Tag Archives: Dr William Happer

Net Zero Will Prevent Almost Zero Warming, Say Three Top Atmospheric Scientists

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From The Daily Sceptic

BY CHRIS MORRISON

Recent calculations by the distinguished atmospheric scientists Richard Lindzen, William Happer and William van Wijngaarden suggest that if the entire world eliminated net carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 it would avert warming of an almost unmeasurable 0.07°C. Even assuming the climate modelled feedbacks and temperature opinions of the politicised Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the rise would be only 0.28°C. Year Zero would have been achieved along with the destruction of economic and social life for eight billion people on Planet Earth. “It would be hard to find a better example of a policy of all pain and no gain,” note the scientists.

In the U.K., the current General Election is almost certain to be won by a party that is committed to outright warfare on hydrocarbons. The Labour party will attempt to ‘decarbonise’ the electricity grid by the end of the decade without any realistic instant backup for unreliable wind and solar except oil and gas. Britain is sitting on huge reserves of hydrocarbons but new exploration is to be banned. It is hard to think of a more ruinous energy policy, but the Conservative governing party is little better. Led by the hapless May, a woman over-promoted since her time running the education committee on Merton Council, through to Buffo Boris and Washed-Out Rishi, its leaders have drunk the eco Kool-Aid fed to them by the likes of Roger Hallam, Extinction Rebellion and the Swedish Doom Goblin. Adding to the mix in the new Parliament will be a likely 200 new ‘Labour’ recruits with university degrees in buggerallology and CVs full of parasitical non-jobs in the public sector.

Hardly any science knowledge between them, they even believe that they can spend billions of other people’s money to capture CO2 – perfectly good plant fertiliser – and bury it in the ground. As a privileged, largely middle class group, they have net zero understanding of how a modern industrial society works, feeds itself and creates the wealth that pays their unnecessary wages. All will be vying to save the planet and stop a temperature rise that is barely a rounding error on any long-term view.

They plan to cull the farting cows, sow wild flowers where food once grew, take away efficient gas boilers and internal combustion cars and stop granny visiting her grandchildren in the United States. On a wider front, banning hydrocarbons will remove almost everything from a modern society including many medicines, building materials, fertilisers, plastics and cleaning products. It might be shorter and easier to list essential items where hydrocarbons are absent than produce one where they are present. Anyone who dissents from their absurd views is said to be in league with fossil fuel interests, a risible suggestion given that they themselves are dependent on hydrocarbon producers to sustain their enviable lifestyles.

Unlike politicians the world over who rant about fire and brimstone, Messrs Lindzen, Happer and van Wijngaarden pay close attention to actual climate observations and analyses of the data. Since it is impossible to determine how much of the gentle warming of the last two centuries is natural or caused by higher levels of CO2, they assume a ‘climate sensitivity’ – rise in temperature when CO2 doubles in the atmosphere – of 0.8°C. This is about four times less than IPCC estimates, which lacks any proof. Understandably the IPCC does not make a big issue of this lack of crucial proof at the heart of the so-called 97% anthropogenic ‘consensus’.

The 0.8°C estimate is based on the idea that greenhouse gases like CO2 ‘saturate’ at certain levels and their warming effect falls off a logarithmic cliff. This idea has the advantage of explaining climate records that stretch back 600 million years since CO2 levels have been up to 10-15 times higher in the past compared with the extremely low levels observed today. There is little if any long term causal link between temperature and CO2 over time. In the immediate past record there is evidence that CO2 rises after natural increases in temperature as the gas is released from warmer oceans.

Any argument that the Earth has a ‘boiling’ problem caused by the small CO2 contribution that humans make by using hydrocarbons is ‘settled’ by an invented political crisis, but is backed by no reliable observational data. Most of the fear-mongering is little more than a circular exercise using computer models with improbable opinions fed in, and improbable opinions fed out.

The three scientists use a simple formula using base-two logarithms to assess the CO2 influence on the atmosphere based on decades of laboratory experiments and atmospheric data collection. They demonstrate how trivial the effect on global temperature will be if humanity stops using hydrocarbons. After years wasted listening to Greta Thunberg, the message is starting to penetrate the political arena. In the United States, the Net Zero project is dead in the water if Trump wins the Presidential election. In Europe, the ruling political elites, both national and supranational, are retreating on their Net Zero commitments. Reality is starting to dawn and alternative political groupings emerge to challenge the comfortable insanity of Net Zero virtue signalling. In New Zealand, the nightmare of the Ardern years is being expunged with a roll back of Net Zero policies ahead of possible electricity black outs.

Only in Britain it seems are citizens prepared to elect a Government obsessed with self-inflicted poverty and deindustrialisation. The only major political grouping committed to scrapping Net Zero is the Nigel Farage-led Reform party and although it could beat the ruling Conservatives into second place in the popular vote, it is unlikely to secure many Parliamentary seats under the U.K.’s first-past-the-post electoral system. Only a few years ago the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who thinks some women have penises, and his imbecilic Deputy Leader Angela Rayner, were bending the knee to an organisation that wanted to cut funding for the police and fling open the borders. The new British Parliament will have plenty of people who still support Net Zero and assorted woke woo woo, and the great tragedy is that they will still be found across most of the represented political parties.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

Climate Change is Driven by Changes in Orientation of Earth to Sun, Not Carbon Emissions, New Analysis of Berkeley Earth Data Shows

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From The Daily Sceptic

BY STEPHEN ANDREWS

Climate change is being driven by a change in the orientation of the Earth to the Sun rather than carbon dioxide emissions, new analysis of data from Berkeley Earth shows.

The analysis is set out in full below. The highlights:

  • Analysis of Berkeley Earth data shows a significant difference in the rate of temperature increase between summer and winter in Greenland, with winter warming over four times more rapidly than summer.
  • Significant seasonal variation in the rate of warming is not specific to Greenland but is a global phenomenon at similar latitudes.
  • There is a correlation between warming rate and latitude, with a decreasing trend in warming rate as we move from north to south.
  • This analysis suggests that it is the change in orientation of the Earth to the Sun, known as Milankovitch cycles, that is the primary driver of climate change.
  • These findings raise questions about the credibility of the existing climate change narrative.

Berkeley Earth offers comprehensive land surface temperature data for the entire planet. It calculates temperature anomalies by comparing the actual temperature to the average temperature during the period from 1950 to 1980. In a previous article I used data from this site to show that there was minimal evidence of a significant increase in global temperatures, contrasting it with the magnitude of seasonal variations. While it is undeniable that our planet has warmed over the past 150 years, what is the root cause? Could it be attributed to the orientation of the Earth to the Sun, considering it is the only heat source?

I had already downloaded data for some specific regions, and as this is available in monthly increments it was a relatively simple task to interrogate the data to see if there were any seasonal variations in the rate of temperature increase.

To clarify, I am analysing the Berkeley Earth data from 1860 to 2020 by dividing them into three-month periods to calculate the average seasonal anomaly. For instance, winter includes December to February, spring includes March to May, and so on. I then graph these data and calculate the temperature change rate using a linear trend line. Comparing seasons each year is a dependable method because it allows us to draw conclusions based on the relative seasonal warming rates at specific locations. This approach reduces the risk of complications caused by factors like urban warming or thermometer inaccuracies.

I was expecting any seasonal differences to be minimal but to my surprise this was not the case. This is the analysis for Greenland for the period of high carbon dioxide emissions (Fig 1):

The chart clearly shows a significant difference in the rate of temperature increase between summer and winter (4.6 times greater). This difference intrigued me, prompting me to investigate if this pattern is consistent globally. Here is a map of the world (Fig 2) comparing the average annual warming rate (in black) with the seasonal variation (in purple) expressed as a percentage relative to the mean (relative standard deviation) for the four seasons. Higher values for both metrics indicate a more pronounced rate of warming and seasonal variation.

The key takeaways from the above (Fig 2) are as follows:

  • A clear decreasing trend as we move from north to south in terms of warming rate and a decreasing seasonal variation. This lack of seasonal variation was expected at the equatorial latitude but not for the northern and southern hemispheres.
  • Warming rates are consistent across latitudes that are at different ends of the earth.

(Data for Antarctica are only available from 1956 onwards so as this is not a comparable data set it has not been included.)

To try and shed further light I have taken four cities and regions from the furthest north, furthest south and proximity to the equator and taken the mean seasonal warming rates for the locations represented by red, green and orange dots respectively above (Fig 3).

This chart confirms that the difference between winter and summer seen in Greenland was not specific to this region but a global phenomenon at this latitude. In this analysis, using four locations, winter is warming nearly four times (3.8 times) more rapidly than summer. This seasonal trend is evident, albeit to a much less extent, at the equator and in the southern hemisphere.

If we examine the observation that the warming rate was changing with latitude using these 12 data sets, we get the following graph (Fig 4):

We can see that there is a reasonable degree of correlation between warming rate and latitude (R2 = 0.7797; a value of 1.0000 equates to a perfect correlation). There are many other factors that influence local climate. Air and ocean currents have a strong bearing and can change on a seasonal basis, but the locations above span the globe.

To further examine this annual cycle of the rate of warming at different latitudes I have taken Greenland as the most extreme and plotted the monthly rate of rise and compared this with New York, the southern hemisphere (Southern Chile) and the equator (Singapore) (Fig 5):

There remains a significant correlation between the time of the year and the rate of warming. For Greenland the difference between the monthly maximum (January) and minimum (July) rate of warming is a factor of 6.5. This large difference indicates that the Earth’s change in orientation to the Sun is playing a crucial role in the warming seen from 1860 to 2020. There is also a clear trend as we move from north to south in the maximum and variation of monthly warming. The second order polynomial curve fit has been determined using Excel.

This analysis suggests that climatic warming in the far northern hemisphere is highly seasonal, with Greenland exemplifying the most extreme winter-to-summer variations. Variations in warming rates across latitudes also point to the Sun’s proximity and angle as the primary driver of planetary warming during the period 1860 to 2020. These changes to the Sun’s orientation to the Earth are known as Milankovitch cycles. The changing seasons occur because the Earth orbits the Sun in an elliptical path and is tilted on its axis. Greenland’s average seasonal range is approximately 26°C and as we are looking for something that can increase the warming rate by 0.011°C per year this simple explanation is hardly far-fetched.

Climate scientists admit their models fall short in explaining past rapid temperature shifts in Greenland, which were much more extreme than what we are currently experiencing. Professor William Happer co-wrote a paper, released in 2020 but largely overlooked, that questions the concept of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas at its current levels. These findings and many others prompt unanswered questions regarding the credibility of the existing climate change narrative.

The outcome and implications of this analysis took me by surprise. As I was citing the work of Professor William Happer I asked him to perform a sanity check. He replied that the analysis “looks reasonable to me”. He added:

What has caused the warming of the past two centuries is still open to debate, but I think the evidence is pretty solid that much of the warming was a natural recovery from the Little Ice Age and had little to do with increased concentrations of greenhouse gases. Others have pointed out that the warming has been more pronounced at nights and at near polar latitudes. But it is nice to see this quantitatively confirmed in this analysis.

It is good that you point out strong evidence that the dogma that CO2 is the control knob of Earth’s climate is certainly wrong. But it is being used as an excuse for suicidal economic policies supported by glassy-eyed fanatics and clear-eyed opportunists. This is bad news for humanity.