The Realists Take on Climate Change

It is well known that carbon dioxide cannot directly account for the observed increase in global temperature over the past century. This has led climate scientists to theorize that many feedback relationships exists within the climate system, serving to amplify the impact of rising CO2 levels. One of these is the impact of rising temperature on the ability of the ecosystem to absorb CO2. The temperature sensitivity of ecosystem respiratory processes (referred to as Q10) is a key determinant of the interaction between climate and the carbon cycle. New research, recently published in the journal Science, shows that the Q10 of ecosystem respiration is invariant with respect to mean annual temperature, and independent of the analyzed ecosystem type. This newly discovered temperature insensitivity suggests that climate sensitivity to CO2 is much smaller than assumed by climate models.

Climate sensitivity is generally given as how much temperature rise would result from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 levels. Using IPCC figures for radiative forcing, a doubling of CO2 would lead to a temperature rise of about half a degree (see “Another Look at Climate Sensitivity”). Yet the UN IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) gives a much higher value for climate sensitivity. It claims a 2°C to 4.5°C rise for a CO2 doubling, or from four to nine times higher than what is see in the real climate system. Why? Climate models assume that there are large positive feedbacks as Earth warms. Among these feedbacks is the impact of rising temperature on emission and absorption of CO2 by Earth's biota.

Accurately predicting future levels of atmospheric CO2 requires a clear understanding of how land and atmosphere exchange CO2. Each year, photosynthesizing land plants remove (fix) one in eight molecules of atmospheric CO2. Land plants and soil organisms return a similar amount of the dreaded greenhouse gas. The balance between removal and respiration determines whether terrestrial ecosystems are a net carbon sink or source. Two papers in the August 13, 2010, issue of Science bring a new understanding of land-atmosphere CO2 exchange.

Click source to read FULL report from Doug L. Hoffman

The Science and Technology Committee will hold an oral evidence session following-up to the previous committee’s report on the disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

The session will be on:

Wednesday 8 September 2010 at 10.30 am

Thatcher Room, House of Commons

The Committee will take evidence from Lord Oxburgh, who headed the International Panel that was set up by the University to assess the integrity of the research published by the Climatic Research Unit.

An oral evidence session with Sir Muir Russell, who headed the Independent Climate Change E-mails Review, will be announced in October.

The sessions will focus on how the two reviews responded to the former committee’s recommendations about the reviews and how they carried out their work.

Inquiry page: The Reviews into the Climatic Research Unit’s E-mails at the University of East Anglia

If this keeps up, no one's going to trust any scientists.

The global-warming establishment took a body blow this week, as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change received a stunning rebuke from a top-notch independent investigation.

For two decades, the IPCC has spearheaded efforts to convince the world's governments that man-made carbon emissions pose a threat to the global temperature equilibrium -- and to civilization itself. IPCC reports, collated from the work of hundreds of climate scientists and bureaucrats, are widely cited as evidence for the urgent need for drastic action to "save the planet."

But the prestigious InterAcademy Council, an independent association of "the best scientists and engineers worldwide" (as the group's own Web site puts it) formed in 2000 to give "high-quality advice to international bodies," has finished a thorough review of IPCC practices -- and found them badly wanting.

For example, the IPCC's much-vaunted Fourth Assessment Report claimed in 2007 that Himalayan glaciers were rapidly melting, and would possibly be gone by the year 2035. The claim was actually false -- yet the IPCC cited it as proof of man-made global warming.

Click source to read FULL report from Matt Patterson

Click source to see another part of the "Green Swindle" video from Fox News last week, this covers the "Cap and Trade Charade".

Who is Joe D'Aleo? He was the first Director of Meteorology at cable TV's Weather Channel, and Chief Meteorologist at the Weather Service's International Corporation. He has over 30 years experience as a meteorologist.

Kim Greenhouse recently interviewed Joseph D'Aleo and he was asked about global cooling: Listen to the interview HERE.

"I believe we're headed into at least a Dalton minimum kind of cooling which could be a degree or two Celsius below globally for over the next couple of decades," says D'Aleo.

"Three degrees Fahrenheit globally. You'll still get your heat waves. Winters will be colder and longer, more extreme. There will be plenty of snow, and snow in places where you usually don't see it.

"The point is that cold is much more dangerous than warmth. This could create crop failures and famines and plagues.

"We believe strongly that cooling is coming.

"We're preparing for something that is not coming."

H/T to Iceagenow.com

This cartoon from Adams appeared in the UK Telegraph on September 1st, 2010

ONE of the world's leading climate change experts, Sir Nicholas Stern, has warned that countries such as Australia will face future trade barriers unless they move to a low-carbon economy.

In a speech to the National Press Club yesterday, Lord Stern said the world should embrace what he called the ''new industrial revolution'' of cleaner technologies and renewable energy.

''Not participating in this new industrial revolution runs two types of risk: you drop behind technologically and you risk, not tomorrow or the next day but 10 or so years from now, finding real difficulty in the trade story,'' Lord Stern said.

''Ten or 15 years from now, those that produce in dirty ways are likely to face trade barriers.''

Lord Stern added that while he had spent his career arguing against protectionism, trade barriers against countries that did not reduce their emissions were ''right'', although he hoped it would not come to that.

Global warming science is still evolving; will future IPCC reports reflect that?

On Monday an independent review found that the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has downplayed uncertainties surrounding climate science. The review also found that the IPCC needs more robust safeguards against conflicts of interest, that it had committed "unnecessary errors" by failing to meet its own standards, that it had inadequately flagged its use of nonscientific sources, that it made claims with "high confidence" based on "weak evidentiary basis," and that it gave short shrift to dissenting scientists.

And for all that, the review added that the IPCC "has been successful overall and has served society well."

This week's report, in keeping with three earlier investigations into the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, limited its inquiry to the "processes and procedures" of the IPCC. While it found those wanting, it also saw no need to question their scientific result.

That's too bad, since the state of the science has moved on considerably since the IPCC concluded in its 2007 report that climate change was "unequivocal." A forthcoming paper in Annals of Applied Statistics details the uncertainties in trying to reconstruct historical temperatures using proxy data such as tree rings and ice cores. Statisticians Blakeley McShane and Abraham Wyner find that while proxy records may relate to temperatures, when it comes to forecasting the warming observed in the last 30 years, "the proxies do not predict temperature significantly better than random series generated independently of temperature."

It should have been the height of summer, but was notable only for its low temperatures.

The UK has just endured its coldest August for 17 years, which was marked, say forecasters, by a complete absence of 'hot days'.

The month also saw the lowest single-day August temperature for 23 years, with it falling to 55f (12.8c) in Edgbaston, Birmingham, last Thursday.

And several 'notably' cold nights were recorded last week

An exceptionally cloudy period in the South East of England put something of a dampener on the holiday period as heavy rain fell across large swathes of the country

The prolonged poor weather has been blamed on a band of low pressure being pushed across the country by the jet stream - the fast-flowing air currents in the upper atmosphere that move weather systems across the northern hemisphere - which was further north during the extended sunny spells of June and July.

It meant that by the end of August there had not been a single day when the mercury rose above 81f ( 27c), forecasters said.

In late 2009 the UK Meteorological office solemnly warned the world that it expected 2010 to be warmer than 1998, the hottest on the instrument record. (“Climate could warm to record levels in 2010”, Met Office, December 10, 2009)

A bastion of global warming theory, the Met Office went on to say that a record warm year is “not a certainty”, as the el Niño cycle then developing in the Pacific may give out early, and was referring to 2010 as a whole rather than the first few days of the year in the UK. But the release’s timing was most unfortunate as it had barely been issued before Britain was literally buried in snow, and exceptionally cold conditions had grounded airline traffic and stopped public transportation systems.

This proved too much even for the BBC which has faithfully reported the greenhouse line. In an interview gleefully shared around the growing network of sceptic newsletters and blogs Met office head, John Hirst, was grilled by a BBC presenter over these forecasts (broadcast January 7, 2010). The interview shed little light on the issue but it is by no means the first time the Met Office has issued a doubtful seasonal forecast. The UK’s The Independent newspaper estimates that the Met has failed to predict wet summers for the past three years; and that its annual global forecast predictions have been wrong for nine of the last 10 years (“Met office deserves to be shown the door”, The Independent, January 19, 2010). In 2009, for example, the office forecast a “barbecue summer”, only for the actual summer to be cooler and much wetter than previous summers.

The Met Office is hardly alone in making poor seasonal forecasts, incidentally. In 2007 the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, which is definitely not pro-warming, issued an analysis of seasonal climate predictions by the country’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, which found that the overall accuracy of the predictions is just 48 per cent. (“World climate predictors right only half the time”, June 8, 2007). There is no reason to think anyone has a better success rate.