Given how much scientific work has been done on chaotic weather and climate patterns since the Second World War, it might be a surprise that the best that ‘settled’ science can come up with to explain all recent changes is that it’s all down to humans adding small amounts of a trace gas into the atmosphere by burning previously sequestered plant material. But how plausible is that hypothesis? Not very, says Dr. Stuart Harris, a retired Professor of Geography at the University of Calgary, in a recently published and wide-ranging review of climate. The relationship of carbon dioxide to atmospheric air temperature has been widely discussed for 50 years, writes the author, and evidence from 24 sites shows that warming during the current deglaciation appears to precede increasing CO2 concentrations.
As the full implications of Net Zero start to become apparent, it is increasingly clear that blaming all climate change on human-caused C02, as the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states, is a political construct that will enrich global elites and impoverish ordinary people around the world. In Harris’s view, the climate of the Earth is driven by uneven solar heating of the surface, and the movement of the excess heat in the tropics towards the cooler polar regions, primarily via ocean currents, modified by the movement of air masses. Emeritus Professor Richard Lindzen also argues that most weather and long-term climate change is caused by heat exchanges across the planet. In his view, doubling C02 from its present level would lead to only a 2% perturbation to this vast energy budget.
Settled climate science, of course, relies on a vast array of ‘attributions’ and forecasts from computer models. This accumulation of false and/or misleading claims is often referred to as the ‘overwhelming evidence’ that we’re in the midst of a ‘climate emergency’, notes Lindzen. “Without these claims, one might legitimately ask whether there is any evidence at all,” he says.
Different changes in recent temperatures over the planet – higher in the Arctic, much lower in Antarctica, with eastern China and Germany showing “no obvious warming” – raise alarm bells about the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis. Harris notes that atmospheric CO2 is present in extremely low quantities and has a narrow band of wavelengths to absorb heat. It cannot possibly compete, he continues, with much larger solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface. The gas is mainly held down in the lower atmosphere by gravity, and models that assume it rises to the outer portion are unrealistic. “Water, in all its phases, is a much more potent agent for moving heat around the globe,” he observes.
Many scientists put great store in trying to understand long-term changes in the climate by studying Milankovitch cycles and the eccentricity of Earth’s orbit around the Sun. The cycles determine how much solar heat and energy the Earth receives and in which areas it falls. There are a number of these cycles over different time periods. Harris reports that the 23,000-year Milankovitch cycle has begun to reduce winter heat reaching the surface in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. This results in “extreme” winter weather and high summer temperatures, and is said to herald the start of the next glaciation. Harris’s paper is an excellent summary of many of the natural influences affecting the climate. A brief outline is given of some of the Milankovitch climatic changes that may be expected in western Canada – during the next 11,500 years.
Harris notes that low levels of CO2 in the atmosphere during colder events could result in too little of this gas being available to support photosynthesis in plants, “resulting in the extermination of most life on Earth as we know it”. As the Daily Sceptic has reported, the Earth is emerging from a period of CO2 denudation where levels have been as low as any observed in the 600 million-year paleo record. The unproven human-warming hypothesis – after 50 years, not a single paper yet provides credible proof – fails on the observational front with CO2 amounts up to 15 times higher in the past. No obvious link between gas and temperature can be seen in the historic or paleo record.
One possible reason why this link is absent is the ‘saturation’ hypothesis – also noted in past Daily Sceptic articles. As Professor Harris observes, CO2 only traps heat within a narrow band of the infrared spectrum. There is a debate about the level at which peak absorption is reached, but some scientists say the heating work is mainly done around 300 parts per million (ppm) concentration, about 100 ppm below the current atmospheric level. Above 300 ppm, the warming of CO2 seems to fall off a logarithmic cliff.
Alas, the opportunity for vast financial subsidies to peddle inferior green technologies that few people want is a tad less under the saturation hypothesis of atmospheric greenhouse gas warming.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor
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I’m sold. Now to convince the millions of zombies out there who believe that every hot day is further proof of man made climate change.
When we listen to politicians on TV, many of us don’t believe a word they say. Apparently they are less trusted today than ever before. On the Economy, on Immigration, Foreign Policy, Education Policy, etc etc etc we don’t trust them and don’t believe them. Which brings me the issue of “climate change”. Almost all climate change science is funded by ———–Governments. The very same governments that we don’t trust and don’t believe. ———–Ah but people will tell you, this is all about science and governments are simply following what the science says. ——-Nope. Government dictates the science. I will quote from Michael Hart’s book “Hubris” which explains it perfectly. —-“Progressives at the United Nations and their supporters around the world had long sought a powerful narrative with which to advance their ambitious agenda of global governance. Harvesting the growing appetite among western environmentalists for a concerted campaign to halt and reverse the perceived rape of the planet could provide such a narrative. The environmental issue, particularly its climate dimension, was ideally suited to becoming the perfect organising principle of the UN’s campaign to eradicate global injustice and inequality by pursuing Sustainable Development, which argues that environmental degradation cannot be addressed without addressing the human activities that give rise to it. The solutions to these problems from the perspective of the UN and its Progressive ideas lay in Central Planning, State Control and Global Governance”———–ie.The Politics came first, and the science hijacked in support of it.
There is no Climate Crisis
Print this for your friends
“Some is caused by humans, mainly through out of control population growth and the resulting destruction of cooling forests and construction of huge concrete heat-trapping mega-cities designed to accommodate said population growth.”
I have asked you previously to provide proof for these assertions, to date you have ignored me.
Proof please.
You yourself have previously conceded there is some local weather variance due to man’s activities.
Take a look at today’s Met Office temperature map of the UK. https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/maps-and-charts/temperature-map#?model=ukmo-ukv&layer=temperature&bbox=%5B%5B40.413496049701955,-46.1865234375%5D,%5B65.10914820386476,38.18847656250001%5D%5D Once again London is the warmest place. It’s the warmest place in the UK 90% of the time, day and night. It’s a concrete heat trapping mega-metropolis.
Now add the extra 2,000,000,000 people net population growth in the last 23 years. They require the equivalent of 200 Londons to accommodate them and most of them are in warm or hot climates where there will be even more of an Urban Island Heat Trapping effect.
Bear in mind that the Climate Fanatics quote tiny temperature variances of fractions of a degree as “proof” of a climate crisis. If we’re chopping down forests on a massive scale and building more heat trapping structures there is going to be some of your admitted “local weather variance” in multiple locations, sometimes on a grand scale (think destruction of 1000’s of square miles of Amazon jungle), add these together and you get a little global human-caused climate change.
You need to read the whole post and not just cherry pick. We cannot defeat the treachery that is Net Zero by denying any human caused climate variance, we must find a way of convincing people that piling our wealth into stopping beneficial CO2 emissions will end up killing billions of people. To do that we must shame the Mainstream Media into admitting these facts.
On Tuesday evening, I went along to my local council’s full meeting to ask them about Agenda 21. My first question – at the beginning of my generously permitted 3 minute speech allowance of democratic rights – was whether any of the council knew what Agenda 21 was. None of them did. I carried on with my speech somewhat astounded, as were some of my more vocal SitP compadres, veering into the area of climate change. The council chair – not even a mayor these days – was scathing in her reply. She could hardly see what this all had to do with council business. I mean why wasn’t I asking about dog litter or street lighting? I wanted to say that THIS is council business, it’s what you’re doing right now with all your sustainability reports and green action plans and what have you, but they just don’t get it. Furthermore, they don’t want to get it. She cut me off before I had the chance to finish anyway. Most of my group were outraged and we all walked out…well, I had to sheepishly return briefly as I forgot my jacket was on the back of my chair but we will demand a council debate. Councils up and down the length and breadth of the land declared Climate Emergencies in 2019: very few of them knew why apart from…IPCC, innit? Ignorance and corruption are pervasive in local councils. All the Nobel Prize winning scientists in the world could dissent with the mainstream narrative but it would make no difference to this intractable, unmovable, unimaginative lot. This is the small-minded reality of our local governments and how Agenda 21 will be slowly rolled out. I thought that tackling local government was the way to go but we have no real democracy there either. Makes me understand why every major revolt in this country came to naught. Still, we go on…
“Ignorance and corruption are pervasive in local councils. All the Nobel Prize winning scientists in the world could dissent with the mainstream narrative but it would make no difference to this intractable, unmovable, unimaginative lot. This is the small-minded reality of our local governments and how Agenda 21 will be slowly rolled out. I thought that tackling local government was the way to go but we have no real democracy there either. Makes me understand why every major revolt in this country came to naught. Still, we go on…”
I have pointed this out more than once Aethelred.
To make matters worse the group I am associated with are also largely ignorant of Agenda 21 / 30 and to make matters worse don’t want to know.
Ignoramuses fighting the grifting ignorants.
Yes, I know you have, HP, but it needs spelling out occasionally although in this echo chamber I wonder who I am spelling it out to! If your local group don’t want to know about A21 then I imagine it is the wrong group to be part of. A21 is the control plan for the world. Maybe they – your group – could be encouraged to look at Rosa Koire’s presentation to the New Hampshire legislature in 2011. It’s in 4 30 minute parts on youtube and is very enlightening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8-bcAwc28s&t=49s
Thanks Aethelred.
The lock step behaviour of our woke local councils is indeed very depressing. Probably many councillors are thrilled to conform to the brainwashed ideology that they have sucked up over the last 30 years and now think that they are saving the planet with their flower boxes. Money is also behind these illogical , disastrous policies, from the Government (taxpayers) and probably elsewhere?Corruption is everywhere.
My local paper reads like a Party Political Broadcast for the Green Party. But actuall all parties are Green now aren’t they. As you say, many of these low quality council people are only follwing the top down narrative and have little clue as to what the are actually talking about. They would have great difficulty explaining anything about energy or climate to a five year old, yet our standard of living and well being, our access to affordable energy etc is in the hands of these imbeciles. ——-Grant Schapps who is currently the Net Zero and Energy Security Minister was asked about a month ago on GB News if heat pumps are any good —–His absurd reply was —-“I don’t know, but I am having one fitted so I will find out!——-WHAT? What a blithering idiot.——-Him and his silly government want to rip out our fantastic gas central heating and give us all a stupid heat pump and he doesn’t know if they are any good? In Scotland the SNP are threatening to not let you sell your house unless you install a heat pump at huge expense……We are actually on Agenda 2030 now, which is why you will see all of these changes like no petrol or diesel cars and other green initiatives all given the date of 2030, which all emanates from the UN and filters its way all the way down to the numbskulls in local government
Very interesting article by Dr Harris, however, there are a number of errors that indicate that the paper has not been reviewed.
For example, referencing world population he states that “According to the UN, this is expected to increase to 11–15 million people by the end of this century”, should be billions, and “Neanderthal man had become extinct in Europe by c.1200 B.C”, more like 40,000 BC, and some of the citations do not link to the appropriate article.
This is a pity as it undermines confidence in the quality of the other information presented.
11 to 15 million may be correct if the globalist de-population measures run out of control.
Sounds like Ellis and Palmer
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674987116300305
co2 bottoms around 180 ppm in coldest times. Grasslands/tundra die off. Winds whip up dust which lands on ice sheets, raising albedo to help melt them during next Milankovitch warm period. CO2 rises with a bit of a lag until it runs out of puff around 280 ppm. Natural variation.
Whilst we all love a bit of Vitamin D. The look of utter forlorn despair on the faces of the BBC weather forecasters is a joy. They are desperate to frighten us with red maps and an uncontrollable nature is laughing at them. It’s a look that reminds me of Dimblebys face when we voted for Brexit. Delicious
I just discovered ‘Milankovitch cycles’ is the new trigger term for the ‘fact’ checkers.
Another brilliant article, Chris. It’s well worth taking the time to read through the whole paper published by Dr Harris. No great surprise to note he received zero funding for it, and is himself now retired. He’s got nothing to lose by telling the truth.
I would like to know what “carbon dioxide traps heat” means and how it is achieved. It is utter drivel. Heat cannot be trapped because it is defined as thermal energy transferring from one location to another. Thermal energy could be trapped, and a thermos flask is an example of the best we can do, but it should be obvious that the thermal energy that is trapped cannot cause any heating elsewhere. Trapped energy in the natural world, particularly the atmosphere and oceans is impossible. The only example in nature of trapped energy is fossil fuels and as we all know they have to be burned to release the energy. The supposed science of global warming is a creation of idiots who want to destroy civilisation.
Many news websites censor comments if you mention dissenting opinions to the ‘settled science’ idea that current climate change is anthropogenic caused.