International study refuting manmade global warming

Earth’s average atmospheric temperatures haven’t increased in almost 17 years. It’s been eight years since a Category 3 hurricane hit the United States. Tornado frequency is at a multi-decade low ebb. Droughts are shorter and less extreme than during the Dust Bowl and 1950s. Sea ice is back to normal, after one of the coldest Arctic summers in decades. And sea levels continue to rise at a meager 4-8 inches per century.

Ignoring these facts, President Obama continues to insist that “dangerous” carbon dioxide emissions are causing “unprecedented” global warming, “more extreme” droughts and hurricanes, and rising seas that “threaten” coastal communities. With Congress refusing to enact job-killing taxes on hydrocarbon energy and CO2, his Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to unleash more job-killing carbon dioxide regulations, amid an economy that is already turning full-time jobs into part-time jobs and welfare.

America and the world desperately need some sound science and common sense on climate change.

Responding to the call, the Chicago-based Heartland Institute has just released the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change 2013 report, Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science.

The 1,018-page report convincingly and systematically challenges IPCC claims that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are causing “dangerous” global warming and climate change; that IPCC computer models can be relied on for alarming climate forecasts and scenarios; and that we need to take immediate, drastic action to prevent “unprecedented” climate and weather events that are no more frequent or unusual than what humans have had to adapt to and deal with for thousands of years.

The 14-page NIPCC Summary for Policymakers is easy to digest and should be required reading for legislators, regulators, journalists and anyone interested in climate change science. The summary and seven-chapter report were prepared by 50 climatologists and other scientists from 15 countries, under the direction of lead authors Craig Idso (USA), Robert Carter (Australia) and Fred Singer (USA).

Unfortunately, the “mainstream” media and climate alarm industry have no interest in reading the report, debating its contents or even letting people know it exists. They have staked their credibility, reputations, continued funding and greater control over our lives on perpetuating climate disaster myths. So it is up to the rest of us to ensure that the word gets out – and we do have that long overdue debate on climate.

Perhaps most important, say the NIPCC authors, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has greatly exaggerated the amount of warming that is likely to occur if atmospheric CO2 concentrations were to double, to around 800 ppm (0.08%). In fact, moderate warning up to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) would cause no net harm to the environment or human well-being. Indeed, it would likely be beneficial, lengthening growing seasons and expanding croplands and many wildlife habitats, especially since more carbon dioxide would help plants grow faster and better, even under adverse conditions like pollution, limited water or hgh temperatures. By contrast, even 2 degrees C of cooling could be disastrous for agriculture and efforts to feed growing human populations, without plowing under more habitats.

The NIPCC also lays bare the false IPCC claims that computer models “prove” recent global warming is due to human CO2 emissions, and are able to forecast future global temperatures, climates and events. In reality, the models greatly exaggerate climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide levels; assume all warming since the industrial revolution began are due to human carbon dioxide; input data contaminated by urban heat island effects; and employ simplified configurations of vital drivers of Earth’s climate system (or simply ignorethem), such as solar variations, cosmic ray fluxes, winds, clouds, precipitation, ocean currents and recurrent phenomena like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (El Nino and La Nina).

In computer lingo, this can be summarized as: Faulty assumptions, faulty data, faulty codes and algorithms, simplistic analytical methodologies and other garbage in – predictive garbage out.

The NIPCC authors conclude that existing climate models “are unable to make accurate projections of climate even ten years ahead, let alone the 100-year period that has been adopted by policy planners. The output of such models should therefore not be used to guide public policy formulation, until they have been validated [by comparison to actual observations] and shown to have predictive value.”

And yet, that is exactly how the deficient models are being used: to devise and justify policies, laws and regulations that stigmatize and penalize hydrocarbon use, promote and subsidize wind and solar energy, and have hugely negative effects on jobs, family energy bills, the overall economy and people’s lives.

Countries are spending countless billions of dollars annually on faulty to fraudulent IPCC climate models and studies that purport to link every adverse event or problem to manmade climate change; subsidized renewable energy programs that displace food crops and kill wildlife; adaptation and mitigation measures against future disasters that exist only in “scenarios” generated by the IPCC’s GIGO computer models; and welfare, food stamp and energy assistance programs for the newly unemployed and impoverished. Equally bad, they are losing tens of billions in royalty, tax and other revenue that they would receive if they were not blocking oil, gas and coal development and use – and destroying manufacturing jobs that depend on cheap, reliable energy, so that companies can compete in international marketplaces.

Meanwhile, a leaked draft of the forthcoming report from the IPCC itself reveals that even its scientists are backtracking from their past dire predictions of planetary disaster. Professor Ross McKitrick, chair of graduate studies at the University of Guelph (Ontario) economics department, put it bluntly in a brilliant Financial Post article. “Everything you need to know about the dilemma the IPCC faces is summed up in one remarkable graph,” he wrote.

The graph dramatically demonstrates that every UN IPCC climate model over the past 22 years (1990-2012) predicted that average global temperatures would be as much as 0.9 degrees C (1.6 degrees F) higher than they actually were! Considering how defective the models are, this is hardly surprising.

And yet, on this basis we are supposed to trash our hydrocarbon-based energy system and economy. It’s absolutely insane!

Two Climate Change Reconsidered briefings will be held next Monday, September 23, in Washington, DC – featuring NIPCC experts. Their title says it all:

“Climate Change Reconsidered: Science the UN will exclude from its next IPCC climate report”

Instead of employing the scientific method to prove or disprove its CO2-driven climate disaster hypothesis, using empirical evidence, the IPCC has routinely assumed its hypothesis is correct – and used selected data that support its claims, while ignoring anything that contradicts them, and refusing to debate any scientists who disagree with them. This can no longer be tolerated. Far too much is at stake.

How inconvenient

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Scientists working on a landmark U.N. report on climate change are struggling over how to address a wrinkle in the meteorological data that has given ammunition to global-warming skeptics: The heating of Earth's surface appears to have slowed in the past 15 years even though greenhouse gas emissions keep rising.

For years, skeptics have touted what looks like a slowdown in surface warming since 1998 to cast doubt on the scientific consensus that humans are cooking the planet by burning coal, oil and natural gas.

Scientists and statisticians have dismissed the purported slowdown as a statistical mirage, arguing among other things that it reflects random climate fluctuations and an unusually hot year picked as the starting point for charting temperatures. They also say the data suggests the "missing" heat is simply settling — temporarily — in the ocean.

But as scientists study the issue, the notion of a slowdown has gained more mainstream attention, putting pressure on the authors of the new U.N. report to deal with it.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report is expected to assert that global warming is continuing. It is also expected to affirm with greater certainty than ever before the link between global warming and human activity.

Leaked documents obtained by The Associated Press show there are deep concerns among governments over how to address the purported slowdown ahead of next week's meeting of the IPCC.

"I think to not address it would be a problem because then you basically have the denialists saying, 'Look, the IPCC is silent on this issue,'" said Alden Meyer of the Washington-based advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists.

Germany called for the reference to the slowdown to be deleted, saying a time span of 10 to 15 years was misleading in the context of climate change, which is measured over decades and centuries.

The U.S. also urged the authors to include the "leading hypothesis" that the reduction in warming is linked to more heat being transferred to the deep ocean.

Heres an idea. Maybe these so-called scientists should go where the evidence leads, instead of dismissing it for political reasons?

Sea ice surrounding Antarctica hit a record high in August and is on track for another record-breaking month in September. Clocking in at a stunning 7.2 million square miles (18.7 million square kilometers), last month's sea ice extent was 4.5 percent above the 1981 to 2010 average and the largest extent since record-keeping started in 1979, according to data released today from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in its monthly State of the Climate Report.
Antarctic sea ice extent in Sept. 2013
Credit: NSIDC
September marks the end of Antarctica's winter, and daily sea ice reports posted online at the National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colo., suggest the growing ice pack has already smashed the all-time record ice extent set in September 2012. This year's massive sea ice reached 7.53 million square miles (19.51 million square km) on Sept. 14, 2013, the NSIDC reports. The old record was 7.51 million square miles (19.44) million square km. The data is preliminary and the NSIDC website came back online yesterday (Sept. 16) after a three-day shutdown due to the Colorado flooding disaster.

Scientists try to explain this away by blaming unusually strong winds...