Articles Tagged "John Christy"

Mr. Chairman and members of the IAC panel, thank you for inviting me to offer my views on the IPCC process. Five years ago the New York Times quoted me saying that an IPCC-like process, “… is the worst way to generate scientific information, except for all the others.” (23 Aug 2005) I now think I was a bit too generous.

A fundamental problem with the entire issue here is that climate science is not a classic, experimental science. As an emerging science of a complex, chaotic climate system, it is plagued by uncertainty and ambiguity in both observations and theory. Lacking classic, laboratory results, it easily becomes hostage to opinion, groupthink, arguments-from-authority, overstatement of confidence, and even Hollywood movies.

When climate scientists are placed in the limelight because this issue can generate compelling disaster scenarios, we simply don’t want to say, “We just don’t know.”

I have been a contributor to the IPCC Assessments since 1992 and a Lead Author in the Third Assessment of 2001. Though I had some good things to say about the IPCC, I did respond in 2001 to the US National Academy of Sciences when they solicited information about certain problems (see Appendix A). At the time, I was more concerned about the product rather than the process.

The first objection I raised regarding the Third Assessment was that the fabled Hockey Stick was oversold as an indicator of past climate change. This was well before the critical work of the Wegman Report, National Academy of Sciences, McIntyre’s papers and the East Anglia emails. Indeed, I urge you in the strongest terms to engage Stephen McIntyre in your deliberations at a high level as he has accurately documented specific failures in the IPCC process, some of which I can attest to, as I was there.

My second objection to the TAR was its overstatement of confidence in model projections. My role in the Fourth Assessment of 2007 was limited to that of a Contributing Author. This means I submitted recommendations that were dealt with by the Lead Authors who tended to disagree with my published findings. Thus, their views carried the day in the report. In this process, the final result really boils down the opinions of those selected as Lead Authors, a point I will address below.

Click source to read in FULL

CLIMATE scientists have warned that 2010 could turn out to be the warmest year in recorded history.

They have collated global surface temperature measurements showing that the world has experienced near-record highs between January and April.

Researchers working independently at the Met Office and Nasa are soon to publish data that reveal the trend is likely to continue for the rest of the year.

James Hansen, director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss), a world centre for climate monitoring, said: “Global temperatures, averaged over the past 12 months, were the warmest for 130 years.

“December to February was also the second-warmest of any such period.”

Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office, said: “It was a cold winter in Europe but, globally, January to March was one of the seven warmest starts to the year on record.

“This year has more than a 50% chance of being the warmest on record.”

The Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions which came into force five years ago has failed in its goals and is now largely redundant.

It took years of complicated negotiations and compromises and many hoped it would prove a major breakthrough in bringing climate change under control.

It was supposed to herald a brave new cleaner world where carbon emissions were reduced and everyone benefited from it. Even after five years problems are still unresolved. Arguably, the deal is now even further behind than it was at the opening stages.

The Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in December 2009, where a new deal on climate change was supposed to be signed, also turned out fruitless.

The CRU e-mails have revealed how the normal conventions of the peer review process appear to have been compromised by a team* of global warming scientists, with the willing cooperation of the editor of the International Journal of Climatology (IJC), Glenn McGregor. The team spent nearly a year preparing and publishing a paper that attempted to rebut a previously published paper in IJC by Douglass, Christy, Pearson, and Singer (DCPS). The DCPS paper, reviewed and accepted in the traditional manner, had shown that the IPCC models that predicted significant "global warming" in fact largely disagreed with the observational data.

We will let the reader judge whether this team effort, revealed in dozens of e-mails and taking nearly a year, involves inappropriate behavior, including (a) unusual cooperation between authors and editor, (b) misstatement of known facts, (c) character assassination, (d) avoidance of traditional scientific give-and-take, (e) using confidential information, (f) misrepresentation (or misunderstanding) of the scientific question posed by DCPS, (g) withholding data, and more.

*The team is a group of climate scientists who frequently collaborate and publish papers which often support the hypothesis of human-caused global warming. For this essay, the leading team members include Ben Santer, Phil Jones, Timothy Osborn, and Tom Wigley, with lesser roles for several others.

Click source to read FULL article by David H. Douglass and John R. Christy

Click the following link to see Global Warming Debate: John Christy vs. Gavin Schmidt

Click for EyeBlast.TV Link

H/T WUWT

In a Fortune interview, noted climatologist John Christy contends the green crusade to fight climate change is "all cost and no benefit."

By Jon Birger, senior writer

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- With Congress about to take up sweeping climate-change legislation, expect to hear more in coming weeks from John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at University of Alabama-Huntsville.

A veteran climatologist who refuses to accept any research funding from the oil or auto industries, Christy was a lead author of the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report as well as one of the three authors of the American Geophysical Union's landmark 2003 statement on climate change.

[Note: Wednesday February 25, 2009 is a big global warming debate day on Capitol Hill. The House Committee on Ways and Means holds a “Hearing on Scientific Objectives for Climate Change Legislation” Meanwhile, the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee will hold climate science hearing - “Update on the Latest Global Warming Science.” See: The Senate hearing will pit UN IPCC Chairman Pachauri against Princeton University physicist Will Happer. More on Dr. Happer here: Prominent Scientist Fired By Gore Says Warming Alarm ‘Mistaken’]

Please download the PDF file to read the FULL report

claims 'temperatures climbing sharply' in last decade!

John Christy and I have written a paper that will soon be published showing the opposite of Parchauri's claim.

Regards;

David Douglass

Limits on CO2 Climate Forcing from Recent Temperature Data of Earth(Submitted on 3 Sep 2008)
by David H. Douglass, John R. Christy

From jennifermarohasy.com

New Detailed Analysis of Global Temperature Data Does Not Support Significant Role for Carbon Dioxide

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stated that: Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations, mainly carbon dioxide. This conclusion is based on output from global climate computer models known as General Circulation Models (GCM).