Further evidence has emerged that climate models are useless for the purpose of forecasting future temperature rises. A recent survey using American summer temperatures (June, July, August) over the last 50 years, found that 36 major climate models showed nearly twice the warming rate observed by the surface temperature measurements recorded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). At the high end, a number of models forecast warming nearly three times greater than observed data show (blue bar below).
The research was carried out by Dr. Roy Spencer, the principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and the compiler of the UAH monthly satellite temperature record. He says that the importance of his findings should be obvious. “Given that U.S. energy policy depends upon the predictions from these models, their tendency to produce too much warming (and likely also warming-associated climate change) should be factored into energy policy planning,” he said. But he doubted it was being, ”given the climate change exaggerations routinely promoted by environment groups, anti-oil advocates, the media, politicians, and most government agencies”.
The Spencer work follows recent research published by Professor Nicola Scafetta of the University of Naples. He found that almost all the global temperature forecasts produced by models between 1980-2021 were excessive, some extremely so, compared with the accurate satellite record. One of the reasons given as to why there’s no climate emergency in the World Climate Declaration is that climate models are “not remotely plausible as global tools”.
Yet as we have seen in numerous articles in the Daily Sceptic, climate models are ubiquitous and are at the forefront of promoting the climate scares pushing the command-and-control Net Zero agenda. They are at the heart of the pseudoscientific work that tries to ‘attribute’ single extreme weather events to long-term changes in the climate claimed supposedly caused by fossil fuels. In simple terms, computers compare an imaginary climate without human-caused carbon dioxide with the current one full of unknown complexities, and then the modellers announce they’ve ‘proved’ the ‘climate emergency’ hypothesis. Since the outputs of these models are unfalsifiable – how can you prove that a wholly imaginary scenario is ‘false’? – the notions are no more than worthless opinions.
The results of Spencer’s work will hardly come as a great surprise, but the conclusions are almost certainly more damaging to the climate catastrophisers’ case than the figures suggest. Spencer uses NOAA surface temperatures and, as we have seen, these are subject to ‘corruption’ from a number of causes in recent years. As Spencer notes, the NOAA figure could be an over-estimate “if increasing urban heat island effects have spuriously influenced trends over the last 50 years, and I have not made any adjustments for that”.
Earlier this year, the U.S. meteorologist Anthony Watts published his latest survey of NOAA’s nationwide weather stations. Describing the temperature record as “fatally flawed”, Watts found about 96% of US temperature stations failed to meet what NOAA itself considered to be acceptable and uncorrupted placement. Watts defined ‘corruption’ as caused by the localised effects of urbanisation, producing heat bias because of a close proximity to asphalt, machinery and other heat-producing, heat-trapping, or heat-accentuating objects. According to Watts, data that had not been corrupted by faulty placement showed a rate of warming in the U.S. “reduced by almost a half compared to all stations”.
There is further substantial evidence that NOAA’s U.S. surface temperature figures are too high. In 2005, it started compiling data from a select group of 114 stations across the country that had been specifically sited away from urban development. Called the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN), it was intended to aim for “superior accuracy and continuity in places that land use will not likely impact during the next five decades”.
The graph above shows the rarely referenced record up to last month. It shows oscillating temperature changes, but very little evidence to indicate a warming trend over the last 17 years.
Considering what is known about the ‘corruption’ of the NOAA’s main temperature dataset, it would be reasonable to significantly reduce the blue NOAA observational bar in Spencer’s graph. This of course provides further confirmation that the temperatures forecasts of most climate models have long lost any connection with reality.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
The only cult as brain dead as the plant food cult, where the 0.04% gas by weight, 5% emitted by humans causes everything, is of course the Rona Religion. Overlapping memberships on offer, 2 for 1 deals. $cience is not science. Fascism is not freedom. Your death is not your liberation.
This brand of global socialism is worse than Hitler’s brand of national socialism for a few reasons. First the marketing is far better, here the scape goat for change is co2, Hitler etc clumsily just used the Jews, co2 essentially invisible and incomprehensible to most ppl helps the scam, whereas eventually ppl could see slaughtering Jews was just plain wrong. Secondly the phenomenon is more widespread, whilst eugenics was popular the movement didnt completely control the political establishment in most counties in the 1930s. Finally the collapse of religion in the west has created a vacuum in to which the climate zealots like Monbiot/Attenborough/Thunberg etc have crawled, brain washing the masses that the creation of serfdom avd rationing of plant food will save the planet.
Will there be some fact check, that will use no facts but just be an ad hominem word salad. Or have the “fact checkers” gone quiet because Chris is so careful as regards sources etc of his excellent articles. Thank you Chris for the the work you have done on this, I at least appreciate it as it keeps me somewhat sane!
Ditto!
“Further evidence has emerged that climate models are useless for the purpose of forecasting future temperature rises.”
But amazing for helping billionaire sociopathic grifters to funnel our money into the biggest pyramid scheme in human history. I did the maths the other day. The further $275 trillion our globalist looters have pledged towards fighting their ‘climate emergency’ works out as a carrier bag containing $34,000 dollars for every human being on this planet. Next time a relative or a friend whines about any threats to humanity, point that out.
Chris, another fantastic article. You, Anthony Watts, Tony Heller, Jo Nova, Andrew Montford, Paul Homewood, Ben Pile et al are a life raft on Lake Bullshit.
Elon Musk has been the most expert at sniffing out – and directly influencing the creation of – “green” subsidies. And his dribbling followers think he is “saving the planet” with his very badly built two-tonne electric fire behemoths!
Heck, some people – even here! – believe he cares about Free Speech! Hahahaha!
Ditto x 2!!
I would like to reiterate your last paragraph, Chris Morrison has been exceptional in his reporting of the Net Zero lie.
That was a very generous headline, Chris. I think you would be on pretty safe ground to cite every single climate model as running hot.
Chris idea for an article, don’t know if you read the comments?? Can you look at the correlation between % of electricity that comes from so called renewables and the price per KwH?? I’m assuming a strong positive correlation!
Listen to Monkton on Tom Nelson podcast. We are not going to convince Joe Public with reason and facts Chris.
Monkton has come up with some concise back-of-the-envelope calculations to show the utter futility in financial terms of net-zero to depress the anticipated warming by even a tiny amount.
Just posting this on the comments to raise awareness…hope that’s ok.
I’ve made a mini documentary about travelling whilst Unvaccinated in 2021.
Please watch it if you have the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tthpc25GvCE
New Podcast coming soon.
The more urgently needed model is MONIAC, which the UK Treasury use for predicting the impact on the UK economy of various economic changes. The original 1949 release was a comprehensible version ran on water. I guess it has been updated to a completely incomprehensible spreadsheet on Rishi’s laptop. I don’t know what the various valves, spigots, bungs and pipes labelled IMF, WEF, Schwab, Rothschild, Black Rock and EU actually do let alone how to work them, or whether the model has retained any predictive skills. I hope Rishi comprehends it.
I can’t remember if this has been featured on daily sceptic.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/68-models-vs-obs-1979-2021-oceans-Fig01.jpg
It basically shows the same thing i.e. that climate models are predicting far more warming than has actually taken place, but is much harder for alarmists to dismiss as it applies to the oceans (71% of the Earth’s surface) rather than just the US (3% of the Earth’s surface).
Model: “Something which accurately resembles or represents something else, esp. on a small scale; a person or a thing that is a likeness of another.” OED
This is why I don’t look like George Clooney and cannot take a Hornby train from Exeter to London.
As a style guide for DS wouldn’t it be more accurate to call renewables “unreliables”?
I see quite a few of the Just Stop Oil people on TV getting to have their say. They normally are very young people full of zeal and are totally convinced that billions will die because of “climate change” and they make the case that “What would you rather have, billions of people dying and being displaced in the climate emergency or soup on a painting”?——————- But “climate change ” is not a black and white issue. It isn’t the case that there either is or there isn’t “climate change”. But what these easily manipulated people fail to understand is that their assumption that billions will die is not based on any empirical evidence. It is all based on models full of assumptions. Most of the models have been totally wrong up till now and are not any kind of evidence of anything at all. The models all assume a high rate for what is known as ECS (Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity) which determines how much the planet will warm with increased levels of CO2. But the true figure for ECS is not known. Once you start making assumptions and simply guessing and speculating and putting all of that into a computer model, then do not be surprised if your model turns out to be wrong, or actually worthless for projecting future climate. Yet governments all over the western world continue to use output from computer models full of assumptions that have all been wrong as the excuse for energy policy that is costing hundreds of billions, and in the case of Net Zero, actually trillions. This is totally absurd, and simply reveals that this issue is and never was about the climate in the first place. It is about the worlds wealth and resources as we approach 8 billion people on the planet with a finite resource (fossil fuels) in the ground. The activist only sees billions dying because they have already decided that this is true. They insist that speculative models full of assumptions are “science”———-Nope they are not.
Anyone else witness the chem trails being spread in the sky above day after day. Straight lines of thick white cloud which spreads out and stays in place for hours. These are not contrails despite the met office insisting they are. Geoengineering, nothing knew. Dimming the sun causes crops to fail, causes humans to fail. Adding aluminium contaminates are soil and water when it drops to earth. Demand answers. Who is paying for all these aircraft, pilots and chemicals.
May I ask, when millions of people are witnessing chem trails overhead on a daily basis, no one wants to know anything about them. Geoengineering isn’t new. Food shortages to come due to dimming of the sun, man made floods and droughts? Sure looks like it. I dare you to write to the met office. They have a preprinted response that goes in for two pages saying there is NO SUCH THING as chem trails, no folks, these are “contrails”. Well when insects and bird life are being decimated, when millions are acquiring Alzheimer’s around the world, when trees are being infected with disease, maybe someone will look a little deeper into chem trails. Between the dangerous and deadly covid injections, chem trails, and poisons sprayed onto our crops, how exactly will man survive?