Perhaps Chalmers should consider the scientists?
Dear Professor Martin Hultman,
Pardon my writing to you in English, because my Swedish has just about disappeared since I lived in Stockholm in the early 1950s as a small boy.
I see that you are studying why many people refuse to accept the claimed “consensus” on Global Warming. From your brief summary here at your Centre for Studies of Climate Change Denialism, you appear to miss the most important point of all. Scientists who have studied this subject extensively and have no conflicts of interests, such as a job dependent on the paradigm, disagree with the scientific conclusions of those who are heavily conflicted.
We do so based on the science. In other words, we feel that the long logic chain beginning with human emissions of carbon dioxide and ending with a climate catastrophe do not stand up to even elementary scrutiny. The paradigm says that human emissions lead to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, and indeed, atmospheric CO2 is rising. But the assumption that the increase comes from human CO2 is unlikely, because Mother Nature is the big player in the carbon cycle. According to both the UN IPCC and my fellow skeptics, Mother Nature pours 200 GtC (Gigatons of carbon) into the atmosphere every year and humans augment that with about 9 GtC. That makes the human concentration about 5%, which is far from concerning. Increasing atmospheric CO2 has led to a greening of the Earth, as seen from space. That is good not bad. However, we cannot take credit for it, because we are only 5% of the effect.
Then there is the question of warming from so-called “Greenhouse gases” where water vapor is the completely dominant such gas. That may not be totally apparent to someone living in Sweden, but it certainly is to those of us who have lived in the tropics. And most importantly, it is apparent to scientists who support the paradigm. They know that the theoretical warming from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 is about one degree C in the absence of feedbacks. They get the additional warming they expect from a positive feedback from water vapor (another one or two degrees C) – especially in the tropics. That in turn leads them to predict substantial warming in the tropical mid-troposphere, leading to the so-called “Hot Spot.” Such predictions are exactly what we need to verify the theory.
Unfortunately for the theory, there is no “Hot Spot” developing. Both satellite and radiosonde data very clearly show the lack of a “Hot Spot.” In the words of Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman, that means your theory is “dead.” It does not matter how many supporters you have or who they are. The theory is dead.
So, where has the recent warming come from? A look at the NASA UAH satellite temperature data shows impressive ocean effects like El Ninos, but only a tiny overall upward trend. That could be CO2 warming, but not of the magnitude claimed by the paradigm. Or it could just be another ocean or perhaps solar effect. We do not know for sure.
But we do know for sure that Warm Periods like the present one have occurred many times in the past over this Holocene Interglacial. Previous Warm Periods go by names like Medieval, Roman, and Minoan, emphasizing the civilizations that they assisted. They clearly had nothing to do with humans burning fossil fuels. Hence, there is nothing unusual going on today.
I realize that you are a sociologist and not a scientist. So the imperatives of the science likely slip past you.
But there are still some of us who are highly qualified scientists (without conflicts of interest) and firmly believe in an objective reality that we work hard to discover. I’m surprised that you completely ignore the objective component of the climate discussion. It is all that really counts in the end.
Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
Corbett, Oregon USA
Climate Changes in view of Science and Geoethics
By Nils-Axel Mörner
Paul Driessen (photo left) and Ron Arnold just published a very interesting article (CFACT, April 17, 2016) where they write:
What we contest are false assertions that “humans are creating a dangerous climate change crisis.” We do not accept false claims that “the science is settled” and will not be limited to discussing only “what we must do now to avert looming climate catastrophes.”
That’s not just constitutionally protected free speech. It is the foundation of scientific progress and informed public policy.
The words are very well formulated, and it perfectly well fits with the basic idea of the foundation of our Independent Committee on Geoethics.
The authors continue:
Meanwhile, EPA and other federal agencies, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), climate activist organizations, state legal and environmental agencies, and legions of scientists who receive government grants for advancing the “manmade climate cataclysm” mantra are themselves engaging in what many say is truly misleading or fraudulent climate science, policy and regulation.
Millions in poor countries die annually from preventable diseases, because hysterical climate claims justify denying them access to affordable modern electricity and transportation that could be provided by coal, natural gas and petroleum products. In developed nations, climate hysteria has cost millions of jobs, adversely affecting people’s living standards, health and welfare. In European countries, thousands are dying each winter, because they can no longer afford proper heat.
The problem is not human intervention in the climate; it’s improper political intervention in climate science. It has corrupted scientific findings from the very beginning.
Let me congratulate the authors for their excellent review based on true Science and Geoethical principles. The full text is accessible on the web (address above).
To all editors acting as gatekeepers
By Pamela Matlack-Klein
Over the past several years I have noticed a distressing tendency of highly respected scientific journals to avoid publishing papers that disagree with the IPCC’s concept of Anthropogenic Global Warming/Climate Change. As this notion has been arrived at with very little actual field work, rather relying heavily on computer modeling, I find it difficult to accept as “fact,” most especially in light of the findings of scientists working in the field, observing and collecting real data.To date, the majority of predictions of these models have failed to come to pass.
The Maldives stubbornly refuse to sink under the waves, (N.A. Morner), the ice pack and glaciers in the Arctic and Antarctica are not shrinking, (Nicola Scafetta and Adriano Mazzarella: “The Arctic and Antarctic Sea-Ice Area Index Records versus Measured and Modeled Temperature Data”. Advances in Meteorology, Volume 2015) and, quite contrary to public opinion (hardly acceptable scientific method), the temperature of the Earth has not risen in any statistically significant way in over a decade.
Even this Ben Santer study shows no significant warming trend for the two decades since 1995, as shown by this graph. (more…)
Indian monsoons and climate change
Madhav Khandekar (Expert Reviewer 2007 IPCC AR4) has forwarded the short comments below as well as this short video based on his long interview with Michelle Sterling of the FOS (Friends of Science, Calgary) on the new IPCC Chief and on his assessment of Indian/Asian monsoon and its impact on close to 3.5 billion people of south Asia on an annual basis and on the the earth’s climate as a huge jigsaw puzzle which we do not fully understand. The interview was taken in mid-April 2015, long before his plans for a tour to UK and a talk at the House of Commons were finalized.
India Monsoon rainfall 1844 to 1991
As seen here, droughts and floods have occurred irregularly for 150 years with NO trend of any kind.
“The earth’s climate is a huge jigsaw puzzle, with many pieces like the annual summer monsoon over India and south Asia, its complex interaction with large-scale atmosphere-ocean features like the ENSO (El Nino-Southern Oscillation), the PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) & the NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation) and a host of other features like interaction with global topography, mountain ranges etc. This jigsaw puzzle still remains unsolved with most climate models not being able to simulate many of these processes above. As such, climate models’ projection of future warming of the earth’s climate must be rejected as being unsuitable for climate policy. Reducing human-CO2 emissions now is an expensive and a meaningless exercise and must be avoided. The best and the most cost-effective strategy against future climate change impacts is to develop comprehensive climate adaptation plans”.
The Gatekeepers strike again
Translated by Rev. Philip Foster
In the present debate on climate change — whether it is driven by natural forces or by CO2 increase in the atmosphere — the proponents for a CO2-driven global warming often allow themselves to use methods, neither anchored in science nor geoethical principles. In the book “Planetary Influence on the Sun and the Earth, and a Modern Book-Burning” (Nova Science Publ., 2015) Christopher Monckton has a chapter on “The Thermaggedon Cult strikes again” (p. 135-138) and Nils-Axel Mörner has a note on “These terrible gatekeepers” (p. 128).
Now it has happened again: Philippe Verdier, head of the weather service at France-2, had published a book called “Climate Investigation”, which made the gatekeepers spring into action. Here is the story:
“Difficult times for Philippe Verdier, head of weather forecasting at France 2. According to L‘Express, he was summoned by the Head of the human resources department of the television channel for an interview leading to his dismissal. This procedure follows Verdier being taken off air on 13 October, after the publication of his controversial book, «Climate Investigation» [Climat Investigation – available on Amazon]
“Contacted this morning by puremedia.com, the management of France Télévisions had no comment to make on the case Philippe Verdier. But according to our information, action is actually being taken against the journalist.
«I await an explanation»
«I haven‘t had a single discussion since the publication of the book. I have not been back to France Télévisions. I was anyway on leave for book promotion. I received a letter telling me not to come back», explained Philippe Verdier to interviewer, Marc-Olivier Fogiel, on October 14, and went on to say that he had no certainty of keeping his job. Philippe Verdier claims, since the beginning of the controversy, that his «freedom of speech» and «the right to information» have been infringed.
The management of France Télévisions has always stood behind «an ethical rule of France Télévision is that personal opinions should not be confused with the company‘s image.» Yet other weather presenters like Jean-Marc Souami (France 3) often take a public stand on political or social issues unmolested. Philippe Verdier recalled that regularly, during interviews with his management, they had been warned of the content of his forthcoming book. “I did not expect support from France Télévisions for the book I wrote independently, but neither did I expect France Télévisions to attack me; I feel hurt (…) indeed sullied”, he explained.
If you have similar experiences, please, let your case heard by leaving a comment below.
On behalf of the ICG steering committee
Rev. Philip Foster
Independent Committee on Geoethics 