Saturday, February 7, 2009

The Collapse of Climate Policy and the Sustainability of Climate Science

The political consensus surrounding climate policy is collapsing. If you are not aware of this fact you will be very soon. The collapse is not due to the cold winter in places you may live or see on the news. It is not due to years without an increase in global temperature. It is not due to the overturning of the scientific consensus on the role of human activity in the global climate system.

It is due to the fact that policy makers and their political advisors (some trained as scientists) can no longer avoid the reality that targets for stabilization such as 450 ppm (or even less realistic targets) are simply not achievable with the approach to climate change that has been at the focus of policy for over a decade. Policies that are obviously fictional and fantasy are frequently subject to a rapid collapse.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Greenhouse Theory Disproved a Century Ago

The claim that carbon dioxide (CO2) can increase air temperatures by "trapping" infrared radiation (IR) ignores the fact that in 1909 physicist R.W. Wood disproved the popular 19th Century thesis that greenhouses stayed warm by trapping IR. Unfortunately, many people who claim to be scientists are unaware of Wood's experiment which was originally published in the Philosophical magazine , 1909, vol 17, p319-320. Wood was an expert on IR. His accomplishments included inventing both IR and UV (ultraviolet) photography. Wood constructed two identical small greenhouses. The description implies the type of structure a gardener would refer to as a "coldframe" rather than a building a person could walk into. He lined the interior with black cardboard which would absorb radiation and convert it to heat which would heat the air through conduction. The cardboard would also produce radiation. He covered one greenhouse with a sheet of transparent rock salt and the other with a sheet of glass. The glass would block IR and the rock salt would allow it to pass. During the first run of the experiment the rock salt greenhouse heated faster due to IR from the sun entering it but not the glass greenhouse. He then set up another pane of glass to filter the IR from the sun before the light reached the greenhouses. The result from this run was that the greenhouses both heated to about 50 C with less than a degree difference between the two. Wood didn't indicate which was warmer or whether there was any difference in the thermal conductivity between the glass sheet and the rock salt. A slight difference in the amount of heat transfered through the sheets by conduction could explain such a minor difference in temperature. The two sheets probably didn't conduct heat at the same rate. The experiment conclusively demonstrates that greenhouses heat up and stay warm by confining heated air rather than by trapping IR. If trapping IR in an enclosed space doesn't cause higher air temperature than CO2 in the atmosphere cannot cause higher air temperatures. The heated air in the greenhouses couldn't rise higher than the sheets that covered the tops of the greenhouses. Heated air outside is free to rise allowing colder air to fall to the ground. Atmospheric CO2 is even less likely to function as a barrier to IR or reflect it back to reheat the ground or water than the sheet of glass in Wood's greenhouse. The blackened cardboard in Wood's greenhouses was a very good radiator of IR as is typical of black substances. The water that covers 70% of earth's surface is a very poor radiator and produces only limited amounts of IR as is typical of transparent substances. Water releases heat through evaporation rather than radiation. The glass sheet provided a solid barrier to IR. Atmospheric CO2 is widely dispersed comprising less than 400 parts per million in the atmosphere. Trapping IR with CO2 would be like trying to confine mice with a chain link fence. Glass reflects a wider spectrum of IR than interacts with CO2. The glass sheets reflected IR back toward the floor of the greenhouse. CO2 doesn't reflect IR. At the time of Wood's experiment, it was believed that CO2 and other gas molecules became hotter after absorbing IR. Four years later Niels Bohr reported his discovery that the absorption of specific wavelengths of light didn't cause gas atoms/molecules to become hotter. Instead, the absorption of specific wavelengths of light caused the electrons in an atom/molecule to move to a higher energy state. After absorption of light of a specific wavelength an atom couldn't absorb additional radiation of that wavelength without first emitting light of that wavelength. (Philosophical Magazine Series 6, Volume 26 July 1913, p. 1-25) Unlike the glass which reflects IR back where it comes from, CO2 molecules emit IR up and sideways as well as down. In the time interval between absorbing and reemitting radiation, CO2 molecules allow IR to pass them by. Glass continuously reflects IR. Those who claim that CO2 molecules in the atmosphere can cause heating by trapping IR have yet to provide any empirical scientific evidence to prove such a physical process exists. The experiment by R.W. Wood demonstrates that even a highly reflective covering cannot cause heating by trapping IR in a confined space. There is no way CO2, which at best only affects a small portion of the IR produced by earth's surface, can heat the atmosphere by trapping IR. Contrary to the lie repeated in news stories about climate, science doesn't say that CO2 is causing higher temperatures by trapping IR. Empirical science indicates that no such process exists in this physical universe.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Who is speaking for the plants?

There is no evidence CO2 is causing global warming or climate change but that is the basis for the slur and the proposed actions. As usual little thought is given to the direct and collateral damage such as the economic impacts from increased taxes and cost of doing business. No thought is given to the damage to nature. So you have the paradox of environmentalists screaming to reduce CO2 to save the planet, while putting all life in jeopardy by killing the plants. It is blind faith. But this is not surprising because the great problem of environmentalism as a religion is the failure to do full and proper cost/benefit analyses. For example, all you ever hear about are the down sides to warming when there are actually more up sides. One major downside rarely mentioned is the impact on plants of reduced CO2 levels.

Extreme environmentalists consider plants and animals more important than humans. Ron Arnold, Executive Vice-President of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, said, “Environmentalism intends to transform government, economy, and society in order to liberate nature from human exploitation.

David Graber, a research biologist with the National park Service said, “Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, are not as important as a wild and healthy planet.” “Until such time as Homo Sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.

Getting rid of everyone permanently solves the problem – David Foreman former chief lobbyist for the Wilderness Society says the optimum number is zero. Ingrid Newkirk of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said, “Mankind is a cancer; we’re the biggest blight on the face of the earth.” “If you haven’t given voluntary human extinction much thought before, the idea of a world with no people in it may seem strange. But, if you give it a chance, I think you might agree that the extinction of Homo Sapiens would mean survival for millions if not billions, of Earth-dwelling species, Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Show The Science were CO2 cause Global Warming

RE: FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT REQUEST

Dear Ms. Jackson:

Pursuant to the rights granted under the Freedom of Information Act, Title 5 of the United State Code section 552 (“FOIA”), I hereby request the following information:

Evidence that carbon dioxide (CO2) is harmful to the environment and that carbon dioxide is the predominant driver of climate change. Following this paragraph, I present reasons why I do not think that carbon dioxide is harmful to our environment and is not the predominant driver of climate change. I request evidence that disproves each of these statements. “Evidence” does not include computer models that try to forecast temperatures for years, decades or a century into the future.

Our computer models do not model impacts on the climate by thunderstorms, volcanos, or impacts by meteorites and cannot forecast temperatures to within 1degree Fahrenheit for one month into the future and certainly not for a century into the future.

I hereby request evidence disproving the following statements that I believe to be true:

1. Water vapor is the prevailing greenhouse gas and retains heat more than all other gasses combined. Without the greenhouse effect, the average temperature of Planet Earth would be below zero.

2. Plants need CO2 to grow. Wood charcoal is mainly carbon that trees extracted from carbon dioxide in the air. CO2 is what actually greens Planet Earth.

3. Plants grow faster in higher concentrations of CO2 and extract more CO2 from the air. Many operators of commercial greenhouses add CO2 to the ambient air which increases plant growth.

4. Man generates 3 billion tons of CO2 annually while plants absorb 75 billion tons of CO2 annually. Plants need all the anthropogenic (man-generated) CO2 plus an additional 72 billion tons of CO2 from natural sources including the oceans

5. The oceans hold 39,000 billion tons of CO2. In high latitudes, cold water adsorbs more CO2 than it expels. In low latitudes, warm water expels more CO2 that it adsorbs.

6. If the oceans release just .000077 of their CO2, that is more than all man-generated CO2.

7. NASA found that the atmosphere of Mars is 95% CO2 and is not effective at retaining heat from the Sun. If an atmosphere of 95% CO2 on Mars is not an effective greenhouse gas, why would less than ½ of 1 percent of CO2 on Earth be an effective greenhouse gas and be the controlling factor for climate change?

8. Some people who claim that CO2 causes global warming use a graph that shows correlation between global temperature and the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere over thousands of years. The point they miss is that the warming occurred hundreds of years before the increase of CO2. Increased CO2 did not cause warming that occurred hundreds of years earlier.

I agree to pay processing fees for this request up to $ 100.00. If there are additional costs, please notify me and get my agreement to pay before incurring such costs.

If you need additional information about the requested items, please contact me at the above address Also, I ask that if for any reason you deny my request or withhold certain information, that you:
1. Provide a list of the denied or withheld materials,

2. Justify these deletions and withholdings by referencing specific exemption in the FOIA, and

3. Release all parts of the withheld material that are not exempt and can be released under the FOIA.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this request.


Respectfully,



Frederick T. Dykes

Copies to: President Obama; all U.S. Senators; all Members of the House of Representatives; The Democratic National Committee; the Republican National Committee; Association of International Automobile Manufacturers; Ford Motor Company; General Motors Corp; Chrysler Corp; Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post; Peter Baker, The New York Times; The Washington Times; Kimberley Strassel, The Wall Street Journal; National Review; The Weekly Standard; ABC; CBS; NBC; Fox News; Glen Beck; Monica Crowley; Sean Hannity.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

James Hansen’s Former NASA Supervisor Declares Himself a Skeptic

Washington DC: NASA warming scientist James Hansen, one of former Vice-President Al Gore’s closest allies in the promotion of man-made global warming fears, is being publicly rebuked by his former supervisor at NASA.

Retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist, Dr. John S. Theon, the former supervisor of James Hansen, NASA’s vocal man-made global warming fear soothsayer, has now publicly declared himself a skeptic and declared that Hansen “embarrassed NASA” with his alarming climate claims and said Hansen was “was never muzzled.” Theon joins the rapidly growing ranks of international scientists abandoning the promotion of man-made global warming fears. [See: U.S. Senate Minority Report Update: More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims & See Prominent Scientist Fired By Gore Says Warming Alarm ‘Mistaken’ & Gore laments global warming efforts: 'I've failed badly' - Washington Post – November 11, 2008 ]

“I appreciate the opportunity to add my name to those who disagree that global warming is man made,” Theon wrote to the Minority Office at the Environment and Public Works Committee on January 15, 2009. “I was, in effect, Hansen's supervisor because I had to justify his funding, allocate his resources, and evaluate his results. I did not have the authority to give him his annual performance evaluation,Theon, the former Chief of the Climate Processes Research Program at NASA Headquarters and former Chief of the Atmospheric Dynamics & Radiation Branch explained. [Note: Theon's full note to EPW reprinted at the end of this report]

“Hansen was never muzzled even though he violated NASA's official agency position on climate forecasting (i.e., we did not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind's effect on it). Hansen thus embarrassed NASA by coming out with his claims of global warming in 1988 in his testimony before Congress,” Theon wrote. [Note: NASA scientist James Hansen who runs NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has created worldwide media frenzy with his dire climate warnings, his call for trials against those who dissent against man-made global warming fear, and his claims that he was allegedly muzzled by the Bush administration despite doing 1,400 on-the-job media interviews! - See: Don’t Panic Over Predictions of Climate Doom - Get the Facts on James Hansen - UK Register: Veteran climate scientist says 'lock up the oil men' – June 23, 2008 & UK Guardian: NASA scientist calls for putting oil firm chiefs on trial for 'high crimes against humanity' for spreading doubt about man-made global warming – June 23, 2008 & NYT's Revkin chides Hansen for promoting sea level claims that are not 'even physically possible' ]

Theon declared “climate models are useless.” “My own belief concerning anthropogenic climate change is that the models do not realistically simulate the climate system because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit,” Theon explained. “Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results. In doing so, they neither explain what they have modified in the observations, nor explain how they did it. They have resisted making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by other scientists. This is clearly contrary to how science should be done. Thus there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy,” he added.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Philadelphia’s Climate in the Early Days

JANUARY 1790 The average or medium temperature of this month was 44 degrees This is the mildest month of January on record. Fogs prevailed very much in the morning but a hot sun soon dispersed them and the mercury often ran up to 70 in the shade at mid day. Boys were often seen swimming in the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. UNPRECEDENTED!!

Friday, January 23, 2009

Profiles in Cowardice

The story starts, as is the case in so many states, with Gov. Mike Beebe's (video link) creation of the Governor's Commission on Global Warming. In most other states where they've been developed, these panels have been fashioned purely by executive fiat. Arkansas's GCGW was authorized also by a law (PDF) to study potential impacts of global warming and ways to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions (the presumed evil behind global temperature uptick). But the GCGW was also given the mandate to "study the scientific data, literature, and research on global warming to determine whether global warming is an immediate threat to the citizens in the State of Arkansas…."

Turns out this area of "study" was only allowed to go so far. As is the standard when the Center for Climate Strategies is granted management control of a state's climate commission (approaching two dozen so far), the prerequisite for CCS to take the job is that no debate of the climate science is allowed. Like the intolerant Al Gore, CCS cannot suffer dissent, flat-earthers, or moonwalk-deniers.

Needless to say, the likelihood that global warming would cause the Arkansas River to flood the William J. Clinton Presidential Library -- or other climate-driven Razorback State catastrophe could-be's -- was never discussed. Instead doom was presumed (PDF) should greenhouse gases continue unabated.

Monday, January 19, 2009

How the world was bullied into silence

One of the most disturbing aspects of the global warming scam is the number of prominent people and entire segments of society bullied into silence. Consider the case of Dr. Joanne Simpson described as follows. “the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology, and formerly of NASA, who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.” Then consider her statement. “Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical...

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Global warming, systemic BBC bias and Earth - The Climate Wars

So, let’s start at the beginning. Stewart explains the purpose of the series. At (1.42) he states: “In this series
I’m going to explore some simple big questions. How do we know the climate’s warming up? How do we
know humans are causing it? And how do we know what’s going to happen next? (Cue in tendentious
footage of storms, sea ice and melodramatic catastrophist music.) As the story of global warming has
unfolded, we’ve learnt of the very nature of scientific truth, and about how that has been falsified,
manipulated, twisted and even bought. ”
At (2.54), this is followed up by the introduction of Stewart’s children on a beach with the reminder that, as a
husband and a father (well, a ‘dad’ actually), he has both a professional and a personal interest in global
warming. Not unrelated to this at (9.31) we have the introduction of Dr. S. Schneider, who at (12.12) is
exonerated from his earlier spectacular failures as a scientific investigator. Was there some purpose in
including Stewart’s meandering reminiscences and his magnanimous absolution of Schneider? The answer,
of course, is “Yes”. These were/are rhetorical propagandist ploys. In contrast, perhaps, to the self-serving
motives of AGW dissenters (a thought as yet unspoken, not that that will last long) they are designed, in the
case of the former, to create in the minds of viewers an impression of altruistic disinterestedness and an
honest quest for truth. In the case of Schneider, the conclusion we are expected to draw is that we have here a
man of intellectual integrity and personal modesty. It would be churlish not to sidestep lightly the weasel
words actually employed, which can be summarised as: “Not my fault! I just paint pictures. Can’t help it, if
somebody else misinterpreted what I said”.
Save to note the depths which the BBC and Dr. Stewart are willing to plumb in order to promote their
propagandist agenda, I will make no further comment about the inclusion of his offspring. Of Dr. Schneider,
let me offer a different and more apposite interpretation, however. This is a man who has made a career, and
much lucre, out of promoting extreme environmentalist claims and, in the process, has demonstrated little
hesitation in hopping from one conveniently passing gravy train to another. Given that the BBC has a legal
as well as a moral obligation to respect its own Editorial Standards, perhaps it should be reminded whence
this gentlemen and his friends come, a stand point which your presenter evidently endorses. “To capture the
public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and....

Earth on the Brink of an Ice Age

The earth is now on the brink of entering another Ice Age, according to a large and compelling body of evidence from within the field of climate science. Many sources of data which provide our knowledge base of long-term climate change indicate that the warm, twelve thousand year-long Holocene period will rather soon be coming to an end, and then the earth will return to Ice Age conditions for the next 100,000 years.Most of the long-term climate data collected from various sources also shows a strong correlation with the three astronomical cycles which are together known as the Milankovich cycles. The three Milankovich cycles include the tilt of the earth, which varies over a 41,000 year period; the shape of the earth’s orbit, which changes over a period of 100,000 years; and the Precession of the Equinoxes, also known as the earth’s ‘wobble’, which gradually rotates the direction of the earth’s axis over a period of 26,000 years.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Global Warm-mongering: More Silk from a Pig's Ear

It seems that NASA's James Hansen, head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), is at it again. He just can't let the data speak for itself. In yet another egregious display of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) arrogance, he changed the temperature data from 1910-2008 to reflect what is clearly a cooling trend to reflect a warming trend. (Y-axis = Annual Mean Temperatures in centigrade; X-axis = Year)

New EU President Klaus, Globaloney Critic, Is a 'Figurehead'; Appellation Was Rarely Used on Predecessor Sarkozy

To say that President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic is not liked by Euro-elitists is a grand understatement.

European media has generally bent over backwards to give European Union politicians and bureaucrats in Brussels respect and the benefit of the doubt. If there is a voter referendum that enhances EU power, the press is for it, and those in countries like Ireland who reject its advances towards smiley-faced socialism are unenlightened.

Even France's widely disliked Nicolas Sarkozy received favorable treatment from the Europhile press during his 2008 stint as EU President.

That has changed now that Klaus, a fervent advocate of democracy and ardent opponent of statism, whatever its disguises -- including "climate change" -- has taken over that office.

David Charter, Europe correspondent for the UK Times Online, led the charge last Friday (the picture and caption above is from the Times's story page), and reported that things are getting quite testy between Klaus and the Europe uber alles crowd:

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Climate Models.

This deconstruction of (IPCC) climate models by Tim Ball was extracted from the "Right Side News

2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved

The first, on May 21, headed "Climate change threat to Alpine ski resorts" , reported that the entire Alpine "winter sports industry" could soon "grind to a halt for lack of snow". The second, on December 19, headed "The Alps have best snow conditions in a generation" , reported that this winter's Alpine snowfalls "look set to beat all records by New Year's Day".

Northeast Siberia braces for extreme cold of -60C

Can you imagine going out to this Stevenson Screen in Verkhojansk and taking a reading in - 60C cold? Let’s count our blessing here in the USA and Canada that we don’t have to deal with these kinds of temperatures, yet.

Monday, December 22, 2008

The only place where CO2 is causing temperature increase is in the IPCC computer models

E. R. Beadle said, “Half the work done in the world is to make things appear what they are not.” The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) does this with purpose and great effect. They built the difference between appearance and reality into their process. Unlike procedure used elsewhere, they produce and release a summary report independently and before the actual technical report is completed. This way the summary gets maximum media attention and becomes the public understanding of what the scientists said. Climate science is made to appear what it is not. Indeed, it is not even what is in their Scientific Report.

The pattern of falsifying appearances began early. Although he works at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Stephen Schneider was heavily employed in the work of the IPCC as this biography notes.

Much of Schneider’s time is taken up by what he calls his “pro bono day job” for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He was a Coordinating Lead Author in Working Group II of the IPCC from 1997 to 2001 and a lead author in Working Group I from 1994 to 1996. Currently, he is a Coordinating Lead Author for the controversial chapter on “Assessing Key Vulnerabilities and the Risks from Climate Change,” in short, defining “dangerous” climate change.” - Pubmedcentral.nih.gov

He continued this work by helping prepare the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) released in April 2007.

Schneider, among others, created the appearance that the Summary was representative of the Science Report. However, he provides an early insight into the thinking when speaking about global warming to Discovery magazine (October 1989) he said scientists need, “to get some broader based support, to capture the public’s imagination…that, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts we may have…each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective, and being honest.” The last sentence is deeply disturbing--there is no decision required.

The Summary for Policymakers is designed to convince everyone that global warming is due to human production of CO2. In SPM AR4 issued in April 2007 they say, “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations.” The term “very likely” is from a table reportedly produced by Schneider and means greater than 90%. Professor Roy Spencer says about probabilities in this context. “Any statements of probability are meaningless and misleading. I think the IPCC made a big mistake. They’re pandering to the public not understanding probabilities. When they say 90 percent, they make it sound like they’ve come up with some kind of objective, independent, quantitative way of estimating probabilities related to this stuff. It isn’t. All it is is a statement of faith.”

So they create an appearance of certainty about a human cause of warming. But what is the reality? The only place where CO2 is causing temperature increase is in the IPCC computer models. In every record of any duration for any time period in the history of the Earth, temperature increase precedes CO2 increase. So an incorrect assumption that a CO2 increase will cause temperature increase is built into the computer models. That is damaging enough, but the computer models themselves are completely inadequate to represent global climate or make any predictions about future climate. But don’t believe me. The IPCC Technical Report (“The Physical Science Basis”) produced by Working Group I and released in November 2007, says so.

Problems begin with the definition of climate change used because it requires they only consider human causes. From the United Nations Environment Program (article 1) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over considerable time periods.” But you cannot determine the human portion unless you understand natural climate change. As Professor Roy Spencer said in his testimony before the US Senate EPW Committee, “And given that virtually no research into possible natural explanations for global warming has been performed, it is time for scientific objectivity and integrity to be restored to the field of global warming research.”

Media and public are allowed to believe the IPCC make climate predictions, but they don’t. The First Assessment Report (Climate Change 1992) said, “Scenarios are not predictions of the future and should not be used as such.” While the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios says; “Scenarios are images of the future or alternative futures. They are neither predictions nor forecasts. Climate Change 2001 continues the warnings; “The possibility that any single in emissions path will occur as described in this scenario is highly uncertain.” In the same Report they say, “No judgment is offered in this report as to the preference for any of the scenarios and they are not assigned probabilities of recurrence, neither must they be interpreted as policy recommendations.” This is a reference to the range of scenarios they produce using different future possible economic conditions. Of course, they didn’t build in the recent financial collapse.

Climate Change 2001 substitutes the word projection for prediction. Projection is defined as follows, “A projection is a potential future evolution of a quantity or set of quantities, often computed with the help of a model. Projections are distinguished from predictions in order to emphasise that projections involve assumptions concerning e.g. future socio-economic and technological developments that may or may not be realised and are therefore subject to substantial uncertainty”.

This and similar statements are based on the unproven hypothesis that human produced CO2 is causing warming and or climate change. The evidence is based solely on the output of 18 computer climate models selected by the IPCC. There are a multitude of problems including the fact that every time they run them they produce different results. They use an average of all the runs. The IPCC then take the average results of the 18 models and average them for the results in their Reports.

Tim Palmer, a leading climate modeler at the European Centre for Medium - Range Weather Forecasts said, “I don’t want to undermine the IPCC, but the forecasts, especially for regional climate change, are immensely uncertain.” This comment is partly explained by the scale of the General Circulation Models (GCM). The models are mathematical constructs that divide the world into rectangles. Size of the rectangles is critical to the abilities of the models as the IPCC AR4 acknowledges. “Computational constraints restrict the resolution that is possible in the discretized equations, and some representation of the large-scale impacts of unresolved processes is required (the parametrization problem). “ (AR4 Chapter 8. p.596.)

The IPCC uses surface weather data, which means there is inadequate data in space and time for most of the world to create an accurate model. Limitations of the surface data are surpassed by an almost complete lack of information above the surface. An illustration of the surface problem is identified by the IPCC comment of the problems of modeling Arctic climates.

“Despite advances since the TAR, substantial uncertainty remains in the magnitude of cryospheric feedbacks within AOGCMs. This contributes to a spread of modelled climate response, particularly at high latitudes. At the global scale, the surface albedo feedback is positive in all the models, and varies between models much less than cloud feedbacks. Understanding and evaluating sea ice feedbacks is complicated by the strong coupling to polar cloud processes and ocean heat and freshwater transport. Scarcity of observations in polar regions also hampers evaluation.” (AR4.,Chapter 8, p593.) Most of the information for the Arctic came from the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) and a diagram from that report illustrates the problem.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

systemic BBC bias

Will The BBC be brought back to the world of Journalistic Integrity?
Maybe this will help.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Cooler heads prevailed.

http://news.scotsman.com/world/EU-climate-change-deal-branded.4789652.jp

Industry lobbyists again triumphed this week in Brussels. Coal-fired power plants in East and Central European countries won the right to a delayed payment schedule for emissions credits. German industry won the right to future concessions if a study deems that the EU ETS renders them less competitive on the global market. Although it was never entirely clear what Italy wanted (some believed that the Italian delegation threatened to veto the package to win concessions for the Italian car industry in upcoming negotiations), Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told AFP that "Italy is on the way to getting all it wants.” The gutted agreement infuriated environmentalists.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

‘There’s a lot of rich people backing this cause’

A former lawyer for Enron, shocked to discover that his main job would be to help draft a global warming treaty, tells spiked that censorship and conformism are preventing proper investigation of climate change hysteria.‘I came back to my office and sent an email, essentially saying “Houston, we have a problem”. Did they have any idea what this group, which I was essentially chairing in [former Enron boss] Ken Lay’s stead, was doing? That didn’t go over well. They reminded me that they knew exactly what they were doing, that they had cobbled up businesses on the relative cheap that would – if they got their way – be worth a fortune. That was now their number one priority: windmills, owned by General Electric; gas pipe, owned by General Electric and Warren Buffett; solar panels, now held by BP, and so on.’

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Pre-industrial CO2 levels were about the same as today. How and why we are told otherwise?

Proponents of human induced warming and climate change told us that an increase in CO2 precedes and causes temperature increases. They were wrong. They told us the late 20th century was the warmest on record. They were wrong. They told us, using the infamous “hockey stick” graph, the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) did not exist. They were wrong. They told us global temperatures would increase through 2008 as CO2 increased. They were wrong. They told us Arctic ice would continue to decrease in area through 2008. They were wrong. They told us October 2008 was the second warmest on record. They were wrong. They told us 1998 was the warmest year on record in the US. They were wrong it was 1934. They told us current atmospheric levels of CO2 are the highest on record. They are wrong. They told us pre-industrial atmospheric levels of CO2 were approximately 100 parts per million (ppm) lower than the present 385 ppm. They are wrong. This last is critical because the claim is basic to the argument that humans are causing warming and climate change by increasing the levels of atmospheric CO2 and have throughout the Industrial era. In fact, pre-industrial CO2 levels were about the same as today, but how did they conclude they were lower?