Big foot-shoot:  New baseline shows SLOWER warming

The galoots behind the study below seemed to have been unhappy that 19th century steam trains might have affected the baseline against which global warming was measured.  They argued that temperatures in the period 1720-1800 would be a better criterion for what the temperature was before industrial influences cut in.

So they did the work of getting their new baseline temperature.  But what did they find? They found that the temperature in this pre-industrial period was "likely 0.55–0.80°C cooler than 1986-2005".  That compares with the usual agreed figure of about two thirds of a degree for global warming so far.

So at the lower end the new baseline shows LESS warming than previous studies.  They were a little bit cowardly, however, in that they stated a range rather than a single figure.  Previous authors have chosen a single most likely figure.

It's a bit rough but we could take an average of their two extremes as a single figure.  In that case we are back to the two thirds of a degree already accepted. So we are left with two possible conclusions from their study.  In the modern warming period, the amount of warming is uncertain or that it is still just about the two thirds already agreed.

But here's the killer: The conventional estimate of warming shows warming of two thirds of a degree over a period of around 100 years -- which is certainly a trivially slow warming.  But the baseline in the new work is around 300 years ago.  So if a change of two thirds of a degree over one century is trivial, what is the same change over a 300 year period?  It looks like these guys have really shot warmism in the foot.

But in their usual way, most Warmists will simply choose the starting point that suits them.  Sad for them that an earlier starting point did not help.

The authors must have known they were on dangerous ground so they included the El Nino effect (2015/2016) in their estimate of current temperature.  But that is rubbish and is increasingly being recognized as such.  But it's the only way they could get their final estimate of a one degree rise

But in the end, what the work below shows is that the temperature today is very similar to the temperature of 300 years ago.  Not the desired message, I think

Estimating changes in global temperature since the pre-industrial period

Ed Hawkins et al.

Abstract

Better defining (or altogether avoiding) the term ‘pre-industrial’ would aid interpretation of internationally agreed global temperature limits and estimation of the required constraints to avoid reaching those limits.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process agreed in Paris to limit global surface temperature rise to ‘well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels’. But what period is ‘pre-industrial’? Some-what remarkably, this is not defined within the UNFCCC’s many agreements and protocols. Nor is it defined in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) in the evaluation of when particular temperature levels might be reached because no robust definition of the period exists. Here we discuss the important factors to consider when defining a pre-industrial period, based on estimates of historical radiative forcings and the availability of climate observations. There is no perfect period, but we suggest that 1720-1800 is the most suitable choice when discussing global temperature limits. We then estimate the change in global average temperature since pre-industrial using a range of approaches based on observations, radiative forcings, global climate model simulations and proxy evidence. Our assessment is that this pre-industrial period was likely 0.55–0.80°C cooler than 1986-2005 and that 2015 was likely the first year in which global average temperature was more than 1°C above pre-industrial levels. We provide some recommendations for how this assessment might be improved in future and suggest that reframing temperature limits with a modern baseline would be inherently less uncertain and more policy-relevant.

SOURCE




NOAA agrees to review scientist’s claim that data manipulated to discredit warming ‘pause’

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday that it would review a whistleblower’s allegations that the agency manipulated climate data in order to eliminate the global warming “pause” for political reasons.

The whistleblower, John Bates, who retired in December as principal scientist of the National Climatic Data Center, rocked the climate change debate Sunday with his claim that a top NOAA climate scientist selectively used data to discredit the global warming hiatus in a key 2015 study.

“NOAA is charged with providing peer-reviewed data to the American public and stands behind its world-class scientists,” a NOAA spokesman said in an email. “NOAA takes seriously any allegation that its internal processes have not been followed and will review the matter appropriately.”

SEE ALSO: Climate change whistleblower alleges NOAA manipulated data to hide global warming ‘pause’

Mr. Bates laid out his allegations in a lengthy article Saturday on the Climate Etc. blog, run by former Georgia Tech climatologist Judith Curry, and in a Sunday interview with the United Kingdom’s Daily Mail.

He criticized the June 2015 “pausebuster” paper’s lead author, Thomas Karl, then director of the National Centers for Environmental Information, for what Mr. Bates described as a failure to archive and document his climate data sets.

“Gradually, in the months after [the paper] came out, the evidence kept mounting that Tom Karl constantly had his ‘thumb on the scale’ — in the documentation, scientific choices, and release of data sets — in an effort to discredit the notion of a global warming hiatus and rush to time the publication of the paper to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy,” Mr. Bates said in his Saturday post.

The paper refuting the 1998-2013 “pause” in global temperature increases was published six months before the Paris Climate Summit, a priority of the Obama administration’s environmental agenda.

Ms. Curry called Monday on the NOAA inspector general to evaluate the claims made by Mr. Bates, adding that he has “more revelations” coming as well as “more detailed responses to some of the issues raised above.”

“Other independent organizations will also want to evaluate these claims, and NOAA should facilitate this by responding to FOIA requests,” Ms. Curry said.

She cited the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, which has tangled with NOAA over document disclosure related to the “pausebuster” paper.

“The House science committee has an enduring interest in this topic and oversight responsibility,” Ms. Curry said. “NOAA should respond to the committee’s request for documentation including emails.”

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Mr. Karl said the archiving process “takes a long time” and denied that he had hurried along the paper to coincide with the summit, saying, “There was no discussion about Paris.”

Mr. Bates has since engaged in a back-and-forth on Climate Etc. with other scientists, including “pausebuster” co-author Thomas Peterson, about the details of his claim.

Several scientists have come to Mr. Karl’s defense, arguing that other research has borne out the study’s conclusions. Climate scientist Peter Thorne, who has done work for NOAA, argued that Mr. Bates was “not involved in any aspect of the work.”

“John Bates never participated in any of the numerous technical meetings on the land or marine data I have participated in at NOAA NCEI either in person or remotely,” Mr. Thorne said on Icarus.

Mr. Bates responded that Mr. Thorne was not a federal employee and therefore was unable to participate in government-only meetings, “and certainly never attended any federal meetings where end-to-end processing was continuously discussed.”

Meanwhile, Ms. Curry said she hoped “policies can be put in place to keep this from ever happening again.”

“Under the Obama administration, I suspect that it would have been very difficult for this story to get any traction,” she said. “Under the Trump administration, I have every confidence that this will be investigated (but still not sure how the MSM will react).”

SOURCE





Trump Agrees With Princeton Physicist That Global Warming Is A ‘Cult Movement’

President Donald Trump told a candidate to be his top science adviser that he agreed global warming had become a “cult movement in the last five or 10 years.”

Princeton University physicist Will Happer met with Trump in January about a week before the inauguration. He told Trump he believed man-made global warming had been “exaggerated,” to which Trump replied: “I agree with you.”

“Very briefly. I said, ‘I’m sure you know my position that I think climate change has been tremendously exaggerated—its significance. Climate is important, always has been, but I think it’s become sort of a cult movement in the last five or 10 years,’” Happer told The Scientist (TS) in a wide-ranging interview.

“So in just a sentence or two, I said, ‘That’s my view of it,’” Happer said. “And he said, Well, I agree with you. But that’s all we discussed.”

Happer is a candidate to be one of Trump’s top science advisers, though it’s unclear where his official post will be. For example, Happer could head White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy or even sit on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Happer served as the director of the Office of Energy Research at the Energy Department (DOE) under former President George H.W. Bush. So, maybe Happer could be asked to head DOE’s Office of Science.

Happer is a prominent skeptic of man-made global warming — in fact, he believes more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a good thing since it stimulates plant life. He’s said the world is in a CO2 “drought” and fought the Obama administration’s labeling it as a “pollutant.”

One of Happer’s goals, if he’s asked to join the Trump administration, would be fixing currently perverse incentives that come with government-funded science.

“One of the problems with the programs for the last 15 or 20 years was, unless you promised that your results were going to bring some sort of alarming new evidence that people were driving the planet to extinction by releasing CO2, you couldn’t get funding,” Happer told TS.

“That was really sick,” he said. “You shouldn’t have funding decisions based on whether you expect to get alarmist results from the applicant. And that’s the way it was.”

TS pushed back, asking Happer for examples of this, to which Happer responded: “I told you it was an anecdote, but my impression is it’s been in the last 10 years.”

Happer may not have had any concrete examples, but his interview comes amid allegations from a whistleblower that National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists manipulated climate data to show more warming in order to influence policymakers.

Dr. John Bates, the former principal scientist at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., said NOAA scientists toyed with data in a 2015 study “to discredit the notion of a global warming hiatus and rush to time the publication of the paper to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy.”

SOURCE




Left-Wing Media Furious Cartoons Aren’t Indoctrinating 5-Year-Olds About Global Warming

A parental advice columnist for left-leaning news site Slate argues that cartoons are “ignoring” global warming.

“After a few more questions, I discovered that he’s never heard any of his favorite science shows mention climate change or global warming,” Melinda Wenner Moyer, a science writer and parental advice columnist for Slate, wrote in an article.

“Which is strange, because according to overwhelming scientific consensus, climate change is one of the most important environmental issues of our time,” she wrote. “My son can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about red pandas, except for the fact that their very existence is being threatened by the changing climate.”

Moyer asked Nickelodeon for examples of its programming that covered global warming, and the network sent her six examples of shows that talked about related subjects, like wind and solar power or littering. The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) said they focus on teaching “foundational science concepts,” and further, determine programming based on the “the most age-appropriate way to serve our audience” and do not often cover global warming, consequently .

Moyer refers to one example in her child’s favorite cartoons discussing global warming. In that program, Professor Hootsburg claims that as “the Earth gets warmer and warmer, big storms get bigger and bigger.”

Moyer, however, ignores the many kids shows dealing environmental issues, including Captain Planet, the Octonauts and the Smoggies.

Several government-funded studies suggest children are the most susceptible to environmentalism. Research run on 30 Girl Scout troops in northern California found that having the kids engage in energy-saving activities had a “lasting impact on family energy consumption” for at least eight months after the end of the program.

SOURCE




Australia needs to wake up to climate change racket

Now we hear from an eminent whistleblower with America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that the organisation used dodgy data to claim the “pause” in global warming from 1998 never existed, and had rushed to publish without the usual checks in order to influence the Paris Agreement on climate change.

This latest scandal comes on top of previous embarrassments for the climate alarm community. There was the 2009 “climategate” batch of leaked emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia that were published on a Russian website three weeks before the Copenhagen summit, revealing a staggering level of fraud, manipulation, and deceit.

Another batch of leaked emails, dubbed Climategate 2.0, a couple of years later, showed eminent climate scientists conspiring to have PhDs stripped from their sceptic rivals, to have journal editors fired for publishing papers they didn’t like, and colluding with the media to slant coverage.

All the fakery adds up to the conclusion that the whole global warming crusade isn’t about science, but politics — and big money.

The NOAA scandal couldn’t have come at a better time for US President Donald Trump to strengthen his resolve to ditch the Paris climate agreement stitched up by his predecessor, Barack Obama.

And in turn Trump’s defection should encourage the Turnbull government to tear up our own Paris climate agreement which they foolishly ratified in November, after Trump won the US presidential election.

Tony Abbott is right: even though it was his government which made the deal, he recognises the changed circumstances of the world. We need to scrap the unreasonably punitive renewable energy targets of 26-28 per cent we have committed to abide by in 2020.

Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg keeps telling us it’s a better deal than the Labor Party’s 50 per cent renewable energy target, but that’s not the point.

Low-cost, coal-fired energy has underpinned this nation’s prosperity. With our abundant resources we should be the world’s low-cost energy superpower, as Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce keeps saying.

Higher RETS equal higher electricity prices, and an unreliable power supply, which is the death-knell to business, as we are seeing in South Australia.

By kowtowing to climate nonsense, successive governments have proven they have no intention of putting Australia first, and this is what is driving the Hanson phenomenon. Scrapping the United Nations control of our energy mix would be an enormous morale boost to the country.

SOURCE

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