The "consensus" is dead....

[mikkey 0]

This post is long. But if you are interested in the debate on climate change you might want to read it.


Everytime sceptical people have raised the issue that the science in regard to GW is not "settled" and far too reliant on a few debatable evidences and computer models, they have been howled down.

However, recently more and more emperical data has emerged that should raise major questions.

- There is now little doubt that global temperatures have NOT increased (even slightly decreased) since 1998/2001 (there is some debate if it is since 98 but none that this is true since 2001). NO model used by the IPCC and others predicted this and CO2 has increased over the whole period. The warming we saw over the century until 1998 still makes the world no hotter today than it was 1000 years ago.

See attached graph "temp" from the Hadley Centre of Britain’s Meteorological Office and one of the four bodies measuring world temperature. Only one of the four, in fact, claims temperatures are still rising. That’s NASA, whose program is run by Dr James Hansen, Al Gore’s global warming adviser and a controversial catastrophist whose team’s reworking of data has been heavily criticised for exaggerating any heating.

We can also drop that old fiction that the world was never warmer. It’s a false claim made popular by a 2001 report of the IPCC, the United Nations’ climate group, which ran a graph, shaped like a hockey stick, claiming there was no warming for millennia until humans last century gassed up their world.

In fact, that “hockey stick” is now discredited, and last year Dr Craig Loehle, of the US National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, argued that using tree rings to work out past temperatures was clearly unreliable.

He instead produced a graph - attached as "temp2" - of past temperatures using all other accepted proxies. You see his results (which for statistical reasons stop at 1935): they show humans lived through a medieval period that was warmer than even today. This was a period that historical accounts confirm was so warm that Greenland farmers grew crops on land now under snow, and British ones grew grapes.

- There is now data showing that ocean levels are not rising and actually had a slight decrease in recent times.
The waters have crept up for at least 150 years, since the world started to thaw from the Little Ice Age, and well before any likely man-made warming. But the climate models predicted that a big rise in emissions from all those cars, power plants and factories since World War II would cause an equally big rise in the seas, swelling them as much as 59cm by 2100. This wasn’t scary enough for alarmists like Al Gore, though, who claimed whole cities could in fact be drowned under 6m of ocean.

But the satellites that have checked sea levels since 1992 find the seas have instead fallen over the past two years. This could be a blip. But it isn’t what the models predicted.

- There is data that the melting of ice at the poles has stopped and ice has lately actually increased.

Look at attached graph "ice". The graph seems to confirm a cooling. Forget media scares about a melting North Pole; sea ice has grown so fast in the southern hemisphere there is now more ice in the world than is usual, says the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

- The latest data is pointing more and more towards the sun as a more important factor on our climate then accepted by the IPCC.

The world may warm again, and soon, although scientists at Leibnitz Institute and Max Planck Institute last month predicted it won’t for at least another decade. If at all, say solar experts worried by a lack of sun spots.

But even if none of the mentioned data disproves the theory that man is causing dangerous warming, they should at least make you pause.

They should at least make you open to other theories of climate change, like that of Dr Henrik Svensmark, head of Denmark’s Centre for Sun-Climate Research, who thinks changes in cosmic rays, which affect clouds, may explain much of the recent warming. And now the cooling, too.


If this post has not totally worn you out yet, you might want to read the transcript from the Australian ABC which interviewed a scientist who actually developed some of those models which predicted catastrophic man made global warming.

He is now doubting these models.....

***
891 ABC
Mornings programme
with David Bevan and Matthew Abraham

9.21 am

DAVID EVANS
Former Consultant to the Greenhouse Office (now Office of Climate Change)

(Proofed)

ANNOUNCER:
Read an interesting article in the Australian last week. These are the words that stuck out, “I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model – FULCAM – that measures Australia’s compliance with the Kyoto Protocol in the land use change and forestry sector.” And this fellah went on to say that when he started that job in 1999, it was a great job. Everybody was really excited, they were properly resourced and they thought they were saving the planet. Now he’s not so sure. Dr David Evans is a former consultant with the Greenhouse Office, the author of that article in the Australian and he joins us now. Good morning David Evans.

EVANS:
Good morning.

ANNOUNCER:
Can you explain to our listeners how you had this – well, was it a road to Damascus conversion? Or- what’s gone on, in your thinking, over the issue of greenhouse gases over the last few years.

EVANS
Well, when I started the job in ‘99, the evidence that greenhouse gases, and particularly carbon emissions, caused global warming was fairly good. At that stage, as exhibited in Al Gore’s movie, we knew that from the old ice core data, that in previous warmings over the last half a million years, temperature and carbon moved in lockstep. So we assumed that carbon was causing the temperature rises. Since 1998 or so, the science has changed a fair bit. Unfortunately the public and the decision makers are still caught back in the pre-1998 situation. First of all, the new ice core data that came through from about 1998 through to 2003 was a high resolution and the data points were only a couple of hundred years apart, instead of a couple of thousand years apart, and that new ice core data shows that the rise in temperature preceded the rise in carbon dioxide by, on average, about 800 years. So we know that the temperature rises cause the CO2 rises, not the other way round as previously assumed. Now, if you look carefully at Al Gore’s movie, you’ll find that’s the only evidence offered for why carbon emissions cause global warming. He shows lots of evidence that global warming’s occurring, but that’s the only evidence he offered for the causes – that carbon emissions cause global warming. And it gets worse than that. Turns out that there is no other evidence, and by evidence you mean that someone saw something on a particular date or there was some observations made that implicated or implied that carbon emissions cause global warming. The case that carbon emissions cause global warming is now entirely theoretical and it’s all driven by computer models and computer models and theory aren’t evidence. But it’s worse than that - something else happened. By 2006 we had a new result. You see, each cause of global warming heats the atmosphere in a different pattern, a so-called signature. The pattern for increased greenhouse warming, which would be what you’d get if you had carbon emissions causing global warming, would be an increase in the heat above the tropics at about eight to 12 kilometres up. That is to say, you’d get a hot spot there. Now, people have been looking for several decades now sending up radio sones - which are weather balloons with thermometers attached - into that region, to try and detect the hot spot. They never found it. In fact, they’re quite sure that it isn’t there. So, by 2006, we had the result that the hot spot is missing. The signature of increased greenhouse warming is missing, and therefore, we know that carbon emissions aren’t the main cause of the recent global warming.

ANNOUNCER:
Is there any doubt that the planet is warming up?

EVANS:
Uh, depends when exactly you’re talking about. You see, the planet warms up and cools down sort of like weather on a long scale, it’s always happening. Now, it’s certainly warmed up most of last century and there was a strong warming trend from about 1975 up to about 2001. Now 1998 was a very hot year, there was an El Nino event there which tends to heat the planet a little and the warming trend continued to through the end of 2001. But the satellite data, the satellite global temperature data since 2001, shows that the global temperature has been flat and maybe even dropping a little since then.

ANNOUNCER:
There was a spike in about 2005, but the trend line since 2001 has been down.

EVANS:
Slightly, yeah.

ANNOUNCER:
Yeah. So, a slight cooling of the planet?

EVANS:
Uh, it’s not really worth talking – describing – about it. It is a little cooling but you’re sort of looking for major events and long trends in this sort of game. So, you know, anything that only lasts a few months or a year doesn’t really count very much.

ANNOUNCER:
Well, should we read anything into the temperature of the planet stabilising in the last few years? Perhaps dipping a little?

EVANS:
Yeah. Yeah, for instance, since 2001, you’ve got carbon emissions continuing at their- well, accelerating. You’ve got the carbon dioxide levels continuing to increase at their usual pace. Yet the temperature has not gone up.

ANNOUNCER:
Now, you’re saying, also here, that actually measuring temperatures, the world’s temperature – um, land based temperature readings – it’s a bit like having a big telescope near a major city – you get light pollution.

EVANS:
Oh, it’s worse than that. The way you measure it using a land based system is you put a thermometer in a small box. The box is there to shade the thermometer. You usually put it in a pole so that it’s about five feet off the ground and easier to read (inaudible) and you pop this – you know, there’s a reading station somewhere out in the countryside. And these thermom- these temperature reading stations have been placed all over the world, mainly in western countries. They’ve been there for decades. The problem is, though, they were put there usually a few decades ago on the outskirts of the city, because that was convenient. But the cities have grown in the mean time. And so the micro climate around these thermometers has often changed. Someone has put a road nearby or a footpath or a house, or, in some cases, you can find cases where an air conditioning outlet is only a couple of meters away from a thermometer. And obviously this is affecting the readings. Another problem is too that the rural network of these land based thermometers largely disappeared due to funding cuts and so we’ve got the situation now that the land based thermometers are heavily corrupted by the urban heat island effect.

ANNOUNCER:
So, we should be relying on satellites?

EVANS:
Well, we can trust the satellites because they take broad sways of data across the planet, except the polar regions, 24/7, round and round they go, and they just measure the same thing all the time.

ANNOUNCER:
And what are the satellites telling us?

EVANS:
They’re telling us the temperatures have been flat or slightly down since 2001.

ANNOUNCER:
We’re talking to David Evans. He’s a former consultant with the Australian Greenhouse Office. He says he was a believer, and he’s now a sceptic. David, can you explain your background? What are your qualifications, and do you have any ties to industry that might have a vested interest in questioning the greenhouse proposal?

EVANS:
Yeah, I have vested interests. I worked for the Greenhouse Office and earned a great deal of money from the Australian Government being on the alarmist side. Apart from that, no, I have no vested interests or ties. My background is in mathematics and engineering. I have six degrees, including a PhD from Stanford in electrical engineering. Electrical engineering consists of a lot of signal processing, a lot of computer programming, finding signals, working out feedback, stuff like that – all of which is fairly applicable to understanding the current situation with climate…

ANNOUNCER:
Now, Rosemary of Magill, here on 891 Mornings. If you’ve just tuned in, we’re talking to David Evans, consultant to the Federal Government’s Greenhouse Office, which is now the Office of Climate Change; saying that there is now no credible link between carbon emissions and global warming - on the science. Rosemary of Magill – hello, Rosemary.

CALLER:
…some time ago, there was a programme on television…related to the ice cap of the North Pole…beginning of the twentieth century…ships could actually transverse the ice cap there. So, by that, obviously it wasn’t a solid block of ice like it is now – or melting, as it is now – this has happened in the past. Could you comment on that?

ANNOUNCER:
Dr David Evans?

EVANS:
(inaudible) preface it by saying, I’m an expert on the causes of the global warming, not on evidence for global warming. The extent of the ice caps in the Arctic area is an effect of global warming. We’re not disputing that global warming has occurred. We’re just wondering about the causes of it, because that’s what relevant to the upcoming emissions trading scheme and so on. Yes, in the past, the Northwest Passage has been passable. I understand that a major cause of the melt - the recent melt - in the Arctic is soot from industry and from passing ships. If you put black soot on top of very, very reflective ice, it tends to heat the ice up, because light that was previously reflected is absorbed by the soot and the heat is transferred to the ice. It’s also probably relevant to mention that the ice levels in the Antarctic, down here in the south, are higher than they’ve been for a couple of decades and that the global levels of ice are higher than normal.

ANNOUNCER:
So, are you saying, if you want to save the polar bears, just keep the soot and the pollution away from the ice?

EVANS:
Actually, it’s a serious possibility, yeah.

ANNOUNCER:
David Evans, we’re- we are, however, in a brave new world of emissions trading. We haven’t yet got the final model. We have the discussion paper out there and so there will be a lot of discussion around this. Should we be doing nothing about carbon emissions? Or should we not be confusing carbon emissions with the global warming debate?

EVANS:
Couple of points there. First of all, I don’t claim that carbon emissions have no effect, I’m saying they’re not the main cause of global warming. We know, theoretically, they must have some effect, okay? But it’s fairly minor and that signal is lost in all the noise - the- we know from the lack of the signature that it’s not the main cause. I think we should do a lot further research on climate, on alternate energies, on clean coal; and we should probably plan an emissions trading scheme, but not implement it. I think instead we should wait to see what the big countries do. Wait to see what climate research produces and wait to see whether temperatures resume going up.

ANNOUNCER:
But couldn’t it be too late?

EVANS:
No. No, not really, we know that it’s not a problem.

ANNOUNCER:
Well, why so?

EVANS:
Well, again, we know that the signature’s not there so we know that it’s not carbon emissions that are causing the problem. We can see that the temperatures aren’t going up. So there is no evidence. I mean, what I would like the press and the Opposition to do is simply ask Penny Wong, as the relevant Minister – to ask – to show the evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. We’re about to change our economy radically so as to de-carbonise it. So, obviously, the onus is on the people who wish to do that, to say, well, why? Show us the evidence. But I think you’ll find there is none; there’d be a bit of an embarrassed silence. And remember that models and theory aren’t evidence. They’re just models and theory.

ANNOUNCER:
Adrian of Northfield has called us. We’ve talked with David Evans, a former consultant to what is now the Office of Climate Change. Good morning, Adrian.

CALLER:
….I’ve got a New Scientist mag, a recent one and I’ve become a sceptic as well, as far as carbon….I just want to read this paragraph.... “Oxygen isotopes in shell fragments show that the water around Antarctica 100 million years ago were a balmy 15 degrees.” Now, this is bearing in mind that even at that time Antarctica was still roughly where it is....it was still six months of darkness and six months of light… there was no ice and snow...Federal Government jumping into this too quickly, I think…

ANNOUNCER:
Adrian, thank you. And we have interviewed Penny Wong and we’ll continue to do so, and we’ve interviewed Dr Tim Flannery, recently, has a different view, and we’ll continue to canvass a broad range of views, that’s our responsibility, and Dr David Evans, thank you for bringing us your perspective.

EVANS:
Thank you

(ENDS)

---------------------------------------------------------
When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

[ErricoMalatesta 0]

A planet wide advanced industrial society has no impact on the environment! You have escaped the NWOs lies.

[mikkey 0]

Quote

A planet wide advanced industrial society has no impact on the environment! You have escaped the NWOs lies.

Where is this claimed? We are talking about the climate and note that "sceptics" do not claim that CO2 has no influence, just that it has been completely overrated and probably not the main driver. Assume you did not care to actually read above...

---------------------------------------------------------
When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

[Squeak 17]

Consensus:
General agreement, characterised by the absence of sustained opposition to substantial issues by any important part of the concerned interests and by a process that involves seeking to take into account the views of all parties concerned and to reconcile any conflicting arguments


so you are saying that they were all in agrereementr and now they are not?

You are not now, nor will you ever be, good enough to not die in this sport (Sparky)
My Life ROCKS!
How's yours doing?

[Andy9o8 2]

A quick Google search reveals that this (the pre-interview discussion) is a cut & paste of a missive making its way through anti-GW blogosphere. Is there some reason you didn't cite any source attributions?

[jcd11235 0]

Do you mean to tell us that you believe a computer programmer knows more about climate science than climatologists? He's not be part of the consensus because it's highly doubtful that climatologists much care what his opinion is so far outside his area of expertise.

Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

[mikkey 0]

Yes much of it is. Used it because it simply summarises the issues and my concerns well. Dont think its important (IMHO as the guy who I took it from is not known to anyone outside the US).

The important thing is that the data it refers to is fully attributed and should be dicsussed more openly as we are heading in a direction that will cost us a lot and do very litttle...

---------------------------------------------------------
When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

[kallend 2,150]

I'll believe the consensus is dead only when the American Meteorological Society, the American Physical Society and the US National Academies of Science and Engineering reverse their official positions that GW is real and that human activities play an important role in causing it.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[kallend 2,150]

Quote

Yes much of it is. Used it because it simply summarises the issues and my concerns well. Dont think its important (IMHO as the guy who I took it from is not known to anyone outside the US).

The important thing is that the data it refers to is fully attributed and should be dicsussed more openly as we are heading in a direction that will cost us a lot and do very litttle...

The cost of doing something is miniscule compared with the cost of doing nothing, should your skeptics be wrong.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[idrankwhat 0]

Quote

The cost of doing something is miniscule compared with the cost of doing nothing, should your skeptics be wrong.

One issue that many neglect to factor in is the cost of the fuel after we convert to cleaner technologies like solar and wind. It's free. Well, at least until someone figures out how to implement the "solar tax".

[billvon 3,120]

> There is now little doubt that global temperatures have NOT
>increased (even slightly decreased) since 1998/2001

False. 2005 was the warmest year on record.

>It’s a false claim made popular by a 2001 report of the IPCC, the
>United Nations’ climate group, which ran a graph, shaped like a hockey
>stick, claiming there was no warming for millennia until humans last
>century gassed up their world.

No one claimed that.

>There is now data showing that ocean levels are not rising and actually
>had a slight decrease in recent times.

Oceans have indeed been rising for some time now, and continue to do so. You may be thinking of the accelerated rise from 1993-2003, where sea levels rose faster than expected. They are now back to rising at their normal rate (about 1.7mm per year.)

>The latest data is pointing more and more towards the sun as a
>more important factor on our climate then accepted by the IPCC.

The latest peer reviewed studies have shown that long term solar variability is not a big part of the warming we've been seeing. Insolation does indeed vary over several cycles, from 11 years to tens of thousands of years - in fact we have been in a period of unusually low activity for about 7 years now. However, those cycles have been going on for as long as the earth has been around, so they're nothing new, and cannot explain the new warming.

>Look at attached graph "ice". The graph seems to confirm a cooling.
>Forget media scares about a melting North Pole; sea ice has grown so
>fast in the southern hemisphere there is now more ice in the world than
>is usual, says the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

?? The graph you posted shows no change in southern sea ice.

In any case, "sea ice extent" is an indication of how much ice is floating on the water, not how much ice there is down there. When the Larsen-B ice shelf collapsed, sea ice extent went up dramatically, because the ice shelf had fragmented and was now floating on the open ocean. Now the Wilkins ice shelf is collapsing, sending megatons of ice into the sea.

It should be noted, though, that Antarctic central temperatures are not predicted to increase very much. Antarctic _peninsula_ temperatures are, though, which is why we've been seeing ice shelf collapses in that area.

>But even if none of the mentioned data disproves the theory that
>man is causing dangerous warming, they should at least make you
>pause.

Man is causing warming. Whether or not you decide it's "dangerous" is subjective. You're not going to burst into flames.

>Dr Henrik Svensmark, head of Denmark’s Centre for Sun-Climate
>Research, who thinks changes in cosmic rays, which affect clouds, may
>explain much of the recent warming. And now the cooling, too.

Been mostly disproven. Terry Sloan of Lancaster University did a study and found no link between cosmic ray intensity and cloud formation, using actual satellite data and cosmic ray measurement. Ionic nucleation has not been shown to do anything other than increase ionic concentration.

>I understand that a major cause of the melt - the recent melt - in
>the Arctic is soot from industry and from passing ships.

It is indeed one cause, a significant one. See the IPCC chart on forcing components - it contributes about .2 watts/sq m worldwide. However:

1) it pales in contrast to the effect of open water, which absorbs far more sunlight than sooty ice

2) it was not as much of an issue until the ice retreated enough to _allow_ ships to get that close.

>Well, we can trust the satellites . . .

If that's the case, there is no question the planet is warming. See attached.