Two more books, on an important union, and on climate change

How many readers, I wonder, will recall this statement: Multiple lines of evidence indicate a strong, consistent, almost linear relationship between cumulative carbon dioxide levels and projected global temperature levels to the year 2100…

I do, for one, and the opening words reappear again and again in the statements of ‘climate experts’ both before and after the Fifth Report. I’m pretty sure Michael Mann used the phrase ‘multiple lines of evidence’ earlier still, after Steve McIntyre had disembowelled the hockey-stick paper. The multiple lines turned out to be chaps quoting other chaps quoting themselves back, or using similar if not identical methodologies. This is what Brady has to say.

False. There has not been a linear relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature levels since 1860, as there have been 70 years of pauses in slightly over 150 years. Therefore, there is not a linear relationship at all.

Here’s another: There is high confidence from many studies showing negative rather than positive climate impacts on crop yields…

Brady:

False. There has been a greening of the globe in many areas due to higher carbon dioxide levels and, in general, world-wide agricultural production per unit area has soared due to improved technology.

There are pages of this, and the wonder is that no one in Parliament or the media has pointed to the sheer discrepancy between what is claimed in the SPM and what is actually the case.

Like many others, Brady calls at the end for the restructuring of the IPCC. He wonders also how this awful travesty, in which science has become the plaything of the environmental movement and politicians keen to win power, will affect the public respect for science that was so pronounced half a century ago. Already there is an unease throughout the academic world about peer review, the unreproducibility of experiments and the fatuity of much published research. Climate science is not necessarily the cause of this unease, but it is perhaps the best example of it.