Letter to Senator James Inhofe about relying on the IPCC (Richard Courtney) UK

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From: Richard S Courtney BA ABSW FRSA ESEF 88 Longfield Falmouth Cornwall TR11 4SL United Kingdom Tel:

+44 01326 211849

email: To:

RichardSCourtney@aol.com

Senator James M Inhofe United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Washington, DC 20510-6175 USA

Date: 3 November 2008 cc for info. Mr Scott M Smith Response to a Request for Information Dear Senator Inhofe: I am writing in response to your letter to me to me dated October 28, 2008. Your letter says you “would appreciate” my “general comments … on the utility of significantly relying on IPCC and the U.S. Climate Change Science Program or regulation under the Clean Air Act.” And it asks me four specific questions.

I address your specific questions below, but first I provide the requested “general comments”. It should be noted that these “general comments” pertain to each of those questions.

Reliance on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Reports Reports published by the United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are biased and misleading polemic and, therefore, any decisions based on them are likely to be very flawed. I explain this as follows.

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Nature of the IPCC Reports The IPCC’s Reports are political tracts that promote a political policy, and they are given the appearance of scientific documents by presenting selected scientific information and misrepresentation of scientific data together with a sham that the contents of the reports have been subjected to scientific peer review.

Climate change is a serious problem and all governments – national and local – need to address it.

Climate has always changed everywhere and it always will: this has been known since the Bronze Age when – according to the Bible – it was pointed out to Pharaoh by Joseph (the one with the Technicolour Dreamcoat). Joseph told Pharaoh to prepare for the bad times when in the good times (Gensesis 31), and all sensible governments have adopted that policy throughout the thousands of years since then.

That tried and tested policy is sensible because people will merely complain at taxes in the good times, but they will revolt if they are short of food in the bad times.

But in 1990 several governments decided to abandon that policy and, instead, to try to control the climate of the entire Earth and, thus, to “stabilize” it.

This policy of global climate control arises from the hypothesis of anthropogenic (that is, human-induced) global warming which, for convenience, I will call AGW. The hypothesis of AGW has existed since the 1880s. It was an obscure scientific hypothesis that burning fossil fuels would increase carbon dioxide (CO 2) in the air to enhance the greenhouse effect and thus cause global warming. Before the 1980s this hypothesis was usually regarded as a curiosity because the nineteenth century calculations indicated that average global temperature should have risen more than 1°C by 1940, and it had not. Then, in 1979, Mrs Margaret Thatcher (now Lady Thatcher) became Prime Minister of the UK, and she elevated the hypothesis to the status of a major international policy issue. It is beyond the scope of this presentation for me to expand on that.

Since then the hypothesis of AGW has become a serious issue of concern for public policy on climate change and the IPCC was established to assess it.

The IPCC is an Intergovernmental Panel, and governments consist of politicians. So, by its very nature, the IPCC is a political organisation. It uses scientists and the work of scientists to produce its reports, but it is not a scientific organisation: it is a political organisation and every statement of every IPCC

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Report is approved by representatives of governments (i.e. representatives of politicians).

The IPCC’s Constitution says, “The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.”

Humans do alter local climates; for example, the temperature of each city is warmer than its surrounding countryside. But the IPCC concerns itself with consideration of AGW. And the above statement from the IPCC presumes that there is a “risk of humaninduced climate change” (i.e. a risk of AGW) that has “potential impacts” which require “options for adaptation and mitigation”.

Every statement in each published IPCC Report is approved by representatives of governments (i.e. representatives of politicians) prior to publication. So, each IPC Report can be – and should be – understood to be presentation of evidence, arguments, and justification for that presumption of a “risk of human-induced climate change” (i.e. a risk of AGW) and the need for “options for adaptation and mitigation”.

Peer Review of IPCC publications The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) was published in 2007 and the IPCC subsequently published a Synthesis Report. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) asked me to review each draft of the AR4 Report, and Rajendra Pechauri (the IPCC Chairman) asked me to review the draft Synthesis Report.

My review comments on the first and second drafts of the AR4 were completely ignored. Hence, I did not bother to review the Synthesis Report.

I posted the following summary of my Review Comments of the first draft of the AR4.

Expert Peer Review Comments of the first draft of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report provided by Richard S Courtney

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General Comment on the draft Report.

My submitted review comments are of Chapters 1 and 2 and they are offered for use, but their best purpose is that they demonstrate the nature of the contents of the draft Report. I had intended to peer review the entire document but I have not bothered to complete that because the draft is of such poor quality that my major review comment is: The draft report should be withdrawn and a report of at least acceptable scientific quality should be presented in its place.

My review comments include suggested corrections to • a blatant lie, • selective use of published data, • use of discredited data, • failure to state (important) limitations of stated information, • presentation of not-evidenced assertions as information, • ignoring of all pertinent data that disproves the assertions, • use of illogical arguments, • failure to mention the most important aerosol (it provides positive forcing greater than methane), • failure to understand the difference between reality and virtual reality, • arrogant assertion that climate modellers are “the scientific community”, • claims of “strong correlation” where none exists, • suggestion that correlation shows causality, • claim that peer review proves the scientific worth of information, • claim that replication is not essential to scientific worth of information, • misleading statements, • ignorance of the ‘greenhouse effect’ and its components, • and other errors.

Perhaps the clearest illustration of the nature of the draft Report is my comment on a Figure title. My comment says; Page 1-45 Chapter 1 Figure 1.3 Title Replace the title with, “Figure 1.3. The Keeling curve showing the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration measured at Mauna Loa, Hawaii” because the draft title is untrue, polemical assertion (the report may intend to be a sales brochure for one very limited scientific opinion but there is no need to be this blatant about it).

Richard S Courtney (exp.)

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I received no response to my recommendation that “The draft report should be withdrawn and a report of at least acceptable scientific quality should be presented in its place”, but I was presented with the second draft that contained many of the errors that I had asked to be corrected in my review comments of the first draft (that I summarised as stated above).

I again began my detailed review of that draft of the AR4. My comments totalled 36 pages of text requesting specific changes. They are available for public observation on the IPCC’s web site and I can provide a collated copy of them on request. I commented on the Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) and the first eight chapters of the Technical Summary. At this point I gave up and submitted the comments I had produced. I gave up because it was clear that my comments on the first draft had been ignored, and there seemed little point in further review that could be expected to be ignored, too. Upon publication of the AR4 it became clear that I need not have bothered to provide any of my review comments.

Additionally, a key statement in the SPM of the AR4 was not included in the drafts for peer review (see the section of this letter headed Misrepresentation of scientific data by the IPCC).

Clearly, “peer review” as practiced by the IPCC is a sham that exists to provide a veneer of apparent scientific respectability to documents that are approved in detail by representatives of governments.

Selected scientific information in IPCC Reports The IPCC Reports contain selected information to support the contention that AGW exists and requires “options for adaptation and mitigation”.

But there is no empirical evidence for man-made global warming; none, not any of any kind.

The existence of global warming (GW) is not evidence of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) because warming of the Earth does not prove that human activity warmed it. At issue is whether human activity is or is not affecting the changes to the Earth’s temperature that have always happened naturally.

Nothing is constant in nature: everything changes all the time. And the Earth must have warmed or cooled over the past 100 years if its temperature were not constant over the past 100 years.

Two thousand years ago – in Roman times – the Earth was warmer than now.

After that it was cooler than now throughout the Dark Ages. That cool period was followed by the so-called Medieval Warm Period when the Vikings farmed Greenland and an insect now constrained to the South of France inhabited York.

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Then the Earth cooled to the so-called Little Ice Age. The Earth has been warming out of the Little Ice Age for the 300 years since then. Around 1700, Londoners used to have “Ice Fairs” on the frozen Thames each year. The last Ice Fair was held in 1814, and the Thames has not frozen solid since.

The IPCC’s AR4 asserts that its Lead Authors are “90% certain” that AGW is happening. However, that is merely the opinion of some (anonymous) scientists.

A claim that man-made global warming exists is merely an assertion: it is not evidence and it is not fact. And the assertion does not become evidence or fact by being voiced, written in words, or written in computer code. This is true regardless of who or how many have the opinion that AGW exists.

The fact is that any warming that may have happened during the last 100 years is within natural climate variability that has occurred in the past. And that warming could be a completely natural recovery from the Little Ice Age that is similar to the recovery from the Dark Age cool period to the Medieval Warm Period.

Furthermore, the history of the estimated warming of the Earth does not agree with an assertion that human emissions were responsible for the warming over the last 100 years. The estimates of the Earth’s average surface temperature (mean global temperature: MGT) all show warming from before 1900 to 1940, then cooling from 1940 to 1970 with a further period of warming after 1970.

Year

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Figure 1. the

T Rex: the Jones et al. temperature record generated by UK’s CRU (Climate Research Unit) at East Anglia University.

The estimates show that most of the warming occurred before 1940 but 80% of the GHG emissions were after that. Indeed, the start of the cooling period coincided with the start of the major emissions. Advocates of man-made global warming excuse this problem by attributing (a) almost all the rise before 1940 to be an effect of the Sun, (b) the cooling from 1940 to 1970 to be an effect of human emissions of aerosols, and (c) the warming after 1970 to be mostly an effect of human emissions of greenhouse gases.

Evidence is lacking for this convoluted story to excuse the disagreement of the emissions with the temperature history.

In fact, there is no evidence for or against the existence of AGW. The only evidence we have is that recent climate variations are within the range of climate variations that have happened in the past. The IPCC reported this fact in its Second Assessment Report (SAR).

However, in its Third Assessment Report (TAR) the IPCC attempted to overcome this fact by publishing the now thoroughly discredited ‘Hockey Stick’ graph of Mann, Bradley and Hughes. It should be noted that Michael Mann was the Lead Author of the chapter that included this graph that the IPCC published prior to its publication elsewhere. In my peer review for IPCC AR4 I wrote: Start Page SPM-9, Start Line 21, End Page SPM-9, End Line 24 This paragraph is grossly misleading and must be replaced. The following replacement is the minimum required to correct the error in the TAR. “The SAR had reported that temperatures of the late twentieth century are similar to or lower than temperatures 1000 years ago. The TAR placed emphasis on the work of Mann et al. that indicated very little variability in NH temperatures over the last 1000 years with consistently low temperature until a temperature rise began around 1900. This finding of Mann et al. seemed to refute the large climate variability previously reported in many places including the SAR. However, since the TAR several studies have provided doubt to that work of Mann et al.. Many studies provide data that conflict with the findings of that work of Mann et al. (e.g. Beltrami et al) (ref. Beltrami et al "Long-term tracking of climate change by underground temperatures", Geophysical Research Letters v.12 (2005) ) and indicate that the report of climate variability in the SAR was correct. In 2005 McIntyre and McKitrick published two papers that together provide a complete refutation of that work of Mann et al. (ref. McIntyre S & McKitrick R, Energy & Environment, v 16, no.1 (2005)) (2005), Geophysical Research Letters Vol. 32, No. 3, (2005)). But, perhaps the most important of their studies of that work of Mann et al. was their publication in 2003 (ref.

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McIntyre S & McKitrick R, Energy & Environment, v 24, pp 751-771 (2003)) that showed it is not possible to replicate the work of Mann et al. There are several reasons for the inability to replicate this work of Mann et al.; not least that Mann refuses to reveal his source codes. The inability to replicate this work of Mann et al. means it has no scientific worth: i.e. this work of Mann et al. is anecdote of similar kind to a report of a ghost sighting. Hence, the IPCC now apologises for including it in the TAR. The IPCC will now disregard this work of Mann et al. and recommends that all others should also disregard it until it can be – and has been – independently replicated.”

But the AR4 did not accept this review comment. Instead, the AR4 made no mention of the ‘Hockey Stick’ (which it had published eight times in the TAR) and merely stated that recent work suggests there was more climate variability in the past than had been reported in the TAR. However, the fact that there is no evidence for AGW is not evidence that AGW is not happening. Simply, there is no evidence that AGW is happening, and there is no evidence that AGW is not happening, either.

Importantly, the absence of any empirical evidence for AGW leads to the IPCC relying on the logical fallacy of ‘argument from ignorance’ and outputs of computer models.

History is replete with examples of politicians being guided by advisors who used the ‘argument from ignorance’ fallacy to justify their advice. The advisors have always presented an appealing case based on accepted theory, and they have always ignored – or rejected – alternative possible explanations for the effects which they have asserted as justification for their advice. In ancient times such advisors said, “We do not know what causes lightening to strike so it must be the actions of Gods and people should make sacrifices to appease those Gods.” In the Middle Ages such advisors said, “We do not know what causes crops to fail so it must be witches and we must eliminate the witches.” Now, the IPCC says, “We do not know what causes global climate change so it must be emissions from human activity and we must eliminate those emissions.” Of course, the IPCC reports phrase it slightly differently: they say that they cannot match historical climate change with known climate mechanisms unless an anthropogenic effect is included. But this “anthropogenic effect” is an assumption with no more empirical evidence to support its existence than the empirical evidence for ancient Gods and witches.

And I gave up my review of the AR4 in disgust at the IPCC’s over-reliance on notvalidated computer models. I submitted the following review comment to explain why I was abandoning further review of the AR4 second draft..

Page 2-47 Chapter 2 Section 2.6.3 Line 46 Delete the phrase, “and a physical model” because it is a falsehood.

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Evidence says what it says, and construction of a physical model is irrelevant to that in any real science.

The authors of this draft Report seem to have an extreme prejudice in favour of models (some parts of the Report seem to assert that climate obeys what the models say; e.g. Page 2-47 Chapter 2 Section 2.6.3 Lines 33 and 34), and this phrase that needs deletion is an example of the prejudice. Evidence is the result of empirical observation of reality. Hypotheses are ideas based on the evidence. Theories are hypotheses that have repeatedly been tested by comparison with evidence and have withstood all the tests. Models are representations of the hypotheses and theories. Outputs of the models can be used as evidence only when the output data is demonstrated to accurately represent reality. If a model output disagrees with the available evidence then this indicates fault in the model, and this indication remains true until the evidence is shown to be wrong.

This draft Report repeatedly demonstrates that its authors do not understand these matters. So, I provide the following analogy to help them. If they can comprehend the analogy then they may achieve graduate standard in their science practice.

A scientist discovers a new species.

1. He/she names it (e.g. he/she calls it a gazelle) and describes it (e.g. a gazelle has a leg in each corner).

2. He/she observes that gazelles leap. (n.b. the muscles, ligaments etc. that enable gazelles to leap are not known, do not need to be discovered, and do not need to be modelled to observe that gazelles leap. The observation is evidence.)

3. Gazelles are observed to always leap when a predator is near. (This observation is also evidence.)

4. From (3) it can be deduced that gazelles leap in response to the presence of a predator.

5. n.b. The gazelle’s internal body structure and central nervous system do not need to be studied, known or modelled for the conclusion in (4) that “gazelles leap when a predator is near” to be valid. Indeed, study of a gazelle’s internal body structure and central nervous system may never reveal that, and such a model may take decades to construct following achievement of the conclusion from the evidence.

(Having read all 11 chapters of the draft Report, I had intended to provide review comments on them all. However, I became so angry at the need to point out the above elementary principles that I abandoned the review at this point: the draft should be withdrawn and replaced by another that displays an adequate level of scientific competence).

I could have added that the global climate system is more complex than the central nervous system of a gazelle and that an incomplete model of a gazelle’s central nervous system could be expected to provide incorrect indications of gazelle behaviour.

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Furthermore, it is known as a certain fact that the AGW projected by computer models of global climate (known as GCMs) is not happening.

All the climate models show more warming in the upper troposphere than near the surface (especially distant from polar regions) as a result of increased radiative forcing from increased atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.

Nobody doubts that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will increase radiative forcing, but AGW-proponents say this will cause the atmosphere to respond in a particular way. The pattern of the proposed response is a 'fingerprint' for AGW. Indeed, this argument that a ‘fingerprint’ for AGW exists has repeatedly been asserted by the IPCC in its reports but each such assertion has been disproved in subsequent scientific publications. Therefore, if a 'fingerprint' of AGW is absent then any observed warming is not a result of the AGW the climate models project.

However, the ‘fingerprint’ of AGW is absent: measurements of temperatures in the troposphere (obtained from weather balloons) fail to show any such warming of the upper troposphere. (We discussed this extensively in the NIPCC Report http://www.sepp.org/publications/NIPCC-Feb%2020.pdf that challenges the IPCC’s conclusions using the same data, but the following correct illustration is provided by Joanne Nova).

Source: HadAT2 radiosonde observations from CCSP (2006) p116,fig 5.7E. This ‘fingerprint’ evidence is disputed in the IPCC and the CCSP reports, but the facts speak for themselves.

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Clearly, the IPCC selects information that suites its political agenda and ignores – or downplays – significant information that refutes its agenda.

Misrepresentation of scientific data by the IPCC A key – and blatantly misleading – statement in the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of AR4 says; “The linear warming trend over the last 50 years is nearly twice that for the last 100 years”.

But this statement was not in the drafts provided for peer review. It was inserted into the final draft of the report and that final draft was only submitted to government representatives for comment. The Chinese Government suggested that it should be deleted and pointed out that “These two linear rates should not compare with each other because the time scales are not the same”. But this valid comment was ignored.

It is not surprising that this key statement was not submitted for peer review because it is extremely misleading. It is justified by a statistical trick that the following paragraphs explain.

This is the graph the IPCC submitted to peer reviewers for comment.

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It is important to note that the above version of the graph contains only one trend line and it was submitted for peer review. But another version of the graph was published in the AR4.

The IPCC published the following version of the above graph in the final version of the AR4. It is one of the key graphs from the AR4 report: it is Figure 1 from FAQ 3.1, and is on page 253 of the WG1 section (i.e. the section by the IPCC’s purportedly scientific working group). I repeat, that the following version – the published version – was not submitted for peer review.

The published graph shows the slope over the last 25 years is significantly greater than that of the last 50 years, which in turn is greater than the slope over 100 years. This is said to show that global warming is accelerating. It is important to note that this grossly misleading calculation is in chapter 3 of WG1 and also in the SPM that states, “The linear warming trend over the last 50 years is nearly twice that for the last 100 years”. Thus, policymakers who only look at the numbers (and don’t think about the different timescales) will be misled into thinking that global warming is accelerating. Of course, the IPCC could have started near the left-hand end of the graph and thus obtained the opposite conclusion! In case this is not obvious, I provide the following graph that does it together with an explanation of the presentation of the data.

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In the above graph, the blue line is the HADCRUT3 data. The green line is the 40year trend from 1905, with a slope of 1.46 degrees per century. The red line is the 100-year trend, with a slope of 0.72. The trend in the early part of the 20th century is twice that of the whole century.

It is very clear that in this case the IPCC has grossly misrepresented the data.

It is not clear who was responsible for this misrepresentation. The governments approved it but the lead authors of chapter 3 of the WG1 IPCC Report were Kevin Trenberth and Phil Jones so they must have some responsibility.

But it is clear why the data has been so flagrantly misrepresented. Global temperature has not again reached the high that it did in the El Nino year of 1998 (see the graph on page 5 above) despite carbon dioxide in the atmosphere having increase by 4% from 1998 to 2007 (when the AR4 was published). This failure of the globe to warm for a decade is embarrassing to the IPCC’s agenda. Indeed, statistically there has been no warming since 1995 and global temperature has fallen rapidly since the AR4 was published. (The IPCC AR4 report predicted that global temperature would fluctuate but increase at a rate of 0.1oC per decade even if anthropogenic GHG emissions completely stopped: but the global temperature fell 0.7oC in the last year and this fall is equivalent to the total rise the IPCC says occurred in the twentieth century).

There are other misrepresentations of data by the IPCC, but this example is so blatant and has so clear a purpose that it alone is sufficient to demonstrate that the IPCC’s Reports cannot be trusted as a guide to policymaking .

Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) I have read the US Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) reports (the most recent CCSP report is available at http://www.climatescience.gov/) but I was not asked to peer review pre-publication drafts of those reports.

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Hence, I am not aware of the thinking that developed during the writing of the CCSP reports. However, the CCSP reports share the same bias as the IPCC reports. The reason for the IPCC bias is plain: as explained above, the IPCC was established to provide justification(s) for political policies. But I do not know why the CCSP reports should share the same bias as the IPCC reports (which they obviously do). Page 15 of the recent CCSP Synthesis Report specifically states the goal of that report, when it says: The goal of this report is to make the key results of the enormous body of scientific information about climate change and its impact on the United States accessible in a single plain English document that can help inform the public and private decision making at all levels.

To “help inform” decision making is not the same as to advocate decisions. But the report does advocate the need for actions to mitigate climate change (I provide examples of this as follows).

The IPCC and the CCSP are similar in their methodology: i.e. they assess published scientific papers and provide an evaluation of the papers they select.

And the CCSP demonstrates similar bias in its selections to that in the IPCC reports.

Some of the CCSP’s claims are patently ridiculous. A glaring example of this is in its consideration of the missing ‘hot spot’ that should be the fingerprint of AGW. It provides this figure showing the ‘hot spot’ indicated by the climate models (GCMs).

And the recent CCSP report also presents this figure showing the temperature changes that are measured (using radiosondes mounted on weather balloons) to have happened in reality.

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It is obvious to anybody who compares the two above figures from the most recent CCSP report that (a) the climate models predict AGW will cause most warming to occur in the lower troposphere at altitude in the tropics, and (b) this predicted warming is not happening according to measurements of the lower troposphere.

But the same CCSP report that included the two above figures asserts that there is no significant difference between them! The report justifies this strange assertion by using the fact that outlying data points of the temperature measurements overlap with the indications of the computer models. This justification is nonsense according to the practices of both science and statistics: it is a claim that the bulk of the measurements should be ignored and trust should be placed in a few outlying data points that fit a preconceived notion. But that claim is ‘double edged’: if it is accepted then it has to be agreed that there was no global warming in the twentieth century.

I stress that I can see no explanation of this strange interpretation of the data presented by the recent CCSP report except advocacy of AGW. Advocacy is not science: it is politics.

Several other people have commented on the bias and advocacy in the recent CCSP report. For example, Chris Horner wrote on NRO Planet Gore:

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…the U.S. Chamber pointed out that a preponderance of the 21 reports that had purportedly been “synthesized” had not actually been produced yet. Sure, that sequence sounds odd in the real world, but is reminiscent of the IPCC, to which the USP appealed as the authority for certain otherwise unsupported claims (though the IPCC openly admits that it, too, performs no scientific research). This is a point we also made in our comments. I’m informed that NOAA has now agreed to publish the underlying documents first and then put out their desired USP. The Chamber should have a release out soon. …Key absurdities included breakout points in the Executive Summary of “Urgency of Action,” “Irreversible Losses,” “The Future Is in Our Hands” and ‘Tipping Points” (even though nowhere else did the document actually offer a discussion of “Tipping Points” that could be summarized), as well as calls for adoption of a certain policy agenda, all in a supposedly scientific document.

In his (highly respected) blog Anthony Watts is more blunt. He wrote of the recent CCSP report: What a concept; publish the basis for the claims first, THEN publish the document that outlines the claims (The CCSP report seen above). But nobody is rushing anything, right? “Tipping points” with no definitions, calls for policy?

That’s advocacy, not science.

Specific questions in the letter from Senator Inhofe Senator, your letter to me also asked the following specific questions that I answer – in so far as I can – in turn.

1.

As policy makers. it is our duty to ensure that models developed by the Agency are useful for their intended purpose, articulate major assumptions and uncertainties’ and separate scientific conclusions from policy judgments. Are the models and data relied on by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and lPCC transparent and verifiable? Can you please comment on their transparency. including for example: whether they have been subject to credible, objective peer review and sensitivity and uncertainty analyses'?

It is not clear what is meant by the models being “transparent”. If it means, “Are all the assumptions and algorithms in the models available for public scrutiny?”, then the answer is, no.

The models are not “verifiable” as tools for predicting future climate change.

None of the existing models has existed for 20, 50 or 100 years so it is not possible to assess their predictive capability on the basis of their demonstrated forecasting skill; i.e. they have no demonstrated forecasting skill. This is why

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their indications of future climate change are said to be “projections” and not “predictions”.

Of course, I would claim the models have been subjected to “credible, objective peer review” and I would cite Courtney RS, An Assessment of Validation Experiments Conducted on Computer Models of Global climate (GCM) Using the General Circulation Modelof the UK Hadley Cenre, Energy & Environment, v.10, no.5 (1999).

It concluded; The IPCC is basing predictions of man-made global wanning on the outputs of GCMs. Validations of these models have now been conducted, and they demonstrate beyond doubt that these models have no validity for predicting large climate changes. The IPCC and the Hadley Centre have responded to this problem by proclaiming that the inputs which they fed to a model are evidence for existence of the man-made global warming. This proclamation is not true and contravenes the principle of science that hypotheses are tested against observed data.

Although that paper is dated, I know of no published information that alters its conclusions. And several subsequent studies also report shortcomings in the models.

Ron Miller and Gavin Schmidt, both of NASA GISS, provide an evaluation of the leading US GCM. They are U.S. climate modelers who use the NASA GISS GCM and they strongly promote the AGW hypothesis. Their paper tiltled ‘Ocean & Climate Modeling: Evaluating the NASA GISS GCM’ was updated on 2005-01-10 and is available at http://icp.giss.nasa.gov/research/ppa/2001/oceans/ Its abstract says: This preliminary investigation evaluated the performance of three versions of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies' recently updated General Circulation Model E (GCM). This effort became necessary when certain Fortran code was rewritten to speed up processing and to better represent some of the interactions (feedbacks) of climate variables in the model. For example, the representation of clouds in the model was made to agree more with the satellite observational data thus affecting the albedo feedback mechanism. The versions of the GCM studied vary in their treatments of the ocean. In the first version, the Fixed-SST, the sea surface temperatures are prescribed from the obsevered seasonal cycle and the atmospheric response is calculated by the model. The second, the Q-Flux model, computes the SST and its response to atmospheric changes, but assumes the transport of heat by ocean currents is constant. The third treatment, called a coupled GCM (CGCM) is a version where an ocean model is used to simulate the entire ocean state including SST and ocean currents, and their interaction with the atmosphere. Various datasets were obtained from satellite, ground-based and sea observations. Observed and simulated climatologies of surface air temperature sea level pressure (SLP) total cloud cover (TCC), precipitation

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(mm/day), and others were produced. These were analyzed for general global patterns and for regional discrepancies when compared to each other. In addition, difference maps of observed climatologies compared to simulated climatologies (model minus observed) and for different versions of the model (model version minus other model version) were prepared to better focus on discrepant areas and regions. T-tests were utilized to reveal significant differences found between the different treatments of the model. It was found that the model represented global patterns well (e.g. ITCZ, mid-latitude storm tracks, and seasonal monsoons). Divergence in the model from observations increased with the introduction of more feedbacks (fewer prescribed variables) progressing from the Fixed–SST, to the coupled model. The model had problems representing variables in geographic areas of sea ice, thick vegetation, low clouds and high relief. It was hypothesized that these problems arose from the way the model calculates the effects of vegetation, sea ice and cloud cover. The problem with relief stems from the model’s coarse resolution. These results have implications for modeling climate change based on global warming scenarios.

The model will lead to better understanding of climate change and the further development of predictive capability. As a direct result of this research, the representation of cloud cover in the model has been brought into agreement with the satellite observations by using radiance measured at a particular wavelength instead of saturation.

This abstract was written by strong proponents of AGW but admits that the NASA GISS GCM has “problems representing variables in geographic areas of sea ice, thick vegetation, low clouds and high relief.” These are severe problems. For example, clouds reflect solar heat and a mere 2% increase to cloud cover would more than compensate for the maximum possible predicted warming due to a doubling of carbon dioxide in the air. Good records of cloud cover are very short because cloud cover is measured by satellites that were not launched until the mid 1980s. But it appears that cloudiness decreased markedly between the mid 1980s and late 1990s. Over that period, the Earth’s reflectivity decreased to the extent that if there were a constant solar irradiance then the reduced cloudiness provided an extra surface warming of 5 to 10 Watts/sq metre. This is a lot of warming. It is between two and four times the entire warming estimated to have been caused by the build-up of human-caused greenhouse gases in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. (The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that since the industrial revolution, the build-up of human-caused greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has had a warming effect of only 2.4 W/sq metre). So, the fact that the NASA GISS GCM has problems representing clouds must call into question the entire performance of the GCM. The abstract says; “the representation of cloud cover in the model has been brought into agreement with the satellite observations by using radiance measured at a particular wavelength instead of saturation” but this adjustment is a ‘fiddle factor’ because both the radiance and the saturation must be correct if the effect of the clouds is to be correct. There is no reason to suppose that the

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adjustment will not induce the model to diverge from reality if other changes – e.g. alterations to GHG concentration in the atmosphere – are introduced into the model. Indeed, this problem of erroneous representation of low-level clouds could be expected to induce the model to provide incorrect indication of effects of changes to atmospheric GHGs because changes to clouds have much greater effect on climate than changes to GHGs. So, the application of “sensitivity and uncertainty analyses'” is not warranted for the models and any such analyses should be distrusted because a. it is not possible to assess the performance of the climate models as indicators of effects of changes to atmospheric GHG concentration, and b. there are good reasons to suppose that the climate models provide wrong indications of effects of changes to atmospheric GHG concentration.

2.

There has been increasing concern among climatologists and statisticians that existing models have limited abilities in predicting localized effects.' In your professional opinion, how accurate are the global models at mimicking atmospheric processes as they relate to effects on local climates?

The GCMs represent temperature reasonably well but fail to indicate precipitation accurately. This failure probably results from the imperfect representation of cloud effects in the models. And it leads to different models indicating different local climate changes. For example, the recent CCSP report provided indications of precipitation over the continental U.S. ‘projected’ by a Canadian GCM and a British GCM. Where one GCM ‘projected’ greatly increased precipitation (with probable increase to flooding) the other GCM ‘projected’ greatly reduced precipitation (with probable increase to droughts), and vice versa. It is difficult to see how provision of such different ‘projections’ “can help inform the public and private decision making at all levels” (which the CCSP report says was its “goal”).

3.

What is the current state of U.S. models in their ability to accurately assess sources and sinks of greenhouse gases at the local, state. and regional levels ?

The question is misplaced because it assumes that there is validity in accounting the sources and sinks. However, the errors in the estimates of the sources and sinks are greater than the changes accounted. Also, the annual flow of carbon into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels is less than 0.02% of the carbon flowing around the carbon cycle. And it is not obvious that so small an addition to the carbon cycle is certain to disrupt the system because no other activity in nature is so constant that it only varies by less than +/- 0.02% per year.

These issues are investigated in a paper that I co-authored; viz.

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Rorsch A, Courtney RS & Thoenes D, 'The Interaction of Climate Change and the Carbon Dioxide Cycle' E&E v16no2 (2005) Our paper acknowledges that it is commonly assumed that the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration during the twentieth century (approx. 30% rise) is a result of anthropogenic emissions of CO2. However, the assumption is probably incorrect because the annual pulse of anthropogenic CO2 into the atmosphere should relate to the annual increase of CO2 in the atmosphere if one is directly causal of the other, but their variations greatly differ from year to year.

So, our paper considers mechanisms in the carbon cycle and uses model studies of the carbon cycle to determine if natural (i.e. non-anthropogenic) factors may be significant contributors to the observed rise to the atmospheric CO 2 concentration. These considerations indicate that any one of three natural mechanisms in the carbon cycle alone could be used to account for the observed rise. The study provides six such models with three of them assuming a significant anthropogenic contribution to the cause and the other three assuming no significant anthropogenic contribution to the cause. Each of the models matches the available empirical data without use of any ‘fiddle-factor’ such as the ‘5-year smoothing’ the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses to get its model to agree with the empirical data.

So, if one of the six models of our paper is adopted then there is a 5:1 probability that the choice is wrong. And other models are probably also possible.

And the six models each give a different indication of future atmospheric CO2 concentration for the same future anthropogenic emission of carbon dioxide.

This indicates that the observed recent rise to the atmospheric CO2 concentration may be entirely natural; indeed, it suggests that the observed recent rise to the atmospheric CO2 concentration most probably is natural. Hence ‘projections’ of future changes to the atmospheric CO2 concentration and resulting climate changes have high uncertainty if they are based on the assumption of an anthropogenic cause.

4.

As policy discussions advance in the next Congress, do you believe climate models exist that are capable of focusing on particular areas to give more reliable predictions for the future ? If not. in your estimate, how long until such models can be developed?

I do not think there are any models of global climate capable of providing adequately reliable predictions for the future, and I suspect such models will not be capable of development within the lifetime of anybody now alive. Reasons for this opinion are both theoretical and pragmatic.

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No model’s predictions should be trusted unless the model has demonstrated forecasting skill. As explained above, none of the climate models has existed for 20, 50 or 100 years so it is not possible to assess their predictive capability on the basis of their demonstrated forecasting skill; i.e. they have no demonstrated forecasting skill and, therefore, their predictions are unreliable. Put bluntly, predictions of the future provided by existing climate models have the same degree of demonstrated reliability as has the casting of chicken bones for predicting the future.

The ability of a computer model to appear to represent existing reality is no guide to the model’s predictive ability. For example, the computer model called ‘F1 Racing’ is commercially available. It is based on physical principles (if it were not then the racing cars would not behave realistically), and ‘F1 Racing’ is a much more accurate representation of motor racing than any GCM is of global climate.

But the ability of a person to win a race as demonstrated by ‘F1 Racing’ is not an indication that the person could or would win the Monte Carlo Grande Prix if put in a real racing car. Similarly, an appearance of reality provided by a GCM cannot be taken as an indication of the GCM’s predictive ability in the absence of the GCM having any demonstrated forecasting skill.

Furthermore, the climate models are based on assumptions that may not be correct. The basic assumption used in the models is that change to climate is driven by change to radiative forcing. And it is very important to recognise that this assumption has not been demonstrated to be correct. Indeed, it is quite possible that there is no force or process causing climate to vary. I explain this as follows.

The climate system is seeking an equilibrium that it never achieves. The Earth obtains radiant energy from the Sun and radiates that energy back to space. The energy input to the system (from the Sun) may be constant (although some doubt that), but the rotation of the Earth and its orbit around the Sun ensure that the energy input/output is never in perfect equilibrium.

The climate system is an intermediary in the process of returning (most of) the energy to space (some energy is radiated from the Earth's surface back to space).

And the Northern and Southern hemispheres have different coverage by oceans.

Therefore, as the year progresses the modulation of the energy input/output of the system varies. Hence, the system is always seeking equilibrium but never achieves it.

Such a varying system could be expected to exhibit oscillatory behaviour. And, importantly, the length of the oscillations could be harmonic effects which, therefore, have periodicity of several years. Of course, such harmonic oscillation would be a process that - at least in principle - is capable of evaluation.

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However, there may be no process because the climate is a chaotic system.

Therefore, the observed oscillations (ENSO, NAO, etc.) could be observation of the system seeking its chaotic attractor(s) in response to its seeking equilibrium in a changing situation.

Very, importantly, there is an apparent ~900 year oscillation that caused the Roman Warm Period (RWP), then the Dark Age Cool Period (DACP), then the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), then the Little Ice Age (LIA), and the present warm period (PWP). All the observed rise of global temperature in the twentieth century could be recovery from the LIA that is similar to the recovery from the DACP to the MWP. And the ~900 year oscillation could be the chaotic climate system seeking its attractor(s). If so, then all global climate models and ‘attribution studies’ utilized by IPCC and CCSP are based on the false premise that there is a force or process causing climate to change when no such force or process exists.

But the assumption that climate change is driven by radiative forcing may be correct. If so, then it is still extremely improbable that – within the foreseeable future – the climate models could be developed to a state whereby they could provide reliable predictions. This is because the climate system is extremely complex. Indeed, the climate system is more complex than the human brain (the climate system has more interacting components – e.g. biological organisms – than the human brain has interacting components – e.g. neurones), and nobody claims to be able to construct a reliable predictive model of the human brain. It is pure hubris to assume that the climate models are sufficient emulations for them to be used as reliable predictors of future climate when they have no demonstrated forecasting skill.

Concluding remarks The important fact is that climate varies. It always has and it always will.

Governments need to prepare for possible climate changes whether those changes have an anthropogenic or a natural cause. Simply, the cause of the changes has little implication for appropriate policies needed to cope with the climate changes that can be anticipated. And the climate changes that can be anticipated include all the changes that have occurred in the past: not only the changes predicted by promoters of AGW. Indeed, preparing for only the changes predicted by promoters of AGW has very high risk.

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I hope this response to your letter is adequate and what you wanted. Please tell me if you want more or different.

Yours Sincerely

Richard S Courtney