Ephemera

[trysail]

http://judithcurry.com/2010/12/23/scenarios-2010-2030-part-i/#comment-25293


By Paul_K:

While a small effort on upgrading numerical methods in GCMs might well be justified, the sort of large-scale attack on regional-scale decadal prediction using dynamic modeling which you describe here seems to be far too early, given the level of understanding of the climate system and the maturity of the GCMs – even if one were to accept the argument for the utility of such predictions. It is worth examining the history of development of dynamic simulators in other disciplines. In every instance that I am familiar with, the application of improved numerical methods – dynamic local grid refinement, flexible gridding, local options on type of solution routine and boundary condition characterizations – were all introduced to allow improved local characterization and reduced numerical error only AFTER certainty had been gained in the completeness and aptness of the governing equations to be applied. The [current] models cannot obtain even a coarse match of key observational data in hindcast, and therefore cannot be expected to found sensible boundary conditions to support a local grid refinement scheme in any useful way.

http://judithcurry.com/2010/12/27/scenarios-2010-2030-part-ii-2/

By Judith Curry, Ph.D.:

...Lets assume that the anthropogenic forcing from long lived greenhouse gases and aerosols can be specified reasonably well out to 2030. That leaves us to consider solar variability, volcanic variability, the multidecadal ocean oscillations, and possibly other terrestrial and extraterrestrial factors.

Multidecadal ocean oscillations

One of the key skeptical talking points has been that climate change over the past century can mostly be explained by the multidecadal ocean oscillations, particularly the PDO and AMO. This essay by Roy Spencer ( http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/06/warming-in-last-50-years-predicted-by-natural-climate-cycles/ ) typifies this argument.

A new paper by DelSole ( http://www.deas.harvard.edu/climate/seminars/pdfs/dts_jclim_2010.pdf ) et al (h/t Craig Loehle) identifies a significant component of unforced multidecadal variability in the recent acceleration of global warming, which they identify as the AMO. This is interesting because it comes from a mainstream climate modeling group. The mainstream is increasingly recognized the unforced multidecadal ocean oscillations as key elements in 20th century attribution and 21st century projections.

The two main ocean oscillations that get discussed are the AMO and PDO, although the NAO and NPGO also get mentioned and deserve consideration in this context. If you are unfamiliar with the multidecadal ocean oscillations, I just spotted a really interesting online textbook “Oceans and 21st Century Climate”, see this section ( http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/oceanography-book/oceananddrought.html ).

We are currently in the warm phase of the AMO (since 1995) and the cool phase of the PDO (since about 2008), with an expectation of remaining in this regime for the next 1-2 decades. The last period that we saw this particular AMO-PDO combination was 1946-1964, a period that was characterized in the U.S. by abundant landfalling major hurricanes and drought in the southwest.

The issue of future projection then becomes to estimate the duration of the current regimes (e.g. warm AMO, cool PDO), particularly the changepoints. The changepoints can be estimated statistically, or decadal climate simulations could be used.

What’s going on with the sun?

I am a novice in this area, and have no idea which are the key references on this topic, but here are some current papers and web posts that caught my eye, I would appreciate some clarification/synthesis of all this from those of you that follow this more closely. Note, on establishment climate blogs like Realclimate, not much mention of the sun, what appears to be their main article on this was written in 2005. Also, I just spotted the blog Heliogenic Climate Change, which is about the sun (but also climate change politics).

The CMIP5 simulations recommend the following for solar forcing. Given the uncertainties and problems with forecasting the current solar cycle, I’m surprised they aren’t exploring the impact of solar uncertainties on future climate. Especially given the controversy regarding the PMOD vs ACRIM total solar irradiance (see section 7 in Scafetta’s paper [ http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/climate_change_cause.pdf ] )...

 

[trysail]

By randomengineer:
http://judithcurry.com/2010/12/20/u...-resistance-to-climate-science/#comment-26034

...The actions of [, for example, ] CARB in California are reprehensible, not just irresponsible. CARB via AB23 basically is trying to force CA utilities to buy “renewables” such as windmills. These are things that don’t scale and don’t really work. They’re an expensive boondoggle for a state that can’t afford to do this. They will effectively bankrupt the energy system to the point that later course corrections (i.e. adopting nuke energy and other stuff that works) is too expensive to do.

This is clearly green politics run amok, and misanthropic and malevolent green minded types look to the success of these things as being license to impose a never ending and increasingly bold list of nonsensical measures. CARB is similar to the EPA where it’s the back door where green misanthropes sneak in to bypass the will of the people and create law/regulation by (unelected!) diktat...

“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”
— Prof Paul Ehrlich, Stanford

My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with its full complement of species, returning throughout the world.”
— Dave Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
— Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme

“The Earth has cancer and the cancer is Man.”
— Club of Rome, Mankind at the Turning Point

The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.”
— Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund

“I root for hurricanes. When, courtesy of the Weather Channel, I see one forming in the ocean off the coast of Africa, I find myself longing for it to become big and strong—Mother Nature’s fist of fury, Gaia’s stern rebuke. Considering the havoc mankind has wreaked upon nature with deforesting, strip mining, and the destruction of animal habitat, it only seems fair that nature get some of its own back and teach us that there are forces greater than our own.”
— James Wolcott, Vanity Fair Contributing Editor

 

[trysail]

http://judithcurry.com/2010/12/29/climate-feedbacks-part-i/#comment-26277


Table 2.11 from the Fourth Assessment report of the IPCC sets out the uncertainty assessment of forcing agents. Listed below are the agents and the level of scientific understanding:

LLGHGs – high
Stratospheric ozone – medium
Tropospheric ozone – medium
Stratospheric water vapour from CH4 – low
Direct aerosol – medium to low
Cloud albedo effect (all aerosols) – low
Surface albedo (land use) – medium to low
Surface albedo (BC aerosol on snow) – low
Persistent linear contrails – low
Solar irradiance – low
Volcanic aerosol – low
Stratospheric water vapour from causes other than CH4 oxidation – very low
Tropospheric water vapour from irrigation – very low
Aviation induced cirrus – very low
Cosmic rays – very low
Other surface effects – very low

______________________


http://judithcurry.com/2010/12/29/climate-feedbacks-part-i/#comment-26289


Young ‘Scientist’ 1: Morning S2. I have been reading some dire warnings about climatology among the advocates. Lets work on it.

Young ‘Scientist’ 2: OK S1, we haven’t got anything else to do. What is the problem.

YS1: I don’t know, but of we can find there is a problem we can make our careers out of it. What shall we measure?

YS2: We could do it properly and look at the big heat sinks like the oceans which are huge and have lots and lots of heat in them. We could set up proper monitoring and really do a proper job and see if there is indeed a problem.

YS1: But that would take years and years and years and we would be old and wizened before we got any results. and our grants would have run out. Haven’t we got any data lying around that we can do stuff with right now?

YS2: There’s always the old weather observations. But they were collected for different purposes and may not be very accurate. So they won’t be much real use

YS1: Perfect. Just what we need. We can get a few bods to do ‘adjustments’ to them so that they show what we want to show. And we can get them from all round the world at no cost. Now how shall we analyse them. What would be a meaningful use of them?

YS2: I don’t know really. What form are they in?

YS1; Maxima and minima mostly. I know – we’ll take the average of them!!

Ys2: But will that actually mean anything (groan)??

YS1: Probably not, but we can do it without needing to learn any proper statistics and its easy to program in Fortran. And if we adjust them right then we can scare the living bejasus out of people before they notice that the global average temperature is a bit of a meaningless measure. We could even win the Nobel Prize!

Ys2: Now you are really away with the fairies. But are we agreed? We won’t bother with all that time consuming boring ‘correct science’ stuff, just work with the stuff we have even if it is meaningless?

Ys1: Yep. That’s the plan. We’ll sweep the world and make a consensus before anybody ever gets to see what we’ve done. Remember that our methods must stay secret. Any other ideas?

YS2: I’ve got this mate who looks at tree rings. And he needs a job. Can we find him something harmless and useless to do???

 

[zinadinpeterson]

This is often used Archivists, librarians, museum professionals and collectors of antiques. Here is the definition of Ephemera Society of America comes from the Greek word for only lasted a day or fleeting - so it is difficult to see how it applied to something that must be preserved, such as a photograph.

 

[trysail]

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/01/why-most-published-research-findings-are-false/


Why Most Published Research Findings are False
January 3rd, 2011
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

Those aren’t my words — it’s the title of a 2005 article ( http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124 ), brought to my attention by Cal Beisner, which uses probability theory to “prove” that “…most claimed research findings are false”. While the article comes from the medical research field, it is sufficiently general that some of what it discusses can be applied to global warming research as well.

I would argue that the situation is even worse for what I consider to the central theory of the climate change debate: that adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere causes significant warming of the climate system. Two corollaries of that theory are that (1) the warming we have seen in recent decades is human-caused, and (2) significant warming will continue into the future as we keep using fossil fuels.

The first problem I see with scientifically determining whether the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is likely to be true is that it is a one-of-a-kind event. This immediately reduces our scientific confidence in pinpointing the cause of warming. The following proxy reconstruction of temperature variations over the last 2,000 years suggests global warming (and cooling), are the rule, not the exception, and so greenhouse gas increases in the last 100 years occurring during warming might be largely a coincidence.

http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/Loehle-2000-years-of-temperatures.jpg​

Twice I have testified in Congress that unbiased funding on the subject of the causes of warming would be much closer to a reality if 50% of that money was devoted to finding natural reasons for climate change. Currently, that kind of research is almost non-existent.

A second, related problem is that we cannot put the Earth in the laboratory to run controlled experiments on. Now, we CAN determine in the laboratory that certain atmospheric constituents (water vapor, water droplets, carbon dioxide, methane) absorb and emit infrared energy…the physical basis for the so-called greenhouse effect. But the ultimate uncertainty over atmospheric feedbacks — e.g. determining whether cloud changes with warming reduce or amplify that warming — cannot be tested with any controlled experiment.

A third problem is the difficulty in separating cause from effect. Determining whether atmospheric feedbacks are positive or negative requires analysis of entire, quasi-global atmospheric circulation systems. Just noticing that more clouds tend to form over warm regions does not tell you anything useful about whether cloud feedbacks are positive or negative. Atmospheric and oceanic circulation systems involve all kinds of interrelated processes in which cause and effect must surely be operating. But separating cause from effect is something else entirely.

For example, just establishing that years experiencing global warmth have less cloud cover letting more sunlight in does not prove positive cloud feedback…simply because the warming could have been the result of — rather than the cause of — fewer clouds. This is the subject that Andy Dessler and I have been debating ( http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/12/dessler-and-spencer-debate-cloud-feedback/ ) recently, and I consider it to be the Achilles heel of AGW theory.

After all, it is not the average role of clouds in the climate system that is being debated — we already know it is a cooling effect. It’s instead how clouds will change as a result of warming that we are interested in. Maybe they are the same thing (which is what I’m betting)…but so far, no one has found a way to prove or disprove it. And I believe cause-versus-effect is at the heart of that uncertainty.

A fourth problem with determining whether AGW theory is true or not is closely related to a similar problem medical research has — the source of funding. This has got to be one of the least appreciated sources of bias in global warming research. In pharmaceutical research, experimentally demonstrating the efficacy of some new drug might be influenced by the fact that the money for the research came from the company that developed the drug in the first place. This is partly why double-blind studies involving many participants (we have only one: Earth) were developed.

But in global warming research, there is a popular misconception that oil industry-funded climate research actually exists, and has skewed the science. I can’t think of a single scientific study that has been funded by an oil or coal company.

But what DOES exist is a large organization that has a virtual monopoly on global warming research in the U.S., and that has a vested interest in AGW theory being true: the U.S. Government. The idea that government-funded climate research is unbiased is laughable. The push for ever increasing levels of government regulation and legislation, the desire of government managers to grow their programs, the dependence of congressional funding of a problem on the existence of a “problem” to begin with, and the U.N.’s desire to find reasons to move toward global governance, all lead to inherent bias in climate research.

At least with medical research, there will always be funding because disease will always exist. But human-caused warming could end up to be little more than a false alarm…as well as a black eye for the climate research community. And lest we forget, possibly the biggest funding-related source of bias in climate research is that research community of scientists. Everyone knows that if the AGW “problem” is no longer a problem, their source of research funding will disappear.

Sometimes I get accused of being a conspiracy nut for believing these things. Well, whoever accuses me of that has obviously not worked in government or spent much time dealing with program managers in Washington. There is no conspiracy, because these things are not done in secret. The U.N.’s Agenda 21 is there for all to read.

The bottom line is that there could scarcely be a more ill-posed scientific question than whether global warming is human-caused: a one of a kind event, the Earth can’t be put into a laboratory to study, cause and effect are intermingled, and the political and financial sources of bias in the resulting research are everywhere.

So, when some scientist says we “know” that warming is human-caused, I cringe at the embarrassing abundance of scientific ignorance on display. No wonder the public doesn’t trust scientific predictions — just as suggested by the 2005 study I mentioned at the outset, those predictions have almost always been wrong!

 

[trysail]

http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/Trenberth_energy_budget.gif

http://www-hrx.ucsd.edu/www-argo/status.jpg
​

Recent energy balance of Earth

R. S. Knox and D. H. Douglass
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY

Full paper ( in press ):
http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~douglass/papers/KD_InPress_final.pdf

Abstract
A recently published estimate of Earth’s global warming trend is 0.63 ± 0.28 W/m2, as calculated from ocean heat content anomaly data spanning 1993–2008. This value is not representative of the recent (2003–2008) warming/cooling rate because of a “flattening” that occurred around 2001–2002. Using only 2003–2008 data from Argo floats, we find
by four different algorithms that the recent trend ranges from –0.010 to –0.160 W/m2 with a typical error bar of ±0.2 W/m2. These results fail to support the existence of a frequently-cited large positive computed radiative imbalance.

1. Introduction
Recently ***** et al. [1] have estimated a robust global warming trend of 0.63 ± 0.28 W/m2 for Earth during 1993–2008, calculated from ocean heat content anomaly
(OHC) data. This value is not representative of the recent (2003–2008) warming/cooling rate because of a “flattening” that occurred around 2001–2002. Using only 2003-2008 data, we find cooling, not warming.


This result does not support the existence of a large frequently- cited positive computed radiative imbalance (see, for example, Trenberth and Fasullo [2]).
A sufficiently accurate data set available for the time period subsequent to 2001–2002 now exists. There are two different observational systems for determining OHC. The first and older is based upon expendable bathythermograph (XBT) probes that have been shown to have various biases and systematic errors (Wijffels et al. [3]). The second is the more accurate and complete global array of autonomous Argo floats [4], which were deployed as of the early 2000s. These floats are free from the biases and errors of the XBT probes although they have had other systematic errors [5]. We begin our analysis with the more accurate Argo OHC data. There are issues associated with a “short-time”
segment of data, which are addressed.

2. Data and Analysis

In what follows, we make reference to FOHC, defined as the rate of change of OHC divided by Earth’s area. It has units of energy flux and is therefore convenient when discussing heating of the whole climate system. In W/m2, FOHC is given by 0.62d(OHC)/dt when the rate of change of OHC is presented in units of 1022 J/yr.

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/knox-douglass_fig1.png​

Figure 1 shows OHC data from July 2003 through June 2008 (blue data points, left scale) as obtained from Willis [6]. These data appear to show a negative trend (slope) but there is an obvious annual variation that must be “removed.” We estimated the trend in four different ways, all of which reduce the annual effect. Method 1. The data were put through a 12-month symmetric box filter (Figure 1, red curve). Note that the length of the time segment is four years. The slope through these data, including standard error, is –0.260 ± 0.064 × 1022 J/yr, or FOHC = –0.161 ± 0.040 W/m2.

Method 2. The difference between the OHC value for July 2007 and July 2003 is divided by 4, giving one annual slope estimate. Next, the difference between
August 2007 and August 2003 is calculated. This is done ten more times, the last difference being June 2008 minus June 2004. The average slope of these twelve values, including standard deviation, is –0.0166 ± 0.4122 × 1022 J/year, or FOHC = –0.0103 ± 0.2445 W/m2. Method 2’s advantage is that the difference of four years is free
from short-term correlations.

Method 3. Slopes of all January values were computed and this was repeated for each of the other months. The average of the twelve estimates, including standard deviation, is –0.066 ± 0.320 × 1022 J/year, or FOHC = –0.041 ± 0.198 W/m2.

Method 4. The average of OHC for the 12 months from July 2003 to June 2004 was computed, similarly for July 2004 to June 2005, etc. For the five values the slope found, including standard error, is –0.0654 ± 0.240 × 1022 J/yr, or FOHC = –0.0405 ± 0.1488 W/m2.

These results are listed in Table 1.

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/knowx-douglass_table1.png​

There have been four other recent estimates of slopes from the Argo OHC data, by Pielke [7], Loehle [8], Douglass and Knox [9], and von Schuckmann et al. [10]. Each of these studies of Argo OHC data with the exception of von Schuckmann’s, which differs in the ocean depth covered (0–2000 m), show a negative trend with an uncertainty of several 0.1 W/m2. Why the von Schuckmann case is an “outlier” is worthy of further study.

…

3. Discussion and Summary
As many authors have noted, knowing FOHC is important because of its close relationship to FTOA, the net inward radiative flux at the top of the atmosphere. Wetherald et al. [13] and Hansen et al. [14] believe that this radiative imbalance in Earth’s climate system is positive, amounting recently [14] to approximately 0.9 W/m2. Pielke [15] has pointed out that at least 90% of the variable heat content of Earth resides in the upper ocean.

Thus, to a good approximation, FOHC may be employed to infer the magnitude of FTOA, and the positive radiation imbalance should be directly reflected in FOHC (when
adjusted for geothermal flux [9]; see Table 1 caption). The principal approximations involved in using this equality, which include the neglect of heat transfers to land masses and those associated with the melting and freezing of ice, estimated to be of the order of 0.04 W/m2 [14], have been discussed by the present authors [9].

In steady state, the state of radiative balance, both quantities FTOA and FOHC should be zero. If FTOA > FOHC, “missing energy” is being produced if no sink other than the ocean can be identified. We note that one recent deep-ocean analysis [16], based on a variety
of time periods generally in the 1990s and 2000s, suggests that the deeper ocean contributes on the order of 0.09 W/m2. This is not sufficient to explain the discrepancy.

Trenberth and Fasullo (TF) [2] believe that missing energy has been accumulating at a considerable rate since 2005. According to their rough graph, as of 2010 the missing energy production rate is about 1.0 W/m2, which represents the difference between FTOA ~ 1.4 and FOHC ~ 0.4 W/m2. It is clear that the TF missing-energy problem is made much more severe if FOHC is negative or even zero. In our opinion, the missing energy problem is probably caused by a serious overestimate by TF of FTOA, which, they state, is most accurately determined by modeling.

In summary, we find that estimates of the recent (2003–2008) OHC rates of change are preponderantly negative. This does not support the existence of either a large positive radiative imbalance or a “missing energy.”

ARGO :
http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/index.html

Trenberth :
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth.papers/EnergyDiagnostics09final2.pdf

 

[trysail]

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4ify7vDXrDs/TSvdIWDMfrI/AAAAAAAAG34/nrE6cV3wNr0/s1600/cc2011_tom_nelson.png​

FY 2011 Climate Research budgets

NOAA $437 million
NSF $480 million
NASA $438.1 million
DOE $627 million
DOI $171 million
EPA $169 million
USDA $159 million



http://climatequotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/cc-funding2011.pdf

http://climatequotes.com/2011/01/08/how-can-climate-scientists-spend-so-much-money/

 

[trysail]

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/16/ncdcs-dr-thomas-peterson-its-a-knife-fight/

We have the NASA GISS Chief Scientist, Dr. James Hansen calling for civil disobedience and the Chief Scientist of NCDC and keeper of the worlds most important surface temperature dataset, Dr. Thomas Peterson, saying things like “its a knife fight”. These two people have the most influential roles on climate data on the planet. Their words cause me to question their ability to be unbiased scientists.

Add that to NCAR’s Dr. Kevin Trenberth’s recent diatribe where he calls concerned citizens of the United States “deniers” in a preprint for a public address, while at the same time attempting to reverse the null hypothesis about human induced climate change….and they wonder why the public trust of climate science is going down the toilet?

 

[trysail]

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/don5.JPG​

...So where do the 1934/1998/2010 warm years rank in the long-term list of warm years? Of the past 10,500 years, 9,100 were warmer than 1934/1998/2010. Thus, regardless of which year ( 1934, 1998, or 2010) turns out to be the warmest of the past century, that year will rank number 9,099 in the long-term list. The climate has been warming slowly since the Little Ice Age, but it has quite a ways to go yet before reaching the temperature levels that persisted for nearly all of the past 10,500 years. It’s really much to do about nothing.

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/2010wheredoesitfitinwarmestyearlist.pdf

-Don J. Easterbrook, Ph.D.
http://myweb.wwu.edu/dbunny/resume.htm
​

 

[trysail]

http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aqCuPHYw0ghA&pos=13


EDF’s Solar ‘Time Bomb’ Will Tick On After France Pops Bubble
By Tara Patel

Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) -- France’s solar power boom that’s led to farmers building unneeded barns just to cover them in panels is costing Electricite de France SA more than a billion euros ($1.3 billion) a year as it meets state pledges to pay above- market prices for renewable energy.

French payments for solar-generated electricity sold into the distribution grid were the highest in Europe in 2009, leading to a 10-fold capacity increase in two years. What’s been a boon for panel owners and manufacturers has hit EDF because a tax to cover the higher costs of renewable electricity has fallen short.

“This is a time bomb EDF needs to defuse as soon as possible,” Bertrand Lecourt, an analyst at Deutsche Bank AG, said by telephone from Paris. While “the totally out-of-control phase” could be over, “it’s still something to be watched carefully,” he said.

The cost is siphoning off funds from EDF as it plans to spend 35 billion euros to extend the life of France’s aging nuclear plants. Europe’s largest power producer also aims to invest tens of billions of euros building plants in the U.K., China and Italy. The tax shortfall will widen this year and last until 2017 even as the government moves to cool the solar rush, said Aurel BGC analyst Louis Boujard.

EDF shares have dropped 20 percent over the past year, compared with a 3.7 percent decline in Europe’s Stoxx 600 Utilities Index. The Paris-based company had net debt of $57 billion euros at the end of June, according to a company filing.

Elsewhere in Europe, governments have stepped in to contain spiraling growth in solar generation.

Spanish Limits
The Czech Senate introduced a temporary tax on solar producers in December, and Spain limited the hours during which existing solar parks can earn premium rates. Germany almost doubled the surcharge consumers have to pay in renewable-energy subsidies starting this year.

To end what it has called a “speculative bubble,” France on Dec. 10 imposed a three-month freeze on solar projects to devise rules that could include caps on development and lowering the so-called feed-in tariffs that pay the higher rate for renewable power. The tariffs were cut twice in 2010.

“We just didn’t see it coming,” French lawmaker Francois- Michel Gonnot said of the boom. “What’s in the pipeline this year is unimaginable. Farmers were being told they could put panels on hangars and get rid of their cows.”

Solar Projects
The French cuts haven’t slowed demand for new solar projects. EDF received 3,000 applications a day to connect panels to the grid at the end of last year, compared with about 7,100 connections in all of 2008, according to the government and EDF. France could reach its 2020 target of 5,400 megawatts of solar generating capacity by the end of 2011 if all proposed projects are completed.

France’s energy regulator estimates EDF will pay an average of 546 euros a megawatt-hour for solar power in 2011. That’s almost 10 times estimated spot market power prices of 55 euros, and the highest among renewable energy sources.

The promise of rich returns spurred suburban supermarkets to put photovoltaic panels in parking lots and farmers to install units on empty, purpose-built barns, according to a French parliamentary report.

“Most panels installed in France were made in China with a highly questionable carbon footprint,” Environment Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet told parliament last month. Policy must “create jobs in France, not subsidize Chinese industry.”

The higher payments for renewable power are supposed to be covered by a levy added to consumers’ electricity bills, which also pays for the supply of power to needy households. For the last two years the CSPE levy, which remained at 4.50 euros a megawatt-hour between 2004 and the end of 2010, failed to keep up with the mounting costs.

Raised Tax
France raised the tax to 7.50 euros a megawatt-hour from Jan. 1, short of the 12.90 euros the regulator estimates is necessary to eliminate the shortfall through the end of 2011.

The new level and further increases in the coming years may allow EDF to reach a “balance” in the system by 2017, Aurel BGC’s Boujard said by telephone.

“EDF shouldn’t have to pay for renewable energy development in France,” Boujard said.

EDF’s shortfall was 1.4 billion euros in 2009, and is estimated to exceed 1 billion euros in 2010, the Commission de Regulation de l’Energie said in a report published this month. With the CSPE set at 7.50 euros a megawatt hour this year, the shortfall will reach an estimated 3 billion euros at the end of 2011 because of the increase in solar capacity, according to data in the report.

The solar component of the tax shortfall will rise to about a billion euros in 2011 compared with 60 million euros in 2009, according to Philippe de Ladoucette, head of the agency.

The development of wind and solar energies is “widening a deficit considerably,” EDF Chief Executive Officer Henri Proglio told Senators Dec. 14. “One can’t ask EDF to be the banker for marginal or local industries,” he said.

 

[trysail]

Location of coal-fired electrical generating capacity in the U.S.


http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/64-coal-fired_map.gif

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/images/figes5.bmp

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/images/fig7p4.jpg
​

Coal
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/figes1.html

 

[trysail]

The rate of the temperature rise from about 1910 to 1940 in the HADCRUT data is at least as great as the warming from 1978-1998. If the former rate of warming was “natural” what makes the same rate 68 years later “unprecedented”?

-Mike Smith
http://judithcurry.com/2011/01/21/mid-20th-century-global-warming/#comment-33495​

 

[trysail]

http://nofrakkingconsensus.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/grey-literature-ipcc-insiders-speak-candidly/


Grey Literature: IPCC Insiders Speak Candidly
January 21, 2011
by: Donna Laframboise

In February 2008 Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), addressed a committee of the North Carolina legislature. He declared to these assembled law-makers (as he has in many other contexts before and since), that:

…we carry out an assessment of climate change based on peer-reviewed literature, so everything that we look at and take into account in our assessments has to carry [the] credibility of peer-reviewed publications, we don’t settle for anything less than that. [bold added]​

Someone needs to tell the committee it was seriously misled. Last April a citizen audit coordinated by yours truly found that nearly one-third of the references in the IPCC’s 2007 report cite non-peer-reviewed sources (often referred to as “grey literature”).

More recently, I’ve been examining the answers IPCC insiders provided to a questionnaire distributed by an InterAcademy Council committee that investigated the IPCC last year. These answers make it abundantly clear numerous individuals knew that Pachauri’s public statements were at odds with the facts.

The quotes below are drawn from this three-megabyte 678-page PDF. The names of those who provided these remarks were removed prior to the document being made public. All bolding has been added by me.

Non-peer-reviewed literature should obviously be minimized but cannot be totally avoided. (page 2)

…the length of the [IPCC report] was constrained, so the number of citations was constrained. Hence, reviews (including those in the “grey” literature) were strongly favored if those reviews cited the primary literature. (p. 7)

In some fields non-peer reviewed is the way the science is done. It just has to be carefully used and identified clearly. (p. 22)

There cannot be any assessment of impacts and possible response strategies to climate change on peer-reviewed literature only. (p. 48)

My WG III chapter depended heavily on non-peer reviewed literature and I have yet to hear a complaint about its quality. (p. 52)

Governments want the chapter to cover questions of current relevance for which there [is] often “grey literature” but little peer reviewed literature. (p. 68)

…to address some of the policy topics it is necessary to use non-peer-reviewed literature. (p. 69)

Working Groups 2 and 3 make more reference to non-peer reviewed literature…The IPCC assessments are very inclusive and include a comprehensive analysis of all existing literature… (p. 74)

Some of the most policy relevant information does not appear in peer reviewed literature. Without it the IPCC could become irrelevant. (p. 119)

If I take it that the role of IPCC is to sift available knowledge on climate-related to help policymakers then the use of grey literature is unavoidable as, especially in the [Working Group 2 and 3] domains, there is a great deal of relevant insight outside the peer-reviewed academic literature. It would be a ducking of responsibility to omit this literature… (p. 123)

Some grey literature is essential as there is nothing else… (p. 128)

Adaptation is increasingly occurring on the ground and being reported in non-journal-based literature. If [Working Group 2] cannot assess this broad range of literature, its assessment will not be at the cutting-edge. (p. 148)

I agree that references to non-journal materials are necessary. Especially for regional impacts and adaptation most of useful materials are in technical reports issued by national research institutes…Without using those materials it is difficult to produce a useful report. (p. 219)

Considering the evolving nature of the science, the assessments would be lacking if alternative sources to peer-reviewed literature were not considered. (p. 225)

…it is necessary to draw on the grey literature, to capture (for example) engineering knowledge, or information from regions for which there is little journal-published literature. (p. 229)

…there are vast amounts of information and data that are not published in scientific papers, some of which is also reviewed as strongly as peer-review papers, and without which the assessments of the IPCC would not be possible. Adaptation, much of which is done autonomously, or by agencies of all sorts, may never be published, and yet it is critical for a correct assessment. (p. 241)

The issue of non-peer reviewed literature has been a point of ongoing debate in IPCC. For a number of areas of IPCC work non-peer reviewed literature is absolutely essential, because the peer reviewed literature does not cover enough relevant information. (p. 257)

Academic work is not enough to cover all places and all sectors, which inevitably needs “non-peer-reviewed (Grey) literature”. (p. 264)

As to the [Working Group 2], those Grey literature play a huge role to cover local findings. (p. 264)

I think the inclusion of grey literature should continue… (p. 284)

I think there is a need to consider more non-peer reviewed literature (sometimes called grey literature), as this often reflects recent developments… (p. 293)

Particularly for [Working Groups 2 and 3], it is important to go beyond the peer-reviewed journal literature. This is the case for several reasons…Even in [Working Group 1], much of the actual data on observations appears in tables and reports rather than in the peer-reviewed literature… (p. 313)

Thus, I think IPCC has to continue to be open to using information and ideas from outside the peer-reviewed journals… (p. 314)

Grey literature is unavoidable in some areas… (p. 378)

In my area, policy, non-peer-reviewed literature is essential for latest information and comprehensive review of state of the art. (p. 405)

The use of non-peer-reviewed literature is necessary… (p. 408)

Many emerging topics eg. on technologies require extensive use of reports and non-peer-reviewed literature. (p. 423)

Non peer reviewed literature must be taken into account, in particular where local impacts are evaluated. (p. 458)

Non-peer-reviewed literature should be avoided whenever possible. But there [are] many cases where such literature has to be taken into account. (p. 469)

Some chapters rely heavily on gray literature while ignoring peer-reviewed literature on the same matter (e.g., Ch 7 WG2). (p. 543)

The pressure from [developing countries] to use publications in [developing countries] and/or grey literature is high and effective. This lowers the scientific quality of the report. (p. 555)

The use of grey literature is unavoidable…Authors should not be plagued by unnecessary rules on the use or non-use of literature… (p. 622)

[G]rey literature is of absolute importance, given e.g. the fast development of some technologies. (p. 632)

The use of gray literature cannot be avoided in [Working Groups 2 and 3], as many of the sources are not peer-reviewed, but still high quality (e.g. reports of EEA). (p.643)

…especially for the policy literature reviewed in [Working Group 3], there is a substantial body of research papers and government-sponsored reports that are not represented in the journal literature. (p. 664)

In [Working Group 3, for the 2001 and 2007 reports], the procedure was to leave the selection of relevant gray literature to the writing team…No particular precedence was accorded to peer-reviewed and gray literature… (p. 664)

The preponderance of important so-called “grey literature” simply cannot be ignored by the IPCC. The information it holds is more current than that in journals and it captures non-English knowledge more effectively. (p. 671)​

In the words of those quoted above, the use of grey literature is essential, necessary, and unavoidable in the preparation of IPCC reports. According to these people, the IPCC has relied on grey literature extensively for some time.

This means that the chairman of the IPCC has systematically misrepresented the process by which his organization produces reports. His declaration that the IPCC does not settle for anything less than peer-reviewed sources is a steaming pile of manure.

Equally troubling is that hundreds – perhaps thousands – of people involved in the IPCC process have clearly been aware that Pachauri’s claims are false. Yet the average journalist – and the average member of the public – remains in the dark.

There have been many open letters, many organized public declarations by climate scientists over the years. Why has no effort been made – not even a dozen people signing a letter-to-the-editor of Nature or Science - to set the record straight?

We’re often told we should believe in dangerous human-caused global warming because science academies from around the world endorse the idea. So why have those same academies remained silent with regard to this matter?

Does no one care that the IPCC’s leadership has been dead wrong about something this simple and straightforward? I mean, IPCC reports are only among the world’s most important documents.

 

[trysail]

http://sppiblog.org/news/commentary...tions-for-human-made-climate-change#more-4248


Commentary: Hansen Draft Paper: Paleoclimate Implications for Human-Made Climate Change
by Dr. Martin Hertzberg

As the saying goes:

“If all you have in your hand is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail”.

It is hopeless to expect that Hansen could possibly analyze data objectively – all he has in his head is “CO2 climate forcing” and everything else has to be “forced” into that ridiculous paradigm. It makes no difference to him that the predictions of his past half-baked computer models based on “CO2 climate forcing” were completely wrong.

It is not worth my time (or anyone else’s in my opinion) to try to critique the entire paper, but the final paragraph on his p. 11 stands our like a sore thumb. In it he states:

” Earth orbital (Milankovic) parameters have favored a cooling trend for the past several thousand years, which should be expected to start in the Northern Hemisphere (NH). For example, Earth is now closest to the sun in January, which favors warm winters and cool summers in the Northern Hemisphere.”

Those statements are typical of the misunderstanding in the popular literature of the Milankovic cycles. Since we are now further from the sun in the NH summer, he argues that the NH should get less solar insolation in the NH summer thus “favoring the growth of glaciers and ice-caps in the NH”. So why then we may ask are we now in an Interglacial Warming? What Hansen fails to realize is that when we are further from the Sun in NH summer we move more slowly in orbit, and are therefore exposed to the summer sun for a longer period of time.


From the graphs in the web-site http://individual.utoronto.ca/kalendis/seasons.htm , one can calculate that in 2010 the NH summer half of the earth’s orbit from the Spring Equinox to the fall Equinox lasts 186.1 days. The NH winter half of the orbit lasts 179.0 days. So the summer half gets 7.1 more days of solar insolation than the winter half. (Go to your calendar and count!)

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/season_lengths_present1.png​

Exposure time in this case is more significant that daily insolation caused by our further distance during the NH summer. And that is why we are in an Interglacial Warming and why Hansen is completely wrong in arguing that we should be “favoring the growth of glaciers and ice-caps in the Northern Hemisphere”.

Now some 10,000 years ago, because of the precession of the Equinoxes, summer and winter would have nearly flipped but with not much change in the earth’s orbital eccentricity. From the same web-site, in the year 8,000 BC, the NH summer half of the earth’s orbit lasted 178.5 days while the winter half lasted 186.6 days, so that the winter half exceeded the summer half by 8.1 days.

So 10,000 years ago the earth was further from the sun during NH winter and it spent a longer time on the winter half of the orbit, thus both effects re-enforced each other to give us a marked Glacial Cooling. (Actually the peak in that Glacial Cooling occurred several thousand years earlier than 8,000 BC.) Today, while we spend a longer time during the NH summer half of our orbit, we are further away in the summer, so the effects tend to cancel, but the longer time exposure is more important than the further distance.

The following discussion from my Chapter 12 of our recently published book “Slaying the Sky Dragon – Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory” is a more general critique of the Hansen paper. Simply substitute “Hansen” for “Gore”.

The Legend of the Sky Dragon and Its Mythmakers
There is a simple way to tell the difference between propagandists and scientists. If scientists have a theory they search diligently for data that might actually contradict the theory so that they can fully test its validity or refine it. Propagandists, on the other hand, carefully select only the data that might agree with their theory and dutifully ignore any data that disagrees with it.

One of the best examples of the contrast between propagandists and scientists comes from the way the human caused global warming advocates handle the Vostok ice core data from Antarctica (6). The data span the last 420,000 years, and they show some four Glacial Coolings with average temperatures some 6 to 8 C below current values and five Interglacial Warming periods with temperatures some 2 to 4 C above current values. The last warming period in the data is the current one that started some 15,000 to 20,000 years ago. The data show a remarkably good correlation between long term variations in temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations are at a minimum during the end of Glacial Coolings when temperatures are at a minimum. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations are at a maximum when temperatures are at a maximum at the end of Interglacial Warmings. Gore, in his movie and his book, “An Inconvenient Truth”, shows the Vostok data, and uses it to argue that the data prove that high atmospheric CO2 concentrations cause global warming.

Is that an objective evaluation of the Vostok data? Let’s look at what Gore failed to mention. First, the correlation between temperature and CO2 has been going on for about half a million years, long before any significant human production of CO2, which began only about 150 years ago. Thus, it is reasonable to argue that the current increase in CO2 during our current Interglacial Warming, which has been going on for the last 15,000 – 20,000 years, is merely the continuation of a natural process that has nothing whatever to do with human activity. Gore also fails to ask the most logical question: where did all that CO2 come from during those past warming periods when the human production of CO2 was virtually nonexistent? The answer is apparent to knowledgeable scientists: from the same place that the current increase is coming from, from the oceans. The amount of CO2 dissolved in the oceans is some 50 times greater than the amount in the atmosphere. As oceans warm for whatever reason, some of their dissolved CO2 is emitted into the atmosphere, just as your soda pop goes flat and loses its dissolved CO2 as it warms to room temperature even as you pour it into the warmer glass. As oceans cool, CO2 from the atmosphere dissolves back into the oceans, just as soda pop is made by injecting CO2 into cold water.

But the real “clincher” that separates the scientists from the propagandists comes from the most significant fact that Gore fails to mention. The same Vostok data show that changes in temperature always precede the changes in atmospheric CO2 by about 500-1500 years.

The temperature increases or decreases come first, and it is only after 500-1500 years that the CO2 follows. Fig 3 shows the data from the termination of the last Glacial Cooling (Major Glaciation) that ended some 15,000 – 20,000 years ago through the current Interglacial Warming of today. The four instances where the temperature changes precede the CO2 curve are clearly shown. All the Vostok data going back some 420,000 years show exactly the same behavior. Any objective scientist looking at that data would conclude that it is the warming that is causing the CO2 increases, not the other way around as Gore claimed. I am indebted to Guy Leblanc Smith (guy.lbs@rockknowledge.com.au) for granting permission to use Fig. 3 as it was published in Viv Forbes’ web-site www.carbon-sense.com .

It is even more revealing to see how the advocates of the human-caused global warming theory handle this “clincher” of the argument. It is generally agreed that the Vostok cycles of Glacial Coolings and Interglacial Warmings are driven by changes in the parameters of the Earth’s orbital motion about the Sun and its orientation with respect to that orbit; namely, changes in the ellipticity of its orbit, changes in its obliquity (tilt relative to its orbital plane), and the precession of its axis of rotation. These changes are referred to as the Milankovitch cycles, and even the human caused global warming advocates agree that those cycles “trigger” the temperature variations. But the human caused global warming advocates present the following ad hoc contrivance to justify their greenhouse effect theory.

The Milankovitch cycles, they say, are “weak” forcings that start the process of Interglacial Warming, but once the oceans begin to release some of their CO2 after 500-1500 years, then the “strong” forcing of “greenhouse warming” takes over to accelerate the warming. That argument is the best example of how propagandists carefully select data that agrees with their theory as they dutifully ignore data that disagrees with it. One need not go any further than to the next Glacial Cooling to expose that fraudulent argument for the artificial contrivance that it really is. Pray tell us then, we slayers of the Sky Dragon ask, what causes the next Glacial Cooling? How can it possibly begin when the CO2 concentration, their “strong” forcing, is at its maximum? How can the “weak” Milankovitch cooling effect possibly overcome that “strong” forcing of the greenhouse effect heating when the CO2 concentration is still at its maximum value at the peak of the Interglacial Warming? The global warmers thus find themselves stuck way out on a limb with that contrived argument. They are stuck there in an everlasting Glacial Warming, with no way to begin the next Glacial Cooling that the data show.

But one has to be sorry for Gore and his friends, for after all, they are in the global warming business. Global cooling is clearly someone else’s job!”

I can think of nothing more inappropriate and insulting to Milankovic than having Hansen speak at a Symposium in his honor.

 

[trysail]

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/...ator-even-way-back-then-study/#comment-581958


By: "Jimbo"

What people don’t understand is that all science researchers, no matter what field, are jumping on the global warming bandwagon in a wild feeding frenzy of funds. Here is where some of the research funding went.



Warmer Northern Hemisphere winters because of global warming

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v399/n6735/abs/399452a0.html
​

Colder Northern Hemisphere winters because of global warming

http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2009JD013568
​

Global warming to slow down the Earth’s rotation

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002.../2001GL013672.shtml

​

Global warming to speed up the Earth’s rotation

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11555
​

North Atlantic Ocean has become less salty

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/308/5729/1772.abstract

​

North Atlantic Ocean has become more salty

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2007GL030126.shtml



​

Avalanches may increase

http://www.taiga.net/nce/schools/lessonplans/snowstudy_impacts.html

​

Avalanches may decline

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/conte...000001/art00029;jsessionid=27gjw6f50jw2.alice
​

Plants move uphill due to global warming

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch1s1-es.html
​

Plants move downhill due to global warming

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21252344
​

Declining coral calcification on the Great Barrier Reef due to global warming

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/323/5910/116.abstract

​

Increasing coral calcification on the Great Barrier Reef due to global warming

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0005239
​

 

[trysail]

Troposphere satellite temperatures since 1998:

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1998


UAH

CHARACTERISTICS OF AIR PARCELS AND AIR MASSES; CLOUDS - NASA
http://rst.gsfc.nasa.gov/Sect14/Sect14_1b.html

 

[trysail]

Do you think these guys have any clue what they're talking about? I don't.



________________________

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/science/earth/25cold.html?ref=earth


Cold Jumps Arctic ‘Fence,’ Stoking Winter’s Fury
By Justin Gillis, New York Times

Judging by the weather, the world seems to have flipped upside down.

For two winters running, an Arctic chill has descended on Europe, burying that continent in snow and ice. Last year in the United States, historic blizzards afflicted the mid-Atlantic region. This winter the Deep South has endured unusual snowstorms and severe cold, and a frigid Northeast is bracing for what could shape into another major snowstorm this week.

Yet while people in Atlanta learn to shovel snow, the weather 2,000 miles to the north has been freakishly warm the past two winters. Throughout northeastern Canada and Greenland, temperatures in December ran as much as 15 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. Bays and lakes have been slow to freeze; ice fishing, hunting and trade routes have been disrupted.

Iqaluit, the capital of the remote Canadian territory of Nunavut, had to cancel its New Year’s snowmobile parade. David Ell, the deputy mayor, said that people in the region had been looking with envy at snowbound American and European cities. “People are saying, ‘That’s where all our snow is going!’ “ he said.

The immediate cause of the topsy-turvy weather is clear enough. A pattern of atmospheric circulation that tends to keep frigid air penned in the Arctic has weakened during the last two winters, allowing big tongues of cold air to descend far to the south, while masses of warmer air have moved north.

The deeper issue is whether this pattern is linked to the rapid changes that global warming is causing in the Arctic, particularly the drastic loss of sea ice. At least two prominent climate scientists have offered theories suggesting that it is. But others are doubtful, saying the recent events are unexceptional, or that more evidence over a longer period would be needed to establish a link.

Since satellites began tracking it in 1979, the ice on the Arctic Ocean’s surface in the bellwether month of September has declined by more than 30 percent. It is the most striking change in the terrain of the planet in recent decades, and a major question is whether it is starting to have an effect on broad weather patterns.

Ice reflects sunlight, and scientists say the loss of ice is causing the Arctic Ocean to absorb more heat in the summer. A handful of scientists point to that extra heat as a possible culprit in the recent harsh winters in Europe and the United States.

Their theories involve a fast-moving river of air called the jet stream that circles the Northern Hemisphere. Many winters, a strong pressure difference between the polar region and the middle latitudes channels the jet stream into a tight circle, or vortex, around the North Pole, effectively containing the frigid air at the top of the world.

“It’s like a fence,” said Michelle L’Heureux, a researcher in Camp Springs, Md., with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. When that pressure difference diminishes, however, the jet stream weakens and meanders southward, bringing warm air into the Arctic and cold air into the midlatitudes - exactly what has happened the last couple of winters. The effect is sometimes compared to leaving a refrigerator door open, with cold air flooding the kitchen even as warm air enters the refrigerator.

This has happened intermittently for many decades. Still, it is unusual for the polar vortex to weaken as much as it has lately. Last winter, one index related to the vortex hit its lowest wintertime value since record-keeping began in 1865, and it was quite low again in December.

James E. Overland, a climate scientist with NOAA in Seattle, has proposed that the extra warmth in the Arctic Ocean could be heating the atmosphere enough to make it less dense, causing the air pressure over the Arctic to be closer to that of the middle latitudes. “The added heat works against having a strong polar vortex,” he said.

But Dr. Overland acknowledges that his idea is tentative and needs further research. Many other climate scientists are not convinced, saying that a two-year span, however unusual, is not much on which to base a new theory. “We haven’t got sufficient insight to make definitive claims,” said Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

Judah Cohen, director of seasonal forecasting at a company called Atmospheric and Environmental Research in Lexington, Mass., has spotted what he believes is a link between increasing snow in Siberia and the weakening of the polar vortex. In his theory, the extra snow is creating a dense, cold air mass over northern Asia in the late autumn, setting off a complex chain of cause and effect that ultimately perturbs the vortex.

Dr. Cohen said in an interview that the rising Siberian snow might, in turn, be linked to the decline of Arctic sea ice, with the open water providing extra moisture to the atmosphere - much as the Great Lakes produce heavy snows in cities like Buffalo and Syracuse. He is publishing seasonal forecasts based on his work, supported by the National Science Foundation. Those forecasts correctly predicted the recent harsh winters in the midlatitudes. But Dr. Cohen acknowledges, as does Dr. Overland, that some of his ideas are tentative and need further research.

The uncertainty about what is causing the strange winters highlights a core difficulty of climate science. While mainstream researchers are sure that greenhouse gases released by humans are warming the Earth, they acknowledge being on shakier ground in trying to predict the regional effects of that change. It is entirely possible, they say, that some regions will cool temporarily, because of disruption of the atmospheric and oceanic circulation, even as the Earth warms over all.

Bloggers who specialize in raising doubts about climate science have gleefully pointed to the recent winters in the United States and Europe as evidence that climatologists must be mistaken about a warming trend. These commentators have not been as eager to write about the strange warmth in parts of the Arctic, a region that scientists have long predicted will warm more rapidly than the planet as a whole.

Without doubt, the winter weather that began and ended 2010 was remarkable. Two of the 10 largest snowstorms in New York City history occurred last year, including the one that disrupted travel right after Christmas. The two snowstorms that fell on Washington and surrounding areas within a week in February had no known precedent in their overall impact on the region, with total accumulations of 40 inches in some places.

But the winters were not the whole story. Even without them, 2010 would have gone down as one of the strangest years in the annals of climatology, thanks in part to a weather condition known as El Nino, which dumped heat from the Pacific Ocean into the atmosphere early in the year. Later, the ocean surface cooled, a condition known as La Nina, contributing to heavy rainfall in many places.

Despite cooling from La Nina, newly compiled figures show that 2010 was among the two warmest years in the historical record. It featured a heat wave in Russia, all-time high temperatures in at least 17 countries, the hottest summer in New York City history, and devastating floods in Pakistan, China, Australia, the United States and other countries.

“It was a wild year,” said Christopher C. Burt, a weather historian for Weather Underground, an Internet site.

Still, however erratic the weather may have become, it is not obvious to most people how global warming could lead to frigid winters. Many scientists are hesitant to back such assertions, at least until they gain a better understanding of what is going on in the Arctic.

In interviews, several scientists recalled that in the decade ending in the mid-1990s, the polar vortex seemed to be strengthening, not weakening, producing mild winters in the eastern United States and western Europe.

At the time, some climate scientists wrote papers attributing that change to global warming. Newspapers, including this one, printed laments for winter lost. But soon after, the apparent trend went away, an experience that has made many researchers more cautious.

John M. Wallace, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington, wrote some of the earlier papers. This time around, he said, it will take a lot of evidence to convince him that a few harsh winters in London or Washington have anything to do with global warming.

“Just when you publish something and it looks like you’re seeing a connection,” Dr. Wallace said, “nature has a way of humbling us.”

 

[trysail]

http://processtrends.com/images/El_nino_La_Nina_status.png

http://processtrends.com/images/RClimate_UAH_Ch5_latest.png

​

http://chartsgraphs.wordpress.com/

 

[fureto]

You broke your own thread.

 

[trysail]

If you are going to make the assertion that runaway global warming is caused by man’s release of CO2 and positive feedbacks, you must have evidence showing that it cannot be caused by some other source and that feedbacks must be positive. How do you decouple CO2 emissions, changes in land use, natural variability, cloud effects, etc? No one has answered this question. The problems with feedback mechanisms is they are used to bring about a much greater rate of warming than is either observed or can be accounted for.

Conjecture does not form scientific evidence. Models without understanding how feedbacks work are dubious. This is the problem with arguing consensus as it is based on feelings rather than facts.

-"Ronald"​

http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_Jan_2011.gif
"…although this, too, shall pass, when La Nina goes away."
-Roy W. Spencer, Ph.D.


​

 

[trysail]

http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/why-wind-wont-work.pdf

"Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?"
- Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme


"A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. Dedevelopment means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation."
- Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies


"Unless we announce disasters no one will listen."
- Sir John Houghton, first chairman of IPCC


"Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty, reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control."
- Professor Maurice King


"The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can't let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are."
- Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defence Fund


"We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public's imagination... So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts... Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both."
- Stephen Schneider, Stanford Professor of Climatology, lead author of many IPCC reports


"It doesn't matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true."
- Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace


"We've got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy."
- Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation


"No matter if the science of global warming is all phony...climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world."
- Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment


"The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe."
- Emeritus Professor Daniel Botkin


"We require a central organizing principle - one agreed to voluntarily. Minor shifts in policy, moderate improvement in laws and regulations, rhetoric offered in lieu of genuine change - these are all forms of appeasement, designed to satisfy the public's desire to believe that sacrifice, struggle and a wrenching transformation of society will not be necessary."
- Al Gore, Earth in the Balance


"Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class— involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing - are not sustainable."
- Maurice Strong, Rio Earth Summit


"Complex technology of any sort is an assault on human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it."
- Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute


"The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet."
- Jeremy Rifkin, Greenhouse Crisis Foundation


"Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun."
- Prof Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University


"The big threat to the planet is people: there are too many, doing too well economically and burning too much oil."
- Sir James Lovelock, BBC Interview


"My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with its full complement of species, returning throughout the world."
- Dave Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!


"A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal."
- Ted Turner, founder of CNN and major UN donor


"... the resultant ideal sustainable population is hence more than 500 million but less than one billion."
- Club of Rome, Goals for Mankind


"I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems."
- John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal


"The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing."
- Christopher Manes, Earth First!


"Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing."
- David Brower, first Executive Director of the Sierra Club

 

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...Politicians formed the IPCC over 20 years ago with an endgame in mind: to regulate CO2 emissions. I know, because I witnessed some of the behind-the-scenes planning. It is not a scientific organization. It was organized to use the government-funded scientific research establishment to achieve policy goals...



...The most vocal climate scientists defending the IPCC have lost their objectivity. Yes, they have what I consider to be a plausible theory. But they actively suppress evidence to the contrary, for instance attempts to study natural explanations for recent warming...


...The climate models are indeed great accomplishments. It’s what they are being used for that is suspect. A total of 23 models cover a wide range of warming estimates for our future, and yet there is no way to test them for what they are being used for! climate change predictions.

Virtually all of the models produce decadal time scale warming that exceeds what we have observed in the last 15 years. That fact has been known for years, but its publication in the peer reviewed literature continues to be blocked.

My theory is that a natural change in cloud cover has caused most of the recent warming. Temperature proxy data from around the world suggests that just about every century in the last 2,000 years has experienced warming or cooling. Why should today’s warmth be manmade, when the Medieval Warm Period was not? Just because we finally have one potential explanation – CO2?

This only shows how LITTLE we understand about climate change…not how MUCH we know.

Why would scientists allow themselves to be used in this way? When I have pressed them on the science over the years, they all retreat to the position that getting away from fossil fuels is the ‘right thing to do anyway’.

In other words, they have let their worldviews, their politics, their economic understanding (or lack thereof) affect their scientific judgment. I am ashamed for our scientific discipline and embarrassed by their behavior...



...the supply of fossil fuels is not endless. But we will never actually “run out”…we will just slowly stop trying to extract them as they become increasingly scarce (translation – more expensive). That’s the way the world works.

People who claim we are going to wake up one morning and our fossil fuels will be gone are either pandering, or stupid, or both.

But how you transition from fossil fuels to other sources of energy makes all the difference in the world. Making our most abundant and affordable sources of energy artificially more expensive with laws and regulations will end up killing millions of people.

And that’s why I speak out. Poverty kills. Those who argue otherwise from their positions of fossil-fueled health and wealth are like spoiled children.

The truly objective scientist should be asking whether MORE, not less, atmospheric carbon dioxide is what we should be trying to achieve. There is more published real-world evidence for the benefits of more carbon dioxide, than for any damage caused by it. The benefits have been measured, and are real-world. The risks still remain theoretical.

Carbon dioxide is necessary for life on Earth. That it has been so successfully demonized with so little hard evidence is truly a testament to the scientific illiteracy of modern society. If humans were destroying CO2 — rather than creating more — imagine the outrage there would be at THAT!

I would love the opportunity to cross examine these (natural) climate change deniers in a court of law. They have gotten away with too much, for too long. Might they be right? Sure. But the public has no idea how flimsy – and circumstantial – their evidence is...

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/02/on-the-house-vote-to-defund-the-ipcc/

-Roy W. Spencer, Ph.D.
Principal Research Scientist
University of Alabama, Huntsville
Former Senior Scientist for Climate Studies
NASA, Marshall Space Flight Center​

 

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Read Andrew W. Montford's The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science ( London [U.K.], 2010 )


http://realclimategate.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/hide-the-decline-tree-ring-data-temp-spliced-in1.jpg http://realclimategate.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/hide-the-decline-tree-ring-data.jpg

Source: http://www.realclimategate.org/2011/02/hide-the-decline-2-pictures-for-2000-comments/

 

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By Willis Eschenbach
http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/26/agreeing/#comment-49692

...I have described myself before as neither a skeptic nor an AGW supporter.

I am a climate heretic. I believe that the climate has a number of homeostatic processes that tend to keep the temperature within a fairly narrow range despite wide fluctuations in forcing.

As a result, I think that the idea that the climate can be represented by

∆Q = λ ∆T
where Q is forcing, lambda is climate sensitivity, and T is surface air temperate

is a tragic joke. C’mon, folks, this is a huge and hugely complicated system. Why on earth would something that simple be true? It isn’t true for the human body, which is equivalently complex, there is no such relationship between forcing and temperature for humans. Why? Homeostatic processes in the human body.

The idea that climate is so bozo second-grade simple that it can be boiled down to a one line equation is NONSENSE, folks. You’ve been had. It ain’t that simple. THINK ABOUT IT! Do you truly believe the system can be contained in a simple, one line equation?

The claim that T is a function of one and only one thing, Q, rests on bad math ( http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/28/the-cold-equations/ ) and an incorrect understanding of dynamic systems. It is a very convenient fiction because it allows us to say “if the forcing changes like this in the future, the temperature must change like that” … but guys, please, think about it — can anyone name me a system as complex as the climate whose output properties are a linear transform of a single input variable?

Anyone?

Because rivers don’t act like that. Storms don’t act like that. Eddies in the stream don’t act like that. The ocean currents don’t act like that, waves breaking don’t act like that, none of them can be boiled down to a dirt simple equation.

∆Q is not equal to lambda times delta T anywhere but in the climate models.

The concept of “climate sensitivity” assumes a linear relationship between the two which does not exist anywhere outside the models. The entire field of climate science has made a fundamental mistake. It has assumed that the climate is like a pool ball on a perfectly level table. Push it north with a force of 3.7 units, it moves north 3 units. The relation between the force applied and the distance moved is called the “climate sensitivity”.

I say, on the other hand, that climate is like a river. If you push it north with a force of three units, it’s just as likely to shift its banks and move east two units. Try it sometime. In such a situation, there is no linear “climate sensitivity” relationship between the force and the distance moved. Nature’s ugly like that.

So … not sure where this puts me on your agreement list. It does reveal a problem with your list, however. As far as I’m concerned, it’s missing one of the most important questions:

Are there homeostatic systems within the climate which tend to keep it in a certain temperature range despite variations in forcing?

I say most definitely, I’ve identified one ( http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/14/the-thermostat-hypothesis/ ), and there are likely others. You guys are free to go on with your ideas about “climate sensitivity” of climate pool balls on a lovely level playing field … but when you ask if I agree, I don’t agree at all. I think that linear simplicity is the wishful thinking of modelers desperate to forecast the future. While they’re on the pool table playing with their balls, I’ll be out on the river learning more about how the world actually responds to forcing … I can already tell you four things about it, though:

1. It ain’t linear.

2. It ain’t simple.

3. It involves self-organized criticality and emergent phenomena.

4. It won’t fit in a one-line equation.

I think the field was put together without a clear overarching theory, and that it is suffering for it. Instead of being modeled as anything approaching the complexity of a natural planetary-scale heat engine which contains a host of self-organized emergent phenomena, it is modeled by a simple one-line equation … and you folks truly believe that? Truly? You really think we can reduce the climate to a one-line equation?

So no, I don’t agree, but not with the things you ask.

I disagree at a fundamental level with the basic assumptions. I disagree with the bogus math used to claim that the only variable in Q is T. I disagree that climate is like a ball on a pool table, free to respond linearly to forcings. I disagree that there is anything remotely resembling “climate sensitivity”, it is a component of an incorrect and oversimplified understanding of what’s going on.

Until your questionnaire gets down to that level, I fear it’s deck chairs on the titanic from my perspective …

 

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http://judithcurry.com/2011/03/01/long-death-of-environmentalism/#comment-51285

Here’s my biggest problem with the GHE, it ONLY describes the act of ‘trapping’ Radiation, it DOES NOT include Convection or Evaporation.

One could very well expect an object’s temperature to rise if its Radiation Rate is decreased (aka reducing its emissitivity) by ‘trapping’ Radiation, in a vacuum. However, the Earth has TWO means to transfer energy away from the planet between the surface and the Tropopause. This is quite important to understand.

Convection is a far more efficient means of transferring energy than Radiation, within the same system of course. If you ‘trap’ Radiation via a GHE or some other means, then Convection, being the MAIN medium for transferring energy between the surface and Tropopause, will quickly pick up where emissitivity dropped off. Entropy demands it.

Our atmosphere, indeed all atmospheres are very elastic and expand and contract when energy is added or reduced from V=nRT/P. You can see this by examining the altitude of the Tropopause at the Poles and at the Equator. This too is a variable that the GHE does not take into account. If the atmosphere’s volume was static, then we would have something more like a greenhouse, but it is not.

Sorry but the GHE isn't even close to being clear. Dr. Curry admitted as much in the Physics of the Atmospheric Greenhouse(?) Thread on Nov 30th stating “But a good mechanistic explanation of the physical processes occurring seems absent”. ‘Seems’ absent without and explanation ‘is’ absent.

This is THE most significant issue. Again, once you include Convection and Evaporation, both very efficient at cooling the Surface, it is soon discovered that ‘trapping’ 2W/m^2 along with the Billions of joules per meter squared at the surface, we see that Convection and Evaporation easily replace Radiation as a means of transfer.

Perhaps you can direct me to an explanation of the GHE you found complete?

If I come across one I’ll let everyone know, but until then (holding one’s breath would be a mistake), does it make sense that if there is a reduction in emissitivity by ‘trapping’ Radiation, that Convection and Evaporation will quickly, if not instantly, provide another means of energy transfer?

I quote trapping because ‘trapping’ Radiation is quite impossible, it moves at 300 Million meters per second and all objects above 0 Kelvin radiate. One can slow the Radiation rate, primarily by reducing the objects temp or secondarily making it reflective, but if you attempt to slow the Radiation Rate while increasing the Temp, you will find it difficult. First the higher the temp of an object the faster the Radiation Rate and if you make it shiny/reflective then you reduce it absorption rate.

Add a second more efficient means of energy transfer such as Conduction or Convection, and the Radiation Rate drops significantly, given that Entropy will favor the most efficient.

The GHE should be renamed the EE, or Emissitivity Effect. It does after all have to do with reducing the Radiation Rate, not the Convection Rate as a Greenhouse functions.

In any event, while the AGW Advocates will say this is a Dead Horse and I’m kicking it, I can see great deal of life in it and it is worth poking at it. IMHUnderstanding the AGW Argument is a cul-de-sac where there is no choice but to go around in circles precisely because it is attempting to Skip an explanation.