Potsdam Institute – Professional Advocates

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Posted by JJ on March 17, 2010 – 8:16 am
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The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, a group composed of natural and social science researchers, announced a study that “shows” that a solar minimum will not slow global warming.  The study is an attempt at a pre-emptive strike.  The sun goes into a cooler period and bingo – they rush to add to the endless repetitions of predictions of doom.  It’s what they do, and why they exist – to advocate for global warming.

The entire study depends on the assumption that the IPCC climate models are comprehensive and correct in their predictions of twenty-first century climate change.  These models include only the possible causes they know about and are capable of modelling, with all of their weightings of climate forcing tuned to enable reasonable hind-casting, applied to a warming world.  When the models approximately predict the global temperature (they are very approximate, and then only while the earth is warming) the climate change scientists conclude that they have proved their estimate of the climate forcing due to man-made CO2, and that their forecasts of temperature rises to come in the twenty-first century must therefore be correct.  They call this modelling technique “optimal detection”.  That is the technique that Ptolemy used in his geocentric model of the universe, which made very accurate predictions of the motions of the moon, planets and stars.  It took more than a thousand years for later scientists to discover the truth,  That is understandable – the relative predictive accuracy of Ptolemy’s model left little reason to suppose that it might be wrong.  So until Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler, astronomers fully accepted the geocentric model.

Similarly, the Potsdam people take AGW and the IPCC-sponsored models as fact.  The very notion that the earth cools and warms in cycles, and that in inter-glacial periods like the present, there are mini-cycles of warm periods between little ice-ages, is dismissed as unscientific wishful thinking.  It is nothing of the kind.  It’s simple observation.  And within the last two thousand years, we have written history to draw upon.  Written history that documents the Roman Warming and the Medieval Warm Period.  The IPCC claim that the recent warming is unprecedented is false.  So are the models.

There has been a fifteen-year hiatus in the warming, against the model predictions.  Even Phil Jones of the CRU agrees that there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995.  And in spite of the present warmth, all indications are that the PDO is now turning negative, and that in five-to-ten years the AMO will also turn negative.  The earth is in for 20 – 30 years of cooling, while CO2 continues to rise, fed by the economic growth in China and India.  The IPCC models did not predict the flat temperature since 1995, and they do not predict the forthcoming cooling.

Greenhouse gases did not cause the twentieth-century warming, or the earlier MWP and still earlier Roman warming.  When cooling sets in, it will not be because greenhouse gases are reduced, or because we are saved by a quiescent sun.  It will be a result of the natural cycles.

Reference:

Discovery News Article    http://news.discovery.com/space/the-sun-cant-save-us-from-global-warming.html

Potsdam Press Release:   http://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/press-releases/weakening-sun-would-hardly-slow-global-warming

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Conservation and Climate Change – The State of the Birds

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Posted by JJ on March 14, 2010 – 1:38 pm
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On March 14 2010, Sciam (Scientific American) tweeted a report called “Climate Change – State of the Birds 2010 Report”.  A link is in the Reference section at the end of this post.

My wife and I are a lifelong conservationists with a special place in our hearts for birds.  In our home country, New Zealand, we gardened organically, without pesticides or artificial fertilisers, and planted native trees in the garden of every house we have owned, to attract, feed and encourage the NZ and exotic birds back into our lives.  People change landscapes, and we feel strongly that we should provide the means for the native wildlife to survive those changes.  So we do just that, and are rewarded by the tuis, wood pigeons, fantails, wax-eyes, goldfinches, starlings, sparrows and other birds that swarm in our garden.  They are so comfortable with us that they pick for food at our feet when we sit on the garden deck.  They will do so again when we return.

Here during our sojourn in the Netherlands, our greatest delight is the splendid variety of birds that grace the trees in our tiny lane in Haarlem, and fill the polders, reserves and wetlands.  We put out seeds, nuts, fat balls and insect blocks this winter, because it has been the harshest for forty years.  No doubt we have assisted the great tits, blue tits, jays, tree-creepers and robins that are outside the window, ten feet from me, right now.  And now that spring quickens the trees and the temperature is finally back above zero, we shall once more roam the cycle lanes in the reserves, among the swans, ducks, herons and magpies.

So how does a Grumpy Old Conservationist react to the report?  By grumping – it is shameless advocacy.  A load of self-serving twaddle riding the coat-tails of the highly exaggerated predictions of anthropogenic catastrophic global warming.  Prediction after prediction in the IPCC report is being exposed as nonsense.  Himalayan glaciers, African crop yields, Amazon rain-forest health are three examples.  These are not small errors – they are critical for the IPCC’s advocacy.  It will not be long before their predicted six-degree Celsius global temperature rise for the twenty-first century is similarly nailed, and nailed conclusively.  Already, scientific analyses of the various bases on which that prediction was based are showing them to be doubtful at best, and suggest that some of them have been shamelessly manipulated.  The leaked emails of the Climategate incident add weight to that suggestion.

Audubon and the other conservation agencies have done a great conservation job of maintaining, recovering and protecting wildlife populations, and will continue to do so.  It is important work, mitigating the environmental consequences of the actions of humankind.  It enriches all of life.  They should keep it up.

It saddens me to see that work, and the agencies who perform it, hooked up in the advocacy of the AGW group.  The predictions of the AGW camp will be shown to be about as accurate as the Jehovah’s Witnesses predictions of the end of the world in 1914, 1915, 1918, 1920, 1925, 1941, 1975 and 1994.  IPCC and all of those who have promoted AGW will be utterly discredited.  An angry world may well discredit all conservationist groups along with them.

That would be a very great shame.

References:

2010 State of the Birds:  http://www.stateofthebirds.org/habitats

Postscript: Scientific American is diminished.  It used to be great magazine that reported science.  Now it is an avenue for advocacy.

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Institute of Physicists under Attack

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Posted by JJ on March 14, 2010 – 9:25 am
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The UK Institute of Physicists submitted a strongly worded thirteen-point memorandum to the UK Parliament commission of enquiry into the CRU.  Leading scientists promptly attacked the submission in emotive terms, without addressing any of the points in the memorandum.  The I.O.P. response to the attacks is strangely meek.  It looks suspiciously like they are backing off, and I wonder why.

Every one of the numbered thirteen points in the “Memorandum submitted by the Institute of Physics (CRU 39)” is valid. There is no need for them to publicly apologise or, cap in hand, to stress that the I.O.P. “has long had a “clear” position on global warming, namely that “there is no doubt that climate change is happening, that it is linked to man-made emissions of greenhouse gases, and that we should be taking action to address it now”.  That “no doubt” sounds more like a recital of a creed than a scientific position.

For goodness sake, the IOP made submissions about disclosure of climate data, the implications for the integrity of scientific research, and appropriate terms of reference for the UEA independnt review. Valid submissions. So why is it subjected to attacks unsupported by any specific rebuttals of any of its points of submission?  Here they are:

John Houghton: “I consider it not only inappropriate but highly irresponsible for a body like the IOP to appear to presume a judgment on what is clearly not a simple issue without having the full facts and without presumably knowing the full context,”

Stefan Rahmstorf: “I was taken aback when I first read it,” he says.  “The evidence is both misinformed and misguided.”

Arnold Wolfendale: ‘the evidence is “not worthy” of the Institute and ‘the submission “further muddies the waters regarding global warming”.’

These generalised and emotive attacks are totally inaccurate as criticisms of the IOP submissions, but ironically, would be accurate if applied to the IPCC reports.  But for some reason the IOP does not call on the critics to be specific about their problems with the submission.  Instead, it rolls over, apologises and and quietly surrenders.

That is truly sad. The forces supporting AGW are mighty indeed if a body like the Institute of Physics is compelled to recant like Galileo. Are we returning to the dark ages?

References:

I.O.P. Memorandum:  http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/memo/climatedata/uc3902.htm

WUWT Report: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/13/iop-fires-back-over-criticism-of-their-submission-to-parliament/

AGW Religion:  http://www.herkinderkin.com/2010/01/anthropogenic-global-warming-as-organised-religion/

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