GREENIE SCIENTISTS: OUR MODELS DO SO REFLECT REALITY: SO THERE!

But they can only show that by using "new observational estimates of surface and tropospheric temperature" -- i.e. by fudging the data. Journal abstract follows:

Consistency of modelled and observed temperature trends in the tropical troposphere

By B. D. Santer et al.

A recent report of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) identified a potentially serious inconsistency between modelled and observed trends in tropical lapse rates (Karl et al., 2006). Early versions of satellite and radiosonde datasets suggested that the tropical surface had warmed more than the troposphere, while climate models consistently showed tropospheric amplification of surface warming in response to human-caused increases in well-mixed greenhouse gases (GHGs).

We revisit such comparisons here using new observational estimates of surface and tropospheric temperature changes. We find that there is no longer a serious discrepancy between modelled and observed trends in tropical lapse rates.

This emerging reconciliation of models and observations has two primary explanations. First, because of changes in the treatment of buoy and satellite information, new surface temperature datasets yield slightly reduced tropical warming relative to earlier versions. Second, recently developed satellite and radiosonde datasets show larger warming of the tropical lower troposphere. In the case of a new satellite dataset from Remote Sensing Systems (RSS), enhanced warming is due to an improved procedure of adjusting for inter-satellite biases. When the RSS-derived tropospheric temperature trend is compared with four different observed estimates of surface temperature change, the surface warming is invariably amplified in the tropical troposphere, consistent with model results. Even if we use data from a second satellite dataset with smaller tropospheric warming than in RSS, observed tropical lapse rate trends are not significantly different from those in all other model simulations.

Our results contradict a recent claim that all simulated temperature trends in the tropical troposphere and in tropical lapse rates are inconsistent with observations. This claim was based on use of older radiosonde and satellite datasets, and on two methodological errors: the neglect of observational trend uncertainties introduced by interannual climate variability, and application of an inappropriate statistical consistency test

International Journal of Climatology, 2008, Volume 28 Issue 13, Pages 1703 - 1722

In case anyone is inclined to take the above claim seriously, Steve McIntyre is ripping it into small pieces at the moment. A key point he makes is that they use data up until 1999 only. If you use data up to 2007, that nasty gap the Greenies are trying to eliminate emerges again! Yet more data fudging needed!





Try not to Laugh

Student volunteers from colleges around New York State braved freezing cold temperatures on their bikes Wednesday to send a message to state and federal political candidates: pay attention to climate change.

The New York Public Interest Research Group helped organize the ride. Environmentalists cheered on the bikers as they stopped in Utica around noon. They want candidates to let voters know what they plan to do about global warming and the energy crisis.

NYPIRG and several other public interest groups also sent letters to the candidates, urging them to support policies that will dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Source






EUROPE'S OPTIONS GET EVEN NARROWER

Their climate policies are already too expensive for them as is -- and now their costs for natural gas seem about to rise. They use a lot of gas because it puts out less CO2 than coal. So they now have yet more pressure to build more of those BAD (but cheap) coal-fired electricity generators. And their CO2 emissions will rise inexoraby. How hair-tearing! And the alternative is nuclear -- which is even more hair-tearing!

Europe would have to rethink its energy policy if Russia, Iran and Qatar go ahead with an OPEC-style cartel on natural gas, the European Commission warned Wednesday. EU spokesman Ferran Tarradellas Espuny said the European Union preferred to see gas traded on a free and transparent market. He said the EU executive was not opposed to energy suppliers cooperating more closely on research but was opposed to price-fixing cartels in principle. "If such a cartel was created, the Commission may review its energy policy," he said, refusing to give details of what that would mean in real terms. He said the EU also expected the three countries to inform it if they do form a cartel.

EU nations are already investing in alternative and cleaner energy sources like wind and solar power to meet future energy needs as part of efforts to combat climate change. They are also considering building new nuclear power plants.

Russia, Iran and Qatar made the first serious move toward forming a cartel with a meeting Tuesday. Together, they account for 60 percent of the world's gas reserves. This raised fears in Europe that the cartel would boost Moscow's use of energy as a political weapon shortly after it clashed with the West over its five-day war with Georgia in August. Russia has previously cut EU pipeline supplies temporarily in disputes with neighbor Ukraine.

Concerned about its growing dependence on imported oil and gas, the European Union is trying to widen its range of energy supplies and transport routes.

Iran, in its standoff with world powers over its nuclear program, has also threatened to choke off oil shipments through the Persian Gulf if it is attacked.

Less-polluting natural gas is becoming more widely used in Europe to generate power and heat as EU nations try to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

Source






THE NEXT CRISIS WILL LEAVE US ALL IN THE DARK

Comment from Britain

ISN'T life a hoot? After 10 years as Chancellor of the Exchequer and one as Prime Minister, Gordon Brown has discovered "the weaknesses of unbridled free markets". No wonder he didn't see the debt crisis coming. But then he wouldn't have, would he? He had banished boom and bust.

As he is clearly a late developer, he will not have spotted the next two crises on the horizon. It is going to be a close run thing which hits us first - inflation or a power shortage. But you can see them coming as clearly as any approaching rainstorm over the Pennines.

Pensioners would say that inflation has already hit them hard. Theirs is put at more than 13 per cent compared with the official entirely unbelievable figure of 5.2 per cent. But we ain't seen nothing yet. You cannot fling hundreds of billions at the banks, demand that they continue to lend as they did irresponsibly in 2007 and then spend and borrow yourself like a demented fraudster without debauching the currency through humdinging inflation. We are back to where we started before Margaret Thatcher tamed the tiger.

Equally, you cannot have as daft an energy policy as the UK's without running into severe trouble. It doesn't add up and is failing on all counts. It is doing nothing to secure our electricity supply without which no modern nation can call itself civilised. The Government has known for a decade that we shall lose a third of our generating capacity through age and infirmity within the next 10 years.

Yet no replacement power stations are being built, apart from totally useless wind "farms". Ed Miliband, a "green" Doncaster MP who has become head of the new Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), is predictably dithering in the face of the fanatics over whether to sanction more coal-fired power stations.

The Government witters on about fuel poverty while it rushes headlong to give 100 per cent subsidies to wind developers, the fat cats of the energy scene, whose electricity is the dearest form of carbon reduction yet devised by man. Yet the wind revolution is grinding to a halt in the face of public revulsion at the desecration of landscapes and ravaged property values, rising costs and technical problems. And, of course, wind does little to reduce greenhouse gases, the sole justification for its development.

The Government's belated commitment to nuclear power has lost momentum with the formation of the new DECC, with the celebrated Joan Ruddock, of CND fame, as a junior Minister. You couldn't make it up. What is more, while the Prime Minister says "we do not live by markets alone", the Government insists that nuclear, which brings security of supply, cheap power and carbon reduction, is left to that very market while it hugely subsidises wind - a form of power that cannot tick any of those boxes.

The sheer loopiness of UK energy policy is demonstrated by three simple examples. In Scotland, more than 14,000MW of wind capacity is operating, approved, planned or proposed yet the cross-border grid can carry only 2,250MW south to consumers.

Such is the sheer manipulation of the subsidy system that it has reduced our largely carbon-free hydro-electric generating capacity because the owners have engineered down their plants to qualify for hand-outs. And, believe it or not, nuclear, which emits next to no greenhouse gases, still has to pay the climate change levy designed to reduce carbon emissions.

Against this background, you will not be surprised to discover that, to "green" acclaim, the first action of the MP for Doncaster North in his new role as Energy Secretary has been to raise the UK target for eliminating carbon emissions from 60 to 80 per cent of the 1990 level by 2050 without having a clue as to how to do it. So what, you may say, he has 41 years to do it in. Ah, yes, but for the foreseeable future only wind and nuclear can replace carbon-rich coal, oil and gas.

My engineering friends calculate that to hit that 80 per cent target we shall need to build another 233,300 2MW wind turbines (on which we could not rely) or 162 nuclear power stations. Don't ask me where we would put all that little lot, assuming we could build them. Currently. Britain has only 2,500 wind turbines and 10 nuclear power stations.

You now understand why the Great Gordon mucks up your life. He can't run a whelk stall. Have fun brushing your teeth in the dark.

Source






OBSESSED WITH SAVING THE PLANET? YOU MAY BE BARKING MAD

Do you feel anxious when you see a television set left on standby? Does the sight of a plastic bottle haphazardly tossed into a paper-only recycling bin make you feel nauseous? Are you consumed with rage when someone has left an empty room and not switched off the light?

Have you recently found yourself overcome with a desire to spit on your car-driving friends and family? When a loved one tells you that he is flying off for some winter sun, do you feel like bludgeoning him over the head with a blunt instrument until he appears no longer to be breathing?

If so, don't worry! You are probably suffering from "carborexia", Or "energy anorexia". Psychiatrists in America have identified a new mental illness that threatens the very fabric of society: an obsession with saving the planet. Some people are so addicted to cutting their carbon emissions that they seem to have gone quite mad.

Take, for example, Sharon Astyk, who makes her four children sleep in a huddle so she doesn't have to turn on the heating (if she was that concerned about the planet, perhaps she could have stopped reproducing after baby number two).

Or Jay Matsueda, who waters his lawn with his own urine so that he doesn't have to flush the loo; he says that it was his ex-girlfriend's choice of gas-guzzling car, rather than his habit of weeing on the grass, that led to the break-down of their relationship.

"If you're criticising friends because they're not living up to your standards of green, that's a problem," said Elizabeth Carll, a psychologist who specialises in obsessive compulsive disorder.

Source







"Green" options are hugely costly

Below is one example from Australia. All the useless windmills are another

Queensland taxpayers have been slugged with a $277 million water tank bill for the equivalent of one day's supply of water for the southeast of the state. The State Government and Brisbane City Council have paid out $216 million and $61 million respectively to subsidise water tanks since 2006, which has given the region an extra capacity of 362 megalitres, or one day's supply.

Lord Mayor Campbell Newman admitted that the water projects were expensive because governments had to rush to solve the crisis. While the majority of tanks are still for garden use, the Government and council are now paying subsidies only if the tanks are connected to plumbing on properties and Cr Newman said that made them far more efficient and capable of capturing more water.

He said the $61 million tank rebate was comparable to the $70 million council had spent on its aquifer project, which supplies about 20 megalitres a day. Tanks supply about 18 megalitres. "Clearly, having these tanks will take pressure off the system," he said. "It's been a good exercise and it's part of an overall drought [Drought? It rains all the time in Brisbane. Hardly a week goes by without rain] strategy. "It's not out of the ball park and I think it was good expenditure. "All the water that has been obtained through the various projects has been expensive water because everything was done in such a hurry." He said on average a 5000-litre tank that was plumbed for household use was saving about $130 a year in water costs.

A Government spokesman said every litre in a tank was one less litre the state had to collect in dams. "It is also about everyone playing their part in water conservation," the spokesman said. "Apart from having some ownership over water conservation issues, people are less likely to leave taps running if they know it is coming from their own water tanks."

Liberal National Party water spokesman Andrew Cripps said an LNP government would hand out incentives to participate in an "eco home scheme", installing rainwater tanks integrated with innovative devices that maximised the capture of rainfall on rooftops and diverted the water directly into home plumbing systems.

Source

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