Global Warming Challenged by New Data and Failed Predictions

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" 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: "The IPCC's methodology relies unduly - indeed, almost exclusively - upon numerical analysis, even where the outputs of the models upon which it so heavily relies are manifestly and significantly at variance with theory or observation or both. Modeled projections such as those upon which the IPCC's entire case rests have long been proven impossible when applied to mathematically-chaotic objects, such as the climate, whose initial state can never be determined to a sufficient precision. For a similar reason, those of the IPCC's conclusions that are founded on probability distributions in the chaotic climate object are unsafe.

"Not one of the key variables necessary to any reliable evaluation of climate sensitivity can be measured empirically. The IPCC's presentation of its principal conclusions as though they were near-certain is accordingly unjustifiable. We cannot even measure mean global surface temperature anomalies to within a factor of 2; and the IPCC's reliance upon mean global temperatures, even if they could be correctly evaluated, itself introduces substantial errors in its evaluation of climate sensitivity. .The IPCC overstates temperature feedbacks to such an extent that the sum of the high-end values that it has now, for the first time, quantified would cross the instability threshold in the Bode feedback equation and induce a runaway greenhouse effect that has not occurred even in geological times despite CO₂ concentrations almost 20 times today's, and temperatures up to 7 ºC higher than today's."

Lord Monkton concludes his paper with: "Even if temperature had risen above natural variability, the recent solar Grand Maximum may have been chiefly responsible. Even if the sun were not chiefly to blame for the past half-century's warming, the IPCC has not demonstrated that, since CO₂ occupies only one-ten-thousandth part more of the atmosphere that it did in 1750, it has contributed more than a small fraction of the warming. Even if carbon dioxide were chiefly responsible for the warming that ceased in 1998 and may not resume until 2015, the distinctive, projected fingerprint of anthropogenic "greenhouse-gas" warming is entirely absent from the observed record.

"Even if the fingerprint were present, computer models are long proven to be inherently incapable of providing projections of the future state of the climate that are sound enough for policymaking. Even if per impossible the models could ever become reliable, the present paper demonstrates that it is not at all likely that the world will warm as much as the IPCC imagines. "Even if the world were to warm that much, the overwhelming majority of the scientific, peer-reviewed literature does not predict that catastrophe would ensue. Even if catastrophe might ensue, even the most drastic proposals to mitigate future climate change by reducing emissions of carbon dioxide would make very little difference to the climate.

"Even if mitigation were likely to be effective, it would do more harm than good: already millions face starvation as the dash for biofuels takes agricultural land out of essential food production: a warning that taking precautions, "just in case", can do untold harm unless there is a sound, scientific basis for them. Finally, even if mitigation might do more good than harm, adaptation as (and if) necessary would be far more cost-effective and less likely to be harmful.

"In short, we must get the science right, or we shall get the policy wrong. If the concluding equation in this analysis (Eqn. 30) is correct, the IPCC's estimates of climate sensitivity must have been very much exaggerated. There may, therefore, be a good reason why, contrary to the projections of the models on which the IPCC relies, temperatures have not risen for a decade and have been falling since the phase-transition in global temperature trends that occurred in late 2001. Perhaps real-world climate sensitivity is very much below the IPCC's estimates. Perhaps, therefore, there is no 'climate crisis' at all. At present, then, in policy terms there is no case for doing anything. The correct policy approach to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing."

Since most of our food requires oil for running farm equipment, the production of fertilizers, transportation for getting the food to the people, etc., oil is essential for food production, not just for running our automobiles. It makes no sense for us to be importing 75% of the oil we use and paying $4 a gallon for gas to line the pockets of our worst enemies while allowing our own vast supply of offshore, Alaskan and western oil shale oil to go unused for outdated and false "environmental" concerns.