Professor of forecasting principles blasts IPCC climate models as “flawed” … Gore AWOL

A recent posting on Matt’s Global Warming Skeptics blog http://glowarmers.blogspot.com makes an excellent point regarding the uncertain nature of the “science” being used to tell us that the world is doomed, it’s all our fault, and that we simply must alter our ways and turn over the keys to our lives to omniscient technocrats and central planners.

Professor J. Scott Armstrong teaches at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and is the author of a widely used forecasting textbook, Forecasting Principles.

According to a recent paper by Professor Armstrong and Kersten Green cited by Matt in his post, the “recent IPCC climate models are flawed becasue the methodology used violates [no less than] 89 of the 140 principles of forecasting, 72 of which significantly alter the outcome of the forecast.”

Of the recent IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Matt reports Armstrong as responding, “We have been unable to identify any scientific forecasts to support global warming. Claims that the Earth will get warmer have no more credence than saying that it will get colder.”

IPCC scientist now says that global warming forecasts are not predictions …

According to a recent report aired by Fox News reporter and analyst Brit Hume, a leading “climate scientist who is part of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), now says computer models cannot predict future climate – and he says the IPCC is not in the climate prediction business.”

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,287437,00.html

The report quotes Dr Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Reserch, a prominent leader in many of the IPCC’s published climate assessments, and a vocal proponent of theories assigning responsiblity for the global warming to human-based carbon emissions.

The report states that in a recent posting to a nature magazine blog, Dr. Trenberth now asserts that “the UN’s dire forcasts about the dangers of global warming are NOT climate predictions” [emphasis added].

Scientists predict global warming to reverse

Far from being the runaway non-stop human-caused global warming trend being hysterically prognosticated by devotees to Al Gore and “An Inconvenient Truth”, a growing number of scientists soberly studying the effects of the sun on earth climate are predicting that the sun may in fact be on the verge of delivering a climate cooling cycle to the planet.

“Climate stability has never been a feature of planet earth,” says R. Timothy Patterson, a professor and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, Department of Earth Sciences at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.

In an article in the Financial Post, Patterson writes, “The only constant about climate is change; it changes continually and, at times, quite rapidly. Many times in the past, [global] temperatures were far higher than today, and occasionally, temperatures were colder.”

Iraq, global warming, and the new ‘Brown Shirts’ …

In 1920 Munich, Germany, a young and politically aspiring Adolf Hitler created a group of ex-soldiers and beer hall brawlers to stifle any opposition to his own expressed and favored views.

This group became known as the Brown Shirts, because of their brown uniforms, and because of the hallmark strong-arm tactics they used to stifle debate and opposition. One of their maxims was that “all opposition must be stamped into the ground.”

Whether the modern-day topic equivalent is skepticism regarding anthropogenic global warming, or support for the troops and their strategic mission on but one front of a now-global effort to counter and combat direct and explicit threats posed by Islamist jihadists and advocates of an Islamo-fascist world order – it is interesting to note that the credo of the Brown Shirts appears to be alive and well in the halls of American academia, as well as it seems in the editorial offices of our own “free press”.

Global Warming is the ‘Wicked Witch’ …

Here is a fun little piece regarding anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming that global warming skeptics might enjoy:

(Excerpted from “Adventures in Global Warming” by Terry Easton:) http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=21068

“Once upon a time there was a very mean witch who lived in a sunny and
prosperous country which she called Amerika

“She was very angry and very depressed because the vast majority of the
citizens of this fair country seemed to be quite happy. And happy is
to a wicked witch what oil is to water.

“Then one day, the wicked witch had a marvellous idea!

“She called this great idea “global cooling.” Unfortunately, the era
was 1975, and the people just laughed her silly thoughts away. Except
for Time Magazine, of course. Years went by and she was very
depressed indeed. Then, one chilly winter day, she came upon an even
better idea to kill off the people’s joy. She called her new idea
“global warming.” And it stuck.

“Soon, every wacky politician and populist journalist were …”

Sorry, to read the rest, you’ll have to follow the link (it’s worth the trip):

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=21068

Hat’s off to Terry for a brilliant piece worth sharing. Encouraging evidence that humor and perspective do still exist in the culture of American University academics, after all.

Snow on Kilimanjaro not victim to ‘global warming’

Although continuing the charge that current trends of glacial ice melt are the result of climate changes brought about by the accumulation of so-called human-sourced “greenhouse gasses” such as carbon dioxide, researchers in a recent article in American Scientist magazine now admit that the diminishing snow and ice cap on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania is probably due to solar radiation and other complex interacting factors, rather than global warming.

Scientific observers note that Kilimanjaro’s snow and ice cap has been in retreat for over 100 years, with most of the loss actually occuring before 1953, twenty years before much of the current data regarding atmospheric temperature was avaiable, and right in the middle of a global cooling trend that lasted from approximately 1940 to 1970.

“Who cares” what causes global warming?

A participant on another forum (who insists on not being identified here), made the following challenge regarding the question of global warming: “WHO CARES WHO’S FAULT IT IS?”

Apparently a lot of people do, which is what treaties such as Kyoto, Al Gore, and the recent IPCC reports are all about – affixing blame as a basis for imposing “solutions”.

What skeptics and critics of the presently-popular and politically-expedient theories of anthropogenic (human caused) global warming are pointing out – is that there may simply be no one to “blame” at all.

In short, if human’s aren’t causing a rise in global temperatures, then human action and regulation is not at all likely to reverse or even to slow the trend.

The skeptical case against human-based ‘global warming’

Many advocates of anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming are occasionally willing to (reluctantly) acknowledge that “who knows?” – when it comes to measuring the relative effect or contribution of human activity to the planetary condition.

Some environmental advocates however propose that we all revert to “the simple life”, and build compost piles in our backyards.

I wonder – don’t compost piles produce emissions of methane and carbon dioxide – and thus contribute to the “greenhouse effect”?

The point that global warming skeptics make is not that humanity does not participate in nature (although there is an entire school of environmental thought that considers humanity to be a freakish accident that does nothing but damage nature).

The point that anthropogenic global warming skeptics make is that on balance, humanity does not produce enough emissions or energy relative to all other natural and geologic sources to have caused the current warming trend, and while perhaps “contributing” to it in some degree at least in theory, eliminating 100% of human emission activity will not stop or slow global warming.

Compost piles notwithstanding.

Global warming: does a ‘variety of theories’ mean no ‘consensus’?

It would seem that on at least one point, a participant on another forum unexpectedly found himself to be in unexpected agreement with the skeptic’s primary point in this thread – a point which he and others constantly seem to want to divert the conversation from.

He was, it seems, now in agreement that “a variety of viable theories” does in fact demonstrate that “there is no scientific consensus on [an] issue”.

Which is the point that global warming skeptics have been making all along, and which point glowarming proponents seem desperately to be wanting to discredit, by constantly launching their attempts at detailed deconstructive logical analysis – presented as “proof” of the anthropogenic global warming skeptics unworthiness to advance either evidence or an opinion.

Global warming mathematical models flawed …

Global warming skeptics make an interesting and quite valid observation regarding the relative accuracy of the mathematical and computer models being used not only to “predict” the likely events that will occur during a continued trend of planet-wide warming, but that are often used to “prove” the primary culpability of humankind in both instigating and exacerbating a global warming apocolypse.

Far from being “settled” and beyond debate, a recent article published in USA Today points out just how inaccurate such computer projections can be.

According to a study referenced by Dan Vergano, it now appears that the widespread droughts which have been loudly predicted to be an expected consequence of a continued gradual global warming trend (ongoing for the past several hundred if not thousands of years), have been overstated.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/2007-05-31-climate-models_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip

In fact, the new study now predicts that the “real problem” will be not be too LITTLE, but rather too MUCH moisture, in the form of rain and flooding, rather than widespread drought.