According to Dr. Vincent Gray, the data collection and scientific methods employed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were unsound, undermining the two main ‘scientific’ claims that ‘the globe is warming’ and ‘increases in carbon dioxide emissions are responsible.’
An energy-rationing bill has been introduced to address “global warming.” The “Climate Security Act” would impose caps on how much carbon dioxide (CO2) emission can be allowed and would institute an elaborate program to “trade” allowances among the industries and businesses affected.
Americans better hope that some members of Congress will ask if there truly is a threat of global warming and why a similar program in Europe has proven to be a resounding failure.
If you really wanted to undermine the nation’s economy, you could not devise a better way. It is the Kyoto Climate Change Protocol on steroids.
Little noted during all the headlines concerning Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize was the fact that it was shared with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Among skeptical scientists I know, the emails were flying. Several had served as part of the vast array of scientists whose opinions on the various IPCC draft reports were requested and then ignored.
A lot of these expert reviewers are among the 2,000 scientists that the IPCC and Al Gore are always citing as being part of the “consensus” on global warming. The problem for both is that many really, really, really disagree that any planet-threatening global warming is occurring.
One of them is Dr. Vincent Gray, a New Zealand-based climate scientist who has been a part of the reviewing process since the IPCC came into being. He is one of those scientists who will not and cannot be shut up despite the din of the IPCC propaganda.
Briefly, Dr. Gray has a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Cambridge University, England, and his long career has included stints in France, Canada, China, and New Zealand. He has published more than a hundred scientific papers on energy and materials, plus a dozen in climate science.
So, following the announcement of the Nobel, Dr. Gray wrote to Professor David Henderson, who has called for a “review” of the IPCC and its procedures. This is a nice way of saying that the Panel is so widely viewed as just one more corrupt United Nations instrumentality, a lot of scientists think it should be tossed into a garbage can behind the UN building.
Permit me to share some of Dr. Gray’s thoughts with you.
Commenting on his initial belief that the IPCC would proceed on the basis of “scientific ethics” and that its conclusions would result from “facts, logic and established scientific and mathematical principles,” Dr. Gray’s experience revealed that,
Penetrating questions often ended without any answer. Comments on the IPCC drafts were rejected without explanation, and attempts to pursue the matter were frustrated indefinitely.
I have been forced to the conclusion that, for significant parts of the work of the IPCC, the data collection and scientific methods employed are unsound . . . normal scientific procedures are not only rejected by the IPCC, but that this practice is endemic, and was part of the organization from the very beginning.
I therefore consider that the IPCC is fundamentally corrupt.
Dr. Gray concluded that the only reform “I could envisage, would be its abolition.” Okay, okay, I hear all the environmentalists saying, “but he’s just one crazy, old New Zealand climate scientist. Boo! Hiss!” Character assassination is just one form of the corruption that is endemic to the entire environmental movement.
Undaunted, Dr. Gray continued, “The two main ‘scientific’ claims of the IPCC are the claim that ‘the globe is warming’ and ‘increases in carbon dioxide emissions are responsible.’ Evidence for both of these claims is fatally flawed.”
Aw, gee, I’m not a scientist, you’re saying. What do I know? Well, if you know enough to be reading this, you know enough to wrap your brain around Dr. Gray’s assertion that, “No average temperature of any part of the earth’s surface, over any period, has ever been made.” If the earth’s “average temperature” cannot be determined, how can you know that it’s dramatically heating? How can you predict anything about an unknown?
As for the IPCC claims about CO2, Dr. Gray points out that “they have suppressed no less than 90,000 measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide made in the last 150 years. Some of these were made by Nobel Prize-winners and all were published in the best scientific journals.”
The IPCC has depended on computer climate models for its claims and there is now a volume of papers demonstrating how they have repeatedly been proven to be inaccurate. As Dr. Gray points out, if you cannot validate these models as actually capable of making predictions, “no self-respecting computer engineer would dare to make use of a model for prediction.” Anyway, “No computer climate model has ever been tested in this way, so none should be used for prediction.”
“The most elaborate of all their ‘evaluation’ techniques is far more dubious,” said Dr. Gray. “Since they have failed to show that any models are actually capable of prediction, they have decided to ‘evaluate’ them by asking the opinions of those who originate them, people with a financial interest in their success.”
“Sooner or later all of us will come to realize,” Dr. Gray concluded, “that this organization, and the thinking behind it, is phony. Unfortunately severe economic damage is likely to be done by its influence before that happens.”
But that’s the point of the IPCC!
If you can require that ethanol be substituted or just added to gasoline, you drive up the cost of corn to where the cost of everything else — like food — dependent on it costs more. Moreover, requiring the addition of ethanol increases refinery costs that are, in turn, passed on to consumers.
If you mandate that wind and solar energy be substituted to provide electricity for that provided by coal (over 50% in the USA) and other sources, then you assure that these two totally inadequate energy producers will drive up the cost to consumers.
If every kind of industry contributes to CO2, then you can create an elaborate “cap-and-trade” scam to sell “credits” for the permission to continue in business. The consumers will pick up the costs involved.
On the chance that Dr. Gray is not some crazy, old New Zealander, maybe we should all be in the streets calling for the abolition of the IPCC? And, while we’re out there, let’s get rid of the United Nations too.
The full text of the letter is available here.
ACaruba@aol.com
http://www.anxietycenter.com/
Read more articles by Alan Caruba
OK, Alan, we all know that extractive industries have opposed the idea of global warming. As I recall, Harvard-educated Ph.D. astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas used to receive funding to condemn global warming. Then she was caught misrepresenting the findings in others' articles. She gave up writing lies about global warming, it seems. I don't know of any ties Dr. Gray has to extractive industries, but I do know that conservatives - apparently you - like to oppose global warming. So my question to you is, Is Dr. Gray really qualified and an appropriate spokesman for your biased view? If the link I provide is accurate, just what is going on? Did you know Gray is apparently bizarre? Does providing the comments of a man like Gray on an important and controversial issue to an accepting (conservative) audience amount to the work of someone trying to misrepresent?
I'm serious Alan, what are you doing? You wouldn't intentionally try to mislead, would you?
Link: Is it accurate? http://allocasuarina.blogspot.com/2007/01/jen-marohasy-and-grumpy-old-men-of.html
Comment by D. Laird | October 24, 2007
RealClimate calls itself “a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists.”
That’s not strictly true. While a handful at RealClimate qualify as scientists, the rest are not, and the decided slant of their publications indicates they are not interested in balanced, unbiased reporting. If you check out the posted credentials of their in-house scientists, what you find is they are mostly modelers with only a couple working in fields where the corroborating work is done (i.e., geology, geophysics, paleoclimatology, &c); and in these latter fields we find an overwhelming skepticism. Note, all of the guys at RealClimate studied, established careers, and express strong belief in areas geared to just one end – proving AGW. This is termed ‘agenda science’, and is not the right approach for getting at the truth in realms as costly and controversial as AGW.
RealClimate is rare among unofficial (non-government, non-commercial) sites in that it is manned by actual scientists. Examples of sites engaged in debunking AGW (and the way it is bogusly presented as a slam-dunk), yet having equal or better credentials include: http://www.sepp.org/, http://ff.org/centers/csspp/misc/index.html, http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/Index.jsp, and http://www.weatherquestions.com/Roy-Spencer-on-global-warming.htm to name just a few. Citing one science-commanding pro-AGW website is easily countered by multiple debunking web-sites, with the groups cited run by scientists having better expertise in this particular arena. Some of these latter have even played significant roles in the development of the science used, something that can’t be said of the RealClimate scientists, most of whom are not that long out of school. Non-agenda driven scientists tend to be naturally skeptical, and this is an asset (not a liability) in science. What is unnatural are bunch scientists pretending to be unbiased all the while refuting any possibility their favored theory might be flawed. The hallmark of good science is setting up propositions with the intent of doing all in our power to knock them down; with the result we can have greater confidence when they don’t fall over like a house-of-cards. Science is never settled, it’s merely ‘waiting to be taken to the next level’, and sometimes we learn we got it wrong.
The article Laird cites makes a big deal of Dr. Gray’s age and categorizes him as ‘bizarre’; which Laird parrots as though the scurrilous remarks suffice to prove themselves. A quick check shows Gray has a PhD in Chemistry from Cambridge University, a long research career in the UK, France, Canada, China and New Zealand, many publications, became interested in climate science some 14 years ago, published many papers on climate science, and was an "Expert Reviewer" for the IPCC almost from its beginning. He has only been deemed a ‘crank’ since he began, more recently, publishing detailed critiques on each of the IPCC science reports questioning the disconnect between actual and reported findings. If he is a crank or irrelevant, why did the IPCC engage him to review their findings? The same goes for the criticism of the other learned gentlemen slammed by this article, all of whom are far more knowledgeable, better credentialed, and less tainted by vested interest in the validity of AGW that the group Laird chooses as unimpeachable.
If the guys Laird’s article criticizes are too old, then the guys he promotes as relevant over at RealClimate are positively wet-behind-the-ears. They are smart, diligent, and methodical; but they are also rash. They do make good solid, science-supported arguments, but these are not so solid even an amateur like me with sufficient interest can find enough holes in it to make them flinch. As a skeptic, I don’t have to prove I know more or demonstrate the true mechanics of climate, I only have to find where their's is false or unproven. Others have shown, this way, that their much ballyhooed ‘modeling’ doesn’t yet cut it and they are way out on a limb. Most of this has been done by guys much smarter than me; leaving it to us to weigh each side’s arguments and see that, although there are some gaps in the skepticism, there are more and far bigger holes in AGW, and that guys like the IPCC governing committee and Al Gore are pushing a science that’s not ready for prime-time.
Comment by Robert W. Stapler | October 25, 2007