Science or politics ? Global warming Nothing but hot air ? Author: Augustin Vidovic. Thanks to Pierre Florenchie for the translation into english. You can give feedback to this article in its dedicated online forum.

Act 1 : Seasons are no more, my lady!

As this famous Newsweek article, The cooling world, bears witness to the time when this concern reached its peak, the scientific consensus was clear: our planet was on the verge of an imminent ice age, and in years to come, everything led to believe that this Global cooling trend would induce a worldwide famine, through violent tornadoes, droughts, floods, prolonged cold spells, late mansoons... and even local temperature increases!

No luck, at the end of the seventies, summers are not so cool (europeans recollect the exceptional 1976 hot spell, for instance), and by mid-eighties, this whole Cooling affair is forgotten.

Act 2 : A story full of holes

A first attempt on this topic had been successful in 1971, when the programme of development of the American supersonic aircraft program (SST) had been fully stopped by the US Congress because of concerns on the possible devastations with the supersonic bang, and not to be reactivated again, following the report of Harold Johnston, who estimated that the discharges of NO_x in the stratosphere by the planes could damage this ozone layer.

There are several theories on what could cause a possible slimming of the ozone layer, besides that of Johnston, like the one about the steam of water rejected by the blast pipes of the stratospheric planes (James McDonald, 1971), or about rejections of methane by bovine animal husbandry (Ape, 1971), or the one about the rejections of coming Chlorine from or not from CFC (Cicerone and Stolarski in 1973, Rowland and Molina in 1974).

The hippy movement frayed, but the movement of political ecology (Greenpeace, etc) took over the hate of technological civilization. James Lovelock, priest of the Gaia religion, built in 1970 a very precise apparatus allowing to measure atmospheric CFC concentration in ppm and uses it to determine the presence of CFC in air as far as Antarctic, on his ship. His results persuaded Rowland that his theory was founded. In 1978, the environmentalists succeeded in making CFC forbiden as propellant gases in spray cans in USA.

In 1985, Joseph Farman, of British Antartic Survey, "discovers" a "hole" (in fact a reduction of concentration in O₃) in the ozone layer above the Antarctic. To "discover" is a big word, given the fact that this seasonal phenomenon due to the Antarctic cortex was first noticed in 1956 (Dobson in Halley Bay in 1956 and 1957, then French Dumont d'Urville base in 1958, that year closer to the centre of the vortex). If measurements prior to 1956 had been available, it is very much probable that this phenomenon would have been observed as well, every year between October and November.

Rowland's theory on CFC did not predict it, but the media nonetheless rushed in and the new fashionable disaster was announced: from main theories in presence, neither methane, nor water steam (because they are largely produced naturally) are held responsible, but the only component coming from human industry, CFC, who would be responsible for an unsurpassed destruction of an element essential to life on Earth.

In 1986, chemistry corparation Du Pont's headquarters decide to take part in the anti-CFC campaign. The ban of CFC would allow them to make huge benefits with the market of the replacement products, much more expensive and less efficient, all the more so as they think that countries as China are going to massively begin to build refridegration devices.

In 1987, the Montreal protocol making CFC a controlled substance is signed. In other words, CFC will be subjected to a prohibition market, becoming much more expensive overnight. The protocol will be reviewed in London in 1990, and 59 nations (perhaps encouraged by article 4) give their consent for a ban of the production of CFC in 2000. It does not seem quick enough, though, and following the booming announcement in 1992 (by Al Gore) of a "ozone hole above Kennebunkport", the CFC production ban is advanced to 1995!

Complete success for the "Ozone" operation: Freon production is forbidden, and replacement products, much more profitable, are put on the market. Rowland and Molina will be awarded the Nobel prize of chemistry in 1995 for their contribution. But it is not the most important.

The most important, is that political environmentalism has just won in a huge way, by becoming an influential force which transcends nations.

And all that, without any demonstration of the reality of the reduction of the ozone layer, which will heared of less and less thereafter.

Transition : A convenient drought

That 1988 drought in the US is the turning point from where any cataclysm related to climate will be attributed to the greenhouse effect, caused by the increase of CO₂ in the atmosphere, in other words, caused by human industry.

Act 3 : The origin of the Church of Climatology

The first IPCC report (1990) features the temperature time series reproduced above, which makes a big impression at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. But more than 3500 scientists sign the Heidelberg Appeal to show their disagreement with this report, which displayed data without direct connections with its conclusions and used unscientific methods. Clearly, this report was made for or by pseudo-scientists. Nevertheless the political personalities present at Rio de Janeiro were convinced (or compelled by the pressure of the ecological movements of their countries) by a document, the "summary for policy makers". A treaty was signed, calling for the "stabilization of concentration of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere to a level preventing a dangerous human interference with the climatic system".

In 1995, IPCC prepared a new report. The predictions of the first one did not come true, it was not warm enough. On top of that, the model predicted that the atmosphere would warm up, while independent measurements by balloons or satellites show that contrariwise, the atmosphere tends to get colder. Rather than admit that there may not be a "global warming" after all, they are going to deduct from this failure of the models that there was, beside the greenhouse effect, a superimposed cooling, caused by the albedo of pollution aerosols.

It is on the occasion of the second report that IPCC finds, for the "summary for policy makers", an expression allowing to ignore measurements (which contradicted models) by treating them as a background noise: "The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate". This slogan is carefully chosen because one can interpret it in a lot of ways, and it allows for a large degree of freedom about the "right" model (among nearly twenty other models which are used, all very different to the others by their predictions) forecasting an increase of the temperature before 2100 from 1°C to 3,5°C (that is more than 300 % of variation on this delta!). Finally, the one which has the favour of the politicians is the one forecasting an increase of 2°C, which is all in all but a comprimse and will allow to limit damage when people notice that it is just as wrong as the others.

The report of 1995 allows to focalize attention and to increase the anxiety of the public, but as of 1998, Hansen acknowledges that factors influencing climate are not known enough to predict future changes. The hypothesis on aerosols is losing popularity, data from surface stations and measurements by satellites do not always agree, which throws doubt, and more and more scientists begin to suspect that the main factor of climate variation could simply be the Sun. To revive the public faith, a big blow is much needed.

Act 4 : A sudden hockey stick strike !

This graph is the core of the report, in which it appears not less than 6 times. It is not the type of graph which one would expect in a climatic publication, but rather in a booklet for a financial "opportunity". It represents a reconstitution of the temperature evolution averaged over the north hemisphere over the last 1000 years. What is striking at first glance is the relative stability of temperatures followed by a very quick increase during XX^th century, which gives the curve the general shape of a hockey stick, hence its name Hockeystick. It was produced by Mann, Bradley and Hugues in 1998, and this study will be called MBH98 henceforth.

This graph becomes very famous, and it is found soon almost everywhere, on the first page of newspapers, on the ecological booklets, and it is seen quickly as the proof that the average temperature rises everywhere in the world, as one can see it on this USGCRP booklet from year 2000, in which the title of the graph is not "northern hemisphere" anymore, but "1000 years of global CO₂ and temperature change". Plus this: the 1990s have been the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year of the millenium.

A tiny little problem, though: nobody could reproduce the results of MBH98, nor even tried, apparently. And it is embarrassing, because on the hockeystick, the medieval hot period and the small ice age have disappeared (these two periods are clearly visible on the graph of the report of 1990, but it was not very efficient to "sell" warming), despite of the facts that their existence is ascertained by a huge mass of historical documents, and that they were worldwide, not only Europe centric, as other studies confirm independently. Then how could the Hockeystick, which seems to gather general consensus, do not account these past variations? (and while we're at it, why do IPCC people not seem to have noticed?)

One will point out first of all that if the medieval hot period had been kept, the graph would have had probably much less impact, since this period was warmer than present. One could not say anymore that "1990 was the hottest decade of the millennium". Plus, as there was no heavy industry in the Middle Ages, it would become much more difficult to accuse industrial CO₂ emissions. It will eventually be known from David Deming that the instructions had been precisely to get rid of this medieval period, int the George Orwell's "memory hole" way.

What matters is that it is thanks to this curious graph that the Kyoto protocol had so much success. If it had not existed, few nations would have found enough motivation to restrict their development (to be even more convincing, though, the Kyoto protocol also contains a enticing financial carrot which we are going to discuss later).

As for the graph itself, though, a question cannot stay unanswered forever: how was it composed? It is a reconstruction of the evolution of temperatures for the northern hemisphere, in other words a series of direct measurements. In order to guess the temperature of one thousand years ago, the researchers try to find a correlation between temperatures and series of "Proxys", such as the properties of the polar ice cap layers, or the growth layers of corals or trees (trees grow more or less quickly depending on several factors, such as rainfall, the rate of CO₂, or the temperature).

In the case of MBH98, the most important proxys by their number and their "weight" in calculation is the trunks of trees. The mathematical method of principal components analysis (PCA) is used. This broadly used method allows to replace a group of series in calculation with a balanced average (called principal component, or PC) of these series, explaining the variability of used series. A matrix of unexplained residue always remains, but that matrix can also be brought back to a PC, and in that case the original PC is called PC1, the second PC2. The same method can be continued through further iterations, leading to PC3, PC4, and so on. Nevertheless, the more PC are computed, the less the PC has importance in the final outcome, and in general a big number of series can be compressed to a small number of PCs, PC1 containing the bulk of information, PC2 much less, etc. MBH98 uses 112 proxys, 71 being individual series (in facts, tree trunks on which growth rings are measured), and 31 being PC computed from about 300 series covering 6 regions (North America, West Mexico, etc).

In 2003, Stephen McIntyre attempts to reproduce the hockeystick curve. He needs the original data, and asks for them to the main author of MBH98, Mann. Mann agrees to provide them after some reservations. And McIntyre discovers that some PCs used in MBH98 cannot be reproduced. He searches then the original data allowing to reconstruct them, and at the same time also discovers some errors (series obsolete or cut down without explanation, etc), which he points out in an article published with Ross McKitrick in 2003, Corrections to the Mann et. al. (1998) proxy database and northern hemispheric average temperature series (below classified as MM03). In this article, they signal that for the most part, errors are of few consequence, except when they replace the famous PC impossible to reproduce...

Mann defends his beefsteak, and answers to MM03 that the data which they examined is the wrong set (it is however himself who provided it) and he gives them the URL of an FTP archive where the right data is located. After checking out this right data set, McIntyre and McKitrick find out that it is roughly the same data, and that it is different from the data Mann et. al. represent in their Nature publication. Having been informed about it and having double checked this dispcrepancy, Nature orders Mann et. al. to write a Corrigendum, in 2004.

Mann also answers to McIntyre and McKitrick that they did not replicate exactly his algorithm of calculation of proxys. And precisely, nobody managed to reproduce it. Mann is the author of the Fortran program used in MBH98, but refuses to provide the source code, incomprehensible attitude. However, without help from the famous climatologist, McIntyre writes an emulation program which allows to realize that Mann knocked up series by at least filling empty spaces of some with the data of others. The precise cocktail remains a mystery.

As for non duplicated PCs, McIntyre and McKitrick will discover the problem in the source code hidden inside Mann's FTP server: the algorithm used consists in recentering them, not around the medium value of the entire series, but around the medium value of the portion corresponding to XX^th century, which brings up their weight by two orders of magnitude in the final reconstruction, that is more weight than all other series put together! Their particular shape will therefore be imposed artificially on the result.

In the case of MBH98, the series which particular shape is chosen is the one constructed from the measurements of the Bristlecone pine tree rings, from Sheep Valley, in California. Series is reproduced below, at the top of the figure. This series, published by Graybill and Idso in 1993, displays a strong growth, still unexplained (Sheep Valley temperature records during the same period do not match), during the XX^th century, which gives this particular shape to its growth streaks timeseries. Down, a series without hockeystick shape, such as all other series of the database in general:

McIntyre and McKitrick describe this astounding dirty trick in an article sent to Nature. After 8 months of delay, Nature rejects the article for it is too long and too technical for its readers. This does not prevent the magazine from publishing a new Corrigendum from Mann et. al., in an online supplement, in which the Team reveals its not standard method, while maintaining that it does not affect the final result.

The upper graph comes from MBH98, the three others are respectively produced by a simple average of proxys, a calculation (accomplished by McIntyre and McKitrick in 2004) by standard PCA method, without pre-increasing the last century of series, and the calculation censored by Mann is at the bottom. You don't need to be a genius to guess why Mann censored this result...

Act 5 : Backlash

Two main topics emerge from the Wegman report. Above all, analyses and conclusions by McIntyre and McKitrick will be confirmed, in a rather humorous manner: the statisticians are going to have a good time applying Mann's method, but instead of using Bristlecone pines timeseries, they will inject the temperature curve of the 1990 IPCC report. And of course...

It's one more nail in the coffin of Hockeystick, and in fact this graph, which was the flag of the cantors of global warming, is by then so much discredited that it is not so much touted anymore. But the Wegman Report goes further, by inquiring the reasons of the "consensus" which was shelling this dirty trick from criticism. One would expect from the Peer review process that this type of errance be filtered at its source, so to say it shortly, the MBH98 should never have been published, if the system had worked (or else as example of methods to avoid).

The Wegman group study includes a "Social network analysis of authorships in temperature reconstructions", an actual dissection of the links which make Mann a central node of this nebula, illustrated by explicit graphs, like this one:

The analysis of Mann's network points out that various studies published on his topic are probably not as independent as one would wish to believe, and in fact, Wegman's group realizes that the same series of proxy are very often reused, which of course introduces a big similarity into results and conclusions, which in turn cannot claim to be "independent".

In short, the Wegman report identifies a clique of researchers in paleoclimatology, who back up each other, even if it means supporting flawed studies against criticism, even when these are at the root of international political decisions, having consequences on billions of people. Also, the existence of this clique implies that, during the Peer review process, articles which disagree Hockeystick have more chances to be rejected before publication. Ironically, this indicates an effect of climate feedback, in climatology publications.

Amoung others, the report recommends to set up audit procedures of climate studies by independent researchers and statisticians.

Act 6 : A spaghetti dish with a warm-over smell

One should therefore expect that, in the fourth IPCC report, delivered three months after its "summary for policy makers" (!), the hockeystick is definitively dumped? That remains to be seen...

For this new issue of the IPCC report, the main author of the "Paleoclimatology" section is Briffa, who, like Mann, takes advantage of his position to have his work placed in the report. His main goal is still to eliminate the medieval warm period, and to keep the hockey stick shape, essential for the alarmist discourse. The version du jour of the temperature graph (by the way, we'll note that it's still for the northern hemisphere) is made from a mixture of different smoothed reconstructions put together on the same grid, for a more massive effect. The resulting spaghetti dish (page 468) is the following:

Surprise (or not): Mann's hockeystick (renamed "W USA") is still there. It is the blue curve which diverges on the right end of graph. The other series which flies off, called "NW Russia", comes from a study by Briffa and Osborn published in 2006 and based on Yamal series: abnormal series characterized by a strong growth in XX_th century. That's it for the "hockeystick effect ", which disappears completely once these two curves are subtracted:

McIntyre also points out that two curves characterized by a net fall during the XX^th century were inconspicuously eliminated from the final version of the report. If Briffa had wanted to avoid "drowning" the Hockeystick, he would not have done this another way.

But the true reason of this graph is not to repeat the Hockeystick trick, because it would have been enough to reuse the graph from the previous report while pretending to ignore that it was discredited. The true reason, as the legend suggests by linking curves to geographical regions and not to studies, is to enforce the belief that the medieval hot period was only a local occurence.

Indeed, it is easy to see that all these reconstructions contradict each other, when one says "warm ", another one says "cold", and this for the whole interval. In this bouillabaisse, very clever the one who will detect any general trend, this tells the inattentive reader "You see, the medieval warm period did not exist!", regardless what they already know about the subject (see above), because it is essential to perpetuate the idea that the temperature has never been as warm as nowadays. All the alarmist speech is based on this notion.

An ironic and unforeseen consequence, this spaghetti dish clearly shows that tree growth rings study has no convincing value for the reconstruction of past temperatures.

Act 7 : A new levy and a very juicy betting system...

Needless to say this is, under another name, a tax on pollution (less one detail: carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, but this is another debate), a levy the environmentalists had always dreamed of, because it penalizes industrial activity. It cannot go without an domino effect which would badly impact the economy. But in order to succeed in making this scheme accepted, it was necessary for the victims to see some profit. Here comes an essential category of intermediates: financiers.

Paradoxically, it is in the USA, country which refused to sign the Kyoto protocol, that the first "Carbon credits" exchange was born. On December 12th, 2003, Richard Sandor, a trader skilled in futures (financial contracts in which you buy an obligation to buy goods at a future pre-determined date), opens the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX). Sandor is an old veteran of finance, extremely clever and inventive, he succeeded for instance in creating earthquakes futures. Congrats.

What is the function of this exchange? Members contract the obligation to reduce their CO₂ by 1% (or more) per year, an objective which, once fulfilled, gives a "credit" which they can sell to another member whose reduction quota is not attained yet. Conversely, a member who wants to augment his "quota" buys "credits" from other members, which makes an offset which can be subtracted from the total of his emissions. The keystone of this system is the contract signed by all members, which becomes a legal obligation (therefore it can work even in the absence of specific legislation, as in the United States). Members are not all, far from it, CO₂ emitting industries or tree growing companies. Most of the members make a new breed of middlemen, offset providers, offset aggregators as well as the liquidity providers, who maintain a list of CO₂ emitters and a list of customers whose quota of reduction is attained and exceeded, and who can sell their offset to the previous ones.

Among CCX memebers is Investment Management LLP, an investment fund created in April 2004 which chairman is none other than Al Gore, the same Al Gore who shouts on the roofs that he buys "Carbon credits" each time he takes the plane. Easy to guess to whom he "buys" his credits. Another clever businessman who knows how to multiply his income, while taking care of his image and increasing his chances to access the US presidency next time he tries...

To buy or sell numbers based on an arbitrary measurement, like in this case CO₂ emissions, creates commissions, opening tempting perspectives... The financial world knows how to acknowledge an opportunity when it comes, as the number of publications about this new potential manna shows. The volume of this market is estimated to several dozen, or even hundred billions dollars in years to come. The largest investment banks, such as Goldman Sachs, have already invested billions. How could one resist?

With such a promising market, in 2005, Sandor's company, Climate Exchange PLC, opens a subsidiary of CCX in Europe, the European Climate Exchange (ECX). In order for the "emissions market" to really expand, its globalization is necessary, just like Europe's entry in this international game.

In March 2007, the IPCC report's ink not being dry yet, Al Gore, named in October, 2006 "special advisor for climatic change" by the British government, addresses the European summit on Energy in Brussels. European governments are ordered to commit to CO₂ emission reduction from 20 % to 30 % by 2020. This goal is, for many, unrealistic. Negative people will say that we are watching a remake of the CFC production ban movie, two decades earlier...

On one hand, we have now a new announced financial bubble, the "emissions market". On the other hand, we have goals which imply the creation of a kind of world government. Problem is that, like the ozone story, all of this relies on nothing concrete. Political imperatives impose a pre-established conclusion to scientific research, which prestige will inevitably suffer later, and interests at stake are so huge that nobody really wants to put an end to this operation.

However, it has to happen someday: a few harshly cold winters and coolish summers in the northern hemisphere will be all it takes, for instance, or even industry's exasperation towards unrealistic "emission" goals... By then, a decade could very well pass, so why not do as everyone else and hypocritically profit?

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