The Global Warming Challenge

The May 2013 data has been released and shows the monthly temperature anomaly was below the 2007 average that is the starting point of the Armstrong-Gore graph for the fourth month running. So far, the total error of Mr Gore’s warming forecast is 21% larger than the error of Professor Armstrong’s no-change forecast. See the updated Climate Bet graph at right for the details.

It occurred to us that the bet would have been fairer to Mr Gore and the IPCC if we had used the data that were available to Mr Gore when he released his movie “An Inconvenient Truth”, during 2006, as the base-year for The Bet. (The base year that we use for The Bet, 2007, was the most recent data available when Professor Armstrong issued his challenge to Mr Gore.) And so we re-ran The Bet using the 2005 average (the latest full year available to Mr Gore when he released his movie) as the base year. Mr Gore’s forecast in the re-run is for a 0.03ºC p.a. increase from the 2005 average and Professor Armstrong’s is simply the 2005 average.

In the event, re-running The Bet from 2008 to date using 2005 as a base results in a total error for the Gore/IPCC alarming warming forecast that is 31% larger than the error of the no-change forecast. We think Mr Gore would likely prefer to stick with the current Bet arrangement, even though it is not as fair.

Bob Carter, Willie Soon, and William Briggs describe the evidence that changes in radiation from the Sun are the major source of changes in the Earth’s climate in a new article in Quadrant. The claim may seem uncontroversial, but global warming alarmists argue that human emissions of carbon dioxide have such a big effect that they dominate solar changes and are inexorably and dangerously boosting global mean temperatures. The Climate Bet is a test of these hypotheses, with Scott Armstrong “betting” on unpredictable changes in solar radiation and Al Gore on CO2-induced warming… and you know how that has been going.

On November 24, 2012, The New York Times published an article titled “Is this the End?,” which warned that manmade global warming is likely to destroy our civilization. The article was published nine days after the NYT published Cass Sunstein’s article advocating that policies on dangerous manmade global warming should be based on cost-benefit analyses, that the government had calculated a net benefit for costly policies, and that Ronald Reagan once agreed with a cost-benefit analysis. I was unable to contact Professor Sunstein to find the sources of the “cost-benefit analyses.” In an effort to calm panic-stricken readers, I wrote a Letter to the Editor at The New York Times revealing that while cost-benefit analysis is indeed the proper method, none has shown likely net harm arising from global warming. Evidence-based forecasts of dangerous warming and of the effects of alternative policies are missing. Strangely, my evidence-based forecasts that our civilization is not threatened by dangerous warming did not meet the NYT criteria of “All the news that’s fit to print.” If you know any NYT readers, please inform them that they are safe.

Wall Street Journal readers were spared panic. They had read No Need to Panic About Global Warming in January 2012.

Test your climate forecasting skills: It’s anonymous, and fun!

Go straight to the Quiz on the page here, make your forecasts for the two 25-year periods offline, then check the outcome and grade your response here.

To learn about the latest developments in climate forecasting, read the draft paper by Kesten Green, Scott Armstrong, and Willie Soon from the recent International Symposium on Forecasting in Boston (June 2012). The link to the paper is here, and supporting materials are towards the bottom of the page.

In a response to environmentalist Bill McKibben’s assertion in the Washington Post that severe weather was becoming more common and more severe as a consequence of human CO2 emissions, Donald Boudreaux of GMU pointed out in the Wall Street Journal that there has been no clear trend in severe weather and, more importantly, deaths in the U.S. have declined in recent decades despite an increasing population.

Boudreaux argues that the trend of fewer deaths is consistent with economic theory and much evidence that people are creative and resourceful in market economies and that this creativity and resourcefulness drives adaptions that result in people living longer.

So confident is Boudreaux in extrapolating this trend, that he has offered to bet McKibben, or Al Gore or Paul Krugman, $10,000 that “the average annual number of Americans killed by these violent weather events from 2011 through 2030 will be lower than it was from 1991 through 2010″. Boudreaux’s WSJ column is here.

The Polar Bear Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has reported that there was no change in the polar bear population in the most recent four-year period studied.

The finding is consistent with the conclusion of a 2008 paper by Scott Armstrong, Kesten Green, and Willie Soon (“Polar Bear Population Forecasts: A Public-Policy Forecasting Audit”) that “the inconsistent long-term trends in the polar bear population suggest that it is best to assume no trend in the long-term.”

The polar bear population finding contrasts with Senator Boxer’s hearings in January 2008 in which she expressed the view that the number of polar bears would decline rapidly. Professor Armstrong offered to bet her that the number of polar bears would not decline, but she did not respond to the challenge.

The Polar Bear group’s report can be found here.

The Armstrong, Green, and Soon paper on polar bear population forecasts can be found here.

We have updated our Climate Bet graph (right) with the latest data from UAH. After 39 months of the bet, Armstrong’s scientific forecast has been more accurate than “Al Gore’s” IPCC forecast for 59% of the forecasts.

Research on Forecasting for the Manmade Global Warming Alarm

Testimony to Committee on Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Energy and Environment on “Climate Change: Examining the processes used to create science and policy” – March 31, 2011

Professor J. Scott Armstrong, University of Pennsylvania,

with Kesten C. Green, University of South Australia,

and Willie Soon, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Abstract

The validity of the manmade global warming alarm requires the support of scientific forecasts of (1) a substantive long-term rise in global mean temperatures in the absence of regulations, (2) serious net harmful effects due to global warming, and (3) cost-effective regulations that would produce net beneficial effects versus alternatives policies, including doing nothing.

Without scientific forecasts for all three aspects of the alarm, there is no scientific basis to enact regulations. In effect, the warming alarm is like a three-legged stool: each leg needs to be strong. Despite repeated appeals to global warming alarmists, we have been unable to find scientific forecasts for any of the three legs.

We drew upon scientific (evidence-based) forecasting principles to audit the forecasting procedures used to forecast global mean temperatures by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—leg “1” of the stool. This audit found that the IPCC procedures violated 81% of the 89 relevant forecasting principles.

We also audited forecasting procedures, used in two papers, that were written to support regulation regarding the protection of polar bears from global warming —leg “3” of the stool. On average, the forecasting procedures violated 85% of the 90 relevant principles.

The warming alarmists have not demonstrated the predictive validity of their procedures. Instead, their argument for predictive validity is based on their claim that nearly all scientists agree with the forecasts. This count of “votes” by scientists is not only an incorrect tally of scientific opinion, it is also, and most importantly, contrary to the scientific method.

We conducted a validation test of the IPCC forecasts that were based on the assumption that there would be no regulations. The errors for the IPCC model long-term forecasts (for 91 to 100 years in the future) were 12.6 times larger than those from an evidence-based “no change” model.

Based on our own analyses and the documented unscientific behavior of global warming alarmists, we concluded that the global warming alarm is the product of an anti-scientific political movement.

Having come to this conclusion, we turned to the “structured analogies” method to forecast the likely outcomes of the warming alarmist movement. In our ongoing study we have, to date, identified 26 similar historical alarmist movements. None of the forecasts behind the analogous alarms proved correct. Twenty-five alarms involved calls for government intervention and the government imposed regulations in 23. None of the 23 interventions was effective and harm was caused by 20 of them.

Our findings on the scientific evidence related to global warming forecasts lead to the following recommendations:

1. End government funding for climate change research.

2. End government funding for research predicated on global warming (e.g., alternative energy; CO₂ reduction; habitat loss).

3. End government programs and repeal regulations predicated on global warming.

4. End government support for organizations that lobby or campaign predicated on global warming.

Full report

The latest, January 2011, temperature date is displayed in our updated Climate Bet graph at right. Neither our graph representing the period of the bet, nor the full satellite temperature series graph compiled by Roy Spencer provide evidence of alarming warming.

Does that mean that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are falling, as would be consistent with the Al Gore’s and the IPCC modelers’ previously expressed beliefs?

Well, no.

(They did tell us that people need to reduce their CO2 emissions in order to stop the global average temperature from increasing dangerously, didn’t they?)

NOAA’s data shows that atmospheric CO2 increased in January, as it has been for the duration of the NOAA record.

We suggest that disinterested and unbiased observers will wonder whether CO2 changes are really such an important influence on climate as Mr Gore would like to have us believe. They might further wonder how costly policies to reduce CO2 emissions can possibly be justified.

On the 8^th of February 2011, 36 scientists wrote to Congress to challenge the alarming predictions of dangerous manmade global warming made in an earlier (28 January) letter from 18 scientists. Here is the text of their letter:

February 8, 2011

To the Members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate:

In reply to “The Importance of Science in Addressing Climate Change”

On 28 January 2011, eighteen scientists sent a letter to members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate urging them to “take a fresh look at climate change.” Their intent, apparently, was to disparage the views of scientists who disagree with their contention that continued business-as-usual increases in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions produced from the burning of coal, gas, and oil will lead to a host of cataclysmic climate-related problems.

We, the undersigned, totally disagree with them and would like to take this opportunity to briefly state our side of the story.

The eighteen climate alarmists (as we refer to them, not derogatorily, but simply because they view themselves as “sounding the alarm” about so many things climatic) state that the people of the world “need to prepare for massive flooding from the extreme storms of the sort being experienced with increasing frequency,” as well as the “direct health impacts from heat waves” and “climate-sensitive infectious diseases,” among a number of other devastating phenomena. And they say that “no research results have produced any evidence that challenges the overall scientific understanding of what is happening to our planet’s climate,” which is understood to mean their view of what is happening to Earth’s climate.

To these statements, however, we take great exception. It is the eighteen climate alarmists who appear to be unaware of “what is happening to our planet’s climate,” as well as the vast amount of research that has produced that knowledge.

For example, a lengthy review of their claims and others that climate alarmists frequently make can be found on the Web site of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (see http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/prudentpath/prudentpath.php). That report offers a point-by-point rebuttal of all of the claims of the “group of eighteen,” citing in every case peer-reviewed scientific research on the actual effects of climate change during the past several decades.

If the “group of eighteen” pleads ignorance of this information due to its very recent posting, then we call their attention to an even larger and more comprehensive report published in 2009, Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). That document has been posted for more than a year in its entirety at www.nipccreport.org.

These are just two recent compilations of scientific research among many we could cite. Do the 678 scientific studies referenced in the CO2 Science document, or the thousands of studies cited in the NIPCC report, provide real-world evidence (as opposed to theoretical climate model predictions) for global warming-induced increases in the worldwide number and severity of floods? No. In the global number and severity of droughts? No. In the number and severity of hurricanes and other storms? No.

Do they provide any real-world evidence of Earth’s seas inundating coastal lowlands around the globe? No. Increased human mortality? No. Plant and animal extinctions? No. Declining vegetative productivity? No. More frequent and deadly coral bleaching? No. Marine life dissolving away in acidified oceans? No.

Quite to the contrary, in fact, these reports provide extensive empirical evidence that these things are not happening. And in many of these areas, the referenced papers report finding just the opposite response to global warming, i.e., biosphere-friendly effects of rising temperatures and rising CO2 levels.

In light of the profusion of actual observations of the workings of the real world showing little or no negative effects of the modest warming of the second half of the twentieth century, and indeed growing evidence of positive effects, we find it incomprehensible that the eighteen climate alarmists could suggest something so far removed from the truth as their claim that no research results have produced any evidence that challenges their view of what is happening to Earth’s climate and weather.

But don’t take our word for it. Read the two reports yourselves. And then make up your own minds about the matter. Don’t be intimidated by false claims of “scientific consensus” or “overwhelming proof.” These are not scientific arguments and they are simply not true.

Like the eighteen climate alarmists, we urge you to take a fresh look at climate change. We believe you will find that it is not the horrendous environmental threat they and others have made it out to be, and that they have consistently exaggerated the negative effects of global warming on the U.S. economy, national security, and public health, when such effects may well be small to negligible.

Signed by:

Syun-Ichi Akasofu, University of Alaska1

Scott Armstrong, University of Pennsylvania

James Barrante, Southern Connecticut State University1

Richard Becherer, University of Rochester

John Boring, University of Virginia

Roger Cohen, American Physical Society Fellow

David Douglass, University of Rochester

Don Easterbrook, Western Washington University1

Robert Essenhigh, The Ohio State University1

Martin Fricke, Senior Fellow, American Physical Society

Lee Gerhard, University of Kansas1

Ulrich Gerlach, The Ohio State University

Laurence Gould, University of Hartford

Bill Gray, Colorado State University1

Will Happer, Princeton University2

Howard Hayden, University of Connecticut1

Craig Idso, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change

Sherwood Idso, USDA, U.S. Water Conservation Laboratory1

Richard Keen, University of Colorado

Doral Kemper, USDA, Agricultural Research Service1

Hugh Kendrick, Office of Nuclear Reactor Programs, DOE1

Richard Lindzen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology2

Anthony Lupo, University of Missouri

Patrick Michaels, Cato Institute

Donald Nielsen, University of California, Davis1

Al Pekarek, St. Cloud State University

John Rhoads, Midwestern State University1

Nicola Scafetta, Duke University

Gary Sharp, Center for Climate/Ocean Resources Study

S. Fred Singer, University of Virginia1

Roy Spencer, University of Alabama

George Taylor, Past President, American Association of State Climatologists

Frank Tipler, Tulane University

Leonard Weinstein, National Institute of Aerospace Senior Research Fellow

Samuel Werner, University of Missouri1

Thomas Wolfram, University of Missouri1

1 – Emeritus or Retired

2 – Member of the National Academy of Sciences

Endorsed by:

Rodney Armstrong, Geophysicist

Edwin Berry, Certified Consulting Meteorologist

Joseph Bevelacqua, Bevelacqua Resources

Carmen Catanese, American Physical Society Member

Roy Clark, Ventura Photonics

John Coleman, Meteorologist KUSI TV

Darrell Connelly, Geophysicist

Joseph D’Aleo, Certified Consulting Meteorologist

Terry Donze, Geophysicist1

Mike Dubrasich, Western Institute for Study of the Environment

John Dunn, American Council on Science and Health of NYC

Dick Flygare, QEP Resources

Michael Fox, Nuclear industry/scientist

Gordon Fulks, Gordon Fulks and Associates

Ken Haapala, Science & Environmental Policy Project

Martin Hertzberg, Bureau of Mines1

Art Horn, Meteorologist

Keith Idso, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change

Jay Lehr, The Heartland Institute

Robert Lerine, Industrial and Defense Research and Engineering1

Peter Link, Geologist

James Macdonald, Chief Meteorologist for the Travelers Weather Service1

Roger Matson, Society of Independent Professional Earth Scientists

Tony Pann, Meteorologist WBAL TV

Ned Rasor, Consulting Physicist

James Rogers, Geologist1

Norman Rogers, National Association of Scholars

Thomas Sheahen, Western Technology Incorporated

Andrew Spurlock, Starfire Engineering and Technologies, Inc.

Leighton Steward, PlantsNeedCO2.org

Soames Summerhays, Summerhays Films, Inc.

Charles Touhill, Consulting Environmental Engineer

David Wojick, Climatechangedebate.org

1 – Emeritus or Retired