Submission regarding
Australia's post-2020 emissions reduction target
John McLean
Executive Summary
This submission argues that the thesis that emissions of greenhouse gases are significantly
impacting climate has no substantial evidence to support it.
It will be shown that the UNFCCC has no credible evidence, the IPCC has no credible
evidence and that the prognostications of the CSIRO are based on climate models that the
IPCC says are seriously flawed.
Other submissions will assert that they have evidence, perhaps even "multiple lines" of
evidence, an expression favoured by the IPCC and CSIRO, and I urge you to critically assess
the merit of that so-called evidence. In my experience the "evidence" is nothing more than
a theory, opinions, evidence of warming (which is not automatically evidence of man-made
warming) and claims based on the output of flawed climate models.
Despite the claims of some people, climate science is very definitely not settled. This starts
with no agreement about the fundamental data and stretches through to the multitude of
alternative explanations for the recent absence of warming.
On the basis of the above it is recommended that Australia's position at the UNFCCC Paris
conference should be along the following lines:
"Australia would be very happy to consider reducing its greenhouse gas emissions if
substantial evidence can be produced to show that these gases are causing significant,
dangerous and detrimental warming.
"A theory is not evidence; opinions are not evidence; anecdotal evidence of warming is not
evidence of manmade warming per se; and claims based on the output of climate models
that have been shown to be flawed are not evidence.
"Further, climate science still appears to be struggling to explain the absence of warming
over the last 17 or 18 years, which means that climate science is far from settled.
"Should substantial evidence be produced and better agreement be reached about climate
science, Australia will act appropriately, but negatively impacting Australia's economy
without clear justification, including a credible and reliable cost-benefit analysis, is not
something this government is prepared to undertake."
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Preamble
My name is John McLean and for the last 10 years I’ve been applying analysis and data processing
skills, developed in IT, to climate matters.
I have written analyses of the IPCC’s history and operations, analysed both global and regional
meteorological data and made submissions to various inquiries both here and overseas.
I was an Expert Reviewer for the Working Group I contribution to latest IPCC report (5AR) and made
the greatest number of comments by any reviewer.
I have also written four peer-reviewed papers on climate matters, the first examining the credibility
of the CSIRO’s climate predictions for various Australian states, and the latest showing that the 21year period of general warming in the late 20th century was plausibly not due to greenhouse gases
but due to firstly a change in the general patter of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation and then to a
reduction in cloud cover.
My web page http://mclean.ch/climate/global_warming.htm contains links to my numerous
articles, papers, submissions and analyses.
The following discussion consists of eight points that support my contention that there is no credible
evidence that greenhouse gases pose a serious threat to future climate on either a global or regional
basis. The sections detailing the eight points are as follows:
1. The IPCC is not impartial and expert on all climate matters
2. The UNFCCC makes unsupported assertions and has distorted the IPCC's role
3. The IPCC has no remit to investigate all possible causes of climate change
4. Predictions of future temperatures and estimates of human influence are flawed
5. Negligible or no warming over the last 16 years
6. The latest IPCC report agrees with points made above
7. The multitude of explanations for "the pause"
8. The CSIRO has very little credibility on climate matters
Discussion
1. The IPCC is not impartial and expert on all climate matters
The IPCC was established in 1988 after the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) had spent
several years attempting to coerce governments into agreeing that carbon dioxide emissions were a
problem. It had no credible evidence, merely very rudimentary and far from complete climate
models. The success of its coercion can be seen in the report of the first meeting of the IPCC, which
shows that one government representative after another announced that his or her government
was pleased that action was being taken on carbon dioxide emissions1.
1
IPCC document http://www.ipcc.ch/meetings/session01/first-final-report.pdf
2
The IPCC was therefore created on an unproven assumption that greenhouse gases were causing
climate change, so it's not unreasonable to accept that the IPCC's role would be firstly to find the
evidence to support that claim.
The first IPCC report says in the preface that the role of the IPCC was
"Assessing the scientific information that is related to the various components of the
climate change issue, such as emissions of major greenhouse gases and the modification
of Earth's radiation balance resulting therefrom ..." 2
But it will be shown below the focus of the IPCC has shifted to specifically and only consider
manmade greenhouse gases.
 The IPCC was established on the basis of an unproven assumption as a consequence of
coercion by a United Nations body.
2. The UNFCCC makes unsupported assertions and has distorted the IPCC's role
The UNFCCC was established following a climate conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and almost
immediately it started claiming that greenhouse gases were causing dangerous warming, not that it
had any evidence to support such statements.
The UNFCCC intended to create its own scientific support unit, the Subsidiary Body of Scientific and
Technical Advice (SBSTA), to do what the name suggests and that the IPCC was only an 'interim'
organization to provide that technical information until the SBSTA was established.
Those plans changed when the pivotal chapter of the IPCC's second assessment report was modified
after the final review by experts, these changes being instigated by a single new paper, submitted to
a scientific journal but not accepted for publication, a paper with about half its authors coming from
the writing team for the same pivotal IPCC chapter. (It's not stretching to believe that the IPCC
authors desperately needed material to support their claims and since none was available they
wrote a paper.)
As a result of this appalling lapse of ethics by the IPCC the UNFCC decided that the SBSTA should be
forgotten and the IPCC continue on a permanent basis to support the UNFCC. The IPCC document
that describes its procedures3 now opens with the sentence:
"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (hereinafter referred to as the IPCC or,
synonymously, the Panel) shall concentrate its activities on the tasks allotted to it by the
relevant WMO Executive Council and UNEP Governing Council resolutions and decisions
as well as on actions in support of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
process."
Again, the IPCC's role seems to be to find the evidence to support the UNFCCC's claims.
2
Preface to First IPCC Assessment Report, available via IPCC webpage
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_ipcc_first_assessment_1990_wg1.shtml
3
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ipcc-principles/ipcc-principles.pdf
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After 25 years of operation the IPCC has not found that evidence but despite this it has progressively
and mendaciously expressed increasing certainty that mankind's greenhouse gas emissions are the
cause of warming since 1951 (warming that in fact only occurred during 21 of 63 years).
 The UNFCCC has never had any credible evidence to support its pivotal claim and the IPCC
has acted in a matter contrary to scientific ethics in its endeavour to support the UNFCCC's
cause.
3. The IPCC has no remit to investigate all possible causes of climate change
The IPCC has no remit to investigate any possible cause of climate change other than manmade. Its
procedures document states:
"The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent
basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to
understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its
potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. IPCC reports should be
neutral with respect to policy, although they may need to deal objectively with
scientific, technical and socio-economic factors relevant to the application of particular
policies." (My highlighting)
The IPCC's focus is therefore ONLY on any human influence on climate and it is obligated to
support the UNFCCC's claims, which mean that the references it cites are carefully selected
to support a particular argument.
 On the basis of the above, the IPCC is an advocacy body rather than an impartial scientific
authority on all matters related to climate. Its opinions are therefore tainted and are not
to be trusted.
4. Predictions of future temperatures and estimates of human influence are flawed
In each report the IPCC described the poor levels of scientific understanding of many climate
forcings that deal with heat transfer by radiation. In IPCC 3AR (2001) the details can be found in
Figure 6.6 on page 392, Table 6-12 (p 394) and repeated in the WGI Summary for Policymakers (p 8).
In IPCC 4AR (2007) it is shown in Table 2-11 (p 201), Figure 2-20(A) (p 203) and in the WGI Summary
for Policymakers (p 4).
Elsewhere in each IPCC report we find a discussion of the shortfalls of climate models. This
appeared in chapter 8 of both IPCC 3AR (2011) and IPCC 4AR (2007) and is discussed again in the
latest IPCC assessment report (see below).
Climate models are not only used to predict future temperatures but are also used to estimate the
human influence on climate. This is done by running the models with and without greenhouse gases
and assuming that the difference is the human influence. This assumption might be valid if the
models were 100% accurate but because they are not, the difference only illustrates the sensitivity
of the models regards the inclusion of greenhouse gases.
Further, no climate models have ever been validated and there is no evidence that models
accurately incorporate all climate influences.
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IPCC 4AR (2007) tried to imply that the climate models it cited were accurate because they
approximately agreed with historical data. This is a phony argument because an excess of one
influence could easily have been counterbalanced by a short-fall in another influence. To use a
simple analogy, 8 + 2 and 1 + 9 both give the same result.
 The IPCC's predictions of future temperatures and the estimates of the magnitude of the
human influence on temperatures are both based on flawed climate models and therefore
neither has any credibility.
5. Negligible or no warming over the last 16 years
I had planned that at this point I would demonstrate the absence of warming over the last 16 years
by graphing the data but I find that the HadCRUT4 temperature data has changed, not just in the last
12 months but back several years. I now find a small upward trend in the data from January 1987 to
February 2015 and I also find that the data has changed so much that IPCC's statement about the
absence of warming from 1998 to 2012 (see point 6 below) is no longer correct according to the
current data.
Near-surface temperature data is constantly being modified, sometimes to many years in the past. It
seems that the basic data, on which the both the claims and predictions rely, is "shifting sand".
Many researchers argue that the data derived from Microwave Sensor Units mounted on satellites is
more accurate because it has better coverage and not a composite of individually adjusted data. This
data, known as the Lower tropospheric Temperature (or LTT), is available from the University of
Alabama (Huntsville) and Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) of California, who process it slightly
differently.
The UAH data shows a very slight warming over the last 18 years but the RSS data shows a slight
cooling, see figure below4.
4
Source: http://www.climatedepot.com/2015/04/06/global-warming-pause-continues-temperature-standstilllengthens-to-18-years-4-months/
5
The least-squares linear-regression trend on the RSS satellite monthly global mean surface temperature
anomaly dataset shows no global warming for 18 years 4 months since December 1996.
 The temperature trend over the last 16 years shows negligible or no warming. Further,
given that there's no agreement on which of five sets of temperature data should be used,
it's ludicrous to claim that the science is settled.
6. The latest IPCC report agrees with points made above
The latest IPCC report confirms several points made above. Firstly it says regards recent average
global temperature anomalies:
"... the rate of warming over the past 15 years (1998–2012; 0.05 [–0.05 to 0.15] °C per
decade) ... is smaller than the rate calculated since 1951 (1951–2012; 0.12 [0.08 to 0.14]
°C per decade)." WG I SPM (page 3, section B.1), WG I chapter 2 (Exec summary pg 162,
Sect 2.4.3 pg 194), Full Synthesis Report (page SYR-6)
In other words the IPCC says that it is 95% certain that the true value of the temperature trend falls
somewhere between an increase of 0.15 C/decade (i.e. warming) and a decrease of 0.05 C/decade
(i.e. cooling). The IPCC isn't certain that any warming at all occurred during that 15 years.
On the matter of the accuracy of climate models the report says
" ...an analysis of the full suite of CMIP5 historical simulations (…) reveals that 111 out of
114 realisations show a GMST trend over 1998–2012 that is higher than the entire
HadCRUT4 trend ensemble (… CMIP5 ensemble-mean trend is 0.21 ºC per decade)."
WGI chapter 9, text box 9.2, page 769
The "HadCRUT4 trend ensemble" is the data on which the previous quote was based, which means
that 97% of model runs (111 of 114) predicted warming when there was none.
The failure of climate models is discussed in more than one part of the report.
“There may also be a contribution from forcing inadequacies and, in some models, an
overestimate of the response to increasing greenhouse gas and other anthropogenic
forcing (dominated by the effects of aerosols).” WGI SPM, page 13, section D.1
And elsewhere we learn:
"This difference between simulated [i.e. model output] and observed trends could be
caused by some combination of (a) internal climate variability, (b) missing or incorrect
radiative forcing and (c) model response error". WGI chapter 9, page 769, text box 9.2
It's very telling that the IPCC not only admits that the reason for the failure of models is not very
clear and that at least "some" models exaggerate the influence of greenhouse gases.
This, along with the exaggeration of greenhouse gases mentioned above, indicates that models
differ, which by extension means that the people who create the models can't agree on the impact
that different forces have.
In contradiction to claims that "the science" is settled, the report says:
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"RF [Radiative forcing] in the simulations including anthropogenic and natural forcings
differs considerably among models (…), and forcing differences explain much of the
differences in temperature response between models over the historical period (…)."
WGI, chapter 10, page 880, section 10.3.1.1.2
I said earlier that models are used for both predicting future temperatures and estimating the
human influence. The latest IPCC report expresses this as follows:
"Climate models are the primary tools available for investigating the response of the
climate system to various forcings, for making climate predictions on seasonal to
decadal time scales and for making projections of future climate over the coming
century and beyond." WGI, chapter 9, page 746, section 9.1.1
The last part of that sentence certainly refers to making predictions, but the first portion is just as
important. The expression “investigating the response of the climate system to various forcings”
really means running the models with and without greenhouse gases and attributing the difference
in the results to human activity. It’s an approach that would be plausible if we could be confident
that climate models were accurate, but as shown above even the IPCC admits they are not.
 These quotes from the latest IPCC assessment report confirm many of the points made
earlier in this document.
As a postscript to this section, the Figure below shows the average temperature predictions
of IPCC climate models and the anomaly in the Lower Tropospheric Temperature up to the
end of 2014. Surely no-one should trust climate predictions or estimates of the human
influence on climate.
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7. The multitude of explanations for "the pause"
The absence of warming reported by the latest IPCC report, which might or might not be correct
now and which might or might not be continuing is often referred to as a "pause". This is poor
terminology because it assumes a resumption of warming at some point, which might or might not
be true.
The real challenge for scientists is to explain how an absence of warming could occur when the
amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing and man-made emissions have continued.
A popular opinion is that natural forces are counterbalancing the influence of carbon dioxide but
that's implausible because it requires that to keep the relative balance, as atmospheric carbon
dioxide increases, the natural counterbalancing forces would also need to increase, which seems
quite implausible.
The latest IPCC report claimed that man-made warming was continuing but was being stored deep in
the ocean (which is not why the IPCC established!). The report gave no credible explanation of how
the heat got there without any indication in sea surface temperatures, why this supposed storage
has only started in the last 15 years and how the heat managed to direct itself into the ocean and
not onto land.
There are now more than 60 suggested explanations for the absence of warming. Some of those
papers contradict each other and some have been proven wrong (like the IPCC's claim), but there
are still more than 40 suggested explanations that haven't been refuted, including my own which
argues that the warming late last century was not due to greenhouse gases so we shouldn't now be
expecting any warming. Maybe one of these explanations is correct or perhaps none are.5
 The multitude of proposed explanations for the absence of warming shows that climate
science is still very uncertain.
8. The CSIRO has very little credibility on climate matters
No discussion of predictions of Australia's future climatic conditions would be complete without
mentioning the work of the CSIRO.
The latest CSIRO report, ", “Climate Change in Australia: Projections for Australia’s NRM Region“6,
published on January 27, has several serious shortcomings:
(a) It fails to mention that the IPCC reported no warming during the last 15 years prior to the latest
report.
(b) It relies on the output of 40 CIMP5 climate models of which 39 appear in the list of CIMP5
climate discussed in the latest IPCC report, but it fails to mention that the negative findings that
the IPCC report made about those models.
5
see http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/updated-list-of-64-excuses-for-18-26.html where a key
point is ... "If you can't explain the 'pause', you can't explain the cause [of the late twentieth century warming]"
6
See
http://www.climatechangeinaustralia.gov.au/media/ccia/2.1.4/cms_page_media/168/CCIA_PROJECTIONS_TE
CHNICAL_REPORT.pdf
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(c) It claims that greenhouse cases have been the dominant cause of warming since 1950 but
shows no evidence to support this assertion
The latest report is certainly not the only CSIRO climate report with serious failings regards evidence.
To the best of my recollection, every report since about 1998 has claimed that human activity has
caused climate change but not once has credible, let alone irrefutable, evidence been presented to
support those claims.
 The CSIRO has a very bad (and unprofessional) habit of failing to provide conclusive
evidence to support its assertions about climate matters and therefore I argue that it has
little or no credibility.
*********
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