Climategate in Review

The climate scientists at NASA, who in the past have played a very large role in promoting the view that global warming is primarily a manmade phenomenon (i.e., AGW), have now released a new report highlighting a "dawning realization" that the variability in the sun's radiant output may contribute significantly in determining the earth's overall climate. The article opens with:

"In the galactic scheme of things, the Sun is a remarkably constant star. While some stars exhibit dramatic pulsations, wildly yo-yoing in size and brightness, and sometimes even exploding, the luminosity of our own sun varies a measly 0.1% over the course of the 11-year solar cycle.

There is, however, a dawning realization among researchers that even these apparently tiny variations can have a significant effect on terrestrial climate. A new report issued by the National Research Council (NRC), "The Effects of Solar Variability on Earth's Climate," lays out some of the surprisingly complex ways that solar activity can make itself felt on our planet.

Understanding the sun-climate connection requires a breadth of expertise in fields such as plasma physics, solar activity, atmospheric chemistry and fluid dynamics, energetic particle physics, and even terrestrial history. No single researcher has the full range of knowledge required to solve the problem. To make progress, the NRC had to assemble dozens of experts from many fields at a single workshop. The report summarizes their combined efforts to frame the problem in a truly multi-disciplinary context."

That's quite a shift in viewpoint from the position, only a few short years ago, that the issue of AGW was a closed book with nearly universal scientific consensus.

Accompanying the chart above, the report states:

"Gerald Meehl of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) presented persuasive evidence that solar variability is leaving an imprint on climate, especially in the Pacific."

and

"In recent years, researchers have considered the possibility that the sun plays a role in global warming. After all, the sun is the main source of heat for our planet. The NRC report suggests, however, that the influence of solar variability is more regional than global. The Pacific region is only one example."

and

"Raymond Bradley of UMass, who has studied historical records of solar activity imprinted by radioisotopes in tree rings and ice cores, says that regional rainfall seems to be more affected than temperature."

and

"Much has been made of the probable connection between the Maunder Minimum, a 70-year deficit of sunspots in the late 17th—early 18th century, and the coldest part of the Little Ice Age, during which Europe and North America were subjected to bitterly cold winters. The mechanism for that regional cooling could have been a drop in the sun's EUV output; this is, however, speculative. [...] Indeed, the sun could be on the threshold of a mini-Maunder event right now. [...] 'If the sun really is entering an unfamiliar phase of the solar cycle, then we must redouble our efforts to understand the sun-climate link,' notes Lika Guhathakurta of NASA's Living with a Star Program."

and

"Hal Maring, a climate scientist at NASA headquarters who has studied the report, notes that 'lots of interesting possibilities were suggested by the panelists. However, few, if any, have been quantified to the point that we can definitively assess their impact on climate.' Hardening the possibilities into concrete, physically-complete models is a key challenge for the researchers."

Hmmm, maybe it's a good thing that those people skeptical of the viewpoint that man's activity had been conclusively proven to be the primary determinant in creating catastrophic global warming, were not put to death prematurely for considering that there might be other factors involved, or for questioning the logic chain leading from the available facts to the stated conclusions.

Climategate Update:

Back on 11-22-11, a second set of email correspondence was leaked from the UK's Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. Included with that release was a password-protected encrypted file, presumably containing the remainder of the emails originally hacked. The assumption was that this "lock box" file was retained as protection against legal action which might be brought against the original hacker, "Mr. FOIA", should his identity be discovered.

Today, blogger, Tom Nelson, received a message containing the password key. Here are a few excerpts from the accompanying letter:

"Subject: FOIA 2013: the password"

"It's time to tie up loose ends and dispel some of the speculation surrounding the Climategate affair."

"Releasing the encrypted archive was a mere practicality. I didn't want to keep the emails lying around."

"I prepared CG1 & 2 alone. Even skimming through all 220.000 emails would have taken several more months of work in an increasingly unfavorable environment."

"Dumping them all into the public domain would be the last resort. Majority of the emails are irrelevant, some of them probably sensitive and socially damaging."

"To get the remaining scientifically (or otherwise) relevant emails out, I ask you to pass this on to any motivated and responsible individuals who could volunteer some time to sift through the material for eventual release."

"I don't expect these remaining emails to hold big surprises. Yet it's possible that the most important pieces are among them. Nobody on the planet has held the archive in plaintext since CG2."

Read the entire article for a justification of why "Mr. FOIA" released the original batches of emails.

James Taylor, reporting in Forbes, references a recent study which reports that:

"Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies. By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem."

"People who look behind the self-serving statements by global warming alarmists about an alleged 'consensus' have always known that no such alarmist consensus exists among scientists. Now that we have access to hard surveys of scientists themselves, it is becoming clear that not only do many scientists dispute the asserted global warming crisis, but these skeptical scientists may indeed form a scientific consensus."

Read the remainder of the article and associated report for additional details.

In a recent mathematical analysis by three German scientists, six overlapping natural cycles were discovered that account for almost all temperature change that has occurred over the past 250 years — the period for which high quality temperature records have been maintained. Their conclusion, assuming that they are correct in their model, is that the dominant cycles peaked around the year 2000 and that we are now rapidly moving towards cooler temperatures. They also conclude that human activity has played little role in determining the earth's past or current temperature. Read more here.

C02 Surpasses 400 ppm.   So what?

On May 10th, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that:

"[T]he daily mean concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Mauna Loa, Hawaii, surpassed 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time since measurements began in 1958. ... It marks an important milestone because Mauna Loa, as the oldest continuous carbon dioxide (CO2) measurement station in the world, is the primary global benchmark site for monitoring the increase of this potent heat-trapping gas."

So what does this mean? Well, it depends upon whom you ask. As reported at Climate Depot:

"Former Vice President Al Gore declared the 400 ppm level 'A sad milestone. A call to action.' New York times reporter Justin Gillis compared trace amounts of CO2 to 'a tiny bit of arsenic or cobra venom' and warned that rising CO2 means 'the fate of the earth hangs in the balance.' The New Yorker Magazine declared 'Everything we use that emits carbon dioxide needs to be replaced with something that doesn't.' And a UK Guardian editorial declared 'Swift political action can avert a carbon dioxide crisis.'"

Yet, despite all the doomsayers, as reported by Plant Fossils of West Virginia, and illustrated in the following chart, throughout the earth's history, atmospheric CO₂ has most typically ranged between 2,000 and 8,000 ppm (black line), with only one other significant drop to todays range of 400 ppm or less during the Carboniferous period.

Also, note that the earth's average temperature (blue line) has only been as low as today's values twice in the past — during the late Ordovician and late Carboniferous Periods. What is particularly interesting is that despite CO₂ levels exceeding 4,000 ppm in the late Ordovician period, this coincided with an ice age! As the entire chart shows, there is no direct correlation between CO₂ and the earth's temperature.

Until climate models can account for the actual known historical record, there is no reason to believe that they can do an accurate job of predicting the future.

In a Forbes article titled, "Global Warming Alarmists Caught Doctoring '97-Percent Consensus' Claims," information is reported concerning John Cook's paper which claims that there is a 97.2% endorsement by the scientific community of the AGW hypothesis that human actions are substantially responsible for global warming. Here is some of what the Forbes article has to say:

"As is the case with other 'surveys' alleging an overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming, the question surveyed had absolutely nothing to do with the issues of contention between global warming alarmists and global warming skeptics. The question Cook and his alarmist colleagues surveyed was simply whether humans have caused some global warming. The question is meaningless regarding the global warming debate because most skeptics as well as most alarmists believe humans have caused some global warming. The issue of contention dividing alarmists and skeptics is whether humans are causing global warming of such negative severity as to constitute a crisis demanding concerted action."

"Cook and his colleagues, for example, classified a peer-reviewed paper by scientist Craig Idso as explicitly supporting the 'consensus' position on global warming 'without minimizing' the asserted severity of global warming. When Popular Technology asked Idso whether this was an accurate characterization of his paper, Idso responded, 'That is not an accurate representation of my paper.' ... It would be incorrect to claim that our paper was an endorsement of CO2-induced global warming.?"

"When Popular Technology asked physicist Nicola Scafetta whether Cook and his colleagues accurately classified one of his peer-reviewed papers as supporting the 'consensus' position, Scafetta similarly criticized the Skeptical Science classification."

"'Cook et al. (2013) is based on a straw man argument because it does not correctly define the IPCC AGW theory, which is NOT that human emissions have contributed 50%+ of the global warming since 1900 but that almost 90-100% of the observed global warming was induced by human emission,' Scafetta responded. 'What my papers say is that the IPCC [United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] view is erroneous because about 40-70% of the global warming observed from 1900 to 2000 was induced by the sun.'"

Read the entire article for many additional comments

Dr. Vincent Gray examines the historical record for both temperature and carbon dioxide levels and demonstrates that there is no correlation between the two.

The following video is a presentation given in Hamburg, Germany by Professor Murry Salby, discussing new research into the Relationship between Greenhouse Gases and Global Temperature.   [Length: 1:32]

Salby shows that all of the computerized climate models used today force CO₂ and global temperature to be completely linked, despite the fact that real world data does not come close to demonstrating this. CO₂ contributes 1% to the total Earth energy budget is, yet the models indicate that CO₂ is the primary driver of temperature, controlling the other 99% of sources.

Salby concludes with the following points:

• In the Real World, Global Temperature is not controlled exclusively by CO₂ — as it is in the Model World.


• In significant part, however, CO₂ is controlled by Global Temperature — as it is in the Proxy [ice] Record.


• The science is not settled.

The German Research Centre for Geosciences reports:

"The Greenland ice sheet is melting from below, caused by a high heat flow from the mantle into the lithosphere. This influence is very variable spatially and has its origin in an exceptionally thin lithosphere. Consequently, there is an increased heat flow from the mantle and a complex interplay between this geothermal heating and the Greenland ice sheet. New research finds that this effect cannot be neglected when modeling the ice sheet as part of a climate study."

"The current climate is influenced by processes that go far back into the history of Earth: the Greenland lithosphere is 2.8 to 1.7 billion years old and is only about 70 to 80 kilometers thick under Central Greenland. It remains to be explored why it is so exceptionally thin. It turns out, however, that the coupling of models of ice dynamics with thermo-mechanical models of the solid earth allows a more accurate view of the processes that are melting the Greenland ice."

Anthony Watts reports that a new paper presented at the 19th International Conference on Nucleation and Atmospheric Aerosols, titled Cleaner Air: Brightening the Pollution Perspective? shows evidence that most or all of the cooling observed during the 1970s, along with the warming of the 80s and 90s, may be attributed to the darkening of the atmosphere due to pollutants, with a subsequent brightening resulting from implementation of pollution control laws. As the atmosphere became clearer, more solar radiation was able to reach the earth's surface, accounting for the increases in temperature through the process of insolation.

Quoting from the authors' paper:

"This study has demonstrated for the first time, using in-situ PM measurements, that reducing aerosol pollution is driving the Insolation Brightening phenomenon and that the trends in aerosol pollution, particularly for sulphate aerosol, is directly linked to anthropogenic emissions. Ultimately, the analysis demonstrates that clean air policies in developed regions such as Europe are driving brightening of the atmosphere and increasing the amount of global radiation reaching the Earth's surface. The actual impact of cleaner air and insolation brightening on temperature remains to be elucidated."

Here is a follow up to the fraud being perpetrated by John Cook and discussed two items above:

"Cooks '97% consensus' disproven by a new peer reviewed paper showing major math errors"

"A major peer-reviewed paper by four senior researchers has exposed grave errors in an earlier paper in a new and unknown journal that had claimed a 97.1% scientific consensus that Man had caused at least half the 0.7 C? global warming since 1950."

"The consensus Cook considered was the standard definition: that Man had caused most post-1950 warming. Even on this weaker definition the true consensus among published scientific papers is now demonstrated to be not 97.1%, as Cook had claimed, but only 0.3%."

"Only 41 out of the 11,944 published climate papers Cook examined explicitly stated that Man caused most of the warming since 1950. Cook himself had flagged just 64 papers as explicitly supporting that consensus, but 23 of the 64 had not in fact supported it."

"Dr Legates said: 'It is astonishing that any journal could have published a paper claiming a 97% climate consensus when on the authors' own analysis the true consensus was well below 1%. It is still more astonishing that the IPCC should claim 95% certainty about the climate consensus when so small a fraction of published papers explicitly endorse the consensus as the IPCC defines it.'"

Governments are demanding that the 2013 UN IPCC report be modified to conceal the fact that the Earth's temperature has not risen during the past fifteen years. Quoting from an article in the UK's Mail Online:

"Scientists working on the most authoritative study on climate change were urged to cover up the fact that the world's temperature hasn't risen for the last 15 years, it is claimed."

"But leaked documents seen by the Associated Press, yesterday revealed deep concerns among politicians about a lack of global warming over the past few years.

"Germany called for the references to the slowdown in warming to be deleted, saying looking at a time span of just 10 or 15 years was 'misleading' and they should focus on decades or centuries.

"Hungary worried the report would provide ammunition for deniers of man-made climate change.

"Belgium objected to using 1998 as a starting year for statistics, as it was exceptionally warm and makes the graph look flat — and suggested using 1999 or 2000 instead to give a more upward-pointing curve.

"The United States delegation even weighed in, urging the authors of the report to explain away the lack of warming using the 'leading hypothesis' among scientists that the lower warming is down to more heat being absorbed by the ocean — which has got hotter."

John C. Beale, the EPA's highest paid employee and climate change expert, was convicted of lying about his position in the CIA, using it as an excuse to not perform his job and bilking US taxpayers out of $1 million over a decade!. He was sentenced to 32 months in federal prison agreed to pay $1.3 million in restitution.

Despite appearing to have spent little time on the job, his lawyer asked the sentencing judge to take into account his "years of admirable work," including:

• Helping to rewrite the Clean Air Act in 1990
• Heading up EPA delegations to UN conferences on climate change in 2000 and 2001
• Helping to negotiate agreements to reduce carbon emissions with China, India and other nations

I guess when it comes to climate change, "admirable work" doesn't actually require much work.

"[Patrick] Sullivan [assistant inspector general] said he doubted Beale's fraud could occur at any federal agency other than the EPA. 'There's a certain culture here at the EPA where the mission is the most important thing,' he said. 'They don't think like criminal investigators. They tend to be very trusting and accepting.'"

Well, OK then.

Dr. Tim Bell reports on how the IPCC has distorted the public perception of climate science by focusing on temperature and ignoring or minimizing the impact of all other climate phenomenon.

"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) set climate research back thirty years, mostly by focusing world attention on CO2 and higher temperature. It was a classic misdirection that required planning. The IPCC was created for this purpose and pursued it relentlessly. Through the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) they controlled national weather offices so global climate policies and research funding were similarly directed.

"IPCC's definition of climate change narrowed the focus to human causes, but they exacerbated it by ignoring, downgrading or misusing variables. Most important and critical was water in all its forms and functions. The obsession restricted focus to higher temperatures and increased CO2, which directed funding of impact analyses, whether economic or environmental to cost only, instead of cost/benefit. Climate studies only considered temperature, usually and incorrectly attributing changes caused by precipitation to temperature. This practice was most evident in paleoclimate reconstructions, either done by IPCC participants or chosen for inclusion in the IPCC Reports."

"The list of variables unmeasured, unknown or excluded from official IPCC science invalidates their models and their claims. Water in all its forms and functions is the most egregious. It also illustrates the degree of auto-correlation confronting climate research and understanding. It appears Wigley and therefore the IPCC knew of the problems but chose to sidestep them by carefully directing the focus — a scientific sleight of hand."

Bob Tisdale wrote an open letter to Jon Stewart, in response to clips and comments by Stewart which recently aired on The Daily Show. Tisdale makes a calm and reasoned presentation explaining what has changed regarding climate knowledge over the past few years. Here are quotes from a few interesting sections, but the entire article is worth a careful read.

"The climate science community, under the direction of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), has only been tasked with determining whether manmade factors, primarily carbon dioxide, could be responsible for the recent bout of global warming, and what the future might bring if the real world responds to projected increases in manmade greenhouse gases in ways that are similar to climate models. They were not asked to determine if naturally caused, sunlight-fueled processes could have caused the global warming over the past 30 years, or to determine the contribution of those natural factors in the future—thus all of the scrambling by climate scientists who are now trying to explain the hiatus in global warming. ... It is not the IPCC's role to understand the scientific basis for naturally caused climate change, which the Earth has experienced all along. As a result, even after decades of modeling efforts, climate models still cannot simulate naturally occurring ocean-atmosphere processes that contribute to global warming or stop it."

"Data from the real world present an entirely different picture of extreme weather events. ...

"I'm sure you've heard of the global warming hiatus, the pause, etc. I presented the following in a post that I linked earlier, but it should be repeated. ... Looking at this realistically, if the climate models cannot explain the current slowdown or halt in global surface warming, then they cannot be used to explain the warming that had occurred from the mid-1970s to the late-1990s. In turn, they have little value as tools for making predictions of future climate. It's unfortunate, but that's the sad reality of the state of climate science today."

Steve Goddard has uncovered evidence that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been manipulating its US Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) data. As he reviewed NOAA's Contiguous US Temperature graph, seen here ...

... he noticed a discontinuity at 1998 which made no sense. What he discovered upon further investigation was that while the previous V1 temperature adjustments raised the actual measurement values from the 1960s onward, the newly applied V2 adjustments significantly lowered the temperature values prior to that date, thereby artificially changing the slope of the temperature trend line over the past 90 years from one that showed a moderate cooling to one showing a significant warming.

Goddard identified other significant problems with the adjusted data and then concludes:

"Bottom line is that the NCDC US temperature record is completely broken, and meaningless. Adjustments that used to go flat after 1990, now go up exponentially. Adjustments which are documented as positive, are implemented as negative."

Patrick Michaels writes in Forbes about reservations recently expressed by Garth Paltridge, a Chief Research Scientist at the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO). Paltridge explains how the flow of government dollars into climate research has blinded scientists to the normal checks and balances of the scientific method, enticing them to support the UN's IPCC climate positions while ignoring facts and data. He concludes that this has forces many respected academic organizations into a corner in which they are now trapped. Paltridge writes:

"The trap was fully sprung when many of the world's major national academies of science (such as the Royal Society in the UK, the National Academy of Sciences in the USA and the Australian Academy of Science) persuaded themselves to issue reports giving support to the conclusions of the IPCC [the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]. The reports were touted as national assessments that were supposedly independent of the IPCC and of each other, but of necessity were compiled with the assistance of, and in some cases at the behest of, many of the scientists involved in the IPCC international machinations. In effect, the academies, which are the most prestigious of the institutions of science, formally nailed their colours to the mast of the politically correct.

Since that time three or four years ago, there has been no comfortable way for the scientific community to raise the spectre of serious uncertainty about the forecasts of climatic disaster."

Because of this, Paltridge raises concerns over the overall effect that this will have on the credibility of science in general.

"In the light of all this, we have at least to consider the possibility that the scientific establishment behind the global warming issue has been drawn into the trap of seriously overstating the climate problem—or, what is much the same thing, of seriously understating the uncertainties associated with the climate problem—in its effort to promote the cause. It is a particularly nasty trap in the context of science, because it risks destroying, perhaps for centuries to come, the unique and hard-won reputation for honesty which is the basis of society's respect for scientific endeavour."

The UKs Global Warming Policy Foundation recently released its GWPF Report 12, authored by Nicholas Lewis and Marcel Crok and titled, OVERSENSITIVE: How The IPCC Hid The Good News On Global Warming. In the report's executive summary, the authors state:

"Only in recent years has it become possible to make good empirical estimates of climate sensitivity from observational data such as temperature and ocean heat records. These estimates, published in leading scientific journals, point to climate sensitivity per doubling most likely being under 2° C for long-term warming, and under 1.5° C over a seventy-year period. This strongly suggests that climate models display too much sensitivity to carbon dioxide concentrations and in almost all cases exaggerate the likely path of global warming.

Although these new results are reported in the body of the recently-published Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), their impact is not made clear and few readers of the report would learn of them.

...

Good empirical estimates of both long-term warming and that over a seventy-year period now imply very different expectations of future warming than do climate models - some 40% to 50% lower to 2081-2100. This is almost certainly the most important finding of climate science in recent years, particularly since there are good reasons to doubt the reliability of climate model forecasts. However, in its report the IPCC only alludes to this issue in an oblique fashion. Moreover, rather than reducing its best estimate of climate sensitivity in the light of the new empirical estimates, it simply reduced the lower bound of the uncertainty range and omitted to give a best estimate, without adequately explaining why it had been necessary to do so. Only in the final report published in January 2014 was a paragraph added in the Technical Summary giving slightly more explanation."

This is just another example of how the government-funded model of scientific research perverts science in the name of political goals.

Richard Tol, an economics professor from England, has terminated his participation with the team writing the United Nation's report on climate change. This IPCC report is "intended to help governments reach global a climate pact at a U.N. summit in Paris in 2015."

"'The drafts became too alarmist,' Tol told Reuters, acknowledging that some other authors 'strongly disagree with me.'"

"Tol told Reuters the report plays down the possible economic benefits of low levels of warming, such as fewer deaths among the elderly in warmer winters and increased crop production in some regions.

"'It is pretty damn obvious that there are positive impacts of climate change, even though we are not always allowed to talk about them,' he said. "

Quoting from Watts Up With That?:

"Peer reviewed paper says it's OK to manipulate data, exaggerate climate claims."

"From CFACT: A new peer-reviewed paper published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, titled "Information Manipulation and Climate Agreements", is openly advocating that global warming proponents engage in mendacious claims in order to further their cause."

"The author's [sic] boldly note in the abstract of the study that the 'news media and some pro-environmental have the tendency to accentuate or even exaggerate the damage caused by climate change. This article provides a rationale for this tendency.' ... 'We find that the information manipulation has an instrumental value, as it ex post induces more countries to participate in an IEA (International Environmental Agreement) which will eventually enhance global welfare.'"

Nigel Lawson submits the text of a speech given to the Institute for Sustainable Energy and the Environment at the University of Bath. In it he summarizes the disconnect between the actual data and the climate projections made by the IPCC.

From the article:

"Scientists Admit Polar Bear Numbers Were Made Up To 'Satisfy Public Demand?'

Researchers with the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) recently admitted to experienced zoologist and polar bear specialist Susan Crockford that the estimate given for the total number of polar bars in the Arctic was "simply a qualified guess given to satisfy public demand."

[...]

Polar bears became the first species listed under the Endangered Species Act because they could potentially be harmed by global warming. But some recent studies have found that some polar bear subpopulations have actually flourished in recent years.

[...]

"All this glosses over what I think is a critical point: none of these 'global population estimates? (from 2001 onward) came anywhere close to being estimates of the actual world population size of polar bears (regardless of how scientifically inaccurate they might have been) — rather, they were estimates of only the subpopulations that Arctic biologists have tried to count," she added.

Climate Science Explained in One Simple Graph

Speaks for itself.

Here is a good editorial by Dr. Tim Ball, discussing the motives and methods behind the IPCC's actions regarding so called "Climate Change". Here are a few excerpts:

"Skeptics have done a reasonable job of explaining what and how the IPCC created bad climate science. Now, as more people understand what the skeptics are saying, the question that most skeptics have not, or do not want to address is being asked — why?"

[...]

"Most find it hard to believe that a few people could fool the world. This is why the consensus argument was used from the start. Initially, it referred to the then approximately 6000 or so involved directly or indirectly in the IPCC. Later it was converted to the 97 percent figure concocted by Oreske, and later Cook. Most people don't know consensus has no relevance to science. The consensus argument also marginalized the few scientists and others who dared to speak out.

"There were also deliberate efforts to marginalize this small group with terminology. Skeptics has a different meaning for science and the public. For the former they are healthy and necessary, for the latter an irritating non-conformist. When the facts contradicted the hypothesis, namely that temperature stopped rising while CO2 continued to increase, a more egregious name was necessary. In the latter half of the 20th century, a denier was automatically associated with the holocaust."

[...]

"Maurice Strong set out the problem, as he saw it, in his keynote speech in Rio in 1992. [...] The motive was to protect the world from the people, particularly people in the industrial world."

The author actually only scratches the surface of what motivates those at the IPCC to propagate their Big Lie. For a fuller explanation, see the section on The Philosophy Behind The Environmental Movement.

The global temperature data manipulation game continues.

"In recent years, these two very different ways of measuring global temperature have increasingly been showing quite different results. The surface-based record has shown a temperature trend rising up to 2014 as "the hottest years since records began". RSS and UAH have, meanwhile, for 18 years been recording no rise in the trend, with 2014 ranking as low as only the sixth warmest since 1997."

"But two aspects of this system for measuring surface temperatures have long been worrying a growing array of statisticians, meteorologists and expert science bloggers. One is that the supposedly worldwide network of stations from which GHCN draws its data is flawed. Up to 80 per cent or more of the Earth's surface is not reliably covered at all. Furthermore, around 1990, the number of stations more than halved, from 12,000 to less than 6,000 - and most of those remaining are concentrated in urban areas or places where studies have shown that, thanks to the "urban heat island effect", readings can be up to 2 degrees higher than in those rural areas where thousands of stations were lost.

To fill in the huge gaps, those compiling the records have resorted to computerised "infilling", whereby the higher temperatures recorded by the remaining stations are projected out to vast surrounding areas (Giss allows single stations to give a reading covering 1.6 million square miles). This alone contributed to the sharp temperature rise shown in the years after 1990."

For example, here is the reported data for the Puerto Casado measuring station:

And here is the original raw data prior to manipulation:

New investigations into the raw temperature data collected from Paraguay and the Arctic show further evidence that the data has been manipulated to falsely report "warming" that has not, in fact, occurred.

"Two weeks ago, under the headline 'How we are being tricked by flawed data on global warming', I wrote about Paul Homewood, who, on his Notalotofpeopleknowthat blog, had checked the published temperature graphs for three weather stations in Paraguay against the temperatures that had originally been recorded. In each instance, the actual trend of 60 years of data had been dramatically reversed, so that a cooling trend was changed to one that showed a marked warming.

"This was only the latest of many examples of a practice long recognised by expert observers around the world — one that raises an ever larger question mark over the entire official surface-temperature record."

"Homewood has now turned his attention to the weather stations across much of the Arctic, between Canada (51 degrees W) and the heart of Siberia (87 degrees E). Again, in nearly every case, the same one-way adjustments have been made, to show warming up to 1 degree C or more higher than was indicated by the data that was actually recorded."

"Of much more serious significance, however, is the way this wholesale manipulation of the official temperature record — for reasons GHCN and Giss have never plausibly explained — has become the real elephant in the room of the greatest and most costly scare the world has known. This really does begin to look like one of the greatest scientific scandals of all time. "

It was not that long ago that Al Gore was widely publicizing the forecast of professor Wieslaw Maslowski:

"Our projection of 2013 for the removal of [polar] ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007. So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative."

Well, 2013 came and went and the polar ice remained. Now there is another unfortunate dataset for the climate alarmists to address—or ignore as the case may be. As reported in Forbes:

Up to their same old tricks.

"National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists have found a solution to the 15-year 'pause' in global warming: They 'adjusted' the hiatus in warming out of the temperature record.

"New climate data by NOAA scientists doubles the warming trend since the late 1990s by adjusting pre-hiatus temperatures downward and inflating temperatures in more recent years."

In this 12 minute video, Lord Christopher Monckton quickly outlines the economics—or the lack thereof—of large scale wind generators: specifically those being proposed in Canada.

What the climate wars did to science

"Scientists are terrible at making forecasts—indeed as Dan Gardner documents in his book Future Babble they are often worse than laymen. And the climate is a chaotic system with multiple influences of which human emissions are just one, which makes prediction even harder.

"The IPCC actually admits the possibility of lukewarming within its consensus, because it gives a range of possible future temperatures: it thinks the world will be between about 1.5 and four degrees warmer on average by the end of the century. That's a huge range, from marginally beneficial to terrifyingly harmful, so it is hardly a consensus of danger, and if you look at the "probability density functions" of climate sensitivity, they always cluster towards the lower end.

"What is more, in the small print describing the assumptions of the "representative concentration pathways", it admits that the top of the range will only be reached if sensitivity to carbon dioxide is high (which is doubtful); if world population growth re-accelerates (which is unlikely); if carbon dioxide absorption by the oceans slows down (which is improbable); and if the world economy goes in a very odd direction, giving up gas but increasing coal use tenfold (which is implausible)."

[...]

"Barack Obama says that 97 per cent of scientists agree that climate change is "real, man-made and dangerous". That's just a lie (or a very ignorant remark): as I point out above, there is no consensus that it's dangerous.

"So where's the outrage from scientists at this presidential distortion? It's worse than that, actually. The 97 per cent figure is derived from two pieces of pseudoscience that would have embarrassed a homeopath. The first was a poll that found that 97 per cent of just seventy-nine scientists thought climate change was man-made—not that it was dangerous. A more recent poll of 1854 members of the American Meteorological Society found the true number is 52 per cent.

"The second source of the 97 per cent number was a survey of scientific papers, which has now been comprehensively demolished by Professor Richard Tol of Sussex University, who is probably the world's leading climate economist. As the Australian blogger Joanne Nova summarised Tol's findings, John Cook of the University of Queensland and his team used an unrepresentative sample, left out much useful data, used biased observers who disagreed with the authors of the papers they were classifying nearly two-thirds of the time, and collected and analysed the data in such a way as to allow the authors to adjust their preliminary conclusions as they went along, a scientific no-no if ever there was one. The data could not be replicated, and Cook himself threatened legal action to hide them. Yet neither the journal nor the university where Cook works has retracted the paper, and the scientific establishment refuses to stop citing it, let alone blow the whistle on it. Its conclusion is too useful."

[...]

"I dread to think what harm this episode will have done to the reputation of science in general when the dust has settled. Science will need a reformation. Garth Paltridge is a distinguished Australian climate scientist, who, in The Facts, pens a wise paragraph that I fear will be the epitaph of climate science:

"We have at least to consider the possibility that the scientific establishment behind the global warming issue has been drawn into the trap of seriously overstating the climate problem—or, what is much the same thing, of seriously understating the uncertainties associated with the climate problem—in its effort to promote the cause."

Journalist Donna Laframboise investigated the personnel behind the IPCC and came to the surprising conclusions that much of the management and many of the authors behind their report are unqualified and have a biased agenda. She discusses these findings in this video.

Laframboise has delineated her findings regarding the IPCC in these two books

As noted above, on September 13, 2011, Nobel prize-winner, Dr. Ivar Giaever resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) in protest over their non-scientific stance on global warming. Here is a video of a speech that Dr. Giaever gave at the 2015 Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings where he delineates the misrepresentations that the alarmists, including Barack Obama, make in an attempt to sell their position to an unknowledgeable public.

German scientists examined the earth's climate records for the past 2,500 years. Their findings:

"The analysis of the past 2500 years involved data from tree rings, sediment cores, stalagmites, etc. A plot of the data yields a climate operating with cyclic behavior."

"Compared to the maxima and minima of the past, the current minima and maxima show that there is nothing unusual happening today. The scientists say today's temperature changes are within the normal range. The German authors write: 'Especially the 20th century shows nothing out of the ordinary.'"   [Emphasis added]

"For better or worse, these scientists argue that global cooling is likely during the next 60 years."

Dr. David Evans has posted a series of ten articles on Joanne Nova's website, discussing the mathematical errors inherent in the computerized climate models which have allowed climate alarmists to vastly overstate the impact of CO₂ on the planet's warming. The master link to these articles is given to the right and links to the specific articles will be included in the section. Here are excerpts from Dr. Evan's introduction to the series.

Just one example of how your tax dollars are being used to directly fund the political ideology of the climate change agenda.

"Chairman of the House Committee on Space, Science and Technology, has written to Professor Jagadish Shukla of George Mason University, in Virginia, requesting that he release all relevant documents pertaining to his activities as head of a non-profit organization called the Institute of Global Environment And Society.

"Smith has two main areas of concern.

"First, the apparent engagement by the institute in 'partisan political activity' - which, as a non-profit, it is forbidden by law from doing.

"Second, what precisely has the IGES institute done with the $63 million in taxpayer grants which it has received since 2001 and which appears to have resulted in remarkably little published research?"

"A new study says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers.

"The research challenges the conclusions of other studies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) 2013 report, which says that Antarctica is overall losing land ice.

"According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008."

Of course, there is never any good news from our friends at NOAA or NASA that is not immediately hedged with a "possibility" of doom. Thus we are treated to the following future scenarios:

"But it might only take a few decades for Antarctica's growth to reverse, according to Zwally. 'If the losses of the Antarctic Peninsula and parts of West Antarctica continue to increase at the same rate they've been increasing for the last two decades, the losses will catch up with the long-term gain in East Antarctica in 20 or 30 years — I don't think there will be enough snowfall increase to offset these losses.'"

and

"'The good news is that Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise, but is taking 0.23 millimeters per year away,' Zwally said. 'But this is also bad news. If the 0.27 millimeters per year of sea level rise attributed to Antarctica in the IPCC report is not really coming from Antarctica, there must be some other contribution to sea level rise that is not accounted for.'"

And so it goes. When it comes to global warming, it is "settled science" for which there can never be any actual evidence contradicting it's preordained conclusions — a condition that is more akin to religion than science.

Time for an update. Back on October 13, 2012 (see above), it was reported that there had been absolutely no global warming for the previous sixteen years. Now that period has been extended to eighteen years nine months!

"The Pause lengthens yet again. One-third of Man's entire influence on climate since the Industrial Revolution has occurred since February 1997. Yet the 225 months since then show no global warming at all. With this month's RSS (Remote Sensing Systems satellite) temperature record, the Pause beats last month's record and now stands at 18 years 9 months."

One might wonder just how long the factual data must fail to conform with the alarmists' climate models before the theory of man-caused global warming is considered invalidated? But that is only a question for science which deals in in testable hypotheses. The politicized global warming movement is anything but science as it is a theory -- in the minds of its proponents -- which is "settled" and is incapable of being invalidated, regardless of the actual facts.

The Journal of Hydrology reports on a new study from the Physics Department at York University, located in Toronto, Canada. The study looked at:

"Precipitation measurements made at nearly 1000 stations located in 114 countries were studied. Each station had at least 100 years of observations resulting in a dataset comprising over 1.5 million monthly precipitation amounts. Data for some stations extend back to the 1700s although most of the data exist for the period after 1850. The total annual precipitation was found if all monthly data in a given year were present. The percentage annual precipitation change relative to 1961-90 was plotted for 6 continents; as well as for stations at different latitudes and those experiencing low, moderate and high annual precipitation totals."

And here is a summary of the conclusions:

Reporting on research from the University of Exeter, a Science Daily article titled "Don't Forget Plankton in Climate Change Models" reports that phytoplankton (alga) rapidly evolve to tolerate varying water temperatures, and as temperatures increase, so does the efficiency of the plankton in absorbing and converting carbon dioxide into biomass. Quoting from the article:

"The results show that evolutionary responses in phytoplankton to warming can be rapid and might offset some of the predicted declines in the ability of aquatic ecosystems to absorb carbon dioxide as the planet warms."

"Our results demonstrate that evolutionary responses of phytoplankton to warming should be taken into account when developing models of how climate change will affect aquatic ecosystems."

In a article titled, Quantification of the Diminishing Earth's Magnetic Dipole Intensity and Geomagnetic Activity as the Causal Source for Global Warming within the Oceans and Atmosphere, David A. E. Vares, Trevor N. Carniello and Michael A. Persinger demonstrate that there is a causal connection between the earth's shifting magnetic field and surface temperatures. They conclude:

"These results indicated that the increase in CO2 and global temperatures are primarily caused by major geophysical factors, particularly the diminishing total geomagnetic field strength and increased geomagnetic activity, but not by human activities. Strategies for adapting to climate change because of these powerful variables may differ from those that assume exclusive anthropomorphic causes."

In light of the new claims coming from NASA, NOAA and other sources that 2015 was the "warmest year on record," Dr. Tim Ball writes a retrospective piece where he reexamines the earth's actual historical records, once again placing current temperature data in proper perspective. His first major point is that by restricting the "data set" to just the past 120 years, a distorted picture of events is artificially created, where recent warming trends are then inaccurately ascribed to human activity rather than to natural processes.

"Recent discussion about record weather events, such as the warmest year on record, is a totally misleading and scientifically useless exercise. This is especially true when restricted to the instrumental record that covers about 25% of the globe for at most 120 years. The age of the Earth is approximately 4.54 billion years, so the sample size is 0.000002643172%. Discussing the significance of anything in a 120-year record plays directly into the hands of those trying to say that the last 120-years climate is abnormal and all due to human activity. It is done purely for political propaganda, to narrow people's attention and to generate fear."

After a bit more discussion, Bell presents this chart, developed from ice core samples from both Greenland and Antarctica, demonstrating that the recent earth warming is not unusual by fully consistent with long term natural cycles.

Continuing the discussion, Ball reviews other data, presented in a series of charts, demonstrating that the major claims of the IPCC are false. He concludes:

"It is the misuse of science to create the deception that is the AGW claim that makes distraction, exaggeration and selective truths necessary. However, as Aldous Huxley said, 'Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.'"

Christopher Monckton, Willie Soon, and David Legates pose the following ten questions that expose the ideological agenda being driven by "money, fame and power" rather than scientific truth, which motivates the climate alarmists. Question #2 is particularly interesting.

"1: What is the source of the warming that surface thermometer datasets now say has occurred in the past 18 years?

2: Why, just two years ago, did every surface temperature dataset agree with the satellites that there had been no global warming so far in this century? And why was every surface dataset altered in the two years preceding the Paris climate conference – in a manner calculated to show significant warming – even though the satellite records continue to show little or no warming?

3: Why do all the datasets, surface as well as satellite, show a lot less warming than predicted? Why has the rate of warming over the past quarter century been only one-third to one-half of the average prediction made by the UN's climate panel in its 1990 First Assessment Report, even after the numerous questionable adjustments to the surface temperature datasets?

4: Why is the gap between official over-prediction and observed reality getting wider?

5: Why is the gap widening between warming rates measured by satellite and by surface datasets?

6: Why should anyone invest trillions of dollars – to replace fossil fuels with expensive renewable energy – on the basis of official predictions in 1990 and 2001 that differ so greatly from reality?

7: Why has the observed rate of warming, on all datasets, been tumbling for decades notwithstanding predictions that it would at least remain stable?

8: So, where is the tropical upper-air hot-spot?

9: Why, if CO2-driven warming ought to warm the surface ocean first, is the ocean warming from below? And why has the ocean been warming throughout the eleven full years of the ARGO dataset at a rate equivalent to only 1 degree every 430 years?

10: Given that the authors of the largest-ever survey of peer-reviewed opinion in learned papers found that only 64 of 11,944 papers (0.5% of the total) actually said their authors agreed with the official "consensus" proposition that recent warming was mostly manmade – on what rational, evidence-based, scientific ground is it daily asserted that "97% of scientists" believe recent global warming is not only manmade but dangerous?"

The article expands upon each of these question, providing a fuller indication of the impact raised by each.

Dr. David Evans and Joanne Nova write about errors made in climate computer models which have improperly accounted for heat transfer in the upper atmosphere, resulting in a five to ten fold overestimate of the warming that can be attributable to atmospheric carbon dioxide.

"The scientists who believe in the carbon dioxide theory of global warming do so essentially because of the application of 'basic physics' to climate, by a model that is ubiquitous and traditional in climate science. This model is rarely named, but is sometimes referred to as the 'forcing-feedback framework/paradigm.' Explicitly called the 'forcing-feedback model' (FFM) here, this pen-and-paper model estimates the sensitivity of the global temperature to increasing carbon dioxide.

"The FFM has serious architectural errors. It contains crucial features dating back to the very first model in 1896, when the greenhouse effect was not properly understood. Fixing the architecture, while keeping the physics, shows that future warming due to increasing carbon dioxide will be a fifth to a tenth of current official estimates. Less than 20% of the global warming since 1973 was due to increasing carbon dioxide."

In the Journal of Geography and Natural Disasters, Kelly MJ, from the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge, has published a report titled, Trends in Extreme Weather Events since 1900 — Conundrum for Wise Polity Advice  [PDF], which analyses weather data from the past century and observes:

"It is widely promulgated and believed that human-caused global warming comes with increases in both the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. A survey of official weather sites and the scientific literature provides strong evidence that the first half of the 20th century had more extreme weather than the second half, when anthropogenic global warming is claimed to have been mainly responsible for observed climate change. The disconnect between real-world historical data on the 100 years' time scale and the current predictions provides a real conundrum when any engineer tries to make a professional assessment of the real future value of any infrastructure project which aims to mitigate or adapt to climate change. What is the appropriate basis on which to make judgements when theory and data are in such disagreement?"

He then concludes, from an engineering perspective:

"The lack of clarity about future extreme weather, after 20 years of intensive analysis of future climates is deeply worrying. There is nothing that emerges from references [1,2] that would require a significant refinement of the margins that have applied over the last half-century, and hyperbole is no substitute for hard facts in the engineering of the physical infrastructure. Over-adaptation that is not needed leaves clients free to sue advisors if the problems have been oversold and the costs of protection prove to have been excessive, even on a 20-year basis."

Martin Hertzberg, a meteorologist and chemist, and Hans Schreuder, an analytical chemist, have authored a paper titled, Reassessing the Climate Role of Carbon Dioxide [PDF], which summarizes many of the criticisms that have been leveled against the IPCC's conclusions that earth's warming is primarily a causal result of atmospheric CO₂. It concludes:

"Nothing in the data supports the supposition that atmospheric CO2 is a driver of weather or climate, or that human emissions control atmospheric CO2. Furthermore, CO2 is not a pollutant, but an essential ingredient of the Earth's ecosystem on which almost all life depends via photosynthesis.

This paper rejects the new paradigm of "climate science" and asserts that the traditional, century old meteorological concepts for the factors that control weather and climate remain sound but need to be reassessed."

Bob Tisdale posts an update regarding the recent NOAA revisions to the temperature data; changes made in order to conceal the current 20 year pause in global temperature increases by lowering the preceding data. The article is filled with links to related posts and presents corroborating data.

Steven Capozzola provides another look at the the Big Lie that states, "97% of scientists believe in global warming". Here, he provides links to the original research and abstract which state:

"We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming."   [Emphasis added]

So the truth is that only 31.6% (i.e., 97.1% of 32.6%) of the original 11,944 papers examined expressed a belief that human activity was warming the planet. And there is no analysis of the severity of the impact expressed in those papers which could range from trivial to catastrophic. Therefore, not only is the 97% consensus mantra a Big Lie, the entire research behind it is nothing more than pure unscientific propaganda.

Does anyone still think the environmental movement and the global warming hoax is actually about the environment rather than asserting totalitarian control over all human thought and activity?

"A basic fact about agricultural products such as grains and oilseeds is that the carbon in them, called biogenic carbon, came from the atmosphere. Biogenic carbon will return to the atmosphere when these products are consumed, such as when human beings eat bread and then breathe out the carbon dioxide resulting from the breakdown of bread in the body. Biogenic carbon therefore cannot contribute to climate change."

"The EPA intends to penalize American farmers and those who make modern energy and bioproducts such as plastics from agricultural feedstocks by treating biogenic carbon like fossil carbon. As part of its approach, the EPA is now attempting to regulate 'sustainability' in the farm field."

"The EPA is trying to put itself in charge of regulating farms—an outstanding example of 'mission creep' and bureaucratic overreach."

"America's farmers and the consumers of what they produce would be collateral damage of the EPA's misguided plans."

Notice that, regardless of the evidence of action after action after action that reveals the true intent, people never ceasing to extend the benefit of the doubt to the bureaucrats and politicians who force their control upon productive people. There is nothing "misguided" about these plans. They are laser-targeted towards achieving the precise results we can clearly see them achieving.

Dr. Tim Ball writes about how the public's perception of catastrophic manmade climate change is manufactured to a large degree by press coverage.

"One phenomenon that creates the illusion weather is abnormal is the attention given by the media. We all experience being introduced to a person then seeing them pop up every time we turn around. It's the same thing with cars after you buy one you see them everywhere. In both cases they were always there, but not part of your awareness. Weather and climate events seem to occur everyday, but it is because they became a media story. They always occurred. Now the story appears and is amplified by the sensationalism of the media with their 'Extreme Weather Reports.'"

He goes on to discuss the public's general ignorance regarding both weather and climate, which leaves them susceptible to false impressions and outright misrepresentations. As an example, he provides the following graph which shows the historical northern hemisphere temperature record over the past 10,000 years, as recorded in the Greenland ice.

"The current temperature is on the right (red line) Some salient points that expose the lies and distortions;

• The world was warmer than today for 97 percent of the last 10,000 years, a period known variously as the Climatic Optimum, or more recently the Holocene Optimum. We have known about this warmer period for at least 75 years.
• The world was 2°C warmer than today 1000 years ago during the Medieval warming. Remember, you are told that the world is going to warm by 2°C, and that is catastrophic.
• The world was 4°C warmer than today during the Minoan warming.
• We are told the amount and rate of temperature increase in the last 100 years (shown in red) is abnormal. Compare the slope with any of the previous increases.
• The green line indicates the larger trend and shows that the Earth has cooled for approximately the last 7000 years."

Read the entire article.

New research suggests that the solar activity cycle for the next three cycles (33 years) may be significantly below normal, leading to significant global cooling. The researcher, Professor Valentina Zharkova, states:

"We will see it from 2020 to 2053, when the three next cycles will be very reduced magnetic field of the sun. Basically what happens is these two waves, they separate into the opposite hemispheres and they will not be interacting with each other, which means that resulting magnetic field will drop dramatically nearly to zero. And this will be a similar conditions like in Maunder Minimum.

"What will happen to the Earth remains to be seen and predicted because nobody has developed any program or any models of terrestrial response – they are based on this period when the sun has maximum activity — when the sun has these nice fluctuations, and its magnetic field [is] very strong. But we're approaching to the stage when the magnetic field of the sun is going to be very, very small."

"Whatever we do to the planet, if everything is done only by the sun, then the temperature should drop similar like it was in the Maunder Minimum. At least in the Northern hemisphere, where this temperature is well protocoled and written. We didn't have many measurements in the Southern hemisphere, we don't know what will happen with that, but in the Northern hemisphere, we know it's very well protocoled. The rivers are frozen. There are winters and no summers, and so on.

"So we only hope because these Maunder Minima will be shorter, the Maunder Minimum of the 17th century was about 65 years, the Maunder Minimum which we expect will be lasting not longer than 30-35 years."

In an essay titled, How To Tell Who's Lying To You: Climate Science Edition, Francis Menton discusses the methodology that can be used in order to determining who is and is not being truthful in the presentation of facts and conclusions regarding the scientific debate over Anthropogenic Global Warming.

Whoops, another in a long line of alarmist climate predictions bites the dust.

"Dire predictions that the Arctic would be free of sea ice by September have proven unfounded after satellite images showed there is far more ice now than in 2012.

"Scientists including Peter Wadhams, of Cambridge University, and Wieslaw Maslowski, of the Naval Postgraduate School in Moderey, California, have regularly forecast the loss of ice by 2016, a warning that has been widely reported by the BBC and other media outlets.

"Prof Wadhams, who is considered a leading expert on Arctic sea ice loss, has recently published a book entitled A Farewell To Ice in which he repeated the assertion that the Arctic would be free of ice in the middle of this decade.

"As late as this summer he was still predicting an ice-free September.

"Yet when figures were released for the yearly minimum on Sept 10, they showed that there was still 4.14 million sq km of sea ice, which was 21 per cent more than the lowest point in 2012."

Oh well, you can't be right all of the time. But Prof Wadhams is no quitter and doubles down on his failed predictions.

"'My view is that the trend of summer sea ice volume is relentlessly downward, such that the volume (and thus area) will come to a low value very soon - in a very small number of years,'

"He said. 'This is to be contrasted with some of the bizarre predictions made by computer modellers, who have the summer sea ice remaining until late this century, which is quite impossible.'"

Impossible indeed!

In the essay Solar Cycle Mystery Solved by David Archibald, the solar sunspot cycle is explained in terms of the orbit of the larger planets in the solar system along with the resulting effect upon the Earth's climate.

Here is some interesting information from Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, regarding the "disappearing" Pacific islands.

"Using historic aerial photographs and high-resolution satellite imagery, Auckland University scientists Murray Ford and Paul Kench recently analyzed shoreline changes on six atolls and two mid-ocean reef islands in the Marshall Islands. Their peer-reviewed study, published in the September 2015 issue of Anthropocene, revealed that since the middle of the 20th century the total land area of the islands has actually grown.

"How is that possible? It seems self-evident that rising sea levels will reduce land area. However, there is a process of accretion, where coral broken up by the waves washes up on these low-lying islands as sand, counteracting the reduction in land mass. Research shows that this process is overpowering the erosion from sea-level rise, leading to net land-area gain."

[...]

"My [Lomborg's] peer-reviewed research, published last November in the journal Global Policy, shows that even if every nation were to fulfill all their carbon-cutting promises by 2030 and stick to them all the way through the century--at a cost of more than $100 trillion in lost GDP—global temperature rise would be reduced by a tiny 0.3°F (0.17°C)."