Showing posts with label climategate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label climategate. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Google Wades into Climate Debate
By John Brandon Published April 05, 2011 FoxNews.com Google is diving headfirst into the climate-change debate with a "21 Club" of hand-picked experts that the search engine giant hopes will drive the conversation -- and guide investments -- in climate change. But it's a discussion that even the club's members say is meant to be one-sided. “If Google included people who challenged that debate, they would be wrong to do so,” said Matthew Nisbet, an associate professor for the School of Communication at American University and one of the 21 Google Science Communication Fellows. “As to whether climate change is happening, humans are a cause and it is a problem -- there is no scientific debate over that," Nisbet told FoxNews.com. A review of the 21 Club confirms Nisbet's comment. The group includes meteorologists, communication specialists, and even weather forecasters, as well as few scientists who research climate change for a living. None argue that the planet isn't in imminent danger. Simon Donner, with the University of British Columbia, recently wrote that unless coral reefs learn to adapt, climate change may rapidly bring on their demise. Noah Diffenbaugh of Stanford University recently concluded that "global warming exacerbates poverty vulnerability in many nations," arguing that the cost of food staples in Bangladesh, Mexico, Indonesia and other countries will jump with the temperature. "There is consensus amongst scientists that humans are changing the Earth's climate," reads the mission statement on the Helmuth Lab website, headed up by Brian Helmuth of the 21 Club. From food to rocks to plants to sea life, the 21 Club believes climate change to be a dramatic problem -- one that requires dramatic action. Eugene Cordero with San Jose University even created the Green Ninja, a climate-action superhero who fights global warming. “Our goal is to foster an open dialogue and provide the tools,” argued Amy Luers, the senior environment program manager at Google.org, the non-profit funded by Google, speaking to FoxNews.com. Depending on what the scientists learn, they may develop a system that shows where climate change is occurring on the globe. Or, using technology such as Google Earth, they might map out detailed models showing the effects of climate change. In other words, some day you might be able to find out that the water near Costa Rica is 1 percentage point warmer since 1980, or that Alaska's glaciers have melted … slightly. Google's position toward climate change should not come as a surprise; the company has historically shown a penchant for Democratic causes. As FoxNews.com reported last October, Google gives more to Democratic politicians than to Republicans, for example. Follow the money So what's Google up to, anyway? Part of the motivation seems to be funding new climate change research. Jack Gold, a research analyst, told FoxNews.com that promoting new research often ends up generating new product ideas. He said having good models for climate change can also feed into the company's own data visualization efforts. The company likely sees the search term “climate change” popping up in search results, too. “They are probably reacting to what people are interested in,” Gold said. Jon Peddie, a consumer analyst with Jon Peddie Research, told FoxNews.com that Google may have other motives in mind. “They are pursuing offshore wind farms along the East Coast of the U.S. and probably want to build a solid case for the need to get off oil,” said Peddie. Whatever the reason for the project, Google has big ambitions: Google.org has already doled out about $100 million in grants, mostly to green tech start-ups and alternative energy consortiums. Google to the rescue? Climate studies also involve enormous data sets from many sources and massive computing requirements for data collection. Google has the computing muscle to help analyze that data and make sense of it. “It includes conventional weather data collected by the meteorological services of the world, at the surface of the Earth and in the atmosphere from balloon-borne instruments and satellites," said Richard C. J. Somerville, a research professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, one of the primary sources of climate-change data. "It also includes satellite and ship and buoy data to give ocean temperatures. It includes measurements of glaciers and ice sheets and sea ice, made from satellites and on the ice itself.” Another key purpose is to make climate-change data more “accessible,” to use the parlance of Google's mission statement -- and more discoverable, of course. The company likely has pure motives, tech analyst Roger Kay told FoxNews.com. But Google is also interested in important issues that make the company look good. “This promotes Google’s overall brand, to be associated with problems and perhaps solutions.” And finally, don't forget that it may all come down to business consideration. Remember all those people searching for "climate change"? “Google won’t be able to sell ads if we wipe ourselves out by not mitigating the effects of climate change,” joked Kay.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
WikiLeaks Cables Confirm Climate Skeptics' Fears -
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http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/wikileaks-cables-confirm-the-worst-fears-of-climate-skeptics/?singlepage=true
Just a year ago, the Climategate files — a collection of emails, data, and computer source code — were somehow purloined from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit and made public. Pajamas Media was one of the first news organizations to cover them, with the first breaking news story out within hours of their first discovery (“Hacker Releases Data Implicating CRU in Global Warming Fraud“).
The full consequences are not yet clear, but the files’ release probably led to the collapse of the Copenhagen climate conference — to which the Obama administration had committed no little amount of political capital — and certainly contributed to the public’s increasing skepticism about the supposed consensus of climate science.
In some ways, the most surprising part of the Climategate files was how well they confirmed the dark suspicions of climate skeptics: there really were problems with replicating some of the most quoted results, there really had been some questionable manipulations made so the data would present the “right” picture, and there really was a somewhat covert group, composed of scientists on the “human agency” side of the argument and certain “reliable” environmental journalists, who were working together to suppress counter-evidence and assassinate the reputations of the skeptics.
Almost exactly a year later, Julius Assange and the WikiLeaks website revealed another collection of similarly purloined data. This time, the data was a collection of diplomatic cable traffic among American diplomats all over the world, some of it considered very sensitive — classified SECRET. Again, the purloined messages proved very embarrassing to the authors, although in this case the damage wasn’t just to egos and reputations; the cables did damage to American interests, even to national security.
On December 3rd, the Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom published one of a series of stories based on the cables, this one titled “WikiLeaks cables reveal how U.S. manipulated climate accord.” The United States really was applying considerable political and diplomatic pressure on other players; the scientific “consensus” had long since been subsumed by the pressure to score a political win. As the Guardian put it:
Hidden behind the save-the-world rhetoric of the global climate change negotiations lies the mucky realpolitik: money and threats buy political support; spying and cyberwarfare are used to seek out leverage.
The bribes — sorry, I mean promised aid — was no mean amount of money. The Guardian reports amounts in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars. The government of the Maldives set their price at $30 million. With a population of roughly 300,000, that is $100 per person in a country where the average household gets by on $450 a year.
This pressure, however, wasn’t limited to financial transactions: the United States was developing intelligence on the other participants in the conferences.
Seeking negotiating chips, the U.S. State Department sent a secret cable on July 31, 2009, seeking human intelligence from UN diplomats across a range of issues, including climate change. The request originated with the CIA. As well as countries’ negotiating positions for Copenhagen, diplomats were asked to provide evidence of UN environmental “treaty circumvention” and deals between nations.
At the same time, foreign powers — most probably at least including the People’s Republic of China — used sophisticated social engineering and cyberwar methods to get leverage in the upcoming negotiations.
On June 19, 2009, the State Department sent a cable detailing a “spear phishing” attack on the office of the U.S. climate change envoy … while talks with China on emissions took place in Beijing.
“Spear phishing” is an attack in which a carefully customized email message to a particular person, including personal information and promising something sure to be of interest to the recipient, is used to introduce a “Trojan horse” program, and while the cables don’t actually identify the suspects, it’s the same style of attack, and exactly the same exploit, that the Chinese used on Google.
The Guardian article is an amusing exercise in cognitive dissonance. The CIA wanted to collect intelligence on the other participants: CIA, ooh, bad! But it was to push through the global warming treaty. Wait. Global warming treaty, oooh, good! The Guardian writers clearly had some trouble deciding what they really thought.
By the time the Copenhagen conference came around, domestic political considerations inside the Obama administration had far outweighed whatever scientific basis originally drove the negotiations. On the other side of the table, pious public mouthing of global-warming dogma was replaced by straight-out monetary transactions: if you want our agreement, come up with the most cash. And China, South Africa, Brazil, and India were working the process with both politics and less savory means, to make sure they had the leverage to get what they wanted.
The lesson of the WikiLeaks climate cables turns out to be very much like the lesson of the Climategate files last year. The most surprising aspect of this story is how thoroughly the cables confirm the dark suspicions of climate skeptics.
Charlie Martin writes on science and technology for Pajamas Media.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/wikileaks-cables-confirm-the-worst-fears-of-climate-skeptics/?singlepage=true
Just a year ago, the Climategate files — a collection of emails, data, and computer source code — were somehow purloined from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit and made public. Pajamas Media was one of the first news organizations to cover them, with the first breaking news story out within hours of their first discovery (“Hacker Releases Data Implicating CRU in Global Warming Fraud“).
The full consequences are not yet clear, but the files’ release probably led to the collapse of the Copenhagen climate conference — to which the Obama administration had committed no little amount of political capital — and certainly contributed to the public’s increasing skepticism about the supposed consensus of climate science.
In some ways, the most surprising part of the Climategate files was how well they confirmed the dark suspicions of climate skeptics: there really were problems with replicating some of the most quoted results, there really had been some questionable manipulations made so the data would present the “right” picture, and there really was a somewhat covert group, composed of scientists on the “human agency” side of the argument and certain “reliable” environmental journalists, who were working together to suppress counter-evidence and assassinate the reputations of the skeptics.
Almost exactly a year later, Julius Assange and the WikiLeaks website revealed another collection of similarly purloined data. This time, the data was a collection of diplomatic cable traffic among American diplomats all over the world, some of it considered very sensitive — classified SECRET. Again, the purloined messages proved very embarrassing to the authors, although in this case the damage wasn’t just to egos and reputations; the cables did damage to American interests, even to national security.
On December 3rd, the Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom published one of a series of stories based on the cables, this one titled “WikiLeaks cables reveal how U.S. manipulated climate accord.” The United States really was applying considerable political and diplomatic pressure on other players; the scientific “consensus” had long since been subsumed by the pressure to score a political win. As the Guardian put it:
Hidden behind the save-the-world rhetoric of the global climate change negotiations lies the mucky realpolitik: money and threats buy political support; spying and cyberwarfare are used to seek out leverage.
The bribes — sorry, I mean promised aid — was no mean amount of money. The Guardian reports amounts in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars. The government of the Maldives set their price at $30 million. With a population of roughly 300,000, that is $100 per person in a country where the average household gets by on $450 a year.
This pressure, however, wasn’t limited to financial transactions: the United States was developing intelligence on the other participants in the conferences.
Seeking negotiating chips, the U.S. State Department sent a secret cable on July 31, 2009, seeking human intelligence from UN diplomats across a range of issues, including climate change. The request originated with the CIA. As well as countries’ negotiating positions for Copenhagen, diplomats were asked to provide evidence of UN environmental “treaty circumvention” and deals between nations.
At the same time, foreign powers — most probably at least including the People’s Republic of China — used sophisticated social engineering and cyberwar methods to get leverage in the upcoming negotiations.
On June 19, 2009, the State Department sent a cable detailing a “spear phishing” attack on the office of the U.S. climate change envoy … while talks with China on emissions took place in Beijing.
“Spear phishing” is an attack in which a carefully customized email message to a particular person, including personal information and promising something sure to be of interest to the recipient, is used to introduce a “Trojan horse” program, and while the cables don’t actually identify the suspects, it’s the same style of attack, and exactly the same exploit, that the Chinese used on Google.
The Guardian article is an amusing exercise in cognitive dissonance. The CIA wanted to collect intelligence on the other participants: CIA, ooh, bad! But it was to push through the global warming treaty. Wait. Global warming treaty, oooh, good! The Guardian writers clearly had some trouble deciding what they really thought.
By the time the Copenhagen conference came around, domestic political considerations inside the Obama administration had far outweighed whatever scientific basis originally drove the negotiations. On the other side of the table, pious public mouthing of global-warming dogma was replaced by straight-out monetary transactions: if you want our agreement, come up with the most cash. And China, South Africa, Brazil, and India were working the process with both politics and less savory means, to make sure they had the leverage to get what they wanted.
The lesson of the WikiLeaks climate cables turns out to be very much like the lesson of the Climategate files last year. The most surprising aspect of this story is how thoroughly the cables confirm the dark suspicions of climate skeptics.
Charlie Martin writes on science and technology for Pajamas Media.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Carbon Trade Ends on Quiet Death of Chicago Climate Exchange-John O’Sullivan
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By John O’Sullivan
Published Nov 7, 2010
Suite101
Republican mid-term election joy deals financial uncertainty among green investors as the Chicago Climate Exchange announces the end of U.S. carbon trading.
The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) announced on October 21, 2010 that it will cease carbon trading this year. However, Steve Milloy reporting on Pajamasmedia.com (November 6, 2010) finds this huge story strangely unreported by the mainstream media.
To some key analysts the collapse of the CCX appears to show that international carbon trading is “dying a quiet death.” Yet Milloy finds that such a major business failure has drawn no interest at all from the mainstream media. Milloy noted that a “Nexis search conducted a week after CCX’s announcement revealed no news articles published about its demise.”
Not until November 02, 2010 had the story even been picked up briefly and that was by Chicagobusiness.com (Crain’s). Reporter, Paul Merrion appeared to find some comfort that while CCX will cease all trading of new emission allowances at the end of the year, “it will continue trading carbon offsets generated by projects that consume greenhouse gases, such as planting trees.”
Collapse is Personal Setback for U.S. President
Barack Obama was a board member of the Joyce Foundation that funded the fledgling CCX. Professor Richard Sandor, of Northwestern University had started the business with $1.1 million in grants from the Chicago-based left-wing Joyce Foundation enthusiastically endorsed by Obama. When founded in November 2000, CCX’s carbon trading market was predicted to grow anywhere between $500 billion and $10 trillion. Fortunately before its collapse Sandor was able to net $98.5 million for his 16.5% stake when CCX was sold.
Read the rest of the article at the source: Suite101
By John O’Sullivan
Published Nov 7, 2010
Suite101
Republican mid-term election joy deals financial uncertainty among green investors as the Chicago Climate Exchange announces the end of U.S. carbon trading.
The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) announced on October 21, 2010 that it will cease carbon trading this year. However, Steve Milloy reporting on Pajamasmedia.com (November 6, 2010) finds this huge story strangely unreported by the mainstream media.
To some key analysts the collapse of the CCX appears to show that international carbon trading is “dying a quiet death.” Yet Milloy finds that such a major business failure has drawn no interest at all from the mainstream media. Milloy noted that a “Nexis search conducted a week after CCX’s announcement revealed no news articles published about its demise.”
Not until November 02, 2010 had the story even been picked up briefly and that was by Chicagobusiness.com (Crain’s). Reporter, Paul Merrion appeared to find some comfort that while CCX will cease all trading of new emission allowances at the end of the year, “it will continue trading carbon offsets generated by projects that consume greenhouse gases, such as planting trees.”
Collapse is Personal Setback for U.S. President
Barack Obama was a board member of the Joyce Foundation that funded the fledgling CCX. Professor Richard Sandor, of Northwestern University had started the business with $1.1 million in grants from the Chicago-based left-wing Joyce Foundation enthusiastically endorsed by Obama. When founded in November 2000, CCX’s carbon trading market was predicted to grow anywhere between $500 billion and $10 trillion. Fortunately before its collapse Sandor was able to net $98.5 million for his 16.5% stake when CCX was sold.
Read the rest of the article at the source: Suite101
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Guessing At CO2 Emissions | The Resilient Earth
glo.
Guessing At CO2 Emissions
http://theresilientearth.com/
Submitted by Doug L. Hoffman on Fri, 06/04/2010 - 14:51
Supposedly, human activity is responsible for the detected rise in atmospheric CO2 levels over the past century. But do we really know were gas emissions come from and how great they are? As it turns out, greenhouse gas emissions are measured using statistical data without testing the results against the actual increases of these gases in the atmosphere. Regardless, climate change alarmists insist that human emissions must be reduced. A revealing perspective article in the June 4, 2010, issue of Science states “this is like dieting without weighing oneself.” Currently, science is only guessing at where CO2 emissions come from.
Scientists are coming to the realization that claims about greenhouse gas emissions can have integrity only if verified by direct atmospheric measurements. Emissions data are produced by greenhouse gas emitters of all sizes—farms, factories and entire nations. These emissions are often quoted with high precision but, as Euan Nisbet and Ray Weiss state in their article, “misreporting still occurs, whether by simple error, ignorance, or intention.” Read More...
Guessing At CO2 Emissions The Resilient Earth
Guessing At CO2 Emissions
http://theresilientearth.com/
Submitted by Doug L. Hoffman on Fri, 06/04/2010 - 14:51
Supposedly, human activity is responsible for the detected rise in atmospheric CO2 levels over the past century. But do we really know were gas emissions come from and how great they are? As it turns out, greenhouse gas emissions are measured using statistical data without testing the results against the actual increases of these gases in the atmosphere. Regardless, climate change alarmists insist that human emissions must be reduced. A revealing perspective article in the June 4, 2010, issue of Science states “this is like dieting without weighing oneself.” Currently, science is only guessing at where CO2 emissions come from.
Scientists are coming to the realization that claims about greenhouse gas emissions can have integrity only if verified by direct atmospheric measurements. Emissions data are produced by greenhouse gas emitters of all sizes—farms, factories and entire nations. These emissions are often quoted with high precision but, as Euan Nisbet and Ray Weiss state in their article, “misreporting still occurs, whether by simple error, ignorance, or intention.” Read More...
Guessing At CO2 Emissions The Resilient Earth
Sunday, October 17, 2010
The Sham of ‘Settled Science’ — Insider Says There Was No IPCC Consensus
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The Sham of ‘Settled Science’ — Insider Says There Was No IPCC Consensus
Remember that “settled science” that Laurie David’s alleged married boyfriend was forever prattling on about? Well, surprise, surprise… according to the National Post’s Lawrence Solomon, it turns out that it’s not so settled after all.
The IPCC consensus on climate change was phoney, says IPCC insider
The Sham of 'Settled Science'; Insider Says There Was No IPCC Consensus
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The Sham of ‘Settled Science’ — Insider Says There Was No IPCC Consensus
Remember that “settled science” that Laurie David’s alleged married boyfriend was forever prattling on about? Well, surprise, surprise… according to the National Post’s Lawrence Solomon, it turns out that it’s not so settled after all.
The IPCC consensus on climate change was phoney, says IPCC insider
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change misled the press and public into believing that thousands of scientists backed its claims on manmade global warming, according to Mike Hulme, a prominent climate scientist and IPCC insider. The actual number of scientists who backed that claim was “only a few dozen experts,” he states in a paper for Progress in Physical Geography, co-authored with student Martin Mahony.Read More...
“Claims such as ‘2,500 of the world’s leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate’ are disingenuous,” the paper states unambiguously, adding that they rendered “the IPCC vulnerable to outside criticism.”
The Sham of 'Settled Science'; Insider Says There Was No IPCC Consensus
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Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Interview With A Global Warming Skeptic: Dr. Roy Spencer
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Interview With A Global Warming Skeptic: Dr. Roy Spencer
By CJE
www.science20.com Created May 13 2010 - 11:28am
It is no secret that a majority of the peer-reviewed climate change literature lays blame for global warming on human greenhouse gas emissions.
But despite the abundance of research supporting anthropogenic global warming, there is a sizable community of qualified scientists who believe the so-called consensus view on global warming is completely wrong. I wanted to find out why, so I contacted one skeptical researcher to ask.
Dr. Roy Spencer is a climatologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. For many years he served as a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, and his research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Geophysical Research Letters and The Journal Of Climate. Dr. Spencer was kind enough to explain to me what convinced him that the consensus view on global warming is incorrect and what he believes is responsible for the rising temperatures we have observed.
Can you summarize your views on climate change?
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Interview With A Global Warming Skeptic: Dr. Roy Spencer
By CJE
www.science20.com Created May 13 2010 - 11:28am
It is no secret that a majority of the peer-reviewed climate change literature lays blame for global warming on human greenhouse gas emissions.
But despite the abundance of research supporting anthropogenic global warming, there is a sizable community of qualified scientists who believe the so-called consensus view on global warming is completely wrong. I wanted to find out why, so I contacted one skeptical researcher to ask.
Dr. Roy Spencer is a climatologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. For many years he served as a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, and his research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Geophysical Research Letters and The Journal Of Climate. Dr. Spencer was kind enough to explain to me what convinced him that the consensus view on global warming is incorrect and what he believes is responsible for the rising temperatures we have observed.
Can you summarize your views on climate change?
I believe that most climate change is natural in origin, the result of long-term changes in the Earth’s albedo (sunlight reflectivity). This alternative explanation for recent warming has seen almost no research, which is a curious situation if science is to progress. Now, I will also say that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions must cause some warming, but that its warming influence is small compared to natural, internal, chaotic fluctuations in global average cloud cover.You say the IPCC has the relationship between temperature and cloud cover completely backwards, and this greatly affects our understanding of how sensitive the climate system is. Can you elaborate?
As we have addressed in a previously published paper in The Journal Of Climate, and elaborate further on in another paper accepted for publication in The Journal of Geophysical Research, natural cloud variations in the climate system give the illusion of a sensitive climate system. This is a relatively new finding, and it is taking time for other researchers to understand its significance to the global warming debate.Some climate change skeptics say solar activity is primarily to blame for rising temperatures. What's your opinion on that?
By way of background, most climate researchers today believe that global average temperatures are moderately to strongly sensitive to our addition of greenhouse gas emissions, and a large part of that sensitivity argument depends upon cloud cover dissipating somewhat with warming. This is a relationship they see during natural climate variations: warmer years tend to have less cloud cover. If that anomalous warming is indeed causing a decrease in cloudiness, then more sunlight would be let in, magnifying the relatively small amount of direct warming that increasing carbon dioxide produces. This is called positive cloud feedback.
But what they have neglected to consider is the fact that a large part of that observed warmth was caused BY the decrease in clouds, not the other way around. We have demonstrated with a simple climate model that warming can cause an increase in clouds, thus producing a strong brake on warming (negative feedback), but the signal of that process is lost in the noise of natural cloud variations causing temperature variations. It all comes down to mixing up cause and effect. Negative cloud feedback is obscured by natural cloud variations causing temperature variations.
I consider it a highly speculative theory….but possible. There is so much we don’t yet understand about natural climate change. Most researchers today have virtually convinced themselves that there is no such thing. In a way, the sunspot theory is the closest alternative match to my theory because it involves natural variations in cloud cover as the main forcing mechanism for climate change.You have a new book out aimed at people who are not climate scientists. Tell us about it.
My new book, The Great Global Warming Blunder, lays out the case for clouds as the main cause of global warming. The climate research community has become so inbred and financially dependent upon the continuing threat of manmade global warming that they have trouble even entertaining any alternative hypotheses. So, since the issue is so easily explained, I am getting others out there involved in the physical sciences to look at the evidence.How significant is the recent climategate scandal to the global warming debate?
I think it is very significant for public perception, but less significant to the climate research community. Climategate has revealed that scientists at the core of the U.N.’s case for humanity as the cause of warming are quite biased and intolerant in their dealings with scientists having alternative views. Those of us who are skeptical that humanity has caused most of the warming have always known this bias exists, but now the public gets to see it on display.Is CO2 a pollutant?
No, since atmospheric carbon dioxide is necessary for life on Earth, I do not consider it a “pollutant”. Considering this fact, it is amazing that there is so little of it: only 40 out of every 100,000 molecules of air are CO2, and it takes 5 years to increase than number by 1 through the burning of fossil fuels. It might well turn out that more CO2 is, on the whole, good for life on Earth. Hundreds of scientific papers have demonstrated this for various types of plants, and we are beginning to see research that the same might be true for the oceans as well.What do you think of the various efforts to reduce CO2 emissions?
Command-and-control mechanisms for reducing CO2 emissions are doomed to failure because there are, as yet, no large scale replacements for fossil fuels. Now, since fossil fuels are a finite resource, we do need to be working toward replacements. But they can not be simply legislated into existence. And if we punish the use of energy by making it more expensive, it is the world’s poor that will be the first to suffer.For more information, visit Dr. Spencer's website.
Since I do not receive any money from Big Oil, I can say that I will maintain this view even if the oil company executives change their minds and support cap-and-trade. Such corporate decisions can be expected as oil companies position themselves for special favors from government if they think cap and trade is inevitable anyway.
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Thursday, October 7, 2010
Trees of Medieval Warming Period - MWP Warmer Than Present
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Piancabella Rock Glacier, Sceru Valley, Southern Swiss Alps
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Reference
Scapozza, C., Lambiel, C., Reynard, E., Fallot, J.-M., Antognini, M. and Schoeneich, P. 2010. Radiocarbon dating of fossil wood remains buried by the Piancabella rock glacier, Blenio Valley (Ticino, Southern Swiss Alps): Implications for rock glacier, treeline and climate history. Permaforst and Periglacial Processes 21: 90-96.
Description
Based on radiocarbon dating of the fossil wood remains of eight larch (Larix decidua) stem fragments found one meter beneath the surface of the ground at the base of the front of the Piancabella rock glacier (46�27'02" N, 9�00'07" E) in the Southern Swiss Alps in September 2005, the authors determined that the wood was formed somewhere between AD 1040 and 1280 with a statistical probability of 95.4%. Then, based on this information and "geomorphological, climatological and geophysical observations," they inferred that "the treeline in the Medieval Warm Period was about 200 meters higher than in the middle of the 20th century, which corresponds to a mean summer temperature as much as 1.2�C warmer than in AD 1950." Thus, we assign the MWP (at a minimum) to the period AD 1040-1280; and adjusting for warming between 1950 and the present, we calculate that the MWP was about 0.5�C warmer than the peak warmth of the CWP.
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Piancabella Rock Glacier, Sceru Valley, Southern Swiss Alps
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Reference
Scapozza, C., Lambiel, C., Reynard, E., Fallot, J.-M., Antognini, M. and Schoeneich, P. 2010. Radiocarbon dating of fossil wood remains buried by the Piancabella rock glacier, Blenio Valley (Ticino, Southern Swiss Alps): Implications for rock glacier, treeline and climate history. Permaforst and Periglacial Processes 21: 90-96.
Description
Based on radiocarbon dating of the fossil wood remains of eight larch (Larix decidua) stem fragments found one meter beneath the surface of the ground at the base of the front of the Piancabella rock glacier (46�27'02" N, 9�00'07" E) in the Southern Swiss Alps in September 2005, the authors determined that the wood was formed somewhere between AD 1040 and 1280 with a statistical probability of 95.4%. Then, based on this information and "geomorphological, climatological and geophysical observations," they inferred that "the treeline in the Medieval Warm Period was about 200 meters higher than in the middle of the 20th century, which corresponds to a mean summer temperature as much as 1.2�C warmer than in AD 1950." Thus, we assign the MWP (at a minimum) to the period AD 1040-1280; and adjusting for warming between 1950 and the present, we calculate that the MWP was about 0.5�C warmer than the peak warmth of the CWP.
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Tuesday, October 5, 2010
'Green' Climate Group Thinks Blowing Kids up is Funny -
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Environmentalist Campaign's Horror 'Comedy' Promo: Go Green or Get Blown Up
By Kathleen Gilbert
LONDON, October 4, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A UK-based campaign against global warming has apologized after releasing an extremely graphic promotional short film depicting individuals being blown up for failing to adhere to the campaign.
The film promotes "10:10," a campaign involving a pledge to reduce an individual's carbon emissions by 10% on October 10. Entitled "No Pressure," the short depicts several short segments, evidently intended to be humorous, in which people, including children in a schoolroom, are detonated in a gory mess after they decline to volunteer to help with the new initiative. In each individual segment, shocked onlookers wipe the spattered blood off themselves.
"10:10: hundreds of thousands of people ... all tackling climate change in more than 40 countires. Care to join us? No pressure," states the final voiceover. The voice actress is then revealed to be X-Files actress Gillian Anderson, who is also detonated. The final shot silently displays the campaign's website address against a blood-soaked wall.
After countless viewers of the 10:10 flick reacted in horror, including several groups sponsoring the 10:10 campaign, producers officially pulled the film from the internet, although copies continue to circulate. The original plan to show the flick in UK theaters was also abandoned.
10:10 officials reportedly originally responded to the furor by stating: "We 'killed' five people to make No Pressure - a mere blip compared to the 300,000 real people who now die each year from climate change."
Later, the group issued a longer apology pointing out that the film, created by English comedy screenwriter Richard Curtis, was intended to have a humorous effect.
"Many people found the resulting film extremely funny, but unfortunately some didn't and we sincerely apologise to anybody we have offended," wrote the group on its website. "At 10:10 we're all about trying new and creative ways of getting people to take action on climate change. Unfortunately in this instance we missed the mark. Oh well, we live and learn."
Read More: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/oct/10100410.html
Watch the video -
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Environmentalist Campaign's Horror 'Comedy' Promo: Go Green or Get Blown Up
By Kathleen Gilbert
LONDON, October 4, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A UK-based campaign against global warming has apologized after releasing an extremely graphic promotional short film depicting individuals being blown up for failing to adhere to the campaign.
The film promotes "10:10," a campaign involving a pledge to reduce an individual's carbon emissions by 10% on October 10. Entitled "No Pressure," the short depicts several short segments, evidently intended to be humorous, in which people, including children in a schoolroom, are detonated in a gory mess after they decline to volunteer to help with the new initiative. In each individual segment, shocked onlookers wipe the spattered blood off themselves.
"10:10: hundreds of thousands of people ... all tackling climate change in more than 40 countires. Care to join us? No pressure," states the final voiceover. The voice actress is then revealed to be X-Files actress Gillian Anderson, who is also detonated. The final shot silently displays the campaign's website address against a blood-soaked wall.
After countless viewers of the 10:10 flick reacted in horror, including several groups sponsoring the 10:10 campaign, producers officially pulled the film from the internet, although copies continue to circulate. The original plan to show the flick in UK theaters was also abandoned.
10:10 officials reportedly originally responded to the furor by stating: "We 'killed' five people to make No Pressure - a mere blip compared to the 300,000 real people who now die each year from climate change."
Later, the group issued a longer apology pointing out that the film, created by English comedy screenwriter Richard Curtis, was intended to have a humorous effect.
"Many people found the resulting film extremely funny, but unfortunately some didn't and we sincerely apologise to anybody we have offended," wrote the group on its website. "At 10:10 we're all about trying new and creative ways of getting people to take action on climate change. Unfortunately in this instance we missed the mark. Oh well, we live and learn."
Read More: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/oct/10100410.html
Watch the video -
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Friday, October 1, 2010
Liberals Gone Wild: 4th International Conference on Climate Change
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American Spectator: Special Report
Liberals Gone Wild
By Peter Ferrara on 5.19.10 @ 6:08AM
Even though the Constitution does not include the words "separation of church and state," liberals have long treated that concept as a hallowed fundamental doctrine of constitutional law. But no more. With the recent introduction of new Senate cap and trade legislation, ultraliberal supporters Barbara Boxer, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and others have now completely abandoned that doctrine in their quest to establish global warming dogma as the official, established religion of the United States.
Under that legislation, everyone in America will be forced to tithe to the new religion through higher prices for electricity, gasoline, natural gas, coal, home heating oil, jet fuel, food (especially meat), and every product produced or transported with such energy sources. Indeed, prices will soar high enough to reduce fossil fuel use and the resulting carbon dioxide emissions back to the per capita levels of 1870!
The legislation will further force Americans to engage in ritual sacrifices to the established religion, slashing back on powerful, roomy cars and SUVS, air conditioning, heat, PCs, laptops, big screen TVs, cell phones, iPods, backyard barbecues, manufacturing jobs, and traditional American prosperity. They will be forced to worship the modern, hip, pagan dogma with smaller "carbon footprints." If they do not profess their true belief, they will be shouted out of public life as troglodyte "deniers," just as those who did not faithfully maintain membership in the established Church of England were disqualified from holding public office.
But if they do faithfully follow the global warming catechism of cap and trade, they will be rewarded with the eternal salvation of a reduction in the projected rise of global temperatures of 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050, based on the UN's own climate models. Hallelujah! Praise the AlGore!
Given Climategate, all the other recent revelations discrediting the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the emerging modern science falsifying the notion of man-caused global warming, the continued fevered embrace of costly cap and trade legislation by Washington's ultraliberals can only be considered faith-based wilding out. The lack of scientific grounding for such policies was made clear by the just completed Fourth International Conference on Climate Change sponsored by the Heartland Institute in Chicago.
Reconsidering the Science and Economics
The conference was attended by over 800 participants from 20 countries worldwide. In sharp contrast to the ritual denunciations of those who will not believe by the High Priests of Global Warming, the conference included careful scientific presentations by such speakers as Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT; S. Fred Singer, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia and the founder of the National Weather Satellite Service; Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the Space Research Laboratory at the Pulkovo Observatory in Russia; J. Scott Armstrong, Professor at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Nils-Axel Morner, head of the Department of Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics at Stockholm University; Roy Spencer, U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) flying on NASA's Aqua satellite, and formerly a senior scientist for climate studies at NASA; Patrick Michaels, Research Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia for 30 years and past President of the American Association of State Climatologists; Willie Soon, astrophysicist and geoscientist at the Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences Division of the Center for Astrophysics; David Douglass, Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester; Don Easterbrook, Professor of Geology at Western Washington University; Gabriel Calzada Alvarez, Associate Professor of Economics in the Environmental Science Faculty at King Juan Carlos University in Spain, and many others.
Heartland invited as well dozens of the most ardent advocates of the theory of man-caused global warming, but all but two refused to attend, not because they don't think they can defend their views in scientific debate, but because High Priests don't entertain doubt about their theological teachings.
The Collapsing Science of Global Warming
These world-class scientists are at least as good as any of the staunch advocates of the theory of man-caused global warming. Those who foolishly succumb to the political propaganda to just ignore them are now woefully behind the curve of the actual global warming debate. These scientists are not challenging the principle that greenhouse gases can cause a greenhouse warming effect, and so those who pontificate on how well established such an effect is in theory are not getting the argument.
The real argument is over how big the greenhouse effect is, most importantly from the carbon dioxide resulting from the burning of fossil fuels. As the intellectually dominating Lindzen indicates, there doesn't seem to be much real dispute that CO2 by itself doesn't have much effect, with even the UN models indicating a doubling of CO2 on its own would produce only an increase in global temperatures of a mere 1 degree centigrade. That should be expected, given that greenhouse gases produced by humans account for only 0.12% of the atmosphere. But the UN modelers reach potentially catastrophic warming by presuming "positive feedbacks" due to atmospheric water vapor and clouds that greatly increase the warming ultimately resulting from increasing CO2.
But what the work of Lindzen and the other top scientists at the Heartland conference has been increasingly demonstrating is that instead of positive feedback effects increasing warming, the impact of water vapor and clouds is more likely to produce "negative feedbacks" offsetting the small original increase caused by CO2. They argue that the greenhouse warming causes an increase in cloud cover and water vapor at altitudes that would reflect solar radiation back out to space before it gets trapped within the earth's atmosphere, leaving little or no effect on global temperatures.
The rest of the body of scientific evidence is increasingly consistent with this Lindzen/Singer led view rather than the man-caused global warming view. The temperature record even as we have it (revealed as faulty by Climategate) does not show temperatures rising with rising CO2, but rather a pattern of periodically rising and falling temperatures consistent with the natural causes emphasized by the prevailing refuseniks at the Heartland Conference. That record shows an increase in temperatures from the 1920s to the 1940s, with a roughly reversing decline from the 1940s to the late 1970s. Temperatures then rose from the late 1970s to the late 1990s, giving rise to the global warming scare, but since then they have been declining with perhaps accelerating force.
Rather than following consistently rising CO2 emissions and accumulations, this temperature pattern follows the variations of natural causes such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), El Niño effects, and sunspot patterns. The PDO reflects the circulation of colder water currents from the deeper ocean to the surface, which changes surface water temperatures from warm to cold, only to be warmed by the sun again, every 20 to 30 years. Such changes in Pacific surface temperatures, along with changing sunspot activity which may correlate with PDO changes, can explain the rising global temperatures of a couple of tenths of a degree or so from the 1920s to the 1940s, as well as the reversing decline from the 1940s to the 1970s, the again reversing increase from the 1970s to the 1990s, with an assist from the spiking El Niño of 1998, and then the reversing and accelerating decline since then.
This natural causes explanation debunks the fundamental argument methodology of the UN IPCC reports, which is surprisingly weak on its face once you dig it out from deep within the voluminous reports. That basic argument is that the warming trend that was supposedly documented by the reports can't be explained by anything other than man-caused global warming. QED (not). The upshot of the Lindzen/Singer counterrevolution is that the warming trend, such as it is, is adequately explained by the natural causes.
Still another developing problem for the global warming theory is that the accumulating temperature data in recent years is not consistent with the predictions of the UN climate models, and the difference is growing larger and larger. The global warming advocates tried to explain this away by speculating about possible temporary negative feedbacks, perhaps from man-caused emissions of atmospheric aerosols, blocking out the greenhouse warming for a time. But the implausibility of never proved, "temporary," negative feedbacks giving way then to positive feedbacks powerful enough to cause catastrophic warming made the global warming alarmists sound like pre-Copernican astronomers still trying to explain that the planets revolve around the Earth in their temporarily reverse elliptical orbits. The actual data is again far better explained by the natural causes.
The natural causes counterargument also explains another major developing anomaly. The UN's own climate models all predict that man-caused global warming would be revealed by a "fingerprint" in atmospheric temperature patterns, involving a "hotspot" in the troposphere portion of the atmosphere above the tropics. A few years ago, new data from satellites and weather balloons in closer study of the issue revealed that the predicted hotspot was not there. No hotspot, no fingerprint, no man-caused global warming. Game over. The lack of the hotspot is again consistent with the natural causes theory of global warming.
One of the chief medicine men of global warming, Ben Santer, tried to counter this with another, increasingly typical, global warming fudge, recalculating and sharply expanding the error margins of the UN models, and then concluding that the results of those models were "not inconsistent" with the actual observed atmospheric results. But the natural causes advocates at the Heartland Conference came back with the answer that models with possible error variations wide enough to include no hotspot at all were not producing statistically meaningful results. Notice, moreover, that Santer's answer did not involve showing there was a hotspot. It involved the argument that no hotspot was needed for this theology after all. But that leaves us at this point with far more evidence for the Resurrection than for man caused global warming.
Lindzen's latest work further refutes the man caused global warming hypothesis. Solar radiation increasingly trapped inside the Earth's atmospheric greenhouse to cause global warming should mean a decline in solar radiation reflected from Earth back out to space. But the recently published results of a long-term Lindzen project involving satellite measurements shows no decline in such reflected solar radiation. Lindzen argues that this shows some negative feedbacks are offsetting any significant global warming greenhouse effect. This, again, would be consistent with varying global warming due to natural causes.
Several of the scientific presentations at the Heartland Conference went on to warn that the natural causes portend a continuing period of colder, declining temperatures rather than global warming. These include the PDO, which reversed to a cold trend in the last decade that can be expected to go on for 20 to 30 years. This would take us back to the declining temperatures of the 1940s to the 1970s, if not the more severe decline of 1880 to 1915. Then there is the extended period of little or no sunspot activity, which presages a return to the even colder period of the Daulton Minimum from 1790 to 1820, or even to the Maunder Minimum of the Little Ice Age itself in the 17th century. Abdussamatov representing Russian research at the conference argued, in fact, that another Little Ice Age would start as soon as 2014. Easterbrook pointed out that during the past million years of geologic history, the Earth has suffered 8 full blown, 100,000-year ice ages, punctuated by warmer interglacial periods like the current one, lasting 12,000 to 13,000 years. Except that the time since the last Ice Age is now 16,000 years.
Scientists Who Want To Be Politicians
While this long-term scientific debate was raging, Climategate exploded last November. That affair involved the public exposure of more than 1,000 hacked emails from the computer of Dr. Phil Jones, head of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Britain, a central repository for the global temperature record used by the UN's IPCC. Those emails involved private conversations among the top scientists in the U.N.'s global warming crusade.
Those conversations reveal these supposedly scientific knights in shining armor behaving not as objective scientists, but as activists or missionaries for their environmentalist views, hiding, manipulating, and even destroying data, intimidating scientific journals not to publish scientific papers with contrary arguments, breaking laws requiring data disclosure, personally disparaging those with alternative views, and, in one celebrated remark, even threatening to "beat the crap" out of one particularly effective critic. As Reinhold Huttl, President of the German Academy of Science and Engineering, explained to the European magazine Der Spiegel last month, what Climategate shows is "more and more scientists who want to be politicians."
The Climategate revelations then led the European media to examine more closely the latest IPCC report claiming to demonstrate the scientific foundation for man caused global warming. That led to further cascading revelations of wild exaggerations, phony claims, and bogus citations, particularly regarding melting glaciers and polar ice caps, rising sea levels, droughts, hurricanes, and other supposedly harmful effects of global warming.
Unfortunately, little of this was covered by the Democrat party controlled, so-called, mainstream media in the U.S. When it was mentioned, it was whitewashed with unjustified comments that the basic science of global warming has not changed. The reality of the debate discussed above shows how misleading such supposed "reporting" is. Try to warn your friends and family. You will have no idea of what is going on in the real world if you just read and watch the "mainstream media." It regularly exhibits the same problem as revealed by Climategate, supposed news reporters who want to be politicians.
The scientific upshot of Climategate is that the UN scientists had collaborated to exaggerate the land-based record of temperature increases since the late 1970s, dropping out weather station reports from colder climates around the world, failing to account for urban heat island effects correctly, splicing in mismatched data from proxies and real world observations, and producing historical temperature records (the so-called "hockey stick") that left out the Medieval Warm Period and subsequent Little Ice Age so thoroughly documented in geological records. This explains another data anomaly, the increasing disparity between the satellite record of global temperatures showing much smaller temperature increases since the late '70s, and the land-based record that Jones and company manipulated.
Most shocking, in their zeal to prevent disclosure of their data, so contrary to the true scientific method, Jones and his colleagues have apparently now "lost" the raw temperature data underlying their land-based temperature record, so it cannot be replicated by anyone else, as in the true scientific method. Indeed, Jones now claims he cannot reproduce the "homogenization" methodology he used to massage that raw data into a global temperature record. As Peter Webster, meteorologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, told Der Spiegel, "It's as if a chef was no longer able to cook his dishes because he lost his recipe." With similar problems in the records of the other two official sources of land-based temperature records, those records are now scientifically worthless unless they can be reconstructed from scratch. The satellite record is now the only scientifically reliable source for global temperature trends.
Getting to the Bottom of Global Warming
Too many people are naïve about the UN and its underlying motives. They recognize that commercial interests seeking private profits are self-interested and untrustworthy regarding possible global warming. But they fail to see that the UN has its own vested interest in the cause of global warming, which can be used to justify massively increased powers and resources for the UN, maybe even global taxes and global government. That is why the UN mandate of the IPCC is not to investigate the possibility of manmade global warming, but to validate it.
The UN has repeatedly demonstrated that it is a corrupt, untrustworthy institution that cannot be trusted with the responsibility of global warming. What is needed is for the American government, not under the current power grasping Administration but under the new Administration in 2013, to appoint a Team B of global warming investigators to document and report to the American people and the whole world alternative views on manmade global warming. That Team B can be led by a leading top scientist like Richard Lindzen, and should include pathbreaking, independent, climate scientists from around the world, as found at the Heartland Conference.
Peter Ferrara is director of entitlement and budget policy at the Institute for Policy Innovation, a policy advisor to the Heartland Institute, a senior fellow at the Social Security Institute, and general counsel of the American Civil Rights Union. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under the first President Bush. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.
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American Spectator: Special Report
Liberals Gone Wild
By Peter Ferrara on 5.19.10 @ 6:08AM
Even though the Constitution does not include the words "separation of church and state," liberals have long treated that concept as a hallowed fundamental doctrine of constitutional law. But no more. With the recent introduction of new Senate cap and trade legislation, ultraliberal supporters Barbara Boxer, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and others have now completely abandoned that doctrine in their quest to establish global warming dogma as the official, established religion of the United States.
Under that legislation, everyone in America will be forced to tithe to the new religion through higher prices for electricity, gasoline, natural gas, coal, home heating oil, jet fuel, food (especially meat), and every product produced or transported with such energy sources. Indeed, prices will soar high enough to reduce fossil fuel use and the resulting carbon dioxide emissions back to the per capita levels of 1870!
The legislation will further force Americans to engage in ritual sacrifices to the established religion, slashing back on powerful, roomy cars and SUVS, air conditioning, heat, PCs, laptops, big screen TVs, cell phones, iPods, backyard barbecues, manufacturing jobs, and traditional American prosperity. They will be forced to worship the modern, hip, pagan dogma with smaller "carbon footprints." If they do not profess their true belief, they will be shouted out of public life as troglodyte "deniers," just as those who did not faithfully maintain membership in the established Church of England were disqualified from holding public office.
But if they do faithfully follow the global warming catechism of cap and trade, they will be rewarded with the eternal salvation of a reduction in the projected rise of global temperatures of 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050, based on the UN's own climate models. Hallelujah! Praise the AlGore!
Given Climategate, all the other recent revelations discrediting the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the emerging modern science falsifying the notion of man-caused global warming, the continued fevered embrace of costly cap and trade legislation by Washington's ultraliberals can only be considered faith-based wilding out. The lack of scientific grounding for such policies was made clear by the just completed Fourth International Conference on Climate Change sponsored by the Heartland Institute in Chicago.
Reconsidering the Science and Economics
The conference was attended by over 800 participants from 20 countries worldwide. In sharp contrast to the ritual denunciations of those who will not believe by the High Priests of Global Warming, the conference included careful scientific presentations by such speakers as Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT; S. Fred Singer, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia and the founder of the National Weather Satellite Service; Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the Space Research Laboratory at the Pulkovo Observatory in Russia; J. Scott Armstrong, Professor at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Nils-Axel Morner, head of the Department of Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics at Stockholm University; Roy Spencer, U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) flying on NASA's Aqua satellite, and formerly a senior scientist for climate studies at NASA; Patrick Michaels, Research Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia for 30 years and past President of the American Association of State Climatologists; Willie Soon, astrophysicist and geoscientist at the Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences Division of the Center for Astrophysics; David Douglass, Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester; Don Easterbrook, Professor of Geology at Western Washington University; Gabriel Calzada Alvarez, Associate Professor of Economics in the Environmental Science Faculty at King Juan Carlos University in Spain, and many others.
Heartland invited as well dozens of the most ardent advocates of the theory of man-caused global warming, but all but two refused to attend, not because they don't think they can defend their views in scientific debate, but because High Priests don't entertain doubt about their theological teachings.
The Collapsing Science of Global Warming
These world-class scientists are at least as good as any of the staunch advocates of the theory of man-caused global warming. Those who foolishly succumb to the political propaganda to just ignore them are now woefully behind the curve of the actual global warming debate. These scientists are not challenging the principle that greenhouse gases can cause a greenhouse warming effect, and so those who pontificate on how well established such an effect is in theory are not getting the argument.
The real argument is over how big the greenhouse effect is, most importantly from the carbon dioxide resulting from the burning of fossil fuels. As the intellectually dominating Lindzen indicates, there doesn't seem to be much real dispute that CO2 by itself doesn't have much effect, with even the UN models indicating a doubling of CO2 on its own would produce only an increase in global temperatures of a mere 1 degree centigrade. That should be expected, given that greenhouse gases produced by humans account for only 0.12% of the atmosphere. But the UN modelers reach potentially catastrophic warming by presuming "positive feedbacks" due to atmospheric water vapor and clouds that greatly increase the warming ultimately resulting from increasing CO2.
But what the work of Lindzen and the other top scientists at the Heartland conference has been increasingly demonstrating is that instead of positive feedback effects increasing warming, the impact of water vapor and clouds is more likely to produce "negative feedbacks" offsetting the small original increase caused by CO2. They argue that the greenhouse warming causes an increase in cloud cover and water vapor at altitudes that would reflect solar radiation back out to space before it gets trapped within the earth's atmosphere, leaving little or no effect on global temperatures.
The rest of the body of scientific evidence is increasingly consistent with this Lindzen/Singer led view rather than the man-caused global warming view. The temperature record even as we have it (revealed as faulty by Climategate) does not show temperatures rising with rising CO2, but rather a pattern of periodically rising and falling temperatures consistent with the natural causes emphasized by the prevailing refuseniks at the Heartland Conference. That record shows an increase in temperatures from the 1920s to the 1940s, with a roughly reversing decline from the 1940s to the late 1970s. Temperatures then rose from the late 1970s to the late 1990s, giving rise to the global warming scare, but since then they have been declining with perhaps accelerating force.
Rather than following consistently rising CO2 emissions and accumulations, this temperature pattern follows the variations of natural causes such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), El Niño effects, and sunspot patterns. The PDO reflects the circulation of colder water currents from the deeper ocean to the surface, which changes surface water temperatures from warm to cold, only to be warmed by the sun again, every 20 to 30 years. Such changes in Pacific surface temperatures, along with changing sunspot activity which may correlate with PDO changes, can explain the rising global temperatures of a couple of tenths of a degree or so from the 1920s to the 1940s, as well as the reversing decline from the 1940s to the 1970s, the again reversing increase from the 1970s to the 1990s, with an assist from the spiking El Niño of 1998, and then the reversing and accelerating decline since then.
This natural causes explanation debunks the fundamental argument methodology of the UN IPCC reports, which is surprisingly weak on its face once you dig it out from deep within the voluminous reports. That basic argument is that the warming trend that was supposedly documented by the reports can't be explained by anything other than man-caused global warming. QED (not). The upshot of the Lindzen/Singer counterrevolution is that the warming trend, such as it is, is adequately explained by the natural causes.
Still another developing problem for the global warming theory is that the accumulating temperature data in recent years is not consistent with the predictions of the UN climate models, and the difference is growing larger and larger. The global warming advocates tried to explain this away by speculating about possible temporary negative feedbacks, perhaps from man-caused emissions of atmospheric aerosols, blocking out the greenhouse warming for a time. But the implausibility of never proved, "temporary," negative feedbacks giving way then to positive feedbacks powerful enough to cause catastrophic warming made the global warming alarmists sound like pre-Copernican astronomers still trying to explain that the planets revolve around the Earth in their temporarily reverse elliptical orbits. The actual data is again far better explained by the natural causes.
The natural causes counterargument also explains another major developing anomaly. The UN's own climate models all predict that man-caused global warming would be revealed by a "fingerprint" in atmospheric temperature patterns, involving a "hotspot" in the troposphere portion of the atmosphere above the tropics. A few years ago, new data from satellites and weather balloons in closer study of the issue revealed that the predicted hotspot was not there. No hotspot, no fingerprint, no man-caused global warming. Game over. The lack of the hotspot is again consistent with the natural causes theory of global warming.
One of the chief medicine men of global warming, Ben Santer, tried to counter this with another, increasingly typical, global warming fudge, recalculating and sharply expanding the error margins of the UN models, and then concluding that the results of those models were "not inconsistent" with the actual observed atmospheric results. But the natural causes advocates at the Heartland Conference came back with the answer that models with possible error variations wide enough to include no hotspot at all were not producing statistically meaningful results. Notice, moreover, that Santer's answer did not involve showing there was a hotspot. It involved the argument that no hotspot was needed for this theology after all. But that leaves us at this point with far more evidence for the Resurrection than for man caused global warming.
Lindzen's latest work further refutes the man caused global warming hypothesis. Solar radiation increasingly trapped inside the Earth's atmospheric greenhouse to cause global warming should mean a decline in solar radiation reflected from Earth back out to space. But the recently published results of a long-term Lindzen project involving satellite measurements shows no decline in such reflected solar radiation. Lindzen argues that this shows some negative feedbacks are offsetting any significant global warming greenhouse effect. This, again, would be consistent with varying global warming due to natural causes.
Several of the scientific presentations at the Heartland Conference went on to warn that the natural causes portend a continuing period of colder, declining temperatures rather than global warming. These include the PDO, which reversed to a cold trend in the last decade that can be expected to go on for 20 to 30 years. This would take us back to the declining temperatures of the 1940s to the 1970s, if not the more severe decline of 1880 to 1915. Then there is the extended period of little or no sunspot activity, which presages a return to the even colder period of the Daulton Minimum from 1790 to 1820, or even to the Maunder Minimum of the Little Ice Age itself in the 17th century. Abdussamatov representing Russian research at the conference argued, in fact, that another Little Ice Age would start as soon as 2014. Easterbrook pointed out that during the past million years of geologic history, the Earth has suffered 8 full blown, 100,000-year ice ages, punctuated by warmer interglacial periods like the current one, lasting 12,000 to 13,000 years. Except that the time since the last Ice Age is now 16,000 years.
Scientists Who Want To Be Politicians
While this long-term scientific debate was raging, Climategate exploded last November. That affair involved the public exposure of more than 1,000 hacked emails from the computer of Dr. Phil Jones, head of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Britain, a central repository for the global temperature record used by the UN's IPCC. Those emails involved private conversations among the top scientists in the U.N.'s global warming crusade.
Those conversations reveal these supposedly scientific knights in shining armor behaving not as objective scientists, but as activists or missionaries for their environmentalist views, hiding, manipulating, and even destroying data, intimidating scientific journals not to publish scientific papers with contrary arguments, breaking laws requiring data disclosure, personally disparaging those with alternative views, and, in one celebrated remark, even threatening to "beat the crap" out of one particularly effective critic. As Reinhold Huttl, President of the German Academy of Science and Engineering, explained to the European magazine Der Spiegel last month, what Climategate shows is "more and more scientists who want to be politicians."
The Climategate revelations then led the European media to examine more closely the latest IPCC report claiming to demonstrate the scientific foundation for man caused global warming. That led to further cascading revelations of wild exaggerations, phony claims, and bogus citations, particularly regarding melting glaciers and polar ice caps, rising sea levels, droughts, hurricanes, and other supposedly harmful effects of global warming.
Unfortunately, little of this was covered by the Democrat party controlled, so-called, mainstream media in the U.S. When it was mentioned, it was whitewashed with unjustified comments that the basic science of global warming has not changed. The reality of the debate discussed above shows how misleading such supposed "reporting" is. Try to warn your friends and family. You will have no idea of what is going on in the real world if you just read and watch the "mainstream media." It regularly exhibits the same problem as revealed by Climategate, supposed news reporters who want to be politicians.
The scientific upshot of Climategate is that the UN scientists had collaborated to exaggerate the land-based record of temperature increases since the late 1970s, dropping out weather station reports from colder climates around the world, failing to account for urban heat island effects correctly, splicing in mismatched data from proxies and real world observations, and producing historical temperature records (the so-called "hockey stick") that left out the Medieval Warm Period and subsequent Little Ice Age so thoroughly documented in geological records. This explains another data anomaly, the increasing disparity between the satellite record of global temperatures showing much smaller temperature increases since the late '70s, and the land-based record that Jones and company manipulated.
Most shocking, in their zeal to prevent disclosure of their data, so contrary to the true scientific method, Jones and his colleagues have apparently now "lost" the raw temperature data underlying their land-based temperature record, so it cannot be replicated by anyone else, as in the true scientific method. Indeed, Jones now claims he cannot reproduce the "homogenization" methodology he used to massage that raw data into a global temperature record. As Peter Webster, meteorologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, told Der Spiegel, "It's as if a chef was no longer able to cook his dishes because he lost his recipe." With similar problems in the records of the other two official sources of land-based temperature records, those records are now scientifically worthless unless they can be reconstructed from scratch. The satellite record is now the only scientifically reliable source for global temperature trends.
Getting to the Bottom of Global Warming
Too many people are naïve about the UN and its underlying motives. They recognize that commercial interests seeking private profits are self-interested and untrustworthy regarding possible global warming. But they fail to see that the UN has its own vested interest in the cause of global warming, which can be used to justify massively increased powers and resources for the UN, maybe even global taxes and global government. That is why the UN mandate of the IPCC is not to investigate the possibility of manmade global warming, but to validate it.
The UN has repeatedly demonstrated that it is a corrupt, untrustworthy institution that cannot be trusted with the responsibility of global warming. What is needed is for the American government, not under the current power grasping Administration but under the new Administration in 2013, to appoint a Team B of global warming investigators to document and report to the American people and the whole world alternative views on manmade global warming. That Team B can be led by a leading top scientist like Richard Lindzen, and should include pathbreaking, independent, climate scientists from around the world, as found at the Heartland Conference.
Peter Ferrara is director of entitlement and budget policy at the Institute for Policy Innovation, a policy advisor to the Heartland Institute, a senior fellow at the Social Security Institute, and general counsel of the American Civil Rights Union. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under the first President Bush. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.
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Tuesday, July 20, 2010
When to Doubt a Scientific ‘Consensus’
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By Jay Richards - Tuesday, March 16, 2010
A December 18 Washington Post poll, released on the final day of the ill-fated Copenhagen climate summit, reported “four in ten Americans now saying that they place little or no trust in what scientists have to say about the environment.” Nor is the poll an outlier. Several recent polls have found “climate change” skepticism rising faster than sea levels on Planet Algore (not to be confused with Planet Earth, where sea levels remain relatively stable).
Many of the doubt-inducing climate scientists and their media acolytes attribute this rising skepticism to the stupidity of Americans, philistines unable to appreciate that there is “a scientific consensus on climate change.” One of the benefits of the recent Climategate scandal, which revealed leading climate scientists manipulating data, methods, and peer review to exaggerate the evidence of significant global warming, may be to permanently deflate the rhetorical value of the phrase “scientific consensus.”
Even without the scandal, the very idea of scientific consensus should give us pause. “Consensus,” according to Merriam-Webster, means both “general agreement” and “group solidarity in sentiment and belief.” That pretty much sums up the dilemma. We want to know whether a scientific consensus is based on solid evidence and sound reasoning, or social pressure and groupthink.
Anyone who has studied the history of science knows that scientists are not immune to the non-rational dynamics of the herd. Many false ideas enjoyed consensus opinion at one time. Indeed, the “power of the paradigm” often shapes the thinking of scientists so strongly that they become unable to accurately summarize, let alone evaluate, radical alternatives. Question the paradigm, and some respond with dogmatic fanaticism.
Good Article to continue reading in Full....
Read More http://www.american.com/archive/2010/march/when-to-doubt-a-scientific-consensus
Jay Richards frequently writes for the Enterprise Blog and is a contributing editor of THE AMERICAN.
FURTHER READING: Richards wrote “Greed Is Not Good, and It’s Not Capitalism” and “The Miser versus the Entrepreneur” on why Ayn Rand is so popular today. The American Enterprise Institute’s Steven Hayward explains why many are “In Denial” about Climategate, while Kenneth Green suggests “The Beginning of the End for Cap-and-Trade?”
.
By Jay Richards - Tuesday, March 16, 2010
A December 18 Washington Post poll, released on the final day of the ill-fated Copenhagen climate summit, reported “four in ten Americans now saying that they place little or no trust in what scientists have to say about the environment.” Nor is the poll an outlier. Several recent polls have found “climate change” skepticism rising faster than sea levels on Planet Algore (not to be confused with Planet Earth, where sea levels remain relatively stable).
Many of the doubt-inducing climate scientists and their media acolytes attribute this rising skepticism to the stupidity of Americans, philistines unable to appreciate that there is “a scientific consensus on climate change.” One of the benefits of the recent Climategate scandal, which revealed leading climate scientists manipulating data, methods, and peer review to exaggerate the evidence of significant global warming, may be to permanently deflate the rhetorical value of the phrase “scientific consensus.”
Even without the scandal, the very idea of scientific consensus should give us pause. “Consensus,” according to Merriam-Webster, means both “general agreement” and “group solidarity in sentiment and belief.” That pretty much sums up the dilemma. We want to know whether a scientific consensus is based on solid evidence and sound reasoning, or social pressure and groupthink.
Anyone who has studied the history of science knows that scientists are not immune to the non-rational dynamics of the herd. Many false ideas enjoyed consensus opinion at one time. Indeed, the “power of the paradigm” often shapes the thinking of scientists so strongly that they become unable to accurately summarize, let alone evaluate, radical alternatives. Question the paradigm, and some respond with dogmatic fanaticism.
Good Article to continue reading in Full....
Read More http://www.american.com/archive/2010/march/when-to-doubt-a-scientific-consensus
Jay Richards frequently writes for the Enterprise Blog and is a contributing editor of THE AMERICAN.
FURTHER READING: Richards wrote “Greed Is Not Good, and It’s Not Capitalism” and “The Miser versus the Entrepreneur” on why Ayn Rand is so popular today. The American Enterprise Institute’s Steven Hayward explains why many are “In Denial” about Climategate, while Kenneth Green suggests “The Beginning of the End for Cap-and-Trade?”
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Monday, July 12, 2010
Increase in Arctic ice confounds Global Warming Nuts
.
From Daily Mail - 3rd April 2010
Is Al Gore wrong again?
Makes you kind of doubt he'll stand in front of large groups spouting rhetoric much anymore.
- Well, he really doesn't need to, anyway. He's pretty well set, financially, for the rest of his life. The inconvenient truth about his newest energy-eating mansion is that it comes with a swimming pool, spa, fountains, six fireplaces, five bedrooms and nine baths. He's just continuing his "cut-down-on-your carbon-footprint" hypocrisy. This world-class rat already had a Mansion in Tennessee that burned 12 times the rate of the ordinary U.S. household and uses more electricity in one month than most American homes use in a year. It included energy-eating features that such as floodlights to highlight his trees...
ANYWAY - We digress.
The amount of sea ice covering the Arctic dramatically increased in March, reaching levels, they say, that had not been seen at that time of year for nearly a decade.
Returning ice - after years of declining cover - astonished the climate scientists.
Dr David Whitehouse, of the Global Warming Policy Foundation think-tank, said: 'The recent observations make the 2007 projections that the region would be ice free by 2013 look very unrealistic.'
Read More http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1263207/Increase-Arctic-ice-confounds-doomsayers.html
.
From Daily Mail - 3rd April 2010
Is Al Gore wrong again?
Makes you kind of doubt he'll stand in front of large groups spouting rhetoric much anymore.
- Well, he really doesn't need to, anyway. He's pretty well set, financially, for the rest of his life. The inconvenient truth about his newest energy-eating mansion is that it comes with a swimming pool, spa, fountains, six fireplaces, five bedrooms and nine baths. He's just continuing his "cut-down-on-your carbon-footprint" hypocrisy. This world-class rat already had a Mansion in Tennessee that burned 12 times the rate of the ordinary U.S. household and uses more electricity in one month than most American homes use in a year. It included energy-eating features that such as floodlights to highlight his trees...
ANYWAY - We digress.
The amount of sea ice covering the Arctic dramatically increased in March, reaching levels, they say, that had not been seen at that time of year for nearly a decade.
Returning ice - after years of declining cover - astonished the climate scientists.
Dr David Whitehouse, of the Global Warming Policy Foundation think-tank, said: 'The recent observations make the 2007 projections that the region would be ice free by 2013 look very unrealistic.'
Read More http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1263207/Increase-Arctic-ice-confounds-doomsayers.html
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Thursday, July 8, 2010
CRU cleared of wrong doing? NOT: Parliamentary Trickery
.
On March 31, 2010, after one day of hearings in London, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee published its report on the disclosure of climate data from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, (CRU). The Committee concluded that there was no basis for accusations of dishonesty and no attempt to mislead on the part of the scientists.
Hogwash.
Steve McIntyre explains why the decision by the House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee to vindicate Phil Jones and his crew after just one day of inquiry is bogus. Tree Ring data was some of what was hidden and discarded by the Climatic Research Unit.
Steve McIntyre, posted on Mar 31, 2010 at 1:30 AM
"their suggestion that Jones and others were doing nothing more than “discarding data known to be erroneous” is simply absurd. There was no testimony to the Committee (nor has it ever been suggested) that the tree ring data was measured incorrectly or that the data was “erroneous” – the data is what it is. The tree ring data goes down instead of up – but that doesn’t make it “erroneous”. It only means that the data is a bad proxy – something that was concealed from IPCC readers. It is discouraging to read such bilge."
One commenter posted, "….”it was merely the deletion of inconvenient data”….
What a wonderfully powerful technique! Just think of the new horizons this opens up for scientific progress"
Read More http://climateaudit.org/2010/03/31/tricking-the-committee/
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On March 31, 2010, after one day of hearings in London, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee published its report on the disclosure of climate data from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, (CRU). The Committee concluded that there was no basis for accusations of dishonesty and no attempt to mislead on the part of the scientists.
Hogwash.
Steve McIntyre explains why the decision by the House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee to vindicate Phil Jones and his crew after just one day of inquiry is bogus. Tree Ring data was some of what was hidden and discarded by the Climatic Research Unit.
Steve McIntyre, posted on Mar 31, 2010 at 1:30 AM
"their suggestion that Jones and others were doing nothing more than “discarding data known to be erroneous” is simply absurd. There was no testimony to the Committee (nor has it ever been suggested) that the tree ring data was measured incorrectly or that the data was “erroneous” – the data is what it is. The tree ring data goes down instead of up – but that doesn’t make it “erroneous”. It only means that the data is a bad proxy – something that was concealed from IPCC readers. It is discouraging to read such bilge."
One commenter posted, "….”it was merely the deletion of inconvenient data”….
What a wonderfully powerful technique! Just think of the new horizons this opens up for scientific progress"
Read More http://climateaudit.org/2010/03/31/tricking-the-committee/
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Monday, July 5, 2010
NASA Data Worse Than Climate-Gate Data, Space Agency Admits
.Excerpts From Fox News - March 30, 2010
And the problems with Climate change data continue: NASA put a man on the moon, but it can't tell you what the temperature was when it did. By its own admission, NASA's temperature records are worse than the Climate-gate data.
...NASA concluded that its own climate findings were inferior to those maintained by both the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) - the source of leaked Climate-gate e-mails - and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center...
"NASA's temperature data is worse than the Climate-gate temperature data. According to NASA," wrote Christopher Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who uncovered the e-mails. Horner is skeptical of NCDC's data as well, stating plainly: "Three out of the four temperature data sets stink."
Global warming advocates have argued that minor flaws in "Climate-gate" data aren't important, since all the major data sets arrive at the same conclusion -- Global warming. But skeptics say there's a good reason for that: They all use the same data.
James M. Taylor, senior fellow of environment policy at The Heartland Institute. said,
"There is far too much overlap among the surface temperature data sets to assert with a straight face that they independently verify each other's results."
"The different groups have cooperated in a very friendly way to try to understand different conclusions when they arise," said Dr. James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in the same 2007 e-mail thread. GISS had previously stated that separate analyses by the different agencies "are not independent, as they must use much of the same input observations." (Dr. James Hansen is also one of the head scientists that Senator Inhofe has wanted to call in for questioning in relation to falsified data.)
...Corrections are needed, Dr. Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at Weather Underground, said, "since there are only a few thousand surface temperature recording sites with records going back 100+ years." As such, climate agencies estimate temperatures in various ways for areas where there aren't any thermometers, to account for the overall incomplete global picture.
...But NASA is less confident, having quietly decided to tweak its corrections to the climate data... In an updated analysis of the surface temperature data released on March 19, 2010, NASA 'adjusted' raw temperature station data to account for inaccurate readings caused by heat-absorbing paved surfaces and buildings in a slightly different way.
Wrong placement of the temperature stations is a problem repeatedly underscored by meteorologist Anthony Watts on his SurfaceStations.org Web site. Last month, Watts told FoxNews.com that "90 percent of them don't meet [the government's] old, simple rule called the '100-foot rule' for keeping thermometers 100 feet or more from biasing influence. Ninety percent of them failed that, and we've got documentation."
Read More http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/03/30/nasa-data-worse-than-climategate-data/
.
And the problems with Climate change data continue: NASA put a man on the moon, but it can't tell you what the temperature was when it did. By its own admission, NASA's temperature records are worse than the Climate-gate data.
...NASA concluded that its own climate findings were inferior to those maintained by both the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) - the source of leaked Climate-gate e-mails - and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center...
"NASA's temperature data is worse than the Climate-gate temperature data. According to NASA," wrote Christopher Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who uncovered the e-mails. Horner is skeptical of NCDC's data as well, stating plainly: "Three out of the four temperature data sets stink."
Global warming advocates have argued that minor flaws in "Climate-gate" data aren't important, since all the major data sets arrive at the same conclusion -- Global warming. But skeptics say there's a good reason for that: They all use the same data.
James M. Taylor, senior fellow of environment policy at The Heartland Institute. said,
"There is far too much overlap among the surface temperature data sets to assert with a straight face that they independently verify each other's results."
"The different groups have cooperated in a very friendly way to try to understand different conclusions when they arise," said Dr. James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in the same 2007 e-mail thread. GISS had previously stated that separate analyses by the different agencies "are not independent, as they must use much of the same input observations." (Dr. James Hansen is also one of the head scientists that Senator Inhofe has wanted to call in for questioning in relation to falsified data.)
...Corrections are needed, Dr. Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at Weather Underground, said, "since there are only a few thousand surface temperature recording sites with records going back 100+ years." As such, climate agencies estimate temperatures in various ways for areas where there aren't any thermometers, to account for the overall incomplete global picture.
...But NASA is less confident, having quietly decided to tweak its corrections to the climate data... In an updated analysis of the surface temperature data released on March 19, 2010, NASA 'adjusted' raw temperature station data to account for inaccurate readings caused by heat-absorbing paved surfaces and buildings in a slightly different way.
Wrong placement of the temperature stations is a problem repeatedly underscored by meteorologist Anthony Watts on his SurfaceStations.org Web site. Last month, Watts told FoxNews.com that "90 percent of them don't meet [the government's] old, simple rule called the '100-foot rule' for keeping thermometers 100 feet or more from biasing influence. Ninety percent of them failed that, and we've got documentation."
Read More http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/03/30/nasa-data-worse-than-climategate-data/
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Monday, June 28, 2010
Germans Giving Up on Global Warming
.
Partially from Fox News via Der Spiegel - March 29, 2010
Germans citizens are losing faith in global warming following Climate-gate scandals, according to a new report in Der Spiegel.
The report indicates that just 42 percent of Germans are worried about global warming, down from the 62 percent in 2006.
German news site The Local analyzed the results from the poll. Many people have little faith in the information and prognosis of climate researchers, The Local explained, with a third questioned in the survey not giving them much credence.
This is largely due to mistakes and exaggerations propagated in a report by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
- Following a leak of thousands of e-mails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, an endless catalog of mistakes, lies, coverups, and faulty assumptions by scientists working on the IPCC's report has been detailed in the past few months, all lumped under the name Climategate.
According to The Local, Germany’s Leibniz Community, an umbrella organization including many climate research institutes, broke ranks by calling for the resignation of IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri.
Read More http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/03/29/achtung-germans-giving-global-warming/?test=latestnews
Partially from Fox News via Der Spiegel - March 29, 2010
Germans citizens are losing faith in global warming following Climate-gate scandals, according to a new report in Der Spiegel.
The report indicates that just 42 percent of Germans are worried about global warming, down from the 62 percent in 2006.
German news site The Local analyzed the results from the poll. Many people have little faith in the information and prognosis of climate researchers, The Local explained, with a third questioned in the survey not giving them much credence.
This is largely due to mistakes and exaggerations propagated in a report by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
- Following a leak of thousands of e-mails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, an endless catalog of mistakes, lies, coverups, and faulty assumptions by scientists working on the IPCC's report has been detailed in the past few months, all lumped under the name Climategate.
According to The Local, Germany’s Leibniz Community, an umbrella organization including many climate research institutes, broke ranks by calling for the resignation of IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri.
Read More http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/03/29/achtung-germans-giving-global-warming/?test=latestnews
Sunday, June 20, 2010
A Pending American Temperaturegate
.
Good Article...
From American Thinker, February 24, 2010
"We have been repeatedly told (perhaps "lectured" is a better word) the past twenty years that global warming is occurring. With Climategate and subsequent confessions and bailouts by scientists at the CRU, Penn State, Arizona State, IPCC, et al., we are learning that little to none of the factual content in their "peer reviewed" articles is true. The Medieval Warming Period did occur, and it was warmer than currently; the oceans are not going to flood the plains; and the Arctic Ocean may not be turning into a summer water park. Of course, the mainstream media, especially in the United States, has reported little of this news, and President Obama appears not to be well-informed. But now the global warming story grows more interesting because here in America, we may have our own little "gate." I will call it ATG, for "American Temperaturegate."
NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) informs us, based on their "Adjusted Data" for the period from the last decade of the 19th century to 2006, that the temperature for the contiguous U.S. has increased at a rate of 0.69oC/century. NCDC arrives at this conclusion by massaging raw data from a set of meteorological stations located in the contiguous U.S. which they selected on the basis of a 2.5-degree latitude- and 3.5-degree-longitude grid.
The most-asked question, most recently by D'Aleo and Watts, is whether the NCDC's reported increase is correct. Perhaps the value is due to a dominant use (over-selection) of stations in urban locations or because of other issues, such as leaving out stations at higher altitudes for the more recent history and retaining them for the more distant past.
Here, one aspect is considered -- that of the Urban Heat Island Effect, which is tagged as UHIE.
We selected two sets of meteorological stations (48 each, with one station per each of the lower 48 states) from the NCDC master list. The stations in one set were at rural locations -- a rural set. The stations in the other set were at urban locations -- an urban set. The NCDC latitude and longitude station coordinates were used to "fly over" the locations on a computer, using a GPS map application to confirm the rural and urban characteristics. For each of the 96 stations, the NCDC's raw and adjusted temperature data were entered into a spreadsheet application and studied. The "raw" data are the annual average temperatures of the measured data. The "adjusted" data are the annual average temperatures the NCDC derived from the raw data by making a set of "corrective" assumptions for time of day, type of instrument, etc. and guessing the temperature at stations for missing data based on temperatures of other stations at the same latitude and/or region. For a more in-depth understanding of the NCDC protocols for converting raw data to adjusted data, click here. A summary of the findings is in the following table. The values in the table show that the NCDC's rate of increase of temperature, 0.69oC/century, is based on an over-selection of stations with urban locations.
Station Set oC/Century, 11-Year Average Based on the Use of
Raw Data
Adjusted Data
Rural (48)
0.11
0.58
Urban (48)
0.72
0.72
Rural + Urban (96)
0.47
0.65
The values in the table highlight four important considerations:
1) The rate of increase for rural locations, based on as-measured (raw) values, is small (if not, in effect, zero) at 0.11 oC/century.
2) There is definitely a UHIE in that the urban raw data has a rate of increase of 0.72oC/century. This tells us that man has caused warming in urban locations. This finding should not surprise anyone. On the other hand, because the rural value is 15% of the urban value, the UHIE has not caused warming in the rural locations, and it certainly has not caused a global sense of warming other than the aspect that the urban location values when averaged with the rural values produce an average increase which is larger than that of the rural alone.
3) The rural + urban value for the adjusted data, 0.65oC/century, is still less than the 0.69oC/century published by the NCDC. Thus, likely, there are more urban than rural sites used by the NCDC.
4) And this is the "Temperaturegate" aspect: The NCDC's massaging -- they call it "adjusting" -- has resulted in an increase in the rural values, from a raw value of 0.11oC/century to an adjusted value of 0.58oC/century, and no change in the urban values. That is, the NCDC's treatment has forced the rural value to look more like that of the urban. This is the exact opposite of any rational consideration, given the growth of the sizes of and activities within urban locations, unless deception is the goal.
The criticism this makes of the NCDC's treatment of historical data for the contiguous U.S. is the same as a recent Russian paper made of the HadCRUT treatment of historical temperature data for Russia.
Edward R. Long holds a Ph.D. in physics. He is a retired NASA scientist who is a consultant on radiation physics for space flight and on energy/climate in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Read more http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/a_pending_american_temperature.html
,
Good Article...
From American Thinker, February 24, 2010
"We have been repeatedly told (perhaps "lectured" is a better word) the past twenty years that global warming is occurring. With Climategate and subsequent confessions and bailouts by scientists at the CRU, Penn State, Arizona State, IPCC, et al., we are learning that little to none of the factual content in their "peer reviewed" articles is true. The Medieval Warming Period did occur, and it was warmer than currently; the oceans are not going to flood the plains; and the Arctic Ocean may not be turning into a summer water park. Of course, the mainstream media, especially in the United States, has reported little of this news, and President Obama appears not to be well-informed. But now the global warming story grows more interesting because here in America, we may have our own little "gate." I will call it ATG, for "American Temperaturegate."
NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) informs us, based on their "Adjusted Data" for the period from the last decade of the 19th century to 2006, that the temperature for the contiguous U.S. has increased at a rate of 0.69oC/century. NCDC arrives at this conclusion by massaging raw data from a set of meteorological stations located in the contiguous U.S. which they selected on the basis of a 2.5-degree latitude- and 3.5-degree-longitude grid.
The most-asked question, most recently by D'Aleo and Watts, is whether the NCDC's reported increase is correct. Perhaps the value is due to a dominant use (over-selection) of stations in urban locations or because of other issues, such as leaving out stations at higher altitudes for the more recent history and retaining them for the more distant past.
Here, one aspect is considered -- that of the Urban Heat Island Effect, which is tagged as UHIE.
We selected two sets of meteorological stations (48 each, with one station per each of the lower 48 states) from the NCDC master list. The stations in one set were at rural locations -- a rural set. The stations in the other set were at urban locations -- an urban set. The NCDC latitude and longitude station coordinates were used to "fly over" the locations on a computer, using a GPS map application to confirm the rural and urban characteristics. For each of the 96 stations, the NCDC's raw and adjusted temperature data were entered into a spreadsheet application and studied. The "raw" data are the annual average temperatures of the measured data. The "adjusted" data are the annual average temperatures the NCDC derived from the raw data by making a set of "corrective" assumptions for time of day, type of instrument, etc. and guessing the temperature at stations for missing data based on temperatures of other stations at the same latitude and/or region. For a more in-depth understanding of the NCDC protocols for converting raw data to adjusted data, click here. A summary of the findings is in the following table. The values in the table show that the NCDC's rate of increase of temperature, 0.69oC/century, is based on an over-selection of stations with urban locations.
Station Set oC/Century, 11-Year Average Based on the Use of
Raw Data
Adjusted Data
Rural (48)
0.11
0.58
Urban (48)
0.72
0.72
Rural + Urban (96)
0.47
0.65
The values in the table highlight four important considerations:
1) The rate of increase for rural locations, based on as-measured (raw) values, is small (if not, in effect, zero) at 0.11 oC/century.
2) There is definitely a UHIE in that the urban raw data has a rate of increase of 0.72oC/century. This tells us that man has caused warming in urban locations. This finding should not surprise anyone. On the other hand, because the rural value is 15% of the urban value, the UHIE has not caused warming in the rural locations, and it certainly has not caused a global sense of warming other than the aspect that the urban location values when averaged with the rural values produce an average increase which is larger than that of the rural alone.
3) The rural + urban value for the adjusted data, 0.65oC/century, is still less than the 0.69oC/century published by the NCDC. Thus, likely, there are more urban than rural sites used by the NCDC.
4) And this is the "Temperaturegate" aspect: The NCDC's massaging -- they call it "adjusting" -- has resulted in an increase in the rural values, from a raw value of 0.11oC/century to an adjusted value of 0.58oC/century, and no change in the urban values. That is, the NCDC's treatment has forced the rural value to look more like that of the urban. This is the exact opposite of any rational consideration, given the growth of the sizes of and activities within urban locations, unless deception is the goal.
The criticism this makes of the NCDC's treatment of historical data for the contiguous U.S. is the same as a recent Russian paper made of the HadCRUT treatment of historical temperature data for Russia.
Edward R. Long holds a Ph.D. in physics. He is a retired NASA scientist who is a consultant on radiation physics for space flight and on energy/climate in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Read more http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/a_pending_american_temperature.html
,
Saturday, June 12, 2010
'Archaic' Network Provides Data for Global Warming Theory
.
From Fox News, March 02, 2010
American climate data that provides the basis for trillion-dollar global warming legislation is obtained by a 120-year-old weather system.
The Historical Climatology Network consists of volunteers who take daily surface temperature readings and send their reports in by snail mail to the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). Volunteers take readings at different times of day, round the temperatures to the nearest whole number, and mark the measurements on paper forms.
It is very kind of these volunteers to do this; they're expected to take measurements 365 days a year. But they aren't scientists, and their reports are sometimes a hodgepodge.
Anthony Watts, a meteorologist, has been cataloging problems in the 1,218 weather stations since 2007.
"When the network was put together in 1892, it was mercury thermometers and paper forms. Today it's still much the same," he said.
Requirements aren't very strict: Volunteers need decent vision in at least one eye and a small amount of training to qualify.
Expecting volunteers to be strict about collection of data several times a day 365 days a year in our current busy society is insane. As one would expect, some volunteers don't bother to collect data when they go on vacation or are sick. Watts told FoxNews.com that one volunteer filled in missing data with local weather reports from the newspapers that stacked up while he was out of town. It's highly likely that most, if not all, do that type of thing.
"You've got this kind of a ragtag network that's reporting the numbers for our official climate readings," said Watts. He added that 90 percent of the stations violated governmental guidelines for location, and poor placement compromises data.
They are supposed to be situated in empty clearings, but many are close to heat sources, such as exhaust pipes, trash-burning barrels, chimneys, barbecue grills, and hot asphalt.
If numbers appear faulty or there are more than nine days missing from a month's tally, the whole month is thrown out. Then the Center uses a computer program to determine average temperatures at dozens of nearby stations to guess what the temperature might have been for the month at that station.
Further - the NCDC adjusts for biases caused by the time of day when measurements are taken, for differences between old and new equipment, and to account for flukes that might be caused by poor siting. As if...they can be sure that those bias adjustments are necessary (poor siting?) or that they are adjusting in the right direction...
The NCDC insists its adjusted numbers are an accurate representation of climatic reality, backed up by worldwide trends in air temperature, water temperature, glacier melt, plant flowering and other indicators of climate change.
The final, highly scientific and meticulously gathered numbers - no...wait... numbers that were initially altered by heat sources they were near, then rounded by volunteers, guessed at by the NCDC, then further adjusted to correct for "biases," including uneven times of day when measurements were taken -- ending up with a number that is 0.6 degrees warmer than raw data, which Watts believes is itself suspect...THESE numbers are then used by several top climate research centers, including the U.N.'s International Panel on Climate Change, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia - all three of which have been implicated in Climategate.
Watts says that even a single step — the rounding of the daily temperature — creates a margin of error about as large as the entire global warming trend scientists are hoping to confirm.
But the NCDC says not to worry, the volunteer system is only part of how they gather data. They make sure that the volunteer numbers fit the numbers they've gathered by other methods.
So..why bother with the volunteer system, then? It will probably become moot within a decade anyway.
Lawrimore told FoxNews.com that 5 percent of the historical network has already been automated. Further, a digitally run "Climate Reference Network" (CRN), a system of 114 stations, went fully online in 2008.
Carefully sited in fields around the country, the CRN automatically records daily climate data and transmits it at midnight local time, sending it by satellite directly to NCDC; eliminating snail-mail delay, rounding of numbers and human error.
But NCDC says it will continue to rely on volunteer readings to gather climate data on the local level. (Ummm...why?)
Actually, it sounds to me like the volunteer program exists only to give a good public relations appearance that the NCDC is collecting local data several times a day and cares about that data. The way it really sounds, with all their adjustments - yet a lack of real concern for how the data is gathered - is that the NCDC has decided what the temperature should be, and if it's not...well, then it needs adjusting. Keeping an archaic system justifies manipulating the data.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/03/02/archaic-weather-network-run-with-volunteers/?test=latestnews
From Fox News, March 02, 2010
American climate data that provides the basis for trillion-dollar global warming legislation is obtained by a 120-year-old weather system.
The Historical Climatology Network consists of volunteers who take daily surface temperature readings and send their reports in by snail mail to the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). Volunteers take readings at different times of day, round the temperatures to the nearest whole number, and mark the measurements on paper forms.
It is very kind of these volunteers to do this; they're expected to take measurements 365 days a year. But they aren't scientists, and their reports are sometimes a hodgepodge.
Anthony Watts, a meteorologist, has been cataloging problems in the 1,218 weather stations since 2007.
"When the network was put together in 1892, it was mercury thermometers and paper forms. Today it's still much the same," he said.
Requirements aren't very strict: Volunteers need decent vision in at least one eye and a small amount of training to qualify.
Expecting volunteers to be strict about collection of data several times a day 365 days a year in our current busy society is insane. As one would expect, some volunteers don't bother to collect data when they go on vacation or are sick. Watts told FoxNews.com that one volunteer filled in missing data with local weather reports from the newspapers that stacked up while he was out of town. It's highly likely that most, if not all, do that type of thing.
"You've got this kind of a ragtag network that's reporting the numbers for our official climate readings," said Watts. He added that 90 percent of the stations violated governmental guidelines for location, and poor placement compromises data.
They are supposed to be situated in empty clearings, but many are close to heat sources, such as exhaust pipes, trash-burning barrels, chimneys, barbecue grills, and hot asphalt.
If numbers appear faulty or there are more than nine days missing from a month's tally, the whole month is thrown out. Then the Center uses a computer program to determine average temperatures at dozens of nearby stations to guess what the temperature might have been for the month at that station.
Further - the NCDC adjusts for biases caused by the time of day when measurements are taken, for differences between old and new equipment, and to account for flukes that might be caused by poor siting. As if...they can be sure that those bias adjustments are necessary (poor siting?) or that they are adjusting in the right direction...
The NCDC insists its adjusted numbers are an accurate representation of climatic reality, backed up by worldwide trends in air temperature, water temperature, glacier melt, plant flowering and other indicators of climate change.
The final, highly scientific and meticulously gathered numbers - no...wait... numbers that were initially altered by heat sources they were near, then rounded by volunteers, guessed at by the NCDC, then further adjusted to correct for "biases," including uneven times of day when measurements were taken -- ending up with a number that is 0.6 degrees warmer than raw data, which Watts believes is itself suspect...THESE numbers are then used by several top climate research centers, including the U.N.'s International Panel on Climate Change, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia - all three of which have been implicated in Climategate.
Watts says that even a single step — the rounding of the daily temperature — creates a margin of error about as large as the entire global warming trend scientists are hoping to confirm.
But the NCDC says not to worry, the volunteer system is only part of how they gather data. They make sure that the volunteer numbers fit the numbers they've gathered by other methods.
So..why bother with the volunteer system, then? It will probably become moot within a decade anyway.
Lawrimore told FoxNews.com that 5 percent of the historical network has already been automated. Further, a digitally run "Climate Reference Network" (CRN), a system of 114 stations, went fully online in 2008.
Carefully sited in fields around the country, the CRN automatically records daily climate data and transmits it at midnight local time, sending it by satellite directly to NCDC; eliminating snail-mail delay, rounding of numbers and human error.
But NCDC says it will continue to rely on volunteer readings to gather climate data on the local level. (Ummm...why?)
Actually, it sounds to me like the volunteer program exists only to give a good public relations appearance that the NCDC is collecting local data several times a day and cares about that data. The way it really sounds, with all their adjustments - yet a lack of real concern for how the data is gathered - is that the NCDC has decided what the temperature should be, and if it's not...well, then it needs adjusting. Keeping an archaic system justifies manipulating the data.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/03/02/archaic-weather-network-run-with-volunteers/?test=latestnews
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Jail the Faux Scientists - Climategate: Senator Ask for DOJ Investigation
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Excerpts from Pajamas Media - February 21, 2010- by Charlie Martin
Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) asked the Obama administration to investigate what he called “the greatest scientific scandal of our generation” — ie Climategate: the actions of climate scientists and admissions by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Dr. Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University and Dr. James Hansen of Columbia University and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies are both of interest.
- Yeah, like the Obama Administration would do that.
Senator Inhofe also asked that Al Gore to be called back to the Senate to testify. Inhofe said, “In [Gore's] science fiction movie, every assertion has been rebutted.”
- Well, that slime bucket will never subject himself to honest scrutiny. He'll only attend functions where he knows no one will confront him.
According to Pajamas Media, the Senator Inhofe minority staff report from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee alleges:
Dr. Murari Lal, editor of the IPCC AR4 report, admitted to the London Daily Mail that he had known the 2035 date was false, but was included in the report anyway “purely to put political pressure on world leaders.”
Senator Inhofe wants an investigation into research misconduct and criminal acts by the researchers. Further, Inhofe wants the EPA to drop its "Finding" that carbon dioxide is a pollutant and Congress to withdraw funding for consideration of carbon dioxide as a pollutant.
- Of all the stupid, ridiculous things the EPA and Congress have ever done...What was next, deeming all humans and animals major polluters for breathing out CO2??
The staff report noted the four major issues revealed by Climategate:
- Are you kidding me? You mean there's a chance that they WON'T go to jail??)
Dr. Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit has already been forced to step aside because of the Climategate FOIA issues, and Dr. Michael Mann of Penn State is currently under investigation by the university for potential misconduct.
Senator Inhofe believes Dr. Hansen and Dr. Mann should be “let go” from their posts “for the good of the institutions involved.”
- Excuse me, Senator Inhofe, but the lies of these men have affected the entire world. I pray that the conservatives in our government won't allow them to walk away with a slap on the hand.
- Of course, the Obama Administration probably won't even acknowledge Senator Inhofe's appeal. The Democratic majority has blocked previous attempts by Inhofe to investigate issues with climate science. We might have to wait and hope for a new administration before justice is done.
For more of PJM’s Climategate coverage, read Charlie Martin’s “Climategate: The World’s Biggest Story, Everywhere but Here.”
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/climategate-and-the-law-senator-inhofe-to-ask-for-congressional-criminal-investigation-pajamas-mediapjtv-exclusive/
.
Excerpts from Pajamas Media - February 21, 2010- by Charlie Martin
Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) asked the Obama administration to investigate what he called “the greatest scientific scandal of our generation” — ie Climategate: the actions of climate scientists and admissions by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Dr. Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University and Dr. James Hansen of Columbia University and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies are both of interest.
- Yeah, like the Obama Administration would do that.
Senator Inhofe also asked that Al Gore to be called back to the Senate to testify. Inhofe said, “In [Gore's] science fiction movie, every assertion has been rebutted.”
- Well, that slime bucket will never subject himself to honest scrutiny. He'll only attend functions where he knows no one will confront him.
According to Pajamas Media, the Senator Inhofe minority staff report from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee alleges:
"[The] Minority Staff of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works believe the scientists involved may have violated fundamental ethical principles governing taxpayer-funded research and, in some cases, federal laws. In addition to these findings, we believe the emails and accompanying documents seriously compromise the IPCC -backed “consensus” and its central conclusion that anthropogenic emissions are inexorably leading to environmental catastrophes."According to Pajamas Media,
"The exposure of the "Climategate files" - ie leaked emails - has led to a reexamination of the IPCC Assessment Reports, especially the fourth report (AR4), published in 2007. The IPCC AR4 report was named by Environmental Protection Agency head Lisa Jackson as one of the major sources of scientific support for the agency’s Endangerment Finding, the first step towards allowing the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant."The IPCC has been forced to retract a number of conclusions — such as that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 - and has been forced to admit that the report was based on reports from environmental activist groups instead of peer-reviewed scientific research.
Dr. Murari Lal, editor of the IPCC AR4 report, admitted to the London Daily Mail that he had known the 2035 date was false, but was included in the report anyway “purely to put political pressure on world leaders.”
Senator Inhofe wants an investigation into research misconduct and criminal acts by the researchers. Further, Inhofe wants the EPA to drop its "Finding" that carbon dioxide is a pollutant and Congress to withdraw funding for consideration of carbon dioxide as a pollutant.
- Of all the stupid, ridiculous things the EPA and Congress have ever done...What was next, deeming all humans and animals major polluters for breathing out CO2??
The staff report noted the four major issues revealed by Climategate:
1.Scientists cooperated to obstruct the release of information and counter-evidence.The report also notes potential legal issues raised by Climategate:
2.Scientists manipulated data to reach predetermined conclusions.
3.Scientists colluded to pressure journal editors not to publish work questioning the “consensus.”
4.Scientists involved in the report assumed the role of climate activists attempting to influence public opinion while claiming scientific objectivity.
1.Scientific misconduct may violate the Shelby Amendment — requiring open access to the results of government-funded research — and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) policies on scientific misconduct.If proven, these charges could debar the Scientists from federally funded research and maybe to criminal penalties.
2.Potential for violations of the Federal False Statements and False Claims Acts, which may have both civil and criminal penalties.
3.Possibility of an obstruction of Congress in congressional proceeds, which may constitute an obstruction of justice.
- Are you kidding me? You mean there's a chance that they WON'T go to jail??)
Dr. Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit has already been forced to step aside because of the Climategate FOIA issues, and Dr. Michael Mann of Penn State is currently under investigation by the university for potential misconduct.
Senator Inhofe believes Dr. Hansen and Dr. Mann should be “let go” from their posts “for the good of the institutions involved.”
- Excuse me, Senator Inhofe, but the lies of these men have affected the entire world. I pray that the conservatives in our government won't allow them to walk away with a slap on the hand.
- Of course, the Obama Administration probably won't even acknowledge Senator Inhofe's appeal. The Democratic majority has blocked previous attempts by Inhofe to investigate issues with climate science. We might have to wait and hope for a new administration before justice is done.
For more of PJM’s Climategate coverage, read Charlie Martin’s “Climategate: The World’s Biggest Story, Everywhere but Here.”
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/climategate-and-the-law-senator-inhofe-to-ask-for-congressional-criminal-investigation-pajamas-mediapjtv-exclusive/
.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Vindicated: Global Warming denier "was right after all"
.
I like this guy. Honest, despite the huge consequences. There aren't many people like that in this world. God bless him.
National Post February 18, 2010, 7:10 AM by Lawrence Solomon
"De Telegraaf, the Netherlands' largest daily newspaper, has totally vindicated the country's most prominent global warming denier in a prominent article entitled "Henk Tennekes - He was right after all."
"Tennekes was the director of the Netherlands Meteorological Institute, KNMI, until the early 1990s, when his skepticism of the climate science coming out of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change led to his forced resignation.
A translation into English of De Telegraaf's no-holds-barred vindication appears here.
Excerpts:
"In the nineties, Henk Tennekes was made to clear his desk and resign as Director of the KNMI (Dutch Meteorological Institute). His sin? In a newspaper column the world-renowned meteorologist had disproved all the bold claims about climate change.
Rehabilitation of the country’s first CO2-exile
By Edwin Timmer
ARNHEM - “I worry a lot these days. I worry about the arrogance of scientists who blithely claim that they are here to solve the climate problem, as long as they receive massive increases in funding. I worry about the way they covet new supercomputers.
Others talk about ”stabilizing the climate“. I’m terrified of the arrogance, vanity
and recklessness of those words. Why is it so difficult to demonstrate a little humility?“
Is this a response to recent climate scandals? Sober criticism of the failed IPCC UN climate panel that exaggerated the melting of the glaciers?
No, these are extracts from a column which appeared exactly twenty(!) years ago in a British scientific journal. When the then Director of Policy Development at the KNMI
(Holland’s Met Office,) Henk Tennekes put the cat among the pigeons. Watch out for all the unsubstantiated claims about climate!
“My role as research director was regarded by the people around me as primarily that of provider of the next even bigger computer. But I wanted to get to the heart of the problem. Are these forecast models reliable?
Not funny, everyone thought. Looking for the truth? You must be mad! That means you have to accept the fallibility of these models. That’s much too dangerous. Most of the KNMI researchers were happy if they could just sit in the cafeteria with their like-minded colleagues.”
Greenhouse Theory
The now 73-year-old scientist still persists in his fundamental criticism of climate modelling, for instance the often-heard argument that ‘95 percent of the greenhouse
theory remains valid’.
Tennekes: “Why does the IPCC ignore the oceans? The top 2½ meters of all sea-water contain as much heat as the total amount of heat in the atmosphere. Why has the topmost kilometre of the oceans turned colder during the last five years? We don’t know. Until we understand what is happening with the heat in the oceans, the models
which aim to predict the climate are totally useless.
“I am much more anxious about the cooling of the earth. The ultimate fate of this planet is a new ice age. If the main wheat belts of the Northern hemisphere fail to
produce their much needed harvest, heaven knows how we will feed ourselves.
Well, it could be that warming will lead to a disaster. I still want to accept that. But you must weigh this unknown risk against other problems. Why should we spend insane amounts to prevent CO2 emissions, while the risk is uncertain and any potential benefits of the solution unsure? With much less money we could eradicate malaria from this planet. Or fight HIV, before the entire African population decimates itself“.
Intimate clique
“No, I’m not surprised about the fuss surrounding current climate research. This storm has been brewing for years. The contributions of climate sceptics disappear unnoticed in the rubbish bin.
IPCC is run by an intimate clique of only a few dozen people. I believe that Minister Cramer (Environment) is a victim of the spin-doctors who surround her, people who believe ’good causes’ are served best by evil means. But these green bureaucrats do not understand the meaning of the proverb. It is the road to HELL that
is paved with good intentions, not the road to HEAVEN. You can print that.“
Translation: Richard Sumner (UK)
A translation into English of De Telegraaf's full no-holds-barred vindication appears here.
Read more: http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2010/02/18/lawrence-solomon-vindication-dutch-global-warming-denier-quot-was-right-after-all-quot.aspx
.
I like this guy. Honest, despite the huge consequences. There aren't many people like that in this world. God bless him.
National Post February 18, 2010, 7:10 AM by Lawrence Solomon
"De Telegraaf, the Netherlands' largest daily newspaper, has totally vindicated the country's most prominent global warming denier in a prominent article entitled "Henk Tennekes - He was right after all."
"Tennekes was the director of the Netherlands Meteorological Institute, KNMI, until the early 1990s, when his skepticism of the climate science coming out of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change led to his forced resignation.
A translation into English of De Telegraaf's no-holds-barred vindication appears here.
Excerpts:
"In the nineties, Henk Tennekes was made to clear his desk and resign as Director of the KNMI (Dutch Meteorological Institute). His sin? In a newspaper column the world-renowned meteorologist had disproved all the bold claims about climate change.
Rehabilitation of the country’s first CO2-exile
By Edwin Timmer
ARNHEM - “I worry a lot these days. I worry about the arrogance of scientists who blithely claim that they are here to solve the climate problem, as long as they receive massive increases in funding. I worry about the way they covet new supercomputers.
Others talk about ”stabilizing the climate“. I’m terrified of the arrogance, vanity
and recklessness of those words. Why is it so difficult to demonstrate a little humility?“
Is this a response to recent climate scandals? Sober criticism of the failed IPCC UN climate panel that exaggerated the melting of the glaciers?
No, these are extracts from a column which appeared exactly twenty(!) years ago in a British scientific journal. When the then Director of Policy Development at the KNMI
(Holland’s Met Office,) Henk Tennekes put the cat among the pigeons. Watch out for all the unsubstantiated claims about climate!
“My role as research director was regarded by the people around me as primarily that of provider of the next even bigger computer. But I wanted to get to the heart of the problem. Are these forecast models reliable?
Not funny, everyone thought. Looking for the truth? You must be mad! That means you have to accept the fallibility of these models. That’s much too dangerous. Most of the KNMI researchers were happy if they could just sit in the cafeteria with their like-minded colleagues.”
Greenhouse Theory
The now 73-year-old scientist still persists in his fundamental criticism of climate modelling, for instance the often-heard argument that ‘95 percent of the greenhouse
theory remains valid’.
Tennekes: “Why does the IPCC ignore the oceans? The top 2½ meters of all sea-water contain as much heat as the total amount of heat in the atmosphere. Why has the topmost kilometre of the oceans turned colder during the last five years? We don’t know. Until we understand what is happening with the heat in the oceans, the models
which aim to predict the climate are totally useless.
“I am much more anxious about the cooling of the earth. The ultimate fate of this planet is a new ice age. If the main wheat belts of the Northern hemisphere fail to
produce their much needed harvest, heaven knows how we will feed ourselves.
Well, it could be that warming will lead to a disaster. I still want to accept that. But you must weigh this unknown risk against other problems. Why should we spend insane amounts to prevent CO2 emissions, while the risk is uncertain and any potential benefits of the solution unsure? With much less money we could eradicate malaria from this planet. Or fight HIV, before the entire African population decimates itself“.
Intimate clique
“No, I’m not surprised about the fuss surrounding current climate research. This storm has been brewing for years. The contributions of climate sceptics disappear unnoticed in the rubbish bin.
IPCC is run by an intimate clique of only a few dozen people. I believe that Minister Cramer (Environment) is a victim of the spin-doctors who surround her, people who believe ’good causes’ are served best by evil means. But these green bureaucrats do not understand the meaning of the proverb. It is the road to HELL that
is paved with good intentions, not the road to HEAVEN. You can print that.“
Translation: Richard Sumner (UK)
A translation into English of De Telegraaf's full no-holds-barred vindication appears here.
Read more: http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2010/02/18/lawrence-solomon-vindication-dutch-global-warming-denier-quot-was-right-after-all-quot.aspx
.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Scientist admits "There has been NO global warming for 15 years"
.
Express.co.uk - Monday February 15,2010
The man at the center of the “Climategate” affair, Professor Phil Jones, Director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), finally admitted that there had been no “statistically significant” rise in temperatures since 1995.
His admission came as new research cast doubt on temperature records collected around the world. Those records had been used to support the crazy global warming theory.
Researchers admitted yesterday that warming recorded by weather stations was often caused by local factors rather than global change.
http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/158214
.
Express.co.uk - Monday February 15,2010
The man at the center of the “Climategate” affair, Professor Phil Jones, Director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), finally admitted that there had been no “statistically significant” rise in temperatures since 1995.
His admission came as new research cast doubt on temperature records collected around the world. Those records had been used to support the crazy global warming theory.
Researchers admitted yesterday that warming recorded by weather stations was often caused by local factors rather than global change.
http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/158214
.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
More Lies: Climate Researchers Manipulated & Hid Data
,From The Guardian Monday 1 February 2010 - Fred Pearce
E-mails leaked by hackers from the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit (CRU) turned up additional concerns. A study by the London paper, The Guardian, found serious flaws in measurements from Chinese weather stations, noting that documents from them could not be produced.
The e-mails revealed that Chinese monitoring stations were moved several times, making their data unreliable. This data was cited by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to prove rapid global warming in the last few decades.
Further, according to The Guardian, CRU chief scientist Phil Jones withheld information requested under freedom of information laws. Of 105 freedom of information requests concerning the climatic research unit (CRU), only 10 had been released in full.
There had been some question concerning the work of Jones's collaborator, Wei-Chyung Wang of the University at Albany-SUNY. Allegations are that he committed fraud in his research cited by the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC (2007) on
“urban heat islands” (a critical issue). Douglas J. Keenan has detailed it in a paper - THE FRAUD ALLEGATION AGAINST SOME CLIMATIC RESEARCH OF WEI-CHYUNG WANG
Wang was cleared of scientific fraud by his university, but new information brought on by the emails indicates at least one senior colleague had serious concerns about the affair and told Jones that he feared that Wang had "screwed up."
"The former director of the unit, Tom Wigley, harboured grave doubts about the cover-up of the shortcomings in Jones and Wang's work. Wigley was in charge of CRU when the original paper was published. "Were you taking W-CW [Wang] on trust?" he asked Jones. He continued: "Why, why, why did you and W-CW not simply say this right at the start?"
Unfortunately, it now seems that documents Wang claimed would exonerate him and Jones do not exist.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/02/climate-researchers-manipulated-hid-data/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/01/leaked-emails-climate-jones-chinese
E-mails leaked by hackers from the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit (CRU) turned up additional concerns. A study by the London paper, The Guardian, found serious flaws in measurements from Chinese weather stations, noting that documents from them could not be produced.
The e-mails revealed that Chinese monitoring stations were moved several times, making their data unreliable. This data was cited by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to prove rapid global warming in the last few decades.
Further, according to The Guardian, CRU chief scientist Phil Jones withheld information requested under freedom of information laws. Of 105 freedom of information requests concerning the climatic research unit (CRU), only 10 had been released in full.
There had been some question concerning the work of Jones's collaborator, Wei-Chyung Wang of the University at Albany-SUNY. Allegations are that he committed fraud in his research cited by the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC (2007) on
“urban heat islands” (a critical issue). Douglas J. Keenan has detailed it in a paper - THE FRAUD ALLEGATION AGAINST SOME CLIMATIC RESEARCH OF WEI-CHYUNG WANG
Wang was cleared of scientific fraud by his university, but new information brought on by the emails indicates at least one senior colleague had serious concerns about the affair and told Jones that he feared that Wang had "screwed up."
"The former director of the unit, Tom Wigley, harboured grave doubts about the cover-up of the shortcomings in Jones and Wang's work. Wigley was in charge of CRU when the original paper was published. "Were you taking W-CW [Wang] on trust?" he asked Jones. He continued: "Why, why, why did you and W-CW not simply say this right at the start?"
Unfortunately, it now seems that documents Wang claimed would exonerate him and Jones do not exist.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/02/climate-researchers-manipulated-hid-data/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/01/leaked-emails-climate-jones-chinese
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