NIPCC
This thread is for discussion of the sceptical report entitled “Not the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change” published by a group of scientists.
Climate Conversation Group
Taking the heat out of global warming
For the first time in history, people shouting “the end is nigh” are somehow
For the first time in history, people shouting “the end is nigh” are somehow
the sane ones, while those of us who say it is not are now the lunatics.
Latest climate models v. reality
As the models continue to leave actual temperature readings in their dust, sizeable warming halted about 1995 — although it might resume at any time. It must hasten to have any hope of catching up with the predictions.
If you claim warming continues, we want evidence of continued warming — eminently reasonable. Making us wait for 17 years for that evidence invites us to doubt you.
Claiming that warming hasn't stopped is the same as claiming it has — and both are ridiculous, for nobody knows the future. The best you can do is describe the past.
Click graph for larger version.
The 2009 report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC)
Climate Change Reconsidered, was released on Tuesday, June 2, 2009, at a press conference at the Washington Court Hotel in Washington, DC, in conjunction with the Third International Conference on Climate Change. Heartland President Joseph Bast, editor of Climate Change Reconsidered, and authors Craig D. Idso Ph.D. and S. Fred Singer Ph.D.
http://www.nipccreport.org/reports/2009/2009report.html
Paper: Climate models lack fundamentals to determine global warming
Saturday, December 11, 2010
As noted on the NIPCC website this week, a peer-reviewed paper published in Geophysical Research Letters concludes that climate models “lack — or incorrectly parameterize — fundamental processes by which surface temperatures respond to radiative forcings.” In other words, climate computer models used by the IPCC are fundamentally incorrect on predictions of global warming due to greenhouse gas concentrations ["radiative forcings"].
“To distinguish between simultaneous natural and anthropogenic impacts on surface temperature, regionally as well as globally,” authors Lean and Rind performed “a robust multivariate analysis using the best available estimates of each together with the observed surface temperature record from 1889 to 2006.”
Lean and Rind report that “contrary to recent assessments based on theoretical models (IPCC, 2007) the anthropogenic warming estimated directly from the historical observations is more pronounced between 45°S and 50°N than at higher latitudes,” which finding, in their words, “is the approximate inverse of the model-simulated anthropogenic plus natural temperature trends … which have minimum values in the tropics and increase steadily from 30 to 70°N.” Furthermore, as they continue, “the empirically-derived zonal mean anthropogenic changes have approximate hemispheric symmetry whereas the mid-to-high latitude modeled changes are larger in the Northern hemisphere.”
Because of what their analysis revealed, the two researchers concluded that “climate models may therefore lack — or incorrectly parameterize — fundamental processes by which surface temperatures respond to radiative forcings.”
Reference
Lean, J.L. and Rind, D.H, 2008. How natural and anthropogenic influences alter global and regional surface temperatures: 1889 to 2006. Geophysical Research Letters 35: 10.1029/2008GL034864.
New Report on Global Warming Contradicts U.N.’s IPCC
According to the new report, “natural causes are very likely to be [the] dominant” cause of climate change that took place in the twentieth and at the start of the twenty-first centuries.
The 430-page report was coauthored and edited by three climate science researchers: Craig D. Idso, Ph.D., editor of the online magazine CO2 Science and author of several books and scholarly articles on the effects of carbon dioxide on plant and animal life; Robert M. Carter, Ph.D., a marine geologist and research professor at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia; and S. Fred Singer, Ph.D., a distinguished atmospheric physicist and first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service. Seven additional scientists and one policy expert on sustainable growth made contributions to the volume.
The book is titled Climate Change Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report because it precedes a comprehensive volume that is expected to be released in 2013. It focuses on scientific research released since publication of Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).
Key findings, as outlined in the interim report’s executive summary, include:
* “We find evidence that the models over-estimate the amount of warming that occurred during the twentieth century and fail to incorporate chemical and biological processes that may be as important as the physical processes employed in the models.”
* “More CO2 promotes more plant growth both on land and throughout the surface waters of the world’s oceans, and this vast assemblage of plant life has the ability to affect Earth’s climate in several ways, almost all of them tending to counteract the heating effects of CO2’s thermal radiative forcing.”
* “The latest research on paleoclimatology and recent temperatures [finds] new evidence that the Medieval Warm Period of approximately 1,000 years ago, when there was about 28 percent less CO2 in the atmosphere than there is currently, was both global and warmer than today’s world.”
* “New research finds less melting of ice in the Arctic, Antarctic, and on mountaintops than previously feared, no sign of acceleration of sea-level rise in recent decades, no trend over the past 50 years in changes to the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (MOC), and no changes in precipitation patterns or river flows that could be attributed to rising CO2 levels.”
* “Amphibians, birds, butterflies, other insects, lizards, mammals, and even worms benefit from global warming and its myriad ecological effects.”
* “Rising temperatures and atmospheric CO2 concentrations, by increasing crop yields, will play a major role in averting hunger and ecological destruction in the future.”
* “The latest research suggests corals and other forms of aquatic life have effective adaptive responses to climate change enabling them to flourish despite or even because of climate change.”
* “Global warming is more likely to improve rather than harm human health because rising temperatures lead to a greater reduction in winter deaths than the increase they cause in summer deaths.”
* “Even in worst-case scenarios, mankind will be much better off in the year 2100 than it is today, and therefore able to adapt to whatever challenges climate change presents.”
http://heartland.org/press-releases/2011/08/29/new-report-global-warming-contradicts-uns-ipcc
‘Anthropogenic Global Warming Science Assessment Report’
The Right Climate Stuff Research Team
April, 2013
Introduction
The Right Climate Stuff (TRCS) research team is a group of engineers and scientists, most of whom are retired NASA Johnson Space Center employees, who have successfully worked together on manned space projects since the early days of the Apollo Program. Although climate science is not one of our technical specialties, the required expertise in physics, chemistry, geology, meteorology, biology, data analysis and interpretation, and complex systems modeling, is similar to our collective academic training and experience gained through our typical 40 – 50 years of experience working in our nation’s space program. Our natural interest in the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) controversy led to invitations to guest speakers on the subject at our occasional NASA retiree organization meetings. Responding to additional interest generated from these guest speakers, our NASA retiree organization hosted two Symposiums on global warming topics during September and October 2011, featuring speakers on either side of the AGW debate. These symposiums generated even more interest in climate science and motivated self-study of the science and related data by some of our colleagues
[...]
Conclusions and Recommendations
Our main objective of determining to what extent CO2 concentrations in our atmosphere can cause detrimental global warming has led us to an objective conclusion that this issue is not settled science. Unfortunately, the scientific progress on this issue has been corrupted by political and special interest influences that determine where our research dollars get spent. Political influences in government sponsored research have focused climate change research on CO2 rather than a broader range of factors that need better definition.
Our recommendation would be to take the time required to improve our knowledge of the critical factors driving temperature prediction uncertainty before attempting to make critical high-economic-impact public policy decisions of doubtful effectiveness based on projections of unvalidated computer simulations. We find no convincing evidence indicating our planet is in a climate crisis. From a historical perspective, temperature variations we have experienced since the dawn of the Industrial Age are well within the earth’s temperature fluctuations of the last 10,000 years, as well as the more recent 2000 years since the Roman Warm Period. The earth’s global average temperature has varied by as much as +/- 2 OC of the 10,000 year average while CO2 levels in our atmosphere were relatively constant during the same 10,000 year period. The earth’s surface temperature has remained within +/- 1 OC of this 10,000 year average since CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have started to rise during the Industrial Age. There is no impending climate disaster that requires immediate corrective action. In the face of model prediction uncertainty, that is the primary source of alarm, we should continue to be anchored to the stable climate data of the last 10,000 years and assess recent temperature trends against the backdrop of these very stable temperatures.
We encourage more government sponsored climate change research to remove critical areas of prediction uncertainty. However, we recommend a broader study of all important climate variables and less concentration on CO2 effects in studies using only predictions of unvalidated models. Until models can be improved beyond their present state of effectiveness, and validated with empirical data covering the vast array of variables in physical, chemical and biological processes that they attempt to simulate over time, numerous studies with unvalidated computer simulations have questionable scientific benefits. Eco-engineering solutions for cooling and warming the planet should be studied as well as methods and cost estimates to adapt to a changing climate that we currently do not understand with sufficient precision to try to control.
http://therightclimatestuff.com/AGW%20Science%20Assess%20Rpt-1.pdf
[Couldn't think of a better place than 'NIPCC' to put this report - RC]
Meanwhile back at NASA:-
‘Responding to the Challenge of Climate and Environmental Change: NASA’s Plan for a Climate-Centric Architecture for Earth Observations and Applications from Space’
June 2010
Executive Summary
The Obama Administration is acting on its recognition that climate change is a defining issue of our generation. Our responses to the challenges of climate change—accurate prediction, equitable adaptation, and efficient mitigation—will influence the quality of life for the nation, and indeed the world, for generations to come. The President’s FY2011 budget request provides a cumulative $10.3 Billion (B) funding to NASA’s Earth Science program over the period FY2011–2015 to address pressing scientific and national issues associated with climate change and the nation’s climate research and monitoring capabilities. As recommended by the National Research Council’s (NRC’s) Earth Science and Applications Decadal Survey, this FY2011 budget request returns NASA Earth Science funding to the approximate level that it had in FY2000, an increase of more than 30% from recent levels. This funding allows for the acceleration and expansion of activities across the entire, coordinated Earth Science program—in the areas of flight missions, research, applications, and Earth Science mission technology development—thus advancing the balance and scope that have been hallmarks of NASA Earth System Science. This document outlines the integrated NASA Earth Science program enabled by the FY2011 budget request.
[...]
2. Components of a Climate-centric Architecture for Earth System Science and Applications
The President’s FY2011 Budget Request includes a substantial new investment in NASA’s Earth Science program to advance the science of climate change and related environmental concerns arising from natural and human-induced changes in the Earth system.
2.2.1 Modeling, Assessment, and Computing
The FY2011 budget request will allow for enhanced participation of NASA modeling groups and funded investigators, bringing NASA observational and model products to the 2013 US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) National Assessment and the 5th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It will also provide for a near-doubling of the Scientific Computing budget (by FY2015) to significantly enhance NASA’s ability to provide hardware, software, and data visualization services for the modeling and assimilation activities carried out at NASA centers and by NASA’s funded investigators.
[...]
Particular areas of emphasis include the following:
• Enhanced opportunity for the NASA investigator community to participate in the IPCC assessment, especially in IPCC Working Group 2 which assesses the vulnerability of socio-economic and natural systems to climate change, consequences of change, and options for adaptation, whereas NASA’s contribution has been mostly to IPCC Working Group 1 which assesses the physical scientific aspects of the climate system and climate change).
http://science.nasa.gov/media/medialibrary/2010/07/01/Climate_Architecture_Final.pdf
Consensus and Controversy: New Report On The Global Warming “Battlefield”
Details
Published on Tuesday, 23 April 2013 12:31
Written by Emil Røyrvik, SINTEF
This report outlines the main positions and debates surrounding the literally hot topic of man-made global warming. Inspired by social studies of science and technology, the goal of the report is to document, describe and take stock of this potent scientific and public “battlefield” that plays out arguably some of the more pressing issues of our time.
Presenting two broad “ideal type” of positions involved in the science of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), the “consensus” and the “contrarian” perspectives, the report analyses both their cultural premises and places them in relation to the philosophy of science.
The report positively concludes that an alleged near unanimous scientific consensus on AGW, that “the science is settled”, is overstated. The report finds a robust, critical scientific discourse in climate related research, yet it highlights that a “consensus-building” approach to science might represent a politicised and unscientific belief in science – a belief in tension with the ethos of “normal science”.
The report calls for a continuing questioning, critical, and undogmatic public debate over man-made global warming, and a clearer separation between science and policy.
SINTEF is the largest independent research organisation in Scandinavia
http://www.rightsidenews.com/2013042332408/life-and-science/energy-and-environment/consensus-and-controversy-new-report-on-the-global-warming-battlefield.html
‘Consensus and Controversy’
The Debate on Man Made Global Warming
Author Emil A. Røyrvik
SINTEF Technology and Society
Industrial Management
2013 04 12
http://www.sintef.no/upload/Teknologi_og_samfunn/Teknologiledelse/SINTEF%20Report%20A24071,%20Consensus%20and%20Controversy.pdf