Climate Change: The Man-Made Warming Myth Explodes (Part 3)
Abstract
The various possible hypotheses for the cause of climate change are analysed and tested using various methods on different measures and surrogates of climate. The results all indicate that carbon dioxide cannot be the driver of climate change. At best it can contribute only a small proportion to the change in global temperature since the end of the Little Ice Age.
The hypothesis that CO2 is the climate driver is due to poor science, poor sampling station distributions, inappropriate analyses, inappropriate averaging, mistaking other natural changes for climate change, overly narrow focusing on infrared effects and ignoring other, more important heat effects, incompetent selection and use of temperature surrogates such as tree rings, as well as bad modelling, and overly-simplistic regression analysis (under-fitting). A particularly egregious error made by the AGW climatologists, is the practice of fitting straight lines to curvilinear climate data, which leads to alarming and unjustified predictions of climate dangers. Applying more appropriate regression analysis to their own data shows that the rate of increase in temperature and mean sea level (MSL) is declining in the great majority of stations analysed. A number of other stations have declining temperatures, not increases. Analysis of the curvilinear regressions using standard algebra shows that the current rise in temperatures will cease sometime between the years 2040 to 2060, and that the increase in temperature until then will be minor. There is no evidence for a “hockey stick.”
Sea level rises will also stop about the same time, and the maximum height at that time will be a few centimetres higher than at present. The rapid rises in sea level of the Atlantic Coast of the Americas are due to geological land subsidence as has been extensively reported in the geological literature, not global warming as claimed by alarmists.
Crop yields also show the same pattern of declining rates over the last few decades as do temperatures and sea levels. This is added independent evidence that the AGW hypothesis is wrong.
The main drivers of climate change appear to be natural variations in solar energy, plus geothermal energy and energy from nuclear decay. These affect the water content of the atmosphere and the formation of clouds, which as are, therefore, secondary causes of climate change. Carbon dioxide appears also to be affected by these drivers, so is a co-correlate with temperature, not a driver.
There is no evidence of “tipping points” or uncontrolled thermal runaway. In fact, there is some evidence of there being a global thermostat due to the effect of water in the atmosphere.
The failure by AGW climatologists to note the drop in the rate of increase over the last 40 years or so is deeply disturbing. The use of tree ring surrogates is deprecated as being almost useless proxies for temperature since tree growth varies greatly from place to place and is affected by more factors than temperature, as dendrochronologists have warned. Reconstructions of past temperatures using tree rings should be dismissed.
Introduction
In my two earlier contributions I reported on some serious errors in the evidence for Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). The use of models as data, the heterogeneity of recording sites, poor sample design, naive treatment of results, inappropriate statistical analysis, poor and patchy data, unjustified corrections to the data, and over-emphasis on radiation as the means by which energy is transmitted are serious faults, which greatly reduces confidence in the validity of the predictions2from the climate models, especially in the belief that that CO2(“carbon”) is the factor (“driver”) causing global warming.
I hope to have shown that the science of climate change is not settled, far from it, and that CO2 is a trace gas with such weak optical properties that it cannot possibly be solely responsible for climate change, a conclusion that has been known to science since the1870s. In the present contribution I present the results of my analysis of climate using real data provided by the official web-based sources maintained by government agencies.
Regression errors made by AGW climatologists
The most important error made by climatologists is the fitting of straight lines to curvilinear data. As the climate recovered from the depths and dangers of the Little Ice Age, which lasted until about 1850, global temperatures increased, as they have in all the very many previous episodes of climate change. But the application of straight lines to what is essentially curvilinear temperature data gives the impression of there being an inevitable rise in temperatures in the immediate future to a fiery doom that will engulf us all. Here is what the philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb has to say about linear relationships.
“Linear relationships are truly the exception; we only focus on them in classrooms and textbooks because they are easier to understand. Yesterday afternoon I tried to take a fresh look around me to catalog what I could see in my day that was linear. I could not find anything, any more than someone hunting for squares or triangles could find them in the rainforest.”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, “The Black Swan.” 2007.
The reason for non-linearity lies partly in the fact that we are volumetric beings living in a volumetric universe, and not points on a line. Also, everything is in movement, even the rocks and mountains which do not appear to move.
There is also the possibility that the fundamental assumptions of normal mathematics and physics may not be entirely valid. The assumed chain of inevitable causes and effects that underlies much of mathematics and science may not be what the universe is really like. The Intuitionist School of mathematics holds that mathematics is a construct of the human mind, and therefore it does not necessarily model reality. Where aspects of nature are well ordered, which is possibly not the norm, then mathematics can be a useful tool that can be used to model any well-behaved and well-ordered system under investigation. But unexpected and unpredictable behaviours of subatomic particles, volcanic explosions, earthquakes, humans and other animals, and the cosmos at large are all unexplained by normal mathematics, and perhaps illustrate the truth of the Intuitionist position. If this is so then the predictions of all simple mathematical models must be taken with large grains of salt. This certainly applies to the multifactorial, extremely complex climate systems that border on chaos and disorder.
In my previous papers I showed a new factor was operating which I called “siccation” from the Latin siccat (drying out). Siccation is shown by those recording stations that show a divergence between maximum temperatures and minimum temperatures over time. At these stations the maximum temperatures may increase over time, but the minimum temperatures either stay the same or decline. This cannot be the result of carbon dioxide. I attributed siccation, and its converse, to changes in the local concentration of water in the atmosphere. This may occur by natural means and by human activities. In many locations, especially coastal urban sites, siccation is more important for the local climate than simple global warming, suggesting that water, not carbon dioxide, is the main driver of climate change. Solar and geothermal factors must also be playing a part as their thermal effects dwarf those of carbon dioxide. And since most people live near water masses, and met stations are placed near people, local climate phenomena may give a biased view of global climate.
I also introduced a new temperature model based on thermal insulation physics, such as applies to double glazed windows or bed blankets, rather than weak infrared irradiance effects of CO2 used in the AGW hypothesis. I call this model the blanket model. It can be used to investigate the factors or components that could have caused the 0.95oC rise since the end of the Little Ice Age. The model proved to be far more accurate than any of the 103 climate models created by government organizations around the world usually using supercomputers.
Figure 1. Energy flow model of solar radiation from the Sun to the Earth and then to outer space. Because the Sun is so large the paths of photons radiating from it have greatly different path lengths. The two most extreme paths are shown. That from the apparent equator has the shortest path, while that from the edge has the longest path. Since the inverse square law applies to the amount of radiation received from these two pathways and all paths in between, the result is a complex amount of received energy which can be taken into account by integral calculus. The action of the atmosphere as a thermal blanket is modeled using the normal insulation equations rather than black body radiation equations. The model works very well as shown in my second paper.
Energy is the ability to do work, it is neither created nor destroyed. Radiant energy travels in straight lines until it hits something that absorbs it, refracts it or reflects it. Light energy, particularly UV or the blue end of the visible spectrum, heats the substance it is absorbed by. The heat causes increased movement, vibration or molecular changes in the molecules affected by the increase in heat. Temperature is the measure of the greater movement of molecules agitated by absorbed energy. The amount of heat in the heated substance is a capacity or quantity, whereas temperature is a potential. The difference can be illustrated by heating a pin to red hot then dropping it into a bucket of water. Even though the pin is very hot it has very little heat. The heat the pin does contain flows from the pin to the colder water. But since there is not much heat in the pin the temperature of the water hardly increases. However, if a large block of steel is heated to the same temperature as the hot pin and then dropped into the bucket of water it would cause a dramatic (and perhaps explosive) increase in the water temperature.
The property of being able to be heated is possessed by all matter, not just CO2. And all matter can lose heat by radiation or other means to cooler substances. But cooling takes time, so the passage of energy from the earth to the cold of outer space can be delayed. Hence the atmosphere can act as a blanket that warms the earth. The rate of heat loss from a hotter body to a colder is described by Newton’s Law of Cooling.
The usual measure reported by the official sites is temperature – usually a maximum temperature and a minimum temperature in a daily period. Yet two days with the same maximum and minimum temperatures can receive very different heat loads during the 24 hours measurement period. One day may achieve the maximum temperature over a very short time whereas the other may do so over a far longer time, thus receiving far more heat. As it is heat (energy), not temperature (potential), that drives so many biological and physico-chemical processes that require energy, this should be borne in mind when considering climate. Yet heat is rarely reported even though it is easy to measure.
Importantly, the energy level in the electromagnetic spectrum declines with increasing wavelength. The energy content of UV ranges from 124 eV per photon for extreme UV to 12.4 eV per photon for near UV. Visible light is around one tenth of this. Infra-red is even weaker ranging from 124 meV to 12.4 meV. Thus the amount of heating a photon can do depends on the wavelength of the photon: UV heats far more per photon than does infra-red.
Solar energy covers a broad range of wavelengths ranging from UV to visible so it can do a lot of heating. Nitrogen and oxygen absorb most UV, so making life on Earth possible, while the other gases in the atmosphere, particularly water and CO2 absorb the longer wavelengths radiating upwards from the earth. The energy leaving the Earth is in the visible and infra-red wavelengths and is capable of doing much less work than the incoming radiation, hence they can do much less warming.
Figure 1 shows the components of my blanket thermal model, which are: the input energy, the various greenhouse gases and other gases that make up the atmospheric blanket, and the output energy that is lost to space. Values are available for each component. As a test procedure the various components can be manipulated to see how much of a change in each component is a required to cause the observed change in global temperatures of 0.95o C, which is the increase in global temperature since about 1850. This is a different approach to the proportionality approach I used in my second paper.
The energy input from the sun is massive. Of the light energy hitting the Earth’s surface small amounts of the red and blue components are absorbed by plants and used to drive photosynthesis on which almost all life depends. Green light is not used by plants, which is why they are green. If all the wavelengths of visible light were absorbed by plants they would be black in color. In fact, a green light is harmful, especially to young plants. The idea that green is good is not actually true. It is useless for photosynthesis and often harmful.
Recently, evidence has come to light that solar energy does vary considerably over time, and that changes in its magnitude can be relatively sudden. Figure 2 shows a reconstruction from data provided by Delaygue and Bard (2010) of solar irradiance from 700 AD to 1995 AD. The coincidence of solar lows with historic temperature minima and solar historic highs with historic temperature highs is very revealing. Note also that the rate of change can be quite rapid and that there is no such thing as a “hockey stick”. There were “vales of despair” during the various minima when life was extremely hard, and rapid recoveries to “mountains of ease” like the present one, when life became much easier. Civilization tends to flourish during warm periods, such as the Minoan, Roman, and Medieval warm periods. But no hockey sticks are evident in the record. On the contrary, the global temperature record resembles a roller coaster rather than a hockey stick.
All matter can be heated. So, the supposed non-greenhouse gases, such as nitrogen and oxygen, do have an important role in keeping the planet warm. They warm up through conduction or convection plus conduction, and they all can contribute to the Earth’s thermal blanket by slowing down the loss of energy to space, thus helping to keep the Earth warm. Furthermore, not only can all matter be heated, it will also emit black body radiation to cooler bodies. It is not just CO2 that can do this.
Heat in warmer bodies, such as the sun-warmed Earth, is lost to cooler bodies, such as the atmosphere, and then the energy in the atmosphere is eventually lost to the cold of outer space. But the radiated energy during this cooling is at a longer wavelength than when it was received during heating so it can do less heating, often much less. In the atmosphere all components – nitrogen, oxygen, water, carbon dioxide, argon, and nitrogen dioxide – will increase in temperature as the received heat causes their molecules to move faster so that their temperature increases. This slows down the loss of energy to space, thus warming the Earth. The atmosphere forms a warming blanket, not so much a greenhouse.
Figure 2. A reconstruction of solar irradiance by Delaygue and Bard (2010) showing rapid changes and close correspondence with historic periods of low and high temperatures, suggesting that solar irradiance is a major driver of temperature change.
Using the blanket model the warming properties of the various atmospheric greenhouse gases were further investigated individually according to both the proportion of the atmosphere they make up and their thermal characteristics. Oxygen is important for climate, but it does not vary at present, although it has in the past when at one time it rose up to 35% or so of the atmospheric gas mixture. And in the period of the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction the level of oxygen fell so low that an estimated 65% or so of all marine species died from oxygen deprivation. These terrible conditions lasted for 3 million years or so. We don’t know what caused this event, and it could happen again in the future. So, although important biologically, oxygen cannot be responsible for the present-day climate change.
Carbon dioxide does vary and has increased from about 200 ppm to about 420 ppm today. It has more than doubled in amount so is apparently a strong candidate as a driver for climate change.
But water in the atmosphere is many times more important for climate than is carbon dioxide. There are about 30 water molecules for each CO2 molecule, and it absorbs energy over a much greater range of wavelengths than does CO2. Its concentration in the atmosphere does vary geographically, and there is indirect evidence that its concentration has changed over time.
From our species point of view there are only two temperatures that really matter: soil temperature (the temperature experienced by plant roots), and ecosystem temperature (the temperature that affects living matter living above ground). Other temperatures in the various layers of the atmosphere are only important if they significantly affect these two most important temperatures.
These biotic temperatures, those of soil and air, are affected by radiation, conduction, convection and phase change energy release or uptake when water changes phase. Cumulus cloud formation is an example of non-radiative heat transfer. The surface of the earth or water that has been warmed by sunlight warms the air immediately in contact with it, causing the air to rise as a thermal column, since hot air rises being less dense than cold air. As it rises it carries with it water vapour. When the thermal column of air reaches a cooler region of the homosphere the water vapour condenses out and forms fluffy, cumulus clouds. The energy in the clouds warms up the air components so that the transfer of heat from the ground to the air is slowed down as the difference between the hotter body, the ground, and the cooler body, the atmosphere, becomes less. The air is acting as a blanket in slowing down the loss of heat to outer space. The rate of heat loss follows Newton’s Law of Cooling.
In addition to transfers of heat energy, the thermal capacity of the solids and liquids in the ecosystem is also of prime importance. Water, in particular, has a great capacity to store heat. Furthermore, it takes up or releases large amounts of energy when it undergoes phase changes to or from ice to or from liquid to or from gaseous vapour. All these changes in phase occur in the atmosphere. So the AGW model’s concentration on infra-red back radiation by CO2 by climate models is too narrow a focus, which explains why their fit to the data and future predictions are so inaccurate.
Air is opaque to certain frequencies in the IR and UV. Most of these absorption bands are due to molecular vibrations and rotations. Absorption of UV light is mostly due to O3 molecules. The blue sky is the result of Rayleigh scattering, caused by the polarisability of oxygen and nitrogen molecules. Atomic transitions are rare, since the energy it takes to get an atom from the ground state to the first excited state is too high to happen in the optical. This shows the importance of the blanket effect rather than the pure glasshouse effect in global warming.
Gary Novak states:
“The fingerprint type of IR absorption is due to the stretching and bending of internal bonds. Nitrogen does not do that. But all matter absorbs and emits IR in proportion to its temperature. This is called “black body” radiation. Physicists say all matter has the same characteristics in absorbing and emitting black body radiation, except that the quantitative proportions vary, mostly due to reflection. For non-reflective substances, such as wood and concrete, the percent IR absorbed or emitted (called emissivity or absorptivity) is around 90% of a perfect black body. Metals are good reflectors of IR, so they have an emissivity of around 50%. This means they emit or absorb about 50% of the infrared radiation which contacts them. Kirchhoff’s law says emissivity equals absorptivity, which means everything absorbs and emits black body radiation in the same way.
There is a curve for black body radiation, and it applies to all matter. The curve slides toward higher frequencies for higher temperatures. At earth temperatures (around 300 degrees Kelvin) the black body curve (or Planks curve) peaks at a wavelength of about 10um. The sides of the curve taper off at about 1um and 30um. Visible light is 0.4 to 0.8um, which is just above the curve for cold black body radiation, but hot objects will radiate into the visible range, which is of course how an incandescent light bulb works. Carbon dioxide has fingerprint peaks at 2.7, 4.3, and 15um, which are all within the black body radiation curve.
In some quantity, everything in the air including nitrogen and oxygen absorbs and emits black body radiation at frequencies that overlap the frequencies absorbed by CO2. In fact, the only reason why there is IR in the air is that the surface of the earth emits black body radiation in proportion to its temperature. The air then does the same thing at some level.
The question then is, in what quantity is the atmosphere absorbing and emitting black body radiation. The emissivity of nitrogen and oxygen gasses should be closed to 100% since they do not reflect IR significantly. But the larger question is how does the quantity of black body absorption compare to the fingerprint absorption of CO2. Actual measurements and numbers do not seem to exist. So promoters use computer models to divide up the heat of the atmosphere between pollutants such as CO2 and everything else. They then pull such numbers out of the hat which says increases in CO2 levels will create a global temperature increase of about 6 deg. This is about 20% of the 33 deg. which the atmosphere is said to contribute to the temperature of the globe.”
This quotation highlights the physics errors made by climatologists in believing that CO2 causes global warming. It simply cannot. It only “picks up” about 8% of the black body radiation from the Earth. And as for the other means of heat transfer it only contributes 0.00043 parts to the whole blanket.
Gary’s work is well worth reading. His main web page is at https://nov79.com/index.html. He highlights the errorsmade by AGW modellers, warmist climatologists and alarmists in a compelling and easily understood way.
The evidence from temperatures
As mentioned earlier the fitting of straight lines to curvilinear data sets is a fundamental error that leads to greatly exaggerated predictions. Prediction is difficult enough even when the system being investigated is simple and well-behaved, but climate is neither simple nor is it well-behaved.
It is very important to get the predictions as correct as we can since so much hangs on them. Bad predictions could lead to greatly damaged economies with all the ills that would follow: poverty, despair, hunger, suicide, crime, homelessness; the dismal list goes on and on. The environment might be better off, but then it may not, especially if the CO2 increase is helping drive increased food production since it is an essential plant nutrient and not a pollutant.
It is, therefore, worth close examination of the official records of temperatures from as many stations as can be managed. This task is not made easier by the “corrections” applied to a great many official records. There are mathematical methods for adjusting or compensating for proven disturbances in a data record, but the use of intuition and nominal adjustments to make corrections is bad science. That being the case it is unfortunate that we have to work with what is recorded on the official climate sites and make what progress we can.
Figure 3. Temperature record for the Christchurch, NZ, Botanical Gardens met station. The year when the gradient equals zero and warming stops is 2048, and the maximum temperature at that date will be 12.6 degrees C, which is only slightly higher (0.18oC) than the average temperature over the last 20 years.
A reanalysis of the official data by fitting a simple second-degree polynomial fitted the data very well, as measured by the Coefficient of Determination (R2). Polynomials fit the data much better than the straight lines used by climatologists.
Obtaining the equations of the fitted polynomials enabled me to calculate the future date when the gradient of the temperature curve becomes zero, that is the when the temperature stops increasing. The temperature reached at this date, which represents the maximum temperature in this period of warming since recording began, can also be easily found. Figure 3 gives this analysis for my home town of Christchurch, NZ.
Warming in Christchurch is calculated to stop in 2048 and the maximum average temperature at that time will be 12.6oC, warmer than the average of 11.79oC for all temperatures since 1864, but only 0.18OC higher than the average over the last 20 years. It will not reach the 2o C limit above “pre-industrial” levels imposed by the Paris Climate Accord. In contrast, the official straight line leads to a conclusion that warming will not stop, which of course is nonsense and illustrates the dangers that Taleb warns us about.
Importantly, the correlation of Christchurch temperatures from 1985 onwards with carbon dioxide levels measured at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, over the same period is not significant (Figure 6; r = 0.290). Therefore, carbon dioxide concentration cannot be a driver. If it were a driver, the correlation would be significant, even highly so.
But there is an anomaly in the Christchurch record since the temperature record from the nearby Lincoln met station does not show the same pattern. Lincoln is a small village 22 km from Christchurch and lies on the same extensive plain as its close neighbor. It has much the same weather as Christchurch, but it is relatively free of the urban heat island effect due to population growth that has caused the increases in temperature in Christchurch City compared to Lincoln.
Figure 4. Lincoln temperatures since 1864 as reported by the official New Zealand government agency, NIWA.
The temperature record for Lincoln shown in Figure 4 appears to show an increase in temperature from 10.7oC in 1864 to nearly 12oC in 2015. But closer inspection shows a flat line until about 1960, a rapid jump up, then another flat line after 1970. This could be due to the building program during the 1960s when Lincoln University started building large buildings that affected the local temperature; the earlier buildings were all much lower.
By regressing the Lincoln data for the period 1864 to 1960 we get a non-significant regression coefficient of 0.00756. The temperature did appear to increase by 1.1oC over that period, which was selected as “representative” by NIWA. But regressing the data from 1968 to 2009 gives a negative regression coefficient of -0.0005, also not significant, and the temperature difference over this period was -0.024oC. In other words, the average temperature dropped and is still dropping after the buildings were finished. There is no evidence for global warming at Lincoln. The predictions given by NIWA for Lincoln are grossly misleading. The straight line they fitted was influenced not by steady rises in temperature, but by the jump in average temperature when the large buildings were built in the 1960s.
Fitting a second order polynomial is not appropriate for the Lincoln data, but as the record shows a decline in recent temperatures, we can be certain that these data do not support the AGW hypothesis, which states that temperatures should be increasing in a linear or greater manner. Lincoln is home to a well-respected agricultural university, so we can be assured that the temperatures recorded were done in an expert and reliable manner.
Figure 5. Lincoln temperatures after the building programme in the 1960s-70s. Far from
warming, the temperature declined.
Of all met stations in New Zealand Lincoln is most likely to be the most indicative of long-term temperature changes, so it is one of the seven selected by NIWA, the official government organization for matters relating to air and water in New Zealand, to be representative of global warming in New Zealand.
If CO2 is the main driver of climate change then it should be strongly correlated with atmospheric CO2 concentration. Figure 6 shows the relationship between Lincoln temperatures and CO2 concentration since 1984. Statistical correlation analysis shows there is no relationship between the two variables as the correlation coefficient is 0.0112, which is not significant. Auckland temperatures also have no significant correlation with atmospheric CO2 concentration for the period since 1984; the correlation coefficient is 0.119 which is not significant. There is also no significant correlation with CO2 for the Christchurch Botanical Gardens met station as r = 0.290.
And so it goes on for station after station with only a few illustrated here. In many met stations there was some correlation between temperatures and CO2, more or less, until about 1984, but since that time the correlations have become weak or non-existent showing that CO2 cannot be a driver of temperature change, but is a partial or weak co-correlate.
Alarmists have committed the oldest error in statistics textbooks – mistaking correlation for causation, but in the case of climate change, it is an egregious error since the correlation is far from perfect or, in some cases, not existent.
Figure 6. A plot of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere against average temperatures at Lincoln since 1984. Carbon dioxide has increased over this time span, but temperatures have decreased. Obviously, there is no correlation between the two variables thus showing that carbon dioxide is not a driver of climate change. The thin blue line shows what a good correlation should look like. The calculated correlation line (strictly the major axis) is the thicker blue line and shows there is no correlation.
A number of other official temperature records from various places were critically analysed. There was no rejection of any record that did not fit my ideas on what they should show. I have not selected records as the national agencies have. A representative sample of the stations I analysed is given in Table 1. Again, I would have preferred the raw data records to work on, but these were not available.
A few stations showed linear increases in temperature, Bermuda is the example in Table 1, but many either were not analysable because of gaps or serious anomalies. However, most showed records that did not support the AGW hypothesis. The percentage that conformed to the AGW hypothesis was under 9% of the total records able to be analysed, and the percentage that did not support the AGW hypothesis was over 91%.
It came as a surprise that the official temperature records for many station were so poor with gaps and obvious errors that they could not add anything useful to the discourse about which hypothesis is valid: AGW or natural causes. They were by far the worst datasets I have ever encountered during my career yet the future welfare of the world may hang on them.
However, we can conclude that the CO2 hypothesis does not explain global warming since, although CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are still increasing at a steady rate, metrological station temperatures are not. So attempts to limit CO2 will not control climate, but will be very damaging economically and socially.
Figure 7. Reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere temperatures since 1100 AD to the present. The temperatures vary considerably in amplitude and quickly in time, contrary to the claims of activists. The present warm period is not unusual. There is no hockey stick. The Little Ice Age is clearly shown.
The reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere temperatures made by Schneider et al from 15 MXD chronologies in non-tropical regions shows a number of important points. The climate varies nearly continuously. There is no hockey stick. It has been warmer than at present and much colder at various times. Those who doubt this and maintain that the earlier temperatures were more steady before about 1850 should read General de Caulaincourt’s account (“Reflections”) of the conditions during Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812. It was cold, very cold – in fact, the coldest temperature shown in Figure 7. The claim that the temperatures measured before about 1870 were not valid is patently untrue. The French Army measured the Russian winter temperature perfectly accurately in 1812 as the mercury thermometer had been invented by Daniel G Fahrenheit in 1714. Another important point is that the temperatures at present are not unusually hot. Indeed, they are probably cooler than those of the Minoan and Roman warm periods, which were the warmest periods since the end of the last ice age.
The evidence from sea levels
A common concern is that sea levels are rising so fast that many coastal areas and islands will soon be swamped by the rising sea. To test this hypothesis I analysed a number of sea level records selected at random from NOAA’s web archives. A second degree polynomial was fitted to each and the maxima calculated which enables the year when the level ceased increasing and the height of the sea level reached to be calculated.
Table 2 gives a random selection of the results of the analysis of mean sea levels (MSL). The great majority (84%) of the stations showed either a declining rate of increase in MSL or an actual present-day decrease in levels. Records from the East Coast of the Americas were anomalous in showing an increase in sea levels, but the apparent increases in this area has been shown to be due to geological processes and not climate change. The sea floor in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean is rising which is tipping the East Coast regions of the Americas downwards, thus giving an apparent, but false, sea level rise. In addition, with respect to oceanic islands of the Pacific, there have been two excellent studies, one Australian and one New Zealand, that show that all bar one are not at threat of being inundated. The entry for Easter Island in Table 2 is typical – there is no inundation.
Table 2. Representative samples of the many sea level records examined. By fitting second order polynomials to the data it can be shown that the great majority (84%) are in decline in either rate of increase or height of MSL.
Note:
decreasing means the rate of increase in sea level is decreasing;
declining means the sea level is itself decreasing.
Anomalous stations
All Chilean stations, that is Easter Island and the mainland stations, show a declining sea level. Many Russian stations cannot be used as the data is truncated Other anomalous stations include:
There is no evidence of a linear rise in sea level as has been reported by many climatologists. Indeed, the data suggest that peak height will be 7.1 m, a small increase in present day MSLs, and the sea level rise will cease around the year 2040, much the same as that for temperature rise.
The most common pattern for most stations is a gradual decline in the rate of increase in sea level over time. Iceland’s mean sea level record shown in Figure 8 is an example. By fitting a polynomial to the curve we are able to predict that the rate of increase will be zero in the year 2046 and the maximum height reached will be 7.14 m, a little above the present level, but not disastrously so. This is a very different, but much more accurate and likely prediction than given by the usual practice of fitting a straight line.
Figure 8. Iceland MSL with a polynomial fitted showing the same pattern as the great majority of stations from around the world.
However, there is a wide variety of patterns shown in sea levels from different parts of the world. There are places where the sea level hasn’t changed; an example is given in Figure 8 for Easter Island.
Figure 10. Murmansk, Russia. An example of a bowed sea-level record. Analysis of the fitted polynomial shows the peak was in 2002 and reached an average height of 7.3 m. Since then there has been a decline in MSL.
Yet another pattern is shown by that of Murmansk, Russia as shown in Figure 10. This is a bowed line where the peak mean sea level has been reached in the recent past and MSL is now declining.
The mean sea level for Auckland, NZ, illustrated in Figure 11, shows the typical pattern of a declining mean sea level which will reach its 2069 with a peak height of 7.06 m, slightly higher than its present level, but not disastrously so.
Figure 11. Auckland, NZ. A rising sea level but the rate of increase is declining.
However, the Port of Whangarei 131 km northwest and on the same coast as Auckland shows a strange pattern as seen in Figure 12. This may be due to the fact that Northland, the region where Whangarei is located, is very active geologically with islands and hills rising and falling over the last 80 million years or so. The rapid isolation of animal and plant populations on these islands and hills has resulted in a speciation “playground.” There are a great number of species (half of the world’s micro-mollusk species occur there) and they exhibit a great deal of endemicity. Therefore, Whangarei cannot be held as being representative of the rest of the globe. It is possibly undergoing one of its periodic geological uplifts.
Figure 12. Mean sea levels for Whangarei, NZ. This is the second most common pattern. There is no evidence of an effect from global warming. It is on the same coast and fairly close to Auckland, which has yet another pattern of MSL, so there is no consistency to the patterns of sea level rise between closely adjacent places. The variation in MSL in Whangarei is obviously due to periodic phenomena. Carbon dioxide concentration is not periodic.
Figure 13. Mean sea level for Norway an example of a pattern where the sea level is dropping. The drop is almost certainly due to the release of pressure from the huge weight of ice that compressed the rock in the last ice age and which melted at the end of the ice age. It has nothing to do with climate change except for the great warming that ended the last ice age that could not have been caused by human means.
It is often claimed that the coasts of Norway (Figure 13) and Sweden are the only regions where coastal upthrust is occurring. This is plainly wrong. Many places experience shoreline uplifts, especially those on the edge of uplifting continental plates where the uplift can be sudden and dramatic. The Kaikoura Coast on the east side of the South Island of New Zealand was lifted by up to 11 meters in mere seconds during the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake. As a result a lot of new land was exposed and the sea level appeared to drop dramatically. It didn’t of course; the land rose. Interestingly, the resident penguins and seals adapted to the new situation with aplomb. The seal pups still continued to frolic safely in a freshwater pool a short distance inland though their mothers now have to make a longer trek from the sea to feed their pups. The sight of the baby pups playing is a favorite with tourists. The mothers have been provided with a tunnel that allows them to safely reach the pups without having to cross the busy state highway or the main railway line.
There are many other examples of significant uplifting. New Zealand as a whole is rising once again above the waves to become the much larger continental mass of Zealandia that it was once, so uplifting shorelines are common.
Figure 14. Battery Point, NY, NY, USA sea levels. The increase is due to geological processes causing land subsidence, not global warming.
Another pattern, one that is the favorite of alarmist activists and the media, is where the sea is apparently rising rapidly to endanger coastal inhabitants and their property. This possibility has hit the headlines as if it were a certainty and has been the cause of dread warnings from people who should know better if they are what they claim to be – scientists or knowledgeable seers. A reanalysis of the official data by fitting a simple second-degree polynomial fitted the data very well, as measured by the Coefficient of Determination (R2). Polynomials are certainly much better the straight lines used by AGW climatologists. In particular, New York has been the subject of confident predictions by certain ex-politicians that it will be flooded by 2010 to 2015. Even worse, this likely flooding has been attributed to global warming. In fact, it is due to geological processes, not climate change. The east coast of North America are subsiding, which gives rise to an apparent rise in sea level. This is shown in Figure 14 for Battery Point, New York, NY, USA. New York has not yet flooded although activists predicted it would have been some years ago. The record for Iceland (Figure 8) shows the real situation: the increase in sea level rises are slowing down and will cease in a few decades. New York may well flood, but it won’t be due to climate change, and New York residents have plenty of time to build protective sea walls as the Netherlanders have done for centuries if the sea does threaten to invade.
Figure 15. Generation at the Wairakei (NZ) geothermal power station, half-hourly figures grouped daily and plotted as magenta (max-upper quartile), green (min-lower quartile), red (median), pale blue (daily average) stepwise dark blue (weekly average), black step (annual averages), black line (overall average).
Figure 15 shows the energy generation at Wairakei, NZ, geothermal station over time. The increase shown was gradual, and is evidently not due to increased in capacity.
The simplest explanation is that there was a gradual and ongoing increase in the amount of energy contained in the bore emissions. This increase in temperature/energy cannot be due to global warming as the bores have an average depth of over 610 meters (m), the deepest being some 1,500 m. The water at that depth cannot, by the Laws of Physics, be being warmed by CO2 driven climate change as it is much warmer by hundreds of degrees than any heat (at an average of 15oC) being conducted from the surface downwards to 600 m plus. It is possible, however, that surface temperatures are being raised by the immense amount of heat coming up from subterranean sources. The Earth has an internal heat content of 1031 joules (3.1015 Twh), which is approximately 100 billion times the 2010 worldwide annual energy consumption. The Earth’s internal thermal energy flows to the surface by conduction at a rate of 44.2 TW, and this is augmented by radioactive decay of minerals at a rate of 30 TW.
But the rate of energy flow from subterranean sources is variable, as evidenced by variations in the number of volcanoes and earthquakes over time. So it is entirety possible, as many geophysicists assert, that the rise in global atmospheric temperatures is at least influenced by, and may be driven by, these variations in subterranean energy flows to the surface. Changes in these massive sources of energy have been held to be the cause of the ice ages and warm periods that have occurred frequently, if not semi-continuously during the history of the Earth.
The evidence from tree rings
Tree rings cannot be used as surrogates for temperature since they are determined by a number of factors besides temperature. Close analysis of the records from a number of studies does not lend any support to global warming and hockey sticks. For instance, extensive tree ring analysis from Campbell Island, NZ (Figure 16), show a bow response. Over a period when atmospheric CO2 was increasing, tree rings decreased in width.
Figure 16. Tree rings from Campbell Island. Although it shows the same pattern as for some other temperature surrogates, tree rings are generally affected by a number of other factors than temperature, so cannot be relied on.
Figure 17. Tree rings from Jirisan Park, Korea showing a decline over time although the slope is not significant statistically.
Oxygen isotope ratios in tree rings are a surrogate for growth conditions and have been investigated for trees in Jirisan Park, Korea (Figure 17). They show a decline with date from 1985 that is not statistically significant, thus the result does not support the AGW hypothesis.
Figure 18. Tree rings from Dacrydium biforme, a long lived tree, from a remote and relatively undisturbed part of the world in the South Island of New Zealand.
The Podocarp tree species, Dacrydium biforme (Pink Pine), growing in a remote and relatively undisturbed (by humans) area in the Fiordland area in southern New Zealand shows a declining width of tree rings with year (Figure 18).
Chinese data from Ordos also shows a decline with year (Figure 19).
Figure 19. Tree rings from Ordos, China. They do not support either a hockey stick nor global warming.
Tree rings from the Scotts Pines in the Cairngorms, Scotland (Figure 20), show a cyclic pattern with the present cycle being slightly lower than the 1290 peak. Again, there is no evidence for a hockey stick in temperatures.
Figure 20. Scots pines tree rings from North Cairngorms, Scotland.
Figure 21. Kauri tree rings from northern New Zealand. Kauri is a low growing and very long-lived tree. It was obviously strongly affected by the El Niño events in 1987-88, and 1997-88
Kauri (Agathis australis) tree rings from northern New Zealand (Figure 21) do show an increase, or, more accurately, a strong correlation with sunspot activity giving a strong cyclic response. The trees sampled grow on a large northern peninsula (Northland) which is heavily affected by oceanic weather patterns. The lows correspond to strong El Niño events.
The evidence from crops
Figure 22. European crop yields per hectare over time. Note especially the slowing in rate of increase in yields from about 1985. Source: Our World in Data: Crop Yields by Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser.
In my second paper I showed that crops in the USA and the UK show a steady decline in the rate of yield increase. This is contrary to the AGW hypothesis since the concentration of atmospheric CO2 is still increasing at a steady or ever-increasing rate. So CO2 cannot account for the decline in the rate of increase in yield. Figure 22 shows that agricultural yields per hectare for European crops in Europe also show a slowdown in their rate of increase. There is even a complete cessation of growth rate increases in certain crops.
While there is no doubt that economic activity, such as the growing of crops, is affected by many factors other than just temperature and CO2 levels, some of which may act in opposite ways to others all at the same time, the world is experiencing a continuing increase in demand for food. So it is of great concern that there is a slow down in growth rate of yields since population growth rates have not slowed down overall. Where will sufficient food come from in the future, especially if we do start entering a cooling period in about 2040 -2060 when crop yields per hectare would be almost certain to decline?
Applying the polynomial regression analysis to crop yield data enabled a test of the AGW hypothesis using yet another line of analysis. And it may be especially valuable to find the date when the crop yield curve will stop increasing and start to drop.
Figure 23. European potato yields after 1985.
The same pattern of a declining rate of increase that has been evident in the other indicators of climate is shown by the potato yield crop. Almost all other crops show the same pattern. Polynomial analysis shows that potato production (shown in Figure 23) will peak in 2029 and the maximum production will be 46.4 tonnes per hectare on average. Rice reached its peak in 2011. Pea crop yields will peak in 2024 and the peak yield will be 7.8 tonnes per hectare. Polynomial analysis of European barley yields with time indicates that the peak year will be 2057 and peak yield will be 11.2 tonnes. This is all in spite of increasing “carbon” levels.
The evidence from rainfall
I have not analysed rainfall data as thoroughly as other forms of evidence, but I did co0nentrate on areas that are perhaps more free from other influences than natural forces. So, I have concentrated on an isolated group of islands that are remote, sparsely populated and with little industry – my homeland New Zealand. I have also included a few stations from other countries that suggest my conclusions may apply to the whole of the Earth.
I used the same methodology to analyse the official rainfall records by fitting second degree polynomials to the published data. I general, the results supported the conclusions from my other analyses, but they presented some conundrums.
Table 3 gives the summaries of the rainfall patterns since 1985 for various stations.
Table 3. Rainfall patterns in various stations
Most of the stations have decreasing rates of rainfall. A typical pattern is shown in Figure 24 (Whangarei, New Zealand). Only four of the stations in Table 3 showed an increase, and even then they are not linear. Their pattern is shown in Figure 25.
Figure 24. The rainfall record for Whangarei Heads, New Zealand, showing the typical rainfall record pattern named “bow” in Table 3.
Figure 1: Figure 25. The rainfall pattern for Wellington Aero, New Zealand showing the less frequent “U-shaped” line. There is little evidence in any of these stations of an increase in rainfall above normal levels.
None of the stations in Table 3 support the AGW hypothesis. If temperatures are increase doe to “carbon” increases in the atmosphere then the warmer temperatures should have resulted in more water in the atmosphere and therefore more rainfall. No such correlated increase in rainfall is evident in the data. Therefore, carbon dioxide cannot be the driver of the changes in rainfall.
The explanation I advance here is a raw hypothesis in the sense it is a proposed explanation (just as AGW is). If the amount of energy (heat in the form of powerful protons) is declining then the amount of evaporation from oceans, seas, rivers, lakes and soil will also be declining. This results in less rainfall. Some areas on the coast may have a more complicated patter of rainfall due to local evens, such as sea fogs and mists, but they majority of the stations show a decline.
An objection may be: “if this is happening then why then are global temperatures still increasing? Why are we still seeing record temperatures?”. Well, remember that heat is different to temperature and that temperature increases are slowing down and will cease all together soon. The thermal blanket is still working so some warming is still occurring though at an ever lowering rate. But it will stop mid-century.
Conclusion
All the climate indicators examined in this paper show the same pattern of a slowing down in the rate of increase with a maximum to be reached in the next few decades. There is no evidence of a runaway or tipping point; quite the contrary. The evidence suggests there is a homeostatic mechanism coming into play that will cause the cessation of temperature rises in the next few decades, well before any serious harm is done.
Furthermore, the temperature at max year will not be dangerously, or even adversely hotter than it is at present as it will only be a small fraction of a degree hotter than it is at present. CO2 cannot be responsible for this pattern because it is still increasing and the correlations between its increase and all other measures or surrogates of climate are weak or non-existent. The recent moderate climate change we have experienced since 1850 must be due to natural causes as the earth recovers from the Little Ice Age. Humans may have had a part to play in this change, but not principally due to their emission of CO2 since this can play only a very minor part in climate change, and its increase was largely beneficial in stimulating plant growth.
There is little evidence for CO2 as the driver of climate change. There is no evidence for tipping points, hockey sticks, or for uncontrolled linear global events such as temperature rises or rising sea levels. There is abundant and diverse evidence for moderate increase in global temperatures of about 0.15oC or less. Most importantly, there is a similar decline in the rate of increase in all the climate-affected phenomena I have investigated based on official records. The phenomena of temperature, sea levels and crop yield all show strong evidence of a decline or cessation of the rate of global warming. And there is strong evidence that the increases in these phenomena will cease sometime between 2040 and 2060. What will follow is not known, but mostly likely it will be a period of slight cooling.
The correlation between temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels are weak or not significant in the data from 1985 to the present. This indicates that CO2 is a co-correlate, not a driver of climate change.
The evidence from tree rings, which has been so instrumental in the past in the creation of “hockey sticks” and other reconstructions of past climate, is too unreliable to be used as a test of the AGW hypothesis since tree growth is affected by many factors in addition to temperature. The fact that tree rings from areas less affected by human activities do not show the same patterns as those from more affected regions speaks for itself. We can certainly conclude that there is no “hockey stick.”
The official climate records of the Word Bank and the national archives such as NOAA in the USA and NIWA in New Zealand should be reinvestigated by independent scientists who have the necessary skills to analyse the data in an unbiased and scientific manner. The official archival authorities should be required to surrender the original climate data and make explanation of where, when, why, and what records they altered or adjusted. This task is urgent since the world economy will be hugely damaged if the predictions of the present highly flawed “climate science”1 are accepted as gospel. The effects of massive increases in energy costs and large-scale diminution of supply that will inevitably result from an overly-hasty and ill-considered attempt to implement the false dictates of the Paris Climate Accord. The whole population of the world will suffer ill effects such as job losses, food restrictions, diminished health care and housing, shortened life expectancy, higher suicide rates, and many other social ills. It is also possible that increased warfare would ensue. It is bad enough that the world has hundreds of trillions of dollars indebtedness at present, which will take decades or centuries to pay off and which will be a dreadful burden on our young people for decades to come. But added to this burden will be the indebtedness of the present-day SARS Covid-19 crisis which will lessen the productivity of the world and which will mean that repayment and recovery will be slow and perhaps difficult. Attempts to reduce the emission of CO2 will add to this litany of horrors and endanger our civilization and our future well-being.
1 As a past Chief Scientific Advisor to the United Kingdom once said to me: “A discipline with science in its title is not a science.” Political Science, Social Science and Climate Science seem to add support for his statement.
Acknowledgments
My sincerest thanks to the many friends (and some opponents) with whom I have discussed my work, especially Dr. Matthew Sunderland and Dr. Gerry Walmisley who encouraged me and critiqued my manuscripts. I owe a special thanks to Gerry as he paid the page charges for my first paper in this series. I also would like to thank Jonas Frantz who wrote the computer program g3data 1.5.2 that enabled me to digitize those climate graphs for which no data sets were available. Thank you, Jonas. My stumbling over your excellent program enabled me to stop learning Python and concentrate instead on climate analysis.
Disclosure
I have received no grants, cash, or donations from any person, company or organization except for Dr Walmsley’s payment to cover the page charges. Except for this my, work is entirely self-funded. But if anyone thinks my work is worth supporting then donations would be welcome, as would offers of collaboration. Science thrives on freedom, and constructive and polite debate. It demands robust scientific methodology with Sir Karl Popper’s criteria the supreme standard.
About the author:
Dr Kelvin Duncan: Kelvin is a New Zealander with a PhD in biology, and post graduate qualifications in Organic Chemistry, and diplomas in Statistics and Spanish. Active in preserving and enhancing natural systems, Kelvin directed a programme for middle and upper management of companies on ecology and, sustainability, indigenous people’s concerns, and how to solve disputes between conflicting interest groups. He also lead three technology-transfer aid missions to certain Pacific Islands and was a Mercosur Scholar.
Dr Duncan taught ecology, physiology and the philosophy and history of science at various universities and was Dean of Science at the University of Canterbury (Sir Karl Popper’s refuge during WW2 where he had an immense effect) until 2002 when he left academia to pursue some of applied science topics including successful commercial developments resulted. His latest project is to replace glucose-based polymers in foodstuffs with fructose based polymers thus alleviating diabetes and obesity.
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