Mirrors and Mazes: review

The whole alarmist spectre starts with CO₂, and its effect on radiation. Brady explains radiation and radiation bands, but also adds the important role of convection, and effect of the Earths spin. He puts greenhouse gases in order of their greenhouse effect. Water vapour is top at 82% and CO₂ second at 11%. The IPCC uses water to enhance the small effect from CO₂ alone, but the modelling of water vapour is a nightmare – beautifully described here. The NASA Carbon Observatory satellite launched in 2014 gives high resolution pictures of CO₂ levels around the world. Some plumes of CO_{2 are} over the ocean, others over rainforest, and the only ones over industrial areas were in China.

Models have their problems. The grid blocks used in global models are huge and only one figure can be placed in each cell. The computer tells us how data put in might interact, but ignores the problems of chaos described earlier. To make a model work, estimates are inserted and then varied while the model is running, called tuning. To avoid responsibility the IPCC only gives ‘projections’ (derived from extending a line on a graph) and not ‘predictions’, but politicians, the media and consultants continue to treat their numbers exactly as predictions, all based on models..

Between 1975 and 1998 temperature and CO₂ (as measured by NASA) were rising in tandem, but after that began to diverge, to the embarrassment of modellers. One leading IPCC author opined “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” and went on to suggest the data must be wrong! But the pause he thought was an artefact is still with us today.

Explanation for the pause include: heat is buried in the ocean (but the heat cannot be found); cooling is caused by aerosols (but this cannot account for earlier coolings); and volcanic eruptions (which do not fit climate history). Very large eruptions do cause global cooling of about one degree C, but only for a few years.

IPCC models predict a tropical hot spot at an altitude of 10-15 km due to heat given out when water vapour condenses. This theoretical hot spot has never been detected despite over 20 million radiosonde balloon readings taken in tropical regions.

Heat transfer is hard to model but is absolutely necessary. The transfer of heat from the equator to the poles is one problem. Another is transfer from atmosphere to ocean.  The heat capacity of the upper few metres of the ocean equals the total heat capacity of the atmosphere. “The ocean accounts for over 90% of total energy accumulation and for almost all uncertainty.”

Clouds are of enormous importance in climate, but are generally neglected. A change of just 1% in the cloudiness of planet Earth could account for all the 20^th Century warming. However, the IPCC computers don’t do clouds.

Despite the alarmist emphasis on CO₂ the sun is the driver of climate. There is discussion of sunspots, magnetic cycles, ultra violet rays, and total solar irradiance. Isotopes formed by cosmic rays, recorded in ice sheets and tree rings for example, provide strong evidence of the Sun’s dominant role in the Earth’s climate. Times of low sun spot activity correlate with cold periods such as the Maunder and, Dalton Minima, and the low sunspot count at present suggests we are in for another time of cooling.

Having assembled the evidence, the IPCC is assessed. Right from the start is assumed that greenhouse gases controlled temperature. From this arose the advice to control emissions to stop a rise in temperature. A number of future greenhouse scenarios were formulated in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (2014). The scenarios (called Representative Concentration Pathways) make assumptions on population, changes in methane concentration, fossil fuels and more. At present there are 300 baseline scenarios and 900 mitigation scenarios.

The IPCC summary statements also contain interpretative propositions that are sometimes incorrect, and some not based on solid data. Many examples (six pages) of IPCC speculation and false statements versus the truth are presented. To pick just the shortest example:

IPCC  Each of the three decades since 1980 have been successively warmer than any preceding decade since 1850.

False. The first two decades were warmer but temperatures have stalled in the latest decade.

There is a brief section on conflicts of interest, mentioning Al Gore, Pachauri and Sterne and their business connection. A brief mention of the Climategate affair notes that many of the people involved are still dominant figures in IPCC committees. But Brady generally steers clear of personalities and politics and sadly, La Framboise’s brilliant expose of IPCC is not discussed or listed in the references.

In IPCC reports even solid scientific data is processed and squeezed into a final shape so that the IPCC Summary statements reflect an exaggerated and false view about how the Earth’s climate is behaving. At the present time there is no evidence of climate behaving outside its normal non-linear boundaries due to human influence.

The final chapter is a rather dismal view of ‘what comes next’. Depressing features of the ‘debate’ include: the funding of research and of universities; the sacking or legal action against dissenters; the prevention of publication of opposing views; the economic arguments of emission control; the rush to alternative energy; the intervention of religion. Brady suggests that the path forward requires a complete restructuring of the IPCC (perhaps abolition would be better).  He hopes one day the edifice of global warming, built over the past 40 years and fuelled by greenhouse gases, will collapse.