Some comments on the latest IPCC report

Here.

An excerpt:

...The warnings from the likes of Prins and Rayner that the Kyoto Protocol was the wrong policy in the past, and is the wrong policy for the future, will go unheeded. Adaptation to inevitable, natural climate change and the development of secure energy sources is the only cost effective way forward in my view.

The highest solar activity for over 1000 years is already coming to an end and the next 11-year solar cycle is running late. The scene is set for a significant period of global cooling by 2020-30, yet our policymakers heed the false alarm call of continued warming by an IPCC that admits to a 'low' or 'very low' level of scientific understanding (LOSU) of the link between solar factors and climate.

Is climate change really "accelerating"?

Here.

Global Warming: The Origin and Nature of the Alleged Scientific Consensus

This 1992 article from Richard Lindzen provides an interesting "historical" perpective on global warming hysteria.

Excerpts:

By early 1989, however, the popular media in Europe and the United States were declaring that "all scientists'' agreed that warming was real and catastrophic in its potential.
...
In the spring of 1989 I was an invited participant at a global warming symposium at Tufts University. I was the only scientist among a panel of environmentalists. There were strident calls for immediate action and ample expressions of impatience with science. Claudine Schneider, then a congressman from Rhode Island, acknowledged that "scientists may disagree, but we can hear Mother Earth, and she is crying.'' It seemed clear to me that a very dangerous situation was arising, and the danger was not of "global warming'' itself.

In the spring of 1989 I prepared a critique of global warming, which I submitted to Science, a magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The paper was rejected without review as being of no interest to the readership. I then submitted the paper to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, where it was accepted after review, rereviewed, and reaccepted--an unusual procedure to say the least. In the meantime, the paper was attacked in Science before it had even been published. The paper circulated for about six months as samizdat. It was delivered at a Humboldt conference at M.I.T. and reprinted in the Frankfurter Allgemeine.

In the meantime, the global warming circus was in full swing. Meetings were going on nonstop. One of the more striking of those meetings was hosted in the summer of 1989 by Robert Redford at his ranch in Sundance, Utah. Redford proclaimed that it was time to stop research and begin acting. I suppose that that was a reasonable suggestion for an actor to make, but it is also indicative of the overall attitude toward science. Barbara Streisand personally undertook to support the research of Michael Oppenheimer at the Environmental Defense Fund, although he is primarily an advocate and not a climatologist. Meryl Streep made an appeal on public television to stop warming. A bill was even prepared to guarantee Americans a stable climate.

New green law could ration flights and raise fuel prices

Check out this article (and the comments) from the Daily Mail.

An excerpt:

The Bill does not say how carbon dioxide emissions will be cut. However, it commits the Government to a 60 per cent reduction by 2050. One method could be personal carbon-allowances, where everyone is given a fixed amount of carbon to use each year.

Each time they travel in a plane, buy petrol, go shopping or eat out would be recorded on a plastic card. The more frugal could sell spare carbon to those who want to indulge themselves. But if you were to run out of your carbon allowance, you could be barred from flying or driving.

Why we shouldn't discourage developing nations

Check out this paper by Indur Goklany of the U.S. Department of Interior.

A key excerpt:

Specifically, many determinants of human well-being — hunger, malnutrition, mortality rates, life expectancy, the level of education, and spending on health care and on research and development — improve along with the level of economic development, as measured by GDP per capita, a surrogate for both per capita income and wealth (or “affluence”) (see Figure 1; Goklany, 2002a). Improvements in these determinants are associated with increased human capital and should aid technological diffusion.

(click to enlarge)


A related paragraph is here:

Is it only “rich Indians” or China that eco-activists seek to punish with carbon taxes or trade barriers? Sadly, no. British activists are lobbying supermarkets to keep Kenyan fresh fruits, vegetables, and flowers off the shelves. To remain fresh, the produce must be flown Kenya to Britain, and air transport of fossil-intensive. That makes this farm practice “unsustainable” in the eyes of eco-activists—even though the $200 million in annual sales Kenyan farmers enjoy in the UK sustains 135,000 jobs in Kenya’s rural villages.

Ivory-billed woodpecker and other non-existent creatures

After noticing spikes in blog hits from searches including "chupacabra", "bigfoot", or "loch ness monster", I finally decided to take a look at some Google Trends.

Some results are here.

Along the way, I found this article about the damage done by Loch Ness Monster skepticism.

Excerpts:

LONDON: Fewer people are reporting sightings of the legendary Loch Ness monster in Scotland, prompting concerns that skepticism about its existence could threaten tourism in the region.

There have only been two reports of sightings this year, compared to three in 2006 and much lower than a decade ago, when the annual number sightings was consistently in the double digits, The Times newspaper said Saturday.

"It's becoming a potential crisis," said Mikko Takala, 39, a founding member of the Loch Ness Monster Fan Club who runs four webcams on the lake's north shore.
...
Nessie has been a key tourism draw, bringing an estimated 6 million pounds (€8.6 million, US$3 million) a year into the Scottish Highlands, according to The Times.

Yet another confirmation of the Medieval Warming Period?

Here.



Check out this related comment from Climate Audit:

Has it occurred to anyone that if Loehle’s paper had been written before MBH and had been taken seriously (as I believe it should) there might be no need for the IPCC and all the silly nonsense about carbon dioxide as a pollutant, carbon credits and footprints, the reluctance to build clean coal power plants, etc., etc. Mann would be teaching freshmen weather courses and Al Gore wouldn’t have the Nobel and Oscar. The rest of the world would just be going about its business in a climate that everyone could see just has some normal historical variation and is no threat at all. A lot of wasted grant money might have been available to help solve some genuine problems.

Still very little sunspot activity

According to a letter linked from this Solar Science post:

A few scientists have even claimed that we might be headed into another Solar Minimum. For the past few months, the actual sunspot numbers have been below NOAA’s lower predicted threshold, approaching zero.

Here are some sites that provide information on current solar activity:

1. spaceweather.com

2. Rice Space Institute

3. Solar Influences Data Center

4. Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)

5. solarcycle24.com

It seems that Solar Cycle 24 is late.

According to David Archibald in October 2007:

Each day’s delay in the onset of Solar Cycle 24 means that the world will be 1.4 thousands of a degree cooler during that cycle. That doesn’t sound like much, but days become weeks, which run into months, and then years, and each year of delay is good for a half degree decline in temperature. If you are expecting three years of delay, as I am, that amounts to one and a half degrees.

Who cares about cause? Something must be done!

An excellent opinion piece by Vin Suprynowicz is here.

Excerpts:

How could meeting all our current power needs with windmills or solar cells (ignoring the costs) possibly cause Lake Mead to fill with water? How could socking us with $5 billion in "carbon taxes" -- doubling the cost of turning on a light switch or pumping a gallon of gasoline, for starters -- cause Lake Mead to fill with water? What evidence is there that this would do any more good than rounding up 10,000 widows and burning them as witches?
...
But how can you deny we've been cursed by the witches? Aren't the lakes drying up? Aren't there storms and wildfires everywhere? Don't children have cancer and asthma? Why can't we all just agree these things are happening, and start to round up and burn the witches? There's no time left to beat around the bush and wait for all this tedious testing of "causality"! Who cares what's causing it? Something must be done!

Notes from lectures given by Mary Scott in 2002

Don't miss this.

Excerpts:

I got a call on my answering machine in late summer, Cheryl had “found the birds”. Needless to say I was stunned and beyond excited. When I talked to Bob I learned that Cheryl, a government wildlife professional, had contacted an “animal communicator” and asked for help. The woman she contacted was the horse whisperer for the British and US Olympic equestrian teams. She had made an effort, and had “made contact” with a group of ivorybills. She would do so several times over the next 6 months. And, dealing with an expedition team that was a collection of believers and skeptics, it was interesting that most took her advice to heart. The birds didn’t like a lot of bug spray. They despised hunters and didn’t like camo clothing. They were in an area with Great Blue Herons and hanging moss. This bit of the story would continue to develop.
...
My greatest contribution to the groups’ preparations was the promise of the expedition t-shirt. “I Want to Believe”, which I made up for each member of the group. Yep, I’d been an early X-Files follower, and the saying was borrowed. But it was accurate. I did want to believe. But I didn’t believe. I just thought the whole thing was a fabulous lark. Searching for an extinct bird in the backyard of my Pearl River hut. I had left corporate America in June of 1999 with enough money to go birding America for a couple of years. This was a welcome adventure.

Bigfoot link

Someone posted this link on Birdforum today.

An excerpt:

Does the sasquatch exist or not? Discussions about the sasquatch usually bog down on this question.

From this page about the author:

John Bindernagel, B.S.A., MS, Ph.D.

I am a 60 year-old professional wildlife biologist who is seriously studying the sasquatch or bigfoot in North America.
...
Although I now have no doubt regarding the existence of the sasquatch, this was not always the case. However now that I am satisfied that the sasquatch is a real animal, subject to study and examination like any other large [m]ammal, I am much more concerned with addressing ecological questions such as how it overwinters in the colder regions of North America, than with dwelling on the controversy of whether it does or does not exist.

A post from Cornell's new "Ivory-bill" camera specialist

Here.

The Great Pacific Climate Shift II?

Here.

An excerpt:

If that change to the cold PDO is this time a lasting one (and given past intervals of warm and cold which typically averaged 20 to 30 years, it certainly appears very possible), we may be entering a new era with more La Ninas and a very different climate, especially if the sun goes into its usual 200 year deep sleep as more and more solar scientists are beginning to believe will happen.

"Por qué no te callas Al Gore ?"

Remember hearing about the exceptionally cold winter (June through August) in the Southern Hemisphere?

It still hasn't ended.

You really shouldn't miss this update (Word format) from Alexandre Aguiar of MetSul Weather Center (Brazil).

An excerpt:

During a summit in Chile King Juan Carlos of Spain told the president of Venezuela Hugo Chavez to shut up: “Por qué no te callas” (Why do you not shut up?). Someone must tell Al Gore the same or invite him to visit this corner of the world. It is a never ending winter here in South America. “What a hell is happening this year with a seven-month winter”, asked a famous TV journalist about the unusual climatic winter of 2007 that began with fury in May and still persist in November. Buenos Aires recorded this Thursday (November 15th) the lowest temperature for the month of November in 90 years. Temperature in the Downtown weather station reached 2.5C. Since records began more than a century ago, only two days had colder lows in November. It was in 1914 (1.6) and 1917 (2.4). And ninety years ago the urban heat island effect was much less pronounced than nowadays, what turns the temperature observed today remarkable.

"Gore's Deceptive Rolling Stone Interview"

Here.

Check out this quote from Gore:

"It is a mistake to think of the Climate Crisis as one in a list of issues that will define our future. It is the issue. Everything else must be viewed through that lens."

China ready to overtake U.S. as the world's largest CO2 emitter

Excerpts from this article:

China and India are under pressure to reduce their carbon emissions, but energy executives and government representatives at an energy conference in Rome agreed Wednesday that the two booming economies will be sticking with coal - whether the rest of the world likes it or not.
...
China is due to overtake the U.S. as the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide this year, while India will become the third-biggest emitter around 2015, according to estimates by the International Energy Agency.

"We have no right to blame India" or China, said Fatih Birol, the IEA's chief economist. "Coal is currently the cheapest energy source to produce electricity and least vulnerable in terms of energy security."

Note that on a per capita basis, the BBC says "Australians named worst emitters".

Ten reasons why the IPCC should be disbanded

Here.

The summary:

The IPCC is a political lobby group whose members undertake research funded by governments and produce peer-reviewed scientific papers. Then teams of authors, including some of the original researchers, write reports based on those peer-reviewed papers and declare those reports to be an accurate summary of the field.

In normal circumstances there would be howls of protest were authors permitted to review and promulgate their own work, and the summary documents would be automatically rejected on the grounds that the authors had vested interests.

But this is how the IPCC has operated since its inception, in fact since its charter directed it to concentrate on the risks posed by any human influence on climate.

Even worse, the IPCC has, via complaisant governments, skewed scientific research to concentrate on aspects of its own claims to the detriment of the wider science. Those claims have very little evidence to support them but such is the dominance of the IPCC that the targeted research has produced more experts in those fields and more scientific papers, potential authors and partisan reviewers through which the IPCC can sustain its claims.

To top it all off the IPCC makes statements that imply a far more intense review process and far greater support for its claims than the evidence really shows.

The bias and manipulation of climate science has gone on for long enough and the problems are too great to rectify from within. The only sensible course of action is to disband the IPCC. If we really must have a central body to co-ordinate the science then we need one that is independent and transparent, and encompasses all aspects of climate science rather than being fixated on an unproven human cause.

Laura Erickson tests a BirdCam

Here.

I'd bet if you deployed enough cameras like this in "Ivory-bill" habitat, you'd get an enormous amount of clear pictures of things that are not Ivory-bills.

For comparison, some of David Luneau's remote camera pictures are here.

Holocene sea-level change on the southeast coast of Australia: a review

Here.

An excerpt:

Present sea level was attained between 7900 and 7700 cal. yr BP [before present], approximately 700—900 years earlier than previously proposed. Sea level continued to rise to between +1 and +1.5 m between 7700 and 7400 cal. yr BP, followed by a sea-level highstand that lasted until about 2000 cal. yr BP followed by a gradual fall to present.

I wonder why there's no mention of imminent, catastrophic sea level rises.

Note this excerpt from this link:

The Holocene Epoch is synonymous with the Recent or Postglacial interval of Earth's geologic history and extends from 10,000 years ago to the present day.

"Existential risk and democratic peace"

A BBC piece by Benny Peiser is here.

Excerpts:

A recent study confirms that the annual percentage of people killed by natural disasters has decreased tenfold in the last 40 years, in spite of the fact that the average annual number of recorded disasters increased fivefold. Evidently, open and technological societies are becoming increasingly resilient to the effects of natural disasters.
...
...I believe that the prophets of doom, including those predicting climate doom, are wrong.

"Perspectives on global warming"

Check out the quotes here.

I particularly like this one by Richard Lindzen:

...and I think future generations are not going to blame us for anything except for being silly, for letting a few tenths of a degree panic us.

"Sun and global warming: A cosmic connection?"

An excerpt from this BBC article:

Two events loom on the horizon that might settle the issue once and for all; one shaped by human hands, one entirely natural.

At Cern, the giant European physics facility, an experiment called Cloud is being constructed which will research the notion that cosmic rays can stimulate the formation of droplets and clouds. There may be some results within three or four years.

By then, observations suggest that the Sun's output may have started to wane from its "grand maximum".

If it does, and if Henrik Svensmark is right, we should then see cosmic rays increase and global temperatures start to fall; if that happens, he can expect to see a Nobel Prize and thousands of red-faced former IPCC members queuing up to hand back the one they have just received.

But if the Sun wanes and temperatures on our planet continue to rise, as the vast majority of scientists in the field believe, the solar-cosmic ray concept of global warming can be laid to eternal rest.

Richard Lindzen speaks at Colgate

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology Richard Lindzen recently spoke on global warming hysteria at Colgate.

A nice article about his presentation is here.

An excerpt:

"Any prediction of catastrophe is extremely unlikely," Lindzen said. He cited the panic in the 1970s over the prediction of catastrophic American famine in the 1980s, which turned out to be false, as well as the infamous prediction of the Y2K disaster.

"These predictions of catastrophe come up episodically and they are always wrong because they have wrong linkages," Lindzen said.

He then projected a model of the linkages leading from cause -- carbon dioxide emissions -- to effect -- disastrous warming effects -- in global warming and noted that the likelihood of each affecting the next was tiny, and that, in the end, the probability of any major effect of global warming was "astronomically small."

Today's Ivory-bill links

1. Inexplicably, Jim Fitzpatrick will evidently still attempt to publicly sell his "Ivory-bill" sighting later this month:

To Challenge Extinction: The Ivory Billed Woodpecker Updated Story, 7 to 8:30 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 27.

Hear and see the story of Jim Fitzpatrick’s involvement in this research and his chance sighting of this illusive bird. Pictures, sounds, videos and humor will guide guests through six years of investigations, update on the current and future of this project and challenge guests on their future participation in this ongoing saga about challenging extinction.

The fee is $3 for “Friends of CNC;” $5 for non- members.

2. Sadly, it looks like the future Arkansas State University mascot will not an Ivory-billed Woodpecker.

Ivory-bill thread at Birder's World

Here.

Here's some free advice for all of the fine organizations listed as part of the Big Woods Conservation Partnership--when people with handles like "chickadeelover" start posting stuff like this:

in my opinion it IS extinct...

it's time for you to very quietly delete the ivorybill.org website.

If you'd prefer to back away from the "rediscovery" in smaller stages, I'd recommend taking down the "found!" banner first.

Update: For some reason, I just stumbled across this Cincinnatti Birds thread from the spring of 2005. Note this post:

The immediate area where the bird was seen is now off limits for the time being. Duck hunters aren't much of a threat, the bird is elusive compared to mallards, and there's no indication Duck hunters are shooting big woodpeckers, as evidenced by the more than ample supplies of Pileated woodpeckers down there.

Regarding the video, the amount of work done analyzing the video is staggering. There's a lot of documentation regarding the analyzation that's not in the Science article. The use of lifelike models with movable wings was definitive. I am sure more of that stuff will be available when they get it prepared for the web. The articles were hastily released a month early due to a leak at the USFWS. The slated release date was May 18, and because of the leak, the articles aren't as solid as they would have been.

A Study of Urban Heat Island (UHI) in Singapore

Here.

Below is Figure 3 from the link above (click to enlarge):



Note that the difference between the coolest and warmest points was several degrees Celsius.

Also note that the implementing the Kyoto protocol (over a 50-year period) would supposedly decrease the earth's temperature by a total of only about .07 degrees Celsius.

This means that the total temperature "benefit" of Kyoto could conceivably be dwarfed by urban heat island bias in our surface temperature data.

A truly absurd "Ivory-bill" press release from the USFWS

Here. You can't make this stuff up.

Related documents are here and here.

"Is there a consensus among skeptics?"

Another extremely sane post by Lubos Motl is here.

New research suggests delay in autumn colour is caused by increased atmospheric CO2, not global warming

Here.

Sibley vs emupilot

...in the comment section here.

Climate Audit named co-winner of Best Science Blog award

I heartily agree with this assessment of Climate Audit:

Steve McIntyre's self-financed blog Climate Audit has done a lot to ensure accountability and responsibility among the well-financed and trendy ranks of climate scientists. It is fitting that his blog should win this years Best Science Blog award.

McIntyre discusses Internet voting irregularities here.

An excerpt:

If CA had been declared a winner based on 5 pm closing vote and the results of the vote were being used in something like an IPCC assessment report, then I’m sure that many people would have called for an audit of the results. But not of a temperature reconstruction. Just one of life’s many ironies.

Some background on McIntyre is at this post, entitled "Stephen McIntyre: a math prodigy".

"Global" warming bypasses Georgia

An excerpt from this link:

Averaged across the state of Georgia, the long-term annual temperature history shows that the first half of the 20th century was, in general, much warmer than the most recent 50 year period. Obviously, “global warming” has not had much of an effect on the temperatures here. While it is often reported that globally the last 10 years were the hottest on record, the story is much different in Georgia where only 1 of the 10 hottest years on record statewide occurred during the past 10 years. Four of the state’s 10 all-time hottest years, including the hottest year on record, occurred during the 1920s—more than 75 years ago. Further, while only 14 of the recent 50 years were above the long-term average, 38 of the first 50 years of the 20th century were warmer than average.

Also note this paragraph:

The two tropical diseases most commonly cited as spreading as a result of global warming, malaria and dengue fever, are not in fact “tropical” at all and thus are not as closely linked to climate as many people suggest. For example, malaria epidemics occurred as far north as Archangel, Russia, in the 1920s, and in the Netherlands. Malaria was common in most of the United States prior to the 1950s (Reiter, 1996). In fact, in the late 1800s, a period when it was demonstrably colder in the United States than it is today, malaria was endemic in most of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains—a region stretching from the Gulf Coast all the way up into Northern Minnesota—including the southern half of Georgia. In 1878, about 100,000 Americans were infected with malaria; about one-quarter of them died. By 1912, malaria was already being brought under control, yet persisted in the southeastern United States well into the 1940s. In fact, in 1946 the Congress created the Communicable Disease Center (the forerunner to the current U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) for the purpose of eradicating malaria from the regions of the U.S. where it continued to persist. The CDC was located in Atlanta, Georgia primarily because this region was the primary one which was still affected by the disease. By the mid-to-late 1950s, the Center had achieved its goal and malaria was effectively eradicated from the United States. This occurred not because of climate change, but because of technological and medical advances. Better anti-malaria drugs, air-conditioning, the use of screen doors and windows, and the elimination of urban overpopulation brought about by the development of suburbs and automobile commuting were largely responsible for the decline in malaria (Reiter, 1996; Reiter, 2001). Today, the mosquitoes that spread malaria are still widely present in the Unites States, but the transmission cycle has been disrupted and the pathogen leading to the disease is absent. Climate change is not involved.

"why can't someone just go out and measure?"

Here is another good post at Climate Skeptic.

Excerpts (see the post for links):

One of the oddities about climate science is just how hard it is to get research that actually goes out and gathers new empirical data. Every climate scientist seems firmly rooted in the office tweaking their computer models, perhaps as an over-reaction to meteorology being historically mostly an observational science. Whatever the reason, study after study masticates the same old 30 or 40 historical proxies, or tries to divine new information out of existing surface temperature records. If you ever read Isaac Asimov's book Foundation, you might remember a similar episode where a character is amazed that scientists no longer seek out new empirical data, but just manipulate data from previous studies.

The issue of how much urban heat islands bias surface temperature records is a case in point. The two most prominent studies cited by the IPCC and the RealClimate.org folks to "prove" that urban heat islands don't really exist are Peterson and Parker. Parker in particular really bent over backwards to draw conclusions without actually gathering any new data...
...
I have always wondered, why can't someone just go out and measure? It can't be that expensive to send a bunch of grad students out with identical calibrated temperature instruments and simultaneously measure temperatures both inside and outside of a city. At the same time, one could test temperatures on natural terrain vs. temperatures on asphalt. A lot of really good data that would be critical to better correction of surface temperature records could be gathered fairly cheaply.
...
Unfortunately, this need for amateurs to actually gather empirical data because the climate scientists are all huddled around the computer screen is not unique in this case. One of the issues with proxy data like tree rings, which are used to infer past temperatures, is that past proxy studies are not getting updated over time. Over the last several decades, proxy measures of temperatures have diverged from actual temperatures, raising the specter that these proxies may not actually do a very good job of reporting temperatures. To confirm this, climate scientists really need to update these proxy studies, but they have so far resisted. In part, they just don't want to expend the effort, and in part I think they are afraid the data they get will cause them to have to reevaluate their past findings.

So, Steve McIntyre, another amateur famous for his statistical criticisms of the Mann Hockey Stick, went and did it himself.

Whatever happened to the Bona Churchill data?

An excerpt from Steve McIntyre's blog here:

In 2002, Lonnie Thompson drilled a 460 meter ice core in a col between Mounts Bona and Churchill in Alaska. As of October 2003, they had analyzed over 5600 samples and concluded that the core covered approximately 2500 years. A presentation was made at AGU in December 2004. The data was not discussed in IPCC AR4 or even in Thompson’s 2006 PNAS article. Actually, not only is the data completely unarchived, to date, there is no journal publication whatever of these results (funded by the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs grant OPP-0099311).

In mining promotions, whenever results are delayed, you can be 99% sure that they are not good results. Promoters can delay results a little bit hoping that more drilling will get a good hole, but there’s not much discretion. For some time, I’ve noticed the non-reporting of Bona Churchill (which I’ve compared to a similar situation at Sheep Mountain) and surmised that the results were not “good” for Thompson’s viewpoint: otherwise we’d have heard about it.

Check out the related comment here:

“…Does anyone think it perhaps more likely that data is withheld (or at least hidden) by scientists not because they are part of some big conspiracy, but because they wish to maintain exclusive access to that data for future papers and/or discoveries?…”

I think it more likely that they are ‘riding the tiger’. They did well out of pinning their reputations on the Global Warming hypothesis early, before it was able to be verified, and then the world’s media and politicians followed them. That left them ‘forced’ to keep the ball rolling.

There is now too much at stake to simply turn around and say ‘Whoops, I was wrong!’. Indeed, much of the push now is in media, political and commercial areas where scientists do not have much influence. All Mann et al can do is hang on tight, and hope that when the inevitable crash comes, people will be too busy blaming Gore, or trying to hide their own unthinking suport, to descend on those who started it.

If I were a ‘Warmist’ now, I would be trying to suppress any indication that I was wrong, and trying to get other people to join in supporting the thesis, while quietly saying a few things which could later be quoted to show that I didn’t ‘really’ support it unquestioningly….

Is the earth warming or cooling?

Check out the battle of the red and green trend lines here.


(click to enlarge)

Birdforum thread on mass hallucinations (or mis-leadings)

Here.

Note this story:

On a field trip a few winters ago the leader pointed out a Snowy Owl on the Lake Erie shore. It was well known among local birders that the lump was in fact a discarded boat bumper washed up on the breakwall. When this was pointed out to the leader he went on about his experience working with Snowy Owls at a rehab facility in Canada and he was certain this was a Snowy. About 2/3 of the people on the trip dutifully checked off Snowy Owl. It was a lifer for 4 people.

It was one extremely patient Snowy Owl as it refused to move from its perch for more than 3 years until the US Coast Guard removed it when cleaning trash off the breakwall one summer.

"Christy Versus Parry"

Links available here:

At last, the BBC Online News Website is providing some belated balance in the ‘global warming’ debate.

Today, it hosts two contrasting viewpoints on the work of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). I recommend that you read them both (makes a change from worrying about spoofs).

An excerpt from Christy's piece:

At an IPCC Lead Authors' meeting in New Zealand, I well remember a conversation over lunch with three Europeans, unknown to me but who served as authors on other chapters. I sat at their table because it was convenient.

After introducing myself, I sat in silence as their discussion continued, which boiled down to this: "We must write this report so strongly that it will convince the US to sign the Kyoto Protocol."

Politics, at least for a few of the Lead Authors, was very much part and parcel of the process.

And, while the 2001 report was being written, Dr Robert Watson, IPCC Chair at the time, testified to the US Senate in 2000 adamantly advocating on behalf of the Kyoto Protocol, which even the journal Nature now reports is a failure.

Informative podcast on global warming science

Available here:

We spent an hour with Warren Meyer of Coyote Blog discussing his book “A Skeptical Layman’s Guide to Anthropogenic Global Warming.” It was really an in-depth look at the science behind the movement.

I recommend that you download this podcast and listen to it on your next long drive.

"Despite predictions, sky is not falling"

An excerpt from an 11/10/07 opinion piece in the Anchorage Daily News here:

The first key to wisdom is constant and frequent questioning, for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth.

-- Peter Abelard (A.D. 1079 - 1142)

Reading about the recent global warming rally at Kincaid Park, I wondered if the participants would be relieved if man's activities were proved not responsible for Alaska's warming weather. An intriguing question.

They probably don't know ground-based warming stopped in 1998, according to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change data. This temperature stability is occurring despite a four percent increase in atmospheric C02 over the last eight years. Lower atmosphere satellite data also show little, if any, warming since 1979, although atmospheric CO2 increased 17 percent.

In another surprising turn, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies corrected data errors this September that required changing America's warmest year on record from 1998 to 1934, thus refuting the Gospel According to James Hansen, the Institute's director. The third hottest year is now 1921.

Canadian Stephen McIntyre (www. climateaudit.org), concerned about the discontinuity of NASA's temperature record, identified the errors and contacted the Institute. The end result: Five of America's top 10 warmest years occurred in the 1930s, when only 10 percent of greenhouse gases emitted in the last century were in the atmosphere. Three of the top 10 remain 1998, 2006 and 1999. Natural variation or catastrophic warming?

McIntyre's widely-commended contribution to climate science also severely damaged Michael Mann's infamous "hockey stick" graph that is integral to climate scare mongering, and the 2007 IPCC report no longer includes it. This is fascinating stuff.

Ancient Chinese records have revealed historic warming from year one to about A.D. 240 (the Roman Warming); a cold period between years A.D. 240 and 800 (Dark Ages); warming between 800 and 1400 (Medieval Optimum); and cooling from 1400 to about 1900 (Little Ice Age). Where were man-made CO2 emissions then?

"Anatomy of a False Panic"

A nice piece on the alleged threat of an Antarctica-based catastrophe is here.

"Climate change by Jupiter"

A very interesting article in the Financial Post is here.

Excerpts:

Changes in sunspots and other solar activity, scientists have realized for more than two centuries, correlate closely with the climate of Earth, explaining the ice ages and periods of great warming. But what, Dr. Fairbridge wondered, causes these changes in our sun?
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The sun's own orbit, he found, has eight characteristic patterns, all determined by Jupiter's position relative to Saturn, with the other planets playing much lesser roles. Some of these eight have orderly orbits, smooth and near-circular. During such orbits, solar activity is high and Earth heats up. Some of the eight orbits are chaotic, taking a loop-the-loop path. These orbits correspond to quiet times for the sun, and cool periods on Earth. Every 179 years or so, the sun embarks on a new cycle of orbits. One of the cooler periods in recent centuries was the Little Ice Age of the 17th century, when the Thames River in London froze over each winter. The next cool period, if the pattern holds, began in 1996, with the effects to be felt starting in 2010. Some predict three decades of severe cold.

No consensus on global warming

Check this out, and keep scrolling.

Philip Stott summarizes his views on global warming

Please check out Philip Stott's excellent piece here.

An excerpt:

I believe the idea of trying to manage climate change by adjusting any one human factor at the margins at any one particular time is misjudged, and that it can have no predictable outcome(s).
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The only valid approach to climate change is constant adaptation. Mitigation is neither workable nor predictable.

A couple of climate debate items from the BBC

"Unravelling the sceptics" here and "Climate scepticism: The top 10" here.

I'd really like to see the data supporting this claim (by Gavin Schmidt?):

The difference between the solar minimum and solar maximum over the 11-year solar cycle is 10 times smaller than the effect of greenhouse gases over the same interval.

Of three Texas weathermen, zero are climate alarmists

Check out this story (their scoffing comes through a bit better in the three-minute video clip than it does in the transcript).

Excerpt:

"It is because of money," said Palmer. "Folks that are writing these papers, that a lot of institutions are going after, grant money and grant money is given by folks who might have very good intentions, but unfortunately the papers that are being written are heavily weighed on man-made Global Warming."

Now, Meteorologist Mark Scirto and Grant Dade want the other side of the argument to be heard.

"I think it is about time we see the other side of the Global Warming debate come out," said Dade. "Is the Earth warming? Yes, I think it is. But is man causing that? No. It's a simple climate cycle our climate goes through over thousands of years."

"The late 1800's, early 1900's, we were so cold parts of Galveston Bay froze over," said Scirto. "In parts of the 20th century it was one of the warmest ever, then we cooled off again and then it was the drought."

Dramatic pictures float the Internet and are seen all over T. V. that seem to show Global Warming taking place, but Dade said there are things we don't hear.

"Did you hear about the Arctic ice melting? But you didn't hear in Antarctica last winter was the most ice ever recorded," said Dade. "You don't hear that."

"Eventually, what is going to happen 20, 30 years from now, this is all going to be gone because we will not be warming anymore," said Scirto.

Hey, Ilya Maclean--in your world, are these guys clearly *paid* to be skeptical?

Do you imagine an evil-looking mustachioed guy wearing a black Exxon hat, laughing maniacally, and handing a big white bag with a dollar sign on it to each of these three weathermen?

"The splice"

An excellent post on some reprehensible shenanigans by the IPCC is here.

Excerpts:

When one gets an inflection point right at the place where two data sources are spliced, as is the case here, one should be suspicious that maybe the inflection is an artifact of mismatches in the data sources, and not representative of a natural phenomenon.
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You can see that almost all of the proxy data we have in the 20th century is actually undershooting gauge temperature measurements. Scientists call this problem divergence, but even this is self-serving. It implies that the proxies have accurately tracked temperatures but are suddenly diverting for some reason this century. What is in fact happening are two effects:

1. Gauge temperature measurements are probably reading a bit high, due to a number of effects including urban biases

2. Temperature proxies, even considering point 1, are very likely under-reporting historic variation. This means that the picture they are painting of past temperature stability is probably a false one.

All of this just confirms that we cannot trust any conclusions we draw from grafting these two data sets together.
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For some reason, the study's author cut the data off around 1950. Is that where his proxy ended? No, in fact he had decades of proxy data left. However, his proxy data turned sharply downwards in 1950. Since this did not tell the story he wanted to tell, he hid the offending data by cutting off the line, choosing to conceal the problem rather than have an open scientific discussion about it.

The study's author? Keith Briffa, who the IPCC named to lead this section of their Fourth Assessment.

Straight talk from Vaclav Klaus

An interview with President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus is here.

One excerpt:

The climate debate itself deserves a sociological analysis. The politicians come first; they use the climate for the reasons explained above. Then we see the journalists who use the issue as a free ticket for a catchy theme on the title page. And finally the climate researchers only act to benefit and to maximize their profit by looking for subjects with the most promising funding situation.
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I am not alone. But I do find the current situation in Europe and the U.S. somewhat tragic. During the recent climate change conference in New York, my speech was the only one that criticized the climate policies. I didn't hear applause. Only after the dinner, many heads of state came to me and congratulated me. "There must have been someone to tell it," they said. One already probably needs political courage to speak against the policy of climate.