Political Distortions in Climatology

Guest opinion: Dr. Tim Ball The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claim with 95 percent certainty that they completed a 5000-piece puzzle using only eleven pieces. The pieces are shown in the Radiative Forcing diagram (Figure 1) from AR5. By their assessment, they have high confidence in only five of these pieces. Those ratings…

In House testimony, Botkin dismantles the IPCC 2014 report

Policycritic writes: You need to read this, Anthony. He dismantles the IPCC 2014 report for Congress. Botkin’s bio: “Daniel B. Botkin, a world-renowned ecologist, is Professor (Emeritus), Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology, UC Santa Barbara, and President of The Center for The Study of The Environment, which provides independent, science-based analyses of complex…

Analysis: What the World Needs Now is a Lot Less Poverty

What is “the biggest single barrier to improving societal resilience to the vagaries of climate.”? In a News & Analysis item recently published in Science, Kintisch (2014) discusses the most recent IPCC report, noting it “is meant to be a practical guide to action,” especially in regard to what the report identifies as eight major…

A Clear Example of IPCC Ideology Trumping Fact

By Paul C. Knappenberger and Patrick J. Michaels Center for the Study of Science, Cato Institute Within the U.S. federal government (and governments around the world), the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is given authority when it comes to climate change opinion. This isn’t a good idea. Here perhaps is the clearest example…

LA Times Tony Barboza gets caught fear mongering the IPCC report, becomes first victim of facts that don’t agree with claims

This sentence… “One of the panel’s most striking new conclusions is that rising temperatures are already depressing crop yields, including those of corn and wheat. In the coming decades, farmers may not be able to grow enough food to meet the demands of the world’s growing population, it warns.” …is in this LA Times story…

The Overselling of Climate Modeling Predictability on Multi-Decadal time Scales in the 2013 IPCC WG1 Report – Annex 1 Is Not Scientifically Robust

Guest essay by Roger A. Pielke Sr. Introduction I have posted in the past how the development of multi-decadal regional climate projections (predictions) to give to policymakers and the impact communities is a huge waste of time and resources; e.g. see The Huge Waste Of Research Money In Providing Multi-Decadal Climate Projections For The New…

The AR5 hearings, live stream

Skeptics get a seat at the table. IPCC 5th Assessment Review Meeting starts at 9.30am GMT Witnesses Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, Grantham Institute, Imperial College London, Professor Myles Allen, University of Oxford University, and Dr Peter Stott, Met Office Professor Richard Lindzen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nicholas Lewis, Climate researcher, and Donna Laframboise, Author Live…

The IPCC discards its models

Who will believe the CMIP5 models, after the IPCC plenary had to discount their temperature projections? Guest essay by Barry Brill Table SPM.2 Projected change in global mean surface temperature (°C) for the mid- and late 21st century relative to the reference period of 1986-2005. From the IPCC AR5 Summary for Policy Makers Last August,…

Oh say can you see modern sea level rise from a geological perspective?

Guest post by David Middleton Experts say the IPCC underestimated future sea level rise A new study surveys 90 sea level rise experts, who say sea level rise this century will exceed IPCC projections Wednesday 4 December 2013 John Abraham It looks like past IPCC predictions of sea level rise were too conservative; things are…

Who are the true denialists?

Guest essay by Professor Philip Lloyd People have the nasty habit of giving their opponents names.  Those who are convinced that humans are wrecking the world by burning fossil fuels call those who don’t believe them “denialists.” It implies that they are close to the Holocaust deniers, and so are clearly beyond the pale. I…

Statistical Analyses of Surface Temperatures in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report

Guest essay by Douglas J. Keenan Temperatures on Earth’s surface—i.e. where people live—are widely believed to provide evidence for global warming.  Demonstrating that those temperatures actually provide evidence, though, requires doing statistical analysis. All such statistical analyses of the temperatures that have been done so far are fatally flawed.  Astoundingly, those flaws are effectively acknowledged…

Radiative Forcing, Radiative Feedbacks and Radiative Imbalance – The 2013 WG1 IPCC Report Failed to Properly Report on this Issue

Guest essay by Roger A. Pielke Sr. Main Points 1. The difference in ocean heat content at two different time periods provides the global average radiative imbalance over that time [within the uncertainty of the ocean heat measurements] 2. This global average radiative imbalance is equal to the sum of the global average radiative forcings…

FROM SCIENCE…TO ART…TO HYPOTHETICALS

The new RCPs are not projections, probabilities, prophecies or pathways – they might possibly be potentialities. Guest essay by Barry Brill The IPCC begins with science: “In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore…

Another Reason Why IPCC Predictions (Projections) Fail. AR5 Continues to Let The End Justify the Unscrupulous Means

Noble cause corruption in the process. Guest essay by Dr. Tim Ball Someone said economists try to predict the tide by measuring one wave. The IPCC essentially try to predict (project) the global temperature by measuring one variable. The IPCC compound their problems by projecting the temperature variable with the influence of the economic variable.…

Lindzen: Understanding The IPCC AR5 Climate Assessment

Guest essay by Dr. Richard Lindzen Each IPCC report seems to be required to conclude that the case for an international agreement to curb carbon dioxide has grown stronger. That is to say the IPCC report (and especially the press release accompanying the summary) is a political document, and as George Orwell noted, political language…

The 2013 IPCC AR5 Report: Facts -vs- Fictions

Guest essay by Dr. Don J. Easterbrook, Professor of Geology, Western Washington University Mark Twain popularized the saying “There are liars, damn liars, and statisticians.” After reading the recently-released [IPCC AR5] report, we can now add, ‘there are liars, damn liars, and IPCC.” When compared to the also recently published NIPCC (Nongovernmental International Panel on…

You don’t want to see sausage or climate policy being made

Tom Nelson points this out – IPCC sausage-making details: Saudi Arabia cautioned against “giving policy makers the message that CO2 drives global warming” Summary of the Twelfth Session of the IPCC WGI and IPCC-36, 23-26 September 2013, Stockholm, Sweden Saudi Arabia proposed clarifying that evidence of future climate change is based on models and simulations…

McIntyre on IPCC’s switching the pea under the thimble

Fixing the Facts – By Steve McIntyre Figure 1.4 of the Second Order Draft clearly showed the discrepancy between models and observations, though IPCC’s covering text reported otherwise. I discussed this in a post leading up to the IPCC Report, citing Ross McKitrick’s article in National Post and Reiner Grundmann’s post at Klimazweiberl. Needless to…

Confidence tricks between IPCC AR4 and AR5

Patrick Carlberg writes: I can’t assess the validity of the values from the climate models presented in AR5 (mostly due to lack of time). But I can tell you there are tricks used in the way they interpret the statistical inference. One of the key points in the new IPCC report is that the CO2…