Anthropogenic or Au-Natural?

In a previous post (“Let’s Have a Debate,” 11/18) I posed six questions that should be addressed by thinking people and taxpayers before any major decisions are made to curb global warming. In “Temperature of the Earth” I noted that temperature changes are the most natural things in the world and that we are (1) nearing the end of a long (12,000 year) Interglacial warm period (the Holocene) and (2) in the middle of the slight warming side of a 1500 year periodic cycle that has been happening for at least two million years.

In “Temperature Forcings” I explained that the Sun is the primary source of our warmth and that Earth dynamics accounts for the major Ice Ages and the Interglacials. Greenhouse gasses are important, keeping the Earth surface roughly 35 C higher than it would otherwise be, but increases of atmospheric CO2 have been a product of external warming not the primary source of warming. The 1500 year cycle that is warming us now is caused by the interaction of solar activity and galactic cosmic rays.

But wait! -- What about the human caused (anthropogenic) global warming? Algore says “we are altering the balance of energy between our planet and the rest of the universe.” Well, maybe locally, like in the Senate building where Teddy pontificates. But the rest of the evidence is iffy, at best.

The global temperature has increased around 0.8 C since 1850, with temperature surges from 1850-1870, from 1920-1940 and from 1975 to 2005. But we had not yet invented cars in 1860, the auto fleet was miniscule in 1930 and when we really did start putting out some CO2 around 1940, the temperature decreased until 1975. Not exactly the best example of cause and effect. So where does this CO2 forcing evidence come from? It comes from models, of course, but not from models that actually work.

This is a great story. The technique adopted by the UN IPCC studies to identify supposed causes of global warming is called “fingerprinting.” The models predict a geographic pattern of warming that is then compared to measurements. Except that the model results only agreed with the data from 1943 to 1970, and then only by introducing a sulfate aerosol cooling effect to account for the embarrassing reversal of warming that was observed. (Later this fudge factor was deleted since the sulfates were preferentially produced in the Northern Hemisphere, which should have cooled the most, while the reverse is what happened.) I said this was interesting. But there’s more.

When the second IPCC report came out in 1996, it contained the phrase that has been repeated a gazillion times in the press: “The balance of evidence suggests a human effect on climate.” The crucial chapter 8 that was supposed to be the compilation of 130 scientific papers actually shows (in Fig. 8.10b) a predicted decrease of temperature during the temperature surge of 1920-1940. Oops!

The editor of chapter 8, a relatively junior scientist named Ben Santor, added this sentence: “The body of statistical evidence in chapter 8, when examined in the context of our physical understanding of the climate system, now points to a discernable human influence on the global climate.”

To make room for this fiction, Santor had to delete several statements such as these by more senior scientists who were not consulted on the changes:

“None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gasses.”

“While none of these studies has specifically considered the attribution issue, they often draw conclusions for which there is little justification.”

“When will an anthropogenic effect on climate be identified? It is not surprising that the best answer to that question is, We do not know.”

And so on. This must be the overwhelming scientific consensus we hear so much about.

Well there was hell to pay in the scientific community, although nobody in the main stream media (outside of the Wall Street Journal) heard anything about it.

Frederick Seitz, former president of the American Academy of Sciences, detailed Santor’s illegitimate rewrite of chapter 8 in a scathing commentary titled “Major Deception on Global Warming.” The Journal editorialized, “Coverup in the greenhouse.” Oddly enough, Santor himself co-authored a paper around the time of the 1996 report that contradicted his previous statement: “It will be hard to say with confidence that an anthropogenic climate signal has or has not been detected.” Well, well.

To sum up, the data do not impute human causes of the recent warming, the models are inconsistent at best and the conclusions were fudged and then retracted. Yet the gullible public still thinks it is so. Amazing what a political party with a motive and a willing media accomplice can achieve.