The Nobel Prize (for propaganda)

[trysail]

James A. Peden - better known as Jim or "Dad" - Webmaster of Middlebury Networks and Editor of the Middlebury Community Network, spent some of his earlier years as an Atmospheric Physicist at the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh and Extranuclear Laboratories in Blawnox, Pennsylvania, studying ion-molecule reactions in the upper atmosphere. As a student, he was elected to both the National Physics Honor Society and the National Mathematics Honor Fraternity, and was President of the Student Section of the American Institute of Physics. He was a founding member of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, and a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. His thesis on charge transfer reactions in the upper atmosphere was co-published in part in the prestigious Journal of Chemical Physics. The results obtained by himself and his colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh remain today as the gold standard in the AstroChemistry Database. He was a co-developer of the Modulated Beam Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer, declared one of the "100 Most Significant Technical Developments of the Year" and displayed at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

______________________________________
http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html

Editorial: The Great Global Warming Hoax

"... Our planet has been slowly warming since last emerging from the "Little Ice Age" of the 17th century, often associated with the Maunder Minimum. Before that came the "Medieval Warm Period", in which temperatures were about the same as they are today. Both of these climate phenomena are known to have occurred in the Northern Hemisphere, but several hundred years prior to the present, the majority of the Southern Hemisphere was primarily populated by indigenous peoples, where science and scientific observation was limited to non-existent. Thus we can not say that these periods were necessarily "global".

However, "Global Warming" in recent historical times has been an undisputable fact, and no one can reasonably deny that.

But we're hearing far too often that the "science" is "settled", and that it is mankind's contribution to the natural CO2 in the atmosphere has been the principal cause of an increasing "Greenhouse Effect", which is the root "cause" of global warming. We're also hearing that "all the world's scientists now agree on this settled science", and it is now time to quickly and most radically alter our culture, and prevent a looming global catastrophe. And last, but not least, we're seeing a sort of mass hysteria sweeping our culture which is really quite disturbing. Historians ponder how the entire nation of Germany could possibly have goose-stepped into place in such a short time, and we have similar unrest. Have we become a nation of overnight loonies?

 

[trysail]

Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, says “I
am a skeptic…Global warming has become a
new religion.”

Geophysicist Dr. Claude Allegre, who has authored more
than 100 scientific articles and was one of the first
scientists to sound global warming fears 20 years
ago, now says the cause of climate change is
“unknown.”

Geologist Bruno Wiskel of the University of Alberta once
set out to build a “Kyoto house” in honor of the
Kyoto Protocol but recently wrote a book titled
“The Emperor’s New Climate: Debunking the Myth
of Global Warming.”

Astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shaviv, one of Israel’s top young
award-winning scientists, “believes there will be
more scientists converting to man-made global
warming skepticism as they discover the dearth of
evidence.”

Atmospheric scientist Dr. Joanna Simpson, the
first woman in the world to receive a PhD in
meteorology: “Since I am no longer affiliated with
any organization nor receiving any funding, I can
speak quite frankly.” Formerly of NASA, she has
authored more than 190 studies.

Mathematician and engineer Dr. David Evans devoted
six years to carbon accounting, building models
for the Australian Greenhouse Office. He wrote the
carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures
Australia’s compliance with the Kyoto Protocol
in the land use change and forestry sector. Evans
became a skeptic in 2007.

Meteorologist Dr. Reid Bryson, dubbed one of the
“Fathers of Meteorology,” became a leading
global warming skeptic in the last few years before
passing away in 2008.

Botanist Dr. David Bellamy, a famed UK environmental
campaigner, former lecturer at Durham University,
and host of a popular UK TV series on wildlife,
said “global warming is largely a natural
phenomenon. The world is wasting stupendous
amounts of money on trying to fix something that
can’t be fixed.”

Climate researcher Dr. Tad Murty, a professor of earth
sciences at Flinders University, says: “I started
with a firm belief about global warming, until I
started working on it myself.”

Climate scientist Dr. Chris de Freitas of The University
of Auckland, N.Z., converted from a believer in
man-made global warming to a skeptic.

Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental
physical chemist, says warming fears are the
“worst scientific scandal in the history…When
people come to know what the truth is, they will feel
deceived by science and scientists.”

Andrei Kapitsa, a Russian geographer and Antarctic ice
core researcher, says “The Kyoto theorists have
put the cart before the horse. It is global warming
that triggers higher levels of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere, not the other way around …”

Atmospheric physicist James A. Peden notes, “Many
[scientists] are now searching for a way to back out
quietly [from promoting warming fears], without
having their professional careers ruined.”

Dr. Richard Courtney, a UN IPCC expert reviewer
and a UK-based climate and atmospheric science
consultant: “To date, no convincing evidence for
AGW (anthropogenic global warming) has been
discovered.”

See p. 9 of: http://joannenova.com.au/globalwarming/skeptics_handbook_2-0.pdf

 

[DesertPirate]

Thanks for the list!

 

[trysail]

Jezuuuuzzzzzzzzz— talk about fucked up! Farmers paid not to grow food in order to solve a problem that may not exist ???

God help us all.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aFYk4zIrQRms&refer=home
( Fair Use Excerpt )
Farmers Want Obama to Make Carbon a Cash Crop Under Climate Law
By Lorraine Woellert and Alan Bjerga

March 26 (Bloomberg) -- Rex Woollen grows corn and soybeans. In 2007, the Wilcox, Nebraska, farmer started cultivating a new commodity: carbon.

By not tilling his 800 acres, Woollen by some estimates keeps 470 tons of carbon per year in the ground and out of the atmosphere. Because of that, Woollen gets carbon credits he can sell on the Chicago Climate Exchange. At first, neighboring farmers were skeptical.

“They called me a tree-hugger,” Woollen said. “Then I showed them my first check.”

Woollen gets about $3,000 a year from the climate exchange’s carbon-trading pilot program. While it isn’t much, to Woollen it hints at bigger potential profit as Congress considers mandatory, nationwide greenhouse-gas limits.

President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress back a “cap-and-trade” system to ease global warming by making companies obtain government-issued pollution permits. As allowable emissions drop over time, companies would have to reduce pollution or buy extra allowances. Businesses adopting clean-energy methods like wind or solar power could sell permits for a profit.

Some farm-state lawmakers and agriculture groups want to let farmers like Woollen create a separate source of carbon allowances. Farmers who use eco-friendly farming techniques or plant trees would earn so-called offsets to sell alongside government permits on carbon markets...

*****​

 

[past_perfect]

I found this interesting to watch:


US Committee on Environment and Public Works

 

[DesertPirate]

Recycle air, plant a tree!

That will accomplish more that Crap & Trap and all the Carbon credit hucksters put together.

 

[trysail]

( Fair Use Excerpts )
The Civil Heretic

By NICHOLAS DAWIDOFF
New York Times
March 25, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all

FOR MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson has quietly resided in Princeton, N.J., on the wooded former farmland that is home to his employer, the Institute for Advanced Study, this country’s most rarefied community of scholars. Lately, however, since coming “out of the closet as far as global warming is concerned,” as Dyson sometimes puts it, there has been noise all around him. Chat rooms, Web threads, editors’ letter boxes and Dyson’s own e-mail queue resonate with a thermal current of invective...

*****​

But in the considered opinion of the neurologist Oliver Sacks, Dyson’s friend and fellow English expatriate, this is far from the case. “His mind is still so open and flexible,” Sacks says. Which makes Dyson something far more formidable than just the latest peevish right-wing climate-change denier. Dyson is a scientist whose intelligence is revered by other scientists — William Press, former deputy director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and now a professor of computer science at the University of Texas, calls him “infinitely smart.”

*****​

Dyson may be an Obama-loving, Bush-loathing liberal who has spent his life opposing American wars and fighting for the protection of natural resources, but he brooks no ideology and has a withering aversion to scientific consensus.

*****​

IT WAS FOUR YEARS AGO that Dyson began publicly stating his doubts about climate change. Speaking at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University, Dyson announced that “all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated.” Since then he has only heated up his misgivings, declaring in a 2007 interview with Salon.com that “the fact that the climate is getting warmer doesn’t scare me at all” and writing in an essay for The New York Review of Books, the left-leaning publication that is to gravitas what the Beagle was to Darwin, that climate change has become an “obsession” — the primary article of faith for “a worldwide secular religion” known as environmentalism. Among those he considers true believers, Dyson has been particularly dismissive of Al Gore, whom Dyson calls climate change’s “chief propagandist,” and James Hansen, the head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and an adviser to Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Dyson accuses them of relying too heavily on computer-generated climate models that foresee a Grand Guignol of imminent world devastation as icecaps melt, oceans rise and storms and plagues sweep the earth, and he blames the pair’s “lousy science” for “distracting public attention” from “more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet.”

*****​

“The climate-studies people who work with models always tend to overestimate their models,” Dyson was saying. “They come to believe models are real and forget they are only models.” Dyson speaks in calm, clear tones that carry simultaneous evidence of his English childhood, the move to the United States after completing his university studies at Cambridge and more than 50 years of marriage to the German-born Imme, but his opinions can be barbed, especially when a conversation turns to climate change. Climate models, he says, take into account atmospheric motion and water levels but have no feeling for the chemistry and biology of sky, soil and trees. “The biologists have essentially been pushed aside,” he continues. “Al Gore’s just an opportunist. The person who is really responsible for this overestimate of global warming is Jim Hansen. He consistently exaggerates all the dangers.”

Dyson agrees with the prevailing view that there are rapidly rising carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere caused by human activity. To the planet, he suggests, the rising carbon may well be a MacGuffin, a striking yet ultimately benign occurrence in what Dyson says is still “a relatively cool period in the earth’s history.” The warming, he says, is not global but local, “making cold places warmer rather than making hot places hotter.” Far from expecting any drastic harmful consequences from these increased temperatures, he says the carbon may well be salubrious — a sign that “the climate is actually improving rather than getting worse,” because carbon acts as an ideal fertilizer promoting forest growth and crop yields. “Most of the evolution of life occurred on a planet substantially warmer than it is now,” he contends, “and substantially richer in carbon dioxide.” Dyson calls ocean acidification, which many scientists say is destroying the saltwater food chain, a genuine but probably exaggerated problem. Sea levels, he says, are rising steadily, but why this is and what dangers it might portend “cannot be predicted until we know much more about its causes.”

For Hansen, the dark agent of the looming environmental apocalypse is carbon dioxide contained in coal smoke. Coal, he has written, “is the single greatest threat to civilization and all life on our planet.” Hansen has referred to railroad cars transporting coal as “death trains.” Dyson, on the other hand, told me in conversations and e-mail messages that “Jim Hansen’s crusade against coal overstates the harm carbon dioxide can do.” Dyson well remembers the lethal black London coal fog of his youth when, after a day of visiting the city, he would return to his hometown of Winchester with his white shirt collar turned black. Coal, Dyson says, contains “real pollutants” like soot, sulphur and nitrogen oxides, “really nasty stuff that makes people sick and looks ugly.” These are “rightly considered a moral evil,” he says, but they “can be reduced to low levels by scrubbers at an affordable cost.” He says Hansen “exploits” the toxic elements of burning coal as a way of condemning the carbon dioxide it releases, “which cannot be reduced at an affordable cost, but does not do any substantial harm.”

******​

 

[trysail]

Dr. Wibjorn Karlen, Emeritus Professor,
Dept. of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology,
Stockholm University, Sweden

"Newspapers should think about the damage they are doing to many persons, particularly young kids, by spreading the exaggerated views of a human impact on climate .... As far as I can see the IPCC ‘Global Temperature’ is wrong. Temperature is fluctuating but it is still most places cooler than in the 1930s and 1940s ... it will take about 800 years before the water level has increased by one meter”

“Changes in solar irradiation have been the dominant causes of changes in climate. Volcanic eruptions can have caused some cooling events and greenhouse gases may have contributed to the increase in temperature over the last decades. However, the influence of solar variability has been the major forcing factor and will probably also remain so in the future.”

 

[amicus]

There was a poster nearby about how 'global warming' would cause havoc in the years 2012-2015; your chart shows change from 2020-2040, according to the fanatics.

Neither will happen, of course, but people believe it and resources are being dumped into it and when it does not happen...everyone will have forgotten these now defunct hippies & their larvae, and wonder what all the fuss was about...that is if they don't totally destroy the economy in the process.

thanks for the piece...

amicus

 

[trysail]

http://www.colby.edu/colby.mag/issues/current/articles.php?issueid=49&articleid=950&dept=fromthehill

Where Is Science Behind Climate Change Claims?
By Dave Epstein

As an environmental advocate I have placed land under conservation and restored habitats. I recycle, reuse rainwater, walk when others drive, and generally leave a small environmental footprint. Yet I am angered by climatologists, environmentalists, and politicians who purvey one of the biggest myths of modern time: that climate change (aka global warming) during the past half century is primarily due to anthropogenic (manmade) causes.

I know this statement will likely have readers scurrying to fire off rebuttals. Many may point to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that says a 90-percent chance exists that the observed temperature increases of the last 50 years are the result of greenhouse gas emissions. The report goes further to say that human activities have begun affecting specific aspects of the climate, such as heat waves, wind patterns, and continental temperatures.

The IPCC doesn’t conduct its own research or monitor data. Its function is to collect original research produced around the world and synthesize the results. The 90 percent, often quoted by the media, was chosen to draw attention to the panel's findings and is rooted in no hard data. It is used as the basis for a prediction of global catastrophe, but we should remember that science is hardly infallible.

Recall for yourself all of the scientific predictions from reputable individuals and organizations that have failed to come to fruition. Here are a few: The Y2K catastrophe on Dec. 31, 1999, the planet running out of oil, Legionnaires' disease, the bird flu epidemic, solar flares knocking out the power grid, the global cooling of the 1970s, and even Einstein predicting that nuclear energy was “unattainable.” However, now our computer models are trusted to be the definitive predictor of the behavior of the planet’s climate well into the future?

Here’s what a Ph.D. friend said to me regarding his view about whether man is the major cause of climate change: “Maybe it’s like religion to me. It’s just a feeling, faith, and belief in something I can’t prove but intrinsically I know is right.” Therein lies the problem. The argument about the cause of climate change is not like faith or religion, right or wrong; it's a scientific hypothesis. Climate models are produced by computers that are fed a series of equations and assumptions and then spit out a prediction of rapid global warming. To date these models have failed to identify the current planetary cooling. In 2006 NASA scientists said the cooling was just a “speed bump” on the road to global warming.

Many factors contribute to the climate. As I write this (during a Jan Plan at Colby, when temperatures plummeted to minus 25 F) we are in the second-quietest period of sunspots since 1900. The Pacific Ocean remains in a cool phase of a multi-decadal oscillation and actually may contribute to a cooling the planet over the next decade. Long-term climate data indicate that world climate varies naturally, and those cycles are the collective result of scores of interrelated variables, playing out either in consort or not. Volcanic activity, sunspots, ocean currents, global winds, and more interact to cool and warm Earth. Man plays a role, but it is dwarfed by the natural variability of the planet.

The media support the idea of man-made warming through the omission of important facts. They fail to tell the public that glaciers grew in Alaska in 2008 - the first time in 250 years - or that overall ice coverage in Antarctica has reached an all-time record level. We cannot assume that the data used to report the worldwide temperature warming are accurate. NOAA’s reported October 2008 warm record was thrown out after some of September’s data had “accidently” been used in the calculation. Over the past 20 years, hundreds of colder, former Soviet Union stations have been dropped from the temperature database, leaving a warmer bias in the data. In an ongoing project, Anthony Watts, a former television meteorologist and expert on weather measurement, discovered hundreds of the U.S. observational stations are not compliant with NOAA regulations.

Examination of past data shows there have been far more alarming temperature trends than we have witnessed recently. As the last glacial period was ending, about 12,000 years ago, and temperatures rose, an abrupt return to glacial cold occurred. This lasted for about 1,000 years and is known as the Younger Dryas. Evidence of the end of this cold period found in ice cores shows where temperatures in Greenland rose 15 F (8 C) in less than a decade. No Hummer caused that meteoric rise in temperature. What exactly is this ideal climate we are trying to achieve? What level of cooling is acceptable? Are we trying to return to the 16th and 17th centuries and the Little Ice Age, where massive crop failure and severe cold were the norm? If we now were in another Little Ice Age, would these scientists urge burning of fossil fuels?

The entire premise of man controlling the weather or climate will, if left unchallenged, yield rules and regulations as crazy as the very premise on which they will be based. Conserve, preserve, and find alternative forms of energy. But let’s do it because it’s the right thing to do, not because of the fear associated with some unproven hypothesis.

Dave Epstein ‘86 [ Colby College ] is a television meteorologist in Boston, teaches at Framingham State College, has taught Jan Plans at Colby, and is host of a gardening Web site, GrowingWisdom.com

 

[trysail]

( Fair Use Excerpts )
Bound to Burn
By: Peter W. Huber

http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_2_carbon.html

Like medieval priests, today’s carbon brokers will sell you an indulgence that forgives your carbon sins. It will run you about $500 for 5 tons of forgiveness—about how much the typical American needs every year. Or about $2,000 a year for a typical four-person household. Your broker will spend the money on such things as reducing methane emissions from hog farms in Brazil.

But if you really want to make a difference, you must send a check large enough to forgive the carbon emitted by four poor Brazilian households, too—because they’re not going to do it themselves. To cover all five households, then, send $4,000. And you probably forgot to send in a check last year, and you might forget again in the future, so you’d best make it an even $40,000, to take care of a decade right now. If you decline to write your own check while insisting that to save the world we must ditch the carbon, you are just burdening your already sooty soul with another ton of self-righteous hypocrisy. And you can’t possibly afford what it will cost to forgive that.

If making carbon this personal seems rude, then think globally instead. During the presidential race, Barack Obama was heard to remark that he would bankrupt the coal industry. No one can doubt Washington’s power to bankrupt almost anything—in the United States. But China is adding 100 gigawatts of coal-fired electrical capacity a year. That’s another whole United States’ worth of coal consumption added every three years, with no stopping point in sight. Much of the rest of the developing world is on a similar path.

Cut to the chase. We rich people can’t stop the world’s 5 billion poor people from burning the couple of trillion tons of cheap carbon that they have within easy reach. We can’t even make any durable dent in global emissions—because emissions from the developing world are growing too fast, because the other 80 percent of humanity desperately needs cheap energy, and because we and they are now part of the same global economy. What we can do, if we’re foolish enough, is let carbon worries send our jobs and industries to their shores, making them grow even faster, and their carbon emissions faster still...

*****​

...The grand theory for how the developed world can unilaterally save the planet seems to run like this. We buy time for the planet by rapidly slashing our own emissions. We do so by developing carbon-free alternatives even cheaper than carbon. The rest of the world will then quickly adopt these alternatives, leaving most of its trillion barrels of oil and trillion tons of coal safely buried, most of the rain forests standing, and most of the planet’s carbon-rich soil undisturbed. From end to end, however, this vision strains credulity.

Perhaps it’s the recognition of that inconvenient truth that has made the anti-carbon rhetoric increasingly apocalyptic. Coal trains have been analogized to boxcars headed for Auschwitz. There is talk of the extinction of all humanity. But then, we have heard such things before. It is indeed quite routine, in environmental discourse, to frame choices as involving potentially infinite costs on the green side of the ledger. If they really are infinite, no reasonable person can quibble about spending mere billions, or even trillions, on the dollar side, to dodge the apocalyptic bullet.

Thirty years ago, the case against nuclear power was framed as the “Zero-Infinity Dilemma.” The risks of a meltdown might be vanishingly small, but if it happened, the costs would be infinitely large, so we should forget about uranium. Computer models demonstrated that meltdowns were highly unlikely and that the costs of a meltdown, should one occur, would be manageable—but greens scoffed: huge computer models couldn’t be trusted. So we ended up burning much more coal. The software shoe is on the other foot now; the machines that said nukes wouldn’t melt now say that the ice caps will. Warming skeptics scoff in turn, and can quite plausibly argue that a planet is harder to model than a nuclear reactor. But that’s a detail. From a rhetorical perspective, any claim that the infinite, the apocalypse, or the Almighty supports your side of the argument shuts down all further discussion...

*****​

 

[Dragonlipz]

If you have any experience with complex computer models (which have all the built-in biases of their designers, most especially the all-too human tendency for extrapolation of recent experience), you know they are chock full of the potential for error. Time and time again, I have watched people draw incorrect conclusions because they were unaware of the subtleties involved. People are amazingly trusting of stuff produced by computer that the programmers know is either pre-ordained by the prejudices of the programmer or the selection of the data. I and many other intelligent observers (Freeman Dyson, William Gray, and Michael Crichton, among others) are not even close to being convinced that the evidence warrants the conclusions that are being accepted as gospel by a credulous media and given the patina of settled science to an even more gullible public.

Home Page- NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies – Surface Temperature Analysis
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/

Punta Arenas, Chile
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/g...py?id=304859340004&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1

Alice Springs, Australia
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/g...py?id=501943260004&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1

Clyde, NWT, Canada
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/g...py?id=403710900006&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1

Christchurch, NZ
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/g...py?id=507937800000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1

Kamenskoe, Siberia
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/g...py?id=222257440004&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1

Rome, Italy
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/g...py?id=623162390011&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1

Paris, Le Bourget
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/g...py?id=615071500001&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1

My muse, the bodacious, buxom, barefoot, bemused, banal, bedazzling bikini barista from the corner expresso stand notes that citing non-references and science fiction authors is hardly any justification for your concerns. She says that if there were no global warming she would not be able to ply her trade......

 

[trysail]

My muse, the bodacious, buxom, barefoot, bemused, banal, bedazzling bikini barista from the corner expresso stand notes that citing non-references and science fiction authors is hardly any justification for your concerns. She says that if there were no global warming she would not be able to ply her trade......

She's obviously not the sharpest knife in the drawer, otherwise she'd recognize Freeman Dyson, Ph.D., William Gray, Ph.D. and source data.

 

[trysail]

In your evaluation of the IPCC's climate forecasts, be sure to incorporate your opinion of the accuracy of the model's albedo effect:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo

 

[Dragonlipz]

Trysail:
My muse states that she doesn't have to be the sharpest knife in the drawer, only the most used to understand what bullshit yer spouting.......She thinks that you ought to draw back, reassemble the FACTS, and let go of the nonsense you're repeating......Get some original, unbiased neural activity going on in between them ears.......you're a smart guy.....think for yourself......that's what she says.....I say: She has a fine pair of tit......I listen to her.....

 

[DesertPirate]

In your evaluation of the IPCC's climate forecasts, be sure to incorporate your opinion of the accuracy of the model's albedo effect:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo

Some folks are still following the gospel of Gore and won't be swayed by facts. Keep trying TrySail.

 

[Dragonlipz]

DP - many folks don't need 'Gore' to figure things out for themselves.....My muse just would like Trysail to give it a try.......(figuring it out for himself).....being a bubblehead there's no point for you.....you're a republicasheep, no hope for ya.....

 

[trysail]

"What would NSIDC and our media make of a photo like this if released by the NAVY today? Would we see headlines like 'NORTH POLE NOW OPEN WATER'? Or maybe 'Global warming melts North Pole'? Perhaps we would. sensationalism is all the rage these days. If it melts it makes headlines."
-Anthony Watts

Skate (SSN-578), surfaced at the North Pole, 17 March 1959. Image from NAVSOURCE

Gee – Global warming must have been bad in the 1950’s, so many poor Polar Bears must have starved and drowned…

 

[oggbashan]

"What would NSIDC and our media make of a photo like this if released by the NAVY today? Would we see headlines like 'NORTH POLE NOW OPEN WATER'? Or maybe 'Global warming melts North Pole'? Perhaps we would. sensationalism is all the rage these days. If it melts it makes headlines."
-Anthony Watts

...
Gee – Global warming must have been bad in the 1950’s, so many poor Polar Bears must have starved and drowned…

You are ignoring the conspiracy theorists. USS Skate never went near the North Pole. This photo was taken at Norfolk News with fake ice. The aim was to get the Russians to emulate the feat and lose a submarine trying...

Og (tongue in cheek)

 

[trysail]

 

[trysail]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/climatechange/2009/06/the_unpredictable_weather.html

Unpredictable weather: why the climate is not a model citizen
Richard Cable
15:13 PM, Tuesday, 9 June 2009

(BBC) One of the awkward things about global warming is that there are no absolutes. No one can say definitively what the climate will do next. Anyone who thinks they can will probably end up looking like one of those TV scientists from the 1950s who said we'd all be holidaying in space and flying around in hover cars by now.

But why is it so very difficult to state anything with complete confidence about the behaviour of our climate? Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which periodically publishes 'the largest and most detailed summary of the climate change situation ever undertaken' is only prepared to say that human beings are 'very likely' to be the source of the problem. They are hedging for a reason.

Admittedly, it's a little firmer about the temperature itself, stating: 'Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.' But then that's a bit like saying that, today, it is hot. It doesn't tell you very much about tomorrow.

The weather is chaotic. Chaotic systems are infinitely complex and inherently unpredictable, (although not, as some suppose, random). The climate is simply 'big, long weather' - the atmospheric conditions of a region charted over a period of time - and is therefore also infinitely complex and inherently unpredictable.

The IPCC attempts to predict this unpredictability by using climate models - fiendishly complex computer simulations of the Earth's climate that explore 'emissions scenarios'. Each of these scenarios looks at different levels of emissions, and from them the IPCC draws conclusions about where we might be heading.

The models are not without their critics. In order to accurately model a chaotic system, you arguably have to be able to describe the starting conditions of the system and understand pretty perfectly how each of the elements in that system will act upon every other element in that system.

But we don't yet fully understand key issues, such as to what degree carbon dioxide warms the atmosphere or how clouds form and disperse, and can't yet accurately predict even complex human systems that themselves act on climate, like population growth and economic development.

With this in mind it's hard to see how a computer model with so much potential error in its starting conditions can accurately extrapolate what the climate will be doing in 100 years. That's not to say they never will, although anyone who has ever relied on a British weather forecast for the next 24 hours will instinctively take any predictions with a pinch of salt.

 

[trysail]

http://www.associatedcontent.com/ar...01_climate_change.html?singlepage=true&cat=58

It's Time to Reopen the Debate
June 05, 2009
by H. Michael Mogil
( Mr. Mogil is a professional meteorologist and holds a B.S. and an M.S. in meteorology from Florida State University )


The bad news is that the climate is changing. The good news is that the climate has always been changing. And when one looks at the wealth of scientific evidence that "real" scientists have been looking at, it is almost impossible to arrive at the conclusion that humans are causing the most recent warming spell in Earth's geologic history. In fact, during the Earth's roughly 4 to 4.5 billion year existence, proxy records (including, but not limited to fossils and geologic structures) show that the Earth has undergone numerous atmospheric and oceanic thermal rises and falls, some great and some smaller.

Rather, what makes this "warm" period newsworthy is that so-called news reporting today is instantaneous, visual and encapsulated. If a pin drops, it can be reported or blogged even before it hits the floor. Encapsulation and visualization ensure that "clips" and "quips," taken out of context, can be used to make a point, any point. It's quite like the old style of quoting in which a few words of a lengthy quote can be used to completely change the intent of the quote.

Nowhere has this approach been used so efficiently than in the purported climate change debate. In fact, the word, "debate," becomes a misnomer if one believes the climate change doomsayers. According to those supporting the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - the case is proven and disbelievers should be shunned. According to the IPCC, it is "very likely that humanity's emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and other greenhouse gases have caused most of the global temperature rise observed since the mid-20th century." The terminology "very likely" means a certainty level of 90% or higher.

Enter several thousands of other scientists who refuse to be stifled and suddenly the debate is on again. And while statistics on either side can be used to advantage, the reasoning linked to those statistics tells another story.

Climate Change Evidence

Prior to attending the 2nd Annual International Conference on Climate Change in New York City in March 2009, I was a climate change skeptic, but one who was concerned about the status of our planet. After hearing noted scientists present their findings about climate change, I became a non-believer in the IPCC findings, but remain concerned about the state of our planet. The bottom line is that geologic and astronomical forces, far greater than those of mortal man (and woman) are controlling what happens on Planet Earth.

Solar cycles (in which solar output varies in a periodic manner) are directly related to the amount of energy reaching Earth; and this incoming energy is directly related to our planet's temperature. Small changes in solar output can yield large changes to Earth's energy budget. Glacial advances and retreats also fuel the temperature of the planet by changing rates of energy absorption and reflection. And over time there has been an ongoing battle between glacial and non-glacial territory. Of course, as glaciers and ice sheets grew, sea level dropped and vice versa. In the most recent geological period, glacial advance ensured that Asia and Alaska were joined by a land bridge; the Chesapeake Bay wasn't a Bay, but rather part of a series of large river systems; Florida was a much fatter peninsula; and many Scandinavian fjords were filled with glacial ice (not yet submerged in water).

According to Jeffery Gold, writing at "Wired New York - Forum", much of the Hudson Canyon (offshore from New York City) was formed during the last Ice Age, over 10,000 years ago. Sea level was about 400 feet lower then and the mouth of the Hudson River was located some 100 miles east of its present site. With a greater drop in elevation due to lower sea level, the river flowed faster and was better able to carve the canyon. The Great Falls region of the Potomac River near Washington, DC also underwent greater erosion due to the lowering of sea level and the resulting increase in slope along the waterway.

Now, that sea level is slowly rising (certainly less than rising 400 feet in 10,000 years), the IPCC wants us to enter panic mode. But, humans did not cause this dramatic rise in sea level and certainly were not around (with cars and factories) during the time sea level fell as the previous Ice Age ensued at the end of an earlier warm period.

Scientists have other evidence that over geologic time things have changed. Fossil and other records show that continents have moved (separating from a single large continental mass known as Pangea) into the distribution that exists today. Formation of mountain ranges due to vulcanism and other geologic forces becomes, over time, undercut by weathering and erosion.

Not surprisingly, animal and plant species have had to adapt, relocate or die. And in this process, oil, natural gas and coal deposits formed under growing deposits of eroded rock material. Trust me when I note that graveyards of plant and marine material (the source of our fossil fuels) could not have formed in the Middle East or the north slope of Alaska given the current continental arrangement or current climate and weather patterns.

Long-term Versus Short-term Assessments

But perhaps the largest flaw in the climate change controversy lies in the short-sightedness of the statistical analysis. Terms such as, "worst drought in 30 years," and "highest temperatures this century" tell how easy it is to use a small piece of a long-term record to make an illogical conclusion. It is no different than using the one second change in the Dow Jones Industrial Average graph at 9:35:01am to predict the change in the market for the entire day. Given the ongoing rise and fall of that graph, the result can be very different if one used the change at 10:35:01 instead.

Things have changed and they continue to change. But our perception of climate is that it is fixed. That's only because of what we experience in the here and now. But climate is only an average of conditions, filled with many variations (positive and negative) that create the average. We think that an 80 average in math class means we scored 80 on all of our tests. But that 80 can be the result of a 60, an 80 and a 100 or a 50, 90 and 100. That's quite a bit of variation around that "average" reading.

Scientific Analysis & Critical Thinking

Although scientific evidence says that humans are NOT THE cause of the recent warming, it does not mean that we shouldn't be better stewards of Planet Earth. We need to be. But, it shouldn't be done in panic mode and it shouldn't be done "at any cost." And, it shouldn't just be done with the U.S. cutting it's carbon emissions while other Nations around the world continue to pollute freely.

Instead we need to scientifically examine all of the evidence and debate the problem. Governmental determinations, research funding requirements and media attention currently act to shut down the debate prematurely and should be changed. We need to understand better how physical and other forces guide our planet. And we need to better understand what the "unintended consequences" of our actions really are. For example, when we build levees along the Mississippi River, we do protect farmland and peoples homes. But, we also cut the flow of sediment to the Mississippi River Delta causing a loss of coastal ecosystems and natural protection to the lower Mississippi River Valley. When we build dams to control stream flow and store water, we impact ecosystems downstream. When we rebuild homes in flood, hurricane or forest fire zones, we set the stage for future disasters. Simply stated, every action we take or don't take affects other things. And it is usually the larger forces of the natural world that win.

I am 100% for solar and wind power as part of a suite of alternative fuels. But, then again, Americans were for biofuels until it was discovered what their real cost turned out to be. Wind and solar power are pricey alternatives to existing fossil fuels. Should they be encouraged? Absolutely. Over time, their price will drop.

But, what about better insulating our homes and businesses? What about planting more trees in urban and other locales to help shade and cool the planet? What about the effect of windmills on birds? Why not use nuclear power with proper safeguards? All of these "trade-offs" and others have to be considered before we rush to judgment.

So, the release of the long-awaited publication, Climate Change Reconsidered - The Report of the Non-Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - NIPCC) by the Heartland Institute at its' 3rd Climate Conference in Washington, DC on June 2, 2009 should ... no, make that MUST ... restart the debate. (Alas, major national TV news networks, the Washington Post and even many conservative talk radio personalities failed to report on the release of this publication and the climate conference.) The lengthy report is filled with key scientific information that showcases the other side of the issue. Instead of relying on what computer models (with varying assumptions and mathematical algorithms) show (as did the IPCC Report), much of the content of this report is based on historical information using data and/or proxy data to assess what has happened over longer time periods. The report, however, is not for the faint of heart. It is literally, and figuratively, heavy scientific reading (it weighs 6 pounds). But for policy makers, it has to be read. Staffers, hopefully those with some scientific awareness need to read it and brief their bosses about the real science. Business owners, scientists, educators and others in leadership roles need to read it and help educate elected officials and others at all levels about the true state of climate change knowledge. This includes the balanced education of our children, the generation that will have to deal with what we do to respond to "climate change."

For everyone, the Heartland Institute has posted the Skeptics Handbook (written by Joanne Nova). The guide details some of the many IPCC statements and how easily they can be refuted. Perhaps the most important information in the handbook centers on the data used to document recent warming. It shows urban instruments biased by nearby buildings, air conditioners, and other heat sources. While likely unintentional, the effect is to skew the data toward warming.

Technology plays a role in our understanding of hurricane frequency, too. In 2004 and 2005, we were told that the number of storms was linked to climate change. Never before (at least in recent, documented history) had such a large number of Atlantic hurricanes occurred. Yet, when going back to periods BEFORE weather satellites showed mid-oceanic storms and when established shipping routes missed storms, and correcting the data set for this technological shift, NOAA scientists have shown that a similar peak occurred some 70 years earlier. Hence, overall trends during the last 100 years show no change in hurricane frequency to perhaps a slight decrease. Globally, the number of tropical cyclones remains about the same, as well.

Finally, climate change alarmists continually describe the threat to Planet Earth and its inhabitants as astronomical. Statements warning of the deaths of hundreds of thousands due to growing droughts, millions at risk as diseases spread, drowning polar bears and the potential loss of a species all grab the headlines. Yet, every one of these scenarios and others has occurred before the media, special interest groups and the Industrial Revolution arrived on the scene.

The bottom line to the climate debate is that we need better scientific research (from all quarters), better communication of the results (not just hype) and better understanding by an unscientifically oriented population. If not, we will almost certainly make inappropriate and costly decisions that may be difficult to remedy.

In Conclusion

Dr. S. Fred Singer, one of the authors of the NIPCC Report, who for decades has been an outspoken skeptic opposing alarmist junk science, noted that the NIPCC report made three broad points:

* There is NO evidence that the rise in global temperatures in the past 50 years is due to human activity. On the contrary, human activity has "no influence" at all on temperature change.

* Increases in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are natural. Any efforts to mitigate them are "ineffectual" and "won't have the slightest impact on CO2 concentrations."

* The debate about global warming "is not about the science." To the contrary, he noted that the political effort to regulate CO2 emissions "is about money and power."

Finally, please remember that statistics (on their own) do not lie. Rather statisticians, scientists, special interest groups and others can bend statistics to do their bidding.

In closing, I urge all readers of this summary article to read about both sides of "climate change" and to make their own decision about the problem or the lack thereof. Readers should apply the same type of critical analysis to proposed solutions, whether national, global or local. Then, at least, whatever we do is based on thought not mass hysteria.

 

[trysail]

http://www.booktv.org/Program/10283...ming+Science+They+Didnt+Want+You+to+Know.aspx

Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don't Want You to Know
By Patrick J. Michaels and Robert C. Balling, Jr.

An in-depth look at consistent, solid science on the other side of the gloom-and-doom global warming story that is rarely reported and pushed aside: that global warming is likely to be modest, and there is no apocalypse on the horizon.
ISBN: 978-1-933995-23-6
Number of Pages: 267

See also: Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media.

About the Book:
There’s a whole new world of global warming science today, but few people hear about it. In recent years, an internally consistent body of scientific literature has emerged that argues cogently for global warming but against the gloom-and-doom vision of climate change. But those who merely call attention to this literature are intimidated, blacklisted, and even driven from prestigious scientific employment. Calling the current scientific environment a “climate of extremes” is an understatement.

It’s a fact that there are fewer citations in the refereed scientific literature providing evidence for the moderate view of global warming, but that’s to be expected. In Climate of Extremes, climatologists Patrick J. Michaels and Robert Balling Jr. explain that climate science is hardly unbiased, even though the global climate community itself believes that any new finding has an equal probability of making our climatic future appear more or less dire.

Michaels and Balling examine all aspects of the apocalyptic vision of climate change making headlines almost every day: Hurricanes pumped up by global warming, rapid melting of Greenland and Antarctica resulting in 20 feet of sea-level rise in the next 90 years, that global warming is occurring at an increasing pace, and there is a massive increase in heat-wave related deaths. Each one of these pop-culture icons of climate change turns out to be short on facts and long on exaggeration. People who read Climate of Extremes will emerge well-armed against an army of extremists hawking climate change as the greatest threat ever to our society and way of life.

About the Authors:
PATRICK J. MICHAELS is a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute.

ROBERT C. BALLING, JR. is a professor in the climatology program in the School of Geographical Sciences at Arizona State University.

----------------------------------------

What Others Have Said:

"Michaels and Balling claim that, although global warming is real, it does not herald a climate crisis and that human beings cannot 'significantly alter the temperature trajectory of the planet.' They present detailed evidence that climate data is inaccurate, the fear that permafrost will release huge amounts of the greenhouse gas methane is unfounded and that 'horror stories about an imminent collapse of Greenland's ice simply aren't borne out by the fact that it was warmer there for decades in the early 20th century, and for millennia after the end of the last ice age.' The authors make persuasive arguments and climate crisis skeptics will applaud the book's message."
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"Michaels and Balling have performed an enormous service with this book. While not disputing the existence of man-made global warming, they demonstrate with scientific rigor, yet in terms accessible to the layman, that the alarmist narrative which is commonly supposed to derive from this is, in fact, wholly unfounded. This is a ‘must read’ for anyone seriously interested in the climate change debate."
—NIGEL LAWSON,
Former UK Secretary of State for Energy
Past President, British Institute of Energy Economics

"This tome challenges today's dire warnings about climate change and conveys the reasons for the overstated conclusions. The science itself has become riddled with bias, which then is channeled through the sensationalism-seeking media. This compelling work illuminates the neglected science and the less-severe consequences of global warming."
—NEWSMAX

"You don’t have to be a skeptic to be curious about how solid the alleged global warming consensus really is. This book will open your eyes, if you are open to evidence and arguments."
—BENNY PEISER
Liverpool John Moores University, United Kingdom

"Michaels and Balling have provided a treasure trove of the latest global warming science that you won’t hear about through the media and reveal the absurdity of the claim that the science of man-made global warming is settled."
—ROY W. SPENCER
Principal Research Scientist, University of Alabama-Huntsville
Recipient, NASA's Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement

"In Climate of Extremes, two distinguished climatologists analyze the media’s message about various alleged doomsday scenarios resulting from global warming—with particular attention to observational data. In each case, they demonstrate that potentially negative effects of increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have been exaggerated or even fabricated, whereas any positive effects have been ignored. An informed citizenry is essential for wise national decisions in a democracy. Climate of Extremes provides important and honest information about climate change that is hard to find elsewhere."
—WILL HAPPER
Professor of Physics and Former Chairman of the University Research Board, Princeton University
Former Director, Office of Energy Research, U.S. Department of Energy

"This book's title refers to the current scientific environment, which Michaels and Balling view as biased toward alarmism with respect to climate change issues. The authors recognize that anthropogenic global warming is a reality, but criticize mainstream climate science through a review of peer-reviewed literature"
—CHOICE

 

[trysail]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3511_arcticdino.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/arcticdino/

A recent NOVA ( a U.S. public broadcasting science program ) piece related the discovery of fossil dinosaurs from the late Cretaceous period ( 55-70 million years ago ) on the North Slope of Alaska.


NARRATOR: They've unearthed dinosaur bones near the North Pole. The animal was called Edmontosaurus, a gentle giant, a 35-foot-long, four-ton, duck-billed plant eater, a member of the Hadrosaur family, found in 70-million-year-old rock, a mere 50 miles from the Arctic Ocean, where temperatures can drop as low as minus-60 degrees Fahrenheit. According to conventional wisdom, it shouldn't be here, because this is how dinosaurs are typically pictured: cold-blooded reptiles living in tropical climes, not in cold, arctic environments like this one. And the Hadrosaur is not alone.

In two sites along Alaska's Colville River, paleontologists have recently unearthed eight distinct species, represented by hundreds of fossils.

ANTHONY FIORILLO: On this table are examples of the biodiversity of the animals—the vertebrate animals—that we've found up on the North Slope. And we have a variety of meat-eating dinosaurs, and this is the left-front jaw of an animal called Gorgosaurus.

NARRATOR: Thirty feet long, almost three tons; mainly a match for its fearsome cousin, Tyrannosaurus rex, Gorgosaurus was at the top of the food chain. In competition: Troodon, six feet long, 150 pounds—small but ferocious; and Dromaeosaurus, a wolf-like two-legged hunter, which may have had feathers as insulation.

ANTHONY FIORILLO: And here we have a horn core from our Pachyrhinosaurus.

NARRATOR: ...a massive four-ton plant eater, with a broad, bony frill protecting its neck, an elongated skull with a beaked mouth, and a thick bone above the nasal opening; Pachycephalosaurus, a two-legged plant-eating brute, with a thick, bony dome on its head, possibly used for combat or defense; and Thescelosaurus, another two-legged animal thought to be a plant eater. The unexpected discovery of so many species living in the arctic is leading scientists to rethink old assumptions about dinosaur biology [ AND CLIMATE CHANGE! Obviously, if there were dinosaurs living that close to the North Pole either our knowledge of dinosaurs is horribly deficient or earth's climate has radically changed. Needless to say, climate change between the late Cretaceous epoch and the Holocene sure as hell wasn't anthropogenic. ]...

*****​

NARRATOR: Conditions were mild during the long bright summer days, but the winter would have been much more challenging. Because they're so close to the Earth's axis, the poles—North and South—experienced the most dramatic seasonal changes.

At the height of summer, when the North Pole is tilted towards the sun, the North Slope enjoys a month of constant daylight. But in the depths of winter, when the North Pole is tilted away from the sun, the North Slope spends six weeks each year in near total darkness. The continents continually drift, and because the North Slope used to be even closer to the North Pole, 70 million years ago, the extremes were even more pronounced.

ROBERT SPICER: The present location of the Liscomb bone bed—that current latitude of about 70 degrees north—at the time the dinosaurs were living, it was closer to 85 degrees north.

NARRATOR: Today, the North Slope is 1,500 miles from the North Pole, but 70 million years ago, it was four times closer, a mere 350 miles, with four months of darkness during the long winter...

*****​

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Unless of course the planet was a lot warmer than it is today? Or the axial tilt was different. Or the orbit around the sun was more circular than elliptical.

Now wouldn't the earth getting smashed by a big asteroid tend to elongate the obit a little? Thus making it an ellipse as opposed to a circle?

Just throwing out questions and theories.