As this time of the years reminds us, flowers never go out of style. Whether it is to celebrate a holiday or make up for some bad behavior, flowers just get it done every time. This has been the case for generations and will be the case from now until eternity. There is a good reason why we have flower shops on every other street corner.

According to AboutFlowers.com, “the U.S. floral industry includes fresh cut flowers, cut cultivated greens, potted flowering plants, foliage plants and bedding/garden plants, making floriculture the third largest U.S. agricultural crop. The U.S. floral industry consists of more than 60,000 small businesses, such as growers, wholesalers, retailers, distributors and importers.” Total revenue for these businesses is over $35 billion annually with 67% of fresh flowers being imported largely from Colombia and Ecuador. Can you name the state leading fresh flower production? California dominates the market with 77% of the US production; Washington produces 6%, Hawaii is at 4%, and Florida, Oregon, and New Jersey each produce 3% of our fresh flowers.

Commercial flower growers are fully aware that higher levels of atmospheric CO2 produce great results in indoor greenhouses, and the industry has dreamed up many creative ways to cheaply produce the magic gas. There is no doubt the CO2 creates better flowers, but maintaining higher levels of CO2 can be expensive and in some cases, not cost effective. Flowers in the real world don’t have to worry about the financial cost of higher levels of atmospheric CO2 - it is coming to them absolutely free given emissions from fossil fuel consumption throughout the world. Flowers today are growing in a world of ever-increasing CO2 levels, and research continues to show us that the flowers are thrilled with the situation.

A recent article on orchids is a case in point. The article appeared in Plant Cell Reports and was written by four scientists from several universities in Japan. While we typically think of orchids as tropical and subtropical flowers for our enjoyment, there are many varieties that grow in temperate and even cold climates. Did you know that vanilla plants are orchids? The underground tubers of some terrestrial orchids can be ground into powder and used in cooking (ground orchid powder shows up in hot beverages and ice cream). Make a trip to Reunion Island and enjoy a rum that is made from the dried leaves of orchids, or if you cannot make the trip, you can purchase any number of perfumes that are derived from the scent of orchids. All of these uses makes us wonder about the future of this highly diverse member of the biosphere.

Norikane et al. grew orchids in glass bottles with atmospheric CO2 concentrations maintained at ambient levels of CO2 (around 380 ppm), 3,000 ppm, and 10,000 ppm to explore what would happen with “super-elevated” levels of CO2; they used cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFL’s) to light the plants throughout the experiment. There is a lot of information in the article, but the plantlets absolutely loved the high levels of CO2. When comparing ambient to 10,000 ppm CO2, the young plantlets increased the number of leaves by 29%, they more than tripled the number of roots, they nearly doubled plant height, root length increased by a factor of six, stem diameter increased by 50%, fresh and dry weight of the shoots nearly tripled, and fresh and dry weight of the roots increased by a factor of 20! They transferred the plantlets and after another 30 days, the goodness kept right on going with benefits to every part of the plants (including the chlorophyll content). In their abstract, Norikane et al. note “growth of plantlets, in particular the roots, was remarkably enhanced” (it is very rare to see scientists referring to their results as remarkable). They state at the very end of the article “we will expect that super-elevated CO2 enrichment under CCFL make possible more efficient and higher quality commercial production of clonal orchid plantlets.”

We all know some guys who have gone down the roses road from time to time and left the orchids for the prom crowd. So, in their interests, we searched around and found this oldie-but-goodie article in The New Phytologist from back in 1985 in which roses were grown with elevated concentrations of CO2. The piece was produced by a scientist with the Agricultural University of Norway and the research was funded by the National Agricultural Research Council and the Royal Ministry of Petroleum and Energy of Norway (very interesting).

Mortensen grew roses (Rosa ‘Mercedes’ in growth chambers with atmospheric CO2 maintained at 330 ppm and 1,000 ppm. The plants increased their dry weight by 21% thanks to the extra CO2. Mortensen also grew two varieties of African violets in these chambers, and their dry weights increased by 40.8 and 58.3% given elevated CO2. The violets increased the number of plants producing flowers, the elevated CO2 decreased the number of days to flowering by a full week, and the number of flowers and flowerbuds more than doubled in the chambers with elevated CO2. Maybe you prefer mums instead of orchids, roses, or violets? You guessed it - Mortensen grew two variety of mums as well, and the elevated CO2 caused them to increase their dry weight by 27.8% and 67.1%.

We could go on and on - Mortensen grew lettuce, cucumbers, tomato, moss, ivy, and other flowers, and the CO2 effect on dry weight ranged from 21.4% for the roses to 74.0% for the lettuce. More reasons for happiness, more reasons to give flowers, and more reasons to welcome higher levels of CO2.

References:

Mortensen, L.M. 1985. Nitrogen oxides produced during CO2 enrichment. I. Effects on different greenhouse plants. The New Phytologist, 101, 103-108.

Norikane, A., T. Takamura, M. Morokuma, and M. Tanaka. 2010. In vitro growth and single-leaf photosynthetic response of Cymbidium plantlets to super-elevated CO2 under cold cathode fluorescent lamps. Plant Cell Reports, 29, 273–283.

Recently, in conjunction with publication of my new book, Merchants of Despair, which exposes the crimes of the global Malthusian movement, I was interviewed on the radio by a liberal talk show host. When I brought up the issue of race- or caste-targeted forced sterilization programs instituted in Peru, India, and many other Third World countries with USAID and World Bank funds, the host chose to deal with the matter by pooh-poohing the existence of these atrocities.

I was shocked. These programs are not secret, and their horrors have received some, if less-than-deserved, coverage in the mainstream media. Indeed, the members of the Fujimori government were brought to trial and convicted of genocide for their enforcement of such policies. Yet here was this liberal gentleman, supposedly an anti-racist and feminist, a self-proclaimed defender of the poor and the helpless, shrugging off massive violations of human rights and extraordinary crimes directed against women, infants, and people of color. In amazement I blurted out, “This is a holocaust, and you should not be denying it!”

Then it hit me. I was dealing with a holocaust denier.

Indeed, the entire environmentalist movement consists of holocaust deniers, who continue to refuse to look at or admit the existence of the carnage they have created and continue to perpetuate worldwide.

So let’s look at the record.

Some of the worst atrocities can be laid at the feet of the population control ideologues such as Paul Ehrlich and his co-thinkers who argued - in direct contradiction to historical fact - that human well-being is inversely proportional to human numbers. As a result of their agitation, since 1966 U.S. foreign aid and World Bank loans to Third World countries have been made contingent upon those nations implementing population control programs. In consequence, over the past four decades, in scores of countries spanning the globe from India to Peru, tens of millions of women have been rounded up and subjected to involuntary sterilizations or abortions, often under very unsafe conditions, with innumerable victims suffering severe health effects or dying afterwards.

Ehrlich also called for the United States to create a Bureau of Population and Environment which would have the power to issue or deny permits to Americans to have children. While rejected here, this idea was adopted by the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, who were convinced of the necessity of such measures by the writings of the Club of Rome after these were plagiarized and republished in China under the name of one of its top officials. Thus was born China’s infamous “one-child policy,” which has involved not only hundreds of millions of involuntary abortions and forced sterilizations, but infanticide and the killing of “llegal children” on a mass scale.

The anti-technology wing of the antihuman movement also has its share of human extermination to account for. The pesticide DDT was first employed by the U.S. Army to stop a typhus epidemic in Naples which had been created by the retreating Germans through their destruction of that city’s sanitation system. Subsequently, Allied forces used it in all theaters to save millions of diseased-ravaged victims of Axis tyranny, and after the war employed it to wipe out malaria in the American south, southern Europe, and much of south Asia and Latin America. The benefits of these campaigns were unprecedented. As the National Academy of Sciences put it in a 1970 report:

To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT. It has contributed to the great increase of agricultural productivity, while sparing countless humanity from a host of diseases, most notably perhaps, scrub typhus and malaria. Indeed, it is estimated that in little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million deaths due to malaria that would otherwise have been inevitable.

But the role of DDT in saving half a billion lives did not positively impress everyone. On the contrary, as Alexander King, the co-founder of the Club of Rome put it in his 1990 biography, “my chief quarrel with DDT in hindsight is that it has greatly added to the population problem.” Of course, such reasoning would carry little appeal to the American public. Much better ammunition was provided by Rachel Carson, who in her 1962 book, Silent Spring, had made an eloquent case that DDT was endangering bird populations. This was false. In fact, by eliminating their insect parasites and infection agents, DDT was helping bird numbers to grow significantly.  No matter. Using Carson’s book and even more wild writing by Ehrlich (who in a 1969 Ramparts article predicted that pesticides would cause all life in the Earth’s oceans to die by 1979), a massive propaganda campaign was launched to ban DDT.

In 1971, the newly formed Environmental Protection Agency responded by holding seven months of investigative hearings on the subject, gathering testimony from 125 witnesses. At the end of this process, Judge Edmund Sweeney issued his verdict: “The uses of DDT under the registration involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds, or other wildlife. … DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man.” No matter. EPA administrator William Ruckelshaus (who would later go on to be a board member of the Draper Fund, a leading population control group), chose to overrule Sweeney and ban the use of DDT in the United States. Subsequently, the U.S. Agency for International Development adopted regulations preventing it from funding international projects that used DDT. Together with similar decisions enacted in Europe, this effectively banned the use of DDT in many Third World countries. By some estimates, the malaria death toll in Africa alone resulting from these restrictions has exceeded 100 million people, with 3 million additional deaths added to the toll every year.

The harm done by the EPA, itself a creation of the environmental movement, has not been limited to stopping DDT. It is no coincidence that U.S. oil production, which had been growing at a rate of 3 percent per year through the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, peaked in 1971, immediately after the EPA’s creation, and has been declining ever since. In 1971, the U.S. produced 9.6 million barrels of oil per day (mpd).  Today we are down to 5.6 mpd. Had we continued without environmentalist interference with our previous 3 percent per year growth in the period since - as the rest of the non-OPEC world actually did - we would today be producing 35 mpd, and the world economy would not be groaning under the extremely regressive tax represented by $100 per barrel oil prices. The environmentalist campaign against nuclear power has made its promise for plentiful, cheap electricity impossible as well.

The genocidal effect of such support for energy price-rigging should not be underestimated. Increasing the price of energy increases the price of all other products. It is one thing to pay $100 per barrel for oil in a nation like the USA which has an average income of $45,000 per year. It is quite another to pay it in a Third World country with an average income of $1500 per year. An oil price stiff enough to cause recession in the advanced sector can cause mass starvation among the world’s poor.

European greens also have much horror to account for, notably through their campaign against genetically modified crops. Hundreds of millions of people in the Third World today suffer from nutritional deficiencies resulting from their cereal-dominated diets. This can now readily be rectified by employing genetically enhanced plants, such as golden rice, which is rich in vitamin A.  Other genetically modified crops offer protection against iron or other vitamin deficiency diseases, dramatically increased yields, self-fertilization, and drought or insect resistance. But as a result of political pressure from the green parties, the European Union has banned the import of crops from countries that employ such strains, thereby blackmailing many governments into forbidding their use. In consequence, millions of people are being unnecessarily blinded, crippled, starved, or killed every year.

Taken together, these campaigns to deny billions of people the means to a decent existence have racked up a death toll exceeding that achieved by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or any of the other tyrants whose crimes fill the sordid pages of human history.  It is ironic that the perpetrators of this holocaust have chosen to affix the term “deniers” to those who refuse to endorse their proposal to radically expand it via a global program of mass human sacrifice for the purpose of weather control. In fact it is they, who call upon us to harden our hearts to “the inconvenient truth” that allegedly requires such suffering, who are the real new deniers; deniers not just of a past holocaust that rightfully commands our grief, but a present one, whose desperate victims still plead for our action.

Dr. Robert Zubrin is president of Pioneer Astronautics, a Senior Fellow with the Center for Security Policy, and the author of “Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil”. His newest book, “Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism” has just been published by Encounter Books.

See how PSU Ethics Professor Donald Brown and Michael Mann is guilty as charged here. Also Bill Nye the science guy.

I’ve told this story before but it requires repeating because of awareness of climate science corruption. Even skeptics realize claims of incompetence are inadequate. Official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) climate science was completely orchestrated for a premeditated result. T.R.Wigley’s 1983 paper “The pre-industrial carbon dioxide level” was pivotal in the evolution of climate science corruption. It was a flawed paper that cherry-picked data to claim pre-industrial CO2 level was 270 ppm. G.S. Callendar did the same thing (diagram), as Zbigniew Jaworowski illustrated in a paper to a 2004 US Senate Committee.


Enlarged

There are 90,000 samples from which Callendar selected a few. Notice they also change the slope of the trend, to show a steady rise from 1750.

Results were required to prove the IPCC claim.

“Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values determined from ice cores spanning many thousands of years.”

Ernst-Georg Beck confirmed Jaworowski’s work.

Modern greenhouse hypothesis is based on the work of G.S. Callendar and C.D. Keeling, following S. Arrhenius, as latterly popularized by the IPCC. Review of available literature raise the question if these authors have systematically discarded a large number of valid technical papers and older atmospheric CO2 determinations because they did not fit their hypothesis? Obviously they use only a few carefully selected values from the older literature, invariably choosing results that are consistent with the hypothesis of an induced rise of CO2 in air caused by the burning of fossil fuel.

Ice cores provide the historic record and Mauna Loa the recent. Both were designed to produce a smooth linking curve of increasing CO2.

Initially, Antarctic ice cores were ‘proof’ of CO2 creating temperature increase and low pre-industrial levels. Then we learned temperature increase preceded CO2 increase and levels were similar to today. The former was widely accepted and contradicted the major assumption of the hypothesis, so recently Shakun et al tried, unsuccessfully, to reassert the claim. The latter claim was contradicted by Jaworowski but essentially ignored.

“The basis of most of the IPCC conclusions on anthropogenic causes and on projections of climatic change is the assumption of low level of CO2 in the pre-industrial atmosphere. This assumption, based on glaciological studies, is false.”

In climate science, vehemence of personal attacks are directly proportional to the truth of the claim and qualifications of the author. Jaworowski’s attacks were nasty and unrelenting.

Glaciers, develop when snowfall survives summer melt and layers accumulate. Gradually snow changes to ice from heat and pressure of additional layers. This creates two larger layers divided by the firn-ice transition. On top is the brittle layer where cracks (crevasses) form and below the plastic layer where ice flows and annual layers blend and are deformed. In an understatement Wikipedia says,

“Dating the air with respect to the ice it is trapped in is problematic.”

and

“Trapping depth varies with climatic conditions, so the air-ice age difference could vary between 2500 and 6000 years.”

Dating errors, critical in climate science, occur with different methods.

“Five different dating methods have been used for Vostok cores, with differences such as 300 years at 100 m depth, 600yr at 200 m, 7000yr at 400 m, 5000yr at 800 m, 6000yr at 1600 m, and 5000yr at 1934 m.”

How much climate change occurs in 5- 6000 years?

Other problems with the ice cores include meltwater moving through the ice; Bacteria in the ice releasing gases even in 500,000-year-old ice at great depth; and contamination and losses during drilling and core recovery process. Jaworowski wrote,

“Until 1985, the published CO2 readings from the air bubbles in the pre-industrial ice ranged from 160 to about 700 ppmv, and occasionally even up to 2,450 ppmv. After 1985, high readings disappeared from the publications.”

Beck found,

“Since 1812, the CO2 concentration in northern hemispheric air has fluctuated exhibiting three high level maxima around 1825, 1857 and 1942 the latter showing more than 400 ppm.”

Here is his plot comparing 19th century readings with ice core and Mauna Loa data.

Enlarged

The ice core record is shown as a smooth curve achieved by eliminating extreme readings and applying a 70 year smoothing average. Eliminating variability is done with the Mauna Loa and all current atmospheric readings, which can vary up to 600 ppm in the course of a day. Information is lost with smoothing. Elimination of high readings prior to smoothing makes loss greater. Statistician William Briggs says you never smooth a time series.

Beck explained that Charles Keeling established Mauna Loa readings using the lowest afternoon measures. Beck notes

“Mauna Loa does not represent the typical atmospheric CO2 on different global locations but is typical only for this volcano at a maritime location in about 4000 m altitude at that latitude.”

Keeling’s son now operates the facility and,

“owns the global monopoly of calibration of all CO2 measurements.”

He’s also co-author of the IPCC reports based on his readings.

Another CO2 measurement provides evidence of smoothing effects and artificially low readings. Stomata, small openings on leaves, vary directly with atmospheric CO2 levels. Stomata records compared with ice core record for a 2000-year period illustrates the issue.

Stomata readings are higher with greater variability as Jaworowski and Beck assert.

Pre-industrial CO2 level was not lower than current levels and both are low in the entire geologic record. Climate models assume pre-industrial levels were lower and CO2 increase causes temperature increase. IPCC predictions are consistently wrong because falsified data and incorrect assumptions produce inaccurate results, but that was their goal.

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See also how Hansen and IPCC projections measure uop relative to other non AGW (CO2 driven) projections here.

Rational thought underlies conservative Christian views on climate change and the environment

David R. Legates

Although he has rarely been willing to discuss or debate energy or environmental issues with those who do not share his views, environmentalist David Suzuki frequently
challenges them on other grounds.  In his recent article, “Religious Right is wrong about climate change,” Suzuki claims that some US and Canadian scientists hold religious views that are anti-science. 

Suzuki asserts that some climate scientists - including me, by name - put “misguided beliefs above rational thought.” His implicit assumption is that conservative Christian views are irrational and incompatible with science, and that I have replaced Almighty God with the “almighty dollar,” believing the economy matters more than the environment.

As a coauthor of the Cornwall Alliance’s Renewed Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Examination of the Theology, Science and Economics of Global Warming, which forms the basis for the Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming that Suzuki criticizes, I know the Cornwall Alliance fully and carefully integrates scientific, economic, ethical and theological reasoning to support its conclusions. There’s nothing at all irrational about it - unless you consider religion irrational per se.
However, Suzuki is correct regarding one aspect of my belief: the economy does matter as much as the environment. Good environmental stewardship requires sound financial footing - and improving and safeguarding human health and welfare requires maintaining a strong, vibrant, innovative economy that can sustain continued environmental progress.

When a country is in dire need of food, clothing, shelter and other necessities for life, it cannot possibly be concerned with environmental issues. The poor people of India pour untreated sewage into the Ganges River - and then draw their drinking and “cleaning” water from it. So poor that they’re desperate simply for survival, they cannot possibly concern themselves with environmental stewardship. Only when economic improvements allow technological advancements to increase the quality of life, provide ample food and clothing, house citizens, provide clean drinking water, and treat and eradicate diseases can a thus wealthier society turn its attention to caring for the environment.

That is precisely what has happened in more developed nations. As the United States and Canada advanced economically, we developed technologies and policies that increased our quality and length of life. In turn, this has led us to be more proactive with our environmental stewardship.

We emit far less pollution and waste today, both per person and per unit of production, than we did fifty years ago. We feed more people with every parcel of land, we get more energy from every drop of oil, we are more efficient at everything we do, and we are much better stewards of our environment. But none of that could have occurred without a strong and developing economy.

Unfortunately, some so-called environmentalists wish to keep Africa and other developing nations in perpetual underdevelopment. They pay them off to be “environmentally conscious,” by giving them handouts - food and monetary aid - to keep them alive and perhaps have little solar panels on their huts. But they also ensure that those poor families never prosper or become middle class - so as to perpetuate environmentalist notions of “noble natives,” supposedly “at one” with their environment and living a “sustainable” existence.

Equally harmful, much of that money is lost to corruption, while the people are forced to continue living in a state of poverty, disease, malnutrition and deprivation, as technologies that could enhance their length and quality of life are denied to them. Among the technologies denied are modern seeds, fertilizers, and high-tech, high-yield farming methods to increase food supplies; natural gas and electricity to heat homes and cook food, instead of cutting down forests and burning wood, thereby degrading indoor air quality and causing lethal lung infections; refrigeration so that people do not have to choose between eating spoiled food and going hungry; and the use of insecticides, including the powerful insect repellant DDT, to spare them from the agonizing illness and death brought on by malaria.

Each of these enhancements requires plentiful, dependable, affordable energy. Yet in the name of “saving the planet” or “preventing cataclysmic climate change,” environmentalists like Suzuki deny developing countries the modern technologies and energy they need to improve their lives and environment - thereby perpetuating high infant mortality, significantly shortened life spans, and greatly decreased quality of life.

Climate alarmism is the rationale for these deadly policies - and that is where political ideology mixes with the new religion of environmentalism. Overstated or non-existent threats to the environment, along with impractical or imaginary ways to prevent the purported threats, are the new scripture on which the adherents develop their theologies and policies for directing and micromanaging the course of human events. Unfortunately, these eco-religionists never encounter (or intentionally avert their eyes from) the misery and devastation that their policies dramatically inflict on the world’s poorest people.  That is because they are too concerned with “saving the planet.”

Back in North America, some wish to have energy rationed or be made increasingly expensive, creating artificial fuel poverty for millions.  Such policies will make food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and medical care - in short, everything - more expensive and scarce, create more unemployed workers, push many people back into conditions of poverty and deprivation, and gravely impair human health and welfare.  This strategy will not save the planet, as they hope, because one of its first casualties will be environmental stewardship. History and human nature both testify that, forced by economic limits to choose between a cleaner environment and food on the table, people always choose food.

In the Parable of the Talents, Jesus told of a master who gave one of his servants a single talent, and then condemned him for hiding it in the earth and not putting it to use. Often we think of the talent only as money or ability, but it really stands for every resource - including natural resources. How will the Master of all creation judge us if we hide our resources in the earth, and then on Judgment Day say, “Behold, you have what is yours”?

If we do not use the resources God has set before us in the earth to care for those in need, our Creator will likely condemn us, saying: “You kept buried what I gave you, instead of using and investing it. You failed to employ my gifts to care for the poor, the hungry, the sick, and those who were dying from disease. You have been worthless, irresponsible stewards of my creation.” We would deserve the same fate as the servant the master called “wicked and lazy.”

I fail to understand how anyone thinking rationally can argue that poverty and economic hardship will enhance environmental stewardship, or that the planet is more important than the people who live on it.  PDF
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David R. Legates is a Professor of Climatology at the University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware, USA.  He is a Christian and a senior fellow of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.

Steve Goddard, Real Science Blog

NOAA’s extreme weather expert, Martin Hoerling, slammed Hansen on Andy Revkin’s blog yesterday.

“Over the next several decades, the Western United States and the semi-arid region from North Dakota to Texas will develop semi-permanent drought, with rain, when it does come, occurring in extreme events with heavy flooding. Economic losses would be incalculable. More and more of the Midwest would be a dust bowl. California’s Central Valley could no longer be irrigated. Food prices would rise to unprecedented levels.”

He doesnt define “several decades,” but a reasonable assumption is that he refers to a period from today through mid-century. I am unaware of any projection for “semi-permanent” drought in this time frame over the expansive region of the Central Great Plains. He implies the drought will be due to a lack of rain (except for the brief, and ineffective downpours). I am unaware of indications, from model projections, for a material decline in mean rainfall. Indeed, that region has seen a general increase in rainfall over the long term during most seasons (certainly no material decline). Also, for the warm season when evaporative loss is especially effective, the climate of the central Great Plains has not become materially warmer (perhaps even cooled) since 1900. In other words, climate conditions in the growing season of the Central Great Plains are today not materially different from those existing 100 years ago. This observational fact belies the expectations from climate simulations and, in truth, our science lacks a good explanation for this discrepancy.

The Hansen piece is policy more than it is science, to be sure, and one can read it for the former. But facts should, and do, matter to some. The vision of a Midwest Dustbowl is a scary one, and the author appears intent to instill fear rather than reason.

The article makes these additional assertions:

“The global warming signal is now louder than the noise of random weather…

This is patently false. Take temperature over the U.S. as an example. The variability of daily temperature over the U.S. is much larger than the anthropogenic warming signal at the time scales of local weather. Depending on season and location, the disparity is at least a factor of 5 to 10.

I think that a more scientifically justifiable statement, at least for the U.S. and extratropical land areas is that daily weather noise continues to drum out the siren call of climate change on local, weather scales.

Hansen goes on to assert that:

“Extremely hot summers have increased noticeably. We can say with high confidence that the recent heat waves in Texas and Russia, and the one in Europe in 2003, which killed tens of thousands, were not natural events - they were caused by human-induced climate change.”

Published scientific studies on the Russian heat wave indicate this claim to be false. Our own study on the Texas heat wave and drought, submitted this week to the Journal of Climate, likewise shows that that event was not caused by human-induced climate change. These are not de novoevents, but upon scientific scrutiny, one finds both the Russian and Texas extreme events to be part of the physics of what has driven variability in those regions over the past century. This is not to say that climate change didn’t contribute to those cases, but their intensity owes to natural, not human, causes.

Enlarged

The closing comment by Hansen is then all the more ironic, though not surprising knowing he often writes from passion and not reason:

“The science of the situation is clear - it’s time for the politics to follow.”

Let me borrow from a recent excellent piece in New Scientist by tornado expert Dr. Harold Brooks regarding the global warming and tornado debate, and state:

“Those who continue to talk in certain terms of how local weather extremes are the result of human climate change are failing to heed all the available evidence.”

Varied Views on Extreme Weather in a Warming Climate - NYTimes.com

Steve Goddard also shows here how In 1999, Hansen himself said that he didn’t see much happening in the US.

Empirical evidence does not lend much support to the notion that climate is headed precipitately toward more extreme heat and drought. The drought of 1999 covered a smaller area than the 1988 drought, when the Mississippi almost dried up. And 1988 was a temporary inconvenience as compared with repeated droughts during the 1930s “Dust Bowl” that caused an exodus from the prairies, as chronicled in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.

Enlarged

Steve goes on to show “Need your climate adjusted? - call Dr. James Hansen at GISS. Below is a chronology of the destruction of the data for Hansen’s political cause.”

By P Gosselin on 9. May 2012

Meteorologist Klaus-Eckard Puls

Physicist and meteorologist Klaus-Eckart Puls was interviewed by Bettina Hahne-Waldscheck of the Swiss magazine “factum”.

I’ve translated and summarised the interview, paraphrasing for brevity.

factum: You’ve been criticizing the theory of man-made global warming for years. How did you become skeptical?

Puls: Ten years ago I simply parroted what the IPCC told us. One day I started checking the facts and data - first I started with a sense of doubt but then I became outraged when I discovered that much of what the IPCC and the media were telling us was sheer nonsense and was not even supported by any scientific facts and measurements. To this day I still feel shame that as a scientist I made presentations of their science without first checking it. The CO2-climate hysteria in Germany is propagated by people who are in it for lots of money, attention and power.

factum: Is there really climate change?

Puls: Climate change is normal. There have always been phases of climate warming, many that even far exceeded the extent we see today. But there hasn’t been any warming since 1998. In fact the IPCC suppliers of data even show a slight cooling.

factum: The IPCC is projecting 0.2C warming per decade, i.e. 2 to 4C by the year 2100. What’s your view?

Puls: These are speculative model projections, so-called scenarios - and not prognoses. Because of climate’s high complexity, reliable prognoses just aren’t possible. Nature does what it wants, and not what the models prophesize. The entire CO2-debate is nonsense. Even if CO2 were doubled, the temperature would rise only 1C. The remainder of the IPCC’s assumed warming is based purely on speculative amplification mechanisms. Even though CO2 has risen, there has been no warming in 13 years.

factum: How does sea level rise look?

Puls: Sea level rise has slowed down. Moreover, it has dropped a half centimeter over the last 2 years. It’s important to remember that mean sea level is a calculated magnitude, and not a measured one.  There are a great number of factors that influence sea level, e.g. tectonic processes, continental shifting, wind currents, passats, volcanoes. Climate change is only one of ten factors.

factum: What have we measured at the North Sea?

Puls:In the last 400 years, sea level at the North Sea coast has risen about 1.40 meters. That’s about 35 centimeters per century. In the last 100 years, the North Sea has risen only 25 centimeters.

factum: Does the sea level rise have anything to do with the melting North Pole?

Puls: That’s a misleading conclusion. Even if the entire North Pole melted, there would be no sea level rise because of the principles of buoyancy.

factum: Is the melting of the glaciers in the Alps caused by global warming?

Puls: There are many factors at play. As one climbs a mountain, the temperature drops about 0.65C per 100 meters. Over the last 100 years it has gotten about 0.75°C warmer and so the temperature boundary has shifted up about 100 meters. But observations tell us that also ice 1000 meters up and higher has melted. Clearly there are other reasons for this, namely soot and dust. But soot and dust do not only have anthropogenic origins; they are also caused by nature via volcanoes, dust storms and wildfires. Advancing and retreating of glaciers have always taken place throughout the Earth’s history. Glaciology studies clearly show that glaciers over the last 10,0000 years were smaller on average than today.

factum: In your view, melting Antarctic sea ice and the fracture of a huge iceberg 3 years ago are nothing to worry about?

Puls: To the contrary, the Antarctic ice cap has grown both in area and volume over the last 30 years, and temperature has declined. This 30-year trend is clear to see. The Amundsen Scott Station of the USA shows that temperature has been declining there since 1957. 90% of the Earth’s ice is stored in Antarctica, which is one and half times larger than Europe.

factum: Then why do we always read it is getting warmer down there?

Puls: Here they are only talking about the West Antarctic peninsula, which is where the big chunk of ice broke off in 2008 - from the Wilkins-Shelf. This area is hardly 1% of the entire area of Antarctica, but it is exposed to Southern Hemisphere west wind drift and some of the strongest storms on the planet.

factum: What causes such massive chunks of ice to break off?

Puls: There are lots of factors, among them the intensity of the west wind fluctuations. These west winds have intensified over the last 20 years as part of natural ocean and atmospheric cycles, and so it has gotten warmer on the west coast of the Antarctic peninsula. A second factor are the larger waves associated with the stronger storms. The waves are more powerful and so they break off more ice. All these causes are meteorological and physical, and have nothing to do with a climate catastrophe.

factum: Then such ice breaks had to have occurred in the past too?

Puls: This has been going on for thousands of years, also in the 1970s, back when all the talk was about “global cooling”. Back then there were breaks with ice chunks hundreads of square kilometers in area. People were even discussing the possibilities of towing these huge ice chunks to dry countries like South Africa or Namibia in order to use them as a drinking water supply.

factum: What about all the media photos of polar bears losing their ice?

Puls: That is one of the worst myths used for generating climate hysteria. Polar bears don’t eat ice, they eat seals. Polar bears go hungry if we shoot their food supply of seals. The polar bear population has increased with moderately rising temperatures, from 5000 50 years ago to 25,000 today.

factum: But it is true that unlike Antarctica, the Arctic is melting?

Puls: It has been melting for 30 years. That also happened twice already in the last 150 years. The low point was reached in 2007 and the ice has since begun to recover. There have always been phases of Arctic melting. Between 900 and 1300 Greenland was green on the edges and the Vikings settled there.

factum: And what do you say about the alleged expanding deserts?

Puls: That doesn’t exist. For example the Sahara is shrinking and has lost in the north an area as large as Germany over the last 20 years. The same is true in the South Sahara. The famine that struck Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia was mainly caused by the leasing of large swaths of land to large international corporations so that they could grow crops for biofuels for Europe, and by war. But it is much easier for prosperous Europe to blame the world’s political failures on a fictional climate catastrophe instead.

factum: So we don’t need to do anything against climate change?

Puls: There’s nothing we can do to stop it. Scientifically it is sheer absurdity to think we can get a nice climate by turning a CO2 adjustment knob. Many confuse environmental protection with climate protection. it’s impossible to protect the climate, but we can protect the environment and our drinking water. On the debate concerning alternative energies, which is sensible, it is often driven by the irrational climate debate. One has nothing to do with the other.

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See 10 Theses of Contention on the Power and Efficacy of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’ Theory by Jorge Gato.

Addresses by Vaclav Klaus, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, NASA astronauts supplement panels on science and economics of climate change

The Heartland Institute today announced a finalized schedule for the Seventh International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC-7), taking place in Chicago on May 21–23. Speaking at dinner Monday night will be Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who holds a Ph.D. in economics and has been a vocal critic of climate change alarmism.

Breakfast on Tuesday, May 22 will feature a panel discussion by two Apollo astronauts - Harrison Schmitt (Apollo 17) and Walter Cunningham (Apollo 7) - as well as two former NASA engineers. They will discuss why they signed a letter with dozens of other NASA alumni warning the agency that its promotion of “unproven and unsupported remarks” on global warming is damaging NASA’s reputation.

At lunch on Tuesday, May 22, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) vice-chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, will deliver a speech and take questions from the audience. Sensenbrenner’s committee has jurisdiction over the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, NASA, NOAA, and several other federal agencies.

See more details below, or here to view a full schedule.

What: Seventh International Conference on Climate Change.

Theme: Real Science, Real Choices

Where: Hilton Chicago, 720 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL

When: Monday, May 21 - Wednesday, May 23, 2012, overlapping the NATO Summit also taking place in Chicago, on May 19-21.

Media: Open to all media. Request here.

The Heartland Institute will be joined by dozens of think tank cosponsors and hundreds of scientists who understand the need for a real debate about the causes, consequences, and policy implications of climate change.

This year’s theme is “Real Science, Real Choices.” Each of 11 panel discussions and eight keynote/meal presentations will address a particular issue or aspect of the climate change debate. Check out the schedule page often for regular updates on the conference.

Some highlights of the conference include:

Some keynote addresses:

Joe Bastardi of WeatherBELL: Global Sea Ice, Accumulated Cyclone Energy, and How it Explains the Climate

Roger Helmer, Member of the European Parliament (MEP), Great Britain

Sebastian Lüning, author, Die kalte Sonne (The Cold Sun): The Medieval Warm Period within the Context of Millennial Scale Climate Cycles

Brian Sussman, author, Eco-Tyranny and Climategate: Global Whining

Titles of some of the 11 panel discussions:

Climate History and Physics
Extreme Weather Events
Attribution: What Causes Climate Change?
Measuring Climate Change and its Impacts
Limits of Renewable Energy
Social and Economic Factors

Visit the conference web site for full information, including promotional videos, speaker bios, schedule, logistical information, and more.

Attendance Information

ICCC-7 is open to the public. [http://climateconference.heartland.org/general-registration/]Registration is required]].

Deadline to register is May 18. More information is available at the [http://climateconference.heartland.org/]conference Web site]].

For media credentials, here or contact Tammy Nash at tnash@heartland.org or 312/377-4000. For more information about The Heartland Institute, visit our Web site or contact Jim Lakely at jlakely@heartland.org or 312/377-4000.

For those of you who cannot join us be sure to follow the live stream via our website here. Get Twitter updates of the conference by following @HeartlandInst and the hashtag #ICCC7.

By John R. Christy and Roy W. Spencer
University of Alabama in Huntsville

A new paper by Stephen Po-Chedley and Quang Fu (2012) (hereafter PCF) was sent to us at the end of April 2012 in page-proof form as an article to appear soon in the Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology. The topic of the paper is an analysis of a single satellite’s impact on the rarely-used, multi-satellite deep-layer global temperature of the mid-troposphere or TMT. Some of you have been waiting for our response, but this was delayed by the fact that one of us (J. Christy) was out of the country when the UW press release was issued and just returned on Tuesday the 8th.

There are numerous incorrect and misleading assumptions in this paper. Neither one of us was aware of the paper until it was sent to us by Po-Chedley two weeks ago, so the paper was written and reviewed in complete absence of the authors of the dataset itself. In some cases this might be a normal activity, but in a situation where complicated algorithms are involved, it is clear that PCF did not have a sufficient understanding of the construction methodology.

By way of summary, here are our main conclusions regarding the new PCF paper:

1) the authors’ methodology is qualitative and irreproducible

2) the author’s are uninformed on the complexity of the UAH satellite merging algorithm

3) the authors use the RSS (Remotes Sensing Systems) satellite dataset as “verification” for their proposed UAH NOAA-9 calibration target adjustment for TMT, but barely mention that their TLT (lower tropospheric) results are insignificant and that trends are essentially identical between UAH and RSS without any adjustment in the NOAA-9 calibration coefficient

4) the authors neglected the main TMT differences among the datasets - and instead try to explain the UAH v. RSS trend difference by only two years of NOAA-9 data, while missing all of the publications which document other issues such as RSS problems with applying the diurnal correction.

The paper specifically claims to show that a calibration target coefficient of one satellite, NOAA-9, should be a value different than that calculated directly from empirical data in UAH’s version of the dataset. With an adjustment to the time series guesstimated by PCF, this increases the UAH overall global trend by +0.042 C/decade. Their new UAH trend, being +0.042 warmer, then becomes the same as the TMT trend from RSS. This, they conclude, indicates a verification of their exercise.

More importantly, with regard to the most publicized UAH dataset, the temperature of the lower troposphere (TLT), there was no similar analysis done by PCF - an indication that their re-calculations would not support their desired outcome for this dataset, as we shall demonstrate below.

All of this will soon be moot, anyway. Since last year we have been working on v6.0 of the UAH datasets which should be ready with the tropospheric temperature datasets before summer is out. These will include (1) a new, more defensible objective empirical calculation to correct for the drift of the satellites through the diurnal cycle, and (2) a new hot calibration target effective emissivity adjustment which results in better agreement between simultaneously operating satellites at the calibration step, making the post-calibration hot-target adjustment PCF criticizes unnecessary. So, since our new v6.0 dataset is close to completion and submission for publication, we have chosen this venue to document PCF’s misinformation in a rather informal, but reproducible, way rather than bother to submit a journal rebuttal addressing the older dataset. However, to show that version 5.4 of our datasets was credible, we discuss these issues below.

The Lower Tropospheric Temperatures (TLT)

We shall return to TMT below, but most of the research and popular use of the UAH datasets have focused on the lower tropospheric temperature, or TLT (surface to about 300 hPa, i.e. without stratospheric impact). Thus, we shall begin our discussion with TLT because it is rightly seen as a more useful variable because it documents the bulk heat content of the troposphere with very little influence from the stratosphere. And [this is important in the TMT discussion] the same hot-target coefficients for NOAA-9 were used in TLT as in TMT.

PCF focused on the deep layer TMT, i.e. temperature of the surface to about 75 hPa, which includes quite a bit of signal above 300 hPa. As such, TMT includes a good portion of the lower stratosphere - a key weakness when utilizing radiosondes which went through significant changes and adjustments during this time. [This was a period when many stations converted to the Vaisala 80 radiosonde which introduced temperature shifts throughout the atmosphere (Christy and Norris 2004).]

As indicated in their paper, it seems PCF’s goal was to explain the differences in trend between RSS and UAH, but the history of this effort has always been to find error with UAH’s products rather than in other products (as we shall see below). With us shut out of the peer-review cycle it is easy to assume an underlying bias of the authors.

Lord Kelvin told us that “All science is numbers”, so here are some numbers. First, let’s look at the “global” trends of UAH and RSS for TLT (70S to 82.5N) for Jan 1979 to Apr 2012:

+0.137 C/decade UAH LT (70S-82.5N)
+0.134 C/decade RSS LT (70S-82.5N)

These trends are, for all practical purposes, identical. This, however, hides the fact that there are indeed differences between the two time series that, for one reason or another, are balanced out when calculating the linear trend over the entire 30+ year period. As several papers have documented (see Christy et al. 2011, or C11, for the list – by the way, C11 was not cited by PCF) the evidence indicates RSS contains a spurious warming in the 1990’s then a spurious cooling from around 2002 onward (note that the RSS temperature anomaly for last month, April, 2012, was 0.08C cooler than our UAH anomaly).

This behavior arises, we believe, from an over-correction of the drift of the satellites by RSS (in the 1990’s the satellites drifted to cooler times of day, so the correction must add warming, and in the 2000’s the satellites drifted to warmer times of day so a correction is needed to cool things down.) These corrections are needed (except for the Aqua satellite operating since 2002, which has no diurnal drift and which we use as an anchor in the UAH dataset) but if not of the right magnitude they will easily affect the trend.

In a single paragraph, PCF admit that the UAH TLT time series has no significant hot-target relationship with radiosonde comparisons (which for TLT are more robust) over the NOAA-9 period. However, they then utilize circular reasoning to claim that since RSS and UAH have a bit of disagreement in that 2-year period, and RSS must be correct, that then means UAH has a problem. So, this type of logic, as stated by PCF, points to their bias - assume that RSS is correct which then implies UAH is the problem. This requires one to ignore the many publications that show the opposite.

Note too that in their press release, PCF claim that observations and models now are closer together for this key parameter (temperature of the bulk troposphere) if one artificially increases the trend in UAH data. This is a questionable claim as evidence shows TLT for CMIP3 and CMIP5 models averages about +0.26C/decade (beginning in 1979) whereas UAH *and* RSS datasets are slightly below +0.14C/decade, about a factor of 2 difference between models and observations. We shall let the reader decide if the PCF press-release claim is accurate.

The key point for the discussion here (and below) is that TLT uses the same hot-target coefficients as TMT, yet we see no problem related to it for the many evaluation studies we have published. Indeed this was the specific result found in Christy and Norris 2004 - again, work not cited by PCF.

The Mid-Tropospheric Temperature (TMT)

About 12 years ago we discovered that even though two different satellites were looking at the same globe at the same time, there were differences in their measurements beyond a simple bias (time-invariant offset). We learned that these were related to the variations in the temperature of the instrument itself. If the instrument warmed or cooled (differing solar angles as it orbited or drifted), so did the calculated temperature. We used the thermistors embedded in the hot-target plate to track the instrument temperature, hence the metric is often called the “hot target temperature coefficient.”

To compensate for this error, we devised a method to calculate a coefficient that when multiplied by the hot target temperature would remove this variation for each satellite. Note that the coefficients were calculated from the satellite data, they were not estimated in an ad hoc fashion.

The calculation of this coefficient depends on a number of things, (a) the magnitude of the already-removed satellite drift correction (i.e. diurnal correction), (b) the way the inter-satellite differences are smoothed, and (c) the sequence in which the satellites are merged.

Since UAH and RSS perform these processes differently, the coefficients so calculated will be different. Again recall that the UAH (and RSS) coefficients are calculated from a system of equations, they are not invented. The coefficients are calculated to produce the largest decrease in inter-satellite error characteristics in each dataset.

To make a long story short, PCF focused on the 26-month period of NOAA-9 operation, basically 1985-86. They then used radiosondes over this period to estimate the hot-target coefficient as +0.048 rather than UAH’s calculated value of +0.0986. [Note, the language in PCF is confusing, as we cannot tell if they conclude our coefficient is too high by 0.051 or should actually be 0.051. We shall assume they believe our coefficient is too high by 0.051 to give them the benefit of the doubt.]

Recall, radiosondes were having significant shifts with the levels monitored by TMT primarily with the switch to Vaisala 80 sondes, and so over small, 26-month periods, just about any result might be expected. [We reproduced PCF’s Fig. 2 using only US VIZ sondes (which had no instrument changes in the 26-month period and span the globe from the western tropical Pacific to Alaska to the Caribbean Sea) and found an explained variance of less than 4% - an insignificant value.]

Another problematic aspect of PCF’s methodology is that when looking at the merged time series, one does not see just NOAA-9’s influence, but the impact of all of the other satellites which provided data during 1985-86, i.e. NOAA-6, -7 and -8 as well. So, it is improper to assume one may pick out NOAA-9’s impact individually from the merged satellite series.

That PCF had little understanding of the UAH algorithm is demonstrated by the following simple test. We substituted the PCF value of +0.048 directly into our code. The increase in trend over our v5.4 TMT dataset was only +0.022 C/decade for 1979-2009 (not 0.042), and +0.019 C/decade for 1979-2012.

To put it another way, PCF overestimated the impact of the NOAA-9 coefficient by a factor of about 2 when they artificially reconstructed our dataset using 0.048 as the NOAA-9 coefficient. In fact, if we use an implausible target coefficient of zero, we still can’t return a trend difference greater than +0.037C/decade. Thus PCF have incorrectly assumed something about the construction methodology of our time series that gave them a result which is demonstrated here to be faulty.

In addition, by changing the coefficient to +0.048 in an ad hoc fashion, they create greater errors in NOAA-9’s comparisons to other satellites. Had they contacted us at any point about this, we would have helped them to understand the techniques. [There were 4 emails from Po-Chedley in Aug and Sep 2011, but this dealt with very basic facts about the dataset, not the construction methodology. Incidently, these emails were exchanged well after C11 was published.]

PCF brought in a third dataset, STAR, but this one uses the same diurnal corrections and sequential merging methodology as RSS, so it is not a truly independent test. As shown in C11, STAR is clearly the outlier for overall trend values due to a different method of debiasing the various satellite data and a differing treatment of the fundamental brightness temperature calibration.

We have additional information regarding UAH’s relatively low error statistics. Using radiosondes to evaluate microwave temperatures requires great care. In our tests, we concentrated on sondes which had documented characteristics and a high degree of consistency such as the US VIZ and Australian sondes. These comparisons have been published a number of times, but most recently updated in C11.

Here are the comparisons for the US VIZ radiosonde network (stretching from the western tropical Pacific to Alaska down across the conterminous US and to the Caribbean.) As you can see, UAH MT provides the lowest error magnitudes and highest reproducibility of the three data sets. Similar results were found for the Australian comparisons.

For data through April 2012 we have the following global TMT trends: UAH +0.045, RSS +0.079 and STAR +0.124C/decade. So, RSS, in the middle, is closer to UAH than STAR, yet PCF chose to examine UAH as the “problem” dataset. Had PCF wanted to pick some low-hanging fruit regarding the differences between UAH, RSS and STAR, they would have (a) looked at the diurnal differences between UAH and RSS (see publications) or (b) looked at a simple time series of differences between the three datasets (below). One thing that pops out is a spurious upward shift in STAR TMT relative to UAH and RSS of about +0.06C on precisely 1 Jan 2001 - an obvious beginning-of-year glitch. Why not look there?

The Bottom Line

In conclusion, we believe that the result in PCF was a rather uninformed attempt to find fault with the UAH global temperature dataset, using an ad hoc adjustment to a single, short-lived satellite while overlooking the greater problems which have been documented (published or as demonstrated in the figure above) regarding the other datasets.

And think about this. If PCF is correct that we should be using a revised NOAA-9 coefficient, and since we use the same coefficient in both TMT and TLT, then the near perfect agreement currently between RSS and UAH for TLT will disappear; our TLT trend will become warmer, and then RSS will have the lowest warming trend of all the satellite datasets. The authors of the new study cannot have it both ways, claiming their new adjustment brings RSS and UAH closer together for TMT (a seldom used temperature index), but then driving the UAH and RSS trends for TLT farther apart, leaving RSS with essentially the same warming trend that UAH had before.

Since it is now within 3 months of the publication cutoff for research to be included in the IPCC AR5, one is tempted to conclude that PCF will be well-received by the Lead Authors (some of whom are closely associated with the RSS dataset) without critical evaluation such as briefly performed here. However, we cannot predict what the AR5 outcome will be or, for that matter, what waning influence the IPCC might still exert.

That PCF brushed aside the fact that the UAH and RSS trends for the LOWER troposphere are essentially identical (for which the UAH NOAA-9 coefficient is the same) seems to us to be a diversionary tactic we have seen before: create a strawman problem which will allow the next IPCC report to make a dismissive statement about the validity of an uncooperative dataset with a minimum of evidence. We hope that rationality instead prevails.

References

Christy, J.R. and W. B. Norris, 2004: What may we conclude about global tropospheric temperature trends? Geophys. Res. Lett. 31, No. 6.

Christy, J.R., R.W. Spencer and W.B Norris (deceased), 2011: The role of remote sensing in monitoring global bulk tropospheric temperatures. Int. J. Remote Sens. 32, 671-685, DOI:10.1080/01431161.2010.517803.

Po-Chedley, S. and Q. Fu, 2012: A bias in the midtropospheric channel warm target factor on the NOAA-9 Microwave Sounding Unit. J. Atmos. Oceanic Tech. DOI: 10.1175/JTECH-D-11-00147.1.

Washington, D.C.  - Today, Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, voiced strong concern over the draft rules on hydraulic fracturing for public and Indian lands released by President Obama’s Department of Interior. The draft rules would require operators to publicly disclose chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing operations on public and Indian lands, address well-bore integrity, and create a number of new requirements surrounding the use, storage, and disposal of water. 

“Today President Obama released yet another rule designed to strangle American energy production,” Senator Inhofe said.  “Once again, his administration couched this rule in disingenuous rhetoric about increasing oil and natural gas development, all while rolling out just another duplicative and unnecessary bureaucratic roadblock designed to stall hydraulic fracturing - the only process available to develop our vast resources from tight shale formulations.  This rule may only apply to public lands now, but let’s not forget that Interior Secretary Salazar has publically stated his hope to use these rules as a blueprint for federal regulation over state and private lands in the future.

“The reason we have had such a boom in natural gas production is precisely because states, not the federal government, have the sole authority to regulate the process. The first use of hydraulic fracturing happened in 1949 in Duncan Oklahoma, and it has been safely regulated at the state level for over 60 years.  Even Administrator Jackson has admitted again, despite EPA’s best efforts to link hydraulic fracturing to groundwater contamination, that ‘in no case have we made a definitive determination that the fracking process has caused chemicals to enter groundwater.’

“If there is anyone out there still buying President Obama’s phony reelection rhetoric about natural gas, the Sierra Club - one of the Big Green groups that gave the President its most enthusiastic endorsement - has just rolled out its newest campaign: ‘Beyond Gas.’ As Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune explained yesterday, ‘As we push to retire coal plants, we’re going to work to make sure we’re not simultaneously switching to natural-gas infrastructure. And we’re going to be preventing new gas plants from being built wherever we can.’ With today’s announcement Big Green can be proud of their endorsement of their President, and his green team administration, who are working overtime to help them achieve their goals.”

Background: Rule Requiring Public Disclosure of Chemicals Used in Hydraulic Fracturing on Public and Indian Lands

These rules are duplicative and unnecessary; disclosure is largely being done through a state led Ground Water Protection Council and Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission web-based voluntary disclosure registry known as “FracFocus” which is required in many states and has over 254 participating companies with data on over 16,000 wells.

In order to combat encroaching federal regulations on natural gas development, Senator Inhofe and nine other Senators introduced the Fracturing Regulations are Effective in State Hands Act which will ensure that states - not the federal government - have the sole authority to regulate hydraulic fracturing within their state boundaries.

Although the Administration likes to take credit for increased oil and gas production and a decrease in foreign imports, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service recently released a report confirming that since 2007, “About 96% of the [oil production] increase took place on non-federal lands...” where states are successfully regulating the development of our natural resources. Furthermore, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), our lessened reliance on foreign oil “results from a variety of factors.  Chief among those is a significant contraction in consumption… This decline partly reflects the downturn in the underlying economy.” The EIA also notes that total fossil fuel sales of production from federal lands are down since 2008.

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The ‘Crucify Them’ Presidency

By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL, WSJ

Al Armendariz, the EPA official who resigned in disgrace this week, was no outlier among the Obama administration’s regulators.

May 3, 2012, 8:05 p.m. ET

Link to Column

Al “Crucify Them” Armendariz resigned from the Environmental Protection Agency this week, for the mistake of telling it like it is. All he leaves behind is an entire administration of Al Armendarizes.

EPA chief Lisa Jackson was quick to assure the public that her regional administrator-who was caught on video describing his desire to “crucify” oil and gas companies-was not “representative of the agency.” Mr. Armendariz’s views, she said, “don’t reflect any policy that we have, and they don’t reflect our actions over the past two years.” At least she didn’t say it under oath.

The Armendariz story matters precisely because he is the model Obama regulator. Hamstrung by both public opinion and Congress, President Obama has turned to these types to enact his broader agenda.

The regional EPA administrator was no rogue appointee. Rather, “there are Armendarizes all throughout this administration” says Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, who first drew attention to the “crucify” video. They were chosen for a purpose.

Consider the broader tale of Mr. Armendariz, lost in the wake of the sensational video. Prior to being appointed by President Obama in late 2009 to serve as EPA’s point man for south-central states, Mr. Armendariz was at Texas’s Southern Methodist University. His then-résumé showed a scant three years of private-sector experience, with far more time devoted to his work as an adviser to the militant fringe of the environmental community.

Mr. Armendariz’s expertise-take note-was working with groups like the Environmental Defense Fund and “Downwinders at Risk” against hydraulic fracturing. Among his achievements: a cameo appearance in “Gasland,” the anti-drilling propaganda film, as well as authoring a 2009 study making the wild claim that gas drilling was the cause of more air pollution in Dallas than even cars.

In other words, he was a perfect general for Mr. Obama’s war against natural gas. The White House is hostile to fossil fuels, yet it has been unable to get Congress or the public to act. So it has unleashed the EPA to crack down on those industries.

The bonanza in natural gas has nonetheless been tricky for the feds, since hydraulic fracturing regulation is technically left to the states. The agency’s solution has been to invent enforcement actions out of existing federal law to harass drillers.

Mr. Armendariz was on the front lines. By early 2010, the EPA boss was already making his “crucify them” comments at a public-meeting-cum-activist-rally in Dish, Texas. At this gathering, Mr. Armendariz also bragged that one of his “really special moments” had been getting the overall chief of EPA enforcement, Cynthia Giles, to watch “Gasland.” He lamented that he did not have a “Way of Life Act” that he could enforce-to deal with the “truck traffic,” “noise,” “water use” and “waste pits” associated with natural-gas drilling.

Though he reminds the crowd that the laws he can use, like the Clean Water Act, aren’t exactly “toothless.”

As he proved. Within a year of arrival, Mr. Armendariz had found his first target: Fort Worth-based gas driller Range Resources. While Texas regulators had found no evidence that Range had polluted local water wells, Mr. Armendariz in December 2010 publicly bypassed them and issued an emergency order giving Range 48 hours to begin supplying water to residents and to clean up.

Emails show that Mr. Armendariz was communicating with his activists on the day of the action. “We’re about to make a lot of news,” he crowed in an email, advising them: “Time to Tivo Channel 8.”

As it happens, “Channel 8” had the news before an aide for Mr. Armendariz had bothered to notify the state. One of Mr. Armendariz’s email buddies (who included members of the Environmental Defense Fund and Public Citizen) wrote back: “Yee haw! Hats off to the new Sheriff and his deputies!” When a Texas official told Mr. Armendariz that he felt the action was “premature,” the EPA appointee forwarded the email to his staff with this word: “Stunning.”

Or not. Fifteen months later-after Texas regulators unanimously concluded that Range was not the cause of natural gas in local wells, after Range had sued, and after EPA was unable to find any evidence of wrongdoing-the agency withdrew its order. Turns out Mr. Armendariz had nothing more against Range than his, and his activists’, disdain for fossil fuels.

His actions are no aberration. This is the “Crucify Them” presidency. Mr. Obama couldn’t get a card check law passed, so his National Labor Relations Board’s union lawyers sue Boeing for locating in a right-to-work state. He couldn’t outlaw offshore drilling, so Interior activists continue a permitorium in the Gulf. He can’t make ObamaCare work, so Health Department officials threaten to exclude insurers from exchanges if they raise premiums. He couldn’t outright kill nuclear energy, so his top nuclear regulator has shut down the Yucca Mountain waste repository to strangle industry growth.

Mr. Armendariz apologized for his “words,” though you might wonder why. He was picked to do a job-to “crucify” industry-and he did it. His real mistake was admitting it.

Methane

By Ed Caryl
I wish to thank the commenter styling himself SpaceScience for drawing our attention to the article at Nature GeoScience titled Atmospheric observations of Arctic Ocean methane emissions up to 82 north.

The comment was in response to my comment pointing to an article stating that the Arctic was a net sink for methane.

The problem with both articles is that they both bow to the “Group Think” prevalent in the climate research community. Both articles clearly assume that global warming is a problem that is, or will, exacerbate methane release in the polar regions, leading to catastrophe. Each approaches the science as if unprecedented global warming were a proven fact, where, as we know, no additional warming has occurred in the last decade and a half, and previous warm periods within the last millennium have exceeded the current one.

The article that this author cited, All About Frozen Ground, by Kevin Schaefer of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, at least admitted that the Arctic is a net sink for methane, then warns that if the permafrost melts, this will release methane that will increase global warming. The logical disconnect is not addressed. Why is the Arctic a net sink? Because warming and additional CO2 is increasing biological activity, the plants growing in the tundra are growing faster and bigger, and the tree line is moving northward, storing additional carbon. There is no explanation of when or how this process might reverse.

The article cited by SpaceScience (behind a paywall) has only the abstract available, but which begins with the word “Uncertainty.”

“Uncertainty in the future atmospheric burden of methane, a potent greenhouse gas1, represents an important challenge to the development of realistic climate projections. The Arctic is home to large reservoirs of methane, in the form of permafrost soils and methane hydrates2, which are vulnerable to destabilization in a warming climate. Furthermore, methane is produced in the surface ocean3 and the surface waters of the Arctic Ocean are supersaturated with respect to methane4, 5. However, the fate of this oceanic methane is uncertain.”

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UK “Drought Forecast” for Christmas Evaporates Within 26 Days!
Climate Realist blog

“Before” BBC Link

“After” BBC Link

Icecap Note: Alarmists have tackled all the major inconvenient facts when data does not match their theory and models instead of by rethinking theory, finding reasons to discard or manipulate the data. They did it with the hockey stick deletion of the MWP that Overpeck said “we have to get rid of Medeival Warm Period”, the nuisance 1940s warm blip which Wigley said could be minimized by adjusted SSTAs down 0.15C, just enough to make a difference but still be plausible.

Though they will probably set out to next find some error in the buoy data that needs adjustment.

Here is WUWT post.

They create an adjustment for the way the Alabama scientists handled data from NOAA-9, a satellite that collected temperature data in the mid-1980s.

From the University of Washington comes this press release:

New research brings satellite measurements and global climate models closer

By Nancy Gohring News and Information For more information: Po-Chedley, pochedls@atmos.uw.edu Trenberth, trenbert@ucar.edu, 303.497.1318

Satellite temperature measurements FAQ

One popular climate record that shows a slower atmospheric warming trend than other studies contains a data calibration problem, and when the problem is corrected the results fall in line with other records and climate models, according to a new University of Washington study.

The finding is important because it helps confirm that models that simulate global warming agree with observations, said Stephen Po-Chedley, a UW graduate student in atmospheric sciences who wrote the paper with Qiang Fu, a UW professor of atmospheric sciences.

They identified a problem with the satellite temperature record put together by the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Researchers there were the first to release such a record, in 1989, and it has often been cited by climate change skeptics to cast doubt on models that show the impact of greenhouse gases on global warming.

In their paper, appearing this month in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, Po-Chedley and Fu examined the record from the researchers in Alabama along with satellite temperature records that were subsequently developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Remote Sensing Systems.

The UW researchers are the first to come up with an adjustment for the way the Alabama scientists handled data from NOAA-9, a satellite that collected temperature data in the mid-1980s.

The UW researchers are the first to come up with an adjustment for the way the Alabama scientists handled data from NOAA-9, a satellite that collected temperature data in the mid-1980s.

Scientists like Po-Chedley and Fu have been studying the three records because each comes to a different conclusion.

“There’s been a debate for many, many years about the different results but we didn’t know which had a problem,” Fu said. “This discovery reduces uncertainty, which is very important.”

When they applied their correction to the Alabama-Huntsville climate record for a UW-derived tropospheric temperature measurement, it effectively eliminated differences with the other studies.

Scientists already had noticed that there were issues with the way the Alabama researchers handled data from NOAA-9, one satellite that collected temperature data for a short time in the mid-1980s. But Po-Chedley and Fu are the first to offer a calculation related to the NOAA-9 data for adjusting the Alabama findings, said Kevin Trenberth, a distinguished (in his own mind) senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

“It should therefore make for a better record, as long as UAH accepts it,” he said.

To come up with the correction, Po-Chedley and Fu closely examined the way the three teams interpreted readings from NOAA-9 and compared it to data collected from weather balloons about the temperature of the troposphere.

They found that the Alabama research incorrectly factors in the changing temperature of the NOAA-9 satellite itself and devised a method to estimate the impact on the Alabama trend.

Like how a baker might use an oven thermometer to gauge the true temperature of an oven and then adjust the oven dial accordingly, the researchers must adjust the temperature data collected by the satellites.

That’s because the calibration of the instruments used to measure the Earth’s temperature is different after the satellites are launched, and because the satellite readings are calibrated by the temperature of the satellite itself. The groups have each separately made their adjustments in part by comparing the satellite’s data to that of other satellites in service at the same time.

Once Po-Chedley and Fu apply the correction, the Alabama-Huntsville record shows 0.21 F warming per decade in the tropics since 1979, instead of its previous finding of 0.13 F warming. Surface measurements show the temperature of Earth in the tropics has increased by about 0.21 F per decade.

The Remote Sensing Systems and NOAA reports continue to reflect warming of the troposphere that’s close to the surface measurements, with warming of 0.26 F per decade and 0.33 F respectively. Note the theory suggests tropospheric warming would be 20% greater than the surface not 20% less

The discrepancy among the records stems from challenges climate researchers face when using weather satellites to measure the temperature of the atmosphere. The records are a composite of over a dozen satellites launched since late 1978 that use microwaves to determine atmospheric temperature.

However, stitching together data collected by those satellites to discover how the climate has changed over time is a complicated matter. Other factors scientists must take into account include the satellite’s drift over time and differences in the instruments used to measure atmospheric temperature on board each satellite.

The temperature reports look largely at the troposphere, which stretches from the surface of the earth to around 10 miles above it, where most weather occurs. Climate models show that this region of the atmosphere will warm considerably due to greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, scientists expect that in some areas, such as over the tropics, the troposphere will warm faster than the surface of the Earth.

The paper does not resolve all the discrepancies among the records, and researchers will continue to look at ways to reconcile those conflicts.

“It will be interesting to see how these differences are resolved in the coming years,” Po-Chedley said.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and NOAA.

The amount of floating ice in the Arctic’s Bering Sea - which had long been expected to retreat disastrously by climate-Cassandra organisations such as Greenpeace - reached all-time record high levels last month, according to US researchers monitoring the area using satellites.

The US National Snow and Ice Data Center announced last week that ice extent in the Bering for the month of March has now been collated and compared, and is the highest seen since records began. The NSIDC boffins said in a statement:

As winds from the north pushed Arctic ice southward through the Bering Strait, the ice locked together and formed a structurally continuous band known as an ice arch, which acts a bit like a keystone arch in a building. The ice arch temporarily held back the ice behind it, but as the winds continued, the arch failed along its southern edge, and ice cascaded south through the strait into the Bering Sea. Sea ice also piled up on the northern coast of St Lawrence Island, streaming southward on either side of it.

Walruses, which travel long distances on floating sea ice that allows them to feed over a wide area may be particularly vulnerable ...

Many species of seal are ice-dependent, including the spotted seal, which in the Bering Sea breeds exclusively at the ice edge in spring; the harp seal, which lives at the ice edge all year; the ringed seal, which give birth to and nurse their pups on sea ice; the ribbon seal and the bearded seal.

Polar bears would be threatened by any decline in ringed seal populations, their main food source.

Which now looks alarmist to say the least.

The NSIDC boffins add, however that overall the Arctic ice - while up on recent years - is below the average seen since records began in 1979. In fact, according to the Cryosphere Today website run by the Polar Research group at Illinois uni, it’s down by 443,000 square km. However the sea ice around the Antarctic coasts is above average by 452,000 km2, so overall the planet’s sea ice is at the moment slightly above average in extent - and in the Bering Sea, the walruses, seals and polar bears can quite literally chill out in comfort.

Standard Bootnote on Why Greenpeace are Definitely Hippies

*We’ve had various mail and comments from people who object to the characterisation of Greenpeace as a bunch of hippies. We would refer you to the words of Greenpeace International’s Director of Information Technology & New Media, Brian Fitzgerald, a multi-decade veteran of the organisation and its top worldwide mouthpiece and IT expert. In an induction speech for new Greenpeace people which he has given “again and again and again” he says:

Greetings, hippies!

Aha, I see a few of you cringing - but you’re in Greenpeace now ... Which means you’re hippies ...

And if you, dear hippies, are going to make a difference in this organization, you’re going have to embrace that madness. You’re just gonna have to honor your hippy roots, find your inner mystic…

So, welcome hippies ... hold on to your hippy heart.

If you work for Greenpeace, you’re a hippy - it’s compulsory. This is just a fact, and one confirmed by the organisation itself. QED - Greenpeace are a bunch of hippies.

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Greenland glaciers not set to cause disastrous sea level rises - study

US government funded scientists have measured the speed of glaciers in Greenland as they move down to the sea over the past ten years, and discovered that - while the glaciers have speeded up somewhat - there’s no indication that this will mean major sea level rises.

“Observed acceleration indicates that sea level rise from Greenland may fall well below proposed upper bounds,” write the boffins, who are based in Seattle and Ohio.

There’s a lot of interest in Greenland’s glaciers, as opposed to the rest of the Arctic ice cap, as they rest on solid land and thus - if they should all slide off - sea levels would rise seriously around the globe. Just a few years ago, the fearmongering hippies at Greenpeace were bandying a wild figure of seven metres about, adding:

That’s bye-bye most of Bangladesh, Netherlands, Florida and would make London the new Atlantis.

In the real world, scientists had thought that - if the glaciers accelerated faster and faster as some models predicted - melting Greenland ice might cause 19 inches of sea-level rise by the year 2100. Other scenarios pointed to a lower figure, of four inches. Combined with melting from the Antarctic and mountain glaciers around the world - though many of these latter don’t appear to be melting at all, according to recent research - this could still mean greater rises than the normal 6-7 inches as seen in the 20th century.

Hence the new effort to get a handle on glacier movement in Greenland, the results of which have now been published. The study involved building a decade-long record of the speed at which 200 Greenland glaciers moved towards the sea, using records generated by the Canadian Space Agency’s Radarsat-1 satellite, Germany’s TerraSar-X satellite and Japan’s Advanced Land Observation Satellite.

In short, the study indicates that even the four inch prediction is now looking very much on the high side. We are told:

The scientists saw no clear indication in the new research that the glaciers will stop gaining speed during the rest of the century, and so by 2100 they could reach or exceed the scenario in which they contribute four inches to sea level rise. Read more here.

The litany chants “The Debate is over”, but hey where was that debate?

Could the Nova Glikson “GreaaSt Debate” be it? Surely not, you think, but debates in “climate science” are high stakes affairs, where branded climate scientists will not publicly debate well known skeptics. They know they can’t win. Instead, the closest thing we get to a real debate is a kind of debate by proxy. The heavyweights on the establishment side pretend to be above it all, but of course, they are only an email away from the man on the front line.

What started as a single pair of “Yes”, then “No” articles that started on Quadrant become a five part saga lasting more than a month. I’ve compiled it all into a PDF which can be printed or read from start to finish, and might be just the thing for fence sitters who like to read. Some people really hanker after the “back-and-forwards” answer and question format. For those that missed it, two years on, the Great Debate still remains a rare example where two opponents actually drilled down to the points that matter.

To Andrew Glickson’s credit, he did not knock back the challenge with the usual “I only debate real climate scientists” - which automatically rules out most of the competition and leaves them debating other government funded establishment “thinkers” who also haven’t disagreed with the meme and been sacked, sabotaged or retired out of frustration.

Dr Glikson is a paleoclimatologist who works at Australian National University along with Will Steffen and the Climate Institute. I’m a blogger with questions he can’t answer. He’s connected via email with most of the team of so called expert climate scientists in Australia. I’m widely read and networked with people who don’t take anyone’s word for it.

When a science theory is monopolistically funded, the normal competition in science is hobbled. So the internet becomes the front line: where the ruling establishment meets free wits.

As it happens the online format is arguably the most powerful method for getting to the truth. There are no limits on space or time, both sides can use as many graphs and references as they want, and can “phone a friend” ad lib. It doesn’t depend on “showmanship”, nor on an ambush, and everyone has infinite right of reply.

It came about because Dr Andrew Glikson requested space for a one off article on Quadrant and the editor, Michael Connor, agreed, and then approached me to write a reply. The debate went through five rounds (one round, possibly the key point, came out in comments).  Dr Glikson asked to reply the sixth time. I welcomed it, but two years later, it still hasn’t arrived.

Glikson Vs Nova: The Great Climate Debate PDF.

If I can only post one exchange to sum it up - this was in my final reply, summing up the paleoclimatic evidence Dr Glikson had put forwards.

Dr Andrew Glikson: Studies from 3 million to 500 million years ago show that when volcanoes blow up or asteroids hit, CO2 levels rise and animals die

Jo Nova: Yes. That’d be because both those events are God-awful, destructive things that dump mountains of ash in the atmosphere. The ash cools the planet. Cold times are horrid for life on earth. Animals die en masse. Tsunamis, dust and lava are none too friendly either. The CO2 effect is a mere rider of correlation, and correlation is not causation.

We know (as I’ve said before) that colder oceans suck CO2 out of the atmosphere. We would be shocked (shocked!) if the geological record didn’t show a correlation between temperature and CO2. Temperature drives CO2.

Read the caption on Figure 1. “Dating errors are typically less than plus/minus 1 Myr.” We’re hunting for an effect that ought to happen in days, weeks and months, with some result within decades, and the graph we’re looking at resolves things to plus or minus one million years. We’re searching for nanotubes in a hay stack, and we’ve only got our bifocals.

IF you believe Australia’s Climate Commissioner, Tim Flannery, it is getting hotter and hotter in Western Sydney.[1]

But scientist Basil Beamish noticed that in the Climate Commission report they only show the trend of the number of hot days from 1970-2011. There is data for Sydney, measured at Observatory Hill, back to 1890.

Dr Beamish noticed that if you use all of the hot days data back to 1890 it is clear there is a different long-term pattern in play (see blue line in chart). In fact the year with the greatest number of hot days for Sydney is 1926 (12 days) and this has not been beaten since.

But instead of reporting on the long term trend for Sydney as measured at Observatory Hill from 1890, Professor Flannery has chosen to just focus on Western Sydney and in particular use only the data for Parramatta North (see red line in chart). This data set begins in 1970, which was a low point in the hot days cycle. By choosing Parramatta and beginning in 1970, Professor Flannery can make the upward trend in hot days look dramatic.

Enlarged

Parramatta is further inland than the Observatory Hill site and so the summers are warmer and the winter’s colder. But if there were data for Parramatta back to 1890 it would almost certainly show the same pattern as Observatory Hill. Indeed it was almost certainly hotter in Parramatta, in Western Sydney, in 1926 than anytime since.

Once again the observational data does not support the nonsense claims made by Australia’s Climate Commissioner, Professor Flannery.

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See also this post in the UK telegraph about this Hansen like climate fairy tale leader.
FIVE years ago, Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery predicted that the nation’s dams would never be full again and major Australian cities would need desalination plants to cater for our water needs.

Yesterday, in his latest report, he said “climate change cannot be ruled out” as a factor in recent two year flooding rains, which led to some of those dams overflowing. Sounds like the UK Met Office. 

- and protect environmental values, endangered species, jobs and human welfare

Unprecedented! As bills to extend seemingly perpetual wind energy subsidies were again introduced by industry lobbyists late last year, taxpayers finally decided they’d had enough.

Informed and inspired by a loose but growing national coalition of groups opposed to more giveaways with no scientifically proven net benefits, thousands of citizens called their senators and representatives - and rounded up enough Nay votes to run four different bills aground. For once, democracy worked.

A shocked American Wind Energy Association and its allies began even more aggressive recruiting of well-connected Democrat and Republican political operatives and cosponsors - and introducing more proposals like HR 3307 to extend the Production Tax Credit (PTC). Parallel efforts were launched in state legislatures, to maintain mandates, subsidies, feed-in tariffs, renewable energy credits, and other “temporary” ratepayer and taxpayer obligations.

This “emerging industry” is “vitally important” to our energy future, supporters insisted. It provides “clean energy” and “over 37,000” jobs that “states can’t afford to lose.” It helps prevent global warming.

None of these sales pitches holds up under objective scrutiny, and their growing awareness of this basic reality has finally made many in Congress inclined to eliminate this wasteful spending on wind power.

Entitlement advocates are petrified at that possibility. Crony corporatist lobbyists and politicians have built a small army to take on beleaguered taxpayers, rate payers and business owners who say America can no longer afford to spend more borrowed money, to prop up energy policies that drive up electricity costs, damage the environment,
and primarily benefit foreign conglomerates and a privileged few. 

To confront the growing onslaught of wind industry pressure and propaganda, citizens should understand the fundamental facts about wind energy. Here are some of the top reasons for opposing further handouts.

Energy 101. It is impossible to have wind turbines without fossil fuels, especially natural gas. Turbines average only 30% of their “rated capacity” - and less than 5% on the hottest and coldest days, when electricity is needed most. They produce excessive electricity when it is least needed, and electricity cannot be stored for later use.

Hydrocarbon-fired backup generators must run constantly, to fill the gap and avoid brownouts, blackouts, and grid destabilization due to constant surges and falloffs in electricity to the grid. Wind turbines frequently draw electricity from the grid, to keep blades turning when the wind is not blowing, reduce strain on turbine gears, and prevent icing during periods of winter calm.

Energy 201. Despite tens of billions in subsidies, wind turbines still generate less than 3% of US electricity. Thankfully, conventional sources keep our country running - and America still has centuries of hydrocarbon resources. It’s time our government allowed us to develop and use those resources.

Economics 101. It is likewise impossible to have wind turbines without perpetual subsidies – mostly money borrowed from Chinese banks and future generations. Wind has never been able to compete economically with traditional energy, and there is no credible evidence that it will be able to in the foreseeable future, especially with abundant natural gas costing one-fourth what it did just a few years ago. It thus makes far more sense to rely on the plentiful, reliable, affordable electricity sources that have powered our economy for decades, build more gas-fired generators – and recycle wind turbines into useful products (while preserving a few as museum exhibits).

Economics 201. As Spain, Germany, Britain and other countries have learned, wind energy mandates and subsidies drive up the price of electricity - for families, factories, hospitals, schools, offices and shops. They squeeze budgets and cost jobs. Indeed, studies have found that two to four traditional jobs are lost for every wind or other “green” job created. That means the supposed 37,000 jobs (perpetuated by $5 billion to $10 billion in combined annual subsidies, or $135,000 to $270,000 per wind job) are likely costing the United States 74,000 to 158,000 traditional jobs, while diverting billions from far more productive uses.

Environment 101. Industrial wind turbine projects require enormous quantities of rare earth metals, concrete, steel, copper, fiberglass and other raw materials, for highly inefficient turbines, multiple backup generators and thousands of miles of high-voltage transmission lines. Extracting and processing these materials, turning them into finished components, and shipping and installing the turbines and power lines involve enormous amounts of fossil fuel and extensive environmental damage. Offshore wind turbine projects are even more expensive, resource intensive and indefensible. Calling wind energy “clean” or “eco-friendly” is an extraordinary distortion of the facts.

Environment 201. Wind turbines, transmission lines and backup generators also require vast amounts of crop, scenic and wildlife habitat land. Where a typical 600-megawatt coal or gas-fired power plant requires 250-750 acres, to generate power 90-95% of the year, a 600-MW wind installation needs 40,000 to 50,000 acres (or more), to deliver 30% performance. And while gas, coal and nuclear plants can be built close to cities, wind installations must go where the wind blows, typically hundreds of miles away - adding thousands of additional acres to every project for transmission lines.

Environment 301. Sometimes referred to as “Cuisinarts of the air,” US wind turbines also slaughter nearly half a million eagles, hawks, falcons, vultures, ducks, geese, bats and other rare, threatened, endangered and otherwise protected flying creatures every year. (Those aren’t song birds killed by house cats, and this may be a conservative number, as coyotes and turbine operator cleanup crews remove much of the evidence.) But while oil companies are prosecuted for the deaths of even a dozen common ducks, turbine operators have been granted a blanket exemption from endangered and migratory species laws and penalties. Now the US Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing a formal rule to allow repeated “takings” (killings) of bald and golden eagles by wind turbines - in effect granting operators a 007 license to kill.

Environment 401. Scientific support for CO2-driven catastrophic manmade global warming continues to diminish. Even if carbon dioxide does contribute to climate change, there is no evidence that even thousands of US wind turbines will affect future global temperatures by more than a few hundredths of a degree. Not only do CO2 emissions from backup generators (and wind turbine manufacturing) offset any reductions by the turbines, but rapidly increasing emissions from Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and other rapidly developing countries dwarf any possible US wind-related CO2 reductions.

Human Health and Welfare 101. Skyrocketing electricity prices due to “renewable portfolio standards” raise heating and air conditioning costs; drive families into fuel poverty; increase food, medical, school and other costs; and force companies to lay off workers, further impairing their families’ health and welfare. The strobe-light effect, annoying audible noise, and inaudible low-frequency sound from whirling blades result in nervous fatigue, headaches, dizziness, irritability, sleep problems, and vibro-acoustic effects on people’s hearts and lungs. Land owners receive royalties for having turbines on their property, but neighbors receive no income and face adverse health effects, decreased property values and difficulty selling their homes. Formerly close-knit communities are torn apart.

Real World Civics 101. Politicians take billions from taxpayers, ratepayers and profitable businesses, to provide subsidies to Big Wind companies, who buy mostly Made Somewhere Else turbines - and then contribute millions to the politicians’ reelection campaigns, to keep the incestuous cycle going.

It is truly government gone wild - GSA on steroids. It is unsustainable. It is a classic sWINDle.

Citizens can contact senators, congressmen, congressional committees and state representatives – to demand science-based energy policies. These reasons could be a good way to start the conversation.

___________

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author or Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.

’Connect the dots’ global warming is a propaganda campaign being conducted by Bill McKibben per James Hansen’s “climate science” - empirical measurements confirm Hansen’s predicted tropical hotspot has not happened, it’s a ‘coldspot’ instead

Enlarged

Climate alarmist James Hansen has long predicted the catastrophic tipping point of global temperatures from human CO2 emissions. His predictions include the seas will soon be boiling and a significant increase of extreme weather events, due to the excessive warming of the tropical atmosphere.

The excessive warming of the atmosphere over the Tropics is referred to as the AGW ‘hotspot’ and is the key signature of anthropogenic (by CO2 greenhouse gas) global warming.

Actual temperature measurements of the tropical atmosphere, as shown above, clearly indicate that the catastrophic ‘hotspot’ does not exist. Additionally, empirical evidence has the tropical atmosphere cooling over the last 15 years, at a -1.2 degree rate by year 2100, which is exact opposite predicted by IPCC climate models and the “experts,” such as James Hansen.

Conclusion: Bill McKibben’s infamous connect-the-dots global warming is a propaganda farce at best. The AGW signature tropical ‘hotspot’ does not factually exist; ergo, trillions of tons of human CO2 emissions has not caused a hotspot, boiling oceans or extreme weather events

Tropical Pacific spatial trend patterns in observed sea level: internal variability and/or anthropogenic signature?

B. Meyssignac1,2, D. Salas y Melia4, M. Becker1,3,*, W. Llovel5, and A. Cazenave1,2
1Université de Toulouse, UPS (OMP-PCA), LEGOS, UMR5566, 14 Av Edouard Belin, 31400 Toulouse, France
2CNES, LEGOS, UMR5566, 18 avenue Edouard Belin 31 401 Toulouse, France
3CNRS, LEGOS, UMR5566, 14 av Edouard Belin, 31400 Toulouse, France
4Météo-France CNRM/GMGEC CNRS/GAME, 31000 Toulouse, France
5JPL, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA
*now at: ESPACE-DEV/UAG, UMR228, Cayenne, French Guiana, France

Abstract. In this study we focus on the sea level trend pattern observed by satellite altimetry in the tropical Pacific over the 1993–2009 time span (i.e. 17 yr). Our objective is to investigate whether this 17-yr-long trend pattern was different before the altimetry era, what was its spatio-temporal variability and what have been its main drivers. We try to discriminate the respective roles of the internal variability of the climate system and of external forcing factors, in particular anthropogenic emissions (greenhouse gases and aerosols). On the basis of a 2-D past sea level reconstruction over 1950–2009 (based on a combination of observations and ocean modelling) and multi-century control runs (i.e. with constant, preindustrial external forcing) from eight coupled climate models, we have investigated how the observed 17-yr sea level trend pattern evolved during the last decades and centuries, and try to estimate the characteristic time scales of its variability. For that purpose, we have computed sea level trend patterns over successive 17-yr windows (i.e. the length of the altimetry record), both for the 60-yr long reconstructed sea level and the model runs. We find that the 2-D sea level reconstruction shows spatial trend patterns similar to the one observed during the altimetry era. The pattern appears to have fluctuated with time with a characteristic time scale of the order of 25-30 yr. The same behaviour is found in multi-centennial control runs of the coupled climate models. A similar analysis is performed with 20th century coupled climate model runs with complete external forcing (i.e. solar plus volcanic variability and changes in anthropogenic forcing). Results suggest that in the tropical Pacific, sea level trend fluctuations are dominated by the internal variability of the ocean–atmosphere coupled system. While our analysis cannot rule out any influence of anthropogenic forcing, it concludes that the latter effect in that particular region is still hardly detectable.

Final Revised Paper (PDF, 17519 KB) Discussion Paper (CPD)

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See also Dr Craig Loehle’s analysis on WUWT Climate Change Impacts In The USA is Already [NOT] Happening.

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Dr Richard Lindzen did a great job testifying at the House of Commons, here’s the key summary:

Stated briefly, I will simply try to clarify what the debate over climate change is really about. It most certainly is not about whether climate is changing: it always is. It is not about whether CO2 is increasing: it clearly is. It is not about whether the increase in CO2, by itself, will lead to some warming: it should. The debate is simply over the matter of how much warming the increase in CO2 can lead to, and the connection of such warming to the innumerable claimed catastrophes. The evidence is that the increase in CO2 will lead to very little warming, and that the connection of this minimal warming (or even significant warming) to the purported catastrophes is also minimal. The arguments on which the catastrophic claims are made are extremely weak - and commonly acknowledged as such. They are sometimes overtly dishonest.

Update: See Dr. Lindzen’s reponse to critics of his testimony.

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Mark Albright and Ken Schlicte report

Climate Impacts Group has stated:
There is good reason to expect warming to continue as a result of climate change, with a likely warming rate of about 0.5°F (0.27°C)/decade.

And yet we have experienced cooling over the past 20 years (1992-2012) of -1.0 to -1.5 deg F at undeveloped and rural farmland sites in the Pacific Northwest. 

Rural:
Hanford (khms):
10 yrs (1992-2001) mean (deg F):  54.4
10 yrs (2002-2011) mean 53.7 -0.7
5 yrs (2007-2011) mean 53.0 -1.4

Farmland:
Corvallis agrimet:
10 yrs (1992-2001) mean (deg F):  52.8
10 yrs (2002-2011) mean 52.3 -0.5
5 yrs (2007-2011) mean 51.7 -1.1

Farmland:
Forest Grove agrimet:
10 yrs (1992-2001) mean (deg F):  52.9
10 yrs (2002-2011) mean 52.4 -0.5
5 yrs (2007-2011) mean 51.8 -1.1

Farmland:
Eugene (keug):
10 yrs (1992-2001) mean (deg F):  52.9
10 yrs (2002-2011) mean 52.5 -0.4
5 yrs (2007-2011) mean 51.9 -1.0

Urban:
Portland (kpdx):
10 yrs (1992-2001) mean (deg F):  54.6
10 yrs (2002-2011) mean 54.4 -0.2
5 yrs (2007-2011) mean 53.7 -0.9

Urban:
Salem (ksle):
10 yrs (1992-2001) mean temperature (deg F):  53.4
10 yrs (2002-2011) mean temperature:  53.2 -0.2
5 yrs (2007-2011) mean temperature:  52.9 -0.5

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See the Galileo Movement here. Visit Then click on the blue text: “9.2.12 Evidence of Political Fraud - Malcolm Roberts”

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Climatologists vs. Weather Forecasters

Climatologists believe in man made global warming, because without it they receive little funding or recognition. They can make predictions 100 years in the future, and change them every few months.

Weather forecasters don’t believe in man made global warming, because their job depends on being continuously accurate and telling the truth.

a survey conducted by George Mason University in 2010* that found 63% of weathercasters believe global warming is due mainly to natural causes compared to just 31% who think it’s mostly a result of human causes. Some 27 percent of weathercasters referred to global warming as “a scam.”

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A catalog of collected papers from SPPI has just been updated through February 2011 and posted on our website. Papers cover many aspects of the energy/environment and science/policy arena. Click on the PDF file to open the catalog, and then click on the link to any particular paper to open its PDF for reading or printing. Many of the papers have a Summary for Policy Makers, convenient for highly busy readers.

The sets of papers once called “BlogWatch” , “ScareWatch” and “Commentary and Essays” have been replaced with postings at the SPPI Blog. The SPPI Blog has a pretty good search engines for key words.

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See John Coleman’s excellent video summary ”There is NO Significant Global Warming” on KUSI Coleman’s corner. No one communicates better to the public.

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See Dr. Doug Hoyt’s Greenhouse Scorecard on Warwick Hughes site here.

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From Jack Black’s Climate Change Dictionary

PEER REVIEW: The act of banding together a group of like-minded academics with a funding conflict of interest, for the purpose of squeezing out any research voices that threaten the multi-million dollar government grant gravy train.

SETTLED SCIENCE: Betrayal of the scientific method for politics or money or both.

DENIER: Anyone who suspects the truth.

CLIMATE CHANGE: What has been happening for billions of years, but should now be flogged to produce ‘panic for profit.’

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE: Leftist Nutcase Prize, unrelated to “Peace” in any meaningful way.

DATA, EVIDENCE: Unnecessary details. If anyone asks for this, see “DENIER,” above.

CLIMATE SCIENTIST: A person skilled in spouting obscure, scientific-sounding jargon that has the effect of deflecting requests for “DATA” by “DENIERS.’ Also skilled at affecting an aura of “Smartest Person in the Room” to buffalo gullible legislators and journalists.

JUNK SCIENCE: The use of invalid scientific evidence resulting in findings of causation which simply cannot be justified or understood from the standpoint of the current state of credible scientific or medical knowledge

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Speaking of junk science, see Lubos Motl’s excellent point by point counter to the John Cook 104 talking points document attacking the skeptical science here.

NOTE: Heartland has the presentations and powerpoints posted for the Heartland ICCC IV.  If you could not go, there is plenty to see there. Please remember the goldmine of videos and PPTs at the Heartland ICCC proceeding sites for 2008 NYC here, 2009 NYC here and 2009 DC here. Here is a PPT I gave at the Heartland Instutute ICCC Meeting in 2008 and here is the follow up in 2009. Here is an abbreviated PPT in two parts I presented at a UK conference last month: Part 1, Part 2.

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See C3 Headlines excellent collection of graphs and charts that show AGW is nonsense here.

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See Climate Theater with a collection of the best climate skeptic films and documentaries here. See additonal scientific youtubes here.

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900+ Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of “Man-Made” Global Warming Alarm and here a list of 1000 stories suggesting global cooling has begun.

“The above papers support skepticism of “man-made” global warming or the environmental or economic effects of. Addendums, comments, corrections, erratum, replies, responses and submitted papers are not included in the peer-reviewed paper count. These are included as references in defense of various papers. There are many more listings than just the 900-1000 papers. Ordering of the papers is alphabetical by title except for the Hockey Stick, Cosmic Rays and Solar sections which are chronological. This list will be updated and corrected as necessary.”

The less intelligent alarmists have written a paper allegedly connecting the scientists to Exxon Mobil. Here is the detailed response from some of the featured scientists. Note that though this continues to be a knee jerk reaction by some of the followers, there is no funding of skeptic causes by big oil BUT Exxon has funded Stanford warmists to the tune of $100 million and BP UC Berkeley to $500,000,000. Climategate emails showed CRU/Hadley soliciting oil dollars and receiving $23,000,000 in funding.

See still more annotated here.

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Many more papers are catalogued at Pete’s Place here.

The science and economics of global warming are not too complicated for the average person to consider and make up his or her own mind. We urge you to do that. Go here and view some of the articles linked under “What’s New” or “A Primer on Global Warming.” Or go here and read about the new report from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), which comprehensively rebuts the claims of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Go here for the sources for the factual statements in the ads.

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See the ICECAP Amazon Book store. Icecap benefits with small commission for your purchases via this link.

Also available now some items that will gore your alarmist friends (part of the proceeds go to support Icecap):

See full size display here.

And “My carbon footprints are bigger than yours and plants love me for it” items here and here

See sister sites:

WeatherBell Analytics here.

Website of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) here.

Coleman’s Corner here.

Science and Public Policy Institute here.

Intellicast Dr. Dewpoint Library here.

RedNeck Engineer Energy and Innovation here.

The Weather Wiz here. See how they have added THE WIZ SCHOOL (UPPER LEFT) to their website. An excellent educational tool for teachers at all class levels. “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel” - Socrates (470--399 BC)