Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. In particular, scientists should emphasize that their modeling output is not the result of magic: computer models are human-made. What comes out is fully dependent on what theoreticians and programmers have put in: hypotheses, assumptions, relationships, parameterizations, stability constraints, etc. Unfortunately, in mainstream climate science most of this input is undeclared.
To believe the outcome of a climate model is to believe what the model makers have put in. This is precisely the problem of today’s climate discussion to which climate models are central. Climate science has degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on sound self-critical science. We should free ourselves from the naïve belief in immature climate models. In the future, climate research must give significantly more emphasis to empirical science.
Download Climate Change Apps & Share The Real Science on Climate Change Not Funded By Governments & Propagandists. The apps are free.
For Iphone
Larry Fink the founder of Google is one of the globalists, pushing for world dominance pushing the climate change narrative that has removed the app from the Google play store. However, you can still download the app here, and just choose to allow your android device to allow apps from unidentified publishers. There is no malicious files in this app, only 60 slides that sum up the whole climate change narrative lie. You will get warnings on it not being safe, but this is normal for any app downloaded from outside the play store, in which information like this is being censored.
For Android
Conveniently, once you have downloaded the app, share the individual slides to your favourite social media device.
There is no climate emergency
A global network of over 1900 scientists and professionals has prepared this urgent message. Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures.
Natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming
The geological archive reveals that Earth’s climate has varied as long as the planet has existed, with natural cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age ended as recently as 1850. Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming.
Warming is far slower than predicted
The world has warmed significantly less than predicted by IPCC on the basis of modeled anthropogenic forcing. The gap between the real world and the modeled world tells us that we are far from understanding climate change.
Climate policy relies on inadequate models
Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as global policy tools. They blow up the effect of greenhouse gases such as CO2. In addition, they ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.
CO2 is plant food, the basis of all life on Earth
CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth. Photosynthesis is a blessing. More CO2 is beneficial for nature, greening the Earth: additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also good for agriculture, increasing the yields of crops worldwide.
Global warming has not increased natural disasters
There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent. However, there is ample evidence that CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly.
Climate policy must respect scientific and economic realities
There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. If better approaches emerge, and they certainly will, we have ample time to reflect and re-adapt. The aim of global policy should be ‘prosperity for all’ by providing reliable and affordable energy at all times. In a prosperous society men and women are well educated, birthrates are low and people care about their environment.
Epilogue
The World Climate Declaration (WCD) has brought a large variety of competent scientists together from all over the world*. The considerable knowledge and experience of this group is indispensable in reaching a balanced, dispassionate and competent view of climate change.
From now onward the group is going to function as “Global Climate Intelligence Group”. The CLINTEL Group will give solicited and unsolicited advice on climate change and energy transition to governments and companies worldwide.
* It is not the number of experts but the quality of arguments that counts
World Climate Declaration plus all signatories in pdf
World Climate Declaration AMBASSADORS
NOBEL LAUREATE PROFESSOR JOHN F. CLAUSER / USA
PROFESSOR GUUS BERKHOUT / THE NETHERLANDS
DR. CORNELIS LE PAIR / THE NETHERLANDS
PROFESSOR REYNALD DU BERGER / FRENCH SPEAKING CANADA
BARRY BRILL / NEW ZEALAND
DR. PATRICK MOORE / ENGLISH SPEAKING CANADA
JENS MORTON HANSEN / DENMARK
PROFESSOR LÁSZIÓ SZARKA / HUNGARY
PROFESSOR SEOK SOON PARK / SOUTH KOREA
PROFESSOR JAN-ERIK SOLHEIM / NORWAY
DR. G.-FIVOS SARGENTIS / GREECE
FERDINAND MEEUS / DUTCH SPEAKING BELGIUM
PROFESSOR RICHARD LINDZEN / USA
HENRI A. MASSON / FRENCH SPEAKING BELGIUM
PROFESSOR INGEMAR NORDIN / SWEDEN
JIM O’BRIEN / REPUBLIC OF IRELAND
PROFESSOR IAN PLIMER / AUSTRALIA
DOUGLAS POLLOCK / CHILE
DR. PETER STALLINGA / PORTUGAL
DR. BLANCA PARGA LANDA / SPAIN
PROFESSOR ALBERTO PRESTININZI / ITALY
PROFESSOR BENOÎT RITTAUD / FRANCE
DR. THIAGO MAIA / BRAZIL
PROFESSOR FRITZ VAHRENHOLT / GERMANY
THE VISCOUNT MONCKTON OF BRENCHLEY / UNITED KINGDOM
DUŠAN BIŽIĆ / CROATIA, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA, SERBIA AND MONTE NEGRO
In addition to these ambassadors, there are over 1900 scientists that have joined our organization and declare that there is no climate change emergency, and instead this is a paid and funded narrative by governments over the world looking to implement green policies to fatten their wallets, and control the populations. Be free people. You can care about the planet, live green, reduce population, but undestand one thing. Humans are not causing the climate to change. Now if you want to advocate for better polution policies, your governments are all guilty of incompetence, corruption, and bias bought and paid for by their corporate lobbyists. Yes we can do better on taking care of our planet, but nothing we are doing, is causing climate change, and CO2 has been shown in history to be 5 times the level it is right now, and the planet was flourishing. CO2 is the food for all life on our planet.
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New peer reviewed paper: climate sensitivity a third lower (Climate Etc. version)
by Nic Lewis reposted from Climate Etc.
Official estimates of future global warming may be overstated.
A brief summary in press release style of my new paper (written in the third person)
One of the most important conclusions of the recent 6th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR6) was to reduce the uncertainty in estimates of climate sensitivity to doubling the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Since 1979, the likely range (66% chance) of climate sensitivity has been between 1.5°C and 4.5°C. This range has remained stubbornly wide, until the IPCC AR6 narrowed the likely range to be between 2.5°C and 4.0°C.
A new paper by independent scientist Nic Lewis published in the journal Climate Dynamics challenges the conclusions of the IPCC AR6 about climate sensitivity. Lewis’ analysis reduces the magnitude of climate sensitivity by one third, relative to the range provided by the IPCC AR6. These results suggest that future global warming in response to fossil fuel emissions could be significantly less than has been assumed by policy makers.
In 2015, the World Climate Research Programme convened a Workshop aimed at reducing the uncertainty in estimates of climate sensitivity to increasing carbon dioxide. The Workshop ultimately resulted in publication of a report (a 92 page paper) by many of the participants that thoroughly assessed all lines of evidence (Sherwood et al, 2020). A key result of this paper was to reduce the likely range of climate sensitivity values to 2.6 oC to 3.9 oC. While Lewis was an invited participant to the 2015 Workshop, he was not a coauthor on this paper. The Sherwood et al. paper strongly influenced the IPCC AR6’s assessment of climate sensitivity.
Lewis’ paper critiqued the methods used in the Sherwood et al. paper, finding significant errors, inconsistencies and other shortcomings. Lewis remedied these shortcomings and also revised key input data, almost entirely to reflect more recent evidence. The results of Lewis’ analysis determined a likely range of 1.75 to 2.7oC for climate sensitivity. The central estimate from Lewis’ analysis is 2.16 oC, which is well below the IPCC AR6 likely range. This large reduction relative to Sherwood et al. shows how sensitive climate sensitivity estimates are to input assumptions. Lewis’ analysis implies that climate sensitivity is more likely to be below 2 oC than it is to be above 2.5 oC.
The lower estimates of climate sensitivity determined by Nic Lewis have profound implications for climate models and projections of warming for the 21st century. Climate models used in the IPCC AR6 had values of climate sensitivity ranging from 1.8oC to 5.6oC. The IPCC AR6 judged that some of the climate models had values of climate sensitivity that were too high. Hence the AR6 selected only the climate models with reasonable values of climate sensitivity to be used in projections of 21st century climate change. Lewis’ analysis indicates that a majority of climate models used in the IPCC AR6 have values higher than the likely range.
Nic Lewis has authored ten peer-reviewed papers on climate sensitivity. Lewis’ latest paper is entitled ‘Objectively combining climate sensitivity evidence’. It can be freely downloaded here. A detailed explanatory article about the paper is available here.
The post New peer reviewed paper: climate sensitivity a third lower (Climate Etc. version) appeared first on Clintel.
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The Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis (VII). A summary plus Q&A
by Javier Vinós & Andy May reposted from Climate Etc.
“On the other hand, I think I can safely say that nobody understands climate change.” J. Vinós, paraphrasing Richard Feynman’s words about quantum mechanics.
7.1 Introduction
This plain-language summary has been written at the request of some readers of our series of articles on the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis:
(I) The search for a solar signal
(II) Solar activity unexplained/ignored effects on climate
(III) Meridional transport
(IV) The climate shift of 1997
(V) A role for the sun in climate change
(VI) Meridional transport as the main climate change driver
Climate is extremely complex, and people, including scientists, have a natural tendency to look for simple explanations. The Occam’s Razor principle is a good first approach but climate change cannot have a simple answer. Over the past seven years, one of the authors of this series (JV) has been laboriously reading many thousands of scientific articles and analyzing hundreds of climate datasets trying to understand how Earth’s climate changes naturally. This is a first step to understanding the human impact on climate change. The outcome of this work is the book “Climate of the Past, Present and Future.” It is a graduate-student level academic book that discusses many controversial issues about natural climate change over the past 800,000 years. In this book, a new hypothesis on natural climate change is presented. It relates changes in the strength of the meridional (poleward) transport of energy with climatic changes that have taken place, both in the past and recently.
The book can be downloaded here (open access) Vinos-CPPF(2022)
Since meridional transport is most variable during the winter of the Northern Hemisphere, and is modulated by solar activity, we named the concept the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis. The other author of the series (AM) is a writer of several published climate books, they are: “Climate Catastrophe! Science or Science Fiction?,” “Politics and Climate Change: A History,” and “The Great Climate Change Debate: Karoly v Happer.” We joined forces to explain this new hypothesis through this series and a new book we are co-writing that will be tailored toward a more general audience. An audience interested in climate change but not in its complex scientific details. The hypothesis grew out of an investigation into the effect of solar variability on climate. But solar variability turned out to be only part of natural climate change. As the scientific evidence for the hypothesis was presented in the first six parts of the series, this summary will present only the conclusions, some additional supporting evidence, and answer a few interesting questions and comments from readers.
7.2 A synopsis of the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis
The IPCC assessment reports published since 1990, reflect a scientific consensus that natural forces, including solar activity and ocean-atmosphere oscillations, like the Atlantic and Pacific multidecadal oscillations, had a net zero effect on the observed global average surface temperature changes since 1951. The IPCC consensus does not allow for changes in the poleward (meridional) transport of energy to have significantly affected this average temperature over the past 75 years.
The Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis proposes that changes in the meridional transport of energy and moisture are the main way the climate changes now and in the past. Meridional transport variability has many causes and forces that act simultaneously and in different time frames on the climate system. They integrate into a very complex poleward energy transportation system. Among these are multidecadal ocean-atmosphere oscillations, solar variability, ozone, stratospheric-reaching tropical volcanic eruptions, orbital changes, and changing luni-solar gravitational pull. Meridional transport is therefore an integrator of internal and external signals. It is not the only way the climate changes, but evidence suggests it is the main one.
The Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis does not disprove greenhouse gas effect induced climate change—manmade or otherwise—in fact, it acts through it. But it does not require changes in the atmospheric content of non-condensing greenhouse gases to cause significant climate change. Therefore, it does refute the hypothesis that CO2 is the main climate change control knob.
Meridional transport moves energy that is already in the climate system toward its exit point at the top of the atmosphere at a higher latitude. It is carried out mainly by the atmosphere, in both the stratosphere and troposphere, with an important oceanic contribution. The greenhouse effect is not homogeneous over the planet due to the unequal distribution of water vapor, and it is stronger in the wet tropics, weaker over deserts, and much weaker at the poles in winter. When meridional transport is stronger, more energy reaches the poles. There it can more efficiently exit the climate system, particularly during the winter, when there is no Sun in the sky. Most polar imported moisture in winter freezes, emitting its latent heat. Additional CO2 molecules increase outward radiation, as they are warmer than the surface. The net result is that all imported energy into the polar regions in winter exits the climate system at the top of the atmosphere (Peixoto & Oort, 1992, p. 363), and increasing the energy transported there at that time can only increase the loss.
When meridional transport is stronger, the planet loses more energy and cools down (or warms less) in a non-homogeneous way, because the net energy loss is greater in the polar regions. However, as more energy is directed toward the poles, the Arctic region warms, even as the rest of the world cools or warms more slowly. When meridional transport is weaker, less energy reaches the poles and exits the climate system. Then the planet loses less energy and warms, while the Arctic cools, because it receives less energy from the lower latitudes.
Most of the energy is transported through the lower troposphere and ocean track. As a result, changes in multidecadal ocean oscillations produce a greater effect on climate in the multidecadal timeframe than changes in solar activity. Solar changes have a stronger effect on stratospheric energy transport. Even so, there is a non-well defined link between changes in solar activity and changes in the multidecadal oscillations that result in major multidecadal climate shifts right after 11-year solar cycle minima (see Part IV). Nevertheless, modern global warming started c. 1850, when the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation increased its amplitude and period (Moore et al. 2017). The overall multidecadal oscillation (aka the stadium wave) currently has a period of c. 65 years, and the 20th century included two rising phases of the oscillation, explaining its two warming phases (1915-1945, and 1976-1997; Fig. 7.1).
Meridional transport was further reduced during the 20th century by the coincidence of the Modern Solar Maximum (Fig. 7.1): A long period of above average solar activity between 1935 and 2004. It is the longest such period in at least 600 years. Solar activity acts mainly on stratospheric energy transport, but since it affects the strength of the polar vortex and the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (see Part II), it also influences tropospheric transport.
Fig. 7.1. Changes in the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and solar activity are consistent with temperature changes. Top, above average solar activity reduces poleward transport causing warming. Bottom, the ascending half-period of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation causes an even bigger reduction in transport and has a bigger temperature effect. Middle, temperature evolution for the past 120 years is consistent with the effect of these two factors on transport. Data from SILSO sunspots (top), HadCRUT4 deseasonalized temperature (middle), and AMO deseasonalized (bottom), have been smoothed with a gaussian filter.
As it can be seen in Fig. 7.1, most of the warming during the 20th century can be explained by the combined effect of the ocean multidecadal oscillations and the Modern Solar Maximum on meridional transport. No other proposed factor can satisfactorily explain the early 20th century warming period, the mid-20th century shallow cooling, and the late 20th century strong warming period, without resorting to ad-hoc explanations. In a single century two periods of reduced transport (warming), coincided with the ascent of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and the effect of the modern solar maximum. This resulted in 80 years of diminished transport that contributed to the greatest warming in 600 years, triggering political and scientific alarm.
7.3 Solar changes, transport changes, and climate shifts
The amount of energy transported poleward varies continuously, with major seasonal changes. However, at certain times the annual average atmospheric transport at high latitudes changes more rapidly over a period of a few years and settles into a different average strength. These abrupt changes in transport are mainly a winter phenomenon, and cause climate shifts on average every 25 years. Climate shifts were first identified in 1991 (Ebbesmeyer et al. 1991), yet they are not considered a cause for climate change in the IPCC reports, despite numerous studies suggesting they are. After each shift, the climate settles into a new regime.
It is known that one of these shifts took place in 1976 resulting in accelerated warming, and another one in 1997, resulting in decelerated warming (see Part IV). The four known shifts that took place in the 20th century happened soon after solar cycle minimums. The climate regimes, or meridional transport phases, disproportionally affect the Arctic climate in an opposite direction to the climate of the northern mid-latitudes. The accelerated warming from 1976-1997 was characterized by a quite stable Arctic climate, but the decelerated warming since 1997 has coincided with strong Arctic warming. Figure 7.2 shows how the sudden Arctic shift of 1997 was caused by an increase in meridional transport. The only energy that reaches the Arctic in winter is through transport, and the shift was accompanied by an abrupt increase in the amount of energy radiated to space.
According to IPCC theory, without a change in solar energy and/or a change in albedo (solar energy reflected by clouds and ice), a change in outgoing longwave energy could not happen, because energy out must match energy in. Yet without a significant change in either solar energy or albedo, a significant change in outgoing longwave energy occurred, as shown in Fig. 7.2.
Fig. 7.2. The change in meridional transport at the 1997 climate shift resulted in an abrupt increase in the amount of energy radiated to space, particularly during the winter. This increase was not compensated for by a corresponding decrease elsewhere.
Climate scientists contributing to the IPCC reports cannot blame the 1976 climate shift on changes in atmospheric greenhouse gases, so they suggest it was caused by a coincidental small reduction in anthropogenic sulfate aerosols. They set the sulphate cooling effect to a point that allowed increasing CO2 levels to overcome the previous cooling trend in 1976. As the 1997 shift cannot be explained in terms of anthropogenic factors, any data that shows that the shift occurred is ignored, and the focus is shifted to the increased Arctic warming.
Climate shifts undoubtedly represent changes in the meridional transport of energy. No theory can successfully explain climate change without accounting for abrupt or gradual changes in transport. The Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis has been developed to explain how climate has changed naturally for the past 50 million years and how it is changing now, integrating into a single interpretation tectonic, orbital, solar, oceanic, and atmospheric causes of climate change. It has tremendous explaining power, and many apparently unconnected phenomena can be linked through it. As an example, changes in wind speed and evaporation are discussed below. Many climate scientists will be able to reinterpret their results guided by this new energy transport view of climate change.
Particularly challenging was to find an explanation for all the previously unconnected evidence of a strong effect on climate from small changes in solar activity. This 220-year-old problem constituted the genesis of the hypothesis. The evidence that small changes in solar activity affect the meridional transport of energy is very solid. Two pieces of evidence are mentioned here.
The first is the repeated observation during the past six decades that changes in solar activity have affected the Earth’s speed of rotation (see Part II). This can only be accomplished by solar-induced changes to atmospheric angular momentum that affect the global atmospheric circulation. This is not a small feat for such small changes in incoming energy, and it derives from the dynamical changes caused by UV (ultraviolet radiation) absorption by ozone in the stratosphere.
The second piece of evidence is that Arctic temperatures display a negative correlation with solar activity. This is not a recent development, as shown in Fig. 5.5. This negative correlation was demonstrated for the past two millennia by Kobashi et al. in their 2015 article “Modern solar maximum forced late twentieth century Greenland cooling.” Part of their figure 3 is shown as Fig. 7.3.
Fig. 7.3. Greenland temperature anomaly and solar activity over the past 2100 years. (B) Greenland temperature anomaly. Average NH temperature from four NH records and combined Greenland temperatures. Periods of warm (cold) anomalies in Greenland are in red (blue). (C) Two TSI reconstructions by Steinhilber et al., 2012 and Roth and Joos, 2013 in z score. The blue (red) areas are the periods of stronger (weaker) solar activity corresponding to (B) with possible multidecadal lags. (E) Decomposition of the Greenland temperatures into solar-induced changes (blue) and hemispheric influences (orange) with a regression constant (–31.2°C; dots), constrained by the multiple linear regressions. The error bounds are the 95% confidence intervals. The green shaded area is the period (the late 20th century) when the modern solar maximum had strong negative influence (red circle) on the Greenland temperature. Figure from Kobashi et al. 2015.
The most plausible explanation for Arctic temperature displaying a negative correlation to solar activity is that changes in the Sun regulate meridional transport. An increase in solar activity reduces transport, cooling the Arctic, and a decrease in solar activity increases transport, warming the Arctic. The effect on the temperature in the mid-latitudes is the opposite.
More evidence is provided by the relationship between solar activity and the strength of the polar vortex (see Fig. 5.4). While this relationship provides an explanation for the Arctic temperature-solar correlation, the polar vortex data cannot be extended back in time as much as Greenland temperature data.
7.4 The explaining power of the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis
Climate research has increased enormously over the past few decades, and frequently changes in climate phenomena are discovered. When these changes do not fit into the IPCC-sponsored CO2 hypothesis, and are not properly reproduced by models using greenhouse gas-related theory, they are considered climate oddities and ignored by the climate science community, who are focused almost exclusively on anthropogenic changes. There are many of these phenomena. We have already mentioned the expansion of the Hadley cells (see Fig. 4.5f). We mention another example here.
At the turn of the century, it was noticed that wind speed over land had been decreasing for over two decades. The phenomenon was termed “global terrestrial stilling” (McVicar & Roderick 2010). It was worrisome because power generation by wind turbines is related to the wind speed to the third power, so the 15% reduction in wind speed observed over the U.S. translated into an almost 40% reduction in available wind energy. The land wind stilling is puzzling as models do not show it. Moreover, it was accompanied by an increase in wind speed over the ocean, so the proposed explanation at the time was that land surface roughness increased due to increases in biomass and land-use changes (Vautard et al. 2010), in another example of an ad-hoc explanation.
Then, unexpectedly, the wind stilling trend started to reverse between 1997 and 2010, and since 2010 all land regions in the Northern Hemisphere are experiencing an increase in wind speed (Zeng et al. 2019). The explanation turned to internal decadal ocean–atmosphere oscillations, that seemed to correlate.
It is unknown to many people, but evaporation over the oceans depends a lot more on wind speed than it does on sea-surface temperature. It was demonstrated that global sea-surface evaporation has closely followed changes in wind speed (Yu 2007; Fig. 7.4).
Fig. 7.4. Changes in wind speed and evaporation during climate regimes. At the 1976-97 period of low transport/high warming, global ocean wind speed (black continuous) increased in parallel to ocean evaporation (blue dashed), while land wind (red dotted) entered a period of stilling. At the 1997 climate shift the trends changed. Data from Yu 2007 and Zeng et al. 2019. Europe has been chosen because it is downwind of the main transport route to the Arctic in the North Atlantic and responds earlier to its changes. Since 2010 the trend is shared by wind over all terrestrial Northern Hemisphere regions.
Lisan Yu shows that between the 1970s and the 1990s, “the enhancement of Evp [evaporation] occurred primarily over the hemispheric wintertime,” while “the westerlies associated with the [Aleutian and the Icelandic] low systems strengthened and expanded southward” (Yu 2007).
The Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis can explain this evidence, which, in turn, supports the hypothesis. The 1976 shift reduced meridional transport due to atmospheric circulation becoming more zonal, this increased wind speed and evaporation over the oceans while decreasing wind speed over land, because most meridional transport takes place over the ocean basins. The changes were more intense during the winter season, when more energy must be transported poleward, and resulted in a low-transport, high-warming, global climate regime (Fig. 7.1). At the 1997 shift the increase in meridional transport was caused by a more meridional atmospheric circulation, decreasing wind speed and evaporation over the oceans while increasing wind speed over land. The climate regime shifted into a high-transport, low-warming one.
It is obvious that changes in non-condensing greenhouse gases and anthropogenic aerosols could not have been the driving force behind these changes in meridional transport. This suggests they have been attributed too much climate sensitivity in climate change theory and models. However, the changes in transport and atmospheric circulation are clearly associated with changes in evaporation and air moisture that, without a doubt, must affect changes in cloud formation and transport, not forgetting changes in seawater salinity. Hypotheses that explain recent climate change in terms of water vapor and cloud changes might be subservient to the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis. The integration of solar, astronomical, and atmospheric-ocean oscillation changes makes this hypothesis an all-encompassing one. It is more likely to be correct than partial hypotheses.
7.5 Some questions and comments about the hypothesis
Given the complexity of the climate system we do not have answers to every question, nor it is required that we do for the essence of the hypothesis to be correct. Some interesting comments came up in the discussions and it is worthwhile to bring them up, for those readers that missed them. Here we review a few of the more interesting questions and comments:
(1) Q: Is it necessary that there has been an increasing trend in solar activity since the Little Ice Age?
A: While an increasing trend in solar activity since 1700 is defensible, it is not required for the solar part of the hypothesis to be correct. As Fig. 7.1 shows, it is enough that an above average activity has reduced meridional transport contributing to the warming. The displayed Modern Solar Maximum had that effect. Fig. 7.3 provides strong support for the solar-transport link over the past two millennia.
(2) Q: Is the greenhouse effect required for the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis?
A: Yes. In a thought experiment, it was proposed that a reader imagine that the polar regions are another planet (B) that is connected to a planet A made of the tropics and mid-latitudes. The connection allows the transfer of heat. The greenhouse effect in planet B is weaker since its atmosphere has a low water vapor content. During 6 months of a year planet B is in the dark. If more energy is allowed to pass to that planet, it is radiated more efficiently to space and the binary system average temperature decreases, despite planet B warming. The opposite happens if less energy is allowed to pass.
(3) Q: Why is there no correlation between surface temperature and solar activity if the hypothesis is true?
A: Because there shouldn’t be a correlation. At the multidecadal scale, meridional transport responds primarily to the multidecadal ocean-atmosphere oscillation. At the inter-annual scale, the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation and El Niño/Southern Oscillation have a strong effect. The Sun is not dominant at these time-scales. The role of the Sun increases as the time scale lengthens due to its longer-term secular cycles and their longer-term cumulative effect.
(4) Q: How important is the role of ocean transport in climate change in your hypothesis?
A: Oceans store most of the energy in the climate system, and most of the solar energy flows through the ocean before reaching the atmosphere. It therefore has a crucial role in climate. However, the role of the ocean in meridional transport is secondary to the role of the atmosphere and so is its role in climate change. Ocean transport is currently considered to be mechanically driven, with winds and tides providing the required energy. The atmosphere transforms heat into mechanical energy, while the ocean does not. This does not diminish the effect of the heat the ocean transports, which is about one third of total meridional heat transported. It also carries all the heat transferred from the Southern to the Northern Hemisphere. But the importance of ocean transport decreases with the increase in latitude, and so the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis cannot rely on ocean transport except in a supporting role.
(5) Q: Do changes in solar activity affect ocean currents?
A: Changes in solar output should not affect ocean currents directly because that requires mechanical energy. Changes in solar output must necessarily affect the atmosphere first. This is important because it essentially rules out solar hypotheses that propose an initial solar effect over the ocean.
(6) Q: Does your hypothesis rule out warming from anthropogenic forcing like greenhouse gas emissions, industrial aerosols, and land use changes?
A: No. It just leaves a lot less room for them. If the hypothesis is correct, it is unlikely that the anthropogenic effect on climate can account for more than half of the observed warming, and probably much less.
(7) Q: What about Svensmark’s cosmic rays-cloud hypothesis?
A: We have not found any evidence for that hypothesis.
(8) Q: Isn’t the change in irradiance during the solar cycle too small to affect climate?
A: The change in irradiance with the solar cycle is only 0.1%, too small to change the system energy budget significantly and drive climate change. The ultraviolet radiation part 200-320nm of the spectrum is only 1% of total solar irradiance energy, and it varies by 1% with the solar cycle (10 times the variation in total energy). So, the ultraviolet radiation change responsible for the solar cycle effect on climate is only 0.01% of the total energy delivered by the Sun. The other 0.09% of the energy change is irrelevant in terms of climate change and has no detectable effect. The solar effect on climate is not about the amount of ultraviolet solar energy, but its dynamical effects in the Earth’s atmosphere. 99.99% of the energy responsible for the solar effect is already in the climate system. An increase in meridional transport reduces its transit time through the system, while a decrease in transport increases its residence time causing the temperature changes.
(9) Q: Your hypothesis cannot be correct because the top of the atmosphere should be in radiative equilibrium and return the same amount of energy it receives.
A: That statement is incorrect. The radiative flux at the top of the atmosphere is never in equilibrium and the planet is warming or cooling all the time at any time frame considered. Nobody has ever identified a period when the amount of energy entering the climate system was the same as the amount of energy exiting the climate system. The Earth has no way of returning the same amount of energy it receives. Many not well constrained feedback mechanisms are responsible for what thermal homeostasis the planet is capable of.
(10) Q: Stratospheric temperature also shows a shift in 1997 from a declining trend to a flat trend.
A: Yes, that is evidence of the 1997 climate shift and the ongoing pause despite the 2016 El Niño. The stratospheric temperature trend has the reverse profile to surface temperature trend. Models believe this is due to changes in stratospheric CO2 and ozone, but models and observations disagree significantly (Thompson et al. 2012). The stratosphere temperature trend is consistent with what is expected if the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis is correct.
(11) Q: Scientists are already aware that changes in meridional transport are a possible cause for warming. See Herweijer et al. 2005.
A: The IPCC does not believe changes in transport have significantly contributed to the observed warming since 1951. If they did it would be included in the natural (internal) variability that they have assigned a net zero effect (see Fig. 5.1). Models do not reproduce transport correctly, and Herweijer et al. 2005 is an example. Models assume that the sum of ocean and atmospheric transport is nearly constant. This is called the Bjerknes compensation hypothesis (see Part IV). In their model experiment they increase ocean transport by 50% and observe warming from water vapor redistribution changes (greenhouse effect changes) and a reduction in low cloud albedo and sea-ice albedo. The problem is they fail to mention that their model-based proposed mechanism should work as negative feedback to warming. In a warming planet with polar amplification and a reducing latitudinal temperature gradient, a reduction in ocean transport is both implied and observed (they acknowledge it, referring to McPhaden & Zhang 2002). According to their model experiment this should drive cooling from transport changes, not warming. Their failure to mention this is misleading, to say the least. In a serious challenge to the model-based Bjerknes compensation hypothesis, researchers have found a strengthening of the North Atlantic Current since 1997 (Oziel et al. 2020) simultaneous with the strengthening of the atmospheric transport shown—and referenced in our articles—and in agreement with the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis.
(12) Q: Shouldn’t the tropical convection zones be the main radiators of the planet, responsible for cooling? Directing heat away from the wet tropics should warm the planet.
A: That is incorrect. More energy is lost at the tropics than at the poles, but the energy loss at the tropics is essentially capped by deep convection. There is a point when additional downward energy does not increase surface temperature because it is used to increase convection. The proposal that deep convection acts as a thermostat in the tropics is over 20 years old (Sud et al. 1999). Deep convection transfers excess energy to the atmosphere but reduces outgoing longwave radiation through cloud formation. Most of the energy remains within the climate system. The negative correlation between sea surface temperature and outgoing longwave radiation, once temperature exceeds 27°C, is a well-known feature of tropical climate (Lau et al. 1997). The standard view is that transporting more energy toward the poles warms the planet. Our hypothesis and the evidence we have presented supports the opposite view.
(13) Q: The essence of Arctic amplification in winter is not what you say, but the impact of increasing sea temperatures, the decline in sea-ice and the increase in winter clouds, that are changing the Arctic to a warmer regime.
A: That is the position of most climate scientists. We disagree. That is the effect. The cause is a change in the amount of heat transported by the atmosphere to the Arctic that took place quite abruptly in a few years after the 1997 climate regime as shown in Fig. 7.2. This increase in heat and moisture transport produced the rapid decline in sea-ice and increase in cloudiness that are features of the new Arctic regime. All consensus Arctic predictions are failing because the situation stabilized in the new transport regime instead of causing positive feedback—the logical conclusion if the consensus position were correct.
(14) Q: Your view of El Niño/Southern Oscillation is incorrect. La Niña and El Niño are the alternating states of an oscillator.
A: That is not supported by a frequency analysis of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation. El Niño and La Niña are opposite deviations from the neutral state. Our analysis shows the frequency of La Niña years displays a strong negative correlation with the frequency of neutral years (see Fig. 2.4), not El Niño years. And the frequency of neutral years follows the solar cycle. There is only one way to interpret this evidence. La Niña and neutral are the alternating states of an oscillator that responds to solar activity. As neutral conditions are not opposite La Niña conditions, the oscillator tends to accumulate too much subsurface ocean heat. El Niño resets the oscillator. El Niño frequency depends upon how much extra heat the oscillator collects, which, in turn, depends upon whether the planet, overall, is warming or cooling. This is a very unorthodox view but it is supported by the evidence.
(15) Q: You show in Fig. 6.9 that over 85% of the surface warming shown in HadCRUT5 for the period 1997-2014 is the product of changes made to the temperature datasets since HadCRUT3. Is this correct?
A: Yes. Global annual average surface warming is not only a poor measure of climate change but, since it is calculated as an anomaly to an average, it is also a very small number relative to the accuracy of the measurements, and to the much larger seasonal temperature changes from which it is subtracted. The planet is warming but the numbers used to show it are not as meaningful as we are led to believe. A significant part of the warming claimed is due to the way it is calculated, as shown in the figure.
(16) Q: Do you really believe that you are correct and the IPCC is wrong?
A: Paraphrasing Einstein, if the IPCC is wrong it should not be necessary that one hundred authors show it. One is sufficient.
(17) Q: According to your theory, what should we expect from climate change in the next years and the rest of the century?
A: The current below average solar activity and an expected cooling phase in the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation indicate a probable continuation, or even accentuation, of the reduced rate of warming during the first third of the 21st century. A modest cooling during this period is possible. Unlike the 20th century, this century should contain two cooling phases of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. Even if another extended solar maximum takes place for most of the century, the 21st century should see significantly less warming than the previous one, regardless of CO2 emissions. A grand solar minimum is highly improbable according to our interpretation of solar cycles, which is a relief. Based on past evidence, a grand solar minimum sets the planet into a severe cooling trend.
(18) Q: What would be a good test of your hypothesis?
A: The expected climate change for the next 30 years, as described above is consistent with several alternative theories to the IPCC’s, based on the effect of the multidecadal oscillations. The Winter Gatekeeper explains better why the shift took place in 1997, and predicts the next shift for c. 2032, i.e., three solar cycles. The best test will be when a very active solar cycle takes place, if Arctic amplification turns into cooling and Arctic sea-ice grows it will support our hypothesis. If this happens, proposed alternatives to our hypothesis will be entertaining.
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Clintel Declaration Collapses Climate Consensus – says Friends of Science Society
The CLINTEL World Climate Declaration that there is no climate emergency and we do have time has more than 1200 science and scholarly signatories, and thus collapses the climate catastrophe ‘consensus’ narrative, says Friends of Science Society. Likewise, since there is no emergency, society must abandon NetZero targets and ramp up conventional, reliable energy sources to stop the energy, food, fuel, fertilizer, and famine crises sweeping the world
CLINTEL’s World Climate Declaration is signed by over 1,200 international scientists and scholars, declaring there is no climate emergency. https://clintel.org/world-climate-declaration/
Abandoning Net Zero targets and climate hysteria – particularly in health care, energy investment markets, and banking – should be the goal of COP27, says Friends of Science Society.
CALGARY, ALBERTA (PRWEB) SEPTEMBER 01, 2022
As reported by the Epoch Times on Aug. 26, 2022, more than 1,100 scientists signatory to the CLINTEL World Climate Declaration say there is no climate emergency, thus collapsing the ‘97% consensus’ claim of activists, says Friends of Science Society. The number of signatories has grown to more than 1,200 in the past few days since publication of the story.
Since there is no climate emergency, we do have time. Net Zero climate targets are unnecessary, says Friends of Science. The fear of a climate emergency came from the misuse of a scenario known as RCP 8.5, as shown by Roger Pielke, Jr., and Justin Ritchie in “Distorting the view of our climate future: The misuse and abuse of climate pathways and scenarios.” RCP 8.5 is an implausible scenario that is not “business-as-usual,” a fact acknowledged by ‘consensus’ scientists like Zeke Hausfather in Nature, Jan. 2020.
Italian professor Franco Battaglia has published a book in several languages titled “There Is No Climate Emergency” outlining the petition sent to the UN by CLINTEL signatories. Physics Nobel Laureate Ivar Giaever was the first signatory. Battaglia was part of a group of 100 dissenting Italian scientists who started the “No Climate Emergency” movement in 2019 which rapidly grew as CLINTEL developed.
Friends of Science has long disputed the claimed consensus, in their 2014 report “97% Consensus? NO! Global Warming Math Myths and Social Proofs.”
Friends of Science is particularly concerned that the climate movement has coopted the medical community into Net Zero health care targets, trying to cut health care emissions in half by 2030. This is a goal which Friends of Science Society is ludicrous, and murderous. Most national health bodies signed on to the COP26 WHO sustainability program in Nov. 2021. In the UK, the National Health Service (NHS) is approaching net zero health care with a disturbing zealotry, says Friends of Science.
A health care paper by Davies and Bhutta (2022) titled “Geriatric medicine in the era of climate change” incorrectly gives the impression that climate change has only happened in the present time. Earth’s climate has had dramatic cyclical changes over 4.5 billion years of Earth’s history; geriatric patients are hardly a contributing cause.
Measuring the carbon footprint of ‘frail’ elderly patients against national Net Zero targets disturbingly aligns with the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) futurist Yuval Noah Harari’s statements about ‘useless eaters.’ Conflating health care and climate change is dangerous public policy, says Friends of Science.
OECD countries face >$78 trillion in pension liabilities according to a 2016 CITI Bank report, but using climate change, individual carbon footprints or Net Zero targets as a cover for decades of incompetent financial management and bad investments is cruel and disingenuous, says Friends of Science Society.
Friends of Science says the difficulty in trying to inform the public of these dangers is that large media collaborations, like Covering Climate Now and Poynter Institute’s agenda-driven fact-checking network (which drives Facebook censorship) have locked dissenting views out of the MSM press. Covering Climate Now has over 400 media signatory outlets and reaches an audience of 2 billion people with its fearmongering.
Covering Climate Now has never interviewed any of the CLINTEL scientists who dispute the claim of a climate emergency. In the spring 2020 magazine edition, Kyle Pope interviewed the director of Mad Max, who told journos “how to make climate fear compelling.” A new #FactsMatter Friends of Science/CLINTEL video shows there’s no climate catastrophe – things are getting better.
The Canadian Association of Journalists and others ran an opinion survey as to whether climate change should be reported as an emergency, driving activist – not accurate – reporting, says Friends of Science. This video deconstructs the faulty ‘logic’ and breach of journalistic ethics of the CAJ et al.
As Europe teeters on the brink of social and economic disaster due to the energy crisis, amplified by the Russian incursion into Ukraine, the developing world faces famine. Across the EU, blackouts and serious heat-or-eat poverty are predicted for this winter.
Abandoning Net Zero targets and climate hysteria – particularly in health care, energy investment markets, and banking – should be the goal of COP27, says Friends of Science Society.
About
Friends of Science Society is an independent group of earth, atmospheric and solar scientists, engineers, and citizens that is celebrating its 20th year of offering climate science insights. After a thorough review of a broad spectrum of literature on climate change, Friends of Science Society has concluded that the sun is the main driver of climate change, not carbon dioxide (CO2).
Friends of Science Society
PO Box 61172 RPO Kensington
Calgary AB T2N 4S6
Canada
Toll-free Telephone: 1-888-789-9597
Web: friendsofscience.org
E-mail: contact(at)friendsofscience(dot)org
Web: climatechange101.ca
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Newsletter Wednesday August 31, 2022
© Clintel Foundation / Wednesday August 31, 2022
Number of signatories of World Climate Declaration growing fast
The number of signatories of the World Climate Declaration (WCD), stating that “there is no climate emergency”, is growing fast and now stands at 1200 (and counting). There are too many new signees to mention in this newsletter, therefore we published them on our website.
The WCD recently got a lot of attention, for instance in a post on The Daily Sceptic by Chris Morrison (see here and later also on wattsupwiththat.com. “The Declaration is an event of enormous importance, although it will be ignored by the mainstream media”, says Morrison.
Clintel cofounder Marcel Crok was quoted extensively in an article on The Epoch Times website: “Conservative in its statements, “the message is plain and clear: there is no climate emergency. Very important: this is true even if you accept that CO2 is the main driver of the current climate change,” Crok told The Epoch Times in an email.”
On August 22, statistician Matt Briggs also endorsed the WCD. “The Science shifts depending on the ‘solutions’ desired by the regime. As we have seen many times. The real science can only be solved by accident, as it were. This means the only real chance of progress is outside the Consensus. From people like those who signed the statement.”
See the full article by Briggs here .
Andrew Montford, deputy director of Net Zero Watch, was interviewed on TalkTV about the WCD (link via twitter: here). And finally Friends of Science (also see item below) has launched a promotional video, recommending Clintel. See: here
Last but not least, cartoonist Josh made a wonderful cartoon about the WCD and how people on both sides respond to it.
If you want to sign the World Climate Declaration as well go here
If you would like to support us in expanding this project, please consider a donation or consider to become Friend of Clintel.
Series on Sun and Climate
Andy May and Javier Vinós have written a series of articles (6) on the relation between Solar Actitity and the Climate. Each article is quite long and together it will be the basis for a book about the sun-climate connection. So far we published the first 5 articles.
Part 1 , Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
They write:
“Over the following five parts in this series of articles we will explain the recently proposed Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis of sun-climate effect (Vinós 2022). It involves some very complex climate phenomena, which explains why it escaped discovery for 220 years. In the next part we will see that the orthodox IPCC sanctioned climate change view ignores the effects of solar variability on at least five very important climate-related phenomena that essentially refute it. It is hoped that the time has arrived for another reversal in the sun-climate consensus.”
Interviews with climate realists in Italian newspaper La Verità
Lord Monckton
The Italian newspaper La Verità continues to publish interviews with prominent climate sceptics/realists. After CLINTEL President Guus Berkhout (see translation here) last month, it recently interviewed Steven Koonin and Lord Monckton.
Theoretical Physicist Koonin was asked, amongst other things, about the value of climate models: “The models are coarse descriptions, in part because their grids are about 100 km X 100 km. So they can give a rough, qualitative picture of how human influences affect the global climate, but are entirely unsuited to project local climates.”
See the full English translation of the interview with Koonin: here
In his interview Lord Monckton says that “The new British Prime Minister should appoint a High Court judge to hold a blue-team vs. red-team debate on whether the science behind the climate scam is soundly based, on whether the true purpose or likely consequence of the scam will be the bankruptcy of the West and the transfer of global hegemony to the Communist-led nations who originated and profiteer from the scam at our people’s expense, and on whether, even if global warming were a problem rather than a benefit, the cost of attempting to abate it would – as the above example shows – comfortably exceed any legitimately conceivable benefit from abatement.”
See the full English translation of the interview with Lord Monckton: here
Koonin wins debate with Dessler
Earlier this month climate alarmist Andrew Dessler and climate realist Steven Koonin held a debate in New York. The central statement was: “Climate science compels us to make large and rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions”. Koonin won the Oxford Style debate since 25% of the in-person and online audience shifted to his view that the statement is false.
One of the topics discussed was solar and wind power.”While Dessler was correct that solar and wind can produce electricity cheaper than fossil fuels under ideal conditions, the cost to make that electricity reliable drives the total wind and solar cost much higher”, says Andy May in a short review of the debate, “Other problems not properly accounted for in wind and solar accounting, are the land required for them and the cost of high value materials, such a rare earth metals lithium, copper, zinc, dysprosium, and many others.”
Read the posts by Andy May on the debate: here and here
The entire debate should be available on YouTube shortly (we will post a link in the two articles mentioned above as soon as it is available).
WEF should engage in an open debate with Clintel, says Friends of Science
“The World Economic Forum is a purveyor of climate change misinformation and should engage in an open scientific debate with Clintel on the fact that there is no climate emergency”, says Friends of Science, a Canadian non-profit society that offers independent insights on climate science and related energy policies for the public and policy makers.
The statement is a reaction to an opinion piece by Inbal Goldberger posted by the World Economic Forum (WEF) on their website on August 10, which proposed using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to censor harmful online misinformation. “The WEF regularly engages in climate misinformation”, says Friends of Science, “noting that WEF gave Greta Thunberg a public stage and much media coverage (posted Jan. 25, 2019 and again Jan. 1, 2020) over her “I want you to panic”… “Our house is on fire” commentaries. Greta’s comments terrified millions of children and adults worldwide, but in testimony to the US Congress on April 21, 2021, Greta stated that there is ‘no science’ behind her comment; it was just a metaphor.”
Friends of Science has also launched a promotional video, recommending CLINTEL. See: here
See the full article: here
Clintel is an Amsterdam (The Netherlands) based thinktank founded in 2019 by Dutch emeritus professor Guus Berkhout and science writer Marcel Crok. Clintel operates as a climate science and climate policy watchdog. In its first year it launched the World Climate Declaration, stating firmly “there is no climate emergency”. That declaration is now signed by more than 1200 scientists and experts.
Clintel wants to be independent from governments as these are the main funders of climate science and policy. In practice it means we need broad support from citizens and small and medium enterprises around the world.
For more information, please contact Marcel Crok, +31 6 16 236275, marcel.crok@clintel.org
You can support us by becoming Friends of Clintel or you can make a one-time donation.
Many thanks in advance for your support!
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Interview Rick Willoughby
Rick Willoughby
Name: Rick Willoughby
Country: Australia
What is your background?
I graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Queensland and was employed by Conzinc Riotinto Australia (CRA); initially in the underground mine at Broken Hill. I subsequently transferred to Dampier iron ore operations where I worked on plant maintenance systems and machine automation. I then transferred to the zinc smelter in Newcastle as the site electrical engineer before moving on to the new coal terminal at Dalrymple Bay; being the third person on the payroll of that business, monitoring the terminal construction and developing the maintenance systems and plant automation.
After gaining extensive field experience in mining and port operations, I moved to the Sydney head office of CRA subsidiary AM&S Mining that was later separated from CRA and publicly listed as Pasminco. During this period I was involved in mining technology research, developing automated mining systems and new processing technology. I was instrumental in technology transfer of ultra-fine grinding mills used in the paper industry to processing zinc minerals exploited at Century Mine. I was the owner’s representative in the design office for the design of the AUD1.5bn Century Mine processing plant, 303km slurry transport pipeline and Karumba port operation.
I remained at Pasminco, often on site at Century Mine, until the mine achieved performance targets, and then joined international insurance giant AIG as an engineering risk consultant, travelling globally assessing large scale operations and construction sites for the insurer.
Since when and why are you interested in climate change?
Weather and climate are key factors in the engineering design of large mines, processing plants and industrial complexes. The ability of the built world to withstand cyclonic winds, storm surge, flooding rain, temperature extremes, earthquake, ground subsidence etc. are all factors that need to be considered and allowed for in the site and plant design. Assessing the risk and defining survivability parameters are key inputs to the design that reflect in the project cost and its operational performance to deliver economic benefit. The design envelope is highly dependent on weather and climate. Experiencing cyclones in Dampier and preparing the equipment to withstand the onslaught was the first experience connecting plant design and climate.
How did your views on climate change evolve?
Knowing how important weather is to the design envelope of large scale sites, plant and equipment, the prospect of climate change takes on new meaning in the insurance industry. It becomes very expensive to cater for changing risk once the plant is built.
To gain an understanding of how climate was changing in Australia, when I joined AIG, I looked into the temperature trend at Broken Hill. I considered Broken Hill to be the birth place of industrialisation in Australia. It has spawned two of the largest mining companies in the world and has solid engineering credentials dating back to the 19th century. It was also a remote location with little industrial change for more than a century. That temperature record revealed to me that Broken Hill was warmer in the 1890s than the early 2000s. That observation began my journey of discovery into the fabricated nonsense that CO2 induces climate change.
Is climate change a big issue in your country and how do you notice this?
Australia is now full throttle on fixing the weather with “renewables”. Australia is following Germany and the UK over the abyss.
How would climate policy ideally look like in your view?
Australia is being poorly served by three, primarily government funded, institutions:
BoM is fabricating data – they call it “homogenisation”; CSIRO have separated the business from reality – models are viewed as evidence and measurements are there to be adjusted to suit models. ABC has become a CO2 demonising propaganda machine. All these organisations should be defunded and those parts that can survive without subsidy should be left to find their niche.
Also, eliminate all subsidies on so-called “renewable” electricity and battery electric vehicles.
What is your motivation to sign the Clintel World Climate Declaration?
Humans are inevitably becoming more reliant on conserving natural resources and smart utilisation of resources. China is consuming more than 4,000,000,000 tonnes of coal each year; a good proportion to manufacture wind turbines and solar panels that cannot recover the energy that they consumed in manufacture during their operating life. It is a massive waste of natural resources.
The current crop of battery electric vehicles on offer in the developed world are an insult to the engineering profession. They are literally behemoths. Gross indulgences that depend on massive subsidies for their production.
What question did we forget?
I have a reasonable knowledge of field theory and an admiration for mathematicians and physicists who command field theory and derive observed behaviours from first principals rather than empirical fits. When I first saw James Hansen’s famous radiation diagram showing “back-radiation”, the alarm bells rang. Here was someone, who obviously had no idea of electro-magnetic radiation, producing silly diagrams that had gained wide credibility. I was buoyed to find that NASA/GISS had employed Russian physicist Michael Mishchenko to apply his knowledge of the electro-magnetic field to climate science. Michael passed away in 2020 but has produced copious papers on electro-magnetics as applied to understanding climate and has often pointed out that EMR is mono-directional. Sadly his work is not yet reflected in the IPCC reports because they are political documents – Hansen’s silly diagram persists.
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Simpletons versus wicked scientists
by Judith Curry – Reposted from Climate Etc.
In which wicked scientists are the good guys.
Activism by climate scientists has been the topic of numerous prior blog posts at Climate Etc. Such activism is generally focused on eliminating fossil fuels. This post presents a new framing for the activism issue. While many scientists prefer to remain in the ivory tower, others desire to engage in the messiness of politics and policy making. Why most scientists reject admonitions to “stay in their lane,” there are more and less useful ways for scientists to engage with politics.
Simpleton climate scientists
I’m defining ‘simpleton climate scientists’ to be academics, mostly in disciplines that are far afield from the core discipline of climate dynamics, who think that both the climate problem and its solutions are simple. Their preferred modes of activism are twitter rants, demonstrations and increasingly civil disobedience.
The issue of simpleton scientists was brought to the forefront last week by a publication in Nature Climate Change entitled Civil disobedience by scientists helps press for urgent climate action. The authors are faculty members in the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Cardiff:
Stuart Capstick, psychologist
Aaron Thierry, social scientist
Emily Cox, psychologist
Oscar Berglund, policy studies (U. of Bristol)
Steve Westlake, psychologist
Julia Steinberger, geography (U. of Lausanne)
The Nature article is behind paywall, but a Guardian article interviews the authors. It is clear that this is not just a scholarly article on civil disobedience. The quote that really popped out for me was by Berglund:
“We have a kind of what we call epistemic authority here: people listen to what we are saying, as scientists, and it becomes a way of showing howserious the situation is, that we see ourselves forced to go to these lengths.”
Since when do psychologists have epistemic authority to speak on climate change, its impacts and relevant policies?
Inside Climate News has another choice quote from the actual paper:
“Civil disobedience by scientists has the potential to cut through the myriad complexities and confusion surrounding the climate crisis.”
Ya think? Is this all it takes?
Also cited in this article is a statement from Peter Kalmus:
Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, agrees. In April, Kalmus was arrested for locking himself to the front door of a JPMorgan Chase bank branch and has since urged other scientists to join him in protest, saying it’s their duty as experts to convey the weight of their findings to the public and convince elected officials to take proper recourse.
“For the sake of our children, for the sake of the future of humanity,” Kalmus said, “you have a responsibility to do everything you can to get that information out there.”
Exactly how does civil disobedience get meaningful information out there? These scientists seem to be taking their cues from Michael Mann’s book for children entitled The Tantrum That Saved the World
Further:
Kalmus told me that he’s “disappointed” that, so far, fewer scientists than he had hoped have joined in his call to action, but he sees Monday’s article as a positive sign and believes more researchers will join the movement—especially as extreme weather and other consequences of global warming accelerate in scope and severity.
Have any of these climate scientists actually read the IPCC AR6?
So why haven’t more climate scientists joined this call to action? Maybe because they find this kind of behavior embarrassing and counterproductive.
More credible approaches to climate activism
Jim Hansen was probably the first high-profile climate activist. Has anyone ever heard Hansen claim “epistemic authority” to speak publicly on climate change? Of course not. Hansen doesn’t need to claim such authority – he has it. Hansen has worked assiduously to communicate with public. He has done the hard work to understand the economics and politics of carbon pricing and also nuclear power. He has worked closely with policy makers, most famously with Al Gore. Have some of his actions been over-the-top? Yes. Whether or not you agree with Hansen, it is undeniable that he has been effective in the political and policy arenas. Hansen is now in his 80’s, it would be interesting for him to write an essay that reflects on his activism, what worked and what didn’t, any general or specific regrets, and recommendations for current activists.
An interesting essay on this topic was written recently by Rick Pancost, entitled Climate Scientist Activism. The entire essay is well worth reading, here are some quotes:
I am not sure what sort of activism will be most effective to bring about transformative change. I certainly cannot speak to where you will be most effective in your activism. Those who do have political influence – real influence – should recognise what a rare commodity that is; they should neither casually discard it nor should they waste it. The climate movement must be a thriving mosaic of approaches, with each leveraging the successes of the others to increase cultural, popular or political capital and drive a Just Transformation.
We must find what activism is most effective, is most genuine, for each of us – but be self-critical when doing so. Some of us DO need to engage governments, some of us must be IN government. But let us not be complicit in our own deception. After all, engaging politicians is difficult but activism is hard. You sacrifice more than your time, but also your reputation, job prospects, even your freedom. Sometimes the logical choice is the right choice; sometimes it is just the easy choice.
But you do have to make a choice. We cannot have our cake and eat it too. We cannot be the vizier to the king as well as the court jester. We cannot participate in civil disobedience and still serve on government advisory boards.
Activist scientists must also be humble and remember that we are not experts on what is effective. We did not know what would be effective when we allowed ourselves to be bound by others´ rules of engagement, when we allowed ourselves to be captured by governments and by extension the lobbyists and special interests who influence them. Because we are not experts on how policy is made, we were tricked. So perhaps rather than deciding who and how to engage, we should join those who do know.
Finally and most importantly, I would urge you to consider that maybe we should stop partnering with governments and start partnering with communities. “
Pangost’s essay reflects scientists attempting to work constructively with policy makers, planners and stakeholders, primarily on the issue of mitigation (reduction of CO2 emissions) and associated societal changes. There are clearly frustrations, but this approach is far more effective than simpleton tantrums.
Wicked scientists
And finally we come to wicked scientists. As I have written in multiple previous posts, a wicked problem is characterized by multiple problem definitions, contentious methods of understanding, chronic conditions of ignorance, and lack of capacity to imagine future eventualities of both the problem and the proposed solutions. The complex web of causality may result in surprising unintended consequences of attempted solutions that generate new vulnerabilities or exacerbate the original harm. Further, wickedness makes it difficult to identify points of irrefutable failure or success in either the science or the policies. Wicked problems are both complex and political.
Although much has been written about wicked problems and the need to address them, there is not much in the way of guidance for effectively tackling wicked problems. Two recent articles have addressed this issue:
The World Needs Wicked Scientists
A Philosophy for Working on Wicked Problems .
“Wicked science” is a process that is tailored to the dual scientific and political natures of wicked societal problems. As such, wicked science is massively transdisciplinary, including natural sciences and engineering along with social sciences and humanities. Wicked science uses approaches from complexity science and systems thinking in a context that engages with the political roles and perspectives of decision makers, planners and other stakeholders. Wicked problems and the strategies devised to address them cannot be defined by scientific experts alone, but include the experiential and operational knowledge of a range of stakeholders.
Two recent papers by atmospheric/climate scientists have articulated something similar to wicked science for the climate sciences, that notably focus more on adaptation than mitigation.
Adam Sobel’s paper “Usable climate science is adaptation science” emphasizes that the localness of adaptation implies much greater uncertainty in the relevant climate science. Climate science for adaptation is more about characterizing uncertainty for robust decision making. Usable climate science requires that scientists engage in co-production of usable science with stakeholders, with a willingness to learn to understand how the human factors are manifest in a particular setting.
Regina Rodrigues and Ted Shepherd’s paper entitled “Small is beautiful: climate-change science as if people mattered” addresses strategies for grappling with the complexity of local situations. The strategies include expressing climate knowledge in conditional form in terms of scenarios developed via the storyline approach, and working with local communities to make sense of their own situations.
Combining and integrating knowledge from diverse disciplines and other sources to provide insights, explanations and solutions to wicked problems is a substantial challenge. For the solution orientation of wicked science to be meaningful, we need an overarching philosophy for navigating wicked problems. We need to acknowledge that control is limited, the future is unknown, and it is difficult to determine whether the impact you make will be positive. We need to accept that climate change will continue to disrupt natural systems and human wellbeing; this acknowledgement helps avoid the urgency trap. By acknowledging that there is no road back, we can focus on the road ahead.
Wicked scientists are willing to become embroiled in political debates and thorny social problems. As such, wicked scientists are not activists that are advocating for a preferred political/policy solution and recognize the reality of political disagreement as a key aspect for dealing with wicked problems.
Wicked scientists are needed to break the hegemony of disciplinary researchers, particularly those who are strident political activists, as being regarded as experts for solutions to the wicked problem of climate change. While the IPCC has operated via a loose cooperation between multiple disciplines, genuine transdisciplinary understanding and collaborations, across disciplines and with a broad range of stakeholders, is needed for meaningful contributions to wicked problems.
Some universities are starting to grapple with how to train wicked scientists. Working in the private weather/climate services sector provides a crash course in being a wicked scientist, in terms of becoming conversant with additional disciplines, working in transdisciplinary teams, an emphasis on uncertainty, and actually listening to and working with policy makers, planners and stakeholders. Not only is activism not needed for problem solving, but it mostly seems counterproductive to actually formulating and evaluating solutions.
The road ahead can be facilitated by broader, transdisciplinary thinking about the climate change problem and its solutions. This requires moving away from the consensus-enforcing and cancel culture approach of attempting to restrict the dialogue surrounding climate change and the policy options. We need to open up space for dissent, disagreement and discussion about scientific uncertainty and policy options, so that multiple perspectives can be considered and broader support can be built for a range of policy options. Bring on the wicked scientists.
But if a scientist is dominated by their political instincts on this issue, they will continue to take the court jester path and not contribute to solutions in a meaningful way.
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New peer reviewed paper: climate sensitivity a third lower (Climate Etc. version)
by Nic Lewis reposted from Climate Etc.
Official estimates of future global warming may be overstated.
A brief summary in press release style of my new paper (written in the third person)
One of the most important conclusions of the recent 6th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR6) was to reduce the uncertainty in estimates of climate sensitivity to doubling the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Since 1979, the likely range (66% chance) of climate sensitivity has been between 1.5°C and 4.5°C. This range has remained stubbornly wide, until the IPCC AR6 narrowed the likely range to be between 2.5°C and 4.0°C.
A new paper by independent scientist Nic Lewis published in the journal Climate Dynamics challenges the conclusions of the IPCC AR6 about climate sensitivity. Lewis’ analysis reduces the magnitude of climate sensitivity by one third, relative to the range provided by the IPCC AR6. These results suggest that future global warming in response to fossil fuel emissions could be significantly less than has been assumed by policy makers.
In 2015, the World Climate Research Programme convened a Workshop aimed at reducing the uncertainty in estimates of climate sensitivity to increasing carbon dioxide. The Workshop ultimately resulted in publication of a report (a 92 page paper) by many of the participants that thoroughly assessed all lines of evidence (Sherwood et al, 2020). A key result of this paper was to reduce the likely range of climate sensitivity values to 2.6 oC to 3.9 oC. While Lewis was an invited participant to the 2015 Workshop, he was not a coauthor on this paper. The Sherwood et al. paper strongly influenced the IPCC AR6’s assessment of climate sensitivity.
Lewis’ paper critiqued the methods used in the Sherwood et al. paper, finding significant errors, inconsistencies and other shortcomings. Lewis remedied these shortcomings and also revised key input data, almost entirely to reflect more recent evidence. The results of Lewis’ analysis determined a likely range of 1.75 to 2.7oC for climate sensitivity. The central estimate from Lewis’ analysis is 2.16 oC, which is well below the IPCC AR6 likely range. This large reduction relative to Sherwood et al. shows how sensitive climate sensitivity estimates are to input assumptions. Lewis’ analysis implies that climate sensitivity is more likely to be below 2 oC than it is to be above 2.5 oC.
The lower estimates of climate sensitivity determined by Nic Lewis have profound implications for climate models and projections of warming for the 21st century. Climate models used in the IPCC AR6 had values of climate sensitivity ranging from 1.8oC to 5.6oC. The IPCC AR6 judged that some of the climate models had values of climate sensitivity that were too high. Hence the AR6 selected only the climate models with reasonable values of climate sensitivity to be used in projections of 21st century climate change. Lewis’ analysis indicates that a majority of climate models used in the IPCC AR6 have values higher than the likely range.
Nic Lewis has authored ten peer-reviewed papers on climate sensitivity. Lewis’ latest paper is entitled ‘Objectively combining climate sensitivity evidence’. It can be freely downloaded here. A detailed explanatory article about the paper is available here.
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The Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis (VII). A summary plus Q&A
by Javier Vinós & Andy May reposted from Climate Etc.
“On the other hand, I think I can safely say that nobody understands climate change.” J. Vinós, paraphrasing Richard Feynman’s words about quantum mechanics.
7.1 Introduction
This plain-language summary has been written at the request of some readers of our series of articles on the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis:
(I) The search for a solar signal (II) Solar activity unexplained/ignored effects on climate (III) Meridional transport (IV) The climate shift of 1997 (V) A role for the sun in climate change (VI) Meridional transport as the main climate change driverClimate is extremely complex, and people, including scientists, have a natural tendency to look for simple explanations. The Occam’s Razor principle is a good first approach but climate change cannot have a simple answer. Over the past seven years, one of the authors of this series (JV) has been laboriously reading many thousands of scientific articles and analyzing hundreds of climate datasets trying to understand how Earth’s climate changes naturally. This is a first step to understanding the human impact on climate change. The outcome of this work is the book “Climate of the Past, Present and Future.” It is a graduate-student level academic book that discusses many controversial issues about natural climate change over the past 800,000 years. In this book, a new hypothesis on natural climate change is presented. It relates changes in the strength of the meridional (poleward) transport of energy with climatic changes that have taken place, both in the past and recently.
The book can be downloaded here (open access) Vinos-CPPF(2022)
Since meridional transport is most variable during the winter of the Northern Hemisphere, and is modulated by solar activity, we named the concept the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis. The other author of the series (AM) is a writer of several published climate books, they are: “Climate Catastrophe! Science or Science Fiction?,” “Politics and Climate Change: A History,” and “The Great Climate Change Debate: Karoly v Happer.” We joined forces to explain this new hypothesis through this series and a new book we are co-writing that will be tailored toward a more general audience. An audience interested in climate change but not in its complex scientific details. The hypothesis grew out of an investigation into the effect of solar variability on climate. But solar variability turned out to be only part of natural climate change. As the scientific evidence for the hypothesis was presented in the first six parts of the series, this summary will present only the conclusions, some additional supporting evidence, and answer a few interesting questions and comments from readers.
7.2 A synopsis of the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis
The IPCC assessment reports published since 1990, reflect a scientific consensus that natural forces, including solar activity and ocean-atmosphere oscillations, like the Atlantic and Pacific multidecadal oscillations, had a net zero effect on the observed global average surface temperature changes since 1951. The IPCC consensus does not allow for changes in the poleward (meridional) transport of energy to have significantly affected this average temperature over the past 75 years.
The Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis proposes that changes in the meridional transport of energy and moisture are the main way the climate changes now and in the past. Meridional transport variability has many causes and forces that act simultaneously and in different time frames on the climate system. They integrate into a very complex poleward energy transportation system. Among these are multidecadal ocean-atmosphere oscillations, solar variability, ozone, stratospheric-reaching tropical volcanic eruptions, orbital changes, and changing luni-solar gravitational pull. Meridional transport is therefore an integrator of internal and external signals. It is not the only way the climate changes, but evidence suggests it is the main one.
The Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis does not disprove greenhouse gas effect induced climate change—manmade or otherwise—in fact, it acts through it. But it does not require changes in the atmospheric content of non-condensing greenhouse gases to cause significant climate change. Therefore, it does refute the hypothesis that CO2 is the main climate change control knob.
Meridional transport moves energy that is already in the climate system toward its exit point at the top of the atmosphere at a higher latitude. It is carried out mainly by the atmosphere, in both the stratosphere and troposphere, with an important oceanic contribution. The greenhouse effect is not homogeneous over the planet due to the unequal distribution of water vapor, and it is stronger in the wet tropics, weaker over deserts, and much weaker at the poles in winter. When meridional transport is stronger, more energy reaches the poles. There it can more efficiently exit the climate system, particularly during the winter, when there is no Sun in the sky. Most polar imported moisture in winter freezes, emitting its latent heat. Additional CO2 molecules increase outward radiation, as they are warmer than the surface. The net result is that all imported energy into the polar regions in winter exits the climate system at the top of the atmosphere (Peixoto & Oort, 1992, p. 363), and increasing the energy transported there at that time can only increase the loss.
When meridional transport is stronger, the planet loses more energy and cools down (or warms less) in a non-homogeneous way, because the net energy loss is greater in the polar regions. However, as more energy is directed toward the poles, the Arctic region warms, even as the rest of the world cools or warms more slowly. When meridional transport is weaker, less energy reaches the poles and exits the climate system. Then the planet loses less energy and warms, while the Arctic cools, because it receives less energy from the lower latitudes.
Most of the energy is transported through the lower troposphere and ocean track. As a result, changes in multidecadal ocean oscillations produce a greater effect on climate in the multidecadal timeframe than changes in solar activity. Solar changes have a stronger effect on stratospheric energy transport. Even so, there is a non-well defined link between changes in solar activity and changes in the multidecadal oscillations that result in major multidecadal climate shifts right after 11-year solar cycle minima (see Part IV). Nevertheless, modern global warming started c. 1850, when the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation increased its amplitude and period (Moore et al. 2017). The overall multidecadal oscillation (aka the stadium wave) currently has a period of c. 65 years, and the 20th century included two rising phases of the oscillation, explaining its two warming phases (1915-1945, and 1976-1997; Fig. 7.1).
Meridional transport was further reduced during the 20th century by the coincidence of the Modern Solar Maximum (Fig. 7.1): A long period of above average solar activity between 1935 and 2004. It is the longest such period in at least 600 years. Solar activity acts mainly on stratospheric energy transport, but since it affects the strength of the polar vortex and the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (see Part II), it also influences tropospheric transport.
Fig. 7.1. Changes in the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and solar activity are consistent with temperature changes. Top, above average solar activity reduces poleward transport causing warming. Bottom, the ascending half-period of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation causes an even bigger reduction in transport and has a bigger temperature effect. Middle, temperature evolution for the past 120 years is consistent with the effect of these two factors on transport. Data from SILSO sunspots (top), HadCRUT4 deseasonalized temperature (middle), and AMO deseasonalized (bottom), have been smoothed with a gaussian filter.
As it can be seen in Fig. 7.1, most of the warming during the 20th century can be explained by the combined effect of the ocean multidecadal oscillations and the Modern Solar Maximum on meridional transport. No other proposed factor can satisfactorily explain the early 20th century warming period, the mid-20th century shallow cooling, and the late 20th century strong warming period, without resorting to ad-hoc explanations. In a single century two periods of reduced transport (warming), coincided with the ascent of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and the effect of the modern solar maximum. This resulted in 80 years of diminished transport that contributed to the greatest warming in 600 years, triggering political and scientific alarm.
7.3 Solar changes, transport changes, and climate shifts
The amount of energy transported poleward varies continuously, with major seasonal changes. However, at certain times the annual average atmospheric transport at high latitudes changes more rapidly over a period of a few years and settles into a different average strength. These abrupt changes in transport are mainly a winter phenomenon, and cause climate shifts on average every 25 years. Climate shifts were first identified in 1991 (Ebbesmeyer et al. 1991), yet they are not considered a cause for climate change in the IPCC reports, despite numerous studies suggesting they are. After each shift, the climate settles into a new regime.
It is known that one of these shifts took place in 1976 resulting in accelerated warming, and another one in 1997, resulting in decelerated warming (see Part IV). The four known shifts that took place in the 20th century happened soon after solar cycle minimums. The climate regimes, or meridional transport phases, disproportionally affect the Arctic climate in an opposite direction to the climate of the northern mid-latitudes. The accelerated warming from 1976-1997 was characterized by a quite stable Arctic climate, but the decelerated warming since 1997 has coincided with strong Arctic warming. Figure 7.2 shows how the sudden Arctic shift of 1997 was caused by an increase in meridional transport. The only energy that reaches the Arctic in winter is through transport, and the shift was accompanied by an abrupt increase in the amount of energy radiated to space.
According to IPCC theory, without a change in solar energy and/or a change in albedo (solar energy reflected by clouds and ice), a change in outgoing longwave energy could not happen, because energy out must match energy in. Yet without a significant change in either solar energy or albedo, a significant change in outgoing longwave energy occurred, as shown in Fig. 7.2.
Fig. 7.2. The change in meridional transport at the 1997 climate shift resulted in an abrupt increase in the amount of energy radiated to space, particularly during the winter. This increase was not compensated for by a corresponding decrease elsewhere.
Climate scientists contributing to the IPCC reports cannot blame the 1976 climate shift on changes in atmospheric greenhouse gases, so they suggest it was caused by a coincidental small reduction in anthropogenic sulfate aerosols. They set the sulphate cooling effect to a point that allowed increasing CO2 levels to overcome the previous cooling trend in 1976. As the 1997 shift cannot be explained in terms of anthropogenic factors, any data that shows that the shift occurred is ignored, and the focus is shifted to the increased Arctic warming.
Climate shifts undoubtedly represent changes in the meridional transport of energy. No theory can successfully explain climate change without accounting for abrupt or gradual changes in transport. The Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis has been developed to explain how climate has changed naturally for the past 50 million years and how it is changing now, integrating into a single interpretation tectonic, orbital, solar, oceanic, and atmospheric causes of climate change. It has tremendous explaining power, and many apparently unconnected phenomena can be linked through it. As an example, changes in wind speed and evaporation are discussed below. Many climate scientists will be able to reinterpret their results guided by this new energy transport view of climate change.
Particularly challenging was to find an explanation for all the previously unconnected evidence of a strong effect on climate from small changes in solar activity. This 220-year-old problem constituted the genesis of the hypothesis. The evidence that small changes in solar activity affect the meridional transport of energy is very solid. Two pieces of evidence are mentioned here.
The first is the repeated observation during the past six decades that changes in solar activity have affected the Earth’s speed of rotation (see Part II). This can only be accomplished by solar-induced changes to atmospheric angular momentum that affect the global atmospheric circulation. This is not a small feat for such small changes in incoming energy, and it derives from the dynamical changes caused by UV (ultraviolet radiation) absorption by ozone in the stratosphere.
The second piece of evidence is that Arctic temperatures display a negative correlation with solar activity. This is not a recent development, as shown in Fig. 5.5. This negative correlation was demonstrated for the past two millennia by Kobashi et al. in their 2015 article “Modern solar maximum forced late twentieth century Greenland cooling.” Part of their figure 3 is shown as Fig. 7.3.
Fig. 7.3. Greenland temperature anomaly and solar activity over the past 2100 years. (B) Greenland temperature anomaly. Average NH temperature from four NH records and combined Greenland temperatures. Periods of warm (cold) anomalies in Greenland are in red (blue). (C) Two TSI reconstructions by Steinhilber et al., 2012 and Roth and Joos, 2013 in z score. The blue (red) areas are the periods of stronger (weaker) solar activity corresponding to (B) with possible multidecadal lags. (E) Decomposition of the Greenland temperatures into solar-induced changes (blue) and hemispheric influences (orange) with a regression constant (–31.2°C; dots), constrained by the multiple linear regressions. The error bounds are the 95% confidence intervals. The green shaded area is the period (the late 20th century) when the modern solar maximum had strong negative influence (red circle) on the Greenland temperature. Figure from Kobashi et al. 2015.
The most plausible explanation for Arctic temperature displaying a negative correlation to solar activity is that changes in the Sun regulate meridional transport. An increase in solar activity reduces transport, cooling the Arctic, and a decrease in solar activity increases transport, warming the Arctic. The effect on the temperature in the mid-latitudes is the opposite.
More evidence is provided by the relationship between solar activity and the strength of the polar vortex (see Fig. 5.4). While this relationship provides an explanation for the Arctic temperature-solar correlation, the polar vortex data cannot be extended back in time as much as Greenland temperature data.
7.4 The explaining power of the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis
Climate research has increased enormously over the past few decades, and frequently changes in climate phenomena are discovered. When these changes do not fit into the IPCC-sponsored CO2 hypothesis, and are not properly reproduced by models using greenhouse gas-related theory, they are considered climate oddities and ignored by the climate science community, who are focused almost exclusively on anthropogenic changes. There are many of these phenomena. We have already mentioned the expansion of the Hadley cells (see Fig. 4.5f). We mention another example here.
At the turn of the century, it was noticed that wind speed over land had been decreasing for over two decades. The phenomenon was termed “global terrestrial stilling” (McVicar & Roderick 2010). It was worrisome because power generation by wind turbines is related to the wind speed to the third power, so the 15% reduction in wind speed observed over the U.S. translated into an almost 40% reduction in available wind energy. The land wind stilling is puzzling as models do not show it. Moreover, it was accompanied by an increase in wind speed over the ocean, so the proposed explanation at the time was that land surface roughness increased due to increases in biomass and land-use changes (Vautard et al. 2010), in another example of an ad-hoc explanation.
Then, unexpectedly, the wind stilling trend started to reverse between 1997 and 2010, and since 2010 all land regions in the Northern Hemisphere are experiencing an increase in wind speed (Zeng et al. 2019). The explanation turned to internal decadal ocean–atmosphere oscillations, that seemed to correlate.
It is unknown to many people, but evaporation over the oceans depends a lot more on wind speed than it does on sea-surface temperature. It was demonstrated that global sea-surface evaporation has closely followed changes in wind speed (Yu 2007; Fig. 7.4).
Fig. 7.4. Changes in wind speed and evaporation during climate regimes. At the 1976-97 period of low transport/high warming, global ocean wind speed (black continuous) increased in parallel to ocean evaporation (blue dashed), while land wind (red dotted) entered a period of stilling. At the 1997 climate shift the trends changed. Data from Yu 2007 and Zeng et al. 2019. Europe has been chosen because it is downwind of the main transport route to the Arctic in the North Atlantic and responds earlier to its changes. Since 2010 the trend is shared by wind over all terrestrial Northern Hemisphere regions.
Lisan Yu shows that between the 1970s and the 1990s, “the enhancement of Evp [evaporation] occurred primarily over the hemispheric wintertime,” while “the westerlies associated with the [Aleutian and the Icelandic] low systems strengthened and expanded southward” (Yu 2007).
The Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis can explain this evidence, which, in turn, supports the hypothesis. The 1976 shift reduced meridional transport due to atmospheric circulation becoming more zonal, this increased wind speed and evaporation over the oceans while decreasing wind speed over land, because most meridional transport takes place over the ocean basins. The changes were more intense during the winter season, when more energy must be transported poleward, and resulted in a low-transport, high-warming, global climate regime (Fig. 7.1). At the 1997 shift the increase in meridional transport was caused by a more meridional atmospheric circulation, decreasing wind speed and evaporation over the oceans while increasing wind speed over land. The climate regime shifted into a high-transport, low-warming one.
It is obvious that changes in non-condensing greenhouse gases and anthropogenic aerosols could not have been the driving force behind these changes in meridional transport. This suggests they have been attributed too much climate sensitivity in climate change theory and models. However, the changes in transport and atmospheric circulation are clearly associated with changes in evaporation and air moisture that, without a doubt, must affect changes in cloud formation and transport, not forgetting changes in seawater salinity. Hypotheses that explain recent climate change in terms of water vapor and cloud changes might be subservient to the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis. The integration of solar, astronomical, and atmospheric-ocean oscillation changes makes this hypothesis an all-encompassing one. It is more likely to be correct than partial hypotheses.
7.5 Some questions and comments about the hypothesis
Given the complexity of the climate system we do not have answers to every question, nor it is required that we do for the essence of the hypothesis to be correct. Some interesting comments came up in the discussions and it is worthwhile to bring them up, for those readers that missed them. Here we review a few of the more interesting questions and comments:
(1) Q: Is it necessary that there has been an increasing trend in solar activity since the Little Ice Age?
A: While an increasing trend in solar activity since 1700 is defensible, it is not required for the solar part of the hypothesis to be correct. As Fig. 7.1 shows, it is enough that an above average activity has reduced meridional transport contributing to the warming. The displayed Modern Solar Maximum had that effect. Fig. 7.3 provides strong support for the solar-transport link over the past two millennia.
(2) Q: Is the greenhouse effect required for the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis?
A: Yes. In a thought experiment, it was proposed that a reader imagine that the polar regions are another planet (B) that is connected to a planet A made of the tropics and mid-latitudes. The connection allows the transfer of heat. The greenhouse effect in planet B is weaker since its atmosphere has a low water vapor content. During 6 months of a year planet B is in the dark. If more energy is allowed to pass to that planet, it is radiated more efficiently to space and the binary system average temperature decreases, despite planet B warming. The opposite happens if less energy is allowed to pass.
(3) Q: Why is there no correlation between surface temperature and solar activity if the hypothesis is true?
A: Because there shouldn’t be a correlation. At the multidecadal scale, meridional transport responds primarily to the multidecadal ocean-atmosphere oscillation. At the inter-annual scale, the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation and El Niño/Southern Oscillation have a strong effect. The Sun is not dominant at these time-scales. The role of the Sun increases as the time scale lengthens due to its longer-term secular cycles and their longer-term cumulative effect.
(4) Q: How important is the role of ocean transport in climate change in your hypothesis?
A: Oceans store most of the energy in the climate system, and most of the solar energy flows through the ocean before reaching the atmosphere. It therefore has a crucial role in climate. However, the role of the ocean in meridional transport is secondary to the role of the atmosphere and so is its role in climate change. Ocean transport is currently considered to be mechanically driven, with winds and tides providing the required energy. The atmosphere transforms heat into mechanical energy, while the ocean does not. This does not diminish the effect of the heat the ocean transports, which is about one third of total meridional heat transported. It also carries all the heat transferred from the Southern to the Northern Hemisphere. But the importance of ocean transport decreases with the increase in latitude, and so the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis cannot rely on ocean transport except in a supporting role.
(5) Q: Do changes in solar activity affect ocean currents?
A: Changes in solar output should not affect ocean currents directly because that requires mechanical energy. Changes in solar output must necessarily affect the atmosphere first. This is important because it essentially rules out solar hypotheses that propose an initial solar effect over the ocean.
(6) Q: Does your hypothesis rule out warming from anthropogenic forcing like greenhouse gas emissions, industrial aerosols, and land use changes?
A: No. It just leaves a lot less room for them. If the hypothesis is correct, it is unlikely that the anthropogenic effect on climate can account for more than half of the observed warming, and probably much less.
(7) Q: What about Svensmark’s cosmic rays-cloud hypothesis?
A: We have not found any evidence for that hypothesis.
(8) Q: Isn’t the change in irradiance during the solar cycle too small to affect climate?
A: The change in irradiance with the solar cycle is only 0.1%, too small to change the system energy budget significantly and drive climate change. The ultraviolet radiation part 200-320nm of the spectrum is only 1% of total solar irradiance energy, and it varies by 1% with the solar cycle (10 times the variation in total energy). So, the ultraviolet radiation change responsible for the solar cycle effect on climate is only 0.01% of the total energy delivered by the Sun. The other 0.09% of the energy change is irrelevant in terms of climate change and has no detectable effect. The solar effect on climate is not about the amount of ultraviolet solar energy, but its dynamical effects in the Earth’s atmosphere. 99.99% of the energy responsible for the solar effect is already in the climate system. An increase in meridional transport reduces its transit time through the system, while a decrease in transport increases its residence time causing the temperature changes.
(9) Q: Your hypothesis cannot be correct because the top of the atmosphere should be in radiative equilibrium and return the same amount of energy it receives.
A: That statement is incorrect. The radiative flux at the top of the atmosphere is never in equilibrium and the planet is warming or cooling all the time at any time frame considered. Nobody has ever identified a period when the amount of energy entering the climate system was the same as the amount of energy exiting the climate system. The Earth has no way of returning the same amount of energy it receives. Many not well constrained feedback mechanisms are responsible for what thermal homeostasis the planet is capable of.
(10) Q: Stratospheric temperature also shows a shift in 1997 from a declining trend to a flat trend.
A: Yes, that is evidence of the 1997 climate shift and the ongoing pause despite the 2016 El Niño. The stratospheric temperature trend has the reverse profile to surface temperature trend. Models believe this is due to changes in stratospheric CO2 and ozone, but models and observations disagree significantly (Thompson et al. 2012). The stratosphere temperature trend is consistent with what is expected if the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis is correct.
(11) Q: Scientists are already aware that changes in meridional transport are a possible cause for warming. See Herweijer et al. 2005.
A: The IPCC does not believe changes in transport have significantly contributed to the observed warming since 1951. If they did it would be included in the natural (internal) variability that they have assigned a net zero effect (see Fig. 5.1). Models do not reproduce transport correctly, and Herweijer et al. 2005 is an example. Models assume that the sum of ocean and atmospheric transport is nearly constant. This is called the Bjerknes compensation hypothesis (see Part IV). In their model experiment they increase ocean transport by 50% and observe warming from water vapor redistribution changes (greenhouse effect changes) and a reduction in low cloud albedo and sea-ice albedo. The problem is they fail to mention that their model-based proposed mechanism should work as negative feedback to warming. In a warming planet with polar amplification and a reducing latitudinal temperature gradient, a reduction in ocean transport is both implied and observed (they acknowledge it, referring to McPhaden & Zhang 2002). According to their model experiment this should drive cooling from transport changes, not warming. Their failure to mention this is misleading, to say the least. In a serious challenge to the model-based Bjerknes compensation hypothesis, researchers have found a strengthening of the North Atlantic Current since 1997 (Oziel et al. 2020) simultaneous with the strengthening of the atmospheric transport shown—and referenced in our articles—and in agreement with the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis.
(12) Q: Shouldn’t the tropical convection zones be the main radiators of the planet, responsible for cooling? Directing heat away from the wet tropics should warm the planet.
A: That is incorrect. More energy is lost at the tropics than at the poles, but the energy loss at the tropics is essentially capped by deep convection. There is a point when additional downward energy does not increase surface temperature because it is used to increase convection. The proposal that deep convection acts as a thermostat in the tropics is over 20 years old (Sud et al. 1999). Deep convection transfers excess energy to the atmosphere but reduces outgoing longwave radiation through cloud formation. Most of the energy remains within the climate system. The negative correlation between sea surface temperature and outgoing longwave radiation, once temperature exceeds 27°C, is a well-known feature of tropical climate (Lau et al. 1997). The standard view is that transporting more energy toward the poles warms the planet. Our hypothesis and the evidence we have presented supports the opposite view.
(13) Q: The essence of Arctic amplification in winter is not what you say, but the impact of increasing sea temperatures, the decline in sea-ice and the increase in winter clouds, that are changing the Arctic to a warmer regime.
A: That is the position of most climate scientists. We disagree. That is the effect. The cause is a change in the amount of heat transported by the atmosphere to the Arctic that took place quite abruptly in a few years after the 1997 climate regime as shown in Fig. 7.2. This increase in heat and moisture transport produced the rapid decline in sea-ice and increase in cloudiness that are features of the new Arctic regime. All consensus Arctic predictions are failing because the situation stabilized in the new transport regime instead of causing positive feedback—the logical conclusion if the consensus position were correct.
(14) Q: Your view of El Niño/Southern Oscillation is incorrect. La Niña and El Niño are the alternating states of an oscillator.
A: That is not supported by a frequency analysis of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation. El Niño and La Niña are opposite deviations from the neutral state. Our analysis shows the frequency of La Niña years displays a strong negative correlation with the frequency of neutral years (see Fig. 2.4), not El Niño years. And the frequency of neutral years follows the solar cycle. There is only one way to interpret this evidence. La Niña and neutral are the alternating states of an oscillator that responds to solar activity. As neutral conditions are not opposite La Niña conditions, the oscillator tends to accumulate too much subsurface ocean heat. El Niño resets the oscillator. El Niño frequency depends upon how much extra heat the oscillator collects, which, in turn, depends upon whether the planet, overall, is warming or cooling. This is a very unorthodox view but it is supported by the evidence.
(15) Q: You show in Fig. 6.9 that over 85% of the surface warming shown in HadCRUT5 for the period 1997-2014 is the product of changes made to the temperature datasets since HadCRUT3. Is this correct?
A: Yes. Global annual average surface warming is not only a poor measure of climate change but, since it is calculated as an anomaly to an average, it is also a very small number relative to the accuracy of the measurements, and to the much larger seasonal temperature changes from which it is subtracted. The planet is warming but the numbers used to show it are not as meaningful as we are led to believe. A significant part of the warming claimed is due to the way it is calculated, as shown in the figure.
(16) Q: Do you really believe that you are correct and the IPCC is wrong?
A: Paraphrasing Einstein, if the IPCC is wrong it should not be necessary that one hundred authors show it. One is sufficient.
(17) Q: According to your theory, what should we expect from climate change in the next years and the rest of the century?
A: The current below average solar activity and an expected cooling phase in the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation indicate a probable continuation, or even accentuation, of the reduced rate of warming during the first third of the 21st century. A modest cooling during this period is possible. Unlike the 20th century, this century should contain two cooling phases of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. Even if another extended solar maximum takes place for most of the century, the 21st century should see significantly less warming than the previous one, regardless of CO2 emissions. A grand solar minimum is highly improbable according to our interpretation of solar cycles, which is a relief. Based on past evidence, a grand solar minimum sets the planet into a severe cooling trend.
(18) Q: What would be a good test of your hypothesis?
A: The expected climate change for the next 30 years, as described above is consistent with several alternative theories to the IPCC’s, based on the effect of the multidecadal oscillations. The Winter Gatekeeper explains better why the shift took place in 1997, and predicts the next shift for c. 2032, i.e., three solar cycles. The best test will be when a very active solar cycle takes place, if Arctic amplification turns into cooling and Arctic sea-ice grows it will support our hypothesis. If this happens, proposed alternatives to our hypothesis will be entertaining.
The post The Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis (VII). A summary plus Q&A appeared first on Clintel.
Clintel Declaration Collapses Climate Consensus – says Friends of Science Society
The CLINTEL World Climate Declaration that there is no climate emergency and we do have time has more than 1200 science and scholarly signatories, and thus collapses the climate catastrophe ‘consensus’ narrative, says Friends of Science Society. Likewise, since there is no emergency, society must abandon NetZero targets and ramp up conventional, reliable energy sources to stop the energy, food, fuel, fertilizer, and famine crises sweeping the world
CLINTEL’s World Climate Declaration is signed by over 1,200 international scientists and scholars, declaring there is no climate emergency. https://clintel.org/world-climate-declaration/
Abandoning Net Zero targets and climate hysteria – particularly in health care, energy investment markets, and banking – should be the goal of COP27, says Friends of Science Society.
CALGARY, ALBERTA (PRWEB) SEPTEMBER 01, 2022
As reported by the Epoch Times on Aug. 26, 2022, more than 1,100 scientists signatory to the CLINTEL World Climate Declaration say there is no climate emergency, thus collapsing the ‘97% consensus’ claim of activists, says Friends of Science Society. The number of signatories has grown to more than 1,200 in the past few days since publication of the story.
Since there is no climate emergency, we do have time. Net Zero climate targets are unnecessary, says Friends of Science. The fear of a climate emergency came from the misuse of a scenario known as RCP 8.5, as shown by Roger Pielke, Jr., and Justin Ritchie in “Distorting the view of our climate future: The misuse and abuse of climate pathways and scenarios.” RCP 8.5 is an implausible scenario that is not “business-as-usual,” a fact acknowledged by ‘consensus’ scientists like Zeke Hausfather in Nature, Jan. 2020.
Italian professor Franco Battaglia has published a book in several languages titled “There Is No Climate Emergency” outlining the petition sent to the UN by CLINTEL signatories. Physics Nobel Laureate Ivar Giaever was the first signatory. Battaglia was part of a group of 100 dissenting Italian scientists who started the “No Climate Emergency” movement in 2019 which rapidly grew as CLINTEL developed.
Friends of Science has long disputed the claimed consensus, in their 2014 report “97% Consensus? NO! Global Warming Math Myths and Social Proofs.”
Friends of Science is particularly concerned that the climate movement has coopted the medical community into Net Zero health care targets, trying to cut health care emissions in half by 2030. This is a goal which Friends of Science Society is ludicrous, and murderous. Most national health bodies signed on to the COP26 WHO sustainability program in Nov. 2021. In the UK, the National Health Service (NHS) is approaching net zero health care with a disturbing zealotry, says Friends of Science.
A health care paper by Davies and Bhutta (2022) titled “Geriatric medicine in the era of climate change” incorrectly gives the impression that climate change has only happened in the present time. Earth’s climate has had dramatic cyclical changes over 4.5 billion years of Earth’s history; geriatric patients are hardly a contributing cause.
Measuring the carbon footprint of ‘frail’ elderly patients against national Net Zero targets disturbingly aligns with the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) futurist Yuval Noah Harari’s statements about ‘useless eaters.’ Conflating health care and climate change is dangerous public policy, says Friends of Science.
OECD countries face >$78 trillion in pension liabilities according to a 2016 CITI Bank report, but using climate change, individual carbon footprints or Net Zero targets as a cover for decades of incompetent financial management and bad investments is cruel and disingenuous, says Friends of Science Society.
Friends of Science says the difficulty in trying to inform the public of these dangers is that large media collaborations, like Covering Climate Now and Poynter Institute’s agenda-driven fact-checking network (which drives Facebook censorship) have locked dissenting views out of the MSM press. Covering Climate Now has over 400 media signatory outlets and reaches an audience of 2 billion people with its fearmongering.
Covering Climate Now has never interviewed any of the CLINTEL scientists who dispute the claim of a climate emergency. In the spring 2020 magazine edition, Kyle Pope interviewed the director of Mad Max, who told journos “how to make climate fear compelling.” A new #FactsMatter Friends of Science/CLINTEL video shows there’s no climate catastrophe – things are getting better.
The Canadian Association of Journalists and others ran an opinion survey as to whether climate change should be reported as an emergency, driving activist – not accurate – reporting, says Friends of Science. This video deconstructs the faulty ‘logic’ and breach of journalistic ethics of the CAJ et al.
As Europe teeters on the brink of social and economic disaster due to the energy crisis, amplified by the Russian incursion into Ukraine, the developing world faces famine. Across the EU, blackouts and serious heat-or-eat poverty are predicted for this winter.
Abandoning Net Zero targets and climate hysteria – particularly in health care, energy investment markets, and banking – should be the goal of COP27, says Friends of Science Society.
About
Friends of Science Society is an independent group of earth, atmospheric and solar scientists, engineers, and citizens that is celebrating its 20th year of offering climate science insights. After a thorough review of a broad spectrum of literature on climate change, Friends of Science Society has concluded that the sun is the main driver of climate change, not carbon dioxide (CO2).
Friends of Science Society
PO Box 61172 RPO Kensington
Calgary AB T2N 4S6
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Toll-free Telephone: 1-888-789-9597
Web: friendsofscience.org
E-mail: contact(at)friendsofscience(dot)org
Web: climatechange101.ca
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Newsletter Wednesday August 31, 2022
© Clintel Foundation / Wednesday August 31, 2022
Number of signatories of World Climate Declaration growing fast
The number of signatories of the World Climate Declaration (WCD), stating that “there is no climate emergency”, is growing fast and now stands at 1200 (and counting). There are too many new signees to mention in this newsletter, therefore we published them on our website.
The WCD recently got a lot of attention, for instance in a post on The Daily Sceptic by Chris Morrison (see here and later also on wattsupwiththat.com. “The Declaration is an event of enormous importance, although it will be ignored by the mainstream media”, says Morrison.
Clintel cofounder Marcel Crok was quoted extensively in an article on The Epoch Times website: “Conservative in its statements, “the message is plain and clear: there is no climate emergency. Very important: this is true even if you accept that CO2 is the main driver of the current climate change,” Crok told The Epoch Times in an email.”
On August 22, statistician Matt Briggs also endorsed the WCD. “The Science shifts depending on the ‘solutions’ desired by the regime. As we have seen many times. The real science can only be solved by accident, as it were. This means the only real chance of progress is outside the Consensus. From people like those who signed the statement.”
See the full article by Briggs here .
Andrew Montford, deputy director of Net Zero Watch, was interviewed on TalkTV about the WCD (link via twitter: here). And finally Friends of Science (also see item below) has launched a promotional video, recommending Clintel. See: here
Last but not least, cartoonist Josh made a wonderful cartoon about the WCD and how people on both sides respond to it.
If you want to sign the World Climate Declaration as well go here
If you would like to support us in expanding this project, please consider a donation or consider to become Friend of Clintel.
Series on Sun and Climate
Andy May and Javier Vinós have written a series of articles (6) on the relation between Solar Actitity and the Climate. Each article is quite long and together it will be the basis for a book about the sun-climate connection. So far we published the first 5 articles.
Part 1 , Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
They write:
“Over the following five parts in this series of articles we will explain the recently proposed Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis of sun-climate effect (Vinós 2022). It involves some very complex climate phenomena, which explains why it escaped discovery for 220 years. In the next part we will see that the orthodox IPCC sanctioned climate change view ignores the effects of solar variability on at least five very important climate-related phenomena that essentially refute it. It is hoped that the time has arrived for another reversal in the sun-climate consensus.”
Interviews with climate realists in Italian newspaper La Verità
Lord Monckton
The Italian newspaper La Verità continues to publish interviews with prominent climate sceptics/realists. After CLINTEL President Guus Berkhout (see translation here) last month, it recently interviewed Steven Koonin and Lord Monckton.
Theoretical Physicist Koonin was asked, amongst other things, about the value of climate models: “The models are coarse descriptions, in part because their grids are about 100 km X 100 km. So they can give a rough, qualitative picture of how human influences affect the global climate, but are entirely unsuited to project local climates.”
See the full English translation of the interview with Koonin: here
In his interview Lord Monckton says that “The new British Prime Minister should appoint a High Court judge to hold a blue-team vs. red-team debate on whether the science behind the climate scam is soundly based, on whether the true purpose or likely consequence of the scam will be the bankruptcy of the West and the transfer of global hegemony to the Communist-led nations who originated and profiteer from the scam at our people’s expense, and on whether, even if global warming were a problem rather than a benefit, the cost of attempting to abate it would – as the above example shows – comfortably exceed any legitimately conceivable benefit from abatement.”
See the full English translation of the interview with Lord Monckton: here
Koonin wins debate with Dessler
Earlier this month climate alarmist Andrew Dessler and climate realist Steven Koonin held a debate in New York. The central statement was: “Climate science compels us to make large and rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions”. Koonin won the Oxford Style debate since 25% of the in-person and online audience shifted to his view that the statement is false.
One of the topics discussed was solar and wind power.”While Dessler was correct that solar and wind can produce electricity cheaper than fossil fuels under ideal conditions, the cost to make that electricity reliable drives the total wind and solar cost much higher”, says Andy May in a short review of the debate, “Other problems not properly accounted for in wind and solar accounting, are the land required for them and the cost of high value materials, such a rare earth metals lithium, copper, zinc, dysprosium, and many others.”
Read the posts by Andy May on the debate: here and here
The entire debate should be available on YouTube shortly (we will post a link in the two articles mentioned above as soon as it is available).
WEF should engage in an open debate with Clintel, says Friends of Science
“The World Economic Forum is a purveyor of climate change misinformation and should engage in an open scientific debate with Clintel on the fact that there is no climate emergency”, says Friends of Science, a Canadian non-profit society that offers independent insights on climate science and related energy policies for the public and policy makers.
The statement is a reaction to an opinion piece by Inbal Goldberger posted by the World Economic Forum (WEF) on their website on August 10, which proposed using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to censor harmful online misinformation. “The WEF regularly engages in climate misinformation”, says Friends of Science, “noting that WEF gave Greta Thunberg a public stage and much media coverage (posted Jan. 25, 2019 and again Jan. 1, 2020) over her “I want you to panic”… “Our house is on fire” commentaries. Greta’s comments terrified millions of children and adults worldwide, but in testimony to the US Congress on April 21, 2021, Greta stated that there is ‘no science’ behind her comment; it was just a metaphor.”
Friends of Science has also launched a promotional video, recommending CLINTEL. See: here
See the full article: here
Clintel is an Amsterdam (The Netherlands) based thinktank founded in 2019 by Dutch emeritus professor Guus Berkhout and science writer Marcel Crok. Clintel operates as a climate science and climate policy watchdog. In its first year it launched the World Climate Declaration, stating firmly “there is no climate emergency”. That declaration is now signed by more than 1200 scientists and experts.
Clintel wants to be independent from governments as these are the main funders of climate science and policy. In practice it means we need broad support from citizens and small and medium enterprises around the world.
For more information, please contact Marcel Crok, +31 6 16 236275, marcel.crok@clintel.org
You can support us by becoming Friends of Clintel or you can make a one-time donation.
Many thanks in advance for your support!
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Interview Rick Willoughby
Rick Willoughby
Name: Rick Willoughby
Country: Australia
What is your background?
I graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Queensland and was employed by Conzinc Riotinto Australia (CRA); initially in the underground mine at Broken Hill. I subsequently transferred to Dampier iron ore operations where I worked on plant maintenance systems and machine automation. I then transferred to the zinc smelter in Newcastle as the site electrical engineer before moving on to the new coal terminal at Dalrymple Bay; being the third person on the payroll of that business, monitoring the terminal construction and developing the maintenance systems and plant automation.
After gaining extensive field experience in mining and port operations, I moved to the Sydney head office of CRA subsidiary AM&S Mining that was later separated from CRA and publicly listed as Pasminco. During this period I was involved in mining technology research, developing automated mining systems and new processing technology. I was instrumental in technology transfer of ultra-fine grinding mills used in the paper industry to processing zinc minerals exploited at Century Mine. I was the owner’s representative in the design office for the design of the AUD1.5bn Century Mine processing plant, 303km slurry transport pipeline and Karumba port operation.
I remained at Pasminco, often on site at Century Mine, until the mine achieved performance targets, and then joined international insurance giant AIG as an engineering risk consultant, travelling globally assessing large scale operations and construction sites for the insurer.
Since when and why are you interested in climate change?
Weather and climate are key factors in the engineering design of large mines, processing plants and industrial complexes. The ability of the built world to withstand cyclonic winds, storm surge, flooding rain, temperature extremes, earthquake, ground subsidence etc. are all factors that need to be considered and allowed for in the site and plant design. Assessing the risk and defining survivability parameters are key inputs to the design that reflect in the project cost and its operational performance to deliver economic benefit. The design envelope is highly dependent on weather and climate. Experiencing cyclones in Dampier and preparing the equipment to withstand the onslaught was the first experience connecting plant design and climate.
How did your views on climate change evolve?
Knowing how important weather is to the design envelope of large scale sites, plant and equipment, the prospect of climate change takes on new meaning in the insurance industry. It becomes very expensive to cater for changing risk once the plant is built.
To gain an understanding of how climate was changing in Australia, when I joined AIG, I looked into the temperature trend at Broken Hill. I considered Broken Hill to be the birth place of industrialisation in Australia. It has spawned two of the largest mining companies in the world and has solid engineering credentials dating back to the 19th century. It was also a remote location with little industrial change for more than a century. That temperature record revealed to me that Broken Hill was warmer in the 1890s than the early 2000s. That observation began my journey of discovery into the fabricated nonsense that CO2 induces climate change.
Is climate change a big issue in your country and how do you notice this?
Australia is now full throttle on fixing the weather with “renewables”. Australia is following Germany and the UK over the abyss.
How would climate policy ideally look like in your view?
Australia is being poorly served by three, primarily government funded, institutions:
BoM is fabricating data – they call it “homogenisation”; CSIRO have separated the business from reality – models are viewed as evidence and measurements are there to be adjusted to suit models. ABC has become a CO2 demonising propaganda machine. All these organisations should be defunded and those parts that can survive without subsidy should be left to find their niche.
Also, eliminate all subsidies on so-called “renewable” electricity and battery electric vehicles.
What is your motivation to sign the Clintel World Climate Declaration?
Humans are inevitably becoming more reliant on conserving natural resources and smart utilisation of resources. China is consuming more than 4,000,000,000 tonnes of coal each year; a good proportion to manufacture wind turbines and solar panels that cannot recover the energy that they consumed in manufacture during their operating life. It is a massive waste of natural resources.
The current crop of battery electric vehicles on offer in the developed world are an insult to the engineering profession. They are literally behemoths. Gross indulgences that depend on massive subsidies for their production.
What question did we forget?
I have a reasonable knowledge of field theory and an admiration for mathematicians and physicists who command field theory and derive observed behaviours from first principals rather than empirical fits. When I first saw James Hansen’s famous radiation diagram showing “back-radiation”, the alarm bells rang. Here was someone, who obviously had no idea of electro-magnetic radiation, producing silly diagrams that had gained wide credibility. I was buoyed to find that NASA/GISS had employed Russian physicist Michael Mishchenko to apply his knowledge of the electro-magnetic field to climate science. Michael passed away in 2020 but has produced copious papers on electro-magnetics as applied to understanding climate and has often pointed out that EMR is mono-directional. Sadly his work is not yet reflected in the IPCC reports because they are political documents – Hansen’s silly diagram persists.
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Simpletons versus wicked scientists
by Judith Curry – Reposted from Climate Etc.
In which wicked scientists are the good guys.
Activism by climate scientists has been the topic of numerous prior blog posts at Climate Etc. Such activism is generally focused on eliminating fossil fuels. This post presents a new framing for the activism issue. While many scientists prefer to remain in the ivory tower, others desire to engage in the messiness of politics and policy making. Why most scientists reject admonitions to “stay in their lane,” there are more and less useful ways for scientists to engage with politics.
Simpleton climate scientists
I’m defining ‘simpleton climate scientists’ to be academics, mostly in disciplines that are far afield from the core discipline of climate dynamics, who think that both the climate problem and its solutions are simple. Their preferred modes of activism are twitter rants, demonstrations and increasingly civil disobedience.
The issue of simpleton scientists was brought to the forefront last week by a publication in Nature Climate Change entitled Civil disobedience by scientists helps press for urgent climate action. The authors are faculty members in the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Cardiff:
Stuart Capstick, psychologist Aaron Thierry, social scientist Emily Cox, psychologist Oscar Berglund, policy studies (U. of Bristol) Steve Westlake, psychologist Julia Steinberger, geography (U. of Lausanne)The Nature article is behind paywall, but a Guardian article interviews the authors. It is clear that this is not just a scholarly article on civil disobedience. The quote that really popped out for me was by Berglund:
“We have a kind of what we call epistemic authority here: people listen to what we are saying, as scientists, and it becomes a way of showing howserious the situation is, that we see ourselves forced to go to these lengths.”
Since when do psychologists have epistemic authority to speak on climate change, its impacts and relevant policies?
Inside Climate News has another choice quote from the actual paper:
“Civil disobedience by scientists has the potential to cut through the myriad complexities and confusion surrounding the climate crisis.”
Ya think? Is this all it takes?
Also cited in this article is a statement from Peter Kalmus:
Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, agrees. In April, Kalmus was arrested for locking himself to the front door of a JPMorgan Chase bank branch and has since urged other scientists to join him in protest, saying it’s their duty as experts to convey the weight of their findings to the public and convince elected officials to take proper recourse.
“For the sake of our children, for the sake of the future of humanity,” Kalmus said, “you have a responsibility to do everything you can to get that information out there.”
Exactly how does civil disobedience get meaningful information out there? These scientists seem to be taking their cues from Michael Mann’s book for children entitled The Tantrum That Saved the World
Further:
Kalmus told me that he’s “disappointed” that, so far, fewer scientists than he had hoped have joined in his call to action, but he sees Monday’s article as a positive sign and believes more researchers will join the movement—especially as extreme weather and other consequences of global warming accelerate in scope and severity.
Have any of these climate scientists actually read the IPCC AR6?
So why haven’t more climate scientists joined this call to action? Maybe because they find this kind of behavior embarrassing and counterproductive.
More credible approaches to climate activism
Jim Hansen was probably the first high-profile climate activist. Has anyone ever heard Hansen claim “epistemic authority” to speak publicly on climate change? Of course not. Hansen doesn’t need to claim such authority – he has it. Hansen has worked assiduously to communicate with public. He has done the hard work to understand the economics and politics of carbon pricing and also nuclear power. He has worked closely with policy makers, most famously with Al Gore. Have some of his actions been over-the-top? Yes. Whether or not you agree with Hansen, it is undeniable that he has been effective in the political and policy arenas. Hansen is now in his 80’s, it would be interesting for him to write an essay that reflects on his activism, what worked and what didn’t, any general or specific regrets, and recommendations for current activists.
An interesting essay on this topic was written recently by Rick Pancost, entitled Climate Scientist Activism. The entire essay is well worth reading, here are some quotes:
I am not sure what sort of activism will be most effective to bring about transformative change. I certainly cannot speak to where you will be most effective in your activism. Those who do have political influence – real influence – should recognise what a rare commodity that is; they should neither casually discard it nor should they waste it. The climate movement must be a thriving mosaic of approaches, with each leveraging the successes of the others to increase cultural, popular or political capital and drive a Just Transformation.
We must find what activism is most effective, is most genuine, for each of us – but be self-critical when doing so. Some of us DO need to engage governments, some of us must be IN government. But let us not be complicit in our own deception. After all, engaging politicians is difficult but activism is hard. You sacrifice more than your time, but also your reputation, job prospects, even your freedom. Sometimes the logical choice is the right choice; sometimes it is just the easy choice.
But you do have to make a choice. We cannot have our cake and eat it too. We cannot be the vizier to the king as well as the court jester. We cannot participate in civil disobedience and still serve on government advisory boards.
Activist scientists must also be humble and remember that we are not experts on what is effective. We did not know what would be effective when we allowed ourselves to be bound by others´ rules of engagement, when we allowed ourselves to be captured by governments and by extension the lobbyists and special interests who influence them. Because we are not experts on how policy is made, we were tricked. So perhaps rather than deciding who and how to engage, we should join those who do know.
Finally and most importantly, I would urge you to consider that maybe we should stop partnering with governments and start partnering with communities. “
Pangost’s essay reflects scientists attempting to work constructively with policy makers, planners and stakeholders, primarily on the issue of mitigation (reduction of CO2 emissions) and associated societal changes. There are clearly frustrations, but this approach is far more effective than simpleton tantrums.
Wicked scientists
And finally we come to wicked scientists. As I have written in multiple previous posts, a wicked problem is characterized by multiple problem definitions, contentious methods of understanding, chronic conditions of ignorance, and lack of capacity to imagine future eventualities of both the problem and the proposed solutions. The complex web of causality may result in surprising unintended consequences of attempted solutions that generate new vulnerabilities or exacerbate the original harm. Further, wickedness makes it difficult to identify points of irrefutable failure or success in either the science or the policies. Wicked problems are both complex and political.
Although much has been written about wicked problems and the need to address them, there is not much in the way of guidance for effectively tackling wicked problems. Two recent articles have addressed this issue:
The World Needs Wicked Scientists A Philosophy for Working on Wicked Problems .“Wicked science” is a process that is tailored to the dual scientific and political natures of wicked societal problems. As such, wicked science is massively transdisciplinary, including natural sciences and engineering along with social sciences and humanities. Wicked science uses approaches from complexity science and systems thinking in a context that engages with the political roles and perspectives of decision makers, planners and other stakeholders. Wicked problems and the strategies devised to address them cannot be defined by scientific experts alone, but include the experiential and operational knowledge of a range of stakeholders.
Two recent papers by atmospheric/climate scientists have articulated something similar to wicked science for the climate sciences, that notably focus more on adaptation than mitigation.
Adam Sobel’s paper “Usable climate science is adaptation science” emphasizes that the localness of adaptation implies much greater uncertainty in the relevant climate science. Climate science for adaptation is more about characterizing uncertainty for robust decision making. Usable climate science requires that scientists engage in co-production of usable science with stakeholders, with a willingness to learn to understand how the human factors are manifest in a particular setting.
Regina Rodrigues and Ted Shepherd’s paper entitled “Small is beautiful: climate-change science as if people mattered” addresses strategies for grappling with the complexity of local situations. The strategies include expressing climate knowledge in conditional form in terms of scenarios developed via the storyline approach, and working with local communities to make sense of their own situations.
Combining and integrating knowledge from diverse disciplines and other sources to provide insights, explanations and solutions to wicked problems is a substantial challenge. For the solution orientation of wicked science to be meaningful, we need an overarching philosophy for navigating wicked problems. We need to acknowledge that control is limited, the future is unknown, and it is difficult to determine whether the impact you make will be positive. We need to accept that climate change will continue to disrupt natural systems and human wellbeing; this acknowledgement helps avoid the urgency trap. By acknowledging that there is no road back, we can focus on the road ahead.
Wicked scientists are willing to become embroiled in political debates and thorny social problems. As such, wicked scientists are not activists that are advocating for a preferred political/policy solution and recognize the reality of political disagreement as a key aspect for dealing with wicked problems.
Wicked scientists are needed to break the hegemony of disciplinary researchers, particularly those who are strident political activists, as being regarded as experts for solutions to the wicked problem of climate change. While the IPCC has operated via a loose cooperation between multiple disciplines, genuine transdisciplinary understanding and collaborations, across disciplines and with a broad range of stakeholders, is needed for meaningful contributions to wicked problems.
Some universities are starting to grapple with how to train wicked scientists. Working in the private weather/climate services sector provides a crash course in being a wicked scientist, in terms of becoming conversant with additional disciplines, working in transdisciplinary teams, an emphasis on uncertainty, and actually listening to and working with policy makers, planners and stakeholders. Not only is activism not needed for problem solving, but it mostly seems counterproductive to actually formulating and evaluating solutions.
The road ahead can be facilitated by broader, transdisciplinary thinking about the climate change problem and its solutions. This requires moving away from the consensus-enforcing and cancel culture approach of attempting to restrict the dialogue surrounding climate change and the policy options. We need to open up space for dissent, disagreement and discussion about scientific uncertainty and policy options, so that multiple perspectives can be considered and broader support can be built for a range of policy options. Bring on the wicked scientists.
But if a scientist is dominated by their political instincts on this issue, they will continue to take the court jester path and not contribute to solutions in a meaningful way.
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