I have given many lectures about the myths, misconceptions and outright lies in the global warming arena. After an hour of graphs, charts and pictures detailing how a tiny trace gas, carbon dioxide, has no relationship to whatever warming and cooling has occurred I get the inevitable statement from someone in the audience. “How can you deny that man made global warming is real when 97 percent of climate scientists agree that it is true?” At this point I have to explain that the 97 percent figure is not what it appears to be.
Let’s start with where this number comes from. One of the most quoted sources is the result of an online survey that was published in 2009 by Peter Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman from the University of Illinois. The survey was sent to 10,257 scientists. It was intended to be very easy to respond to and was supposed to take only two minutes to complete. As a result 3,146 scientists responded to the survey.
There were nine questions in all but the two primary questions in the survey were these. Question number one: When compared to pre-1800 levels, do you think mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant? Of the 3,146 respondents 90% said risen. Herein lies one of the flaws in the survey. This is a loaded question. During the past 2,000 years the earth has had well documented swings in average temperature. At the beginning of the Roman Empire the earth was as warm or warmer than today. This warm spell is known as the “Roman Warmer Period” and extended from about 250 BC to 450 AD. Rome fell during an era when the temperature was turning colder, know as “The Dark Ages Cold Period” from about 450 AD to 950 AD. This cold spell finally gave way to a more agreeable temperature rebound known as the “Medieval Warm Period” from about 950 AD to1400 AD. Hundreds of peer reviewed papers have confirmed that this warm period was as warm or warmer than today’s temperature. After this warm spell the earth cascaded into a prolonged cold era know as “The Little Ice Age” that lasted from about 1400 to 1850 AD. Studies indicate that the bottom of this cold period was around 1700 AD. Since that time the global average temperature has risen. I know of no meteorologist, climatologist or anyone involved in the study of the earth’s temperature who would argue this point.
The survey question: When compared to pre-1800 levels, do you think mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant, was intentionally worded to elicit the response the authors wanted to hear. It was the intent of the question to get a response of “risen”. A loaded question if I have ever seen one. Amazingly the response was not 100%! In fact only 90% of the 3,146 answered “risen” to question one.
Question number two is even more suspect. The question is: Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures? Of the 3,146 respondents only 82% answered yes to this question. This means that taken together the percentage response to the survey was not 97% but 86%, a significant majority but not nearly as impressive as a 97% figure.
Question two has several vague areas. First is just what constitutes “human activity”? The burning of fossil fuels to make energy is one. The changing of land surfaces to make cities, farmland and deforestation is “human activity” that can change temperature as well. Changing mean temperature can be accomplished by changing the environment around a climate recording station. This is also “human activity”. As rural climate recording stations are gradually surrounded by urban sprawl and eventually larger buildings and infrastructure, the temperature of the site will warm due to the “Urban Heat Island (UHI)” effect. This has nothing to due with fossil fuel use increasing the efficiency of the green house effect but is a significant “human activity” that can change the temperature of a recording station over time. The results from the survey do not address the variety of just what constitutes “human activity”. A “yes” response to question two implies the responder is referring to fossil fuels but that is not necessarily the case. It is however, what the survey likely wanted to convey.
Question number two also does not address what the word “significant” means to each individual respondent. What constitutes “significant” can be very different from person to person. To some a 50% human influence on the temperature increase of the last 150 years would be significant. To another scientist a 25% human contribution to the temperature increase would be significant. And to another a 10% increase in the global temperature due to human activity would be significant. This range of possible interpretations to the word “significant” makes the 82% response more suspect.
The 97% figure from the survey comes from a whittling down of the accepted number of responses from 3,146 to 79. The 79 scientist are those that said they have recently published 50% of their papers in the area of climate change. Of these, 76 of 79 answered “risen” to questions one (96.2%). How this number is not 100% is very strange. As to question two 75 of 77 answered “yes” (97.4%). As I have shown above this response does not necessarily mean that the respondent was attributing the significant human activity to the use of fossil fuels. Additionally a “yes” response does not quantify the degree of significance that human activity has on climate change. This can range significantly from person to person.
It is interesting that of the 36 meteorologists who responded to question number two, only 23 of 36 or 64% thought that human activity was a “significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures”. The authors dismiss this group of trained atmospheric scientists outright even though their size is almost half of the 79 climate scientists used in generating the 97% figure! Apparently the 64% number was not convincing enough. If the authors of the survey had combined the results of the meteorologists and the climate scientists the “yes” response to question two would have been 98 out of 113 or 87%. That number just doesn’t have the same impact as 97%.
The Global Warming Petition Project has been signed by 31,487 scientist including 9,029 with PHDs in their fields. The petition states that: “There is no convincing scientific evidence that the human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth”. It would appear that there are many well educated people who do not agree with the survey and its 97% figure.
This year, 2012, is a critical period in the history of the United States. The choice of who will lead us to or from energy freedom and economic prosperity will come this November. If we go in the wrong direction or in other words, the direction we are heading in now, by 2016 it may be too late to recover. The fear of man made global warming is being used to shape a dangerously flawed energy policy. If voters make their choices based in part on misleading surveys like the one above we will fail. The result will be national and world wide upheaval that could have devastating effects for everyone. We must be allowed to develop our fossil fuel resources here at home. Abundant, affordable energy is the key to prosperity and peace.
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This weekend’s Boston Globe Magazine will feature a gargantuan, 3600 word homage to rabid environmentalism in the form of a profile on 350.org founder Bill McKibben. The piece and President Obama’s disastrously short-sighted decision Wednesday to reject permitting for Transcanada’s Keystone XL pipeline are both symptomatic of a much larger ailment plaguing liberal politicking in general and the Obama administration in particular: a continual willingness to sacrifice the well-being of the majority for an elite, hypocritical minority.
The Keystone project, a 1,700-mile pipeline that would bring crude from Alberta’s oil sands to U.S. refineries on the Gulf Coast, has the potential to create hundreds of thousands of direct and indirect decent-paying American jobs and reduce our dependency on the oil of despotic, anti-western nations with questionably sane leaders. But radical environmentalists like McKibben – a second generation jailed protestor and disciple of John Kerry - seem either not to know or else don’t care what real poverty looks like. And he is among the leaders of the voting contingent to which our president is pandering - purely for political reasons.
The Harvard-educated McKibben, who was among the 1,252 people arrested during protests against the pipeline outside the White House last year, is on a mission to “end the tyranny of oil” and coal. Along with his worship of the false god of climate change, McGibben like many leftist elitists is committed to “social justice” according to the Globe. What McGibben and his ilk overlook is that real social justice begins with a job, the dignity of work, and the ability to care for and feed one’s own family. McGibben & Company’s quest is anti-jobs and therefore anti true social justice.
According to analysis released just this week by the Brookings Institution, child poverty has risen 4% in the past five years - an addition of 3 million impoverished kids, most of them added in the time Obama has been in office. The state with the highest rate? Mississippi, in the Gulf Coast - the very region in which many of the Keystone XL’s quarter-million jobs would have been created, and where the Obama administration’s six-month deepwater drilling moratorium cost Americans tens of thousands of jobs. T.V. talk show host - and Obama supporter - Tavis Smiley said recently, “Many of the ‘new poor’ are the former middle class.”
Obama claims to be “all in” for domestic energy production and job creation, but when handed a no-brainer like Keystone, he choose to side with a radical minority of his base. Why? As Michael Brune, the head of the Sierra Club said, “it shores up the base, definitely”.
On Capitol Hill there has been almost universal silence from Congressional Democrats who apparently are listening to that same “base.” So, what does that say about what agenda really drives the Democratic Party? Politico.com says that according to a “top Democratic fundraiser” the issues driving the party donors are “Keystone and gay marriage.”
Obama and the Democrats may soon grow to regret the Keystone decision. There are about 25 million Americans unemployed, under employed, or that have given up even trying to find a job. If you’re out of work or struggling to get by, a politician focused on killing jobs and promoting gay marriage probably doesn’t sound like one that has your best interests at heart.
Besides all jobs we now stand to lose out on, we also face a considerable new security challenge in the form of a bolstered China. As Rep. Steve King of Iowa said this week: “If we block [the pipeline] that oil will certainly go to China. It will enrich their economy.” Canadian Prime Minster Stephen Harper has no intention of waiting for the United States to reverse this wrongheaded move; his goal is to see Canada at the forefront of the energy game. Harper will travel to Beijing next month, where he will likely take part in talks on selling his country’s vast oil supplies to the Chinese government. And China is serious about quenching its thirst for oil.
“Chinese firms aren’t just buying stakes, they’re buying whole operations,” reads a piece this month in Canada’s daily Globe and Mail. “It’s a new phase of China’s step-by-step Canada strategy. It will change not just the oil patch but Canada’s foreign policy. And a game of international energy politics is afoot in Canada’s West.”
When Obama finally turns around for a gander at his fellow Washington backers on this latest political choice, he will see he has precious few.
The academic face of the anti-fracking movement - Cornell marine ecologist Robert Howarth - increasingly looks like he’s willing to turn science into farce.
Last spring, the once-obscure professor became the go-to expert for anti-fracking journalists and lawmakers when he published a report claiming shale gas pollutes more than coal. The New York Times featured his study in two uncritical articles in one week, he was interviewed on dozens of talk shows - and the media echo chamber did the rest: He was a star.
Since then, other scientists have almost universally challenged his findings - but now he’s doubled down.
Last week, Howarth released another scientifically questionable study, now warning that fracking could push the world over a tipping point, sending temperatures irreversibly higher - an inflammatory and demonstrably incorrect assertion.
Here’s the backstory. Shale gas is acknowledged as an ideal “bridge fuel” to a cleaner energy future. It’s become cost-attractive thanks to fracking: a proven extraction technique used for decades, technologically tweaked to mine shale gas - notably the Marcellus Formation beneath a large swath of New York.
Thanks to fracking, America is poised to transform itself from a fuel pauper, dependent upon the whims of Mideast madmen and Russian oligarchs, into an energy exporter.
But hard leftists have always opposed any energy other than wind or solar. That’s where Howarth and the anti-fracking Park Foundation come in.
In an interview, Howarth told me his goal was to make the anti-fracking movement mainstream and fashionable. He said he met with the Ithaca-based foundation two years ago, agreeing to produce a study challenging the conventional wisdom that shale gas is comparatively clean.
The polluting impact of shale gas revolves around one key issue: how much methane gas is released during extraction. Methane has more short-term global-warming impact than any other fossil fuel. Howarth emerged from academic nowhere when he claimed shale-gas wells leak like sieves, venting methane half the time, spewing 7 percent to 8 percent of reserves into the atmosphere.
“That’s absurd,” says Michael Levi, director of the Program on Energy Security and Climate Change at the Council of Foreign Relations. “Most methane gas is either “delivered to sales” with no leakage, or it’s burnt off through flaring, which diminishes its greenhouse impact.”
Renowned geologist Lawrence Cathles, also at Cornell, who published a scathing deconstruction of Howarth’s paper this month, says that he “doesn’t document venting but what the industry calls ‘capture.’”
Almost every independent researcher - at the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Energy Department and numerous independent university teams - has slammed Howarth’s conclusions. At a minimum, the evidence suggests he either acted in bad faith or is ignorant of gas technology.
The core problem: Howarth uses Environmental Protection Agency estimates dating to 2007 - ancient data, given how quickly the technology is evolving.
Crucially, he fails to account for innovation. Gas lost through leakage is money lost, literally into thin air. For that reason, new wells are now “green completed” - meaning most leaking gas is captured and sold rather than vented.
Cathles notes the latest Devon study, now being verified by the EPA, documenting that shale gas is vented in only 5 percent of wells. The Energy Department estimates only 1 percent to 2 percent of methane is now lost during production.
Bottom line, almost all nonindustry-linked researchers believe Howarth exaggerates the impact of shale-gas leakage by 10 to 20 times. “His conclusions are more a politically charged articulation than a balanced scientific assessment,” Cathles says.
Howarth hired an aggressive PR firm, the Hastings Group, to promote his politicized viewpoint. Scientists aren’t buying it, but many journalists fall for the fear-mongering.
Howarth doesn’t have to convince anyone he’s right to devastate New York’s budding shale industry and put tens of thousands of jobs into question. He wins if he muddies the waters enough to give cautious Albany bureaucrats reason to stall.
Almost every news story now frames this issue as a standoff between equally valid scientific experts. In fact, it’s really a debate between science and ideology.
Jon Entine is a senior research fellow at the Center for Health & Risk Communication at George Mason University/STATS.
Bicentennial Decrease of the Total Solar Irradiance Leads to Unbalanced Thermal Budget of the Earth
Habibullo I. Abdussamatov, Pulkovo Observatory of the RAS
Applied Physics Research Vol. 4, No. 1; February 2012
Abstract
Temporal changes in the power of the longwave radiation of the system Earth-atmosphere emitted to space always lag behind changes in the power of absorbed solar radiation due to slow change of its enthalpy. That is why the debit and credit parts of the average annual energy budget of the terrestrial globe with its air and water envelope are practically always in an unbalanced state.
Average annual balance of the thermal budget of the system Earth-atmosphere during long time period will reliably determine the course and value of both an energy excess accumulated by the Earth or the energy deficit in the thermal budget which, with account for data of the TSI forecast, can define and predict well in advance the direction and amplitude of the forthcoming climate changes.
From the early 1990s we observe bicentennial decrease in both the TSI and the portion of its energy absorbed by the Earth. The Earth as a planet will henceforward have negative balance in the energy budget which will result in the temperature drop in approximately 2014. Due to increase of albedo and decrease of the greenhouse gases atmospheric concentration the absorbed portion of solar energy and the influence of the greenhouse effect It will additionally decline.
The influence of the consecutive chain of feedback effects which can lead to additional drop of temperature will surpass the influence of the TSI decrease. The onset of the deep bicentennial minimum of TSI is expected in 2042plus or minus 11, that of the 19th Little Ice Age in the past 7500 years - in 2055 plus or minus 11.
After the maximum of solar cycle 24, from approximately 2014 we can expect the start of the next bicentennial cycle of deep cooling with a Little Ice Age in 2055 plus or minus 11. Thus, long-term variations of TSI (with account for their direct and secondary, based on feedback effects, influence) are the main fundamental cause of climate changes since variations of the Earth climate is mainly determined by a long-term imbalance between the energy of solar radiation entering the upper layers of the Earth’s atmosphere and the total energy emitted from the Earth back to space.
The New USDA Plant Zone Maps: Planting the Seeds of Faulty Logic
By Dr. Anthony Lupo
In late January, an updated planting zone map was issued by the USDA for the first time since 1990. As it was during the summer of 2011 when the new 1981-2010 climate normals were issued, this should be no surprise to climate scientists [1]. The new map is a big improvement over the older one as more data were incorporated using new techniques. It is available also online incorporating geographic information system (GIS) technology allowing it to be an interactive tool for users [2].
But, even as the map was released, stories written by media organizations such as the Associated Press were then carried in publications across the nation e.g. [3]. The first line of the story stated that the map demonstrates global warming is now affecting both your home and garden. It’s as if the map itself demonstrates, or is more proof for, the occurrence of human induced climate change (global warming refers to this phenomenon). The same article says this reflects the new reality that the coldest days of the year are not as cold anymore. They quote scientists as saying that you can now grow things in your locality that you could not plant before. The implication is that the warmth being experienced in recent decades is unprecedented.
Figure 1. Adapted from the USDA website (enlarged). The plant hardiness zone map created using climate data from 1976 -2005.
However, USDA spokesperson K. Kaplan correctly points out that the map is not the best instrument for demonstrating climate change. She does not deny that climate change has taken place, but that the map is not the best indicator for demonstrating it. She is correct and presumably meant that the current map uses improved methods and more available data than the previous map, thus comparisons would be difficult to make even if climate had not changed.
Climate change has occurred in recent decades and that is easily demonstrated by comparing the 1981-2010 normals to previous periods [1]. The new USDA map included data gathered from 1976-2005 [2], which largely overlaps with the period including the new climate normals. As the article about the new normals stated[1], the new map (Fig. 1) included a period of time that was warmer than the period that was used to create the 1990 plant hardiness map. Thus, the map is going to be reflective of climatic conditions in the immediate past. On a planet where the climate is almost always warming or cooling, the map may be out-of-step with current realities. Global temperatures have been steady or cooling since about 2000 and especially since 2007.
Additionally, there is no way that one can ascribe a cause for climate change by looking at changes in the new normals or plant hardiness. Presumably, changes in the weather and climate, regardless of cause will be reflected by what kind of flora and fauna inhabit a region. As the glaciers shrank away for North America deciduous trees
such as American Beech moved northward from the Deep South and into the Great Lakes Region. Climate skeptics also recount that a thriving wine industry existed into the northern parts of England and the Vikings colonized Greenland during Medieval times, but not today.
An example closer to home and our time reveals that during the 1800s certain types of citrus grew well in Alabama, Florida, and even in South Carolina. In the colder period from about 1890 to 1920, some types of citrus were wiped out of this region (e.g., Satsuma Tangerines), and citrus production in general during this time shifted toward California [4]. In the last few decades, citrus production has increased again even as far north as South Carolina [5].
This is not to criticize the new map. It can only be based on the best available data and technology. But, the larger point is, the map is only guidance for the amateur or
experienced gardener or farmer. The map will always be changing into the future as the climate changes. For example it would be interesting to look at the same map by using comparable data gathered from the period 1921 -1960 when temperatures were still warmer than the current period used for the climate normals. But, it is flawed logic to imply that the new map is more evidence of human induced global warming.
Update: See this analysis of the corruption of the temperature record by Steve Goddard on Real Science.
Update: See the well deserved credit given to Anthony Watts and WUWT bloggers for the collapse of the Global Warming Charade in this Pat Michael’s editorial on Forbes. Because of Anthony’s surface stations.org effort the Government’s own GAO also pushed NOAA to upgrade the siting of 1000 stations in the Climate Reference Network instead of the originally planned 114 after finding t least 42% failed to meets acceptable standards. In a fair world Anthony should be given an award by AMs instead of Hansen, Gore, Emanuel (3).
By Joseph D’Aleo
NASA announced this week that 2011 was the ninth warmest year since 1880 (132 years) despite a quiet sun (not really the case) and La Nina.
UAH had 2011 as the 18th warmest (thus 15th coldest) in their 33 years of record keeping. That alone should raise your eyebrows. Obviously the 15th coldest year in the last 33 years could not also be the ninth warmest in 132 years.
Here is a plot of the UAH and NASA GISS temperatures versus the CO2 in the last 10 years.
Temperatures are flat even as CO2 has risen almost 8%. It looks like the third coldest year of the ten in NASA and UAH data sets. The anomalies are supposed to be greater (1.2 times) for the lower troposphere as measured by UAH than the surface as measured by GISS because the atmosphere is where the CO2 is supposed to do its trapping work according to the theory. Instead the surface anomalies are three times higher suggesting surface contamination and a failed/incomplete theory.
Notice how much warmer NASA GISS is than UAH.
Back in 2007, Steve McIntyre found a millenium bug that elevated the temperatures after 2000 in the NASA data for the US. See how they adjusted down for that for 2007 data. Notice a few years later it all returned as the NOAA USHCN removed the UHI adjustment. Again this year they seem to find more warmth in recent years.
They also have found ways to cool off the prior warm period in the 1930s-1950s to make the current warm cycle look even more impressive. This chart uses an old Hansen temperature plot from 1980 and one from 2010.
E-mail messages obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that NASA concluded that its own climate findings were inferior to those maintained by both the University of East Anglia’s Climatie Research Unit (CRU)—the scandalized source of the leaked Climate-gate e-mails—and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center.
The e-mails from 2007 reveal that when a USA Today reporter asked if NASA’s data “was more accurate” than other climate-change data sets, NASA’s Dr. Reto A. Ruedy replied with an unequivocal no. He said “the National Climatic Data Center’s procedure of only using the best stations is more accurate,” admitting that some of his own procedures led to less accurate readings. “My recommendation to you is to continue using NCDC’s data for the U.S. means and [East Anglia] data for the global means,” Ruedy told the reporter.
Hansen seems to have a teflon coat. Despite all his failures (including predictions of the West Side Highway being underwater by 2010 made in 1980 - sea level rises are about 1 inch) and data issues, he escapes scrutiny.
Just to put some numbers to this global manipulation, here is a selection from Iceland the change since last year’sversion. Enhancing warming trend by cooling off the past.
Reykjavik (degrees C)
Year Last This Diff
1911 5.31 4.21 1.1
1941 5.28 4.09 1.19
1971 5.85 4.65 1.2
1991 6.12 4.92 1.2
2011 5.58 5.58 0
NASA was not alone. the three data centeres collaborated as the climategate emails suggest.
They accomplished this ‘kockey sticking’ by cooling off old data and warming later data, in part through elimination of a UHI adjustment in the US. They also cooled ocean temperatures near the bothersome warm blip around 1940, The climategate emails included one by Wigley of UEA and later NCAR suggesting a cooling then of about 0.15C would be effective but still plausible.
I am working on a document the next few weeks for the broadcasters and forecasters that gives reasons why we should remain objective about climate science and why resources should be spent on research into these natural factors so we can better foresee the large scale oddities like we have seen this winter.
Over at the Wall Street Journal a group of pedigreed individuals headed by Dr. Kevin Trenberth argue:
Do you consult your dentist about your heart condition? In science, as in any area, reputations are based on knowledge and expertise in a field and on published, peer-reviewed work. If you need surgery, you want a highly experienced expert in the field who has done a large number of the proposed operations.
Wrong answer!!
If you need surgery you DON’T want “a highly experienced expert in the field who has done a large number of the proposed operations.” What you want is “a highly experienced expert in the field who has CONVINCING EVIDENCE THAT HIS OR HER OPERATIONS HAVE BEEN SUCCESSFUL”
And if before I go to a dentist, I would like evidence that the dentist does not pull the wrong teeth (even on occasion).
Unfortunately, there is no convincing evidence that climate models can successfully predict future climate - and I mean “climate” not just “temperature.” [The latter is just one aspect of the climate and for many impacts it may not even be the most relevant.]
Climate models, which are the source of the apocalyptic vision of global warming, have not been validated using data that were not used in their development. Even the US Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) and the IPCC acknowledge as much. Specifically, the IPCC does not say that “all” features of current climate or past climate changes can be reproduced, as a reliable model of climate change ought to be able to do endogenously. In fact, it notes:
“… models still show significant errors. Although these are generally greater at smaller scales, important large scale problems also remain. For example, deficiencies remain in the simulation of tropical precipitation, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation and the Madden-Julian Oscillation (an observed variation in tropical winds and rainfall with a time scale of 30 to 90 days).” (AR4WG1, p. 601).
And the CCSP has this to say in its 2008 publication, Climate Models: An Assessment of Strengths and Limitations. A Report by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research:
“Climate model simulation of precipitation has improved over time but is still problematic. Correlation between models and observations is 50 to 60% for seasonal means on scales of a few hundred kilometers.” (CCSP 2008:3).
“In summary, modern AOGCMs generally simulate continental and larger-scale mean surface temperature and precipitation with considerable accuracy, but the models often are not reliable for smaller regions, particularly for precipitation.” (CCSP 2008: 52).
So before one pulls society’s economic teeth, validate the models or else you could end up pulling society’s economic teeth in error.
In the medical profession this would be known as “evidence-based medicine.” Exactly the same principle should apply to climate change remedies. We should insist on nothing less.
Feb 01, 2012
Psuedo science responds to WSJ editorial
In an attempt to counter the scientific argument made in the editorial in the WSJ this weekend by distinquised scientists, the usual suspects of men and women who have abused the scientific method and taken advantage of the considerable largess (tens of billions of grant dollars available for those willing to sell their souls to the devil) responded with a response as weak and laughable as their excuses for the ever growing lists of failures for their theory. They use their favorite talking points including the parallel to tobacco and of course the call to authority (basically their own bad work that got by a failed pal review process). There is not a one on that list I would trust with any advice or accurate information about climate science. The mindless herd keeps doubling down on proven deceptions. They even went as far as using the bogus 97% survey which ended up asking 79 scientists if it has warmed since the little ice age and making their answer proof of a settled science. Despicable. I look forward to the day in the not to distant future when these men and women and others are called to answer for their sins against science. Here is an excerpt from the letter and the list of accomplices.
Do you consult your dentist about your heart condition? In science, as in any area, reputations are based on knowledge and expertise in a field and on published, peer-reviewed work. If you need surgery, you want a highly experienced expert in the field who has done a large number of the proposed operations.
You published “No Need to Panic About Global Warming” (op-ed, Jan. 27) on climate change by the climate-science equivalent of dentists practicing cardiology. While accomplished in their own fields, most of these authors have no expertise in climate science. The few authors who have such expertise are known to have extreme views that are out of step with nearly every other climate expert. This happens in nearly every field of science. For example, there is a retrovirus expert who does not accept that HIV causes AIDS. And it is instructive to recall that a few scientists continued to state that smoking did not cause cancer, long after that was settled science.
Climate experts know that the long-term warming trend has not abated in the past decade. In fact, it was the warmest decade on record. Observations show unequivocally that our planet is getting hotter. And computer models have recently shown that during periods when there is a smaller increase of surface temperatures, warming is occurring elsewhere in the climate system, typically in the deep ocean. Such periods are a relatively common climate phenomenon, are consistent with our physical understanding of how the climate system works, and certainly do not invalidate our understanding of human-induced warming or the models used to simulate that warming.
Thus, climate experts also know what one of us, Kevin Trenberth, actually meant by the out-of-context, misrepresented quote used in the op-ed. Mr. Trenberth was lamenting the inadequacy of observing systems to fully monitor warming trends in the deep ocean and other aspects of the short-term variations that always occur, together with the long-term human-induced warming trend.
The National Academy of Sciences of the U.S. (set up by President Abraham Lincoln to advise on scientific issues), as well as major national academies of science around the world and every other authoritative body of scientists active in climate research have stated that the science is clear: The world is heating up and humans are primarily responsible. Impacts are already apparent and will increase. Reducing future impacts will require significant reductions in emissions of heat-trapping gases.
Research shows that more than 97% of scientists actively publishing in the field agree that climate change is real and human caused. It would be an act of recklessness for any political leader to disregard the weight of evidence and ignore the enormous risks that climate change clearly poses. In addition, there is very clear evidence that investing in the transition to a low-carbon economy will not only allow the world to avoid the worst risks of climate change, but could also drive decades of economic growth. Just what the doctor ordered.
Kevin Trenberth, Sc.D.
Distinguished Senior Scientist
Climate Analysis Section National Center for Atmospheric Research
La Jolla, Calif.
Kevin Trenberth, Sc.D, Distinguished Senior Scientist, Climate Analysis Section, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Richard Somerville, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego
Katharine Hayhoe, Ph.D., Director, Climate Science Center, Texas Tech University
Rasmus Benestad, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, The Norwegian Meteorological Institute
Gerald Meehl, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Climate and Global Dynamics Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Michael Oppenheimer, Ph.D., Professor of Geosciences; Director, Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy, Princeton University
Peter Gleick, Ph.D., co-founder and president, Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security
Michael C. MacCracken, Ph.D., Chief Scientist, Climate Institute, Washington
Michael Mann, Ph.D., Director, Earth System Science Center, Pennsylvania State University
Steven Running, Ph.D., Professor, Director, Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group, University of Montana
Robert Corell, Ph.D., Chair, Arctic Climate Impact Assessment; Principal, Global Environment Technology Foundation
Dennis Ojima, Ph.D., Professor, Senior Research Scientist, and Head of the Dept. of Interior’s Climate Science Center at Colorado State University
Matthew England, Ph.D., Professor, Joint Director of the Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Australia
Ken Caldeira, Ph.D., Atmospheric Scientist, Dept. of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution
Warren Washington, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Terry L. Root, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University
David Karoly, Ph.D., ARC Federation Fellow and Professor, University of Melbourne, Australia
Jeffrey Kiehl, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Climate and Global Dynamics Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Donald Wuebbles, Ph.D., Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois
Camille Parmesan, Ph.D., Professor of Biology, University of Texas; Professor of Global Change Biology, Marine Institute, University of Plymouth, UK
Simon Donner, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Canada
Barrett N. Rock, Ph.D., Professor, Complex Systems Research Center and Department of Natural Resources, University of New Hampshire
David Griggs, Ph.D., Professor and Director, Monash Sustainability Institute, Monash University, Australia
Roger N. Jones, Ph.D., Professor, Professorial Research Fellow, Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University, Australia
William L. Chameides, Ph.D., Dean and Professor, School of the Environment, Duke University
Gary Yohe, Ph.D., Professor, Economics and Environmental Studies, Wesleyan University, CT
Robert Watson, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Chair of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia
Steven Sherwood, Ph.D., Director, Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Chris Rapley, Ph.D., Professor of Climate Science, University College London, UK
Joan Kleypas, Ph.D., Scientist, Climate and Global Dynamics Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research
James J. McCarthy, Ph.D., Professor of Biological Oceanography, Harvard University
Stefan Rahmstorf, Ph.D., Professor of Physics of the Oceans, Potsdam University, Germany
Julia Cole, Ph.D., Professor, Geosciences and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Arizona
William H. Schlesinger, Ph.D., President, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
Jonathan Overpeck, Ph.D., Professor of Geosciences and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Arizona
Eric Rignot, Ph.D., Senior Research Scientist, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Professor of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine
Wolfgang Cramer, Professor of Global Ecology, Mediterranean Institute for Biodiversity and Ecology, CNRS, Aix-en-Provence, France
Jan 30, 2012
Montana Supreme Court rejects the Global Warming petition by Our Children’s Trust
by Ed Berry
In a precedent-making decision, the Montana Supreme Court dismissed yesterday the Petition for Original Jurisdiction by Our Children’s Trust saying unsettled factual issues related to limiting emissions of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) must first be addressed in a lower court.The Montana Supreme Court followed the recommendations of the Montana Attorney General, and rejected the claim made by Our Children’s Trust in its May 4, 2011, Petition, that a “scientific consensus exists that increasing emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) are affecting the Earth’s climate.” The ruling forces those filing future GHG-emissions lawsuits to first prove the scientific credibility of their global warming claims by means of legally competent evidence.
As the Montana Supreme Court stated the case:
Petitioners ask us to enter judgment in this original proceeding to declare that the State of Montana (State) holds the atmosphere in trust for the present and future citizens of the State of Montana. Petitioners further contend that this trust imposes on the State the affirmative duty to protect and preserve the atmosphere, including establishing and enforcing limitations on the levels of greenhouse gas emissions as necessary to mitigate human-caused climate change.
But, the Court wrote, it was “persuaded” by the Attorney General’s arguments that the evidence Our Children’s Trust offered for human-caused global warming is in legally substantial doubt:
This disputed record is just one example of the factual determinations this Court would need to make to rule for Petitioners. In addition, it would need to address, among other issues, the current state of climate change science; the role of Montana in the global problem of climate change; how emissions created in Montana ultimately affect Montana’s climate; whether the benefits of energy production must be balanced against the potential harm of climate change; and the concrete limits, if any, of the alleged “affirmative duty” [to restrict CO2 emissions.] (Emphasis added.)
Dr. Ed Berry, Director of Climate Physics Institute (CPI), said “The Montana Supreme Court’s decision was influenced by CPI’s Motion to Intervene which included 118 Intervenors, 13 minor children, 15 state representatives, 7 state senators, and 8 elected state officials.”
CPI used 2 key scientific exhibits in its Motion to Intervene: A 321-page “Climate Depot Special Report” compiled by Marc Morano and The Heartland Institute’s “Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate’ edited by S. Fred Singer. The full legal exhibits may be viewed on climatephysics.org. (See 1000 Scientists Climate Physics Institute
an edberry.com site
There’s no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy..
Editor’s Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article:
A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about “global warming.” Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.
In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: “I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: ‘The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.’ In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?”
In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the “pollutant” carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific “heretics” is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.
Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 “Climategate” email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.
The lack of warming for more than a decade - indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections - suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.
The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere’s life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.
Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted - or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.
This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before - for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.
Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word “incontrovertible” from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question “cui bono?” Or the modern update, “Follow the money.”
Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.
Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to “decarbonize” the world’s economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.
A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.
If elected officials feel compelled to “do something” about climate, we recommend supporting the excellent scientists who are increasing our understanding of climate with well-designed instruments on satellites, in the oceans and on land, and in the analysis of observational data. The better we understand climate, the better we can cope with its ever-changing nature, which has complicated human life throughout history. However, much of the huge private and government investment in climate is badly in need of critical review.
Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but untenable claims of “incontrovertible” evidence.
Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.
2009 ClimateGate email: Warmist MacCracken suggests that Phil Jones start working on a “backup” in case Jones’ prediction of warming is wrong
ClimateGate FOIA grepper! - if the sulfate hypothesis is right, then your prediction of warming might end up being wrong
In any case, if the sulfate hypothesis is right, then your prediction of warming might end up being wrong. I think we have been too readily explaining the slow changes over past decade as a result of variability--that explanation is wearing thin. I would just suggest, as a backup to your prediction, that you also do some checking on the sulfate issue, just so you might have a quantified explanation in case the prediction is wrong. Otherwise, the Skeptics will be all over us--the world is really cooling, the models are no good, etc. And all this just as the US is about ready to get serious on the issue.
We all, and you all in particular, need to be prepared.
Best, Mike MacCracken [Note that Obama’s chief science advisor, John Holdren, is copied on this email]
According to research jumped on in Reuters based on no domain knowledge by clueless bureaucrats on the dole (sound familiar?):
- A weaker sun over the next 90 years is not likely to significantly delay a rise in global temperature caused by greenhouse gases,a report said Monday.
The study, by Britain’s Meteorological Office and the university of Reading, found that the Sun’s output would decrease up until 2100 but this would only lead to a fall in global temperatures of 0.08 degrees Celsius.
Scientists have warned that more extreme weather is likely across the globe this century as the Earth’s climate warms.
The world is expected to heat up by over 2 degrees Celsius this century due to increased greenhouse gas emissions.
Current global pledges to cut carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions are not seen as sufficient to stop the planet heating up beyond 2 degrees, a threshold scientists say risks an unstable climate in which weather extremes are common.
“This research shows that the most likely change in the sun’s output will not have a big impact on global temperatures or do much to slow the warming we expect from greenhouse gases,” said Gareth Jones, climate change detection scientist at the Met Office.
Astrophysicist Meteorologist and Climate Forecaster Piers Corbyn responds:
This UK Met Office and BBC promoted statement (Reuters) is extremely delusional and dishonest and a cover-up of reality.
Their ‘expectation’ that the world will warm by 2C this century ‘due to increased greenhouse gas emissions’ is proven drivel based on their own failed self-serving fraudulent models.
They deliberately choose to know almost nothing about solar influences on earth’s weather and climate and create ‘information’ designed to deceive.
It is the largely predictable vast changes in solar charged particle flux and sun-earth magnetic connectivity which control weather and climate.
That is why we at WeatherAction.com long range forecasters:
1. Confidently predict that the world will continue general cooling to 2035 - see presentation in submission to UK parliament enquiry into Dec 2010 supercold which we predicted
and
2. Systematically predict and will continue to predict extreme weather events and situations many months ahead around the world
The CO2 driver theory of weather and climate is delusional nonsense propagated by a self-serving failed sect. Their ‘theory’ fails to explain past weather and climate; all its predictions over the last ten years have failed and it cannot and never will predict anything.
The dangerous delusional CO2 sect must be destroyed before it’s diktats destroy the world economy and thousands more lives are lost from the chosen refusal of governments across the world to allow the application of scientific advanced forecasting of extreme weather which can help reduce disruption and destruction and save money and lives.
Thanks,
Piers Corbyn, MSc ARCS FRAS FRMetS,
WeatherAction.com long range weather and climate forecasters
See also some very different concluding solar research by David Archibald here.
The global average lower tropospheric temperature anomaly for January, 2012 took a precipitous plunge, not totally unexpected for a La Nina January (click here for the full-size version):
The 3rd order polynomial fit to the data (courtesy of Excel) is for entertainment purposes only, and should not be construed as having any predictive value whatsoever.
Progress continues on Version 6 of our global temperature dataset. You can anticipate a little cooler anomalies than recently reported, maybe by a few hundredths of a degree, due to a small warming drift we have identified in one of the satellites carrying the AMSU instruments.
Well, now government scientists must be added to the long list of the so addled. Here it is, straight from the (high tech) horse’s mouth, a new report from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies titled “Global Temperature in 2011, Trends, and Prospects:”
“Global temperature in 2011 was lower than in 1998.”
But don’t worry. Even as climate scientists—and an ever-gullible media—are forced by new data to admit that the Earth is not warming, they take pains to assure us that the Earth is still warming.
The Associated Press was typical in its contortions, as in this Jan. 20 statement: “The world last year wasn’t quite as warm as it has been for most of the past decade, government scientists said Thursday, but it continues a general trend of rising temperatures.”
Not as warm, but still a “general trend” of rising temperatures. Got that? No? Well, don’t worry. The high priests of warming have apparently assumed a plane far above our mere mortal logic.
Besides, it all depends on how you define “trend,” doesn’t it? If you go far enough back, you can prove any trend you like about global temperatures. If you start at about 650 million years ago, when the Earth was covered pole to pole in ice, you can say current data show we are in a “general trend” of rising temperatures. If you go back to 1998, not so much.
It is cute, in a pathetic kind of way, to watch the global warming cult try and fudge and spin this fact like nobody’s business. Here’s another hilarious example, from the same AP story:
“‘It would be premature to make any conclusion that we would see any hiatus of the longer-term warming trend,’ said Tom Karl, director of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. ‘Global temperatures are continuing to increase.’”
Yes, it would be premature to draw a conclusion (that global warming is not happening) based on current data (that global temps are lower today than in 1998). That’s what we foolish mortals do.
Government scientists, and the functionaries and bureaucrats they serve, however, know better. Aren’t we lucky?
In another sickening example, NASA scientists admit that while the new data is “suggestive of a slowdown in global warming, this apparent slowdown may largely disappear as a few more years of data are added.”
An apparent slowdown that may disappear. Talk about covering your bases. Nothing to see here, folks, move along.
One can understand this disappointment. Lucrative climate-scaremongering careers are at stake. So it is no surprise that many cling to the hope that maybe we will burn up after all, that maybe this new data is just a fluke, a blip, a natural respite from man’s descent into an unnatural global conflagration.
The truth is this: There is no such thing as an “average” global temperature. The history of our planet is a history of wildly fluctuating temperatures, locally and globally, from season to season, century to century, epoch to epoch.
Only a generation as narcissistic as the baby boomers would assume that the temperature they were accustomed to as they came of age in the mid-20th century is the “correct” or “average” global temperature, which must be maintained in perpetuity no matter the costs.
Again, from NASA: “Global temperature in 2011 was lower than in 1998.” Now there’s an inconvenient truth for you.
Matt Patterson is the Warren Brookes fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and senior editor at the Capital Research Center.
Some one or some organization is attempting to influence the upcoming annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society (AMS).
According to Urging American Meteorological Society to Get Tougher on Climate Change, a program called Forecast the Facts is attempting to lobby the AMS to change their 5-year policy on climate change to a new policy “drafted by a panel of [unidentified] experts” (emphasis added). The “Campaign Director” is identified as Daniel Souweine.
The Forecast the Facts web site turns out to be a product of “Citizen Engagement Laboratory (CEL).”
And who is the Chief of Staff of CEL? You guessed it: Daniel Souweine.
The web site describes CEL as: “a non-profit, non-partisan organization that uses digital media and technology to amplify the voices of underrepresented constituencies. We seek to empower individuals to take collective action on the issues that concern them, promoting a world of greater equality and justice in the process.”
The CEL web site lists 350.org as a “Partner,” which describes itself as: “building a global grassroots movement to solve the climate crisis. Our online campaigns, grassroots organizing, and mass public actions are led from the bottom up by thousands of volunteer organizers in over 188 countries.”
Sounds like birds of a feather, even though they are both attempting to lobby a major national organization to change a policy that affects all of its members… from the top down. Hardly grass roots organization. And hardly on behalf of “underrepresented constituencies.”
Evidently, grassroots meteorologists are insufficiently toeing the line when it comes to laying weather patterns at the feet of “global warming.” Someone unnamed wants them to publicly join the global warming bandwagon in blaming human CO2 emissions for observed climate change, ignoring the uncertainty of climate science, ignoring all evidence to the contrary, insisting on one single simplistic explanation for climate change.
TeeVee weather presenters, even those who are qualified meteorologists, are the most visible source of public information about weather and climate. They appear daily to billions of people, and whether or not it is a good idea, their “opinions” about climate change carry a lot of weight in popular culture. It’s no wonder that those whose interests are served by spreading fear of climate change in support of a predetermined economic outcome are after these “grass roots” who fail to tremble in fear of natural climate phenomena.
This is not grass roots, this is Big Money come to the service of shadowy figures in the background of international politics and economics. Who profits from fear of climate change? Who is funding this program to gag independent meteorologists and TeeVee weather presenters?
This is part of a concerted behind-the-scenes program funded by monied interests to subvert all elements of environmental awareness and activism to the cause of money and power, political and economic influence. Global warming hyperbole has been used to discredit free-thinking, independent scientific research, free expression, free thought and free action. The individuals and corporations funding this movement are laying the ground work for society controlled by corporate-government-military oligarchies to maintain the economic and political status quo.
A campaign starting this weekend will urge meteorologists to cite man-made climate change when they report on strong storms and flooding.
“Forecast the Facts” - a campaign by the League of Conservation Voters, 350.org and Citizen Engagement Lab—aims to persuade the American Meteorological Society to adopt an official position linking higher instance of extreme weather events to emissions of heat-trapping gases.
The groups will deliver petitions to the society next week during its annual meeting in New Orleans.
The campaign ultimately hopes to persuade weather forecasters to discuss climate change when they report on the weather, campaign director Daniel Souweine said.
“The aim of the campaign is really to shift how TV meteorologists report on climate change,” he said.
Meteorologists usually don’t mention man-made climate change in reports on extreme weather, the activists say, even though many scientists say human emissions are making those events more common.
Souweine said many TV weather forecasters doubt climate change is occurring or that it’s linked to human activities.
A survey by George Mason University found 26 percent of meteorologists believe man-made climate change is “a scam.” Seventy-eight percent of respondents said reporters should provide “balance” when discussing climate change, treating it as a political issue, and two-thirds said weather broadcasts are not an appropriate place to discuss the issue.
Souweine said meteorologists should begin reporting that climate change is a scientific consensus, even though he acknowledges that no individual storm or drought can be linked to the phenomenon.
“We think it’s important to tell their viewers what is behind those phenomenon,” he said. “We think that is actually their professional responsibility.”
AMS did not immediately return calls for comment. PDF with comments.
And SEPP reports: New Tactics: Global warming alarmists have taken a new tactic in their efforts to brand global warming skeptics as anti-science. Skeptics, such as SEPP, insist that climate change is natural and normal and that the UN IPCC has failed to produce rigorous scientific research demonstrating that carbon dioxide emissions are causing unprecedented and dangerous global warming. The models used failed to predict current temperature trends, thus the results are nothing but speculation.
In an effort to distort issues, organizations such as the self-styled National Center for Science Education (NCSE) are attempting to lump skepticism about global warming with skepticism about evolution. The subjects are separate and distinct, and any rational discussion needs to separate them. To SEPP, this is but one more example how desperate the global warming alarmists have become over their failure to conduct the necessary research.
The web site of NCSE states: “To ensure the accuracy of the models at projecting future climate trends, the models are often run backwards in time to “retrodict” past climate changes, and then compared with paleoclimate observations. The models through this process have become remarkably accurate and give the climate research community confidence that the future projections are robust.” [Boldface added.] The climate models are failing the most critical test - the ability to predict the current temperature trend of no increase. Please see links under ”Expanding the Orthodoxy.”
-------
False Positives: No matter how scrupulously conducted, sometimes studies will produce a false positive by sheer random chance. There is no way of knowing when this will occur. As reader Tom Sheahen pointed out, Judith Curry had an interesting post on false positives on her web site, linked in TWTW last week and this week.
To help assure that false positives do not enter into government policy requires demanding repetitive, rigorous, transparent studies. Of course, this is of little use when agencies, such as the EPA in its new mercury rules, pick and choose the studies they wish to use and discard the rest without written justification. Please see link under “Seeking a Common Ground.”
Good afternoon. David’s friend and chief meteorologist of the Power of 5 weather network at WEWS Cleveland, Mark Johnson, has recently been drawing fire for his claims, “Earth hasn’t warmed in 15 years” story on newsnet5.com (here). The group, “thinkprogress.org”, began the criticism. The group “Forecast the Facts” on Facebook, (here) also joined in the crusade.
Just when things were just staying on one meteorologist, they decided to go after another Cleveland meteorologist, WJW FOX 8 weather, Andre Bernier. Andre’s story related to the same topic titled, “Serious global…COOLING?” (here).
David also believes in the same criteria in global warming as Mark and Andre believes in. David states, “Anthropogenic climate change, or “Global Warming,” is nothing more than a corrupt political agenda based theory. There is no good science that has gone into the “research” or findings. Climate change goes both ways. The Earth warms, the Earth cools. The Earth has been doing this for millions and millions of years and we can’t control the weather in the short term, nevertheless the climate.”
Clevelanders, we need to stand behind our meteorologists that deliver the accurate forecast and state the truth. Support Mark and Andre’s claims on the lies, government cover-ups, and government make-ups by the paid scientists.
Clevelanders looking for latest weather information across Northeastern Ohio and greater Cleveland area. You can catch the great weather team and friends of mine, Chief Meteorologist, Jimmy Cornell, and Meteorologists Brian Ivey, Eric Poston, and Mark Spencer of www.neoweather.com. They are Northeastern Ohio’s most comprehensive and accurate weather team around. They are also located on Facebook, www.facebook.com/neoweather. Check them out sometime and tell them David Saurer sent you.
Clevelanders looking for the national weather information, news, and forecast. Check out David Saurer’s national weather blog.
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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