Climate alarmists

Government-induced Climaphobia….Was IPCC Complicit?

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Is ‘Deliberate Deception’ An Unfair Description Of ‘Official’ IPCC Climate Science?

/ June 1, 2015

deliberate-deceptionGuest opinion: Dr. Tim Ball

When a scientist’s work is revealed as wrong, the reason is rarely an issue. The error is identified and corrected by the author Unfortunately, that is not always the case with climate science errors. Often the question is whether it is a matter of incompetence or malfeasance? Either way there is a problem for an accurate advance of science. Normally, a simple determination is that a single mistake is probably incompetence, but a series of mistakes is more likely to be malfeasance. However, again in climate science, that doesn’t always apply because a single major error to establish a false premise to predetermine the result can occur. Usually, this is exposed when the perpetrator refuses to acknowledge the error.

All these issues were inevitable when a political agenda coopted climate science. Two words, “skeptic” and consensus”, illustrate the difference between politics and science in climate research. All scientists are and must be skeptics, but they are troublemakers for the general public. Science is not about consensus, but it is very important in politics. As a result of these and other differences, the climate debate occurs in two different universes.

A major challenge for those fighting the manipulations of the IPCC and politicians using climate change for political platforms is that the public cannot believe that scientists would be anything less than completely open and truthful. They cannot believe that scientists would even remain silent even when science is misused. The politicians exploit this trust in science and scientists, which places science in jeopardy. It also allowed the scientific malfeasance of climate science to be carried out in the open.

A particularly egregious exploitation was carried out through science societies and professional scientific groups. They were given the climate science of the IPCC and urged to support it on behalf of their members. Certainly a few were part of the exploitation, but a majority, including most of the members simply assumed that the rigorous methods of research and publication in their science were used. Lord May of the UK Royal Society was influential in the manipulation of public perception through national scientific societies. They persuaded other national societies to become involved by making public statements. The Russian Academy of Science, under its President Yuri Israel, refused to participate. At a United Kingdom Meteorological Office (UKMO) 2005climate meeting he was put in his place.

“The Russian scientist was immediately and disrespectfully admonished by the chair and former IPCC chief Sir John Houghton for being far too optimistic. Such a moderate proposal was ridiculous since it was “incompatible with IPCC policy”.

Israel, a Vice-chair of the IPCC, knew what he was talking about from the scientific and political perspective.

Politics and science of human-caused climate change became parallel through the auspices of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The political framework evolved as Agenda 21, and the science framework evolved through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (Figure 1).

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Figure 1

The challenge was to control the science by bending it to the political agenda, which had the effect of guaranteeing scientific conflict; these created inevitable points of conflict that forced reaction.

The first was in the definition of climate change given to the IPCC in Article 1 of the UNFCCC. It limited them to considering only human causes of change.

Climate change means a change of climate, which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over considerable periods of time.

Because of the political agenda people were allowed to believe the IPCC were studying climate change in total. The reality is you cannot determine human causes of change if you do not know or understand natural causes. The forcing diagrams used in early IPCC science Reports illustrate the narrowness (Figure 1) and its limitations.

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FIGURE 1: Source, AR4

They identify nine forcings and claim a “high” level of scientific understanding (LOSU – last column) for only two of eleven. Of course, this is their assessment.

Most people, including most of the media don’t know that the science reports exist. This is because the Summary for Policymakers Report is released with great fanfare months ahead of the science report. As David Wojick, IPCC expert reviewer explained:

Glaring omissions are only glaring to experts, so the “policymakers”—including the press and the public—who read the SPM will not realize they are being told only one side of a story. But the scientists who drafted the SPM know the truth, as revealed by the sometimes artful way they conceal it.

…

What is systematically omitted from the SPM are precisely the uncertainties and positive counter evidence that might negate the human interference theory. Instead of assessing these objections, the Summary confidently asserts just those findings that support its case. In short, this is advocacy, not assessment.

Actions speak louder than words. Some of us started pointing to the limitations and predetermination of the results created by the original definition of climate change. As Voltaire said, “If you wish to converse with me, define your terms.” Typically, the IPCC people listened, but only to offset not deal with the problem. Quietly, as a Footnote in the Summary for Working Group I AR4 Report they changed the definition of climate change.

“Climate change in IPCC usage refers to any change in climate over time, whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity.”

It is a convenient comment to counter those who challenge the original definition, but little else. If it was true AR5 should be very different. For example, it should refer to the Milankovitch and Svensmark Effects and include them in their computer models. It is not possible to make it true because the original structure of the IPCC and its Reports was cumulative. Each Report simply updated the original material that was restricted by the original definition. The only way they could make the new definition correct is to scrap all previous work and start over.

When science operates properly this wouldn’t happen. Predictions of the first IPCC Report (1990) were wrong. Normally that forces a reexamination of the science. Instead, in the 1995 Report they changed predictions to projections and continued with the same seriously limiting definition. The entire IPCC exercise was a deliberate deception to achieve a predetermined, required, science result for the political agenda. It is not science at all.

If an honest man is wrong, after demonstrating that he is wrong, he either stops being wrong or he stops being honest. Anonymous

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The 97% Consensus Theory, is Based on Misinformation, and Weasel words….

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Claim that 97% of scientists support climate alarm cannot be supported

Ross McKitrick, Special to Financial Post | May 25, 2015 | Last Updated:May 25 7:45 PM ET
More from Special to Financial Post

Ross McKitrick: Cook, being a PhD student in psychology with a background in communication studies, is hardly in a position to dismiss the membership of the American Meteorological Society as “fake experts.”

AP Photo/The Bakersfield Californian, Casey ChristieRoss McKitrick: Cook, being a PhD student in psychology with a background in communication studies, is hardly in a position to dismiss the membership of the American Meteorological Society as “fake experts.

This study design may simply be a circular argument 

In my column I pointed out that people who invoke the 97 per cent consensus often leave vague what is actually being agreed upon. John Cook does this too: Note that his wording is consistent with a range of interpretations, including that greenhouse gases definitely cause only a tiny bit of global warming.

Manufacturing doubt about climate consensus

Scientists have observed distinctive greenhouse patterns such as winters warming faster than summers and a cooling upper atmosphere.

He cannot claim that 97 per cent of scientists believe greenhouse gases cause a lot of warming and that this is a big problem, since the surveys either didn’t ask this, or did but didn’t find 97 per cent support.

Cook, being a PhD student in psychology with a background in communication studies, is hardly in a position to dismiss the membership of the American Meteorological Society as “fake experts.” As to fakery, I would refer readers to the analysis of Cook’s work by social psychologist Jose Duarte, noting that the word “fraud” appears 21 times in that essay alone, and it is not even the harshest of Duarte’s essays on Cook’s discredited methods. Economist Richard Tol has also published detailed excoriations of Cook’s work at as well as in the peer-reviewed literature, as have others.

The Illinois study asked 10,257 Earth Scientists “Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?” The question was vague to the point of meaninglessness. It only refers to “a,” not “the,” factor; it only refers to “human activity” in general, thus conflating land use change, conventional air pollution emissions and greenhouse gases; and it only refers to “changing” mean temperatures (since 1800), without specifying a portion of the total observed. So someone who thinks greenhouse gases caused only a small fraction of the warming would answer Yes, as would someone who thought they drove it all.

The Illinois authors received 3,146 responses. After seeing the answers they selected only 77 as being relevant, and of these 75 (97 per cent) said Yes. What puzzles me is why two answered No. And why the authors asked 10,257 experts for their views when they only considered 77 qualified to answer.

The Princeton study started with 1,372 experts and found that 97 of the ones they deemed the top-100 publishing scientists in the climatology field were also contributors to the IPCC or had signed statements supporting the IPCC position. Hence 97 per cent yadda yadda. But this study design may simply be a circular argument, since the top climatology journals are not double-blind, so it can be difficult for critics of the IPCC to get their papers published. In other words, this result might simply be a measure of the level of clique-citation and group think in the sample they selected. In this regard it is quite noteworthy that the AMS and Netherlands surveys were anonymous and they found nowhere near 97 per cent support for the IPCC conclusion.

Government-induced Climaphobia Strikes Again!

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Tom Harris explains why the climate promises are a joke

Posted on May 25, 2015  

Harris is an engineer with a special interest in Climate studies and GHG agreements. Here he explains the hypocrisy of the Lima “promises” on reductions in emissions.

It’s like any agreement with a leftist agenda, the words hide the intentions. In any international “promise” on GHG no verification, no enforcement–window dressing.

http://www.torontosun.com/2015/05/23/harpers-climate-pledge-is-hot-air

Harper’s climate pledge is hot air

Canada has no way to ensure developing nations keep their commitments

Tom Harris, Guest Columnist

First posted: Saturday, May 23, 2015 07:00 PM EDT | Updated: Saturday, May 23, 2015 11:51 AM EDT

In announcing the Stephen Harper government’s new greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets earlier this month, Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq said Canada will “work with our international partners to establish an international agreement in Paris that includes meaningful and transparent commitments from all major emitters.”

But Canadians are being tricked.

Any GHG emission reduction pledges made by developing countries in Paris later this year will almost certainly not be enforced.

Written in bureaucratese, the convoluted first sentence in last December’s “Lima Call for Climate Action”, the United Nations’ last major climate change agreement, indicated exactly that.

It reads: “The Conference of the Parties, Reiterating that the work of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) shall be under the Convention and guided by its principles…”

The ADP are the back room negotiators who are drafting the text for the big climate deal to be signed in Paris in December.

The “Convention” refers to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), signed by former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney and hundreds of other world leaders at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992.

And the ADP’s work will adhere to the UNFCCC, including its critical Article 4: “The extent to which developing country Parties will effectively implement their commitments under the Convention will depend on the effective implementation by developed country Parties of their commitments under the Convention related to financial resources and transfer of technology and will take fully into account that economic and social development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities of the developing country Parties.”

So, under any treaty based on the UNFCCC (which all UN climate agreements are), developing countries will keep their emission reduction commitments only if we in the developed world pay them enough and give them enough of our technology.

Also implied in the article is that, even if we give them everything we promise, developing countries may simply forget about their GHG targets if they interfere with their “first and overriding priorities” of “economic and social development and poverty eradication.”

Developed nations like Canada, on the other hand, do not have this option. We must keep our emission reduction commitments no matter how it impacts our economies.

It is not as if the UN has been hiding this “firewall” between developing and developed nations.

It has told us repeatedly in UN climate change agreements in Copenhagen, Cancun, Durban and Lima that, “development and poverty eradication”, not emission reduction, takes top billing for developing countries.

Actions to significantly reduce GHG emissions would entail dramatically cutting back on the use of coal, the source of 81% of China’s electricity and 71% of India’s.

As coal is by far the least expensive source of electric power in most of the world, reducing GHG emissions by restricting coal use would unquestionably interfere with development priorities.

So, developing countries simply won’t do it, citing the UNFCCC in support of their actions.

Some commentators have speculated that tougher requirements will be imposed by the UN on poor nations over time as they develop.

The only way this can happen is if there are substantial revisions to the UNFCCC treaty.

China, India, and other developing countries have clearly indicated they will not allow this to happen any time soon.

Chinese negotiator Su Wei summed up the stance of developing nations when he explained that the purpose of the Paris agreement is to “reinforce and enhance” the 1992 convention, not rewrite it.

Canada withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol in part because it lacked legally binding GHG targets for developing countries.

So why is the Harper government supporting a process that will result in our country being stuck in another Kyoto?

— Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa-based International Climate Science Coalition, which opposes the hypothesis carbon dioxide emissions from human activities are known to cause climate problems

Tom Harris, B. Eng., M. Eng. (Mech.)
Executive Director,
International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC)
P.O. Box 23013
Ottawa, Ontario
K2A 4E2
Canada

More Countries Caught Manipulating Their Climate Data. FRAUD!

/ 1957chev / 2 Comments

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION
Al Gore: green house gases and sweat.
More Countries Caught Manipulating Their Climate Data
Photo of Michael Bastasch
MICHAEL BASTASCH

05/19/2015
Weather agencies in Australia, Paraguay and Switzerland may be manipulating temperature data to create a sharper warming trend than is present in the raw data — a practice that has come under scrutiny in recent months.

Most recently, Dr. H. Sterling Burnett with the Heartland Institute detailed how the Swiss Meteorological Service adjusted its climate data “to show greater warming than actually measured by its temperature instruments.”

In his latest article, Sterling wrote that Switzerland’s weather bureau adjusted its raw temperature data so that “the temperatures reported were consistently higher than those actually recorded.” For example, the cities of Sion and Zurich saw “a doubling of the temperature trend” after such adjustments were made.

But even with the data tampering, Sterling noted that “there has been an 18-year-pause in rising temperatures, even with data- tampering.”

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“Even with fudged data, governments have been unable to hide the fact winters in Switzerland and in Central Europe have become colder over the past 20 years, defying predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other climate alarmists,” according to Sterling.

The Swiss affair, however, is not the first instance of data “homogenization” catalogued by scientists and researchers who are skeptical of man-made global warming. In January, skeptic blogger Paul Homewood documented how NASA has “homogenized” temperature data across Paraguay to create a warming trend that doesn’t exist in the raw data.

Homewood found that all three operational rural thermometers in Paraguay had been adjusted by NASA to show a warming trend where one did not exist before. Homewood also found that urban thermometers in Paraguay had similarly been adjusted by NASA.

“[NASA is] supposed to make a ‘homogenisation adjustment,’ to allow for [urban heat island (UHI)] bias,” Homewood wrote. “The sort of thing you would expect to see at Asuncion Airport, Paraguay’s main gateway, handling over 800,000 passengers a year.”
“However, far from increasing historic temperatures to allow for UHI, [NASA] has done the opposite and decreased temperatures prior to 1972 by 0.4C,” Homewood added.

Before that, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (ABM) was forced to admit it adjusts temperatures recorded at all weather stations across the country. Aussie journalists had been critical of ABM for being secretive about its data adjustments.

“Almost all the alterations resulted in higher temperatures being reported for the present and lower numbers for the past–with the higher numbers being used to demonstrate a historical warming trend–than the numbers that were actually recorded,” wrote Sterling.

“Downward homogenizations in recent years were rare. In some areas, downward temperature trends measured over time showed a significantly increased temperature trend after homogenization,” he added. “The difference between actually measured temperatures and homogenized temperatures topped 4 degrees Celsius over certain periods at some measuring stations.”

Global warming skeptics have increasingly become critical of adjustments to raw temperature data made by government climate agencies. Such adjustments seem to overwhelmingly show a massive warming trend not present in the raw data.

Such adjusted data has been used by climate scientists and environmental activists to claim that 2014 was the warmest year on record. Adjusted data also shows that 13 of the warmest years on record have occurred since 2000.

NOAA and other climate agencies have defended such adjustments to the temperature record, arguing they are necessary to correct for “biases” that distort the reality of the Earth’s climate.

NOAA scientists increase or decrease temperatures to correct for things like changes in the locations of thermometers (some that were once in rural areas are now in the suburbs or even in cities). Scientists have also had to correct for a drastic change in the time of day temperatures were recorded (for whatever reason, past temperatures were recorded in the afternoon, but are now often collected in the morning).

Other adjustments have been made to the data to correct for such “biases,” but global warming skeptics question if the scope of the data adjustments are justifiable.

The U.K.’s Global Warming Policy Foundation has created a panel of skeptical scientists from around the world who will evaluate temperature adjustments to find out if they are scientifically justified.

“Many people have found the extent of adjustments to the data surprising,” Terence Kealey, former vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham, said in a statement.

“While we believe that the 20th century warming is real, we are concerned by claims that the actual trend is different from — or less certain than — has been suggested,” said Kealey, who has been appointed chairman of the foundation’s investigative task force. “We hope to perform a valuable public service by getting everything out into the open.”

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Climate Alarmists Do Not Like Facts….They Only Get In the Way!

/ 1957chev / 2 Comments
Another pre-COP21 Attack by the Shrill

Posted: 16 May 2015 01:08 AM PDT

As we approach Paris COP21 in December, the Alarmists have a problem. The Public are deserting the ranks of the true believers. The planet hasn’t warmed for around 20 years.

As Marine Biologist Walter Stark wrote last year: (Link Quadrant On Line)

Be scared, the experts tell us, be very scared. Well there is certainly cause for concern, but not about those “rising” temperatures, which refuse to confirm researchers’ computer models. A far bigger worry is the corruption that has turned ‘science’ into a synonym for shameless, cynical careerism.

So that the delegates to COP21 have something to fall back on, the Shrill are getting shriller.

Take the attack by Daily Kos’ Judah Freed on International Climate Science Coalition’s Tom Harris.

Tom posted a reply but it disappeared faster than a white ant in sunlight. Curiously, Mr Freed’s piece was titled “Facing the Facts and Fictions of the Climate Change Deniers.” Curious, because Mr Freed’s piece lacked facts and was full of fiction.

Here is some of Mr Harris’ responses. (LINK)

Mr. Freed writes: “Please see through this misleading public relations campaign by paid climate change deniers.”

Tom Harris responds: I am not now, nor have I ever been involved in a “public relations campaign,” paid or otherwise.

Freed writes: “Tom Harris from the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) is touting guest editorials across North America that it is “ridiculous” to think that only industry-funded “deniers” are claiming that climate change is not real.”

Harris responds: We are not climate change deniers. Climate change has been “real” since the formation of the atmosphere billions of years ago. We advocate helping people adapt to the sometimes dangerous impacts of climate change and continuing the research so that someday we may be able to forecast future climate states. We have essentially no chance of controlling them, however.

Freed: “What’s ridiculous is that Harris and the ICSC themselves are industry-funded climate change deniers.”

Harris: ICSC funding has been 100% confidential since I took over as Executive Director in March 2008. This is obviously to protect our donors from attacks by aggressive climate campaigners….

How often do the Shrill resort to this untruth. The Alarmists funding far exceeds the pittance that we realists receive.

Harris:  I find it interesting that he seems to have no problem with climate campaigners who share his point of view receiving industry funding. I have no problem with that either, which is why we do not criticize them for it. It would be a motive intent logical fallacy to do otherwise. Indeed, we are jealous of their access to the vast resources of corporations.

Freed: “Harris himself had been the Ottawa operations director of the High Park Group, a Toronto-based public policy and public relations firm specializing in energy industry clients like the transnational Areva nuclear power group, the Canadian Electricity Association, and the Canadian Gas Association.”

Harris: For five months in 2006, I worked for High Park Group out of my basement office in Ottawa. Their clients included solar and wind power companies as well as those Freed names. Would this make them biased in the direction of the climate scare? No, they were just a communications company doing what communications companies do—conducting communications for their clients. I have never been involved in public relations or lobbying.

Freed: “According to geochemist and U.S. National Science Board member James Lawrence Powell, author of The Inquisition of Climate Science (Columbia University Press, 2011), rather than supporting open-minded scientific inquiry, closed-minded “denier organizations like the ICSC know the answers and seek only confirmation that they are right.””

Harris: The exact opposite is the case. ICSC repeatedly calls for “open-minded scientific inquiry” in which all reputable points of view are given a fair hearing. Perhaps Powell was speaking about climate alarmist groups when he spoke about entities that “know the answers and seek only confirmation that they are right.”

Freed: “Harris and the ICSC have promoted a skeptical climate change report produced by the Heartland Institute, identified by SourceWatch and others as a front for the ultra-conservative Koch Brothers, the primary backers of the Tea Party.”

Harris: According to the Heartland Web page http://blog.heartland.org/2014/04/response-to-a-critic-of-climate-realists-and-the-nipcc-reports/:

“None of the NIPCC reports — ZERO — have been funded with corporate money. They are funded by family foundations that have no interest in the energy sector. The Funding for the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change reports (see www.climatechangereconsidered.org) comes from two family foundations.”

Note: Heartland have repeatedly stated that the only funding they have received from Koch was $25K for healthcare-related matters, not climate or energy.

It doesn’t matter how many times the funding lies about Heartland are debunked, the Shrill still repeat them. Shame. Another oft repeated falsehood by the Shrill….

Freed: “Harris does not reveal that Dr. Ball today is a paid science policy advisor to oil companies…”

Harris: Dr. Ball has previously explained that this statement is a complete falsehood. The death threats against Ball are, sadly, very real, as are those against some other scientists we work with.

Not content with those slurs, Mr Freed moves on….

Freed: “Among the tactics too often deployed to suppress evidence-based logic and critical thinking, the misleading irrationality and fear-mongering by Harris and ICSC smacks of the McCarthyism in the 1950s that repressed progressive post-war urges for social justice and open democracy.”

Harris: This is a complete straw man argument. We encourage rational thinking and a mature, respectful dialog, taken proper account of the importance of social justice and open democracy, discussions that are free of logical fallacies and name calling. I have written about this often; see http://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/5257712-errors-in-thinking-are-sabotaging-climate-change-discussion/, for example.

Freed: “In the eyes of the climate change deniers, apparently, yesterday’s scary reds are today’s greens.

Harris: That may be true for some on our side of the climate debate but it does not apply to me or ICSC since I have never made that point. Indeed, I am not even right wing and regularly criticize Canada’s Conservative government for stupidity and even dishonesty on the climate debate.

Mr Harris may not say “yesterday’s scary reds are today’s greens,” However, Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore has stated it quite plainly.

Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, left the Green Movement when the Green Movement was taken over by Refugees from the fall of World Communism (link)

Patrick is the author of Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist in which he wrote that, after the collapse of World Communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the environment movement was hi-jacked by the “political and social activists who learned to use green language to cloak agendas that had more to do with anticapitalism and antiglobalization than with science or ecology.”

Mr Harris closes with:

So, practically nothing that Judah Freed writes above is correct or even makes sense. It is good to see the attack though, as it shows we are right over the most effective target, the most vulnerable weakness of climate crusaders: the immature and highly uncertain science of climate change. It is revealing that Mr. Freed did not have anything to say at all about any of the science we promote. His piece, the parts that were not completely wrong, was mostly just logical fallacies.

Read all Mr Harris reply – HERE

On the Daily Kos site there is a poll showing that their small readership doesn’t believe fossil fuels are the primary cause of climate change.
Since 1990 Satellites show World not warming as much as the models say.

Posted: 15 May 2015 08:51 PM PDT

The scientists at the University of Alabama in Huntsville are known throughout the environmental community as being skeptical that climate change (or global warming) will have a catastrophic effect on the earth. The crux of the matter is that their research, using satellite data to measure temperatures in the atmosphere, disagrees with climate models they say that overstates the earth’s warming. (link)

What John Christy and Roy Spencer (who then worked for NASA at Marshall Space Flight Center just down the street from UAH) announced at that press conference on March 29, 1990, was that their study of temperature data from satellites indicated the world was not warming as much as was believed.

Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville appeared before the US Congress Committee of Natural Resources.

Christy said that

  • they agree, that there is climate change;
  • they agree, humans play a role in that climate change;
  • No, they agree, it’s not a catastrophic event.
It was virtually the silver anniversary of Roy Spencer’s career-defining moment. John Christy said he had no idea that a discovery announced in 1990 would not only still resonate 25 years later but would be at the center of a raging debate.
The date was March 29, 1990. That was the day – though unbeknownst to either Christy or Spencer – they publicly became climate change skeptics.

“We had no clue at that time, 25 years ago, we would be in the center of a huge controversy almost 25 years to the day with congressional investigations, the secretary of state, the vice president telling us we don’t even believe in gravity. Who would have thought that 25 years ago?”

“I think we knew it was going to be an important new way of monitoring the climate. But you just never know if something like that is going to have legs scientifically. Whether somebody will come up with a new way of doing it better in two years.

Looking back, I’m kind of surprised this is still the leading way of doing this. Really our only competitors in the field have the same answer we do, very close to the same answer.” (link)

Alabama site AL.com interviewed Christy and Spencer. (LINK)

Eric Schultz / eschultz@al.com)

Some extracts:

AL.com: President Obama recently said that Republicans are going to have to change their opinions on the dangers of climate change. Is this a partisan issue?

Christy: Numbers are numbers. That’s what we produced. Those aren’t Republican numbers or Democratic numbers. Those are numbers. Those are observations from real satellites. Roy and I were the pioneers. We discovered how to do this with satellites before anyone else did. You can see this very strongly in the administration. Secretary of State John Kerry comes out and says it’s like denying gravity. The attack on skeptics was ramped up in the past month.

As this blog has noted before, the Shrill Alarmists are getting shriller.

AL.com: How do you respond to the perception that 97 percent of scientists agree on climate change? (The Wall Street Journal in 2013 reported on the “myth”of the 97 percent).

Christy: The impression people make with that statement is that 97 percent of scientists agree with my view of climate change, which typically is one of catastrophic change. So if a Senate hearing or the president or vice president says 97 percent of the scientists agree with me, that’s not true. The American Meteorological Society did their survey and they specifically asked the question, Is man the dominate controller of climate over the last 50 years? Only 52 percent said yes. That is not a consensus at all in science.

Recently Astrophysicist Dr Gordon Fulks wrote:

Science is NEVER about consensus and belief in any form.  Those who invoke such arguments are operating in the realm of politics and religion, probably because their science is weak.  We would never say that the earth is round because the majority of scientists believe it is.  We would simply produce a photo of the earth taken from the moon!

For those who refuse to understand that science is not a consensus activity, I like to talk about Albert Einstein, Alfred Weggner, Harlen Bretz, Barry Marshall, and Robin Warren, among others.

For those who think that the professional societies are the ultimate authority, I like to remind them that they are really labor unions looking out for the best financial interests of their members.

On renewables.

AL.com: What about the value of renewable energy sources?

Christy: I am for any energy source that is affordable and doesn’t destroy the environment. If carbon dioxide was a poisonous gas, I’d be against it. Carbon dioxide makes things grow. The world used to have five times as much carbon dioxide as it does now. Plants love this stuff. It creates more food. CO2 is not the problem.

On satellite data.

Christy atmosphere temps
Paul Gattis | pgattis@al.com

AL.com: Why is your research using satellite data a more effective way of measuring climate change than surface temperature? After all, humans live on the surface, not in the upper atmosphere.

Christy: Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. When you put more of it in the atmosphere, the radiation budget will respond appropriately. It’s just that what we found with the real data is that the way the earth responds is to shed a lot of that heat, not keep it in, which climate models do. So I’d rather base policy on observations than on climate models.

Read More at AL.com

Facts Like These, Put Climate Alarmists to Shame….

/ 1957chev / 1 Comment

A Winter to Remember

In the Northeast, February 2015 was a month like no other in our lifetime; January through March Harshest since 1717?

By Joseph D’Aleo · May, 2015
 No one who has lived in many parts of the Northeast into Canada experienced a six-week and calendar month as extreme for the combination of cold and snow as we have this late winter. From this writer’s viewpoint in southern New Hampshire, February 2015 was the coldest month ever recorded in nearby Nashua with an average temperature of 12.2 degrees Fahrenheit. It beat out January 1888, which had averaged 12.9F. A record 18 days had low temperatures at or below zero (as cold as 14F below). 25 days remained freezing or below, also a record.

Not far away in Boston, where temperature records began in 1872, February 2015 was exceeded only by February 1934, which brought Boston its all-time record of -18F. Temperatures never rose out of the 30s this year in February in Boston, though it topped 40 four times in 1934.

The cold in February 2015 was not confined to the Boston-Nashua area. It was the coldest month ever in Worcester, Hartford and Portland. It was the coldest February in Chicago and Cleveland, third coldest in New York City and fifth coldest ever in Detroit and Baltimore, both with records back into the early 1870s.

Boston set a record for monthly snow with 64.6 inches in February and 100.4 inches in the 39 days following January 24th. The 110.6 inches for the entire season exceeded the 107.6 inch record from 1995/96. The snow that year was spread out over six months with thaws, not concentrated so much in less than six weeks. The snow blitz and the intense cold is why the snow piles were so high this year. College students were shown on local television jumping out second story windows onto huge snowbanks in their bathing suit.

ONLY 1717 BEAT THIS?

Looking back through accounts of big snows in New England by the late weather historian David Ludlum, it appears for the eastern areas this winter’s snow blitz may have delivered the most snow since perhaps 1717.

That year, snows had reached five feet in December with drifts of 25 feet in January before one great last assault in late February into early March of 40 to 60 more inches. The snow was so deep that people could only leave their houses from the second floor, implying actual snow depths of as much as eight feet or more.  The New England Historical Society’s account indicated New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut were hardest hit, a lot like 2015 in what was known as the year of the great snows.

“Entire houses were covered over, identifiable only by a thin curl of smoke coming out of a hole in the snow. In Hampton, N.H., search parties went out after the storms hunting for elderly people at risk of freezing to death… Sometimes they were found burning their furniture because they couldn’t get to the woodshed. People maintained tunnels and paths through the snow from house to house.”

You may hear or read that increased snow is consistent with global warming because warmer air holds more moisture. In actual fact, 93% of the years with more than 60 inches of snow in Boston were colder than normal.

During the 40 days of snowy weather this winter, we averaged over 11F below normal, and moisture content of the air in the snow region was well below the long-term average. Cooling, not warming, increases snowfall. Indeed, winter temperatures have cooled over the last two decades in the Northeast and the 10-year running mean of Boston area snowfall has skyrocketed to the highest level since snow records were first kept.

The cold continued in March here in New England. The month averaged 5.1F below in Boston and 5.8F below normal in Nashua. There were only four 50F days in March after no 40F days in February in Boston. This compares with seventeen 50F days, eleven 60F days, seven 70F days and one 80F day in March 2012.

JANUARY TO MARCH RECORD COLD

January to March average temperatures were the coldest in the entire record in Worcester, Providence, Hartford and Nashua and third coldest in Boston behind only 1885 and 1895.

In fact, it was the coldest January through March on average in the entire Northeast (the 10 Northeast states and the District of Colombia) in NOAA’s climate record, which started in 1895.

Note how from January to March temperatures in the Northeast have declined for 20 years at a rate of 1.5F/decade.

This season, most areas of central New England had the snowiest mid to late winter and many spots the snowiest winter season on record. In 2013/14, Chicago had its coldest December to March back to 1872 and third snowiest while Detroit had its snowiest back to 1880.

The Great Lakes ice in the two years was the greatest in the record back to 1973, when measurements began edging out the late 1970s, when the world was worrying about a new ice age.

The Adirondacks into southeast Canada in these years usually gets the worst of the Arctic cold. Saranac Lake in February 2015 was 13.6F below normal with 23 sub-zero days, no day reaching freezing and four record lows. March had 15 days zero or below with 10 record lows. Last March (2014), Saranac Lake was 11.4F below normal with 10 sub-zero days and seven record lows.

All of eastern Canada set all-time records for cold, and in Maritime Canada, in many locations, this winter produced more snow than any winter season on record. Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island had a record, incredible 18.1 feet of snow. These were two amazing late winters.

WHAT IS BEHIND THE EXTREMES?

I learned early in my career from the some of the giants in the field like Jerome Namias how ocean temperature pools that develop in conjunction with strong El Niño and La Niña events meander with the ocean currents determine how the jet stream sets up and how strong and persistent it is. This determines how and where extreme winters and summers are for both temperature and precipitation.

A super La Niña in 2010/11 (second strongest in 120 years by some measures) set up warm water in the central Pacific and cold water near the West Coast of North America, which lead to that record warm and droughty 2011/12 central and eastern winter, spring and summer. That warm water came east first to off of Alaska last year leading to the historic winter near the western Lakes and north-central areas (highlighted January’s so-called ‘polar vortex’). Then in 2014 the warm water was carried by the currents southeast to the entire West Coast, forcing the cold to take aim more on the eastern Lakes and Northeast that was at its worst in February.

Similar changes occurred in the Atlantic. Starting in 2007, a warm North Atlantic helped build high pressure in the polar regions and drive Siberian air west to Europe where, in December 2010, the UK had its second coldest December since 1659 in the Little Ice Age.

Though scientists had warned snow was a thing of the past, the UK and much of northern Europe had all–time record snows and cold in five of six years. The North Atlantic turned cold last year and more so this year and Europe turned milder. But a cold North Atlantic means colder and snowier winters in eastern Canada, the Great Lakes and Northeast. The Atlantic thus helped exaggerate the Pacific-driven central U.S. and Northeast cold the last two winters.

At Weatherbell.com, where we use the oceans and sun in our statistical models for long-range prediction, we successfully predicted many months in advance these historic winters. Unless we see major changes in the eastern Pacific, we expect we may make this a threepeat about the time the administration signs a treaty in Paris with other nations at the UN to disassemble our current energy policies to supposedly save the planet from the ravages of warming, which we will show you in the next story is not happening globally and hasn’t for over 18 years.

Joe D’Aleo is a certified Consulting Meteorologist, Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), former chair AMS Committee on Weather Analysis and Forecasting, co-founder and first Director of Meteorology at The Weather Channel and a former college professor of Meteorology and Climatology.

Climate Alarmists: They Hate Facts that Don’t Back Up Their Story, and the People Who Expose Them!

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Climate Change | John Roskam
Australian Financial Review 1st May, 2015

In 1987, the American historian and philosopher Allan Bloom wrote a best-selling book, The Closing of the American Mind. It was about the mediocrity and intellectual conformity of American universities. Bloom died in 1992. If he was alive today and writing about Australian universities his book could be titled The Closed Australian Mind.

The reaction of university academics to the Abbott government’s decision to provide $1 million to fund a branch of Bjorn Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Centre at the University of Western Australia demonstrates all that’s wrong with Australia’s universities. Their culture tends to be distrustful, insular and choked in unthinking intellectual uniformity. That’s why the number of Australian researchers who rival Lomborg’s global renown can be numbered on the fingers of one hand. Probably the closest any Australian comes to having anything like Lomborg’s international standing in the field of philosophy and policy is the ethicist Peter Singer now at Princeton University. (Singer who supports infanticide in some circumstances was voted one of Australia’s most outstanding public intellectuals. He’s also been awarded the Companion of the Order of Australia, the country’s second-highest honour.)

Instead of welcoming a world-class public policy thinker coming to Australia and to their university, academics and students at the University of Western Australia are outraged. The vice-president of the university’s staff association talked of having the funding revoked, while the student guild launched a ‘Say No to Bjorn Lomborg’ campaign.

Lomborg’s problem is he’s a climate “contrarian”. As the The Guardian newspaper has helpfully pointed out a climate “contrarian” is someone who is not a climate “denialist” but who nevertheless says things that “infuriate” people who believe climate change is the world’s most serious and urgent problem. And the reason we know Lomborg is not a “denialist” is because the university’s vice-chancellor says so. At a meeting last week of 150 angry academics the vice-chancellor attempted to placate his staff by reassuring them Lomborg most definitely wasn’t a “denialist” and his institution “had a history of defending its climate change research staff against the most extreme views of climate change deniers”. (There’s no record of the vice-chancellor defining what he meant by the term “denialist”. Presumably his university doesn’t employ any.)

LOMBORG’S BELIEFS

Lomborg believes humans are causing the climate to change and he believes it’s a problem. But he also believes that much of the money spent on fighting climate change would be better spent on overcoming malaria and HIV/Aids and assisting the 700 million people on the planet who don’t have clean water. These views apparently make Lomborg unfit to hold a position at the University of Western Australia. As yet it’s not clear what Lomborg would have to believe to satisfy the staff and students of the university.

In The Closing of the American Mind, Bloom examines how the teaching of humanities has been affected by postmodernism and moral relativism. For Bloom, what’s even worse is that so many academics think the same things and they won’t tolerate anyone disagreeing with them. He tells the story of what happened to him as a student.

“We are used to hearing the Founders charged with being racists, murderers of Indians, representatives of class interests. I asked my first history professor in the university, a very famous scholar, whether the picture he gave us of George Washington did not have the effect of making us despise our regime. ‘Not at all,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t depend on individuals but on our having good democratic values.’ To which I rejoined, ‘But you just showed us that Washington was only using those values to further the class interests of the Virginian squirearchy.’ He got angry, and that was the end of it.”

What Bloom said about the humanities in American universities 30 years ago is true of science in Australian universities today. Those who dare to question whether the science of climate change actually is “settled” provoke anger and name calling from many in Australia’s scientific community.

Australia’s Nobel Laureate Peter Doherty is a leader of that community. He’s another one angry Lomborg is coming to this country. Doherty’s attitude is disappointing but also perplexing. Without contrarian thinkers there wouldn’t be many Nobel Prizes to hand out.

Educating the Pope on Climate Alarmism, and How to Avoid It!

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Scientists’ Message to Pope: Be Skeptical of Climate Change Alarm

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Scientists' Message to Pope: Be Skeptical of Climate Change Alarm

A team of independent climate scientists and public policy experts is traveling to Rome to enlighten Pope Francis about climate science in advance of the Vatican’s April 28environmental conference. They plan to host two public workshops to explain that there is no global warming crisis and to discourage the pontiff from relying on faulty information from climate alarmists within the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“Sadly, the pope is aligning himself with a U.N. agenda that will limit development for billions of the world’s desperately poor residents,” says Marc Morano, former communications director for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and founder of the watchdog website Climate Depot. Morano is one of the policy experts slated to speak at the workshops scheduled on Monday, April 27 and Tuesday, April 28 in Rome. He explains, “The pope has been misled on climate science, and his promotion of the U.N. agenda will only mean the poor will be the biggest victims of climate change policies.”

Scientists with The Heartland Institute, a think tank promoting scientific skepticism about man-made global warming, will join Morano to promote the same message. “Humans are not causing a climate crisis on God’s Green Earth — in fact, they are fulfilling their Biblical duty to protect and use it for the benefit of humanity,” said Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast. “The world’s poor will suffer horribly if reliable energy — the engine of prosperity and a better life — is made more expensive and less reliable by the decree of global planners.

Among other climate experts scheduled to address the skeptic conferences are:

• Dr. Thomas Sheahen, director of the Institute for Theological Encounter with Science and Technology, which is headquartered at the Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis and funded largely by the Catholic publishing company, Our Sunday Visitor;

• Dr. Richard Keen of the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Colorado;

• Lord Christopher Monckton, chief policy advisor to the Science and Public Policy Institute and former special advisor to Margaret Thatcher when she served as U.K. prime minister from 1982 to 1986;

• Retired physicist/engineer and current NASA consultant Harold Doiron;

• Jim Lakely, director of communications at the Heartland Institute and former White House correspondent for The Washington Times; and

• Dr. E. Calvin Beisner, founder and national spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance, a Biblically-based public policy network of inter-faith religious leaders and scholars dedicated to free-market solutions to economic, social, and environmental challenges.

Beisner issued a press release about the upcoming events in Rome. “Adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere isn’t going to cause dangerous global warming,” he noted. “But it sure will enhance all life on earth — including human life, especially among the poor.”

Both media and public are invited to attend the conferences. For those who cannot be there, the Heartland Institute provides an action plan here and encourages everyone to contact the pope by postal mail (His Holiness, Pope Francis PP., 00120 Via del Pellegrino, Citta del Vaticano) or email: cdf@cfaith.va. The Heartland website also includes links to valuable research and commentary about the pressing importance of the climate change debate.

“If Pope Francis embraces the Climate Change agenda, he will be aligning himself with the biggest enemies of the Church and of Catholic moral principles,” warns Morano. “These activists are pro-population control and have bought into ‘population bomb’ hype.”

Photo of Pope Francis: AP Images

Climate Models Never Reflect Reality…..Reality Must be Wrong???

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95% of Climate Models Agree: The Observations Must be Wrong

Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

I’m seeing a lot of wrangling over the recent (15+ year) pause in global average warming…when did it start, is it a full pause, shouldn’t we be taking the longer view, etc.

These are all interesting exercises, but they miss the most important point:the climate models that governments base policy decisions on have failed miserably.

I’ve updated our comparison of 90 climate models versus observations for global average surface temperatures through 2013, and we still see that >95% of the models have over-forecast the warming trend since 1979, whether we use their own surface temperature dataset (HadCRUT4), or our satellite dataset of lower tropospheric temperatures (UAH):

CMIP5-90-models-global-Tsfc-vs-obs-thru-2013

Whether humans are the cause of 100% of the observed warming or not, the conclusion is that global warming isn’t as bad as was predicted. That should have major policy implications…assuming policy is still informed by facts more than emotions and political aspirations.

And if humans are the cause of only, say, 50% of the warming (e.g. our published paper), then there is even less reason to force expensive and prosperity-destroying energy policies down our throats.

I am growing weary of the variety of emotional, misleading, and policy-useless statements like “most warming since the 1950s is human caused” or “97% of climate scientists agree humans are contributing to warming”, neither of which leads to the conclusion we need to substantially increase energy prices and freeze and starve more poor people to death for the greater good.

Yet, that is the direction we are heading.

And even if the extra energy is being stored in the deep ocean (if you have faith in long-term measured warming trends of thousandths or hundredths of a degree), I say “great!”. Because that extra heat is in the form of a tiny temperature change spread throughout an unimaginably large heat sink, which can never have an appreciable effect on future surface climate.

If the deep ocean ends up averaging 4.1 deg. C, rather than 4.0 deg. C, it won’t really matter.

New Movie, Kingsman: The Secret Service – about the Elitist, Narcissistic Nature of Climate Alarmists!

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Kingsman: the most subversive anti-AGW movie

Anthony Cox

Some movies are unintentionally anti-AGW because they are so pretentious like Atavaror just plain stupid like Noah.

Some are subtle and sly in their critique of AGW like Interstellar, a great movie orCaptain America: The Winter Soldier another great piece of cinema.

But there is nothing subtle or sly about Kingsman: The Secret Service; this movie presents in Technicolour the awful nature of alarmists; they are elitist, narcissistic and misanthropic. And riddled in hypocrisy.

The villain is Valentine, played by Samuel Jackson. Valentine is another tech billionaire who despises his fellow man for causing AGW. His solution is to kill off 99.9% of the human population.

His sales pitch to the rich and famous is classic alarmist agigprop. Valentine tells them that humans are a virus raising the temperature of the living Earth. If the virus isn’t destroyed the planet’s fever will worsen and either the planet will fight back and kill the disease of the disease will kill the planet.

The idea that humans are a disease or parasite has underpinned the AGW narrative and is espoused by all the leading AGW scientists and particularly AGW’s many rich supporters like Bill Gates.

In Kingsman Valentine is seen convincing Obama of his vision which is ironic since Obama’s chief scientist, John Holdren, is an avid supporter of forced reduction of humanity. In real life Obama would have taking no convincing.

Valentine, as the archetypal rich supporter of AGW,  has a tenuous hold on real life. He thinks he is living in a movie and can’t stand the sight of blood even though he is prepared to kill billions.

Valentine is the perfect portrayal of the elitist loon who supports AGW. He has made his vast wealth from his society and now as a matter of vanity will destroy that society. The thought that his lifestyle will cease when the society is destroyed doesn’t enter his thinking. This is cognitive dissonance on a grand scale.

Valentine implants chips in the chosen ones so they can resist the doomsday device he has perfected.

In a delicious twist all the elistists, including Obama (and Prince Charles) literally lose their heads when the device backfires.

The movie wittily portrays the religious nature of AGW belief when Valentine tests his device on a bible bashing Southern Baptist church. The message is plain: when religion claims to be fact trouble is inevitable. This is what has happened with AGW: it is religion masquerading as fact. Armed with the pseudoscience of AGW rich crackpots like Valentine can live out their dreams. At the end Valentine can’t tell reality from his ego generated bubble of fantasy.

The movie offers no formal solution to the blight of public corruption by the AGW scam and relies on a steadfast and very aggressive secret organisation to violently eradicate the AGW zealots and hypocrites.

We should be so lucky in the real world.

DEBUNKING THE SCAM….

CO2 is a “trace gas” in air, insignificant by definition. It absorbs 1/7th as much IR, heat energy, from sunlight as water vapor which has 188 times as many molecules capturing 1200 times as much heat making 99.8% of all “global warming.” CO2 does only 0.2% of it. For this we should destroy our economy?

There is no possible “greenhouse effect” in an atmosphere. A greenhouse has a solid, clear cover that traps heat. The atmosphere does not trap heat as gas molecules cannot form surfaces as required for greenhouses. Molecules have to be in contact, as in liquids and solids like water and glass, to form surfaces.

The Medieval Warming from 800 AD to 1300 AD Micheal Mann erased to make his “hockey stick” was several degrees warmer than anything “global warmers” fear. It was the longest time, 500 years, of peace with great abundance for all.

Vostock Ice Core data analysis show CO2 increases follow temperature increases by 800 years 19 times in 450,000 years. That means temperature change is cause and CO2 change effect; not the other way around. This alone refutes the anthropogenic global warming concept.

Methane is called “a greenhouse gas 20 to 500 times more potent than CO2,” depending on who is raving, but it is not per the on-line absorption chart at the American Meteorological Society. It has an absorption profile very similar to nitrogen which is classified “transparent” to IR, heat waves and is only present to 18 ppm. “Green vegans” blame cow flatulence for global warming in their war against eating meat.

Carbon combustion generates 80% of our energy. Control and taxing of carbon would give the elected ruling class more power and money than anything since the Magna Carta of 1215 AD.

Most scientists and science educators work for tax supported institutions. They are eager to help government raise more money for them and they love being seen as “saving the planet.”

Google “Two Minute Conservative,” and you will be applauded when you speak truth at your next dinner party, barbecue or church picnic.