A major survey into the accuracy of climate models has found that almost all the past temperature forecasts between 1980-2021 were excessive compared with accurate satellite measurements. The findings were recently published by Professor Nicola Scafetta, a physicist from the University of Naples. He attributes the inaccuracies to a limited understanding of Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS), the number of degrees centigrade the Earth’s temperature will rise with a doubling of carbon dioxide.
Scientists have spent decades trying to find an accurate ECS number, to no avail. Current estimates range from 0.5°C to around 6-7°C. Without knowing this vital figure, the so-called ‘settled’ science narrative around human-caused climate change remains a largely political invention, not a credible scientific proposition. Professor Scafetta has conducted extensive work into climate models and is a long-time critic of their results and forecasts. In a previous work, he said many of the climate models should be “dismissed and not used by policymakers”. Along with around 250 professors, he is a signatory to the World Climate Declaration which states there is no climate emergency and also notes climate models are “not remotely plausible as global tools”.
Scafetta’s latest work grouped 38 major climate models into low, medium and high ECS values, ranging between 1.8°C and 5.7°C. He found that models in the medium and high category “ran hot” in over 95% and 97% of cases respectively. The lower models were said to have done better when compared to global warming calculated for the period by the major surface datasets of 0.52-0.58°C. But the UAH satellite data showed warming up to 30% less during this period, suggesting even the low warming models produced “excessive warming” from 1980-2021.
According to Scafetta, these results are showed that the ECS figure could be as low as 1.2-2°C. Particular concern is expressed about surface temperature records that “appear to be severely affected by non-climatic warming biases”. Scafetta concludes that surface-based temperature records are likely to be affected by warming biases, such as the urban heat island effect due to expanding urban development, and subject to natural oscillations that are not reproduced by climate models. He concludes: “The global warming expected for the next few decades may be even more moderate than predicted by the low ECS-GCMs [Global Circulation Models], and could easily fall within a safe temperature range where climate adaptation policies will suffice.”
Scafetta’s work is vital in providing a realistic insight into the dominant role played by climate models in promoting the command-and-control Net Zero political agenda. Many of the constantly promoted climate thermogeddon scares use forecasts based on high ECS values. The higher values are behind every statement from bureaucrats, politicians, green activists and journalists that we are heading for a 2-3°C increase in global temperature in the near future. In the absence of any definitive ECS figure, these predictions are guesses.
In fact, once the ECS figure falls to around 1°C, it is moving into margin of error territory. However, many scientists have more or less given up trying to calculate ECS, since measuring the non-linear atmosphere is proving as difficult as it ever was. The atmosphere is a chaotic system with many powerful influences reacting unpredictably with each other. The huge heat transfers that obviously have a considerable part to play in climate are far from completely understood. Recent suggestions that modellers can ‘attribute’ single event weather events to human-caused climate change are unprovable, and little more than figments of over-active, agenda-driven imaginations. Furthermore, it is possible that carbon dioxide becomes ‘saturated’ beyond certain levels and its effect as a warming gas rapidly declines.
What we do know is that over the last 20 years, global warming has started to run out of steam. The latest September UAH satellite data, considered in some scientific circles as the most accurate measurement we have, show the current standstill has been extended to eight years. But whereas satellite data are common and invaluable in many geographical fields, these temperature results are less welcome. It is not hard to see why. Scafetta calculates that the results since the start of recordings around 1980 are 30% below surface temperature datasets. As it happens, the two adjustments since 2013 by the U.K.’s Met Office to its HadCRUT global surface temperature record have increased recent warming by a similar amount. Similar upward adjustments are to be found in the other major global datasets. A previous temperature pause from about 1998-2010 is no longer visible in these records.
Claims of ‘record’ heat years and ever higher temperatures are taken exclusively from the surface records. The satellite record is largely ignored. There are even attempts to cancel the inconvenient figures, with Google AdSense recently ‘demonetising’ the site of Dr. Roy Spencer, the Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, one of the main compilers of the UAH satellite record. The record, of course, that is a vital part of Professor Scafetta’s work investigating the accuracy of climate models.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Thank you Toby for a cracking ‘taster’ into what is becoming an extremely invidious subject. Although I fell out with the Catholic Church many years ago and my anti-stance has hardened these last 2.5 years I remain a Christian and very much support Christian beliefs. I have nothing to say in favour of Islam and it is unquestionably, diametrically opposed, I believe to the Christian way of life. So I agree the undermining of Christianity seems to have been matched by the growth of wokery and the results are bad and getting worse.
The trans / alphabet brigade are very much a minority within a much larger group of people but unfortunately make far too much noise. The vast majority of trans people would I am sure prefer to live quiet lives under the radar.
If the Church went back to basics and ensured the Christian basics were reasserted once more a firmer push back against wokery might commence. Unlikely I know and especially with their current hierarchy.
The wokery infecting our society is evil and unless stopped will grow. It is certainly a nasty element in the push to break apart our society and like all other attacks we must resist and stand up for basic common sense.
“After a brief flurry of feminine freedom towards the end of the last century, once again men are the self-appointed experts on everything female.”. A “brief flurry”?. “towards the end of the last century”?. Not a single word of blame goes to the swivel-eyed loons that are ‘progressive’ women. We’re into the 9th decade of increasingly aggressive feminism and it’s no coincidence that life is becoming increasingly shite. Men must give up their masculinity and women must be more masculine (so few people seem able to see the bizarrely obvious double speak). Where could this campaign possibly end? Men wanting to be women, and women wanting to be men. Suck it up Julie, you’ve got a lot to answer for. Get comfortable in that bed.
Why has she got a lot to answer for?
Look up her previous rants about men. This woman absolutely hates males – hates with a venomous passion. That hatred has consequences – 60+ years of consequences.
Yes, I’m blaming womem like Julie; I’m just saying it out aloud. You sometimes have to dig deep to fnd the roots of a problem.
Well I don’t know anything about her. And I don’t even know if a word exists which is the female equivalent of ‘misogynist’. But I do like men, as long as they aren’t tossers. Women can be complete tossers too. What I will agree with this woman on is her opinion of a man being appointed as “Period dignity officer”. No idea what that job entails but it does sound like something straight from a Babylon Bee skit. I can imagine JP having a lot of fun with that one too.
“Rise of the New Puritans”.
For some time I have been imagining members of this new cult asking (in a “Southern” drawl): “Are you woke? Do you accept woke as your personal…” etc.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…
Four hundred years ago, one could say that the difference between the Catholics and the Protestants was that one set wanted to follow rules, while the other set wanted to think.
The same two sets exist today. Instead of it being Protestants and Catholics, what should it be? Sceptics and Wokesters?
I don’t know. Some Catholics are very sceptical. Have you read The Song Of Bernadette? And some Protestants for that matter are not very sceptical ( the clergy at Durham Cathedral?).
Note that the religious tend to not fall for the wokerati tricks — and the more religious they are the more they’re immune.
Perhaps society needs a religion, and in the absence of any of the traditional theologies people will get suckered into ‘belief’ in whatever is being pushed by the media.
Depends what one means by religious. I tend to consider some of the atheist cults as religious. And by the way, I don’t particularly buy the distinction that the atheist crimes of the 20th century were not in the name of atheism .Even if they were not specifically in its name or about converting the world to atheism, it won’t make much difference to their many victims, but I suppose the likes of Dawkins have to try and distance their religion from these crimes, and I suppose some are bound to buy it. Meanwhile, the maxim that if people cease to believe i n God, they don’t believe in nothing but rather in anything, seems to have a lot of truth in it. Innit? No coincidence that there is a big interest in “the aliens” in post Christian towns in South Wales.
If I say I have no idea about any gods and just want to focus on doing what I believe is the right thing for myself and those I love, what does that make me?
A Christian.
Agnostic I suppose if you don’t claim to know for certain. Nonetheless, there are likely to be other things that you do believe for certain without having seen. These may or may not include “aliens” (as I said), the origin of life, the provenance and age of fossils, whether or not Scottish shrimps are really likely to remain unchanged for 300 million years if molecules to man can allegedly happen in 4,000 million years (according to “the science”), whether T-rex DNA is really likely to survive for millions of years, where matter came from and how much there is and why, what the mind is (atoms arranged in a certain way (which would mean you could theoretically be duplicated and thus one person with two bodies), your own atoms (even though almost all are replaced over a life time), your own DNA (which would mean identical twins were one person with two bodies), or perhaps the dwelling place of the soul), whether the “big bang” is scientific (the universe came from a dot and the dot came from nothing and that idea gets printed in a journal as “science”), how much space, time and matter there is and why (if they are infinite, could anything happen (if so, why isn’t there more than one of me, and if not why not, how much of them is there and why?). why the missing links that Victorian amateur naturalist fretted about remain missing (and what said naturalist would have made of the stunning discoveries of DNA and the mindboggling complexity of the cell), about whether macro-evolution can happen by random chance despite lack of proof and seeming statistical impossibility (amino acids to protein, an eye forming etc.), and why the many natural laws (and many conditions of the unique planet Earth in its unique solar system) just happen to be perfectly calibrated to allow life to exist.
My point is that, whilst atheists and agnostics and “nones” might traditionally be considered as non-religious, they may very well be believers, simply arguing on essentially philosophical grounds that their belief is more reasonable than other beliefs (as indeed most people do to be fair).
And I should add that those atheists who place themselves at the centre and effectively make gods of themselves are effectively atheistic satanists (man made god is a key definition of this). Christians on the other hand aspire to love their enemy and do good to those that hate them. This is a very difficult thing, but very commendable (and to be fair, some atheists and agnostics try to do this. Always worth learning from other beliefs as our old friends the Amish have shown us with “vaccines”).
Which athiests make gods of themselves? So now they’re satanists?
And loving your enemy is commendable, doing good to those who hate you?
Sounds like being stuck in an abusive relationship to me and makes somebody a massive mug.
Just more sanctimonious cobblers and further proof that those of us without religion and happy in our lot seem to really rub the devout up the wrong way. The fact we do not feel we are lacking in the slightest and can have a fulfilling existence without subscribing to organized belief systems really gets up some noses doesn’t it?
Loving your enemy= treating them with respect and recognizing their humanity and agency; not snogging them and giving them your wage packet.
What has characterized all the lockdown protests and resistance movements (e.g trucker protests) has been their decency, kindness and good behaviour.
The religious are not, on the whole ‘rubbed up the wrong way’ by atheists. What rubs many of us up the wrong way is the mealy-mouthed caving-in of some of our own leaders -like the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Kudos to the Canadian pastor who roared at the cops who tried to close his church.
Why on earth would you treat your enemy with respect?? What humanity? Surely if they had any they wouldn’t be considered your enemy? No offence but I’m not someone who enjoys being treat like a doormat because I get to polish my halo and earn some brownie points before I reach your pearly gates. Nope. Treat others as you want to be treat yourself. Simple as.
But I do agree with that Bishop, and the pope actually, being utterly disingenuous in their preaching, and the Polish dude totally rocks. Got all the time in the world for people like that. His video went viral for a reason.
It makes you a decent and compassionate human being, and you do not have to belong to any particular club to be one of those. We aren’t living in primitive times where our very life depended on choosing a side.
“We aren’t living in primitive times where our very life depended on choosing a side.”
We have come very close Mogs. In places like Canada, New York, Australia and the others with ‘vaccine” mandates, for many they really did have to pick a side.
I am an Atheist, i.e. I do not believe in God(s), Angels, Archangels, etc.
That is all being an “Atheist” means.
To construe “not believing in God” as “believing in nothing” is illogical.
To construe “not believing in God” as “believing in anything” is merely puerile.
BTW Christian Cults have been murdering each other throughout history.
There’s always the English Divine Liturgy. Mar Mari Emanuel would get me back into a church.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i1QgjDenQ_s
“Note that the religious tend to not fall for the wokerati tricks”
Well that is a mile off the donkey’s nose. I come from a large and committed family of Catholics and unfortunately they have fallen for the scam hook…
Two churches I know well – Catholic and Baptist. C1984 believers up to their eye balls.
There are smaller groups within Christianity standing up to the nonsense (including that Canadian pastor and certain Catholic groups), however it is hard to think of leaders of any of the major Christian denominations who have made a stand, and many of them inspire little (or no) confidence. What I would say is that the Church is better than its leadership at any given time, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I trust Christ, even if I do not trust some Christian leaders so much.
I’m not alone in being both not religious and impervious to woke claptrap. Society “needs” religion like it needs mask mandates or a harnfull novel injection. All examples of completely unnecessary belief systems in order to live as a decent human being in a functional and civilised society.
But what people will use to virtue signal to the max nevertheless.
Ok… Except for “the child-raping of the Catholic Church”. I am aware of the scandals that prompted Ms Burchill to smear the whole Church in this way, but child rape is NOT part of the (Catholic) Christian religion.
“Far safer to kick the Christians instead” indeed.
I think I’ve spotted a typo in “…bullying cults…”