Influential Canadian climate model one of the most extreme

Study: The Canadian Climate Model 's Epic Failure

The Canadian Centre for Climate Modeling and Analysis located at the University of Victoria in British Columbia submitted five runs of its climate model CanESM2 for use in the fifth assessment report of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The climate model produces one of the most extreme warming projections of all the 30 models evaluated by the IPCC. (See Note 1.) The model badly fails to match the surface and atmosphere temperature observations, both globally, regionally, as presented in six graphs.

... The results from the Canadian climate model were used in a U.S. Global Change Research Program report provided to the US Environmental Protection Agency to justify regulating CO2. The authors of that report were told that the Canadian climate model produces only anti-information. They confirmed this fact, but published their report unchanged. The Canadian government has indicated it will follow the lead of the U.S.A. in regulating CO2 emissions.

... Climate alarmism based on climate models that don't work has so far cost the world $1.6 trillion in a misguided and ineffective effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These efforts have caused electricity prices to increase dramatically in Europe causing fuel poverty and putting poor people at risk.

Note that the Canadian Centre for Climate Modeling and Analysis in Victoria is a division of Environment Canada's Climate Research Branch, formerly run by CAGW alarmist Andrew Weaver (now BC Green Party MLA).  So that's where the feds have been getting the "science" on which to base their "climate change" policy.

"Global warming is crap"

... so says newly elected Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott.  Ezra agrees, and explains why:



Judith Curry on the Nature Climate Change article by three Canadian climate researchers:
Overestimated global warming over the past 20 years.  (Former UVic climate modeller and alarmist, Andrew Weaver, must be rolling over in his new Green Party MLA suit.)

Andrew Weaver's political science

In past posts I've referred to prominent UVic climate 'science' Prof Andrew Weaver's field as 'political' science.

Well, now I see he's made it official.

Climate alarmist Andrew Weaver defends oil sands

Further to my post yesterday, here's Ezra Levant with Lorrie Goldstein:



Here's Weaver on the "tar" sands three years ago.

And CTV News had a story last night on the EU's proposed anti-oil sands legislation and Canada's threat to retaliate.  (No mention of Weaver's oil sands research in last night's broadcast but it's in this online version.)

... On Feb. 23, the EU will vote on a proposal to label crude from the oilsands as causing 22 per cent more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil ...

... Canada has fired a diplomatic shot across the bow of the European Union, warning that any move to single out oilsands crude as environmentally unfriendly will be met with retaliation.

Breaking: Climate alarmist tells truth

UVic's Andrew Weaver says impact of burning all Alberta’s oilsands negligible:

Andrew Weaver isn’t what you’d call an oilsands apologist.

Weaver, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Climate Modelling and Analysis at the University of Victoria, was a lead author with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He is one of the world’s leading authorities on global warming, and one of the fiercest critics of the Harper government’s carbon emissions policy — or lack thereof.

That’s what makes Weaver’s latest research publication such startling news. This Sunday, Feb. 19th, Weaver and his doctoral student, Neil Swart, published an analysis in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change, an offshoot of Nature, the world’s most prestigious science journal.

In their paper, Swart and Weaver conclude the impact of burning all the economically viable proven reserve of Alberta’s oilsands — all 170 billion barrels — would be negligible. Burning all the proven reserve between 2012 and 2062, they say, would raise global temperatures by just 0.02 C to 0.05 C.

[...]

I've been following Weaver's climate alarmism for some time.  He has been the Canadian equivalent of James Hansen. He won't likely be changing his tune on AGW, but good for him in telling the truth about this.  Now as Ezra predicts, will he be the subject of vicious attacks from his fellow true believers?

Andrew Weaver’s pathetic response to ClimateGate

Actually, make that "...Weaver’s predictably pathetic response ... ". Weaver* tries to cast himself and other "scientists" as victims. Now we have it that poor climate "researchers" like him and the CRU ClimateGate crew (Phil Jones, Michael Mann and others) are being "harassed" by dastardly climate skeptics:

... Like other scientists working in the climate-change field, Weaver says they face a well-orchestrated campaign of harassment by global-warming skeptics. ["Well-orchestrated" by skeptics on a budget that is infinitesimal compared with massively funded climate scaremongers like Weaver.]

... Weaver worries that climate-change deniers, many funded by large oil companies, are succeeding in scaring or confusing people. [That’s hilarious! Compared to the miniscule funding skeptics get (from any source), the AGW scaremongers’s coffers are awash in Big-Oil funding.]

Not only that but skeptics are nasty right-wingers:

Many skeptics are libertarians who do not want government interference in their lives, Weaver said. Others have vested interests in discouraging change. [True, but skeptics genuinely distrust the weak science and shrill propaganda behind claims of impending doom. And who in his right mind wants our governments to waste billions and trillions gambling on Weaver’s toy climate models.]

... the level of animosity is surprising, he agreed. [Hardly "surprising" - understandable and entirely predictable given the warm-mongers' treatment of "deniers".]

...Tom Pedersen, director of the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions at UVic, has monitored most of the climate-change-denial blogs and has found the common thread is an animosity toward government regulation. [Unlike Weaver and co. who apparently love the idea of global regulation and micro-management of our lives.]

If he had any real integrity or courage Weaver would, like his fellow climate alarmist George Monbiot, be condemning the actions of the CRU climate scammers, and not ridiculously playing victim. Oh, and by the way, Andrew, even the UK Met Office thinks the CRU's global temperature data analysis is hopelessly tainted (but who'd trust them to do the re-analysis?)

George Will of the Washington Post recently commented on a similarly pathetic response, in his own newspaper and elsewhere, to the ClimateGate travesty:

... The CRU materials also reveal paranoia on the part of scientists who believe that in trying to engineer "consensus" and alarm about warming, they are a brave and embattled minority. Actually, never in peacetime history has the government-media-academic complex been in such sustained propagandistic lockstep about any subject.

... Were their science as unassailable as they insist it is, and were the consensus as broad as they say it is, and were they as brave as they claim to be, they would not be "goaded" into intellectual corruption. Nor would they meretriciously bandy the word "deniers" to disparage skepticism that shocks communicants in the faith-based global warming community.

... The travesty is the intellectual arrogance of the authors of climate-change models partially based on the problematic practice of reconstructing long-term prior climate changes. On such models we are supposed to wager trillions of dollars -- and substantially diminished freedom.

Update: Here's a companion story featuring Weaver in yesterday's Post; and a couple of letters (one, two) responding in today's Post.

*Andrew Weaver is Victoria’s and one of Canada’s top 'political' scientists who, when he’s not telling tall climate tales, he’s fiddling with climate models to generate fodder for yet more tall climate tales.

The AGW debate - another good sign

The editorial in today’s Victoria Times Colonist actually summarizes a study that challenges the prevailing AGW orthodoxy:

... now, a group of respected academics has published a study challenging the majority view. (You can read their report, Climate Change Reconsidered, at
http://www.nipccreport.org/.)

More than 9,000 scholars with doctorates in scientific disciplines have signed a petition of support.

The group disputes not only the theory of climate change, but many of the facts underlying it.

On the matter of sea ice and glaciers, they note that ice coverage in Antarctica has actually increased, while Arctic levels appear to have stabilized. They see little evidence that recent reductions in glacier size are outside the historical trend.

They found no increase in precipitation worldwide, and no overall rise or decline in river levels. They claim that droughts and floods are no more common, or severe, than before, and that wind speeds and storm intensities are unchanged.

These observations appear to contradict some basic predictions of climate change theory.

But their most contentious claims have to do with global temperature trends. They believe the observed increase of just under 1º C in the 20th century has no predictive value.

They point out that during previous warm periods over the last millennium, temperatures rose 2º or 3º C. Moreover, they claim satellite data show the upward shift of recent years has slowed dramatically in the current decade.

Finally, they reject the UN view that global warming has caused heightened mortality.

They argue that moderate temperature increases actually reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease and respiratory ailments.

It is impossible for most laymen to weigh the merit of these claims. Much of the argument turns on highly technical areas of oceanography and atmospheric science.

But this is more than an academic dispute. Across the globe, governments are taking unprecedented steps to change the foundations of industrial production.

These measures involve significant costs, which the consumer must bear.

Good stuff. The main flaw in the editorial is that it prefaced the above with a capsule statement of it’s former (false) position that (up to now, only) "A few isolated critics have raised difficulties. Some were cranks, and few had standing in the scientific community". Nothing could further from the truth. The scientists who contributed to this study are the same ones who for years have been waxing skeptical about AGW theory and evidence.

But still, before now the TC has been a dedicated purveyor of AGW alarmism with stories featuring the likes of the Sierra Club and David Suzuki and almost always calling upon it’s chief political scientist and climate alarmist, Andrew Weaver, for comment. So this editorial represents a significant shift in the TC's position and is another sign the climate debate in general is shifting in the right direction - that is towards an actual honest debate.

Victoria - hotbed of climate alarmists

Today’s Financial Post Comment section features two climate alarmists from Victoria, BC. Given that Vancouver Island is loaded with tree huggers and other assorted environmental fanatics that may not be too surprising.

The first is well known. Andrew Weaver, UVic climate modeler, Big Government grant sucker and climate scare monger attracted Peter Foster’s attention in relation to Australia’s tragic bush fires [my emphasis]:

On Monday, CBC’s The National proudly reported that "Canadian researchers were the first to make a link between global warming and more wildfires." Out was trotted one of Canada’s leading climate alarmists, the University of Victoria’s Andrew Weaver, to make the startlingly obvious point that higher temperatures increase fire risk, and then to predict, "So, yes, we will be seeing forest fires in the future on the scale that they’re seeing there."

Naturally, Mr. Foster proceeds to debunk the link between global warming and the fires. As in the case of recent forest fires in BC the real culprit was poor forest management practices, ie. a failure of government forestry services.

The second Victorian is climate alarmed, acoustic guitarist ("one of Canada finest"), singer-song-writer, Dave Clarke, who is mad at Lawrence Solomon for dissing Michael Mann’s shoddy research. US National Academy of Sciences former chair Gerald North wrote a terse note saying he agreed with Clarke. Lawrence Solomon responded to Clarke and North in detail, pointing out that in North’s own testimony before a congressional committee he said that although Mann’s science was crap his conclusion was right. Some defence!

Andrew Weaver - 'political' scientist

Andrew Weaver is a UVic climatologist (climate modeler) and global warming hysteric. He’s one of those 1/2500 Nobel laureates who shared the 2007 Peace Prize with Al Gore. This has made him the go-to guy for the local media whenever there’s some minor weather-related story that needs an authoritative voice to back up claims that it’s evidence of the impending doom. He’s their chief political scientist with emphasis on "political" since it pretty much dominates his "science".

The latest news is that Weaver has written a new book entitled "Keeping Our Cool". So naturally Weaver gets an interview and book review. Some interesting excerpts:

Keeping Our Cool, written during a sabbatical last winter... [Ie. on the taxpayers’ dime]

... so "incensed" is he by what he calls Prime Minister Stephen Harper's war on science and scientists, by the government's questioning of climate change ...he felt he had no choice.

... he said. "But I recognize that [climate change] is the defining problem for humanity, and I recognize there's only one leader in Canada who's actually dealing with it."

"Vote for [Liberal Party Leader] Stéphane Dion. Don't vote for the Green Party,"

He has no patience with people who persist in believing there is still scientific debate on climate change. [And Weaver insists on calling himself a 'scientist'. He should read Lawrence Solomon’s book "The Deniers"]

He writes ... "Not a single study disagreed with the consensus view concerning the role of greenhouse gases in causing global warming." [True, but that’s not what the "debate" is about, is it, Andrew?]

... he added, if scientists were to criticize the government publicly, they could lose the funding they need to do their research. [There’s a whopper! There’s hardly a government anywhere, including Canada, that hasn’t bought into global warming alarmism. Weaver has never shied away from criticizing anyone he deems insufficiently enthusiastic about his alarmist viewpoint. And I doubt that he’s ever been short of government funds to pursue his "science". In fact, the scientists who find their funding and reputations in jeopardy are those whose research might cast the slightest doubt on AGW orthodoxy.]

Weaver decided to be a whistle-blower by writing Keeping Our Cool ... so incensed by what has happened in Ottawa, by the war on science in Ottawa... 'Enough is enough.' [Oh come on, Andrew! You've been blowing that whistle so long you've worn it out!]

And the ‘piece de resistance’:

Reading in a newspaper story that environmentalist David Suzuki and his wife sometimes retire to their bedroom to cry, Weaver said he can understand why. [Ha ha haa hahaaa! More likely they’re laughing all the way to the bank.]

These aren’t the views of a scientist. They’re the views of a proselytizing political activist . His government funding should be cut.

Climate modelers are ‘political’ scientists

Hooray! It’s Junk Science week again at the ‘Post’. Yesterday it was the media ignoring a Health Canada report confirming the safety of 2,4-D herbicide.

Today Terence Corcoran and Roger Pielke, Jr expose climate modelers and their exaggerated claims of accuracy and certainty.

Mr. Corcoran’s column today was special for me because it featured local climate modeler and Nobel (Peace Prize) Laureate, Andrew Weaver or as I prefer to call him, Victoria’s chief ‘political’ scientist, or alternately, Victoria’s chief Chicken Little. He’s the local media’s go-to guy whenever there’s a weather related story that’s proof-positive global warming is upon us. Recently it was lemons growing in a North Saanich backyard ("against a south- facing wall") which the Times Colonist reporter claimed was "a home-grown example of climate change." Naturally, Andrew Weaver was consulted and said: "We know the climate has continued to warm". And, to quote myself: "the bull crap continues to flow."

Corcoran and Pielke point out that the standard claim by climate modelers when commenting on weather events is "it’s consistent with climate change model predictions". But if every weather event is consistent with the models’ predictions then the modelers’ claims are completely meaningless - their models say nothing useful about short term events or trends:

As [Roger Pielke] puts it, there’s nothing that could take place over a period of a decade or less "short of an ice sheet advancing on New York" that would be "inconsistent with climate change model predictions."

Dr. Pielke even enlists an anthropologist who has studied the modelers (maybe she assumes climate modelers’ thought processes can’t be too different from the neanderthals’ she’s researched). Ultimately it all boils down to politics:

Not surprisingly, the reason for overstated claims lies in the bitter and contested politics of climate change.

...a prominent climate scientist warned a group of his colleagues at the National Center for Atmospheric Research ... to "Choose carefully your adjectives to describe the models. Confidence or lack of confidence in the models is the deciding factor in whether or not there will be policy response on behalf of climate change."

Exaggerate, mislead, fib, lie, whatever - just so long as we get the right policy response. Climate modelers are definitely ‘political’ scientists.

Political science

In today’s ‘Post’, Peter Foster is outraged by the political bias in a ‘science’ journal ‘Nature’ editorial criticizing Canada and the Harper government:

...it could easily have been written by David "Off with their heads" Suzuki. Maybe it was.

As evidence, the magazine cites the closing down of the office of science advisor Arthur Carty. Who knew it existed?

Climate change is in fact the real focus for Nature's attack, which also castigates Prime Minister Stephen Harper for backing away from Kyoto. Nature's implication that the Harper government is somehow resisting "settled" science is nonsensical.

When it comes to Kyoto, Nature is not being the least scientific.

Mr. Foster also goes after Victoria’s own .0005 Nobel laureate, Andrew Weaver. Weaver (or ‘Weasel’ as I prefer to call him) is a UVic climate modeller and pet political scientist for the uniformly alarmist local media:

Sounding suspiciously like Nature, [Weaver] suggested: "It's almost like a war on science is going on in government, which is very sad."

He also unleashed a diatribe against the research of Ross McKitrick and Stephen McIntyre, who inconveniently exploded the IPCC's alarmist "hockey stick" graph of temperatures soaring in the past century after a millennium of stability. Mr. Weaver has even suggested that it is dangerous to allow skeptics a voice in scientific debate.

That isn't science. And neither is Nature's editorial.

It’s truly a sad time for physical science when it’s so routinely subverted by political ‘scientists’.