Urban heat-island fraud

An email to Benny Peiser from Madhav Khandekar [mkhandekar@rogers.com], Expert Reviewer 2007 IPCC Climate Change, Toronto Canada:

I congratulate Prof James Rust for making a bold and a correct statement that "Frauds, mistruths are common practice by those promoting the AGW". Prof Rust has pointed out two previous examples, one re: the infamous "Hockey Stick" by Mann et al (Nature 1998) and the other by NASA data managers who used September data (instead of October) to show Russian Territory warming significantly when in fact there was cooling!

The sordid saga of the alleged fraud by Prof Wang at the University of Albanay in USA begins with Phil Jones (East Anglia UK), the lead author of a paper published in Nature 1990, which the authors ( Phil Jones, Wong et al) have used to the hilt to keep insisting that the "urban bias" ( the urban heat island effect on city centre) magnitude is NO MORE than just 0.05C over 100 years! The Nature 1990 paper is now running a strong second to Mann et al paper of 1998, as one of the "most poorly reviewed papers by Nature"

Phil Jones and co-authors have totally ignored so many excellent studies on urban heat island reported in peer-reviewed literature by (late) Prof Helmut Landsberg (USA) and Prof Tim Oke ( Canada). Landsberg and Oke have amply demonstrated (in the 1970s and 1980s) how urban heat island can produce a temperature difference of up to 5C or more between a city centre and its surroundings. By completely ignoring previous work and pushing only thier 1990 paper (with flawed data, as it appears now), Phil Jones and co-authors while preparing the IPCC 2007 Climate Chnage Documents have refused to accept a higher value for urban bias than the value of 0.05C, which most meteorologists now agree is too small. Several recent papers have shown this urban bias to be about 0.18C for the recent 30 years to about 0.35C over a one-hundred year database. A paper by McKitrick and Michaels (2007 J of Geophysical Research) shows clearly that for a gridded temperature data (commonly used in climate models) the urban bias can account for up to half the recent warming of the earth's surface.

If the urban bias is carefully removed from the temperature data, the "left-over" warming ( about 0.4C over 100 years or even less) is hardly something to be overly concerned about!

Once again, it is time to re-iterate: Global Warming is NO crisis for humanity!

NOTE in reply from Benny Peiser: As a matter of principle, I would like to make clear that Professor Wang's university has cleared him of scientific fraud. The University of Albany has come to the conclusion that "there is no evidence whatsoever that you have committed data fabrication or any research misconduct with respect to this allegation" and "that the University at Albany takes appropriate steps to restore your scientific reputation". It is regrettable that as a result of the inadequate and unconvincing manner in which the University of Albany has conducted this scientific misconduct investigation, it seems unlikely that it can fully restore Professor Wang's reputation. As long as the flaws of the investigatory process are not addressed, as long as the university is preventing the scientific community from assessing the existence and authenticity of the data in question, a troublesome suspicion will always remain. As Aubrey Blumsohn emphasised quite rightly: "When you see universities reluctant to investigate things properly, it provides reasonable evidence that they really don't want to investigate things properly."






Two thirds of ocean temperature changes caused by dust

Not much role for CO2, it would seem. I wonder how much weighting dust is given in all the famous Warmist "models"? A lot less that twon thirds of the causation, I'll warrant

The temperature of North Atlantic surface waters has a major effect on climate in a variety of ways, not least because its heat content helps to control hurricane formation and strength. The North Atlantic surface has warmed considerably in recent decades, a trend generally associated with global or regional air temperature increases, or with changes in ocean circulation. Evan et al. (p. 778, published online 26 March) use nearly 30 years of satellite data to examine another source of ocean temperature variability, the radiative effects of atmospheric aerosols. Low frequency changes in local tropical North Atlantic surface temperatures seem mostly to be caused by variability in mineral and stratospheric aerosol abundances. Thus, to provide more accurate projections of these temperatures, general circulation models will need to account for long-term changes in dust loadings.

SOURCE

The Role of Aerosols in the Evolution of Tropical North Atlantic Ocean Temperature Anomalies

By Amato T. Evan et al.

Abstract

Observations and models show that northern tropical Atlantic surface temperatures are sensitive to regional changes in stratospheric volcanic and tropospheric mineral aerosols. However, it is unknown whether the temporal variability of these aerosols is a key factor in the evolution of ocean temperature anomalies. We used a simple physical model, incorporating 26 years of satellite data, to estimate the temperature response of the ocean mixed layer to changes in aerosol loadings. Our results suggest that the mixed layer’s response to regional variability in aerosols accounts for 69% of the recent upward trend, and 67% of the detrended and 5-year low pass–filtered variance, in northern tropical Atlantic Ocean temperatures.

Science 8 May 2009: Vol. 324. no. 5928, pp. 778 - 781

The Brainless Green/Left again

If they had half a brain they would not have mentioned this evidence of an unusually severe winter. I think their brains must be completely addled by incessant manual abuse of their genitals

Gov. Sarah Palin has cancelled her trip to D.C. for the White House Correspondents' prom to attend to major flooding in Alaska.

Think Progress, rather obviously, calls the flooding a "climate disaster" — clearly, proof that we're all about to die from global warming.

The waters, of course, come from the melting of unusually heavy winter snow. And, as we all know, for snow to melt in May is an unprecedented weather event.

SOURCE






Once more, reality intrudes on a Greenie dream

It was meant to be a carbon-neutral adventure to fire the imaginations of 25,000 schoolchildren.

Raoul Surcouf, 40, a landscape gardener from Jersey, and Richard Spink, 32, a physiotherapist from Bristol, shunned the polluting aircraft normally used to reach Greenland's polar ice cap and set sail in Fleur, a 40ft yacht fitted with solar panels and a wind turbine. Schools were poised to follow their green expedition online; once the duo had skied across the Arctic wastes they had hoped to boast of the first carbon-neutral crossing of Greenland.

On Friday, nature, displaying a heavy irony, intervened. After a battering by hurricane force winds, the crew of the Carbon Neutral Expeditions craft had to be rescued 400 miles off Ireland.

As if their ordeal wasn't terrifying enough, their saviour seemed chosen to rub salt in their wounds: a 113,000-ton tanker, Overseas Yellowstone, carrying 680,000 barrels of crude. In a statement from the tanker, Spink said: "We experienced some of the harshest conditions known, with winds gusting hurricane force 12 ... The decision was made that the risk to our personal safety was too great to continue."

In truth, the crew could not afford to be choosy. They were in a life-threatening predicament, and heaped thanks on Captain Ferro, the tanker's skipper, and his crew for being "outstanding in the execution of the rescue". But the rather awkward twist was not lost on Spink, who ruefully noted afterwards that "the team are now safely and ironically aboard the oil tanker" as they headed to Maine, where they are due to arrive in three days.

SOURCE







CO2 And You

While a bill that's intended to cut carbon dioxide emissions wends its way through Congress, an arm of the legislative branch is warning that doing so will have nasty economic consequences.

Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, told members of the Senate Finance Committee Thursday that "Under a cap-and-trade program, consumers" — not demonized corporations, we might add — "would ultimately bear most of the costs of emission reductions." This is because industry and other groups (hospitals, schools, any institution that discharges carbon), forced under a federal cap-and-trade regime to buy government permits to release CO2, would pass on their costs to consumers.

Cutting carbon emissions by 15% through this method would cost each American household an average of $1,600 a year, the CBO found. In a worst-case scenario, the cost is $2,200 per household. Current House legislation would carry even heavier economic penalties than the CBO's model suggests.

Should it become law, it would require that CO2, the greenhouse gas some (but far from all) scientists believe is warming the planet, be cut 20% from 2005 levels by 2020. By 2050, the emissions would have to be 83% below 2005 levels. In light of this, $1,600 a year seems like a bargain.

Elmendorf is no crazed right-wing economist. He was on the Clinton Council of Economic Advisers and worked at the left-leaning Brookings Institution before being named CBO director by Congress' Democratic leadership. The findings of his office should carry some weight with the Democrats who are pushing hard for legislation to cut CO2 emissions. Some, particularly those who represent the heartland, might consider the CBO assessment.

But Rep. Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who chairs the Energy and Commerce Committee that is looking at a cap-and-trade bill, won't. Neither will the White House, which is putting pressure on House Democrats to pass legislation quickly. "The president says he wants legislation, he wants us to move as quickly as possible," Waxman said.

OK, now we're convinced. The country does need cap-and-trade — preferably a cap placed on the many poor ideas flowing out of Washington and a large-scale trade of the existing political leadership for a fresh class of elected officials who can think straight.

SOURCE






Obama Strips Funds for Hydrogen Fuel Cells

Cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells, once hailed by President George W. Bush as a pollution-free solution for reducing the nation’s dependence on foreign oil, will not be practical over the next 10 to 20 years, the energy secretary said Thursday, and the government will cut off funds for the vehicles’ development.

Developing those cells and coming up with a way to transport the hydrogen is a big challenge, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in releasing energy-related details of the administration’s budget for the year beginning Oct. 1. Dr. Chu said the government preferred to focus on projects that would bear fruit more quickly.

The retreat from cars powered by fuel cells counters Mr. Bush’s prediction in 2003 that “the first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen, and pollution-free.” The Energy Department will continue to pay for research into stationary fuel cells, which Dr. Chu said could be used like batteries on the power grid and do not require compact storage of hydrogen.

SOURCE

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