Fake climate science and scientists by Paul Driessen

Alarmists game the system to enrich and empower themselves, and hurt everyone else

The multi-colored placard in front of a $2-million home in North Center Chicago proudly proclaimed, “In this house we believe: No human is illegal” – and “Science is real” (plus a few other liberal mantras).

I knew right away where the owners stood on climate change, and other hot-button political issues. They would likely tolerate no dissension or debate on “settled” climate science or any of the other topics.

But they have it exactly backward on the science issue. Real science is not belief – or consensus, 97% or otherwise. Real science constantly asks questions, expresses skepticism, reexamines hypotheses and evidence. If debate, skepticism and empirical evidence are prohibited – it’s pseudo-science, at best.

Real science – and real scientists – seek to understand natural phenomena and processes. They pose hypotheses that they think best explain what they have witnessed, then test them against actual evidence, observations and experimental data. If the hypotheses (and predictions based on them) are borne out by their subsequent findings, the hypotheses become theories, rules, laws of nature – at least until someone finds new evidence that pokes holes in their assessments, or devises better explanations.

Real science does not involve simply declaring that you “believe” something, It’s not immutable doctrine. It doesn’t claim “science is real” – or demand that a particular scientific explanation be carved in stone. Earth-centric concepts gave way to a sun-centered solar system. Miasma disease beliefs surrendered to the germ theory. The certainty that continents are locked in place was replaced by plate tectonics (and the realization that you can’t stop continental drift, any more than you stop climate change).

Real scientists often employ computers to analyze data more quickly and accurately, depict or model complex natural systems, or forecast future events or conditions. But they test their models against real-world evidence. If the models, observations and predictions don’t match up, real scientists modify or discard the models, and the hypotheses behind them. They engage in robust discussion and debate.

They don’t let models or hypotheses become substitutes for real-world evidence and observations. They don’t alter or “homogenize” raw or historic data to make it look like the models actually work. They don’t hide their data and computer algorithms (AlGoreRythms?), restrict peer review to closed circles of like-minded colleagues who protect one another’s reputations and funding, claim “the debate is over,” or try to silence anyone who dares to ask inconvenient questions or find fault with their claims and models. They don’t concoct hockey stick temperature graphs that can be replicated by plugging in random numbers.

In the realm contemplated by the Chicago yard sign, we ought to be doing all we can to understand Earth’s highly complex, largely chaotic, frequently changing climate system – all we can to figure out how the sun and other powerful forces interact with each other. Only in that way can we accurately predict future climate changes, prepare for them, and not waste money and resources chasing goblins.

But instead, we have people in white lab coats masquerading as real scientists. They’re doing what I just explained true scientists don’t do. They also ignore fluctuations in solar energy output and numerous other powerful, interconnected natural forces that have driven climate change throughout Earth’s history. They look only (or 97% of the time) at carbon dioxide as the principal or sole driving force behind current and future climate changes – and blame every weather event, fire and walrus death on man-made CO2.

Even worse, they let their biases drive their research and use their pseudo-science to justify demands that we eliminate all fossil fuel use, and all carbon dioxide and methane emissions, by little more than a decade from now. Otherwise, they claim, we will bring unprecedented cataclysms to people and planet.

Not surprisingly, their bad behavior is applauded, funded and employed by politicians, environmentalists, journalists, celebrities, corporate executives, billionaires and others who have their own axes to grind, their own egos to inflate – and their intense desire to profit from climate alarmism and pseudo-science.

Worst of all, while they get rich and famous, their immoral actions impoverish billions and kill millions, by depriving them of the affordable, reliable fossil fuel energy that powers modern societies.

And still these slippery characters endlessly repeat the tired trope that they “believe in science” – and anyone who doesn’t agree to “keep fossil fuels in the ground” to stop climate change is a “science denier.”

When these folks and the yard sign crowd brandish the term “science,” political analyst Robert Tracinski suggests, it is primarily to “provide a badge of tribal identity” – while ironically demonstrating that they have no real understanding of or interest in “the guiding principles of actual science.”

Genuine climate scientist (and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology) Dr. Judith Curry echoes Tracinski. Politicians like Senator Elizabeth Warren use “science” as a way of “declaring belief in a proposition which is outside their knowledge and which they do not understand…. The purpose of the trope is to bypass any meaningful discussion of these separate questions, rolling them all into one package deal – and one political party ticket,” she explains.

The ultimate purpose of all this, of course, is to silence the dissenting voices of evidence- and reality-based climate science, block creation of a Presidential Committee on Climate Science, and ensure that the only debate is over which actions to take first to end fossil fuel use … and upend modern economies.

The last thing fake/alarmist climate scientists want is a full-throated debate with real climate scientists – a debate that forces them to defend their doomsday assertions, methodologies, data manipulation … and claims that solar and other powerful natural forces are minuscule or irrelevant compared to man-made carbon dioxide that constitutes less that 0.02% of Earth’s atmosphere (natural CO2 adds another 0.02%).

Thankfully, there are many reasons for hope. For recognizing that we do not face a climate crisis, much less threats to our very existence. For realizing there is no need to subject ourselves to punitive carbon taxes or the misery, poverty, deprivation, disease and death that banning fossil fuels would cause.

Between the peak of the great global cooling scare in 1975 until around 1998, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and temperatures did rise in rough conjunction. But then temperatures mostly flat-lined, while CO2 levels kept climbing. Now actual average global temperatures are already 1 degree F below the Garbage In-Garbage Out computer model predictions. Other alarmist forecasts are also out of touch with reality.

Instead of fearing rising CO2, we should thank it for making crop, forest and grassland plants grow faster and better, benefiting nature and humanity – especially in conjunction with slightly warmer temperatures that extend growing seasons, expand arable land and increase crop production.

The rate of sea level rise has not changed for over a century – and much of what alarmists attribute to climate change and rising seas is actually due to land subsidence and other factors.

Weather is not becoming more extreme. In fact, Harvey was the first Category 3-5 hurricane to make US landfall in a record 12 years – and the number of violent F3 to F5 tornadoes has fallen from an average of 56 per year from 1950 to 1985 to only 34 per year since then.

Human ingenuity and adaptability have enabled humans to survive and thrive in all sorts of climates, even during our far more primitive past. Allowed to use our brains, fossil fuels and technologies, we will deal just fine with whatever climate changes might confront us in the future. (Of course, another nature-driven Pleistocene-style glacier pulling 400 feet of water out of our oceans and crushing Northern Hemisphere forests and cities under mile-high walls of ice truly would be an existential threat to life as we know it.) 

So if NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio and other egotistical grand-standing politicians and fake climate scientists want to ban fossil fuels, glass-and-steel buildings, cows and even hotdogs – in the name of preventing “dangerous man-made climate change” – let them impose their schemes on themselves and their own families. The rest of us are tired of being made guinea pigs in their fake-science experiments.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and author of articles and books on energy, environmental and human rights issues.  I have published his article here at his request.

Computer Climate Model Incompetence and the Settled Science

An examination of the prediction spread from the 90 CMIP5 climate models makes it immediately obvious that the settled science of catastrophic man-made global warming is not at all well-understood.  Various combinations of bad science input into the models and computer programming incompetence must be the reason for the spread in results seen below:

This graph also shows the highly fudged HadCRUT4 surface temperature "measurements" adjusted in a desperate attempt to minimize its disagreement with the many climate model predictions of a steady and rapid global surface temperature increase.  The UAH Lower Troposphere measurements are also shown.  These satellite measurements are more reliable measurements, though they are not actually surface temperature measurements.  Almost all of the CMIP5 computer models of the climate are predicting substantially higher temperatures than are measured.  This is an additional indictment of the idea that the climate models represent settled science.

Among the inputs into these models are the man-made or anthropogenic forcings shown below:

Now examine the error bars closely on these anthropogenic effects.  The error bars on the stratospheric ozone effect are several times bigger than the expected effect.  The error bar on the tropospheric ozone effect is as big as the expected effect.   The error bar on the stratospheric water vapor effect is as big as the expected effect.  The same is true of the land use and black carbon on snow effects.  The error bar on the direct aerosol effect is as big as the expected effect, while that on the cloud albedo effect is larger than the expected effect.  The error on the linear contrails is larger than the expected effect, as is that for what is here called the solar irradiance effect.  According to the analysis of errors used for this graph, the net anthropogenic component is anywhere between 0.60 and 2.40 W/m² .  The settled science is so settled that the effect that is so widely claimed to be of a catastrophic scale may be a mere 0.60 W/m² or it may four times greater.

Note that these inputs are only those in which man has played a role.  The uncertainties relating to many natural effects are no smaller.  Indeed, many natural effects are not included in the models at all because they are too poorly understood to be included!

It sure is hard to produce a plausible settled science from a great number of effects which are clearly not well-understood individually and which are not necessarily stochastically independent.  Indeed, it takes some knowledge of an effect's science and magnitude to actually make an informed estimate of error.  With errors this large, it is clear that there is insufficient knowledge to even estimate the errors accurately because they imply a massive lack of understanding.

Some time ago, we learned that the global climate models do not have sufficient spatial resolution to properly model convection, which is a critical effect I have long noted was underestimated in the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis. See http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/09/new-paper-finds-ipcc-climate-models.html  Dr. Noor van Andel explained that the human fingerprint so long predicted in the climate models was actually an artifact of the models not properly handling convection.

It is also known that the computer models have up to 30% errors relative to the observed absorption of solar insolation by the atmosphere. This is a huge error which at least in part is due to inadequate knowledge of the absorption of near ultraviolet radiation by water vapor. See http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/09/new-paper-finds-up-to-30-discrepancy.html

I have long claimed that the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis was based on a number of violations of energy conservation. It turns out that the actual computer models find still more ways to violate energy conservation. Some of them concentrate energy in regions in a manner to violate both the Second and the First Laws of Thermodynamics, making nonsense of the alarmist claim that the computer models simply incorporate well-known physics. It was found that the water vapor fluxes of some models are wrong by up to 10% due to the model causing decreases in entropy, thereby violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics. See http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2014/05/new-paper-finds-climate-models-violate.html

A new paper has shown that the "settled science" computer models have variations in the top of the atmosphere incident solar radiation of up to 30 W/m², which vary with the longitude, not the latitude.  This is nonsense and is entirely due to very poor thought in the programming.  Compared to the claimed 1.68 W/m² value for the effect of doubling CO₂, this variation in the top of the atmosphere solar radiation is a very large error.  See http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/10/whoops-study-shows-huge-basic-errors-found-in-cmip5-climate-models/

The climate computer models do not attempt to model the actual interface of the surface with the atmosphere.  They do not properly handle water evaporation or evapotranspiration.  They also do not handle advection (wind) effects well, particularly as it interacts directly with the surface in molecular collisions and in inducing water evaporation.

The climate computer models are wrong for many reasons:

• The physics behind the infra-red gas warming effects is wrong, as I pointed out in Why Greenhouse Gas Theory is Wrong -- An Examination of the Theoretical Basis
• Still further errors in the physics are input into the computer models as missing information or wrong information.
• The computer models are poorly programmed so that they often do not preserve well-known scientific laws.
• The computer models do not have sufficient spatial resolution to calculate some of the effects they are tasked to calculate.

Despite all of this, the effects of man's use of fossil fuels are "settled science."  Yes, you can bet your economy and freedom on that assertion.  After all, no less an authority than Obama assures us that this is so and he has never lied to us.   Not once.  No never, ever.  Castro tells us Obama is an honest man.  We all still have our health insurance and doctor that we liked, we all saved money on our health insurance premiums, and we are doing just hunky-dory on this fabulous Obama recovery from the Bush Recession.  Though it might appear that Obama has an agenda to increase the power of government and that billions were handed out to his campaign contributors for their sham green energy companies, we know Obama is really just trying to save us from a future frying.  Though it might appear that his Department of Justice, his NLRB, his IRS, his NSA, his FCC, and his FEC are corrupt, surely his soaring rhetoric and claim there is not a smidgeon of corruption should convince us he has our best interest at heart.  Right?  Or are these highly touted climate computer models, the sole basis for the claim of a catastrophic impact on man due to his use of fossil fuels, clear evidence of still another massive Progressive Elitist lie?

The Evidence Settled State of the "Settled" Science of Catastrophic Man-Made Global Warming

In many posts on this blog, I have torn apart the supposed physics of climate that supposedly backs the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis.  The alarmists backing that hypothesis say it is settled science and those of us who do not agree are both unknowing and dangerous to mankind's very survival.  Since my arguments against their physical explanations require the reader to know a significant measure of physics, the alarmists hope to win the hearts of most of the people with the stridency and supposed authority of their claims.

Fortunately, one does not actually have to understand much physics to see that the alarmist claim that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere is causing a warming similar to that which their complex models are predicting is clearly and obviously wrong.  John Christy, in support of the state of Alabama's appeal to the Obama and rabid environmentalist-dominated EPA to prevent the closing of coal-fired power plants in that state, provided this plot:

Now anyone can see that the actual temperature data measured by satellite and that measured by balloons at the middle altitudes of the troposphere, our lower atmosphere, are in pretty close agreement.  The actual temperature increase according to these measurements since 1980 is much lower than that predicted by any of the computer model results based on the alarmist view of the physics of the atmosphere and the climate.  This is definitive proof that the alarmists do not know what they are doing.  They clearly do not understand the physics.

In fact, these scientists clearly do not even agree on the "settled" science very well themselves, given the great divergence in their own predictions.  Their models predict a rate of increase that varies from twice that observed to about 8 times that observed.  By any measure of reason, this is indication that even the alarmist community cannot claim the science is agreed upon among themselves.  They are highly biased toward exaggerated warming predictions, but each model has its own individual misconception of the actual physics of the climate.

Such a failed prediction history should cause any rational person to reject the claims of the catastrophic man-made global warming alarmists.  In fact, anyone rational would find their continued persistence in advancing this hypothesis to be hilarious.  That is, were it not for the US government spending $20 billion a year in support of this and the EPA shutting down coal-fired power plants and denying construction of pipelines on the basis of this nonsense.

In order to perpetuate this massive fraud on the American People and indeed upon people worldwide, our government is also massively fabricating the temperature record at the weather stations it operates.  Tony Heller at Real Science has shown that these surface temperature measurements show no temperature increase since 1990 if only the actually measured data is examined.  A massive 7.3 F/century temperature increase is provided in the fabricated data, however.  All of the claimed increase in temperatures in the US since 1990 is faked.

When you get the physics wrong and yet you insist on continuing to promote a political agenda to strangle economies, to rob the private sector of its wealth and productivity, and to destroy businesses and whole industries, you just have to tell some really big and strident lies.  As I have pointed out innumerable times on many, many issues, socialists and Progressive Elitists are very willing to lie.  Nay, they are compelled to lie.  The Big Lie is all they have.  They never allow reality to get in the way of a "good" lie.

The Anti-Science IPCC Global Warming Report 5

Fundamentally, the IPCC has never had any solid evidence of measurable man-made global warming caused by man's emissions of carbon dioxide.  The newest report about to be issued apparently does not change this according to those who have read the drafts.  Yet, the Summary Report issued to the press and politicians claims that catastrophic man-made global warming is now known to be more certain than ever.  This claim is made on the basis of General Circulation Model (GCMs) computer models interpreted with an embarrassing flight of fancy.

In the light of that claim, let us examine the predictions of such GCMs used in the prior reports, when we were informed that the science was already settled and well-known.  The draft report that was sent out to actual scientists for review had the following graph in it.  The various shaded areas show the range of certainty of the average global temperature according to the body of computer models.

The FAR was the first report of 1990, the SAR was the second report of 1995, the TAR was the third report of 2001, and the AR4 is the fourth report of 2007.  Over this period the U.S. government alone spent about $150 billion funding climate change related phenomena.  Each IPCC report claimed a higher level of confidence in catastrophic man-made global warming.  So we should expect to be able to look at the range of expected temperatures from each report for 2015 and see that the range of each successive report falls within the range of the previous report, but is narrower.  This is both because the claim is that the science is better known and because the prediction time is becoming shorter.

Because the colored ranges overlap, it is easiest to quickly see how the certainty of the predictions of the settled science actually changed from report to report by looking at the brackets on the right side of the graph which are color-coded.  These represent the range of the prediction for 2015 for each report.

So what actually has happened is that the settled science did claim a smaller temperature range in the second report than in the first report, but its prediction range did not lie entirely within the range claimed in the first report.  No, it admitted that the temperature increase might be smaller.  In the third report the 2015 temperature range was much wider than in the second report.  The 2015 temperature might be much higher than that predicted in the second report, or a bit lower.  This represented a large increase in the scientific uncertainty being claimed.  The fourth report claimed that knowledge had improved and the range shrank compared to that of the third report, but apparently the knowledge was not as good as that of the second report whose range was narrower.  While the range of the fourth report prediction does lie entirely within that of the third report prediction and that of the first report, it excludes the lower part of the range of the second report on the settled science.

Unfortunately for the IPCC, the fourth report prediction of the temperature did not allow for such low temperatures as have been measured in the meantime.  The black and red dots of recent years are well below the predicted range of the fourth report and even below the range by a bit from any of the reports.  The only conclusion a rational person can make is that the settled science incorporated into the many computer models was wrong.  This presents a major problem for the fifth report which is about to be issued in January.

So, the predictions of the computer models will be presented in a way to obscure these failures.  Instead of averaging the results of the 162 or so model predictions and then using an uncertainty range that is claimed to be narrowed by the average result, some individual computer model predictions will be given on the graph.  Since a few of the models do predict a smaller increase in temperature by 2015, a few lines representing those outlier predictions will pass through the actual measured temperature data points or just below them.

This will not change the fact that almost all of the computer model results still predict higher temperatures than are actually observed.  It will not change the fact that the science clearly has not been well-understood and should never have been claimed to be settled.  The implication of the fifth report will once again be one of a widening range of predictions and therefore an increasing level of uncertainty when compared to the fourth report of 2007.  Apparently, the upcoming report will claim the same upper range on the temperature prediction, but include lower temperatures that were ruled out by the settled science of the fourth report.

The actual measurements have to be kept in the range of the predictions, so some sleigh of hand is needed to make them appear to be so.  This is not how science is done, but it is how politics is done.

This is all very much a circus of clowns, not scientists.  This is becoming recognized by more and more scientists and even by more and more non-scientists.  One no longer even needs to know much science to see that this has been a very expensive farce.

Far worse than the $150 billion largely wasted on this science is the huge damage done politically with such misguided policies as green energy subsidies, ethanol mandates and earlier subsidies, electricity source mandates, the vendetta against coal and the Keystone XL pipeline, and a host of anti-fossil fuel laws and regulations which have cost people their jobs and forced them to spend much more on energy which is also less dependable.

As a scientist, I am also very angry that so many so-called scientists have done so much to undermine the credibility of science and scientists.  Just as bad money drives out good money, so does bad science drive out good science, especially when the politicians and bureaucrats dive into the mess and use it to hurt the People to the advantage of special interest groups and to increase their own control over our lives.