Mega-pesky: New German/Russian Temperature Reconstruction Shows NIL correlation With CO2 levels.

And it also shows that it is the sun wot did it. This would be the end of global warming if it were a scientific question. It is precisely (very selective) tree ring data that the Warmists rely on for their "hockeystick" -- yet once again we find in trees the sort of "decline" that Jones & Co. tried to "hide"

A new temperature reconstruction carried out by a team of German/Russian scientists has yielded interesting results. It finds no correlation over the last 400 years between atmospheric CO2 and the temperature in the Arctic regions studied.

Yuri Kononov of the Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow and Michael Friedrich of the Institute of Botany, University of Hohenheim collect tree samples of Scots pine in the Khibiny Low Mountains of the Kola Peninsula in Arctic Russia

Recall that CO2 concentrations have been rising steadily since the start of the Industrial Revolution, 1870, yet the press release starts with: "Parts of the Arctic have cooled clearly over the past [20th]century, but temperatures have been rising steeply there since 1990"

Rising since 1990? That’s more than 100 years after the start of the Industrial Revolution. The press release continues: "The reconstructed summer temperature on Kola in the months of July and August has varied between 10.4°C (1709) and [peaking at] 14.7°C (1957), with a mean of 12.2°C. Afterwards, after a cooling phase, an ongoing warming can be observed from 1990 onwards".

The temperature fluctuated between 10.4°C and a peak of 14.7°C in 1957 , and then cooled until 1990. The scientists say it correlated very well with solar activity until 1990. Then beginning in 1990, the temperatures started to rise rapidly again. Does anyone see a CO2 correlation there? I don’t.

The only time we have a correlation between CO2 concentrations and temperature is from 1990 until…? Unfortunately the press release does not even mention that. Until today? 2005? 2000? It really is annoying that they didn’t specify the end of the time scale. If the reconstruction was only up to 2000, then we are only speaking about a 10-year period - a completely meaningless time period. Even 20 years would be highly dubious.

I called UFZ early this afternoon here in Germany to try to find out, but the secretary said that all scientists had already left for the weekend.

UPDATE! The German press release now has the following graphic. The dataset ended 2001! The press spokesman just told me on the phone. So there was warming from 1990 until 2001! As you see, the graphic iteself is misleading. It almost looks as if the curve goes until 2010.


Press spokesman Tilo Arnhold informed by telephone that the dataset goes only up to 2001, yet the press release graphic clearly shows a curve beyond 2001

Interestingly, also, the graphic shows warming since 1650.

The press release also states: "What stands out in the data from the Kola Peninsula is that the highest temperatures were found in the period around 1935 and 1955, and that by 1990 the curve had fallen to the 1870 level, which corresponds to the start of the Industrial Age."

The temperature fell to 1870-levels by 1990? Wait a minute – the CO2 theory say it’s supposed to go up, and not down.

The team compared their Kola region data to Swedish Lapland and the Yamal and Tamimyr Penninsula temperature reconstructions: Here’s what they found: "The reconstructed summer temperatures of the last four centuries from Lapland and the Kola and Taimyr Peninsulas are similar in that all three data series display a temperature peak in the middle of the twentieth century, followed by a cooling of one or two degrees."

Cooling from the middle of the twentieth century until 1990. Cooling!

So if it’s not CO2, then what could be driving temperature? The press release goes on: "What is conspicuous about the new data is that the reconstructed minimum temperatures coincide exactly with times of low solar activity."

More HERE (See the original for links)






Data from yet another part of the world confirming big medieval climate change

Discussing: Escobar, J., Curtis, J.H., Brenner, M., Hodell, D.A. and Holmes, J.A. 2010. Isotope measurements of single ostracod valves and gastropod shells for climate reconstruction: Evaluation of within-sample variability and determination of optimum sample size. Journal of Paleolimnology 43: 921-938.

What was done

In the words of the authors, "sediment cores from Lakes Punta Laguna, Chichancanab, and Peten Itza on the Yucatan Peninsula were used to (1) investigate 'within-horizon' stable isotope variability (δ18O and δ13C) measured on multiple, single ostracod valves and gastropod shells, (2) determine the optimum number of individuals required to infer low-frequency climate changes, and (3) evaluate the potential for using intra-sample δ18O variability in ostracod and gastropod shells as a proxy measure for high-frequency climate variability."

What was learned

The five researchers report that their results "allow calculation of mean isotope values and thus provide a rough estimate of the low-frequency variability over the entire sediment sequence," and these results indicated that "relatively dry periods were persistently dry [italics added], whereas relatively wet periods were composed of wet and dry times."

What it means

Escobar et al. state that their findings "confirm the interpretations of Hodell et al. (1995, 2007) and Curtis et al. (1996) that there were persistent dry climate episodes associated with the Terminal Classic Maya Period." In fact, they find that "the Terminal Classic Period from ca. AD 910 to 990 was not only the driest period in the last 3,000 years, but also a persistently dry period [italics added]." And in further support of this interpretation, they note that "the core section encompassing the Classic Maya collapse has the lowest sedimentation rate among all layers and the lowest oxygen isotope variability."

We additionally note, in this regard, that the AD 910 to 990 time period falls very close to the central section of the frequency plot of the time-of-occurrence of the Medieval Warm Period for many of the locations where it has been detected (to date) throughout the entire world, as may be seen from the Interactive Map and Time Domain Plot of our Medieval Warm Period Project, which observation suggests that the climate of the Yucatan Peninsula during that time period likely was also persistently warm. And that "double whammy" of persistent warmth and persistent dryness appears to have been just a bit too much for the Mayans of that trying time to endure.

SOURCE





That dreaded "ocean acidification": Jellyfish unaffected by large variations in pH and temperature

Discussing: "Winans, A.K. and Purcell, J.E. 2010. "Effects of pH on asexual reproduction and statolith formation of the scyphozoan, Aurelia labiata". Hydrobiologia 645: 39-52.

Background

The authors write that "scyphozoans have two main stages in their life cycles, the benthic polyps and pelagic jellyfish." The polyps reproduce asexually by budding polyps and through the process of strobilation, in which ephyrae (juvenile jelly fish) are produced by transverse fission." And, as they continue, "like many other marine invertebrates, jellyfish have statocysts, balance organs that enable them to sense gravity," and they say that "inside these statocysts are numerous statoliths of trigonal crystals of calcium sulfate hemihydrate that are formed during strobilation."

What was done

Polyps produced by medusae collected from the moon jellyfish (Aurelia labiata) in Dyes Inlet, Washington (USA) were arbitrarily assigned (18 each) to one of six treatments comprised of all combinations of two water temperatures (9 and 15°C) and three pH levels (7.2, 7.5 and 7.9), where they were allowed to develop under controlled conditions for 122 days.

What was learned

The two researchers report that "polyp survival was 100% after 122 days in seawater in all six temperature and pH combinations;" and because few polyps strobilated at 9°C and "temperature effects on budding were consistent with published results," they say they "did not analyze data from those three treatments further." At 15°C, there were also no significant effects of pH on the numbers of ephyrae or buds produced per polyp or on the numbers of statoliths per statocyst." However, they state that "statolith size was significantly smaller in ephyrae released from polyps reared at low pH."

What it means

Winans and Purcell conclude that "A. labiata polyps are quite tolerant of low pH, surviving and reproducing asexually even at the lowest tested pH," which degree of "acidification" is not expected to occur (even by climate alarmists) until about AD 2300.

But to not come up empty-handed with respect to potential bad news, they note that "the effects of small statoliths on ephyra fitness are unknown," which means that the phenomenon could bode poorly for earth's jellyfish.

On the other hand, they acknowledge that many organisms "may be able to acclimate or adapt to slowly changing pH conditions." And in this context they report that in Puget Sound "pH fluctuates from 7.2 to 9.6 in 2.4-meter deep water over the span of a couple of days," stating that "with such large pH fluctuations due to plant photosynthesis during the day and respiration at night, many organisms may be exposed to low pH conditions routinely." And, obviously, they are also successfully dealing with those low pH conditions routinely, as are an enormous amount of other marine organisms.

SOURCE





Global Temperature And Data Distortions Continue

by Dr. Tim Ball

Recent reports claim June was the warmest on record, but it seems to fly in the face of reports of record cold from around the world. Reports from Australia say, “Sydney recorded its coldest June morning today since 1949, with temperatures diving to 4.3 degrees just before 6:00 a.m. (AEST).” “Experts say it is unusual to see such widespread cold weather in June

In the southern hemisphere reports of cold have appeared frequently but rarely make the mainstream media. “The Peruvian government has declared a state of emergency in more than half the country due to cold weather.” “This week Peru’s capital, Lima, recorded its lowest temperatures in 46 years at 8C, and the emergency measures apply to several of its outlying districts.”

“In Peru’s hot and humid Amazon region, temperatures dropped as low as 9C. The jungle region has recorded five cold spells this year.

Hundreds of people – nearly half of them very young children – have died of cold-related diseases, such as pneumonia, in Peru’s mountainous south where temperatures can plummet at night to -20C.”

“A brutal and historical cold snap has so far caused 80 deaths in South America, according to international news agencies. Temperatures have been much below normal for over a week in vast areas of the continent.”

“It snowed in nearly all the provinces of Argentina, an extremely rare event. It snowed even in the western part of the province of Buenos Aires and Southern Santa Fe, in cities at sea level.” (Source)

Evidence of the cold is reflected in the fact that Antarctic ice is continuing to reach record levels. “Antarctic sea ice peaks at third highest in the satellite record”

The same contradictory evidence is happening in the Arctic. They claimed the most dramatic warming was occurring in the Arctic but this contradicts what the ice is doing. Ice continues its normal melt of the summer with a slowing rate slowed in the months of June and July. (Figure 1)

So where are the stories coming from? It goes back to the manipulation of temperature data by the two main generators the Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) and the Hadley Climate Research Unit (HadCrut). They use data provided by individual countries of the World Meteorological Organization. This is supposedly raw data, but in fact it has already been adjusted for various presumed local anomalies.

But the arctic warming is even more problematic. The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) is the source of data for Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change yet it tells us there is no data for the entire Arctic Ocean Basin. Figure 2 shows the diagram from their report.

So how do they determine that the Arctic is warming at all, let alone more rapidly than other regions? The answer is, with GISS at least, they use computer models to extrapolate. They do this by assuming that a weather station record is valid for a 1200 km region. Figure 4 shows the 1200 km smoothing results for the Arctic region. (The green circle is 80°N latitude.)

Then we see what happens when the interpolation or smoothing is done using a more reasonable 250 km (Figure 5).

None of this is surprising because GISS have consistently distorted the record always to amplify warming. The problem of data adjustment is best illustrated by comparing the results of GISS and Hadcrut (Figure 6).

The Hadcrut data shows what Phil Jones, former Director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) confirmed to the BBC that global temperatures have not increased since 1998. However, the GISS data shows a slight warming over the period and a significant increase from 2007. How can two records both using the same weather data achieve such different conclusions? The simple answer is they use different stations and adjust them differently, especially for such things as the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHIE).

There is another problem.

The number of stations used to produce a global average was significantly reduced in 1990 and this affected temperature estimates as Ross McKitrick showed (Figure 7). He wrote, “The temperature average in the above graph is unprocessed. Graphs of the ‘Global Temperature’ from places like GISS and CRU reflect attempts to correct for, among other things, the loss of stations within grid cells, so they don’t show the same jump at 1990.” McKitrick got the idea for the problem from an article by meteorologist Joe D’Aleo.

The challenge is to produce meaningful long-term records from such interrupted data, but that is not the only problem because the loss of stations is not uniform. “The loss in stations was not uniform around the world. Most stations were lost in the former Soviet Union, China, Africa and South America.” This is may explain the distortions currently occurring because it adds to the distortions that already exist toward eastern North American and western European stations.

The pattern of temperatures of the Northern Hemisphere in the early spring and summer saw heat in eastern North America and Western Europe. There is a greater density of weather stations in these regions and they have the greatest heat island effect. The rest of the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere had cooler conditions but in the deliberately distorted record this was minimized.

McKitrick, Essex and Andersen, in “Does a global temperature exist?” concluded, “The purpose of this paper was to explain the fundamental meaninglessness of so-called global temperature data.” “But nature is not obliged to respect our statistical conventions and conceptual shortcuts.”

That is clearly the case this year and it confirms Alfred Whitehead’s observation that, “There is no more common error than to assume that, because prolonged and accurate calculations have been made, the application of the result to some fact of nature is absolutely certain”.

SOURCE (See the original for links and graphics)





Global warming scam systematically propped up by Leftist journalists

The Journolist story demonstrates active, covert collaboration among leftists to plant political themes in the media. Long-time listeners of conservative talk radio are aware of audio montages where old-line media talking heads repeat verbatim a set of words that can't be anything other than shared talking points. A perfect example was the 2000-era Dick Cheney "gravitas" showcased by Rush Limbaugh.

It's one thing to ask how proper reporting of Obama might have changed the outcome of the election. I'll ask a bigger question: Did old-line media journalists share talking points to prop up the global warming issue?

In his August 2007 American Thinker article "Global Warming Propaganda Factory," Christopher Alleva described the coordinated efforts of the Society of Environmental Journalists: "I have often wondered how the media are in such lock step on Global Warming. Well, I wonder no more. Recently, I came across a website for the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ). This website is veritable tool box for any budding reporter assigned to the global warming beat. If you're an editor at the Palookaville Post, all you have to do is send your cub reporters to this site and they'll have everything they need to write an article that fits the template and action line perfectly."

In my own simpleminded quest to find out why skeptic scientists did not appear on one of the last bastions of fair-and-balanced news outlets, the PBS NewsHour, I received a reply from the PBS ombudsman in a phrase eerily repeated by others in the media dismissing the need to present skeptics: "Yes, we *could* have one of them [skeptics] in a story, or on a show, and have a representative of the "other side." But that would be false balance."

The concept of a "false journalistic need for balance" goes as far back as 1995, generated by a journalist named Ross Gelpspan and spread by a network of activists and institutions. The story is detailed in my American Thinker article earlier this month, "Smearing Global Warming Skeptics."

After writing that article, I still wanted to find out just how biased the NewsHour was in its global warming presentations, so I copied and counted online transcripts of the NewsHour going back to 1996. Out of 212 global warming-centered program segments, including some online background info pages, only three on-air segments had discussion of basic skeptic science, featuring Western Fuels CEO Fred Palmer, the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Chris Horner, and Joe Barton (R-TX), respectively, along with one web page. Barton's science quotes were very brief. All the other segments and web pages offered virtually no rebuttal to statements about man-caused global warming.

IPCC scientists Michael Oppenheimer, Stephen Schneider, and Kevin Trenberth spoke unopposed a great length about man-caused global warming seven, four, and two times, respectively. No skeptic scientists ever had an opportunity to present the myriad faults in the idea of man-caused global warming.

The most disturbing revelation was found in the December 5, 1997 interview of Fred Palmer, fourth-from-last paragraph: "MARGARET WARNER: ...but that because carbon dioxide, once it's up in the atmosphere, really doesn't disappear for a hundred years or more, that by the time the buildup gets enough--high enough to prove it--it's almost too late to do anything[.]"

Her statement seems eerily paraphrased from Ross Gelbspan's The Heat is On book, released earlier that same year, top of page 12: "And since carbon dioxide lingers in the atmosphere for one to two hundred years, it will continue to disturb the global climate long after we drastically cut our fuel emissions ... By the time we actually feel the heavy brunt of climate-driven catastrophes, it may well be too late for us to preserve any semblance of democratic order....."

The "Journolist" problem is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to the manipulation of global issues by a small number of people.

SOURCE (See the original for links)






A "Green" government in Australia that is dangerously reluctant to do backburning to prevent wildfires

California is not alone

The NSW government is under fire for its "appalling" record on hazard reduction. The opposition said NSW must learn the lessons of the the 900-page Teague report on Victoria's Black Saturday disaster and massively increase backburning efforts in the state.

Opposition spokeswoman for emergency services Melinda Pavey accused the Keneally government of tying up the process of hazard reduction in "green tape". "If we can believe the government's own statistics, on average only around 115,000 hectares of hazard reduction has taken place in each of the past four years, representing a mere 0.4 per cent of fire-prone land in the state annually," Ms Pavey said. Royal commission chairman Bernard Teague said backburning in Victoria must be nearly tripled to bring the total area of public land backburnt to 5 per cent.

Ms Pavey called on the NSW government to increase funds to ensure backburning in NSW could be similarly expanded. "The $17 million the Keneally Labor government spends on hazard reduction each year represents only about 8 per cent of the Rural Fire Service expenses of $220.2 million, which is clearly not enough," she said. "With the smell of an election in the air the state Labor government has been desperately playing catch up during autumn and winter, however wet conditions have delayed this process."

Ms Pavey said there were now significant fuel loads in many areas including the Blue Mountains, central coast, south coast and the Monaro.

Emergency Services Minister Steve Whan said NSW would carefully review the final recommendations of the Teague report, saying the state had already developed strong fire prevention and management practices. "It is important that we now take stock of the events in Victoria and look at opportunities for further improvement as we continue to build on our experience and expertise in bush fire management."

Mr Whan said since Black Saturday NSW had introduced the nationally agreed system of fire danger ratings, which provide clearer information and trigger points for the public before a fire starts. [Big deal!]

SOURCE

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