At The Daily Blog on May 15, 2013, at 8:13 pm, while discussing The irrelevance of the rabid right, by Gareth Renowden, I asked a question.

What is the evidence for warming?

Rob Painting replied:

1. Accelerated warming of the ocean. The ocean soaking up about 93% of global warming. See Levitus (2012), Nuccitelli (2012) and Balmaseda (2013).
2. Accelerated ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica. Shepherd (2012).
3. Accelerated ice loss from mountain glaciers worldwide. See the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS).
4. Ongoing heat uptake by the land surface (up to 2004 at least). See Huang 2006.
5. Ongoing sea level rise (it’s not currently accelerating due mainly to the deposition of heat into the deeper, colder ocean layers – thermal expansion reduces with lower temperature). See the AVISO website.
6. The poleward migration of tens of thousands of animal and plant species, and up mountainsides too, to escape the warming.
7. Continued intensification of the global water cycle. Westra (2013), Durack (2012).
8. The increased blocking of longwave radiation by CO2 – as observed by satellites. Harries (2001), Philipona (2004).

That’s an impressive list of evidence, so I want to thank Mr Painting for his trouble. I’m sure he would prefer to be rebutted if there are any faults in his evidence, rather than continue in his ignorance, so if you can contribute to an understanding of these pieces of evidence, I encourage you to comment below.

Let’s put together a convincing critique. Bear in mind that even if we don’t like it it’s not necessarily wrong, so we need to provide solid evidence. After warming, we should examine attribution.

Hmm, sounds as though I want my own AR5. Ok, why not?

First impressions

My first thoughts include these:

1. Doubtful, but I’m unfamiliar with the three papers.
2. Magnitude?
3. Magnitude?
4. Magnitude, period?
5. Magnitude? If it’s about 1.5 mm/yr then it has little anthro component.
6. Magnitude, period? I doubt it was established that migration was motivated by excessive heat.
7. What does this mean?
8. How was “blocking” concluded rather than less energy being emitted?
9. Why does he silently deprecate the use of the best temperature-sensing device we have, the thermometer, in favour of remote proxies?

So it was all quite learned discourse, but at the end he stoops to a gratuitous insult like any head-banger:

The question is, why do people like Richard Treadgold pretend as if this stuff has never been explained to them before? Anterograde amnesia perhaps?

Nasty, but all he’s doing is trying to avoid a too-close examination of his excuses for confiscating my self-drive motor car and overseas air travel.

Rodney Hide continues to support a realistic view of dangerous anthropogenic global warming.

The NBR today carries his article “Faith, not facts, drive[s] global warming.”

Rodney says Renwick “was in no doubt that man-made global warming was causing the summer drought,” then quotes Renwick from his TV interview:

“Oh, no, no. There’s no other explanation that’s remotely plausible.”

But Rodney rightly points out:

That’s religious zealotry in action. Science is never that certain. The best-ever scientific knowledge was Newtonian mechanics. And Einstein blew it to bits. That’s the nature of science.

He goes on to show how Renwick’s theory is falsified. It’s the right stuff.

From a correspondent

I think the game is up for the pro-AGW crowd due to the lack of temperature rises over the last 16-23 years.

It looks like Gavin Schmidt might be jumping from the sinking ship now as well. To me, Gavin looks like he’s positioning himself for a back-down on his AGW position – why would he point out the flaws with Nuccitelli’s post otherwise, it’s no concern to him? I think Hansen, even though he admitted the lack of a temp rise over the last 16 years, was given the boot from NASA Read more… »

Redolent of the grey men running the climate scam and the IPCC, here’s a similar illusion in grey. The colours of squares A and B are identical. Click for larger version and to see proof. Reflect on what you know of the image of the “scientific” IPCC and the “thousands” of scientists who “write” the assessment reports. Consider what is true. Let us know.

Be in no doubt

A reader, Simon, made some interesting points when he commented on my assertion that scientists “incite” policy, saying:

The relatively recent trend of activism by individual scientists is solely because of the way their work is being misrepresented and their concern over the changing environment.

What he calls “concern over the changing environment” is the motivation for activism, so I’m glad we agree on that. But if they only looked more closely rather than satisfying their expectations at first glance they wouldn’t detect any change beyond the ordinary. Because no unprecedented climatic fluctuations have been reported. So why be concerned?

He refers to scientific activism as a “recent trend”, blatantly ignoring the fact that the whole climate scam was started by activists, and describes activism by “individual scientists” to imply they are few. In fact, they are thickly distributed throughout the UN, the IPCC, national and international scientific organisations and national governments, and their pronouncements and opinions are broadcast constantly.

How much more must they do before Simon notices them? Read more… »

Every policy document is written by a person or a panel. The question is, who else filled it with ideas and who else, therefore, is responsible?

It’s hard to know if a reader, Simon, was being serious when he said “Scientists don’t set policy either, politicians do that” because it’s blindingly obvious that scientists don’t keep their hands off policy. They constantly agitate because — surprise — they constantly need funding.

That’s the very reason we’re in this climate change mess, because politicians alone couldn’t have done it. A few smart leaders might have come up with the idea of dangerous anthropogenic global warming (DAGW) justifying deep government interference in our lives, but they had to be assisted by publicly-funded scientists who became heavily involved in supporting policy proposals, even to the point of activism.

At all levels of science and of government, scientists have spent thirty years providing assistance of varying magnitude to politicians; it’s not only cynics who remark that scientists made friends with politicians only to safeguard their funding. Read more… »

Among the difficult, arcane arguments entangled in the doctrine of dangerous anthropogenic global warming (DAGW), the simplest, most immediate and most understandable is that a general warming leads to dangerous climate change. First warming, then dangerous changes. Nobody seems to argue with that — not openly, anyway.

But we find lots of talk about “climate change” that has nothing to do with warming, as though we can have one without the other, which in turn means that humanity can be criticised for “damage” they have no hand in. In these ways warmists work to alarm the naive. We must keep our heads on our shoulders. Read more… »

Here’s good sceptical climate information all wrapped up in a lovely example of how to deliver it.

My good friend Bryan Leyland, engineer, sent this exchange. He gives us an admirable example of the best practicality and erudition, conjoined as only Kiwis do it, leavened with a charming humanity.

Some while ago Bryan gave an address to IPENZ (Institute of Professional Engineers NZ) members in Whangarei and one of his audience has been thinking carefully about what he said. Bryan just received a letter from this colleague, who describes himself as an environmental engineer, and Bryan replied. Below, the letter writer, with his name and details withheld to preserve his privacy, is quoted in the green text.

In his responses, Bryan listens to the anxiety and the honest intent of a person who looks like an opponent, keeps a level head and gives informed answers that address the substance of the opposing view. It’s an object lesson for us all, on both sides of the great climate divide. Read more… »

A new study shows modern temperatures are not unprecedented and disproves an important part of Mann’s “hockey stick” paper of 1999.

Orbital forcing of tree-ring data, J. Esper et al., says:

“… large-scale near-surface air-temperature reconstructions [specifically the hockey stick] relying on tree-ring data may underestimate pre-instrumental temperatures including warmth during Medieval and Roman times.”

This is beautiful.

Emissions of greenhouse gases are quoted everywhere to illustrate how humanity is sending the world to hell in a hand basket.

The articles make much of “emissions” from various countries, from the developed and the developing worlds. How many know that these vast, hugely important quantities are not even measured?

They’re only calculated from reported energy use — and they are far from reliable. That’s the first point. The second point is that emissions lead, presumably, to a global temperature increase. If they didn’t, there wouldn’t be a problem, would there?

But emissions don’t automatically mean higher temperatures. For a start, about 45% of human emissions — regardless how they increase — are absorbed somewhere in the gigantic natural system. Nobody knows where it all goes. It’s immensely complicated to track our puny emissions of carbon dioxide as they mix with the truly gargantuan streams out of and into forests and the oceans.

So most authors make no attempt to convert the net emissions into a temperature increase, but why not, actually?

The main reason would be that nobody — and I mean nobody, from the IPCC, NASA, the CRU at East Anglia and Al Gore all the way down to me — has the foggiest idea of the temperature that will result from these emissions.

Amazing, eh? There’s no knowledge or evidence of the inconvenient disaster we’re supposed to be creating with our selfish lifestyles. This gives rise to two questions:

• Why does nobody demand some evidence?
• What has persuaded everyone, without evidence, that there’s a problem?

Paul Mulshine says it well:

This guy nails it.

The movement to use a theoretical threat from atmospheric CO2 to control other humans is a religion, not a science.

He says the issue is the role of CO2 versus cosmic rays in cloud formation, and “it can be resolved only by physicists, not the crowd I like to call ‘climate scientologists’.” He cites an article about Henrik Svensmark by Robert Tracinski.

Henrik Svensmark.

Svensmark, says Tracinski, “has already broken the claim of the man-made global warming “consensus” to be the only scientific explanation of the climate.”

He says:

Ignoring the past is precisely what [the alarmists] have done. Read more… »

Modern climate misapprehensions spread like dandelion seeds on the wind and have become intricately tangled in our everyday lives. Rampant repetition converts these empty myths into eternal truths. Refuting them with observations and reason risks mockery and scorn but it is reasonable to try.

The West Coast Environmental Network (WCEN) opposes coal mining operations on the grounds, among other things, that burning coal will destroy the earth. The following statements about coal and climate change are published on their web site. Let’s see if they’re right.

Burning and mining coal is the most efficient and fastest way to bring about disastrous climate change.

Well, some people need a rhetoric licence. This breaches several principles of logic. First, there’s surely no connection between mining anything and any kind of climate change, either disastrous or benign. Second, burning coal produces some CO2, which probably causes a little warming, but such warming is so far undetectable. Thirdly, there’s absolutely no difference between the CO2 from coal and the CO2 from any other source, so there’s no reason to put coal at the top of some demon list of dangerous fuels. Read more… »

Boundary conditions are complex.

Yes, the ocean has warmed; no, it’s not ‘global warming’

And warm water does not sink

Oceanographer Dr Willem de Lange has referred us to a really clear treatment of ocean warming and ocean-atmosphere interaction in an article by a noted oceanographer (now deceased). It appeared in 21st Century Science & Technology magazine in 2000 and carried the “Yes, the ocean has warmed” headline you see above. Though written 12 years ago, it makes a solid rebuttal to the substance of the modern warming scare, emphasizing, as though marine scientists needed to be told, that warm water cannot sink.
 
The author was Dr. Robert E. Stevenson, an oceanography consultant, who trained NASA astronauts in oceanography and marine meteorology, was Secretary General of the International Association for the Physical Science of the Oceans from 1987 to 1995 and was an oceanographer for the U.S. Office of Naval Research for 20 years.

Having completed the post, I’ve discovered the new Levitus paper. How does Levitus et al. 2012 compare with the old Levitus et al. 2000? The new paper is in press, so we only have the abstracts to compare. In 2000, the heat content of the world ocean increased by ∼2 × 10²³ joules between the mid-1950s and mid-1990s, representing a volume mean warming of 0.06°C. In 2012, the heat content of the world ocean increased by 24.0 × 10²² J for 1955-2010, corresponding to a volume mean warming of 0.09ºC.

With 24.0 × 10²² being 20% greater than 2 × 10²³, and the temperature going from 0.06 to 0.09°C giving an increase of 50%, we have a familiar picture. It’s deja vu, only warmer.

Here’s the article’s original introduction:

Contrary to recent press reports that the oceans hold the still-undetected global atmospheric warming predicted by climate models, ocean warming occurs in 100-year cycles, independent of both radiative and human influences.

Which echoes today’s headlines about ocean heat content trying to explain why climate models don’t predict the climate. Read more… »

It’s getting worse than they thought (for them!)

NZ monthly temperature anomalies 2001-2012 from NIWA’s monthly press releases. Although the trend is as near to zero as “damn it” is to swearing, it is, as a matter of fact, cooling. Anyway, for at least 10 years and 5 months, New Zealand has officially experienced no warming — unlike the great globe itself, which was predicted by highly skilled computer models to warm about 0.2°C over the same period, and so no doubt it did warm. Oh, no it didn’t.

This insight into the NZ temperature record is from the resourceful Bob D. I’ve promoted it because it’s priceless. Bob says:

NIWA’s Climate Updates

I thought I’d share the local New Zealand temperatures over the last decade. I downloaded all NIWA’s Climate Updates from their website (the first one I could find was Oct 2001) and plotted the temperature anomalies that were published for each month.

Of course, what with Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming and all, I expected to see temperatures rising (accelerating, even) in a wild, out-of-control fashion, as the water vapour feedbacks kicked in, tripling the initial warming that came from the gigatons of poisonous carbon dioxide pollution that we’ve spewed (spewed, I tell you) into the atmosphere over the past decade.
/sarc

I was a little surprised at what I saw. Read more… »

The graph that proves no significant warming for about 15 years – since about 1996. Measured by satellite, not the unreliable hand of man. The wiggly blue line trending steadily upwards is the CO2 concentration. There is no sign of it affecting the temperature. Though CO2 probably raises the temperature a little, it is for all practical concerns irrelevant because other factors overpower it for decades at a time — which is why we point out the lack of warming over the last 15 years. The global warming hypothesis has been demolished. Click for larger version.

You’ve seen mine, now show me yours

On 29 March Hot Topic took exception to my factual assertion in relation to climate fraud that “Global warming has not happened for about 15 years, unless you take a micrometer to the thermometer. And if you have to do that just to detect warming, then it’s hardly dangerous, is it?” by thundering:

The certainty of Treadgold’s denial is only possible because he creates a carefully cultivated cocoon of ignorance around himself and around the true believers who worship at his blog. The world where the rest of us live is a much more uncomfortable place. We have to work with whatever reality throws at us. Retreating into a fantasy world where warming hasn’t happened for 15 years is a luxury only the deluded can afford.

Later that day I posted here: Read more… »

When being criticised, it’s relatively easy to ignore people you’ve never heard of, but it’s not so easy to ignore your friends. It’s possible that this astonishing rebuke from respected former NASA scientists, engineers and astronauts might change minds at NASA where world-wide sceptical opposition from strangers has not. h/t WUWT. Press release from SPPI.

Former NASA scientists, astronauts admonish agency on climate change position

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:

Blanquita Cullum

703-307-9510

bqview at mac.com

Joint letter to NASA Administrator blasts agency’s policy of ignoring empirical evidence

HOUSTON, TX – April 10, 2012. 49 former NASA scientists and astronauts sent a letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden last week admonishing the agency for its role in advocating a high degree of certainty that man-made CO2 is a major cause of climate change while neglecting empirical evidence that calls the theory into question.

The group, which includes seven Apollo astronauts and two former directors of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, are dismayed over the failure of NASA, and specifically the Goddard Institute For Space Studies (GISS), to make an objective assessment of all available scientific data on climate change. They charge that NASA is relying too heavily on complex climate models that have proven scientifically inadequate in predicting climate only one or two decades in advance. Read more… »

Scepticism is not a psychological disorder, you morons

Though climate alarmists have claimed for several years that evidence for dangerous man-made global warming is “overwhelming”, it’s actually becoming harder and harder to find.

Thus it has instead become fashionable among climate alarmists to ignore what climate sceptics say and to discredit them with pseudo-psychological, ethical or moral inventions to explain why they say it. Anything but actually address what they say. Here are five examples. At the end are four facts that explain why climate scepticism arises spontaneously around the world — even without oil money. Read more… »

A week ago I offered the NZ Herald this short rebuttal of some alarmist climate nonsense from Carmen Gravatt (well, it’s really from Greenpeace but Carmen didn’t check it). The Herald has neither published nor acknowledged receipt of this so now you can see it and wonder with me why they turn down even moderate sceptical material. It goes without saying that the new, radical Greenpeace will flog this dead horse for years to come, but there’s no excuse for professional journalists to persist in ignoring well-known facts. When this climate revel is finally ended the Herald’s editors will deeply regret having adopted blinkers.

Carmen Gravatt’s gravely misleading Herald article of 15 March We don’t need extreme oil gives a gross distortion of a stupendously simple truth.

She blames oil for global warming, claiming we’ll cause “global average temperature [to soar] – uncontrollably.” But runaway warming is impossible. No credible climate scientist is making that claim — and it’s never happened before. Oil can cause real pollution and injury to humans and wildlife, but the global warming threat is imaginary, for no dangerous climatic influence from our emissions has been detected.

Jo Nova said in a report three years ago (Massive climate funding exposed) that the US government had poured $30 billion into pure climate research over 20 years. Yet the simple truth is that still nobody can point to a single piece of empirical evidence that man-made carbon dioxide has a significant effect on the global climate. Read more… »

In my previous post I said that, since the temperature hasn’t gone up (much) in about 15 years, nothing has happened as a result – in short, global warming hasn’t caused anything, harmful or otherwise.

That short chain of reasoning seemed justified by the observed and documented lack of significant warming of the near-surface atmosphere around the globe during the last 15 years, and I thought the logic unassailable.

The above link shows the HadCRUT3 record, but you’ll see a very similar trajectory with the GISTEMP dataset, UAH, RSS or NCDC. All of these records show that, from about 1997, there’s been precious little warming or cooling and that the global monthly mean temperature anomaly has, in the last six months or less, steeply descended through exactly the same band through which it rose in 1997.

To repeat: because global warming hasn’t occurred for about 15 years, global warming hasn’t caused anything else to occur in that time. Very simple. Read more… »

A key argument much used by the IPCC to claim that we cause dangerous global warming is nothing but an unsophisticated display of ignorance decked out as knowledge.

Reasonable men and women must see through this subterfuge and openly deplore its use by the learned warmists running (or overrunning) the IPCC.

The argument aims to prove that only our GHG emissions cause global warming and says “we haven’t seen anything else it could be.” As it plainly admits to a complete absence of observation, and its reasoning is unpersuasive (“it must be this, for we can think of nothing else”), it will never be a leading endorsement of the age of science. Yet it was written into the AR4 in 2007 by “thousands of leading scientists” using real ink instead of crayon and became permanent.

Because of this barbarous offence against logic people now call global warming “the greatest challenge we have faced,” clamour to humbly “redistribute” our wealth around the world to atone for our “climate crimes” against vaguely-defined “undeveloped nations”, gamble with humanity’s economic future and plan alarming experiments with our planet to “save” it from warming.

You’d think all the greatest advances in human civilisation hadn’t occurred during periods of warming. But they did – during cold times we don’t develop, we die. Read more… »

Denier, denier, pants on fire

Deniers claim debate is ‘over’ because they can’t win it

Constant practise of scepticism is the root of good science

Hot Topic have been reviling our good friend and climate warrior Bryan Leyland for his opinion piece published recently. Not to mention several other sceptical climate articles by other people which they cannot tolerate. In the process Gareth Renowden and his gang spill the beans on their evidence—they don’t have any.

Because, pressed for some evidence of catastrophic man-made warming of our planet, they don’t reveal any. Renowden, Dappledwater and the rest of the fourth-formers threaten that evidence not only exists but increases beyond doubt, yet they still refuse to disclose it.

They also make unsubstantiated allegations of impropriety or even falsehood against Bryan.

Their arguments always seemed fact-poor and this proves it. Again and again they ignore reasonable requests for supporting information or peer-reviewed papers and resort instead to attacking the questioner. Read more… »

A headline caught my eye today. It was a case of over-sensitivity caused by too many hits on the same nerve – the climate change nerve, but it illustrated the masterful social engineering that went on 20 years ago. The headline was from the Mother Nature Network:

Climate change gives gardeners new options

Curious, I thought, it’s probably about shifting climate zones, and it was.

The US Department of Agriculture has updated its Plant Hardiness Zone Map. It lets you know what plants or crops will thrive in your area and what won’t. Because of the slight late-twentieth century warming, those areas have changed a bit. Read more… »

Big things influence little things. Little things hardly at all influence big things.

Please bear this in mind when the topic of climate comes up. Let me elaborate.

In the fourth form, little boys do not push big fat boys around and taunt them with “who’s a mummy’s boy, then?” The big fat boys pick on the little boys instead. It just seems more natural.

Among animals, rats don’t eat live caribou, lizards leave lions alone and hamsters don’t munch bears.

Any animal meeting a tiger fears for tomorrow, and an animal near enough to a lion to distinguish its nose hairs wishes it couldn’t, unless it’s an elephant or cape buffalo.

You see which way this goes, don’t you? Little gives way to big. Big overpowers little. It’s a rule of nature. No way can the mouse clamp its ferocious jaws around the neck of the antelope. Read more… »

The following article was just published in none other than the Wall Street Journal, signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article. The mood towards catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) is surely in some upheaval. It’s wonderful to hear the disgraceful treatment of Chris de Freitas described in sympathetic terms, and the scandalous behaviour of the warmist clique towards him condemned. No doubt those enthusiastic world-savers would love to hide their dirty deeds and save their skins, but one day Salinger (the ring-leader in attacking de Freitas as both editor and academic), Jones and Schmidt, with others who have long flouted scientific courtesy, will reap the consequences of the odious conduct they have sown. Ignorant people might be expected to deny free speech to those who disagree with them, but climatology is alone in science in its disgraceful tolerance of conspiracy to prevent scientific critics being published. It’s a further scandal that the IPCC, while paying mere lip-service to solid science, does nothing to clean it up, even after severe criticism in August last year of its processes and attitudes by the InterAcademy Council (representing national academies of science such as the Royal Society) on behalf of the UN and the IPCC itself. It is left to us to preserve memory of their shameful practices, and we’ll do that despite attempts by our local climate deniers to bully local newspapers into silencing us.

No Need to Panic About Global Warming

A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about “global warming.” Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.

This is an adopted article.

In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: “I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: ‘The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.’ In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?” Read more… »

Lord Turnbull, former Cabinet Secretary and head of the Civil Service from 2002 to 2005.

From the GWPF come these remarks by Lord Turnbull to the House of Lords on January 12th, two days ago.

House of Lords: That this House takes note of the Government’s green agenda: My Lords, in a short debate, I will concentrate my remarks on one issue only, the governance of the science, as this is vital for the credibility of the thinking upon which the Government’s policies are based.

In a debate in December 2009 on a report by the Committee on Climate Change, I said:

“Below the surface there are serious questions about the foundations on which it has been constructed”.—[Official Report, 8/12/09; col. 1051.]

Complete decarbonisation

Over the subsequent two years my concerns have increased rather than been assuaged.

This is an adopted article.

The governing narrative for our climate change framework can be summarised as follows. Read more… »

There has been no significant global surface warming this century, yet experts say that temperatures rose during the first decade, becoming seriously hot. Hotter than ever before, in fact. For example:

January 21, 2010:

Past Decade Warmest on Record, NASA Data Shows

The decade ending in 2009 was the warmest on record, new surface temperature figures released Thursday by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration show.

The agency also found that 2009 was the second warmest year since 1880, when modern temperature measurement began. The warmest year was 2005. The other hottest recorded years have all occurred since 1998, NASA said.

James E. Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said that global temperatures varied because of changes in ocean heating and cooling cycles. “When we average temperature over 5 or 10 years to minimize that variability,” said Dr. Hansen, one of the world’s leading climatologists, “we find global warming is continuing unabated.”

But the only thing continuing “unabated” is the linear trend line — it’s still going up, and its slope hasn’t changed. “It’s all right. Only the data show a decline.” Read more… »

This will blow your socks off.
It is not made up; the people promoting the global climate crisis promise to control the weather — but first they need to control you (actually, don’t be fooled, controlling you is their real objective and it has been since before the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was agreed at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992). These people might be highly dangerous, but they are certainly patient.
In the article below, published as an “exclusive” at Cimate Depot, Lord Christopher Monckton blows the whistle on the contents of the “failed” climate treaty being put together in Durban. You won’t hear this from our proper news media — if you want to see them carry it, start writing your letters to them now.

This is an adopted article.

UPDATE: Lord Monckton referred me to the UNFCCC site to find the draft documents. He told me the draft he read was dated 7 December, which I guess would be this “amalgamation of draft texts“. But there are others – look under “Latest Documents” on the right-hand side. They’re changing rapidly but you might find them interesting.

Special to Climate Depot – Lord Christopher Monckton reports from UN Climate Summit

Durban: what the media are not telling you

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley in Durban, South Africa

DURBAN, South Africa — “No high hopes for Durban.” “Binding treaty unlikely.” “No deal this year.” Thus ran the headlines. The profiteering UN bureaucrats here think otherwise. Their plans to establish a world government paid for by the West on the pretext of dealing with the non-problem of “global warming” are now well in hand. As usual, the mainstream media have simply not reported what is in the draft text which the 194 states parties to the UN framework convention on climate change are being asked to approve.

Behind the scenes, throughout the year since Cancun, the now-permanent bureaucrats who have made highly-profitable careers out of what they lovingly call “the process” have been beavering away at what is now a 138-page document. Read more… »

It’s one thing to be misunderstood, quite another to be repeatedly misquoted.

A misunderstanding can be a mere message muddle – happens all the time – and mistakenly misquoting is minor misconduct.

But continuing to misquote someone after being told what they actually said is unforgivable. Crafting your assertions to your own ends rather than to the truth is detestable.

Children make no bones about it. They call it lying and they hate it. Read more… »

UN “scientists” are taking desperate risks with their reputations, attempting to cover up their deceptions about a climatic peril that doesn’t exist.

Some scientists at the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) have become desperate to cover up their hamfisted deceptions aimed at generating support for their hypothesis that mankind is causing the Earth to catastrophically heat up. In their desperation they’re still misleading the public, but also abandoning science and, incredibly, telling actual lies about the climate.

This makes for particularly dangerous implications for public policy. We need to be on our guard.

That this is going on is so easy to discover (but not through the mainstream media) that one cannot help but speculate whether our local journalists either have very strong reason to be sympathetic to these activist scientists or are even actually in league with them. Read more… »

This damning article from Christopher Booker is best appreciated in the whole — I redact none of it. May our leaders notice it.
Now, to be sure, there’s no sign here of the extreme obsession with global warming that marks the UK government. Thus, there is no local concern with the excesses the UK displays over reducing their carbon footprint.
However, we do exhibit a singular desire to lead the world in defeating the efficiency of our world-leading industry and agriculture.
So we object! This analysis from Mr Booker elucidates some of the excellent reasons why we object.

Is the global warming scare the greatest delusion in history?

By Christopher Booker

First published by The Telegraph

7:00PM GMT 26 Nov 2011

The scare over man-made global warming is not only the scientific scandal of our generation, but a suicidal flight from reality.

This is an adopted article.

To grasp the almost suicidal state of unreality our Government has been driven into by the obsession with global warming, it is necessary to put together the two sides to an overall picture – each vividly highlighted by events of recent days.

On one hand there is the utterly lamentable state of the science which underpins it all, illuminated yet again by “Climategate 2.0”, the latest release of emails between the leading scientists who for years have been at the heart of the warming scare (which I return to below). On the other hand, we see the damage done by the political consequences of this scare, which will directly impinge, in various ways, on all our lives.

It is hard to know where to begin, after a week which opened with The Sunday Telegraph’s exclusive on a blast of realism from Prince Philip Read more… »

When Naomi Klein uses the word “denier” and its derivatives no fewer than 28 times* in a single article, she telegraphs her belief that those so labelled cannot be motivated by facts. Jo Nova, once again prepared to fearlessly battle climate bigotry, confronts Klein’s vacuous arguments with her usual cutting perspicacity, real science and humorous mockery of her opponent’s weaknesses.

Though there’s little chance of any direct reply from Klein, the sceptical climate scene is sadly lacking in such talented writers and thinkers as our beloved Jo. Here, she’s done it again, treating another breathless Earth-saver with robust scorn.

Naomi Klein’s lengthy ramble is notable for not commenting on the science or refuting sceptical claims. Instead, she rabbits on about opinion polls, political loyalties, age and ethnic groups and, of course, it’s all about America — the rest of the world doesn’t exist. Read more… »

Earth’s temperature has never been taken, actually

A story, Analysis confirms global warming data, accounts for urban heat islands, appeared in the Science Media Centre (SMC) on 21 October. I missed it then, but it’s been brought to my attention in correspondence within the Climate Science Coalition.

A member saw the SMC story and commented:

Wratt and Renwick are quick to assert that this non-peer-reviewed temp study reinforces their suspicion that UHI is an insignificant factor. They both refer to numerous other authorities. I thought the leading paper supporting this view was Phil Jones’ China study of about 1991, which he has recently admitted to be based on a mistake. Are there any others which debunk UHI?

This raises several interesting elements which I’d like to follow at some time, but it also prompted this succinct analysis from the evergreen Dr Vincent Gray, who responded: Read more… »

Climate Realists carried a letter from John O’Sullivan on 2 November, claiming ill treatment at the hands of Suite101.com, in terminating their publishing arrangement with him. I note that two of O’Sullivan’s articles are still available at Suite101 but this is his letter:

Friends,

I write to announce my employment with my publishers, Suite101 was terminated today without prior notice or explanation and all my articles published over a two-year period with them are now removed from the Internet. I believe this is in retaliation for my latest article ‘New Satellite Data Contradicts Carbon Dioxide Climate Theory’ revealing the shocking fact that the Japanese ‘IBUKI’ satellite measuring surface carbon dioxide emissions shows that Third World regions are emitting considerably more CO2 than western, industrial nations. Read more… »

Everyone loves well-crafted prose, even when the author of it opposes their point of view. So it is with Matt Ridley, well-known author of The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, in less than a week earning nearly 9000 Google hits on his “Scientific heresy” address to the Royal Society of the Arts in Edinburgh on 31 October, posted at Bishop Hill. Even alarmist Gareth Renowden appreciates Ridley’s wordcraft before scorning his so-called climate science.

Ridley’s given us an admirable piece of work on several levels. His writing is a pleasure to read, he gives good information and clearly sets out his thinking on a tour of the weaknesses in the current alarmist view of the global climate. In doing so he warms the cockles of sceptical hearts everywhere while enraging the alarmists with his “well-known sceptic tropes”. That’s the view according to Renowden. Poor things; claiming emptiness for Ridley’s contentions is a flaccid stand-in for a cogent rebuttal.

Ridley concludes that science “needs heretics” and one can appreciate the radical point that even heretics should be heard. But he leaves unstated his crucial implication that evidence elevates the climate “heretic” above all the cereologists, astrologers and eugenicists in history, while true heretics need no evidence.

Here’s his address, copied from Bishop Hill with appreciation and thanks. I also repost the document Mr Montford prepared, with its helpful diagrams (pdf, 1865KB).

Matt Ridley

Scientific heresy

by Matt Ridley

It is a great honour to be asked to deliver the Angus Millar lecture.

I have no idea whether Angus Millar ever saw himself as a heretic, but I have a soft spot for heresy. One of my ancestral relations, Nicholas Ridley* the Oxford martyr, was burned at the stake for heresy.

My topic today is scientific heresy. When are scientific heretics right and when are they mad? How do you tell the difference between science and pseudoscience?

Let us run through some issues, starting with the easy ones.

Astronomy is a science; astrology is a pseudoscience.

Evolution is science; creationism is pseudoscience.

Molecular biology is science; homeopathy is pseudoscience.

Vaccination is science; the MMR scare is pseudoscience.

Oxygen is science; phlogiston was pseudoscience.

Chemistry is science; alchemy was pseudoscience.

Are you with me so far? Read more… »

Al Gore

The Washington Times rips into the famous Al Gore, he of the warmist persuasion, the alarmist disposition and the iconic, truth-bending book and movie An Inconvenient Truth, for ignoring his long-cultivated good manners and giving vent to a stream of public profanity at sceptical scientists.

It’s clear that the practice of quietly stating the truth and asking pertinent questions does start to unpick the foundations of belief. Poor Al.

Here’s how H. Leighton Steward puts it: Read more… »

– by Barry Brill, Chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

Graphic kindly provided by International Climate Science Coalition

In the latest Rasmussen national telephone survey of American adults, 69% say it’s likely that some scientists have falsified research data in order to support their own theories and beliefs. Only 6% say it is not at all likely. Read more… »

Albert Einstein.

To defeat relativity one did not need the word of 100 scientists, just one fact.

– Albert Einstein.

This statement is not true because Einstein made it — it’s true because it accords with reason. Theory must always bow to observation.

… or just one paper

Unfortunately, in CAGW (catastrophic anthropogenic global warming) we have a theory which is undefined in a peer-reviewed paper, which means it’s almost impossible to refute. This is deliberate. Sceptical questions provoke the inevitable challenge to “produce a better theory” — as though their opponents’ failure to do so proves the half-baked theory correct, which it cannot.

Any evidence contrary to part of the theory is answered by talking about some other part. “Heads we win, tails you lose.”

Any change in the climate, especially any violent weather event which injures us or damages our property, “proves” climate change, which, by a mere trick of linguistic association, “proves” global warming. That, in turn, is our fault. After all, so many people wouldn’t be talking about how to prevent it if it didn’t exist, right?

Well, no, actually. Read more… »

A masterful performance. Inferior opposition knocked out of the park.

Viscount Monckton of Brenchley opened his debate at the National Press Club in Australia two days ago by reminding his audience that England not only took the Ashes off Australia, but also held on to them in the next rematch. He said: “I just thought I’d rub it in.” Then he proceeded to take his cudgel to his feeble debating opponent.

Economist Richard Deniss must be no intellectual weakling, but he gave the impression of not knowing where he was, so he said the things he normally said. Which usually works, because his normal audience has heard them before and agrees with him. But here, he floundered and had no idea what he was doing. Read more… »

de Freitas feeds his students sceptic propaganda …

So says the radical Renowden, he of the non-sceptical “believe everything they say” warmist persuasion. But read what he says about Chris de Freitas’ crimes and you’ll realise he says nothing, because no crimes exist.

Gareth Renowden is himself guilty of attempting to abridge the academic freedom to study and teach inconvenient facts.

It’s all arm-waving, and Renowden cites nothing in the Geography 101 course that’s untrue. He says many unkind things about the graphs and their provenance, but he never says they’re wrong, and that’s a strange thing to forget, which means he didn’t forget it — he omitted it, because they’re not wrong. Read more… »

What is weather?

(h/t Bob D for most of the references)

Journalist Chris Barton has a story in yesterday’s Herald titled The climate dissenter holds his ground. After looking at Barton’s alarmist arguments I’ll stand with Chris de Freitas on the solid ground.

The story begins with the implication (not that the journalist says it this plainly) that, even with the planet battling weather extremes, that is not enough to convince an Auckland climate scientist (Associate Professor Chris de Freitas, at the University of Auckland) of the truth of human-induced global warming. We’re supposed to feel exasperation: “What will it take to get that man to see sense?”

But Barton is dead wrong. For why should “extreme” weather be an indication of man-made global warming? How could we get more extreme weather out of global warming? Read more… »

The IPCC climate forecasts from 20 years ago compared with the latest temperature data. Thanks to Clive Best. Click for larger version.

Several readers, among them the evergreen Mike Jowsey (thanks, Mike!) have drawn my attention to Clive Best’s simple yet remarkable post from yesterday. It brings together in a most accessible way the early IPCC forecasts (or “scenarios”, actually — they were never predictions) and the latest observations of global temperature.

So, after 20 years, how well have the consensus scientists done in forecasting the climate? It could be said the results are patchy. Read more… »

Principled sceptical stance

An extraordinary letter to the Taranaki Daily News (copied to Climate Conversation) from a climate sceptic well-placed to hear and and well-qualified to judge competing sides in the global warming controversy. Professor Kelly’s written testimony to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, for The Reviews into the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit’s E-mails, published on 25 January 2011, set out pointed questions directed to Jones and Briffa. This letter, clear and moderate, is in stark contrast to Miss Stewart’s anguished squalling and offers those who share her beliefs an easy delivery from the gut-wrenching fears of their own alarming predictions: check the facts. We echo Prof Kelly’s appeal for moderate language because so-called climate change has a profound importance for the vast amounts of money in it, the tyranny it’s bringing over our lives and the damage being done in its name to scientific integrity. (I hope the Daily News publishes the letter.)

4 June 2011

Dear Editor,

As a New Plymouth Boy, I would like you to do me a favour and let Rachel Stewart know that I think she is doing journalism a disservice.

I expect better from my home town.

Professor Mike Kelly

It is perfectly possible to adopt a position, as I have, of ‘a principled climate science scepticism.’ It is based on the fact that every time an engineering-standard analysis is done of the climate data, one ends up contradicting the results of the climate change modellers. I am heavily involved in the debate in the UK.

My views on the East Anglian Science are on the web, and in the UK Parliamentary record. See pp21ff of The Reviews into the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit’s E-mails.

If she cares to take a look at the attached ppt slides, she will see that there is a systematic divergence, now 16 years old, between the modelling results and the actual data on climate temperatures. At what point do we accept the data over the IPCC models?

She might like to look at the recent analysis by Pat Franks which tightens the conclusion that the anthropogenic contribution is at most 0.3°C per century. This concludes that it is rising temperatures that are increasing the atmospheric carbon dioxide, not the other way round. Read more… »

The Taranaki Daily News two days ago published a polemic notable more for its rancour than its precision regarding climatic facts.

It’s a good example of one-eyed thinking, skewed views and perfectly furious ad hominem attacks — all teeth and talons and only the hissing missing.

Lost her cuddly toy?

Written by the doubtless-locally-renowned scribe Rachel Stewart, it strikes some of the sourest notes I’ve come across in the climate debate since finding Hot Topic. But her thunderous venom simply accents her foolhardy logic. She wears a filthy expression in the accompanying photo. Did someone steal her favourite cuddly toy? It would certainly explain the spleen.

With a headline recalling Gore’s thoroughly discredited film “An inconvenient truth”, you’d think the article was about global warming. But it quickly becomes clear that Miss Stewart has it in for farming itself, not just its emissions. Don’t know how she thinks we’ll eat. Or, in this country, import buses or computers.

Last refuge of the defeated

She repeats lies about Bob Carter and the alleged funding of his opinions, as though that’s all that produces his opinions, but I would like to point out some of the fraudulent assertions she repeats about global warming. I like Bob and I could listen to him all day, but he would himself agree that his personal reputation, though valuable, is meaningless beside the lies being told about climate science. They are my target. Read more… »

Proof please, not propaganda

To the Editor
Climate Conversation

9th May 2011

We need proof that carbon dioxide is a pollutant in the atmosphere. There is none – only political propaganda.

We need proof that global temperatures are controlled by man-made carbon dioxide. There is none – only computer models which are fiddled to fit the past but unable to predict the future.

We need proof on how the emissions targets will be achieved, especially if the big emitters are exempted and consumers are compensated. How many power stations, steel furnaces and cement plants will need to close, what will replace them and when?

We need proof that a tax on carbon dioxide will produce net benefits for the climate or the environment. There is none – just scare stories, misleading pictures and green fairy tales.

We need an independent audit into the mishmash of mandates and subsidies promoting the ethanol, solar, wind, carbon forest and carbon trading industries. There is none – only government spruikers and lobbyists for vested interests.

On the other hand there is voluminous evidence that carbon dioxide is a beneficial plant food not a pollutant, that global temperatures are set by natural cycles and processes, that a tax on carbon dioxide will increase living costs and close Australian industries and that the climate agenda has more to do with wealth redistribution than with climate or the environment.

Viv Forbes
Chairman
Carbon Sense Coalition

Crowd-pleasing banner uniting People Of The Ilk.

With regard to Treadgold and his ilk, I have to say that there is nothing they say that I can relate to.

– Prof. Keith Hunter, marine and freshwater chemistry, Otago Univ.

People Of The Ilk (POTI), we stand at a cross-roads.

Around us, people are losing their heads to the global warming madness and blaming it on the sceptics.

They accuse us of being potty, but, secure in our self-knowledge as the POTI, their slurs do not touch us.

Yet the science we revere, being spoken unto them, yea, even unto common, easy-to-understand English phrases, is mocked, and spat upon and reviled. The blessed truth is ignored and trampled on in mainstream media and amateur blog alike. Even the peer-reviewed scientific journals scorn the time-honoured practices and conspire to conceal the scientific truth.

Shall we surrender?

Shall we fight on?

Shall we apply for government funding?

Shall we infiltrate Greenpeace?

Shall we pray for divine assistance?

Shall we poison the water supply? (All right, that’s a joke!)

What are we to do?

A recent snapshot of People Of The Ilk quite keen on recent developments.

Talk to us again, Keith.

All it would take is some evidence

Professor Keith Hunter didn’t continue his conversation with us here (which we all felt was proceeding very well). He based that decision on unspecified comments from some of our readers. But he’s not above visiting Hot Topic and throwing us a barb from there.

He had this to say a few days ago:

With regard to Treadgold and his ilk, I have to say that there is nothing they say that I can relate to, as an active scientist who works in the climate change arena and who speaks on behalf of many others down here at Otago in that arena. I have told Richard this. For better or worse, my view is that they (RT and co) do not speak for the genuinely skeptic community.

The time for their brand of skepticism is past, I am afraid.

Sincerely. Keith

How strange. He’s identified in us a unique brand of scepticism. It must be the brand which won’t go away until evidence turns up. But instead of waxing psychological and talking about scepticism, he should listen to what we’re asking. It’s not very hard.

I cannot imagine Keith’s flexible, wide-ranging intellect being unable to “relate” to the following, because it’s just not difficult to understand! Let me say it slowly:

THERE – IS – NO – EVIDENCE

Read more… »

Jo Nova created this iconic cartoon of the shaky evidence for CAGW.

This is in response (slightly delayed by an Easter break) to the list of “proofs” produced by Gareth Renowden, at Hot Topic, in answer to my request of Sir Peter Gluckman, the PM’s scientific advisor, for evidence of a human cause for anticipated dangerous climate change, more properly referred to as the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) theory.

On 17th April, I wrote:

I would remind Sir Peter that evidence is required to establish the following key factors in the global warming debate — evidence that has not surfaced so far. We have been looking for evidence to show:

1. The existence of a current unprecedented global warming trend.
2. That the greenhouse effect is powerful enough to endanger the environment.
3. A causal link between human activities and dangerously high global temperatures.
4. That climate models have a high level of skill in predicting the climate.
5. A causal link between atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and global temperatures.
6. A causal link between global warming and the gentle rise in sea level.

In response to this, Gareth claims “there is plenty of evidence to address every one of his points” and presents some attractive and interesting graphics in support. I’ll comment on what he says to each point.

1. The existence of a current unprecedented global warming trend.

GR: “…is [the current warming] unprecedented…? Well, no.” Read more… »

Recent domestic icicles in Germany brought on by the mind-altering greenhouse gas, CO₂.

All right, so it might not be getting down to out-of-the-ordinary freezing temperatures, but it’s certainly not unduly warm, which is the claim we’re constantly hearing in the mainstream media, even now. Even after all the contrary evidence. Here’s more.

To show that there is scientific data backing up the refutation of strong, even dangerous, warming brought on by our over-indulgence in the famous capitalist mind-altering industrial pollutant, carbon dioxide, the NZ Climate Science Coalition just issued a press release. The 2009 paper from McLean, de Freitas and Carter shows the uncanny correlation between the Southern Oscillation Index and global temperature several months later. The press release shows how the paper “predicts” the current temperature plunge.

And I really mean plunge, because McLean et al speculate this year could be the coldest since 1956. Brrr!

Now be my guest: show how wrong it is! Show us how the correlation is not really a correlation. It’s a free world!

Oh — and you’ll also have to demonstrate, of course, that global temperatures are NOT following the SOI graph from about seven months ago (please don’t forget that part). The press release is next. Read more… »

Here is my submission to the 2050 Emissions Reduction Target Consultation, as invited by the Minister for Climate Change Issues, the Hon Dr Nick Smith, in his position paper Gazetting New Zealand’s 2050 Emissions Target, published last month. The central argument is a challenge to the Minister and his department to show us the evidence of a dangerous human influence on the global temperature. For without that, there is no need to “fight climate change” and they have no right to tax us. They have already raised the prices of petrol and electricity by their ETS scheme. This submission also available as a pdf (50KB).

The Hon Dr Nick Smith. Campaigner against dangerous influences on global temperature caused by human activities. Recently was dead against the idea and warned the rest of us against it in no uncertain terms.

I operate a blog, the Climate Conversation Group, whose well-informed readers over the past four years have had thousands of conversations about climate, climate changes, their causes and likely effects. We oppose the Minister’s intention to gazette the country’s 2050 target reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These are our objections to the gazetting.

Noting that 39 years remain in which to achieve these so-called “reductions”, the gazetting strikes us as primarily a marketing exercise rather than a sincere attempt to influence the climate. The Government’s intention to achieve mere public relations purposes is confirmed when the Minister denies even the possibility of influencing the climate and in the same breath talks instead about our reputation.

New Zealand alone cannot have much impact on global climate change… As a trading nation, New Zealand depends on its international reputation and its strong clean and green image.

Who is to say whether the natural course of New Zealand’s emissions during the next 39 years will be upwards or downwards? It could be that the emission levels specified here will at some time in the future be achieved only by increasing our emissions. Who is to say what technological innovations will improve our ability to generate energy without GHG emissions? What if we embrace nuclear power generation? What if the climate cools? Read more… »

So you want to stop climate change? All right: here’s 65 million years’ worth of climate change—stop that! Click for larger version. Grow up and see how the world really works—how, in the past, temperatures were higher than today. So we made it through; who would have thought?

Last month our government, through the Minister for Climate Change Issues, the Hon Nick Smith, released a “Minister’s Position Paper” on New Zealand’s 2050 Emissions Target. It makes sickening reading. Here’s the beginning:

Multiple lines of scientific evidence show that climate change is happening, and humankind’s emissions of greenhouse gases are very likely the cause. Since the 1970s there is mounting scientific evidence that increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human activities are raising temperatures and changing the Earth’s climate patterns.

These activities include burning fossil fuels like coal and oil, deforestation and farming. Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, increased markedly over the 20th century.

“Climate change” is “happening”? It’s amazing that the government feels the need to point out to their subjects a fact known to Man since before the dawn of time: the climate changes. No, it’s ludicrous. Actually it’s stupid. Or it’s fatuous, or condescending, patronising, ignorant, dictatorial, racist, sexist and discriminatory. Also it’s witless. Read more… »

A natural manifestation of the mythical sky-dragon, fabled embodiment of a generalised enemy.

‘Personal mission’ abandoned

No possibility of a ‘single grand deal’

Those unconvinced of the possibility of catastrophic global warming caused by human activity could, perhaps, be forgiven for relaxing their guard a little.

Everywhere you look, there are signs that the theory of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) has been defeated or is in the process of being defeated.

From the revelations of Climategate, where the venal motivations and cynical manipulations of leading climate scientists were made embarrassingly public, to the geological history of the last 5 million years of temperature (which shows a slow decline, meaning the modest modern rise is not a bit unprecedented), mounting evidence of severe quality problems with the surface instrumental temperature record, evidence of declining SSTs and surface air temperatures, no evidence of acceleration in sea-level rise, no increase in ocean acidification or bleaching of coral reefs, natural cycles reported as well capable of accounting for late-20th century warming and strong support for a solar influence on cloud formation moderated through intergalactic cosmic rays, not to mention changing results from opinion surveys around the world, it is beyond doubt that support for the CAGW hypothesis, based almost entirely on human emissions of the minor greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, is evaporating. Read more… »