Is something ailing The Register’s Lewis Page ? Despite having access to the text of a recent research paper about the Sun’s recent output, and its short-term impact on surface temperatures on Earth, and having had plenty of time to read plain English reviews of the paper’s findings in everyday language, he still writes it up poorly (in my humble opinion). Could this be due to internal bias, I ask myself ? Or is Lewis Page being wilfully contrarian ? Who can say ?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/07/solar_as_big_as_people/

“Much of recent global warming actually caused by Sun : By Lewis Page : 7th October 2010 : New data indicates that changes in the Sun’s output of energy were a major factor in the global temperature increases seen in recent years. The research will be unwelcome among hardcore green activists, as it downplays the influence of human-driven carbon emissions. As the Sun has shown decreased levels of activity during the past decade, it had been generally thought that it was warming the Earth less, not more. Thus, scientists considered that temperature rises seen in global databases must mean that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions – in particular of CO2 – must be exerting a powerful warming effect. Now, however, boffins working at Imperial College in London (and one in Boulder, Colorado) have analysed detailed sunlight readings taken from 2004 to 2007 by NASA’s Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) satellite. They found that although the Sun was putting out less energy overall than usual, in line with observations showing decreased sunspot activity, it actually emitted more in the key visible-light and near-infrared wavelengths. These shorter wavelength forms of radiated heat penetrate the atmosphere particularly well to heat up the Earth’s surface – just as the same frequencies get in through car windows to heat up its interior. The hot seats and dashboard – in this case the seas, landmasses etc – then radiate their own increased warmth via conduction, convection and longer-wave infrared, which can’t escape the way the shortwave energy came in. This is why the car, and the planet, become so hot. Thus the Sun, though it was unusually calm in the back half of the last decade, was actually warming the planet much more strongly than before…”

Lewis Page is playing up the warming influence of the solar minimum, in my view.

Let’s take a short look at the Abstract of the paper :-

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v467/n7316/full/nature09426.html

Letter : Nature 467, 696-699 (7 October 2010)
doi:10.1038/nature09426; Published online 6 October 2010

“An influence of solar spectral variations on radiative forcing of climate”
Joanna D. Haigh, Ann R. Winning, Ralf Toumi & Jerald W. Harder

“Abstract : The thermal structure and composition of the atmosphere is determined fundamentally by the incoming solar irradiance. Radiation at ultraviolet wavelengths dissociates atmospheric molecules, initiating chains of chemical reactions—specifically those producing stratospheric ozone—and providing the major source of heating for the middle atmosphere, while radiation at visible and near-infrared wavelengths mainly reaches and warms the lower atmosphere and the Earth’s surface. Thus the spectral composition of solar radiation is crucial in determining atmospheric structure, as well as surface temperature, and it follows that the response of the atmosphere to variations in solar irradiance depends on the spectrum. Daily measurements of the solar spectrum between 0.2  micrometres and 2.4 micrometres, made by the Spectral Irradiance Monitor (SIM) instrument on the Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) satellite since April 2004, have revealed that over this declining phase of the solar cycle there was a four to six times larger decline in ultraviolet than would have been predicted on the basis of our previous understanding. This reduction was partially compensated in the total solar output by an increase in radiation at visible wavelengths. Here we show that these spectral changes appear to have led to a significant decline from 2004 to 2007 in stratospheric ozone below an altitude of 45 km, with an increase above this altitude. Our results, simulated with a radiative-photochemical model, are consistent with contemporaneous measurements of ozone from the Aura-MLS satellite, although the short time period makes precise attribution to solar effects difficult. We also show, using the SIM data, that solar radiative forcing of surface climate is out of phase with solar activity. Currently there is insufficient observational evidence to validate the spectral variations observed by SIM, or to fully characterize other solar cycles, but our findings raise the possibility that the effects of solar variability on temperature throughout the atmosphere may be contrary to current expectations.”

It just doesn’t say what Lewis Page is saying.

Fiona Harvey at the Financial Times seems slightly confused, as she doesn’t appear to have realised about the difference between longer wave and shorter wave radiation, and their different impacts on the different layers of the atmosphere :-

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/871c589c-d164-11df-96d1-00144feabdc0.html

“Sun throws new light on global warming : By Fiona Harvey, Environment Correspondent : Published: October 7 2010 : The sun has been behaving more curiously in the last few years than previously thought, scientists have found, in research that throws new light on global warming. Data from new satellites show that although the sun’s activity – which can be measured in part by observing sunspots – has been at an unusual low, the effect of this has not been to cool the earth, as might have been expected, but to warm it. The research challenges some accepted opinions on the effect of the sun’s activities on the climate, as it suggests that climate models may have slightly over-estimated the sun’s role in warming the earth. Scientists from Imperial College London and the University of Colorado monitored the sun’s activity from 2004-07, a period when its activity was declining. Activity on the sun waxes and wanes over an 11-year cycle, and in the declining phase the overall amount of radiation reaching the earth also declines. That should have meant that the earth would become slightly cooler. But instead, the amount of energy reaching the earth increased. This has led the scientists involved to theorise that, conversely, decreasing solar activity could slightly warm the earth. Joannah Haigh, professor at Imperial and lead author of the study, said: “These results are challenging what we thought we knew about the sun’s effect on our climate. If further studies find the same pattern over a longer period, this could suggest we may have overestimated the sun’s role in warming the planet, rather than underestimating it.” However, the amount of warming involved either way is very small. The research, published on Thursday in the peer-review journal Nature, is complex, and the authors cautioned that there were several potential explanations for their observations. They also warned that as the research had been carried out over a relatively short period, it would be wrong to extrapolate too much from it, and that more study was needed. However, the research is likely to spark further debates in climate circles. The role of the sun has been hotly disputed, with some sceptics claiming that solar activity, measured by sunspots, was the real culprit behind warming temperatures. Prof Haigh said: “This [new research] does not give comfort to climate change sceptics at all – it may suggest we do not know enough about the sun but casts no aspersions on climate models [which] would still be producing the same results without these solar effects.”

Agence France-Presse does better than Fiona :-
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jQB0_aw8czUjhiSN-o1dVpNxKfrA?docId=CNG.6f90940f6d9bb44d73f1c586d3a44fbb.8c1

“…The amount of energy in the ultraviolet part of the energy spectrum fell, the researchers found…”These results are challenging what we thought we knew about the Sun’s effect on our climate,” said lead author Joanna Haigh, a professor at Imperial College London where she is also a member of the Grantham Institute for Climate change. “However, they only show us a snapshot of the Sun’s activity and its behaviour over the three years of our study could be an anomaly.” Insisting on caution, Haigh said that if the Sun turned out to have a warming effect during the “waning” part of the cycle, it might also turn out to have a cooling effect during the “waxing” part of the cycle. In that case, greenhouse gases would be more to blame than thought for the perceptible rise in global temperatures over the past century. “We cannot jump to any conclusions based on what we have found during this comparatively short period,” Haigh said. “We need to carry out further studies to explore the Sun’s activity, and the patterns that we have uncovered, on longer timescales.”… ”

The situation has not been helped by the write-up in Nature itself, sadly :-

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101006/full/news.2010.519.html

“Published online 6 October 2010 : Nature : doi:10.1038/news.2010.519 : News : Declining solar activity linked to recent warming : The Sun may have caused as much warming as carbon dioxide over three years : Quirin Schiermeier : Waning solar activity between 2004 and 2007 has unexpectedly been linked to a warmer Earth. : An analysis of satellite data challenges the intuitive idea that decreasing solar activity cools Earth, and vice versa. In fact, solar forcing of Earth’s surface climate seems to work the opposite way around — at least during the current Sun cycle…Over the three-year study period, the observed variations in the solar spectrum have caused roughly as much warming of Earth’s surface as have increases in carbon dioxide emissions, says Haigh. But because solar activity is cyclic it should have no long-term impact on climate, regardless of whether similar spectral changes have occurred during previous solar cycles. “If the climate were affected in the long term, the Sun should have produced a notable cooling in the first half of the twentieth century, which we know it didn’t,” she says…”

RealClimate dig their teeth into this and commence chewing :-

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/10/solar-spectral-stumper/

“Solar spectral stumper : gavin @ 7 October 2010 : It’s again time for one of those puzzling results that if they turn out to be true, would have some very important implications and upset a lot of relatively established science. The big issue of course is the “if”. The case in question relates to some results published this week in Nature by Joanna Haigh and colleagues. They took some ‘hot off the presses’ satellite data from the SORCE mission (which has been in operation since 2003) and ran it through a relatively complex chemistry/radiation model. These data are measurements of how the solar output varies as a function of wavelength from an instrument called “SIM” (the Spectral Irradiance Monitor). It has been known for some time that over a solar cycle, different wavelengths vary with different amplitudes. For instance, Lean (2000) showed that the UV component varied by about 10 times as much as the total solar irradiance (TSI) did over a cycle. This information (and subsequent analyses) have lent a lot of support to the idea that solar variability changes have an important amplification via changes in stratospheric ozone (Shindell et al (2001), for instance). So it is not a novel finding that the SIM results in the UV don’t look exactly like the TSI. What is a surprise is that for the visible wavelengths, SIM seems to suggest that the irradiance changes are opposite in sign to the changes in the TSI. To be clear, while the TSI has decreased since 2003 (as part of the descent into the current solar minimum), SIM seems to indicate that the UV decreases are much larger than expected, while irradiance in visible bands has actually increased! This is counter to any current understanding of what controls irradiance on solar cycle timescales. What are the implications of such a phenomena? Well, since the UV portion of the solar input is mostly absorbed in stratosphere, it is the visible and near-IR portions of the irradiance change that directly influence the lower atmosphere. Bigger changes in the UV also imply bigger changes in stratospheric ozone and temperature, and this influences the tropospheric radiative forcing too. Indeed, according to Haigh’s calculations, the combination of the two effects means that the net radiative forcing at the tropopause is opposite in sign to the TSI change. So during a solar minimum you would expect a warmer surface!…”

The Guardian has it about right – a gold star and a bonus pint goes to Damian Carrington (and there was I thinking that his only role was to write fluff) :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/oct/06/sun-role-warming-planet

“Sun’s role in warming the planet may be overestimated, study finds : The discovery could help explain why Europe can have cold winters while the world as a whole is heating up : Damian Carrington : Wednesday 6 October 2010…Some climate change sceptics have suggested the changes in the sun’s brightness can explain the global warming seen over the past century. But Haigh said: “It does not give comfort to climate sceptics at all.” If the sun warmed the Earth less when it was at the solar maximum, then the reverse was also true, she said: “You can’t have it one way and not the other.” In addition, she said, the warming influence of rising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, emitted by human activities, was at least 10 times greater than changes in the strength of the sun. Prof Mike Lockwood, a solar physicist at the University of Reading said: “We don’t have any reason at the moment to change our overall view of the contributions of changing solar radiation to climate change, not on a global scale, but there is quite a lot of evidence coming forward that these changes do matter on a regional scale and particularly to us here in Europe.” That is because the sun’s intensity plays a crucial role at mid-latitudes, where the UK sits, by controlling the jet stream winds, which in turn govern weather, he said. Changes to the jet stream are responsible for extremely cold European winters, such as the last one, and also the conditions which caused the volcanic ash cloud from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano to blow southwards and ground flights in April and May…”

The trouble with science communication, is that sometimes scientists don’t communicate very well :-

http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2010/10/thinking-youve-communicated.html

It appears that in this case, the scientists have communicated exceptionally well and the journalists have been “neutral” about the results.

I have to give Richard Black at the BBC his dues – his write-up is very reasonable and balanced :-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11480916

“6 October 2010 : Solar surprise for climate issue : By Richard Black : Environment correspondent, BBC News : The view that the Sun may be driving modern-day climate change has clouded policy discussions
The Sun’s influence on modern-day global warming may have been overestimated, a study suggests…”

I think we should give New Scientist the last word :-

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727793.100-the-sun-joins-the-climate-club.html

“The sun joins the climate club : Updated 13:05 29 September 2010 by Michael Marshall : Editorial: The sun’s activity has a place in climate science : THE idea that changes in the sun’s activity can influence the climate is making a comeback, after years of scientific vilification, thanks to major advances in our understanding of the atmosphere. The findings do not suggest – as climate sceptics frequently do – that we can blame the rise of global temperatures since the early 20th century on the sun. “There are extravagant claims for the effects of the sun on global climate,” says Giles Harrison, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Reading, UK. “They are not supported.”…”

Image Credit : SOHO : Solar and Heliospheric Observatory

Predictably, sadly, Niall Firth writing for the Daily Mail, appears to have read a press briefing from Nigel Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation, and proceeds to repeat errors :-

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1316469/Royal-Society-issues-new-climate-change-guide-admits-uncertainties.html

“Royal Society issues new climate change guide that admits there are ‘uncertainties’ about the science : By NIALL FIRTH : 30th September 2010…”

First up, the reporter documents the false claim that the Royal Society was “forced” to make changes to its public guidance on Climate Change science because of the views of the sceptic-deniers. Nothing could be more flimsy an assertion :-

“…The UK’s leading scientific body has been forced to rewrite its guide on climate change and admit that it is not known how much warmer the Earth will become. The Royal Society has updated its guide after 43 of its members complained that the previous version failed to take into account the opinion of climate change sceptics…”

Well, actually, the reason the Royal Society has been persuaded to issue new Climate Change guidance is because people (including Niall Firth, apparently) do not appear to have understood the science of Climate Change, as they have been listening to the inaccuracies put forward by the sceptic-deniers.

The aim of this new guidance is to try to make the bare bones of Climate Change science more readable, more accessible for people like Niall Firth, who seem to find it hard to listen to warnings of real dangers.

Another reason why the Royal Society have put out new guidance on Climate Change is that they were accused of seeking to dictate governmental policy in their previous publications.

The accusation of “activists” from the sceptic-deniers appears to have stuck, and so the Royal Society have tried to separate science from policy recommendations and advocacy of particular courses of action with this new publication.

Niall Firth makes much of the “admission” of uncertainty, even though the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, has repeatedly pointed out the areas of uncertainty in the science.

And Niall Firth seems to completely fail to understand that the most significant parts of the science are broadly settled :-

“The UK’s leading scientific body has been forced [...] admit that it is not known how much warmer the Earth will become….Now the new guide, called ‘Climate change: a summary of the science’, admits that there are some ‘uncertainties’ regarding the science behind climate change. And it says that it impossible to know for sure how the Earth’s climate will change in the future nor what the possible effects may be. The 19-page guide says: ’It is not possible to determine exactly how much the Earth will warm or exactly how the climate will change in the future, but careful estimates of potential changes and associated uncertainties have been made. Scientists continue to work to narrow these areas of uncertainty. Uncertainty can work both ways, since the changes and their impacts may be either smaller or larger than those projected.’…”

If you read the Royal Society guidance, which I guess Niall Firth has not, you can see that there is a general acceptance that the most likely outcome is more warming, although it is not clear how much more warming is coming our way.

It’s already bad. It’s going to get worse. We just don’t know exactly how much worse that worse is. Partly because we don’t know when humankind is going to stop excess Greenhouse Gas Emissions.

The Royal Society guidance allows for possible cooling influences from known and unknown sources, but its main message is that there will be increasing warmth.

Niall Firth regurgitates the views of Benny Peiser, social anthropologist, employee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, without a trace of doubt :-

“…Benny Peiser, Director of The Global Warming Policy Foundation also welcomed the Royal Society’s decision to revise….’The Royal Society now also agrees with the GWPF that the warming trend of
the 1980s and 90s has come to a halt in the last 10 years.’…”

I beg your pardon ?

I’ve read the Royal Society guidance twice, and I find no mention that backs up Benny Peiser’s claim that “the warming trend of the 1980s and 90s has come to a halt in the last 10 years”.

That, I’m afraid, is utter fabrication.

What the guidance does say in paragraph 22 is :-

“When [...] surface temperatures are averaged over periods of a decade, to remove some of the year-to-year variability, each decade since the 1970s has been clearly warmer (given known uncertainties) than the one immediately preceding it. The decade 2000-2009 was, globally, around 0.15 degrees C warmer than the decade 1990-1999.”

Niall Firth needs to make corrections, in my view.

The Royal Society today publishes its latest layman’s summary of Climate Change, and thankfully manages to avoid several representational pitfalls that sceptic-deniers could have leapt on and said “See ! We told you !”

http://royalsociety.org/climate-change-summary-of-science/

Unfortunately, to my mind, it still has a few chinks in the door that should have slammed shut and permanently sealed off the sceptic-denier “contributions” on the subject.

Let’s look at the Royal Society narrative of progress by degrees, for example.

In section 28, “Aspects of climate change on which there is wide agreement : Climate forcing by greenhouse gas changes”, it reads :-

“…Application of established physical principles shows that, even in the absence of processes that amplify or reduce climate change [...], the climate sensitivity would be around 1 degree C, for a doubling of CO2 [Carbon Dioxide] concentrations [in the atmosphere]…”

The related material in section 36, “Aspects of climate change where there is a wide consensus but continuing debate and discussion : Climate sensitivity”, goes on to talk about how global warming causes changes in the hydrological cycle, and how water vapour builds up in the atmosphere because of global warming, leading to further global warming :-

“…The more complex climate models, supported by observations, allow climate sensitivity to be calculated in the presence of processes that amplify or reduce the size of the climate response. Increases in water vapour alone, in response to warming, are estimated to approximately double the climate sensitivity from its value in the absence of amplifying processes. There nevertheless remain uncertainties in how much water vapour amounts will change, and how these changes will be distributed in the atmosphere, in response to a warming. Climate models indicate that the overall climate sensitivity (for a hypothetical doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere) is likely to lie in the range 2 degrees C to 4.5 degrees C; this range is mainly due to the difficulties in simulating the overall effect of the response of clouds to climate change mentioned earlier…”

Section 28 is at fault in my mind in three aspects :-

1. The IPCC Working Group 1 review of the science, which is the first of only two formal references in the new Royal Society guidance, makes clear that the likely influence of doubling Carbon Dioxide concentrations, with no other contributions included, would be a global warming of 1.2 degrees C, not 1 degree C :-

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch8s8-6-2.html
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch8s8-6-2-3.html

“…In the idealised situation that the climate response to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 consisted of a uniform temperature change only, with no feedbacks operating (but allowing for the enhanced radiative cooling resulting from the temperature increase), the global warming from GCMs would be around 1.2 degrees C (Hansen et al., 1984; Bony et al., 2006)…”

2. The second reason that section 28 is at fault is because of what the IPCC says directly afterwards :-

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch8s8-6-2.html
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch8s8-6-2-3.html

“…The water vapour feedback, operating alone on top of this [the calculation from basic physics of the effect of doubling Carbon Dioxide], would at least double the response. The water vapour feedback is, however, closely related to the lapse rate feedback [...], and the two combined result in a feedback parameter of approximately 1 W m–2 degrees C–1 [Watts per square metre per degree Celsius], corresponding to an amplification of the basic temperature response by approximately 50%. The surface albedo feedback amplifies the basic response by about 10%, and the cloud feedback does so by 10 to 50% depending on the GCM [General Circulation Model or Global Climate Model]…”

Section 28 should at least have mentioned that more water vapour residing in the atmosphere is an inevitable result of global warming, and that this will compound the warming.

Adding Carbon Dioxide to the atmosphere is not happening in isolation from any other effect. Because the Earth has an atmosphere, increased Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere has a warming effect. This automatically and naturally has an effect on the composition of the atmosphere through changes in the cycling of water between the Earth surface, the oceans and the atmosphere. You don’t get one without the other.

It’s a bit ridiculous to suggest that a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere could have an effect all by itself – it’s bound to cause an increase in the temperature of the Earth’s surface, which is bound to cause an increase in water vapour concentrations in the Atmosphere.

Global Warming from Carbon Dioxide is not going to be “in the absence of amplifying processes.”

This is established science, and should have been included in section 28, in my view.

3. The Royal Society guidance does not issue the standard caveat about “Climate sensitivity” – that by the time that mankind stops adding Carbon Dioxide to the atmosphere, the actual increase in concentration could be a lot more than double.

If CO2 levels more than double, the calculation of the actual temperature rise from the climate sensitivity will have to be adjusted by the relevant factor.

Specimen A

Simon Hoggart pronounces on Climate Change Science despite not knowing a thing about it. I do not understand how this piece of writing was published, as it contains a number of inaccuracies.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/feb/06/climate-change-simon-hoggarts-week

“Is climate change the new faith? : Fanatics must stop playing fast and loose with global warming data : Simon Hoggart : The Guardian, Saturday 6 February 2010 : As a climate change agnostic – and I suspect most of us are, especially now, and more especially after the Guardian series this week – I’ve been bothered by two aspects of the argument. The first is the religious overtone. Humankind has always wanted to blame its own behaviour for natural events, whether Noah’s flood, plagues of frogs, or volcanos which demonstrate that the gods are angry. Three years ago a British bishop announced that gay marriage had caused our floods. I’ve often wondered whether global warming is another example of this, an irrational belief designed for a rationalist world. And there is an element of religious faith in the true believers. Those who disagree are “deniers”, with its echo of fanatics who don’t believe in the Holocaust. Years ago I saw a sceptic howled down at a British Association meeting; scientists shouldn’t behave like that. If people disagree with you they might not be morally wrong, or agents of Satan. (Or big oil, as the believers often claim.) This ties in with my second worry. Clearly many believers have played fast and loose with the data: since what they believe is true beyond doubt, they have a right – no, a moral duty – to suppress any evidence that might contradict them. Years ago I cowrote a book, Bizarre Beliefs, about various crazy things people believe in, such as astrology, the Bermuda Triangle and spiritualism. Most of them generated vast amounts of data from which believers simply cherry-picked whatever suited their case. The world’s climate produces millions upon millions of facts and figures, and it’s very easy to select the ones that suit you and ignore all the rest. Of course I don’t know who’s right. But I’m not surprised to see the true believers struggling.”

How could anybody claim to be a “climate change agnostic” ? Climate Change Science is not something you need to have a kind of blind faith in. Debates are going on all the time within the Climate Change Science community about how to test theories and interpret data. However, if you care to look at the facts, you could not remain on the fence. That you have not looked at the facts makes your statements invalid.

Excuse me ? What “religious overtone” ? When Climate Change Scientists try to put together a Media briefing, since most of the journalists have no idea what the Scientific evidence means, the Scientists try to explain things in ways that the journalists could possibly understand – rivers drying out, rains failing, extreme weather. This isn’t Moses prophesying plagues, this is trying to use ordinary language to explain potential change. Attempting to use descriptive means to interpret the data. Climate Change Scientists are not “fanatics”, they don’t hold “irrational beliefs”. Of course you “don’t know who’s right”, Simon, you say you haven’t a clue, so stop thinking you have the right to comment. I would suggest you get a proper Climate Change Science education before making judgements that appear to be ridiculous !

Nobody’s “played fast and loose with the data” – that’s just totally incorrect. If you want to see who the real “cherry pickers” are, go read the Climate Change Denier-Sceptics.

Sceptics are people who are genuinely not sure. Deniers are people who attack the Climate Change Science with a well-known set of fallacious arguments. You need to learn the difference. You need to know how deep the deniers will dig for even an iota of muck to rub in the faces of those who are valiantly trying to do their jobs and promote the truth.

Climate Change poses huge risks that can be estimated in terms of large numbers. This is not a trifling problem, and the Science that recounts the emerging data encompasses a raft of disciplines.

The “true believers” aren’t “struggling”. They just realise there’s no point in trying to come back at those who are wasting their time with endless, pointless non-arguments.

Specimen B

The Guardian editorial team appear to be dancing to the Climate Change Sceptic tune – falling right into their meaningless narrative and dubious agenda. Phil Jones’ e-mails do not indicate failure to comply with Freedom of Information Requests. Phil Jones’ work is important, but his e-mails are not. How the Guardian top ranks seem to have had their heads completely spun by this Climategate nonsense !

You would have thought that the last 200 years of Science has been proved unfounded. When you’ve finished showing that Geology is wrong, Chemistry is wrong, The Laws of Physics are wrong, then you might have a case. Until then, it’s all spin from the Climate Science Obstructers. Nothing’s changed since November. The world is still warming, on average, and faster than it did 30 years ago. It’s still humans that are to blame and it’s still the job of the governments to regulate Carbon Energy out of the economies without leaving us all poor, cold, hungry and unemployed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/01/climate-change-university-east-anglia

“Global warming: Undeniable evidence : Editorial : The Guardian, Monday 1 February 2010 : The unwillingness of scientists at the University of East Anglia to release climate data to people who choose not to believe in climate change was a mistake. Science advances through openness, through the ability of others to replicate the same findings or demonstrate error in discovery and interpretation. Reluctance to disclose – revealed last week in the wake of the release of private email exchanges between climate researchers – invites suspicion. The hacked email exchanges were an embarrassment, and the refusal to disclose data was a bad call, but neither episode casts much doubt upon the science of global warming…There is plenty of room for argument about the rate at which the world is warming, the degree to which humans are culpable, the likely outcomes and the most effective steps to be taken…”

The Guardian editorial team have been completely sucked in by the agenda of the Climate Science Obstructers, those who seek to pervert the course of Climate Change Science. The CRU at the UEA was subject to an unreasonable level of harrassment by Freedom of Information requests, and they were not given the means to deal with this as effectively as George Monbiot thinks they should have done. That’s not saying that the research teams were not prepared to be “open”. Here’s what the CRU at the UEA say to the accusation that the research teams were not “open” :-

http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/guardianstatement

There’s not “plenty of room for argument about the rate at which the world is warming”. For somebody to make that statement means they don’t know what they’re talking about. There is plenty of data that shows a narrow band of values for Global Warming. It really is getting hotter, and it really is a problem.

And as for “the degree to which humans are culpable”, this has been well established as being closely correlated in a causal fashion with accumulation of Carbon Dioxide and other Greenhouse Gases in the atmosphere, which can only be explained by net emissions from mankind’s activities. All other proposals for mechanisms have been ruled out. “What about water vapour ?” I hear you ask. Well, water vapour concentrations in the atmosphere and the change of water vapour at different levels of the atmosphere are feedbacks from Global Warming on the Earth system as a whole.

I don’t know why The Guardian wants to appear to be somehow treading a middle ground between conflicting social perceptions of the Science.

The Guardian’s responsibility is to relay the truth, not suggest compromises, particularly if they don’t have any scientists on their reporting team.

What can the editorial team at The Guardian possibly know about Climate Change Science, if they don’t even know enough to make accurate statements ?

He’s come out loud and proud, defending himself, his Science and his institution, and he’s being backed up by his boss, too :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/24/climate-professor-leaked-emails-uea

Meanwhile…the Scientific American magazine uncovers a genuine cover-up in Climate Science :-

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=climate-change-cover-up-you-better-2009-11-24

“Nov 24, 2009 : Climate change cover-up? You better believe it : By David Biello…”

As some readers of this post will know, some time in the recent past, a person or persons unknown allegedly took some files from a computer server belonging to the CRU, the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

They may have been “hackers”, “stealing” the files. They may have fabricated them. That is a matter for the Police and authorities yet to decide. The files may have been taken/invented last week : another fact open to investigation.

These alleged files allegedly contained information and e-mails pertaining to work by Climate Change scientists spanning a number of years.

Those who acquired/created the files posted them on the Internet and proceeded to inform the Climate Change sceptic network of their presence, since which there has been a flurry of Internet and Media activity asking questions of the character, motives and actions of Climate Change scientists, based on the contents of the supposed e-mails.

Nigel Lawson is even calling for an independent inquiry into allegations that Climate Change scientists manipulated data :-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/6634282/Lord-Lawson-calls-for-public-inquiry-into-UEA-global-warming-data-manipulation.html

I think there should be an inquiry, but it should cover other aspects of this incident.

I was only wondering the other day where the Climate Change deniers and sceptics were hiding, as I hadn’t heard a peep from them for a while.

And then last week, several people who write on Climate Change, who write weblogs or run news services, found that their webservers were being subjected to heavy traffic.

It is suggested that there was possibly a coordinated attempt to perhaps upload the real/fake e-mail files onto the personal websites of Climate Change scientists and webloggers, from remote servers, presumably as an attempt to smear them for having copies of this information.

In addition, people have been reporting that they have been under DoS (Denial of Service) style attacks, where automated computer programmes have been accessing websites in great volumes in order to drag down their speed and squeeze out their availability.

My own webhost contacted me to let me know that the slow speed of my personal website was due to the fact that it was under a DoS style attack, apparently from a webserver in China, which has now been blocked.

This appears to be showing that the Climate Change deniers and sceptics are all acting in a coordinated fashion to bring Climate Change Science into disrepute and to deny reasonable, intellectual commentary on it.

I would propose we give this a name : scepticaemia, a poison in the blood of a global brotherhood that seek to stop action on Climate Change.

They’ve already shown they are prepared to commit possibly criminal acts in taking/faking information that is not theirs. They are busy waging a propaganda war against Science. They are clearly highly networked. Are they strongly coordinated ? Did they plan this “Climategate”, as James Delingpole puts it, so unoriginally ? Was there any group behind it ? Any particular people ?

I would like to ask you to take part in a few suggestions for action :-

1. Call for an investigation into the behaviour of the Climate Change Sceptics in light of this potentially criminal, certainly destabilising, incident. Use the Media channels.

2. Assert your personal acceptance of the Climate Change Science, and dismiss the accusations of bad scientist behaviour coming from the sceptics.

3. Post copies of e-mail traffic that you have had with Climate Change sceptics on your websites, with some analysis of their communications techniques. After all, Climate Change scientists may have been tempted to badmouth their opponents, but they are not the only people who may be tempted to badmouth their opponents. I think we should see publicly what sceptics have been writing in their e-mails, particularly if they may have been plotting. If it’s anything like the e-mails and comments I have received on this weblog and in forums and my Inbox, then it can be very abusive, mendacious, conspiratorial, manipulative and insulting. Oh, and threatening, too; even some that I would consider “hate crime”.

4. Refuse to answer the sceptic accusations against Climate Change scientists. You will only end up in long, detailed, heated arguments, which nobody has time for.

The Climate Change Sceptics have shot themselves in the foot with this ridiculous and underhand manoeuvre regarding CRU. People aren’t going to listen to them for very much longer if they continue to behave like this. The plot (if it is a plot) has failed.

Some of the links to the news and commentary on this matter :-

Climateer Views
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack-context/
http://climatedenial.org/2009/11/22/swiftboating-the-climate-scientists/
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/on_those_stolen_cru_emails.php
http://www.desmogblog.com/climategate-perspective-featuring-isaac-newton
http://climateprogress.org/2009/11/21/hacked-emails-ncar-kevin-trenberth/
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-11-20-skeptics-claim-global-warming-fake-scientists-emails-CRU/

Denier Views
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/19/breaking-news-story-hadley-cru-has-apparently-been-hacked-hundreds-of-files-released/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/20/cru_climate_hack/
http://www.lettersfromatory.com/2009/11/21/climate-change-comes-under-heavy-fire-in-the-blogosphere/
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/
http://www.examiner.com/x-11224-Baltimore-Weather-Examiner~y2009m11d21-Climate-change-conspiracy-busted-by-computer-hackers–Links-to-important-reports-here
http://www.devilskitchen.me.uk/2009/11/those-cru-emails-2.html
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017451/climategate-how-the-msm-reported-the-greatest-scandal-in-modern-science/
http://www.examiner.com/x-28973-Essex-County-Conservative-Examiner~y2009m11d21-Who-leaked-the-Hadley-CRU-files-and-why
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/17102
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1230122/How-climate-change-scientists-dodged-sceptics.html

Please submit your own links to articles and commentary on this mess in the comments section below. (Keep it clean or it will be wiped and tidied, I assure you.)

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/06/2735769.htm

“Rudd wages war on Coalition climate deniers : By online parliamentary correspondent Emma Rodgers : Posted Fri Nov 6, 2009 : Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has upped the pressure on the Opposition over its emissions trading stance, accusing it of being full of climate change deniers intent on delaying action. In a speech to the Lowy Institute today Mr Rudd launched a strongly worded attack on the Opposition and climate change sceptics worldwide for holding up countries’ efforts to combat climate change. “It is time to be totally blunt about the agenda of the climate change sceptics in all their colours, some more sophisticated than others,” he said. “It is to destroy the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme at home and it is to destroy agreed global action on climate change abroad. And our children’s fate – our grandchildren’s fate – will lie entirely with them. It is time to remove any polite veneer from this debate; the stakes are that high. The clock is ticking for the planet, but the climate change sceptics simply do not care.”… Mr Rudd accused those who question climate change science of “holding the world to ransom. Climate change sceptics, the climate change deniers, the opponents of climate change action are active in every country,” he said. “They are a minority. They are however powerful and invariably they are driven by vested interests [and are] powerful enough to so far block domestic legislation in Australia.” Quoting several Opposition frontbenchers at length as proof of scepticism and a “do-nothing” attitude within the Coalition, Mr Rudd accused the Opposition of political cowardice and a “failure of logic” in so far refusing to pass the scheme. “The tentacles of the climate change sceptics reach deep into the ranks of the Liberal Party and once you add the National party it’s plain the sceptics and the deniers are a major force,” he said…”

I expected the American right-wing free-trade lunatics to try and chew him up :-

http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/world-mainmenu-26/australia-mainmenu-34/2267-australian-prime-minister-goes-hysterical-over-global-warming

“Australian Prime Minister Goes Hysterical Over Global Warming : Written by William F. Jasper : Monday, 09 November 2009…”

But I was still surprised to find that the Wall Street Journal was so nasty-mean about Kevin Rudd, written anonymously as far as I can see, and using evidence from what I think could well be a dubious opinion poll :-

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704402404574525031879821944.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

“NOVEMBER 9, 2009 : Climate-Change Panic Down Under : Kevin Rudd’s attack on ‘skeptics’ is instructive-and bodes poorly for Copenhagen. Tough economic times have a way of clarifying political priorities and forcing people to distinguish among needs, wishes—and fantasies. So you might think a politician as canny as Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd would know better than to blame his country’s new-found skepticism about the risks of global warming on something other than an evil conspiracy. In a speech in Sydney on Friday, Mr. Rudd claimed “climate-change skeptics, the climate-change deniers, the opponents of climate-change action are active in every country.” The prime minister then linked this global conspiracy to “vested interests” bent on “slowing and if possible destroying the momentum towards a global deal on climate change.” Mr. Rudd went on to attack, by name, “the vocal group of conservatives who do not accept the scientific consensus”; opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull, who has questioned the wisdom of taxing the most productive sectors of Australia’s economy during the downturn; and “world government conspiracy theorists” who worry about devolving tax-and-spend powers to unaccountable United Nations bureaucrats. Well, who’s left? Inconveniently for Mr. Rudd, who based his election in 2007 on his environmental bona fides, the public. Electorates all over the world are starting to question the climate-change received wisdom. A recent poll by the Lowy Institute—where Mr. Rudd gave his speech Friday—showed climate-change had fallen to the seventh “most important” foreign-policy goal for the public—down from first two years ago. There is receding support in the U.S. and Europe too, which is why next month’s Copenhagen confab is expected to be such a dud. Like the U.S., Australia is ignoring this common sense and pushing ahead to impose an expensive cap-and-trade regime on its economy. At the very least, such a fundamental change deserves a lively debate, not a defensive denunciation of anyone who disagrees with Mr. Rudd.”

But then I read this :-

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/09/2737160.htm

“Murdoch blasts ABC’s global ‘didgeridoos’ plan : By communications reporter Michael Rowland : Posted Mon Nov 9, 2009 : Mr Murdoch is confident he’ll be able to work out a way of charging people for online content. News Corporation’s media mogul Rupert Murdoch has been in town and he has had a lot to get off his chest, opening up on everything from the treatment of asylum seekers to Kevin Rudd’s personality. Mr Murdoch gave expansive and remarkably candid interviews with The Australian and Melbourne’s Herald Sun… Mr Murdoch also took a swipe at US President Barack Obama, saying he was “going badly”. But his comments on the Prime Minister were the most striking. Mr Murdoch described Mr Rudd as “delusional” for thinking he could shift global thinking on climate change, and accused him of being over-sensitive to criticism. He also said Mr Rudd seemed more interested in running the world and not Australia. It is no secret that Mr Rudd and News Limited papers have been at odds of late, but Mr Murdoch says this simply goes with the territory and effectively told Mr Rudd to harden up…”

Who owns the Wall Street Journal ? Wikipedia tells me, Dow Jones, of course. And who owns Dow Jones ? News Corporation. And who owns News Corporation ? Why, strangely, Rupert Murdoch.

Image Credit : Rahmstorf et al. (2007)

When is Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister going to appear on TV and tell it to us straight ?

Climate Change is real, and it’s happening now, and the sceptics, deniers, delayers and cynics are all wrong. And somebody with some kind of respect needs to be saying that, regularly, with backup, in all the media channels.

It’s time that scepticism, denialism, delayism and cynicism were ruled out of order.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/04/network-climate-change-scepticism

“…It has almost reached the point at which Energy and Climate Secretary Ed Miliband could state that the colour red has a wavelength of about 650 nanometres and a large group would immediately rise up to contradict him. And the regular mention of higher levels of green taxation doesn’t help – it just emphasises that the battle against climate change seems to be quite closely associated with giving governments more control over what we do and how we do it…Whether we like it or not, we will not get substantive action unless the growing scepticism in the electorate is addressed. This means a much greater willingness to engage in debate and discussion…”

I don’t think there’s room for debate or discussion.

You can’t have a debate with a Climate Change sceptic, as they won’t see reason, as they most often don’t know anything about the science, only some psychological gameplaying they picked up off the Internet, or the TV or a tabloid newspaper they found discarded on a train.

The Media isn’t helping as they continue to give a platform to Climate Change sceptical views, not knowing the fallacies on which they are based. Because they don’t hire journalists with a science or engineering background. Journalists are, on the whole, great with wordplay, but hopeless at spotting when they’re been hoodwinked.

I wouldn’t trust a bunch of ideas that principally come from Fossil Fuel industry sponsored doubt manufacturers, but journalists do, because they can’t tell the difference between an authentic factual statement and spin on science. And neither can their editors. It seems.

For example, a relative of mine pointed me to this today :-

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14743441

“A changing climate : SIR – Indur Goklany questioned whether global warming has caused an increase in droughts and floods (Letters, October 10th). In fact, the answer is already well settled. That question was examined thoroughly by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In its 2001 report, one chapter, titled “Has climate variability, or have climate extremes, changed?”, concluded that there was no discernible increase in storms, hurricanes, floods or droughts. A re-examination of that issue therefore seemed unnecessary in the IPCC’s 2007 report. Concerning rising sea levels, this is a more complex issue since a natural increase of 1-2mm a year has been occurring for many centuries. However, over the past few decades no anthropogenic signal in sea-level changes has been detected. This is firmly backed up by precise satellite altimetry. Meanwhile it was just last month that Professor Mojib Latif of the University of Kiel in Germany, a renowned climate expert and IPCC author, presented his latest work at the World Climate Conference in Geneva. His findings show that the mean global temperature has actually declined since 2001. Moreover, his computer models predict a further temperature drop over the coming decades. All of this beckons the question: just where are the supposedly detrimental effects of anthropogenic CO2? Horst-Joachim Luedecke, Retired professor of physics, Heidelberg, Germany”

My relative was a bit confused, thinking that there was some foundation in the retired physics professor’s views.

Fact check it.

Let me start with sea level rise :-

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_TS.pdf
UNFCCC IPCC AR4 WGI Technical Summary : see Table TS.3

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008GL036010.shtml

“…January 2004 to December 2007…we find that the sum of steric sea level and the ocean mass component has a trend of 1.5 ± 1.0 mm/a over the period, in agreement with the total sea level rise observed by either Jason-1 (2.4 ± 1.1 mm/a) or Envisat (2.7 ± 1.5 mm/a) within a 95% confidence interval….”

http://www.imedea.uib.es/goifis/OTROS/VANIMEDAT/documentos/intranet/Bibliography/Church_SeaLevelAcceleration_20century.pdf

“A 20th century acceleration in global sea-level rise : John A. Church and Neil J. White : Received 6 October 2005; revised 22 November 2005; accepted 1 December 2005; published 6 January 2006. Multi-century sea-level records and climate models indicate an acceleration of sea-level rise, but no 20th century acceleration has previously been detected. A reconstruction of global sea level using tide-gauge data from 1950 to 2000 indicates a larger rate of rise after 1993 and other periods of rapid sea-level rise but no significant acceleration over this period. Here, we extend the reconstruction of global mean sea level back to 1870 and find a sea-level rise from January 1870 to December 2004 of 195 mm, a 20th century rate of sea-level rise of 1.7 ± 0.3 mm yr-1 and a significant acceleration of sea-level rise
of 0.013 ± 0.006 mm yr-2. This acceleration is an important confirmation of climate change simulations which show an acceleration not previously observed. If this acceleration remained constant then the 1990 to 2100 rise would range from 280 to 340 mm, consistent with projections in the IPCC TAR. Citation: Church, J. A., and N. J. White (2006), A 20th century acceleration in global sea-level rise, Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L01602, doi:10.1029/2005GL024826.”

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1135456

“A Semi-Empirical Approach to Projecting Future Sea-Level Rise : Stefan Rahmstorf : A semi-empirical relation is presented that connects global sea-level rise to global mean surface temperature. It is proposed that, for time scales relevant to anthropogenic warming, the rate of sea-level rise is roughly proportional to the magnitude of warming above the temperatures of the pre–Industrial Age. This holds to good approximation for temperature and sea-level changes during the 20th century, with a proportionality constant of 3.4 millimeters/year per °C. When applied to future warming scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this relationship results in a projected sea-level rise in 2100 of 0.5 to 1.4 meters above the 1990 level.”

That’s a bit different from the last few centuries. I wonder why that is ?

And as for Mojib Latif’s comments, try this :-

http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610

I showed this video to my relative who said “The sceptics can’t read graphs”.

So there you have it. Easily nailed.

It appears to me from the following blog post :-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2009/10/climates_magnetic_attraction.html

that Richard Black is either (a) entirely ignorant of the relevant science or is (b) deliberately not including the relevant science.

He does not include the well-known counterpoints to Piers Corbyn’s theories on Global Warming.

He poses a challenge to Climate Change scientists that has already been answered in the literature.

In order to restore accuracy to the piece, people would need to contribute comments that informed Richard Black of the relevant science, that he should know about anyway, and should have cited.

Richard Black is thus wasting peoples’ time in my view, either intentionally or accidentally.

He has a position as a senior environmental writer for the BBC Online team, and so in my view, he should have at least some understanding of why Piers Corbyn’s theories are not mainstream science, and how they have been already discredited.

If he does not know this kind of information, he should at least be conscious that it might exist, and he should at least make an attempt to find out, and report his findings.

I remain perplexed that people without any relevant scientific training are writing for the environmental reporting section of BBC Online.

They are good writers, but they appear to lack a depth and range in their knowledge of the state of the science.

I am surprised that Richard Black bothered to attend the presentation by Piers Corbyn, as he should have easily been able to find out why it could be counted as pseudo-science.

My demand is that environmental writers for the BBC Online should undertake a course in Climate Change science, so that it is clear that they understand what they are reporting on, and recognise which views are non-science.

The section I am concerned about is this :-

…Now, doubtless many of you will have views on the science and everything else in this post, and I look forward to reading them.

But the responses I would particularly invite are from working scientists – physicists, climatologists, and those in related fields.

At the beginning of this post, I suggested working scientists might like to read to the end – and here’s why.

Piers Corbyn hasn’t given you a scientific paper here but I hope I have relayed the main elements, and you can see his presentation for more details.

So please – have a look around. Some of you know about this stuff – orbital precession, solar cycles, Fourier transforms, magnetic dipoles – far, far better than I do. When you have a free moment or two, don’t turn to Tetris, but have a play with this box of toys.

The datasets Mr Corbyn used are publically available, as is information on cycles of lunar nodes and such like.

Do the numbers and mechanisms stack up? Is the theory plausible? Compelling? Completely nuts? What do you think?

As of now, does it even qualify as a theory?

I’m certainly not qualified to pronounce judgement – but some of you may be.

I look forward to seeing what you come up with… and so, I’m sure, will everyone anxious to make sure that negotiators in Copenhagen are armed only with the best scientific evidence.

Although Richard Black asserts that he is not qualified to pronounce judgement, which appears unbiased, he has not made an attempt to explain alternative viewpoints or report them.

He is also laying out for the reader the position of Piers Corbyn, and asking the reader to put some effort in to either confirm or deny this.

However, a simple perusal of the literature would show that Piers Corbyn’s views on Global Warming are easily challenged, and have been done so quite regularly and successfully.

Thus, this blog post for me is biased, unreasonable and provocative and I would call it unacceptable.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2009/10/climates_magnetic_attraction.html

Magnetic attraction of climate ‘scepticism’

Richard Black
Friday, 30 October 2009

There’s been interest on this blog and elsewhere about a meeting organised on Wednesday by Piers Corbyn, the independent UK weather forecaster who argues that the sources of modern-day climate change lie in magnetic interactions around the Earth rather than greenhouse gas emissions on it.

So – a genie to your Aladdin, though emphatically not all-powerful – I thought I’d go along.

Held at Imperial College London – Mr Corbyn’s alma mater – the meeting featured presentations from Northern Ireland’s famously “climate-sceptical” environment minister Sammy Wilson, botanist and ex-BBC TV nature presenter David Bellamy, and a handful of academics – as well as from Mr Corbyn himself.

(The meeting wasn’t endorsed or sponsored by Imperial – I’m sure they’d want me to point that out.)

If you’re a practising scientist reading this and are wondering “why did he bother?”, by the way, read on… I’ve an assignment for you at the end.

…Did the meeting live up to its billing of “refuting, totally, the CO2 theory of warming”?

Hardly. Because doing that seriously doesn’t mean refuting it to my satisfaction, or yours, or that of the audience scattered about the Imperial College lecture theatre on Wednesday; it means convincing the greater community of climate scientists, and that brings us back to… publishing.

What some in the sceptical camp do not appear to appreciate is that published, peer-reviewed science is not only the sole way of establishing and improving theories; it’s also, now, the only route to the policymakers they want to influence.

Modern-day ministers and their scientifically-qualified advisers are absolutely not going to listen to half-developed, unpublished theories or complaints about fraud and conspiracies.

As I noted above, many speakers at the meeting labelled mainstream climate science as “politicised”. And in one sense it is: whenever a scientist steps away from considering what the data tells you is happening to suggesting what political or social actions sensibly flow from the data, it must be partially politicised.

…I asked Mr Corbyn whether dropping hints of a new theory of climate change into the mix shortly before the UN summit in Copenhagen was accidental.

He initial answer was that it was “deliberate”, before clarifying that the date had first been chosen to mark the first anniversary of the third reading of the UK Climate Change Act; but that when it was pointed out that Copenhagen was just around the corner, he and the other organisers had concluded it was “good timing”.

“We are involved in the political debate about climate change,” he told me. “The whole regime is suspect and has to be destroyed.”

If you really wanted to be cynical, you could argue that enough information on the concept has been released to tantalise the palates of those hungry for a non-CO2 theory, but not nearly enough to allow proper scientific scrutiny.

It does generate a climate projection that is very different from the IPCC’s – a “general cooling to 2030 and probably beyond”, with temperatures staying below 2002 levels for perhaps a century.

Unlike a weather forecast duel, I don’t think policymakers will want to wait until then before deciding whether greenhouse emissions need to be tackled.

Now, doubtless many of you will have views on the science and everything else in this post, and I look forward to reading them.

But the responses I would particularly invite are from working scientists – physicists, climatologists, and those in related fields.

At the beginning of this post, I suggested working scientists might like to read to the end – and here’s why.

Piers Corbyn hasn’t given you a scientific paper here but I hope I have relayed the main elements, and you can see his presentation for more details.

So please – have a look around. Some of you know about this stuff – orbital precession, solar cycles, Fourier transforms, magnetic dipoles – far, far better than I do. When you have a free moment or two, don’t turn to Tetris, but have a play with this box of toys.

The datasets Mr Corbyn used are publically available, as is information on cycles of lunar nodes and such like.

Do the numbers and mechanisms stack up? Is the theory plausible? Compelling? Completely nuts? What do you think?

As of now, does it even qualify as a theory?

I’m certainly not qualified to pronounce judgement – but some of you may be.

I look forward to seeing what you come up with… and so, I’m sure, will everyone anxious to make sure that negotiators in Copenhagen are armed only with the best scientific evidence.

I don’t think many people are going to bother to respond to this challenge.

Of the working Climate Change scientists that I know, none of them entertain Mr Corbyn’s theories. They’re not in any way new, and people have already found plenty of reasons not to accept them.

It would be a waste of time to respond to Richard Black’s challenge as the answers are already out there, if Richard Black had bothered to read them up.

Here’s a few links for the information-starved Richard Black :-

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/solar-activity-not-the-cause-of-global-warming-456785.html

http://www.mps.mpg.de/homes/natalie/PAPERS/warming.pdf

http://www.physorg.com/pdf615.pdf

Some of the work was started by the year 1995 :-

http://www.geo.umass.edu/faculty/bradley/lean1995.pdf

I think the idea that Corbyn might be promoting as a “new” theory may be related to this link, forwarded to me by a sceptic in my own neighbourhood :-

http://www.gao.spb.ru/english/astrometr/index1_eng.html

“The project Astrometria to measure temporary variations of shape and diameter of the Sun – the total solar irradiance, as well as fine structure and dynamics of the granulation on the Service module of the Russian segment of the International Space Station : The main goal of the project: The study of global processes occurring deeply inside the Sun and of consequent variations of physical processes in the system Sun-Earth as well as the study of fine structure and dynamics of active and quiet regions of the photosphere and of their cyclic variations…The increase in greenhouse gases concentration is not the reason of global warming, but on the contrary, the result of the rise of temperature caused by prolonged increase in the TSI [Total Solar Irradiance]. The rise of atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide takes place with a delay (from the moment of global warming). The delay is necessary to heat deep layers of the ocean and to melt virtually all floating icebergs (200–800 years). The ocean is the major storage of carbon dioxide and because the solubility of gases in water decreases with the rise of temperature, heating of the ocean causes the emission of a large volume of gases into the atmosphere. Another source of carbon dioxide emission was found several years ago by the scientists of Eastern department of Russian Academy of Sciences: a large amount of old dead algae frozen inside the icebergs floating in Arctic and near the coast of Antarctica. Being thrown out in the warm water after ice melting, they decompose, being another major source of emission of CO2 into the atmosphere. This proves that the observed increase in atmospheric C02 concentration is mainly the result of natural increase in temperature of the land and ocean. Consequently, the popular statement that the industrial activity of humans plays a major role in global warming has emerged from mixing up the cause and effect or, in the other words, “a locomotive” and “a wagon”. Thus, the observed global warming on the Earth is not caused by human-induced greenhouse gases emission, but mostly by unusually high intensity of the solar radiation during the whole passed century. The coming decrease of global temperature will take place even if the anthropogenic CO2 emission will reach record high levels in the future…”

It contains a number of assertions that cannot possibly be correct. It does not take into account that the magnitude of the measured changes so far indicate that solar change is nowhere near large enough to account for them.

Although it mentions a time lag in the heating of the planet, it only speaks about past episodes where warming caused Carbon Dioxide release (which caused warming). Today, it is Carbon Dioxide that is causing warming.

This pseudo-science report from Russia makes several predictions/projections of reduced global warming anomalies going forwards, which will be easy to refute when the data has actually been gathered.