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| Index of Editorials Report |
All Editorials for 2020 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 Categories Subcategories Antarctic Warming Skepticism [2] Book Review [3] Climate Change CO2 Emissions [1] Climate Models Uncertainty [2] Climate Science Climate Cycles [1] Climate Sensitivity [1] Holes [1] Thermal History [1] Unsolved Problems [1] Energy Issues American Power Act [1] Clean and Sustainable [1] Nuclear Waste Storage [1] Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) [1] Environmentalism Surrogate Religion [1] Foreword Energy Primer for Kids [1] Geo-Engineering Applications [2] Global Climate - International French Academy [1] Global Warming Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) [6] Confusion [1] Economics [1] General [2] Greenhouse Gases [1] Hockeystick [4] Ice Cores [1] Junkscience [9] Oceans' Role [2] Skepticism [1] Sun's Role [2] Health Issues Second Hand Smoke [1] Measurements Arctic Sea Ice [1] Atmospheric Temperature Data [2] Sea Surface Temperature [1] Surface Data [2] Misinformation Statistics Misuse [1] Modern Empirical Science v. Medieval Science [1] NIPCC China [1] Nuclear Fuel Supplies [1] Organizations Climate Research Unit (CRU) [1] International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [2] Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) [1] UK Met Office [1] World Meteorological Organization (WMO) [1] Political Issues Climate Realism [1] Climategate [3] Independent Cross Check of Temperature Data [1] Report IPCC Assessment Report [2] NOAA State of the Climate 2009 [1] NRC-NAS Advancing the Science of Climate Change [1] Sea-Level Rise West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) [1] Alarmism [1] Types of Energy Nuclear Energy [1] |
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(in TWTW Jan 5, 2013) Guest Editorial by Vincent Gray, New Zealand Expert Review of IPCC Assessment Report (AR5WGI), Reviewer of All Five Reports Nov 1, 2012 Nov, 2012, General Comments, slightly edited for clarity. Dear Fred and Ken Now the contents of the AR5-WGI 2nd Draft seem to be publicly available I see no reason why I should not make available my comments. You might note that I am far more radical than any of the critics published so far. I consider that the basic models are all fatally flawed for a whole host of reasons. They violate several basic principles of Physics and mathematics. They replace heat transfer by conduction convection and latent heat by radiation, and they ignore altogether the dominant influence of the chaos of air and ocean movement which effectively forbids the long term forecasting they favour... Their earlier projections were all one hundred years ahead, to ensure that their scientist would enjoy their generous pensions before the Projections were proved to be wrong, but they have been tempted to make projections: much earlier. The UK Met Office is suffering yet another cold winter after projecting: the end of snow and the destruction of equipment to deal with it. The current frat actually compares their projections with what has happened recently and it is not impressive. I have also had a thorough look at ARI [Assessment Report I, 1990] which few people seem to have read. Its mention of predictions: which is mainly in the Executive Summary at the beginning, disappear as soon as they give details, when the predictions all disappear in a collection of best estimates and statements of confidence from their collection of biased, well paid supporters. All this subsequently degenerated into an elaborate system of attribution simulation and various levels of likelihood and confidence made by people paid to do so Cheers Vincent Gray View The Week That Was in which this editorial appeared. Return to Top of Page SEPP SCIENCE EDITORIAL #25-2010 (in TWTW Aug 14, 2010) Guest Editorial by Sherwood Idso, Keith Idso, and Craig Idso The State of Earth's Climate 2009: How can so many people be so wrong? Aug 14, 2010 The State of Earth's Climate 2009 [BAMS vol 13, no 31: 4 August 2010] In a "Highlights" report of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's State of the Climate in 2009 document, which was prepared under the direction of the U.S. National Climatic Data Center, we can read the principal findings of what the document describes as the work of "more than 300 scientists from 48 countries." Their primary conclusion, as stated in the Report's first paragraph, is that "global warming is undeniable," and the Report goes on from there to describe "how we know the world has warmed." But this, and all that follows, tells us next to nothing about what has caused the warming, which is the crux of the whole contentious matter. The Report next states, for example, that "recent studies show the world's oceans are heating up," which is fine; but then -- as if hoping no one will question them -- the Report says the oceans are warming, "as they absorb most of the extra heat being added to the climate system from the build-up of heat-trapping gases," which contention is far from a proven fact, and is -- in fact -- merely an hypothesis .... and a bad one at that, as we shall soon see. Another fault of the Report is its hyping of "melting Arctic sea ice," while it remains silent on the state of Antarctic sea ice, which has been doing just the opposite as it has grown in extent. Likewise, a major inconsistency of the Report is its stating, with respect to temperature, that "a particular year can experience record-breaking highs and lows in any given location," while, "as a whole, global climate continues to warm." This is very true; and it can also do so while, as a whole, global climate cools or remains unchanged. And it implies the same thing for all types of weather phenomena (such as droughts, floods, hurricanes, etc.), which means that the occurrence of any unusually dramatic weather phenomenon in any "particular year" should imply nothing about the long-term trend of that phenomenon or the presumed trajectory of the global climate within which it is embedded. Yet the Report goes on to describe six such extreme events that occurred in the "particular year" of 2009, which would have to have been done for no other reason than to imply that these weather extremes were caused by global warming, which flies in the face of their earlier contention that record-breaking low temperatures in any year say nothing about the long-term thermal tendency of the planet. Last of all, the Report states that "people have spent thousands of years building society for one climate and now a new one is being created -- one that's warmer and more extreme," which leads us to wonder .... How could more than 300 scientists from 48 countries possibly be so wrong? Any student of history and palaeoclimate well knows that earth's climate has changed dramatically over the past "thousands of years." During the central portion of the current interglacial period, for example, many parts of the planet were a few to several degrees Centigrade warmer than they currently are. And only a thousand years ago, the Medieval Warm Period was holding sway. Although many of the scientists of Climategate infamy tried mightily to make that period of warmth "go away," the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change has for quite some time now posted a review of a different research project every single week that testifies to the reality of the Medieval Warm Period. And that ever-growing body of research is demonstrating beyond any doubt that there was a several-hundred-year interval of warmth back then that was at many different times (stretching from decades to centuries), and in numerous places (throughout the entire world), significantly warmer than the Report's highly-touted first decade of the 21st century, and at a time when the atmosphere's CO2 concentration was far less than it is today. What makes this particular failure of the Report so doubly damning is the fact that it claims that each of the "more than 30 different climate indicators" it has analyzed "is placed into historical context." That is obviously not true. And for a parameter so central to the core of the global warming discussion as temperature to not be put into proper long-term context is inexcusable, although quite understandable, especially when one realizes the implications it would hold for the Report's unfounded contentions about the present state of earth's climate. View The Week That Was in which this editorial appeared. Return to Top of Page SEPP SCIENCE EDITORIAL #18-2010 (in TWTW Jun 5, 2010) S. Fred Singer, Chairman and President , Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) The National Academy Lays a $6-Million Egg Jun 5, 2010 The report of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences [Advancing the Science of Climate Change, May 2010] claims that the climate is warming and that the cause is human. http://news.sciencemag.org... The first claim of this federally funded $6-million exercise is meaningless and trivial, the second claim is almost surely wrong. Their recommendation is that the United States should put a price on carbon to staunch emissions of CO2; it is pointless, counterproductive, and very costly. The climate certainly has warmed considerably since 10,000 years ago (the end of the last Ice Age) -- and much less since 1850, the end of the Little Ice Age. No one disputes these facts. But the climate has not warmed during the past decade -- in spite of the steady rise in human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. According to a BBC interview of Dr Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (CRU-UEA, of Climategate fame), there has been no warming trend since 1995. The 2007 report of the UN-sponsored IPCC furnished no credible evidence for anthropogenic global warming (AGW). None at all - see here the Summary of the NIPCC report . Nature- Not Human Activity - Rules the Climate http://www.sepp.org... The NRC-NAS panel did not add any new relevant information - nor did it have the expertise to do so. The IPCC panel was made up of many qualified atmospheric scientists, active in research. The NAS panel was politically chosen and listed among its "climate science experts" a sociology professor and a professor of 'sustainable development' - whatever that may mean. That certainly doesn't inspire much confidence in the NAS conclusions. This is our most comprehensive report ever on climate change," said Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), at a briefing to discuss the effort, more than 2 years in the making and involving 90 scientists. It "analyzes the reality of climate change and how should the nation respond. ... It emphasizes why the United States should act now." Ironically, this report comes at a time when the venerable and respected Royal Society (London) is having second thoughts about their past record of climate alarmism. In the words of outgoing RS president Lord Martin Rees (May 28, 2010): "Science is organized scepticism and the consensus must shift in light of the evidence. Looking back, this may well have been a low point for the NAS, which will inevitably discredit all other NAS activities. But it will provide a useful lesson to other scientific organizations that have uncritically jumped on the AGW bandwagon. View The Week That Was in which this editorial appeared. Return to Top of Page SCIENCE EDITORIAL #12-2010 (in TWTW Apr 12, 2010) S. Fred Singer, Chairman and President , Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) Due Diligence on the IPCC Assessment Report #4 [2007] Apr 12, 2010 I know it's a tough job - but let's just check the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes (IPCC 2007) iconic, widely-quoted conclusion and parse its meaning: "Most of the observed increase in globally-averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GH gas concentrations." How should one interpret this ex cathedra declaration to the faithful? IPCC helpfully defines "very likely" as "90-99% certain", but they don't tell us how they reached such well-defined certainty. What remarkable unanimity! Just how many and whom did they poll? No word. IPCC doesn't define the word "most." We may assume it means anything between 51 and 99%. That's quite a spread. But a footnote informs us that solar forcing is less than 10% of anthropogenic [0.12/ 1.6 W/m2]; so "most" must be closer to 99% than to 51%. OK; let's check out the data since 1958. But we don't want to rely on contaminated surface data - which IPCC likely used (although they omitted to say so). However, atmospheric data were readily available to the IPCC in the CCSP-SAP-1.1 report (Fig 3a, p.54; convening lead author John Lanzante, NOAA), with independent analyses by the Hadley Centre and NOAA that agree well. And further, according to GH models, atmospheric trends should be larger than surface temperature trends. 1958 - 2005: Shows a total warming of +0.5 C . But how much of that is anthropogenic? (The IPCC ascribes pre-1958 warming to natural forcings.) So let's break it down: 1958 - 1976: Cooling 1976 - 1977: Sudden jump of +0.5 C (Cannot be due to GH gases) 1979 - 1997: The satellite data show only a slightly positive trend 1998 - 1999: El Nino spike 2000 - 2001: No detectable warming trend 2001 - 2003: Sudden jump of +0.3 C (Cannot be due to GH gases) 2003 - present: No trend, maybe even slight cooling In conclusion: The IPCC's "most" is not sustained by the best observations; the surface data (1979 to 1997) are suspect - until the raw data and algorithms of CRU are examined. Therefore, the human contribution is very likely only 10% of observed warming --or even less. Return to Top of Page |
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