Muller vs. Hansen

A report by a longtime global warming researcher has concluded that recent extreme summer weather was linked to climate change. The study by a team led by James E. Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Here's more on the study from Richard Muller, physics professor at UC Berkeley, who for years was a climate-change skeptic but recently declared that he is now convinced that not only is global warming real but that human beings are the overwhelming cause of it.

Convinced he may be, but on Tuesday he said that the report by Hansen was overstating the case. "I agree with his findings, but I think he presents it in a way that greatly exaggerates what the result is,” Muller said on "The Madeleine Brand Show."

Here's an excerpt from the interview explaining what he means by that:

"If we are a degree warmer, which is what he and I agree we have warmed up in the last 50 years -- one degree warmer -- then you will have more heat spells, they'll be a little bit hotter, more records -- but they'll only be one degree. When he says expect more heat waves, what that means is, if you were used to a heat wave of 101 degrees, now you'll have a heat wave of 102.”

Hansen termed this as a 100-year event now becoming a 10-year event, and Muller doesn't disagree. But, Muller says, it's again worth noting that this much-more-frequent event is just 1 degree warmer.

In an opinion article in the Washington Post, Hansen linked the findings to the "deadly European heat wave of 2003, the fiery Russian heat wave of 2010 and catastrophic droughts in Texas and Oklahoma last year."

Muller said that there is "not even a hint" that global warming can be specifically linked to those events.

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NCDC Tampers With July Data For Global Warming Propaganda Purposes

July average tops U.S. temperature record, NOAA says

The July heat wave that wilted crops, shriveled rivers and fueled wildfires officially went into the books Wednesday as the hottest single month on record for the continental United States.

The average temperature across the Lower 48 was 77.6 degrees Fahrenheit, 3.3 degrees above the 20th-century average, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration reported. That edged out the previous high mark, set in 1936, by two-tenths of a degree, NOAA said.

U.S. forecasters started keeping records in 1895. The seven months of 2012 to date are the warmest of any year on record and were drier than average as well, NOAA said.

July average tops U.S. temperature record, NOAA says – This Just In – CNN.com Blogs

Complete nonsense. July 1936 was much hotter. Compare the two maps below – it isn’t even close.





SOURCE (See the original for links)




Spanish Renewable Lessons for Obama

Spain is planning to correct its renewable energy experiment gone wrong by spreading the pain, a powerful lessons for a White House with an incoherent energy policy that has often cited its model as one to emulate.

This week Obama’s campaign bashed challenger Mitt Romney for planning to end tax incentives for wind power if elected. “By opposing an extension to the wind production tax credit, Mitt Romney has come out against growth of the wind industry to support 100,000 jobs by 2016 and 500,000 jobs by 2030.”

Obama’s expectations though are based on European policy support models that are being revised and corrected. Ahead of November elections, both candidates must realize America’s energy policy more than ever demands a coherent policy based on its best interest not ideological imperatives.

Putting renewable on steroids can come to damage a country’s power sector, consumers, and the renewable industry itself, and in Spain’s case, even a national economy.

Public support for renewable power in America thus should be reconfigured to achieve realistic economic or geopolitical net gain, not winning elections.

During the first two years of his administration, President Barack Obama and top officials praised Spain as a successful model to create employment and improve energy security. So did everyone else, for that matter, but it’s time to heed the lessons.

For over a decade Spain has accumulated nearly 25 billion euro in debt –equivalent to more than half of the urgent capitalization needs of its distraught financial system- mostly in the form of subsidies for wind and solar energy.

Basically the country did not pass along to consumers the cost of generating around 30 percent of its electricity through renewable sources, and faced with the prospect of a macroeconomic sovereign collapse it has decided to hike taxes for power utilities, to increase consumer prices, and to cut some of the generous subsidies that the renewable industry has enjoyed.

The conservative government’s proposed solution has expectedly enraged all sides, although the final reforms will not be decreed until later this month.

All sides have legitimate grievances. After all, hiking consumer electricity prices during a recession is beating a dead horse; renewable players say the back-peddling will all but kill their industry already hit by an earlier moratorium imposed on new renewable projects, and utilities say more taxes will only mean more layoffs and less investment.

Furthermore, Spain’s generous subsidies already attracted more than twice as much installed capacity than its peak demand of 40 GW, and much cheaper fossil fuel and nuclear generators are being left idle to pay for renewable output.

In this context, the country has no choice but to pull the plug on its renewable experiment. More than a decade of robust Spanish growth ended in 2008 as a construction boom went bust leaving millions without a job and as the global economic crisis further undermined the economy.

Gross national product in 2012 and 2013 is expected to further contract and unemployment, already the highest of any rich nation at 25 percent, is expected to continue growing and to become increasingly hard structural, according to the OECD.

The IMF estimates Spain needs around 45 billion euros to recapitalize its ailing banks and Europe has already pledged as much as 100 billion euro. But markets are nervous. Spain will eventually have to seek a sovereign bailout like those of Greece, Ireland, and Portugal.

Meanwhile, the difference between the cost of generation and what consumers pay is adding between 7 and 10 billion euros annually in debt, depending of the year, according to the Energy Ministry, 60 percent of which comes from subsidizing renewable power.

The subsidy system itself is also dysfunctional. Solar companies get as much as half of the subsidies, despite contributing less than 5 percent of total power generation in 2011, while wind power gets around a quarter of subsidies despite contributing three times more power.

The government thus plans to raise taxes across the board for power generation between 3 and 20 percent, depending on the source. Fossil fuels, nuclear and hydroelectric would be taxed the least, while renewable would be taxed more. Companies have said consumer prices will inevitably increase.

Utilities, which truth be told are among the biggest investors in renewable power and thus are complicit of the failed experiment, have said tax increases doesn’t address the problem per se and fear the government is simply using them to raise revenue. And renewable energy investors, from international funds to small families, have also blasted planned reforms which they describe as suicidal.

Back to the drawing board

Spain is the worst example, but not the only.

A recent International Energy Agency outlook of renewable power this decade suggests how Spain’s model embodies the “wrongs” of unconditionally supporting the industry.

Now its renewable revision is going to eliminate thousands of jobs and billions in investment, and more critically become another agonizing drag on the economy.

Many countries overdid it, plain and simple. Renewable industries in OECD reached maturity and have become an economic drain, which is why countries are quietly backtracking, as the data shows.

“First, general macroeconomic and credit concerns are increasing capital costs, reducing risk appetites, and prompting investor preferences for higher returns and shorter payback periods, which tend to work against renewable technologies. Second, short-term policy uncertainty in some markets is undermining renewable project economics due to potential changes in financial support,” the IEA said.

The IEA’s report also shows how several technologies are competitive in some markets, able to compete with fossil fuel options. It got there thanks to generous subsidies in countries like Spain, Germany, and Italy, but also the United States, China, and Japan.

Indeed, renewable power is a viable economic option under certain circumstances. And in the US, there are some regions that can make a case for long term economic sustainability, even amid a natural gas glut.

But so far this administration has had an ideological, not economic approach to energy policy. And America can’t afford gambling its energy future. And for that matter, the renewable industry can’t afford it either.

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The “GREENHOUSE EFFECT” should cause droughts to DIMINISH

This should be evident from the slightest knowledge of physics. Warming the ocean puts MORE water into the air

Carl Brehmer

The following is an excerpt from a recent radio broadcast: “Heat waves are getting hotter and longer and the forest fires are getting bigger and more severe and there seems to be little doubt that the warming earth, caused by greenhouse gas pollution primarily from fossil fuel burning, is warming the earth and that extra warmth is making the heat waves worse and its making the wild fires worse and its making droughts that we are experiencing worse.” Coast to Coast AM, July 26th, 2012 hour 2: Interview with Jonathan Overpeck, Professor, Department of Geosciences and the Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Co-director of the Institute of the Environment at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

The droughts that are occurring this year on the Great Plains are a true calamity, but to blame them on a “greenhouse gas” mediated “greenhouse effect” is improper from a scientific point of view, since the “greenhouse effect” is hypothetical warming said to be caused primarily by water vapor and droughts are caused by a lack of water vapor. Therefore, droughts and the “greenhouse effect” cannot occupy the same space at the same time—one requires the presence of water vapor and the other requires its absence. I say that the “greenhouse effect” causes “hypothetical” warming because I recently completed a simple scientific study that demonstrates that an increased presence of water vapor is accompanied by a decrease in temperatures, but we will go over those results in a minute.

Let me first say that periodic severe droughts are not unique to the Great Plains as Professor Overpeck himself revealed in a paper that he co-authored in 1998: “Historical documents, tree rings, archaeological remains, lake sediment, and geomorphic data make it clear that the droughts of the twentieth century, including those of the 1930s and 1950s, were eclipsed several times by droughts earlier in the last 2000 years, and as recently as the late sixteenth century. In general, some droughts prior to 1600 appear to be characterized by longer duration (i.e., multidecadal) and greater spatial extent than those of the twentieth century.” Woodhouse, C.A. & Overpeck, J.T., 2000 Years of Drought Variability in the Central United States, 1998 Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 79: 2693-2714

The subject of this article though is not whether or not the earth is warming or whether or not droughts are getting worse around the world. The subject of this article is whether or not such droughts can be caused by a water vapor mediated “greenhouse effect.” According to the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis itself the “greenhouse effect” requires the presence of water vapor to operate. That is, water vapor not only accounts for the majority of the primary “greenhouse warming” in the atmosphere (60-90% depending upon the author) but it also, via “positive water vapor feedback,” is responsible for the much of the hypothetical warming caused by secondary “greenhouse gases” such as carbon dioxide. So, where there is little or no water vapor there can be little or no greenhouse effect. Take, for example the precipitous nighttime cooling seen in a desert mentioned by John Tyndall.

“Whenever the air is dry we are liable to daily extremes of temperature. By day in such places, the sun’s heat reaches the earth unimpeded and renders the maximum high; by night on the other hand the earth’s heat escapes unhindered into space and renders the minimum low. Hence the difference between the maximum and minimum is greatest where the air is driest.

“In the plains of India, on the heights of the Himalaya, in Central Asia, in Australia—wherever drought reigns, we have the heat of day forcibly contrasted with the chill of night. In the Sahara itself, when the sun’s rays cease to impinge on the burning soil the temperature runs rapidly down to freezing, because there is no vapour overhead to check the calorific drain.” Tyndall, John, On radiation: The "Rede" lecture, delivered in the Senate-house before the University of Cambridge, England, on Tuesday, May 16, 1865

a) Little or no water vapor = little or no greenhouse effect

b) Little or no water vapor = drought

Ergo: droughts cannot possibly be caused by the “greenhouse effect” since the “greenhouse effect” is a hypothetical effect caused primarily by water vapor. Where there is enough water vapor in the air to cause said hypothetical “greenhouse effect” then there will be no drought, because it will be cloudy and rainy instead. Ergo, droughts and the “greenhouse effect” are mutually exclusive. Droughts are, in fact, caused by a “greenhouse gas” deficit, i.e., not enough water vapor in the air!

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Proven Gas Reserves Up 50% From 2005 to 2010: Where's The Gas Ponzi Scheme?

In a continuing effort to drive a stake through the crazy conspiracy popularized by the NYT that the natural gas boom is a Ponzi scheme, I direct your attention to hot off the presses EIA data for what it calls "proved gas reserves," the most conservative or smallest category of reserve classifications.

In 2010, the most recent year for which data is available, EIA's proved gas reserves jumped the most it has in 35 years, more than 11%. www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=7370. While the 2010 rise was especially big, it was not a fluke. EIA's estimates of proved gas reserves have increased for 12 straight years.

Most impressively, proved gas reserves in 2010 were up 50% compared to the 2005 number or the 1980 number. That's right our proved gas reserves are 50% higher in 2010 than 30 years ago, despite using a lot of gas during that 30 year period.

Indeed, during the last 30 years, the country consumed more than double the amount of our 1980 proved gas reserve number. How could that be?

Exploration and production activities are never ending. They keep filling the US natural gas cup that has never emptied and is now overflowing.

So proved reserves have gone up for 12 straight years, increased during 2010 by the highest amount in 35 years, and are 50% higher than in 2005 or 1980. Other than in the conspiratorial, demagogic mind, just exactly where's the notorious gas Ponzi Scheme featured by the NYT?

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The Utter Desperation of Global Warming Liars

By Alan Caruba

The more the public grows skeptical of the global warming hoax, the more desperate the charlatans behind it become.

There is no global warming if by that one means a sudden, dramatic increase in the overall temperature of the Earth. It is not, nor ever was, caused by an increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth’s atmosphere; currently a miniscule 0.038 percent. Climate science has demonstrated that CO2 increases show up centuries after a major change in the Earth’s temperature, not before.

In recent testimony before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Dr. John Christy, Alabama’s state climatologist, a professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, said, “It is popular again to claim that extreme events, such as the current central U.S. drought are evidence of human-caused climate change. Actually, the Earth is very large, the weather is very dynamic, and extreme events will continue to occur somewhere, every year, naturally. The recent ‘extremes’ were exceeded in previous decades.”

Recent examples of the Warmists to convince the public that the Earth is in peril include an opinion by the president of the radical Environmental Defense Fund, Fred Krupp, in The Wall Street Journal, and a PBS television report featuring NASA’s Dr. James Hansen, offering a statistical analysis as bogus as his 1988 testimony that global warming was man-made and going to kill us all if we didn’t destroy the economy by outlawing CO2 emissions.

Noted meteorologist, Anthony Watts, whose website, WattsUpWithThat, is a treasure trove of real climate science, dismissed Hansen’s PBS presentation of bell curve charts claiming the current drought conditions as proof of global warming. “This bell curve proves nothing,” said Watts. “This is nothing but a political ploy from a man who has abandoned any pretext of professionally done science in favor of activism.” Watts’ research has demonstrated how corrupt many of the temperature findings have been due to the sites where thermometers have been placed as well as the many places on Earth where there are none.

In The Wall Street Journal Krupp penned a plea for “A New Climate-Change Consensus.” Bear in mind that the nexus of the global warming hoax has been the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and it has claimed for years that a “consensus” of scientists worldwide agrees that global warming is real. The data on which the IPCC claim was made was exposed in 2009 when emails between the scientists providing it revealed their panic over the signs of a global cooling cycle that had begun in 1998. The Earth has been cooling ever since.

Science does not work by consensus. It works by the rigorous testing of hypotheses and theories.
Even Krupp noted that “One scorching summer doesn’t confirm that climate change is real any more than a white Christmas proves it’s a hoax.” True. However, year after year of thoroughly debunked “data” by our own government agencies like NASA doesn’t make it real either. Did I mention that Dr. Hansen is the Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies?

About the only truth Krupp stated was that “Some proposed climate solutions, if not well designed or thoughtfully implemented, could damage the economy and stifle short-term growth.” Or any growth for that matter.

As this is written, the Environmental Protection Agency is seeking to apply draconian limits on CO2 emissions for every single entity of the U.S. economy from large companies to small businesses. Despite centuries of U.S. coal reserves, the EPA has been hard at work putting coal mining operations and coal-burning plant that generates electricity out of business.

Steven Goddard, writing in the August 6th edition of Real Science, was quick to point out that “There were twice as many daily all-time high temperature records set or tied during the 1930s as in the 2000s, for USHCN stations which were operational during both decades. That is why he (Hansen) doesn’t start his baseline (for the charts he showed in the PBS program) until the 1950s.”

Neither Krupp’s sweet words of inducement to global warming skeptics, nor Dr. Hansen’s lies add up to the fact that there is no global warming and never was except in the minds of those who sought to profit from selling “carbon credits” to industries and individuals who wanted permission to cause emissions of CO2 for any reason.

There ought to be a chart concerning how global warming lies rise and fall with each climate event like a drought or each new revelation of scientific fact that disputes and debunks the hoax.

SOURCE

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