Global warming
This thread is for comment and discussion on any aspect of global warming not covered by other threads.
Climate Conversation Group
Taking the heat out of global warming
For the first time in history, people shouting “the end is nigh” are somehow
For the first time in history, people shouting “the end is nigh” are somehow
the sane ones, while those of us who say it is not are now the lunatics.
Latest climate models v. reality
As the models continue to leave actual temperature readings in their dust, sizeable warming halted about 1995 — although it might resume at any time. It must hasten to have any hope of catching up with the predictions.
If you claim warming continues, we want evidence of continued warming — eminently reasonable. Making us wait for 17 years for that evidence invites us to doubt you.
Claiming that warming hasn't stopped is the same as claiming it has — and both are ridiculous, for nobody knows the future. The best you can do is describe the past.
Click graph for larger version.
I’d like to introduce you to a website http://www.conscious.com.au/
which contains extensive material by Malcolm Roberts and John Maclean (their bios are on site) and also reviews of the UN IPCC’s 2007 report by chapter by Dr Vincent Gray (UN IPCC Expert Reviewer,) (PhD chemistry, Cambridge) who has reviewed every UN IPCC Assessment Report and Summary for Policy Makers: 1991, 1995, 2001, 2007.) There is also a link to the 2007 report and its chapters. Dr Gray’s bio is also on site and his reviews are certainly worth a read even without comparing them line by line to the report.
This is one comment I like from his review of Ch 9 ‘Paragrapg 5.1.1. is confused. First, you should avoid using the term “climate change” altogether, because it
is defined, legally by the Framework Convention on Climate Change as exclusively concerbed with changes
in greenhouse gases caused by humans. This is a very restricted definition which makes it impossible for
scientists to study the climate before they have been able to attribute any possible cxause. It is no use
claimimg that the IPCC hacve changed this definition. They have not. The FCCC definition is endorsed by an
international treaty, and you cannot just change it like this.’
For lay people like me the site is certainly educational
“First, you should avoid using the term “climate change” altogether, because it is defined, legally by the Framework Convention on Climate Change as exclusively concerbed with changes in greenhouse gases caused by humans. This is a very restricted definition which makes it impossible for scientists to study the climate before they have been able to attribute any possible cxause. It is no use claimimg that the IPCC hacve changed this definition. They have not. The FCCC definition is endorsed by an international treaty, and you cannot just change it like this.’”
I have a variation on this
http://www.climateconversation.wordshine.co.nz/2010/10/world-of-sceptical-questions-unfolds%E2%80%A6/#comment-25683
Yes as Dr Gray says ‘There needs to be part of the “Introduction”, or even a separate section, discussing the problems and ambiguities that have been caused by the definition of “Climate Change” in the Framework Convention on Climate Change 1992. The definition is “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over a comparable time period” .This definition has the following unfortunate consequences. It gives the impression that ALL “Changes of Climate” are caused by human emitted greenhouse gases, and encourages the use of climate models that are based on that assumption. In reality there are several other causes of changes of climate, some by humans, such as urban development, energy emissions, and land use change, and some natural, such as the sun, volcanoes, El Niño ocean changes and cosmic rays, not present in the models, which means that they are all of very limited use.’
(from his General Comments Review)
The 1992 definition has a biased nuance (they don’t entertain the notion that natural cycles forcings just might be the major climate drivers) :
“a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over a comparable time period”
And Is substantially different to (can’t remember where I got this from):
“Climate change refers to a statistically significant variation in either the mean state of the climate or in its variability, persisting for an extended period (typically decades or longer). Climate change may be due to natural internal processes or external forcings, or to persistent anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere or in land use.”
Which does at least acknowledge uncertainty as to the predominate climate drivers (they don’t know – we do)
Or the AR4 Glossary:
“Climate change refers to a change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g., by using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties, and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer. Climate change may be due to natural internal processes or external forcings, or to persistent anthropogenic changes in
the composition of the atmosphere or in land use. Note that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in its Article 1, defines climate change as: ‘a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition ofthe global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability
observed over comparable time periods’. The UNFCCC thus makes a distinction between climate change attributable to human activities altering the atmospheric composition, and climate variability attributable to natural causes. See also Climate variability; Detection and Attribution”
Which is a messy and incommunicable combination.
So to the world, the communication is:
“Climate Change is Man Made” and lots of money must change hands to stop it.
(and wealthy nations de-developed and the wealth transferred to poorer nations of course)
another site worth a look today
Climate Change Now Questioned At German Universities – Professors Speaking Up
contains a clip of a seminar here by Professors Dr Klaus Landfried of Heidelberg and Dr Werner Kirstein of the Institute for Geography at the University of Leipzig before an audience at the University of Leipzig. The seminar is titled:
“Where’s The Climate Change?”
http://notrickszone.com/2010/10/15/climate-change-now-questioned-at-german-universities-professors-speaking-up/
I have just listened to a very good interview on BBC Radio Oxford, with Richard North (EURef) at Chris Goodall (Green party candidate and director of 10:10)
The interview starts about 10 mins in after the musak.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00bg9r3/Louisa_Hannan_14_10_2010/
The interview is a blinder. Ricard North says climate change is all about politics, and Chris Goodall agrees with him
This is the kind of interview we need on Kim Hill!!!
Andy O/T
Did you see this?
Connections
NIWA – Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
http://www.safecoast.org/editor/databank/File/Integrated%20analysis%20of%20risks%20Norfolk.pdf
NIWA – Grantham Institute
http://www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/2009/12/09/warmest-decade-on-record-experts-respond/
At this thread (Also see up-thread funding etc):
http://www.climateconversation.wordshine.co.nz/2010/10/world-of-sceptical-questions-unfolds%E2%80%A6/#comment-25796
I read as far as the bit on “warmest year on record” at it started to sounded like a stuck record.
Matt Briggs (statistician) has some interesting points on this:
So the prediction that “2008 will be in the 10 ten warmest years” has an overwhelming probability of being true regardless whether man-made global warming is significant or not, and regardless whether an increasing or cyclic climate holds. That is, no matter what, this prediction is probably true, and it is useless as its intent was to give indirect evidence that the increasing climate scenario holds and that the man-made component of global warming is significant. It does neither such thing. Presenting this prediction as news is a clever debating tactic, but it is misleading, because the alternatives are not presented, even though the forecast is just as much evidence for them.
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=45
Seems to be trend.
Cozy little consensus at Science Media Centre
My use of “6 degees of separation” was grossly overstating the case.
I think we should join the local dots re spheres of influence
i.e NIWA – Science Media Centre – Royal Society (NZ) – Gluckman – Smith – IPCC – Media etc
I’m not totally up with the play or all of the players. The connections were glaringly apparent circa COP15. I did see some articles but don’t know if I could find the links.
I’m more physics/model orientated (big zone), so have not done the exercise, although others here will be thoroughly versed, I’m pickin.
The connections were explored at this post:
“Gluckman: knows nothing about climate”
http://www.climateconversation.wordshine.co.nz/2010/09/gluckman-knows-nothing-about-climate/
In case ya’ll missed it from Booker
Andy’s Money Trail – TERI, Pachauri, prominent NZ climate researcher, Reisinger etc
http://www.climateconversation.wordshine.co.nz/2010/10/world-of-sceptical-questions-unfolds%E2%80%A6/#comment-25795
Green pressure groups get €66 million from the EU
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100029193/green-pressure-groups-get-e66-million-from-the-eu/
Guardian scribe can’t cope with complex scientific arguments unseating his cognitive faculties:
“How fear of bias dominates the climate change debate”
Climate sceptics say they want science free of politics, yet their campaigning frames discussion
So…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/oct/15/climate-change-bias-debate
“we should actively avoid letting fringe ideological convictions frame public discussions of climate change science”
As a MMCC sceptic – couldn’t agree more
I’ve put this in “News” too. I hadn’t caught up with RT’s extended Open thread index.
GLOBAL COOLING
See “South America”
See “Africa”
See “Asia”
See “Australia”
See “New Zealand”
See “UK”
See “USA”
See “Europe”
See “Pacific”
Professor Don Easterbrook on The Looming Threat of Global Cooling
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Professor of Geology Dr. Don Easterbrook’s essay, The Looming Threat of Global Cooling, predicts on the basis of natural climate cycles such as the PDO that “global cooling for the next 2 to 3 decades will be far more damaging than global warming would have been.” The paper also finds there were numerous, abrupt, short-lived warming and cooling episodes, much more intense than recent warming/cooling, during the last ice age, none of which could have been caused by changes in atmospheric CO2:
THE LOOMING THREAT OF GLOBAL COOLING
Geologic Evidence for Prolonged Cooling Ahead and its Impacts
Prof. Don J. Easterbrook
Dept. of geology, Western Washington University
Essay
SOLAR CYCLE 24: EXPECTATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS
David C. Archibald
ABSTRACT
Archibald (2006) predicted that climate during the forthcoming Solar Cycles 24 and 25 would be significantly cold. As at late 2008, the progression of the current 23/24 solar minimum indicates that a severe cool period is now inevitable, similar to that of the Dalton Minimum. A decline in average annual temperature of 2.2° C is here predicted for the mid-latitude regions over Solar Cycle 24. The result will be an equator-ward shift in continental climatic conditions in the mid-latitudes of the order of 300 km, with consequent severe effects on world agricultural productivity.
Quantifying the US Agricultural Productivity Response to Solar Cycle 24
David Archibald 30th December, 2008
Assuming that two thirds of the productivity increase in mid-western states from 1990 to 2004 was climatically driven, then the productivity decline in this region due to Solar Cycle 24 is expected to be of the order of 30%. The total US agricultural productivity decrease would be less than that at possibly 20%, equating to the export share of US agricultural production.
See – “Economics” Global Cooling – Economic Impacts
More Evidence That Global Warming Is Becoming A Global Cooling Trend, Despite CO2 Growth
There is plenty of anecdotal and empirical evidence that global warming is on its last legs and fading fast. Often the global warming is presented as a linear temperature growth that seems to be a runaway-train-on-the-tracks headed off the charts. But the linear trend representation is very misleading.
When the same data is viewed in a non-linear representation, the simple straight line to heaven look is revealed for what it really is – a false representation.
Below are both global temperature and CO2 data for the last two decades, plus the first six months of 2010. Using a non-linear trend analysis, the actual data reveals the CO2 trend and global temperature trend diverging significantly.
Clearly, the flattening of warming is evident in the smooth blue trend curve for temperatures. This is happening while the smooth blue trend curve for CO2 continues its upward climb. The CO2-induced, “soon to be,” global warming tipping point is in reality, a fantasy. (click on image to enlarge)
A New Treasure Trove Of 1970s “Global Cooling” Articles
10 11 2010
Italian newspaper “La Stampa” has just put online its 1867-today archive (yes, it IS in Italian). What better chance (well, for me at least…) to explore the evolution of “global cooling” thinking in the 1970s beyond the usual English-speaking newsmedia? With the added bonus of plenty of names and other key words to use as…keywords for further research.
Rearview: Paul Ehrlich; Global Cooling
November 23rd, 2010
Source: S&A Digest
On global warming, we do have a position. It is the uber-bunk of our time, the big lie that’s too popular for politicians to ignore. Ironically, today’s big lie is the exact opposite of the last big lie, which was spawned by Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb, a best-selling book of the early 1970s. Ehrlich, a professor at Stanford University, predicted the world’s population would grow too rapidly to be supported by farming, resulting in a mass famine. Ehrlich wrote that in 10 years England would cease to exist because everyone there would starve to death. Part of the drama was the risk of global cooling.
As Dennis Gartman reminded me today, a 1975 Newsweek cover story proclaimed:
The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually… Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states. To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists… are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic.
Triple Crown of global cooling could pose serious threat to humanity
* May 19th, 2010 2:31 pm ET
* Seminole County Environmental News Examiner. Kirk Myers
“Global warming” may become one of those quaint cocktail party conversations of the past if three key climate drivers – cooling North Pacific sea surface temperatures, extremely low solar activity and increased volcanic eruptions – converge to form a “perfect storm” of plummeting temperatures that send our planet into a long-term cool-down lasting 20 or 30 years or longer.
“There are some wild cards that are different from what we saw when we came out of the last warm PDO [Pacific Decadal Oscillation] and entered its cool phase [1947 to 1976]. Now we have a very weak solar cycle and the possibility of increased volcanic activity. Together, they would create what I call the ‘Triple Crown of Cooling,’” says Accuweather meteorologist Joe Bastardi.
If all three climate-change ingredients come together, it would be a recipe for dangerously cold temperatures that would shorten the agricultural growing season in northern latitudes, crippling grain production in the wheat belts of the United States and Canada and triggering widespread food shortages and famine.
Cool Pacific Decadal Oscillation
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation refers to cyclical variations in sea surface temperatures that occur in the North Pacific Ocean. (The PDO is often described as a long-lived El Niño-like pattern.) PDO events usually persist for 20 to 30 years, alternating between warm and cool phases. During these long periods there are sometimes short-interval phase switches that can last several years.
From 1977 to 1998, during the height of “global warming,” North America was in the midst of a warm PDO. Since then, we have experienced several short-duration PDO fluctuations between cool and warm.
But the PDO has once again resumed its negative cool phase, and, as such, represents the first climate driver in the Triple Crown of Cooling. With the switch to a cool PDO, we’ve seen a change in the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which alternates between El Nino (warm phase) and La Nina (cool phase) every few years. The recent strong El Nino that began in July 2009 is now transitioning to a La Nina, a sign of cooler temperatures ahead.
“We’re definitely headed towards La Nina conditions before summer is over, and we’re looking at a moderate to strong La Nina by fall and winter, which, as these La Ninas tend to persist in the cold PDO for two years, should bring us cooler temperatures over the next few years,” predicts Joe D’Aleo, founder of the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project (ICECAP) and the first director of meteorology at the Weather Channel.
He is not alone in his forecast. Bastardi also sees a La Nina just around the corner.
“I’ve been saying since February that we’ll transition to La Nina by the middle of the hurricane season. I think we’re already seeing the atmosphere going into a La Nina state in advance of water temperatures. This will have interesting implications down the road. La Nina will dramatically cool off everything later this year and into next year, and it is a signal for strong hurricane activity,” Bastardi predicts.
The difference in sea surface temperature between positive and negative PDO phases is not more than 1 to 2 degrees Celsius, but the affected area is huge. So the temperature changes can have a big impact on the climate in North America.
In fact, as Dr. Roy Spencer points out, the warm-phase PDO lasting from 1977 to 1998 might explain most of the warming we experienced in the late 20th century.
“This is because a change in weather circulation patterns can cause a small change in global-average cloudiness. And since clouds represent the single largest internal control on global temperatures (through their ability to reflect sunlight), a change in cloudiness associated with the PDO might explain most of the climate change we’ve seen in the last 100 years or more,” he writes.
Declining solar activity
Another real concern – and the second climate driver in the Triple Crown of Cooling – is the continued stretch of weak solar activity Earth is experiencing. We recently exited the longest solar minimum –12.7 years compared to the 11-year average – in 100 years. It was a historically inactive period in terms of sunspot numbers. During the minimum, which began in 2004, we have experienced 800 spotless days. A normal cycle averages 485 spotless days.
In 2008, we experienced 265 days without a sunspot, the fourth-highest number of spotless days since continuous daily observations began in 1849. In 2009, the trend continued, with 261 spotless days, ranking it among the top five blank-sun years. Only 1878, 1901 and 1913 (the record-holder with 311 days) recorded more spotless days.
In 2010, the sun continues to remain in a funk. There were 27 spotless days (according to Layman’s sunspot count) in April and, as of May 19, 12 days without a spot. Both months exhibited periods of inexplicably low solar activity during a time when the sun should be flexing its “solar muscle” and ramping up towards the next solar maximum.
Why are sunspot numbers important? Very simple: there is a strong correlation between sunspot activity and global temperature. During the Dalton Minimum (1790 – 1830) and Maunder Minimum (1645 -1715), two periods with very low sunspot activity, temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere plummeted.
During the Dalton Minimum, the abnormally cold weather destroyed crops in northern Europe, the northeastern United States and eastern Canada. Historian John D. Post called it “the last great subsistence crisis in the Western world.” The record cold intensified after the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815, the largest volcanic eruption in more than 1,600 years (see details below).
During the 70-year Maunder Minimum, astronomers at the time counted only a few dozen sunspots per year, thousands fewer than usual. As sunspots vanished, temperatures fell. The River Thames in London froze, sea ice was reported along the coasts of southeast England, and ice floes blocked many harbors. Agricultural production nose-dived as growing seasons became shorter, leading to lower crop yields, food shortages and famine.
If the low levels of solar activity during the past three years continue through the current solar cycle (Solar Cycle 24), which is expected to peak in 2013, we could be facing a severe temperature decline within the next five to eight years as Earth’s climate begins to respond to the drop-off in solar activity.
“The sun is behaving very quietly – like it did in the late 1700s during the transition from Solar Cycle 4 to Solar Cycle 5 – which was the start of the Dalton Minimum,” D’Aleo says. If the official sunspot number reaches only 40 or 50 – a low number indicating very weak solar energy levels – during the next solar maximum, we could be facing much lower global temperatures down the road.”
Even NASA solar physicist David Hathaway has said this is “the quietest sun we’ve seen in almost a century.”
“Since the Space Age began in the 1950s, solar activity has been generally high,” Hathaway told NASA Science News. “Five of the ten most intense solar cycles on record have occurred in the last 50 years. We’re just not used to this kind of deep calm.”
Volcanic eruptions
Although the eruption of Iceland’s Mount Eyjafjallajokull volcano continues to raise havoc with air travel, it remains a relatively minor event by volcanic standards. Much of its ash cloud has stayed out of the stratosphere, where it would reflect sunlight, bringing cooler temperatures to the northern hemisphere.
Unfortunately, there is a very real chance Eyjafjallajokull’s much larger neighbor, the Katla volcano, could blow its top, creating the third-climate driver in the Triple Crown of Cooling. If Katla does erupt, it would send global temperatures into a nosedive, with a big assist from the cool PDO and a slumbering sun.
The Katla caldera measures 42 square miles and has a magma chamber with a volume of around 2.4 cubic miles, enough to produce a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) level-six eruption – an event ten times larger than Mount St. Helens.
Katla erupts about every 70 years or so, most recently in 1918, often in tandem with neighboring Eyjafjallajokull, which is not a good sign.
According to Bastardi, “The Katla volcano in Iceland is a game changer. If it erupts and sends plumes of ash and SO2 into the stratosphere, any cooling caused by the oceanic cycles would be strengthened and amplified.”
Iceland’s President Olafur Grimsson says the eruption of Eyjafjallajoekull volcano is only a “small rehearsal.”
“The time for Katla to erupt is coming close . . . I don’t say if, but I say when Katla will erupt,” Grimsson predicts. And when Katla finally erupts it will “create for a long period, extraordinary damage to modern advanced society.”
Not a very encouraging outlook. Yet major eruptions throughout history bear witness to the deadly impact of volcanoes.
The Tambora eruption in 1815, the largest in 1,600 years, sent the earth’s climate into a deep freeze, triggering “the year without a summer.” Columnist Art Horn, writing in the Energy Tribune, describes the impact:
“During early June of 1815, a foot of snow fell on Quebec City. In July and August, lake and river ice were observed as far south as Pennsylvania. Frost killed crops across New England with resulting famine. During the brutal winter of 1816/17, the temperature fell to -32 in New York City.”
And Katla, with its large magma chamber, would register high on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, if it were to erupt. When it unleashed its fury in the 1700s, the volcano sent temperatures into a tailspin in North America.
As Gary Hufford, a scientist with the Alaska Region of the National Weather Service, observes:
“The Mississippi River froze just north of New Orleans and the East Coast, especially New England, had an extremely cold winter.
“Katla could cause some serious weather changes. It depends on the duration of the eruption, and how high the ash gets blasted into the stratosphere.”
Global cooling: a life-threatening event
With the PDO now in its cool phase, solar activity the weakest in more than 100 years, and the prospect of a major climate-cooling volcanic eruption, actions to limit CO2 emissions should be shelved and preparations made for an extended period of global cooling that would pose far more danger to humankind than any real or imagined warming predicted by today’s climate models.
Says D’Aleo: “Cold is far more threatening than the little extra warmth we experienced from 1977 to 1998 during the recent warm PDO. According to NASA, crop yield decreased 30 percent, and there was a 10 percent decrease in arable land during that period, which helped us feed many millions more of the earth’s population. A cooling down to Dalton Minimum temperatures or worse would lead to shortened growing seasons and large-scale crop failures. Food shortages would make worse the fact that more people die from cold than heat.”
The Long Winter of 2010-2011
Alan Caruba, Warning Signs | 28 January 2011
For New Yorkers and those in my part of New Jersey across the river, snow has fallen eight times since December 14, an average of once every five days, 56.1 inches in Central Park as of Jan 27th, and people are, shall we say, taking notice?
[Snip]
People’s lives depend on our government’s ability to measure and forecast the weather. A government that continues to tell people that “global warming” is real and then throws billions of money on “research” to prove it, while issuing utterly false claims, must be forced to acknowledge reality. The same applies to the energy policies on which everyone depends for electricity, a reliable supply of heating oil, and other elements of the infrastructure.
The lies must end. The end of the cooling cycle is nowhere in sight.
CLIMATE CHANGE PROPAGANDA
Metacommenting MetaHousekeeping and MetaTips
Debating
Quadrant Online today has Part 1 of The 5th International Climate Conference, sponsored by the Heartland Institute of Chicago (held in Sydney); Part 1 is written by Barry Brill http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2010/10/heartland-in-sydney-part-1
quoting a sample
Chris de Freitas set the stage: The big questions are – how much of the observed warming is due to humans and how much is natural? And, how high will temperatures rise?
There is not one research-based journal article anywhere with real-world data showing that human-caused CO2 emissions will cause dangerous global warming. The evidence simply doesn’t exist. Unverified models are not useful for policy-making and nobody pretends that they can faithfully capture the critical roles of clouds, oceans or aerosols.
I like to highlight stuff like this:
There is not one research-based journal article anywhere with real-world data showing that human-caused CO2 emissions will cause dangerous global warming. The evidence simply doesn’t exist. Unverified models are not useful for policy-making and nobody pretends that they can faithfully capture the critical roles of clouds, oceans or aerosols.
Thanks Val.
Andy, Val, Richard T:
I did a bit of pseudo programming using the “Pointer” construct.
e.g. http://www.climateconversation.wordshine.co.nz/open-threads/climate/#comment-26601
The sequence is:
Climate:
Climate Blogs:
Hot Topic:
Climate Conversations v Hot Topic:
Climate Conversations v Hot Topic Alexa Traffic Stats
Wow, the Alexa Traffic Stats are making News headlines (The link jumps in here)
News: Climate Conversations v Hot Topic
Climate Conversations v Hot Topic Alexa Traffic Stats
Thoughts on keeping people informed?
Because Open Thread comments are closed, I suggest “Global Warming” is the best forum.
Andy, I was triggered to do this after our “Key Words” conversation but I can’t find it – where is it?
[The perils of O/T conversations]
Oops
“Open threads” comments are closed.
“Open threads as promised” comments are open
Space tourism to accelerate climate change
Scientists predict that soot from commercial space flight will change global temperatures.
Multiple studies and scientists link sunspot activity (among many other factors) to climate change. See here.
Breaking News! The earth is warming! No wait, it’s cooling! No wait . . .
Global Warming’s Corrupt Science
By Patrick J. Michaels, October 20, 2010
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Physicist: Global Warming 1980-2008 caused by Sun, not Man
Dr. Horst Borchert, the Director of the Department of Physics of the Johannes-Gutenberg Institute, Mainz, Germany, presented a paper, Using Satellite Measurements to study the Influence of Sun Activity on Terrestrial Weather at the Space Weather Workshop held in Boulder, Colorado earlier this year. Dr. Borchert finds from satellite measurements that global warming between about 1980 to 2008 was “not anthropogenic but caused by natural activities of the Sun’s surface.” He relates changes of the solar magnetic field to cosmic rays and cloud formation (the cosmic ray theory of Svensmark et al) and to effects on the North Atlantic Oscillation, which affects weather phenomena around the globe.
Wrong link – should be:
http://sc25.com/index.php?id=255
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Paper: Sun affects Climate much more than thought
Adding the the recent spate of papers showing that – surprise – the Sun has much, much more to do with climate change than previously thought, the respected German Physics Journal Annalyn der Physik recently published a paper analyzing solar irradiance data from 1905 to 2008 which finds cosmic rays modulated by solar activity cause a large portion of atmospheric aerosols (clouds) with profound effects on climate [see the cosmic ray theory of Svensmark et al]. The paper concludes, “The contribution of the active sun, indirectly via cosmic rays, to global warming appears to be much stronger than the presently accepted [IPCC] upper limit of 1/3.”
Paging IPCC: Much of recent global warming actually caused by Sun
By Lewis Page • The Register Posted in Environment, 7th October 2010
New data indicates that changes in the Sun’s output of energy were a major factor in the global temperature increases seen in recent years. The research will be unwelcome among hardcore green activists, as it downplays the influence of human-driven carbon emissions.
As the Sun has shown decreased levels of activity during the past decade, it had been generally thought that it was warming the Earth less, not more. Thus, scientists considered that temperature rises seen in global databases must mean that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions – in particular of CO2 – must be exerting a powerful warming effect.
Now, however, boffins working at Imperial College in London (and one in Boulder, Colorado) have analysed detailed sunlight readings taken from 2004 to 2007 by NASA’s Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) satellite. They found that although the Sun was putting out less energy overall than usual, in line with observations showing decreased sunspot activity, it actually emitted more in the key visible-light and near-infrared wavelengths.
The causes of global warming and climate change!
There are two competing theories for the recent global warming trend.
* The first is based on a theory which followed the warming trend that occurred between 1975 and 1998.
* The second theory is based on highly correlated data going back thousands of years.
Most agree that the temperature has increased about 0.6 – 0.7 Centigrade over the last century and that the level of CO2 or Carbon Dioxide a greenhouse gas has been increased in the atmosphere by 25-30% from pre industrial values.
* The first theory, which is the generally accepted one, is that the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuel and from land use is responsible for the resent temperature increase.
* The second theory is that the sun’s magnetic field and the solar wind modulate the amount of high energy cosmic radiation that the earth receives. This in turn affects low altitude cloud cover and how much water vapor there is in the atmosphere and thus regulates the climate.
Continues……
——————————————————————————————————————–
Cosmic Rays and Climate
By: Nir J. Shaviv
In 1959, the late Edward Ney of the U. of Minnesota suggested that any climatic sensitivity to the density of tropospheric ions would immediately link solar activity to climate. This is because the solar wind modulates the flux of high energy particles coming from outside the solar system. These particles, the cosmic rays, are the dominant source of ionization in the troposphere. More specifically, a more active sun accelerates a stronger solar wind, which in turn implies that as cosmic rays diffuse from the outskirts of the solar system to its center, they lose more energy. Consequently, a lower tropospheric ionization rate results. Over the 11-yr solar cycle and the long term variations in solar activity, these variations correspond to typically a 10% change in this ionization rate. It now appears that there is a climatic variable sensitive to the amount of tropospheric ionization Clouds.
Clouds have been observed from space since the beginning of the 1980′s. By the mid 1990′s, enough cloud data accumulated to provide empirical evidence for a solar/cloud-cover link. Without the satellite data, it hard or probably impossible to get statistically meaningful results because of the large systematic errors plaguing ground based observations. Using the satellite data, Henrik Svensmark of the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen has shown that cloud cover varies in sync with the variable cosmic ray flux reaching the Earth. Over the relevant time scale, the largest variations arise from the 11-yr solar cycle, and indeed, this cloud cover seemed to follow the cycle and a half of cosmic ray flux modulation. Later, Henrik Svensmark and his colleague Nigel Marsh, have shown that the correlation is primarily with low altitude cloud cover. This can be seen in fig. 3.
The solar-activity cosmic-ray-flux cloud-cover correlation is quite apparent. It was in fact sought for by Henrik Svensmrk, based on theoretical considerations. However, by itself it cannot be used to prove the cosmic ray climate connection. The reason is that we cannot exclude the possibility that solar activity modulates the cosmic ray flux and independently climate, without any casual link between the latter two. There is however separate proof that a casual link exists between cosmic rays and climate, and independently that cosmic rays left a fingerprint in the observed cloud cover variations.
Continues………
Some of you with far more knowledge than I have may like to become involved in this debate at http://climateclash.com/2010/11/03/g-greenhouse-gas-effect/
What happened to the ‘warmest year on record’: The truth is global warming has halted
MailOnline
Last updated at 4:17 PM on 5th December 2010
A year ago tomorrow, just before the opening of the UN Copenhagen world climate summit, the British Meteorological Office issued a confident prediction. The mean world temperature for 2010, it announced, ‘is expected to be 14.58C, the warmest on record’ – a deeply worrying 0.58C above the 19611990 average.
World temperatures, it went on, were locked inexorably into an everrising trend: ‘Our experimental decadal forecast confirms previous indications that about half the years 2010-2019 will be warmer than the warmest year observed so far – 1998.’
Met Office officials openly boasted that they hoped by their statements to persuade the Copenhagen gathering to impose new and stringent carbon emission limits – an ambition that was not to be met.
Last week, halfway through yet another giant, 15,000delegate UN climate jamboree, being held this time in the tropical splendour of Cancun in Mexico, the Met Office was at it again.
Never mind that Britain, just as it was last winter and the winter before, was deep in the grip of a cold snap, which has seen some temperatures plummet to minus 20C, and that here 2010 has been the coolest year since 1996.
Globally, it insisted, 2010 was still on course to be the warmest or second warmest year since current records began.
But buried amid the details of those two Met Office statements 12 months apart lies a remarkable climbdown that has huge implications – not just for the Met Office, but for debate over climate change as a whole.
Read carefully with other official data, they conceal a truth that for some, to paraphrase former US VicePresident Al Gore, is really inconvenient: for the past 15 years, global warming has stopped.
Continues…………
Throwing cold water on global warming
By Bill Schuster
Observer-Dispatch
Posted Dec 04, 2010 @ 09:00 PM
Orin Domenico, in a guest view last Sunday, called for a discussion on global warming. He stated, “Let’s talk.”
I have studied the subject since 1988. Back then Dr. James Hansen of NASA presented his alarmist views and influenced Al Gore into taking the alarmist position. Over these 22 years, I have become a “skeptic” of the man-made global warming hypothesis. Alarmists have no use for skeptics. Former Rep. Sherwood Boehlert called us “Neanderthals.”
Carbon dioxide
Consensus
Albert Gore
Funding
Conclusion
Bill Schuster is a retired engineer. He lives in Sauquoit.
Copyright 2010 The Observer-Dispatch, Utica, New York. Some rights reserved
Claes Johnson banned from teaching Mathematics course at Swedish University:
Extremist pro-green Swedish university shackles academic freedom and bans all teaching that doesn’t conform to dogma of human-caused global warming
[snip]
The math professor reports that this latest gagging is most extreme because it includes required material for his students and may be fatally damaging to their studies.
The highly-experienced and respected professor has been banned by his bosses from teaching any “part of course material in the course Numerical Methods II.” The material is also found in his ebook, ‘BodyandSoul.’
Dr. Johnson laments, “the course, has been “stopped” by the President of the Royal Technological Institute KTH, because the book contains a mathematical analysis of some models related to climate simulation.”
It appears the blanket ban was precipitated after a small clique of pro-green student activists protested to the university that Johnson was daring to address both sides of the global warming debate. The story is also reported by DN.SE, a popular Scandinavian publication who added, “the school took away pages of the book.”
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/30756
Claes Johnson’s Blog:
http://claesjohnson.blogspot.com/2010/12/kth-gate-climate-mathematics-stopped.html
We are witnessing science by Royal decree in our time
A Royal level manifestation of what alarmists (and totalitarians) are now forced to do all over the world to protect their position.
Alienate
Attack
Abuse
Accuse
Ban
Censor
Corrupt
Denigrate
Eliminate
Erase
Gag.
Hide.
Hijack
Obfuscate
Remove
Silence
Suppress
Stifle
Separate
Stop
I clicked through the CFP ‘Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory’ link to Amazon.com then the same ‘Slaying the Sky Dragon – Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory” link again to the next Amazon page and “Active discussions in related forums” near the bottom of the page. I caught a link to this thread just before it disappeared.
“But, the oceans have been cooling for a decade. Where’s the global warming?”
http://www.amazon.com/tag/science/forum/ref=cm_cd_dp_rft_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=FxZ58KVEERYS5E&cdThread=Tx38OVDNLGVGUD7
It’s very similar to the NZ Herald, JoNova, Hot Topic discussion/arguments but with more and better info from both sides IMO.
It was back in Sept 2010 and a “Mug Wump” posted this impressive piece
—————————————————————————————————————————–
In reply to an earlier post on Sept. 28, 2010 4:14 PM PDT
Last edited by the author on Sept. 28, 2010 5:03 PM PDT
Mug Wump says:
All of the land based data is corrupted by the urban heat island effect. We do, however, have accurate satellite and radiosonde temperature change data for the top layer of the ocean and lower troposphere (see below). We know the truth.
The sun was very active throughout the 20th century and this led to global warming. It’s happened before. Now the sun is anomalously quiet and it has been quiet for a while now. It is not surprising to many scientists that the combined satellite and radiosonde temperature data now indicate that there has been a cooling trend for years corresponding with this observed change in solar activity.
The technology has been explained very well by Dick Thoenes (The stabilising effect of the oceans on climate). “High quality subsurface ocean temperature, salinity and density data are now available from a fleet of 3000 submersible floats that are distributed throughout the world’s oceans.18 The floats are designed to sink to a depth of 1000 or 2000 m, drift at that depth for ten days, then return to the surface, acquiring data during the ascent. At the surface, the data are transmitted via satellite to a series of ground monitoring stations. The floats then repeat the descent/ascent cycle. The floats are not tethered and drift with the ocean currents. The principal features of the solar heating of the ocean at various latitudes through the year may be understood by examining the results from selected Argo floats. Figure 1 summarizes a year of data from 5 Argo floats covering a range of latitudes from the equator to the Antarctic Circle in the southern central Pacific Ocean. The temperatures at 5 depths, 5, 25, 50, 75 and 100 m are shown as a time series for the year. The latitude drift of the floats is also shown. Because of variability in the float actuators, the depths are averages for each float with a standard deviation of approximately 0.2 m. The average latitude, longitude, depths and temperatures for each float are given in Table 1. The average temperatures show the expected decrease in temperature at higher latitudes.”
What we see is that Observational evidence in the real world simply does not support the data and the adjustments to the data and all of the variables and parameters that are used to capture ‘reality’ in the GCM world.
“The observed ocean heat content trends were calculated by Josh K. Willis of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Craig Leohle of the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, Inc. Loehle’s calculations have a smaller margin for error than Willis, because Willis only uses annual average data. The heat deficit shows that from 2003-2008 there was no positive radiative imbalance caused by anthropogenic forcing, despite increasing levels of CO2. Indeed, the radiative imbalance was negative, meaning the earth was losing slightly more energy than it absorbed.
“Since the oceans are the primary reservoir of atmospheric heat, there is no need to account for lag time involved with heat transfer. By using ocean heat as a metric, we can quantify nearly all of the energy that drives the climate system at any given moment. So, if there is still heat ‘in the pipeline’, where is it? The deficit of heat after nearly 6 years of cooling is now enormous. Heat can be transferred, but it cannot hide.” (William DiPuccio)
“Even when alarmist evidence is conclusively discredited (e.g. the hockey stick graph), the climate alarmists continue to use it, and to dismiss all conflicting evidence no matter how sound or voluminous it may be. When their own claims fail, they revise the evidence, not their hypothesis. Recent examples of this have involved the current global cooling trend, the absence of a signature tropical tropospheric hot spot, Antarctic cooling, oceanic cooling, unchanged rates of sea level rise, etc. All these phenomena have been subjected to dubious data manipulation trying to make a silk purse to suit GW out of a sow’s ear of empirical data which refuses to conform to their hopes.” (Walter Starck)
Argos data is collected aboard the NOAA Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellites (POES). “We must face the fact that the earth is now cooling,” as for example: Craig Loehle, “1,500-Year Climate Cycles, Broken Hockey Stocks, and Ocean Cooling,” Energy and Environment Vol. 20, 2009.
Here’s the problem the Warmanazis have: they cannot tell the truth. A direct example is their refusal to admit that the oceans are in a cooling trend (and the unconscious incompetence of schoolteachers who continue to facilitate the ignorance and lies of these anti-humanist science authoritarians is mind-boggling).
It’s a simple fact. The fact is based on easily knowable and understandable technology.
To question the fact is to simply say humans are incapable of knowing anything. The Warmanists cannot say that, of course, as that would completely undermine the supposed certainty with which the Warmanazis pretend the Earth is doomed if they are not given power over the production and distribution of all goods and services used by Western civilization.
So, that leaves very little room for them to continue beating a dead hoax. All they’ve got left is say something like, e.g., “Claims that the ocean has been cooling are correct. Claims that global warming has stopped are not.”
Well, they’ve been caught saying just that. And, what they’re saying is more than misleading–more than a misconception–it demonstrates a total lack of understanding of physics, PERIOD.
“If ocean cooling does occur, it DOES mean global warming as stopped during that time period.” (Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr)
http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/uah/from:1998/to:2009/plot/uah/from:1998/to:2009/trend
Why are the oceans cooling?
1410-1500 cold – Low Solar Activity (LSA) – i.e., Sporer minimum
1510-1600 warm – High Solar Activity (HSA)
1610-1700 cold – (LSA) – i.e., Maunder minimum
1710-1800 warm – (HSA)
1810-1900 cold – (LSA) i.e., Dalton minimum
1910-2000 warm – (HSA)
2010+ Global cooling predicted by some scientists, perhaps over the next 3 to 7 decades due to low solar activity, e.g.,
Note: “The partial forecast indicates that climate may stabilize or cool until 2030-2040. Possible physical mechanisms are qualitatively discussed with an emphasis on the phenomenon of collective synchronization of coupled oscillators.” ~Nikola Scafetta
And, Note: “… a long-term global cooling starting around 2002 is expected to continue for next five to seven decades…” ~Lu, Q.
“Until we understand the oceans better we simply don’t know anything of the future of the climate. They may model the atmosphere as much as they want, without the oceans it is meaningless and if they include the oceans the models will be so complicated that they will be useless anyhow.” ~Sten Kaijser, 20 March 2010
http://www.amazon.com/tag/science/forum/ref=cm_cd_et_md_pl?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=FxZ58KVEERYS5E&cdMsgNo=15&cdPage=1&cdSort=oldest&cdThread=Tx38OVDNLGVGUD7&cdMsgID=MxXUFN9MJ4XBM7#MxXUFN9MJ4XBM7
Also this comment from the review of ‘Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory’ by Mr. Peter M. Sullivan Aca
In reply to an earlier post on Nov. 30, 2010 9:19 AM PST
Joe Postma says:
]
Thank you Hans!
I put together this (http://people.ucalgary.ca/~jpostma/Solar_Flux.pdf) little report to discuss with friends…but other professors at my institution keep ripping it off my office door and shredding it! It’s only 9 pages in large font…would you mind taking a look at it and send me a brief reply? My email is at ucalgary.ca with the name in the above weblink pre-pended. Cheers mate! [using your country's vernacular
http://www.amazon.com/review/RUV7BITHW9KOD/ref=cm_cr_rev_detmd_pl?ie=UTF8&cdMsgNo=6&cdPage=1&asin=B004DNWJN6&store=digital-text&cdSort=oldest&cdMsgID=Mx3LZ1NP5CPLZUR#Mx3LZ1NP5CPLZUR
It becomes obvious from reading the pdf why the Professors ripped it off his door.
SUMMARY
1- The radiative surface of the earth is not the same thing as the ground surface of the earth. Therefore, comparing the actual ground-air temperature to the theoretical radiative equilibrium blackbody temperature is an invalid concept – there is no reason to do this from the outset. The theoretical radiative equilibrium temperature is measured to be exactly just that, on average, as seen from space.
2- The simple Ideal Gas Law, and the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics, tell us that the atmospheric temperature increases with density in a gravitational field.
3- Given the dry adiabatic lapse rate is known from thermodynamics and meteorology, and the altitude of the radiative equilibrium temperature is known from measurement, the average ground surface air temperature is calculated to be +220C, via thermodynamics.Therefore the real question and science is found in: How much does outgoing radiative transfer contribute to the height of the radiative equilibrium surface, thus contributing to warming of the ground-air due to thermodynamics? Then, how much is this height affected by CO2? Then, how much by anthropogenic CO2? Satellite-measured data has already answered the last question for us: It’s too little to matter! Thus the need for positive feedbacks (see last).
Additionally: The idea that the ground-air temperature is due exclusively to the mechanics of outgoing infrared radiative transfer is false. A significant portion of ground-air heating must be due to simple thermodynamics a-priori, because the majority of incoming solar energy is absorbed directly by the atmosphere, raising the radiative equilibrium surface far above the ground.
There is no such thing as an atmospheric Greenhouse Effect as popularly understood by the lay-public: the analogy was never valid to begin with. A horticulturalists’ greenhouse is warm because the glass prevents convective cooling of sunlight-heated air. It is not because the glass absorbs or traps infrared radiation. IR transparent glass could be used and a greenhouse will still be warm. Air actually conducts & convects heat away from sun-lit ground, acting rather as an air-conditioner. The sun-lit surface of the moon is after-all, with no atmosphere, hundreds of degrees hotter than the Stefan-Boltzmann equation would predict. This is because there is no atmosphere present to share the thermal load, distribute the heat, and convectively cool the lunar regolith. The atmospheric greenhouse analogy is invalid and misleading, and sidesteps true understanding based on well-accepted theory and physical principles. We need a better mnemonic than the one we have.
“The present approach of dealing with climate as completely specified by a single number, globally averaged surface temperature anomaly, that is forced by another single number, atmospheric CO2, limits real understanding. So does the replacement of physical theory by model simulation”1 and simple-minded misleading mnemonics. Theory is further abused in the error of proposing that the ground-air temperature is determined exclusively by the amount of radiation in it, rather than the amount of radiation being determined by the temperature. Any stellar atmospherics astrophysicist knows that the amount of radiation in an atmosphere is determined by its temperature, not the other way around. If it was, then astrophysicists should concern themselves with the “Greenhouse Effect” in stars…They don’t.
http://people.ucalgary.ca/~jpostma/Solar_Flux.pd
AGW debunking on campus as per Gerlich and Tscheuschner et al (or Martin Luther) must NOT be tolerated by learned Professors at Universities – it’s just NOT allowed, NO dissent, PERIOD.
Global Warming cloud feedback debate heats up at Cancun
09.12.2010 19:16 Age: 36 min
Category: Climate change
By: Leon Clifford
Cloud feedback erupted as the new front line in the debate over climate change today as a paper to be published tomorrow in US journal Science was immediately challenged by a leading sceptical climate scientist.
Texas A&M University climate scientist Andy Dessler’s Science paper criticises the idea that cloud feedback will prevent global warming. It follows on from a paper which suggested that clouds may have an overall cooling effect that was published in August and co-authored by climate scientist and acknowledged global warming sceptic Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama.
“There’s three takeaways from my paper,” Andy Dessler told Reporting Climate Science .Com. “First the observational evidence of global cloud feedbacks is likely positive. Second the magnitude of the feedback measured in the observations is a good match with the computer models. And third some climate sceptics have put cloud feedbacks as a magical process that will save us from climate change and the evidence here is that it won’t save us.”
Spencer released a statement from the Cancun climate change conference in Mexico. “What is the new evidence of positive cloud feedback that Dessler has published? Well, actually it isn’t new. It’s basically the same evidence we published in the “Journal of Geophysical Research” earlier this year,” Spencer said in his statement. “Yet we came to a very different conclusion, which was that the only clear evidence of feedback we found in the data was of strongly negative cloud feedback.”
Cloud feedback is one of the key areas of uncertainty identified by climate scientists working with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and is a key issue cited by climate change sceptics, so this debate is significant. If cloud feedback is positive then clouds will have an accelerating effect on climate change whereas if cloud feedback is negative then it will have a cooling effect.
Dessler explained that he had looked at the interaction between clouds and the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Pacific Ocean warming and cooling cycle. “In this case the ENSO cycle is a proxy for climate change. We know that clouds do not cause the ENSO so we looked for any changes in the clouds as a response to the ENSO. And we found that the response was positive feedback.”
Spencer believes that there is a cause and effect issue at work and that clouds actually have a cooling effect that interacts with the ENSO. “Dessler’s paper claims to show that cloud feedback is both positive and generally supportive of the cloud feedback assumptions exhibited by the IPCC’s computerized climate models. This would, in turn, support the IPCC¹s claim that anthropogenic global warming will become an increasingly serious problem in the future. Unfortunately, the central evidence contained in the paper is weak at best, and seriously misleading at worst. It uses flawed logic to ignore recent advancements we have made in identifying cloud feedback.”
Dessler believes that his work reduces the scope for doubt about clouds. “When you look at what we know about climate change you can see that we know a lot but that clouds were one of the areas of uncertainty. My paper has not settled the issue completely but it has substantially reduced the opportunity for climate sceptics to point at this issue. At some point people are just going to have to accept that if you put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere then we will increase the temperature,” he said.
“There has been a cordial disagreement,” said a spokesman for Spencer who confirmed that Spencer had been contacted by Science for his view on the paper.
Citation:
“A Determination of the Cloud Feedback from Climate Variations over the Past Decade” by A. E. Dessle published in SCIENCE VOL 330 10 DECEMBER 2010
Click here for Science.
“On the diagnosis of radiative feedback in the presence of unknown radiative forcing” by Roy W. Spencer and William D. Braswell published in JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 115, D16109, doi:10.1029/2009JD013371, 201
Click here.
Michigan buried by global warming
Henry Payne / The Michigan View.com
Last Updated: December 14. 2010 1:00AM
From The Detroit News:
Has there ever been a better illustration of the gulf between America’s political elites and Middle America?
This weekend, a delegation to the United Nation’s Climate Summit in the resort city of Cancun, Mexico that included Washington negotiators, Michigan faculty, and Ann Arbor students returned to declare that they had come to an agreement to transfer $100 billion — that’s BILLION — to Third World countries to combat catastrophic global warming. The announcement came as a brutal winter snowstorm buried the Midwest in record snowdrifts that collapsed the Minneapolis Metrodome, drove temperatures to record lows in the south, and killed five people in the Metro Detroit area
How many people has global warming killed?
Despite last year’s Climategate scandal that have gutted climate science credibility, the United States increased funding three-fold in 2010 to a staggering $1.7 billion-a-year to fight the phantom global warming scare at a time when the country’s federal and state budgets are hobbled by a loss of revenue from the Great Recession.
Is global warming a greater threat than state bankruptcy?
While the Cancun delegation studied the diversion of another $100 billion in tax dollars to the help Third World governments build windmills, local Michigan governments like Oakland County cut its snow and salt crews by a third to meet budget — crews that were sorely missing Monday morning as semi-trucks jackknifed on slick roads, clotting roadways and forcing backup for miles.
Is global warming a greater threat than road safety?
In Atlanta last week, hundreds of poor residents shivered in line for home-heating assistance as the mercury in southern Georgia plunged into the ’20s. Indeed, Cancun itself greeted its warming saviors with record low temperatures while climate delegates met amidst hotels full of resort vacationers honked off by 50-degree temperatures.
This is madness.
The University of Michigan sent 30 professors, students, and alumni to the Cancun Summit. “Rather than only learning in the classroom about the most complex and contentious environmental negotiations that we have ever faced, the students will get a first-hand look at how such an international treaty is worked out,” said Andrew Hoffman, a professor in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment. Freezing, overtaxed Michigan voters may wonder whether if this is the best use of their U-M subsidy dollars.
“Last year, the masses in Copenhagen were alive with the idealistic belief that a solution to climate change was at hand. This year, the masses in Cancun are alert to the nearest bar with a deal on margaritas,” sniffed one U-M student in Cancun about the vacationers around him. “Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against tanned bikini clad bodies or margaritas. At the same time, it does give one pause when the vast majority of people just outside the conference walls are oblivious to the debate which could have a drastic impact not only on their own lives but the lives of future generations.”
Maybe these students would have learned more helping “the masses” in a Detroit warming center where large numbers of homeless are expected this year in the midst of a down Detroit economy.
While The Detroit News reports that “extreme temperatures” this winter will see an overflow of families to Detroit warming centers, Gov. Jennifer Granholm is celebrating the forced purchase of wind power — to fight global warming — by DTE in order to meet state alternative energy mandates. The expensive mandates will suck more money from Michigan ratepayers. The governor applauded the deal as Lansing has experienced record snowfall and record low temperatures this decade.
It is hard to square the rhetoric of Cancun with the reality of Detroit’s streets. U-M might expose its students to climatologist Pat Michaels who explains that even Cancun’s goal of an 80 percent carbon reduction by 2050 would have minimal effect on global temperatures. Or that diverting $100 million from the economic engines like the U.S. to create green utopias will increase poverty.
Instead, students get green mythology.
“We hope to participate actively while in Cancun, as well as share our experiences with our community upon return,” said one Mexico-bound U-M student. More likely, she’ll be sharing experiences of slip-sliding across an iced-over campus in 10-degree temperatures.
Henry Payne is editor of The Michigan View.com
If you haven’t seen this little comedy skit on Global Warming, it is quite funny
(h/t Dellers and Bishop Hill)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-F8EO3qOVk&feature=player_embedded
Another Record Breaking Winter, What Happened to Global Warming?
Patrick Henningsen
t seems that the only people in denial are the religious followers of the IPCC’s new Jonestown Church of climate change… drunk on a delusion that they are, in their own little way, saving the planet from the evil substance known as CO2. It’s become a sort of tribal division, where two tribes cannot seem to agree if the Sun orbits the Earth, or the Earth orbits the Sun. Throughout history tribes of people needed mythologies in order to give meaning to their lives. Climate Change is simply the latest mythology for this current epoch. In the 21st century, we thought modern man had surely advanced past this handicap, but alas… old habits die hard.
Alice… are you there Alice?
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article25112.html#comment97399
Powerful writing and graphics.
The one group of pragmatists guaranteed not to be fooled are market traders that keep an eye on fundamentals. If they’re fooled by group-think, they lose; if they see the trend before the herd, they win – simple (unless the market’s rigged of course – then the scammers win).
Study Shows Half Of Warming Since 1980 Due To Clear Skies
By P Gosselin on 19. Dezember 2010
Spaceweather.com has an excellent report today called: ALL-CLEAR IN THE STRATOSPHERE about volcanic aerosols and their impact on the earth’s climate and cooling. Turns out that they have a far greater impact than expected.
Today the earth’s stratosphere is as clean as it’s been in more than 50 years. What does that mean? It means more solar radiation can reach the earth, and is thus contributing to warming. The stratosphere is too clean – because of the lack of volcanic activity over the last 18 years. According to climate scientist Richard Keen of the University of Colorado:
“Since 1996, lunar eclipses have been bright, which means the stratosphere is relatively clear of volcanic aerosols. This is the longest period with a clear stratosphere since before 1960.”
Continues………
Gerald Warner: Weathering The True Lies Of Global Warming Newspeak
Sunday, 26 December 2010 07:57 Gerald Warner, Scotland on Sunday
WEATHER is not climate. Grasp that crucial distinction and you have the essence of the situation, a gnostic insight that will enable you to, er, weather the current cold snap while clinging faithfully to the revealed truth of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). The ex cathedra dogma that weather is not climate has the authoritative resonance of similar Orwellian Newspeak maxims such as “War is peace”.
Beware, above all, of succumbing to a false consciousness, of imagining that a few snowdrifts somehow discredit the metaphysical reality of global warming. Those gifted with climate gnosis arguably have a duty to proclaim their faith by dressing in Bermuda shorts and bikinis, to dispel the illusion of Arctic conditions. This is another area in which the Scottish Parliament, a tabernacle of AGW piety, might profitably impose a ban on people wrapping up in warm clothing, for is that not implicit climate change denial?
These are challenging times for climate jihadists. Last week the Met Office was forced to issue a press release stating it “categorically denies forecasting a ‘mild winter’ “. In fact, in October, its long-range probability map predicted an 80 per cent probability of warmer than average temperatures from November to January in Scotland. It claimed Scotland, along with Northern Ireland, the eastern half of England and Cornwall, would experience temperatures above the 3.7°C average, more than 2°C higher than last winter.
Perversely, those are precisely the regions most ravaged by blizzard conditions; but the Met Office now insists that was not a forecast. Apparently, just as weather is not climate, a Met Office map predicting an 80 per cent likelihood of higher temperatures is not a forecast………….continues
HARRIS & LEYLAND: Global warming ideology still on top
By Tom Harris and Bryan Leyland – The Washington Times
6:30 p.m., Wednesday, December 8, 2010
The science has crumbled, but too much money backs the scare
“Climate change” has suffered significant setbacks in the past year. First there was Climategate. Then the Copenhagen conference ended without binding agreements on either mitigation or adaptation. This was followed quickly by Glaciergate, Amazongate, Kiwigate and serious challenges to the credibility of Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Next, professor Phil Jones of the United Kingdom’s Climatic Research Unit (and lead author of the IPCC chapter on temperatures) admitted that there has been no statistically significant warming for 15 years. Then “hockey stick” promoters finally acknowledged that there indeed was a Medieval Warm Period.
[Snip]
Some commentators tell us that this is the beginning of the end of the climate scare. More likely, it is just the end of the beginning………..continues
Tom Harris is the executive director of the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC). Bryan Leyland is ICSC’s founding secretary and energy issues adviser.
Global Cooling Consensus Is Heating Up – Cooling Over The Next 1 To 3 Decades
By P Gosselin on 28. Dezember 2010
http://notrickszone.com/2010/12/28/global-cooling-consensus-is-heating-up-cooling-over-the-next-1-to-3-decades/
Dr Marohasy has a post up about the latest Climategate enquiry
To read and comment http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2011/01/another-report-into-climategate/
there are some excellent links in the comments too as well as an update by David Holland
Val,
The comments from Graham Stringer MP are fairly damning.
There are proposals to increase worldwide taxation by up to a trillion dollars on the basis of climate science predictions. This is an area where strong and opposing views are held. The release of the e-mails from CRU at the University of East Anglia and the accusations that followed demanded independent and objective scrutiny by independent panels. This has not happened. The composition of the two panels has been criticised for having members who were over identified with the views of CRU. Lord Oxburgh as President of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association and Chairman of Falck Renewable appeared to have a conflict of interest. Lord Oxburgh himself was aware that this might lead to criticism. Similarly Professor Boulton as an ex colleague of CRU seemed wholly inappropriate to be a member of the Russell panel. No reputable scientist who was critical of CRU’s work was on the panel, and prominent and distinguished critics were not interviewed. The Oxburgh panel did not do as our predecessor committee had been promised, investigate the science, but only looked at the integrity of the researchers. With the exception of Professor Kelly’s notes other notes taken by members of the panel have not been published. This leaves a question mark against whether CRU science is reliable. The Oxburgh panel also did not look at CRU’s controversial work on the IPPC which is what has attracted most [serious] allegations. Russell did not investigate the deletion of e-mails. We are now left after three investigations without a clear understanding of whether or not the CRU science is compromised.
Andy totally agree and those are the words which history may remember ‘This leaves a question mark against whether CRU science is reliable. The Oxburgh panel also did not look at CRU’s controversial work on the IPPC which is what has attracted most [serious] allegations. Russell did not investigate the deletion of e-mails. We are now left after three investigations without a clear understanding of whether or not the CRU science is compromised.’
Hope so
Val,
I don’t know if you follow Josh’s cartoons. but this one captures the “Stringer moment”
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/1/26/josh-70.html
very good Andy; I love Josh’s cartoons, WUWT features them too
my favourite is this one:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/07/friday-funnies/
History of science shows consensus can be mistaken
* Paul Monk
* From: The Australian
* February 07, 2011 12:00AM
FEW things have more bedevilled the debate about global warming than the question of scientific consensus. About what the scientific consensus on the subject is, and about what degree of deference should be paid to scientific consensus as such. Both debates have been seriously aggravated by two other factors. Global warming seems to have colossal economic implications, which has activated the concerns of many interested parties; and the ecological nature of global warming has stirred up heated ideological passions that go well beyond the science. It’s all very well to feel either passionate or sceptical about these matters, but how are we to think clearly about them?
David Weintraub’s How Old is the Universe offers five useful clues. The author has nothing to say about climate science and all parties to the climate debate can, therefore, chill out and think dispassionately here.
His general argument is about how we can know the age of the universe. He asks: “How have 400 years of science brought us to this point at which astronomers, cosmologists and physicists can claim that the universe came into existence at a specific moment 13.7 billion years ago? And how much confidence should you have in this statement?”
Continues…………
Bit of light relief from poring over temperature records.
Changing the Guard at Buckingham palace
The delightful Fenbeagle makes some pertinent observations on the lack of methane emissions from Kangaroos and the use thereof at The Palace
Prince Chuckles would approve, I am sure
http://fenbeagleblog.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/changing-the-guard-at-buckingham-palace/
Teleconference will attempt to explain huge snowstorms are due to global warming
Friday, February 25, 2011
In an apparent bid to counter skepticism of the specious claim that global warming caused the string of heavy snowfalls in the US and Europe this winter, a media teleconference with “two leading climate and weather experts” has been scheduled for Tuesday, March 1, 2011. Mark “death spiral” Serreze and Jeff Masters will “discuss how a rise in the number of snowfalls of 6 inches or more may be related to an increase in moisture in the atmosphere,” allegedly due to global warming.
Major problems with this argument include weather balloon and satellite data showing that
1) tropospheric relative and specific humidity has significantly declined since the ‘safe CO2 levels’ of 1948,
2) atmospheric water vapor has declined since satellite measurements began in 1983,
3) there has been no statistically significant global warming since 1995, and
4) the IPCC predicted milder winters and that the “milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms.”
See humidity plots……..
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/02/teleconference-will-attempt-to-explain.html
Earthquakes caused by Global warming.
MONTREAL – Severe earthquakes in Haiti, Chile and most recently Japan have raised the question of whether the world’s tectonic plates are becoming more active and if so what is the cause.
Some scientists theorize that the sudden melting of glaciers due to man-made climate change is lightening the load on the Earth, allowing its mantle to rebound upward, causing the plates to become unstuck.
These scientists point to the historical increase in volcanic and earthquake activity that occurred about 12,000 years ago, when the glaciers that covered most of Canada in an ice sheet several kilometres thick suddenly melted.
The result was that most of Canada’s crust has lifted and is still rising.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Climate+change+quakes+link/4447200/story.html
Global warming since 1995 ‘now significant’
Climate warming since 1995 is now statistically significant, according to Phil Jones, the UK scientist targeted in the “ClimateGate” affair.
10 June 2011 Last updated at 12:59 GMT
By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News
Last year, he told BBC News that post-1995 warming was not significant – a statement still seen on blogs critical of the idea of man-made climate change.
But another year of data has pushed the trend past the threshold usually used to assess whether trends are “real”.
Dr Jones says this shows the importance of using longer records for analysis.
By widespread convention, scientists use a minimum threshold of 95% to assess whether a trend is likely to be down to an underlying cause, rather than emerging by chance.
If a trend meets the 95% threshold, it basically means that the odds of it being down to chance are less than one in 20.
Last year’s analysis, which went to 2009, did not reach this threshold; but adding data for 2010 takes it over the line.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13719510
——————————————————————————————————-
Nice try Phil, but just keep adding the data.
Richard C – this is an interesting one. Both Doug Keenan and Lucia at The Blackboard disagree with Phil Jones on this.
Lucia here
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/statistical-significance-since-1995-not-with-hadcrut/
and Doug Keenan’s comments at Bishop Hill here:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/6/10/jones-post-1995-warming-significant.html
and here too
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/6/12/will-black-react.html
Aside from the statistical SNAFU, even if there is a smidgen of warming 1995-2010, is it anthropogenic?
And why 1995?
And wouldn’t we expect it anyway given 2010 El Nino?
Bet its not sustained into 2011.
What a PR crock.
Paul Dennis, a colleague of Jones at UEA, left this message on BH
“I’m rather bemused by the article. 1995-2009, no significant warming, 1995-2010 significant warming and perhaps 1995-2011 no significant warming depending on this years temperature. Who knows! Adding a year to the trend and suddenly claiming significance as the headline asserts (‘Global warming since 1995 ‘now significant’) really shows a complete lack of understanding of linear regression, let alone the nature of the data.
Jun 10, 2011 at 6:32 PM | Paul Dennis ”
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/6/10/jones-post-1995-warming-significant.html#comments
This is one of many articles covering this story today. Also appears on WUWT
Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade
What may be the science story of the century is breaking this evening, as heavyweight US solar physicists announce that the Sun appears to be headed into a lengthy spell of low activity, which could mean that the Earth – far from facing a global warming problem – is actually headed into a mini Ice Age
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/14/ice_age/
An explanation(?) for lack of warming since 1998
by Judith Curry
A new paper has been published in PNAS entitled “Reconciling anthropogenic climate change with observed temperature 1998-2008.”
Reconciling anthropogenic climate change with observed temperature 1998-2008
Robert K. Kaufmann, Heikki Kauppi, Michael L. Mann, and James H. Stock
The key argument in their paper is that an increase in coal burning (primarily in China) has increased atmospheric sulfate concentration with a resulting global cooling effect.
JC comments: Their argument is totally unconvincing to me. However, the link between flat/cooling global temperature and increased coal burning in China is certainly an interesting argument from a political perspective. The scientific motivation for this article seems to be that that scientists understand the evolution of global temperature forcing and that the answer is forced variability (not natural internal variability), and this explanation of the recent lack of warming supports a similar argument for the cooling between 1940 and 1970. The political consequence of this article seems to be that the simplest solution to global warming is for the Chinese to burn more coal, which they intend to do anyways.
And finally, with the civil heretic discussion fresh in my mind, I checked the personal web pages of each of the co-authors: Robert K. Kaufmann, Heikki Kauppi, Michael L. Mann (not Michael E. Mann, of hockeystick fame), and James H. Stock. These authors (individually and collectively) apparently know a heck of a lot less about atmospheric aerosols (i.e. pretty much nothing) than Freeman Dyson knows about climate change. The authors don’t seem to know much about attribution, either.
This article is listed as a PNAS direct submission, which means that it gets the more rigorous review treatment by the PNAS editors. I would certainly be interested in knowing who reviewed this paper. I suspect that this paper will be criticized from both sides of the AGW debate.
http://judithcurry.com/2011/07/04/an-explanation-for-lack-of-warming-since-1998/
Key point’s from JC so far seem to be:-
# “…translating regional sulfate emission into global forcing isn’t really appropriate, since atmospheric sulfate has too short of an atmospheric lifetime (owing to cloud and rain processes) to influence the global radiation balance”.
# “The alternative explanation is natural internal variability associated with the ocean oscillations. Since 1999, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation has been shifting from the warm phase (warm phase since 1976) to the cool phase, and has been mostly in the cool phase since 2007″.
# “Sulfate from coal burning is but one source of atmospheric aerosol. AGW Observer provides a recent list of papers on aerosol forcing observations. See especially the Remer et al. paper, Fig 5, which shows no trend in global aerosol optical depth during the period 2000-2006. A plot for East Asia also shows no trend regional aerosol optical depth.
Other blog commentary:-
Warmist paper: Sulfur emissions have cooled and not cooled the planet since 1998
# “One glaring problem with this theory is that figure 1 of the paper shows that there has been no change – zero – in the effect of sulfur emissions on global temperature since 1998“.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/07/warmist-paper-sulfur-emissions-have_05.html
Global Warming Standstill Confirmed – But How Long Will It Last?
# “The researchers tweak an out-of-date [statistical - not GCM] climate computer model and cherry-pick the outcome to get their desired result. They do not use the latest data on the sun’s influence on the Earth, rendering their results of academic interest only”.
http://www.thegwpf.org/the-observatory/3373-global-warming-standstill-confirmed-but-how-long-will-it-last.html
Lot’s of news headlines. Google News search of “Reconciling anthropogenic climate change with observed temperature 1998–2008″
http://news.google.co.nz/news/more?pz=1&cf=all&cf=all&ncl=duHKEdsYcgyt5sM520bQKU0uIDhGM
Includes Booker, BBC, AFP, Wash Post, Daily Mail, Guardian and the Independent
More Blog commentary:-
# “They blame increased aerosol pollutants from China as being the reason why temperatures are cooling versus warming. Unfortunately, actual air quality measurements reveal the galactic bogosity of that claim. (click on charts to enlarge)
For example, U.S. air quality since 1990 has improved tremendously with vast reductions in air aerosols and particulates as the chart on left reveals. While aerosols/particulates over the U.S. were dramatically decreasing, the U.S. surface temperatures were falling as shown in the chart on the right.”
http://www.c3headlines.com/2011/07/global-warming-alarmists-again-try-the-lame-aerosol-masking-excuse-to-explain-cooling-us-data-refute.html
This argument has to be one of the lamest excuses I have ever seen from the warmist camp.
It really doesn’t do their cause much good. It would be much more honest to say “we don’t know”.
Oh, hang on, I am being a bit naive here….
Joe Romm doesn’t like the use of the word “hiatus”:-
Study: Hottest Decade on Record Would Have Been Even Hotter But for Chinese Coal Plant Sulfur Pollution
“What’s not clever about this study is that it repeats the myth that there was a ‘hiatus’ in the first place.”
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/07/05/260177/study-hottest-decade-chinese-coal-plant-sulfr-pollution/
Links to this post for support:-
Skeptical Science explains how we know global warming is happening: It’s the oceans, stupid!
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2009/10/10/204783/skeptical-science-global-warming-not-cooling-is-still-happening-ocean-heat-content/
Romm cites Murphy et al 2009 and quotes the conclusion:-
Unfortunately, the abstract says this:-
Yeeees, the solar SW went into heating the ocean but the GHG DLR didn’t (well not past 100 microns anyway).
Then cites von Shuckmann et al 2009 and quotes Figure [2]: Time series of global mean heat storage (0-2000 m), but as Bob D puts it:-
Then duplicates 2 SS posts that cite Murphy et al, Trenberth et al and Hansen et al but studiously avoids any papers contrary to the narrative. Those posts drone on about how much heat is going into the oceans but Cook doesn’t realize he’s making a case for continued global warming due to solar radiation – not GHG DLR.
Confirmation bias and woolly reasoning at its very best.
So, Climatologists—Whatever Happened To Global Warming?
James Delingpole
One of the many great pleasures for those of us on the “Realist” side of the debate over man-made global warming has been watching the contortions of the “Warmists” as they try to explain away a very inconvenient truth: There has been no statistically significant global warming in more than a decade.
[...]
So how do the Warmists plan to scare us now that global warming seems not to be quite the clear and present threat it was a decade ago? Well, one recent imaginative solution comes courtesy of the paper reconciling anthropogenic climate change with observed temperature 1998-2008 [PDF] by a team led by Robert Kaufmann at the Department of Geography at Boston University.
This ingeniously argues that even though global warming hasn’t been happening, it has been happening really. We just can’t see it because of the distorting effect of the pollution being pumped into the atmosphere by the Chinese.
“Results indicate that net anthropogenic forcing rises slower than previous decades because the cooling effects of sulfur emissions grow in tandem with the warming effects greenhouse gas concentrations. This slow-down, along with declining solar insolation and a change from El Nino to La Nina conditions, enables the model to simulate the lack of warming after 1998,” the paper explains.
What the paper is claiming, in other words, is that “Man-Made Global Cooling” is cancelling out the effects of man-made global warming.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/what-ever-happened-to-global-warming-2011-7#ixzz1RpvyO0Sj
It also negated the “leave the coal in the ground” argument too.
You can’t make this stuff up really. I really appears that a couple of decades of global dumbing and people really believe this stuff.
Dr Martin Manning still pushing “unequivocal” global warming with some dodgy stats. Manawatu Standard reports:-
He said graphs of world temperatures showed an increase even relative to the 1950s.
Recorded findings of science all point to a consistent pattern of climate change:
Surface temperatures increasing [Nope, not for over a decade Martin];
Lower troposphere temperatures increasing [So what? Tell them about the GHG critical upper trop, -0.40 C/decade for UAH and -0.48 C/decade for RSS since 2003 Martin] ;
Atmospheric water vapour content increasing [Nope, WV content in the upper troposphere has declined by 13% from 1948 to 2010 at the GHG critical 400 hPa pressure level Martin];
Ocean heat content increasing and being directly linked to sea level rise [Nope, OHC flat since 2003 Martin. Yes, SSL decelerating since 2002 consistent with flat OHC. Got that right Martin, well done];
[there's more but why bother?]
He said there were many effects and they all were unequivocally pointing to global warming. And IPCC data showed that was directly in line with an increase in carbon dioxide. [Nope, the warming has stopped Martin. The out-of-date IPCC data was for a 20th Century apparent correlation, that correlation's broken now Martin]
He said that while science had developed a detailed understanding of many aspects of climate change, the rates of change were increasing, and science was having trouble keeping up [Nope, the rates of change are decelerating or are in negative trend, it's you who's having trouble keeping up Martin]
http://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/rural/5234702/Climate-expert-issues-warning
Martin’s a “climate expert” – apparently.
There’s a few of these “experts” doing a roadshow soon (Salinger, Rod Oram, and Caroline Saunders) itinerary here: http://hot-topic.co.nz/on-the-road-again-2/#more-8222
Would be quite good to ask them if they have been advised on the possibility of a solar minimum and how that would affect NZ’s agriculture if it were to cause a prolonged period of cooling.
It would also be quite good for them to put money on their predictions.
Scientists hit back amid fresh death threats
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/06/20/3248032.htm
Top Australian scientists have united in a new campaign to defend their credibility amid fresh death threats aimed at key climate change scientists.
In an unprecedented move in Canberra today, more than 200 scientists will converge on Parliament House to call on politicians to help stop misinformation in the climate debate.
Their concern is that the hysteria has now escalated and is spilling over into attacks on their work and threats to their personal safety.
Maybe they were thinking of this Python Sketch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnS49c9KZw8
Yes, the question of cooling should be raised with these alarmists. A growing number of scientists are pointing to a new LIA mid-century:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/05/nils-axel-morner-arctic-environment-by-the-middle-of-this-century/
Mike, the alarmists have already “discredited” the solar minimum theory. They have the “rebuttal” from Skeptical Science. They cannot accept that the sun plays a major role in climate because it lessens the role of CO2.
They are even claiming that coal has caused the stalling in warming over the last 10 years.
Do we have any witches to burn?
Mike, as Andy says, we wont get any traction with a solar argument from anyone with an entrenched global warming alarm mindset – so why bother?
Instead, I’ve sent an email to MfE CC (Cc’d to PMSAC) with the title “Sun Headed Into Hibernation, Solar Studies Predict” taken from the Nat Geo article that I’ve referenced and quoted from along with a Wash Times editorial. I then asked these questions:-
1) Given that a cooler climate regime has already claimed hundred’s of
lives and disrupted national economies e.g. South America last winter,
will (or has) MfE CC advise(ed) the NZ government via the PMSAC of
this development and that the possibility of a sustained period of
global cooling is on the way and that it should be factored into
long-term planning and policy formation?
2) Given that cooling vs warming pits the predictions of
astrophysicists against climate scientists, will the MfE CC take an
impartial position and evaluate each case on it’s merits?
3) Given that Feulner and Rahmstorf’s finding that a new grand minimum
would produce no more than 0.3 deg C cooling by 2100 in the paper “On
the effect of a new grand minimum of solar activity on the future
climate on Earth” (2010) is based solely on climate model simulations,
what criteria will MfE CC use to evaluate the relative merits of the
predictions for warming based on global climate models and cooling
based on solar physics models?
With hindsight, I should have said “based solely on [CO2 forced] climate model simulations” and “factored in to” but too late now. Maybe I’ll get a chance to redress my error.
Now waiting patiently for a reply and imagining hopefully some discomfort at MfE.
Excellent stuff Richard.
You are absolutely right of course. We need to ask questions of our public “servants” (ha!) and challenge them on these issues.
It’s pointless arguing with the CO2 fetishists.
The word “anathema” really sums up the status of solar or naturally caused climate change in the radical MMCC warmist mindset – they can’t tolerate the notion.
Wikipedia has the evolution of the word from its original meaning and these modern meanings:-
1. to be formally set apart;
2. banished, exiled, excommunicated;
3. denounced, sometimes accursed; or
4. a literary term.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathema
Religious roots and an appropriate description of the Gaia religion’s attitude to non man-made climate change.
Just twigged why the name “Caroline Saunders” rang bells and why I couldn’t think of the reason – it didn’t, it was UK Green MP Caroline Lucas I was thinking of as mentioned in “UN reveals its master plan for destruction of global economy” by James Delingpole:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=8003&linkbox=true&position=1
Is Caroline Saunders similarly infamous?
I don’t think Caroline Saunders is infamous. Lucas is the UK’s only Green MP. Saunders is an economist who is based at Lincoln University
http://www.lincoln.ac.nz/staff-profile?staffId=Caroline.Saunders
Rod Oram is a business writer and columnist for thee Sunday Star Times.
So of the three “experts” in this roadshow, climate science is represented by Jim Salinger.
Great!
Dr Manning said investors, insurers and politicians were rejecting the view of climate change sceptics and they were now thinking longer term.
Hmm, thinking about the $$$$$
“investors, insurers and politicians” are reliable futurists apparently, no mention of the views of astrophysicists and whether their views will be rejected along with those of “climate change sceptics”.
Loehle and Scafetta calculate 0.66°C/century for AGW
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/25/loehle-and-scafetta-calculate-0-66%C2%B0ccentury-for-agw/
New paper, ‘The Model Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect’ By Postma 2011
http://climatechangedispatch.com/home/9244-junk-greenhouse-gas-theory-numbers-turned-earth-into-a-star
New paper, “On the Misdiagnosis Of Surface Temperature Feedbacks From Variations In Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance” By Spencer and Braswell 2011
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/new-paper-on-the-misdiagnosis-of-surface-temperature-feedbacks-from-variations-in-earth%E2%80%99s-radiant-energy-balance-by-spencer-and-braswell-2011/
I feel another letter to the MftE CC and PMSAC coming on.
Alarmist bollocks of the week award goes to:
Climate Change and Wine: The Death of Rioja and Aussie Shiraz?
Jerry Lockspeiser gives an apocalyptic view of how climate change may affect the wine industry over the next few decades.
http://www.iaindale.com/posts/climate-change-and-wine-the-death-of-rioja-and-aussie-shiraz
Hilarious.
Get drunk now, before we run out….
Tom Bennion at Hot Topic is desperately trying to link the water crisis in the Pacific to climate change in his “Water, water everywhere…” post (HT sycophants nod and fret approvingly).
“here, here” is “ENSO Amplitude Change in Observation and Coupled Models”, ZHANG, GUAN, and YANG, 2007 (yet another Zhang et al paper):-
http://www.corp-pku.cn/subpage/people/faculty/yanghj.files/253zq.pdf
But Zhang et al show enhanced ENSO amplitude which is El Nino and La Nina oscillation. Nowhere in the paper that I can see is it “suggested that global temperature increases could lead to more intense and longer lasting La Nina events”. Zhang et al say:-
Meehl et al, 2006 is “The WCRP CMIP3 multimodel dataset”
http://scholar.google.co.nz/scholar?hl=en&q=Meehl+et+al.%2C+2006&btnG=Search&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo=&as_vis=0
That paper says in regard to El Niño:-
Climate science has (until now) been fixated on El Niño – not La Nina. That is why Queensland Australia was caught off-guard by the last La Nina because their climate models were predicting an almost permanent El Niño. Now the Pacific is experiencing what seems to be an unprecedented double-dip La Nina but never was that on the climate change radar.
There’s a causal link between Pacific drought and La Nina – fine, but saying by tenuous extension “There appears to be a reasonable probability that there is a causal link between the drought and water scarcity affecting the islands and climate change” is a stretch too far IMO (especially given the citation doesn’t support the statement).
Al Gore is doing a disservice to science by overplaying the link between climate change and weather
To claim that we are causing meteorological events that would not have occurred without human influence is just plain wrong
Myles Allen, guardian.co.uk.
When Al Gore said last week that scientists now have “clear proof that climate change is directly responsible for the extreme and devastating floods, storms and droughts that displaced millions of people this year,” my heart sank. Having suggested the idea of “event attribution” back in 2003, and co-authored a study published earlier this year on the origins of the UK floods in autumn 2000, I suspect I may be one of the scientists being talked about.
>>>>>>>>
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/07/al-gore-science-climate-weather?CMP=twt_gu
Al Gore’s inconvenient untruths of the day
Gore’s rant today on his unreality blog suggests some companies are helping to ‘solve the climate [hoax] crisis’ by preparing for alleged cotton shortages from global warming and lack of snow for the skiing industry. The inconvenient truth is that despite Gore’s manufactured “climate crisis,” world cotton production and yields are at record highs and winter North American snow extent has been on a rising trend over the past 50 years:
[See plots]
Companies Working to Solve the Climate Crisis By Al Gore October 7, 2011
The Climate Reality blog points to companies that have discovered solving the climate crisis makes good business sense:
“Over the past several years, electric utilities, automobile manufacturers, investors and other businesses have started to recognize that climate change is real and that humans are contributing to it. These companies also realize that they can be part of the solution — and that it makes business sense to do so.”
“To this end, a number of forward-thinking companies formed “Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy” or BICEP nearly three years ago. Members include Nike, Starbucks, Levi Strauss & Co., Timberland, Target, Best Buy and other major brands.”
“These companies know that climate change threatens their supply chains, and therefore increases risk and uncertainty. For example, 95% of Levi products are made from cotton, which is sensitive to extreme heat and both too much and too little water. Aspen Skiing Co. will feel the impacts of climate change directly; a lack of snow affects the entire $66 billion-per-year industry that depends on skiers and other winter sports enthusiasts for financial survival.”
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/10/al-gores-inconvenient-untruths-of-day.html
*****************************************************************************************************
NIWA have also discovered that it “makes good business sense” to supply services to entities spooked by climate change alarmism (helped along by themselves of course).
The link below documents NIWA’s involvement with Ski Areas Association of New Zealand worried about “the impacts of climate change”, in their case “a [potential] lack of snow:-
http://www.climateconversation.wordshine.co.nz/open-threads/climate/meteorology-001/#comment-32747
Global warming is the least of Tuvalu’s worries
For nearly a decade now, the tiny Pacific island-group nation of Tuvalu has made news for its government’s claim that the archipelago is being swallowed up by rising sea levels caused by global warming. The island government has even considered suing the world’s largest industrial powers for emitting the carbon dioxide that many scientists believe is trapping solar radiation in the atmosphere and leading to allegedly higher global temperatures. When the highly vaunted UN climate summit in Copenhagen in Dec. 2009 failed to produce a successor agreement to the 1997 Kyoto accords, the Tuvalu delegation was not shy about expressing its disgust and outrage, claiming that world leaders had consigned them to a slow extermination. (So slow — over 100 years — that almost no current Tuvaluns will live long enough to be killed by the encroaching oceans and their descendents will have plenty of time to row to safety. But let’s not pick nits.)
Now comes word that a drought afflicting the four-island, five-atoll state has dried up nearly all the fresh water there. The United States, Australia and New Zealand have airlifted in potable supplies and desalination plants, but even so, Tuvalu has only about half the daily water supply its inhabitants need.
This, too, is being blamed on manmade climate change, although, it is known that the immediate cause of the low rainfall is a powerful La Nina, which (not to nitpick again), is a cooling of the Pacific’s surface over a broad area near the equator.
[...]
All the dire talk has convinced New Zealand to create an immigration fast-track for islanders and caused guilt-ridden governments in the developed world to send Tuvalu tens of millions of development dollars. So it’s not hard to figure out why Tuvalu has such a high stake in all the climate change hysteria.
>>>>>>>
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/10/14/lorne-gunter-global-warming-is-the-least-of-tuvalus-worries/
Tuvalu did pretty well out of selling its .TV domain a few years back. A few million changed hands I think.
I guess they are pretty resourceful at extracting money out of the latest fad.Can’t say I blame them really, if the western handwringers are so stupid and gullible.
Revealed at last: the true cause of global warming
Horst-Joachim Lüdecke: The Sun, not Man, warms the Earth
A German climate researcher has discovered that the surge in solar radiation that began in 1700, peaked in 1960 and is still at historically high levels was far stronger and more significant than had previously been realized.
According to Dr. Horst-Joachim Lüdecke, who spent months comparing the varying widths of annual tree-rings and stalagmite deposits with recent temperature and sunspot records, this remarkable increase in solar activity was the real reason why the weather got warmer from 1950-2000. There has been no warming since 2000.
[...]
Dr. Lüdecke said: “The Sun is still recovering from the Maunder Minimum, the 70-year period from 1645-1715 when there were hardly any sunspots. It was less active then than during any similar period over the past 11,400 years.
[...]
Table 1. A “hockey-stick” graph (above) of annual mean sunspot numbers (SSN) from 0-2000 AD, revealing clearly for the first time the startling growth in solar activity from 1700 until the peak of solar activity in the last 1000 years, which occurred in 1960 (Lüdecke, 2011).
For comparison, the notorious “hockey-stick” graph of reconstructed and instrumental northern-hemisphere surface temperatures
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http://climaterealists.com/?id=8495
Or maybe Columbus caused the Little Ice Age
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/10/asinine-climate-theory-of-week-columbus.html
Coldest Early October for the Sea Surface Temperatures
[...]
Sometime in the near future the 400 ppm level of CO2 is going to be reached and you can bet that there will be a field day in the warmist community as the doom of the planet Earth is trumpeted about. The problem they will face is that the Earth at 400 ppm is likely to appear markedly cooler than it did at 365 ppm. The early indicator of this is the sea surface temperatures. That region of the Earth that is supposed to be warming as a direct result of the CO2 level and it is not behaving as the theory of global warming predicts.
Since the difference between the average and the measured is how the anomaly is determined, it is straightforward to show the daily temperature anomaly for the year so far. It shows that 2011 is well below the average temperature of the past decade for almost every day so far this year.
[See plots]
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http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/2011/10/coldest-early-october-for-the-sea-surface-temperatures/
GAO Confirms: Anthony Watts Is Right, UN Temperature Data Rigged To Show Warming
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has just confirmed the pioneering research conducted by Anthony Watts, the author of the prominent Web site “Watts Up With That?. Watts showed in a 2009 report (right) that the U.S. Historical Climate Network (USHCN) surface temperature record is unreliable. The GAO now concurs.
Note: The USHCN, considered the best source of surface temperature data in the world, is used to assess climate change within the contiguous US. On this basis, the government estimates a rise in so-called “average surface temperature” across the US by 1.4oF since 1895.
USHCN data is combined with temperature records from around the world to determine global temperature trends. This trend is then used as the basis of the assessment reports of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on which governments base climate and energy policy costing hundreds of billions of dollars.
But the GAO has found that “42 percent of the active stations [in the USHCN] in 2010 did not meet one or more of the siting standards.” Siting standards violated include temperature sensors located too close to buildings, roads and other heat sources that artificially increase measurements and so, ultimately, the supposed global warming trend.
GAO writes that they “did not assess the effect of stations not meeting siting standards on the reliability of NOAA’s analysis of temperature trends.” Until this is done and similar assessments carried out on the rest of the data used to determine global trends, it is clear that the global record is not reliable.
http://blog.heartland.org/2011/10/gao-confirms-anthony-watts-is-right-un-temperature-data-rigged-to-show-warming/
Attenborough’s global warming fears
Sir David Attenborough has warned that life will get tougher for future generations as they battle the effects of global warming – and revealed how the “natural world” had helped him cope with grief.
The natural history presenter, 85, who is back on-screen presenting a BBC1 seven-part series Frozen Planet, said that he had “no doubt” that global warming “is man-made”.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5hZYAga9iv6aSwlM3-wE7QCS3PqyA?docId=N0118171318855760475A
Don’t suppose we’ll be seeing David Bellamy on the BBC anytime soon
‘Rogue’ sharks attacking people, chasing whales
Experts cite global warming as a potential reason for more interaction with sharks as it may have changed migration habits of both whales and sharks.
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http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/rogue-sharks-attacking-people-chasing-whales#
The Death Of Global Warming Skepticism, Or The Birth Of Straw Men?
The mainstream media has been spiking the football in the proverbial end zone ever since a paper released last Friday claimed two-thirds of global temperature stations show some warming occurred during the past century. The media have been claiming the new paper delivers a death blow to skepticism, but the paper itself brings almost nothing new to the global warming debate and instead shows how far global warming advocates are from presenting credible evidence of a crisis. Rather than delivering a death blow to skepticism, the media has merely invented and shredded an insignificant straw man.
University of California, Berkeley physics professor Richard Muller analyzed land-based temperature readings from temperature stations around the world and found two-thirds indicate warming temperatures and one-third indicate cooling temperatures. As a result, “Global warming is real,” summarized Muller in an editorial he wrote in the October 21 Wall Street Journal .
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http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2011/10/26/the-death-of-global-warming-skepticism-or-the-birth-of-straw-men/
Climate scientists and their excuses
By Dr. Roger Pielke Sr.
There is a news release by Paul Voosen on Greenwire titled
Provoked scientists try to explain lag in global warming (Tuesday, October 25, 2011)
There are some interesting quotes from climate scientists in this article that highlight a large degree of uncertainty with respect to the climate system, and the human role in it, even among scientists closely involved with the IPCC reports. The long article focuses on the question
Interesting quotes and text {rearranged to order the persons’ quoted; I highly recommend reading the entire article include [quotes removed]:
John Barnes
Jean-Paul Vernier
Kevin Trenberth
Susan Solomon
Jim Hansen
John Daniel
Ben Santer
Judith Lean
Graeme Stephens
Robert Kaufmann
Martin Wild
Daniel Jacobs
The end of the article highlights the developing debate among even these scientists.
These extracts from the Greenwire article illustrate why the climate system is not yet well understood. The science is NOT solved.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/27/climate-scientists-and-their-excuses/
Why Hasn’t The Earth Warmed In Nearly 15 Years?
Patrick Michaels
There is no statistically significant warming trend since November of 1996 in monthly surface temperature records compiled at the University of East Anglia. Do we now understand why there’s been no change in fourteen and a half years?
If you read the news stories surrounding a recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Boston University’s Robert Kaufmann and three colleagues, you’d say yes, indeed. It’s China’s fault.
[...]
So, if it is indeed sulfates cooling the warming, given that there is no net change in global temperature, then the northern hemisphere should be cooling since 1998 (the first year in Kaufmann’s paper) while the southern warms. Here are the sad facts:
[See plot page 2]
The opposite is occurring. Why this test was not performed eludes me. Perhaps that is because it provides yet another piece of evidence supporting the hypothesis that we have simply overstated the sensitivity of surface temperature to changes in carbon dioxide.
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http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmichaels/2011/07/15/why-hasnt-the-earth-warmed-in-nearly-15-years/
Quote of the Week:
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened. Winston Churchill
From WUWT