This Man-Made Global Warming Nonsense

A few random comments, 3 November 2006.

I have got so completely fed-up with the constant haranguing from the government and media about the supposed calamity of global warming, that it is clearly way beyond time, that I had some counter comments and links on my web-site.

And for those who may query my right to make scientific comments in this area may I say,

No, I am not a climatologist, I am a retired chemist and food scientist - but I do have plenty of knowledge about (a) food and agriculture, (b) computer modelling and its pitfalls and (c) the application and misapplication of statistics.

So here goes:

• There is no scientific consensus.
  See below for links to web-sites of scientists opposed to the so-called "consensus" on global warming

• Carbon dioxide
  Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but a necessary contributor to plant growth and the utilisation by plants of energy from the sun by photosynthesis.
  Within limits higher carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, mean faster and more productive plant growth (a fact well known, for instance, to tomato growers, who routinely take steps to raise the carbon dioxide level in their greenhouses).
  Neither is carbon dioxide the main greenhouse gas - water vapour is by far the most important "greenhouse gas".
  Furthermore, the so-called "greenhouse effect" of additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere necessarily reduces logarithmically (i.e the effect of an increase from say 300 ppm to 600 ppm is much less than that of an increase from say 200 to 400 ppm).
  Or - perhaps easier to understand: (a similar phenomenon) Suppose you put up a black-out curtain against the window - it will cut out most of the light. Now add a second curtain - how much difference will it make?
  Carbon dioxide at 250 ppm has already had its effect; how much difference will an extra 250 ppm make?

• What is wrong with warmer weather?
  Relying so much on heating to make the house habitable through nearly half the year, and needing fans to cool us for perhaps two weeks in summer, who objects to warming in cold and wet old England?
  And how much faith can you have in forecasts of weather for hundreds of years - or even decades ahead - when weather forecasts for more than a few days ahead are notoriously unreliable?.
  Actually that really comes down to, how much faith can there ever be in forecasts (beyond the limit of available data !!). This is really the role of Old Moore's Almanac than of respectable scientists. But now we are expected to believe the dismal forecasts of economists as well - ever heard one who forecast correctly the timing of a crash on the stock market?

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Additional comments and further questions

The war is hotting up, as more and more papers questioning the scaremongering forecasts are published, including many from climate scientists across the world questioning the reliability of data input to the much-quoted climate models.

The FIRST question is:
What is meant by global temperature?
Presumably they mean average global temperature?
How, then is it calculated? Meteorological sites report maximum and minimum tempratures each 24-hours.
But weather and climate depend not on average temperatures but by differences in temperature between different regions, causing differences in barometric pressure and circulation of air masses between regions.<

What has average temperature to do with it?


Or even before that, what do we mean by surface air temperature?

See GISS [Goddard institute for Space Studies (NASA)]

And, then NASA has recently admitted to a mistake in the corrections applied to its US temperature records at the beginning of the millenium (the Y2K error):

... to begin with, the NASA temperature screw-up is not particularly relevant or even significant news in climate circles -- there is no agreement on exactly what we are trying to measure or how to go about it, far less precisely what the global mean surface temperature actually is (just see Hansen's Q&A). It is only because media and the people they proselytize have unreasonable expectation regarding pronouncements of temperature and trend that this acquires any significance. Let's be explicit -- the margin of error in our attempts to derive the global mean temperature is larger than the estimate of all net warming since the Industrial Revolution (we think it exists but we cannot quantify it, nor determine causation because we have an inadequate understanding of the system). Regarding estimates of future warming, these are all guesses and of limited value (those yielding catastrophic warming are rubbish relying on massive and imaginary feedbacks -- they exist only in virtual worlds and fevered imaginations). Guesstimates of 'tipping points' and Greenland meltdown are similarly divorced from reality, based as they are on the absurd output of 'climate models' (this is not data and must not be treated as such) and fly in the face of history and empirical measures. All this nonsense is predicated on physically impossible response to trivial increase in a trace gas -- the real world demonstrates that the magical multipliers do not exist as panic-peddlers postulate, so fuggedaboudit. (Junk Science

And see the comment in this week's Economist - Gambling on tomorrow: Modelling the Earth's climate mathematically is hard already. Now a new difficulty is emerging.

References:
Comments from Roy Spencer (Earth System Science Center, Univ. of Alabama)

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Some useful Links

Global Warming Generally

Scientific Alliance comment (Cambridge, UK)
Climate Science (Roger Pielke Sr - USA)
Still Waiting for Greenhouse (founded by the late John L. Daly, Australia)
EnviroSpin Watch (Professor Emeritus Philip Stott, UK)
Climate Chaos, Don't believe it [Christopher Monkton, Daily Telegraph]
Wrong problem, wrong solution [Christopher Monkton, Daily Telegraph]
Conversation with Bjorn Lomborg [TCSDaily (USA)]
There's not much future in prediction [On-Line Opinion (Australia)]
World Climate Report [Longest-running Climate Change blog (USA)]

Misuse of Statistics

Number Watch (Prof. John Brignell, UK)

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© Copyright E.C. ("Paddy") Apling, November 2006, last updated 22nd August, 2007.

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