Real Science shows the hypocrisy of the IPCC report: We are now at AR5 with zero warming since AR4. The last IPCC report which actually experienced any warming was SAR in 1995. In fact, the vast majority of the IPCC’s history has seen zero warming, and prior to that the warming was primarily due to rebound from Mt. Pinatubo cooling.
This complete lack of warming through most of the IPCC’s history has led them to 95% certainty that humans are heating the world out of control.
That level of certainty “has increased with every report,” notes Dr. Hayhoe, an expert reviewer for the IPCC. “Because we have more data, we have more science, we have more observations.”
The Heartland reports on Nine walk backs in the latest IPCC report
- First they admit that there has been no warming for at least 15 years
- Second they admit that the Medieval Warm Period existed and had temperatures higher than temperatures at the end of the 20th century.
- Third they admit that Antarctic sea ice is growing rather than contracting.
- Fourth they admit that the computer models are failing and they go on to specifically cite the failure to predict precipitation, changes in cloud cover, aerosols, and land sinks. They even admit to not being sure about the sign of the effect of changes to cloud cover.
- Fifth their estimate of sensitivity to carbon dioxide is as wide as it was 20 years ago, and by one measure is less, only 1.0 to 2.5 degrees.
- Sixth, they appear to have some discussion of cosmic rays, so an admission that there is a mechanism whereby changes in solar activity can influence the climate. They still claim it is too small to account for observed variations in temperatures.
- Seventh, they explicitly reject the scenario in which the oceanic conveyor belt collapses.
- Eighth, they reject the scenario of Greenland ice melting causing large increases in sea leves.
- Ninth they lowered their confidence in predictions of increased intensity and or duration of drought and of increases in intense tropical cyclone activity.
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Before the Scientific Alliance post, the AR5 SPM was released today. It turn to Andrew Lord Montford’s Bishop Hill’s blog for his take:
Ducking, diving, bobbing and weaving are the general themes of the Summary for Policymakers, just released this morning.
You would imagine that the document would review what was said last time round and how things have changed since that time, but you’d be wrong. This is, after all, the bureaucracy at work: difficulties have to be brushed under carpets and stones left unturned.
It would, for example, have been interesting for AR5 to discuss the increase in hurricane intensity that the AR4 SPM said was “likely” on the basis of the climate models. Instead, we get a veil drawn over the subject, with not a word on the hurricane drought in recent years.
Similarly, the divergence between model and observational estimates of long-term warming (effective climate sensitivity) is alluded to in opaque fashion in a footnote ("lack of agreement on values across lines of evidence") rather than being tackled head on in a way that would make clear the difficulties scientists are having with the climate jigsaw.
The general theme of obscurantism runs across the document. Whereas in previous years the temperature records have been shown unadulterated, now we have presentation of a single figure for each decade; surely an attempt to mislead rather than inform. And the pause is only addressed with handwaving arguments and vague allusions to ocean heat.
From the questions asked by journalists at the press conference, few cared about the science and the contradictions in what they were being told. The press corps are, almost to a man (and woman) environmentalists and only interesting in decarbonization. The exceptions were David Rose and the guy from the Economist. So it is very uncertain that the problems in the WGI report will make the mainstream of public discourse.
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And Bob Tisdale at WUWT:
Regarding the cause of the warming, still living in fantasy world, they write:
Greenhouse gases contributed a global mean surface warming likely to be in the range of 0.5C to 1.3C over the period 1951-2010, with the contributions from other anthropogenic forcings, including the cooling effect of aerosols, likely to be in the range of -0.6C to 0.1C. The contribution from natural forcings is likely to be in the range of -0.1C to 0.1C, and from internal variability is likely to be in the range of −0.1C to 0.1C. Together these assessed contributions are consistent with the observed warming of approximately 0.6C to 0.7C over this period. {10.3}
They’re still misleading the public. Everyone knows (well, many of us know) their models can’t simulate the natural processes that cause surface temperatures to warm over multidecadal timeframes, yet they insist on continuing this myth. More.
Icecap Note; Sorry alarmists and enviros. Half of the warming globally is due to urbanization/land use/bad siting contamination. Most all the rest due to natural variability - cycles in the sun and oceans.
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People are very good at making predictions although, alas, rarely ones which are correct. What we do all too rarely is take a step back and look at earlier predictions through the filter of current knowledge. Although situations change continually, there should be some general lessons to learn from the mistakes of the past. Perhaps the most important is the realisation that projections of current trends are almost certainly going to be wrong and that any conclusions we can draw are subject to considerable uncertainty. Recognition that this is true can be a humbling experience, but should help us see our forecasts more as a range of probabilistic scenarios than likely outcomes.
Unfortunately, humility is not much in evidence when it comes to climate change. Earlier this week, Lord Stern (of the eponymous report) claimed that the latest IPCC Assessment Report (of which more later) would seriously understate the problem because some risk factors had not been taken into account (Lord Stern: IPCC report will underestimate climate change). He is quoted by the Telegraph as saying that many economic models ‘grossly underestimate the risks’ because they assume climate change will not affect growth.
In a story from the Guardian, he attacks sceptics (Leading climate change economist brands sceptics ‘irrational’
: “The science is unequivocal and shows there is serious danger. What is coming from [sceptics] is just noise, and should be treated as noise.’ He said some sceptics were in the pay of hostile industries, with a vested interest in contradicting the science, and were being ‘deliberately naive’ in claiming the world could wait decades to deal with rising emissions. ‘It (the sceptic response) looks very well-organised,’ he said. ‘They are deliberately distorting the way we understand risk.’”
Such talk smacks of desperation: if you can’t persuade an audience that your opponent is wrong by rational argument, then question their credibility. Implying that sceptics are part of some shadowy conspiracy and simply motivated by money is insulting, but suggests that the climate change establishment with much greater resources at its disposal is rattled.
Today’s much-heralded launch of the first part of the Fifth Assessment Report (actually just the Summary for Policymakers of the report from Working Group 1 on climate science) similarly over-eggs the argument. Their key conclusion is that it is now 95% certain that the primary driver of recent climate change is human activity (WG1 Summary for Policymakers). This has increased since the previous report, published in 2007, but the judgement is a subjective one; there is no objective way of deriving such a metric.
To quote from the press release accompanying the report (Human influence on climate clear, IPCC report says): “As the ocean warms, and glaciers and ice sheets reduce, global mean sea level will continue to rise, but at a faster rate than we have experienced over the past 40 years,” said Co-Chair Qin Dahe. The report finds with high confidence that ocean warming dominates the increase in energy stored in the climate system, accounting for more than 90% of the energy accumulated between 1971 and 2010. Co-Chair Thomas Stocker concluded: “As a result of our past, present and expected future emissions of CO2, we are committed to climate change, and effects will persist for many centuries even if emissions of CO2 stop.”
He also delivered this key message: “Continued emissions of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and changes in all components of the climate system. Limiting climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.” And that is the essential argument being made: that carbon dioxide emissions must be drastically reduced to avoid continued unwelcome changes to the climate.
Now, this could turn out to be true, but we have to remember that the entire argument has rather shaky foundations. The only facts we have are the evidence of measurements: first that average temperatures have trended upwards since the end of the Little Ice Age (but not smoothly) and second that the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have risen significantly and are continuing to rise as more coal, gas and oil is burnt. The third fact is that the infra-red absorption properties of CO2 mean that increasing levels will lead to modest temperature rises.
That much is clear, but the IPCC reasoning is that this warming is reinforced by positive feedbacks, so raising temperatures considerably more. There is currently no evidence of this so we all, citizens and governments alike, are effectively being asked to trust the IPCC and push ahead with radical and expensive changes to our energy generation and use. Any critical comments which weaken the argument for action are being slapped down. With Canada and now Australia having left the fold of enthusiasts for emissions reduction, the IPCC and its supporters will see AR5 as their last chance to maintain momentum behind their cause.
But it looks increasingly likely that they are now swimming against the tide. Their lack of realism about the importance of renewable energy, the failure of Carbon Capture and Storage schemes to be brought on stream and the undeniable fact that CO2 emissions will continue to rise until China’s growth plateaus make current policy look more and more Quixotic (with the difference being they are fighting for windmills, not against them).
The IPCC will not get many more chances. If it wants to persuade others of its case, it has to be less dogmatic and more realistic. Arguing that the chances of catastrophe warrant action, even if the scientific evidence is not clear, is a reasonable position. So is the position that emissions reduction should be achieved in the most cost-effective way, without artificial targets for renewables. Favouring nuclear energy would be the obvious long term strategy, delivering an affordable, secure electricity supply even if the enhanced greenhouse hypothesis turns out not to be valid.
Lord Stern’s original work was laughable. What is not laughable is to the degree the EU environmental wackos used this to cause energy prices to skyrocket, causing 100,000s of thousands to have their power turned off and many pensioners to be unable to afford heating fuels, the excess deaths that have resulted fall on his shoulder. He and the environmentalists are mass murderers. The world would be well served if they ignore or even retire Lord Stern and his ilk.
Written by Alex Newman
As the United Nations prepares to release its latest report on “climate change,” leaked documents obtained recently by the Associated Press show the Obama administration and other governments are pressuring the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to cover up the fact that “global warming” essentially has been stopped for the last 16 years. The explosive revelations, already being described as “ClimateGate II” in the press, come amid a coordinated bid to revive the failing effort to adopt an international carbon regime in the coming years.
According to analysts, the leaked documents confirm once again that the global body’s alarmism about alleged “man-made global warming” is really a political ploy, rather than an issue of “science.” As The New American reported last week, with the ongoing UN climate deception once again re-emerging in the global media, experts and scientists are lashing out at what they see as the corruption of science - a dangerous trend for humanity. The latest revelations only add further weight to the concerns.
Drafts of the upcoming UN IPCC report leaked to sympathetic “journalists” ahead of the official release tried to dance around an inconvenient truth that has been plaguing alarmists in the climate debate for quite some time - for the last decade and a half, the Earth has not been warming. The planetary entity’s supposed “scientists” and computer models had all been frantically warning of “catastrophic” temperature increases as carbon dioxide levels continued to rise. When it did not happen, however, the UN and its allies in the media and national governments were left with egg on their faces, to put it mildly.
Instead of admitting the major blunder or outright deception, the UN doubled down, claiming to now be more confident than ever that human emissions of CO2 were to blame for “climate change” - 95 percent sure, to be precise. UN IPCC “experts,” though, struggled hard to come up with a credible excuse for a lack of warming, leaked draft reports show. Everything from volcanic ash and declining sun activity to natural variability and heat supposedly being trapped somewhere in the deep oceans was implausibly cited to explain away the lack of warming in defiance of all the predictions.
For national governments, though, that was not enough, the leaked documents obtained by the AP revealed. In comments to the UN IPCC, several governments “objected” to how the lack of warming was addressed. German authorities, for example, called for the reference to the global-warming “slowdown,” as the UN puts it, to be deleted from the report entirely. Officials claimed that a timespan of 10 to 15 years was “misleading” because “climate change” is measured over “decades and centuries.”
The Obama administration, meanwhile, which is trying to bypass Congress by lawlessly imposing global-warming decrees on the American people, while waging a witch-hunt on “climate deniers,” also had some comments for the UN. According to the documents obtained by AP, the U.S. government called on the IPCC to include the so-called leading hypothesis - the notion that the lack of warming is linked to the heat supposedly being transferred to the depths of the oceans. Of course, the deeply controversial theory remains unproven by actual observation.
For Obama and his climate agenda, the UN’s dubious upcoming report could prove critical on several fronts. Last week, the EPA, following the president’s demands, announced executive decrees regulating carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants as supposed “pollution.” CO2, of course, is a gas that is exhaled by every human being on the planet and is fundamental to plant life. Man’s emissions of the “pollution,” meanwhile, make up just a fraction of one percent of the greenhouse gases naturally present in the atmosphere. So, it is hardly a surprise that the administration would call on the IPCC to come up with some sort of public explanation.
The Obama administration and political authorities from Germany were hardly alone, though. According to the AP, the Belgian government complained about using the year 1998 because temperatures either remained the same or went lower after that year. Using another year as a starting point could help create a more “upward-pointing curve,” authorities in Belgium said, thereby making it easier for governments to claim that carbon taxes and draconian global regulatory regimes are needed to stave off “climate change.”
Finally, the government of Hungary also expressed concerns that the IPCC report would “provide ammunition for skeptics,” the AP reported without elaborating. In other words, political forces seeking bigger and more centralized government at all levels have been prodding the UN “climate” entity to crank up the alarmism another notch while essentially ignoring or at least downplaying the 800-pound gorilla in the room: the lack of global warming in defiance of climate models and UN predictions. Indeed, more than a few prominent experts, citing the latest data and trends, are even suggesting the Earth may be entering an era of global cooling.
Commenting on the latest developments about political intervention, IPCC spokesman Jonathan Lynn attempted to downplay the news of political meddling in the report as simply routine. “This is the culmination of four years’ work by hundreds of scientists, where governments get a chance to ensure the summary for policymakers is clear and concise in a dialogue with the scientists who wrote it, and have the opportunity to raise any topics they think should be highlighted,” he was quoted as saying by the U.K. Daily Mail.
Experts, however, have pointed out that the UN is really in a tight spot. “This unpredicted hiatus [in global warming] just reflects the fact that we don’t understand things as well as we thought,” said Roger Pielke, Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder, described as a vocal critic of the climate-change establishment. “Now the IPCC finds itself in a position that a science group never wants to be in. It’s in spin management mode.”
Considering the utter disaster that was the last IPCC report - flagrant errors even on basic facts, as The New American documented extensively - climate alarmists are hoping to restore some measure of credibility to the UN institution and its largely debunked theories. That will be tough. Following the last report, for instance, the Dutch government forced the IPCC to retract its claim that 55 percent of the Netherlands was below sea level. It’s actually only 26 percent.
There were numerous other major errors - or attempts at deception - in the UN “science” and predictions, too. Among other examples, the last report claimed Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, an absurd claim that was later found to have been plagiarized from an advocacy group’s debunked propaganda citing an incorrect magazine article. The IPCC eventually apologized for “GlacierGate,” as the scandal became known. But there was also AfricaGate, ChinaGate, and numerous other scandals.
The bad publicity was so overwhelming that polls showed barely a third of Americans even believed in the UN’s theories by 2009. Numerous IPCC scientists, more than a few of whom have spoken with The New American, resigned in disgust. Even the former chairman of the UN body, Robert Watson, acknowledged the problems. “The mistakes all appear to have gone in the direction of making it seem like climate change is more serious by overstating the impact,” he conceded. “That is worrying.” More recently, studies show that some 97 percent of “climate” computer models overestimated the warming by an average of 100 percent.
As if all of those scandals around its last report were not bad enough for the embattled IPCC and the climate-alarmism industry, then came ClimateGate. That particular scandal involved leaked e-mails that exposed leading UN climate alarmists engaged in outright fraud, manipulation of data, deception, unlawful activities, destruction of data to avoid complying with freedom of information requests, and more. It was all to promote “the cause” - theories claiming that human CO2 emissions are leading to dangerous warming and must be restrained by a UN-run planetary carbon regime.
Of course, the hysteria surrounding the implosion of UN global-warming theories by governments and self-styled UN “climate experts” is understandable. If and when what numerous respected experts and scientists have labeled the climate “hoax” comes completely undone - and that moment appears to be approaching fast - the UN, its scientists, and national governments around the world will almost certainly face a public backlash of epic proportions. After squandering billions of dollars on the bogus climate scheme to extort trillions more to deal with it, humanity’s trust in its would-be rulers would almost certainly be all but impossible to restore.
At this point, the UN climate alarmism appears to be on the brink of a total meltdown. A recent report by the Science and Space Research Corporation, for example, suggests strongly that global cooling is on the way. Numerous prominent experts have echoed those concerns as the Arctic rebounds, Antarctic ice levels soar, the globe fails to warm despite UN predictions, and the thorough debunking of climate models becomes impossible to ignore.
Another new climate report recently released by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) - a team of dozens of independent climate experts citing over 1,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers - also adds to the growing body of evidence showing the IPCC has either ignored or misinterpreted much of the available data in a bid to hype its anti-carbon schemes. “The NIPCC report demonstrates that the science being relied upon by governments to create multi-billion dollar policies is almost certainly wrong,” said Tom Harris, executive director of the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC).
While the Obama administration and its allies try to pressure the largely discredited UN IPCC to step up the alarmism and explain away or even conceal inconvenient truths, the world appears to be slowly waking up. In Australia, voters recently delivered a landslide victory to a political coalition that vowed to kill the costly carbon tax and rein in the climate alarmism machine. In Britain, the hysteria is dying, too.
Aside from the alarmist U.K. Guardian, even much of the world media appears to be taking a step back. In the political realm, establishment politicians like Obama continue to push the hysteria to justify the broader agenda - openly described by the UN as the development of global governance and planetary control. However, as the latest UN report gets torn to pieces by scientists before it is even released, it will only get harder for alarmists to push their claims.
Wrong: Al Gore Predicted Arctic Summer Ice Could Disappear In 2013
September 13, 2013 - 12:05 PM
By Barbara Hollingsworth
(CNSNews.com) - A 2007 prediction that summer in the North Pole could be “ice-free by 2013” that was cited by former Vice President Al Gore in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech has proven to be off… by 920,000 square miles.
In his Dec. 10, 2007 “Earth has a fever” speech, Gore referred to a prediction by U.S. climate scientist Wieslaw Maslowski that the Arctic’s summer ice could “completely disappear” by 2013 due to global warming caused by carbon emissions.
Gore said that on Sept. 21, 2007, “scientists reported with unprecedented alarm that the North Polar icecap is, in their words, ‘falling off a cliff.’ One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week warns that it could happen in as little as seven years, seven years from now.”
Maslowski told members of the American Geophysical Union in 2007 that the Arctic’s summer ice could completely disappear within the decade. “If anything,” he said, “our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer...is already too conservative.”
The former vice president also warned that rising temperatures were “a planetary emergency and a threat to the survival of our civilization.”
However, instead of completely melting away, the polar icecap is at now at its highest level for this time of year since 2006.
Satellite photos of the Arctic taken by NASA in August 2012 and August 2013 show a 60 percent increase in the polar ice sheet, more than half the size of Europe, despite “realistic” predictions by climate scientists six years ago that the North Pole would be completely melted by now.
Instead of shrinking, the NASA photographs clearly show that the Arctic ice sheet is much larger than it was at the same time last year. The thick layer of summer ice, which currently stretches from Canada to Russia, is preventing ships from using the North-West Passage.
A Dec. 12, 2007 BBC article quoted Professor Maslowski and his team of climate researchers at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. explaining how they used “a high-resolution regional [computer] model for the Arctic Ocean and sea ice forced with realistic atmospheric data” to make their predictions.
“This way, we get much more realistic forcing, from above by the atmosphere and from the bottom by the ocean,” he said.
NASA spokesman Steve Cole told CNSNews.com that the space agency is in charge of monitoring polar ice “as part of our Earth sciences” mandate. “We have a number of different satellites orbiting the Earth and observing the ice sheets and a lot of other things around the clock, and we are funded to collect that data
- See more
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James Taylor, Forbes
Arctic sea ice experienced record 60-percent growth in August 2013 compared to August 2012. Global warming alarmists now tell us they predicted this, despite our collective memories to the contrary.
Remember all those claims last year about accelerating Arctic ice loss and an ice-free Arctic by 2015 or 2020? Well, actually you don’t, because nobody ever made those claims. In fact, you heard exactly the opposite. You may think you heard claims about accelerating Arctic ice loss and an imminent ice-free Arctic, but they were merely figments of your imagination. You were merely hallucinating. How do I know this? Global warming alarmists just told us so.
Writing in Monday’s UK Guardian, alarmists John Abraham and Dana Nuccitelli claim global warming alarmists predicted this year’s record growth in Arctic sea ice. And all those claims of doom-and-gloom predictions about Arctic sea ice in 2012? They were apparently just figments of our collective imagination.
So when you click on this article published by the very same UK Guardian last September 17, you really aren’t reading the article title that you think you are reading:
“Arctic expert predicts final collapse of sea ice within four years.”
You really aren’t reading this gem of a quote from the story’s central “expert,” either.
“This collapse, I predicted would occur in 2015-16 at which time the summer Arctic (August to September) would become ice-free. The final collapse towards that state is now happening and will probably be complete by those dates.”
When you click on this New York Times article, you also aren’t seeing what you think you see, because global warming alarmists apparently told us last year the 2012 Arctic ice season was unlikely to be repeated in 2013.
According to our collective hallucination in the September 19, 2012 New York Times:
“‘The Arctic is the earth’s air-conditioner,’ said Walt Meier, a research scientist at the snow and ice center, an agency sponsored by the government. ‘We’re losing that. It’s not just that polar bears might go extinct, or that native communities might have to adapt, which we’re already seeing there are larger climate effects.’”
“Now, some scientists think the Arctic Ocean could be largely free of summer ice as soon as 2020,” the Times continued, according to our collective hallucination.
“Scientists said Wednesday that the Arctic has become a prime example of the built-in conservatism of their climate forecasts. As dire as their warnings about the long-term consequences of heat-trapping emissions have been, many of them fear they may still be underestimating the speed and severity of the impending changes,” the Times apparently never reported.
Of course, the UK Guardian and the New York Times are just two of many publications that warned us about rapidly accelerating Arctic ice loss and an imminent loss of the entire polar ice cap. Er, I mean, the UK Guardian and the New York Times are just two of many publications that we falsely thinkwarned us about rapidly accelerating Arctic ice loss and an imminent loss of the entire polar ice cap.
These hallucinations are strikingly similar to when we erroneously believe alarmists warned us about less snowfall, more hurricanes, shrinking Antarctic sea ice, the Gulf Stream shutting down, etc. When the earth’s climate reacts exactly in the opposite manner as predicted by global warming alarmists, they pretend they never made such scary predictions in the first place.
No, alarmists never predicted Arctic sea ice would recede this year. They all predicted record Arctic sea ice growth, instead. Any such memories to the contrary are mere hallucinations. We know this because if the alarmists ever had made such doom-and-gloom predictions, it would prove to be yet another epic fail in the annals of silly and disproven global warming predictions.