more significant due to thermal characteristics and expanse of ocean relative to land) will be perceptible earlier then that in land-only datasets, possibly this year onwards, but significant cooling wont be for some time yet more likely from around 2020 onwards. Ocean heat content (OHC) is still rising on global aggregate according to NODC’s Josh Willis “adjusted” data even though the upper Pacific has lost heat this century. The Indian has been gaining heat (some from the Pacific) enough to skew the global metric. Point is, there wont be much cooling in the atmosphere as long as OHC is still rising or at peak.
In other words, solar levels, although past Grand Maximum peak are still the highest they have been for over 1000 years therefore the ocean is still accumulating energy. The NODC page is a must watch in that respect as a leading indicator of OHC peaking (also see ‘Basin time series fields’ data):
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
>”So why are we in the middle of a 30 year period of slight net cooling?”
Negative ocean oscillation of the 60 year climate cycle. But the effect is a minor oscillation compared to the 208 year (DeVries) solar energy cycle or quasi 1000+ year cycles (e.g. Eddy)
>”but there will be about half a degree of warming between about 2029 and 2059
Not if the solar recession is still underway. The current solar recession will have taken atmospheric temperatures below present levels by 2029 so it would be warming relative to new lower levels – not current levels. How far below current the new level will be depends on the severity of the recession.
Oceanic oscillation isn’t new energy into the system, it’s merely redistribution of existing system energy. A minor phase change effect will be more than offset (continued cooling) by reduced solar input to the planetary system (i.e. reduced planetary entropy) according to solar cyclicity if the recession is severe. Atmospheric warming by ocean oscillation can’t occur if there’s less energy being introduced to the planetary system by solar initially via the ocean. If the solar recession turns out to be the mild scenario i.e. energy level recedes then increases again within the next 20 – 30 years (improbable), then there could be a warming effect but only relative to the cooler regime post 2020 relative to current levels.
The integral of solar activity + ocean oscillations (PDO+AMO) accounts for 96% (R2 = 0.96) of climate variability. Dr Roy Spencer had a Sept 26th, 2013, post on “our forthcoming paper”:
‘ENSO and PDO Explain Tropical Average SSTs during 1950-2013’
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/09/enso-and-pdo-explain-tropical-average-ssts-during-1950-2013/
First comment:
Hockey Schtick says:
September 26, 2013 at 9:35 AM
PDO + AMO + “Sunspot Integral” explain 96% of climate variability
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/01/climate-modeling-ocean-oscillations.html
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/08/natural-climate-change-has-been-hiding.html
Second link (Dan Pangburn’s model), Figure 1: Measured average global temperature anomalies with calculated prior and projected trends, shows the mild scenario (“assuming sunspots like from 1925 to 1941”) vs severe scenario (“the case of no sunspots which is similar to the Maunder Minimum”):
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xw_hE2SzQLc/UYoEq5f9PvI/AAAAAAAAAAc/67d2gjg_ZzE/s1600/Figure2.jpg
Note I don’t subscribe fully to Dan Pangburn’s model or prediction method because it doesn’t account for planetary thermal inertia from what I can see (the prediction turns down sharply too soon).
Compare Pangburn’s non-lagged prediction downturn:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xw_hE2SzQLc/UYoEq5f9PvI/AAAAAAAAAAc/67d2gjg_ZzE/s1600/Figure2.jpg
To Abdussamatov’s (Figure 2) lagged prediction downturn:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.nz/2013/12/new-paper-predicts-another-little-ice.html
Abdussamatov predicts “the pause” to end about now (2013/14) but his sharp downturn only really commences around 2020. Pangburn has a sharp downturn starting 2005. That didn’t happen we know, apparently because he doesn’t factor in about 14 years of planetary thermal lag.
And no warming at all this century from Abdussamatov (2013) – the Grinch. Solar energy trumps ocean oscillations completely. Duhau and De Jager (2010) correct their earlier 2009 Dalton-type prognosis to a Maunder-type too along with Abdussamatov I’ve just discovered, but they don’t translate that to atmospheric temperature:
4. Forecasting the Next Grand Episode
Earlier, we (Duhau and De Jager, 2009) presented a forecast of solar activity during Schwabe cycle #24 that has just started. We foresaw a late (2013.5) and low (Rmax = 67) solar maximum. This remarkably low solar activity gives rise to the question of the expected longer-term behaviour of the sun’s activity. To answer it we make use of the diagnostic phase diagram as described in Section 2. As a correction to our earlier study (De Jager and Duhau, 2009) we have used the improved aa-data for deriving improved phase diagrams of the Gleissberg cycle. It is presented in Fig. 4 (left) and it shows a remarkable behaviour when compared to those for the earlier periods as the diagram shown in Fig. 4. It represents a perfect correlation between the long-term components of Rmax and aamin. We note that in the year 2009 the Gleissberg cycle exactly hit the origin. In our earlier study it was found that it missed it (see Fig. 1 in De Jager and Duhau, 2009) and so a Regular episode, starting with a short (about a half of a century), Dalton-type minimum was forecasted. The new data, though, lead to the prediction of a Grand Minimum.
http://journalofcosmology.com/ClimateChange111.html