What happens when you use only quality data to measure warming?

I generally don't comment on reports that appear on the site of Anthony Watts, because I assume that anybody reading this blog will already be reading that one.  He has a much bigger readership than I do. This time I think I need to say something however.

The background is that Anthony is a skeptical meteorologist who has long bent over backwards to achieve some respectability among climate scientists. That is not my style at all  -- I never give an inch for the sake of popularity --  but maybe Anthony is right and I am wrong in the great scheme of things.  And he has finally got what must be his heart's desire by being allowed to present a paper at the AGU.  And it is that paper that I want to talk about.  The report below tells you some things about it but not, in my view, the most important things.

For a start, there is here a graph that summarizes Anthony's findings. It is too large for me to reproduce usefully on this page but you can see it if you click on the link.  It is an extraordinarily poor graph.  If I had been handed it as a student assignment in my statistics classes, I would have failed it. There is no calibration on the X axis and unexplained calibration on the Y axis.  So I have to be a bit approximate in some of the things I want to say about it.

One of the reasons statisticians graph things is to detect non-linear relationships -- and when I look at Athony's graph I immediately detect something of that kind.  The graph seems bimodal to me.  The temperature seems just about flat up to about the year 2000 and then takes a leap onto a new plateau after that time.  So what I think we see is not a steady upward trend but two flat records with a short sudden leap from one to the other.

But Anthonly ignores that.  His analysis looks only at a steady upward trend.  Why?  Because his whole presentation is designed not to rock the boat too much.  By combining the data from the '80s and '90s (which did show some warming) with the 21st century data (which shows no warming), he gets an overall upwards temperature rise -- which is just what the Warmists want.  By failing to consider the pre- and post- 2000 data separately, Anthony ignores the "pause", the period in the 21st century temperature record that even Warmists concede has shown no statistically significant change in global temperature.

Anthony will no doubt say that I misconceive what he was trying to do and that may be so but I am concerned that Warmists will now be able to say that a prominent skeptic has admitted that the globe is still warming after all -- when that is clearly not the case.  The overall temperature rise that Anthony reports is nothing more than a statistical artifact, and a deliberate one at that.

Here once again is the graph of the satellite temperature record:



Anthony's data are of course from the USA only so, logically, one could say that they tell us nothing about global temperatures. The USA could be entirely atypical of the globe. I am not, however, aware that anybody has ever put forward such an improbable proposition. In any case, my criticism concerns the misinterpretation of a graph, nothing more.

And if the graph is typical of the globe, it gives Warmists a new big problem. None of their models and theories even begin to account for a recent sudden step change in temperature over just a year or two. Or have we already had the famed "tipping point"?!


Surface temperatures recorded over three decades at 410 ideally situated weather stations are markedly lower than temperatures recorded at stations located near multiple heatsinks, according to a new study presented Thursday at the 2015 fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

The study examined the 30-year temperature records collected from a subset of 410 weather stations belonging to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) of 1,218 stations.

“A 410-station subset of U.S. Historical Climatology stations is identified that experienced no changes in time of observation or station moves during the 1979-2008 period. These stations are classified on proximity to artificial surfaces, buildings, and other such objects with unnatural thermal mass,” according to the study, entitled Comparing of Temperature Trends Using an Unperturbed Subset of the U.S. Historical Climatology Network.

 “The United States temperature trends estimated from the relatively few stations in the classes with minimal artificial impact are found to be collectively about 2/3 as large as US trends estimated in the classes with greater expected artificial impact,” the researchers report.

The study “suggests that the trend for U.S. temperature will need to be corrected. We also see evidence of this same sort of siting problem around the world at many other official weather stations, suggesting that the same upward bias on trend also manifests itself in the global temperature record.”

However, “the data suggests that the divergence between well and poorly sited stations is gradual, not a result of spurious step change due to poor metadata,” they concluded.

“The majority of weather stations used by NOAA to detect climate change temperature signal have been compromised by encroachment of artificial surfaces like concrete, asphalt, and heat sources like air conditioner exhausts. This study demonstrates conclusively that this issue affects temperature trend and that NOAA’s methods are not correcting for this problem, resulting in an inflated temperature trend,” said lead author Anthony Watts, who blogs at Watts Up With That?

The best stations (Class 1) are defined as those situated on “flat and horizontal ground surrounded by a clear surface with a slope below 1/3 (<19 deg.). Grass/low vegetation ground cover <10 centimeters high. Sensors located at least 100 meters from artificial heating or reflecting surfaces, such as buildings, concrete surfaces, and parking lots. Far from large bodies of water, except if it is representative of the area, and then located at least 100 meters away. No shading when the sun elevation >3 degrees,” according to NOAA's 2002 Site Information Handbook.

The worst (Class 5) have their “temperature sensor located next to/above an artificial heating source, such as a building, roof top, parking lot, or concrete surface.”

“The poorest sites tend to be warmer,” explained co-author John Nielsen-Gammon, professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University.

SOURCE






Greenland Ice Sheet lost mass twice as fast between 2003 and 2010 as it did during the ENTIRE twentieth century

There was NO global warming during the period concerned (2003-2010).  That pesky graph again:



So global warming cannot be held responsible for the changes  described below.  So what might have been the cause of the melting? Probably vulcanism of some sort.  Greenland is not generally known for volcanoes at present but had a lots of them in the distant past.  And the Arctic as a whole is still volcanically active. The volcanoes of neighboring Iceland are of course well known and the underwater volcanoes of the Gakkel ridge are quite explosive.  So there may be more going on under the Greenland icecap than we know.

Some years ago an "unexpected" hotspot was discovered under the Greenland ice and that could well not be the whole of it.  One might note that the extensive volcanic activity under the Antarctic icecap has only recently become known.  It is therefore entirely reasonable to expect that something similar lies ready to be discovered in the Arctic

Note also that the melting recorded below was quite uneven -- not Greenland-wide.  That is much more consistent with random vulcanism events than with an effect of global warming, which would affect the whole of Greenland

The Greenland ice sheet - a potentially massive contributor to land-encroaching sea-level rise - lost mass twice as fast between 2003 and 2010 as during the entire 20th century.

This is according to the first direct observations of the region's melting during the latest 110 years.

Greenland ice loss contributed to a global average sea level rise of 25 millimetres (about an inch) between 1990 and 2010 - mainly from surface melt.

The total mass lost was over 9,000 gigatonnes (billion tonnes). It was net loss, meaning the difference between ice melt and ice gain from falling snow or rain.

The study is the first time scientists have been able to provide an accurate estimate of how much Greenland contributes to sea level rise.

Data on the Greenland ice sheet has been lacking in reports of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), scientists in the study said.

It also allows researchers to pinpoint where the ice sheet is particularly sensitive and what controls the loss of glacier ice in Greenland.

'If we do not know the contribution from the all sources that have contributed towards global sea level rise, then it is difficult to predict future global sea levels,' said first author of the paper, Kristian Kjeldsen from the Natural History Museum of Denmark.

'In our paper we have used direct observations to specify the mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet and thereby highlight its contribution to global sea level rise'.

The scientists were particularly interested in the changes of the ice sheet after the Little Ice Age, a period from c. 1200 AD to the end of the nineteenth century.

This marks when the ice sheet was at its largest during the past millinium.

Changes of the Greenland Ice Sheet are observed when the ice retreats and leaves an imprint on the landscape.

The vegetation along mountain slopes was removed by the advancing ice and once the ice begins to retreat the freshly eroded part of the mountain slope is seen as a lighter colour than the non-eroded part where plants were growing all along.

The results show that some areas of the Greenland Ice Sheet have lost considerable amounts of ice during the twentieth century.

The mass loss along the southeastern and northwestern coast contributed between 53 and 83 per cent of the entire mass loss for the individual periods.

'One of the unique things about our results - which distinguish them from earlier model studies - is that we not only estimate the total mass loss of the entire ice,' said Kjeldsen.

'But we can actually calculate changes all the way down to regional and local levels and say something about changes for individual outlet glaciers'.

SOURCE





White House: Spending Deal Allows Obama to Shift Money to Green Climate Fund

The $1.2 trillion year-end spending bill released by House Speaker Paul Ryan on Wednesday does not include money for the United Nation’s Green Climate Fund (GCF), but it does not prevent President Obama from shifting funds to it from other areas, according to the White House.

“Based on what we have reviewed so far, there are no restrictions on our ability to make good on the president’s pledge to contribute to the Green Climate Fund,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Wednesday.

Obama has pledged $3 billion to help developing countries mitigate and adapt to climate change.

“When you take a look at the entire package, I think the country can feel good about how this budget reflects the priorities that the President has laid out when it comes to transitioning to the low-carbon economy of the future,” Earnest said.

The GCF is the financial mechanism that will be used to implement the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) Paris Agreement adopted on December 12.

James Taylor, senior fellow for environment and energy policy at the Heartland Institute, told CNSNews.com that the Paris agreement “hamstrings Western economies to utilize much more expensive energy sources that put them at a competitive disadvantage and hands over $100 billion to developing nations, which may presumably include China” - despite “real-world evidence [that] continues to contradict the notion of a global warming crisis.”

Taylor pointed out that China is the largest emitter of carbon dioxide on earth and emits “more than all the nations in the Western Hemisphere combined.” Chinese finance minister Yingming Yang is on the GCF’s board.


James Taylor (Heartland Institute)
However, under the agreement, China and India, another major CO2 emitter, “don’t have to do anything,” he told CNSNews.com.

Under the non-binding agreement, China has merely promised to “peak” its CO2 emissions “around 2030”, but has not agreed to any actual reductions.

In contrast, Obama pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. by at least 26 percent below 2005 levels over the next 10 years. That goal would require implementation of the Environmental Protection Agency’s controversial Clean Power Plan, which is being challenged in court by 26 states.

Nevertheless, Taylor characterized the Paris agreement as a “crushing defeat” for the Obama administration. “They did not achieve their objective, which was to obligate the United States to internationally enforceable carbon dioxide restrictions,” he told CNSNews.com.

“The only way that would happen is if U.S. policy makers decide to implement the plan, and for that Congress has to come on board. And Congress is not that foolish,” he predicted.

SOURCE






Republicans to Keep Trying to Block Obama’s International Climate Change Deal

Republicans upset with President Barack Obama’s international climate change agreement remain committed to the few options they have to do something about it.

“Honestly, I never feel helpless,” insisted Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., one of the leaders in the House opposing Obama’s climate change plans. “Whatever is going to happen today is going to happen today. This is a generational battle. If we think after one battle, one skirmish, we should throw in the towel, we are not leading the America that we have been entrusted with.”

“We will just keep fighting and are never, ever going to give up,” Kelly added. “I just keep asking our guys: What else can we do?”

Since it became clear that Obama intended to pursue an accord committing nearly every nation to lower planet-warming emissions without seeking congressional approval, Republicans have tried to insert their authority into the matter.

But Obama has no intent to oblige, and negotiators went out of their way to word the agreement in such a way to where they believe it does need to be submitted to the Senate as a treaty.

Opponents are also threatening to use their “power of the purse” to withhold money that the U.S. plans to contribute to developing nations to combat climate change.

Obama has pledged to contribute up to $3 billion in U.S. spending on the Green Climate Fund, including $500 million in fiscal year 2016.

The Green Climate Fund is a pool of money through which developed countries, with contributions from public and private sources, help developing nations confront climate change.

The climate change agreement does not legally bind countries to contribute money to the climate fund, but it sets the goal for rich countries to contribute together at least $100 billion per year.

A new spending bill appropriating money for this fiscal year—which is expected to be voted on by lawmakers this week—does not assign money for the Green Climate Fund.

But Republicans were unable to attach a proposed policy provision that would have explicitly blocked Obama from sending federal money to the Green Climate Fund.

In addition, the $1.1 trillion spending bill does not prohibit the administration from transferring money from other accounts for the climate fund.

On Wednesday, White House Spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama is interpreting the spending bill as allowing him to pay into the climate fund, since Republicans did not explicitly bar the funding.

“Based on what we have reviewed so far, there are no restrictions on our ability to contribute to the Green Climate Fund,” Earnest said.

Kelly, in an interview with The Daily Signal, said Republicans would continue to try to stop efforts to appropriate the money, although it’s unclear how they can.

“If it comes down to this and we are going to take hard-earned American taxpayer money to pay for it, than that is a no-go for me,” Kelly said. “That is not a bus I am ever going to get on.”

If the funding issue is indeed resolved for this fiscal year, Kelly and other Republicans are still pushing for Congress to review the climate deal.

Kelly is the author of a resolution “expressing the sense of Congress” that Obama should submit the climate deal struck in Paris last week to the Senate for approval.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, introduced an identical resolution in his chamber.

The combined measure, filed as a “concurrent resolution” last month, is non-binding, meaning it does not function as law or require approval of the president.

Instead, it is meant as a messaging vehicle to pressure Obama to submit the climate deal as a treaty. The House and Senate have not yet voted on the resolution.

Yet the Obama administration, mindful that the Republican-led Congress would block the deal, says it is not obligated to share it with the Senate.

Negotiators argue that the climate change agreement does not include target levels for countries to reduce their emissions. While every country is required to put forward a plan, there is no legal requirement dictating how, or how much, countries should cut emissions.

In addition, though, the countries party to the deal have to legally monitor, verify, and report progress on their emissions-reductions, there is no enforcement mechanism, or penalty, for not doing so.

So because the Obama administration says the agreement does not include “targets and timetables,” U.S. negotiators contend that it can be produced as an executive agreement that is already legally protected under a 1992 United Nations climate change treaty.

Lee, in an interview with The Daily Signal, says he is not buying this argument.

“I am aware of no exception to the ratification requirement in the Constitution saying if you don’t have any specific emissions targets in a global climate change agreement, that means you don’t need advice and consent from the Senate,” Lee said. “There are still obligations. That is the nature of an international agreement. And when we are making obligations, regardless of the nature of the obligations, we need to have that review process—that’s what the Constitution contemplates, and that’s the kind of process that guarantees the American people will have some input.”

Lee said he has not received a commitment from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., that he would bring the “concurrent resolution” to the floor for a vote, although Lee believes there’s a “decent” chance it happens next year.

Even if the measure passed, it would be nothing more than symbolic, and Lee said it’s unlikely a court would intervene to force Obama to submit the climate agreement as a treaty.

“This is not the kind of thing that is likely to be enforced by a court,” Lee said. “This interaction is between two branches of government, and if we don’t make sure that it happens, we can’t assume anyone else will do it for us.”

Both Senate and House Republicans have already passed measures striking down Environmental Protection Agency rules cutting carbon emissions, but Obama would veto those measures.

The EPA regulations, which form the basis of the U.S. commitment to the larger global climate deal, are being challenged in court by two dozen states.

Republicans’ best chance to fight the international climate agreement may not come soon.

Since much of the agreement is not legally binding, a potential future Republican president does not have to uphold it.

“One of the consequences of not getting Senate ratification is that it’s not binding on a subsequent president, and I would not anticipate a subsequent Republican president would be inclined to honor an agreement that does not carry the force of a ratified treaty that amounts to the law of the land of the constitution,” Lee said.

Kelly is less diplomatic.

“The reality is, the whole world committed to a conversation,” Kelly said. “This is a wish list. It has nothing to do with reality. I don’t know who the president is going to be, but I hope that person understands they are the best chance we have to make sure that in our lifetime we are never going to walk away and say we can’t win.”

Secretary of State John Kerry, meanwhile, says Obama is not worried about Republican attempts to undo his executive actions.

“I don’t believe you can be elected president of the United States if you don’t understand climate change or you’re not committed to this kind of a plan,” Kerry said on ABC this past weekend.

SOURCE





Shafting taxpayers – promoting crony corporatism

Omnibus budget deal ends oil export ban, perpetuates renewable subsidies, redistributes wealth

Paul Driessen

President Reagan once said, “The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program.” The omnibus budget package being negotiated on Capitol Hill is a perfect example.

The wheeling and dealing is too complex and fast-moving for anyone to follow or understand. But its energy components center on trading an end to the 40-year-old oil export ban in exchange for extending and perpetuating renewable energy programs and President Obama’s dictatorial Clean Power Plan.

It is especially maddening when supposed Republican fiscal conservatives are supposedly in charge of Congress and the purse strings. It’s especially despicable when the energy policies are based on lies and fraud about “dangerous manmade climate change,” and on blatant crony corporatism that gives coerced taxpayer subsidies to companies that then make campaign contributions to helpful legislators. It makes it perfectly clear why voters are spitting mad, and “outsiders” have an inside track on presidential races.

The not-a-treaty arrangements just concluded in Paris allow climate alarmists to claim 100% of countries now agree that climate change is a huge problem – even though most American disagree, and some 90% of those countries signed the agreement just to get their “fair share” of the $100 billion per year that they demand from developed nations, which are now expected to de-carbonize, de-industrialize and de-develop.

But where are the dangerous, unprecedented rising seas and stronger storms? They’re not happening in the Real World. They exist only in computer models and White House press releases. But we are supposed to accept the hysteria as fact; base laws and policies on them; and destroy millions of coal, oil, natural gas and factory jobs, while we prop up wind, solar and biofuel industries to replace fossil fuels.

The ban on exporting American crude oil was enacted after the Arab oil embargo, and long before the fracking revolution, when politicians thought we were running out of petroleum. Now the United States and world have abundant oil and natural gas, oil prices have plummeted to $40 per barrel, oilfield jobs are threatened, and letting American companies export crude to Europe and other regions would spur drilling and job preservation, generate major tax revenues and greatly reduce balance of trade deficits.

However, Democrats detest drilling and fossil fuels, and President Obama had threatened to veto any bill that ends the export ban. So congressional leaders cobbled together a deal that would lift the ban – in exchange for extending wind and solar subsidies, and sending billions of dollars to “poor” countries like China and India, for climate change “adaptation and reparations,” while they burn more and more coal.

The reported deal extends subsidies five more years. The wind energy Production Tax Credit would be reduced 20% in 2017, 40% in 2018 and 60% in 2019, after which it would finally expire (unless Congress extends it yet again). For solar, the 30% Investment Tax Credit would remain in place past 2017, then drop to 26% through 2020, then to 22% through 2021, then remain at 10% in perpetuity. Biofuel mandates would also remain.

Just as bad, wind and solar would continue to be exempt from the Endangered Species Act. Companies would still be allowed to bury, hide, incinerate or ignore millions of eagle, hawk, other bird and bat carcasses – and never be subjected to penalties imposed on oil and coal companies for a few dozen deaths.

As Politico explains, the “logic” behind these arrangements is that solar (and wind) companies need this “lifeline” so that they can survive over the next few years, “until EPA rules kick in and boost demand for their carbon-free power.” As I see it, the omnibus bill sanctifies EPA’s draconian Clean Power Plan and other anti-coal regulations, which force coal-fired power plants to close in favor of wind and solar.

That would mean millions more jobs lost in factories and communities that depend on low-cost coal-based electricity, and on natural gas-fueled power plants that are also under environmentalist and EPA assault. It would mean ruling elites again get to decide whose jobs get preserved, and who get the shaft.

It seems Congress doesn’t dare imperil jobs and companies created via government diktats and taxpayer largesse. They are granted eternal life. It likewise doesn’t dare furlough federal workers for a few weeks, during another government shutdown over the budget. Fear of being blamed for a government shutdown drives Republican decisions – even though the feds would again get full back pay when they return to work, unlike private sector workers whose jobs get destroyed, often sacrificed on the climate altar, or for campaign contributions from crony corporatist friends.

As to “carbon-free” power, there is no such thing. Enormous wind and solar installations require coal or gas-fired backup generating plants, operating at peak inefficiency as they ramp up and power down when wind or sun conditions repeatedly change. That means even more carbon dioxide emissions.

And as even Secretary of State John Kerry recently admitted, with nearly 200 other countries still operating, building and planning thousands of coal-fired power plants, even if Americans all biked to work and ended all U.S. fossil fuel use, atmospheric CO2 levels would continue to rise. So even if carbon dioxide actually does drive climate change (which it doesn’t), our sacrifices would be for nothing.

In fact, even EPA analyses make it clear that a fully implemented job-killing Clean Power Plan would bring an undetectable, irrelevant reduction of 0.02 degrees Celsius (0.05 F) in average global temperatures 85 years from now – because the rest of the world is not about to stop burning oil, gas and coal.

But meanwhile we are supposed to blanket millions of acres with solar panels and wind turbines, convert millions of acres of crop and habitat land into biofuel plantations, send electricity prices “skyrocketing” for families, factories and hospitals, and kill millions of jobs – because our government says we must.

Then, even more insane, the Republican leadership also seems prepared to end the ban on using American dollars to bankroll our “fair share” of the $100-billion-a-year Green Climate Fund. And they’re planning to participate in this massive global wealth redistribution program in a sneaky, stealthy way.

They plan to let the Obama Administration have total control over $171 million that’s been appropriated in the omnibus spending bill for the Clean Technology Fund and $50 million appropriated for the Strategic Climate Fund – both of which feed into the GCF. They’ll also end prohibitions on reprogramming $168 million of Global Environment Facility money, so that it can be transferred to the GCF, and let the Treasury Department use $50 million of International Bank for Reconstruction and Development money for the same purpose. Otherwise no ending the oil exports ban.

Presto! $439 million in hard-earned taxpayer money becomes a down-payment to the Green Climate Fund, as “reparations” for climate changes we never caused, and “adaptation” money for future climate changes that will be no different or worse than what humans have experienced throughout history. Of course, the president and Democrats want a lot more – something closer to $3 billion a year.

Finally, let’s assume Republicans agree to all this pain, waste and joblessness, to end the oil export ban – and Mr. Obama refrains from vetoing it, because he gets the “renewable” energy subsidies he wants. Can we trust this president not to impose more regulatory edicts to block leasing, drilling, fracking, pipelines and exports? Or will we again be left holding an empty bag and looking like suckers?

Simply put, would it be better to give up on ending the export ban until we get a less anti-American occupant in the White House – and just eliminate these wind, solar and climate fund subsidies right now?

Voters should remind their rank-and-file representatives and the Republican (and Democrat) leadership that they are sick of the duplicity, double dealing and job destruction at the hands of ruling elites. No budget deal is better than a domestic version of the Iran nuclear deal or Paris climate non-treaty.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Via email





Solar subsidy cuts in Britain put up to 18,700 jobs at risk

Government to slash rooftop solar subsidies as it admits for the first time that thousands of jobs could be lost as a result

Solar panel subsidy cuts could result in 18,700 job losses, ministers have admitted, as they confirmed payments to homeowners would be slashed in the new year.

The Government on Thursday said it would cut level of 'feed in tariff' subsidies for rooftop solar panels by 64pc - less severe than an 87pc cut first proposed in August.

The drastic reduction is nevertheless expected to deter more than 700,000 of the 900,000 households that would otherwise have installed the panels over the next five years.

More than half of the 32,000 jobs in the solar panel installation industry could be lost as a result as work dries up, the Government's impact assessment suggests.

It said: "There are assumed to be between 9,700 and 18,700 (out of c32,300) fewer solar jobs supported on a headcount basis, and between 4,500 and 8,700 (out of c15,100) on an full-time equivalent basis by the end of 2018/19, as a result of these changes."

Several solar firms have already gone into administration since the planned cuts were announced in the summer.

Alasdair Cameron, of Friends of the Earth, said the "slight improvements" to the new subsidy level would be "cold comfort to those who have already lost their jobs and mean an uncertain Christmas for thousands more who are set to lose theirs in the coming months".

To date about 700,000 households have solar panels installed. This would have more than doubled to 1.6 million households if subsidies had remained unchanged, the Government estimates.

Instead, the total is forecast to remain at less than 900,000 by 2020.

The subsidies are funded through levies on household energy bills. A typical household bill will be £5 lower in 2020 as a result of the changes, DECC estimates.

But the industry has argued that a less severe cut could still have saved households money without leading to such a drastic reduction in installations.

A DECC spokesman said: “The Government continues to support the low-carbon sector but for this to be sustainable it needs to be driven by competition and innovation, not subsidies. Subsidies are supposed to be temporary not part of a permanent business model.

"We believe that the industry can continue to grow and maintain jobs and we estimate that by 2019 the plans we have set out today will still support between 15,000 and 23,000 jobs in the solar industry."

SOURCE

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