Not So Hot

By Patrick J. Michaels

If a scientific paper appeared in a major journal saying that the planet has warmed twice as much as previously thought, that would be front-page news in every major paper around the planet. But what would happen if a paper was published demonstrating that the planet may have warmed up only half as much as previously thought? Nothing. Earlier this month, Ross McKitrick from Canada's University of Guelph and I published a manuscript in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres saying precisely that.

Scientists have known for years that temperature records can be contaminated by so-called "urban warming," which results from the fact that long-term temperature histories tend to have originated at points of commerce. The bricks, buildings, and pavement of cities retain the heat of the day and impede the flow of ventilating winds. For example, downtown Washington is warmer than nearby (and more rural) Dulles Airport. As government and services expand down the Dulles Access road, it, too, is beginning to warm compared to more rural sites to the west.

Adjusting data for this effect, or using only rural stations, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states with confidence that less than 10% of the observed warming in long-term climate histories is due to urbanization. That's a wonderful hypothesis, and Ross and I decided to test it. We noted that other types of bias must still be affecting historical climate records. What about the quality of a national network and the competence of the observers? Other factors include movement or closing of weather stations and modification of local land surfaces, such as replacing a forest with a cornfield.

Many of these are socioeconomic, so we built a computer model that included both regional climatic factors, such as latitude, as well as socioeconomic indicators like GDP and applied it to the IPCC's temperature history.

Weather equipment is very high-maintenance. The standard temperature shelter is painted white. If the paint wears or discolors, the shelter absorbs more of the sun's heat and the thermometer inside will read artificially high. But keeping temperature stations well painted probably isn't the highest priority in a poor country.

IPCC divides the world into latitude-longitude boxes, and for each of these we supplied information on GDP, literacy, amount of missing data (a measure of quality), population change, economic growth and change in coal consumption (the more there is, the cooler the area).

Guess what. Almost all the socioeconomic variables were important. We found the data were of highest quality in North America and that they were very contaminated in Africa and South America. Overall, we found that the socioeconomic biases "likely add up to a net warming bias at the global level that may explain as much as half the observed land-based warming trend."

We then modified IPCC's temperature data for these biases and compared the statistical distribution of the warming to the original IPCC data and to satellite measures of lower atmospheric temperature that have been available since 1979. Since these are from a single source (the U.S. government), and they don't have any urban contamination, they are likely to be affected very little by economic factors.

Indeed. The adjusted IPCC data now looks a lot like the satellite data. The biggest change was that the high (very warm) end of the distribution in the IPCC data was knocked off by the unbiasing process.

Where was the press? A Google search reveals that with the exception of a few blog citations, the only major story ran in Canada's Financial Post.

There are several reasons why the press provides so little coverage to science indicating that global warming isn't the end of the world. One has to do with bias in the scientific literature itself. Theoretically, assuming unbiased climate research, every new finding should have an equal probability of indicating that things are going to be more or less warm, or worse-than-we-thought vs. not-so-bad. But, when someone finds that there's only half as much warming as we thought, and the story is completely ignored, what does this say about the nature of the coverage itself? Somehow, you'd think that would have been newsworthy.

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IPCC stumbles from folly to folly

The IPCC -- a United Nations bureaucracy that literally dictates the world view on climate change--may not be the most reliable or trustworthy of agencies. It is, above all, a government-controlled body with a political mission that IPCC officials pursue with religious and dogmatic fervour. The IPCC distorts, exaggerates and manipulates its science, producing conclusions that are aimed at generating a political response and raising public awareness.

To doubt IPCC science is considered sacrilegious. We are required to "believe" anthropomorphic climate change is real, or otherwise face ridicule. For scientists, it can mean excommunication.

One of the IPCC's earlier blunders was to claim, as part of its proof of carbon-caused warming, that the 20th century was the hottest in 2,000 years. A graph showing the trend, shaped like a hockey stick, dominated scores of IPCC documents. But the science behind the claim was wrong. The latest IPCC reports no longer make the claim or show the graphic. The latest rough version of the Earth's temperature over 2,000 years (prepared by non-IPCC scientists) suggests the Earth was a lot warmer about 1,000 years ago, long before man began driving Fords and Chevys. Not much propaganda value in that, so the IPCC dropped the whole idea.

The new version of the 2,000-year temperature record corrects some of the main problems with the original hockey stick. Above all, it attempts to plot temperature change without using flawed tree-ring data as major indicators of temperature. Stripped of its 2,000-year sensation, the IPCC now trumpets a new chart as the official Global Temperature Record. This is the first graphic in the IPCC's latest official pre-Bali "synthesis" report on climate science. It's another scientific icon that purports to show temperatures soaring over the last 25 years. The recent jump, the IPCC says, is "very likely" due to man-made carbon emissions.

But a new paper by Ross McKitrick of Guelph University and Patrick Michaels of the Cato Institute suggests the latest IPCC climate-change icon could be as flawed as the hockey stick. One of the main problems with the 2,000-year graphic is that it wiped out a well-known Medieval Warm Period from 1,000 years ago. The McKitrick/Michaels analysis looks at the other end of the time spectrum and finds that much of the recent warming trend may be a function of faulty, contaminated data. It may simply be wrong.

The trick IPCC treatment of problems associated with 20th-century temperature measurements are spelled out in Mr. Mc-Kitrick's commentary. The short version is that the IPCC ignored findings related to the heat effect of people living in urban areas, and the degree to which measures of urban temperatures have been compromised over the years. It's hotter in cities not because of climate change, but simply because cities are hotter. "Claims about the amount of warming since 1980 ... should be reassessed using uncontaminated data," Mr. McKitrick says.

Most revealing, however, is the scientific runaround Mr. Mc-Kitrick experienced when, as an official IPCC external reviewer, he presented his evidence on the degree of contamination in the IPCC's official Global Temperature Record. Not only is IPCC science in question, but on display is the IPCC's domineering bureaucratic methodology, state monopoly science in action.

So now the IPCC temperature scares have been corrected at both ends. First, warming periods of the distant past were wrongly eliminated or diminished. And now the warming periods of the present have been exaggerated. What's left as proof that unprecedented anthropomorphic climate change is taking place as predicted?

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NYT says Castro is good for the environment

The New York Times blubbers about how Cuba's environment will suffer in a post-U.S. embargo era of increased tourism. Better to preserve a "priceless ecological resource" than to free people from oppression. I have yet to come across ANY Leftist who disapproves of Castro. I think that tells you what so-called "liberals" really aspire to

It is becoming increasingly more difficult to take the environmental movement, and science and environmental reporters, seriously because of stories such as the Christmas Day hand-wringer "Conserving Cuba, After the Embargo." Given great latitude by New York Times editors, reporter Cornelia Dean goes on for more than 2,000 words about "why many scientists are so worried about what will become of (Cuba's environment) after Fidel Castro and his associates leave power and, as is widely anticipated, the American government relaxes or ends its trade embargo."

There was precious little, though, about the obvious - except to intractable left-wingers - advantages to humanity. It's as if the beneficiaries of the fall of communism in Cuba and the ensuing spread of commerce would be only greedy capitalist exploiters.

The New York Times, with a wide reach and influence far out of proportion to its lack of wisdom, has found yet another backhanded way to praise Castro's Island Prison and malign the free market. Maybe its plunging stock price - now below $18 a share, down from its all-time high of nearly $50 in 2004 - soon WILL teach its staff a valuable lesson in capitalism. Until then, the Times and the rest of the mainstream media will continue to worship at the green altar. In the meantime, let's bring some clarity to the murky swamp of environmental agitprop.

Above all else, the fall of Marxism in Cuba would lift the torment that millions of Cubans have endured since Castro took power 48 years ago on Tuesday. Far from being a workers' paradise, Cuba has been a hellhole where the ruling elite and a few party functionaries enjoy life at everyone else's expense. It's an island without hope. Communism, hailed as environmental savior, brought to Cuba food shortages, food rationing, land and factory seizures, economic regression, brutal imprisonment and often death for dissenters, fear, paranoia, censorship and a discouragingly bleak future.

Once a jewel of the Caribbean, Cuba has been since 1959 a police state where sons turn their fathers in and neighbors spy on each other. That evil system is what the political left, using the cover of environmentalism, wishes to preserve. If self-identified environmentalists were truly interested in Cuba's ecology, they would welcome capitalism and renounce the revolution.

But they are blinded to the illuminating lessons offered by East and West Germany and North and South Korea, which starkly demonstrate the differences between capitalism and communism. After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, one of the first things visitors noticed was how dirty the former communist East Germany was compared with West Germany, which was far more densely populated.

Likewise, communist North Korea is a mess, while South Korea thrives. In 2003, a United Nations assessment found the country to be in an environmental crisis. Unlike North Korea, capitalist South Korea has clean cities, a fast-growing economy and no starvation. In neither case can culture or ethnic differences be blamed.

The Germans who have prospered in a clean environment under a liberal economic system are the same as those who have been miserable under tyrannical Marxism and lived in its hallmark filth.

The Koreans who have kept the southern part of the peninsula thriving and relatively clean are the same people as those in the North who simply don't have the luxury to think about the ecological impact of their actions or the property rights that effectively police the environment.

Are we supposed to believe that, unlike North Korea and East Germany, Cuba has somehow escaped the environmental ravages of Marxism? The chance of that is about as slim as the legacy media appropriately recognizing the human progress that comes each time a communist regime falls.

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Scientific skeptics have a right to be heard



In the 16th century a large, powerful institution saw itself as threatened by heretics - people who didn't agree with all its dogmas - so it began to identify and punish those dissidents. Five hundred years later a similar effort is under way.

In the 16th century it was the Roman Catholic church; today it is Big Science. The only real difference is that today heretics are simply deprived of their livelihood; burning at the stake is no longer in vogue.

Exhibit One in this contention is found on Page A2 of the Dec. 14 Enquirer: "Global-warning skeptic says he's being vilified." This is from an economist, but scientists who express similar doubts about the fashionable view (global warming is due to generation of CO2 by humans) are similarly marginalized.

Exhibit Two is the denial of tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez by the astronomy department of Iowa State University, despite a stellar record of scientific publications. His crime? He co-authored a book ("The Privileged Planet") that suggested that the unusually benign (for life) situation of the Earth might have been due to an intelligent designer.

As a doctoral student I was taught that good science sought reliable facts about the world around us, and hypotheses followed wherever those facts lead. Sadly, that no longer seems to be the case. Instead, selected facts have led to politicized conclusions, and countervailing facts are no longer tolerated. This is not good science.The 16th century Inquisitors had, as part of their agenda, the salvation of the heretic's soul; the preservation of institutional power was a useful side result. Today's inquisitors no longer have even that touch of humanity; the preservation of their power as the ultimate arbiters of "truth" is their only goal.To end this Inquisition, scientists dedicated to good science must defend the right of skeptics to be heard.

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One disappointed nutcase coming up

Green/Leftist claims that "Global Warming Will Save America from the Right...Eventually". And it will apparently happen within a cat's lifetime (c. 15 years). Not even the IPCC expects such rapid change

The future political map of America is likely to look a lot different, with much of the so-called "red" state region either gone or depopulated.Sat., 12/22/2007 - 19:21-Say what you will about the looming catastrophe facing the world as the pace of global heating and polar melting accelerates. There is a silver lining. Look at a map of the US.

The area that will by completely inundated by the rising ocean-and not in a century but in the lifetime of my two cats-are the American southeast, including the most populated area of Texas, almost all of Florida, most of Louisiana, and half of Alabama and Mississippi, as well as goodly portions of eastern Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. While the northeast will also see some coastal flooding, its geography is such that that aside from a few projecting sandbars like Long Island and Cape Cod, the land rises fairly quickly to well above sea level. Sure, Boston, New York and Philadelphia will be threatened, but these are geographically confined areas that could lend themselves to protection by Dutch-style dikes. The West Coast too tends to rise rapidly to well above sea level in most places. Only down in Southern California towards the San Diego area is the ground closer to sea level. So what we see is that huge swaths of conservative America are set to face a biblical deluge in a few more presidential cycles.

Then there's the matter of the Midwest, which climate experts say is likely to face a permanent condition of unprecedented drought, making the place largely unlivable, and certainly unfarmable. The agribusinesses and conservative farmers that have been growing corn and wheat may be able to stretch out this doomsday scenario by deep well drilling, but west of the Mississippi, the vast Ogallala Aquifer that has allowed for such irrigation is already being tapped out. It will not be replaced.

So again, we will see the decline and depopulation of the nation's vast midsection-noted for its consistent conservatism. Only in the northernmost area, around the Great Lakes (which will be not so great anymore), and along the Canadian border, will there still be enough rain for farming and continued large population concentrations, but those regions, like Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois, are also more liberal in their politics.

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