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Some Personal Testimonies |
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Article in The Daily Telegraph Monday, October 12, 2009. Climate change sceptics have welcomed a "surprise" BBC decision to give prominence to evidence from scientists that there could
be 30 years of "global cooling". Perhaps then there is a little hope that the AGW scam will one day be shown to be the nonsense that it actually is! Unless the BBC or some other influential body or person starts to tell the truth it simply will not get on the front pages and without that there is no hope of combating the farce. In the meantime I'll wager that we won't be seeing or hearing much from Paul Hudson in the near future, the BBC doesn't like its people going against their propaganda diktats. Scientific Spectacle - I really like this one! A letter in The Sunday Telegraph, 20th September 2009 by Dr. James Farquhar, Barr, Ayrshire. As a professional scientist, I am perplexed to watch the ridiculous spectacle of some of the worlds top scientists making such fools of themselves over global warming. One must come to suspect that what started out as a mistaken concept has now got so out of hand that some leading scientists are having to indulge in questionable tactics to save face. I say to your columnist Christopher Booker: keep up the pressure. This is much closer to home!
During a recent warm afternoon some friends and I got talking about global warming and I was pleased to hear that they
too were sceptics.
Pat said that her Uncle Dick, a Ph.D in meteorology, has no time for the Anthropogenic Global Warming theory.
Indeed, he was more inclined to predict that we were heading for a rather cold period. I have met this man and look forward
to having a chat with him when next we meet.
Together with more than 100 other real scientists, Uncle Dick has signed a petition directed at
Barack Obama, pointing out that his views on global warming does not receive universal scientific support. These web pages further attest to
that fact. This is what President-Elect Barack Obama said on November 19, 2008 :- "Few challenges facing America
and the world are more urgent than combating climate change. The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear." This is what the more than 100 scientists, nearly every one a Ph.D, want the
U.S. President to understand :- "With all due respect Mr. President, that is not true. We, the undersigned scientists, maintain that the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated.
Surface temperature changes over the past century have been episodic and modest and there has been no net global warming for over a decade now. The petition can be viewed here http://www.cato.org/special/climatechange/alternate_version.html or pdf here. Well, they can try to get their message through but Obama seems to be a very blinkered man! And I very much doubt that his advisors will allow him to see anything that does not agree with their AGW, anti-carbon, stance. Still, pigs might fly! A Climate Change Reality Check By Glen Meakem, Pittsburgh Live. Jan 25, 2009 One year ago, I believed that man-made global warming was true, with temperatures rising dangerously due to
increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in our atmosphere. I also believed that a consensus of the international
scientific community supported these conclusions. I based these beliefs on information from the popular press,
television and political leaders. Then I began some real research on the topic. I quickly discovered three critical things: To understand the science of climate change, you must first know that very accurate historic temperature data going back thousands of years are available through analysis of dead corals in ocean sediments as well as ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica. You must also understand what the Earth was like 18,000 years ago. Back then, our planet was at the peak of its most recent major ice age. At 18°C, average ocean surface temperatures were 5°C lower than they are today. Half of North America and Eurasia were covered by massive ice sheets thousands of feet thick and sea level was more than 400 feet lower than today. Then the Earth began a dramatic warming and the ice age ended. The increase in the Earth’s temperatures over 18,000 years has not been steady. In just the past 1,000 years, average ocean surface temperatures have fluctuated between 22°C and 25°C. Today the average temperature is 23°C. Nine-hundred years ago, when CO2 levels were lower than today, global temperatures reached what is called the “medieval temperature maximum”. The world was warmer than today. Sea surface temperatures were 24°C and the southern tip of Greenland, which had been settled by Vikings, was actually green and habitable with a European agricultural lifestyle. Historians call this "The Medieval Warm Period". Unfortunately for the residents of Greenland, temperatures soon began to fall. The Earth reached the depth of what historians call the “Little Ice Age” in about 1600 with an average ocean surface water temperature of 22°C. With no help from humans, global temperatures rose significantly from 1600 to 1900. It is true that the levels of CO2 in our atmosphere have been rising over the past hundred years as global society has industrialized. But increased CO2 stimulates increased plant and tree growth. And there are many natural ways CO2 is created, including by the breathing of humans and animals. CO2 is essential to life and feedback loops are complex. Further, temperatures have not risen in correlation with the increase in CO2. Global temperatures actually decreased between 1940 and 1975, increased from 1976 through 1998 and remained relatively unchanged between 1998 and 2006. Since 2006, temperatures have declined. This year, 2009, record snowfall and low temperatures are being reported all over the world, from the Americas through Asia to Europe. In just a few examples, this winter the European nation of Slovenia set a record low temperature of minus 49°C and travel in Madrid was hindered by the deepest snowfall in years. Record snowfall and winter storms have forced Minnesota officials to cancel an annual dog-sled race and closed schools and roads in Las Vegas. Even Malibu, California, and Houston, Texas, have experienced rare snowfall this winter. Lower temperatures have also led to an expansion in Alaska’s glaciers. Once you look beyond the political beliefs of the man-made global warming or climate change movement, the scientific truth is that there is no evidence of a correlation between atmospheric temperatures and CO2 levels. The idea that there is a “consensus” among scientists supporting man-made global warming also is plainly untrue. According to the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Minority Staff Report released this winter, “more than 650 international scientists” who are considered experts in the atmosphere disagree with the global warming theory. This is 12 times the number of scientists who authored the pro-global warming “United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 Summary for Policymakers.” While no correlation has been demonstrated between CO2 levels and temperature, early data do suggest a strong correlation between changes in surface activity on the sun (sunspots) and temperatures on Earth. So, it might be that the same forces that have guided the changes in Earth’s atmosphere for eternity are still at work and still beyond human control. Despite the science, many who advocate dramatic, state-dictated changes in our economy to reduce carbon levels view man-made global warming as “sacrosanct”, an indisputable, dogmatic fact. As we debate climate change legislation, which would have negative economic effects on all of us, it is time to move beyond belief to scientific understanding. CLIMATE CHANGE Madam Chairman and members, thank you for the opportunity to appear before the Committee on Environment and Public Works to testify on Climate Change. My name is William Happer, and I am the Cyrus Fogg Bracket Professor of Physics at Princeton University. I am not a climatologist, but I don’t think any of the other witnesses are either. I do work in the related field of atomic, molecular and optical physics. I have spent my professional life studying the interactions of visible and infrared radiation with gases – one of the main physical phenomena behind the greenhouse effect. I have published over 200 papers in peer reviewed scientific journals. I am a member of a number of professional organizations, including the American Physical Society and the National Academy of Sciences. I have done extensive consulting work for the US Government and Industry. I also served as the Director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy (DOE) from 1990 to 1993, where I supervised all of DOE’s work on climate change. I have come here today as a concerned citizen to express my personal views, and those of many like me, about US climate-change policy. These are not official views of my main employer, Princeton University, nor of any other organization with which I am associated. Let me state clearly where I probably agree with the other witnesses. We have been in a period of global warming over the past 200 years, but there have been several periods, like the last ten years, when the warming has ceased, and there have even been periods of substantial cooling, as from 1940 to 1970. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) have increased from about 280 to 380 parts per million over past 100 years. The combustion of fossil fuels, coal, oil and natural gas, has contributed to the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. And finally, increasing concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere will cause the earth’s surface to warm. The key question is: will the net effect of the warming, and any other effects of the CO2, be good or bad for humanity? I believe that the increase of CO2 is not a cause for alarm and will be good for mankind. I predict that future historians will look back on this period much as we now view the period just before the passage of the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution to prohibit “the manufacturing, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors.” At the time, the 18th amendment seemed to be exactly the right thing to do – who wanted to be in league with demon rum? It was the 1917 version of saving the planet. More than half the states enacted prohibition laws before the 18th amendment was ratified. Only one state, Rhode Island, voted against the 18th amendment. Two states, Illinois and Indiana, never got around to voting and all the rest voted for it. There were many thoughtful people, including a majority of Rhode Islanders, who thought that prohibition might do more harm than good. But they were completely outmatched by the temperance movement, whose motives and methods had much in common with the movement to stop climate change. Deeply sincere people thought they were saving humanity from the evils of alcohol, just as many people now sincerely think they are saving humanity from the evils of CO2. Prohibition was a mistake, and our country has probably still not fully recovered from the damage it did. Institutions like organized crime got their start in that era. Drastic limitations on CO2 are likely to damage our country in analogous ways. But what about the frightening consequences of increasing levels of CO2 that we keep hearing about? In a word, they are wildly exaggerated, just as the purported benefits of prohibition were wildly exaggerated. Let me turn now to the science and try to explain why I and many scientists like me are not alarmed by increasing levels of CO2. The earth’s climate really is strongly affected by the greenhouse effect, although the physics is not the same as that which makes real, glassed-in greenhouses work. Without greenhouse warming, the earth would be much too cold to sustain its current abundance of life. However, at least 90% of greenhouse warming is due to water vapour and clouds. Carbon dioxide is a bit player. There is little argument in the scientific community that a direct effect of doubling the CO2 concentration will be a small increase of the earth’s temperature -- on the order of one degree. Additional increments of CO2 will cause relatively less direct warming because we already have so much CO2 in the atmosphere that it has blocked most of the infrared radiation that it can. It is like putting an additional ski hat on your head when you already have a nice warm one below it, but you are only wearing a windbreaker. To really get warmer, you need to add a warmer jacket. The IPCC thinks that this extra jacket is water vapour and clouds. Since most of the greenhouse effect for the earth is due to water vapour and clouds, added CO2 must substantially increase water’s contribution to lead to the frightening scenarios that are bandied about. The buzz word here is that there is “positive feedback.” With each passing year, experimental observations further undermine the claim of a large positive feedback from water. In fact, observations suggest that the feedback is close to zero and may even be negative. That is, water vapour and clouds may actually diminish the already small global warming expected from CO2, not amplify it. The evidence here comes from satellite measurements of infrared radiation escaping from the earth into outer space, from measurements of sunlight reflected from clouds and from measurements of the temperature the earth’s surface or of the troposphere, the roughly 10 km thick layer of the atmosphere above the earth’s surface that is filled with churning air and clouds, heated from below at the earth’s surface, and cooled at the top by radiation into space. But the climate is warming and CO2 is increasing. Doesn’t this prove that CO2 is causing global warming through the greenhouse effect? No, the current warming period began about 1800 at the end of the little ice age, long before there was an appreciable increase of CO2. There have been similar and even larger warmings several times in the 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age. These earlier warmings clearly had nothing to do with the combustion of fossil fuels. The current warming also seems to be due mostly to natural causes, not to increasing levels of carbon dioxide. Over the past ten years there has been no global warming, and in fact a slight cooling. This is not at all what was predicted by the IPCC models. The climate has changed many times in the past with no help by mankind. Recall that the Romans grew grapes in Britain around the year 100, and Viking settlers prospered on small farms in Greenland for several centuries during the Medieval Climate Optimum around 1100. People have had an urge to control the climate throughout history so I suppose it is no surprise that we are at it again today. For example, in June of 1644, the Bishop of Geneva led a flock of believers to the face of a glacier that was advancing “by over a musket shot” every day. The glacier would soon destroy a village. The Bishop and his flock prayed over the glacier, and it is said to have stopped. The poor Vikings had long since abandoned Greenland where the advancing glaciers and cooling climate proved much less susceptible to prayer. Sometimes the obsession for control of the climate got a bit out of hand, as in the Aztec state, where the local scientific/religious establishment of the year 1500 had long since announced that the debate was over and that at least 20,000 human sacrifices a year were needed to keep the sun moving, the rain falling, and to stop climate change. The widespread dissatisfaction of the people who were unfortunate enough to be the source of these sacrifices played an important part in the success of the Spanish conquest of Mexico. The existence of climate variability in the past has long been an embarrassment to those who claim that all climate change is due to man and that man can control it. When I was a schoolboy, my textbooks on earth science showed a prominent “medieval warm period” at the time the Vikings settled Greenland, followed by a vicious “little ice age” that drove them out. So I was very surprised when I first saw the celebrated “hockey stick curve,” in the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC. I could hardly believe my eyes. Both the little ice age and the Medieval Warm Period were gone, and the newly revised temperature of the world since the year 1000 had suddenly become absolutely flat until the last hundred years when it shot up like the blade on a hockey stick. This was far from an obscure detail, and the hockey stick was trumpeted around the world as evidence that the end was near. We now know that the hockey stick has nothing to do with reality but was the result of incorrect handling of proxy temperature records and incorrect statistical analysis. There really was a little ice age and there really was a medieval warm period that was as warm or warmer than today. I bring up the hockey stick as a particularly clear example that the IPCC summaries for policy makers are not dispassionate statements of the facts of climate change. It is a shame, because many of the IPCC chapters are quite good. The whole hockey-stick episode reminds me of the motto of Orwell’s Ministry of Information in the novel “1984:” “He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.” The IPCC has made no serious attempt to model the natural variations of the earth’s temperature in the past. Whatever caused these large past variations, it was not due to people burning coal and oil. If you can’t model the past, where you know the answer pretty well, how can you model the future? Many of us are aware that we are living in an ice age, where we have hundred-thousand-year intervals of big continental glaciers that cover much of the land area of the northern hemisphere, interspersed with relative short interglacial intervals like the one we are living in now. By looking at ice cores from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, one can estimate past temperatures and atmospheric concentrations of CO2. Al Gore likes to display graphs of temperature and CO2 concentrations over the past million years or so, showing that when CO2 rises, the temperature also rises. Doesn’t this prove that the temperature is driven by CO2? Absolutely not! If you look carefully at these records, you find that first the temperature goes up, and then the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere goes up. There is a delay between a temperature increase and a CO2 increase of about 800 years. This casts serious doubt on CO2 as a climate driver because of the fundamental concept of causality. A cause must precede its effect. For example, I hear my furnace go on in the morning about six o’clock, and by about 7 o’clock, I notice that my house is now so warm that I have too many covers on my bed. It is time to get up. It would never occur to me to assume that the furnace started burning gas at 6 o’clock because the house got warm at 7 o’clock. Sure, temperature and gas burning are correlated, just like temperature and atmospheric levels of CO2. But the thing that changes first is the cause. In the case of the ice cores, the cause of increased CO2 is almost certainly the warming of the oceans. The oceans release dissolved CO2 when they warm up, just like a glass of beer rapidly goes flat in a warm room. If not CO2, then what really causes the warming at the end of the cold periods of ice ages? A great question and one of the reasons I strongly support research in climate. I keep hearing about the “pollutant CO2,” or about “poisoning the atmosphere” with CO2, or about minimizing our “carbon footprint.” This brings to mind another Orwellian pronouncement that is worth pondering: “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” CO2 is not a pollutant and it is not a poison and we should not corrupt the English language by depriving “pollutant” and “poison” of their original meaning. Our exhaled breath contains about 4% CO2. That is 40,000 parts per million, or about 100 times the current atmospheric concentration. CO2 is absolutely essential for life on earth. Commercial greenhouse operators often use CO2 as a fertilizer to improve the health and growth rate of their plants. Plants and our own primate ancestors evolved when the levels of atmospheric CO2 were about 1000 ppm, a level that we will probably not reach by burning fossil fuels, and far above our current level of about 380 ppm. We try to keep CO2 levels in our US Navy submarines no higher than 8,000 parts per million, about 20 time current atmospheric levels. Few adverse effects are observed at even higher levels. We are all aware that “the green revolution” has increased crop yields around the world. Part of this wonderful development is due to improved crop varieties, better use of mineral fertilizers, herbicides, etc. But no small part of the yield improvement has come from increased atmospheric levels of CO2. Plants photosynthesize more carbohydrates when they have more CO2. Plants are also more drought-tolerant with more CO2, because they need not “inhale” as much air to get the CO2 needed for photosynthesis. At the same time, the plants need not “exhale” as much water vapour when they are using air enriched in CO2. Plants decrease the number of stomata or air pores on their leaf surfaces in response to increasing atmospheric levels of CO2. They are adapted to changing CO2 levels and they prefer higher levels than those we have at present. If we really were to decrease our current level of CO2 of around 400 ppm to the 270 ppm that prevailed a few hundred years ago, we would lose some of the benefits of the green revolution. Crop yields will continue to increase as CO2 levels go up, since we are far from the optimum levels for plant growth. Commercial greenhouse operators are advised to add enough CO2 to maintain about 1000 ppm around their plants. Indeed, economic studies like those of Dr. Robert Mendelsohn at Yale University project that moderate warming is an overall benefit to mankind because of higher agricultural yields and many other reasons. I remember being forced to read Voltaire’s novel, Candide, when I was young. You recall that Dr. Pangloss repeatedly assured young Candide that he was living in “the best of all possible worlds,” presumably also with the best of all CO2 concentrations. That we are (or were) living at the best of all CO2 concentrations seems to be a tacit assumption of the IPCC executive summaries for policy makers. Enormous effort and imagination have gone into showing that increasing concentrations of CO2 will be catastrophic, cities will be flooded by sea-level rises that are ten or more times bigger than even IPCC predicts, there will be mass extinctions of species, billions of people will die, tipping points will render the planet a desert. A few months ago I read that global warming will soon bring on a devastating epidemic of kidney stones. If you write down all the ills attributed to global warming you fill up a very thick book. Much is made about tropical diseases like malaria and yellow fever devastating the populations of temperate climates because of the burning of fossil fuels and the subsequent warming of the earth. Many people who actually work with tropical diseases, notably Dr. Paul Reiter, a specialist on tropical diseases, have pointed out how silly all of this is. Perhaps I can add a few bits of history to illustrate this point. One of the first military expenditures of the Continental Congress in 1775 was $300 to purchase quinine for the Continental Army and to mitigate the effects of malaria. The Continental Congress moved from the then Capital of the United States , Philadelphia, to my home town of Princeton, New Jersey, in the summer of 1783 for two reasons. The first was that the Congress had not yet paid many soldiers of the Revolutionary War their promised wages, and disgruntled veterans were wandering up and down the streets of Philadelphia. Secondly, there were outbreaks of malaria in cities as far north as Boston. The Congress knew you were less likely to catch malaria in Princeton than in Philadelphia. In 1793 there was not only malaria, but a horrendous outbreak of yellow fever in Philadelphia. Many thousands of people died in a city with a population of about 50,000. And I should point out that Philadelphia was a bit cooler then than now, since the little ice age was just coming to an end. Controlling tropical diseases and many other diseases has little to do with temperature, and everything to do with curtailing the factors that cause the spread – notably mosquitoes in the case of malaria and yellow fever. Many of the frightening scenarios about global warming come from large computer calculations, “general circulation models,” that try to mimic the behaviour of the earth’s climate as more CO2 is added to the atmosphere. It is true that climate models use increasingly capable and increasingly expensive computers. But their predictions have not been very good. For example, none of them predicted the lack of warming that we have experienced during the past ten years. All the models assume the water feedback is positive, while satellite observations suggest that the feedback is zero or negative. Modelers have been wrong before. One of the most famous modeling disputes involved the physicist William Thompson, later Lord Kelvin, and the naturalist Charles Darwin. Lord Kelvin was a great believer in models and differential equations. Charles Darwin was not particularly facile with mathematics, but he took observations very seriously. For evolution to produce the variety of living and fossil species that Darwin had observed, the earth needed to have spent hundreds of millions of years with conditions not very different from now. With his mathematical models, Kelvin rather pompously demonstrated that the earth must have been a hellish ball of molten rock only a few tens of millions of years ago, and that the sun could not have been shining for more than about 30 million years. Kelvin was actually modeling what he thought was global and solar cooling. I am sorry to say that a majority of his fellow physicists supported Kelvin. Poor Darwin removed any reference to the age of the earth in later editions of the “Origin of the Species.” But Darwin was right the first time, and Kelvin was wrong. Kelvin thought he knew everything but he did not know about the atomic nucleus, radioactivity and nuclear reactions, all of which invalidated his elegant modeling calculations. This brings up the frequent assertion that there is a consensus behind the idea that there is an impending disaster from climate change, and that it may already be too late to avert this catastrophe, even if we stop burning fossil fuels now. We are told that only a few flat-earthers still have any doubt about the calamitous effects of continued CO2 emissions. There are a number of answers to this assertion. First, what is correct in science is not determined by consensus but by experiment and observations. Historically, the consensus is often wrong, and I just mentioned the incorrect consensus of modelers about the age of the earth and the sun. During the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 in Philadelphia the medical consensus was that you could cure almost anything by bleeding the patient. Benjamin Rush, George Washington’s Surgeon General during the War of Independence, and a brave man, stayed in Philadelphia throughout the yellow fever epidemic. He worked tirelessly to save the stricken by bleeding them, the consensus treatment of the day. A few cautious observers noticed that you were more likely to survive the yellow fever without the services of the great man. But Dr. Rush had plenty of high level-friends and he was backed up by the self-evident consensus, so he went ahead with his ministrations. In summary, a consensus is often wrong. Secondly, I do not think there is a consensus about an impending climate crisis. I personally certainly don’t believe we are facing a crisis unless we create one for ourselves, as Benjamin Rush did by bleeding his patients. Many others, wiser than I am, share my view. The number of those with the courage to speak out is growing. There may be an illusion of consensus. Like the temperance movement one hundred years ago the climate-catastrophe movement has enlisted the mass media, the leadership of scientific societies, the trustees of charitable foundations, and many other influential people to their cause. Just as editorials used to fulminate about the slippery path to hell behind the tavern door, hysterical op-ed’s lecture us today about the impending end of the planet and the need to stop climate change with bold political action. Many distinguished scientific journals now have editors who further the agenda of climate-change alarmism. Research papers with scientific findings contrary to the dogma of climate calamity are rejected by reviewers, many of whom fear that their research funding will be cut if any doubt is cast on the coming climate catastrophe. Speaking of the Romans, then invading Scotland in the year 83, the great Scottish chieftain Calgacus is quoted as saying “They make a desert and call it peace.” If you have the power to stifle dissent, you can indeed create the illusion of peace or consensus. The Romans have made impressive inroads into climate science. Certainly, it is a bit unnerving to read statements of Dr. James Hansen in the Congressional Record that climate sceptics are guilty of “high crimes against humanity and nature.” Even elementary school teachers and writers of children’s books are enlisted to terrify our children and to promote the idea of impending climate doom. Having observed the education of many children, including my own, I am not sure how effective the effort will be. Many children seem to do just the opposite of what they are taught. Nevertheless, children should not be force-fed propaganda, masquerading as science. Many of you may know that in 2007 a British Court ruled that if Al Gore’s book, “An Inconvenient Truth,” was used in public schools, the children had to be told of eleven particularly troubling inaccuracies. You can easily find a list of the inaccuracies on the internet, but I will mention one. The court ruled that it was not possible to attribute hurricane Katrina to CO2. Indeed, had we taken a few of the many billions of dollars we have been spending on climate change research and propaganda and fixed the dykes and pumps around the New Orleans, most of the damage from Hurricane Katrina could have been avoided. (See '35 Inconvenient Truths' below).The sea level is indeed rising, just as it has for the past 20,000 years since the end of the last ice age. Fairly accurate measurements of sea level have been available since about 1800. These measurements show no sign of any acceleration. The rising sea level can be a serious local problem for heavily-populated, low-lying areas like New Orleans, where land subsidence compounds the problem. But to think that limiting CO2 emissions will stop sea level rise is a dangerous illusion. It is also possible that the warming seas around Antarctica will cause more snowfall over the continent and will counteract the sea-level rise. In any case, the rising sea level is a problem that needs quick local action for locations like New Orleans rather than slow action globally. In closing, let me say again that we should provide adequate support to the many brilliant scientists, some at my own institution of Princeton University, who are trying to better understand the earth’s climate, now, in the past, and what it may be in the future. I regret that the climate-change issue has become confused with serious problems like secure energy supplies, protecting our environment, and figuring out where future generations will get energy supplies after we have burned all the fossil fuel we can find. We should not confuse these laudable goals with hysterics about carbon footprints. For example, when weighing pluses and minuses of the continued or increased use of coal, the negative issue should not be increased atmospheric CO2, which is probably good for mankind. We should focus on real issues like damage to the land and waterways by strip mining, inadequate remediation, hazards to miners, the release of real pollutants and poisons like mercury, other heavy metals, organic carcinogens, etc. Life is about making decisions and decisions are about trade-offs. The Congress can choose to promote investment in technology that addresses real problems and scientific research that will let us cope with real problems more efficiently. Or they can act on unreasonable fears and suppress energy use, economic growth and the benefits that come from the creation of national wealth.
35 Inconvenient Truths - The errors in Al Gore’s movie. A spokesman for Al Gore has issued a questionable response to the news that in October 2007 the High Court in London had identified nine “errors” in his movie An Inconvenient Truth. The judge had stated that, if the UK Government had not agreed to send to every secondary school in England a corrected guidance note making clear the mainstream scientific position on these nine “errors”, he would have made a finding that the Government’s distribution of the film and the first draft of the guidance note earlier in 2007 to all English secondary schools had been an unlawful contravention of an Act of Parliament prohibiting the political indoctrination of children. Al Gore’s spokesman and “environment advisor,” Ms. Kalee Kreider, begins by saying that the film presented “thousands and thousands of facts.” It did not: just 2,000 “facts” in 93 minutes would have been one fact every three seconds. The film contained only a few dozen points, most of which will be seen to have been substantially inaccurate. The judge concentrated only on nine points which even the UK Government, to which Gore is a climate-change advisor, had to admit did not represent mainstream scientific opinion. Ms. Kreider then states, incorrectly, that the judge himself had never used the term “errors.” In fact, the judge used the term “errors,” in inverted commas, throughout his judgment. Next, Ms. Kreider makes some unjustifiable ad hominem attacks on Mr. Stewart Dimmock, the lorry driver, school governor and father of two school-age children who was the plaintiff in the case. This memorandum, however, will eschew any ad hominem response, and will concentrate exclusively on the 35 scientific inaccuracies and exaggerations in Gore’s movie. Ms. Kreider then says, “The process of creating a 90-minute documentary from the original peer-reviewed science for an audience of moviegoers in the U.S. and around the world is complex.” However, the single web-page entitled “The Science” on the movie’s official website contains only two references to articles in the peer-reviewed scientific journals. There is also a reference to a document of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), but its documents are not independently peer-reviewed in the usual understanding of the term. Ms. Kreider then says, “The judge stated clearly that he was not attempting to perform an analysis of the scientific questions in his ruling.” He did not need to. Each of the nine “errors” which he identified had been admitted by the UK Government to be inconsistent with the mainstream of scientific opinion. Ms. Kreider says the IPCC’s results are sometimes “conservative,” and continues: “Vice President Gore tried to convey in good faith those threats that he views as the most serious.” Readers of the long list of errors described in this memorandum will decide for themselves whether Mr. Gore was acting in good faith. However, in this connection it is significant that each of the 35 errors listed below misstates the conclusions of the scientific literature or states that there is a threat where there is none or exaggerates the threat where there may be one. All of the errors point in one direction – towards undue alarmism. Not one of the errors falls in the direction of underestimating the degree of concern in the scientific community. The likelihood that all 35 of the errors listed below could have fallen in one direction purely by inadvertence is less than 1 in 34 billion. We now itemize 35 of the scientific errors and exaggerations in Al Gore’s movie. The first nine were listed by the judge in the High Court in London in October 2007 as being “errors.” The remaining 26 errors are just as inaccurate or exaggerated as the nine spelt out by the judge, who made it plain during the proceedings that the Court had not had time to consider more than these few errors. The judge found these errors serious enough to require the UK Government to pay substantial costs to the plaintiff. ERROR 1 - Sea level "rising 6 m" The IPCC says sea-level increases up to 7 m (23 ft) above today’s levels have happened naturally in the past climate, and would only be likely to happen again after several millennia. In the next 100 years, according to calculations based on figures in the IPCC’s 2007 report, these two ice sheets between them will add a little over 6 cm (2.5 inches) to sea level, not 6 m (this figure of 6 cm is 15% of the IPCC’s total central estimate of a 43 cm or 1 ft 5 in sea-level rise over the next century). Gore has accordingly exaggerated the official sea-level estimate by approaching 10,000 per cent. Ms. Kreider says the IPCC estimates a sea-level rise of “59 cm” by 2100. She fails to point out that this amounts to less than 2 ft, not the 20 ft imagined by Gore. She also fails to point out that this is the IPCC’s upper estimate, on its most extreme scenario. And she fails to state that the IPCC, faced with a stream of peer-reviewed articles stating that sea-level rise is not a threat, has reduced this upper estimate from 3 ft in 2001 to less than 2 ft (i.e. half the mean centennial sea-level rise that has occurred since the end of the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago) in 2007. Ms. Kreider says the IPCC’s 2007 sea-level calculations excluded contributions from Greenland and West Antarctica because they could not be quantified. However, Table SPM1 of the 2007 report quantifies the contributions of these two ice-sheets to sea-level rise as representing about 15% of the total change. The report also mentions the possibility that there may be an unquantified further contribution in future from these two ice sheets arising from “dynamical ice flow.” However, the Greenland ice sheet rests in a depression in the bedrock created by its own weight, wherefore “dynamical ice flow” is impossible, and the IPCC says that temperature would have to be sustained at more than 5.5 degrees C above its present level for several millennia before half the Greenland ice sheet could melt, causing sea level to rise by some 3 m (10 ft). Finally, the IPCC’s 2007 report estimates that the likelihood that humankind is having any influence on sea level at all is little better than 50:50. The judge was accordingly correct in finding that Gore’s presentation of the imagined imminent threat of a 6 m (20 ft) sea-level rise, with his account of the supposed impact on the present-day populations of Manhattan, the Netherlands, Bangladesh, etc., etc, was not a correct statement of the mainstream science on this question. (Back) ERROR 2 - Pacific islands "drowning" Furthermore, corals can grow at ten times the predicted rate of increase in sea level. It is not by some accident or coincidence that so many atolls reach just a few feet above the ocean surface. Ms. Kreider says, “The IPCC estimates that 150 million environmental refugees could exist by the year 2050, due mainly to the effects of coastal flooding, shoreline erosion and agricultural disruption.” However, the IPCC cannot be basing its estimate on sea-level rise, since even its maximum projected rise of just 30 cm (1 ft) by 2050 would not cause significant coastal flooding or shoreline erosion. There are several coastlines (the east coast of England, for instance) where the land is sinking as a consequence of post-ice-age isostatic recovery, or where (as in Bangladesh) tectonic subduction is similarly causing the land to sink. But such natural causes owe nothing to sea-level rise. There have been no mass evacuations of populations of islanders as suggested by Gore, though some residents of Tuvalu have asked to be moved to New Zealand, even though the tide-gauges maintained until recently by the National Tidal Facility of Australia show a mean annual sea-level rise over the past half-century equivalent to the thickness of a human hair. The problem with the Carteret Islands, mentioned by Ms. Kreider, arose not because of rising sea levels but because of imprudent dynamiting of the reefs by local fishermen. In the Maldives, a detailed recent study showed that sea levels were unchanged today compared with 1250 years ago, though they have been higher in much of the intervening period, and have very seldom been lower. A well-established tree very close to the Maldivian shoreline and only inches above sea level was recently uprooted by Australian environmentalists anxious to destroy this visible proof that sea level cannot have risen very far. (Back) ERROR 3 - Thermohaline circulation "stopping" Ms. Kreider, for Mr. Gore, says that “multiple scientists” have claimed that we cannot exclude the possibility of the disruption or shutdown of the Conveyor. Disruption, perhaps: shutdown, no. It is now near-universally accepted that the thermohaline circulation cannot be and will not be shut down by “global warming,” and the film should have been corrected to reflect the consensus. (Back) ERROR 4 - CO2 "driving temperature" Ms. Kreider says it is true that “greenhouse gas levels and temperature changes in the ice signals have a complicated relationship but they do fit.” This does not address Gore’s error at all. The judge found that Gore had very clearly implied that it was changes in carbon dioxide concentration that had led to changes in temperature in the palaeoclimate, when the scientific literature is unanimous (save only for a single paper by James Hansen, whom Gore trusts) to the effect that the relationship was in fact the other way about, with a carbon dioxide feedback contributing only a comparatively insignificant further increase to temperature after the temperature change had itself initiated a change in carbon dioxide concentration. The significance of this error was explained during the court proceedings, and was accepted by the judge. Gore says that the 100 ppmv difference between carbon dioxide concentrations during ice-age temperature minima and interglacial temperature maxima represents “the difference between a nice day and a mile of ice above your head.” This would imply a CO2 effect on temperature about 10 times greater than that regarded as plausible by the consensus of mainstream scientific opinion (see Error 10). Ms. Kreider refers readers to a “more complete description” available at a website maintained by, among others, two of the three authors of the now-discredited “hockey stick” graph that falsely attempted to abolish the Mediaeval Warm Period. The National Academy of Sciences in the US had found that graph to have “a validation skill not significantly different from zero” – i.e., the graph was useless. (Back) ERROR 5 - Snows of Kilimanjaro "melting" The melting of the Furtwangler Glacier at the summit of the mountain began 125 years ago. More of the glacier had melted before Hemingway wrote The Snows of Kilimanjaro in 1936 than afterward. Temperature at the summit never rises above freezing and is at an average of –7 Celsius. The cause of the melting is long-term climate shifts exacerbated by imprudent regional deforestation, and has nothing to do with “global warming.” Ms. Kreider says, “Every tropical glacier for which we have documented evidence shows that glaciers are retreating.” However, a recent survey of the glaciers in the tropical Andes shows that they were largely ice-free in the past 10,000 years, except on the very highest peaks. The mere fact of warming or melting, therefore, tells us nothing of the cause. Ms. Kreider says, “Global warming exacerbates the stresses that ecosystems (and humans) are already experiencing.” However, since the temperature at the summit of Kilimanjaro remains below freezing and has not risen in 30 years, “global warming” is not “exacerbating the stresses” at the summit of Kilimanjaro. (Back) ERROR 6 - Lake Chad "drying up" ERROR 7 - Hurricane Katrina "man made" Ms. Kreider says, “Mr. Gore has never addressed the issue of climate change and hurricane frequency.” What Gore actually says, however, addresses the frequency not only of hurricanes but also of typhoons and tornadoes – “We have seen in the last couple of years, a lot of big hurricanes. Hurricanes Jean, Francis and Ivan were among them. In the same year we had that string of big hurricanes; we also set an all time record for tornadoes in the United States. Japan again didn’t get as much attention in our news media, but they set an all time record for typhoons. The previous record was seven. Here are all ten of the ones they had in 2004.” For the record, however, the number of Atlantic hurricanes shows no trend over the past half century; the number of typhoons has fallen throughout the past 30 years; the number of tornadoes has risen only because of better detection systems for smaller tornadoes; but the number of larger tornadoes in the US has fallen. (Back) ERROR 8 - Polar bear "dying" Ms. Kreider says sea-ice “was the lowest ever measured for minimum extent in 2007.” She does not say that the measurements, which are done by satellite, go back only 29 years. She does not say that the North-West Passage, a good proxy for Arctic sea-ice extent, was open to shipping in 1945, or that Amundsen passed through in a sailing vessel in 1903. (Back) ERROR 9 - Coral reefs "bleaching" Ms. Kreider says, “The IPCC and other scientific bodies have long identified increases in ocean temperatures with the bleaching of coral reefs.” So they have: but the bleaching in 1998 occurred as a result not of “global warming” but of a rare, though not unique, severe El Nino Southern Oscillation. (Back) ERROR 10 - 100 ppmv of CO2 "melting mile-thick ice" Temperature changes by up to 12 degrees C between glacial minima and interglacial maxima, but CO2 concentration changes by no more than 100 ppmv. Gore is accordingly implying that 100 ppmv can cause a temperature increase of up to 12 degrees C. However, the consensus as expressed by the IPCC is that 100 ppmv of increased CO2 concentration, from 180 to 280 ppmv, would increase radiant energy flux in the atmosphere by 2.33 watts per square meter, or less than 1.2 degrees Celsius including the effect of temperature feedbacks.(Back) ERROR 11 - Hurricane Caterina "manmade" ERROR 12 - Japanese typhoons "a new record" ERROR 13 - Hurricanes "getting stronger" ERROR 14 - Big storm insurances losses "increasing" ERROR 15 - Mumbai "flooding" ERROR 16 - Severe tornadoes "more frequent" ERROR 17 - The sun "heats the Arctic ocean" ERROR 18 - Arctic "warming fastest" ERROR 19 - Greenland ice sheet "unstable" ERROR 20 - Himalayan glacial melt waters "failing" ERROR 21 - Peruvian glaciers "disappearing" ERROR 22 - Mountain glaciers worldwide disappearing" ERROR 23 - Sahara desert "drying" ERROR 24 - West Antarctic ice sheet "unstable" ERROR 25 - Antarctic Peninsula ice shelves "breaking up"" ERROR 26 - Larsen B Ice Shelf "broke up because of 'global warming'" ERROR 27 - Mosquitoes "climbing to higher altitudes" ERROR 28 - Many tropical diseases "spread through 'global warming'" ERROR 29 - West Nile virus in the US "spread through 'global warming'" ERROR 30 - Carbon dioxide is "pollution" ERROR 31 - The European heat wave of 2003 "killed 35,000" ERROR 32 - Pied flycatchers "cannot feed their young" ERROR 33 - Gore's bogus pictures and film footage ERROR 34 - The Thames Barrier "closing more frequently" ERROR 35 - "No fact...in dispute by anybody. " As many as 35 serious scientific errors or exaggerations, The Great Global Warming Swindle Last year, a TV program opposing global warming alarmism, The Great Global Warming Swindle, was aired by Channel 4 in Britain. The IPCC brought a complaint against the producers of the program to the British Office of Communications (OfCom). The OfCom held that the producers did not give the IPCC sufficient time to respond (they were given about a week), but that the program did not materially mislead the public. Steven McIntyre on his web site, www.climateaudit.org, analyzes the decision as well as the dishonest responses of the IPCC officials to the OfCom findings. It is a lovely example of self-refutation. That is to say, the IPCC officials demonstrated that they were acting in a political capacity in the very process of denying this. Ofcom: The IPCC Complaint By Steve McIntyre Ofcom’s disposition of the IPCC Complaint is here page 43 (hyperlink lost). There are many interesting aspects to
this decision that are distinct from any of the others. Ofcom’s actual finding is extremely narrow. It rejected 2 of 6
complaints. On 3 of 6, it determined that the producers had provided notice to IPCC but the notice on Feb 27, 2007 did
not leave IPCC with “reasonable time” to respond prior to the airing on March 8, 2007 (though Ofcom itself states that
“three working days” is a “reasonable time” for the parties to file an appeal of the present decision. They also determined
that the producers failed to give The two rejected claims are themselves rather interesting and make you scratch your head. As discussed below, Swindle contributors were said to have claimed that IPCC had predicted climate disaster and the northward migration of malaria as a result of global warming. IPCC denied ever ma8ing such claims and apparently felt that its reputation was sullied by being associated with such claims. These two matters were decided on other grounds, but many readers will be interested to read more about IPCC disassociating itself from claims that global warming would cause northward migration of malaria or predictions of climate disaster. In addition, in its complaint, IPCC made grandiose claims about its “open and transparent process” and the role of review editors, describing the process as being in the public domain and by its nature designed to avoid “undue influence” of any reviewer. This will come as somewhat of a surprise to CA readers, who are familiar with the avoidance of IPCC procedures by Ammann and Briffa and the seemingly casual performance of review editor Mitchell and who have been following the relentless stonewalling by IPCC and IPCC officials of requests for specific information per8aining to this allegedly “open and transparent process”. Two Rejected Complaints. They discarded two parts of the complaint entirely. IPCC complained that the “programme falsely claimed that its FAR (1990) predicted “climatic disaster as a result of global warming” without an opportunity to defend itself against the 8ndignity of being accused of making such a claim. It’s a relief to the rest of us to know that not only is the IPCC not predicting climatic disaster, but it considers being associated with such a claim to be an insult. Ofcom considered some interesting contemporary evidence, including a speech by Margaret Thatcher, the scientific content of which was approved by Houghton, and came to the view that this was not an unreasonable characterisation. Their decision on this issue stated: “the Committee considered that the comment that described the FAR (1990) as predicting “climatic disaster as a result of global warming” was not an allegation against the IPCC and was not unfair to it. It was not, therefore, incumbent on the programme makers to have offered the IPCC an appropriate and timely opportunity to respond to this particular comment.” The most interesting part of these two issues were the IPCC defenses. <8p> Three Issues where the notice was insufficiently timely What would be a reasonable amount of time? Ofcom says in their Guidelines for the handling of standards complaints and cases (in programmes and sponsorship) that three working days is a “reasonable time” for an appeal, 5 working days for broadcasters to deliver any requested material and 10 working days to deliver certain sorts of detailed written submissions. While the producers had preliminary contact with IPCC in October 2006 (as a result of which they were referred to a website), the first notice to IPCC that they8would be presenting the Reiter and Seitz allegations came on Feb 26, 2007 (a Monday), to which there was no response. A follow-up email was sent three days later on March 1, 2007, again with no response. At the time of the show’s first airing on March 8, 2007, ten days (8 working days) after the first notice letter, IPCC had still sent no response. Nor did it send one prior to the second airing. Ofcom noted: “the IPCC is a large organisation with considerable resources at its disposal and that it employs a dedicated Information and Communications Officer. On the face of it, these factors might be taken to suggest the IPCC should have been in a position to respond to the programme makers’ emails (subject to being provided with sufficient information about the allegations that would be made in the programme)” On the other hand, Ofcom noted that the producers had failed to properly inform IPCC of the deadl8nes: As mentioned above, it was significant that the programme maker’s email of 26 February 2007 gave the IPCC no indication of when its response was required and the follow-up email of 1 March 2007 (sent at 7.33pm) subsequently gave a deadline of the following day. Neither of these emails indicated the date of broadcast. Taking into account all the above factors, the Committee considered that it was unreasonable for the programme makers to have expected the IPCC to understand that its response was required in a matter of days, and that it was not reasonable to expect the IPCC to be able to provide a response within the one day of being advised of the deadline. The Committee therefore found that the opportunity to respond had not been offered in a timely way. On these particular findings, there’s a process lesson about the need for clear and unequivocal notice. In this particular case, it seems highly unlikely that IPCC was going to bother responding in any event. So the producers could easily have avoided this particular problem merely by giving clearer and somewhat more informative notice. For example, had they sent out the email on Feb 20, 2007 instead of Feb 27, 2007, notifying the IPCC of their deadline, it is hard to see how these parts of the IPCC complaint could have even got as far as they did. I note that it appears that IPCC itself did not even file the “IPCC Complaint”. It appears to be another concoction by Rado and associates. Their website says that: “Sir John Houghton … co-authorised our Fairness complaint on behalf of the IPCC…. Dr Pachauri co-authorised our Fairness complaint on behalf of the IPCC. …Martin Parry also co-authorised our Fairness complaint on behalf of the IPCC… Professor [Robert] Watson co-authorised our Fairness complaint on behalf of the IPCC.” which I take this as evidence that IPCC itself did not author the complaint. Normally, in order to be heard by Ofcom, a “fairness” complaint has to be made by the person directly affected. There are situations in which a third party can be authorised to make the complaint; I haven’t examined whether these situations apply here. However the form of IPCC “authorisation” seems highly curious. John Houghton supposedly “co-authorised our Fairness complaint on behalf of the IPCC”. While Houghton has obviously been an important figure in the IPCC movement, he is not listed at the IPCC website as one of its present officers and would not appear to have sufficient current authority to “authorise” the complaint. Robert Watson’s appearance on this list is also interesting. Watson is likewise not listed as a current IPCC officer; Rado’s website states that Watson is currently DEFRA’s Chief Scientific Adviser. That a DEFRA employee should perceive himself as having the authority to authorise the commencement of an action in the U.K. on behalf of IPCC, which, under other circumstance, asserts its immunity rights as an international organisation, is intriguing to say the least. A “Political” Organisation In its defence, Channel 4 said: The IPCC response will be particularly intriguing to Climate Audit readers who have followed IPCC’s refusal to provide a complete archive of its Review Comments and Responses (in direct breach of their own formal procedures), a refusal abetted by corresponding refusals of national FOI requests. Ofcom summarises their response: In relation to the IPCC being “politically driven”, the IPCC said that the requirement for openness and transparency in its processes ensured that it was impossible for any undue interference to take place or any undue pressure to be applied by any reviewer (government or otherwise). The IPCC said the government expert reviewer is free to ask any lead author to reconsider what they have written, but based solely on scientific content. The lead author will then consider the comment or request for change. If the lead author then wishes to make the change, he/she has to account for the decision to his/her review editor, who will make the final decision. Such changes must then be documented and the results made public. The IPCC said that, given the IPCC’s own procedures, Channel 4’s arguments in relation to this head of complaint were either ill-informed or disingenuous. Huh? This is not a true description of the process that I’ve experienced or that has been documented here. “Disingenuous” - they must be taking etiquette lessons from Michael Mann. In terms of my own personal experience, we know that Ammann evaded the formal “open and transparent” process by sending review comments about our work outside the properly instituted process and that the parties have subsequently refused to produce the presumably adverse comments. Did these exchanges result in “undue interference” or “undue pressure” by a reviewer? The purpose of the “open and transparent” process is to do what IPCC represented to Ofcom that it did. Too bad that it’s not a true description. Similarly with the role of the Review Editors. IPCC testified to Ofcom that the “review editor” made the final decision. But Review Editor Mitchell has said that these decisions were up to Briffa and the chapter authors. Although IPCC says here that this process is “public”, IPCC has refused to provide Mitchell’s comments and Mitchell has concocted absurd and untrue reasons to avoid producing the comments (even claiming that he acted as an IPCC review editor in a “personal” capacity and that he has destroyed all his IPCC correspondence). Here’s how Ofcom decided this matter: The Committee considered that such an impression went to the core of the IPCC’s function and reputation: in this regard it noted that the IPCC was set up following international governmental accord with the aim of producing objective scientific assessments to inform policy and decision making worldwide. The Committee considered that “politically driven” was a strong and potentially damaging allegation which, within the context of this part of the programme, suggested direct political influence and was clearly intended to call into question the credibility of the IPCC…. … In the circumstances, the Committee concluded that the IPCC was not afforded a timely or appropriate opportunity to respond to the significant allegation that the conclusions of the IPCC were “politically driven”. This resulted in unfairness to the IPCC in the programme as broadcast. Summary “Vindication” Pachauri: Climate Science: Some of this is simply untrue. Ofcom did not “uphold” the review process of the IPCC or the credibility of IPCC publications. Neither did it trash them. It simply did not consider them. Pachauri is totally misrepresenting the decision. Houghton: Again, all completely untrue. The Ofcom decision did “not expose the misleading and false information” regarding IPCC nor did it “confirm the integrity of the IPCC reports”. Nor did it endorse the programme nor did it trash the integrity of the reports. It didn’t make any decision on them one way or another. It simply said that the producers failed to give IPCC enough notice to respond. Robert Watson: Again untrue. Ofcom did nothing of the sort. It made no attempt whatever to sort out the scientific disputes. Martin Parry:
Again completely untrue. The Ofcom ruling did not “uphold” the “reputation of the IPCC as the source of dependable and high quality information”. Nor did it disparage its reputation. It simply said that IPCC didn’t get enough time to respond. Testimony of John Coleman before the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands of the Committee on Natural Resources of the United States Congress April 7, 2009 http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner Thank you to the Committee for the invitation to appear here today. And to any who listen to my remarks or read them later, thank you for your consideration of my testimony. I come before this Subcommittee with no allusions or expectations. I am aware that for the majority of the Committee and most involved government officials my conclusions will run counter to your interests and agenda and will be ignored. None-the-less, I have made the effort to be here today because I feel what I have to contribute should at least be in the record. Here is what I know as scientific fact: There is no significant man-made global warming or climate change at this time, there has not been any in the past and there is little reason to fear any in the future. I did not say that the activities of man do not alter the weather and climate, because it is clear they do. What I said there is no significant man-made climate change and none should be reasonably expected to occur in the future. I have visited most of the National Parks in the United States and love them. I have enormous appreciation for the efforts to protect our environment and provide places and ways for the citizens to enjoy the amazing beauty and powerful natural forces at work around us and interact with the thousands of species that live in those parks and related natural areas. Clearly, it is a huge task to balance between access and protection. I honor that. But here is crux of what I can contribute to the issue before us. The science behind this current global warming, man-made climate change commotion, has failed to verify. The hypothesis that our carbon footprints produced by our use of fossil fuels is producing a significant greenhouse effect that will lead to climate calamity has failed to verify. So I repeat, there is no significant man-made global climate change. I have studied the research papers of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and examined the science presented by Al Gore in his books, his movie and his power point. I have traced the history of the development of the concept of carbon dioxide in the exhaust from our cars, power plants and industrial plants entering the atmosphere and interacting with the primary greenhouse gas, water vapor, to magnify warming. It all collapses into a failed theory when examined with scientific care. I am not alone in reaching this conclusion. In the past year, 34 thousand scientists, 10 thousand with PhDs, have signed a statement debunking global warming. There is solid scientific evidence that by burning fossil fuels our civilization increases the amount of carbon dioxide, CO2, in the atmosphere. However, even after 150 years of burning fossil fuels, CO2 remains a tiny trace gas. To be precise only 380 molecules out of every one million are CO2. Scientists with an anti-fossil fuel agenda developed a theory of radiative forcing to explain how this trace gas could create runaway greenhouse warming. They put that theory into general circulation computer models. Their models then projected a continuous rapid rise in global temperatures year after year. In the 1980s and 1990's the models seemed on track as temperatures climbed. But in 1998 the warming stopped. By 2002 a rapid cooling had begun. That cooling continues today. The computer proof has failed. It has become clear the warming in the 80s and 90s was at the peak of a solar cycle and now that the sun has gone very quiet, cooling has gripped the planet. Yet the models continue to predict warming that is not happening. There is no significant warming from CO2. I am painfully aware that global warming has become a political issue. I deeply regret that. The latest Gallup Poll documents the wide divide on the issue: 66 percent of Republicans are of the opinion that the claims of global warming are exaggerated; only 22 percent of Democrats are of that position. I want to make very clear my conclusion is in no way politically based. I was a science reporter for ABC News in the 1970's when there was a similar flurry of excitement about a coming Ice Age. Thankfully our government and political parties didn't get involved so when the science got things straightened out, the frenzy faded away. Unfortunately, this time people with the anti fossil fuel agenda had jumped on the global warming bandwagon and just won't let go. They have calmed the rhetoric to climate change, but they are still all wrapped up in cap and trade to tax our use of fossil fuels. This will do great harm to our economy but do nothing of consequence to protect the environment. . My advice to the National Park Service and the Subcommittee is: Do nothing to mitigate man-made global warming or climate change, because there is none. Reject the extremist agendas and concentrate on your wonderful work protecting our natural resources and making natural experiences available to us citizens of today and generations to follow. . To any who have an interest in pursuing the sources behind my scientific conclusions I provide a list of internet links with my written testimony. . Again, thank you for allowing me to present my testimony and place it into the record. Links referenced in John Coleman’s remarks :- The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - http://www.ipcc.ch/ The Al Gore movie, “An Inconvenient Truth - http://www.climatecrisis.net/ An online article about the word “deniers” used to describe Global Warming skeptics http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/1782/ United Nations IPCC Chapter 9, the key chapter on CO2 Forcing http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter9.pdf Natural Resources Defense Council Global Warming report http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/fcons.asp Michael Mann and the Hockey Stick Charthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Mann_(scientist) Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick’s Paper refuting the Hockey Stick Chart http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/mcintyre.grl.2005.pdf Stephen McIntyre’s website - http://www.climateaudit.org Ross McKitrick’s website - http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/ross.html NASA web pages on average annual temperatures http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/earth_warm.html Dr. Mayhay Khandekar and Joseph D’Aleo’s post on the problems with the NASA average temperature calculations - Dr. Roger Pielke Sr;’s post on problems with calculation average global temperatures: Ross McKitrick and Pat Michaels paper detailing how observation points change over time influences global average temperatures - Anthony Watts discovers serious site problems with many official weather observation stations in the United States and conducts a national effort to survey every location - http://surfacestations.org/ Dr. Ben Herman investigates questionable exaggerations in maximum temperatures at locations where certain types of new temperature sensors have been installed. http://climatesci.org/2008/01/21/guest-weblog-by-professor-ben-herman-of-the-university-of-arizona-maximum-temperature-trends/ The controversy about the influence of urban heat islands on global temperatures is covered in the Wikipedia article at - Long term climate changes on Earth, resulting from natural causes, primarily variations in the radiation received from the Sun are detailed by D. Bruce Merrifield http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/07/global_warming_and_solar_radia_1.html I write about the solar influence on climate variations on Earth in my brief The Force behind Climate Change Roger Revelle, the Grandfather of Global Warming and the man who inspired Al Gore, cautioned against alarmism from the carbon dioxide build-up - Carbon Dioxide characterized as a pollutant, the force behind global warming http://worldcoolers.org/co2map/ Typical newspaper article decrying carbon dioxide build-up in the atmosphere http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003716817_carbon22.html Union of Concerned Scientists page on carbon dioxide http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles/vehicles_health/cars-and-trucks-and-global-warming.html The key Paper by Arthur B. Robinson, Noah E. Robinson and Willie Soon that explains that Carbon Dioxide Forcing is not valid - Another excellent Paper by Allan M.R, MacRae showing that Carbon Dioxide is not the primary force in climate change - Dr. David Evans Paper showing that Carbon Dioxide does not cause Global Warming Alan Cheetham details the history of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Dr. John McLean details the lack of significant peer review of the IPCC documents Dr. Vincent Gray writes about his experience as a member of the IPCC The report on the over 700 scientists who have spoken out in opposition to global warming The website of the global warming debunkers petition with over 31,000 signatures: http://www.petitionproject.org/ An Open Letter To Environmentalists By John Coleman Dear fellow Earth lovers, Thank you for your dedication to protecting our environment. Clean air and clean water are essential to preserving life on planet Earth. Protecting all species and natural lands and forests are admirable priorities. Recycling and a green lifestyle are wonderful. Making the environment the most important thing in your life is a good thing, not a problem. I support you. But we do have a problem. You have vigorously embraced the Man-Made Global Warming predictions of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore and you are using Mr. Gore's warnings of environmental calamity to campaign for elimination of fossil fuels. Your environmentally conscious friends in politics and in the media have united with you and we are experiencing a barrage of frightening news reports, documentaries, TV feature reports, movies, books, concerts and protest events to build support for your goals. With your support the war against fossil fuels has become a massive scare campaign that is even being taught as an undebatable truth in our schools leaving children with nightmares. Here's what's wrong with that: The science is wrong. There is no significant man-made Global Warming underway and the science on which the computer projections of weather chaos are based is badly flawed. I know many scientists are part of your movement and they have tried hard to give your uncontrollable climate change panic a scientific basis. Al Gore has a professional staff and millions of dollars and his status as former Vice President to support his campaign to sell the "big scare". And thousands of well-intentioned politicians and the media of the world have supported your movement. It must seem to you that there can be no doubt: fossil fuels are destroying the environment and will lead to uncontrollable global warming unless we act now. With all that powerful support for your anti-fossil fuel movement, and with the worthy goal of saving the planet from the disastrous consequences of runaway Global Warming, how can you fail? Here's how: The science behind your global warming scare is bad. There has been no significant anthropogenic global warming in the past, none seems to be happening now and none is likely in the future. Dissenting scientists have produced convincing evidence that the cornerstone of your scientific argument, increased atmospheric carbon dioxide forcing a rapid, irreversible rise in temperature, is invalid. All of the various "signs of global warming" you have so widely publicized have been proven unrelated, considerably overstated or in many cases, just plain wrong. There are normal variations in climate that result mostly from the cycles of the Sun. For instance, as the Sun cycle has changed from active to passive in the last decade, the warm up of the 1990's has reversed itself. Arctic ice melting and polar bears dying, shrinkage of glaciers and the rise of ocean levels, increased intensity and number of hurricanes and intensified droughts have all been touted as signs of global warming. They are not. They are part of this natural variation in climate. The intensified hurricane claim never happened. Katrina was an isolated, random event. The droughts are part of the natural cycle and are reversing at this time. Glaciers are stabilizing. The Arctic ice cap is largely back to normal. Here is what I am suggesting you do. Campaign for your environmental goals on the basis of their own merit. Let go of the global warming frenzy before it leaves you discredited and embarrassed. Stop screaming, "The sky is falling." It is not. Do your good work. Devote your lives to our environment. In many ways you will succeed. We are all grateful for your love of the planet. But, don't use scare tactics. Most of all I urge you not to become extremists. And, may I encourage you to live your lives in a loving way, love your fellow human beings and our wonderful advanced standard of living and way of life as much as you love the Earth. My very best regards, John Coleman P.S. - If you will read my briefs on the science that debunks the global warming frenzy and follow the links there, you will begin to realize the folly of Global Warming. Go to ICECAP.us for a starter. Today’s forecast: yet another blast of hot air. Why I would rather be called a heretic on global warming. By David Bellamy October 22, 2007 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article2709551.ece Am I worried about man-made global warming? The answer is “no” and “yes”. No, because the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction has come up against an “inconvenient truth”. Its research shows that since 1998 the average temperature of the planet has not risen, even though the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has continued to increase. Yes, because the self-proclaimed consensus among scientists has detached itself from the questioning rigours of hard science and become a political cause. Those of us who dare to question the dogma of the global-warming doomsters who claim that C not only stands for carbon but also for climate catastrophe are vilified as heretics or worse as deniers. I am happy to be branded a heretic because throughout history heretics have stood up against dogma based on the bigotry of vested interests. But I don’t like being smeared as a denier because deniers don’t believe in facts. The truth is that there are no facts that link the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide with imminent catastrophic global warming. Instead of facts, the advocates of man-made climate change trade in future scenarios based on complex and often unreliable computer models. Name-calling may be acceptable in politics but it should have no place in science; indeed, what is happening smacks of McCarthyism, witch-hunts and all. Scientific understanding, however, is advanced by robust, reasoned argument based on well-researched data. So I turn to simple sets of data that are already in the public domain. The last peak global temperatures were in 1998 and 1934 and the troughs of low temperature were around 1910 and 1970. The second dip caused pop science and the media to cry wolf about an impending, devastating Ice Age. Our end was nigh! Then, when temperatures took an upward swing in the 1980s, the scaremongers changed their tune. Global warming was the new imminent catastrophe. But the computer model – called “hockey stick” – that predicted the catastrophe of a frying planet proved to be so bent that it “disappeared” from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s armoury of argument in 2007. It was bent because the historical data it used to predict the future dated from only the 1850s, when the world was emerging from the Little Ice Age. Little wonder that temperatures showed an upward trend. In the Sixties I used to discuss climate change with my undergraduates at Durham University. I would point to the plethora of published scientific evidence that showed the cyclical nature of change – and how, for instance, the latest of a string of ice ages had affected the climate, sea levels and tree lines around the world. Thank goodness the latest crop of glaciers and ice sheets began to wane in earnest about 12,000 years ago; this gave Britain a window of opportunity to lead the industrial revolution. The Romans grew grapes in York and during the worldwide medieval warm period – when civilizations blossomed across the world – Nordic settlers farmed lowland Greenland (hence its name) and then got wiped out by the Little Ice Age that lasted roughly from the 16th century until about 1850. There is no escaping the fact that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been rising for 150 years – and very uniformly since the 1950s. Yet the temperature has not increased in step with CO2. Not only have there been long periods of little change in temperature, but also the year-to-year oscillations are totally unrelated to CO2 change. What is more, the trend lines of glacial shortening and rise in sea level have shown no marked change since the big increase in the use of fossil fuels since 1950. How can this be explained unless there are other factors at work overriding the greenhouse effect of CO2? There are, of course, many to be found in the peer-reviewed literature: solar cycles, cosmic rays, cloud control and those little rascals, such as El Niño and La Niña, all of which are played down or even ignored by the global-warming brigade. Let’s turn to Al Gore’s doom-laden Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. First, what is the point of scaring the families of the world with tales that polar bears are heading for extinction? Last year Mitchell Taylor, of the US National Biological Service, stated that “of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present.” Why create alarm about a potential increase in the spread of malaria thanks to rising temperatures when this mosquito-borne disease was a major killer of people in Britain and northern Russia throughout the Little Ice Age? Despite the $50 billion spent on greenwashing propaganda, the sceptics and their inconvenient questions are beginning to make their presence felt. A recent survey of Klaus-Martin Schulte, of Kings College Hospital, of all papers on the subject of climate change that were published between 2004 and February of 2007 found that only 7 per cent explicitly endorsed a “so-called consensus” position that man-made carbon dioxide is causing catastrophic global warming. What is more, James Lovelock, the author and green guru, has changed his mind: he recently stated that neither Earth nor the human race is doomed. Yes, melting sea ice around Greenland has recently opened up the fabled North West passage. And, yes, the years 2006 and 2007 have seen massive flooding in Europe. However, a quick dip into the records of the Royal Society – which ranked alongside Dr Lovelock as arch doomsters, before his change of mind – shows that dramatic fluctuations happened long before the infernal combustion engine began spewing out carbon dioxide. The year 1816 went down in history as the “year without a summer”, thanks to the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia that veiled much of the world with dust, screening out the Sun. Yet in 1817, while still in the grip of the Little Ice Age, the Royal Society was so worried that 2,000 square leagues of sea ice around Greenland had disappeared within two years, and massive flooding was taking place in Germany, that its president wrote to the Admiralty advising of the necessity of an expedition to find out what was the source of this new heat. Perhaps, when similar things are happening 190 years later, the Royal Society should accept that anthropogenic carbon dioxide is unlikely to be the main – or only – driver of “global warming”. THE CATASTROPHE BEHIND CLIMATE CHANGE As the estimated cost of measures proposed by politicians to "combat global warming" soars ever higher - such as the International Energy Council's $45 trillion - "fighting climate change" has become the single most expensive item on the world's political agenda. As Senators Obama and McCain vie with the leaders of the European Union to promise 50, 60, even 80 per cent cuts in "carbon emissions", it is clear that to realise even half their imaginary targets would necessitate a dramatic change in how we all live, and a drastic reduction in living standards. All this makes it rather important to know just why our politicians have come to believe that global warming is the most serious challenge confronting mankind, and just how reliable is the evidence for the theory on which their policies are based. By far the most influential player in putting climate change at the top of the global agenda has been the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), set up in 1988, not least on the initiative of the Thatcher government. (This was why the first chairman of its scientific working group was Sir John Houghton, then the head of the UK's Meteorological Office.) Through a succession of reports and international conferences, it was the IPCC which led to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, soon to have an even more ambitious successor, to be agreed in Copenhagen next year (2009). The common view of the IPCC is that it consists of 2,500 of the world's leading scientists who, after carefully weighing all the evidence, have arrived at a "consensus" that world temperatures are rising disastrously, and that the only plausible cause has been rising levels of CO2 and other man-made greenhouse gases. In fact, as has become ever more apparent over the past 20 years - not least thanks to the evidence of a succession of scientists who have participated in the IPCC itself - the reality of this curious body could scarcely be more different. It is not so much a scientific as a political organisation. Its brief has never been to look dispassionately at all the evidence for man-made global warming: it has always taken this as an accepted fact. Indeed only a comparatively small part of its reports are concerned with the science of climate change at all. The greater part must start by accepting the official line, and are concerned only with assessing the impact of warming and what should be done about it. In reality the IPCC's agenda has always been tightly controlled by the small group of officials at its head. As one recent study has shown, of the 53 contributors to the key Chapter 9 of the latest report dealing with the basic science (most of them British and American, and 10 of them associated with the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office), 37 belong to a closely related network of academics who are all active promoters of the official warming thesis. It is on the projections of their computer models that all the IPCC's predictions of future warming are based. The final step in the process is that, before each report is published, a "Summary for Policymakers" is drafted by those at the top of the IPCC, to which governments can make input. It is this which makes headlines in the media, and which all too frequently eliminates the more carefully qualified findings of contributors to the report itself. The idea that the IPCC represents any kind of genuine scientific "consensus" is a complete fiction. Again and again there have been examples of how evidence has been manipulated to promote the official line, the most glaring instance being the notorious "hockey stick". Initially the advocates of global warming had one huge problem. Evidence from all over the world indicated that the earth was hotter 1,000 years ago than it is today. This was so generally accepted that the first two IPCC reports included a graph, based on work by Sir John Houghton himself, showing that temperatures were higher in what is known as the Mediaeval Warming period than they were in the 1990s. The trouble was that this blew a mighty hole in the thesis that warming was caused only by recent man-made CO2. Then in 1999 an obscure young US physicist, Michael Mann, came up with a new graph like nothing seen before. Instead of the familiar rises and falls in temperature over the past 1,000 years, the line ran virtually flat, only curving up dramatically at the end in a hockey-stick shape to show recent decades as easily the hottest on record. This was just what the IPCC wanted, The Mediaeval Warming had simply been wiped from the record. When its next report came along in 2001, Mann's graph was given top billing, appearing right at the top of page one of the Summary for Policymakers and five more times in the report proper. But then two Canadian computer analysts, Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, got to work on how Mann had arrived at his graph. When, with great difficulty, they eventually persuaded Mann to hand over his data, it turned out he had built into his programme an algorithm which would produce a hockey stick shape whatever data were fed into it. Even numbers from the phonebook would come out looking like a hockey stick. By the time of its latest report, last year (2007), the IPCC had an even greater problem. Far from continuing to rise in line with rising CO2, as its computer models predicted they should, global temperatures since the abnormally hot year of 1998 had flattened out at a lower level and were even falling - a trend confirmed by Nasa's satellite readings over the past 18 months. So pronounced has this been that even scientists supporting the warmist thesis now concede that, due to changes in ocean currents, we can expect a decade or more of "cooling", before the "underlying warming trend" reappears. The point is that none of this was predicted by the computer models on which the IPCC relies. Among the ever-growing mountain of informed criticism of the IPCC's methods, a detailed study by an Australian analyst John McLean (to find it, Google "Prejudiced authors, prejudiced findings") shows just how incestuously linked are most of the core group of academics whose models underpin everything the IPCC wishes us to believe about global warming. The significance of the past year is not just that the vaunted "consensus" on the forces driving our climate has been blown apart as never before, but that a new "counter-consensus" has been emerging among thousands of scientists across the world, given expression in last March's (2008) Manhattan Declaration by the so-called Non-Governmental Panel on Climate Change. This wholly repudiates the IPCC process, showing how its computer models are hopelessly biased, based on unreliable data and programmed to ignore many of the genuine drivers of climate change, from variations in solar activity to those cyclical shifts in ocean currents. As it was put by Roger Cohen, a senior US physicist formerly involved with the IPCC process, who long accepted its orthodoxy: "I was appalled at how flimsy the case is. I was also appalled at the behaviour of many of those who helped produce the IPCC reports and by many of those who promote it.” "In particular I am referring to the arrogance, the activities aimed at shutting down debate; the outright fabrications; the mindless defence of bogus science; and the politicisation of the IPCC process and the science process itself." Yet it is at just this moment, when the IPCC's house of cards is crumbling, that the politicians of the Western world are using it to propose steps that can only damage our way of life beyond recognition. It really is time for that "counter-consensus" to be taken seriously.
CLIMATE CHANGE: THE SUN AND THE OCEANS DO NOT LIE. The moves now being made by the world's political establishment to lock us into December's Copenhagen treaty to halt global warming are as alarming as anything that has happened in our lifetimes. Last week in Italy, the various branches of our emerging world government, G8 and G20, agreed in principle that the world must by 2050 cut its CO2 emissions in half. Britain and the US are already committed to cutting their use of fossil fuels by more than 80 per cent. Short of an unimaginable technological revolution, this could only be achieved by closing down virtually all our economic activity: no electricity, no transport, no industry. All this is being egged on by a gigantic publicity machine, by the UN, by serried ranks of government-funded scientists, by cheer leaders such as Al Gore, last week comparing the fight against global warming to that against Hitler's Nazis, and by politicians who have no idea what they are setting in train. What makes this even odder is that the runaway warming predicted by their computer models simply isn't happening. Last week one of the four official sources of temperature measurement, compiled from satellite data by the University of Huntsville, Alabama, showed that temperatures have now fallen to their average level since satellite data began 30 years ago. Faced with a "consensus" view which looks increasingly implausible, a fast-growing body of reputable scientists from many countries has been coming up with a ''counter-consensus'', which holds that their fellow scientists have been looking in wholly the wrong direction to explain what is happening to the world's climate. The two factors which most plausibly explain what temperatures are actually doing are fluctuations in the radiation of the sun and the related shifting of ocean currents. Two episodes highlight the establishment's alarm at the growing influence of this ''counter consensus''. In March, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has a key role in President Obama's plans to curb CO2 emissions, asked one of its senior policy analysts, Alan Carlin, to report on the science used to justify its policy. His 90-page paper recommended that the EPA carry out an independent review of the science, because the CO2 theory was looking indefensible, while the "counter consensus" view – solar radiation and ocean currents – seemed to fit the data much better. Provoking a considerable stir, Carlin's report was stopped dead, on the grounds that it was too late to raise objections to what was now the EPA's official policy. Meanwhile a remarkable drama has been unfolding in Australia, where the new Labor government has belatedly joined the "consensus" bandwagon by introducing a bill for an emissions-curbing "cap and trade'' scheme, which would devastate Australia's economy, it being 80 per cent dependent on coal. The bill still has to pass the Senate, which is so precisely divided that the decisive vote next month may be cast by an independent Senator, Stephen Fielding. So crucial is his vote that the climate change minister, Penny Wong, agreed to see him with his four advisers, all leading Australian scientists. Fielding put to the minister three questions. How, since temperatures have been dropping, can CO2 be blamed for them rising? What, if CO2 was the cause of recent warming, was the cause of temperatures rising higher in the past? Why, since the official computer models have been proved wrong, should we rely on them for future projections? The written answers produced by the minister's own scientific advisers proved so woolly and full of elementary errors that Fielding's team have now published a 50-page, fully-referenced "Due Diligence'' paper tearing them apart. In light of the inadequacy of the Government's reply, the Senator has announced that he will be voting against the bill. The wider significance of this episode is that it is the first time a Western government has allowed itself to be drawn into debating the science behind the global warming scare with expert scientists representing the "counter consensus" – and the "consensus" lost hands down. We still have a long way to go before that Copenhagen treaty is agreed in December, and with China, India and 128 other countries still demanding trillions of dollars as the price of their co-operation, the prospect of anything but a hopelessly fudged agreement looks slim. But even a compromise could inflict devastating damage on our own economic future – all for a theory now shot so full of holes that its supporters are having to suppress free speech to defend it. Oct 20, 2009 - Open Letter to President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives Mr. President, You have recently held an undersea Cabinet meeting to raise awareness of the idea that global sea level is rising and hence threatens to drown the Maldives. This proposition is not founded in observational facts and true scientific judgment. Accordingly it is incorrect. Therefore, I am most surprised at your action and must protest to its intended message. In 2001, when our research group found overwhelming evidence that sea level was by no means in a rising mode in the Maldives, but had remained quite stable for the last 30 years, I thought it would not be respectful to the fine people of the Maldives if I were to return home and present our results in international fora. Therefore, I announced this happy news during an interview for your local TV station. However, your predecessor as president censored and stopped the broadcast. When you became president, I was hoping both for democracy and for dialogue. However, I have written to you twice without reply.
Your people ought not to have to suffer a constant claim that there is no future for them on their own islands. This terrible message
is deeply inappropriate, since it is founded not upon reality but upon an imported concept, which lacks scientific justification and
is thus untenable. There is simply no rational basis for it. Let me summarize a few facts (see Fig. 1, and evidence presented in Morner, 2007):
(1) In the last 2000 years, sea level has oscillated with 5 peaks reaching 0.6 to 1.2 m above the present sea level. When I was president for the INQUA commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution (1999-2003), we spent much effort on the question of present-to-future sea level changes. After intensive field studies, deliberation within the commission and discussions at five international meeting, we agreed on a “best estimate” for possible sea level changes by the year 2100. Our figure was +10 cm plus/minus 10 cm. This figure was later revised at +5 cm plus/minus 15 cm (as given in Fig. 1). Such changes would imply small to negligible effects. From our sea level curve in Fig. 1, we can directly see that such a small rise would pose no threat for the Maldives. Rather, it would be a natural return to the conditions existing from 1790 to 1970; i.e. to the position before the sea level fall in the 1970s. The same non-rising sea level story is recorded for all other areas claimed to be under a flooding already in progress; viz. Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Venice (Morner, 2007b). Besides, the proposed global trend derived from satellite altimetry have been tampered by a “personal correction” in order to create a rising trend (Morner, 2008), actually not measured. Thermal expansion of the water column may affect the ocean level by some centimetres to a decimetre. At the shore, however, the effect is zero (Morner, 2000, 2005a, 2009a). Fig. 1. The Maldives Sea Level Curve of the last 500 years (blue) and the proposed best estimate of possible sea level changes by year 2100 (violet). This curve is a detail (without error bars, anchor points and curved breaking points) from the one presented by Morner, (2007). Sea level has been stable for the last 30 years. Future changes in the next century are by no means alarming; at the most it would imply a return to the pre-1970 situation with an about 20 cm higher sea level as was the case from 1790 to 1970. These are the observational facts and the consequences to face for the future: i.e. no real problems and certainly no reason for any alarm and SOS message. So, Mr. President, when you ignore available observational facts, refuse a normal democratic dialogue, and continue to menace your people with the imaginary threat of a disastrous flooding already in progress, I think you are doing a serious mistake. Let us be constructive. Let us discuss available observational facts. Let us continue to extend our sea level project to new sites in the huge Maldivian atoll archipelago. And let us, for Heaven’s sake, lift the terrible psychological burden that you and your predecessor have placed upon the shoulders of all people in the Maldives, who are now living with the imagined threat that flooding will soon drive them from their homes, a wholly false notion that is nothing but an armchair fiction artificially constructed by mere computer modelling constantly proven wrong by meticulous real-world observations. Your cabinet meeting under the water is nothing but a misdirected gimmick or PR stunt. Al Gore is a master in such cheap techniques. But such misconduct is dishonest, unproductive and certainly most un-scientific. |
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Answermethis! Why do we not hear this sort of thing on the BBC?
