Senate committee approves funding for UN global warming bureaucracy

Our beloved Democratic-controlled Senate: A Senate committee today rejected Trump’s proposal to cut all UN spending for its global warming bureaucracy, including the IPCC, and re-installed the $10 million budget item.

It is important to note how the vote went:

The amendment passed 16-14. Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee voted in favor, as did all committee Democrats except for West Virginia’s Joe Manchin.

Essentially, the Senate is now controlled by the Democrats, with the help of a handful of fake Republicans. I should add that the Republican leadership is partly allowing this, by not imposing any party discipline on any of its members.

IPPC replaces head with economist

The politics of climate science: The IPCC has selected an economist, Hoesung Lee, to replace the disgraced railroad engineer, Rajendra Pachauri, who had previously been its leader.

That neither Pachauri nor Lee is an actual climate scientist, nor have they ever even done any climate science, tells us all we need to know about the IPCC. It is a political body, designed to push the political agenda of the advocates of human-caused global warming regardless of the scientific evidence. And that political agenda has nothing to do with science or climate, but using science and climate as a tool to impose Marxist fascist rule on everyone.

And if you doubt me, read this article in the science journal Nature describing the possible directions the IPCC will take under Lee’s leadership.

In the final draft of its new report the IPCC has significantly slashed its predictions for how much the climate will warm in the coming decades.

From the second to the final draft of its newest report the IPCC significantly slashed its predictions for how much the climate will warm in the coming decades.

In the second draft of the Fifth Assessment Report it had broadly agreed with the models that the world will warm by 0.4 to 1.0 Cº from 2016-2035 against 1986-2005. But in the final draft it quietly cut the 30-year projection to 0.3-0.7 Cº, saying the warming is more likely to be at the lower end of the range [equivalent to about 0.4 Cº over 30 years]. If that rate continued till 2100, global warming this century could be as little as 1.3 Cº.

This will bring the IPCC’s predictions more in line with the reality of the past two decades, which has seen a complete pause in any warming.

This is actually very good news, as it suggests that the good scientists in the climate community are beginning to regain control of the science. Rather than bend to the political winds, the IPCC is being forced to bend to the data itself. Nonetheless, no one should be sanguine about the situation. As noted by Christopher Monckton at the link,

Multiple lines of evidence now confirm that the models and consequently the IPCC have overestimated global warming. Yet neither that misconceived organization nor any of its host of unthinking devotees has displayed any remorse. Instead, they persist in maintaining that the warming is temporarily paused, though they cannot really explain why; or they blame particulate aerosols, their get-out-of-jail-free fudge-factor; or they pretend warming is really continuing unabated, saying it has gone into hiding deep in the oceans where, conveniently, we cannot measure it, or that the Earth-atmosphere system has a fever driven by four atom-bombs’-worth of heat content increase every second.

What they are not prepared to countenance, notwithstanding the real-world, measured evidence, is the growing probability that they and their precious models have so badly misunderstood the climate, or so well understood it and so badly misrepresented it, that global warming is simply not going to occur at anything like any of the exaggerated rates that they had until now so confidently over-predicted.

Read the whole thing. Look especially at Figure 9, the last figure, as it shows the data in comparison with the predictions in all the IPCC reports.

A good global warming scientists comments on the IPCC report: “The increase from 90-95% means that they are more certain. How they can justify this is beyond me.”

A good global warming scientists comments on the IPCC report: “The increase from 90-95% means that they are more certain. How they can justify this is beyond me.”

Read the whole post. Curry illustrates in blunt language how broken the IPCC process is, and how little it has to do with real science.

How the tentacles of the green environmental movement dominate the IPCC.

How the tentacles of the green environmental movement dominate the IPCC.

The U.N. has charged the IPCC with weighing the evidence on climate change in an objective manner. The problem is that numerous IPCC personnel have ties to environmental groups, many of which raise funds by hyping the alleged dangers of climate change. This relationship raises a legitimate question about their objectivity.

The examples are legion. Donald Wuebbles, one of the two leaders of the introductory first chapter of the Working Group 1 report (a draft of which may be released next Monday)—has been writing awareness-raising climate change reports for the activist Union of Concerned Scientists for a decade. Another chapter of the full IPCC report, “Open Oceans,” is led by Australian marine biologist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, who has written a string of reports with titles such as “Pacific in Peril” for Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Astrophysicist Michael Oppenheimer, in charge of another chapter of the IPCC report, “Emergent Risks and Key Vulnerabilities,” advises the Environmental Defense Fund (after having spent more than two decades on its payroll).

University of Maryland scientist Richard Moss is a former fulltime WWF vice president, while Jennifer Morgan used to be the WWF’s chief climate change spokesperson. Both are currently IPCC review editors—a position that’s supposed to ensure that feedback from IPCC external reviewers is addressed in an even-handed manner.

My own examination of the 2007 IPCC report found that two-thirds of its 44 chapters included at least one individual with ties to the WWF. Some were former or current employees, others were members of a WWF advisory panel whose purpose is to heighten the public’s sense of urgency around climate change.

Considering these facts, if the IPCC report even mentions the 15 year pause in warming it will be a remarkable thing.

German politicians openly admit they are trying to squelch any mention in the IPCC report of the recent 15 year pause in global temperature rise.

German politicians openly admit they are trying to squelch any mention in the IPCC report of the recent 15 year pause in global temperature rise.

Despite resistance from many researchers, the German ministries insist that it is important not to detract from the effectiveness of climate change warnings by discussing the past 15 years’ lack of global warming. Doing so, they say, would result in a loss of the support necessary for pursuing rigorous climate policies. “Climate policy needs the element of fear,” [German Green Party politician Hermann] Ott openly admits. “Otherwise, no politician would take on this topic.”

Germany’s Federal Ministry of Research would prefer to leave any discussion of the global warming hiatus entirely out of the new IPCC report summary. “In climate research, changes don’t count until they’ve been observed on a timescale of 30 years,” claims one delegate participating in the negotiations on behalf of German Research Minister Johanna Wanka of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The Ministry for the Environment’s identical stance: “Climate fluctuations that don’t last very long are not scientifically relevant.” [emphasis mine]

I must admire the Green Party politician for admitting that his approach to science and politics is the use of fear. He might be the most honest, if fascist, politician in the world!

The IPCC and the climate science community should be warned, however. Their reputation for honest science is already in the tank. If the IPCC report to be released later this week makes believe that the climate pause hasn’t happened their ability to persuade anyone will be gone forever.

The head of the IPCC, railroad engineer Rajendra Pachauri, plans to step down in 2015.

The head of the IPCC, railroad engineer Rajendra Pachauri, plans to step down in 2015.

I don’t know why he is waiting that long. When the next report is released next week the IPCC is likely to be finished. It is very doubtful the UN will get the funds to do another, especially as it appears that a lot of scientists are very disenchanted with how this political process has been warping the science.

The global warming scientists at the IPCC struggle to explain the lack of warming.

The global warming scientists at the IPCC struggle to explain the lack of warming.

Though scientists don’t have any firm answers, they do have multiple theories. Xie has argued that the hiatus is the result of heat absorption by the Pacific Ocean — a little-understood, naturally occurring process that repeats itself every few decades. Xie and his colleagues presented the idea in a study published last month in the prestigious journal Nature.

The theory, which is gaining adherents, remains unproved by actual observation. Surface temperature records date to the late 1800s, but measurements of deep water temperature began only in the 1960s, so there just isn’t enough data to chart the long-term patterns, Xie said. [emphasis mine]

This theory, that the oceans are absorbing all the heat, is one of the new favorite explanations for the lack of warming by advocates of global warming. However, as this article correctly notes, we have no good data to support it, and even fewer theories to explain it.

The truth is really summed up by the article’s last paragraph:

“This unpredicted hiatus just reflects the fact that we don’t understand things as well as we thought,” said Roger Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder and vocal critic of the climate change establishment. “Now the IPCC finds itself in a position that a science group never wants to be in. It’s in spin management mode.”

Another leak from the IPCC shows that politicians in Belgium, Hungary, Germany, and the United States attempted to pressure the scientists writing the report to cover up the lack in global temperature rise since 1998.

Another leak from the IPCC shows that politicians in Belgium, Hungary, Germany, and the United States attempted to pressure the scientists writing the report to cover up the lack in global temperature rise since 1998.

[L]eaked documents seen by the Associated Press, yesterday revealed deep concerns among politicians about a lack of global warming over the past few years. Germany called for the references to the slowdown in warming to be deleted, saying looking at a time span of just 10 or 15 years was ‘misleading’ and they should focus on decades or centuries. Hungary worried the report would provide ammunition for deniers of man-made climate change. Belgium objected to using 1998 as a starting year for statistics, as it was exceptionally warm and makes the graph look flat – and suggested using 1999 or 2000 instead to give a more upward-pointing curve. The United States delegation even weighed in, urging the authors of the report to explain away the lack of warming using the ‘leading hypothesis’ among scientists that the lower warming is down to more heat being absorbed by the ocean – which has got hotter.

Two points: First, for this article to refer to any legitimate scientist who questions the theory of human-caused global warming to be called a “denier” offends me beyond words, as regular readers of this website know.

Second, this leak proves once again the foolishness of allowing politicians to get involved in the scientific process. They should be kept as far away as possible, at all times.

Another look at the leaked IPCC draft report.

Another look at the leaked IPCC draft report. Key quote:

To those of us who have been following the climate debate for decades, the next few years will be electrifying. There is a high probability we will witness the crackup of one of the most influential scientific paradigms of the 20th century, and the implications for policy and global politics could be staggering.

The article also takes a close look at the contradiction between the data and the IPCC models and says this:

[W]hat is commonly called the “mainstream” view of climate science is contained in the spread of results from computer models. What is commonly dismissed as the “skeptical” or “denier” view coincides with the real-world observations. Now you know how to interpret those terms when you hear them.

A newly leaked revised draft of the upcoming IPCC report suggests that the climate uncertainties have significantly grown since the last report in 2007.

A newly leaked revised draft of the upcoming IPCC report suggests that the climate uncertainties have significantly grown since the last report in 2007.

Most important of all, the new IPCC draft finally admits that the climate has not warmed as predicted and that the climate field does not know why.

They recognize the global warming ‘pause’ first reported by The Mail on Sunday last year is real – and concede that their computer models did not predict it. But they cannot explain why world average temperatures have not shown any statistically significant increase since 1997.

They admit large parts of the world were as warm as they are now for decades at a time between 950 and 1250 AD – centuries before the Industrial Revolution, and when the population and CO2 levels were both much lower.

The IPCC admits that while computer models forecast a decline in Antarctic sea ice, it has actually grown to a new record high. Again, the IPCC cannot say why.

A forecast in the 2007 report that hurricanes would become more intense has simply been dropped, without mention. This year has been one of the quietest hurricane seasons in history and the US is currently enjoying its longest-ever period – almost eight years – without a single hurricane of Category 3 or above making landfall.

The worst aspect of this new draft, however, is how its conclusions completely ignore these admitted uncertainties.

In the new report, the IPCC says it is ‘extremely likely’ – 95 per cent certain – that human influence caused more than half the temperature rises from 1951 to 2010, up from ‘very confident’ – 90 per cent certain – in 2007. [Climate scientists Judith] Curry said: ‘This is incomprehensible to me’ – adding that the IPCC projections are ‘overconfident’, especially given the report’s admitted areas of doubt.

As I’ve noted before, though Curry favors the theory that the climate is warming, she is also a good scientist willing to honestly discuss the uncertainties of the science.

One last point: Most of these newly admitted uncertainties in the upcoming IPCC report were originally discussed in detail in the first IPCC report back in 1990. That 1990 report was an excellent and fair assessment of the overall knowledge of the field, at the time. Since then, none of the science has really been able to reduce any of these uncertainties significantly. All that happened in the ensuing years is that too many climate scientists and in the IPCC decided to make believe the uncertainties didn’t exist any more. Thus, later IPCC reports were filled with false certainty and an unreasonable insistence that the climate field understood what was going on.

These false certainties have now come back to bite that climate field, in the ass.

“The timing couldn’t be worse.”

The next IPCC report: “The timing couldn’t be worse.”

The author describes how the new report, due out in just a couple of months, is probably already obsolete because of a slew of new papers documenting the long 10 to 15 year pause in global warming that was not predicted by any of the climate models used by the IPCC.

This quote I think sums things up nicely, however:

Due to a ‘combination of errors’, the models have overestimated warming by 100% over the past 20 years and by 400% over the past 15 years.

A draft of the next IPCC climate report has arrived, and it is more of the same: We are all gonna die!

A draft of the next IPCC climate report has arrived, and it is more of the same: We are all gonna die!

An international panel of scientists has found with near certainty that human activity is the cause of most of the temperature increases of recent decades, and warns that sea levels could conceivably rise by more than three feet by the end of the century if emissions continue at a runaway pace. The scientists, whose findings are reported in a draft summary of the next big United Nations climate report, largely dismiss a recent slowdown in the pace of warming, which is often cited by climate change doubters, attributing it most likely to short-term factors. The report emphasizes that the basic facts about future climate change are more established than ever, justifying the rise in global concern. It also reiterates that the consequences of escalating emissions are likely to be profound.

I love the way the journalist here uses the term “climate change doubters.” Throughout the story it is applied to skeptical scientists in such a way as to imply that any doubt about these conclusions is obviously something to snicker at and to ignore.

As for the claim that the seas will rise three feet in the next 90 years, note that the level of sea rise has been consistently between 2 and 3 millimeters per year for the past half century, even as we have been pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and the climate has supposedly warmed. At 3mm per year, the seas will only rise 270 millimeters by the end of the century, or just under 11 inches, not three feet as claimed by this new IPCC report.

An analysis of the climate models used by global warming advocates to illustrate the consequences of climate change finds them to be totally useless.

Climate fraud: An analysis of the climate models used by global warming advocates to illustrate the consequences of climate change finds them to be totally useless.

These models have crucial flaws that make them close to useless as tools for policy analysis: certain inputs (e.g. the discount rate) are arbitrary, but have huge effects on the SCC estimates the models produce; the models’ descriptions of the impact of climate change are completely ad hoc, with no theoretical or empirical foundation; and the models can tell us nothing about the most important driver of the SCC, the possibility of a catastrophic climate outcome. IAM-based analyses of climate policy create a perception of knowledge and precision, but that perception is illusory and misleading. [emphasis added]

A science poster released at an American Geophysical Union conference this week finds again that the global warming climate models used by policy makers have all failed to predict what has actually happened.

The uncertainty of science: A science poster released at an American Geophysical Union conference this week finds again that the global warming climate models used by policy makers have all failed to predict what has actually happened.

Some devastating quotes from the poster:
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“The fact that global surface temperatures have not followed the expected global warming pattern is now widely accepted.”

The uncertainty of science: “The fact that global surface temperatures have not followed the expected global warming pattern is now widely accepted.”

This quote above refers to scientists in the climate field, who are now admitting that for the past 20 years the climate has shown no warming, despite the continuing increase in CO2 in the atmosphere and their computer models that all predicted increased temperatures because of that CO2.

In an interview in Australia, the head of the IPCC has admitted that the climate has stopped warming now for the past seventeen years.

Consensus! In an interview in Australia, the head of the IPCC has admitted that the climate has stopped warming now for the past seventeen years.

No computer climate model offered in any IPCC report predicted this long pause in warming. They all instead insisted that because of the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the global temperature would have to rise, and do so quickly and with catastrophic results.

In other words, those models were wrong. The climate is very complicated, and we don’t yet understand very well how it functions.

Not only have the models failed to predict temperature, they also have failed to predict the amount of methane in the atmosphere.

Another IPCC failure, revealed in the leaked report: Not only have the models failed to predict global temperature, they also have failed to predict the amount of methane in the atmosphere.

The graph at the link is just like the temperature graph I posted on Monday. It compares actual observations with the predictions of the computer models, which all called for a hefty rise in atmospheric methane. All the models got it wrong.

A preliminary copy of the next IPCC report has been leaked.

IPCC figure

A preliminary copy of the next IPCC report has been leaked.

In the coming days there will be much discussion of this document — such as how it appears the IPCC has finally acknowledged the importance of the Sun’s variability to climate change — but for now, I post on the right what is probably its most important admission. This graph from the leaked report shows the rise in global temperatures as predicted by all the different climate models used by the IPCC, compared to actual observed temperatures. As you can see, since the late 1990s there has been no significant increase in global temperature. Moreover, the observed data now sits outside the predicted margin of error for all the models, making every single one of these models completely wrong.

But don’t worry, these facts aren’t important. In fact, any facts that contradict the religion of global warming must be ignored. It is far more important to shut down all industry and live like cavemen, just because we have faith in our belief in global warming.

Scientists have found that the method used by the IPCC to measure droughts has significantly overestimated their number during the the past 60 years.

The uncertainty of science: Scientists have found that the method used by the IPCC to measure droughts has significantly overestimated their number during the the past 60 years.

Although previous studies have suggested that droughts have increased over that 60-year period, the team’s new analysis hints that the increase in drought has been substantially overestimated. For instance, the new assessment technique found that between 1980 and 2008, the global area stricken by drought grew by approximately 0.08% per year—less than one-seventh the increase estimated by the temperature-only [IPCC method].

The IPCC and the global warming activists that run it had claimed that the warming climate was causing more droughts. It turns out that claim was essentially false. The number of droughts has apparently not gone up. Note that this fact is actually not a surprise to those who have read the IPCC reports carefully. Deep down past their simplistic summaries, the reports have consistently pointed out that these conclusions were very uncertain and could be found to be wrong.

Not surprisingly, the article above spends a lot of time trying to rationalize this new data, quoting one scientist who insists there is nothing to see here, move on! The trouble is that there is plenty to see here. Our knowledge of the climate remains very incomplete.

A review by the IPCC of its earlier reports has admitted to serious problems and fundamental biases.

A review by the IPCC of its earlier reports has admitted that the manner in which the reports were produced had serious problems and fundamental biases.

The IAC reported that IPCC lead authors fail to give “due consideration … to properly documented alternative views” (p. 20), fail to “provide detailed written responses to the most significant review issues identified by the Review Editors” (p. 21), and are not “consider[ing] review comments carefully and document[ing] their responses” (p. 22). In plain English: the IPCC reports are not peer-reviewed.

The IAC found that “the IPCC has no formal process or criteria for selecting authors” and “the selection criteria seemed arbitrary to many respondents” (p. 18). Government officials appoint scientists from their countries and “do not always nominate the best scientists from among those who volunteer, either because they do not know who these scientists are or because political considerations are given more weight than scientific qualifications” (p. 18). In other words: authors are selected from a “club” of scientists and nonscientists who agree with the alarmist perspective favored by politicians.

The rewriting of the Summary for Policy Makers by politicians and environmental activists — a problem called out by global warming realists for many years, but with little apparent notice by the media or policymakers — was plainly admitted, perhaps for the first time by an organization in the “mainstream” of alarmist climate change thinking. “[M]any were concerned that reinterpretations of the assessment’s findings, suggested in the final Plenary, might be politically motivated,” the IAC auditors wrote. The scientists they interviewed commonly found the Synthesis Report “too political” (p. 25). [emphasis mine]

The sad part is that almost none of these problems have been addressed by the IPCC in producing its next report, due out sometime in 2013 or 2014.

The IPCC has decided that it is too difficult to purge non-peer-reviewed envionmental activist press releases from its next report.

The IPCC has decided that it is too difficult to purge non-peer-reviewed envionmental activist press releases from its next report. Instead,

[A]ny information they choose to use will be considered peer reviewed just by being posted on the Internet by the IPCC.

In addition, the IPCC has decided “to impose gender and geographical quotas on IPCC membership,” rather than simple pick the best scientists.

And climate scientists wonder why the public no longer believes anything they say.

“I feel duped.”

The man duped is Fritz Vahrenholt, a former global warming advocate and leftwing environmentalist in Germany. The words were spoken in a long and detailed interview in Der Spiegel. Read it all, as it demonstrates without question that Vahrenholt has done his research about the complexities of climate research as well as the flaws and dishonesty contained within the IPCC reports. However, he gets to the nub of the matter when he is asked why he has taken on the role of a climate skeptic with such passion.
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Two more global warming scientists turn skeptics

Two more global warming scientists, this time in Germany, have become global warming skeptics.

One of the fathers of Germany’s modern green movement, Professor Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, a social democrat and green activist, decided to author a climate science skeptical book together with geologist/paleontologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning. Vahrenholt’s skepticism started when he was asked to review an IPCC report on renewable energy. He found hundreds of errors. When he pointed them out, IPCC officials simply brushed them aside. Stunned, he asked himself, “Is this the way they approached the climate assessment reports?”

Vahrenholt decided to do some digging. His colleague Dr. Lüning also gave him a copy of Andrew Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion. He was horrified by the sloppiness and deception he found. Persuaded by Hoffmann & Campe, he and Lüning decided to write the book. Die kalte Sonne [The Cold Sun] cites 800 sources and has over 80 charts and figures. It examines and summarizes the latest science.

[The c]onclusion: climate catastrophe is called off. The science was hyped.

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