Friday 20 March 2015

GLOBAL WARMING:  IS THERE A SCIENTIFIC CONCENSUS?                                                        
                                                           It is frequently asserted that there is an overwhelming
concensus of expert opinion that dangerous global warming is taking place and is
caused mainly by anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions.  This view is bolstered by
citing the number of scientfic papers which support  it.  Opponents cite the large
number of scientific papers which cast doubt on the thesis.
                                                         Assessment of the controversy requires an examination
of the procedure of scientific publication, depending heavily on "peer group review",  
and the associated research grants and academic appointments and promotion.  The
procedures have developed comparatively recently, since the huge explosion of university
teaching and research since the early 1960s.  At the risk of being accused of caricature,
it might be said that before that time academics published something only when they
had or thought they had something valuable to say;  since then it has become
necessary to publish in a peer-reviewed journal in order to qualify for a research
grant and an academic job. From a lifetime working in social science teaching and
research, I would be dubious about the validity of the procedures there. No social
science journal, as far as I know, takes the elementary precaution of reviewing
submissions "blind", to rule out the possibility of preference being given to authors
and institutions which can give reciprocal favours.   In three fields with which I have
been particularly concerned- crime, immigration into Britain, and global warming- I
believe social science research bodies have acted not merely to promote a particular
standpoint but to suppress dissenting views.
                                                   I have always believed that in physical sciences the
situation is different and that the peer-group review system works as it should, but the
global warming debate suggests that at least in this field there are grave defects.
                                                   The view that there is an large conscensus in favour
of anthropogenic CO2 as the main cause of warming ignores the long-established
and still continuing work of astrophysiocists and others who support the
Milankovitch theory of climate change- that it is due to the earth*s relationship to
the sun- and also the large number who are still examining the idea that it is due
to solar acivity, especially sunspots.  It is highly significant that several of these, in
contrast to the IPCC and other warmists, conclude that the causes of climate change
are at present unknown. For example Brian McDougall,  Frozen earth:  the once and
future story of ice ages  (University fo California Press, 2008) says that since the
general acceptance of the tehory of ice ages in the middle of the nineteenth century
"literally hundreds, perahps even thousands, of scientists have pursuded research into
the causes of ice ages.  The intellectual challenge presented by the geological event,
with its multiple possibilities, has attracted the efforts of geologists, chemists,
physicists, mathematicians, biologists and climatologists.  There is still much uncertainty
about how, and especially why, an ice age actually happens.  To be sure, there are
hypotheses, but none have yet attained the status of an accepted theory  (p.8-italics
added).
                                                    A question which can usefully be posed to all who
believe they know the causes of climate change is what caused the Little Ice Age
(about 1350 to 1850) and its ending. An authoritative study of the literature on sunspots
(Judith Broady, The enigma of susnspots,  Floris Books, Edinburgh, 2002) concludes
"The verdict at present has to remain that neither climate nor solar variability are
suffcieintly well defined, either spatially or temporarily, nor their causes adequately
understood.  Increasing solar and human activity both contribute to global warming
but in what proportion is still unknown..... At the moment all we have is surmises and
it is pretty unlikely that we shallever stumble on four- or five-hundred year-old
reliable meterological records for the whole planet". (pp.171-172).

                                                         
                                                          

Tuesday 17 March 2015

the 150-year rise in world temperature

It is agreed that world temperatures have risen by some 1.8oC since about 1850,
which is also about the time recording instruments came widely into use. I think
in fact the start of the upward trend could be more correctly put at about 1900.
From then till about 1940 temperatures especially in the Arctic rose markedly,
after which there was a 30-year pause or decline until about 1970, when the
temperature rise began which gave rise to the current widespread concern
about warming.  It is hardly necessary to say that these dates are not exact
and that the start and end dates varied between countries and regions.
                                      The rise since about 1970 can therefore be seen as a
recovery from the exceptionally cold spell of the preceding 30 years, and the rise
from 1850 or 1900 can be seen as a recovery from the exceptional cold of the
Little Ice Age.  Far from being a hockey-stick picture of 1,000 or more years
of temperature stability followed by a steep upsurge in the twentieth century, the
picture is therefore one of continuous fluctuations.
                                       Hubert Lamb  (1913-1997) for long Britain*s leading
climatologist and founder in 1972 of the University of East Anglia*s  Centre
for Climate Research (later hi-jacked by the warmists)  wrote in Climate,
history and the modern world  (Methuen, 1982):
   The cooling of the Arctic since 1950-1960 has been most marked in the very
   same regions that experienced the strongest warming in the earlier decades of
   the present century, namely the central Arctic and the northernmost parts of the
   two great continents remote from the world*s oceans but also in the Norwegian-
   East Greenland sea. In some places e.g. the Franz Josef Land archipelago near
   80oN-60oE, the long-term temperature fell by 3-4 degrees C and the ten-year
   average temperatures became 6 to 10 degrees colder in the 1960s compared with
   the preceding decades.  It is clear from Icelandic oceanographic surveys that
   changes in the ocean currents have been involved, including a greatly (in the
   extreme case, ten times) increased flow of the East Greenland Current, bringing
   polar water southwards. It has in several years, especially 1968 and 1969 but also
   1955, 1975 and 1979 brought more Arctic sea ice to the coast of Iceland than for
   fifty years.  In April-May 1968 and 1969 the island was half surrounded by ice,
   as had not occurred since 1888.
                                       His next paragraph gives an idea of why some warming is
regarded as beneficial, not only in Greenland and Iceland but also in Scandinavia,
Scotland, Canada and Russia  In the first four cold has historically been associated
with famine and emigration.
   Such ice years have always been dreaded in Iceland*s history because of the
   depression of summer temperatures and the effect on farm production. In the
   1950s the mean temperatures of the summer half-year in Iceland had been 7.7
   degrees C and the average hay yield 4.3 tonnes/hectare. In the late 1960s with mean
   temperatures of 6.8 degrees the average hay yield was only 3 tonnes/hectare despite
   the use of more fertilisers. The temperature level was dangerously close to the point
   at which grass virtually ceases to grow. The country*s yield of potatoes was
   similarly reduced.  The 1960s also saw the abandonment of attempts at corn growing
  in Iceland which had been resumed in the warmer decades of the century after a lapse
  of some hundreds of years.
     Further discussion in the author*s THE GLOBAL WARMING DEBATE-  CAN 
SCIENCE PREVAIL?  published by Farsight Research, 1 Wetheral Court, Alston Road,
London SW17 OTS on21st April, 2015, price £18.