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GLOBAL
WARMING an hir
series 1 2 3 4
“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 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 1. J. M. Barnola, D.
Raynaud, Y. S. Korotkevich, C. Lorius, Nature 329, 408 (1987) .
2. A. Neftel, E.
Moor, H. Oeschger, B. Stauffer, ibid. 315, 45 (1985) . 3. 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. 4. C. D. Keeling, T.
P. Whorf, M. Wahlen, J. van der Pflicht, Nature 375, 666 (1995)
[CrossRef] . 5. M. Leuenberger,
U. Siegenthaler, C. C. Langway, ibid. 357, 488 (1992) [CrossRef]. 6. H. J. Smith,
H. Fischer, M. Wahlen, D. Mastroianni, B. Deck, in
preparation. 7. C. Lorius, J.
Jouzel, D. Raynaud, J. Hansen, H. Le Treut, Nature 347, 139
(1990) . 8. 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 9. A. Indermühle et
al., Nature, in press. 10. J. Schwander, et
al., J. Geophys. Res. 98, 2831 (1993) . 11. J.-M. Barnola, P.
Pimienta, D. Raynaud, Y. S. Korotkevich, Tellus Ser. B 43, 83
(1991) [CrossRef]. 12. 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. 13. T. Blunier, et
al., Nature 394, 739 (1998) [CrossRef] . 14. E. J. Steig, et
al., Science 282, 92 (1998) [Abstract/Free Full Text] . 15. A. Neftel, H.
Oeschger, T. Staffelbach, B. Stauffer, Nature 331, 609 (1988) .
16. B. Stauffer, et
al., ibid. 392, 59 (1998) [CrossRef]. 17. J. Jouzel, et al., Clim. Dyn. 12,
513 (1996) . 18. J. R. Petit, et
al., Nature 387, 359 (1997) [CrossRef] . 19. S. J. Johnsen, W.
Dansgaard, H. B. Clausen, C. C. Langway Jr., ibid. 235, 429
(1972) [CrossRef] [Web of Science]. 20. 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 21. T. Blunier, et
al., Geophys. Res. Lett. 24, 2683 (1997) [CrossRef] [Web of Science]. 22. D. G. Martinson, et al., Quat. Res. 27,
1 (1987) . 23. J. Imbrie et
al., in Milankovitch and Climate, A. Berger et al.,
Eds. (Reidel, Hingham, MA, 1984), pp.
269-305. 24. 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. . . ████████████████████████ |
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