Full disclosure from the outset: I am a sceptic on the question as to whether climate change is a man-made phenomenon. I haven’t always been a sceptic. Until a couple of years ago I was largely a believer. I wasn’t a full on alarmist. I recognised that the earth had always undergone climate change. However, I believed the message I was told that this time it was largely man’s fault. It’s hard not to be a believer. We are hammered with climate alarmism at every turn: extreme weather; more floods; more fires; less ice; less polar bears; melting icebergs; rising sea levels; record temperatures, bleached coral reefs etc etc. We are constantly told that time is running out to save the planet.
However, all that changed rapidly for me a couple of years ago. The catalyst was an article that recommended watching ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’. Link here. I watched this documentary soon after. It was full of credible arguments by credible people explaining that global warming had nothing to do with humans. Overnight I became a climate change sceptic. Simultaneously, I felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I realised that I had been carrying a low-level anxiety about climate change around with me without being conscious of it. All of a sudden, I had one less (big) thing to worry about. I felt a huge sense of relief. This euphoria stayed with me for a couple of weeks, during which, I was in a really good mood. I really do recommend being a sceptic: not only will you be in possession of a much wider range of information but you will stop feeling the sky is about to fall in on you.
Now, in order to make the world a happier place, I want to create more sceptics.
I have recently started following the climate change science more closely. I know about Michael Mann’s hockey Stick. More recently I have read the criticisms of the Mann’s hockey stick that were levelled at Mann by Steve McIntrye and Ross McKitrick. These criticisms focused on the assumptions and the modelling and the statistical analysis that were used by Mann.
I don’t deny that the climate on earth changes. I just dispute that mankind’s activities are responsible for those changes. Here are 10 questions that should be asked of any Climate Alarmist. If they can’t answer these questions, they really don’t know what they are talking about:
1) How do you explain the previous periods of global warming and cooling?
The cool periods are known as ‘ice ages’. We all know about ice ages. We think of them as occurring thousands of years ago whereas, in reality, the last one finished in the early 19th century. Plus which, there were genuine fears as recently as the 1970s that earth was heading for another ice age as temperatures had been cooling for the previous 30 years. Earth’s warm periods are less well known: there was a ‘Medieval Warm Period’ which lasted from about 1000AD to about 1300AD. There was also a warm period during the 1930s/40s (the cooling from which lead to fears of a new ice age). These are just 2 of many present in the temperature record. However, there is much information about the warm periods in this link:
2) Are you aware that the temperature of the Earth reached its 20th century peak in 1998 and that, since then, there has been a slight cooling?
You almost certainly will not be aware because it is not something the mainstream media (MSM) promotes. The MSM always promotes climate alarmism because the MSM always pushes bad news over good news.
https://newzealandclimatechange.wordpress.com/2013/01/19/the-halt-in-warming/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/list-of-excuses-for-the-pause-in-global-warming/
3) Why have the warmer 21st century temperatures we were warned were coming not arrived?
The computer models created by Climate Change scientists in the 1990s predicted accelerating temperatures after 2000. Yet that hasn’t happened. In fact we’ve seen cooler weather. That tells me the models are wrong which means the assumptions underpinning the models are wrong.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/17/how-reliable-are-the-climate-models/
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/global-warming-who-are-the-deniers-now/
4) Have you read any criticisms of Michael Mann’s ‘Hockey Stick’?
The ‘Hockey Stick’ is the single most famous piece of Global Warming propaganda in the public domain. It shows a graph of ever-warmer future temperatures. Yet the Hockey Stick model was produced using bad science and bad mathematics. The ‘Hockey Stick’ model used a distortion of timescales and also removed the Medieval Warm Period in order to achieve its effect.
Below I have included a link to a piece by Ross McKitrock that summarises the criticisms of the Hockey Stick. In summary of that summary, Ross points out flaws in Mann’s statistical analysis and multiple instances of Mann’s obtuseness when questioned about his approach. Some extracts are here…
A very brief summary of the problems of the hockey stick would go like this. Mann’s algorithm, applied to a large proxy data set, extracted the shape associated with one small and controversial subset of the tree rings records, namely the bristlecone pine cores from high and arid mountains in the US Southwest. The trees are extremely long-lived, but grow in highly contorted shapes as bark dies back to a single twisted strip. The scientists who published the data (Graybill and Idso 1993) had specifically warned that the ring widths should not be used for temperature reconstruction, and in particular their 20th century portion is unlike the climatic history of the region, and is probably biased by other factors.
Mann’s method exaggerated the significance of the bristlecones so as to make their chronology out to be the dominant global climatic pattern rather than a minor (and likely inaccurate) regional one; Mann then understated the uncertainties of the final climate reconstruction, leading to the claim that 1998 was the warmest year of the last millennium, a claim that was not, in reality, supportable in the data. Furthermore, Mann put obstacles in place for subsequent researchers wanting to obtain his data and replicate his methodologies, most of which were only resolved by the interventions of US Congressional investigators and the editors of Nature magazine, both of whom demanded full release of his data and methodologies some six years after publication of his original Nature paper.
Mann had re-done his hockey stick graph at some point during its preparation with the dubious bristlecone records excluded and saw that the result lost the hockey stick shape altogether, collapsing into a heap of trendless noise. However he never pointed this out to readers.
And…
Mann’s PC [principal components] step was programmed incorrectly and created two weird effects in how it handled data. First, if the underlying data set was mostly random noise, but there was one hockey stick-shaped series in the group, the flawed PC step would isolate it out, generate a hockey stick composite and call it the dominant pattern, even if it was just a minor background fluctuation. Second, if the underlying data consisted of a particular type of randomness called “red noise”—basically randomness operating on a slow, cyclical scale—then the PC step would rearrange the red noise into a hockey stick-shaped composite. Either way, the resulting composites would have a hockey stick shape for the LS [least squares] setup to glom onto and produce the famous final result.
https://www.rossmckitrick.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/hockey-stick-retrospective.pdf
5) Are you aware that Climate Change scientists such as Mann, Bradley & Hughes refused to release their computer models for independent scrutiny?
As such, no one is allowed to know what assumptions they have made and whether those assumptions are valid:
Of 105 freedom of information requests to the university concerning the Climatic Research Unit up to December 2009, the university refused 77, accepted six in part, had 11 outstanding, and had only 10 were released in full. One was withdrawn.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/03/climate-scientists-freedom-information-act
This is not how scientists should be behaving. The scientific method requires scientists to document their findings and make all their data available. Other scientists are then invited to analyse the approach for possible flaws in either the approach or the conclusions drawn. The scientific method requires that findings should be repeatable. This is how the body of scientific knowledge is built: through a continuous process of criticism, refinement and validation. For Mann and his colleagues to keep their data and assumptions secret is a red flag.
Some information was released following a campaign and Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrock criticised what they discovered upon their reviews of the work.
I did intend to include a number of those criticisms in this post. However, they become pretty technical pretty quickly.
As such, I have summarised McIntyre and McKitrick’s criticisms in a separate blog piece, found here
For the best context it is best if you read the document in its entirety.
Here is a link to that document:
https:r//climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/mcintyre-ee-2005.pdf
6) Are you aware that inferred temp data from tree rings does not match real world temp records since reliable temp recording has been in place?
Climate Change scientists use proxy data in place of temperature data for periods where there are no temperature records, I.e most of history. However, they seem to pick and choose which proxies they use in order to give them the temperature record they want. The reliability of the proxies is questionable. For example, tree ring analysis has been used as the primary temperature proxy. Yet, during the last 60 years where real temp data has been available, the inferred temp from the tree rings does not match the observed temps: the tree data indicated temperatures cooler than the actual temperature records. This tells us that temp inferences from tree rings is very unreliable. Yet, the IPCC report of 2001 did not point this out. The IPCC report showed a composite temperature graph comprised of models submitted by Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998-9), Jones’ modelling and Briffa modelling of tree records (2000). The Composite graph suggested that ALL models showed recent temperature increases. The decline in the Briffa series was removed and replaced with actual temperature records so that all models appeared in agreement. There was no footnote in the IPCC report that highlighted this manoeuvre.
More details here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/28/how-the-trick-was-pulled-off/
7) Are you aware that current levels of CO2 are not high in the context of the Earth’s entire history?
We know from our fossil record that CO2 levels throughout Earth’s history have averaged more than six times our modern concentrations. We also know that nuclear submarines submerged beneath the ocean for weeks at a time, average 5000 ppm CO2, with no health problem ever reported.
8) Are you aware there is no link between CO2 levels having an affect on global temperatures?
Antarctica has had the longest continuous accumulation of ice. It has provided data going back 800,000 years, while data from Greenland in the Northern Hemisphere gives CO2 data going back into the last interglacial period 128,000 years ago. Temperature and CO2 levels have varied during this long period, and importantly, temperature changes preceded changes in CO2. In other words, carbon dioxide has NOT driven temperatures for the last 800,000 years.
9) Are you aware that the much quoted ‘97% of Climate Change Scientists agree that Climate Change is real and that man’s impact is to blame’ is not true?
In 2013, U.S. President Barack Obama sent out a tweet claiming 97 per cent of climate experts believe global warming is “real, man-made and dangerous.” As it turns out, the survey he was referring to didn’t ask that question, so he was basically making it up.
10) Have you heard of ClimateGate?
No? That’s a shame.
ClimateGate revealed lots of information about the skulduggery perpetuated by a group of leading climate scientists:
Hacked emails reveal systematic attempts to block FoI requests from sceptics — and deep frustration at anti-warming agenda…The emails reveal repeated and systematic attempts by him [Dr. Phil Jones] and his colleagues to block FoI requests from climate sceptics who wanted access to emails, documents and data.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/03/climate-scientists-freedom-information-act
These 10 questions should be enough to make people question their understanding of climate change. If people want to read more, I recommend these links…
Links:
Since watching the documentary, I have investigated further. I have read a great many articles about climate change written by climate realists.
Here are links to the climate realism websites that I have been reading:
This is Steve McIntyre’s website: https://climateaudit.org/
This is Ross McKitrick’s website: https://www.rossmckitrick.com/paleoclimatehockey-stick.html
This is Antony Watts’ website: https://wattsupwiththat.com/
This is Tom Nelson’s website: http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/
Other websites:
https://www.technocracy.news/extensive-anthology-refutes-man-made-global-warming/
https://newzealandclimatechange.wordpress.com/
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/
Atticus Fox 