Kicking off – changes in CO2 lag changes in temperature in seasonal cycles:
‘Atmospheric CO2 and Global Temperature: Which Leads Which When Change Occurs?’
Written by CO2 Science.
[…]
Humlum et al. (2013) introduce their analysis of the phase relation between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and mean global air temperature by noting that over the last 420 thousand years, “variations in atmospheric CO2 broadly followed temperature according to ice cores, with a typical delay of several centuries to more than a millennium,”
[…]
So if this be true for glacial cycles, should it not also be true for seasonal cycles?
Feeling that such might indeed be the case, the three Norwegian researchers intensively studied the phase relations (leads/lags) between atmospheric CO2 concentration data and several global temperature data series – including HadCRUT, GISS and NCDC surface air data, as well as UAH lower troposphere data and HadSST2 sea surface data – for the period January 1980 to December 2011. And what did they find?
Humlum et al. report that annual cycles were present in all of the several data sets they studied and that there was “a high degree of co-variation between all data series … but with changes in CO2 always lagging changes in temperature.” More specifically, they state that “the maximum positive correlation between CO2 and temperature is found for CO2 lagging 11-12 months in relation to global sea surface temperature, 9.5-10 months [in relation] to global surface air temperature, and about 9 months [in relation] to global lower troposphere temperature,” so that “the overall global temperature change sequence of events appears to be from the ocean surface to the land surface to the lower troposphere.”
This is the guts of this article in the MU newsletter: “A warmer climate may be causing snakes to become more active and seek more baby birds for food,” said Faaborg, professor of biological sciences in MU’s College of Arts and Science.
That’s it. The rebuttal is easy – “Or it may not”.
German Resistance: Mutiny In The Land Of Wind Turbines
* Matthias Schultz, Spiegel Online
Germany plans to build 60,000 new wind turbines — in forests, in the foothills of the Alps and even in protected environmental areas. But local residents are up in arms, costs are skyrocketing and Germany’s determination to phase out nuclear power is in danger.
‘The myth of Denmark as a corruption-free country’
Peter Rørdam
It’s a widely held conception that Denmark is one of the world’s least corrupt countries. The message is always warmly received, but this isn’t the same as saying that Denmark is free of corruption.
I’m not qualified to speak about corruption in general, but there is one area in which I do have an in-depth knowledge: wind power – which is an industry that has managed to thoroughly corrupt the political system.
‘Climate Expert von Storch: Why Is Global Warming Stagnating?’
Climate experts have long predicted that temperatures would rise in parallel with greenhouse gas emissions. But, for 15 years, they haven’t. In a SPIEGEL interview, meteorologist Hans von Storch discusses how this “puzzle” might force scientists to alter what could be “fundamentally wrong” models.
[…]
SPIEGEL: Despite all these problem areas, do you still believe global warming will continue?
Storch: Yes, we are certainly going to see an increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) or more — and by the end of this century, mind you. That’s what my instinct tells me, since I don’t know exactly how emission levels will develop. Other climate researchers might have a different instinct. Our models certainly include a great number of highly subjective assumptions. Natural science is also a social process, and one far more influenced by the spirit of the times than non-scientists can imagine. You can expect many more surprises.
‘Climate change: The forecast for 2018 is cloudy with record heat’
Efforts to predict the near-term climate are taking off, but their record so far has been patchy.
* Jeff Tollefson
[…]
In preparation for the IPCC report, the first part of which is due out in September, some 16 teams ran an intensive series of decadal forecasting experiments with climate models. Over the past two years, a number of papers based on these exercises have been published, and they generally predict less warming than standard models over the near term. For these researchers, decadal forecasting has come of age. But many prominent scientists question both the results and the utility of what is, by all accounts, an expensive and time-consuming exercise.
[…]
By starting in the present with actual conditions, Smith’s group hoped to improve the model’s accuracy at forecasting the near-term climate. The results looked promising at first. The model initially predicted temperatures that were cooler than those seen in conventional climate projections — a forecast that basically held true into 2008. But then the prediction’s accuracy faded sharply: the dramatic warming expected after 2008 has yet to arrive (see ‘Hazy view’). “It’s fair to say that the real world warmed even less than our forecast suggested,” Smith says. “We don’t really understand at the moment why that is.”
[…]
Smith says that his group at the Hadley Centre has doubled the resolution of its model, which now breaks the planet into a grid with cells 150 kilometres on each side. Within a few years, he hopes to move to a 60-kilometre grid, which will make it easier to capture the connections between ocean activities and the weather that society is interested in. With improved models, more data and better statistics, he foresees a day when their models will offer up a probabilistic assessment of temperatures and perhaps even precipitation for the coming decade.
In preparation for that day, he has set up a ‘decadal exchange’ to collect, analyse and publish annual forecasts. Nine groups used the latest climate models to produce ten-year forecasts beginning in 2011. An analysis of the ensemble6 shows much the same pattern as Smith’s 2007 prediction: temperatures start out cool and then rise sharply, and within the next few years, barring something like a volcanic eruption, record temperatures seem all but inevitable.
“I wouldn’t be keen to bet on that at the moment,” Smith says, “but I do think we’re going to make some good progress within a few years.”
‘Forecast failure: how the Met Office lost touch with reality’
Ideology has corrupted a valuable British institution
Rupert Darwall
[…]
The Met Office’s record of obstruction and denial should give pause to even the firmest believer in global warming and illustrates the profound incompatibility of state science (which climate science has become) and the real thing. ‘We should listen to the scientists — and we should believe them,’ said Ed Davey, the Climate Secretary, earlier this year. Yet his department has officially sanctioned the anti-scientific practice of withholding data. The climate secretary has denounced sceptics and other non-believers as ‘crackpots’ — an attack conforming to a key feature of what the philosopher Karl Popper defined as pseudoscience. Genuine science invites refutation; pseudoscience tries to silence dissent.
Scepticism in science should always be welcomed. With climate science, it is necessary. As Davey remarked in his speech, ‘the science drives the policy’, but last month might well mark the moment when the government’s energy policy lost all contact with reason. It doesn’t take much to imagine how Mrs Thatcher would have galvanised her government if she had been told Britain was sitting on the richest shale gas deposits in the world. Yet the Cameron government pushes on with the Energy Bill to implement the 2008 Climate Change Act and its colossal £404 billion price tag.
Last month saw Ofgem warn of power rationing; the government agree a price guarantee for nuclear power; and in effect a £10 billion transfer from British to French taxpayers via state-owned EDF. In Brussels, Ed Davey told the EU to adopt unilateral emissions cuts, despite the fact that even Germany is having second thoughts about this strange form of economic suicide.
None of this would be happening without climate scientists — led by those at the top of the Met Office — raising the alarm and behaving like propagandists. ‘We seem to be losing the communications battle,’ Dr Slingo told the conference on dangerous climate change in February. Winning the battle meant personalising the narrative about what climate change might mean in the future, she said. This is not science. It is political spin from the same playbook that brought us Tony Blair’s ‘dodgy dossier’ on Iraq. It comes as no surprise that the Met Office retains PR consultants to help with its climate change message.
At the very least, the Met Office has a duty of care to the rest of us: to be balanced and objective, to admit when they’ve got it wrong, not to indulge in speculation and to tell us what they don’t know. The Met Office has not discharged that duty. Politicians, in the grip of a mania, have told us we must defer to scientists.
But Britain is in this mess because scientists became political cheerleaders. In doing so, they abandoned science as the disinterested pursuit of knowledge. Failure to predict the weather is, in the scale of things, the least of it. With the cost of climate change policies approaching half a trillion pounds, the Met Office is setting itself up for the largest case of public misfeasance in British history.
Rupert Darwall is the author of The Age of Global Warming – A History.
Book Review: ‘The Age of Global Warming, A History’, Rupert Darwall
by SkeptEco on May 25, 2013
“Darwall has made an important contribution to climate change literature, putting together in one place the history of global warming from ideological roots to the failure of the most recent attempts to forge a global agreement on CO2 under the supervision of a powerful supra-national organisation.”
Darwall is very good on the science, and on the distinction between “science” and “predictive opinion”. But the abandonment by climate scientists of the need to verify their claims is at the heart of Darwall’s belief that the science is the critically weak point of the “idea” of climate change. Darwall is firmly on the side of those who regard science as being the empirical testing of verifiable and falsifiable hypotheses.
And.
Sixty-six pages of end notes attest to the book’s scholarship. This is no polemic. As Darwall says, “Global warming is a highly contentious subject and a history must be faithful both to evidence and to context.”
‘How Good Are Met Office Predictions? (Now Includes at Least May Data)’
By Werner Brozek, Edited By Just The Facts
“We are now using the system to predict changes out to 2014. By the end of this period, the global average temperature is expected to have risen by around 0.3 °C compared to 2004, and half of the years after 2009 are predicted to be hotter than the current record hot year, 1998.” Met Office Hadley Centre 2007
“The Met Office Hadley Centre has the highest concentration of absolutely outstanding people who do absolutely outstanding work, spanning the breadth of modelling, attribution, and data analysis, of anywhere in the world.” Dr Susan Solomon, Co Chair IPCC AR4 WGI
So let us see how “absolutely outstanding” the Met Office Hadley Centre’s 2007 prediction is turning out.
As of 2012, the 1998 record has not been beaten on HadCRUT3. […]
Here are some relevant facts today: The sun is extremely quiet and ENSO has been neutral since the start of the year. Even if a 1998 type El Nino started to set in tomorrow, it would be at least 4 or 5 months for the maximum ENSO reading to be reached. Then it would take at least 3 more months for the high ENSO to be reflected in Earth’s temperature. If a 1998 type El Nino does not start within a few months, then it is doubtful that even 2014 would set a new record. CO2 passing the 400 ppm mark certainly cannot do it alone.
[…]
In the sections below, we will present you with the latest facts. The information will be presented in three sections and an appendix. The first section will show the period that there has been no warming for various data sets. The second section will show the period that there has been no statistically significant warming on several data sets. The third section will show how 2013 to date compares with 2012 and the warmest years and months on record so far. The appendix will illustrate sections 1 and 2 in a different way. Graphs and a table will be used to illustrate the data.
[…]
Conclusion
You saw how an earlier prediction by the MET office ended. The MET office felt the need to revise its forecasts. Look at the following and keep in mind that the MET office now believes that the 1998 mark will be beaten by 2017 [their revised decadal forecast]. Do you agree?
Plenty of scope Mike, when the CC-stupid is without trammel. Spiegel’s onto it in Germany and I’ll be interested to see what Andy comes up with when he checks in re wind etc.
Had to chuckle at the Gavin Schmidt quote in Nature up-thread:
“Although I have nothing against this endeavour as a research opportunity, the papers so far have mostly served as a ‘disproof of concept’,” says Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeller at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, which declined to participate in the IPCC’s decadal-predictions experiment.
‘disproof of concept’ indeed. No wonder GISS isn’t participating given the “concept” is essentially the same for multi-decadal prediction. Now I see the US House Of Representatives has passed legislation to improve weather forecasting research, but to do so by cutting NOAA’s spending on climate change research. No skin off GISS (yet) but disturbing for Gavin I’m sure.
As far as I understand it, something that is ‘trammelled’ is kept under strict control. The best example I can offer is that of the ‘Trammell Bars’ ( a long bar with a point at the inner end and an alterable stylus at the other) an engineer uses to mark out very big arcs.
Strict control conspicuously absent internally in climate science Alexander (peer/pal-review notwithstanding), as compared to disciplines where public safety and survival are the primary considerations.
But external controls are arriving because if climate science wont self-regulate internally then it will inevitably be done for them. Check out the US Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF) Global Warming Litigation Project that is petitioning the US Supreme Court to review the EPA Endangerment Finding. See the ‘USA’ Open Thread staring here:
I. The Conclusion That EPA Drew From Its Three Lines Of Evidence Is Demonstrably Invalid
A. First Line Of Evidence: EPA’s GHG Fingerprint (Or Hot Spot) Theory
B. Second Line Of Evidence: The Purported Unusual Rise In GAST
C. Third Line Of Evidence: Climate Models
II. Serious Deficiencies In EPA’s Process Contributed To Its Scientific Errors
The models situation is interesting. The focus is turning to decadal forecasts (see up-thread) i.e. here-and-now that can be verified (or not as it turns out). This focus is gazumping the long-term forecasts and relegating them to irrelevance even more than the failure of the long-term forecasts this century already is. Needless to say, decadal forecasts are anathema to GISS (see Schmidt quote above) because until now there wasn’t sufficient length of observations to assess whether the 100/200/300 year “scenarios” that international public climate policy was based on were of any validity. Climate modelers could not be held accountable in the same way weather forecasters are – now they can. If 5 -10 yr forecasts are useless, why bother with anything longer (100 yrs) and the expense that incurs over and above the expense of decadal forecast computation time until the decadal forecasts acquire sufficient skill?
How long will that take? Trenberth in the Nature article up-thread (my emphasis):
‘Climate change: The forecast for 2018 is cloudy with record heat’
Efforts to predict the near-term climate are taking off, but their record so far has been patchy.
[…]
Even advocates [of decadal forecasts] have no illusions about the challenges ahead. Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, says that it could be a decade or more before this research really begins to pay off in terms of predictive power, and even then climate scientists will be limited in what they can say about the future.
That is an implicit admission that decadal forecasts do not as yet have predictive power and even by 2023 or later, still may be of limited use (if any). The admission also applies to multi-decadal forecasts obviously.
Then there’s the trickle down to energy as a consequence of model-driven climate change alarm. The groundswell against wind farms in Germany (up-thread, also Fukushima kneejerk there) is certainly a turning point surely? ‘Eco-Blowback: Mutiny…..’ is a BIG headline in “green” Germany.
The external control will ultimately be a public that has woken up to where climate science based policy has taken them. Whether enormous financial waste, rorts, frauds, opportunity cost, rifled fees (ETS/carbon tax), or the radical fall in standards of wellbeing and affordability as a result of insane energy plans in some countries. A good part of the populace is already suffering but if it’s not you then there’s not much empathy – especially from politicians.
Once the waking up process clears heads, eyes have been rubbed, cold water applied, reality will set in and so will anger, if Germany is anything to go by.
There, that was “discourse with untrammelled exuberance” wasn’t it?
Earlier this year, David Whitehouse of GWPF drew attention to a striking decrease in the UK Met Office decadal temperature forecast, that had been quietly changed by the Met Office on Christmas Eve. Whitehouse’s article led to some contemporary interest in Met Office decadal forecasts. The Met Office responded (see here); Whitehouse was also challenged by Greenpeace columnist Bob Ward.
Fast forward to July 10, 2013. Using UK Met Office decadal forecasts, Jeff Tollefson of Nature reported as a “News Feature” that “The forecast for 2018 is cloudy with record heat”, covered by Judy Curry here.
An innocent reader would presume that a Nature “News Feature” reporting on Met Office decadal forecasts would include the current Met Office decadal forecast. However, this proves not to be the case. Tollefson showed an older decadal forecast issued prior to the downward revision of the Met Office decadal forecast to which Whitehouse had drawn attention. Tollefson showed the multi-model mean from Smith et al 2012 (Clim Dyn), which has negligible difference from the 2011 Met Office decadal forecast. Had Tollefson shown the “decline” in the current decadal forecast, Nature would not have been able to make the same unequivocal headline.
In yesterday’s post, I observed that Nature’s recent news article on Met Office decadal forecasts failed to show the most recent Met Office decadal forecast and that its inclusion would not have permitted the Nature headline…………..
[…]
Betts’ claimed that my graphic “exaggerated” the difference between the Met Office submission to IPCC and the most recent Met Office decadal forecast. Untrue. I plotted Met Office data. In my opinion, the exact contrary is the case: the Nature News graphic downplayed the differences between Met Office versions by not showing the most recent decadal forecast and by not showing the Met Office IPCC submission. If anything was “wrong” in this incident, it was that the Met Office either signed off on the Nature News’ omission of their most recent decadal forecast (if given a chance to comment) and that they failed to write in their own objection to the omission once the article was published. And that instead of conceding the point, Betts made untrue and unwarranted allegations that I had committed errors in my post reporting the problem.
In a recent post, I noted the discrepancy between the UK Met OFfice contribution to IPCC AR5 and observations (as many others have observed), a discrepancy that is also evident in the “initialized” decadal forecast using the most recent model (HadGEM3). I thought that it would be interesting to examine the HadGEM2 hindcast to see if there are other periods in which there might have been similar discrepancies. (Reader Kenneth Fritsch has mentioned that he’s been doing similar exercises.)
In the figure below, I’ve compared HadCRUT4 (anomaly basis 1961-1990) to the Met Office CMIP5 contribution (red), converted to 1961-90 anomaly.
Figure 1. IPCC CMIP5 contribution (HadGEM2 RPC45 average) vs HadCRUT4.
There is a persistent over-estimate over the first half of the 20th century, particularly in the 1920s. Nor does the Met Office model adequately replicate the temperature increase of the early part of the 20th century. In its CMIP contribution, the average temperature in the first decade (1900-1910) was -0.116, almost identical to the average temperature from 1960-70 (-0.111), as compared to an increase of 0.35 deg in HadCRUT4 (from -0.518 to -0.161).
We often hear about the supposed success of current GCMs in hindcasting 20th century from first principles. Nonetheless, quite aside from the developing discrepancy in the recent period, the apparent inability of the Met Office model used for their IPCC submissions to model the early 20th century suggests a certain amount of salesmanship in the success proclamations.
Forget decadal forecasts. Niwa’s forecast for July, after the coldest June for many years was “Above average temperatures” for both July and the remainder of Winter, meanwhile the snow continues to fall.
“Mean temperatures for June were above average (0.5 to 1.2°C above the June average) across areas of southern and western Southland, Fiordland, Westland, Manawatu and Hawke’s Bay, Gisborne and Bay of Plenty. June temperatures throughout inland Canterbury were below average (0.5 to 1.2°C below the June average). In general, June temperatures were near average throughout the remainder of the country (within 0.5°C of June average). Milford Sound recorded its highest June mean maximum air temperature since records began in 1934.”
‘Sun’s Bizarre Activity May Trigger Another Little Ice Age (Or Not)’
Dick Ahlstrom, The Irish Times
The sun is acting bizarrely and scientists have no idea why. Solar activity is in gradual decline, a change from the norm which in the past triggered a 300-year-long mini ice age.
‘SIDC Belgium show divergent [sunspot] model results’
by tchannon
* SC (red dash-dotted) : classical Standard-Curves prediction method, based on a least-square interpolation of Waldmeier’s set of standard solar cycle profiles;
* CM (red dashes) : Combined Method (K.Denkmayr and P. Cugnon), based on a regression technique combining a geomagnetic precursor (aa index) with a least-square fit to the actual profiles of the past 24 solar cycles.
No mention of any of this in the latest post at Climate Etc:
‘Unforced variability and the global warming slow down’
by Patrick Brown
How we interpret the current slow-down in the rate of global warming depends very much on the length of the ‘leash’ in the true climate system (i.e., how large internal variability is).
Biosketch: Patrick Brown is a PhD student in Earth and Ocean Sciences at Duke University.
Quite a good essay by Patrick Brown but he’s totally ignorant of what directs the “man” holding the “leash” (his dog-on-a-leash analogy that JC “like”s). He’s in for a surprise over the next few years.
The MP (Davey) has a very strong case – argument from authority reinforced by the precautionary principle (/sarc). The interviewer (Neil) was surprisingly good and the debate was vigorous. Good to see.
Very good I agree. Davey suggests that we shouldn’t listen to crackpots, deniers and flat earthers, but need to maintain a healthy scepticism about the science.
It really made sense to me
By the way, Google “Britain’s Climate Fool” for more on Mr Davey
Notice how he kept trying to use Obama’s name as evidence, but tries to avoid any real scientific evidence? A shameless attempt at propaganda to a European community that hero worships the US messiah who preaches ‘hope and change’, but delivers neither. ‘If Obama believes in it it must be true’.
Building the Keystone XL would create thousands of jobs but symbolise a nation resigned to a fossil fuel future. To deny it would be a decent punch; the best of any US President in the climate change fight.
Andrew Neil: Now, are you ready for a puzzle? Well, here’s one. Can global warming be happening as expected, when the world has stopped getting hotter? That’s the brain-teaser that’s troubling scientists and which threatens to shatter the consensus over global warming.
Global temperatures have increased by 0.8 degrees Celsius since the industrial revolution. But since the late 1990s, they’ve stalled, despite the fact that emissions of greenhouse gases have continued apace. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached 400 parts per million for the first time earlier this year. The pause has led some climate scientists to question whether there could be something wrong with their models. One eminent German professor [Hans von Storch, University of Hamburg] has said: “So far, no one has been able to provide a compelling answer to why climate change seems to be taking a break. We’re facing a puzzle…”
The Climate Change Secretary, Ed Davey, has said that this normal expression of scientific uncertainty is no reason to reconsider energy and climate change policies, even though his department says they’re already adding £112 to annual household bills, a number which is set to rise. Speaking last month, he described people who cast doubt on the scientific consensus as “crackpots and conspiracy theorists”, and he warned the press not to give an “uncritical campaigning platform” to people who deny that climate change is man-made.
Ed Davey, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, joins me now for the Sunday interview.
Andrew Neil
The Climate Mafia is very well organised. Suspiciously large number of tweets making same point in same language. Intimidation of dissent
Unlike · · Share · @afneil on Twitter · 53 minutes ago via Twitter ·
‘Climate consensus cracking under weight of evidence’
By Larry Bell
[…] Can’t Be the Models… Something Must Be Wrong With the Climate!
Mark Maslin and Patrick Austin stated in their June 2012 article in the journal Nature that, for the next UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment, “climate scientists face a serious public-image problem.” If the ClimateGate scandals weren’t enough, they observe that, “The climate models they are working with, which use significant improvements in our understanding of complex climate processes, are likely to produce wider rather than smaller ranges of uncertainty in their predictions. To the public and to policymakers, this will look as though the scientific understanding of climate change is becoming less, rather than more, clear.”
D’ya suppose they might have something there?
Maslin and Austin emphasize that a major uncertainty relates to subjective ways models are weighted. They note, for example, that “Every model has its own design and parameterizations of key processes, such as how to include clouds: and every model and its output [in IPCC’s last 2007 assessment] was assumed to be equally valid, even though some perform better than others in certain ways when tested against historic records. The differences between the models will be exacerbated in the 2013 IPCC assessment, because many, but not all, of the models have improved spatial resolution.”
Writing in The New Republic, Nate Cohn shares Maslin’s and Austin’s public climate science confidence concern: “Since 1998, the warmest year of the 20th Century, temperatures have not kept up with computer models that seemed to project steady warming: they’re perilously close to falling beneath even the lowest projections.” He observes that “in the end, the so-called scientific consensus on global warming doesn’t look much like consensus when scientists are struggling to explain the intricacies of the earth’s climate system, or uttering the word ‘uncertainty’ with striking regularity.”
Cohn then unhappily concludes, “The recent wave of news and magazine articles about scientists struggling to explain the warming slowdown could prolong or deepen the public’s skepticism.” He’s correct in acknowledging an existing and growing public skepticism.
How Trustworthy are those Models? Here’s a Reality Check……………………
On this basis and with the EPA’s Endangerment Finding (only 3 lines of evidence – the models one, temp trend and hotspot the other two) before the Supreme Court, the US Dems want to debate the “science”:
‘Dems to Boehner: Debate climate science on House floor’
By Ben Geman
Twenty-two House Democrats are pressing House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to schedule a floor debate on the science of climate change and “the nation’s response to this growing threat.”
The new letter to Boehner came from the “Safe Climate Caucus,” which formed early this year and is led by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.).
It arrives as GOP leaders are attacking the White House climate plan on economic grounds but steering clear of putting widespread GOP skepticism about global warming front-and-center in their messaging.
“The Republican strategy amounts to a conspiracy of silence. It jeopardizes the future of our children and of future generations by recklessly ignoring what scientists tell us is one of the most pressing challenges we face,” the Democrats’ letter states.
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Thursday will hold the first big congressional climate change hearing since President Obama unveiled his global warming plan in late June.
Below is the witness list for the hearing titled “Climate Change: It’s Happening Now.”
Dr. Heidi Cullen, chief climatologist, Climate Central
Mr. Frank Nutter, president, Reinsurance Association of America
Mr. KC Golden, policy director, Climate Solutions
Dr. Diana Furchtgott-Roth, senior fellow, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
Dr. Robert P. Murphy, senior economist, Institute for Energy Research
Dr. Jennifer Francis, research professor, Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, Rutgers University
Dr. Scott C. Doney, director, Ocean and Climate Change Institute, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Dr. Margaret Leinen, executive director, Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, Florida Atlantic University
Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr., professor, Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Colorado
I wonder if Abbot is watching the US development? Terms of reference all important for these pollies but what if the US Supreme court vacates the Endangerment Finding?
Does the EPW have another hearing titled “Climate Change: It’s Not Happening Now”?
Rudd would still want to debate the “carbon price” of course, Abbott ambivalence would continue, and Key probably wouldn’t even notice
Professor Richard Dennis, an economist at the Australian National University, said Mr Abbott should make it clear whether he thinks radiation was harmful or not.
JC uses the word “misleading” wrt Heidi Cullen and Jennifer Francis. Add “dubious” for Cullen. JC:
“On the “warm” side, overconfidence or snarky putdowns of scientists on the other side of the debate does not go over well, since this triggers reminders of Climategate and detracts from your credibility. On the more “skeptical” side, aligning yourself with consensus is an effective strategy, which was used both by Roy Spencer and Roger Pielke Jr. in this Hearing.”
Spencer’s approach will be unsettling in certain quarters I’m sure and his testimony devastating (see testimony quote). But the big surprise (to me anyway) is this (JC):
Robert Murphy
Murphy’s testimony focused on an economics perspective of the social cost of carbon, including issues surrounding the discount rate and domestic versus global social cost of carbon. His testimony concludes with this rather surprising statement:
“The American public and policymakers alike have been led to believe that the social cost of carbon is an objective scientific concept akin to the mass of the moon or the radius of the sun. However, although there are inputs from the physical sciences into the calculation, estimates of the social cost of carbon are heavily dependent on modeling assumptions. In particular, if the White House Working Group had followed OMB guidance on either the choice of discount rate or reporting from a domestic perspective, then the official estimates of the current SCC would probably be close to zero, or possibly even negative—a situation meaning that (within this context) the federal government should be subsidizing coal-fired power plants because their activities confer external benefits on humanity.”
“It is time for scientists to entertain the possibility that there is something wrong with the assumptions built into their climate models. The fact that all of the models have been peer reviewed does not mean that any of them have been deemed to have any skill for predicting future temperatures. In the parlance of the Daubert standard for rules of scientific evidence, the models have not been successfully field tested for predicting climate change, and so far their error rate should preclude their use for predicting future climate change.”
So now the US Senate has heard this and one of the EPA’s three lines of evidence for its Endangerment Finding is the climate models. And now too the US Supreme Court is being asked by the SLF Petition to review and vacate the EPA Endangerment Finding on the grounds of faulty evidence including climate models.
It will be interesting to see what the US Senate and US Supreme Court make of this (apart from dismissing it out-of-hand that is).
Issue #98: ‘Boxer’s Own Experts Contradict Obama on Climate Change’
James M. Taylor, J.D.
Expert witnesses called by Sen. Barbara Boxer to testify during Senate Environment and Public Works hearings Thursday contradicted a key assertion made by President Barack Obama on climate change.
Speaking at a Democratic fundraiser less than a month before directing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to impose costly new restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions, Obama said,
“we also know that the climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or 10 years ago.”
“I don’t have much patience for people who deny climate change,” Obama added.
During Thursday’s Environment and Public Works hearings, Sen. David Vitter asked a panel of experts, including experts selected by Boxer, “Can any witnesses say they agree with Obama’s statement that warming has accelerated during the past 10 years?”
Nobody said a word. After several seconds of deafening silence, Weather Channel meteorologist and global warming activist Heidi Cullen attempted to change the subject. Cullen said our focus should be on longer time periods rather than the 10-year period mentioned by Obama. When pressed, however, she contradicted Obama’s central assertion and said warming has slowed, not accelerated.
Several minutes later, Sen. Jeff Sessions returned to the topic and sought additional clarity. Sessions recited Obama’s quote claiming accelerating global warming during the past 10 years and asked, “Do any of you support that quote?”
Again, a prolonged and deafening silence ensued. Neither Cullen nor any of the other experts on the panel spoke a word, not even in an attempt to change the subject.
Boxer may have envisioned her high-profile global warming hearings as an opportunity to build momentum for congressional or EPA action to restrict carbon dioxide emissions. Instead, the very global warming activists she called to serve as expert witnesses delivered a crushing blow to Obama’s central justification for expensive new restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions.
Republican report: Critical Thinking on Climate Change
Senate GOP criticizes past global warming claims ahead of hearing
Senate Republicans have released a report debunking catastrophic predictions made about global warming in advance of the Environment and Public Works Committee hearing held today.
“Over nearly four decades, numerous predictions have had adequate time to come to fruition, providing an opportunity to analyze and compare them to today’s statistics,” reads the report from Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
The report examines the 15-year break from global warming, sea level rises, extreme weather, and the unilateral regulations proposed by the Obama administration.
‘Southwest U.S. Heatwave Cancelled. Reason? Too much Water Vapor’
by Carl Brehmer
“Good news! The 2013 Southwestern US heat wave has been cancelled because a deluge of water vapor has moved into the region and cooled everything down.”
“This, of course, is opposite what the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis predicts. It asserts that water vapor is a “heat trapping gas” that is suppose to cause at least 22 degrees C (40 degrees F) of atmospheric warming.”
I wish to provide you with sound scientific and chemical engineering analysis of the faults with the Greenhouse Gas Theory, GHGT, proposed to drive Anthropogenic Global Warming and Climate Change, AGW & CC, especially as it pertains to CO2. I want to arm you for this huge, ongoing debate. I seek and receive no financial support from any government, business or organization; I finance my own work in retirement.
For the life of me I cannot get a solid, consistent grip on the underlying physics supporting the notion first proclaimed by James Hansen, Science, 1981, atmospheric CO2 has any quantitatively verified effect on Earth’s temperature. It is the duty of AGW & CC promoters to provide it, not skeptics like me. So I claim political leaders promoting GHGT have not explained the physics and quantified the effect to my satisfaction. They make claims and charges with little or no relevant evidence to back it up. In American law courts these are called frivolous claims and dismissed (thrown out). When their expensive schemes collapse due to foreseeable engineering consequences, their claim they are unintended consequences rings hollow.
While it is not my job as skeptic, I will offer eight objections to their GHG Theory, each of which falsify it. It is their job to prove me wrong. I will present my assertions in simple terms with justifications; I have detailed chemical engineering mathematical analysis verified by experiment to support them.
‘Evangelical Scientists Issue Faith-Based Call For Congress To Address Climate Change’
By Katie Valentine
Jim Ball, executive vice president for policy and climate change at the Evangelical Environmental Network, told E&E Publishing that the evangelical community’s culture of climate skepticism also comes down to a matter of trust in science — something some Christians have historically struggled with. “There is a suspicion about science because of the debate in creation and evolution theory,” Ball said. “To have evangelical scientists, people of faith, saying to the evangelical community that you can trust this science is quite important. It’s all a matter of trust.”
“Global warming could be reversed using a combination of burning trees and crops for energy, and capturing and storing carbon dioxide underground (CCS), according to an analysis by scientists. ”
Let’s hope this is right.
“The age of global warming is over. I refer, not to any warming of the planet that may or may not be occurring, but to the world’s apparently serious and broadly shared belief in dangerous, man-made global warming and of equally serious attempts to implement policies of enforced decarbonisation to deal with it. “
and we have these dangerous clowns coming your way soon….
“It will take 100% collaboration and 200% commitment for New Zealand to reach Generation Zero’s goal of zero carbon pollution, University of Otago Centre for Sustainability director Dr Janet Stephenson says. ”
” Speaking at the first event of Generation Zero’s ”What’s the Holdup?” nationwide tour on climate change action at the University of Otago last night, Dr Stephenson said there were many opportunities to move beyond fossil fuel use.
”We just need to get on and do it fast.”
“Generation Zero Dunedin campaign organiser Letisha Nicholas said there was a deep consensus around the world for action on climate change…”
Dr. Janet Stephenson is passionate about collaborative, interdisciplinary research. Her research interests include indigenous resource management; the interconnections between people and their local environments; and the role of individuals and communities in the transition to a sustainable energy future.
Janet became Director of CSAFE in February 2011. Her academic background is in sociology, planning and human geography. She first joined CSAFE as a Senior Research Fellow at the end of 2008, having previously taught in the Geography Department at Otago University from 2001-2008. Prior to this, she worked as a professional planner, mainly based in Hokianga in the Far North of New Zealand. She is a trustee of the National Energy Research Institute, as well as a member of the Otago Energy Research Centre, the Research Cluster for Natural Resources Law, and the Centre for Research on National Identity.
That is quite an interesting read. Clearly the Indians “get’ the problems with wind and are requiring them to forecast their output so that the backup generators can plan, or maybe they are just trying to nail the wind industry.
I see that quite a few of the JN commenters have picked up on the UK STOR (diesel backup) scam too
>”You can admire the stable predictable output that comes from averaging so many turbines over such a large area. Right?”
Have to say I would have anticipated a little better load profile from 7000 turbines over Northern Europe (some diversity surely?). But no, that’s an eye opener. And pathetic.
Wonder if it has improved since 2004 with the addition of more units (as if 7000 isn’t enough for diversity)? If not, what’s the point of any?
‘Could Living as a Virtual Cow Make You Go Vegan?’
By Lex Berko
Stanford researcher Jeremy Bailenson and his colleagues at the Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL) are transforming people into cows. Participants in their immersive virtual reality programs not only see themselves as bovines in a virtual mirror, but they also get virtually poked with cattle prods and eventually are helplessly dragged to the virtual slaughterhouse.
“Superficially, this might seem a little bizarre, but there is a purpose……….”
Eating less meat, in turn translates into less energy consumption, making climate change, an otherwise “slow, gradual, and nonlinear” process, seem more immediate and consequential and change your behaviour – apparently.
The key issues in this National Grid report are around the instabilities in the grid that will be caused by a large penetration of wind, and the requirement for a 15min response time from backup generation, in the form of diesel. This can happen often because of too much wind or strong gusts that cause entire fleets to be shut due to safetly and operational reasons.
NZ is often touted as a good place for wind generation, yet is prone to strong and gusty winds.
I wonder how much of this problem would occur in NZ too, should there be widespread expansion of the wind fleet?
“Spot prices for electricity in South Australia peaked above $12,100/MWh several times over the past couple of weeks. [for context the average spot price for electricity last year was about $45/MWh]
The reason for the high spot prices is that the power output from wind farms keeps falling away to near zero. It happened again yesterday. Look at the chart here: http://windfarmperformance.info/?date=2013-06-16
Deselect all states except South Australia. Notice the power generated by South Australian wind farms between 06:00 and 17:00 (i.e. when it is most needed) varied between about 10 MW and 80 MW. That’s from a total capacity of 1,223 MW.
The output from all wind farms in all states connected to the National Grid was down to a pathetic 200 MW during the morning.
The Australian national grid is the largest interconnected grid in the world by areal extent. Wind farms are spread over an area 1200 km east-west by 800 km north-south. So the low output from all wind farms over such a large area demonstrates clearly how irrelevant is the claim that “the wind is always blowing somewhere”. The statement is true in principle but irrelevant in practice because the area that would have to be connected, the amount of excess generating capacity and the transmission capacity required makes it impracticable to connect a sufficiently large area to ensure a reliable electricity supply from wind energy.
From my perspective, no amount of wind energy makes economic sense.”
Thanks Ron – very interesting. Peter Lang is obviously in the power generation industry and has some interesting insight regards Australian power industry – his several other comments are worth reading too.
The issue with wind energy has always been that for every MW generated by wind, an equivalent amount needs to be available from “conventional” power as a standby for when the wind doesn’t blow (which is frequently)
However, the report from the UK National Grid highlights another problem, which is that wind farms have to be shut down when there is too much wind, often at very short notice
Here comes the requirement for STOR (Short Term Operating Reserve), which is a network of diesel generators that can fire up very quickly and replace the wind energy until bigger thermal stations can be brought up to speed.
These generators are paid quite handsomely for their availability, of course. Therefore, we end up with conventional power, wind (with subsidies, that in the case of UK offshore wind are around 3 times the cost of the power sold).
All these costs are passed onto the consumer.
The high wind scenario raises the question of how often this happens in NZ and how it is managed.
If hydro is load balancing wind, then is there actually any point to wind energy in NZ other than to “save water”? Does it actually increase the capacity of the grid in NZ?
Of the renewable sources of electricity, wind has greatest potential for New Zealand. It’s abundant and we have plenty of land on which to site wind farms. The technology has developed to the point where it is now a very cost-effective way to generate electricity.
Wind is free and clean. The technologies for harnessing wind have advanced hugely over the last two decades. Turbines are bigger and better. Capacity is increasing as is efficiency and reliability. All the while, costs are coming down.
The New Zealand Government has recognised the importance of renewable generation; its current energy strategy includes a target of 90% electricity from renewable sources by 2025, up from around 75% today. Achieving this target requires a substantial increase in renewable generation.
Allied with other generation sources and an integrated electricity grid, wind will be a key part of a safe and secure electricity system, generating at least 20% of New Zealand’s electricity by 2030, up from 5% of generation today.
Renewable energy can shield the economy from global price and supply issues associated with fossil fuels. It can help combat climate change. Renewable energy also ties in strongly with New Zealand’s clean and green image around the world, supporting tourism and providing other business opportunities.
Not sure how carpeting NZ’s iconic landscape with wind turbines will support tourism, especially as there is ample evidence that they destroy tourism, particularly in many parts of Europe (I know of a cycle tour company in Scotland – for example – that actively avoids areas with windfarms, which is becoming increasingly difficult)
My questions on how wind will be load balanced whilst increasing capacity remain unanswered – I guess I could write to them.
I am very suspicious that wind is cost effective, when there is little evidence that they will actually pay back their initial investment over their lifetime of 15-20 years, without government subsidies.
Fascinating terms – “Gone Green Scenario” and “Wind Cut-Out”. Almost interchangeable.
11.8, page 72:
“The marginal impact of wind is assumed to reduce to 30% by 2020, that is to say we carry an additional 0.3MW of reserve for each additional MW of wind generation.”
“Assumed” – what could possibly go wrong?
Interesting report Andy, I will spend some time on it.
[…] When sunspot activity is high, as it was during the 1990s and early 2000s, temperatures tend to be high as well. When it is low, as it is now, temperatures fall. And because sunspot activity occurs in decades-long cycles, the unusually cold winter and spring of 2012 may be just the beginning. As a Barron’s article recently noted, current sunspot activity is now the least it has been in a century.
What this means is that the era of global cooling has begun. In the northern hemisphere, three out of the four last winters and springs have been unusually cold. This spring was so cold in East Asia that China was forced to import millions of tons of grain and soybeans from the U.S. and other suppliers.
The environmental elitists in Manhattan and Laguna Beach may not be greatly inconvenienced by cold winters, but ordinary people have to eat, too, and food exhausts a much greater share of their income. For the world’s poor, a cold year means the difference between eating and going hungry, or between heating one’s home and shivering all winter. Or as the philosopher Thomas Hobbes put it (while living through the thick of the Little Ice Age himself), it’s the difference between a life that is warm and comfortable and one that is “nasty, brutish, and short.” Because climate alarmists are focused on global warming when they should be concerned with cooling, life for the world’s poor is likely to be just that.
That is because shortages inevitably result from global cooling. As supplies of foodstuffs and energy become constrained due to cold, damp growing seasons and the need for more heating, a global bidding war arises in which the poor lose out. The environmental elitists will not suffer — they’ll pay more as they roll their overladen buggies out of the local Costco, but what the heck? They can bask in the illusion that they are saving the earth.
[…]
Obama’s legacy may be that he was the fool who believed, or pretended to believe, that closing a few power plants would cool the planet just when the planet was already in the process of cooling. He is the one who looked in the rearview mirror and prepared for global warming just as he was about to crash head-on into the exact opposite.
‘German Researcher On Possible Consequences Of A Solar Grand Minimum…”Weakest Cycle In Almost 200 Years” ‘
By P Gosselin on 14. Juli 2013
Die kalte Sonne website presents an article on a potential approaching solar grand minimum.
‘The Sun in June 2013 – on the way to a grand minimum? New study on the possible consequences’
by Frank Bosse
Solar activity has also been very modest this month. One has been able to observe only 48% of the mean value of the activity of the previous cycles for the current cycle, the sunspot number was only 52,5. Here’s how it looks graphically:
In our monthly series in consideration of solar activity, a number of authors have been brought up who think it’s probable that the sun is headed for a grand minimum similar to the Maunder- Minimums of 1649-1715. That may already manifest itself in 2020. There have already been studies that attempt to project the impacts on global temperatures. Included here is a study from Meehl et al. 2013. As an input the authors look at an approximately 0.25% reduction in Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) between 2020 and 2070:
[Note: that’s a 3.5 W/m2 and realistic assumption but a greater reduction is not out of the question in historical terms given the range of estimates of 6 W/m2 from 1600s – 1900s]
They fed this into a climate model. Result: global temperatures could drop around 0,2…0,3 degrees Celsius with local peak values of up to 0.8°C, especially in the middle and upper latitudes of the northern hemispheres:
The model used by Meehl et al. employs a high climate sensitivity with respect to greenhouse gases, foremost CO2, and it is thus little wonder that the shown cooling with respect to the warming on top of it in the simulation only has a temporary effect and a moderate braking effect. The questions that a critical observer may ask are the following:
1. Is the magnitude of sensitivity with regards to GHG in the model really assured when we consider the current stagnation of global temperatures since at least 2001 – while CO2 has steadily increased?
2. Is the TSI in the paper, viewed as the “motor”, solely what one could expect to act or does spectral variation (especially UV) make an additional contribution? The same needs to be asked about the significantly increasing galactic cosmic radiation.
We see: Forecasts are very difficult – especially when they concern the future.
Dr Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring at the Met Office, said: “Global surface temperatures remain high. Twelve of the 14 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000, the lower troposphere – the atmosphere above the surface – is continuing to warm in recent years, and combined with the cooling in the stratosphere this is a distinctive fingerprint of the effects of greenhouse gases on the climate system.”
Prof Rowan Sutton, Director of Climate Research at the University of Reading, said: “Within the field we have taken for granted that there will be variations in the rate of warming, it is totally accepted and is no surprise …[it] would correct to say that wasn’t the message that we communicated more widely and that probably is a failing.”
+ + + + +
Hmmm. Lower trop warming in recent years Dr Stott? And since when was lower trop the criteria for a “distinctive fingerprint? Prof Sutton might like to have a chat with Myles Allen who said ““no-one predicted the shorter-timescale lack-of-trend we have seen since 2000”. And what about “a bit of a mystery” and “scientists are puzzled”?
Weasels. But at least they’ve discovered natural cycles.
The BBC’s David Shukman wasn’t as amenable according to what must be a transcript from Steve Milloy:
‘Bad for warmism: In-the-tank BBC asks ‘Why has global warming stalled?’ ‘
BBC science editor David Shukman reports:
With Britain’s heatwave reaching a peak, there could be no better moment to talk about why global warming has slowed to a standstill…
What if the climate models – which are the very basis for all discussions of what to do about global warming – exaggerate the sensitivity of the climate to rising carbon dioxide?
Dr Stott conceded that the projections showing the most rapid warming now look less likely, given recent observations, but that others remain largely unchanged.
A Met Office briefing document, released at the briefing, says that, even allowing for the temperatures of the last decade, the most likely warming scenario is only reduced by 10% – so “the warming that we might have expected by 2050 would be delayed by only a few years”.
Overall, it concludes, the pause “does not materially alter the risks of substantial warming of the Earth by the end of this century.”
In other words, global warming is still on.
But until the pause can be properly explained, many people will take a lot of convincing – especially if the pause lasts longer than expected.
Given the pause wasn’t expected at all I’m not sure what length can be considered “longer”. And no mention of the word “cooling” either – that’s still out-of-the-question obviously.
>”no mention of the word “cooling” either – that’s still out-of-the-question obviously”
Not so everywhere of course (UKMO or Univ of Reading not being everywhere):
Irish solar science specialist Dr Ian Elliott – “It all points to perhaps another little ice age,” he said. “It seems likely we are going to enter a period of very low solar activity and could mean we are in for very cold winters.”
Each month Professor Ole Humlum from the University of Oslo published the latest month’s data in a report called Climate4you. He has just issued the latest for June 2013. (link – pdf)
* The two satellite records continue to show cooling;
* All three surface air temperature records continue to show negative temperature trend for the last 5 and 10 years; however
* as seen by the Mauna Loa record below CO2 continues its rise:
The former United Nations chief climate negotiator Yvo de Boer in Australia this week, regarding the forthcoming fifth assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said:
“THAT report is going to scare the wits out of everyone,”
Did he mean everyone, or did he mean those looking for further grant money for research into the “settled science.”
“I asked why this [the pause] had not come up in earlier presentations. No one really had an answer, except to say that this “message” about pauses had not been communicated widely.”
Perceptive essay by Ben Pile and a lot going on in it connecting back to the STC inquiry into climate change communication. Good to have that background as a reference for these latest developments. Highlights the power of mass media too when the issues are drawn out in clarity.
Sunday Politics certainly did their research for the Davey interview quite impressively and a thorough riposte to critics in whole. Reading between the lines I detect fingers on the pulse of a number of topical issues which would have required some extensive reading and keeping up with developments.
“Contrary to many unfounded claims on Twitter………All our evidence came from mainstream scientists who do not doubt the fundamental tenets of global warming.”
First impression was surprise to see that headline at The Guardian too, but reading on Pearce answers his question in the title with another question and answer that reveals his ulterior motive:
“At what point can we judge that a scientific question moves from a position of “doubt” to being “settled”? Both climate change sceptics and advocates of climate policy see this question as important; sharing a faith that scientific evidence is the basis for public policy. However, such a faith omits the possibility that science is not suited to such a role, and that “solving” climate change does not flow linearly from agreement on the science. The attentions of sceptics may or may not be improving the practice and knowledge of climate science. However, if sceptics’ never-ending audit is really damaging policy, that may be more a reflection of an overly scientised policy process than a basis for denying them a voice in debate.”
He seems to imply the policy process can/should/might be less scientised in the case of climate to avoid intense scrutiny of the science. Does that mean an even more ideological process is appropriate for climate in his assessment?
Never thought I’d see PSI get a mention in The Guardian:
“However, others offer far more fundamental challenges to climate science, such as fringe sceptic group Principia Scientific who reject this orthodox view of atmospheric physics [hotlink].”
Can’t see the Guardian comments at the moment to see if any of the Guardianistas actually understand what’s going on there in the wider context of GHE. I doubt any do but if they did, who would they “side” with (as Pearce puts it)? Eschenbach/Watts, or PSI?
“His insistance on calling them sceptics is illustrative of his attitude, since few of them are real sceptics in any sense of the world, since they don’t understand the science. How can one be sceptical about something one has no understanding of?”
Peter would be astonished I’m sure if confronted with the actual understanding of AGW theory by the collective sceptic community, not that he’ll ever look himself. But it’s the likes of Robert Lacatena in his reply to Paul Vincelli (University of Kentucky) that I was interested in seeing as expressed up-thread:
Robert Lacatena
“The thing about the “citizen scientists” is that they (Watts and his legion of flying monkeys specifically) don’t hold themselves to the same gilded standard to which they hold actual scientists. Watts will publish just about any old nonsense that comes his way (although even he finally had to admit that the Slayers were so far beyond reason that it was embarrassing to associate with them). 90% of what is published on contrarian sites is self-contradictory. And in the end it all boils down to a frantic, jumbled collage of “it’s not happening, if it is, it’s not us, it’s one of this other list of things we’ve thought of, and if it is us its not CO2, if it is CO2, it won’t be bad, and if it will be bad, there’s nothing we can do about it anyway, and no matter what, it’s all a socialist commie eco-fascist plot by the UN and NAACP.” It’s the exact opposite of real science… climate “skepticism”, as practiced at WUWT and other self-styled scientific champions, is in the end a conclusion looking for an argument.”
Robert Lacatena is obviously ignorant (as is Michael Craig replying to Vincelli below Lacatena) of the real argument taking place between WUWT and PSI. Anthony Watts “and his legion of flying monkeys” (Dr Roy Spencer and Willis Eschenbach deserve a whole lot better than that), are attempting to defend GHE by default of any other GHE proponents in response to PSI, and GHE is the prerequisite of AGW. But Spencer and Watts have no answer to PSI’s non-GHE round-earth model so where does that leave Robert? At some stage he’ll need ring-ins if the “flying monkeys” can’t hold the fort on behalf of him but he’s a fool if he thinks he can find anyone else that has better arguments because Watts, Spencer and Eschenbach are essentially elucidating and defending Kiehl & Trenberth, GHE and AGW with conventional climate science wisdom.
The latest from PSI is “a simplified version of an earlier PSI model produced in answer to a “put up or shut up” challenge (May 10, 2013) by climatologist, Dr Roy Spencer”:
‘New Climate Model Trumps Flat Earthers of Greenhouse Gas ‘Science’ ‘
Eventually the Guardianistas will have to confront for themselves the PSI arguments and propositions (including the mathematical physics in the vein of ‘The Relentless Pseudo-science of WUWT’ up-thread) without the help of sceptic (but luke-warm) “flying monkey” “self-styled scientific champion” intermediaries. If Robert Lacatena’s conception of the skeptical argument is anything typical then they’re totally clueless, ignorant, and completely unprepared for the PSI-type scepticism that the thoroughly aware Spencer, Watts and Eschenbach have been up against for a while now but have been unable to refute, let alone conclusively rebut to the extent of shutting down PSI.
If those 3 can’t do it, it’ll take inestimably more than Guardianista Bozos if their comments are anything to go by. If anybody makes headway it will be those who front up in comments addressing the PSI propositions e.g. Geraint Hughes, Rojclague and Anon under the above linked article. Not sure that they have been answered satisfactorily by PSI yet in respect to the simplified model or whether the simplified model is an improvementr but the round-earth concept (or accounting for rotation) is difficult to dismiss. From the article:
Multiplying the solar constant (= 1367 W/m^2) x 0.7 (= “filtering” effect of the atmosphere owing to albedo, scattering of solar radiation by aerosols and clouds) x 0.41, an average distribution of solar radiation on the surface, i.e. 390 W/m^2, is obtained. That correlates, through applying the Stefan-Boltzmann equation, to nearly 15°C, which is the “average temperature” of Earth as evidenced by weather stations.
It is interesting to note that this result could have also been observed by Kiehl & Trenberth had they not disregarded the Earth’s rotation (= actual absorption) and emissivity (= grey-body) of the Earth.
In the K-T diagram the average solar irradiance on Earth’s surface is given as nearly 161 W/m^2. Dividing 161 by 0.41 for total emissivity as per above arrives at a figure of 392 W/m^2, corresponding – according to the same S-B equation – to 15.2°C, closely similar to our calculation.
I would like to see Kiehl & Trenberth’s (or other approved Lacatena/Guardianista ring-ins) response to that
The outlook is very clear and stark. A future global economy based on high energy costs and reduced energy usage per capita is inevitable. It will be permanently recessionary
Tamsin made a presentation a while back in response to the film ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ titled ‘Climate Change Denial’:
“A talk on “The Great Global Warming Swindle” Channel 4 programme. I gave this to the “Climatic Prediction and Research student group” at the University of Bristol in May 2007.”
Poked holes in most of the graphs etc so that her case for AGW was credible at the time because the film left a lot to be desired and the pause was not an issue. However, she now has a can of worms at her own blog in respect to her Summary: 1 and Summary: 2 and the Met Office’s decadal forecast thanks to Barry Woods:
No answers from Tamsin despite her avowed “risk assessment, estimating the probability of change” rather than “risk management, deciding how to reduce or live with that risk” and unequivocal statements in Summary: 1 and Summary: 2 e.g.
“Other factors do affect our climate, such as variations in the sun’s energy and volcanic eruptions and we do not dismiss them. But their net effect is small”
And,
“The observed warming has been caused predominantly by human emissions of greenhouse gases”.
All very well staying out of policy but there’s an accountability by the assessor for the risk assessment (and basis of it above) if it’s looking dodgy (no observed warming for a decade or more). As Barry Woods puts it:
“I could not quite pin Richard [Betts – Met Office] down to when models should show significant rate of warming again, we need ~0.3C, right now per decade to hit 2040 projections, but he did concede the 0.3C, vs the low rate observed. I was looking for a test, that either constrains OR validates the projections.”
This is exactly the same situation as Gluckman’s 0.9C projection for all NZ by 2040 (requires 0.33C, right now per decade). Gluckman is the intermediary between risk assessors (Tamsin/Betts/Wratt/Renwick et al) and risk managers (Key/Groser et al in NZ).
There really isn’t much of a distinction if risk managers kowtow to risk assessors irrespective of the veracity of the assessment i.e. there is no “out” for Tamsin because her assessment is the basis of policy. This is simply the same responsibility to get it right that engineers are held accountable to (think CTV building collapse inquiry).
“Other factors do affect our climate, such as variations in the sun’s energy and volcanic eruptions and we do not dismiss them. But their net effect is small”
Fred Pearce January 2013 on the Met Office forecast downgrade:
What has changed in their thinking?
There is a growing awareness among climate scientists of the importance of natural variability in predicting climate change, especially in the short term, where it can completely obscure the global warming signal. This realisation has been bubbling up for a while. Four years ago, New Scientist reported evidence – including research by the Met Office’s Doug Smith – that natural cycles were pushing the atmosphere into a cold phase [see hotlink]. Back then, we said the research “suggests that surface air temperatures will remain steady for the next six years or so, as cooler sea surface temperatures keep the lower atmosphere cool despite ever higher greenhouse gas levels”.
Are these cycles just something scientists have invented to explain away the lack of recent warming?
No. The Met Office admits that we still know far too little about how these natural cycles work, and how big they are. And climate scientists are open to the charge that they ignored the potential impact of natural variability when it was accelerating global warming. According to Brian Hoskins of Imperial College London, it now looks like natural cycles played a big role in the unexpectedly fast warming of the 1990s.”
In other words, they (including Tamsin) were wrong. And irresponsible. What other cycles are operating that they’ve ignored? Pierce:
“But there are also longer-term cycles. The biggest cycles are known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.”…….”The 11-year solar cycle has a small effect.”
“Biggest cycles” ??? They, according to Fred, consider 60/70 yrs the “biggest” cycles?
So they’ve ignored the “biggest” “longer-term” cycles of only up to 60 – 70 yrs (PDO/AMO) until forced to by the pause and their only solar cycle consideration now there’s a pause is 11 yr. What chance then, an even bigger, longer, quasi 200, 1000 or 1500 year cycle might get their attention unless forced to again by the climate over the next few years if temperatures cool rather than just “remain steady” i.e. they’ll be wrong again because 60/70 yrs are not the “biggest” climate cycles that effect climate but simply oscillations about much larger cycles?
‘Multi-scale analysis of global temperature changes and trend of a drop in temperature in the next 20 years’
Lin Zhen-Shan and Sun Xian
Received May 2, 2005; revised October 24, 2005; accepted April 6, 2006
Published online: July 31, 2006
The School of Geographic Sciences, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, P. R. China
Summary
A novel multi-timescale analysis method, Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD), is used to diagnose the variation of the annual mean temperature data of the global, Northern Hemisphere (NH) and China from 1881 to 2002. The results show that:
(1) Temperature can be completely decomposed into four timescales quasi-periodic oscillations including an ENSO-like mode, a 6–8-year signal, a 20-year signal and a 60-year signal, as well as a trend. With each contributing ration of the quasi-periodicity discussed, the trend and the 60-year timescale oscillation of temperature variation are the most prominent.
(2) It has been noticed that whether on century-scale or 60-year scales, the global temperature tends to descend in the coming 20 years.
(3) On quasi 60-year timescale, temperature abrupt changes in China precede those in the global and NH [approx 5–10 years ahead], which provides a denotation for global climate changes. Signs also show a drop in temperature in China on century scale in the next 20 years.
(4) The dominant contribution of CO2 concentration to global temperature variation is the trend. However, its influence weight on global temperature variation accounts for no more than 40.19%, smaller than those of the natural climate changes on the rest four timescales. Despite the increasing trend in atmospheric CO2 concentration, the patterns of 20-year and 60-year oscillation of global temperature are all in falling. Therefore, if CO2 concentration remains constant at present, the CO2 greenhouse effect will be deficient in counterchecking the natural cooling of global climate in the following 20 years. Even though the CO2 greenhouse effect on global climate change is unsuspicious, it could have been excessively exaggerated. It is high time to re-consider the trend of global climate changes.
So even before Tamsin Edwards of Bristol University UK was stating that “The observed warming has been caused predominantly by human emissions of greenhouse gases” or there had been a natural cycles epiphany at the UK Met Office and the Imperial College London, two guys (or gals? students or professors – who knows?) in China that no-one has heard of were busy isolating the shorter cycles and concluding GHG influence was “smaller than those of the natural climate changes” at a University that never, ever, gets a mention in Western media climate change dispatches.
Not only that but their 20 year prediction of a drop in temperature is playing out in HadCRUT4 over the 8 years since 2005:
Goes to show I think, that there is far too much credence placed on UK (and US) climate scientists.
Lin Zhen-Shan and Sun Xian end their Discussion with this Chinglish:
“And again, our primary conclusion, i.e., that atmospheric CO2 concentration is not a key determinant of periodic variation of the global temperature. The global climate warming is not solely affected by the CO2 greenhouse effect……..climate change on different timescales by analysis the solar activity, earth movement (nutation, rift and volcano activity) and the others greenhouse gases using EMD method.”
Fine by me in view of their results. All respect to big-name British scientists Tamsin Edwards, Doug Smith, Brian Hoskins and Richard Betts, but I’m more inclined to place my credence (not all but some at least) on Lin Zhen-Shan and Sun Xian – whoever they were, and however they said it.
Page 1 – “….the CO2 greenhouse effect on global climate change is unsuspicious”
Page 5 – “….the greenhouse effect of CO2 in the atmosphere on global temperature variation is mainly the century scale trend [EMD residual]”
Page 5, Fig. 4. The CO2 concentration is decomposed into two intrinsic mode functions (IMF) and a trend (Res) by EMD method.
Page 2, Fig. 1. The global mean temperature is decomposed into four intrinsic mode functions (IMF) and a trend by EMD method………….The Res indicates larger timescale oscillation.
Page 4, Fig. 2. The northern hemisphere mean temperature is decomposed into four intrinsic mode functions (IMF) and a trend by EMD method………………..The Res indicates larger timescale oscillation
Page 6, Fig. 5. The China annual mean temperature is decomposed into four intrinsic mode functions (IMF) and a trend by EMD method…………..The Res indicates larger timescale oscillation.
The CO2 effect is very “suspicious” contrary to Zhen-Shan and Xian because the CO2 residual trend at the bottom of Figure 4 is almost exactly opposite to the temperature residual trend’s at the bottom of Figures 1, 2 and 3.
The Global, NH and China temperature residual trends do however correspond with TSI rise over the 1881 to 2002 period. Almost identical for China but lagged over a decade for Global and NH indicating the influence of ocean i.e. the atmospheric response is fast over land but slow over ocean. The residual temperature trend had peaked in the China dataset by 2002 but had not for Global or NH but China is obviously a leading indicator as Zhen-Shan and Xian found i.e. the Global and NH residual temperature trends are peaking over a decade later than China and from around now (2013/4) will turn negative consistent with TSI and oceanic lag along with IMF4 that has already turned negative i.e. their shorter cycle cooling on top of longer cycle cooling for an even greater downturn than they expect.
All Zhen-Shan and Xian had to do was factor in their residual trends to their IMF prediction with appropriate attribution and rationale to overlay the IMF oscillation on the residual cycle to make their analysis impeccable and for time to verify the whole thing rather than just the IMF prediction. They (or someone else) could do that easily in a follow-up paper if they had the inclination. So although Zhen-Shan and Xian have made good use and correct attribution of IMFs, they’ve miss-attributed the residual. They were still way ahead of their UK counterparts even so.
Interesting to see the China annual mean temperature series in Figure 5. The data series (“signal” at top of Figure 5) exhibits pronounced warming 1920s – 1950s and that entire period was warmer than right up to the late 1990s. The 1980 level is about the same as the 1880 level and the series looks much like the USA land series before all the “adjustments”.
Climate science finally getting to grips with natural cycles but they could still benefit from perusal of Zhen-Shan and Xian (2006), e.g. these guys:
‘Deciphering the Air-Sea Communication: Ocean Significantly Affects Long-Term Climate Fluctuations’
[…] Ocean currents affect the surface temperature of the oceans and thus the heat exchange with the atmosphere — eventually causing climate variations on the adjacent continents. The most evident is an oscillation with a period of 60 years. “Such decadal climate fluctuations are superimposed on the general warming trend, so that at times it seems as if the warming trend slowed or even stopped. After a few decades, it accelerates once again,” explains Prof. Latif. “It is important for us to understand these natural cycles, so that we can finally provide better climate predictions as well.” One of the major problems, as Latif explained, is that there are just very few long-term oceanic measurements, thereby complicating the analysis and interpretation of climate change signals. Therefore, scientists are using increasingly refined statistical methods to extract more and more information from the available data sets.
“We need both, realistic model simulations and long-term data records, and really sophisticated analysis methods to produce reliable climate predictions. Our work is an additional piece in the giant puzzle of global climate variability, but I am confident that we will be able to extract the secrets underlying the natural climate fluctuations,” says Prof. Latif.
“Such decadal climate fluctuations are superimposed on the general warming trend, so that at times it seems as if the warming trend slowed or even stopped. After a few decades, it accelerates once again,” – or not.
Zhen-Shan and Xian show the “general warming trend” is changing phase from warming – to zenith – to cooling. Decadal fluctuations will then be “superimposed on the general [cooling] trend”.
Hopefully it wont take another 7 years for Latif and others to assemble “realistic model simulations and long-term data records, and really sophisticated analysis methods” so they can figure out what had been revealed (but not realized) by Zhen-Shan and Xian’s EMD analysis in 2005/6.
US scientists found that even small changes in temperature or rainfall correlated with a rise in assaults, rapes and murders, as well as group conflicts and war.
The team says with the current projected levels of climate change, the world is likely to become a more violent place.
“Dead indoor plants strengthen belief in global warming”
Abstract
Studies have revealed that heuristics and accessible schemas may affect people’s judgments about global warming. In two studies, participants were asked to report on beliefs regarding global warming while seated in a room in which a small tree or several trees had been placed. In one experimental condition, the tree possessed its foliage whereas in the other, the branches were bare. It was found that participants were more likely to believe in global warming in presence of the tree without foliage (Study 1), that this belief increased in presence of three rather than one tree without foliage (Study 2), and that other beliefs not related to global warming were not affected by the experimental conditions. These results reveal that surrounding physical cues do affect beliefs about global warming. The spreading activation theory is used to explain these results
Hi Cedric, great of you to drop by, I do enjoy trolling at Kens blog as you know, especially as you guys have nothing to say other than cut and paste videos from NASA
Do stop around, it has become kind of quiet around here recently.
Now how about some moon landing denier videos, or some references to creationists?
These little gems turned up news outlets lately in “Reuters” (apparently) articles on the ’2012 State of the Climate report’ but the “Reuters” articles have all been re-edited somewhere along the publishing process (maybe tailored for each customer?) e.g. Stuff includes Renwick and Salinger not found in the others but omits the all-important Tom Karl attribution:
[Jim Salinger in Stuff] – “Warming of surface temperatures has slowed somewhat over the last decade…..”
Followed by the obligatory – “…..as the excess heat goes into warming up the deep global oceans”
Fortunately Stuff clears the fog with what is attributed to Tom Karl elsewhere:
“It [the report] showed a complex picture, with global temperatures actually declining by 0.05 degrees Celsius in the decade leading up to 2012.”
From Reuters in the Sydney Morning Herald with Karl attributed and a little more precise than Salinger in Stuff:
“However, in the decade leading up to 2012, global temperatures actually declined by 0.05 degree celcius, according to Thomas Karl, director of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Centre”
And
“The recent decrease in atmospheric temperatures has been noted by climate change sceptics who question the impact of human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels that emit carbon dioxide, on climate.”
Followed by the obligatory:
Other reports including NOAA’s, though, indicate the oceans have been warming up as they absorb more heat.
The Rueters “However” is also to be found at CBC (Radio Canada) but curiously a different version to the Sydney Morning Herald. Instead of the obligatory heat-going-into-the-oceans there is another “However” which is not as explicit:
“However, other changes detailed in the report paint a more complex picture:……….”
“Ocean heat was near record high levels in the upper half-mile (.8 km) of the water, and temperatures also increased in the deep ocean.”
Also in Today Online with “But” instead of “However”:
“But in the decade leading up to 2012, global temperatures actually declined by 0.05°C, said Dr Thomas Karl, Director of the NOAA’s National Climatic Data Centre.”
Followed by a “However”:
“However, other changes detailed in the report — such as [NOTHING ABOUT OCEAN HEAT] — paint a more complex picture.”
# # #
Getting a bit tricky for the MSM, they’re having to call on “actually”, “however” and “but” quite a lot now.
Not the same zealotry for spelling unfortunately. I suspect his numeracy doesn’t live up to his self-ascribed gift either. CAGW religiosity and proliferation unquestionable though.
Today, all across the country, people are telling members of Congress that it’s not OK to deny the science behind climate change.
There are 135 climate change deniers in Congress — elected officials who refuse to believe that climate change is real, manmade, and dangerous. Today, we want everyone pointing and laughing at these folks.
It’s easy to join in. Can you help by sharing something on Twitter or Facebook?
Tweet at Speaker John Boehner, the lead climate denier in Congress — and call out the climate denial.
Or share this graphic on Facebook:
Call on Speaker Boehner to stop denying the science behind climate change.
Share on Facebook
It only takes a second — but if we do our jobs, it’ll be fun to watch these climate change deniers try to explain themselves.
‘OFA Gets Zero Attendance for Climate Change Rally’
BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff
Not a single person showed up at the Georgetown waterfront Tuesday for a climate change agenda event put on by Organizing for Action, the shadowy nonprofit advocacy group born out of President Obama’s 2012 campaign……
Robert Murphy in ‘Scathing MIT Paper Blasts Obama’s Climate Models’:
“Any Result One Desires”
In my testimony [to the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee], I said the “economist can produce just about any estimate of the social cost of carbon desired.” Pindyck reaches the same conclusion in his paper when he writes:
And here we see a major problem with IAM-based climate policy analysis: The modeler has a great deal of freedom in choosing functional forms, parameter values, and other inputs, and different choices can give wildly different estimates of the SCC and the optimal amount of abatement. You might think that some input choices are more reasonable or defensible than others, but no, “reasonable” is very much in the eye of the modeler. Thus these models can be used to obtain almost any result one desires. [Pindyck p. 5, bold added.]
As Pindyck is here underscoring, our claim isn’t that the economists generating large values for the social cost of carbon are “lying.” The point is, these models are so open-ended—they’re trying to model the entire climate system and global economy through the year 2300, for crying out loud—that the analyst has to pick and choose what items to include, and which to omit. If the economist wants the computer to spit out a big scary number, that’s not hard to accomplish.
Conclusion
“Robert Pindyck is exactly the sort of expert we are being told should have the floor in the climate change debate: He is not from industry, but instead is an academic at a prestigious post at MIT. He has been publishing on energy issues (including entire books) since the 1970s. And yet, in his recent paper assessing the computer models currently driving federal policy, he concludes: “I have argued that IAMs are of little or no value for evaluating alternative climate change policies and estimating the SCC. On the contrary, an IAM-based analysis suggests a level of knowledge and precision that is nonexistent.”
Now it’s true, Pindyck still thinks there is a strong case for federal intervention to curb emissions of greenhouse gases, and on that score he and I part ways. Yet when it comes to the Obama Administration’s official rationale for its anti-carbon policies, even Pindyck the MIT expert agrees with me: these computer models are close to useless. I wonder if Senator Boxer and others will have a change of heart, since they claim to follow the peer-reviewed literature?”
Offshore wimd farm in Germany is not connected to the grid and is burning through 22000 litres of diesel every month to stop the turbines corroding, whilst producing zero energy output
There is a widespread concern among climate scientists, environmentalists and policy makers that they are in a war of words on climate change and seem to be losing out. Sir John Houghton told the BBC that “We are … losing that war because we’re not good at PR. Your average scientist is not a good PR person because he [sic] wants to get on with his science… So we need to look, I suppose, for some good PR people to help us get our messages across in an honest and open and sensible way, without causing the sort of furore, the sort of polarisation that has occurred because of the people who are trying to deny it, and trying to deny it so vehemently that the media is taking so much notice of them.” (BBC online news, 11 February 2010). Similar statements have been made over the 20 year period since climate change, and climate science, became an object of public debate. We will re-consider such claims by analysing press coverage from four countries.
Interesting fact:
Al Gore, the most visible advocate, is quoted 25 times more often than Michael Crichton, the most visible sceptic across national boundaries. (Page 11)
Ed. note: A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hearing William Tucker speak at a conference in Washington, DC. His explanation of E = mc2 was the best I had ever heard. Even better, Tucker explained how Einstein”s equation applied to renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and hydro. His lecture was a revelation. It showed that the limits of renewable energy have nothing to do with politics or research dollars, but rather with simple mathematics. During a later exchange of emails with Tucker, I praised his lecture and suggested he write an article that explained E = mc2 and its corollary, E = mv2.
To my delight, he informed me that he”d already written such an essay and he agreed that we could publish it in Energy Tribune. –
AGW alarmism in Germany has gone as far as it will ever get – it’s past its heyday. Spiegel publishing this report is a clear signal that they are no longer in with the kook alarmists on the issue and are gravitating to lukewarmism. It’s the end of the PIK as a meaningful player in Germany. When Spiegel no longer cooperates, then lots of other media outlets are going to start re-evaluating their positions on AGW. It’ll be a slow protracted death that will take many years – but it has begun and it#s not going to turn back.
‘Kevin Trenberth downgrades global warming to just a ‘hotspot’ that moves ‘unpredictably’ ‘
by Steve Milloy
Kevin Trenberth told ClimateProgress’ Joe Romm:
“We can confidently say that the risk of drought and heat waves has gone up and the odds of a hot spot somewhere on the planet have increased but the hotspot moves around and the location is not very predictable. This year perhaps it is East Asia: China, or earlier Siberia? It has been much wetter and cooler in the US (except for SW), whereas last year the hot spot was the US. Earlier this year it was Australia (Tasmania etc) in January (southern summer). We can name spots for all summers going back quite a few years: Australia in 2009, the Russian heat wave in 2010, Texas in 2011, etc.
Similarly with risk of high rains and floods: They are occurring but the location moves.”
We can confidently say that the risk of climate changing has gone up, although we cannot say with any certainty where, when, how or by what magnitude. Weather is occurring, but the location moves. Please send more research funds.
‘Undersea Volcanoes ‘Unexpectedly’ Add Iron to the Atlantic Ocean’
By Greg Pollowitz
This is actually a big deal as the more iron there is in the oceans, the more the oceans are able to absorb CO2:
Previously, oceanographers thought the Atlantic Ocean seafloor didn’t spit out as much iron as other regions. However, a recently discovered plume of iron billowing from the depth of the Atlantic Ocean suggests the seafloor may be pumping iron like a young Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The oceanic iron cloud spreads for more than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) across the Atlantic from west of Angola, Africa, to northeast of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The iron-rich waters flow 1,500 to 3,500 meters (4,921 – 11,482 feet) beneath the surface of the ocean. The complete extent and shape of the iron plume remains to be discovered.
“We had never seen anything like it,” said Mak Saito, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute scientist and lead author of the study, in a press release. “We were sort of shocked—there’s this huge bull’s-eye right in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean. We didn’t quite know what to do with it, because it went contrary to a lot of our expectations.”
Cracks in the Earth crust, or hydrothermal vents, on the ocean floor released the iron. However, the type of vent came as a surprise to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and University of Liverpool oceanographers who discovered it.
A long ridge splits the Atlantic Ocean as geological forces gradually force the ocean wider. The slow-spreading Atlantic ridge was thought to produce less iron and other chemicals than vents in regions with speedier splits, like the ridge in the eastern Pacific.
The rest here [hotlink].
Now, let’s see when climate scientists update their models to account for this new revelation.
The Hot Topicers are adamant undersea volcanoes are “mystical” and “non-existent”, in this case actually hydrovents but the Hot Topicers don’t know the difference either. Even after Roger Dewhurst (a Geologist) enlightened them on the exposed magma of the Mid-Atlantic Rift they were no wiser (or didn’t want to be).
Along with iron there’s the superheated water of course, which is dismissed as inconsequential by climate science (and Willis Eschenbach I would add).
I expect more of these “unexpected” revelations accompanied by “We had never seen anything like it” and “We were sort of shocked” and “We didn’t quite know what to do with it, because it went contrary to a lot of our expectations”.
‘New paper has ‘profound implications’ for ocean carbon cycle’
A new paper published in Nature Geoscience finds a major source of iron from hydrothermal vents in the Atlantic Ocean, “and that has profound implications, because iron is a critical element for ocean life. Iron is known to spur the growth of phytoplankton in many marine habitats, especially those important in the ocean’s carbon cycle, which, in turn, impacts atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and Earth’s climate. Because more than half the world’s seafloor ridges are slow-spreading, the team’s discovery suggests there may be far more iron from these locations than previously estimated. “We need to understand where iron is in the ocean and where it’s coming from to understand the role of iron in the marine carbon cycle with any confidence,” Saito says.”
‘Newly discovered ocean plume could be major source of iron’
Jim Salinger was on TV tonight, announcing the “warmest winter on record”
Since I follow the winter weather quite closely, (as a keen skier), I know that there was a mega dump of cold snow in June, followed by a very strong NWer for a few days, and then a predominately Northerly airflow for August giving us very little precipitation and fairly warm temperatures
Probably nothing to do with Greenhouse warming, but it fits the narrative so our Jim feels obliged to remind us of this
‘Climate Science Exploited for Political Agenda, According to Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons’
TUCSON, Ariz., Aug. 28, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Climatism or global warming alarmism is the most prominent recent example of science being coopted to serve a political agenda, writes Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the in the fall 2013 issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. He compares it to past examples: Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union, and the eugenics movement.
Here at the Mt M sand dunes, nice people planted wild flowers and bulbs years ago to brighten things up. My favourite being jonquil bulbs (I think they are) because they flower and release fantastic scent at the beginning of spring around now. Makes walks and runs downwind a joy now that it’s warmer (no snow and cold here).and my favourite time of year.
Except the Tga City Council has sent in a spraying contractor to eradicate non-natural dune plants – including jonquils. Only some fenced off areas have been sprayed so far so there’s still some sensual enjoyment to be had and even the sprayed flowers are still doing their best as they wilt and die.
A bit like the springtime equivalent of the Grinch stealing Christmas.
SkS are highlighting a paper that dismisses solar change effect on climate (natch):
‘Study offers clues on 20th century global warming wobbles’
by dana1981
The amount of solar radiation passing through Earth’s atmosphere and reaching the ground globally peaked in the 1930s, substantially decreased from the 1940s to the 1970s, and changed little after that, a new study has found.
The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that “neither the rapid increase in temperature from the 1970s through the 1990s nor the slowdown of warming in the early 21st century appear to be significantly related to changes of Rs (solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface)”.
The new finding may help explain variations in warming during the 20th century. The authors showed that, while aerosols and clouds did play some role in temperature variations, they did not have a major effect on global mean land temperatures after 1985.
The authors, Kaicun Wang from Beijing Normal University and Robert E. Dickinson from the University of Texas at Austin, compiled a global data set of daily temperatures from the 1900s and through to 2010.
They analysed the relationship between the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth and diurnal temperature range (the daily temperature variations that occur as day turns into night).
The authors of the study said that “the overall increase of global temperature over the last century has been largely attributable to the increase of greenhouse gases. Less well understood are the reasons for the variability of this increase on a decadal time scale… However, global temperatures do not appear to be significantly affected by changing Rs (solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface).”
The first problem is the 1930 radiation at surface peak given 1930 was the beginning of the onset of the modern solar Grand Maximum. A peak at surface prior to the maximum (about 1950 – 2009) doesn’t make any sense.
And the global conclusions are a big stretch from the diurnal temperature range (DTR) proxy for radiation at surface (Rs) of land-only, mainly regional industrial Europe, China and to a lessor extent USA, Nothing at the ocean surface (70% of global surface area).
The DTR – Rs correlation breaks down at coastlands and recently in China among a number of other things. Inclined to agree with commenter #2:
#2 K.a.r.S.t.e.N at 09:32 AM on 3 September, 2013
“Interesting paper with a different approach to a long-standing problem. Well worth a read, though some aspects are certainly debatable…..”
‘Socialist Science in the Climate Science Neighborhood’
By Anthony J. Sadar
Radical socialists (often disguised with the euphemism “progressives”) have many potential avenues they can travel to arrive at their ends — an end that justifies its means. And, rather than a goal to save lives or help the poor, the nefarious ends of socialists unfortunately seems to be their own power and control over the rest of us great unwashed.
[…]
During my 35 years of practice in the atmospheric science profession, in government, consulting, and academia, the socialist techniques that have become apparent include blatant dishonesty stemming from arrogance — a hallmark of socialism — and its offshoot, a sense of supreme superiority.
Haughty socialism has no problem with twisting the truth or simply lying. Although for most people, “honesty is the best policy,” in socialist ideology the ends justifies the means and so, even though verity can be useful, it’s not absolutely necessary.
There are many experienced real-world atmospheric-science practitioners who legitimately question the conclusions of the cadre of academic and government scientists who have declared “settled” the complex scientific endeavor of understanding climate change. When experienced practitioners are labeled “climate change deniers” by some of these very same arrogant scientists, you know a symptom of socialism has reared its ugly head.
[…]
The path to true progress for people and the planet should be traveled with gracious, empathetic, and humble responsibility by those who can make a difference with advanced science and technology. In short, science should be in the service of humanity, rather than in the service of any ideology. But, unfortunately, with radical socialism now taking up residence on Climate Science Street, well… there goes the neighborhood.
Anthony J. Sadar, a Certified Consulting Meteorologist, is author of In Global Warming We Trust: A Heretic’s Guide to Climate Science (Telescope Books, 2012).
‘Hack the planet to counter climate change,’ says Lord Rees
Lord Rees, the Astronomer Royal, claims that launching mirrors into space, triggering algal blooms in the oceans and seeding clouds are just some of “Plan B” schemes which will have to be considered by world leaders unless carbon emissions can be cut in the next 20 years
[…]
Lord Rees is set to say that he is pessimistic that global carbon dioxide emissions can be reduced to safe levels within the next 20 years, meaning that by the end of the century gas concentrations in the atmosphere will rise above 500 parts per million (ppm).
This could trigger a 6C rise in average temperature and the melting of the ice caps which in turn could accelerate climate change, it is believed.
“If the effect is strong, and the world consequently seems on a rapidly warming trajectory into dangerous territory, there may be a pressure for ‘panic measures’,” he will say.
Narrator: Chicken Little was in the woods one day when an acorn fell on her head. It scared her so much she trembled all over. She shook so hard, half her feathers fell out.
Chicken Little: “Help! Help! The sky is falling! I have to go tell the king!”
Narrator: So she ran in great fright to tell the king. Along the way she met Henny Penny.
Henny Penny: “Where are you going, Chicken Little?”
Chicken Little: “Oh, help! The sky is falling!”
Henny Penny: “How do you know?”
Chicken Little: “I saw it with my own eyes, and heard it with my own ears, and part of it fell on my head!”
Henny Penny: “This is terrible, just terrible! We’d better hurry up.”
Narrator: So they both ran away as fast as they could. Soon they met Ducky Lucky.
[…] Here are some excerpts from congressional testimony given by a Professor of Biology from Stanford University. Notice how the warnings and, in particular, the time frame could have come from any number of climate change alarmists.
If bad weather continues in the Midwest this year, and if the monsoon should fail this year in India, as it might, then I think you’re going to see the age of scarcity and many of the changes I’m talking about coming on next winter. ‘I mean that’s when we’re really going to start getting into it. If we are “fortunate” for a few years, and have nothing but good weather, then it’ll come on, you know, 5 or 10 years down the pike. But of course during that time populations will have increased…
I think that the thing you can say with absolute assurance is, considering the magnitude of the changes, if we have 20 years-which I wouldn’t put a nickel on-but if we have 20 years, we’re already 10 years too late in starting to do something about it. We’re not going to change the political and economic structure of the United States overnight. And for that reason, I think that any feeling of urgency that you can generate—one of the big problems is how do you generate a feeling of urgency…
It’s all there: the implicit blaming of bad weather on the perceived problem; the built in disclaimer if weather does not deteriorate, with a promise that things will be even worse when fate catches up with us; the twenty year projection for disaster, and the assertion that it is all ready to late to do anything about it. Naturally the US is at the root of the problem and above all, there is an urgent need to act. I have always wondered if it is already too late to act why we should act at all, why not party on until the end?
Which member of the global warming cabal made these statements? Actually, it was Paul Ehrlich in hearings held by the Committee on Commerce and Committee on Government Operations back in 1974. […]
Ehrlich’s most shocking prediction was that the world would suffer millions of deaths through starvation in the 1970s and 1980s. The author claimed that “radical action” was needed to prevent this from taking place. Among the radical actions, Ehrlich recommended starving entire nations if they refused to implement policies to reduce or suspend population growth. Life is cheep to tenured professors, just ask their students.
Another example of a catastrophist true believer is a man who also testified at that hearing back in 1974. Here is what he said to the committee:
The main point here is that, although there may be defects in any specific detailed model, the general conclusion is far more robust than any specific model. At the same time, one has to make a certain disclaimer, and that is that neither analysis nor computer models are adequate to the task of predicting exactly what disaster will follow from a continuation of present trends and exactly when such a disaster will take place.
Now, this problem puts those of us who tend to view with alarm in a somewhat curious position. We’re calling upon society to make major changes, but we cannot prove exactly what will happen and exactly when, in the absence of those kinds of changes. This particular point is often used against us by people who are optimistic and believe that one way or another, technology will let us muddle through. I think a useful way to think about this particular dilemma is in terms of the burden of proof; that is, we should ask: Are we worse off if we believe the pessimists and they are wrong, or are we worse off if we believe the optimists and they are wrong?
In the first paragraph he admits that their models are flawed but insists we believe the predictions of disaster anyway. Al Gore and Michael Mann could not make a better statement of the alarmist position. In fact, this admitted alarmist confesses to urging major societal changes even though he and his ilk cannot say when disaster will strike or even what form it will take. The precautionary principle rules—for God’s sake don’t do anything that might have any consequences at all. This timorous chicken little is none other than John Holdren, Assistant to the President and senior adviser to Barack Obama on science and technology issues. But his aversion to action does not extend to things he thinks are correct. In 1977 he joined forces with Ehrlich and Ehrlich’s wife Anne to write another totalitarian tome that should have disqualified him from ever serving in government. Here is a quote from Ecoscience:
One way to carry out this disapproval might be to insist that all illegitimate babies be put up for adoption—especially those born to minors, who generally are not capable of caring properly for a child alone. If a single mother really wished to keep her baby, she might be obliged to go through adoption proceedings and demonstrate her ability to support and care for it. Adoption proceedings probably should remain more difficult for single people than for married couples, in recognition of the relative difficulty of raising children alone. It would even be possible to require pregnant single women to marry or have abortions, perhaps as an alternative to placement for adoption, depending on the society.
Mandatory adoptions, forcing single mothers to marry or undergo abortions? Sounds progressive to me. It is not surprising that he was a neo-Malthusian population catastrophist during the 1970s nor is it surprising that he now shills for climate change. In the minds of self-aggrandizing, needful personalities like Ehrlich and Holder the sky is always falling.
‘Chicken Little Climate Change Alarmists Are Shamelessly At It Again’
March 30, 2012 by Frank York
The Chicken Little’s are once again screaming about the end of the world as we know it due to alleged “global warming.”
The latest alarmist jabberwocky comes from a Reuters article in the Scientific American, titled:
“Global Warming Close To Becoming Irreversible.”
According to this end-of-the-world scenario, we’re supposedly going to reach some sort of “tipping point” beyond which our world will be in dire trouble. The old “tipping point” was to be in 2200. Now it’s been revised to whenever the Chicken Little’s decide it is politically expedient. Gotta keep those government grants flowing into the coffers of these climate alarmist think tanks, don’t we?
Chicken Little Will Steffen with the Australian National University Climate Change Institute claims that “We are on the cusp of some big changes. We can … cap temperature rise at two degrees, or cross the threshold beyond which the system shifts to a much hotter state.”
[Kerry] “We as a nation must have the foresight and courage to make the investments necessary to safeguard the most sacred trust we keep for our children and grandchildren.”
“Courage” is a Washington euphemism for rolling over and accepting higher taxes, bigger government and an all-powerful regulatory state — policies at the core of President Obama’s push for “climate change” legislation. Mr. Kerry insists climate change would have a “catastrophic” impact on future generations, leaving an environment “ravaged by rising seas, deadly superstorms, devastating droughts and the other hallmarks of a dramatically changing climate.” Chicken Little, step aside. John F. Kerry is here.
Some really good news for those not taken in by the Climate Change Disruption scam, and still more doom and gloom for the dwindling bunch of warming alarmists.
Chris “Chicken Little” Huhne was only yesterday outlining new plans for Green taxes and further donations to the Church of Climatology, when today comes the news that HM Treasury want to “shit can” the Department of Energy and Climate Change and absorb it’s staff in to HM Treasury.
Leaked part of the IPCC’s next assessment report knocks the bottom out of the global warming warnings
The Financial Express [India]
“While scientists will continue to debate the ‘pause’ in global warming, and politicians such as in the US who never believed Al Gore’s inconvenient truth will probably rejoice at each drubbing the IPCC gets, it would be wise for policymakers to take a more nuanced view. For one, whether or not it is global warming that is causing the problem, extreme weather events are a reality, so it is important to be prepared for them, whether by way of stronger emergency procedures for evacuation or by way of short-duration high-yielding crops that withstand extreme heat or extreme drought conditions for instance. What is equally important, however, is that the fear of global warming shouldn’t force countries into accepting high-cost solutions since it is clear the skies aren’t falling in a hurry. A more balanced, more nuanced view is called for. That’s the inconvenient truth.”
EU policy on climate change is right even if science was wrong, says commissioner
“Say that 30 years from now, science came back and said, ‘wow, we were mistaken then now we have some new information so we think it is something else’. In a world with nine billion people, even 10 billion at the middle of this century, where literally billions of global citizens will still have to get out of poverty and enter the consuming middle classes, don’t you think that anyway it makes a lot of sense to get more energy and resource efficient,” she said.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10313261/EU-policy-on-climate-change-is-right-even-if-science-was-wrong-says-commissioner.html
No matter, not quite in this “Chicken Little” thread theme but turns out in a recurring theme too. Climate Depot continues:
Flashback: 1993: Former U.S. Senator Timothy Wirth: ‘We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing, in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.’
Hedegaard in 2013: ‘I think we have to realize that in the world of the 21st century for us to have the cheapest possible energy is not the answer.’
Flashback 1975: Obama Science Czar John Holdren Says Real Threat to USA Is Cheap Energy: ‘The U.S.is threatened far more by the hazards of too much energy, too soon, than by the hazards of too little energy, too late.’
Flashback: UN IPCC Official Edenhofer: ‘We Redistribute World’s Wealth By Climate Policy’
# # #
Can’t think of a catchy theme yet (night-shift, got up to watch AC – postponed) but something along the lines of Climate Charlatans seems appropriate.
There are further rifts happening in the green hold on the New Zealand economy that are worth noting.
Over the last decade a group of architects, engineers, and disciples came through that developed the green building concept. The green star 4 and 5 ratings needed to be assessed and signed off of by their registered gurus. The rules are highly proscriptive, full of social engineer goals and littered with statements concerning sustainability. They don’t necessarily produce buildings that are good to live in (eg if you want to park more than a smart car) and are not necessarily efficient (in the normal measure of low operating costs). There are all sorts unnecessary complexities included in the building systems that will be a nightmare to maintain and manage long term.
They are expensive. A five star multi-story office will cost about 25% more to build and lease than an unrated building. Up to Christchurch events, all new publicly owned buildings had to be at least 4 star rated. As a result the consultants, builders developers and asset managers bought heavily into the deal. The reality has hit and the requirement for star rating has been abandoned. I am guessing Gerry and company recognised the con.
Now the requirement is buildings with “Green Features”, which means common sense things like managing of heat losses and gains; maximise natural light; efficient air conditioning; efficient electricity consumption – ie lower operating cost. Without the “Stars” the control has gone from the NZGBC.
I am sure that the social engineers will re-gather but for the moment at least they are on the back foot and I suspect that their infrastructure will likely face some pruning.
No body for common sense professionals to obtain accreditation from that I’m aware of, they’ll have a harder sell without the point-of difference green stars provided among the conventional Architectural and Engineering professionals.
Interesting development (or just return to sensibility), pity it took some adversity to achieve it.
There’s quite a good series on TV one about National Parks. Last nights one was about Mt Cook, unfortunately marred by some hand wringing about Global Warming and the retreat of the Tasman Glacier.
The Doc staff made no mention of Global Warming when asked by a kid why the glaciers were retreating, during a school camp I attended at Mt Cook
Maybe they didn’t get the memo?
Haven’t seen it (the one on glaciers) but did see the NZ from the air doco on Prime. Same thing about the glaciers. After a bit of hand wringing, crusty greenie glider pilot uttered “It’s climate change all right”.
I had an interesting discussion on Treehugger.com recently. It was an article on how to convince the “deniers” (hint – don’t call them names, for a start).
One of the commenters was convinced that the glaciers only started retreating 150 years ago.
The eco-fascists always play the Godwin card, which is very convenient for them.
Their agenda is pretty clear though, and isn’t really that much different to the founders of the Green movement in Germany in the 1930s.
“A couple of years ago I decided to stop arguing with climate change deniers. It was driving me mad.” says George; to which modesty replies, “Oh, no, sir, we can’t take ALL the credit.”
On September 27 2013 the 5th Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will be released.
One part of this report will address the so-called “warming hiatus”. This is the argument that warming has stopped, with the further assertion in some quarters that we therefore have nothing to worry about in the future.
[…]
In short, the slowing of warming rates since 1998 is not a good news story. It is very likely a hint that climate scientists have underestimated the sensitivity of climate to increasing CO2 and the slowing of warming is lulling us into a very false sense of security.
So the hiatus in warming, that shows the real world temps tracking below the IPCC projections, is an indicator that scientists have underestimated climate sensitivity
Saw a snippet at Tom Nelson from The Conversation, eyes rolled and decided to pass reading the rest on the strength of it:
[Andy Pitman] – “What is surprising – and what is deeply concerning to me and almost entirely missed in the media commentary – is that we have not cooled dramatically over the last 15 years.”
Now I’ve read the rest thanks to your Sciblogs link Andy (sigh). Another clueless dolt unable to superimpose oceanic cyclicity, ENSO cyclicity, solar cyclicity (longer than the 11 yr kind), cloudiness trends, and planetary thermal lag onto global temperature fluctuations.
Also apparently lacking a “feel” for relative climate forcing power and sensitivity.
[Pitman] – “We have seen a combination of the solar minimum……”
Who is “we”. Some of the rest of us have seen a combination that includes the rather more significant solar Grand Maximum, not the much lessor 11 yr minimum.
[Pitman] – “There really is a case to argue that we should have cooled to close to the values measured in around 1990 and definitely not broken the record for the warmest decade on record
Give it time (thermal lag, end of modern solar Grand Max etc) but the 21st Century 2nd decade is already cooler on average than the first so far.
Andy Pitman is Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science at University of New South Wales. If that article is an indication of the “excellence” at the centre then I really don’t want to know anything from the periphery.
Also more missing heat desperation from Weaver and Oppenheimer who appear to be at odds with Pitman (in his article above) and the IPCC (at top of following article) who just see heat offset rather than missing:
‘Climate report struggles with temperature quirks’
By KARL RITTER, Associated Press
[…]
Many researchers say the slowdown in warming is related to the natural ocean warming and cooling cycles known as El Nino and La Nina. Also, a 2013 study by Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research found dramatic recent warming in the deeper oceans, between 2,300 and 6,500 feet.
“The heat is not missing,” said University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver, who is also a Green Party member of the British Columbia parliament. “The heat is there. The heat is in the ocean.”
The idea is that the energy trapped by carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases has to go somewhere on Earth, said Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer. But that heat energy will eventually make its way to the ocean surface and the air, putting surface warming back on the increasing track, he said.
“Energy will hide out in the ocean for a while before it pops out into the atmosphere,” Oppenheimer said.
Big news for all of us who care about fighting climate change:
The first part of President Obama’s climate plan is going into effect: The EPA proposed its first-ever limits on carbon pollution for new power plants.
This is exactly what President Obama meant when he told Congress in the State of the Union that if they didn’t act to fight climate change, he would. His climate action plan will cut carbon pollution, prepare the country for the impacts of climate change, and put America’s best and brightest to work fighting it.
But let’s be clear — there are a lot of deep-pocketed interests on the other side who are going to fight these changes tooth and nail, and they have plenty of climate change denier friends in Congress to back them up.
Stand up and say you support the EPA’s plan to limit carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants.
This week’s news is only the first step the EPA is taking to cut carbon pollution — they’re already hard at work and plan to extend these limits to existing power plants next year.
Here’s why this is a big deal: Power plants account for 40 percent of the carbon pollution in the United States.
The government currently protects public health with limits on arsenic, lead, soot, and other pollutants from power plants — but, until today, that didn’t include carbon pollution.
I’m pretty proud that President Obama took the lead on changing that. We know climate change is real, manmade, and dangerous — and we know 97 percent of scientists agree. That’s why OFA is keeping the pressure on Congress until they take action.
Support bold action to combat climate change — add your name and join OFA in supporting the EPA’s carbon pollution standards today:
Ivan Frishberg
Climate Campaign Manager
Organizing for Action
I’m pretty proud that President Obama took the lead on changing that. We know climate change is real, manmade, and dangerous — and we know 97 percent of scientists agree. is an outright lie and misrepresentation of fact
Interesting, too, that in order to tackle “carbon pollution” (sic), the EPA will require all new coal fired power stations to be fitted with CCS, a technology that doesn’t actually exist (to any degree) yet.
Does highlight their internal inconsistency though. I took the opportunity (among other things) of relaying JC on this :
[Dr Judith Curry, from article: The IPCC’s ‘inconvenient truth’] – “If the IPCC attributes the pause to natural internal variability, then this begs the question as to what extent the warming between 1975 and 2000 can also be explained by natural internal variability. Not to mention raising questions about the confidence that we should place in the IPCC’s projections of future climate change”
The MSM are onto the pause (“However, the global average temperature has not risen in 15 years” – TVNZ) but the divergence doesn’t appear to have caught on in the MSM yet that I recall offhand.
The Financial Times might have got the ball rolling on that though:
“Here, we show how the projections for temperature and sea level rise set out in the fourth Assessment Report in 2007 compare with actual measurements. We can see that global average temperatures have not accelerated at the rate predicted in some scenarios”
There was an interesting little lead in from the TV NZ anchor (Wendy?) who talked of the puzzlement of “global warming scientists”.
After this, I went to the local ski club meeting, and the skifield owner (who has watched the weather for the last 30 years) made a comment that “the low numbers were not because of global warming, because that’s over”, making a reference to the TV piece.
A few others mumbled in agreement. I said nothing, being the secret climate anorak sad case.
But that was the message I got – we all knew it was BS and now they said it on the telly, so we can move on.
2 minutes and a few hundred million dollars later..
Watching the video of Rod Oram over at Hot Topic makes me want to weep.
So the Anglican Church have decided to divest from fossil fuel investments and are looking at biofuels, amongst others.
Since when was it a Christian virtue to take food from starving Africans and convert it into biofuel so that you can drive “ethical” cars?
Corporate investment, instead of biblical distribution, was what got the old western Church holding stocks in the first place. Probably nice earners too. Now that faction has got politically correct in western terms but I don’t think “ethical” investment is what attracts “the typical Anglican today” in the first instance, from any area.
I haven’t made a biofuels-impacting-poverty connection in Africa though. When I think of biofuels I think of the US cornbelt and US subsidies where I think they would be making the new investment. I haven’t heard of fuel crops displacing food crops in Africa, is there something I should be reading?
I was aware of the global grain situation but didn’t know about those biofuel plantations in that part of the world, thanks for bringing this up.
It’s the forced land grabs and eviction there that are creating havoc rather than food prices (jatropha isn’t food), but if you can no longer grow your own food on your own land then that does become a food price problem. But if you don’t then have the means to pay then its simply a food problem. Nasty.
David Farrar is also a fan of wind energy (no pun intended). He thinks they “look nice”.
At least Cameron Slater gets it.
I had to block Farrar’s pinko drivel on my Facebook page, it was driving me over the edge. As if grey drizzle and the America’s Cup aren’t enough suffering..
anyone who thinks that wind farms are good because “they look nice” is seriously deluded, so “Pinko” is a pretty good description.
s
[FYI, Pinko is the description Cameron Slater likes to give to Farrar, so I am just stirring up the pot a bit more]
Cindy at Hot Topic is droning on about a Denier Cacophony, which is some kind of projection I guess, now that The Pause is mainstream TV and featuring the likes iof Andrew Montford on prime time TV news makes a cacophony, or rather a softly spoken piece to the rest of us.
Mind you, when some of your staff are facing 15 years in a Russian gulag on piracy charges, it is understandable things can get a little tense.
By the way, I wouldn’t wish a 15 year term in a Russian prison camp on my worst enemies, but maybe Greenpeace should stick to softer targets in future.
A similar transgression in NZ gets a $600 fine. In Russia, 15 years in the Gulag.
That is an issue because this week, scientists from around the world have gathered in Stockholm for a meeting of a UN panel on climate change, and they will probably release a report saying it is “extremely likely” – which they define in footnotes as 95 per cent certain – that humans are mostly to blame for temperatures that have climbed since 1951.
Note the 1951 date. So they acknowledge that the warming prior to 1951 was what?
If this warming, of a similar size to the post 1951 warming, is mostly natural, then we know that there are recent natural variations that are of similar size to the supposed anthropogenic warmings, which they also acknowledge have “paused” since 1998 or so.
Yet they are 95% certain.
Of what?
If this report had appeared as an engineering report, it would have been binned
Elsewhere it’s 1950 to 2010. 2010 was a strong El Nino year in the early part, temperature is way down since then.
They decry the use of 1998 is a start date for the pause because that was a huge El Nino year and fair enough. But to have no problems with 2010 as an end date is scurrilous given it’s a 2013 report.
Fortunately they can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
Re 1, This is a must-read I think but what The HS does not point out is the solar forcing from 2000 to 2050 in the NASA GISS graph. They’ve assumed it will stay constant in CMIP5/AR5 simulations when already in 2013, SC24 solar output has dropped by about 0.3 – 0.5 W.m2 compared to the comparative starts of SCs 22 and 23.
Re 2. David’s scenario is at the lowest (extreme) end of the cooling scenarios range (along with Abdussamatov for around 2035) but it’s worth mentioning that the immediate solar/temperature progression would have to be temperatures returning to pre modern Grand Maximum levels of 1900 – 1920/30. Can’t cite any papers for this but see next paragraph.
The next progression, if the first pans out, would then be Dalton Minimum conditions of around 1800. This is the De Jager and Duhau (2009) prediction among others.
Only then, after the first and second levels being reached one after the other, could a progression to Maunder Minimum conditions of the 1600s be possible. De Jager and Duhau, and others of the medium cooling scenario, do not consider a direct progression from DM to MM conditions to be plausible in view of quasi 200 year cyclicity (there wasn’t historically). They predict DM conditions by around 2030s but a warmer regime following with MM conditions only (possibly) occurring after around 200 years from now.
All of the prediction alternatives, whether IPCC or solar-centric above, are getting way too far ahead IMV except for the UK Met Office decadal forecast (now a 5 year forecast). I’d like to see more attention being given in the solar-centric scenarios first to the period of SC 24 i.e. out to around 2020, then to the 2030s i.e. SC 25. Both David Archibald (see Section 2, page 10 slides above) and Habibullo Abdussamatov include a prediction for SC 24 and 25 levels but without sufficient reasoning that I can see. The De Jager and Duhau reasoning seems rather more plausible from my reading.
We’ve seen the IPCC’s 21st century 2100 prediction fail in only a decade or so, That should be sobering for solar-centric predictions too. That said, Archibald does state the fact on page 59 that historically “sometimes severe cooling comes out of the blue” with the example of 1739 which he implies graphically may also occur in 2014. Sheer speculation I think but we’ll see next year.
Interesting that even CO2-centric IPCC solar specialist and AR5 chapter author Mike Lockwood has also identified that historically a slow warming is usually followed by an abrupt cooling. The only difference between his view and that of Archibald in the last paragraph is that Lockwood thinks (based on some dubious modeling – Jones, Lockwood and Stott (2012), cited in AR5 Chapter 8 ) that this time CO2 forcing will offset any cooling plus some (my paraphrase).
Given CO2 forcing didn’t offset the last decade cooling “plus some”, I don’t believe AR5 authors Jones (Gareth not Phil) Lockwood and Stott on this issue – or AR5 Chapter 8 for that matter.
To clarify, although Jones, Lockwood and Stott (2012) is cited in AR5 Chapter 8: Radiative Forcing, those three are co-lead (Stott, UK Met Office) and contributing (Jones, Lockwood) authors of Chapter 10: Detection and Attribution i.e. their Chapter 10 conclusions are based on Chapter 8 conclusions, which in turn are based on Jones, Lockwood and Stott (2012) conclusions.
‘Gavin Schmidt debunks NYTimes article claim of ‘stair-step’ warming’
“People think that global warming means every year is going to be warmer than the year before,” said Gerald A. Meehl, an American scientist who helped write the report. “It’s more like a stair-step kind of thing.”
“Take Naomi Klein, for instance,” Schmidt says. “Sometimes she makes a good point, but I don’t share her values. So when she starts talking about climate change as a rod to break capitalism’s back, she loses me. She clearly has a political agenda that’s different from mine. But if we both say, ‘We should do something about climate change,’ there are people who will think we totally agree on what and why.”
Kicking off – changes in CO2 lag changes in temperature in seasonal cycles:
‘Atmospheric CO2 and Global Temperature: Which Leads Which When Change Occurs?’
Written by CO2 Science.
[…]
Humlum et al. (2013) introduce their analysis of the phase relation between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and mean global air temperature by noting that over the last 420 thousand years, “variations in atmospheric CO2 broadly followed temperature according to ice cores, with a typical delay of several centuries to more than a millennium,”
[…]
So if this be true for glacial cycles, should it not also be true for seasonal cycles?
Feeling that such might indeed be the case, the three Norwegian researchers intensively studied the phase relations (leads/lags) between atmospheric CO2 concentration data and several global temperature data series – including HadCRUT, GISS and NCDC surface air data, as well as UAH lower troposphere data and HadSST2 sea surface data – for the period January 1980 to December 2011. And what did they find?
Humlum et al. report that annual cycles were present in all of the several data sets they studied and that there was “a high degree of co-variation between all data series … but with changes in CO2 always lagging changes in temperature.” More specifically, they state that “the maximum positive correlation between CO2 and temperature is found for CO2 lagging 11-12 months in relation to global sea surface temperature, 9.5-10 months [in relation] to global surface air temperature, and about 9 months [in relation] to global lower troposphere temperature,” so that “the overall global temperature change sequence of events appears to be from the ocean surface to the land surface to the lower troposphere.”
>>>>>>
http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/11414-co2-follows-temperature-rises.html
# # #
According to Obama, “We don’t have time for a meeting of the flat-Earth society”.
I would have thought 9 – 12 months was plenty of time.
My nomination for Headline Of The Month (HOTM):
‘I tawt I taw a wattler: Global warming to cause snakes to eat more baby birds’ – Steve Milloy
http://junkscience.com/2013/07/11/i-tawt-i-taw-a-wattler-global-warming-to-cause-snakes-to-eat-more-baby-birds/
Oh the stupid, it burns…. to quote Anthony Watts.
This is the guts of this article in the MU newsletter:
“A warmer climate may be causing snakes to become more active and seek more baby birds for food,” said Faaborg, professor of biological sciences in MU’s College of Arts and Science.
That’s it. The rebuttal is easy – “Or it may not”.
German Resistance: Mutiny In The Land Of Wind Turbines
* Matthias Schultz, Spiegel Online
Germany plans to build 60,000 new wind turbines — in forests, in the foothills of the Alps and even in protected environmental areas. But local residents are up in arms, costs are skyrocketing and Germany’s determination to phase out nuclear power is in danger.
http://www.thegwpf.org/anti-green-resistance-mutiny-land-wind-turbines/
‘The myth of Denmark as a corruption-free country’
Peter Rørdam
It’s a widely held conception that Denmark is one of the world’s least corrupt countries. The message is always warmly received, but this isn’t the same as saying that Denmark is free of corruption.
I’m not qualified to speak about corruption in general, but there is one area in which I do have an in-depth knowledge: wind power – which is an industry that has managed to thoroughly corrupt the political system.
http://cphpost.dk/commentary/opinion/opinion-myth-denmark-corruption-free-country
‘Eco-Blowback: Mutiny in the Land of Wind Turbines’ – [direct link to Spiegel article]
By Matthias Schulz
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/wind-energy-encounters-problems-and-resistance-in-germany-a-910816.html
‘Climate Expert von Storch: Why Is Global Warming Stagnating?’
Climate experts have long predicted that temperatures would rise in parallel with greenhouse gas emissions. But, for 15 years, they haven’t. In a SPIEGEL interview, meteorologist Hans von Storch discusses how this “puzzle” might force scientists to alter what could be “fundamentally wrong” models.
[…]
SPIEGEL: Despite all these problem areas, do you still believe global warming will continue?
Storch: Yes, we are certainly going to see an increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) or more — and by the end of this century, mind you. That’s what my instinct tells me, since I don’t know exactly how emission levels will develop. Other climate researchers might have a different instinct. Our models certainly include a great number of highly subjective assumptions. Natural science is also a social process, and one far more influenced by the spirit of the times than non-scientists can imagine. You can expect many more surprises.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-hans-von-storch-on-problems-with-climate-change-models-a-906721.html
“instinct” ???
‘Climate change: The forecast for 2018 is cloudy with record heat’
Efforts to predict the near-term climate are taking off, but their record so far has been patchy.
* Jeff Tollefson
[…]
In preparation for the IPCC report, the first part of which is due out in September, some 16 teams ran an intensive series of decadal forecasting experiments with climate models. Over the past two years, a number of papers based on these exercises have been published, and they generally predict less warming than standard models over the near term. For these researchers, decadal forecasting has come of age. But many prominent scientists question both the results and the utility of what is, by all accounts, an expensive and time-consuming exercise.
[…]
By starting in the present with actual conditions, Smith’s group hoped to improve the model’s accuracy at forecasting the near-term climate. The results looked promising at first. The model initially predicted temperatures that were cooler than those seen in conventional climate projections — a forecast that basically held true into 2008. But then the prediction’s accuracy faded sharply: the dramatic warming expected after 2008 has yet to arrive (see ‘Hazy view’). “It’s fair to say that the real world warmed even less than our forecast suggested,” Smith says. “We don’t really understand at the moment why that is.”
[…]
Smith says that his group at the Hadley Centre has doubled the resolution of its model, which now breaks the planet into a grid with cells 150 kilometres on each side. Within a few years, he hopes to move to a 60-kilometre grid, which will make it easier to capture the connections between ocean activities and the weather that society is interested in. With improved models, more data and better statistics, he foresees a day when their models will offer up a probabilistic assessment of temperatures and perhaps even precipitation for the coming decade.
In preparation for that day, he has set up a ‘decadal exchange’ to collect, analyse and publish annual forecasts. Nine groups used the latest climate models to produce ten-year forecasts beginning in 2011. An analysis of the ensemble6 shows much the same pattern as Smith’s 2007 prediction: temperatures start out cool and then rise sharply, and within the next few years, barring something like a volcanic eruption, record temperatures seem all but inevitable.
“I wouldn’t be keen to bet on that at the moment,” Smith says, “but I do think we’re going to make some good progress within a few years.”
http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-the-forecast-for-2018-is-cloudy-with-record-heat-1.13344
Basically, all these near-term model predictions “start out cool and then rise sharply” no matter what year they start them.
Also see ‘Climate Models’:
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/open-threads/climate/climate-science/climate-models/#comment-216347
‘Forecast failure: how the Met Office lost touch with reality’
Ideology has corrupted a valuable British institution
Rupert Darwall
[…]
The Met Office’s record of obstruction and denial should give pause to even the firmest believer in global warming and illustrates the profound incompatibility of state science (which climate science has become) and the real thing. ‘We should listen to the scientists — and we should believe them,’ said Ed Davey, the Climate Secretary, earlier this year. Yet his department has officially sanctioned the anti-scientific practice of withholding data. The climate secretary has denounced sceptics and other non-believers as ‘crackpots’ — an attack conforming to a key feature of what the philosopher Karl Popper defined as pseudoscience. Genuine science invites refutation; pseudoscience tries to silence dissent.
Scepticism in science should always be welcomed. With climate science, it is necessary. As Davey remarked in his speech, ‘the science drives the policy’, but last month might well mark the moment when the government’s energy policy lost all contact with reason. It doesn’t take much to imagine how Mrs Thatcher would have galvanised her government if she had been told Britain was sitting on the richest shale gas deposits in the world. Yet the Cameron government pushes on with the Energy Bill to implement the 2008 Climate Change Act and its colossal £404 billion price tag.
Last month saw Ofgem warn of power rationing; the government agree a price guarantee for nuclear power; and in effect a £10 billion transfer from British to French taxpayers via state-owned EDF. In Brussels, Ed Davey told the EU to adopt unilateral emissions cuts, despite the fact that even Germany is having second thoughts about this strange form of economic suicide.
None of this would be happening without climate scientists — led by those at the top of the Met Office — raising the alarm and behaving like propagandists. ‘We seem to be losing the communications battle,’ Dr Slingo told the conference on dangerous climate change in February. Winning the battle meant personalising the narrative about what climate change might mean in the future, she said. This is not science. It is political spin from the same playbook that brought us Tony Blair’s ‘dodgy dossier’ on Iraq. It comes as no surprise that the Met Office retains PR consultants to help with its climate change message.
At the very least, the Met Office has a duty of care to the rest of us: to be balanced and objective, to admit when they’ve got it wrong, not to indulge in speculation and to tell us what they don’t know. The Met Office has not discharged that duty. Politicians, in the grip of a mania, have told us we must defer to scientists.
But Britain is in this mess because scientists became political cheerleaders. In doing so, they abandoned science as the disinterested pursuit of knowledge. Failure to predict the weather is, in the scale of things, the least of it. With the cost of climate change policies approaching half a trillion pounds, the Met Office is setting itself up for the largest case of public misfeasance in British history.
Rupert Darwall is the author of The Age of Global Warming – A History.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/8959941/whats-wrong-with-the-met-office/
Book Review: ‘The Age of Global Warming, A History’, Rupert Darwall
by SkeptEco on May 25, 2013
“Darwall has made an important contribution to climate change literature, putting together in one place the history of global warming from ideological roots to the failure of the most recent attempts to forge a global agreement on CO2 under the supervision of a powerful supra-national organisation.”
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/open-threads/climate/global-warming-general-001/#comment-215895
The Age of Global Warming is Over’, Paul Collits
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/open-threads/climate/global-warming-general-001/#comment-215891
Collits on Darwall’s book:
Darwall is very good on the science, and on the distinction between “science” and “predictive opinion”. But the abandonment by climate scientists of the need to verify their claims is at the heart of Darwall’s belief that the science is the critically weak point of the “idea” of climate change. Darwall is firmly on the side of those who regard science as being the empirical testing of verifiable and falsifiable hypotheses.
And.
Sixty-six pages of end notes attest to the book’s scholarship. This is no polemic. As Darwall says, “Global warming is a highly contentious subject and a history must be faithful both to evidence and to context.”
‘How Good Are Met Office Predictions? (Now Includes at Least May Data)’
By Werner Brozek, Edited By Just The Facts
“We are now using the system to predict changes out to 2014. By the end of this period, the global average temperature is expected to have risen by around 0.3 °C compared to 2004, and half of the years after 2009 are predicted to be hotter than the current record hot year, 1998.” Met Office Hadley Centre 2007
“The Met Office Hadley Centre has the highest concentration of absolutely outstanding people who do absolutely outstanding work, spanning the breadth of modelling, attribution, and data analysis, of anywhere in the world.” Dr Susan Solomon, Co Chair IPCC AR4 WGI
So let us see how “absolutely outstanding” the Met Office Hadley Centre’s 2007 prediction is turning out.
As of 2012, the 1998 record has not been beaten on HadCRUT3. […]
Here are some relevant facts today: The sun is extremely quiet and ENSO has been neutral since the start of the year. Even if a 1998 type El Nino started to set in tomorrow, it would be at least 4 or 5 months for the maximum ENSO reading to be reached. Then it would take at least 3 more months for the high ENSO to be reflected in Earth’s temperature. If a 1998 type El Nino does not start within a few months, then it is doubtful that even 2014 would set a new record. CO2 passing the 400 ppm mark certainly cannot do it alone.
[…]
In the sections below, we will present you with the latest facts. The information will be presented in three sections and an appendix. The first section will show the period that there has been no warming for various data sets. The second section will show the period that there has been no statistically significant warming on several data sets. The third section will show how 2013 to date compares with 2012 and the warmest years and months on record so far. The appendix will illustrate sections 1 and 2 in a different way. Graphs and a table will be used to illustrate the data.
[…]
Conclusion
You saw how an earlier prediction by the MET office ended. The MET office felt the need to revise its forecasts. Look at the following and keep in mind that the MET office now believes that the 1998 mark will be beaten by 2017 [their revised decadal forecast]. Do you agree?
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/offset-0-16.gif?w=640&h=480
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/14/how-good-are-met-office-predictions-now-includes-at-least-may-data/
“Do you agree?” – Nope, I don’t.
Richard C: your exuberance is without trammel, it would seem. 😉
Plenty of scope Mike, when the CC-stupid is without trammel. Spiegel’s onto it in Germany and I’ll be interested to see what Andy comes up with when he checks in re wind etc.
Had to chuckle at the Gavin Schmidt quote in Nature up-thread:
“Although I have nothing against this endeavour as a research opportunity, the papers so far have mostly served as a ‘disproof of concept’,” says Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeller at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, which declined to participate in the IPCC’s decadal-predictions experiment.
‘disproof of concept’ indeed. No wonder GISS isn’t participating given the “concept” is essentially the same for multi-decadal prediction. Now I see the US House Of Representatives has passed legislation to improve weather forecasting research, but to do so by cutting NOAA’s spending on climate change research. No skin off GISS (yet) but disturbing for Gavin I’m sure.
As far as I understand it, something that is ‘trammelled’ is kept under strict control. The best example I can offer is that of the ‘Trammell Bars’ ( a long bar with a point at the inner end and an alterable stylus at the other) an engineer uses to mark out very big arcs.
Strict control conspicuously absent internally in climate science Alexander (peer/pal-review notwithstanding), as compared to disciplines where public safety and survival are the primary considerations.
But external controls are arriving because if climate science wont self-regulate internally then it will inevitably be done for them. Check out the US Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF) Global Warming Litigation Project that is petitioning the US Supreme Court to review the EPA Endangerment Finding. See the ‘USA’ Open Thread staring here:
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/open-threads/climate/regions/usa/#comment-213937
Summary Of The Argument
I. The Conclusion That EPA Drew From Its Three Lines Of Evidence Is Demonstrably Invalid
A. First Line Of Evidence: EPA’s GHG Fingerprint (Or Hot Spot) Theory
B. Second Line Of Evidence: The Purported Unusual Rise In GAST
C. Third Line Of Evidence: Climate Models
II. Serious Deficiencies In EPA’s Process Contributed To Its Scientific Errors
The models situation is interesting. The focus is turning to decadal forecasts (see up-thread) i.e. here-and-now that can be verified (or not as it turns out). This focus is gazumping the long-term forecasts and relegating them to irrelevance even more than the failure of the long-term forecasts this century already is. Needless to say, decadal forecasts are anathema to GISS (see Schmidt quote above) because until now there wasn’t sufficient length of observations to assess whether the 100/200/300 year “scenarios” that international public climate policy was based on were of any validity. Climate modelers could not be held accountable in the same way weather forecasters are – now they can. If 5 -10 yr forecasts are useless, why bother with anything longer (100 yrs) and the expense that incurs over and above the expense of decadal forecast computation time until the decadal forecasts acquire sufficient skill?
How long will that take? Trenberth in the Nature article up-thread (my emphasis):
That is an implicit admission that decadal forecasts do not as yet have predictive power and even by 2023 or later, still may be of limited use (if any). The admission also applies to multi-decadal forecasts obviously.
Then there’s the trickle down to energy as a consequence of model-driven climate change alarm. The groundswell against wind farms in Germany (up-thread, also Fukushima kneejerk there) is certainly a turning point surely? ‘Eco-Blowback: Mutiny…..’ is a BIG headline in “green” Germany.
The external control will ultimately be a public that has woken up to where climate science based policy has taken them. Whether enormous financial waste, rorts, frauds, opportunity cost, rifled fees (ETS/carbon tax), or the radical fall in standards of wellbeing and affordability as a result of insane energy plans in some countries. A good part of the populace is already suffering but if it’s not you then there’s not much empathy – especially from politicians.
Once the waking up process clears heads, eyes have been rubbed, cold water applied, reality will set in and so will anger, if Germany is anything to go by.
There, that was “discourse with untrammelled exuberance” wasn’t it?
‘Nature-mag Hides the Decline’
Steve McIntyre
Earlier this year, David Whitehouse of GWPF drew attention to a striking decrease in the UK Met Office decadal temperature forecast, that had been quietly changed by the Met Office on Christmas Eve. Whitehouse’s article led to some contemporary interest in Met Office decadal forecasts. The Met Office responded (see here); Whitehouse was also challenged by Greenpeace columnist Bob Ward.
Fast forward to July 10, 2013. Using UK Met Office decadal forecasts, Jeff Tollefson of Nature reported as a “News Feature” that “The forecast for 2018 is cloudy with record heat”, covered by Judy Curry here.
An innocent reader would presume that a Nature “News Feature” reporting on Met Office decadal forecasts would include the current Met Office decadal forecast. However, this proves not to be the case. Tollefson showed an older decadal forecast issued prior to the downward revision of the Met Office decadal forecast to which Whitehouse had drawn attention. Tollefson showed the multi-model mean from Smith et al 2012 (Clim Dyn), which has negligible difference from the 2011 Met Office decadal forecast. Had Tollefson shown the “decline” in the current decadal forecast, Nature would not have been able to make the same unequivocal headline.
>>>>>>>>
http://climateaudit.org/2013/07/15/nature-hides-the-decline/
‘More Met Office Hypocrisy’
Steve McIntyre
In yesterday’s post, I observed that Nature’s recent news article on Met Office decadal forecasts failed to show the most recent Met Office decadal forecast and that its inclusion would not have permitted the Nature headline…………..
[…]
Betts’ claimed that my graphic “exaggerated” the difference between the Met Office submission to IPCC and the most recent Met Office decadal forecast. Untrue. I plotted Met Office data. In my opinion, the exact contrary is the case: the Nature News graphic downplayed the differences between Met Office versions by not showing the most recent decadal forecast and by not showing the Met Office IPCC submission. If anything was “wrong” in this incident, it was that the Met Office either signed off on the Nature News’ omission of their most recent decadal forecast (if given a chance to comment) and that they failed to write in their own objection to the omission once the article was published. And that instead of conceding the point, Betts made untrue and unwarranted allegations that I had committed errors in my post reporting the problem.
http://climateaudit.org/2013/07/17/more-met-office-hypocrisy/
# # #
That revised decadal forecast is really coming back to bite the UKMO on the butt. I bet they wish they’d never published it – even on Christmas Eve.
‘Met Office Hindcast’
Steve McIntyre
In a recent post, I noted the discrepancy between the UK Met OFfice contribution to IPCC AR5 and observations (as many others have observed), a discrepancy that is also evident in the “initialized” decadal forecast using the most recent model (HadGEM3). I thought that it would be interesting to examine the HadGEM2 hindcast to see if there are other periods in which there might have been similar discrepancies. (Reader Kenneth Fritsch has mentioned that he’s been doing similar exercises.)
In the figure below, I’ve compared HadCRUT4 (anomaly basis 1961-1990) to the Met Office CMIP5 contribution (red), converted to 1961-90 anomaly.
Figure 1. IPCC CMIP5 contribution (HadGEM2 RPC45 average) vs HadCRUT4.
http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/metoffice-forecast-comparison-20th.png?w=720&h=560
There is a persistent over-estimate over the first half of the 20th century, particularly in the 1920s. Nor does the Met Office model adequately replicate the temperature increase of the early part of the 20th century. In its CMIP contribution, the average temperature in the first decade (1900-1910) was -0.116, almost identical to the average temperature from 1960-70 (-0.111), as compared to an increase of 0.35 deg in HadCRUT4 (from -0.518 to -0.161).
We often hear about the supposed success of current GCMs in hindcasting 20th century from first principles. Nonetheless, quite aside from the developing discrepancy in the recent period, the apparent inability of the Met Office model used for their IPCC submissions to model the early 20th century suggests a certain amount of salesmanship in the success proclamations.
http://climateaudit.org/2013/07/19/met-office-hindcast/
Forget decadal forecasts. Niwa’s forecast for July, after the coldest June for many years was “Above average temperatures” for both July and the remainder of Winter, meanwhile the snow continues to fall.
June was not colder than average, though there were exceptions such as inland Canterbury. https://www.niwa.co.nz/sites/default/files/climate_summary_june_2013_final.pdf
“Mean temperatures for June were above average (0.5 to 1.2°C above the June average) across areas of southern and western Southland, Fiordland, Westland, Manawatu and Hawke’s Bay, Gisborne and Bay of Plenty. June temperatures throughout inland Canterbury were below average (0.5 to 1.2°C below the June average). In general, June temperatures were near average throughout the remainder of the country (within 0.5°C of June average). Milford Sound recorded its highest June mean maximum air temperature since records began in 1934.”
Fascinating, I am sure we all agree.
‘Sun’s Bizarre Activity May Trigger Another Little Ice Age (Or Not)’
Dick Ahlstrom, The Irish Times
The sun is acting bizarrely and scientists have no idea why. Solar activity is in gradual decline, a change from the norm which in the past triggered a 300-year-long mini ice age.
http://www.thegwpf.org/suns-bizarre-activity-trigger-ice-age/
‘SIDC Belgium show divergent [sunspot] model results’
by tchannon
* SC (red dash-dotted) : classical Standard-Curves prediction method, based on a least-square interpolation of Waldmeier’s set of standard solar cycle profiles;
* CM (red dashes) : Combined Method (K.Denkmayr and P. Cugnon), based on a regression technique combining a geomagnetic precursor (aa index) with a least-square fit to the actual profiles of the past 24 solar cycles.
One or other or both will be wrong.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/07/01/sidc-belgium-show-divergent-model-results/
‘Big pullback in sunspot numbers for June – nice “rabbit ears” ‘
by Warwick Hughes
That “second max” peak did not last long. […]
From here it looks like a slide towards the next solar minimum – NASA/NOAA say in this chart [hotlinked] it will not be before ~2020.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=2303
No mention of any of this in the latest post at Climate Etc:
‘Unforced variability and the global warming slow down’
by Patrick Brown
How we interpret the current slow-down in the rate of global warming depends very much on the length of the ‘leash’ in the true climate system (i.e., how large internal variability is).
Biosketch: Patrick Brown is a PhD student in Earth and Ocean Sciences at Duke University.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/07/13/unforced-variability-and-the-global-warming-slow-down/
Quite a good essay by Patrick Brown but he’s totally ignorant of what directs the “man” holding the “leash” (his dog-on-a-leash analogy that JC “like”s). He’s in for a surprise over the next few years.
Andrew Neil interviews Ed Davey on the BBC’s Sunday Politics
http://www.youtube.com/embed/dKYszIxaUxY?rel=0
This is really worth a watch.
Andrew Neil really seems to know his stuff about climate, and even has the Richard Tol reference that dismisses the SkS 97% consensus results.
It is hard to believe that this got aired on the BBC, of all places
Might be a new era of interviews?
I see McIntyre has a long post on Nurse vs Lawson and Nurse vs Montford. Hopefully the likes of Neil have got wind of this:
http://climateaudit.org/2013/07/13/paul-nurse-and-his-big-boy-pants/#more-18139
The MP (Davey) has a very strong case – argument from authority reinforced by the precautionary principle (/sarc). The interviewer (Neil) was surprisingly good and the debate was vigorous. Good to see.
Very good I agree. Davey suggests that we shouldn’t listen to crackpots, deniers and flat earthers, but need to maintain a healthy scepticism about the science.
It really made sense to me
By the way, Google “Britain’s Climate Fool” for more on Mr Davey
Notice how he kept trying to use Obama’s name as evidence, but tries to avoid any real scientific evidence? A shameless attempt at propaganda to a European community that hero worships the US messiah who preaches ‘hope and change’, but delivers neither. ‘If Obama believes in it it must be true’.
>‘If Obama believes in it it must be true’
Exhibit A:
Jack Tame: ‘Heat’s on over climate change’
Building the Keystone XL would create thousands of jobs but symbolise a nation resigned to a fossil fuel future. To deny it would be a decent punch; the best of any US President in the climate change fight.
But hey! This is war.
“New Email from Jack Tame”
Get ’em in the guts, Bammy.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/climate-change/news/article.cfm?c_id=26&objectid=10893791
I think I must be in the same email list as Jack Tame, but mine are more to the point,
They keep asking me for five bucks, and are very insistent I might add.
Obama the spare change artist.
Andrew Neil @afneil 14 Jul
Please, anybody, give me one factual error that was presented to Ed Davey this morning. Some people have just stopped thinking #bbcsp
https://twitter.com/afneil/status/356450708377182209
Results for #bbcsp
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23bbcsp&src=hash
Bishop Hill @aDissentient 23h
There is now a transcript of the @afneil @eddaveykands interview available here https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20130714_sp …
Andrew Neil: Now, are you ready for a puzzle? Well, here’s one. Can global warming be happening as expected, when the world has stopped getting hotter? That’s the brain-teaser that’s troubling scientists and which threatens to shatter the consensus over global warming.
Global temperatures have increased by 0.8 degrees Celsius since the industrial revolution. But since the late 1990s, they’ve stalled, despite the fact that emissions of greenhouse gases have continued apace. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached 400 parts per million for the first time earlier this year. The pause has led some climate scientists to question whether there could be something wrong with their models. One eminent German professor [Hans von Storch, University of Hamburg] has said: “So far, no one has been able to provide a compelling answer to why climate change seems to be taking a break. We’re facing a puzzle…”
The Climate Change Secretary, Ed Davey, has said that this normal expression of scientific uncertainty is no reason to reconsider energy and climate change policies, even though his department says they’re already adding £112 to annual household bills, a number which is set to rise. Speaking last month, he described people who cast doubt on the scientific consensus as “crackpots and conspiracy theorists”, and he warned the press not to give an “uncritical campaigning platform” to people who deny that climate change is man-made.
Ed Davey, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, joins me now for the Sunday interview.
More from Neil on Twitter/Facebook
Andrew Neil
The Climate Mafia is very well organised. Suspiciously large number of tweets making same point in same language. Intimidation of dissent
Unlike · · Share · @afneil on Twitter · 53 minutes ago via Twitter ·
Highly Distinguished Professor Lord Dana Nutticelli of Skeptical Guardian responds to Andrew Neil
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/jul/17/climate-change-scepticism-andrew-neil-ed-davey?CMP=twt_gu
‘Climate consensus cracking under weight of evidence’
By Larry Bell
[…] Can’t Be the Models… Something Must Be Wrong With the Climate!
Mark Maslin and Patrick Austin stated in their June 2012 article in the journal Nature that, for the next UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment, “climate scientists face a serious public-image problem.” If the ClimateGate scandals weren’t enough, they observe that, “The climate models they are working with, which use significant improvements in our understanding of complex climate processes, are likely to produce wider rather than smaller ranges of uncertainty in their predictions. To the public and to policymakers, this will look as though the scientific understanding of climate change is becoming less, rather than more, clear.”
D’ya suppose they might have something there?
Maslin and Austin emphasize that a major uncertainty relates to subjective ways models are weighted. They note, for example, that “Every model has its own design and parameterizations of key processes, such as how to include clouds: and every model and its output [in IPCC’s last 2007 assessment] was assumed to be equally valid, even though some perform better than others in certain ways when tested against historic records. The differences between the models will be exacerbated in the 2013 IPCC assessment, because many, but not all, of the models have improved spatial resolution.”
Writing in The New Republic, Nate Cohn shares Maslin’s and Austin’s public climate science confidence concern: “Since 1998, the warmest year of the 20th Century, temperatures have not kept up with computer models that seemed to project steady warming: they’re perilously close to falling beneath even the lowest projections.” He observes that “in the end, the so-called scientific consensus on global warming doesn’t look much like consensus when scientists are struggling to explain the intricacies of the earth’s climate system, or uttering the word ‘uncertainty’ with striking regularity.”
Cohn then unhappily concludes, “The recent wave of news and magazine articles about scientists struggling to explain the warming slowdown could prolong or deepen the public’s skepticism.” He’s correct in acknowledging an existing and growing public skepticism.
How Trustworthy are those Models? Here’s a Reality Check……………………
Read more at NetRightDaily.com: http://netrightdaily.com/2013/07/climate-consensus-cracking-under-weight-of-evidence/#ixzz2Z9t0op13
+ + + + +
On this basis and with the EPA’s Endangerment Finding (only 3 lines of evidence – the models one, temp trend and hotspot the other two) before the Supreme Court, the US Dems want to debate the “science”:
‘Dems to Boehner: Debate climate science on House floor’
By Ben Geman
Twenty-two House Democrats are pressing House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to schedule a floor debate on the science of climate change and “the nation’s response to this growing threat.”
The new letter to Boehner came from the “Safe Climate Caucus,” which formed early this year and is led by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.).
It arrives as GOP leaders are attacking the White House climate plan on economic grounds but steering clear of putting widespread GOP skepticism about global warming front-and-center in their messaging.
“The Republican strategy amounts to a conspiracy of silence. It jeopardizes the future of our children and of future generations by recklessly ignoring what scientists tell us is one of the most pressing challenges we face,” the Democrats’ letter states.
Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/311035-dems-to-boehner-debate-climate-science-on-house-floor#ixzz2Z9uZL1tm
# # #
This would be interesting – the Dems might wish they’d kept the silence
‘Climate change showdown takes shape’
By Ben Geman
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Thursday will hold the first big congressional climate change hearing since President Obama unveiled his global warming plan in late June.
Below is the witness list for the hearing titled “Climate Change: It’s Happening Now.”
Dr. Heidi Cullen, chief climatologist, Climate Central
Mr. Frank Nutter, president, Reinsurance Association of America
Mr. KC Golden, policy director, Climate Solutions
Dr. Diana Furchtgott-Roth, senior fellow, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
Dr. Robert P. Murphy, senior economist, Institute for Energy Research
Dr. Jennifer Francis, research professor, Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, Rutgers University
Dr. Scott C. Doney, director, Ocean and Climate Change Institute, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Dr. Margaret Leinen, executive director, Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, Florida Atlantic University
Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr., professor, Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Colorado
Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/310973-climate-change-showdown-takes-shape#ixzz2ZBZU8eyg
‘Debate me on climate, Rudd tells Abbott’
Source: AAP
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has again challenged Opposition Leader Tony Abbott to a debate and this time the proposed topic is climate change.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has challenged Opposition Leader Tony Abbott to a debate on measures to tackle climate change. […]
“Here’s the challenge. You pick the day next week at the National Press Club to debate the carbon price,” he said.
“The emissions trading scheme under this government, versus your scheme.
“Let the people decide through that debate whether we have the facts supporting our case or yours.”
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1789522/Debate-me-on-climate-Rudd-tells-Abbott
# # #
I wonder if Abbot is watching the US development? Terms of reference all important for these pollies but what if the US Supreme court vacates the Endangerment Finding?
Does the EPW have another hearing titled “Climate Change: It’s Not Happening Now”?
Rudd would still want to debate the “carbon price” of course, Abbott ambivalence would continue, and Key probably wouldn’t even notice
/cynicism
>”Abbott ambivalence would continue”
Although this is not what I had in mind:
Professor Richard Dennis, an economist at the Australian National University, said Mr Abbott should make it clear whether he thinks radiation was harmful or not.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/abbott-hit-by-backlash-20130715-2q0dw.html#ixzz2ZC168OdD
But wait… the debate is over. The science is in.
The debate didn’t go so well for the Dems if Steve Milloy’s Tweets are anything to go by:
http://junksciencecom.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/screen-shot-2013-07-18-at-1-32-05-pm.gif
Judith Curry has a synopsis and comment on the witness testimonies:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/07/18/u-s-senate-hearing-climate-change-its-happening-now/#more-12235
JC uses the word “misleading” wrt Heidi Cullen and Jennifer Francis. Add “dubious” for Cullen. JC:
“On the “warm” side, overconfidence or snarky putdowns of scientists on the other side of the debate does not go over well, since this triggers reminders of Climategate and detracts from your credibility. On the more “skeptical” side, aligning yourself with consensus is an effective strategy, which was used both by Roy Spencer and Roger Pielke Jr. in this Hearing.”
Spencer’s approach will be unsettling in certain quarters I’m sure and his testimony devastating (see testimony quote). But the big surprise (to me anyway) is this (JC):
Robert Murphy
Murphy’s testimony focused on an economics perspective of the social cost of carbon, including issues surrounding the discount rate and domestic versus global social cost of carbon. His testimony concludes with this rather surprising statement:
“The American public and policymakers alike have been led to believe that the social cost of carbon is an objective scientific concept akin to the mass of the moon or the radius of the sun. However, although there are inputs from the physical sciences into the calculation, estimates of the social cost of carbon are heavily dependent on modeling assumptions. In particular, if the White House Working Group had followed OMB guidance on either the choice of discount rate or reporting from a domestic perspective, then the official estimates of the current SCC would probably be close to zero, or possibly even negative—a situation meaning that (within this context) the federal government should be subsidizing coal-fired power plants because their activities confer external benefits on humanity.”
Spencer:
“It is time for scientists to entertain the possibility that there is something wrong with the assumptions built into their climate models. The fact that all of the models have been peer reviewed does not mean that any of them have been deemed to have any skill for predicting future temperatures. In the parlance of the Daubert standard for rules of scientific evidence, the models have not been successfully field tested for predicting climate change, and so far their error rate should preclude their use for predicting future climate change.”
So now the US Senate has heard this and one of the EPA’s three lines of evidence for its Endangerment Finding is the climate models. And now too the US Supreme Court is being asked by the SLF Petition to review and vacate the EPA Endangerment Finding on the grounds of faulty evidence including climate models.
It will be interesting to see what the US Senate and US Supreme Court make of this (apart from dismissing it out-of-hand that is).
Must have been quite a debate to witness first hand. Here’s Milloy’s running Tweet commentary in order of hearing:
http://tomnelson.blogspot.co.nz/2013/07/junksciencecom-live-tweets-from-senate.html
http://tomnelson.blogspot.co.nz/2013/07/more-junksciencecom-tweets-from-today.html
Sen. Inhofe: Cites Richard Lindzen — “When you control carbon, you control life.”
Issue #98: ‘Boxer’s Own Experts Contradict Obama on Climate Change’
James M. Taylor, J.D.
Expert witnesses called by Sen. Barbara Boxer to testify during Senate Environment and Public Works hearings Thursday contradicted a key assertion made by President Barack Obama on climate change.
Speaking at a Democratic fundraiser less than a month before directing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to impose costly new restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions, Obama said,
“we also know that the climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or 10 years ago.”
“I don’t have much patience for people who deny climate change,” Obama added.
During Thursday’s Environment and Public Works hearings, Sen. David Vitter asked a panel of experts, including experts selected by Boxer, “Can any witnesses say they agree with Obama’s statement that warming has accelerated during the past 10 years?”
Nobody said a word. After several seconds of deafening silence, Weather Channel meteorologist and global warming activist Heidi Cullen attempted to change the subject. Cullen said our focus should be on longer time periods rather than the 10-year period mentioned by Obama. When pressed, however, she contradicted Obama’s central assertion and said warming has slowed, not accelerated.
Several minutes later, Sen. Jeff Sessions returned to the topic and sought additional clarity. Sessions recited Obama’s quote claiming accelerating global warming during the past 10 years and asked, “Do any of you support that quote?”
Again, a prolonged and deafening silence ensued. Neither Cullen nor any of the other experts on the panel spoke a word, not even in an attempt to change the subject.
Boxer may have envisioned her high-profile global warming hearings as an opportunity to build momentum for congressional or EPA action to restrict carbon dioxide emissions. Instead, the very global warming activists she called to serve as expert witnesses delivered a crushing blow to Obama’s central justification for expensive new restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions.
http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2013/07/19/boxers-own-experts-contradict-obama-climate-change
Republican report: Critical Thinking on Climate Change
Senate GOP criticizes past global warming claims ahead of hearing
Senate Republicans have released a report debunking catastrophic predictions made about global warming in advance of the Environment and Public Works Committee hearing held today.
“Over nearly four decades, numerous predictions have had adequate time to come to fruition, providing an opportunity to analyze and compare them to today’s statistics,” reads the report from Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
The report examines the 15-year break from global warming, sea level rises, extreme weather, and the unilateral regulations proposed by the Obama administration.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.nz/2013/07/republican-report-critical-thinking-on.html
United States Senate
Environment and Public Works Committee
Minority Report
‘Critical Thinking on Climate Change’
Questions to Consider Before Taking Regulatory
Action and Implementing Economic Policies
July 18, 2013
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………………………………… 1
I. CLIMATE MODELS: THE 15-YEAR HIATUS IN WARMING………………………….. 2
II. SEA LEVEL RISE: IT’S MEASURED IN MILLIMETERS, NOT FEET……………….… 7
III. EXTREME WEATHER: HURRICANES, DROUGHTS, HEAT WAVES AND WILDFIRES.10
IV. CLIMATE REGULATION: WHAT IS IT REALLY ABOUT? .……………………………. 15
V. THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED: THE GOVERNMENT CAN’T CONTROL CLIMATE……. 17
VI. SUMMARY: POINTS ON U.S. UNILATERAL REGULATION…………………………… 19
http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=f4ace657-9490-4f4c-86f3-25d367e2085c
Page 23:
“The energy of the mind is the essence of life.” – Aristotle, Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great
From The Scotsman comes some heresy:
“Polar ice melt may be natural event”
http://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/polar-ice-melt-may-be-natural-event-1-3001226
The Flying Wind Turbines, another great idea from Big Green
http://toryaardvark.com/2013/07/16/the-brave-new-green-future-flying-wind-turbines/
That’ll never fly…….
Two of the latest from PSI:
‘Southwest U.S. Heatwave Cancelled. Reason? Too much Water Vapor’
by Carl Brehmer
“Good news! The 2013 Southwestern US heat wave has been cancelled because a deluge of water vapor has moved into the region and cooled everything down.”
“This, of course, is opposite what the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis predicts. It asserts that water vapor is a “heat trapping gas” that is suppose to cause at least 22 degrees C (40 degrees F) of atmospheric warming.”
http://principia-scientific.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=250&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_July_16_2013
‘Greenhouse Gas Theory is False’
by Dr. Pierre R Latour, PE, PhD Chemical Engineer
I wish to provide you with sound scientific and chemical engineering analysis of the faults with the Greenhouse Gas Theory, GHGT, proposed to drive Anthropogenic Global Warming and Climate Change, AGW & CC, especially as it pertains to CO2. I want to arm you for this huge, ongoing debate. I seek and receive no financial support from any government, business or organization; I finance my own work in retirement.
For the life of me I cannot get a solid, consistent grip on the underlying physics supporting the notion first proclaimed by James Hansen, Science, 1981, atmospheric CO2 has any quantitatively verified effect on Earth’s temperature. It is the duty of AGW & CC promoters to provide it, not skeptics like me. So I claim political leaders promoting GHGT have not explained the physics and quantified the effect to my satisfaction. They make claims and charges with little or no relevant evidence to back it up. In American law courts these are called frivolous claims and dismissed (thrown out). When their expensive schemes collapse due to foreseeable engineering consequences, their claim they are unintended consequences rings hollow.
While it is not my job as skeptic, I will offer eight objections to their GHG Theory, each of which falsify it. It is their job to prove me wrong. I will present my assertions in simple terms with justifications; I have detailed chemical engineering mathematical analysis verified by experiment to support them.
>>>>>>>>
http://principia-scientific.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=248&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_July_16_2013
‘Evangelical Scientists Issue Faith-Based Call For Congress To Address Climate Change’
By Katie Valentine
Jim Ball, executive vice president for policy and climate change at the Evangelical Environmental Network, told E&E Publishing that the evangelical community’s culture of climate skepticism also comes down to a matter of trust in science — something some Christians have historically struggled with. “There is a suspicion about science because of the debate in creation and evolution theory,” Ball said. “To have evangelical scientists, people of faith, saying to the evangelical community that you can trust this science is quite important. It’s all a matter of trust.”
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/07/15/2302021/evangelical-scientists-climate-change/
# # #
People of faith might also consider being people of brain too.
“Highland joy as wind turbine plan rejected”
http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/3318413
This would have been a massive wind development near the iconic Loch Ness
Unfortunately, it is only one rejection in a flood of approvals that are set to trash the scenery of Scotland
Dangerous global warming could be reversed, say scientists
http://grist.org/climate-energy/dangerous-global-warming-could-be-reversed-say-scientists/
“Global warming could be reversed using a combination of burning trees and crops for energy, and capturing and storing carbon dioxide underground (CCS), according to an analysis by scientists. ”
/facepalm
Excellent article and good review of Rupert Darwall’s book
http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2013/7-8/the-age-of-global-warming-is-over
Let’s hope this is right.
“The age of global warming is over. I refer, not to any warming of the planet that may or may not be occurring, but to the world’s apparently serious and broadly shared belief in dangerous, man-made global warming and of equally serious attempts to implement policies of enforced decarbonisation to deal with it. “
Rupert Darwall in the UK HuffPo:
‘Global Warming – From Science to Agitprop’
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/rupert-darwall/global-warming_b_3615720.html
“With global warming, science morphs seamlessly into political campaigning…..”
and we have these dangerous clowns coming your way soon….
“It will take 100% collaboration and 200% commitment for New Zealand to reach Generation Zero’s goal of zero carbon pollution, University of Otago Centre for Sustainability director Dr Janet Stephenson says. ”
” Speaking at the first event of Generation Zero’s ”What’s the Holdup?” nationwide tour on climate change action at the University of Otago last night, Dr Stephenson said there were many opportunities to move beyond fossil fuel use.
”We just need to get on and do it fast.”
“Generation Zero Dunedin campaign organiser Letisha Nicholas said there was a deep consensus around the world for action on climate change…”
http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/264938/fast-action-needed-fossil-fuel-use
wonder how much taxpayer money is supporting this propaganda stunt and the troughing academic zealots intent on brainwashing the young.
I would have gone to the Gen Zero talk but I didn’t have the five days required to walk to the nearest venue
Ron, I just Googled Dr Janet Stevenson of Otago
http://www.csafe.org.nz/management/dr._janet_stephenson
Seems to tick all the progressive “right on” boxes. It does worry me that sociologists not engineers have their fingers on our energy policy though
Here’s one for Andy:
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/07/india-threatens-wind-farms-with-fines-accurately-predict-the-wind-a-day-in-advance-or-else/
That is quite an interesting read. Clearly the Indians “get’ the problems with wind and are requiring them to forecast their output so that the backup generators can plan, or maybe they are just trying to nail the wind industry.
I see that quite a few of the JN commenters have picked up on the UK STOR (diesel backup) scam too
>”You can admire the stable predictable output that comes from averaging so many turbines over such a large area. Right?”
Have to say I would have anticipated a little better load profile from 7000 turbines over Northern Europe (some diversity surely?). But no, that’s an eye opener. And pathetic.
Wonder if it has improved since 2004 with the addition of more units (as if 7000 isn’t enough for diversity)? If not, what’s the point of any?
If not, what’s the point of any?
There isn’t any point of any. That’s the point
‘Could Living as a Virtual Cow Make You Go Vegan?’
By Lex Berko
Stanford researcher Jeremy Bailenson and his colleagues at the Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL) are transforming people into cows. Participants in their immersive virtual reality programs not only see themselves as bovines in a virtual mirror, but they also get virtually poked with cattle prods and eventually are helplessly dragged to the virtual slaughterhouse.
“Superficially, this might seem a little bizarre, but there is a purpose……….”
Read more: http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/could-living-as-a-virtual-cow-make-you-go-vegan#ixzz2ZMYaWV5P
Eating less meat, in turn translates into less energy consumption, making climate change, an otherwise “slow, gradual, and nonlinear” process, seem more immediate and consequential and change your behaviour – apparently.
On the topic of wind and UK generation towards 2020 , this report is worth spending some time on.
http://www.nationalgrid.com/NR/rdonlyres/DF928C19-9210-4629-AB78-BBAA7AD8B89D/47178/Operatingin2020_finalversion0806_final.pdf
The key issues in this National Grid report are around the instabilities in the grid that will be caused by a large penetration of wind, and the requirement for a 15min response time from backup generation, in the form of diesel. This can happen often because of too much wind or strong gusts that cause entire fleets to be shut due to safetly and operational reasons.
NZ is often touted as a good place for wind generation, yet is prone to strong and gusty winds.
I wonder how much of this problem would occur in NZ too, should there be widespread expansion of the wind fleet?
There was interesting coverage in the comments to a recent Judy Curry piece (on the articles in the Economist and by Walter Mead about Germany’s renewables problems http://judithcurry.com/2013/06/15/tilting-at-windmills-in-germany/ )
eg this one by Peter Lang on the Oz experience:
“Spot prices for electricity in South Australia peaked above $12,100/MWh several times over the past couple of weeks. [for context the average spot price for electricity last year was about $45/MWh]
The reason for the high spot prices is that the power output from wind farms keeps falling away to near zero. It happened again yesterday. Look at the chart here: http://windfarmperformance.info/?date=2013-06-16
Deselect all states except South Australia. Notice the power generated by South Australian wind farms between 06:00 and 17:00 (i.e. when it is most needed) varied between about 10 MW and 80 MW. That’s from a total capacity of 1,223 MW.
The output from all wind farms in all states connected to the National Grid was down to a pathetic 200 MW during the morning.
The Australian national grid is the largest interconnected grid in the world by areal extent. Wind farms are spread over an area 1200 km east-west by 800 km north-south. So the low output from all wind farms over such a large area demonstrates clearly how irrelevant is the claim that “the wind is always blowing somewhere”. The statement is true in principle but irrelevant in practice because the area that would have to be connected, the amount of excess generating capacity and the transmission capacity required makes it impracticable to connect a sufficiently large area to ensure a reliable electricity supply from wind energy.
From my perspective, no amount of wind energy makes economic sense.”
http://judithcurry.com/2013/06/15/tilting-at-windmills-in-germany/#comment-333179
Thanks Ron – very interesting. Peter Lang is obviously in the power generation industry and has some interesting insight regards Australian power industry – his several other comments are worth reading too.
The issue with wind energy has always been that for every MW generated by wind, an equivalent amount needs to be available from “conventional” power as a standby for when the wind doesn’t blow (which is frequently)
However, the report from the UK National Grid highlights another problem, which is that wind farms have to be shut down when there is too much wind, often at very short notice
Here comes the requirement for STOR (Short Term Operating Reserve), which is a network of diesel generators that can fire up very quickly and replace the wind energy until bigger thermal stations can be brought up to speed.
These generators are paid quite handsomely for their availability, of course. Therefore, we end up with conventional power, wind (with subsidies, that in the case of UK offshore wind are around 3 times the cost of the power sold).
All these costs are passed onto the consumer.
The high wind scenario raises the question of how often this happens in NZ and how it is managed.
If hydro is load balancing wind, then is there actually any point to wind energy in NZ other than to “save water”? Does it actually increase the capacity of the grid in NZ?
Some PR from the NZ Wind Energy Association:
Wind is crucial to New Zealand’s energy future.
Of the renewable sources of electricity, wind has greatest potential for New Zealand. It’s abundant and we have plenty of land on which to site wind farms. The technology has developed to the point where it is now a very cost-effective way to generate electricity.
Wind is free and clean. The technologies for harnessing wind have advanced hugely over the last two decades. Turbines are bigger and better. Capacity is increasing as is efficiency and reliability. All the while, costs are coming down.
The New Zealand Government has recognised the importance of renewable generation; its current energy strategy includes a target of 90% electricity from renewable sources by 2025, up from around 75% today. Achieving this target requires a substantial increase in renewable generation.
Allied with other generation sources and an integrated electricity grid, wind will be a key part of a safe and secure electricity system, generating at least 20% of New Zealand’s electricity by 2030, up from 5% of generation today.
Renewable energy can shield the economy from global price and supply issues associated with fossil fuels. It can help combat climate change. Renewable energy also ties in strongly with New Zealand’s clean and green image around the world, supporting tourism and providing other business opportunities.
(My emphasis added)
http://windenergy.org.nz/wind-energy/wind-energy
Not sure how carpeting NZ’s iconic landscape with wind turbines will support tourism, especially as there is ample evidence that they destroy tourism, particularly in many parts of Europe (I know of a cycle tour company in Scotland – for example – that actively avoids areas with windfarms, which is becoming increasingly difficult)
My questions on how wind will be load balanced whilst increasing capacity remain unanswered – I guess I could write to them.
I am very suspicious that wind is cost effective, when there is little evidence that they will actually pay back their initial investment over their lifetime of 15-20 years, without government subsidies.
This site gives some idea about how big turbine blades have become
http://www.the9billion.com/2013/07/21/worlds-longest-wind-turbine-blades/
Fascinating terms – “Gone Green Scenario” and “Wind Cut-Out”. Almost interchangeable.
11.8, page 72:
“The marginal impact of wind is assumed to reduce to 30% by 2020, that is to say we carry an additional 0.3MW of reserve for each additional MW of wind generation.”
“Assumed” – what could possibly go wrong?
Interesting report Andy, I will spend some time on it.
‘Sunspots and the Great Cooling Ahead’
By Jeffrey Folks
[…] When sunspot activity is high, as it was during the 1990s and early 2000s, temperatures tend to be high as well. When it is low, as it is now, temperatures fall. And because sunspot activity occurs in decades-long cycles, the unusually cold winter and spring of 2012 may be just the beginning. As a Barron’s article recently noted, current sunspot activity is now the least it has been in a century.
What this means is that the era of global cooling has begun. In the northern hemisphere, three out of the four last winters and springs have been unusually cold. This spring was so cold in East Asia that China was forced to import millions of tons of grain and soybeans from the U.S. and other suppliers.
The environmental elitists in Manhattan and Laguna Beach may not be greatly inconvenienced by cold winters, but ordinary people have to eat, too, and food exhausts a much greater share of their income. For the world’s poor, a cold year means the difference between eating and going hungry, or between heating one’s home and shivering all winter. Or as the philosopher Thomas Hobbes put it (while living through the thick of the Little Ice Age himself), it’s the difference between a life that is warm and comfortable and one that is “nasty, brutish, and short.” Because climate alarmists are focused on global warming when they should be concerned with cooling, life for the world’s poor is likely to be just that.
That is because shortages inevitably result from global cooling. As supplies of foodstuffs and energy become constrained due to cold, damp growing seasons and the need for more heating, a global bidding war arises in which the poor lose out. The environmental elitists will not suffer — they’ll pay more as they roll their overladen buggies out of the local Costco, but what the heck? They can bask in the illusion that they are saving the earth.
[…]
Obama’s legacy may be that he was the fool who believed, or pretended to believe, that closing a few power plants would cool the planet just when the planet was already in the process of cooling. He is the one who looked in the rearview mirror and prepared for global warming just as he was about to crash head-on into the exact opposite.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/07/sunspots_and_the_great_cooling_ahead.html#ixzz2ZTm3StxR
‘German Researcher On Possible Consequences Of A Solar Grand Minimum…”Weakest Cycle In Almost 200 Years” ‘
By P Gosselin on 14. Juli 2013
Die kalte Sonne website presents an article on a potential approaching solar grand minimum.
‘The Sun in June 2013 – on the way to a grand minimum? New study on the possible consequences’
by Frank Bosse
Solar activity has also been very modest this month. One has been able to observe only 48% of the mean value of the activity of the previous cycles for the current cycle, the sunspot number was only 52,5. Here’s how it looks graphically:
http://kaltesonne.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/jul1.gif
[…]
In our monthly series in consideration of solar activity, a number of authors have been brought up who think it’s probable that the sun is headed for a grand minimum similar to the Maunder- Minimums of 1649-1715. That may already manifest itself in 2020. There have already been studies that attempt to project the impacts on global temperatures. Included here is a study from Meehl et al. 2013. As an input the authors look at an approximately 0.25% reduction in Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) between 2020 and 2070:
http://kaltesonne.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/jul4.gif
[Note: that’s a 3.5 W/m2 and realistic assumption but a greater reduction is not out of the question in historical terms given the range of estimates of 6 W/m2 from 1600s – 1900s]
They fed this into a climate model. Result: global temperatures could drop around 0,2…0,3 degrees Celsius with local peak values of up to 0.8°C, especially in the middle and upper latitudes of the northern hemispheres:
http://kaltesonne.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/jul5.gif
Source: Figure 3c of Meehl et al. 2013.
The model used by Meehl et al. employs a high climate sensitivity with respect to greenhouse gases, foremost CO2, and it is thus little wonder that the shown cooling with respect to the warming on top of it in the simulation only has a temporary effect and a moderate braking effect. The questions that a critical observer may ask are the following:
1. Is the magnitude of sensitivity with regards to GHG in the model really assured when we consider the current stagnation of global temperatures since at least 2001 – while CO2 has steadily increased?
2. Is the TSI in the paper, viewed as the “motor”, solely what one could expect to act or does spectral variation (especially UV) make an additional contribution? The same needs to be asked about the significantly increasing galactic cosmic radiation.
We see: Forecasts are very difficult – especially when they concern the future.
http://notrickszone.com/2013/07/14/german-researcher-on-possible-consequences-of-a-solar-grand-minimum-weakest-cycle-in-almost-200-years/
“The Arctic Could Be Ice Free By 2012, Er No, 2020, Er No, 2058 That’s Right”
http://toryaardvark.com/2013/07/22/the-arctic-could-be-ice-free-by-2012-er-no-2020-er-no-2058-thats-right/
“Slippage” is accelerating alarmingly. We’re well past the tipping point.
Funny story in the doctors this morning (in relation to Arctic headlines pre-empting themselves)
Woman’s Day March 2013 – picture of Kate Middleton, headline “It’s a girl!”
‘Global warming ‘on pause’ but set to resume’
Global warming has been on “pause” for 15 years but will speed up again and is still a real threat, Met Office scientists have warned.
“…global warming has been disguised…”
“….caused by the natural cycle of the oceans…”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10195498/Global-warming-on-pause-but-set-to-resume.html
Dr Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring at the Met Office, said: “Global surface temperatures remain high. Twelve of the 14 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000, the lower troposphere – the atmosphere above the surface – is continuing to warm in recent years, and combined with the cooling in the stratosphere this is a distinctive fingerprint of the effects of greenhouse gases on the climate system.”
Prof Rowan Sutton, Director of Climate Research at the University of Reading, said: “Within the field we have taken for granted that there will be variations in the rate of warming, it is totally accepted and is no surprise …[it] would correct to say that wasn’t the message that we communicated more widely and that probably is a failing.”
+ + + + +
Hmmm. Lower trop warming in recent years Dr Stott? And since when was lower trop the criteria for a “distinctive fingerprint? Prof Sutton might like to have a chat with Myles Allen who said ““no-one predicted the shorter-timescale lack-of-trend we have seen since 2000”. And what about “a bit of a mystery” and “scientists are puzzled”?
Weasels. But at least they’ve discovered natural cycles.
The BBC’s David Shukman wasn’t as amenable according to what must be a transcript from Steve Milloy:
‘Bad for warmism: In-the-tank BBC asks ‘Why has global warming stalled?’ ‘
BBC science editor David Shukman reports:
With Britain’s heatwave reaching a peak, there could be no better moment to talk about why global warming has slowed to a standstill…
What if the climate models – which are the very basis for all discussions of what to do about global warming – exaggerate the sensitivity of the climate to rising carbon dioxide?
Dr Stott conceded that the projections showing the most rapid warming now look less likely, given recent observations, but that others remain largely unchanged.
A Met Office briefing document, released at the briefing, says that, even allowing for the temperatures of the last decade, the most likely warming scenario is only reduced by 10% – so “the warming that we might have expected by 2050 would be delayed by only a few years”.
Overall, it concludes, the pause “does not materially alter the risks of substantial warming of the Earth by the end of this century.”
In other words, global warming is still on.
But until the pause can be properly explained, many people will take a lot of convincing – especially if the pause lasts longer than expected.
http://junkscience.com/2013/07/22/bad-for-warmism-in-the-tank-bbc-asks-why-has-global-warming-stalled/
Given the pause wasn’t expected at all I’m not sure what length can be considered “longer”. And no mention of the word “cooling” either – that’s still out-of-the-question obviously.
>”no mention of the word “cooling” either – that’s still out-of-the-question obviously”
Not so everywhere of course (UKMO or Univ of Reading not being everywhere):
Irish solar science specialist Dr Ian Elliott – “It all points to perhaps another little ice age,” he said. “It seems likely we are going to enter a period of very low solar activity and could mean we are in for very cold winters.”
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/sun-s-bizarre-activity-may-trigger-another-ice-age-1.1460937
And so it goes on:
‘More bad news for the IPCC’
Each month Professor Ole Humlum from the University of Oslo published the latest month’s data in a report called Climate4you. He has just issued the latest for June 2013. (link – pdf)
* The two satellite records continue to show cooling;
* All three surface air temperature records continue to show negative temperature trend for the last 5 and 10 years; however
* as seen by the Mauna Loa record below CO2 continues its rise:
The former United Nations chief climate negotiator Yvo de Boer in Australia this week, regarding the forthcoming fifth assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said:
“THAT report is going to scare the wits out of everyone,”
Did he mean everyone, or did he mean those looking for further grant money for research into the “settled science.”
http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.co.nz/2013/07/more-bad-news-for-ipcc.html
Bishop Hill is onto this (as we expect):
‘Science Media Centre spins the pause’
[…]
Lots of “our understanding is getting better” and not a lot of “nobody has a clue what’s going on”.
[…]
David Shukman’s take is here [link to following quote].
“…the scientists say, pauses in warming were always to be expected. This is new – at least to me.
It is common sense that climate change would not happen in a neat, linear away but instead in fits and starts.
But I’ve never heard leading researchers mention the possibility before.”
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/7/22/science-media-centre-spins-the-pause.html
Turns out Steve Milloy quoted from the article Bishop Hill linked to:
‘Why has global warming stalled?’
David Shukman, science editor
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23409404
“I asked why this [the pause] had not come up in earlier presentations. No one really had an answer, except to say that this “message” about pauses had not been communicated widely.”
Also from the BBC, Andrew Neil responds to critics
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23405202
And Ben Pile writes quite a good piece on the Andrew Neil saga
http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/makingsciencepublic/2013/07/23/whats-behind-the-battle-of-received-wisdoms/
Perceptive essay by Ben Pile and a lot going on in it connecting back to the STC inquiry into climate change communication. Good to have that background as a reference for these latest developments. Highlights the power of mass media too when the issues are drawn out in clarity.
Sunday Politics certainly did their research for the Davey interview quite impressively and a thorough riposte to critics in whole. Reading between the lines I detect fingers on the pulse of a number of topical issues which would have required some extensive reading and keeping up with developments.
“Contrary to many unfounded claims on Twitter………All our evidence came from mainstream scientists who do not doubt the fundamental tenets of global warming.”
That must rankle in certain quarters.
I found this interesting article by Lubos Motl on James Randi and climate science
http://motls.blogspot.co.nz/2009/12/climate-james-randi-vs-mindless.html
that I also posted over at Ken’s place, since Cedric appears to be a fan of Randi, whilst not apparently aware he is an “evil denier”
“Are climate sceptics the real champions of the scientific method?”
A question posed in, of all places, The Guardian.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/political-science/2013/jul/30/climate-sceptics-scientific-method
Trolls are busy bursting blood vessels in the comments
First impression was surprise to see that headline at The Guardian too, but reading on Pearce answers his question in the title with another question and answer that reveals his ulterior motive:
“At what point can we judge that a scientific question moves from a position of “doubt” to being “settled”? Both climate change sceptics and advocates of climate policy see this question as important; sharing a faith that scientific evidence is the basis for public policy. However, such a faith omits the possibility that science is not suited to such a role, and that “solving” climate change does not flow linearly from agreement on the science. The attentions of sceptics may or may not be improving the practice and knowledge of climate science. However, if sceptics’ never-ending audit is really damaging policy, that may be more a reflection of an overly scientised policy process than a basis for denying them a voice in debate.”
He seems to imply the policy process can/should/might be less scientised in the case of climate to avoid intense scrutiny of the science. Does that mean an even more ideological process is appropriate for climate in his assessment?
Never thought I’d see PSI get a mention in The Guardian:
“However, others offer far more fundamental challenges to climate science, such as fringe sceptic group Principia Scientific who reject this orthodox view of atmospheric physics [hotlink].”
The link is to this article:
‘The Relentless Pseudo-science of WUWT’
http://principia-scientific.org/supportnews/latest-news/247-the-relentless-pseudo-science-of-wuwt.html
Can’t see the Guardian comments at the moment to see if any of the Guardianistas actually understand what’s going on there in the wider context of GHE. I doubt any do but if they did, who would they “side” with (as Pearce puts it)? Eschenbach/Watts, or PSI?
Tricky choice for them.
The Guardianistas are foaming at the mouth that anyone should challenge the orthodoxy in this way.
This article “Reuters editor attacked by media for ‘climate skepticism” is more consist with the behaviour patterns we observe in the warmist cult
http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/30/reuters-editor-attacked-by-media-for-climate-skepticism/#ixzz2aaikKWn8
Ah yes, I can see the comments now.
Peter would be astonished I’m sure if confronted with the actual understanding of AGW theory by the collective sceptic community, not that he’ll ever look himself. But it’s the likes of Robert Lacatena in his reply to Paul Vincelli (University of Kentucky) that I was interested in seeing as expressed up-thread:
Robert Lacatena is obviously ignorant (as is Michael Craig replying to Vincelli below Lacatena) of the real argument taking place between WUWT and PSI. Anthony Watts “and his legion of flying monkeys” (Dr Roy Spencer and Willis Eschenbach deserve a whole lot better than that), are attempting to defend GHE by default of any other GHE proponents in response to PSI, and GHE is the prerequisite of AGW. But Spencer and Watts have no answer to PSI’s non-GHE round-earth model so where does that leave Robert? At some stage he’ll need ring-ins if the “flying monkeys” can’t hold the fort on behalf of him but he’s a fool if he thinks he can find anyone else that has better arguments because Watts, Spencer and Eschenbach are essentially elucidating and defending Kiehl & Trenberth, GHE and AGW with conventional climate science wisdom.
The latest from PSI is “a simplified version of an earlier PSI model produced in answer to a “put up or shut up” challenge (May 10, 2013) by climatologist, Dr Roy Spencer”:
‘New Climate Model Trumps Flat Earthers of Greenhouse Gas ‘Science’ ‘
‘PSI’s Miatello Earth Energy Budget Diagram’
http://principia-scientific.org/images/Miatello_EARTH_ENERGY_BUDGET.jpg
>>>>>>>>>>
http://principia-scientific.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=259&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_July_29_2013
Eventually the Guardianistas will have to confront for themselves the PSI arguments and propositions (including the mathematical physics in the vein of ‘The Relentless Pseudo-science of WUWT’ up-thread) without the help of sceptic (but luke-warm) “flying monkey” “self-styled scientific champion” intermediaries. If Robert Lacatena’s conception of the skeptical argument is anything typical then they’re totally clueless, ignorant, and completely unprepared for the PSI-type scepticism that the thoroughly aware Spencer, Watts and Eschenbach have been up against for a while now but have been unable to refute, let alone conclusively rebut to the extent of shutting down PSI.
If those 3 can’t do it, it’ll take inestimably more than Guardianista Bozos if their comments are anything to go by. If anybody makes headway it will be those who front up in comments addressing the PSI propositions e.g. Geraint Hughes, Rojclague and Anon under the above linked article. Not sure that they have been answered satisfactorily by PSI yet in respect to the simplified model or whether the simplified model is an improvementr but the round-earth concept (or accounting for rotation) is difficult to dismiss. From the article:
I would like to see Kiehl & Trenberth’s (or other approved Lacatena/Guardianista ring-ins) response to that
“Wayne Cartwright : Energy exploration debate missing the point”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10905614&ref=newsl_afternoonnewsdirect_J20080609_142008_1716_1129_825738151
That’s the society they dream of
Wow, another Guardian article (this time from Tamsin Edwards) suggesting that the politics be taken out of climate science
http://www.theguardian.com/science/political-science/2013/jul/31/climate-scientists-policies
Tamsin made a presentation a while back in response to the film ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ titled ‘Climate Change Denial’:
“A talk on “The Great Global Warming Swindle” Channel 4 programme. I gave this to the “Climatic Prediction and Research student group” at the University of Bristol in May 2007.”
http://www.academia.edu/1740608/Climate_Change_Denial
Poked holes in most of the graphs etc so that her case for AGW was credible at the time because the film left a lot to be desired and the pause was not an issue. However, she now has a can of worms at her own blog in respect to her Summary: 1 and Summary: 2 and the Met Office’s decadal forecast thanks to Barry Woods:
http://blogs.plos.org/models/possible-futures/#comment-2389
No answers from Tamsin despite her avowed “risk assessment, estimating the probability of change” rather than “risk management, deciding how to reduce or live with that risk” and unequivocal statements in Summary: 1 and Summary: 2 e.g.
“Other factors do affect our climate, such as variations in the sun’s energy and volcanic eruptions and we do not dismiss them. But their net effect is small”
And,
“The observed warming has been caused predominantly by human emissions of greenhouse gases”.
All very well staying out of policy but there’s an accountability by the assessor for the risk assessment (and basis of it above) if it’s looking dodgy (no observed warming for a decade or more). As Barry Woods puts it:
“I could not quite pin Richard [Betts – Met Office] down to when models should show significant rate of warming again, we need ~0.3C, right now per decade to hit 2040 projections, but he did concede the 0.3C, vs the low rate observed. I was looking for a test, that either constrains OR validates the projections.”
This is exactly the same situation as Gluckman’s 0.9C projection for all NZ by 2040 (requires 0.33C, right now per decade). Gluckman is the intermediary between risk assessors (Tamsin/Betts/Wratt/Renwick et al) and risk managers (Key/Groser et al in NZ).
There really isn’t much of a distinction if risk managers kowtow to risk assessors irrespective of the veracity of the assessment i.e. there is no “out” for Tamsin because her assessment is the basis of policy. This is simply the same responsibility to get it right that engineers are held accountable to (think CTV building collapse inquiry).
Tamsin Edwards circa 2007:
“Other factors do affect our climate, such as variations in the sun’s energy and volcanic eruptions and we do not dismiss them. But their net effect is small”
Fred Pearce January 2013 on the Met Office forecast downgrade:
What has changed in their thinking?
There is a growing awareness among climate scientists of the importance of natural variability in predicting climate change, especially in the short term, where it can completely obscure the global warming signal. This realisation has been bubbling up for a while. Four years ago, New Scientist reported evidence – including research by the Met Office’s Doug Smith – that natural cycles were pushing the atmosphere into a cold phase [see hotlink]. Back then, we said the research “suggests that surface air temperatures will remain steady for the next six years or so, as cooler sea surface temperatures keep the lower atmosphere cool despite ever higher greenhouse gas levels”.
Are these cycles just something scientists have invented to explain away the lack of recent warming?
No. The Met Office admits that we still know far too little about how these natural cycles work, and how big they are. And climate scientists are open to the charge that they ignored the potential impact of natural variability when it was accelerating global warming. According to Brian Hoskins of Imperial College London, it now looks like natural cycles played a big role in the unexpectedly fast warming of the 1990s.”
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23060-has-global-warming-ground-to-a-halt.html
In other words, they (including Tamsin) were wrong. And irresponsible. What other cycles are operating that they’ve ignored? Pierce:
“But there are also longer-term cycles. The biggest cycles are known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.”…….”The 11-year solar cycle has a small effect.”
“Biggest cycles” ??? They, according to Fred, consider 60/70 yrs the “biggest” cycles?
So they’ve ignored the “biggest” “longer-term” cycles of only up to 60 – 70 yrs (PDO/AMO) until forced to by the pause and their only solar cycle consideration now there’s a pause is 11 yr. What chance then, an even bigger, longer, quasi 200, 1000 or 1500 year cycle might get their attention unless forced to again by the climate over the next few years if temperatures cool rather than just “remain steady” i.e. they’ll be wrong again because 60/70 yrs are not the “biggest” climate cycles that effect climate but simply oscillations about much larger cycles?
Gives a new meaning to the term “climate forcing”
Zhen-Shan and Xian (who were they?) in 2006:
‘Multi-scale analysis of global temperature changes and trend of a drop in temperature in the next 20 years’
Lin Zhen-Shan and Sun Xian
Received May 2, 2005; revised October 24, 2005; accepted April 6, 2006
Published online: July 31, 2006
The School of Geographic Sciences, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, P. R. China
Summary
A novel multi-timescale analysis method, Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD), is used to diagnose the variation of the annual mean temperature data of the global, Northern Hemisphere (NH) and China from 1881 to 2002. The results show that:
(1) Temperature can be completely decomposed into four timescales quasi-periodic oscillations including an ENSO-like mode, a 6–8-year signal, a 20-year signal and a 60-year signal, as well as a trend. With each contributing ration of the quasi-periodicity discussed, the trend and the 60-year timescale oscillation of temperature variation are the most prominent.
(2) It has been noticed that whether on century-scale or 60-year scales, the global temperature tends to descend in the coming 20 years.
(3) On quasi 60-year timescale, temperature abrupt changes in China precede those in the global and NH [approx 5–10 years ahead], which provides a denotation for global climate changes. Signs also show a drop in temperature in China on century scale in the next 20 years.
(4) The dominant contribution of CO2 concentration to global temperature variation is the trend. However, its influence weight on global temperature variation accounts for no more than 40.19%, smaller than those of the natural climate changes on the rest four timescales. Despite the increasing trend in atmospheric CO2 concentration, the patterns of 20-year and 60-year oscillation of global temperature are all in falling. Therefore, if CO2 concentration remains constant at present, the CO2 greenhouse effect will be deficient in counterchecking the natural cooling of global climate in the following 20 years. Even though the CO2 greenhouse effect on global climate change is unsuspicious, it could have been excessively exaggerated. It is high time to re-consider the trend of global climate changes.
http://www.crikey.com.au/wp-content/uploads/media/docs/Zh/Zhen-Shan–Xiuan-MeteorAtmosPhys-2007-d1227bc1-3183-456f-a935-69c263af1904.pdf
# # #
So even before Tamsin Edwards of Bristol University UK was stating that “The observed warming has been caused predominantly by human emissions of greenhouse gases” or there had been a natural cycles epiphany at the UK Met Office and the Imperial College London, two guys (or gals? students or professors – who knows?) in China that no-one has heard of were busy isolating the shorter cycles and concluding GHG influence was “smaller than those of the natural climate changes” at a University that never, ever, gets a mention in Western media climate change dispatches.
Not only that but their 20 year prediction of a drop in temperature is playing out in HadCRUT4 over the 8 years since 2005:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/hadcrut4gl/from:2005/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2005/trend
Goes to show I think, that there is far too much credence placed on UK (and US) climate scientists.
Lin Zhen-Shan and Sun Xian end their Discussion with this Chinglish:
“And again, our primary conclusion, i.e., that atmospheric CO2 concentration is not a key determinant of periodic variation of the global temperature. The global climate warming is not solely affected by the CO2 greenhouse effect……..climate change on different timescales by analysis the solar activity, earth movement (nutation, rift and volcano activity) and the others greenhouse gases using EMD method.”
Fine by me in view of their results. All respect to big-name British scientists Tamsin Edwards, Doug Smith, Brian Hoskins and Richard Betts, but I’m more inclined to place my credence (not all but some at least) on Lin Zhen-Shan and Sun Xian – whoever they were, and however they said it.
Where Zhen-Shan and Xian went wrong.
Page 1 – “….the CO2 greenhouse effect on global climate change is unsuspicious”
Page 5 – “….the greenhouse effect of CO2 in the atmosphere on global temperature variation is mainly the century scale trend [EMD residual]”
Page 5, Fig. 4. The CO2 concentration is decomposed into two intrinsic mode functions (IMF) and a trend (Res) by EMD method.
Page 2, Fig. 1. The global mean temperature is decomposed into four intrinsic mode functions (IMF) and a trend by EMD method………….The Res indicates larger timescale oscillation.
Page 4, Fig. 2. The northern hemisphere mean temperature is decomposed into four intrinsic mode functions (IMF) and a trend by EMD method………………..The Res indicates larger timescale oscillation
Page 6, Fig. 5. The China annual mean temperature is decomposed into four intrinsic mode functions (IMF) and a trend by EMD method…………..The Res indicates larger timescale oscillation.
The CO2 effect is very “suspicious” contrary to Zhen-Shan and Xian because the CO2 residual trend at the bottom of Figure 4 is almost exactly opposite to the temperature residual trend’s at the bottom of Figures 1, 2 and 3.
The Global, NH and China temperature residual trends do however correspond with TSI rise over the 1881 to 2002 period. Almost identical for China but lagged over a decade for Global and NH indicating the influence of ocean i.e. the atmospheric response is fast over land but slow over ocean. The residual temperature trend had peaked in the China dataset by 2002 but had not for Global or NH but China is obviously a leading indicator as Zhen-Shan and Xian found i.e. the Global and NH residual temperature trends are peaking over a decade later than China and from around now (2013/4) will turn negative consistent with TSI and oceanic lag along with IMF4 that has already turned negative i.e. their shorter cycle cooling on top of longer cycle cooling for an even greater downturn than they expect.
All Zhen-Shan and Xian had to do was factor in their residual trends to their IMF prediction with appropriate attribution and rationale to overlay the IMF oscillation on the residual cycle to make their analysis impeccable and for time to verify the whole thing rather than just the IMF prediction. They (or someone else) could do that easily in a follow-up paper if they had the inclination. So although Zhen-Shan and Xian have made good use and correct attribution of IMFs, they’ve miss-attributed the residual. They were still way ahead of their UK counterparts even so.
Interesting to see the China annual mean temperature series in Figure 5. The data series (“signal” at top of Figure 5) exhibits pronounced warming 1920s – 1950s and that entire period was warmer than right up to the late 1990s. The 1980 level is about the same as the 1880 level and the series looks much like the USA land series before all the “adjustments”.
Climate science finally getting to grips with natural cycles but they could still benefit from perusal of Zhen-Shan and Xian (2006), e.g. these guys:
‘Deciphering the Air-Sea Communication: Ocean Significantly Affects Long-Term Climate Fluctuations’
[…] Ocean currents affect the surface temperature of the oceans and thus the heat exchange with the atmosphere — eventually causing climate variations on the adjacent continents. The most evident is an oscillation with a period of 60 years. “Such decadal climate fluctuations are superimposed on the general warming trend, so that at times it seems as if the warming trend slowed or even stopped. After a few decades, it accelerates once again,” explains Prof. Latif. “It is important for us to understand these natural cycles, so that we can finally provide better climate predictions as well.” One of the major problems, as Latif explained, is that there are just very few long-term oceanic measurements, thereby complicating the analysis and interpretation of climate change signals. Therefore, scientists are using increasingly refined statistical methods to extract more and more information from the available data sets.
“We need both, realistic model simulations and long-term data records, and really sophisticated analysis methods to produce reliable climate predictions. Our work is an additional piece in the giant puzzle of global climate variability, but I am confident that we will be able to extract the secrets underlying the natural climate fluctuations,” says Prof. Latif.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130725104849.htm
# # #
“Such decadal climate fluctuations are superimposed on the general warming trend, so that at times it seems as if the warming trend slowed or even stopped. After a few decades, it accelerates once again,” – or not.
Zhen-Shan and Xian show the “general warming trend” is changing phase from warming – to zenith – to cooling. Decadal fluctuations will then be “superimposed on the general [cooling] trend”.
Hopefully it wont take another 7 years for Latif and others to assemble “realistic model simulations and long-term data records, and really sophisticated analysis methods” so they can figure out what had been revealed (but not realized) by Zhen-Shan and Xian’s EMD analysis in 2005/6.
Rise in violence ‘linked to climate change’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23538771
“Why would anyone believe a single word coming out of their mouth?”
Good question, as Pointman tries to answer
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2013/08/02/why-would-anyone-believe-a-single-word-coming-out-of-their-mouth/
Lib Dems: ban petrol and diesel cars from UK roads by 2040
The Liberal Democrats want to ban millions of ordinary cars from Britain’s roads.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/liberaldemocrats/10224801/Lib-Dems-ban-petrol-and-diesel-cars-from-UK-roads-by-2040.html
“Dead indoor plants strengthen belief in global warming”
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494411000867
$39.95, Elsevier
The Knights who say Ni, give me a shrubbery!
More of Andy is available.
Cheers all.
http://openparachute.wordpress.com/2013/07/30/the-limits-of-science-and-a-world-record/
Hi Cedric, great of you to drop by, I do enjoy trolling at Kens blog as you know, especially as you guys have nothing to say other than cut and paste videos from NASA
Do stop around, it has become kind of quiet around here recently.
Now how about some moon landing denier videos, or some references to creationists?
We do love these little excursions you know
The Daily Caller
Michael Mann, climate charlatan
http://dailycaller.com/2013/08/05/michael-mann-climate-charlatan/
Lawyers on speed dial
“Paul H. Jossey is a lawyer living in Alexandria, Virginia. His policy interests include environmental and First Amendment issues”
Hence the reason for Mann’s speed dial settings. I’m sure Jossey is not the only lawyer that smells blood.
These little gems turned up news outlets lately in “Reuters” (apparently) articles on the ’2012 State of the Climate report’ but the “Reuters” articles have all been re-edited somewhere along the publishing process (maybe tailored for each customer?) e.g. Stuff includes Renwick and Salinger not found in the others but omits the all-important Tom Karl attribution:
[Jim Salinger in Stuff] – “Warming of surface temperatures has slowed somewhat over the last decade…..”
Followed by the obligatory – “…..as the excess heat goes into warming up the deep global oceans”
Fortunately Stuff clears the fog with what is attributed to Tom Karl elsewhere:
“It [the report] showed a complex picture, with global temperatures actually declining by 0.05 degrees Celsius in the decade leading up to 2012.”
http://i.stuff.co.nz/science/9012298/Hotter-Earth-the-new-normal
From Reuters in the Sydney Morning Herald with Karl attributed and a little more precise than Salinger in Stuff:
“However, in the decade leading up to 2012, global temperatures actually declined by 0.05 degree celcius, according to Thomas Karl, director of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Centre”
And
“The recent decrease in atmospheric temperatures has been noted by climate change sceptics who question the impact of human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels that emit carbon dioxide, on climate.”
Followed by the obligatory:
Other reports including NOAA’s, though, indicate the oceans have been warming up as they absorb more heat.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/records-melt-in-another-hot-year-for-the-climate-20130807-2re7u.html#ixzz2bWZFTdA0
The Rueters “However” is also to be found at CBC (Radio Canada) but curiously a different version to the Sydney Morning Herald. Instead of the obligatory heat-going-into-the-oceans there is another “However” which is not as explicit:
“However, other changes detailed in the report paint a more complex picture:……….”
“Ocean heat was near record high levels in the upper half-mile (.8 km) of the water, and temperatures also increased in the deep ocean.”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/08/07/technology-state-of-the-climate-report-2012.html
Also in Today Online with “But” instead of “However”:
“But in the decade leading up to 2012, global temperatures actually declined by 0.05°C, said Dr Thomas Karl, Director of the NOAA’s National Climatic Data Centre.”
Followed by a “However”:
“However, other changes detailed in the report — such as [NOTHING ABOUT OCEAN HEAT] — paint a more complex picture.”
# # #
Getting a bit tricky for the MSM, they’re having to call on “actually”, “however” and “but” quite a lot now.
Polly’s been busy at Stuff, latest in response to Bob.H (“Yes great news! Hate the cold!):
polymath 1 day ago
“bad news for you then – climate change will warm gloablly, but loically will have varied effects, which may well include colder winters.”
http://i.stuff.co.nz/science/9012298/Hotter-Earth-the-new-normal
Polymath seems to be a prolific keyboard-eco-warrior with an amazing zealotry for the CAGW religion.
Not the same zealotry for spelling unfortunately. I suspect his numeracy doesn’t live up to his self-ascribed gift either. CAGW religiosity and proliferation unquestionable though.
From my Inbox today
>”……it’ll be fun to watch these climate change deniers try to explain themselves”
Not so much fun if the Endangerment Finding is overturned in Court.
Here’s hoping.
‘OFA Gets Zero Attendance for Climate Change Rally’
BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff
Not a single person showed up at the Georgetown waterfront Tuesday for a climate change agenda event put on by Organizing for Action, the shadowy nonprofit advocacy group born out of President Obama’s 2012 campaign……
http://freebeacon.com/ofa-gets-zero-attendance-for-climate-change-rally/
Fun?
Robert Murphy in ‘Scathing MIT Paper Blasts Obama’s Climate Models’:
“Any Result One Desires”
In my testimony [to the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee], I said the “economist can produce just about any estimate of the social cost of carbon desired.” Pindyck reaches the same conclusion in his paper when he writes:
As Pindyck is here underscoring, our claim isn’t that the economists generating large values for the social cost of carbon are “lying.” The point is, these models are so open-ended—they’re trying to model the entire climate system and global economy through the year 2300, for crying out loud—that the analyst has to pick and choose what items to include, and which to omit. If the economist wants the computer to spit out a big scary number, that’s not hard to accomplish.
Conclusion
“Robert Pindyck is exactly the sort of expert we are being told should have the floor in the climate change debate: He is not from industry, but instead is an academic at a prestigious post at MIT. He has been publishing on energy issues (including entire books) since the 1970s. And yet, in his recent paper assessing the computer models currently driving federal policy, he concludes: “I have argued that IAMs are of little or no value for evaluating alternative climate change policies and estimating the SCC. On the contrary, an IAM-based analysis suggests a level of knowledge and precision that is nonexistent.”
Now it’s true, Pindyck still thinks there is a strong case for federal intervention to curb emissions of greenhouse gases, and on that score he and I part ways. Yet when it comes to the Obama Administration’s official rationale for its anti-carbon policies, even Pindyck the MIT expert agrees with me: these computer models are close to useless. I wonder if Senator Boxer and others will have a change of heart, since they claim to follow the peer-reviewed literature?”
http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2013/08/12/scathing-mit-paper-blasts-obamas-climate-models/
Also see the ‘Economics’ thread re SCC, IAM’s and the Murphy testimony:
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/open-threads/climate/economics/#comment-214789
Sir Peter Gluckman interviewed by Chris Laidlaw on RadioNZ
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday/20130811
in which he opines that climate change will be catastrophic, in his “personal opinion”
Offshore wimd farm in Germany is not connected to the grid and is burning through 22000 litres of diesel every month to stop the turbines corroding, whilst producing zero energy output
http://notrickszone.com/2013/08/13/windpark-to-nowhere-22000-litres-of-diesel-fuel-burned-every-month-to-keep-windpark-from-rusting-away/
When encountering an allegation of a media bias against advocates and for sceptics, cite this paper published in Dec 2012 which makes an empirical analysis of media coverage:
http://www.academia.edu/2303010/Disputed_climate_science_in_the_media_Do_countries_matter
Introduction:
Interesting fact:
Ed. note: A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hearing William Tucker speak at a conference in Washington, DC. His explanation of E = mc2 was the best I had ever heard. Even better, Tucker explained how Einstein”s equation applied to renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and hydro. His lecture was a revelation. It showed that the limits of renewable energy have nothing to do with politics or research dollars, but rather with simple mathematics. During a later exchange of emails with Tucker, I praised his lecture and suggested he write an article that explained E = mc2 and its corollary, E = mv2.
To my delight, he informed me that he”d already written such an essay and he agreed that we could publish it in Energy Tribune. –
See more at: http://www.energytribune.com/2771/understanding-e-mc2#sthash.BNtO9q5r.dpuf
P Gosselin 15. August 2013 at 21:54
AGW alarmism in Germany has gone as far as it will ever get – it’s past its heyday. Spiegel publishing this report is a clear signal that they are no longer in with the kook alarmists on the issue and are gravitating to lukewarmism. It’s the end of the PIK as a meaningful player in Germany. When Spiegel no longer cooperates, then lots of other media outlets are going to start re-evaluating their positions on AGW. It’ll be a slow protracted death that will take many years – but it has begun and it#s not going to turn back.
http://notrickszone.com/2013/08/15/vahrenholt-thrashes-leading-ipcc-former-ncar-scientist-in-hamburg-debate-the-wound-of-climate-science/#comment-647892
Quote of The Week contender:
Paraphrasing Richard Feynman
“If your model doesn’t match the experiment, then it’s wrong. It’s that simple, it doesn’t matter how smart you are,…”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL6-x0modwY
Arctic mean temperatures per day, with archives back to 1958
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Fun toy. 2013 vs 1958 (or any other year) – yikes!
Rodney Hide in the NBR
“Prophecy fails the scientific test”
http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/prophecy-fails-scientific-test-ck-144540
Hard to beat the audacity:
‘Kevin Trenberth downgrades global warming to just a ‘hotspot’ that moves ‘unpredictably’ ‘
by Steve Milloy
Kevin Trenberth told ClimateProgress’ Joe Romm:
“We can confidently say that the risk of drought and heat waves has gone up and the odds of a hot spot somewhere on the planet have increased but the hotspot moves around and the location is not very predictable. This year perhaps it is East Asia: China, or earlier Siberia? It has been much wetter and cooler in the US (except for SW), whereas last year the hot spot was the US. Earlier this year it was Australia (Tasmania etc) in January (southern summer). We can name spots for all summers going back quite a few years: Australia in 2009, the Russian heat wave in 2010, Texas in 2011, etc.
Similarly with risk of high rains and floods: They are occurring but the location moves.”
http://junkscience.com/2013/08/18/kevin-trenberth-downgrades-global-warming-to-just-a-hotspot-that-moves-unpredictably/
We can confidently say that the risk of climate changing has gone up, although we cannot say with any certainty where, when, how or by what magnitude. Weather is occurring, but the location moves. Please send more research funds.
Has anybody seen RT lately? Been off-radar for over a month now…..
Nope
Correction
yep
Welcome back Richard!
Contact lifts dividends as it abandons uneconomic windfarms
Tuesday, 20 August 2013, 2:18 pm
Article: BusinessDesk
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU1308/S00702/contact-lifts-dividends-as-it-abandons-uneconomic-windfarms.htm
No surprises here.
‘Undersea Volcanoes ‘Unexpectedly’ Add Iron to the Atlantic Ocean’
By Greg Pollowitz
This is actually a big deal as the more iron there is in the oceans, the more the oceans are able to absorb CO2:
The rest here [hotlink].
Now, let’s see when climate scientists update their models to account for this new revelation.
http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore/356562/undersea-volcanoes-unexpectedly-add-iron-atlantic-ocean-greg-pollowitz
# # #
The Hot Topicers are adamant undersea volcanoes are “mystical” and “non-existent”, in this case actually hydrovents but the Hot Topicers don’t know the difference either. Even after Roger Dewhurst (a Geologist) enlightened them on the exposed magma of the Mid-Atlantic Rift they were no wiser (or didn’t want to be).
Along with iron there’s the superheated water of course, which is dismissed as inconsequential by climate science (and Willis Eschenbach I would add).
I expect more of these “unexpected” revelations accompanied by “We had never seen anything like it” and “We were sort of shocked” and “We didn’t quite know what to do with it, because it went contrary to a lot of our expectations”.
Also at The Hockey Schtick:
‘New paper has ‘profound implications’ for ocean carbon cycle’
A new paper published in Nature Geoscience finds a major source of iron from hydrothermal vents in the Atlantic Ocean, “and that has profound implications, because iron is a critical element for ocean life. Iron is known to spur the growth of phytoplankton in many marine habitats, especially those important in the ocean’s carbon cycle, which, in turn, impacts atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and Earth’s climate. Because more than half the world’s seafloor ridges are slow-spreading, the team’s discovery suggests there may be far more iron from these locations than previously estimated. “We need to understand where iron is in the ocean and where it’s coming from to understand the role of iron in the marine carbon cycle with any confidence,” Saito says.”
‘Newly discovered ocean plume could be major source of iron’
by Staff WritersCape Cod MA (SPX) Aug 21, 2013
>>>>>>>>
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.nz/2013/08/new-paper-has-profound-implications-for.html
Jim Salinger was on TV tonight, announcing the “warmest winter on record”
Since I follow the winter weather quite closely, (as a keen skier), I know that there was a mega dump of cold snow in June, followed by a very strong NWer for a few days, and then a predominately Northerly airflow for August giving us very little precipitation and fairly warm temperatures
Probably nothing to do with Greenhouse warming, but it fits the narrative so our Jim feels obliged to remind us of this
Thanks Jim.
‘Climate Science Exploited for Political Agenda, According to Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons’
TUCSON, Ariz., Aug. 28, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Climatism or global warming alarmism is the most prominent recent example of science being coopted to serve a political agenda, writes Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the in the fall 2013 issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. He compares it to past examples: Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union, and the eugenics movement.
>>>>>>>
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/climate-science-exploited-for-political-agenda-according-to-journal-of-american-physicians-and-surgeons-221474241.html
Yours truly enjoying the “warmest winter on record”
http://fairfaxmedia.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx
Front page of Timaru Herald, that is
Scarse ?
I assume the 100 kph limit in the background is not a restriction for footpath skiers.
Nz warmest ever winter looks set to continue tomorrow with snow to low levels and bitterly cold southerlies
Perhaps some more Roadside Skiing and powder runs at the local ski field that is forecasting big snow dump?
http://www.metservice.com/national/warnings/severe-weather-outlook
4th September tomorrow – spring Andy, spring.
Here at the Mt M sand dunes, nice people planted wild flowers and bulbs years ago to brighten things up. My favourite being jonquil bulbs (I think they are) because they flower and release fantastic scent at the beginning of spring around now. Makes walks and runs downwind a joy now that it’s warmer (no snow and cold here).and my favourite time of year.
Except the Tga City Council has sent in a spraying contractor to eradicate non-natural dune plants – including jonquils. Only some fenced off areas have been sprayed so far so there’s still some sensual enjoyment to be had and even the sprayed flowers are still doing their best as they wilt and die.
A bit like the springtime equivalent of the Grinch stealing Christmas.
Sping is an anthropomorphic concept. It ain’t over until the fat lady sings, as us powder hounds say
SkS are highlighting a paper that dismisses solar change effect on climate (natch):
‘Study offers clues on 20th century global warming wobbles’
by dana1981
The amount of solar radiation passing through Earth’s atmosphere and reaching the ground globally peaked in the 1930s, substantially decreased from the 1940s to the 1970s, and changed little after that, a new study has found.
The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that “neither the rapid increase in temperature from the 1970s through the 1990s nor the slowdown of warming in the early 21st century appear to be significantly related to changes of Rs (solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface)”.
The new finding may help explain variations in warming during the 20th century. The authors showed that, while aerosols and clouds did play some role in temperature variations, they did not have a major effect on global mean land temperatures after 1985.
The authors, Kaicun Wang from Beijing Normal University and Robert E. Dickinson from the University of Texas at Austin, compiled a global data set of daily temperatures from the 1900s and through to 2010.
They analysed the relationship between the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth and diurnal temperature range (the daily temperature variations that occur as day turns into night).
The authors of the study said that “the overall increase of global temperature over the last century has been largely attributable to the increase of greenhouse gases. Less well understood are the reasons for the variability of this increase on a decadal time scale… However, global temperatures do not appear to be significantly affected by changing Rs (solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface).”
>>>>>>
http://www.skepticalscience.com/study-offers-clues-on-20th-century-global-warming-wobbles.html
Actually quite an interesting paper:
‘Contribution of solar radiation to decadal temperature variability over land’
Kaicun Wang and Robert E. Dickinson
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/08/21/1311433110.full.pdf+html
Supplementary material:
http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2013/08/22/1311433110.DCSupplemental/pnas.201311433SI.pdf#nameddest=SF1
The first problem is the 1930 radiation at surface peak given 1930 was the beginning of the onset of the modern solar Grand Maximum. A peak at surface prior to the maximum (about 1950 – 2009) doesn’t make any sense.
And the global conclusions are a big stretch from the diurnal temperature range (DTR) proxy for radiation at surface (Rs) of land-only, mainly regional industrial Europe, China and to a lessor extent USA, Nothing at the ocean surface (70% of global surface area).
The DTR – Rs correlation breaks down at coastlands and recently in China among a number of other things. Inclined to agree with commenter #2:
#2 K.a.r.S.t.e.N at 09:32 AM on 3 September, 2013
“Interesting paper with a different approach to a long-standing problem. Well worth a read, though some aspects are certainly debatable…..”
300 skiers trapped at Mt Hutt overnight tonight #warmestwinterinnz
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/9123768/300-stuck-on-Mt-Hutt-as-wintry-blast-hits
‘Socialist Science in the Climate Science Neighborhood’
By Anthony J. Sadar
Radical socialists (often disguised with the euphemism “progressives”) have many potential avenues they can travel to arrive at their ends — an end that justifies its means. And, rather than a goal to save lives or help the poor, the nefarious ends of socialists unfortunately seems to be their own power and control over the rest of us great unwashed.
[…]
During my 35 years of practice in the atmospheric science profession, in government, consulting, and academia, the socialist techniques that have become apparent include blatant dishonesty stemming from arrogance — a hallmark of socialism — and its offshoot, a sense of supreme superiority.
Haughty socialism has no problem with twisting the truth or simply lying. Although for most people, “honesty is the best policy,” in socialist ideology the ends justifies the means and so, even though verity can be useful, it’s not absolutely necessary.
There are many experienced real-world atmospheric-science practitioners who legitimately question the conclusions of the cadre of academic and government scientists who have declared “settled” the complex scientific endeavor of understanding climate change. When experienced practitioners are labeled “climate change deniers” by some of these very same arrogant scientists, you know a symptom of socialism has reared its ugly head.
[…]
The path to true progress for people and the planet should be traveled with gracious, empathetic, and humble responsibility by those who can make a difference with advanced science and technology. In short, science should be in the service of humanity, rather than in the service of any ideology. But, unfortunately, with radical socialism now taking up residence on Climate Science Street, well… there goes the neighborhood.
Anthony J. Sadar, a Certified Consulting Meteorologist, is author of In Global Warming We Trust: A Heretic’s Guide to Climate Science (Telescope Books, 2012).
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/09/socialist_science_in_the_climate_science_neighborhood.html#ixzz2eFg6vq00
‘Hack the planet to counter climate change,’ says Lord Rees
[…]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10303776/Hack-the-planet-to-counter-climate-change-says-Lord-Rees.html
Reminds me of The Story of Chicken Little:
Narrator: Chicken Little was in the woods one day when an acorn fell on her head. It scared her so much she trembled all over. She shook so hard, half her feathers fell out.
Chicken Little: “Help! Help! The sky is falling! I have to go tell the king!”
Narrator: So she ran in great fright to tell the king. Along the way she met Henny Penny.
Henny Penny: “Where are you going, Chicken Little?”
Chicken Little: “Oh, help! The sky is falling!”
Henny Penny: “How do you know?”
Chicken Little: “I saw it with my own eyes, and heard it with my own ears, and part of it fell on my head!”
Henny Penny: “This is terrible, just terrible! We’d better hurry up.”
Narrator: So they both ran away as fast as they could. Soon they met Ducky Lucky.
[And so on]
http://eleaston.com/chicken.html
Chicken Little Climate Science
by Doug L. Hoffman
[…] Here are some excerpts from congressional testimony given by a Professor of Biology from Stanford University. Notice how the warnings and, in particular, the time frame could have come from any number of climate change alarmists.
It’s all there: the implicit blaming of bad weather on the perceived problem; the built in disclaimer if weather does not deteriorate, with a promise that things will be even worse when fate catches up with us; the twenty year projection for disaster, and the assertion that it is all ready to late to do anything about it. Naturally the US is at the root of the problem and above all, there is an urgent need to act. I have always wondered if it is already too late to act why we should act at all, why not party on until the end?
Which member of the global warming cabal made these statements? Actually, it was Paul Ehrlich in hearings held by the Committee on Commerce and Committee on Government Operations back in 1974. […]
Ehrlich’s most shocking prediction was that the world would suffer millions of deaths through starvation in the 1970s and 1980s. The author claimed that “radical action” was needed to prevent this from taking place. Among the radical actions, Ehrlich recommended starving entire nations if they refused to implement policies to reduce or suspend population growth. Life is cheep to tenured professors, just ask their students.
Another example of a catastrophist true believer is a man who also testified at that hearing back in 1974. Here is what he said to the committee:
In the first paragraph he admits that their models are flawed but insists we believe the predictions of disaster anyway. Al Gore and Michael Mann could not make a better statement of the alarmist position. In fact, this admitted alarmist confesses to urging major societal changes even though he and his ilk cannot say when disaster will strike or even what form it will take. The precautionary principle rules—for God’s sake don’t do anything that might have any consequences at all. This timorous chicken little is none other than John Holdren, Assistant to the President and senior adviser to Barack Obama on science and technology issues. But his aversion to action does not extend to things he thinks are correct. In 1977 he joined forces with Ehrlich and Ehrlich’s wife Anne to write another totalitarian tome that should have disqualified him from ever serving in government. Here is a quote from Ecoscience:
Mandatory adoptions, forcing single mothers to marry or undergo abortions? Sounds progressive to me. It is not surprising that he was a neo-Malthusian population catastrophist during the 1970s nor is it surprising that he now shills for climate change. In the minds of self-aggrandizing, needful personalities like Ehrlich and Holder the sky is always falling.
http://resilientearth.com/?q=content/chicken-little-climate-science
‘Chicken Little Climate Change Alarmists Are Shamelessly At It Again’
March 30, 2012 by Frank York
The Chicken Little’s are once again screaming about the end of the world as we know it due to alleged “global warming.”
The latest alarmist jabberwocky comes from a Reuters article in the Scientific American, titled:
“Global Warming Close To Becoming Irreversible.”
According to this end-of-the-world scenario, we’re supposedly going to reach some sort of “tipping point” beyond which our world will be in dire trouble. The old “tipping point” was to be in 2200. Now it’s been revised to whenever the Chicken Little’s decide it is politically expedient. Gotta keep those government grants flowing into the coffers of these climate alarmist think tanks, don’t we?
Chicken Little Will Steffen with the Australian National University Climate Change Institute claims that “We are on the cusp of some big changes. We can … cap temperature rise at two degrees, or cross the threshold beyond which the system shifts to a much hotter state.”
>>>>>>
http://www.westernjournalism.com/chicken-little-climate-change-alarmists-are-shamelessly-at-it-again-2/
# # #
Will Steffen lately of the Australian Climate Commission – now “on the cusp of some big changes” too.
EDITORIAL: Kerry’s global warming crusade
[Kerry] “We as a nation must have the foresight and courage to make the investments necessary to safeguard the most sacred trust we keep for our children and grandchildren.”
“Courage” is a Washington euphemism for rolling over and accepting higher taxes, bigger government and an all-powerful regulatory state — policies at the core of President Obama’s push for “climate change” legislation. Mr. Kerry insists climate change would have a “catastrophic” impact on future generations, leaving an environment “ravaged by rising seas, deadly superstorms, devastating droughts and the other hallmarks of a dramatically changing climate.” Chicken Little, step aside. John F. Kerry is here.
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/1/kerrys-global-warming-crusade/#ixzz2erEi4HRW
‘The End Of Warming Alarmism In Britain?’
by Tory Aardvark
Some really good news for those not taken in by the Climate Change Disruption scam, and still more doom and gloom for the dwindling bunch of warming alarmists.
Chris “Chicken Little” Huhne was only yesterday outlining new plans for Green taxes and further donations to the Church of Climatology, when today comes the news that HM Treasury want to “shit can” the Department of Energy and Climate Change and absorb it’s staff in to HM Treasury.
>>>>>>
http://toryaardvark.com/2010/09/22/the-end-of-warming-alarmism-in-britain/
# # #
Google search Chris “Chicken Little” Huhne
‘Apocalypse Later’
Leaked part of the IPCC’s next assessment report knocks the bottom out of the global warming warnings
The Financial Express [India]
“While scientists will continue to debate the ‘pause’ in global warming, and politicians such as in the US who never believed Al Gore’s inconvenient truth will probably rejoice at each drubbing the IPCC gets, it would be wise for policymakers to take a more nuanced view. For one, whether or not it is global warming that is causing the problem, extreme weather events are a reality, so it is important to be prepared for them, whether by way of stronger emergency procedures for evacuation or by way of short-duration high-yielding crops that withstand extreme heat or extreme drought conditions for instance. What is equally important, however, is that the fear of global warming shouldn’t force countries into accepting high-cost solutions since it is clear the skies aren’t falling in a hurry. A more balanced, more nuanced view is called for. That’s the inconvenient truth.”
http://www.financialexpress.com/news/apocalypse-later/1170020
And this in the Daily Mail:
It’s a hard-hitting article, good to see in MSM.
The stupid, it burns (to quote Watts)…
Ah – I see RC you’ve already posted a link under Europe to that article.
No matter, not quite in this “Chicken Little” thread theme but turns out in a recurring theme too. Climate Depot continues:
Flashback: 1993: Former U.S. Senator Timothy Wirth: ‘We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing, in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.’
Hedegaard in 2013: ‘I think we have to realize that in the world of the 21st century for us to have the cheapest possible energy is not the answer.’
Flashback 1975: Obama Science Czar John Holdren Says Real Threat to USA Is Cheap Energy: ‘The U.S.is threatened far more by the hazards of too much energy, too soon, than by the hazards of too little energy, too late.’
Flashback: UN IPCC Official Edenhofer: ‘We Redistribute World’s Wealth By Climate Policy’
# # #
Can’t think of a catchy theme yet (night-shift, got up to watch AC – postponed) but something along the lines of Climate Charlatans seems appropriate.
There are further rifts happening in the green hold on the New Zealand economy that are worth noting.
Over the last decade a group of architects, engineers, and disciples came through that developed the green building concept. The green star 4 and 5 ratings needed to be assessed and signed off of by their registered gurus. The rules are highly proscriptive, full of social engineer goals and littered with statements concerning sustainability. They don’t necessarily produce buildings that are good to live in (eg if you want to park more than a smart car) and are not necessarily efficient (in the normal measure of low operating costs). There are all sorts unnecessary complexities included in the building systems that will be a nightmare to maintain and manage long term.
They are expensive. A five star multi-story office will cost about 25% more to build and lease than an unrated building. Up to Christchurch events, all new publicly owned buildings had to be at least 4 star rated. As a result the consultants, builders developers and asset managers bought heavily into the deal. The reality has hit and the requirement for star rating has been abandoned. I am guessing Gerry and company recognised the con.
Now the requirement is buildings with “Green Features”, which means common sense things like managing of heat losses and gains; maximise natural light; efficient air conditioning; efficient electricity consumption – ie lower operating cost. Without the “Stars” the control has gone from the NZGBC.
I am sure that the social engineers will re-gather but for the moment at least they are on the back foot and I suspect that their infrastructure will likely face some pruning.
More info http://www.nzgbc.org.nz
Good insight ck, thanks. A marketing problem for Green Building Consultants (“registered gurus”) now e.g.
GREEN STAR ACCREDITED PROFESSIONALS
http://www.greenlist.co.nz/Sustainable/Eco-Friendly/302/Green-Building-Consultants.aspx
No body for common sense professionals to obtain accreditation from that I’m aware of, they’ll have a harder sell without the point-of difference green stars provided among the conventional Architectural and Engineering professionals.
Interesting development (or just return to sensibility), pity it took some adversity to achieve it.
There’s quite a good series on TV one about National Parks. Last nights one was about Mt Cook, unfortunately marred by some hand wringing about Global Warming and the retreat of the Tasman Glacier.
The Doc staff made no mention of Global Warming when asked by a kid why the glaciers were retreating, during a school camp I attended at Mt Cook
Maybe they didn’t get the memo?
Haven’t seen it (the one on glaciers) but did see the NZ from the air doco on Prime. Same thing about the glaciers. After a bit of hand wringing, crusty greenie glider pilot uttered “It’s climate change all right”.
I had an interesting discussion on Treehugger.com recently. It was an article on how to convince the “deniers” (hint – don’t call them names, for a start).
One of the commenters was convinced that the glaciers only started retreating 150 years ago.
Incredible, really
The online version of the latest show is here
http://tvnz.co.nz/wild-about-new-zealand/video
It is well worth watching – stunning photography, but some sad moments as Marty Schmidt is featured prominently. Marty died on K2 this year
A “No Deniers Rule” for Solutions Companies
http://grist.org/article/a-no-deniers-rule-for-solutions-companies/
Or just wear a yellow star on your jacket
The comments are a hoot, e.g. http://grist.org/article/a-no-deniers-rule-for-solutions-companies/#comment-1047353454
The eco-fascists always play the Godwin card, which is very convenient for them.
Their agenda is pretty clear though, and isn’t really that much different to the founders of the Green movement in Germany in the 1930s.
The great Moonbat has returned
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/16/can-mps-resist-flat-earth-love-in
We noticed
Heh, also Jon Jermey at BH:
“A couple of years ago I decided to stop arguing with climate change deniers. It was driving me mad.” says George; to which modesty replies, “Oh, no, sir, we can’t take ALL the credit.”
lol
Is global warming in a hiatus?
By Andy Pitman
http://sciblogs.co.nz/guestwork/2013/09/20/is-global-warming-in-a-hiatus/
So the hiatus in warming, that shows the real world temps tracking below the IPCC projections, is an indicator that scientists have underestimated climate sensitivity
Huh?
Saw a snippet at Tom Nelson from The Conversation, eyes rolled and decided to pass reading the rest on the strength of it:
[Andy Pitman] – “What is surprising – and what is deeply concerning to me and almost entirely missed in the media commentary – is that we have not cooled dramatically over the last 15 years.”
http://theconversation.com/is-global-warming-in-a-hiatus-18367
Now I’ve read the rest thanks to your Sciblogs link Andy (sigh). Another clueless dolt unable to superimpose oceanic cyclicity, ENSO cyclicity, solar cyclicity (longer than the 11 yr kind), cloudiness trends, and planetary thermal lag onto global temperature fluctuations.
Also apparently lacking a “feel” for relative climate forcing power and sensitivity.
[Pitman] – “We have seen a combination of the solar minimum……”
Who is “we”. Some of the rest of us have seen a combination that includes the rather more significant solar Grand Maximum, not the much lessor 11 yr minimum.
[Pitman] – “There really is a case to argue that we should have cooled to close to the values measured in around 1990 and definitely not broken the record for the warmest decade on record
Give it time (thermal lag, end of modern solar Grand Max etc) but the 21st Century 2nd decade is already cooler on average than the first so far.
Andy Pitman is Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science at University of New South Wales. If that article is an indication of the “excellence” at the centre then I really don’t want to know anything from the periphery.
[Pitman] – “we should have cooled to close to the values measured in around 1990”
Dr Roy Spencer’s UAH August 2012 update +0.16 and running/centred 13 month ave about +0,23:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_August_2013_v5.6.png
Around 1990 was anything between about -0.43 to +0.28.
Around 1993 was Pinatubo cooling.
Around 2010 was El Nino warming.
That’s not much removed from “close” I would have thought.
Also more missing heat desperation from Weaver and Oppenheimer who appear to be at odds with Pitman (in his article above) and the IPCC (at top of following article) who just see heat offset rather than missing:
‘Climate report struggles with temperature quirks’
By KARL RITTER, Associated Press
[…]
Many researchers say the slowdown in warming is related to the natural ocean warming and cooling cycles known as El Nino and La Nina. Also, a 2013 study by Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research found dramatic recent warming in the deeper oceans, between 2,300 and 6,500 feet.
“The heat is not missing,” said University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver, who is also a Green Party member of the British Columbia parliament. “The heat is there. The heat is in the ocean.”
The idea is that the energy trapped by carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases has to go somewhere on Earth, said Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer. But that heat energy will eventually make its way to the ocean surface and the air, putting surface warming back on the increasing track, he said.
“Energy will hide out in the ocean for a while before it pops out into the atmosphere,” Oppenheimer said.
>>>>>>>>
http://www.wral.com/warming-lull-haunts-authors-of-key-climate-report/12902683/
# # #
“Pops out”? I hope I’m around to witness that particular climatological phenomenon.
Same Ritter/AP article featuring Weaver and Oppenheimer appears in Stuff but with different title:
‘Global warming seems to slow’
“Energy will hide out in the ocean for a while before it pops out into the atmosphere,” Oppenheimer said.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/science/9189372/Global-warming-seems-to-slow
Comments are enabled, mine’s in moderation but I’ve kept a copy in case it misses the cut somehow.
Your comment is there now Richard.
From my inbox today:
I’m pretty proud that President Obama took the lead on changing that. We know climate change is real, manmade, and dangerous — and we know 97 percent of scientists agree. is an outright lie and misrepresentation of fact
Interesting, too, that in order to tackle “carbon pollution” (sic), the EPA will require all new coal fired power stations to be fitted with CCS, a technology that doesn’t actually exist (to any degree) yet.
I guess that is bye bye to the USA coal industry
‘Climate change manmade probability up’
ANNA RINGSTROM – Reuters
http://www.stuff.co.nz/science/9202423/Climate-change-manmade-probability-up
Comments are enabled.
I wonder what they actually mean by “probability up” and what their methodology is?
I guess we’ll never know..
Does highlight their internal inconsistency though. I took the opportunity (among other things) of relaying JC on this :
[Dr Judith Curry, from article: The IPCC’s ‘inconvenient truth’] – “If the IPCC attributes the pause to natural internal variability, then this begs the question as to what extent the warming between 1975 and 2000 can also be explained by natural internal variability. Not to mention raising questions about the confidence that we should place in the IPCC’s projections of future climate change”
It’s all so internally inconsistent. How does the Hockey Stick fit in the picture, for example?
If “climate change” were a murder trial, it would have been thrown out long ago
Cripes, I just saw Andrew Montford (Bishop Hill) on TVOne news at 6.20 pm.
the discussion was about “the pause” of course, with the usual impartial BBC slant
The MSM are onto the pause (“However, the global average temperature has not risen in 15 years” – TVNZ) but the divergence doesn’t appear to have caught on in the MSM yet that I recall offhand.
The Financial Times might have got the ball rolling on that though:
“Here, we show how the projections for temperature and sea level rise set out in the fourth Assessment Report in 2007 compare with actual measurements. We can see that global average temperatures have not accelerated at the rate predicted in some scenarios”
http://junkscience.com/2013/09/23/epic-fail-financial-times-graph-shows-ipcc-projections-fail-against-observations/
Or any scenario. Temperatures are tracking below ‘Commit’.
There was an interesting little lead in from the TV NZ anchor (Wendy?) who talked of the puzzlement of “global warming scientists”.
After this, I went to the local ski club meeting, and the skifield owner (who has watched the weather for the last 30 years) made a comment that “the low numbers were not because of global warming, because that’s over”, making a reference to the TV piece.
A few others mumbled in agreement. I said nothing, being the secret climate anorak sad case.
But that was the message I got – we all knew it was BS and now they said it on the telly, so we can move on.
2 minutes and a few hundred million dollars later..
Watching the video of Rod Oram over at Hot Topic makes me want to weep.
So the Anglican Church have decided to divest from fossil fuel investments and are looking at biofuels, amongst others.
Since when was it a Christian virtue to take food from starving Africans and convert it into biofuel so that you can drive “ethical” cars?
Do these guys not read much?
Part of a bigger malaise I think Andy:
‘Anglican Church faces falling membership, deep divisions’
“the typical Anglican today is a black woman living in sub-Saharan Africa”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/anglican-church-faces-falling-membership-deeper-divisions/article14450164/
Corporate investment, instead of biblical distribution, was what got the old western Church holding stocks in the first place. Probably nice earners too. Now that faction has got politically correct in western terms but I don’t think “ethical” investment is what attracts “the typical Anglican today” in the first instance, from any area.
I haven’t made a biofuels-impacting-poverty connection in Africa though. When I think of biofuels I think of the US cornbelt and US subsidies where I think they would be making the new investment. I haven’t heard of fuel crops displacing food crops in Africa, is there something I should be reading?
The Guardian has an article on Biofuels that mentions this issue
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/jun/01/biofuels-driving-food-prices-higher
UK charity Action Aid did a spoof video called Drive Aid which pulled some punches
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n3uD5iSQP0
I was aware of the global grain situation but didn’t know about those biofuel plantations in that part of the world, thanks for bringing this up.
It’s the forced land grabs and eviction there that are creating havoc rather than food prices (jatropha isn’t food), but if you can no longer grow your own food on your own land then that does become a food price problem. But if you don’t then have the means to pay then its simply a food problem. Nasty.
Some of the UK Anglican Church seem to have broken with the core faith on windfarms.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10332173/Wind-farms-are-a-blot-on-Gods-creation-says-bishop.html
David Farrar sticks to the party line about The Pause and AR5 on kiwiblog, well-informed comments let fly
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2013/09/the_warming_pause.html
David Farrar is also a fan of wind energy (no pun intended). He thinks they “look nice”.
At least Cameron Slater gets it.
I had to block Farrar’s pinko drivel on my Facebook page, it was driving me over the edge. As if grey drizzle and the America’s Cup aren’t enough suffering..
David P Farrar is a pinko? Your political spectrum seems to have been red-shifted. 🙂
anyone who thinks that wind farms are good because “they look nice” is seriously deluded, so “Pinko” is a pretty good description.
s
[FYI, Pinko is the description Cameron Slater likes to give to Farrar, so I am just stirring up the pot a bit more]
Cindy at Hot Topic is droning on about a Denier Cacophony, which is some kind of projection I guess, now that The Pause is mainstream TV and featuring the likes iof Andrew Montford on prime time TV news makes a cacophony, or rather a softly spoken piece to the rest of us.
Mind you, when some of your staff are facing 15 years in a Russian gulag on piracy charges, it is understandable things can get a little tense.
By the way, I wouldn’t wish a 15 year term in a Russian prison camp on my worst enemies, but maybe Greenpeace should stick to softer targets in future.
A similar transgression in NZ gets a $600 fine. In Russia, 15 years in the Gulag.
“Climate Change Gold Standard Met”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/science/9206537/Climate-change-gold-standard-met
Comments are open
That is an issue because this week, scientists from around the world have gathered in Stockholm for a meeting of a UN panel on climate change, and they will probably release a report saying it is “extremely likely” – which they define in footnotes as 95 per cent certain – that humans are mostly to blame for temperatures that have climbed since 1951.
Note the 1951 date. So they acknowledge that the warming prior to 1951 was what?
If this warming, of a similar size to the post 1951 warming, is mostly natural, then we know that there are recent natural variations that are of similar size to the supposed anthropogenic warmings, which they also acknowledge have “paused” since 1998 or so.
Yet they are 95% certain.
Of what?
If this report had appeared as an engineering report, it would have been binned
Elsewhere it’s 1950 to 2010. 2010 was a strong El Nino year in the early part, temperature is way down since then.
They decry the use of 1998 is a start date for the pause because that was a huge El Nino year and fair enough. But to have no problems with 2010 as an end date is scurrilous given it’s a 2013 report.
Fortunately they can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
I think we can say with 99% certainty that 100% of “scientists” attending Stockholm in an official capacity support the concept of AGW.
I wonder how many are going – are the budgets getting reined in?
Apparently there’s more than 250 climate “scientists” in Stockholm ck:
http://www.livescience.com/39763-ipcc-report-faq.html
Judith Curry has an interesting post on the ocean heat issue
http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/26/the-relentless-increase-of-ocean-heat/
In which she cites Lubos Motl who calculates the relentless heat rise of the oceans since 1960 as 0.06 degrees.
It’s worse than we thought!
The Nature of David Suzuki
The great man gets asked some difficult questions, by the Australian Broadcasting Corp of all places
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/the-nature-of-david-suzuki/2688616449001
A couple of very recent solar-centric articles worth a scan (IMHO, FWIW):
1. ‘How climate models dismiss the role of the Sun in climate’
by The Hockey Schtick (short post)
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.nz/2013/09/how-climate-models-dismiss-role-of-sun.html
2. ‘Our Cooling Climate’
by David Archibald (slides)
http://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130911_OurCoolingClimateCapitolHill16thSeptember2013.pdf
# # #
Re 1, This is a must-read I think but what The HS does not point out is the solar forcing from 2000 to 2050 in the NASA GISS graph. They’ve assumed it will stay constant in CMIP5/AR5 simulations when already in 2013, SC24 solar output has dropped by about 0.3 – 0.5 W.m2 compared to the comparative starts of SCs 22 and 23.
Re 2. David’s scenario is at the lowest (extreme) end of the cooling scenarios range (along with Abdussamatov for around 2035) but it’s worth mentioning that the immediate solar/temperature progression would have to be temperatures returning to pre modern Grand Maximum levels of 1900 – 1920/30. Can’t cite any papers for this but see next paragraph.
The next progression, if the first pans out, would then be Dalton Minimum conditions of around 1800. This is the De Jager and Duhau (2009) prediction among others.
Only then, after the first and second levels being reached one after the other, could a progression to Maunder Minimum conditions of the 1600s be possible. De Jager and Duhau, and others of the medium cooling scenario, do not consider a direct progression from DM to MM conditions to be plausible in view of quasi 200 year cyclicity (there wasn’t historically). They predict DM conditions by around 2030s but a warmer regime following with MM conditions only (possibly) occurring after around 200 years from now.
All of the prediction alternatives, whether IPCC or solar-centric above, are getting way too far ahead IMV except for the UK Met Office decadal forecast (now a 5 year forecast). I’d like to see more attention being given in the solar-centric scenarios first to the period of SC 24 i.e. out to around 2020, then to the 2030s i.e. SC 25. Both David Archibald (see Section 2, page 10 slides above) and Habibullo Abdussamatov include a prediction for SC 24 and 25 levels but without sufficient reasoning that I can see. The De Jager and Duhau reasoning seems rather more plausible from my reading.
We’ve seen the IPCC’s 21st century 2100 prediction fail in only a decade or so, That should be sobering for solar-centric predictions too. That said, Archibald does state the fact on page 59 that historically “sometimes severe cooling comes out of the blue” with the example of 1739 which he implies graphically may also occur in 2014. Sheer speculation I think but we’ll see next year.
Interesting that even CO2-centric IPCC solar specialist and AR5 chapter author Mike Lockwood has also identified that historically a slow warming is usually followed by an abrupt cooling. The only difference between his view and that of Archibald in the last paragraph is that Lockwood thinks (based on some dubious modeling – Jones, Lockwood and Stott (2012), cited in AR5 Chapter 8 ) that this time CO2 forcing will offset any cooling plus some (my paraphrase).
Given CO2 forcing didn’t offset the last decade cooling “plus some”, I don’t believe AR5 authors Jones (Gareth not Phil) Lockwood and Stott on this issue – or AR5 Chapter 8 for that matter.
To clarify, although Jones, Lockwood and Stott (2012) is cited in AR5 Chapter 8: Radiative Forcing, those three are co-lead (Stott, UK Met Office) and contributing (Jones, Lockwood) authors of Chapter 10: Detection and Attribution i.e. their Chapter 10 conclusions are based on Chapter 8 conclusions, which in turn are based on Jones, Lockwood and Stott (2012) conclusions.
And round and round it goes.
Whoopsy, Schmidt vs Meehl:
‘Gavin Schmidt debunks NYTimes article claim of ‘stair-step’ warming’
“People think that global warming means every year is going to be warmer than the year before,” said Gerald A. Meehl, an American scientist who helped write the report. “It’s more like a stair-step kind of thing.”
Schmidt – “hopelessly unphysical”
http://junkscience.com/2013/09/27/gavin-schmidt-debunks-nytimes-article-claim-of-stair-step-warming/
Also, Schmidt vs Klein:
‘The Value of Talking About Values’
“Take Naomi Klein, for instance,” Schmidt says. “Sometimes she makes a good point, but I don’t share her values. So when she starts talking about climate change as a rod to break capitalism’s back, she loses me. She clearly has a political agenda that’s different from mine. But if we both say, ‘We should do something about climate change,’ there are people who will think we totally agree on what and why.”
http://ensia.com/voices/the-value-of-talking-about-values/
Some funny trolling at Hot topic with Tnomas boldly declaring that t wind energy doesn’t require fossil fuel backup
http://hot-topic.co.nz/we-did-it-and-its-going-to-get-worse-but-its-not-yet-too-late-ipcc-ar5-science-report-summary-released/#comment-39187
The reality is, of course, that the National Grid are providing reserve via diesel generators, aka STOR (short term operational reserve)
The warmist creed get more and more batty by the minute. It is surprising that academics still comment there
The climate alarmists have lost the debate: it’s time we stopped indulging their poisonous fantasy
James Delingpole
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100238550/the-climate-alarmists-have-lost-the-debate-its-time-we-stopped-indulging-their-poisonous-fantasy/