Skeptical funding
One of the ridiculous claims made by climate alarmists is that skeptics are a well organized group well-paid from the coffers of oil companies and other anti-environment groups. First of all, climate skeptics are not anti-environment or anti-science. Secondly, from all that I’ve been able to see, there is no organized funding for climate skeptics.
One of the so-called “well-paid” climate skeptic bloggers, Bob Tisdale, has had to retire from full-time climate change blogging. He had to get a real job. In an update to his post announcing this, he writes:
Something else that was stated in the article Anthony quoted that needs to be addressed. They falsely claimed that skeptics are some part of an organized effort. Truth be told, Anthony Watts and I have never met. We’ve talked on the phone, maybe, 3 times. And our email exchanges have been about blog posts. Someday, it will be my pleasure to meet and shake hands with Anthony Watts, but that time has not come yet
There doesn’t need to be any organization behind climate skeptics. Responding to the nonsense from the climate science community, and from their alarmist parrots, is enough to keep any group of people with common sense busy for years.
97%
The issue of global warming hasn’t gone away. After all, 97% of climate scientists endorse the consensus that we are causing global warming.
Well, that’s not quite true. One source for the 97%
comes from a non-peer reviewed article describing an online poll in which a total of only 79 climate scientists chose to participate. Of the 79 self-selected climate scientists, 75 agreed with the notion of AGW. (source)
Another comes from a paper published last May, Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature. In the abstract, Cook et. al. say that that they looked at peer-reviewed scientific literature:
examining 11,944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics ‘global climate change’ or ‘global warming’. We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. In a second phase of this study, we invited authors to rate their own papers.
So, about 7,930 climate abstracts out of 11,944 express no position on the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) consensus and about 4,o14 do. About 3,897 papers, then, support the consensus. That’s 32.6% of the papers related to global climate change that were looked at, a far cry from the 97% that is cited way too often in the media.
Extremely likely1
And, of course, the newest version of the IPCC’s (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) is out and, according to it,
It is extremely likely (>95% confidence) that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century .
That sounds pretty positive, doesn’t it? Mankind is responsible for most of the warming since the 1950s or 1960s or so. It’s even more certain than the previous report’s SPM:
Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely (>90% confidence) due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gases. [AR4 SPM (2007)]
According to climatologist Judith Curry, the increase in confidence stated in the SPM is not reflected in the text, figures and analyses in the main Working Group One report or when comparing AR5 conclusions to those in AR4. Ms. Curry writes:
Several key elements of the report point to a weakening of the case for attributing the warming of human influences:
Lack of warming since 1998 and growing discrepancies with climate model projections
- Evidence of decreased climate sensitivity to increases in CO2
- Evidence that sea level rise in 1920-1950 is of the same magnitude as in 1993-2012
- Increasing Antarctic sea ice extent
- Low confidence in attributing extreme weather events to anthropogenic global warming
In 2007, AR4 projected a warming or 0.2°C per decade. Yet the final draft report of AR5 says:
The rate of warming over 1998–2012 (0.05°C [–0.05 to +0.15] per decade) is smaller than the trend since 1951 (0.12°C [0.08 to 0.14] per decade). (Page 6 of The Physical Science Basis.)
Ms. Curry says, “The IPCC does not have a convincing or confident explanation for the hiatus in warming.”
Temperature projections2
In 2013, it was obvious to many that, in the draft SPM, climate sensitivity was too high, climate models were obviously wrong, and the pause in the rise in temperature was not explained.
The IPCC had only three options – (i) re-run the models and re-draft the whole report, (ii) issue a string of caveats, or (iii) simply bluster on.
After 4 days in Stockholm, debating and wordsmithing, the decision was to… bluster on – with an assertion of increased certainty.
The table of temperature projections is the heart and soul of each voluminous IPCC Assessment Report. Climate alarm stands or falls on the credibility of that table.
Despite its customary obscurantism and spin, the IPCC has now admitted that:
- a number of its CMIP5 models seriously exaggerate future warming;
- the climate sensitivity range used for the modeled projections is too high;
- internal variability is expected to significantly offset warming (for some decades);
- scientists cannot quantify the influence of sensitivity or of internal variability beyond about 2035; and
- consequently, the modeled temperature projections are unreliable.
I guess consensus on climate change is just a matter of faith.
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References
1 Judith Curry’s IPCC AR5 weakens the case for AGW.
2 Guest essay by Barry Brill on Watt’s Up With That – The IPCC discards its models
Image Credit
Wind Turbines – Driving into the future
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Polar Ice – Glacier Cruise East Greenland
License Some rights reserved by christine zenino
Al Gore – Gore Feels the Heat
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The Independent: 
