The Realists Take on Climate Change

COMMENTS ON THE RECENT STATEMENT BY THE CLIMATE

COMMITTEE OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF NEW ZEALAND

Dr Vincent Gray

INTRODUCTION

As an Expert Reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for eighteen years, that is to say, from the very beginning. I have submitted thousands of comments to all of the Reports. My comments on the Fourth IPCC Report, all 1,898 of them, are to be found at IPCC (2007) and my opinions of the IPCC are in Gray (2008b)

I am therefore very familiar with the arguments presented by the IPCC, many of which have now been copied by the Royal Society of New Zealand, and the responses to them.

I will first comment on the Introduction

Chico Enterprise-Record
Article Launched: 07/20/2008 12:00:00 AM PDT

Monday's E-R editorial noted that the G-8 Leaders took on intractable problems at this meeting. The label of "intractable" is dead on, as all three agenda issues are mighty hard to deal with. My comments address only global warming.

The editorial refers to a Supreme Court order requiring the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. I think the order told the EPA to render a decision regarding exit gases from autos, rather than total greenhouse gases, within 60 days. But no matter, my point remains the same. The EPA report correctly stated that there were doubts whether greenhouse gases could be controlled under the Clean Air Act, and claimed attempting to do so would cause economic havoc. Their use of 588 pages to say this is silly, but no surprise.

California is a leader to curtail carbon dioxide emissions with regulations. This approach will be extremely costly to us and makes no sense in light of proven factual evidence. Readers should get on Google and call up the Oregon Institute's technical paper on "Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide."

In RenewAmerica, Mary Mostert extracted the following points from Lord Monckton's challenge on the accuracy of the IPCC.

The American Physical Society (APS), representing over 50,000 physicists, has re-opened the discussion of the issue of global warming. In 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that more than half of the "Global warming" of the past 50 years (IPCC, 2007) had been caused by CO2 emissions from humans and that human activity would cause further rapid warming . That conclusion is now being challenged by new data and the failure of old data to predict what has actually happened to the climate since 2001.

Of particular interest is an article entitled "Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered" (Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered) written by Christopher Monckton. The IPCC argues that humans are the cause of the global warming that has taken place following the end of the "Little Ice Age" that ended about 1850 AD. IPCC claims that the current global warming was CAUSED by the development of and human use of railways, steam powered ships, the internal combustion engine and electrical power, all products of the 2nd Industrial Revolution that began as the "Little Ice Age" ended.

Lord Monckton challenges the accuracy of the IPCC calculations as follows:

Updated via Email from Bob Ashworth below

The Guardian by their media correspondent Owen Gibson reports on the latest stage in the 15 month enquiry to the showing of the Channel 4 film "The Great Global Warming Swindle".

The former chief scientist Sir David King and the IPCC complained about Channel 4’s film, that it misrepresented some of the world's leading climate scientists in a controversial documentary that claimed global warming was a conspiracy and a fraud, the UK's media regulator will rule next week.

In a long-awaited judgment following a 15-month inquiry, Ofcom is expected to censure the network over its treatment of some scientists in the programme, The Great Global Warming Swindle, which sparked outcry from environmentalists.

Complaints about privacy and fairness from the government's former chief scientist, Sir David King, and the Nobel peace prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be upheld on almost all counts, the Guardian has learned.

But it is understood that Channel 4 will still claim victory because the ultimate verdict on a separate complaint about accuracy, which contained 131 specific points and ran to 270 pages, will find that it did not breach the regulator's broadcasting code and did not materially mislead viewers.

Updated from The Times & The Telegraph below

An excellent news blog from THEAGE by William Kininmonth.......

WE NOW have Professor Jeffrey Sachs, economics adviser to the UN Secretary-General, and Professor Ross Garnaut, economics adviser to our Prime Minister, disagreeing over what form Australia's response to global warming should take (The Age, 15/7).

Whichever course is adopted, there is agreement that Australia's economy will suffer through a loss of its natural comparative advantage from access to cheap fossil fuels.

When doctors differ over the cure, it is time to get a new diagnosis. This is especially so if the nature and severity of the disease are poorly understood and if either recommended cure is going to reduce wellness significantly, or even leave the patient a cripple.

In the war that has become a stand in the name of science or the complete lack of it in regard to "Man Made Global Warming". We have the American Physical Society going to the front line in an effort to start a scientific debate about what is the real consensus, in other words "what the hell is going on", this is the Editor Comments: -

With this issue of Physics & Society, we kick off a debate concerning one of the main conclusions of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body which, together with Al Gore, recently won the Nobel Prize for its work concerning climate change research. There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution. Since the correctness or fallacy of that conclusion has immense implications for public policy and for the future of the biosphere, we thought it appropriate to present a debate within the pages of P&S concerning that conclusion.

This editor (JJM) invited several people to contribute articles that were either pro or con. Christopher Monckton responded with this issue's article that argues against the correctness of the IPCC conclusion, and a pair from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, David Hafemeister and Peter Schwartz, responded with this issue's article in favor of the IPCC conclusion. We, the editors of P&S, invite reasoned rebuttals from the authors as well as further contributions from the physics community. Please contact me (jjmarque@sbcglobal.net) if you wish to jump into this fray with comments or articles that are scientific in nature. However, we will not publish articles that are political or polemical in nature. Stick to the science! (JJM)

Updated from the American Thinker and also from Dennis Avery ( CFP) below

This story is a few days old from The Hindu - India’s National Newspaper: July 10, 2008, but it's worth a look.....

As western nations step up pressure on India and China to curb the emission of greenhouse gases, Russian scientists reject the very idea that carbon dioxide may be responsible for global warming.

Russian critics of the Kyoto Protocol, which calls for cuts in CO2 emissions, say that the theory underlying the pact lacks scientific basis. Under the Theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming, it is human-generated greenhouse gases, and mainly CO2, that cause climate change. “The Kyoto theorists have put the cart before the horse,” says renowned Russian geographer Andrei Kapitsa. “It is global warming that triggers higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not the other way round.”

Russian researchers made this discovery while studying ice cores recovered from the depth of 3.5 kilometres in Antarctica. Analysis of ancient ice and air bubbles trapped inside revealed the composition of the atmosphere and air temperature going back as far as 400,000 years.

It has been brought to my attention that users could not delete or edit their comments sucessfully, this should be fixed now... If you are still having issues with this then contact me and let me know.

The HeraldSun by Andrew Bolt produced an excellent news blog with reference to 7 graphs that demonstrate the end of Global Warming.

THESE are the seven graphs that should make the Rudd Government feel sick.

These are the seven graphs that should make you ask: What? Has global warming now stopped?

Look for yourself. They show that the world hasn't warmed for a decade, and has even cooled for several years.

See for yourself: Click here to view the graphs in detail (pdf)

We did not want to include this article about the Al Gore speach but having read what the New York Times JOHN M. BRODER had to say, we thought you would want to make a few comments.....

WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Al Gore on Thursday urged the United States to wean the nation from its entire electricity grid to carbon-free energy within 10 years, warning that drastic steps were needed to avoid a global economic and ecological cataclysm.

Like a modern Jeremiah, Mr. Gore called down thunder to justify the spending of trillions of dollars to remake the American power system, a plan fraught with technological and political challenges that goes far beyond the changes recently debated in Congress and by world leaders.

Update from Marc Morano below