The Science and Public Policy Institute 

The Senate testimony of Sec. Chu is predicated upon false assumptions, points out Christopher Monckton in a succinct letter to Senators posted by the Science and Public Policy Institute, [SPPI], a Washington DC -based NGO.

The letter points out that Chu's testimony cites the now-outdated 2007 Climate Assessment Report of the IPCC and a subsequent but also now-outdated MIT study, saying global warming by 2100 would be 7-11 F. "These excessive estimates are founded solely on computerized guesswork," says Christopher Monckton, former adviser to UK Prime Minister Thatcher and current SPPI policy adviser.

Monckton reviews a number of recent papers having appeared in the peer-reviewed literature that put the man-made warming scare to rest, and render regulation of CO2 emissions needless and blindingly fatuous. Particular attention is given to the recent paper of Lindzen and Choi (2009). Using direct measurements of outgoing radiation, the two researchers found that the IPCC models get both the science and their "predictions" wrong. Monckton resents a series of IPPC model graphs and compares them to the one produced from real measurements. "The IPPC model predictions," reports Monckton, "actually trend in a direction opposite to that of the graph from observed reality."

All UN models (11 are shown in red) wrongly predict that as the sea surface warms by 1 C (1.8 F), the outgoing radiation escaping from the top of the Earth�s atmosphere to space diminishes by about 3 Watts per square meter. The UN wrongly assumes temperature feedbacks cause water vapor - the most significant greenhouse gas - to accumulate in the upper air.

Concludes Monckton, "By patient, painstaking measurement, the two researchers have trumped the computer models' unanimously erroneous guesswork, and have definitively ended the debate over the question how much warming CO2 causes. Therefore, Secretary Chu's declaration that the ‘threat' from ‘climate change' is ‘grave' and that current levels of CO2 emission are ‘unsustainable' has no scientific justification."

The letter further informs Senators that "Even if, per impossibile, the UN's exaggerated estimate of the warming effect of CO2 were right, it is trivial to demonstrate that reducing carbon emissions would be the least cost-effective use of taxpayers' money ever devised." This is so because to forestall just 1 F of warming would require the entire world to forego all carbon emissions for more than 200 years. Thus, "Sec. Chu's implication that reducing CO2 emissions via the Copenhagen Treaty or via the 900-page Climate Bill now before the Senate would make a significant difference to the climate is accordingly wrong. The Bill, even if fully implemented, would make no measurable difference."

The letter concludes by informing the Senators of Sec. Chu's "regrettably one-sided view of the current market for so-called "renewable" technologies," his withholding information of China's true energy investments and the failure of CO2 trading schemes in every instance tried. Says Monckton, "The Energy Secretary has not yet mastered his portfolio. It is high time he did, or the consequences for taxpayers will be as costly as they are pointless."

This report is from SPPI

The Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI) is a nonprofit institute of research and education dedicated to sound public policy based on sound science. Free from affiliation to any corporation or political party, we support the advancement of sensible public policies for energy and the environment rooted in rational science and economics.  Only through science and factual information, separating reality from rhetoric, can legislators develop beneficial policies without unintended consequences that might threaten the life, liberty, and prosperity of the citizenry. 

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Arithmetic
written by Brian H, October 31, 2009

Just saw Lord M.'s presentation in brief on Glenn Beck, and his arithmetic there suggested that he period of zero emissions would have to be 33 years. I don't have the numbers he used there, but in any case the point remains: it's a totally implausible project to undertake from any possible cost-benefit standpoint.

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