Global Warming / Climate Change

Global Warming / Climate Change

Overview


Environmental activists claim that the greenhouse gas emissions associated with human industrial activity are a primary cause of global warming/climate change, which they associate with all manner of natural calamities such as droughts, floods, heat waves, hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes. This claim is addressed in the following excerpt from Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming: The NIPCC Report on Scientific Consensus (by Craig D. Idso, Robert M. Carter, and S. Fred Singer, 2015).

Environmental activists and their allies in the media often characterize climate science as an “overwhelming consensus” in favor of a single view that is sometimes challenged by a tiny minority of scientists funded by the fossil fuel industry to “sow doubt” or otherwise emphasize the absence of certainty on key aspects of the debate. This popular narrative grossly over-simplifies the issue while libeling scientists who question the alleged consensus…. [S]cientists do, in fact, disagree on the causes and consequences of climate change.

In May 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry warned graduating students at Boston College of the “crippling consequences” of climate change. “Ninety-seven percent of the world’s scientists tell us this is urgent,” he added. Three days earlier, President Obama tweeted that “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.” What is the basis of these claims?

The most influential statement of this alleged consensus appears in the Summary for Policymakers of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): “It is extremely likely (95%+ certainty) that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together. The best estimate of the human-induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period.”

In a “synthesis report” produced the following year, IPCC went further, claiming “Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems. Limiting climate change would require substantial and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions which, together with adaptation, can limit climate change risks.” In that same report, IPCC expresses skepticism that even reducing emissions will make a difference: “Many aspects of climate change and associated impacts will continue for centuries, even if anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are stopped. The risks of abrupt or irreversible changes increase as the magnitude of the warming increases.” The media uncritically reported IPCC’s claims with headlines such as “New Climate Change Report Warns of Dire Consequences” and “Panel’s Warning on Climate Risk: Worst Is Yet to Come.”

What evidence is there for a “scientific consensus” on the causes and consequences of climate change? What do scientists really say? Any inquiry along these lines must begin by questioning the legitimacy of the question. Science does not advance by consensus or a show of hands. Disagreement is the rule and consensus is the exception in most academic disciplines. This is because science is a process leading to ever-greater certainty, necessarily implying that what is accepted as true today will likely not be accepted as true tomorrow. As Albert Einstein famously once said, “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” Still, claims of a “scientific consensus” cloud the current debate on climate change…. So what do the surveys and studies reveal?

Claims of a “scientific consensus” on the causes and consequences of climate change rely on a handful of essays reporting the results of surveys or efforts to count the number of articles published in peer-reviewed journals that appear to endorse or reject the positions of IPCC. NASA on its website cites four sources supporting its claim that “Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities” (NASA,
2015)…. [T]hese surveys and abstract-counting exercises are deeply flawed and do not support the claims of those who cite them….

[By contrast, the] Global Warming Petition Project (2015) is a statement about the causes and consequences of climate change signed by 31,478 American scientists, including 9,021 with Ph.D.s. The full statement reads:

“We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon
the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”

This is a remarkably strong statement of dissent from the perspective advanced by IPCC. The fact that more than ten times as many scientists have signed it as are alleged to have “participated” in some way or another in the research, writing, and review of IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report is very significant. These scientists actually endorse the statement that appears above. By contrast, fewer than 100 of the scientists (and nonscientists) who are listed in the appendices to IPCC reports actually participated in the writing of the all-important Summary for Policymakers or the editing of the final report to comply with the summary, and therefore could be said to endorse the main findings of that report….

Even prominent “alarmists” in the climate change debate admit there is no consensus. Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, when asked if the debate on climate change is over, told the BBC, “I don’t believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view.” …

The most important fact about climate science, often overlooked, is that scientists disagree about the environmental impacts of the combustion of fossil fuels on the global climate. There is no survey or study showing “consensus” on the most important scientific issues, despite frequent claims by advocates to the contrary. Scientists disagree about the causes and consequences of climate for several reasons. Climate is an interdisciplinary subject requiring insights from many fields. Very few scholars have mastery of more than one or two of these disciplines. Fundamental uncertainties arise from insufficient observational evidence and disagreements over how to interpret data and how to set the parameters of models. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), created to find and disseminate research finding a human impact on global climate, is not a credible source. It is agenda-driven, a political rather than scientific body, and some allege it is corrupt. Finally, climate scientists, like all humans, can be biased. Origins of bias include careerism, grant-seeking, political views, and confirmation bias.

Probably the only “consensus” among climate scientists is that human activities can have an effect on local climate and that the sum of such local effects could hypothetically rise to the level of an observable global signal. The key questions to be answered, however, are whether the human global signal is large enough to be measured and if it is, does it represent, or is it likely to become, a dangerous change outside the range of natural variability? On these questions, an energetic scientific debate is taking place on the pages of peer-reviewed science journals.

In contradiction of the scientific method, IPCC assumes its implicit hypothesis – that dangerous global warming is resulting, or will result, from human-related greenhouse gas emissions – is correct and that its only duty is to collect evidence and make plausible arguments in the hypothesis’s favor. It simply ignores the alternative and null hypothesis, amply supported by empirical research, that currently observed changes in global climate indices and the physical environment are the result of natural variability. The results of the global climate models (GCMs) relied on by IPCC are only as reliable as the data and theories “fed” into them. Most climate scientists agree those data are seriously deficient and IPCC’s estimate for climate sensitivity to CO2 is too high….

NIPCC’s conclusion, drawn from its extensive review of the scientific evidence, is that any human global climate impact is within the background variability of the natural climate system and is not dangerous…. Policymakers should resist pressure from lobby groups to silence scientists who question the authority of IPCC to claim to speak for “climate science.” The distinguished British biologist Conrad Waddington wrote in 1941: “It is … important that scientists must be ready for their pet theories to turn out to be wrong. Science as a whole certainly cannot allow its judgment about facts to be distorted by ideas of what ought to be true, or what one may hope to be true.”

This prescient statement merits careful examination by those who continue to assert the fashionable belief, in the face of strong empirical evidence to the contrary, that human CO2 emissions are going to cause dangerous global warming.

To read the full report, click here.

Additional Resources:


ORIGINS AND CHRONOLOGY OF GLOBAL WARMING THEORY:

Global Warming Myth and Marxism: How the U.N. and Marxist Economists Have Used the Global Warming Myth to Wreck World Economies
By Edward F. Blick
2009

The Marxist Roots of the Global Warming Scare
By Wes Vernon
June 16, 2008

A Chronology of the Global Warming Swindle
By Marcia Merry Baker
March 2007

Global Warming: The Origin and Nature of the Alleged Scientific Consensus
By Richard S. Lindzen
Spring 1992

Global Warming: How It All Began
By Richard Courtney
May 15, 1999

The Left’s War on Science
By Daniel Greenfield
April 12, 2013

The Shocking True Story of How Global Warming Became the Biggest #FakeNews Scare of All Time
By James Delingpole
February 28, 2018

EVALUATING THE EVIDENCE:

Climate Change Reconsidered
By Craig Idso and S. Fred Singer
2009

World Climate Declaration: There Is No Climate Emergency
By Climate Intelligence
2023

Climate Change Reconsidered: Interim Report
By Craig D. Idso, Robert M. Carter, and S. Fred Singer
2011

Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science
By Craig D. Idso, Robert M. Carter, and S. Fred Singer
2013

Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts
By Craig D. Idso, Sherwood B. Idso, Robert M. Carter, and S. Fred Singer
2014

Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming
By Craig D. Idso, Robert M. Carter, and S. Fred Singer
2015

Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels
By Roger Bezdek, Craig D. Idso, David Legates, and S. Fred Singer
2019

Deconstructing Global Warming
By Richard S. Lindzen
October 26, 2009

Global Warming and the Irrelevance of Science
By Richard Lindzen
2016

The Climate Science Isn’t Settled
By Richard S. Lindzen
November 3

A Geophysicist Looks at Climate Change: Human Contribution to Climate Change Remains Questionable
By Fred Singer
September 27, 1999

On the Validity of NOAA, NASA, and Hadley CRU Global Average Surface Temperature Data
By Dr. James P. Watson III, et al.
June 2017

Warming Up to the Truth: The Real Story About Climate Change
By Sallie Baliunas (Heritage Foundation)
August 22, 2002

Hotheads on a Lukewarm Planet
By Patrick J. Michaels (Capital Research Center)
April 2011

The Climate Change Inquisition
By Hans von Spakovsky and Nicolas Loris (Heritage Foundation)
October 24, 2016

Climategate: Leaked Email Inspired Data Analyses Show Claimed Warming Greatly Exaggerated, and NOAA not CRU Is Ground Zero
By Joseph D’Aleo
January 2010

31,000 Scientists Reject ‘Global Warming’ Agenda
By Bob Unruh
May 19, 2008

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Thinking Smartly about Climate Change
By Bjorn Lomborg
April 24, 2023

If It’s Not Open Warfare, It’s Collusive Lawfare
By Paul Driessen
June 9, 2023

Climate and Energy Fantasy and Tyranny
By Paul Driessen
January 27, 2024

Cobalt Carnage, Child Labor and Ecological Destruction
By Paul Driessen
July 31, 2023

Your Taxes at Work: ‘Eco-anxiety’ Counseling for Federal Workers
By Paul Driessen
April 25, 2023

Legalized Climate Grifting
By Paul Driessen
March 20, 2023

The Profound Junk Science of Climate
By Norman Rogers
November 27, 2021

Climate Alarmists Finally Admit ‘We Were Wrong About Global Warming’
By James Delingpole
September 19, 2017

The Myth of the Climate Change “97%”
By Joseph Bast and Roy Spencer

When Too Little CO2 Nearly Doomed Humanity
By Dennis T. Avery
June 30, 2017

Global Warming Believers Are Like a Hysterical ‘Cult’: MIT Scientist Compares ‘Climate Alarmists’ to Religious Fanatics
By Ellie Zolfagharifard
January 22, 2015

Greenpeace Co-Founder: No Scientific Evidence of Man-Made Global Warming
By Michael Bastasch
February 25, 2014

The Truth about Greenhouse Gases
By William Happer
June 2011

Myth of Arctic Meltdown
By David Rose
August 30, 2014

Climate Science in the Political Arena
By William Happer
May 20, 2010

Report Shows UN Admitting Solar Activity May Play Significant Role in Global Warming
By Maxim Lott
February 1, 2013

Study: Earth Was Warmer in Roman, Medieval Times
By Michael Bastasch
December 13, 2013

US Physics Professor: ‘Global Warming Is the Greatest and Most Successful Pseudoscientific Fraud I Have Seen In My Long Life’
By James Delingpole
October 11, 2010

More Studies Rebut Climate Change Consensus Amid Government Crackdown on Dissent
By Valerie Richardson
April 10, 2016

75 Climate Scientists Think Humans Contribute to Global Warming
By Lawrence Solomon
December 30, 2010

Deep-Sixing Another Useful Climate Myth [of 97% Consensus]
By David Legates
April 9, 2016

IPCC Insider Rejects Global-Warming Report 
By Alec Torres
April 3, 2014

No Need to Panic About Global Warming
Wall Street Journal
January 27, 2012

The Climate Crisis Hoax
Larry Bell
January 5, 2011

Now Even Michael Mann Admits The ‘Pause’ In Global Warming Is Real; Throws Allies To Wolves
By James Delingpole
February 28, 2016

There Has Been No Global Warming Since 1998
By James Delingpole
July 6, 2011

Weather Channel Founder: Global Warming ‘Greatest Scam in History’
By Noel Sheppard
November 07, 2007

Climate Change: The Greatest-Ever Conspiracy Against the Taxpayer
By James Delingpole
March 28, 2016

“Global Warming” Is a Myth, Say 58 Scientific Papers in 2017
Bt James Delingpole
June 6. 2017

Study Finds Temperature Adjustments Account For ‘Nearly All Of The Warming’ In Climate Data
By Michael Bastasch
July 5, 2017

Antarctic Sea Ice Reaches New Record Maximum
By NASA.gov
Oct. 7, 2014

How World Leaders Were Duped into Investing Billions over Manipulated Global Warming Data
By David Rose
February 4, 2017

Let’s Follow the Climate Money
By Paul Driessen
December 29, 2018

Top MIT Scientist: Gov’t Funded Climate Science Promotes Alarmism
By Michael Bastasch
March 5, 2015

Climategate U-turn as Scientist at Centre of Row Admits: There Has Been No Global Warming Since 1995
By Jonathan Petre
February 14, 2010

Climategate Stunner: NASA Heads Knew NASA Data Was Poor, Then Used Data from CRU
By Charlie Martin
March 10, 2010

Q&A: Professor Phil Jones
By BBC News
February 13, 2010

Son of Climategate: Scientist Says Feds Manipulated Data
By Bob Unruh
January 16, 2010

VIDEOS:

The Great Global Warming Swindle
By the British Broadcasting Corporation
2007

Nobel Laureate in Physics; “Global Warming is Pseudoscience”
By Professor Ivar Giaever

Global Warming or Global Governance?

Dr. Roy Spencer on Global Warming
Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
February 18, 2009

Is There Really a Climate Emergency?
By Steve Koonin (Prager University)
October 25, 2021

Al Gore Debates Global Warming
By JunkScience.com
2007

Fossil Fuels: The Greenest Energy
By Prager University
April 2016

A World Without Fossil Fuels
By Prager University
December 18, 2023

Why You Should Love Fossil Fuel
By Prager University
April 2015

Do 97% of Climate Scientists Really Agree?
By Prager University
July 2016

Climate Change: What’s So Alarming?
By Prager University
July 2016

Climatologist Breaks the Silence on Global Warming Groupthink
By Dr. Judith Curry

IPCC Official Admits Global Warming Is a Lie
By Mark Steyn

BOOK:

The Real Global Warming Disaster

LINKS:

GlobalWarmingHoax.com

RealClimateScience.com

 

 

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