Observation shows climate sensitivity low

8 May, 2010 by

Roy Spencer

Note that this result is obtained from actual observations of the climate system not flaky computer models. Roy Spencer explains:

Arguably the single most important scientific issue – and unresolved question – in the global warming debate is climate sensitivity. Will increasing carbon dioxide cause warming that is so small that it can be safely ignored (low climate sensitivity)? Or will it cause a global warming Armageddon (high climate sensitivity)?

The answer depends upon the net radiative feedback: the rate at which the Earth loses extra radiant energy with warming. Climate sensitivity is mostly determined by changes in clouds and water vapor in response to the small, direct warming influence from (for instance) increasing carbon dioxide concentrations.

…

A net feedback of 6 operating on the warming caused by a doubling of atmospheric CO2 late in this century would correspond to only about 0.5 deg. C of warming. This is well below the 3.0 deg. C best estimate of the IPCC, and even below the lower limit of 1.5 deg. C of warming that the IPCC claims to be 90% certain of.

How Does this Compare to the IPCC Climate Models?

In comparison, we find that none of the 17 IPCC climate models (those that have sufficient data to do the same calculations) exhibit this level of negative feedback when similar statistics are computed from output of either their 20th Century simulations, or their increasing-CO2 simulations. Those model-based values range from around 2 to a little over 4.

These results suggest that the sensitivity of the real climate system is less than that exhibited by ANY of the IPCC climate models. This will end up being a serious problem for global warming predictions. You see, while modelers claim that the models do a reasonably good job of reproducing the average behavior of the climate system, it isn’t the average behavior we are interested in. It is how the average behavior will CHANGE.

And the above results show that not one of the IPCC climate models behaves like the real climate system does when it comes to feedbacks during interannual climate variations…and feedbacks are what determine how serious manmade global warming will be.

Read it here. (h/t WUWT)

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Idiotic Comment of the Day: Penny Wong

8 May, 2010 by

Close those minds

Tony Abbott dares to suggest that school students should be open-minded and sceptical in their thinking on climate change and earns this rebuke from Penny Wong:

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said it was “irresponsible and disappointing” for the Liberal leader to encourage climate-change scepticism in the classroom. (source)

Because in your mind Penny, unless you are a true believer and switch off any critical thought you’re a heretic that should be burned at the stake, right? Let’s bring up a generation of children who can’t think for themselves and believe whatever the government tells them.

And I notice that Wong doesn’t complain about the alarmist climate indoctrination many students receive from their teachers every day? Strangely silent on that one.

P.S. Notice how The Australian spins the headline (“Abbott evokes Jesus…”) to make Abbott out to be some religious fruitcake as well, when in fact he was simply referring to the Roman warm period…

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Yet another whinging letter from climate scientists

7 May, 2010 by

Still an embarrassment

Climate scientists can sense they’re being found out. You can always tell, because they start writing bleating letters to journals banging their fists and saying “It’s not fair” like toddlers who don’t get their own way. And yes, another one appears today in the pages of Science. You can read the full text at the Guardian (of course) here. The opening paragraph sets the tone:

We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular. All citizens should understand some basic scientific facts. There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions; science never absolutely proves anything. When someone says that society should wait until scientists are absolutely certain before taking any action, it is the same as saying society should never take action. For a problem as potentially catastrophic as climate change, taking no action poses a dangerous risk for our planet. [and our wallets – Ed]

And our own chief scientist Penny Sackett can’t support it quickly enough. Sackett is a regular on these pages (see here and here) for her extreme views on climate change, and she still hasn’t learnt that being a scientist is all about free-thinking and impartial enquiry, not eco-Marxist environmental advocacy:

AUSTRALIA’S chief scientists Professor Penny Sackett has backed a group of eminent international scientists calling for urgent action on climate change.

Professor Sackett said governments everywhere needed to show more leadership on climate change action.

“Even if each one of us on the face of the earth stopped emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow, not another ounce into the atmosphere, the temperature would still rise,” she told ABC radio today.

“I would say that every delay makes it harder for ourselves in the future. I’d like us to also think about how much more difficult it makes it for the next generation.”

In their open letter published in the journal Science, the group of 250 scientists called for rationale [sic] debate and not to have discussion deflected by extreme views. (source)

Rational debate? Don’t make me laugh. And “extreme views” in this context means anything that challenges the pseudoscience of An Inconvenient Truth, I guess. And then there is the inevitable victim status plea for the sympathy vote. The letter reads:

“We also call for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them.”

You have to laugh, don’t you. So let’s get this straight: destroying emails is innuendo perhaps? Fudging data is innuendo maybe? If these guys were accountants or lawyers they would understand this concept better – because they would be in prison.

Just more evidence that the consensus scientists can see their cash cow being sent to market, and they are doing everything to keep their precious funds flowing in. Sorry guys, the public (who are far more intelligent than you have ever given them credit for) are not falling for it any more.

UPDATE: And a timely Galaxy opinion poll demonstrates that exact point:

Two out of three Australians are not convinced climate change is man-made, and even those who do believe it is aren’t prepared to pay much to fix it, a new poll shows.

A Galaxy Poll, commissioned by the conservative Institute of Public Affairs, found 35 per cent of respondents blamed humans for global warming.

Fully 26 per cent believed it was just part of a natural cycle, while 38 per cent remained uncertain. [Total 64% – Ed]

Thirty-five per cent said they would not be prepared to pay anything to generate cleaner energy and fight global warming.

Of those who believed climate change to be man-made, 27 per cent said they would be prepared to pay only $100 or less a year in increased tax and utility costs. (source)

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Daily Bayonet GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

7 May, 2010 by

Skewering the clueless

As always, a great read!

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ABC's Catalyst: increased CO2 is bad for plants

6 May, 2010 by

Cassava, soon to be cyanide if we keep driving SUVs

Another week, another “climate” scare story from Catalyst. The ETS is dead and nobody’s interested in reducing CO2 to “tackle climate change” any more, so the ABC goes looking for another reason to cripple Western economies and send our standards of living back to the Dark Ages.

And they find a corker. You thought increasing CO2 in the atmosphere would be good for plants? Wrong. It’s bad, and the ABC’s “science” programme jumps on this research without pausing for breath. Brilliant. Forget global warming, forget how the majority of plants would benefit from increased CO2, forget how we are actually living in a CO2 starved atmosphere. Now it’s “food security” that everyone’s worrying about, thanks to reduced nutrition and increased toxins:

Dr Graham Phillips
The next big food issue could be how rising levels of carbon dioxide are affecting our fruit and vegies. Now we know that plants love CO2 so rising levels of it will affect their metabolisms and it seems almost certain that for many foods the levels of nutrition will go down and for some toxin levels will go up. Both serious issues when you are trying to feed a world with an increasing population.

Dr Ros Gleadow
We’re tracking worst case scenario with carbon dioxide at the moment [what? – Ed] and we need to predict what sort of things are going to happen in the future.

Maybe they could predict the future with some dodgy second-hand climate models bought off the back of a truck from Michael Mann. That should do the trick. Or Madame Za Za’s crystal ball, perhaps? Just like last week: more scary music, more alarmism. And they’ve found a plant, cassava, that links rising CO2 levels with increased levels of cyanide. Almost a Holy Grail for the ABC’s alarmism department – cut CO2 or you’ll die of cyanide poisoning:

NARRATION
Back in the lab Ros’s group have been looking at how rising CO2 will affect the cyanide levels of cassava.

Dr Ros Gleadow
We grew cassava at three different concentrations of carbon dioxide. Today’s air, one and a half times the amount of carbon dioxide and twice the carbon dioxide of today. And we found that cyanogen concentration in the leaves increased.

Dr Graham Phillips
So as we get more Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere these will contain more cyanide?

Emeritus Prof. Howard Bradbury
More cyanide yes. The yield from the roots which is the main thing, will go down. So that is the most worrying aspect.

And the last word to Dr Gleadow:

Dr Ros Gleadow
I don’t want to be a gloom and doom person. I want to think okay clover’s going to become more toxic, let’s develop other cultivars. If cassava’s going to become more toxic, let’s look at some other cultivars. Let’s look at other ways we can deal with this problem.

Don’t say that! It’ll spoil the story!

Read/watch it here.

Filed Under: ABC Bias, Climate Tagged With: ,

ABC: quotes "residents" in climate change article

6 May, 2010 by

Victim of climate change?

The ABC just can’t stop, can they? Any authority, no matter how worthless, will do in advancing their pre-conceived agenda of climate alarmism. In another bleeding heart article on the same government report discussed here, the ABC quotes the opinion of local residents as somehow worthy of reporting. Not only that but throwing in “Kakadu” is a cheap shot to grab the punters’ attention, with the breathless headline “Climate change could hit Kakadu food sources”:

[The report] says a projected sea level rise of 20 centimetres would irreversibly change the shape of rivers like the South Alligator and alter tidal flows and vegetation cover.

Rising sea levels would also reduce the availability of traditional food sources for Indigenous communities, like magpie geese, barramundi and freshwater turtles.

The report did not discuss the impact of climate change on mining projects, but residents raised concerns about how the Ranger uranium mine, near Jabiru, would cope with more intense cyclones and heavier rainfall.

So the report didn’t even mention mining, but the residents have raised concerns, and those concerns conveniently happen to fit the alarmist agenda of the ABC, so they get published uncritically! Forget the fact that more intense cyclones and heavier rainfall are chestnuts that has been debunked over and over again. And anyway, I thought climate change caused drought? Who cares. It’s just whatever fits the requirement at the time.

And what about the concerns of other residents that climate change is a crock and a complete waste of taxpayers money? No, they won’t get published, because according to the biased ABC, people who hold those views are just dumb bogans.

Read it here.

Filed Under: ABC Bias, Climate Tagged With: ,

Rudd government still wasting money on climate change

6 May, 2010 by

Now wash your hands (of responsibility)

Despite the ditching of the ETS, the Rudd government is still spending truckloads of money on the empty shell of its climate change policy. As The Daily Telegraph reported last week, a bloated government department is still being run for the purpose of administering a non-existent CPRS:

TAXPAYERS will fork out $90 million a year to keep more than 400 public servants employed within the federal Climate Change Department – despite most now having nothing to do until 2013.

More than 60 of them are classified as senior executive staff on salaries between $168,000 and $298,000 a year. Their salary bill alone will cost an estimated $12 million every year.

A further $8 million will also be paid in rent for plush offices at Canberra’s Constitution Place until 2012, where it is believed 500 new computers will be delivered this week.

It can be revealed that despite Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s decision on Tuesday to suspend the failed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme until at least 2013, the department has ruled out plans to cut back staff.

A formal response by department secretary Martin Parkinson to a Senate estimates hearing on Tuesday – the same day as the scheme’s suspension – claimed the department would not offer redundancies. (source)

Not only that, but thousands of (your taxpayer) dollars are still being wasted on pointless “climate change” reports, like this one reported on the ABC this morning:

A new report has found the health of Indigenous Australians living in coastal areas such as the Torres Strait could be at risk due to climate change.

The report commissioned by the Federal Government found climate change will elevate existing health risks for Indigenous people and create a whole new set of health problems.

They include respiratory illness and increasing incidence of heat stress and dehydration.

The loss of livelihoods and population displacement will also have a serious impact on the health and nutrition of those living in remote island communities.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong [who she? – Ed] delivered the report while touring the Torres Strait. (source)

Now aren’t you glad that your hard earned money is being spent so wisely?

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Dr Roy Spencer: "The Great Global Warming Blunder"

5 May, 2010 by

Must read

Dr Roy Spencer has written a book summarising the findings of his soon to be published (and peer-reviewed) work on probably the most important aspect of climate science: climate sensitivity:

The most obvious way for warming to be caused naturally is for small, natural fluctuations in the circulation patterns of the atmosphere and ocean to result in a 1% or 2% decrease in global cloud cover. Clouds are the Earth’s sunshade, and if cloud cover changes for any reason, you have global warming — or global cooling.

How could the experts have missed such a simple explanation? Because they have convinced themselves that only a temperature change can cause a cloud cover change, and not the other way around. The issue is one of causation. They have not accounted for cloud changes causing temperature changes.

The experts have simply mixed up cause and effect when observing how clouds and temperature vary. The book reveals a simple way to determine the direction of causation from satellite observations of global average temperature and cloud variations. And that new tool should fundamentally change how we view the climate system.

Blunder also addresses a second major mistake that results from ignoring the effect of natural cloud variations on temperature: it results in the illusion that the climate system is very sensitive. The experts claim that, since our climate system is very sensitive, then our carbon dioxide emissions are all that is needed to explain global warming. There is no need to look for alternative explanations.

But I show that the experts have merely reasoned themselves in a circle on this subject. When properly interpreted, our satellite observations actually reveal that the system is quite IN-sensitive. And an insensitive climate system means that nature does not really care whether you travel by jet, or how many hamburgers or steaks you eat.

Read Dr Spencer’s post here. A copy of the book is on its way to me right now, and a more detailed review will follow.

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ABC: yet more scaremongering

5 May, 2010 by

More like science fiction

Another day, another hysterical climate piece from your publicly funded national broadcaster. This time, researchers claim that when wet bulb temperatures (dew point, in other words) reach 35 degrees, it will become “uncomfortable” for humans. They have used climate models to predict when this will occur, and we all know how reliable and accurate they are. The ABC uncritically publishes it all in its science pages, under the headline “Warmer planet to stress humans: study”:

Professor Steven Sherwood of University of New South Wales and Associate Professor Matthew Huber of Purdue University in Illinois, used climate models to predict where and when temperatures will increase to uncomfortable levels.

They found a global temperature increase of 7°C above pre-industrial levels would push temperatures in some regions above 35°C for extended periods, resulting in heat stress across the whole population.

Sherwood says while heat-related deaths among the elderly and young already occur, global warming will result in more of the population suffering.

“What we’re talking about here is something a bit different – these limits apply to a healthy person,” he says.

But the final paragraphs tell the real story:

Sherwood says a 7°C increase isn’t likely to happen until next century, but he says it’s important to understand the impact should it occur.

“When you’re planning sensibly for anything you plan for the worst case scenario,” he says. [In other words, take the precautionary principle to its logical conclusion – Ed]

“We’re saying this is the worst scenario, we’re not saying it’s going to happen soon, but to ignore it seems foolhardy.”

The researchers conclude further warming would have a more drastic impact.

“If warmings of 10°C were really to occur in [the] next three centuries, the area of land likely rendered uninhabitable by heat stress would dwarf that affects by rising sea level,” they write.

The average global temperature has increased by 0.8°C since pre-industrial times. Some scientists and environmental groups are pushing for limits on human-produced greenhouse gas emissions to limit the increase to no more than 2°C.

In other words, this is a worst-case, precautionary-principle-gone-mad study, which somehow makes it onto the ABC as mainstream science.

Read it here.

Filed Under: ABC Bias, Climate Tagged With: ,

Backflip backfires

4 May, 2010 by

Rudd's gymnastics coach demonstrates the back flip

Kevin Rudd (he who has no political convictions whatsoever) thought that by dumping the ETS he would avoid having to be beaten repeatedly round the ears in the run up to an election by an Opposition wielding a stick bearing the words “Great big new tax”. Unfortunately, his political cowardice in not forcing a double dissolution on climate change, which is what he should have done if he truly believed it to be the greatest moral challenge of our time, is backfiring, as the public realise that he is a spineless and gutless prime minister. As The Australian reports:

THE Labor government has lost its position as the leader on climate change for the first time, following Kevin Rudd’s decision to dump plans for an emissions trading scheme.

Having always led the Coalition, at times by a margin of more than two to one on the question of which party would be best able to handle the issue of climate change, the Labor government is now equal to the Coalition opposition and, essentially, the Greens.

The Prime Minister’s sudden decision to push off any attempt to get the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme through this parliament and possibly not until after the election after next has led to a dramatic slump in support for Labor on climate change.

Under pressure from Tony Abbott’s political campaign against the ETS as a “great big tax” and faced with Coalition and Greens opposition in the Senate, Mr Rudd declared last week that the timetable for implementation of any CPRS would be “extended” until 2013 at least.

Read it here.

UPDATE: Of course, the warmist media is trying to spin this story as demonstrating that the Australian people really, really wanted a huge tax on everything for no environmental benefit whatsoever, and they are deserting Rudd because he isn’t giving them one… Believe that at your peril.

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