Friday, February 14, 2014


1350+ Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skeptic Arguments Against ACC/AGW Alarm

Preface: The following papers support skeptic arguments against Anthropogenic Climate Change (ACC), Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) or ACC/AGW Alarm [Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW)].

ACC/AGW Alarm: (defined), "concern relating to a perceived negative environmental or socio-economic effect of ACC/AGW, usually exaggerated as catastrophic."

Disclaimer: The inclusion of a paper in this list does not imply a specific personal position to any of the authors. While certain authors on the list cannot be labeled skeptics (e.g. Harold Brooks, Roger Pielke Jr., Roger Pielke Sr.) their paper(s) or results from their paper(s) can still support skeptic's arguments against ACC/AGW alarm. Various papers are mutually exclusive and should be considered independently. This list will be updated and corrected as necessary.

This is a resource for skeptics not a list of skeptics.

Counting Method: Only Peer-Reviewed papers are counted. Supplemental papers are not counted but listed as references in defense of various papers; * Addendums, Comments, Corrections, Erratum, Rebuttals, Replies, Responses, and Submitted papers.

This is a dynamic list that is routinely updated. When a significant new number of peer-reviewed papers is added the list title will be updated with the new larger number. The list intentionally includes an additional 10+ peer-reviewed papers as a margin of error at all times, which gradually increases between updates. Thus the actual number of peer-reviewed papers on the list can be much greater than stated.

Criteria for Inclusion: All counted papers must be peer-reviewed, published in a peer-reviewed journal and support a skeptic argument against ACC/AGW or ACC/AGW Alarm.

Criteria for Removal: Papers will only be removed if it is determined by the editor that they have not properly met the criteria for inclusion or have been retracted by the journal. No paper will be removed because of the existence of a criticism or published correction.

Formatting: All papers are cited as: "Paper Name, Journal Name, Volume, Issue or Number, Pages, Date and Authors". All Supplemental papers are preceded by an asterisk and italicized; * Addendums, Comments, Corrections, Erratum, Replies, Responses and Submitted papers. Ordering of the papers is chronological per category.

Purpose: To provide a resource for peer-reviewed papers that support skeptic arguments against ACC/AGW or ACC/AGW Alarm and to prove that these papers exist contrary to claims otherwise;

More HERE





So why wasn't Thames dredged? In case a rare mollusc was disturbed

The Army has been called in, hundreds of families have been forced to evacuate their homes, and small businesses are wondering if they’ll ever be able to reopen.

But it’s not bad news for all the inhabitants of the Thames Valley. The river’s population of Depressed River Mussels is safe.

As residents faced an uncertain future, it emerged the Environment Agency rejected calls to dredge the flood-hit lower reaches of the Thames because of the presence of the endangered mollusc.

In a 2010 report, seen by the Mail, they ruled out dredging between Datchet and Staines because the river bed was home to the vulnerable creatures.

And even though a public consultation indicated support for de-silting work, the quango said it would be ‘environmentally unacceptable’ due to the ‘high impact on aquatic species’.

But last night a spokesman at the Environment Agency said the report on mussels was ‘badly worded’ and the presence of the mussels would not have been the only argument against dredging.

‘If protected species are living in a river and dredging would reduce the risk of flooding then we would ensure that dredging occurs without having a serious impact on wildlife,’ he said. ‘This is case not just for the Thames but all rivers.’

But he added; ‘An independent study carried out by engineering firm Halcrow has shown that the natural activity of the Thames removes significantly more silt than mechanical dredging would do.’

The revelation came as it emerged that EU waste regulations have made regular dredging on Britain’s rivers uneconomic.

Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that the disposal of silt became so complex and expensive that it was more attractive to take advantage of financial incentives given by Brussels to conservation schemes.

This Despite the Agency describing that stretch of the river as one of the ‘largest and most at-risk developed and undefended flood plains in England’.

Hundreds of houses on the Thames are presently under water and there are fears the situation could get worse.

The Depressed River Mussel, the name of which comes from the flattened shape of its shell, is categorised by environmentalists as ‘vulnerable and threatened’, with the number of rivers it lives in declining by 30 per cent in the past 25 years.

However, some believe the UK actually has the healthiest populations in Europe, with the possible exception of Finland. One river - the Waveney - may have 1.2million of the mussels alone.

The agency’s report said: ‘A number of protected and threatened species are known to be present in the waters of the Lower Thames, including the Depressed River Mussel, which is a UK Biodiversity Action Plan species, and on the IUCN Red List as near-threatened.

‘This poses a constraint on any works to be undertaken within the River Thames itself, especially activities such as dredging.’

A ‘strategy appraisal report’, compiled by the agency into the prospect of defence works on the Lower Thames in August 2010, said dredging was one of the ‘options rejected at preliminary stage’.

However, the previous year the Agency held a public consultation with residents along the banks of the Thames, and the official report shows that they thought ‘dredging of pinch points of the River Thames is essential to provide interim relief from flooding’.

Tory MPs said they were appalled that the Environment Agency appeared to be more interested in promoting the welfare of molluscs than householders.

Douglas Carswell said: ‘Ever since we have given responsibility for flood defences to this central quango, they’ve elevated the interests of the natural over and above the human.

'We can see the consequences today. There is nothing nice about letting our rivers and coastline revert to nature. London used to be a swamp, and if we leave these clowns in charge it will return to that.’

Alok Sharma, Tory MP for the flood-affected Thames-side constituency of Reading West, said: ‘The priority has to be protecting people and property not mussels.

Ultimately, any decision on dredging any river has to take into account the impact on communities living further downstream.’

Regular dredging was undertaken for 50 years on the stretch of river from Datchet to Staines following the 1947 floods, but was stopped in 1996 when the agency took over responsibility.

SOURCE




Unthinking climate change worship harms UK': Tory energy minister hits back at Liberal attack on 'diabolical' coalition partners

Britain has been damaged by ‘unthinking climate change worship’, a senior Tory minister claimed today as the coalition parties clashed over going green.

Lib Dem Energy Secretary Ed Davey is using the floods crisis to launch an extraordinary attack on ‘diabolical’ and ‘wilfully ignorant, head in the sand, nimbyist’ Conservatives who question global warming.

But Conservative energy minister Michael Fallon has hit back, insisting now is not the time for ‘political’ squabbling.

The storms which have wreaked havoc across much of England and Wales have reignited the debate about the role of climate change on altering weather patterns.

In a speech to Institute for Public Policy Research, Mr Davey insisted the disaster that has befallen much of England demonstrates ‘the possible consequences of a world in which extreme weather events are much more likely’.

Mr Davey said climate change denial and Euro-scepticism are a ‘diabolical cocktail’ that threatens efforts to tackle global warming.

The attempt to exploit the flooding crisis to attack the Tories came as David Cameron came under pressure over his ‘money is no object’ pledge on aiding victims.

But Mr Fallon, the junior Tory minister in Mr Davey’s department, condemned the outburst by his boss. He told the Standard: ‘This is not a time for Coalition squabbling. We should all be focusing on getting people’s power back on and protecting the sub stations that are in danger of being flooded.

‘Unthinking climate change worship has damaged British industry and put up consumer bills.  'It’s David Cameron who is cutting green taxes and steering Europe away from artificial targets.’

Mr Davey’s intervention will be seen as an attack on Environment Secretary Owen Paterson in particular, who harbours doubts about the degree to which man has contributed to global warming.

Mr Davey added: ‘From the right, fringes of the Conservative Party and Ukip are parroting the arguments of the most discredited climate change deniers – seizing on any anomaly in the climate data to attempt to discredit the whole.

‘This is undermining public trust in the scientific evidence for climate change – overwhelming though it is. And we can see around us today the possible consequences of a world in which extreme weather events are much more likely. This type of climate change denying conservatism is wilfully ignorant, head in the sand, nimbyist conservatism.

‘And when married to the europhobia innate to parts of the Conservative Party, you have a diabolical cocktail that threatens the whole long-term structure of UK climate change and energy policy.

'If you accept the logic of climate change, you have to accept the logic of European co-operation to tackle it.’

He was backed by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who said: ‘It’s not a secret that in the Conservative Party you’ve got a fair number of people who just don’t accept the reality of climate change.’

Speaking on his weekly radio phone-in, the Lib Dem minister told LBC 97.3: ‘These very violent and volatile weather patterns are linked in some shape or form to climate change.

‘Other people are entitled to say, no we think it’s all baloney, but I think at a certain point you’ve just got to say, look come on, how many more times do you need to be told by people who know what they’re talking about that this happening, and we’ve got to do something about it.’

Former Conservative Chancellor Lord Lawson insisted there was no evidence that extreme weather was linked to climate change, and urged scientists to admit they did not know what was happening.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'I think we want to focus not on this extremely speculative and uncertain area. I don’t blame the climate scientists for not knowing.

'Climate and weather is quite extraordinarily complex and this is a very new form of science. All I blame them for is pretending they know when they don’t.'

SOURCE





Obama’s big freeze for America

An Obama Department of Energy official told the House Energy and Commerce Committee today that Administration policies aimed at coal fired electric generation would increase the wholesale cost of electricity by 70 to 80 percent.

The admission that Obama environmental policy proscriptions targeting the coal fired utility industry would dramatically increase the cost of turning on the lights, as well as heating and cooling homes is news. But this Administration’s gross disregard for the least of these in our society is the headline even though it is not surprising to those paying attention.

As the Energy Department is trying to almost double the price of coal fired electric generation, the EPA has regulations that would ban the production and sale of 80 percent of wood burning stoves in the country. With 12 percent of all homes in the U.S. primarily dependent upon burning wood for heat and cooking, the EPA measure will hit right at the heart of many people’s ability to stay warm in the long, cold winters.

Apparently, the Obama Administration would rather that people—who are struggling to keep their heads above water under the yoke of his failed economic policies—freeze to death as the federal government strips away affordable and available home heating options.

This is liberal compassion.  And it can be anticipated that more tax dollars flow to government programs to help the indigent with their heating costs, now that their environmental policies have exacerbated the need.

After all, the utility company gets the blame when electricity costs go up, not the federal government that deliberately drove those costs through the roof.

And no one can figure out why they can’t find a wood stove anymore for their home, so they are tied to the electrical grid for heating and cooking.

But politicians get credit when they give these same people other people’s money to pay for some of the increased costs, and the very victims of the crazy environmental policies that caused the problems then reward the very politicians responsible with their votes.

In a nutshell, that is the big government environmentalist scam.  Create market scarcity through regulations, meet scarcity with government handouts which entices your victims to vote for you and repeat process.  All the while, our nation’s economy gets destroyed.

SOURCE




Olympians blame global warming for lack of snow in sunny Sochi



ClimateDepot founder Marc Morano ridiculed Olympians who signed onto a letter urging a U.N. global warming treaty in the wake of low snow totals for the Sochi Olympics, noting that record snow is occurring throughout the world and they picked “the most southern Russian city with palm trees.”

Morano spoke with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto about the letter, which saw over 100 Olympic athletes write a letter claiming climate change “threatens” this and future Winter Olympics. They highlighted the importance of signing a comprehensive, global climate change treaty at a 2015 U.N. meeting on global warming.

But Morano pointed out that Sochi’s position in Russia — thousands of miles south of Moscow and not far from the Turkish maritime border — lends the resort town an almost tropical feel that doesn’t produce much snow. Meanwhile, vast swathes of the Northern Hemisphere, including the storm-socked East Coast, remain buried under snow and ice.

SOURCE





The martyrdom of Mark Steyn

James Delingpole

When I first read, many months ago, that the notorious US climate scientist Michael Mann was suing the notorious right-wing bastard Mark Steyn for defamation, I admit that I felt a little piqued.

Obviously a libel trial is not something any sane person would wish to court; and naturally I’m a massive fan of Steyn’s. Nevertheless, after all the work I’ve dedicated over the years to goading Mann, I found it a bit bloody annoying that Steyn — a relative latecomer to the climate change debate — should have been the one who ended up stealing all my courtroom glory.

What made me doubly jealous was that this was a case Steyn was guaranteed to win. In the unlikely event it came to court — which I didn’t think it would, given Mann’s longstanding aversion to any form of public disclosure regarding his academic research — the case would fall down on the fact that defamation is so hard to prove in the US, especially when it involves publicly funded semi-celebrities who are expected to take this sort of thing on the chin.

Since then, though, much has changed. It now looks — go to Steynonline.com for the full story — as if Steyn is going to be up there on his own, fighting and financing his case without the support of his magazine, National Review; that the outcome is not as certain as it seemed at the beginning; and that this hero deserves all the help we can give him.

Why? Well, the fact that I even have to explain this shows what a cowardly, snivelling, career-safe, intellectually feeble, morally compromised age we inhabit. By rights, Mann v Steyn should be the 21st-century equivalent of the Scopes monkey trial, with believers in free speech, proponents of the scientific method and sympathetic millionaires and billionaires all piling in to Steyn’s defence with op eds, learned papers, and lavish funds to buy the hottest of hotshot lawyers.

Instead, what do I read? Crap like, ‘Steyn’s out of order: he shouldn’t have been so rude about the judge who mishandled the initial hearing.’ (OK, maybe he shouldn’t — but what are you supposed to say about judges who mishandle your case? ‘Nice job, ma’am’?) Crap like, ‘And he’s going to take the National Review down with him.’ (No he isn’t. That’s what libel insurance is for.) Crap like, ‘Well, he shouldn’t have used such-and-such a word or written that polemic in quite so inflammatory and offensive a way.’ (Yes that’s right. Polemics should be cautious, dry, legalistic, tame. Otherwise people might read them and have their minds changed.)

So let’s just cut through that crap and remind ourselves briefly what we know about the plaintiff. Michael Mann was an obscure young physicist-turned-climatologist who rose without trace in 1998 with the publication in Nature of his ‘hockey stick’ chart showing dramatic and apparently unprecedented late-20th-century global warming.

There followed almost instant fame, on which Mann has traded ever since — gaining tenure at Penn State University, drawing millions in public funding for research, often called on by the Guardian and the New York Times to sum up the state of climate science. Al Gore used a version of Mann’s hockey stick in his Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth. The IPCC used it five times in its Third Assessment Report and promoted Mann to lead author.

But the hockey stick, on which Mann’s reputation largely rests, was and is a nonsense. It obliterates the medieval warm period; it is unduly reliant on proxy data — bristlecone pine samples — which are known to be unreliable; it is dependent on a flawed algorithm which, according to every statistical authority who has ever looked at the subject, creates the same hockey-stick data almost regardless of the information you feed into it.

Surely if you’re going to sue someone for defamation, this must involve an examination of the reputation said to be worth defending. What would this say about Mann, onlie begetter of arguably the most comprehensively discredited artefact in recent climate science history?

And if Mann’s scientific reputation really matters to him so much, maybe he ought first to do a bit of reading on how world-class scientists actually behave. He could do worse than read Paul Johnson’s account in Modern Times of how Einstein proposed his general theory of relativity. Einstein insisted that before his claims were taken seriously, they must first be verified by empirical observation, in the form of three specific tests. Of the final one — the red shift — Einstein wrote: ‘If it were proved that this effect does not exist in nature then the whole theory would have to be abandoned.’

Einstein’s rigour and integrity inspired Karl Popper to form his influential theories on falsification: that a scientific theory is only useful if it contains the key to its own destruction. This, critics argue, is the fundamental flaw with anthropogenic global warming theory: it has been couched in such a way as to be unfalsifiable; it is being kept alive not by science and free enquiry, but by the kind of appeals to authority we see exemplified by Mann’s response to Steyn’s criticisms.

Mann may or may not have a case against Steyn on technical grounds; but in terms of the bigger argument about empiricism, free speech and the scientific method, he doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Steyn gets this and — as he did in his case against the Ontario Human Rights Committee — is laying his neck on the line not solely because he’s a show-off and an awkward sod but for the greater cause of western civilisation. Now go to his website Steynonline.com and read what you can do to support him.

SOURCE

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