An email from David Whitehouse [david@davidwhitehouse.com] below -- noting statistical shenanigans at NOAA -- including that great Greenie practice of treating as "outliers" anything that does not suit them. The latter part of the summary blue line in the graph below is pure fiction -- as a look at the detailed figures reveals. That we are now in a plateau phase of a temperature oscillation is wilfully ignored. It is a perfectly legitimate statistical practice to ignore the occasional aberrant value as an outlier but it is certainly not justifiable when there are lots of such "outliers" in close succession
You know my view of global warming - first allegiance should be to the data. Looking at NOAA's data on annual global mean temperature over land and ocean here shows something interesting which I know others have referred to. NOAA says of 2006 that it was the 5th warmest year on record but adds that it is in reality statistically indistinguishable from previous years. Indeed looking at the graph it's apparent that the last six years show no warming trend and are well within each others error bars. In fact the past ten years are statistically equivalent to no increase.
Clearly the past ten years have been warmer than the previous ten years and the blue line shows a trend of about 0.015 degrees a year. But I wonder what is the statistical justification of carrying that rising trend through the past ten years. It seems predicated on passing through the exact centre of the 2001 error bars and allowing 1998 (an El Nino year) to be 2 standard deviations above the trend. Is the blue line justified in showing a 0.1 degree rise all within the (larger) error bars that themselves show no trend?
HURRICANE SCARE DEBUNKED
Hurricanes over the past 5,000 years appear to have been controlled more by El Nino and an African monsoon than warm sea surface temperatures, such as those caused by global warming, researchers said on Wednesday. The study, published in the journal Nature, adds to the debate on whether seas warmed by greenhouse gas emissions lead to more hurricanes, such as those that bashed the Gulf of Mexico in 2005.
Some researchers say warmer seas appear to have contributed to more intense hurricanes, while others disagree. The UN International Panel on Climate Change said this year it was more likely than not that humans contribute to a trend of increasingly intense hurricanes.
Frequent strong hurricanes thrived in the Western Atlantic during times of weak El Ninos, or warming of surface waters of the Eastern Pacific Ocean, and strong West African monsoons even when local seas were cooler than now, the study said. "Tropical sea surface temperatures as warm as at present are apparently not a requisite condition for increased intense hurricane activity," Jeffrey Donnelly, the lead author and researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said in the study.
Intense hurricanes made landfall during the latter half of the Little Ice Age, a period of cooling that occurred approximately from the 14th to mid-19th centuries, he said.
Donnelly took core sediment samples from coastal lagoons in Puerto Rico to determine the frequency and strength of hurricanes that hit the Caribbean island over thousands of years. The storms whipped up sand and other coarse grains that were deposited in the lagoons. He compared the deposits with historic paleoclimatology records to determine that the storms hit during periods when El Ninos were weak and when Western African monsoons were strong. Intense hurricanes hit when local sea surface temperatures were warm or cool.
In fact, "the Caribbean experienced a relatively active interval of intense hurricanes for more than a millennium when local sea surface temperatures were on average cooler than modern," the study said. Changes in intense hurricane activity should be better predicted with more study of the Eastern Pacific and West African climate patterns, it said.
Source
Appalling and unhealthy results of recycling mania in the Unhinged Kingdom
Sharon Lock, 36, has three bags of rubbish in her cluttered garage. They have accumulated there in the three days since her husband spent his Sunday morning driving to the tip seven miles away. Since February, when East Cambridgeshire District Council introduced fortnightly black-bag collections in Bottisham, he has been making the journey twice a week. "It's a real pain in the butt, to be honest with you", the mother of one said. "My son, Drew, is 2 and we can't have dirty nappies and food sitting in the garage for a fortnight. The smell is horrendous."
Lucy Baynes, who gave birth to her first child Zac only five weeks ago, tells a similar story. Two days before the fortnightly collection in leafy Bottisham, there is already a pile of black bags stacked against a post outside her garden, one of the communal collection points for the village. "Initially I thought the scheme was a good idea, but the stacks of rubbish are disgusting. That pile will be humming in the summer, and there will be more foxes and cats."
The council halved black bag collections in Bottisham only weeks ago, having already done so last summer in the village of Witchford. The pilot schemes are a response to the Government's controversial drive to push councils into cutting down on landfill and boost recycling, which Ben Bradshaw, the Environment Minister, said has resulted in 144 councils already experimenting with fortnightly collections.
Voters in many of these local authorities, including East Cambridgeshire, will be taking part in local elections next week. If sitting councillors are going to suffer as a result of their decisions to cut back on the dustmen, you would expect it to be at the hands of people such as Mrs Lock and Ms Baynes. Yet neither of these women will be voicing their frustration over refuse at the polls next week, because neither of them will be voting at all. Both cite their young children as a reason why they have not engaged with the election campaign, and both seem decidedly uninterested in whether the 17 Liberal Democrat councillors, 16 Conservatives and 6 independents will hold their seats on May 3.
Among those in the village who will vote, post office closures and council tax were both mentioned as reasons to back one party over the other, but not one person told The Times that the backlog of binbags would influence their decision. Which is perhaps why Colin McLean, the village's Conservative councillor, is relatively relaxed about the issue: "People have not been shaking hands over it on the doorstep," he said, "but nor have they been shaking fists."
Back in Bottisham, where the residents have had less time to adjust to the changes, John Humphreys expresses the mood of many people: "It is a diminution of the service which they tell us is an improvement, which gets up people's noses, and its an imposition, but compared with the big issues like the NHS it is not important. The retired teacher is less than thrilled about having to store nonrecyclable rubbish for two weeks before it is taken off his hands. But he will not be swayed by the battle of the binbag when he goes to vote. "We are the compliant people of England, and life's too short," he said. "It's not worth going to the barricades over."
Source
Ethanol mania hits China -- hurts food supply
To a growing list of grievances over the rapid pace of economic change in their country, Chinese have another to add: a surge in the price of pork, caused partly by the country's drive to curb pollution. China consumes more pork per capita than any other nation and the meat is at the heart of myriad dishes, most frequently stir-fried with vegetables or chillies. It is also served as meatballs in a popular dish known as Lion's Head or in Dongpo rou, pork belly braised for hours into sweetish unctuous melt-in-your-mouth chunks named after an 11th-century poet.
But many Chinese are having to curtail their passion for pork after prices almost doubled in some cities compared with a year ago. Some consumers are now paying a record 10 yuan (60p) per jin (about 1 lb/4.5kg) and there is official concern about possible unrest among an urban population fretting over poor housing, a volatile jobs market, severe congestion and pollution.
China's Communist leadership is particularly sensitive to any issues that are likely to stir popular anger - and the price of food is acutely important to a people who use the words "Have you eaten?" as a greeting. State media said: "The relevant management offices attach great importance to this and have organised experts to investigate the market."
China boasts the world's largest population of hogs, with about 485 million at the end of last year. Most are reared on large farms, but tens of millions are the pride and joy of smallholders who keep one or two animals that live virtually in the family home. They feed on scraps from the table and ensure a windfall when the animal goes to slaughter, often at Chinese new year.
The cause of the rise in prices is much debated. An outbreak of blue ear disease - porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome - a year ago, wiped out more than a million pigs. But the biggest factor driving up prices appears to be the cost of corn for feed. Corn is in short supply because harvests have been diverted to produce ethanol. Corn-based ethanol is used mainly for blending with petrol to reduce quantities of harmful emissions and China has been promoting wider use of biofuel to curb pollution before the Beijing Olympics next year.
An official at the New Hope Group, China's biggest private feed grain producer, in the southwestern province of Sichuan said: "Supply is tight and this is making corn more expensive. We are seeing contradictions between supply and demand."
Perhaps mindful of last year's street protests in Mexico over a shortage of corn-based tortillas, Beijing is urging consumers to be patient. The Price Bureau, which monitors consumer trends, said that it was confident the price of pork would now start to fall slowly, partly because farmers are raising more pigs to take advantage of the higher prices and in part because people eat less pork in the summer.
Source
Britain: GREEN SPIN GOES UP IN SMOKE AS BP SCRAPS CARBON STORAGE PLANS
British government is all talk
BP has abandoned plans to build a "green" power plant in a snub to Alistair Darling on the day that the Trade and Industry Secretary unveiled a new energy strategy aimed at reducing carbon emissions. Just hours after Mr Darling announced his Energy White Paper yesterday, the oil giant halted work on a 1bn-plus carbon capture and storage facility in Scotland, blaming delays in state subsidies.
BP's decision is an embarrassment for the minister, whose White Paper is designed to underline the Government's commitment to take a global lead in cutting greenhouse gases. The oil company, in a joint venture with Scottish & Southern Energy, has spent 30m during the past 18 months preparing to build a gas-fired power plant that would generate electricity and store 90pc of the emissions created in a depleted North Sea oil field. Similar projects are planned by other power companies.
But because the advanced technology makes such plants uneconomic, the Government promised to kick-start two or three facilities with subsidies. BP said yesterday that it had hoped to get a decision on state aid by the end of 2006, but this was pushed back to the end of 2007. But the White Paper indicated that a decision might not come until well into 2008 or beyond. "That's an extension too far," said a BP spokesman. "It would have been difficult to keep the project alive when there is uncertainty about funding. We have already spent a lot of money on the project."
FULL STORY here
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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.
Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists
For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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