631. The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World's Top Climate Scientists. Roy Spencer.- summary

631.  The Great Global Warming Blunder:  How Mother Nature Fooled the World's Top Climate Scientists.   Roy Spencer.

This book gives a new perspective on global warming.  Dr. Spencer asserts:

1.  IPCC is flawed in that it was formed to show that humans are the cause of global warming. Science says Spencer first notices an issue and then investigates all aspects of the problem.  It is flawed because its premise presupposes the conclusion in the purpose for its formation.

2.  There has yet  to be a debate about global warming and its causes.  Debate is discouraged and contrary views are discouraged.  Dr. Spencer and others have had papers rejected because these do not conform to the mission.

3. The peer review process has failed in that arguments against the concept were discouraged or outright denied presentation.  There is inherent danger in government setting up such organizations.  It becomes a source of  income and becomes for that reason a reason for perpetuation.

4.  IPCC has not thoroughly investigated the effects of natural climate change.  They assume that only external events such as volcanoes or solar effects or human influence are the only means of causing change.

5.  IPCC decided that the earth's climate system is very sensitive to a change in CO2. The premise has not been tested and investigations have not been initiated to challenge their own premise.

6.  Computer modeling only puts out what someone puts in.  And prevents seeing the value of views from other disciplines.   There is something else too which Dr. Spencer refers to in his book.  Disciplines have become so specialized that experts can not see the forest for the trees as he says.  I was thinking as I read his book that astronomers for example no longer use telescopes.  I can understand that and see how that could be the case.  But something is lost when they have no idea how to look through a telescope and find an object.  Something amiss here which does not sound good.

7.  Meteorologists are chided for entering the debate because they only  predict the weather.  Spencer responds that climate is average weather.  In my field of Classics this would be like someone who wants to become an expert on Cicero by studying history and politics but ignoring his principles of rhythmic patterns which come from poetry.  Or trying to become an expert on Virgil with only a smattering of late Republican or early imperial history.  Something which is done by the way with damage to the field in general. 

8.  His view of the earth's climate system sees the earth as an entity which reacts over time to levels of CO2 by adjusting the number of clouds to release heat or hold heat.  This part to me was the most fascinating because his view seems to come very close the Stoic view of the earth.  To Stoics the earth was a living being with a pulse and drive of its own.  I did not expect to hear echos of what I have studied for so many years in a book on climate change.

9.  He posses a question which must make many of those in IPCC fume- is extra CO2 a bad thing?  Perhaps the earth is starved for CO2 locked up by accident in all those deposits of coal and oil.