UN IPCC Scientist: ‘Natural climate change denial of the last decade is not sustainable anymore’

UN IPCC Scientist Richard Courtney responds to new peer-reviewed study calling climate models “fundamentally wrong.” (See: Study shakes foundation of climate theory! Reveals UN models ‘fundamentally wrong’ – Blames ‘Unknown Processes’ — not CO2 for ancient global warming – ‘Global warming: Our best guess is likely wrong’ July 14, 2009)

Courtney, a UN IPCC expert reviewer and a UK based atmospheric science consultant, is featured on page 224 of the U.S. Senate Report of More Than 700 Dissenting Scientists Over Man-Made Global Warming.

Courtney’s Guest Post:

Key Excerpts: It is a scientific conclusion that the data does not indicate whether future warming or cooling will occur. And it is a political decision to ignore that unarguable scientific conclusion. But deniers of natural climate change do ignore it and they proclaim that human activities alone cause global warming: their climate change denial is pure superstition. […] Even RealClimate (i.e. the Alamo of discredited so-called climate scientists) now admits the fact that the Earth is experiencing global cooling and suggests that global warming will not resume “until roughly 2020.” And they are trying to provide excuses for the cooling. In other words, these global warming propagandists have recognized that their natural climate change denial of the last decade is not sustainable anymore. So, they have abandoned any pretence that global warming exists at the moment, and they are presenting their excuses for why the globe is cooling together with their assertions of when global warming will resume (presumably they will claim with a vengeance). Simply, nobody can now plausibly deny that the globe is cooling while the emissions and the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide both continue to increase.

Courtney’s Full Commentary:

I would like to comment on the Climate Depot report providing the information concerning the paper by Zeebe et al. that says the PETM (Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum of 55 million years ago) demonstrates the assumed (e.g. by IPCC) relationship of mean global temperature to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is wrong.

The Climate Depot report reveals:

“In a nutshell, theoretical models cannot explain what we observe in the geological record,” said oceanographer Gerald Dickens, a co-author of the study and professor of Earth science at Rice University. “There appears to be something fundamentally wrong with the way temperature and carbon are linked in climate models.”

OK, but if there is “something fundamentally wrong with the way temperature and

U.S. Government Scientist’s Shock Admission: ‘Climate Model Software Doesn’t Meet the Best Standards Available’

Two prominent U.S. Government scientists made two separate admissions questioning the reliability of climate models used to predict warming decades and hundreds of years into the future.

Gary Strand, a software engineer at the federally funded National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), admitted climate model software “doesn’t meet the best standards available” in a comment he posted on the website Climate Audit.

“As a software engineer, I know that climate model software doesn’t meet the best standards available. We’ve made quite a lot of progress, but we’ve still quite a ways to go,” Strand wrote on July 5, 2009, according to the website WattsUpWithThat.com.

Strand’s candid admission promoted WattsUpWithThat’s skeptical Meteorologist Anthony Watts to ask the following question:

“Do we really want Congress to make trillion dollar tax decisions today based on ‘software [that] doesn’t meet the best standards available?’”

Meteorologist Watts also critiqued the current climate models, noting, “NASA GISS model E written on some of the worst FORTRAN coding ever seen is a challenge to even get running. NASA GISTEMP is even worse. Yet our government has legislation under consideration significantly based on model output that Jim Hansen started. His 1988 speech to Congress was entirely based on model scenarios.”

Another Government Scientist Admits Climate Model Shortcomings

Another government scientist — NASA climate modeler Gavin Schmidt — admitted last week that the “chaotic component of climate system…is not predictable beyond two weeks, even theoretically.”

Schmidt made his admission during a June 29, 2009 interview about the shortcomings of climate models. Schmidt noted that some climate models “suggest very strongly” that the American Southwest will dry in a warming world. But Schmidt also noted that “other models suggest the exact opposite.”

“With these two models, you have two estimates — one says it’s going to get wetter and one says it’s going to get drier. What do you do? Is there anything that you can say at all? That is a really difficult question,” Schmidt conceded.

“The problem with climate prediction and projections going out to 2030 and 2050 is that we don’t anticipate that they can be tested in the way you can test a weather forecast. It takes about 20 years to evaluate because there is so much unforced variability in the system which we can’t predict — the chaotic component of the climate system — which is not predictable beyond two

Climatologist slams RealClimate.org for ‘erroneously communicating the reality of the how climate system is actually behaving’

The global warming promoting website RealClimate.org, is under fire yet again from a prominent scientist for presenting incorrect climate information. Climatologist Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. publicly rebuked the website in a June 30, 2009 article for “erroneously communicating the reality of the how the climate system is actually behaving.” Pielke, the former Colorado State Climatologist and currently a senior scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder, countered Real Climate’s claim that warming was “progressing faster than expected” with the latest data on sea level rise, ocean heat content and Arctic ice.

In his article titled “Real Climate’s Misinformation”, Pielke also chastised readers of Real Climate for blindly accepting the incorrect climate claims promoted on the site.

“Media and policymakers who blindly accept these claims are either naive or are deliberately slanting the science to promote their particular advocacy position,” Pielke Sr. wrote.

Realclimate.org, a website which much of the mainstream media has relied on for climate science developments, has come under increasing criticism and scrutiny from scientists. Real Climate’s lead blogger and NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt was harshly criticized for some of his scientific claims in January 2009. Atmospheric scientist Dr. Hendrik Tennekes, a prominent scientist from the Netherlands, wrote a scathing denunciation of Schmidt in which he said he was “appalled” by Schmidt’s “lack of knowledge” and added, “Back to graduate school, Gavin!”

The latest scientific woes by RealClimate.org were rebutted point by point by Pielke on June 20, 2009.

Real Climate claimed:

“Our regular readers will hardly be surprised by the key findings from physical climate science, most of which we have already discussed here. Some aspects of climate change are progressing faster than was expected a few years ago – such as rising sea levels, the increase of heat stored in the ocean and the shrinking Arctic sea ice.”

Pielke responded:

“First, what is ‘physical climate science’? How is this different from ‘climate science’. In the past, this terminology has been used when authors ignore the biological components of the climate system,” Pielke wrote.

Pielke continued: “More importantly, however, the author of the weblog makes the statement that the following climate metrics ‘are progressing faster than was expected a few years ago'”:

1. Real Climate Claim: “rising sea levels”

Pielke’s Response: “NOT TRUE; e.g. see the University of Colorado at Boulder Sea Level Change analysis. Sea level has actually flattened since 2006.”

2.