Welcome to the Lavoisier Group Website (original) (raw)
You will find here a wide range of papers and the search engine will enable you to look up anything of particular interest.
The topics covered include greenhouse gas theory; solar and planetary influences on the earth's climate; predictions of future climate; the history of climate change; the economics of energy and technology; energy security; the role of the IPCC in promoting global warming hysteria; the response of Australia's governments to the decarbonisation campaigns of the Environmentalist movement and the media.
Latest News
November 2024
The Unpopular Truth: Hydrogen is not the answer
Most, if not all, energy enthusiasts understand that in regards to the ‘energy transition’, hydrogen is not a ‘source’ of energy, but an energy ‘carrier’. Read more here.
October 2024
Claims of Consensus on Climate Change Have Been Propagandistic from the Beginning
‘The exploitation of climate fits into a pattern, and as with all its predecessors, science is, in fact, irrelevant.’ Read more here.
October 2024
Scientists capture Earth’s climate over past 485 million years
‘The revelations about Earth’s scorching past are further reason for concern about modern climate change.’ Read more here.
September 2024
Why big corporations are quietly abandoning their climate commitments
‘More than 500 companies pledged to get to net zero by 2040. Ninety-six per cent of them, however, are failing to stay on track.’ Read more here.
September 2024
The Solar Control of Climate: A Review
Some say carbon dioxide is the controlling variable in climate. That notion is now discredited. Read more here.
August 2024
The Methane Myth
Reduction in Australian cattle numbers of 25 million would have negligible impact on the methane level and on global warming. Read more here.
August 2024
Climate Driven by Orientation – Not Carbon Emissions
Climate change is being driven by a change in the orientation of the Earth to the Sun, rather than carbon dioxide emissions, new analysis of data from Berkeley Earth shows. Read more here.
July 2024
Carbon Dioxide and Plant Nutrition
Solar energy and Carbon Dioxide (CO2) are absorbed by plants to make carbon compounds which are the basic compounds, including carbon in wood fibre. Read more here.
July 2024
Bill Gates moves ahead with nuclear project aimed at revolutionizing power generation
Technological innovator and climate champion Bill Gates bets on nuclear power. Read more here.
June 2024
The Numbers Behind the Narrative
‘Nobody has an incentive to portray scientific truth and facts', says physicist Steven Koonin. Read more here.
June 2024
Nuclear Power Takes Off (Part 3): back to Euratom?
At the most recent COP28 meeting in Dubai, 22 nations endorsed an agreement to advance nuclear energy. Esteemed scholars Samuel Furfari, Professor at the University of Brussels, and Ernest Mund, Emeritus Extraordinary Professor at UCL, offer their insightful policy reflections. Read more here.
June 2024
Nuclear Power Takes Off (Part 2): the ongoing evolution of reactors
At the most recent COP28 meeting in Dubai, 22 nations endorsed an agreement to advance nuclear energy. Esteemed scholars Samuel Furfari, Professor at the University of Brussels, and Ernest Mund, Emeritus Extraordinary Professor at UCL, offer their insightful policy reflections. Read more here.
June 2024
Nuclear Power Takes Off (Part 1): meeting the growth in global electricity demand
At the most recent COP28 meeting in Dubai, 22 nations endorsed an agreement to advance nuclear energy. Esteemed scholars Samuel Furfari, Professor at the University of Brussels, and Ernest Mund, Emeritus Extraordinary Professor at UCL, offer their insightful policy reflections. Read more here.
May 2024
The Consequences of Net Zero:
Lindzen-Happer-Koonin
There will be disastrous consequences for the poor, people worldwide, future generations and the West, if fossil fuels, CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions are reduced to ‘Net Zero’. Read more here.
May 2024
The Cloud Thermostat
Computer modelling of the climate has been unable to simulate the Earth’s surface temperature history, let alone predict its future. Read more [here.](/articles/climate-policy/science-and-policy/The Cloud Thermostat.pdf)
May 2024
Temperature v CO2
As atmospheric CO2 concentrations have increased, the frequency of hot afternoons in the US has plummeted. Reality is the exact opposite of the claims being made by academics, government agencies and the press.
April 2024
The CO2 Famine
Today's CO2 famine is very real. See more here.
April 2024
The Norwegian Illusion
Despite spending nearly $4bn a year subsidizing electric vehicles (EVs), sales of internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles continue to rise. Using Norway as a model for CO2 reduction would be a mistake. Read more here.
March 2024
Tapping the Brakes on Electric Vehicles
The facts are slowly coming out – EVs aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. In more ways than one, the gloss is starting to wear off. Read more here.
February 2024
American vs Russian Temperature Reconstructions
The Americans flatten the early part of the 1,000 years long record, obliterating the Medieval Warm period, and then they use ‘Mike’s trick’. Read more here.
February 2024
The Climate Models Are Wrong
It should not need to be said that a model is not evidence of anything. A model is a hypothesis. Like any scientific hypothesis, it is confirmed or refuted by observation. Read more here.
February 2024
Climate 4 You
This post contains graphs and diagrams showing a selection of important meteorological variables. Read more here.
January 2024
Climate dioxide and climate facts
Carbon dioxide is essential for life on planet earth. Read more here.
January 2024
Court orders wind farm to be torn down
Tearing them down was justified and proportionate based on the ongoing harm they were doing to local wildlife. See more here.
January 2024
Junk Science Alert: Met Office Set to Ditch Actual Temperature Data in Favour of Model Predictions
Despite 40 years of trying, climate models have barely an accurate temperature forecast between them. See more here.
January 2024
‘Climate Tipping Point’: Yes, Again
The purveyors of perpetual panic never tire of inventing a new computer-generated scenario that predicts the end of the world as we know it unless taxpayers fork over trillions of dollars to the political classes and UN bureaucrats. See more here.
December 2023
2023: Global temperature, statistics and hot air
It is pertinent to say that climate scientists were a little puzzled at this year’s sudden temperature surge as they cannot quite explain it: their models neither predict it nor are they able to account for the surprise. See more here.
December 2023
Taking the wind out of climate change
The bottom line is that there is no scientific proof that wind energy saves any consequential amount of CO2. See more here.
December 2023
Causation of Climate Change and the Scientific Method
It’s by far the most important scientific question of our age: Do human emissions of CO2 and other such “greenhouse gases” cause significant global warming, aka “climate change”? See more here.
November 2023
Renewables cost so big it’s a secret
The program will be expanded from 6 gigawatts of renewable energy projects to 32 gigawatts, with the cost to taxpayers being kept secret under commercial-in-confidence provisions. See more here.
November 2023
Cold is Horrifically Bad for Humanity
There is a strong correlation between the rise and fall of temperature and the fortunes of great civilizations. See more here.
November 2023
COP28: Climate Negotiations At A Crossroads
As COP28 gets underway next month, much has changed within the political establishments in the West that have been leading the charge on the “decarbonization” and “net zero by 2050” imperatives at the UN. See more here.
October 2023
An Energy Future Worth Having
The economics of wind farms are slightly better than solar panels, but still well short of what is needed to sustain civilisation. See more here.
October 2023
Settled Science Shock: Earth Temperatures Rise AHEAD of CO2 Emissions
Dramatic new and improved evidence points to temperatures on Earth rising before an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. See more here.
October 2023
Comment and Reply – CMIP6
A most helpful exchange of comments occurred recently at Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) on a paper by Nicola Scafetta. The paper related to Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) – an international project aimed at improving climate models by comparing multiple model simulations to observations and to each other. See more here.
September 2023
The Energy Storage Conundrum
There is no proven and costed energy storage solution that can take a wind/solar electricity generation system all the way to Net Zero emissions – or anything close to it. See more here.
September 2023
How Science is Done These Days
Thanks to a science whistle-blower, there’s now documentation of an exercise as bad as that captured in the ‘Hockey Stick’ correspondence of 2004. See more here.
August 2023
The Evidence Is Now Irrefutable
In this SPECIAL EDITION, we present no fewer than six fully-researched papers on Climate Change phenomena:
• The Global Warming Policy Foundation here.
• Excess mortality attributed to heat and cold here.
• The Lithium Battery Menace here.
• Solar Panels – Three Times More Carbon-Intensive Than IPCC Claims here.
• Record Heat? – Doctors for Disaster Preparedness here.
• Renewable Energy Storage Requirements Are Impossible here.
August 2023
What the IPCC Actually Says About Extreme Weather
For those who want to know what the research actually says on the relationship of extreme weather and climate change, the information is readily available. See more here.
July 2023
Nobel Laureate Dr John Clauser:
"I Don’t Believe There is a Climate Crisis"
Dr Clauser received the Nobel Prize in Physics for experimentally elucidating the phenomenon of quantum entanglement. He majored in physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and worked as a researcher at the University of California. See more here.
July 2023
Geophysical constraints on the reliability of solar and wind power worldwide
This analysis helps quantify the power, energy, and utilization rates of additional energy storage, demand management, or curtailment, as well as the benefits of regional aggregation. See more here.
June 2023
The Sun in June 2023
This is where the rubber hits the road in terms of the solar effect on climate. See more here.
June 2023
Global Warming Trend Is 'Only One-Half of the Climate Model Simulations', says new study
The latest suite of climate models collectively projects that the average temperature of the global atmosphere should be increasing at the rate of about 0.28–0.29 degrees Celsius per decade. But how do these model projections compare to actual temperature data? It depends. See more here.
May 2023
The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC
The IPCC seems obsessed with a few themes: the current warming is 'unique' or their favourite word 'unprecedented', climate change is all bad and it’s caused by CO2. See more here.
May 2023
Climate Change Alarmism Is a Lie that Must Stop
Future generations will judge us harshly for allowing extremist environmental activism to enfeeble us in the West, while a hostile East – China, Russia, North Korea and Iran – continue to advance their industrial and military capabilities. See more here.
April 2023
Renewables are not Sustainable
It is time to conclude that wind, solar and biomass renewables are not green, they are not sustainable and are unable to support a modern economy. Hydropower scores well, but its usefulness is limited by geography. The only low-carbon, scalable, sustainable, dispatchable source of electricity generation is nuclear. See more here.
March 2023
The myth that "97% of climate scientists agree" about a climate crisis
Most climate scientists agree that we have some climate impact. However, repeating the claim that, “97% of climate scientists agree that climate change is real and human-caused,” to argue against fossil fuels is illogical and unscientific. See more here.
March 2023
The energy transition delusion
Transitioning the world’s energy from liquids and gases to solids is ‘impossible’, says physicist and development engineer Mark P. Mills. See more here.
February 2023
Sea level is stable around the world
We have been studying climate change and potentially associated sea level changes resulting from melting ice and warming oceans for a half century. Many believe that increasing quantities of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere could result in rising levels of the sea in general. The record does not show this to be true. There is no evidence whatever to support impending sea-level-rise catastrophe. More here.
February 2023
IPCC vs the Facts: The Case for Climate Realism
A key assumption driving the computer models in IPCC studies is that rising CO2 levels from the burning of fossil fuels produces a strong positive feedback response from water vapour. The IPCC's own results do not support this. More here.
January 2023
Astronomical battery cost looms over renewable energy
The amount of storage needed to make renewables reliable is so huge that even if the cost dropped fantastically we still could not afford it. More here.
January 2023
Clouds Complicit in Black Swan Event
In 1697, Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh discovered black swans in Australia, upending the belief that ‘all swans were white’. His discovery transformed how biologists understood the natural world. The phrase ‘black swan event’ came to refer to an event that previously had thought to be impossible. More here.
December 2022
Global Warming 'Science' Heads to Court
The case is called the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council (CHECC) v. EPA, and is now pending in the US’s DC Circuit Court of Appeals. The CHECC is challenging the EPA's 2009 Finding that CO2 and other greenhouse gases constitute a 'danger' to human health and welfare. More here.
November 2022
Polar Bear Propaganda Melts Under Analysis
Summer sea ice trend has been pretty much flat since 2007, with ice covering about 42% less area than in 1979, yet polar bears in many regions are doing better now than they were in 2005, especially in Davis Strait, the Barents and Chukchi Seas, and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. More here.
November 2022
Report Slams Governments and Media for Spinning Climate Alarmism From IPCC Reports Without Scientific Evidence
Professor Steven Koonin, one of America's most distinguished scientists, questions the conventional political wisdom that the science of climate change is settled. He explores how the science, with all of its certainties and uncertainties, becomes ‘The Science’ – how it gets summarised and communicated, and what is lost in the process. The end result is that the popular perception of global warming differs markedly from what the science actually says. More here and here.
October 2022
An Assessment of the Conventional Global Warming Narrative
The one-dimensional picture of the greenhouse effect and the role of carbon dioxide in this mechanism dominates current depictions of climate and global warming. Read more here.
October 2022
Rethinking the Greenhouse Effect
The temperature at any given point on the Earth’s surface is regulated by energy-exchange processes. Read more here.
September 2022
A Lesson in Climate Science
CSIRO chief executive Larry Marshall says 40 per cent of the technologies needed to get to net zero are yet to be invented. See more here.
September 2022
Carbon Dioxide Feeds the World
More CO2 will do much good and no harm. If we allow it to go on increasing at the current rate, CO2 will feed the world's coming peak population with no more land, seed, cultivation or water. Read more here.
September 2022
What would decarbonization actually cost?
Without natural gas and coal, there would be a shortage of electricity generation capacity and fuel for residential and commercial heating. Almost all parts of the world would experience blackouts and brownouts. Read more here.
August 2022
No Warming in US for at Least 17 Years
There has been no temperature warming for at least 17 years across the United States, according to results from a rarely referenced dataset that was designed to remove all urban heat distortions. Read more here.
August 2022
The Carbon Story
An increase in CO2 level at the rate of 1.75ppm per annum did not give an increase in mid-day temperature at Mauna Loa over 30 years, while mid-night temperature rose just over 1℃ during the same period. Read more here.
July 2022
All-Time Cold Records Fall In Australia
Following its best start to a ski season ever, conditions have been anomalously cold and snowy across swathes of Australia. Read more here.
July 2022
NASA admits climate change occurs because of changes in Earth's solar orbit – not because of SUVs and fossil fuels
For more than 60 years, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has known that the changes occurring to planetary weather patterns are completely natural and normal. But the space agency, for whatever reason, has chosen to let the man-made global warming hoax persist and spread, to the detriment of human freedom. Read more here.
July 2022
Climate science literature “pal review, not peer review”
say top-level scientists
Two top-level American atmospheric scientists have dismissed the peer review system of current climate science literature as “a joke”. According to Emeritus Professors William Happer and Richard Lindzen, “it is pal review, not peer review”. Read more here.
July 2022
Are More Fossil Fuels the Future?
The path to global human flourishing is a combination of using more fossil fuels, getting better at ‘climate mastery’, and establishing ‘energy freedom’ policies that allow nuclear and other truly promising alternatives to reach their full long-term potential. Read more here.
June 2022
Global Warming: The Great Deception -
the triumph of dollars and politics over science
Guy Mitchell takes a holistic approach and combines scientific analysis with an in-depth review of the political and economic aspects of the subject. Read more here.
May 2022
The State of the Climate
In contrast to the IPCC, former Professor of Physical Geography at the University Centre in Svalbard, Norway, and Emeritus Professor of Physical Geography, University of Oslo, Norway Ole Humlum’s systematic review of climate trends and observational data has found no evidence to support the claim of a climate crisis. Temperatures have shown a slight but not exceptional zig-zag warming, and oceanic temperatures, sea levels and other changes, said by the IPCC to require urgent action, are found to be unalarming. Read more here.
April 2022
The new Pause lengthens: now 7 years and 6 months
One of the best-kept secrets in what passes for "journalism" these days is that global temperatures have not risen for more than seven years. Read more here.
March 2022
Limits to Green Energy Becoming Clearer
Things are increasingly not working out as planned. It is becoming clear that intermittent wind and solar cannot be counted on to provide adequate electricity supply when the electrical distribution system needs them. Read more here.
February 2022
Hottest Hype Ever
At the end of every year, global warming campaigners proclaim the past year was, "the hottest year ever" – no matter how mild the temperature. 2021 didn't fit the warming narrative at all. Read more here.
January 2022
Coal hits record high in 2021
Reports of the death of coal are, to quote Mark Twain, "greatly exaggerated." In fact, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reveals that coal has had its best year ever---propelled by insatiable demand from China and India. Read more here.
December 2021
The simple arithmetic of wind power
All solar and wind power on an electric grid must be backed up with an equal or greater amount of fossil fuel power running on standby 100% of the time. Read more here.
November 2021
Science is a leaky vessel
In our modern "information age", we are told that there is a 97 per cent consensus that man’s activities are causing the climate to change. It is assumed or in many cases proclaimed that this change is dreadful and that the consequences will be catastrophic. Such proclamations are unscientific propaganda. Read more here.
October 2021
'Fact checks' by non-experts are shutting down genuine scientific inquiry
Depending on which scientific datasets you choose, you could explain global warming since the 19th century as being anything from mostly natural to mostly human-caused. The huge uncertainty over such a key question is a major concern. Read more here.
September 2021
Greenhouse saturation research could kill 'climate emergency'
Until recently the estimates of greenhouse potency were based on approximation bands of absorbed radiation wavelengths. Now authors William van Wijngaarden and William Happer have done line-by-line spectral analysis, looking at over 300,000 individual wavelengths within these bands. Read more here.
August 2021
'Hockey Stick' Curve Obscures Earth's CO2 History
Today, 400 ppm of CO2 is 10 per cent of the level 500 million years ago when CO2 reached 4,000 ppm supporting vegetation during the dinosaurs' reign. More details here.
July 2021
40 years of forecasts vs 40 years of actuals
John Christy, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Centre at the University of Alabama, has collated 32 climate model forecasts showing 31 of the 32 models have failed to accurately predict temperature rise. More details here.
June 2021
Antarctica's inconvenient volcanoes
Scientists have thoroughly documented the existence of underwater volcanic activity beneath Antarctica's Pine Island. Full article here.
May 2021
What goes up, must come down
Civilization, as we know it today, would not survive another ice age. Very low temperatures result in death, destruction, the extinction of species, and mass migrations. During such an event, the safest place to live is on and around the earth’s equator. Full article here.
April 2021
China generating over half of the world’s coal-fired power
China’s coal-fired power generation rose by 1.7% or 77 terawatt-hours in 2020, enough to bring its share of total global coal-fired power to 53%, up from 44% in 2015. Full article here.
March 2021
Texas frozen wind power – outages ensue, electricity now at unheard of $9000 per megawatt-hour
There's a saying in the lone star state "Don’t Mess with Texas" which actually started out as an anti-littering campaign but has become sort of a slogan for the rugged, no-nonsense way of life that people have there. Now with dead wind turbines littering the state, the focus on deploying unreliable renewable energy in the name of "saving the planet" has literally "messed with Texas" in a huge way. Full article here.
February 2021
Apart from brief period in 1800s, Iceland now colder than any time in past 8,000 years
A wealth of new research in glacier and sea ice extent show modern Iceland is 2-4°C colder than all of the last 8000 years except for a slightly colder late 19th century. Even the 1700s were warmer with less ice than today in and around Iceland. Full article here.
January 2021
New glacier evidence for ice-free summits during the life of the Tyrolean Iceman
Abstract: Detailed knowledge of Holocene climate and glaciers dynamics is essential for sustainable development in warming mountain regions. Yet information about Holocene glacier coverage in the Alps before the Little Ice Age stems mostly from studying advances of glacier tongues at lower elevations. Here we present a new approach to reconstructing past glacier low stands and ice-free conditions by assessing and dating the oldest ice preserved at high elevations. A previously unexplored ice dome at Weißseespitze summit (3500 m), near where the “Tyrolean Iceman” was found, offers almost ideal conditions for preserving the original ice formed at the site. The glaciological settings and state-of-the-art micro-radiocarbon age constraints indicate that the summit has been glaciated for about 5900 years. In combination with known maximum ages of other high Alpine glaciers, we present evidence for an elevation gradient of neoglaciation onset. It reveals that in the Alps only the highest elevation sites remained ice-covered throughout the Holocene. Just before the life of the Iceman, high Alpine summits were emerging from nearly ice-free conditions, during the start of a Mid-Holocene neoglaciation. We demonstrate that, under specific circumstances, the old ice at the base of high Alpine glaciers is a sensitive archive of glacier change. However, under current melt rates the archive at Weißseespitze and at similar locations will be lost within the next two decades. Full article here.
January 2021
CO2 climate innocence in 500 words
CO2 climate innocence in 500 words: paleoclimatological-astrophysical literature synthesis by an impartial geologist. Full Abstract here.
December 2020
Nuclear physicist talks climate change
Newzroom Afrika looks at greenhouse gas emissions and the effect they have on climate change with nuclear physicist Dr Kelvin Kemm. View YouTube video here.
November 2020
Study suggests no more CO2 warming
Precision research by physicists William Happer and William van Wijngaarden has determined that the present levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and water vapor are almost completely saturated. Read more here.
November 2020
Wind Energy
Wind energy is a favourite alternative energy source for advocates of all things green — and we use wind energy as an example of what happens when we deviate from using real science. Read more here.
September 2020
Southern Ocean Now as Cold as Last Ice Age-Era
A new temperature reconstruction indicates today's sea surface temperatures are colder than all but a few millennia out of the last 156,000 years. Read more here.
August 2020
Roman Warm Period Was 2°C Warmer Than Today
The Mediterranean Sea was 3.6°F (2°C) hotter during the Roman Empire than other average temperatures at the time, a new study claims. Read more here.
July 2020
Weather Extremes: Are they caused by global warming?
by Ralph Alexander
Professor Ralph Alexander’s review of extreme weather finds there to be no trend in precipitation, hot and cold days, hurricanes. He notes that the IPCC, though espousing global warming, has so far adhered to the path of science by finding little to no evidence linking extreme weather to global warming. Read more here.
The Sun Has Entered 'Very Deep' Solar Minimum
by David Whitehouse
The lack of any sunspots suggests the current solar minimum is one of the 'deepest' in 100 years. Read more here.
Maldives to Open 4 New Airports
In 1988 the United Nations predicted that the Maldives’ 1,196 islands would be underwater by 2018. Read more here.
Ottawa, Canada 1919–2019
by Dr John Robinson
If you woke up tomorrow and it was 1919 things would look very different to 2019. Environment Canada’s temperature records 1919–2019 reveal what would be different about the weather. See more at Climate Discussion Nexus.
Climate Change: The Defence of CO2
by John Droz, Jr
In the Court of Public Opinion Carbon Dioxide (CO2) has already been convicted of being an evil villain. CO2 — more specifically man-made CO2 — has been found guilty of "being the main cause of substantial, unusual, global warming."
But its case was appealed, and a new trial has just been ordered!
Basically, there were two legal grounds for the appeal:
- the arguments against CO2 were circumstantial and/or inaccurate, and
- in the first go-around, CO2 was not allowed to put on an adequate legal defense.
Full PDF here.
The Four Pillars Supporting Climate Change Claims
by John Droz, Jr
One of the most formidable challenges of our times is that we are continually being bombarded with information, advice, propositions, stimuli, etc. In a word, all of us are overwhelmed. In such an environment, it’s a daunting ordeal to keep things in perspective. For example: What is true and what is not? What is important and what is not? So let’s cut to the chase: What is true and important about one of the main issues of our times: Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW)? When we separate the wheat from the chaff, belief in the AGW hypothesis is based on one or more of four pillars …. (read more here).
Are Australian Bushfires Worsening from Human-Caused Climate Change?
by Roy W. Spencer
The current claim by many that human-caused climate change has made Australian bushfires worse is difficult to support, for a number of reasons. Bushfires (like wildfires elsewhere in the world) are a natural occurrence wherever there is strong seasonality in precipitation, with vegetation growing during the wet season and then becoming fuel for fire during the dry season. Full posting here.
IPCC Temperature Forecasts vs Actuals
Latest IPCC Reports (AR5) have shown global mean temperature forecasts from the 2005 IPCC report exceeded actual readings. In the image above the coloured lines are Forecasts, the black line is the Actuals. Read more here and here.
Geologist’s short talk on AGW to Pennsylvania Legislature
Gregory Wrightstone provides compelling and science-based testimony to the Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources & Energy Committee opposing the plan to enrol that state into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
All-Time Low Temperatures Recorded
Weather data website ELECTROVERSE is reporting massive snow falls in many US, UK, European and Asian locations as temperatures plunge to all-time lows. Full details here.
Climategate Ten Years On
by Graham Pinn
It is now ten years since a hacked account at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) released over a thousand emails of communication between the UK’s leading climate centre and its equivalent in the US, the Earth Science Research Unit at Pennsylvania State University. The Director of research at the UK organisation, Phil Jones, and his US equivalent Michael Mann, were both the subject of a number of enquiries; Jones retired in 2016 and Mann is still involved in multiple litigation cases which followed publication of these documents. This important anniversary will no doubt not be mentioned by the left-wing press. Full PDF here
A lesson in futility: Drax Power Station
by Graham Pinn
The Drax power station opened in Selby, Yorkshire, UK in 1973. It was designed as a coal fired power station using the abundant coal which lay beneath it in the Selby coal fields which were opened in 1967. It produced 3,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity, subsequently expanded to 4,000 MW in 1986, 7% of the country’s electricity and enough to power 6 million homes. Its 6 units burned around 11 million tonnes of coal, producing an estimated 22 million tonnes of CO2, Europe’s largest industrial source. It is one of 7 remaining coal-fired power stations in UK which, between them produce 11,000 MW of electricity. Full PDF here
500 Scientists tell UN: There is no climate emergency
On the same day that Greta Thunberg made an impassioned speech to the UN about her fears of a climate emergency, 500 scientists sent a registered letter to the UN Secretary-General stating that there is no climate emergency and climate policies should be designed to benefit the lives of people. Link: Prominent scientists warn UN Secretary-General Guterres.
Confessions of a climate scientist:
The global warming hypothesis is an unproven hypothesis
by Dr Mototaka Nakamura
"In climate research and modelling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible." (Chapter 14, Section 14.2.2.2, IPCC, Third Report, 2001, emphasis added.)
The temperature forecasting models trying to deal with the intractable complexities of the climate are no better than toys or Mickey Mouse mockeries of the real world.
The global surface mean temperature-change data no longer have any scientific value and are nothing more than a propaganda tool to the public.
Greenhouse definition in violation of physical laws
by Dr Antero Ollila
The greenhouse (GH) effect is the IPCC's basic concept in global warming. The anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory is based on the enhanced GH effect caused by GH gases. There have been many comments on net pages that how carbon dioxide having only 400 ppm concentration can warm-up the climate so much as proposed by the IPCC. This story is a piece of simple evidence that it cannot. Full article here ...
Human-induced Climate Change: Fact or Fiction?
by Geoff Derrick
A wide-ranging slide presentation by geologist Geoff Derrick. Topics covered include the infamous 'hockey stick', the nature of carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide levels, tree-ring data, temperature sets, sea levels, hurricanes and storms, the politicisation of climate science, sunspot activity, the IPCC and energy demand (amongst others). Full PDF (note: 15Mb) here.
Winter monsoons become stronger during geomagnetic reversal
Revealing the impact of cosmic rays on the Earth's climate
(From Climate News by Alan Moran, August 2019)
Japanese researchers added to this body of knowledge by demonstrating the effects of cosmic rays on wind and atmospheric particulates in major climatic changes.
The graphic (above) is the picture on CO2 according to NASA.
But the increase does not spell doom because there is a weak relationship of CO2 and temperature (a CO2 doubling according to Lindzen and Choi brings only a 0.7°C increase). Moreover, NASA's data splices ice core data with direct measurements, exaggerating recent levels.
Cosmic theory gathering support
Studies of cosmic rays on cloud formation by Japan’s Kobe University and Finand’s Turku University show that during the last one hundred years temperature increases caused by carbon dioxide were approximately 0.1°C. The human contribution (ie non-natural environmental emissions), "was approximately 0.01°C". In other words, "practically no anthropogenic climate change". The study suggests that a major role in temperature variations is cloud, variations in which the Kobe researchers claim to have demonstrated were influential in previous climate change events. Read the Full Report here.
Why the global fossil-fuel phase-out is a fantasy akin to time travel
by Terence Corcoran
(Financial Post, 21 June 2019)
"Judging from the headlines, Canada and the world are on track to ratchet up renewable energy and begin the rapid scale-down and ultimate phase-out of fossil fuels. Most energy analysts consider the fossil-fuel phase-out to be a scientific, economic and political fantasy, akin to levitation and time travel, but the movement keeps making news." Full article here.
Arctic Sea Ice
(From Climate News by Alan Moran, July 2019)
Lending credence to global warming theories, Arctic sea ice melt is near to the 2012 record low point. The actual reason was "an area of high sea level pressure, an anticyclone, centered near the pole". Full details here.
Europe’s Dramatic Decline Of Renewable Energy Uptake
Ed Hoskins
(From Climate News by Alan Moran, June 2019)
The rate of renewable energy installations in the EU in 2018 was less than half the maximum level achieved in 2010. Both onshore Wind power and Solar PV are demising rapidly. Full post here.
Climate Change
Paul Butler, May 2019
The term "Climate Change", as used by environmental activists, is an Orwellian abuse of the language. Climate change is largely a natural phenomenon – day follows night, winter follows summer and long ice age periods follow shorter inter-glacial periods – so who can argue with it.
The more precise and meaningful title for the activists "climate change" is the cumbersome "Anthropogenic Global Warming Thesis (AGWT)"...
Read the full presentation here.
Does Global Warming Increase Tornado Activity?
Alan Moran, Climate News, June 2019
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) is one among many politicians claiming global warming is causing increased tornado activity. Roy Spencer shows that modest global warming, contrary to activist claims, reduces the number of tornadoes because their formation needs unusually cold air. Evidence supporting this is that tropical cyclones impacting Australia are on a flat or downward trajectory. Read the full story here, as well as the rest of the June edition of Climate News.
Hottest Summer in Australia was 1938/1939
Dr Jennifer Marohasy
THIS last summer has been hot in Australia. But was it the hottest ever? Summer 80 years ago was arguably as hot, if not hotter. Back then more ferocious bushfires burnt larger areas.
Yet Australia’s Environment Minister, Melissa Price, recently claimed this summer’s bushfires as a consequence of climate change. I grew up with stories from my late father of terrible bushfires – infernos – back in 1939. The Black Friday bushfires destroyed four times the area of farmland and forest as the devastating February 2009 fires – and twenty times as much as burnt this last summer. Ash from that bushfire fell as far away as New Zealand...
Read the full blogpost here.
The Truth about Greenhouse Gases
William Happer
"The object of the Author in the following pages has been to collect the most remarkable instances of those moral epidemics which have been excited, sometimes by one cause and sometimes by another, and to show how easily the masses have been led astray, and how imitative and gregarious men are, even in their infatuations and crimes," wrote Charles Mackay in the preface to the first edition of his Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. I want to discuss a contemporary moral epidemic: the notion that increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide, will have disastrous consequences for mankind and for the planet. This contemporary "climate crusade" has much in common with the medieval crusades Mackay describes, with true believers, opportunists, cynics, money-hungry governments, manipulators of various types, and even children's crusades.... Read the full document here.
Heartland Institute Forum:
Four Climate Scientists Destroy Climate Change Alarmism
Renewable subsidies: destroyers of low cost electricity supplies
Alan Moran
Renewable energy and its replacement of conventional electricity supplies
In meeting targets agreed at the 2002 Kyoto Convention, the precursor to the Paris Agreement, Australia, by preventing land clearance, reduced emissions by 100 million tonnes a year of CO2 equivalent. Comprising almost 20 per cent of total emissions, this reduction allowed Australia to claim that there had been a negligible increase over the period 1990-2012, and Australian politicians were able to bask in diplomatic plaudits at farmers’ expense... Read the full document here.
Massive expansion of Greenland ice taking place
Alan Moran, Climate News
Greenland Snow
A massive expansion of Greenland ice is taking place. At the end of the 2018 season (31 August), 517 billion tonnes more snow fell than the snow and ice that melted into the sea. The aggregate level of snow was 150 billion tonnes above the average for 1981-2010. Read the full story here, as well as the rest of the January edition of Climate News.
Renewable subsidies: destroyers of low cost electricity supplies
Alan Moran
Renewable energy and its replacement of conventional electricity supplies
In meeting targets agreed at the 2002 Kyoto Convention, the precursor to the Paris Agreement, Australia, by preventing land clearance, reduced emissions by 100 million tonnes a year of CO2 equivalent. Comprising almost 20 per cent of total emissions, this reduction allowed Australia to claim that there had been a negligible increase over the period 1990-2012, and Australian politicians were able to bask in diplomatic plaudits at farmers’ expense... Read the full document here.
September 2018 issue of Alan Moran's Climate News now available
The September edition of Alan Moran’s Climate News includes some recent (non-alarmist) climate science, the rising price of electricity in most Australian states and, against a backdrop of political turmoil, the politics of emissions and energy---both in Australia and overseas. Not forgetting, of course, the usual smattering of 'nutty' stories from the alarmist brigade. Read the full document here.
Windpower set to destroy Victorian baseload power—just as it did in South Australia
Jo Nova with Tom Quirk
Data analysis by Tom Quirk:
In the South Australian experiment total wind power capacity is now far above the average state demand most hours of the day. This effectively destroys any economic case for cheap baseload power (I hear that was the aim). This fleet of unreliable generators is being supported by forced subsidies through power bills from all around Australia. Sadly, despite this rain of money falling in SA, those funds end up with renewable investors, not South Australian consumers who pay some of the highest rates in the world.
These legislated subsidies have fed so much wind power that sometimes the state produces more power than it can use. That excess power will be exported, but may or may not be actually useful at whatever time it happens. Unless it happens at peak-time, it will be eating into the efficiency of baseload providers in other states. Like an infection, inefficiency and underutilization of infrastructure spreads…
This volatility appears to make freak wholesale price spikes more likely. Quirk calculates that one hot January day last year was so wildly expensive in South Australia it added $2/MWh to the entire years average wholesale cost. Can’t beat that for excitement in the trading room floor.
Victoria is determined to follow South Australia. While it currently has...
Read the full text of the PDF here.
Temperature and CO2 concentration
Bevan Dockery
The analysis of satellite lower troposphere temperature data compared to observatory CO2 concentration data contradicts the IPCC claim that CO2 causes atmospheric warming. Instead, the analysis shows that there is a statistically significant probability that the temperature controls the rate of change of the CO2 concentration. This is supported by the fact that the temperature and the rate of change of CO2 concentration have identical autocorrelation functions and Fourier Transform spectra. These reveal that there is a prominent 42 month cycle for the temperature due to the synodic period of the Sun, Earth, Moon configuration which is expressed in the Earth’s climate as the El Nino event.
Read the full text of the PDF here.
Will Australia make it to Paris 2030?
Tom Quirk
In 2005 Australia emitted 608 million tonnes (Mt) of CO2 – equivalent greenhouse gases. To achieve a 26 to 28% reduction we must cut emissions to an average of 444 Mt.
Due to accounting changes to land use and forestry, Australia could claim a fall of 104 Mt of CO2 from 2005 to 2012. The emissions from cutting down trees were no longer to be accounted immediately but could be written off over longer periods of years. A most interesting change was for forest fires to be treated as Acts of God and not counted in national emissions. An external issue is whether God is anthropogenic...
Read the full text of the PDF here.
Geologists challenge Society's position on AGW
1 June 2018
The President
Geological Society of London
Dear President
We are writing as a group of concerned primarily geoscientists, half of whom are or were Fellows, (names and affiliations listed below). Our concern is that the Society’s position on Climate Change (aka Anthropogenic Global Warming or AGW), is outdated and one-sided, and is distracting attention and funding from real issues of pollution such as plastic and other noxious industrial and domestic waste…
Read the full text of the open letter here.
June 2018 issue of Alan Moran's Climate News now available
The June edition of Alan Moran’s Climate News deals with the usual mix of the serious and the whimsical. It includes recent serious work on temperature data, the real economics of renewable energy and the precarious position of Professor Peter Ridd. But there are also whacky alarmist stories about Cuba’s environmental prowess, the alleged rise of dengue fever and carbon-credit-backed ice cream. Oh yes! Read the full document here.
Dr Jennifer Marohasy’s letter to the Chief Scientist on BOM’s Temperature Data (May 2018)
"In summary, given the intense political interest in climate change with far reaching economic implications, and the relatively recent transition to a very different methods of measuring temperatures (mercury thermometer to electronic probe), it would be assumed that there are dozens of reports published by the Bureau that document how comparable the measurements have proven at different locations, and under different conditions.
Yet there are none! Without independent verification, these temperature recordings of the Bureau are open to dispute and the integrity of the Bureau and the Government is degraded."
Read Dr Marohasy’s full letter here.
April 2018 issue of Alan Moran's Climate News now available
The April edition of Alan Moran’s Climate News deals with the serious and the silly—serious news on latest temperature data, storm and hurricane frequency; legal and diplomatic disputes from around the world that allege some connection with climate change; the economics of energy; and the usual weird and wacky claims that climate change is responsible for all manner of things. Read the full document here.
The Uncertain Climate
Tom Quirk
- The sources and sinks of atmospheric CO2 are not well understood.
- The occurence of decadel ocean oscillations cannot be predicted.
- The oceans have variable performance with El Nino La Nina events.
- Forest and peat fires have been ignored compared to CO2 from fossil fuels.
- The expanding forest sink for CO2 needs further exploration.
View the full PowerPoint presentation here.
Global cooling a reality but technology will help earth survive
Matt Ridley
This article originally appeared in The Times UK
and was reproduced with permission from The Australian
Record cold in America has brought temperatures as low as minus 44C in North Dakota, frozen sharks in Massachusetts and iguanas falling from trees in Florida. Al Gore blames global warming, citing one scientist to the effect that this is "exactly what we should expect from the climate crisis". Others beg to differ: Kevin Trenberth, of America’s National Centre for Atmospheric Research, insists that "winter storms are a manifestation of winter, not climate change". Read the full document here.
January 2018 issue of Alan Moran's Climate News now available
The latest edition of Alan Moran’s Climate News covers a wide range of topics—the latest ocean temperature and sea-ice data; the role of coal in power generation (and who is prepared to fund new coal-fired plants); the ongoing saga of the emaciated polar bear; and more on the impending ‘death’ of the Great Barrier Reef because of global warming. Read the full document here.
Hypothesis upon hypothesis
Dr Philip Dawson
Dr Ian Flanigan's article, "The core of climate science is in the real-world data" (News Weekly, November 17), rightly mentions data to prove hypotheses, and convincingly shows two graphs to disprove the carbon dioxide raises global temperature hypothesis.
There are a couple of problems with this. First, neither graph shows real-world data: each shows interpretations of the data based on numerous assumptions (hypotheses). Continue reading...
Two leading US scientists acclaim Australian climate book
Two leading USA scientists have acclaimed a little known book for its remarkable ability to show everyday people, not just scientists, the wonder of the climate system and how carbon dioxide is not driving modern climate change. The accolades are from world famous physicist, Emeritus Professor William Happer (who has advised President Trump on climate change), Princeton University, and Dr Willie Soon, Senior Researcher, Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics. Continue reading...
Two New Documentary Videos now available
1. ”Climate Change: A Better Understanding—The Physics” by Payne Kilbourn looks at energy flows in the earth’s fluid systems and suggests why the present basis of climate models, the radiative forcing concept, may be pushing climate research in the wrong direction:
2. ”Climate Change: A Better Understanding” by Payne Kilbourn traces the history of climate science, explains its fundamental flaws, and describes its unfortunate impact:
New issue of Alan Moran's Climate News now available
In late breaking news Michael Mann has been found guilty of contempt of court for refusing to hand over documents he claims to have in his libel action against Tim Ball.
Sensationally, a paper by the doyen of the warmistas with Ben Santar as the lead author and the litigious Mann as a co-author finally admits that the climate models they concocted are not tracking reality.
They "conclude that model overestimation of tropospheric warming in the early twenty-first century is partly due to systematic deficiencies in some of the post-2000 external forcings used in the model simulations". Just within the last 5 months, 58 more papers and 80 new graphs have been published that continue to undermine the popularized conception of a dramatic hockey-stick-shaped uptick, or an especially unusual global-scale warming during modern times. Continue reading ...
Inconvenient truths surface amid climate model doubts
The Australian, 1 July 2017
With preparations under way for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's next report, a key challenge for scientists remains to explain properly the 20-year slowdown in surface temperature rises and the failure of models to predict it.
The so-called pause has been a totemic issue for sceptics, who have earned derision from much of the climate science community since bringing it to global attention. The slowdown or hiatus was mentioned, however, in the IPCC fifth assessment report, and behind the vitriol there has been a lot of work done to provide some answers for the sixth assessment report to be published next year. Continue reading ...
Blueprint's author didn't ask about the weather
By William Kininmonth, The Australian, 12 June 2017
"Blueprint for the Future", Chief Scientist Alan Finkel's report into the future security of the National Electricity Market, claims four key outcomes: increased security, future reliability, rewarding consumers and lower emissions.
The central theme is Australia's continuing commitment to the Paris Accord. This commitment requires a cut in greenhouse gas emissions (that is, carbon dioxide) of 26 to 28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030. Surprisingly, and without policy direction, Finkel extends the target to zero emissions by the second half of the century. Continue reading ...
Important New Paper:
Is There a Trend in Global Average Temperature?
By John Reid, 2 May 2017
In recent decades, energy policy, both nationally and internationally, has been primarily concerned with the reduction in carbon emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels. This has arisen from a proliferation of theories of climate, encapsulated in complex numerical models, which purport to relate global surface air temperature to the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. All this activity is based on a single empirical observation, viz. that there has been a significant increase in global average temperature over the last century and a half. In this article we show that this observation is false and is based on an overly simplistic interpretation of the data. Read the article ...
US Politics and Climate Change
By Alan Moran, Climate News, 2 April 2017
The Obama administration's climate strategy fabricated a "Social cost of carbon" value at $36 per ton of CO2 and involved:
- tightening vehicle fuel economy standards;
- the Clean Power Plan designed to cut, by 2030, carbon dioxide emissions from electric power
- generation plants by 30 per cent below their 2005 levels; and a moratorium on federal coal leasing.
President Trump's budget proposes a 31 per cent reduction ($2.5 billion) for EPA, eliminating most of the agency's climate change programs, including the regulations to control CO2 emissions from power plants, funding of international climate change programs, climate change research and the Energy Star voluntary certification program for energy-efficient products. The Department of Energy has a $2 billion cut in programs to promote carbon free energy technologies. Continue reading ...
Climate Warriors Tilt at the Orthodoxy
By Andrew L. Urban, The Australian, 31 March 2017
Climate science has failed public policy, respected and disenchanted climate scientist Judith Curry argued to the US Congress this week.
Dr Curry deconstructed the history of climate science to claim that the singular focus on research corralled by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change into man-made causes destroyed the usefulness of the science from the beginning. Continue reading ...
South Australia - a Renewable State?
Paul Miskelly and Tom Quirk
With $90 billion spent on batteries and 4,000 MW of more wind farms, South Australia could be a totally renewable state, at least for electricity.
Australia along with one or two other states has been described by Al Gore as the canary in the coal mine for climate change and renewable energy. This interesting comparison was rewarded by South Australia putting the canary in the dark as there was no coal. But it would be interesting to see what the electricity supply of South Australia might be like with zero CO2 emissions as is the fond wish of many and even of learned societies. Continue reading...
US Congress to investigate shonky climate report
Peter Westmore, News Weekly
The United States Congress will investigate America's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), following revelations by a senior climate scientist that the government agency faked evidence to claim that global temperatures had soared over the past 20 years, contradicting earlier evidence of a 20-year pause.
The NOAA report, which was strongly endorsed by the former Obama Administration just before the recent Paris Climate Conference, was used to justify the conference demand for continuing cuts in global carbon dioxide emissions.Continue reading...
Latest Analysis of Official Temperatures Suggest Increase Since 1900 Only from 'Natural Drivers' or Errors by Official Agencies
Des Moore
As we watch our TV news showing well below freezing temperatures in parts of Europe, even in Greece, and North America, we are also told by official meteorological agencies that 2016 was one of the warmest years on record. For example, in its report on 2016 the Australian Bureau of Meteorology claims that year was 'Australia's fourth-warmest year on record (the national observational dataset commences in 1910), with Australia's area-averaged mean temperature for 2016 being 0.87°C above the 1961-1990 average. It also claims that sea surface temperatures in the oceans around Australia were the warmest on record at 0.73°C above average. The UK Met Office claims that provisional statistics published by it show 2016 as 13th warmest year in the UK (in the series going back to 1910) and that globally 2016 shares the warmest year with 2015. Continue reading...
Jennifer Marohasy on the Australian Temperature Record
Jennifer's latest article on the the historical temperature record for Australia (and the BoM's "human-induced" climate change bias)---"Intent as the enemy of truth"---is available here. [January 2017].
Available Now ... New Book on Climate Science
Mirrors and Mazes
Mirrors and Mazes is written by Dr Howard T. Brady, an Australian who worked as an Antarctic scientist. He was on four expeditions to Antarctica with the US Office of Polar Programs. In 2011 he was awarded the Alumnus Scientist of the Year by Northern Illinois University for contributions to the climate debate and to the community at large.
Mirrors and Mazes addresses questions we all ask: Is sea level rising? Are the Poles melting? Are storms getting worse? Are temperatures rising? How do climate models work? Could there be other future climate shocks?
Mirrors and Mazes is now available.
For further information, including more about the author, excerpts from the book and publication details, visit Mirrors and Mazes.
The Civil Heretic
By Nicholas Dawidoff, The New York Times
"For more than half a century the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson has quietly resided in Princeton, N.J., on the wooded former farmland that is home to his employer, the Institute for Advanced Study, this country's most rarefied community of scholars. Lately, however, since coming "out of the closet as far as global warming is concerned," as Dyson sometimes puts it, there has been noise all around him..." Continue reading ...
Obituary: Professor Bob Carter 1942-2016
It is with great sadness that we report the passing of Professor Bob Carter, who died in Townsville on Tuesday 19 January 2016 following a heart attack. The following tribute was written by Dr Jennifer Marohasy, who was a friend and colleague of Bob's.
"We should prepare for climate change"
OUTSPOKEN critic of catastrophic global warming theory, Bob Carter, died in Townsville on Tuesday.
Professor Carter did not like the term sceptic, he considered himself a rationalist, and popular usage of the term 'climate change' a tautology. As he wrote frequently: the geological record tells us that climate always changes. In Professor Carter's passing we have lost a person who believed in value-free science.
When he was still directing the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, Professor Carter spent an evening with me at his home in Townsville poring over a single chart that was a proxy record of New Zealand's climate over the last several thousand years. The time series data had been printed out on a long and continuous roll of paper: longer than the kitchen table so the end of the chart, that portion representing the present, was often dangling somewhere near the floor.
Professor Carter was always more interested in periods of dramatic climate change, particularly the Younger Dryas. The Younger Dryas occurred about 14,500 years ago, with an article in the Journal of Geophysical Research suggesting Greenland’s temperature rose 10° C (18° F) in a decade. Professor Carter was reluctant to endorse such a dramatic temperature increase, but always emphasized that relative to geological history, late 20th century rates of warming of less than 2° C per century, are not unusual.
Professor Carter was a real expert on climate change. He was director of the Australian Office of the Ocean Drilling Program which was an international cooperative effort to collect deep sea cores. From these cores past climates for specific regions have been reconstructed.
We both presented to the Coalition Environment Committee at Parliament House on 20th October last year. Professor Carter eloquently explained, with examples, how modern temperatures are not unusually warm; that current carbon dioxide levels are low relative to geological time; that as industrial emissions are added to the atmosphere, the less the "greenhouse" warming effect of each increment of carbon dioxide. Therefore, the professor concluded, "dangerous warming of this causation will not occur."
Furthermore, Professor Carter added: the addition of 50 ppm of CO2 for 1981-2010 has fertilized an 11 percent increase in plant cover. Thus CO2 is both a strong environmental (greening the planet) and agrarian (crop yield increases) benefit.
In this presentation, the Professor also emphasized the importance of the scientific method. "To the extent that it is possible for any human endeavor to be so, science is value-free. Science is a way of attempting to understand the world in which live from a rational point of view, based on observation, experiment and tested theory. Irritatingly, especially for governments, science does not operate by consensus and it is often best progressed by mavericks. The alternative to a scientific approach is one based on superstition, phobia, religion or politics." So, wrote Bob Carter in an article entitled 'Science is not Consensus', published by the Institute of Public Affairs in December 2003.
In the preface to his first book 'Climate: The Counter Consensus' Bob encouraged us to all to "trust authority less and our own brains more" as we assess the likely dangers of both known natural and hypothetical human-caused global climate change. Chapter 11 of this book outlined the real and present dangers posed by natural climate change. We are reminded of 1816, known as 'the year without a summer' for its intense cold associated with both the Dalton solar minimum and a super-eruption of the Indonesian volcano Tambora.
Professor Carter understood that such events were often associated with extreme hardship and famine, and that, to the extent possible, nations should use their resources to mitigate against such catastrophe. In particular, Professor Carter advocated what he referred to as Plan B: that future climate hazards, both natural and possibly human-caused, be assessed in terms of risk that vary in type and intensity from geographic place to place.
"Nobody," the Professor would joke, "lives in a world climate". Putting in place policies and plans to mitigate the dangers and vagaries of natural climate change must occur on a regional basis. Putting in place policies and plan to prepare for natural climate change, would, Professor Carter argued, make us ready for human-caused climate change, should it ever become manifest. Even with generous funding for the implementation of national hazard warning and disaster relief schemes, Bob concluded his book with comment that this would cost orders of magnitude less than those associated with the introduction of unnecessary and ineffectual emissions trading schemes.
Other tributes and notices for Professor Carter may be found at JoNova's website and the Heartland Institute.
A selection of his papers published on the Lavoisier website may be found here.
A mysterious CO2 anomaly in the atmosphere:
how 2.5Gt of carbon came in 1988 and went in 1992
By Tom Quirk, January 2016
There is an unexplained atmospheric CO2 "bubble" centred around 1990. The apparent smooth and continuous rise in atmospheric CO2 concentrations is broken by an anomaly that can be seen in Figure 1 below.Full PDF of Article...
Crisis in Science
By Don Benjamin, December 2015
The public are being deprived of important information necessary for them to make decisions, including decisions that could affect their survival, because of information unwittingly withheld by the media.
The problem arises out of the fact that in several important controversial areas the majority of scientific experts hold a belief that is contrary to the latest scientific evidence.
Because those in the media have concluded that the majority of medical or scientific experts must be correct, they have decided not to air viewpoints that conflict with those of the consensus of experts. This avoids the criticism by those with vested interests that people might be given wrong information that might put them at risk.
The controversial health areas include cancer, cardiovascular disease, HIV/AIDS, genetics and global warming. Full PDF of Article...
Why Scientists Disagree about Global Warming
By Craig Idso, Robert M. Carter, S. Fred Singer, 23 November 2015, at The Heartland Institute
Summary: "The most important fact about climate science, often overlooked, is that scientists disagree about the environmental impacts of the combustion of fossil fuels on the global climate. There is no survey or study showing "consensus" on the most important scientific issues, despite frequent claims by advocates to the contrary.
Scientists disagree about the causes and consequences of climate for several reasons. Climate is an interdisciplinary subject requiring insights from many fields. Very few scholars have mastery of more than one or two of these disciplines." Continue reading summary and for link to full PDF of Policy Paper...
Drawing the Wrong Conclusions
By Steven Kates, November 2015, in Quadrant Magazine
Global warming and Keynesian theory are natural bedmates, each built on the notion that only harm can come of trusting market forces. As both aim to suppress individual freedom, those who fancy themselves best equipped to regulate the world's affairs tolerate neither naysayers nor contradictory evidence. Full article ...
"Massively Altered" ... German Professor Examines NASA GISS Temperature Datasets
By Pierre Gosselin, 20 November 2015, on NoTricksZone
Veteran journalist Gunter Ederer has written a piece reporting that massive alterations have been found in the NASA GISS temperature data series, citing a comprehensive analysis conducted by a leading German scientist. These results are now available to the public.
Ederer reports not long ago retired geologist and data computation expert Professor Dr. Friedrich Karl Ewert began looking at the data behind the global warming claims, and especially the datasets of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS).
Ewert painstakingly examined and tabulated the reams of archived data from 1153 stations that go back to 1881 -- which NASA has publicly available -- data that the UN IPCC uses to base its conclusion that man is heating the Earth's atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels. According to Ederer, what Professor Ewert found is "unbelievable". Read more...
What You Don't Know About Climate
A public statement from the Climate Study Group, placed in The Australian newspaper, November 2015. PDF is available here.
Comment
Peter Mervyn commenting on "French weatherman Philippe Verdier sacked for being a climate sceptic"
in The Australian, 2 November 2015:
"The only true, accurate and reliable global temperature data sets are the two satellite temperature data sets. Virtually every cubic inch of the atmosphere is scanned by these NASA satellites. The data is validated by weather balloon radiosonde temperature data.
In the last 18 years and 8 months, there is no doubting that the atmospheric CO2 concentration has risen for whatever reasons. Yet the satellite temperature data show there has not been any global warming over that same period.
So what we have is an extensive data set kept by the University of Alabama, Huntsville and the one kept by Remote Sensing Systems, both confirming the same thing ... the data represents actual measurements, being first-class real world observational data ... and the data shows no discernible global warming over the last 18 years and 8 months.
That demonstrates that the climate models get an "F" for fail. It also shows that the pseudoscience behind the IPCC's supposition, and the supposition itself, that CO2 emitted by human activity is causing catastrophic global warming and is the key driver of climate change are absolute rubbish!"
Cutting emissions beyond Paris
By Alan Moran on 22 October 2015 in Australian Financial Review
Since the Turnbull Prime Ministership, Environment Minister Greg Hunt has used somewhat tougher language in selling the government's intent to force a reduction in Australia's greenhouse gas emissions.
No longer do we have Tony Abbott's prospective axing of the renewable scheme with its 2.5billionayearcosttoconsumersandtheclosureofthe2.5 billion a year cost to consumers and the closure of the 2.5billionayearcosttoconsumersandtheclosureofthe10 billion Clean Energy Development Corporation. Instead we have assurances that the renewable requirement will never be reduced and a stressing of $1.8 million fines for companies that breech their baseline requirements. Read more...
Ideology adds heat to the debate on climate change
By Jennifer Marohasy on September 29, 2015 in The Australian
For the true believer, it is too awful to even consider that the Australian Bureau of Meteorology could be exaggerating global warming by adjusting figures. This doesn't mean, though, that it's not true.
In fact, under prime minister Tony Abbott, a panel of eminent statisticians was formed to investigate these claims detailed in The Australian newspaper in August and September last year. Read more...
'Climate sceptics should be jailed', say scientists
The science on global warming is settled, so settled that 20 climate scientists are asking President Barack Obama to prosecute people who disagree with them on the science behind man-made global warming.
Scientists from several universities and research centers even asked Obama to use the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) to prosecute groups that "have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change, as a means to forestall America's response to climate change." Read more...
Another inconvenient truth on climate change
By Brett Hogan on September 13, 2015 in Economic freedom
Graham Lloyd, the Australian's Environment Editor, has a fascinating piece in Friday's paper about the Southern Ocean's renewed ability to absorb increased amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
It wasn't long ago that environmentalists were alleging that the Southern Ocean was "full" of CO2 because of wicked humans!. Read more...
Briefing Note: Environmental Policy
Des Moore
Having announced a target for reducing emissions by 26 per cent by 2030, is it feasible for the Abbott government to publish a critique of the reductions approach being adopted by some countries? As it appears that the Paris talks will involve a "pledge and review" that will be highly unlikely to involve legally binding commitments by (at least) major developing countries, there would seem no reason to forego publishing a critical review and to indicate that Australia will not adopt policies that would reduce potential economic growth (now acknowledged by the one-eyed Climate Change Authority under former Treasury Head Bernie Fraser) until major emitters have all agreed to substantive reductions. Continue reading...
Recent Presentation
Des Moore: "Exposing the myths of climate change"
A presentation to the Forum on Climate Change held in Noosa, July 2015. PDF of the presentation is here.
Interesting New Post
Anthony Watts: Despite the "urgency" of Paris climate talks, a U.N. sponsored global poll rates climate change dead last
The PDF of the item (graphics and text) is here.
New Report
Interim Report of the Senate Select Committee on Wind Turbines
The PDF of the Report (June 2015, 29 pages) is here.
New Video
Mark Steyn: Keynote address to the International Conference of Climate Change sponsored by The Heartland Institute
YouTube video link is here.
New Submission
"Register of Environmental Organisations"
[A Submission by P.S. Clark to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on the Environment Inquiry into the administration, transparency and effectiveness of the Register of Environmental Organisations under the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997, 21 May 2015]
Full submission here (PDF)
New Submission
"A New View On Climate Change Involving the Relevance of Behavioural Economics"
[A Submission regarding Australia's post-2020 emissions reduction target
by the Climate Study Group, April 2015]
ABSTRACT
Recent results in psychology research have made a significant contribution to behavioural economics. The results are also relevant for determination of public policy. On this basis implications for climate policy are reviewed.
Full submission here (PDF)
Important Scientific Paper
"The Potency of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) as a Greenhouse Gas"
Antero Ollila, Adjunct Associate Professor, Aalto University, Finland
ABSTRACT
According to this study the commonly applied radiative forcing (RF) value of 3.7 Wm-2 for CO2 concentration of 560 ppm includes water feedback. The same value without water feedback is 2.16 Wm-2 which is 41.6 % smaller. Spectral analyses show that the contribution of CO2 in the greenhouse (GH) phenomenon is about 11 % and water's strength in the present climate in comparison to CO2 is 15.2. The author has analyzed the value of the climate sensitivity (CS) and the climate sensitivity parameter using three different calculation bases. These methods include energy balance calculations, infrared radiation absorption in the atmosphere, and the changes in outgoing longwave radiation at the top of the atmosphere. According to the analyzed results, the equilibrium CS (ECS) is at maximum 0.6 °C and the best estimate of climate sensitivity is 0.268 K/(Wm-2) without any feedback mechanisms. The latest warming scenarios of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for different CO2 concentrations until the year 2100 include the same feedbacks as the 2011 warming i.e. only water feedback. The ECS value of 3.0 °C would mean that other feedback mechanisms should be stronger than water feedback. So far there is no evidence about these mechanisms, even though 40 % of the change from 280 ppm to 560 ppm has already happened. The relative humidity trends since 1948 show descending development which gives no basis for using positive water feedback in any warming calculations. Cloudiness changes could explain the recent stagnation in global warming.
The full paper [PDF] is available here.
Patrick Moore Goes to War
Tony Thomas
The co-founder of Greenpeace left his Melbourne audience in no doubt that the so-called 'environmental organisation' is a not only an enemy of progress, it regards the waste of human life as collateral damage in its crusade to hector, harass and hobble all who oppose its ambitions.
Full article here (PDF)
Former Greenpeace Co-founder to vist Australia
Des Moore
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| Greenpeace Co-Founder Dr Patrick Moore was director of Greenpeace International for seven years, when it became the world's largest environmental activist organisation. Moore left Greenpeace in 1986. He is currently touring Australia discussing the global warming scare. |
The UN Climate Summit has been forgotten but we still seem to be trying to discover how long is a piece of string. While an article since in prominent science journal Nature acknowledges the "barely risen" (as it puts it) temperature over 16 years makes tenuous the aim to try to limit temperature increases to the IPCC's 2C, the authors suggest the increased energy generated by humans lies buried in the oceans and is stoking sea level rises. Yet the rate of such rises poses no serious threat to humans.
Another recent report says the Presidents of the US and India have agreed to scale back the chemical refrigerants (HFCs) used in air conditioners and home appliances because they may be trapping the sun's heat in the atmosphere. Yet with no apparent effect on temperatures. Of course, the US Administration recently claimed that global warming is a bigger threat to mankind than Islamic State.
More sensibly, former head of the National Climate Centre, William Kininmonth, argued in his letter in The Australian that queries about the temperature data published by the Bureau of Meteorology should be examined not on their own but as part of a full and open scrutiny of the scientific methodology used.
Indeed, the stage has surely been reached in the climate change string where a thorough explanation needs to be provided to a confused public of the justification for governments continuing to spend taxpayers money on policies designed to reduce temperatures which are already stagnant. Desirably, such an explanation should be made before any decision on continuing the enormous subsidies for renewable energy.
Former co-founder of Greenpeace, Canadian Patrick Moore, is due shortly in Australia to explain why he is a convert and now accepts the growing sceptical view of the dangerous warming thesis. He is even trying to obtain access to Abbott to explain why he should become a full sceptic. Moore (no relation) is a much sought after speaker overseas and, thanks to the sponsorship by Case Smit (who brought Monckton to Australia) will be making presentations from 20 October.
It's official: no global warming for 18 years 1 month
Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
The RSS monthly satellite global temperature anomaly for September 2014 is in, and the Great Pause is now two months longer than it was last month. Would this year's el Niño bite soon enough to stop the psychologically-significant 18-year threshold from being crossed? The official answer is No.
Globally, September was scarcely warmer than August, which was itself some distance below the 18-year trend-line. Therefore, taking the least-squares linear-regression trend on the RSS satellite monthly global mean surface temperature anomalies, there has now been no global warming for 18 years 1 month.
Dr Benny Peiser, our good friend at the Global Warming Policy Foundation in the UK, had anticipated the official crossing of the 18-year threshold by a day or two with an interesting note circulated to supporters on the ever-lengthening period without any global warming, and featuring our 17-years-11-months graph from last month.
The Great Pause is the longest continuous period without any warming in the global instrumental temperature record since the satellites first watched in 1979. It has endured for a little over half the satellite temperature record. Yet the Pause coincides with a continuing, rapid increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Cool It
Nigel Lawson
"Global warming orthodoxy is not merely irrational. It is wicked."
There is something odd about the global warming debate - or the climate change debate, as we are now expected to call it, since global warming has for the time being come to a halt.
I have never shied away from controversy, nor - for example, as Chancellor - worried about being unpopular if I believed that what I was saying and doing was in the public interest.
But I have never in my life experienced the extremes of personal hostility, vituperation and vilification which I - along with other dissenters, of course - have received for my views on global warming and global warming policies.Continue reading...
[An essay based on the text of a speech given to the Institute for Sustainable Energy and the Environment at the University of Bath]
New Submission to Senate Committee
by Dr Ian R.G. Wilson
One religion is enough
by John Howard
[An extract from the Annual Lecture to Global Warming Policy Foundation on 5 November 2013]
We are all aware of the climate enthusiasts, who advocate quite substantial, and costly, responses to what they see as irrefutable evidence that the world's climate faces catastrophe. By employing a sanctimonious tone against people who do not share their view, they show their true colours: to them the cause has become a substitute religion. Increasingly offensive language is used. The most egregious example has been the term "denier".
We are all aware of the particular meaning that word has acquired in contemporary parlance. It has been employed in this debate with some malice aforethought. An overriding feature of the debate is the constant attempt to intimidate policy makers, in some cases successfully, with the mantras of "follow the science" and "the science is truly settled".
The purpose is to create the impression that there is really no room for argument; this is not really a public policy issue; it is one on which the experts have spoken, and we would all be quite daft to do other than follow the prescriptions, it is asserted, which flow automatically from the scientific findings. Continue reading...
Ray Evans Reflects
19 October 2013
"Various commentators are telling us we must have a "price on carbon". One presumes they mean that we need to levy a tax on emissions of carbon dioxide, which is not quite the same thing. Currently NSW is suffering from the worst bushfires for a decade. These bushfires are emitting many megatonnes of CO2, arguably equivalent to Australia's annual emissions of anthropogenic CO2. Does the atmospheric CO2 from bushfires play a different climate control role to mankind's emissions? If not, then who is to pay the tax on them? This on-going "carbon" lunacy becomes increasingly difficult to challenge, since the language and the slogans used by the Warmists have no connection with the real world."
"The story from Germany becomes increasingly fantastic (although tragic for the Germans). The account of a secret deal between Germany and the UK in which Germany could save its auto industry, and Britain keep its financial services sector in good health is something out of Fawlty Towers - "Don't mention the War".
For related articles, see our Most Recent Additions page.
IPCC at a crossroad with fifth climate change report
by William Kininmonth
25 September 2013
The meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in Stockholm this week is arguably the most important in its 25-year history. The meeting is to finalise the fifth IPCC assessment report, the UN's formal advice to governments.
Since the release of the fourth report in 2007, the IPCC finds itself battling to retain credibility as a source of independent advice to governments.
Parliamentary and semi-judicial inquiries were held in Britain following unintended public access to email exchanges held by the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia. The emails involved scientists and others associated with the IPCC process. No wrong-doing was attributed to the scientists but questions of probity and bias were left unanswered. Continue reading...
Taxing Air successfully launched in Adelaide
29 July 2013
Written by Bob Carter and John Spooner, Taxing Air: Facts and Fallacies About Climate Change was successfully launched by Senator Cory Bernardi at the Bert Kelly Research Centre in Adelaide on 29 July.
Speakers at the launch included Lydia Bevege (Institute of Public Affairs), Centre Chairman Bob Day and author Prof. Bob Carter. More information and images here.
BOOK LAUNCH: "Reflections of a Professional Engineer"
a personal account of family and professional life
4.30 pm, Wednesday 19 December 2012,
Engineers Australia Auditorium, Chatswood, NSW
George Fox AM was a founding member of the Lavoisier Group. He had a long career with the English Electric Company as managing director for Australia, after which at age 55 he formed his own small business which he ran for the next 43 years. He was on the boards of 12 companies, represented numerous manufacturers, ranging from turbine blades to arc furnaces to transportation systems and spent much time and energy giving back to the profession. For more than a decade he championed a realistic and fact-based view of climate change, deriding false science. He was made a Member of the Order of Australia for services to engineering in 2007 and also received the James N Kirby Award for outstanding contributions to electrical engineering.
George Fox died in June 2012 aged 98. His memorial service was held in Pymble on 14 June which noted that he was still on the board of one company at the time of his passing. He had had a huge innings, packing in the '60 seconds worth of distance run' every waking minute. He had completed the text of his book at the time of his death. "Reflections of a Professional Engineer" was launched on Wednesday 19 December 2012 at 4.30pm at Engineers Australia Auditorium in Chatswood in Sydney.
Further information may be found here. Ray Evans' obituary notice is here.
Copies of the book will be available on the evening for purchase, at $65.00 nett. Cash or cheque payable to 'ECF Engineering Pty Ltd'. To obtain a copy please write to Robert Fox at bob@fox-com.com.
Important New Paper
Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt?
by Dr David Evans
"How many excuses does it take? The Western Climate Establishment has allowed egregious mistakes, major errors, and obvious biases to accumulate - each factor on its own might be hard to pin down, but the pattern is undeniable."
"The public might not understand the science, but they do understand cheating..."
Download the PDF [4.5 Mb] here.
The Climategate Emails
edited and annotated by John Costella
In November 2009, an anonymous whistleblower put just over 1000 emails comprising email traffic to and from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) on an obscure Russian website. They were subsequently rapidly disseminated around the world.
These emails show a tightly knit cabal of scientists adjusting temperature data to conform to their political agenda; exerting pressure to censor publications going into the "peer reviewed" literature (usually with complete success); bullying journalists with threats of excommunication so that what was published in the mainstream media was in accordance with the global warming agenda; and using the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as the primary vehicle for their political ambitions.
To work through these emails, in order to discover what was going on, is a major undertaking. John Costella has provided us with an edited and annotated account of the emails which enables the lay person, in a relatively short time, to understand what was going on and how it was done.
This PDF version of the published book will provide access to everyone who is concerned with this great debate. It is available here.
Hard copy of Back to the Nineteenth Century available on request;
online version also available
Back to the Nineteenth Century, comprises three essays by Ray Evans (on the social and economic consequences of the CPRS), Tom Quirk (on the shortcomings of the IPCC science) and Alan Moran (on the economic consequences of the Act, especially for energy), together with a foreword by Peter Walsh.
The publication is available in either of two forms: as hard copy or as an online PDF file. To order a hard copy, please send your details to the Secretary here. Please include your name and postal address and the number of copies you would like to receive. The Lavoisier Group would be grateful to receive donations to cover postage and printing costs.
If preferred, the booklet may also be downloaded as a PDF file. To download it, please click here [2.9 Mb PDF].
Lavoisier Conferences/Forums
Our most recent Forum was held in Melbourne in July 2008. Entitled 'The Solar System and Earth's Climate', we are adding presentations from the Forum to our site as they come to hand. Click here for three Forum papers on the life and work of Rhodes Fairbridge. Click here for Ian Wilson's 'Which Came First: The Chicken or the Egg?' [PDF]