Friday, September 20, 2013



World's top climate scientists told to 'cover up' the fact that the Earth's temperature hasn't risen for the last 15 years



Scientists working on the most authoritative study on climate change were urged to cover up the fact that the world’s temperature hasn’t risen for the last 15 years, it is claimed.

A leaked copy of a United Nations report, compiled by hundreds of scientists, shows politicians in Belgium, Germany, Hungary and the United States raised concerns about the final draft.

Published next week, it is expected to address the fact that 1998 was the hottest year on record and world temperatures have not yet exceeded it, which scientists have so far struggled to explain.

The report is the result of six years’ work by UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is seen as the world authority on the extent of climate change and what is causing it – on which governments including Britain’s base their green policies.

But leaked documents seen by the Associated Press, yesterday revealed deep concerns among politicians about a lack of global warming over the past few years.

Germany called for the references to the slowdown in warming to be deleted, saying looking at a time span of just 10 or 15 years was ‘misleading’ and they should focus on decades or centuries.

Hungary worried the report would provide ammunition for deniers of man-made climate change.

Belgium objected to using 1998 as a starting year for statistics, as it was exceptionally warm and makes the graph look flat - and suggested using 1999 or 2000 instead to give a more upward-pointing curve.

The United States delegation even weighed in, urging the authors of the report to explain away the lack of warming using the ‘leading hypothesis’ among scientists that the lower warming is down to more heat being absorbed by the ocean – which has got hotter.

The last IPCC ‘assessment report’ was published in 2007 and has been the subject of huge controversy after it had to correct the embarrassing claim that the Himalayas would melt by 2035.

It was then engulfed in the ‘Climategate’ scandal surrounding leaked emails allegedly showing scientists involved in it trying to manipulate their data to make it look more convincing – although several inquiries found no wrongdoing.

The latest report, which runs to 2,000 pages, will be shown to representatives from all 195 governments next week at a meeting in Stockholm, who can discuss alterations they want to make.

But since it was issued to governments in June, they have raised hundreds of objections about the 20-page summary for policymakers, which sums up the findings of the scientists.

What it says will inform renewable energy policies and how much consumers and businesses will pay for them.

The report is expected to say the rate of warming between 1998 and 2012 was about half of the average rate since 1951 – and put this down to natural variations such as the El Nino and La Nina ocean cycles and the cooling effects of volcanoes.

A German climate scientist - Stefan Rahmstorf, who reviewed the chapter on sea levels - yesterday admitted it was possible the report’s authors were feeling under pressure to address the slowdown in warming due to the ‘public debate’ around the issue.

The draft report, which is not new research but a synthesis of all the work being done by scientists around the world, is likely to be highly disputed at the three-day meeting.

It will make the case that humans are causing global warming with carbon emissions even more strongly upgrading it from ‘very likely’ in 2007 to ‘extremely likely’ it is manmade.

But scientists are under pressure to explain why the warming has not exceeded 1998 levels although the decade 2000-2010 was the hottest on record.

Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists based in Washington, said yesterday: ‘I think to not address it would be a problem because then you basically have the denialists saying: ‘Look the IPCC is silent on this issue.’

Jonathan Lynn, a spokesman for the IPCC said yesterday: ‘This is the culmination of four years’ work by hundreds of scientists, where governments get a chance to ensure the summary for policymakers is clear and concise in a dialogue with the scientists who wrote it, and have the opportunity to raise any topics they think should be highlighted.’

SOURCE





Climate Change Ice-Capped

There is a tradition in politics that is similar to one in the legal profession: When evidence supports your position, make your argument based on the evidence, but when it argues against your position, ignore the evidence and appeal to emotion.

The evidence is piling up that "climate change," formerly known as "global warming," is losing evidentiary support, despite recent "preliminary findings" by a group of "experts" from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that a Washington Post editorial suggests may prove, "warming has boosted the chances, in some cases significantly, that certain unwelcome weather or weather-related disasters will occur." The Post and other "true believers" ignore or ridicule a growing body of evidence rebutting their beliefs.

Most bad weather -- from hurricanes, which have been few this season, to tornadoes -- are unwelcome by those in their paths, but these weather phenomena have existed for centuries. Both sides seem to agree that CO2 levels are elevated, but they don't agree on whether that will cause dangerous climate change, including rising temperatures and turbulent weather. The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) argues, "The human effect is likely to be small relative to natural variability, and whatever small warming is likely to occur will produce benefits as well as costs."

Yet the climate change cultists continue to focus on melting polar ice caps and "displaced" polar bears as part of their emotional appeal for government to "fix" the problem. Now comes a report in the UK Daily Mail that "eminent scientists" have observed a record return of the Arctic ice cap as it grows by 60 percent in a year, covering with ice almost 1 million more square miles of ocean than in 2012.

In 2007, the BBC reported that by 2013, global warming would leave the Arctic "ice free." Oops!

Just how silly this is getting is an assertion by some activists that the current tensions in Syria might be linked to climate change. That's not as harebrained as a newspaper report in January 1933, which said, "Yo-Yo Banned in Syria, Blamed for Drought by Moslems." The Syrians of 1933 actually believed the up and down of a toy yo-yo affected the weather. If it went down and sprang right back up, rain. If it went down and didn't spring up, drought. Police reportedly patrolled the streets, confiscating the toy. Ridiculous? Not as ridiculous as some of the junk science coming out of climate research circles today.

Last March, the Daily Mail reported that global temperatures are about to drop "below the level that the (computer) models forecast with '90 percent certainty.'"

Marc Morano, a former staff member of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (whose web page climatedepot.com offers numerous scientific articles debunking climate change), emails me: "As a long observer of the global weather movement, I can say that the events of 2013 (have) been one of the most devastating to the movement. Both poles have record expanding ice. Global temperatures have failed to rise for 15 plus years, sea level rise is failing to accelerate, tornadoes are at record lows, hurricanes are near record low activity ... 2013 may be the year in which man-made global warming fears enter the dustbin of history."

I doubt it. Too many people have too much invested in perpetuating this fiction. Billions of dollars and other currencies have been diverted into "green" projects in a Chicken Little attempt to stop the sky from falling. The BBC reports it as fact in virtually every story it does on the environment. Ditto the American media. Most media ignore evidence that counters climate change proponents.

Former Vice President Al Gore has made a personal fortune promoting the cult of global warming, a cult being partially defined as a belief system that ignores proof contrary to its beliefs.

Perhaps the climate change counter-revolutionaries should adopt the yo-yo as their symbol and send Gore and his apostles a box of them.

SOURCE





Gore sued by 30,000 scientists for global warming fraud

This report is from Ghana.  Not sure how accurate it all is

30,000 scientists, including the founder of The Weather Channel, have come forward to sue former US Vice President Al Gore for fraud, alleging that he made massive profits in the promotion of the global warming mythology.

They scientists are hoping the lawsuit will finally give the thousands of 'dissenting' scientists a voice again.

Environmentalism has been politically linked to alternative medicine for many years, due to the unfortunate pervasive presence of the paganistic religions. It is truly a tragic situation that has impeded alternative medicine in the U.S. perhaps as much as any other factor.

At The Health Wyze Report, scientists believe that reducing human harm to the planet is a reasonable goal, so long as it is not given precedence over the rights and livelihoods of people.

Increasingly, environmentalists and politicians have exploited the shoddy global warming hypothesis as a method to take away the rights of the people in a draconian manner, and to tax all of us exorbitantly.

In the past few years, there has been massive growth in the amount of people who believe that man is the primary cause of global warming, and that ironically, an ice age is somehow coming. It really is incredible when one steps back to examine the ridiculousness of it all.

The theory of man-made global warming has actually been widely accepted by society. The power elites have told us that the world will come to an end if we do not reduce our consumption of fossil fuels, and lower our output of carbon dioxide (CO2).

Dissenting scientists have been silenced, even as they explained that most CO2 is emitted from the oceans, and that CO2 does not lead to any increases in temperatures. In fact, the reverse is true. The warming of the earth (due to solar cycles) leads to increases in CO2.

SOURCE




Study Shows Few Methane Leaks From Fracking

If you were worried that fracking would ever take the place of cow flatulence as a source of methane in the atmosphere, worry no more. A study released earlier this week and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences estimated that total leakage of methane was less than one-half of 1% of all produced natural gas, or roughly 100 billion cubic feet based on 2012 U.S. production of 24.1 trillion cubic feet.

Yet Radical Green remains unfazed by the facts, claiming that the wells selected were not “real operations” but carefully chosen as low-emitting sites. “Their study was not designed to look at the combination of normal and abnormal operations,” sneered Ira Leifer, a University of California-Santa Barbara scientist who measures methane leaks around the country. Other skeptics claimed bias because industry interests mainly financed the $2.3 million study – not that environmental groups have ever financed a study where the conclusions somehow coincided with their desired result.

NAS president Ralph Cicerone, however, called the study participants “some of the very best experts” in the field, who are “going to give you the straight scoop.” Unlike other broad airborne estimates of methane leakage that have varied widely and may not have accounted for natural sources, these measurements were taken at 489 participating wells around the country.

Unfortunately for the radical environmental community, the hyperbole of massive environmental damage and flaming water faucets blamed on fracking isn't borne out in reality. The truth is that our nation could be among the world's top producers of natural gas and an energy exporter in the very near future – if the federal government and Radical Green stand aside.

SOURCE





Sermonizing at the church of the burning planet

By Larry Bell

Bummer! Now, just before members of the UN’s Church of the Burning Planet are scheduled to finalize their latest hellfire and brimstone sermon, a chilling development has occurred. A flood of blasphemous reports circulated among ranks of former faithful parishioners are challenging human-caused climate crisis theology.

On September 23 through 26, representatives of the world’s Environment Ministries will meet in Stockholm to agree on the final draft of a key portion of the gospel of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Summary for Policymakers — which is expected, once again, to keep the political climate cauldron steaming. This Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) is intended to be used by international ministers working to devise a new global treaty by 2015 to curb “climate change”.

That goal is certainly no trifle, given that dramatic climate changes have been occurring over many millions of years, although lately…not so much. Therein lays the big rub. How can ministers conjure up a newsworthy sequel to previous knuckle-biting prognostications when all evidence suggests that the prophesies, and the scriptures they were based upon, were proven wrong?

Remember that really scary “hockey stick” graph IPCC used to show that rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations would send global temperatures soaring? And recall all the ballyhoo about CO2 levels reaching a 400 ppm record high? Yet last February even IPCC’s chairman Rajenda Pachuri has admitted that world temperature data has been flat for the past 17 years. And that was after the British media reported that the UK Met Office was projecting a 20-year standstill in global warming by 2017.

You certainly know the jig is up when the New York Times finally recognizes that the feverish climate fervor is overheated. They reported on June 6 that, “The rise in the surface temperature of Earth has been markedly slower over the last 15 years than in the 20 years before that. And that lull in warming has occurred even as greenhouse gases have accumulated in the atmosphere at a record pace.” Reporter Justin Gillis went on to admit that the break in temperature increases “highlights important gaps in our knowledge of the climate system”, whereby the lack of warming “is a bit of a mystery to climate scientists.”

D’ya think?

Where, Oh Where, Has that Global Warming Gone?

One highly plausible answer to this mystery is that the climate models upon which IPCC’s failed projections are based exaggerate climate sensitivity to CO2, underestimate known natural forcings, and simply don’t understand how to factor in and calibrate other influences such as ocean cycles and solar activity. Numerous recent scientific papers suggest that overestimation of sensitivity by at least 30 percent may account for much of the problem. If so, a reduction of 30percent would leave lots of missing heat which must have been offset by natural cooling.

After all, the importance of those natural influences shouldn’t be that surprising given that history shows that temperatures have been higher when CO2 levels were lower, and vise versa. In fact, the past century has witnessed two generally accepted periods of warming The first occurred between 1900 and 1945. Since CO2 levels were relatively low then compared with now, and didn’t change much, they couldn’t have been the cause before 1950.

The second possible very small warming, following a slight cool-down, may have begun in the late 1970s lasting until 1998, a strong Pacific Ocean El Niño year. Yet even if global temperatures actually did rise very slightly during that second period, the U.K. Hadley Center and U.S. NOAA balloon instrument analyses fail to show any evidence, whatsoever, of a human CO2 emission-influenced warming telltale “signature” in the upper troposphere over the equator as predicted by all IPCC global circulation models. In fact, about half of all estimated warming since 1900 occurred before the mid-1940s despite continuously rising CO2 levels since that time.

So Maybe the Models Are Broke…Not the Climate After All!

According to a recent Opinion & Comment piece titled “Overestimating global warming over the past 20 years” that appeared in Nature Climate Change, the model-based fear and loathing attached to global warming may be substantially overheated. Notably, Francis W. Zwiers, one of the three authors, is a vice-chair of this relevant section for AR5. The writers observe that whereas the global mean temperature over the past 20 years (1993-2012) rose at a rate of between about 0.14o°–0.06o° C per decade, average temperatures computed by 117 simulations of 37 climate models predicted a surface temperature rise of 0.30o°-0.02o° C per decade. The observed rate of warming was less than half of the simulated rate.

The inconsistency between observed and simulated warming was even greater over the past 15 years (between 1998 and 2012). Here the observed trend was 0.05o°-0.08o° C per decade, vs. the average simulated trend of 0.21o°-0.03o° C. The observed trend was four times smaller. The divergence began in the early 1990s. Accordingly, evidence indicates that the group of model simulations do not reproduce observed global warming over the past 20 years, or the slowdown over the past 15 years.

Since 2003 when the trend reached close to a predicted 0.2o° C /decade peak, the trends have been waning strongly. The measured trend was lower in 2013 than 2008, which was, in turn, lower than in 2003.

As well-known climate scientist Judith Curry points out, the selection of 20 years was prudent because it gets away from the “cherry-picking” criticism of starting with 1997 or 1998, a big El Niño period. It also includes a big jump that occurred from 1993-1998.

“The Ocean Ate My Global Temperatures”

Kevin Trenberth theorizes that missing heat takes a dive into deep oceans. “The oceans can at times soak up a lot of heat. Some goes into the deep oceans where it can stay for centuries [and where lamentably, there are no reliable temperature measurements]. But heat absorbed closer to the surface can easily flow back into the air.” Yet sea surface temperatures and the upper heat content didn’t increase over the last decade by enough to account for the “missing heat” that those greenhouse gas emissions should have trapped in the Earth’s climate system but couldn’t be found.

And how have they arrived at this hypothesis? Well, perhaps you already guessed the answer. Of course! They developed some hypothetical, unproven guess-work models.

Climate as Religion…Imposing Penance for Prosperity

Atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT, Richard Lindzen, posted an article in the fall 2013 issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons characterizing global warming as an alarmist religion. Furthermore, he accuses alarmist orthodoxy of adjusting both data and theory to accommodate politically correct positions that are costly to society.

Scientists who give in to this temptation make meaningless claims; activists for certain causes supported by those claims pull political strings; and the scientists, in turn, are rewarded with more research funding. The result is an “Iron Triangle” of destructively twisted science incentives. Lindzen remarks that, “A surprisingly large number of people seem to have concluded that all that gives meaning to their lives is the belief that they are saving the planet by paying attention to their carbon footprint.”

Global warming (aka “climate change”) has thus become a religious mantra, a call for action in a crusade against larger evils we have perpetrated against nature and punishment for our sins. Author Michael Crichton articulated the essence of this creed in a 2003 speech whereby: “There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with Nature; there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result from eating from the tree of knowledge; and as a result of our actions, there is a judgment day coming for all of us. We are energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability.

Sustainability is salvation in the Church of the Environment, just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs imbibe.”

What Will IPCC’s High Priests Ordain Next?

Daunting pressure befalls those scores of IPCC representatives in Stockholm who must wordsmith and dumb down a final summary of climate conclusions that will once again garner world-shaking attention. Their previous reports will provide tough acts to follow in the alarm department. For example:

The IPCC’s 2001 Summary for Policymakers Report (TAR) stated: “Most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.”

The IPCC’s 2007 report (4AR) said: “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.”

And now, a leaked draft of the new 2013 (5AR) is expected to conclude: “It is extremely likely that human influence on climate caused more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010.”

And there you have it! Whereas they were previously only very likely sure that we humans contributed to global warming 6 years ago, now that there hasn’t been any warming for nearly three times that long they are expected to be extremely sure. Also, never mind that the latest 10-year period (2003-12) is the coolest decade since satellite records began in 1979.

Assuming that they’re likely to be extremely sure that despite flat temperatures we’re still at fault, what do you plan to do about it? If continued guilt about your carbon footprint is prompting you to consider trading in your CO2-belching SUV for a bicycle, remember that you’ll still exhale between 0.7 and 0.9 kg of carbon dioxide daily just being alive. So if you’re waiting for IPCC to cut you any slack…don’t hold your breath.

SOURCE




James Hansen’s Venusian fantasy

Dr James Hansen of NASA, a climate alarmist, has claimed that if we continue to burn fossil fuel we will end up like Venus. I gather he is recently retired. Maybe just as well.

Four billion years ago this planet did indeed have an atmosphere like Venus: >95% CO2 at 100 atmospheres pressure and no oxygen. But since then the trend for CO2 has been rapidly downward as CO2 was sequestered into limestones, organic life where the carbon was extracted and laid down to make fossil fuels: coal, oil, gas).

2.4 billion years ago the atmosphere was still very high in CO2. We know that because of very ancient barytes (Barium Sulphate) deposits contain additional CO2 which must have been forced in by pressures in excess of 60 atmospheres.

Around one billion years ago atmospheric CO2 was at 35% yet the earth plunged into ‘snowball earth’ where ice extended to the equator. This incidentally makes the claim that CO2 causes warming look rather absurd. After the Cambrian Explosion, life flourished drawing more and more CO2 down into the biosphere, sequestering much of it in the coal deposits. The removal of CO2 caused the atmospheric pressure to also drop, so that by the time of the dinosaurs atmospheric pressure was nearer three modern atmospheres: this enabled the pterosaurs to fly – something they could not do today. Now CO2 levels stand at 0.04%. This is nearly the lowest it has ever been and is potentially dangerously low – plants are beginning to ‘struggle for breath’. If plants die off – we die. The more CO2 that goes into the atmosphere the better for the planet’s ecology, including ourselves.

The current tiny rise over the last couple of centuries is trivial (humans being responsible for perhaps 4% of it) and probably caused by deep ocean warming during the Medieval Warm Period – it takes oceans several hundred years to respond by outgasing CO2.

So just how could the earth become like Venus again and bring on the fate Dr Hansen so fears?

First, all the limestone and other carbonates and all the fossil fuels on and in the crust and mantle must be burnt, turning limestone into lime and CO2 and fossil fuels into water and CO2. This would take many millions of years working round the clock and doing nothing else!

Second, all the water on the planet must be removed, and I mean all of it, including that currently sequestered in minerals as water of crystallization.

Third, having achieved all this (and somehow survived), we must move the planet from its current orbit of some 90 million miles from the sun to a mere 66 million miles. Oh, and stop the earth rotating as it does and put it into reverse to rotate very slowly backwards.

Then, and only then, could we conceivably end up like Venus.

SOURCE

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