On October 31,2009, the once largest aluminum plant in the world will shut down. With it goes another American industry and more American jobs. The Columbia Falls Aluminum Company in Montana will shut down its aluminum production because it cannot purchase the necessary electrical power to continue its operations.
How did this happen in America? America was once the envy of the world in its industrial capability. America's industrial capacity built America into the most productive nation the world had ever known. Its standard of living rose to levels never before accomplished. Its currency became valuable and powerful, allowing Americans to purchase imported goods at relatively cheap prices.
America grew because of innovation and hard work by the pioneers of the industrial revolution, and because America has vast natural resources. A great economy, as America once was, is founded on the ability to produce electrical energy at low cost. This ability has been extinguished. Why?
Columbia Falls Aluminum negotiated a contract with Bonneville Power Administration in 2006 for Bonneville to supply electrical power until September 30, 2011. But, responding to lawsuits, the 9th US Circuit Court ruled the contract was invalid because it was incompatible with the Northwest Power Act. Therefore, the combination of the Northwest Power Act and a US Circuit Court were the final villains that caused the shutdown of Columbia Falls Aluminum.
But the real reasons are much more complicated. Why was it not possible for Columbia Falls Aluminum to find sources of electricity other than Bonneville?
We need to look no further than the many environmental groups like the Sierra Club and to America's elected officials who turned their backs on American citizens and in essence themselves, for they too are citizens of this country. These officials bought into the green agenda promoted by the heavily funded environmental groups. Caving to pressure, they passed laws and the environmental groups filed lawsuits that began turning off the lights in America. The dominos started to fall.
They began stopping nuclear power plants in the 1970's. They locked up much of our coal and oil resources with land laws. They passed tax credits, which forces taxpayers to foot the bill for billionaire investors to save taxes by investing in less productive wind and solar energy projects.
In 1988, the Environmental Protection Agency called a meeting of atmospheric scientists and others with environmental interests. I remember well the meeting I attended in the San Francisco Bay Area. The meeting was in a theater-like lecture room with the seating curved to face the center stage and rising rapidly toward the back of the room. Attending were many atmospheric scientists whom I knew from Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, Stanford Research Institute and some local colleges.
The room became silent when a man walked up to the lectern. He told us that the next big national problem was global warming. He explained how human carbon dioxide emissions were trapping the earth's radiation like a greenhouse and causing the atmosphere to heat beyond its normal temperature. He said this will lead to environmental disasters. He finished by saying the EPA will now concentrate its research funding toward quantifying the disasters that would be caused by our carbon dioxide.
The room was silent. I was the first to raise my hand to ask a question, "How can you defend your global warming hypothesis when you have omitted the effects of clouds which affect heat balance far more than carbon dioxide, and when your hypothesis contradicts the paper by Lee * in the Journal of Applied Meteorology in 1973 that shows the atmosphere does not behave like a greenhouse?"
He answered me by saying, "You do not know what you are talking about. I know more about how the atmosphere works than you do."
Not being one to drop out of a fight, I responded, "I know many of the atmospheric scientists in this room, and many others who are not present but I do not know you. What is your background and what makes you know so much more than me?"
He answered, "I know more than you because I am a lawyer and I work for the EPA."
After the meeting, many of my atmospheric science friends who worked for public agencies thanked me for what I said, saying they would have liked to say the same thing but they feared for their jobs.
And that, my dear readers, is my recollection of that great day when a lawyer, acting as a scientist, working for the federal government, announced global warming.
Fast forward to today. The federal government is spending 1000 times more money to promote the global warming charade than is available to those scientists who are arguing against it. Never before in history has it taken a massive publicity campaign to convince the public of a scientific truth. The only reason half the public thinks global warming may be true is the massive amount of money put into global warming propaganda.
The green eco-groups have their umbilical cords in the government's tax funds. Aside from a few honest but duped scientists living on government money, the majority of the alarms about global warming - now called "climate change" because it's no longer warming - come from those who have no professional training in atmospheric science. They are the environmentalists, the ecologists, the lawyers and the politicians. They are not the reliable atmospheric scientists whom I know.
Nevertheless, our politicians have passed laws stating that carbon dioxide is bad. See California's AB32 which is based upon science fiction. (For readers who take issue with me, I will be happy to destroy your arguments in another place. In this paper, we focus on the damage to America that is being caused by those promoting the global warming fraud.)
In the year 2000, America planned 150 new coal-electric power plants. These power plants would have been "clean" by real standards but the Greens managed to have carbon dioxide defined legally as "dirty" and this new definition makes all emitters of carbon dioxide, including you, a threat to the planet. Therefore, using legal illogic, the Sierra Club stopped 82 of these planned power plants under Bush II and they expect it will be a slam dunk to stop the rest under Obama.
And now you know the real reason the Columbia Falls Aluminum Company had to shut down. America stopped building new power plants a long time ago. There is now no other source where the company can buy energy. Our energy-producing capability is in a decline and it is taking America with it.
I used to belong to the Sierra Club in the 1960's. It used to be a nice hiking club. In the late 1960's the Sierra Club began turning its attention toward stopping nuclear power. Then I quit the Sierra Club. It continues to prosper from the many subscribers who think they are supporting a good cause. What they are really supporting is the destruction of America brick by brick. The Sierra Club and similar organizations are like watermelons - green on the outside, red on the inside. They are telling us we have no right to our own natural resources, and in doing so they are sinking America.
Inherent in ecology are three assumptions: "natural" conditions are optimal, climate is fragile, and human influences are bad. Physics makes no such assumptions. By assuming climate is fragile, the global warming supporters have assumed their conclusion. In fact, the climate is not fragile. It is stable. The non-adherence to physical logic in the global warming camp is what makes many physical scientists say that global warming is a religion.
So we have a new age religion promoted by environmentalists, incorporated into our laws and brainwashed into our people that is now destroying America from the inside.
Like a vast ship, America is taking a long time to sink but each day it sinks a little further. The fearsome day awaits, when America, if not quickly recovered by its real citizens, will tilt its nose into the water to begin a rapid and final descent into oblivion ... her many resources saved for whom?
Monday, October 26, 2009
Crap and Tax - A Lobotomy for the United States of America?
By Kevin Klees
OK, I'll start right off by admitting that I am a "Climate Change" Denier, Naysayer, Skeptic, Cynic, Disbeliever, Doubter, Doubting Thomas, Flat Earther, and any other phrases that you might find in your Thesaurus. There, I admit it. Do I feel guilty about the future of the planet? No, not in the least. Why do I reach this decision? Because, as an engineer I have extensive training on the actual limits placed on human activities by the LAWS OF PHYSICS. For more than a quarter of a century I have tried to design things that violate the LAWS OF PHYSICS. I am ashamed to admit that I HAVE NOT BROKEN ANY OF THEM YET. As an engineer I am in the FRONT LINES fighting the LAWS OF PHYSICS every day. So far the LAWS OF PHYSICS are winning, 99-0. So, here is one of those NASTY little LAWS OF PHYSICS, it's called the THIRD LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS. It can make for a really drowsy read, but the simple version states: "IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO TRAP HEAT" Yep, that's it, pretty simple; it means that there is NOTHING NATURE, OR A MAN/WOMAN CAN DO TO TRAP HEAT. This LAW is demonstrated MILLIONS of times every day. When you put more insulation into the attic of your house, you are SLOWING the flow of heat from inside (umm, warm and toasty) to the outside (ugh, cold and wet). You are NOT TRAPPING HEAT. Ask yourself this simple question; if a Greenhouse can "TRAP HEAT" why is it colder inside one in January than in August? Why can't you "trap" the heat from August and use it during the whole rest of the year? Because of the THIRD LAW. So, if the THIRD LAW is enforced in manmade greenhouses on the surface of the earth, why is it not enforced in the atmosphere of the earth? Simple answer, it applies equally in all locations.So you are probably now asking, what's that whole Lobotomy thing about? Back in the 1930's and 1940's there was a "consensus" that lobotomies' were an effective treatment for mental disorders. Unfortunately, one sibling of a recently deceased US Senator from Massachusetts had this "therapy" applied to her. In fact, the doctor that "perfected" the lobotomy was awarded a Noble prize for his efforts to torture and cripple individual human beings. Of course, it was later determined that the "consensus" was "mistaken".
Whoops! The next "consensus" will certainly do better, we promise. So are we really ready to perform a Lobotomy on the Economy of the United States of America by passing the CRAP AND TAX bill because a "consensus" is really really sure that: "most" of the (poorly measured) warming is "very likely" caused by human activities ? (UN IPCC statement, paraphrased slightly). Should we commit economic suicide because a "consensus" is sure that MOST of the (poorly measured) warming is VERY LIKELY caused by humans? One definition of MOST is "more than half", and the UN's own definition of VERY LIKELY is 90%, so the UN is stating that 51% * 90% = 45% of the (poorly measured) "warming" is caused by human activities. Should we perform a self-inflicted lobotomy to "solve" a problem that has a likely occurrence of 45% ? You should of course also know that the manufacturers of this "consensus" depend entirely on the propagation of the "consensus" for their livelihood i.e.: no consensus, no jobs. ----
OK, I'll start right off by admitting that I am a "Climate Change" Denier, Naysayer, Skeptic, Cynic, Disbeliever, Doubter, Doubting Thomas, Flat Earther, and any other phrases that you might find in your Thesaurus. There, I admit it. Do I feel guilty about the future of the planet? No, not in the least. Why do I reach this decision? Because, as an engineer I have extensive training on the actual limits placed on human activities by the LAWS OF PHYSICS. For more than a quarter of a century I have tried to design things that violate the LAWS OF PHYSICS. I am ashamed to admit that I HAVE NOT BROKEN ANY OF THEM YET. As an engineer I am in the FRONT LINES fighting the LAWS OF PHYSICS every day. So far the LAWS OF PHYSICS are winning, 99-0. So, here is one of those NASTY little LAWS OF PHYSICS, it's called the THIRD LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS. It can make for a really drowsy read, but the simple version states: "IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO TRAP HEAT" Yep, that's it, pretty simple; it means that there is NOTHING NATURE, OR A MAN/WOMAN CAN DO TO TRAP HEAT. This LAW is demonstrated MILLIONS of times every day. When you put more insulation into the attic of your house, you are SLOWING the flow of heat from inside (umm, warm and toasty) to the outside (ugh, cold and wet). You are NOT TRAPPING HEAT. Ask yourself this simple question; if a Greenhouse can "TRAP HEAT" why is it colder inside one in January than in August? Why can't you "trap" the heat from August and use it during the whole rest of the year? Because of the THIRD LAW. So, if the THIRD LAW is enforced in manmade greenhouses on the surface of the earth, why is it not enforced in the atmosphere of the earth? Simple answer, it applies equally in all locations.So you are probably now asking, what's that whole Lobotomy thing about? Back in the 1930's and 1940's there was a "consensus" that lobotomies' were an effective treatment for mental disorders. Unfortunately, one sibling of a recently deceased US Senator from Massachusetts had this "therapy" applied to her. In fact, the doctor that "perfected" the lobotomy was awarded a Noble prize for his efforts to torture and cripple individual human beings. Of course, it was later determined that the "consensus" was "mistaken".
Whoops! The next "consensus" will certainly do better, we promise. So are we really ready to perform a Lobotomy on the Economy of the United States of America by passing the CRAP AND TAX bill because a "consensus" is really really sure that: "most" of the (poorly measured) warming is "very likely" caused by human activities ? (UN IPCC statement, paraphrased slightly). Should we commit economic suicide because a "consensus" is sure that MOST of the (poorly measured) warming is VERY LIKELY caused by humans? One definition of MOST is "more than half", and the UN's own definition of VERY LIKELY is 90%, so the UN is stating that 51% * 90% = 45% of the (poorly measured) "warming" is caused by human activities. Should we perform a self-inflicted lobotomy to "solve" a problem that has a likely occurrence of 45% ? You should of course also know that the manufacturers of this "consensus" depend entirely on the propagation of the "consensus" for their livelihood i.e.: no consensus, no jobs. ----
The science of deceit
A well-accepted aphorism about science, in the context of difference of opinion between two points of view, is “Madam, you are entitled to your own interpretation, but not to your own facts”.
The world stoker of the fires of global warming alarmism, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), cleverly suborns this dictum in two ways.
First, the IPCC accepts advice from influential groups of scientists who treat the data that underpins their published climate interpretations (collected, of course, using public research funds) as their own private property, and refuse to release it to other scientists.
Thus, confronted in 1996 with a request that he provide a U.S. peer-review referee with a copy of the data that underpinned a research paper that he had submitted, U.K. Hadley Climate Research Centre scientist Tom Wigley responded:
First, it is entirely unnecessary to have original “raw” data in order to review a scientific document. I know of no case at all in which such data were required by or provided to a referee ….. Second, while the data in question [model output from the U.K. Hadley Centre’s climate model] were generated using taxpayer money, this was U.K. taxpayer money. U.S. scientists therefore have no a priori right to such data. Furthermore, these data belong to individual scientists who produced them, not to the IPCC, and it is up to those scientists to decide who they give their data to.
The world stoker of the fires of global warming alarmism, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), cleverly suborns this dictum in two ways.
First, the IPCC accepts advice from influential groups of scientists who treat the data that underpins their published climate interpretations (collected, of course, using public research funds) as their own private property, and refuse to release it to other scientists.
Thus, confronted in 1996 with a request that he provide a U.S. peer-review referee with a copy of the data that underpinned a research paper that he had submitted, U.K. Hadley Climate Research Centre scientist Tom Wigley responded:
First, it is entirely unnecessary to have original “raw” data in order to review a scientific document. I know of no case at all in which such data were required by or provided to a referee ….. Second, while the data in question [model output from the U.K. Hadley Centre’s climate model] were generated using taxpayer money, this was U.K. taxpayer money. U.S. scientists therefore have no a priori right to such data. Furthermore, these data belong to individual scientists who produced them, not to the IPCC, and it is up to those scientists to decide who they give their data to.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
350 day: a failing struggle for an unattractive utopia
You may have not noticed but Saturday, October 24th, 2009 was an International Day of Climate Action: see 350.org & Google News.
Hundreds of people in the whole world organized events urging the world's CO2 concentration to return to 350 ppm (350 parts per million: 3.5 molecules out of 10,000 are CO2 molecules). Even in the Czech Republic, a dozen of activists gathered at the Old Town Square, emitting dozens of dirty black "CO2" latex balloons into the air.
(They also used masks of various well-known world politicians for a childish puppet show in which these politicians declare 350 ppm to be the new Copenhagen law.)
Twenty years ago when the CO2 concentration was at 350 ppm, the environmental activists would fight against things such as latex balloons in the air. They are polluting the environment and some animals may get into trouble when they swallow the balloon.
Today, they don't care. They decided that the CO2 concentration should be 350 ppm - instead of the correct current value, 388 ppm, shown by the world climate widget. (This figure, corresponding to the maximum of 2009, increases approximately by 1.8 ppm a year, and the annual difference between the maximum and minimum due to the seasons on the dominant Northern Hemisphere's lands is around 7 ppm.)
Hundreds of people in the whole world organized events urging the world's CO2 concentration to return to 350 ppm (350 parts per million: 3.5 molecules out of 10,000 are CO2 molecules). Even in the Czech Republic, a dozen of activists gathered at the Old Town Square, emitting dozens of dirty black "CO2" latex balloons into the air.
(They also used masks of various well-known world politicians for a childish puppet show in which these politicians declare 350 ppm to be the new Copenhagen law.)
Twenty years ago when the CO2 concentration was at 350 ppm, the environmental activists would fight against things such as latex balloons in the air. They are polluting the environment and some animals may get into trouble when they swallow the balloon.
Today, they don't care. They decided that the CO2 concentration should be 350 ppm - instead of the correct current value, 388 ppm, shown by the world climate widget. (This figure, corresponding to the maximum of 2009, increases approximately by 1.8 ppm a year, and the annual difference between the maximum and minimum due to the seasons on the dominant Northern Hemisphere's lands is around 7 ppm.)
An Expensive Urban Legend
October 24th, 2009 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
I contend that the belief in human-caused global warming as a dangerous event, either now or in the future, has most of the characteristics of an urban legend. Like other urban legends, it is based upon an element of truth. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas whose concentration in the atmosphere is increasing, and since greenhouse gases warm the lower atmosphere, more CO2 can be expected, at least theoretically, to result in some level of warming.
But skillful storytelling has elevated the danger from a theoretical one to one of near-certainty. The actual scientific basis for the plausible hypothesis that humans could be responsible for most recent warming is contained in the cautious scientific language of many scientific papers. Unfortunately, most of the uncertainties and caveats are then minimized with artfully designed prose contained in the Summary for Policymakers (SP) portion of the report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This Summary was clearly meant to instill maximum alarm from a minimum amount of direct evidence.
Next, politicians seized upon the SP, further simplifying and extrapolating its claims to the level of a “climate crisis”. Other politicians embellished the tale even more by claiming they “saw” global warming in Greenland as if it was a sighting of Sasquatch, or that they felt it when they fly in airplanes.
I contend that the belief in human-caused global warming as a dangerous event, either now or in the future, has most of the characteristics of an urban legend. Like other urban legends, it is based upon an element of truth. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas whose concentration in the atmosphere is increasing, and since greenhouse gases warm the lower atmosphere, more CO2 can be expected, at least theoretically, to result in some level of warming.
But skillful storytelling has elevated the danger from a theoretical one to one of near-certainty. The actual scientific basis for the plausible hypothesis that humans could be responsible for most recent warming is contained in the cautious scientific language of many scientific papers. Unfortunately, most of the uncertainties and caveats are then minimized with artfully designed prose contained in the Summary for Policymakers (SP) portion of the report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This Summary was clearly meant to instill maximum alarm from a minimum amount of direct evidence.
Next, politicians seized upon the SP, further simplifying and extrapolating its claims to the level of a “climate crisis”. Other politicians embellished the tale even more by claiming they “saw” global warming in Greenland as if it was a sighting of Sasquatch, or that they felt it when they fly in airplanes.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Good news is no news.
Scientists using a network of ground sensors emplaced in Antarctica say that NASA satellites have overestimated the amount of ice that is melting and running off into the ocean from the polar continent.
Lewis Page, The Register, 20 October 2009
With the clock running out and deep differences unresolved, it now appears that there is little chance that international climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in December will produce a comprehensive and binding new treaty on global warming.
John M Broder, The New York Times, 21 October 2009
Discord reigned supreme at a meeting of EU finance ministers in Luxembourg on Tuesday, with the most notable failure in the area of climate financing. Greenpeace EU climate policy director Joris den Blanken described the meeting as a "fiasco", adding that the likelihood of failing to secure a global deal in Copenhagen this December to replace the Kyoto protocol was now "very real."
Andrew Willis, EUObserver, 21 October 2009
The UN climate conference in Copenhagen will not succeed to agree on a new international treaty under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Instead, the meeting must reach agreement to set up a structure of a deal with technical details to be filled in later, says the UN top climate negotiator. "A fully fledged new international treaty under the [UN Framework] Convention [on Climate Change] – I do not think that is going to happen," Yvo de Boer says.
Marianne Bom, COP15, 20 October 2009
Lewis Page, The Register, 20 October 2009
With the clock running out and deep differences unresolved, it now appears that there is little chance that international climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in December will produce a comprehensive and binding new treaty on global warming.
John M Broder, The New York Times, 21 October 2009
Discord reigned supreme at a meeting of EU finance ministers in Luxembourg on Tuesday, with the most notable failure in the area of climate financing. Greenpeace EU climate policy director Joris den Blanken described the meeting as a "fiasco", adding that the likelihood of failing to secure a global deal in Copenhagen this December to replace the Kyoto protocol was now "very real."
Andrew Willis, EUObserver, 21 October 2009
The UN climate conference in Copenhagen will not succeed to agree on a new international treaty under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Instead, the meeting must reach agreement to set up a structure of a deal with technical details to be filled in later, says the UN top climate negotiator. "A fully fledged new international treaty under the [UN Framework] Convention [on Climate Change] – I do not think that is going to happen," Yvo de Boer says.
Marianne Bom, COP15, 20 October 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Anatomy of smear
“We are the first generation of organisms on planet earth that has ever [foolishly] feared a warm climate.” Ian P.
18 October 2009
Anatomy of a Smear
Wow. This has to be read to be believed. According to Stephen Dubner on his blog at the NYT, in the dust-up over the SupreFreakonomics book (which I have not read) Joe Romm manufactures a smear of the book and its authors by making this request of Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at Stanford (emphasis added):
"I want to trash them for this insanity and ignorance. . . my blog is read by everyone in this area, including the media. I’d like a quote like ‘The authors of SuperFreakonomics have utterly misrepresented my work,’ plus whatever else you want to say."
Caldeira did not provide the requested quote, what he did say according to Dubner was:
“The only significant error,” he wrote to Romm, “is the line: ‘carbon dioxide is not the right villain in this fight.’ That is just wrong and I never would have said it. On the other hand, I f&@?ed up. They sent me the draft and I approved it without reading it carefully and I just missed it. … I think everyone operated in good faith, and this was just a mistake that got by my inadequate editing.”
Is that the story that you get from Romm? Not even close. Romm spins and lies instead. Dubner explains how Romm didn't report the full story from Caldeira, but instead twisted it into a smear by reporting an untruth: "Levitt and Dubner didn’t run this quote by Caldeira . . ." We know from Dubner and confirmed by Caldeira that
. . . Caldeira did see that line, and the rest of the chapter too, not once but twice.
But that didn’t seem to matter. While Romm’s post never actually delivered the Caldeira quotes teased in the headline – that it was “an inaccurate portrayal of me” and “misleading” – the point was clear to any reader: everything SuperFreakonomics says about global warming must be wrong because the main climate scientist they write about has refuted what he said. It’s hard to blame the bloggers who subsequently repeated this story: if you didn’t know it was false, it would have seemed pretty newsworthy. It’s also hard to misinterpret what’s going on here. Now that global warming has transcended science to become a political issue, the rules of politics apply: if you don’t like someone’s position, attack their credibility.
For his part Caldeira expresses some regret at being drawn into the dispute:
“I was drawn in by Romm and Al Gore’s assistant into critiquing other parts of the chapter. Rather than acting deliberately, I panicked and commented on things that I now wish I would have been silent on. It was obviously a mistake to let myself get drawn into this, and I learned a quick and hard lesson in public relations.”
Caldeira also said of the book and it authors:
“I believe all of the ideas attributed to me are based on fact, with the exception of the ‘carbon dioxide is not the right villain’ line,” he wrote. “That said, when I am speaking, I place these facts in a very different context and draw different policy conclusions.” He added that “I believe the authors to have worked in good faith. They draw different conclusions than I draw from the same facts, but as authors of the book, that is their prerogative.”
Dubner accepts Caldeira's critique, and even though Caldeira had two chances to correct the text before publication:
I understand why Caldeira now feels that the “villain” line overstates his position. I certainly wish we had discussed amending it earlier, and it’s probably a good idea to change that linein future editions of the book.
The story here is a climate scientist being played as a fool in the political battle over climate change. Joe Romm often engages in some pretty dirty politics in smearing the credibility of people whose views that he disagrees with, which in the past has included me. That people play dirty politics is not a surprise. That Joe Romm is taken seriously by the mainstream media and the mainstream scientific community says a lot about them as well.
18 October 2009
Anatomy of a Smear
Wow. This has to be read to be believed. According to Stephen Dubner on his blog at the NYT, in the dust-up over the SupreFreakonomics book (which I have not read) Joe Romm manufactures a smear of the book and its authors by making this request of Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at Stanford (emphasis added):
"I want to trash them for this insanity and ignorance. . . my blog is read by everyone in this area, including the media. I’d like a quote like ‘The authors of SuperFreakonomics have utterly misrepresented my work,’ plus whatever else you want to say."
Caldeira did not provide the requested quote, what he did say according to Dubner was:
“The only significant error,” he wrote to Romm, “is the line: ‘carbon dioxide is not the right villain in this fight.’ That is just wrong and I never would have said it. On the other hand, I f&@?ed up. They sent me the draft and I approved it without reading it carefully and I just missed it. … I think everyone operated in good faith, and this was just a mistake that got by my inadequate editing.”
Is that the story that you get from Romm? Not even close. Romm spins and lies instead. Dubner explains how Romm didn't report the full story from Caldeira, but instead twisted it into a smear by reporting an untruth: "Levitt and Dubner didn’t run this quote by Caldeira . . ." We know from Dubner and confirmed by Caldeira that
. . . Caldeira did see that line, and the rest of the chapter too, not once but twice.
But that didn’t seem to matter. While Romm’s post never actually delivered the Caldeira quotes teased in the headline – that it was “an inaccurate portrayal of me” and “misleading” – the point was clear to any reader: everything SuperFreakonomics says about global warming must be wrong because the main climate scientist they write about has refuted what he said. It’s hard to blame the bloggers who subsequently repeated this story: if you didn’t know it was false, it would have seemed pretty newsworthy. It’s also hard to misinterpret what’s going on here. Now that global warming has transcended science to become a political issue, the rules of politics apply: if you don’t like someone’s position, attack their credibility.
For his part Caldeira expresses some regret at being drawn into the dispute:
“I was drawn in by Romm and Al Gore’s assistant into critiquing other parts of the chapter. Rather than acting deliberately, I panicked and commented on things that I now wish I would have been silent on. It was obviously a mistake to let myself get drawn into this, and I learned a quick and hard lesson in public relations.”
Caldeira also said of the book and it authors:
“I believe all of the ideas attributed to me are based on fact, with the exception of the ‘carbon dioxide is not the right villain’ line,” he wrote. “That said, when I am speaking, I place these facts in a very different context and draw different policy conclusions.” He added that “I believe the authors to have worked in good faith. They draw different conclusions than I draw from the same facts, but as authors of the book, that is their prerogative.”
Dubner accepts Caldeira's critique, and even though Caldeira had two chances to correct the text before publication:
I understand why Caldeira now feels that the “villain” line overstates his position. I certainly wish we had discussed amending it earlier, and it’s probably a good idea to change that linein future editions of the book.
The story here is a climate scientist being played as a fool in the political battle over climate change. Joe Romm often engages in some pretty dirty politics in smearing the credibility of people whose views that he disagrees with, which in the past has included me. That people play dirty politics is not a surprise. That Joe Romm is taken seriously by the mainstream media and the mainstream scientific community says a lot about them as well.
Friday, October 16, 2009
The whole global warming craze is a massive Ponzi scheme
The whole global warming craze is a massive Ponzi scheme designed to separate wealthy nations from their wealth and pass it over to developing nations without them having to actually go through the process of creating and earning that wealth. It’s a gigantic global welfare scheme that if it comes to fruition, will equalize the wealth of all nations, making poor nations wealthier. It will also make wealthy nations poorer.
In fact, as the proponents of climate hysteria come to realize that developed nations’ citizenry may not be on board for a gigantic wealth transfer, they are looking at other avenues to facilitate separating wealthy nations from their money.
In fact, as the proponents of climate hysteria come to realize that developed nations’ citizenry may not be on board for a gigantic wealth transfer, they are looking at other avenues to facilitate separating wealthy nations from their money.
Monday, October 12, 2009
What happened to global warming?
This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.
But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.
And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.
So what on Earth is going on?
Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man's influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.
They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?
But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.
And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.
So what on Earth is going on?
Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man's influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.
They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?
Friday, October 9, 2009
Global blushing
Growing ice, the mob and red-faced professors: Warmists are having yet another bad week.
This week, the doomsters were embarrassed to learn, once again, that the planet was not in grave peril. Antarctica, their greatest candidate for catastrophe, was not melting at an ever-faster rate, according to a report in Geophysical Research Letters, but at the slowest rate in 30 years. To add to their frustration, they couldn’t even lash out at the lead author, Marco Tedesco of the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department of City College of New York — the doomsters had praised his previous reports showing high rates of Antarctic melt.
The latest news from the Arctic — delivered daily via satellite — is no better. Two years ago with the Arctic ice in rapid retreat, the doomsters, convinced of the coming of an ice-free Arctic, could scarcely contain themselves. Now, with the Arctic ice in rapid return, their anticipation of disaster seems more a cruel hoax of Nature. The doomsters now dread to track the satellite data beamed down to us courtesy of the International Arctic Research Center and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency — you can see why they cringe each day by going to the satellite website and following the red line:
This week, the doomsters were embarrassed to learn, once again, that the planet was not in grave peril. Antarctica, their greatest candidate for catastrophe, was not melting at an ever-faster rate, according to a report in Geophysical Research Letters, but at the slowest rate in 30 years. To add to their frustration, they couldn’t even lash out at the lead author, Marco Tedesco of the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department of City College of New York — the doomsters had praised his previous reports showing high rates of Antarctic melt.
The latest news from the Arctic — delivered daily via satellite — is no better. Two years ago with the Arctic ice in rapid retreat, the doomsters, convinced of the coming of an ice-free Arctic, could scarcely contain themselves. Now, with the Arctic ice in rapid return, their anticipation of disaster seems more a cruel hoax of Nature. The doomsters now dread to track the satellite data beamed down to us courtesy of the International Arctic Research Center and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency — you can see why they cringe each day by going to the satellite website and following the red line:
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
An exercise in futility...Lord Monckton
Science establishes the “global warming” scare is over. The warming effect of CO2 is now measured at less than one-sixth of the IPCC’s central estimate: i.e. a “climate sensitivity” of a harmless 0.5 C° at CO2 doubling, not the 3.3 C° the IPCC thought (Flag 1).
Adaptation as and if necessary would be vastly cheaper than mitigation. Even if the IPCC’s 3.3 C° climate sensitivity (down from 3.5 C° in 2001 and 3.8 C° in 1995) were right, the world would have to forego 2 trillion tonnes of CO2 emission to prevent 1 C° of warming (Flag 2) – a robust figure that has been kept out of the debate till now. The world emits just 30 billion tonnes of CO2 a year, so even if the entire carbon economy were shut down it would take 67 years to prevent 1 C° of warming. To prevent the 3.4 C° warming the IPCC predicts for this century, make that 227 years without any transportation or fossil-fueled electricity. Carbon mitigation would accordingly be the least cost-effective use of taxpayers’ money ever. Adaptation would be orders of magnitude cheaper, but still unnecessary.
World “government” is unnecessary and would destroy democracy and markets. Even if mitigation were needed and might work, the UN secretariat’s plan (Flag 3) to establish a world “government” – the Copenhagen draft names “government” as the first of three purposes of the unelected sovereign entity the UN wants you to subject Canada’s democratic constitution to – would subordinate our democracy to a complex, costly, multi-tentacled oligarchy which the UN says will rule governments, economies, and markets worldwide and pre-empt national taxes at will. A “facilitative” (i.e. enforcement) mechanism will include technical panels with the power to order governments how to conduct their economic affairs.
Lord Monckton’s remarkable, impeccably-referenced presentation provided a wealth of economic and scientific detail on which the media are silent. Recent peer-reviewed science and climate data have made the IPCC’s assessment reports out of date by establishing that – The oceans, where all parties agree 80-90% of all heat held in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases must go, show no net accumulation of heat energy in 70 years and slight cooling for 6 years, demonstrating that “global warming” is not manmade (Douglass & Knox, 2009).
Surface temperature is near-solely determined not by CO2 concentration changes but by how much sunlight actually strikes the Earth’s surface (Soon, 2009).
If the “global warming” that ceased in the mid-1990s resumes, the resulting increase in cloud cover will offset the warming, not amplify it as the IPCC had thought (Spencer, 2008). The tropical upper air, predicted by the IPCC to warm at thrice the surface rate if we caused “global warming”, has warmed no faster than the surface, because subsidence drying is carrying water vapor to lower altitudes where it causes less warming (Douglass et al., 2008). Measured climate sensitivity is less than one-sixth of the IPCC’s central estimate. Its models all predict that as the Earth warms less radiation will escape to space, but the measured reality is that more radiation gets out, so less warming arises. Climate sensitivity of 0.5 C is thus determined (Lindzen & Choi, 2009). End of scare.
To support his contentions you might want to read on, in order to avail yourselves of more details on the science.
Flag 1
How measured outgoing radiation
determines low climate sensitivity
Reality vs. predictions: All UN models (11 of them shown in red) predict that as sea surface temperature rises the outgoing radiation escaping from the Earth to space diminishes because temperature feedbacks cause water vapor – the most significant greenhouse gas - to accumulate in the atmosphere. However, direct measurement using the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment Satellite (green) shows that as temperature rises more outgoing radiation, not less, escapes to space.
Each point on the ERBE observed-data scatter-plot represents a period during which the change in sea surface temperature was sufficient to prevent spurious results (known as “noise”). The point is placed at the intersection of the observed sea-surface temperature change (horizontal axis) and of the corresponding change in the flux of outgoing radiation measured by the ERBE satellite (vertical axis). Each point on the models’ scatter-plots represents a period identical to that which is used in the observed-data scatter-plot. The sea-surface temperature change over each relevant period is then input to the model to “force” it. The model then predicts how much outgoing radiation will escape to space in response to the input amount of temperature change.
The substantial discrepancy between what the models predict and and what is measured in reality occurs because the IPCC incorrectly assumes that the most important of the temperature feedbacks that reinforce any initial warming as the planetary surface warms – the increase in water vapor concentration – will occur at all altitudes, whereas recent results (Paltridge et al., 2009) have demonstrated that subsidence drying carries any additional water vapor to lower altitudes, where it has less warming effect because at lower altitudes the sheer quantity of pre-existing water vapor is sufficient to ensure saturation of the principal radiation-absorption wavelengths of water vapor. Hence the model-predicted tripling of the tropical surface warming rate at altitude is not observed (Douglass et al., 2008).
Simple calculation based on the observed discrepancy between the models’ predictions and measured reality establishes that the warming to be expected if CO2 concentration doubles – the “climate sensitivity” – will be just 0.5 C°, not the 3.3 C° that the IPCC takes as its current central estimate.
Flag 2
Why carbon mitigation cannot be cost-effective
2 trillion tonnes of CO2 emissions must be foregone
to prevent just 1 C° of “global warming”
An exercise in futility: The table demonstrates how many tonnes of CO2 emissions must be foregone to prevent just 1 C° of “global warming”, on the assumption that the IPCC’s climate sensitivity prediction – a warming of 3.4 C° during the 21st century – will actually occur unless efforts at mitigation are made.
The 21st-century increase in CO2 concentration that is predicted to occur under the IPCC’s A2 emissions scenario (which conforms most closely to today’s emissions) is divided by the IPCC’s prediction of 21st century “global warming” on that scenario, yielding a CO2 concentration increase of 140 ppmv per Celsius degree mitigated. This value is multiplied by the measured quantity of CO2 emissions per part per million by volume of CO2 increase over the past 30 years – i.e. 14,150 million tonnes of CO2 (excluding transient volcanic effects). Accordingly, the emissions cuts necessary for achievement of a 1 C° cooling are 2 trillion tonnes. This value is essential to evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of climate mitigation.
The relationship between changes in CO2 concentration and changes in surface temperature is not linear, as assumed in this calculation, but logarithmic. Therefore, if the calculation were extended over a longer period than a century – the current standard time-horizon for IPCC calculations – an even greater tonnage of CO2 emissions would have to be foregone to achieve each subsequent 1 C° reduction in surface temperature.
If, as Flag 1 demonstrates, climate sensitivity is less than one-sixth of the UN’s central estimate, then the quantity of carbon emissions foregone to prevent 1 C° of warming would rise from 2 to 12.5 trillion tonnes. The world only emits 30 billion tonnes a year. Therefore, even an outright ban on the use of all fossil fuels worldwide would take 67-417 years to prevent 1 C° of warming, and the same outright ban would take 227-1417 years. The cost would be nothing less than the destruction of around three-quarters of the world economy: the climatic value would be negligible, and would not occur in time to make any difference.
Therefore mitigation is inescapably cost-ineffective, even if the most drastic measures are taken. Mitigation must fail.fos
Open minded they are not
The scene was a scientific workshop set up to discuss the science of global warming. It took place in a non-Western country and was convened by the country's Academy of Sciences. Delegates came from all over the world. Yet the delegation from one major Western power behaved in a most undiplomatic fashion. The way the science was being presented was inconvenient to their political agenda, so they tried to get the scientists they disagreed with silenced. The organizers refused, so the delegation went to its government to exert political pressure. The organizers still refused, so the delegation disrupted the conference. When it became apparent they weren't going to get their way, they walked out.The chairman of the conference told the press that the leader of the disruptive delegation "had brought several scientists along with him and he insisted that the program should include among the speakers only those scientists and no other. So, he came over, selected scientists at his discretion, scientists who were to be given the floor in his opinion and scientists who were to be denied an opportunity to speak." A top official of the host government commented, "For some participants the main goal was the search for the truth, understanding of real processes. Other people had the task of disrupting the seminar, so that other people who were seeking the truth could not do so."
Shutting down dissent.
Yet another example of arrogant America disrupting the world's attempts to solve the climate change program? No. The delegation in question was that of the United Kingdom, and the conference was that held last week in Moscow, hosted by the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The British delegation was led by Sir David King, chief scientific adviser to Her Majesty's government. Sir David has gone on record as saying that, "Global warming is worse than terrorism." As far as Sir David and Tony Blair's government is concerned, there should be no need for any further scientific debate on global warming. They have taken the scientific consensus that global warming is happening and cheerfully conflated it with the debatable argument that it will be catastrophic for mankind unless we suppress energy use now.
The religious fervor with which Tony Blair's government is acting on this belief has many Britons unnerved. Dr. David Bellamy, one of the titans of the British environmental movement, wrote in the Daily Mail that he considers global warming alarmism "poppycock." Analysts predict a 40 percent rise in electricity prices as a result of the government's energy suppression policies. British manufacturers foresee having to put thousands out of work as they lose out in competitiveness to overseas suppliers. The Times's economics editor has written that the environmentalists pushing these policies "are like the medieval monks who favored self-flagellation as the road to virtue. For a Government to enshrine such thinking in policy is truly perverse."
In equally medieval fashion, adherents of the environmentalist religion have launched an inquisition against scientific views that they consider heretical. Hence, Sir David's outrageous behavior at the Moscow conference. On learning of the program arranged by the Russian Academy, he proposed a different program that would censor the voices of scientists who do not believe global warming is a worse threat to the world than terrorism. Such delegates included Paul Reiter of the Paris-based Pasteur Institute, who presented the predominant view of the world's malaria experts that global warming is not a major factor in the increasing incidence of vector-borne diseases.
Sir David even got British foreign secretary Jack Straw to intervene on his behalf. It did no good. The Russian Academy, used to seeing dissent crushed for political means, refused to kowtow to Sir David's demands. So, in the words of Russian economic adviser Andrei Illarionov, "Other attempts were made to disrupt the seminar. At least four times during the course of the seminar ugly scenes were staged that prevented the seminar from proceeding normally. As a result we lost at least four hours of working time in order to try to solve these problems." The disruption was serious enough that at the press conference one questioner asked why the security guards did not handle the situation.
Sir David apparently walked out with his delegation in mid-answer to one question. Commenting on this display, Illarionov said, "It is not for us to give an assessment to what happened, but in our opinion the reputation of British science, the reputation of the British government, and the reputation of the title 'Sir' has sustained heavy damage."
If Americans had behaved this way, the world would be full of stories charging America with arrogance, boorishness, and disdain for the spirit of free inquiry. Yet Sir David King continues on his way, the Torquemada of the global-warming inquisition.
Sir David King’s Queenie FitShutting down dissent.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
“Margaret Thatcher” comments on the “Idiocracy of the New Millennium”
Comments by “Margaret Thatcher” in the Economist
Well, the voting gap is closing fast. But not fast enough. I suppose the Greenpeace-bots, taking their emailed marching orders from Greenpeace Director Mr Liepold, are fizzling out. [Or perhaps it is due to the Economist’s very user-unfriendly website.]
This debate was based on a preposterous question, which could have been better framed by a moron advised by idiots. But in reality, the question was deliberately framed by intelligent people with an agenda, in order to appeal to the unthinking eco-Luddites who wouldn’t know “carbon” [by which is meant carbon dioxide, a gas] from their craniums. Idiocracy rules the new millennium.
There is no way the average person would voluntarily give up his or her electricity in the false hope of a slightly cleaner environment. Thus, the bogus question before the house, made intentionally vague in order to be palatable to do-gooders everywhere.
Further, it is ethical for each side to select their spokesperson. But that was not allowed. Ms Amy has done a fine job of appearing somewhat less left of center than Liepold, but she was selected specifically for that purpose by exactly the same people who selected Liepold and the Moderator.
And as many commentators have pointed out, the Moderator is heavily biased in favor of the question. Thus, all three are of the same general opinion, only separated by a degree.
None of the three are permitted to take the position that the use of fossil fuels has greatly increased human health and life-span, and have taken much of the drudgery out of life. Those believing that we should stop using fossil fuels should do their laundry for a few weeks using a washboard. And for the men, try baling hay by hand for even six hours. You will bow down in grateful praise of fossil fuels.
The ethical course of action would be to allow each side to select their spokesperson, and to have a black and white question such as: “This house believes that every citizen must immediately forfeit their fossil fueled transportation, and all electricity derived from fossil fuels.”
Of course that would result in a very heavy preponderance of No votes; thus, the loaded question in the current debate, which is vague enough to appeal to wishful thinkers raised on television, Hollywood, the BBC and People magazine.
It will be quite a spectacle watching the tax sucking elite jetting first class to Copenhagen from around the world, feasting on caviar, lobster and brie, clinking their champagne glasses whilst toasting their commitment to everything “green” � just so long as being green means that we working stiffs must give up much more of our earnings to these doubleplusungood scam artists, who could not care less about their “carbon footprint,” as they party the week away in gluttonous luxury that would excite even the most depraved ancient Roman senator, whilst promoting fads that will grind the poor into even more abject poverty, and reassuring each other that they are being good and saintly for doing so.
The UN’s shenanigans will be on the world’s stage for all to see, and will elevate “hypocrisy” to a new level. And now, with carbon credits selling for under ten pence - just 1/70th of their price last spring - they can buy cheap “carbon” indulgences to salve their guilty consciences as they connive to make our lives more miserable, based on the repeatedly falsified notion that CO2 is harmful. See comments here. Note: This may not be the real Margaret Thatcher but likely reflects her opinion. In her later years despite suffering from small strokes after 2002, as a scientist, she followed this issue closely and felt strongly the issue no longer represented the true scientific picture but had been politicized.
United Nations Pulls Hockey Stick from Climate Report
The discovery of a Wikipedia graphic in the UNEP Climate Change Science Compendium must have been embarrassing as it shows the sort of sloppy science that is going into “official” publications.
In this case, the United Nations simply grabbed an image from Wikipedia that supported the view they wanted to sell. The problem with the graph in the upper right of page 5 of the UNEP report is that it itself has not been peer reviewed nor has it originated from a peer reviewed publication, having its inception at Wikipedia.
So the graph used by the IPCC showing CO2 rise causing temperature rise was a fake? Who could have guest that one. Again thanks to Steve Mcintyre..a good Canadian and just in time for the Copenhagen big lie conference. Cool Aid time?
Monday, October 5, 2009
President Obama Keeps Repeating Climate Falsehoods
He ignores the fact the scientist who claimed a global temperature rise of circa 1 degree C since pre-industrial times refuses to disclose his data or method. He ignores recent global temperature decline as CO2 levels increase in contradiction of IPCC assumptions. IPCC is the sole source of his claim of warming and sea level rise, but all previous predictions have been wrong. He repeats errors already exposed and ignores newly exposed errors. If he is unaware of this information, he displays incompetence. If he is aware, he is perpetuating a massive deception.Ironically, Obama made one accurate comment, “The security and stability of each nation and all peoples—our prosperity, our health, our safety—are in jeopardy. And the time we have to reverse this tide is running out.” It’s true as long as leaders ignore the evidence and accept incorrect corrupt science to destroy economies with disastrous, unnecessary policies. Disseminating and repeating false information for political purposes is the definition of propaganda.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
They say the MWP was not global?
We are continuously being told by the proponent of the broken hockey stick that the MWP was not global but only a NH blip!. ...last time I check the pacific was not in the Northern hemisphere.
A new 2,000-year-long reconstruction of sea surface temperatures (SST) from the Indo-Pacific warm pool (IPWP) suggests that temperatures in the region may have been as warm during the Medieval Warm Period as they are today.
The IPWP is the largest body of warm water in the world, and, as a result, it is the largest source of heat and moisture to the global atmosphere, and an important component of the planet’s climate. Climate models suggest that global mean temperatures are particularly sensitive to sea surface temperatures in the IPWP. Understanding the past history of the region is of great importance for placing current warming trends in a global context.
A new 2,000-year-long reconstruction of sea surface temperatures (SST) from the Indo-Pacific warm pool (IPWP) suggests that temperatures in the region may have been as warm during the Medieval Warm Period as they are today.
The IPWP is the largest body of warm water in the world, and, as a result, it is the largest source of heat and moisture to the global atmosphere, and an important component of the planet’s climate. Climate models suggest that global mean temperatures are particularly sensitive to sea surface temperatures in the IPWP. Understanding the past history of the region is of great importance for placing current warming trends in a global context.
The Yamal implosion
Climate There is a great deal of excitement among climate sceptics over Steve McIntyre's recent posting on Yamal. Several people have asked me to do a layman's guide to the story in the manner of Caspar and the Jesus paper. Here it is.
The story of Michael Mann's Hockey Stick reconstruction, its statistical bias and the influence of the bristlecone pines is well known. McIntyre's research into the other reconstructions has received less publicity, however. The story of the Yamal chronology may change that.
The bristlecone pines that created the shape of the Hockey Stick graph are used in nearly every millennial temperature reconstruction around today, but there are also a handful of other tree ring series that are nearly as common and just as influential on the results. Back at the start of McIntyre's research into the area of paleoclimate, one of the most significant of these was called Polar Urals, a chronology first published by Keith Briffa of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. At the time, it was used in pretty much every temperature reconstruction around. In his paper, Briffa made the startling claim that the coldest year of the millennium was AD 1032, a statement that, if true, would have completely overturned the idea of the Medieval Warm Period. It is not hard to see why paleoclimatologists found the series so alluring.
Keith BriffaSome of McIntyre's research into Polar Urals deserves a story in its own right, but it is one that will have to wait for another day. We can pick up the narrative again in 2005, when McIntyre discovered that an update to the Polar Urals series had been collected in 1999. Through a contact he was able to obtain a copy of the revised series. Remarkably, in the update the eleventh century appeared to be much warmer than in the original - in fact it was higher even than the twentieth century. This must have been a severe blow to paleoclimatologists, a supposition that is borne out by what happened next, or rather what didn't: the update to the Polar Urals was not published, it was not archived and it was almost never seen again.
With Polar Urals now unusable, paleclimatologists had a pressing need for a hockey stick shaped replacement and a solution appeared in the nick of time in the shape of a series from the nearby location of Yamal.
The Yamal data had been collected by a pair of Russian scientists, Hantemirov and Shiyatov, and was published in 2002. In their version of the data, Yamal had little by way of a twentieth century trend. Strangely though, Briffa's version, which had made it into print before even the Russians', was somewhat different. While it was very similar to the Russians' version for most of the length of the record, Briffa's verison had a sharp uptick at the end of the twentieth century -- another hockey stick, made almost to order to meet the requirements of the paleoclimate community. Certainly, after its first appearance in Briffa's 2000 paper in Quaternary Science Reviews, this version of Yamal was seized upon by climatologists, appearing again and again in temperature reconstructions; it became virtually ubiquitous in the field: apart from Briffa 2000, it also contributed to the reconstructions in Mann and Jones 2003, Jones and Mann 2004, Moberg et al 2005, D'Arrigo et al 2006, Osborn and Briffa 2006 and Hegerl et al 2007, among others.
When McIntyre started to look at the Osborn and Briffa paper in 2006, he quickly ran into the problem of the Yamal chronology: he needed to understand exactly how the difference between the Briffa and Hantemirov versions of Yamal had arisen. McIntyre therefore wrote to the Englishman asking for the original tree ring measurements involved. When Briffa refused, McIntyre wrote to Science, who had published the new paper, pointing out that, since it was now six years since Briffa had originally published his version of the chronology, there could be no reason for withholding the underlying data. After some deliberation, the editors at Science declined the request, deciding that Briffa did not have to publish anything more as he had merely re-used data from an earlier study. McIntyre should, they advised, approach the author of the earlier study, that author being, of course, Briffa himself. Wearily, McIntyre wrote to Briffa again, this time in his capacity as author of the original study in Quaternary Science Reviews and he was, as expected, turned down flat.
more...
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Breaking news : the stick is dead
The sheer effrontery and gall appears to be breathtaking.
The Briffa temperature graphs have been widely cited as evidence by the IPCC, yet it appears they were based on a very carefully selected set of data, so select, that the shape of the graph would have been totally transformed if the rest of the data had been included.JNOVA
one of the most disquieting images ever presented at Climate Audit. Two posts ago, I observed that the number of cores used in the most recent portion of the Yamal archive at CRU was implausibly low. There were only 10 cores in 1990 versus 65 cores in 1990 in the Polar Urals archive and 110 cores in the Avam-Taymir archive. These cores were picked from a larger population - measurements from the larger population remain unavailable. One post ago, I observed that Briffa had supplemented the Taymir data set (which had a pronounced 20th century divergence problem) not just with the Sidorova et al 2007 data from Avam referenced in Briffa et al 2008, but with a Schweingruber data set from Balschaya Kamenka (russ124w), also located over 400 km from Taymir.
Given this precedent, I examined the ITRDB data set for potential measurement data from Yamal that could be used to supplement the obviously deficient recent portion of the CRU archive (along the lines of Brifffa’s supplementing the Taymir data set.) Sure enough, there was a Schweingruber series that fell squarely within the Yamal area - indeed on the first named Khadyta River - russ035w located at 67 12N 69 50Eurl . This data set had 34 cores, nearly 3 times more than the 12 cores selected into the CRU archive. Regardless of the principles for the selection of the 12 CRU cores, one would certainly hope to obtain a similar-looking RCS chronology using the Schweingruber population for living trees in lieu of the selection by CRU (or whoever).
Saturday, September 26, 2009
The Arctic ice “is melting far faster than had been previously supposed,”
If you’re confused by stats on Arctic melting, you have lots of company. Arctic stats are easy to misunderstand because the Arctic environment is unlike our own — the Arctic magnifies the changes we experience in the temperate regions. In summer, our days get longer and theirs get really, really long, just as in winter, when our days gets shorter, theirs all but disappear. By analogy, the Arctic also magnifies temperature variations, and resulting changes to its physical environment.
In the Arctic, the ice has indeed been contracting, as the global warming doomsayers have been telling us. But it has also been expanding. The riddle of how the Arctic ice can both be contracting and expanding is easily explained. After you read the next two paragraphs, you’ll be able to describe it easily to your friends to set them straight.
Each winter, the Arctic ice pack rapidly expands and each summer it rapidly contracts, as you can see thanks to photos from a Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency satellite that tracks the changes in the ice pack. On its website, you can also get data showing the area of sea ice for every month going back to 2002.
In the Arctic, the ice has indeed been contracting, as the global warming doomsayers have been telling us. But it has also been expanding. The riddle of how the Arctic ice can both be contracting and expanding is easily explained. After you read the next two paragraphs, you’ll be able to describe it easily to your friends to set them straight.
Each winter, the Arctic ice pack rapidly expands and each summer it rapidly contracts, as you can see thanks to photos from a Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency satellite that tracks the changes in the ice pack. On its website, you can also get data showing the area of sea ice for every month going back to 2002.
Exile for Non-Believers
So now we have a group of biologists, who effectively make recommendations about global energy sources without considering the evidence, the criticisms, or allowing anyone to speak in opposition.
This is the state of modern “science”, and it is not the pinnacle of critical thinking that we are led to believe.
Monday, September 21, 2009
US-EU rift clouds climate summit
A growing rift between the US and Europe is overshadowing Tuesday’s United Nations climate change summit in New York, further damping hopes for a breakthrough at the Copenhagen talks in December.
Connie Hedegaard, the Danish environment minister, lowered expectations, saying: “Things are looking difficult and too slow, that is the fact.”
I say Obama will compromise.. remember in 12 days the Olympic committee will announce who will get the Games from Copenhagen Denmark. Chicago is on a the list and Obama want the games. Copenhagen talks in December will need the US to be on board if it is to succeed. a deal in the making?
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Denmark's wind energy failure
OK. That's been done — by the establishment think tank CEPOS, and you can read it here. The answer is that the president's (repeat) claim that "Denmark produces almost 20 percent of their electricity through wind power" is false. Denmark actually produces much less of its own electricity from wind, as low as 4 percent depending on the year, with the recent average of 9.7 percent. This despite a massive buildout of what they flatteringly call the "wind carpet," on some of the most hospitable terrain for wind power in the world.
It is also in return for its households paying the highest eletricity rates in Europe. With a substantially lower per-capita energy use. That means, to get half of what Obama seeks, the U.S. would have to carpet itself twice over — which means lots of windmills where birds fly and Kennedys live — and pay Danish-style rates.
Oh. Wait. That still won't do it. Apparently Denmark's experience isn't even scalable to Scanadanavia. It turns out that, if the Norwegians and Swedes tried to replicate Denmark's expensive folly, well, it would blow the system up. Here's why. Denmark took advantage of long-since-paid-for interconnectors between Jutland and Norway, and the island on which Copenhagen sits and Sweden. It made a political decision that windmills would be their "national champion" industry, and as you will hear to no end throughout the Copenhagen COP, a big part of their national identity. So they built a lot of windmills, and started a mythology.
It is also in return for its households paying the highest eletricity rates in Europe. With a substantially lower per-capita energy use. That means, to get half of what Obama seeks, the U.S. would have to carpet itself twice over — which means lots of windmills where birds fly and Kennedys live — and pay Danish-style rates.
Oh. Wait. That still won't do it. Apparently Denmark's experience isn't even scalable to Scanadanavia. It turns out that, if the Norwegians and Swedes tried to replicate Denmark's expensive folly, well, it would blow the system up. Here's why. Denmark took advantage of long-since-paid-for interconnectors between Jutland and Norway, and the island on which Copenhagen sits and Sweden. It made a political decision that windmills would be their "national champion" industry, and as you will hear to no end throughout the Copenhagen COP, a big part of their national identity. So they built a lot of windmills, and started a mythology.
NOAA: Warmest Global Sea-Surface Temperatures for August and Summer
AMS Fellow and CCM, Joe D’Aleo of ICECAP has this to say about it:.
Icecap Note: to enable them to make the case the oceans are warming, NOAA chose to remove satellite input into their global ocean estimation and not make any attempt to operationally use Argo data in the process. This resulted in a jump of 0.2C or more and ‘a new ocean warmth record’ in July. ARGO tells us this is another example of NOAA’s inexplicable decision to corrupt data to support political agendas.
http://www.icecap.us/
Monday, September 14, 2009
Only in Climate Science Can You Play With a Broken Hockey Stick
What Was The Climate Hockey Stick?
It was warmer 1000 years ago than in the late 20th century. Existence of this Medieval Warm Period (MWP) contradicted the claim that post-industrial human CO2 was causing unprecedented warming. As Thomas Huxley said, “The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.” Solution? Eliminate the fact. Professor Deming reported receiving an email that said, “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.” Deming didn’t name the sender, but we now know it was Jonathan Overpeck, a lead author of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)Boston College Professor Philip Altbach provides one reason why they’ve succeeded.“Corruption in higher education is not a topic much discussed in academic circles. Academic institutions see themselves as somehow above the baser motivations and lower instincts of other elements of society. And society generally believes that universities are somehow special institutions imbued with the virtues of integrity.”
Concern about this in the UK led to the “UK Panel for Research Integrity”. The objective: “A new watchdog to promote research integrity was launched this week with a scathing attack on the “good chaps” network and general complacency in universities that has allowed fraud and misconduct to gain a foothold in the UK academic sector.” (Source:)
Playing with a broken ice hockey stick is a minor penalty. A lifetime ban is required when scientists play repeatedly with broken research hockey sticks, especially when they drive unnecessary, devastating economic and energy policies and provide false academic justifications for politicians. “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” is an anonymous but pungent truism.
The Great Copenhagen Liar’s Conference
Now, keep in mind that a couple of hundred, perhaps a thousand or more diplomats, scientists, and environmentalists are going to gather in Copenhagen for the single purpose of extending or expanding the Kyoto Protocols that are based on the assertion that the Earth is warming even though it is not.
Moreover, the IPCC will announce that, if the industrialized nations do not dramatically reduce the production of “greenhouse gases” (carbon dioxide), we are all doomed. In the United States, the Cap-and-Trade bill which passed the House by a slim margin will be up for consideration in the Senate. It is based on the global warming lie. It will drive up the cost of energy for all Americans and basically wreck the economy!
Moreover, the IPCC will announce that, if the industrialized nations do not dramatically reduce the production of “greenhouse gases” (carbon dioxide), we are all doomed. In the United States, the Cap-and-Trade bill which passed the House by a slim margin will be up for consideration in the Senate. It is based on the global warming lie. It will drive up the cost of energy for all Americans and basically wreck the economy!
Monday, September 7, 2009
The Pompous fools
There was a special dinner at some point, and the head of the theology place, a very nice, very Jewish man, gave a speech. It was a good speech, and he was a very good speaker, so while it sounds crazy now, when I'm telling about it, at that time his main idea sounded completely obvious and true. He talked about the big differences in the welfare of various countries, which cause jealousy, which leads to conflict, and now that we have atomic weapons, any war and we're doomed, so therefore the right way out is to strive for peace by making sure there are no great differences from place to place, and since we have so much in the United States, we should give up nearly everything to the other countries until we're all even. Everybody was listening to this, and we were all full of sacrificial feeling, and all thinking we ought to do this. But I came back to my senses on the way home.
The next day one of the guys in our group said, "I think that speech last night was so good that we should all endorse it, and it should be the summary of our conference."
I started to say that the idea of distributing everything evenly is based on a theory that there's only X amount of stuff in the world, that somehow we took it away from the poorer countries in the first place, and therefore we should give it back to them. But this theory doesn't take into account the real reason for the differences between countries -- that is, the development of new techniques for growing food, the development of machinery to grow food and to do other things, and the fact that all this machinery requires the concentration of capital. It isn't the stuff, but the power to make the stuff, that is important. But I realize now that these people were not in science; they didn't understand it. They didn't understand technology; they didn't understand their time.
The conference made me so nervous that a girl I knew in New York had to calm me down. "Look," she said, "you're shaking! You've gone absolutely nuts! Just take it easy, and don't take it so seriously. Back away a minute and look at what it is." So I thought about the conference, how crazy it was, and it wasn't so bad. But if someone were to ask me to participate in something like that again, I'd shy away from it like mad -- I mean zero! No! Absolutely not! And I still get invitations for this kind of thing today.
When it came time to evaluate the conference at the end, the others told how much they got out of it, how successful it was, and so on. When they asked me, I said, "This conference was worse than a Rorschach test: There's a meaningless inkblot, and the others ask you what you think you see, but when you tell them, they start arguing with you!"
Even worse, at the end of the conference they were going to have another meeting, but this time the public would come, and the guy in charge of our group has the nerve to say that since we've worked out so much, there won't be any time for public discussion, so we'll just tell the public all the things we've worked out. My eyes bugged out: I didn't think we had worked out a damn thing!
Finally, when we were discussing the question of whether we had developed a way of having a dialogue among people of different disciplines -- our second basic "problem" -- I said that I noticed something interesting. Each of us talked about what we thought the "ethics of equality" was, from our own point of view, without paying any attention to the other guy's point of view. For example, the historian proposed that the way to understand ethical problems is to look historically at how they evolved and how they developed; the international lawyer suggested that the way to do it is to see how in fact people actually act in different situations and make their arrangements; the Jesuit priest was always referring to "the fragmentation of knowledge"; and I, as a scientist, proposed that we should isolate the problem in a way analogous to Galileo's techniques for experiments; and so on. "So, in my opinion," I said, "we had no dialogue at all. Instead, we had nothing but chaos!"
Of course I was attacked, from all around. "Don't you think that order can come from chaos?"
"Uh, well, as a general principle, or..." I didn't understand what to do with a question like "Can order come from chaos?" Yes, no, what of it?
There were a lot of fools at that conference -- pompous fools -- and pompous fools drive me up the wall. Ordinary fools are all right; you can talk to them, and try to help them out. But pompous fools -- guys who are fools and are covering it all over and impressing people as to how wonderful they are with all this hocus pocus -- THAT, I CANNOT STAND! An ordinary fool isn't a faker; an honest fool is all right. But a dishonest fool is terrible! And that's what I got at the conference, a bunch of pompous fools, and I got very upset. I'm not going to get upset like that again, so I won't participate in interdisciplinary conferences any more.
The next day one of the guys in our group said, "I think that speech last night was so good that we should all endorse it, and it should be the summary of our conference."
I started to say that the idea of distributing everything evenly is based on a theory that there's only X amount of stuff in the world, that somehow we took it away from the poorer countries in the first place, and therefore we should give it back to them. But this theory doesn't take into account the real reason for the differences between countries -- that is, the development of new techniques for growing food, the development of machinery to grow food and to do other things, and the fact that all this machinery requires the concentration of capital. It isn't the stuff, but the power to make the stuff, that is important. But I realize now that these people were not in science; they didn't understand it. They didn't understand technology; they didn't understand their time.
The conference made me so nervous that a girl I knew in New York had to calm me down. "Look," she said, "you're shaking! You've gone absolutely nuts! Just take it easy, and don't take it so seriously. Back away a minute and look at what it is." So I thought about the conference, how crazy it was, and it wasn't so bad. But if someone were to ask me to participate in something like that again, I'd shy away from it like mad -- I mean zero! No! Absolutely not! And I still get invitations for this kind of thing today.
When it came time to evaluate the conference at the end, the others told how much they got out of it, how successful it was, and so on. When they asked me, I said, "This conference was worse than a Rorschach test: There's a meaningless inkblot, and the others ask you what you think you see, but when you tell them, they start arguing with you!"
Even worse, at the end of the conference they were going to have another meeting, but this time the public would come, and the guy in charge of our group has the nerve to say that since we've worked out so much, there won't be any time for public discussion, so we'll just tell the public all the things we've worked out. My eyes bugged out: I didn't think we had worked out a damn thing!
Finally, when we were discussing the question of whether we had developed a way of having a dialogue among people of different disciplines -- our second basic "problem" -- I said that I noticed something interesting. Each of us talked about what we thought the "ethics of equality" was, from our own point of view, without paying any attention to the other guy's point of view. For example, the historian proposed that the way to understand ethical problems is to look historically at how they evolved and how they developed; the international lawyer suggested that the way to do it is to see how in fact people actually act in different situations and make their arrangements; the Jesuit priest was always referring to "the fragmentation of knowledge"; and I, as a scientist, proposed that we should isolate the problem in a way analogous to Galileo's techniques for experiments; and so on. "So, in my opinion," I said, "we had no dialogue at all. Instead, we had nothing but chaos!"
Of course I was attacked, from all around. "Don't you think that order can come from chaos?"
"Uh, well, as a general principle, or..." I didn't understand what to do with a question like "Can order come from chaos?" Yes, no, what of it?
There were a lot of fools at that conference -- pompous fools -- and pompous fools drive me up the wall. Ordinary fools are all right; you can talk to them, and try to help them out. But pompous fools -- guys who are fools and are covering it all over and impressing people as to how wonderful they are with all this hocus pocus -- THAT, I CANNOT STAND! An ordinary fool isn't a faker; an honest fool is all right. But a dishonest fool is terrible! And that's what I got at the conference, a bunch of pompous fools, and I got very upset. I'm not going to get upset like that again, so I won't participate in interdisciplinary conferences any more.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
The Thermostat Hypothesis
Every heat engine has a throttle. The throttle is the part of the engine that controls how much energy enters the heat engine. A motorcycle has a hand throttle. In an automobile, the throttle is called the gas pedal. It controls incoming energy.
The stability of the earth’s temperature over time (including alternating bi-stable glacial/interglacial periods), as well as theoretical considerations, indicates that this heat engine we call climate must have some kind of governor controlling the throttle.
While all heat engines have a throttle, not all of them have a governor. In a car, a governor is called “Cruise Control”. Cruise control is a governor that controls the throttle (gas pedal). A governor adjusts the energy going to the car engine to maintain a constant speed regardless of changes in internal and external forcing (e.g. hills, winds, engine efficiency and losses).
We can narrow the candidates for this climate governing mechanism by noting first that a governor controls the throttle (which in turn controls the energy supplied to a heat engine). Second, we note that a successful governor must be able to drive the system beyond the desired result (overshoot).
(Note that a governor, which contains a hysteresis loop, is different from a negative feedback. A negative feedback can only reduce an increase. It cannot maintain a steady state despite differing forcings, variable loads, and changing losses. Only a governor can do that.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Arctic Temperature Reporting In The News Needs A Reality Check
There new articles that claim the Arctic is rapidly warming. These articles are an excellent examples of the cherrypicking of particular published papers to promote the very narrow perspective of the journalists.
These include
An Associated Press news article by Randolph E. Schmid titled “Arctic reverses long-term trend”.
A New York Times article by Andrew C. Revkin titled “Humans May Have Ended Long Arctic Chill”.
The Schmid article has the text
“The most recent 10-year interval, 1999-2008, was the warmest of the last 2,000 years in the Arctic, according to the researchers led by Darrell S. Kaufman, a professor of geology and environmental science at Northern Arizona University.
Summer temperatures in the Arctic averaged 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit (1.4 degrees Celsius) warmer than would have been expected if the cooling had continued, the researchers said.
The finding adds fuel to the debate over a House-passed climate bill now pending in the Senate. The administration-backed measure would impose the first limits on greenhouse gases and eventually would lead to an 80 percent reduction by putting a price on each ton of climate-altering pollution.”
Revkin reinforces this extreme view in his September 3 2009 article with his figure of 2000 years of Arctic surface temperatures, with each decade having the same temporal resolution as the last 10 years.
The publication of these news articles are clearly meant to influence the political process, as evident in the last paragraph, where Schmid writes “The finding adds fuel to the debate over a House-passed climate bill now pending in the Senate.”
The documentation of their biased reporting is easy to show. For example, they do not report on observational data which does not show this rapid recent warming; e.g. see that the current high latitude temperatures are close to the longer term average since 1958
The Danish Meteorological Institute Daily Mean Temperatures in the Arctic 1958 – 2008 [and thanks to the excellent weblog Watts Up With That for making this easily available to us!]
There are also peer reviewed papers which show that the Schmid and Revkin articles are biased; e. g. see
i) the areal coverage of the coldest middle tropospheric temperatures (below -40C) have not changed radically as shown in the Revkin figure; see
Herman, B., M. Barlage, T.N. Chase, and R.A. Pielke Sr., 2008: Update on a proposed mechanism for the regulation of minimum mid-tropospheric and surface temperatures in the Arctic and Antarctic. J. Geophys. Res.-Atmos., 113, D24101, doi:10.1029/2008JD009799.
and
ii) there is a warm bias in the Arctic surface temperature measurements when they are used to characterize deeper atmospheric warming; see
Klotzbach, P.J., R.A. Pielke Sr., R.A. Pielke Jr., J.R. Christy, and R.T. McNider, 2009: An alternative explanation for differential temperature trends at the surface and in the lower troposphere. J. Geophys. Res., accepted.
At least the news Editors of the newspapers are starting to recognize that these journalists are presenting slanted news. The Schmid article appeared only on page 12 of my local newspaper.
Friday, September 4, 2009
New Peer-Reviewed Study Shows Arctic COOLING Over last 1500 years!
New Arctic Study published in Climate Dynamics, and the work was conducted by Håkan Grudd of Stockholm University’s Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology - Published online: 30 January 2008
Excerpt: “The late-twentieth century is not exceptionally warm in the new Torneträsk record: On decadal-to-century timescales, periods around AD 750, 1000, 1400, and 1750 were all equally warm, or warmer. The warmest summers in this new reconstruction occur in a 200-year period centred on AD 1000. A ‘Medieval Warm Period’ is supported by other paleoclimate evidence from northern Fennoscandia, although the new tree-ring evidence from Tornetraäsk suggests that this period was much warmer than previously recognised.” < >
“The new Torneträsk summer temperature reconstruction shows a trend of -0.3°C over the last 1,500 years.” Paper available here: & Full Paper (pdf) available here:
A New “Hockey Stick”
The Washington Post is touting a new study purporting to show an Arctic temperature “Hockey Stick.” But the study appears to contradict numerous previous Arctic studies and scientists are already challenging the premise and claims of the new study. The study in under fire for basing key results and conclusions on Penn State Professor Michael Mann's discredited “Hockey Stick” temperature graph. (Editor's Note: Mann just recently attempted to invent a hurricane "Hockey Stick" as well. )
The new study claims to show “human-generated greenhouse gas emissions have helped reverse a 2,000-year trend of cooling in the Arctic, prompting warmer average temperatures in the past decade that now rank higher than at any time since 1 B.C.,” according to a September 3, 2009 article by the Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin. The study will appear in the September 3, 2009 online version of the journal Science. The lead author was Northern Arizona University professor Darrell S. Kaufman.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
UN chief visits 'doomsday' seed vault in Arctic
How did the Egyptians, Mayas, Aztec, etc did it?
How deep in the permafrost they they have to dig? Baskets of seed left in caves and tombs survived just fine. let's all remember what UN chief Ban Ki-moon said last 2 weeks .http://www.un.org/apps/news/infocus/sgspeeches/statments_full.asp?statID=557
The twit is "very much alarmed" by the rapid rate of melting ice. " ?? what does he think happened to Arctic summer sea ice in Summer? He is pulling out of the alarmist hat every imaginary rabbits he can. "This is alarming" "this is alarming" .
How deep in the permafrost they they have to dig? Baskets of seed left in caves and tombs survived just fine. let's all remember what UN chief Ban Ki-moon said last 2 weeks .http://www.un.org/apps/news/infocus/sgspeeches/statments_full.asp?statID=557
The twit is "very much alarmed" by the rapid rate of melting ice. " ?? what does he think happened to Arctic summer sea ice in Summer? He is pulling out of the alarmist hat every imaginary rabbits he can. "This is alarming" "this is alarming" .
Friday, August 28, 2009
will the EPA jump at the opportunity ?
The guys over at http://thechillingeffect.org/2009/08/25/cowardly-epa-ducks-biggest-biz-group-on-global-warming/ offer their take on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s wonderful petition of the EPA demanding a bit of a trial on the premise for its “endangerment” finding that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is real, threatening, and proven - or sufficiently proven to justify regulation, even if nothing the U.S. can do through regulation would do anything about the purported warming.
The EPA is of course ducking the opportunity to finally and for the first time make its case. To this point, they have appealed to authority of the IPCC, which says on its web page that it doesn't perform any research. That should tell you as much as you need to know about their confidence in the case: it’s nonexistent, and they are filled with terror over the thought of having to defend their stance.
The EPA is of course ducking the opportunity to finally and for the first time make its case. To this point, they have appealed to authority of the IPCC, which says on its web page that it doesn't perform any research. That should tell you as much as you need to know about their confidence in the case: it’s nonexistent, and they are filled with terror over the thought of having to defend their stance.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Thank God For Carbon
acidifying oceans, dying coral reefs, more frequent droughts, are all based on simulations carried out on very large computer models of the world’s climate. All the models are constructed on the assumption of global warming caused by increasing atmospheric CO2. These climate models have suffered major credibility setbacks in recent years.
They have been unable to predict the temperatures we have actually experienced,
particularly since 1998, as temperatures have remained stationary or, as in the last
two years, declined by 0.7 °C, despite increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
Furthermore, there have been major changes in the model predictions, but these
have not diminished the faith of the global warmers (or carbonistas), nor of the policy makers who follow them. Early predictions included the idea of ever-increasing temperatures (as in the notorious hockey stick graph), but now we are told that global warming has been delayed until 2015.
The satellite and radiosonde (weather balloon) measurements taken of tropospheric temperatures in the tropical regions have shown no increase in the last ten years.
Every climate model requires these particular temperatures to increase with increasing
atmospheric carbon dioxide.
It has been admitted by some of the climate modellers connected to the IPCC that
their simulations cannot describe in any detail clouds or cloud formation. The type and extent of cloud cover over the earth has a very large impact on radiation input to the earth from the sun and on the earth’s radiation to space. Th is is, therefore, a damning admission from within the global-warming community.
They have been unable to predict the temperatures we have actually experienced,
particularly since 1998, as temperatures have remained stationary or, as in the last
two years, declined by 0.7 °C, despite increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
Furthermore, there have been major changes in the model predictions, but these
have not diminished the faith of the global warmers (or carbonistas), nor of the policy makers who follow them. Early predictions included the idea of ever-increasing temperatures (as in the notorious hockey stick graph), but now we are told that global warming has been delayed until 2015.
The satellite and radiosonde (weather balloon) measurements taken of tropospheric temperatures in the tropical regions have shown no increase in the last ten years.
Every climate model requires these particular temperatures to increase with increasing
atmospheric carbon dioxide.
It has been admitted by some of the climate modellers connected to the IPCC that
their simulations cannot describe in any detail clouds or cloud formation. The type and extent of cloud cover over the earth has a very large impact on radiation input to the earth from the sun and on the earth’s radiation to space. Th is is, therefore, a damning admission from within the global-warming community.
NSIDC on arctic ice: It is now unlikely that 2009 will see a record low extent
Daily Arctic sea ice extent on August 17 was 6.26 million square kilometers (2.42 million square miles). The orange line shows the 1979 to 2000 median extent for that day. The black cross indicates the geographic North Pole. Sea Ice Index data. About the data.
Seven arrested in suspected carbon tax fraud
"Those arrested are believed to be part of an organized crime group operating a network of companies trading large volumes of high-value carbon credits," it said.
"It is thought that the proceeds of this crime have then been used to finance lavish lifestyles and the purchase of prestige vehicles."
"It is thought that the proceeds of this crime have then been used to finance lavish lifestyles and the purchase of prestige vehicles."
Greenpeace Leader Admits Arctic Ice Exaggeration
The outgoing leader of Greenpeace has admitted his organization's recent claim that the Arctic Ice will disappear by 2030 was "a mistake."
Greenpeace made the claim in a July 15 press release entitled "Urgent Action Needed As Arctic Ice Melts," which said there will be an ice-free Arctic by 2030 because of global warming.
Under close questioning by BBC reporter Stephen Sackur on the "Hardtalk" program, Gerd Leipold, the retiring leader of Greenpeace, said the claim was wrong.
"I don't think it will be melting by 2030. ... That may have been a mistake," he said.Sackur said the claim was inaccurate on two fronts, pointing out that the Arctic ice is a mass of 1.6 million square kilometers with a thickness of 3 km in the middle, and that it had survived much warmer periods in history than the present.
The BBC reporter accused Leipold and Greenpeace of releasing "misleading information" and using "exaggeration and alarmism."
Leipold's admission that Greenpeace issued misleading information is a major embarrassment to the organization, which often has been accused of alarmism but has always insisted that it applies full scientific rigor in its global-warming pronouncements.
Although he admitted Greenpeace had released inaccurate but alarming information, Leipold defended the organization's practice of "emotionalizing issues" in order to bring the public around to its way of thinking and alter public opinion.
Leipold said later in the BBC interview that there is an urgent need for the suppression of economic growth in the United States and around the world. He said annual growth rates of 3 percent to 8 percent cannot continue without serious consequences for the climate.
"We will definitely have to move to a different concept of growth. ... The lifestyle of the rich in the world is not a sustainable model," Leipold said. "If you take the lifestyle, its cost on the environment, and you multiply it with the billions of people and an increasing world population, you come up with numbers which are truly scary."
Greenpeace made the claim in a July 15 press release entitled "Urgent Action Needed As Arctic Ice Melts," which said there will be an ice-free Arctic by 2030 because of global warming.
Under close questioning by BBC reporter Stephen Sackur on the "Hardtalk" program, Gerd Leipold, the retiring leader of Greenpeace, said the claim was wrong.
"I don't think it will be melting by 2030. ... That may have been a mistake," he said.Sackur said the claim was inaccurate on two fronts, pointing out that the Arctic ice is a mass of 1.6 million square kilometers with a thickness of 3 km in the middle, and that it had survived much warmer periods in history than the present.
The BBC reporter accused Leipold and Greenpeace of releasing "misleading information" and using "exaggeration and alarmism."
Leipold's admission that Greenpeace issued misleading information is a major embarrassment to the organization, which often has been accused of alarmism but has always insisted that it applies full scientific rigor in its global-warming pronouncements.
Although he admitted Greenpeace had released inaccurate but alarming information, Leipold defended the organization's practice of "emotionalizing issues" in order to bring the public around to its way of thinking and alter public opinion.
Leipold said later in the BBC interview that there is an urgent need for the suppression of economic growth in the United States and around the world. He said annual growth rates of 3 percent to 8 percent cannot continue without serious consequences for the climate.
"We will definitely have to move to a different concept of growth. ... The lifestyle of the rich in the world is not a sustainable model," Leipold said. "If you take the lifestyle, its cost on the environment, and you multiply it with the billions of people and an increasing world population, you come up with numbers which are truly scary."
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Who is Really Making Up the Facts
“When I asked Chu about the earth-is-cooling argument, he rolled his eyes and whipped out a chart showing that the 10 hottest years on record have all been in the past 12 years and that 1998 was the hottest. He mocked the skeptics who focus on that post-1998 blip while ignoring a century-long trend of rising temperatures: “See? It’s gone down! The earth must be cooling!” But then he got serious, almost plaintive: “You know, it’s totally irresponsible. You’re not supposed to make up the facts."”
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Four months till the end of the world
"We have just four months. Four months to secure the future of our planet."
How did a nut job like this ever become UN Secretary-General?
How did a nut job like this ever become UN Secretary-General?
The New Politics, A Speech by carl Pope
* Increasing Mining Royalties and Grazing Fees on public lands -- "Mining claims on federal lands are property rights. The current grazing fee formula takes account of a permitee's private property rights."
* Blocking Interior Secretary Babbitt's Grazing Regulations --"Grazing permits result from pre-existing property rights. These rights are well documented throughout western water and land-use law."
* Mojave National Monument -- "Thousands of mining claims, numerous operating mines, and grazing permits would be included inside the boundaries of the new parks and wilderness areas.... Property rights supporters sparked significant opposition."
* Forest Service Road Budget -- "To reduce the Forest Service roadbuilding budget by $11.9 million. In addition to timber producers, these roads have multiple uses; private property inholders, mining claimants, grazing permittees and recreationists use them as well. Without access, private property is worthless...."
* National Biological Survey Volunteers -- Rep. Billy Tauzin offered an amendment forbidding the National Biological Survey from using volunteers. "Defenders of private property voted yes. Volunteers could have self interested motives to find endangered species and would be much harder to control through civil service regulations than federal employees."
* Mining Law Repeal -- "The General Mining Law of 1872 provides incentives to encourage people to discover and develop minerals .... The bill would radically change this system..."
* Montana Wilderness -- "Rep. Pat Williams' bill would create new wilderness areas in Montana totaling 1.6 million acres. Mining and other activities would be prohibited within these areas..."
* Blocking Interior Secretary Babbitt's Grazing Regulations --"Grazing permits result from pre-existing property rights. These rights are well documented throughout western water and land-use law."
* Mojave National Monument -- "Thousands of mining claims, numerous operating mines, and grazing permits would be included inside the boundaries of the new parks and wilderness areas.... Property rights supporters sparked significant opposition."
* Forest Service Road Budget -- "To reduce the Forest Service roadbuilding budget by $11.9 million. In addition to timber producers, these roads have multiple uses; private property inholders, mining claimants, grazing permittees and recreationists use them as well. Without access, private property is worthless...."
* National Biological Survey Volunteers -- Rep. Billy Tauzin offered an amendment forbidding the National Biological Survey from using volunteers. "Defenders of private property voted yes. Volunteers could have self interested motives to find endangered species and would be much harder to control through civil service regulations than federal employees."
* Mining Law Repeal -- "The General Mining Law of 1872 provides incentives to encourage people to discover and develop minerals .... The bill would radically change this system..."
* Montana Wilderness -- "Rep. Pat Williams' bill would create new wilderness areas in Montana totaling 1.6 million acres. Mining and other activities would be prohibited within these areas..."
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Chevy Volt's "230 MPG" Propaganda
The Chevy Volt gets 230 MPG? Really? Using GM's "calculations" if you drive under 40 miles per day, you will get infinite MPG! The reality is that the Chevy Volt runs 40 miles on battery power, then a gasoline generator kicks in and you average around "40 MPG". However, I will wait for the real MPG rating as the Prius's initial 60 MPG rating was a lie - try 45 MPG. But what does a plug-in electrical charge (which is not free) have to do with MPG? Absolutely nothing, it is pure propaganda using it to calculate "MPG". How dishonest has Government Motors become to sell a car that only the mathematically challenged would buy? Apparently a sucker is born every minute...
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Dangerous Deception?
Motive
It is difficult and dangerous to impute motive. How and why a person acts in a certain way is usually difficult to determine. A particular course of action may be taken with the best of intentions yet cause considerable problems. However, certain actions although not definitive may expose the motive.
It is difficult and dangerous to impute motive. How and why a person acts in a certain way is usually difficult to determine. A particular course of action may be taken with the best of intentions yet cause considerable problems. However, certain actions although not definitive may expose the motive.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Arctic Ice Changes in past 3 years due to 'shifting winds'
Arctic Ice Changes in past 3 years due to 'shifting winds' - The Star Canada - July 28, 2009 - Excerpt: Oceanographer and Arctic researcher Jane Eert said "dramatic [Arctic ice] changes in the past three years are the result of shifting winds." "Enormous amounts of ice have 'been exported from the Arctic,' driven by winds that are shifting," according to Eert. Eert noted that climate models have many woes. "The guys who are running the long-term climate models have a tough problem," Eert says. "They're looking at really long time scales, and as result they can't look at a lot of details for each year. In order to get the results before you die, you have to fudge some things. And what they fudge is the small-scale stuff. But it turns out that probably the small-scale stuff is important and fudging it gives you wrong answers." [...] Jane Eert is science coordinator of the Three Oceans Project, a federal study of Canada's Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific oceans. [...] A physical oceanographer, Eert leads the scientific team aboard The Louis. It's her 10th voyage on the ship since 1999. Between 10 and 15 per cent of the Arctic Ocean is what Eert calls a data hole. It will take years' more research to fill it in with solid information, she adds. After years of reports that vast areas of Arctic ice are melting as the seawater below, and air above, warm up, scientists have discovered that dramatic changes in the past three years are the result of shifting winds, perhaps caused by climate change. Enormous amounts of ice have "been exported from the Arctic," driven by winds that are shifting as the climate changes, which pushed the ice into ocean currents that delivered it to the North Atlantic, Eert says. "The multi-year ice in the polar pack didn't melt in the Arctic Ocean,'' she says. "It moved out and what's left in the Arctic is thinner than it was." That doesn't mean some Arctic ice isn't disappearing altogether, just that the process is not as simple as some reports suggest, Eert says. Old ice that has shifted south from Greenland may have a counter-effect on the climate, which is just one of the many pieces of a very complex jigsaw puzzle that scientists are trying to piece together as they attempt to predict the effects of global warming.
North Pole expedition finds 'ice 100% thicker than expected' - April 28, 2009Excerpt: Surprising results - In Canada, "Polar 5", a research aircraft (see 27 hi-res pictures), has ended its recent Arctic expedition today. During the flight, scientists were measuring the ice thickness in regions that have never been overflown before. The result: the sea ice is apparently thicker than the scientists had suspected. Under normal conditions, the ice is formed within two years and ends up being slightly above 2 meters of thickness. "Here, the thickness was as high as four meters," said the spokesperson for the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven. According to the scientists, this conclusion seems to contradict the warming of the ocean water.
Danish Meteorological Institute records show: No Arctic Warming Since 1958! - 'Arctic was warmer in the 1940s than now' - May 13, 2009 - Excerpt: The Danish Meteorological Institute has records going back to 1958 and GISSTEMP has even longer records. Below is a visual comparison of DMI 1958 Arctic temperatures vs. 2009, showing that temperatures have hardly changed since the start of their record.[...] Below is an overlay directly showing that 2009 temperatures (green) are similar to 1958 (red) and close to the mean. Temperatures have warmed since the start of the satellite record, but they cooled even more between 1940 and 1980. Everyone (including NSIDC) quietly acknowledges that most of the Arctic was warmer in the 1940s than now – so they shift the warming argument to the Alaska side. However, that argument also has problems. Alaska temperatures rose at the positive PDO shift in 1977, and have cooled again with the recent negative PDO shift – as seen below. 2008 was notable in that Alaska glaciers started to increase in size.
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