What a laugh! Warmist temperature predictions accurate????


Figure 1. Temperature predictions vs. observations as portrayed by Dana1981

Warmists clearly rely on their followers being scientifically totally illiterate. The above diagram purports to show that Warmist computer projections have been matched by actual measured temperatures. But the graph clearly shows a total failure of their projections over the last 10 years. The red line (actual temperature) clearly does not rise at all overall. It just oscillates. Yet all the predictions are of rising temperature! The Warmists did NOT predict the stasis of the last 10 years. Their own data makes a mockery of them.

There's a lot more wrong with this strange graph. Don Easterbrook has a few words on it below and his full demolition of it is here

Note also: If their models did accurately predict the half a degree or so warming over the last 100 years, why are these same people warning of five degrees warming in the next 100 years? Either the models are accurate and warming is not a problem, or the models are wrong and warming is not a problem -- JR

The October 18, 2011 post on Skeptical Science entitled “How Global Temperatures Predictions Compare to What Happened (Skeptics Off Target)” by ‘Dana 1981’ claimed that “the IPCC projections have thus far been the most accurate” and “mainstream climate science predictions ….. have mostly done well …….. and the “skeptics” have generally done rather poorly.” ““several skeptics basically failed, while leading scientists such as Dr. James Hansen (a regular climate activist, as well as the top climatologist at NASA) and those at the IPCC did pretty darn well.” Figure 1 shows a graphical comparison of predictions vs. observations as portrayed by Dana1981.

However, the graph and these statements seemed to fly in the face of data, which show just the opposite—that computer models have failed badly in predicting temperatures over the past decade. So how could anyone make these claims? Figure 2 shows the IPCC temperature predictions from 2000 to 2011, taken from the IPCC website in 2000. Note that their projection is for warming of 0.6ºC (1.1ºF) between 2003 and now.

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Another "skeptics are nuts" claim

Or as they put it a little more delicately: Skeptics are "imperfectly rational"

The Warmists need to believe that skepticism is due to a mental defect now that their scares have largely failed. Psychologists call such needs "motivated cognition" -- so it is the Warmists who are nuts if anybody.

The Warmists talk of "providing information" but that's the last thing they do. Since when did you hear a Warmist proclaim publicly that temperatures have risen by less than one degree in the last 100 years?

All the Warmists provide is prophecies and prophecies have a well-deserved record of failure. It is perfectly rational to be highly skeptical about prophecies

People know about climate change. For years now, media stories and scientific reports have poured down on the public, telling them that climate change is real, dangerous and happening now. But for some reason the public has not risen up, en masse, and demanded policy solutions, stopped driving cars and started planting trees. Heck, many can't bring themselves to believe it is real. Others believe it, but go on with their lives without confronting it, paralyzed by the enormity of the problem.

Okay, so just providing information is clearly not enough. In Miami today, at the annual meeting of the Society for Environmental Journalists, a panel of three social scientists tackled the question of how to get people to change behavior. Never mind whether they care or not. How can the culture be tweaked? How can policies be set to influence human behaviors to emit less greenhouse gas?

One - perhaps controversial - recommendation they all echoed was to avoid the phrase 'climate change,' which they say has become too politicized. Kenneth Broad, the director of the Leonard and Jane Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy at the University of Miami suggested 'environmental change.' Shahzeen Attari, who studies human behavior and energy use at Indiana University likes "climate disruption."

Michel Handgraaf, a psychologist who works among economists at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, emphasized that rewards for behavior have to be immediate to really work. People are less likely to buy an energy efficient fridge if it costs more money now, even if it will save them twice as much in energy bills over the long run. So incentive programs should figure out how to deliver those savings right away. Handgraaf says that we are simply not evolved to be long term thinkers. "We are meant to deal with predators jumping out of the bush, or for maybe a year ahead--we should store food for the winter," he says.

Another approach is to emphasize the social benefits of action. In one study, people claimed that their energy efficient behavior was motivated by saving money. But those same subjects were willing to go the farthest if they were told that their neighbors were also taking aggressive action. "We think we are economic animals, but really we are social animals," says Handgraaf.

Journalists and environmentalists in the audience raised the point that the kind of individual consumer behaviors the panel were focusing on were all well and good, but that bigger forces matter more in the end, from city planning to the decisions made by power companies to international agreements on carbon limits or taxes.

Attari agreed that individual behavior can only go so far when it is "embedded in unsustainable structures." But of course power company executives, politicians and car manufacturers are individuals too, people with the same kinds of imperfectly rational evolved brains. If we can "psych out" the man on the street and get him biking to work, we should be able to influence the major decisions that shape our global energy economy. Perhaps environmental organizations should start recruiting in psychology departments and in the intelligence community.

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Both warming and cooling cause African drought??

Romm blames African droughts on global warming.

By Joe Romm on Oct 19, 2011 at 6:52 pm

Somalia’s “mis-government” has turned a brutal drought into a horrific famine. But “if it weren’t in drought, it wouldn’t be in famine,” as Dr. Chris Funk, one of the world’s foremost authorities on East African drought explained to me in an exclusive interview today.

And Funk’s work provides strong evidence that global warming has exacerbated the drought.

In 1974, African drought was blamed on global cooling.

Another Ice Age?
Monday, June 24, 1974

In Africa, drought continues for the sixth consecutive year, adding terribly to the toll of famine victims.

Not to mention Pakistani flooding, record tornadoes …..

During 1972 record rains in parts of the U.S., Pakistan and Japan caused some of the worst flooding in centuries.

Scientists have found other indications of global cooling.

drought-ridden areas stretching all the way from Central America to the Middle East and India, the polar winds have in effect caused the Sahara and other deserts to reach farther to the south.

Cold air is pulled down across the Western U.S. and warm air is swept up to the Northeast. The collision of air masses of widely differing temperatures and humidity can create violent storms—the Midwest’s recent rash of disastrous tornadoes, for example.

The 1974 arguments make sense. Romm’s arguments are – as always -- completely inane.

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New Tree Ring Study Shows Little Ice Age And Medieval Warm Period Were Global

A new paper here on the Jorge Montt Glacier at the Chilean Patagonia is out in Climate of the Past journal. What’s interesting is that this glacier is located in Chile – in South America, far away from the North Atlantic region.

A team of scientists studied tree rings from old trees recently exposed by the retreating Patagonian glaciers. Samples of these trees were dated using radiocarbon methods, yielding burial ages between 460 and 250 years ago.

Well guess what! The study confirms that the Little Ice Age existed in Chile too. Now remember how the high-sticking hockey team kept trying to have us believe that the Medieval Warm Period-Little Ice Age thing was a local phenomena, and not global? That claim is looking more and more like a real joke with every passing study.

The person who brought my attention to this paper is an expert geologist, and wishes to remain anonymous. He wrote me in an e-mail: "Amazing how globally widespread the ‘local North Atlantic’ Little Ice Age was in fact.” And he quoted the paper’s abstract:

"The dendrochronology and maps indicate that Glaciar Jorge Montt was at its present position before the beginning of the LIA, in concert with several other glaciers in Southern Patagonia, and reached its maximum advance position between 1650 and 1750 AD.”

No misprint there. It’s correct. Before the LIA the Chilean glaciers were at the same spot as the present position. Send a copy of that paper to Michael Mann and the rest of the climate clowns.

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California votes to place yet more burdens on its businesses

Hello more unemployment!

California approved one of the broadest and most controversial components of its landmark climate change law, pushing the state toward a low-carbon economy that relies less on imported foreign oil. The California Air Resources Board on Thursday voted to adopt final rules that will regulate carbon emissions across a broad cross section of the state's economy, including oil and gas producers, utilities and transportation companies, farmers and the building industry. "We will look back at this as an important date in California's transition to a clean energy economy," said Mary Nichols, the air board's chairwoman.

Dubbed the economic equivalent of "a moonshot" by its backers and a "job killer" by detractors, the "cap and trade" system adopted Thursday sets limits on the amount of carbon dioxide that can be produced by 350 of the state's largest industrial polluters starting in January 2013. The state will issue a set number of "carbon allowances." Companies that pollute less than their limit can sell their unused allowances to companies that pollute heavily, creating market incentives to reduce emissions.

The program will create the nation's largest market for trading pollution allowances. Congress in 2009 rejected legislation that would have created a federal cap and trade system. In California, 90 percent of the allowances will be given out free, but 10 percent will be sold on the open market, which some say could raise $500 million a year for the state's climate-change programs.

Proponents say cap and trade will not only reduce greenhouse gases but will spur innovation in the clean-technology sector. Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, said the vote is a historic event and shows that California can move in a big way toward cutting carbon pollution. As the world's eighth largest economy, much of California's future growth will emerge from development of clean technologies, he said.

In a joint statement emailed to the media, the American Lung Association in California, the Union of Concerned Scientists and other top public health and environment groups lauded the air board's vote, saying the new regulations will lower health care costs caused by breathing polluted air. "We believe this program represents a major milestone that will set California on a course to fundamentally shift the way we use energy and resources," the groups said.

Businesses counter that the measure will increase electricity and gasoline prices and could prompt manufacturers and other large employers to move to states where business costs are lower. In a letter to the air board, the California Chamber of Commerce, the California Manufacturers and Technology Association and several other business organizations said that with the statewide unemployment rate at 12.1 percent, many businesses cannot bear the added costs. "In view of the fragile state of California's economy, this is the worst possible time to impose yet another energy tax on struggling businesses and consumers," the letter said.

That sentiment was shared by Mike O'Kelly, who owns Morning Glory Dairy in Susanville. O'Kelly said he's worried that the cap and trade program will inflate the cost of his electricity and fuel. "It's really crazy to think you can throw a tax on PG&E and think PG&E will go, 'Oh, I'll pay it and not pass it on to you and me,' " he said. "The consumers of that energy … will all have to pay the difference."

Lisa Bowman, an employee for ConocoPhillips, said she's worried the new regulations could force her employer to relocate or shut down its Southern California refinery. "There's not a lot of jobs out there," she said. "If this refinery disappears, where am I going to retire to?"

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Australia: Backlash brews for plans for a massive expansion of wind farms in Queensland

THE war between farmers and energy companies has moved into a new phase with the emergence of plans for a massive expansion of wind farms in Queensland.

Some farmers in the South Burnett have already walked away from lucrative payouts from wind farm companies of $140,000 a year because of feared impacts on their health and their business.

While the struggle against coal seam gas, coal mines and underground coal gasification rages in other parts of the state, companies like AGL and Ratch (formerly Transfield) are pushing investment of about $3 billion in wind farm technology and getting support from farmers.

The Energy Users Association this week released a report showing Australia will need to spend about $30 billion on wind farms by 2020 to meet with the Government's renewable energy targets.

But there is also a backlash based on apparent impacts on the health of those living near similar facilities in South Australia and Victoria, as well as north Queensland.

Colin Walkden lives about 400m from the Windy Hill wind turbine, near Ravenshoe, in north Queensland, and is on medication for depression because of sleep loss allegedly caused by the constant noise from turbines.

"It's like no other noise you have ever heard," he said describing it as a strong whooshing sound that persists with a westerly wind. "That's about 90 per cent of the year."

South Australian farmer Andy Thomas lives near six turbines at Mt Bryan. In an affidavit in a case against the wind farm, Mr Thomas said the turbine noise was like a jet passing overhead.

"From my home, I can hear five or more turbines at the same time, so it is like having five or more jets overhead at once. At its worst it is like living next to a ball mill of the type used at mines to crush ore," he said.

AGL is now planning a $1 billion, 115 tower wind farm at Coopers Gap, in the South Burnett, while a second project at Kumbia at the base of the Bunya Mountains for about 50 towers has been stalled by farmer opposition. There is also a $1.5 billion plan for 300 turbines outside Mt Isa and other smaller proposals across the state.

Coopers Gap horse breeder Brian Lyons has rejected advances from AGL, despite a potentially big payout of $12,000 a year for each of the 20 turbines planned on his property.

"It's quite a good business for some of (the farmers), but I'm only going to live once," he said.

Despite his rejecting the approach, his neighbours are backing the scheme and it is possible Mr Lyons will still have turbines on his boundary only a short distance from his house.

He said there were at least four wind farm proposals in southern Queensland, with his own community faced with a large new industry that initially they knew very little about.

While the industry maintains the wind farms generate only a small amount of noise, several residents complain it is as loud as a jet engine and that the noise is directional, meaning some residents may not hear it while others will.

"I don't think a company with noise problems at its last operating wind farm should be treated any different to any other industry in Queensland," Mr Lyons said.

Local councillor Cheryl Dalton said low-frequency vibration was also an issue. "I don't understand why consideration hasn't been given to buying all the affected properties," she said.

As yet, there is no planning application before the South Burnett Council and there is confusion over whether it or the State Government will be the one who assesses the development.

Kumbia cattle farmer Paul Newman rallied local residents to a community meeting which overwhelmingly rejected a plan by Next Wind for a 53-turbine farm nearby. His compensation offer was worth about $140,000 a year, but he considered the project just as intrusive to his neighbours and the local community as that of a mine or an industrial development.

"Money is not the solution to everything," he said. He said that to live in a rural community you had to consider your neighbours and how a future project might hurt them.

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