The time's up, boys

A lineup of global warming heavyweights said in 2011 that a 17 year period in the temperature record was needed to evaluate the theory.  That time has now passed with no warming -- so the theory is plainly wrong.  Journal abstract below

Separating signal and noise in atmospheric temperature changes: The importance of timescale

B. D. Santer, C. Mears, C. Doutriaux, P. Caldwell, P. J. Gleckler, T. M. L. Wigley, S. Solomon, N. P. Gillett, D. Ivanova, T. R. Karl, J. R. Lanzante, G. A. Meehl, P. A. Stott, K. E. Taylor, P. W. Thorne, M. F. Wehner, and F. J. Wentz

Abstract

We compare global-scale changes in satellite estimates of the temperature of the lower troposphere (TLT) with model simulations of forced and unforced TLT changes. While previous work has focused on a single period of record, we select analysis timescales ranging from 10 to 32 years, and then compare all possible observed TLT trends on each timescale with corresponding multi-model distributions of forced and unforced trends. We use observed estimates of the signal component of TLT changes and model estimates of climate noise to calculate timescale-dependent signal-to-noise ratios (S/N). These ratios are small (less than 1) on the 10?year timescale, increasing to more than 3.9 for 32?year trends. This large change in S/N is primarily due to a decrease in the amplitude of internally generated variability with increasing trend length. Because of the pronounced effect of interannual noise on decadal trends, a multi-model ensemble of anthropogenically-forced simulations displays many 10-year periods with little warming. A single decade of observational TLT data is therefore inadequate for identifying a slowly evolving anthropogenic warming signal. Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature.

Citation: Santer, B. D., et al. (2011), Separating signal and noise in atmospheric temperature changes: The importance of timescale, J. Geophys. Res., 116, D22105, doi:10.1029/2011JD016263.

SOURCE




Does CO2 "hurtle"?

Transcript below of the words of wisdom uttered by  Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) at the recent anti-capitalist march in NYC. He seems to think CO2 is a physical object rather than a gas.  If he had known what he was talking about he might have said "entering"

"We need to stop CO2 from hurtling into the atmosphere. We need do it, we need to work for climate change both globally and locally. Globally, the whole UN is here. Globally, all the leaders of the the world should get together and maybe begin raising consciousness and doing so. Locally, we have to act on our own. We can’t wait for the leaders of the world. Today Mayor DeBlasio did a very good thing by saying he’s going to greatly increase the efficiency of buildings. That’s important."

SOURCE




Green taxes DO harm the British economy, prominent Liberal admits

Vince Cable has launched an astonishing broadside against the party’s green agenda, saying that it imposes too high a cost on industry.

The Business Secretary said industries with high energy costs such as steel, are struggling against their international competitors because of soaring electricity costs.

Chancellor George Osborne has given £250million compensation to ‘energy intensive’ industries, but Mr Cable admitted this ‘doesn’t go the whole hog’.

It is a surprise admission from a Liberal Democrat, because the party is passionate about renewable energy which is funded by levies on households and businesses.

His party colleague, Energy Secretary Ed Davey, clashed with the Conservatives last year when they blocked his attempt to set an even more ambitious green energy target for 2030.

But Mr Cable told a conference fringe event last night: ‘We do have an issue which should concern us as Lib Dems because of our very strong environmental commitments.

Many of our manufacturing companies and exporters – particularly in areas like steel and cement and others which consume lots of electricity – are struggling against international competition because of the cost of energy.’

He said his party had to recognise that forcing businesses abroad would simply ‘export pollution’ to other countries and not benefit the environment.

Mr Cable was talking about why, despite the economic recovery, Britain’s exports have stalled.

He said the main reason is that half of UK exports go to the eurozone which is still emerging from the financial crisis. They have also been battered by the growing strength of the pound against the euro.

But another reason is green energy. ‘They [firms] argue that because we are trying to be green we are imposing costs on them which their competitors don’t have,’ he said.

‘Now of course a lot of that is unfair, and we have now introduced compensation schemes to offset some of those costs, but... it doesn’t go the whole hog by any means.

'There’s an issue here about the extent to which we are willing to tolerate the export of pollution because of our own system of taxing and charging industries which have a high energy content.’

Jeremy Nicholson, director of the Energy Intensive Users Group, representing heavy industry which directly employs 200,000 people and contributes £15billion a year to the economy, said: ‘The penny is dropping.’

Britain’s revenue from green taxes was £43billion in 2013 – the second highest in Europe.

SOURCE





A Rare Debate on the “Settled Science” of Climate Change

Steve Goreham

In 1997 during the Kyoto Protocol Treaty negotiations in Japan, Dr. Robert Watson, then Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was asked about scientists who challenge United Nations conclusions that global warming was man-made. He answered, “The science is settled…we’re not going to reopen it here.” Thus began one of the greatest propaganda lines in support of the theory of human-caused global warming.

On June 19 this year, the University of Northern Iowa held a debate on climate change titled, “Climate Instability: Interpretations of Scientific Evidence.” Dr. Jerry Schnoor of the University of Iowa presented an effective case for the theory of man-made warming and I presented the case for climate change driven by natural causes. The video contains 30 minutes of presentation by each side and then 30 minutes of questions and rebuttal, presented to a small audience of faculty and students.



Formal debates on the theory of human-caused warming are somewhat rare in our society today. Former Vice President Al Gore stated on the CBS Early Show on May 31, 2006:

    "…the debate among the scientists is over. There is no more debate. We face a planetary emergency. There is no more scientific debate among serious people who’ve looked at the science…Well, I guess in some quarters, there’s still a debate over whether the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona, or whether the earth is flat instead of round."

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson declared to Congress in 2010, “The science behind climate change is settled, and human activity is responsible for global warming.” Even President Obama in his 2014 State of the Union address said, “But the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact.”

The Los Angeles Times announced last year that they will not print opinions that challenge the concept that humans are the cause of climate change. The BBC has taken a similar position. Many of our universities will not allow an open debate on climate change. The Department of Meteorology and Climate Science at San Jose State University posted an image last year of two professors holding a match to my book.

In contrast to the “no debate” positions of our political leaders, news media, and many universities, the event at the University of Northern Iowa was a breath of fresh air. Thanks to Dr. Catherine Zeman and the Center for Energy and Environmental Education at UNI for their sponsorship of an open debate on the “settled science” of climate change.

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Children of the Global Warming Scare: coming of age with no global warming over their lifetimes

Children born 18 years ago have lived their lives without any of the 'global warming' with which some people have been intent on scaring them witless.

At school, they would have seen those graphs of relentless rising CO2 levels and rising temperatures in the last decades of the 20th century.  They might well have seen propagandists such as Al Gore up a stepladder declaiming how one caused the other.  They might have heard of a Dr Hansen who on a hot day in 1988 warned the world of those relentless rises.

They could well have seen the MBH hockey stick plot of temperatures published in 1998,  and widely promoted by campaigners including the IPCC for some years.  It was a contrivance of no scientific merit other than serving the PR needs of those intent on scaring politicians, as well as children, about how rising CO2 was dominating our climate.

Well, the CO2 has continued to rise - at rates well above some of the projections used by such as the aforementioned Dr Hansen.  But here's the thing, the global mean temperature, once so widely display in reports, textbooks, press conferences, leaflets, presentations and videos, has not risen along with it.



The temperature rise turned out to be not so relentless after all.    A cause of much rejoicing you might suppose?  Far from it.  Catastrophe-talk has been so advantageous for so many people jumping on the global warming bandwagon, that they will not give up on it so easily,  Merely being contradicted by the data is only something that decent scientists would be troubled by.  As Feynman for example has pointed out, when your theory is contradicted by the data, your theory is wrong.  But decent scientists are few, and self-serving followers of the climate catastrophe cult are many, and they don't really care about the science.

Here are some illustrations of that:

'We've got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing, in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.' - Timothy Wirth, former US senator

'No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits . . . Climate change provides the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.'  - Christine Stewart, former environment minister in Canada

Another key insight for eco-activists is this related one:
'It doesn't matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.'  - Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace

John Christy, one of the world's decent climate scientists has noted this disgraceful and unscientific view out there:  'there is still a strong belief system that greenhouse gases control the climate, and so if that is your belief system, then it doesn’t really matter what the evidence shows.'

It encourages this sort of thing:

'The Communist Party USA’s environmental program “presents a viable plan to carry out on the long march to socialism.”'  - Havel Wolf, Seattle Audubon Society

And this sort of thing:

'Are you interested in reducing your carbon footprint?  How about playing a part in the survival of a virgin rain forest and the numerous species found within? Are you interested in making extra income and helping OURF raise funds in the process? If so, you can get involved in the worldwide effort to combat global warming by participating in the global carbon credit market.'  -  Oppor Tunistic, a fundraiser typical of many.

And even this sort of thing:



I wonder what she will be angry about eight years from now?  Her parents?  Her lost childhood?  The harm and suffering caused by renewables?  The frequent powercuts?  Rotten teaching?  The nightmares she had about global warming?

Meanwhile, alarmers are busy promoting more satisfactory totems for their purposes now that global mean air temperature near the surface has so badly let them down.  Lubos looks more deeply into fatuous temperature targets. They are stupid targets but my goodness they served the alarmists well for decades by giving the impression we could decide on planetary temperatures merely by destroying our civilisation.  'Stupid' is too good a word for such people.  Children of the Warming Scare will have been harmed by them.  Perhaps as adults, they will be able to think more for themselves more, and begin to develop a calmer, more rational, and more optimistic view of their future.

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Climate Change ‘Reforms’ Would Hurt People

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recently designated actor Leonardo DiCaprio as a “U.N. Messenger of Peace” for climate change, touting him as a “credible voice in the environmental movement.”

Can a Hollywood actor be a credible source when it comes to something as complex as climate science? Perhaps. However, simply being a popular Hollywood actor does not, in and of itself, make one an expert on climate change. In fact, it should raise a lot of red flags when people start turning to Hollywood for credible information.

The truth is the dire predictions that were once made by climate change alarmists haven’t come to fruition. Data simply does not show that the climate has been getting warmer, wetter or wilder at the accelerating pace some predicted it would. All the climate summits in the world and all the marches and rallies may ironically increase the collective carbon footprint, but they won’t change reality.

However, drastic measures taken to combat climate change could harm economic growth. Increased environmental regulations, carbon taxes and cap-and-trade schemes all harm the economy.

Where is the indignation from Hollywood over the harm these policies and others like them inflict on people who struggle simply to afford electricity and other sources of needed energy? Increased economic activity is one of the ways to improve quality of life for people in America and across the globe, but there will be less access to jobs, hospitals, schools and businesses if excessive carbon emissions regulations and other such schemes are enacted.

Perhaps this is why the top leaders of countries such as China and India are skipping the summit. These countries have some of the largest populations, segments of which do not have reliable access to energy, and emit much of the world’s carbon. Their absence from this week’s Climate Summit is telling.

Instead of being a “Messenger of Peace,” DiCaprio should aim to be a Messenger of the Market. The free market can improve peoples’ lives, create opportunity and prosperity and simultaneously help with stewarding the environment. That idea probably wouldn’t mesh well with DiCaprio’s progressive inclinations, but it would actually help people live better lives.

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

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