THE SCIENCE MANDATE OF THE IPCC

An email from Norm Kalmanovitch [kalhnd@shaw.ca]

The actual science mandate of the IPCC was simply to investigate and quantify possible human causes for the observed warming of the past century. This mandate is so simple and straightforward that a team of just half a dozen researchers could have fulfilled this mandate within a few weeks, yet with over 2500 scientists, the IPCC has operated for over twenty years, produced four major reports, had countless meetings and conventions around the world, but still has not even come close to fulfilling their original mandate.

The first order of business to meet the mandate should have been to define a reference temperature dataset on which to evaluate the global temperature changes. Satellites had been recording global temperatures for ten years at the time of the IPCC formation, and since these measurements are far more precise and completely free of the physical biases of land based temperature data, this would have made the perfect reference.

Global temperature is an instantaneous average of the temperature of all parts of the world, and since this is constantly changing as areas of the world go from day to night, from cloud cover to open sky, and are affected by both warm and cold winds; this temperature cannot actually be measured. What can be measured by satellites is an overall daily average which can be summed into and displayed as a monthly average. From this, the best that can be determined is a temperature trend; i.e. global warming or global cooling.

Since temperature is the average kinetic energy of a body, global warming would require the addition of energy to the measured body, and global cooling would require some loss of energy from this body.

In physical terms this would mean that global warming results from a net addition of energy into the Earth's system relative to the energy leaving the Earth's system through radiation at night, and global cooling (as we are now experiencing) would require a net loss of energy from the Earth's system relative to the energy leaving the Earth's system through radiation at night.

Human contribution to this energy balance could take place, by changing the insulating capacity of the Earth's atmosphere, by changing the reflectivity of the surface through land use, by changing the amount of heat retained by the urban heat island effect, and by the addition of heat energy from sources that are not part of the natural system.

The only one of these factors that could immediately be ruled out is the changes to the insulating capacity of the Earth's atmosphere, because the only human sourced agent that could do that is CO2. Observational evidence from the Nimbus 4 satellite in 1970 clearly shows that most of the possible effect from CO2 on the Earth's radiative spectrum had already been achieved, and this was verified by the fact that during the previous global cooling period from about 1942 to 1975, CO2 emissions were increasing at record rates from post war industrialization. Any increases in the insulating capacity of the Earth's atmosphere from increases in CO2 emissions were obviously having no measurable effect, so the only possible influence from humans would have to come from the other factors mentioned.

Instead of investigating the remaining possible human causes for the observed warming, the IPCC completely dismissed these possible causes, violating its mandate. Instead the IPCC went about promoting the clearly false concept of CO2 emissions causing what is essentially a physically impossible degree of warming, violating not only its mandate, but violating the very essence of science protocol and ethics. Even more repulsive to any honest scientist was that the IPCC adopted this false concept as fact making ridiculous claims about potential effects if the globe warmed to the degree that was stated, and using this to promote what can only be assumed is some sort of political agenda.

Today, twenty years after its inception, the world is once again cooling as CO2 continues to rise, and the IPCC is still claiming that the world needs to cater to various carbon trading and taxing schemes to stop global warming, while admitting that there is currently no global warming, and making no predictions about when this global warming will reoccur.

A litre of gasoline produces 8700kcal of heat energy when burned and about 2.4kg of CO2. The heat energy produced is sufficient to heat one km3 of air by 0.0000036°C; the CO2 produced has zero heating effect. Supposedly according to the IPCC, 2500 of the world's top scientists have yet to figure this out.






Leftist commentator on BBC chat show lumps "climate deniers" in with "gay bashers" and "Fascist sympathizers"

Transcript excerpt:

POLLY TOYNBEE

I think this is one of the most alarming aspects of current Conservative policy and it suggests that Cameron’s moderation is something of a veneer if he is willing to leave the mainstream of Europe where Merkel, where Sarkozy are, where power is, where decisions are made and join this very freakish group. I mean I would like to hear from Caroline whether she would say it hasn't been decided yet but all of those likely to form this new alliance if they can get enough of these freakish parties in ,will you say yourself that you will object strongly if it does include any gypsy-haters, any gay-bashers, any fascist sympathizers and any climate deniers? Because if it includes any of those a respectable Conservative party should have nothing to do with it.

Full transcript downloadable HERE. The comment is towards the end of the programme. The remark was greeted with applause from the studio audience.







Reason clouded by CO2 obsession

By Peter Schwerdtfeger, emeritus professor of meteorology at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia

ALTHOUGH there are many doubters of man-made climate change, I am not yet one of them. But I remain unconvinced that carbon dioxide is the sole bete noire. Two decades ago, I pored over the spectral properties of the infra-red radiation of this gas, which is essential to plant life, and found that it was almost completely overshadowed by the radiative properties of water vapour, which is vital to all forms of life on earth.

Repeatedly in science we are reminded that happenings in nature can rarely be ascribed to a single phenomenon. For example, sea levels on our coasts are dependent on winds and astronomical forces as well as atmospheric pressure and, on a different time scale, the temperature profile of the ocean. Now, with complete abandon, a vociferous body of claimants is insisting that CO2 alone is the root of climatic evil.

I fear that many supporters of this view have become carried away by the euphoria of mass or dominant group psyche. Scientists are no more immune from being swayed by the pressure of collective enthusiasm than any other member of the human race. I do not believe for one moment that undisciplined burning of fossil fuels is harmless, but the most awful consequence of the burning of carboniferous fuels is not the release of CO2 but the large-scale injection ofminute particulate pollutants into the atmosphere.

Detailed studies led by internationally acclaimed cloud physicist Daniel Rosenfeld of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have revealed that the minute water vapour droplets that form around some carbon particles are so small as to be almost incapable of being subsequently coalesced into larger precipitable drops. In short, the particulates prevent rainfall.

Rosenfeld's research group has shown that humans are changing the climate in a much more direct way than through the release of CO2. Rather, pollution is seriously inhibiting rain over mountains in semi-arid regions, a phenomenon with dire consequences for water resources in the Middle East and many other parts of the world, including China and Australia.

Rosenfeld is no snake-oil salesman. As an American Meteorological Society medallist, he has an internationally endorsed research record in cloud physics that no living Australian can claim to emulate. It is more than 20 years since Australia was a knowledgeable force in cloud physics and cloud seeding. CSIRO's relevant division has long been disbanded and its cloud-seeding techniques based on the use of expensive silver iodide have been superseded by the Israelis using an inexpensive and far more natural product: sea salt.

Chinese and Israeli researchers have shown that the average precipitation on Mt Hua near Xi'an in central China has decreased by 20per cent amid increasing levels of man-made air pollution during the past 50 years. The precipitation loss was doubled on days that had the poorest visibility because of pollution particles in the air. This explains the widely observed trends of decrease in mountain precipitation relative to the rainfall in nearby densely populated lowlands, which until now had not been directly ascribed to air pollution.

Some of the most chilling evidence was presented by Rosenfeld's Australian-based research associate Aron Gingis in a 2002 submission to the House of Representatives standing committee on agriculture, fisheries and forestry concerning future water supplies for Australia's rural industries and communities.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's satellite map of southeast Australia, enhanced by Rosenfeld, shows the frightening persistence and longevity of pollutant trails across vast areas, including the all-important Snowy Mountains catchments. It may well be concluded that the increasing emissions from the phalanx of brown coal-burning power stations at Hazelwood and other locations in Gippsland, Victoria, have substantially wrecked the natural precipitation processes over the once hydrologically rich Australian Alps.

If Rosenfeld's scientific interpretations are correct, then southern Australia would greatly benefit from the application of his discoveries. At the very least, Rosenfeld's conclusions should be accorded appropriate evaluation and testing by an unprejudiced panel of peers.

Yet his work so far has been ignored in Australia because it does not fit in with the dominant paradigm that holds CO2 responsible for reduced rainfall in semi-arid regions.

Scientists, like all other people, need to remain open to competing views and avoid the danger of being locked into tunnel vision through group obsession, which is what global warming seems to have become.

SOURCE






Fun! Russia to INCREASE its CO2 output

Russia plans to release 30 percent more greenhouse gases by 2020 under an emissions target scheme announced on Friday by President Dmitry Medvedev. The plan would reduce emissions by 10-15 percent from Russia's emissions in 1990 when it was part of the Soviet Union and its emissions were far higher than they are today.

This angered environmentalists, and the target also is likely to fall short of expectations from developing countries. "It's not enough, it's very low," said Alexey Kokorin, the Russia spokesman for environmental protection group WWF.

Medvedev's announcement was interpreted as an opening shot in United Nations negotiations meant to seal a new climate treaty in December to replace the Kyoto Protocol. Under those talks, rich nations are meant to propose mid-term emissions targets. Russia is the last major country to do so.

Green groups and developing countries want industrialized countries to trim their emissions by 25-40 percent below 1990 levels, referring to a range of cuts suggested by a U.N. panel of climate scientists. "Based on the current situation by 2020 we could cut emissions by about 10-15 percent," Medvedev told Russian state television, according to a copy of his comments supplied by the Kremlin.

Arkady Dvorkovich, the Kremlin's chief economic adviser, later clarified to Interfax news agency that the reduction would be from 1990 levels, before the Soviet Union fell and Russia's heavy industry collapsed. Since then, its carbon emissions have returned to an upward curve along with its industrial revival, preserving Russia's place as the world's third largest polluter behind China and the United States.

The target laid out on Friday meant cumulative cuts of 30 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases from 1990 to 2020, Medvedev said. This implies Russia will emit about 3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas in 2020 compared with 2.2 billion tonnes in 2007. "We will not cut off our development potential," Medvedev said.

Under Kyoto, Russia has to return its emissions to 1990 levels by 2008-12. Green groups and developing countries were disappointed last week by Japan's proposals for a 2020 target barely stiffer than its Kyoto Protocol goal, and were again downbeat on Friday after Russia's announcement.

More HERE






Latest British climate predictions are a joke

Projections by the UK's Climate Impact Programme released on Thursday come with strict caveats about how they should be used and their margin for error. The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Met Office argue that, even though the projections are far from certain, they will be useful to help plan for climate change in the UK. But others have warned that the uncertainties in the projections are too great to be of practical use

Defra has produced projections of climate change and consequent weather using advanced computer modelling techniques. Up until now, most projections have been at a sub-continental level - giving information at a regional level in squares of 300km on a side. Defra's projections are among the first in the world to give information at a local level - to the scale of large cities of 25km square and, in some cases, projecting weather patterns to a village scale of 5km square.

The UK's Climate Impacts Programme projections were explicitly designed to help local authority planners and businesses make investment decisions to adapt to the consequence of climate change. But according to Dr Myles Allen of Oxford University, who was among those who carried out an independent review of the projections, said that they may not be reliable enough at this stage to make some of the most important policy decisions. "If your decisions depend on what's happening at these very fine scales of 25 km or even 5 km resolution, then you probably shouldn't be making irreversible investment decisions now," he said.

The review, published on Thursday, says that the projections are "credible" but does raise concerns that the statistical techniques used are untested and have not been published in a peer-reviewed journal. The last assessment by a committee set up in 2007 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that these kinds of so-called "probabilistic" projections could only be applied reliably on a global scale - of 1000km square. "The IPCC explicitly stepped back from making probabilistic projections on this sort of scale," said Dr Allen.

"The method that's been used to produce this projection is a very specific one. "It's not been used before for this climate change approach and we thought that it would be helpful to provide a much more conservative method, something the IPCC would have used in 2007 just to provide users with a context and something to compare with so that they can see which aspects of these projections are robust."

Defra has not accepted the recommendation to provide an an alternative set of projections by the independent review panel because officials felt that having two sets would be confusing.

Dr Leonard Smith of the London School of Economics' Grantham Institute says he cannot see how any planner could make decisions on probable climate outcomes that are so uncertain that they might change substantially in 20 years. "It's very hard to find a rational way of using them," he said. "If the numbers are used in a naive way, then you are very likely to design a power plant or reservoir that doesn't meet the needs of the population."

Many in the scientific community were particularly astonished that Defra published projections at a scale of 5km square - which are even more uncertain than the 25km square projections. Among them was Professor Sir David King who was involved in commissioning the projections when he was the government's chief scientific advisor. "If you include a 5km scale in your predictions, you are probably pushing things beyond what is realistic. So I'm a little surprised that scientists were prepared to go that far.

More HERE






BRITAIN'S GREEN SUICIDE NOTE: £5,000 POWER BILLS SHOCK

ENERGY bills will hit a shocking £5,000 a year to strike a blow to millions of struggling families, experts warned last night. Consumer champions said the massive sum was a "wake-up call", marking the end of cheap electricity and gas. Bills will rise by up to 42 per cent ayear over the next decade - with the biggest single increase an eye-watering £1,280.

But they said this will be boosted by a yearly £548 to help overhaul the UK's out-of-date energy supply system. And they warned that the huge rise would stretch household budgets to breaking point and dump hundreds of thousands more people into fuel poverty.

Experts at uSwitch.com said that average annual bills have more than doubled from £580 five years ago to £1,243 today. Over the next decade customers will suffer even steeper price rises with fees quadrupling by 2020, they warn. Investment in outdated infrastructure and new green energy policies will drive bills higher.

More HERE

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