What fun! CO2 levels rocketing up but temperature stable

This sure detonates the cause-effect relationship the Warmists believe in. Even on the Greenie data, global surface temperatures have not risen since 1998. It does however conform with the paleoclimate findings that CO2 levels are a lagged EFFECT of warming

Carbon dioxide emissions were 35 percent higher in 2006 than in 1990, a much faster growth rate than anticipated, researchers led by Josep G. Canadell, of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Increased industrial use of fossil fuels coupled with a decline in the gas absorbed by the oceans and land were listed as causes of the increase. "In addition to the growth of global population and wealth, we now know that significant contributions to the growth of atmospheric CO2 arise from the slowdown" of nature's ability to take the chemical out of the air, said Canadell, director of the Global Carbon Project at the research organization. The changes "characterize a carbon cycle that is generating stronger-than-expected and sooner-than-expected climate forcing," the researchers report.

Kevin Trenberth of the climate analysis section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. said the "paper raises some very important issues that the public should be aware of: Namely that concentrations of CO2 are increasing at much higher rates than previously expected and this is in spite of the Kyoto Protocol that is designed to hold them down in western countries,"

Alan Robock, associate director of the Center for Environmental Prediction at Rutgers University, added: "What is really shocking is the reduction of the oceanic CO2 sink," meaning the ability of the ocean to absorb carbon dioxide, removing it from the atmosphere. The researchers blamed that reduction on changes in wind circulation, but Robock said he also thinks rising ocean temperatures reduce the ability to take in the gas. "Think that a warm Coke has less fizz than a cold Coke," he said.

Neither Robock nor Trenberth was part of Canadell's research team.... "It turns out that global warming critics were right when they said that global climate models did not do a good job at predicting climate change," Robock commented. "But what has been wrong recently is that the climate is changing even faster than the models said. In fact, Arctic sea ice is melting much faster than any models predicted, and sea level is rising much faster than IPCC previously predicted."

According to the new study, carbon released from burning fossil fuel and making cement rose from 7.0 billion metric tons per year in 2000 to 8.4 billion metric tons in 2006. A metric tons is 2,205 pounds. The growth rate increased from 1.3 percent per year in 1990-1999 to 3.3 percent per year in 2000-2006, the researchers added.

Trenberth noted that carbon dioxide is not the whole story - methane emissions have declined, so total greenhouse gases are not increasing as much as carbon dioxide alone. Also, he added, other pollution plays a role by cooling. There are changes from year to year in the fraction of the atmosphere made up of carbon dioxide and the question is whether this increase is transient or will be sustained, he said. "The theory suggests increases in (the atmospheric fraction), as is claimed here, but the evidence is not strong," Trenberth said.

The paper looks at a rather short time to measure a trend, Robock added, "but the results they get certainly look reasonable, and much of the paper is looking at much longer trends."

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Climate scares are nonsense -- says top forecaster

Interesting that this article was not known to Google at the time of this post being put up

"There is no scientific data evidence that Carbon Dioxide has been the driver of world temperatures or climate over the last 1000, 10,000 or 100,000 years, and I challenge those politicians - such as Hilary Benn and Condoleeza Rice - who act as if that is the case, to produce the evidence" said Piers Corbyn, astrophysicist and climate scientist of Weather Action Long Range Forecasters, recently.

Mr Corbyn, whose Weather Action long range forecasts for the British Isles rain and floods through the summer, the cold later part of September and new trial forecasts for West North Pacific Typhoons and Atlantic/Gulf/Carrib Tropical storms have all been 'astoundingly well confirmed' said it was tragic to hear Hilary Benn MP at the Labour conference blindly repeating known falsities of Al Gore's movie ('An Inconvenient Truth).

Hilary Benn said 'Al Gore has taught us 'we have to examine the truth however inconvenient'. "However the real truth is that Al Gore's film made false claims such as that CO2 drives world temperatures and climate when close examination of data shows it does not - and indeed the situation is often the other way around", said Piers. "Where does Hilary Benn get advice? Cannot he think for himself? Is this what Gordon Brown means by a sound and honest 'no-spin' approach to issues?

"Climate has always been changing and it is not driven by CO2. There is nothing special happening now that hasn't happened before. The best way to tackle weather and climate events is to first forecast them a long time ahead - and this we can now do using solar activity, whereas the theories of CO2 driven weather and climate can forecast nothing. "The global warming and climate crisis industry is not science fact but science fiction and the 'actions' they propose will not change weather events or climate one jot. It is a self-serving political operation boosted by Western powers and interests in an attempt to further control world energy supply. I support the electrification of Africa, not the holding back the developing world.

There are many pollutants which must be tackled but CO2 is not a pollutant", said Piers. Weather Action long range summer forecasts - based on solar-magnetic activity - for floods in the Britain have been confirmed in a 10/11 success rate of forecasted 'Flooding very likely' time windows (one period, 5-9th, gave floods - and mudslides - in Scotland rather than England as well) .

Commenting on the Plane Stupid actions at Heathrow in August Piers Corbyn said: "The misinformation put out by this group is beyond belief. However, let us be clear they are products of the hysterical 'climate crisis' misinformation pouring out of media, especially state run-media, in Britain and around the world. They would do well to actually read the IPCC report they keep talking about. It is very circumspect about evidence for climate changes induced by supposed extra warming and specifically says `There is insufficient evidence to determine whether trends exist ..(in)..phenomena such as tornadoes, hail, lighting ...' (see letter to Gordon Brown available on request).

Piers continued: "Since global warming has not been taking place for the last 5 years it makes no sense to blame it for recent events like the British floods which themselves were the opposite of the warm or hot summer forecast by the Met Office using global warming theory. It is to the lasting shame of the 51 (note 51 not 2,500) advisors named on the front of the IPCC Summary for Policy makers that they do nothing to stop the misinformation being trumpeted around in their name. Or was it their intention that their report would be so misused?"

The role of CO2 "There is no evidence that CO2 changes have ever driven world temperature or climate change and new advances show that other factors negate its effect" said Piers. "If weather extremes are driven or enhanced by CO2 now, we must ask what caused all those other floods in history? 1875 was a worse year than so far for floods. In that year the River Trent reached its highest recorded level and unprecedentedly flooded twice. The Thames also flooded at Windsor and there were above average monsoon rains. 1875 was 6 magnetic cycles of the Sun ago and about 7 main long lunar cycles so these events coming back now is not a surprise and nothing to do with CO2.

Then as now there were particular solar activity driven shifts in the jet-stream which led to various weather changes in Britain, Europe and Asia . There is nothing new happening now except media hype and unprecedentedly increased rain run-off rates due to irresponsible land management which has reduced the water holding capacity of uplands in England, Wales, India, Bangladesh, Korea and China. Those land mismanagement policies are what needs tackling not the CO2 bogey."

Weather Action's long Range forecasts are 90% confident and have been correct through the summer while the Met Office long range forecast for a warm or very summer which could possibly reach 100F and 'no indications of (a) particularly wet summer' have spectacularly failed (see letter to Gordon Brown for links).

Floods in history. The history of the rivers of England is a history of flooding and Terry Scholey of Nottingham recently phoned me the flood levels recorded on Trent Bridge. The largest was in 1875 and that was also the only year when two floods are recorded (July and October). There were also floods at Windsor on the Lower Thames that year. In announcing aspects of our August forecast when speaking at the Imperial College Union President 's centenary dinner on 27 July - where there was great interest in the subject - I drew to people's attention that 1875 is 132 years ago which is 6x22 and also just one less than 7x19. This means that now we are in a very similar combined Hale (solar magnetic, 22yr) cycle and lunar (eg eclipse timing) modulation (19yr) cycle as then, so all these floods this year come as no surprise. [NB. The connections are not clockwork so although this fact indicates general similarities the details are much more complicated ]

It's the sun what does it ! We have had a number of enquiries about recent claims in the media that 'it has been proved' that solar activity is not important in causing climate change and global warming'. Users of our forecasts are amused because Weather Action uses predictable aspects of solar particle activity to predict the weather whereas CO2 based theories can predict nothing. Some of these arguments are dealt with in the letter to Gordon Brown (available) but further information is available (eg re the above claim made by Professor Lockwood ) - Email for copies ( piers@weatheraction.com)

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The High Cost of Climate Lies

According to Dr. Vincent Gray, the data collection and scientific methods employed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were unsound, undermining the two main `scientific' claims that `the globe is warming' and `increases in carbon dioxide emissions are responsible.'

An energy-rationing bill has been introduced to address "global warming." The "Climate Security Act" would impose caps on how much carbon dioxide (CO2) emission can be allowed and would institute an elaborate program to "trade" allowances among the industries and businesses affected. Americans better hope that some members of Congress will ask if there truly is a threat of global warming and why a similar program in Europe has proven to be a resounding failure. If you really wanted to undermine the nation's economy, you could not devise a better way. It is the Kyoto Climate Change Protocol on steroids.

Little noted during all the headlines concerning Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize was the fact that it was shared with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Among skeptical scientists I know, the emails were flying. Several had served as part of the vast array of scientists whose opinions on the various IPCC draft reports were requested and then ignored. A lot of these expert reviewers are among the 2,000 scientists that the IPCC and Al Gore are always citing as being part of the "consensus" on global warming. The problem for both is that many really, really, really disagree that any planet-threatening global warming is occurring.

One of them is Dr. Vincent Gray, a New Zealand-based climate scientist who has been a part of the reviewing process since the IPCC came into being. He is one of those scientists who will not and cannot be shut up despite the din of the IPCC propaganda. Briefly, Dr. Gray has a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Cambridge University, England, and his long career has included stints in France, Canada, China, and New Zealand. He has published more than a hundred scientific papers on energy and materials, plus a dozen in climate science.

So, following the announcement of the Nobel, Dr. Gray wrote to Professor David Henderson, who has called for a "review" of the IPCC and its procedures. This is a nice way of saying that the Panel is so widely viewed as just one more corrupt United Nations instrumentality, a lot of scientists think it should be tossed into a garbage can behind the UN building. Permit me to share some of Dr. Gray's thoughts with you. Commenting on his initial belief that the IPCC would proceed on the basis of "scientific ethics" and that its conclusions would result from "facts, logic and established scientific and mathematical principles," Dr. Gray's experience revealed that,

Penetrating questions often ended without any answer. Comments on the IPCC drafts were rejected without explanation, and attempts to pursue the matter were frustrated indefinitely. I have been forced to the conclusion that, for significant parts of the work of the IPCC, the data collection and scientific methods employed are unsound . . . normal scientific procedures are not only rejected by the IPCC, but that this practice is endemic, and was part of the organization from the very beginning. I therefore consider that the IPCC is fundamentally corrupt.

Dr. Gray concluded that the only reform "I could envisage, would be its abolition." Okay, okay, I hear all the environmentalists saying, "but he's just one crazy, old New Zealand climate scientist. Boo! Hiss!" Character assassination is just one form of the corruption that is endemic to the entire environmental movement. Undaunted, Dr. Gray continued, "The two main `scientific' claims of the IPCC are the claim that `the globe is warming' and `increases in carbon dioxide emissions are responsible.' Evidence for both of these claims is fatally flawed."

Aw, gee, I'm not a scientist, you're saying. What do I know? Well, if you know enough to be reading this, you know enough to wrap your brain around Dr. Gray's assertion that, "No average temperature of any part of the earth's surface, over any period, has ever been made." If the earth's "average temperature" cannot be determined, how can you know that it's dramatically heating? How can you predict anything about an unknown?

As for the IPCC claims about CO2, Dr. Gray points out that "they have suppressed no less than 90,000 measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide made in the last 150 years. Some of these were made by Nobel Prize-winners and all were published in the best scientific journals."

The IPCC has depended on computer climate models for its claims and there is now a volume of papers demonstrating how they have repeatedly been proven to be inaccurate. As Dr. Gray points out, if you cannot validate these models as actually capable of making predictions, "no self-respecting computer engineer would dare to make use of a model for prediction." Anyway, "No computer climate model has ever been tested in this way, so none should be used for prediction."

"The most elaborate of all their `evaluation' techniques is far more dubious," said Dr. Gray. "Since they have failed to show that any models are actually capable of prediction, they have decided to `evaluate' them by asking the opinions of those who originate them, people with a financial interest in their success." "Sooner or later all of us will come to realize," Dr. Gray concluded, "that this organization, and the thinking behind it, is phony. Unfortunately severe economic damage is likely to be done by its influence before that happens." But that's the point of the IPCC!

If you can require that ethanol be substituted or just added to gasoline, you drive up the cost of corn to where the cost of everything else - like food - dependent on it costs more. Moreover, requiring the addition of ethanol increases refinery costs that are, in turn, passed on to consumers. If you mandate that wind and solar energy be substituted to provide electricity for that provided by coal (over 50% in the USA) and other sources, then you assure that these two totally inadequate energy producers will drive up the cost to consumers. If every kind of industry contributes to CO2, then you can create an elaborate "cap-and-trade" scam to sell "credits" for the permission to continue in business. The consumers will pick up the costs involved.

On the chance that Dr. Gray is not some crazy, old New Zealander, maybe we should all be in the streets calling for the abolition of the IPCC? And, while we're out there, let's get rid of the United Nations too

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The "consensus" is a myth

A new survey of over 500 peer reviewed scientific research papers on climate change, written between 2004 and 2007, has concluded that less than half endorse what has been dubbed the "consensus view," that human activity is contributing to considerable global climate change.

In direct conflict with assertions by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that a scientific consensus agrees it is 90% likely that man is responsible for warming, Medical researcher Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte's survey contends that only 45% support the theory and that is only if you include papers that merely lean towards endorsement.

Though the survey has not yet been released, the results have been submitted to the journal Energy and Environment, and science blog DailyTech has obtained a pre-publication copy which states: Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers "implicit" endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no "consensus."

The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the "primary" cause of warming, but it doesn't require any belief or support for "catastrophic" global warming. In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.

Man made warming proponents have often pointed to a similar survey that was conducted by history professor Naomi Oreskes on peer-reviewed papers published on the ISI Web of Science database from 1993 to 2003 which found that a majority of scientists supported the theory. Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte sought to update the research and according to DailyTech, used the same database and search terms as Oreskes but reached a radically different conclusion.

The introduction and the summary of the IPCC's report was written entirely by politicians under the mandate of the UN, the input of actual scientists was minimal. In addition, all sections that were written by selected scientists were edited to comply with the report summary. Some of the scientists involved even admitted that the IPCC models failed to accurately predict climate change and that "none of the climate states in the models corresponds even remotely to the current observed climate".

By contrast, the ISI Web of Science database covers 8,700 journals and publications, including every leading scientific journal in the world and is not directly influenced by any governmental body. Schulte's survey confirms the claim that the climate change momentum has shifted among prominent scientists who are now benefiting from a greater depth of research. A spate of new research papers has significantly chilled fears of global warming.

The new survey provides undeniable proof that the world is being sold a lie on climate change by a group of politicians and elite lobbyists who wish to seize on the opportunity to hype the global warming threat and use it as a means of social manipulation for political and corporate gain. As we have extensively reported, it is the elites, the establishment and big business interests that are pushing these fears, not the scientific community.

People who still trust the platitudes of politicians and elitists who implore us to change our way of life, cough up more tax money, and get on board with the global warming religion save being linked with Holocaust denial, are as deluded and enslaved as the tribes of Mesoamerica who, unaware of the natural phenomenon of a solar eclipse, thought their high priests could make the sky snake eat the Sun, and therefore obeyed their every demand.

Politicians are professional liars, they make careers out of deceiving people and twisting reality to fit pre-conceived agendas, yet a cascade of otherwise rationally minded people are eager to blindly trust everything they have to say about climate change, no matter how delusional it sounds. They are also willing to comply with the ridiculous overbearing "solutions" to climate change that will just coincidentally restrict mobility and freedom of travel, regulate personal behavior, empower and expand global government and reinvigorate the surveillance state - everything Big Brother ever wanted - but surely they wouldn't lie to us about global warming to achieve it, would they?

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SCIENCE IS THE PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH, NOT CONSENSUS

Michael Schrage's comment on politics and science (September 26) struck a raw nerve: and provoked an extended response from the president of the UK's Royal Society. Lord Rees advocates that we should base policy on something called "the scientific consensus", while acknowledging that such consensus may be provisional. But this proposal blurs the distinction between politics and science that Lord Rees wants to emphasise. Novelist Michael Crichton may have exaggerated when he wrote that "if it's consensus, it's not science, if it's science, it's not consensus", but only a bit. Consensus is a political concept, not a scientific one.

Consensus finds a way through conflicting opinions and interests. Consensus is achieved when the outcome of discussion leaves everyone feeling they have been given enough of what they want. The processes of proper science could hardly be more different. The accomplished politician is a negotiator, a conciliator, finding agreement where none seemed to exist. The accomplished scientist is an original, an extremist, disrupting established patterns of thought. Good science involves perpetual, open debate, in which every objection is aired and dissents are sharpened and clarified, not smoothed over.

Often the argument will continue for ever, and should, because the objective of science is not agreement on a course of action, but the pursuit of truth. Occasionally that pursuit seems to have been successful and the matter is resolved, not by consensus, but by the exhaustion of opposition. We do not say that there is a consensus over the second law of thermodynamics, a consensus that Paris is south of London or that two and two are four. We say that these are the way things are. Nor is there a consensus on evolution since creationists will never be reconciled to that theory. There is no possibility of a compromise, in which Darwinians agree that a few animals went into the ark with Noah and their opponents acknowledge that most species evolved.

Numbers are critical to democracy, but science is not a democracy. If an evangelical Christian converted all members of the Royal Society to creationism, that neither would nor should affect my belief in evolution. Most scientists know no more about climate change, HIV/Aids or the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine than do most lawyers, philosophers or economists, and it is not obvious who is better equipped to assess conflicting claims on these issues. Science is a matter of evidence, not what a majority of scientists think.

It is easy to see why the president of the Royal Society might want to elide that distinction, but in doing so he turns the organisation from a learned society into a trade union. Peer review is a valuable part of the apparatus of scholarship, but carries a danger of establishing self-referential clubs that promote each other's work.

Statements about the world derive their value from the facts and arguments that support them, not from the status and qualifications of the people who assert them. Evidence versus authority was the issue on which Galileo challenged the church. The modern world exists because Galileo won.

But to use the achievements of science to assert the authority of scientists undermines that very process of science. When consumers believe that genetically modified foods are unsafe, mothers intuit that their children's autism is caused by the MMR vaccine and politicians assert that HIV/Aids is a first world conspiracy, the answer that the scientific consensus is otherwise does not convince - nor should it. Such claims are mistaken because there is no evidence for them, not because scientists take a different view: scientists should influence policy by explaining facts and arguments, not by parading their doctorates.

The notion of a monolithic "science", meaning what scientists say, is pernicious and the notion of "scientific consensus" actively so. The route to knowledge is transparency in disagreement and openness in debate. The route to truth is the pluralist expression of conflicting views in which, often not as quickly as we might like, good ideas drive out bad. There is no room in this process for any notion of "scientific consensus".

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