Inevitable really, but the Daily Sceptic‘s recent article on the World Climate Declaration (WCD) has attracted a green-activist ‘fact check’, and on that flimsy basis has been labelled “false information” by Facebook. On August 18th we published an article reporting that scientists across the world had declared there was no climate emergency. We added that the assertions that humans cause most or all climate change and that the science behind this claim is ‘settled’ have been dealt a savage blow by the WCD. The lead signatory is the Norwegian physics Nobel Prize laureate Professor Ivar Giaever, and he is followed by over 1,100 scientists and professionals. No fewer than 235 professors have signed the Declaration. Our story on the WCD went viral on social media, and is one of the most widely read articles we have ever published. The article and the WCD have now been branded “incorrect” by the green activist blog Climate Feedback.
The blog’s author writes: “Natural (non-human) drivers of climate change have been mostly stable since the onset of modern warming and all the available scientific evidence implicates human greenhouse gas emissions as the primary culprit.”
To claim that the climate has not undergone any natural change for almost 200 years is nonsense. Not a scrap of evidence can be submitted to back up this proposition, and it flies in the face of all climate science. The climate has changed on Earth since gas first made an appearance in the atmosphere. Climate Feedback’s claim is in fact a denial of climate change.
The second part of the charge sheet runs: “Scientific evidence also indicates that climate change is contributing to intensified or more frequent natural disasters such as heatwaves, drought and heavy rainfall.”
Again show us the evidence for this outlandish claim. Not a single scientific paper, not a scintilla of scientific proof, can attribute a one off bad (extreme) weather event to a change in long-term climate caused by humans burning fossil fuel. Any evidence supplied arises from climate models – evidence being a polite term for fanciful and wishful thinking.
A great deal of social media criticism of the WCD is reserved for the signatories. Their skills and interests range over many disciplines including pure science, such as chemistry and physics, along with useful related fields such as geology and paleoclimatology. The Climate Feedback review highlights the involvement of lead signatory Professor Antonino Zichichi, who is said to have links to the influential libertarian U.S. Heartland think tank. Furthermore, it is said he does not have a background in climate science. The attempted slur is interesting since Climate Feedback provides a link that does nothing more than present the professor’s impressive scientific and academic credentials. Zichichi “does not have a background in climate science”, it is said. In fact, Professor Zichichi is a physicist of immense international standing. He is credited with a number of scientific discoveries including nuclear anti-matter, served as President of the World Federation of Scientists and was awarded Italy’s highest honour, the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.
But, obviously, when dealing with the settled science of climate change, Zichichi has spent a lifetime studying the wrong sort of physics.
Timothy Osborn, a climate professor at the University of East Anglia, claims that all natural warming stopped by the late 1800s, although, confusingly, he adds that natural factors, “would have caused a slight cooling over the last 70 years”. Such certitude of course doesn’t arise from the scientific evidence – there isn’t any to back up this absurd claim.
Osborn continues with his tale:
Scientists estimate the effects of various potential climate drivers [influences] by running model simulations, mathematical representations of the climate system. The effectiveness of climate models is evaluated by their ability to capture real world climate trends. Models used by the IPCC have been faithfully predicting climate since the 1970s, which gives researchers confidence in their performance.
In fact, as the above graph shows, “real world climate trends” haven’t got a great track record when it comes to accurately forecasting future temperatures. The thick green line above shows the satellite record, the other lines the predications of climate models. From the turn of the century, when green activists went to war on fossil fuel, the predictions of thermogeddon have become increasingly detached from reality.
Finally, the ‘fact check’ disputes the statement in the WCD that there is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying weather events. This is said to be at odds with the most recent IPCC report, which states in its “Summary for Policymakers” that “human-induced climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe”. As the Daily Sceptic has noted, these ‘attribution’ claims are mostly the product of climate models, slammed by the WCD as “not remotely plausible as global policy tools”. Meanwhile, the IPCC summary for policymakers has recently been criticised as “government-dictated findings”. Professors William Happer and Richard Lindzen of Princeton and MIT respectively, laid that charge, noting that an IPCC rule states that all summaries must be approved by governments. “Climate science is awash with manipulated data, which provides no reliable scientific evidence,” they said.
Academics around the world are becoming increasingly frustrated and angry at the politicisation of science in the interest of promoting the command-and-control Net Zero agenda. The science is not settled – far from it. The WCD is a powerful fightback and is attracting worldwide interest and debate. This latest so-called fact check from Climate Feedback is just a recitation of a political narrative.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor
Stop Press: Watch Chris talk to TalkTV’s Kevin O’Sullivan about the World Climate Declaration.
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