An inexperienced fossicker may be fooled by a nugget of pyrite when searching for gold. They need to know how to discriminate between the two. An inexperienced political leader may be fooled similarly, by international climate science. I proposed a couple of useful tests in an earlier article to help differentiate between gold and pyrite level standards. Firstly, data used to inform policy decisions must be free of bias and secondly, the data, process and assumptions used must be subject to appropriate peer review. Let’s recap (from the last few articles) how well the UN IPCC and their appointed Lead Authors fared against these two critical tests. I’ll be keen to know how you scored this, perhaps with a comment.
Data Test Results:
- The true UHI effect on LST measurement is being ignored, essentially;
- 70% of weather stations in the USHCN are CRN Level 3 or worse, with measurement uncertainties greater than or equal to 2 degrees C;
- 50% of the USHCN weather stations disappeared around 1990 with a move away from higher altitudes and latitudes, away from the coast and now dominated by airport locations;
- There is a severe lack of southern oceans SST measures prior to the 1930’s;
- A 0.5 degrees C difference existed between SST measurement practice from UK vs US vessels prior to 1945 (the blip) – now “homogenised”;
- Proxies were selected and rejected based on their propensity to eliminate the MWP, LIA and 1940’s to 1970’s cooling period and to support the current warming period; and
- An overall adjustment has been added to the GHCN data of approx. half of the warming trend – a cooling of pre-1980 temperatures by up to 0.2 degrees C and a warming of post-1980 temperatures by 0.1 degrees C.
Process and Review Test Results:
- Mann: developed algorithms to screen out proxies that did not suit the hockey-stick profile;
- Mann: refuses to release Hockey Stick regression data;
- Mann: criticised the practice of grafting proxy data to instrumental data while doing it himself;
- Mann: threatened multiple critics with legal action and acted on it;
- Jones: used “Mike’s Nature Trick” to “hide the decline”;
- Jones: vowed to keep McKitrick’s papers out of the IPCC somehow “even if we have to redefine what the peer review literature is”;
- Jones: destroyed / lost raw CRU Global Climate Dataset temperature data to stop third party reconstruction – “Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”;
- The InterAcademy Council’s audit (IAC, 2010) of the IPCC processes found:
- Fake confidence intervals;
- Use of grey-sources;
- Political interference;
- Use of secret data;
- Selection of contributors is politicised;
- Chapter authors exclude opposing views; and
- Need for independent review?
- UN IPCC’s continued use of Mann’s Hockey Stick graph despite Climategate and Mann’s legal losses.
So, how would you now rate the standard for international climate science? Based on the evidence presented, what would you say about former President Obama’s “gold standard” imprimatur?
Nature vs Nurture
After all of the temperature data issues and manipulation that had occurred, is it any wonder that in 2015 Irish father and son scientists, Michael and Ronan Connolly, attempted to isolate and focus solely on high quality rural weather stations that have kept records for many decades?
Their study identified:
- A warming trend from the late 19th century until the mid-to -late 1940s;
- A cooling trend from the 1950s until the 1970s; and
- A warming trend from the 1980s until the 2000s
Their attempts to explain the causes of these temperature variations will be dealt with in a later article.
In their quest to identify even more reliable sources of temperature data, the duo decided to look to the skies. They realised that since the 1950’s, over 20 million sets of weather balloon data was available for analysis. In the first of three “Physics of the Earth’s atmosphere” papers, they developed new analytical techniques for studying weather balloon data. Using these techniques, they found that we were able to accurately describe the changes in temperature with height by just accounting for changes in water content and the existence of a previously unreported phase change. The implications of this result are monumental, calling into question the very existence of the Radiative Green House Effect, at least in the weather balloon range (up to half way through the Stratosphere which accounts for 80-90 % of atmospheric gas content). More on this topic in a later article.
In: Handling the Truth, the first of five Climate Change positions were provided and will be concluded in this article:
The previous four articles have defended the alternative position while mainstream media deals only with the popular. Two different closing arguments will be made based on these. The reader may now decide which is more plausibly true:
- The earth is in a period of unprecedented warming caused by rising Carbon Dioxide levels. The data that underpins this has been:
- verified as accurate;
- made available for peer review;
- adjusted appropriately for bias and error; and
- managed appropriately.
- Paleoclimate records do not support a significant MWP, LIA or 1940 – 1970 cooling period; and
- The recent hiatus in warming can be explained.
- The Earth is experiencing some levels of warming, primarily in urban areas and mainly at night. There are significant issues with the data (and its use) that underpins the alleged unprecedented warming trend including:
- a dismissal of the true effect of the Urban Heat Island effect;
- a homogenisation algorithm that contaminates reliable with unreliable data;
- adjustments to historical temperature records cooling pre-1980 data by 0.2o C and warming the present by 0.1o C;
- deceptive practices to hide “blips” and “declines” from other scientists and the general public;
- loss or destruction of historical raw data records to thwart reconstruction and review efforts;
- selective use of paleoclimate proxies designed to remove the MWP, LIA and 1940 – 1970 cooling period for the commonly used Hockey-Stick graph;
- the Climate Reference Network has shown no significant rise in temperature since 2005, and indeed a significant decline since 2016, which renders Climate Models useless for predicting future temperatures.
The key question to be answered before concluding this series of articles is:
On the preponderance of evidence, which of the two statements above is more plausibly true?
Summation:
I do not consider myself to be a Climate Change denier. As stated previously, it’s obvious that the climate has been changing for millennia. What is not obvious is that the level of warming is unprecedented or even as measured and reported. Wrapped up into this popular AGW view is that the “unprecedented” warming is due to atmospheric CO2 levels. This asserted cause is also denied, even though Climate Alarmists possess the burden of proof and cannot support it. Carbon Dioxide’s impact on the RGHE works at the molecular level and only in a laboratory, not in the earth’s atmosphere. Solid scientific evidence will be provided that refutes the key AGW assertion. This is the focus of the following series of articles, which will examine and compare the next two positions:
The term “Climate Denier” is both factually incorrect and enormously disparaging, conflating scientific disagreement with the holocaust. “Denier” should never be used in this context. I have been showing and will continue to demonstrate with compelling evidence, that Climate Change occurs quite naturally. I guess that would make someone like me, a Climate Change Naturalist.