Amusing:  Another "hottest" year

If 27 HUNDREDTHS of one degree floats your boat, good luck. Your boat will still probably sink, however, when you note that it is only the fiddle-prone terrestrial measurements that show "hottest".  All the satellite data show no such thing. The fact that neither NCDC, GISS nor JMA have acknowledged the disagreement with satellite data reeks of collusion and fraud. Not that there is anything new about that.  The way the Warmists contantly act as if statistically insignificant differences of hundredths of a degree meant something is scientific dishonesty in itself.


Graph from JMA.  The differences in the the leaping line above are expressed in tenths of a degree.  If the line were drawn in terms of whole degrees, it would be dead-flat horizontal.  It is only the application of a statistical magnifying glass that makes it look as if something is going on

And here's some fun:


What's the difference between the two graphs?  A great leaping line now looks very flat, does it not?  Yet it is exactly the same graph from the same source, displaying the same  information.  I have just altered the html that dictates how it is displayed.  And it now gives a picture closer to reality. It gives a better impression of how flat the temperatures have in fact been.  Warmist graphs are essentially exercises in chartmanship -- how to lie with graphs.  The figures on the graph are not the main problem.  The problem is picturing tiny changes as huge -- using wide calibrations down the side of the graph.


The Japan Meteorological Association (JMA) has become the latest organisation to claim that 2014 was the hottest on record.

They say it was 0.27°C warmer than the average from 1981 to 2010, and 0.63°C warmer than the 20th century average - without the help of an El Niño weather event.

And according to their data, ten of the hottest years on record have come since 1998. And none of them differ from one another to a statistically significant degree

The JMA joins Nasa and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) in the US, and the UK Met Office, as one of four major global temperature 'keepers' to reveal 2014 was the hottest ever.

All four make their readings separately to one another - and they have all individually come to the same conclusion that last year was the hottest since records began in the late 19th century.

Experts say the rate at which it is warming is alarmingly quick.  What is quick about 7 tenths of a degree per CENTURY? (See the trend figure at the top of the graph)

According to the JMA, the average temperature last year was 0.27°C warmer than the average from 1981 to 2010, and 0.63°C warmer than the 20th Century average.

And it is by far the hottest year in 120 years of keeping records.  Many records go back further than that -- the Central England dataset, for instance

The findings also reveal there has been no warming slowdown in the past decade, despite claims to the contrary by skeptics. No change in 18 years is not a slowdown?  It's a dead halt!

Some believed there was a slowdown because of an abnormally extreme El Niño weather effect in 1998 which was the second hottest year on record.

As seen in the graph above, years after 1998 were seen to be cooler, leading some to suggest climate change had been slowing.

However, this data shows that, although cooler than 1998, the top ten hottest years on record all came in the last 16 years - showing there has been no climate slowdown. It shows nothing of the sort.  It shows that temperatures have plateaued

Before 1998, no year came close to approaching these top ten in temperature.  How close is close?  Is two tenths of one degree not close?

Various organisations are preparing to release data, or have already, which shows that 2014 was the hottest year on record across the globe.

While some places, like the US, may have experienced a variation that caused some places to get very slightly colder, overall the global trend is a worrying increase, far faster than any natural phenomenon could cause.  Absurd.  The geological record shows previous rapid warming.  And this isn't warming.  It's stasis

It heavily suggests humans are driving climate change through the emissions of CO2.  Stasis suggests warming?

More crap HERE





German Physicist Sees Dangerous Return To “Medieval Scholasticism"

At EIKE distinguished German physicist and climate expert Prof. Dr. Horst-Joachim Lüdecke writes how we are witnessing a notable paradigm shift in climate research today: the resurrection of medieval scholasticism. In plain language: the science of the Dark Ages.

Scholasticism dominated medieval western Europe and was based on the writings of the Church Fathers, with strict adherence to traditional doctrines. To say the least, it was effective in stifling enlightenment.

The breakthrough from this crusty, dogmatic approach, Lüdecke writes, came with Galileo, who gave highest priority to systematic and numerical measurement, which today remains the standard method of science. With Galileo’s approach hypotheses or theories that are not confirmed by measurements get discarded and are no longer pursued. The method led to giant leaps and bounds in technology, medicine and science, from which today humanity is benefitting immensely.

Richard Richard Feynman summarized Galileo’s approach beautifully, saying that if a hypothesis disagrees with observations, then it’s wrong.

This fundamental approach, the Lüdecke writes, is no longer in use in climate science and, what is worse, the old medieval scholastic method is even now dangerously invading other fields of science.

According to Lüdecke, the key question today: Is the climate change witnessed since 1850 unusual, and thus due to man, or is it well within the range of natural variability the planet has seen throughout its history? The German physicist says a hypothesis’s burden of proof is clearly not on its skeptics, but on the one proposing the hypothesis. He writes:

"It is senseless to favor a certain hypothesis – senseless according to our still valid scientific paradigm – when no confirming measured data can be shown to support it. One can occupy himself with a hypothesis, put it at the center of his research, and even have complete faith in it. However one cannot use it as a basis for taking rational action without first having confirmed measurements. In summary: If we cannot observe any unusual climate activity since 1850 compared to the times before that, then we have no choice but to assume natural climate change.”

In order to assume there has been “unusual activity”, Lüdecke says, it would be necessary to have comprehensive data about the oceans before 1850. This doesn’t exist, and so a comparison is not possible. Lüdecke reminds: “It is mandatory to prove that the climate data since 1850 are indeed unusual when compared to the period before that.” A comparison is already very difficult to do with atmospheric temperatures. With ocean data: “Who today can tell us what temperature distributions the oceans had back during the Medieval Warm Period?” Lüdecke writes. Assuming that today is unusual without being able to compare it to anything from the past is not science at all, he tells us.

When it comes to extreme weather events, there are plenty of paintings and recorded accounts showing that they too existed earlier on, and that today’s events are nothing new, Lüdecke writes. Even the IPCC has reached that conclusion. The German climatologist puts the assumptions of more future extreme weather events in the category of “crystal balls” and not modern science.

Prof. Lüdecke also blasts the over-emphasis on climate models, writing that “the models fail already for the past” and that they cannot even predict the next El Nino correctly or the missing tropospheric hot spot. He writes:

"Using the R. Feynman yardstick these climate models are not only inaccurate or a bit false; they are totally false. […] Anyone selling climate forecasts from climate models as scientific is using a medieval paradigm. He is conducting moral sciences instead of physics.”

Ouch. Lüdecke also then calls the alliance between the IPCC and policymaking “dubious” and one that was set up with the target of reaching an already predetermined result. He calls the manner in which policymaking is moving ahead “embellished nonsense”.

In his conclusion the German professor advises those engaged in a discussion with alarmists, or listening to a presenation by an alarmist, to not go easy on them. There are three points, he advises:

1. The modern science paradigm of priority on measurement over theoretical model remains valid. The climate alarmist must prove that his hypothsies is confirmed by observations and measurements. It is not up to you to prove his hypothesis is false.

2. When the climate alarmist “starts beating around the bush” insists that he name a peer-reviewed paper that proves, based on measurements, that the climate change since 1850 is unprecedented compared to earlier times (there isn’t any).

3. Don’t let yourself be drawn into the discussion over climate models. That the models are unable to describe the climate development means they are false, as to point no. 1.”

The distinguished professor ends by blasting climate policymakers, warning they are bordering on “criminal activity” in their conscious misuse of science to formulate policy:

"We are allowing hundreds of thousands of people in the poorest developing countries to starve in order to be able to finance climate protection and energy transformation that are not based on today’s valid science paradigm. That is not only idiotic, but also borders on criminal activity by the politically responsible persons.”

SOURCE





Record CO2 Coincides With Record-Breaking Crop Yields, 'Greening of Globe'

Eight years after the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned of mass starvation from global warming caused by high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), emissions of the greenhouse gas are at record levels. But so is worldwide crop production.

The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, which was edited by then-chairman Dr. Rajendra Pachauri and released in 2007, predicted with “virtual certainty” that crop yields would plummet in some areas unless industrialized nations immediately adopted stricter limits on CO2, which the IPCC said was causing “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”

“By 2020, in some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50%,” the report predicted. But last year, even a record level of atmospheric CO2 did not keep farmers from reaping record-breaking harvests worldwide, including a record opium crop in Afghanistan.

The monthly CO2 average in November 2014 was 397.13 parts per million as measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, which maintains “the longest record of direct measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The level of atmospheric CO2 was 315.97 ppm in 1959, when it was first measured, and is now about 40 percent higher than it was during the pre-industrial era.

However, according to a report also released in November by the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, “world cereal production in 2014 is forecast at a new record of 2,532 million tonnes… 7 million tonnes (0.3 percent) above last year’s peak.”  That includes a record level of wheat production worldwide, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Atmospheric CO2 increased 14 percent between 1982 and 2010, coinciding with a “5 to 10 percent increase in green foliage cover in warm, arid environments,” according to a June 2013 study published in the peer-reviewed journal, Geophysical Research Letters. The study stated that the CO2 “fertilization effect is now a significant land surface process” and has created “a greening of the globe over recent decades.”

That greening effect includes a growth spurt among redwoods and giant sequoias in California.

“Since the 1970s we’ve seen an increase in wood production and that’s making these trees get even bigger than they were growing earlier in the 20th century,” said Emily Burns, director of science at Save the Redwoods League, who added that the accelerated growth winds up naturally sequestering the additional carbon.

That’s not a coincidence, says Dr. James Taylor, senior fellow for environmental policy at the Heartland Institute. “For virtually every crop that’s grown in the United States and globally, we see record crop production on just about a yearly basis,” he said. This is happening at the same time that CO2 levels have been rising because plants use the greenhouse gas to make food in a process called photosynthesis.

“Claims that global warming and more atmospheric carbon dioxide are harming crop production are simply preposterous, and they’re proven preposterous by the real-world, objective data,” Taylor told CNSNews.com.

“We know that in recent decades, we’ve seen an actual tripling of production of the most important staple crops: corn, wheat, and rice. There’s been a record production of wheat in the past year in the United States, in India, in much of Africa, and throughout the world where the wheat harvest is important."

Instead of diminishing crop yields, high levels of CO2 actually help to increase them, he said.  “As we add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, it can be expected that that’s going to benefit crop production because carbon dioxide is aerial plant fertilizer. That’s what people pump into greenhouses to facilitate plant growth,” Taylor told CNSNews.com.

“Just as people have demonstrated in greenhouses, where plants that are growing in greenhouses - with more atmospheric carbon dioxide there, those plants grow more rapidly and are more productive - such has been the case also in the natural environment when we’ve had more atmospheric carbon dioxide,” Taylor explained.

“So whether it be redwoods in California, tropical rain forests around the globe, [or] boreal forests in the polar region, we see that as carbon dioxide has increased in the atmosphere, there is greater growth for these trees, and not just trees, but all plant life. This is something to be welcomed.”

“Any time that we have more atmospheric carbon dioxide, we’re going to see plant life benefit spectacularly,” he added.

CNSNews.com asked Taylor whether the link between high levels of CO2 and record crop yields worldwide was discussed at the UN’s climate change conference in Lima last month.  “No, it never came up,” he replied. “To the extent that crop production was discussed at the United Nation meetings, it was in the context of claiming that global warming is wreaking havoc on crops. And that’s simply not the case.

“What you have to understand is that this is the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. These are government bodies. These are government appointees. Some of them are scientists, but many of them are not. And even those who are scientists tend to be scientists who work for environmental activist groups such as The Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund, Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, etc. They have an agenda to push. It’s very little objective science. It’s 99 percent politics from an environmental activist agenda.

”And unfortunately in that environment, the facts simply don’t come out if people aren’t doing their own research. If we’re just listening and reading the UN press releases, we’re going to believe that a world exists that is exactly opposite from what the real world really is.”

Despite the "greening of the globe," the IPCC and environmental groups are still pushing for steep worldwide reductions of carbon dioxide. Last month, White House science adviser John Holdren said he’s like to get CO2 emissions “close to zero by 2100.”

SOURCE




Climate Change's Instructive Past

We know, because they often say so, that those who think catastrophic global warming is probable and perhaps imminent are exemplary empiricists. They say those who disagree with them are “climate change deniers” disrespectful of science.

Actually, however, something about which everyone can agree is that of course the climate is changing – it always is. And if climate Cassandras are as conscientious as they claim to be about weighing evidence, how do they accommodate historical evidence of enormously consequential episodes of climate change not produced by human activity? Before wagering vast wealth and curtailments of liberty on correcting the climate, two recent books should be considered.

In “The Third Horseman: Climate Change and the Great Famine of the 14th Century,” William Rosen explains how Europe’s “most widespread and destructive famine” was the result of “an almost incomprehensibly complicated mixture of climate, commerce, and conflict, four centuries in gestation.” Early in that century, 10 percent of the population from the Atlantic to the Urals died, partly because of the effect of climate change on “the incredible amalgam of molecules that comprises a few inches of soil that produces the world’s food.”

In the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), from the end of the ninth century to the beginning of the 14th, the Northern Hemisphere was warmer than at any time in the last 8,000 years – for reasons concerning which there is no consensus. Warming increased the amount of arable land – there were vineyards in northern England – leading, Rosen says, to Europe’s “first sustained population increase since the fall of the Roman Empire.” The need for land on which to grow cereals drove deforestation. The MWP population explosion gave rise to towns, textile manufacturing and new wealthy classes.

Then, near the end of the MWP, came the severe winters of 1309-1312, when polar bears could walk from Greenland to Iceland on pack ice. In 1315 there was rain for perhaps 155 consecutive days, washing away topsoil. Upwards of half the arable land in much of Europe was gone; cannibalism arrived as parents ate children. Corpses hanging from gallows were devoured.

Human behavior did not cause this climate change. Instead, climate warming caused behavioral change (10 million mouths to feed became 30 million). Then climate cooling caused social changes (rebelliousness and bellicosity) that amplified the consequences of climate, a pattern repeated four centuries later.

In “Global Crisis: War, Climate Change & Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century,” Geoffrey Parker, a history professor at Ohio State, explains how a “fatal synergy” between climatological and political factors produced turmoil from Europe to China. What he calls “the placenta of the crisis” of that century included “the Little Ice Age” (LIA) between the 1640s and the 1690s. Unusual weather, protracted enough to qualify as a change in climate, correlated so strongly with political upheavals as to constitute causation.

Whatever caused the LIA – decreased sunspot activity and increased seismic activity were important factors – it caused, among other horrific things, “stunting” that, Parker says, “reduced the average height of those born in 1675, the ‘year without a summer,’ or during the years of cold and famine in the early 1690s, to only 63 inches: the lowest ever recorded.”

In northerly latitudes, Parker says, each decline of 0.5 degrees Celsius in the mean summer temperature “decreases the number of days on which crops ripen by 10 percent, doubles the risk of a single harvest failure, and increases the risk of a double failure sixfold,” For those farming at least 1,000 feet above sea level this temperature decline “increases the chance of two consecutive failures a hundredfold.”

The flight from abandoned farms to cities produced “the urban graveyard effect,” crises of disease, nutrition, water, sanitation, housing, fire, crime, abortion, infanticide, marriages forgone, and suicide. Given the ubiquity of desperation, it is not surprising that more wars took place during the 17th-century crisis “than in any other era before the Second World War.”

By documenting the appalling consequences of two climate changes, Rosen and Parker validate wariness about behaviors that might cause changes. The last 12 of Parker’s 712 pages of text deliver a scalding exhortation to be alarmed about what he considers preventable global warming. Neither book, however, supports those who believe human behavior is the sovereign or even primary disrupter of climate normality, whatever that might be. With the hands that today’s climate Cassandras are not using to pat themselves on the back for their virtuous empiricism, they should pick up such books.

SOURCE





"Renewable" investment down in Australia

Investments in renewable energy rose to record levels globally in 2014 but fell sharply in Australia because of uncertainty triggered by the Abbott government's review of the industry, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said.

Worldwide investment in wind farms, solar photovoltaics and other clean energy sources jumped 16 per cent last year to $US310 billion ($383 billion), or more than five times the tally of a decade earlier. Solar investments accounted for almost half the total.

China led the way, with investment soaring almost one-third to $US89.5 billion, while US investment gained 8 per cent to $US51.8 billion, and Brazil's almost doubled to $US7.9 billion.

Australia, though, went the other way, with investment sinking 35 per cent to $US3.7 billion. BNEF said the amount was the "lowest since 2009, as wind and solar project developers delayed decisions while they awaited the government's response to its Renewable Energy Target review".

The Australian tally in fact masks a much steeper dive for large-scale renewable plants as small-scale solar PV largely held its own in 2014 even as state-based support schemes were wound back further.

"Four wind farms are currently under construction, but these signed contracts before the last RET review," said Darren Gladman, the acting policy director for the Clean Energy Council.

"No more projects in the country have imminent construction plans.

"Australia is not just at risk of falling behind the rest of the world on renewable energy, we have already slipped off the back of the wave. We have some of the best sun, wind and waves in the world, but this new research shows that we are squandering some of our huge natural advantages."

Fairfax Media sought comment from Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane, who has sought to cut the country's renewable energy target from the current goal of 41 terawatt-hours annually by 2020 to as low as 27tWh.

So far, the Senate has blocked such a move but uncertainty over whether and when the goal will be reset has made it almost impossible to raise financing for new projects.

"Labor has offered to reopen negotiations around the RET in the interest of returning the policy to the bipartisanship that saw jobs in the industry triple while Labor was in government," said a spokeswoman for Mark Butler, the opposition spokesman for the environment.

"However, our negotiating principles remain the same – Labor will not support any proposal that decimates the industry, including reducing the RET by 40 per cent."

SOURCE

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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.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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