I have two major stories out of Germany to report, one on the rise of Climate Skepticism into the mainstream, as Germany’s Top Environmentalist Turns Climate Sceptic, saying
“I couldn’t take it any more. I had to write this book.”
Doubt came two years ago when he was an expert reviewer of an IPCC report on renewable energy. “I discovered numerous errors and asked myself if the other IPCC reports on climate were similarly sloppy.”
….and the other major story is on the failure of solar and wind power in Germany. First, the mainstream skepticism:
Body Blow To German Global Warming Movement! Major Media Outlets Unload On “CO2 Lies!”
Excerpts reposted from NoTricksZone by Pierre Gosselin
Today Germany’s national tabloid Bild (which has a whopping circulation of 16 million) devoted half of page 2 on an article called:.
“THE CO2 LIES ... pure fear-mongering ... should we blindly trust the experts?”
That’s what Germany’s leading daily Bild (see photo) wrote in its print and online editions today, on the very day that renowned publisher Hoffmann & Campe officially released a skeptic book - one written by a prominent socialist and environmental figure.
This is huge. More than I ever could have possibly imagined. And more is coming in the days ahead! The Bild piece was just the first of a series.
Mark this as the date that Germany’s global warming movement took a massive body blow.
Today, not one, but two of Germany’s most widely read news media published comprehensive skeptical climate science articles in their print and online editions, coinciding with the release of a major climate skeptical book, Die kalte Sonne (The Cold Sun).
Germany has now plunged into raucous discord on the heated topic of climate change
What has set it all off? One of the fathers of Germany’s modern green movement, Professor Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, a social democrat and green activist, decided to author a climate science skeptical book together with geologist/paleontologist Dr. Sebastian Luning.
Vahrenholt’s skepticism started when he was asked to review an IPCC report on renewable energy. He found hundreds of errors. When he pointed them out, IPCC officials simply brushed them aside. Stunned, he asked himself, “Is this the way they approached the climate assessment reports?”
Vahrenholt decided to do some digging. His colleague Dr. Luning also gave him a copy of Andrew Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion. He was horrified by the sloppiness and deception he found. Well-connected to Hoffmann & Campe, he and Lüning decided to write the book. Die kalte Sonne cites 800 sources and has over 80 charts and figures. It examines and summarizes the latest science.
Conclusion: climate catastrophe is called off
The science was hyped. The book started hitting the bookshops today and has already hit no. 1 on the Amazon.de list for environment books. Indications show that it will climb very high in the overall bestseller charts. It’s published by a renowned publishing house and is now sending shock waves through the German climate science establishment. The first printing will produce 20,000 copies. I expect they will sell out rather quickly.
Australian farmers were waiting to assess crop damage after heavy rains, for a second successive year, left many eastern areas flooded, inundating towns and prompting helicopter rescues.
While rains were, late on Friday local time, easing in New South Wales and Queensland, after dumping 30cm (one foot) of rain in two days in some areas, they left behind flooding.
This year’s floods, caused by rains linked to the recurrence of the La Nina weather pattern.
In Moree, the centre of Queensland’s cotton industry, floodwaters have hit their highest in at least 35 years, beating levels reached exactly a year ago after Cyclone Yasi, billed as the most severe ever storm to hit the state.
This is the second straight year of major flooding. It comes after the government’s appointed so-called climate experts had projected increased semi--permanent drought was the problem to prepare for not flooding. See their report:
Excerpt from FUTURE DROUGHTS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR GOVERNMENTS
Global warming is a reality that is with us today. We can expect that the impact of drought in Australia will get worse as global warming accelerates. CSIRO (2001) has projected increases in Australian temperatures of between 1C and 6C by 2070, much greater than the increases over the last 50 years. These temperature increases would lead to even greater evaporation and water stress during future droughts, much worse than in 2002. CSIRO (2001) has projected up to a 45% decrease in stream flow in the Murray-Darling Basin by 2070. Climate models have projected a marked increase in the frequency of extreme droughts under global warming conditions (IPCC, 2001). From WWF report authored by alarmist professor Karoly.
See in the following post by Jennifer Marohasy ”Time to Reject AGW - And Bob Brown” how Karoly and the greens are responsible for the country not being prepared for disastrous flooding despite warnings that the decadal cycles were changing and rains were coming.
By Jennifer Marohasy
EVER the opportunist, Bob Brown, Leader of the Australian Greens, blamed the Brisbane floods on the coal industry for causing global warming.
But there is no correlation between atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and rainfall or flooding, as measured by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, anywhere in Australia.
There is, however, a correlation between patterns in the major atmospheric-oceanic oscillations and flood events.
Stewart Franks, a hydrologist at the University of Newcastle, has shown that the usefulness of the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) as a predictor of flooding depends on whether or not a more complex phenomenon also measured by sea surface temperatures known as the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) (also called the PDO) is in a positive or negative phase.
In a series of peer-reviewed papers published in the best international journals since 2003, Professor Franks has shown that when the IPO is negative, as it was from 1946 to 1977, then there is a much greater chance that there will be flooding rains if a La Nina forms.
The IPO started to go negative in 1999, but an El Nino formed in 2001, and seven years of mostly drought followed - sustained by the El Nino conditions.
In February 2009, Professor Franks commented at this weblog that the Australian climate showed signs of entering another wet phase and warned that governments should prepare for a return to a 20-40 year period where La Nina dominates.
Just over a year later, in April 2010, the negative IPO now entrenched, a strong La Nina began to form and flooding rains followed.
Indeed the explanation for the recent devastating flooding is not carbon dioxide, but inadequate infrastructure and warning systems in the face of a combination of La Nina conditions during a negative IPO, a monsoon trough and already saturated catchments.
This graph from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) on Brisbane flooding history. When you add the 2010 flood levels to the graph all of the sudden, the historical context for the flood being driven by global warming disappears.
Enlarged
Ever more alarming facts are emerging to show how Brisbane’s floods were made infinitely worse by cockeyed decisions inspired by the obsession of the Australian authorities with global warming. Inevitably, the country’s warmist lobby has been voluble in claiming that such a “freak weather event” (as the BBC called it) is a consequence of man-made climate change. But far from being an unprecedented “freak event”, the latest flood was nearly a foot below the level of one in 1974 and 10 feet below the record set in 1893.
For years, Australia’s warmists have been advising the authorities that the danger posed to the country by global warming is not floods but droughts: not too much rain but too little. One result, in Brisbane, was a relaxation of planning rules, to allow building on areas vulnerable to flooding in the past. As long ago as 1999, this was seen as potentially disastrous by an expert Brisbane River Flood Study (which was ignored and for years kept secret). Instead of investing in its flood defences, Australia spent $13 billion on desalination plants. (Queensland’s was recently mothballed because of the excess of rain.)
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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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.
Editor’s Note: Jim Witt is being featured today (Feb. 2) as The Huffington Post’s Greatest Person of the Day. The series features stories of people across the nation who are making a difference in their community. Congratulations Jim!
Predicting the weather is just one way Jim Witt has helped his community for the last fifty years.
Since 1986, this innovative meteorologist has been producing a long-range weather forecast calendar that has raised over two million dollars for charity.
Sold in over fifty stores, the calendar features local photographer Joe Deutsch’s beautiful landscape pictures of the Hudson Valley, along with Witt’s expert weather projections for the months ahead.
Witt, a resident of Cold Spring and a former Lakeland Central School District science teacher, remembers how he became fascinated with meteorology back in 1944.
“I have been excited about weather since I was a seven-year-old kid watching a barometer go down as a hurricane came up the East coast,” he said. Witt eventually came to the district in 1962 and became the coordinator for the district’s science departments.
Tapping into his students’ excitement for forecasting weather, he founded the high school’s “Weather Club,” an admired program that has been nationally recognized.
“We would meet to plot and analyze weather maps and come up with forecasts for the days ahead,” Witt said of the club. Their three-day forecasts were then broadcasted on local radio station WLNA and appeared in the Peekskill Evening Star.
After retiring in 1977, Witt founded a forecasting company that aided highway departments, shipping companies, crane operators and others in obtaining accurate weather information. He has utilized his broad expertise to teach meteorology, consult for government organizations and as a radio personality on stations like WHUD and WLNA in the Hudson Valley and at WKIT, a station in Bangor, Maine that is owned by the author Stephen King.
It was with colleagues at WHUD that the idea for the calendar was born.
“We knew that people love the weather and with Joe’s gorgeous photos of the Hudson Valley - why not make a calendar that would raise money for kids?” Witt said.
All of the proceeds have gone to 50 different organizations involved with the Hope for Youth Foundation charity, with beneficiaries that include the Make-a-Wish Foundation, Ronald McDonald House and Friends of Karen, among others. He added that the Peekskill Rotary club has now become an invaluable partner in the production and distribution of the calendar.
Witt proudly asserts that his greatest achievement has been the success of his former Lakeland district students in their pursuit of science.
“It is really incredible and I am so proud of what these kids have achieved,” he said. “One of my former students is the Director of Research at the National Hurricane Center, another is Executive Vice President at AccuWeather, a third is a lead forecaster at NASA and amazingly, a student of mine is responsible for a breakthrough in forecasting technology that has improved the accuracy of the seven-day forecast.”
His legacy was recognized last year with a prestigious award from the American Meteorological Society for “innovative leadership in teaching high school meteorology, mentoring, and inspiring his students to accomplishments in the meteorological community and in life.”
And what about Jim Witt’s forecast for the rest of winter 2012?
He predicts a “major event” during the week of March 18-March 24, with very strong, cold winds and possibly a large snowstorm. Careful out there.
Look for Witt’s calendars in these fifty stores around northern Westchester.
See Jim’s website and educational pages:
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)
Feb 05, 2012
Cook cooked by Monckton ….again
SS “Skeptical Science"[sic] author John Cook gets schooled by Lord Christopher Monckton (ad-hom magnet).
Mr. John Cook, who runs a website puzzlingly entitled “Skeptical Science” (for he is not in the least sceptical of the “official” position) seems annoyed that I won the 2011 televised debate with Dr. Denniss of the Australia Institute, and has published a commentary on what I said. It has been suggested that I should reply to the commentary. So, seriatim, I shall consider the points made. Mr. Cook’s comments are in Roman face: my replies are in bold face. Since Mr. Cook accuses me of lying, I have asked him to be good enough to make sure that this reply to his commentary is posted on his website in the interest of balance.
Chaotic climate
Cook: “Monckton launched his Gish Gallop by arguing that climate cannot be predicted in the long-term because it’s too chaotic because, [Monckton says],’the climate is chaotic...it is not predictable in the long-term...they [the IPCC] say that the climate is a coupled, non-linear, chaotic object, and that therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.’… It’s really quite self-evident that Monckton’s statement here is incorrect.”
Reply: Paragraph 5 section 14.2.2.2 of the IPCC’s 2007 AR4 TAR report says: ‘In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.” My quotation from the IPCC, given from memory, was in substance accurate. Here and throughout, I shall ignore Mr. Cook’s numerous, disfiguring, ad-hominem comments.
Consensus
Cook: “Monckton proceeds to demonstrate his confusion about the causal relationship between science and consensus: [he says: ‘the idea that you decide any scientific question by mere consensus [is incorrect].’… He suggests that somehow climate science is done by first creating a consensus when in reality the consensus exists because the scientific evidence supporting the anthropogenic global warming theory is so strong.”
Reply:
This seems a quibble. Dr. Denniss had said he was satisfied with the science because there was a consensus. He had appealed repeatedly to consensus. Yet in the Aristotelian canon the argumentum ad populum, or headcount fallacy, is rightly regarded as unacceptable because the consensus view - and whatever “science” the consensus opinion is founded upon - may or may not be correct, and the mere fact that there is a consensus tells us nothing about the correctness of the consensus opinion or of the rationale behind that opinion. Adding carbon dioxide to an atmosphere will cause warming, but we need not (and should not) plead “consensus” in aid of that notion: for it is a result long proven by experiment, and has no need of “consensus” to sanctify it. However, the real scientific debate is about how much warming extra CO2 in the air will cause. There is no “consensus” on that; and, even if there were, science is not done by consensus.
Mediaeval warm period
Cook: “Every single peer-reviewed millennial temperature reconstruction agrees that current temperatures are hotter than during the peak of the [Mediaeval Warm Period]....
Reply: At http://www.co2science.org, Dr. Craig Idso maintains a database of papers by more than 1000 scientists from more than 400 institutions in more than 40 countries providing evidence that the medieval warm period was real, was global, and was generally warmer than the present, sometimes by as much as 3-4 C. Many of these papers provide millennial reconstructions…
Climate sensitivity
Cook: “Where Monckton gets this claim that the Australian government’s central climate sensitivity estimate to doubled CO2 is 5.1 C is a complete mystery.
Reply: The “mystery” could and should have been cleared up by Mr. Cook simply asking me. The estimate is that of Professor Ross Garnaut, the Australian Government’s economic adviser on climate questions. It is on that figure that his economic analysis - accepted by the Australian Government - centres.
Cook: “Monckton also repeats a myth… that most climate sensitivity estimates are based on models, and those few which are based on observations arrive at lower estimates. The only study which matches Monckton’s description is the immensely-flawed Lindzen and Choi (2009)."Reply: I am not sure what qualifications Mr. Cook has to find Professor Lindzen’s work “immensely flawed”. However, among the numerous papers that find climate sensitivity low are Douglass et al. (2004, 2007) and Coleman & Thorne (2005), who reported the absence of the projected fingerprint of anthropogenic greenhouse-gas warming in the tropical mid-troposphere; Douglass & Christy (2009), who found the overall feedback gain in the climate system to be somewhat net-negative; Wentz et al. (2007), who found that the rate of evaporation from the Earth’s surface with warming rose thrice as fast as the models predicted, implying climate-sensitivity is overstated threefold in the models; Shaviv (2005, 2011), who found that if the cosmic-ray influence on climate were factored into palaeoclimate reconstructions the climate sensitivities cohered at 1-1.7 C per CO2 doubling, one-half to one-third of the IPCC’s central estimate; Paltridge et al. (2009), who found that additional water vapor at altitude (caused by warming) tends to subside to lower altitudes, allowing radiation to escape to space much as before and greatly reducing the water vapor feedback implicit in a naive application of the Clausius-Clapeyron relation; Spencer and Braswell (2010, 2011), who found the cloud feedback as strongly negative as the IPCC finds it positive, explicitly confirming Lindzen & Choi’s estimated climate sensitivity; Loehle & Scafetta (2011), who followed Tsonis et al. (2006) in finding that much of the warming of the period 1976-2001 was caused not by us but by the natural cycles in the climate system, notably the great ocean oscillations; etc., etc.
Climate sensitivity
Cook: “Monckton at various times has claimed that climate sensitivity to doubled CO2 is anywhere between 0.2 and 1.6 C.”
Reply: I have indeed done climate sensitivity estimates by a variety of methods, and those methods tend to cohere at a low sensitivity. The IPCC at various times has claimed that a central estimate of climate sensitivity is 3.8 C (1995); 3.5 C (2001); and 3.26 C (2007); and its range of estimates of 21st-century warming in the 2007 report is 1.1-6.4 C. Ranges of estimates are usual where it is not possible to derive an exact value.
Carbon pricing economics
Cook: “Monckton employs the common ‘skeptic’ trick of focusing on the costs of carbon pricing while completely ignoring the benefits.”
Reply: On the contrary: my analysis, presented in detail at the Los Alamos Santa Fe climate conference in 2011, explicitly calculates the costs of taxing, trading, regulating, reducing, or replacing CO2 and sets against the costs the cost of not preventing the quantum of “global warming” that will be reduced this century as a result of the “investment”.
Reply
Yet again, if Mr. Cook had bothered to check I could have sent him my slides and the underlying paper.
Benefits of CO2 control
Cook: “Economic studies consistently predict that the benefits [of carbon dioxide control] will outweigh the costs several times over.”
Reply: No, they don’t. True, the Stern and Garnaut reports - neither of them peer-reviewed - came to this conclusion by questionable methods, including the use of an absurdly low inter-temporal discount rate. However, if one were permitted to use the word “consensus”, one would have to point out that the overwhelming majority of economic studies on the subject (which are summarized in my paper) find the cost of climate action greatly exceeds the cost of inaction. Indeed, two review papers - Lomborg (2007) and Tol (2009) - found near-unanimity on this point in the peer-reviewed literature. Cook is here forced back on to the argument from consensus, citing only an opinion survey of “economists with climate expertise”. However, he does not say how many were interviewed, how they were selected, what weightings and other methods were used: and, in any event, the study was not peer-reviewed. Science is not, repeat not, repeat not done by opinion surveys or any form of head-count. Has Earth warmed as expected?
Earth warming
Cook: “Monckton...repeats… that Earth hasn’t warmed as much as expected...[He says} ‘If we go back to 1750...using the Central England Temperature Record as a proxy for global temperatures...we’ve had 0.9 C of warming...’. It should go without saying that the temperature record for a single geographic location cannot be an accurate proxy for average global temperature.”
Reply: Central England is at a latitude suitable to take the long-run temperature record as a fair proxy for global temperatures. However, if Mr. Cook were unhappy with that, he could and should have contacted me to ask for an independent verification of the 0.9 C warming since 1750. Hansen (1984) found 0.5 C of warming had occurred until that year, and there has been 0.4 C of warming since, making 0.9 C. Indeed, in another article on Mr. Cook’s website he himself uses a value of 0.8 C in the context of a discussion of warming since 1970. The significance, of course, is that the radiative forcings we have caused since 1750 are equivalent to those from a doubling of CO2 concentration, suggesting that the transient sensitivity to CO2 doubling is around 1 C.
Aerosols
Cook: “...Human aerosol emissions, which have a cooling effect, have also increased over this period. And while 3 C is the IPCC’s best estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity, the climate system is not yet in equilibrium. Neglecting these two factors (aerosols and thermal inertia of the global climate), as Monckton and Lindzen have done, will certainly give you an underestimate of equilibrium sensitivity, by a large margin. This is how Monckton supports his lowball climate sensitivity claim - by neglecting two important climate factors.”
Reply: Once again, Mr. Cook has failed to check his facts with me. Of course my calculations include the effect of aerosols (which, however, is by no means as certain in its magnitude as Mr. Cook seems to think). And of course I have not ignored temperature feedbacks (which Mr. Cook mistakenly confuses with “the thermal inertia of the global climate”: actually, it is I who have been arguing that there is considerable homoeostasis in global temperatures, and he who had earlier been arguing that global climate was not stable). If I am right about temperature feedbacks (see above), then the equilibrium sensitivity will be about the same as the transient sensitivity - around 1 C. And that, on most analyses, would actually be beneficial.
Always entertaining to see AGW cultists accuse others of ‘gish galloping’!
Feb 01, 2012
On Dentists, Cardiologists, Climatologists and Evidence-Based Remedies
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.
LORD LAWSON had barely removed his microphone when the vitriolic attacks began.
The veteran politician had just taken part in a calm debate about the merits of extracting gas from shale. During the discussion on the BBC’s Today programme he stated his firmly held view that there has been no global warming so far this century.
It was the catalyst for an outpouring of venom on message boards and social networking sites. In a selection of the printable insults Lord Lawson was described as “a rabid climate change denier”, “a liar” and “a lone nutcase”. One listener even posted: “Why isn’t he dead yet?”
Former Chancellor Lord Lawson celebrates his 80th birthday in March and might be forgiven for wondering, at his time of life, if he really needs to endure all this. His supporters insist he is turning the tide in the bitter debate over the impact of global warming but such is the might of the green lobby there must have been occasions when he felt like a lone voice.
Climate change is a complex issue and it could be decades before there is a definitive answer as to its impact on the planet and the extent to which pollution caused by man is harmful. At the moment there’s much that we can’t explain but it is certainly an emotive issue that polarises opinion.
However Lord Lawson, an inherently decent man with a compelling argument, finds himself pilloried. Yesterday there was an apparent campaign by green activists to have him banned from the BBC.
In the past he has spoken about attempts to smear his organisation, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think-tank which challenges many misconceptions about global warming and warns against hasty policy decisions based on exaggerated research.
In this propaganda war in which his opponents seem intent on destroying his reputation there have also been mutterings about the funding of the organisation, although it receives no cash from any oil or energy companies.
Dr Benny Peiser, director of Lord Lawson’s organisation, says: “It does get personal. Some use a bullying strategy rather than engage in proper debate.”
The foundation chooses not to have a Facebook site or Twitter page. “They can encourage personal attacks,” says Peiser, who launched the fight back against global warming alarmists seven years ago.
He claims there’s growing public disillusionment with the narrow agenda being pushed by the green lobby. Polls appear to support that, with one showing more than one in three Britons believe global warming claims are hyped.
Lord Lawson’s organisation is not allied to a political party but he has found himself coming under fire from the Government. Energy Secretary Chris Huhne has called some of the Foundation’s work “misinformed, wrong and perverse”.
Lord Lawson says no one is certain about the impact of global warming on the environment. He says: “There is no scientific basis for some of the alarmism.”
He adds: “While it is scientifically established that increased emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from the use of carbon-based energy such as coal, oil and gas can be expected to warm the planet, it is uncertain how great any such warming would be and how much harm, if any, it would do.”
Many scientists now believe that climate change is much more likely to be part of a cycle of warming and cooling that has happened regularly every 1,500 years for the last million years, without causing major harm.
Lord Lawson fears that economies are being harmed by an obsession with so-called renewable fuels, which are expensive. They might be trendy and appear to have all the right green credentials but they are costing us all a small fortune in hidden taxes and higher fuel bills to fund their introduction.
It’s claimed that by 2020 every family could be paying an additional 300 pounds a year and that energy produced from wind farms is five times more expensive than conventional fuels.
The peer and his growing band of supporters insist that it’s premature to turn our backs on fossil fuels, including shale gas which can be extracted cheaply in large amounts by a process known as fracking.
Yesterday Lord Lawson described this fuel as “exciting”, adding: “There is now the prospect of cheap gas in abundance all over the world.”
Lord Lawson, who was Margaret Thatcher’s Chancellor from 1983 to 1989 and an MP for 28 years, is not the only one to have suffered for his views on climate change. Anyone who dares to challenge the often zealous green lobby is apparently fair game.
Entertainer and mathematician Johnny Ball has been vilified for opposing the commonly held view about global warming.
He says: “For daring to take this contrarian view I’ve lost bookings, had talks cancelled and been the subject of a sinister internet campaign that only came to an end following the intervention of the police.”
Ball shares many of Lord Lawson’s views, saying: “Logic tells me that we will eventually be proved right. The argument that we are going to hell in a handcart because of global warming is failing at every turn. The furore over climate change has been totally overstated. Nothing has happened in the past 20 years but the green lobby is incredibly powerful.”
He has been forced to threaten legal action against one campaigner for his “vitriolic” attacks. Ball, who opposes the creation of huge wind farms, says: “Nigel Lawson deserves immense respect because the supporters of this doom and gloom theory have behaved outrageously.”
Environmental campaigner David Bellamy also claims he has been victimised for taking an alternative position. He has said: “The sad fact is that since I said I didn’t believe human beings caused global warming I’ve not been allowed to make a TV programme. The idiot fringe has accused me of being like a Holocaust denier.”
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]
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.”
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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.
Mark and Andre Bernier and the other climate realists are the honest scientists.
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.
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.
“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.
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):
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)
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