The Great Green Con no. 1: The hard proof that finally shows global warming forecasts that are costing you billions were WRONG all along  

By David Rose

PUBLISHED: 18:37 EST, 16 March 2013 | UPDATED: 05:40 EST, 1 May 2013


No, the world ISN'T getting warmer (as you may have noticed). Now we reveal the official data that's making scientists suddenly change their minds about climate doom. So will eco-funded MPs stop waging a green crusade with your money? Well... what do YOU think?

The Mail on Sunday today presents irrefutable evidence that official predictions of global climate warming have been catastrophically flawed.

The graph on this page blows apart the ‘scientific basis’ for Britain reshaping its entire economy and spending billions in taxes and subsidies in order to cut emissions of greenhouse gases. These moves have already added £100 a year to household energy bills.

global warming graph

global warming graph

Steadily climbing orange and red bands on the graph show the computer predictions of world temperatures used by the official United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The estimates – given with 75 per cent and 95 per cent certainty – suggest only a five per cent chance of the real temperature falling outside both bands.

 

More...

But when the latest official global temperature figures from the Met Office are placed over the predictions, they show how wrong the estimates have been, to the point of falling out of the ‘95 per cent’ band completely.

The graph shows in incontrovertible detail how the speed of global warming has been massively overestimated. Yet those forecasts have had a ruinous impact on the bills we pay, from heating to car fuel to huge sums paid by councils to reduce carbon emissions.

The eco-debate was, in effect, hijacked by false data. The forecasts have also forced jobs abroad as manufacturers relocate to places with no emissions targets.

A version of the graph appears in a leaked draft of the IPCC’s landmark Fifth Assessment Report due out later this year. It comes as leading climate scientists begin to admit that their worst fears about global warming will not be realised.

Academics are revising their views after acknowledging the miscalculation. Last night Myles Allen, Oxford University’s Professor of Geosystem Science, said that until recently he believed the world might be on course for a catastrophic temperature rise of more than five degrees this century.

But he now says: ‘The odds have come down,’ – adding that warming is likely to be significantly lower.
Prof Allen says higher estimates are now ‘looking iffy’.

The graph confirms there has been no statistically significant increase in the world’s average temperature since January 1997 – as this newspaper first disclosed last year.

At the end of last year the Met Office revised its ten-year forecast predicting a succession of years breaking records for warmth. It now says the pause in warming will last until at least 2017. A glance at the graph will confirm that the world will be cooler than even the coolest scenario predicted.

experts

experts

Its source is impeccable. The line showing world temperatures comes from the Met Office ‘HadCRUT4’ database, which contains readings from more than 30,000 measuring posts. This was added to the 75 and 95 per cent certainty bands to produce the graph by a group that amalgamates the work of 20 climate model centres working for the IPCC.

Predictions of global warming, based on scientists’ forecasts of how  fast increasing CO2 levels would cause temperatures to rise, directly led to Britain’s Climate Change Act. This commits the UK to cut emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.

1977 - THE YEAR WE WERE TOLD TO FEAR TERROR OF...GLOBAL COOLING

In the Seventies, scientists and policymakers were just as concerned about a looming ‘ice age’ as they have been lately about global warming – as the Time magazine cover  pictured here illustrates.

Temperatures had been falling since the beginning of the Forties. Professors warned that the trend would continue and food crises were going to get worse because of shorter growing seasons.

Newsweek magazine reported that evidence of cooling was so strong ‘meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it’. But, it lamented, ‘scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections’. It said the planet was already ‘a sixth of the way towards  the next ice age’.

While recently every kind of extreme weather event has been blamed on warming, in the Seventies the culprit was cooling. One article predicted ‘the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded’, along with ‘droughts, floods, extended dry spells and long freezes’.

The current Energy Bill is set to increase subsidies for wind turbines to £7.6 billion a year – leading to a combined cost of £110 billion. Motorists will soon see a further 3p per litre rise in the cost of petrol because this now has to contain ‘biofuel’ ethanol.

Many scientists say the pause, and new research into factors such as smoke particles and ocean cycles, has made them rethink what is termed ‘climate sensitivity’ – how much the world will warm for a given level of CO2.

Yesterday Piers Forster, Climate Change Professor at Leeds University, said: ‘The fact that global surface temperatures haven’t risen in the last 15 years, combined with good knowledge of the terms changing climate, make the high estimates unlikely.’

And Professor Judith Curry, head of climate science at the prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology, said: ‘The models are running too hot. The flat trend in global surface temperatures may continue for another decade or two.’

Climate scientist Dr James Annan, a prominent ‘warmist’, recently said higher estimates for climate sensitivity now look ‘increasingly untenable’.

Avowed climate sceptics are more  unequivocal. Dr David Whitehouse, author of a new report on the pause published on Friday by Lord Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation, said: ‘This changes everything. It means we have much longer to work things out. Global warming should no longer be the main determinant of anyone’s economic or energy policy.’

I said the end wasn't nigh... and it cost me my BBC career says TV's first environmentalist, David Bellamy

Former BBC Botanist David Bellamy said that he was regarded as heretical for not toeing the line on global warming

Challenged the orthodoxy: Former BBC Botanist David Bellamy said that he was regarded as heretical for not toeing the line on global warming

This graph shows the end of the world isn’t nigh. But for anyone – like myself – who has been vilified for holding such an unfashionable view, possibly the most important thing about it is its source: the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Since its creation in 1988, the IPCC has been sounding the alarm about man-made global warming. Yet here, in a draft of its latest report, is a diagram overlaying the observed temperature of the earth on its predictions.

The graph shows a world stubbornly refusing to warm. Indeed, it shows the world is soon set to be cooler.

The awkward fact is that the earth has warmed just 0.5 degrees over the past 50 years. And Met Office records show that for the past 16 years temperatures have plateaued and, if anything, are going down.

As the graph shows, the longer this goes on, the more the actual, real-world temperature record will diverge from the IPCC’s doom-laden prediction.

Yet this prediction is used to justify the ugly wind farms spoiling our countryside and billions in unnecessary ‘green’ taxes that make our industry less competitive and add up to £100 a year to household energy bills.

Man-made global warming has become scientific orthodoxy, with no room for dissent. Tragically, the traditional caution of my brethren has gone out of the window along with the concept of sceptical peer reviewing to test new theories.

Opponents of man-made global warming are regarded as dangerous heretics, as I learnt to my cost. Soon after the IPCC was created, I was invited to what is now the Met Office’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Exeter to hear a presentation on global warming.

As the face of natural history on the BBC and a science academic, they wanted to enrol me in their cause. But when I read the so-called evidence, I realised it was flawed and refused to ‘sign up’.

I rapidly found myself cast out from the BBC and the wider scientific community. When I helped some children campaign against a wind farm as part of a Blue Peter programme, I was publicly vilified. Abusive emails criticised me. I realised my career at the BBC was over. 

But scientific theory should be tested. That’s why I question the science which casts carbon as the villain that will bring about the end of the world.

David Bellamy argues that we should be able to test theories about global warming and that the world can live with fluctuations of carbon levels in the air

Open discussion: David Bellamy argues that we should be able to test theories about global warming and that the world can live with fluctuations of carbon levels in the air

Geology tells us that fossil fuels are predominantly carbon which was part of our atmosphere before being locked away in the earth millions of years ago. At that time, there were more than 4,000 carbon parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere. Over time this has been as low as 270ppm and is now about 385ppm.

It is obvious the world can live with these fluctuations in the level of atmospheric carbon.
There is a correlation between temperature and CO2, but some of my colleagues have put the cart before the horse.

The evidence shows CO2 levels follow temperature, not the other way around.
Indeed, there may be many factors that determine our climate. Australian scientist David Archibald has shown  a remarkable correlation between the sun’s activity and our climate over the past 300 years. Climate scientists insist we must accept the ‘carbon’ orthodoxy or be cast into the wilderness.

But the scientists behind  the theory have a vested interest – it’s a great way to justify new taxes, get more money and guarantee themselves more work.

The reality is that man-made global warming is a myth: the global temperature is well within life’s limits and, indeed, the present day is cooler by comparison to much of Earth’s history. Perhaps this will be the moment that this fact becomes the new scientific orthodoxy.

The original graph was produced by Dr Ed Hawkins, a senior research scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science. Discussion of the graph and its meaning can be found on the website Climate Lab Book.

We apologise that this credit was initially missing.

An earlier version of this article said climate scientist James Annan was predicting the true rate of global warming as about half that predicted by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007. In fact the UN’s prediction was a probable warming range of 2°C- 4.5°C if CO2 levels double, with a most likely figure of 3°C. Dr Annan now predicts a range of 2°C- 4°C with 2.5°C most likely. We are happy to set the record straight.

Comments (737)

Share what you think

 View all

The comments below have not been moderated.

Henrik Svensmark, the Danish astrophysicist who is credited with the theory that most of the global warming of the 20th century was caused by a doubling of the magnetic output of the sun (a magnetic sun reduces cosmic rays which Svensmark says cause clouds) may be in line someday for a Nobel prize. Solar cycle 24 which began in 2009 shows the sun is in a steep magnetic decline. Sunspots are a proxy for solar magnetism -- the more the sunspots the greater the solar magnetism. Solar cycle 24 is showing a steep decline in sunspots from previous 20th century solar cycles. Solar cycle 25 is looking to be even less magnetic with some astrophysicists (Livingston and Penn) predicting that by then there may be no sunspots. If Svensmark's theory holds and the sunspots decline further, we may be looking at another little ice age like we had during the Maunder Minimum (1645-1715) when there were almost no sunspots for 70 years and the earth was as cold as its been since the last ice age.

60
315
 Click to rate

The recommend system has been attacked. A handful of banal warmist comments has ostensibly attracted thousands of up-ratings. Is Gore really so stupid as to launch a cyber-attack to make it look as though people still believe in CAGW or Climate Change?- suffolkboy, Bury, United Kingdom --------------------------------------------- Come out of your darkened basement, get some sunshine and vitamin D, meet some real people, watch nature and view those majestic wind turbines, you'll feel better for it. You'll never find where they hid the fake moon landers or where Elvis lives so you may as well quit trying.

306
111
 Click to rate

The recommend system has been attacked. A handful of banal warmist comments has ostensibly attracted thousands of up-ratings. Is Gore really so stupid as to launch a cyber-attack to make it look as though people still believe in CAGW or Climate Change?

80
188
 Click to rate

The vast majority of comments here are sceptical of the Global Warming claims and these comments are generally well supported, with a similar degree of derision being shown to warmist comments. Yet the top 4 or 5 comments are against the trend and have attracted massive support. Perhaps they do this in political elections also. Keep up the good work David. -Colin Porter, Rochdale, United Kingdom ------------------------------------------------------------------- Go get yourself a life for pity's sake, do you really care when a few posters obviously award themselves arrows, or when certain others down vote some? It's just the DM, it's primary purpose is to sell advertising. Every now and then they roll out the work of fiction by David Rose, usually at the weekends for obvious reasons. It doesn't matter what he or the posters think, world governments of all political colours take the problem seriously and will continue to do so.

251
57
 Click to rate

The vast majority of comments here are sceptical of the Global Warming claims and these comments are generally well supported, with a similar degree of derision being shown to warmist comments. Yet the top 4 or 5 comments are against the trend and have attracted massive support. I find this to be highly suspicious and well outside the distribution curve of what a normal response would be. A bit like the statistics in Climate Science in fact. I would suggest that the Green Twitteraty have been mustering their foot soldiers to swamp the popular vote. Well done David Rose. You have got the Greens rattled to the point that they have to vote stuff your article. Perhaps they do this in political elections also. Keep up the good work David. It is about time the press started telling the truth about Global Warming.

52
185
 Click to rate

belamy has said some strange things. google "Belamy monbiot" and look at the youtube links. its a shame. but basically David basically he got caught out misinforming people about behaviour of the worlds glaciers. Perhaps the BBC just thought correctly that whatever edge he had, he had lost it.

148
37
 Click to rate

- dangermouse , Cheddar, 17/3/2013 19:45 - ZedsDeadBed , Truro_UK, 17/3/2013 18:26 et. alia N.B. Feynman was once asked by a Caltech faculty member to explain why spin 1/2 particles obey Fermi-Dirac statistics. He gauged his audience perfectly and said "I'll prepare a freshman lecture on it." But a few days later he returned and said, "You know, I couldn't do it. I couldn't reduce it to the freshman level. That means we really don't understand it." I WOULD SUGGEST MANY EMPLOYED IN THIS SCAM JUST WON'T ADMIT, THEY ARE WAFFLING, & TRY TO BLIND THE EMPEROR'S AUDIENCE, & THE "BRAIN DEAD" POLITICIANS WITH PSEUDO SCIENCE. WHY NOT READ, SOME OF FEYNMAN'S BOOKS. Surly You're Joking Mr. Feynman, MENTIONS INTEGRITY, THIS IS A QUALITY SADLY LACKING, WHERE PRACTITIONERS OF THIS PSEUDO RELIGION ARE CONCERNED. WHY NOT ALLOW OPEN DEBATE, & STOP RIPPING US OFF? OR WOULD THAT SHOW THE EMPEROR REALY WAS NAKED? REGARDS ......... WASP

35
90
 Click to rate

- dangermouse , Cheddar, 17/3/2013 19:45 - ZedsDeadBed , Truro_UK, 17/3/2013 18:26 et. alia N.B. Feynman was once asked by a Caltech faculty member to explain why spin 1/2 particles obey Fermi-Dirac statistics. He gauged his audience perfectly and said "I'll prepare a freshman lecture on it." But a few days later he returned and said, "You know, I couldn't do it. I couldn't reduce it to the freshman level. That means we really don't understand it." I WOULD SUGGEST MANY EMPLOYED IN THIS SCAM JUST WON'T ADMIT, THEY ARE WAFFLING, & TRY TO BLIND THE EMPEROR'S AUDIENCE, & THE "BRAIN DEAD" POLITICIANS WITH PSEUDO SCIENCE. WHY NOT READ, SOME OF FEYNMAN'S BOOKS. Surly You're Joking Mr. Feynman, MENTIONS INTEGRITY, THIS IS A QUALITY SADLY LACKING, WHERE PRACTITIONERS OF THIS PSEUDO RELIGION ARE CONCERNED. WHY NOT ALLOW OPEN DEBATE, & STOP RIPPING US OFF? OR WOULD THAT SHOW THE EMPEROR REALY WAS NAKED? REGARDS ......... WASP

33
32
 Click to rate

- dangermouse , Cheddar, 17/3/2013 19:45 - ZedsDeadBed , Truro_UK, 17/3/2013 18:26 et. alia N.B. Feynman was once asked by a Caltech faculty member to explain why spin 1/2 particles obey Fermi-Dirac statistics. He gauged his audience perfectly and said "I'll prepare a freshman lecture on it." But a few days later he returned and said, "You know, I couldn't do it. I couldn't reduce it to the freshman level. That means we really don't understand it." I WOULD SUGGEST MANY EMPLOYED IN THIS SCAM JUST WON'T ADMIT, THEY ARE WAFFLING, & TRY TO BLIND THE EMPEROR'S AUDIENCE, & THE "BRAIN DEAD" POLITICIANS WITH PSEUDO SCIENCE. WHY NOT READ, SOME OF FEYNMAN'S BOOKS. Surly You're Joking Mr. Feynman, MENTIONS INTEGRITY, THIS IS A QUALITY SADLY LACKING, WHERE PRACTITIONERS OF THIS PSEUDO RELIGION ARE CONCERNED. WHY NOT ALLOW OPEN DEBATE, & STOP RIPPING US OFF? OR WOULD THAT SHOW THE EMPEROR REALY WAS NAKED? REGARDS ......... WASP

33
31
 Click to rate

Just more junk science...probably concocted by the same zealots who've got everyone believing that second hand smoke is a raging killer akin to nerve gas!

46
131
 Click to rate

The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.

We are no longer accepting comments on this article.

Who is this week's top commenter? Find out now