Guardian scribe can’t cope with complex scientific arguments unseating his cognitive faculties:
“How fear of bias dominates the climate change debate”
Climate sceptics say they want science free of politics, yet their campaigning frames discussion
This shift is a result of the long-running sceptics’ campaign. A similar change occurred last month at the Royal Society. Two members of Lord Lawson’s sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation lobbied the Royal Society to update its short guide to climate science for the public. Their goal was not to alter the scientific conclusions, as the previous guide was accurate. Their aim was to reframe the advice. The old guide was written as short, clear answers to a series of common arguments made by climate contrarians. The new advice is no longer in such a useful form for the public. The science is the same, but Lawson’s gang have politicised its presentation. Prominent sceptics, like Lawson, say they want science free of politics, yet their campaigning has brought about exactly the opposite.
So…
What’s to be done? First, acknowledge that many of us, especially researchers and committed science journalists who fear accusations of bias, have internalised the sceptics’ conspiracy-laden worldview. Second, we all need to avoid playing along with their agenda, by carefully explaining scientific results to avoid the inevitable contrarian wilful misinterpretations, without name-checking “the sceptics” as a group. We don’t accept vocal fringe groups such as creationists framing the reporting of evolution, and likewise, we should actively avoid letting fringe ideological convictions frame public discussions of climate change science.
I realise this site intends to have a great reference library but I do miss conversing with people like you can do at Jo Nova or WUWT or Climate Audit where there is one or two topical items and people comment on it; News doesn’t fit it on this site because there’s too much other reference stuff happening; well; that probably doesn’t fit this site and there are other sites where that can happen but I think if all you are doing is building a reference library then from a followers point of view that’s a bit boring
My scepticism saw our previous Prime Minister, Helen Clark, constantly labelling me a denier. It rankled that she could dodge legitimate Parliamentary questions by such a cheap political ruse. But Bob now has this to say about the Helen Clark’s of the world:
“They deny that the Earth’s climate is cooling; they deny that the climate models on which their global warming policies are based are worthless as predictive tools; they deny that the IPCC and its advice are flawed beyond repair; they deny that the Copenhagen Conference was a failure; they deny that carbon dioxide is an environmental benefice; they deny that Climategate is any more than an isolated, minor squabble among a few climate research cognoscenti; they deny that they have allowed their young people to be educationally brainwashed about global warming; they deny that the science research community has been corrupted by their agenda-driven funding requirements; they deny that government science-related organizations, at their behest, have been acting as propagandists for eco-evangelistic causes; they deny that windfarms and solar power are environmentally damaging and uneconomic for baseload power generation; they continue to strive to deny public voice to independent scientific viewpoints on climate change; and, above all, they deny that they are wrong in their continued assertions that human-caused global warming is an identified and deadly danger.”
No that’s not Prof Carter; he says in a reply to ‘oh dear’ on that page ‘in this you are correct I’m not bob carter’ and that poster has denied that before on that blog
Andy that’s a great read; it’s also up at WUWT and there’s some great footnotes linking to Prof Carter’s writings published in Quadrant Online;
I liked this lead in
We should keep saying very loudly that the current debate about global warming –and I agree with the Australian paleoclimatologist Prof. Carter that we should always speak about “dangerous human caused global warming” because it is not “warming per se that we are concerned with”[1] – is in its substance not part of the scientific discourse about the relative role of a myriad of factors influencing swings in global temperature but part of public policy debate about man and society. As R. M. Carter stresses in his recent book, “the global warming issue long ago ceased being a scientific problem.”[2]
So how about it Richard – amend the thread name to ‘dangerous human caused global warming’
Klaus doesn’t sound like a politician.
He sounds like a man who knows what he is talking about, and has lived through the kind of regime the warmists would impose on us.
I agree Andy; here’s one of my favourite ‘thinkers’ on the web
Charles R. Anderson – he’s a materials physicist and this link is to one of to me his interesting articles ‘Moon effect’ http://objectivistindividualist.blogspot.com/2010/06/moon-effect-called-greenhouse-effect-on.html
(quoting from selected parts)
It is commonly claimed that the Earth can be treated as a black body which is in equilibrium with the incoming radiation of the sun and the outgoing radiation into space from the black body Earth. Calculations based on this simple model indicate the Earth has an average temperature 33C warmer than it should be. It is said to be this much warmer due to its atmosphere, in particular due to water vapor primarily and other greenhouse gases such as CO2 secondarily.
…
Because the Earth has an atmosphere and because it has oceans over 70% of its surface and the oceans retain huge reservoirs of heat, the variation in temperature throughout a day is much less on Earth than on the moon. But, there is still a rise in the average temperature due to heat convection on land, in the oceans, and in the atmosphere. Heat convection in 3-dimensions creates an effect that looks like the greenhouse effect. Similar effects are observed for all of the planets.
It appears that if any “greenhouse effect” occurs due to CO2 in our atmosphere, that effect is very small compared to the 3-dimensional effects of distributed heat with convection heat transfer. That this is so has long been known by NASA…’
and there’s a link in his article to another paper
Richard please read my reply to Andy above; the last line is addresssed to you
So how about it Richard – amend the thread name to ‘dangerous human caused global warming’
I’m getting bored with keeping track of BBC greenie/environment/climate alarmism nonsense – there are so many stories, so much rubbish, so many inane, insane claims, that each report I file here is looking and sounding like more of the same. Black, Harrabin (though he has been keeping a low profile of late) Kinver & co seem to be under instructions to provide a torrent of one-sided propaganda, so much so that I have no doubt that this is being coordinated. They are like the Terminator androids, capable of self-repairing and continuing with their pre-programmed, lunatic mission no matter what happens.
George Taylor, former Oregon State climatologist writes:
Nicola Scafetta has published the most decisive indictment of GCM’s I’ve ever read in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics. His analysis is purely phenomenological, but he claims that over half of the warming observed since 1975 can be tied to 20 and 60-year climate oscillations driven by the 12 and 30-year orbital periods of Jupiter and Saturn, through their gravitational influence on the Sun, which in turn modulates cosmic radiation.
If he’s correct, then all GCM’s are massively in error because they fail to show any of the observed oscillations.
See “Controversy and scandal”
Penn State University – where have we heard that name before?
This should be restated “A New Kind of Crime Against Humanity?: The Penn State University’s Disinformation Campaign On The Fossil Fuel Industry.”
What a load of baloney from Donald A. Brown, Associate Professor,
Environmental Ethics, Science, and Law.
“Given that there are thousands of peer-reviewed scientific studies that support the consensus view on the dangers of continuing to emit increasing levels of greenhouse gases,”
[But not one that conclusively supports the underlying AGW hypothesis.]
“that Academy of Sciences around the world have issued statements in support of the consensus view articulated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ,”
[So what?]
“there are virtually no peer-reviewed scientific articles that prove beyond reasonable doubt that observed warming is naturally caused”
[Really?]
Donald A. Brown should visit Climate Conversations starting at:
Fate of the World, a new strategy game launched on Tuesday, could reach new audiences, say green campaigners
Arriving on PCs on Tuesday and Macs shortly after, the British-made Fate of the World puts players at the helm of a future World Trade Organisation-style environmental body with a task of saving the world by cutting carbon emissions or damning it by letting soaring temperatures wreak havoc through floods, droughts and fires.
A senior House Democrat from Tennessee issued the first congressional report on geoengineering Friday, just as delegates from 193 nations approved a ban on such research under a global biodiversity treaty.
The debate over whether humans should explore ways to manipulate the climate has taken on increased urgency over the past year, as efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming have encountered political roadblocks in the United States and elsewhere.
The measure adopted under the Convention on Biological Diversity, which recently concluded in Nagoya, Japan, states “that no climate-related geo-engineering activities that may affect biodiversity take place, until there is an adequate scientific basis on which to justify such activities and appropriate consideration of the associated risks for the environment and biodiversity and associated social, economic and cultural impacts, with the exception of small-scale scientific research studies” under controlled circumstances.
For 35 years I have been wrong about how to prevent climate change. It’s time I confessed.
For 35 years I have worked to improve energy efficiency – insulating homes, efficiency standards for appliances, better light bulbs, fuel-economy standards for cars and energy-saving technologies in industry and farming.
The assumption was that this would result in less fossil fuel being burned and less carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere. Well, it doesn’t.
For 35 years I have promoted renewable energy – solar water heating, solar electricity, wind power, log and pellet burners, bio-gas – assuming that these would result in less fossil fuel being burned and less carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere. Well, they don’t.
We would be stupid not to make those changes, which achieve cost savings, health benefits, warmer homes, jobs, more affordable energy, more profitable businesses and a stronger economy. But to protect the climate, we have to change tack. I’m changing tack.
[Fitzsimons cites Hansen and “Storms of My Grandchildren”]
Nasa climate scientist James Hansen has calculated how much more fossil fuel we could afford to use if we were to get back to 350 parts per million of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere: the level that he calculates will allow climate to stabilise.
His recipe, set out in his book Storms of My Grandchildren, published last year, allows us to use all the conventional oil (though not tar sands, shale or oil from extreme environments like that of the Southern Ocean) but coal must be phased out completely by 2030, starting now.
I’m having another “Alice down the rabbit hole” moment, in response to the Scientific American article, the explication of the article by its author Michael Lemonick, Scientific American’s survey on whether I am a dupe or a peacemaker, and the numerous discussions in blogosphere. My first such moment was in 2005 in response to the media attention associated with the hurricane wars, which was described in a Q&A with Keith Kloor at collide-a-scape. While I really want to make this blog about the science and not about personalities (and especially not about me), this article deserves a response.
The title of the article itself is rather astonishing. The Wikipedia defines heresy as: “Heresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma.” The definition of dogma is “Dogma is the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, ideology or any kind of organization: it is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted, or diverged from.” Use of the word “heretic” by Lemonick implies general acceptance by the “insiders” of the IPCC as dogma. If the IPCC is dogma, then count me in as a heretic. The story should not be about me, but about how and why the IPCC became dogma.
Fresh from a sabbatical studying climate change reporting at the University of Oxford, the ABC’s Margot O’Neill considers whether or not the media has done a good job.
WHATEVER HAPPENED to climate change? This time last year climate change was a hot topic regularly appearing in news bulletins and on front pages. Phrases such as “the future of humanity could be at stake” were quoted, celebrities marshalled and 4,000 journalists prepared to descend on the UN climate change summit in Copenhagen. Apparently humanity’s future is now secure… or so it might seem given the paucity of journalism devoted to the issue in the mainstream media.
Where did all the climate change stories go? “The [programmers] are against it because it loses ratings,” says a senior BBC journalist. “The wave [of public interest] has gone. There is climate change fatigue. That is why I am not [reporting] it now.”
Andy, this is a VERY revealing article re MSM Journalism having a similar epiphany to Dr Judith Curry.
So it turns out that there may not have been a conspiracy of silence on Climategate – they just missed the story.
I have to agree with this:-
“A BBC correspondent said it is arguable that journalists need qualifications in science, politics and economics to straddle the demands of climate change reporting.”
I’ve got part quals in Engineering Science (Int NZCE Mech), strong in thermodynamics and heat, and NZ Dip Bus, strong in Economics, plenty of IT plus corporate energy research and I still struggle to assimilate the directions, strengths and weaknesses of the whole climate change – climate science thing.
Anyone who is just going by Executive Summary has not got a clue. I would also add to the BBC guy’s skill-set an ability to think critically. It is so easy to be misled by group-think.
I note that in “Overconfidence in IPCC’s detection and attribution. Part II”, Judith Curry says this:-
“Hard to imagine that this is taking three parts, each of which exceeds 2000 words. I have developed brain strain this week from trying to sort through all this; Part II is admittedly not my best writing but I think I have the arguments straight.”
The dearth of comprehensive MSM climate science reporting is the result of all the above and more but it comes down to – not enough “brain strain”.
There was a New Zealand /Australia Climate Forum held in Hobart Au on 14/10/10
Does anyone know where I could get a copy of any papers presented by the BOM Au
I understand there was a paper; I’ve checked in the usual sites
Binding climate change deal is impossible after Barack Obama’s election defeat, says John Prescott
Barack Obama’s setback in the US mid-term elections has killed of any hope of securing a legally binding global climate change deal, John Prescott has said.
The big problem now is to get through to the idiot politicians, to undo some of the damage they and their predecessors have done. That is going to be difficult. We still have legislation on the stocks, introduced on the assumption that BSE was going to cause a large-scale epidemic in humans. Getting legislators to claw back on legislation is one of the hardest tasks known to man.
In March, a Greenpeace report, “Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine”, called the company “the financial kingpin of climate science denial”.
So, yet more “balanced” reporting from the NZ media.
The Heralds a bit late with this story, Huff Post has been pushing it for months. I wonder why it has just become topical here?
“Three “charitable” foundations set up by the Kochs, the report said, spent US$24.9 million on this purpose between 2005 and 2008, as against ExxonMobil’s US$8.9 million”
Drop in the bucket compared to the billions spent by the climate change industry.
Heads up on some school propaganda possibly heading our way:
A handbook titled The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism is to be sent to school teachers across the US, Australia, and hopefully many other countries. The handbook is close to being finished and I wish to thank John Cook for all of the time that he has already put into this important project.
New Retreat from Global Warming Data by Australian Gov Bureau
Article by John O’Sullivan and Val Majkus (via email from John O’Sullivan)
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Global warmers in full retreat as Aussie experts admit growing doubts about their own methods as new study shows one third of temperatures not reliable.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) admits it was wrong about urban heating effects as a professional statistical analysis by Andrew Barnham exposes a BOM claim that “since 1960 the mean temperature in Australia has increased by about 0.7 °C”; the BOM assertion has no empirical scientific basis.
Barnham, who spent 8 years working in emerging South Asian economies building high volume transaction processing systems, applied a high-tech statistical technique very different from an earlier well-publicized probe by fellow Aussie, Ken Stewart on his blog, Ken’s Kingdom.
Stewart grabbed headlines in what became known as the Australiagate controversy after his findings were featured on popular science blog, Watts Up With That. Stewart exposed dubious BOM adjustments to temperature data that bore little or no resemblance to actual or raw past temperatures.
Like Stewart, Barnham paid particular attention to BOM’s methodology in addressing what is known as the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHI), a proven phenomenon whereby thermometers measuring temperatures in towns and cities become unduly influenced by extra ‘background’ heating from buildings, road surfaces, machinery, etc. It’s in the UHI adjustments that the greatest discrepancies appear to lie.
The failed presidency of Barack Obama, post-election edition
And so the chances have dropped sharply of averting multiple catastrophes post-2040 — widespread Dust-Bowlification; multi-feet sea level rise followed by a rise of 6 to 12+ inches a decade until the planet is ice free; massive species loss; the ocean turning into large, hot acidified dead zones; and ever-strengthening superstorms that bring devastation to country after country that equals or surpasses what happened to Moscow and Pakistan and Nashville and New Orleans.
Colder winters possible due to climate change-study 16 Nov 2010 14:52:16 GMT
Source: Reuters
* Colder winters possible in northern regions
* Shrinking sea ice causes airstream anomalies
* Finding does not conflict with global warming
BERLIN, Nov 16 (Reuters) – Climate change could lead to colder winters in northern regions, according to a study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research on Tuesday.
Vladimir Petoukhov, lead author of the study, said a shrinking of sea ice in the eastern Arctic causes some regional warming of lower air levels and may lead to anomalies in atmospheric airstreams, triggering an overall cooling of the northern continents.
“These anomalies could triple the probability of cold winter extremes in Europe and northern Asia,” he said. “Recent severe winters like last year’s or the one of 2005/06 do not conflict with the global warming picture but rather supplement it.”
PREVIEW-UN climate talks seek limited deal as costs soar 16 Nov 2010 15:12:46 GMT
Source: Reuters
* U.N. talks in Mexico aim to agree green fund to aid poor
* Meeting seeks some elements of U.N. treaty; no final deal
* Costs of tackling global warming rising due to delays-IEA
Underscoring a need for urgency, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a report last week the costs of a strong assault on global warming by 2030 had risen by $1 trillion to $18 trillion simply because of delays in 2010.
“If there is still no agreement in Cancun and South Africa (host of the next U.N. talks in late 2011), this cost will increase further and this will make it even less likely that we ever have an agreement,” IEA chief economist Fatih Birol said.
“It will definitely be an increase in the order of hundreds of billions of dollars,” he told Reuters of extra costs to shift from fossil fuels towards wind, solar and other clean energies.
Temperatures are on track for 2010 to be the warmest year since records began in the 19th century. The year saw floods in Pakistan and drought in Russia. BP plc’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico highlighted fossil fuel risks.
Climate Prognoses “Not Worth The Paper They’re Printed On”
By P Gosselin on 20. November 2010
Whoa! Germany’s got a new enfant-terrible. Someone has just bolted though the Climate Berlin Wall, big time. Climatologists are dissenting, and it’s even being reported. The normally quite alarmist Austrian online Der Standard published a shocking article yesterday headlined:
Experts: “Prognoses not worth the paper they are printed on”
Yes, I saw that Andy but thanks for the link again
I wonder if this AGW scam is the last bastion or should I say bulwark of the otherwise useless and out of date UN
After all if you guys fail to reach your emission targets who is going to collect your fine
Climate protectors and experts in Cancun will be forced to increasingly defend their earth-warming models against mounting criticism. “We just know way too little about the various factors that influence climate and cannot possibly make any reliable prognoses”, says the managing director of Donnerwetter.de and climatologist Karsten Brandt.”
Donnerwetter.de is a private and successful weather forecasting service in Germany. Der Standard reports Dr. Brandt made these comments at a press conference with other climatologists, who say modellers just do not take lots of factors like solar activity and ocean currents into account, and overestimate CO2′s impact. In summary, Dr Brandt is calling the models hopelessly simplistic and useless.
[Cancun will be interesting, one way or the other]
If the models can’t forecast the past (hindcast), they certainly can’t forecast the future. And yeah, we know about the missing natural factors and CO2 overestimation – good to hear it from a climatologist though.
Blam! Kapow! Smack! The bell has rung for the latest round of climate talks, but the battle continues among climate scientists too, making only one thing truly clear — the science of global warming simply isn’t settled.
With United Nations climate negotiators facing an uphill battle to advance their goal of reducing emissions linked to global warming, it’s no surprise that the woman steering the talks appealed to a Mayan goddess Monday.
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, invoked the ancient jaguar goddess Ixchel in her opening statement to delegates gathered in Cancun, Mexico, noting that Ixchel was not only goddess of the moon, but also “the goddess of reason, creativity and weaving. May she inspire you — because today, you are gathered in Cancun to weave together the elements of a solid response to climate change, using both reason and creativity as your tools.”
She called for “a balanced outcome” which would marry financial and emissions commitments from industrialized countries aimed at combating climate change with “the understanding of fairness that will guide long-term mitigation efforts.”
“Excellencies, the goddess Ixchel would probably tell you that a tapestry is the result of the skilful interlacing of many threads,” said Figueres, who hails from Costa Rica and started her greetings in Spanish before switching to English. “I am convinced that 20 years from now, we will admire the policy tapestry that you have woven together and think back fondly to Cancun and the inspiration of Ixchel.”
FOR some time The Australian newspaper’s editorial position on climate change has been at the centre of a culture wars campaign in which a misrepresentation of where the paper stands has been repeated so often and with such conviction that it has become accepted by some people as fact.
[Snip]
The Australian has unwaveringly supported global action to combat climate change based on the science.
On November 2, 2006, the paper said: “You can accept the significant risk that the climate is warming while wishing to employ scepticism and scientific rigour when working out what to do about it. Eventually an international carbon pricing system that sets proper price signals for pollution will further drive this process.”
It has accepted the findings of the UN panel on climate change. On February 5, 2007, it said: “The real news from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest report, issued last Friday in Paris, is the higher level of implied scientific certainty – first that global warming is unequivocally happening, and second that humans are, in the panel’s view, highly likely to be causing most of it.
[Snip]
In the case of climate change, it is apparent that some people would be quite happy for a totalitarian approach.
Writing on Crikey, commentator Guy Rundle recently encouraged climate campaigners to mount a propaganda revolution based on the tactics of Mao and Lenin. He said climate change campaigners could achieve more by adopting a communist model of establishing a whole disciplined apparatus, “with the explicit object of creating both a core of full-time cadres-organisers-propagandists who could expound the argument everywhere, anytime, a hundred different ways, at the drop of a hat”.
Rundle said: “Earlier revolutions had succeeded because step by step they created a wider band of people who, while not professional agitators themselves, had been so convinced by the argument – intellectually, politically, morally – that they felt some of its urgency and identified with it, so that they would talk to others about it.”
Rundle said crucial to this process were four things: the training school, the pamphlet, the public meeting and political self-criticism-analysis.
“It’s a signal fact of the climate change movement that none of these features are really present. The Right likes to argue the Green movement is Marxism by other means. If only that were the case, some of these things might have been in place,” Rundle wrote.
He encourages the propaganda approach despite offering the view “you can’t honestly say that the science is settled, because no science is ever settled”.
A year ago tomorrow, just before the opening of the UN Copenhagen world climate summit, the British Meteorological Office issued a confident prediction. The mean world temperature for 2010, it announced, ‘is expected to be 14.58C, the warmest on record’ – a deeply worrying 0.58C above the 19611990 average.
World temperatures, it went on, were locked inexorably into an everrising trend: ‘Our experimental decadal forecast confirms previous indications that about half the years 2010-2019 will be warmer than the warmest year observed so far – 1998.’
Met Office officials openly boasted that they hoped by their statements to persuade the Copenhagen gathering to impose new and stringent carbon emission limits – an ambition that was not to be met.
Last week, halfway through yet another giant, 15,000delegate UN climate jamboree, being held this time in the tropical splendour of Cancun in Mexico, the Met Office was at it again.
Never mind that Britain, just as it was last winter and the winter before, was deep in the grip of a cold snap, which has seen some temperatures plummet to minus 20C, and that here 2010 has been the coolest year since 1996.
Globally, it insisted, 2010 was still on course to be the warmest or second warmest year since current records began.
But buried amid the details of those two Met Office statements 12 months apart lies a remarkable climbdown that has huge implications – not just for the Met Office, but for debate over climate change as a whole.
Read carefully with other official data, they conceal a truth that for some, to paraphrase former US VicePresident Al Gore, is really inconvenient: for the past 15 years, global warming has stopped.
interesting historical data on WUWT today Has Charles Dickens shaped our perception of climate change? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/05/has-charles-dickens-shaped-our-perception-of-climate-change/#more-28894
starting from 1816 Dickens life demonstrates the extraordinary variability of the British winters during that era, when the coldest and warmest winters in the CET records can be juxtaposed. Generally there are few examples of constant cold winters year after year-the LIA was becoming much more sporadic than it had been several centuries earlier, when bitter cold weather appears to have been the norm. To put this era into perspective mature English people might be surprised to learn they lived through a much colder winter than Dickens ever experienced. 1962/3 at -0.33C was the third coldest in the entire CET record compared to Dickens coldest year 1814 at 0.43c, the fourth coldest in the record. (1962/3 was a bit of a one off-Dickens experienced a greater number of relatively cold winters)
the climatic trough in 1880 is the exact point from when GISS commenced their temperature records and there are additional articles on GISS records since that data
Climate Change Negotiations Minister Tim Groser – in Mexico for renewed climate change talks – hit back last night at vocal Labour and Green critics whom he says have “no understanding of what the negotiation is about”.
He described a suggestion by Greens co-leader Russel Norman that New Zealand was siding with “big polluters” such as the United States as “absolute bollocks.”
There’s a lot of reading between the lines with this one Andy.
My take.
“The idea that New Zealand is ‘siding with the big polluters’ is just bollocks.”
Yes, New Zealand has “joined the Progressives Group – a group of about 30 developing and developed countries, including Germany, Britain and France, Costa Rica, Chile, Indonesia and Mexico – which were all trying to move forward the climate change agenda.”
Germany, Britain and France? What are they doing? This must be for trade.
This is not good news unless the NZ negotiators take on a spoiling/stalling role in the group. I had thought after investigating the COP15 Alliance that NZ might be “mainstream” on the surface but looking for “outs” in reality – now I’m not so sure what game they’re playing.
“Actually we are a perfectly respectable middle positioned country working very closely with countries like India, Indonesia and Mexico in reality.
This makes more sense, stick with India for an “out”, Indonesia for forestry exemptions, Mexico for the “mainstream” illusion.
I’ve been looking in the smh climate change section and the Guardian but that’s not much use for NZ specific stuff.
The fundamental difference I see for NZ (COP15-COP16) is that NZ joined an “Alliance” at COP15 and a “Group” at COP16 but with different countries in each.
Forest concessions are a big deal for NZ so I’m thinking that’s why NZ is keeping close to Indonesia who will be pivotal along with Brazil in REDD/Forestry negotiations.
It’s not inconceivable that NZ will put their hand up in support of the REDD scam in order to win forestry concessions for NZ in return.
Remember it was NZ that moved the motion for UN troop withdrawal that precipitated the Rwandan massacre – Groser et al will sell NZ souls and grandmothers if need be.
“Even getting out of the gate isn’t certain. Bolivia and its allies are seeking to block the forestry measure on the grounds that it applies capitalist principles to achieving a public good. On Tuesday, a group of activists marched through one of the buildings housing negotiations chanting, “No, no, no, no, no REDD. No!””
Herein lies the problem.
The Left hates the notion that voluntary measures enacted via a simple business model is actually preserving rainforest.
For them, the only option is enforced measures via bureaucratic command and control with the obligatory wealth redistribution proviso but with the inevitable Oil-for-Food style syphoning because scam-savvy crooks (Gore, Annan, Mafia etc) are equally attracted to this MO for the golden opportunities it presents..
A further poke in the eye would be if InfiniteEarth listed on the Hong Kong stockmarket.
I might even be motivated to purchase a participatory share in a patch of rainforest myself if there’s legit title, oversight and tradeable securities but there’s no way I’d give anything to a UN scheme voluntarily.
And that goes for UNICEF that Gareth Morgan spruiks on TV. There’s a zillion charities ahead of that on my list.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
More than 1000 dissenting scientists (updates previous 700 scientist report) from around the globe have now challenged man-made global warming claims made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former Vice President Al Gore. This new 2010 320-page Climate Depot Special Report — updated from 2007′s groundbreaking U.S. Senate Report of over 400 scientists who voiced skepticism about the so-called global warming “consensus” — features the skeptical voices of over 1000 international scientists, including many current and former UN IPCC scientists, who have now turned against the UN IPCC. This updated 2010 report includes a dramatic increase of over 300 additional (and growing) scientists and climate researchers since the last update in March 2009. This report’s release coincides with the 2010 UN global warming summit being held in Cancun.
read on at WUWT or Climate Depot (full links available)
Clouds will respond to climate change in ways that further heat the planet, a new study suggests.
The research, published yesterday in the journal Science, appears to solve one of of the biggest remaining mysteries in climate science: How well do computer climate models predict the behavior of clouds?
That’s important because clouds can work to cool or heat the Earth, depending on the type of cloud and where it sits in the atmosphere. Clouds cool the planet by reflecting incoming radiation from the sun. They heat it by trapping outgoing radiation from the planet’s surface. The question scientists have been struggling to answer is which of these two effects will dominate as climate change intensifies.
“Clouds are really, I would say, the biggest uncertainty in understanding how much warming we’re going to get in the future,” said study author Andrew Dessler, an atmospheric scientist at Texas A&M University. “And up until my paper, all we really had were the models. We had no idea if the models were completely wrong.”
Computerized climate models vary widely in their predictions of how clouds will respond to long-term climate change. A few models predict clouds will be neutral players, neither compounding warming nor counteracting it, while others predict clouds will exacerbate warming.
Some climate skeptics have alleged that models “got clouds completely wrong,” Dessler said. He believes that his paper, which suggests long-term climate change will create a positive feedback from clouds that produces additional heating of the planet, “shows that models are doing a reasonable job as a group.”
A bolt from Cancun
One of those skeptics is Roy Spencer, a climatologist at the University of Alabama, Huntsville. He issued a statement (pdf) yesterday attacking Dessler’s study, calling its “central evidence weak at best, misleading at worst.”
Spencer has published a paper arguing that clouds will cool the planet and counteract warming. He drew on that work to argue that Dessler’s study confuses the cause and effect of warming by failing to take into account the idea that changes in clouds drive temperature, rather than temperature changes driving cloud behavior.
Dennis Hartmann, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, agreed with Dessler.
“I do think it’s very significant that this analysis shows that a strongly negative, short-term cloud feedback is very unlikely, based upon the evidence, and that positive cloud feedback is more likely,” said Hartmann, who did not contribute to the new study. “Current climate models vary widely on their assessments of cloud feedback. But if you were forced to draw consensus on what models are saying so far, they’re saying that cloud feedback is moderately positive.”
The new analysis is based on the first 10 years of data collected by an instrument flying aboard NASA’s Terra satellite that monitors how much radiation is entering and leaving Earth’s atmosphere. The instrument, known as CERES (short for “Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System”), began collecting information in March 2000.
Dessler used the data to determine how the El Niño-Southern Oscillation weather cycle affected the amount of radiation leaving the atmosphere over a 10-year period — an indirect measurement of cloud behavior and the ensuing climate response.
A 10-year glimpse of cloud behavior
That’s not a precise analogue for cloud behavior in response to long-term climate change, he said.
The latter “is really what we care about,” Dessler added. “In order to understand how clouds are going to respond to long-term warming, you have to wait until there is long-term warming. That will take decades. Looking at the short-term is the best we can do right now.”
Hartmann noted that the warming observed during an El Niño cycle of a year or two is different than the long-term climate change prompted by human activities that produce greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.
El Niño warms the tropics, whereas climate change driven by greenhouse gases warms the planet up everywhere, Hartmann said. But the scientist said he thought Dessler’s approach still amounted to a “useful diagnostic tool” for trying to understand whether climate models’ representation of clouds is on the right track.
Meanwhile, Dessler said his next step is aimed at identifying how well individual climate models do predicting cloud behavior, by examining their output for different regions of the globe — such as land versus ocean, or high latitudes versus low latitudes.
“This is a significantly harder problem, and it’s a tougher test of the models,” he said. “My hope is that looking at the spatial distribution will allow me to say, ‘These models are doing a good job. These models are doing a terrible job.'”
Interfering with skeptics’ ‘negative impact’?
In his statement attacking Dessler’s study, Spencer also said he suspected, but had no proof, “that Dessler was under pressure to get this paper published to blunt the negative impact our work has had on the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]’s efforts.”
Spencer appeared in Cancun accompanied by Marc Morano, founder of Climate Depot, which regularly attacks mainstream climate change science, and Lord Christopher Monckton, a British skeptic who asserted the Kyoto Protocol threatens national sovereignty and individual freedom.
In a response posted yesterday afternoon on the blog “RealClimate,” Dessler said his disagreement with Spencer stemmed from their very different views about the cause of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), quoting an e-mail exchange (pdf) with Spencer.
“My position is the mainstream one, backed up by decades of research,” Dessler wrote on the blog. “This mainstream theory is quite successful at simulating almost all of the aspects of ENSO. Dr. Spencer, on the other hand, is as far out of the mainstream when it comes to ENSO as he is when it comes to climate change. He is advancing here a completely new and untested theory of ENSO — based on just one figure in one of his papers (and, as I told him in one of our e-mails, there are other interpretations of those data that do not agree with his interpretation).”
He added: “And as far as my interest in influencing the policy debate goes, I’ll just say that I’m in College Station this week, while Dr. Spencer is in Cancun.”
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——————————————————————————————————————– Climate change forecast is partly cloudy
Global warming’s impact on clouds – and vice versa — remains one of the biggest wild cards in climate science. A new study out this week in the journal Science, which finds that clouds will amplify global warming, is certain to fuel the discussion.
Study author Andrew Dessler of Texas A&M says that warming due to increases in greenhouse gases will cause clouds to trap more heat, which will lead to additional warming.
“It’s a vicious cycle – warmer temperatures mean clouds trap more heat, which in turn leads to even more warming,” Dessler explains.
Scientists use the term “feedback” to describe the phenomenon: A “positive” feedback means that additional clouds will worsen global warming, while a “negative” feedback means that more clouds will lead to global cooling.
As noted by Dressler in the paper, “Clouds affect the climate by reflecting incoming solar radiation back to space, which tends to cool the climate, and by trapping outgoing infrared radiation, which tends to warm the climate.”
Using satellite measurements to calculate the amount of energy trapped by clouds as the climate varied over the last decade, Dessler found that cloud feedback is positive and supports findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s computer climate models.
Climate change skeptic Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama, in an e-mail sent to journalists today, agrees with the idea that clouds’ interaction with warming is a significant issue:
“How clouds respond to warming – the ‘cloud feedback’ problem – will probably determine whether manmade global warming becomes either the defining environmental event of the 21st century, or is merely lost in the noise of natural climate variability,”
However, Spencer says the only clear evidence of feedback found in his analysis of the same satellite data was of strongly negative cloud feedback.
As noted in a companion news article in this week’s Science by Richard Kerr, Spencer says Dessler is mixed up — that Dessler is seeing not only cloud changes caused by temperature changes, but also temperature changes caused by natural cloud fluctuations. Such effects garble the true negative feedback beyond recognition, Spencer says.
“Unfortunately, the central evidence contained in the paper is weak at best, and seriously misleading at worst,” writes Spencer.
Dessler disagrees: “Based on my results, I think the chances that clouds will save us from dramatic climate change are pretty low,” he explains. “In fact, my work shows that clouds will likely be amplifying the warming from human activities.
“I think we can be pretty confident that temperatures will rise by several degrees Celsius over the next century if we continue our present trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions,” notes Dessler.
Dessler appears to discount the occurrence of negative feedback from clouds, or at least anything significant. He also considers the magnitude of warming will be significant; we won’t be talking about a slightly more balmy evening but a climate frankly hazardous to crops and everything else. The clear implication is that warming will be dangerous for the Earth and its inhabitants.
Indeed, he is so convinced of this vacuous gobbledygook, he talks of being “saved”:
“Based on my results, I think the chances that clouds will save us from dramatic climate change are pretty low,” he explains. “In fact, my work shows that clouds will likely be amplifying the warming from human activities.
“I think we can be pretty confident that temperatures will rise by several degrees Celsius over the next century if we continue our present trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions,” notes Dessler.
My question to him is: “If the positive feedback you show is so certain and so strong, what halted past warming?”
There’s another interpretation of cloud effect – that of modulation (also the “Iris effect”).
What this means is that clouds can have either positive or negative feedback depending on the state of the climate system.
Clouds in the tropics rapidly transport energy up through the GHGs so there’s no heat trapping there and any energy imbalances are even more rapidly reset by lightning.
Cloud cover changes (albedo – reflectivity) can account for much of the 90s warming but are not parameterized in the models because the 70s-90s period is THE ONLY CO2 temperature correlation.
Dessler’s part of the GISS “team” – they’re getting very desperate now and their PR (science?) is looking increasingly silly and at odds with the metrics (except GISSTemp of course).
Even GISS’es in-house rival at NASA, GSFC, has just come out with a revised CS of 1.65C for 2xCO2.
Irony alert: The unusually chilly global-warming summit
Cancun is hosting the U.N. conference on man-made climate change — amid record cold temperatures
The irony: As negotiators from nearly 200 countries met in Cancun to strategize ways to keep the planet from getting hotter, the temperature in the seaside Mexican city plunged to a 100-year record low of 54° F. Climate-change skeptics are gleefully calling Cancun’s weather the latest example of the “Gore Effect” — a plunge in temperature they say occurs wherever former Vice President Al Gore, now a Nobel Prize-winning environmental activist, makes a speech about the climate. Although Gore is not scheduled to speak in Cancun, “it could be that the Gore Effect has announced his secret arrival,” jokes former NASA scientist Roy W. Spencer.
The reaction: ClimateGate was “bad enough,” says Duncan Davidson in Wall Street Pit, but Cancun’s weather is particularly “inconvenient” for global-warming alarmists. It’s a reminder that global temperatures have “flatlined” despite rising carbon dioxide levels, “which is decidedly chilling against the concept of hampering economic growth to limit Co2 emissions.” Grow up, says Tony Juniper in The Independent. “Sure, it’s cold outside,” but “the trend data show that the world is warming, that the climate is changing, and that the release of greenhouse gases is the cause.” The longer we use every cold snap as an excuse to put off reducing emissions, “the bigger the risk we run. Tick tock, tick tock.”
The Canadian military is racing to rescue more than 300 motorists who are trapped on a highway in the worst storm to hit Ontario in 25 years.
Some people were trapped for nearly 24 hours with snow piled up so high they could not open the doors of their cars on Highway 402 outside the town of Sarnia.
The military has mobilised a CC-130 Hercules airplane, two Griffons helicopters and an array of snowmobiles and four-wheel drive SUVs for the rescue effort.
They have reached some motorists just in the nick of time
This post explores the possibility of “attestable identities” This was brought up in relation to the Monbiot/North thread were comments were getting deleted from the Guardian
Scientists have established a link between the cold, snowy winters in Britain and melting sea ice in the Arctic and have warned that long periods of freezing weather are likely to become more frequent.
Okaaay
An analysis of the ice-free regions of the Arctic Ocean has found that the higher temperatures there caused by global warming, which have melted the sea ice in the summer months, have paradoxically increased the chances of colder winters in Britain and the rest of northern Europe.
1) “higher temperature” How was that measured Arctic-wide?
[Hint: Thermometers in the Arctic are conspicuous by their absence]
2) “caused by global warming” What global warming?
[Hint: There’s been no statistically significant global warming in the last 15 years, so a non-existent event is “causing” another un-measured event – apparently]
3) “melted the sea ice” How?
[Hint: The temperature of the atmosphere overhead doesn’t melt sea ice – the ocean underneath does]
4) “paradoxically increased the chances of colder winters” Really?
[Hint: Colder winters in Europe have occurred in the past as a result of solar minimums – refer Maunder Minimum and Dalton Minimum. Now add to those the “Monbiot Minimum”]
The researchers used computer models to assess the impact of the disappearing Arctic sea ice……..Their models found that, as the ice cap over the ocean disappeared, this allowed the heat of the relatively warm seawater to escape into the much colder atmosphere above, creating an area of high pressure surrounded by clockwise-moving winds that sweep down from the polar region over Europe and the British Isles.
1) “Their models found” Models that are verified and validated?
[Hint: How were the models parameterized with non-existent Arctic temperatures? What was the ocean-atmosphere heat transfer mechanism if models have not evolved to the point of incorporating conduction at the surface? What is their hindcast success (or otherwise)]
2) “the heat” Heat (Q) in Arctic sea water – how much?
[Hint: Salinity will allow sea temperatures to fall below 0 degrees Celcius so we really would like to know how much “heat”]
the floating sea ice in winter insulates the relatively warm seawater from the bitterly cold temperatures of the air above it, which can be around -20C or -30C
1) “air….-20C or -30C” This is where the “heat” is now?
[Hint: If the “heat” from the ocean is released to the atmosphere, the temperature of the air will rise, will it not? So what were the before and after temperatures of the air?]
I could go on but I see the name “Rahmsdorf” so nuff said.
Nice analysis and I always find your exploration of models illuminating. I would mention that studies have shown i) winds have moved sea ice out of the Arctic into warmer Atlantic waters, ii) ocean currents have moved warmer waters into the Arctic, melting the ice and warming the atmosphere. They are both regional events, nothing to do with global anything.
Give me a couple of days, but this anaylsis will become a post. The Herald’s readers must be given a chance to hear a rebuttal to that nonsense.
The paper was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research so there’s the possibility that someone from the science fraternity will write a more learned rebuttal in their lunch-break.
The question is, now that the Herald has taken to publishing commentary on the latest scientific papers, will they publish the rebuttal in six months time? And what will be the headline then?
Also, is this a one-off to steer public perception back to the path of enlightenment or will they publish other news from the steady stream of new papers e.g. this paper from the same Journal of Geophysical Research 10/29/2010:-
Reconstruction of solar spectral irradiance since the Maunder minimum
N. A. Krivova, L. E. A. Vieira, S. K. Solanki 2010
New Paper: Solar UV activity increased almost 50% over past 400 years
The TSI is estimated to have increased 1.25 W/m2 since the Maunder minimum as shown in the first graph below. Use of the Stefan-Boltzmann equation indicates that a 1.25 W/m2 increase in solar activity could account for an approximate .44C global temperature increase [the HADCRU global warming from 1850 to 2000 is .55C].
This is highly significant because the UV portion of the solar spectrum is the most important for heating of the oceans due to the greatest penetration beyond the surface and highest energy levels. Solar UV is capable of penetrating the ocean to depths of several meters to cause ocean heating. whereas long wave infrared emission from “greenhouse gases” or the sun is only capable of penetrating the ocean surface a few microns with all energy lost to the phase change of evaporation with no net heating of the ocean.
The model temperature was probably forced by NCEP/NCAR “reanalysis” of LAND stations north of 60 deg N from CRUTem 3v dataset as have been used by previous Potsdam Institute model simulations. This because there are NO weather stations in the middle of the Arctic ocean.
The NOAA Arctic anomaly 60 – 90 deg N shows a very clear warm-cool-warm cycle with warming from 1965 – 2005 but the last data point 1 deg COOLER than that previous. So if heat was released from the ocean, it doesn’t show in the anomaly.
There is also this contradiction from NOAA:-
“While 2009 showed a slowdown in the rate of annual air temperature increases in the Arctic ………….. There continues to be significant excess heat storage in the Arctic Ocean at the end of summer due to continued near-record sea ice loss.”
Then this corroboration:-
“There is evidence that the effect of higher air temperatures in the lower Arctic atmosphere in fall is contributing to changes in the atmospheric circulation in both the Arctic and northern mid-latitudes. Winter 2009-2010 showed a new connectivity between mid-latitude extreme cold and snowy weather events and changes in the wind patterns of the Arctic; the so-called Warm Arctic-Cold Continents pattern.”
Searching for – hindcast simulation arctic sea ice – turns up some work on this topic with one interesting letter:-
“LIM3, an advanced sea-ice model for climate simulation and operational oceanography”
“The Louvain-la-Neuve sea ice model (LIM) has been coupled to OPA (Ocean Parallélisé) almost 10 years ago, leading to significant successes in ice-ocean and climate simulations. Meanwhile, the development of LIM kept going on, leading to LIM3, a C-grid, dynamic-thermodynamic sea-ice model including the representation of the subgrid scale variations of ice thickness, enthalpy, salinity and age, which we describe in more detail in the next section.
Then, the results of two 1970-2007 hindcasts performed with NEMO – one using LIM2 and the other using LIM3 – are compared to available observations of ice concentration, thickness and mixed layer depth.”
[Note: The authors have previously advocated better physics and LIM3 is the resulting improvement over LIM2]
“Conclusion and perspectives
In this letter, we presented the new LIM3 sea ice model and reviewed the results of a 1970- 2007 hindcast simulation performed with NEMO using LIM2 / LIM3. The results show that NEMO-LIM3 produces mean sea ice coverage and thickness fields that compare significantly better to available observations. In addition, variability and trends in ice coverage, as well as patterns of anomalies are also better captured. This suggests that the inclusion of LIM3 would affect and probably improve the results of climate projections in coupled GCMs. Finally, the improved sea ice field also results in a better distribution of the convection sites in the North Atlantic. In conclusion, LIM3 is certainly a more accurate tool for ice-ocean and climate simulations as well as for operational oceanography. Further development, calibration and use of NEMO-LIM will continue during the next few years in Louvain-la-Neuve”
…………………………………………………. So the question remains as to how sophisticated the physics of the Potsdam model(s) is(are) and do they use LIM and which version?
The Petoukhov and Semenov paper was submitted in November 2009.
A link between reduced Barents-Kara sea ice and cold winter extremes over northern continents
Abstract
The recent overall Northern Hemisphere warming was accompanied by several severe northern continental winters, as for example, extremely cold winter 2005–2006 in Europe and northern Asia. Here we show that anomalous decrease of wintertime sea ice concentration in the Barents-Kara (B-K) seas could bring about extreme cold events like winter 2005–2006. Our simulations with the ECHAM5 general circulation model demonstrate that lower-troposphere heating over the B-K seas in the Eastern Arctic caused by the sea ice reduction may result in strong anticyclonic anomaly over the Polar Ocean and anomalous easterly advection over northern continents. This causes a continental-scale winter cooling reaching −1.5°C, with more than 3 times increased probability of cold winter extremes over large areas including Europe. Our results imply that several recent severe winters do not conflict the global warming picture but rather supplement it, being in qualitative agreement with the simulated large-scale atmospheric circulation realignment. Furthermore, our results suggest that high-latitude atmospheric circulation response to the B-K sea ice decrease is highly nonlinear and characterized by transition from anomalous cyclonic circulation to anticyclonic one and then back again to cyclonic type of circulation as the B-K sea ice concentration gradually reduces from 100% to ice free conditions. We present a conceptual model that may explain the nonlinear local atmospheric response in the B-K seas region by counter play between convection over the surface heat source and baroclinic effect due to modified temperature gradients in the vicinity of the heating area.
Indicates that LIM2 was more likely used by ECHAM5 NEMO in 2009 than LIM# as there are still problems integrating LIM3
“We use the Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) to assimilate either sea-ice concentration or seaice thickness data into the coupled ocean sea-ice models NEMO-LIM2 and -LIM3. Output from our data assimilation system is intended to be used to initialize decadal forecasts within the EU-project COMBINE. For now assimilated data is model generated (twin experiments).
We find that assimilation of data of one variable in NEMO-LIM2 does not only improve the assimilated variable but also non-assimilated variables. Such cross-variable improvement is very promising considering the scarcity of polar data, particularly of sea-ice thickness. We also show preliminary results of data assimilation experiments into the new version of our sea-ice model, NEMO-LIM3, where data assimilation does not yet lead to the expected results.”
——————————————————————————————————————–
Just the heat convection question to answer but it’s not a pretty picture so far.
Conduction – not convection, got confused by the abstract.
Ocean Heat: Solar Gain – Loss to Atmosphere
Solar Radiation: …+168 watts per square meter (SW)
Net Back Radiation: -66 watts per square meter (LW) Conduction: ……..-24 watts per square meter
Latent Heat: ………-78 watts per square meter
Model Information of Potential Use to the IPCC Lead Authors and the AR4. ECHAM5_MPI-OM
3. list of variables passed between components:
a. atmosphere – ocean: heat, freshwater, momentum, 10m wind speed, solar radiation, sea surface temperature, ocean surface current (u,v components)
However, we are looking for atmosphere-sea ice-ocean coupling.
“Influence of coupling on atmosphere, sea ice and ocean regional models in the Ross Sea sector, Antarctica”
Nicolas C. Jourdain • Pierre Mathiot • Hubert Galle´e • Bernard Barnier Received: 11 September 2009 / Accepted: 23 July 2010
Copyright Springer-Verlag 2010
Abstract Air–sea ice–ocean interactions in the Ross Sea sector form dense waters that feed the global thermohaline circulation. In this paper, we develop the new limited-area ocean–sea ice–atmosphere coupled model TANGO to simulate the Ross Sea sector. TANGO is built up by coupling the atmospheric limited-area model MAR to a regional configuration of the ocean–sea ice model NEMO. A method is then developed to identify the mechanisms by which local coupling affects the simulations. TANGO is shown to simulate realistic sea ice properties and atmospheric surface temperatures. These skills are mostly related to the skills of the stand alone atmospheric and oceanic models used to build TANGO. Nonetheless, air temperatures over ocean and winter sea ice thickness are found to be slightly improved in coupled simulations as compared to standard stand alone ones. Local atmosphere ocean feedbacks over the open ocean are found to significantly influence ocean temperature and salinity. In a stand alone ocean configuration, the dry and cold air produces an ocean cooling through sensible and latent heat loss. In a coupled configuration, the atmosphere is in turn moistened and warmed by the ocean; sensible and latent heat loss is therefore reduced as compared to the stand alone simulations.
[Why?]
5.2.2 Effects of coupled processes The effect of the local feedback is probably amplified over sea ice as compared to the effect over open ocean because of heat conduction within sea ice. Any SST anomaly is indeed quickly mixed in the ocean surface layer, whereas heat conduction within sea ice is relatively slow (the characteristic time of conduction through ice of thickness 0.5 m is estimated to 2.5 days). As a consequence, the feedback of surface temperature to heat fluxes could be stronger over sea ice than over open ocean in limited-area simulations [Among other things]
[Note Tango uses NEMO2.0 LIM2]
Conclusion The effects of local feedbacks are increased in presence of sea ice. It is suggested that heat conduction within sea ice could amplify the feedbacks. We find that local feedbacks result in less sea ice production in coupled mode, [Among other things]
———————————————————————————————————————
Did Petoukhov and Semenov know about the Jourdain et al paper and LIM2-LIM3 progression?
Because the result of that shows that until Messers Petoukhov and Semenov deploy ECHAM5 NEMO3.0 LIM3 with atmosphere-sea ice-ocean coupling, the heat transfer at the surface (conduction through sea ice) is inadequately modeled (parameterized) and the physics needs improving from LIM2 to LIM3.
i.e. There’s still aways to go in model evolution and the conclusion is premature in addition to their speculation. The configuration they used:-
1) Produced too much sea ice (not enough ocean heat gain from solar).
2) Produced too much heat flux over sea ice (too much ocean heat loss through sea ice).
The same simulations using an up-graded configuration might output an even greater Arctic atmospheric temperature rise – it’s worse than we thought.
Then the simulations have to be compared to observations (Modeled vs Observed). i.e. They have speculated on qualitative agreement but what about quantitative agreement? That exercise wont make the newspaper headlines though.
In other sports news, the Vancouver Winter Olympics begin on an uncertain note when it is discovered that Vancouver — apparently nobody realized this ahead of time — is a seaside city with a mild climate, so there is no snow.
MARCH
On a more hopeful note, on March 27 people in more than 4,000 cities around the world turn off their lights in observance of Earth Hour, saving an estimated 45 million megawatts of electricity — enough to power one of Al Gore’s houses for nearly three days.
DECEMBER
The federal government will continue to fund a “green energy” program under which corn is converted into ethanol, which is then converted back into corn, which is then planted to grow more corn. This will cost $5 billion a year, but it is expected to create or save literally dozens of Iowa jobs.
On the environmental front, delegates from 193 countries at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Cancún, Mexico, pass a resolution stating that they should not have had those last four rounds of margaritas.
Germany Passes Energy Tyranny Act – Will Force Energy Rationing
By P Gosselin on 3. Januar 2011
This is serious. A new law has been passed by the German government, quietly and almost unnoticed. Soon in the future, the government will tell its citizens how much energy they can consume.
If the German State can pass this, then it can pretty much do whatever the hell it damn well pleases.
Gone are the days of a government that is there to serve its citizens. Here to stay is a group of elitists who are going to boss the citizens around and tell them how to live.
Unlike most other hot button environmental issues, global warming is widely misunderstood. As a climate scientist thinking about this, it struck me that it was not surprising since accounts of the scientific basics of global warming almost never appear anywhere in the press.
The Met Office fries while the rest of the world freezes
As the Met Office desperately tries to salvage its reputation, another of this ‘warm’ winter’s ice disasters is unfolding in the Sea of Okhotsk, writes Christopher Booker.
Green Writer for BBC, Guardian, Demands: End Farming, Dismantle Civilization.
Dr John Feeney is a prominent green campaigner who has written for the Guardian newspaper, the BBC, and many other Green journals and websites. He was the winner of the 2007 ECO award. In 2009 he received the Global Media award from the Population Institute for his work.
Now this award-winning Greenie has joined the growing list of ecologists and activists who are saying that the root of the problem is agriculture, which enables humans to “circumvent” nature’s sacred limits and build earth-destroying civilizations. Like many others, he accuses us of being in “denial” over the need to return to a hunter-gatherer way of life:
At the woods’ edge, small groups of HSBC technology managers, armed with clipboards and measuring tapes, meticulously determine the circumference of specially tagged trees down to a tenth of an inch. They’re wearing bright orange vests because it’s deer-hunting season, and though field science isn’t in their job descriptions, their employer, HSBC bank, wants them to understand climate change.
HSBC joined with Earthwatch Institute in 2007 in a $100 million partnership to train 2,000 bank employees in climate change science and conduct the largest-ever field experiment looking at the long-term effects of climate change on forests. In five climate centers on four continents, bank workers — from cashiers to staff in marketing, human resources, technology services and call centers — become so-called “Climate Champions” through two-week trainings, during which they meet with scientists, learn about sustainability and contribute to the international study.
“Everyone comes in with a different background,” says Anna Janovicz, a learning and communications manager at Earthwatch, “and the light bulb that goes off is different for everybody.”
For Wa’il Ashshowwaf, from HSBC’s D.C. office, the light bulb was realizing that rising sea levels may change our global landscape within our lifetimes.
Fred Pearce writes about the Lisbon conference on climate reconciliation:
Climate sceptics offer a peace deal. Well, no it wasn’t quite like that. But in Lisbon, Portugal, last week, I joined a group of 28 climate scientists, bloggers and professional contrarians who spent three days discussing how to encourage reconciliation in the increasing fractious debate about the science of climate change.
The meeting was the brainchild of University of Oxford science philosopher Jerry Ravetz, an 81-year-old Greenpeace member who fears Al Gore may have done as much damage to environmentalism as Joseph Stalin did to socialism. Post-Climategate, he found climate science characterised by “a poisoned atmosphere” in which “each side accuses the other of being corrupt”. Mainstream researchers were labelled “ideologues on the gravy train”, while sceptics were denigrated as “prostitutes and cranks”.
His dream of an instant rapprochement in Lisbon didn’t come off. The eventual make-up of the workshop, paid for by the European Commission, was too lopsided in favour of the sceptical camp.
Those making the trip included heroes of the sceptics such as statistician Steve McIntyre and economist Ross McKitrick, plus writers and bloggers such as Steve Mosher, the man who broke the Climategate story, and “heretical” scientists such as Georgia Tech’s Judy Curry and Peter Webster.
Avowed non-sceptics included Hans von Storch, a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and James Risbey of CSIRO. But the leaders of mainstream climate science turned down the gig, including NASA’s Gavin Schmidt, who said the science was settled so there was nothing to discuss.
Heartland Institute’s Sixth International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC-6), Washington, DC, June 3, 2011
“The theme of ICCC-6, ‘Restoring the Scientific Method,’ highlights the reliance of claims of scientific certainty and predictions of climate catastrophes on post-normal science, which substitutes claims of consensus for the scientific method.”
Lineup includes:-
* Timothy Ball, Ph.D., environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He was recently sued for libel by Michael Mann, a prominent figure in the Climategate scandal.
* Barry Brill, OBE, New Zealand barrister and solicitor. He is a former minister of science & technology and minister of energy, and is currently chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition.
* Alan Carlin, Ph.D., former senior analyst and manager at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In March 2009 he authored a highly critical internal review of EPA’s draft report on endangerment from greenhouse gases, which led him to become a whistle-blower.
* Robert “Bob” Carter, Hon. FRSNZ, research professor at James Cook University (Queensland, Australia), where he was head of the School of Earth Sciences between 1981 and 1999. He is author of Climate: The Counter Consensus.
* Scott Denning, Ph.D., professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University. Denning believes in man-caused global warming and spoke last year at the Fourth International Conference on Climate Change in Chicago.
* Christopher Horner, J.D., senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author of Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed.
* Craig Idso, Ph.D., chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change and coauthor of Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change.
* Robert O. Mendelsohn, Ph.D., Edwin Weyerhaeuser Davis Professor of Forest Policy & Professor of Economics at Yale University and author of the forthcoming book Climate Change and Agriculture: An Economic Analysis of Global Impacts, Adaptation, and Distributional Effects.
* Patrick J. Michaels, Ph.D., distinguished senior fellow in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University and a senior fellow in environmental policy at the Cato Institute. He is a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists and was program chair for the Committee on Applied Climatology of the American Meteorological Society and editor of the new book Climate Coup: Global Warming’s Invasion of Our Government and Our Lives.
* Marc Morano, executive editor and chief correspondent for ClimateDepot.com, a global warming and eco-news center founded in 2009. Morano served for three years as a senior advisor, speechwriter, and climate researcher for the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
* Nicola Scafetta, Ph.D., research scientist in the Duke University Physics Department. His research interests are in theoretical and applied statistics and nonlinear models of complex processes. He has published peer-reviewed papers in journals covering a wide variety of disciplines, including astronomy, biology, climatology, economics, and physics.
* Harrison Schmitt, Ph.D., is a former NASA astronaut and U.S. Senator. He is the twelfth and last person to set foot on the Moon. He served as chair of the NASA Advisory Council and is currently adjunct professor of engineering physics at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. He is a field geologist who received a Ph.D. from Harvard University.
* David Schnare, Ph.D., J.D., senior fellow for energy and the environment for the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. He is an attorney and scientist with 32 years of federal and private-sector experience consulting on and litigating local, state, federal, and international environmental legislative, regulatory, risk management, and free-market environmentalism issues.
* S. Fred Singer, Ph.D., founder and president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, coauthor of Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years and Climate Change Reconsidered, and professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia.
* Willie Soon, Ph.D., astrophysicist and a geoscientist at the Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
* Roy W. Spencer, Ph.D., principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville where he directs a variety of climate research projects. He is the author of several books, including most recently, The Great Global Warming Blunder.
* James M. Taylor, J.D., senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of its Environment & Climate News. He writes Climate Change Weekly, a Heartland e-newsletter, and a weekly column on climate change issues for Forbes.com.
* David G. Tuerck, Ph.D., executive director of the Beacon Hill Institute, and professor and chairman of the Suffolk University Department of Economics.
* Anthony Watts, a 25-year broadcast meteorology veteran and currently chief meteorologist for KPAY-AM radio. He hosts the popular climate change blog Wattsupwiththat.com and a Web site at surfacestations.org devoted to photographing and documenting the quality of weather stations across the U.S.
Borenstein “obtains” a draft IPCC report, spins it up on the coat-tails of “similar” events, and media editors dutifully spread the joy.
APNewsbreak: Panel says wild weather worsens
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer
WASHINGTON — Freakish weather disasters — from the sudden October snowstorm in the Northeast U.S. to the record floods in Thailand — are striking more often. And global warming is likely to spawn more similar weather extremes at a huge cost, says a draft summary of an international climate report obtained by The Associated Press.
The final draft of the report from a panel of the world’s top climate scientists paints a wild future for a world already weary of weather catastrophes costing billions of dollars. The report says costs will rise and perhaps some locations will become “increasingly marginal as places to live.”
The report from the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be issued in a few weeks, after a meeting in Uganda. It says there is at least a 2-in-3 probability that climate extremes have already worsened because of man-made greenhouse gases.
This marks a change in climate science from focusing on subtle changes in daily average temperatures to concentrating on the harder-to-analyze freak events that grab headlines, cause economic damage and kill people. The most recent bizarre weather extreme, the pre-Halloween snowstorm, is typical of the damage climate scientists warn will occur — but it’s not typical of the events they tie to global warming.
Looks like AFP “obtained” a copy of the draft report too:-
Climate change linked to extreme weather
AFP
A draft UN report three years in the making concludes that man-made climate change has boosted the frequency or intensity of heat waves, wildfires, floods and cyclones and that such disasters are likely to increase in the future.
The document being discussed by the world’s Nobel-winning panel of climate scientists says the severity of the impacts vary, and some regions are more vulnerable than others.
Hundreds of scientists working under the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) will vet the phonebook-sized draft at a meeting in Kampala of the 194-nation body later this month.
[…]
AFP obtained a copy of the draft report’s 20-page Summary for Policymakers, which is subject to revision by governments before release on November 18.
Most of these events match predicted impacts of manmade global warming, which has raised temperatures, increased the amount of water in the atmosphere and warmed ocean surface temperatures — all drivers of extreme weather.
But teasing apart the role of natural fluctuations in the weather and rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has proven devilishly difficult for scientists.
[…]
The new report’s main conclusions about future trends include:
– It is “virtually certain” — 99-100% sure — that the frequency and magnitude of warm daily temperature extremes will increase over the 21st century on a global scale;
You Have Got To Be Kidding – A Los Angeles Times Article Titled “‘Snowtober’ Fits U.N. Climate Change Predictions”
[…]
The historic snowstorm in the northeast United States a few days ago was due to an unusually far south Polar jet stream for this time of the year, and colder than average temperatures associated with the east coast storm. To claim that this event fits with the IPCC climate change predictions is ridiculous. The article reads as an op-ed in the guise of a news article.
The NZHerald are no longer even trying to hide the fact that they are altering webpage links by sceptics in the comments on AGW articles to make them inoperable. Check out this story:
Now look at the comment by ‘NZCimate (New Zealand) 11:46 AM Friday, 2 Dec 2011’
His link has been altered so the word corruption is now ‘climategate-2-and-c*********-of-peer-review/’
I wrote a reply to it pointing out the alteration and showing it should be ‘corruption’. Looking at the preview in my account, it is appearing as the following:
‘I see the NZHerald moderators have been altering peoples links again when they point to things that go against their personal beliefs. The missing part of the link that someone from the Herald has removed should read -c*********-of-peer-review/
Sums up the AGW crowd really, or as Phil Jones would say – ‘hide the decline’. Such a shame that a great newspaper such as the NZ Herald has let their standards slip so far.’
I’ve caught the moderators doing it over & over & have let the editors know repeatedly but they let it continue.
I think I might give up on the NZ Herald. There’s only a tiny handful of deluded AGW believers left as the others have given up, and the drop in the amount of comments there shows that either everyone’s had enough of AGW, or they are sick of the tabloid journalism at the Herald’s sacred alter to climate change. Jeez, the moderators there are starting to resemble John Cook, I’m just wondering how long before they start altering people’s comments as well as the web links they provide.
(To the moderator – Richard C posted something to this thread yesterday and it isn’t appearing. If the ‘older comments’ link is clicked it shows 127 comments, but when the ‘newer comments’ link is clicked it shows 126 comments. The comment is missing in action. Could you please check it out as I’m quite interested to see what it says? Many Thanks.)
[I’ve searched for this but come up empty. There’s nothing caught in the spam trap and nothing awaiting moderation. Any clue to its content? Perhaps Richard C might enlighten us? – RT]
RT, AGC has copied a comment submitted to NZ Herald, not CCG sorry.
AGC, it takes a while for the Herald mods to post up the comments so give it time. It may not be cleared over the weekend but here’s hoping. BTW the comment count is 27 not 127.
I’ve had problems with Herald comments in the past but it turned out to be a an automated correction feature that alters spelling, changes caps e.g. NOAA to noaa and generally stuffs everything up including formatting..
How that feature could change corruption to c********* beats me though but there is 9 * (wild cards?) so either it’s the auto-correction or the Editor was very careful.
My comment has been posted this morning but the question to the Editors as to why the word “corruption” in NZ Climate’s link had been corrupted is deleted and the corruption remains in the link.
They deleted my comment on the changing of the weblink also. Usually they just change 1 character so that the poster doesn’t notice, but now they don’t even try to hide what they’re doing. I think they have a greenie as a moderator or editor, but it only happens some times which suggests that not all their moderators are at it. The thing that gets up my nose is the editor allows it to happen – I’ve sent numerous emails alerting him to the fact. It exposes the decline of the journalistic standards at the NZ Herald – the paper is starting to look like the Guardian or the BBC, and the editorial practices are resembling John Cook’s altering of comments on his scepticalscience.conjob website.
I often wonder whether Gandalf works for the NZ Herald, it wouldn’t surprise me. I’ve been reading the comments for about 5 yrs now & he was there before I started. He lies his ass off & when you back him into a corner he’ll just start back at the beginning of the debate again like nothing happened. I see he’s just said that the ACT party believe the ‘climates been cooling for the last 100 years’. There’s only one thing worse than a lying nutter, & that’s a know-it-all lying nutter.
Hi Richard T. There’s something wrong with the comments on this page. As I mentioned previously a comment wasn’t visible, but when I posted about it it reappeared. Now that both you & Richard C have since posted the comments are disappearing again. I’ve tried both Safari on a Mac & Firefox on Windows but the result is the same. You can delete this comment after you’ve read it if you like.
After I posted my ‘to the moderator’ post at December 3, 2011 at 7:36 am both of the posts by Richard C @ December 3, 2011 at 8:38 & yourself @ December 3, 2011 at 8:48 wouldn’t show. I knew they were there as I could see that you’d both posted in the Latest Comments on the right side of the page. Also when I clicked the Older Comments link the amount of comments would show more (131), but when I clicked back to Newer Comments the last one was my original at December 2, 2011 at 4:11 pm, & the number of comments was back to 127. Having said that your latest one seems ok.
Well, I appreciate your feedback, AGC, and the trouble you’ve gone to, thanks.
Just one puzzling point: at 1:51pm, when you said “the comments are disappearing again”, do you think you were mistaken?
I think the important thing is that the comments are fixed now. We can probably put the strange behaviour earlier down to the fact that the database was confused. I and other posters were updating several things simultaneously and our separate caches were in different states. As long as it’s now well behaved I think I can relax.
If you have no objection within a few hours, I’ll delete this little exchange.
Sorry Richard but it’s done it again. I need to post something to see what you just said. it doesn’t matter so much to me, but I’m wondering if I’m the only one.
Yes, I’m a bit concerned too. But it’s working for me. Just a thought: you must be refreshing the page just to see that there’s a new comment, right? So this advice won’t help. But, to refresh the view, you press F5. You know about that?
I didn’t know about the F5. I’ve seen this sort of thing before but it usually comes right after 30 mins. or so. Hopefully it’s just a temporary glitch. I’ll keep an eye on it for you if you like & let you know if it’s continuing on a longer term.
Damn computers always seem to develop a mind of their own every once in a while.
Right. What I was thinking of was that, instead of waiting that 30 mins or so for the cache to update itself, you might try pressing F5, which forces an immediate refresh. Then you might see the displayed comments match the number of comments reported in the sidebar. Let me know!
Egg gas finding a rotten result for free-range hens
EGGS from caged hens produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions than free range eggs, a new report has found, prompting calls for carbon footprint labelling to be used on all food products in Australia.
A report for the Australian Egg Corporation, which represents most egg farmers, found that free range egg production’s carbon footprint in Australia was about 20 per cent higher than caged production.
The main reason was because free range egg production uses more feed per kilogram of eggs produced than caged egg production, the report, which was half-funded by the federal government, found.
The report also found that egg production had a lower carbon footprint than several European egg studies, mainly due to more efficient grain production in Australia.
It seems that the NZ Guardian (I mean Herald) now just removes your ability to comment on climate change articles if you don’t tow the pro AGW line. After having a few comments published my ability to comment has disappeared – the button to ‘ADD’ comment is non existent whilst other people are still commenting. I can still comment on other articles, just not the Jim Hopkins one:
Try a different browser, unplug the modem to get an IP refresh, clear the cookies, but I don’t believe anyone at Das Herald is smart enough to block you.
Tried a different browser on another computer with Windows instead of Mac OS X with the same result. I can comment on other articles but not this one, even though I’ve commented already about 4 times (maybe they have a limit). I might be paranoid, but I’ve caught them altering web links a good 10 times previously in comments (very unlikely to be automated) & here we have the comments box disappearing when I start skewering the greenies. The worst part is that it looks like I’ve run away from their counterarguments dammit, at the hands of that imbecile Gandalf no less.
I have to wonder what some of you might be doing wrong. I’ve just had a quick count on the first few screens of comments on Jim’s article and noticed eight comments from me. I think there are more, but they were all published as I submitted them. They always took some hours to appear, but they don’t appear to have been interfered with in any way, nor has my ability to create new comments been restricted. I want to check that, but it’ll take until tomorrow. I’ve got more enjoyable things to do!
Unified Theory of Climate
Posted on December 29, 2011 by Anthony Watts
This finding leads to a new and very different paradigm of climate controls. Results from our research are combined with those from other studies to propose a new Unified Theory of Climate, which explains a number of phenomena that the current theory fails to explain. Implications of the new paradigm for predicting future climate trends are briefly discussed.
This idea that the Greenhouse effect doesn’t exist at all has been propositioned here and elsewhere by Harry Dale Huffman (maybe not exactly as in this paper)
This certainly would completely blow apart the CO2 AGW theory.
The new idea here is comparing other planets to earth in terms of atmosphere, pressure, TOA temp, surface temp and GHG levels. The overall finding is that atmosphere mass and pressure is a big driver of climate. It certainly is sparking some debate, including a responding article contending that Ned Nikolov and Karl Zeller confuse cause with effect.
The Year That Winter Forgot: Is It Climate Change?
By Bryan Walsh Monday, Jan. 09, 2012
And then there’s the less quantifiable, more lyrical value of winter — a cold, frozen, crystalline season that’s beautiful and punishing all at once. As the British poet Anne Bradstreet said, “If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant.” Climate change disrupts the rhythm of the seasons, that regular passage of time and temperature we assumed was fixed. It turns out we may be wrong, and winter as we know it could one day be a season of the past. As we keep altering the climate, who can tell what else might follow it into unplanned obsolescence.
Bill Gates backs climate scientists lobbying for large-scale geoengineering
A small group of leading climate scientists, financially supported by billionaires including Bill Gates, are lobbying governments and international bodies to back experiments into manipulating the climate on a global scale to avoid catastrophic climate change.
The scientists, who advocate geoengineering methods such as spraying millions of tonnes of reflective particles of sulphur dioxide 30 miles above earth, argue that a “plan B” for climate change will be needed if the UN and politicians cannot agree to making the necessary cuts in greenhouse gases, and say the US government and others should pay for a major programme of international research.
Anna Rose believes the truth of climate change has been manipulated by vested interests.
…
For 29-year-old Rose, who spent a month working on a recent TV documentary with former Liberal senator Nick Minchin, human-generated climate change is a basic truth that has been deliberately tangled by vested interests.
“There has been a massive campaign of misinformation and confusion and doubt,” she says. “But there are three pretty simple facts. One, greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere; two, humans have emitted these gases since the industrial revolution; three, since then the world has warmed.
”Our carbon dioxide levels are 40 per cent higher than they were before the Industrial Revolution and that has led to a rise of 0.8 degree centigrade. That can seem small until you realise it is a global average. For example, Arctic temperatures have risen six degrees.”
… Rose’s other message is on rising seas. “At the moment, Australia is on track for at least a one-metre rise by 2100. We met the chief oceanographer of the US Navy and he said they are planning for at least a metre. In NSW alone, that would destroy or damage between 40,000 and 60,000 homes, 250 kilometres of highway and 1200 commercial enterprises. When you look at the risks, it would be irresponsible to ignore the science.”
Unmitigated alarmist drivel on TV One news last night. 1:44 second clip, using all the usual pictures of polar bears, hurricanes, twisters, cracked drought-affected ground. No actual statistical trends showing that the extreme weather events are getting worse, just the bald claim. Viewer discretion is advised – those easily enraged should first take several valium.
He [university Vice-Chancellor Edward Acton] said he hoped the announcement would “draw a line under the stressful events of the last two and half years.”
No Ed sorry, there’s a bit more of that to endure yet.
More broadly, the Climate Reality Project’s goal is to forge connections between nongovernmental organizations working on climate change issues around the globe with individuals to spread awareness, Ms. Fox said in an interview. “There are something like two million environmental N.G.O.’s around the world working on climate,” she said. “We actually believe we have the numbers — but we don’t have the mass.”
She suggested that social media could create that mass: “we actually can find each other.”
Reuters are spinning a tricky news story with a little help from some warmists but they’ve been forced to eat a plate of crow in doing so:-
Warming has slowed, however, not only by comparison with 1998 but in the years since then. The new modelling from Britain’s Hadley Centre, which forecasts global average temperatures to 2017, suggests the present decade may turn out to be no hotter than the last one.
That is something of a bombshell to the previous climate narrative of inexorable temperature rises decade by decade.
Note the use of the word “slowed”. Their headline is also titled ‘Slowing global warming no cause for complacency’. No warming is to be characterized as “slowing’ or “slowed” when there’s crow in the diet – it helps digestion.
There’s a bunch of “help explain” rubbish in the rest of the article but at least the UKMO/HadCRUT revision issue and “slowed” warming is being aired in the MSM, albeit cloaked in warmist vernacular.
“We all get things wrong, and by definition futurology is a risky business. But behind all this lies something much more pernicious than a revised decadal forecast. The problem is not the difficulty of predicting something as chaotic as the Earth’s climate, but the almost Stalinist way the Green Establishment tries to stifle dissent.
There is, for example, the odious term ‘denier’. This is applied to anyone who questions the new orthodoxy about global warming. It doesn’t matter if one states that yes, CO2 does warm the planet, but the critical issues we need to address are how fast and how much: if one doesn’t anticipate catastrophe, one must be vilified, and equated with those who deny the Holocaust.
Yet the real deniers are those who don’t just claim that the pause is insignificant, but that it doesn’t exist at all. Such deniers also still insist that the ‘science is settled’. The truth is that the unexpected pause has triggered a new spate of research, in which many supposed ‘consensus’ conclusions are being questioned.”
In short, the Met Office lied repeatedly to do down a journalist [David Rose, Mail on Sunday] who had uttered the inconvenient truth that there had been no global warming for at least 15 years.
The Fraud Act 2000 defines the serious imprisonable offence of fraud as dishonestly making an express or implied representation that the offender knows is or may be untrue or misleading, intending to gain money or other property (here, grant funding) or to cause loss or risk of loss to another ($30 billion a year of unnecessary “green” taxes, fees and charges to the British public).
So I reported the Met Office to the Serious Fraud Office, which has a specific remit to deal with frauds that involve large sums (here, tens of billions) and organized crime (here, that appreciable fraction of the academic and scientific community that has been telling similar porkies.
Checked to see if the comment was posted today (Tuesday) only to be greeted with “Debate on this article is now closed.” Forgot to to keep a copy unfortunately. I note other comments were posted today (Tuesday) but not mine.
Klimawandel: Forscher rätseln über Stillstand bei Erderwärmung
Von Axel Bojanowski
Wie stark erwärmt sich unser Klima wirklich? Nasa-Forscher belegen, dass der Temperaturanstieg seit 15 Jahren eine Pause macht. Gleichzeitig gibt es Indizien dafür, dass sich das Problem verlagert: Die Umwelt könnte sich vorläufig an ganz anderer Stelle erhitzen.
Researchers Puzzled About Global Warming Standstill
by Axel Bojanowski,
How dramatically is global warming really? NASA researchers have shown that the temperature rise has taken a break for 15 years. There are plenty of plausible explanations for why global warming has stalled. However, the number of guesses also shows how little the climate is understood.
Doesn’t matter how you say it, there’s still some explaining to be done. This however (also Hansen, Sato and Ruedy’s line) sticks in my craw:-
“Meteorologists interpret that 2011 and 2012 were the warmest La Niña years since records began as a sign of progressive warming.”
Yeah right. There was only one La Niña event overlapping both 2011 and 2012 but 2012 also had a complete El Niño event. The previous 3 La Niña’s don’t show a rising trend either.
“In other words, climate change is very, very complicated. Greenhouse gases emitted by burning fossil fuels are just one of many factors that affect the climate. Other factors – ocean temperatures, soot, clouds, solar radiation etc. – turn out to be a lot more important than we thought and aren’t so easily captured by computer models.”
* by: GRAHAM LLOYD, ENVIRONMENT EDITOR
* From: The Australian
* February 02, 2013 12:00AM
THE world’s great forests have long been recognised as the lungs of the earth, but the science establishment has been rocked by claims that trees may also be the heart of its climate.
Not only do trees fix carbon and produce oxygen; a new and controversial paper says they collectively unleash forces powerful enough to drive global wind patterns and are a core feature in the circulation of the climate system.
If the theory proves correct, the peer-reviewed international paper co-authored by Australian scientist Douglas Sheil will overturn two centuries of conventional wisdom about what makes wind. And it will undermine key principles of every model on which climate predictions are based.
The paper, Where do winds come from? A new theory on how water vapour condensation influences atmospheric pressure and dynamics, is not designed to challenge the orthodox view on climate science. But Sheil, a professor of forest ecology and conservation at Southern Cross University’s School of Environment, Science and Engineering, says he is not surprised that is how the paper has been received internationally.
Boiled down, he says, bad science is protecting shoddy climate models.
Links to the paper and other commentary at JN, JC and New Scientist.
Makarieva, A. M., Gorshkov, V. G., Sheil, D., Nobre, A. D., and Li, B.-L.: Where do winds come from? A new theory on how water vapor condensation influences atmospheric pressure and dynamics,
Climate change protesters who staged a seven day sit-in at a Nottinghamshire power station claim they are being sued for about £5m by the facility’s owners.
[…]
A statement on the No Dash for Gas website reads: “EDF has launched a civil claim for damages against the group and associated activists for costs the company claims to have incurred, a figure it puts at £5m.
“Should the claim succeed, several of the campaigners face losing their homes, and all could face bankruptcy or be forced to pay a percentage of their salaries to EDF for decades to come
The Great Green Con no. 1: The hard proof that finally shows global warming forecasts that are costing you billions were WRONG all along
By David Rose
The graph on this page blows apart the ‘scientific basis’ for Britain reshaping its entire economy and spending billions in taxes and subsidies in order to cut emissions of greenhouse gases. These moves have already added £100 a year to household energy bills.
“Hawkins’s comparison shows global temperatures are tracking the bottom of the range in which 90 per cent of the model simulations lie. In other words, global temperatures are, broadly speaking, represented by a model simulation that is cooler than about 90% of the CMIP5 model runs.
More simply, most of the models predict warmer temperatures than we’ve seen in the past decade.”
The dimwits at Carbon Brief probably don’t realize that John Christy has taken his version of that graph (with the actual runs, not just the range) to the US Congress long ago – twice.
And the full ensemble “average” is spurious anyway for assigning uncertainty. Lucia:-
“I still don’t know why you and RC don’t show color for each model when making your error bands so people can *see* that spread isn’t “weather”.
I’m under the impression Gavin’s “point” is that we shouldn’t care the spread isn’t “weather” because — for some mysterious reason– we are only supposed to care whether the observations fall inside the larger-than-weather spread of all weather + structural uncertainty of forecast.
But that would be a rather bizarre limitation since what we ought to want to know is what range of forecasts are consistent with *earth weather* not merely “does trend fall inside spread of all models in all weather”. It does — because the models with the lowest projected warming aren’t inconsistent with the data.
It’s only the ones with the fastest projected warming that are inconsistent with the data. That is: Only a subset of models that we all anticipate will be accepted for inclusion in the ensemble to of the AR5 can be diagnosed as “wrong” in the sense that their projections of over all warming are inconsistent with observed warming. ”
The “wrong” subset can be tossed in my view, they are utterly useless. I don’t know why anyone even considers them – let alone determines uncertainty by including them.
Twenty-year hiatus in rising temperatures has climate scientists puzzled
* by: Graham Lloyd, Environment Editor
* From: The Australian
* March 30, 2013 12:00AM
DEBATE about the reality of a two-decade pause in global warming and what it means has made its way from the sceptical fringe to the mainstream.
In a lengthy article this week, The Economist magazine said if climate scientists were credit-rating agencies, then climate sensitivity – the way climate reacts to changes in carbon-dioxide levels – would be on negative watch but not yet downgraded.
Another paper published by leading climate scientist James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, says the lower than expected temperature rise between 2000 and the present could be explained by increased emissions from burning coal.
For Hansen the pause is a fact, but it’s good news that probably won’t last.
International Panel on Climate Change chairman Rajendra Pachauri recently told The Weekend Australian the hiatus would have to last 30 to 40 years “at least” to break the long-term warming
But the fact that global surface temperatures have not followed the expected global warming pattern is now widely accepted.
Research by Ed Hawkins of University of Reading shows surface temperatures since 2005 are already at the low end of the range projections derived from 20 climate models and if they remain flat, they will fall outside the models’ range within a few years.
“The global temperature standstill shows that climate models are diverging from observations,” says David Whitehouse of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
“If we have not passed it already, we are on the threshold of global observations becoming incompatible with the consensus theory of climate change,” he says.
Whitehouse argues that whatever has happened to make temperatures remain constant requires an explanation because the pause in temperature rise has occurred despite a sharp increase in global carbon emissions.
The Economist says the world has added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010, about one-quarter of all the carbon dioxide put there by humans since 1750. This mismatch between rising greenhouse gas emissions and not-rising temperatures is among the biggest puzzles in climate science just now, The Economist article says.
[…]
According to The Economist, “given the hiatus in warming and all the new evidence, a small reduction in estimates of climate sensitivity would seem to be justified.”
he climate may be heating up less in response to greenhouse-gas emissions than was once thought. But that does not mean the problem is going away
Mar 30th 2013 |From the print edition The Economist
OVER the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar. The world added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all the CO₂ put there by humanity since 1750. And yet, as James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, observes, “the five-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade.”
“Besides, a broader problem remains: on present policies, atmospheric CO2 levels will not stop rising when they reach the doubling point, but go on soaring past it – meaning that the world will still reach the danger point, even if more slowly.”
Unless of course the rising CO2 levels are primarily a natural lagged effect of solar-driven rising temperature rather than being due to fossil fuel emissions (the lessor factor by far) in which case CO2 will not “go on soaring” when temperatures fall as they inevitably will now solar input is falling.
(Reuters) – Scientists are struggling to explain a slowdown in climate change that has exposed gaps in their understanding and defies a rise in global greenhouse gas emissions.
UN PANEL SEEKS EXPLANATION
A rapid rise in global temperatures in the 1980s and 1990s – when clean air laws in developed nations cut pollution and made sunshine stronger at the earth’s surface – made for a compelling argument that human emissions were to blame.
The IPCC will seek to explain the current pause in a report to be released in three parts from late 2013 as the main scientific roadmap for governments in shifting from fossil fuels towards renewable energies such as solar or wind power, the panel’s chairman Rajendra Pachauri said.
The above Reuters article is propagating (or whatever the news term is for “has legs”):-
Warming slowdown puzzles scientists
Oslo – Scientists are struggling to explain a slowdown in climate change that has exposed gaps in their understanding and defies a rise in global greenhouse gas emissions.
‘Climate change may have little impact on tropical lizards’
Eureka! Science News – 17 hours ago
A new Dartmouth College study finds human-caused climate change may have little impact on many species of tropical lizards, contradicting a host of recent studies that predict their widespread extinction in a rapidly warming planet.
‘Want climate resistant oysters, or climate “Justice”? The ARC has millions to help. But no money for skeptics.’
Guest Post: Dr Roberto Soria
“I counted at least 50 winning projects with the magic words “climate change” or greenhouse gas emission in them (compared with about 10 astronomy projects, and 19 cancer research projects, for example). “Climate change” projects raked up $16 million in the Discovery category alone.”
“There’s one that promises to study how oysters can be made resilient to climate change: here’s $285,000 coming their way”
‘One could reasonably argue that lack of evidence, one way or the other, is no reason for complacency.
I will concede that.’
We can imagine all sorts of disaster scenarios such as the sky falling on our heads, but without evidence or even a strong possibility of them actually happening, what’s the point in doing anything other than keeping an eye on the data? Shoveling truckloads of money down the dunny on the unlikely off chance of a ‘what if’ bit of unfounded paranoia is nothing more than a vast waste of money.
You’ve spotted the key, Magoo, because that’s not being complacent. Complacency stops us from seeing what’s actually happening and is never a good idea, even when there seems to be no evidence. So Chris’ “concession” to what is simply good sense can raise a smile.
Oh, and I noticed your remark about the Herald closing comments so I posted the article here, thanks.
Anyone else have a problem with this Bloomberg reporting?
‘Globe warms at unprecedented rate, WMO report says’
The planet has warmed faster since the turn of the century than ever recorded, almost doubling the pace of sea-level increase and causing a 20-fold jump in heat-related deaths, the United Nations said.
“The decadal rate of increase between 1991-2000 and 2001-2010 was unprecedented,” WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said in a statement. “Rising concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases are changing our climate, with far-reaching implications for our environment and our oceans.”
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.
‘And now it’s global COOLING! Record return of Arctic ice cap as it grows by 60% in a year’
* Almost a million more square miles of ocean covered with ice than in 2012
* BBC reported in 2007 global warming would leave Arctic ice-free in summer by 2013
* Publication of UN climate change report suggesting global warming caused by humans pushed back to later this month
* The extremely low Arctic sea ice extent in summer 2012 resulted primarily from the melting of younger, thin ice from a warmed atmosphere and ocean. This event cannot be explained by natural variability alone. Summer Arctic sea ice extent will continue to decrease in the future, and is expected to be largely absent by mid-century.
Yes, what “cannot be explained by natural variability alone” will probably be explained by natural variability…..err…..alone.
Meanwhile over at SkS, the pause is “more accurately” the slowdown:
“So, what about the whole current debate about global warming having “ended” or at least “slowed down” over the past decade-and-a-half? The whole issue of the warming “pause” or, more accurately, slow-down, and its practical implications and significance will be subjects of several upcoming Yale Forum postings…”
And a Dr Chris Brierley has got the huff and resigned from the editorial board of the journal Climate because it published Akasofu’s paper “On the present halting of global warming”:
>’….ignorance of recent peer-reviewed papers evidently”
Ignorance now displaced I see (well maybe):
David Lewis September 7, 2013 at 4:27 am
I don’t think it is useful to dispute whether there is discussion in the literature about something generally described as a “hiatus, pause or slowdown in warming”. It is not some “denier-promulgated myth”.
Solomon wrote “the trend in global surface temperatures has been nearly flat since the late 1990s despite continuing increases in the forcing…”, in 2010. Hansen disputed this in 2010, saying it “is not supported by our data”, but by 2013 even Hansen is writing about “the standstill of global temperature in the past decade”. Trenberth is one of many who use the word “hiatus”, eg. in this recent NPR interview
“Hiatus” seems to be a hot topic. A recent study used the word “hiatus” in its title. ScienceNews, and Nature magazine both published reports about it. i.e. saying it “adds to mounting evidence that cooling in the tropical Pacific is the cause of the global warming hiatus….”
The study itself states that the fact that “the annual mean global temperature has not risen in the twenty first century” is “challenging the prevailing view that anthropogenic forcing causes climate warming”.
‘Global warming ‘hiatus’ puts climate change scientists on the spot’
“Since just before the start of the 21st century, the Earth’s average global surface temperature has failed to rise despite soaring levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases and years of dire warnings from environmental advocates.”
Guardian scribe can’t cope with complex scientific arguments unseating his cognitive faculties:
“How fear of bias dominates the climate change debate”
Climate sceptics say they want science free of politics, yet their campaigning frames discussion
So…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/oct/15/climate-change-bias-debate
“we should actively avoid letting fringe ideological convictions frame public discussions of climate change science”
As a MMCC sceptic – couldn’t agree more
NZ Herald ratifies outrageous rant
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2010/09/nz-herald-ratifies-outrageous-rant/
Hot Topic semi-science now in the Herald
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2010/09/hot-topic-semi-science-now-in-the-herald/
Andy says:
October 26, 2010 at 8:48 am
Gareth Renowden is starting a new radio show called “The Climate Show”
http://hot-topic.co.nz/the-climate-show-beta-1/
Climate change is no threat-Czech president
Also see:
Vaclav Klaus’s recent speech in London:
The Climate Change Doctrine is Part of Environmentalism, Not of Science
Thank heavens for Bob Carter
The Australian professor deserves thanks and praise for repudiating the heretic-hunting climate orthodoxy
Article in The Spectator by Vaclav Klaus,
http://www.spectator.co.uk/australia/6392618/thank-heavens-for-bob-carter.thtml
Video of Vaclav Klaus’s London speech at GWPF now available here:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/10/29/vaclav-klaus-video.html
Rodney Hide (NZ Minister) talking to Alan Jones (Aust radio personality) about their ETS
http://www.2gb.com/index2.php?option=com_newsmanager&task=view&id=7157
Aust Prof Ian Plimer (geologist) talks with Alan Jones (Aust radio personality)
http://www.2gb.com/index2.php?option=com_newsmanager&task=view&id=7142
I realise this site intends to have a great reference library but I do miss conversing with people like you can do at Jo Nova or WUWT or Climate Audit where there is one or two topical items and people comment on it; News doesn’t fit it on this site because there’s too much other reference stuff happening; well; that probably doesn’t fit this site and there are other sites where that can happen but I think if all you are doing is building a reference library then from a followers point of view that’s a bit boring
There’s a forum at Open Thread to sound off – we’ll talk.
Also Housekeeping if you want to get Richard T’s attention.
You don’t have to visit News if it’s not your thing.
Should have been Richard C (NZ) not THREAD
sorry, can’t find the we’ll talk open thread
but it’s there I’m sure
I don’t mind visiting any forum but aren’t the threads mainly a reference library (so far as I can ascertain)
Don’t worry about me Richard; I just like to have a chat and if there’s nowhere to do that doesn’t matter
Just click on the Red “OPEN THREADS” button at the top of any page.
Say something and we’ll see it here (or RSS or somewhere):
Latest comments
* Richard C (NZ) on News
* Richard C (NZ) on Disproving AGW
* Andy on News
* val majkus on News (we know where you are)
Sorry, didn’t realize Open Threads comments were closed.
I suggest “Global Warming” instead
But talking about News (Replying to a thread) is what it’s all about.
And any other thread too.
Oops
“Open threads” comments are closed.
“Open threads as promised” comments are open
Rodney Hide’s speech to introduce Bob Carter’s book
http://www.act.org.nz/news/speech-to-launch-professor-bob-carters-new-book-climate-the-counter-consensus
I liked this bit:
My scepticism saw our previous Prime Minister, Helen Clark, constantly labelling me a denier. It rankled that she could dodge legitimate Parliamentary questions by such a cheap political ruse. But Bob now has this to say about the Helen Clark’s of the world:
“They deny that the Earth’s climate is cooling; they deny that the climate models on which their global warming policies are based are worthless as predictive tools; they deny that the IPCC and its advice are flawed beyond repair; they deny that the Copenhagen Conference was a failure; they deny that carbon dioxide is an environmental benefice; they deny that Climategate is any more than an isolated, minor squabble among a few climate research cognoscenti; they deny that they have allowed their young people to be educationally brainwashed about global warming; they deny that the science research community has been corrupted by their agenda-driven funding requirements; they deny that government science-related organizations, at their behest, have been acting as propagandists for eco-evangelistic causes; they deny that windfarms and solar power are environmentally damaging and uneconomic for baseload power generation; they continue to strive to deny public voice to independent scientific viewpoints on climate change; and, above all, they deny that they are wrong in their continued assertions that human-caused global warming is an identified and deadly danger.”
h/t Hot Topic
Thanks, Rodney and Bob – and thank you Hot Topic, your efforts in spreading the message are much appreciated here at CCG.
I think Bob Carter is at work here as Bob C
Check out # 163
No that’s not Prof Carter; he says in a reply to ‘oh dear’ on that page ‘in this you are correct I’m not bob carter’ and that poster has denied that before on that blog
Yes – well spotted Val.
There’s a Bob D at CCG too
My problem:
Richard S. Cumming
Richard S Courtney (I think I’ll leave the full name to this prominent person at present though)
Hmmm …. Richard S Cumming is a great name – use it with pride
Yes, but in my case, pride will probably come before a fall !
Climate Conversations v Hot Topic
Climate Conversations ahead of Hot Topic in Alexa Traffic Stats – Search Visits (percent) since the Open Threads system was enacted
Vaclav Klaus’s recent speech in London:
The Climate Change Doctrine is Part of Environmentalism, Not of Science
http://thegwpf.org/news/1726-president-vaclav-klaus-inaugural-annual-gwpf-lecture.html
The video of the speech will be available later in the week
Andy that’s a great read; it’s also up at WUWT and there’s some great footnotes linking to Prof Carter’s writings published in Quadrant Online;
I liked this lead in
We should keep saying very loudly that the current debate about global warming –and I agree with the Australian paleoclimatologist Prof. Carter that we should always speak about “dangerous human caused global warming” because it is not “warming per se that we are concerned with”[1] – is in its substance not part of the scientific discourse about the relative role of a myriad of factors influencing swings in global temperature but part of public policy debate about man and society. As R. M. Carter stresses in his recent book, “the global warming issue long ago ceased being a scientific problem.”[2]
So how about it Richard – amend the thread name to ‘dangerous human caused global warming’
Klaus doesn’t sound like a politician.
He sounds like a man who knows what he is talking about, and has lived through the kind of regime the warmists would impose on us.
I agree Andy; here’s one of my favourite ‘thinkers’ on the web
Charles R. Anderson – he’s a materials physicist and this link is to one of to me his interesting articles ‘Moon effect’
http://objectivistindividualist.blogspot.com/2010/06/moon-effect-called-greenhouse-effect-on.html
(quoting from selected parts)
It is commonly claimed that the Earth can be treated as a black body which is in equilibrium with the incoming radiation of the sun and the outgoing radiation into space from the black body Earth. Calculations based on this simple model indicate the Earth has an average temperature 33C warmer than it should be. It is said to be this much warmer due to its atmosphere, in particular due to water vapor primarily and other greenhouse gases such as CO2 secondarily.
…
Because the Earth has an atmosphere and because it has oceans over 70% of its surface and the oceans retain huge reservoirs of heat, the variation in temperature throughout a day is much less on Earth than on the moon. But, there is still a rise in the average temperature due to heat convection on land, in the oceans, and in the atmosphere. Heat convection in 3-dimensions creates an effect that looks like the greenhouse effect. Similar effects are observed for all of the planets.
It appears that if any “greenhouse effect” occurs due to CO2 in our atmosphere, that effect is very small compared to the 3-dimensional effects of distributed heat with convection heat transfer. That this is so has long been known by NASA…’
and there’s a link in his article to another paper
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/pdf/Greenhouse_Effect_on_the_Moon.pdf
Val, this is great, I’ll link this in “Oceans and Heat”
Richard please read my reply to Andy above; the last line is addresssed to you
So how about it Richard – amend the thread name to ‘dangerous human caused global warming’
Yes, I saw that Val, but only Richard Treadgold is able to do that.
Remember though, that Richard T did have a similar category but changed to the present category structure.
For me personally, Global Warming ranks second to last, just above Ocean Acidification.
i.e. Neither of those two big scary stories have any basis, so let’s not give substance and credence to them by giving them prominence.
Hence “Disproving AGW” is at the top of my priorities.
Earliest snowfall in Bergen, Norway in 37 years
http://www.bt.no/vaer/Tidligste-snoefall-paa-37-aar-i-Bergen-1178696.html
(in Norwegian)
h/t Richard North at http://eureferendum.blogspot.com
I’ll duplicate this under “Europe”
Google 2.4% Rate Shows How $60 Billion Lost to Tax Loopholes
Gave 75% of contribs to Democrats. (Al Gore is/was an advisor).
i.e. If your Google “climate science” News section has a warm bias, go to Climate Depot.
After news of Google tax dodges, Obama raises money with Google execs
Google’s $3.1 billion tax haven loophole – smh
Warmists at Work
See “Controversy and scandal”
Climategate Google Suggest
Biased BBC (h/t Richard North)
I’m getting bored with keeping track of BBC greenie/environment/climate alarmism nonsense – there are so many stories, so much rubbish, so many inane, insane claims, that each report I file here is looking and sounding like more of the same. Black, Harrabin (though he has been keeping a low profile of late) Kinver & co seem to be under instructions to provide a torrent of one-sided propaganda, so much so that I have no doubt that this is being coordinated. They are like the Terminator androids, capable of self-repairing and continuing with their pre-programmed, lunatic mission no matter what happens.
http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2010/10/help-more-of-same.html
Gareth Renowden is starting a new radio show called “The Climate Show”
http://hot-topic.co.nz/the-climate-show-beta-1/
See also Hot Topic semi-science now in the Herald
Scafetta on 60 year climate oscillations
George Taylor, former Oregon State climatologist writes:
Nicola Scafetta has published the most decisive indictment of GCM’s I’ve ever read in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics. His analysis is purely phenomenological, but he claims that over half of the warming observed since 1975 can be tied to 20 and 60-year climate oscillations driven by the 12 and 30-year orbital periods of Jupiter and Saturn, through their gravitational influence on the Sun, which in turn modulates cosmic radiation.
If he’s correct, then all GCM’s are massively in error because they fail to show any of the observed oscillations.
See “Controversy and scandal”
Breaking News! The earth is warming! No wait, it’s cooling! No wait . . .
A New Kind of Crime Against Humanity?: The Fossil Fuel Industry’s Disinformation Campaign On Climate Change
http://rockblogs.psu.edu/climate/2010/10/a-new-kind-of-vicious-crime-against-humanity-the-fossil-fuel-industrys-disinformation-campaign-on-cl.html
Penn State University – where have we heard that name before?
This should be restated “A New Kind of Crime Against Humanity?: The Penn State University’s Disinformation Campaign On The Fossil Fuel Industry.”
What a load of baloney from Donald A. Brown, Associate Professor,
Environmental Ethics, Science, and Law.
“Given that there are thousands of peer-reviewed scientific studies that support the consensus view on the dangers of continuing to emit increasing levels of greenhouse gases,”
[But not one that conclusively supports the underlying AGW hypothesis.]
“that Academy of Sciences around the world have issued statements in support of the consensus view articulated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ,”
[So what?]
“there are virtually no peer-reviewed scientific articles that prove beyond reasonable doubt that observed warming is naturally caused”
[Really?]
Donald A. Brown should visit Climate Conversations starting at:
“Climate Science”
800 peer reviewed papers to deny
Then moving on to:
“IPCC Scince”
Peer-Reviewed Studies: Documenting The Evidence That Disproves The IPCC Global Warming Science – C3
And before leaving, a check in to:
“Climate Science”
CLIMATE DRIVER HYPOTHESES
If he hasn’t figured it out by then, there’s always the NIPCC to provide a counter to IPCC “science”.
Frozen Britain braves coldest October night for 17 years
Parts of Britain have suffered their coldest October night for 17 years, with temperatures plummeting to -6.6C, reports the Daily Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/8085946/Frozen-Britain-braves-coldest-October-night-for-17-years.html
UK Climate sceptics launch campaign to overturn green targets
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/8088204/Climate-sceptics-launch-campaign-to-overturn-green-targets.html
Climate change challenge for computer gamers
Fate of the World, a new strategy game launched on Tuesday, could reach new audiences, say green campaigners
Arriving on PCs on Tuesday and Macs shortly after, the British-made Fate of the World puts players at the helm of a future World Trade Organisation-style environmental body with a task of saving the world by cutting carbon emissions or damning it by letting soaring temperatures wreak havoc through floods, droughts and fires.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/oct/31/climate-change-computer-game
[Andy] I wonder if there’s a Red Button hack that allows you to blow up “climate deniers” ?
Geoengineering sparks international ban, first-ever congressional report
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 30, 2010
A senior House Democrat from Tennessee issued the first congressional report on geoengineering Friday, just as delegates from 193 nations approved a ban on such research under a global biodiversity treaty.
The debate over whether humans should explore ways to manipulate the climate has taken on increased urgency over the past year, as efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming have encountered political roadblocks in the United States and elsewhere.
The measure adopted under the Convention on Biological Diversity, which recently concluded in Nagoya, Japan, states “that no climate-related geo-engineering activities that may affect biodiversity take place, until there is an adequate scientific basis on which to justify such activities and appropriate consideration of the associated risks for the environment and biodiversity and associated social, economic and cultural impacts, with the exception of small-scale scientific research studies” under controlled circumstances.
Keep coal in the hole, or green efforts will remain futile
By Jeanette Fitzsimons
5:30 AM Tuesday Nov 2, 2010 – NZ Herald
For 35 years I have been wrong about how to prevent climate change. It’s time I confessed.
For 35 years I have worked to improve energy efficiency – insulating homes, efficiency standards for appliances, better light bulbs, fuel-economy standards for cars and energy-saving technologies in industry and farming.
The assumption was that this would result in less fossil fuel being burned and less carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere. Well, it doesn’t.
For 35 years I have promoted renewable energy – solar water heating, solar electricity, wind power, log and pellet burners, bio-gas – assuming that these would result in less fossil fuel being burned and less carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere. Well, they don’t.
We would be stupid not to make those changes, which achieve cost savings, health benefits, warmer homes, jobs, more affordable energy, more profitable businesses and a stronger economy. But to protect the climate, we have to change tack. I’m changing tack.
[Fitzsimons cites Hansen and “Storms of My Grandchildren”]
Nasa climate scientist James Hansen has calculated how much more fossil fuel we could afford to use if we were to get back to 350 parts per million of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere: the level that he calculates will allow climate to stabilise.
His recipe, set out in his book Storms of My Grandchildren, published last year, allows us to use all the conventional oil (though not tar sands, shale or oil from extreme environments like that of the Southern Ocean) but coal must be phased out completely by 2030, starting now.
‘High Priestess of Global Warming’ No More! Former Warmist Judith Curry Admits To Being ‘Duped Into Supporting IPCC’
Judith Curry
Climate etc
Oct 26, 2010
I’m having another “Alice down the rabbit hole” moment, in response to the Scientific American article, the explication of the article by its author Michael Lemonick, Scientific American’s survey on whether I am a dupe or a peacemaker, and the numerous discussions in blogosphere. My first such moment was in 2005 in response to the media attention associated with the hurricane wars, which was described in a Q&A with Keith Kloor at collide-a-scape. While I really want to make this blog about the science and not about personalities (and especially not about me), this article deserves a response.
The title of the article itself is rather astonishing. The Wikipedia defines heresy as: “Heresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma.” The definition of dogma is “Dogma is the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, ideology or any kind of organization: it is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted, or diverged from.” Use of the word “heretic” by Lemonick implies general acceptance by the “insiders” of the IPCC as dogma. If the IPCC is dogma, then count me in as a heretic. The story should not be about me, but about how and why the IPCC became dogma.
Why the United Nations (UN) climate change talks are now largely irrelevant
writes Louise Gray in the Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/8105844/Why-the-United-Nations-UN-climate-change-talks-are-now-largely-irrelevant.html
As Richard North says, blimey!
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/11/blimey.html
$52 million Bering Sea global warming project hit by three coldest years on record
Via Tom Nelson:
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2010/11/funny-stuff-52-million-bering-sea.html
Quentin F says:
November 4, 2010 at 6:01 pm
Dont worry about the NZ temp record for what its worth ..or isnt..:D
Mag reversal coming..increased volcanism..usually precedes the next ice-age.
http://iceagenow.com/Troubling_Global_Volcanic_Activity_on_the_Rise.htm
A stormy forecast for climate change reporting
Fresh from a sabbatical studying climate change reporting at the University of Oxford, the ABC’s Margot O’Neill considers whether or not the media has done a good job.
WHATEVER HAPPENED to climate change? This time last year climate change was a hot topic regularly appearing in news bulletins and on front pages. Phrases such as “the future of humanity could be at stake” were quoted, celebrities marshalled and 4,000 journalists prepared to descend on the UN climate change summit in Copenhagen. Apparently humanity’s future is now secure… or so it might seem given the paucity of journalism devoted to the issue in the mainstream media.
Where did all the climate change stories go? “The [programmers] are against it because it loses ratings,” says a senior BBC journalist. “The wave [of public interest] has gone. There is climate change fatigue. That is why I am not [reporting] it now.”
http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2010/11/03/3056199.htm
Andy, this is a VERY revealing article re MSM Journalism having a similar epiphany to Dr Judith Curry.
So it turns out that there may not have been a conspiracy of silence on Climategate – they just missed the story.
I have to agree with this:-
“A BBC correspondent said it is arguable that journalists need qualifications in science, politics and economics to straddle the demands of climate change reporting.”
I’ve got part quals in Engineering Science (Int NZCE Mech), strong in thermodynamics and heat, and NZ Dip Bus, strong in Economics, plenty of IT plus corporate energy research and I still struggle to assimilate the directions, strengths and weaknesses of the whole climate change – climate science thing.
Anyone who is just going by Executive Summary has not got a clue. I would also add to the BBC guy’s skill-set an ability to think critically. It is so easy to be misled by group-think.
I note that in “Overconfidence in IPCC’s detection and attribution. Part II”, Judith Curry says this:-
“Hard to imagine that this is taking three parts, each of which exceeds 2000 words. I have developed brain strain this week from trying to sort through all this; Part II is admittedly not my best writing but I think I have the arguments straight.”
The dearth of comprehensive MSM climate science reporting is the result of all the above and more but it comes down to – not enough “brain strain”.
There was a New Zealand /Australia Climate Forum held in Hobart Au on 14/10/10
Does anyone know where I could get a copy of any papers presented by the BOM Au
I understand there was a paper; I’ve checked in the usual sites
Out of my zone at the moment, Val.
From the Daily Telegraph:
Binding climate change deal is impossible after Barack Obama’s election defeat, says John Prescott
Barack Obama’s setback in the US mid-term elections has killed of any hope of securing a legally binding global climate change deal, John Prescott has said.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8109388/Binding-climate-change-deal-is-impossible-after-Barack-Obamas-election-defeat-says-John-Prescott.html
and Richard North’s comments on this:
The big problem now is to get through to the idiot politicians, to undo some of the damage they and their predecessors have done. That is going to be difficult. We still have legislation on the stocks, introduced on the assumption that BSE was going to cause a large-scale epidemic in humans. Getting legislators to claw back on legislation is one of the hardest tasks known to man.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/11/we-knew-this.html
“Getting legislators to claw back on legislation is one of the hardest tasks known to man.”
Aint that the truth.
More shocking news from The Herald.
Oil billionaire undermines Obama
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/climate-change/news/article.cfm?c_id=26&objectid=10685795&ref=rss
In March, a Greenpeace report, “Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine”, called the company “the financial kingpin of climate science denial”.
So, yet more “balanced” reporting from the NZ media.
The Heralds a bit late with this story, Huff Post has been pushing it for months. I wonder why it has just become topical here?
“Three “charitable” foundations set up by the Kochs, the report said, spent US$24.9 million on this purpose between 2005 and 2008, as against ExxonMobil’s US$8.9 million”
Drop in the bucket compared to the billions spent by the climate change industry.
Even the NZ govt pledged NZ$90 million at COP15.
Massive non-story NZ Herald – you fail.
Perfect storm of cold brewing
November 3, 2010
Heads up on some school propaganda possibly heading our way:
A handbook titled The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism is to be sent to school teachers across the US, Australia, and hopefully many other countries. The handbook is close to being finished and I wish to thank John Cook for all of the time that he has already put into this important project.
http://profmandia.wordpress.com/2010/11/07/we-are-not-going-to-take-it-anymore-scientists-push-back/
**BREAKING NEWS**
New Retreat from Global Warming Data by Australian Gov Bureau
Article by John O’Sullivan and Val Majkus (via email from John O’Sullivan)
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Global warmers in full retreat as Aussie experts admit growing doubts about their own methods as new study shows one third of temperatures not reliable.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) admits it was wrong about urban heating effects as a professional statistical analysis by Andrew Barnham exposes a BOM claim that “since 1960 the mean temperature in Australia has increased by about 0.7 °C”; the BOM assertion has no empirical scientific basis.
Barnham, who spent 8 years working in emerging South Asian economies building high volume transaction processing systems, applied a high-tech statistical technique very different from an earlier well-publicized probe by fellow Aussie, Ken Stewart on his blog, Ken’s Kingdom.
Stewart grabbed headlines in what became known as the Australiagate controversy after his findings were featured on popular science blog, Watts Up With That. Stewart exposed dubious BOM adjustments to temperature data that bore little or no resemblance to actual or raw past temperatures.
Like Stewart, Barnham paid particular attention to BOM’s methodology in addressing what is known as the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHI), a proven phenomenon whereby thermometers measuring temperatures in towns and cities become unduly influenced by extra ‘background’ heating from buildings, road surfaces, machinery, etc. It’s in the UHI adjustments that the greatest discrepancies appear to lie.
Continues….
Ultra Alarmism
As the world burns
by Joseph Romm
4 Nov 2010 5:10 PM
The failed presidency of Barack Obama, post-election edition
And so the chances have dropped sharply of averting multiple catastrophes post-2040 — widespread Dust-Bowlification; multi-feet sea level rise followed by a rise of 6 to 12+ inches a decade until the planet is ice free; massive species loss; the ocean turning into large, hot acidified dead zones; and ever-strengthening superstorms that bring devastation to country after country that equals or surpasses what happened to Moscow and Pakistan and Nashville and New Orleans.
THOMPSON REUTERS FOUNDATION (Alarmist News)
AlertNet
Alerting humanitarians to emergencies
Colder winters possible due to climate change-study
16 Nov 2010 14:52:16 GMT
Source: Reuters
* Colder winters possible in northern regions
* Shrinking sea ice causes airstream anomalies
* Finding does not conflict with global warming
BERLIN, Nov 16 (Reuters) – Climate change could lead to colder winters in northern regions, according to a study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research on Tuesday.
Vladimir Petoukhov, lead author of the study, said a shrinking of sea ice in the eastern Arctic causes some regional warming of lower air levels and may lead to anomalies in atmospheric airstreams, triggering an overall cooling of the northern continents.
“These anomalies could triple the probability of cold winter extremes in Europe and northern Asia,” he said. “Recent severe winters like last year’s or the one of 2005/06 do not conflict with the global warming picture but rather supplement it.”
PREVIEW-UN climate talks seek limited deal as costs soar
16 Nov 2010 15:12:46 GMT
Source: Reuters
* U.N. talks in Mexico aim to agree green fund to aid poor
* Meeting seeks some elements of U.N. treaty; no final deal
* Costs of tackling global warming rising due to delays-IEA
Underscoring a need for urgency, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a report last week the costs of a strong assault on global warming by 2030 had risen by $1 trillion to $18 trillion simply because of delays in 2010.
“If there is still no agreement in Cancun and South Africa (host of the next U.N. talks in late 2011), this cost will increase further and this will make it even less likely that we ever have an agreement,” IEA chief economist Fatih Birol said.
“It will definitely be an increase in the order of hundreds of billions of dollars,” he told Reuters of extra costs to shift from fossil fuels towards wind, solar and other clean energies.
Temperatures are on track for 2010 to be the warmest year since records began in the 19th century. The year saw floods in Pakistan and drought in Russia. BP plc’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico highlighted fossil fuel risks.
Al Gore is in India, preaching doom over there.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/Climate-change-is-the-new-global-terror-says-Al-Gore/Article1-628952.aspx
Climate Prognoses “Not Worth The Paper They’re Printed On”
By P Gosselin on 20. November 2010
Whoa! Germany’s got a new enfant-terrible. Someone has just bolted though the Climate Berlin Wall, big time. Climatologists are dissenting, and it’s even being reported. The normally quite alarmist Austrian online Der Standard published a shocking article yesterday headlined:
Experts: “Prognoses not worth the paper they are printed on”
http://notrickszone.com/2010/11/20/climate-models-not-worth-the-paper-theyre-printed-on/
h/t Bishop Hill
Yes, I saw that Andy but thanks for the link again
I wonder if this AGW scam is the last bastion or should I say bulwark of the otherwise useless and out of date UN
After all if you guys fail to reach your emission targets who is going to collect your fine
There’s an out.
Environment Minister Nick Smith said “the Copenhagen accord was not legally binding”.
Besides, the fine could be be paid by issuing the equivalent amount of carbon credits. Why monetize it?
What better way to kill the scam – carbon credit inflation.
This article seems to a breakthrough.
[Cancun will be interesting, one way or the other]
If the models can’t forecast the past (hindcast), they certainly can’t forecast the future. And yeah, we know about the missing natural factors and CO2 overestimation – good to hear it from a climatologist though.
Clouds
Blam! Kapow! Climate Scientists in Verbal Brawl
December 03, 2010 FoxNews.com
Blam! Kapow! Smack! The bell has rung for the latest round of climate talks, but the battle continues among climate scientists too, making only one thing truly clear — the science of global warming simply isn’t settled.
Continues………(featuring Prof Don Easterbrook)
Cancun talks start with a call to the gods
11/29/2010 – Wash post
With United Nations climate negotiators facing an uphill battle to advance their goal of reducing emissions linked to global warming, it’s no surprise that the woman steering the talks appealed to a Mayan goddess Monday.
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, invoked the ancient jaguar goddess Ixchel in her opening statement to delegates gathered in Cancun, Mexico, noting that Ixchel was not only goddess of the moon, but also “the goddess of reason, creativity and weaving. May she inspire you — because today, you are gathered in Cancun to weave together the elements of a solid response to climate change, using both reason and creativity as your tools.”
She called for “a balanced outcome” which would marry financial and emissions commitments from industrialized countries aimed at combating climate change with “the understanding of fairness that will guide long-term mitigation efforts.”
“Excellencies, the goddess Ixchel would probably tell you that a tapestry is the result of the skilful interlacing of many threads,” said Figueres, who hails from Costa Rica and started her greetings in Spanish before switching to English. “I am convinced that 20 years from now, we will admire the policy tapestry that you have woven together and think back fondly to Cancun and the inspiration of Ixchel.”
THIS newspaper supports global action on climate change based on the science.
* Graham Lloyd, Environment editor
* From: The Australian
* December 04, 2010 12:00AM
FOR some time The Australian newspaper’s editorial position on climate change has been at the centre of a culture wars campaign in which a misrepresentation of where the paper stands has been repeated so often and with such conviction that it has become accepted by some people as fact.
[Snip]
The Australian has unwaveringly supported global action to combat climate change based on the science.
On November 2, 2006, the paper said: “You can accept the significant risk that the climate is warming while wishing to employ scepticism and scientific rigour when working out what to do about it. Eventually an international carbon pricing system that sets proper price signals for pollution will further drive this process.”
It has accepted the findings of the UN panel on climate change. On February 5, 2007, it said: “The real news from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest report, issued last Friday in Paris, is the higher level of implied scientific certainty – first that global warming is unequivocally happening, and second that humans are, in the panel’s view, highly likely to be causing most of it.
[Snip]
In the case of climate change, it is apparent that some people would be quite happy for a totalitarian approach.
Writing on Crikey, commentator Guy Rundle recently encouraged climate campaigners to mount a propaganda revolution based on the tactics of Mao and Lenin. He said climate change campaigners could achieve more by adopting a communist model of establishing a whole disciplined apparatus, “with the explicit object of creating both a core of full-time cadres-organisers-propagandists who could expound the argument everywhere, anytime, a hundred different ways, at the drop of a hat”.
Rundle said: “Earlier revolutions had succeeded because step by step they created a wider band of people who, while not professional agitators themselves, had been so convinced by the argument – intellectually, politically, morally – that they felt some of its urgency and identified with it, so that they would talk to others about it.”
Rundle said crucial to this process were four things: the training school, the pamphlet, the public meeting and political self-criticism-analysis.
“It’s a signal fact of the climate change movement that none of these features are really present. The Right likes to argue the Green movement is Marxism by other means. If only that were the case, some of these things might have been in place,” Rundle wrote.
He encourages the propaganda approach despite offering the view “you can’t honestly say that the science is settled, because no science is ever settled”.
What happened to the ‘warmest year on record’: The truth is global warming has halted
MailOnline
Last updated at 4:17 PM on 5th December 2010
A year ago tomorrow, just before the opening of the UN Copenhagen world climate summit, the British Meteorological Office issued a confident prediction. The mean world temperature for 2010, it announced, ‘is expected to be 14.58C, the warmest on record’ – a deeply worrying 0.58C above the 19611990 average.
World temperatures, it went on, were locked inexorably into an everrising trend: ‘Our experimental decadal forecast confirms previous indications that about half the years 2010-2019 will be warmer than the warmest year observed so far – 1998.’
Met Office officials openly boasted that they hoped by their statements to persuade the Copenhagen gathering to impose new and stringent carbon emission limits – an ambition that was not to be met.
Last week, halfway through yet another giant, 15,000delegate UN climate jamboree, being held this time in the tropical splendour of Cancun in Mexico, the Met Office was at it again.
Never mind that Britain, just as it was last winter and the winter before, was deep in the grip of a cold snap, which has seen some temperatures plummet to minus 20C, and that here 2010 has been the coolest year since 1996.
Globally, it insisted, 2010 was still on course to be the warmest or second warmest year since current records began.
But buried amid the details of those two Met Office statements 12 months apart lies a remarkable climbdown that has huge implications – not just for the Met Office, but for debate over climate change as a whole.
Read carefully with other official data, they conceal a truth that for some, to paraphrase former US VicePresident Al Gore, is really inconvenient: for the past 15 years, global warming has stopped.
Continues…………
interesting historical data on WUWT today Has Charles Dickens shaped our perception of climate change?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/05/has-charles-dickens-shaped-our-perception-of-climate-change/#more-28894
starting from 1816 Dickens life demonstrates the extraordinary variability of the British winters during that era, when the coldest and warmest winters in the CET records can be juxtaposed. Generally there are few examples of constant cold winters year after year-the LIA was becoming much more sporadic than it had been several centuries earlier, when bitter cold weather appears to have been the norm. To put this era into perspective mature English people might be surprised to learn they lived through a much colder winter than Dickens ever experienced. 1962/3 at -0.33C was the third coldest in the entire CET record compared to Dickens coldest year 1814 at 0.43c, the fourth coldest in the record. (1962/3 was a bit of a one off-Dickens experienced a greater number of relatively cold winters)
the climatic trough in 1880 is the exact point from when GISS commenced their temperature records and there are additional articles on GISS records since that data
‘Bollocks’ Groser tells climate change critics
Climate Change Negotiations Minister Tim Groser – in Mexico for renewed climate change talks – hit back last night at vocal Labour and Green critics whom he says have “no understanding of what the negotiation is about”.
He described a suggestion by Greens co-leader Russel Norman that New Zealand was siding with “big polluters” such as the United States as “absolute bollocks.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/climate-change/news/article.cfm?c_id=26&objectid=10692830&ref=rss
Couldn’t have put it better myself.
See my reply below – I forgot to hit the reply button.
BTW, is Mexico a dairying country? Animal emissions a factor there? Why Mexico?
Chile would have similar aims to NZ I’m thinking.
There’s a lot of reading between the lines with this one Andy.
My take.
“The idea that New Zealand is ‘siding with the big polluters’ is just bollocks.”
Yes, New Zealand has “joined the Progressives Group – a group of about 30 developing and developed countries, including Germany, Britain and France, Costa Rica, Chile, Indonesia and Mexico – which were all trying to move forward the climate change agenda.”
Germany, Britain and France? What are they doing? This must be for trade.
This is not good news unless the NZ negotiators take on a spoiling/stalling role in the group. I had thought after investigating the COP15 Alliance that NZ might be “mainstream” on the surface but looking for “outs” in reality – now I’m not so sure what game they’re playing.
“Actually we are a perfectly respectable middle positioned country working very closely with countries like India, Indonesia and Mexico in reality.
This makes more sense, stick with India for an “out”, Indonesia for forestry exemptions, Mexico for the “mainstream” illusion.
What’s your take?
I have really no idea what’s going on in Cancun. The media coverage is just about zero.
Your link is the best so far for NZ.
I’ve been looking in the smh climate change section and the Guardian but that’s not much use for NZ specific stuff.
The fundamental difference I see for NZ (COP15-COP16) is that NZ joined an “Alliance” at COP15 and a “Group” at COP16 but with different countries in each.
Shub has a new post up on Cancun
http://nigguraths.wordpress.com/2010/12/08/cancun-redd-failure/
His claim is that it’s all about REDD, i.e the billions that the likes of WWF (mainly) are set to make out of this scam.
Forest concessions are a big deal for NZ so I’m thinking that’s why NZ is keeping close to Indonesia who will be pivotal along with Brazil in REDD/Forestry negotiations.
It’s not inconceivable that NZ will put their hand up in support of the REDD scam in order to win forestry concessions for NZ in return.
Remember it was NZ that moved the motion for UN troop withdrawal that precipitated the Rwandan massacre – Groser et al will sell NZ souls and grandmothers if need be.
The Washington Post has some stuff on REDD and Cancun here
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/07/AR2010120707171.html
“Even getting out of the gate isn’t certain. Bolivia and its allies are seeking to block the forestry measure on the grounds that it applies capitalist principles to achieving a public good. On Tuesday, a group of activists marched through one of the buildings housing negotiations chanting, “No, no, no, no, no REDD. No!””
Herein lies the problem.
The Left hates the notion that voluntary measures enacted via a simple business model is actually preserving rainforest.
For them, the only option is enforced measures via bureaucratic command and control with the obligatory wealth redistribution proviso but with the inevitable Oil-for-Food style syphoning because scam-savvy crooks (Gore, Annan, Mafia etc) are equally attracted to this MO for the golden opportunities it presents..
A further poke in the eye would be if InfiniteEarth listed on the Hong Kong stockmarket.
I might even be motivated to purchase a participatory share in a patch of rainforest myself if there’s legit title, oversight and tradeable securities but there’s no way I’d give anything to a UN scheme voluntarily.
And that goes for UNICEF that Gareth Morgan spruiks on TV. There’s a zillion charities ahead of that on my list.
The two-week period, last week of November and first week of December is the coldest since CET records began in 1659.
From Joe bastardi – Accuweather.
The coldest weather since records began in 1659, Central England temperature record.
http://www.accuweather.com/ukie/bastardi-europe-blog.asp?partner=accuweather
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
More than 1000 dissenting scientists (updates previous 700 scientist report) from around the globe have now challenged man-made global warming claims made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former Vice President Al Gore. This new 2010 320-page Climate Depot Special Report — updated from 2007′s groundbreaking U.S. Senate Report of over 400 scientists who voiced skepticism about the so-called global warming “consensus” — features the skeptical voices of over 1000 international scientists, including many current and former UN IPCC scientists, who have now turned against the UN IPCC. This updated 2010 report includes a dramatic increase of over 300 additional (and growing) scientists and climate researchers since the last update in March 2009. This report’s release coincides with the 2010 UN global warming summit being held in Cancun.
read on at WUWT or Climate Depot (full links available)
New Theory of Climate Effects of Clouds Triggers a Thunderstorm Among Skeptics in Cancun
By LAUREN MORELLO of ClimateWire
Published: December 10, 2010
The New York Times, Global Edition, Energy & Environment
Clouds will respond to climate change in ways that further heat the planet, a new study suggests.
The research, published yesterday in the journal Science, appears to solve one of of the biggest remaining mysteries in climate science: How well do computer climate models predict the behavior of clouds?
That’s important because clouds can work to cool or heat the Earth, depending on the type of cloud and where it sits in the atmosphere. Clouds cool the planet by reflecting incoming radiation from the sun. They heat it by trapping outgoing radiation from the planet’s surface. The question scientists have been struggling to answer is which of these two effects will dominate as climate change intensifies.
“Clouds are really, I would say, the biggest uncertainty in understanding how much warming we’re going to get in the future,” said study author Andrew Dessler, an atmospheric scientist at Texas A&M University. “And up until my paper, all we really had were the models. We had no idea if the models were completely wrong.”
Computerized climate models vary widely in their predictions of how clouds will respond to long-term climate change. A few models predict clouds will be neutral players, neither compounding warming nor counteracting it, while others predict clouds will exacerbate warming.
Some climate skeptics have alleged that models “got clouds completely wrong,” Dessler said. He believes that his paper, which suggests long-term climate change will create a positive feedback from clouds that produces additional heating of the planet, “shows that models are doing a reasonable job as a group.”
A bolt from Cancun
One of those skeptics is Roy Spencer, a climatologist at the University of Alabama, Huntsville. He issued a statement (pdf) yesterday attacking Dessler’s study, calling its “central evidence weak at best, misleading at worst.”
Spencer has published a paper arguing that clouds will cool the planet and counteract warming. He drew on that work to argue that Dessler’s study confuses the cause and effect of warming by failing to take into account the idea that changes in clouds drive temperature, rather than temperature changes driving cloud behavior.
Dennis Hartmann, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, agreed with Dessler.
“I do think it’s very significant that this analysis shows that a strongly negative, short-term cloud feedback is very unlikely, based upon the evidence, and that positive cloud feedback is more likely,” said Hartmann, who did not contribute to the new study. “Current climate models vary widely on their assessments of cloud feedback. But if you were forced to draw consensus on what models are saying so far, they’re saying that cloud feedback is moderately positive.”
The new analysis is based on the first 10 years of data collected by an instrument flying aboard NASA’s Terra satellite that monitors how much radiation is entering and leaving Earth’s atmosphere. The instrument, known as CERES (short for “Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System”), began collecting information in March 2000.
Dessler used the data to determine how the El Niño-Southern Oscillation weather cycle affected the amount of radiation leaving the atmosphere over a 10-year period — an indirect measurement of cloud behavior and the ensuing climate response.
A 10-year glimpse of cloud behavior
That’s not a precise analogue for cloud behavior in response to long-term climate change, he said.
The latter “is really what we care about,” Dessler added. “In order to understand how clouds are going to respond to long-term warming, you have to wait until there is long-term warming. That will take decades. Looking at the short-term is the best we can do right now.”
Hartmann noted that the warming observed during an El Niño cycle of a year or two is different than the long-term climate change prompted by human activities that produce greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.
El Niño warms the tropics, whereas climate change driven by greenhouse gases warms the planet up everywhere, Hartmann said. But the scientist said he thought Dessler’s approach still amounted to a “useful diagnostic tool” for trying to understand whether climate models’ representation of clouds is on the right track.
Meanwhile, Dessler said his next step is aimed at identifying how well individual climate models do predicting cloud behavior, by examining their output for different regions of the globe — such as land versus ocean, or high latitudes versus low latitudes.
“This is a significantly harder problem, and it’s a tougher test of the models,” he said. “My hope is that looking at the spatial distribution will allow me to say, ‘These models are doing a good job. These models are doing a terrible job.'”
Interfering with skeptics’ ‘negative impact’?
In his statement attacking Dessler’s study, Spencer also said he suspected, but had no proof, “that Dessler was under pressure to get this paper published to blunt the negative impact our work has had on the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]’s efforts.”
Spencer appeared in Cancun accompanied by Marc Morano, founder of Climate Depot, which regularly attacks mainstream climate change science, and Lord Christopher Monckton, a British skeptic who asserted the Kyoto Protocol threatens national sovereignty and individual freedom.
In a response posted yesterday afternoon on the blog “RealClimate,” Dessler said his disagreement with Spencer stemmed from their very different views about the cause of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), quoting an e-mail exchange (pdf) with Spencer.
“My position is the mainstream one, backed up by decades of research,” Dessler wrote on the blog. “This mainstream theory is quite successful at simulating almost all of the aspects of ENSO. Dr. Spencer, on the other hand, is as far out of the mainstream when it comes to ENSO as he is when it comes to climate change. He is advancing here a completely new and untested theory of ENSO — based on just one figure in one of his papers (and, as I told him in one of our e-mails, there are other interpretations of those data that do not agree with his interpretation).”
He added: “And as far as my interest in influencing the policy debate goes, I’ll just say that I’m in College Station this week, while Dr. Spencer is in Cancun.”
Copyright 2010 E&E Publishing. All Rights Reserved.
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——————————————————————————————————————–
Climate change forecast is partly cloudy
Dec 09, 2010
USA TODAY
Global warming’s impact on clouds – and vice versa — remains one of the biggest wild cards in climate science. A new study out this week in the journal Science, which finds that clouds will amplify global warming, is certain to fuel the discussion.
Study author Andrew Dessler of Texas A&M says that warming due to increases in greenhouse gases will cause clouds to trap more heat, which will lead to additional warming.
“It’s a vicious cycle – warmer temperatures mean clouds trap more heat, which in turn leads to even more warming,” Dessler explains.
Scientists use the term “feedback” to describe the phenomenon: A “positive” feedback means that additional clouds will worsen global warming, while a “negative” feedback means that more clouds will lead to global cooling.
As noted by Dressler in the paper, “Clouds affect the climate by reflecting incoming solar radiation back to space, which tends to cool the climate, and by trapping outgoing infrared radiation, which tends to warm the climate.”
Using satellite measurements to calculate the amount of energy trapped by clouds as the climate varied over the last decade, Dessler found that cloud feedback is positive and supports findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s computer climate models.
Climate change skeptic Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama, in an e-mail sent to journalists today, agrees with the idea that clouds’ interaction with warming is a significant issue:
“How clouds respond to warming – the ‘cloud feedback’ problem – will probably determine whether manmade global warming becomes either the defining environmental event of the 21st century, or is merely lost in the noise of natural climate variability,”
However, Spencer says the only clear evidence of feedback found in his analysis of the same satellite data was of strongly negative cloud feedback.
As noted in a companion news article in this week’s Science by Richard Kerr, Spencer says Dessler is mixed up — that Dessler is seeing not only cloud changes caused by temperature changes, but also temperature changes caused by natural cloud fluctuations. Such effects garble the true negative feedback beyond recognition, Spencer says.
“Unfortunately, the central evidence contained in the paper is weak at best, and seriously misleading at worst,” writes Spencer.
Dessler disagrees: “Based on my results, I think the chances that clouds will save us from dramatic climate change are pretty low,” he explains. “In fact, my work shows that clouds will likely be amplifying the warming from human activities.
“I think we can be pretty confident that temperatures will rise by several degrees Celsius over the next century if we continue our present trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions,” notes Dessler.
By Doyle Rice
Dessler appears to discount the occurrence of negative feedback from clouds, or at least anything significant. He also considers the magnitude of warming will be significant; we won’t be talking about a slightly more balmy evening but a climate frankly hazardous to crops and everything else. The clear implication is that warming will be dangerous for the Earth and its inhabitants.
Indeed, he is so convinced of this vacuous gobbledygook, he talks of being “saved”:
My question to him is: “If the positive feedback you show is so certain and so strong, what halted past warming?”
What empty prattle.
There’s another interpretation of cloud effect – that of modulation (also the “Iris effect”).
What this means is that clouds can have either positive or negative feedback depending on the state of the climate system.
Clouds in the tropics rapidly transport energy up through the GHGs so there’s no heat trapping there and any energy imbalances are even more rapidly reset by lightning.
Cloud cover changes (albedo – reflectivity) can account for much of the 90s warming but are not parameterized in the models because the 70s-90s period is THE ONLY CO2 temperature correlation.
Dessler’s part of the GISS “team” – they’re getting very desperate now and their PR (science?) is looking increasingly silly and at odds with the metrics (except GISSTemp of course).
Even GISS’es in-house rival at NASA, GSFC, has just come out with a revised CS of 1.65C for 2xCO2.
Irony alert: The unusually chilly global-warming summit
Cancun is hosting the U.N. conference on man-made climate change — amid record cold temperatures
posted on December 9, 2010, at 11:57 AM – THE WEEK
Best Opinion: Wall St. Pit, Independent
The irony: As negotiators from nearly 200 countries met in Cancun to strategize ways to keep the planet from getting hotter, the temperature in the seaside Mexican city plunged to a 100-year record low of 54° F. Climate-change skeptics are gleefully calling Cancun’s weather the latest example of the “Gore Effect” — a plunge in temperature they say occurs wherever former Vice President Al Gore, now a Nobel Prize-winning environmental activist, makes a speech about the climate. Although Gore is not scheduled to speak in Cancun, “it could be that the Gore Effect has announced his secret arrival,” jokes former NASA scientist Roy W. Spencer.
The reaction: ClimateGate was “bad enough,” says Duncan Davidson in Wall Street Pit, but Cancun’s weather is particularly “inconvenient” for global-warming alarmists. It’s a reminder that global temperatures have “flatlined” despite rising carbon dioxide levels, “which is decidedly chilling against the concept of hampering economic growth to limit Co2 emissions.” Grow up, says Tony Juniper in The Independent. “Sure, it’s cold outside,” but “the trend data show that the world is warming, that the climate is changing, and that the release of greenhouse gases is the cause.” The longer we use every cold snap as an excuse to put off reducing emissions, “the bigger the risk we run. Tick tock, tick tock.”
The Canadian military is racing to rescue more than 300 motorists who are trapped on a highway in the worst storm to hit Ontario in 25 years.
Some people were trapped for nearly 24 hours with snow piled up so high they could not open the doors of their cars on Highway 402 outside the town of Sarnia.
The military has mobilised a CC-130 Hercules airplane, two Griffons helicopters and an array of snowmobiles and four-wheel drive SUVs for the rescue effort.
They have reached some motorists just in the nick of time
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1338454/Midwest-snow-storm-moves-east-threatens-cause-chaos-travel-Christmas.html
Activists who planned to shut down the UK’s second largest power station have been found guilty of conspiring to commit aggravated trespass.
The 20 climate change protesters intended to invade the coal-fired station at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire, their trial was told.
They were among more than 100 people arrested during a night-time raid at Iona School in Sneinton in April 2009
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-11992969
Towards an identity ecosystem.
http://arthur.shumwaysmith.com/life/content/towards_an_identity_ecosystem
This post explores the possibility of “attestable identities” This was brought up in relation to the Monbiot/North thread were comments were getting deleted from the Guardian
Very Big Brother.
Let’s have a look at this
———————————————————————————————————————-
Cold winters linked to ebbing Arctic ice
5:30 AM Monday Dec 27, 2010 – New Zealand Herald
Okaaay
1) “higher temperature” How was that measured Arctic-wide?
[Hint: Thermometers in the Arctic are conspicuous by their absence]
2) “caused by global warming” What global warming?
[Hint: There’s been no statistically significant global warming in the last 15 years, so a non-existent event is “causing” another un-measured event – apparently]
3) “melted the sea ice” How?
[Hint: The temperature of the atmosphere overhead doesn’t melt sea ice – the ocean underneath does]
4) “paradoxically increased the chances of colder winters” Really?
[Hint: Colder winters in Europe have occurred in the past as a result of solar minimums – refer Maunder Minimum and Dalton Minimum. Now add to those the “Monbiot Minimum”]
1) “Their models found” Models that are verified and validated?
[Hint: How were the models parameterized with non-existent Arctic temperatures? What was the ocean-atmosphere heat transfer mechanism if models have not evolved to the point of incorporating conduction at the surface? What is their hindcast success (or otherwise)]
2) “the heat” Heat (Q) in Arctic sea water – how much?
[Hint: Salinity will allow sea temperatures to fall below 0 degrees Celcius so we really would like to know how much “heat”]
1) “air….-20C or -30C” This is where the “heat” is now?
[Hint: If the “heat” from the ocean is released to the atmosphere, the temperature of the air will rise, will it not? So what were the before and after temperatures of the air?]
I could go on but I see the name “Rahmsdorf” so nuff said.
Nice analysis and I always find your exploration of models illuminating. I would mention that studies have shown i) winds have moved sea ice out of the Arctic into warmer Atlantic waters, ii) ocean currents have moved warmer waters into the Arctic, melting the ice and warming the atmosphere. They are both regional events, nothing to do with global anything.
Give me a couple of days, but this anaylsis will become a post. The Herald’s readers must be given a chance to hear a rebuttal to that nonsense.
And we’re the laymen.
The paper was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research so there’s the possibility that someone from the science fraternity will write a more learned rebuttal in their lunch-break.
The question is, now that the Herald has taken to publishing commentary on the latest scientific papers, will they publish the rebuttal in six months time? And what will be the headline then?
Also, is this a one-off to steer public perception back to the path of enlightenment or will they publish other news from the steady stream of new papers e.g. this paper from the same Journal of Geophysical Research 10/29/2010:-
Reconstruction of solar spectral irradiance since the Maunder minimum
N. A. Krivova, L. E. A. Vieira, S. K. Solanki 2010
New Paper: Solar UV activity increased almost 50% over past 400 years
The TSI is estimated to have increased 1.25 W/m2 since the Maunder minimum as shown in the first graph below. Use of the Stefan-Boltzmann equation indicates that a 1.25 W/m2 increase in solar activity could account for an approximate .44C global temperature increase [the HADCRU global warming from 1850 to 2000 is .55C].
This is highly significant because the UV portion of the solar spectrum is the most important for heating of the oceans due to the greatest penetration beyond the surface and highest energy levels. Solar UV is capable of penetrating the ocean to depths of several meters to cause ocean heating. whereas long wave infrared emission from “greenhouse gases” or the sun is only capable of penetrating the ocean surface a few microns with all energy lost to the phase change of evaporation with no net heating of the ocean.
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/open-threads/climate/climate-science/solar/#comment-33501
I’m pickin we wont see that in the Herald though.
The model temperature was probably forced by NCEP/NCAR “reanalysis” of LAND stations north of 60 deg N from CRUTem 3v dataset as have been used by previous Potsdam Institute model simulations. This because there are NO weather stations in the middle of the Arctic ocean.
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/atmosphere.html
The NOAA Arctic anomaly 60 – 90 deg N shows a very clear warm-cool-warm cycle with warming from 1965 – 2005 but the last data point 1 deg COOLER than that previous. So if heat was released from the ocean, it doesn’t show in the anomaly.
There is also this contradiction from NOAA:-
“While 2009 showed a slowdown in the rate of annual air temperature increases in the Arctic ………….. There continues to be significant excess heat storage in the Arctic Ocean at the end of summer due to continued near-record sea ice loss.”
Then this corroboration:-
“There is evidence that the effect of higher air temperatures in the lower Arctic atmosphere in fall is contributing to changes in the atmospheric circulation in both the Arctic and northern mid-latitudes. Winter 2009-2010 showed a new connectivity between mid-latitude extreme cold and snowy weather events and changes in the wind patterns of the Arctic; the so-called Warm Arctic-Cold Continents pattern.”
Searching for – hindcast simulation arctic sea ice – turns up some work on this topic with one interesting letter:-
“LIM3, an advanced sea-ice model for climate simulation and operational oceanography”
http://www.astr.ucl.ac.be/users/vancop/WEB/Docs/Vancoppenolle_et_al_MERCATOR08.pdf
“The Louvain-la-Neuve sea ice model (LIM) has been coupled to OPA (Ocean Parallélisé) almost 10 years ago, leading to significant successes in ice-ocean and climate simulations. Meanwhile, the development of LIM kept going on, leading to LIM3, a C-grid, dynamic-thermodynamic sea-ice model including the representation of the subgrid scale variations of ice thickness, enthalpy, salinity and age, which we describe in more detail in the next section.
Then, the results of two 1970-2007 hindcasts performed with NEMO – one using LIM2 and the other using LIM3 – are compared to available observations of ice concentration, thickness and mixed layer depth.”
[Note: The authors have previously advocated better physics and LIM3 is the resulting improvement over LIM2]
“Conclusion and perspectives
In this letter, we presented the new LIM3 sea ice model and reviewed the results of a 1970- 2007 hindcast simulation performed with NEMO using LIM2 / LIM3. The results show that NEMO-LIM3 produces mean sea ice coverage and thickness fields that compare significantly better to available observations. In addition, variability and trends in ice coverage, as well as patterns of anomalies are also better captured. This suggests that the inclusion of LIM3 would affect and probably improve the results of climate projections in coupled GCMs. Finally, the improved sea ice field also results in a better distribution of the convection sites in the North Atlantic. In conclusion, LIM3 is certainly a more accurate tool for ice-ocean and climate simulations as well as for operational oceanography. Further development, calibration and use of NEMO-LIM will continue during the next few years in Louvain-la-Neuve”
………………………………………………….
So the question remains as to how sophisticated the physics of the Potsdam model(s) is(are) and do they use LIM and which version?
The Petoukhov and Semenov paper was submitted in November 2009.
A link between reduced Barents-Kara sea ice and cold winter extremes over northern continents
Abstract
The recent overall Northern Hemisphere warming was accompanied by several severe northern continental winters, as for example, extremely cold winter 2005–2006 in Europe and northern Asia. Here we show that anomalous decrease of wintertime sea ice concentration in the Barents-Kara (B-K) seas could bring about extreme cold events like winter 2005–2006. Our simulations with the ECHAM5 general circulation model demonstrate that lower-troposphere heating over the B-K seas in the Eastern Arctic caused by the sea ice reduction may result in strong anticyclonic anomaly over the Polar Ocean and anomalous easterly advection over northern continents. This causes a continental-scale winter cooling reaching −1.5°C, with more than 3 times increased probability of cold winter extremes over large areas including Europe. Our results imply that several recent severe winters do not conflict the global warming picture but rather supplement it, being in qualitative agreement with the simulated large-scale atmospheric circulation realignment. Furthermore, our results suggest that high-latitude atmospheric circulation response to the B-K sea ice decrease is highly nonlinear and characterized by transition from anomalous cyclonic circulation to anticyclonic one and then back again to cyclonic type of circulation as the B-K sea ice concentration gradually reduces from 100% to ice free conditions. We present a conceptual model that may explain the nonlinear local atmospheric response in the B-K seas region by counter play between convection over the surface heat source and baroclinic effect due to modified temperature gradients in the vicinity of the heating area.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2009JD013568.shtml
So possibly ECHAM5 NEMO does parameterize ocean-atmosphere heat convection – I’ll have a look later.
But note that “The recent overall Northern Hemisphere warming” does NOT refer to 2010 but to warming prior to Nov 2009. The NH has COOLED in 2010
http://junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/UAHMSUNHem.html
This lecture from 10 June 2010 EU COMBINE project,
Sea-ice data assimilation in NEMO-LIM2 and -LIM3 using the Ensemble
Kalman Filter
http://www.combine-project.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/combine/20100609_GA1/Posters_Abstracts.pdf
Indicates that LIM2 was more likely used by ECHAM5 NEMO in 2009 than LIM# as there are still problems integrating LIM3
“We use the Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) to assimilate either sea-ice concentration or seaice thickness data into the coupled ocean sea-ice models NEMO-LIM2 and -LIM3. Output from our data assimilation system is intended to be used to initialize decadal forecasts within the EU-project COMBINE. For now assimilated data is model generated (twin experiments).
We find that assimilation of data of one variable in NEMO-LIM2 does not only improve the assimilated variable but also non-assimilated variables. Such cross-variable improvement is very promising considering the scarcity of polar data, particularly of sea-ice thickness. We also show preliminary results of data assimilation experiments into the new version of our sea-ice model, NEMO-LIM3, where data assimilation does not yet lead to the expected results.”
——————————————————————————————————————–
Just the heat convection question to answer but it’s not a pretty picture so far.
Conduction – not convection, got confused by the abstract.
Ocean Heat: Solar Gain – Loss to Atmosphere
Solar Radiation: …+168 watts per square meter (SW)
Net Back Radiation: -66 watts per square meter (LW)
Conduction: ……..-24 watts per square meter
Latent Heat: ………-78 watts per square meter
Sea-Air Heat Exchange http://eesc.columbia.edu/courses/ees/climate/lectures/o_atm.html
Model Information of Potential Use to the IPCC Lead Authors and the AR4. ECHAM5_MPI-OM
http://www-pcmdi.llnl.gov/ipcc/model_documentation/ECHAM5_MPI-OM.htm
However, we are looking for atmosphere-sea ice-ocean coupling.
“Influence of coupling on atmosphere, sea ice and ocean regional models in the Ross Sea sector, Antarctica”
Nicolas C. Jourdain • Pierre Mathiot • Hubert Galle´e • Bernard Barnier Received: 11 September 2009 / Accepted: 23 July 2010
Copyright Springer-Verlag 2010
http://www.springerlink.com/content/1544613222vp8n27/fulltext.pdf
[Why?]
[Note Tango uses NEMO2.0 LIM2]
———————————————————————————————————————
Did Petoukhov and Semenov know about the Jourdain et al paper and LIM2-LIM3 progression?
Because the result of that shows that until Messers Petoukhov and Semenov deploy ECHAM5 NEMO3.0 LIM3 with atmosphere-sea ice-ocean coupling, the heat transfer at the surface (conduction through sea ice) is inadequately modeled (parameterized) and the physics needs improving from LIM2 to LIM3.
i.e. There’s still aways to go in model evolution and the conclusion is premature in addition to their speculation. The configuration they used:-
1) Produced too much sea ice (not enough ocean heat gain from solar).
2) Produced too much heat flux over sea ice (too much ocean heat loss through sea ice).
The same simulations using an up-graded configuration might output an even greater Arctic atmospheric temperature rise – it’s worse than we thought.
Then the simulations have to be compared to observations (Modeled vs Observed). i.e. They have speculated on qualitative agreement but what about quantitative agreement? That exercise wont make the newspaper headlines though.
This is just a syndicated version of an Independent article than ran a few days ago.
Richard North did a piece on this
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/12/transient-phenomenon.html
“The immaculate conception of climate change”
No one in Britain takes these clowns seriously anymore (apart from the government and Guardian readers).
Severe blizzard conditions in NE USA
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/12/its-local-event.html
I was getting this via Facebook too, with friends stuck in airports over there
“Big freeze gives way to brief thaw before more snow and ice”
Looks like a brief thaw before another return to freezing conditions in the UK:
(not sure whose forecast this is though)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/8225719/Big-freeze-gives-way-to-brief-thaw-before-more-snow-and-ice.html
Time Magazine Goes Full Stupid
The Northeast Blizzard: One More Sign of Global Warming
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2010/12/28/time-magazine-goes-full-stupid/
Bastardi and Corbyn respond to the Met Office
http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2011/01/02/bastardi-and-corbyn-reply/
Dave Barry’s 2010 Year in Review
FEBRUARY
In other sports news, the Vancouver Winter Olympics begin on an uncertain note when it is discovered that Vancouver — apparently nobody realized this ahead of time — is a seaside city with a mild climate, so there is no snow.
MARCH
On a more hopeful note, on March 27 people in more than 4,000 cities around the world turn off their lights in observance of Earth Hour, saving an estimated 45 million megawatts of electricity — enough to power one of Al Gore’s houses for nearly three days.
DECEMBER
The federal government will continue to fund a “green energy” program under which corn is converted into ethanol, which is then converted back into corn, which is then planted to grow more corn. This will cost $5 billion a year, but it is expected to create or save literally dozens of Iowa jobs.
On the environmental front, delegates from 193 countries at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Cancún, Mexico, pass a resolution stating that they should not have had those last four rounds of margaritas.
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/01/01/1992746_p4/dave-barrys-2010-year-in-review.html#ixzz1A0bGu8kL
Germany Passes Energy Tyranny Act – Will Force Energy Rationing
By P Gosselin on 3. Januar 2011
This is serious. A new law has been passed by the German government, quietly and almost unnoticed. Soon in the future, the government will tell its citizens how much energy they can consume.
If the German State can pass this, then it can pretty much do whatever the hell it damn well pleases.
Gone are the days of a government that is there to serve its citizens. Here to stay is a group of elitists who are going to boss the citizens around and tell them how to live.
http://notrickszone.com/2011/01/03/germany-passes-energy-tyranny-act-will-force-energy-rationing/
Chris de Freitas in the NZ Herald today
Unlike most other hot button environmental issues, global warming is widely misunderstood. As a climate scientist thinking about this, it struck me that it was not surprising since accounts of the scientific basics of global warming almost never appear anywhere in the press.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10697845
Booker:
The Met Office fries while the rest of the world freezes
As the Met Office desperately tries to salvage its reputation, another of this ‘warm’ winter’s ice disasters is unfolding in the Sea of Okhotsk, writes Christopher Booker.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/8248146/The-Met-Office-fries-while-the-rest-of-the-world-freezes.html
The drama in the sea of Okhotsk is one I have been following on EURef. There are hundreds of sailors stuck in the ice, their lives at threat.
Study: Banded penguins die sooner, skewing climate data
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/2011-01-12-banded-penguins_N.htm?csp=34news
Attach a band to the penguin, makes it harder for them to swim, then they die.
Welcome to climate science 101
The BBC became a propaganda machine for climate change zealots, says Peter Sissons… and I was treated as a lunatic for daring to dissent
By Peter Sissons
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1350206/BBC-propaganda-machine-climate-change-says-Peter-Sissons.html#ixzz1C1fa8W32
This is not news to me, but interesting to see it in the MSM
The Daily Bayonet’s Weekly roundup
As always a great read
http://dailybayonet.com/?p=7844
The quotes from Chris Evans (BBC Radio 2 presenter) are just priceless.
Green Writer for BBC, Guardian, Demands: End Farming, Dismantle Civilization.
Dr John Feeney is a prominent green campaigner who has written for the Guardian newspaper, the BBC, and many other Green journals and websites. He was the winner of the 2007 ECO award. In 2009 he received the Global Media award from the Population Institute for his work.
Now this award-winning Greenie has joined the growing list of ecologists and activists who are saying that the root of the problem is agriculture, which enables humans to “circumvent” nature’s sacred limits and build earth-destroying civilizations. Like many others, he accuses us of being in “denial” over the need to return to a hunter-gatherer way of life:
Read more here:
http://hauntingthelibrary.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/green-writer-for-bbc-guardian-demands-end-of-farming-dismantle-civilization/
Bankers learn climate science
Monday, January 31, 2011 – Washington Post
At the woods’ edge, small groups of HSBC technology managers, armed with clipboards and measuring tapes, meticulously determine the circumference of specially tagged trees down to a tenth of an inch. They’re wearing bright orange vests because it’s deer-hunting season, and though field science isn’t in their job descriptions, their employer, HSBC bank, wants them to understand climate change.
HSBC joined with Earthwatch Institute in 2007 in a $100 million partnership to train 2,000 bank employees in climate change science and conduct the largest-ever field experiment looking at the long-term effects of climate change on forests. In five climate centers on four continents, bank workers — from cashiers to staff in marketing, human resources, technology services and call centers — become so-called “Climate Champions” through two-week trainings, during which they meet with scientists, learn about sustainability and contribute to the international study.
“Everyone comes in with a different background,” says Anna Janovicz, a learning and communications manager at Earthwatch, “and the light bulb that goes off is different for everybody.”
For Wa’il Ashshowwaf, from HSBC’s D.C. office, the light bulb was realizing that rising sea levels may change our global landscape within our lifetimes.
Continues……….
Fred Pearce writes about the Lisbon conference on climate reconciliation:
Climate sceptics offer a peace deal. Well, no it wasn’t quite like that. But in Lisbon, Portugal, last week, I joined a group of 28 climate scientists, bloggers and professional contrarians who spent three days discussing how to encourage reconciliation in the increasing fractious debate about the science of climate change.
The meeting was the brainchild of University of Oxford science philosopher Jerry Ravetz, an 81-year-old Greenpeace member who fears Al Gore may have done as much damage to environmentalism as Joseph Stalin did to socialism. Post-Climategate, he found climate science characterised by “a poisoned atmosphere” in which “each side accuses the other of being corrupt”. Mainstream researchers were labelled “ideologues on the gravy train”, while sceptics were denigrated as “prostitutes and cranks”.
His dream of an instant rapprochement in Lisbon didn’t come off. The eventual make-up of the workshop, paid for by the European Commission, was too lopsided in favour of the sceptical camp.
Those making the trip included heroes of the sceptics such as statistician Steve McIntyre and economist Ross McKitrick, plus writers and bloggers such as Steve Mosher, the man who broke the Climategate story, and “heretical” scientists such as Georgia Tech’s Judy Curry and Peter Webster.
Avowed non-sceptics included Hans von Storch, a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and James Risbey of CSIRO. But the leaders of mainstream climate science turned down the gig, including NASA’s Gavin Schmidt, who said the science was settled so there was nothing to discuss.
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/02/climate-sceptics-scientists-at.html
Google takes on climate sceptics
http://solveclimatenews.com/news/20110318/google-climate-change-fellows-science-new-media
Check out the comments on the blog. Not a good move for “Don’t be evil”
This looks like an interesting book:
Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Confessions-Greenpeace-Dropout-Sensible-Environmentalist/dp/0986480827
The single book review is worth a read a rings a few bells for me.
Heartland Institute’s Sixth International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC-6), Washington, DC, June 3, 2011
Lineup includes:-
* Timothy Ball, Ph.D., environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He was recently sued for libel by Michael Mann, a prominent figure in the Climategate scandal.
* Barry Brill, OBE, New Zealand barrister and solicitor. He is a former minister of science & technology and minister of energy, and is currently chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition.
* Alan Carlin, Ph.D., former senior analyst and manager at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In March 2009 he authored a highly critical internal review of EPA’s draft report on endangerment from greenhouse gases, which led him to become a whistle-blower.
* Robert “Bob” Carter, Hon. FRSNZ, research professor at James Cook University (Queensland, Australia), where he was head of the School of Earth Sciences between 1981 and 1999. He is author of Climate: The Counter Consensus.
* Scott Denning, Ph.D., professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University. Denning believes in man-caused global warming and spoke last year at the Fourth International Conference on Climate Change in Chicago.
* Christopher Horner, J.D., senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author of Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed.
* Craig Idso, Ph.D., chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change and coauthor of Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change.
* Robert O. Mendelsohn, Ph.D., Edwin Weyerhaeuser Davis Professor of Forest Policy & Professor of Economics at Yale University and author of the forthcoming book Climate Change and Agriculture: An Economic Analysis of Global Impacts, Adaptation, and Distributional Effects.
* Patrick J. Michaels, Ph.D., distinguished senior fellow in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University and a senior fellow in environmental policy at the Cato Institute. He is a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists and was program chair for the Committee on Applied Climatology of the American Meteorological Society and editor of the new book Climate Coup: Global Warming’s Invasion of Our Government and Our Lives.
* Marc Morano, executive editor and chief correspondent for ClimateDepot.com, a global warming and eco-news center founded in 2009. Morano served for three years as a senior advisor, speechwriter, and climate researcher for the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
* Nicola Scafetta, Ph.D., research scientist in the Duke University Physics Department. His research interests are in theoretical and applied statistics and nonlinear models of complex processes. He has published peer-reviewed papers in journals covering a wide variety of disciplines, including astronomy, biology, climatology, economics, and physics.
* Harrison Schmitt, Ph.D., is a former NASA astronaut and U.S. Senator. He is the twelfth and last person to set foot on the Moon. He served as chair of the NASA Advisory Council and is currently adjunct professor of engineering physics at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. He is a field geologist who received a Ph.D. from Harvard University.
* David Schnare, Ph.D., J.D., senior fellow for energy and the environment for the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. He is an attorney and scientist with 32 years of federal and private-sector experience consulting on and litigating local, state, federal, and international environmental legislative, regulatory, risk management, and free-market environmentalism issues.
* S. Fred Singer, Ph.D., founder and president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, coauthor of Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years and Climate Change Reconsidered, and professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia.
* Willie Soon, Ph.D., astrophysicist and a geoscientist at the Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
* Roy W. Spencer, Ph.D., principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville where he directs a variety of climate research projects. He is the author of several books, including most recently, The Great Global Warming Blunder.
* James M. Taylor, J.D., senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of its Environment & Climate News. He writes Climate Change Weekly, a Heartland e-newsletter, and a weekly column on climate change issues for Forbes.com.
* David G. Tuerck, Ph.D., executive director of the Beacon Hill Institute, and professor and chairman of the Suffolk University Department of Economics.
* Anthony Watts, a 25-year broadcast meteorology veteran and currently chief meteorologist for KPAY-AM radio. He hosts the popular climate change blog Wattsupwiththat.com and a Web site at surfacestations.org devoted to photographing and documenting the quality of weather stations across the U.S.
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/6/prweb8608147.htm
Sounds great. Maybe Barry Brill could post up something here about his trip.
“Good” news from Google: We’ll allegedly use vastly more electric cars by 2030. “bad” news: They’ll be powered by coal
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2011/06/news-from-google-we-allegedly-use.html
Map: The Climate Change Scare Machine — the perpetual self-feeding cycle of alarm
Climate Change Scare Machine Cycle: see how your tax dollars are converted into alarming messages
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/10/map-the-climate-change-scare-machine-the-perpetual-self-feeding-cycle-of-alarm/
*******************************************************************************************************
This is an amazing depiction and documentation of the “scare machine” and has really backfired on Time Magazine, The New York Times and others pushing a “denier machine” meme I think
Borenstein “obtains” a draft IPCC report, spins it up on the coat-tails of “similar” events, and media editors dutifully spread the joy.
APNewsbreak: Panel says wild weather worsens
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer
WASHINGTON — Freakish weather disasters — from the sudden October snowstorm in the Northeast U.S. to the record floods in Thailand — are striking more often. And global warming is likely to spawn more similar weather extremes at a huge cost, says a draft summary of an international climate report obtained by The Associated Press.
The final draft of the report from a panel of the world’s top climate scientists paints a wild future for a world already weary of weather catastrophes costing billions of dollars. The report says costs will rise and perhaps some locations will become “increasingly marginal as places to live.”
The report from the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be issued in a few weeks, after a meeting in Uganda. It says there is at least a 2-in-3 probability that climate extremes have already worsened because of man-made greenhouse gases.
This marks a change in climate science from focusing on subtle changes in daily average temperatures to concentrating on the harder-to-analyze freak events that grab headlines, cause economic damage and kill people. The most recent bizarre weather extreme, the pre-Halloween snowstorm, is typical of the damage climate scientists warn will occur — but it’s not typical of the events they tie to global warming.
>>>>>>>>>
http://www.wral.com/news/science/story/10321244/
“Freakish weather disasters….are striking more often” apparently.
Get ready for a very alarming IPCC report to be released soon in an effort to hype up COP17 Durban.
One question: how exactly was Thailand’s massive flood plain (the size of Florida with Bangkok at the base) formed, except by massive floods?
Seth Borenstein, this guy?
AP’s Seth Borenstein is just too damn cozy with the people he covers – time for AP to do something about it
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/12/aps-seth-borenstein-is-just-too-damn-cozy-with-the-people-he-covers-time-for-ap-to-do-somethig-about-it/
or this one?
Long sad history of AP reporter Seth Borenstein’s woeful global warming reporting
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/2546/Long-sad-history-of-AP-reporter-Seth-Borensteins-woeful-global-warming-reporting
yet the NZ “media” dutifully regurgitate his words.
(These were the top two search results when Googling his name)
Looks like AFP “obtained” a copy of the draft report too:-
Climate change linked to extreme weather
AFP
A draft UN report three years in the making concludes that man-made climate change has boosted the frequency or intensity of heat waves, wildfires, floods and cyclones and that such disasters are likely to increase in the future.
The document being discussed by the world’s Nobel-winning panel of climate scientists says the severity of the impacts vary, and some regions are more vulnerable than others.
Hundreds of scientists working under the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) will vet the phonebook-sized draft at a meeting in Kampala of the 194-nation body later this month.
[…]
AFP obtained a copy of the draft report’s 20-page Summary for Policymakers, which is subject to revision by governments before release on November 18.
Most of these events match predicted impacts of manmade global warming, which has raised temperatures, increased the amount of water in the atmosphere and warmed ocean surface temperatures — all drivers of extreme weather.
But teasing apart the role of natural fluctuations in the weather and rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has proven devilishly difficult for scientists.
[…]
The new report’s main conclusions about future trends include:
– It is “virtually certain” — 99-100% sure — that the frequency and magnitude of warm daily temperature extremes will increase over the 21st century on a global scale;
>>>>>>>>>
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/climate-change-linked-to-extreme-weather-20111101-1mu3a.html
The re-re-framing of AGW via complicit media
LA Times “obtained” a copy
You Have Got To Be Kidding – A Los Angeles Times Article Titled “‘Snowtober’ Fits U.N. Climate Change Predictions”
[…]
The historic snowstorm in the northeast United States a few days ago was due to an unusually far south Polar jet stream for this time of the year, and colder than average temperatures associated with the east coast storm. To claim that this event fits with the IPCC climate change predictions is ridiculous. The article reads as an op-ed in the guise of a news article.
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/you-have-got-to-be-kidding-a-los-angeles-times-article-titled-snowtober-fits-u-n-climate-change-predictions/
The NZHerald are no longer even trying to hide the fact that they are altering webpage links by sceptics in the comments on AGW articles to make them inoperable. Check out this story:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10769953
Now look at the comment by ‘NZCimate (New Zealand) 11:46 AM Friday, 2 Dec 2011’
His link has been altered so the word corruption is now ‘climategate-2-and-c*********-of-peer-review/’
I wrote a reply to it pointing out the alteration and showing it should be ‘corruption’. Looking at the preview in my account, it is appearing as the following:
‘I see the NZHerald moderators have been altering peoples links again when they point to things that go against their personal beliefs. The missing part of the link that someone from the Herald has removed should read -c*********-of-peer-review/
Sums up the AGW crowd really, or as Phil Jones would say – ‘hide the decline’. Such a shame that a great newspaper such as the NZ Herald has let their standards slip so far.’
I’ve caught the moderators doing it over & over & have let the editors know repeatedly but they let it continue.
Message received and transmitted to comments (I’m Nonentity at NZ Herald BTW)
Anthropogenic Global Cooling – Ha!, gets me every time.
I think I might give up on the NZ Herald. There’s only a tiny handful of deluded AGW believers left as the others have given up, and the drop in the amount of comments there shows that either everyone’s had enough of AGW, or they are sick of the tabloid journalism at the Herald’s sacred alter to climate change. Jeez, the moderators there are starting to resemble John Cook, I’m just wondering how long before they start altering people’s comments as well as the web links they provide.
(To the moderator – Richard C posted something to this thread yesterday and it isn’t appearing. If the ‘older comments’ link is clicked it shows 127 comments, but when the ‘newer comments’ link is clicked it shows 126 comments. The comment is missing in action. Could you please check it out as I’m quite interested to see what it says? Many Thanks.)
[I’ve searched for this but come up empty. There’s nothing caught in the spam trap and nothing awaiting moderation. Any clue to its content? Perhaps Richard C might enlighten us? – RT]
RT, AGC has copied a comment submitted to NZ Herald, not CCG sorry.
AGC, it takes a while for the Herald mods to post up the comments so give it time. It may not be cleared over the weekend but here’s hoping. BTW the comment count is 27 not 127.
I’ve had problems with Herald comments in the past but it turned out to be a an automated correction feature that alters spelling, changes caps e.g. NOAA to noaa and generally stuffs everything up including formatting..
How that feature could change corruption to c********* beats me though but there is 9 * (wild cards?) so either it’s the auto-correction or the Editor was very careful.
RT, AGC has copied a comment submitted to NZ Herald, not CCG sorry.
OK.
My comment has been posted this morning but the question to the Editors as to why the word “corruption” in NZ Climate’s link had been corrupted is deleted and the corruption remains in the link.
They deleted my comment on the changing of the weblink also. Usually they just change 1 character so that the poster doesn’t notice, but now they don’t even try to hide what they’re doing. I think they have a greenie as a moderator or editor, but it only happens some times which suggests that not all their moderators are at it. The thing that gets up my nose is the editor allows it to happen – I’ve sent numerous emails alerting him to the fact. It exposes the decline of the journalistic standards at the NZ Herald – the paper is starting to look like the Guardian or the BBC, and the editorial practices are resembling John Cook’s altering of comments on his scepticalscience.conjob website.
Curious that when when Gandalf posts a comment, BEST reads BEST but when I submit a comment BEST reads best.
Gandalf must have friends in Herald places, either that or he’s in the place.
I often wonder whether Gandalf works for the NZ Herald, it wouldn’t surprise me. I’ve been reading the comments for about 5 yrs now & he was there before I started. He lies his ass off & when you back him into a corner he’ll just start back at the beginning of the debate again like nothing happened. I see he’s just said that the ACT party believe the ‘climates been cooling for the last 100 years’. There’s only one thing worse than a lying nutter, & that’s a know-it-all lying nutter.
Comment 02:07 PM Tuesday, 6 Dec 2011
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10771213
More propaganda from The Herald, this time from Greenpeace’s Cindy Baxter
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/greenpeace/news/article.cfm?o_id=320&objectid=10380264
Speaking of John Cook, I see that SkS have now released the “debunking handbook”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Debunking-Handbook-now-freely-available-download.html
Some fun comments in the thread
Hi Richard T. There’s something wrong with the comments on this page. As I mentioned previously a comment wasn’t visible, but when I posted about it it reappeared. Now that both you & Richard C have since posted the comments are disappearing again. I’ve tried both Safari on a Mac & Firefox on Windows but the result is the same. You can delete this comment after you’ve read it if you like.
Ok. So this comment has appeared, because I can see it.
What leads you to say that “the comments are disappearing again”?
After I posted my ‘to the moderator’ post at December 3, 2011 at 7:36 am both of the posts by Richard C @ December 3, 2011 at 8:38 & yourself @ December 3, 2011 at 8:48 wouldn’t show. I knew they were there as I could see that you’d both posted in the Latest Comments on the right side of the page. Also when I clicked the Older Comments link the amount of comments would show more (131), but when I clicked back to Newer Comments the last one was my original at December 2, 2011 at 4:11 pm, & the number of comments was back to 127. Having said that your latest one seems ok.
Well, I appreciate your feedback, AGC, and the trouble you’ve gone to, thanks.
Just one puzzling point: at 1:51pm, when you said “the comments are disappearing again”, do you think you were mistaken?
I think the important thing is that the comments are fixed now. We can probably put the strange behaviour earlier down to the fact that the database was confused. I and other posters were updating several things simultaneously and our separate caches were in different states. As long as it’s now well behaved I think I can relax.
If you have no objection within a few hours, I’ll delete this little exchange.
Sorry Richard but it’s done it again. I need to post something to see what you just said. it doesn’t matter so much to me, but I’m wondering if I’m the only one.
Yes, I’m a bit concerned too. But it’s working for me. Just a thought: you must be refreshing the page just to see that there’s a new comment, right? So this advice won’t help. But, to refresh the view, you press F5. You know about that?
Feel free to delete it all Richard.
I didn’t know about the F5. I’ve seen this sort of thing before but it usually comes right after 30 mins. or so. Hopefully it’s just a temporary glitch. I’ll keep an eye on it for you if you like & let you know if it’s continuing on a longer term.
Damn computers always seem to develop a mind of their own every once in a while.
Right. What I was thinking of was that, instead of waiting that 30 mins or so for the cache to update itself, you might try pressing F5, which forces an immediate refresh. Then you might see the displayed comments match the number of comments reported in the sidebar. Let me know!
I tried the f5 key but it doesn’t refresh. Perhaps it’s because I’m using Safari.
Yes, could be. I’d look for the equivalent, something like View | Refresh.
I used the refresh button but it gave the same results. It seems ok now.
Ctrl F5 does a fuller refresh than just F5
a
Super-Monckton parachutes into Durban
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4I9PoOjPa_w
This Richard Black BBC article is a keeper (and the quote is stellar):-
I did NOT expect to be reading THIS from the BBC around this time of year.
Can it get any sillier?
Egg gas finding a rotten result for free-range hens
EGGS from caged hens produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions than free range eggs, a new report has found, prompting calls for carbon footprint labelling to be used on all food products in Australia.
A report for the Australian Egg Corporation, which represents most egg farmers, found that free range egg production’s carbon footprint in Australia was about 20 per cent higher than caged production.
The main reason was because free range egg production uses more feed per kilogram of eggs produced than caged egg production, the report, which was half-funded by the federal government, found.
The report also found that egg production had a lower carbon footprint than several European egg studies, mainly due to more efficient grain production in Australia.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/egg-gas-finding-a-rotten-result-for-freerange-hens-20111216-1oyic.html#ixzz1glhNJXI0
Free range hens consume more feed per kilogram of eggs produced than caged hens – duh!
I hope, that come the revolution, there are enough lamppost vacancies for the fools who come up with this kind of rubbish
It seems that the NZ Guardian (I mean Herald) now just removes your ability to comment on climate change articles if you don’t tow the pro AGW line. After having a few comments published my ability to comment has disappeared – the button to ‘ADD’ comment is non existent whilst other people are still commenting. I can still comment on other articles, just not the Jim Hopkins one:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/climate-change/news/article.cfm?c_id=26&objectid=10773421
I knew I shouldn’t have wasted my time reading that stupid leftie tabloid journalist rag.
Did you try a different IP address? I’d be interested in how they are blocking you. Cookie maybe?
There’s plenty of sceptical comments on that thread.
I’ve been blocked from seeing the comments (probably a good thing though).
The comments box comes and goes but I haven’t bothered to try adding anything.
Sheesh you guys are paranoid.
I think there maybe browser or other issues.
Try a different browser, unplug the modem to get an IP refresh, clear the cookies, but I don’t believe anyone at Das Herald is smart enough to block you.
You’re right Andy – tried a different browser and I can see comments.
Tried a different browser on another computer with Windows instead of Mac OS X with the same result. I can comment on other articles but not this one, even though I’ve commented already about 4 times (maybe they have a limit). I might be paranoid, but I’ve caught them altering web links a good 10 times previously in comments (very unlikely to be automated) & here we have the comments box disappearing when I start skewering the greenies. The worst part is that it looks like I’ve run away from their counterarguments dammit, at the hands of that imbecile Gandalf no less.
Most likely explanation is that they have a limit of 4 comments. There are so many sceptical views that it seems unlikely that they are blocking you
I have to wonder what some of you might be doing wrong. I’ve just had a quick count on the first few screens of comments on Jim’s article and noticed eight comments from me. I think there are more, but they were all published as I submitted them. They always took some hours to appear, but they don’t appear to have been interfered with in any way, nor has my ability to create new comments been restricted. I want to check that, but it’ll take until tomorrow. I’ve got more enjoyable things to do!
b
Abertawe yn un QPR sero
Posted on December 27, 2011 by Steven Goddard
A fydd abertawe yn gwneud y deg uchaf?
http://www.real-science.com/abertawe-yn-qpr-sero#comments
Thought you’d all like to know.
I think this article is worthy of the News post.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/29/unified-theory-of-climate/
Unified Theory of Climate
Posted on December 29, 2011 by Anthony Watts
This idea that the Greenhouse effect doesn’t exist at all has been propositioned here and elsewhere by Harry Dale Huffman (maybe not exactly as in this paper)
This certainly would completely blow apart the CO2 AGW theory.
The new idea here is comparing other planets to earth in terms of atmosphere, pressure, TOA temp, surface temp and GHG levels. The overall finding is that atmosphere mass and pressure is a big driver of climate. It certainly is sparking some debate, including a responding article contending that Ned Nikolov and Karl Zeller confuse cause with effect.
Congratulations to Dr David Wratt on the QSO in the New Year’s Honours list, for Services to Science
2012 Bloggie Awards being called for
read all about it (you can nominate up to 3 blogs)
closing date 15 January
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/02/2012-bloggies-awards-nominations-open/#more-54095
I know what I’m going to do
——————————————————————————–
The Year That Winter Forgot: Is It Climate Change?
By Bryan Walsh Monday, Jan. 09, 2012
And then there’s the less quantifiable, more lyrical value of winter — a cold, frozen, crystalline season that’s beautiful and punishing all at once. As the British poet Anne Bradstreet said, “If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant.” Climate change disrupts the rhythm of the seasons, that regular passage of time and temperature we assumed was fixed. It turns out we may be wrong, and winter as we know it could one day be a season of the past. As we keep altering the climate, who can tell what else might follow it into unplanned obsolescence.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2104040,00.html#ixzz1jJgYzkTI
“…..winter as we know it could one day be a season of the past” – poetic.
Bill Gates backs climate scientists lobbying for large-scale geoengineering
A small group of leading climate scientists, financially supported by billionaires including Bill Gates, are lobbying governments and international bodies to back experiments into manipulating the climate on a global scale to avoid catastrophic climate change.
The scientists, who advocate geoengineering methods such as spraying millions of tonnes of reflective particles of sulphur dioxide 30 miles above earth, argue that a “plan B” for climate change will be needed if the UN and politicians cannot agree to making the necessary cuts in greenhouse gases, and say the US government and others should pay for a major programme of international research.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/06/bill-gates-climate-scientists-geoengineering?newsfeed=true
I wish they’d choose another planet to “geoengineer”
Does Bill plan an “uninstall” option?
Geoengineering proposals in the News back in 1933:-
Men Who Can Change The Climate
Posted on February 10, 2012 by Steven Goddard
http://www.real-science.com/men-change-climate
Great new article on Climate Change in the National Business Review – highly recommended:
http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/sanity-prevail-climate-change-policy-115955
Climate warrior battles the sceptics
Anna Rose believes the truth of climate change has been manipulated by vested interests.
…
For 29-year-old Rose, who spent a month working on a recent TV documentary with former Liberal senator Nick Minchin, human-generated climate change is a basic truth that has been deliberately tangled by vested interests.
“There has been a massive campaign of misinformation and confusion and doubt,” she says. “But there are three pretty simple facts. One, greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere; two, humans have emitted these gases since the industrial revolution; three, since then the world has warmed.
”Our carbon dioxide levels are 40 per cent higher than they were before the Industrial Revolution and that has led to a rise of 0.8 degree centigrade. That can seem small until you realise it is a global average. For example, Arctic temperatures have risen six degrees.”
…
Rose’s other message is on rising seas. “At the moment, Australia is on track for at least a one-metre rise by 2100. We met the chief oceanographer of the US Navy and he said they are planning for at least a metre. In NSW alone, that would destroy or damage between 40,000 and 60,000 homes, 250 kilometres of highway and 1200 commercial enterprises. When you look at the risks, it would be irresponsible to ignore the science.”
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/climate-warrior-battles-the-sceptics-20120621-20qo6.html#ixzz1yVb08o3a
Simple!
There you have it from “29-year-old Rose”
Reminds me of “17-year-old Brittany”
Kiwi schoolgirl addresses world leaders at Rio+20 summit
http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/7144193/Kiwi-schoolgirl-addresses-world-leaders-at-Rio-20-summit
Unmitigated alarmist drivel on TV One news last night. 1:44 second clip, using all the usual pictures of polar bears, hurricanes, twisters, cracked drought-affected ground. No actual statistical trends showing that the extreme weather events are getting worse, just the bald claim. Viewer discretion is advised – those easily enraged should first take several valium.
http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/bells-ringing-over-climate-change-video-4964853
It’s in the Mash, Mike,
It must be serious
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/environment/britains-heap-of-shit-weather-explained-2012071133979
Thanks mate – I needed that! Lol.
‘Climategate’ email leak to remain a mystery
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10820649
He [university Vice-Chancellor Edward Acton] said he hoped the announcement would “draw a line under the stressful events of the last two and half years.”
No Ed sorry, there’s a bit more of that to endure yet.
Yes, the password for that zip file!
More broadly, the Climate Reality Project’s goal is to forge connections between nongovernmental organizations working on climate change issues around the globe with individuals to spread awareness, Ms. Fox said in an interview. “There are something like two million environmental N.G.O.’s around the world working on climate,” she said. “We actually believe we have the numbers — but we don’t have the mass.”
She suggested that social media could create that mass: “we actually can find each other.”
>>>>>>>>>
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/24/al-gore-sees-dirty-weather-ahead/?smid=tw-nytimesscience&seid=auto
H/t Tom Nelson
Reuters are spinning a tricky news story with a little help from some warmists but they’ve been forced to eat a plate of crow in doing so:-
“Bombshell” to Reuters, old news to sceptics.
Note the use of the word “slowed”. Their headline is also titled ‘Slowing global warming no cause for complacency’. No warming is to be characterized as “slowing’ or “slowed” when there’s crow in the diet – it helps digestion.
There’s a bunch of “help explain” rubbish in the rest of the article but at least the UKMO/HadCRUT revision issue and “slowed” warming is being aired in the MSM, albeit cloaked in warmist vernacular.
Global warming stopped 16 years ago, Met Office report reveals: MoS got it right about warming… so who are the ‘deniers’ now?
By David Rose
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2261577/Global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago-Met-Office-report-reveals-MoS-got-right-warming–deniers-now.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
“We all get things wrong, and by definition futurology is a risky business. But behind all this lies something much more pernicious than a revised decadal forecast. The problem is not the difficulty of predicting something as chaotic as the Earth’s climate, but the almost Stalinist way the Green Establishment tries to stifle dissent.
There is, for example, the odious term ‘denier’. This is applied to anyone who questions the new orthodoxy about global warming. It doesn’t matter if one states that yes, CO2 does warm the planet, but the critical issues we need to address are how fast and how much: if one doesn’t anticipate catastrophe, one must be vilified, and equated with those who deny the Holocaust.
Yet the real deniers are those who don’t just claim that the pause is insignificant, but that it doesn’t exist at all. Such deniers also still insist that the ‘science is settled’. The truth is that the unexpected pause has triggered a new spate of research, in which many supposed ‘consensus’ conclusions are being questioned.”
Has the Met Office committed fraud?
Guest post by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
In short, the Met Office lied repeatedly to do down a journalist [David Rose, Mail on Sunday] who had uttered the inconvenient truth that there had been no global warming for at least 15 years.
The Fraud Act 2000 defines the serious imprisonable offence of fraud as dishonestly making an express or implied representation that the offender knows is or may be untrue or misleading, intending to gain money or other property (here, grant funding) or to cause loss or risk of loss to another ($30 billion a year of unnecessary “green” taxes, fees and charges to the British public).
So I reported the Met Office to the Serious Fraud Office, which has a specific remit to deal with frauds that involve large sums (here, tens of billions) and organized crime (here, that appreciable fraction of the academic and scientific community that has been telling similar porkies.
>>>>>>>>>
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/14/has-the-met-office-committed-fraud/
“Why not try your local police?” said the Serious Fraud Office.
Ye Gods, the NYT give pro-natural gas movie Fracknation a glowing review
http://movies.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/movies/fracknation-a-documentary.html?smid=tw-nytimesmovies&seid=auto&_r=2&
Placed a carefully crafted comment Monday in the NZ Herald online taking to task “as the world continues to get warmer”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/climate-change/news/article.cfm?c_id=26&objectid=10858874
Checked to see if the comment was posted today (Tuesday) only to be greeted with “Debate on this article is now closed.” Forgot to to keep a copy unfortunately. I note other comments were posted today (Tuesday) but not mine.
Had better luck at the TV3 de Freitas article:-
http://www.3news.co.nz/Default.aspx?TabId=1160&articleID=282994&ce12649=1#comment
Klimawandel: Forscher rätseln über Stillstand bei Erderwärmung
Von Axel Bojanowski
Wie stark erwärmt sich unser Klima wirklich? Nasa-Forscher belegen, dass der Temperaturanstieg seit 15 Jahren eine Pause macht. Gleichzeitig gibt es Indizien dafür, dass sich das Problem verlagert: Die Umwelt könnte sich vorläufig an ganz anderer Stelle erhitzen.
>>>>>>>>
http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/stillstand-der-temperatur-erklaerungen-fuer-pause-der-klimaerwaermung-a-877941.html
Translates to:-
Researchers Puzzled About Global Warming Standstill
by Axel Bojanowski,
How dramatically is global warming really? NASA researchers have shown that the temperature rise has taken a break for 15 years. There are plenty of plausible explanations for why global warming has stalled. However, the number of guesses also shows how little the climate is understood.
>>>>>>>>
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=10989
Doesn’t matter how you say it, there’s still some explaining to be done. This however (also Hansen, Sato and Ruedy’s line) sticks in my craw:-
Yeah right. There was only one La Niña event overlapping both 2011 and 2012 but 2012 also had a complete El Niño event. The previous 3 La Niña’s don’t show a rising trend either.
German media waking up? Another paper raising questions, on front page no less:-
Major German Daily Carries Front-Page Headline: “Global Warming Keeps Us Waiting…CO2 Over-Estimated?”
http://notrickszone.com/2013/01/21/major-german-daily-front-page-headline-global-warming-keeps-us-waiting-co2-over-estimated/
“Is carbon dioxide being over-estimated? British scientists announce: the temperature increase stopped already 15 years ago.”
Whatever happened to global warming?
Margaret Wente
The Globe and Mail [Canada]
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/whatever-happened-to-global-warming/article7725145/
“In other words, climate change is very, very complicated. Greenhouse gases emitted by burning fossil fuels are just one of many factors that affect the climate. Other factors – ocean temperatures, soot, clouds, solar radiation etc. – turn out to be a lot more important than we thought and aren’t so easily captured by computer models.”
BH has a post on aerosols that is relevant here
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/1/24/the-low-down-on-aerosols.html
Branching out on climate
* by: GRAHAM LLOYD, ENVIRONMENT EDITOR
* From: The Australian
* February 02, 2013 12:00AM
THE world’s great forests have long been recognised as the lungs of the earth, but the science establishment has been rocked by claims that trees may also be the heart of its climate.
Not only do trees fix carbon and produce oxygen; a new and controversial paper says they collectively unleash forces powerful enough to drive global wind patterns and are a core feature in the circulation of the climate system.
If the theory proves correct, the peer-reviewed international paper co-authored by Australian scientist Douglas Sheil will overturn two centuries of conventional wisdom about what makes wind. And it will undermine key principles of every model on which climate predictions are based.
The paper, Where do winds come from? A new theory on how water vapour condensation influences atmospheric pressure and dynamics, is not designed to challenge the orthodox view on climate science. But Sheil, a professor of forest ecology and conservation at Southern Cross University’s School of Environment, Science and Engineering, says he is not surprised that is how the paper has been received internationally.
Boiled down, he says, bad science is protecting shoddy climate models.
>>>>>>
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/branching-out-on-climate/story-e6frg6xf-1226566999146
Links to the paper and other commentary at JN, JC and New Scientist.
Makarieva, A. M., Gorshkov, V. G., Sheil, D., Nobre, A. D., and Li, B.-L.: Where do winds come from? A new theory on how water vapor condensation influences atmospheric pressure and dynamics,
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/02/do-forests-drive-wind-and-bring-rain-is-there-a-major-man-made-climate-driver-the-models-miss/#more-26699
http://judithcurry.com/2013/01/31/condensation-driven-winds-an-update-new-version/
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21729024.500-keep-rainforests–they-drive-the-planets-winds.html
Newsweek 1975 : Climate Scientists Wanted To Melt The Arctic – To Save The Planet From Bad Weather
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/02/07/1975-climate-scientists-wanted-melt-the-arctic-to-save-the-planet-from-bad-weather/
West Burton power station: EDF to sue protesters
Climate change protesters who staged a seven day sit-in at a Nottinghamshire power station claim they are being sued for about £5m by the facility’s owners.
[…]
A statement on the No Dash for Gas website reads: “EDF has launched a civil claim for damages against the group and associated activists for costs the company claims to have incurred, a figure it puts at £5m.
“Should the claim succeed, several of the campaigners face losing their homes, and all could face bankruptcy or be forced to pay a percentage of their salaries to EDF for decades to come
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-21537939
The Great Green Con no. 1: The hard proof that finally shows global warming forecasts that are costing you billions were WRONG all along
By David Rose
The graph on this page blows apart the ‘scientific basis’ for Britain reshaping its entire economy and spending billions in taxes and subsidies in order to cut emissions of greenhouse gases. These moves have already added £100 a year to household energy bills.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2294560/The-great-green-1-The-hard-proof-finally-shows-global-warming-forecasts-costing-billions-WRONG-along.html#ixzz2NpSuSi8d
Some interesting observations on the Mail article at BH:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/3/17/rose-in-the-mail.html
Discussion re the Rose article and provenance of the graph at Ed Dawkins blog here:-
http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2013/updated-comparison-of-simulations-and-observations/#more-1104
Hmm…. The Carbon Brief response to Rose’s article goes straight to #1 on Google News ‘Climate Science’ while the original is relegated to #11.
On the bright side, the graph is now displayed prominently at #1 and #11 – thank you Google and Carbon Brief.
Limp attempt to “set straight” as it turns out:-
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013/03/scientists-set-straight-mail-on-sundays-latest-climate-contortion
Strengthens the point more than anything:-
“Hawkins’s comparison shows global temperatures are tracking the bottom of the range in which 90 per cent of the model simulations lie. In other words, global temperatures are, broadly speaking, represented by a model simulation that is cooler than about 90% of the CMIP5 model runs.
More simply, most of the models predict warmer temperatures than we’ve seen in the past decade.”
The dimwits at Carbon Brief probably don’t realize that John Christy has taken his version of that graph (with the actual runs, not just the range) to the US Congress long ago – twice.
First trip,
http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/christy-fig.jpg?w=808&h=622
Second trip (updated),
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/clip_image0042.jpghttp://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/christy-fig.jpg?w=808&h=622
There’s some more follow up at Bishop Hill
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/3/19/more-rose-reaction.html
BH also links to Slate which is good for a laugh if you like lots of D words thrown around
I see Plait prefers old-school CMIP3 to state-of-the-art CMIP5.
That’s because the error bars on CMIP3 are wider than CMIP5 so the temps fall within range
And the full ensemble “average” is spurious anyway for assigning uncertainty. Lucia:-
“I still don’t know why you and RC don’t show color for each model when making your error bands so people can *see* that spread isn’t “weather”.
I’m under the impression Gavin’s “point” is that we shouldn’t care the spread isn’t “weather” because — for some mysterious reason– we are only supposed to care whether the observations fall inside the larger-than-weather spread of all weather + structural uncertainty of forecast.
But that would be a rather bizarre limitation since what we ought to want to know is what range of forecasts are consistent with *earth weather* not merely “does trend fall inside spread of all models in all weather”. It does — because the models with the lowest projected warming aren’t inconsistent with the data.
It’s only the ones with the fastest projected warming that are inconsistent with the data. That is: Only a subset of models that we all anticipate will be accepted for inclusion in the ensemble to of the AR5 can be diagnosed as “wrong” in the sense that their projections of over all warming are inconsistent with observed warming. ”
http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2013/updated-comparison-of-simulations-and-observations/#comment-23534
The “wrong” subset can be tossed in my view, they are utterly useless. I don’t know why anyone even considers them – let alone determines uncertainty by including them.
“subset” – starting to sound like Glieck.
Twenty-year hiatus in rising temperatures has climate scientists puzzled
* by: Graham Lloyd, Environment Editor
* From: The Australian
* March 30, 2013 12:00AM
DEBATE about the reality of a two-decade pause in global warming and what it means has made its way from the sceptical fringe to the mainstream.
In a lengthy article this week, The Economist magazine said if climate scientists were credit-rating agencies, then climate sensitivity – the way climate reacts to changes in carbon-dioxide levels – would be on negative watch but not yet downgraded.
Another paper published by leading climate scientist James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, says the lower than expected temperature rise between 2000 and the present could be explained by increased emissions from burning coal.
For Hansen the pause is a fact, but it’s good news that probably won’t last.
International Panel on Climate Change chairman Rajendra Pachauri recently told The Weekend Australian the hiatus would have to last 30 to 40 years “at least” to break the long-term warming
But the fact that global surface temperatures have not followed the expected global warming pattern is now widely accepted.
Research by Ed Hawkins of University of Reading shows surface temperatures since 2005 are already at the low end of the range projections derived from 20 climate models and if they remain flat, they will fall outside the models’ range within a few years.
“The global temperature standstill shows that climate models are diverging from observations,” says David Whitehouse of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
“If we have not passed it already, we are on the threshold of global observations becoming incompatible with the consensus theory of climate change,” he says.
Whitehouse argues that whatever has happened to make temperatures remain constant requires an explanation because the pause in temperature rise has occurred despite a sharp increase in global carbon emissions.
The Economist says the world has added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010, about one-quarter of all the carbon dioxide put there by humans since 1750. This mismatch between rising greenhouse gas emissions and not-rising temperatures is among the biggest puzzles in climate science just now, The Economist article says.
[…]
According to The Economist, “given the hiatus in warming and all the new evidence, a small reduction in estimates of climate sensitivity would seem to be justified.”
>>>>>>
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/twenty-year-hiatus-in-rising-temperatures-has-climate-scientists-puzzled/story-e6frg6z6-1226609140980
A sensitive matter
he climate may be heating up less in response to greenhouse-gas emissions than was once thought. But that does not mean the problem is going away
Mar 30th 2013 |From the print edition The Economist
OVER the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar. The world added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all the CO₂ put there by humanity since 1750. And yet, as James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, observes, “the five-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade.”
>>>>>>>
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21574461-climate-may-be-heating-up-less-response-greenhouse-gas-emissions
Global warming: time to rein back on doom and gloom?
Climate change scientists acknowledge that the decline in rapid temperature increases is a positive sign
By Geoffrey Lean
05 Apr 2013, 451 Comments
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/9974397/Global-warming-time-to-rein-back-on-doom-and-gloom.html
“Besides, a broader problem remains: on present policies, atmospheric CO2 levels will not stop rising when they reach the doubling point, but go on soaring past it – meaning that the world will still reach the danger point, even if more slowly.”
Unless of course the rising CO2 levels are primarily a natural lagged effect of solar-driven rising temperature rather than being due to fossil fuel emissions (the lessor factor by far) in which case CO2 will not “go on soaring” when temperatures fall as they inevitably will now solar input is falling.
(Reuters) – Scientists are struggling to explain a slowdown in climate change that has exposed gaps in their understanding and defies a rise in global greenhouse gas emissions.
UN PANEL SEEKS EXPLANATION
A rapid rise in global temperatures in the 1980s and 1990s – when clean air laws in developed nations cut pollution and made sunshine stronger at the earth’s surface – made for a compelling argument that human emissions were to blame.
The IPCC will seek to explain the current pause in a report to be released in three parts from late 2013 as the main scientific roadmap for governments in shifting from fossil fuels towards renewable energies such as solar or wind power, the panel’s chairman Rajendra Pachauri said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/16/us-climate-slowdown-idUSBRE93F0AJ20130416
Mostly scathing comments:-
http://www.reuters.com/article/comments/idUSBRE93F0AJ20130416
The above Reuters article is propagating (or whatever the news term is for “has legs”):-
Warming slowdown puzzles scientists
Oslo – Scientists are struggling to explain a slowdown in climate change that has exposed gaps in their understanding and defies a rise in global greenhouse gas emissions.
http://www.news24.com/Green/News/Scientists-struggle-to-explain-warming-slowdown-20130416
STOP PRESS – Underwhelming Breaking News
‘Climate change may have little impact on tropical lizards’
Eureka! Science News – 17 hours ago
A new Dartmouth College study finds human-caused climate change may have little impact on many species of tropical lizards, contradicting a host of recent studies that predict their widespread extinction in a rapidly warming planet.
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2013/05/17/climate.change.may.have.little.impact.tropical.lizards
“….a host of recent studies….” ????
Lizards…..and oysters:-
“Taxpayers even paid for research on climate resistant oysters. Let no barnacle be unturned.”
From JoNova – ‘Cook’s fallacy “97% consensus” study is a marketing ploy some journalists will fall for’
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/05/cooks-fallacy-97-consensus-study-is-a-marketing-ploy-some-journalists-will-fall-for/
‘Want climate resistant oysters, or climate “Justice”? The ARC has millions to help. But no money for skeptics.’
Guest Post: Dr Roberto Soria
“I counted at least 50 winning projects with the magic words “climate change” or greenhouse gas emission in them (compared with about 10 astronomy projects, and 19 cancer research projects, for example). “Climate change” projects raked up $16 million in the Discovery category alone.”
“There’s one that promises to study how oysters can be made resilient to climate change: here’s $285,000 coming their way”
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/05/want-climate-resistant-oysters-or-climate-justice-the-arc-has-millions-to-help-but-no-money-for-skeptics/
Nice little article in the herald today, with comments open:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/climate-change/news/article.cfm?c_id=26&objectid=10886282
Well the comments were open until I left one, now they’re closed it seems.
I wonder how long it will take the usual suspects to start huffing and puffing over this article.
I have to disagree with his closing statement:
‘One could reasonably argue that lack of evidence, one way or the other, is no reason for complacency.
I will concede that.’
We can imagine all sorts of disaster scenarios such as the sky falling on our heads, but without evidence or even a strong possibility of them actually happening, what’s the point in doing anything other than keeping an eye on the data? Shoveling truckloads of money down the dunny on the unlikely off chance of a ‘what if’ bit of unfounded paranoia is nothing more than a vast waste of money.
You’ve spotted the key, Magoo, because that’s not being complacent. Complacency stops us from seeing what’s actually happening and is never a good idea, even when there seems to be no evidence. So Chris’ “concession” to what is simply good sense can raise a smile.
Oh, and I noticed your remark about the Herald closing comments so I posted the article here, thanks.
Why I think we’re wasting billions on global warming, by top British climate scientist
By Professor Myles Allen
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2331057/Why-I-think-wasting-billions-global-warming-British-climate-scientist.html
Take the fun quiz at the end of the article too
Anyone else have a problem with this Bloomberg reporting?
‘Globe warms at unprecedented rate, WMO report says’
The planet has warmed faster since the turn of the century than ever recorded, almost doubling the pace of sea-level increase and causing a 20-fold jump in heat-related deaths, the United Nations said.
“The decadal rate of increase between 1991-2000 and 2001-2010 was unprecedented,” WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said in a statement. “Rising concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases are changing our climate, with far-reaching implications for our environment and our oceans.”
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/globe-warms-at-unprecedented-rate-wmo-report-says-20130703-2pchd.html#ixzz2Y3LWeDb7
Bloomberg reporting aside, Steven Goddard has 3 posts on the WMO report:
‘United Nations Says That Cooling Temperatures Indicate Unprecedented Warming’
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/united-nations-says-that-cooling-temperatures-indicate-unprecedented-warming/
‘Fastest Cooling Decade On Record’
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/fastest-cooling-decade-on-record/
‘WMO Believes That The World Ended In 2010’
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/wmo-believes-that-the-world-ended-in-2010/
Business journalism the US and UK no better, see:
‘Business Journalists: Climate Change Deniers Have No Place in Our Reporting’
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2013/06/heated-climate-debate-continues/#comment-215067
‘Quote of the day … appalling journalism promoted unsustainable “renewables”.’
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2013/06/heated-climate-debate-continues/#comment-215105
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.
‘And now it’s global COOLING! Record return of Arctic ice cap as it grows by 60% in a year’
* Almost a million more square miles of ocean covered with ice than in 2012
* BBC reported in 2007 global warming would leave Arctic ice-free in summer by 2013
* Publication of UN climate change report suggesting global warming caused by humans pushed back to later this month
By David Rose
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2415191/Global-cooling-Arctic-ice-caps-grows-60-global-warming-predictions.html#ixzz2eLnMpfw1
‘Global warming? No, actually we’re cooling, claim scientists’
A cold Arctic summer has led to a record increase in the ice cap, leading experts to predict a period of global cooling.
By Hayley Dixon
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10294082/Global-warming-No-actually-were-cooling-claim-scientists.html
Bit of silence from GW pause deniers at HT on this one. I though Arctic Sea Ice was a bit of a favorite over there
The NOAA hasn’t got the 2013 news yet, their 2012 extreme weather and climate report comes up in Google News too:
‘New analyses find evidence of human-caused climate change in half of the 12 extreme weather and climate events analyzed from 2012′
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2013/20130905-extremeweatherandclimateevents.html
I like this bit:
Arctic Sea Ice:
* The extremely low Arctic sea ice extent in summer 2012 resulted primarily from the melting of younger, thin ice from a warmed atmosphere and ocean. This event cannot be explained by natural variability alone. Summer Arctic sea ice extent will continue to decrease in the future, and is expected to be largely absent by mid-century.
# # #
I look forward to their 2013 report in 2014.
I expect they’ll put it down to “natural variability”, as with anything that doesn’t fit the narrative these days
Yes, what “cannot be explained by natural variability alone” will probably be explained by natural variability…..err…..alone.
Meanwhile over at SkS, the pause is “more accurately” the slowdown:
“So, what about the whole current debate about global warming having “ended” or at least “slowed down” over the past decade-and-a-half? The whole issue of the warming “pause” or, more accurately, slow-down, and its practical implications and significance will be subjects of several upcoming Yale Forum postings…”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/yale-forum-global-warming-includes-oceans-too.html
And a Dr Chris Brierley has got the huff and resigned from the editorial board of the journal Climate because it published Akasofu’s paper “On the present halting of global warming”:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/brierly-resignation-climate-akasofu.html
As AW puts it “Tough Times For Sea Ice Melt Enthusiasts…” and, I would add, Anthropogenic Global Warming Enthusiasts.
Great move from Chris Brierley.
Byeeee….
[Gareth] “….no slowdown in global warming” and “…..media buying into the denier-promulgated myth of a hiatus, pause or slowdown in warming”
http://hot-topic.co.nz/this-is-not-cool-no-slowdown-in-global-warming/
So at SkS it’s “more accurately” the slowdown but at HT there’s no slowdown, a slowdown is “the denier-promulgated myth”.
Wires crossed in Warmer World – and ignorance of recent peer-reviewed papers evidently.
>’….ignorance of recent peer-reviewed papers evidently”
Ignorance now displaced I see (well maybe):
David Lewis September 7, 2013 at 4:27 am
I don’t think it is useful to dispute whether there is discussion in the literature about something generally described as a “hiatus, pause or slowdown in warming”. It is not some “denier-promulgated myth”.
Solomon wrote “the trend in global surface temperatures has been nearly flat since the late 1990s despite continuing increases in the forcing…”, in 2010. Hansen disputed this in 2010, saying it “is not supported by our data”, but by 2013 even Hansen is writing about “the standstill of global temperature in the past decade”. Trenberth is one of many who use the word “hiatus”, eg. in this recent NPR interview
“Hiatus” seems to be a hot topic. A recent study used the word “hiatus” in its title. ScienceNews, and Nature magazine both published reports about it. i.e. saying it “adds to mounting evidence that cooling in the tropical Pacific is the cause of the global warming hiatus….”
The study itself states that the fact that “the annual mean global temperature has not risen in the twenty first century” is “challenging the prevailing view that anthropogenic forcing causes climate warming”.
[…..reverts to HT form….]
http://hot-topic.co.nz/this-is-not-cool-no-slowdown-in-global-warming/#comment-38652
A poke in the eye for Gareth.
The Los Angeles Times spells it out:
‘Global warming ‘hiatus’ puts climate change scientists on the spot’
“Since just before the start of the 21st century, the Earth’s average global surface temperature has failed to rise despite soaring levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases and years of dire warnings from environmental advocates.”
http://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-climate-change-uncertainty-20130923,0,791164.story