Start here – What Just Happened

Here are some articles and interviews that may open the wider debate about climate alarm and net zero.

First, some questions

How would you define climate?

I think climate is the range of weather to expect in a particular region. For example, if we talk about the climate of the British Isles, and wanted to define how it differs from the climate of Central Europe, we would look for average temperature and the patterns of rainfall and wind across the different months of the year. I would expect those averages to be from about 50 years of data, as I know in the British Isles our weather can be very variable from year to year.

How do we understand/find out/measure what causes changes in our weather patterns?

Perhaps the main driver for weather patterns is the energy of the sun that arrives on planet earth. The warming of the sun drives patterns of air circulation in the atmosphere, and currents in the oceans. It provides energy for rainfall. Our climate will be affected by changes in the sun’s activity itself. But also by cloud cover, gases and particles in the atmosphere (e.g. CO2 or ash from volcanic eruptions), and changes in the colour of the surface of the earth.

If you were to measure the climate of the world, what would you need to do?

And to predict changes in the climates of the world, what would you need to know?

I hope these questions remind us that the measurement and definition of global climate change is a vast undertaking. And that predicting how global climate may change in the future is a task of far greater magnitude.

How the IPCC works

An important thing to understand is that the authoritative voice on climate change is the IPCC. Every few years they summarise the available science on climate change and make an assessment report.

The IPCC science documents are thousands of pages long, so the IPCC also produces a series of summary documents for policy makers. In this simplification process it is possible to loose connection with the unknowns and uncertainties considered in the science.

Statements about climate are based on measurements and available data. The world is vast and our knowledge is incomplete. And we cannot be certain how current trends (human or natural) will change in the future. Therefore the technical documents:

consider the quality of the data/evidence that is available;
consider a range of scenarios for changes in trends of human activity;
estimate the likelihood of predictions made by climate modellers.

Thus in the summary for policy makers we are presented with ‘facts’ without qualifying information such as the strength of the evidence behind these facts, or which scenarios they are based on.

And there is a further simplification when the summaries are reported in the media as journalists do not have time to cover the full extent of the summary for policy makers. They distil down even more.

Here is an example from the IPCC website:

The IPCC began to roll out its 6th set of assessment reports with Climate Change 2021: the Physical Science Basis. The press release for this publication makes assertions such as:

…unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to close to 1.5°C or even 2°C will be beyond reach.
…emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are responsible for approximately 1.1°C of warming since 1850-1900, and finds that averaged over the next 20 years, global temperature is expected to reach or exceed 1.5°C of warming.
…Climate change is already affecting every region on Earth, in multiple ways. The changes we experience will increase with additional warming.
…But it is not just about temperature. Climate change is bringing multiple different changes in different regions – which will all increase with further warming. These include changes to wetness and dryness, to winds, snow and ice, coastal areas and oceans
…human actions still have the potential to determine the future course of climate. The evidence is clear that carbon dioxide (CO₂) is the main driver of climate change, even as other greenhouse gases and air pollutants also affect the climate.

Discussion of the IPCC publications

An introduction to the way research is collated by the IPCC and summarised in assessment reports (16 mins).
- The 6th IPCC assessment report was released in stages, from 2021-2023. Important to note is that the science in the IPCC reports is reserved regarding the likelihood and confidence limits on all the various findings. Essentially there is no good evidence for human-caused climate change. But the assessment reports are summarised for policy makers and at this step the findings are simplified and lose connection with the evidence.
  - There is scant data to support the notion that any of the things like hurricanes, droughts, melting ice are changing due to human influences
  - IPCC reviews published climate research. But journals tend to only publish papers that promote alarmism.
  - IPCC doesn’t study natural climate change.
  - Predictions of a dire future are based on models. There are a range of models, giving different results. Models can’t model everything and so have tuning parameters, which are changed according to the modellers ideas, not any strict science.
  - Modest warming of 1.3C global average since 1900s and in that time, everything you might measure – lifespan, nutrition, death rates from adverse weather – is all going in a positive direction.
  - Sea rise continues about 30cm per 100 years.
  - Huge cost of net zero in GDP to developed countries.
Interview with Steven Koonin (54 mins). This is a deeper overview of how the IPCC works, and how the science gets distorted in the summaries for policy makers. Details many alarmist assertions.
[document] Climate Change – the impacts and the need to act. A 6-page document summarising much of the climate knowledge and possible actions. This is evidence given to US Congress in 2019 by Judith Curry. She explains the uncertainty associated with our scientific understanding.The worst outcome for decision makers is a scientific conclusion or forecast issued with a high level of confidence that turns out to be wrong.
We don’t have the money, workforce or materials to achieve net zero. Michael Kelly, professor emeritus of technology at the University of Cambridge. He was a government scientist when the Climate Change Act launched in 2008, and has been researching the reduction of carbon in Britain since then. This is incredibly practical.
A longer interview with Judith Curry on the uncertainties of Climate change. I have added notes to summarise much of what is discussed. It is a good primer on many of the uncertainty issues around climate change. Judy has spent 40 years studying weather and climate.