Guest opinion: Dr.Tim Ball

The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin. Thomas Huxley

This comment describes the career of John L. Daly (March 1943-January 2004). John lived on the beautiful island of Tasmania, where he became a climate devil gaining global attention in 1995 when he started the most successful early skeptics webpage “Still Waiting for Greenhouse.” He was an innovator in the climate area of using the internet to establish himself. He became a new type of investigator despised by the arrogant, heavily funded, academic elites who control world thought on so many issues. In climate, this was primarily the hacks who took over the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia after its founder, Hubert Lamb, stepped down. They proceeded to control the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Proof of how much he annoyed them came as a back-handed compliment in one of those infamous leaked emails by Phil Jones. He was Director of the CRU at the time of John’s death in 2004 and wrote, “in an odd way this is cheering news.” This disgusting, inhuman comment is not unique in the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) climate science community because William Connolley (Stoat) commented on the passing of Bob Carter, that “Science advances one funeral at a time.”

Perhaps among the best summaries of John Daly’s role was by Professor Emeritus John Brignell, who wrote,

Daly was the epitome of a new phenomenon of the post-scientific age, a lone scholar with all the traditions of meticulous attention to detail and truth that the word implies, with limited means upholding the principles of the scientific method in the face of adversaries with vast resources. He usually won, but the establishment media ensured that the world never got to hear of it. He was the eternal small boy gleefully pointing out that the emperor had no clothes.

John was an advisor to Channel 4’s 1990 production of “The Greenhouse Conspiracy”. Remember, that was the year that the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report appeared. Sadly, much of the information is a revelation to most people even today. Equally sad, the members of the IPCC must have know about the film and its content yet ignored it. If they didn’t know about the content, it is a measure of their incompetence. As I recall, the documentary was generally well received in the UK but was blocked in the US and Canada.

I first saw it 1991 in the boardroom of Manitoba Hydro, a public utility company that controlled all power production in the Province of Manitoba. They obtained a pirated copy and asked me for commentary. They ignored what I told them because most of their power was hydroelectric and so they and the political masters benefited greatly from low CO2 levels. In fact, when the Canadian Federal government moved to ratify the Kyoto Protocol only two of ten Provinces, Manitoba, and Quebec, supported the action because they stood to collect huge carbon credit compensation.

I was privileged to communicate with John and had a couple of articles published along with several other early skeptics. The website is till accessible but is a shadow of its former content. Nonetheless, it provides an insight into how innovative and perceptive the work John and others were doing. In his 1989 book “The Greenhouse Trap – why the greenhouse effect will not end life on earth, he says

“…clearly laid out what would be the crucial arguments later presented by the IPCC. To each and every argument Daly countered with his own arguments, questioning the “orthodox” science.”

I will not repeat any of John’s comments or articles; people can read them for themselves. However, I know John, with his refreshing irreverence and fascination with people’s opinions and the need for accountability, will appreciate a limited update of his article titled “THEY SAID IT.” The subtitle was

A compendium of interesting and illuminating quotes from leading figures in the Greenhouse Industry (exact source references available on request).

With deference to John;

The More Things Change …

“There is a finite possibility that a serious worldwide cooling could befall the Earth within the next 100 years”

– (from a U.S. National Academy of Sciences Report, 1975)

“When I was going to graduate school, it was gospel that the Ice Age was about to start. I had trouble warming up to that one too.This (Greenhouse) is not the first climate apocalypse, but it’s certainly the loudest.”

– (Prof. Patrick Michaels, interview for UK Channel 4, 1990)

“There is no reason not to anticipate the onset of the next cycle of 90 thousand years of glaciation beginning at any time.

In this context, I find it remarkable that one rarely, if ever, hears the suggestion that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is just what is needed to prevent or delay the onset of the next period of glaciation which, if anything, is apparently already overdue, or already in progress.”

– (Dr Hugh Ellsaesser, 13 Feb 1990)

“On the short time scale, if CO2 is augmented by another 10 percent in the next 30 years, the increase in the global temperature may be as small as +0.1 deg.”

(Dr Stephen Schneider, in 1971 paper on the effect of atmospheric aerosols)

“… An increase by a factor of 8 in the amount of CO2 (which is highly unlikely in the next several thousand years), will produce an increase in the surface temperature of less than 2 deg. K.

However, the effect on surface temperature of an increase in the aerosol content of the atmosphere is found to be quite significant.

An increase by a factor of 4 in the equilibrium dust concentration in the global atmosphere, which cannot be ruled out as a possibility within the next century, could decrease the mean surface temperature by as much as 3.5 deg. K.

If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease could be sufficient to trigger an ice age. ”

(Dr Stephen Schneider, (from a 1971 paper in `Science’ on the effect of atmospheric aerosols)

The Politics of Climate Change Science

(A triple oxymoron?)

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temperatures to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keoth’s to hide the decline.

Phil Jones email November 16, 1999.

I have just read M&M (McIntyre & McKitrick) stuff critcizing MBH. A lot of it seems valid to me. At the very least MBH is a very sloppy piece of wrok- an opinion I have held for some time.

Tom Wigley email 21 October 2004

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith regarding the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report? Keith will do likewise.

Phil Jones email to Michael Mann May 29 2008.

“I hope there is a major glitch. It might give Mother Earth a rest. I think it would be wonderful if things collapsed for a few days. Chaos would happen … but it would be an amazing opportunity for people to really start thinking about things — and a global collapse would really make people think.”

– David Suzuki, just before Christmas 1999, anticipating a Y2K meltdown

(as quoted by Terence Corcoran of the National Post)

“No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits….

Climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.” Christine Stewart 1998, Canada’s Minister of the Environment as quoted by the Calgary Herald.

“For those environmentalists who have felt threatened by technological progress and economic growth, the campaign to prevent global warming has become a vehicle for achieving many other goals. (Dr Hugh Ellsaesser – Dec 8 1995)

“Both environmentalist groups, like GCI and Greenpeace, and industry groups like the Global Climate Coalition, are having great difficulty understanding how the IPCC conducts itself with regard to peer review. What is clear, however, is that the UN panel is so thoroughly politicized that its integrity and objectivity cannot be taken for granted” — (James M. Sheehan, 1996)

“We may get to the point where the ONLY WAY of saving the world will be for the industrial civilization to collapse.” (Maurice Strong, Secretary General Rio Summit — 1992)

“The two main tasks for the present are to promote social stress and instability in industrial society and to develop and propagate an ideology that opposes technology and the industrial system. When the system becomes sufficiently stressed and unstable, a revolution against technology may be possible”. – (The Unabomber Manifesto)

“To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have.

Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest.”

(Dr. Stephen Schneider, NCAR, in interview for “Discover” magazine, Oct 1989)

“The rate of change is so fast that I don’t hesitate to call it potentially catastrophic for ecosystems.”

– (Dr Stephen Schneider, UK Channel 4 interview, 1990)

“Looking at every bump and wiggle of the record is a waste of time – it’s like trying to figure out the probability of a pair of dice by looking at the individual rolls.

You’ve got to look at averages. So, I don’t set very much store in looking at the direct evidence.”

– (Dr Stephen Schneider, UK Channel 4 interview, 1990)

“The issue of the ‘greenhouse effect’ has assumed a peculiar life of its own.

Politicians, government officials, and various policy specialists cling with remarkable tenacity to the notion that this is a proven and intolerable danger about which there is scientific unanimity.

At the same time, one has no difficulty hearing the muttering in the corridors of any meteorology department that this is an issue that has gotten out of hand, that the claims are insupportable, that the models are inadequate, and the data contradictory.”

– (Prof. Richard Lindzen (MIT), May 1989)

“Would you walk down the road towards a policy which people have rightly said requires an economic restructuring of the world, knowing that the world was doing the opposite to what the basis for that policy said?”

– Prof Patrick Michaels, University of Virginia, 1991.

“It was not surprising the cold period raised questions over climate change – but the snowy weather should not be used as evidence against it.”

-Stephen Dorling, of the University of East Anglia’s school of environmental sciences. 2010.

“They [the global climate models] are full of fudge factors that are fitted to the existing climate, so the models more or less agree with the observed data. But there is no reason to believe that the same fudge factors would give the right behavior in a world with different chemistry, for example in a world with increased CO2 in the atmosphere.”

Freeman Dyson 2007.

‘Authorities’, ‘disciples’, and ‘schools’ are the curse of science; and do more to interfere with the work of the scientific spirit than all its enemies. Thomas Henry Huxley, (1825-1895)

“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.” — Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace. 1993.

“The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.” –Daniel Botkin, Chairman of Environmental Studies at UCSB 2011.

“Analyses like these by people who don’t know the field are useless. A good example is Naomi Oreskes work.” – Tom Wigley, Former Director, Climatic Research Unit (CRU) 2013.

The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States: We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the U.S. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are. And it is important to the rest of the world to make sure that they don’t suffer economically by virtue of our stopping them.

Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund.

If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.

Prince Phillip, World Wildlife Fund 2012.

What we’ve got to do in energy conservation is try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.

Timothy Wirth, former U.S. Senator (D-Colorado) 1996?

“Only an insignificant fraction of scientists deny the global warming crisis. The time for debate is over. The science is settled.” — Gore (1992):

If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and no-one dares criticize it.

Pierre Gallois (1911-2010)

“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.”

Dwight D Eisenhower, Farewell address 1961.

“The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.”

Thomas H. Huxley

When we allow science to become political then we are lost. We will enter the internet version of the Dark Ages, an era of stifling fears and wild prejudices, transmitted to people who don’t know any better.

Michael Crichton.

“So unfortunately, inside of Washington we’ve still got some climate deniers who shout loud, but they’re wasting everybody’s time on a settled debate,” “Climate change is a fact.”

Barack Obama 2015

“We don’t have time for a meeting anywhere of the Flat Earth Society.” John Kerry 2015

Funding … (Shhhhhhh….)

“The issues arising from the Greenhouse Effect – is the best thing that’s ever happened for us.”

– (Remark by a scientist, overheard at the “Greenhouse ’88” conference,

Hobart, Tasmania, Nov. 1988)

“It’s easier to get funding if you can show some evidence for impending climate disasters. In the late 1970’s it was the coming ice age. Who knows what it will be ten years from now. Sure, science benefits from scary scenarios.”

-Dr Roy Spencer, NASA, 1990 TV Interview

“A lot of people are getting very famous and very well funded as a result of promoting the disastrous scenario of greenhouse warming.”

– Prof. Sherwood Idso, University of Arizona, 1990

“My suspicion is that if you have a crisis like this, it’s easier to gain funds for the profession as a whole”

– Prof Reginald Newell, MIT, 1990

“Using my organization as an example, we have only one permanently-funded university scientist – and that’s me! I have a dozen research workers with Ph.D’s who are working in the Climate Research Unit (CRU) and they are all funded on so-called soft money.Their existence requires me, or us jointly, to get external support.”

– Prof Tom Wigley, CRU, 1990

“I was warned when I wrote my first paper (which discussed the difference between the climate models and some figures I was looking at for the tropics) that it would be very difficult, and my funding would probably be cut. In fact, it has been cut.”

– Prof. Reginald Newell, MIT, 1990

On Climate Models …

“There is no more common error than to assume that, because prolonged and accurate mathematical calculations have been made, the application of the result to some fact of nature is absolutely certain.”

– A.N. Whitehead

“A troubling trend of the “new physics” is that the theories have many arbitrarily adjustable parameters. Although these theories do make predictions, their effectiveness is compromised by excessive flexibility. The strategy (goes) something like this –

Test the predictions, and if they are not borne out experimentally, then achieve agreement, or at least avoid conflict, by twiddling with the adjustable parameters – or switching to a slightly modified version of the theory.”

– (Robert Oldershaw, New Scientist, 22/29-Dec 1990).

“The so-called consensus on greenhouse warming exists only among climate modelers and their associates. The majority of practicing meteorologists have very strong misgivings about the amount of warming predicted for a doubling of CO2, but they are hesitant to speak out for fear of revealing or being accused of ignorance of the principles of radiation transport.”

– (Prof. Hugh Ellsaesser, 13 Feb 1990)

“I don’t think we can speak of these models as being accurate at this point. They are experimental tools. We’re trying to forge these tools. To use them to forecast delicate things like warming is calling for an accuracy these models simply do not have.”

-Prof Richard Lindzen (in interview for UK Channel 4, 1990)

“There has really been no warming in the Polar Regions at all, even though this is where computer models predict warming should be greatest”

– (Dr Phillip Jones, CRU, in New Scientist, 19-Jan-91)

“We have to accept the possibility that the GCM’s will function far less effectively as predictive tools than is presently claimed.”

– CSIRO Report, 5-Feb-90)

“(Of the) fundamental ingredients of radiative convective models, (namely) Radiative Equilibrium, Convective Adjustment to 6.5 K/Km, Absorbing layer Cloud Simulations, and Fixed Relative Humidity – only Radiative Equilibrium has a sound physical basis.

The others are ad hoc characterizations of how the atmosphere works.”

– (Dr Christopher Essex, Univ. of Western Ontario, 1986)

“The observed surface temperatures of Mars,. Earth, and Venus would indeed appear to confirm the existence, nature, and magnitude of the greenhouse effect, … but they yield a result for contemporary Earth, ie. a predicted warming for a 300 to 600 ppm doubling of the air’s CO2 content, which is a full order of magnitude (ie. ten-fold) less than that produced by essentially all state-of-the-art GCM’s.”

– (Prof. Sherwood Idso, Univ. of Arizona, 1989)

The Silver Lining

“Slight changes in cloudiness can drastically influence how the world responds to the trace gases”.

– Prof Patrick Michaels, MIT, 1990

“Cloud albedo causes less warming at the earth’s surface so that the increase in temperature produced by carbon dioxide is reduced by the presence of clouds.”

– Prof Peter Jonas, University of Manchester, 1990

“Additions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere will certainly cause an increase in the downward flux of energy at the surface, but that will not necessarily change the temperature of the lower layers of the atmosphere. I think it will cause more water to evaporate which will have a lot of ramifications, one of which will be the radiative effects. These will tend to produce more cooling, and also more clouds which will reflect the solar radiation.

So it’s not at all obvious that increasing the carbon dioxide in the system will make the temperature rise.

– Prof Reginald Newell, MIT, 1990

“The presence of cloud cover strongly damps the net effect on planetary albedo of any perturbation in snow-ice extent (an effect that is neglected in simple treatments of the ice-albedo feedback mechanism).”

– Prof Ann Henderson-Sellers, 1984

“When a politician … says “the debate is over,” you can be sure of two things: the debate is raging; and he’s losing it.”

George Will 2015

Peer Review

I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!

Phil Jones email to Michael Mann July 8 2004.

Cheers

Dr. Tom Wigley of NCAR, reveals these review comments by those of his `peers’ who reviewed a research paper of his for `Science’.

Referee #1: “Overall evaluation: Excellent and exciting…presents an insightful and deceptively simple analysis…”

Referee #2: “Overall evaluation: excellent and exciting…an exciting paper using an underutilized technique…deserves rapid publication…

Referee #3: “This is an excellent and exciting paper…has some very interesting and important results…a novel, yet simple approach…”

“I hope you will note the uniformity of the referees opinions.”

Wigley’s own self-congratulation of the above referee comments –

————————————————————————

“I have had experiences with editors of more than one journal who have said that my papers have been rejected because they are held to a higher standard of review than others.

I believe this is because what they say is not popular. That’s OK, I’m a big boy. I know that I would have been more successful if I had said the world is coming to an end, but I can’t quite bring myself to do that.”

– Prof Patrick Michaels, University of Virginia, 1990

Times Past …

“We have to be careful when we look at people who say they have detected global warming, because what they may have detected is urban warming.”

– (Dr Robert Balling, Univ. of Arizona, 1990)

“There appears to have been little or no global warming over the past century.”

– (MIT Technology Review, 1989)

“There is no statistically significant evidence of an overall increase in annual temperature or change in annual precipitation for the contiguous U.S.A., 1895 – 1987.”

– (Thomas Karl et al, NOAA, 1989)

“We looked at a thousand stations in the United States that came from very small towns averaging no more than about 5,800 people. We looked at the temperature patterns over this century and found that most of the United States has cooled this century, not warmed.”

– (Dr Robert Balling, Univ. of Arizona, 1990)

“It’s pretty apparent that the lion’s share of the warming ocurred before the lion’s share of the trace gases went in.”

Prof Patrick Michaels

“Yes, – that’s a remarkable puzzle.”

– Prof. Tom Wigley

– (from interviews with UK Channel 4, August 1991)

Hysterical Science

“But just who are the 2,600 scientists proclaiming the certitude of human-caused global warming? One would assume climate experts, but an analysis of the academic backgrounds of the signatories to Vice President Gore’s letter found only one bona fide climatologist.”

Dr Hugh Ellsaesser, 1997

“Warmer temperatures will lead to a more vigorous hydrological cycle; this translates into prospects for more severe droughts and/or floods in some places and less severe droughts and/or floods in other places”.

IPCC 1995 Report Executive Summary

“… the media, because they rely on news impact, have given the greatest weight to the most extreme forecasts, and are not interested in emphasising uncertainty. To compound the difficulty we are greatly outnumbered (and outranked in political terms) by a community of experts in other such disciplines as economics, geography, geology, and social sciences, all of which are pleased to justify their own activity in terms of the consequences of climate change.”

Dr A.D. McEwan, CSIRO Oceanography, 1990

“Some greenhouse scientists have adopted an almost missionary zeal in dealing with their subject…Such uncritical zeal and a constant need for backpedaling on the original doom-laden predictions do little for scientific credibility.

Predictions on climate change have in effect changed from working hypotheses to being dogma central to a large research effort, and are communicated to the media and the general public with much more credibility than they merit.”

Dr Richard Hobbs, CSIRO, 1990

“Panic statements about impending climatic disasters and rising sea levels because of increased carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases may be distracting our attention from the real reasons for existing climatic change. Given the present state of knowledge, the publicity on sensational but very improbable aspects of the greenhouse scenario are actually counter-productive and irresponsible.”

Prof. Edward Bryant, University of Wollongong, 1988

“The signal that the atmosphere is warming or that the sea level is rising is scarcely greater than the `noise’ level, and requires the eye of faith”

Dr A.D. McEwan, CSIRO Oceanography, 1990

“In my experience, global warming freezing is already a bit of a public relations problem with the media.”

2004 leaked email from Nick at the Minns/Tyndall Centre.

“I agree with Nick that climate change might be a better labelling than global warming.”

Response from Bo Kjellen Swedish Chief Climate Negotiator

Discussion

I know many have their favorite comments, and the list will grow as the deception that John anticipated is exposed.

The final comment must go to Ray Evans and Rachel Daly who knew John better than anyone and who wrote in an obituary,

His life is testimony to the fact that one person, if armed with intelligence, energy, perseverance and a commitment to the truth, can change events. John Daly was above all valiant for truth and his memory will long endure.

Diderot said, “Skepticism is the first step toward truth.” John took that first step, and we must continue to follow in his footsteps.

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