Physicist makes case against catastrophic climate change

The Daily Inter Lake published this letter here.

by Dr. Ed Berry

Jerry Elwood (in a Jan. 4 Daily Inter Lake guest opinion) claims his case for catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is based upon “unequivocal and easily accessible scientific evidence.” Let’s review his claim.

Elwood claims the scientific case for catastrophic man-caused global warming is closed and his side has won. He wants to close the debate because he has lost the debate and he wants government to force his belief on you.

Professor Judith Curry, a United Nations expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who knows more than Elwood about climate physics, just testified in the U.S. Senate, “the science of climate change is not settled.”

Which of the 73 climate models does Elwood believe represents his “settled” science?

All climate models disagree among themselves and all produce forecasts way outside reality. If climate science were settled, there would be only one model and it would agree with data.

Elwood claims “almost all climate scientists with expertise and experience” support catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. Not so.

The “97 percent” consensus myth comes from a reference to two old studies both of which fail to prove such a claim.

In 2013, a survey of 1,800 responding members of the American Meteorological Society shows only 52 (not 97) percent said they believe humans caused most of the recent warming but did not support catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. The study also found global-warming believers were strongly influenced by their perceptions of a scientific consensus and by their political ideology, whereas the non-believers were not.

Using consensus to decide a scientific issue is one of 12 logical fallacies described by Aristotle 2,300 years ago. Consensus is a kindergarten class attempting to determine the sex of a puppy, when one kid suggests they vote on it.

Elwood claims “Our entire planet is accumulating heat due to an energy imbalance caused primarily by the rising concentration of CO2 and… other human activities. Due to this imbalance, the Earth’s climate is warming.”

Elwood’s claim is eco-cultism, not science. There is no “balance of nature” law in physics. Climate, plants, animals, land, and rivers have changed dramatically in Earth’s 5-billion-year history.

Where there is a balance, it is found as a physics result, not as a stated law. For example, data show atmospheric water vapor decreases as carbon dioxide increases in a manner that keeps Earth’s total greenhouse effect constant.

If climate models allowed water vapor to adjust as it does in nature, they would not predict catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.

Elwood cherry picks data. He relies upon IPCC reports where 30 percent of the referenced papers are non-peer-reviewed handouts from biased environmental groups, and that changed the scientists’ final draft reports.

In 2007, the IPCC final report reversed the scientists’ final draft that stated “there is no discernible human influence on climate.”

The IPCC “90 percent confidence” claim came not from a vote of scientists but from a show of hands by the government political representatives. China argued for a “no confidence” estimate.

Elwood ignores more scientifically qualified reports by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change and the Science and Environmental Policy Project.

Elwood claims global temperature has been rising since 1997. But data and people on his own side, contradict him.

NASA and NOAA press releases say data show no statistically significant global warming since 1997. NASA’s James Hansen agrees global temperatures have stopped rising. In addition, the IPCC chairman and the UK Met Office agree there has been no statistically significant change in global temperature since 1997.

Antarctica just recorded the coldest Earth temperature ever, minus 94C, well below the previous record of minus 89.2 in 1983. The East Antarctic ice sheet, which contains about 90 percent of the Earth’s fresh water, is expanding.

The North Pole had the coldest summer on record and the Arctic ice cap grew by 920,000 square miles over 2012.

Climate-wise, there is nothing unusual about present temperatures or the warming since 1970. The Minoan, Roman, and Medieval warm periods were warmer than today. Each warm period in the past 12,000 years got progressively colder and we are near the end of our 12,000-year warm interval between 90,000 year ice ages.

Elwood says, “saying it’s a ‘natural cyclical change’ is not an explanation of the cause.” That’s true but we can use cycles to make good predictions without understanding their cause.

If we were Neanderthals, we could predict future day and night, summer and winter, and full moons without understanding their cause.

While we cannot explain why ocean currents change, we can predict the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which turned cold in 2001, will continue colder for the next 30 years.

Even if temperatures warmed, it would not prove our carbon dioxide caused it.

In science, we must state a hypothesis. The IPCC “catastrophic anthropogenic global warming” hypothesis is that human greenhouse emissions, especially carbon dioxide, cause dangerous global warming.

The null hypothesis is “global climate changes are presumed to be natural unless specific evidence shows human causation”. Carbon dioxide is innocent until proven guilty.

As a legal analogy, Elwood is the prosecuting attorney who attempts to show carbon dioxide is guilty. I am the defense attorney who attempts to find a hole in the prosecution’s case. Elwood has the burden of proof. If I find only one failure, he loses.

To test a hypothesis, we compare its predictions against new data.

The key to science is: if your prediction is wrong, your hypothesis is wrong.

Climate models incorporate the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis and make predictions we can test. If climate models fail any test, we must reject them.

Models predict human carbon dioxide will cause a “hot spot” in the tropical upper atmosphere. But data show no such hot spot.

Models predicted a significant temperature rise over the past 17 years. But temperatures did not cooperate even though carbon dioxide increased.

These two tests prove the catastrophic anthropogenic global-warming hypothesis is wrong.

Internally, climate models assume the Earth is flat, the sun shines at constant intensity all 24 hours, all energy transfers are by radiation and none by latent heat, all temperature changes are caused by greenhouse gases, and more carbon dioxide causes more water vapor. No wonder models don’t work.

If you believe climate models, you are a Flat-Earther.

Climate models produce errors of plus or minus 15 degrees Celsius in 100 year projections, which means their predictive ability is nada. Models can’t resolve human emission effects so any claims otherwise are bogus.

Elwood contradicts the scientific method in his claim that “climate models predict the observed increase in global average temperatures since 1951 only if human-caused climate forcing is included in the models.” His argument is circular and modelers can set model parameters to “prove” anything.

Climate models give widely different predictions. So the IPCC uses an “ensemble” of model predictions as the “model” prediction. However, even the ensemble prediction is far off reality.

Climate models are like pianos where strings are missing and strings are out of tune. Expecting climate models to produce an accurate climate prediction is like expecting an ensemble of such pianos to produce a good rendition of Pachelbel’s Cannon in D.

In 2008, the world’s leading modelers wrote that a deviation over a period of 15 years between model predictions and data would prove the models wrong. The models have deviated for the past 17 years.

The U.S. National Academy of Sciences admitted climate models have over-predicted actual temperature trends by a factor of 2.0 in the lower troposphere.

Even if global temperature rose as Elwood claims, it makes no difference. The actual temperature remains way below model predictions and this proves the theory of catastrophic global warming is wrong.

Data show atmospheric carbon dioxide follows temperature rather than leads it. Cause always precedes effect.

Every argument Elwood made to support his case for catastrophic anthropogenic global warming has failed.

We’ve had a 17-year standstill in temperature while carbon dioxide continued to rise. If you are in high school, climate hasn’t warmed since you were born.

Cold, not warm, should be our greater concern. Astrophysicists have evidence our Sun has entered a cooling phase like the Dalton Minimum of the 1800s and maybe like the Maunder Minimum and “Little Ice Age” of the 1600s.

It’s time to stop the global-warming charade.

Ed Berry, of Bigfork, has a PH.D. in atmospheric physics, is a certified consulting meteorologist and a former National Science Foundation program manager for weather modification.