Renwick, Naish invoke malignant ‘consensus’, cite scandalous papers

Desperation palpable

See UPDATE, below

Professors James Renwick and Tim Naish are sounding global warming warnings around the country. We have received a copy of their presentation, called Ten by Ten: Climate Change – Ten things you didn’t know about climate change.

This academic presentation is filled with errors, though it’s funded by the Victoria University of Wellington and the Royal Society—which means your taxes, at least in part. Just now I want to comment on one slide (No. 14) that appears to claim that almost all scientists believe that anthropogenic global warming is caused by mankind. This is the slide.

TEN by TEN slide 14

It illustrates the malignant “climate consensus” that poisons most popular discussion on climate policy. Mere disagreement of even thousands of people won’t create warming if the temperature has been falling. It matters little whether they’re scientists or not. But the very mention of a consensus inhibits the examination of evidence—and even armed with evidence it still takes a brave man to disagree with “97 per cent of scientists.” So claiming a consensus, even if it doesn’t exist, can be an effective ploy.

Of course, resorting to a consensus, even if it does exist, to win a scientific argument is erroneous. The late Michael Crichton said: “In science consensus is irrelevant. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.” He was contemptuous that claiming a consensus could settle a scientific question: “There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”

Perfectly unpersuasive

For convenience and a kind of shorthand there may well arise a consensus on some scientific topic, and it often happens, but though the truth in science might create a consensus, no consensus ever established a scientific truth.

Professor Judith Curry quotes a post by Ben Pile which is further food for thought as we contemplate this crisis in climate science:

Being an advocate of science seems to mean nothing more than shouting as loudly as possible ‘what science says…’, second hand. And those who shout most loudly about science turn out to be advancing an idea of science which, rather than emphasising the scientific method, puts much more store — let’s call it ‘faith’ — in scientific institutions. Hence, the emphasis on the weight, number and height of scientific evidence articles, and expertise, rather than on the process of testing competing theories.

This road-show presentation is, as I said, full of errors. But when I received it recently what stood out for me was that Professors Renwick and Naish cite a number of research papers that have been comprehensively invalidated. This is a major mistake. If they are unaware of the faults revealed in these papers by subsequent research then they cannot have been diligent. If they are aware of them, they should at the very least have mentioned that the papers are controversial. To present them to the lay public as good science is a perversion of their academic authority.

For these papers are scandalous.

The paper Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature is the infamous study by John Cook et al. that is widely disparaged for its fatal and particularly egregious errors. It’s hard to understand why anyone familiar with the paper would cite it or why anyone would cite it who was not familiar with it. Unless they were desperate for support and didn’t care where they found it.

Surely no reputable academic would cite these studies. They purport to prove a consensus of almost all climate scientists but either use a weak definition of consensus that most would agree with or their samples of papers or survey respondents are unreasonably small.

For a solid analysis of Oreskes (2004) see Christopher Monckton (2007). Oreskes does not reveal how many papers explicitly endorsed her watered-down consensus, but subsequent research found that only 1% explicitly endorse that consensus—not 100%.

An excellent dissection of the execrable Cook et al. (2013), by Paul Homewood, is available at Not a lot of people know that. An earlier paper by David Legates et al. (2013) showed that Cook et al’s claimed consensus of 97%, when measured correctly from their own data, was in fact only 0.3%.

This one slide we’ve discovered being foisted on amateur audiences around the country during yet another junket funded from your taxes would be enough on its own to dismiss Profs Renwick and Naish’s specious arguments that we’re destroying the climate and laugh them out of town.

Unfortunately this slide is just one of 49. Watch this space.


UPDATE 17 Jul 2016 1315 NZST

Here are the studies cited in the presentation that claim some level of consensus concerning climate science, with papers that contradict them (including the two references given above in the post). I’ve found some errors not mentioned in the original post, above.

Oreskes (2004) 97% Consensus? No! Global warming math myths & social proofs, The Myth of the Climate Change ‘97%’

Doran (2009) 97% Consensus? No! Global warming math myths & social proofs, The Myth of the Climate Change ‘97%’

Anderegg (2010) 97% Consensus? No! Global warming math myths & social proofs, The Myth of the Climate Change ‘97%’

Cook (2013) Climate Consensus and ‘Misinformation’: A Rejoinder to Agnotology, Scientific Consensus, and the Teaching and Learning of Climate Change, The Myth of the Climate Change ‘97%’,

Verheggen (2014) Authors and lead authors associated with the IPCC appear strongly represented in this sample, and they could reasonably be expected to believe strongly in dangerous man-made global warming, as it’s the subject they’re writing about, but whether that slants their results I don’t know. It seems to be a high-quality paper. I’ve found no rebuttals.

Stenhouse (2014) Surveys the American Meteorological Society (26% response) and provides a limited view.

Carlton (2015) The climate change consensus extends beyond climate scientists. I’ve uncovered a curious error. The slide claims this demonstrates 97% “scientific agreement on human-caused global warming” but the paper doesn’t say this. It actually says 96.66% answered Yes to:

Q4 Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures” (Question displayed only if respondent thinks temperatures have risen).

But how many respondents think temperatures have risen? It’s the answer to the previous question:

Q3 When compared with pre-1800’s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?

We find that 93.48% answered Yes, and you can calculate that 96.66% of 93.48 is 90%. So the paper provided the data for the correct calculation to be made but for some reason inflated the answer. The correct number of respondents was 90% but our road-show presenters incorrectly show 97%.

Professors are not allowed to make a mistake as large as 7%. Their skill with percentages is presumed to be perfect. I cannot avoid the impression they were trying to mislead us. Shame on you, sirs.

I have to say this list of papers is persuasive only by repetition of 97% and similar numbers because on close inspection their errors make each paper singularly unimpressive. More drab and humdrum than gripping.

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49 Thoughts on “Renwick, Naish invoke malignant ‘consensus’, cite scandalous papers

  1. Gary Kerkin on 16/07/2016 at 3:30 pm said:

    It is essential, Richard T, that the proponents of AGW know that their views (faith?) are constantly reaffirmed, and being assured that there are many of the same point of view is one such example. It is akin to what I understand of the concept of midrash in Hebrew teaching—in the stories of the Old Testament. For example it wasn’t Moses alone who parted the waters for the people to cross. So did Joshua part the waters of the Jordan to enable his army to cross. Not only did Solomon build a temple. So did Zerubbabel, and later, Herod. Even Elijah saw a temple built in a vision. My understanding is that by repeating the stories the Rabbis were reminding the people that Jehovah was still with them. It was a reaffirmation of the interest of the Almighty in His chosen people. Do I detect a necessity in the proponents of AGW (or should that now be ACC—and no I am not referring to compensation!) for such reaffirmation. Surely the evidence of the last nearly 30 years must be shaking their very foundations.

    Of course, we know they are “deniers”! We know “they” deny that there is no physical evidence tying increasing carbon dioxide to increasing temperature. We know “they” deny that there is little or no evidence tying extreme weather events to climate change. We know “they” deny that there is no evidence of increasing trends in sea level rise. But “they” also know these are established facts and to sustain “their” denial of them they must seek mutual support. Hence the need for a consensus. To put it it in another Biblical context, “they” exhibit the conditions necessary for a definition of faith, particularly that expressed by Paul in his letter to the Hebrews: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

    The topic of consensus has been well dealt with by various critics—you’ve cited Curry, Pile, Monckton, Homewood and Legate. The most telling comments, though, probably come from the past. Einstein is reported to have said of his theories that any number of experiments would never prove him right, but that it would take only one to prove him wrong. He is also supposed to have asked, when informed that a committee of something like 100 had been set up the challenge his general theory of relativity, “Why so many? It needs only one!” Perhaps his challengers were seeking safety in numbers? Doesn’t that sound like the need for a consensus?

    Richard, you have cited one slide from the “Ten Things” traveling road show. A slide preceding it, asking the question “Did you know … That Scientists are almost 100% convinced that warming is human induced?”, is possibly the most egregious of all 49 slides in the road show presentation. The whole presentation is a mishmash of misleading, overstated, and just plain incorrect information. This one in particular tries to mislead because it avoids the term “consensus”. What scientists? Almost 100%? It doesn’t infer a consensus which might be challenged (such as the Oreskes and Cook papers). Does it mean that almost all scientists are convinced? Or does it mean that just some scientists are almost convinced? I am sure it is intended to confuse the listener. I have to wonder why!

  2. Richard Treadgold on 16/07/2016 at 3:38 pm said:

    Gary,
    Phew! Nice to see you here! You take my breath away!
    Frankly, I wonder if the biblical references are appropriate or useful in the context, but I don’t want to discourage you. If they help you visualise the climate debate, carry on. I agree that our views on any subject are an expression of faith. Even waiting for the bus is an expression of faith.
    You’re quite right that every group looks for confirmation and I guess it’s the scientific path that is the loneliest and the best. It’s certainly science that we wish to discover and to promulgate here.
    It’s great to have your help!

  3. Gary Kerkin on 16/07/2016 at 4:00 pm said:

    Richard,

    Yes, it’s been a while. I often feel like that Peter Sellers’ character who expressed it as, “So much to do. So little time!”

    I used the Biblical references, not because I am religious—far from it, although I will own up to being a Freemason (which is not religious, just in case someone objects!)—but because I find it the easiest way to explain what I can only consider to be “blind faith”. In my opinion probably the best way to fight such “faith” is by quietly undermining it with simple facts expressed in such a way that everyone can easily understand them.

  4. Simon on 16/07/2016 at 5:46 pm said:

    So what proportion of climate papers and/or scientists state that anthropogenic climate change is occurring? Show us some peer-reviewed studies that claim less than 90%.
    Consensus is completely relevant, until the paradigm is broken by proven study.
    CO2 is a greenhouse gas. CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere. Global temperatures are increasing as a result. All of these statements are true.

  5. Gary Kerkin on 16/07/2016 at 6:21 pm said:

    Simon,
    A little proof would be extremely useful and would add to our knowledge. You are quite correct that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and that it is increasing in the atmosphere. But perhaps you might like to reveal the incontrovertible, physical evidence that it is causing global temperatures to increase as a result.

  6. Richard C (NZ) on 16/07/2016 at 7:50 pm said:

    I’ve already racked over Naish and Renwick’s rubbish in a series of comments in the previous post but rebuttal of points 3 and 5 is worth repeating (there’s much more in subsequent comments):
    ************************************************************************************
    Richard C (NZ) on July 9, 2016 at 2:36 pm said:

    Naish and Renwick blowing hot air too:

    ‘Ten things New Zealand can learn about climate change’ – Tim Naish and James Renwick
    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11669116

    “3 ……the radiative effects of carbon dioxide and methane as powerful greenhouse gases has been known for more than a century. The physics is beyond question.”

    Yes the physics of “the radiative effects of carbon dioxide and methane” is “beyond question” depending on the scope of the statement (e.g. absorption and emission, and surface measurement of DLR by BSRN and SurfRad stations, except CO2/CH4 are minor components of DLR). But so what? That is NOT the issue. There are 2 issues:

    1) Is theoretical GHG forcing a valid climate driver? No, as demonstrated by theory (Chapter 8) vs observations (Chapter 2) in the IPCC’s own AR5 report but they ignore their own climate change criteria and the obs-theory discrepancy in Chapter 10 Detection and Attribution:

    ‘IPCC Ignores IPCC Climate Change Criteria’
    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/52688456/IPCCIgnoresIPCCClimateChangeCriteria.pdf

    2) Is downwelling longwave radiation (IR-C, DLR) a surface material heating agent? No, The net LW flux is UP (-52.4 W.m-2) from the surface i.e. a COOLING flux of outgoing longwave radiation (OLR). The CO2 component of DLR is only about 2% (7/345.6) and the change since 1976 only about 1 W.m-2 i.e. 0.3% (1/345.6). This is negligible. And DLR only penetrates the ocean surface by a max of about 100 microns. This is about the thickness of a human hair.

    If Naish and Renwick think there is a heat transfer from air-to-surface or air-to-sea (as the IPCC speculates), then they are subscribing to a violation of the Clausius statement of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and run contrary to IPCC observations and energy budgets. The IPCC went looking for their “air-sea fluxes” in Chapter 3 but they should have known it was a fools errand, as it turned out to be, if they had just looked at their own cited earth’s energy budget (see ‘IPCC Ignores IPCC Climate Change Criteria’) – there is NO air-to-surface heat transfer by sensible/latent heat or radiation. The radiative energy transfer is UP from the surface (-52.4 W.m-2).

    “Skeptics would do well to stop wasting their energy, and distracting the public and scientists by trying to deconstruct this scientific truth [“the physics is beyond question”], and join the rest of humanity in helping figure out what to do about climate change.”

    They wish. What amazing arrogance, It is patently clear that they know squat about “the physics” as they demonstrate in point 5:

    5 Ninety-three per cent of the heat ………….. from humankind’s use of fossil fuels has gone into the ocean.

    This is an outright fabrication (a lie). The IPCC only speculates on this in Chapter 10 Detection and Attribution i.e. attribution by speculation. They have no science whatsoever to support their speculation. The IPCC went looking for their speculated “air-sea” fluxes in Chapter 3 but could not find them. Pointless to look because the earth’s energy budget they cite does not have any net LW flux into the ocean so there cannot be an air to sea heat transfer (and see 2 above).

    Naish and Renwick are scientific phonies and they are touting scientific fraud – they are either totally inept or charletans.

    https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2016/07/gareth-who-has-nothing/#comment-1497543

    # # #

    I would add here that it is not just Naish and Renwick “touting scientific fraud” as Richard T observes:

    “This academic presentation is……… funded by the Victoria University of Wellington and the Royal Society

    They’re being PAID to tout their scientific fraud by a university and a society.

  7. Richard C (NZ) on 16/07/2016 at 8:00 pm said:

    Simon

    >”CO2 is a greenhouse gas.”

    Again. already raked over in a series of comments in the previous thread but worth bringing up again because it arrives at this:
    *********************************************************************************************
    Richard C (NZ) on July 16, 2016 at 2:06 pm said:

    An internally contradictory article from UCAR/NCAR re CO2 a “heat-trapping greenhouse gas”:

    [Title] ‘Carbon Dioxide Absorbs and Re-emits Infrared Radiation’

    UCAR Centre For Science Education © 2012 UCAR

    [see CO2 molecule animation]

    Molecules of carbon dioxide (CO2) can absorb energy from infrared (IR) radiation. This animation shows a molecule of CO2 absorbing an incoming infrared photon (yellow arrows). The energy from the photon causes the CO2 molecule to vibrate.

    Shortly thereafter, [1] the molecule gives up this extra energy [/1] by emitting another infrared photon.Once [2] the extra energy has been removed [/2] by the emitted photon, the carbon dioxide stops vibrating.

    This [3] ability to absorb and re-emit infrared energy [/3] is what makes [4] CO2 an effective heat-trapping greenhouse gas. [/4]

    The National Center for Atmospheric Research is sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
    http://scied.ucar.edu/carbon-dioxide-absorbs-and-re-emits-infrared-radiation

    # # #

    The last statement [4] is contradicted by the title [Title] and statements [1], [2] and [3]:

    [Title] ‘Carbon Dioxide Absorbs and Re-emits Infrared Radiation’
    [1] the molecule gives up this extra energy
    [2] the extra energy has been removed
    [3] ability to absorb and re-emit infrared energy
    [4] CO2 an effective heat-trapping greenhouse gas.

    [Title] and [1], [2] and [3] describe energy TRANSFER – not “trapping” as stated in [4]. There is NO energy “trapped” in this process whatsoever, the energy has simply been transferred. Therefore, CO2 is an effective and passive energy TRANSFER medium contrary to [4]..

    UCAR are peddling bunk as “science education”. Which might explain why the NSF dissociates itself in the disclaimer.

    https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2016/07/gareth-who-has-nothing/#comment-1499319

    RT replied, my response in following comment

  8. Richard C (NZ) on 16/07/2016 at 8:05 pm said:

    My reply to Richard Treadgold:
    *******************************************************************************************
    Richard C (NZ) on July 16, 2016 at 7:28 pm said:

    RT >”So you can call it trapped and it increases with the increase in CO2. So I’m not sure it’s useful to excoriate such as the UCAR as “peddling bunk”. Unless I’ve misunderstood”

    Yes you sure have misunderstood RT. The UCAR article is specifically in respect to the CO2 molecule absorbing and emitting – nothing else. Nothing at all about what you extrapolate from it. I don’t know how you make the leap you’ve taken. Note too upthread that it is not just me that sees the utter falsity of the CO2 “heat trapping” notion.

    Here’s the UCAR animation of the CO2 molecule again:

    http://scied.ucar.edu/sites/default/files/images/long-content-page/Create%20Long%20Content%20Page/co2_absorb_emit_infrared_anim_320x240.gif

    This is the sole basis (nothing else) for UCAR’s internally contradictory claim in their article:

    “This ability to absorb and re-emit infrared energy is what makes CO2 an effective heat-trapping greenhouse gas.

    The first element “this ability to absorb and re-emit infrared energy” contradicts the second “makes CO2 an effective heat-trapping greenhouse gas”.

    The contradiction is because the first element is describing TRANSFER:

    Heat transfer – Radiation
    Thermal radiation is a direct result of the random movements of atoms and molecules in matter. Since these atoms and molecules are composed of charged particles (protons and electrons), their movement results in the emission of electromagnetic radiation, which carries energy away from the surface.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_transfer

    But the second element is claiming TRAPPING:

    v. trapped, trap·ping, traps
    v.tr.
    1. To catch in a trap; ensnare.
    2. To prevent from escaping or getting free: was trapped in the locked attic.
    3. [N/A]
    4. To seal off (gases) by a trap.
    http://www.thefreedictionary.com/trap

    Clearly “transfer” is NOT “trapping”. UCAR certainly is “peddling bunk”.

    >”Not that the energy is trapped permanently in the scientific sense, as it’s only held up temporarily. I don’t know how long, as I’ve never seen a quantification of the delay caused by being emitted downwards then eventually to space. But held up enough to cause some measurable increase in temperature”

    Well you might be in for a surprise RT (emission is in any direction BTW):

    ‘Thermal Infrared Radiation and Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere’
    Bill Satzer, 3M Company
    http://www.math.umn.edu/~mcGehee/Seminars/ClimateChange/presentations/2013-1Spring/20130212ThermalIRandCarbonDioxideintheAtmosphere.pdf

    Page 13:

    Receptivity of gas molecules to infrared radiation

    • Excited molecular states have very long lifetimes compared to
    excited electron states – from milliseconds to tenths of seconds.

    • Mean time between collisions with another molecule is roughly
    0.1 microseconds – so, many collisions and efficient energy transfer.

    Transfer by collision (most likely transfer at low altitudes) is in the order of “0.1 microseconds”
    Transfer by radiation is in the order of “milliseconds to tenths of seconds”.

    No change in air temperature results because CO2 is simply a passive transfer medium. Too invoke radiative energy transfer as determining temperature at any altitude is not only redundant but fallacious. The entire temperature profile of the atmosphere (surface to TOA) is determined WITHOUT recourse to radiative transfer as I’ve shown upthread (see “Greenhouse Equation”). The US Airforce Labs first modeled the atmospheric temperature profile from surface to TOA (see Satzer above, page 10) in 1958, revisions l1962, 1966, and the final version 1976 (see below), WITHOUT recourse to radiative transfer. The only radiative input is the solar constant (see “Greenhouse Equation” upthread).

    Access to US Standard Atmosphere Model here (bottom of article):

    US Standard Atmosphere Model & Observations Prove Maxwell’s Mass/Gravity/Pressure Theory of the ‘Greenhouse Effect’ is Correct & Falsifies CAGW
    http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.nz/2014/12/why-us-standard-atmosphere-model.html

    James Clerk Maxwell FRS FRSE (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish[2][3] scientist in the field of mathematical physics.[4] His most notable achievement was to formulate the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, bringing together for the first time electricity, magnetism, and light as manifestations of the same phenomenon. Maxwell’s equations for electromagnetism have been called the “second great unification in physics”[5] after the first one realised by Isaac Newton.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clerk_Maxwell

    https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2016/07/gareth-who-has-nothing/#comment-1499378

  9. Richard C (NZ) on 16/07/2016 at 9:25 pm said:

    Naish and Renwick (thanks to Victoria University of Wellington and the Royal Society) are just “useful idiots” for a political cause that has nothing to do with science, and they’ve already been shafted anyway:

    Quote by Christine Stewart, former Canadian Environment Minister: “No matter if the science is all phoney, there are collateral environmental benefits…. climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.”

    Quote by Richard Benedik, former U.S./UN bureaucrat: “A global climate treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the greenhouse effect.”

    Quote by Ottmar Edenhoffer, high level UN-IPCC official: “We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy…Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization…One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”

    Quote by Club of Rome: “In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill….All these dangers are caused by human intervention….and thus the “real enemy, then, is humanity itself….believe humanity requires a common motivation, namely a common adversary in order to realize world government. It does not matter if this common enemy is “a real one or….one invented for the purpose.”

    Quote by Europe’s climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard: “Regardless of whether or not scientists are wrong on global warming, the European Union is pursuing the correct energy policies even if they lead to higher prices,.” “Let’s say that science, some decades from now, said ‘we were wrong, it was not about climate’, would it not in any case have been good to do many of things you have to do in order to combat climate change?.”

    # # #

    It’s much more than bogus science we’re up against, we are up against an ideology. Case in point, US Democrat party:

    ‘Communists and Socialists Push Democrat Platform Toward Tyranny’

    Written by Alex Newman, New American on July 15, 2016.

    It’s not your grandfather’s Democrat Party anymore. In fact, it’s not even your father’s party anymore. With the powerful Democratic Party Platform Committee featuring a number of prominent socialists and communists, the Democrat Party’s draft platform has moved further toward full-blown extremism and totalitarianism than ever before. Indeed, the proposed platform now includes an unprecedented array of extreme anti-constitutional proposals practically guaranteed to alienate mainstream Americans — at least if the public finds out.

    From tax-funded abortion worldwide and banishing millions of Americans from the workforce with a $15-per-hour minimum wage, to empowering a United Nations “climate” regime and prosecuting skeptics of the man-made global-warming theory, the Democrat Party’s latest guiding document reads almost like a parody concocted by Republicans to make their rivals look ridiculous. An examination of the extremists sitting on the body that drafted the agenda, though, helps explain how one of America’s two main parties could have openly moved so far to the fringes in such a short time period.

    […]

    Another dangerous outfit well-represented on the Democrat Party’s platform committee is the Communist Party USA, once a tentacle of the mass-murdering Soviet regime in the United States. However, the presence of CPUSA friends and activists on the Democrat Party’s key committee guiding the party’s positions is hardly a surprise. Last year, the CPUSA’s boss, John Bachtell, even boasted openly that his Marxist-Leninist organization “utilizes” the increasingly radical Democratic Party to advance its totalitarian objectives in the United States. “At this stage we are about building the broad people’s movement led by labor that utilizes the vehicle of the Democratic Party to advance its agenda,” Bachtell wrote to his supporters.

    http://climatechangedispatch.com/communists-and-socialists-push-democrat-platform-toward-tyranny/

  10. Simon on 16/07/2016 at 10:04 pm said:

    7 meta-studies claiming in excess of 90% scientific agreement on human caused global warming. Please cite a meta-study that suggests otherwise. Only one peer-reviewed paper is cited (Legates et al. (2013)) and it is a critique of the Cook paper. If you are unable to cite a contradictory independent study, literature review, or meta-analysis; then Slide 14 must be valid.
    I look forward to your analysis of other ‘erroneous’ slides.

  11. “If you are unable to cite a contradictory independent study, literature review, or meta-analysis; then Slide 14 must be valid.”

    Simon is not arguing science, he is arguing ideology. He himself cites a contradictory review (Legates et al. 2013), then immediately dismisses it. He is utterly unaware of his thoughtlessness, in determined pursuit of a false certainty. He is a liar, to himself above all. And he is representative of all who cling to the “global warming” alarmism as their faith.

  12. Magoo on 16/07/2016 at 11:10 pm said:

    Simon, you say the following:

    ‘7 meta-studies claiming in excess of 90% scientific agreement on human caused global warming. Please cite a meta-study that suggests otherwise.’

    Here you go, it’s in the IPCC AR5 (Figure TS.14, page 87, Technical Summary, Working Group I, IPCC AR5 report):

    http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_TS_FINAL.pdf

    Or if you can’t be bothered waiting for the AR5 to load:

    http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/figures/WGI_AR5_Fig11-25.jpg

    It’s not a consensus of opinion either, but empirical evidence from 4 sources – a consensus of empirical evidence if you like.

  13. Richard Treadgold on 17/07/2016 at 6:25 am said:

    Magoo,

    Here you go, it’s in the IPCC AR5

    Talk about a meta-study—with impeccable credentials! Nice one.

    Simon,

    Only one peer-reviewed paper is cited

    Do you fully support these papers, with their methodologies and assumptions? Do you accept their conclusions with no reservations whatsoever? Please consider the potential effects on your own credibility before answering.

    A peer review is not required for a paper to be published, logical, correct, refuted or even to be read. Lack of a peer review is no refutation so you have to provide some argument against it (read it first). But I’ll append rebuttals for the other erroneous papers.

  14. Maggy Wassilieff on 17/07/2016 at 9:04 am said:

    There is a new paper out that summarises the histories and flaws of the consensus papers.
    Enjoy.
    http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2807652

  15. Richard C (NZ) on 17/07/2016 at 9:10 am said:

    Simon

    >”CO2 is a greenhouse gas.”

    Completely ineffective as such during the latest El Nino apparently.

    Climate scientists Gavin Schmidt, Stefan Rahmstorf, Steven Sherwood, Micheal Mann, and the UK Met Office all claimed the bulk of the El Nino spike for AGW/MMCC. All are now being proved wrong by temperatures returning to neutral.

    The oceanic El Nino heat has simply been transferred (not “trapped”) by the troposphere (including “greenhouse” gases) to space in accordance with the Kelvin-Planck statement of the Second Law of Thermodynamics which in essence says the excess energy is expelled to a heat sink (space in the El Nino case).

    The latest El Nino falsifies the “heat trapping greenhouse gas” notion, and makes the above climate scientists look like idiots. Do you REALLY want to subscribe to their idiocy Simon?

  16. Richard C (NZ) on 17/07/2016 at 9:55 am said:

    >”The entire temperature profile of the atmosphere (surface to TOA) is determined WITHOUT recourse to radiative transfer as I’ve shown upthread (see “Greenhouse Equation”).” [Where “upthread” is in the previous post – see “Greenhouse Equation” below]

    This refers to the initial and final state of the CO2 molecule in the UCAR animation (from upthread in this post):

    UCAR – Carbon Dioxide Absorbs and Re-emits Infrared Radiation
    http://scied.ucar.edu/sites/default/files/images/long-content-page/Create%20Long%20Content%20Page/co2_absorb_emit_infrared_anim_320x240.gif

    No energy is “trapped” in this absorption-emission process. The energy is TRANSFERRED.

    For CO2 in the troposphere the animation should show some molecular excitation in the initial and final state rather than the zero excitation shown (O Kelvin temperature). The temperature of the lower mid troposphere is 273 K i.e. molecular excitation.

    In the context of the atmosphere, the initial and final state of the molecule is the ambient temperature at whatever the altitude of the air mass containing the molecule, technically Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium (LTE).

    The ambient temperature of air at EVERY altitude in the standard atmosphere is calculated by the “greenhouse equation” (see below) but without recourse to any “greenhouse” or radiative effects except for the solar constant and Stefan–Boltzmann constant. It is impossible to reproduce the entire atmospheric temperature profile from within the “heat trapping greenhouse gas” paradigm.

    ********************************************************************************************
    The Greenhouse Equation
    http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.nz/2014/11/the-greenhouse-equation.html

    Where:
    T = temperature at height (s) meters above the surface, thus at the surface s = 0
    s = height in meters above the surface to calculate the temperature T, thus at the surface s=0
    S = the solar constant = 1367 W/m2, derivation here
    ε = emissivity = 1 assuming Sun and Earth are blackbodies
    σ = the Stefan-Boltzmann constant = 5.6704 x 10-8 W m-2 K-4
    g = gravitational acceleration = 9.8 m/s^2
    m = average molar mass of the atmosphere = 29g/mole = 0.029kg/mole
    α = albedo = 0.3 for earth
    C = Cp = the heat capacity of the atmosphere at constant pressure, ~ 1.5077 average for Earth
    P = surface pressure in the unit atmospheres, defined as = 1 atmosphere for latitude of Paris
    R = universal gas constant = 8.3145 J/mol K
    e = the base of the natural logarithm, approximately equal to 2.71828

    T is the initial and final temperature of the CO2 molecule in the UCAR animation above.

    Note that there is NO recourse whatsoever to “heat trapping greenhouse gas” effects (CO2 occurs only in “m = average molar mass of the atmosphere” i.e. as a constituency).

    The Stefan–Boltzmann constant is the constant of proportionality in the Stefan–Boltzmann law: “the total intensity radiated over all wavelengths increases as the temperature increases”, of a black body which is proportional to the fourth power of the thermodynamic temperature.

  17. Richard C (NZ) on 17/07/2016 at 10:19 am said:

    >”Too invoke radiative energy transfer as determining temperature at any altitude is not only redundant but fallacious. The entire temperature profile of the atmosphere (surface to TOA) is determined WITHOUT recourse to radiative transfer as I’ve shown upthread (see “Greenhouse Equation”).”

    Not true when I look at this again. I was referring to CO2 absorption and re-emission (“radiative energy transfer”) being termed “heat trapping” by UCAR i.e. a miss-characterization.

    Obviously the Stefan–Boltzmann constant is “recourse to radiative transfer” – my bad.

  18. Richard C (NZ) on 17/07/2016 at 11:12 am said:

    ‘Already 240 Published Papers In 2016 Alone Show AGW “Consensus” Is A Fantasy!’

    770 papers questioning AGW “consensus” since 2014
    By Kenneth Richard

    http://notrickszone.com/2016/07/03/already-240-published-papers-in-2016-alone-show-agw-consensus-is-a-fantasy/

  19. Richard C (NZ) on 17/07/2016 at 11:32 am said:

    Following Maggy upthread:

    Consensus=Nonsensus – Reviewing Cook et al (2016)
    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/07/16/consensusnonsensus-reviewing-cook-et-al-2016/

    Stirling, Michelle, Consensus Nonsensus on 97%: Science is Not a Democracy (July 10, 2016).

    Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2807652

    Abstract:
    A number of scholars who have previously undertaken studies on the alleged ‘consensus’ of the human impact on global warming have recently published a paper (Cook et al. 2016) which they claim confirms and strengthens their previous 97% consensus claims. This author rejects their findings and deconstructs both the premise of the relevance of consensus in the empirical evidence-based world of science and finds the claims are in fact ‘nonsensus.’ Several of the scholars’ consensus claims and those of scientific bodies were published prior to the 2013 IPCC Working Group I report wherein it was reported that there had been a hiatus in global warming for some 15 years (to 2012), despite a significant rise in carbon dioxide from human industrial emissions.

    Open source paper here: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2807652

    # # #

    >”the 2013 IPCC Working Group I report”

    Chapter 2 observations falsify Chapter 8 theory. Chapter 10 neglects to address the issue, see:

    ‘IPCC Ignores IPCC Climate Change Criteria’
    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/52688456/IPCCIgnoresIPCCClimateChangeCriteria.pdf

  20. Richard Treadgold on 17/07/2016 at 11:58 am said:

    Maggie,

    There is a new paper out that summarises the histories and flaws of the consensus papers.

    That’s a win, thanks.

  21. Gary Kerkin on 17/07/2016 at 12:02 pm said:

    Richard C, it is worth pursuing the Stirling’s paper further. For examples she writes of Arrhenius, ‘Arrhenius amended his initial catastrophic view of the effects of increased carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere in a little known paper “Die vermutliche Ursache der Klimaschwankungen” published only in German6 in 1906 to state that the effect of increased carbon dioxide would be nominal and beneficial.’ This is probably a “consensus” view that most of us could agree with. I’m still in the process of reading the paper having picked it up this morning. There are some quotable quotes e.g. “Science is about inquiry, not compliance.”

  22. Richard C (NZ) on 17/07/2016 at 2:04 pm said:

    Gary >”There are some quotable quotes”

    Yes, plenty. Also ‘gateway belief model’ is an interesting concept (just belieeeeeve……pleeeeease……).

    But my interest centres on the IPCC AR5 report as you might have picked up by my article upthread (link below): Michelle Stirling misses a critical issue, as do just about everyone else. The IPCC’s primary climate change criteria is:

    “the energy balance of the Earth-atmosphere system…..measured at the top of the atmosphere”

    AR5 WG1 Chapter 2 observations of the imbalance falsify Chapter 8 theory and Chapter 10 Detection and Attribution ignores the issue. Chapter 10 also makes attribution-by-speculation in regard to anthropogenic ocean warming which Naish and Renwick have morphed into (from upthread):

    5 Ninety-three per cent of the heat ………….. from humankind’s use of fossil fuels has gone into the ocean.

    This is bogus as I’ve detailed upthread. Read about the IPCC’s Chapter 10 omission (neglect) here:

    ‘IPCC Ignores IPCC Climate Change Criteria – Incompetence or Coverup?’
    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/52688456/IPCCIgnoresIPCCClimateChangeCriteria.pdf

    Interesting though is that Michelle Stirling shows the drop in solar activity after 2006 in Figure 3 page 16. The observed TOA energy imbalance according to IPCC Chapter 2 citation was only +0.6 W.m-2 2000 – 2010. Solar activity (Minimum) has dropped at least 0.26 W.m-2 since 2006 – 2015 in Fig 3. Probably more by other measures e.g. integral.

    Theoretical CO2 forcing per decade this century is only about +0.3 W.m-2/decade. If this forcing was valid and the total effective theoretical anthropogenic radiative forcing was valid, the earth’s energy imbalance SHOULD be at least +2.33 W.m-2 and increasing – it isn’t.

    This doesn’t mean that solar change has diminished the earth’s energy imbalance to +0.34 W.m-2 but it certainly means that an updated earth’s energy imbalance will be altered in some way. We will have to wait and see what the effect is.

    This does mean that theoretical anthropogenic climate forcing is invalid.

  23. Richard C (NZ) on 17/07/2016 at 2:34 pm said:

    >”…..an updated earth’s energy imbalance will be altered in some way [by recent solar change]. We will have to wait and see what the effect is”

    Outgoing radiation (OLR) from the El Nino will obscure this picture, as will a following La Nina. It will probably be at least the end of 2018 before we see neutral conditions again. And that’s if there’s no further ENSO activity.

    Abdussamatov (2012) below says the earth is now in “energy deficit” relative to Modern Maximum solar levels but it wouldn’t surprise me if the TOA radiative imbalance change is minimal. The IPCC assumption is that the budget should be in balance (i.e. 0 imbalance) but there’s no justification for that given the enormous amount of heat stored in the oceanic heat sink and the delay the ocean adds to the sun => ocean => atmosphere system (ocean adds “10 -100 years” – Trenberth).

    Bicentennial Decrease of the Total Solar Irradiance Leads to Unbalanced Thermal Budget of the Earth and the Little Ice Age
    Habibullo I. Abdussamatov (2012)
    http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/apr/article/download/14754/10140

  24. Richard C (NZ) on 17/07/2016 at 4:09 pm said:

    RT

    >”Verheggen (2014) — Authors and lead authors associated with the IPCC appear strongly represented in this sample, and they could reasonably be expected to believe strongly in dangerous man-made global warming, as it’s the subject they’re writing about, but whether that slants their results I don’t know. It seems to be a high-quality paper. I’ve found no rebuttals.”

    Here’s one:

    Comment on “Scientists’ Views about Attribution of Global Warming” [Verheggen (2014)]
    Jose L. Duarte

    Verheggen et al.1 report a survey of scientists’ views on climate change. However, they surveyed a large number of psychologists, pollsters, philosophers, etc. The number of nonclimate scientists who responded is undisclosed, and is likely unknowable given the design. Thus, the valid results of
    the study are unknown, and it should be withdrawn. Moreover, the core method of including mitigation and impacts researchers creates a structural inflationary bias, ultimately conflating career choice with consensus. Finally, an estimate of the consensus is unlikely to be reliable without accounting for
    the extraordinary personal cost of dissent, especially when an issue is moralized.

    Verheggen et al. searched the topics “global warming” and “global climate change” at Web of Science, and surveyed the authors of all the resulting articles. This produced 6000 of their pool of 8000 authors (1868 responded.) Examples of the WoS results:

    Gonzalez, G. A. An eco-Marxist analysis of oil depletion via urban sprawl. Environ. Polit. 2006, 15, 515−531.

    Entman, R. M. Improving Newspapers’ Economic Prospects by Augmenting Their Contributions to Democracy. Int. J. Press- Polit. 2010, 15, 104−125.

    Harribey, J. M. The unsustainable heaviness of the capitalist way of development. Pensee 2002, 31 − +.

    The searches yield 14,144 articles, with likely overlap. If we deselect the Social Science and Arts & Humanities indices which the authors did not dowe lose 1235. Counting only the subset of 895 such papers from the “global warming” search, they plausibly represent 380 authors. (14 144/6000 =
    2.36 papers per author.) Notably, authors classified as Other Expertisea plausible destination for psychologists, eco-Marxists, etc.were especially likely to respond to the survey (Figure S1, Supporting Information.)

    This understates the problem. The remaining search results still include a large number of irrelevant papers, such as

    Delmelle, E. C.; Thill, J.-C. Urban Bicyclists Spatial Analysis of Adult and Youth Traffic Hazard Intensity. Transp. Res. Record 2008, 31−39.

    Howard, C.; Parsons, E. C. M. Attitudes of Scottish city inhabitants to cetacean conservation. Biodivers. Conserv. 2006, 15, 4335−4356.

    McCright, A. M.; Dunlap, R. E. Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States. Glob. Environ. Change-Human Policy Dimens. 2011, 21, 1163−1172.

    The number of authors of such papers in the survey responses is unknown, and is unknowable given the failure to log the specific fields of all respondents. This invalidates most of the reported findings. The paper should be withdrawn and the correct figures reported when available.

    There is a deeper problem. Inclusion of mitigation and impacts paperseven from physical sciences or engineering creates a structural bias that will inflate estimates of consensus, because these categories have no symmetric disconfirming counterparts. For example, a mitigation article often mentions
    climate change to frame an engineering project. However, most engineering papers do not mention climatethose authors will not be surveyed. Thus, the views of most “mitigation” researchers cannot be contested.

    More>>>>>
    http://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/37212472/Duarte_Comment_on_Verheggen_et_al.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ56TQJRTWSMTNPEA&Expires=1468730714&Signature=COiu%2FkeCez3Vlb0fkybyvROGAZ8%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DComment_on_Scientists_Views_about_Attrib.pdf

    Reply to Comment on “Scientists’ Views about Attribution of Global Warming”
    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268793196_Reply_to_Comment_on_Scientists'_Views_about_Attribution_of_Global_Warming

    # # #

    An “eco-Marxist analysis” is part of a 91% “consensus” of attribution of global warming to human cause.

    Gee, what a surprise.

  25. Richard C (NZ) on 17/07/2016 at 5:04 pm said:

    ‘A psychologist’s scathing review of John Cook’s ‘97% consensus’ nonsensus paper’

    Anthony Watts / August 29, 2014

    Psychologist José Duarte writes: The Cook et al. (2013) 97% paper included a bunch of psychology studies, marketing papers, and surveys of the general public as scientific endorsement of anthropogenic climate change.

    Let’s go ahead and walk through that sentence again. The Cook et al 97% paper included a bunch of psychology studies, marketing papers, and surveys of the general public as scientific endorsement of anthropogenic climate change. I only spent ten minutes with their database — there will be more such papers for those who search. I’m not willing to spend a lot of time with their data, for reasons I detail further down.

    This paper is vacated, as a scientific product, given that it included psychology papers, and also given that it twice lied about its method (claiming not to count social science papers, and claiming to use independent raters), and the professed cheating by the raters. It was essentially voided by its invalid method of using partisan and unqualified political activists to subjectively rate climate science abstracts on the issue on which their activism centers — a stunning and unprecedented method. I’m awaiting word on retraction from the journal, but I think we already know that this paper is vacated. It doesn’t represent knowledge of the consensus.

    Continues>>>>>>>>
    https://wattsupwiththat.com/climate-fail-files/list-of-excuses-for-the-pause-in-global-warming/

    Read the full essay here:

    ‘Cooking stove use, housing associations, white males, and the 97%’
    José L. Duarte
    Social Psychology, Scientific Validity, and Research Methods.
    http://www.joseduarte.com/blog/cooking-stove-use-housing-associations-white-males-and-the-97

  26. Richard Treadgold on 17/07/2016 at 6:11 pm said:

    Thanks, Richard.

  27. Richard C (NZ) on 17/07/2016 at 6:35 pm said:

    >”It’s much more than bogus science we’re up against, we are up against an ideology.”

    And megalomaniacs conflating both:

    ‘Christiana Figueres launches UN secretary general bid’
    Costa Rican says she will keep vow to protect world’s most vulnerable if she is appointed to New York post later this year
    http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/07/07/christiana-figueres-launches-un-secretary-general-bid/

    ‘Figueres delivers climate pitch to UN General Assembly’
    Costa Rican diplomat says her experience forging a global warming pact fits her for the secretary general job
    http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/07/13/figueres-delivers-climate-pitch-to-un-general-assembly/

    # # #

    Lysenkoism + Totalitarianism + Megalomania + Climatism + Socialism

    What could go wrong?

  28. Richard C (NZ) on 17/07/2016 at 7:12 pm said:

    RT >”Not that the energy is trapped permanently in the scientific sense, as it’s only held up temporarily. I don’t know how long, as I’ve never seen a quantification of the delay caused by being emitted downwards then eventually to space. But held up enough to cause some measurable increase in temperature”

    ‘Why Tyndall’s experiment did not “prove” the theory of anthropogenic global warming’

    THS, October 27, 2015

    http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.nz/2015/10/why-tyndalls-experiment-did-not-prove.html

    Excerpts:

    Many warmists cite Tyndall’s 1861 experiment as “proof” of the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming theory, but in fact the experiment demonstrated only that CO2 and H2O are IR-active molecules capable of absorbing and emitting infrared radiation, nothing more.

    Of course, CO2 does indeed absorb and emit very low-energy ~15 micron infrared radiation, equivalent to a “partial blackbody” at a temperature of 193K (-80C) by Wien’s Law. However, radiation from a true or “partial” blackbody cannot warm the much warmer atmosphere (with an “average” temperature of 255K (-18C), equivalent to the equilibrium temperature of Earth with the Sun), nor the even warmer Earth surface at 288K (15C).

    Yet the Arrhenius radiative greenhouse theory falsely assumes that “backradiation” from the 193K CO2 “partial blackbody” can warm the Earth surface temperature from the 255K equilibrium temperature with the Sun by 33K up to 288K. This would require a continuous and dominating heat transfer from cold to hot, thus requiring an impossible decrease of entropy, and therefore a gross violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics (which requires entropy to increase from any transfer of heat).

    And,

    Furthermore, as physicist William Happer points out [hotlink], the probability of CO2 transferring quanta of energy in the troposphere via collisions instead of emitting a photon is one billion times more likely. This transfer of energy via collisions to the remaining 99.06% of the atmosphere causes acceleration of convective cooling by increasing the adiabatic expansion, rising, and cooling of air parcels. Convection dominates radiative-convective equilibrium in the troposphere by a factor of ~8 times and thus cancels any possible warming effect of the low-energy CO2 backradiation upon the surface.

    Further, the presence of IR-active gases in the atmosphere only delays the ultimate passage of IR photons from the surface to space by a few seconds, and is easily reversed and erased during each 12 hour night, and explains why ‘greenhouse gases’ don’t ‘trap heat’ in the atmosphere.

    Even a Luke-warmer position is untenable in this onslaught.

  29. Richard C (NZ) on 18/07/2016 at 8:51 am said:

    Michael Mann:

    “I am a climate scientist and have spent much of my career with my head buried in climate model output and observational climate data, trying to tease out the signal of human-caused climate change.”

    http://www.ecowatch.com/right-wing-denial-machine-distorts-climate-change-discourse-1924120031.html

    That difficult huh?

  30. Gary Kerkin on 18/07/2016 at 9:46 am said:

    Richard C: “That difficult huh?”.

    Now! Now! Richard, sarcasm does not become you 😉. We do have to remember he is a poor, struggling, academic who is just trying to support himself in a world where (horror of horrors!) the “science is settled” and there is no need to keep devoting money to determining it (witness CSIRO).

    Of much more import to me is Figure 1 of Michelle Stirling’s paper (Consensus Nonsensus) which is sourced from Spencer and Christy (UAH). I haven’t gone looking for the original (Richard T thinks there is an updated version with later data) but that doesn’t lessen Stirling’s representation. The figure shows the evolution of the consensus papers with their dates shown on a plot of temperatures from model predictions and actual data (satellite and balloons). I am unable to display it here, but for those who haven’t seen it and would like to I have uploaded it to my web site for quick access. It can viewed at this URL http://kerkin.co.nz/weather/stirling.png. The import of the figure is simply brilliant.

    What stands out like the proverbial is that any sort of consensus is totally irrelevant because the time evolution shows that those supporting the consensus haven’t got it right yet. I would argue that they never will while the underlying hypothesis remains just plain wrong.

  31. Simon on 18/07/2016 at 10:53 am said:

    There are a few things you need to know about that widely misunderstood figure:
    http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2016/05/comparing-models-to-the-satellite-datasets/

  32. Richard C (NZ) on 18/07/2016 at 1:38 pm said:

    Gary >”Of much more import to me is Figure 1 of Michelle Stirling’s paper”

    Agreed. There’s a variation on that theme with very clear graphs here:

    ‘IPCC’s Confidence Grows as Models Get Worse’
    http://www.energyadvocate.com/fw95.htm

    At the most recent and widest models-obs divergence, the IPCC’s confidence is greatest at “Extremely likely >95%”

  33. Richard C (NZ) on 18/07/2016 at 1:44 pm said:

    Simon >”There are a few things you need to know about that widely misunderstood figure”

    And here’s John Christy’s rebuttal of Schmidt:

    Christy: Schmidt Is “Completely Wrong”
    http://www.reportingclimatescience.com/2016/05/08/christy/

    Also,

    McIntyre: “Schmidt’s Histogram Diagram Doesn’t Refute Christy”
    https://climateaudit.org/2016/05/05/schmidts-histogram-diagram-doesnt-refute-christy/

  34. Richard C (NZ) on 18/07/2016 at 3:09 pm said:

    ‘Analysis: How much did El Niño boost global temperature in 2015?’ – Carbon Brief

    Almost as soon as the news broke that 2015 was the hottest year in the modern record, the conversation quickly turned to how much of the record-breaking warmth was down to climate change and how much to the Pacific weather phenomenon known as El Niño.

    Carbon Brief has spoken to climate scientists working on this question, who all seem to agree El Niño was responsible for somewhere in the region of 10% of the record warmth in 2015.

    https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-much-did-el-nino-boost-global-temperature-in-2015

    NASA’s Dr Gavin Schmidt:

    Schmidt estimated El Niño was responsible for 0.07C of the above-average warming we saw in 2015.

    Dr Adam Scaife, head of the UK Met Office’s long-range forecasting division:

    “We think El Niño made only a small contribution (a few hundredths of a degree) to the record global temperatures in 2015.”

    Dr Thomas Cropper, a climate scientist at the University of Sheffield:

    has estimated the contribution from El Niño to 2015 temperature. He says it is about 0.09C

    Also,

    Stefan Rahmstorf, a professor of physics at Potsdam University:

    “The record is helped along a bit by El Nino, but most of it — more than 80% — is due to human-caused global warming,”

    http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/more-sizzling-news-january-2016-hottest-ever-recorded-1544043

    # # #

    NASA GISTEMP: Global-mean monthly
    Divide by 100 to get changes in degrees Celsius (deg-C).
    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts.txt

    Year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
    2015 95 109 110 75 87 83 70 87 79 118 119 139
    2016 134 166 164 136 119

    Apparently the “heat trapping greenhouse gases” didn’t “trap” the heat after the 2016 Feb peak. Most of which was “due to human-caused global warming” according to Rahmstorf. Temperatures are now on the way back to neutral according to the Kelvin-Planck statement of the Second Law of Thermodynamics (excess heat expelled to heat sink).

    So now Schmidt Scaife Cropper and Rahmstorf, among others, all look like idiots.

    Worse, the Man-Made Climate Change (MMCC a.k.a AGW) conjecture is being falsified by the GISTEMP temperature data after the 2016 Feb peak. Embarrassing for Schmidt and Scaife in particular.

    Here’s the January 2016 forecast from Scaife’s UKMO:

    Decadal forecast (see Figure 3)
    http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/seasonal-to-decadal/long-range/decadal-fc

    Neutral is below the UKMO’s blue forecast range and only just in the lower green CMIP5 forecast range i.e. the neutral trajectory (flat) takes the observations out of the model forecast range whether UKMO Decadal or CMIP5.

    We are witnessing the abject failure of the anthropogenic global warming theory.

  35. Gary Kerkin on 18/07/2016 at 4:53 pm said:

    Richard C, the “confidence grows as the models get worse” is akin to my view of why a consensus is required: reaffirmation of a faith. (If others agree with me, I must be right – post hoc ergo propter hoc).

    Simon’s “misunderstood figure” reference is another example of someone scraping the bottom of the barrel to try to find some small iota of justification. Arguing about placement of baselines, vertical scales, scatter of models, inconsistencies of smoothing, and structural faults is just playing with words. Of course any system of smoothing using, say, 5 year rolling averages will have inconsistencies at one end or other. If the period of smoothing is 5 years there will be periods of 1, 2, 3, and 4 years either at the beginning or at the end. To make such a criticism is trivial carping. The data from satellites and balloons at the University of Alabama, Huntsville is highly regarded and to suggest it has “structural faults” without precisely detailing what those faults may be is unfair and possibly insulting.

    I’m still waiting for Simon’s incontrovertible physical evidence that carbon dioxide is the cause of global temperature rise.

  36. Richard C (NZ) on 18/07/2016 at 7:21 pm said:

    Gary >”Simon’s “misunderstood figure” reference is another example of someone scraping the bottom of the barrel to try to find some small iota of justification.”

    Exactly. He and his hero Schmidt don’t acknowledge that other renditions paint the same picture. I referenced the UKMOs decadal forecast just above, that’s this graph:

    UKMO Decadal Forecast
    Figure 3: Observed (black, from Met Office Hadley Centre, GISS and NCDC) and predicted (blue) global average annual surface temperature difference relative to 1981-2010. 22 model simulations, from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5), that have not been initialised with observations are shown in green
    http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/image/q/o/fig3_dp2015_fcst_global_t.png

    Note that CMIP5 (green) “HAVE NOT” been initialised with observations. Decadal forecast (blue) HAVE been initialised with observations

    This is neither satellites, nor Spencer, nor Christy. It’s UKMO (Probably from one or some of Smith, Eade, Dunstone, Fereday, Murphy, Pohlmann, and Scaife. Maybe other names now but Scaife’s still there), HadCRUT, NASA GISS and NCDC (NCEI now).

    >”……any system of smoothing using, say, 5 year rolling averages” “…….periods of 1, 2, 3, and 4 years either at the beginning or at the end.”

    Shortcomings accepted. The smoothing problem in Figure would be the 2 yr period at the end of the series 2014/2015. They need another 2 yrs at least, 3 or 4 would be good.

    However, 5 yr smoothing would be appropriate in Figure 3 because climate models don’t do ENSO i.e. they are not comparing apples-to-apples without smoothing. Their projection is from the top of an El Nino spike, fergoodness sakes!

    Thing is, the Scaife quote upthread reveals the mindset at UKMO:

    Dr Adam Scaife, head of the UK Met Office’s long-range forecasting division – “We think El Niño made only a small contribution (a few hundredths of a degree) to the record global temperatures in 2015.”

    They don’t regard the 2015/16 El Nino as a natural phenomenon, therefore, they make their CO2-centric projection from the top of a data spike they regard as man-made (all but “a few hundredths of a degree”).

    This is a recipe for egg on face.

  37. Richard C (NZ) on 18/07/2016 at 8:12 pm said:

    Re UKMO decadal forecasts.

    Fun thing is they do a new one each year so there will be a new and improved forecast at the end of this year. UKMO stopped doing actual 10 yr decadal forecasts when their Smith et al (2007) “established skill” 10 yr forecast turned out horribly wrong:

    ‘Ooops – Met Office decadal model forecast for 2004-2014 falls flat’
    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/21/ooops-met-office-decadal-model-forecast-for-2004-2014-falls-flat/

    So now they do 5 yr “decadal” forecasts every year in the hope they’ll get lucky. Their December 2012 forecast (Figure 1) and a comparison (Figure 5) of the forecasts from 2011 and 2012 is on this page:

    ‘Decadal Forecasting – What is it and what does it tell us?’
    http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/news/decadal-forecasting

    I would not have thought Figure 1 in conjunction with Figure 5 would have been very encouraging but they’ve persevered. Didn’t do so well each year until their end of 2014 forecast when they finally got super lucky with a big El Nino in 2015 (Woo Hoo !!).

    But they’ll be back in egg-on-face serial failure mode at the end of this year again. Their next forecast will have to be from the BOTTOM of the El Nino data – not the top.

    Worse, there’s a La Nina forecast to develop during August – October this year……..

  38. Richard C (NZ) on 18/07/2016 at 8:37 pm said:

    UKMO’s mission statement:

    Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.

  39. Richard C (NZ) on 19/07/2016 at 8:50 am said:

    ‘Killer cold in Peru’

    17 July 2016 – In Atuncoya and Cachipascana cold kills.
    Extreme cold in Puno. Temperatures reaching 15 degrees below zero.

    13 children under five have died in the Puno region from April to date.
    19 thousand hectares of crops have been ruined by hail and bitter cold.
    More than 18,000 animals have died.

    http://iceagenow.info/killer-cold-peru/

    # # #

    Peru is a Non-Consensus zone apparently..

  40. Richard C (NZ) on 25/07/2016 at 9:11 am said:

    Uni professors are making biased claims about climate change
    Sunday, 24 July 2016, 10:38 pm
    Press Release: New Zealand Climate Science Coalition
    http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC1607/S00055/uni-professors-are-making-biased-claims-about-climate-change.htm

    # # #

    This is a bit limp. I hope the NZCSC has compiled more ammunition than what is presented here. Rebuttal of points 3 and 5 as upthread for example

    Doesn’t represent the full sceptic spectrum either, or at least not well:

    In fact, the authors of the papers referred to in their Slide 14 do not say that all climate change is ‘human-caused’ anyway. Some man-made greenhouse gases have contributed, and that is agreed on all sides if the climate debate.

    Not so in terms of radiative warming it’s not agreed. That is only agreed upon by Warmers and Lukewarmers.The Slayers don’t agree, the Hockey Schtick doesn’t agree. I don’t agree. The US Standard Atmosphere Model doesn’t agree, The earth’s energy balance doesn’t agree and that’s the IPCC’s primary climate change criteria i.e. the IPCC cannot agree by their own climate change criteria despite their attribution statements.

    The only agreement by those is that greenhouse gases contribute simply by being an atmospheric constituent. Even then the US Standard Atmosphere Model neglects insignificant trace gases, CO2 included. GHG’s are thermalised by mass, gravity, pressure, solar input etc, After that, GHGs are merely passive heat transfer mediums. How can that possibly “contribute” to climate change of any sort?

  41. Richard C (NZ) on 25/07/2016 at 9:35 am said:

    Naish has had to concede that West Antarctic climate is “not unusual”, “natural variability” apparently:

    ‘Antarctica’s temporary cooling phase – what does it mean?’

    RACHEL THOMAS July 25 2016

    Q: Why is Antarctica cooling down?

    The Antarctic Peninsula experienced rapid warming from the early 1950s to the late 1990s, but that warming has paused as the peninsula cools instead. New research from British scientists found stabilisation of the ozone hole, changing wind patterns and natural variability have caused the peninsula to enter a temporary cooling phase.

    A: Professor Tim Naish, director, Antarctic Research Centre, Victoria University of Wellington, says:

    This is a really interesting new study and confirms the conclusion of earlier research – cited in the news and views, that the 20th and 21st century warming trends in west Antarctica were not unusual in the context of natural climate variability of the last 2000 years.

    Natural climate processes that control the timing and strength of the El Nino Southern Oscillation and the Southern Annular Mode are thought responsible for the variability.

    This new paper focuses specifically on the temperature records of the Antarctic Peninsula, which has often been referred to as a “global warming hot spot”.

    So while some sceptics may see this paper as an apparent “debunking”, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) made it clear that, unlike the Arctic, overall Antarctica had not warmed any faster than the global average temperature increase since the mid-20th century, and that regional rapid warming observed on the Antarctic Peninsula could not be attributed to anthropogenic global warming.

    […]

    The message is that this is not a surprise, that amplified warming of Antarctica is expected and is predicted as greenhouse concentrations increase.

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/82284682/antarcticas-temporary-cooling-phase–what-does-it-mean

    # # #

    Ah yes, “the message” – it is “temporary”. Cooling is just a warming “pause”.

  42. Richard Treadgold on 25/07/2016 at 1:14 pm said:

    The letter in Nature, Absence of 21st century warming on Antarctic Peninsula consistent with natural variability, by John Turner et al. seems to have everyone by the ears but I wonder how many have looked at it, because it draws no conclusion about the continent of Antarctica. It didn’t study the whole of Antarctica, but only the Antarctic Peninsula (AP) (which is not even within the Antarctic Circle). The authors say:

    Our findings cover only 1% of the Antarctic continent and emphasize that decadal temperature changes in this region are not primarily associated with the drivers of global temperature change but, rather, reflect the extreme natural internal variability of the regional atmospheric circulation.

    Naish says:

    This is a really interesting new study and confirms the conclusion of earlier research – cited in the news and views, that the 20th and 21st century warming trends in west Antarctica were not unusual in the context of natural climate variability of the last 2000 years.

    But I’m flabbergasted that his wording strongly implies when he refers to “West Antarctica” that he means continental Antarctica. It’s an egregious misdirection.

    The paper does not contain the word “temporary” and gives no indication of the future of temperature on the AP. In other words, it does not justify the word “temporary” in the Stuff headline—though future temperature rise is not ruled out. It’s worth repeating the following from the end of the letter. As you’ll see, though their studies found no evidence for it, they echo model claims of future warming.

    The start of the AP cooling in 1998 coincided with the so-called ‘global warming hiatus’. There has been extensive discussion over the factors responsible for this reduction in the rate of increase in mean global SAT [surface air temperature], with the negative phase of the IPO, volcanic and solar activity, and aerosol forcing being cited as possible causes. As discussed earlier, the phase of the IPO can affect the climate of the AP, but the negative phase is usually associated with higher SATs during the extended winter. Since the late 1990s, AP SATs have decreased throughout the year, with local factors playing a greater part than tropical variability, indicating that the absence of AP SAT warming is independent of the global warming hiatus.

    The recent change in SAT trend can be set in a longer-term perspective through examination of regional ice core records. An ice core from James Ross Island (Fig. 1), which is close to Marambio station, showed that the region experienced several periods of rapid warming and cooling in the last 1,000 years, and that the warming trend over the last 100 years was ‘highly unusual’, although not unprecedented. However, the period since the late 1970s includes the ozone hole, which is unique in the record. The Ferrigno ice core from the coast of West Antarctica (Fig. 1) shows a warming from the 1950s to the early twenty-first century that agrees well with the warming observed at Vernadsky. In the longer term, this record revealed marked decadal variability and, importantly, resolved a 50-year period in the eighteenth century when SATs increased at a faster rate than observed at Vernadsky over the second half of the twentieth century. Such long-term variability is also expected from analysis of station SAT records, which exhibit statistical long-term persistence. Therefore all these studies suggest that the rapid warming on the AP since the 1950s and subsequent cooling since the late-1990s are both within the bounds of the large natural decadal-scale climate variability of the region. This result is also consistent with the very high level of decadal-scale natural internal variability of the regional atmospheric circulation seen in long control runs of climate models. Climate model projections forced with medium emission scenarios indicate the emergence of a large anthropogenic regional warming signal, comparable in magnitude to the late twentieth century Peninsula warming, during the latter part of the current century.

  43. Richard C (NZ) on 25/07/2016 at 1:56 pm said:

    RT

    Good to have those passages from the paper highlighted. The last 3 sentences of that quote reveal the problem for attributing the late 20th century warming to human cause and the problem that anthropogenic forcing in the models is at least excessive with respect to the Turner et al study. The last of the 3 sentences first:

    [Sentence 3] “Climate model projections forced with medium emission scenarios indicate the emergence of a large anthropogenic regional warming signal, comparable in magnitude to the late twentieth century Peninsula warming, during the latter part of the current century.

    OK, this gives the impression that the warming was anthropogenic in origin. But immediately prior in the previous 2 sentences the attribution was (sentence 1) “natural decadal-scale climate variability”:

    “[Sentence 1] “Therefore all these studies suggest that the rapid warming on the AP since the 1950s ……… [is]………. within the bounds of the large natural decadal-scale climate variability of the region.”

    Then again in the last sentence (sentence 2) “decadal-scale natural internal variability”:

    “[Sentence 2] This result is also consistent with the very high level of decadal-scale natural internal variability of the regional atmospheric circulation seen in long control runs of climate models”

    The “large anthropogenic regional warming signal” in the models is irrelevant. The attribution is “decadal-scale natural internal variability” – Period.

    And yes, “temporary” in the Stuff headline is unfounded, not fact, Just mere speculation.

  44. Richard C (NZ) on 25/07/2016 at 2:21 pm said:

    Climategate email:

    “What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multidecadal natural fluctuation? They’ll kill us probably “

    — Tommy Willis, Swansea University

  45. Richard Treadgold on 25/07/2016 at 2:29 pm said:

    Heh, heh!

  46. Simon on 25/07/2016 at 9:28 pm said:

    Who wrote that CSC press release? If you are going to personally attack scientists, you should at least have a decency to put your name to it. It’s a bit rich claiming to be tax-payers when your debt to NIWA remains unpaid.

  47. Richard C (NZ) on 26/07/2016 at 11:03 am said:

    Inevitable spin on Turner et al by Grist:

    just a li’l chill
    Don’t be fooled by a cooling Antarctica — warming is winning out
    By Andrea Thompson on Jul 24, 2016
    http://grist.org/climate-energy/dont-be-fooled-by-a-cooling-antarctica-warming-is-winning-out/

    Mixed messages though, and more than a little desperate. Examples:

    The cooling is relatively minor — less than 2 degrees F (1 degree C) since the 1990s — and it doesn’t negate the background warming that is happening because of the steady rise of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere, the researchers said. It is simply masking it for the time being. Eventually, human-driven warming will overwhelm the influence of the ozone hole recovery and natural climate drivers, and temperatures will once again rise.

    There sure seems to be a lot of natural “masking” going on. Not so much “heat trapping” though.

    Warming will win out

    To put the warming and cooling periods into context, the team included analyses of ice core records. These cylinders of ice drilled from Antarctic glaciers can reveal temperature patterns and showed that episodes like these had occurred in the past as the result of natural variations in climate. The warming period, while unusual, wasn’t unprecedented. Nor is the cooling period.

    That doesn’t mean that greenhouse gas-driven warming isn’t playing a role now, either on the peninsula or on Antarctica as a whole (of which the peninsula only makes up 1 percent). Instead, it means that the large ups and downs driven by the ozone hole and natural variability are overwhelming the long-term warming signal for the time being.

    If emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases continue, that signal will eventually emerge, likely sometime in the next two to three decades, Turner said.

    Heh – “natural variability are overwhelming the long-term warming signal for the time being”.

    I bet they gagged on that sentence.

    And “that [human] signal will eventually emerge, likely sometime in the next two to three decades”

    Well before 2050 I would have thought, if the theory had any validity. 2016 would be good. Thing is though, Turner is conceding the human signal is simply not there; it has not “emerged”.

    It’s the same with sea level rise in the Pacific. No human signal detectable and we will have to wait “decades” for it to “emerge” (apparently).

    These, basically anecdotal, studies demonstrate why there has to be primary critical criteria – and there is. The IPCC provides it – earth’s energy balance measured at the top of atmosphere, And it is in the critical criteria that the MMCC theory fails.

    If the human-caused theory has failed in the critical criteria then any secondary study is pointless in respect to a human-caused signal. As Turner at al ably demonstrate.

  48. Richard C (NZ) on 26/07/2016 at 3:37 pm said:

    Dr Jarrod Gilbert: Why climate denial should be a criminal offence (H/t Andy)

    “”Since the 1960s, it has been known that heat-trapping gasses were increasing in the earth’s atmosphere, but no one knew to what effect. In 1979, a study found “no reason to doubt that climate changes will result and no reason to believe that these changes will be negligible”. Since then scientists have been seeking to prove it, and the results are in. Meta studies show that 97 per cent of published climate scientists agree that global warming is occurring and that it is caused by human activities.”

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11681154

    Dr Jarrod Gilbert is a sociologist at the University of Canterbury and the lead researcher at Independent Research Solutions. He is an award-winning writer who specialises in research with practical applications.

    # # #

    Heh, “heat-trapping gasses” again. From a Sociologist no less. Expert in radiative thermodynamics of course.

    But scientific truth is determined by vote now? And refuted papers (see upthread and post) still remain valid?

  49. Richard C (NZ) on 28/07/2016 at 2:35 pm said:

    Two papers that together falsify the Man-Made Climate Change Theory.

    1) ‘An observationally based energy balance for the Earth since 1950’
    D. M. Murphy, S. Solomon, R. W. Portmann, K. H. Rosenlof, P. M. Forster, T. Wong (2009)
    http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009JD012105/full

    There is obviously a massive discrepancy between theoretical forcing and actual earth heating. Murphy et al describe the discrepancy as “striking”:

    [38] A striking result of the Earth energy budget analysis presented here [Figure 6 below] is the small fraction of greenhouse gas forcing that has gone into heating the Earth. Since 1950, only about 10 ± 7% of the forcing by greenhouse gases and solar radiation has gone into heating the Earth, primarily the oceans.

    Murphy et al (2009) Figure 6
    http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1029/2009JD012105/asset/image_n/jgrd15636-fig-0006.png?v=1&s=1d48ee59aed4b059a12eea9575028e88a7b134ce

    Total cumulative theoretical forcing is 1700 x 10^21 Joules 1950 – 2004 of which 10% is 170 x 10^21 Joules.

    In Figure 6, solar forcing is already 100 x 10^21 Joules leaving a residual of 70 x 10^21 Joules. Nordell and Gervet (2009) below estimate only 27.3 x 10^21 Joules (say 30 at 2004) actual energy accumulation total over the entire extended period 1880–2000 (say 2004):

    2) ‘Global energy accumulation and net heat emission’ [1880–2000 ]
    Bo Nordell and Bruno Gervet (2009)
    http://www.ltu.se/cms_fs/1.5035!/nordell-gervet%20ijgw.pdf

    “The global heat accumulation in the air, ground and water during 1880–2000 is thus 75.8.1014 kWh (27.3.10^21 J). This heat is distributed in the air (6.6%), ground (31.5%), water (28.5%) and melting of land and sea ice (33.3%) according to Figure 3.

    It is noticeable that the heat content in air only corresponds to 6.6% of global warming.

    So Murphy et al’s 1950 – 2004 earth heating is still 140 x 10^21 Joules MORE than Nordell and Gervet’s estimate for earth heating over the entire period 1880-2004 (170 vs 30 x 10^21 Joules) even after Murphy et al throw out almost all GhG forcing and a bit of solar forcing (90% total discard).

    In other words, Murphy et al would have to discard ALL GhG forcing (and a bit more solar forcing) to reconcile with Nordell and Gervet.

    It gets worse for the Man-Made Theory after the GhG discard:

    [39] “…………Small changes in heat transfer into the ocean, cloudiness, or other terms can create significant changes in surface temperature………..”

    Not specified but obviously Surface Solar Radiation (SSR) i.e. solar radiation reaching the surface through clouds, aerosols, etc, would drive “small changes in heat transfer into the ocean” along with windiness or changes in wind patterns.

    Murphy et al (2009) together with Nordell and Gervet (2009) effectively falsify the Man-Made Climate Change Theory.

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