Tag Archives: Penn & Teller

A GISS Scientist pans the IPCC Report

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Posted by JJ on February 12, 2010 – 11:09 pm
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You have to wonder…

The IPCC was so determined to get its proselytising message out there that it rejected all advice and all criticism pointing out its lack of evidential backing for the extraordinary claims that it wanted to make.  Not just from outsiders and skeptics, but also from its own troops.

Like a man called Andrew Lacis of GISS.  Yep, that GISS – Hansen’s GISS.  Lacis criticised the executive summary of Chapter 9 of the IPCC report thus:

There is no scientific merit to be found in the Executive Summary. The presentation sounds like something put together by Greenpeace activists and their legal department. The points being made are made arbitrarily with legal sounding caveats without having established any foundation or basis in fact. The Executive Summary seems to be a political statement that is only designed to annoy greenhouse skeptics. Wasn’t the IPCC Assessment Report intended to be a scientific document that would merit solid backing from the climate science community – instead of forcing many climate scientists into having to agree with greenhouse skeptic criticisms that this is indeed a report with a clear and obvious political agenda. Attribution can not happen until understanding has been clearly demonstrated. Once the facts of climate change have been established and understood, attribution will become self-evident to all. The Executive Summary as it stands is beyond redemption and should simply be deleted.

He’s talking about the summary of the chapter of the report that “establishes” that the global warming is man-made – the one that is the basis of the clarion call to action.

The man is one of the climate science community.  It is very clear from his criticism that he is a scientist on the side of the warmers.  It is also clear that he wants the findings presented with scientific rigour, open to testing and scientific debate.  Which is what I would expect from a scientist.  Scientists are not afraid to have their theories examined.  In fact, they actively want that to happen.  That’s how knowledge evolves.

But the IPCC, as he observed, is about promoting a political agenda.  It is not about knowledge.  Lacis’s criticism was rejected as summarily as those from outside the ranks of the AGW lobby.  Nothing was going to stop the IPCC from pressing ahead with their baloney.

Andrew Lacis, maybe you should contact Penn & Teller.  They may disagree with you, but they at least would discuss that disagreement rationally.

Reference: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/09/hansen-colleague-rejected-ipcc-ar4-es-as-having-no-scientific-merit-but-what-does-ipcc-do/

Accentuate the Positive?

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Posted by JJ on February 3, 2010 – 9:57 pm
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My word, there are so many reports of “errors” and “omissions” in calculation of global temperature data, or in official reports of the supposedly catastrophic consequences of global warming (sorry, climate change).   Naturally every public announcement by the IPCC reiterates that their science is sound, and that “this isolated incident”  in no way invalidates their main message that we must all take urgent action (and pay big money) to avert Armageddon.  The same line is taken by the politicians who are counting on our meek acceptance of our collective guilt (and the taxes they shall levy as penance).

But worse than that, almost all of the supposedly impartial mainstream media follow the same route.  Their reports usually end with prominent attention to a disclaimer.  Methinks they protest too much.

Here’s but one example, from “The Guardian”.  Reading this, one can almost hear old Bing Crosby accentuating the positive:

“This dramatic revision of the estimated impact of urbanization on temperatures in China does not change the global picture of temperature trends.” (Source: Fred Pearce, published on guardian.co.uk at 21.00 GMT on Monday 1 February 2010.

Oh, good grief!  Of course an analysis revealing a cover-up in one area of a report does not invalidate other areas of the report.  Not scientifically at any rate.  But it is yet another instance of incorrect official information from the climate change experts.  Phil Jones, with assistance from a Chinese colleague, had asserted that the Urban Heat Island effect on reported temperature rise in China is “an order of magnitude” less than other factors.  And that was a key finding of the IPCC 2007 report.  That’s right – information published by the IPCC and used to influence leaders.  And which Jones himself changed as quietly as possible in 2008, hoping nobody would notice.  Changed, that is, from “an order of magnitude less” to “at least 40%”!

Here are some other instances:

  • Himalayan glaciers to disappear by 2035 – a key finding in the IPCC 2007 report, since vigorously defended by the head of the IPCC and then retracted with an assurance that it is “an isolated failure”.
  • Distortions of records and concealment of sources by Mann, Hansen, Briffa, NASA, GISS and the IPCC
  • email-documented collusion between the major players to continue their concealment of their sources
  • Continuous attacks on the motives of sceptics (funny, real science thrives on scepticism).  Climate change scientists cast sceptics as the enemy and hence attempt to justify keeping them in the dark.

Now, can you still hear Bing Crosby?  I can’t.  I hear Monty Python’s “Bright Side”, with Penn & Teller in the chorus.

In isolation, each instance is bad.  Put them together and they demonstrate that we should view all communications from these parties with suspicion.  They have relinquished any authority in this field.  Their calls for urgent action are beginning to sound very hollow.

So here’s a Grumpy Old Man’s call for action.  I call for assessment and formal review of the men and the institutions they serve, their research and conclusions, and all the reports they have produced.  By scientific enquiry, as soon as possible.  The terms of reference must be defined by scientific institutions, and the panel that defines them must exclude all politicians, all academic or other bodies connected with the the IPCC, NASA, NOAA or any affiliated group, and in particular, all organisations whose charters involve climate change.  The enquirers themselves would have to be similarly uncontaminated.

I do not need to call for prosecutions.  Given the likely outcome of a scientific enquiry as defined above, they would follow.

Putting the Acid Test on Ocean Acidity

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Posted by JJ on January 24, 2010 – 10:18 pm
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Man is responsible for carbon dioxide emissions of around 26 gigatonnes per year. The oceans have a total mass of 1.3 billion gigatonnes.  Even if all man-made carbon dioxide emissions were absorbed in the oceans (they’re not), there would be a rise in the ratio of oceanic CO2 by one part carbon dioxide to 50 million parts ocean per year, or one part per million per half century.  That is a very insignificant proportion – almost undetectable, certainly undetectable by marine life.  Even after fifty years, human emissions of CO2 would make no appreciable difference to the acidity of the oceans.  And yet, we are subjected to nonsensical “scientific” reports with emotive alarmist conclusions.  Like these two:

First, the report from the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity  Incredibly, it claims that “Ocean acidity will increase by 150 percent by 2050, a rate of acidification 100 times greater than anything that has occurred in the last 20 million years. This will leave little chance for adaptation by marine organisms and cause the widespread dying off of the world’s corals. In addition, shelled organisms will not be able to survive the increased acidity, which will likely lead to a wide scale collapse of the marine food chain.  Ocean acidification is irreversible on timescales of at least tens of thousands of years, and substantial damage to ocean ecosystems can only be avoided by urgent and rapid reductions in global emissions of CO2.”

Second, a report published by the European Project on Ocean Acidification.  It states that the survival of a number of marine species is affected or threatened.  The study predicts that levels of aragonite will fall by 60% to 80% by 2095 across the northern hemisphere.  Aragonite is essential for marine organisms to make their skeletons and shells.  Dr John Baxter, a senior scientist with Scottish Natural Heritage, and the report’s co-author, says “The bottom line is the only way to slow this down or reverse it is aggressive and immediate cuts in CO2.  This is a very dangerous global experiment we’re undertaking here.”

What?  We guilty humans are about to kill off marine life?  A rise in the oceanic proportion of CO2 by one part per million per half-century would not go within a bull’s roar of  doing the kind of damage these people are talking about.  It’s bloody insignificant!  So why have they published the reports?

Here’s a clue…

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), known informally as the Biodiversity Convention, is an international legally binding treaty that was adopted in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992.  The Secretariat is institutionally linked to the United Nations Environment Programme, its host institution, and is located in Montreal, Canada.

The European Project on Ocean Acidification report was commissioned and funded by the European Union for the Copenhagen Climate Fest in December 2009, and presented there.

There’s your answer, in the names of the sponsors.  The United Nations and the European Union.  The reports were commissioned by the two bodies with the greatest interest in and the most to gain from causing public alarm and guilt over CO2 emissions.  They were commissioned with that specific aim.  And their conclusions are baloney.

P.S.  The reports are even sillier when you consider that not all the carbon dioxide emissions caused by man are absorbed by the oceans.  According to Skeptical Science (yep, the website that supports global warming), the oceans absorb only 6 gigatonnes net per year.  Humph!

P.P.S.  Sea water pH is somewhere between 7.5 and 8.4, depending on location and depth.  It is alkaline.  The addition of one part per million of CO2 in fifty years will make no appreciable difference to that.

References:

Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity Report:

http://oceanacidification.wordpress.com/2009/12/18/acid-oceans-global-warming%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98evil-twin%E2%80%99/

European Project Report, quoted in the “Guardian” article “Ocean Acidification Rates pose Disaster”, reporting on the Copenhagen Summit.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/10/ocean-acidification-epoca

Skeptical Science on Human CO2 Emissions and the Carbon Cycle

http://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions.htm