Letter To Mark Carney

 

Alex Henney has written to Mark Carney, in response to the latter’s speech at Lloyds last week:

 

 

Mr. Mark Carney

Governor

The Bank of England

1 Threadneadle Street

London EC2R 8AH.

Adaptation.reporting@bankofengland.co.uk

 

Dear Mr. Carney,

I regret to say that you have many factual errors in your speech to Lloyds.

1. It is not correct to claim that “many of the changes in our world since the 1950s are without precedent”:-

• The increase in temperature from the late 1970s to late 1990s was equalled by the increase from 1910 to 1940, and the temperatures in the US (along with droughts and cycles) were greater in the 1930s than subsequently (Grapes of Wrath, Okies, etc)

• The Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 was significantly stronger than Katrina

• The attached comments by Professor John Christy, who runs the University of Alabama’s satellite temperature measurement system, notes that “droughts have for the most part become shorter, less severe and less extensive.” Temperature extremes have reduced since the 1930s. He observed:-

“From the broad perspective, where we consider all the extremes above, we should see a warning – that the climate system has always had within itself the capability of causing devastating events and these will certainly continue with or without human influence on the climate.”

• The IPCC comments “low confidence that damaging increases will occur in either drought or tropical cyclone activity” (SPM-23, Table SPM.1)

1. It is not correct to claim that the last 30 years have been the warmest since Anglo Saxon times – the Medieval Warming Period lasting up to about 1250 – 1300 is generally recognised as being as warm, if not warmer than now. (Vikings in Greenland, wine in Yorkshire).

1. While the claim that eight of the ten warmest years on record in the UK have occurred since 2002, this reflects the fact that records started¹ shortly after the Dalton minimum (1790-1830) which was the end of the Little Ice Age when temperatures were cool and increased over three periods up to about 1997 then plateaued. So not surprisingly many of the highest temperatures since records began have been since 1997. Furthermore the temperature in 2014 was only 0.06⁰C higher than 2006, and no months through the year saw a record for temperature – each was warm but only August was cold. I do not think we need to get excited over this – but the Met Office is a part of the PR for Paris.

1. The rate of sea level rise has not changed recently, see my paper “The scientific flaws in the Committee on Climate Change and the expensive consequences” attached.

1. The underlying warming trend – let alone any “human induced trend” – of 0.2⁰C/decade has most definitely not continued unabated since the 1970s. According to satellite records, there has been no increase in temperature for 18 years. The IPCC commented “The rate of warming over the past 15 years (1998-2012; 0.05 deg. C/decade) is smaller than the trend since 1951 (1951-2012; 0.12 deg. C/decade)” (SPM-3).

1. If, as you claim, inflation adjusted insurance losses have quintupled in real terms since the 1980s that is largely because there is more “stuff” around. I attach an extract from another report of mine regarding Professor Roger Pielke’s experience with a paper by Munich Re, and the issue of disaster trends. A close friend of mine who was brought up in Florida in the 1940s early 50s observed that then houses were built 3 dunes back from the sea. The Federal government introduced free top-up insurance – a moral hazard – and developers consequently built 2 dunes back. And the population has increased enormously along the hurricane coast.

1. There is no evidence of increases in the severity of extreme events driven by climate change, at least in the US. I attach a piece about, and material by, Chris Landsea of the National Hurricane Centre in Miami. He resigned from the 2007 IPCC report objecting to this storyline; as noted above the IPCC 2013 report stated “low confidence that damaging increases will occur in either drought or tropical cyclone activity.”

1. The winter of 2014 was not “England’s wettest since the time of King George III” – November 1929 to January 1930 was much wetter.

1. Regarding the rise in sea level at the tip of Manhattan since 1950s it is generally accepted that about half the “rise” is due to land sinking, not sea rising.

You treat the IPCC as a source of serious science. It is not – its remit is to identify “man’s impact on climate change”, not to study the issue in a broad and scientific manner. Over the years it has included a great deal of junk “science” which has been retracted. Furthermore it is a political body. Its Summaries for Policymakers are signed off by government representatives and on various critical points do not represent the science but spins and evades issues. Climate models are critical to the work of the IPCC including both its (rigged) predictions of future temperature and its attribution of the effect of CO2. Yet for a whole variety of reasons climate models do not (and will not) reflect reality – the climate is too complex, the models too crude. That said, after the sloppy claims it peddled in 2001 (the hockey stick) and 2007 (more storms, more malaria, the Himalayas melting), the 2013 report had fewer gross errors. But it fudged the fact that empirical studies of climate sensitivity are showing much lower figures than model studies, and that there may be no positive feedback – indeed it may even be negative. It continued to give credence to climate models which have not been validated².

You source the Met Office. Regrettably it has become a politicized agency (rather like the statistics office became). And I expect you are aware that politicians and political organisations are not noted for their rigour. Under John Houghton in the late 1980s the Met Office signed up to anthropogenic global warming. Along with Swede Bert Bolin and your fellow countryman Maurice Strong, Houghton and now the Met Office play a major role in getting the CO2 scare going and through thick and thin have stuck by the story. The Met Office is not above spinning data as it shamelessly did over the wet winter of 2014; the Press Notice you have as your reference 14 about impacts is based on its flawed modelling. (In 2007, introducing its new computer, it claimed that the global temperature would increase over the decade 2005-14 by 0.3⁰C. There was no increase. The Met Office should understand the Arab precept “He who professes to foretell the future lies, even if correct.”)

The warmist scare is kept rolling by a wide range of people who have vested interest in it – the Met Office wants to save face and wants bigger budgets and computers; a host of academics want grants and, particularly in Stern’s case, larger talking fees; renewables developers want subsidies; green NGOs want subscriptions, grants from the EC, and to self-importantly strut the stage; insurance companies want more business (e.g. Munich Re); and last – and definitely not least – politicians want either to save us and/or get their snouts in the trough. Climate alarmism is maintained by ignorant and excitable media like the BBC and the Guardian, and by extensive “group think”. I attach my letter to Philip Hammond objecting to Professor King FRS, formerly Chief Government Scientist, representing us at the Paris COP – he is an ignorant man who should stick to his chemistry.

My paper “The scientific flaws of the Committee on Climate Change and the expensive consequences” first deals with its factually incorrect understanding of the climate. The bottom line is that over both the long (hundreds of years) and short (months) temperature rise precedes CO2 rise – as effect cannot precede cause, so CO2 cannot be the main driver of the climate. There are an increasing number of solar physicists who believe that the sun and cosmic rays have a major effect on climate and ties in with the oceans. Furthermore many solar physicists think that the current quiet cycle (number 24) is looking like the Dalton minimum of about 1790-1830. A number of solar physicists (who are generally excluded from the deliberations of the IPCC, which resolutely ignores the possible influences of the sun on the climate) are forecasting the possibility of a decline in temperatures over the next few decades.

The second part of the paper deals with the extraordinarily expensive and ineffectual generation policies we are pursuing³. They should I suggest be a matter of more than passing interest to you because all of them (except perhaps the wasteful research into CCS) involve major contributions to UK’s current account deficit, which as you know is a matter of concern.

While I note your economics background, please bear in mind that when you are dealing with science as Richard Feynman observed, “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, if it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong”.

And when you are dealing with politicians as H.L. Mencken observed, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

The moral of these two quotes is to junk junk science, and sup with a long spoon when dealing with politicians and politicised organisations. I leave it to you to reflect on whether you have fallen for group think.

Yours sincerely,

ALEX HENNEY

 

 

 

1 Unless you prefer to refer to the Central England temperature record which commenced in 1659, and was cool in the seventeenth, eighteenths and nineteenth centuries.

2 For a fuller discussion of its shortcomings see “3 Things Scientists Need to Know about the IPCC”, Donna LaFromboise, nofrakkingconsensus, August 2015 presentation to the World Federation of Scientists. The 3 things are:-

1. The IPCC Is a political entity

2. The scientists are not in charge, but governments are

3. The IPCC is a template by which the UN repeatedly exploits the good name of science

3 By way of background I was on the board of London Electricity in the early 1980s and in February 1987 was the first person to propose a competitive restructuring of electricity in Britain. After the election in June 1987 I was involved with the then Minister for Energy, Rt. Hon. Cecil Parkinson, and officials in the early days of restructuring and in October wrote a paper “The Operation of a Power Market” which had a significant impact on the course of events. Subsequently I have advised on electric markets and regulation from Norway to New Zealand.