Concise and comprehensive paper by Dr Chris de Freitas
pointing out myths and fallacies in the entire IPCC position. Dowloadable pdf
file just over 1 Mb. CSIRO and the greenhouse game: player yes, umpire no by Bob Foster1 1. A REPUTATION WORTH PROTECTING It takes decades to earn a reputation like this. 2. CSIRO’S TEMPERATURE PROJECTIONS FOR
AUSTRALIA I promise I am not making this up: now, CSIRO has Darwin going from the present one December-February day per year over 35 OC on average, to a whopping 5-79 days by 2070. CSIRO could be quite right, of course; but no-one today has any way of knowing. Think the unthinkable: is CSIRO snowing us on future Australian warming? 3. CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE NATURAL SCIENCES
The Great Pacific Climate Shift of 1976/77 was the climatic event of the
century. This Shift coincided with an abrupt reduction in the
upwelling of cold water in the eastern Pacific, as recorded by the Pacific
Decadal Oscillation (PDO) Index (Figure 2) - which
shows reductions during the 1920s-40s and 1977-98. The impact of the 76/77
Shift extended far beyond PDO and the Pacific; and its global influence on
atmosphere and oceans is illustrated in Figure 3.
Selected examples of its physical and biological influence are given in Figure 4,---Figure 5,---Figure 6,---Figure 7,---Figure 8, and Figure 9. 1. Phone (61.3) 9525 6335, fax 6345, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] Bob is a director of the Lavoisier Group www.lavoisier.com.au which is putting a contrarian view on climate change to that of the UN’s IPCC. Like-minded Australian sites are www.webace.com.au/~wsh and the comprehensive www.john-daly.com. But could the renewed warming from the late 70s be the greenhouse effect? The human-caused ‘greenhouse effect’ is a phenomenon of the atmosphere. GHG emissions, of which carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil fuels is by far the most influential constituent, are supposed to trap extra heat in the lower troposphere – which warms as a consequence. Instead of escaping to Space as before, some of this trapped heat should return to the earth’s surface – causing ‘greenhouse effect’ warming. Concurrently, less heat than before escapes to Space. We now have 23 years of global coverage from satellite-derived observations to supplement the weather balloon record (top graph in Figure 3), which is only adequate in the Northern Hemisphere - better over land, best over Europe and North America. There are two surprising findings. The lower troposphere is only warming a quarter as fast as is the surface, and (in the tropics, at least) more – not less – heat is leaving the top of the atmosphere for Space. The simplest explanation for these findings is that most of the measured surface temperature increase over the past 23 years is something other than ‘greenhouse effect’ warming. During this period, the lower troposphere of the Southern Hemisphere appears not to have warmed (Figure 10---Figure 11). In fact, most warming in the lower troposphere is north of 30ON; and south of 45 OS is cooling. Therefore, any human-caused greenhouse warming (i.e. at the surface) to date, would be largely confined to the extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere. And yet, CSIRO is warning us that Australia could warm ten times as much by 2070 - from the greenhouse effect alone - as the global-average warming from all causes over the last 100 years. To me at least, this sounds more like advocacy than umpiring. 3.2 Palaeoclimatology and the cause of contemporary climate change
During the Great Winter of 1683/4, when 11 inches of ice formed on the River,
diarist John Evelyn (here copied from Museum of London) wrote:
The long-running (at least 200,000 years) 1500-year cold/warm cycle, of which the Roman Empire Warm Period, Dark Ages, Mediaeval Warm Period and Little Ice Age are the latest manifestations, is closely linked to solar influences. But the overprinted 50/60-year cycle of global temperatures is related in the first instance to inertial factors, as evidenced by cyclic changes in length-of-day which display a strikingly similar period; and the same period applies to the cycle of change in the movement of atmospheric and oceanic mass – and hence in heat transportation. Again, the Sun may well be involved, although we don’t yet know how – but there is no ‘greenhouse effect’ signature in evidence. Just a thought: this cycle has persisted for several hundred years now; and if it were to continue, 1999-2016 should become its cooler next phase. 4. CLIMATE PROJECTIONS AND THE SOCIAL
SCIENCES Misleadingly, CSIRO tells us that: This explanation is highly implausible. The first draft of IPCC’s new Report (Climate Change 2001: the scientific basis) released in 1999, already included the changed assumptions for cooling aerosols, and the high-end projection for 2100 rose then only from 3.5 to 4.0 OC. In any case, the aerosol explanation is contradicted by the observed pattern of warming. Roughly 90% of these short-lived aerosols (Figure 13) are emitted in the Northern Hemisphere – where most fossil fuels are burned. But the warming is in the same hemisphere. (Indeed, Australia emits negligible ‘cooling’ sulphates - whose future elimination might otherwise have given a boost to projected regional warming. CSIRO is already in over its depth.) However, the global 5.8 OC did not surface until the final draft of October 2000 – subsequent to review by government representatives. The key post-science changes appear to be: First, the inclusion of a high-end scenario (A1F1, see below)
which incorporates an extremely high use of fossil fuels;
The assertion that the jump from 3.5 to 5.8 OC results from the new assumption of lower sulphur dioxide emissions in the future appears not to be true. 4.2 Reliance on IPCC’s economics One “marker” storyline (A1) assumes rapid growth in economic activity,
coupled with a fast rate of convergence in per-capita wealth between the world’s
regions. One scenario (A1F1) has this growth powered to an extreme extent
by energy derived from coal. This scenario, applied to the most sensitive
climate model, yields the projection of 5.8 OC
global-average temperature rise between 1990 and 2100. Hence, the
plausibility of CSIRO’s projected warming for Australia in 2070 is crucially
dependent on the plausibility of the underpinning assumptions for IPCC’s
economic models. This is social, rather than natural, science.
4.3 Analysis by Ian Castles SRES converted all nations in the base year (1990) to a common measure of per-capita wealth, using quoted currency exchange rates. This mistake made economies in the developing world appear too small in 1990; and hence, they were required to grow by too much in order to reach their designated future level of GDP-per-capita parity with the developed world. As an example, compare electricity consumption in Japan and China. When the Chinese electricity tariff in Yuan, and the Japanese in Yen, were converted to the common currency of the study (US dollars), the Chinese tariff was only a tenth that in Japan on a kWh basis. On a USD basis, China was (wrongly) shown to have a lot of catching up to do – an error by a factor of ten. If SRES had instead used purchasing power parity (PPP) for calculating base–year equivalence (i.e. kWh not USD for electricity), much less economic growth would have needed to be projected in the SRES storylines. 4.4 IPCC’s high-end projection of 5.8 OC Global CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel use (plus industrial processes) were about 6.1 billion tonnes in 1990, on a contained-carbon basis. Coal-intensive A1F1 has them rising steeply to 24 BT in 2050 and 30 BT in 2100. On a per-capita basis, historical carbon emissions peaked at 1.23 tonnes in 1979, and were down to 1.11 tonnes by 1999. A1F1 has over 4 tonnes by 2100; and this scenario assumes cumulative coal use by 2100 far beyond the exhaustion of currently-known reserves. But the writing is already on the wall for A1F1, because it had coal consumption growing 31% between 1990 and 2000. In reality, it grew less than 1%. The atmospheric concentration of CO2 has been growing at about 1.5 ppm per year for the past two decades and more. It is now 370 ppm (compared to a pre-industrial 280 ppm), with no sign of acceleration. A1F1 has it at 960 ppm plus 300 ppm for uncertainties, to yield the extremely implausible 1260 ppm by 2100 on which the high-end projection relies. Even 1998, the year of the vast peat fires in Kalimantan (Figure 4), didn’t come close to the 9 ppm/year average increase which is needed to make 1260 ppm a reality. Atmospheric concentration of methane, the second most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas, has grown at a decreasing rate for more than a decade; and in 2000, the concentration fell. It is now about 1750 ppb; although A1F1 envisages an implausible 3400 ppb by 2100. 4.5 IPCC’s low-end projection of 1.4 OC The SRES authors acknowledge that growth rates lower than assumed in the B1 scenario-group are not only possible, but likely. Thus, IPCC’s 1.4-5 8 OC ‘range’ is not a range at all. For the developing countries (including Africa), IPCC’s low-end temperature projection stems from a per-capita wealth increase during the half-century from 1990 of nine times – averaging 4.5% per year. But the World Bank’s 2001 Global Economic Prospects report offers three (PPP-based) cases for developing countries to 2015 – 1.5%, 2.2% and a “best case” of 3.7%. The range of economic outcomes which CSIRO has adopted, and the range which World Bank envisages, do not even overlap. There is daylight between them! 4.6 CSIRO’s ‘range’ for 2070: ignorance not malice However, IPCC’s problem goes beyond spurious economics, and implausible CO2 emissions growth thus resulting. Equally implausible is its autistic fixation with human-caused greenhouse gas emissions as driver of 20th Century climate change. This leads on to IPCC’s strictly-unidirectional model-based projections of climate over the next century - which CSIRO has uncritically adopted for its 2070 global-average starting point, and then elaborated to achieve its own regional projections. 5. POLICY-MAKING IN THE WEST CSIRO atmospheric science division head Graeme Pearman said Kyoto
emission limits would be insignificant in averting global warming.
Something is wrong here. There are three stations belonging to the Bureau of Meteorology “high quality rainfall data set” situated in the SW – Cape Naturaliste, Kendenup (Mt Barker) and King River (Albany). Compared to 1904-1976, rainfall for 1977-2001 is certainly down –by an average 5%. Some other places (e.g. Perth, 11%) are more than 10% down, but there is no 30 or 40% - or 20%. Just to the NE, in the adjacent Wheat Belt, increases above 20% are common – see Warwick Hughes’ http://au.geocities.com/perth_water for more. 6. SHOULD CSIRO COME CLEAN? In view of both this pre-existing stricture, and Ian Castles’ exposé of the flawed social-science underpinnings to IPCC’s ‘scientific’ projections, now is the time for CSIRO to warn both policymakers and public that its widely-disseminated 2070 regional temperature projections for Australia should be permitted no role whatever in the formulation of policy. This is a big ask. But retreating into denial will not do, because preparing and publicizing CSIRO’s fatally-flawed projections involved the expenditure of public funds – i.e. taxpayers’ money. Besides, CSIRO has a reputation to protect. 7. HANDS-ON CONTROL OF GLOBAL CLIMATE
By implication, there has to be another side to this coin. What would
it say? It might go something like this: But there is a vast array of earth-science-based observational/deductive evidence contradicting any such nonsense - whose only substantial support derives from the atmospheric-science-based numerical models which IPCC invokes. Admittedly, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said in Mozambique (1 September
2002): We can defeat climate change if we want to. But that
comforting belief is implausible now, and will remain so for the foreseeable
future. This is politics, not science. Whether held by the US EPA, Australia’s CSIRO, or the British PM, sincere belief in the feasibility of hands-on control of climate – no matter how vehemently held - is not enough. We humans can’t control climate; and mitigating the impact of both climate change and extreme weather events is the only course currently open to us. I look forward to CSIRO taking the intellectual lead in Australia on this scientific issue - by saying just that. 8. AUSTRALIA NEEDS A CLIMATE UMPIRE – BUT IT ISN’T
CSIRO Are Australians just as alert to special pleading when hearing from those on
the side of the Angels? Back in 1989, Dr Rajendra K. Pachauri (who has
recently succeeded Dr Robert Watson as Chairman of IPCC) was instrumental in the
issuance of this remarkable statement: While, happily, its words aren’t quite as purple as those above, CSIRO is
also advocating the catastrophist line - as in the following example (ABC
Sci-Tech, 31 May 2002): Is this our “trusted umpire” speaking? If not, who will prioritize for Australians the dubious threat of future human-caused warming against (for instance) the real-life, here-and-now, threat to biodiversity posed by continued clearing on a vast scale in our region: Sumatra, Kalimantan, New Guinea and the lesser Melanesian islands – and Queensland?
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