IPCC: Just Bad at Science … or Engaged in Science Fraud?

IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and climate alarmists in general don’t think the sun is terribly important in the matter of the climate of our planet. As absurd as that sounds, there is a reason: The UN’s political Agenda (established by Resolution A/RES/43/53 of the UN General Assembly in 1988) is to promote Anthropogenic Climate Change. That is the cart that precedes AGW and its so-called science horse. If the sun was shown to be a major player in global climate, it would short circuit the AGW movement. But that creates a problem, as the sun is indeed the major player behind our planet’s climate.

I think of it this way:  A “third rail”, as a metaphor, refers to a sensitive or controversial issue that climate scientists avoid touching due to its potential to harm their careers. I don’t know if an actual third rail (a dangerous electrical source) makes a hissing sound, but I imagine that climate scientists are super-sensitive to anything making even a slight hissing noise. For that reason, even now, 36 years after their mission (AGW) being spelled out for them, they find themselves unable or unwilling to do any real science. They have to hang with each other and avoid skeptics, who indeed are usually real scientists. Climate “science” as done by the current group referring to themselves as “scientists” is a spook show done for effect. There is no science there.

This post is about slinking around in the shadows trying to shade real science in darkness while their own propaganda is front and center and followed by every government in the world. Climate Change is a religion now, and we can easily invoke Galileo to demonstrate what happens when religion “owns” science.

I hereby introduce you to two scientists, both climate change skeptics:

• Ned Nikolov, who got his Ph.D. in forest ecology (which he refers to as “climate modeling”) in 1990, and
• Karl Zeller, whose Ph.D. was in fluid mechanics, also in 1990.

As far as I know, the two worked together for the United States Forest Service. Nikolov followed a familiar path as I did in that he once believed in what masquerades as “climate science” and AGW. However, he then read the Climategate emails, and realized that the fish was rotten from the head down. These two (henceforth “NZ”) now research and write, and have attempted to publish papers, two of which I have read. They are:

• Exact Formulas for Estimating the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity of Rocky Planets & Moons to Total Solar Irradiance, Absorbed Shortwave Radiation, Planetary Albedo and Surface Atmospheric Pressure (2022) (Link), and
• Misrepresentation of Critical Satellite Data by IPCC (2024) (Link).

I wrote about the first paper here and here, and with some trepidation, as the math was intense. I suspect it mostly comes from Karl Zeller, as it address fluid dynamics on Earth, Venus, and several other moons and rocky planets. They conclude that it is atmospheric pressure that causes warming, and not greenhouse gases and longwave radiation. Climate alarmists, of course, only dismiss the findings out of hand, and their groupthink environment supports them.

I read the second listed paper, Misrepresentation of Critical Satellite Data by IPCC, which I will refer to as the “CERES paper” for brevity’s sake. I’ve been poring over it these last few days, flagging it, highlighting it, and marking it up, trying to comprehend the subject matter. It is very serious. Science Fraud was committed by the IPCC. Before delving into it, note that I have inserted, at the end of this (hopefully brief) post, definitions of certain terms and meanings of certain abbreviations used in the CERES paper. Such jargon-laden writing is due to papers like this being written not for the layperson, but for other scientists. If by chance you find yourself reading the CERES paper, you might find the glossary down below useful.

My focus will be on “solar forcing”, or solar emissions bringing about global climate change, and not greenhouse-gas radiative forcing, which we will learn via this paper to be nothing more than an agreed-upon lie.

“CERES” by the way is an array of equipment put in low-earth orbit by NASA, and stands for Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System.

This is where it gets interesting (“Finally!” says the reader), as the sun’s warming of our planet is measured by watts per square meter (W m^-2). CERES data shows that from 2000 to 2023 our planet’s annual absorption of solar energy increased by 2.7 (W m^-2), due in large part to less cloud cover and a lower planetary albedo. According to the IPCC AR6, total anthropogenic (human-caused) forcing from 1750-2019 was 2.7 (W m^-2). In other words, solar forcing achieved as much increase in (W m^-2) in 25 years as anthropogenic forcing in 270 years. This is critical, because IPCC dismisses solar forcing as minimal and irrelevant.

In other words, the term “Solar Forcing” hisses. Read AI on the matter:

Solar forcing is the hypothesis that variations in solar emissivity can bring about global climate changes. This hypothesis is undeniable in principle, since virtually all of the Earth’s heat comes eventually from the Sun. The problems come in finding episodes in the Earth’s climatic history where this has actually occurred.

If you think that AI is a neutral source of information, I have a page in Wikipedia to sell you. (Goodness me: I just discovered a bit of solar forcing this morning! It’s called “Sunrise.”)

The CERES paper is about use of a minus sign (-) to turn the data given us by NASA’s CERES equipment and turn it on its head. Because climate “scientists” inserted those minus signs, they were able to claim that all of the warming from 2000-2023 was due to anthropogenic causes, i.e., people using fossil fuels. In fact, according the NZ, all of that warming was due to solar forcing, including reduction of cloud cover, and a lowering of the Earth’s albedo.

In fact, that is what the CERES data said. Because we can show via CERES that the sun is a primary mover in our climate, we can eliminate CO2 as a cause of any warming. Ergo, the minus sign.

Below is a portion of what is called Python script of CERES data, which is used by IPCC authors to plot the total outer atmosphere (TOA) of reflected shortwave, emitted longwave, and net fluxes from both CERES observations and climate model projections. That’s a mouthful. (It is important to understand here that actual CERES data, sans the minus signs, is available via AR6, and that NZ were able to work with it. It is AR6 Chapter 7.2.2 that wildly misconstrues it.)

 

It’s a bit hard to read, but you can access it in more readable form at the Tallbloke link, where the CERES paper is reproduced. I inserted the blue arrows pointing at the places where IPCC people mischievously inserted the minus signs. As a result, warming caused by CO2 in the atmosphere was resurrected from the dead, and became the prime mover in IPCC AR6. Want to see how the “-” sign affected IPCC reports versus reality? Below are two graphs  you don’t have to understand except in a general sense.

 

The top one is straight data from CERES on Global Reflected Solar Radiation Anomaly. In the lower graph, we see the result of insertion of -1 in the Python script. See how a downward trend got turned on its head? (The spaghetti lines are various climate models featured by IPCC.) NZ are professionals, and do not use the words “science fraud” in reference to insertion of the “-” signs, but I do. (In fact, most of the CERES paper is centered around three graphs in Chapter 7.2.2 of AR6, two of which are heavily impacted by the minus sign insertions.)

NZ contacted IPCC about this matter, asking to confer with the authors of chapter 7.2.2, which is where this this data appears in IPCC AR6. They were put in touch with Dr. Mathew Palmer of the University of Bristoll and Dr. Chris Smith at the University of Leeds (UK). They were also supplied with the Python scrips, a part of which is shown above. Dr. Palmer was dismissive of the importance of the minus sign insertion, saying “I don’t think there is any fundamental issue here – just different choices about the sign convention used”. I am stuck between deciding that statement to be just evasive, or weasel-wording.

Here’s NZ on the importance of the minus sign:

The results from the trend inversion of CERES radiation data in the IPCC AR6 are highly consequential. Thus, Fig. 7.3 creates a false impression that the solar forcing played no role in recent warming and the rising concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases caused a retention of heat in the climate system by impeding the outgoing LW radiation. The truth is that the solar forcing explains the entire tropospheric warming since 2000, and there is no sign of “heat trapping” by greenhouse gases in the system. Had the IPCC acknowledged the increase of Earth’s sunlight absorption in the 21^st Century, this would have invalidated the Report’s central assertion that human carbon emissions were the main driver of climate in recent decades. In conclusion, it appears that radiative flux anomalies in Fig. 7.3 were manipulated and a discussion about long-term all-sky CERES trends in Section 7.2.2 was intentionally omitted, because the actual observations present a significant empirical challenge to the UN’s political Agenda to promote Anthropogenic Climate Change … [emphasis added.]

IPCC AR6 WG1 chapter 7 is diametrically opposed to satellite observations. Essentially they are saying that the sun played no role in recent warming, or “brightening”, and that atmospheric gases were the “culprit”. Notably, they say, it is CO2, and humans and our fossil fuels that are causing what is really just an intermittent warm period caused by solar forcing.  NZ are clear that without the insertion of -1 in the Python script, AGW would die, strangled in the crib of reality: Their science is wrong.

Is it essential to label this deliberate misrepresentation of CERES data as science fraud? I say yes.

Here is the closing paragraph of the CERES paper, which while a bit idealistic, is well-written.

Considering the above facts and the enormous global socioeconomic impact of the IPCC’s conclusions and recommendations, we believe that it would be in the World’s best interest to launch an independent, critical reevaluation of fundamental premises in the climate theory from the standpoint of modern observations, and establish a new, objective peer-review system that ensures a complete and unbiased representation of all available data in the IPCC Reports. These efforts should be accompanied by a decisive depoliticization of climate science through the passing of appropriate legislation in the form of International Law that restores the financial independence of academic research, criminalizes political interference with scientific inquiry, and incentivizes the adoption of novel approaches to solving climate physics problems.

The CERES paper is worthy of anyone’s time invested. If the reader can at least somewhat grasp the terminology below, the paper will shine a light in a dark corner of science as we do it now, which is fraudulently.

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Glossary:

• AGW: Anthropogenic global warming.
• Albedo: The amount of light of a body in space reflected back into space.
• CERES: NASA’s Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System. These are five instruments launched at various times, the purpose of  which will become apparent.
• Climate sensitivity: The change in tropospheric temperatures said to result from a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere.
• EEI: Earth’s energy imbalance.
• Flux: Any effect that appears to pass through a surface or substance.
• Flux anomaly: a persisting deviation in a physical quantity from its expected value.
• GHG: Greenhouse gases.
• GitHub.com: A data depository run by the IPCC. Anyone studying the assessment reports can come here for hopefully raw data. This will be a critical factor in this paper.
• Global dimming: Decreasing trends in SSR.
• Global brightening: Increasing trends in SSR.
• Greenhouse-gas radiative forcing: Global climate change brought about by gain or loss of various gases in the atmosphere, the central thesis of AGW.
• GSAT: Global Surface Air Temperature.
• IPCC AR6: The sixth assessment report put out by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2022.
• OLWR: Outgoing long wave radiation, or just LW radiation. This is radiation leaving the Earth’s atmosphere, never to return.
• Python processing scripts: A toolbox where all the algorithms used in a process can be accessed.
• Science fraud: Manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record.
• Solar forcing: Solar emissions bringing about global climate change.
• SSR: Surface Solar Radiation.
• SST: Sea-surface temperatures.
• SW: Shortwave radiation.
• TOA: Top of the Atmosphere.
• TCR: Transient climate response.
• WG1: Working Group One, the group responsible for Section 7.2.2 of Chapter 7 of IPCC AR6, a central issue in this paper, called Changes in Earth’s Energy Budget.