Paul

Excerpts: Regarding the currently popular theory that mankind is responsible for global warming, I am very pleased to deliver good news from the front lines of climate change research. Our latest research results, which I am about to describe, could have an enormous impact on policy decisions regarding greenhouse gas emissions.

Despite decades of persistent uncertainty over how sensitive the climate system is to increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels, we now have new satellite evidence which strongly suggests that the climate system is much less sensitive than is claimed by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Another way of saying this is that the real climate system appears to be dominated by “negative feedbacks” — instead of the “positive feedbacks” which are displayed by all twenty computerized climate models utilized by the IPCC. (Feedback parameters larger than 3.3 Watts per square meter per degree Kelvin (Wm-2K-1) indicate negative feedback, while feedback parameters smaller than 3.3 indicate positive feedback.)

If true, an insensitive climate system would mean that we have little to worry about in the way of manmade global warming and associated climate change. And, as we will see, it would also mean that the warming we have experienced in the last 100 years is mostly natural. Of course, if climate change is mostly natural then it is largely out of our control, and is likely to end — if it has not ended already, since satellite-measured global temperatures have not warmed for at least seven years now.

I hope that the Committee realizes that, if true, these new results mean that humanity will be largely spared the negative consequences of human-induced climate change. This would be good news that should be celebrated — not attacked and maligned.

And given that virtually no research into possible natural explanations for global warming has been performed, it is time for scientific objectivity and integrity to be restored to the field of global warming research. This Committee could, at a minimum, make a statement that encourages that goal.

REFERENCES

1. Spencer, R.W., and W.D. Braswell, 2008: Potential biases in cloud feedback diagnosis: A simple model demonstration. J. Climate, in press.

2. Allen, M.R., and D.J. Frame, 2007: Call off the quest. Science, 318, 582.

3. Spencer, R.W., W. D. Braswell, J. R. Christy, and J. Hnilo, 2007: Cloud and radiation budget changes associated with tropical intraseasonal oscillations. Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L15707, doi:10.1029/2007GL029698.

4. Forster, P. M., and J. M. Gregory, 2006: The climate sensitivity and its components diagnosed from Earth Radiation Budget data. J. Climate, 19, 39-52.

5. Stephens, G. L., 2005: Clouds feedbacks in the climate system: A critical review. J. Climate, 18, 237-273.

6. Schwartz, S. E., 2007: Heat capacity, time constant, and sensitivity of the Earth’s climate system. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S05, doi:10.1029/2007JD008746.

Testimony of Roy W. Spencer before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on 22 July 2008

Channel 4 misrepresented some of the world’s leading climate scientists in a controversial documentary that claimed global warming was a conspiracy and a fraud, the UK’s media regulator will rule next week.

But it is understood that Channel 4 will still claim victory because the ultimate verdict on a separate complaint about accuracy, which contained 131 specific points and ran to 270 pages, will find that it did not breach the regulator’s broadcasting code and did not materially mislead viewers.

The Guardian: Channel 4 to be censured over controversial climate film. Watchdog finds documentary was unfair to scientists but did not mislead viewers

Ofcom will say: “Channel 4 unfairly attributed to the former chief scientist, David King, comments he had not made and criticized him for them and also failed to provide him an opportunity to reply”.In the program, the concluding voice over from the climate change skeptic Fred Singer claimed “the chief scientist of the UK” was “telling people that by the end of the century, the only habitable place on Earth will be the Antarctic and humanity may survive thanks to some breeding couples who moved to the Antarctic … it would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad”.King has never made such a statement and it is believed Singer confused his views with those of the contrarian scientist James Lovelock.

Related story from The Indpendent on Sunday, 2nd May 2004: Why Antarctica will soon be the only place to live – literally

“Antarctica is likely to be the world’s only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked, the Government’s chief scientist, Professor Sir David King, said last week.”

The IPCC is a single-interest organisation, whose charter presumes a widespread human influence on climate, rather than consideration of whether such influence may be negligible or missing altogether. Though the IPCC’s principles also state that a wide range of views is to be sought when selecting lead authors and contributing authors, this rule has been honored more in the breach than in the observance.

More than two-thirds of all authors of chapter 9 of the IPCC’s 2007 climate-science assessment are part of a clique whose members have co-authored papers with each other and, we can surmise, very possibly at times acted as peer-reviewers for each other’s work. Of the 44 contributing authors, more than half have co-authored papers with the lead authors or coordinating lead authors of chapter 9.

It is no surprise, therefore, that the majority of scientists who are skeptical of a human influence on climate significant enough to be damaging to the planet were unrepresented in the authorship of chapter 9. Many of the IPCC authors were climate modelers – or associated with laboratories committed to modeling – unwilling to admit that their models are neither accurate nor complete. Still less do they recognize or admit that modeling a chaotic object whose initial state and evolutionary processes are not known to a sufficient precision has a validation skill not significantly different from zero. In short, it cannot be done and has long been proven impossible. The modelers say that the “consensus” among their models is significant: but it is an artifact of ex-post-facto tuning to replicate historical temperatures, of repeated intercomparison studies, and of the authors’ shared belief in the unrealistically high estimate of climate sensitivity upon which all of the models assume.

The hypothesis of damaging, man-made warming is a long way from being proven – and, given the recent trend in the peer-reviewed literature, is well on the way to being disproven. Recent cooling of the planet further suggests that man-made warming is at best too weak to be detected in the “noise” of natural internal variability.

Governments have naively and unwisely accepted the claims of a human influence on global temperatures made by a close-knit clique of a few dozen scientists, many of them climate modellers, as if such claims were representative of the opinion of the wider scientific community. On the evidence presented here, the IPCC’s selection of its chapter authors appears so prejudiced towards a predetermined outcome that it renders its scientific assessment of the climate suspect and its conclusions inappropriate for policy making.

Continue reading: Prejudiced authors, Prejudiced findings – Did the UN bias its attribution of “global warming” to
humankind? by John McLean

KEVIN Rudd is about to bank his leadership on a variation of Pascal’s wager, appropriate during the Pope’s visit but reflecting a new and risky calculus in Australian politics.

His independent expert Ross Garnaut has done the same, as he explained by reference to 17th-century French scientist Blaise Pascal: “If there were no God and one believed,” pondered Pascal, “what is the loss? But if there were a God and he rewards belief or denial in heaven and hell, the absence of belief is catastrophic. It is rational to act as if there were a God.”

Pascal’s argument was that smart non-believers should live their lives as though there were a God because they had little to lose and much to gain. Garnaut’s argument is that it is smart to act on the assumption that climate change is real because betting on its denial involves a high risk of catastrophic consequences.

Paul Kelly Blog – The Australian: Caught in carbon crunch

Thanks to Luke for lighting the blue touch-paper on this one!