Climategate

"Carbon (Dioxide) trading is now the fastest growing commodities market on earth.....And here’s the great thing about it. Unlike traditional commodities markets, which will eventually involve delivery to someone in physical form, the carbon (dioxide) market is based on lack of delivery of an invisible substance to no-one. Since the market revolves around creating carbon (dioxide) credits, or finding carbon (dioxide) reduction projects whose benefits can then be sold to those with a surplus of emissions, it is entirely intangible." (Telegraph)

This blog has been tracking the 'Global Warming Scam' for over ten years now. There are a very large number of articles being published in blogs and more in the MSM who are waking up to the fact the public refuse to be conned any more and are objecting to the 'green madness' of governments and the artificially high price of energy. This blog will now be concentrating on the major stories as we move to the pragmatic view of 'not if, but when' and how the situation is managed back to reality. To quote Professor Lindzen, "a lot of people are going to look pretty silly"


PS: If you have arrived here on a page link, then click on the HOME link...

Thursday 27 March 2014

Maybe the IPCC’s Modelers Should Try to Simulate Earth’s Oceans

WUWT
"...The climate science community somehow believes their science is settled…or at least we’ve been led to believe it’s settled. But the climate scientists who contribute to the IPCC are no closer to being able to discern man’s fingerprint on climate than they were in their first report back in 1990. That is a sad reality that they refuse to accept. Or maybe the scientists understand it, and it’s the politicians, those who fund climate science and steer its course, those who are ultimately responsible for its failings, who refuse to accept that climate science has been stymied by its focus on the assumed effects of manmade greenhouse gases…without understanding of the fundamental roles of natural variability."

Wednesday 26 March 2014

When will climate feedbacks fully function? Not for millennia

WUWT
"...In passing, there is a characteristically hysterical recent piece (in The Guardian, inevitably) by the accident-prone Australian professional bed-wetter Graham Redfearn, saying that from 2002-2011 some 260 billion tons of ice a year has melted from Greenland. Oo-er! Even if that were the case, sea level would have risen by just 0.7 mm a year, or little more than a quarter of an inch over the decade. ....
Finally, it is worth reiterating that there is no, repeat no, consensus in the scientific literature in support of the IPCC’s assertion that recent warming is mostly manmade. Legates et al. (2013) established that only 0.3% of abstracts of 11,944 climate science papers published in the 21 years 1991-2011 explicitly stated that we are responsible for more than half of the 0.69 Cº global warming since we began to have a theoretically-detectable effect on global temperature in 1950."

Another alarmist claim based on "computer models"

Climate Change Dispatch
"Another alarmist claim whereby if they say it often enough, it will be true. There has been no observable temperature changes in the oceans, only in computer-model predictions. And contrary to the WMO, both NASA and the MET have admitted there has been a sixteen-year pause in worldwide warming."

Warm, Cold, Dry,Wet? It’s All your Fault Anyway!

NALPKT
" ......this report seems to have been leaked to the Met Office’s friends, the BBC & Guardian, even though there is nothing on their own website. .... There is, in fact, nothing new in the report, which has no doubt been wheeled out to frighten us all. It simply repeats previous forecasts, such as the UK Climate Projections Report and DEFRA’s Climate Change Risk Assessment. Meanwhile, despite the last few months, UK winters have been growing steadily colder since 2007, and the long term trend is lower than in the 1920’s."

The Met Office got every seasonal forecast wrong for about five years, before they abandoned them. But they are back now with unverifiable 25 year forecasts :

Real Science
"Once a climate junkie gets hooked on government funding crack, apparently they can never get off."

GLOBAL WARMING: A Boon to Humans and Other Animals

Thomas Gale Moore,Senior Fellow,Hoover Institution (1995)     (More)

Raising the specter of disaster as well, Vice President Al Gore has called the threat of global warming "the most serious problem our civilization faces."[3] In fact, he has styled those who dispute it as "self-interested" and compared them to spokesmen for the tobacco industry who have questioned the relation of smoking to cancer. But Gore is misinformed; many disinterested scientists, including climatologists with no financial interest other than preventing wasteful expenditures of society's limited resources, question the evidence and the models that underlie the warming hypothesis.
In fact, the evidence supporting the claim that the earth has grown warmer is shaky; the theory is weak; and the models on which the conclusions are based cannot even replicate the current climate. It is asserted, for example, that over the last hundred years the average temperature at the earth's surface has gone up by 0.5deg. Centigrade or about 1deg. Fahrenheit. Given the paucity of data in the Southern Hemisphere, the evidence that in the United States, with the best records, temperatures have failed to rise; the British naval records that find no significant change in temperatures at sea since the mid-1800s; and that the reported increases occurred mainly prior to 1940 -- before the rapid rise in CO2 -- the public is entitled to be wary. Moreover, even the National Academy of Sciences is skeptical of the validity of the computer models and warns that the modeling of clouds -- a key factor -- is inadequate and poorly understood.[4] "   (A Must Read)

Tuesday 25 March 2014

Some comments on the Royal Society report

Bishop Hill
"I suspect that in the not too distant future if the "pause" continues, the signatories to the report, and past FRSs and PRSs who have actively and politically promoted anthropogenic climate warming/change will be thought to have discredited the Royal Society. Then members may remember the advice of its member the late New Zealander Charles Fleming, a distinguished ornithologist and avian palaeontologist; “Any body of scientists that adopts pressure group tactics is endangering its status as the guardian of principles of scientific philosophy that are worth keeping.” I suggest The Royal Society should leave pseudo science and “scientific” advocacy to green NGOs and politicians who know no better."

The return of Secret Santa

Bishop Hill
" Secret Santa, the mole within IPCC Working Group II, has delivered his latest batch of goodies: The latest draft of the WGII Summary for Policymakers, currently being discussed in Yokahama A document floating round the conference that demonstrates through its title - "Hope for our Earth" - the policy-neutral environment in which delegates are operating."
IPCC Working Group II unleashed while documents leaked (WUWT)

Sunday 23 March 2014

Finally, Some Real Climate Science

Quadrant Online
"The American Physical Society has been amongst the loudest alarmist organisations whipping up hysteria about CO2, but a review of its position that included evidence from six experts, including three sceptics, strongly suggests the tide has turned".

UN Employees as IPCC Authors

Donna Laframboise
"The IPCC’s Chapter 7 was not written by neutral, dispassionate scholars. Three UN employees are among its authors."

Biofuels do more harm than good, UN warns

Telegraph
" The United Nations will officially warn that growing crops to make “green” biofuel harms the environment and drives up food prices, The Telegraph can disclose. A leaked draft of a UN report condemns the widespread use of biofuels made from crops as a replacement for petrol and diesel. It says that biofuels, rather than combating the effects of global warming, could make them worse. The draft report represents a dramatic about-turn for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Its previous assessment on climate change, in 2007, was widely condemned by environmentalists for giving the green light to large-scale biofuel production. The latest report instead puts pressure on world leaders to scrap policies promoting the use of biofuel for transport."

Why Met Office gaffes are worse than a joke

Christopher Booker of The Sunday Telegraph
" We are, of course, only too familiar with the way the computer models relied on by our global-warming-besotted Met Office have so consistently in recent years got their seasonal weather forecasts 180 degrees wrong: how its “ barbecue summer” of 2009 was a washout; how its October 2010 forecast that December would be warmer than average preceded the coldest December ever; how its March 2012 prediction that we were in for a dry April was immediately followed by the wettest April on record; and so forth.
What makes this much more than a joke, however, is that the other branches of government are obliged to believe these predictions and to shape their response accordingly. I recently described how the Met Office’s forecast last November – that we were in for a drier than average winter – prompted the Environment Agency to allow flooding of a key part of the Somerset Levels, in the interests of keeping enough water for birds. When this was followed by the wettest January on record, the already flooded area owned by Natural England blocked the draining of so much land further east that disaster was inevitable."

Wednesday 19 March 2014

Decarbonization Can Only Have Marginal Effects On Future Climate At Best. Ultra-High Price For Negligible Results

NoTricksZone
"As global temperatures have already been showing stagnation or cooling [v] over the last seventeen years, the world should fear the real and detrimental effects of global cooling [vi] rather than being hysterical about limited, beneficial or now non-existent warming"

Switzerland’s ‘WeltWoche’ Features “The Silence Of The Climate Scientists” … How The IPCC “Concealed Good News”

NoTricksZone
"The print edition of the Swiss Die WeltWoche has a story on the IPCC and accusations that climate scientists have misled policymakers: The Silence of the Climate Scientists, authored by Markus Schär.
In it Schär claims that “the IPCC lead by Thomas Stocker concealed good news in its report” and that “a new report shows that the warnings of climate change have to be called off.”
Weltwoche writes that in view of the record Antarctic sea ice, 17 years of no global warming and cold records peppering the globe, it is obvious that “the climate models of climate scientists can’t be right“.

Mann's latest propaganda: "Global Warming Will Cross a Dangerous Threshold in 2036"

The Hockey Schtick
"Fraudster Michael Mann has published an article in Scientific American today entitled "Why Global Warming Will Cross a Dangerous Threshold in 2036," subtitled, "Emitting carbon dioxide at current rates will soon push Earth’s temperature up by 2 degrees Celsius. Here’s how to make the calculation yourself."......1. Mann uses the repeatedly debunked "IPCC/Myhre formula" for CO2 radiative forcing: .....Even if radiative forcing did control the surface temperature [it doesn't- convection, phase change, pressure, atmospheric mass do], Mann's radiative forcing calculations are exaggerated by at least 3.8 times due to false assumptions of water vapor positive feedback. Mann's claims are once again shown to be just more hockey stick propaganda, oblivious to the abject failure of climate models based upon these same calculations."

Pound the Table Climate Science

Junk Science
The rule in the practice of law is–if the law or the facts don’t support your position, pound the table. I keep seeing this double down phenomenon among the climate is warming and changing fanatics–all events are evidence of proof of their theory that carbon dioxide will cause a terrible catastrophe. The Chicken Littles must be happy or they wouldn’t be so noisy. Happy means they are well-funded..... 
Nothing makes the knuckleheads more willing to pound the table than big money. All the big money is for statist environmentalism.
Billion is a thousand Millions, remember, so this is not chicken feed, going to a relatively small cottage industry of junksters and tricksters."

Un-cherry-picking and the Singer Event

WUWT

To AAAS: What we know? Earth hasn’t warmed significantly in over a decade, climate models failed to predict this

WUWT
Roger A. Pielke Sr. says:"The AAAS report is even worse than the AGU and AMS Statements (and I thought that would be hard to do). I know several of the authors of the AAAC report, and respect their science within their immediate area of expertise. However, the blatant advocacy and absurd statements such as
“The science linking human activities to climate change is analogous to the science linking
smoking to lung and cardiovascular diseases.”
show that this report is just political theater.
There are no health benefits from smoking, only health risks. CO2 is required for life on Earth including plant growth and function."

The EU's Green Taliban Are Another Reason for Britain to Quit Europe

HuffPost
"Green Party Leader Natalie Bennett called for all government ministers and advisors who question man's contribution to climate change (even those without an environment brief) to be sacked.
Nailing his authoritarian credentials firmly to the mast, Labour Leader Ed Miliband followed suit to announce during PMQs that if he were in charge, anyone who dared to question man-made climate change (or presumably, anything else in his 'Little Ed Book') will be banished for eternity into political exile.
Australia's John Howard noted that climate change has become a "substitute" for religion. This is true for many on the Left who aggressively denounce those who question their belief as "deniers", a vicious and cynical political ploy adopted to associate those who question man-made climate change with those who deny the genocide of the Jews during World War II. Well, I've been to Auschwitz/Birkenhau and seen the hard and appalling evidence there, but how can this be equated in any way with the mass scientific uncertainties over man-made climate change?
Some of the most active disciples in the religion for climate change are the unelected EU bureaucrats who currently rule over the UK. With the EU environmental coffers standing at a rather generous 20 per cent slice of the seven-year €960 billion EU budget, you can understand their eagerness to promote Doomsday climate change predictions."

Tuesday 18 March 2014

The one-sided Conversation

WUWT
At The Conversation, a taxpayer-funded propaganda website based in Australia, Dr Rod Lamberts has suggested that in the climate debate those pushing the Party Line should disregard the mere facts and should advance their invaluable opinions instead.
He writes that Tony Abbott, Australia’s prime minister, Andrew Bolt, Australia’s chief sceptic, and one Monckton, Australia’s honorary visiting sceptic, should not be heeded, for we are mere “deniers” (that hate-speech word again).
I wrote the following article in reply, but The Conversation refused to publish it........
..............In the meantime, here is the article The Conversation dared not print."

Monday 17 March 2014

Statement of Patrick Moore, Ph.D. Before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee


After 15 years in the top committee I had to leave as Greenpeace took a sharp turn to the political left, and began to adopt policies that I could not accept from my scientific perspective. Climate change was not an issue when I abandoned Greenpeace, but it certainly is now.
There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 100 years. If there were such a proof it would be written down for all to see. No actual proof, as it is understood in science, exists.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states: “It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.” (My emphasis)
“Extremely likely” is not a scientific term but rather a judgment, as in a court of law. The IPCC defines “extremely likely” as a “95-100% probability”. But upon further examination it is clear that these numbers are not the result of any mathematical calculation or statistical analysis. They have been “invented” as a construct within the IPCC report to express “expert judgment”, as determined by the IPCC contributors.
These judgments are based, almost entirely, on the results of sophisticated computer models designed to predict the future of global climate. As noted by many observers, including Dr. Freeman Dyson of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies, a computer model is not a crystal ball. We may think it sophisticated, but we cannot predict the future with a computer model any more than we can make predictions with crystal balls, throwing bones, or by appealing to the Gods."

Download here

Sunday 16 March 2014

Inhofe: Obama Wasted $120 Billion on Global Warming Which Could Buy 1400 F-35s

CNSNews
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Wednesday at a hearing on the Defense Department’s Fiscal Year 2015 budget that President Barack Obama has wasted $120 billion on global warming over the past five years – money that would be better spent on the military.
“I've been working on this for quite some time ... In the last five years, between 2009 and 2014, the president has spent $120 billion on the environmental agenda, mostly global warming, climate and that type of thing,” said Inhofe. “And in that respect, if you'll just take the amount that was not authorized by Congress -- and I'm talking about the environmental agenda, you could actually buy 1,400 F-35s.”

The bonfire of insanity: Woodland is shipped 3,800 miles and burned in Drax power station. It belches out more CO2 than coal at a huge cost YOU pay for... and all for a cleaner, greener Britain!

Daily Mail
"In fact, Burdett admits, Drax’s wood-fuelled furnaces actually produce three per cent more carbon dioxide (CO2) than coal – and well over twice as much as gas: 870g per megawatt hour (MW/hr) is belched out by wood, compared to just 400g for gas. Then there’s the extra CO2 produced by manufacturing the pellets and transporting them 3,800 miles. According to Burdett, when all that is taken into account, using biomass for generating power produces 20 per cent more greenhouse gas emissions than coal. And meanwhile, say the environmentalists, the forest’s precious wildlife habitat is being placed  in jeopardy.  ......
All this has required an investment of £700 million. Thanks to the green subsidies, this will soon be paid off. Even if all Britain’s forests were devoted to Drax, they could not keep its furnaces going. ‘We need areas with lots of wood, a reliable supply chain,’ Mr Burdett said. As well as Enviva, Drax buys wood from other firms such as Georgia Biomass, which supplies mainly pine. It is building new pellet-making plants in Mississippi and Louisiana. Last month, the Department of Energy and Climate Change issued new rules on biomass sourcing, and will insist on strict monitoring to ensure there really is ‘sustainability’. In North Carolina, this will not be easy: as Carter points out, there is very little local regulation. But wouldn’t a much more effective and cheaper way of cutting emissions be to shut down Drax altogether, and replace it with clean new gas plants – which need no subsidy at all? Mr Burdett said: ‘We develop  our business plan in light of what the Government wants – not what might be nice.’
-----------------------------------
Matt Ridley (June 2013)

Making electricity from burning wood is bad for the economy and the environment




BBC puzzles viewers on energy

Christopher Booker of The Sunday Telegraph
"We have long been aware, of course, that the BBC displays quite shameless bias whenever it covers energy or climate issues. But rarely do we see such a demonstrably dishonest example of this as the programme with which on Monday it opened its new Bang Goes The Theory series. .....What the programme-makers must have known, since they were so heavily featuring KiWi Power, is that this firm is not just into “demand management”. It is also, as its website shows, one of those many firms signing up with the National Grid to provide instantly available back-up power from thousands of diesel generators, hidden discreetly in old quarries and industrial premises across the land. That is the real “secret weapon” whereby the grid hopes, at a potential cost of billions, to keep our lights on whenever those windmills cease to turn. The BBC must have known this. But, of course, any mention of all those “dirty” generators, pumping out CO2, would not have fitted the silly propaganda narrative they were so shamelessly trying to sell us."

Friday 14 March 2014

Removing 90% Of Stations Affects The Trend

Real Science
"I tried an experiment to randomly remove 90% of GHCN US stations three times, using different random seeds. One run produced cooling and others produced warming. Blue is the full data set. ....The 90% removed leaves approximately 100 US stations, showing that amount isn’t enough for the US – much less the world."

Documentary: How the Global Warming Scare Began

WUWT
"A great scientist named Roger Revelle had Al Gore in his class at Harvard and the Global Warming campaign was born. Revelle tried to calm things down years later, but Gore said Revelle was Senile and refused to debate. John Coleman documents the entire story and shows how our tax dollars are perpetuating the Global Warming alarmist campaign even though temperatures have not risen in years."

Wednesday 12 March 2014

Where’s the Science at the IPCC?

Donna Laframboise (Canada)
"The IPCC admits that it does not conduct any research. It’s in the business of writing reports. Reports that are thousands of pages long. Five of those reports have been written over the past 25 years. IPCC personnel are expected to survey the scientific literature and write a report about what that literature says about climate change. In the process, these people make thousands of judgment calls. They decide that some studies are worth paying attention to – and that others belong in the dustbin. Some – still unproven – assumptions are taken seriously at the IPCC. Others are dismissed.
Judgment calls are not science. They’re relying on their knowledge of scientific matters, but IPCC personnel are actually playing a role similar to jurors at a trial. When a jury evaluates evidence and draws conclusions no one calls that ‘science.’So where, exactly does ‘science’ happen at the IPCC? Is this really a ‘scientific body?’

Every home paying £25 each year for wind farms: MPs criticise 'Klondike-style' gold rush as £1.2billion subsidies revealed

Daily Mail
"Wind farms are being handed £1.2billion a year in subsidies paid for by a supplement on consumer electricity bills.
That works out at £25 for each household and business, in what one Conservative MP criticised as a Klondike-type gold rush.
Ministers told Parliament that onshore wind farms received £557million last year, and offshore turbines £699million. The figures will add to fears that big business is planning to erect hundreds more turbines in order to claim the generous handouts."

Monday 10 March 2014

95% Of Australia Is Drought Free

Real Science
"Now that the fraudulent temperature statistic push is over, alarmists are planning another big save the carbon tax push in Australia, by making up fraudulent drought statistics.
95% of the country is drought free. Better than average."

Obama Administration to Insert Global Warming Activism into Dietary Guidelines Mandated by Congress

WUWT
In the past, says Stier, the federal government’s dietary guidelines were intended exclusively to “promote health and reduce risk for major chronic diseases.”
No more, says Stier: “For the first time in the history of the guidelines, ‘sustainability’ is part of the agenda. Actual items on their Dietary Guidelines working group agenda include ‘immigration,’ ‘global climate change’ and ‘agriculture/aquaculture sustainability.’”
What’s more, says Stier, these new guidelines will cost the public money: “By favoring foods which activists think have a smaller carbon footprint, the new guidelines will increase the prices you pay for your food. It will also increase the cost to all taxpayers, since the Dietary Guidelines are used to set policy for food stamps (SNAP) and military diets,” he says.
“The food guidelines, by law, are supposed to be based on a ‘preponderance of scientific and medical knowledge,’” said Amy Ridenour, chairman of the National Center for Public Policy Research, who has studied climate change polices for over a quarter century. “Science can say with authority that eating green vegetables is good for you. It can’t say that humans are causing catastrophic global warming with any more certainty than it can explain why the planet hasn’t warmed since the Clinton Administration. Moms and Dads across America deserve — and, as taxpayers, have paid for — dietary guidelines they can use to help them feed their families wisely. No one benefits from causing people to wonder if the nutritional advice they are getting from their government isn’t focused on nutrition at all, but has been polluted by environmental activists.”

Al Gore’s 10-Year “Scorching” Prophesy Emerging As A Grand Hoax…Global Temperatures Declined Over Last Decade

NoTricksZone
" Conclusion:
Al Gore’s prophesy has been nothing but a hoax. And because Al Gore continues to claim to the contrary, despite what the data show, and continues to profit by perpetuating the scare, he stands accused defrauding the public."

Owen Paterson puts 'dry homes' before greens' 'wet lands'

Telegraph, Christopher Booker
"The shocking truth, as I have been reporting here since early January, is that those unprecedented floods were not just a freak of nature, brought on by what turned out to be only England’s 16th wettest winter in 250 years. They were deliberately brought about by a fundamental shift in management policy, shaped by EU directives and enforced by the Environment Agency, which in certain areas of the country, notably the Levels in my own county of Somerset, put the interests of wildlife and “biodiversity” above those of people and property.
Someone who grasped this when, at my instigation, he came down to Somerset in January to talk to practical local experts was the Environment Secretary Owen Paterson. After private meetings with those experts, whose pleas had long been ignored, he returned to London with a clear idea of what needed to be done.
The Environment Agency should be directed to dredge the rivers which had been horribly silting up ever since it took control of them in 1996. Management of the Levels should then be handed over to a “Somerset rivers authority”, including those local boards which previously kept the Levels effectively pumped and drained for generations. There should be a new sluice at the mouth of the River Parrett, to prevent silt being pushed back into it by the second highest tidal range in the world. And within six weeks the relevant local organisations should present him with an agreed plan to ensure that this winter’s disaster is not repeated.
On Thursday this was just what happened, when Mr Paterson was able to announce that these bodies had come up with just the proposals he had asked them for. But all through these recent weeks, a rival lobby has been desperately trying to divert attention from all this. “Environmentalists” have been battling to preserve their dream by hiding everything which made disaster inevitable. Their “useful idiots”, such as the BBC and the journalist George Monbiot, have repeatedly tried to blame the disaster on “climate change”, and on greedy farmers increasing the run-off of water from the hills by planting maize: two theories which no proper scientific evidence supports."

Wednesday 5 March 2014

The Stealth Carbon Tax

American Thinker
"....We conclude that the historic increase of CO2 in the past 200 years has benefitted humanity and will continue to do so in future.

Outdated Climate Science
The most fundamental problem with the TSDs is the absence of any empirical evidence for significant climate effects of rising CO2 levels.  [We note in particular a lack of global warming over the past 17 years!]  The only 'evidence' comes from (so far) unvalidated climate models that disagree even with each other, and from unsubstantiated claims of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in successive UN-IPCC (Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change) reports.  [For details, see reports of the more credible NIPCC (Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change) at www.NIPCCreport.org .  A critique of the latest (2013) IPCC Summary can be accessed at http://heartland.org/sites/default/files/critique_of_ipcc_spm.pdf]  ............"...................

Conclusion

The use of fossil fuels, and the resultant rise in atmospheric CO2, yield benefits that far outweigh any conceivable estimate of social cost; hence using an SCC does not make economic sense.  The OMB should publicize this view and encourage reasoned debate.  Beyond a possible use in allowing rational regulation, establishing an SCC as a Carbon Tax is likely unconstitutional.

Great Lakes reaches second highest ice cover on record

WUWT
"The latest data just in from the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor Michigan indicates that as of today, total ice cover reached the second highest value on record 91%, beating the previous 2nd highest value set in 1994 of 90.7%."
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Niagara Falls comes to a halt AGAIN: Millions of gallons of cascading water is frozen in bitter temperatures (Daily Mail)

Statistics For Dummies — And Warmists

Quadrant Online
These breathless reports about the planet never being hotter, take them with a truckload of salt. How can anyone place the slightest credence in claims being advanced by people who fail to grasp, or refuse to grasp, the simple truth about trend lines and temperature.......  Read all about it! Read all about it! It’s the hottest year on record — except for another five hotter years!” A new twist can be put on the aphorism attributed to Benjamin Disraeli. It is now clear that there are lies, damn lies, and the interpretation of climate statistics.  ..........
....Solutions which go, among other things, to research and development, across all forms of energy; to minimizing obstacles to the exploitation of gas and nuclear energy; and to adaptation might find common ground among rational warmists and sceptics alike and those in the middle; always provided environmental extremists like the Greens are excluded from the process. Is this optimistic? Probably it is.
Unfortunately the alternative is to continue the madness of trying to price carbon dioxide emissions in a world market which will inevitably reward massive rigging; of spending bucket loads of money on totally ineffective and impoverishing measures; of bribing poor countries to implement inefficient methods of power generation keeping them uncompetitive and dependent; and of regressing to a Dark Ages-collective state of mind which values and promotes cripplingly expensive tokenism over practical solutions."

Tuesday 4 March 2014

Record snowfall in Scotland may allow skiing into summer

IceAgeNow
"A HIGHLAND snowports resort which enjoyed its busiest day in a decade this week has unveiled plans to “ski into summer” if conditions allow.
Earlier in the week Iain Sykes, the founder of Nevis Range Ski Resort claimed that the resort had more snow than ever in the history of skiing there.
The resort has now recorded snow fall for 59 consecutive days.
The snow cover was described as “wall-to-wall”.  Average snow depths are thought to be 1.6 metres on the lower slopes, 4.5 metres on the upper slopes, with some deep gully areas estimated as being over 18m (58 ft) deep. (More than 5 stories deep!)
The resort was not even able to operate all of its lifts at the weekend because some lifts are still buried under the unprecedented amounts of snow."

Ice Cover On Great Lakes 'Could Break Record'

Sky News
"Ice cover on North America’s Great Lakes reached almost 90% last month, the highest level observed in 20 years, and could break the all-time record.
"Persistently low temperatures across the Great Lakes region are responsible for the increased coverage of the ice," said Nathan Kurtz, a scientist with Nasa.
"Low temperatures are also the dominant mechanism for thickening the ice, while secondary factors like clouds, snow, and wind also play a role."
USA Today quoted a scientist as saying that the record of 95% - set in February 1979 - could be broken." ...."Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport broke a 141-year-old record low temperature for March, reaching 4F (-15C)."

John Podesta: The man behind President Obama’s new environmental push

Washington Post
“He said, ‘I want to protect the legacy of the president’ — not protect the overall welfare of the American people, but the legacy of the president,” Whitfield said. “He’s very aggressive, and he believes in pushing the envelope — if you’ve got the power, utilize it. That’s probably one of the reasons there’s a strong sentiment that this president is going way too far, way too fast and threatening the constitutional separation of powers.”

Climate Change Denial and the Holocaust allusion

JoNova (Australia)
Readers here will know that my problem with the term “denial” is with its misuse in English*. But the term “denier” is also used as a character slur to mark those who disagree in a science debate as being as odious as Holocaust deniers. The hope, apparently, is that dissenting views should be shunned and their arguments and evidence ignored. It’s a cheap debating tactic to shut down debate for those without evidence and reason, but it’s incredibly effective if you have the media on your side. What’s amazing is how many otherwise smart people don’t see through this babyish rhetorical stunt.
Last week Roy Spencer had had enough. In response to years of name-calling, he  protested at being called a “denier” and said
Too many of us for too long have ignored the repulsive, extremist nature of the comparison. It’s time to push back.  I’m now going to start calling these people “global warming Nazis”.
Skeptics have been likened to Holocaust deniers for a decade, and the Anti-Defamation League have been pretty silent. They did once in 2007 tell off James Hansen. But otherwise, it’s been fair game to besmirch the memory of the holocaust in the name of climate alarm. So immediately after Roy blogged the Anti-Defamation League did the obvious thing (for irrational fans of alarming science) and jumped in to denounce Roy Spencer. To put it in perspective, Roy Spencer and John Christy developed the system that measures temperatures from satellites, and won a NASA medal for exceptional scientific achievement. Activists who failed science at high school have been calling both men “deniers”. The hypocrisy knows no bounds."

Sunday 2 March 2014

Sea Ice Update February 28 2014 – Antarctic Sea Ice Extent 24% above normal

Sunshine Hours
A quick update for sea ice extent:
  • Global Sea Ice is only 50,000 sq km below the 1981-2010 mean.  That is 0.3% below the mean.
  • Antarctic Sea Ice is  720,000 sq km above the 1981-2010 mean. That is 24% above the mean.  I’m pretty sure day 51 was minimum. Extent is 170,000 above what it was on Day 51. That would be the 4th highest minimum of all time!
  • Arctic Sea Ice is 769,000 sq km below the 1981-2010 mean.  That is 5% below the mean .

February Was 33rd Warmest On Record In Central England

Real Science
"The two warmest Februaries were 1779 and 1869. During the current decade, February temperatures have averaged almost 0.4C cooler than they did during the 1730′s."

Confronting the exploitation of extreme weather events in global warming reporting

The Washington Post
"Like many of my colleagues in the climate dynamics community, I am not convinced that this winter’s extreme cold lies outside the range of internally generated variability of the climate system or that it was exacerbated by the recent reduction of summer Arctic sea ice coverage. The evidence linking Arctic amplification to the behavior of the wintertime polar vortex is not strong and it is not well supported by independent, peer-reviewed studies. I expressed similar reservations 50 years ago when my father asked me whether I thought that nuclear weapons tests were changing the weather."

Volcanoes And The ‘Pause’

GWPF
Another week and another explanation for the ‘pause’ in global surface/lower atmosphere temperatures. This time it’s the return of the ‘small volcanoes add up to big effect’ explanation in the form of a paper by Santer et al 2014 in Nature Geoscience. Could the cumulative effect from small volcanoes be causing a reduction in sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface, and hence a reduction in the rate of global surface warming?    .....
Overall this paper shows that volcanoes are having a minor to marginal effect, in many scenarios about the same effect as the noise in the global temperature dataset for the past 15 years. It concludes that the ratio of simulations of global surface temperatures to the actual observations is about 15% smaller, even though there are large uncertainties in the magnitude of the effect!
It is formally true that including volcanoes means the models are more able to match the observed temperature but not that usefully. There are so many other factors that have to be taken into account that have uncertain effects and that are adding to the inaccuracy of the models in explaining the ‘pause’. Despite this the Guardian says the models work, period."

Wild And Lethal Weather Extremes Gripped The Planet…80 Years Ago When Atmospheric CO2 Was Well Under 350 ppm!

NoTricksZone
Wild and crazy weather extremes really are nothing new. I got the following compilation from reader Jimbo:
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Hi Pierre,
Please consider putting up the following as a post. It concerns 1935 bad weather events. It’s intended to put things into perspective for younger folks.
Below is a small selection of newspaper headlines from 1935 reporting on ‘bad weather’ events and some consequences. Some reports overlap into 1934."

How the journal Nature plays fast & loose with the facts about the "pause" in global warming

The Hockey Schtick
"The recent paper offering excuse #8 for the "pause" in global warming has an accompanying editorial published in Nature Climate Change which plays fast & loose with the facts to cover-up the implications of the "pause." For example, the editorial mentions the "pause" could affect estimates of "climate sensitivity" to CO2, while conveniently leaving out the pause would suggest decreased climate sensitivity, i.e. less effect from man-made CO2. 

The editorial also says that for this excuse for the pause to be correct, sea level rise and ocean heat uptake should have accelerated since 2000, but conveniently fails to mention the data shows both have instead decelerated during the 21st century. "

Saturday 1 March 2014

Spiegel On 15-Year Pause: “Biggest Mystery In Climate Science” … Scientists Caught With Their Pants Down

NoTricksZone
Spiegel writes, quoting Ed Hawkins of the University of Reading:
Since 1990 in its 5 reports the UN IPCC failed somewhat to provide clear details over the possibilities of a slowdown in warming. Studies on this were ‘first published after the pause’.”
Bojanowski looks into why this is so. In a nutshell: That a slowdown in warming was possible never even occurred to the scientists. Reality caught them with their pants down.
He writes:
Climate models had never expected the pause: Only 3 of 114 climate simulations were able to reproduce the trend of the past years, the IPCC concludes in its latest report. The reason for the deviation between models and observations is unclear.”