A former GWH believer named David Evans changed his mind some years ago and now says that the human responsibility for global warming is minimal, and that the warming industry is steeped in ideology after the expected scientific findings didn’t work out. He once advised the Australian Government on the issue, helping to build its carbon measuring system, so I think the change in views is noteworthy. But it is also worth noting that since turning skeptic, he’s been attacked roundly and bitterly by the warming establishment and in left wing politicized sites, such as “Source Watch,” so you will have to judge his credibility for yourselves.
From his column, “Climate Models Go Cold:”
Let’s set a few things straight. The whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of the recent global warming is based on a guess that was proved false by empirical evidence during the 1990s. But the gravy train was too big, with too many jobs, industries, trading profits, political careers, and the possibility of world government and total control riding on the outcome. So rather than admit they were wrong, the governments, and their tame climate scientists, now outrageously maintain the fiction that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant.
This is precisely the problem that has concerned me. Yes, skeptics paid by oil companies have an axe to grind, but so do those on the “consensus” side. Indeed, step outside the straight jacket and your career suffers materially—as does your social acceptance, perhaps an even stronger inducement to toe the line. (As I have written before, I have seen this iron maiden tactic in other issues in which I engage.)
Evans says that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and the question really is not whether it causes warming but how much. And the fight is over the modeling about the future. But Evans says the models predicting DIRE have been shown wrong:
Weather balloons had been measuring the atmosphere since the 1960s, many thousands of them every year. The climate models all predict that as the planet warms, a hot spot of moist air will develop over the tropics about 10 kilometres up, as the layer of moist air expands upwards into the cool dry air above. During the warming of the late 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, the weather balloons found no hot spot. None at all. Not even a small one. This evidence proves that the climate models are fundamentally flawed, that they greatly overestimate the temperature increases due to carbon dioxide. This evidence first became clear around the mid-1990s.
That alone, isn’t proof. But I have noticed that the modelers have been shown to be repeatedly wrong—as in the slowing of warming to statistical insignificance in recent years. And then, there have been the exaggerated reports that really undermined that side’s credibility as have the repeated and often contradictory claims that any weather anomaly is proof of global warming.
Back to Evans: He charges that once the science didn’t bear out the theory, the insiders didn’t want to change their “consensus:”
At this point, official “climate science” stopped being a science. In science, empirical evidence always trumps theory, no matter how much you are in love with the theory. If theory and evidence disagree, real scientists scrap the theory.
Evans makes a very serious charge: That the scientists are stacking the data:
The official thermometers are often located in the warm exhaust of air conditioning outlets, over hot tarmac at airports where they get blasts of hot air from jet engines, at waste-water plants where they get warmth from decomposing sewage, or in hot cities choked with cars and buildings. Global warming is measured in 10ths of a degree, so any extra heating nudge is important. In the United States, nearly 90% of official thermometers surveyed by volunteers violate official siting requirements that they not be too close to an artificial heating source.
Global temperature is also measured by satellites, which measure nearly the whole planet 24/7 without bias. The satellites say the hottest recent year was 1998, and that since 2001 the global temperature has levelled off. Why does official science track only the surface thermometer results and not mention the satellite results?
And then, there is this:
Even if we stopped emitting all carbon dioxide tomorrow, completely shut up shop and went back to the Stone Age, according to the official government climate models it would be cooler in 2050 by about 0.015 degrees. But their models exaggerate 10-fold — in fact our sacrifices would make the planet in 2050 a mere 0.0015 degrees cooler! Finally, to those who still believe the planet is in danger from our carbon dioxide emissions: Sorry, but you’ve been had. Yes, carbon dioxide is a cause of global warming, but it’s so minor it’s not worth doing much about.
This strikes me as a devastating indictment. And the charge of politicization of science accords precisely with what I have seen in my other work. Science is becoming a special interest feeding at the trough with a political agenda designed to keep the public money flowing. That not only undermines the field, but it sows distrust among those with different politics.
