Monday, June 20, 2011

Most US States Set Their Record High Temperature Prior To 1940



Only one state set their record high during Hansen’s “hottest decade ever.” Forty-four states set their record high temperature before global warming became "dangerous" at 350 ppm.

SOURCE






There is no such thing as a happy Hansen

In 1988, Hansen considered his scenario C to indicate no "net climate forcing". It was in other words the ideal or safe climate situation.

But lately Hansen has been running around talking about catastrophic warming, hottest year ever, multi-metre sea level rise, death trains, extinction, end of the world as we know it…….etc.

Yet, by his own measures temperatures are below scenario C – which he considers safe. How can the climate be both catastrophic and safe at the same time?


Blue line the temperature according to Hansen. Dotted line scenario C

SOURCE





The moon influences temperature too

The 18.6-year lunar nodal cycle and surface temperature variability in the northeast Pacific

By Stewart M. McKinnell & William R. Crawford

Abstract

The 18.6-year lunar nodal cycle (LNC) is a significant feature of winter (January) air and sea temperatures along the North American west coast over a 400-year period.

Yet much of the recent temperature variation can also be explained by wind patterns associated with the PNA teleconnection. At Sitka, Alaska, (57°N) and nearby stations in northern British Columbia, the January PNA index accounts for over 70% of average January air temperatures in lengthy meteorological records.

It appears that the LNC signal in January air temperatures in this region is not independent of the PNA, but is a component of it. The Sitka air temperature record, along with SSTs along the British Columbia coast and the PNA index have significant cross-correlations with the LNC that appear at a 2-year lag, LNC leading. The influence of the PNA pattern declines in winter with decreasing latitude but the LNC component does not.

It appears as a significant feature of long-term SST variation at Scripps Pier and the California Current System.

The LNC also appears over centennial-scales in proxy temperatures along western North America. The linkage of LNC-moderated surface temperatures to processes involving basin-scale teleconnections expands the possibility that the proximate mechanism may be located remotely from its expression in the northeast Pacific. Some of the largest potential sources of a diurnal tidal signal in the atmosphere are located in the western Pacific; the Sea of Okhotsk and the Indonesian archipelago.

JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 112, C02002, 15 PP., 2007





Planting trees will hardly dent global temperature

Schemes to convert croplands or marginal lands to forests will make almost no inroads against global warming this century, a scientific study published on Sunday said.

Afforestation is being encouraged under the UN's Kyoto Protocol climate-change treaty under the theory that forests are "sinks" that soak up carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air through photosynthesis.

But environmental researchers, in a new probe, said that even massive conversion of land to forestry would have only a slender benefit against the greenhouse-gas problem.

This is partly because forests take decades to mature and CO2 is a long-lasting molecule, able to lurk for centuries in the atmosphere. But another reason is that forests, even as they absorb greenhouse gas, are darker than croplands and thus absorb more solar heat -- and in high latitudes, this may even result in net warming.

Vivek Arora of the University of Victoria in British Columbia and Alvaro Montenegro of St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia modelled five scenarios in which afforestation was carried out over 50 years, from 2011 to 2060.

They used a Canadian programme called CanESM1 that simulated the impacts on land, sea and air if Earth's surface temperature rose by some 3.0 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100 compared to 1850.

Even if all the cropland in the world were afforested, this would reduce the warming by only 0.45 C (0.81 F) by a timescale of 2081-2100, according to the study, which appears in the journal Nature Geoscience. Fifty-percent afforestation would brake it by an even tinier 0.25 C (0.45 F).

Both scenarios are, of course, wildly unrealistic because of the need to grow food. Fifty-percent afforestation would require at least a doubling in crop yield to feed the human population because half of the crop area would be taken out of use.

The other three scenarios found that afforestation in the tropics was three times more efficient at "avoided warming" than in northerly latitudes and temperate regions.

The study said that afforestation does have other benefits, for the economy and the ecoystem. "There's nothing wrong with afforestation, it is positive, but our findings say that it's not a response to temperature control if we are going to be emitting (greenhouse gases) this way," Montenegro told AFP. The study said bluntly, "Afforestation is not a substitute for reduced greenhouse-gas emissions."

In forest programmes, policymakers would be advised to focus afforestation efforts in the tropics but also push hard against deforestation, which accounts for 10 to 20 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions globally.

Avoiding deforestation is under discussion for post-2012 climate action under the UN flag.

SOURCE





Joe Romm: That Nuclear Furnace In The Sky Is Small Potatoes

If the Sun does go into a state similar to what caused the Maunder Minimum during the Little Ice Age, the Warmists have found their groove in a way to keep pushing their failed pseudo religion. Here's Joe Romm's version, which starts off with a bit of Fox News Derangement syndrome
The anti-science disinformers are ecstatic over an analysis that says by 2020, we might be entering a long period of anomalously low solar activity. The headline at Fox Nation is:

Global Warming Be Damned, We Might Be Headed For A Mini Ice Age

No. Not even close, actually.

Yes, there is a credible prediction based on independent studies that we could possibly be entering a so-called "grand minimum" in solar activity. And yes, the last one on record, the "Maunder Minimum," which occurred between 1645 and 1715, coincided with the so-called Little Ice Age.

But the Little Ice Age wasn't just driven by a drop in solar forcing -- it was also driven by a burst of volcanic activity. And now we have human-caused greenhouse gases that have overwhelmed the much, much smaller solar forcing.

See? Al Gore flying private jets, being chauffeured in SUV limos, and purchasing McMansions on the California coastline is much worse than the ball of fire in the sky, which has just a tiny affect on the Earth.

Of course, this forgets that the Little Ice Age lasted from the 13th century till about 1850. But, you're all just anti-science disinformers (Joe sure has his progressive talking points down now that his Alarmist website is hosted by Soros funded Think Progress, eh?) for......following the science that the Sun has a huge affect on the state of the Earth's climate.

Joe then goes on to try and prove that the majority of all warming is caused by.....Mankind, and that the Sun means little. Say, what caused the last glacial period?
A Maunder Minimum can't stop catastrophic global warming -- only we can!

By "we," he means that Someone Else needs to Do Something, preferably the Government. Because Alarmists just can't be bothered to Do Something themselves, other than "spread awareness."

SOURCE





The Rubber Duckies: Two United Nations giants of junk

This year, we award a special joint Rubber Duckie to two giants of junk, Achim Steiner and Rajendra Pachauri. Together they are collectively responsible for uncountable thousands of reports, initiatives, policies, statements, comments, studies and panels that are based on science that is politically motivated, either in content or objective.

Mr. Steiner is head of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), a font of untenable science, including his enthusiastic support for the idea that 50 million refugees would plague the world to escape climate change by 2010.

A long-term shill for junk environmental science and the green energy industry, Mr. Steiner is also an expert at sophistry. Following the 50 million refugee debacle, he took to the editorial pages of The Guardian to cover the issue with rhetoric. “Imagine if the world acted only when 100% scientific proof was in place,” he declared. “We would still be insulating buildings with cancer-causing asbestos and fuelling cars with lead additives, damaging babies’ brains.”

See the logic? Those who question “official” junk science are baby killers.

Mr. Steiner’s rhetorical arsenal also includes the reductio ad absurdum. When he was head of the IUCN, the World Conservation Union, Mr. Steiner was part of the pack ­attack on Bjorn Lomborg’s book The Skeptical Environmentalist. “Mr. Lomborg,” he wrote, “is wrong to suggest that species extinction, climate change and pollution are imaginary environmental problems.”

Mr. Lomborg had suggested none of these things.

Since UNEP is one of the parents of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Mr. Steiner has stoutly defended the ­IPCC, even as that institution’s credibility sinks to zero. He has suggested that questions about the stewardship of his colleague at IPCC — Rajendra Pachauri — amounted to a “witch hunt.” The IPCC’s claim that all the glaciers of the Himalayas might disappear by 2035 was, he said, a “typographical error.”

Mr. Steiner, who accuses skeptics of being “ideologically driven,” is another global bureaucrat whose priority is reformulating humanity. “We have a misdirected economic compass,” he has said. “We have arranged our economies in a way that they destroy their environmental foundations.”

Over at the IPCC, meanwhile. Mr. Pauchauri has dug himself another hole. On top of Climategate, through which he clung to power, we now have Mr. Pachauri positioning Greenpeace as lead author on a global energy report that, amazingly, endorsed Greenpeace’s global energy plan — a plan for which Mr. Pachauri had written a glowing introduction.

All in all, Mr. Pachauri and Mr. Steiner have turned in very fine performances worthy of a rarely awarded joint Rubber Duck.

SOURCE

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