"It's Our Fault" | Doubts | Did Gore Lie? | Emperors New Clothes | Temp | -records | -distorted. | IPCC vs Science | CO2 basics | Corruption?   Heart of the controversy | Cosmic Rays | Solar Driver | Key Science | CO2 follows temp | No Runaway Temp | CO2 Lynching | Truth of CO2 cycle Missing MWP | Hockey Stick | Scientific Malpractice | Urban Heat Islands | False Alarms | Face the Problem | Solutions? | Summaries | Glossary

Introduction

Perusal of "obvious" evidence and "scientists' reports" converted many people from being sceptical of Anthropogenic Global Warming, to believing it was true - this happened to me, watching Al Gore's film. However, further perusal of "neglected" or "suppressed" evidence leads to a U-turn back to an informed scepticism. "Climategate", the public exposure of emails confirming suspected malpractices in key areas of Climate Science, and the whitewash "reviews", occurred after I first wrote this, and amplified the public disillusion with the official science. My Primer is a pretty unique "confessions of an ex-warmist" aimed at intelligent non-scientists as well as scientists from other disciplines, not too long/erudite nor too short/simplistic.

This is a personal story of awakening, as well as a primer in Climate Science. It is not officially "peer-reviewed", but it has had excellent unofficial peer-reviewing from both supporters and critics. It works from a lot of muddy, confusing evidence, to gain clarity in the science, so that effectively one becomes a scientist as one progresses with reading this and thinking about it. Thus you can reach your own informed conclusions about the science as well as the politics. You are protected from hitting a brick wall of technical language, or paywalls, or contradictory reports without clues. It is vital to grasp the scientific basics, to see where orthodoxy fails on science that has been taken for granted and trusted. Checking contradictory sources, and continuing to question evidence, is essential to discovering the truth. The primer is loaded with references; but no amount of good references is good enough for someone whose mind is already made up. Nobody is sponsoring me.

If you cannot trust evidence unless it comes from a top scientist with whom you cannot pull rank, watch Professor Carter show how CO2 is not causing Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW), parts one, two, three and four. This fairly short, fact-packed, crystal-clear science U-tube may be all you need. Back this up with more videos. Look at the evidence in Akasofu: Two Natural Components of the Recent Climate Change and Segalstad: Atmospheric CO2 and Global Warming (both large pdf files). Learn a overview of facts: Global Warming Science is a powerful resource: good science and good links. Discover IPCC's scientific limitations with a top solar scientist. Study the 850 Peer-Reviewed Papers supporting scepticism of "Man-Made" Global Warming alarmism. Friendly for non-scientists is a simple introduction. Read the short but forthright Skeptics' Handbook that clarifies the key issues for debate. An introduction similar to this one but written by a trained scientist, is Great Global Warming Hoax. Statisticians show the predicted hotspot is missing, though it is essential to the CAGW hypothesis. A brilliant amateur disproves the two basic CAGW hypotheses with Cause and Effect. The NIPCC is written by experts to match the contents, and beat the expertise, of IPCC itself. Here is a whole list of introductions. More exist. Read our quotes from top scientists that include Nobel laureates. Take your pick.  Nobody can truthfully say that scientists sceptical of manmade global warming are kooks or crooks, or simply in the pay of Big Exxxx, or that there is a consensus - as Al Gore claimed.

I have, throughout, tried to judge the science on its own merits, not by whether it has been peer-reviewed and supported by official science. This is an important point. There's a lot of evidence that crucial work in Climate Science has been refused publication in peer-reviewed science literature, not because it's bad science but because it challenges "authority" and vested interests. Climate Science is not the only area of science to have this problem. The time for debate in Science is never over. Important ideas always bubble up to be explored, long before formal studies. Often even the experts disagree. It is quite normal for important new work to be rubbished at first. Since climate sceptics have been shut out of mainstream publication and acceptance so extensively and crucially (as Climategate shows), they have turned to websites and blogs, to share more and more evidence that contradicts "manmade global warming". If you have evidence to query or improve anything here - please contact me. I've done my best, but I'm still learning and I still make silly mistakes sometimes.

Now we'll turn the clock back to before Climategate 17 Nov 2009, to tell my story.

*******************************************

I became alarmed by seeing An Inconvenient Truth

In September 2007 I became very concerned about global warming after seeing Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth. He showed a graph which is a "hockey stick" shape, showing a millennium of steady global temperatures, followed by a dramatic temperature rise as the twentieth century progressed. A second graph shows CO2 levels rising inexorably from 1958 when Keeling started CO2 measurements. Al Gore showed the temperature "hockey stick" together with Keeling's compelling zigzag graph, to demonstrate how the two had risen together. He then showed disasters worldwide, including Hurricane Katrina, which are all apparently getting worse as temperatures rise. He said:

The message was reinforced for me by top NASA scientist James Hansen describing catastrophic levels of polar ice melt. I always checked evidence - and my checks seemed to confirm the science. As I lived on the Somerset levels, a huge area as flat and low as Holland, the picture hit home. Holland would disappear completely in this new Noah's Flood. How are we to cut back CO2 soon enough? Cope with disaster? What are we bequeathing our children? How can I begin to wake people up?

That month, I changed from back-street thinker to 200% committed activist. I discovered Transition Towns, which are developing positive, creative ways to cope with Peak Oil and Global Warming. I read many science websites, which all told me that those who still denied we were causing Global Warming were ignorant, in denial, or in the pay of big oil. I found clear answers to all the sceptics' issues. I got to learn the chief sceptics' names: who to counter, and how.

What's up doc? temperatures falling despite CO2 rising..?

I noticed things in the climate forums that I'd passed over before. I noticed unexplained anomalies in the most basic data. IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change) use the following graph showing global temperature rise from 1860 to now. Their original bright red/blue vertical bars are highly distracting, so I've toned them all down to pale gray. When the powerful colours are removed, it is much easier to see that the temperature also rises steeply from 1910 to 1940 when CO2 output was far lower. One starts looking without being spoon-fed. Ah yes, temperature decreases from 1940 to 1970. So what was the meaning of the vertical bars changing from "BLUE" to "RED" as they cross a "zero" line? What zero? Why?

...for the splice of this 150 years' thermometer record onto a millennium of "proxy" temperature measurements, that produced the infamous "hockey stick". This icon was used prominently by IPCC 2001. I started Googling for evidence of other views - still trying to avoid the "baddies" like Lord Monckton and the Heartland Institute who were in the pay of "big oil"... I found this Gallup poll - it is out of date - but was it true then, and is it true now, that there wasn't the consensus among scientists that Al Gore claimed when he made his film? Here's a 2006 poll... but it's from Heartland... oh dear... is it fair or not?

Help! but the nineties were the warmest years of last century? What, 1930's were warmer... oh, in the US... but New York has only got warmer now because it's a city... and oh my goodness, it was even warmer, according to the oxygen isotope records, in the Medieval Warm Period... even warmer in the Roman Warm Period... even warmer in the Minoan Warm Period. Is there other evidence for this? Roman remains under glaciers? Greenland buildings buried in permafrost? well, yes...

Oh no! Al Gore has portrayed a totally misleading picture!

Suddenly I mistrusted the whole of Al Gore's message in An Inconvenient Truth. His claim of scientific consensus over global warming now sounded false: I'd found reasonable-sounding scientists who disagreed. It appeared that the "hockey stick" graph he used could be false. He maintained that CO2 is driving temperature change now, despite the visible lack of correlation in the recent temperature / CO2 graph; then he insinuated that the geological records show that CO2 has always driven temperature changes - yet you cannot tell from his graphs which drives which, if at all, or whether both have another driver. In fact, the records show that CO2 lags behind big temperature changes by around 800 years - but on a geological time scale, this lag is so small that you don't see it unless you look close.

Gore made claims of "extreme weather" that will happen as CO2 rises - accelerating sea level rise, more droughts here, floods there, tornadoes, serious hurricanes (Katrina was timely), glaciers melting, ice-sheets cracking up, the Gulf Stream shutting down, heatwaves killing people, tropical diseases spreading, lakes drying out, polar bears dying out... all supposedly already happening and likely to getting worse through our global warming. He calls carbon dioxide a pollutant.

In my new searches, however, I discovered that... every single claim of An Inconvenient Truth is "cherrypicking", false, or otherwise critically misleading...

...as has been shown well in "35 Errors in AIT" by Lord Monckton, "Falsehoods in Gore's AIT" by William Johnson, "Unmasking AIT" by William Kininmonth, and "Convenient Fibs" by Prof. Rossiter. Here's a short video of scientists challenging Al Gore. Check the evidence yourself: don't bypass Monckton because you've heard that he is untrustworthy, as I once did (that's ad hominem and a great way to avoid the truth). Here was weighty, informed evidence on all counts against Al Gore, that I could not refute - however much I might try. Suddenly - there was a mass of evidence that contradicts every single claim for Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming.

The Emperor's New Clothes

So was the Emperor of Global Warming naked? Everywhere I now looked, I was seeing the evidence differently.

How could I have been so mistaken? Was I really that mistaken? How could Al Gore be so untruthful? How could he have slipped through the checks and balances of Science, if he really was that misled or twisted? How could so many scientists be so mistaken? Perhaps, if I looked harder, I'd find that science did have answers? For a while I bounced from one side to the other as challenge after challenge appeared. But every time I dug deeper, I found more bad science, more evidence that there was no CAGW. So what does this say about those who have promoted a misleading, expensive science where the prime evidence disappears in every direction? Could scientists say they had been deceived or pressured? Did any experience a "Damascus" awakening? How was I going to avoid being ignored or trashed as a shill of "big oil", a gullible newcomer, a heretic who "cannot deal with the real science"? And how was I to channel my distress and outrage in positive ways? How was I to stand up for the truth with courtesy, when I was uncovering what now looked like mass hysteria, stupidity, ignorance, pretence, bullying, and even fraud?

I started to discover I was not alone - I found articles like "how can so many be so wrong?" and "discrimination & job loss" and "confessions of an ex-IPCC reviewer" and "alarmist tactics & funding" and "Wikipedia disinformation" and "I devoted six years to carbon accounting" and "The Green Inquisition" and saddest of all "The Lynching of CO2 - the Innocent Source of Life". And, despite the official extreme reluctance to even mention these information sources by name, lest - God forbid - I go and look for myself, I found Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, and the gates were open to connect with like minds both amateur and highly professional, and to explore for myself the research that Al Gore had concealed and denigrated.

Many scientists started out honestly believing there was a serious greenhouse warming effect from rising CO2 levels, and that the increase in CO2 levels was due to us. But there is masses of evidence that does NOT fit CO2 raising temperature. And... CORRELATION DOES NOT PROVE CAUSATION OR EVEN CONNECTION.

Let's look at the evidence for ourselves...

We can make wise choices instead of uncertain and expensive choices which depend on small teams of experts with possibly vested interests, by grasping the key science ourselves. Knowledge is power. sceptics' issues have been rebutted by New Scientist... But... Climate Skeptic appears to have rebutted all of New Scientist's rebuttals... Which is right? We need to be willing to examine the evidence in many different disciplines that contribute to Climate Science, and see where they fit together. Thankfully, the start is very easy. Many "experts" seem to have not noticed, or have ignored, the fundamental anomalies in the temperature records we suspected above, evidence that is right under our noses. Let's look further...

Central England Temperature (CET) is the world's longest continuous temperature record. Now although recent temperatures there look quite high, past temperatures have at times been almost as high... and have increased faster and more dramatically than in the last century... and now we might well suspect there may be a problem with uncorrected urban heat, since the US Military Academy record above shows no overall temperature rise - whereas nearby New York does.

De Bilt is another long record from the Netherlands. Difference of fluctuation patterns between winter and summer is marked. Remarkably, recent mean annual temperatures seem no different from those between 1850 and 1950.

Eight long European records: there is a remarkable consistency with which they bear each other out, thus confirming the trustworthiness of each individual record. Again, current temperatures are no higher than temperatures seen before on several occasions between 1780 and the present time.

Difference between raw and final- what? Are these records not what they seem? Why are recent temperatures raised? Why so much? John Daly picked out interesting and trustworthy records from all corners of the globe, especially rural records, and made them available. He did sterling work before he died, rescuing the real Climate Science - a real gift to the next generation. He uses the GISS dataset. Both "raw" and "adjusted" sets are accessible at GISS - but not the adjustments code. H'mmm...

Armagh vs CET: Armagh is rural and close enough to CET to be comparable over this long time span. Aha, there appears to be a slight unquantified urban heat rise exaggerating CET.

...and let's cast the net wide enough to get the whole picture...

Global averate temperatures: 1850 is as far back as we can go to reasonably estimate a "global average" from thermometers direct. It looks as if there is clear evidence of a 60-year cycle, with 30 years warming followed by 30 years cooling. Is it possible that the overall warming would disappear if urban warming was properly subtracted?

1998 temperature anomalies for the troposphere (region of clouds) and lower stratosphere (above the clouds). Anomaly signifies a temperature different from a chosen "normal"; thus the red areas in the Arctic only indicate some lessening of the normal cold; they do not indicate warmth; moreover, Antarctica has basically cooled, not warmed. H'mmmm... the models said that warming would be more extreme in polar regions... The troposphere shows a balance between warming and cooling, while the lower stratosphere has been cooling a lot, particularly over Antarctica.

Arctic temperature patterns amplify global patterns, show the solar connection strongly, and do not show the expected CO2 correlation (above right). Note the huge annual fluctuations of sea ice (below left, and at Cryosphere Today). Here is an excellent source of information; see also my Polar information page.

The Arctic is quite different to Antarctica. Its sea ice has always been subject to huge fluctuations, and the claims of "unprecedented melt!" are untrue if we look for evidence before 1979 when satellite records started. US submarines visited the North Pole regularly. Amundsen sailed the Northwest Passage in 1906, and Nordenskjiold sailed the Northeast Passage in 1878. Anecdotes, history, archaeology, pre-CAGW and post-CAGW science from Greenland, Alaska, and northern Canada should not be dismissed. Evidence shows a cultivated medieval Greenland still frozen in permafrost, many early navigations of the North-West Passage, a warmer Greenland in the 1930's, ice-free Arctic Ocean, etc.

Antarctica: overall, this huge continent has cooled in recent years - claims of warming overall are mistaken, and its icecap and sea ice have grown. Those who suggest the growth of sea ice is due to "ozone hole" issues are "robustly" answered in the negative here. I answer the Steig 2009 nonsense about the continent "warming"; intrepid amateurs O'Donnell et al publish a peer-reviewed paper. The warming spots are volcanic areas and there are warm ocean currents from further north, affecting the maritime Antarctic Peninsula where the well-publicised slight warming actually occurred. There may also be a very good reason why Antarctica cooled as the planet warmed - see Svensmark.

The global picture: the greatest warming is in the vicinity of the North Magnetic Pole, but there is also cooling: the greatest cooling is in the vicinity of the South Magnetic Pole. All this seems very unpredicted, and it has the feel of cosmic dynamics at work, things we do not yet understand, that may involve the Sun's sphere of influence as well as our own magnetosphere. It really feels less and less like the work of humankind.

The record keepers: above right are three different global records, MSU (satellite), GHCN and HadCRUT3, with differences increasing up to an extraordinary 0.3 °C since 1979. When we consider that the total temperature increase over a century is only 0.7 °C, this is a worrying difference. Note that the satellite temperature is the lowest, adding suspicion to the presence of undetected urban heat effects in the other two records.

Psychology underpinning the keeping of records: James Hansen keeps the NASA GISS global temperature records (above left). Hansen came to this from astrophysics where it was believed (almost certainly mistakenly) that the hot little planet Venus was suffering runaway warming from the greenhouse effect of its thick CO2 mantle. Hansen's projected temperature rise (green) reflects this; but in addition, the GISS records are currently the highest of all four global records, and have been adjusted several times in a way that increases the trend to approach the green line. Chiefio has documented all this.

Psychology underpinning the presentation of evidence. Antarctica "Warming by Paintwork" shows how quickly the mood shifted to alarmism. Yes, the colour is meant to indicate temperature. Yet we are talking about a continent whose temperature stays around -40°C and descends to an unimaginable -70°C, where materials become brittle and the stations get buried in snow after a few years, hence the difficulty in keeping records; where, on the mainland (not the tiny abnormal peninsula), temperatures always stay well below freezing so no ice melt is even possible - which explains why, every few years, great chunks of sea ice break away and throw the media into a flurry of fainting fits. See my Polar page for more on this.

Now here is a killer piece: the long temperature record of the ice itself:

IPCC dogma trumps the evidence of Science...

President Eisenhower’s famous 1961 farewell address to the nation included two threat warnings. The well-known warning reminded us to beware of the “Military Industrial Complex.” The other, less-remembered warning was “…that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” Sir John Houghton, first head of IPCC, said “If we want a good environmental policy in the future, we’ll have to have a disaster” and “The impacts of global warming are like a weapon of mass destruction”. He did not, however, advocate lying. The current IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri, partner in undeserved Nobel Prize with Al Gore, non-climatologist (railway engineer turned businessman) with suspect records and a private golf course, guilty of Glaciergate and other IPCC lies and fudges, simply refuses to resign.

Now the role of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change) was supposedly to “assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.” From its very mission statement we can see that the IPCC was set up to find science that would back up a dogmatic belief in CAGW, rather than consider openly whether the warming could be natural, or even whether the records of warming were of a sufficiently high standard. Indeed, it appears that the reports have been edited to conform to a desired message, see here here and here. IPCC made the Summary for Policymakers, published before the science, the most important part of their reports, the part people would actually read. Frederick Seitz (a past president of the US National Academy of Sciences and American Physical Society) blew the whistle with an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. The doubts still reverberate for many serious scientists. Unstoppable Global Warming describes how principal conclusions of the 1995 IPCC scientists ' key Chapter 8 were rewritten - apparently to conform with a pre-arranged Summary for Policymakers:-

• Where it had once said there was no discernible human influence on climate, it was rewritten to say there was now a discernible influence. This was done without reference back to the scientists who had originally submitted their final draft reaching the opposite conclusion.

But "nearly all climate scientists" is misleading -

• what about 31,000 scientist who signed the Oregon Petition? (0nly a tiny number were fake, and those are now gone)
• what about the 700+ scientists including Nobel laureates recorded by Senator Inhofe? (the number is growing daily)
• what about archaeologists, geologists, and astrophysicists who know we are well within natural fluctuations?
• what about scientists' replies to criticisms, which mainstream ignores eg Shaviv & Veizer here and here?
• there are stories here, and elsewhere, of suppression of evidence contradicting "manmade global warming";
• look at all these individual testimonies from scientists

Nearly all the above scientists are in fact aware that:

• "First", the warming trends were 1910-1940 and 1970-2000, not 1940-1970 or 2000-2010;
• we need to exclude urban heat island effect and there is evidence that UHI has doubled apparent warming;
• during this period, most of Antarctica cooled - it did the opposite to the rest of the planet;
• the sea is not getting hotter any longer - there is no overall "storage of warmth" there;
• "Second", temperature has levelled off after the latest 30-year rise cycle, but CO2 has continued to rise steadily;
• CO2 rise fits sea surface temperature rise far better than it fits the rising curve of our emissions;
• we appear to have long ago reached the saturation level of the CO2 greenhouse effect;
• The models say that the "fingerprint" of a CO2 greenhouse gas effect will be excessive warming in the tropical troposphere; but this has not occurred, see here and here;
• There is evidence that the Sun's recent output was higher than it has been for 8000 years. Total Solar Irradiance is insufficient to explain the temperature rise, but the correlation with the sun is undeniable (see below): all we need is to find the drivers and amplifiers that could cause the full temperature rise;
• There are serious concerns that some of the warming may be due to undetected data issues like UHI;
• "Third" - if CO2 is incapable of causing massive temperature rises, or if the temperature rise is incapable of doing the damage predicted, this fear is meaningless, and "actions" will be useless..
• Monckton and Spencer and others show there is no evidence for "runaway tipping points"

Let's get the basic CO2 figures:

First, let's get a sense of proportion. Our CO2 emissions, compared with the natural planetary CO2 turnover, are absolutely tiny. Seas store 50 times as much CO2 as is in the air: a fact town-dwellers forget. Natural annual turnover is 30-40 times our contribution. Thus it is quite plausible that ultra-slowly-warming seas could be the cause of the continuing CO2 rise. We can unpack the details later (under CO2 follows temp and Lynching of innocent CO2):

All the President's Men

• Prof. Noble tells of a "Corporate climate coup".
• Prof. Tim Ball tells "How UN structures were designed to prove human CO2 was causing global warming".
• Climate data analyst John McLean wrote Peer-review? What peer review? about the IPCC.
• Dr John Everett led work for the IPCC for which he shared the Nobel Peace Prize - but read his "Climate Change Facts".
• Prof. Lindzen has published an important paper Climate Science: is it currently designed to answer questions? which talks about many incidents like this in a historical context.
• Prof. Akasofu, retired director of the International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, has written some of the best well-informed, highly readable pieces, esp. Misleading Information on Global Warming.
• Prof Segalstad of Oslo University: On the construction of the "Greenhouse Effect Global Warming" dogma
• Dr Keenan has found strong evidence of fraud in papers important to IPCC conclusions.
• Prof Alexander tells how his peer-reviewed paper was attacked as non-peer-reviewed bad science; and how the editor refused him space to set the record straight.

What doubled my sense of horror was to realize the extent to which many scientists (not those above) were following bad science, forgetting basics of science and scientific method, and ignoring or even trashing good science, without the apparent ability, or apparent realization of the need, to check the basics for themselves; many seemed to think that no sceptic has written peer-reviewed papers; and that only peer-reviewed papers and IPCC are to be trusted. Horrors: the official scientific bodies all have science-lookalike pieces that seem to explain away all the sceptics' issues.

The worst find was "brownshirt" activists who had insinuated themselves into positions of power and were trying to suppress all dissenting views, vilifying the high-profile sceptic scientists who speak up, using lies, half-truths, coercion, and suppression, often claiming falsely that sceptics must simply be in denial or in Exxon's pay pocket. Sadly the BBC, once a paragon of virtue and an example to the world, has fallen very low. I never thought I would be thankful for the Great Global Warming Swindle. It's not my cup of tea as a film. But its director has my admiration for how he stood up to Bob Ward, ex-manager in "policy communication" for the Royal Society, who fought fanatically to try to suppress the Swindle DVD. Dr Vincent Gray's insider's descriptions of the IPCC gave me much-needed evidence of an IPCC serially intent on devaluing natural causes of climate change. But his strong language make him an easy target for CAGW repudiation that ignores his vital valid points.

Then came Climategate!

<<<< "Don't shut us out of the debate" the sceptics had been saying. "we don't want to acknowledge your existence", said UEA and "the Team" >>>>.

It's important to try and understand how a false "science-lookalike" could have built up. It seems so improbable. But we do not need conspiracy theories. "Noble cause corruption" ("the ends justify the means") is a good start (see also here). Willis Eschenbach gives a classical statement of pretty well every scientific principle that is being abused in Climate Science. Funny thing is, the 70's cooling scare was reported with exactly the same ill-informed hysterical language. Koutsoyannis and others have studied serious problems with peer review in science today. Peer-review becomes harder to maintain, the smaller the specialist group becomes, and the more its findings become (or are portrayed as being) incomprehensible to lesser outsiders. Read Prof Segalstad's story. The concern with our effects on the climate generally started innocently. See Spencer Weart. Then a "sorcerer's apprentice" situation developed: in the '70's Thatcher cut research funding except for pro-CAGW research, in what was, then, a reasonable concern. Alas, there was no thought for how the money teat would drive the formation of conclusions, and set up a vicious circle of alarmism-for-funding and persecution of a dwindling number of outspoken scientists. See Richard Courtney. In the eighties / early nineties, some Big Businesses stepped in to fund research to deny CAGW. But with growing levels of apocalyptic fears, and with awareness that such fears can be manipulated for political gain, the scales tipped again, and now big business funds CAGW (eg Al Gore's own oil company) - there are claims that CAGW science gets effectively 2000 times the amount of funding that sceptics get, despite continuing CAGW cries that sceptics get "oil funding!" But scientists are speaking up, and Inhofe's list of 700 scientists including Nobel prizewinners, is increasing at about 4 a week.

If we clear the tsunami of bad science, we can find a core of good science that has been growing under wraps.

Trenberth's diagram (above) of heat transfer in our atmosphere is used by the IPCC. The absorption characteristics of different "greenhouse" gases (right) are measured and beyond dispute. The Air Vent explains. But the key issue here is, does the temperature actually go up seriously with increasing CO2 (and other greenhouse gases)? Hansen says YES!!!! RUNAWAY WARMING COMING SOON!!!! Many factors suggest otherwise. But this is an area where people get dogmatic with many different apparently physics-based and mathematically-justified points of view, and it is quite difficult to be sure what really happens. Monckton (below) sidesteps all that by turning the IPCC maths on itself.

The heart of the science controversy - IPCC and greenhouse gas effects
Sceptics say that the CO2 greenhouse effect is grossly overestimated, has already reached its maximum level in being already effectively opaque, and does not have any serious "amplifying" effects threatening to tip the planet into runaway heating. The true main greenhouse gas is water vapour, but this is much harder to quantify or predict as it is so changeable.

** See below for more about RealClimate. Schmidt still has no reply to Monckton's rebuttal of his "Cuckoo Science". This is of key importance. Had Schmidt been able to reply, he would not have passed up this opportunity to prove a key issue of the CAGW thesis, and to silence opposition. Schmidt, in his July 2008 RealClimate "rebuttal" of Monckton's July 2008 APS paper, refers to Monckton's "previous attempt" as if his "Cuckoo Science" rebuttal had disproved and silenced Monckton, which we can see was not the case. Monckton thus still stands vindicated. It's easy to wave equations or computer models in someone's face to say they prove something. But it's not so easy to fool someone who is a scientist or statistician, or has an eye for fraud, or has actually studied Climate Science.

Monckton has shown that the greenhouse effects of CO2 have been calculated incorrectly - much higher than the IPCC figures themselves dictate. Thus the whole "greenhouse" basis of CAGW comes unstuck - the credibility of the IPCC comes unstuck - and the expensive "fixing" of nonexistent problems comes unstuck.

Fresh air at last with Svensmark and Cloud Science

It was hard work to extract myself from a mire of contradictory "science" claims, from former friends and scientists I now believed were seriously mistaken if not knowingly fraudulent, and from a lot of self-doubt. But the polar bears are fine after all [9]. Eventually I was ready to investigate the work of Svensmark et al. Reading "The Chilling Stars" was like climbing a mountain and suddenly finding oneself emerging from rain, wind, and poor visibility, into clear, sunlit pastures above. This new science really fits the whole of earth history, and can explain all the many twentieth-century anomalies with a single factor. Simple and beautiful, and like Cinderella's Shoe. Svensmark and others are showing, inch by inch, an unremitting correlation between the level of cosmic rays and the quantity of low cloud. By increasing Earth’s albedo, or whiteness, more solar energy lost by reflection. Black warms; white cools. Now over the last 100 years, the Sun’s magnetic flux increased by 230%, in addition to its sustaining a TSI “high” longer than it has done for 8000 years. The high TSI heated the huge ocean reservoir gradually, and the high solar magnetic flux lowered the level of cosmic rays. Less rays, less clouds, more warmth. Data fits theory pretty well, and all this suggests that after all, the Sun is a prime driver of temperature changes. New experiments are starting to give an idea of how the cloud-forming mechanism could work. <<<Geologist Jan Veizer and astrophysicist Nir Shaviv confirm that there has been a strong correlation between high cosmic ray levels and a cool Earth, throughout Earth's geological history, as it has moved through different sectors of the Galaxy. Svensmark's material has been rubbished [15]. But in one instance that looks suspiciously typical, he was simply not allowed the normal space to defend his science when it was attacked by Laut in 2003, and Damon and Laut in 2004 [16]. Actually he has written very fair rebuttals of both Laut's papers. He pointed out mistakes in Laut's science, fallacies in Laut's rebuttals of Svensmark's science, and Laut's discourteous language. You have to read both sides' answers to each other, to see that Svensmark is both correct and courteous, unlike the other side. Svensmark's website flushed out a serious bias in Wikipedia I wouldn't have known otherwise: mention of Laut, but none of Svensmark's reply to Laut. Also, see [57] re Lockwood & Frohlich's dissent. Svensmark's studies also bear out the Antarctica anomaly: with clear skies, brilliant-white Antarctica cools while the rest of the Earth warms. See U-tube of Svensmark's work here, here, here, here and here. Recent changes in albedo do correlate well with recent temperatures. The real science now starts to look a lot more simple and beautiful. It is unfortunate that so much has been taken over by strident activists and bad scientists - and not just in Climate Science, but also in other disciplines that have a bearing on climate science. The result is that some of the most important and beautiful developments are sidelined, squashed, steamrollered by abuse. Very interesting areas of exploration for understanding the real drivers of climate lie in the atmosphere and the cosmos: not just the sun but the whole solar system and its "barycentre", and the galaxy beyond. The biggest driving forces of the cosmos appear to be electromagnetic in nature. See here and here. The second link also has answers (here here) to those who may have written this off on the strength of "debunks". As with Svensmark, read the replies to the "debunks". Many "climate sceptics" have an understanding - or hunches - that this is how the science works. But the basics are not yet accepted by mainstream astrophysics - and enthusiasts are liable to make claims they cannot substantiate - that may or may not be true if explored more rigorously! Perhaps this is why it has been possible for dogmatic academics and "green" alarmists to be accepted with their rogue certainties about "disasters ahead!" Easy answers for people who dislike uncertainty.

Science makes sense again! It is the Sun, here are the key factors:

GLOBAL TEMPERATURES rise overall in step with increased total solar irradiance (TSI), and fall with increased "albedo" - whiteness - from ice caps, from cloud cover -and with occasional large volcanic eruptions. HUMAN EFFECTS are from urban warmth, change of land use, surface station locations and changes, and bad data management. OCEAN CURRENTS act like huge, slow messengers whose complex cycles strongly affect land temperatures (blue panel, below right, no.3). CLOUD COVER varies significantly according to the solar magnetic flux (blue panel, left). Clouds reflect significant warmth into space. THE SUN'S RECENT ACTIVITY - solar magnetic flux between 1940 and 2000 was at a very high level(top left). Scafetta quantifies solar effects here, here and here; here he replies to criticisms. TSI change is too small to be the direct cause; but the correlation is there. Scafetta also notes solar correlation with planetary movements. This is a contentious issue among non-Russian climate sceptics but there is good evidence, backed by good scientists like Landscheidt. THE SUN'S VERY RECENT ACTIVITY: Solar output has fallen again (no sunspots at present!), and the earth has now been cooling, slowly and with variations, but unmistakeably, for ten years. OCEANS ARE PLANETARY RESERVOIRS - 1000 times the thermal capacity of the atmosphere - that take a long time to heat or cool. Geological records show CO2 lagging temperature by around 800 years; the slowest part of the thermohaline cycle is also approximately 800 years. CO2 AND OCEANS: Oceans, at 70% of the earth's surface area, release huge quantities of CO2 in the tropics, and absorb huge quantities of CO2 at polar latitudes. Oceans hold 50 times as much CO2 as is in the air. SEA LEVELS have been steadily rising since before fossil fuels though this appears to be slowing or even stopping now. The rise has nothing to do with melting icecaps since Antarctica's increase easily balances any Greenland melt. OUTGASSING OCEANS: But the slow thermohaline current still tells of the Little Ice Age (Akasofu) - the tropics could well be still outgassing from this - THIS alone can explain the CO2 increase. ATMOSPHERIC CO2 increases greatly with only a tiny overall increase in sea surface temperature. CO2 stays in the atmosphere for only a few years (Segalstad + 35 other studies), not the many years that the CAGW thesis needs. OUR CO2 EMISSIONS are tiny (c.3%) in comparison with the huge CO2 flux out of, and back into, the oceans and the terrestrial vegetation and "leaf water". Carbon isotope levels have been shown by Segalstad and Quirke as verification that the increase of CO2 is natural and not from fossil fuels. CO2 AND THE BIOSPHERE (BIOSEQUESTRATION): If the ocean temperature rose by only 1ºC, atmospheric CO2 levels would rise another 150 ppm by Endersbee's actual graph figures. However, by the "atmospheric pipe effect" the 150 ppm MEASURED rise of CO2 represents an increase in CO2 "PRESSURE", and the extra CO2 is absorbed by vegetation by photosynthesis and by coral etc by calcification. Endersbee's statistics are a little questionable but highly suggestive - this is one of many areas of ongoing study. See our CO2 page. CLIMATE SCIENCE IS STILL IN ITS INFANCY, and there are still many areas of mystery, particularly in atmospheric science and astrophysics; but unfortunately, major claims that are seriously mistaken or unproven, have been repeated as fact while the Sun has been neglected because TSI is not the "obvious" cause.

Key Correlations: but how to prove what drives what??

Cosmic Rays ~ Clouds Sunspot numbers ~ Sea Surface Temp Temp ~ Sun + Oceans but not CO2 Shaviv and Svensmark: High correlation between cosmic rays and cloud. See the varying correlations in the other graphs. Cyclic solar activity is significant, modulated by oceans & clouds. TallBloke's graph (see WUWT 03:08 on 1/1/09) shows an impressive correlation between sea surface temp and sunspots over 5 cycles. SST is averaged over 43 mths (1/3 solar cycle). (4) Ocean, sun, CO2 all together for best fit to temperature. (3) Temp. correlates with ocean currents even better. (2)Temp. fits Total Solar Irradiance much better - includes mid-century dip. (1) Temperature fits 100 years of regularly rising CO2 records very poorly.

Temperatures correlate to the sun and oceans far better than to CO2 overall (Joe D'Aleo, above right). Dr Glassman shows the strong correlation between the solubility of CO2 and the CO2/temperature link, as shown in the Vostok ice core data - irrespective of time. Lance Endersbee shows a very high correlation between CO2 and sea surface temperature - but the time frame is a bit short... Arctic regions show a particularly high correlation with solar activity, see here and here; they do not show CAGW's predicted polar amplification of warming; Antarctica shows an inverse correlation due to sunlit ice having higher albedo than clouds.

CO2: the short-term fluctuations in its increase rate fit temperature fluctuations closely. This pattern fits outgassing from the oceans; but it does not fit the steady rise of fossil fuel emissions: only the crude overall trends are comparable (see below). Segalstad  & Jaworowski say in Atmospheric CO2 and Global Warming (pdf):

"The equilibration between CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and in the sea is very short (about 3/4 year according to Bolin, 1982). Therefore one might expect that most of the annual man-made perturbation in atmospheric CO2 would be visible in the Mauna Loa data. But the dramatic "Mauna Loa" CO2 changes are not reflected in the more steady annual emissions of fossil fuel CO2".

Is the rising CO2 even due to our CO2 emissions? ...

Al Gore informs us it is due to us, because... the relentless CO2 rise has behaved... just like our relentless emissions rise... so what else could have caused CO2 to rise? However, Al fails to declare a splice to this graph, a splice between proxy and direct measurements of CO2. This produces another Hockey Stick, just like the temperature Hockey Stick. Dr Bradley also fails to declare the splice. The suspicion is that the (proxy) CO2 levels in the ice cores is NOT a reliable indicator of past global CO2 levels. There is strong likelihood that some CO2 escapes before measurement, and there are many problems, detailed here.

Now there is evidence for an alternative hypothesis. Henry's Law states the proportion of CO2 that must dissolve in water at any given temperature, and there is enough water in the slow deep thermohaline current to provide a huge steady supply of CO2. Joe d'Aleo demonstrates a clear correlation between sea surface temperature (warm El Ninos pink, cold La Ninas blue), volcano eruptions, and rate of rise of CO2. The thermohaline current takes an estimated 800 years although clearly the reality is more complex, fractal, and approximate. Still, there is ample reason for allowing hundreds of years' recovery time from the Little Ice Age; the cold water that sank then in Arctic regions will slowly surface at the tropics and outgas what it dissolved hundreds of years ago. People forget that two-thirds of our planet is water, and that is just surface area. In reality, we need to remember its mass, thousands of times that of the atmosphere, and its slowness of circulation.

...Anyway, er, carbon dioxide follows temperature, now...

Taken from Josh Hall's post here (scroll down to 11.38am) [48], these graphs show a high "fit" for temperature-leading-CO2 but only a very low "fit" for CO2-leading-temp. These graphs are explained further here. Click on pics to see originals. Macrae describes the same proof. Below, centre, we see the extremely high correlation between sea surface temperature and CO2 level - independent of time - strongly suggesting that CO2 levels fluctuate globally with sea temperatures.

...as always... here's the pattern of the last four Ice Ages...

Al Gore said "The relationship is very complicated but there is one relationship that is far more powerful than all the others and it is this: When there is more CO2 the temperature gets warmer, because it traps more heat from the Sun". He is misleading. <---In the graph he used, it's impossible to see which leads. The R.H.---> graph is the pink band widened. When temperature is shifted to "best fit", we see that temp. leads CO2 by 800 years - as if warmth causes CO2 level to rise. See Caillon's 800-yr-shift graph here. Caillon shows no evidence that CO2 can drive temperatures. But Lansner and WUWT show that, despite unsubstantiated claims to the contrary (RealClimate and here), it appears that CO2 has never amplified temperature. <---This graph is a composite of the last 4 Ice Ages. Very useful to see the pattern. At any two points of equal CO2 concentration there is a higher temp. when temp. is rising, and a lower temp. when temp. is falling. This is consistent with temp. leading CO2, but not vice versa. Anyway, what causes the downturn if CO2 has amplified the upturn? And parallel rising lines prove CO2 has a linear fit to temp; if CO2 were leading, the CO2 rise would need to be plotted logarithmically (each doubling of CO2 would have the same effect) to obtain parallel lines.

There's good evidence that CO2 runaway warming is not even possible

In the Silurian Age, while the Earth emerged from an ice age, CO2 levels dropped from 4000 ppm to 3000 ppm (0.4% to 0.3%). While CO2 levels have declined from 7000 ppm to the current 350 +/- 50ppm, very ancient global temperatures appear to have oscillated firmly between a lower limit of 12ºC and an upper limit of 22ºC. The CO2 rise as ice ages end varies between 200 ppm and 300 ppm. Today, with a temperature rise of less than 1ºC, we appear to have seen a similar rise of CO2 levels (assuming ice core levels are accurate proxies, which I dispute anyway). There is no sign in any ancient records of runaway warming. Revisit the video. All the evidence says that CO2 does not affect temperature, but temperature affects CO2.

IPCC's models predicted that as CO2 increased, water vapour would also increase, giving a "feedback loop" that would amplify temperature increase above that expected from CO2 alone, to give 4-6ºC temperature increase over this century - if CO2 levels increase at the present rate. As temperature increased, IPCC reasoned, relative humidity would stay constant, thereby causing absolute humidity to rise. But relative humidity has not - in practice - stayed constant.

Miskolczi says that we have a self-regulating atmosphere that causes water vapour at a critical height above the Earth to fall as the CO2 level rises, so that the fall in the GHG (greenhouse gas) effect of water vapour balances the rising GHG effect of CO2. Miskolczi is a brilliant scientist who worked with NASA until his paper was refused publication, probably because it gives evidence that a runaway GHG effect is categorically impossible: a thoroughly non-alarmist stance that is not good for attracting funds. There is also clear evidence of NASA cooking the data for Venus, in favour of Venus having a runaway GHG effect. I believe that Miskolczi's science of greenhouse gases points the real way forward. It fits real-life measurements beautifully, and provides a beautiful and plausible theory. It is difficult to follow the maths - but slowly Miscolczi is attracting a following, and Noor van Andel explains a bit more clearly. The penny may drop presently.

Erl Happ demonstrates how the Earth Laboratory tests the greenhouse theory once a year, every year, and finds it wanting every time. I've also found two excellent science papers showing the minuscule heating effect of CO2 in atmospheric conditions, that should have been published, one 1986, the other 1994 or so - but they were suppressed. Who knows how many more have been suppressed.

The lynching of innocent CO2

The scare science has been building up for quite a while. Over a hundred years ago, Arrhenius suggested that if our CO2 emissions built up, they could cause global warming. Interestingly, his grandson joined the same laboratory in the US as Roger Revelle, who later became Al Gore's mentor. Revelle became concerned that our emissions could become a problem - but how to measure the CO2 levels well enough? So he set up a station at Mauna Loa in the Pacific, far from any land-borne influences, subject only to seasonal fluctuations, to measure CO2, and appointed Charles Keeling as record keeper.

Now the old, forgotten chemical CO2 records are being re-examined by Beck, Lansner and others. Keeling's son would like to see this evidence suppressed. Yet Beck's records have a very high level of accuracy. They are still effectively as accurate as Keeling's system (with different issues) and were used, interestingly, for a short overlap period in Scandinavia when Keeling started. Therein lie some important observations that cast doubt on the "infallibility" of Mauna Loa. There is a problem of location, since winds from forests and industries can create huge daily differences. It is possible Beck's records indicate higher CO2 levels that collapsed suddenly - this reflects the old Central England temperature record (below left).

Old CO2 records fit old temperature records Why was the ice core record shifted to fit the new CO2 measurements? Is the official reason acceptable? More evidence casting doubt on the ice core CO2 record

The ice core CO2 record (above centre) has been shifted forward, to splice neatly onto the start of Keeling's record in 1955. But this is a highly suspect splice, not checked over a proper overlap period. Most suspiciously, it produces a "hockey stick" with a sudden, recent, alarming rise, like the temperature Hockey Stick. There are serious questions about the reliability of ice core CO2 records regarding past levels of greenhouse gases: the stomata proxy record (above right) suggests far more variability, and a higher level of CO2, than the ice core shows. Prof Jaworowski, top expert in ice core studies, describes all this and more. Jaworowski deserves proper study of his Atmospheric CO2 and Global Warming (pdf) that he co-authored with Prof Segalstad of Norsk Polarinstitutt. He may not be 100% correct. But he was a far greater expert on ice cores than myself, he followed scientific method, he saw it being debased in his own professional lifetime, spoke up, and was vilified. The pattern is distressingly familiar, and makes me inclined to take him seriously and listen carefully.

The IPCC's alarm picture, built on models, ignoring real factors & data

The greenhouse gas properties of carbon dioxide are well-known to all sceptics. CO2 is opaque to some infra-red wavelengths. The question is: do GHG effects actually increase seriously, if present CO2 levels rise? The simple answer is, no.

Here is the IPCC's chart of "forcings". Many scientists have been worried about greenhouse gases, from Arrhenius in 1896 on. Suggestive evidence was noticed after temperatures started going up after 1970. Our CO2 emissions seem a likely culprit - to a mediocre scientist who ignores the mysterious sun; who forgets Henry's Law, the size of the oceans, and the power of the biosphere; who ignores all the studies showing the short lifespan of CO2 in the atmosphere; and who fails to consider or measure the water vapour situation, or the logarithmic GHG "saturation" effect, whereby higher levels of CO2 make virtually no difference to its net GHG effect. Here is the "elephant in the sitting room", water.

IPCC has reinforced a dogma, extending the work of Callendar (1949) Bolin & Eriksson (1959), Revelle, Keeling, and Siegenthaler & Oeschger (1987) who were already building up a thesis of global warming effects through our CO2 emissions, while ignoring all the science that fundamentally challenges this thesis. Monckton demonstrates IPCC's serial fudging of GHG science, Segalstadt demonstrates serial falsification of CO2 science, Jo Nova explains how IPCC's needed tropical tropospheric hotspot is missing, and proved missing.

<<<< The fingerprint of CAGW is missing Santer's attempt to save the fingerprint has failed There has been cooling in the stratosphere (region of pressure less than 200 mb) where warming was predicted >>>>>

IPCC 2007 is serially based on faulty methods and data and non-peer-reviewed material. Donna Laframboise has investigated IPCC thoroughly, see here and here. Glaciergate (here and here) tells how IPCC scientists used fake data to pressurize policy makers. Amazongate shows how WWF tried to rake in millions from fake scare figures in the IPCC report.

IPCC leader Pachauri made misleading claims at COP15. Glaciergate involved financial advantage to him. Other conflicts of interest and accounts anomalies were reported. His company's golf course using sprinklers in a parched Indian city was reported - together with other luxuries totally at odds with the message of IPCC. Weirdly in all this, he published a soft porn novel. As with Al Gore, another non-climate-scientist, there is conflict of interests, a private fortune amassing from "save the planet" work, and behaviour that is massively at odds with a central message of AGW, leading by example in lowering one's carbon footprint. We have rogues in the driving seat, misrepresenting the science and making money out of people's fears. And I believe that such rogues will draw in more rogues, or naive scientists who are persuaded to accept high-sounding alarms.

Milgram's classic study shows how such "innocents" can, under pressure, become ruthless torturers, deaf to pleas from the "other side", in their desire to serve what they have been told by "authority" is a "noble cause". Climate sceptics thus become dehumanized and lose the fundamental right even to be heard, in their eyes. And to these "corrupted innocents" are added the brownshirts (they exist to "support" both skeptics and warmists) who project their personal violence by threatening the life of the leaders of the perceived enemy.

Crucially, a paragraph of AR4 written by Trenberth/Jones dismisses the 2004 paper of McKitrick and Michaels which demonstrates UHI factors substantially greater than allowed-for in CRU global temperature records. CRU still uses Jones & Wang's 1990 paper. But not only is the UHI here far too low, there is also reasonable suspicion that this paper's claims are fraudulent. Then to add insult to injury, Trenberth/Jones tried to exclude all mention of MM2004. When that failed, they claimed that it had been conclusively demonstrated as unreliable. No such demonstration exists in fact.

My understanding of the science of Carbon Dioxide, Staff of Life of all plants.

Enjoy Segalstad's friendly presentation all about CO2. Watch (and do) a kitchen experiment yourself! The following is my personal gleanings and is open to improvements.

We are emitting 3-4ppm (6-8Gt) carbon dioxide each year, perhaps 2% of the total natural annual CO2 flux. CO2 levels have been rising at around 1.5ppm, or 3Gt p.a. since Keeling's records started in 1952, and are now around 380ppm (=750Gt). The total annual CO2 flux is huge but just how big? - maybe 220 Gt p.a. (Holmen 2000), maybe 150 Gt p.a. (IPCC SAR) (or more if one includes leaf water and rain water?) - between 1/3 and 1/5 of the total atmospheric CO2. Henry's Law says that CO2 is in balance between the atmosphere and the oceans in approx. ratio 1: 50... So only 1/50 of our emissions should remain in the air, in theory... BUT... (dividing 3.5 by 50)... ...since the measured CO2 rise of 1.5ppm p.a. is so much higher than the 0.07ppm p.a. that should remain airborne from human emissions, this alerts observant minds to look for another cause of CO2 rise. Also, the CO2 level is rising at about 46% of the rate of our emissions rise, BUT it has a jagged profile of rise, which doesn't fit the smooth rise of our emissions, but fits temperature fluctuations. It seems that to "prove" their bad science, IPCC had to invent more bad science: they now need CO2 to remain in the air for 50-200 years, or more, which we can see, from the size of the annual flux, is ridiculous. Segalstad lists 35 studies based on 6 different factors, which give lifetimes of between 2 and 12 years. IPCC stands out as the "odd one out" in this, by an order of magnitude CAGW - and "townies" behind computers - forget the massive area and volume of the oceans that outgasses vast quantities of CO2 with tiny temperature changes. The Greenpeace CO2 cycle ignores the oceans! CO2 Science have been conducting experiments with plant growth and maintain a formidable collection of information, backed by a strong ethical committment Dr Floor Anthoni explains the "atmospheric pipe effect" - the level of CO2 works like pressure on vegetation to grow more. CAGW totally underestimates biosequestration: increased CO2 levels enable vegetation to grow more, naturally sequestering CO2, as the biosphere has done for millions of years in response to erupting volcanoes and possibly a steady trickle of CO2 from space. CAGW also fails to consider the subtle oceanic balance (see here): more ocean CO2 enables more plants AND enables CaCO3 to be precipitated into corals and mollusc shells, by drawing on ever-present Ca ions. Schoolchildren are being taught lies! CO2 is Not Pollution! The capacity of plants to take up CO2: This animation of satellite data suggests the huge Eurasian biosphere soaks up CO2 each summer. Since plants depend on CO2 to live, and thrive on raised levels of CO2 in greenhouses, the benefit of slightly raised CO2 seems plain common sense. NASA admit the effect and even have this graph ---> documenting it. And this graph shows how wrong Al Gore is to call CO2 a pollutant. Any studies seriously suggesting otherwise are clearly in CAGW's pay pocket. The idea of carbon sequestration arises from an inversion of Science. * It would be robbery from the biosphere * It would be very costly yet have zero effect

The strange story of the missing Medieval Warm Period

IPCC 1990 and 1995 had this picture [below, upper left] showing the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) as portrayed by Hubert Lamb, first head of the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit and author of competent climate studies that give evidence of the MWP which was well-known to historians as well as scientists.

Anthropologists and archaeologists are aware of the MWP from Viking settlements in Greenland. They know from things like places inhabited, plants cultivated. The Schnidejoch pass in Switzerland [Svensmark & Calder, The Chilling Stars] was used regularly in Roman and in Medieval times; the pass has only just reopened. But CAGW devalues "anecdotal" and historical evidence in favour of "proxy" temp. measurements. In 1998 a study by Huang et al was published of over 6,000 borehole records of the last 20,000 years, from which temperature proxies were read. Here is the last millennium [lower left], strikingly similar to the IPCC 1995 graph. The world experienced a medieval warm period that appears to dwarf recent changes.

IPCC 2001: Someone at IPCC wanted to erase the Medieval Warm Period from visibility... Hubert Lamb was gone from CRU. The psychological climate had changed, and CRU now believed in CAGW. Dr. David Deming was welcomed into the close-knit group of global warming believers after he published a paper in 1995 that noted some warming in the 20th century. Deming says he was then contacted by a significant global warming scientist who told him "we have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period." IPCC 2001 (Third Assessment Report) did exactly this: it replaced Lamb's 1995 graph with Michael Mann's infamous "hockey stick" prominently displayed six times, to show "unprecedented" recent global warming.

Monckton wrote "The UN says [the Hockey Stick] is not important. It is. Scores of scientific papers show that the mediaeval warm period was real, global and up to 3ºC warmer than now." The Hockey Stick, amplified by Al Gore’s visually hypnotic film, was used to shout down traditional well-evidenced knowledge with propaganda claiming that there never was a significant MWP.

"Rewriting [countless textbooks] would take decades, time that the band members didn't have if they were to save the globe from warming" said Solomon in The Deniers. Instead, "the Team" created a website called RealClimate.org. "The idea is that we working climate scientists should have a place where we can mount a rapid response to supposedly 'bombshell' papers that are doing the rounds" in aid of "combating dis-information," Gavin Schmidt emailed the Climatic Research Unit on 10/12/2004. Almost certainly, RealClimate was targeted to oppose Steve McIntyre, who had recently seriously challenged

McIntyre and McKitrick broke the "hockey stick" - false temperature graph

McKitrick has an excellent account of the story. Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre became suspicious of Michael Mann's IPCC 2001 "hockey stick" graph where the Medieval Warm Period had disappeared. He had been an IPCC assessor, and his background in auditing told him to beware any graph showing a sudden recent rise. McIntyre requested the data from Mann so that he could check the results for himself. Mann refused and obstructed. In the end, Mc Intyre used the Freedom Of Information Act to obtain material. He found that one proxy record, bristlecone pine, had been given prominence 390 times the weighting of the rest - because it had properties [see how its rings distort] that could be made use of to compile a hockey-stick-shaped record supposedly attributable to warming. Some of the other data had simply been buried in a file marked "censored". Ross McKitrick tells the story. Longer histories of the malfeasance are told by Bishop Hill and Monckton of Brenchley.

Al Gore's film 2006 Before Al Gore's film, McIntyre & McKitrick had published refutations of the statistics of the hockey stick, in 2003 and 2005. Their work was subsequently supported by the Wegman report (2006) for the US House of Representatives, and (re. the statistics) by the North report of the National Academy of Sciences in the US. Dr. Wegman is one of the world's most eminent statisticians; his report found that the graph had “a validation skill not significantly different from zero”. Unfortunately, the media reported North's support for Mann's conclusions of warming, but failed to say that North did not support Mann's statistics, and thus gave the impression that NAS approved the hockey stick. This belief still persists and has been used to bolster support for the similarly worthless 2007 and 2008 hockey sticks.

Jeff Id [above right] demolishes the validity of Mann's statistical process... the past, particularly the recent past, is automatically diminished in comparison with the present... to always make a hockey stick... Notice the family resemblance to both the original Hockey Stick and the Luminous Spaghetti graph - subdued MWP, slowly dipping, then kick up to a current high - a resemblance not shared with a single one of Monckton's 19 studies and clearly not with Loehle's 18 studies. Loehle wrote another paper that summarizes over 20 papers that challenge the use of tree-ring measurements for proxy temperature measurement. Tree-ring proxies were used to produce the original hockey stick - but these tend not to show the MWP - perhaps because they measure moisture not temperature. All other proxies tend to show the MWP

Steve McIntyre runs Climate Audit which deservedly won the 2007 award for Best Science Blog. It provides crucial audits of bad IPCC statistics and associated bad practice, and shows real science at work (the proper use of statistics is science in its own right, and is an essential part of almost all other sciences). But Steve cannot get stuff peer-reviewed or published in the old, formal sense; he has become an embarrassment to the establishment. And the saga of obstruction continues.

The Team carries on promoting bad science

RealClimate is a blog run by members of the same clique as the original Hockey Stick authors and GISS/CRU temperature record-keepers. They actually chose to call themselves "the Team" in a rare moment of self-recognition, and Steve McIntyre happily adopted the name. Though few of them are fully-qualified climatologists, they will readily insult sceptics who are not fully-qualified. RealClimate was set up to belittle the work of Steve McIntyre; Steve set up Climate Audit in response. RC consistently refused to name him, so Steve called himself "he who must not be named". The Climategate emails showed clearly that Steve was in fact watched closely, and abusively, as suspected. RealClimate is a totalitarian non-debate made to look like a debate. They have perfected the art. See here and here. But their readership is falling, whereas the support for sceptical blogs has increased hugely. Eventually, Truth Will Out. But BBC and the top science institutions are still entrenched and refuse to consider challenges to their science as anything but scumbag "denialists" "in denial". Who are the real deniers, we ask?

This well-known hockey stick, the "spaghetti graph" appears to be formed by several independent studies. But analysis of data below reveals "the Team" - they are anything but independent of each other.

IPCC 2007 abandoned the original hockey stick in favour of - another hockey stick [above left]. The "spaghetti" graph looks different - but it's virtually the same hockey-stick, disguised with minor concessions... Look: (a) the data is from a limited set, bristlecone pines and Polar Urals data sets are both highly suspect - see Steve's 2009 ICCC presentation [above right] (b) it's mostly procured by "The Team" [both diagrams above]; (c) the MWP is still devalued way below what the real evidence suggests, (d) the graph still uses the same unholy splice of data – thermometer for the twentieth century and questionable proxies for earlier - despite existing temperature records.

Hockey Stick 2008 The Team constructed yet another Hockey Stick. Despite no tree-ring temp. proxies, the latest model bears every sign of the original flaws: cherrypicking proxies that are already suspect (contaminated Finnish lake sediment)... the unholy maths that automatically produces a hockey stick... To add insult to injury, BBC has been parading the original hockey stick (Iain Stewart, Climate Wars) as if it had never been discredited by top statistician Wegman.

Yamal Sept-Oct 2009 Steve McIntyre finally got data after years of asking - data that should have been released with the original publication. One of the three rogue records used to maintain the IPCC Hockey Stick depended on just 12 trees, with 1 rogue outlier YAD 061. Bishop Hill tells the story, and I did three pages with pictures. See here here and especially here, where you can see the "treemometer" records direct and compare with all the local Siberian thermometer records (GISS).

Climategate 17 Nov 2009 This followed close on the heels of Yamal, thoroughly eclipsed it, and proved everything Steve Mc Intyre and co-researchers had suspected, especially insiders' corruption of the peer-review process - even while believing they were "saving the planet".

Antarctica Dec 2009 The Team's next iniquity was Steig's paper that purportedly showed Antarctica warming. Nature magazine proudly showed Antarctica coloured yellow and red - despite a continental average of around minus 40ºC, and a measly warming of a fraction of a degree. Even that "warming" depended on (1) choice of start and end dates (2) including minor and unrepresentative areas that are warming slightly and (3) highly suspicious statistics. Yet the warmist models "predict" that polar regions should show the greatest warming. See my paragraph, Warming Antarctica by Paintwork.

O'Donnell Dec 2010 After a year, sceptic amateurs Ryan O'Donnell, Jeff Condon (Jeff Id), Nick Lewis, and Steven McIntyre managed to publish a rebuttal to Steig (see here, here and here), but not before running the gauntlet of a ridiculous number of silly objections that still continue (see here er seaa for detail, here for the nub of the matter, here for story). Still the blocking, refusal to release data, name-calling, misleading quotes, and failure to mention criticism, continues.

Alarmist diehards are continuing to fight for an indefensible science.

Urban Heat Island effect and other issues of data corruption

The UHI effect probably wipes out all of the recent global temperature rise in excess of solar-linked rises and ongoing recovery from the Little Ice Age. Warwick Hughes' two graphs [left] show a huge discrepancy between urban and rural weather station records in Australia, and suggests there has been no temperature increase at all, unlike what the CRU record appears to show. I have done a whole article on studies comparing urban and rural records: the same discrepancy is borne out over and over again. GISS made adjustments of temperature data in the wrong direction, Steve McIntyre showed. See Ken Gregory June 2008. CRU make adjustments which are still very unclear and un-repeatable, and which still lean on Jones & Wang's 1990 paper showing minimal UHI effects to correct for. Here and here are examples of increasingly big and unjustifiable alterations to the raw global surface temperature records. Chiefio has blogged at length about all this. A 14-year-old boy could conduct a perfectly adequate survey of the UHI effect, to reveal a difference of about 5 degrees C between city centre and countryside. The number of weather stations worldwide was drastically cut around 1990. This happened mainly in rural locations, and , surprise surprise, the "average temp" suddenly rose at the same time [lower left picture]. Three out of four global temperature records are managed by the US; they have a record number of weather stations and should be world leaders, yet... The majority of US weather stations are sited very badly, near tarmac, heat exchangers, airplane exhausts, barbecues, warm buildings, sewage plants, etc, falling far short of AMS' own standards, with the majority likely to record positive errors of 2-5ºC. Such stations amplify the UHI effect still further. Anthony Watts used material from his surface stations project, run by volunteers, in a paper which show that 90% of all US station records are untrustworthy, with rises in urban areas that are unmatched by reliable rural records. There are so many data problems it looks like a policy-driven deception, to allow more and more warming in the surface temperature records. <<<< See the paper by Watts and d'Aleo. The increasingly over-warm records do two things: they hide the solar link so people can continue to blame CO2; and they make the warming look really bad. See here: Jones and Trenberth in IPCC AR4 changed the wording, without proper agreement, so that the 2004 paper on UHI by McKitrick and Michaels appears to have been rejected due to faulty statistics, whereas it never was: it is perfectly valid. This "rejection" enables the (misleading, possibly fraudulent) Jones & Wang 1990 paper, or its 2008 "update", to continue in use.

Alarmism and irresponsible reporting

Here you can see the true pictures and graphs. However, they are not what the mainstream media like to announce; they are not alarming. Unfortunately too, the number of scientifically-trained reporters (and politicians) appears to have decreased in proportion to Science having grown more complex and therefore needing better informed science reporting.

Just think what the BBC could do, to sponsor truly independent reporting - since its revenue is NOT dependent on advertisers or purchasers whose prejudices have the power to skew all other mainstream media. What a golden opportunity for integrity the BBC is losing, trading on past glories that were honestly earned. This corruption has happened in the last ten years: before that time it was actually possible to get a fair and scientific appraisal in BBC programmes. Now we have despicable propaganda. But I live in hope that the BBC will be called to account. The public are slowly but surely waking up, and seem to understand the science a great deal better than those who think to broadcast to us what to believe.

• Dangerous sea level rise is a scare story. Sea levels have been rising, but on average only by the tiny 1.6mm p.a. that corresponds to thermal expansion, and even this has recently slowed.
• Dangerous ocean acidification is a scare story. Marine fauna use the plentiful Ca++ ions with dissolved CO2 to build shells. See here and here. Overall acidification is a scientific impossibility the alarmists overlook: firstly because 50 times as much CO2 is in the oceans than is in the air anyway, secondly because the worldwide Ca++ stocks get replenished to soak up any spare CO2. There is plenty of spare calcium. The actual problems here are mostly local pollution issues.
• Greenland was warmer in the past, both in the 1930's and in the Middle Ages.There are medieval settlements in Greenland still buried under modern permafrost. People have short memories.
• The big global ice sheets are growing if anything. Local effects in Greenland and the Antarctic peninsula are NOT global patterns; effects of ocean currents and volcanic activity in these areas get ignored or forgotten.
• Aerosols cause local effects eg smog; the true global effects are far less certain; volcanic aerosols cool.
• Other greenhouse gases: Methane is doing its own thing; there is serious evidence casting doubt on the CFC link to the ozone hole which fluctuates naturally and regularly.
• Hurricanes: there is no overall trend. However, escalation of insurance claims can give a misleading impression of rising storm power, which disappears when we use GDP as index of costs.
• Tornadoes? With modern means, more are reported; but there are less of the severe tornadoes.
• Volcanic activity warms some polar areas.
• Glaciers have been melting for 200 years - and most of the world's glaciers, which are on Antarctica, have been growing.
• Polar bears? Mitch Taylor worked with them for thirty years, and knows that their numbers have greatly increased – due to limits on hunting - but they’ve survived warmer times in the past are not under any threat now.

More fibs? Monckton's "35 Inconvenient Truths" is as good an exposé of Al Gore's science as any - or if you want to demolish the lot, read Unmasking An Inconvenient Truth.

Facing the Truth: does Science face a new Dark Ages?

For at least the last decade, CAGW activists have trumped sound previous science with bad science, or have ignored or vilified new evidence challenging them; as the dates on "Warming by Paintwork" suggests, the corruption has been rapid. All the chief science organizations (outside China, Russia and India, perhaps) claim that manmade global warming has been proved; they have refuted serious sceptics' arguments with what they claim is fair science, but is nothing of the sort. Debates have been consistently shunned, while the claim is made that "the debate is over, there is consensus among all responsible scientists". Some who see such lies being shamelessly pushed, fear a previously unthinkable return into a new Dark Ages. At no point have IPCC's two fundamental theses been confirmed by evidence.

Many experts, seeing only their area of expertise, have said, "I believe in CAGW... except for what my area of expertise shows". This is corruption in the very heart of the scientific process. Here I've tried to join up the dots...

...for instance, all of this displays the same tricks that were used to publish the notorious Malleus Maleficarum. Kramer and Sprenger printed a fake approval for all copies sold outside Cologne, the town of the censors, but in Cologne itself they omitted the fake approval. This convinced everyone outside Cologne that the book had the approval of both the Pope and the censors, when, in reality, it had no Papal approval and it had downright condemnation from the censors. By the time the discrepancy was noticed, it was too late, the masses were rarin' to go beat the hell out of the witches, and the Pope was cornered into conceding support.

"It is unfortunate that the integrity of science will be badly damaged by alarming the public without solid scientific foundation" says Prof. Akasofu. "Although it is often reported that there is “consensus” among scientists... this situation has no comparison to the consensus among many scientists at the time of the nuclear crisis in the 1970s and the 1980s, when scientists alarmed the world. The difference between them could be compared to a dinosaur (which was proven to exist) and a dragon (which is an imaginary creature)... Scientists are responsible for clarifying and rectifying the confusion."

How could this have happened? How could so many scientists have been mistaken or silent or disempowered for so long? How could apocalyptic anxieties and politics have undermined the heart of Scientific Method so completely in Climate Science? How can we be sure now that Science is trustworthy anywhere? How can we be sure what our real global problems are, if the science foundations we need are so thoroughly corrupt? Truth matters.

Speaking Up, What is the solution?

Many prominent sceptics including Lawrence Solomon, Anthony Watts and Senator Inhofe used to believe in CAGW but became disenchanted. Many have been punished for their views by being denied legitimate recognition or employment, and most have seen some form of personal attack. The Oregon Petition Project is signed by 31,000 scientists who don't accept CAGW. What, 31,000 scientists don't know what they're talking about? It has been attacked unpleasantly; to answer such attacks, visit its FAQ page and meet Art Robinson - an inspiring fighter, even though one may disagree sometimes... Readership of Watts Up With That and development of similar blogs have increased a thousandfold. Books are appearing more and more. Inhofe's list is growing daily and now holds over 13 times as many scientists as were ever involved in IPCC; some are defectors from the IPCC. James Hansen's former boss Dr John Theon said at the 2008 ICCC conference:

"I worked as the head of the NASA Weather and Climate Program which included up to 300 scientists in NASA, in academia, and in the private sector... Jim Hansen had... some very powerful political friends. Al Gore was a Senator... and subsequently became Vice President of the US. Now there isn't too much a NASA person can do when he's up against that kind of a challenge... In the early '90's I realized the whole thing was a great big fraud... Recent developments have convinced me that it is my duty to speak out, and to help educate the public about what we're going to get into if we don't stop this nonsense".

A whole generation of children has been raised with this deceitful dogma around their necks. Have they been encouraged or even allowed to question and explore the science behind it? Is that likely, seeing that top scientists have been attacked by alarmists and gagged by top journals and disabled from gaining the peer-review and publication they should have had? - scientists of calibre, integrity and high ability like Tim Ball, David Denning, Willie Soon, Ferencz Miskolczi, Will Alexander, Zbigniew Jaworowski, Tom Segalstad, Nils-Axel Moerner, and many more, who have been portrayed as fools, money-grabbers, deniers of "inconvenient truth" for selfish reasons, misrepresented on Wikipedia, collected on blacklists, and personally attacked. So children have been taught propaganda and lies, and have not been taken by example through Scientific Method, that accepts nothing without checking the evidence.

Yet I can actually see a new chapter of Science coming to birth under the "lid" of official censorship. The Sun in the Solar System and Galaxy promises a lot to explore. Here is the Sun in all his glory, seen through a whole 11-year sunspot cycle by NASA/SOHO. Click on the picture. Enjoy it well, for the last may be the most powerful cycle that we will see for some time. There are strong signs that we may have cool times ahead - and these are far harder to cope with than warm times. Crops fail in the shorter seasons; there is both less sun, and less moisture, everywhere. However, we have ingenuity and, occasionally, wisdom, and incentive to research further.

It often seems as if the public are actually less fooled than those who should know best, the experts... What has happened in Climate Science is not unique nor new. In the '70's the scare was that we were going to enter an ice age... Here is strong evidence that the ozone hole fluctuates naturally... and, WHY IS THE OZONE HOLE AT THE SOUTH POLE AND NOT THE NORTH POLE if we caused it??? >>>>

Perhaps we can dream up some kind of amnesty for all those unfortunate scientists and insane activists, when they can detox, dry out, hand in their CAGW weapons without fear of recrimination or incarceration... just appropriate de-de-bunking post-trauma debriefing... Here's a suggested Twelve Step Plan to Shake Off the CAGW Indoctrination

One thing is very clear - There is no alarming situation; cutting our CO2 would be cripplingly expensive and will change nothing in the environment anyway - in fact, the more CO2 is in the atmosphere, the better the plants will grow. The "precautionary principle" is completely upside-down. This scare is a distraction that adds to, rather than solves, the real problems.

Summaries

• REAL CLIMATE SCIENCE BASICS - The Earth's climate varies in semi-regular to irregular cycles.
• Solar output to earth = over 24,000 times our total human output.
• There is a strongly-suspected link between the Sun, cosmic rays, and our climate; but the science is young.
• There have been vastly greater quantities of CO2 in the ancient past, with no ill effects.
• The greenhouse gas effect of CO2 is already saturated, so even doubling CO2 would have near-zero effect.
• Ocean currents oscillating over decades have huge effects on measured temperatures; the oceans' thermal inertia is 10,000 times that of the atmosphere.
• Oceans hold 49/50 of all free CO2 which outgasses in the tropics and sinks at the poles; the total annual CO2 turnover could be a quarter of the total atmospheric CO2 and around 40 times the human contribution.
• It is possible that the CO2 increase is from slow thermohaline currents since the 17th Century "Little Ice Age".
• Water vapour is the biggest greenhouse gas; clouds are the biggest natural cooler and a variable quantity.
• There appears to be a natural homeostasis mechanism that prevents Earth temperatures going beyond certain limits.
• Plants on land, and sea animals making shells, are the earth's well-tested natural CO2 regulators; plants account for a third to a half of the annual CO2 turnover.
• There are serious problems with bad data, the most critical being the "urban heat island" problem..

SCIENTIFIC METHOD IS NOT DIFFICULT TO GRASP: it is, essentially, intelligent commonsense and persistence in searching out and testing the laws of the Universe, consolidated and referenced, but NOT limited, by awareness of "orthodox" scientific knowledge. See also Ric Werme and James Lewis for insights into Scientific Method and the challenge of the current situation.

THE CHALLENGE OF CORRUPT SCIENCE IS SERIOUS. Before Climategate, the corruption was difficult to grasp or check, but the Climategate emails confirmed every suspicion. Little appears to be 100% corrupt, it is much more a mixture of group think, the glamour of "Noble Cause Corruption", massive hubris, the funding of alarmism, and sheer bad science. Much of the problem is at the top, where, with a new science that has political implications, confusion has emerged between what is natural and expected in politics, and what is legitimate, expected, and trusted, in science. See Peiser's challenge to the legitimacy of CAGW's claim of consensus here AND here AND here. You need to read all three to see through the "disproofs of Peiser" that are around, to see how difficult it can be to get to the truth.

• One widespread problem has been lack of transparency, regarding data, methods, and other issues.
• The IPCC have been less than honest, less than scientific. There were only 52 scientists, not 2500.
• The complexification of Science, leading to specialization and widespread ignorance, has lent itself to "divide and rule" and the trumping of good science by grossly inferior, atavistic science, politics, and fear-mongering.
• Models fail to handle the most powerful "forcing" factors: water in several different forms. It is impossible to model the climate accurately, with current knowledge. Until we know the real climate drivers, models are nothing but expensive, intimidating distractions and games, that have consistently failed to predict true.
• There has been corruption of the peer-review process and the process of publication, that was suspected before Climategate but the emails proved.
• The media have contributed great damage to the integrity of Science, by choosing again and again to publish alarmism and to fail to convey a balanced account; they should be brought to heel.
• The reins of power have been held by a small group spanning the UN, the IPCC, certain business interests, and a few key scientists, bloggers, activists; they have often broadcast "don't look at us! look at the contrarians / deniers!", used personal slurs, and avoided the science

WITHOUT WASTING ENERGY IN BLAME, THERE ARE IMPORTANT LESSONS TO LEARN. I end with Monckton's conclusion to his recent paper Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered; also his concluding words to the students at Cambridge in 2007, as lights to hold in the mysterious realms of Science. Now here is an important observation: almost certainly, he can see these vital principles all the more clearly because he is NOT a degree'd scientist but has taught himself, and because he has been motivated by passion, love of truth, and concern for the upholding of integrity.

*****************************************

Some References

[1] Peter Taylor, ECSR Peter Taylor first put me on the trail of the real inconvenient truths.
[2] Monckton of Brenchley, "35 errors in AIT" - a classic piece of the story
[3] Wm R Johnston, "Falsehoods in Gore's An Inconvenient Truth"
[4] Prof Rossiter, "Convenient Fibs, or Why I Flunked Al Gore"
[5] James Peden's Climate Science introduction "The Great Global Warming Hoax?"
[6] C Monckton, Telegraph 05/11/06, "Climate Chaos? Don't believe it"
[7] Monckton of Brenchley, "Gore Gored: a science based response to Al Gore’s Global Warming Commentary" pdf
[8] Steve Durkin, "The Great Global Warming Swindle" video
[9] Courtney writes an interesting history of CAGW & Thatcher's involvement in the UK
[10] George Monbiot, The Guardian
[11] Schmidt at RealClimate attacks Monckton as "Cuckoo Science"
[12] Monckton replies "Chuck it Schmidt" including "Why the UN should apologize for the Hockey Stick", and 16 recent science papers proving the Medieval Warm Period
[13] Svensmark & Calder's book, The Chilling Stars, at Amazon with rave reviews
[14] Cosmoclimatology in outline, Danish National Space Center 
[15] eg Wikipedia, Solar Variation Theory
[16] Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, 2003 p801–812
[17] Damon & Laut charge Svensmark with bad science he never did (pdf) 
[18] Svensmark et al, Response to Criticism (section with several relevant papers)
[19] CBS News, article onWikipedia Climate Science disinformation
[20] Spencer Weart, "The Discovery of Global Warming"
[21] US senator Inhofe claims CAGW has monumental funding advantage, $50,000 million to $19 million 
[22] eg vikings in Greenland http://www.spirasolaris.ca/sbb4g1bv.html
[23] Huang and coauthors, Geophysical Research Letters, 1997
[24] Idsos, CO2 Science, "Medieval Warm Period"; Monckton "Chuck it Schmidt", references at the end of this paper
[25] McKitrick, "The hockey-stick debate" (pdf) - a classic piece of the story
[26] Watts Up draws attention to Beck's paper validating old CO2 records
[27] Steve McIntyre’s award-winning science blog: pages on Proxies and Data quality are especially revealing
[28] Oregon Petition Project - 31,000 US scientists who do not accept the IPCC picture of CAGW
[29] Lawrence Solomon, environmentalist reporter & author of "The Deniers", podcast "the list is extremely long and the scientists are extremely eminent, and the picture Al Gore paints is just not accurate"
[30]Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, p.100, p.120
[31] eg http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2006/05/15/polar-bears.html
[32] Article showing there is no acidification problem - “the system under study was surprisingly resilient to abrupt and large pH changes” - just the opposite of what CCAGW characteristically predicts...
[33] Nils-Axel Morne, IPCC reviewer, "Sea level expert - it's not rising" (pdf)
[34] Glance first at Monckton's reply to Schmidt [12], before reading Monckton's original Nov 2006 article [6] or Schmidt's Nov 2006 "Cuckoo Science" rebuttal [11]. Since Monbiot had taken Schmidt's rebuttal as gospel, and has not shifted his position despite Monckton's excellent science refuting Schmidt's rebuttal, this particular scientific exposition is important. Yet Schmidt has never answered Monckton's reply, as would be expected in such a key position, if he had had an answer to offer. In fact, Schmidt recently (July 2008) referred to his "Cuckoo Science" article as if he had successfully disproved Monckton. Given that Monckton had answered Schmidt's supposed disproof in 2006, point for point, Schmidt's 2008 statement is sheer dishonesty. After months of perusing, I've concluded that Monckton is one of the best introductions to the refutation of the central science issues, leaping from journalist's article to exact science about the key issues. Just put aside Monckton's reference to 1421, for although that too can be proved sound, it too is currently under attack from orthodoxy, and will only create a distraction. You don't need the 1421 reference to validate the rest of Monckton. For more detailed maths, refer to [36] since the Telegraph hyperlink doesn't seem to function.
[35] "Al Gore Debates Global Warming", short U-tube video - there are more of this kind.
[36] "Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered", Monckton's classic 2008 expert paper on the American Physical Society Forum
[37] Skeptics' Guide to Global Warming from Climate Skeptic website: finally a book! This last chapter deconstructs New Scientist's rebuttals of 20 sceptic "issues" and, by implication, the "answers to sceptics" at Gristmill, Skeptical Scientist, Royal Society,
[38] New Scientist's "guide for the perplexed" list of 20 sceptics' issues "explained"
[39] Skeptical Science's main list of 100+ sceptics' issues - each issue is discussed, then opened for public discussion - this is the best the mainstream can offer. Its tone has deteriorated, sadly, though the number of issues "disproved" grows and grows.
[40] CO2 sceptics can inform you about the real nature of CO2
[41] no greenhouse effect (layman's introduction, by a chemist with practical experience of absorption and emission spectroscopy) "Greenhouse Gas Facts and Fantasies" by Tom Kondis; "Heat Stored by Greenhouse Gases" by Nasif Nahle (peer-reviewed); and I Love my Carbon Dioxide website of Hans Schreuder (why greenhouse effect is false; links to several more papers)
[42] Climate Sensitivity issues brought to US Congress by ex-NASA scientist Roy Spencer, WattsUpWithThat
[43] award-winning astronaut speaks out against CCAGW science, WattsUpWithThat
[44] Ric Werme's excellent introduction Science, Method, Climatology, and Forgetting the Basics
[45] Lance Endersbee 2008 "Carbon dioxide and the oceans: Should we try harder to understand the causes of natural climate change
instead of assuming present climate change is man-made?" (pdf) - powerful visual evidence for ocean temp causing CO2 levels
[46] "A 2000-Year Global Temperature Reconstruction Based on Non-Treering Proxies" - shows MWP & LIA - 2007 Craig Loehle, with minor corrections thanks to Steve McIntyre, Gavin Schmidt, et al
[47] NASA "Antarctic Heating and Cooling Trends" and NASA "Two Decades of Temperature Change in Antarctica". Now although In It for the Gold says that Connolley suggested that the first picture is "probably the work of a PR droid", we suspect bias all round.
[48] WattsUpWithThat - Scroll down to 11.38am post on 4/8/08 by Josh
[49] Josh Hall explains the use of graphs for "Causality Inference in Dynamic Systems"
[50] Joe d'Aleo, US Temperatures and Climate Factors since 1895 pdf
[51] Dr Vincent Gray, "Spinning the Climate" and "Comments on the Recent Statement by the Climate Committee of the Royal Society of New Zealand" - these pages are unique, to my knowledge, for adequately conveying the IPCC workings, the weakness of their science claims, and their serial downplaying of natural factors (this is clear by the IPCC chapter headings), in a lively, readable way. But Dr Gray's latest "Global Warming Scam" is badly written, with foolish assertions that do not help make his science credible. There are better sceptics' writings on the issues he covers here. However, here (read both letters), he sets out pretty clear, straightforward evidence against CAGW's basic claims.
[52] Dr John Everett, IPCC impacts analyst, "Climate Change Facts"
[53] Prof Tom Segalstad "On the construction of a greenhouse effect global warming dogma"
[54] Robinson, Robinson & Soon "Environmental effects of increased atmospheric CO2" pdf
[55] Usoskin & Solanki "Millennium-Scale Sunspot Number Reconstruction: Evidence for an Unusually Active Sun since the 1940s" pdf
[56] John McLean,"Peer review? What peer review? Failures of scrutiny in the UN's Fourth Assessment Report" pdf
[57] Lockwood and Frohlich, Recent oppositely directed trends in solar climate forcings and the global mean surface air temperature is a rebuttal of the recent solar warming underpinning Svensmark - but it's rebutted in turn by "A Critique on the Lockwood/Frohlich Paper in the Royal Society proceedings" by Ken Gregory, and by Svensmark and Friis-Christensen. Read all!
[58] William Kininmonth, "Unmasking AIT" pdf
[59] Prof. David F. Noble, "Opposing Views on Global Warming: The Corporate Climate Coup"
[60] Beck, "180 Years of atmospheric CO2 Gas Analysis by Chemical Methods" 2007. Download from this page to read the paper, the telling comment by Keeling junior, and Beck's reply

Glossary of Acronyms and Abbreviations ppm parts per million by volume Gt gigatonnes weight (=1,000,000,000 tonnes) CAGW Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming IPCC Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change AGW Anthropogenic Global Warming CO2 Carbon Dioxide (the chemical formula) GHG Greenhouse Gas AIT An Inconvenient Truth (Al Gore's film) MWP Medieval Warm Period

 I've tried to give credits where appropriate, however if I've not acknowledged you properly, please let me know and I'll put in the credits or remove the reference. If anyone has serious queries with my material, I would be glad to be given the chance to respond in kind, before being dismissed in places where I’ve had no chance to respond.

key page - updated 15th February 2011