RUTHFULLY YOURS

The methodology of John Cook’s infamous paper purporting to demonstrate global warming must be real because almost all scientists believe in it has long since been demolished. But there is another flaw hitherto overlooked: the extent to which humans are thought responsible.

The Cook et al paper ‘Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature’ has been the top-ranking paper in terms of press citations, with Barack Obama using it to justify his efforts in Paris to lead the world in the war on CO2.

A typical press report on the study, reproduced in full below, advises in the first paragraph that ninety-seven percent of scientists say global warming is mainly man-made and the study found an overwhelming view among scientists that “human activity, led by the use of fossil fuels”, was the main cause of rising temperatures in recent decades. That looks like strong support for action on fossil fuels, but what does the paper itself tell us? Does it tell us anything more than that there is an overwhelming consensus on a human contribution to warming? Is that exciting news? Can you find anyone among the so-called deniers who denies that there has been warming since the industrial revolution? Do any of the “deniers” dispute a human contribution, if only in the heat-island effect of cities and towns?

What does the paper tell us about the agreement on amount of warming, the need to be alarmed about warming, the size of the human contribution and the role of CO2? As far as I can see, after reading the paper several times:

The consensus in the paper does not refer to any particular amount of warming.
There is nothing about a need to be alarmed.
There is agreement that humans have contributed, but there is nothing about how much humans have contributed.
There is no mention of the contribution of CO2.

I will not dwell on the way the Cook study was conducted, other than to note the method has been subjected to a great deal of criticism. Rather, my focus is on the published results and what they say, and do not say, about questions which matter if you have concerns about the trillions of dollars being sunk around the world in the suppression of CO2 emissions.

Turning to the paper, it is clear from the way the paper is organized that they wanted to say

x% of scientists believe in warming
y% think humans contribute and
z% consider that human activity is the major driver.

They got what they wanted for x and y, namely 97+%, but z is missing. Of course the authors obtained a value because Table 1 shows how the data were classified to find it. However it is not in the paper. It is possible that the number is small to sustain the case for alarm about CO2. The research was clearly designed to provide a number for three levels of endorsement of the consensus.

First “explicit endorsement (of humans as the primary cause of recent warming) with quantification”.
Second “explicit endorsement without quantification”.
Third “implicit endorsement”.

In the results (Table 2) the three categories are collapsed into one. Presumably if a significant number had turned up in the category which identified humans as the primary cause of warming it would have been reported because it is the figure that matters when you consider whether there is any need to address CO2 emissions. So the three levels of endorsement are collapsed into a figure of 97.1 for those who endorsed the “scientific consensus”.

It is clear from the way the authors talk that, for them, the consensus is not just warming but alarming warming with humans as the major cause. But that is not the consensus revealed in their own figures.

The results support (1) the proposition that there has been warming which is not in dispute and (2) the proposition that human activity makes a contribution, which by itself is hardly controversial. The paper makes no apparent contribution to the key issues, namely the amount of warming, whether we need to worry about it, how much humans contribute and, most important, the role of CO2.

In her closing G-20 speech on Saturday, Merkel noted that the summit’s final declaration reveals clear disagreement with the U.S. on climate issues. She says she’s not optimistic that Washington will return to the Paris climate agreement.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel didn’t mince words on Saturday when talking about the results of the G-20 summit in Hamburg. While she said that participants agree that markets must remain open and protectionism resisted, she was much less sanguine about the climate passages in the summit’s closing declaration. She said that the disagreement with the U.S. was clearly stated in the declaration.

She also said she doesn’t share the belief of some that the U.S. will ultimately return to the Paris climate agreement. “I don’t share that optimism,” she said in her closing speech, adding that the closing declaration clearly enunciates the dissent between the U.S. and the other 19 members of the G-20. “On this issue, it has become very clear that we were unable to find a consensus.” This disagreement should not be “covered up.”

In a parting shot, German Chancellor Angela Merkel rebuked President Donald Trump for announcing his intention to withdraw from the Paris climate accord. She joined the leaders of 18 other countries to attack him as the G-20 summit concluded Saturday.

“Unfortunately — and I deplore this — the United States of America left the climate agreement, or rather announced their intention of doing this,” Merkel said as she closed the summit and presented the G20 declaration document. That document acknowledged Trump’s decision to withdraw from the agreement, but argued that withdrawal is impossible.

“We take note of the decision of the United States of America to withdraw from the Paris Agreement,” the leaders wrote. “The United States of America announced it will immediately cease the implementation of its current nationally-determined contribution and affirms its strong commitment to an approach that lowers emissions while supporting economic growth and improving energy security needs.”

Despite Trump’s decision to withdraw from the agreement, he promised to help countries in other ways. “The United States of America states it will endeavor to work closely with other countries to help them access and use fossil fuels more cleanly and efficiently and help deploy renewable and other clean energy sources,” the document noted.

While the leaders acknowledged Trump’s intent to remove America from the Paris accord, they added a passive-aggressive note: “The Leaders of the other G20 members state that the Paris Agreement is irreversible.” But as the Paris accord had no enforcement mechanism, opponents have long derided it as toothless, and this rebuke seems to confirm that there will be no real consequences for Trump’s decision.

Despite her attack on Trump’s climate position, Merkel did seem to make concessions to the American president’s trade policies. “This is all about fighting protectionism and also unfair trade practices,” she said. The declaration noted “the role of legitimate trade defense” in combatting “unfair trade practices,” echoing Trump’s criticism of international trade agreements during the 2016 campaign.

During that campaign, Trump won on an “America First” platform, vowing to pull the country out of several multilateral trade deals. Since his inauguration, he has stepped back some of the isolationist rhetoric, but he has threatened to impose new tariffs on steel imports, which prompted European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to threaten retaliation.

Many liberals overreacted to Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris accord. Left-wing bundler Tom Steyer said doing so would be a “traitorous act of war” against the American people.

But the science is very far from “settled” on climate change. Climate models fail over and over again. Senate Democrats launched an inquisition last year aimed at silencing free inquiry and speech about this issue. Activists like Bill Nye give very unscientific answers when pressed on the issue, and a Georgia Tech climatologist resigned rather than give up her scientific integrity by toeing the party line.

Madness prevails. Cheered on by green zealots, governments have accepted a tenuous theory based on black-box models of no proven worth. As carpetbaggers rejoice with charlatans, those who can least afford it are bled dry for what was, until recently, cheap as chips: electricity.

It’s five o’clock on Sunday afternoon in Sydney in winter. By any reckoning Sydney doesn’t get that cold. But I have been at my computer for a couple of hours, with three layers on top and a beanie, and have been cold the whole of that time. When I was married the heater would have been on. Women sensibly don’t like putting up with cold. Me, I’m the son of my father who was always concerned about power bills.

He had reason to be concerned; big power bills seriously dented the household budget. Mind you, I can’t remember a time when a coal fire was not heating the living room on a cold afternoon. That’s progress for you; from warm to cold in the space of childhood to older age. I’ve finally just switched on my gas heater. Ah! The luxury of warmth will soon envelop the room.

Now, for a moment, imagine (if you have to) that you live in, say, Melbourne or Tasmania or Canberra and it’s a cold winter afternoon. Now imagine you are poor and must account for every dollar. Power bills matter to you.

You sit as a single mother with your young children wrapped in clothes and blankets. You’re old and clutch a hot-water bottle. You’re a coal power station worker thrown on the scrap heap, pacing the room, distraught at no longer being able to afford to keep your family warm.

Weep not at these Dickensian scenes for all is not bleak in each house. The poor find consolation in knowing they’re helping to save the planet by keeping their heaters off. An inspirational picture of Al Gore hangs over their cold mantelpieces. Big Al watches over them from his private gas-guzzling jet.

Meanwhile in Point Piper and Toorak the deeply-green Smug and Swank families are enjoying the warmth supplied by under-floor heating throughout every room. But there are no double standards here. They are renewal-energy junkies to their cores. They have taxpayer-subsidised solar panels fitted across their vast roofs, which often earn them a rebate for supplying power to the grid. True, managing this reverse flow of power increases power bills for others, but that’s not their fault.

Madness prevails. Cheered on by green zealots, governments have accepted as settled a tenuous scientific theory, based almost entirely on black-box model predictions which have been seriously astray. If that is not enough, cheered on by carpetbaggers and snake-oil merchants, intermittent, unreliable, ineffective and cripplingly costly renewal power has been foisted on working-class populations scared into compliance.

On the flimsiest basis, the world has been turned upside down. Power bills have soared. Our governments and politicians have shown themselves to be as susceptible to superstition as those in bygone ages who sought the future in the entrails of animals. And then there are those in the broader community who simply accept any old rope handed down from authority. Give them the Little Red Book and they would have been fodder for Mao.

I need to confess to an evolving mind. I entertained a small possibility that the received wisdom of catastrophic man-made global warming might be right, though the remedies being applied were totally misconceived (to some extent I was in sync with the Matt Ridley and Bjorn Lomborg positions). Now, the more I read, the more I am tending to believe that it is codswallop from start to finish.

Here, I think, is fairly persuasive scientific comment from Richard Lindzen, eminent Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at MIT:

The system we are looking at consists in two turbulent fluids interacting with each other. They are on a rotating planet that is differentially heated by the sun. A vital constituent of the atmospheric component is water in the liquid, solid and vapor phases, and the changes in phase have vast energetic ramifications. The energy budget of this system involves the absorption and reemission of about 200 watts per square meter. Doubling CO2 involves a 2% perturbation to this budget. So do minor changes in clouds and other features, and such changes are common. In this complex multifactor system, what is the likelihood of the climate (which, itself, consists in many variables and not just globally averaged temperature anomaly) is controlled by this 2% perturbation in a single variable? Believing this is pretty close to believing in magic. Instead, you are told that it is believing in ‘science’.
– Thoughts on the Public Discourse over Climate Change