Warmist Rahmstorf is now rubbishing statistical significance -- and he thinks a few THOUSANDTHS of one degree Celsius are important



Stefan Rahmstorf is a  German oceanographer and big-time Warmist who got his doctorate in New Zealand! He writes very well and often in English and has been richly rewarded for it.  He is definitely a man who knows on which side his bread is buttered.

His oceanographic background does however make him skeptical of the usual but absurd Warmist claim that the deep oceans suddenly started storing "missing" heat 18 years ago.   So he has to deny that the heat is missing.  Hence his latest article: Recent global warming trends: significant or paused or what?". In other words, he  challenges the now generally accepted warming "pause". Consensus can be wrong, apparently.

I am not going to reproduce any of it as it is graphics intensive but, if you look, you can see that at the top of his figure 1 he gives the trend as 0.175 degrees Celsius per decade. The "5" in that figure is five thousandths of one degree.  I have long ridiculed Warmist use of hundredths of a degree and think that I asked rhetorically once whether they would get around to using thousandths eventually.  That day has come.  As Oscar Wilde often said, nature imitates art.

But his main point is that although there has been no significant warming in the 21st century, there HAS been warming.  It's just that the warming is not significant statistically.  That is a defensible statement.  There's a limit to what statistical significance tells us.  But he skates around WHY the warming is not statistically significant.  It is because the warming is TRIVIAL.  When you can show years differing only by hundredths and thousandths of one degree in temperature, you are showing warming that is for all practical purposes non-existent.  The statistical significance is, in other words, telling us something important.  We do well to heed it.

Nice try, though.  Warmism is one unending attempt to deceive -- JR.





More lying with statistics

I taught statistics for a number of years  at a major Australian university and one of the major reasons for studying statistics is to help you to detect improper use of them.  And one of the classic deceptive techniques which enables you to prove almost anything with statistics can be seen in full bloom below:  Careful choice of your beginning and endpoints.  

A dead giveaway is that for anything they describe they choose different beginning and endpoints.  And the timespans examined are quite short. Why not just start with the begining of the 20th century for all the phenomena they describe?  The available statistics do go back that far.

I can think of one reason.  As Steve Goddard has repeatedly documented, there were some huge adverse weather events around the beginning of the 20th century  -- events that put anything recent into the shade.

And why is their commentary on temperature so short?   One would have thought that that was the BIG issue. Answer:  They are embarrassed by the fact that global temperature has plateaued for 18 years now. There was some slight warming in the late 20th century but that has long ceased.  It is probably true that this year will be warmer than 1992 but so are all the years of the 21st century.  And the different years of the 21st century differ from one-another only in hundredths of one degree Celsius, which is vanishingly trivial.

And once you know that, all the other recent changes they claim become irrelevant.  The recent changes concerned may be due to many things but they CANNOT be due to global warming  -- because there hasn't been any

Twenty years ago world leaders met for the first ever climate change summit but new figures show that since then the globe has become hotter and weather has become more weird.

Numbers show that carbon dioxide emissions are up, the global temperature has increased, sea levels are rising along with the earth's population.

The statistics come as more than 190 nations opened talks on Monday at a United Nations global warming conference in Lima, Peru.

It is hoped the summit will pave the way for an international treaty on climate change, which would follow on from the first ever Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, where leaders pledged to try and tackle climate change.

Now data since 1983 has been analysed to show how the global climate is changing.

And Professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University Michael Oppenheimer said: 'Simply put, we are rapidly remaking the planet and beginning to suffer the consequences.'

STORMY WEATHER

The first figures show that since 1992, there have been more than 6,600 major climate, weather and water disasters worldwide, causing more than $1.6 trillion in damage and killing more than 600,000 people, according to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters in Belgium, which tracks the world's catastrophes.

While climate-related, not all can be blamed on man-made warming or climate change.

But, extreme weather has noticeably increased over the years, says Debby Sapir, who runs the centre and its database.

From 1983 to 1992 the world averaged 147 climate, water and weather disasters each year. Over the past 10 years, that number has jumped to an average 306 a year.

In the United States, an index of climate extremes — hot and cold, wet and dry — kept by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has jumped 30 percent from 1992 to 2013, not counting hurricanes, based on 10-year averages.

Worldwide, the 10-year average for weather-related losses adjusted for inflation was $30 billion a year from 1983-92, according to insurance giant Swiss Re.

From 2004 to 2013, the cost was more than three times that on average, or $131 billion a year.

Ms Sapir and others say it would be wrong to pin all, or even most, of these increases on climate change alone.

But they note a trend of growing extremes and more disasters, and that fits with what scientists have long said about global warming.

TEMPERATURE

In terms of temperature, 2014 is set to be the warmest in record, with the globe breaking six monthly heat records in 2014 and 47 since 1992. The last monthly cold record set was in 1916.

The average annual temperature for 2014 is on track to be 14.6 degrees Celsius, compared with 14.1 degrees Celsius in 1992.

More guff HERE





Obama To Subsidize ‘Green’ Trains In Mexico

Not content with subsidizing green technology domestically, the Obama administration is now spending U.S. tax dollars to upgrade Mexican freight trains.

In September, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) approved a grant worth nearly $600,000 for the Asociación Mexicana de Ferrocarriles (AMF), a trade association for the Mexican rail industry, “to speed the adoption of green power technologies throughout Mexico’s freight rail locomotive fleet,” according to a press release.

“USTDA is pleased to partner again with Mexico’s national railroad association to support freight rail modernization efforts, this time focusing on cleaner and more efficient locomotives,” USTDA Regional Director Nathan Younge said at the time.

AMF officially opened the bidding process this month, asking “interested U.S. firms that are qualified on the basis of experience and capability to develop a Technical Assistance for the Green Locomotive Technologies Project in Mexico.” (RELATED: Up to 50 Obama-Backed Green Energy Companies Bankrupt or Troubled)

Mexico’s freight railway system is owned by the national government, but operated by private companies under government charters who coordinate their activities through the auspices of the AMF.

The technical assistance will focus on applying new technologies to diesel locomotives that will reduce emissions while improving fuel efficiency, such as “advanced auxiliary power units to retrofit older freight locomotives, emissions control systems, [and] idle reduction technologies.”

According to the solicitation, “only U.S. firms and individuals may bid on this USTDA-financed activity,” and “all goods and services to be provided by the selected firm shall have their nationality, source, and origin in the U.S. or host country.”

The program will also “examine the potential development of federal- and state-level government incentive programs in Mexico,” indicating that additional subsidies could be awarded in the future.

Even without direct government grants, planning documents leave open the possibility that Mexico could seek additional financing through entities such as the Export-Import Bank. Both Ex-Im and the USTDA have been accused in the past of engaging in crony capitalism, with opponents claiming they use government money to pick winners and losers.

“At a time when this Administration plans regulations on railcars that will create crippling cost increases for U.S. railroads, it is absurd that they are spending taxpayer dollars to retrofit and upgrade Mexican rail capacity,” Rick Manning, Vice President of Public Policy and Communications at Americans for Limited Government, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Once again, Obama’s policies harm U.S. productivity and jobs, while benefiting industry in other countries,” Manning added.

The project is included in the Major Infrastructure Projects in Mexico resource guide, which was developed “in order to support the country’s ambitious reform efforts and position U.S. firms for success implementing critical infrastructure projects,” which are expected to exceed $600 billion over the next four years.

“We believe this guide will serve as a key resource for U.S. firms interested in supporting priority projects associated with Mexico’s new National Infrastructure Program,” said USTDA Director Leocadia Zak.

The USTDA did not respond to requests for comment from The Daily Caller News Foundation.

SOURCE




Obama Wants Kids to Learn About Global Warming

Perhaps unable to convince older Americans of the severity of global warming, President Barack Obama is hoping to have better luck with the next generation by turning to the classroom.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on Wednesday announced it will launch a new initiative aimed at climate education and literacy that will distribute science-based information – in line with the administration's position on the issue – to students, teachers and the broader public.

Educators, government officials, philanthropic leaders and those from the private sector will participate in a roundtable discussion at the White House Wednesday. The participants will focus on how to spread more resources to teachers and increase professional development and training related to climate change for educators, federal employees and informal educators, such as those working in national parks, museums, aquariums or botanic gardens.

"If you believe, like I do, that something has to be done on this, then you're going to have to speak out," Obama said in June at the University of California–Irvine commencement ceremony. "You've got to educate your classmates, and colleagues, and family members and fellow citizens, and tell them what's at stake."

With many states transitioning to the Next Generation Science Standards, opposition to issues such as climate change and evolution has resurfaced with a new intensity. At least 12 states and the District of Columbia have adopted the standards, which place an increased emphasis on the controversial topics and were developed by a group of national science and education organizations – including one also involved in developing the Common Core State Standards.

A Gallup analysis in April showed that 1 in 4 Americans are global warming skeptics and are not worried much or at all about it. All of those deemed skeptics said the rise in the Earth's temperature is due to natural changes in the environment, rather than pollution, and that global warming will not pose a serious threat in the future.

Meanwhile, a separate survey from Yale and George Mason universities found just more than half of Americans – 55 percent – said they were at least somewhat worried about global warming, while only 11 percent said they were very worried about it. The same poll found 66 percent of Americans think global warming is happening, and that half of Americans think global warming – if it is occurring – is largely human-caused.

The White House initiative pulls together more than two dozen advocacy and education groups from more than 30 states that responded to a call for increased leadership in climate education made by the administration in October. Some of the groups include the Chicago Botanic Garden, the American Meteorological Society, the Alliance for Climate Education, the Los Angeles Unified School District, the Philadelphia School and the Green Schools Alliance.

The groups will provide fellowship programs, teacher training opportunities and increased attention to public education on climate change through museums, aquariums, botanic gardens and zoos. The combined efforts are expected to reach millions of students, teachers, federal employees and visitors to national parks and public nature facilities.

The National Park Service, for example, will develop a plan by the end of 2015 that will help employees create and deliver "effective climate change messages in the programs and exhibits" in national parks, according to a fact sheet from the White House. Each year, more than 270 million people visit the 401 national parks.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with other science agencies, will create digital game prototypes that teachers and students can use to learn more about climate change. And the Alliance for Climate Education plans to bring more than 150,000 high school students to a program on climate science education, and will train 80 students as "climate leaders" through its Action Fellowship.

"Under President Obama’s Climate Action Plan, important steps have already been taken to cut carbon pollution, prepare for the impacts of climate change and lead international efforts to fight this global challenge," the White House fact sheet says. "Continued progress into the future will depend on ensuring a climate-smart citizenry and a next-generation American workforce of city planners, community leaders, engineers and entrepreneurs who understand the urgent climate change challenge and are equipped with the knowledge, skills and training to seek and implement solutions."

SOURCE




Ecopop lost, but its miserabilism lives on

Switzerland rejected green immigration proposals - now it needs to reject green principles

By Andrea Seaman, a school student in Switzerland

In a national referendum last weekend, the Swiss decisively rejected Ecopop, a proposal to cut net annual immigration to a maximum of 0.2 per cent of Switzerland’s population. If it had been successful, it would have limited the number of permitted immigrants to about 16,000 per year. To put this into perspective, 144,000 migrants entered Switzerland in 2012.

Advocates of Ecopop – a 40-year-old movement that links ecological betterment to population control – claimed that Switzerland’s ‘natural basis for living’ was being destroyed by too many humans. Hence they wanted to limit the number of people living in Switzerland, as well as providing free family planning, particularly in Africa, at the Swiss taxpayers’ behest.

In a video on the Ecopop website, poverty is blamed on there being too many people. So, according to the Ecopop logic, poverty can only be tackled by reducing the number of people living in it. Especially in Africa.

It was unsurprising, then, that throughout the campaign, Ecopop was accused of being racist. But its supporters vehemently rejected the charge, stating that, if the Earth is to be protected, its population needs reducing. Racism, they said, has nothing to do with it. And up to a point, I believe them. They find the whole of humanity appalling, not just Africans.

On Ecopop’s website, the politician Thomas Minder urged readers to ‘Say yes to nature’, and asked rhetorically: ‘40,000 new apartments, 50,000 additional cars and 410 square metres for every new immigrant, every year?’ Rather than seeing such things as causes for celebration, he laments them. Minder claims he is motivated by worries over our children’s futures. He argued that we have to stop what he calls the concreting over of nature in the present. And he talked about the ‘egotistical unfairness of taking away the chance of our descendants to grow by growing all we can grow now’.

But Minder does not really care about posterity. What he really wants to do is to avoid being part of the generation that uses up the last available resources. That dubious honour can then fall to a generation yet to be born. That’s generational fairness for you.

Another advocate of the Ecopop initiative, the ex-director of both the Swiss federal office of the environment and WWF Switzerland, Philippe Roch, accused the Swiss government of ‘clinging blindly to limitless growth in economics, population and housebuilding’. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our government has accepted the green dogma of limits. It is using Roch-type assumptions to limit economic growth; it has closed borders; and it cleaves to tough planning laws that inhibit mass housebuilding.

That 74 per cent voted against Ecopop was not a surprise, however. Its opponents span the political spectrum. Even the Green Party distanced itself from the Ecopop initiative. It was simply too radical a proposal to be accepted by our existing parties. The main establishment parties warned Swiss voters about the dangers of saying yes to Ecopop. They rightly said that our bilateral agreements with Europe on trade, immigration, education and culture would be impossible to maintain. They correctly noted that our economy would be weakened by a reduction in immigration because we depend on foreigners to do most of the work Swiss people deem too menial to do themselves.

Yet, Ecopop’s opponents frequently used ecological arguments against it. They said it makes no difference in the fight against climate change whether a person emits CO2 in France or in Switzerland. Urs Leugger-Eggiman of Pro Natura, yet another organisation committed to saving nature from humanity, argued that Ecopop is picking up on an important problem in society called ‘growth compulsion’, before adding that reducing immigration is the wrong answer. The real solution, says Leugger-Eggiman, must involve tackling humanity itself. No amount of immigration-cutting is going to change man’s addiction to growth.

This is why Ecopop’s defeat is only half worth cheering. It seems that even Ecopop’s critics share its basic premise: that man is a problem and that economic growth and development need constraining. Ecopop’s advocates and its critics differ only on the best way to deal with the problem of humanity and its addiction to growth. Many renounced Ecopop while embracing its principles.

The referendum was a fight to replace one radical eco-policy with another more moderate one. As Tom Paine might say: A casual discontinuance of the practice of misanthropy is not a discontinuation of its principles.

SOURCE





China Pledges $0 to U.N. Climate Fund, Then Complains About Amount Allotted to Fund

The Chinese representative at the U.N. climate conference in Peru scolded developed countries Thursday for not pouring enough money into a global climate fund intended to help poorer countries cope with climate change – but China has pledged nothing.

China today boasts the world’s biggest economy, having overtaken the United States according to new International Monetary Fund (IMF) figures. China is also the world’s biggest emitter of “greenhouse gases” blamed for climate change.

At the talks in Lima, China’s negotiator Su Wei singled out Australia, whose conservative government – labeled a “pariah” by climate activists – said last month that instead of contributing to the Green Climate Fund (GCF), it will prioritize climate-related assistance to developing countries through its own development programs.

Despite its fast-growing and now world-leading economy, China is classified a developing country, and as a result has dodged “greenhouse gas” (GHG) emission-reduction targets set for developed nations under the Kyoto Protocol and other international climate agreements. It was just last month that China agreed, for the first time, to work on reducing emissions.

Launched in 2011, the GCF is designed to help developing countries curb GHH emissions and cope with occurrences blamed on climate change, such as rising sea levels. The aim is to raise $100 billion a year from public and private sources, by 2020.

At a pledging conference in Berlin last month, more than 20 governments committed a total of $9.3 billion for the fund. Far in the lead was the United States, with a $3 billion pledge, followed by Japan with $1.5 billion.

Su told reporters in Lima Thursday that the total pledge of $9.3 billion was “far from adequate,” noting the large gap between that amount and the 2020 goal of $100 billion a year. “We don’t have any clear roadmap or clear picture of meeting that target.”

He said the Australian decision not to give to the fund was “not good news.”

Su also complained that GHG emission cuts planned by developed countries before 2020 were not big enough, pointing to Australia, Japan and Canada in particular. China’s own recent announcement sets a 2030 goal for emissions to peak, but does not specify reduction percentage targets for the years leading up to that date. Su said Thursday China was still researching the issue of an absolute cap on emissions.

(By contrast President Obama on the same day as the Chinese announcement said the new U.S. goal was to reduce emissions by 26-28 percent by 2025, compared with 2005 levels.)

Despite Su’s criticism of wealthy countries’ commitments to the GCF, China has not itself pledged any money to the fund. (At a U.N. climate meeting in New York last September China did offer to support “south-south” cooperation on climate change.)

Among countries that did make pledges to the GCF in Berlin last month were some whose economies are dwarfed by China’s. Luxembourg, for instance, pledged $6 million, Panama $1 million and Mongolia $50,000.

According to new IMF data which for the first time saw China’s economy overtake that of the United States, China’s 2014 national economic output (GDP in purchasing-power parity terms) is $17.6 trillion.

By comparison, Luxembourg’s is $50.6 billion, Panama’s is $64.5 billion and Mongolia’s is $29.7 billion.

Even developed countries that made significantly larger GCF pledges have modest economies compared to China’s:  Finland, with a GDP of $221 billion, pledged $100 million to the fund, and Denmark, with a GDP of $248.6 billion, pledged $70 million.

Apart from China, other countries with large economies that have made no pledge to the GCF include Russia, with a GDP of $3.5 trillion, and Brazil, with a GDP of $3.07 trillion.

The GCF announced this week it will be ready to start accepting proposals for financing projects by 2015.

The talks underway in the Peruvian capital from December 1-12 aim to pave the way for a global pact on climate change, meant to be adopted at a major U.N. gathering in Paris late next year.
Secretary of State John Kerry, an enthusiastic proponent of international action on climate change, plans to join the more than 12,000 negotiators from almost 200 countries in Lima next week.

Speaking in Brussels on Wednesday, Kerry described the Peru conference as “the lead-in to a year of important focus on climate change and high hopes for success in Paris next December.”

“With the ongoing meetings in Peru and what will follow over the course of the next year and the U.S. president, President Obama’s, pledge of a contribution of $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund and the E.U.’s early commitments, we believe that we are making clear that the Obama administration and the United States are all-in on this issue and committed to try to take steps that are long overdue,” he said.

The total amount pledged to the GCF so far is $9.3 billion. The contributors are: the United States $3 billion, Japan $1.5 billion, Britain $1.1 billion, Germany $1 billion, France $1 billion, Sweden $500 million, Italy $300 million, Canada $264 million, Spain $150 million, the Netherlands $100 million, Finland $100 million, Switzerland $100 million, South Korea $100 million, Denmark $70 million, Mexico $10 million, Czech Republic $6 million, Luxembourg $6 million, New Zealand $3 million, Norway $1.3 million, Panama $1 million, Monaco $300,000, Indonesia $250,000 and Mongolia $50,000.

SOURCE

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