Yesterday the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council (CHECC) filed a corrected version of its opening brief challenging the EPA’s Endangerment Finding as to CO2 and other greenhouse gases. The brief can be found here. The bizarre reason for the “corrected” filing was that the clerks at the DC Circuit rejected our initial filing on the ground that we used an excessive number of acronyms. They have a rule encouraging you not to use too many acronyms, but the rule gives no clue as to how many is too many. When you use the term “greenhouse gases” thirty times, should you shorten it to “GHGs,” or write it out every time? You only find out when they bounce the brief and require you to correct it. Anyway, with any luck the linked version is now the final one.

When you take a look at the brief, you will see that we are directly and openly challenging the fake science of predicted catastrophic human-caused global warming from GHGs. (No rule on excessive use of acronyms here at MC.). In this we join our amicus the CO2 Coalition, whose brief was filed on October 21, and discussed here in this post on October 22. Both the Coalition and CHECC follow the basic precept of the scientific method of looking to see whether there are observational data that are inconsistent with and therefore invalidate the hypothesis put forth by the proponents. Both the Coalition and CHECC find such data. Both briefs then quote the famous line of physicist Richard Feynman, “If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong.” Nothing very complicated about that.

But the data on which the two briefs focus are different. I’ll get to that in a moment. But first, I want to mention how much I am struck by the incredible parallels between this situation and that of Galileo back in the early 1600s. When I was in high school (for me that was over 50 years ago) they taught the story of Galileo as a lesson in how dense and stupid the people of the past were, unwilling to look at obvious evidence to see the truth; whereas today we are so much more enlightened, because we follow the scientific method. But I don’t think they actually taught us the details of the Galileo affair. I have now looked them up. Two places where you can find versions of the story are history.com and Wikipedia.

The issue in the Galileo story was whether the solar system was geocentric or heliocentric. Galileo had corresponded with Copernicus, and had become aware of the new heliocentric hypothesis. Galileo also worked on incremental improvements to the newly-invented telescope, which enabled him to see aspects of the planets previously unobservable. Two things in particular were inconsistent with (and therefore invalidated) the geocentric version of the solar system: the phases of Venus, and the moons of Jupiter, both of which could be seen with the new telescopes. Both could be explained by the heliocentric hypothesis.

But the heliocentric version contradicted teachings of the Church, which had adopted the geocentric version in its dogma. The academics of the time refused to look in the telescopes thinking they must be some instrument of the devil. Here is a famous quote from Galileo in a letter to Kepler:

What do you have to say about the principal philosophers of this academy who are filled with the stubbornness of an asp and do not want to look at either the planets, the moon or the telescope, even though I have freely and deliberately offered them the opportunity a thousand times? Truly, just as the asp stops its ears, so do these philosophers shut their eyes to the light of truth.

Galileo was tried before the Roman Inquisition, and ultimately convicted and kept under house arrest from 1633 to the end of his life. Obviously, the Inquisition did not follow the scientific method.

As previously discussed in the October 22 post, the CO2 Coalition brief focuses on IPCC’s CMIP models — relied on by EPA for the Endangerment Finding — as the hypothesis that supports the forecast of catastrophic warming. The Coalition then presents the famous 2017 John Christy chart showing 102 simulations from IPCC CMIP models from 32 different institutions, and showing that observed temperatures since 1979 from ten credible temperature data series have increased less than the forecasts of the models in every single case, and by significant and increasing amounts. The Coalition concluded that the IPCC models “fail the basic test of the scientific method and, thus, should not be used.”

The CHECC brief takes a different approach to invalidation of the hypothesis adopted by EPA, but leading to the same result. CHECC looks at three areas where EPA’s “science,” as described in its own write-up of the basis for the Endangerment Finding, is either unsupported by or contradicted by real world evidence. Those three areas are:

• EPA uses certain official “surface temperature” records, derived from government agencies NOAA and NASA, as its temperature history. CHECC shows that EPA had no data for these series for most of the world prior to 2000, including none for the entirety of the Southern Hemisphere oceans (about 40% of the earth’s surface right there). To fill the gap, it simply fabricated data by computer algorithm to create a record consistent with its desired results.

• EPA claims that the warming in its (flawed) temperature records can only be explained by human influences. But CHECC shows that a structural analysis of credible temperature series from satellites and balloons, after backing out influences only from certain enumerated natural factors (ocean currents, volcanoes, and solar variations), leaves no statistically significant warming left to be explained by human influences.

• EPA claims its hypothesis is supported by a distinctive warming pattern in the tropical troposphere, known as the “hot spot.” CHECC shows that the tropical “hot spot” does not exist in the real world data.

Here are a few pithy quotes from the CHECC brief:

Over the period 1900-2000, essentially no credible temperature data were captured monthly for the vast oceans of the Southern Hemisphere. Thus, over this period, there is essentially no data for 40% plus of the surface of the Earth. . . . No valid global average surface temperature record can be constructed with such huge gaps in coverage in time and space. Thus, the lack of data in the Southern Hemisphere alone is fatal to the validity of the surface temperature record. From CHECC brief p. 12-13.

The analysis clearly demonstrates that once the solar, volcanic and oceanic activity, that is, natural factor impacts on temperature data are accounted for, there is no warming trend in the data at all. These findings invalidate both the Hot Spot theory and the climate models that EPA relies upon for attribution, and thus invalidate the Endangerment Finding as a whole. CHECC brief, p. 16.

The Technical Support Document explicitly stated “[t]he observed warming can only be reproduced with models that contain both natural and anthropogenic forcings.” Id. p. 49. (Emphasis added). In fact, the exact opposite is true –only models without human emissions matched observations. Models unequivocally fail the explicitly stated criteria for their use in attribution. CHECC brief p. 27.

And finally, this concluding line on the science from page 28:

In sum, no claim of attribution can survive (1) proof that the global average surface temperature record is totally fabricated (2) the comprehensive invalidation of the Hot Spot theory by observations (in this case, by proper mathematical analysis of the most credible, relevant tropical temperature data), and (3) the abject failure of climate models to meet the explicitly stated criteria for their use in attribution.

Well, it’s just a motley bunch of unpaid amateurs up against the entire scientific establishment, brought into dissent-free line by a few hundred billion dollars of annual federal spending. It’s not surprising that they close their eyes and shout “LALALALALALA” when presented with clear evidence that invalidates the official orthodoxy. They have all joined the weird pagan climate cult.

And how about the DC Circuit? Has anything changed since the Roman Inquisition? That remains to be seen.

I want to express my thanks for the outpouring of support that has come to me and my colleagues through comments on this blog and many personal emails.