Monday, April 04, 2016



Mauna Loa CO2

The Mauna Loa CO2 record seems to be the one most referred to by Warmists so I have for some time been greatly amused by what it shows for 2015, that "record" year for warming, according to Warmists.  It is so amusing that I think there is a fair chance that it will be "adjusted" -- as the temperature record often has been.  So I have decided to take a screen capture of it while it is in its original state.  See below.



The 4th column is the actual average CO2 level in ppm.  As you can see, the actual CO2 levels just bobbed up and down around 400ppm, showing that CO2 levels plateaued during that year.  There was no overall change.  There were slight increases but also slight decreases.

So it is perfectly clear that this "warmest" year was NOT caused by anthropogenic CO2 emissions rising -- because total CO2 levels did not rise.  ALL the warming was due to natural factors, principally El Nino.

Instead of crowing that it proved their theory, Warmists should be in deep despond that this "warmest" year was TOTALLY natural.  CO2 levels did nothing.  Once again, there was no linkage between temperature and CO2 levels.  The facts are totally at odds with Warmism.





Petard in Warmist calls for a RICO investigation of companies

Exxon is particularly targeted as conspiring to hush up global warming information but other companies and groups could be dragged in.  A reader -- below -- is a bit amused at the whole idea

The Rico Act works both ways. Do the Green/Left not realize that false science perpetrated to promote a Climate Change Agenda is also a conspiracy that should be prosecuted equally. After all there seems to be more actual evidence that monkeying with data and distorted graphs and bogus models supported by non scientist is a bigger conspiracy than any corporate effort.

ExxonMobil is not really concerned that Wind and Solar will put them out of business anytime in the foreseeable future. The world is on a fossil fuel diet and nothing is going to change that as long as there are people who want to live warm, cool, mobile, watching TV, eating healthy in comfortable homes with all of the luxury that we can get.

The world leaders will always be the countries with the most cheap energy........USA, Russia, Australia,Canada and a few others.





The Pause Update: March 2016 (Preliminary)

Industrious Australian graph-maker, Ken Stewart, has launched another banderilla at the Warmists -- below.  Probably because of the distortion caused by the El Nino phenomenon, Lord Monckton seems to have desisted from updating his graph of satellite temperatures -- probably until the La Nina cuts in later this year.  So Ken fills a gap.  His approach is quite different from Monckton's but is still very informative.  I reproduce below only his graph for the globe as a whole.  See the original for full details

Well my last post certainly stirred up some Global Warming Enthusiasts who found it difficult to get their heads around the continued existence of The Pause.  What will they make of this month’s update?  The Pause refuses to go away, despite greatly exaggerated rumours of its death.

Dr Roy Spencer has just released UAH v6.0 data for March.  This is a preliminary post with graphs only for the Globe, the Northern Hemisphere, the Southern Hemisphere, and the Tropics.  Other regions will be updated in a few days’ time when the full data for March are released.  (These preliminary figures may change slightly as well.)

These graphs show the furthest back one can go to show a zero or negative trend (less than +0.1C/ 100 years) in lower tropospheric temperatures.    I calculate 12 month running means to remove the small possibility of seasonal autocorrelation in the monthly anomalies.  Note: The satellite record commences in December 1978- now 37 years and 4 months long- 448 months.  12 month running means commence in November 1979.  The graphs below start in December 1978, so the vertical gridlines denote Decembers.  The final plotted points are March 2016.

Except for the Tropics, where The Pause has reduced by three months, in other regions it has remained at the same length.

Globe:



Mar 16 globe

Sorry, GWEs, The Pause is still an embarrassing reality!  For how much longer we don’t know.

And, for the special benefit of those who think that I am deliberately fudging data by using 12 month running means, here is the plot of monthly anomalies, which shows that The Pause is over in monthly anomalies by my rather strict criterion:

I will continue posting these figures showing these scarey trends from monthly anomalies.  The Pause will return sooner with monthly anomalies than 12 month means of course.  Meanwhile, shudder at the thought of 18 years and 4 months with a frightening trend of +0.15C +/-0.1C per 100 years.

The Northern Hemisphere Pause refuses to go quietly and remains at nearly half the record.  It may well disappear in the next month or two.

For well over half the record the Southern Hemisphere has zero trend.

Mar 16 Tropics:  The Pause has shortened by three months, but is still well over half the record long.

In a few days the full dataset will be released and graphs for the other regions will be plotted as soon as possible.

SOURCE  





FALLING Sea Levels on U.S. East coast

Where's Al Gore when you need him?  And Jim Hansen, for that matter

Sea level has been falling on the Atlantic seaboard for the past six years.





Our top scientists say that Manhattan will be underwater no later than 2018, but this appears unlikely.

Sea level rise rates on the Atlantic seaboard peaked around 1950. There is no “human footprint.” None at all.



(Bigger graph here)

SOURCE  





Enviro-Critical and/or Climate-Sceptical Websites

(About this List)

The starting place for compiling this list were the “blogrolls” or “links” sections of the better known climate-sceptical and/or enviro-critical websites. Many of the websites listed there have blogrolls of their own, which were also surveyed. Overall, about 100 such lists were perused. Only websites appearing on these lists were selected for the list below.

About 20 blogrolls contain over 100 entries each but there is a lot overlapping content. Moreover, the lists tend to be poorly maintained and thus include many broken links and dud sites. They also include websites with little enviro-content.

The Lord Monckton Foundation website has an impressive 300 hyperlinks, but over half of these link not to websites but to individual articles, papers, and data-sets, or to pro-global warming sites including one that calls Lord Moncton a “purple crested crackpot.” In fairness to Lord Monckton, he is not advertising his list as being exclusively a roll call of enviro-critical/climate-sceptical sites. Only about 70 of his entries fit this definition, which still makes it one of the longest such lists on the Internet.

U Climate is a noble effort to produce a universal climate website collection. The site claims to draw postings from 150 climate sites but actually seems to draw from about 100. Of its 52 skeptical sites, 2 are not sceptical. Nevertheless, U Climate is a great idea and a site worth visiting.

None of the lists perused contain over 90 currently-active, enviro-critical/climate-sceptical websites. The list below is four times longer than any other. This reflects a community that really does not know itself.

True, the list below could be pared back. It includes multiple projects that trace to common sources. For instance, four websites are produced by the Center for Organizational Research and Education; however, in this and other instances, each website is a stand-alone, semi-independent project and thus appears as a separate entry. In other cases where multiple websites replicate a single source, only the presumed master site is listed.

A greater quandary is the dormant website. The exemplar of this phenomenon is World Climate Report. This seminal website is the most common resident on sceptics’ lists despite being dormant since 2012. Regarding the list below, if a website has not had a fresh posting since 2013, it was usually struck. Applying this rule excluded several dozen websites that appear regularly on sceptics’ lists.

A still greater quandary relates to websites whose enviro-critical information constitutes only a small portion of the website’s overall content. While no strict cut-off line was drawn, this concern excluded scores of websites.

On the other hand, the ultimate list of climate-sceptical/enviro-critical websites is probably over ten times longer than the one offered below. The reasons for this are:

While almost all websites listed below hail from the English-speaking world, the list does contain entries from Germany, Norway, Sweden, France, Italy, South Africa, India, Argentina, Venezuela, etc. The Internet’s limited robot translation services renders sleuthing about in foreign languages problematic. Deeper investigation would no doubt generate many more entries. The Eco Tretas site alone links to 27 Portuguese eco-sceptical sites.

Scores of the websites listed below issue forth from the libertarian fountainhead. Libertarians oppose government intervention into the market, and such intervention is precisely what environmentalists aim to increase. There are many libertarian websites. The Atlas Economic Research Foundation alone founded 400 libertarian think-tanks across 80 countries. While many libertarian sites are listed below, a full inventory of such sites, even winnowed to those with significant environmental commentary, was beyond the scope of this project.

Similar to the previous point, there exist a large number pro-free-enterprise, limited-government, traditional-values, and/or classical-liberal pressure groups and webzines, each with a substantial Internet presence. Such groups lack the doctrinal purity of outright libertarians and tend to focus on practical political problems. Nevertheless, they all resist environmentalism. The State Policy Network is a coalition of 130 said groups. The Federalist Society has 75 chapters and other offshoots. Only a few representatives of this genre appear on the list below. As well, many Tea Party groups are not listed but could be.

Several of the listed sites are part of a little-known, grassroots groundswell opposing wind power – i.e. the form of electrical generation most favoured by climate activists. The European Platform Against Windfarms has 957 member organizations. The North American Platform Against Wind Power links to 120 supporting organizations but includes few from the 50-member Ontario Wind Resistance. Across the globe at least 1,500 structured organizations oppose wind power. One problem here is that some of these organizations are green NIMBY groups sporting names like Forest Ecology Network and Save Our Lakes.

While the list below includes a few mainstream media pundits and journalists, as a general rule such persons are not included. Celebs often do not have independent websites and are only contactable through their overlords and hence are incommunicado. Nevertheless, Tom Stossel, Rush Limbaugh, and about 40 others rightly belong on this list.

This list does not include any of the hundreds of associations representing the oil, gas, nuclear, coal, pipeline, forestry, fishing, construction, and mining industries. Too often such groups espouse an appeasing Corporate Social Responsibility line. The problem is not, as the enviros allege, that big industrial firms lavish funds onto the enviro-counter movement. The problem is that they are not spending enough to ensure their own survival.

About 150 of the entries below are for simple blogs, meaning “web-logs” of individuals unconnected to any larger, funding agencies. Some blogs have blossomed into substantial enterprises. Jo Nova was selected top Australian blog in 2014 after receiving 600,000 hits. This website launched The Sceptic’s Handbook (Volumes 1 and 2), 200,000 copies of which have been distributed. Watts Up With That is the clear champion in this regard. Its 263 million cumulative hits have earned it numerous Internet awards.

Jeff Id relays how in the heyday of the Climate Gate scandal his blog (The Air Vent) peaked at 15,000 hits a day but has since quieted down, in part due to his own divided efforts. Real Science’s producer openly bemoans his inability to attract funders for his site. The Climate Scepticism initiative was launched because its producer felt the climate blogosphere was getting so crowded individual bloggers could no longer maintain visibility. So far this coalition project has attracted seven “sceptics” – two of whom are too sketchy to make it onto the list below.

Dozens of the website producers have hard copy books on the market and several websites are entirely devoted to advertising recently published books. Presumably all bloggers would welcome greater success in the conventional publishing and media realms, but obscure sites such as Green Corruption Files and No Tricks Zone often make for the most interesting reading.

SOURCE. (See the original for links)    




A New Car Will Cost You at Least $3,800 Extra Because of Government Regulation

When Congress and the Obama administration passed and implemented extremely strict fuel economy regulations, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claimed that it would save consumers a few thousand dollars on gas and add only $948 to the price of a new car.

The most modest of the independent estimates works out to $3,800 per vehicle, even after the fuel savings are taken into account.

Three teams of independent economists and engineers went up against the EPA’s analysts—finding much larger costs and smaller benefits. The most modest of the independent estimates works out to $3,800 per vehicle, even after the fuel savings are taken into account.

So whose predictions were more accurate?

Although we don’t know how prices would have changed if regulations had been left alone, there are several trends that all moved together before the law was changed in 2007.

The price index for vehicles (adjusted for quality improvements), published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, had been falling steadily since the 1990s.

The prices of other large consumer goods—“furnishings and durable household equipment”—had been falling even longer, as modern manufacturing and trade made things like dishwashers and sofas cheaper.

Prices for vehicles had been falling at about the same rate in the U.K., Australia, and Canada.

So what happened? Several of these trends showed turbulence during the 2008-2009 global crisis but then resumed their downward paths. The exceptions were car prices in the U.S. and Canada, which enacted similar new, more stringent fuel economy standards.

In a recently released Heritage Foundation research paper, we’ve compared the recent price trends to the scholarly predictions and found that if U.S. vehicle prices had followed one of the comparable trends, cars would be between $3,975 and $7,140 cheaper today than they are. This massive expense buys very little change in global warming: less than two hundredths of a degree, according to the Obama administration’s own estimate.

Congress should scrap Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards entirely—they cost consumers dearly while having a negligible impact on carbon emissions. Failing that, a new administration can freeze the standards at 2016 levels to prevent the Corporate Average Fuel Economy tax from doubling by 2025, as the Obama administration has planned.

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.  

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

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