|
Notify me of new HIR pieces!
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
GLOBAL WARMING an hir series
“When is an inference from a premise,
p, to a conclusion, c, reasonable? If an inference is made by the mainstream
of a scientific community, is it not reasonable, for is not science the
epitome of rationality? While scientists value rationality, they too are
fallible and mainstreams sometimes fail under social pressures… Next, the
idea that scientists’ inferences define reasonableness is authoritarian
because it would make criticism of established thought unreasonable, whereas
criticism may progress science; and subjectivist, because it locates reasonableness
not in the objective character of inferences, but in relations between
inferences and particular groups. An inference from p to c is reasonable only
if p supports c…” [1] Introduction The media, the
Western governments, the UN, innumerable ‘environmental organizations,’ and a
host of scientific institutions have been defending for some time the
anthropogenic (man-made) global warming hypothesis, which states that global
warming is a consequence of human activity. By burning fossil fuels, they
explain, we are releasing large quantities of CO2 (carbon dioxide) into the
atmosphere, and because CO2 is a “greenhouse gas,” it traps solar radiation
and contributes to the warming of our planet. The argument has become famous
especially through the efforts of Al Gore and his movie An Inconvenient
Truth, for which he received a Nobel Peace Prize. It is not a mere ‘academic’ question, but a
political and economic one as well. The above-mentioned actors do not merely
argue that global warming is man-made, but also that, as a result of global
warming, a large-scale catastrophe will soon be upon us. If they are right,
such can only be averted by making profound changes—on an emergency basis—in
the economic arrangements that govern the lives of billions of people around
the globe. Copenhagen is the recently agreed upon site for discussing
recommended policy changes, that, everybody agrees, will impose profound
costs, and especially so in the developing world, but these sacrifices, they
say, are necessary in order to avert the expected collapse of human life on
Earth. With passion, Al Gore warns that the planet “has a fever” (and
prolonged fevers, if untreated, kill the patient). On this and other topics laypeople are daily asked
to bow before the “claims of science,” a new “Word of God” sternly pouring
forth from the mouth of an irresistible new priesthood, custodian of the new
sacred: objectivity. Do I exaggerate the similarities with religion?
Not if people take objectivity on faith (in which case the Enlightenment, for
all practical purposes, never happened). And herein lies the paradox: to
defend science one must question it. The true scientist, therefore,
even should he be an anthropogenic partisan, will celebrate rather than
condemn that anything so momentous as the possibility of man-made global
warming should be received with skepticism. And he will delight in the
debate, gladly meeting his intellectual opponents to discuss their
objections. For science is a cultural activity, not immune to political,
ideological, reputational, or economic incentives, which can be sources of
error. Only when we allow—in fact promote—an open and vigorous debate
can errors be identified and their sources corrected. As in other topics, the skeptical layman will here
find support among the priests, for there is dissension within the Temple,
and a number of scientists disagree with the thesis that global warming has
anything to do with human activity. Matters appear differently because the
media has repeatedly lectured us about a supposed “unanimous scientific
consensus” on man-made global warming (but the intellectually free will save
some skepticism for the media). This article will familiarize the reader with
an aspect of the data collected from ice core samples obtained by drilling
deep into the Antarctic ice. It is my view, and that of many climate
scientists, that this key evidence in fact refutes the anthropogenic
hypothesis. What are the ice cores? Snowfall over those areas of
the Antarctic that never melt has created a kind of ‘fossil’ record of
atmospheric composition, because as the snow falls it traps air. As
successive layers of snowfall accumulate on top of each other, we get over
time a vertical frozen record of changing atmospheric conditions. It is not
only the relative quantities of various gases, such as CO2, that can be
reconstructed with this record, but also the temperatures, because some of
the particles trapped in the air bubbles (certain kinds of ‘isotopes’) are
known to be strong correlates of temperature. The upshot is that thanks to
the ice core samples we can now say with some confidence, for a period of
some 650,000 years, 1) how the temperatures have bounced around, and 2) how
the levels of CO2 have bounced around. This allows us to look for
evidence that changes in the concentrations of CO2 cause changes in the
overall temperature. The central issue. If
the ice core record shows evidence consistent with a causal relationship
where CO2 ‘drives’ temperature, then it is possible for the anthropogenic
hypothesis to be correct (though it would still be necessary to show that
human production of CO2 is sufficient to produce current warming trends). My
contention, however, is that such evidence is missing, and that the ice core
record has refuted the anthropogenic hypothesis. I contend, also, that this
is obvious, and that no serious challenge to this view has appeared in the
scientific peer-reviewed literature. The above notwithstanding, those who defend that
global warming is man-made have continued to insist that their view is
“settled fact.” Not only that, they claim that the ice core evidence is
actually the best evidence in their favor. Since these arguments receive lots
of support in the media, which repeat that the UN’s IPCC (Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change) brings together the world’s top climate scientists,
and that they all agree that global warming is man-made, the average
layperson is easily impressed. To counter that, we will here explain the
importance of the ice core evidence, and why this evidence does not help the
anthropogenic hypothesis. We will also provide evidence to controvert the
supposed scientific consensus around IPCC claims. Happily, there is no
disagreement about the quality of the evidence, nor is there any disagreement
about what the evidence says. Also happily, this is all quite easy to
understand. The lay reader, therefore, once the evidence is explained, will
be in a position to make up his or her own mind. So that the reader is in no doubt about our
fairness, we will consider what proponents of the anthropogenic hypothesis
have themselves referred to as their best arguments. In particular, we will
examine an article by climate scientist Jeff Severinghaus,
who is repeatedly used as a rebuttal source when skeptics dare affirm that
the ice core evidence has embarrassed the man-made global warming hypothesis. ___________________________________________________________ What I am not saying The subtitle of my article, “I don’t believe in
man-made global warming,” is a simple declarative statement. And yet it fails
to make my position clear. Many people believe that if someone questions the
hypothesis of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming one is automatically
stating a number of other things. But one isn’t—not necessarily. And I
am not. So I begin by clearing the air. I am not defending the oil companies Before anybody proposed the hypothesis that global
warming was man-made there was already a long tradition among progressives
and liberals of suspicion and opposition to the great oil conglomerates.
Historically, plenty of nasty stuff going on in the oil business, quite apart
from any environmental considerations, has justified this stance. A
refutation of the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis should not be
interpreted as, and is not here intended to be, an argument to rehabilitate
any oil company. What I am saying is simply this: I don’t believe global temperatures
are rising because we burn fossil fuels. I don’t deny the existence of serious
environmental problems which demand our attention For some 20 years I have been what people call an
‘environmentalist,’ and my awakened consciousness has moved me to reflection
and action concerning the manner in which we pollute the oceans, the land,
the rivers, the groundwater, and, yes, also the air. I am concerned, too,
about the costs imposed on the poor, who routinely become the greatest
victims of environmental degradation. But concern for the health of the
environment and its human victims does not commit me to any particular theory
of how global temperatures work. I believe we are harming the environment in
various quite dangerous ways, but I don’t believe we are causing global
warming. And I believe we increase the dangers of many environmental problems
when we pour so much energy on global warming, something we cannot affect. For example, people in Mexico City are more
concerned about global warming than about fecal matter in the air they
breathe. The second problem has a solution: proper water treatment. But
Mexicans are also largely unaware that practically all of the water treatment
plants in the country are not in operation. In consequence, the air, groundwater,
and soil are being poisoned. And yet Mexicans are hardly mobilized to demand
a solution to these problems, for they don’t hear about them. What they hear
about—incessantly—is global warming. I am not saying that the world’s top
climate scientists are wrong People hear from the media, from a great many
environmental activists, and from government and UN bureaucrats at different
levels that the UN-based IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
brings together the world’s top climate scientists, and that they all agree
global warming is man-made. Lots of people who say this—including many
relatively high-profile environmental activists and bureaucrats at the UN and
other places—no doubt believe it. But it isn’t true. Many of the scientists listed as authors on IPCC
documents actually disagree with their content and have fought to have their
names removed. Some have threatened or taken legal action to achieve this.
Others, with less energy for that, have impotently watched how the IPCC uses
their names to defend a position which they have not endorsed. Many people
listed on IPCC documents are not climate scientists. These issues are
discussed in the 2007 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle,
which has a good number of top climate scientists disagreeing with the
anthropogenic hypothesis.[2] In Heaven
and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science, Australia’s top geologist
Ian Plimer explains: “Although it is commonly cited that 2500 scientists wrote the IPCC’s
Fourth Assessment report, a head count shows that there were 1656 authors and
many of them were authors of many parts of the Report. Some of them used
their given name in one part, used an initial in another, and used an
abbreviation in another.” Is this a
scandal? People wrote their names different ways so they could be counted two
or three times when calculating the ‘number’ of scientists who authored the
report. Plimer
continues: “Furthermore, if we investigate the biographies of the 2500 ‘climate
scientists,’ we find that many are not even scientists [let alone climate scientists
– FGW]. To claim that this group of people represents the world’s top
scientists is untrue. It seems that of the 1190 separate individuals who
wrote the scientific part of the report, many were not scientists but were
political and environmental activists.” Plimer
also writes the following: “The social scientist Naomi Oreskes claimed
in the scientific journal Science that a search of the ISI Web of
Knowledge Database for the years 1993-2003 under the key words ‘global
climate change’ produced 928 articles, all of which had abstracts supporting
the consensus view. Another social scientists, Benny Peiser,
tried to validate this claim, checked Oreskes’
procedure and found that only 905 of the 928 articles actually had abstracts,
and that only 13 of the 905 explicitly supported the consensus view. Some
papers opposed the consensus view. Referees and editors of Science could
have done their job and easily checked Oreskes’
claim, as did Peiser. They did not. Claims of
consensus relieve policy bureaucrats, environmental advocates, and
politicians of the need to validate claims or have any knowledge of science
and are used to intimidate those who beg to differ.” Plimer
also points out that the US Academy of Science refused to join the British
Royal Society in signing an alarmist manifesto [ UPDATE 06/13/2010 : A
controversy against the anthropogenic hypothesis has now arrived, finally, at
the Royal Society, where modern scientific skepticism was invented [19] ]. The Russian Academy of Science
has taken a quite public and quite explicit position against what the IPCC
claims is the ‘consensus’ view. Furthermore, writes Plimer, “the 32,000 American scientists who signed the Oregon Petition
expressed serious doubt about the major conclusions of the IPCC. Many surveys
now involve little time and effort as they utilize the click of a computer
mouse. The process for the Oregon Petition involved filling in a printed
document, finding a stamp and envelope, and posting it to the Oregon
Institute of Science and Medicine. The American Physical Society stated: ‘There is a considerable
presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the
IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to
be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the
Industrial Revolution.’ ” [2a] In December
of 2008 the following was reported: “WASHINGTON – A United Nations climate change conference in Poland is
about to get a surprise from 650 leading scientists who scoff at doomsday
reports of man-made global warming – labeling them variously a lie, a hoax
and part of a new religion. The article
cited above quoted the statements of some of the scientists. One, a
Nobel-prize winner, said, “Global warming has become a new religion.” Another
said that warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history.”
And so on. To read the
text of the report authored by these scientists, which was officially
submitted in a US Senate Environment & Public Works Committee Minority
Report, visit: I don’t know whether there was follow through on
this, but the founder of the Weather Channel announced on FOX NEWS in 2008
that he and over 30,000 scientists, many of them professionals of climate and
closely related sciences, had initiated action to sue Al Gore for what they
claim is scientific fraud in his high-profile defense of the anthropogenic
hypothesis.[3] Also in 2008, Vincent Gray, “expert reviewer” for the
IPCC, resigned in disgust and published an exposé of what he claims is
widespread and fraudulent manipulation of data at the IPCC.[3a]
In his exposé Gray charges that “dubious observations and some genuine
science has been distorted and ‘spun’ to support a global campaign to limit
human emissions of certain greenhouse gases which has no scientific basis.”[3b]
Gray’s accusations received dramatic support in late 2009 when the Climategate scandal revealed that the most important IPCC
scientists were exchanging emails about how to twist their data in favor of
the anthropogenic hypothesis and how to censor any skeptics who disagreed
with them (this is covered towards the end of this article). This is already enough to establish that the idea of
a ‘scientific consensus’ in favor of IPCC claims is at the very least a wild
exaggeration, and perhaps an outright inversion of the truth. So, given that
at least a good many (and apparently a great many) of our top climate
scientists are disputing the anthropogenic hypothesis, my stance on this
question does not place me in opposition to them. I don’t deny global warming as such There appears to be general agreement that from 1979
to 1998 planetary temperatures rose. Let us stipulate here that they did. The
question then is not whether the Earth has been warming but why.
Some of us believe that human production of CO2 has nothing to do with the
warming and that some other cause is responsible. Most probably, the sun (no
one disputes there has been increased solar activity). But we agree that
there has been some warming. As a brief aside, I point out two wrinkles on the
widespread agreement concerning the 1979-1998 warming. The first is that
warming appears to have stopped since 1998, coinciding with a decrease in
solar activity that nobody disputes. If we haven’t quite begun cooling (some
believe we have), at least we have not resumed warming yet.[4] The second is that, contrary to what some claim, the
1979-1998 warming may not have been much. The data used to argue for a
dramatic planetary temperature increase comes from terrestrial measuring
stations. These are plagued with problems that give the measurements a warm
bias, according to a report from the Science and Public Policy Institute. The
satellite data, which do not have these problems, show nothing but a moderate
temperature increase in the period 1979-1998, and therefore no actual global
warming for the 20th c. as a whole. This supports the skeptics who
claim that 1979-1998 shows ordinary cyclical warming—nothing to do with human
activity.[4a] We
shall return to this issue at the end. I don’t deny the “greenhouse effect” In a greenhouse the glass (or plastic) roof and
walls allow the sun’s rays in, and these warm the air and other things within
it; but thanks to the roof and walls the heated air cannot be lost by
convection as it normally would (more precisely, heat loss is slower than
heat production).[5]
The so-called atmospheric “greenhouse effect” works differently but appears
analogically similar, hence the name. In the atmospheric “greenhouse effect,”
when the sun’s rays bombard the surface of the Earth, gases in our atmosphere
trap some of the infrared radiation and prevent it from escaping back into
space.[6]
This warms the air between the surface and the troposphere. I believe the “greenhouse effect” does happen. But
this does not force me to believe that large-scale changes in the Earth’s
temperature are primarily due to changes in the concentrations of “greenhouse
gases.” It is logically possible for the “greenhouse effect” to do its thing
while other processes move the planetary temperatures dramatically up
and down. Suppose you study my body temperature in the shade
and conclude that burning of calories is mostly responsible. I step into the
sun and my body gets quickly warmer. Why? Because I suddenly began burning
more calories? Nothing forces you to say that. On the contrary, the best
hypothesis for why my body temperature suddenly increased has to do with the
sun’s rays directly hitting my body. And yet recognizing this will in no way
deny that my body burns calories and that calories produce heat. Similarly,
when I say that big shifts in global temperatures do not follow changes in
the relative abundance of certain “greenhouse gases,” but rather some other
process, I am not denying that the “greenhouse effect” happens. As an economist would say, the greenhouse gas
elasticity of global temperature may be very low: perhaps even large shifts
in greenhouse gas concentrations cause only very small changes in global
temperatures, tiny wiggles on the truly important movements. A top climate
scientists puts it like this: “If the current atmospheric CO2 content of 380 ppmv were doubled to 760 ppmv,
there would be a minuscule impact on the radiation balance and the
temperature.”[6d] I am not denying that CO2 is a
“greenhouse gas” The IPCC claims that the CO2 elasticity of global
warming is CO2 is considered one of the gases that contribute
to the “greenhouse effect.” Everybody agrees, however, that water vapor is by
far the most important greenhouse gas, and that CO2’s effect relative to
water vapor is small. Moreover, human production of CO2 is quite small compared
to naturally occurring CO2 production: “Experts estimate annual human
production of CO2 at 23 billion tonnes - less than
3 per cent of nature's estimated 770 billion tonnes.
Annually, nature produces 33 times more than do humans.”[6a] The anthropogenic hypothesis
thus requires that a proportionally very small increment—the human-caused
increment—in the global level of a relatively unimportant greenhouse gas
somehow operates a “tipping point” that puts the “greenhouse effect” into
overdrive, causing a dramatic rise in the planetary temperature. That sounds
a bit far-fetched, but that is precisely what the IPCC claims. As one
newspaper puts it: “The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the earth has effectively
developed an allergy to CO2. The effect of a tiny amount of CO2 in the
atmosphere is amplified by water vapour and clouds
in a positive feedback loop which enhances the climate's sensitivity to extra
CO2 and causes ‘runaway global warming.’ That is the big Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change hypothesis.”[6b] Those who believe, in disagreement with the IPCC,
that human production of CO2 has not caused global warming, though CO2 is
indeed a “greenhouse gas,” incur no necessary contradiction. I don’t deny the evidence suggesting
that atmospheric temperature and CO2 are causally linked Those who believe in man-made global warming
routinely refer us to the Antarctic ice-core evidence with which climate
scientists have reconstructed a 650,000-year record of both Antarctic
temperatures and CO2 levels. In fact, they seem quite sure that this is their
most important evidence, and it has become famous with the public thanks to
the efforts, especially, of Al Gore and his movie, An Inconvenient Truth.
Like them, I accept the ice core data, and like them, I believe this data
suggests that atmospheric temperature and CO2 concentrations are causally
linked. The question, however, is: what causes what? For the anthropogenic argument to make sense, higher
levels of CO2 must cause higher temperatures. Should the higher temperatures
(achieved by some other process) be the ones causing higher levels of CO2,
then the relationship will go precisely the wrong way for the
anthropogenic argument. As it turns out, in the 650,000-year record,
Antarctic temperatures always rise first, and then, with an 800-year lag
(give or take), rise the Antarctic levels of CO2. This is the most dramatic
refutation imaginable of the anthropogenic argument’s most basic premise. For
it is simply impossible for rises in CO2 to cause changes in temperature if
the rises in CO2 happen second (the very principle of causality requires
precedence in time). And yet this evidence is usually presented as the
most dramatic in the anthropogenic argument’s favor. ‘Orwellian’ is an adjective reserved for a
media-imposed total inversion of reality, plus indifference to absurdity
equal parts boldness and nonchalance (so powerful in the rash assertion of
its plausibility as to convince the innocent). Loudly claiming
that evidence refuting an argument is the most powerful supposedly validating
selfsame argument, and daring us to disagree, is Orwellian. ___________________________________________________________ What about the ice core evidence? “While some environmentalists might concede
that the IPCC report is a political document, they would also point to what
they see as Mr Gore’s knockout punch, a dramatic
video based on the world’s climate record preserved in ice cores.” --The Straits Times (Singapore) [6c] The evidence mentioned immediately above is
important, because proponents of the man-made global warming hypothesis—in
which CO2 stars as the main protagonist—consider the ice core evidence their
“knockout punch.” In his movie, Al Gore proudly poses in front of a giant
representation of the ice core evidence, shown as two graphs, one of
temperature levels and another of CO2 levels, covering a period of many
hundreds of thousands of years. The Straits Times: “The two
graphs obviously move in lockstep with each other, he says. With great
panache, Mr Gore concludes that when carbon goes
up, temperature inevitably follows.” But this is based on a deception. Al
Gore placed the two graphs—CO2 and temperature—‘on top’ of each other,
disrespecting the axis of time. A trick. If one represents matters
properly, explains The Straits Times, “...it becomes
very clear that, very consistently, every temperature rise actually precedes
the carbon rise by some 800 years. This undeniable time lag is critical since
what it says is that more carbon in the air did not lead to global warming in
times past. If so, factors other than carbon must have set off the various
periods of global warming in times past. If so, the
most fundamental assumption of the carbon theory of human-induced global
warming rests on shaky ground.” [emphasis added] A ‘knockout punch,’ all right, if anthropogenic
partisans were fighting with the mirror. They stand refuted by their own
‘best’ evidence. But naturally one may feel insecure on this point.
One might prefer, before making up one’s mind, to see anthropogenic partisans
at least try to defend their hypothesis from the ice core evidence.
After watching them fail, one could then abandon this theory without the
nagging pangs of guilt that usually accompany shifts against political
correctness. To this end, I will consider two cases. As we shall see, both
cases make clear the importance of climate scientist Jeff Severinghaus’s
arguments to those in favor of the anthropogenic hypothesis. We will
therefore consider Severinghaus’s arguments in some
detail. Ice core evidence (Case 1) Our first case concerns contributions to the
internet website RealClimate, whose academic
authority is heralded in its header: “Climate Science from Climate
Scientists.” The “About” section explains: “RealClimate is a commentary site on climate science by
working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists. We aim
to provide a quick response to developing stories and provide the context
sometimes missing in mainstream commentary. The discussion here is restricted
to scientific topics and will not get involved in any political or economic
implications of the science...”[7] After such a strongly worded commitment to avoid
politics and economic policy one is surprised to find, in a post dated April
2007, the heading: “THE LAG BETWEEN TEMPERATURE AND CO2. (GORE’S GOT IT
RIGHT.)”[8]
Naturally, an article on the ice core evidence should, as this one does, make
reference in its title to the glaring problem: CO2 lags temperature. But if a
politician selling worldwide economic reforms via anthropogenic arguments is
embarrassed by his own ‘best’ evidence, or if he isn’t, what does that matter
to scientists who write “for... journalists” without “get[ting]
involved in any political or economic implications...”? Anyway. But we learn
from this, at least, that despite 650,000 years of data showing temperature
rising before—not after—CO2, the article will defend the bravado claim
that Al Gore is still right: CO2 is the agent of world temperatures. The author begins: “When I give
talks about climate change the question that comes up most frequently is
this: ‘Doesn’t the relationship between CO2 and temperature in the ice core
record show that temperature drives CO2, not the other way round?’ On the
face of it, it sounds like a reasonable question.” To doubt that the most fundamental premise of the
anthropogenic warming hypothesis can be right, when the purported cause turns
out to be an effect, take note, is only apparently reasonable. Respect
for the rules of logic and the principle of causality, therefore, cannot
animate the complaint; rather, certain people “try to discredit Al Gore,” and
so “it is one of the most popular claims made by the global warming deniers.”
I am stopped cold. As mentioned earlier, most
skeptics of the anthropogenic theory actually agree that global warming has
been taking place (at least for the period 1979-1998). But even if we didn’t,
if this is a scientific debate, why attack us with the epithet “global
warming deniers”? Sounds a bit like “Holocaust deniers,” doesn’t it?
People beyond the pale. Heretics. Quite a bit of emotion here already,
then, and I have quoted only the first two paragraphs. One glances nervously
back at the “About” page for reassurance that this website “will not get
involved in any[thing] political,” but one is then hit by the article’s next
few sentences. [Quote from RealClimate begins here] [The
troublesome question] got a particularly high profile airing a couple of
weeks ago, when congressman Joe Barton brought it up to try to discredit Al
Gore’s congressional testimony. Barton said: “In your
movie, you display a timeline of temperature and compared to CO2 levels over
a 600,000-year period as reconstructed from ice core samples. You indicate
that this is conclusive proof of the link of increased CO2 emissions and
global warming. A closer examination of these facts reveals something
entirely different. I have an article from Science magazine[8a] which I will put into the
record at the appropriate time that explains that historically, a rise in CO2
concentrations did not precede a rise in temperatures, but actually lagged
temperature by 200 to 1,000 years. CO2 levels went up after the temperature
rose. The temperature appears to drive CO2, not vice versa. On this point,
Mr. Vice President, you’re not just off a little. You’re totally wrong.” Of course,
those who’ve been paying attention will recognize that Gore is not wrong at
all. This subject has been very well addressed in numerous places. Indeed,
guest contributor Jeff Severinghaus addressed this
in one of our very first RealClimate posts, way
back in 2004. [Excerpt from RealClimate ends here] Impossible to miss the simultaneous ad hominem
and browbeating recourse to authority: should you think that Gore is “wrong
at all,” just because some people “try to discredit” him with his own ‘best’
evidence, you have not “been paying attention” to how “this subject has been
very well addressed in numerous places.” You are distracted. If I may digress from the above article for a
second, how did Al Gore reply? Happily, a video of the congressional exchange
between Joe Barton and Al Gore is available on YouTube.[9] First, Al Gore took refuge in authority: “...the
[congressional] committees should be under no illusion of what the scientific
consensus is...” For support, he rattled off a list of organizations that
endorse his views, and placed great emphasis on the IPCC, which he called
“the most extensive and elaborate, in depth, highest quality, international
scientific collaboration in all of history.” Not only that, he said the IPCC
was “unanimous” and that believing in anthropogenic global warming was like
believing in gravity! But we have already mentioned the problems with the
IPCC (and we shall return to this issue). Almost by accident, Gore made a statement on the
substance of Barton’s point: “On CO2 and temperature, when CO2 goes up,
temperature goes up.” This way of talking appears to imply that CO2 rises
first and the temperature second. Indeed, in An Inconvenient Truth, as
he stood in front of a gigantic graph of the ice core data, Al Gore literally
stated: “when there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer.” But
this actually inverts what his own graph would show if he hadn’t
tricked his viewers by playing fast and loose with the time axis: when temperature
gets warmer, CO2 then goes up: carbon dioxide increases follow
temperature increases (not the other way around). After this, Gore insisted for a while, with great
passion, that the 20th c. has been warm (which is hardly the issue). Then,
again almost by accident, he returned to the substance of Barton’s point: “In
the ice core record, as I’ve said every time I give my slide show, the
relation...—it’s a coupled system, they [CO2 and temperature] go up and down
together...” Notice: he almost committed himself to a statement about
what the causal relationship is but corrected himself just in time: “it’s a
coupled system.” Well yes, “coupled,” if you wish, but with an 800-year
lag, and with the temperatures rising first. The reason Gore opted
for his vague “coupled system” instead of committing himself to a clear
statement of causality, I think, is that he was confronted with a clear
interpretation of the evidence that refutes the CO2-drives-temperature
hypothesis. After some virtuoso ink-spilling from Gore on
rotation wobbles, and orbits, and the sun, and whatnot, all of which had
nothing to do with the issue, Barton simplemindedly insisted: “The
temperature goes up before the CO2 goes up.” To my eyes, Gore appeared a bit
desperate as he shot back: “Sometimes that has been true in the past; the
opposite has also been true in the past.” This is false. The ice core data never
show CO2 changes preceding temperature changes. But if Al Gore is not very good at this, perhaps the
professional climate scientists who contribute their views on the website RealClimate will do better. Coming back to the article quoted
above, of those “numerous places” where the embarrassment of the ice core
data has been addressed to the satisfaction of the author, we are directed
especially to one place. This is a 2004 post, also on RealClimate,
by Jeff Severinghaus, Professor of Geosciences at
the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California (San
Diego). Severinghaus’s article leads off with the
title: “WHAT DOES THE LAG OF CO2 BEHIND TEMPERATURE IN ICE CORES TELL US
ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING?”[10] I
now quote the article in full: [Quote from RealClimate begins here] This is an
issue that is often misunderstood in the public sphere and media, so it is
worth spending some time to explain it and clarify it. At least three careful
ice core studies have shown that CO2 starts to rise about 800 years (600-1000
years) after Antantarctic temperature during
glacial terminations. These terminations are pronounced warming periods that
mark the ends of the ice ages that happen every 100,000 years or so. Does this
prove that CO2 doesn’t cause global warming? The answer is no. The reason has
to do with the fact that the warmings take about
5000 years to be complete. The lag is only 800 years. All that the lag shows
is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000
year trend. The other 4200 years of warming could in fact have been caused by
CO2, as far as we can tell from this ice core data. The 4200 years
of warming make up about 5/6 of the total warming. So CO2 could have caused
the last 5/6 of the warming, but could not have caused the first 1/6 of the
warming. It comes as no
surprise that other factors besides CO2 affect climate. Changes in the amount
of summer sunshine, due to changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun that
happen every 21,000 years, have long been known to affect the comings and
goings of ice ages. Atlantic ocean circulation slowdowns are thought to warm
Antarctica, also. From studying
all the available data (not just ice cores), the probable sequence of events
at a termination goes something like this. Some (currently unknown) process
causes Antarctica and the surrounding ocean to warm. This process also
causes CO2 to start rising, about 800 years later. Then CO2 further warms the
whole planet, because of its heat-trapping properties. This leads to even
further CO2 release. So CO2 during ice ages should be thought of as a
“feedback”, much like the feedback that results from putting a microphone too
near to a loudspeaker. In other
words, CO2 does not initiate the warmings, but acts
as an amplifier once they are underway. From model estimates, CO2 (along with
other greenhouse gases CH4 and N2O) causes about half of the full
glacial-to-interglacial warming. So, in
summary, the lag of CO2 behind temperature doesn’t tell us much about global
warming. (But it may give us a very interesting clue about why CO2 rises at
the ends of ice ages. The 800-year lag is about the amount of time required
to flush out the deep ocean through natural ocean currents. So CO2 might be
stored in the deep ocean during ice ages, and then get released when the
climate warms.) [Quote from RealClimate ends here]
“It comes as
no surprise that other factors besides CO2 affect climate. Changes in the
amount of summer sunshine, due to changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun
that happen every 21,000 years, have long been known to affect the comings
and goings of ice ages. Atlantic ocean circulation slowdowns are thought to
warm Antarctica, also.” Severinghaus
concedes that powerful forces having nothing to do with CO2—powerful enough
to end ice ages—are drivers of global temperatures. Though he alludes
mysteriously to “some (currently unknown) process [that] causes Antarctica
and the surrounding ocean to warm,” it appears from what he writes that the
“unknown” process might have a lot to do with the sun. “This process,” he
agrees, “also causes CO2 to start rising, about 800 years later.” He poses the obvious question: “Does this prove that
CO2 doesn’t cause global warming?” One is tempted to answer (perhaps timidly)
“yes.” But Severinghaus replies, “The answer is
no.” And why not? “The reason
has to do with the fact that the warmings take
about 5000 years to be complete. The lag is only 800 years. All that the lag
shows is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the
5000 year trend. The other 4200 years of warming could in fact have been
caused by CO2, as far as we can tell from this ice core data.” Can we agree from the above that the ice core
embarrassment has been “very well addressed,” so that anybody thinking that
Al Gore is “wrong at all” has not “been paying attention?” I hardly think so.
Severinghaus himself makes clear that his
conjecture is entirely speculative: “The other 4200 years of warming could in
fact have been caused by CO2.” Could. Grant, for the sake of argument,
this very weak claim of in-principle possibility. Does anything compel you to
say it is likely? Even to those overflowing with charity for Severinghaus, his argument must seem baroque and full of
special pleading. The objections are obvious. If the initial warming
period, propelled by a cause so powerful that it can end an ice age, has
nothing to do with CO2, why can’t the entire 5000-year trend be entirely due
to this other, so powerful cause? Why couldn’t this other powerful cause
continue to warm the planet without any help from CO2, as it did—and here he
agrees—for the first 800 years (a rather longish stretch of time...)? And why
shouldn’t this be the first and most obvious hypothesis? What compels Severinghaus to assert that, once the alternative
powerful cause warms the planet for 800 years, finally causing the release of
CO2, the CO2 then takes over, acting as an “amplifier” in the warming
process? The answer to that question can be found in his
sentence: “From model estimates, CO2 (along with other greenhouse gases CH4
and N2O) causes about half of the full glacial-to-interglacial warming.” This
is what compels Severinghaus: faith. Faith in the
“model estimates.” What models are these? Computer simulations built by some
climate scientists in which rises in CO2, through an enhancement of the
“greenhouse effect,” are shown to produce increases in planetary
temperatures. Of course, a model—any model—works the way it does
because of the assumptions built into it. These could be correct or
incorrect. So we must ask: How are those scientists who build “greenhouse
warming” models arriving at their assumptions? In Super Freakonomics,
authors Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner discuss
the general topic of global warming. About the models, they quote
astrophysicist Lowell Wood explaining: “ ‘Everybody turns their knobs’—that
is, adjusts the control parameters and coefficients of their models—‘so they
aren’t the outlier...’ ” What is an outlier? This would be a model that,
unlike all the others, doesn’t show proper greenhouse-driven global warming.
And why doesn’t anybody want to be the outlier? “ ‘[B]ecause
the outlying model is going to have difficulty getting funded.’ In other
words, the economic reality of research funding, rather than a disinterested
and uncoordinated scientific consensus, leads the models to approximately
match one another.”[10a] This is a crucial point: The assumptions in the
greenhouse warming models are determined by the desire to please those who
hand out enormous sums of money for climate research, and those people want
to hear that global warming is man-made. This is what produces the
“scientific consensus.” Now, there is nothing in principle wrong—mind you—in
building a model in order to achieve a particular behavior. But it is
certainly damaging to the exploration of the Universe that scientists aren’t
building other kinds of models, based on alternative hypotheses,
because they can’t get funding for them. The key point: if we believe that CO2 causes global
warming just because it does so in the models, we have a quasi-circular argument
(the models, after all, were built to do that!). The argument is not entirely
circular because these models do show that one can build, in the computer, some
“greenhouse effect”—not necessarily like our own—in which CO2 causes global
warming. But is it like our own? To find out we investigate reality:
we go looking for facts. For example, we drill deep into the Antarctic ice in
order to get relatively solid data about past atmospheric temperatures and
past levels of CO2. If the models’ assumptions are reasonable from the point
of view of our reality, they will predict at least the qualitative shape of
the data we collect; but if those assumptions aren’t reasonable, the models
will come out wrong. When the data have been collected, it is best to be
honest. Who can doubt, for instance, that if the ice core data had shown CO2
rising first, Severinghaus and his colleagues would
have shouted victory from the rooftops, bidding us to recognize how the data
had vindicated their hypothesis? Who can doubt the severity of their reaction
if skeptics had said that CO2 didn’t play a role in warming even though
it began rising immediately before the end of an Ice Age? But it went the
other way, so they tell us that CO2 is responsible for global warming despite
the fact that it begins rising after the temperatures do. Well, if
the hypothesis that CO2 drives global temperature is right no matter what the
data say, we ought to be saving ourselves tremendous expense and a lot of
heroic trouble in the Antarctic. When we assert—regardless of which way the data
go—that our model is right, then we have faith in the model, just as
people have faith in various kinds of supernatural causes even when the
evidence does not support their beliefs. Guided by such a mind-frame, we will
attack those who disagree with us for being “deniers” (“atheists”), and we
will accuse them of not “paying attention” to the Unquestioned Truth spoken
by those all-important greenhouse models—our new totems, our new idols. One clever reader of RealClimate,
David Holland, noticed the religious fervor and commented: “Wow! Are you
really saying that we have no idea what starts to warm up our world from an
ice age but [we] know with near certainty what has caused the warming of the
last three decades?” More precisely, if we are still not even sure why the
ice ages come to an end, shouldn’t we be at least a little skeptical
that the anthropogenic hypothesis explains current global warming (especially
when the ice core evidence does not support it)? Another relevant question: Given that we are not
sure, yet, what causes ice ages to end, and given that this is obviously the
most powerful cause behind global temperature changes, how can we be building
reasonable models of climate change in which the role of CO2 is properly
represented? Shouldn’t the models first include the action of the powerful
but unknown cause before they can say anything sensible about CO2’s
proportionate role? Severinghaus hints more than
once that the “unknown” powerful cause is the sun, and yet Victor Manuel
Velasco Herrera, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the National
Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), points out that, incredibly, the
models “do not include, for example, solar activity.” [10b] Another clever reader of RealClimate,
John (no last name is given), realized that the ice core data already contain
a test of Severinghaus’s claims, so he asked him
about it. [Excerpt from RealClimate begins here] Dear Jeff, I read your
article “What does the lag of CO2 behind temperature in ice cores tell us
about global warming?” You mention that CO2 does not initiate warmings, but may amplify warmings
that are already underway. The obvious question comes up as to whether or not
CO2 levels also lag periods when cooling begins after a warming cycle…even
one of 5,000 years? If CO2 levels
on planet Earth also lag the cooling periods, then how can it be that CO2
levels are causally related to terrestrial heating periods at all? [. . .] If
there is also a lag in CO2 levels behind a cooling period, then it appears
that CO2 levels not only do not initiate warming periods but are also
unrelated to the onset of cooling periods. It would appear that the actual
CO2 levels are rather impotent as an amplifier either way…warming or cooling.
[. . .] If there is
also a time lag upon the onset of cooling, then it appears that some other
mechanism actually drives the temperature changes. So what is the time
difference between CO2 levels during the onset of a cooling period at the end
of a warming period and the time history of the temperature changes in the
ice cores?[11] [Excerpt from RealClimate ends here] In other words, if Severinghaus
is right that CO2 acts as an important amplifier once it starts being
released, taking over from the powerful cause that ended the ice age, then at
least we should see that the warming ends because CO2 levels go down.
So at the end of a warming period we should see CO2 levels decrease first,
followed by a drop in temperatures, as shown in the stylized diagram A,
below.
Suppose, however, that we see the following pattern:
at the end of a warming trend, the temperatures drop first, and then, after a
lag, fall the levels of CO2, as shown in stylized diagram B.
If the ice core data show this second pattern,
reasons John, we don’t have any evidence to support that CO2 acts as
an amplifier. There is just no reason to suppose that it has an effect on
warming and cooling trends at all. CO2 is “impotent,” as he says. So what’s the story? What do 650,000 years of ice
core data say about the final phase of warming trends? Jeff Severinghaus replies: “Dear John, The coolings appear to be caused primarily and initially by
increase in the Earth-Sun distance during northern hemisphere summer, due to
changes in the Earth’s orbit. As the orbit is not round, but elliptical,
sunshine is weaker during some parts of the year than others. This is the
so-called Milankovitch hypothesis, which you may
have heard about. Just as in the warmings, CO2 lags
the coolings by a thousand years or so, in some
cases as much as three thousand years.” What begins a cooling trend? Once again, most
probably, the action of the sun. Severinghaus says
so himself. CO2 levels begin decreasing “in some cases as much as three
thousand years [later].” But does Severinghaus
recant? Not for a second. He writes: “But do not
make the mistake of assuming that these warmings
and coolings must have a single cause. It is well
known that multiple factors are involved, including the change in planetary
albedo, change in nitrous oxide concentration, change in methane concentration,
and change in CO2 concentration.” Is it really “well known” that “warmings
and coolings” have something to do with “change in
CO2 concentration”? No, this is false. It is not well known. The greenhouse
models that Severinghaus reifies into religious idols
do say this, but that is quite different from something being “well known.”
The models could be wrong, and the ice core data suggest that they are. Perhaps there is still some way to save the
anthropogenic global warming hypothesis; what is clear, however, is that the
ice core evidence does not help this hypothesis at all. Quite to the
contrary. Therefore, against the claims of RealClimate,
it is now certain that Al Gore is wrong, for in his movie An
Inconvenient Truth he presents the ice core evidence as somehow obviously
(no less) the best evidence (no less) in favor of his preferred hypothesis,
and he pours gleeful scorn on anybody who would dare disagree, calling such
skepticism the “most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.” Ice core evidence (Case 2) The Great Global Warming Swindle is
a British documentary that aired on TV for the first time in 2007.[12] Many people, including a good
number of top climate scientists, are interviewed expressing their
disagreement with the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. The
documentary is meticulous in arguing that virtually every prediction—explicit
or implied—made by this hypothesis fails. But the scientists, in particular,
place great emphasis on the ice core data, explaining that if CO2 rises after
the warming trends begin, then CO2 cannot be driving global temperatures. I went looking for reactions to the movie from
proponents of anthropogenic global warming. For this, I turned first to the Wikipedia
article on the movie. My reading of this article is that Wikipedia
editors feel quite negatively about the movie. Here is what they write: [Excerpt from Wikipedia
begins here] Although the
documentary was welcomed by global warming sceptics,
it was criticised heavily by many scientific organisations and individual scientists (including two of
the film's contributors). The film's critics argued that it had
misused and fabricated data, relied on out-of-date research, employed
misleading arguments, and misrepresented the position of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Channel 4 and Wag TV (the
production company) accepted some of the criticism, correcting a few errors
in subsequent releases. However according to Bob Ward (former spokesman for
the Royal Society), this still left five out of seven of the errors and
misleading arguments which had been previously attacked by him and 36 other
scientists in an open letter. The British
broadcasting regulator, the Office of Communications (Ofcom),
received 265 complaints about the programme, one of
which was a 176-page detailed complaint co-authored by a group of scientists.
Ofcom used this complaint in its deliberation, and
delivered its ruling on 21 July 2008. It ruled that the programme
had unfairly treated Sir David King, the IPCC and Professor Carl Wunsch. Ofcom also found that
part 5 of the programme (the 'political' part) had
breached several parts of the Broadcasting Code regarding impartiality. Ofcom said that the rules on impartiality did not apply
to the scientific arguments in parts 1-4, because global warming caused by
human activity was a settled fact: "In this respect it could be said
that the discussion about the causes of global warming was to a very great
extent settled by the date of broadcast ( 8 March 2007 ). [...] In Ofcom’s view the link between human activity and global
warming also became similarly settled before March 2007. [...] Having reached
this view, it follows that the rules relating to the preservation of due
impartiality did not apply to these parts." Regarding the programme's accuracy, Ofcom
noted that in its role as regulator it: "had to ascertain – not whether
the programme was accurate - but whether it
materially misled the audience." On this basis Ofcom
ruled that: "On balance it did not materially mislead the audience so as
to cause harm or offence." On 4 and 5 August 2008, Channel 4 and More 4
broadcast a summary of Ofcom's findings, though it
will not face sanctions.[12a] [Excerpt from Wikipedia
ends here] How interesting to learn that, according to the
British office in charge of regulating communications, “global warming caused
by human activity [is] a settled fact.” But I am not impressed. Ofcom is hardly the arbiter of “settled facts”—evidence and
logic are. However, the casual Wikipedia reader might conceivably be
impressed with such appeals to authority, and with the references to “many
scientific organisations and individual scientists
(including two of the film’s contributors),” who, according to Wikipedia,
expressed opposition to the movie. (Concerning “two of the film’s
contributors,” please consult the footnote [12b].) One might also be impressed upon reading that Ofcom “received 265 complaints about the programme, one of which was a 176-page detailed complaint
co-authored by a group of scientists.” Certainly, my eyebrow went up
when I read that. So I decided to look at the text of this rather long formal
complaint filed with Ofcom, the link for which Wikipedia
helpfully provides. My main concern was to see if critics of the movie,
whatever else they said, had a reasonable defense for the anthropogenic
hypothesis from the points made in the movie concerning the ice core
evidence: for this is the key issue. First, let us examine the transcript of the movie,
which the complaint reproduces before proceeding to its objections. [Excerpt from The
Great Global Warming Swindle begins here] [Narrator]
Former Vice President Al Gore’s emotional film “An Inconvenient Truth” is
regarded by many as the definitive popular presentation of the theory of
man-made global warming. His argument rests on one all-important piece of
evidence taken from ice core surveys in which scientists drilled deep into
the ice to look back into earth’s climate history hundreds of thousands of
years. The first ice core survey took place in Vostok
in the Antarctic. What it found, as Al Gore correctly points out was a clear
correlation between carbon dioxide and temperature. [Cut to Al
Gore speaking on the film “An Inconvenient Truth”, with a graph of CO2 vs.
temperature in the background] We’re going back in time now
650,000 years. Here’s what the temperature has been on our earth. Now one
thing that kinda jumps out at you is: ‘Do they
[temperature and CO2] ever fit together?’ Most ridiculous thing I’ve ever
heard. The
relationship is actually very complicated, but there is one relationship that
is far more powerful than all the others, and it’s this: when there is more
carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer. [Narrator] Al
Gore says that the relationship between temperature and CO2 is complicated;
but he doesn’t say what those complications are. In fact there was something
very important in the ice core data that he failed to mention. Professor Ian
Clark is a leading Arctic palaeoclimatologist, who
looks back into the earth’s temperature record tens of millions of years. [Prof Ian
Clark] When we look at climate on long scales we’re
looking at geological material that actually records climate. If we were to
take an ice sample for example, we use isotopes to reconstruct temperature;
but the atmosphere that’s imprisoned in that ice, we liberate it and then we
look at the CO2 content. [Narrator]
Professor Clark and others have indeed discovered, as Al Gore said, a link
between carbon dioxide and temperature. But what Al Gore doesn’t say is that
the link is the wrong way round. [Cut to Prof
Ian Clark in front of his laptop, on which he’s demonstrating a graph. Cut to
a separate animation of the graph.] [Prof Ian
Clark] So here we’re looking at the ice core record from Vostok, and in the red we see temperature going up from
early time to later time. At a very key interval when we came out of a
glaciation; and we see the temperature going up, and then we see the CO2
coming up. The CO2 lags behind that increase – it’s got an 800[-year] lag. So
temperature is leading CO2 by 800 years. [Narrator]
There have now been several major ice core surveys. Every one of them shows
the same thing. The temperature rises or falls, and then after a few hundred
years CO2 follows. [Dr Frederick
Singer] So obviously carbon dioxide is not the cause of
that warming. In fact we can say that the warming produced the increase in
carbon dioxide. [Prof Ian
Clark] CO2 clearly cannot be causing temperature changes –
it’s a product of temperature – it’s following temperature
changes. [Dr Tim Ball]
The ice core record goes to the very heart of the problem we have here. They
said: “if the CO2 increases in the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas, the
temperature will go up.” But the ice core record shows exactly the opposite;
so the fundamental assumption, the most fundamental assumption of the
whole theory of climate change due to humans is shown to be wrong.[13] [Excerpt from The
Great Global Warming Swindle ends here] What does the complaint filed with Ofcom say about this? [Excerpt from
the complaint begins here] “This
accumulation of consecutive interviewee statements, taken together with
statements by the narrator, amount to a highly misleading narrative coverage
of the lag of historical CO2 increases behind temperature increases. The ‘CO2 lags
temperature’ argument against anthropogenic global warming theory has been
discussed in the literature and rebutted many times, for example see:
http://tinyurl.com/2g4cq8 [UK Met Office], and http://tinyurl.com/27lfdu [RealClimate].”[14] [Excerpt from
the complaint ends here] For those not familiar with academic lingo, the
phrase “in the literature” is synonymous with “in the scientific literature,”
meaning publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals. And yet, despite
assuring us that the objection stated in the film has been “rebutted many
times” and “in the literature,” the complaint document—which was elaborated
and also reviewed by a number of scientists sympathetic to the
complaint—refers us only to two documents, neither of them peer-reviewed. One
is to the website for the press office at the UK Met Office (notorious
for almost always getting its climate forecasts dead wrong), and the other to
...(drum roll)... RealClimate. One is led to
believe that, concerning the ice core data, the authors could not find
peer-reviewed scientific publications that could rebut the points made in the
movie. Concerning the link to the UK Met Office, it takes
me to the following page: If you visit this page, you will find the following
message: “PAGE NOT FOUND.” As for the link to RealClimate,
it takes me to Jeff Severinghaus’s piece! ___________________________________________________________ Climategate: Deep problems in the anthropogenic camp It is curious that the authors of the complaint to Ofcom should have included a section in their complaint
titled: “This Complaint is Not an Attack on Free Speech.” If they aren’t
against free speech, they should simply exercise it in disagreement with the
film. But a formal complaint to the State, seeking sanctions, cannot be
construed but as an attempt at censorship. It is not the only such attempt from the
anthropogenic camp. Recently, as reported in the Wall Street Journal,
hackers penetrated the computers of the Climatic Research Unit of the
University of East Anglia in Britain, a prominent institution that has
defended the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. The hackers then
published on the internet the thousands of documents they retrieved, which
included more than 1000 emails.[15] Many of the emails confirm an accusation made in
the film The Great Global Warming Swindle: that there is an effort—by
those scientists now receiving millions in funding to do “climate change”
research with an anthropogenic slant—to censor out of the scientific journals
and organizations those who express skepticism about anthropogenic global
warming. It is precisely in this manner, by censoring the views of those who
disagree, that over the years Al Gore and others have been able to convince
lots of people that the consensus on anthropogenic global warming is
“unanimous,” shoring up the claims of Ofcom and
other official bodies to the effect that “global warming caused by human
activity [is] a settled fact.” The Wall Street Journal reports that, “In the
emails, which date to 1996, researchers in the U.S. and the U.K. repeatedly take
issue with climate research at odds with their own findings. In some cases,
they discuss ways to rebut what they call ‘disinformation’ using new articles
in scientific journals or popular Web sites.” Could these be websites such as RealClimate?
One is led to wonder. After all, as we saw above, Jeff Severinghaus’s
article was “one of our very first RealClimate
posts,” so one could reasonably infer that RealClimate
was created specifically in order to deal with the embarrassment of the ice
core evidence. The poverty of Severinghaus’s
arguments, and the stridency of the website, might then convince us to
disregard entirely the disclaimer in the “About” section and conclude that
the website has always been an entirely political creature, rife with the
same kind of deliberate intellectual dishonesty that is evidenced in the East
Anglia emails. “The emails,” writes the WSJ, “include discussions
of apparent efforts to make sure that reports from the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], a United Nations group that monitors climate
science, include their own views [those of anthropogenic warming proponents]
and exclude others.” One is filled with doubt that Al Gore can be right when
he calls the IPCC the “highest quality international scientific collaboration
in all of history.” The WSJ continues: “In addition, emails show that climate
scientists declined to make their data available to scientists whose views
they disagreed with.” Aside from poor ethics, such tactics are evidence of
fear: proponents of the anthropogenic hypothesis are scared to face
their critics. If I were guilty of rather formidable shenanigans, as appears
to be the case with Michael Mann (who, with Phil Jones, is easily the most
influential climate scientist pushing the anthopogenic
hypothesis), I would be afraid to face my critics too.[17a]
Perhaps this is why, in one of the now exposed emails that the Wall Street
Journal quotes, “Phil Jones, the director of the East Anglia climate
center, suggested to climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University
that skeptics’ research was unwelcome: We ‘will keep them out somehow -- even
if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!’ ” Ah… Phil Jones will no doubt borrow his new meaning
of ‘peer review’ from the Holy Office of the Inquisition’s dictionary. But even redefining what the peer-review literature
is has not saved the anthropogenic hypothesis from the core embarrassment—the
ice core embarrassment. For even with the censorship, as we have seen
above, it appears that nobody has dared state in the peer-reviewed literature
that the ice core evidence supports the anthropogenic hypothesis. Is it
really that warm? I close with a final question on the reported
temperatures themselves: Is it really that warm? As I look out my window it
hardly seems so. We are having one darn cold winter here in Mexico City. I
can see from the news that others are shivering too. Joseph D’Aleo and Anthony
Watts write as follows in a Science and Public Policy Institute report dated
January 2010: “Recent
revelations from the Climategate emails,
originating from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia
showed how all the data centers, most notably NOAA [National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration] and NASA, conspired in the manipulation of global
temperature records to suggest that temperatures in the 20th century rose
faster than, in reality, they actually did. This has
inspired climate researchers worldwide to take a hard look at the data
proffered by comparing it to the original data and to other data sources. . . Five
organizations publish global temperature data. Two – Remote Sensing Systems
(RSS) and the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) – are satellite
datasets. The three terrestrial institutions – NOAA’s National Climatic
Data Center (NCDC), NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), and
the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) – all depend on
data supplied by ground stations via NOAA.” [emphasis added] [15a] So there are two main ways of computing planetary
temperatures: by using satellites and by using ground measuring stations.
Those who claim there has been dramatic global warming—such as the now
infamous University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit—use the surface
station NOAA data. How accurate is NOAA? At one time, this was a reliable
source of data. “The world’s surface observing network,” explain D’Aleo and Watts, “had reached its golden era in the
1960s-1980s, with more than 6000 stations providing valuable climate
information.” But this is no longer true. “Now, there are fewer than 1500
[stations].” What happened? “Around 1990,
NOAA began weeding out more than three-quarters of the climate measuring
stations around the world. They may have been working under the auspices of
the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). It can be shown that they
systematically and purposefully, country by country, removed higher-latitude,
higher-altitude, and rural locations, all of which had a tendency to be
cooler. The
thermometers were marched towards the tropics, the sea, and airports near
bigger cities. These data were then used to determine the global average
temperature and to initialize climate models. Interestingly, the very same
stations that have been deleted from the world climate network were retained
for computing the average-temperature base periods, further increasing the
bias towards overstatement of warming by NOAA.” [emphasis added] By contrast, the satellite data show only a moderate
warming for the period 1979-1998. And yet, explain D’Aleo
and Watts, “When the satellites were first launched, their temperature
readings were in relatively good agreement with the surface station data.
There has been increasing divergence over time, but the divergence does not
arise from satellite errors.” The divergence is easily explained by the
biased removal of terrestrial climate measuring stations in cold areas and
the resulting bias in favor of urban ‘heat islands.’ Because the satellite
data do not suffer from these biases, argue the authors, they can more
readily be trusted. There were warnings of these problems at least as
far back as 2003, when “S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental
sciences at the University of Virginia and former director of the US Weather
Satellite Service,” pointed out that: [Quote from P.R.
Newswire begins here] “The UN-IPCC
science panel... based its conclusions on three major claims. And although widely
publicized, none of them pass muster. They have been or are being disproved
by actual data.” For example: -- The IPCC
claims the 20th century was the warmest in the past 1,000 years. This is
based entirely on a manhandling of the available data. Two Canadian
scientists have just published a detailed audit that exposes a shocking set
of errors; it permits anyone to independently verify their counter-claim. -- The IPCC
claims the climate is currently warming. This is based solely on surface
thermometer data. It is contradicted not only by superior
observations from weather satellites, but also by independent data from radiosondes carried on weather balloons. In addition,
proxy data from tree rings, ice cores, etc. confirm that there is no
significant current warming. [15b] [Quote from P.R.
Newswire begins here] I must emphasize that those who claim a dramatic
temperature increase in the period 1979-1998, and who deny that we have begun
cooling in the last decade, rely always on the NOAA surface station data. An
example of this would be an April 2008 paper by Robert Fawcett and David
Jones, from the National Climate Center, Australian Bureau of Meteorology, in
Melbourne. They write: “There is very
little justification for asserting that global warming has gone away over the
past ten years, not least because the linear trend in globally-averaged
annual mean temperatures (the standard yardstick) over the period 1998-2007
remains upward. While 1998 was the world’s warmest year in the surface-based instrumental record
up to that point in time, 2005 was equally warm and in some data sets
surpassed 1998.”[17] Fawcett and Jones go on to argue that it takes more
than ten years to determine a trend. But it’s all moot if the temperature
figures they rely on to defend their view cannot be trusted. As we see above,
they are relying on the “surface-based instrumental record.” When the bias in the surface weather stations is not
enough, the data is simply invented, as happened when some ‘scientists’
invented nonexistent weather stations in the Antarctic with which to claim
that the southern continent had been warming (instead of cooling as the
satellite data show). Among the members of the team that produced this ‘magic’
was Michael Mann, at the center of the Climategate
controversy.[17a] Important conclusions in the scientific literature
concerning global warming should now be called into question. For example, a much-cited study by Usoskin et al. (2005) finds that “the long-term
trends in solar [activity] data and in northern hemisphere temperatures have
a correlation coefficient of about 0.7 – 0.8 at a 94% to 98% confidence
level.” This is very high, and one obvious interpretation is that solar
activity is mostly responsible for global temperatures. But the authors note
that “the last 30 years are not considered, however. In this time, the
climate [i.e. temperature] and solar data diverge strongly from each other.”
This is because, according to these data, solar activity does not trend
upward in the last three decades and yet the temperatures drastically do. To
the authors this means that there is a “marked (or even dominant) solar
effect on climate variability until the middle of the 20th century,” but “a
non-solar origin of the most recent warming episode since about 1970.”[17b] The “non-solar origin” is by
obvious implication human activity. Proponents of anthropogenic global
warming have loudly claimed victory on the basis of these data: the sun does
not explain global temperature in recent decades. This is, for example, the
argument of the website Skeptical Science, whose motto is: “Getting skeptical
about global warming skepticism.”[17c] The problem with the Usoskin
et al. paper is that “the terrestrial climate data we use are the
reconstruction of the northern hemisphere temperature between AD 1000 and AD
1980 by Mann et al.(1999) (MBH99) and the reconstructions of northern
hemisphere, southern hemisphere, and global temperatures for the period
between AD 200 and AD 1980 by Mann and Jones (2003).” In other words, for a
reconstruction of global temperatures Usoskin et
al. are relying on the “surface-based instrumental record” which
underpins the work of the very scientists at the center of the Climategate controversy: Michael Mann and Phil Jones. No
wonder that the close correlation between solar activity and global
temperatures disappears in the last 30 years: it was precisely in the last 30
that, according to the SPPI, surface-based measuring stations were removed
from cold places to give measurements a warm bias. These kinds of studies
need to be redone using the satellite data.
Many in the public believe there has been dramatic
global warming because, explain D’Aleo & Watts,
“in monthly press releases no satellite measurements are ever mentioned,
although NOAA claimed that was the future of observations.” The satellite
data do support moderate warming in the period 1979-1998. But that’s
all. Nothing to write home about. So taking it as a whole, conclude D’Aleo and Watts, “it cannot be credibly asserted there
has been any significant ‘global warming’ in the 20th century.”[18]
Complementary
research by Roy Spencer, a climate
scientist formerly at NASA, concludes likewise that “Most U.S. Warming Since
1973 Could Be Spurious.” His reasoning is as follows. Even if we assume that
there is no bias in the distribution of surface temperature stations, with
the passage of time urban structures have been growing around many of them,
and this will introduce an apparent warming in the measurements because it
amounts to a growth of an urban heat island (UHI) effect around these
thermometers. We cannot know how much of the reported increases in
temperature reflect actual global warming until this spurious warming is
corrected for. But this hasn’t been done. But why? Why all this
nonsense to convince us that there has been anthropogenic global warming
threatening global catastrophe (no less)? This topic will be dealt with in a
future HIR paper.
The next piece in
this series is: GLOBAL WARMING AND THE MEDIA ___________________________________________________________ Footnotes
and Further Reading [1] Michell, Joel (2009) “The psychometricians
fallacy: Too clever by half?”, British Journal of Mathematical and
Statistical Psychology (2009), 62. 41-55 [2] To buy the DVD: To watch a trailer: [2a] Plimer,
I. (2009). Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science. New
York: Taylor Trade Publishing. (pp.20, 452) [2b]
HEAT
OF THE MOMENT; “Scientists abandon global warming 'lie' : 650 to dissent at
U.N. climate change conference”; World Net Daily; Posted: December 11, 2008 [3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfHW7KR33IQ [3a] ES ‘FALSO’ QUE EL CO2 CAUSE EL CALENTAMIENTO: Un
miembro del IPCC destapa la "gran mentira" del cambio climático;
Libertad Digital; 1 de octubre, 2008 [3b] THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON
CLIMATE CHANGE (IPCC): SPINNING THE CLIMATE; by Vincent Gray [4] A number of statisticians were
given figures on global temperatures in the last 12 years to see if they
could find a trend. They could not find one. This is generally accepted; what
varies is the interpretation. Some scientists have begun arguing that the warming
trend is over (or at least the present upward wobble in a larger warming
trend) and that a cooling trend has begun that will last a few decades. Don
Easterbrook, from the Department of Geology at Western Washington University,
has been a prominent exponent of this view: To defend themselves from anything so catastrophic
(to their theory) as global cooling, the anthropogenic camp looks at the data
for the last 12 years and says, “Look: no trend. This means there is no
global cooling.” Here is an example of this interpretation: The problem for the anthropogenic hypothesis,
however, is that the Earth has not been warming for the last 12 years. Why is
this a problem? Because the greenhouse models of the anthropogenic crowd,
based on the dramatic increase in human CO2 production that we have seen in
the last few years, predicted a dramatic acceleration of global warming
precisely during these 12 years in which we have seen no warming. This means
that something is wrong with their models. Here is an example of the
alternative interpretation of the same data: At least, the slowdown in the warming—or the
beginning of cooling, or whatever it is that we are now experiencing—has
begun a debate: [4a] “SURFACE TEMPERATURE RECORDS:
POLICY DRIVEN DECEPTION?”; Science and Public Policy Institute; January 7,
2010; by Joseph D’Aleo and Anthony Watts [5] “Greenhouse”; Wikipedia
[consulted 28 November 2009] [6] “Greenhouse Effect”; Wikipedia
[consulted 28 November 2009] [6a] The
Advertiser (Australia), August 17, 2009 Monday, OPINION; Pg. 17, 635 words [6b] “Science cooks the books,
driving sensible people to screaming point”; Sydney Morning Herald
(Australia), November 12, 2009 Thursday, NEWS AND FEATURES; Opinion; Pg. 17,
1057 words, Miranda Devine [6c] “Who
or what is the real culprit?; Not all experts agree that man is to blame;
others point the finger at oceans or the sun.” The Straits Times (Singapore),
May 1, 2007 Tuesday, REVIEW - OTHERS, 1625 words, Andy Ho, Senior Writer [6d] Plimer,
I. (2009). Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science. New
York: Taylor Trade Publishing. (p.366) [7] http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/about/ [8] The lag between temperature and
CO2. (Gore’s got it right.); RealClimate; 27 April
2007; by Eric [8a] Ice Core Records of Atmospheric CO2 Around the
Last Three Glacial Terminations ; Science 12 March 1999,
Vol. 283. no. 5408, pp. 1712 – 1714; DOI: 10.1126/science.283.5408.1712 Authors: Hubertus Fischer, Martin Wahlen,
Jesse Smith, Derek Mastroianni, Bruce Deck ABSTRACT: Air trapped in bubbles in polar ice cores
constitutes an archive for the reconstruction of the global carbon cycle and
the relation between greenhouse gases and climate in the past. High-resolution records from Antarctic ice cores show that
carbon dioxide concentrations increased by 80 to
100 parts per million by volume 600 ± 400 years after the warming of
the last three deglaciations.
Despite strongly decreasing temperatures, high carbon dioxide
concentrations can be sustained for thousands of years during
glaciations; the size of this phase lag is probably connected to
the duration of the preceding warm period, which controls the
change in land ice coverage and the buildup of the terrestrial
biosphere. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Geosciences Research Division,
University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0220, USA. Previous studies of Antarctic ice cores (1-3) revealed that
atmospheric CO2 concentrations changed by 80 to
100 parts per million by volume (ppmv) during
the last climatic cycle and showed, together with continuous
atmospheric measurements (4), that
anthropogenic emissions increased CO2 concentrations
from 280 ppmv during preindustrial times to
more than 360 ppmv at present, an
increase of more than 80% of the glacial-interglacial change.
Variations in atmospheric CO2 concentrations accompanying
glacial-interglacial transitions have been attributed to
climate-induced changes in the global carbon cycle (5, 6), but they also
amplify climate variations by the accompanying greenhouse effect.
Accordingly, the relation of temperature and greenhouse gases in
the past derived from ice core records has been used to estimate
the sensitivity of climate to changes in greenhouse gas
concentrations (7) to
constrain the prediction of an anthropogenic global warming. This
procedure, however, requires the separation of systematic variations
representative for all climatic cycles from those specific for
each event, as well as a more detailed knowledge of the leads and
lags between greenhouse gas concentrations and climate proxies. To resolve short-term changes in the atmospheric carbon reservoir, to
constrain the onset and end of major variations in CO2 concentrations,
and to test whether these variations are temporally representative,
we expanded the Antarctic Vostok CO2
record over the transition from marine isotope stage (MIS)
8 to MIS 7 [about 210 to 250 thousand years (ky) before present (B.P.)] and analyzed the
time interval around the penultimate deglaciation
(about 70 to 160 ky B.P.) at a high
resolution of 100 to 2000 years (8). This
data set was supplemented by a CO2 record recently derived from
the Antarctic Taylor Dome (TD) ice core (6, 9) covering
the last 35,000 years. The internal temporal resolution of
ice core air samples is restricted by the age distribution of the
bubbles caused by the enclosure process (10). This
age spread is about 300 years for Vostok (11) and
140 years for the TD ice core (9) at present but
about three times higher for glacial conditions (11). The
depth-ice age scale used for terminations II and III in the Vostok core is a recently expanded version of the
extended glaciological time scale (12). The dating
uncertainty (on the order of 10,000 years for termination
III) is considerable; however, the absolute time scale is not so
important as long as we consistently compare Vostok
CO2 with the Vostok isotope temperature
( More important is the relative dating of ice and air at a certain
depth. The ice age-air age difference ( In Fig. 1, our data and
previously published CO2 concentration records (1, 6,
9, 11, 15, 16) are compared with Antarctic isotope
(temperature) ice core records (13, 17-19). Note
that the CO2 concentrations represent essentially a global signal.
In contrast, the geographical representativeness of isotope temperature
records may vary from a synoptical to hemispherical
scale and accordingly within different cores with increasing
variability for shorter time scales. The Vostok
and TD CO2 data presented here are in good agreement
with previous CO2 values. On a 10,000-year time scale,
CO2 covaries with the isotope
temperatures with minimum glacial CO2 concentrations of
180 to 200 ppmv, glacial-interglacial
transitions accompanied by a rapid increase in CO2
concentrations to a maximum of 270 to 300 ppmv, and a gradual return to low CO2 values
during glaciation. On a shorter time scale, however, a much more
complex picture evolves. Fig. 1. Records of atmospheric CO2
concentrations and isotope temperature records derived from the Antarctic
Byrd, Vostok, and TD ice cores during the deglaciation and glaciation events around the last three
glacial terminations. Error bars in CO2 concentration data
represent 1 The onset of the atmospheric CO2 increase during
termination I recorded in the TD record is at 19 to 20 ky B.P. The rise in the long-term trend in CO2
concentrations seems to be about 1000 years earlier than the rise
in Vostok A dip in CO2 concentrations at 135 ky
B.P. precedes the start of the increase in CO2 concentrations
during termination II, which reaches a maximum of 290 ppmv at 128 ky B.P. Like
in the Holocene, CO2 concentrations decrease after this
initial maximum to ~275 ppmv. The onset
of the major warming during termination II is hard to define, but
during the penultimate warm period, CO2 concentrations
reach their maximum 400 ± 200 years later than Antarctic
temperatures. In the following 15,000 years of the Eemian
warm period, CO2 concentrations do not show a substantial
change despite distinct cooling over the Antarctic ice sheet. Not
until 6000 years after the major cooling in MIS 5.4 does
a substantial decline in CO2 concentration occur.
Another 4000 to 6000 years is required to return to an
approximate in-phase relation of CO2 with the
temperature variations. Finally, termination III starts with a CO2 concentration of
205 ppmv at 244 ky
B.P., slightly higher than that for the beginnings of terminations
I and II. At that time, temperatures had already increased since
the glacial temperature minimum at ~260 ky B.P.
CO2 concentrations rise slowly from 244 to 241 ky B.P. and then rapidly to more than
300 ppmv at 238 ky
B.P. Keeping the rather coarse resolution of the Comparison of the sequence of events for the three time intervals
described above suggests that the carbon cycle-climate relation should
be separated into (at least) a deglaciation and a
glaciation mode. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations show a
similar increase for all three terminations, connected to a
climate-driven net transfer of carbon from the ocean to the
atmosphere (6). The time
lag of the rise in CO2 concentrations with respect to temperature
change is on the order of 400 to 1000 years during all three
glacial-interglacial transitions. Considering the uncertainties in
The situation is even more complicated for the interglacial and
glaciation periods. During the extended Holocene and Eemian
warm periods, atmospheric CO2 concentrations drop by ~10 ppmv after an initial maximum, attributable to
a substantial increase in the terrestrial biospheric
carbon storage extracting CO2 from the atmosphere. In
the case of the Eemian, CO2 concentrations
remain constant after the initial maximum in MIS 5.5 despite
slowly decreasing temperatures; during the Holocene, atmospheric
CO2 concentrations even increase during the last
8000 years. Application of a carbon cycle model to CO2
and During further glaciation in MIS 5.4, CO2
concentrations remain constant, although temperatures strongly decline. We
suggest that this reflects the combination of the increased
oceanic uptake of CO2 expected for colder climate
conditions and CO2 release caused by the net decline of
the terrestrial biosphere during the glaciation and possibly by
respiration of organic carbon deposited on increasingly exposed
shelf areas. These processes, however, should terminate (with some
delay) after the lowest temperatures are reached in MIS 5.4 and
ice volume is at its maximum at 111 ky
B.P. (22). In agreement
with this hypothesis, CO2 concentrations start to
decrease in the Vostok record at about 111 ky B.P. Another possibility to explain this delayed
response of CO2 to the cooling during MIS
5.4 would be an inhibited uptake of CO2 by the
ocean. In any case, about 5°C lower temperatures on the Antarctic
ice sheet during MIS 5.4 (17) are difficult
to reconcile with the full interglacial CO2 forcing encountered
at the beginning of this cold period and again question the
straightforward application of the past CO2-climate relation to
the recent anthropogenic warming. Another scenario is encountered during MIS 7, in which no
prolonged warm period is observed. Although temperatures at the end
of termination III are comparable to those at the end of termination II
and CO2 concentrations are even slightly higher, a much shorter
lag in the decrease of CO2 relative to the Antarctic
temperature decrease in MIS 7.4 is found. Comparison with the
SPECMAP record (23) shows that
during the preceding interglacial MIS 7.5, ice volume was
much larger than during the Holocene and the Eemian
warm periods. Accordingly, the buildup of the terrestrial biosphere
during MIS 7.5 is expected to be much less and sea level changes
smaller, leading to a smaller net release of CO2 into the
atmosphere during the following glaciation, which is not able to
fully counterbalance the CO2 uptake by the ocean. REFERENCES AND NOTES J.
M. Barnola, D. Raynaud, Y. S. Korotkevich,
C. Lorius, Nature 329, 408 (1987) . A.
Neftel, E. Moor, H. Oeschger,
B. Stauffer, ibid. 315, 45 (1985) . D.
Raynaud, et al., Science 259, 926 (1993) [Free Full Text] . Recent
investigations in central Greenland have reported an in situ production of CO2
in the ice, possibly related to carbonate or organic species reactions (or
both), and have strongly compromised the validity of the determined CO2
concentrations. However, Antarctic ice cores are (if at all) much less
affected by this effect because of the very low abundance of reactive carbon
species dissolved in Antarctic ice. C.
D. Keeling, T. P. Whorf, M. Wahlen, J. van der Pflicht, Nature 375, 666 (1995) [CrossRef] . M.
Leuenberger, U. Siegenthaler,
C. C. Langway, ibid. 357, 488 (1992) [CrossRef]. H.
J. Smith, H. Fischer, M. Wahlen,
D. Mastroianni, B. Deck, in preparation. C.
Lorius, J. Jouzel, D.
Raynaud, J. Hansen, H. Le Treut, Nature 347,
139 (1990) . M.
Wahlen, D. Allen, B. Deck, A. Herchenroder,
Geophys. Res. Lett.
18, 1457 (1991) . Air samples were extracted from Vostok
5G and TD ice with a dry extraction technique, and CO2
concentrations were determined with laser spectroscopy. The accuracy of a
single measurement (as essentially determined by the standard deviation of
multiple frequency tunings of the diode laser) is better than 5 ppmv. The laser spectroscopic method enables the use of
very small samples (~4 g), allowing us to pick crack-free ice and to measure
replicate samples at the same depth interval. In general, all given CO2
concentrations correspond to the average and standard deviation of at least
three replicate samples. On average, the variability of such replicate
measurements is 7.5 ppmv (1 A.
Indermühle et al., Nature, in press. J. Schwander, et al., J. Geophys. Res. 98, 2831 (1993) . J.-M. Barnola, P. Pimienta,
D. Raynaud, Y. S. Korotkevich, Tellus
Ser. B 43, 83 (1991) [CrossRef]. Expanded ice age and air age time scales were kindly provided by
J. Jouzel and J.-R. Petit. Ages were assigned
to sample depths after slight depth corrections for the Vostok
5G core (17) by linear interpolation of the depth-age scale. A publication
describing the calculation of the expanded time scales, which is essentially
based on the procedure described by J. Jouzel et
al. [Nature 364, 407 (1993)], is in preparation. T. Blunier, et al., Nature 394,
739 (1998) [CrossRef] . E. J. Steig, et al., Science 282,
92 (1998) [Abstract/Free Full Text] . A. Neftel, H. Oeschger,
T. Staffelbach, B. Stauffer, Nature 331,
609 (1988) . B. Stauffer, et al., ibid. 392, 59 (1998) [CrossRef]. J. Jouzel, et al., Clim. Dyn. 12,
513 (1996) . J. R. Petit, et al., Nature 387, 359 (1997) [CrossRef] . S. J. Johnsen, W. Dansgaard,
H. B. Clausen, C. C. Langway Jr., ibid. 235,
429 (1972) [CrossRef] [Web of Science]. Phase relations were determined by comparison of maxima and minima in
the long-term trend of CO2 concentrations and isotope temperatures
as represented by spline approximations. Given errors reflect the uncertainty
in the actual positions of the extrema, which are
weakly dependent on the degree of smoothing. They do not take into account
the uncertainty in T. Blunier, et al., Geophys. Res. Lett.
24, 2683 (1997) [CrossRef] [Web of Science]. D. G. Martinson, et al., Quat.
Res. 27, 1 (1987) . J. Imbrie et al., in Milankovitch and Climate, A. Berger et
al., Eds. (Reidel, Hingham, MA, 1984), pp.
269-305. We thank J.-M. Barnola and D. Raynaud
for helpful comments and for sharing with us their unpublished Vostok CO2 record of the last four
glacial-interglacial cycles during our sample selection process. This study
was funded by NSF grants OPP9615292, OPP9196095, and OPP9118534. Financial
support of H.F. has been provided by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.
30 November 1998; accepted 29 January 1999 [9] To see the video of Joe
Barton’s exchange with Al Gore, visit: [10] What does the lag of CO2 behind
temperature in ice cores tell us about global warming?; RealClimate;
3 December 2004; by Jeff Severinghaus [10a] Levitt, S. D., and S. J. Dubner. 2009. Super Freakonomics:
Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy
Life Insurance. New York: HarperCollins. [10b] HEAT OF THE MOMENT; “Scientists abandon
global warming 'lie' : 650 to dissent at U.N. climate change conference”;
World Net Daily; Posted: December 11, 2008 [11] John’s letter and Severinghaus’s response are both quoted in the first RealClimate article mentioned in this piece. To read
them, scroll down. [12] To buy the DVD: To watch a trailer: [12a] The Great Global Warming
Swindle; Wikipedia [consulted 28 November 2009] [12b] Here follows the excerpt from
the complaint that deals with “two of the film’s contributors” who later
complained about the film. As you will see below, these two contributors are
Carl Wunsch and Eigil Friis-Christensen. My commentary, which follows the
quotation, will deal with this and other issues. [Quote from
complaint to Ofcom begins here] 1.6.2 Falsification
or Serious Misrepresentation of Graphs or Data; or of Quotations from
Reports, or of Press Articles; or of Film Footage Presentation
of graphs or figures which evidently have been manipulated or fabricated,
most likely with the intent of aiding the arguments presented by the programme. Some examples: 1. The programme presented a graph (attributed to NASA) of
global temperature over the last 120 years, and suggested that most of the
warming in the 20th century actually occurred prior to the post–World War II
industrial boom. However, the original source of the graph is unclear and,
most importantly, it is obsolete as it ended in the mid-80s. Hence, it left
out the warming from the last 20 years, the period in which the fastest rate
of warming has occurred. The film makers extended the time axis of the graph
to cover up this limitation, and later admitted that the original time axis
was incorrect. A cursory glance at up-to-date temperature records from NASA
would have revealed to the film maker that contrary to the programme’s claims, most of the warming in the 20th
century occurred after World War II, so this appears to have been an
intentional deception (see Comment 42, page 35 and Comment 43, page 38). 2. The film
presents a graph, attributed to Eigil Friis-Christensen (also an interviewee) titled ‘Temp and
Solar Activity 400 Years’. The original graph produced by Friis-Christensen
and published in the scientific literature included a 100-year gap in the
solar data. The graph presented in the film fills this gap (¼ of the graph)
with solar activity data which exactly matches the temperature, artificially
inflating the correlation between the two. The manner in which this occurred
has led even Friis-Christensen to state that it is
highly likely that it was filled with artificial data. Martin Durkin claims
that this was a mistake (see Comment 60, page 55) A total of 9
breaches fell into this category. See Appendix A.1.1, page 116 for details.` 1.6.3
Misrepresentations of People’s Views and Other Breaches of Section 7 of the Ofcom Code 1. The views
of one of the programme’s participants, Carl Wunsch, were clearly misrepresented by the programme on both climate change and on modelling, through selective editing and use of context
to make him appear to the audience to be saying the precise opposite of what
he was actually trying to convey: see Comment 54, page 49; and Comment 94,
page 79. In addition, Wunsch has stated publicly
that he was misinformed by WagTV about the
true nature of the programme (see Comment
53, page 48), in breach of Section 7 of the Broadcasting Code. 2. On April
27, 2007 another of the programme’s participants, Dr
Eigil Friis-Christensen
issued a joint statement with one of the lead authors of this complaint,
Nathan Rive, stating specifically that Friis-Christensen’s
views had been knowingly and fundamentally misrepresented by the film (see
Comment 60, page 55). 3. The UK
Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser Sir David King was attacked on the
basis of a misquote in the closing statement of the film – see Comment
137, page 115 and Appendix H: page 167. 4.The views of
both Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and of
millions of ordinary people who are concerned about the environment were
repeatedly misrepresented in a factually inaccurate and extreme way (see
Comment 75, page 68; Comment 80, page 71; Comment 81, page 71; Comment 120,
page 100; and Comment 136, page 114). 5. Serious
allegations, many of them demonstrably false, were made about the IPCC
without any evidence being offered to support the allegations, and without
the IPCC being given a chance to defend itself on the programme
(see Comment 17, page 21; Comment 113, page 94; and Comment 115, page 96). A
passage from an IPCC report was selectively quoted in order to appear to the
viewer to be stating the opposite of what it was actually stating (Comment
112, page 92) and other passages were seriously misrepresented by the film
(for example Comment 73, page 66; Comment 74, page 67; and Comment 111, page
92). A Wall Street Journal article attacking IPCC processes was shown and
quoted from, but it was not revealed that the writer of the article has never
had any involvement with the IPCC, nor that he runs a lobby group that
actively campaigns against greenhouse gas emissions reduction policies (see
Comment 114, page 95). 6. Serious
allegations of misappropriation of public funds by scientific funding bodies
were made by the programme without any evidence
being offered in support of the allegations and without any of the bodies
being given a chance to defend themselves on the programme
(see for example Comment 117, page 97).[a] [Quote from
complaint to Ofcom ends here] Complaints that the opinions of Mr. X or Mr. Y were
misrepresented is a very weak complaint. It is the scientific issues
that really matter here. If the authors of the movie made Carl Wunsch appear to say something when he meant to say a
different thing, bad for them, but can we please concentrate on whether the
scientific data support or not what Wunsch now says
is his real opinion? Is there, or isn’t there, anthropogenic global warming?
Since this is the fundamental issue, it is curious that the authors of the
complaint should seem so preoccupied with the question of Wunsch’s
honor. In any case, to the allegations concerning Wunsch, Martin Durkin, the film’s producer, replies:
“Prof Carl Wunsch, of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, who appeared in the film, later claimed he was duped into
taking part. He was not.”[b] I believe this. I have watched
the movie again and paid special attention to Wunsch’s
statements. It seems almost impossible that he was tricked into saying them.
They are general statements about the speed at which various forces acting on
global temperatures can act, and which have to do with his area of expertise.
Certainly, the film used those statements to criticize the premises of the
anthropogenic global warming hypothesis, and this appears to be what now
bothers Wunsch. Perhaps for this reason he now says
that “he was misinformed about WagTV about the true
nature of the programme.” What matters in a scientific debate is not Wunsch’s honor, or that of “Sir David King,” who is “the
UK Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser” (no less!). Neither is the
fundamental issue the honor of the IPCC, or of the NGO’s, or of “millions of
ordinary people who are concerned about the environment,” all of which the
formal complaint to Ofcom rises valiantly to
defend. (And the last one is curious, isn’t it? What does it matter whether
millions of people think that global warming is man-made? A million Mohicans
can’t be wrong? Are we to decide scientific issues by the democratic vote of
the lay masses?) What matters is simply who is right concerning the state of
the art of the scientific data. Why then so much emphasis on all this
nonsense? Let us focus, then, on the criticisms that at least
purport to be about the scientific substance. The quotation above is from the introductory
summary, and it therefore limits itself to giving “some examples” (in fact,
2) of what will be 9 cases of “Falsification or Serious Misrepresentation of
Graphs or Data.” This kind of accusation is naturally a very serious one, and
the complaint means to be dramatic in its introductory summary, so the two
examples given will obviously be the strongest ones. How strong are they? About the first example, the complaint says: “the
original source of the graph is unclear and, most importantly, it is obsolete
as it ended in the mid-80s.” Using an obsolete graph would indeed constitute
a relatively serious problem. However, a graph that ends in the mid-80’s is
not obsolete but merely incomplete. We find here, then, that the complaint’s
authors evince a certain intellectual indiscipline (or indifference)—not
random, however, but slanted to sharpen the apparent seriousness of the
film’s offense. The complaint then says: “A cursory glance at
up-to-date temperature records from NASA would have revealed to the film
maker that contrary to the programme’s claims, most
of the warming in the 20th century occurred after World War II, so this
appears to have been an intentional deception.” An “intentional deception” to
support what? The film doesn’t deny that there has been warming
after WWII. What the authors of the complaint seem to forget is that during
the 1970s (occurring after WWII) the widely disseminated media scare was that
the planet was cooling and we were on the verge of an ice age. So
there does not appear to be a clear relationship between human production of
CO2 in the 20th c. and 20th c. temperatures, because these latter have gone
up and down rather capriciously while human CO2 production has gone rapidly
ever upwards. This is one of the film’s main observations, and the error of
omission in the graph attributed to NASA (to which the film’s producers have
stipulated) does not affect this point. The weight of the criticism in this first example,
therefore, does not constitute the refutation of a scientific argument, take
note, but rather the imputation of a bad intention. Intentions,
however, are quite irrelevant. What matters is who is right on the issues of
climate science. To find such a strong emphasis on the supposed intentions of
the authors of the movie suggests that the authors of the complaint don’t
have very good scientific arguments. Now let us consider the second example. There the
complaint states that in Eigil Friis-Christensen’s
work there was a 100-year gap for which data was unavailable, and that the
film’s authors filled in the missing years with made-up data to show an
enhanced correlation between solar activity and global temperatures. The
film’s authors have confessed to this error. And yes, they should have left
the graph as it was rather than represent data that we don’t have. The
complaint then states that Eigil Friis-Christensen—who was interviewed in the movie—has
added his name to the formal complaints against the film, something that is
supposed to create a strong impression on us. Now, but the scientific question is this: If
we examine the graph as it was, with the missing 100 years of data for all to
see, do the existing numbers now support a different argument? Not in the
least. Eigil Friis-Christensen’s
data, though it is missing those years, shows a clear correlation between the
activity of the sun and planetary temperatures. Martin Durkin, producer of The Great Global
Warming Swindle, has stated: “A critic
claims that one of the graphs cited by us, illustrating the extraordinarily
close correlation between solar variation and temperature change, has since
been ‘corrected.’ It most certainly has not. The graph was produced by Prof Eigil Friis-Christensen, the
head of the Danish National Space Centre, who says it still stands. But if
the global-warmers don’t like that graph, there are plenty of others that say
the same thing.”[b] This is correct, as one can see from an article
published in The Independent. My reading of this article is that the
author takes a position in favor of the complaint and against the movie,
referring us to Eigil Friis-Christensen’s
criticisms. And yet, when the author quotes Friis-Christensen
it becomes clear that the film’s sin on this point is really minor and does
not affect the main argument. In fact, despite his criticisms, this is what Friis-Christensen himself says, as reported in The
Independent: “ ‘We have
reason to believe that parts of the graph were made up of fabricated data
that were presented as genuine. The inclusion of the artificial data is both
misleading and pointless,’ Dr Friis-Christensen
said.”[c] Pointless? Why pointless? Because the fundamental
argument hardly changes. Friis-Christensen
continues: “ ‘. . .the
commentary during the presentation of the graph is consistent with the
conclusions of the paper from which the figure originates. . .’ ” Well in that case we are quibbling over a detail
entirely marginal to the scientific controversy. Friis-Christensen
complains in the same comment that the film “ ‘incorrectly rules out a
contribution by anthropogenic [man-made] greenhouse gases to 20th century
global warming.’ ” It does? Incorrectly? Why incorrectly? In order to claim
that the film’s authors are mistaken when they discard the anthropogenic
global warming hypothesis we need an argument. It appears that Friis-Christensen did not provide one because, had he
done so, The Independent, with its slant against the movie and in
favor of the complaints, would not have failed to mention it. Notice what The
Independent writes: “Dr Friis-Christensen, a physicist, believes that solar
cycles play an important role in climate change and that not enough effort
has gone into addressing the theory. The fabricated data did not, he said,
make any difference to the overall view he takes but he is still critical of
the way the film handled the scientific evidence. Asked by The Independent
whether the documentary was scientifically accurate, Dr Friiss-Christensen
said: “No, I think several points were not explained in the way that I, as a
scientist, would have explained them ... it is obvious it’s not accurate.’ ” The complaint once more reduces to imputing bad
intentions to the film’s authors, and to invoking the authority of “I, as
a scientist,” of the complainer. But he is complaining of the film’s style,
not its substance, for Friis-Christensen himself
says 1) that the film’s statements concerning his work do reflect his
conclusions; and 2) that the added data in truth don’t change a thing. So the
decision to fill in the missing gap—though wrongheaded—was a cosmetic sin,
the kind of thing a media producer does to keep the audience focused on the
main message, rather than a fundamental deception that distorts the main
conclusions of Friis-Christensen’s work. We have now considered, then, the two most
serious allegations against the film concerning the most serious
accusation possible: fabrication and misrepresentation of data. And we have
also considered the substance of the complaint that involves “two of the
film’s contributors.” There isn’t much here. SOURCES CITED IN THIS FOOTNOTE: [a] http://www.ofcomswindlecomplaint.net/FullComplaint/p4.htm [b] ‘The
global-warmers were bound to attack, but why are they so feeble?’; Telegraph;
18 March 200; by Martin Durkin [c] “C4 accused of
falsifying data in documentary on climate change”; The Independent; 8
May 2007; by Steve Connor, Science Editor [13] Complaint to Ofcom Regarding “The Great Global Warming Swindle”; Lead
Authors: Nathan Rive, Dr Brian Jackson, Dave Rado;
last updated 11/06/2007; pp.44-45 [14] Complaint
to Ofcom Regarding “The Great Global Warming
Swindle”; Lead Authors: Nathan Rive, Dr Brian Jackson, Dave Rado; last udated 11/06/2007;
p.45 [15] “Climate Emails Stoke Debate:
Scientists' Leaked Correspondence Illustrates Bitter Feud over Global
Warming”; Wall Street Journal; NOVEMBER 23, 2009; by Keith Johnson [15a] “SURFACE
TEMPERATURE RECORDS: POLICY DRIVEN DECEPTION?”; Science and Public Policy
Institute; January 7, 2010; by Joseph D’Aleo and
Anthony Watts; pp.4-7, 33. [15b] Science Behind Global Warming
Doesn't Uphold Scrutiny; NCPA's Experts Available to Discuss Climate Change
Science; U.S. Newswire, October 30, 2003 Thursday, National Desk, 495 words [16] Farmer’s Almanac: National Wildlife Federation: [17] “WAITING FOR GLOBAL COOLING”;
by Robert Fawcett and David Jones; National Climate Centre, Australian Bureau
of Meteorology, Melbourne, Australia. (April 2008) [17a] The following was reported in the Sunday Telegraph: [Quote from Sunday
Telegraph begins here] “...[N]othing has been more disconcerting... than the methods
used by promoters of the warming cause over the years to plug some of the
glaring holes in their scientific argument. Another
example last week was the much-publicised claim,
contradicting all previous evidence, that Antarctica, the coldest continent,
is in fact warming up, Antarctica has long been a major embarrassment to the warmists. Al Gore and Co may have wanted to scare us that
the continent, which contains 90 per cent of ice on the planet, is heating up
because that would be the source of all the meltwater
which they claim will raise sea levels by 20 feet. However, to
provide their pictures of ice-shelves "the size of Texas'' calving off
into the sea, they have had to draw on one tiny region, the Antarctic
Peninsula - the only part that has been warming. The vast mass of Antarctica,
all satellite evidence has shown, has been getting colder over the past 30
years. Last year's sea-ice cover was 30 per cent above average. So it
predictably made headlines last week when a new study, from a team led by
Professor Eric Steig, claimed to prove that the
Antarctic has been heating up after all. The usual supporters were called in
to whoop up its historic importance. It was made a cover story by Nature and
heavily promoted by the BBC. This, crowed journalists such as Newsweek's
Sharon Begley, would really be one in the eye for the "deniers'' and
"contrarians''. But then a good many experts began to examine
just what new evidence had been used to justify this dramatic finding. It
turned out that it was produced by a computer model based on combining the
satellite evidence since 1979 with temperature readings from surface weather
stations. The problem with Antarctica, though, is that
has so few weather stations. So what the computer had been programmed to do,
by a formula not yet revealed, was to estimate the data those missing weather
stations would have come up with if they had existed. In other words, while
confirming that the satellite data have indeed shown the Antarctic as cooling
since 1979, the study relied ultimately on pure guesswork, to show that in
the past 50 years the continent has warmed - by just one degree Fahrenheit. One of the
first to express astonishment was Dr Kenneth Trenberth,
a senior scientist with the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) and a convinced believer in global warming, who wryly observed
"it is hard to make data where none exists''. A disbelieving Ross Hayes,
an atmospheric scientist who has visited the Antarctic for Nasa, sent Professor Steig a
caustic email ending: "With statistics you can make numbers go to any
conclusion you want. It saddens me to see members of the scientific community
do this for media coverage.'' But it was
also noticed that among the members of Steig's team
was Michael Mann, author of the "hockey stick'', the most celebrated of
all attempts by the warmists to rewrite the
scientific evidence to promote their cause. The greatest embarrassment for
the believers in man-made global warming is the fact that the world was
significantly warmer in the Middle Ages than now. "We must get rid of
the Medieval Warm Period,'' as one contributor to the IPCC famously said in
an unguarded moment. It was Dr Mann who duly obliged by getting his
computer-model to produce a graph shaped like a hockey stick, eliminating the
medieval warming and showing recent temperatures curving up to an
unprecedented high. This instantly
became the warmists' chief icon, and made the centrepiece of the IPCC's 2001 report. But Mann's
selective use of data and the flaws in his computer model were then so
devastatingly torn apart that it has become the most discredited artefact in the history of science. The fact that
Dr Mann is behind the new study is, alas, all part of an ongoing pattern. But
this will not prevent the paper being cited ad nauseam by everyone from the
BBC to Al Gore. So, regardless of the science, and until the politicians wake
up to how they have been duped, what threatens to become the most costly
flight from reality in history will roll remorselessly on its way. [Quote from Sunday
Telegraph ends here] SOURCE: The Sunday Telegraph (United Kingdom);
January 25, 2009 Sunday; SCIENTISTS FIND GAPING HOLES IN POLAR ICE FACTS; by
Christopher Booker; 748 words [17b]
Usoskin, I. G., Schüssler,
M., Solanki, S. K., & Mursula,
K. (2005). Solar Activity over the Last 1150 Years: Does it Correlate with
Climate? In F. Favata, G. Hussain,
& B. Battrick (Eds.), 13th Cool Stars Workshop.
Hamburg. [17c] http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm [18] “SURFACE TEMPERATURE RECORDS:
POLICY DRIVEN DECEPTION?”; Science and Public Policy Institute; January 7,
2010; by Joseph D’Aleo and Anthony Watts; pp.4-7,
33. [19] “Society to review climate
message”; BBC News; Thursday, 27 May 2010; By Roger Harrabin
Environment analyst |
████████████████████████ “The bitter winter afflicting much of
the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler
weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s
most eminent climate scientists. Their predictions – based on an
analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic
oceans – challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply
cherished beliefs, such as the claim that the North Pole will be free of ice
in summer by 2013. According to the US National Snow and
Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000
square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most committed global
warming activists do not dispute this.” —Daily Mail (Jan 2010) ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Global cooling ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ Farmer’s Almanac (Jan 2010): “Last year, the 2009 Farmers’ Almanac predicted an exceptionally
long, cold winter for most regions. As promised, bitter cold and heavy snow
punished much of the nation.
. . . The 193rd edition of the Farmers’
Almanac warns that this winter’s frigid forecast offers no respite in
sight. . . National Wildlife Federation (Jan
2010): “Global warming is having a seemingly peculiar effect
on winter weather. . . ████████████████████████ Notify me of new HIR pieces!
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
