IPCC – too much hype and not enough science?

Blowing in the wind - another study shows carbon emissions are not as damaging as climate scientists proclaim. (credit: phault)

The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently announced another doomsday prediction about the consequences of man made climate change, this time we’ll all be submerged by floods, blown away by storms and then suffer lingering droughts and all because of our carbon emissions. Sadly once again it appears they’ve got it wrong.

Not content with predicting hundreds of millions of people tramping around the globe to avoid rising sea levels and islands nations disappearing under the wave by last year – which hasn’t happened – they are now once again trying to predict a future climate based on false assumptions.

IPCC climate claims undermined yet again.

There’s a group of us that run a sweep-stake whenever the IPCC make a predication to see how quickly their claims are undermined by actual science rather than supported by the politico-science of climate alarmists. It hasn’t taken long before another piece of real science has come out to undermine the IPCC claims of man made climate change catastrophe being just over the horizon.

A lot of people are interested in the science behind climate change – and no one is denying that the climate is changing – but they are not dependant on receiving funds from the political or green lobby. This group are more likely to look for reasons behind climate change than just human emissions. That’s not to say we should not tackle air pollution, hundreds of children will suffer asthma attacks or breathing problems today because of emissions from cars on the school run, but lets not try and make claims about carbon emissions that have no hard evidence.

Planetary and solar processes drive the changing climate.

There are much larger influences on the climate than humans. Planetary and atmospheric processes together with solar energy changes have much greater influences that human activities. There’s no greater proof of that than the seasons – just watch the Frozen Planet and see how much the Antarctic and the Arctic changes between Summer and Winter. Natural processes drive the weather and the climate on Earth not humans.

The natural processes are dynamic but many claim that carbon emissions since the dawn of the industrial revolution is the reason for rising temperatures. This is mis-leading though as yet another new study published in Science has shown. The researchers looked back at historic temperatures from the last Ice Age – the Last Glacial Maximum - about 21,000 years ago. Then the atmosphere was very different with a third less carbon in the atmosphere.

New study reduces the impact of carbon on global temperatures.

The researchers used known climate and atmospheric data gained from ice cores and other studies and included them in the mathematical models used by climate sciences to predict temperature changes if CO2 doubled from pre-industrialisation levels. What they found was that the current climate models significantly overestimated the rise in temperatures from carbon emissions.

Previous IPCC reports predicted temperatures rises of between 2 and 4.5 degrees Celcius (C) with an average of 3C. Some climate studies have gone as far as predicted temperatures rises of 10C if carbon levels doubled in the atmosphere. What the new study found was that climate sensitivity to increased carbon was about 2.4C.

One of the things that is most noticeable about the climate change debate is that over time the man made climate supporters have tried to argue a worsening situation and a hyped up dangerous future while pure science and scientist unconnected with the big money available to climate alarmists are bringing out more and more evidence to demonstrate an ever reducing impact of human activity on the climate.

Sunspots are just one reason for changing climate.

There’s lots of natural processes at play that impact on the Earth’s climate and small changes can have big impacts. If we just look at one aspects of solar processes - that of the 11 year sun spot cycle we can see a very good correlation between the Sun’s energy and rising temperatures since the 1800′s which is the period that climate alarmists use as evidence that it’s human activity and industrialisation that is causing global temperature increases.

Each sunspot cycle has a higher average energy output than previous one.

Since the last solar minimum ending in 1715 the sun has been going through a series of 11 year Sunspot cycles. Each 11 year sun spot cycle has been increasing in energy output. The 11 year running average of the energy output fits in very nicely with the rising temperatures that we have encountered since that time. Compare the running average of Sun energy output with the 5 year average temperature on the graphs below and you will see a very nice match up of the trends.

average energy output and sunspot cycles

average climate tempurature rises

Research team predicted temperature trend in the 1970′s.

There are many different sunspots cycles one of them is the 80 year cycle and in the 70′s – a time of discussion of not global warming but global cooling – a Danish team headed by glaciologist Willi Dansgaard used the 80 year cycle to try and make some long term predictions. He concluded that the cooling of the 1970′s would continue for another decade or so and this would be followed by 30 years or so of warming before cooling began again.

Cooling did continue till the 80′s when the climate started to warm significantly for 30 years. now those rising temperatures are, as predicted, beginning to slow down. We shall see over the next few years whether this slow down in temperature rises lead to a falling in global temperatures as predicted. We’re already seeing climate scientists saying that we should look at ocean temperatures and not air or ground temperatures as being more accurate. But that’s because of the latency of the oceans is showing global temperatures continuing to rise. As the ocean body took longer to start warming so it is going to take longer to cool down.

Climate scientists increasing using ocean temperatures as atmospheric temperature fail to support their arguments.

As air and ground temperatures start to fall quicker watch out for climate scientists increasingly using ocean temperatures as a way to demonstrate that global warming is still with us and caused by human activity. Ocean temperatures will start to fall about 4 or 5 years after atmospheric temperatures start to fall and that will happen fairly soon.

But sunspots are only one aspect of natural processes that influence the Earth. The Earth’s path around the Sun is not set and can vary between being nearly circular to being elliptical of upto 5 degrees – it’s currently about 1.7. Even small changes in our orbit around the Sun can have big changes to our climate. Then there’s the changing magnetic field off the Earth. It long overdue for a reversal and there’s some interesting things happening with a magnetic anomaly just of the coast of south America at the moment. Changing magnetic fields changes the amount of cosmic radiation reaching the planet and that can change the climate on Earth.

Next 5 years or so will make or break climate alarmists arguments.

We’ll know within the next 5 years or so which is the most important sunspot cycles or human emissions where climate change is concerned. The latest reports seem to indicate that we are going into a solar minimum any day now. Solar Cycle 23 was extremely long – over 13 years in length – and Solar Cycle 24 had barely begun before the first signs of Solar Cycle 25 began to appear.

It’s not going to be too long before we discover who has made the more realistic predictions about the climate – the IPCC or the Danish team. Get your bets on as to whether it’s going to get warmer or colder over the next 5 years because the roulette wheel of climate change is spinning and the ball has been released.