Climate Change Weekly #172
Switzerland joins a growing list of countries whose temperature measurements have been adjusted to show greater warming than actually measured by its temperature instruments. In previous editions of Climate Change Weekly (CCW), I reported weather bureaus in Australia (CCW #139) and Paraguay (CCW #158) were caught adjusting datasets from their temperature gauges. After the adjustment, the temperatures reported were consistently higher than those actually recorded. Science journalist Markus Schär of the Swiss news weekly Weltwoche discovered the Swiss Meteorological Service (SMS) tampered with its datasets as well.
For example, in Sion and Zurich, SMS adjustments resulted in a doubling of the temperature trend. Schär notes there has been an 18-year-pause in rising temperatures, even with data- tampering. As a result, Schär calls the adjustments a “propaganda trick, and not a valid trend.”
In light of significant urbanization resulting in an expanded heat island effect near many temperature gauges, Schär argues the adjustment of raw data to report higher temperatures than are actually measured is unjustifiable. “The corrections … appear so massive that they represent half of the entire temperature increase,” said Schär.
Even with fudged data, governments have been unable to hide the fact winters in Switzerland and in Central Europe have become colder over the past 20 years, defying predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other climate alarmists.
The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is launching an investigation to determine whether data adjustments by government meteorological bureaus are justified and have been carried out using sound scientific methods. GWPF ultimately seeks to determine whether those adjustments have exaggerated the warming of the twentieth century.
Dr. Benny Peiser, director of GWPF, says the panel’s work will be transparent and all data will be published on a public website.
According to the Daily Mail, the panel’s chairman, professor Terence Kealey, former vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham, said:
While we believe that the 20th Century warming is real, we are concerned by claims that the actual trend is different from – or less certain than – has been suggested. We hope to perform a valuable public service by getting everything out into the open.
We hope that people who are concerned with the integrity of climate science, from all sides of the debate, will help us to get to the bottom of these questions by telling us what they know about the temperature records and the adjustments made to them.
Concerning cooperation from institutions with financial and reputational stakes in the warming scare, all I can say is, “Good luck with that!”
— H. Sterling Burnett
SOURCES: NoTricksZone; Global Warming Policy Foundation; and Daily Mail
IN THIS ISSUE …
Debunking the 97 percent climate alarmist consensus, again! … Does low sunspot activity mean cooling is coming? … Minorities pan president’s climate agenda … U.N. urges people to eat insects … Climate controversy Down Under … The “Tipping Point” is dead, long live the tipping point
DEBUNKING THE 97 PERCENT CLIMATE ALARMIST CONSENSUS, AGAIN!
Professor Ross McKitrick argues the pressure to sign a climate agreement at the Paris climate summit in late 2015 is based, in part, on the false notion 97 percent of the world’s scientists agree there is a climate problem.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has asserted more than 50 percent of post-1950 global warming is due to human activity. IPCC does not, however, survey its own contributors, so we do not know how many experts agree with that conclusion. By itself, McKitrick says IPCC’s statement “is consistent with the view that the benefits of fossil fuel use greatly outweigh the climate-related costs.”
The author of the most-cited paper claiming 97 percent of published scientific studies support manmade global warming has admitted he used poor survey methodology that resulted in questionable conclusions. Rather than 97 percent, only 33 percent of the papers he reviewed found humans were contributing to climate change. Of those papers, many supported only a weak human contribution to global warming, and many also critiqued key elements of IPCC’s alarmist views.
In a 2012 American Meteorological Society survey of its 7,000 members, only 52 percent of those responding said they believed the globe warmed over the twentieth century and that warming was mostly caused by human activity. The remaining 48 percent reported believing warming happened but was mostly natural, or that it didn’t happen, or they didn’t know.
SOURCE: Financial Post
DOES LOW SUNSPOT ACTIVITY MEAN COOLING IS COMING?
The sun, the main driver of weather and climate, is currently far less active than it has been in a century. Solar cycles last about 11 years, and not since “Solar Cycle 14” in February 1906 has there been a cycle with fewer sunspots. Since April 2014, the number of sunspots has consistently fallen.
The current weak solar cycle is a continuation of a 20-year downward trend in sunspot cycle strength. If this trend continues for a couple of more cycles, Earth could enter a new Little Ice Age, confirming what many solar scientists and climate change skeptics have long argued: The sun, not human actions, is the main driver of ongoing climate changes.
SOURCES: Breitbart and Townhall.com
MINORITIES PAN PRESIDENT’S CLIMATE AGENDA
Powerful organizations representing U.S. minorities, who voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama for president, are objecting to his climate policies.
The U.S. Hispanic and National Black Chambers of Commerce have submitted comments to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) criticizing its proposed clean power plant carbon dioxide restrictions. The Hispanic Chamber’s statement says, “We urge EPA to re-examine the impacts and implementation of its Clean Power Plan proposal, which we believe is currently too inflexible, costly and contains many unknown impacts.” The National Black Chamber of Commerce stated EPA’s regulations would “ultimately force African-American business owners to eliminate good-paying jobs and become more financially unstable as energy costs rise.”
Polling data confirm black and Hispanic voters are more concerned about the economic consequences of President Barack Obama’s policies than they are about climate change. According to an October 2014 poll, just 3 percent of black voters and 7 percent of Hispanic voters believed climate change was the most important issue affecting their communities. In the same survey, 60 percent of black and Hispanic voters were more worried about rising energy costs than climate change.
SOURCE: The Washington Times
UN URGES PEOPLE TO EAT INSECTS
Former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan recently suggested people in industrialized countries begin eating insects to do their part to fight global warming. Annan complained eating beef, chicken, and pork is causing “a major threat to the climate” because raising livestock produces global warming emissions. Annan said, “There are alternative sources of protein. Insects have a very good conversion rate from feed to meat.” Annan noted insects “make up part of the diet of two billion people and are commonly eaten in many parts of the world. Eating insects is good for the environment and balanced diets.”
Of course Annan misses the important point: People in poverty-stricken counties who eat insects don’t do so because it’s good for the environment; they do so because they live in abject poverty and either cannot afford or do not have regular access to cattle, chickens, and other forms of animal protein. As soon as standards of living rise, people who can access animal protein forgo eating bugs – only a misanthrope or curmudgeon could object to them doing so.
SOURCES: The Guardian and The American Spectator
CLIMATE CONTROVERSY DOWN UNDER
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott (LP) declared the science behind climate change “crap” in 2009, and he repealed the country’s tax on carbon and abolished the independent Climate Commission shortly after assuming office. Now, Maurice Newman, chairman of Abbott’s business advisory council, has accused the United Nations of using debunked climate science to push an economic agenda. Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, went on a speaking tour in Australia in early May urging Australia to cease coal mining and using its energy. In a commentary published in advance of Figueres’ tour, Newman cited Figueres’ February 2015 statement the climate treaty under development is “probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history.”
That shows, according to Newman, the U.N. was using false models showing sustained temperature increases to end democracy and impose authoritarian rule. Newman wrote, “The real agenda is concentrated political authority. Global warming is the hook … It’s about a new world order under the control of the UN. It is opposed to capitalism and freedom and has made environmental catastrophism a household topic to achieve its objective.”
Though the Abbott government has made strides toward formulating a rational climate policy, it has not had its way in all things.
The University of Western Australia (UWA) cancelled a contract it had signed with the government to form the Australian Consensus Centre, to be headed by researcher Björn Lomborg. Abbott’s government had pledged to contribute $4 million to establish the Consensus Centre. In cancelling the contract UWA Vice Chancellor Paul Johnson said, “The scale of the strong and passionate emotional reaction was one that the university did not predict.” Johnson lamented the decision to cancel the center, stating, “The work of the Australia Consensus Centre is important to Australia’s future by engaging in important discussion and economic analysis about how we ensure future generations are better off than those that came before them. Unfortunately, that work cannot happen here.”
Federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne shared his view of the decision on social media, tweeting, “What a sad day for academic freedom when staff at a university silence a dissenting voice rather than test their ideas in debate.”
SOURCES: ABCNews (Australia) and Reuters
THE “TIPPING POINT” IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE TIPPING POINT
Michael Bastasch writes in The Daily Caller climate alarmists have been predicting a so-called “tipping point” – a point beyond which catastrophic climate change is inevitable regardless of what actions people take to prevent it – for 25 years. All have come and gone with nary a dangerous irreversible trend in sight.
Bastasch traces the first tipping point claim to a 1989 San Jose Mercury News article, which reported, “[A] senior environmental official at the United Nations, Noel Brown, says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000.”
In 2002, environmental writer George Monbiot wrote in The Guardian, “[Within] as little as 10 years, the world will be faced with a choice: arable farming either continues to feed the world’s animals or it continues to feed the world’s people. It cannot do both.” United Nations reports suggest otherwise. In 2002, U.N. claimed 930 million people around the world were undernourished. That figure fell to 805 million by 2014.
In 2009, then British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said there were only 50 days left to save the world from global warming. His 50 days have long passed with no appreciable warming. The planet is still here, and Brown is long gone.
In 2007, Rajendra Pachauri, the former IPCC director who resigned in early 2015 amid sexual harassment charges, said, “[I]f there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.”
A new tipping point warning came out of the late April papal climate conference. A statement was issued saying 2015 was the “last effective opportunity to negotiate arrangements that keep human-induced warming below 2-degrees [Celsius].”
Bastasch wrote, “It seems like every year the ‘tipping point’ is close to being reached, and that the world must get rid of fossil fuels to save the planet. That is, until we’ve passed that deadline and the next such ‘tipping point’ is predicted.”
SOURCE: The Daily Caller
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy and the managing editor of Environment & Climate News.
