Carefully Selected Quotes.
by Ye Editor
Quote of the Week:
“When a politician says the debate is over, you can be sure of two things: the debate is raging, and he’s losing it” – George Will, political commentator
THIS WEEK:
The third part in the four-part series called the 6th Assessment Report (AR6) of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This episode is called “Mitigation of Climate Change” and it is the product of Working Group III which “focuses on climate change mitigation, assessing methods for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.” Of course, the key assumption is that the group understands climate change and its causes, which it does not. ...
Ross McKitrick published a paper showing another set of errors in using statistics to falsely attribute natural events to human caused climate change. After over thirty years the IPCC has not learned to use competent statisticians to examine studies claiming human cause.
As Richard Feynman stated: “If there is something very slightly wrong in our definition of the theories, then the full mathematical rigor may convert these errors into ridiculous conclusions.”
The problem is that many politicized scientist, bureaucrats, and politicians claim the ridiculous conclusions are science facts, the same as physical evidence.
The UK government announced it will address the problems brought by not importing Russian gas by relying on more unreliable, expensive wind power and reliable, expensive nuclear power.
Francis Menton mentions a graph by the International Energy Agency (IEA) showing that the “Per-capita CO2 emissions in China now exceed the average in advanced economies.” Of course, this graph renders foolish the claims that advanced economies must curtail carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. China and Southeast Asia will not stop the use of fossil fuels that is bringing them out of poverty. It takes more than one generation to forget what poverty is.
... Howard Hayden corrected a small error in essay # 6 of his Basic Climate Physics. Correction of error is critical for science to advance. Failure to correct error is one reason IPCC science has stagnated.
... Mitigation of Climate Change? To lessen harmful climate change the IPCC must identify the causes. It claims that 80% of global warming is caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases, without giving any physical evidence.
It claims as physical evidence the projections, forecasts, and predictions from climate models which fail basic testing against physical evidence.
Thus, as a physical science, the models are worthless for prediction. As discussed a number of times in TWTWs, such as in the January 29, 2022, climate modeler Mototaka Nakamura and physicist Stephen Koonin have stated that climate simulation models may be a useful teaching tool but are of no value for prediction.
Nakamura wrote:
“Before pointing out a few of the serious flaws in climate simulation models, in defense of those climate researchers who use climate simulation models for various meaningful scientific projects, I want to emphasize here that climate simulation models are fine tools to study the climate system, so long as the users are aware of the limitations of the models and exercise caution in designing experiments and interpreting their output.
In this sense, experiments to study the response of simplified climate systems, such as those generated by the ‘state-of-the-art’ climate simulation models, to major increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases are also interesting and meaningful academic projects that are certainly worth pursuing. So long as the results of such projects are presented with disclaimers that unambiguously state the extent to which the results can be compared with the real world, I would not have any problem with such projects.
The models just become useless pieces of junk or worse (worse, in a sense that they can produce gravely misleading output) only when they are used for climate forecasting.
“All climate simulation models have many details that become fatal flaws when they are used as climate forecasting tools, especially for mid- to long-term (several years and longer) climate variations and changes. These models completely lack some of critically important climate processes and feedbacks and represent some other critically important climate processes and feedbacks in grossly distorted manners to the extent that makes these models useless for any meaningful climate prediction.
It means that they are also completely useless for assessing the effects of the past atmospheric carbon dioxide increase on the climate. I myself used to use climate simulation models for scientific studies, not for predictions, and learned about their problems and limitations in the process.”
The same TWTW discussed a paper by Richard Lindzen which identified major problems of the IPCC reports, part of which are below:
1. The core of the system consists in two turbulent fluids (the atmosphere and oceans) interacting with each other.
2. The two fluids are on a rotating planet that is differentially [unevenly] heated by the sun and unevenly absorbing the solar warming. Solar rays directly hit the equator and skim the earth at the poles resulting in uneven heating, which drives the circulation of the atmosphere. The result is heat transport from the equator towards the poles (meridional).
3.The earth’s climate system is never in equilibrium.
In addition to the oceans, the atmosphere is interacting with a hugely irregular land surface distorting the airflow, causing planetary scale waves, which are not accurately described in climate models.
A vital component of the atmosphere is water in its liquid, solid, and vapor phases, and the changes in phases have immense dynamic consequences. Each phase affects incoming and outgoing radiation differently. Substantial heat is released when water vapor condenses, driving thunder clouds.
Further, clouds consist of water in the form of fine droplets and ice crystals. Normally, these are suspended by rising air currents, but when these grow large enough, they fall as rain and snow. The energies involved in phase changes are important, as well as the fact that both water vapor and clouds strongly affect radiation.
“The two most important greenhouse substances
by far are water vapor and clouds.
Clouds are also important reflectors of sunlight.
These matters are discussed in detail in the IPCC WG1 reports, each of which openly acknowledge clouds as major sources of uncertainty in climate modeling.”
Despite great advances in understanding the atmosphere over the past 40 plus years, the IPCC continues to ignore its characteristics, including atmospheric temperature trends. In reporting the latest findings by the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, including March 2022, Roy Spencer writes:
“The linear warming trend since January 1979 still stands at +0.13 C/decade (+0.12 C/decade over the global-averaged oceans, and +0.18 C/decade over global-averaged land).”
This modest rise is within natural variability and does not constitute a climate crisis. Nor does it mean that the linear trend will continue at the same rate.
In addition, the work of W. A. van Wijngaarden & W. Happer for a cloud-free atmosphere shows that there is no generalized theory for the greenhouse effect. That the influence of greenhouse gases on temperature changes with altitude and latitude.
For example, the influence of Ozone increases from the surface to the Stratosphere up to about 40 km (25 mi) in the mid-latitudes before declining. Further, all five of major greenhouse gases are saturated, meaning that their effectiveness declines with increasing concentration and carbon dioxide and water vapor are strongly saturated.
Using the work of W. A. van Wijngaarden & W. Happer, Atomic, Molecular, and Optical physicist Howard Hayden developed ten essays on Basic Climate Physics, posted on the SEPP website. These essays show that the UN IPCC can account for less than 25% of the heat needed to raise the earth’s surface temperature by 3 degrees C from a doubling of greenhouse gases which is the average claim of the IPCC.
Any organization that claims to be able to forecast the earth’s climate without correctly considering the characteristics of the atmosphere is a political organization, not a scientific one. The findings of the UN IPCC are political, not scientific.
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Incompetent Statistics?
Statistician Stephen McIntyre and Econometrician Ross McKitrick demolished the notorious hockey-stick featured in the IPCC Third Assessment Report (AR3, 2001).
In addition, McIntyre has shown that the 2000-year hockey-stick featured in the Summary for Policymakers of The Physical Science Basis, of the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6, 2021) is statistical nonsense.
The authors assemble many examples of unrelated proxy data into a hockey- stick and assert that the data sources are related. But they fail to use physical evidence showing their relationships and are contradicted by well-established long-term proxies.
McKitrick has shown that attributing probabilities of human cause to unusual weather events is without an established theoretical basis in Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) Theory and is most likely highly biased.
Now, McKitrick shows huge problems in a different statistical technique used by climate researchers, Total Least Squares (TLS) in assigning human cause to weather events. McKitrick writes:
Continuing my exploration of the statistical elements of the IPCC climate attribution methodology I have a couple of papers under review at journals in which I use Monte Carlo simulations to analyse the properties of Total Least Squares (TLS, the preferred regression method) under conditions typical in a signal detection regression.
... The results are, frankly, bizarre. ... The term “bizarre” may be an understatement.
Organizations that use statistics need to have their work reviewed by competent statisticians. Unfortunately, with the use of “packaged statistical programs,” many users do not understand the theoretical limitations of statistics. It will be interesting to see if the final episode of AR6, The Synthesis Report, due in September contains the same statistical nonsense.
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Bandwagon Science:
NOAA has gone on the methane emissions bandwagon by developing mathematical absurdities. NOAA administrator Rick Spinrad stated:
“The evidence is consistent, alarming, and undeniable. We need to build a Climate Ready Nation to adapt for what’s already here and prepare for what’s to come. At the same time, we can no longer afford to delay urgent and effective action needed to address the cause of the problem – greenhouse gas pollution,”
... Without physical evidence, the claim is a mathematically absurdity. Breathing indoor air from burning dung is a health risk, but ground level ozone from methane is another matter. Is living near swamps in Southeast US deadly? The W. A. van Wijngaarden & W. Happer paper covers the positive climate feedbacks of methane. Strangely, the IPCC has no negative feedbacks to global warming except humans darkening the skies. Yet the earth has cooled before. NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory loses credibility with such reports.
... Do academics who advocate a subsistence lifestyle for Americans lead by example to show how it is done? In their calculations do they include the carbon costs of their computers which require extremely reliable electricity to manufacture? Or the costs of storing data on the cloud, which requires reliable electricity?
The once respected medical journal The Lancet now has a section called Planetary Health. It ran an article stating: “National responsibility for ecological breakdown: a fair-shares assessment of resource use, 1970–2017” claiming wealthy nations are responsible for 74% of worldwide ecological harm. Obviously, they fail to account for the benefits of adding CO2 to the atmosphere and the enormous damage of subsistence farming.
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Continued Failure of Wind:
The UK government is providing a great example of what not to do. Instead of trying to develop domestic sources of natural gas, which can complement shortcomings as nuclear comes online, it is going for wind and nuclear. ...
“Far from clearing up Tony’s mess, Boris and his Government appear to have learned nothing from the failure of the New Labour energy policies.”
Constable and Paul Homewood point out that wind and nuclear power are incompatible. Both types of electrical generation are expensive, but the former is highly erratic, unstable, and unreliable, while nuclear is stable and reliable. To TWTW that a large part of the cost of nuclear power is due to concerns with safety that border on neurotic.
As Homewood writes concerning nuclear expansion:
“The current strike price for Hinkley Point C [nuclear] is £113.83/MWh. If prices could be reduced to below £100/MWh, it would make economic sense given current power prices of double that.
“There are two issues raised by this strategy:
“1) Who will build and fund them? [the nuclear reactors]
“2) A nuclear strategy rather undermines the case for wind and solar power. With the baseload provided by nuclear, wind and solar power will be redundant much of the time.
“And, of course, you cannot simply ramp nuclear up and down to match the vagaries of renewables. Quite apart from the technical issues, the economic case for nuclear depends on 24/7 operation.”
Non-US and Nuclear Energy and Fears:
The problems for the UK and EU for cutting off Russian oil and gas are real. It takes time to convert to other forms of electricity generation and wind and solar are unreliable unless an affordable, utility scale form of storage is found. ...
“On a per capita basis, CO2 emissions in advanced economies have fallen to 8.2 tonnes on average and are now below the average of 8.4 tonnes in China. However, the overall average for advanced economies masks significant differences: per capita emissions average 14 tonnes in the United States, 6 tonnes in the European Union, and 3.2 tonnes in Mexico.”