By Christopher Monckton, SPPI
The warming effect of greenhouse gases is less than one-tenth the UN’s central estimate.
Spencer et al. (2008, cloud albedo); Douglass (2008, tropical mid-troposphere temperature change); Lindzen & Choi (2009 in press, outgoing long-wave radiation); and Armstrong, Green & Soon (2009 in press, zero-change benchmarking of climate forecasts) empirically confirm theoretical demonstrations (Schwartz, 2007; Monckton, 2008; Monckton & Evans, 2009 in draft) that climate sensitivity - the warming effect of all greenhouse gases, not just of CO2 - is less than one-fourth of the UN’s current central estimate. A CO2 doubling would cause just 1.5 F warming, not the 5.9 F imagined by the UN.
Global warming’ is nothing new
It was 10 F warmer than today in each of the past four interglacial periods; 2-3 F warmer for most of the past 10,000 years; warmer in the Minoan, medieval, and Roman warm periods. The rate of warming is nothing new either: the warming rate equivalent to 2.9 F/century from 1975-1998, when humankind might have had a small influence, was exactly the same as the warming rates from 1860-1880 and from 1910-1940 (House of Lords Written Answer, 2009).
There has been no statistically-significant ‘global warming’ for almost 15 years.
In fact, for almost eight years, on all measures, there has been global cooling at 3.4 F/century. Oceans have also been cooling ever since 3300 automated
bathythermographs were deployed in 2005. The ocean cooling definitively proves the UN wrong about “global warming”: if there were any, 80% of it would have to show up in the top 400 fathoms of the world’s oceans, but it is not happening. It follows that all recent reports that “global warming” has caused adverse weather events must be incorrect, because there has not been any. The UN’s central estimate, on its “business-as-usual” scenario, is for 6 F warming in the 21st century, but in the 30 years since accurate satellite temperatures became available in 1980 the warming rate has averaged just 2.7 F/century - less than half the UN’s prediction.
CO2 concentration is rising at less than half the UN’s predicted rate.
The UN’s central estimate is that CO2 concentration will grow exponentially to reach 836 parts per million by volume this century, but in fact it is growing
linearly towards just 575 ppm. This factor alone demands a halving of all UN temperature predictions. Methane concentration stopped rising in 2000 and has
hardly changed since.
Contrary to reports, the climate is doing just fine
- Global Sea-ice Extent A steady heartbeat for 30 years.
- Arctic Sea Ice Normal in winter, down a little in recent summers, but well within natural variability. Arctic Temperature Warmer in the 1930s and early 1940s than today. North-West Passage Amundsen sailed through it in 1903. It was also open in the mid-1940s
- Greenland Mean ice-sheet thickness grew by 2 in/yr from 1993-2003 (Johannessen et al., 2005).
- Polar Bears Population up fivefold since the 1940s.
- Antarctic Sea Ice Growing for 30 years. Antarctic Temperature Little change in 50 years. Antarctic Peninsula Ice-shelves about 1/55 the area of Texas have gone, but were not there in the Middle Ages.
- Sahara Desert Greening so fast that 300,000 km2 has become vegetated, allowing nomadic tribes to settle where they haveN’t been seen in living memory.
- Droughts and Floods Variable as usual.
- Hurricanes and OtherTropical Cyclones Lowest activity for 30 years.
- Sea Level Rising at 1 ft/century since satellite measurements began in 1993, compared with average 4 ft/century over the past 10,000 years. No sea-level rise in the last three years. UN High-end Forecast Slashed from 3ft to <2ft sea-level rise by 2100: UN best current estimate 1 ft 5 in. Bangladesh Has gained 70,000 km2 land area confounding UN sea-level forecasts. Pacific Atolls Not at risk: corals can grow towards the light at 10x the rate of sea-level rise, which is why so many atolls are just above sea level. Maldives No sea-level rise in 1250 years (Morner, 2004).
Ocean acidification is a scientific impossibility
Henry’s Law mandates that warming oceans will outgas CO2 to the atmosphere (as the UN’s own documents predict it will), making the oceans less acid. Also, more CO2 would increase calcification rates. No comprehensive, reliable measurement of worldwide oceanic acid/base balance has ever been carried out: therefore, there is no observational basis for the computer models’ guess that acidification of 0.1 pH units has occurred in recent decades.
There is no economic case for costly measures to mitigate greenhouse-gas emissions.
To prevent 1 F of warming, 1-10 trillion tons of CO2 emission would have to be foregone - the equivalent of shutting down the entire US economy for 170-1700 years. The Waxman/Markey Climate Bill would cost $160 billion/year (White House estimate) and, even if implemented fully, would cool the climate by just 0.0005-0.005 F/yr. Secretary Chu’s grand plan to paint the world white would cool the climate 0.2 F at the very most, at a cost of $200 trillion.
Overtaxing & overregulating US fossil-fuel industries would increase the world carbon footprint
Not that the carbon footprint matters (see point 1). However, if the US kills its own fossil-fuel industry, US corporations and jobs will move to China and other third-world economies, where carbon emissions per unit of output are higher than in the US. China and India will not be cutting their emissions. (PDF)
By William Yeatman, CEI
The Competitive Enterprise Institute today charged that a senior official of the U.S. Environment Protection Agency actively suppressed a scientific analysis of climate change because of political pressure to support the Administration’s policy agenda of regulating carbon dioxide.
As part of a just-ended public comment period, CEI submitted a set of four EPA emails, dated March 12-17, 2009, which indicate that a significant internal critique of the agency’s global warming position was put under wraps and concealed.
The study the emails refer to, which ran counter to the administration’s views on carbon dioxide and climate change, was kept from circulating within the agency, was never disclosed to the public, and was not added to the body of materials relevant to EPA’s current “endangerment” proceeding. The emails further show that the study was treated in this manner not because of any problem with its quality, but for political reasons.
“This suppression of valid science for political reasons is beyond belief,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman. “EPA’s conduct is even more outlandish because it flies in the face of the President’s widely-touted claim that ‘the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over.’”
CEI’s filing requests that EPA make the suppressed study public, place it into the endangerment docket, and extend the comment period to allow public response to the new information. CEI is also requesting that EPA publicly declare that it will engage in no reprisals against the study’s author, a senior analyst who has worked at EPA for over 35 years. Read more here.
See also Watts Up With That post on this issue here.
The EPA apparently doesn’t care about any negative comment of their GHG Endangerment findings, even internally, so the exercise in Democracy we did yesterday apparently was for naught.
“The time for such discussion of fundamental issues has passed for this round. The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision...I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.”
- Internal EPA email, March 17th, 2009
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) has caught EPA administration red-handed in concealment of internal dissent as well as apparently proceeding with plans in advance. From this PDF circulated today by CEI, here are the points:
CEI is submitting a set of four EPA emails, dated March 12-17, 2009, which indicate that a significant internal critique of EPA’s position on Endangerment was essentially put under wraps and concealed. The study was barred from being circulated within EPA, it was never disclosed to the public, and it was not placed in the docket of this proceeding. The emails further show that the study was treated in this manner not because of any problem with its quality, but for political reasons.
CEI hereby requests that EPA make this study public, place it into the docket, and either extend or reopen the comment period to allow public response to this new study. We also request that EPA publicly declare that it will engage in no reprisals against the author of the study, who has worked at EPA for over 35 years.
The emails, attached hereto, consist of the following:
1) a March 12 email from Al McGartland, Office Director of EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE), to Alan Carlin, Senior Operations Research Analyst at NCEE, forbidding him from speaking to anyone outside NCEE on endangerment issues;
2) a March 16 email from Mr. Carlin to another NCEE economist, with a cc to Mr. McGartland and two other NCEE staffers, requesting that his study be forwarded to EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, which directs EPA’s climate change program. The email notes the quantity of peer-reviewed references in the study, and defends its inclusion of new research as well. It states Mr. Carlin’s view that “the critical attribute of good science is its correspondence to observable data rather than where it appears in the technical literature.” It goes on to point out that the new studies “explain much of the observational data that have been collected which cannot be explained by the IPCC models.” (Emphases added);
3) a March 17 email from Mr. McGartland to Mr. Carlin, stating that he will not forward Mr. Carlin’s study. “The time for such discussion of fundamental issues has passed for this round. The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision...I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.” (Emphasis added);
4) a second March 17 email from Mr. McGartland to Mr. Carlin, dated eight minutes later, stating “I don’t want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change.”
Mr. McGartland’s emails demonstrate that he was rejecting Mr. Carlin’s study because its conclusions ran counter to EPA’s proposed position.
i>Icecap Note: Mr. Carlin who told us he was a regular Icecap visitor, was an invited guest of Icecap at the Heartland Institute ICCC III. Kudos to him for trying to understand and inject science into what is clearly a politically driven process.
UPDATE: CEI has released the suppressed study here.
By Dr. Ed Blick, Emeritus Professor, Engineering and Meteorology, University of Oklahoma
The first part of President Obama’s “I Have a Scheme” plan is the passage of the “Cap and Trade (Tax)” fossil fuel rationing bill. It will be the largest tax increase in the world’s history. It is scheduled for vote in the House of Representatives, this Friday, June 26. It is another huge bill (over 1200 pages) that no one has read except the global warming crooks at the UN, who wrote it. Please pass this information on to your legislators and local media outlets. This bill must be defeated!
If it passes, Obama hopes to have enough money to pay for his Universal Health Care Rationing scheme. He hopes the taxes from Cap and Trade will drive gasoline to $8 per gallon or higher. Then the public will buy his “putt-putt” cars from his newly extorted auto companies, Government Motors and Chrysler/Fiat. His scheme involves setting up a “straw man” (straw molecule?), carbon dioxide (CO2), that is used to frighten the public. He tells us this mean molecule CO2 is causing a climate disaster by warming the Earth, melting our polar ice caps, raising our sea level, and inundating our coastal cities. (Can we restrict it to Washington, DC?) There is no credible scientific evidence to support any of this nonsense. Anthropogenic Global Warming and its new name, Climate Change are politicized science. This politicized science scheme is a variation of Politics 101, which uses fairy tales to frighten the public, and then the government promises to save them by some scheme that involves raising their taxes. It’s a big con job by the government.
All of the rhetoric about a shortage of oil is baloney. America has 25% of the world’s coal. We are the Saudi Arabia of coal. We can make oil and gas from coal using the Fischer-Tropsch technology used by the Germans in WW II. SASOL in South Africa has produced petroleum from coal for decades! They have no indigenous petroleum supplies. The German synthetic oil and gasoline were so good that as U.S. General Patton’s Third Army began outracing their supply lines they transferred the synthetic gasoline from German vehicles and raced ahead. A recent Royal Dutch Shell report indicated that when oil prices hit $64 per barrel, it is economical to produce oil from coal. The term “we are running out of oil” is obsolete. We can make sulfur-free petroleum in any quantity and any grade we want! In addition by using fast breeder reactors, the world has enough nuclear fuel to last for tens of thousands of years! Obama needs to abandon these punitive tax schemes on fossil fuels that will kill our prosperity and start developing coal to oil and nuclear energy programs.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is a harmless gas. It is not a pollutant. CO2 and O2 are gases of life. God in His wisdom set up a synergism between the living gases of animals and plants. Animals inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. Plants inhale CO2 and exhale O2 by the process of photosynthesis. Why is Obama ignorant of these basic facts? When CO2 levels drops below 200 parts per million (ppm), plants start to die and then man dies. During the 20th century, a warmer ocean increased atmospheric levels of CO2 which increased crop yields worldwide. CO2 has not caused measurable increase in global temperatures.
The U.S. House of Representatives Committee of Energy and Commerce, chaired by Henry Waxman recently passed the “Cap and Trade” bill. Duplicating Europe’s failed scheme would be a knockout blow for the U.S. economy because it would dramatically increase energy costs and cripple the nation’s dwindling manufacturing base. It would be a giant economic dagger aimed at the nation’s heartland, where 20 states get 60-98% of their electricity from coal.
This bill compels an 80% CO2 reduction, by imposing punitive cap-and-trade restrictions on virtually every business, motorist, and family using hydrocarbon fuels. Anything and anyone who uses electricity and/or fossil fuels will be taxed. The National Economic Council puts the tax bite at $1.3 to $3 trillion, which averages out to $4000 to $10,000 per person. Since businesses pass their increased tax cost on to the consumer, everything will cost more. Every item we buy will increase in price, including clothing, food, drink, housing, cars, gasoline, travel, fuels, wood, and raw materials. America will be the most toxic-tax place in the world to do business. Of course many businesses will flee America, taking their jobs with them.
An 80% reduction in CO2 could take us back to 1905 according to Oak Ridge National laboratory data. At that time coal and wood heated homes. New York City’s vehicle emissions were 900,000 tons of horse manure annually. America had a population of 84 million versus 300 million today. There were no cars, jet liners, or electricity for offices, factories, schools or hospitals.
The bill was so lengthy, that chairman Henry Waxman, had not read it all. A TV clip showed a colleague asking him a question about the bill and Waxman answered, he didn’t know, but the scientists [bureaucrats] at the IPCC knew all of the details. This let the cat out of the bag that the UN had written the bill! IPCC is the “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change” and is the “political junk science division” of the corrupt UN. This bill is governmental gangsterism. “The right response to the non-problem of global warming is to have the courage to do nothing,” said Lord Christopher Monckton, former science advisor to U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
The mentally challenged EPA want to put a tax on flatulence of cows, sheep and pigs! The EPA claims animal flatulence contains methane, which is causing global warming which will destroy our planet! The EPA is considering that the tax on dairy cows may be $175 per dairy cow, $88 on beef cattle, and $20 on each hog! Unbelievable! Can they also tax Al Gore’s gas? Read full rant here.