Arctic Ice Extent Has Increased 85% Since September

When there was a big melt of Arctic ice in 2007, it gave the Warmists a real horn, so much so that it has not gone down to this day. They just assume that the melting has continued. They keep asserting that the Arctic is still melting as if it were a fact. That 2007 was just a blip that has now very much gone into reverse cannot penetrate their closed minds -- JR

While the LSM talks endlessly about record melt in the Arctic, a record freeze up is occurring.



Arctic autumn temperatures have been the coldest in at least a decade, and possibly since 1996. That is why the record fast freeze is occurring.

SOURCE (See the original for links)





Are Revkin and the NYT too moderate?

There is a curious site which calls itself the "NYT Examiner". It attacks the NYT from the Left. The latest attack is on the NYT global warming coverage. Excerpt below. Andrew Revkin, who blogs for the Times on climate, is seen by skeptics as a Warmist whom you can sometimes reason with. He is not as oblivious to the facts as are most Warmists. But that won't do at all, apparently:

An Interview with Howard Friel by NYTX:

Q. Howard, you have said that you were writing a book about the coverage of climate change by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal when you changed your mind to write a book about Bjorn Lomborg and climate skepticism. What did you find out about the coverage of climate change by the Times and Journal?

A. For one thing, the Times’ coverage of climate change was much better in the 1990s, when the reporter covering the issue back then, William K. Stevens, actually made a genuine attempt to cover climate science. Since then, the person who took the place of Stevens, Andrew Revkin, who blogs for the Times at Dot Earth, this was around year 2000, has deemphasized the climate science and instead has conducted a kind of features column about himself and the people that he emails or talks to.

Revkin was critical of the climate coverage of the Guardian and Independent beginning around 2004 or 2005, when the published climate science shifted, and began to point toward worst-case scenarios pretty much across the board. The Guardian and Independent were following the science to this effect. Revkin referred to this kind of science-based coverage as “climate porn”—probably quoting somebody else to this effect, but adopting the term for himself. Shortly thereafter, with enough high-profile climate skeptics adopting this view, this criticism coincided with an apparent reduction in the climate-based coverage by the Guardian and Independent.

Revkin also psychoanalyzes his readers by claiming that they can’t handle all the bad climate news, and so that’s his official rationale for not reporting it. I hope to write about this more in the future with more detail. As for the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the people there who write for that page are all corporate shills and climate deniers, so that’s easy to characterize. Revkin’s performance is more complicated, but it faithfully reflects the Times’ editorial policy.

Q. What do you mean when you say that about Revkin and the Times’ editorial policy?

A. The Times’ editorial policy is to not go out on a limb on any issue; to play it moderately; to be “objective”; to play it cool; to not be a crusading newspaper about any issue; to not permit the Times to be too strongly identified with any point of view on the important and controversial issues of the day. This policy has been articulated and repeated over and over again by the line of Times publishers and top editors over the years, going back to the late nineteenth century, with the Times’ founder Adolph Ochs.

However, to not take a position on issues of settled law and science—like the international law prohibition against the threat and use of force, and climate science and what that is telling us—is like a return to the Dark Ages, and is a very reckless and irresponsible position. Likewise, Revkin has avoided taking the view that reflects the very high factual probability and likelihood that the physical science basis of climate change is pointing toward a very serious and probably irreversible problem, which tracks worst-case scenarios, if we don’t act immediately to dramatically cut CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. Instead, Revkin gravitates toward people like Roger Pielke Jr., who specializes in obfuscation and is an almost classic hot-air type social scientist.

More HERE





Is "The Ecologist" preparing for a retreat?

"The Ecologist" makes large claims about its influence on environmental thinking so it is a surprise to find in it multiple admissions that climate prophecies have serious weaknesses. Some excerpts:

Its political and social importance has seen climate modelling come under more scrutiny than ever before. As a result the pressure is on climate scientists to be as precise as it is possible to be, not least because of the speed with which any perceived data discrepancies are seized upon by different interest groups.

Mistakes, cover-ups and inaccuracies have served to undermine many people’s faith in climate science at a time when its work is more important than ever.

Climate modelling has a different problem: based on forecast and projection, it is by definition an inexact science, but one upon which concrete decisions must be based if governments and societies are to assess risks and plan ahead. Somewhere in the grey area between prediction and policy, this uncertainty becomes more concrete.

Vicky Pope, head of climate science advice at the Met Office, says it is important to keep the politics and science separate. Problems arise, she says, when campaigning groups seek to use the science to make their own arguments. ‘The science needs to be seen to be objective, peer-reviewed and open, so people can ask questions.’

A step in this direction was made In July this year. After a two-year battle following ‘Climategate’, an Oxford academic won the right to get access to the UEA data, including 160 years’ worth of thermometer readings from 4,000 weather stations. As a result of the ruling, climate researchers from now on will be required to make their research publicly available.

Climate models translate the climate of the earth into mathematics. The simpler ones do so in order for scientists better to understand the processes and establish patterns. More complex examples (General Circulation Models) attempt to represent everything – clouds, air movement, rain, shrinking ice, ocean heat, as well as the interaction between all these things, which in effect define climate – as well as use archive information to model climates from the past, in order to make predictions for the future.

GCMs are currently the best means of creating a climate forecast, but because of the complexity of the weather systems they calculate can be difficult to analyse and understand. And even the very best models are only as good as our current level of knowledge and the computer technology available to us.

There are 22 major global climate models and many more regional ones that submit their data to the IPCC. It produces a report comparing and synthesising all of the data, noting discrepancies and scientific disagreements – some models have different ways of representing clouds, for example.

This makes it one of the most powerful ways to assess the uncertainty inherent in the process, says Vicky Pope. She adds that the IPCC process ‘isn’t perfect’ but significant improvements are made to it on an ongoing basis.

‘These are projections – there is no way to provide an accurate prediction of the future – and their goal and that of climate science is to produce a risk assessment of what the science is telling us about how the climate will change. It is up to politicians and society to decide on a response. Our role is simply to supply objective evidence and to represent the uncertainty inherent in the scientific process. It isn’t a question of right and wrong, but of trying to give a balanced assessment of what is certain and uncertain.’

But new research from the Lancaster Centre for Forecasting at Lancaster University Management School (LUMS) does suggest that current forecasts can be made more accurate.

Report co-author Robert Fildes, a forecast researcher, developing a simple statistical model that delivers better results when compared with previous climate forecasts, i.e. by adding certain data he has been able to match his figures more accurately with a historic forecast.

‘If the climate model was as good as it is possible to be, my simple statistical model should not have added any value. But broadly speaking, it does. My research revealed the limited availability of “proper” forecasts from these climate models, yet we are risking the world on them. The whole thing is based on a set of forecasts – for example, how high should our flood defences be? – and we need to know how accurate they are.’

Weather forecasters get immediate feedback, he points out: if they forecast rain for tomorrow, they know tomorrow whether they were right. While there are methodological problems inherent in forecasts with a 10-20-year horizon, Fildes is critical of the fact that climate scientists have ‘tended to say it’s too difficult and not perfect so we won’t do it. They can do it, and do it better.’

He stresses that his work should not be misinterpreted as being negative about climate modelling, but he says climate modelling would be improved if it absorbed the lessons learnt by the forecasting and economic communities over the past 20-30 years, primarily that rigorous evaluation and benchmarking methods – comparing forecasts against some established benchmark to assess their accuracy – are vital.

Another issue is that current GCMs are by no means exhaustive. In a recent report, Nasa climate change scientist James Hansen observed that current climate models do not factor in ‘climate forcing’ – changes that affect the energy balance of the planet – caused by aerosols, and as such deliver incorrect results. He calls it ‘the principal barrier to quantitative understanding of ongoing climate change. Until aerosol forcing is measured, its magnitude will continue to be crudely inferred, implicitly or explicitly, via observations of climate change and knowledge of climate sensitivity.’

Fildes argues that policymakers need to be responding to a wide range of other climate forcings – not simply greenhouse gases – and considering their effects regionally as well as globally. The IPCC climate modelling process is unreliable because it does not do so, he says, adding that the focus on greenhouse gases has been driven by a priori assumptions in the models themselves. This will have to change in the future, he adds.

More HERE





Another climate liar -- and a prominent one

Truth has never been much of a priority for the Green/Left but this is pretty blatant -- JR

From an ABC interview with Richard Somerville:

Q : for some decades climate scientists have been predicting that heavy snowfalls in the winter would be more frequent.

A : That’s right, in fact …..

Given that Richard Somerville is an IPCC lead author, he should probably be aware that one decade ago the IPCC predicted the exact opposite of what he claims.

IPCC 2001 15.2.4.1.2.4. Ice Storms

Milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms

And:

MONDAY 20 MARCH 2000

According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.

“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.

David Parker, at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Berkshire, says ultimately, British children could have only virtual experience of snow. Via the internet, they might wonder at polar scenes – or eventually “feel” virtual cold.

SOURCE (See the original for links)






Warming is over. Global cooling is the immediate threat

Some excerpts from Don Easterbrook -- who has the distinction of having made TRUE predictions about climate change -- something no Warmist has managed

Global climate changes have been far more intense (12 to 20 times as intense in some cases) than the global warming of the past century, and they took place in as little as 20–100 years. Global warming of the past century (0.8° C) is virtually insignificant when compared to the magnitude of at least 10 global climate changes in the past 15,000 years. None of these sudden global climate changes could possibly have been caused by human CO2 input to the atmosphere because they all took place long before anthropogenic CO2 emissions began. The cause of the ten earlier ‘natural’ climate changes was most likely the same as the cause of global warming from 1977 to 1998.

After several decades of studying alpine glacier fluctuations in the North Cascade Range, my research showed a distinct pattern of glacial advances and retreats (the Glacial Decadal Oscillation, GDO) that correlated well with climate records. In 1992, Mantua published the Pacific Decadal Oscillation curve showing warming and cooling of the Pacific Ocean that correlated remarkably well with glacial fluctuations. Both the GDA and the PDO matched global temperature records and were obviously related (Fig. 4). All but the latest 30 years of changes occurred prior to significant CO2 emissions so they were clearly unrelated to atmospheric CO2.

The significance of the correlation between the GDO, PDO, and global temperature is that once this connection has been made, climatic changes during the past century can be understood, and the pattern of glacial and climatic fluctuations over the past millennia can be reconstructed. These patterns can then be used to project climatic changes in the future.

Using the pattern established for the past several hundred years, in 1998 I projected the temperature curve for the past century into the next century and came up with curve ‘A’ in Figure 5 as an approximation of what might be in store for the world if the pattern of past climate changes continued. Ironically, that prediction was made in the warmest year of the past three decades and at the acme of the 1977-1998 warm period. At that time, the projected curved indicated global cooling beginning about 2005 ± 3-5 years until about 2030, then renewed warming from about 2030 to about 2060 (unrelated to CO2—just continuation of the natural cycle), then another cool period from about 2060 to about 2090.

This was admittedly an approximation, but it was radically different from the 1° F per decade warming called for by the IPCC. Because the prediction was so different from the IPCC prediction, time would obviously show which projection was ultimately correct.

Now a decade later, the global climate has not warmed 1° F as forecast by the IPCC but has cooled slightly until 2007-08 when global temperatures turned sharply downward. In 2008, NASA satellite imagery (Figure 6) confirmed that the Pacific Ocean had switched from the warm mode it had been in since 1977 to its cool mode, similar to that of the 1945-1977 global cooling period. The shift strongly suggests that the next several decades will be cooler, not warmer as predicted by the IPCC.

The IPCC prediction of global temperatures, 1° F warmer by 2011 and 2° F by 2038 (Fig. 1), stand little chance of being correct. NASA’s imagery showing that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has shifted to its cool phase is right on schedule as predicted by past climate and PDO changes (Easterbrook, 2001, 2006, 2007).

The PDO typically lasts 25-30 years and assures North America of cool, wetter climates during its cool phases and warmer, drier climates during its warm phases. The establishment of the cool PDO, together with similar cooling of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), virtually assures several decades of global cooling and the end of the past 30-year warm phase. It also means that the IPCC predictions of catastrophic global warming this century were highly inaccurate.

The switch of PDO cool mode to warm mode in 1977 initiated several decades of global warming. The PDO has now switched from its warm mode (where it had been since 1977) into its cool mode. As shown on the graph above, each time this had happened in the past century, global temperature has followed.

Comparisons of historic global climate warming and cooling over the past century with PDO and NAO oscillations, glacial fluctuations, and sun spot activity show strong correlations and provide a solid data base for future climate change projections.

The ramifications of the global cooling cycle for the next 30 years are far reaching―e.g., failure of crops in critical agricultural areas (it’s already happening this year), increasing energy demands, transportation difficulties, and habitat change. All this during which global population will increase from six billion to about nine billion. The real danger in spending trillions of dollars trying to reduce atmospheric CO2 is that little will be left to deal with the very real problems engendered by global cooling.

CONCLUSIONS

Global warming (i.e, the warming since 1977) is over. The minute increase of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere (0.008%) was not the cause of the warming—it was a continuation of natural cycles that occurred over the past 500 years.

The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling, perhaps much deeper than the global cooling from about 1945 to 1977. Just how much cooler the global climate will be during this cool cycle is uncertain. Recent solar changes suggest that it could be fairly severe, perhaps more like the 1880 to 1915 cool cycle than the more moderate 1945-1977 cool cycle. A more drastic cooling, similar to that during the Dalton and Maunder minimums, could plunge the Earth into another Little Ice Age, but only time will tell if that is likely.

More HERE (See the original for links, graphics etc.)




Fulfilling The President's Green Dreams Through Private Competition

The Reason Foundation’s Julian Morris and Adam Peshek argue that instead of handing out loans to companies like Solyndra, the government should offer prizes for actual results

Solar-panel maker Solyndra, with its $535 million loan guarantee from taxpayers, was supposed to help usher in the era of clean energy and green jobs that President Obama has been promising. Instead, Solyndra went bankrupt and the FBI, Treasury Department and Congress are all investigating the company’s collapse and how it got its loan.

The Department of Energy program that made the disastrous loan to Solyndra was supposed to “accelerate the domestic commercial deployment of innovative and advanced clean energy technologies at a scale sufficient to contribute meaningfully to the achievement of our national clean energy objectives.” That obviously didn’t happen. And since the energy program handed out numerous other loans worth over $16 billion since 2009, it is likely we’ll be hearing about more “green” failures and further taxpayer losses.

The Obama administration should be examining a recent example that shows how to spur environmental innovation and progress – without putting any taxpayer money at risk. Last year, the X Prize Foundation and Wendy Schmidt partnered to create the Oil Cleanup X Challenge to “develop innovative, rapidly deployable, and highly efficient methods of capturing crude oil from the ocean surface.”

The Deep Water Horizon explosion and oil spill off the coast of Louisiana in 2010 demonstrated how little improvement in oil cleanup technology had been made since the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. So the Oil Cleanup X Challenge’s goal was straightforward: whoever could create the most efficient method of removing oil from the surface of sea water, meeting a minimum oil recovery rate of 2,500 gallons per minute, would receive $1 million. Second- and third-place would get $300,000 and $100,000 respectively.

This $1.4 million call to action prompted over 350 teams to pre-register and the results, announced October 11, were impressive. Seven of the final 10 teams doubled the standard oil recovery rate of 1,100 gallons per minute. The winner, privately-held Elastec/American Marine of Illinois produced an oil recovery rate of nearly 4,700 gallons a minute. In a single year, without any federal funding, the X Prize had identified a problem, incentivized a solution, and produced a more efficient and cheaper technology that more than quadrupled the industry standard for cleaning oil spills.

The primary difference between the Oil Cleanup X Challenge and the disastrous federal loan program that gave Solyndra over half a billion dollars is clear: The government program wasn’t based on results. It loaned money to the companies, like Solyndra, that had the most lobbying influence and best political connections. The oil cleanup contest awarded money for outcomes. It was an even playing field open to all comers. Companies didn’t compete through grant applications or lobbying. The best products won.

Some governments have started recognizing the merits of prizes over subsidies. In 2009, the governments of the United Kingdom, Italy, Canada, Russia and Norway, together with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation committed $1.5 billion to buy vaccines for diseases that primarily affect people in poorer countries. The first company to develop an effective vaccine is rewarded with a prize in the form of large scale purchases of its vaccine. The push for this prize-like system came after conventional government subsidies for vaccine research failed.

Government shouldn’t be in the business of selecting winners and losers in business at all. But if it is going to attempt to drive “green” innovation, it should use prizes to reward actual results and minimize corruption and corporate welfare. Prizes could be used to increase energy efficiency, cost-effectively convert solar energy to electricity, waste reduction efforts, and drive advancements on any number of environmental issues. The type of crony capitalism that led taxpayers to waste over half-a-billion dollars on Solyndra needs to be eliminated. And rewarding proven success through prizes is a significantly better policy than subsidizing failure.

SOURCE

***************************************

For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here

*****************************************