Climate Delusionism

Harry Clarke
La Trobe University
September 2009.
Politics of climate change

• In 1957 Revelle & Suess - heating a policy

concern – CO2 emissions - “large scale
geophysical experiment”.

• Unanimity of policy concern led to 1992

Climate Convention & ongoing role for
IPCC.

• Activity of climate delusionists forced a

Delusionism
• Influential political movement rejecting science.

• George C. Marshall Institute & the Heartland

Institute sources of delusionism.

• In past have denied passive smoking damage,

CFCs cause ozone layer hole, SO2 cause acid rain
etc etc. Received funding from Exxon-Mobil &
officials (Singer, Selz) have worked for tobacco
companies.

• Australian delusionism has pervasive influence.

More...

• Delusionists seek to create false impression of

substantive debate in climate science.

• Implication that because there is ‘doubt’ - no case

for policy.

• Fostered by press balance ideas – any view has

‘right’ to equal treatment.
• Some false delusionist claims.
Proposition 1:

Global Warming Stopped in

1998.
What science says……

• One cannot assess trends in time

series without eliminating cyclical
fluctuations.

• 1998 was an extreme El Niño year -

temps rose well above the long-run
(increasing) trend. In 2008 there
was a strong La Niña.

• Visually it is clear warming has

Visually it is clear warming has
continued….
 Statistically - no evidence of
cooling
• Refuted by Robert Fawcett & David
Jones from National Climate Centre,
Australian Bureau of Meteorology. (
here)

• Indeed considering data from 1910 on

the authors state:

• “There are no indications in these data

of a cessation in the national warming
trend of the past half-century”.
Also refuted in Garnaut
Report
• Garnaut commissioned the ANU’s
Trevor Breusch & Farshid Vahid to
examine this claim (here).

• “The warming trend becomes

steeper after the mid-1970s, but
there is no significant evidence for a
break in trend in the late 1990s.”
Others disagree

• Andrew Bolt & Tim Blair among

others….

• George Will pursued the issue in

the Washington Post, February 15,
2009. Quote:
 
• “according to the U.N. World
Meteorological Organization, there
has been no recorded global
WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud
responded in a letter to that newspaper:

• “Data collected over the past 150 years by the

188 members of the WMO… through observing
networks of tens of thousands of stations on
land, at sea, in the air and from constellations
of weather and climate satellites lead to an
unequivocal conclusion: The observed increase
in global surface temperatures is a
manifestation of global warming. Warming has
accelerated particularly in the past 20 years.
(my underlining)

• It is a misinterpretation of the data and of

scientific knowledge to point to one year as the
warmest on record …… and then to extrapolate
that cooler subsequent years invalidate the
reality of global warming and its effects.

• …… Evidence of global warming has been

 Professor Plimer (in the worst
book I have seen on climate
science) states:

• (The) “Hadley Centre has shown that

warming stopped in 1998.” (p. 391)
Hadley Centre response (
here)….

• “Over the last ten years, global

temperatures have warmed more
slowly than the long-term trend. But
this does not mean that global
warming has slowed down or even
stopped”.
Falsehoods have been discussed – what
is the truth?

Many aspects of the climate are changing near

the upper boundary of IPCC projections. Key
climate indicators (including global mean surface
temperature) are already moving beyond
patterns of natural variability within which
contemporary society & economy have developed
& thrived. With unabated emissions, many trends
in climate will likely accelerate, leading to an
increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climatic
shifts.

(Synthesis Report, Copenhagen, March, 2009).

• Delusionism has other false stories.

• I’ll mention only a few.

Proposition 2:

Climate Science does not recognize

that warming decreases as CO2
concentrations rise.
It does you know….

• Svante Arrhenius
linked temperature
change to the log
of CO2
concentrations.

• A concave function.

• Relation modified
today to account
for feedbacks.
• Proposition 3: In the 1930s it was
much hotter than today.

(e.g. Plimer, 2009).

No it wasn’t ….. (NASA data)
• Proposition 4: From 1920 -1940 we
had far less arctic sea.

(e.g. Plimer, 2009)

No we didn’t …..(Smoothed northern
hemisphere sea ice).
Proposition 5: The ice sheets of both
Greenland & Antarctica are growing.

(e.g. Jennifer Marohasy, here).

They are not…..
Comment

• Is climate change delusionism poor

scholarship or a deliberate attempt
to mislead?
Comment

• As a non-scientist my presumption is
that I should respect mainstream
science.

• The claims of the delusionists are

false.