A Fresh Look at Climate Change (original) (raw)
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Global Warming: Forecasts by Scientists versus Scientific Forecasts
In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Working Group One, a panel of experts established by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme, issued its Fourth Assessment Report. The Report included predictions of dramatic increases in average world temperatures over the next 92 years and serious harm resulting from the predicted temperature increases. Using forecasting principles as our guide we asked: Are these forecasts a good basis for developing public policy? Our answer is “no”. To provide forecasts of climate change that are useful for policy-making, one would need to forecast (1) global temperature, (2) the effects of any temperature changes, and (3) the effects of feasible alternative policies. Proper forecasts of all three are necessary for rational policy making. The IPCC WG1 Report was regarded as providing the most credible long-term forecasts of global average temperatures by 31 of the 51 scientists and others involved in forecasting climate change who responded to our survey. We found no references in the 1056-page Report to the primary sources of information on forecasting methods despite the fact these are conveniently available in books, articles, and websites. We audited the forecasting processes described in Chapter 8 of the IPCC’s WG1 Report to assess the extent to which they complied with forecasting principles. We found enough information to make judgments on 89 out of a total of 140 forecasting principles. The forecasting procedures that were described violated 72 principles. Many of the violations were, by themselves, critical. The forecasts in the Report were not the outcome of scientific procedures. In effect, they were the opinions of scientists transformed by mathematics and obscured by complex writing. Research on forecasting has shown that experts’ predictions are not useful in situations involving uncertainly and complexity. We have been unable to identify any scientific forecasts of global warming. Claims that the Earth will get warmer have no more credence than saying that it will get colder.
Global Warming and Climate Change: Science and Politics
Quaestiones Geographicae, 2013
The threat of dangerous climate change from anthropogenic global warming has decreased. Global temperature rose from 1975 to 1998, but since then has levelled off. Sea level is now rising at about 1.5mm per year based on tide gauges, and satellite data suggests it may even be falling. Coral islands once allegedly threatened by drowning have actually increased in area. Ice caps cannot possibly slide into the sea (the alarmist model) because they occupy kilometres-deep basins extending below sea level. Deep ice cores show a succession of annual layers of snow accumulation back to 760,000 years and in all that time never melted, despite times when the temperature was higher than it is today. Sea ice shows no change in 30 years in the Arctic. Emphasis on the greenhouse effect stresses radiation and usually leads to neglect of important factors like convection. Water is the main greenhouse gas. The CO 2 in the ocean and the atmosphere are in equilibrium: if we could remove CO 2 from the atmosphere the ocean would give out more to restore the balance. Increasing CO 2 might make the ocean less alkaline but never acid. The sun is now seen as the major control of climate, but not through greenhouse gases. There is a very good correlation of sunspots and climate. Solar cycles provide a basis for prediction. Solar Cycle 24 has started and we can expect serious cooling. Many think that political decisions about climate are based on scientific predictions but what politicians get are projections based on computer models. The UN's main adviser, the IPCC, uses adjusted data for the input, their models and codes remain secret, and they do not accept responsibility for their projections.
Energies, 2020
In order to assess the merits of national climate change mitigation policies, it is important to have a reasonable benchmark for how much human-caused global warming would occur over the coming century with "Business-As-Usual" (BAU) conditions. However, currently, policymakers are limited to making assessments by comparing the Global Climate Model (GCM) projections of future climate change under various different "scenarios", none of which are explicitly defined as BAU. Moreover, all of these estimates are ab initio computer model projections, and policymakers do not currently have equivalent empirically derived estimates for comparison. Therefore, estimates of the total future human-caused global warming from the three main greenhouse gases of concern (CO 2 , CH 4 , and N 2 O) up to 2100 are here derived for BAU conditions. A semi-empirical approach is used that allows direct comparisons between GCM-based estimates and empirically derived estimates. If the climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases implies a Transient Climate Response (TCR) of ≥ 2.5 • C or an Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) of ≥ 5.0 • C then the 2015 Paris Agreement's target of keeping human-caused global warming below 2.0 • C will have been broken by the middle of the century under BAU. However, for a TCR < 1.5 • C or ECS < 2.0 • C, the target would not be broken under BAU until the 22nd century or later. Therefore, the current Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) "likely" range estimates for TCR of 1.0 to 2.5 • C and ECS of 1.5 to 4.5 • C have not yet established if human-caused global warming is a 21st century problem.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just published its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). The Panel is recognized today as a pioneer in providing policy-relevant science to global policy: it has conducted the most comprehensive orchestration of scientific knowledge to date and has managed to include experts from around the world in assessment activities. In doing so it has spoken on behalf of global science with one voice, thereby acquiring a reputation as the epistemic authority in knowledge matters relevant for climate policy. It was jointly awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize along with former US Vice President Al Gore. The previous IPCC assessment report in 2007 had already signaled that scientific controversies over the existence of global warming have effectively been settled and that human influences on the climate system are real and significant. The IPCC has thus accomplished a core part of its original mission, namely to provide sound scientific evidence about the causes of human-induced global climate change. Nevertheless, many of the characteristics and consequences of future climate change at sub-global scales, as well as their interactions with other drivers of change in the world, are still poorly understood. Because much has changed since the establishment of the IPCC in the late 1980s, discussions about the need for, and design of, future assessments beyond 2014 are back on the agenda of the IPCC plenary sessions (Stocker 2013). In the following we discuss the responsiveness and organizational reflexivity of the IPCC. We briefly illustrate how the IPCC has responded to particular challenges, such as demands for political relevance, the integration and representation of diverse and distributed knowledge and calls for public accountability and participation. We thus propose more substantial changes to constructively address the realities of climate change and to meet the changing geopolitical and public conditions of its debate. We make suggestions for more substantial changes to ensure that future assessments of climate change knowledge are more representative, reflexive and accountable. How Knowledge is Never Neutral For Policy The 'global average temperature' has long been the organizing device for the IPCC around which both scientific knowledge has been assessed and different policy options evaluated. Framing climate change in this way, as a universal risk that can only be reduced through collective action, creates the need for consensus-based knowledge production and decision support. It has been difficult, if not impossible, for the IPCC to break away from the early framing of climate change around global average temperature as the pre-eminent indicator of risk. The IPCC thereby reduced the diversity of political drivers of climate change and the complex breadth of values underlying climate policy to a singular index of change and policy ambition: limiting global warming to no more than 2°C above nineteenth century temperature with its respective carbon budget. Climate Change and the Assessment of Expert Knowledge: Does the IPCC Model Need Updating?