I am a scientist who was on the carbon gravy train, understands the evidence, was once an alarmist, but am now a skeptic. Watching this issue unfold has been amusing but, lately, worrying. This issue is tearing society apart, making fools out of our politicians.

This is the core idea of every official climate model: For each bit of warming due to carbon dioxide, they claim it ends up causing three bits of warming due to the extra moist air. The climate models amplify the carbon dioxide warming by a factor of three — so two-thirds of their projected warming is due to extra moist air (and other factors); only one-third is due to extra carbon dioxide.

That’s the core of the issue. All the disagreements and misunderstandings spring from this. The alarmist case is based on this guess about moisture in the atmosphere, and there is simply no evidence for the amplification that is at the core of their alarmism.

Weather balloons had been measuring the atmosphere since the 1960s, many thousands of them every year. The climate models all predict that as the planet warms, a hot spot of moist air will develop over the tropics about 10 kilometres up, as the layer of moist air expands upwards into the cool dry air above. During the warming of the late 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, the weather balloons found no hot spot. None at all. Not even a small one. This evidence proves that the climate models are fundamentally flawed, that they greatly overestimate the temperature increases due to carbon dioxide.

This evidence first became clear around the mid-1990s.

At this point, official “climate science” stopped being a science. In science, empirical evidence always trumps theory, no matter how much you are in love with the theory. If theory and evidence disagree, real scientists scrap the theory. But official climate science ignored the crucial weather balloon evidence, and other subsequent evidence that backs it up, and instead clung to their carbon dioxide theory — that just happens to keep them in well-paying jobs with lavish research grants, and gives great political power to their government masters.

There are now several independent pieces of evidence showing that the earth responds to the warming due to extra carbon dioxide by dampening the warming. Every long-lived natural system behaves this way, counteracting any disturbance. Otherwise the system would be unstable. The climate system is no exception, and now we can prove it.

But the alarmists say the exact opposite, that the climate system amplifies any warming due to extra carbon dioxide, and is potentially unstable. It is no surprise that their predictions of planetary temperature made in 1988 to the U.S. Congress, and again in 1990, 1995, and 2001, have all proved much higher than reality.

They keep lowering the temperature increases they expect, from 0.30C per decade in 1990, to 0.20C per decade in 2001, and now 0.15C per decade — yet they have the gall to tell us “it’s worse than expected.” These people are not scientists. They overestimate the temperature increases due to carbon dioxide, selectively deny evidence, and now they conceal the truth.

One way they conceal is in the way they measure temperature.

The official thermometers are often located in the warm exhaust of air conditioning outlets, over hot tarmac at airports where they get blasts of hot air from jet engines, at waste-water plants where they get warmth from decomposing sewage, or in hot cities choked with cars and buildings. Global warming is measured in 10ths of a degree, so any extra heating nudge is important. In the United States, nearly 90% of official thermometers surveyed by volunteers violate official siting requirements that they not be too close to an artificial heating source.

Global temperature is also measured by satellites, which measure nearly the whole planet 24/7 without bias. The satellites say the hottest recent year was 1998, and that since 2001 the global temperature has levelled off. Why does official science track only the surface thermometer results and not mention the satellite results?

The Earth has been in a warming trend since the depth of the Little Ice Age around 1680. Human emissions of carbon dioxide were negligible before 1850 and have nearly all come after the Second World War, so human carbon dioxide cannot possibly have caused the trend. Within the trend, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation causes alternating global warming and cooling for 25 to 30 years at a go in each direction. We have just finished a warming phase, so expect mild global cooling for the next two decades.

We are now at an extraordinary juncture. Official climate science, which is funded and directed entirely by government, promotes a theory that is based on a guess about moist air that is now a known falsehood. Governments gleefully accept their advice, because the only ways to curb emissions are to impose taxes and extend government control over all energy use. And to curb emissions on a world scale might even lead to world government — how exciting for the political class!

Even if we stopped emitting all carbon dioxide tomorrow, completely shut up shop and went back to the Stone Age, according to the official government climate models it would be cooler in 2050 by about 0.015 degrees. But their models exaggerate 10-fold — in fact our sacrifices would make the planet in 2050 a mere 0.0015 degrees cooler!

Finally, to those who still believe the planet is in danger from our carbon dioxide emissions: Sorry, but you’ve been had. Yes, carbon dioxide is a cause of global warming, but it’s so minor it’s not worth doing much about.

On 2011-05-17 18:40, Woland wrote:
Those who no longer wish to be confused by the facts can stop reading now.

David Alexander, an Australian climate c......e facts:

On 2011-05-17 19:13, Andrew Zuber wrote:
Okay, so how are we supposed to react to this? Keep buying Hummers? Stand on our roof tops with cans of hair spray? Can we stop worrying about the environment now or something? Anyone who was ever flown in Los Angeles, as I have done hundreds of times, will tell you that air quality is a MAJOR health issue. When I read stuff like this and the author starts going on about the politics of the issue, it's hard not to imagine that he has an agenda that isn't purely scientific.

On 2011-05-17 21:07, Jonathan Townsend wrote:
Step back and look at the effect. The net effect.

Then look at the method.

Breathtaking IMHO.

On 2011-05-17 19:35, LobowolfXXX wrote:

Quote:

On 2011-05-17 19:13, Andrew Zuber wrote:
Okay, so how are we supposed to react to this? Keep buying Hummers? Stand on our roof tops with cans of hair spray? Can we stop worrying about the environment now or something? Anyone who was ever flown in Los Angeles, as I have done hundreds of times, will tell you that air quality is a MAJOR health issue. When I read stuff like this and the author starts going on about the politics of the issue, it's hard not to imagine that he has an agenda that isn't purely scientific.

Anyone who's lived in Los Angeles for any length of time will tell you that air quality is vastly better now than it was in decades past.

On 2011-05-18 00:03, landmark wrote:

Quote:

On 2011-05-17 19:35, LobowolfXXX wrote:

Quote:

On 2011-05-17 19:13, Andrew Zuber wrote:
Okay, so how are we supposed to react to this? Keep buying Hummers? Stand on our roof tops with cans of hair spray? Can we stop worrying about the environment now or something? Anyone who was ever flown in Los Angeles, as I have done hundreds of times, will tell you that air quality is a MAJOR health issue. When I read stuff like this and the author starts going on about the politics of the issue, it's hard not to imagine that he has an agenda that isn't purely scientific.

Anyone who's lived in Los Angeles for any length of time will tell you that air quality is vastly better now than it was in decades past.

You think that was just the natural course of events, or because of human action curbing car and other emissions?