Oh Canada

Today's Financial Post has run an open letter to the Prime Minister of Canada. You can read it online here. It is an embarrassment. (I heard about it here, FWIW, fairly deep into the comments)

Amongst all the hand waves that strike me as completely detached from reality, two things stuck out:

"Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future."

and

"It was only 30 years ago that many of today's global-warming alarmists were telling us that the world was in the midst of a global-cooling catastrophe. "

The first, about the models, is hard to argue as they do not specify what observations they think do not fit the models. I am frankly not aware of any serious contradictions. It is likely this is an oblique reference to James Hansen's 1988 testimony and Patrick Micheals' subsequent perjury about it to the US congress in 1998. I have debunked that persistent urban legend here. It could also be a reference to satellite readings of upper and mid tropospheric warming. However last year, Spencer and Christy re-did this anaysis yet again after uncovering further errors and now the warming trend they found is in fact in agreement with model predictions. That was a big blow to the "What warming?" crowd. You can read some detail and see some references here.
(I note that Roy Spencer is one of the signatories, he at least should know what his own results are.)

The second quote about predictions from the 70's is also an urban legend (I'm being kind, many if not most of the people signing to that should know it for the lie it is, especially as they have it stated).

I am not generally a believer in arguments from authority or attacks on other's credentials, scientific arguments must stand on their own. However, this letter, as I said above, is one big hand wave with nothing specific or substantive to address, so I feel justified to note that most of the signatories are not climate scientists and it includes the usual batch of sceptical political economists and the regular cast of denialists for hire: Micheals, Baliunas, Singer, Peiser, Jaworowski, Essex and McKitrick.

There some demonstrable liars in there.

Some other standards:

• there is no consensus
• climate changes all the time
• it will be years before we know what is going on
• we should not listen to "the confident pronouncements of scientifically unqualified environmental groups"
• action is not necessary

Sorry, that letter is garbage.

[Please see this important update!]