The Copenhagen Diagnosis: Sick Science

The Copenhagen Diagnosis: Updating the World on the Latest Climate Science presents itself as a handbook of science updates that supplements the IPCC AR4 in time  for Copenhagen in December, 2009, and any national or international climate change policy negotiations that follow.  Its Executive Summary states:

• The turning point must come soon: If global warming is to be limited to a maximum of 2 °C above pre-industrial values, global  emissions need to peak between 2015 and 2020 and then decline rapidly. To stabilize climate, a decarbonized global society –  with near-zero emissions of CO 2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases – needs to be reached well within this century.  More  specifically, the average annual per-capita emissions will have to shrink to well under 1 metric ton CO  2 by 2050. This is 80-95%  below the per-capita emissions in developed nations in 2000.
  

The main experimental evidence of the coming catastrophy is summarized as:

• Recent global temperatures demonstrate human-induced warming: Over the past 25 years temperatures have increased at a rate of 0.19°C per decade, in very good agreement with predictions based on greenhouse gas increases.  Even over the past ten years, despite a decrease in solar forcing, the trend continues to be one of warming. Natural, short-term fluctuations are occurring as usual, but there have been no significant changes in the underlying warming trend. 

The main question Has global warming recently slowed down or paused?  is answered by:

• The Hadley Center data most recently show smaller  warming trends (0.11 °C per decade for 1999-2008) 
  

with the following excuse: primarily due to the fact that this data set is not fully global but leaves  out the Arctic, which has warmed particularly strongly in recent years. 

The question Isn’t Antarctica cooling and Antarctic sea ice increasing? is answered by:

• Although the weather station at the South Pole shows cooling over the last 50 years, this single weather station is not representative. 

The question Are there tipping points in the Earth’s climate  system? is answered by:

• The proximity of some tipping points has been assessed  through expert elicitation. Proximity, rate and reversibility have been also assessed through literature review. 
• A global tipping point can only occur if a net amplifying feedback  becomes strong enough to produce a threshold whereby the  global system is committed to a change in state, carried by its  own internal dynamics. Despite much talk in the popular media  about such ‘runaway’ climate change there is as yet no strong  evidence that the Earth as a whole is near such a threshold.  

Of the temperature curves in Fig. 19 one shows an alarming increase in recent years: the red CRU Observed Trend, from the CRU at the center of Climategate. 

On Climate Projections it is reported:

• There has been no new coordinated set of future climate model projections undertaken since the IPCC AR4.  Instead, much  of the new research over the past few years has focused on  preparation for the next round of IPCC simulations for AR5, and  continued evaluation of the AR4 model runs.  
  

The statements presented above are visibly contradictory as concerns e.g. rates of warming,

existence of tipping points, and the value of climate models. If anything the Copenhagen Diagnosis indicates that climate science is sick, and cannot participate in the Copenhagen meeting.

To save the climate conference from collapse, COP15 assures all of us that  Scientists "behaving badly" won’t influence UN climate conference:

• While e-mails stolen from one of the world’s top climate research centres may embarrass some of the involved scientists, the incident is reported not to affect the ongoing political negotiations.
  

After this declaration COP15 rings the alarm of Copenhagen Diagnosis: Global warming outpaces predictions:

• The biggest scientific overview since the IPCC’s landmark report from 2007 warns of warming up to seven degrees Celsius this century – a figure that adds weight to the gloomiest of the forecasts made two years ago. 
  

But a climate congress based on sick climate science "behaving badly" should be called off. 

Reinfeldt now has a global warming potato in his hands. What to do? Close the ears and get burned? Or open the eyes and lead the World away from catastrophy? Read YstadsAllehanda!

It does not require much thinking to understand that a climate conference without climate science is meaningless. It would be like a heart bypass operation on a healthy patient with Gordon Brown at the knife. 

Meanwhile the temperature of Climategate and Copenhagen is increased even more by the Met Office meeting  the allegations of scientific fraud by claiming that 

• previous estimates about the rate of temperature rise had been too low...the planet could warm by 7C (10.8F) which would make large parts of the planet uninhabitable.
  

The response to inquiry is met by increasing the level of alarm. This is a process with positive feed-back and can only end in exponential blow-up.

Watch Fall of the Republic. Science is a republic to serve the people, not priests and oligarchs.