Ephemera

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Climate Change Dictionary



PEER REVIEW: The act of banding together a group of like-minded academics with a funding conflict of interest, for the purpose of squeezing out any research voices that threaten the multi-million dollar government grant gravy train.

SETTLED SCIENCE: Betrayal of the scientific method for politics or money or both.

DENIER: Anyone who suspects the truth.

CLIMATE CHANGE: What has been happening for billions of years, but should now be flogged to produce 'panic for profit.'

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE: Leftist Nutcase Prize, unrelated to "Peace" in any meaningful way.

DATA, EVIDENCE: Unnecessary details. If anyone asks for this, see "DENIER," above.

CLIMATE SCIENTIST: A person skilled in spouting obscure, scientific-sounding jargon that has the effect of deflecting requests for "DATA" by "DENIERS." Also skilled at affecting an aura of "Smartest Person in the Room" to buffalo gullible legislators and journalists.

JUNK SCIENCE: The use of invalid scientific evidence resulting in findings of causation which simply cannot be justified or understood from the standpoint of the current state of credible scientific or medical knowledge.

 

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We have replaced theory and observations with computer models and simulations. The latter ain’t science.

Richard S. Lindzen, Ph.D.
Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, AGU, AAAS, and AMS
Member Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
Member National Academy of Sciences

 

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http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601104&sid=a8jILBtMw1a4



OPEC in Comfortable Middle Age, Turns 50 Tomorrow: Timeline
By Grant Smith

Sept. 13 (Bloomberg) -- The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries turns 50 years old tomorrow, having survived a tumultuous history of wars, embargoes and in-fighting. The world’s oldest and largest energy producer group is now enjoying prices close to the $75 a barrel level that its largest member Saudi Arabia considers “ideal.”

OPEC’s Timeline:

Sept. 14, 1960: The organization was born in Baghdad. The five founding members -- Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela -- created the group during a five-day meeting in the Iraqi capital, dedicated to “the coordination and unification of the petroleum policies of Member Countries and the determination of the best means of safeguarding their interests.”

Sept. 1, 1965: The group moved its headquarters from Geneva to Vienna, where its secretariat is now based. Between 1961 and 1971 the following six countries join: Qatar, Indonesia, Libya, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria and Nigeria.

October, 1973: The six-month Arab oil embargo pitted OPEC’s Arab members against the U.S. and Israel in a politically-motivated suspension of exports that pushed prices above $12 a barrel. The Paris-based International Energy Agency was created in 1974 by consumer nations, in response to the oil price shock. Ecuador and Gabon join OPEC in 1973 and 1975, respectively, only to leave the group later.

Dec. 20, 1975: Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, known as Carlos the Jackal, took more than 60 hostages during a raid on OPEC’s Vienna headquarters to protest against treatment of Palestinians by Israel.

October, 1978: Protests and strikes in OPEC member Iran against ruling Shah Reza Pahlavi, deposed the following year in a revolution, cut the country’s oil production within three months to a 27-year low.

Sept. 23, 1980: Iraq invaded Iran in the first war between OPEC members. During the eight-year conflict, with its attacks on oil-tankers in the Persian Gulf, group production plunged to a 20-year low.

October, 1981: OPEC members agreed to maintain oil prices within a range of $32 to $38 a barrel.

August, 1985: Saudi Arabia abandoned the system of “posting” oil prices to one in favor of letting the retail value of refined products such as gasoline determine the cost of crude.

1986: [ Petroleum price crash due to oversupply; the price of a barrel falls from the mid $30s all the way to a low of ~$6 a barrel. Stock prices of publicly-traded energy companies collapse providing what turns out IN HINDSIGHT to be a fabulous buying opportunity ]. OPEC members switched to a new pricing system in which futures contracts traded on exchanges in New York and London effectively determined the cost of oil shipments.

Aug. 2, 1990: Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait marked the second war among OPEC members. Repelled the following year by a U.S.-led coalition, withdrawing Iraqi troops set fire to Kuwait’s oil wells.

Nov. 29, 1997: At a meeting in Jakarta, OPEC raised production quotas for the first time in four years as the Asian financial crisis unfolds, sending prices as low as $10 the following December. Analysts often refer to the event as “the Ghost of Jakarta.” [ While nowhere near as dramatic as the 1986 episode, stock prices of publicly-traded energy companies decline providing what turns out IN HINDSIGHT to be an excellent buying opportunity ].

June 24, 1998: OPEC was assisted by non-members including Mexico, Russia and Norway in cutting production as demand collapsed, helping revive prices. The coordinated action followed initial talks between Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Mexico.

March 19, 2003: Aircraft and missile attacks on Iraq begin, followed by a U.S. and U.K. troop invasion that subsequently topples Saddam Hussein’s government in Baghdad.

Jan. 1, 2007: Angola joined OPEC, its first new member since the 1970s. In November, Ecuador re-joined the organization following a 15-year absence.

Sept. 10, 2008: Indonesia exited the oil group after becoming a net importer, leaving the total number of members at 12.

Dec. 18, 2008: OPEC announced the largest production cut in its history as the financial crisis sent prices plunging from a record $147.27 a barrel in July, 2008, to near $30 by the year- end. Oil prices then climb 78 percent during 2009.

Sept. 14, 2010: In happy middle age, OPEC turns 50, with oil prices near $75 a barrel and above $70 a barrel for all but two weeks of this year.

 

[trysail]

pp. 49-50 of:
Understanding the Climategate Inquiries
By Ross McKitrick, Ph.D
Professor of Environmental Economics
University of Guelph
Canada
September 2010
http://rossmckitrick.weebly.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/rmck_climategate.pdf

Conclusions

Where do matters now stand? Returning to the five issues raised at the start, we can say that the evidence points to some clear conclusions.


1. The scientists involved in the email exchanges manipulated evidence in IPCC and WMO reports with the effect of misleading readers, including policymakers. The divergence problem was concealed by deleting data to “hide the decline.” The panels that examined the issue in detail, namely Muir Russell’s panel, concurred that the graph was “misleading.” The ridiculous attempt by the Penn State Inquiry to defend an instance of deleting data and splicing in other data to conceal a divergence problem only discredits their claims to have investigated the issue.

2. Phil Jones admitted deleting emails, and it appears to have been directed towards preventing disclosure of information subject to Freedom of Information laws, and he asked his colleagues to do the same. The inquiries largely fumbled this question, or averted their eyes. Despite being asked by Parliament to conclusively resolve this issue, Sir Muir Russell did not attend the interviews with Jones and, as reported in UK media, his inquiry did not ask Jones if he had deleted emails.

3. The scientists privately expressed greater doubts or uncertainties about the science in their own professional writings and in their interactions with one another than they allowed to be stated in reports of the IPCC or WMO that were intended for policymakers. Rather than criticise the scientists for this, the inquiries (particularly the House of Commons and Oxburgh inquiries) took the astonishing view that as long as scientists expressed doubts and uncertainties in their academic papers and among themselves, it was acceptable for them to conceal those uncertainties in documents prepared for policy makers.

4. The scientists took steps individually or in collusion to block access to data or methodologies in order to prevent external examination of their work. This point was accepted by the Commons Inquiry and Muir Russell, and the authors were admonished and encouraged to improve their conduct in the future.

5. The inquiries were largely unable to deal with the issue of the issue of blocking publication of papers, or intimidating journals. These ended up being subjective, he-said-she-said disputes, and in some cases the documentation was too sparse. But academics reading the emails could see quite clearly the tribalism at work, and in comparison to other fields, climatology comes off looking juvenile, corrupt and in the grip of a handful of self-appointed gatekeepers and bullies.

There remain two other questions needing to be addressed:
6. Is the IPCC a reliable source of information on climate change? In light of the answer to question 3, and the findings of the IAC that fundamental reforms are needed, the answer is that, even if one assumes that the existing problems did not compromise the validity of previous IPCC reports, as of the present, the IPCC should be viewed as unsound until and unless fundamental reforms are implemented. It has become tendentious and conniving, and its review process is compromised.

7. Is the science concerning the current concerns about climate change sound? Many people, starting with the members of the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, had hoped this question would be answered during the inquiry process, and there is a frequent refrain in the media that the investigations affirmed the science. But the reality is that none of the inquiries actually investigated the science. The one inquiry supposedly set up to address this, namely Lord Oxburgh’s, actually operated under a different remit altogether, despite multiple claims by the UEA that it was a science reappraisal panel. Sir Muir Russell’s team had no mandate to assess CRU scientific work, though they nonetheless ventured into making superfluous claims in support of the conventional view. The IAC made clear that they were not investigating or commenting on the scientific issues. The House of Commons inquiry and the Penn State inquiries were also too limited in focus to examine the scientific issues. Consequently none of the inquiries addressed the question.

 

[trysail]

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-300


A Growing La Nina Chills Out the Pacific
by Alan Buis

September 15, 2010

The tropical Pacific Ocean has transitioned from last winter's El Niño conditions to a cool La Niña, as shown by new data about sea surface heights, collected by the U.S-French Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM)/Jason-2 oceanography satellite.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/earth/20100915/lanina20100915-640.jpg​

La Niña continues to strengthen in the Pacific Ocean, as shown
in the latest satellite data of sea surface heights from the
NASA/European Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2 satellite.
The image is based on the average of 10 days of data centered on
Sept. 3, 2010. Higher (warmer) than normal sea surface heights
are indicated by yellows and reds, while lower (cooler) than normal
sea surface heights are depicted in blues and purples. Green
indicates near-normal conditions.
Image credit: NASA/JPL Ocean Surface Topography Team​

This OSTM/Jason-2 image of the Pacific Ocean is based on the average of 10 days of data centered on Sept. 3, 2010. A new image depicts places where the Pacific sea surface height is higher (warmer) than normal as yellow and red, with places where the sea surface is lower (cooler) than normal as blue and purple. Green indicates near-normal conditions. Sea surface height is an indicator of how much of the sun's heat is stored in the upper ocean.

La Niña ocean conditions often follow an El Niño episode and are essentially the opposite of El Niño conditions. During a La Niña episode, trade winds are stronger than normal, and the cold water that normally exists along the coast of South America extends to the central equatorial Pacific. La Niña episodes change global weather patterns and are associated with less moisture in the air over cooler ocean waters, resulting in less rain along the coasts of North and South America and the equator, and more rain in the far Western Pacific.

"This La Niña has strengthened for the past four months, is strong now and is still building," said Climatologist Bill Patzert of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "It will surely impact this coming winter's weather and climate.

"After more than a decade of mostly dry years on the Colorado River watershed and in the American Southwest, and only one normal rain year in the past five years in Southern California, water supplies are dangerously low," Patzert added. "This La Niña could deepen the drought in the already parched Southwest and could also worsen conditions that have fueled Southern California's recent deadly wildfires."

*****​

-Alan Buis
Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
California Institute of Technology
NASA

 

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The South:

http://www.sportspower.com/football/images/map/Map_Southern.gif​

 

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http://www.spaceweather.com/

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/ataglance

CLOSE ENCOUNTER WITH JUPITER

Tonight, Earth and Jupiter converge for their closest encounter until 2022. The giant planet will soar overhead at midnight, outshining everything except the Moon itself. At this time, even a small telescope pointed at Jupiter will reveal the planet's moons, cloud belts and swirling storms. Take a look!

... Jupiter (magnitude –2.9, in Pisces) is at opposition this week. As twilight fades, Jupiter becomes visible low in the east. It's well up in the east-southeast by mid-evening — by far the brightest starlike point in the sky. It's highest in the south around 1 a.m. daylight saving time.

Jupiter is having an unusually close apparition; from now through mid-October it appears 49 arcseconds wide. In fact, at opposition on the night of Monday the 20th Jupiter will be closer than at any other time from 1963 to 2022. However, that's only 1% or 2% closer than in any year when opposition occurs from mid-August through October, including last year and next...

http://www.spaceweather.com/swpod2010/20sep10/opposition_gif.gif?PHPSESSID=9i4shhe9cgjrb42qkh5cc0l5u4


​

 

[trysail]

We entered La Niña after an El Niño winter. I am told that warm summers are par for the course on the heels of an El Niño.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/209479main_elnino1_080128_HI.jpg​

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_update/sstanim.gif​

http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif​

http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frsgc/research/d1/iod/2007/observations/emi_recent.jpg​

 

[trysail]

Acid Oceans and Acid Rain
by Matt Ridley
( noted science writer, author of, among other books, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters )

Today in Beijing an alliance of scientists called Oceans United will present the United Nations with a request for $5 billion a year to be spent on monitoring the oceans. High among their concerns is ocean acidification, which `could make it harder for animals such as lobsters, crabs, shellfish, coral or plankton to build protective shells’.

As opinion polls reveal that global warming is losing traction on the public imagination, environmental pressure groups have been cranking the engine on this `other carbon dioxide problem’. `Time is running out’ wrote two activists in Scientific American in August, `to limit acidification before it irreparably harms the food chain on which the world’s oceans – and people – depend.’

The trouble is, a shoal of new scientific papers points to the conclusion that this scare is based on faulty biochemical reasoning, unrealistic experiments and exaggeration.

We have been here before. In 1984, acid rain was the environmental scare of the day. As the science correspondent of The Economist, I wrote: `Forests are beginning to die at a catastrophic rate. One year ago, West Germany estimated that 8% of its trees were in trouble. Now 34% are...that forests are in trouble is now indisputable.’ Experts told me all Germany’s conifers would be gone by 1990 and the Federal Ministry of the Interior predicted all forests would be gone by 2002.

Bunk. Acid rain (though a real phenomenon) did not kill forests. It did not even damage them. Scientists eventually admitted that forests thrived in Germany, Scandinavia and North America during the 1980s and 1990s, despite acid rain. I was a gullible idiot not to question the conventional wisdom I was being fed by those with vested interests in alarm.

Talking of vested interests, the European Project on Ocean Acidification (EPOCA) is now a consortium of over 100 scientists from 27 institutes and 9 countries. This last summer it funded 35 scientists to spend six weeks in the Arctic studying the problem, `assisted’ by Greenpeace’s ship Esperanza. Think how little incentive the scientists would have to say `sorry, lads, we realize it is a not much of an issue after all’.

Start with a few facts. The oceans are not acid but alkaline, with an average pH of about 8.15 (0-7 being acid, 7-14 being alkaline). But they vary both in space and time, Arctic seas being less strongly alkaline than tropical, and some bays and reefs being actually acid because of underwater volcanic emissions. The dissolution of carbon dioxide in the oceans may lower the pH slightly to about 7.9 or 7.8 by the end of the century at the worst – still alkaline.


Environmentalists like to call this a 30% increase in acidity, because it sounds more scary than a 0.3 point (out of 14) decrease in alkalinity, but no matter. It is still well within the bounds of normal variation over space and time: the pH of the water intake at the Monterey aquarium varies by almost twice as much as this every month. The difference between the pH of the seas off Hawaii and Alaska is greater than this.

Enough numbers. Try chemistry. The scary reasoning rests on the argument that lower pH will mean less dissolved carbonate in the water. But a new paper from scientists in North Carolina proves what many scientists have long suspected, namely that corals and other species do not use carbonate as raw material to make their shells; they use bicarbonate. And dissolving carbon dioxide in water actually increases bicarbonate concentrations.

This may explain why study after study keeps finding that far from depressing growth rates of marine organisms, high but realistic levels of carbon dioxide either do not affect them or increase them. By far the most important calcifiers in the oceans are plankton called coccolithophores, which account for about a third of the total marine calcium carbonate manufacture. There is now strong evidence that coccolithophores are growing faster and larger as a result of human carbon dioxide emissions. Stands to reason if they use bicarbonate.

Studies of oyster sperm, cuttlefish eggs, juvenile sea stars, coral polyps and krill all point to the same conclusion: damage only occurs when carbon dioxide levels reach ludicrous levels, not expected for many centuries. A new study of plankton concluded: `Thus, both of the investigated coastal plankton communities were unaffected by twenty-first century expected changes in pH and free CO2.’

When I voiced some of these doubts in my book The Rational Optimist, I was accused of cherry-picking studies. All right, so let’s take a look at a `meta-analysis’, that is to say a comprehensive paper summarising all relevant studies. Iris Hendriks and Carlos Duarte of the Spanish Council for Scientific Research found that in 372 studies of 44 different marine species `there was no significant mean effect’ from lower pH. They concluded that the world’s marine biota are `more resistant to ocean acidification than suggested by pessimistic predictions’ and that ocean acidification `may not be the widespread problem conjured into the 21st century.'

Before I started looking into this, I assumed the evidence for damage from ocean acidification must be strong because that is what the media kept saying. I am amazed by what I have found. Make no mistake: there are lots of threats to the ecosystems of the ocean, from over-fishing to nutrient run-off, but acidification is way down the list. The attention is deflecting funds and action from greater threats. It is time scientists had the courage to admit this.


http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/acid-oceans-and-acid-rain

 

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An ice-free Arctic is nothing new:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007AGUFMPP11A0203F


Abstract:

Extensive systems of wave generated beach ridges along the North Greenland coasts show that these areas once saw seasonally open water. In addition to beach ridges, large amounts of striated boulders in and on the marine sediments from the same period also indicate that the ocean was open enough for ice bergs to drift along the shore and drop their loads. Presently the North Greenland coastline is permanently beleaguered by pack ice, and ice bergs are very rare and locked up in the sea ice. Predictions of the rapidly decreasing sea ice in the Arctic Ocean generally point to this area as the last to become ice free in summer. We therefore suggest that the occurrence of wave generated shores and abundant ice berg dropped boulders indicate that the Arctic Ocean was nearly free of sea ice in the summer at the time when they were formed. The beach ridges occur as isostatically raised "staircases", and C14-dated curves for relative sea level change show that they were formed in the Early Holocene. A large set of samples of molluscs from beach ridges and marine sediments were collected in the summer of 2007, and are presently being dated to give a precise dating of the ice free interval. Preliminary results indicate that it fell within the interval from c. 8.5 to c. 6 ka &150; being progressively shorter from south to north. We therefore conclude that for a priod in the Early Holocene, probably for a millenium or more, the Arctic Ocean was free of sea ice at least for shorter periods in the summer. This may serve as an analogue to the predicted "greenhouse situation" expected to appear within our century.

 

[trysail]

An excellent letter by Matt Ridley ( noted science writer, author of, among other books, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters ):
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/best-shot

includes the following exhibits:​

http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/gisp-last-10000-new.png

Contiguous U.S. temperatures from NCDC ( prior to adjustment ):
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/long_rural_urban_raw.png​

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Ridley

 

[trysail]

In respect of the very shaky science purporting to underlie the hypothesis of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming—

"Never attribute malice to that which can be explained by simple incompetence."

 

[trysail]

A debate held at The University of Virginia Law School on 10 October, 2010 between Andrew Dessler, Ph.D. of Texas A&M and Richard Lindzen, Ph.D. of MIT on the topic of anthropogenic global warming:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9Sh1B-rV60&feature=player_embedded

The presentations are lengthy. Dessler goes first, Lindzen begins at ~31 minutes. Rebuttals follow.

 

[trysail]

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/news/Scotland-39risking-a-blackout39-in.6624497.jp?articlepage=1


Scotland 'risking a blackout' in a bid to go green
13 November 2010
By Nathalie Thomas
Chief business correspondent

THE "lights could go out" over Scotland unless new power stations are built in the next two years to ward off a looming electricity crisis, the head of one of Scotland's most successful companies has warned Alex Salmond.

• Salmond has been warned by the chief executive of Agreeko that there is no realistic back-up plan

Rupert Soames, chief executive of power supply firm Aggreko, told the First Minister that the National Grid will lose a third of its capacity by 2018 as a string of nuclear, gas and oil-fired power stations across the UK are retired - including several in Scotland.

Mr Soames claimed that no other industrialised country in the world is at risk of losing so much of its energy supply at the same time - and without a realistic back-up plan.

He urged both the Scottish and UK governments to postpone green energy targets by a decade. Unless "the concrete is poured" on a new fleet of power stations within the next two years, Mr Soames warned, "we will be in serious danger of the lights going out".

His warning came as British Gas announced it will increase bills by an average of 7 per cent from 10 December. British Gas blamed rising wholesale prices.

• Winter blues come early as gas bills set to increase 7 per cent

• Premium- Leader: MSPs must see the light on unrealistic green targets

Mr Soames, the boss of the FTSE 100 firm - which has supplied energy for events including the World Cup and the Beijing Olympics, accused Scottish ministers of "wishful thinking" on renewable energy targets, which are among the most ambitious in the world.

"There is a danger in some quarters (in Scotland] of believing that if you wish things to be true, they will be true," he told an audience of MSPs and business leaders at the annual Business in the Parliament conference in Edinburgh. He said: "Scotland might wish to be a major exporter of renewable energy to Europe, and might wish to see an interconnector built across the North Sea, but does anyone really believe that we can get one built in the next ten years?"

Mr Soames attacked politicians for being too focused on long-term targets several decades away, and for having no "Plan B" when it comes to addressing the threat of more immediate energy shortages.

"We may wish the replacement to be wind; we may wish it to be tidal; but wishing isn't going to make it happen," he said. "We need a Plan B."

But Mr Soames did not reserve his criticism for Scotland.

"At the moment we as a nation are turning up to meetings with the bank manager in jeans and a T-shirt that says: 'Jesus loves you'," he said.

"All of this leaves investors shaking their heads

The UK is in danger of becoming an unattractive place to invest in infrastructure."

Mr Soames, the grandson of Winston Churchill, has long been a critic of the government's failure to commission enough new power stations - but yesterday's comments are expected to spark a fresh row over the Scottish Government's ambitious renewables targets and its stringent anti-nuclear stance.

Scotland is committed to cutting carbon emissions by 42 per cent by 2020 and 80 per cent by 2050.

Gavin Brown, energy spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives, said: "The SNP needs to listen to the CEO of one of Scotland's most successful companies, a real energy expert, and find a credible policy for our energy needs.

"The chorus of criticism continues to grow against the SNP's dogmatic stance on nuclear power. Alex Salmond is refusing to face facts."

Niall Stuart, chief executive of trade body Scottish Renewables, admitted Scotland did face electricity supply problems in the short-term which could not be overcome solely through green energy generation, such as wind and tidal.

"Mr Soames is right in that we face massive challenges to replace the loss of existing generation in the network," Mr Stuart told The Scotsman. "We will need a mixture of other forms of generation for the foreseeable future. However, what he completely fails to understand is that Scotland is part of the British network and we need to focus on our massive strengths and the economic and environmental benefit of renewables.

"Our research clearly shows Scotland can aim to be 100 per cent renewables in the medium-term."

A Scottish Government spokesman said Scotland was on track to meet interim renewable energy targets. "The Scottish Parliament has united to set world-leading carbon reduction targets that have also been widely endorsed among the private, public and third sector," he said. "The on-going expansion of our low-carbon industries - in particular renewables alongside greater energy efficiency - will play a key role in reducing emissions.

"Since coming to office in 2007, the Scottish Government has consented 36 large renewable energy projects, while the Crown Estate has granted leases for more than ten GW of offshore wind projects and marine (wind or tidal) energy schemes capable of generating up to 1.6 GW off Scotland's north coast by 2020. The Scottish Government is confident of meeting our targets for the industry."

 

[trysail]

The eruption of Mt. Merapi, Indonesia has commentators remarking on the effect previous volcanic activity has had on global temperatures. Notice that the time scale for this NASA chart stops in the year 2000. That's a bit curious.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Aerosols/images/temperature_aerosols_1850-2000.png

http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2010/11/12/106560386_wide.jpg?t=1289594106&s=4

​

http://www.npr.org/2010/11/12/13127...mmentKey:aad504f5-dd61-43d3-9b63-02db494f81e9

... Large, temperature-altering eruptions occur about once per decade...

...Despite considerable advances in recent decades, estimating the direct climate impacts of aerosols remains an immature science. Of the 25 climate models considered by the Fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), only a handful considered the direct effects of aerosol types other than sulfates...

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Aerosols/page3.php

... The details of aerosol indirect effects are only partially understood, as most instruments cannot measure aerosols within clouds. Climatologists consider the role of clouds to be the largest single uncertainty in climate prediction. Less than a third of the models participating in the Fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) included indirect aerosol effects, even in a very limited way, and those considered only sulfate aerosols...

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Aerosols/page4.php

All the carbon that’s underground was once in the atmosphere. What will Mother Nature do if we put it back there? Look at that Mauna Loa CO2 graph: every spring she sharply reverses the slope demonstrating it’s well within her power to control CO2 so far. Probably she’ll simply widen the growing season.

-Jim Hardy
http://judithcurry.com/2010/11/10/uncertainty-gets-a-seat-at-the-“big-table”/#comment-11622

The Scientific Method, CAGW & Uncertainty
http://judithcurry.com/2010/11/12/uncertainty-gets-a-seat-at-the-big-table-part-ii/#comment-11624

 

[trysail]

An interview of Dr. Ross McKitrick on "the hockey stick":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STHx27lQuBA&feature=player_embedded

Nothing in Al Gore's movie stands up to scientific scrutiny.
-Ross McKitrick, Ph.D.

 

[trysail]

Scientists are in broad agreement that the earth has been slowly warming for about three centuries. We don’t know why, which should give us a clue about the depth of our understanding of the climate.

More to the point, there is no agreement about such basic, rudimentary, fundamental, all-important questions as the sign and size of the cloud feedbacks. A change of 2% in cloud cover would wipe out any CO2 effect. Since we don’t understand the clouds, that most basic and critically important part of climate science, the idea that we understand why the earth is currently warming, or the idea that we can forecast climate a hundred years in advance, is hubris of the first order. We don’t know why it warmed in Medieval times. We don’t know why it warmed in Roman times. We don’t know why it has warmed since the “Little Ice Age". We don’t understand the climate, and you folks’ claims that you do understand it well enough to make century-long forecasts just makes rational, reasonable people point and laugh.

-Willis Eschenbach



_______________________________

Technology Review
Published by MIT

Global Warming Bombshell
A prime piece of evidence linking human activity to climate change turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics.

By Richard Muller
October 15, 2004
McIntyre and McKitrick obtained part of the program that Mann used, and they found serious problems. Not only does the program not do conventional PCA, but it handles data normalization in a way that can only be described as mistaken.

Now comes the real shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called Monte Carlo analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!

That discovery hit me like a bombshell, ...

Full article:
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/13830/?a=f

 

[Colonel Hogan]

The whole problem is they didn't count Boston and anyone who's been there KNOWS they have the worst drivers.

They don't even have street signs in Boston for fuck's sake. It's like the movie Road Warrior there. I always expected some guy in leather chaps and a mohawk to shoot me a with crossbow as he drove by in an army jeep in Roxbury.

No shit. That's about the most accurate description of it I've seen. Those people are fucking crazy but not a smart crazy like you get in Chicago. They're just fucking nuts behind the wheel.

People who haven't been could never grasp the sheer horror, but if I may add just a bit of perspective....

My first time in New York, I drove right up to the address in Greenwich Village where I was staying, without a hitch.

I've tooled around D. C. as if I had embassy plates.

No problems in LA and Hollywood.

But my 90 minute visit to Boston consisted of nothing other than exiting the I-93 bridge across the Charles River southbound and re-entering I-93 northbound in order to get the hell out of town as fast as I possibly could.

I still wake up in the middle of the night screaming.

 

[thør]

People who haven't been could never grasp the sheer horror, but if I may add just a bit of perspective....

My first time in New York, I drove right up to the address in Greenwich Village where I was staying, without a hitch.

I've tooled around D. C. as if I had embassy plates.

No problems in LA and Hollywood.

But my 90 minute visit to Boston consisted of nothing other than exiting the I-93 bridge across the Charles River southbound and re-entering I-93 northbound in order to get the hell out of town as fast as I possibly could.

I still wake up in the middle of the night screaming.

Bogata is nastier than Boston..........

 

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Where coal is burned:

http://docs.google.com/File?id=dd6txnv7_44f8znrs98_b
​

 

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Recommended:
http://judithcurry.com/2010/11/14/what-we-know-with-confidence/

____________________________

..As the summer growing season takes hold, photosynthesis by forests and crops draws concentrations of CO2 down, opposing the general increase from fossil fuel burning...

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/carbontracker/



____________________________


http://www.aos.wisc.edu/~colose/



____________________________


House Science and Technology Committee, Sub-Committee on Energy and Environment
17 November, 2010
Video:
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/event.php?id=188081
Transcripts of Witness Testimony:
http://science.house.gov/publications/hearings_markups_details.aspx?NewsID=2947

http://democrats.science.house.gov/...rings/2010/Energy/17nov/Lindzen_Testimony.pdf




_____________________________________


Adjustments to CRU's temperature record?

http://judithcurry.com/2010/11/19/michaels-controversial-testimony-part-ii/


Thompson et al. (2008) state:

The adjustments immediately after 1945 are expected to be as large as those made to the pre-war data (,0.3C; Fig. 4), and smaller adjustments are likely to be required in SSTs through at least the mid-1960s.

Thompson, D., et al., 2008. A large discontinuity in the mid-twentieth century in observed global-mean surface temperature. Nature, 453, 646-649.

 

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Newton's Law of Gravitation: 99.99999% certainty
Ohm's Law: 99.99999% certainty
Fick's First and Second Laws: 99.99999% certainty
Avagadro's Law: 99.99999% certainty
Faraday's Laws of Electromagnetic Induction: 99.99999% certainty
Law of Conservation of Matter: 99.99999% certainty
Descent by Evolution and Natural Selection: 99.99999% certainty
Plate tectonics: 99.99999% certainty
Newton's Laws of Motion: 99.99999% certainty
Boyle's Law: 99.99999% certainty

Hypothesis of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming: 35% (?) 50%(?) 20%(?) certainty

 

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Potential dependence of global warming on the residence time (RT) in the atmosphere of anthropogenically sourced carbon dioxide
RH Essenhigh – Energy Fuels, 2009, 23 (5), pp 2773–2784
DOI: 10.1021/ef800581r

The driver for this study is the wide-ranging published values of the CO2 atmospheric residence time (RT), τ, with the values differing by more than an order of magnitude, where the significance of the difference relates to decisions on whether (1) to attempt control of combustion-sourced (anthropogenic) CO2 emissions, if τ > 100 years, or (2) not to attempt control, if τ 10 years. . . .In this study, using the combustion/chemical-engineering perfectly stirred reactor (PSR) mixing structure or 0D box for the model basis, as an alternative to the more commonly used global circulation models (GCMs), to define and determine the RT in the atmosphere and then using data from the IPCC and other sources for model validation and numerical determination, the data (1) support the validity of the PSR model application in this context and, (2) from the analysis, provide (quasi-equilibrium) RTs for CO2 of 5 years carrying C12 and 16 years carrying C14, with both values essentially in agreement with the IPCC short-term (4 year) value and, separately, in agreement with most other data sources, notably, a 1998 listing by Segalstad of 36 other published values, also in the range of 5−15 years.


http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ef800581r

__________________________________

http://judithcurry.com/2010/10/23/water-vapor-mischief/#comment-5267

 

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http://sites.google.com/site/globalwarmingquestions/ipcc

IPCC Criticism

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) officially released its Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) in 2007. This document is often regarded as the definitive word on the science behind global warming. However, AR4 gives a distorted, misleading, biased and often erroneous picture. Examples of these distortions are listed here, with attention focused on the Working Group 1 Report "The Physical Science Basis" (WG1), and in particular its Summary for Policymakers (SPM). Curiously, the SPM was released in February 2007, several months before the main report. Confusingly, a "Synthesis Report" was issued in November 2007, with its own SPM. More background to the structure of the IPCC report is given here.




Errors, distortions and exaggerations in the WGI Report

1. How the IPCC invented a new calculus. The IPCC authors invented a new way of measuring the slope of a graph, in order to create the false impression that global warming is accelerating.
2. The table that didn't add up. The WG1 SPM was approved by the IPCC even though it contained a table with arithmetic errors. The table was quietly corrected with no admission of the error.
3. False statement about Antarctic sea ice. The IPCC claims that there is no significant trends in Antarctic sea ice. In fact several papers (ignored by the IPCC) show a significant positive trend.
4. Misleading claims about sea level rise. AR4 gives the misleading impression that the rate of sea level rise is increasing, using the trick of switching from one measurement system (tide gauges) to another (satellites).
5. Incorrect calculation of an average. An arithmetic error was made in the calculation of an average of a contribution to radiative forcing. Hence four diagrams in AR4 are wrong and misleading.

6. False claims about Antarctic ice sheet. The IPCC claims that the Antarctic ice sheet is melting and that this is contributing to sea level rise, but recent research papers show that in fact the ice sheet is thickening.
7. Dubious claims about Greenland ice sheet. The IPCC claims that the Greenland ice sheet is melting and causing sea level to rise - ignoring or misrepresenting research that shows the opposite.
8. Erroneous claims about snow cover. The IPCC makes the false claim that snow cover is decreasing in both hemispheres.
9. Exaggerated claims about water vapour. The IPCC summary claims that water vapour has increased. In fact studies show no significant trend or in some cases a decrease.
10. Misleading claims on increased tropical cyclone activity. The IPCC states that tropical cyclones have increased, by cherry-picking start dates, but their own data shows no evidence of this.

11. The IPCC contradicts itself over the medieval warm period. The IPCC's own data shows clear evidence that the medieval warm period was as warm as the late 20th century, but the text states the opposite.
12. False statement about paleoclimate studies. The IPCC claims that there is increased confidence in proxy temperature reconstructions, but in fact the opposite is the case.
13. Proxies that aren't proxies. The IPCC makes use of 'proxy' data such as tree rings to justify their claim that current temperatures are unusual - but this data doesn't match measured temperature.
14. Downplaying the urban heat island effect. The IPCC significantly underestimates the influence of the fact that many temperature measurement sites are located in cities.
15. The UN misquotes its own report. A UN press release coinciding with the release of AR4 blatantly misquoted the report, incorrectly claiming that man-made global warming was unequivocal.

16. Underestimating past variation in carbon dioxide. The IPCC claims that variation of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere was very low, ignoring published research that shows much greater variation.
17. Biased reporting of the literature. One of many examples where the IPCC ignores or disparages research that does not support its agenda, in the area of past solar activity.
18. Where's the beef? The crucial step of the argument for global warming - how carbon dioxide causes heating - is barely mentioned and the numbers not justified by the IPCC.
19. Hypothetical positive feedback. The alarming predictions of the IPCC rely on the assumption of a strong positive feedback, for which there is no evidence.
20. The lost continent of Antarctica. A world map of 'global warming' in the SPM omits Antarctica, where there has been cooling.

21. Misleading claims about increased greenhouse effect. The IPCC claims that observations show an increase in the greenhouse effect, referring to one paper but ignoring more recent ones.
22. Misleading statement about ocean heat. The IPCC SPM says that ocean heat content is increasing, without mentioning a paper that shows recent ocean cooling.
23. Ignoring research that does not fit the agenda. Work of a Finnish research team with 34 publications in the field of tree ring temperature reconstructions is completely ignored by the IPCC.
24. Inconsistent statement about wind strength. The IPCC SPM claims that the strength of westerly winds has increased - but if true this would be evidence for cooling of the atmosphere.
25. Error regarding total radiative forcing. The 'total net anthropogenic radiative forcing' given by the IPCC is incorrect, according to climate scientist Roger Pielke.

26. Unfair citation of criticism. IPCC author Kevin Trenberth cites his own criticism of the work of other authors, but does not mention those authors' response to his criticism.
27. Ignoring criticism of the surface temperature record. Many papers have been written raising questions about the accuracy and bias of surface temperature measurements, but these are ignored by the IPCC.
28. No explanation for mid-century cooling. The IPCC has no consistent or valid explanation for a period of cooling from 1940-1970.
29. False statements about tropospheric warming. The IPCC claims that the troposphere (lower atmosphere) has warmed more than the surface, but the IPCC's own graphs show that this is not true.
30. Unsubstantiated claims of human influence. The IPCC makes confident claims about man's influence on the climate but has no evidence to support these claims.

31. Misleading temperature trends (1). The IPCC claims that the trend from 1906-2005 is larger than that from 1901-2000 due to recent warm years, but in fact this is due to a sharp drop in temperatures from 1901-1906.
32. Misleading temperature trends (2). The IPCC compares chalk with cheese in order to convey the false impression that temperature trends are increasing.
33. False claim of warming since the TAR. The IPCC's claim that temperatures have increased since its 2001 Third Assessment Report is demonstrably false.
34. More false statements on temperature trends. The IPCC significantly underestimates temperature trends in the early part of the 20th century.
35. False claims about hurricanes. The IPCC makes unsustainable claims about increasing hurricane activity and a link with global warming, ignoring key papers that find no link; this lead to one expert resigning from the IPCC.

36. If you don't like it, resign. Some scientists who do not support the IPCC agenda find they have no alternative but to resign from the IPCC process.
37. Reviewer comments ignored. The IPCC reports undergo a process of review by scientists and goverments. But many valid comments and criticisms of the IPCC view are simply ignored.
38. Exaggerated claims of increased precipitation. The IPCC summary greatly exaggerates the claims from its main report about an alleged very slight increase in heavy rainfall events.
39. Trying to suppress work that doesn't support the agenda. IPCC authors try to keep a paper by McKitrick and Michaels out of AR4, "even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is".
40. Hiding the decline - in the number of storms. IPCC authors insert a line about increasing wind strength into the final version of the SPM. They discuss evidence for declining number of storms but decide not to mention this.

41. Hiding inconvenient proxy data. The IPCC refused to show proxy ice core data showing a warm medieval period in the Southern hemisphere, despite acknowledging a lack of such data and despite reviewer comments.
42. False confidence in man-made warming. The IPCC SPM claims "very high confidence" regarding the quantification of man-mad global warming, but the main body of the report is much more cautious.
43. Spinning the literature on cloud feedback. IPCC authors regurgitate chunks of their own papers on clouds, but cut back sections that refer to negative cloud feedback.
44. Cherry-picking solar irradiance reconstructions. The IPCC selects outdated estimates of past solar radiance (to try to 'explain' early 20th century warming) while ignoring more recent research that shows very little variation.
45. False confidence in long-term climate predictions. The IPCC makes the ridiculous claim that predicting the climate 50 years ahead is much easier than predicting the weather a few weeks ahead.




Errors, distortions and exaggerations in the WGII Report

1. Incorrect claim about Himalayan glaciers. The IPCC incorrectly said that Himalayan glaciers could melt to one fifth of their current area by 2035. This is probably a misreading of 2350.
2. False claims about disaster losses. The IPCC claims a link between disaster losses and climate, by relying on a single cherry-picked non-peer-reviewed paper.
3. Unsubstantiated claim about loss of Amazon rainforest. Chapter 13 of WGII claimed that 40% of the Amazon rainforest could 'react drastically' to a change in climate. The source for this was a WWF report that does not even support the claim. See also BBC report and The Telegraph.
4. Error about the Netherlands and sea level. Chapter 12 of WGII claims that 55% of The Netherlands is below sea level. In fact the figure is about 26%.
5. Unsubstantiated claims about Africa. A claim repeatedly made by the IPCC that agricultural yields in some African countries could fall by 50% as soon as 2020 has no basis.
6. False claims about wildfires and climate. The IPCC claims that wildfires influence tourism, relying on newspaper reports and ignoring three expert reviewers who identify problems with this claim.




Errors, distortions and exaggerations in the WGIII Report
The report of Working Group III of the IPCC is concerned with "Mitigation of Climate Change".


Richard Tol, Professor of Economics, has investigated WGIII and reported his results at Roger Pielke Jr.'s blog. In his overall summary, he writes that the IPCC "substantially and knowingly misrepresents the state of the art in our understanding of the costs of emission reduction. It leads the reader to the conclusion that emission reduction is much cheaper and easier than it will be in real life." He also writes that "all errors point in one direction: alarmism about climate change", and refers to the "inability of the IPCC to constructively engage with valid criticism". His specific criticisms are as follows:

Part I. Claims by the IPCC in WGIII chapter 11 that climate policy would stimulate growth and create jobs are biased and not based on peer-reviewed literature.


Part II. Again in Chapter 11, the IPCC highlights work that supports the view that costs of emission reduction are low, while ignoring or misquoting studies that find such costs are high.


Part III. In the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) in WGIII, the IPCC underestimates the costs of emissions reduction, failing to correct its estimates for selection bias.


Part IV. In Chapter 3, the IPCC misrepresents a paper (Fisher et al 2006), ignoring complaints about this by reviewers.


Part V. In Chapter 3 and in the SPM, the IPCC incorrectly claims that exchange rates are immaterial, and misrepresents the literature. Several reviewer comments on this are ignored.


Part VI. In the SPM, Table SPM1 underestimates the cost of reducing emissions, by a misleading process of "double counting". The errors were pointed out by reviewers, but ignored by the IPCC.











Acknowledgements: These examples come from many different sources. Many of them arise simply from a careful reading of AR4. Many originated from a thread at climate audit (which no longer exists) so thanks are due to those who contributed to that - especially Max. Several examples come from Roger Pielke's Climate Science blog.

A note on timings: Most of the items on WGI were written in the second half of 2008. The WGII and WGIII articles were written in early 2010, when the mainstream media started to note these errors.

 

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Source: http://climvis.ncdc.noaa.gov

October Temperature
Contiguous United States​

http://climvis.ncdc.noaa.gov/tmp/graph-Nov2114:11:142726745605.gif​