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[Note: This is devastating new climate research submitted to the journal Energy and Environment, which continues to show how the entire man-made global warming fear movement is “falling apart.” See earlier EPW Blog: New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears

Breaking News:

Excerpt: Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers “implicit” endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no “consensus.” The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the “primary” cause of warming, but it doesn’t require any belief or support for “catastrophic” global warming. In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results. These changing viewpoints represent the advances in climate science over the past decade. While today we are even more certain the earth is warming, we are less certain about the root causes. More importantly, research has shown us that — whatever the cause may be — the amount of warming is unlikely to cause any great calamity for mankind or the planet itself.

Survey: Less Than Half of all Published Scientists Endorse Global Warming Theory

Michael Asher

August 29, 2007 11:07 AM

Comprehensive survey of published climate research reveals changing viewpoints

In 2004, history professor Naomi Oreskes performed a survey of research papers on climate change. Examining peer-reviewed papers published on the ISI Web of Science database from 1993 to 2003, she found a majority supported the “consensus view,” defined as humans were having at least some effect on global climate change. Oreskes’ work has been repeatedly cited, but as some of its data is now nearly 15 years old, its conclusions are becoming somewhat dated.

Medical researcher Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte recently updated this research. Using the same database and search terms as Oreskes, he examined all papers published from 2004 to February 2007. The results have been submitted to the journal Energy and Environment, of which DailyTech has obtained a pre-publication copy. The figures are surprising.

Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers “implicit” endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no “consensus.”

The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the “primary” cause of warming, but it doesn’t require any belief or support for “catastrophic” global warming. In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.

These changing viewpoints represent the advances in climate science over the past decade. While today we are even more certain the earth is warming, we are less certain about the root causes. More importantly, research has shown us that — whatever the cause may be — the amount of warming is unlikely to cause any great calamity for mankind or the planet itself.

Schulte’s survey contradicts the United Nation IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (2007), which gave a figure of “90% likely” man was having an impact on world temperatures. But does the IPCC represent a consensus view of world scientists? Despite media claims of “thousands of scientists” involved in the report, the actual text is written by a much smaller number of “lead authors.” The introductory “Summary for Policymakers” — the only portion usually quoted in the media — is written not by scientists at all, but by politicians, and approved, word-by-word, by political representatives from member nations. By IPCC policy, the individual report chapters — the only text actually written by scientists — are edited to “ensure compliance” with the summary, which is typically published months before the actual report itself.

By contrast, the ISI Web of Science database covers 8,700 journals and publications, including every leading scientific journal in the world.

Article in The Australian:

Climate change can’t bog down APEC

NEXT week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum meeting in Sydney won’t be its last, but if we accept Kevin Rudd’s view of the world then, like John Howard, its days may be numbered.

The press release accompanying Rudd’s speech to the Australian Institute of International Affairs on Monday bore the headline, “APEC’S Future: Confront the Economic Challenge of Climate Change” . According to Labor’s Great Helmsman, if it fails to embrace “real action” on climate change, APEC has “little future”.

What does real action mean? To quote Rudd: “APEC must set concrete emissions targets, as it languishes behind the European Union and the G8 on tackling the economic impact of climate change.”

This is an interesting comparison, for reasons I will come to in a moment. But we already know that setting action plans in concrete is not APEC’s modus operandi.

China and the other Asian developing economies don’t want anything to do with Kyoto-style targets, which would cripple their economic growth. Bringing their living standards up to those of the West is their greatest economic challenge, not climate change.

A leaked draft of the Sydney Declaration to be released at the end of next week’s APEC meeting speaks only of a long-term aspirational target for emissions reductions. So presumably one of the early actions of a Rudd government will be to withdraw from APEC, an institution with little future………….

According to a report in The Australian, Labor plan to impose a ban on electric hot water systems from 2012, in favour of solar systems, in order to cut those ubiquitous greenhouse gas emissions. Read the full story here.

Thanks to Luke Walker for alerting us to this story. Luke asks if this is controversial fiddling or good science?

Graphic courtesy of NOAA

GREENHOUSE GASES LIKELY DROVE NEAR-RECORD U.S. WARMTH IN 2006

Greenhouse gases likely accounted for more than half of the widespread warmth across the continental United States last year, according to a new study by four scientists at NOAA’s Earth System Research Lab in Boulder, Colo. Last year’s average temperature was the second highest since record-keeping began in 1895. The team found that it was very unlikely that the 2006 El Niño played any role, though other natural factors likely contributed to the unusual warmth. The findings will appear September 5 in the Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union.

The NOAA team also found that the probability of U.S. temperatures breaking a record in 2006 had increased 15-fold compared to pre-industrial times because of greenhouse gas increases in Earth’s atmosphere.

Preliminary data available last January led NOAA to place 2006 as the warmest year on record. In May, NOAA changed the 2006 ranking to second warmest after updated statistics showed the year was 0.08 degree F cooler than 1998.

The annual average temperature in 2006 was 2.1 degrees F above the 20th Century average and marked the ninth consecutive year of above-normal U.S. temperatures. Each of the contiguous 48 states reported above-normal annual temperatures and, for the majority of states, 2006 ranked among the 10 hottest years since 1895.

“We wanted to find out whether it was pure coincidence that the two warmest years on record both coincided with El Niño events,” says lead author Martin Hoerling of NOAA/ESRL. “We decided to quantify the impact of El Niño and compare it to the human influence on temperatures through greenhouse gases.” El Niño is a warming of the surface of the east tropical Pacific Ocean.

Using data from 10 past El Niño events observed since 1965, the authors examined the impact of El Niño on average annual U.S. surface temperatures. They found a slight cooling across the country. To overcome uncertainties inherent in the data analysis, the team also studied the El Niño influence using two atmospheric climate models. The scientists conducted two sets of 50-year simulations of U.S. climate, with and without the influence of El Niño sea-surface warming. They again found a slight cooling across the nation when El Niño was present.

To assess the role of greenhouse gases in the 2006 warmth, the NOAA team analyzed 42 simulations of Earth’s climate from 18 climate models provided for the latest assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The models included greenhouse gas emissions and airborne particles in Earth’s atmosphere since the late 19th century and computed their influence on average temperatures through 2006. The results of the analysis showed that greenhouse gases produced warmth over the entire United States in the model projections, much like the warming pattern that was observed last year across the country.

For a final check, the scientists compared the observed 2006 pattern of abnormal surface temperatures to the projected effects of greenhouse-gas warming and El Niño temperature responses. The U.S. temperature pattern of widespread warming was completely inconsistent with the pattern expected from El Niño, but it closely matched the expected effects of greenhouse warming.

When average annual temperature in the United States broke records in 1998, a powerful El Niño was affecting climate around the globe. Scientists widely attributed the unusual warmth in the United States to the influence of the ongoing El Niño.

“That attribution was not confirmed at the time,” says Hoerling. “Now we have the capability, on the spatial scale of the United States, to better distinguish natural climate variations from climate changes caused by humans.”

The authors also estimate that there is a 16 percent chance that 2007 will bring record-breaking warmth.

CNN’s take on the story is here:

Scorching U.S. heat in 2006 blamed on humans