Read the full report here (PDF).
Lord Christopher Monckton, Viscount Brenchley, former advisor to the Thatcher and Major governments in the UK and a well-known critic of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has written a paper especially for the Cornwall Alliance revealing a major mathematical error in the work of the IPCC. Because of the error, the IPCC exaggerates the warming effect of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide by 2 to 7 times.
The IPCC’s cardinal error is in its logically inconsistent and prodigiously exaggerated estimate of the effect of what is called the “radiative forcing” effect of increases in greenhouse-gas concentration on global temperature. This internal logical inconsistency by itself allows the IPCC almost to double the true effect of CO2 on temperature. But the true exaggeration is far worse, as can be seen by moving from the model-based guesswork of the IPCC to some real-world observations.
Monckton’s empirical approach suggests that a doubling of CO2 concentration would add only 0.73° K to global temperature, not the 3.2° K central estimate of the IPCC. I.e., in light of this correction alone, the IPCC’s estimate of “climate sensitivity” is about 4.4 times higher than it should be.
Monckton has not only exposed a logical inconsistency at the heart of the IPCC’s calculations but has also demonstrated by two empirical experiments and two theoretical calculations that all of the IPCC’s estimates of the temperature response to anthropogenic enhancement of the greenhouse effect are excessive by a factor of two and a half to seven.
There are experimental ways to confirm this result. One is to measure whether the temperature in the tropical mid-troposphere has been rising over recent decades at two or three times the rate of increase in surface temperature, as predicted by models on which the IPCC depends. Not one of the many radiosonde and satellite records of mid-tropospheric temperature shows the differential in warming rates that the IPCC predicts. Most show no differential at all. Indeed, the temperature actually seems to be rising more slowly at altitude than at the surface, strongly suggesting that anthropogenic enhancement of the natural greenhouse effect has very little to do with the relatively small and harmless warming that has occurred.
Remember this when you next hear your government advocating spending trillions of dollars to reduce carbon emissions on the ground that “the science is settled.” The IPCC’s entire case rests on the assumption that an effect predicted by its computer models must occur in reality, even though measurements have indicated that it does not.
In the absence of the model-predicted tropical mid-troposphere “hot spot,” climate sensitivity cannot be more than one-third of the IPCC’s central estimate.
Read the full report here (PDF).
Edited 12/29/14
Featured Image Courtesy of Evgeni Dinev/Freedigitalphotos.net
