That pesky cooling in the Antarctic

CO2 levels have risen steadily to a record high but Antarctica has shown a clearly growing sea ice cover since 1980, totally contradicting global warming theory.  The authors below therefore have begun to look at what actually influences the Antarctic

Low-Frequency Climate Modes and Antarctic Sea Ice Variations, 1982–2013

Abstract

The NCEP–NCAR composite dataset (comprising sea level pressure, 500-hPa geopotential height, 500-hPa temperature, and meridional wind stress at 10 m above the surface) is used for compiling a set of climate indices describing the most important physical modes of variability in the Southern Hemisphere (SH): the southern annular mode (SAM), semiannual oscillation (SAO), Pacific–South American (PSA), and quasi-stationary zonal wavenumber 3 (ZW3) patterns. Compelling evidence indicates that the large increase in the SH sea ice, recorded over recent years, arises from the impact of climate modes and their long-term trends. The examination of variability ranging from seasonal to interdecadal scales, and of trends within the climate patterns and total Antarctic sea ice concentration (SIC) for the 32-yr period (1982–2013), is the key focus of this paper. The results herein indicate that a progressive cooling has affected the year-to-year climate of the sub-Antarctic since the 1990s. This feature is found in association with increased positive SAM and SAO phases detected in terms of upward annual and seasonal trends (in autumn and summer) and upward decadal trends. In addition, the SIC shows upward annual, spring, and summer trends, indicating the insulation of Antarctica from the warmer flows in the midlatitudes. This picture of variations is also found to be consistent with the upward trends detected for the PSA and ZW3 patterns on the annual scale and during the last two decades. Evidence of a more frequent occurrence of the PSA–ZW3 combination could explain, in part, the significant increase of the regional and total Antarctic sea ice coverages.

SOURCE 





Egyptian election: Army-backed President wins second term with 97% of vote



There's that 97% again -- the hallmark of a fraud: In climate politics as in any politics.  Warmists really are in good company

Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has won a second, four-year term in office, with more than 97 per cent of the vote in last week’s election, according to official results announced on Monday by the election commission, which put turnout at 41.05 per cent.

SOURCE 





The Stunning Statistical Fraud Behind The Global Warming Scare

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration may have a boring name, but it has a very important job: It measures U.S. temperatures. Unfortunately, it seems to be a captive of the global warming religion. Its data are fraudulent.

What do we mean by fraudulent? How about this: NOAA has made repeated "adjustments" to its data, for the presumed scientific reason of making the data sets more accurate.

Nothing wrong with that. Except, all their changes point to one thing — lowering previously measured temperatures to show cooler weather in the past, and raising more recent temperatures to show warming in the recent present.

This creates a data illusion of ever-rising temperatures to match the increase in CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere since the mid-1800s, which global warming advocates say is a cause-and-effect relationship. The more CO2, the more warming.

But the actual measured temperature record shows something different: There have been hot years and hot decades since the turn of the last century, and colder years and colder decades. But the overall measured temperature shows no clear trend over the last century, at least not one that suggests runaway warming.

That is, until the NOAA's statisticians "adjust" the data. Using complex statistical models, they change the data to reflect not reality, but their underlying theories of global warming. That's clear from a simple fact of statistics: Data generate random errors, which cancel out over time. So by averaging data, the errors mostly disappear.

That's not what NOAA does.

According to the NOAA, the errors aren't random. They're systematic. As we noted, all of their temperature adjustments lean cooler in the distant past, and warmer in the more recent past. But they're very fuzzy about why this should be.

Far from legitimately "adjusting" anything, it appears they are cooking the data to show a politically correct trend toward global warming. Not by coincidence, that has been part and parcel of the government's underlying policies for the better part of two decades.

What NOAA does aren't niggling little changes, either.

As Tony Heller at the Real Climate Science web site notes, "Pre-2000 temperatures are progressively cooled, and post-2000 temperatures are warmed. This year has been a particularly spectacular episode of data tampering by NOAA, as they introduce nearly 2.5 degrees of fake warming since 1895."

So the global warming scare is basically a hoax.

This winter, for instance, as measured by temperature in city after city  and by snow-storm severity, has been one of the coldest on record in the Northeast.

But after the NOAA's wizards finished with the data, it was merely about average.

Climate analyst Paul Homewood notes for instance that in New York state, measured temperatures this year were 2.7 degrees or more colder than in 1943. Not to NOAA. Its data show temperatures this year as 0.9 degrees cooler than the actual data in 1943.

Erasing Winter

By the way, a similar result occurred after the brutally cold 2013-2014 winter in New York. It was simply adjusted away. Do this year after year, and with the goal of radically altering the temperature record to fit the global warming narrative, and you have what amounts to climate fraud.

"Clearly NOAA's highly homogenized and adjusted version of the Central Lakes temperature record bears no resemblance at all the the actual station data," writes Homewood. "And if this one division is so badly in error, what confidence can there be that the rest of the U.S. is any better?"

That's the big question. And for those who think that government officials don't have political, cultural or other agendas, that's naivete of the highest sort. They do.

Since the official government mantra for all of the bureaucracies at least since the Clinton era is that CO2 production is an evil that inevitably leads to runaway global warming, those who toil in the bureaucracies' statistical sweat shops know that their careers and future funding depend on having the politically correct answers — not the scientifically correct ones.

"The key point here is that while NOAA frequently makes these adjustments to the raw data, it has never offered a convincing explanation as to why they are necessary," wrote James Delingpole recently in Breitbart's Big Government. "Nor yet, how exactly their adjusted data provides a more accurate version of the truth than the original data."

There are at least some signs of progress, however. In the case of the Environmental Protection Agency, future reports and studies will include the data and the underlying scientific assumptions for public scrutiny.

That's one way to bring greater honesty to government — and to keep climate charlatans from bankrupting our nation with spurious demands for carbon taxes and deindustrialization of our economy to prevent global warming. The only real result won't be a cooler planet, but rather mass poverty and lower standards of living for all.

SOURCE 





Climate Alarmists May Inherit the Wind

They likened a courtroom ‘tutorial’ to the Scopes Monkey Trial. But their side got schooled.

Five American oil companies find themselves in a San Francisco courtroom. California v. Chevron is a civil action brought by the city attorneys of San Francisco and Oakland, who accuse the defendants of creating a “public nuisance” by contributing to climate change and of conspiring to cover it up so they could continue to profit.No trial date has been set, but on March 21 the litigants gathered for a “climate change tutorial” ordered by Judge William Alsup—a prospect that thrilled climate-change alarmists. Excited spectators gathered outside the courtroom at 6 a.m., urged on by advocates such as the website Grist, which declared “Buckle up, polluters! You’re in for it now,” and likened the proceeding to the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial.

In the event, the hearing did not go well for the plainti s—and not for lack of legal talent. Steve W. Berman, who represented the cities, is a star trial lawyer who has made a career and a fortune suing corporations for large settlements, including the $200 billion-plus tobacco settlement in 1998.

“Until now, fossil fuel companies have been able to talk about climate science in political and media arenas where there is far less accountability to the truth,” Michael Burger of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University told Grist. The hearing

did mark a shi toward accountability—but perhaps not in the way activists would have liked.

Judge Alsup started quietly. He flattered the plainti s’ first witness, Oxford physicist Myles Allen, by calling him a “genius,” but he also reprimanded Mr. Allen for using a misleading illustration to represent carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and a graph ostensibly about temperature rise that did not actually show rising temperatures.

Then the pointed questions began. Gary Griggs, an oceanographer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, struggled with the judge’s simple query: “What do you think caused the last Ice Age?”

The professor talked at length about a wobble in the earth’s orbit and went on to describe a period “before there were humans on the planet,” which “we call hothouse Earth.” That was when “all the ice melted. We had fossils of palm trees and alligators in the Arctic,” Mr. Griggs told the court. He added that at one time the sea level was 20 to 30 feet higher than today.

Mr. Griggs then recounted “a period called ‘snow ballers,’ ” when scientists “think the entire Earth was frozen due to changes in things like methane released from the ocean.”

Bear in mind these accounts of two apocalyptic climate events that occurred naturally came from a witness for plainti s looking to prove American oil companies are responsible for small changes in present-day climate.

The defendants’ lawyer, Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., emphasized the little-discussed but huge uncertainties in reports from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the failure of worst-case climate models to pan out in reality. Or as Judge Alsup put it: “Instead of doom and gloom, it’s just gloom.”

Mr. Boutrous also noted that the city of San Francisco—in court claiming that rising sea levels imperil its future—recently issued a 20-year bond, whose prospectus asserted the city was “unable to predict whether sea level rise or other impacts of climate change or

flooding from a major storm will occur.”

Judge Alsup was particularly scathing about the conspiracy claim. The plainti s alleged that the oil companies were in possession of “smoking gun” documents that would prove their liability; Mr. Boutrous said this was simply an internal summary of the publicly available 1995 IPCC report.

The judge said he read the lawsuit’s allegations to mean “that there was a conspiratorial document within the defendants about how they knew good and well that global warming was right around the corner. And I said: ‘OK, that’s going to be a big thing. I want to see it.’ Well, it turned out it wasn’t quite that. What it was, was a slide show that somebody had gone to the IPCC and was reporting on what the IPCC had reported, and that was it. Nothing more. So they were on notice of what in IPCC said from that document, but it’s hard to say that they were secretly aware. By that point they knew. Everybody knew everything in the IPCC,” he stated.

Judge Alsup then turned to Mr. Berman: “If you want to respond, I’ll let you respond. . . . Anything you want to say?”“No,” said the counsel to the plainti s. Whereupon Judge Alsup adjourned the proceedings.

Until now, environmentalists and friendly academics have found a receptive audience in journalists and politicians who don’t understand science and are happy to defer to experts. Perhaps this is why the plainti s seemed so ill-prepared for their first court outings with tough questions from an informed and inquisitive judge.

Activists have long claimed they want their day in court so that the truth can be revealed. Given last week’s poor performance, they may be the ones who inherit the wind.

SOURCE 





Australia: Pressure from conservative parliamentarians for more coal-fired electicity

Malcolm Turnbull faces a challenge to his signature energy ­policy from a group of Coalition backbenchers, including Tony Abbott, Eric Abetz and Kevin ­Andrews, who have formed a lobby group to promote government support for the construction of new coal-fired power stations.

Liberal MP Craig Kelly and Nationals MP George Christensen yesterday claimed more than 20 government MPs had joined the newly created Monash Forum, named after World War I military hero John Monash, a key figure in opening Victoria’s ­Latrobe Valley to coal production.

The Australian was told last night that Barnaby Joyce had thrown his support behind the new informal political faction along with up to 11 other Nationals. The former deputy prime minister did not respond to ­requests for comment.

The lobby group could threaten the Prime Minister’s national energy guarantee (NEG) as he ­attempts to secure support from state and territory governments for a new national framework later this month.

While not ­opposed to the NEG, the Monash Forum aims to test Mr Turnbull’s assurances to the Coalition partyroom that the government framework is “technology-neutral” by aggressively pushing for more coal-fired power stations.

One member of the new group said: “Some of us see ­energy as being the only ticket to ride in the next election and the NEG is clearly not going to cut it for us.”

The backbench lobby group push comes as Mr Turnbull faces pressure over his leadership, with the Coalition on track to trail Labor for 30 consecutive Newspolls — the benchmark Mr Turnbull used to oust Mr Abbott as prime minister in September 2015.

The Australian understands the new ginger group is based on the Lyons Forum of the early 1990s which was made up of conservative Liberals who played a vital role in facilitating John Howard’s leadership ascension in 1995.

The Lyons Forum, dubbed the “God squad” by some commentators, included Liberal MPs Mr Andrews and Senator Abetz.

The Monash Forum is understood to have its own mission statement or policy manifesto, which was given to backbenchers when parliament sat in Canberra last week. Some MPs were ­encouraged to sign documents to confirm their support.

“It says the government is building a Snowy 2.0 so why can’t it build a Hazelwood 2.0,” Mr Kelly said of the manifesto.

“The group wants to see the ­replacement of Australia’s existing coal-fired power fleet with new high-efficiency, low-­emissions (HELE) coal-fired power stations.”

Mr Kelly and Mr Christensen said yesterday they expected more than 30 MPs to join the forum, which would be more than half of the backbench. Mr Christensen said 10 Nationals had formally joined the group and another two had verbally told him they would join.

Mr Christensen last week sent a message to Nationals MPs asking them to join. “We are setting up a new group called the Monash Forum encouraging the government in the promotion of and ­facilitation of and/or construction of coal-fired power stations,” he wrote. “Why Monash? Because he opened the La Trobe coal reserves and oversaw the construction of coal-fired power there.”

Mr Christensen said there needed to be more federal government support for coal-fired power. He said the government should “secure” Liddell power station in the NSW Upper Hunter and then expand the baseload network.

“I think that there is a strong desire within the backbench for the government to get more actively involved in the construction of reliable, around-the-clock baseload power,” Mr Christensen said. “Most of us haven’t bought into the great green lie that that is going to be achieved by solar with batteries or wind power. Those products have their place but they do not supply affordable, around-the-clock, secure, baseload power. The only thing in the Australian market that does that is coal-fired power.”

When asked if the forum’s requests would be possible within the framework of the NEG, Mr Christensen said: “We are told the NEG is technologically neutral … within those parameters the best solution currently available to us is coal-fired power”.

Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg said yesterday the government’s policy was technology-neutral.

He said independent modelling by the Energy Security Board had suggested coal would make up more than half of the energy mix in 2030. In its advice to government in October, the ESB said renewables were likely to reach 28 to 36 per cent of the energy mix by 2030 under the NEG — with wind and solar providing 18 to 24 per cent.

The NEG is aimed at guaranteeing energy reliability, while lowering costs for consumers and delivering on Australia’s Paris Agreement commitment to reducing carbon emissions by 26 per cent on 2005 levels. It will put an obligation on electricity retailers to buy power at a set level of emissions intensity each year to meet a 2030 reduction target — set by government — for the power generation sector while also forcing retailers to meet a percentage of demand from reliable power generation.

SOURCE

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

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.  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

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