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Showing posts with label Craig D Idso. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Craig D Idso. Show all posts

Monday, April 21, 2014

The Heartland Institute can't get anyone to promote their NIPCC report

Sou | 2:28 PM Go to the first of 9 comments. Add a comment

The poor chaps at the Heartland Institute are doing it tough. Craig Idso (respected scientist?) can't find anyone to do some free PR and advertising for the Not the IPCC Report version umpteen. So he is falling back on an old standby, Anthony Watts and his pseudo-science blog, wattsupwiththat.com (archived here).  Which means, of course, that he is preaching to the converted.

I'm not sure that WUWT is an old standby. It might just be a fallback position. While Anthony occasionally posts an article by one or other of the Idso family of disinformers, it doesn't happen very often.  Still, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Their "big launch" of the latest version of the Not the IPCC report attracted the following people, according to skepticalscience.com:
  • 5 Heartland participants
  • 5 grumpy-looking old white guys 
  • 1 supporter from the American Enterprise Institute
  • 2 bored looking middle-aged guys playing with electronic devices
  • 1 journalist from CNS news ("The right news. Right now")
  • 1 guy running the Fox TV camera 
  • 2 women who came in late
  • An SkS author and co-conspirator.

They knew they were in trouble. Maybe they put in a call to their mate, Tom Harris, because yesterday it was Tom Harris from Canada and the grandly if inappropriately named International Climate Science Coalition, who explained that bible science trumps climate science, and then denied having written it.  He also denied writing that "In the long run, the climate scare will be revealed as the most expensive hoax in the history of science", which is pretty odd, because it turns out he's claimed climate science is a hoax on other occasions too (h/t Anonymous).

It could be they weren't satisfied with Tom's promo, or maybe it was part of the PR effort but today it's Craig Idso's turn.  To his credit, he admitted right up front that he couldn't get reputable media organisations to publish his nonsense, so he's making a plea for any science denying bloggers to put his article up on denier blogs.


Too hot dull wrong to handle!


Craig Idso started off somewhat hopefully: "NOTE: This op-ed is apparently too hot for some editors to handle."

Ha ha - when was an op-ed about climate "too hot to handle"? More commonly they would be considered too dull to handle.  In this case it wasn't that it was too hot or too dull, it turns out it was too wrong to handle.  As Craig admitted (my bold italics):
"Late last week it was accepted and posted on politix.topix.com only to be abruptly removed some two hours later. After several hours of attempting to determine why it was removed, I was informed the topix.com editor had permanently taken it down because of a strong negative reaction to it and because of “conflicting views from the scientific community” over factual assertions in the piece."

Yep, Craig didn't portray the science properly.  So let's see how much he got wrong. His first paragraph was okay but then he quickly strayed from the facts, writing:
Really? Is Earth’s climate so fragile that both it and our way of life are in jeopardy because of rising carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions?
In a word, no! 

Craig is wrong! And he doesn't accept paleoclimatology.  A sudden rapid change in CO2 can precipitate a major extinction event.  Earth's climate is fairly robust as long as nothing changes too rapidly.  The earth system has fast and slow feedbacks and prefers slow changes so that everything in the system has time to adjust.  Give it a big shock and the results are difficult to predict.  But looking at big shocks to the system in the past provides some clues.  For example, the Permian-Triassic extinctions.

Then Craig makes a couple of other "wrong" statements in quick succession:
  • The human impact on global climate is small; Wrong! Human activity is probably responsible for more than 100% of the warming since the 1950s, and some of the warming before that time).
  • any warming that may occur as a result of anthropogenic CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions is likely to have little effect on either Earth’s climate or biosphere - Wrong again!  It is already and will continue to raise temperatures, melt ice, raise sea levels, drop ocean pH etc etc, all having massive flow-on effects to life on land and in the oceans.



Craig gives up at this point. The rest of his article is mostly empty rhetoric with lots of mentions of his silly Not the IPCC report, which he can't seem to be able to give away to too many people.  I noticed that Craig provided no evidence for his bald statements of untruth, other than his Not the IPCC report.  Readers are meant to take on faith that all the world's scientists are wrong and the Heartland Institute is right.  Which if you stop to think about it is ridiculous.  (If you have to stop to think about it you are probably not familiar with the Heartland Institute.)


From the WUWT comments


There wasn't all that much discussion of the scientific content errors in Craig's article. The majority of comments didn't seem to relate directly to the article at all. The commenters got distracted by other commenters' comments :)

Ian W says rather hopefully:
April 20, 2014 at 8:24 am
Panic must really be breaking out if the politicians and grant seeking catastrophists have to pull strings to remove such a mild ‘op-ed’. They obviously have not heard of the Streisand effect.

Greg cries "censorship" and says:
April 20, 2014 at 8:25 am
Hardly radical. This well demonstrates the fact the alarmists now realise the game is over and all they have is an attempt at total censorship of opposing views and information.

RMB says something about not being able to heat water through its surface. He's wrong. How does he think that water evaporates - from underneath? (This is something you'll read in the WUWT comments from time to time, usually refuted by other WUWT commenters):
April 20, 2014 at 8:30 am
The good Dr doesn’t appreciate just how right he actually is. The fact is that you cannot heat water through its surface. If you doubt me try heating water through the surface using a heat gun. The heat is completely rejected. Energy only enters the ocean via the sun’s rays not via the heat of the atmosphere. The reason is surface tension. Surface tension is not a powerful force but it is powerful enough to block heat passing from the atmosphere into the ocean. No matter how much co2 is put into the atmosphere the heat from it cannot pass through the the surface of water. In short there is no way of storing or building heat on the planet, no matter how long you leave your suv idling. Therefore there is no such thing as anthropogenic global warming and the oceans cannot be boiled away.

Leonard Weinstein comes to the rescue of WUWT and does refute RMB and says:
April 20, 2014 at 8:43 am
RMB,
Your reply manages to contaminate a good blog, and give ammunition to pro CAGW viewers, that will quote your error as typical skeptic ignorance. Surface tension is not the cause of blocking heat entering the oceans. 

Col Mosby points out that the article has no evidence and says (excerpt):
April 20, 2014 at 8:37 am
What’s lacking in the op-ed is some nice concise facts to illustrate the main failings of the AGW position ...

 Steven Mosher puts his head on the WUWT chopping block and says:
April 20, 2014 at 8:48 am
“The human impact on global climate is small; and any warming that may occur as a result of anthropogenic CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions is likely to have little effect on either Earth’s climate or biosphere, according to the recently-released contrasting report Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts, which was produced by the independent Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).”
so the science is settled. little effect?
I wonder how the clowns who wrote the NIPCC scientifically determined that there will be little effect in the future? how’d they do that? I read the NIPCC. I saw no experiments that proved there would be little effect. I saw no statistical analysis in that report that proved there would be little effect. And they explained why you could not use models to project the effects.
How did those clowns deduce from no evidence that there would be little effect

From here on in, as expected, much of the discussion turns to Steve Mosher, not Craig Idso and the Not the IPCC report.

BioBob is partly correct when he responds to Steve Mosher and says:
April 20, 2014 at 9:20 am
Steven Mosher says: April 20, 2014 at 8:48 am How did those clowns deduce from no evidence that there would be little effect
Is this a trick question ? Here is my response….
The same way warmists concluded the opposite: they made it up ? /sarc

Otter (ClimateOtter on Twitter) dumps on Steve Mosher and says:
April 20, 2014 at 9:25 am
Clowns, mosh? My apologies to Anthony and the rest, but you just took a HUGE step down in whatever estimation I had of you. 

Brad says how sad it is that deniers get criticised for their nonsense:
April 20, 2014 at 9:28 am
Mosher,
Once again you exhibit the fear your side has for an alternate stance. You are reduced to calling people you disagree with “clowns”, and generalize the NIPCC findings to suit your position.
Very immature, and very sad.

kim says:
April 20, 2014 at 9:28 amUh, moshe, it’s paleontology. CO2 warms and greens the globe. Be thankful the level has risen.
The Early Bird shares the worm. Bon Appetit.
==========

Anthony Watts belatedly joins in with the lynch mob. He wanted to wield the axe to chop off Steve Mosher's head and rescue Craig Idso and says:
April 20, 2014 at 9:38 am
Mr. Mosher needs to learn the value of debate and alternate ideas. Don’t be a Mannic oppresive. 

Chad Wozniak says to hell with airing differences of opinion:
April 20, 2014 at 10:38 am
The only “clown” here is Steven Mosher, with his disingenuous attack on the real science offered by Dr. Idso. Steven, why don’t you just shut up and go away somewhere? Go find a place that provides you with no energy nor any of the other benefits of carbon-based civilization, and stay there. 

Mark Bofill comes to the rescue of Steve Mosher and says (excerpt):
April 20, 2014 at 10:59 am
Steven’s only saying what he often says one way or another, which is that skeptics should apply (where applicable) the same standards and criticisms to reports with conclusions we like as we do to reports with conclusions we do not like. As usual, it’s hard to argue with his point. 

Matthew W bemoans the fact that dissension diverts discussion away from unanimous applause and says:
April 20, 2014 at 11:34 am
It’s a real shame that some of the best topics here get little to no real disscission in the replies because most of the replies have to deal with Mosher saying something stupid. 

James Ard makes the point that Steve Mosher asks the impossible of fake sceptics and says:
April 20, 2014 at 1:24 pm
Did Mosher just imply that the onus is on us to prove their doomsday scenario is wrong? I thought he was smarter than that. 

thegriss reckons Steve Mosher ought to hang out with the science deniers not sceptics and says:
April 20, 2014 at 6:39 pm
Moshpit, you really should stick to low level journalism. ! The one thing you might be good at.
And ‘hangin’ with the crew from BEST isn’t helping your scientific credibility 

There were quite a few other comments diverted to Steve Mosher rather than Craig Idso's article. Some telling him in no uncertain terms to shut up and go away, others implying that he's wrong or a traitor to the cause or something. I won't bother with them.


Santa Baby doesn't understand science, but knows what he/she likes (or in this case, doesn't like) and says:
April 20, 2014 at 9:16 am
The whole climate theme is so political created by the democrats and Al gore, Obama etc.. in the USA that it’s vomiting to watch it.
Policy based science is what it really is. And policy based on policy based science is no longer a sign of a functional democracy?
USA better wake up and rid themself of this ideological corruption before it’s to late?

cnxtim copies and pastes her/his regular comment and once again builds a strawman. Does s/he know the difference between the troposphere and the upper layers of the atmosphere? Does s/he know that the greenhouse effect is in the troposphere not the upper atmosphere?  Has s/he ever heard of convection? S/he and says:
April 20, 2014 at 10:36 am
And can anyone here on either side of the CAGW debate please explain to me, by what physical process(es) CO2 generated at ground level by the burning of fossil fuels makes its way to the upper atmosphere to become a greenhouse gas? 

Chad Wozniak can't contain himself as a rare event has just taken place, he bursts out and says:
April 20, 2014 at 10:41 am
I just gave myself an idea – we skeptics are defenders of carbon-based civilization!

Terry Oldberg seems to think that science is divided according to party politics in the USA and says:
April 20, 2014 at 11:17 am
Among the news outlets that do not tolerate deviation from the party line are the San Francisco Chronicle and PBS News Hour. The other night, in reporting on global warming politics the latter organization presented its audience with two experts, each of whom presented the Democratic party line. Cancellation of one’s subscription to the Chronicle and contributions to public broadcasting stations would be appropriate responses.

Steve from Rockwood says:
April 20, 2014 at 4:14 pm
50 years from now Michael Mann and James Hansen will either be regarded as ahead of their time brilliant leaders of science who fought so bravely against the hoard of denying heathens … or … complete buffoons who duped so many with their faulty science and set the world’s great economies on a wild goose chase while so many were forced to remain in poverty. I’m leaning heavily toward the latter.

Paul Woland says:
April 20, 2014 at 4:29 pm
RACookPE1978:
Incidentally, the Pentagon thought that climate change was a serious threat even under bush. Do you think that was political manipulation as well? Then how do you explain it considering the fact that Bush never accepted the reality of climate change?
http://www.rense.com/general70/pepen.htm 

Which doesn't go down too well with the denialati, hunter says:
April 20, 2014 at 4:51 pm
Paul Woland, Argument from authority just makes you look rather ignorant. You seem to thrive on argument from authority, when you are not relying on condemnation by association (even when you have to fib about the association). 

To which Paul Woland responds and says:
April 20, 2014 at 4:59 pm
Hunter: My authority in this matter is science. When I mentioned the fact that Pentagon has accepted climate change as a reality for a long time, it was only to falsify the argument of RACookPE1978. I suspect the Pentagon make their choice in part through some institutional process that evaluates science as well. 

lordjim74, citing no evidence or authority at all other than himself, pipes up and says:
April 20, 2014 at 5:12 pm
Argument from authority needs a bit more than ‘my authority in this matter is science’. It requires (inter alia) a genuine consensus amongst qualified experts. There is no genuine consensus amongst qualified experts that co2 emissions will lead to CAGW, so the argument from authority fails. 

I kept looking for discussion of specific points raised by Craig Idso, but they were few and far between. Most comments related to politics, not science.  Or Steve Mosher. Or whether or not the oceans can warm from the top.
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Wednesday, December 18, 2013

List of scientists "respected in their field" - only @wattsupwiththat - take on the EPA

Sou | 10:06 AM Go to the first of 13 comments. Add a comment

This made me laugh.  Anthony Watts is all excited because a bunch of clowns have filed a brief supporting a whole mob of litigants to the US Supreme Court, who want to stop the EPA from regulating CO2 emissions.  This isn't the first time and probably won't be the last.

What caught my eye was this mob that Anthony Watts is promoting (archived here) are trying to pass themselves off as:
...highly regarded scientists and economists [who] have expertise in a wide array of fields implicated by this rulemaking, including climate research, weather modeling, physics, geology, statistical analysis, engineering, and economics. One or more of these scientists and economists has the relevant expertise to support every statement made in this brief. These scientists and economists all have publications in peer reviewed journals and are respected in their fields of expertise by their peers.

Look at the list, six of them have already graced the pages of HotWhopper, some several times.  I guess you could call that regarded, though not at all highly.  The list is below.  It reads like an excerpt from who's who of the extreme right wing of the denial machine.


EPA Endangerment Finding


What this motley lot are trying to argue in their writ is that greenhouse gases don't cause the greenhouse effect.  And they claim to be "respected"!  They take issue with the Endangerment Finding of the EPA and try to refute the lines of evidence described on page 66518 of the Rules and Regulations:
The attribution of observed climate change to anthropogenic activities is based on multiple lines of evidence. The first line of evidence arises from our basic physical understanding of the effects of changing concentrations of greenhouse gases, natural factors, and other human impacts on the climate system. The second line of evidence arises from indirect, historical estimates of past climate changes that suggest that the changes in global surface temperature over the last several decades are unusual. The third line of evidence arises from the use of computer-based climate models to simulate the likely patterns of response of the climate system to different forcing mechanisms (both natural and anthropogenic).

The tropospheric hotspot is a feature of warming from any forcing


First these fake sceptics go on and on about the tropospheric hot spot, which they wrongly characterise as evidence of greenhouse gas warming.  (It's not.  It's a feature of warming from any forcing, not just greenhouse gases, as explained at SkepticalScience and by Bart Verheggen).  Who knows why they pick on that and ignore the expanding oceans, the melting ice and all the other signs of global warming.  It's a strange point with which to lead off their argument.


Earth is heating up


Then they do make a switch to discussing surface temperature, arguing that because not everywhere on earth has heated up at the same rate it's not global warming.  Did I say they are nutters?  They get quite cheeky when they claim:
These data thus demonstrate that EPA’s second line of evidence—the claim that there has been unusual warming on a global, that is, worldwide, basis over the past several decades—is invalid.

Let's see about that:

Data sources: NASA GISTemp, NODC/NOAA Ocean Heat, U Colorado sea level, PIOMAS Arctic Ice



Observations are not inconsistent with climate model projections


They also try to argue that the models are "wrong".  In their writ they include a very weird chart describing it as:
Figure 5 contrasts the forecasts through 2025 with the actual trend line of global average surface temperature (GAST) data from the Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia (CRU) for 2000-2012 (identified as “HadCRUT4 Trend/Forecast” on the chart).:

Data source: the writ from the not respected


HadCRUT4 is observations not a forecast.  Maybe they meant with HadGEM or HadCM, in which case they couldn't argue that observations are out of kilter.  Either that or they are arguing that they've made observations of the future three years and this future they've already observed doesn't match their version of climate models.

Thing is, observations are within the range of modeled climate projections:

Source: IPCC AR5 WG1

Here is a chart of a CMIP3 model run, showing that periods of hiatus do show up in some runs - from realclimate.org.

Source: realclimate.org


CO2 is a waste by-product of burning fossil fuels


This mob surely can't be serious when they claim that CO2 isn't an "unwanted by-product" by arguing that it is indeed a waste by-product.  They make it sound as if they want to add CO2 to the atmosphere:
CO2 is not in any sense an unwanted by-product of the production of useful energy. Rather, the combustion of carbon based fuels to produce CO2, and the capture of the energy released by that process, is the whole idea....

And they can't do their case any good by arguing that 82% of energy production still emits CO2!
While a modest portion of energy production in the United States (and other countries in general) comes from non-carbon sources (nuclear, wind, solar, hydro), the proportion that comes from fossil fuels in the U.S. is approximately 82 percent (sic).

From the WUWT comments

Not too many fake sceptics at WUWT are as excited as Anthony Watts about this silly writ.  (Archived here.)

Bloke down the pub says:
December 17, 2013 at 9:49 am
They won’t be allowed to win that.


GoneWithTheWind says:
December 17, 2013 at 9:49 am
I wish them luck but I have no faith in the Supreme court as it is now staffed.

LT confusingly or confusedly calls for more regulation, not less:
December 17, 2013 at 9:55 am
That is good news, the EPA is a burden to society they need tighter regulations placed on them than even a BP refinery.

AleaJactaEst says:
December 17, 2013 at 10:02 am
pi**ing in the wind, snowball in Hell’s, US winning the World Cup, not a prayer, the Arctic will be ice free in our lifetime. You get the message about how much chance this has of succeeding.


NeedleFactory says:
December 17, 2013 at 10:03 am
SCOTUS accepts for hearing only about 5% of the requests for Writ of Certiorari.
Don’t get your hopes up.

pokerguy says:
December 17, 2013 at 10:35 am
“snowballs chance etc.”
Negative defeatists many of you. There are people out there fighting your battles. What are you guys doing, except whining?

Roger Sowell puts the writ in perspective and says:
December 17, 2013 at 1:05 pm
This is one of at least eight briefs filed in this case. This amicus brief is only advisory to the Court. The Court will consider the question or questions raised in the petitioners’ briefs.
More later, hopefully tonight 12-17-13.
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Sunday, October 20, 2013

Anthony Watts and his pseudo-science from the Heartland Institute

Sou | 4:23 PM Go to the first of 4 comments. Add a comment

I've already commented on the ridiculous "Not the IPCC" report with it's "CO2 is plant food" and other tired denier memes.  Anthony Watts is pushing it again today in an article on his denier blog, WUWT, written by four of the more vocal science rejectors: Fred Singer, Bob Carter, Willie Soon and Craig Idso.

Remember those names if you've never heard them before and triple check anything they say before accepting it.  They are all science disinformers.  It's what they do.

I don't have time to go through all their long article and it's too long for HotWhopper in any case.  Suffice to say that despite the title Anthony Watts gave it, it's neither scientific nor a logical critique.  If you put on your critical thinking cap you can see for yourself just how dumb this foursome thinks WUWT readers are. (Archived here.)

Here are a couple of examples under their heading of "IPCC retreats".  The IPCC extracts are in italics, the science deniers' words are not.  Bolding and italics is mine.


The Medieval Climate Anomaly was regional not global


2. “Continental-scale surface temperature reconstructions show, with high confidence, multi-decadal intervals during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (950-1250) that were in some regions as warm as in the late 20th century” (SPM-4).
What the Heartland Institute science deniers wrote: IPCC-related scientists have previously argued that the magnitude of the late twentieth century global warming exceeded that of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP). The notorious “hockey stick” featured in the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report, and still visible in the Fourth Assessment Report, appeared to erase the MWP from the historical temperature record by showing little temperature change for thousands of years followed by a sharp rise in the twentieth century.
Climate scientists know that the Medieval Climate Anomaly was regional in nature.  The IPCC statement is not in any way a contradiction of previous work.  Science rejectors are assuming that their readers will miss the words "in some regions".  Since the only people who take any notice of these ratbags are other people who reject science, they are probably correct in their assumption.   BTW I've discussed the Medieval Climate Anomaly a few times, for example here.


"It's the sun" is wrong, but the sun can affect climate


6. “The reduced trend in radiative forcing (between 1998 and 2012) is primarily due to volcanic eruptions and the timing of the downward phase of the 11-year solar cycle” (SPM-10).
What the Heartland Institute science deniers wrote: This statement marks the first time the IPCC has acknowledged that solar factors may play a determinative role in short-term climate variability.
This is a critically important concession to the views of the many independent scientists who have concluded that solar effects play a bigger role in controlling climate than does CO2 (NIPCC, Chapter 3).
The claim of the disinformers that the IPCC hasn't discussed solar radiation before is ridiculously wrong and so easy to check.  Just do a word search for the word "solar" in any of the past reports and you'll see that these disinformers are telling a bald-faced lie when they write:  This statement marks the first time the IPCC has acknowledged that solar factors may play a determinative role in short-term climate variability.

 There is no "concession".  These disinformers are making up stuff.  All IPCC reports discuss the role of solar radiation on climate.  How do these so-called scientists think the greenhouse effect works? Magic?

There's a good article on realclimate.org about attribution, which includes charts from previous reports so you can see for yourself about what is attributed to solar radiation.  Here's an animation of charts from the 1995 SAR and the 2001 TAR reports:

Source: RealClimate.org / IPCC



Below is just one example of what these pseudo-science quacks have described as "misleading or untrue" statements from the IPCC.


Many observed changes since the 1950s are unprecedented in decades to millenia


2. “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s many of the observed changes are unprecedented” (SPM-3).
What the Heartland Institute science deniers wrote: This statement is doubly untrue. The post-1950 warming shown by the Hadley record is of about the same magnitude and rate as the known natural warming between 1910 and 1940, and is therefore not unprecedented.
Here's the full statement in the Summary for Policy Makers (page SPM-3).
Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased (see Figures SPM.1, SPM.2, SPM.3 and SPM.4). {2.2, 2.4, 3.2, 3.7, 4.2–4.7, 5.2, 5.3, 5.5–5.6, 6.2, 13.2}
The IPCC report states that many of the observed changes are unprecedented - and note what the Heartland Institute employees left out.  The lying foursome say that's a lie because they reckon that they've found one thing that isn't unprecedented.  A prime example of a logical fallacy, which I'm sure HotWhopper readers, even some of the science deniers among you, will recognise.

The IPCC listed some specific observed changes that are unprecedented over decades to millenia.  And they've provided some figures to illustrate this as well as referred readers to the relevant sections of the reports. Here's just one example: it's hotter than ever in the modern record:

Data source: NASA


The denier foursome have cherry picked some changes that they argue are not unprecedented as if that negates the observed changes that are unprecedented.  They reckon there were some parts of the world that didn't warm as much as others.  Well, whoopy doo.  That doesn't mean that GLOBAL warming isn't happening.  I wouldn't mind betting they got a lot wrong even with their examples, but I can't be bothered checking because it's irrelevant.


Enough is enough


I've wasted enough time on these nincompoops.  If you want to see how much more idiotic twaddle they write, check out my take down of their ridiculous Executive Summary of their latest effort for the Heartland Institute's Not the IPCC report, or read this archived WUWT article and check their silly claims for yourself.

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Thursday, September 19, 2013

Heartland Institute's NIPCC science deniers make startling finds: "CO2 is plant food" and "it's the sun"

Sou | 6:06 PM Go to the first of 13 comments. Add a comment

The "Not the IPCC" crowd of science deniers from the Heartland Institute have released their latest report (NIPCC page archived here).  The main authors are listed as Craig D. Idso (USA), Robert M. Carter (Australia), S. Fred Singer (USA).  The full list includes people like Tim Ball, and denier Don Easterbrook and Cliff Ollier - so you can imagine the lack of quality and silliness their report contains.

It doesn't look as if they've come up with anything new from their last equally silly report.  I've listed their "summary of findings" from their "Summary for Policy Makers" (ie the tea party in the USA).  I've put their summary document up on Google docs to save you going to the NIPCC website.

They've covered a lot of SkepticalScience's climate myths.  Like many science deniers, they seem to use Skeptical Science's most common denier memes as a cheat sheet. This so-called "report" is a load of crock.  It's nothing more than a repeat and mishmash of some of the silliest denier memes that they used in their previous "reports" from "CO2 is plant food" to "it's the sun" to "it's not warming" to "it's warming but it's a recovery from the Little Ice Age".

Here is their Summary of NIPCC’s Findings, which they list as: Source: “Executive Summary,” Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science (Chicago, IL: The Heartland Institute, 2013).  I've made a brief comment for each of their claims, explaining why each is wrong.

"CO2 is only a weak greenhouse gas" - no, it's not!

False claim: Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is a mild greenhouse gas that exerts a diminishing warming effect as its concentration increases. 

Why it is false: CO2 is not mild.  It is the main greenhouse gas that controls earth's climate.  Although it has a smaller effect than water vapour in absolute terms, it is long-lived in the atmosphere.  A change in CO2 acts as a force on climate.  In response to the forcing, water vapour changes, known as a feedback.

"We don't understand the carbon cycle" - that's obvious!

False claim: Doubling the concentration of atmospheric CO2 from its pre-industrial level, in the absence of other forcings and feedbacks, would likely cause a warming of ~0.3 to 1.1°C, almost 50% of which must already have occurred. 

Why it is false: In the absence of any other feedbacks or forcings,a doubling of CO2 would cause a warming of around the same magnitude as a 2% increase in solar radiation.  This effect takes a long time - ultimately the time it takes to complete a carbon cycle - many millenia.  Therefore it is also wrong to claim that almost 50% of which "must already have occurred".

Source: Realclimate.org


"We're building a straw man" - question is why?

False claim: A few tenths of a degree of additional warming, should it occur, would not represent a climate crisis. 

 Why it is false: This is a strawman argument.  There has been and will continue to be much more warming than a "few tenths of a degree".  This is already causing problems for the world and it will get much worse if we do not cut emissions.


"We don't know what we're trying to argue" - well, that's obvious!

False claim: Model outputs published in successive IPCC reports since 1990 project a doubling of CO2 could cause warming of up to 6°C by 2100. Instead, global warming ceased around the end of the twentieth century and was followed (since 1997) by 16 years of stable temperature.

 Why it is false: Firstly the argument is very mixed up.  The doubling of CO2 is not the same as any projected surface warming by 2100.  We are on track to double atmospheric CO2 well before the end of this century, maybe triple it. Secondly, global warming has not stopped.  The first decade this century was the hottest on record, hotter than any decade in the twentieth century. In addition to surface and tropospheric temperatures, now even the deep ocean is warming up.

"It's natural" - and we're causing it!

False claim: Over recent geological time, Earth’s temperature has fluctuated naturally between about +4°C and -6°C with respect to twentieth century temperature. A warming of 2°C above today, should it occur, falls within the bounds of natural variability.

Why it is false: The causes of temperature variations in "recent geological time" are known.  The ice ages and deglaciations referred to are caused by changes in solar irradiance combined with changes in CO2 as a feedback (Milankovitch cycles).  The current changes are not a result of natural variability.  They are the result of a very rapid increase in atmospheric CO2 because of human activities - predominately the burning of fossil fuels.  The variation in temperature over the entire Holocene, since the beginning of civilisation is not likely to have exceeded +/- one degree at a maximum.  A rapid warming of 2°C above today would vastly exceed anything that could be caused by "natural variation" of anything other than our huge emissions of CO2.


"We don't believe science" - ummm - oka..a..ay

False claim: Though a future warming of 2°C would cause geographically varied ecological responses, no evidence exists that those changes would be net harmful to the global environment or to human well-being. 

Why it is false.  The main reason for the changes being so harmful is because they are happening so quickly.  Life on earth does not have time to adapt to the changes.  This is one reason we are now witnessing the beginning of the sixth major extinction event and why it's likely to speed up.  Global warming and the rapid rise of CO2 is affecting the oceans through warming of the seas plus acidification; it is affecting the land by melting ice, droughts, wildfires, heatwaves and intense precipitation.  And if you want know about potential direct harm to humans, read what the science says if web bulb temperatures were to exceed an achievable threshhold.

These changes are already causing harm and it will only get worse


"CO2 was higher before life on land existed" - errr ... so what?

False claim: At the current level of ~400 ppm we still live in a CO2-starved world. Atmospheric levels 15 times greater existed during the Cambrian Period (about 550 million years ago) without known adverse effects. 

Why it is false:  This is one of the sillier of this list of silly claims.  Humans didn't even exist 550,000,000 years ago when CO2 levels were 7000 ppm and neither did any other life on land.  Life did start to flourish in the late Cambrian - just not on land.  It wasn't till CO2 dropped and oxygen increased in the atmosphere that the land was colonised with plants and animals.

"Climate changes by magic" - no it doesn't!

False claim: The overall warming since about 1860 corresponds to a recovery from the Little Ice Age modulated by natural multidecadal cycles driven by ocean-atmosphere oscillations, or by solar variations at the de Vries (~208 year) and Gleissberg (~80 year) and shorter periodicities. 

Why it is false: Contrary to what Not the IPCC implies, climate does not change by magic.  Any "recovery" from the Little Ice Age has to be explained in terms of what caused the earth to warm.  Not only that, but it would have to explain why it continues to warm.  "Cycles" and "oscillations" mean that if temperature goes up from a cycle or oscillation it also goes back down again in the same cycle or oscillation.  Otherwise it's not a cycle or oscillation.  The fact is that energy is being built up in the earth system, which is causing the temperature of the air and oceans to rise, the ice to melt etc.

"It's not warming" - yes, it is!

False claim: Earth has not warmed significantly for the past 16 years despite an 8% increase in atmospheric CO2, which represents 34% of all extra CO2 added to the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution. 

Why it is false: Firstly the argument is a repeat of part of the one above. The first decade this century was the hottest on record, hotter than any decade in the twentieth century. In addition to surface temperatures, now even the deep ocean is warming up.  This is very significant!

"CO2 is plant food!" - ROTFL!

False Claim: CO2 is a vital nutrient used by plants in photosynthesis. Increasing CO2 in the atmosphere “greens” the planet and helps feed the growing human population. 

Why it is false: This is the silly denier meme of "CO2 is plant food".  C3 plants like wheat (but not maize) do respond to increased CO2, all other things being equal.  But rising CO2 makes other things not equal.  The downside working against "feeding the growing human population" are temperatures so hot that it kills crops; drought so long that crops, if they get planted at all, don't produce seed or fruit and die from dehydration; rain so intense that it washes away crops that have been planted or prevents farmers from getting into the paddocks to sow their crops; humidity such that plant disease flourishes and reduces productivity.


"It's not CO2" - yes, it is!

False claim: No close correlation exists between temperature variation over the past 150 years and humanrelated CO2 emissions. The parallelism of temperature and CO2 increase between about 1980 and 2000 AD could be due to chance and does not necessarily indicate causation. 

Why it is false: This one is just plain dumb.  Physics explains the greenhouse effect.  Paleoclimatology shows that when CO2 increases in the atmosphere the earth system heats up in response.  Modern climatology shows exactly the same thing.  I'm surprised at how these so-called scientists oscillate between accepting the greenhouse effect and denying it.  They are as bad as Tim Ball and his merry band of "sky dragon slayers".


"It's the sun" - not!

False claim: The causes of historic global warming remain uncertain, but significant correlations exist between climate patterning and multidecadal variation and solar activity over the past few hundred years. 

Why it is false: This is the "it's the sun" argument, which is dumb as.  The causes of historic global warming are explained by science.  The temperature keeps rising even though incoming solar radiation hasn't increased.  That's because atmospheric CO2 keeps rising.


 "We're heading for an ice age!" - they didn't go quite that far, but came close!
False claim: Forward projections of solar cyclicity imply the next few decades may be marked by global cooling rather than warming, despite continuing CO2 emissions. 

Why it is false: Even if there were to be a grand minimum it would only reduce the warming by a very small amount.  Earth will continue to heat up very quickly as we continue to pour more and more waste CO2 into the air, polluting the atmosphere for centuries.


Wrap up

Nothing new from the anti-science crowd at the Heartland Institute.  It's not suprising it hasn't caused a ripple in the mainstream media.  One could say the denier mob from Heartland Institute are showing symptoms of brain deficiency.

WUWT is late to the party

I haven't seen this posted on WUWT yet.  Anthony Watts is too busy telling everyone about what the new Abbott government is doing and undoing in Australia.


Note: The "Not the IPCC Report" from the US-based anti-science lobby group, the Heartland Institute, is part of a wider disinformation campaign (as described by Bloomberg) ahead of the release of the real IPCC report at the end of September.  Members of the anti-science brigade are coming out of the woodwork.  Graham Lloyd of the Australian did his bit and so did Mail hack "journalist" David Rose (and again) as well as right wing economist (and failed banker) Matt Ridley and science denying scientist, Judith Curry (and again).

What's going to bite these other disinformers in the proverbial is that they are all saying that the IPCC report is correct (although misrepresenting it).  What will this pack of science deniers say when the real report comes out?  I guess they'll do an about face and say that 97% of scientists are wrong and tabloid journos know better.  Self-contradiction is one of the hallmarks of a science denier.

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