How to lie with statistics

Below is the latest Warmist propaganda from government  scientists.  It cites various statistics that together give the impression of changing climate.  That imnpression does not survive even the most cursory look, however.  They admit to both drought and flood so there is no net GLOBAL change there.  They admit that the Arctic is out of line with both global tendencies and the Antarctic so there is again no GLOBAL effect there.  They admit that the temperature was well short of the global maximum so there is no GLOBAL change in recent figures.  And all that stasis coincided with actual CO2 levels that were once prophesied to be disastrous!  Dr Goebbels would be proud of such dishonesty

THE world lost record amounts of Arctic sea ice in 2012 and spewed out all-time high levels of greenhouse gases by burning fossil fuels, international climate scientists said overnight.

Last year was among the top 10 on record for global land and surface temperature since modern data collection began, said the State of the Climate report issued annually by researchers in Britain and the United States.

"The findings are striking," said Kathryn Sullivan, acting administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

"Our planet as a whole is becoming a warmer place," she told reporters.

The peer-reviewed report did not go into the causes for the trends but experts said it should serve as a guide for policymakers as they prepare for the effects of rising seas and warming weather on communities and infrastructure.

Furthermore, it points to a new normal in which record-setting events are typical, particularly in the Arctic, where surface temperature rise is fast outpacing the rest of the world.

"It's hard to read the report and not be led to the conclusion that the task of reducing carbon emissions is now more urgent than ever," said Michael Mann, a leading US climatologist at Pennsylvania State University, who was not involved in the research.

Globally, according to four independent analyses cited by the study "2012 ranked as the eighth or ninth warmest year since records began in the mid-to-late 1800s.

"The year was 0.140C-0.170C above the 1981-2010 average, depending on the dataset considered," said the report published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

When it comes to Arctic sea ice, a new record low was observed in September and another all-time low for snow cover was recorded in the Northern Hemisphere, it said.

"Surface temperatures in the Arctic are increasing at a rate about two times faster than the rest of the world," said Jackie Richter-Menge, research civil engineer with the US Army Corps of Engineers.

"In the Arctic, the records or near records being reported from year to year are no longer anomalies or exceptions," she added.

"Really, they have become the rule for us, or the norm that we see in the Arctic and we expect to see for the foreseeable future."

The melt is also contributing to rising sea level. Average global sea level reached a record high in 2012, 1.4 inches (3.5 centimetres) above the 1993 to 2010 average.

"Most recently, over the past seven years or so, it appears that the ice melt is contributing more than twice as much to the global sea level rise compared with warming waters," said Jessica Blunden, climatologist at NOAA's National Climatic Data Centre.

Meanwhile, permafrost temperatures reached record highs in northern Alaska and 97 per cent of the Greenland ice sheet showed some form of melt, four times greater than the average melt for this time of year.

The amount of carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels also hit new highs, after a slight decline in recent years that followed the global financial crisis.

"In spring 2012, for the first time, the atmospheric CO2 concentration exceeded 400 parts per million at seven of the 13 Arctic observation sites," said the report.

Global average carbon dioxide reached 392.6 ppm, a 2.1 ppm increase from 2011, it said.

Droughts and unusual rains struck different parts of the globe last year, with ``the worst drought in at least the past three decades for northeastern Brazil," it said.

"The Caribbean observed a very wet dry season and it was the Sahel's wettest rainy season in 50 years."

Ms Sullivan said the findings "caution us, perhaps, to be looking at a likely future where extremes and intensity of some extremes are more frequent and more intense than what we have accounted for in the past."

On a positive note, the climate in Antarctica remained "relatively stable overall" and warm air led to the second smallest ozone hole in the past two decades, the report found.

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Arctic Ice Growth Since 1971

Reader Brian D sent over this 1971 National Geographic map, which shows that there is a lot more Arctic sea ice now than there was 42 years ago.



I remember seeing that map at the time.  The next map overlays current ice extent on the 1971 map, with green representing ice present in 2013 that was not present in 1971, and red representing the opposite.



NSIDC likes to pretend that ice has been declining steadily, by starting their graphs near the century maximum in 1978.

More HERE






GE scraps US largest solar panel plant

GENERAL Electric is permanently scrapping plans to build the largest solar factory in the US near Denver.

GE blamed the cancellation on a glut of solar panels on the market and falling prices, The Denver Post reported on Tuesday.

The factory was to have been bigger than 11 football fields and have an annual capacity of 400 megawatts. State officials said it would create 350 jobs.

GE put the project on hold last month.

A research centre that developed the thin-film solar-cell technology for the plant will be closed, with 50 people losing their jobs, according to Lindsay Thiel, a GE spokeswoman. The research centre, formerly a startup named PrimeStar, was in Arvada, another Denver suburb.

"We have decided that it is not in the best interest of GE, our customers or the Denver community to move forward with the build-out of this facility," Thiel told the newspaper in an email.

At least 10 states were vying for the PrimeStar plant in 2011. GE said it would go to Aurora that northern autumn, and company executives attended the next year's State of the State address by Governor John Hickenlooper, who personally cited the plant in his speech.

Thiel said the company has decided to permanently end plans for the plant.

"With the continued price declines of and overcapacity for solar panels, solar module manufacturing is very competitive, and only the most competitive technology at the most competitive cost position will succeed," Thiel said.

SOURCE




"Extinction" is not final, apparently

Butterflies throw an interesting light on Greenie extinction prophecies

They are one of the most welcome sights in any garden or country field.  But over the past five decades, Britain’s butterflies have suffered mixed fortunes.

The numbers of many species are dwindling and several are either lost or on the brink of extinction.

Meanwhile, other varieties are proving to be nature’s great survivors and enjoying a comeback – some even after being declared extinct many years ago.

The figures were revealed by the National Trust. Its conservationists have helped protect and reintroduce butterfly species, such as the Large Blue.

It said that amid ongoing threats to many habitats and after a ‘catastrophic’ washout summer last year, some varieties – even those which were once common – now require ‘major expeditions’ to find.

Last year butterflies fared the worst out of any year on record as a result of the wet summer, with 52 of the 56 species monitored in decline and overall sightings down by 300,000. Fortunately, last month’s heatwave has given a welcome boost to numbers this year, at least for the short-term.

And while the future remains uncertain for many types of native butterfly, the predicted warmer climate will make it more likely that continental species will one day colonise our south coast.

Arrivals could include the Swallowtail and the Large Tortoiseshell, which has been deemed extinct for many years but could recolonise the coast after being spotted on the Isle of Wight.

SOURCE




Global Warming consensus obliterated—by facts

What if everything you think you know about something turns out to be wrong?

Does it force you to evaluate everything else, or do you just shrug your shoulders figuring that it is impossible to know everything, so you have to pick your experts and take your chances?

When it comes to following baseball teams, if the Angels General Manager (GM) Jerry DiPoto or Yankees GM Brian Cashman spend hundreds of millions of someone else’s money and end up with a subpar product, it may hurt your heart as a fan of those respective teams, but it doesn’t impact your life.

However, when the government either gets duped or more insidiously, is a co-conspirator in what could be a big lie, suddenly it is taxpayer money being spent and that should get people’s attention.

A new, peer reviewed study published in “Energy & Environment” comes to the stunning conclusion that global temperatures have actually been dropping since 1986.  This conclusion, at best, obliterates the claims that there is a global warming consensus.

The  “Meteosat Derived Planetary Temperature Trend  –  1982-2006” study took satellite derived temperature data from 1986-2006 that was collected using a European satellite system which measures thermal infrared radiation (similar to those red to blue heat maps that weather.com uses.)

Incredibly, here are the key excerpts from the study’s conclusion which reveals the scientist’s bias going into doing the research:

“The amazing finding of the present study is that we do not observe global warming in the period 1982-2006, but significant cooling. What could be the cause?”

After recapping methodology and some key findings that support the conclusion, the study ends by bluntly stating what they believe was the cause of the cooling trend:

“[C]loudiness changes could be the mechanism behind the observed global cooling since 1982: an increase in cloudiness would decrease global radiation and increase rainfall and evapotranspiration.  Both effects tend to decrease the surface temperature.”

After all these years, will the global warming disciples have their collectives legs cut out from under them because it was more cloudy than usual during the very years they claimed it was supposed to be getting warmer?

We already know that even the staunchest global warmists concede that warming hasn’t occurred in the past fifteen years, but this study forces us to re-think everything we have been told.

The study is particularly troubling when combined with Russian weather scientists who contend we are heading for a new cooling period, the startling fact that this year Antarctic (South Pole) ice is increasing at record levels, and that the North Pole has hit freezing temperatures about a month earlier than the norm.

To sum it up, after hearing about global warming ad nauseum for a decade, and having various government agencies around the world spend billions of dollars promoting alternative, non-carbon producing energy alternatives as a solution, the global warming consensus no longer exists, and global warming itself may have been nothing more than an error in data collection.

In short, everything we have been told, may just be nothing more than hot air.

It may just be that Newsweek inadvertently stumbled onto a closer version of the truth when they printed their apocalyptic 1975 cover story, “The Coming Ice Age,” which concluded with these very familiar sounding words:

“Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects.

“They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.”

But even these worldwide renewed doubts cannot stop the intrepid United States’ Environmental Protection Agency, which continues to plunge headlong into attacking a global warming carbon problem that may not even exist.  People’s lives destroyed, the economy shackled, and billions of tax dollars wasted on the altar of a global warming god who doesn’t even have the decency to make the climate warmer.

It certainly is enough to make one wonder if they are really concerned about global warming, or if this climate fad is nothing more than an excuse to grab power.

And it should be enough to force thinking Americans to question everything they have been told.  Of course, few of us are climate scientists so we have to pick our sources and take our chances.

But with the breakdown of the “climate consensus” so obvious around the world, and with the globe fooling the warmist computer models so completely by refusing to warm, it is time to step away from the EPA’s regulatory machine gun that threatens not only our nation, but the world’s economy, until someone figures out what really is going on.

SOURCE




Steve Goreham: Climatism is the ‘Greatest Global Delusion’ in History

Is the earth on a collision course with catastrophe? The climatists say it is and that human beings are to blame. But environmental researcher and author Steve Goreham, author of the The Mad, Mad, Mad, World of Climatism, says that’s just not so.

Climatism is the belief that man-made greenhouse gasses are wreaking havoc with the climate and destroying the planet. Climatists say the gases from industry are warming the earth so much that the ice caps are melting, the oceans are rising, and the polar bears are threatened with extinction.

If there’s a heat wave, a cold snap, stronger than usual hurricanes, droughts or floods — climatists say it’s all because of man-made climate change. They add that if we don’t curb our evil, carbon-emitting ways, the earth is doomed.

But Goreham says not so fast. The environmental researcher and author of The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism says that science points to natural factors — not human activity — as the cause of global warming. He calls climatism the greatest global delusion in history.

What are some of the myths about climate change? On July 25, Goreham appeared on “The 700 Club” to talk about those myths. Goreham talks about Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warming Period, the effect of the sun on the Earth’s climate, and much more. This is a very incisive interview by Pat Robertson, which you should watch below.




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