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Pseudo-science fraudsters profiteering at taxpayers' and energy users' expense by falsely whipping up the climate scare should be prosecuted


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Summary

Satellites show no global warming for 18 years 8 months. Warming in the 25 years since the 1990 was 1/3 of what the IPCC then predicted on the basis of "substantial confidence" in its models.

The IPCC has cut the CO2 forcing and hence climate sensitivity by 15% and will soon cut it by a further 40% after correcting the erroneous assumption in the Lorentzian / Voigt scattering-profile equations that collisions occur instantaneously when there is an influential delay of several picoseconds, greatly reducing the forcing in the far wings of the principal absorption bands where nearly all forcing occurs. 

The CMIP5 models have cut the central estimate of the feedback sum from 2.06 to 1.47 W/m2/K (IPCC AR5, fig. 9.43a), mandating a cut of at least 1/3 in sensitivity to CO2 doubling, from 3.3 to 2.2 K.

The RCP 6.0 forcing is 3/4 of sensitivity to a CO2 doubling. Only 2/3 of that sensitivity will occur by 2100. The forcing (on the RCP 6.0 business-as-usual scenario) will arise linearly, halving in-century warming to just 0.5 K without any mitigation.

However, there is growing evidence in the journals (see e.g. Monckton et al., 2015, Science Bulletin 60:1, Chinese Acad. Sci.) that feedbacks are net-negative (as Prof. Ray Bates' recent talk in Moscow confirms).

Even if warming at the rate originally predicted by the IPCC were to occur, the peer-reviewed journals of economics are near-unanimous that the cost of mitigation today exceeds that of adaptation the day after tomorrow by 1-2 orders of magnitude.

Only 0.3% of the abstracts of 11,944 climate science papers published in the 21 years 1991-2011 would even go so far as to say that at least 0.35 K of the 0.7 K global warming since 1950 was manmade.

Yet academic and other rent-seekers, ignoring all this evidence, persist in peddling the profitable but misconceived climate scare. Prosecuting the worst offenders would allow the trillions now being wasted to be redeployed to solve real environmental problems, benefiting us all.


What actions do you propose?

Alumni of MIT should begin by verifying the following facts.

Satellites show no global warming for 18 years 8 months (least-squares linear-regression trend from February 1997 to September 2015 on the RSS monthly global lower-troposphere anomaly data available from remss.com).

Warming in the 25 years since 1990 has been only one-third of what the IPCC then predicted as its central estimate on the basis of "substantial confidence" that its models had captured all essential features of the global climate. Detailed monthly analyses of the temperature data are available at WattsUpWithThat.com, or see Monckton of Brenchley et al., 2015b, Science Bulletin, Chinese Acad. Sci.).

The IPCC has cut the CO2 forcing and hence climate sensitivity by 15% (see e.g. Myhre et al., 1998, based on an intercomparison between three climate models, followed by IPCC, 2001, ch. 6.1).

The IPCC will soon be compelled to reduce the CO2 forcing, and hence all estimates of future global warming on all timescales and emissions scenarios, by a further 40% after correcting the erroneous assumption in the Lorentzian / Voigt scattering-profile equations implemented in the CMIP3/CMIP5 model ensembles that collisions occur instantaneously when there is an influential delay of several picoseconds, greatly reducing the forcing in the far wings of the principal absorption bands where nearly all forcing occurs. Though some models implement attempted work-arounds, none has correctly introduced the requisite time-delay, because climate sensitivity at once falls below any value that could fairly be thought to cause concern.

In addition, the CMIP5 models have cut the central estimate of the temperature feedback sum from 2.06 to 1.47 W/m2/K (IPCC AR5, fig. 9.43a), mandating a cut of at least 1/3 in sensitivity to CO2 doubling, from 3.3 to 2.2 K, because the models use the Bode system-gain equation.

The Bode equation is borrowed by the climate modelers from electronic circuitry. It is in several fundamental respects unsuited to modeling a chaotic object characterized not by runaway feedback (as the Bode model would imply) but by formidable thermostasis across geological time.

It is nothing like as easy to alter global temperature as the profiteers of doom have attempted to suggest. Over the past 810,000 years, after making due allowance for polar amplification, global mean surface temperature has varied by less than 3.5 K either side of the long-run median - approximately the same margin as that permitted by a home thermostat. 

Even after 250 years of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, to the nearest tenth of one per cent there is no CO2 in the air at all. Though some warming may be expected from the uplift of about 2/5 compared with the pre-industrial atmospheric burden, very little can really be expected, not least because CO2 was once present at many hundreds of times the present concentration, and yet no harm was done.

The RCP 6.0 forcing is 3/4 of sensitivity to a CO2 doubling. Only 2/3 of that sensitivity will occur by 2100. The forcing (on the RCP 6.0 business-as-usual scenario) will arise linearly, halving in-century warming to just 0.5 K without any mitigation. 

However, there is growing evidence in the journals (see e.g. Monckton et al., 2015, Science Bulletin 60:1, Chinese Acad. Sci.) that feedbacks are net-negative (as Prof. Ray Bates' recent talk in Moscow confirms, and few anywhere know as much about the operation of feedbacks in the climate object as he).

Even if warming at the rate originally predicted by the IPCC were to occur, the peer-reviewed journals of economics are near-unanimous that the cost of mitigation today exceeds that of adaptation the day after tomorrow by 1-2 orders of magnitude. See e.g. Monckton of Brenchley 2012, Annual Proceedings of the World Federation of Scientists' Seminars on Planetary Emergencies, for a review of the literature and a method for properly combining the techniques of inter-temporal investment appraisal with the fundamental equations of climate sensitivity.

Suggestions such as that of Lord Stern that there is a 1/10 probability that the Earth will come to an end this century as a direct result of anthropogenic warming are mere rodomontade, and are, scientifically speaking, untenable. Yet apocalypticist conclusions of this type continue to be advanced, and profitably, by a coalition of rent-seeking vested interests, academe foremost among them.

These profiteering entities and individuals often attempt to assert, falsely as it turns out, that there is a "scientific consensus" that climate change caused by Man will be dangerous. However, fhe facts support them no more on this head-count than on the hard science and economics of the climate question. For only 0.3% of the abstracts of 11,944 climate science papers published in the 21 years 1991-2011 would even go so far as to say that at least 0.35 K of the 0.7 K global warming since 1950 was manmade.

Honest enquiry by MIT alumni would be likely to confirm that the facts outlined above are indeed correct. In that event, it will become clear to the honest enquirers that there will be little global warming this century; that even if there were substantial warming as the IPCC had once predicted it would be 10-100 times costlier to try to prevent it now than to adapt to its consequences when they eventually occur; and that in any event the oft-declared near-unanimity among scientists on this issue is in reality non-existent.

What, then, should be done?

The first step is to investigate some of the more blatant frauds surrounding the climate scam. Not the least among these frauds is the notion that "the science is settled". Though in mathematics it is often possible - albeit after some labor - to demonstrate a result definitively so that no further argument or debate is legitimate, in the physical sciences such certainty is near-totally absent. For the processes of nature, both at the gross and at the quantum scale, tend to be probabilistic rather than deterministic.

In future, therefore, any attempt to stifle debate or silence dissenters from the admittedly profitable official viewpoint should be firmly resisted, and, if the stifling of debate continues to be carried beyond all reason, those chiefly responsible for insisting that only their point of view should be uttered, even on pain of death to dissenters, should themselves be prosecuted.

Numerous aspects of the published scientific research on the climate question are fraudulent, and the perpetrators should no longer be permitted to think that, simply because they are protected by government bureaucracies and politicians, they can get away with outright corruption indefinitely.

For instance, those who asserted that their results showed a 97% "consensus" that recent global warming was mostly manmade, when their own datafile (which they were eventually compelled to disclose, but only after their claim of 97% consensus had received worldwide publicity) showed that only 0.3% of the papers had in fact supported the "consensus" as the authors of the fraudulent paper had defined it. Police are investigating, but there has been no prosecution yet.

Another instance: two scientific researchers at Harvard were among the co-authors of a paper praising the EPA's proposed regulations to shut down the coal industry, which the academic and political Left have long detested because coal-owners tend to donate substantially to the Republican party. At the time when the researchers were writing their encomium to the EPA, not only had the two of them received between them $45 million in grants from the EPA, but they were allowing it to assist them in preparing the paper, and the lead author was actually asking the EPA for more money. Yet not one of the authors declared any conflict of interest. When Drew Faust, the president of Harvard, had this matter drawn to her attention, she brushed it aside and refused to do anything about the corruption at her university. Police are investigating here, too, and prosecutions are expected, possibly at a very senior level at Harvard.

Another instance of fraud is the recent statement by one of the authors of the infamous "hokey-stick" graph that falsely abolished the medieval warm period that he had had nothing to do with a representation of that graph that had appeared on the front cover of the World Meteorological Organization's Status of the Global Climate report for 1999. In fact, the author in question had his name on the graph and was also acknowledged as one of its authors in the text. Police are investigating this, too, for the falsehood was perpetrated under oath in a court document.

Swiss police - specifically the Bureau de l'Escroquerie - are investigating the IPCC, which in 2007 published a graph showing the global temperature anomalies since 1850. Four separate linear trend-lines had been superimposed on the graph, all ending at the present. The four trend-lines started, respectively, 150, 100, 50 and 25 years before the present. The lines that started more recently were steeper than those that started earlier. The IPCC twice drew from this graph the deliberately false conclusion that the rate of global warming was accelerating and that Man was to blame. I say "deliberately", because one of the IPCC's expert reviewers drew the statistical dodge used in the graph to the IPCC's attention and asked for it to be corrected, pointing out that from 1860-1880 and from 1910-1940 the warming rate was just as steep as it was from 1976-1998, so that there was no basis for saying that the rate of global warming was accelerating. Furthermore, it was pointed out to the IPCC that applying its false technique to a sine-wave (which by definition has a zero trend) would similarly, and erroneously, show an apparently accelerating uptrend. The IPCC, however, refused to make any correction, though it was of course wholly unable to defend its bogus graph or the manifestly incorrect conclusion it had twice drawn therefrom.

Numerous further examples might be adduced: for instance, the suspiciously unilateral and substantial tampering with all three of the longest-standing terrestrial temperature records so as artificially to increase the apparent rate of global warming in the 20th century.

Another instance of tampering was recently perpetrated by NOAA, one of whose directors recently published a paper making the remarkable but obviously nonsensical assertion that, though the surface of the ocean has not warmed and the lower troposphere has not warmed this century the surface between them has warmed. Such deceptions have no place in science, but are increasingly deployed as it becomes ever more evident that the original extreme predictions on the basis of which the profiteers have made a good living for a generation have not been borne out in reality.

Yet academic and other rent-seekers, ignoring all this evidence, persist in peddling the profitable but misconceived climate scare. Prosecuting the worst offenders would allow the trillions now being wasted to be redeployed to solve real environmental problems, to the benefit of all of us and of all the flora and fauna who share our planet with us.

MIT alumni could greatly assist in the process of bringing the climate fraudsters to book by warning their own institution that it would be unwise to clamber aboard this particular bandwaggon, however previously profitable, just as the wheels are falling off. It will take only one or two prosecutions to drive all the fraudsters away and restore some semblence of probity and rationality to climate research. The world would be a far better place for that.