Who would be giving the Communist clenched-fist salute these days?



Ecofascists, of course.  The pic above is apparently from a new film full of Warmist hysteria.  Some of the speakers sound a lot like old uncle Adolf too.  One totalitarianism is as good as another to them, I guess.

Details here





THE (LATEST) ANSWER TO THE “PAUSE”

Dr David Whitehouse

In popular science journalism the latest is always the best. With all the explanations for the “pause” in global surface temperatures since 1997 – there are now over 30 of them – it is always the most recently published one that is the “answer.”
This time it’s the Atlantic Ocean that’s to blame. A paper published in Science says that a 30-year periodicity warms and cools the world by sequestering heat below the ocean’s surface and then releasing it.

The paper concerned is not an impressive one. It starts off assuming the answer it seeks and finds it! Since the emphasis is on the Atlantic take a look at their data for surface temperature and ocean heat content (OHC.) As you can see OHC is declining, as the surface temperature remains static. Incidentally, a few error bars on the graphs would have been illuminating and would have altered a false impression given by the graphs data’s precision.



The OHC data comes from the Argo array that has been in place for about a decade. When talking to people about Argo I have heard many comments about how it is obviously showing a global increase in OHC over that period but this is something that is not entirely borne out by the data, and will be the subject of a future post.

Before the Atlantic it was the Pacific storing heat beneath the waves and taking it away from the atmosphere. Some scientists were quite confident that it was at the root of most of the “pause” and some still are despite the recent attention to the Atlantic Ocean. Even the authors of the recent Science paper say they are “not downplaying the role of the Pacific.” So there you have it. It is the Atlantic that is the cause of the “pause,” and it is the Pacific that is the cause of the “pause” as well. I’m glad that’s clear.

For those who are impressed with some of the media’s reports that the “pause” has its best explanation to date there are two papers, here and here, published in Nature Climate Change at the same time that say it is, most definitely, due to the Pacific.

The language of science journalism is interesting here. Note that the “pause” has been “seized” upon by “climate change sceptics and puzzled scientists,” and that the “pause” happened after “decades of rapid warming.” (Note to Editor: recent warming started around 1980. The 80s hardly saw “rapid warming” and the warming had stopped by the later half of the 90s.)

You don’t have to look very deeply at the science to realise that, despite the headlines, no one has come up with an answer to the “pause.” Some place their faith that there is a major driver – the Atlantic or the Pacific for instance – that can explain most of it. Others admit that there will not be any one cause for the “pause” and that it is likely to be the result of a patchwork of influences. If so then they have to explain why such a patchwork has for 17 years kept the global surface temperature statistically flat in the face of rising greenhouse gas concentrations – surely one of the most remarkable balancing acts in the history of science.

For many the proof of what is causing the “pause” will not be forthcoming until it goes away and what is expected to be accelerated global warming resumes. But since whatever the culprit is would have been a very significant contributor to the pre “pause” warming in the 80s and 90s, one wonders how swift will be that acceleration?

SOURCE (See the original for links)





Updated list of excuses for the 18 year 'pause' in global warming

"If you can't explain the 'pause', you can't explain the cause". RSS satellite data shows the 18 year 'pause' of global warming

An updated list of at least 29 32 36 38 39 41 52 excuses for the 18 year 'pause' in global warming, including recent scientific papers, media quotes, blogs, and related debunkings:

1) Low solar activity

2) Oceans ate the global warming [debunked] [debunked] [debunked]

3) Chinese coal use [debunked]

4) Montreal Protocol

5) What ‘pause’? [debunked] [debunked] [debunked] [debunked]

6) Volcanic aerosols [debunked]

7) Stratospheric Water Vapor

8) Faster Pacific trade winds [debunked]

9) Stadium Waves

10) ‘Coincidence!’

11) Pine aerosols

12) It's "not so unusual" and "no more than natural variability"

13) "Scientists looking at the wrong 'lousy' data" http://

14) Cold nights getting colder in Northern Hemisphere

15) We forgot to cherry-pick models in tune with natural variability [debunked]

16) Negative phase of Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation

17) AMOC ocean oscillation

18) "Global brightening" has stopped

19) "Ahistorical media"

20) "It's the hottest decade ever" Decadal averages used to hide the 'pause' [debunked]

21) Few El Ninos since 1999

22) Temperature variations fall "roughly in the middle of the AR4 model results"

23) "Not scientifically relevant"

24) The wrong type of El Ninos

25) Slower trade winds [debunked]

26) The climate is less sensitive to CO2 than previously thought [see also]

27) PDO and AMO natural cycles and here

28) ENSO

29) Solar cycle driven ocean temperature variations

30) Warming Atlantic caused cooling Pacific [paper] [debunked by Trenberth & Wunsch]

31) "Experts simply do not know, and bad luck is one reason"

32) IPCC climate models are too complex, natural variability more important

33) NAO & PDO

34) Solar cycles

35) Scientists forgot "to look at our models and observations and ask questions"

36) The models really do explain the "pause" [debunked] [debunked] [debunked]

37) As soon as the sun, the weather and volcanoes – all natural factors – allow, the world will start warming again. Who knew?

38) Trenberth's "missing heat" is hiding in the Atlantic, not Pacific as Trenberth claimed [debunked] [Dr. Curry's take] [Author: “Every week there’s a new explanation of the hiatus”]

39) "Slowdown" due to "a delayed rebound effect from 1991 Mount Pinatubo aerosols and deep prolonged solar minimum"

40) The "slowdown" is "probably just barely statistically significant" and not "meaningful in terms of the public discourse about climate change"

41) The "recent hiatus in global warming is mainly caused by internal variability of the climate" because "anthropogenic aerosol emissions from Europe and North America towards China and India between 1996 and 2010 has surprisingly warmed rather than cooled the global climate."
[Before this new paper, anthropogenic aerosols were thought to cool the climate or to have minimal effects on climate, but as of now, they "surprisingly warm" the climate]

42) 'Missing heat' is not "supported by the data itself" in the "real ocean":
"it is not clear to me, actually, that an accelerated warming of some...layer of the ocean ... is robustly supported by the data itself. Until we clear up whether there has been some kind of accelerated warming at depth in the real ocean, I think these results serve as interesting hypotheses about why the rate of surface warming has slowed-down, but we still lack a definitive answer on this topic."

43) "After some intense work by of the community, there is general agreement that the main driver [of climate the "pause"]  is ocean variability. That's actually quite impressive progress."

44) "This [the 'pause'] is not an existential threat to the mainstream theory of climate."

45) "In a few years, as we get to understand this [the 'pause'] more, skeptics will move on (just like they dropped arguments about the hockey stick and about the surface station record) to their next reason not to believe climate science."

46) " I think the findings that the heat is going into the Atlantic and Southern Ocean’s is probably pretty robust. However, I will defer to people like Josh Willis who know the data better than I do."-Andrew Dessler. Debunked by Josh Willis, who Dessler says "knows the data better than I do," says in the very same NYT article that "it is not clear to me, actually, that an accelerated warming of some...layer of the ocean ... is robustly supported by the data itself" - Josh Willis

47) "Ultimately, the challenge is to come up with the parsimonious theory [of the 'pause'] that fits all of the data"

48) "the argument that the hiatus will last for another decade or two is very weak and I would not put much faith in that. If the cycle has a period of 60-70 years, that means we have one or two cycles of observations. And I don’t think you can much about a cycle with just 1-2 cycles: e.g., what the actual period of the variability is, how regular it is, etc. You really need dozens of cycles to determine what the actual underlying variability looks like. In fact, I don’t think we even know if it IS a cycle."

49) "this brings up what to me is the real question: how much of the hiatus is pure internal variability and how much is a forced response (from loading the atmosphere with carbon). This paper seems to implicitly take the position that it’s purely internal variability, which I’m not sure is true and might lead to a very different interpretation of the data and estimate of the future."

50) It's the Atlantic, not Pacific, and "the hiatus in the warming...should not be dismissed as a statistical fluke"

51) The other papers with excuses for the "pause" are not "science done right":
" If the science is done right, the calculated uncertainty takes account of this background variation. But none of these papers, Tung, or Trenberth, does that. Overlain on top of this natural behavior is the small, and often shaky, observing systems, both atmosphere and ocean where the shifting places and times and technologies must also produce a change even if none actually occurred. The “hiatus” is likely real, but so what? The fuss is mainly about normal behavior of the climate system."

52) "The central problem of climate science is to ask what you do and say when your data are, by almost any standard, inadequate? If I spend three years analyzing my data, and the only defensible inference is that “the data are inadequate to answer the question,” how do you publish? How do you get your grant renewed? A common answer is to distort the calculation of the uncertainty, or ignore it all together, and proclaim an exciting story that the New York Times will pick up...How many such stories have been withdrawn years later when enough adequate data became available?"

52) My University screwed up the press release & didn't let me stop them from claiming my paper shows the "hiatus will last another decade or two." [Dessler]

More HERE (See the original for links and graphics)





Climate Change Nonsensus: Only 52% of meteorologists think global warming is mostly man-made

The American Meteorological Society has released updated polling results of their membership [26.3% response rate] which shows only 52% agree with the so-called "consensus" that global warming is mostly man-made. The poll finds "members of this professional community are not unanimous in their views of climate change, and there has been tension among members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) who hold different views on the topic."

In a must-read post today by Dr. Judith Curry, she explains why the IPCC attribution claim with 95% confidence that climate change is mostly man-made fails the most basic principles of logic, is unsupportable, that the IPCC and the Gavin's of the world are the parties who are "making things up." Therefore, the meteorologists in this poll who likewise claim to know that most climate change is man-made also fail basic logical analysis and thus this opinion is more political than scientific. The AMS poll confirms that opinions on AGW are to a significant degree driven by political views rather than science:

More HERE




Scientists reveal how they feel about climate change in handwritten letters and photos

Another attempt to substitute appeals to authority for actual evidence

SCIENTISTS can be a practical bunch, they deal with facts, data, hard evidence. But even scientists can lose their s*** sometimes and now they are revealing how they really feel.

Academics from around Australia have posed for striking photographs, while others have put their feelings about climate change in handwritten letters as part of two independent projects.

In one masters project, Australian National University student Joe Duggan contacted scientists and asked them to write the letters about how they felt about climate change.

“What follows are the words of real scientists. Researchers that understand climate change,” states the Is This How You Feel website, where Duggan is publishing the letters.

The letters feel more personal because they are handwritten and the passion, frustration and anxiety is palpable in some of them.

But there is also guilt that they too are left feeling apathetic because of the lack of action and interest in tackling the problem.

A letter from Dr Ailie Gallant of Monash University reflects many of her fellow scientists views: “I hate feeling helpless. I’m ashamed to say that, sometimes, my frustration leads to apathy. I hate feeling apathetic.  “All I can hope is that people share my optimism and convert it into Action.”

Duggan told news.com.au that scientists were generally called on to communicate with the public about climate change using data and clinical prose but it occurred to him that this might not be the best way, and perhaps giving them an opportunity to express their passion might be a way of cutting through the apathy that many people felt about the issue.

“I’m not trying to convert denialists, I’m trying to reach people who are apathetic, who don’t have an opinion, to show them that climate change is relevant to them,” Duggan said.

On another website launched this month scaredscientists.com, some of Australia’s top minds have posed for striking portraits and describe what they are most scared of.

This includes earth system scientist Will Steffen of the Australian National University, who says his biggest fear is the loss of control of the climate system.

“If we push the climate too far, if we start losing ice too rapidly, start flipping things like the Amazon, then the internal dynamics of the climate will take over - and even if we pull emissions back, we won’t be able to stop very large changes - that’s my biggest fear.

“The thing people don’t realise, is getting emissions down is not only feasible but economically promising and will actually lead to a better life.”

One of the founders of the site, photographer Nick Bowers said the project was a labour of love that came about after conversations with two fellow creatives copywriter Rachel Guest and art director Celine Faledam.

“We were interested in environmental issues and discussed this constantly among ourselves, we all have young kids,” Bowers said.  “We wanted to try and bring authenticity and humanity to this issue.”

He said the scientists were photographed while they were being interviewed. This includes many prominent names such as mammologist and palaeontologist Tim Flannery.

Bowers said he thought scientists were more willing in recent years, to put forward their personal views as the information around climate change had become overwhelming.  “There’s more evidence of rapid change in climate and that it is going to effect us,” Bowers said.

While some critics have suggested climate scientists are motivated by grant money, Bowers said he got the sense that they just wanted the debate to move on so they could do other science.  “They want to get on with doing other stuff, they are sick of trying to spruik this stuff themselves.”

Duggan has also experienced a strong response from scientists willing to put forward their views. He said he had received about 20 letters from scientists in Australia and estimated that about 70 to 80 per cent of those he had contacted had responded.

“The thing that hits me the most, are that these people are the ones that understand the facts, that understand the data and can pass judgment on climate change and they’re scared. They are literally scared for the world they are leaving behind for their children.  “They get the statistics, they get the facts and they are scared.”

However, Duggan said that while he expected that fear would be the overriding sentiment, he did not expect how optimistic the scientists would be.  “They expressed optimism as well, even with all the problems, there was optimism that they could reach their goals.”

SOURCE




If only EPA stood for 'Enough Protection Already'

 John Stossel

Thanks, Environmental Protection Agency! You’ve required sewage treatment plants, catalytic converters on cars and other things that made the world cleaner than the world in which I grew up. Good work.

Today, America’s waterways are so much cleaner that I swim in New York City’s once-filthy Hudson River -- right beside skyscrapers in which millions of people, uh, flush. The air we breathe is also cleaner than it’s been for 60 years.

In a rational world, environmental bureaucrats would now say, “Mission accomplished. We set tough standards, so we don’t need to keep doing more. Stick a fork in it! We’re done.”

America does still need some bureaucrats to enforce existing environmental rules and watch for new pollution problems. But we don’t need what we’ve got: 16,000 environmental regulators constantly trying to control more of our lives.
OK, I went too far. America does still need some bureaucrats to enforce existing environmental rules and watch for new pollution problems. But we don’t need what we’ve got: 16,000 environmental regulators constantly trying to control more of our lives. EPA should stand for: Enough Protection Already.

But bureaucracies never  say they’ve done “enough.” That would mean they were out of work.

Like all bureaucracies -- regulatory, poverty-fighting and military -- the EPA spends every day hunting for new things to do, even if its new efforts cost much more and accomplish far less. Its biggest current crusade is global warming -- I mean, “climate change.”

Even if it turns out that man’s emission of greenhouse gases is a threat, “EPA’s own cost-benefit analyses don’t really identify any benefits” from additional regulation, says Case Western Reserve law professor Jonathan Adler. “If we are serious about dealing with climate change, we need to reduce per capita emissions of carbon dioxide to the level they were during the period of Reconstruction after the Civil War.”

That reduction in our industrial capacity would be one of the worst costs the human race had ever suffered, all for tiny benefits. Even if we did everything the environmentalists want, the regulators admit it might only lower temperatures a fraction of a degree, a century from now.
By that time, we will have cheaper ways of dealing with the problem, if it is a problem. But government rarely pays attention to costs vs. benefits.

Today, instead of environmental regulations that actually save lives, we pay to subsidize politicians’ cronies and pet projects, such as electric cars.

Voters rarely object to such deals, says David Harsanyi of The Federalist, because government hides their real costs. “If people actually paid what a Chevy Volt cost to make, it would probably be around $200,000. Without government -- essentially, government cronyism and all kinds of subsidies -- the Volt wouldn’t exist.”

He says Chevy, even with its government subsidies, loses about $49,000 on every Volt it builds. It’s ironic that, as environmentalists talk about “sustainability,” they create totally unsustainable subsidy schemes.

“It’s happening with all kinds of alternative energy companies that rely on government subsidies,” Harsanyi says. Politicians, by shifting money away from private-sector experiments, “are hurting companies that actually have some innovation that might work better.”

Since people rarely question spending that supposedly is “good for the environment, green subsidies create opportunity for corruption,” Harsanyi says. “The people who lobby and have the closest ties to government are typically the ones who benefit from the subsidies the government gives.”

Close associates of President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and former Vice President Al Gore all benefited from well-timed investments in green companies that got a leg up from government subsidies and regulations.

Unfortunately, green companies often do poorly even with government assistance, as was the case with solar panel maker Solyndra.

I don’t doubt there are important technological advances ahead that will make energy use more efficient -- and make the environment cleaner, sometimes as an unintended side effect. But I don’t trust government to pick the technologies.

Why should we think government’s ideas for cleaning the environment are on the cutting edge? As Harsanyi points out, windmills, one of environmentalists’ favorite ideas and biggest subsidy-recipients, “have been around since the Middle Ages.”

There will be a better way. Government probably won’t find it.

SOURCE

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

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