Now conclusively proven:  James Hansen is a false prophet who  has no idea what he is talking about

The inauguration of Obama's second term seals it






Obama Brings God Into the Climate-Change Fight

More evidence that Warmism is a religion

Climate change and environmental policy have always been on President Obama's agenda. But rarely have they been so central as they were in his inaugural address on Monday, when the environment was the first issue Obama brought up after his full-throated defense of economic fairness.

As usual, and in keeping with the high-minded tone of his speech, there were few policy specifics. (The Washington Post's Brad Plumer has a good rundown of what might be feasible in the president's second term.) What was interesting was how he framed the issue: not just as one of responsibility to future generations, but as one of responsibility to God. Here's what he said:

"We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it. We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries — we must claim its promise. That is how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure — our forests and waterways; our croplands and snowcapped peaks. That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That's what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared."

If Obama were just paying lip service to climate change to please his backers on the left—as he has sometimes been accused of doing—the reference to "science" would have been quite sufficient. By bringing in God, he's attempting to reframe the issue as one that transcends not only partisanship but the divide between those who believe in science and those who doubt science but believe in God. Left or right, atheist or creationist—either way, Obama is saying, we've got to do something.

SOURCE





Obama inadvertently got it right

His penchant for vague assertions  betrays him.  Read this excerpt from his speech again:  "Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.'

That is literally true.  None of us can avoid the impact of extreme weather events.  CO2 control won't help.  Nothing will.  The idea of human control over climate is a delusion.

Those with ears of faith will however hear a different message.   They will hear an assertion that "raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms" have become more common in recent times.  Steve Goddard has the documentation to show that such things were in fact worse in the 19th century.





Aging naturalist doesn't like people



Humans are a plague on the Earth that need to be controlled by limiting population growth, according to Sir David Attenborough.

The television presenter said that humans are threatening their own existence and that of other species by using up the world’s resources.

He said the only way to save the planet from famine and species extinction is to limit human population growth.

“We are a plague on the Earth. It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now,” he told the Radio Times.

Sir David, who is a patron of the Optimum Population Trust, has spoken out before about the “frightening explosion in human numbers” and the need for investment in sex education and other voluntary means of limiting population in developing countries.

“We keep putting on programmes about famine in Ethiopia; that’s what’s happening. Too many people there. They can’t support themselves — and it’s not an inhuman thing to say. It’s the case. Until humanity manages to sort itself out and get a coordinated view about the planet it’s going to get worse and worse.”

Sir David, whose landmark series are repeated from Monday on BBC2, starting with Life on Earth, has also spoken out about the change in wildlife documentaries during his lifetime.

The 86-year-old said commentary from presenters like himself are becoming less necessary as camera work is able to tell a story.

“I’m not sure there’s any need for a new Attenborough,” he said. “The more you go on, the less you need people standing between you and the animal and the camera waving their arms about.

“It’s much cheaper to get someone in front of a camera describing animal behaviour than actually showing you [the behaviour]. That takes a much longer time. But the kind of carefully tailored programmes in which you really work at the commentary, you really match pictures to words, is a bit out of fashion now … regarded as old hat.”

SOURCE





The tendency is to believe

And lying Leftists take advantage of that

The National Weather Service called for a moderate snowstorm in the Washingon, D.C. area on Jan. 17.

In the evening leading up to it, I expressed some skepticism as the temperatures were hovering around 45 degrees, and typically for there to be real accumulation on the roadways, there needs to be some subfreezing weather in advance of the snowfall.

However, I was assured by friends that it was going to snow, and the drive home would be miserable, because the government said so.

Thursday morning I awoke and noted that at 7 am, it was still 43 degrees, and expressed my skepticism that we were going to have a major snow event.  Once again, I was assured that the temperature was going to drop precipitously throughout the day, and we were in for it, because the Weather Service had said so.

As I was reflecting on the conversation that occurred with someone who is very conservative politically, I was hit between the eyes with a fundamental challenge facing those who fight for limited government.

Even the most skeptical of big government, believe what the government puts out as data.

If the government says it is going to snow, it is going to snow, no matter what our objective observation might tell us otherwise.

Likewise, if the government tells us that unemployment is getting better, it must be getting better, even if the drop in the unemployment rate is wholly due to people dropping out of the workforce.

And if the government tells us that we had the warmest year in history in 2012, then it must be true, even when we have reason to question it.

Anecdotally, the weather in Washington, D.C. was warm last year, so for people who reside in the puzzle palace that governs our nation, the claim rings true.

But is it?  Maybe not.

Some meteorologists like Brian Sussman, point to changes in how and where data is collected that skew the numbers.

In his book Climategate, Sussman chronicles how concrete jungles that are our nation’s modern cities retain more heat and as a result the temperatures are warmer in those locations than before.

If your temperature data collection points become more urbanized, of course, they should read warmer.  Furthermore, if you disproportionately place your ground temperature sensing stations in more urbanized areas, you can unintentionally create a warming trend.

But climate change by nature is not as simple as a ground temperature reading, and fortunately, we also have satellites which measure temperatures free from the surface vagaries.  If both the satellite data and the ground data match, then you have a headline.

As far as the claim that 2012 was the warmest on history in the continental U.S., the satellite data contradicts the ground data.

In fact, the satellite data shows that the earth’s atmospheric temperatures have been stable over the past decade.  Something even Dr. James Hansen — who served as an adviser to Al Gore on his controversial documentary The Inconvenient Truth — has had to come out and admit: “The five-year mean global temperature has been flat for the last decade, which we interpret as a combination of natural variability and a slow down in the growth rate of net climate forcing.”

Based upon this discrepancy, the question that a thinking person should ask is which data measurement tool is the most subject to outside variables that impact readings rather than giving true data.

Clearly, the ground temperature variables ranging from data collection locations and the surrounding communities increased urbanization as well as the increase in the number of collection locations and the choices for placement of them, provide significant variables making 2012 on ground weather measurements an apples to oranges comparison between the decades of data.

Even Hansen had to include this gem in his recent analysis: “An update through 2012 of our global analysis reveals 2012 as having practically the same temperature as 2011, significantly lower than the maximum reached in 2010.”

While most Americans will just accept the headlines created by the federal government’s declaration of a 2012 heat wave, and the agenda driven global warming pronouncements that followed, sometimes it is good to look behind the data.  Because as Paul Harvey used to say, when you look behind the headlines you learn, “the rest of the story.”

SOURCE






The freezing out of a skeptic

The BBC froze me out because I don't believe in global warming: Outspoken as ever, David Bellamy reveals why you don't see him on TV any more



David Bellamy still has the most wonderful face. He is pink-cheeked and beaming, his nose is impossibly broken and squashed, his eyes are kind, his hair and beard are now white but still lustrous and his vast fleshy ears are bobbing with hearing aids.

‘Come in! Come in! Sit wherever you like, that’s a comfy seat there,’ he booms, waving his hands and pointing with enormous sausage fingers. ‘Rosemary! Can we have some tea, please?

ROOOOSEMARY!’ he roars in the general direction of the kitchen and his wife of 56 years.

‘She’s the love of my life, you know. I adoooore her. We met in Love Lane in Cheam when she was just 17 and I just knew. We used to canoodle on the train together. Ooh, I’m the luckiest man in the world. I married a wonderful woman, I’ve toured the world, I’ve stood on the top of the world, I’ve made more than 400 television programmes and I’ve had one of the most woooonderful lives.....’

Everything about him exudes joy and enthusiasm. He hops from subject to subject like a vast hairy bunny.

So in our first 40 minutes chatting in his cluttered home in the middle of nowhere in County Durham, we cover everything from God (‘It’s important to have something to hang things on’), to his five children, four of whom are adopted (‘Goodness knows how old they all are — you’ll have to ask Rosemary, but we’ve got nine grandchildren and they’re all different colours’).

We take in the Royal Family (‘I worship them — particularly Prince Philip’), his lifelong love of ballet (‘Do you know, I actually wrote a ballet that’s been performed six times?’), his beard (‘I’ve never shaved in my life, never ever’) and his passion for very brief Speedo swimming trunks (‘My children hate them, but I can’t bear anything flapping around my legs’).

He rambles on in that brilliantly distinctive voice, great paws waving, eyes rolling. He turned 80 last week but he is just as he always was — a joy and a treat.

Until, that is, we touch on climate change and the vicious backlash he suffered when, in 2004, and in the face of scientific convention and public opinion, he dismissed man-made global warming as ‘poppycock!’

‘From that moment, I really wasn’t welcome at the BBC. They froze me out, because I don’t believe in global warming. My career dried up. I was thrown out of my own conservation groups and I got spat at in London.

‘And the worst thing that ever happened — I got a letter that said, “David Bellamy is the worst .....”

Oh, what was it? Damn, I’m always forgetting things. Rosemary?!’

‘Are you on about the paedophile thing?’ she says, emerging with tea. ‘Yes! It said: “David Bellamy is a paedophile because he doesn’t believe in global warming and is killing our children.”

‘And it’s just nonsense. For the last 16 years, temperatures have been going down and the carbon dioxide has been going up and the crops have got greener and grow quicker. We’ve done plenty to smash up the planet, but there’s been no global warming caused by man.’

During his heyday as a conservationist and TV personality in the Eighties and Nineties, David was everywhere — peering through palm trees, wading through marshlands and delivering wonderful rambling monologues illustrated with madly windmilling hands.  ‘I never used a script. I didn’t have people sitting in branches for six months to get a shot. I just talked and talked. It was wonderful.’

He made all those TV programmes, wrote more than 45 books, inspired comedian Lenny Henry’s ‘grapple me grapenuts’ catchphrase and starred in a Ribena commercial.

He also had a Top 40 hit with Brontosaurus, Will You Wait For Me? and appeared on Jim’ll Fix It. ‘I didn’t like Savile. He was always telling me I should become a DJ because I’d make a lot more money. And why did he pick his nose like that? He was for ever fiddling with it. Not nice.’

Bellamy also set up endless charities and campaigning groups (he was patron of more than 400 at one time — ‘I helped to start conservation’) and was never afraid to get stuck in (‘I used to play rugby and I’ve always liked a punch-up’), speak his mind  or live with the consequences.

He spent his 50th birthday in prison in Tasmania after blockading the Franklin River in protest against a proposed dam — ‘I had so many letters from all around the world, it was amaaazing!’

And in 1996 he let rip against wind farms (‘because they don’t work’) during one of his regular appearances on Blue Peter: ‘That was the beginning really. From that moment, I was not welcome at the BBC.’

But it was his global warming comments in 2004 that really cut him adrift. The killer blow came when he was dropped by The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, of which he was president. ‘I worked with the Wildlife Trusts for 52 years. And when they dropped me, they didn’t even tell me.

They didn’t have the guts. I read about it in the newspapers. Can you believe it? Now they don’t want to be anywhere near me. But what are they doing? The WWF might have saved a few pandas, but what about the forests? What have Greenpeace done?’

‘There are some very strange people out there,’ says Rosemary quietly.

It must have been terribly upsetting, I suggest. ‘Yes. It did upset us terribly,’ she says. ‘But we pretended not to be upset, didn’t we David? The best thing to do was not to talk about it. So we didn’t. It’s been very difficult, because he does feel strongly about things.’

‘I still say it’s poppycock!’ he snorts. ‘If you believe it, fine. But I don’t and there’s thousands like me. David Attenborough used to be one of us on wind farms, but then he changed his mind.’

For years, he and 86-year-old Sir David were peers. Isn’t he just a bit envious that the other David will probably still be churning out award-winning wildlife programmes when he’s 100 while he spends most of his time pottering in his garden, watching Upstairs Downstairs and Dad’s Army box sets and ‘just keeping up with what’s going on’.

‘No, no! You can’t knock him — he’s done a fantastic job of opening people’s eyes, and he has all the gadgets and stuff. But we’re different. He’s a natural history man and I’m a campaigner.

‘And I can’t complain. When I was at the BBC, I could do whatever I wanted. In those days, you could say what you liked. You can’t now.  'The world’s gone bonkers. What about this latest bloody thing — that poor lady who went to court because she wanted to wear a cross? It’s madness.’

It all started at Durham University, where David first studied and later taught botany: ‘Some of my lectures used to go on for hours. In my second year there I thought I should take my students to see a tropical rain forest — I’d never seen one. When I got there the only thing I could name was a cheese plant. So we got a nine-year-old local boy called Boko to tell us all the names and one day he didn’t turn up. He’d died of malnutrition — there was no food. I couldn’t believe it.’

That was the beginning of his environmental campaigning. After the Torrey Canyon oil disaster off the British coast in 1967, Bellamy, who was working on a project in Cornwall, gave a single TV interview on the subject and was spotted as television gold.

Decades of relentless programme-making during every university holiday followed. ‘I only ever filmed in the holidays, so my family could all come with me, which nearly bankrupted me.’

It was quite a family. ‘We were always going to have two children of our own and adopt two, but we lost our first five children before our son Rufus was born — two lived for a day, the others didn’t make it that far and Rufus was in an oxygen tent for six weeks. So we adopted the next four, from all round the world, and they’re wonderful.’

There were also 32 different species of pet, including a crocodile. ‘I bought it back from Australia — you couldn’t do that now.’

Today, David is the first to admit he’s getting old. Physically, he’s in brilliant shape — at 6ft, he’s still an impressive specimen and instantly recognisable. ‘I can’t get on to a train or aeroplane without people coming up and saying: “David  Bellamy! We haven’t seen you on telly — we thought you were dead!”’

But he’s forgetful, is for ever grasping for missing words (which Rosemary patiently supplies), and after years of deafness has recently succumbed to hearing aids.  'Bloody things. But it’s nicer for Rosemary that I’m not yelling all the time.’

Rosemary has always been his ‘pillar’, he says. ‘She deals with everything. For years I didn’t know who my bank manager was. She dealt with all that. And taught full time and brought up five children and bought my clothes. I once had to buy a shirt and tie to get into a club in London and I had no idea how to go about it.’

Does he ever regret his outspokenness and how it might have affected his image and popularity?

‘Absolutely not! Who cares if they’ve put me on the back burner? I can still talk to my flowers, which are all fine and growing amazingly and say, “Thank you very much, David!”’

And with that, we say our farewells. He gives me a warm hairy hug and big wet kiss.

‘I’m the world’s luckiest man — I’ve stood on top of the world and I married a wonderful woman and I’d still die for my country. And the BBC still makes damn good programmes, doesn’t it?’

SOURCE




The usual Greenie exploitation of Australia's Barrier Reef



The GBR has been "threatened" as far back as I remember and I am in my 70th year.  No evidence is needed:  Just a shriek

THE Great Barrier Reef could be stripped of its world heritage status within months if action isn't taken to better protect the natural icon from coal and gas developments, environment groups say.

A coalition of green groups today launched the Fight for the Reef campaign in Canberra, warning state and federal politicians were putting the reef's international reputation at risk.

Last year UNESCO was "sufficiently concerned" enough by proposed developments along the Queensland coast it sent a mission to Australia to investigate, the campaign's director Felicity Wishart said.

It made a number of recommendations to the commonwealth and Queensland governments about how to proceed in the best interests of the reef.

The global heritage body could place the reef - the world's longest coral reef system - on the "world heritage in danger" list if it doesn't receive an adequate response by February.

Ms Wishart said such action would be an international embarrassment that threatened both the reef ecosystem and the $6 billion tourism industry it supports.

"The reef has an international reputation, it is loved globally," she said.

"That's a really alarming international black mark that we could be tracking towards if we don't lift our game."

She said the campaign, formed by the Australian Marine Conservation Society and the World Wildlife Fund, had written to all the major parties in a bid to get the reef on the 2013 election agenda.

At the centre of their concerns are 45 major industrial developments proposed for the coast, including large-scale coal and gas projects that would boost shipping over the reef.

Currently, around 4000 ships make "port calls" through the reef every year, but that number could skyrocket to 7000 if the proposals go ahead unchallenged, the campaign group warns.

The main concern is that the government, which has a "proud track record" of defending the reef, wasn't now taking this issue seriously, Ms Wishart said.

"We're calling on all sides of politics to step up and commit to greater protection for what is the most significant natural icon that Australia has," she said.

"This is something that has to be beyond politics."

The Great Barrier Reef was granted world heritage status in 1981, but has since faced numerous threats from coral bleaching to cyclones, runoff, Crown-of-thorns starfish and commercial activity.

SOURCE

***************************************

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

Preserving the graphics:  Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility.  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 and here

*****************************************

How Mature Is Climate Science?

Finding new data and incorporating it in support of or opposition to theory is the way science works–and it works very well. We live in an amazing and wonderful world because of it.

The term ‘climate science’ is actually an umbrella phrase that covers a number of disciplines that contribute to our overall understanding of the many forces acting and interacting on our climate. Some of these disciplines are mature–like physics. Others are not.

Many of the participants in the political debate about what to do regarding future climate change do not understand this. Many others are conversant with one of the sub-topics and think that allows them to speak with authority on other topics. The result is dismal–and what you see around you.

I will just point out that a science that just discovered that black soot turns out to be the second-greatest man-made forcing of temperatures, almost as great as CO2, should not be considered mature.

SOURCE





Inaugural Lies and the Big Chill

By Alan Caruba

In his second inaugural speech, Barack Obama said, “We must respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations”?

To what “climate change” is Obama referring? Is it the now thoroughly debunked “global warming” hoax? Is it the climate change of the 11,500 years since the last ice age? Or is it “the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms” to which Obama referred?

If it is the latter, does anyone actually believe that these natural events can be mitigated by anything Americans or the entire population of the world can do? Did any among the thousands in attendance at the inauguration, shivering in the frigid weather, wonder what the President was talking about or why?

After more than three decades of being told that the Earth was dangerously heating up by people like Al Gore and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, there are more voices warning that the current cold cycle that will last, at a minimum, several decades.

The public continues to be misled to the mainstream media and, more importantly, by the federal government whose increased environmental regulations are based on the global warming lies, so who can you believe?

Publications such as Science magazine have been so politicized at this point as to be virtually useless. Roger Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies, recently released a study that updates his study of the magazine, noted that “In a 2009 paper I documented that Science magazine published 40 editorials critical of the Bush Administration during its two terms, and only 1 such critique of the Clinton Administration’s previous 2 terms. I have just updated this analysis through the first term of the Obama Administration, and found no editorials critical of the Obama Administration.”

It should be noted that Obama routinely refers to “climate change”, the new name for “global warming”, and has already wasted billions on “renewable” energy, wind and solar, including algae, otherwise known as pond scum. The Obama EPA is releasing an avalanche of new regulations based in part on the “global warming” myths and dubious “science” regarding levels of pollution that are worthless.

Recently I received a book by John L. Casey, “Cold Sun: A Dangerous ‘Hibernation’ of the Sun Has Begun” ($14.50, Trafford Publishing, softcover), the president of the Space and Science Research Corporation (SPSC). It is essentially a one-man operation and Casey’s book is an effort to warn the public about the fact that the sun has entered a cycle of very low sunspot activity. More sunspots mean warming weather and fewer mean cold weather. SPSC has the support of a number of scientists who concur that the planet has entered a cooling cycle, something well known to meteorologists, climatologists, and solar scientists, even if it remains generally unknown to the public.

Casey has been issuing press releases since 2007 warning of a decades-long period of cooling that will likely have some extremely serious effects on the planet that include droughts, increased volcanic activity, earthquakes, and the death of millions as the history of such events in the past demonstrates. He is candid about his credentials and the lack of response he has gotten from the media and those in the government he has tried to inform.

Of one release, he says that “In fact, it was seen with even less credulity since it was proposed by someone essentially unknown in the professional climate science community, a person without any past record of university research and not one published paper in any scientific journal.” It would be easy to dismiss Casey, but he has been a consultant to NASA, “performing space shuttle and space station analysis” and done studies for the Department of Defense “performing rocket launch studies.” He has a BS degree in physics and mathematics and a MA in management. So it can be said he has extensive experience in areas that require a sound body of knowledge.

Others are also forecasting a serious cold cycle. In January 2012, Habilbullo Abdusamatov, a scientist from the Pulkovo Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences predicted a sharp drop in temperature starting in 2014 and a new “little” ice age that will last at least two centuries with a peak in 2055. It would be the fifth such event over the past nine centuries, the last of which lasted from 1300 to 1850 when the last warming cycle began.

In January 2012, Wall Street Journal science columnist Matt Ridley, noted that the cycle of warm weather between ice ages that the Earth has been enjoying “is already 11,600 years old, and it must surely in the normal course of things, come to an end.”

One of the leading authorities on ice ages, Robert W. Felix, author of “Not By Fire, But By Ice”, like Casey, became fascinated with ice age cycles and spent eight years studying them before publishing his book in 2005. He maintains a website, www.iceagenow.info that is well worth visiting as he documents the weather events of our current cold cycle and the advent of a new ice age.

Casey’s book reflects his mission to educate the public to the dangers of a sun whose low number of sunspots (magnetic storms) is well known among solar scientists and generally under-reported. “This particular solar cycle (#24) peak is one of the lowest since cycle #14 in 1906 which had approximately 64 sunspots,” Casey told me. “We measure each solar maximum every eleven years to determine the average of solar activity by sunspot count. We have had solar maximums in the past there were over 200 sunspots and some as low as 50. The relevance of information about the number of sunspots is that when the count goes below 50 we enter a much colder climate era.”

Some will dismiss Casey for not having the credentials of climatologists and meteorologists. Many with these credentials jumped on the global warming hoax by way of securing grants and other funding. A courageous few debunked global warming until it became obvious that it was a lie. There will be those who will dismiss his warning as hyperbole. In “Cold Sun” he says “A historic reduction in the energy output of the Sun has begun. The most likely outcome from this ‘solar hibernation’ will be widespread global loss of life and social, economic, and political disruption.”

As the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) said, “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” It is very likely that as the current cooling cycle—now over 16 years old—wlll increase, Robert W. Felix’s, Casey’s, and others with traditional credentials in meteorology, climatology, geology and physics will eventually be heeded and the Big Chill will have become self-evident.

SOURCE






Even Germans being forced back to the past by energy costs

With snow blanketing the ground, it's the perfect time of year to snuggle up in front of a fireplace. That, though, makes German foresters nervous. When the mercury falls, the theft of wood in the country's woodlands goes up as people turn to cheaper ways to heat their homes.

"The forest is open for everyone to enter and people just think they can help themselves, but they can't!" says Enno Rosenthal, head of the forest farmers association in the northeastern German state of Brandenburg. "Naturally, those log piles belong to someone and there is a lot of money and work that goes into them."

The problem has been compounded this winter by rising energy costs. The Germany's Renters Association estimates the heating costs will go up 22 percent this winter alone. A side effect is an increasing number of people turning to wood-burning stoves for warmth. Germans bought 400,000 such stoves in 2011, the German magazine FOCUS reported this week. It marks the continuation of a trend: The number of Germans buying heating devices that burn wood and coal has grown steadily since 2005, according to consumer research company GfK Group.

That increase in demand has now also boosted prices for wood, leading many to fuel their fires with theft.

Rosenthal said just last weekend someone stole an entire bundle of oak wood worth about €150 ($199) from a private forest in the town of Neuruppin outside of Berlin. "Many foresters come back to their wood piles and find them a little smaller or even gone," he says.

About 10 percent of the firewood that comes out of Brandenburg's forest every year is stolen, resulting in losses of about €500,000, Rosenthal estimates. In the southern German state of Bavaria some 5 percent is absconded with annually says Hans Bauer, head of the state's forest owners association.

"A gray zone has developed," says Rosenthal. "Normally if you sell sausages, you create a business and pay taxes, but with wood some people are laxer." He says many people steal wood and then resell it via ads in the newspaper. Such sales, needless to say, tend to be of the under-the-table variety.

Other thieves are more spontaneous, says Bauer. Often people will just drive by a pile of wood and see it as invitation to steal, he says. "Drivers just stop, open up their trunks and put the wood in and drive off," he says. "It's that easy."

Bauer says that a couple of years ago, a driver loaded up €2,000 worth of wood into a truck and drove off. He was eventually caught and paid a fine to the forest owner. But Bauer says such retribution is rare.

Bauer now advises foresters to keep wood deep in the forests away from busy thoroughfares and to make logs too large to fit in regular cars, keeping temptation for casual thieves at bay.
Often, however, even those measures aren't enough. Rosenthal said that just a few years ago foresters would leave log piles in the forest for up to a year to dry. Now, though, he says they aren't kept for more than a month before moving to more secure locales. "Keeping the wood under your own surveillance is the best protection," says Rosenthal.

In the western German city of Hessisch Lichtenau other foresters are taking a more extreme approach, according to local daily the Hessische/Niedersächsische Allegemeine. In recent years, two major tree heists have taken place in town and the state experiences losses of millions of euros as a result. The paper reports that now some foresters are outfitting log piles with GPS devices to track thieves.

SOURCE





Green Germany: 800,000 German Households Can No Longer Pay Their Energy Bills

Germany’s consumers are facing record price rises for green energy. Social campaigners and consumer groups complain that up to 800 000 households in Germany can no longer pay their energy bills.

Over the last few days, it has become obvious that the Green Energy Levy will rise to record levels next year. The first thing Peter Altmaier, Germany’s federal environment minister, would say is this: consumers should save electricity. After a meeting with local authorities, the energy industry, consumer advocates and charities he announced that to achieve this he wants to send free energy consultants to all households in Germany.

His proposal, however, was met by massive criticism: the chief executive of the Joint Welfare Association, Ulrich Schneider, said: “It would be naive to think that growing poverty caused by rising energy costs can be solved by free energy-saving advice.” The environment minister of Lower Saxony pointed out that energy advice was already available. What was needed now was an immediate response to the rising cost of electricity.

A few days later, Altmeier finally said that he wanted to shake up the Renewable Energy Act and thus get any further expansion of the renewable energy under control.

Electricity and heating costs overwhelm German households

The fact remains that as of next year electricity will be more expensive for Germans than ever before. This is all the more frustrating as they have to pay increasingly more for other things too. Yet energy costs are turning into a so-called ‘second rent’, making life for Germans ever more expensive.

Some years ago the tariffs for water, sewage, refuse collection and street cleaning were regarded as a nuisance, but looming price increases for energy are focusing Germans’ attention, says the Association of German Tenants in Berlin. “The disproportionate rise in electricity and heating costs makes living costs a growing problem for many households,” said DMB director Lukas Siebenkotten.

On average 34 percent of net household income are spent on rent and energy. That is more than ever. And it is only partly because housing rents are rising: The Association of House and Apartment Owners has found that energy prices have increased far more than rents in the past 15 years. According to the Association of Energy Consumers, heating and hot water costs now comprise 41 percent of bills on average - and rising.

Hundreds of thousands cannot pay their bills

Especially for small household budgets – with real incomes more or less stagnant for many years – energy costs are becoming increasingly intolerable. In 2009, Germans spent about 100 billion Euros for energy – an average of 2,500 Euros per household. Social campaigners and consumer groups complain that up to 800 000 households in Germany can no longer pay their electric bills. If the rise in energy prices continues, this “second rent” could soon exceed the main rent in some parts of Germany.

SOURCE





Global cooling coming

NASA reports this week that we may be on the verge of another Maunder Minimum (a period with an unusually low number of sunspots, leading to colder temperatures):

Much has been made of the probable connection between the Maunder Minimum, a 70-year deficit of sunspots in the late 17th-early 18th century, and the coldest part of the Little Ice Age, during which Europe and North America were subjected to bitterly cold winters.  The mechanism for that regional cooling could have been a drop in the sun’s EUV output; this is, however, speculative.

The yearly averaged sunspot number for a period of 400 years (1610-2010). SOURCE: Courtesy of NASA Marshall Space Flight Center

The sun could be on the threshold of a mini-Maunder event right now.  Ongoing Solar Cycle 24 is the weakest in more than 50 years.  Moreover, there is (controversial) evidence of a long-term weakening trend in the magnetic field strength of sunspots. Matt Penn and William Livingston of the National Solar Observatory predict that by the time Solar Cycle 25 arrives, magnetic fields on the sun will be so weak that few if any sunspots will be formed. Independent lines of research involving helioseismology and surface polar fields tend to support their conclusion.
NASA explains that interactions between the sun, sources of cosmic radiation and the Earth are very complicated, and it takes an interdisciplinary team of heliophysicists, chemists and others to quantify what is really going on.  And the Earth’s climate is also affected by cosmic radiation.

So – even if NASA’s prediction of a period of an unusually low amount of sun spots is proven correct – it is hard to know whether that will lead to a large or small reduction in temperature trends.

SOURCE





Boris Johnson on Global Cooling

As Mayor of London he has to step cautiously

"The Sun is god!” cried JMW Turner as he died, and plenty of other people have thought there was much in his analysis. The Aztecs agreed, and so did the pharaohs of Egypt. We are an arrogant lot these days, and we tend to underestimate the importance of our governor and creator.

We forget that we were once just a clod of cooled-down solar dust; we forget that without the Sun there would have been no photosynthesis, no hydrocarbons — and that it was the great celestial orb that effectively called life into being on Earth. In so far as we are able to heat our homes or turn on our computers or drive to work it is thanks to the unlocking of energy from the Sun.

As a species, we human beings have become so blind with conceit and self-love that we genuinely believe that the fate of the planet is in our hands — when the reality is that everything, or almost everything, depends on the behaviour and caprice of the gigantic thermonuclear fireball around which we revolve.

I say all this because I am sitting here staring through the window at the flowerpot and the bashed-up barbecue, and I am starting to think this series of winters is not a coincidence. The snow on the flowerpot, since I have been staring, has got about an inch thicker. The barbecue is all but invisible. By my calculations, this is now the fifth year in a row that we have had an unusual amount of snow; and by unusual I mean snow of a kind that I don’t remember from my childhood: snow that comes one day, and then sticks around for a couple of days, followed by more.

I remember snow that used to come and settle for just long enough for a single decent snowball fight before turning to slush; I don’t remember winters like this. Two days ago I was cycling through Trafalgar Square and saw icicles on the traffic lights; and though I am sure plenty of readers will say I am just unobservant, I don’t think I have seen that before. I am all for theories about climate change, and would not for a moment dispute the wisdom or good intentions of the vast majority of scientists.

But I am also an empiricist; and I observe that something appears to be up with our winter weather, and to call it “warming” is obviously to strain the language. I see from the BBC website that there are scientists who say that “global warming” is indeed the cause of the cold and snowy winters we seem to be having. A team of Americans and Chinese experts have postulated that the melting of the Arctic ice means that the whole North Atlantic is being chilled as the floes start to break off — like a Martini refrigerated by ice cubes.

I do not have the expertise to comment on the Martini theory; I merely observe that there are at least some other reputable scientists who say that it is complete tosh, or at least that there is no evidence to support it. We are expecting the snow and cold to go on for several days, and though London transport has coped very well so far, with few delays or cancellations, I can’t help brooding on my own amateur meteorological observations. I wish I knew more about what is going on, and why. It is time to consult once again the learned astrophysicist, Piers Corbyn.

Now Piers has a very good record of forecasting the weather. He has been bang on about these cold winters. Like JMW Turner and the Aztecs he thinks we should be paying more attention to the Sun. According to Piers, global temperature depends not on concentrations of CO2 but on the mood of our celestial orb. Sometime too bright the eye of heaven shines, said Shakespeare, and often is his gold complexion dimmed. That is more or less right. There are times in astronomical history when the Sun has been churning out more stuff — protons and electrons and what have you — than at other times. When the Sun has plenty of sunspots, he bathes the Earth in abundant rays.

When the solar acne diminishes, it seems that the Earth gets colder. No one contests that when the planet palpably cooled from 1645 to 1715 — the Maunder minimum, which saw the freezing of the Thames — there was a diminution of solar activity. The same point is made about the so-called Dalton minimum, from 1790 to 1830. And it is the view of Piers Corbyn that we are now seeing exactly the same phenomenon today.



Lower solar activity means – broadly speaking – that there is less agitation of the warm currents of air from the tropical to the temperate zones, so that a place like Britain can expect to be colder and damper in summer, and colder and snowier in winter. “There is every indication that we are at the beginning of a mini ice age,” he says. “The general decline in solar activity is lower than Nasa’s lowest prediction of five years ago. That could be very bad news for our climate. We are in for a prolonged cold period. Indeed, we could have 30 years of general cooling.”

Now I am not for a second saying that I am convinced Piers is right; and to all those scientists and environmentalists who will go wild with indignation on the publication of this article, I say, relax. I certainly support reducing CO2 by retrofitting homes and offices – not least since that reduces fuel bills. I want cleaner vehicles.

I am speaking only as a layman who observes that there is plenty of snow in our winters these days, and who wonders whether it might be time for government to start taking seriously the possibility — however remote — that Corbyn is right. If he is, that will have big implications for agriculture, tourism, transport, aviation policy and the economy as a whole. Of course it still seems a bit nuts to talk of the encroachment of a mini ice age.

But it doesn’t seem as nuts as it did five years ago. I look at the snowy waste outside, and I have an open mind.

SOURCE

***************************************

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

Preserving the graphics:  Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility.  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 and here

*****************************************

Another "scientist" who thinks that truth is detemined by majority vote

Amusing that he admits global warming to be the ruling paradigm.  He should read Thomas Kuhn on paradigm shifts.  Given the recent admissions by the British Met office and others, we may right now be at the beginning of a paradigm shift.

But to address his article in more detail: I found the same in my research career in psychology.  There was an almost universal view that conservatives were maladjusted.  When I presented evidence undermining that view, a very high standard of proof -- far higher than normal  -- was required of me for my articles to get published.  Fortunately, as a born academic, I could do that and 200+ of my papers were eventually published in the academic journals.

But I might as well have not bothered.  My papers were ignored.  Despite meeting higher quality standards, they had no impact on  opinion in the discipline.  So the huge bias towards Green/Left beliefs that we see in the climate literature was previously very well-known to me from my research career in psychology.  It is the ruling paradigm that determines what gets published and what gets noticed.  It takes a huge "hit on the head" to budge that and for many no budge is possible.  They just have to die out

As the geochemist James Lawrence Powell notes, opinion polls in the US show a large number of people believe that scientists “substantially disagree about human-caused global warming”. So Powell, who was appointed by Ronald Reagan to the US National Board for Science and Technology, set out to examine the evidence.

“If there is disagreement among scientists, based not on opinion but on hard evidence, it will be found in the peer-reviewed literature,” he writes, because this is the “gold standard” of scientific research. So he trawled through the Web of Science searching for scientific articles with the keywords “global warming” or “global climate change”.

Going way back to January 1st, 1991, and right up to date, Powell’s search turned up a total of 13,950 articles. Of these, just 24 – 0.17 per cent or one in 581 – clearly rejected global warming or endorsed a cause other than carbon dioxide emissions for the observed warming of 0.8 degrees since the beginning of the industrial era.

“To be classified as rejecting, an article had to clearly and explicitly state that the theory of global warming is false or, as happened in a few cases, that some other process better explains the observed warming,” Powell says, adding that he did not classify as “rejecting” articles that merely claimed to have found small discrepancies.

“Of one thing we can be certain: had any of these articles presented the magic bullet that falsifies human-caused global warming, that article would be on its way to becoming one of the most-cited in the history of science,” he wrote. Indeed it would be absolutely sensational, however unlikely it is to happen.

“Global warming deniers often claim that bias prevents them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals. But 24 articles in 18 different journals . . . expose that claim as false. Articles rejecting global warming can be published, but those that have been have earned little support or notice, even from other deniers,” according to Powell.

The 24 “denial” articles have been cited by others a total of 113 times over the nearly 21-year period, for an average of close to five citations each – compared to an average of about 19 citations for articles answering to “global warming”. Four of the “rejecting” articles have never been cited while another four have 10 or more.

He notes that the 13,950 articles he found had a total of 33,690 individual authors, with the top 10 (in descending order) coming from the US, Britain, China, Germany, Japan, Canada, Australia, France, Spain and the Netherlands. A similarly broad range would also be reflected in the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“Only one conclusion is possible: within science, global warming denial has virtually no influence. Its influence is instead on a misguided media, politicians all-too-willing to deny science for their own gain, and a gullible public”, writes Powell, the author of The Inquisition of Climate Science, an illuminating book published in 2011.

“Scientists do not disagree about human-caused global warming. It is the ruling paradigm of climate science, in the same way that plate tectonics is the ruling paradigm of geology. We know that continents move. We know that the earth is warming and that human emissions of greenhouse gases are the primary cause.”

More HERE




"There is no such thing as right and wrong"  -- except when it comes to climate change?

I long ago documented the strange phenomenon where Leftists deny any objective morality and then immediately hop into very moralistic  discourse against things they disapprove of.  And so it still goes today, as we see documented below.  Conservatives however DO believe in morality so can reasonably condemn the gross immorality of Warmists

People have been saying for years that climate change is a moral issue, that fighting global warming is an ethical imperative. In both the first and last paragraph of this essay/book excerpt posted on the National Public Radio (US) website in 2006, Al Gore declares:

"…global warming is not just about science and…it is not just a political issue. It is really a moral issue. …this crisis is not really about politics at all. It is a moral and spiritual challenge."

Four years later here he is telling students at Duke University:

"Make no mistake, this is not just a political issue, not just a market issue, not just a national security issue, not just a jobs issue. It is a moral issue."

Writer Willis Eschenbach also sees the climate campaign as a moral issue. But his sense of morality resonates with me because it takes into account poor people – whom environmentalists like to pretend don’t really exist.

The greens have been very clear. Climate change is due to too much CO2. Therefore energy use, which produces CO2, must be slashed. Therefore prices should rise sharply to discourage people from using energy.

No other serious analysis has been advanced by the big green machine. That’s the basic climate change argument. The problem is that this amounts to a war against the poor.

As Eschenbach points out, the consequences of this sort of thinking are disastrous for a large percentage of the world’s population. Over-privileged academics and bureaucrats might not notice if their home heating bill doubles – or if it costs twice as much to fill up their car. Many of these people might well consider the extra cost worth it.

Yes, there’d be less spending money in their pockets, they say, but surely the sacrifice would be worth it to save the planet. While being interviewed by a unionized employee of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation last this summer, I was told pretty much that.  But here’s how Eschenbach explains matters:

"The difference between rich and poor, between developed and developing, is the availability of inexpensive energy.  …The poorer you are, the larger a percentage of your budget goes to energy-intensive things like transportation and heat and electricity. If you double the price of energy, everyone is poorer, but the poor take it the hardest. Causing an increase in energy prices for any reason is the most regressive tax imaginable.

…I find it both reprehensible and incomprehensible when those of us who are in the 1% of the global 1%, like President Obama and Secretary [Stephen] Chu, blithely talk of doubling the price of gasoline and sending the cost of electricity skyrocketing as though there were no negative results from that, as though it wouldn’t cause widespread suffering, as though cheap energy weren’t the best friend of the poor. What Chu and Obama propose are crazy plans, they are ivory-tower schemes of people who are totally out of touch with the realities faced by the poor of the world, whether inside the US or out."

This is what I call placing the anti-climate change crusade in a moral context. Eschenbach’s conclusion is one that makes eminent sense to me:

"…I’m sorry, but I am totally unwilling to trade inexpensive energy today, which is the real actual salvation of the poor today, for some imagined possible slight reduction in the temperature fifty years from now. That is one of the worst trades that I can imagine, exchanging current suffering for a promise of a slight reduction in temperatures in the year 2050."

More HERE  (See the original for links)





An empirical examination of human agency in climate change

If most of the temperature changes prior to 1945 were largely natural, then there is great difficulty in determining how much of the temperature change post-1945 is natural and how much might be driven by increasing carbon dioxide. This raises the question of what the natural variation in temperature might be.

To answer this question, we turn to the Vostok ice core record over the past 9000 years[12]. The core was sampled every metre of depth, which represented ~20 years of accumulation in the upper layers and ~50 years in the lower levels. The temperature was estimated from differences in the oxygen isotope ratios. While a point measurement such as this cannot give a good measure of the average global temperature, it is a reasonable measure of changes in global temperature, and it is primarily temperature changes that are of interest.

The data are shown in Figure 4. There has been a slight cooling over the past 9 millennia, as shown by the least-squares line. The data were therefore detrended before further analysis – the mean temperature at any one date was added to the reported relative temperature. The detrended temperatures were what is known as “normally distributed”, i.e. there was nothing abnormal or skewed about them. Then the rate of change between each detrended temperature and the temperature approximately 100±20 years earlier was calculated and expressed as a rate per century. The results were also normally distributed, with a standard deviation of 0.94oC per century.


Figure 4. Relative temperatures over the past 9000 years.

Thus there is about a 2:1 chance that the temperature may vary by up to 1oC per century from natural causes, but only about a 1 in 10 chance that it will vary by more than 1.9oC naturally. Between 1900 and 2000 it varied by about 0.9oC, which is, therefore, within the range of natural variation. And that, in simple terms, is why there is scepticism about the thesis that carbon dioxide is causing global warming – there is no clear signal of any such warming effect.

Much more HERE





Government Scientist Gets Fired for Telling the Truth

Something’s amiss at the Department of Interior. Eight government scientists were recently fired or reassigned after voicing concerns to their superiors about faulty environmental science used for policy decisions. Which begs the question, “Are some government agencies manipulating science to advance political agendas?”

Fictional book authors operate in a convenient world, unconstrained by facts and experiences of the real world. The antithesis of works of fiction are scientific findings solely based on provable facts and experience. For agenda-driven environmental science, facts can sometime prove inconvenient. It’s far easier to advance an agenda with agreeable science, even if that means creating science fiction or fictional science. Fictional science thus becomes the pseudo-reality of environmentalist’s absolutism and any science that disagrees with their predetermined conclusions of man-made harm to the environment is ignored or distorted. Now we learn that in some government agencies, scientists who question the veracity and validity of scientific evidence used to formulate environmental regulations and policies are shunned, kept quiet, and purged.

The purpose of fictional environmental science is to sway public opinion through what amounts to propaganda. Intransigent purveyors of “green” propaganda know their greatest enemy is truth. One of the most famous propaganda experts was Germany’s Joseph Goebbels, who taught that if a lie is repeated often enough it will eventually be accepted as truth. Goebbels also knew that truth has to be suppressed if it contradicts the objectives of the propaganda. Goebbels wrote, “It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Over the past three decades, government has unleashed an unprecedented wave of environmental rules and regulations that affect nearly every aspect of American life, and for the most part the public has tolerated it. Public embrace of environmental propaganda and fear mongering about the apocalyptic consequences of mankind’s abuse of the planet have elevated environmentalism to a status above national security. The public is now more likely to give up rights and freedoms for the cause of saving the planet than for security reasons.

Rural America has long been a target of environmentalists. Government agencies such as the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and the DOI (Department of Interior) have been hijacked by extreme elements of environmentalism and rural America is feeling the heat. When environmental protocol is pitted against the welfare of a rural community, these agencies almost exclusively side with the environmental cause, and adverse consequences to the human element are considered last, if at all.

The Department of Interior refers to itself as the nation's landlord. It controls almost 30% of the nation's 2.27 billion acres of land and its natural resources, and as a regulatory agency, it creates policies to govern how public land and these resources are used. Under the leadership of Secretary Ken Salazar the agency has engaged in an aggressive crusade to obstruct and undermine the use of natural resources, restrict human access to public lands, and increase its influence over private property. Decisions made by the agency are presumed to be based on sound scientific analysis, but often times policy is driving the science, rather than science driving environmental policy. This has led to harmful decisions and a violation of the public trust.

A case in point is the story of DOI science adviser and scientific integrity officer, Dr. Paul Houser, who found out that by simply doing his job can be hazardous to one’s career. Dr. Houser is an expert in hydrology who was hired by DOI’s Bureau of Reclamation to evaluate scientific data used in the department’s decision making process. He was assigned several Western State projects including a scheme to remove four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River in Northern California—the largest dam removal project in U.S. history. When a summary of science posted on the web to support DOI’s claim for removal of the dams omitted several crucial factors from expert panel reports, Dr. Houser brought his concerns to his superiors. He was repeatedly told to refrain from sharing his concerns through electronic communication, which could be subject to Freedom of Information Act discovery.

Dr. Houser learned firsthand that policy was driving the science, rather than the other way around, when he was told by his superiors at DOI, “Secretary Salazar wants to remove those dams. So your actions here aren’t helpful.”

According to the DOI the premise for Klamath River dams removal is to restore Coho salmon spawning habitat above the dams. However, official DOI documents reveal scientific concerns that dam removal may, in fact, result in species decline based on millions of tons of toxic sediment build up behind the dams that will make its way to the ocean. Water temperature increases without the dams could also negatively impact the salmon. These studies were ignored. Concerns about the human toll and impact to local Klamath Basin communities were also brushed aside. Those most interested in the well-being of the environment they live and work in, were given a backseat to special interests thousands of miles away.

The Klamath hydroelectric dams provide clean inexpensive energy to thousands of local residents who will be forced to pay much higher premiums if the dams are removed because California has strict new laws for use of renewable energy. The town of Happy Camp sits on the banks of the Klamath River and could be wiped out with seasonal flooding without the dams. Once Coho salmon are introduced into the upper Klamath, farmers and ranchers will be faced with water use restrictions and invasive government regulation of private land. The economic impact will be devastating, property values will depreciate and the agriculture community, often operating on slim profit margins, will be subjected to the fate of the once vibrant logging industry which fell victim to the spotted owl crusades.

Last year, Dr. Houser raised these concerns and was subsequently fired by the DOI. “I put my concerns forward and immediately thereafter I was pushed out of the organization,” he stated. The agency sent a clear message to the rest of their employees and scientists - Salazar’s dam busting agenda cannot be subject to any internal scientific scrutiny. Goebbels would be proud. Truth must be repressed when it contradicts the objective.

Dr. Houser did the right thing. He did his job. His integrity as a scientist was more important than a paycheck. But he remains concerned about his colleagues in DOI, “There are a lot of good scientists that work for the government but they are scared, they are scared that what happened to me might happen to them. This is an issue (about) the honesty and transparency of government and an issue for other scientists in government who want to speak out.” A few weeks ago Dr. Houser settled a wrongful discharge case with the DOI. Terms of his settlement are not public.

Now, seven more DOI scientists working on the Klamath Project have filed a complaint with PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility) claiming they have been reassigned or terminated for disagreement with the integrity of the science used to support dam removal. They have charged DOI’s Bureau of Reclamation’s management with “coercive manipulation, sublimating science to political priorities, censorship, and scientific misconduct.”

The government’s use of fictional science in the Klamath dam removal project should concern every American. Our public servants at DOI are brazenly advancing their own agendas at the expense of the truth and regardless of adverse impacts on the environment, humans, and on rural communities. Environment and human interests are not incompatible. We have to find solutions that work to the benefit of both. That requires agendas be put aside and allow complete science to determine policy.

DOI Secretary Ken Salazar is stepping down in March. His replacement needs to be someone who can be trusted to end the culture of fictional science as a means to advance environmental agendas.

SOURCE




Britain faces global cooling

Britain faces more travel chaos tomorrow after forecasters predicted a fresh blanket of heavy snow over much of the country – and said the big freeze could last for two weeks.

But as some of these pictures show, the bad weather didn’t necessarily mean bad news for everyone, with families across Britain determined to make  the most of the snow.

Following Friday’s deluge, much of today’s snow was limited to flurries in the North East of England and the east of Scotland. But the weather heaped misery on more than 10,000 households in South Wales, where residents found themselves with no power this morning.

The M48 Severn Bridge was closed in both directions because of hazardous conditions and the Highways Agency warned drivers to take extra care on all roads across the UK.

Many rail passengers were hit. South West Trains cancelled services between Salisbury and Bristol and Virginia Water and Weybridge, Surrey.  Routes from London to Hampshire, Berkshire, Surrey, Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset and Devon were also affected.

With more snow set to fall tomorrow and overnight into Monday, hundreds of schools could be forced to close.

Forecasters said heavy snowfall of up to 3in (8cm) will hit coastal regions of south-eastern England and London tomorrow, with amber weather warnings issued in Kent  and Hertfordshire.

Temperatures will not rise above freezing next week, with Met Office forecaster Robin Thwaytes warning: ‘It looks like it will be a slow thaw, probably taking place this week or the week after.’

Heathrow has already been badly hit by the bad weather and the announcement that 20 per cent of Sunday's flights have been axed will bring further misery to hundreds of passengers who have remained trapped at the airport after spending the night sleeping on the floor.

More than 100 have been cancelled today and some travellers complained that they had spent seven hours sitting on a plane on the tarmac only to be told to return to the terminal. One commentator referred to the vast complex as a 'refugee camp'.

It comes as fears grow that the Arctic conditions may not recede for up to two weeks, leaving the country shivering under a layer of ice and snow in a 'once a decade' big freeze.

Met office forecaster Robin Thwaytes said: 'It looks like it will be a slow thaw, probably next week or the week after.'

SOURCE





Al Gore Warming

In October one of the main culprits in the global warming hoax published new data that undermines their own theory of global warming. The UK’s MET Office, more formally called the UK's National Weather Service, updated global temperatures for 2012 and the new dataset shows that an “unlikely” event has occurred, according to their own models: Global warming has been halted for 15 years and counting.

While the MET Office accused critics of cherry-picking a starting point and nitpicked about language-for example the Daily Mail reported that the “Met Office report [was] quietly released,” while the Met office whined they just updated the data and there was no “report” at all- they don’t dispute that from 1997 until the halfway mark in 2012 there has been no statistically significant rise in global temperatures.

Data such as this and a better coordinated scientific effort at debunking the “science” behind global warming is poking some serious holes that establishment technocrats would rather normal people like us not know about.

Fortunately however, some honest technocrats have been recruited for seven years in a row in a gathering that seems to be growing some legs in an effort to confront, debunk and demystify global warming.

In May of 2012, the Heartland Institute hosted its biggest ever- and seventh ever-International Conference on Climate Change, known affectionately as ICCC7, which might be a mocking reference to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change known as IPCC. For my money ICCC7 would look a LOT cooler on a t-shirt, pun intended.

A record number of think tanks, concerned policy makers, scientists and citizens got together in Chicago to look at the science behind global warming theories and explain why the science is wrong. ICCC7 also invited 50 UN scientists “who support the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s perspective, but none agreed to attend,” according to the Heartland Institute.

One of the most compelling presentations at ICCC7 was by Stanley Goldberg, a research scientist with the Hurricane Research division with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

He says the link that we have all heard through mainstream media about more violent storms caused by a rise in global temperatures are mostly manipulated by our ability to better “observe” weather globally. In one compelling case he shows how it used to be that between 100 and 75 percent of the observed storms in pre-satellite days made landfall, once satellite technology was available, the percentage of observed storms that made landfall fell to 59 percent. The implication is that since the decrease in storms making landfall accompanies advances in technology and does not represent an increase in the number of storms that make landfall, the only explanation is that through technology our ability to observe storms is better than its has been in the past.

The same can be said about temperature data as well. With temperatures showing a total increase of .75 degrees Celsius to make it “THE WARMEST PLANET EVER IN RECORDED HISTORY!” can we really be sure that it’s not our ability to measure and manipulate data that is not responsible for some of the increase?

Because here’s the reality that none of the scientists tell you: There is no such thing as an average global temperature. It’s a mathematically impossible concept.

“Absolute estimates of global average surface temperature are difficult to compile for several reasons,” says the National Climatic Data Center. “Some regions have few temperature measurement stations (e.g., the Sahara Desert) and interpolation must be made over large, data-sparse regions. In mountainous areas, most observations come from the inhabited valleys, so the effect of elevation on a region’s average temperature must be considered as well. For example, a summer month over an area may be cooler than average, both at a mountain top and in a nearby valley, but the absolute temperatures will be quite different at the two locations.”

In other words, the ability to measure global temperatures is hindered by our ability to observe temperatures. Is it just coincidental that our increased ability to observe temperatures coincides with our observations of a global warming trend?  

There is a tendency, says Goldberg, by some of the media, government “and certain scientific circles to attribute almost ANY increase in natural disasters to AGW,” which he jokingly calls “Al Gore Warming.”

“If it’s bad,” he concludes, “it must be AGW!”

But here’s the real rub: None of the so-called solutions put forward by Kyoto, the Cap and Trade crowd and others with the ability to implement solutions attempts, under their own scientific theories of global warming, to reverse the warming trend. For example, if you assume that today renewable energy contributes about zero to energy production and assume that by 2040 renewable energy will contribute an optimistic 20 percent of all energy production, you still get fossil fuel use of about 112 percent of today’s figure, when you include energy demand growth forecasts.

Under global warming theory this does nothing to halt or reverse any warming. All it does is ask American consumers to subsidize the development and use of cheaper fuels in developing nations, while putting the American economy at a disadvantage relative to India, China, Russia and other developing nations.

So here’s to the climate warriors on the right side of science. They don’t have to win. They just have to help us hold out a little longer, and let the climate do the rest.      

SOURCE

***************************************

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

Preserving the graphics:  Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility.  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 and here

*****************************************

Major German newsmagazine concedes Global Warming Has Ended …Models Were Wrong

Spiegel has finally gotten around to conceding that global warming has ended, at least for the time being.  Yesterday Spiegel science journalist Axel Bojanowski published a piece called: Klimawandel: Forscher rätseln über Stillstand bei Erderwärmung (Climate change: scientists baffled by the standstill in global warming).

We’ve been waiting for this admission a long time, and watching the media reaction is interesting to say the least. Bojanowski writes that “The word has been out for quite some time now that the climate is developing differently than predicted earlier”. He poses the question: “How many more years of stagnation are needed before scientists rethink their predictions of future warming?”

Bojanowski adds:  "15 years without warming are now behind us. The stagnation of global near-surface average temperatures shows that the uncertainties in the climate prognoses are surprisingly large. The public is now waiting with suspense to see if the next UN IPCC report, due in September, is going to discuss the warming stop.”

The big question now circulating through the stunned European media, governments and activist organisations is how could the warming stop have happened? Moreover, how do we now explain it to the public? To find an answer, Bojanowski contacted a number of sources. The result, in summary: scientists are now left only to speculate over an entire range of possible causes. Uncertainty in climate science indeed has never been greater. It’s back to square one.

One explanation Spiegel presents is that the oceans have somehow absorbed the heat and are now hiding it somewhere. Yet, Bojanowski writes that there is very little available data to base this on: “There is a lot of uncertainty concerning the development of the water temperature. It has long appeared that also the oceans have not warmed further since 2003.” Spiegel then quotes Kevin Trenberth concerning NASA’s claim that they’ve detected a warming of the oceans: “The uncertainties with the data are too great. We need to improve our measurements“.

Spiegel also writes that the missing heat may be lurking somewhere deep in the oceans. But here Bojanowski [Spiegel] quotes Doug Smith of the Met Office: “This is very difficult to confirm“.

Jochem Marotzke of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI) suspects that energy has been conveyed to the ocean’s interior, but there’s a dire lack of data to confirm this. Bojanowski writes over the current state of ocean data measurement: “Without intensifying the data measurement network, we are going to have to wait a long time for any proof“.

Scientists also suspect that the stratosphere may have something to do with the recent global temperature stall. Susan Solomon says the stratosphere has gotten considerably drier, and so warming at the surface may have been reduced by a quarter. But Bojanowski reminds us that under the bottom line, the scientists are pretty much without a clue; he writes:

"However, climate models do not illustrate stratospheric water vapour very well," says Marotzke. "The prognoses thus remain vague.”

Well then, maybe it’s due to aerosols from China and India blocking out the sun, some scientists are speculating, and ”thus weakening warming by one third“.  Spiegel writes that “If the air were cleaner, then climate warming would accelerate.” But aerosols have always been used a convenient joker in climate models to explain unexpected cooling, such as from 1945 to 1980.

In fact, all the explanations presented by Bojanowski above have already been thoroughly looked at in a book-  one year ago – by a pair of scientists: Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt and Dr. Sebastian Lüning. Last year much of the media massively ostracised them for floating “crude theories”. A year later it’s indeed strange to see that their “crude theories” are now completely in vogue.

How does Bojanowski sum it up? “The numerous possible explanations do show just how imprecisely climate is understood.”

Yet, as Bojanowski points out, some scientists refuse to give up on the AGW theory. He writes:

Under the bottom line, there are a number of various ominous signs of warming: rising sea levels, Arctic sea ice reduced by a half in the summertime, melting glaciers. At some locations there are signs that extreme weather events are increasing. ‘There are many signs of global warming,’ emphasizes Kevin Trenberth, “near surface air temperatures is only one of them.’”

Sorry, but isolated singular events do not constitute trends, let alone science. Prof. Trenberth really ought to know that. This is pathetic. The observed data and measured trends have stopped showing global warming. So are scientists now claiming that singular events are robust signs? This would be only one step away from astrology!

Bojanowski reminds us again that the science is poorly understood and that a number of factors are at play. He writes:

"Indeed new surprising data keep popping up. Recently a new study appeared showing that soot particles from unfiltered diesel engine exhaust and open fires have had an impact on warming that is twice as high as what was first thought.”

Bojanowski also tells his readers that “Computer simulations have shown that warming has made tropical storms rarer.”

He also mentions other factors that are poorly understood, such as: solar radiation’s impact on clouds, water vapour cycles, and natural and man-made aerosols.

Spiegel at the end of the article seems to be duped into thinking that short-term prognoses are uncertain, but longterm ones are rather sure. Spiegel quotes warmist Jochem Marotzke of the MPI:

"Climate prognoses over time periods of a few years still remain especially uncertain. ‘Our forecasting system in this regard still lets us down,’ says MPI director Marotzke. “But we’re still working on it.”

This to me appears to be an attempt to have readers believe that although they’ve botched the short-term projections completely, they are likely still right about the longterm projections of warming. Now take five minutes to get your laughing under control. … If the models failed for the first 15 years, then they are no good! Period! They’re crap, and you cannot rely on them for projecting the long-term. They belong in one place only: the dustbin! How long must we wait before climate scientists return to science?

Don’t get me wrong, at least this article, admitting something is terribly amiss, is a very encouraging step in the right direction. But it’s difficult to remain hopeful when climate scientists continue demonstrating that they do not even know what proper scientific methodology is.

Lastly, I like they way Bojanowski ends his piece:

"Current prognoses warn of a 5°C warming if CO2 emissions continue as before. But it is not now well-known just how much natural climate impacts are able to change the temperature development – the new NASA data have revealed this as well.”

Spiegel science writers would be well-advised to read Fritz Vahrenholt’s and Sebastian Lüning’s “Die kalte Sonne“. Practically every question brought up by Bojanowski has been answered there – one year ago. Moreover, Lüning”s and Vahrenholt’s temperature model for the next 100 years so far has been dead on.

SOURCE




The carbon trading money tree

The COP-18 environmental conference held in Doha has come and gone. In the wake of high expectations for a successor treaty, the Kyoto Protocol was extended, but only after bitter debate — and several countries have withdrawn from the process or signaled their intent to do so.

Moreover, many observers believe the decision to extend the Protocol was primarily the result of countries not having the courage to stop or scuttle it outright, and not actually knowing what to do next.  So the easy way out was to just extend Kyoto and also promise the developing world lots and lots of dollars for “climate mitigation,” which is a sort of apology from the first world for having allegedly messed up the planet in the first place with their fossil fuels and economic development.

Whether the billions of promised aid dollars will really materialize is another matter. But a lot of people have already gotten rich – including Al Gore, hundreds of climate scientists, and thousands of environmental activists and government bureaucrats – and others are trying to cash in.

I recently read an article in a South African magazine concerning carbon trading. Headlined “The Big C is a Money Tree,” the article included a picture of a tree with hundreds of dollar bills hanging on the branches. Its essence was that people can easily make loads of money in the carbon trading business. Unfortunately, much of the sentiment was correct. So alarm bells should be ringing.

When it appears easy to make a lot of money from something simple, then in all probability something is wrong. The economic rules which govern the world usually dictate that it is not easy to make a lot of money with not much effort.

Consider the hamburger market. If it is easy to sell a large number of hamburgers and make a lot of money, then what happens is a competitor joins the market, then another, and another. The result is that the quality of the hamburgers goes up and the price comes down. This is all because the natural competition forces the sellers to offer the best quality at the lowest price.

If one of the hamburger sellers can’t make the grade, he goes out of business.  None of the hamburger sellers really wants to be kind and sympathetic to the consumers, but they have no option but to be attentive to their customers or the customers just go to a competitor. Hamburger suppliers have to offer a good product at a good price to stay in business. So the basis of the hamburger business is good cooking, good service and efficient meal production.

So one can ask the question: What is the basis of the carbon trading business? It is buying or renting air with less carbon dioxide (CO2) — based on assertions that the gas causes global warming, climate change, and more frequent and intense storms, droughts and floods. Sounds dicey, doesn’t it?

What happens is that if some company, say in Germany, wants to extend its factory, and they are going to have to produce CO2 in the operation of the plant, they may find that they will exceed their emission quota.

If a company in Germany wants to expand its factory, and operating this larger facility will produce carbon dioxide, the new operation may exceed the company’s CO2 emission quota. One way out of this predicament is to come to a country like South Africa and find some land where workers can grow plants that take CO2 out of the air. Another is to find a factory that emits CO2 and help it buy and install technology that removes some tons of CO2 from the factory’s emission.

(There is a type of South African cactus called Spekboom, which translates as “bacon tree.” The connection between cactus and bacon is not clear. It’s easy to plant. You just break off a soft branch, push it into the ground, and it grows – normally to about a meter tall, but sometimes to 3m over many years. Spekboom grows in arid areas like weeds and is generally useless. But it apparently absorbs much more CO2 than normal plants. So Europeans pay South Africans tidy sums to plant fields of the stuff. The Europeans then claim “carbon credits” and feel righteous, while South Africans get rich watching weeds grow.)

Each time one of these operations removes 10 tons of CO2 from South African airspace, the German company can put the same amount of CO2 into Germany’s air and (presto!) all is great again, because on balance the total CO2 emitted into whole world’s atmosphere is equalized.

Then the German company pays the South African company a lot of dollars per month to keep South Africa’s air “clean,” so that the German company can put the “saved” CO2 back into Germany’s air.

So the basis of the carbon trading business is to rent “clean” air from somebody else.

Therefore if you launch a major project to develop a new factory, and a significant part of the budget is carbon trading income, then don’t forget that renting clean air is part of the asset of the business.

If the Kyoto Protocol collapses and the clean air requirement falls away — then your investment blows away in a breeze … of “clean” air. That would be disastrous for you. And that is a primary reason why so many people are determined to perpetuate Kyoto in some form or another.

Many people would never build their new factory on a foundation of sand. But they are happy to build it on a foundation of air. I say: “Be careful.”

If it turns out that man-made industrial CO2 is not leading to climate change then the whole carbon market could disappear faster than a puff of wind.

Remember that the measured increase in the earth’s atmospheric CO2 concentration over the last century does not match global temperature increase very well; in fact, a good correlation is distinctly absent. Furthermore, a competing theory argues that the sun’s magnetic influence on incoming cosmic radiation seems to match the observed temperature profile of the planet a lot better; this theory relates to varying cloud cover, influenced by the varying amount of incoming cosmic radiation.

The carbon trading business seems too good to be true.  Money trees are not common.  Warning bells should be ringing.

SOURCE




Debate Verdict: Al Gore Presenter Trounced by Heartland’s James Taylor

Global warming alarmists and skeptics alike report that Heartland Institute senior fellow James Taylor scored a decisive victory over Ray Bellamy, an official presenter for Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project, in a global warming debate in Tallahassee, Florida.

Rare Public Debate

Gore’s Climate Reality Project surprised observers by agreeing to the January 8 public debate. Gore’s presenters very rarely agree to participate in debates or public events in which skeptics are allowed an opportunity to present the case against a global warming crisis.

Contrasting Styles, Substance

A coin flip determined that Bellamy would speak first, and the Al Gore surrogate proceeded to give a very Gore-like presentation with pictures of Arctic ice sheets, attacks on skeptics’ funding, and anecdotal reports of extreme weather events such as droughts.

Taylor opened his rebuttal by pointing out that global warming alarmists need to prove all four of the following to show that humans are creating a global warming crisis: (1) that temperatures are unusually warm by historical standards, (2) that humans are the primary cause of recent warming, (3) that a warmer climate is substantially worse than a colder climate, and (4) that global warming activists offer solutions that would achieve meaningful real-world results. Taylor then presented dozens of slides with objective data and peer-reviewed studies showing alarmists can prove none of the four necessary components of an asserted global warming crisis. While presenting his data and studies, Taylor repeatedly pointed out that Bellamy relied merely on anecdotal assertions rather than objective long-term data or peer-reviewed studies.

Bellamy Mishaps

During the question-and-answer segment, Bellamy embarrassingly had to pass on a question about historical carbon dioxide levels. Taylor then answered the question with ease.

During closing remarks, Bellamy was embarrassed again when Taylor caught him misrepresenting a statement made by Heartland Institute president Joe Bast. As an audience member called out to Bellamy, “He caught you, didn’t he?” Taylor scolded Bellamy for misrepresenting Bast and for earlier launching ad hominem attacks on climate scientists who disagree with Bellamy’s point of view.

Alarmists Admit Defeat

Prior to the debate, environmental activist groups throughout northern Florida rallied supporters to show up at the debate and support Bellamy. Global warming activists appeared to form a clear majority of the more than 260 people attending the debate, but even Bellamy’s supporters admitted afterward that Taylor scored a decisive victory.

“A number of attenders had their viewpoint about climate change not being a crisis confirmed,” global warming alarmist Pam McVety lamented in an article published in the Tallahassee Democrat. “The audience experienced the climate denial machine at its best.”

Despite the one-sided debate, McVety refused to change her mind on the topic.  “Being a good debater does not mean your facts or conclusions are correct,” McVety protested.

“Judging it as a pure debate, Bellamy came in second,” admitted Tallahassee Democrat columnist Mark Hohmeister, who then attempted to reargue Bellamy’s presentation for him.

On a Facebook page titled, “Crash a Tea Party!!” more than two dozen people eagerly let it be known they would attend the debate to “have Dr. Ray Bellamy’s back.” After the debate, however, few people posted and fewer still were in good spirits.

“What did you expect?” one activist moaned after the debate. “But it was fun getting the excellent look at the Face of the Beast,” the activist posted in answer to his own question.

More HERE  (See the original for links)





Government issues warnings, but are rising temperatures a health risk?

Last Friday, the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee (NCADAC) issued a draft report titled “Climate Change and the American People.” The report was produced by the 60-person NCADAC and supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of our federal government. The report concludes that “Climate change is already affecting the American people” and that US communities will face “economic or health-related challenges.” Sadly, common sense is hard to find in the 1146-page document.

The report is driven by the misguided ideology of Climatism, the belief that man-made greenhouse gases are destroying Earth’s climate. According to Climatism, Earth’s climate has been unchanging for thousands of years, but carbon dioxide emissions from human society are now causing dangerous global warming. Further, any change in Earth’s climate must be bad for US citizens.

The document uses the word “extreme” more than 600 times to create an alarming picture of the future. It predicts “extreme heat events…extreme weather…extreme snowstorms…extreme winds…extreme drought…extreme floods…extreme rainfall” and many other “extremes,” all claimed to be due mankind’s relatively small emissions of CO2, a trace gas in our atmosphere. The report’s conclusions are based on computer model projections.

Yet, there is no empirical evidence to show that US climate events are becoming more severe. When Hurricane Sandy devastated New York City last year, it was only a Category 1 storm in terms of wind speed. No strong hurricane (Category 3 winds or stronger) has made landfall in the US during the last seven years, the longest such period on record. The count of strong to violent US tornadoes has been flat to declining over the last 30 years. Even a chart on page 59 of the NCADAC report shows that US droughts were most severe during the 1930s and 1950s.

It would take a PhD thesis to refute all the unsupported assertions in the report, so let’s focus on just one—the claim that warm temperatures are a health risk for US citizens. In Chapter 9, the document states, “Extreme heat events have long threatened public health in U.S. metropolitan areas…climate projections indicate that extreme heat events will be more frequent and intense in coming decades.” The chapter goes on to conclude that climate change will cause an “increase in heat-related deaths.”

The computer models cited in the NCADAC report estimate, on average, that global temperature will increase by 3oC (5.4oF) by the year 2100. According to the report, this will be a health hazard for U.S. citizens due to extreme heat waves. The average temperature in Chicago is 49oF and the average temperature in St. Louis is 56oF, a difference of 3.9oC. Are more people dying in St. Louis due to this “extreme” temperature difference?

Earlier this month, I flew to Houston with a planeload of coughing and sneezing passengers. The news media reports that we’re in the midst of an influenza epidemic. The Center for Disease Control defines the US flu season to be from October to March. According to the World Health Organization of the United Nations, the flu season for the Southern Hemisphere is from April to October, during their winter months. Could it be that cold climate has a greater negative impact on human health than warmer climate?

In fact, scientific studies show that more people get sick in cold weather and more people die as a result. The late Dr. William Keating of Queen Mary and Westfield College led a team that studied temperature-related deaths for people aged 65 to 74 in six European nations. Keating’s team found that deaths related to cold temperatures were more than nine times greater than those related to hot temperatures in Europe. Heart attacks, strokes, and respiratory illness were responsible for most of the cold-weather deaths.

Dr. Matthew Falagas of the Alfa Institute of Medical Sciences in Athens, Greece, analyzed seasonal mortality for eleven nations, including the United States. The research showed that the average number of deaths per month was lower in summer and fall months and peaked in the coldest months of the year for all nations.

Most of us have an Aunt Susan or an Uncle Henry who has retired or plans to retire to another climate. The favored locations are Alaska, Canada, and North Dakota, right? Nonsense! Senior citizens wish to retire to the warm climates of Florida, Texas, and Arizona. But don’t they know our government warns about premature death in warm climates? In fact, Aunt Susan and Uncle Henry have more common sense than the US government.

SOURCE




Global Warming: A Geological Perspective

A paper titled "Global Warming: A Geological Perspective," published in Environmental Geosciences, and summarized below in Arizona Geology, should be required reading for all climate scientists.

The paper notes that if "the temperature increase during the past 130 years reflects recovery from the Little Ice Age, it is not unreasonable to expect the temperature to rise another 2 to 2.5 degrees Celsius to a level comparable to that of the Medieval Warm Period about 800 years ago"

and that

"Climatic changes measured during the last 100 years are not unique or even unusual when compared with the frequency, rate, and magnitude of changes that have taken place since the beginning of the Holocene Epoch.  Recent fluctuations in temperature, both upward and downward, are well within the limits observed in nature prior to human influence."

Sadly, most climate scientists fail to study or understand the geologic history of climate, which has led to countless false claims that today's climate is unnatural, extreme, unusual, or unprecedented.

From the summary paper:

A review of research on past temperatures and variations led us to the following conclusions:

1.  Climate is in continual flux: the average annual temperature is usually either rising or falling and the temperature is never static for a long period of time.

2.  Observed climatic changes occurred over widespread areas, probably on the global scale.

3.  Climate changes must be judged against the natural climatic variability that occurs on a comparable time scale.  The Little Ice Age, Medieval Warm Period, and similar events are part of this natural variability.  These events correspond to global changes of 1 - 2 C.

4.  Global temperatures appear to be rising, irrespective of any human influence, as Earth continues to emerge from the Little Ice Age.  If the temperature increase during the past 130 years reflects recovery from the Little Ice Age, it is not unreasonable to expect the temperature to rise another 2 to 2.5 degrees Celsius to a level comparable to that of the Medieval Warm Period about 800 years ago.  The Holocene Epoch, as a whole, has been a remarkably stable period with few extremes of either rising or falling temperatures, as were common during Pleistocene glacial and interglacial periods.  Nevertheless, the Holocene has been, and still is, a time of fluctuating climate.

5.  Climatic changes measured during the last 100 years are not unique or even unusual when compared with the frequency, rate, and magnitude of changes that have taken place since the beginning of the Holocene Epoch.  Recent fluctuations in temperature, both upward and downward, are well within the limits observed in nature prior to human influence.

More HERE




Paper finds increase in US sunshine has had 4.4 times more effect than greenhouse gases since 1996

A paper published today in the Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres finds that due to a decrease in cloud cover, solar radiation has significantly increased over the US from 1996 to 2011.

The authors note the change in longwave (infrared) surface radiation "dwarfs the [alleged contribution] from the increase of CO2 during the analysis period." According to the paper, the natural variability due to changes in sunshine has had 4.4 times greater effect on surface radiation than increased greenhouse gases since 1996 [6.6/1.5 = 4.4]. According to the authors:

    "The network average total surface net radiation increases by +8.2 Wm−2 per decade from 1996 to 2011. A significant upward trend in downwelling shortwave [solar radiation](SW-down) of +6.6 Wm−2 per decade dominates the total surface net radiation signal. This [brightening of solar radiation] is attributed to a decrease in cloud coverage, and aerosols have only a minor effect. Increasing downwelling longwave [radiation from greenhouse gases](LW-down) of +1.5 Wm−2 per decade and decreasing upwelling LW [infrared radiation from the Earth surface] (LW-up) of −0.9 Wm−2 per decade produce a +2.3 Wm−2 per decade increase in surface net-LW, which dwarfs the expected contribution to LW-down from the 30 ppm increase of CO2 during the analysis period. The dramatic surface net radiation excess should have stimulated surface energy fluxes, but, oddly, the temperature trend is flat."

The paper adds to many other peer reviewed papers documenting a global decrease in cloud cover or 'global brightening' over various periods and locations beginning the the 1980's. This decrease in cloud cover alone could account for all global warming observed since the ice age scare of the 1970's.

Variability of the surface radiation budget over the United States from 1996 through 2011 from high-quality measurements

John A. Augustine, Ellsworth G. Dutton

Abstract

Sixteen years of high-quality surface radiation budget (SRB) measurements over seven U.S. stations are summarized. The network average total surface net radiation increases by +8.2 Wm−2 per decade from 1996 to 2011. A significant upward trend in downwelling shortwave (SW-down) of +6.6 Wm−2 per decade dominates the total surface net radiation signal. This SW brightening is attributed to a decrease in cloud coverage, and aerosols have only a minor effect. Increasing downwelling longwave (LW-down) of +1.5 Wm−2 per decade and decreasing upwelling LW (LW-up) of −0.9 Wm−2 per decade produce a +2.3 Wm−2 per decade increase in surface net-LW, which dwarfs the expected contribution to LW-down from the 30 ppm increase of CO2 during the analysis period. The dramatic surface net radiation excess should have stimulated surface energy fluxes, but, oddly, the temperature trend is flat, and specific humidity decreases. The enigmatic nature of LW-down, temperature, and moisture may be a chaotic result of their large interannual variations. Interannual variation of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) ONI index is shown to be moderately correlated with temperature, moisture, and LW-down. Thus, circulations associated with ENSO events may be responsible for manipulating (e.g., by advection or convection) the excess surface energy available from the SRB increase. It is clear that continued monitoring is necessary to separate the SRB's response to long-term climate processes from natural variability and that collocated surface energy flux measurements at the SRB stations would be beneficial.

SOURCE

***************************************

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

Preserving the graphics:  Graphics hotlinked to this site sometimes have only a short life and if I host graphics with blogspot, the graphics sometimes get shrunk down to illegibility.  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 and here

*****************************************