Comment to Otto, A., Otto, F.E.L., Boucher, O., Church, J., Hegerl, G., Forster, P.M., Gillett, N.P., (…), Allen, M.R., Energy budget constraints on climate response, Nature Geoscience 2013 6 (6):415-416:

The climate models sensitivity to carbon is overrated

Albert Parker

E-mail: [email protected]

Comparison of reconstructed global land and sea temperature (for example GISS [1]) and anthropogenic carbon dioxide time histories (for example CDIAC [2]) over the last century show a very different sensitivity of temperatures to anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions than what is claimed by Otto, A., Otto, F.E.L., Boucher, O., Church, J., Hegerl, G., Forster, P.M., Gillett, N.P., (…), Allen, M.R. in their paper Energy budget constraints on climate response, Nature Geoscience 2013 6 (6):415-416.

The reason why climate models are failing so badly so quickly is not because of the “variability” in the climate, but because of the overrated effect of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions and neglected natural oscillations.

Figure 1 presents the non-dimensional global temperatures as reconstructed by GISS and the non-dimensional carbon emission as reconstructed by CDIAC vs. time 1910 to present. While carbon emissions are growing almost exponentially, the temperature has a much more complex behaviour where two natural oscillations of about 60 years are clearly superimposed to a longer term trend that may be natural and/or carbon driven. The upwards phases 1910 to 1940 and 1970 to 2000 are followed by the downward phases 1940 to 1970 and 2000 to the present (and very likely to 2030). As pointed out in the recent works [3-7], the climate sensitivity is overrated when correlating the temperature and carbon dioxide emission behaviour over the time window 1970 to 2000.

COMMENT TO CAMILO MORA ET AL., THE PROJECTED TIMING OF CLIMATE DEPARTURE FROM RECENT VARIABILITY, NATURE 502:183–187 (10 OCTOBER 2013) DOI:10.1038/NATURE12540:

THE CLIMATE MODELS DO NOT FAIL BECAUSE OF “VARIABILITY” BUT BECAUSE OF THE NEGLECTED MULTI-DECADAL NATURAL OSCILLATIONS AND THE OVERRATED EFFECT OF THE ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION

Albert Parker

E-mail: [email protected]

If the authors of [1] carefully analyse the reconstructed global land and sea temperature time history since the 1800s (for example GISS [2]), they may certainly realize that the reason why climate models are failing so badly so quickly is not because of the “variability” in the climate, but only because of their wrong assumptions about the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emission driving the climate and the neglected natural oscillations. This “inconvenient truth” emerges clearly as soon as the reconstructed global temperatures are compared with the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions not only during the last upwards phase of a quasi-60 years natural oscillation affecting the climate, but also including what happened prior of 1970 and what is happening since 2000 [3-8]. Fitting the data with functions that minimize the error over the full record length and not only a small time window of the recent past it is clear that the theory of exponentially growing temperatures is wrong.

This is written in response to an earlier contribution by Derek Alker, which I criticized and I need to begin with an apology to Derek. My criticism was clumsy in its wording and could have been interpreted as arrogant in spirit. As far as I know Derek has no ill intent towards me and I have none towards him but I was surprised by my own apparent aggression when I saw the contribution on-line. This is important, though I withdraw none of the points of criticism I made, since the manner of criticism is an important issue in the community of science and in particular in the debates about climate change, which (as anyone will know who is familiar with the main blogs) are awash with insults and bad behaviour and even threats. I want to begin by correcting my own mistake in that respect by referring to a key aspect of Popper’s philosophy.

In the debate about the relative merits of Popper’s and Kuhn’s ideas about what I will call the dynamic of science, this matter of attitude is pivotal, though few commentators have analysed it. And this in spite of the repeated emphasis that Popper gave to it. It is captured in the often-quoted lines;

“I may be wrong and you may be right,

and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth”

These lines encapsulate what Critical Rationalism means and they hold the secret to the whole of Popper’s approach. They have many layers of meaning; logical, methodological and social. They point to a logic of discovery that is based on criticism, to an attitude of mind that is non-authoritarian, to a culture of tolerance and to humility in the individual.

The Carbon Sense Coalition has accused those waging a war on carbon dioxide of being “anti-green”. The Chairman of Carbon Sense, Mr Viv Forbes, said that carbon dioxide is the gas of life, feeding every green plant, producing food for every animal and in the process releasing oxygen, another gas of life, into the atmosphere.

A recent report on measuring global vegetation growth notes that data from remote sensing devices show significant increase in annual vegetation growth during the last three decades. They also report that CO2 fertilization is more important than climate variation in determining the magnitude of the vegetation growth. “The CO2 fertilization effect of the carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere by mankind’s burning of fossil fuels, such as coal, gas and oil, is beginning to assume its vaulted position of being a tremendous “boon to the biosphere. . .”  

Current levels of carbon dioxide are well below optimal levels for plants, so all true environmentalists should welcome any increase – all life would benefit if the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere was triple current levels.

The biosphere always flourishes during the recurring but short warm eras on Earth. Ice ages are the times of extinctions. As oceans warm, carbon dioxide is expelled and water evaporates. Warmth, and more moisture and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere provide ideal growing conditions for the green world.

The Internet Reformation is the culmination of the power and glory of Western civil society and free-market thinking. It is the apogee of all that is best in a sweep of history that began with the ancient Greeks and has culminated in the hearts and minds of millions of young men and women who industriously add to its impact every day via additional code, non-mainstream news or fundamental scientific commentary.

It is NOT an “Internet Revolution.” The Internet Revolution is a standard “pat” phrase of the powers-that-be about the so-called empowering effects of technology. The Internet Reformation is a much more deeply disruptive concept. It is truly a revolutionary one, affecting every aspect of human society and human relationships with modern elites. It is focused around the insights generated by the Internet itself.

This concept is based on what happened during the era of the Gutenberg press. Almost from the beginning, the Gutenberg press was a revolutionary technology. As soon as people used the press to print Bibles, readers began to discover that the Holy Word differed considerably from what they’d been taught by the Catholic Church.

Until then, Bibles had been fairly rare. They were printed in Latin or Greek, and copied down by hand with elaborate engravings. The Catholic Church and its important functionaries and bureaucrats possessed Bibles. Priests performed Mass with their back to the congregation. The ceremony was a highly Romanized one, as the West had come to conceive of Rome within its most corrupt and centralizing phase, and highly controlled.

But printing Bibles in moveable type changed the power relationship entirely. Now, anyone could own a Bible and they were easily reproduced and increasingly inexpensive. Almost immediately, then Bibles began to be translated into “vulgate” and eventually the King James Version (English) would become a dominant variant. But in the meantime, the damage was done. First came the Renaissance and then the Reformation and finally the Age of Enlightenment, three powerful rolling waves of free-thinking that transformed the face of human society, first in the West and then around the world.

The changes ushered in by the Gutenberg press were fundamental. The Renaissance began the reconfiguration by allowing for the rediscovery of the scientific orientation of Greece and Rome. This set in motion a series of events that has not yet ceased to reverberate.

Not content with promoting junk climate science the former poster boy of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has now published his latest unscientific rant, ‘The Subterranean War on Science‘.

Pronouncing that “science denial kills,” Penn. State University’s Michael Mann’s new paper launches off by promoting a myth first promulgated by data fraudster,  Dr. Pride Chigwedere (2008). Chigwedere’s false claim was of 300,000 needless South African deaths due to President Mbeki’s refusal to adopt Big Pharma’s use of antiretroviral drugs.

Clark Baker, CEO of the Office of Medical and Scientific Justice (OMSJ) and a dedicated opponent of junk HIV/AIDS science unequivically dismisses Mann’s claim as “pure propaganda.” But then, those of us familiar with Michael Mann, infamous for his ‘hockey stick’ graph, can see why he and co-author, Stephan Lewandowsky, find such affinity with Chigwedere. Mann’s reputation is now so low that even those who were once his closest colleagues distance themselves from his shenanigans.

Lewandowsky, Mann’s accomplice in the latest tawdry piece, is likewise increasingly mocked among his peers. The tortured (and tortuous) twosome have just published (November, 2013), in the Association of Psychological Science (APS), a 2,400-word outpouring of hate against critics who simply demand that scientists be more open about their methods and data. And heaven knows this is desperately needed with so much apparent fraud and deceit tarnishing the image of government scientists in general.

But in this paper we see that Lewandowsky’s and Mann’s old habits die hard. They are back to the same tricks – this time telling ‘porkies’ about the AIDS/HIV controversy.

As Clark Baker points out, “As I reported here, Chigwedere admits to using estimates that UNAIDS admits were deliberately inflated and FAR BELOW South Africa’s actual mortality numbers.” (see table below)

The Chigwedere data begs the question: if AIDS allegedly kills millions in Africa, why has Africa’s population doubled from 400-800 million during the same period? The source of such misinformation is Nathan Geffen of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), which is funded by mining giant AngloGold and TAG, which is funded by pharma. Chigwedere’s report was funded by the Harvard School of Public Health, which received a $160 million spike of AIDS funding from HRSA in the years leading up to publication (2008). As they say: follow the money!

Across North America and elsewhere, independent scientists are increasingly worried that freedom of thought and discourse among fellow professionals is under grave threat. One such scientist who has long endured attack on his academic freedom is Dr. David Rasnick. Rasnick is a chemist and biologist noted for research questioning the orthodoxy about HIV/AIDS. For raising doubt on common misconceptions he is vilified by the mainstream. In this article we examine Rasnick’s concerns and offer readers some insight into how propaganda about HIV/AIDS and man-made global warming sprout from the same Establishment root: the Academic-Governmental-Industrial Complex (AGIC).

The AGIC is a multi-national business enterprise that has kept science in its enthrall due to the mega bucks on offer to researchers. Dissenters are denounced and starved of funding in this monolithic culture. Without numerous competing sources of funding, the centralized gatekeeping mechanisms of government grants have led to a scientific community too readily possessed by Group Think.

Group Think is the collective corruption of the decision-making processes. Group thinkers have an illusion of invulnerability, collective rationalization, stereotypes of outgroups, self-censorship, mind-guards, and belief in the inherent morality of the group.

As psychologists have shown:

“They typically have defective decision-making, involve the incomplete survey of alternatives and objectives, poor information search, failure to appraise the risks of the preferred solution, and selective information processing. Not surprisingly, these combined forces are predicted to result in extremely defective decision making performance by the group.” [1]

David Rasnick has the courage to stand up for his personal scientific convictions. According to PubMed, Rasnick has contributed to 18 scientific papers on protease-related research, and written a book about the aneuploidy theory of cancer. Rasnick’s complete CV and publication list is posted on his website. He dares to advance new ideas that question common AGIC scientific assumptions even if they may threaten entrenched interests (and investments). AGIC investments are worth many hundreds of billions of dollars to those who serve the system. Even those who passively kowtow to it are, in effect, sustaining the Establishment view.

While perusing the US Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts vs. EPA 2007 one finds this astonishing statement in footnote #26 on page 26: “No party to this dispute [Massachusetts vs. EPA 2007] contests that greenhouse gases both ‘enter the ambient air’ and tend to warm the atmosphere. They are therefore unquestionably ‘agents’ of air pollution.”

As you can see, according to this Court decision “warm[th]” is itself air pollution and “greenhouses gases” are simply presumed to be “agents” of that pollution. Under this paradigm anything that enters and warms the atmosphere can be considered a “pollutant”. Sunlight enters the ambient air and tends to warm the atmosphere; is it a “pollutant” as well?

The law upon which the US Supreme Court was relying in the formation of this decision was the Clean Air Act (first passed in 1970 and revised in 1990) that defines a “pollutant” as that which can reasonably be “anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” In their 2007 decision the Court reasons that carbon dioxide is an air pollutant because it is presumed to warm the atmosphere; ergo the Court views atmospheric warmth to be a danger to public health and welfare. Stated another way, the US Supreme Court in Massachusetts vs. EPA (2007) asserts that warmth is air pollution.

A common argument that skeptics of anthropogenic global warming have been voicing of late is the fact that the mean global temperature stopped going up some 15 or so years ago while carbon dioxide levels have continued to rise, thus attempting to disassociate carbon dioxide from global warming. Even though it has a certain merit the problem with this argument is that it tacitly concedes the assertion being made that global warming is itself a bad thing and leaves open the possibility that said warming may very well have resulted in environmental catastrophe had it continued. Have we forgotten that the cold polar regions are nearly devoid of life while the warm equatorial regions are teaming with life and that in the mid to upper latitudes everything dies or goes dormant in the cold of winter and comes to life in the warmth of summer?

Did not humanity start using fire as an energy source in the first place to warm the air because in many places on Earth during much of the year the air is just plain too cold?

Chapter 13 of the IPCC 5^th WGI Report claims that sea level will rise by an amount between 0.26 to 0.97 metres by 2100 according to which of their new scenarios actually happens.

Relative Sea Level, the distance between the level of the sea and the level of neighbouring land, is what matters to most of us. The Level of the open ocean is only of minor importance. This Report tries to mix the two up in a single chart.

Relative Sea Level is measured by tide gauges which measure the distance between the level of the sea registered on specialist equipment and a supposedly constant benchmark location on the neighbouring land. This is carried out in over 1,000 coastal locations all over the world. The records are averages, over a day, week, month or years.

Both the level of the sea and of the neighbouring land constantly vary from place to place.and from  time to time. The sea changes level constantly, diurnally and seasonally. It is influenced by winds, storms and hurricanes and also by earthquakes. The level of the sea may be influenced by breakwaters and harbour works. The equipment may be damaged or its location altered by storms. Severe storms may prevent correct measurement and give a false reading which interferes with claims for “change.”

Land surfaces may change. The land may subside by weight of buildings, and removal of minerals and groundwater. The Report illustrates the problem of measurement near land covered in ice. Geological change (Isostasy) may result from plate movements and earthquakes. Many of these effects cause an upwards bias to the readings.

Long term trends may as much show these changes as any other influence. As a result  they are not a reliable guide to the future, which should be based on a recent period of reliable measurements.

The recent installation of GPS levelling equipment on many sites has greatly improved the reliability of the land-based benchmark. It has resulted in a nearly constant sea level change for many records. It is therefore wrong to place reliance on older readings in order to assess future behaviour. It should be based on the most recent measurements which are the least likely to be affected by previous bias.

The records are publicly available at the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level  (PSMSL) website at   athttp://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/map.html which features a very convenient map of the world from which all the records can be obtained.

Many records are defective in one way or another. Many have gaps or sudden changes. Few have a long-term continuous record.  Frequently there is little sign of change during the recent decade – evidence. that currently there is little or no change in sea level. The following figure from Chapter 13, FAQ 13.1 Figure 1. illustrates this error.

It shows six tide gauge records compared with the supposed global average.

The actual current records, which are shown (rather small), disagree with this supposed trend:

San Francisco is unchanged since 1990.

Charlottetown is unchanged from 1995 to 2010.

Antofagasta  is unchanged from 1980 to 2012

Pago Pago is unchanged since 2000.

Stockholm is actually falling.

Manila is a rogue record.

Once I had begun to take in the full import of the fact that the earth and the oceans meet the atmosphere just everywhere and all-at-once I began to search for a word to describe this phenomenon that everybody observes yet which virtually nobody acknowledges. Could one say simultaneous-ness? Ugly. Then I thought of ‘synchronicity’ – but it is not enough. Synchronous applies only to time. I needed a word for time and place.

The great heat exchange that is taking place over the entire globe is taking place everywhere and all at once by contact, by conduction. There is not a word in the English language that I am aware of that can describe the fact that is easily observable – that the action and reaction that is taking place between every surface everywhere on this planet is instantaneous, contiguous and continuous.

Far from it being the Sceptics who do not believe in Global Warming and Climate Change, precisely the opposite is the case. It is the Warmists who do not acknowledge, who are utterly blind to the incredible Global Warming/Cooling that is taking place all together and all at once – in a sort of majestic symphony. Every instrument in this celestial orchestra is playing its part harmoniously, everything is on cue, and the supreme conductor, Great Nature, is conducting everything.

Dear Professor Steffen,

We read your comments in the Canberra Times on Saturday 26th October. As you have not responded to our earlier letter we now add our further concerns.

Is it misleading the Australian public when you say that the science on Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warmining/(CAGW) alias climate change/ extreme weather events etc. has been settled for decades?

You completely omit to mention the NIPCC Report which shows robust evidence for the null hypothesis.

You omit the historical events detailed in the climate gate emails which clearly indicate that the science was not settled as far back as 2009. Is it a coincidence that the bipartisan support for CAGW started to decline as from 2009?

You omit to mention the recorded signatures of more than 30,000 scientists (www.petitionproject.org) who have maintained over a considerable period of time that there is no convincing evidence for CAGW.

You omit to mention that many of these scientists are considering legal action against Al Gore for fraud (Preview on YouTube).

The Australian people trust you to provide them with reliable, evidence-based information. That means no exaggeration of effects, no misleading allegations and no omission of evidence that does not support your hypothesis.

BRITAIN faces a new mini-Ice Age with decades of severe Siberian winters and washout summers, an expert has warned.

Professor Mike Lockwood, of Reading University, said erratic and extreme weather patterns could be the norm in 20 years. He said the risk of harsh winters and wet miserable summers has gone up to 25 to 30 per cent compared with 10 per cent a few years ago.

Weakening sunspot activity is to blame for a “major change” in the UK’s weather he told BBC TV.

He said: “The sun is ‘quietening’ really rapidly. We think it is actually quietening more rapidly than at any time in the last 10,000 years.

“So this is a major change. We think lower solar activity does seem to tie up with more cold winters in central Europe and the UK.”

Climatologist Dr Dennis Wheeler from Sunderland University, said: “When we have had periods where the sun has been quieter than usual we tend to get these much harsher winters.”

The comments follow unusual weather patterns over the past few years including the extreme winter of 2010 and this summer’s heatwave.

University of Florida Threatens to Arrest anti-GMO Presenters and Bans Them from Campus

Gainesville, FL (US) – The University of Florida, a leading institution researching genetically engineered (GE) trees [1], threatened to arrest activists from the Campaign to STOP GE Trees when they arrived on campus Saturday to prepare for a presentation to highlight critical perspectives on tree biotechnology that was scheduled for tonight. The police informed the group that their presentation had been cancelled, and warned them that they were banned from University of Florida (UF) property for three years.

“Evicting us from campus was a blatant act of censorship by the University of Florida, likely linked to the millions they are receiving for GE trees research,” said Keith Brunner, from the international Campaign to STOP Genetically Engineered Trees [2].

In 2011, the University of Florida School of Forest Resources and Conservation along with GE tree company ArborGen won a three-year, $6.3 million grant from the US Department of Energy to develop GE loblolly pines for liquid biofuel production [3]. There is rising opposition to GE trees due to concerns over genetic contamination, increased flammability, deforestation and other ecological impacts of industrial tree plantations.

The UF presentation was part of a multi-week speaking tour titled “The Growing Threat: Genetically Engineered Trees and the Future of Forests” [4]. The tour will travel through several southern states (NC, GA, FL, SC) to educate the public about the social and environmental threats posed by the proposed commercial release of billions of genetically engineered freeze tolerant eucalyptus trees in seven southern states from South Carolina to Florida to Texas.

University of Florida Professor Bron Taylor teaches a course on Environmental Ethics and had encouraged students to attend the presentation. He expressed disappointment about the cancellation and stated, “The University is supposed to be a place characterized by free and robust debate. This situation begs the question, why was the presentation cancelled and these activists banned from campus under a threat of arrest?”

I was reading this excellent book ‘Taxing Air’ for the second time and for the second time I was stopped dead in my tracks by some words on page 69. It says that the common ground among scientists includes that ‘Carbon Dioxide is a Greenhouse gas and warms the lower atmosphere.’ Whoa! Whoa! Bob Carter, Spooner et al, and the composite authors of this book.

Surely this is a printing error, or something written in haste. What is generally agreed is that Carbon Dioxide is 0.04{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the atmosphere and reacts to the infrared radiation from the earth; and it is this radiation that warms the molecules of carbon dioxide. So it is the gas that is warmed by the radiation. Even the Warmists do not really claim any more, because obviously a gas cannot heat itself; the atmosphere, the temperature of which is always varying – cannot heat itself.

So yes, the Carbon Dioxide molecules are warmed by the infrared radiation, all 0.04{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the atmosphere. But being a gas these molecules are also subject to convection; that is to say that as they warm these molecules rise up and cool, as does the whole of the lower atmosphere.

So that begs the question: What warms the lower atmosphere? Now we come to what warmists and sceptics do agree on. They agree that the sun warms the earth and the oceans, as radiation from the Sun encounters mass. It is also generally agreed that water has a great heat capacity and that the warm oceans in particular warm the lower atmosphere. Is that OK? Not quite. And the cold oceans cool the lower atmosphere. Is that better?

The land is more complex. Hot sands warm, while cold rocks cool the atmosphere. Hot tar warms, while frosty runways cool the air. A leafy wood is often cooler than an open field or lawn. Snow-bound Siberian wastes are cooling, while the Gobi desert by day is warming the atmosphere – all by conduction.

The atmosphere is being warmed or being cooled every instant of every day. The gases of the atmosphere are being warmed primarily by contact, by conduction. So where does that leave the 0.04{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the atmosphere that is Carbon Dioxide? In order to answer this question let us ask ourselves another question that I first saw posed in the book ‘Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory.’ Why does the Sun warm the Earth? Answer: Because it is hotter.’ Is that agreed? Because the Sun is hotter than the Earth.