Most of the Western Political and chattering eco-left classes have enthusiastically adopted the new anti-capitalist religious belief in AGW as a useful tool by which they can try to assert a claim to control the world economy while feeling conveniently self righteous.They,like Gardner,are only too happy to frame the discussion in ethical and moral terms.They eagerly claim that the science is settled to avoid dealing with the actual data. Bull , in order for his recent article to have any relevance ,opens with the main beliefs in the warmist creed. One ,that it is currently getting warmer, two, that humans are causing it and three, that by controlling GHG emissions we can do something useful about it. All of these beliefs are patently false.
The Hadley Sea Surface Temperature Data is the best measure of Global Trends.The 5 year moving SST temperature average shows that the warming trend peaked in 2003 and a simple regression analysis shows an nine year global SST cooling trend since then .The data shows warming from 1900 – 1940 ,cooling from 1940 to about 1975 and warming from 1975 – 2003. CO2 levels rose monotonically during this entire period.Since 1997 – CO2 is up 7.9% with no net warming. Anthropogenic CO2 has some effect but our knowledge of the natural drivers is still so poor that we cannot accurately estimate what the anthropogenic CO2 contribution is. Nine years is obviously a short term on which to base predictions but all statistical analyses of particular time series must be interpreted in conjunction with other ongoing events and in the context of declining solar magnetic field strength and activity – to the extent of a possible Dalton or Maunder minimum and the negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation a global 20 – 30 year cooling spell is more likely than a warming trend. Beyond that we supply do not know enough to make any actionable predictions.Today anyone can check these statements not by reference to an imaginary and irrelevant consensus or authority but by checking the basic data via Google on line.
The 2007 IPCC AR4 Summary for Policy Makers is the current basis for the alarmist predictions of disaster but this Summary is inconsistent with the AR4 WG1 Science section. It should be noted that the Summary was published before the WG1 report and the editors of the Summary , incredibly ,asked the authors of the Science report to make their reports conform to the Summary rather than the other way around. When this was not done the Science section was simply ignored.Most of the predicted disasters are based on climate models.Even the modelers themselves say that they do not make predictions . The models produce projections or scenarios which are no more accurate than the assumptions,algorithms and data , often of poor quality,which were put into them. In reality they are no more than expensive drafting tools to produce power point slides to illustrate the ideas and prejudices of their creators. The IPCC science section AR4 WG1 section 8.6.4 deals with the reliability of the climate models .This IPCC science section on models itself concludes:
“Moreover it is not yet clear which tests are critical for constraining the future projections,consequently a set of model metrics that might be used to narrow the range of plausible climate change feedbacks and climate sensitivity has yet to be developed”
What could be clearer. The IPCC itself says that we don’t even know what metrics to put into the models to test their reliability.- i.e. we don’t know what future temperatures will be and we can’t yet calculate the climate sensitivity to anthropogenic CO2.This also begs a further question of what mere assumptions went into the “plausible” models to be tested anyway. Nevertheless this statement was ignored by the editors who produced the Summary. Here predictions of disaster were illegitimately given “with high confidence.” in complete contradiction to several sections of the WG1 science section where uncertainties and error bars were discussed.
In order to predict the disaster required by the policymakers the modelers had to assume a positive feed back to increasing CO2 from increased humidity and cloud cover changes. Measured feed backs are actually negative and indeed must logically be negative otherwise the oceans would have boiled away long ago.
What we have had is a perfect storm of first the misuse and misrepresentation of the data and the scientific method to support the IPCC's political agenda and a rush to the public trough by establishment scientists , second Corporate rent seeking by e.g. Al Gore ,GE ,Goldman Sachs ,Microsoft ,Solar Power companies,and Wind Turbine manufactures and third the enthusiastic adoption of the AGW paradigm by the Politicians who see it as the perfect means to assuage their Messiah complexes and save the world by gathering power to themselves through using fear and then reward their campaign contributing corporate friends and the landowning classes via solar and wind subsidies.
The climate and energy policies of Europe the UK and the USA are economically suicidal and in fact immoral.They raise food prices world wide and would keep billions in poverty by raising energy prices thus slowing the economic and social emancipation of women and thereby worsening the population problem
