January temperature trends

As usual, Sophia is comparing the most recent monthly average temperature figure with the figures for the same month in previous years.  She finds that the 2013 figures project out to a COOLING of 9.4 F over the next 100 years.  Judged by the most recent trend, Januaries are getting cooler-- JR

As usual I thought it would be interesting to look at the recent January US temperature from a “historic” perspective. To see how the decade trends have evolved during the last 113 years

Especially to see how the decade trends have evolved during the last 43 years. The period that according to the Global Warming Hysterics and computer models they worship should show a steady and accelerated increase in temperature.

And as I always point out:

Remember, these are the official figures. With the poor placement of stations (91 % of the stations are CRN 3 to 5 = bad to very poor); where they have purposely taken away the urban heat island effect, use huge smoothing radius, the historical “adjustment and tweaking” to cool the past etc.

Not to mention the great slaughter of GHCN stations 1990-1993 – roughly 63 % of all stations were “dropped”. Oddly enough many of them in cold places – Hmmm? Now the number of GHCN stations is back at the same numbers as in 1890.

Also remember that the US stations are now nearly a third of the all GHCN world stations.  So here are the trends:

The trend for 1900 to 2013 is 0.11 F / Decade

The trend for 1970 to 2013 is 1.13 F / Decade

The trend for 1980 to 2013 is 0.69 F / Decade

The trend for 1990 to 2013 is 0.05 F / Decade

The trend for 2000 to 2013 is - 0.94 F / Decade

So the “warming trend” 2000-2013 for January is exactly - 0.94 F degrees a decade.  That is a - 9.4 F COOLER in 100 years. That’s what I call “warming”!

According to the computer models that the Global Warming Hysterics love so much,  it should be EXACTLY the opposite.

And we are supposed to be very worried about a predicted rise of 3-4 F?

But not this ACTUAL trend?

And for this predicted trend the politicians want to take our societies back to the Stone Age. But, as usual, they DO NOTHING about the actual trend.

More HERE  (See the original for links, graphics etc.)




Another Antarctic Sea Ice Extent Record – Still On Track To Break All-time Highest Minimum

Day 45 – Valentines Day – saw another Antarctic Sea Ice Record for the day of 3.75 million sq km.

Day 44,  so far,  is the lowest value for the year and still higher than the all-time highest minimum  of 3.69176 which occurred on day 51 in 2008.



SOURCE





Carbon Tax Hallucinations

Average planetary temperatures haven’t budged in 16 years. Hurricanes and strong tornadoes are at or near their lowest ebb in decades. Global sea ice is back to normal, while the Antarctic icepack continues to grow. The rate of sea level rise remains what it was in 1900.

And yet, President Obama and many politicians, newscasters and alarmist scientists continue to insist that carbon dioxide emissions are changing Earth’s climate, and we need to take immediate action to prevent storms like Hurricane Sandy and avert catastrophes predicted by IPCC computer models and “scientific consensus.” Not surprisingly, polls show public support for controlling CO2 output and taxing hydrocarbon use – to “ensure climate security” and “save vital federal programs” from budgetary axes.

As the liberal lobby Think Progress put it, people “overwhelmingly” prefer a carbon tax on “big polluters” versus cuts in favorite programs “like education, Social Security, Medicare and environmental protection.”

Five-alarm climate claims, skewed polling questions and phony taxes-versus-grandma budget alternatives will almost always ensure support for carbon taxes – especially among Bigger Government and Ban Fossil Fuels constituencies. More rational analysis reveals that dreams of hundred-billion-dollar windfalls from slapping regressive new taxes on job creation and economic growth are nothing more than dangerous tax revenue hallucinations. They would bring intense pain for no climate or economic gain.

Employing Energy Information Administration data, a recent Heritage Foundation study by economists David Kreutzer and Nicolas Loris found that a tax starting at $25-per-ton of CO2 emitted and increasing by 5% per year would cut a family of four’s income by $1,400 annually, raise their utility bills by $500 a year, and increase gasoline fill-ups by up to 50 cents per gallon. That’s $2,000 a year chopped from their budget for food, vacations, home and car payments and repairs, college and retirement savings, dental and medical care, and overall quality of life.

Even “millionaire” families making $200,000 a year would find such a hit painful. While the poorest families might get some offsetting tax relief, most would get nothing – nor would employers.

Carbon taxes would thus increase the likelihood that many breadwinners will end up unemployed, since the tax would raise business energy costs dramatically, force companies to trim hours and/or employees, and result in an aggregate loss of at least 1 million jobs by 2016, Heritage notes. That would bring more home foreclosures, greater stress, reduced nutrition, and more strokes and heart attacks, especially for older workers whose odds of finding new employment are increasingly bleak.

No small businesses or energy-intensive manufacturing companies would get a rebate for their soaring carbon taxes. Nor would any mall, hospital, school, church, synagogue or charity group.

Hydrocarbons provide over 83% of all the energy that powers America. A carbon tax would put a hefty surcharge on everything we make, grow, ship, eat and do. It would put the federal government in control of, not just one-sixth of our economy as under Obamacare, but 100% of our economy and lives. It would make the United States increasingly less productive, less competitive globally, less able to provide opportunities for our children.

But it gets worse, because this tax on America’s energy and productivity is not being promoted in a vacuum. It would be imposed on top of countless other job and economy strangling actions.

President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency has already issued 2,071 new rules and dispensed a regulatory burden of over $353 billion per year – equal to all wealth generated annually by Virginia’s private sector. It is now preparing still more rules, the most crushing of which would regulate the same CO2 emissions that some in Congress want to tax, from both moving and stationary sources. Most, if not all of its punitive rules, are based on exaggerated risks, fear mongering, junk science, and illusory health, welfare, “environmental justice” and “sustainability” benefits.

Other agencies are inflicting still more rules, and more crushing paperwork burdens. Obamacare alone will add 127,602,371 more hours per year to the federal paperwork burden for American businesses and families. That’s enough time to carve 1,039 Mount Rushmore monuments, says the Washington Examiner. Even at $25 per hour, that’s $32 billion a year. On top of that, there are the Dodd-Frank financial requirements and myriad other costly, time-consuming, economy-sapping, job-killing rules.

Nothing at all suggests that Congress would reverse or modify even one of these laws, regulations and taxes, as part of a carbon tax deal – or that Mr. Obama would refrain from vetoing any attempted change. Nothing whatsoever suggests that Congress, the President or environmentalists will ease their opposition to issuing leases and drilling and fracking permits for more of our vast onshore and offshore oil and gas deposits, which could generate millions of jobs and billions in royalties and tax revenues. Or that they won’t ultimately enact a punitive cap-and-trade law on top of all of this.

Instead of real energy for real jobs and revenues, President Obama wants to redouble spending on “green” energy – extracting billions of dollars from still productive sectors of our economy, and transferring the money to crony corporatists and campaign contributors, whose operations are exempted from endangered species and other laws that are imposed routinely and punitively on oil, mining and other companies.

Meanwhile, federal “discretionary” spending skyrocketed another $129 billion annually in just four years under Obama. That’s comparable to what carbon tax snake oil salesmen claim a $25-per-ton tax would raise each year, several years into a steadily escalating tax, using static analyses that ignore all these “concrete lifesaver” effects.

The CBO Congressional Budget Office says the US economy will grow by a miserly 1.4% for the next several years, and official unemployment will remain stuck at 7.5% (plus extensive involuntary underemployment and people who have given up looking). Washington Post economics analyst Neil Irwin worries that the United States doesn’t just have a $1-trillion budget deficit. Largely because of government restrictions, regulations, red tape and taxes, it also has a $1-trillion “output gap,” between what it is capable of producing and what it actually produces. To top it off, if Congress and the White House get more money, they will spend more money!

The net result of a carbon tax will not be new federal revenues. It will be more economic strangulation, a more bloated federal bureaucracy, more layoffs, sharply higher unemployment, food stamp and welfare payouts, reduced corporate and personal income tax receipts – and thus reduced federal revenues.

And for what? The Kyoto Protocol is dead. Japan and many other countries are rejecting any new binding emission targets. China, India, other rapidly developing nations, and even Germany and Europe are burning more coal, emitting more carbon dioxide, and sending atmospheric CO2 levels higher.

And yet, average planetary temperatures show no trend up or down, and global hurricane activity stands at a near-record low. There’s no change in big tornadoes, droughts or rains averaged over the USA for the past century. Polar sea ice is down slightly in the Northern Hemisphere, but up in the Southern. And sea levels show no measurable deviation from trends over the last hundred years.

The only thing that will happen if carbon taxes are inflicted on the US economy is that American jobs, economic growth, living standards, health, dreams and lives will be sacrificed for nothing.

We need to stop basing laws and policies on hallucinations – and start basing them on reality.

SOURCE




Washington Turns Science to Science Fiction

“If you build it,” an Iowa corn farmer was told in the movie Field of Dreams, “they will come.” That worked out so well for all concerned that the federal government is reviving the approach, with some slight edits. “If we mandate it, the science will come,” seems to be Washington’s motto.

Instead, government has ended up replacing science with, well, fiction. Consider the push for renewable fuels.

It’s easy to see why lawmakers would want to encourage Americans to grow energy rather than dig it out of the ground. But in their eagerness to create an industry, lawmakers often go too far. In 2007, Congress passed a requirement that refiners add something called cellulosic biofuel to their gasoline. It’s made from non-edible plant material -- wood chips, corn husks, and so forth. The problem: Nobody could produce such biofuel on a commercial scale.

Still, hope triumphed over reality. Lawmakers demanded that refiners use 100 million gallons in 2010, 250 million in 2011, and half a billion in 2012. Refiners ended up breaking the law, though, because they used no cellulosic biofuel. Only about 20,000 gallons have ever been produced commercially, and all of that was exported to Brazil last year.

The federal government actually benefitted, in a way, because the Environmental Protection Agency fined refiners $6.8 million in 2011 for failing to use a product that didn’t exist. Good thing it’s not called the “Reality” protection agency.

EPA had wanted to pocket another $8 million or so in fines for last year, but a federal court said it cannot. Still, that isn’t stopping the agency from trying to squeeze more money out of refiners. This year, EPA says it will demand refiners use 14 million gallons of this non-existent product. Expect another lawsuit to ensue.

This matters to everyone, because we’re all paying more for gasoline than we need to, because when they’re hit with fines, refiners simply add their higher costs into the price of a gallon of gasoline. But another EPA program may end up costing you even more.

Two years ago, EPA declared that E15 -- gasoline that’s 15 percent ethanol -- is safe for use in any car made after 2001. Currently refiners are required to use 10 percent ethanol, as virtually any gas pump in the country warns you.

But in tests completed last month, the American Petroleum Institute found that E15 led to, “an elevated incidence of fuel pump failures, fuel system component swelling, and impairment of fuel measurement systems in some of the vehicles tested. E15 could cause erratic and misleading fuel gauge readings or cause faulty check engine light illuminations. It also could cause critical components to break and stop fuel flow to the engine.” None of these problems occurred when E10 or gasoline without ethanol was used.

The problem, again, is one of science. EPA approved E15 without waiting for testing on it to be completed. As the API report notes, “When Congress passed the law, it could not know it was creating this problem. Today we know. The answer is to repeal the [Renewable Fuel Standard] before it puts millions of vehicles and many motorists at risk.”

That’s one answer. A more comprehensive answer would be for Congress to stop passing vague laws, such as the RFS, and then expecting bureaucrats to find ways to implement them.

Today’s bureaucrats like to claim there’s a scientific reason that they have so much power. As Matthew Spalding writes for The Heritage Foundation, “They rule over virtually every aspect of our daily lives, ostensibly in the name of the American people but in actuality by the claimed authority of science, policy expertise, and administrative efficiency.”

Sadly, we’re seeing not only a usurpation of political power by today’s bureaucrats, but a perversion of science as well. Instead of having Washington decide what’s best for Americans, let’s repeal the EPA’s various mandates and let the market decide what fuel is best in our cars.

SOURCE




Magic-gas Discovery in Australia

It has been discovered that Australian coal has a magical property – it is one of a small group of coals which produces an invisible gas with super-natural properties.

This magic gas, carbon dioxide, first became famous for its claimed ability to warm the whole world, thus removing the threat of a new ice age. The British academic who reported this magic power claimed that winter snow would become “a very rare and exciting event”.

Then an Australian guru predicted that just a tiny addition of magic-gas to the atmosphere would abolish floods, and billions of dollars were spent constructing water desalination plants to combat his forecast of never-ending droughts.

Then after massive snows in Britain and huge floods in Australia, it was widely reported that magic-gas could produce both heatwaves and snowstorms, floods and droughts and even bushfires, cyclones and tornadoes, depending on the way the political winds were blowing in that country.

Strangely, only a few countries are able to produce “magic-gas”. A special exclusive club called the Kyoto Club was formed for these lucky countries. Membership fees are stratospheric, but members are rewarded with invitations to lavish UN conventions at top tourist destinations. However, many founding members have allowed their membership to lapse, leaving only EU, Australia and New Zealand as fully paid up members.

Coals burnt in Russia, India, China, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, Korea, Japan, Canada and USA produce carbon dioxide but their gas apparently lacks the magic climate-altering properties of Australian magic-gas. Amazingly, these properties are lost if Australian coal is burnt overseas – once loaded on a ship the magic disappears.

There are a few unpatriotic Australians who think the whole “magic-gas” thing is a big con, and just an excuse for a new tax.

Worried that the world may become sceptical of the magic-gas story, CSIRO has been charged to re-educate these dangerous and deluded sceptics. Vast sums are also being spent by academics to invent more climate-bending properties for carbon dioxide, and regular dramatic announcements are expected on the ABC and the BBC.

By email from the satirical Viv Forbes [forbes@carbon-sense.com]




"Expert" assures us:  Global warming causes everything bad

Someone who is both a professor of law and an IPCC lead author must know

Scientists and environmentalists have reacted with anger to emerging reports that dismiss the reality of climate change.

While climate scepticism is a popular topic in fringe political groups, the evidence points to irreversible climate change with devastating impacts for poor communities if no action is taken.

"No doubt, Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents to climate variability and change because of multiple stresses and low adaptive capacity. Environmental and climatic stress also raises existing inequalities between rich and poor," Professor Oliver C Ruppel told News24.

He is professor of Law at Stellenbosch University, specialising in Public International Law and Diplomacy, World Trade Law, Regional Integration Policy, Sustainable Development Law and International Environmental Law.

The UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has identified extreme weather events as part of a global warming trend that could see a temperature rise of over 5°C by 2100.

Sceptics

"If you look at the trend then I think that's pretty unmistakable and any proper analysis would tell you that we are heading in that direction," said IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri recently in Australia as the body discussed the heat waves that affected the country.

The IPCC said it expects more extreme weather events as climate change takes hold.

Sceptics, however, have argued that a Medieval warming period proves that global warming is part of a natural cycle.

"Claims that global average temperatures during Medieval times were warmer than present-day are based on a number of false premises," World Wide Fund for Nature climate expert Richard Worthington told News24.

He said the warming period was not as widespread as the sceptics argue, and noted that temperatures warmed up significantly in the latter half of the 20th century.

"There is wide scientific consensus that the increased number and intensity of climate change induced natural disasters, such as earthquakes, volcano eruptions, tsunamis and hurricanes, is of alarming concern," said Ruppel, though adding that not all climate events lead to disasters.

According to Ruppel, who serves as AR5 co-ordinating lead author for the Chapter on Africa of the UN IPCC, Working Group II, policies need to be in place to recover from disasters related to climate change.

"Policies to avoid, prepare for, respond to and recover from the risks of disaster can reduce the impact of these events and increase the resilience of people exposed to extreme events."

SOURCE

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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

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