About this website

(updated May 2021)

When we first launched this website in 2014, our main goal was to summarise for a general audience our key scientific findings that we had reached after more than five years of careful and systematic scientific research into the subject of climate change. All of this research was unfunded and entirely voluntary. We carried it out in our spare time because as scientists and environmentalists we wanted to investigate what was considered then (as now), one of the biggest scientific and environmental issues.

We also launched a separate website, Open Peer Review Journal (oprj.net) (OPRJ for short), where we had published some of our key results and findings as a series of eight scientific papers. for open review by the scientific community. We took this new “open peer review” approach rather than the typical “closed peer review” approach adopted by most scientific journals, because our papers were long and technical, and covered many different fields of expertise. We wanted to subject our analysis to more rigorous and open scrutiny than the standard peer review.

We found this new open peer review approach to be more scientifically rewarding, and it is an approach we plan on returning to over the coming years. However, we have also published much of our follow-on research using the more conventional approach, i.e., in academic peer-reviewed journals. See our “Publications” page for links to all our peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed articles (including the OPRJ papers).

Apart from a brief post in 2017, we had not updated this blog since we originally launched it in 2014. Seven years later (2021), we have now decided it is time to update and re-launch the website. Our 2014 “Start Here” page was mostly based on the findings of our eight OPRJ papers as well as our reviewing of the scientific literature on climate change at the time (including the well-known IPCC reports). We still stand by the points that we made then. In our opinion, our more recent research has, if anything, strengthened our original arguments. You’re welcome to view our original “Start Here” page from then which can be accessed here. However, below is our updated 2021 “Start Here”:

Our findings on climate change

1) 95% of scientists agree on climate change, including us
2) The climate is changing, and it always has
3) The claims that recent global warming is human-caused and unusual are based on flawed computer models and simplistic science
4) Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is not “pollution”
5) The “climate change solutions” that are being implemented are causing more harm than good

1) 95% of scientists agree on climate change, including us

It is widely believed that “90-95% of scientists agree on climate change”. This is technically true if you define “agree on climate change” to mean “agree that the climate is changing”. We would be included in that 90-95% of scientists. Indeed, the very subject of this website is about climate change.

However, many people mistakenly assume that 90-95% of scientists agree that recent climate change is “mostly human-caused”. The reality is that there is a wide range of views among the scientific community about the causes of recent climate change. Many scientists agree with that view, but many do not!

In the following posts, we explain how this mistaken idea became embedded in the public conscience, and what is known about the true views of the scientific community on climate change:

2) The climate is changing, and it always has

In recent years, we have been inundated with tragic reports of disasters from hurricanes, typhoons, floods, droughts, etc. We are also told that there have been dramatic decreases in the Arctic sea ice, and that sea levels are rising. This has led many people to believe that we are causing an increase in extreme weather events, melting in the Arctic, dangerous sea level rises.

However, this perception of catastrophic climate changes seems to be mostly down to simple improvements in our climate monitoring technology.

Our ability to monitor and report on extreme weather events and changes in the climate has dramatically improved in recent years. This means that we are now able to detect events and changes which we wouldn’t have noticed when they occurred in the past. This doesn’t mean these events and changes are unusual. It just means that we’ve only started noticing them!

We discuss our analysis for some of these phenomena in the following essays:

Are we seeing “unusual” weather extremes and dangerous sea level rises?

Are we seeing “unusual” melting snow and ice?

Are we seeing “unusual” global warming?

3) The claims that recent global warming is human-caused and unusual are based on flawed computer models and simplistic science

For several decades now, it has been widely believed that humans are causing unusual global warming by increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

However, our research has shown us that this claim is based on flawed computer models and simplistic science.

There are actually two sub-claims underlying this claim.

The first is that unusual global warming is occurring. We have found that the allegedly “unusual global warming” is not as unusual as claimed, after all.

Instead, we have found that the world naturally switches between periods of global warming and periods of global cooling, with each period lasting several decades.

We also identified a number of serious mistakes in the studies which had claimed that there has been unusual global warming. These mistakes meant that the amount of warming in the last global warming period (1980s-2000s) was overestimated and the amount of cooling in the last global cooling period (1950s-1970s) was underestimated.

When these mistakes are corrected, it turns out that it was about as warm in the 1930s-1940s as it is now.

See the following posts for more details:

Are we seeing “unusual” global warming?

The other sub-claim is that recent global warming (whether unusual or not) is mostly due to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations from human emissions, chiefly that of carbon dioxide (CO₂). However, again our research has shown that this is incorrect.

It is true that humans have been increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, because of our use of fossil fuels. Before the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide seems to have been about 0.03% of the atmosphere, while it is now about 0.04%.

According to current computer climate models, this increase in CO₂ is responsible for most of the global warming since the 19^th century. However, our research has shown that these computer model-based “attribution studies” are based on flawed assumptions and approximations and are contradicted by plenty of scientific data.

The problems with the so-called “attribution studies”:

We have also shown that the current computer climate models are unable to explain the observed trends of many key aspects of the climate, e.g., snow cover, sea ice.

Examples of how unreliable the current computer climate models are:

We also have carried out extensive research into the physics of the Earth’s atmosphere using publicly archived weather balloon measurements of the atmosphere.

Weather balloon “soundings” provide a very powerful mechanism for studying the atmosphere. They record the temperature, pressure and other meteorological parameters of the surrounding air as the balloon rises up through the atmosphere. Roughly 1,000 weather stations spread around the world have been launching these balloons between one and four times per day since the 1960s and 1970s, and in some cases much earlier.

Therefore, we decided to use this important source of scientific data to evaluate some of the fundamental assumptions of the current computer climate models that had never been experimentally checked. For three of our OPRJ papers in 2014, we analysed more than 13 million weather balloons and discovered that several of these key model assumptions were flawed. These flaws explain why the computer model predictions are not working.

Our research using this powerful scientific resource of the weather balloon archives is ongoing. But, if you want to learn more about our research so far, see the following posts.

Fundamental assumptions of the models had never been tested:

4) Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is not “pollution”

The combustion of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) releases energy, water vapour (H₂O) and carbon dioxide (CO₂).

If you studied biology in school, you might remember that this is the same thing that happens when animals (including humans) and plants “respire”. You might also remember that this is the exact opposite of the process of “photosynthesis” which plants use.

Indeed, the two processes of photosynthesis and respiration make up a fundamental cycle of life on this planet for all carbon-based life, i.e., life as we know it.

*The “carbon cycle” of photosynthesis and respiration*

Current computer climate models predict that increases in carbon dioxide (CO₂) from human activity should be causing unusual global warming. As discussed above, our research contradicts those computer model predictions. But, if you believe in the computer models, you might argue that increasing CO₂ is contributing to climate change. However, even still, it would be unscientific and wrong to use the term “pollution” to refer to a naturally-occurring gas that plays such an important role in life on this planet.

As an aside, there is sometimes confusion because carbon dioxide (CO₂) sounds similar to “carbon monoxide” (CO). Carbon monoxide could indeed be considered a pollutant, but it is a very different gas.

5) The “climate change solutions” that are being implemented are causing more harm than good

A lot of people suggest that even if the computer model-based claims that humans are causing unusual global warming are wrong (as we have found), that it doesn’t really matter because the “climate change solutions” are desirable anyway. For example, see the following cartoon published by Joel Pett in USA Today in 2009 (see here for a 2012 article by the cartoonist about the popularity of this particular cartoon):

Cartoon by Joel Pett first published in USA Today (2009).

Initially, this can seem like a compelling argument. However, our research has shown that there are two main problems with it:

1. The current “climate change solutions” that are being promoted are not reducing either greenhouse gas emissions or climate change. That is, the solutions are not “solutions”.

E.g., see this post for more details:

How much global warming should we expect under “business-as-usual” policies?

2. Worse still, ironically, most of these “green solutions” are creating substantial environmental problems. They also are leading to separate social and economic problems, and these problems are often more pronounced for poor and/or disadvantaged communities. In other words, “the cure is worse than the disease”.

E.g., see this post for more details:

There’s no such thing as clean energy

Note on funding and how you can support us

All of our climate research up until 2018 was carried out in our spare time and at our own expense. However, this meant that our rate of research was fairly slow. So, in 2018, along with Dr. Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), we set up a new independent organization called the Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences (CERES).

Ronan has been working full-time on his climate research through this group since then.
Michael and Imelda are still continuing their own climate research on a voluntary basis, as before.

CERES is funded by donations from the public. However, the aim of CERES is to promote open-minded and independent scientific inquiry. For this reason, donors to CERES are strictly required not to attempt to influence either the research directions or the findings of CERES.

Nonetheless, if you would like to support us, any donations (small or large) to CERES would be a great help. You can find details on donating to CERES at https://ceres-science.com/.

Alternatively, you can support us by sharing our website; or individual posts; or links to our published peer-reviewed papers (see here for a list) with anyone you think might find our work relevant.