DDP Newsletter November 2009, Vol. XXVI, No. 6
In reaching its endangerment finding about the staff of life (CO2), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) quashed a 98-page paper by its own analyst, Alan Carlin, because it “does not help the legal or policy case” for its controversial decision. Carlin is “not a scientist,” official said. He holds an undergraduate degree in physics from CalTech and a Ph.D. in economics. The report, which Dr. Carlin posted on his personal web site, states that “available observable data…invalidate the hypothesis” of human-caused serious global warming (Wash Times 8/25/09 cited in TWTW 8/29/09, www.sepp.org ).
Carlin’s boss forbade him to engage in “any direct communication” with anyone outside his office regarding his analysis, and not to spend any more agency time on climate change (Wall St J 7/3-5/09).
The EPA received 300,000 public comments on the endangerment issue. In a petition by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) to reopen the comment period, Patrick Michaels cites the revelation that the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) had destroyed the raw data for its global surface temperature data set for alleged lack of storage space. Because the CRU’s data set forms the basis of several international studies that claim we face a global warming crisis, its destruction severely undercuts their credibility. (See “The Dog That Ate Global Warming,” NROnline 9/23/09, http://article.nationalreview.com.)
“Hiding data in science is equivalent to a company issuing its annual report and telling the auditors that the receipts are [confidential] and they would just have to trust them. No court of law would accept that, yet at the ‘top’ levels in science, papers have been allowed to sit as show-pieces for years without any chance that anyone could seriously verify their findings” (Joanne Nova 9/29/09, http://joannenova.com.au).
After a protected fight for data access, Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick were able to show that “Mann-made global warming” resulted from “the most extreme example of scientific cherry-picking ever seen.” The vaunted hockey stick depended on the use of a small subset of a much larger collection of tree-ring data (12 out of 34 cores) from the same area (www.climateaudit.org/?p=7168). When the complete data set is included, the hockey stick not only disappears, but goes negative–and medieval warming is seen.
The peer-review process failed to pick up the problems with the data that McIntyre spotted. The hockey stick was just what the peers needed to solve the problem named in an email from Jonathan Overpeck, a lead author of UN IPCC reports: “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.” Professor Edward J. Wegman of George Mason University found that at least 43 authors of papers on temperature reconstruction had direct ties with hockey-stick inventor Michael Mann by virtue of coauthorship. Key climate scientists form a clique, Wegman states, subverting the peer-review process. And they are still “playing with a broken hockey stick,” states Tim Ball (Canada Free Press 9/14/09).
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD VS. COMPUTER MODELING
Roy Tucker describes the scientific method as follows (CCNet 76/2009):
1. Observe a phenomenon carefully.
2. Develop a hypothesis that possibly explains the phenomenon.
3. Perform a test in an attempt to disprove or invalidate the hypothesis. If the hypothesis is disproven, return to steps 1 and 2.
4. A hypothesis that stubbornly refuses to be invalidated may be correct. Continue testing.
The “scientific” computer modeling method:
1. Observe a phenomenon carefully.
2. Develop a computer model that mimics the behavior of the phenomenon.
3. Select observations that conform to the model predictions and dismiss observations as of inadequate quality if they conflict with the model.
4. If all of the observations conflict with the model, “refine” the model with fudge factors to give a better match with the pesky facts. Assert that these factors reveal fundamental processes previously unknown in association with the phenomenon. Under no circumstances willingly reveal your complete data sets, methods, or computer codes.
5. Upon achieving a model of incomprehensible complexity that still somewhat resembles the phenomenon, issue to the popular media dire predictions that will occur as far in the future as possible, at least beyond your professional lifetime.
6. Continue to “refine” the model to maximize funding and Nobel Prizes.
7. Dismiss all critics as unqualfied, ignorant conspiracy theorists.
8. Repeat steps 3 through 7 indefinitely.
OCEAN ACIDIFICATION
The Center for Biological Diversity is filing a lawsuit to require the EPA to force reductions in CO2 emissions lest the oceans acidify, causing the collapse of our marine ecosystems. The pH at the ocean surface has, they claim, fallen from 8.2 to 8.1 since the dawn of the Industrial Age. Although most studies have shown little or no impact on marine life from the increased atmospheric CO2 concentration, except for better growth and a 22% increase in chlorophyll concentration, a small number of vulnerable species might be burdened (Environ Climate News, January 2009).
In a few decades, ocean acidification may “devastate our oceans,” claims a documentary called Acid Test. Although “the other carbon problem” seems to be the “best kept secret in environmental science,” scientists in the know are “freaked out” and are “losing a battle with despair” (Danel Hinerfeld, Natural Resources Defense Council).
Christopher Monckton points out: The alleged 0.1 pH units acidification since 1750 is inevitably the output from someone’s X-Box 360, not a measured value. Since the oceans contain 70 times as much CO2 as the atmosphere, adding the entire atmospheric CO2 content to the oceans would scarcely be measurable. Moreover, if as much as a quarter of the CO2 we have emitted since 1750 has gone into the oceans, it has done so in defiance of Henry’s Law, which mandates that as the oceans warm they will outgas CO2 to the atmosphere, not the other way about.
“When we run out of rocks on Earth or plate tectonics ceases, then we will have acid oceans,” writes geologist Ian Plimer of the University of Adelaide in Australia. Most of the CO2 is locked up in rocks; there is not enough in carbon fuels to acidify the ocean. Sea water has a local and regional variation in pH from 7.8 to 8.3. The oceans have been alkaline throughout the last 540 million years, except for one brief poorly understood period, although the atmosphere once had at least 25 times the current CO2 content. The warmers choose to ignore the large literature on this subject (TWTW 11/8/09).
MEETINGS
The 4th International Conference on Climate Change, sponsored by the Heartland Institute, will be held in Chicago, May 16-18, 2010, at the Marriott Magnificent Mile Hotel. Featured speakers will include Bob Ferguson, Jay Lehr, Patrick Michaels, Arthur Robinson, and Willie Soon. See www.heartland.org (videos from past conferences are available).
Recordings from DDP meetings 1998-2008 have been digitized and can be downloaded at www.ddponline.org. Many Power Point presentations are also there