Does Al Gore do Science and Reason?

Posted 4th October 2011

In the run up to Al Gore’s televised 24 hour climate alarmism extravaganza, he penned an article for Rolling Stone in which he sought to discredit those scientists who dissent from the claimed “consensus” on climate change.  This is a rebuttal of those claims which Rolling Stone will not publish:

Al Gore sounds desperate (Climate of Denial – Rolling Stone June 22, 2011).  According to NASA’s satellite data, sea levels show a 6mm decline in 2010 and AMSR-E Global Sea Surface Temperature Variations indicate that oceans are cooling.   Studies, by three separate teams from the National Solar Observatory and the Air Force Research Laboratory, are suggesting the next solar cycle (25) will be similar to the Dalton or Maunder Minima. These minima occurred during the Little Ice Age which saw temperatures plunge after the relatively high temperatures of the Medieval Warm Period.  Scientists studying oceans demonstrate that the recent warming, to the end of the last century, is part of the natural cycle of oceanic oscillations and predict a thirty year cooling phase.   The CLOUD experiment at CERN suggests that all the warming of the late twentieth century could be accounted for by a small percentage reduction of reflective cloud cover (albedo) – more of the sun’s rays reached the earth, warming the planet.  Indications are that albedo is growing once more.  Clearly,  the computer climate models on which climate alarmism is based are flawed because they fail to model these natural processes correctly.

What’s a Nobel Prize winner, trying to save the world, to do?

Call up the bogey-men! “Poisonous Polluters and Right-wing idealogues are battling to defeat science and reason!”  However, the traditional polluters are well placed to capture the “climate change” dollar: from consumers in higher energy prices; from taxpayers in the form of  subsidies for renewable energy and carbon capture; and from carbon credits and carbon trading.   Gore complains these companies are funding attacks on the climate change establishment.  But, man-made global warming sceptics and “deniers” are a vilified minority comprising scientists and the intellectually curious, many of whom, have little or no financial support for their interest in climate science.  Furthermore, sceptics are swimming against the tide of the mainstream media and subject to ridicule and attack.  It is the climate change lobby that has the most financial, political and media fire power.  And why does it have this power? Because billions of dollars have been committed by the US government and others, to promote the idea we are destroying our planet through carbon emissions.  Money that could have been spent developing clean energy from a variety of sources and protecting the environment from real threats such as deforestation, ground water pollution and depletion, environmentally damaging mining and drilling etc.
We now have a climate change industry which will collapse when the truth emerges, hence the need to suppress the truth at any cost.

In October 2007, a UK High Court judge ruled that Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, contained nine scientific errors but because of the institutionalised “belief” in man-made global warming, the judge didn’t stop it being shown in UK secondary schools (11-18 year olds).  He did stipulate however, that the flaws in the film should be pointed out to students prior to screening.

In the Rolling Stone article, Gore makes a number of claims again without any evidence to back them up.  For example, he claims the scientific consensus is even stronger with endorsement from 98 percent of climate scientists throughout the world.  But, in the run up to the Copenhagen Climate Conference, 166 highly qualified climate specialists wrote to UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, stating “Truly, the science is NOT settled.”

Open Letter to UN Secretary-General

His Excellency Ban Ki Moon
Secretary-General, United Nations
New York, NY
United States of America
December 8, 2009

Dear Secretary-General,

Climate change science is in a period of ‘negative discovery’ – the more we learn about this exceptionally complex and rapidly evolving field the more we realize how little we know. Truly, the science is NOT settled.

Therefore, there is no sound reason to impose expensive and restrictive public policy decisions on the peoples of the Earth without first providing convincing evidence that human activities are causing dangerous climate change beyond that resulting from natural causes. Before any precipitate action is taken, we must have solid observational data demonstrating that recent changes in climate differ substantially from changes observed in the past and are well in excess of normal variations caused by solar cycles, ocean currents, changes in the Earth’s orbital parameters and other natural phenomena.

We the undersigned, being qualified in climate-related scientific disciplines, challenge the UNFCCC and supporters of the United Nations Climate Change Conference to produce convincing OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE for their claims of dangerous human-caused global warming and other changes in climate. Projections of possible future scenarios from unproven computer models of climate are not acceptable substitutes for real world data obtained through unbiased and rigorous scientific investigation.

Specifically, we challenge supporters of the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused climate change to demonstrate that:

1.    Variations in global climate in the last hundred years are significantly outside the natural range experienced in previous centuries;

2.    Humanity’s emissions of carbon dioxide and other ‘greenhouse gases’ (GHG) are having a dangerous impact on global climate;

3.    Computer-based models can meaningfully replicate the impact of all of the natural factors that may significantly influence climate;

4.    Sea levels are rising dangerously at a rate that has accelerated with increasing human GHG emissions, thereby threatening small islands and coastal communities;

5.    The incidence of malaria is increasing due to recent climate changes;

6.    Human society and natural ecosystems cannot adapt to foreseeable climate change as they have done in the past;

7.    Worldwide glacier retreat, and sea ice melting in Polar Regions , is unusual and related to increases in human GHG emissions;

8.    Polar bears and other Arctic and Antarctic wildlife are unable to adapt to anticipated local climate change effects, independent of the causes of those changes;

9.    Hurricanes, other tropical cyclones and associated extreme weather events are increasing in severity and frequency;

10.     Data recorded by ground-based stations are a reliable indicator of surface temperature trends.

It is not the responsibility of ‘climate realist’ scientists to prove that dangerous human-caused climate change is not happening. Rather, it is those who propose that it is, and promote the allocation of massive investments to solve the supposed ‘problem’, who have the obligation to convincingly demonstrate that recent climate change is not of mostly natural origin and, if we do nothing, catastrophic change will ensue. To date, this they have utterly failed to do.

Signed by:

Science and Technology Experts Well Qualified in Climate Science (a full list of signatories is available at http://www.copenhagenclimatechallenge.org)

Gore goes on to claim that Polluters and Ideologues are financing pseudoscientists to manufacture doubt about what is true and what is false.  Does he mean climate scientists like Richard Lintzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and member of the National Academy of Sciences or maybe Dr John R Christy, at the Atmospheric Science Department at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a lead IPCC author?  Perhaps he’s thinking of Dr Judith Curry, Professor and Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology and another IPCC contributor (she’s earned the ire of the climate change establishment by entering into a dialogue with sceptics, acknowledging the flaws in climate models and the undisclosed uncertainties in the IPCC Reports); or Jasper Kirkby, the particle physicist who heads the CLOUD experiment at CERN (Geneva), investigating the theory that global warming is caused by changes in solar activity, that affects cosmic radiation hitting the earth, that then affects reflective cloud cover (albedo).  There is a long list of reputable climate scientists who dissent from the claimed “consensus”.

Gore is presumably referring to the 2007 IPCC report when saying: In the latest and most authoritative study by 3,000 of the very best scientific experts in the world the evidence was judged “unequivocal.”  John McLean conducted a study analysing the authors and reviewers of the IPCC reports and found that only about 60 could be said to have explicitly supported the claims about a significant human influence on climate.  The scientific papers underpinning the IPCC reports do not add up to a consensus but once the small number of scientists and apparatchiks, who support the man-made warming theory, write the Summary for Policy Makers, uncertainties are expunged and contradictory evidence is ignored, dismissed or suppressed (the latest Summary, AR4 in 2007, was written before all the scientific papers were submitted).  By the time Rajendra Pachaudrey, the IPCC chairman, goes public with baseless alarmist claims, the illusion of consensus is complete as the mainstream media pick up climate change stories of drought in Africa, drowning polar bears and disappearing glaciers, none of which stand up to scientific scrutiny.

Gore’s claim that every national academy of science and every major scientific society endorses the claimed consensus is worthy of closer examination.  In the same way that the IPCC Report Summary for Policy Makers filters out dissent, so do the management boards of the major scientific institutions.  Take the case of Hal Lewis, Professor and Chairman of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who resigned from the American Physical Society with the following:
Sent: Friday, 08 October 2010 17:19 Hal Lewis
From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara
To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society
6 October 2010

Dear Curt:

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago).

Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:

1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate

2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer “explanatory” screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.

3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.

4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind—simply to bring the subject into the open.

5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members’ interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.

6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.

APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?

I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.

I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.

Hal

Fig 1. From the first IPCC assessment report produced in 1991

The question of the integrity of climate scientists was raised by the hockeystick fiasco and the subsequent release of emails and documents from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (Climategate) which exposed the dubious science behind the claim that the 1990s was the hottest decade since AD1000.  The IPCC’s first assessment report, produced in 1991, portrayed global temperatures as in Fig. 1 which clearly wasn’t going to convince anyone that we had a problem with carbon emissions.  For the third assessment report in 2001, a small group of paleoclimatic scientists transformed the perception of global temperatures over the second millennium to Fig 2.  They’d managed to eliminate the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age.  The hockeystick continued to feature in global warming propaganda long after it was shown to be false.

Fig 2. From the third IPCC assessment report produced in 2001

Climategate revealed how this small group of paleoclimatic scientists tortured data to produce the now infamous hockeystick, “hiding the decline” and using flawed statistical techniques which produced hockeysticks from random data.  It further showed subversion of the peer review process, withholding of data and programs from others, contrary to the scientific method and Freedom of Information Requests (remember these are publicly funded institutions) while using bullying techniques and collusion to suppress contradictory evidence.  The subsequent inquiries were a classic establishment whitewash with the University of East Anglia ensuring that climate science funding continued to flow into its coffers and kept the climate change gravy train on the tracks.

Gore claimed the following as evidence from the past twelve months that the climate crisis is real:

Heat.   According to NASA, 2010 was tied with 2005 as the hottest year measured since instruments were first used systematically in the 1880s.

Apart from the very obvious fact that one year is no indication of climate trends – 2007 saw temperatures fall dramatically, this claim is suspect at best but totally misleading.  According to satellite data, the most reliable guide to temperatures we have, temperatures peaked in 1998 and have plateaued since.  2010 didn’t reach the 1998 temperatures.   The NASA surface temperature records, are incomplete and do not cover the globe for the period Gore selected.  There are projects underway to improve the records to give us a better picture but it will take time.  So, satellite data show that temperatures have plateaued this century but more importantly, sea surface temperatures are falling.   None of the climate models predicted this lack of warming and the Climategate “team” of paleoclimatic scientists  worked feverishly to shore up the crumbling edifice of man-made global warming.  From the Climategate emails, Dr Kevin Tremberth wrote late in 2009: “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.”  In contrast, solar scientists, oceanographers and those studying natural cycles are unsurprised by the lack of warming.

It is interesting to note Gore referred to the first decade of this millennium being the hottest measured in spite of half the decade representing a solar minimum.  Recent studies are predicting dramatically reduced solar activity for solar cycle 25 (due shortly) similar to the Dalton and Maunder Minima during the Little Ice Age which is one reason cooling why is predicted.  As to whether the last decade was unusual, evidence suggests that the Medieval Warm Period was significantly warmer.

Floods.  Many places around the world are now experiencing larger and more frequent extreme downpours and snowstorms; last year’s “Snowmaggedon” in the northeastern United States is part of the same pattern, notwithstanding the guffaws of deniers.

Another claim with no evidence to support it.   Gore refers to megafloods in Pakistan displacing 20 million people but Pakistan has a long history of flooding.  In 1976 10 million homes were destroyed which suggests many more than 20 million were displaced three years before the recent phase of global warming started.  A leading hurricane specialist, Chris Landsea, resigned from the IPCC in protest over repeated, unsubstantiated claims of man’s CO2 emissions causing extreme weather. His 2007 study, of hurricanes over the last 100 years, found no link between climate change and the frequency or intensity of hurricanes. A more recent study by the Institute for Environmental Studies, Amsterdam, found no correlation between climate change and extreme weather. It concluded rising insurance losses were due to expanding populations in vulnerable areas.  So is Gore’s claim derived from science and reason?  Numerous studies have failed to link extreme weather to climate change although a cooler planet is undoubtedly more hostile to man.  The Little Ice Age was characterised by crop failures and famine in the northern hemisphere.  Interestingly, rising concentrations of CO2 have increased crop yields but if CO2 levels were to drop below 150 parts per million, nothing will grow.   How can CO2 be a pollutant if it is so necessary that its removal will kill all plant and animal (humans are animal) life on earth?  Long ago CO2 concentrations were much higher than the current 391 parts per million and plant life flourished.   Deforestation, diverting water courses, brush clearance, removing wetlands and other activities may have caused localised extremes such as droughts, fires, floods and mudslides but  CO2 emissions are irrelevant; patterns of extreme weather show no correlation with climate change.   Munich Re may subscribe to the extreme weather climate change myth but like most financial institutions, they have much to gain from the “climate change” dollar.

Melting Ice.  The acceleration of ice loss in both Greenland and Antarctica has caused another upward revision of global sea-level rise and the numbers of refugees expected from low-lying coastal areas.

Another false claim.  Changes in sea levels are influenced by thermal expansion and contraction of the oceans and have been rising steadily since the end of the Little Ice Age.  According to NASA’s satellite data, since around 2007, the trend has slowed and 2010 saw a 6mm drop.  Antarctic studies show evidence of cooling from 1966 to 2000.  While some Antarctic ice has melted where it protrudes into the warm water which has been pushed down from the equator and circulates the southern oceans, in other areas ice has been growing.  Equatorial waters moving north cannot circulate the globe but form gyres or spirals between the land masses and until 2007, caused Arctic ice to melt. Recent evidence suggests northern oceans are cooling.  The jury is out on when Arctic ice will start growing again and recent studies show that temperature is not necessarily the main driver of sea ice melt; winds and currents play a significant role.

And another one: Twenty percent of the global-warming pollution we spew into the sky each day will still be there 20,000 years from now!  Most studies have shown the average residency time of CO2 in the atmosphere to be about 10 years with only one suggesting more than 20 years.  Even the IPCC’s exaggeration only extends to 100 years in the atmosphere, so how Gore gets to 20,000 years is a real feat of  imagination over science.  Over the last two years Professor Murry Salby, Chair of Climate Science at Macquarie University, has been looking at C12 and C13 (isotopes) ratios and CO2 levels around the world, and has come to the conclusion that man-made emissions have only a small effect on global CO2 levels. It’s not just that man-made emissions don’t control the climate, they don’t even control global CO2 levels.  Which accords with what is known from ice cores showing that over the last 800,000 years CO2 levels in the atmosphere have followed temperature changes with a lag of around 800 years.  This suggests that temperature drives CO2, not the other way round.

So what about the predictions of cooling?  According to studies released in the United States in June this year, experts believe the familiar sunspot cycle may be shutting down and heading toward a pattern of inactivity unseen since the 17th century.  The studies, by three separate teams from the National Solar Observatory and the Air Force Research Laboratory,  are suggesting solar cycle 25 will be similar to the Dalton or Maunder Minima. These minima occurred during the Little Ice Age which lasted from around 1450 to 1800.

Solar influences appear to interact with other cyclical phenomena such as ocean currents and oscillations which transfer heat around the globe.  The El-Nino Southern Oscillation produces a warming pulse of varying intensity every 4-5 years.  Following the peak El-Nino of 1998, the intensity has diminished.  The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has a 30 year cycle.  The PDO’s reversal from its positive phase (which coincided with the recent warming) to negative in 2007 depressed temperatures worldwide and heralds a 30 year negative cycle.  The Arctic Oscillation peaks every 60 to 70 years.  It matched the warm spike in the 1940s as well as the recent warming.  Sometimes, these oscillations cancel each other out and at other times they work in harmony.  Fig. 3 is based on the PDO and projects cooling scenarios analogous to those seen in the past.

Fig 3. From Professor Don Easterbrook

The CLOUD experiment at CERN in Switzerland is looking to explain the mechanism by which changes in reflective cloud cover (albedo) correlate with galactic cosmic rays which are inhibited during periods of strong solar magnetic flux.    Towards the end of the last century, stronger magnetic flux inhibited galactic cosmic rays leading to reduced albedo.  The small percentage reduction of albedo over the period (as measured by satellite data) had a significant effect on the energy balance and all the recent warming could have been caused by reduced albedo.  Whereas, there is no real world evidence that CO2 concentrations had any significant influence on warming in the late 20th century.  Recently, albedo has been increasing.

A weaker solar cycle 25, the PDO having turned negative and increasing albedo all suggest we are in for a prolonged period of cooling which is likely to last for decades.  If it is severe, the more CO2 in the atmosphere the better to increase crop yields which will suffer in a colder climate.  We breath CO2 and above certain concentrations our respiratory systems would suffer but fossil fuel emissions are unlikely to take us to anything like those levels.  Not least because CO2 released from fossil fuels has its origins in plant life which absorbed CO2 from the atmosphere millions of years ago.

But what of the cure for this mythical problem of CO2 emissions?  What impact studies have there been into the consequences of inappropriate climate change policies?  Very few.  Yet, renewable energy subsidies are contributing to higher energy prices, driving millions into fuel poverty.  In a cooler climate, things can only get worse if we deny ourselves energy from fossil fuels.  Germany is paying lip service to a carbon free future while gaining subsidies from the rest of Europe to increase power generation from brown coal (lignite) at the expense of solar power. Since the Fukiyama earthquake and nuclear disaster, Germany has decided to abandon nuclear power and is committing resources earmarked for renewable energy projects to build even more coal fired power plants.  Reality trumps mythology.  Meanwhile, the establishment of eucalyptus carbon sinks has driven indigenous communities from their land and destroyed ancient forests.  Hunger and malnutrition are on the rise, as higher energy costs and subsidies for biofuels have driven up food prices.

Solar and wind power are unlikely to constitute significant, viable, alternative energy sources.  Spain has already begun to remove subsidies for solar power driving those who’d used their land to invest in solar farms, into bankruptcy.  Increasing reflective cloud cover renders solar power ineffective for many countries.  Wind turbines are expensive, inefficient, unreliable and have a devastating environmental impact due to: the rare earths and materials to manufacture them, the 200 tons of concrete for the foundations, the service access roads for maintenance and the effect on birds and other wildlife.  Geothermal energy may contribute to the energy mix but would you really want to sink a deep bore hole into the San Andreas fault?  Sure, we need to seek alternative energy sources but they need to be practical and viable.  Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist, is backing many alternative energy technologies.  Nikola Tesla, credited with many inventions including wireless transmission of electricity, was convinced we could generate free electricity from the ionosphere.  Nuclear fusion would be an immeasurably preferable source of energy to nuclear fission.  As there is no climate crisis we can develop rational solutions rather than rushing into technologies which waste resources and steal from the poor.

Gore proposes: “we stop subsidising Big Oil and Coal and put a price on carbon that reflected the true cost of fossil energy — either through the much-maligned cap-and-trade approach, or through a revenue-neutral tax swap.”  Either proposal will constitute a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich as energy prices are driven ever higher.  Until Generation Investment Management sold its stake in the Chicago Climate Exchange, Gore, Generation’s Chairman, was no doubt expecting to clean up on global carbon trading; the Chicago Exchange also owns the European Climate Exchange.  The stake was sold because without legislation to mandate cap and trade, interest in carbon trading on the Chicago exchange evaporated and carbon credits were flatlining until trading ceased at the end of 2010.  The carbon price in Europe is artificially maintained by European regulation. Already multi-million dollar frauds in carbon trading have been committed.   Meanwhile, the Australian people are in revolt over Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s proposal to introduce a carbon tax in spite of previous pledges not to.

Gore is correct in his assessment of the paucity of critical analysis in the media in the run up to war in Iraq.  The mainstream media were complicit in fabricating the case for war but curiously there is a similar lack of critical analysis of the IPCC’s assessment reports.   The climate scientists’ letter to Ban Ki Moon says: “Climate change science is in a period of ‘negative discovery’ – the more we learn about this exceptionally complex and rapidly evolving field the more we realize how little we know. Truly, the science is NOT settled.” Yet the IPCC’s fourth assessment report of 2007 claimed a higher level of certainty than all previous assessments.  It is no trivial matter that the Inter Academy Council (a composite board of many of the world’s national scientific bodies, such as the National Academy of Sciences in the U.S.) conducted a review of the IPCC’s fourth assessment report and criticised the IPCC’s claims of certainty without the backing of scientific evidence.

There is no doubt the IPCC’s fourth assessment report was “sexed up” rather like Tony Blair’s “dodgy dossier”, the UK Intelligence report that was heavily edited to persuade the UK Parliament to vote for the war in Iraq.   But has there been any critical analysis of the IPCC’s fourth assessment report in the media?  Fox may give air to sceptics but the weight of media coverage reflects the climate change lobby’s propaganda which is based on the misleading Summary for Policy Makers not the underlying science.

Gore chided President Obama for not taking to the bully pulpit for bold action on climate change but Obama’s political antennae have detected that man-made climate change scepticism is on the rise amongst the electorate and it’s not a battle he chooses to fight.  In the context of the US economy, who can blame him?

What is Gore exhorting us to do?

To engage sceptics and yet he shies away from public debate with those who could expose the myths he espouses.

“…deepen your commitment by making consumer choices that reduce energy use and reduce your impact on the environment.”   When Gore travels with his entourage between his various mansions and IPCC conventions in exotic locations, what sort of impact is he having on the environment?  Not much evidence of walking the talk.

Contrary to Gore’s assertions, the global warming myth is embedded in the public consciousness and is constantly reinforced by the mainstream media.  Our children are being brainwashed with climate change propaganda and critical thinking is no longer on the science curriculum.

There are similarities between the growth of the climate change industry and the sub-prime crisis.  Neither are conspiracies but came about due to a collusion of interests.  This term was coined by Peter Taylor, an experienced environmental scientist who spent three years exploring climate science.  His book “Chill, A Reassessment of Global Warming” is endorsed by W. Jackson Davis, professor emeritus, University of California and author of the first draft of the Kyoto Protocol, who says it is essential reading for everyone on both sides of the debate.
In the sub-prime crisis, structural incentives obscured the toxic nature of mortgage backed securities (bonds) which allowed the fraud on investors to continue for years.  From the formation of the credit rating agencies early in the twentieth century investors delegated due diligence on bonds to the agencies (Standard and Poors, Moodys and Fitch) for which they paid a fee. In the run up to financial deregulation, rating agencies started charging bond issuers for ratings (in the 1970s).  Thus the seeds of the sub-prime crisis were sown as the interests of the issuing banks and the rating agencies converged.  Investigations following the crisis revealed evidence of collusion between issuing banks and rating agencies to achieve AAA ratings (equivalent to prime government debt) for what turned out to be worthless junk. Credit raters had no access to the mortgage files and data tapes which contained fraudulent applications and loans to house buyers with insufficient earnings. Consequently, they applied ratings on the basis of historical mortgage data from an era when affordable loans were granted to credit worthy owner-occupiers.  Agency bosses put raters under pressure to give junk bonds AAA ratings, to grow their businesses.

Fig 4. Pyramid of ignorance

Financial incentives ensured the true nature of the debt wasn’t revealed.  The pyramid in Fig 4.  illustrates how investors were ignorant of the true value of what they were buying.  But everybody was winning, until the music stopped.  The house buyers and property agents gained in a rising property market while lenders removed bad loans from their balance sheets enabling them to write yet more dodgy loans. Investors bought AAA securities yielding much more than government bonds. Issuing banks earned fees and and profits from trading mortgage backed securities, sometimes at their clients’ expense. Meanwhile, rating agencies enjoyed a fourfold increase in revenues from 2000 to 2007.

Fig 5. Another pyramid of ignorance

The man-made climate change or anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory is dependent on the IPCC’s flawed climate models and discredited hockey sticks (see Fig. 5 Climate Change House of Cards). The IPCC, the media and others have suppressed, dismissed or ignored contradictory evidence. By the scientific method, the onus of proof of the AGW theory is on the IPCC and there is none.

Let’s examine why so many have so much to lose should the truth be faced – the “collusion of interests.”

The IPCC’s mission is to assess “human induced climate change”.  No AGW theory, no IPCC.  Its chairman, Rajendra Pachaudrey, has interests which benefit from his role in the IPCC.  The paleoclimatic community (which created the hockeystick) and climate modellers support the IPCC agenda; they are funded accordingly.  Those who, like Al Gore, have staked their political credentials on the AGW theory stand to lose credibility and possibly their jobs.  More importantly, we now have a multi-billion dollar climate change industry reaching out into every branch of the economy – big Al, for one, hopes to make big money from climate change investments.   Should the theory be abandoned anyone involved has something to lose.  These structural incentives to obscure the truth, irrespective of the integrity of individuals, are not dissimilar to those prevailing in the pre-crash sub-prime market.

Earth’s climate is a natural, chaotic, cyclical system which responds to solar cycles and oceanic oscillations.  The preoccupation with proving CO2 emissions cause global warming has been such that, we only have a limited understanding of these natural processes.  If the predictions of cooling come to pass, our children and future generations face unprecedented hardship unless we tear down the walls of the man-made climate change establishment.  This is not denial but reality.  Like the sub-prime mortgage market, the global warming party is over!