Pouring cold water on hot air
In a remarkable editorial over the weekend, Australian scientist David Evans renews his argument against government-mandated restrictions on carbon emissions, noting that there is little evidence to show they have anything to do with climate change.
If you’ve followed my sporadic coverage of climate change alarmism, you may recall him as a scientist who worked on carbon accounting for the Australian government, and changed his mind once he saw the evidence on which global warming alarmism was (or rather, was not) based.
Evans was one of the signatories of the open letter to UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon, on the occasion of the climate change junket in Bali, late last year. He was among several people who weren’t welcome. He has written a paper (link in PDF) in support of his position that CO2 does not cause global warming, has written a more accessible alternative, and has also penned a remarkable confession: I Was On the Global Warming Gravy Train.
His editorial is worth reading in full, but here are some key points:
When I started that job [of writing Australia’s carbon accounting model] in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.
The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.
But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts:
1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it. […]
2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed) but there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming.
3. The satellites that measure the world’s temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980). […]
4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect.
None of these points are controversial. The alarmist scientists agree with them, though they would dispute their relevance.
[…]
Until now the global warming debate has merely been an academic matter of little interest. Now that it matters, we should debate the causes of global warming.
So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions.
In the minds of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn’t noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved.
[…]
The world has spent $50 billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. Evidence consists of observations made by someone at some time that supports the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory.
[…]
The onus should be on those who want to change things to provide evidence for why the changes are necessary. The Australian public is eventually going to have to be told the evidence anyway, so it might as well be told before wrecking the economy.
Don’t expect any of this to make an ounce of difference. To turn a typical alarmist point against them, too many people are invested in the climate alarmism lobby. Some merely for its value in obtaining public money for research, but others, like Al Gore, quite literally. Politicians love the idea of climate change, because it gives them at once an opportunity to appear saintly and selfless, and an excuse to impose measures that increase their power and reward their political benefactors. Many companies buy into it because it gives them marketing collateral, and allows them to gain a slice of a “green” products pie that is expect to top $688 billion by 2010 (link in PDF), not to mention all the spinoffs from trade in an entirely new class of assets — carbon credits — simply conjured out of thin air by governments. The media loves it because, well, scary stories sell magazines.
Expect David Evans to be attacked over everything except the substance of his arguments, by all these people with undeniable vested interests of their own.
But he is right: if climate alarmists demand that the world drastically limit its use of fossil energy, and significantly increase the cost of production — which is the stuff that provide people with food, housing and healthcare, and lift the poor out of poverty — the onus is on them to prove why he is wrong and their solution is unavoidably necessary. And even if he is wrong, they should show why there is no alternative solution to large-scale, invasive government regulation, such as relying on technological innovation and free markets to solve whatever problems people might encounter as a result of global warming.
Their plan is a staggering price to pay for mere precaution, especially when it appears that their fears are based on little more than elaborate speculation. In fact, the precautionary principle — that self-contradictory rule to which environmentalists so often appeal — itself cautions against their grand, megalomaniacal, but ultimately vain schemes to change the climate. But it won’t stop them trying to run your life, scare your children and rob you blind.
Update: Fixed a missing close quote that cut half the paragraph starting with, “Don’t expect any of this to make an ounce of difference.” Proof-reading is under-rated and sadly neglected, on occasion. My apologies.
Dr. Roy Spencer (author of Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science…) appeared before a U.S. congressional committee yesterday. Unfortunately, not much interest was shown in his testimony. Why would it? The committee (and others) are only listening for what they want to hear…
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/roy-spencers-testimony-before-congress-backs-up-moncktons-assertions-on-climate-sensitivity/
Very well pointed out. We can only hope that more people start to sit up and take notice that the global warming “crisis” is just, well, hot air.
Hi Ivo,
Well done, as always.
Scary how we keep falling for conventional wisdom. I’m reading the doc’s commentson the Von Mises Institute site. Interesting the role of the sun and cosmic rays. Seems the planet may need sunscreen… LOL
In the meantime, one cannot be skeptical enough.
Rgds
Leon
Heh, don’t joke, Leon: Space-Based Sun-Shade Concept a Bright Idea.
But yes, there is a lot more correlation between solar activity and terrestrial temperatures, than between CO2 and temperatures.
Most notably, the last century’s temperature curve, which rose between 1910 and 1945, declined to 1975, and rose again until a few years ago, does not match the steady increase in carbon emissions. Fans of the emissions theory speculate that particulates caused the 1945-1975 dip, but I find that explanation unconvincing.
An equally strong hint at the impact of the sun is the correspondence between the Maunder Minimum in the solar cycle, and the Little Ice Age during the early industrial revolution, when Englishmen could often skate on the Thames.
The greenhouse effect as the major cause of climate change simply cannot explain these things.
The only warming which occurs in this debate arises from much under collar heating should one have the temerity to challenge the urban legend of carbon emissions versus climate. The ‘climate’ then turns decidedly ugly.
Why do people love this idea?
Why does the attention wander and selective deafness kick in when one attempts to present empirical research repudiating ‘Global Warming’?
I believe the reason is buried deep in the human psyche, and attempts to change this penchant through calls to reason are thus utterly futile.
It is the same dynamic driving people to rubberneck at vehicle accidents, why bad news and sensationalism sells newspapers, why people cleave to interpersonal relationships riddled with conflict and argument, and which underlies ‘Schadenfreude’
Smoothly running systems are simply boring.
People are free to believe anything they want, however irrational. My problem arises when such beliefs spawn political interventions which are going to cost me money while affording me no benefit.
All manner of statists, socialists, alarmists and sundry crackpots seem obsessed with externalizing their perversions and paranoia onto others, perhaps feeding some deep seated need to garner ‘support’ for themselves.
Green ‘do gooders’ cling to their beliefs and shut their minds to reason because reason would seriously challenge their position in the system which may afford them a paycheck, a reason to get up in the morning, even purpose to their otherwise dull and unimaginative lives.
We have to bear the cost of those who refuse to abandon their ‘position’ because it would threaten their comfort zone, even if such is based on rubbish.
Perry Curling-Hope: At the very end of Dr. Spencer’s spoken testimony he said the following:
“There’s a story I’d like to relate to you and I’ve never told it before. In the early days of the IPCC, I was visiting the head of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy. The director, Dr. Robert Watson, who later became the first Chairman of the IPCC, he informed me and a work associate with me that since we had started to regulate Ozone depleting substances under the 1987 Montreal Protocol, the next goal, in his mind, was to regulate Carbon Dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning. This was nearly twenty years ago. There’s no mention of a scientific basis for that goal. So, as you can see from the beginning of the IPCC process, it has been guided by desired policy outcomes, not science.
I believe that most of the scientists involved with the IPCC are indeed reputable and honest. But, I they have been used by politicians, bureaucrats and a handful of sympathetic and outspoken scientists.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qzf6z-oHP8U
So, if I understand the piece you are referencing correctly, the fellow is saying that global warming is actually occurring, but that carbon emissions have no discernible effect on it. How do you infer from the above hypothesis that global warming is a crock?
“Global warming” and “climate change” are inferred euphemisms for anthropogenic global warming due to carbon dioxide emissions.
The trick is whether one will accept that a trace atmospheric gas is the primary driving force of global climate and whether the comparatively meagre human contribution of said trace gas is somehow a tipping point into “runaway warming” and catastrophe.
@ Shaun McDonald: Hard Rain explained it well, but I’ll add my 2c.
Nobody disputes that the climate changes, and that sometimes average temperatures rise. This seems almost axiomatic to me. Finding that the climate should be static would be, well, surprising.
I can even buy that human action has some effect on it. That does not imply that I accept that we have a handle on how the climate changes, or the mechanics by which it does so, nor on whether such change is historically anomalous, nor in the broader theory that humans are the main cause of climate change, nor that their impact is by default negative, nor that feedback factors are at play that turn this change into the kind of “runaway” warming that, they speculate, occurred in the Venutian atmosphere.
In fact, there are good reasons to strongly doubt all of these, not least the blatant exaggeration — if not outright falsification — of data by alarmists like Michael Mann and James Hansen.
Therefore, I cannot accept that the only solution constitutes drastic changes in how we live, plus exceedingly costly mitigation efforts imposed by government decree, when the lost productivity will severely impact our ability to create employment and reduce poverty, and when the resources at our disposal can be invested in many less costly, more beneficial, and more certain interventions to save or improve human lives.
That the climate changes is a trivial truth. That this constitutes a grave crisis of humanity, with eternal punishment inevitable if we refuse, in vainglorious pride, to prostrate ourselves before St Gore and pray he intercedes for us with a wrathful Gaia, is just a little less self-evident.
Hush, Ivo, or a young child might report you to the Climate Bureau for High Climate Crimes Against Humanity!
(And I’m not kidding. This ad campaign is reminiscent of Orwell’s child spies in 1984): http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2008/07/climate-nazis.html
So we are pretty stuffed either way? We are experiencing global warming but we can’t do anything about it because we don’t know why it is happening? And I thought I am going to struggle understanding quantum physics.
Signs of the times at the indefatigable EU Referendum: http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2008/08/signs-of-times.html
Yet more observable evidence for cooling rather than warming…
Who says we’re stuffed? That climate changes doesn’t have to constitute a crisis. It will have positive and negative effects, as it always has. As it had in the Middle Ages, when it warmed significantly, and the Industrial Revolution, when it cooled significantly. We’ll have to adapt to it, as we always have. And we’re better equipped now, both in terms of technology and in terms of outright prosperity, than we ever were. Unless, of course, we squander our prosperity and the potential for further growth by misinvesting a major share of our production and productive ability into futile means of trying to stop the climate from doing what it will do anyway.
Talk about stepping in where angels fear to tread! Anyway here goes……….
The discussion in this thread treats the climate on a very simplistic basis - eg: it has warmed …it has cooled…meagre additions to CO2 etc.
It a ultimately a question of evidence. It is also not a black & white issue. It is a risk management issue that has several shades of grey.
Facts:
1. There are several greenhouse gases, the most important of which is water. The next most important is CO2.
Water (obviously) has an extremely important role through the operation of the hydrological cycle in distributing heat and precipitation around the world (mainly from low latitudes to high latitudes). The movement of heat occurs through the distribution of sensible heat and latent heat (energy changes resulting from change of phase eg gas to liquid). This movement of heat is particularly potent with water.
2. All greenhouse gases operate the same way - they have spectral radiation properties that are impacted by inbound, but also outbound radiatiuon to and from the earth. Without this greenhouse effect the average temperature on earth would be around -18degC.
3. These gases operate seperately and together. Their operation, particlularly together, is highly complex.
4. The worlds climate consists of a large number of important sub-systems. Eg the El-Nino - Southern Oscillation (ENSO) system operates in the Pacific, but has global impacts. There are several such systems: The Monsoons, The northern and souther annular modes, Pacific Decadel Oscillation, The Polar vortices etc.
5. CO2 concentrations have increased to around 380ppm from around 280ppm in pre-industrial (approx 1750) times. This has been very accurately measured especially in the last 50 years or so (the Keeling curve).
6. Several of the climatic sub-systems are showing changes that are highly correlated with increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2.
None of the above is controversial and for those that can be bothered with the detail each of the above 6 statements are easy to verify.
The Precautionary Principle has also been discussed in this thread. It is simple and it states: The precautionary principle is a moral and political principle which states that if an action or policy might cause severe or irreversible harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of a scientific consensus that harm would not ensue, the burden of proof falls on those who would advocate taking continuing the action. In some legal systems the precautionary principle is also a general principle of law. This means that it is compulsory. The principle aims to provide guidance for protecting public health and the environment in the face of uncertain risks, stating that the absence of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason to postpone measures where there is a risk of serious or irreversible harm to public health or the environment.
In other words it cannot be turned on its head, as in this discussion, that unless climate change can be proved that the use of fossil fuels should be in any way curtailed because of “economic damage”.
Thus it is axiomatic that if it can be shown that the use of fossil fules could be causing climate change with anything more than a trivial degree of probability that we should be taking action. As Sir Nicholas Stern pointed out, the cost of acting on climate change (1% growth) is far outweighed by the potential cost of not acting.
I actually think this is a massive opportunity to generate a whole new industry and way of working and living. This change out will create millions of jobs and encourage the development of whole new technology directions. Instaed oif resisting and trying to cling to the old ways we should be embracing this new direction.
Ivo,
I find the Evans’ argument strangely similar to Mbeki’s when he asserted that HIV does not _cause_ AIDS. It was based very much on the same, sound, principles of logic, that is, correlation does not prove causality. (And of course you couldn’t simply do a control group HIV study on humans)
Obviously, the high correlation between HIV & AIDS would draw most reasonable people to draw a “causality” conclusion, even though, strictly speaking, there is none until you do a proper test.
And such a test would be pretty unethical.
Similarly, when it comes to our planet, we really only have once chance. You don’t have to be a bleeding heart treehugger to have a certain ’sense’ that one can’t just spew forth kilotons of toxic (to humans) gases and that the earth would magically maintain ecostasis.
We also don’t have the opportunity to take a 1000 randomly selected Earths and “inject” half of them with CO2 to see what the effect would be, all else remaining equal.
Evans article is moot. It’s a Mbeki’esque argument based on logic, rather than on any facts.