Human beings are a disease

The Greenie dream






Two Decades Of "Unprecedented Global Warming" Has Left Arctic Ice extent Almost The Same As It Was 20 Years Ago



One might be inclined to believe that Arctic experts have absolutely no idea what they are talking about.

SOURCE





New paper finds climate models have greatly exaggerated warming & finds no statistically-significant warming for past 20 years

A paper published today in Nature Climate Change finds climate models have greatly exaggerated global warming over the past 20 years, noting the observed warming is "less than half" of the modeled warming. The authors falsify the models at a confidence level of 90%, and also find that there has been no statistically significant global warming for the past 20 years. According to the authors, "The evidence, therefore, indicates that the current generation of climate models ...do not reproduce the observed global warming over the past 20 years, or the slowdown in global warming over the past fifteen years." The paper follows another recent paper falsifying climate models at a confidence level of greater than 98% for the past 15 years.

Overestimated global warming over the past 20 years

 By  John C. Fyfe et al.

Recent observed global warming is significantly less than that simulated by climate models. This difference might be explained by some combination of errors in external forcing, model response and internal [natural] climate variability.

At a glance

Global mean surface temperature over the past 20 years (1993–2012) rose at a rate of 0.14 ± 0.06 °C per decade (95% confidence interval)1. This rate of warming is significantly slower than that simulated by the climate models participating in Phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). To illustrate this, we considered trends in global mean surface temperature computed from 117 simulations of the climate by 37 CMIP5 models (see Supplementary Information). These models generally simulate natural variability — including that associated with the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and explosive volcanic eruptions — as well as estimate the combined response of climate to changes in greenhouse gas concentrations, aerosol abundance (of sulphate, black carbon and organic carbon, for example), ozone concentrations (tropospheric and stratospheric), land use (for example, deforestation) and solar variability. By averaging simulated temperatures only at locations where corresponding observations exist, we find an average simulated rise in global mean surface temperature of 0.30 ± 0.02 °C per decade (using 95% confidence intervals on the model average). The observed rate of warming given above is less than half of this simulated rate, and only a few simulations provide warming trends within the range of observational uncertainty

The inconsistency between observed and simulated global warming is even more striking for temperature trends computed over the past fifteen years (1998–2012). For this period, the observed trend of 0.05 ± 0.08 °C per decade is more than four times smaller than the average simulated trend of 0.21 ± 0.03 °C per decade (Fig. 1b). It is worth noting that the observed trend over this period — not significantly different from zero — suggests a temporary 'hiatus' in global warming2, 3, 4. The divergence between observed and CMIP5-simulated global warming begins in the early 1990s, as can be seen when comparing observed and simulated running trends from 1970–2012 (Fig. 2a and 2b for 20-year and 15-year running trends, respectively).

The evidence, therefore, indicates that the current generation of climate models (when run as a group, with the CMIP5 prescribed forcings) do not reproduce the observed global warming over the past 20 years, or the slowdown in global warming over the past fifteen years. This interpretation is supported by statistical tests of the null hypothesis that the observed and model mean trends are equal, assuming that either: (1) the models are exchangeable with each other (that is, the 'truth plus error' view); or (2) the models are exchangeable with each other and with the observations (seeSupplementary Information). Differences between observed and simulated 20-year trends have p values (Supplementary Information) that drop to close to zero by 1993–2012 under assumption (1) and to 0.04 under assumption (2) (Fig. 2c). Here we note that the smaller the p value is, the stronger the evidence against the null hypothesis. On this basis, the rarity of the 1993–2012 trend difference under assumption (1) is obvious. Under assumption (2), this implies that such an inconsistency is only expected to occur by chance once in 500 years"

More HERE





Stop Denying Climate Science and ACT! (Before People Realize it’s a Scam)

The full-court press is on. Alarmist scientists, politicians, pressure groups, newspapers, ministers, rabbis and bureaucrats want Americans to “stop stalling” on climate change. They demand that we embrace “revenue-neutral” carbon taxes and carbon dioxide regulations, before it’s “too late” to prevent “catastrophic” global warming, “monster” storms and rising seas that will “inundate our coastal cities.”

Anyone dissenting from this “call to action” is a climate change “denier” – a pejorative devised to vilify and silence anyone who rejects this agenda, by linking our views to Holocaust denial. What nonsense.

All of us “deniers” know climate change is real and has been throughout Earth’s many cycles of warming and cooling, storms and droughts, ice ages and little ice ages. Striations (scratches) on a chunk of Niagara Escarpment limestone that I dug out a mile from my boyhood home memorialize stones dragged by the last glacier that buried Wisconsin under a mile of ice. Countless climate changes have buffeted our Earth.

What we deny are assertions that human carbon dioxide emissions have replaced the myriad of complex, interrelated planetary, solar and cosmic forces that caused previous climate reverberations, and that what we are experiencing now is unprecedented and likely to be catastrophic.

Not one of the alarmist claims is supported by actual observations or scientific evidence. Even worse, the claims are getting more ridiculous with every passing day: “children aren’t going to know what snow is,” crime is rising, oceans won’t smell the same, and storms are getting worse – because of global warming.

Contrary to the hype and hysteria, our planet stopped warming 16 years ago, even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continued to climb. That prompted climate catastrophists to start talking about “climate change” and blame every “extreme weather” event on CO2 emissions.

As I have pointed out before, far from being a “dangerous pollutant” (as President Obama and EPA keep saying), carbon dioxide makes all life on Earth possible. It makes food crops and other plants grow faster and better, loads them with more nutrients, helps them survive droughts, and makes our planet greener.

This trace gas has almost nothing to do with planetary warming or climate change. But it’s worth noting that the United States has slashed its CO2 emissions more than almost any other country – sending them back to where they were 30 years ago, thanks to the environmentalists’ latest target: fracking! And the daily human contribution of CO2 to our atmosphere is equivalent to a penny out of $1 million!

CO2 levels have “soared” to 400 ppm (0.04% of Earth’s atmosphere) not because of the USA or other developed countries – but because China, India and dozens of other countries are working desperately to lift billions of people out of abject poverty. To do that, they need fossil fuels, which provide 80% of the energy that makes modern civilization and living standards possible – and these countries are not going to slash their hydrocarbon use. To suggest otherwise reflects callous contempt for the needs of families that want to take their rightful places among Earth’s healthy and prosperous people.

No one would suggest that the absence of extreme weather events over a particular time period is due to humans. However, recent history certainly contradicts incessant claims that our weather is getting worse. In fact, no category 3 or higher hurricane has struck the United States in eight years, the longest such stretch since the Civil War. With only a couple of exceptions earlier this summer, the US is enjoying its longest respite from major tornadoes in decades. We are also witnessing the highest August Arctic sea ice extent since 2006, amid the coldest summer on record at the North Pole; record August lows for Alert and Eureka, in Nunavut, BC; and record highs for the extent of August sea ice in Antarctica.

Equally fascinating, most of the record high temperatures that the alarmists are trumpeting beat the previous records, mostly set in the 1930s, by mere hundredths of a degree. Yet, somehow that’s news.

As to oceans inundating coastal communities, Topex Poseidon satellites show virtually no rise in sea levels between 1993 and 2001, and the EU’s Envisat satellites show no rise from 2003 through 2011. The steady 2-3 mm per year rise in sea level, it turns out, is because scientists “adjust” the raw data (always upward, never down, for some reason). But even 200-300 mm (8-12 inches) per century, or by the year 2100, is a far cry from the 3-20 feet that President Obama and former VP Al Gore have warned us about. Even Mr. Obama was off a few years when he said June 2008 was “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow.” But it’s one more climate cataclysm that we can erase from our worry list – especially compared to the 400 feet that the world’s oceans have risen since the end of the last ice age.

(Mr. Gore is also famous for misinforming his 2009 “Tonight Show” audience that the Earth’s interior is “really hot, several million degrees” – the core is actually 9,000 degrees F – and for refusing to debate anyone on climate change or even take audience questions that he has not preapproved. Perhaps in his defense, Nobel Laureate Gore managed only a C+ and a D in the only science courses he ever took.)

If it’s “weird weather” you seek, just peruse Richard Keene’s fascinating weather guides, Skywatch East and Skywatch West, for numerous examples of wild and wacky weather in the USA. For more examples, check out the Tri-State Twister and Children’s Blizzard, or consult the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change 2011 interim report, Climate Change Reconsidered. You will be amazed at how different the facts are from the fallacies, fibs and fear mongering you find in the “mainstream media.”

One final point. No tax that penalizes people and businesses for using fossil fuels is “revenue neutral.” Any such tax or regulation kills profits and jobs, turns full-time jobs into part-timers, and adversely affects people’s health and well-being. Millions of families cannot heat and cool their homes properly, pay their rent, mortgage or other bills, take vacations, or save for retirement. The increasing stress results in sleep deprivation, poor nutrition, more commuting, higher incidences of depression and alcohol, drug, spousal and child abuse, lower life expectancies and higher suicide rates. Climate taxes and regulations also force us to spend billions subsidizing environment unfriendly biofuel, wind and solar energy.

That’s an intolerably high price to pay, for “protection” from illusory and exaggerated climate dangers.

Climate alarmists are trying to sucker, snooker and stampede us into taking “immediate action” on job and economy-strangling taxes and restrictions, before more people catch on to what’s really happening. This protection racket is one more example of passing a law, so that we can find out what’s in it. We simply cannot afford to let science get coopted to serve anti-hydrocarbon political agendas.

Demands that we “stop stalling” on “catastrophic manmade climate change” have nothing to do with preventing warming and cooling, storms and droughts that have been “real” since time immemorial. They have everything to do with regulating and restricting the use of hydrocarbons that provide 80% of the energy that makes modern civilization and living standards possible. They have everything to do with giving politicians, bureaucrats and pressure groups more money and more control over our lives and economy – but with no accountability for the lies, mistakes, job losses, ill health and deaths that are inevitable as US living standards deteriorate, and Third World lives remain destitute and desperate.

Computer models and scary predictions are not evidence. Basing energy and economic decisions on climate models is akin to betting your life’s savings on a computer model that focuses on middle linebackers and ignores quarterbacks and offensive lines, in predicting the Buffalo Bills will win the 2014 and 2015 Super Bowls – and when the prediction falls flat insisting that the Bills really did win, and reality must be “adjusted” to make it conform with the predictions.

Climate “deniers” and rationalists should support Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) and other politicians and scientists who are under constant attack by climate alarmists, for daring to dissent from approved orthodoxy. Their vigilance and determination are all that stand between energy and economic sanity – and America heading down the same destructive path that Europe has trod for the past two decades.

SOURCE



IPCC on the spot: Global Warming Slowdown Data Sought in UN Climate Report

U.S. and European Union envoys are seeking more clarity from the United Nations on a slowdown in global warming that climate skeptics have cited as a reason not to “panic” about environmental changes, leaked documents show.

They’re requesting that more details on the so-called “hiatus” be included in a key document set to be debated at a UN conference next month that will summarize the latest scientific conclusions on climate change.
Enlarge image Global Warming Slowdown Data Sought in Leaked UN Climate Report

Calved icebergs from the nearby Twin Glaciers are seen floating on the water on July 30, 2013 in Qaqortoq, Greenland. Photographer: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Including more information on the hiatus will help officials counter arguments that the slowing pace of global warming in recent years is a sign that the long-term trend may be discounted, according to Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics.

“In the public debate, there are people who are using the slowdown to say global warming is less of a problem than thought,” Ward said in an interview yesterday. “It has to be fully explained in the summary.”

A draft of the summary and the underlying 2,200-page report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were obtained by Bloomberg from a person with official access to the documents who declined to be further identified because it hasn’t been published.

Government envoys from around the world will debate the final wording of the summary at an IPCC meeting that starts in Stockholm on Sept. 23. That document, formally the Summary for Policymakers, is designed to be used by ministers working to devise by 2015 a global treaty to curb climate change.
‘Key Issue’

The current version of the summary needs more information about the hiatus, according to the EU and the U.S.

“The recent slowing of the temperature trend is currently a key issue, yet it has not been adequately addressed in the SPM,” the EU said, according to an official paper that includes all governmental comments on the draft report. The U.S. comment suggested “adding information on recent hiatus in global mean air temperature trend.”

Isaac Valero-Ladron, a spokesman for EU Climate Action Commissioner Connie Hedegaard, declined to comment, citing a confidentiality agreement with the IPCC and the lack of a finalized text.

Jonathan Lynn, a spokesman for the UN panel, and Nayyera Haq, a U.S. State Department spokeswoman, both declined to comment.

Addressing the hiatus is important because skeptics of man’s influence on warming the planet have seized on the slowing pace temperature increase as evidence that scientists have exaggerated the impact of manmade greenhouse gases. That supports their assertion that there’s less need for expensive policies to curb carbon emissions from factories, vehicles and deforestation.
Climate Sensitivity

“Some people have suggested that the slowdown means that climate sensitivity is lower,” said Ward from the Grantham Institute.

Climate sensitivity is the increase in temperatures resulting from a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In the latest draft, sensitivity is estimated at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) to 4.5 degrees Celsius. That compares with the estimate of 2 degrees to 4.5 degrees from the UN’s last major climate assessment in 2007.

The summary document notes that the rate of warming over the past 15 years “is smaller than the trend since 1951,” citing a rate of about 0.05 degrees Celsius per decade in the years 1998 through 2012. The rate was about 0.12 degrees per decade from 1951 through 2012.
Carbon Emissions

The slowdown came as emissions grew, with the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere this year exceeding 400 parts per million for the first time on record.

The draft report includes possible reasons for the slowing rate, including natural variability, volcanic eruptions and a drop in solar energy reaching the Earth.

“Much of the information is present but it requires a lot of effort on the part of the reader to piece it all together,” the 28-nation EU said in the comments document.

The U.S. requested clarity on the implications of the data, commenting “this is an example of providing a bunch of numbers, then leave them up in the air without a concrete conclusion.”

Norway, Denmark and China requested information on the role oceans have played in the slowdown. China cited three scientific papers, including a study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters in May that found deep ocean waters below 700 meters (2,300 feet) have absorbed more heat since 1999.
Ocean Temperatures

A separate study in the journal Nature Aug. 28 linked the hiatus to a cooling of surface waters in the eastern Pacific. The cut-off date for papers to be considered in the UN report was March 15.

The UN World Meteorological Organization defines climate as the average weather over a 30-year period, and scientists say the 15-year slowdown isn’t long enough to mark a trend. Hungary and Germany, both EU members, cited this as a reason to delete any reference to the hiatus in the summary, while Japan questioned the purpose of using a 15-year average.

“A 15-years period of observation is not sufficient to give a qualified analysis of the global mean surface temperature trend in an assessment of climate change,” Germany said. It also said the use of the word “hiatus” is “strongly misleading” because “there is not a pause or interruption, but a decrease in the warming trend.”

“We never comment on the internal procedures of the IPCC,” Nikolai Fichtner, a spokesman for the German environment ministry, said in an e-mail.
Slowdown Acknowledged

The slowdown in warming has been acknowledged by the U.K. Met Office, which produces one of the world’s three main series of global temperature data, and James Hansen, the former NASA scientist who first brought climate change to the attention of Congress in the 1980s. They say the data is still compatible with humans being the main cause of warming.

Even with the slowdown, the decade of 2001 to 2010 was the warmest for both hemispheres and for land and sea, the WMO said July 3 in a report. The World Bank says the planet is on course to warm by 4 degrees Celsius by 2100 because of rising emissions.

That hasn’t stopped skeptics, from scientists to lawmakers and bloggers from seizing on the issue.

The Global Warming Policy Foundation, a U.K.-based research group that describes itself as “deeply concerned about the costs” of climate change policies, said in a report in March that “we are on the threshold of global observations becoming incompatible with the consensus theory of climate change.”
Don’t ‘Panic’

The Wall Street Journal published in January 2012 an opinion piece signed by 16 scientists that cited “the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now” as a reason not to “panic” about climate change. They included professors at Princeton and Cambridge universities, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and former U.S. Senator and Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt.

The comments on the slowdown are among 1,855 from governments around the world detailed in the document. The comments range from requests to spell out what acronyms stand for and eliminate scientific jargon to clarifying the likelihood of predictions and shuffling bits of text about.

SOURCE




British businesses protest over cost of green energy reforms

Businesses have voiced their concern over the costs of the £110bn “green” overhaul of Britain’s energy sector and believe it risks making the country uncompetitive.

Three quarters of major energy users said they were worried about the impact of the reforms on their businesses, according to research by supplier npower.

Ministers are pushing an Energy Bill through Parliament that will introduce billions of pounds of long-term subsidies for low-carbon power sources such as wind farms and nuclear reactors.

The plants are intended to replace older, dirtier coal plants that are being switched off so Britain can meet legally binding carbon emission and renewable energy targets.

But the green technologies are not commercially viable to build without the subsidies, which will be paid for through levies on energy consumers’ bills.

Intermittent new sources of power such as wind will also make the economics of building gas plants more difficult, as they will no longer be able to operate the entire time. There will be incentives for new gas plants to operate when needed, such as when the wind does not blow, in a policy described as “an insurance premium against the risk of blackouts”.

Official figures suggest the unit price of electricity has already risen by 30pc as a result of the policies and that prices will have risen by 50pc by 2020. However, ministers insist the policies will be cheaper than doing nothing because they say gas plants will only become more expensive to run.

An npower survey of 66 senior energy managers from major UK industrial and commercial businesses and energy consultants showed that less than half understood exactly how their businesses would be affected.

Three out of four said they were concerned over the reforms. Most cited costs as their leading concern.

Wayne Mitchell, npower’s industrial and commercial sales and marketing director, said: “It is revealing that businesses are worried about the impact on UK competitiveness, as the last thing Government will want is businesses moving abroad as a way around EMR [energy reforms].”

The warning echoes those by manufacturers’ organisation, the EEF, which has said that “unless we get a grip on spiralling policy costs, steeply rising electricity prices for the rest of the sector risk making the UK an increasingly unattractive location for industrial investment and undermining efforts to rebalance the economy”.

Ministers have already proposed schemes to exempt major energy users from some of the costs of the reforms. But critics say they do not go far enough to help offset the costs.

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:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  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 or here

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