The recent report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration claims that surface temperatures have increased in the past decade. In fact, the NOAA report, “State of the Climate in 2009,” says 2000-2009 was 0.2° Celsius [1]  warmer than the decade previous. However, the report’s summary, as shown in Figure 1 below, shows a decadal increase of only .2° Fahrenheit (.11°C) based on 20th century temperatures.

The press release was so splashy it made the front page of Toronto’s Globe and Mail with the headline: “Signs of warming earth ‘unmistakable’.”

Of course, given that the planet is in an interglacial period, we would expect “unmistakable” signs of warming, including melting glaciers and Arctic ice, rising temperatures, and rising sea levels. That’s what the planet does during an interglacial.

Furthermore, we’re nowhere near the peak reached by the interglacial of 125,000 years ago, when temperatures were 1-3°C higher than today and sea levels up to 20 feet higher, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change itself. In other words, the Globe might as well have had a headline reading “Signs of changing weather ‘unmistakable’.”

Similarly, the NOAA report laments: “People have spent thousands of years building society for one climate and now a new one is being created - one that’s warmer and more extreme.” The implication is that we can somehow freeze-dry the climate we’ve got to last forever, which is absurd.

Sea levels have risen 400 feet in the past 15,000 years, causing all kinds of inconvenience for humanity in the process-and all quite naturally. As the interglacial continues, sea levels will rise and temperatures will increase-until the interglacial reaches its peak, at which point the planet will again move toward glacial conditions. To think that we can somehow stop this process is insane.

Even die-hard alarmists admitted 2000-2009 cooling

But what about the NOAA claim that the surface temperature increased .2°C during 2000-2009? Although they did everything possible to hide this information from the public, media, politicians, and even fellow scientists, by the late 2000s even die-hard alarmists were eventually forced to accept that the surface temperature record showed no warming as of the late 1990s, and some cooling as of about 2002. In other words, overall, for the first decade of the 21^st century, there was no warming and even some cooling.

One of the consistent themes in the Climategate emails was consternation that the planet wasn’t warming as expected by the models (that is, as Figure 1 shows, about half of the .2°C per decade expected by the climate models). For example, as early as 2005 the then-head of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), Phil Jones, wrote in an email: “The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only seven years of data and it isn’t statistically significant.”

Fellow Climategate emailer and IPCC contributor Kevin Trenberth wrote to hockey-stick creator Michael Mann in 2009: “The fact is that we cannot account for the lack of warming at the moment and it’s a travesty that we can’t.” [italics added] Note the date: 2009, the last year of the decade. As far as Trenberth knew-and he should have known as a leading IPCC author-the planet hadn’t warmed for several years up to that time.

Even Tim Flannery, author of the arch-alarmist The Weather Makers, acknowledged in November 2009: “In the last few years, where there hasn’t been a continuation of that warming trend, we don’t understand all of the factors that creates Earth’s climate, so there are some things we don’t understand, that’s what the scientists were emailing about. … These people [the scientists] work with models, computer modeling. When the computer modeling and the real world data disagree you have a problem.”[3] [italics added]

Jones tries for climate honesty

Yes, you do have a problem, to the point where, in February 2010, after he’d been suspended as head of the CRU following the Climategate scandal, and in an attempt to restore his reputation as an honest scientist, Jones came a bit clean in an interview with the BBC. For example, Jones agreed with the BBC interviewer that there had been “no statistically significant warming” since 1995 (although he asserted that the warming was close to significant), whereas in his 2005 email he was at pains to hide the lack of warming from the public and even fellow researchers.

Jones admitted that from 2002-2009 the planet had been cooling slightly (-0.12ºC per decade), although he contended that “this trend is not statistically significant.” In short, as far as Jones knew in February 2010-and as the keeper of the Hadley-CRU surface temperature record he was surely in a very good position to know-the planet hadn’t warmed on average over the decade.

In the BBC interview, Jones calculated the overall surface temperature trend for 1975 to 2009 to be +0.16°C per decade. Since that includes the warming years 1975-1998, it seems incredible that NOAA could manufacture a warming of 0.2°C for 2000-2009, especially given this graph from the 2009 NOAA report summary, which shows a 21st century warming of only .2° Fahrenheit (1.1°C):

Figure 1: NOAA State of the Climate 2009 Highlights, p. 5

To show this level of warming, NOAA must have included lead-up to the January-March 2010 El Nino. A surge in warming at the end of the decade would tend to pull the 2000-2009 average up, but this doesn’t negate the fact that for almost all of the last decade, the planet did not warm.

NOAA’s U.S. temperatures contradict 2009 report

Curiously, another part of the NOAA website directly contradicts the NOAA report. On its site, NOAA offers a gadget that lets browsers check the temperature trend in the continental United States for any two years between 1895 and 2010. Here’s what the graph shows for the years 2000-2009 in the United States:

Figure 2: NOAA website

This graph shows a temperature decline of 0.73°Fahrenheit (-0.4°C) for 2000-2009 in the U.S. To get a perspective on how large a decline this is: the IPCC estimates that the temperature increase for the whole of the 20^th century was 1.1°F, or 0.6°C. In other words, at least in the United States, the past decade’s cooling wiped out two-thirds of the temperature gain of the last century.

While the U.S. isn’t, of course, the whole world, it has the world’s best temperature records, and a review of the NOAA data since 1895 shows that in the 20^th century the U.S. temperature trends mirrored, quite closely, the global temperature trends. So, for example, between 1940-1975, a global cooling period, the NOAA chart showed a temperature decline of 0.14°F (-0.07°C).

In other words, it stretches credulity to the breaking point to believe that the global temperature trend from 2000-2009 could be a full 0.6°C—more than half a degree Celsius—higher than the temperature trend for the United States (that is, -.4C + .2C).

Until NOAA issues a correction (which isn’t likely), the cooling of the past decade—which has been such an embarrassment to the hypothesis that human-caused carbon emissions will cause runaway warming—is gone, conjured away by a wave of the NOAA climate fairy’s magic wand.

Notes

[1] In the full report, page S19, NOAA claims warming of .2°C for the last decade over 1990-1999. In page 5 of the report summary, as shown in the figure, the increase per decade based on the 20th century average is shown as .2° Fahrenheit, or .11°C. However, even the latter figure seems high based on the lack of warming for most of 2000-2009.

[2] “Flannery defends scientists in leaked emails row.” ABC News Online, Nov. 24, 2009.

[3] Quoted in Patrick J. Michaels, Sound and Fury: The Science and Politics of Global Warming. Washington: Cato Institute, 1992, p. 83.

He is famous for noting that climate scientists will exaggerate if the truth isn’t “scary” enough: 

On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change.

To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.[2] [italics ad

Is climate science based on "overwhelming" empirical evidence, as the public is told? Not if you believe Schneider, who wrote: "Computer modeling is our only available tool to perform what-if experiments such as the human impact on the future."[3] [italics added]  In other words, climate science is only as good as its models, models that weren’t accurate enough to predict the non-warming of the past 10 years.

It was Schneider who noted during a debate with Bjorn Lomborg that, in climate science, “We end up with a maddening degree of uncertainty. We end up with scenarios which, if we’re lucky, give us mild outcomes and we end up with scenarios that, if we’re unlucky, give us catastrophic outcomes.”[4] [italics added]

In a similar vein, Schneider wrote in Scientific American as part of an attack on Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist: “Uncertainties so infuse the issue of climate change that it is still impossible to rule out either mild or catastrophic outcomes.”[5] [italics added]

A “maddening degree of uncertainty”? “Impossible to rule out either mild or catastrophic outcomes”? “Infused with uncertainties”? But isn’t the public told the science on climate change is settled, certain, beyond question, and that we’re heading for catastrophe?

Or are we being bombarded by “scary scenarios” that exist only in computer models?

Based on Schneider’s own words, the answer is obvious.

Notes

[1] In his 1976 book The Genesis Strategy (p. 66), Schneider wrote: “Today there are few people much concerned by the approach of the next ice age. And since ice ages take thousands of years to develop, why should we worry? There are several reasons to worry.”

[2] Laboratory Earth, 1997, p. 67.

[3] Quoted in Jonathan Schell, “Our Fragile Earth.” Discover, October, 1989, pp. 45-48.

[4] Earthbeat, “Skeptical Environmentalist Debates Critics,” Australian Broadcasting Corp., Oct. 10, 2001.

[5]  Stephen Schneider, “Global Warming: Neglecting the Complexities.” Scientific American, January, 2002.

False Alarm will be in bookstores in Canada sometime in August. In Victoria, B.C., the books are available at Munro’s books and Bolen books, both excellent independent bookstores.

False Alarm can also be purchased online at Amazon.ca, Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, and BarnesandNoble.com. The price is around $25 US and Canadian, £17.50 British. A epub (electronic edition) for Kindle, iPad, Sony Reader, etc., will also be available soon.

For background on the book, please go to “Book,” on this site.

I have started to make media appearances to promote the book.

• I was on Dave Dickson’s show in Victoria’s CFAX (1070 AM) on Thursday, July 15.
• There was also a short interview with Stephen Andrew of A-Channel (Channel 12) Sunday, July 18, as part of the 6 p.m. news. (I originally announced this as Saturday, July 17.)
• I will be on Stephen Andrew’s show on CFAX on Monday, July 26, at 10:30 a.m.

The panel members were Pederson, Lucinda Chodan, editor of the Victoria Times Colonist, Peter Calamai, a science journalist, and James Hoggan, author Climate Cover-up, which claims that unscrupulous right-wing think tanks are trying to brainwash the public against belief in global warming. There was, thanks to Pederson (see why below), no one representing the skeptical side of the issue.

In his 15-minute segment, Pederson accused Murphy of breaching journalistic ethics in a July 24, 2009, Globe and Mail column entitled “So where’s that global cooling alert?” Murphy’s crime? He ignored what Pederson considers the global warming “facts.” Pederson’s point was that a newspaper columnist can have whatever opinions he/she wants, but these opinions must be based on facts, not just ideology. As a former columnist myself, for the Times Colonist, I also believe this is true.

Murphy’s column noted that temperatures in Ontario had been cool in July 2009 and he wondered why nobody had bothered to issue a global cooling alert; if the temperatures had been unusually warm, wouldn’t that have been blamed on global warming? Murphy wrote:

What we do not hear from them [the global warming believers], from any one of them, is the slightest indication of puzzlement over how or why so suddenly, in this age of the greatest emergency our planet has ever faced—global warming—things have gotten cool. Not a furrowed brow among the lot over the consideration that, contrary to the visions of Al Gore and David Suzuki or NASA’s own anti-global warming Nostradamus, James Hansen, the great trend line of an ever-warming world is being contradicted nightly in their own forecasts.

To show how wrong Murphy had been, Pederson presented a PowerPoint slide showing that, contrary to Murphy’s column, July 2009 was quite hot in most of the planet, and suggested—to audience laughter—that Murphy was foolishly guilty of assuming the weather in Toronto represented the world. Below is the map Pederson used, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) website.

NOAA world temperatures July 2009

Pederson also accused Murphy not just of being foolish, but of being unethical as well in spreading climate skeptic lies.

Murphy is anything but foolish—a Rhodes scholar, he’s probably got the finest mind in Canadian journalism. Nor is he wrong or naive about the planetary cooling trend. For example, Murphy is quite aware of the difference between weather and climate, writing in his column:

Not that these studio meteorologists were making the elementary mistake of confounding weather with climate, for this is a distinction familiar now even to kindergartners. [Much less, one might add, to Rhodes scholars.]

And he is quite aware that Ontario’s weather doesn’t represent the globe’s weather. He was making a broader point about the trend toward global cooling in the past decade—a point that Pederson, deliberately or unconsciously, sidestepped.

The U.S. is cooling, not warming

Let’s take a closer look at the average U.S. temperature in July, 2009, also from the NOAA website:

Temps July 2009

All that blue indicates that, yes, July was, as Murphy said, colder than normal in the northern and eastern parts of the United States, in some cases record cold. Granted, the planet won’t be uniformly warm (or cold), but record cold? In July? At a time when the planet is supposed to be not only warming, but experiencing (according to IPCC president Rajendra Pachauri) “accelerated” warming? (See Christopher Monckton’s article debunking this claim.)

Also on the NOAA website is a handy gadget that lets users  calculate for themselves temperatures and trends over the past 115 years in the continental United States (my thanks to C3 Headlines for bringing this website to my attention). You just put in the date you want to begin, any time from 1895 on, the date you want to end, and a month or the annual average. The U.S. has the world’s best climate records, so the temperatures in the U.S. will mirror, reasonably well, temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere and almost certainly the planet as well.

Here’s what the graph shows if you input the years 1997-2010:

NOAA

Good heavens! Since 1997 the planet (or at least the U.S. portion of it) has been cooling! Just like Murphy said in his column. And this cooling is not just a 2009 phenomenon.

If you input 1996-2010, the temperature is flat-lined, so the cooling started at least in 1997 in the U.S., and almost certainly everywhere else as well. And, the later you put the end date, the more pronounced is the downward, cooling slant of the temperature line.

Phil Jones: the planet isn’t warming

Murphy’s view fits very well with what Phil Jones, the former head of East Anglia University’s Climatic Research Unit, said in one of his “Climategate” emails (July 5, 2005):

The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only seven years of data and it isn’t statistically significant.

In other words, in 2009 Murphy was writing about a global cooling (not warming) trend that even climate alarmist Phil Jones admitted began in 1998.

Jones further admitted in a Feb. 13, 2010, interview with the BBC that there had been no “statistically significant” warming since 1995, and evidence of cooling (although not “statistically significant” for Jones) since 2002. Here’s what Jones said about the cooling:

BBC: Do you agree that from January 2002 to the present there has been statistically significant global cooling? Jones: No. This period is even shorter than 1995-2009. The trend this time is negative (-0.12C per decade), but this trend is not statistically significant.

But if the temperature “trend” might be toward cooling, that at least means that there was no statistically significant global warming during the years from 2002-2010, does it not? And the planet may well be cooling—NOAA’s U.S. data certainly points that way. Jones argues the timeline isn’t long enough to establish a cooling trend, but 12 years of no warming certainly looks like a trend. It’s also 12 years, or more, during which the public has been relentlessly—and, it appears, falsely—bombarded with the message that the planet is suffering from out-of-control warming.

So let’s summarize: Pederson accused Murphy of being an unethical columnist for claiming that the planet was cooling in 2009. Yet NOAA, which is a strong believer in anthropogenic global warming, says the United States has been cooling since 1997. Phil Jones suggests in his email that the planet—not just the U.S.—has not warmed since 1995 (with the addition that he doesn’t want this news to get out, hence “hide the decline”), and might even have cooled since 2002. So, who’s right? Pederson? Or Murphy, along with both NOAA and Jones?

At the very least, how can Pederson, with a straight face, accuse Murphy of lack of ethics, thereby slandering Murphy’s journalistic reputation, when Murphy is simply basing his opinion on scientific data? In other words, at least in my opinion, Pederson slandered Murphy and owes him an apology.

Ignoring the evidence

But, then, this is what AGW believers do. Evidence that the planet hasn’t warmed since the late 1990s is dismissed as “cherry-picking” because, for warmists, the overall trend is up. It has to be up, because that’s what the computer climate models say, and the models cannot be wrong.

Pederson set up the climate and media panel so there were no skeptics on board because he is a dedicated, one might even say fanatical, believer in human-caused global warming and its catastrophic outcome. How do I know? Because last December, I attended a video streaming, arranged by Pederson in a University of Victoria classroom, of an online debate pitting skeptics Bjorn Lomborg and Nigel Lawson against warmists Elizabeth May and George Monbiot.

Before the debate began, however, Pederson went to the front of the classroom and, for 15 minutes, told those attending that they shouldn’t believe a word of what Lomborg and Lawson said. The idea that a university audience might listen to a debate with an open mind is apparently beyond Pederson’s ability to comprehend because, of course, he believes he is totally right on global warming and any other viewpoint is totally wrong.

(As an aside, philosopher of science Karl Popper has written, in The Logic of Scientific Discovery (p. 281): “The wrong view of science reveals itself as the craving to be right.” Pederson, and global warming alarmists in general, seem to be strongly in the grip of this craving.)

Why warmists can’t admit cooling

During question period at the media and climate panel, I asked Pederson about Jones’s comment on the lack of “statistically significant” warming since 1995 and the possible cooling from 2002 on. Pederson replied that the 1995 non-warming was just that, a statistical artifact, and that the current decade had been the warmest on record. Which may be true, but that doesn’t mean the decade is warming.

However, Pederson refused to answer the second part of my question on Jones’s comment about possible cooling.

Pederson’s refusal to respond made it very clear that warmists don’t want to publicly acknowledge any cooling over the past 12 or 13 years (from 1997 in the U.S. and probably everywhere else, too). And so, they pour scorn on anyone, like Murphy or myself, who dares to mention it.

By why is it so important not to admit that the planet has cooled, at least to the public? I must confess that this question has puzzled me, or did until the media and climate panel.

One reason is, of course, because scientists like Pederson know the public will lose faith in the AGW theory if what it predicts—warming—isn’t occurring. How silly of the public to demand actual evidence of warming before making some very expensive decisions to cope with warming, but there it is.

The main reason, though, is that to acknowledge cooling over the past decade is to admit that the AGW hypothesis is wrong. Why? Jones provides a clue when he says that while the planet isn’t warming and is actually cooling, it hasn’t warmed or cooled for enough years to be “statistically significant.”

So, how many years does it take for a climatologist to accept that climate change, as opposed to weather fluctuation, has occurred (is “statistically significant”)?  The generally accepted time is 30 years. How long has the planet been warming? From the mid-1970s to no later than 1998. That’s 23 years of warming, followed by 12 years of non-warming (so far). In other words, this warming that we’re told is so “unequivocal” and “settled” and “certain” has not passed the crucial 30-year mark. The warming of 1975-1998 is therefore not “statistically significant.”

Hence, it is necessary for climatologists like Pederson to assert, at least to the public, that warming has occurred after 1998 and, more recently, that it is actually “accelerating.” Without warming in the 21st century, “global warming” hasn’t reached the crucial 30-year milestone. But if for Pederson there is no statistically significant cooling over the past decade, there was also no statistically significant warming in the late 20th century, either. Warmists like Pederson cannot admit this fact because it utterly destroys their case.

In other words, it’s not Rex Murphy who is misleading the public with ideology and false information. It’s the alarmist climatologists like Pederson who are misleading the public with their smokescreen of “certainty” and “consensus” and “global warming” that not only hasn’t occurred in more than a decade, but wasn’t “statistically significant” before that.

Postscript: Desperately seeking answers

Prior to the media and climate panel, the organizers put out a call for written questions. I sent in several questions. They were not answered by the panel, nor do I expect that the answers to any of them would have been anything more than obfuscation. But, for the record, here they are. If anyone has a sensible response to any of them, I’d love to hear it.

Question 1 (for Pederson): Karl Popper has written: “A theory that is not refutable by any conceivable event is not scientific.” What empirical evidence would it take for you to consider the anthropogenic warming hypothesis to be refuted?

Question 2 (for Times Colonist editor Lucinda Chodan): IPCC reports are subject to “review by governments.” This does not mean that government does what it wishes after the IPCC reports are published, as is proper; governments get to determine what the scientific results will be before they are published. In other words, the IPCC is subject to a political agenda. My question is: Would you agree to be the editor in chief of a newspaper that was subject to “review by governments”? Would you trust such a newspaper?

Question 3 (for Pederson): The 2007 IPCC report states that evidence of warming in the 21^st century is “unequivocal.”  On the other hand, Phil Jones, former head of the Climatic Research Unit and a strong supporter of the AGW hypothesis, admitted in a Feb. 13 interview with the BBC that there has been no “statistically significant” warming since 1995, and evidence of slight cooling since 2002. Clearly the planet can’t be both cooling and warming at the same time. Which position, Jones’s or the IPCC’s, is wrong?

Question 4 (for Pederson): You appear to be “certain” that the anthropogenic hypothesis has complete empirical support; for you the science is “settled” and beyond dispute, and there is no need to keep an open mind on the issue (I was present at your 15-minute talk before the online debate). Yet Mike Hulme, a leading IPCC contributor, has written:

Reaching consensus about climate change, recognizing that these statements emerge from processes of deliberation and discussion rather than from pure observation, experimentation and falsification, can therefore be an uncomfortable thing for scientists and public alike. Scientists need to be prepared to argue about their “considered opinions”, to embrace consensus but without closing down argument or suggesting that matters are settled.

How can a scientific conclusions that emerge from “processes of deliberation and discussion rather than from pure observation, experimentation and falsification” be considered “settled” and “certain”? And do you agree or disagree with Hulme that climate scientists should not suggest “that matters are settled”?

Question 5 (for Peter Calamai or Lucinda Chodan): There has never been, to my knowledge, a full-dress  debate on any of the major Canadian television networks on the question of global warming, in part, I gather, because AGW supporters do not want to give the skeptics “credibility.” If the AGW hypothesis is as “certain” as its supporters believe, why not have such a debate, or a series of them, and crush the skeptics once and for all?

Question 6 (for Pederson): In his textbook Earth’s Climate: Past and Future, William Ruddiman writes: “Earth’s temperature reacts strongly to small changes in CO2 values at the lower end of the range (less than 200 ppm), but changes much less at the high end of the range (greater than 800 ppm)” (page 134). Some sources say that CO2 does most of its warming in the first 20 ppm.

Given that CO₂ levels, at 400 ppm (388, actually), are now twice 200 ppm, and half 800 ppm, at what point would you expect “carbon saturation” to set in and warming based on additional carbon dioxide to more or less cease (I know warming doesn’t end entirely, but the additional warming per unit is miniscule). One gets the impression, reading the papers, that additional units of CO2 will create a lot more warming per unit, rather than a lot less.

The evidence … however properly reached, may always be more or less wrong, the best information being never complete, and the best reasoning being liable to fallacy.”

—Thomas Huxley, Science and Christian Tradition, p. 206

Thomas H. Huxley (1825-1895) was one of the first and most vigorous promoters of modern scientific thinking. He is perhaps best-known as “Darwin’s bulldog”—no one did more to fight for Darwin’s theory of natural selection in the face of theological opposition—but he also almost single-handedly introduced science into the British school curriculum at all levels.

Thomas H. Huxley

Huxley was a formidable philosopher of science, anticipating many of the principles of scientific inquiry that Karl Popper would make a mainstay of scientific thinking in the 20th century, including the need for falsifiable hypotheses and non-dogmatic, continuous inquiry.

In short, in the history and philosophy of science, Huxley is someone to be reckoned with.

So what would T.H. Huxley have thought of today’s “consensus” climate scientists, with their claims that the issue of man-made climate change is “settled,” that there is no need for further debate, and that those who challenge the hypothesis of anthropogenic warming in any way are, in effect, heretics?

Three of Huxley’s books—Science and Hebrew Tradition (SHT), Science and Christian Tradition (SCT), and Hume, a biography of Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776)—present Huxley’s philosophy of science very clearly. How well does “consensus” climate science bear up in Huxley’s crucible?

Science is never certain

.

The pretension to infallibility, by whomsoever made, has done endless mischief; with impartial malignity it has proved a curse, alike to those who have made and it those who have accepted it.

–Science and Hebrew Tradition, Preface, p. ix

Just as Huxley fought against religious certainty in his time, so he undoubtedly would have questioned the consensus claim that the evidence for human-driven climate change is “overwhelming” and therefore beyond question.

But, then, orthodoxy always hates criticism, a point Huxley underscored by quoting from David Hume’s “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.” In “Dialogues,” Hume has the religious Cleanthes, who believes that because nature is harmonious there must be a Supreme Designer, say to the skeptical Philo:

You [Philo] alone, or almost alone, disturb this general harmony. You state abstruse doubts, cavils, and objections. You ask me what is the cause of this cause? I know not: I care not: that concerns me not. I have found a Deity and here I stop my inquiry. (Hume, p. 178)

Against this view, Huxley wrote: “No man, nor any body of men, is good enough, or wise enough, to dispense with the tonic of criticism” (SCT, “Science and Pseudoscience,” p. 93).

But, of course, the consensus climate science orthodoxy, as expressed many times by believers like Al Gore, Goddard Institute director James Hansen, and Canada’s Andrew Weaver and David Suzuki (who once stormed out of a radio interview because the interviewer dared to suggest the global warming issue is “not totally settled”)(1), is that “abstruse doubts, cavils, and objections” that don’t fit within the consensus paradigm should not be aired lest the public’s faith in anthropogenic global warming be weakened.

For example, in refusing to debate skeptical environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg , Gore said: “We have long since passed the time when we should pretend this is a ‘on the one hand, on the other hand’ issue. It’s not a matter of theory or conjecture.”

Canada’s leading climate computer modeler, Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria, in explaining his reluctance to publicly debate the question of global warming on a CBC radio program, has written:

There is no such debate in the atmospheric or climate scientific community, and … making the public believe that such a debate exists is precisely the goal of the denial industry. … Scientific debate over global warming would therefore imply uncertainty. (Keeping Our Cool, pp. 22-23)

Why not debate with climate skeptics? Why not crush the abstruse doubts, cavils and objections, as Huxley did many times in publicly debating opponents of Darwin?

For example, in 1860, in one of the most famous debates in the history of science, Huxley demolished the arguments of Anglican Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, who was defending religious doctrine against Darwin’s theory of evolution. Huxley’s attitude wasn’t, like Weaver’s and Gore’s, “I’m right, the other side is wrong, and therefore I don’t need to debate them.” Huxley knew the public needed to hear both sides, not just one, to make up its mind.

For his part, Bishop Wilberforce must have felt he shouldn’t have to defend what he considered immutable religious truth against the upstart scientific heretics. Yet, unlike Weaver, Gore, and most others in the climate consensus, Wilberforce had the courage to publicly debate his views.

Why don’t Gore, Weaver, et al., feel the same need to put their “truths” to the public test? Perhaps because they fear that they and the climate orthodoxy would lose the debate, and quite rightly. The few times warming believers have publicly debated skeptics, the believers have lost.(2,3)

The facts must fit the theory

.

An inductive hypothesis is said to be demonstrated when the facts are shown to be in entire accordance with it [italics added].

–Science and the Hebrew Tradition, “Lectures on Evolution III,” p. 132.

What would Huxley think of the claim that the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis is based on empirical facts (i.e., is an inductive hypothesis), when the facts no longer support (are no longer in “entire accordance with”) that hypothesis? Probably not much given that, despite increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the planet has not warmed since at least 2001 and perhaps earlier than that.(4)

Theory must account for previous experience

.

The more a statement of fact conflicts with previous experience,

Figure 1: Temperature and carbon dioxide over 600 million years

the more complete must be the evidence which is to justify us in believing it.

—Hume, p. 158

What is the planet’s “previous experience” in terms of carbon dioxide and temperature? The geological evidence of the past 600 million years shows the relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature is tenuous at best (see Figure 1. The black line is carbon dioxide; the blue line is temperature).

Note particularly 450 million years ago, when the earth’s temperature was as cold as today’s—i.e., the earth was in an Ice Age—while carbon dioxide levels were more than 10 times today’s levels. Clearly, high levels of CO2 weren’t keeping the planet warm then.

There are other periods, such as 100 million years ago, when the temperature remained high but carbon dioxide fell. If, as consensus climate science claims, carbon dioxide is the main driver of climate, why didn’t the temperature start to fall until tens of millions of years after CO2 did?

The consensus view, which closely links high carbon dioxide levels and high temperatures, had no validity in “previous experience” (the geological past). Why should we accept that view now?

Science must be able to predict phenomena

.

The true mark of a theory is without doubt its ability to predict phenomena.

– Science and Hebrew Tradition, “On the Method of Zadig,” p. 20

Huxley didn’t pen these words, although he heartily approved of them. They were written in 1822 by Baron Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), one of the founders of biological classification, and have been repeated by philosophers of science every since.(5) To be valid, a scientific hypothesis must be able to predict phenomena. An hypothesis that can’t make valid predictions is guesswork, not science.

Figure 2: IPCC computer predictions of warming versus real-world temperature data (blue and green lines)

So what would Huxley (much less Cuvier) say of the failure of climate computer models to predict the flat-lining of temperatures over the past decade?

Figure 2 shows the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s predictions for the next two decades in red, orange and yellow. The blue and green lines show the actual temperatures as measured by Britain’s Hadley Institute and the University of Alabama at Huntsville climate monitoring centres.

Figure 3 shows the predictions of climate alarmist James Hansen in 1988. The blue line is Hansen’s scary Scenario A prediction; the orange line is the actual temperature. The only point of contact between the two is 1998, the year of an unusually strong El Nino warming.

Figure 3: James Hansen's exaggerated prediction

Both predictions—indeed, all of the consensus climate model predictions without exception—have been higher than observed temperatures.

But, then, the IPCC itself said, in its 2001 report: “In climate research and modelling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”(6)

Extreme claims require extreme proof

.

It is a canon of common sense, to say nothing of science, that the more improbable a supposed occurrence, the more cogent ought to be the evidence in its favor.

–Science and the Christian Tradition, “An Episcopal Trilogy,” p. 135

Huxley addressed, a century ago, the question of how much credence we should place in extreme claims of the type that Gore, Hansen, Weaver, and others present as scientific fact.

Not much, if we are also to believe astronomer Carl Sagan, who has written, in the same vein: “Apocalyptic predictions require, to be taken seriously, higher standards of evidence than do assertions on other matters where the stakes are not as great”(7). Sagan’s comment often appears online as “extreme claims require extreme proof,” but Huxley beat him to the punch.

Among these extreme claims is Andrew Weaver’s ominous prediction of a “sixth extinction” that will wipe out “between 40 per cent and 70 per cent of the world’s species” should the global temperature rise above 3.3 degrees Celsius” (a rise that is, for Weaver, entirely humanity’s fault) (Keeping Our Cool, p. 218). He has also called for a complete ban on fossil-fuel use.(8)

Hansen warns of sea level rises of five metres in the next century, 20 metres over the next 400 years (New Scientist, July 25, 2007). And, of course, we should all be familiar with Gore’s apocalyptic predictions (New York under water soon, no Arctic ice by 2014, etc.) if we fail to follow his draconian political and economic program.

Curiously, at least so far, none—not one—of the environmentalists’ apocalyptic predictions, from Thomas Malthus to Paul Ehrlich (mass starvation in the 1970s) to Suzuki, Weaver and Gore, has come to pass.

Or, as the CBC’s Rex Murphy notes:

So much of what the alarmists promised was supposed to be happening now isn’t happening. So many events are running counter to their near-term projections, they’ve decided to go all Armageddon with their long-term ones, projections for a future that none of us will be around to check.(9)

By any standard, the claims of Gore, Weaver, Hansen, et al., are extreme. Yet we are expected to accept these extreme claims with very little public debate, scrutiny, or criticism (after all, the debate is settled and the climate scientists are the experts), and based on almost no empirical evidence (unless mathematical models are considered the equivalent of empirical evidence).

Instead, climate alarmists abandon scientific principles of evidence, fall back on the precautionary principle (if it could happen we must act as if it will happen)(10), and try to silence anyone asking for proof more convincing than the flawed predictions of computer models.

Science doesn’t operate by consensus

.

My love of my fellow-countrymen has led me to reflect, with dread, on what will happen to them, if any of the laws of nature ever become so unpopular in their eyes, as to be voted down by the transcendent authority of universal suffrage.

–Science and Christian Tradition, p. 252

Huxley was worried that citizens would decide to vote against, for example, the laws of gravity. Undoubtedly, he would be equally concerned if scientists declared that a scientific assertion was true because, after a vote, a majority of them had agreed it was so, i.e., proof by “consensus.”

Just as a vote of citizens doesn’t make a scientific fact true or false, neither does a vote of scientists make a fact true or false. Only empirical evidence does that. And the empirical evidence for anthropogenic warming isn’t there.

Dealing with absurdity

.

When you cannot prove that people are wrong, but only that they are absurd, the best course is to let them alone.

—Science and Hebrew Tradition, “On the Method of Zadig,” p. 13

It would be nice to leave the consensus climate alarmists alone. After all, the hypothesis that anthropogenic gases might cause warming is not unreasonable. It may even be true, although so far the evidence (or lack of it) argues otherwise.

What takes consensus climate science into Huxley’s realm of absurdity is the dogmatic insistence that all other hypotheses are not just wrong, but so wrong that they should not be debated or, better yet, not heard at all by the public or other scientists.

Moreover, the consensus climate science alarmists, and their environmentalist supporters, refuse to leave the rest of us alone. Instead, they wish to impose economy-crippling measures based on a global-warming hypothesis that becomes more and more surreal with each year that warming does not occur.

Conclusion

So, how well does consensus climate science meet Huxley’s conditions for real science?

Huxley: Scientific certainty does not exist. Consensus climate science: The evidence is so overwhelming there’s no need to discuss it any further.

Huxley: A strong theory must be “in entire accordance” with the data. Consensus climate science: Ignore data (such as the current cooling) that doesn’t fit the theory (the planet should be warming).

Huxley: Data not in accord with previous experience should be regarded with suspicion. Consensus climate science: Ignore previous experience (such as the geological record showing little correlation between carbon dioxide and temperature) if it doesn’t fit the theory.

Huxley: Theories must be able to predict accurately. Consensus climate science: Nothing, so far, predicted accurately.

Huxley: Extreme claims require extreme proof. Consensus climate science: If the proof doesn’t exist, fall back on the precautionary principle.

Huxley: Science doesn’t operate by consensus. Consensus climate science: Yes, it does.

How, we might wonder, would Huxley fare in a public debate with consensus climate believers like Al Gore, James Hansen, or Andrew Weaver, assuming they had the courage to take him on?

As Bishop Wilberforce discovered, they wouldn’t know what hit them.

Notes

1. Barbara Kay, “David Suzuki vs. Michael Crichton.” National Post, Feb. 21, 2007.

2. See, for example, Marc Sheppard’s “No wonder climate extremists refuse to debate” at http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/04/no_wonder_climate_alarmists_re.html. For a list of the few debates that have occurred, and their outcomes, see Climate Depot, http://www.climatedepot.com/a/39/Climate-Depotrsquos-Morano-debates-Global-Warming-with-former-Clinton-Admin-Official-Romm.

3. Losing a debate to skeptic Marc Morano prompted Joe Romm to write, in his blog Climate Progress: “While science and logic are powerful systematic tools for understanding the world, they are no match in the public realm for the 25-century-old art of verbal persuasion: rhetoric.” To say that consensus climate scientists like David Suzuki, Andrew Weaver and James Hansen, much less ex-politician Al Gore, don’t have the rhetorical skills to match the skeptics is absurd. What Romm lacks, what consensus science lacks, and what Bishop Wilberforce lacked, is an argument that makes sense.

4. Meteorologist Richard Lindzen argues that the most recent cycle of global warming ended in 1995. See the Watts Up With That website, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/30/lindzen-on-negative-climate-feedback.

5. Georges Cuvier, Recherches sur les Ossemens., Paris: Chez G. Dufour et d’Ocagne, Libraires, 1822, p. 292.

6. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 01, Chapter 14, Advancing Our Understanding, Section 14.2.2.2.

7. Carl Sagan, “Nuclear War and Climatic Catastrophe: Some Policy Implications,” Foreign Affairs, Winter 1983/84, pp. 257-258.

8. Andrew Weaver, “‘Environmentalists’ are abandoning science.” Vancouver Sun, March 24, 2009.

9. Rex Murphy, “Armageddon theory: Vancouver,” Globe and Mail, Jan. 10, 2009.

10. For example, environmental writer Jonathan Schell has written: “Now, in a widening sphere of decisions, the costs of error are so exorbitant that we need to act on theory alone. It follows that the reputation of scientific prediction needs to be enhanced” [italics added]. “Our Fragile Earth,” Discover, Oct., 1987, p. 47.

Works Cited

Huxley, T.H., Hume: With Helps to the Study of Berkeley. New York. D. Appleton, 1896.
Huxley, T.H., Science and Christian Tradition. New York, D. Appleton, 1896.
Huxley, T.H., Science and  Hebrew Tradition. New York: D. Appleton, 1896.
Weaver, Andrew, Keeping Our Cool: Canada in a Warming World. Toronto: Viking Canada, 2008.

Do not knowingly mislead, or allow others to be misled, about scientific matters. Present and review scientific evidence, theory or interpretation honestly and accurately.

–Proposed scientific code of ethics

For one giddy, almost magical moment, I thought the “consensus” climate science community, or at least a small portion of it, had come to its senses. I should have known better.

The almost-magical moment came on reading a headline in the U.K. Guardian online. It read: “Scientists must rein in misleading climate change claims: Overplaying natural variations in the weather diverts attention from the real issues.” The article was by Dr. Vicky Pope of the British Meteorological (Hadley) Centre, one of the four major centres monitoring climate.

Finally! I thought. The consensus climate scientists who believe, passionately but with almost no scientific evidence beyond computer models, that the planet is warming, that it’s all humanity’s fault, and that we’re heading for oblivion, are willing to admit they’ve been wildly exaggerating the threat of warming to places like the Arctic.

Pope even seemed to agree, noting:

Figure 1: IPCC computer predictions of warming versus real-world temperature data (blue and green lines)

Recent headlines have proclaimed that Arctic summer sea ice has decreased so much in the past few years that it has reached a tipping point and will disappear very quickly. The truth is that there is little evidence to support this. Indeed, the record-breaking losses in the past couple of years could easily be due to natural fluctuations in the weather, with summer sea ice increasing again over the next few years.

But the giddiness quickly passed. The rest of Pope’s article is just another consensus attempt to explain away its deplorable track record in predicting a great deal of warming when there is either very little or no warming at all (see Figure 1 and Is the Planet Still Warming?).

At best, Pope will only admit that “in the past 10 years the temperature rise has slowed,” when in truth temperature rise hasn’t “slowed” (see How the Hadley Centre Spins the Data on Non-Warming), it’s stopped. The climate may even tip into cooling for the next decade or two or longer. But why quibble over facts?

Pope’s target isn’t global warming believers

Of course, Pope isn’t criticizing those who believe the planet is warming due to human causes and use extreme warm weather events as proof. That’s been OK with her up to now.

At least, I don’t recall seeing an article from Pope complaining about, say, Eugene Linden’s 2006 book The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations, which ends with a chapter documenting extremely warm weather over the past few decades as evidence of human-caused global warming. For example, Linden writes on 2003: “Heat and drought in Europe so reduce the flow to the Rhine that shipping is interrupted” (p. 299). (In January 2009, by contrast, Europe experienced record cold weather that trapped ships in ice.)

Where was her attack on Ross Gelbspan’s The Heat is On (1997), with its catalogue of extreme weather stories in the Introduction and first chapter? Or Lydia Dotto’s 2000 book Storm Warming: Gambling with the Future of Our Planet? Its publisher, Random House, promotes the book with the following litany of weather events:

The Ice Storm of 1998. The flooding of Manitoba of 1997. Wherever you live, it’s likely you’ve experienced some extreme weather lately. A recent report from the Red Cross stated that natural catastrophes in 1998 has wreaked the most havoc on record, and warned that a series of “super-disasters” could be imminent. What’s behind all this stormy weather?

What’s behind this stormy weather? Why, human-caused global warming, silly.

Global warming even blamed for Aussie plant growth

Perhaps Pope will write to chide Tim Flannery’s latest alarmist diatribe, this one blaming global warming for Australia’s disastrous fires (”A deadly reminder that we must tackle climate change,” Sydney Morning Herald, Feb. 12, 2009). Indeed, an Australian reporter even suggested that “years of global warming and increased CO2 emissions have caused these trees to grow at an unprecedented rate, providing more fuel for these fires.” Oh, evil global warming and carbon emissions that allow more vegetation to flourish.

Or, last but not least, when is Pope going to tackle Al Gore’s wildly exaggerated accusation, from An Inconvenient Truth, that global warming is causing more hurricanes, including Katrina, and extreme weather in general? Unfortunately for Gore, the people who actually track hurricanes say the number is, if anything, below average in the past decade. But, again, why quibble over facts?

No, Pope’s target isn’t the anthropogenic global warming believers. Her target is, of course, those evil skeptics, makers of mischief who, perversely, play the same game as Gelbspan and Dotto and Gore.

If warmers can cite extreme weather, why can’t skeptics?

Pope wants to rein in the consensus climate extremists because, in their claims that extreme warming weather equals a warmer (human-created) climate, they legitimize skeptical claims that perhaps today’s cooling weather equals a cooling climate. If the planet is cooling, even temporarily, then human carbon emissions can’t be a key factor, and we don’t want people thinking that, do we?

Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, after all. For warming believers, when it’s warming that’s climate, when it’s cooling that’s weather. Another version of this: If it’s warming, that’s human-caused; if it’s cooling, that’s natural variation. Why can’t skeptics play the same game in reverse?

Figure 2: IPCC models show the planet cooling (blue line) without human carbon emissions.

The AGW believers have a logically untenable position, as Pope clearly realizes, hence her suggestion that they cool their rhetoric to take the wind out of the skeptics’ sails.

However, there’s no danger of Pope admitting that the AGW hypothesis might be flawed even though, according to the hypothesis, the current cooling should not be happening. Or, at least, none of the consensus climate models predicted this cooling, which is why, to avoid looking completely ridiculous, AGW believers now refer to “climate change” rather than “global warming.” Ironically, though, the consensus models do predict cooling if human influence is removed (see Figure 2).

Maybe climate change is natural

Humans are continuing to put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, yet the planet is not warming and may even be cooling. If this is so, then logic suggests that perhaps humans aren’t to blame for warming (or cooling) after all.

Maybe the planet just naturally warms and cools, as it has for hundreds of millions of years, as it has for the past two centuries when the climate was cool (the Little Ice Age) up to 1850 or so, then warmed up to 1940, then cooled until the mid-1970’s, then warmed until about 2000. Now it appears to be cooling again — something that shouldn’t happen if the consensus climate models are to be believed, but something that might happen if the earth’s climate warms and cools regardless of what humans do.

And, lest we forget, the planet has been in an Ice Age for the past two and a half million years. Our current warmth is a relatively brief, perhaps 15,000-year, interlude between bouts of 80,000 years of glaciation. We’re past the 12,000-year mark; the ice will return eventually. Indeed, the planet is, overall, the coldest it’s been in 250 million years. Why consensus climate scientists regard warming as a danger under these adverse geological circumstances is yet another mystery to skeptics.

At the very least, the decade’s non-warming (or cooling) should make consensus climate scientists question their theories, as real scientists do when the empirical evidence doesn’t support those theories.

Defending the dogma

But we won’t hear that kind of questioning from Pope. Instead, at the end of her article, she issues a ringing endorsement of the dogma of human-caused warming, which (like all dogmas) does not believe it is dogma but God’s truth. She writes:

When climate scientists like me explain to people what we do for a living we are increasingly asked whether we ‘believe in climate change’. Quite simply it is not a matter of belief. Our concerns about climate change arise from the scientific evidence that humanity’s activities are leading to changes in our climate. The scientific evidence is overwhelming.

Dr. Pope is, of course, entitled to her views, as we all are (or should be, even skeptics). But her claim that the scientific evidence for human-caused warming is “overwhelming” begs the question: If the evidence is so overwhelming, why do so many consensus scientists and their supporters feel compelled to exaggerate the evidence? Why not let the facts speak for themselves?

In truth, the scientific evidence is anything but overwhelming, if the past decade of non-warming is any indication, and anthropogenic warming is still an hypothesis, not a proven scientific fact as Pope would like us to believe.

Even after 150 years and a mountain of supporting evidence, Darwin’s theory of evolution is still a theory, open to re-evaluation based on new data. But after only 20 years of serious climate research,  human-caused global warming is regarded by consensus climate science not as a theory but incontrovertible fact. This arrogance is just another example of the consensus exaggeration that Pope claims to deplore.

But, then, no consensus climate scientist wants to admit even the teeniest, tiniest possibility that he/she could be wrong. Do that and, even worse than global warming, the research funding and jobs might dry up.

To review: At first sight, Pope’s article appears to be a refreshing call for intellectual honesty from the consensus climate-science camp: “Hey, why don’t we try telling the public the truth, for a change, instead of all this exaggerated alarmism?” After all, as anyone who studies the climate issue with an open mind knows, the Arctic example is only one of hundreds of perfectly natural phenomena that consensus climate science blames on human-caused global warming.(1)

Alas, on further reading, Pope’s article is revealed not as a plea for honesty but yet another consensus scientist’s attempt to keep the public from hearing any views on climate but her own.

Oh, well. I suppose a glimmer of hope for consensus climate honesty is better than none….

Note

(1) My almost-finished book, False Alarm: Why Almost Everything We’ve Been Told About Global Warming is Misleading, Exaggerated or Plain Wrong, documents many of these distortions of fact. See also http://paulmacrae.com/links for articles by other writers exposing consensus climate science errors.

The determinants of complex processes are invariably plural and interrelated.

– David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, p. 517

Most of what “consensus” climate science tells the public about human-caused global warming is, I believe, misleading, exaggerated, or plain wrong. But what are the consensus climate scientists saying that isn’t misleading, exaggerated, or wrong? These are scientists, after all, men and women of high intelligence, years of academic study and, one can assume, high integrity. Surely they can’t be that wrong. What are they getting right?

First, let’s look at what orthodox climate science is arguing. Here’s as good a statement of the consensus hypothesis as any, from R.A. Warrick, E.M. Barrow and T.M.L. Wigley, all recognized climatologists and self-described climate “alarmists” (in Climate and Sea Level Change: Observations, Projections and Implications, from which the hypothesis is taken, they note “the alarming rate of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide”). They write:

The potential rates and magnitudes of the GHG-induced change … give rise to legitimate concerns about the future. These concerns include the following:

• first, that humankind may now be a potent factor in causing unidirectional global changes which could dominate over natural changes on the decade-to-century time scale;
• secondly, that, in terms of recent human experience, changes in climate and sea level could accelerate to unprecedented rates;
• thirdly, that human tinkering with the global climate system could have unforeseen catastrophic consequences (e.g., ‘runaway’ warming or sea level rise from strong positive feedbacks); and
• finally, that the quickened rates of change could exceed the capacity of natural and human systems to adapt without undue disruption or cost.(1)

In other words, it’s the classic consensus position that the build-up of human carbon emissions rather than natural factors is driving climate change and that we may be heading for disaster. What’s right about this hypothesis?

What’s right is that both carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and the global temperature have increased since the mid-1800’s. Also right is that human emissions have been contributing to this increase in carbon dioxide. Finally, it is true that rapid climate changes could have “catastrophic consequences” for humanity.

So, consensus climate science has it right on a number of basic facts. If we go beyond these basic facts, however, the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis breaks down rather badly.

Higher carbon dioxide levels are not a danger to life

Carbon dioxide levels have risen in the atmosphere from roughly 280 parts per million in the late 19th century to 380 ppm today, a 30 per cent increase in just over a century. In that time, the global temperature has risen about .8 degrees Celsius.(2) Both represent a fairly rapid increase and human beings are responsible for a small portion of that increase.

But is a CO2 level of 380 ppm dangerous in and of itself, for the planet or for us? Would twice this level be dangerous? Three times? The answer is: not at all, as the consensus climate scientists must be fully aware.  CO2 levels have been much higher in the geological past — often five to 10 times higher (see Figure 1) — and both plants and animals evolved and thrived.(3)

Figure 1. Temperature and CO2 levels over 600 million years

A warmer planet is not a danger to life

Is a warmer planet, in and of itself, a danger to life? Again, the answer is no.

For 80 to 90 per cent of its 4.5-billion-year history earth has been warmer, and sometimes up to 15 degrees Celsius warmer, than today.(4) Both the “golden age” of dinosaurs and of mammals occurred when CO2 levels and temperatures were much higher than today’s.

However, our planet is currently in an ice age, and has been for the past two million years. As Figure 1 shows, carbon dioxide levels and temperatures are the lowest in 250 million years, and among the lowest in 600 million years. We are within five degrees Celsius of entering another period of glaciation, which would be very bad news — far worse than an equivalent amount of warming.(5)

So, the consensus position is correct in stating that temperature levels are increasing (until recently — see “Is the planet still warming” on this site) and that CO2 levels are increasing. It is not correct that these increases are, in themselves, a potential “catastrophe.”

Abrupt climate change is a potential danger

Consensus climate science is on stronger ground when it warns that rapid climate change “could exceed the capacity of natural and human systems to adapt without undue disruption or cost.”

The problem for the AGW hypothesis is that rapid climate change has occurred in the past without any human input and will occur in the future regardless of what humanity does or doesn’t do. In addition, the problem facing humanity isn’t rapid climate change, it’s abrupt climate change.

In abrupt climate change, sudden large swings in climate (up to 10 degrees Celsius or more) can occur within a century or even a decade when the climate hits a “tipping point” or trips a “switch” and goes into its opposite mode.(6) For example, this kind of abrupt change occurred 13,000 years ago when the Holocene warming suddenly stopped and temperatures plunged 10 degrees Celsius within a few decades.(7) This event has been called the Younger Dryas minimum. A thousand years later, the temperature rose again almost as suddenly.

Human carbon emissions had nothing to do with these fluctuations. These abrupt changes also prove there is nothing “unprecedented” about the rate of the 20th century’s warming, as the consensus hypothesis would like us to believe.

The climate has never been ’stable’

In his very readable book Climate Crash, on the science on abrupt climate change, science journalist John D. Cox notes that for the past century climate scientists and geologists have believed that climate change was a slow, gradual, “uniformitarian” process, like the slow creation of mountains. They also believed that “the planet as a whole enjoyed a stable, ‘equable’ climate.”(8)

Instead, Cox writes, analysis of ice cores, ocean sediments, and other climate proxies has revealed that the idea of a stable climate — including in the Holocene, our interglacial — is a myth. Even within the most recent glaciation that ended 15,000 years ago, the climate had rapid spikes of warmth, then sudden plunges back into bitter cold within decades (see Figure 2).(9)

Figure 2: Abrupt climate change during the last glacial

However, as Cox notes, “Climate scientists now realize that just as a moving hand is more likely to throw a switch than a still one, anything that changes the system runs the risk of provoking abrupt climate change.”(10)

Cox’s book is one of those unusual situations where the author’s even-handedness actually disproves the case he wishes to make. Cox argues that increased anthropogenic carbon dioxide levels could trip the climate switch and throw us into a major cold spell, so we should curb carbon emissions.

What he ends up demonstrating is that the planet goes into warm and cold spells far more often than was believed and will continue to do so no matter what we do or don’t do. If we increase carbon dioxide levels, we may trigger an abrupt climate change. On the other hand, even if we decrease carbon dioxide levels, the planet may go into an abrupt cooling anyway due to other triggering factors.

Climate surprises are ‘inevitable’

In other words, any climate factor could trip the switch, or not. As the title of the more scholarly Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises tells us, abrupt climate surprises are “inevitable” and we might as well carry on as best we can. The alternative is to go back to living in caves while walking on eggshells lest we waken the climate gods. Like every other creature, we affect the earth — that, too, is “inevitable.”

Once abrupt climate change is understood, the whole issue of trying to curb carbon dioxide to stop anthropogenic warming is seen as irrelevant — the planet will warm or cool as natural forces (not human carbon “forcings”) dictate. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek more efficient, less carbon-emitting forms of energy; it just means that there’s no urgency to do so as far as climate is concerned.

Three unwelcome facts for consensus climate science

Cox also demonstrates three other facts about abrupt climate change that do not support consensus climate science.

First, research into abrupt climate change has shown that climate changes, period, regardless of human activity, and sometimes very rapidly. Consensus climate science, on the other hand, wants us to believe that if it hadn’t been for our emissions, the climate of the past century would have been “stable” rather than warming. For example, an anthology on climate co-edited by Andrew Weaver notes: “Climate change is above all the result of a century and a half of industrialization” [italics added].(11) The clear implication is that without human activity, the climate in the 20th century wouldn’t have changed, or not much. This argument ignores what made the climate start to turn warmer in the mid-1800s, before human carbon emissions were a factor.

Cox’s data shows that this supposed stability is a myth and that thanks to natural variations, the climate in the 20th century would have gone up and down without us — the century’s warming and cooling wasn’t “our fault,” as the consensus would like us to believe.

Second, the abrupt climate change data shows very clearly that what humanity has to fear is not global warming but global cooling. Time and time again, in Cox’s examples such as the Younger Dryas, the negative effects of abrupt climate change — especially drought — result from cooling, not warming. On the other hand, as climatologist William F. Ruddiman notes, “A warmer earth is likely to be a wetter earth.”(12) A warmer, wetter earth is almost always better for humankind.

If consensus climate scientists were arguing that anthropogenic warming could lead to abrupt cooling, they might make some sense (although not entirely: abrupt climate change is clearly dependent on many more factors than human actions, so they’d have to remove the “anthropogenic” part). However, the consensus climate science position, as typified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is that the “tipping point” danger we face is increased warming, period. The University of Victoria’s Andrew Weaver, Canada’s leading climate computer modeler, has written: “Have you heard that global warming may cause an ice age? How ironic. Does it sound odd? It should, as it’s utter nonsense.”(13)

For Weaver and most of consensus climate science, the climate thermometer only goes up because carbon dioxide emissions are going up. Yet, if the abrupt climate change theorists are right — and their ideas are based on fairly conclusive ice core, etc., readings — it’s the consensus position of unlimited, “unidirectional” warming that is utter nonsense.

Human-caused warming may be delaying glaciation

Yes, on average, the planet has warmed in the past 14,000 years because we are in an interglacial. But if and when the switch is tripped, the planet will start cooling, perhaps temporarily, perhaps into the next glaciation, regardless of how much CO2 we put in the air.

Indeed, it’s possible (although unlikely) that human-amplified warming, far from tripping the switch, is postponing the return of the glaciers. In that case, we should be grateful for anthropogenic global warming, rather than trying to stop it.

Third, Cox shows that the current climate models simply cannot handle abrupt climate change: “Abrupt change means that, like the weather itself, climate often behaves in ways that defy prediction.”(14) To make matters worse, orthodox climate science bodies like the IPCC have “focused attention on anthropogenic warming, whereas abrupt climate change is a broader subject covering natural as well as human causes.”(15)

In short — and quite the opposite of the position that he would like to convey — Cox proves that, yes, as the consensus says, climate change could be catastrophic. But he also shows that these abrupt climate changes are beyond human cause or control, and that the consensus climate models are, in effect, useless as predictive tools.

Consensus climate science is more speculation than science

So, summing up, consensus climate science is correct in stating that overall the planet is warming (or rather, it was correct until a decade ago when the warming stopped). It is correct in stating that the level of carbon dioxide is increasing. It is correct in stating that human-caused carbon dioxide may be contributing to this increase. It is correct in stating that climate change could be disastrous.

Beyond this, though, very little of what the consensus hypothesis predicts as a result of human activities has actual scientific evidence to support it. Almost all of the consensus hypothesis is scientific speculation — informed speculation, perhaps, but speculation nonetheless.

In particular, and despite its claims, consensus climate science has failed to show any convincing causal connection between human-caused CO2 and rising temperatures — correlation does not equal causation. After all, global temperatures actually went down from the 1940’s to the 1970’s and the average global temperature has been flat-lined since at least 2001, both while CO2 levels have been rising.

We may have “amplified” some of the past century’s warming but, more likely, the planet would be warming or cooling with or without us thanks to natural variation.

Warming a boon, not a catastrophe

Consensus climate science has also failed to show any causal connection between human-caused CO2 and possible catastrophe — quite the opposite, actually. It’s largely because the planet is warming that we’ve been able to feed a population of more than six billion. In other words, warming has been a boon, not a catastrophe. If catastrophe occurs, it will likely be caused by abrupt climate cooling due to natural variations that are beyond human control, not human carbon emissions and warming.

As for the consensus computer models: they may be useful tools for theoretical analysis but they are not physical scientific evidence and, if abrupt climate change is a reality, they have very little predictive value.

Above all, based on the scientific evidence for abrupt climate change, there are no grounds whatsoever for consensus climate science’s dogmatic condemnation of those — contemptuously called “deniers” — who question that humans are the “driving” force behind global warming and that warming will continue “unidirectionally” until the planet experiences “thermaggedon.” If nothing else, the cooling of 1940-1970 and the non-warming of the past decade have shown that the consensus hypothesis — rising CO2 levels equal rising temperatures — is shaky.

It’s time for consensus climate science to come up with another, more accurate, hypothesis, one that deals with the realities of abrupt climate change, instead of the fairy tale of the “stable” climate that would result if only humanity brought industrial civilization to a halt.

Notes

1. R.A. Warrick, E.M. Barrow and T.M.L. Wigley, Climate and Sea Level Change: Observations, Projections and Implications. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993, p. 3. I’ve converted the paragraph into bullets for easier reading. Although this statement was written in 1993, it holds up very well 15 years later.

2. This is the figure used by James E. Hansen, head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a leading advocate of AGW. See “Why fast action on climate change is needed,” available at http://www.beyondzeroemissions.org/media/2007/07/15/22/james-hansen-nasa-several-metre-sea-level-rise-zero-emission-conference-melbourn.

3. This graph and its academic sources are available at http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html.

4. Edward Aguado and James E. Burt, Understanding Weather & Climate. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2004, p. 479. The authors write: “The majority of the earth’s history has been marked by conditions warmer than those of today.” This is a standard university textbook on climate.

5. Geologist Cesare Emiliani has written, “Temperatures as high as today’s occurred for only about 10% of the time during the past half-million years.” In other words, for 90 per cent of the past 500,000 years, the climate has been glacial. Quoted in John. D. Cox, Climate Crash: Abrupt Climate Change and What It Means for Our Future. Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press, 2008, p. 81.

6. Committee on Abrupt Climate Change, et al. Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises. Washington, CD: National Academy Press, 2002, p. v.

7. John D. Cox, Climate Crash: Abrupt Climate Change and What It Means for Our Future. Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press, 2008, pp. 24, 41.

8. Cox, Climate Crash, p. 21.

9. Graph is taken from Abrupt Climate Change, p. 37. The data is based on ice cores from Greenland. The Younger Dryas freezing is marked “YD.” See also Science, August 1, 2008, for two articles on abrupt climate change: “High-resolution Greenland ice-core data show abrupt climate change happens in few years,” and “Did you say fast?”

10. Cox, Climate Crash, p. 4.

11. Gerard F. McLean & Murray Love, “Technology and climate change,” in Hard Choices: Climate Change in Canada, Andrew Weaver & Harold Coward, eds. Waterloo, ON: Wilfred Laurier Univ. Press, 2004, p. 127.

12. William F. Ruddiman, Earth’s Climate: Past and Future. New York: W.H. Freeman, 2001, p. 95.

13. Andrew Weaver, “The global cooling fallacy.” Ottawa Citizen, Feb. 18. 2008.

14. Cox, p. 146.

15. Cox, p. 185.

Mystification is the process of explaining away what might otherwise be evident.

– John Berger, Ways of Seeing

Britain’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research is in a spot of bother at the moment.

On the one hand, the Hadley Centre is a firm believer in the hypothesis that humans are the main cause of global warming and that we’re heading toward catastrophe. It even devotes several of its web pages to waving a nagging finger at those foolish enough or unprincipled enough to believe otherwise.

On the other hand, the Hadley Centre, as part of the British Meteorological Office and one of the world’s foremost climate-monitoring sites, is also churning out data showing that the planet isn’t warming at the moment, and hasn’t for the past 10 years or so. Clearly, increasing human carbon emissions aren’t causing the warming that was expected.

What to do?

As principled scientists, the Hadley staff can’t cook the books so the temperature figures fit the hypothesis, although at least one other major climate centre is doing its best to keep its figures matching the hypothesis.¹ On the other hand, if the general public got the idea that maybe the planet wasn’t warming after all, despite what it’s been told so often, the people might rebel against punitive carbon taxes and go back to their materialist-loving ways.

The Hadley Centre’s solution is a combination of spin-doctoring and let’s hope nobody notices.

You find the spin in its finger-wagging admonitions that we mustn’t take this non-warming trend at all seriously. Just temporary. Planet’s still warming. Move along; nothing to see here.

So, in its webpage on Climate Facts #1, it says: “There is indisputable evidence from observations that the Earth is warming.” ² This is hardly controversial; even the pesky warming skeptics who annoy the Hadley Centre so much agree on the earth is, overall, on a warming trend. But, just to make sure we’re clear so far: the earth is in an overall warming trend (interglacial) right now and would be whether humans were a factor or not.

Humans causing ‘most of the warming’?

Hadley goes on: “Concentrations of CO2, created largely by the burning of fossil fuels, are now much higher, and increasing at a much faster rate, than at any time in the last 600,000 years. Because CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the increased concentrations have contributed to the recent warming and probably most of the warming over the last 50 years” (italics added).

So, just so we’re clear: humans are the primary (Al Gore likes to use the term “principal”) cause of global warming - that’s what’s meant by causing “most of the warming.”

But then, Climate Fact #3 tells us: “Earth’s climate is complex and influenced by many things, particularly changes in its orbit, volcanic eruptions, and changes in the energy emitted from the Sun. It is well known that the world has experienced warm or cold periods in the past without any interference from humans” (italics added).

So, just to be clear: humans are causing “most of the warming” at the moment, but not warming in the past, and there are many other causes of warming as well, all natural, and all, one would think, a lot more powerful — solar orbit changes, volcanoes, variations in solar energy — than anything humans could throw at the planet.

The site goes on: “In recent ice ages, natural changes in the climate, such as those due to orbit changes, led to cooling of the climate system. This caused a fall in CO2 concentrations which weakened the greenhouse effect and amplified the cooling. Now the link between temperature and CO2 is working in the opposite direction. Human-induced increases in CO2 are driving the greenhouse effect and amplifying the recent warming” (italics added).

Driving or amplifying? They aren’t the same thing

We’ve got two processes here, described by two different verbs: driving and amplifying. Even though the planet is warming naturally (Fact #1), which would naturally tend to increase CO2 levels anyway, human-emitted CO2 is “driving” the greenhouse effect.

This is an amazing feat when you consider that human-added concentrations of CO2 are only about five per cent of natural carbon emissions every year from factors like rotting vegetation, volcanoes, outgassing from the oceans, and the like. And amazing considering that 90 to 95 per cent of the greenhouse effect is produced by water vapor, not CO2.

Never mind. For the Hadley Centre, five per cent of a trace gas like carbon dioxide (CO2 is only 380 parts per million in the atmosphere, to which human emissions add about 10 ppm every five years) is “driving” the greenhouse gas system.

Then the Centre backtracks a bit and says we humans are “amplifying,” rather than “driving,” the recent warming. How much are we “amplifying” natural warming? Presumably about five per cent. Is an amplification of five per cent enough to produce “most of the warming” we’ve experienced over the past 30 years? It’s unlikely, especially considering that the planet warmed about the same amount from 1850-1940, when human carbon emissions were still relatively low.

Furthermore, in the 1850s the planet came out of more than 400 years of cooling known as the Little Ice Age. Before that, during the Medieval Warm Period (900-1350), global temperatures were up to a degree Celsius higher than today’s. Temperatures were warmer about 2,000 years ago (the Roman Warm Period) and about 3,500 years ago (the Minoan Warm Period).

Natural warming occurs every 1,000 years or so

This means that over the past 5,000 years there’s been a major warming and cooling cycle every 1,000 years or so. The current warming, a millennium after the Medieval Warm Period, is right on track as part of that natural cycle.

In other words, the planet may be going about its natural warming at the moment, with a bit of “amplification” - five per cent? - from humans. “Amplifying” doesn’t mean the same as “driving” the climate, but the Hadley Centre doesn’t make this fine distinction.

Then there’s that pesky decade of warming. To counter this inconvenient truth, Hadley tells us in its webpage on Climate Facts #2 that “the rise in global surface temperature has averaged more than 0.15 °C per decade since the mid-1970s. Warming has been unprecedented in at least the last 50 years, and the 17 warmest years have all occurred in the last 20 years. This does not mean that next year will necessarily be warmer than last year, but the long-term trend is for rising temperatures.”

Translating this into understandable English, the Centre is saying that just because it’s not warming now doesn’t mean it hasn’t warmed in the past, which is hardly news. Therefore, it concludes, because it’s been warm in the past three decades, the planet is going to be warmer in the future.

It was warm from 1850 to 1940, too, but in 1940 the planet cooled for 30 years. However, this cooling can’t happen again, according to the Hadley Centre. How does it know? Because its computers tell it so — the same computers that couldn’t predict the recent 10 years of non-warming.

But why isn’t the planet warming now? After all, humans are “driving” the climate, aren’t we? Well, not quite. As the Hadley Centre tells us in Fact #2: “The recent slight slowing of the warming is due to a shift towards more-frequent La Niña conditions in the Pacific since 1998. These bring cool water up from the depths of the Pacific Ocean, cooling global temperatures” (italics added; incidentally, “slight slowing of the warming” is an unsual way of describing “no warming”).

So the oceans are driving this non-warming through an La Nina (a cold current), overriding our human-caused carbon dioxide. Maybe humans aren’t as powerful a “driving” force as the Hadley Centre would like us to believe after all. And if humans aren’t the main cause of cooling, maybe we’re not the main cause of warming, either.

How Hadley chart buries non-warming

Finally, again, the Hadley Centre is stuck with a bunch of numbers that show the planet isn’t warming, despite its computers’ predictions that human CO2 will warm things up. It can’t sweep this data under the rug so it does the next best thing: it produces a graph that makes the lack of warming barely discernible. Here’s the chart the Hadley Centre uses to illustrate temperatures (actually, temperature anomalies) over the last 157 years:

Hadley Centre temperature data, 1850-2007

The current flat-lined warming shows as a tiny, horizontal tail on the right side of the chart. If you get out a magnifying glass, you’ll see that, yes, the blue temperature line flattens out after the year 2000. I’ve searched the Hadley site and can’t find any graphic that shows the last 10 years in detail, although the numbers are there as a long list. (But, see Postscript.)

However, on his site, Anthony Watts has produced a graph of the past 10 years, using the Hadley Centre’s numbers.³ Here’s what that graph looks like (I’ve added a red line to show average temperatures).

Anthony Watts chart, 1988-2008, from Hadley Centre data

Why hasn’t the Hadley Centre produced a graphic like this? Isn’t an average temperature that hasn’t gone up in 10 years worthy of public attention? Shouldn’t even a temporary pause in warming be good news? Why bury that news in a tiny fillip at the end of a very long-term chart? Why work so hard to hide the truth?

Because the truth doesn’t agree with the Centre’s hypothesis that humans are the “driving” force behind climate. In short, it’s an embarrassment, and therefore to be underplayed as much as possible.

I argue that much of what the public is told by “consensus” climate science about global warming is misleading, exaggerated, or plain wrong.

The Hadley Centre’s spin effort isn’t exaggerating the data (far from it), nor is it plain wrong — the true figures are on the site. But the Centre is doing everything it can to mislead the public in hopes that the planet will start warming again before the peasants figure out that, maybe, the “consensus” climate science prophets are, in fact, plain wrong.

Hadley Centre chart showing 1950-2007

Postscript: One of the comment posts below has a link to a Hadley chart that shows the last few decades in more detail (see right). The blue and orange lines both show a slowdown in average warming in the last few years, including a startling drop (orange line) in 2008. The graphic can be found at http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/smoothing.html.

Of course, this wouldn’t do, so the Hadley programs revised their way of calculating temperatures to produce the rising blue and orange lines that they wanted (see the web page above for the second, revised graph).

It’s worth noting, as well, that the more detailed graph with the obvious fall in temperature is not the graph that the public sees on the Hadley Centre’s “myths” pages.

Notes

In proportion as religious sects exalt feeling above intellect, and believe themselves to be guided by direct inspiration rather than by a spontaneous exertion of their faculties — that is, in proportion as they are removed from rationalism — their sense of truthfulness is misty and confused.

– George Eliot, “Evangelical teaching: Dr. Cumming.”

After more than year’s intensive research for a book on the bizarre distortions that make up the global warming issue, I now wonder how anyone in the “consensus” climate scientist community sleeps at night. And yet, individually, I’m certain that 99 per cent of them are highly principled human beings.

If more climate scientists spoke out about what they really believe, here’s what I think the silent minority (majority?) might say:

Hello. I am a “consensus” climate scientist, and I must confess that I and many of my fellow climate scientists haven’t been entirely honest with the public over the last 20 years or so on the issue of global warming, what causes it, and what damage it is likely to cause. Therefore, I have decided to come clean and tell the public honestly what “consensus” climate science is really all about.

First, many of us are genuinely afraid that human beings are the main cause of the planetary warming of the past century and that rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere could be a serious problem, maybe even catastrophic. That’s why we’ve felt it necessary to lie to you. We’re afraid you won’t take the threat seriously if we tell you the truth - that there may not be a threat because we have absolutely no scientific evidence to back up our beliefs. None.

I know we’ve told you that the science is “settled” and “certain” and that anyone who dares question it is either senile or crazy or in the pay of the oil companies. But it’s not true. There is only circumstantial evidence that human activities are the main cause of warming, and there’s no scientific evidence at all that warming will be disastrous. There is just speculation.

For one thing, the carbon cycle is just one of dozens, maybe hundreds of factors affecting the planet’s climate. It isn’t the “principal” driver of climate. And that means humans can’t be the “principal” driver of climate, either, as Al Gore charges, since our contribution to the carbon cycle is only 5 per cent a year; nature supplies 95 per cent.

Many of my colleagues believe that, even so, humanity’s small additions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere could be a “tipping point” that will create serious, perhaps even catastrophic global warming. They also believe that these small human additions of CO2 are causing the climate to warm at an unnaturally rapid pace.

Climate change today isn’t unusually rapid

The problem is - and we’ve done a pretty good job of keeping these facts from the public - in the past the planet has had five to 10 times the level of CO2 we have now and there was no catastrophe. The Eocene, 55 million to 38 million years ago, was much warmer, with much higher levels of CO2, than today, and the Eocene has been described as an “Eden” and a paradise for mammalian evolution. Things became tougher for mammals during the Oligocene, 38 million years ago, when the planet started to get colder.

As for warming being unusually rapid - that’s not true, either. In the last century, the planet has warmed .6 degrees Celsius. That seems like a lot by some reckonings, but it’s not unusually rapid when you look at even the recent paleo-historical record.

After the most recent glaciation ended 12,000 years ago, the planet’s temperature went up and down five degrees Celsius or more within decades. The Queen Charlotte Islands Haida say their ancestors had to move their coastal villages every generation or two because the seas were rising so quickly, because the temperature was rising so quickly.

In other words, climate change in the past has been much more rapid than today’s without any human input at all. Climate change today is not unusually or unnaturally rapid.

Most of my colleagues know this, but because of our fears of what could happen, we’ve tried to keep the public in the dark about our doubts. We’ve done this by claiming there is, in Al Gore’s words, a “100 per cent” consensus among climate scientists that the issue of the cause of global warming is settled, that it’s caused by humans, and that it’s going to be a catastrophe. And anyone who says otherwise is a heretic.

The ‘100 per cent consensus’ is a myth

Well, I’m exposing another lie: there is no “consensus.” There are thousands of scientists who don’t believe in the human-caused, catastrophic global warming theory. However, many are afraid to speak out because they will lose research grants -the U.S. alone spends an estimated $4 billion a year on climate research - and possibly have their careers ruined by their “consensus” colleagues.

My “consensus” colleagues accuse global warming skeptics of being in the pay of the oil companies. If so, they’re either highly principled or really dumb: the oil companies don’t pay nearly as well for skeptical research as governments do for research confirming global warming. Even if it’s not warming.

Because, finally, that’s the most blatant fib of all: that the planet is currently warming. It hasn’t warmed since either 1998 or 2001, depending on how you do your calculations.

Yet, so far, the “consensus” climate community has not come out and officially told the public that the planet isn’t warming. If asked, they just say it’s an interlude, a plateau, only an “apparent” lack of warming, and that warming will resume again soon. Even though ten years of no warming is more than an interlude, and not just “apparent,” they’d prefer the public not know that.

If carbon dioxide is increasing but the planet isn’t warming, even if only for 10 years, then clearly carbon dioxide isn’t driving the climate. And since human beings are only a small part of the carbon dioxide budget, it’s doubly clear that humans can’t be at fault, either.

‘Consensus’ science ignores facts in favor of ideology

But rather than come clean with the public, Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the “consensus” have tried to ignore these facts because, if they accepted the facts, they’d have to change their theory. In other words, human-caused global warming theory is, if not an outright lie, then an ideology, and ideologies don’t change just because the facts don’t support them.

It may mean my career will be ruined and I will no longer receive grant money for research, but I must speak out. I can no longer want to be a part of this lie of human-caused, catastrophic global warming.

Whether the planet warms or cools, human activities are only a small part of the climate system. Cutting down on carbon emissions will only have a small effect on climate, so there’s no point in wrecking industrial civilization to prevent a fraction of a degree of warming. And increased carbon dioxide levels won’t cause “runaway” warming. How do we know? Because CO2 levels were much higher in the past and it didn’t happen.

That’s the truth. I wish more people were aware of it. Unfortunately, I’m only a “fictional” climate scientist.

Until a few more “real” climate scientists break the “consensus” to come out with the truth, the public will continue to believe that they, not nature, are to blame for warming, that carbon dioxide is a “pollutant” when, in fact, it’s essential for life, and that the solution is taxing themselves into poverty - all based on a consensus climate science whose “consensus” and “science” are, alas, as “fictional” as I am.

Most geologists aren’t part of Al Gore’s “100 per cent consensus” of scientists that humans are the principal cause of global warming and that we have to take drastic steps to deal with it.

For example, in March 2008, a poll of Alberta’s 51,000 geologists found that only 26 per cent believe humans are the main cause of global warming. Forty-five per cent believe both humans and nature are causing climate change, and 68 per cent don’t think the debate is “over,” as Gore would like the public to believe.¹

The position of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists is quite clear:

The earth’s climate is constantly changing owing to natural variability in earth processes. Natural climate variability over recent geological time is greater than reasonable estimates of potential human-induced greenhouse gas changes. Because no tool is available to test the supposition of human-induced climate change and the range of natural variability is so great, there is no discernible human influence on global climate at this time.²

Why do geologists tend to be skeptics? Is it because they are, as Gore and the “consensus” charge, in the pay of the oil industry? Perhaps, but there may be other, more scientific reasons. As Peter Sciaky, a retired geologist, writes:

A geologist has a much longer perspective. There are several salient points about our earth that the greenhouse theorists overlook (or are not aware of). The first of these is that the planet has never been this cool. There is abundant fossil evidence to support this — from plants of the monocot order (such as palm trees) in the rocks of Cretaceous Age in Greenland and warm water fossils in sedimentary rocks of the far north. This is hardly the first warming period in the earth’s history. The present global warming is hardly unique. It is arriving pretty much “on schedule.”

One thing, for sure, is that the environmental community has always spurned any input from geologists (many of whom are employed by the petroleum industry). No environmental conference, such as Kyoto, has ever invited a geologist, a paleontologist, a paleo-climatologist. It would seem beneficial for any scientific investigatory to include such scientific disciplines.

Among all my liberal and leftist friends (and I am certainly one of those), I know not a one who does not accept that global warming is an event caused by mankind. I do not know one geologist who believes that global warming is not taking place. I do not know a single geologist who believes that it is a man-made phenomenon.³

Finally, a retired scientist who emailed me after reading one of my climate columns in the Times Colonist observed: “Most of my geology friends are skeptics — but it has become politically incorrect to voice such views.”

Current climate conditions are not unusual

Geologists tend to question the anthropogenic theory because their education tells them that current climate conditions are not unusually warm, based on either the past few thousand years, or the past few hundred thousand years, or the past tens of millions of years, or even the past hundreds of millions of years.

Temperatures since 1860. Source: R.M. Carter.

It’s possible to look at a graph of the past century and conclude: “Oh, my God, the planet is burning up!” After all, the temperature has been rising, more or less, since the 1850’s, with a dip from the 1940’s to the mid-1970’s. The chart to the right shows temperature and carbon dioxide levels from 1860 to now.⁴

But what if we take a longer view? That presents quite a different picture. Only 400 years ago, the planet was quite cold, a period known as the Little Ice Age (roughly 1300-1850). Before that, though, during the Medieval Warm Period (roughly 1000-1300), the planet was a degree or two Celsius warmer than today, to the point where Greenland was warm enough for settlement by the Vikings. The Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were clearly a natural occurrences since industrial carbon emissions weren’t yet a factor. Figure 1 is a graph of the last thousand years based on work by climatologist H.H. Lamb.

Figure 1. Lamb graph of temperature over the past 1,000 years

Curiously, the temperature graph preferred by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the famous “hockey stick,” smooths out the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age to create an impression that twentieth-century warming is “the warmest in 1,000 years” (Figure 2). Faced with the flaws in this graph, the IPCC has since dropped it and now claims the climate is the warmest in 400 years, which isn’t that impressive given that we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age.

Figure 2. IPCC hockey stick graph of the past 1,000 years

Over the past 4,000 years, the planet has also experienced warm and cool periods, again quite naturally. In fact, warm times seem to recur on a cycle of about 1,000-1,500 years, as Figure 3 shows.⁵ The 20th century’s warming appeared pretty much in line with this millennial cycle.

Figure 3. Warming every 1,000 years or so. Source: R.M. Carter

Going back 8,000 years or so, we encounter the Holocene Optimum, which was 2-3 degrees Celsius warmer than today’s temperatures — naturally.

Let’s expand our view once again, to the past 450,000 years (Figure 4). What do we see? A roller-coaster ride of glacials (cold times) and interglacials (warm times), on a cycle of about 100,000 years.

Figure 4. A glacial cycle every 100,000 years

By the way, this is the chart, based on ice core readings taken in Antarctica, that Gore uses in his film An Inconvenient Truth. Gore doesn’t try to explain why this roller coaster has occurred, since if changes in carbon dioxide levels were causing the cycle of glaciations and interglaciations, as Gore implies, then the logical question is what caused the changes in carbon dioxide levels?

Gore doesn’t say, because to do so would destroy his case, but here’s what science says: temperature changes precede carbon dioxide level changes by several hundred years, and temperature changes are caused by changes in solar intensity called the Milankovitch Cycles, not carbon dioxide. The Milankovitch Cycles, based on the earth’s changing position in relation to the sun, appear to be the ultimate drivers of climate over the past few million years.

The four previous interglacials were warmer than today’s

Another interesting observation that Gore doesn’t make because it would destroy his case: the four previous interglacials shown on his chart are all warmer than today’s interglacial (the green line in Figure 4 shows how today’s average temperature compares with that of the three previous interglacials).

Also, note that the interglacial peaks are very steep. Before an interglacial becomes a glacial, warming occurs relatively rapidly (if the warming was slow, the curve would be more rounded), and cooling also occurs rapidly.

If our planet is near the top of its interglacial cycle, then we’d be getting — as part of a natural process — the rapid warming climatologists are so alarmed about. And, we can expect rapid cooling when the balance tips (the steep downward slope). To worry about global warming at this stage in our planet’s geological history seems silly from the geologist’s perspective.

As further evidence that we may be near the high point of the climate cycle, the planet has not warmed since 1998, even though carbon dioxide levels have increased steadily. We may well be heading into a new glaciation while spending billions of dollars on reducing carbon emissions on the false premise that the planet is getting too warm.

During the glacials, much of the northern hemisphere (and Antarctica, of course) is covered with ice two and three kilometres thick. Within our roughly two-million-year-old ice age, the glacials last about 80,000 years. The warmer interglacials, which make global civilization possible, last only 10,000-20,000 years. Our interglacial, the Holocene, began about 13,000 years ago, so we’re well past the half-way point in this cycle of warming and looking at a new glacial in the next few centuries or millennia. Warming is, therefore, from the geologist’s point of view, the least of our problems.

Temperatures have been falling for 65 million years

Suppose we take an even longer geological view: the last 65 million years. Here we see a temperature graph that looks like a double-diamond ski slope: the planet has been gradually but steadily cooling during this time (see Figure 5).⁶) Note how the climate has seesawed in the past two million years, and how close the tips of the warming periods are to the point where glaciations return.

Figure 5. Global temperature falling for 70 million years

The temperature 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs were obliterated by a comet, was about 22 degrees Celsius; today, the planet’s average temperature is about 12 degrees Celsius. Carbon dioxide levels have also been falling over this time, but much more rapidly than the temperature (which should, in all but the most die-hard “consensus” climatologists’ minds, destroy the idea that carbon dioxide drives temperature). For most of this time on our planet there were no polar ice caps and, yes, the sea levels were many metres higher than today. Humanity can deal with higher sea levels; we’ll have a lot more trouble coping with three-kilometre-high walls of glacial ice.

Finally, let’s look at the very long-range picture: earth over the past 600 million years (Figure 6). Again, we see fluctuations of temperature but, overall, the planet has been much warmer (and with much higher levels of carbon dioxide) than today, and yet life managed to evolve and flourish.

Figure 6. Temperature and CO2 levels over 600 million years

The planet didn’t experience “oblivion,” as the Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki-Moon, suggested at the Bali conference on climate change in 2007. It’s curious that not one of the thousands of so-called climate experts at that conference saw fit to educate Ki-Moon on the geological facts before (or, apparently, after) his speech.

Geologists are fully aware that our planet is not unusually warm at the moment, it is unusually cold. They also know that carbon dioxide is not the villain when it comes to warming — for most of earth’s history, temperature and carbon dioxide have shown only the most tenuous relationship, as Figure 6 shows. The correlation today of rising carbon dioxide levels and rising temperatures that worries climate scientists so much is likely just coincidence.

Overall, as Lamb observed, “Seemingly objective statistics may produce a variety of verdicts which are actually arbitrary in that they depend on the choice of observation period.”⁷ Alarmists like Al Gore have chosen to focus on the past century, and therefore they worry about warming. Geologists take a longer time-frame and know that the planet has been much warmer in the past without “thermageddon,” that we are in an ice age, and that the biggest future problem we face is not warming but cooling.

Who’s right, the geologists or the computer-based climate scientists? There is no certainty in science (a fact that “consensus” climate science seems to have forgotten). However, if we think like a geologist rather than a computer climate specialist, we know that today’s climate is well within past natural variability — for example, previous interglacials and even previous warm cycles within this interglacial were warmer than today.

In other words, the record of past climate history makes it very likely that today’s climate change is based on natural, cyclical factors, not human factors, and that what we need to worry about is a planet that is colder, not warmer.

Notes