Australians are fortunate that they can freely choose whoever they wish to support them in the parliament and to govern this once great country.

This choice is usually made on the basis that the voter has studied his party’s choice and is WELL AWARE of their policies and what that party stands for. But I find it hard to believe that the people who voted for the Greens are aware of all their policies.

So why did you vote for the Greens ?

Was it as one voter said ‘I thought they were nice people.’ Another said it was ‘because they care about the environment.’ As if no one else does.!!!!

Perhaps you were disenchanted by the major parties and thought you would give your vote to the greens instead, without even knowing their policies or how dangerous they are. I find it impossible to believe that anyone in their right mind would vote for the Greens if they knew the truth. Instead of all the lies they have told and policies that would put the fear into the devil.

Did you know they want to introduce death duties. That horrible archaic tax from the past that has caused an overwhelming amount of misery and grief to so many families. Rich and poor, it makes no difference. Everything is frozen till the tax man gets his share. In the mean time families are torn apart.

They want to allow the boat people and other so called ‘environmental refugees’ free access to Australia without any limitations or health and security checks within two weeks of arrival. Allowing them to live freely in our country, and worse to give them financial aid and housing.

The flood of millions from Asia and everywhere else would totally devastate our country and terrorists would be free to attack us from within the country , tearing us apart from the inside. They want to increase taxes on large and small businesses by another 5%. As if small businesses are not already hanging on by their fingertips desperately trying to survive through a global financial crisis and the painfully slow recovery. This could be a possible death blow to many small businesses.

They will demand farmers “remove as far as possible” all genetically modified crops, which includes cotton worth $1.3 billion a year.

They want to end “the mining and export of uranium”, worth $900 billion a year.

They want to introduce a carbon tax on everything destroying whatever businesses that survive their other holocausts and force the cost of electricity (if we still have any) and other products through the roof.

They intend to lift foreign aid to a minimum of 0.7 per cent of GDP, which means an instant rise in handouts to their fanatics overseas of $4 billion a year. This is partly due to the fact that their Copenhagen handout of seven thousand million dollars a year, thankfully failed, and this is another way of getting that money

They want to close down all coal mines in Australia and wipe out an industry that brings to the Australian people over $64 billion a year to help pay for our hospitals, road, schools, family and child care, pensions, national defence, etc. etc.

Not only that but it would completely alienate our trade relationship with China, the backbone of our export economy.  Without China purchasing our resources our economy would be in total collapse and so would this country.

They want to close down all coal fired power stations and replace them with “Renewable energy”. Which might be O.K. if it was at all feasible but it is TOTALLY IMPOSSIBLE to even achieve 5% renewable energy. Let alone 100% renewable energy.

It has been tried over the last thirty years or more in many countries with the resultant abject failure.

California has gone bankrupt trying with over 14000 wind generator failures and a return to thermal power generation. The total ‘renewable energy’ in California after 31 years is 2.3% and falling.

Spain is also bankrupt because of their renewable energy fiasco and are importing power. The cost of which has doubled and they now have an unemployment rate of over 20%.

Germany has over 7500 wind generators of which 2500 failed last year and they have returned to Thermal power which saved them last winter from total collapse.

With Denmark’s 5000 wind generators of which 2000 failed last year they are yet to reduce so called ‘CO2 emissions.’ By one gram and like the other countries rely on thermal power generation for backup.

The resultant failures in various countries are always the same from many countries but the Greens flatly refuse to see the failures because they want to bring Australia to its knees and under their communist globalisation control.

They have NO interest in our well being, only in their communist ideologies and are determined to destroy our economy.

Under that very thin cover of green is a very bright red of the communist, lead by the fanatical Bob Brown, who is a liar and one of the worst perpetrators of this world scam and he wants total control.

If the extremists called ‘greens’ should bring their policies to fruition it will destroy our economy and our country.

To the point it could bring about an extremely violent reaction from the Australian people when they finally realise that the Greens are deliberately trying to tear our country apart.

By that time it could be too late. The only consolation would be that every Green would pay severely for their treachery.

Now that you have read their policies, and this is not all of them. Are you still proud you voted for the greens. Will you stand up and accept the blame when this country is devastated for this communist agenda.

Or will you do the right thing by your country and help get rid of these destructive vandals and traitors.

When you voted for the greens you were given a Poison Chalice that we may never recover from. Remember that 173 people were burnt to death because of ‘greens’ policies forced on councils who were too weak to deny them.

Also the destruction of over 300 homes and the displacement of over 7000 people. The Greens have NOT been responsible for even one environmental improvement. They are a farce and liars.

If Australia could reduce its total CO2 emissions (a harmless gas essential to all life) by 20% as they want to, it would make a difference of .00000016% or 16 parts per ten millionth to the increase of CO2 in air per year. NOT even measurable.

Following are two similar reports and I urge you to read them and realise this is not some ‘Wild story’. Our future is now in your hands. You are the ones who MUST REJECT the greens and do everything to revoke your vote and stop the communist greens before it is too late.

The sinister, omnipresent moneybags of the American left, George Soros, knows that distraction and misdirection make for a good defense. So do his many lackeys and sympathizers in the American media.

Recently, the left has built up two conservative billionaire brothers as their latest bogeymen. I am referring to the libertarians Charles and David Koch, who fund, among other groups, Americans for Prosperity. First Barack Obama lambasted them, and his minions in the media dutifully followed. Jane Mayer’s 10,000-word article in the New Yorker, titled “Covert Operations: the billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama,” has been widely cited in other liberal media.

In reality, the brothers have long funded a variety of causes years before anyone had ever heard of Obama. Regardless, Mayer’s article was criticized as shameful by others, including a trenchant bit of criticism by Mark Hemingway in the Washington Examiner. One of Hemingway’s points was right on target: Mayer’s barely visible coverage of George Soros, sugar daddy of the Democratic Party and an early, ardent and generous supporter of Barack Obama. Hemingway excerpts a paragraph from Mayer’s article and notes some omissions:

But this passage from Mayer’s piece is also worth noting, as a measure of the article’s bias:

Of course, Democrats give money, too. Their most prominent donor, the financier George Soros, runs a foundation, the Open Society Institute, that has spent as much as a hundred million dollars a year in America. Soros has also made generous private contributions to various Democratic campaigns, including Obama’s. But Michael Vachon, his spokesman, argued that Soros’s giving is transparent, and that “none of his contributions are in the service of his own economic interests.”

The idea that Soros’ giving is transparent is laughable—he’s given millions to the Tides Foundation, a byzantine organization notorious for obscuring finding sources on the left ... Further, Soros was very influential in setting up the Center for American Progress think tank and many other liberal organizations in the last decade. If any billionaire has waged war against a president recently, it’s Soros’ campaign against Bush. To dismiss any concerns about Soros’ political spending while saying that the Koch brothers are at the center of a dark conspiracy is absurd.
Mayer just let the claim that Soros has no monetary interest when he gives money stand unchallenged—and that was shameful. Where was the famed New Yorker fact-checking department? Did they get laid off?

Let me expand on Hemingway’s commentary, in light of the view that somehow Soros’s giving has zero to do with his financial interest—or, as his spokesman spins, “none of the contributions are in the service of his economic interests.” New York Times theatre critic turned frothing attack dog columnist of the left Frank Rich has started promoting this theme: Soros is Santa Claus or Mother Theresa. This Sunday, Rich had his typical invective-filled column—also railing against the Kochs—and then gave us this whopper:

Soros is a publicity hound who is transparent about where he shovels his money and “like many liberals—selflessly or foolishly, depending on your point of view—he supports causes that are unrelated to his business interests.”

What planet do Mayer and Rich live on? Soros obviously has his financial interests in mind when he gives, and he knows how to use his billions to make more billions by tapping his friends in high places in the Democratic Party.

For example, Soros has made a boatload of money off his huge investment in the Brazilian oil company, Petrobras, a company that has benefited mightily from its deep offshore oil reserves. Barack Obama had the U.S. Export-Import bank extend billions of dollars of loans to underwrite Petrobras’s offshore oil development. Soros positioned himself to reap big gains just days before his pal in the White House pushed for billions in loans to Petrobras—a company from a country that can certainly tap the financial markets on its own to raise funds to tap oil off its shores. The company did not need easy money from American taxpayers. Yet there was Soros, who somehow was prescient enough to roll the loaded dice in taking a major stake in Petorbras. He got a double-dip type of return when Barack ("never let a crisis go to waste") Obama shut down deep-water oil exploration off America’s own energy-rich coasts—further enriching the prospects for Petrobras and George Soros.

Strike one.

Soros’s pet think-tank, the Center for American Progress, constantly pushes green schemes. Democratic politicians are on board, as well. This group includes Barack Obama who, runs after one electric battery, solar power plant, and windmill after another (when he is not on the links or listening to live music at the club he created in the East Room of the White House). How generous have Obama and the Democrats been to the green schemers? The grand champion of budget-busting departments has been the “Energy Efficiency and Renewable Program,” which received $1.7 billion in 2008 and $16.8 billion in 2009, a 1,014% increase in just one year. Media reports over the past year or so have tied numerous Democratic donors to these “ventures.” They have been richly rewarded with taxpayer dollars.

What a great scheme! Give thousands to Obama and various Democrats and get billions back in our taxpayer dollars. Who is a big investor in “clean energy,” by the way? Why, none other than George Soros, who announced back in October 2009 that he would invest at least $1 billion in “clean energy.” The Center for American Progress is closely tied to the Obama administration (see “Soros-Funded Democratic Idea Factory Becomes Obama Policy Font") and serves as its hiring hall, not to mention as the fourth or fifth branch of government (or so it seems—I have the Center for American Progress as a Google search term, and the employees of that tank are all over the media landscape, as well as D.C.). Soros knows how to use leverage, and the millions he put into the Center for American Progress (and into the election of Barack Obama and other leftist Democrats) will reap big returns—at our expense—in the years ahead.

Strike two.

Whatever happened to all the hullaballoo regarding hedge funds? Back in 2008 and early 2009, Democrats were busy blaming Wall Street, hedge funds, and Republicans for the financial crisis. We were promised that hedge funds would be regulated to the point of harmlessness, that their investors would have to be disclosed, their positions monitored, their leverage controlled. What happened to those promises? Well, that did not suit hedge fund managers—not at all. So the promises went away.

And who was one of the biggest hedge fund titans out there? Why, it happens to be none other than George Soros, who made billions in 2008 from the financial and housing collapse and then made billions more in 2009 as the Democrats bailed out Wall Street. Who was the major beneficiary of hedge fund campaign money in 2008? Barack Obama, eclipsing the long-time champ in this area, Christopher Dodd, the Senator from Connecticut (Hedgefundland) who chaired the Senate Banking Committee. In 2008, I noted that Obama was “The Hedge Fund Candidate.”

Obama, Dodd, and fellow Democrats just forgot that crusade against hedge funds, and Soros continues to rake in billions. George Soros—who is the number-one funder of so-called 527 groups (such as MoveOn.Org)—gets his money’s worth whenever and wherever he puts it to work. He finds his best leverage in the Democratic Party.

Strike three.

And a bonus pitch.

I have written quite a bit about the riches we have in America in the form of shale gas. Soros has investments in the energy industry that would be harmed if our cheap and plentiful reserves were tapped to their full extent. Among his holdings are a huge one in InterOil that has big reserves of natural gas in New Guinea. Democrats are now trying to shut down our shale gas industry by attacking “fracking”—a method that is used to extract the gas from the shale rock that holds it. There is plenty of evidence that fracking is safe and sound—it has been used for many years. Nevertheless, the industry is under attack by Democrats in Congress such as Ed Markey, by Obama’s EPA, by the Center for American Progress, by Pro Publica—an outfit created and funded by Soros pals Herbert and Marion Sandler—and recently by MoveOn.org. Soros must be getting desperate, as Americans crave cheap natural gas, to bring in MoveOn.org, which has heretofore focused on the purely political sport of bashing Republicans and electing as many left-wingers as it could—including, of course, the biggest of them all, Barack Obama.

One could go on. Soros is an enterprising man and legendary investor. He figured out sooner and better than anyone else how to buy political power and bend politicians to his will. He is not a goody-two-shoes, as partisans on the left try to portray him. He has benefited hugely from leverage, and the best leverage he enjoys is when he “gives” money in ways that are really investments (payoffs, bribes?) in disguise. Shame on Mayer, Rich, and others who hide this history. They also are all but puppets in the hands of George Soros. Post is here.

Ed Lasky is news editor of American Thinker

As scientists, we write to support U.S. Senate candidate Ron Johnson’s correct view on natural factors of climate change as reported in the Journal Sentinel (Page 1B, Aug. 17; Page 1A, Aug. 21).

This is not a debate about politics or about a belief system. Objective science informs us that the so-called consensus viewpoints offered by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change about man-made carbon dioxide being the dominant factor of climate change is largely a political conclusion and not likely a scientifically correct one.

If global temperatures are supposedly affected by rapidly rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations but the warming has ceased over at least the last decade, then something more important than atmospheric CO2 must be driving climate change. This is why the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Aug. 13 that “greenhouse gas forcing fails to explain the 2010 heat wave over western Russia.”

We wish to emphasize that many peer-reviewed publications exist that support the minimal role of atmospheric CO2 as a cause for the weather and climate that we experience. Extremist views only serve to induce panic about climate change, and the unwillingness to address the real science only leads to spurious claims that “the science is settled.”

For example, a paper published Aug. 19 in Geophysical Research Letters by a scientist from the California Institute of Technology shows that even the apparently drastic decrease of summer-autumn Arctic sea ice is not unprecedented but merely an effect of Arctic Ocean geography.

We therefore applaud Senate candidate Ron Johnson’s stance against CO2-induced climate change.

Eight scientists signed this letter; they noted that their university affiliations are for identification purposes only and are not an endorsement of the letter. The signers are: Willie Soon, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Scott Armstrong, Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania; Robert Carter, James Cook University, Australia; Susan Crockford, University of Victoria, Canada; Kesten Green, University of South Australia; Nils-Axel Morner, Stockholm University, Sweden; George Taylor, Oregon State University, retired; and Mitchell Taylor, Lakehead University, Canada.

Posted by Kooten

Recently, Canada’s Global National News (Friday, July 16, 2010) carried a story indicating that 2010 was the hottest year on record. A follow-up article in Victoria’s Times-Colonist newspaper (July 18, 2010, p.A12) made a similar claim. The claims remind me of the children’s story “The Emperor has no Clothes,” about a tailor who managed to convince the emperor and his entourage that they were incapable of seeing the wonderful tunic he was sewing. When the emperor paraded in his new suit, a child exposed the scam by asking why the emperor had no clothes on.

Thus it is with climate. Although Victorians experienced a mild winter and spring, the last few months have been colder than usual. The Canadian prairies experienced a miserable winter and things were not much better elsewhere in North America and Europe. However, a few weeks of warm weather in Europe and eastern Canada, and it becomes easy to sell the idea that temperatures are the highest they have ever been and that 2010 is on course for become the warmest year ever! Is this so?

NASA temperature data underlie these stories. Consider the ten warmest years as reported in Table 1. The data in the table are here , but viewed on three different dates as indicated. Since data collected in August 2007 are available only through 2006, 2007 is not included in the earliest ranking given in Table 1.

Table 1: Ten Warmest Years based on Average Contiguous 48 U.S. Surface Air Temperature Anomalies, 1880 through 2006

Date when data was retrieved from NASA website
8/20/2007 5/27/2009 4/26/2010
1934 1934 1998
1998 1998 2006
1921 1921 1934
2006 2006 1921
1931 1931 1999
1999 1999 1931
1953 1953 1990
1990 1990 2001
1938 1938 2005
1939 1954 2007

NASA scientists have adjusted the data in ways that make more recent years appear warmer - scientists have dropped weather stations and/or used a different method for ‘adjusting’ the data. Thus, the number of years from the past two decades that appear in the top twenty warm years (only the top ten are shown in Table 1) has increased from 7 to 8 and finally to 11. In the May 2009 listing, 2007 is the 14th warmest year in the historical record, but it has moved up to tenth by the April 2010 listing. While it may be true that the latest adjustments are scientifically better than earlier adjustments, it seems odd that the most recent years now show up as among the warmest in the temperature record, contrary to evidence from satellite data and reconstructions by the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University in the UK - reconstructions that use the same underlying data as NASA.

Other evidence fails to support the NASA story. Using the unadjusted U.S. weather station data, 22 out of 50 states recorded their highest temperature during the 1930s. Likewise, a 2006 study in the Journal of Geophysical Research found that 1941 was the warmest year experienced in Greenland between 1784 and 2005, while the 1930s and 1940s were the warmest decades; 1863 was the coldest year while the coldest decade was the 1810s (although it corresponded to two volcanic eruptions in 1809 and 1815). A 2010 study in Climatic Change reconstructs winter and spring temperatures for Stockholm going back 500 years. The warmest and coldest years are reported in Table 2. Notice that 1863 was the warmest winter/spring, while 1569 was the coldest.

Table 2: Ten coldest/warmest January-April Seasons in the Past 500 Years, Stockholm, Sweden, Temperature Anomalies in oC from 1961-90 Average

Rank Year Rank Year
Ten coldest Ten warmest
1 1569 1 1863
2 1573 2 1990
3 1557 3 1743
4 1595 4 1525
5 1572 5 1989
6 1942 6 1605
7 1614 7 1822
8 1600 8 1790
9 1574 9 1762
10 1940 10 2008

ICECAP NOTE: See (below, enlarged here) how NASA temperatures have been significantly manipulated since 1980. The changes produced a cooling of the warm blip in the 1930s and 1940s and a warming post 1980 for numerous reasons.

By Jeremy A. Kaplan

Acknowledging flaws in its reports and growing public skepticism toward the theory of manmade global warming, the United Nations hired an independent review panel in March to audit its climate-science arm. The group found plenty of problems.

The InterAcademy Council, an independent group of scientists representing agencies from around the world, presented the findings of its five-month investigation Monday morning at the United Nations. The group took issue with the structure, methods and leadership of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—the group responsible for a 2007 report that erroneously forecast the imminent melting of Himalayan glaciers, the rate of melt of polar ice caps and dwindling Amazon rainforests.

“The IPCC has raised public awareness of climate change, and driven policymakers,” said Harold Shapiro, chair of the IAC Committee to Review IPCC and former president of Princeton University. But the controversies that have erupted, and revelations of errors, have put the group under the microscope. “We recommend some significant reforms,” he told the U.N.

“The IPCC has yet to review the IAC’s findings, so I am not able to comment on its findings,” said longstanding chair Rajendra Pachauri in a press conference following the presentation. But he did note that none of the seven reviews of the IPCC to date had found flaws in the U.N. group.

“The scientific community agrees that climate change is real,” Pachauri said.

Despite his confidence, the science underlying climate change has come under great scrutiny. Yet the IAC did not spend its time analyzing the accuracy of climate models and climate science.

“We did not redo the science,” said Shapiro. Instead, the IAC focused its attention on the procedures and methodologies of the IPCC, suggesting many areas for improvement.

The rate of melt of the Himalayan glaciers was one touchstone among skeptics of manmade global warming that the group addressed. Shapiro explained that many reviewers noted the lack of substance behind the claim, but their criticism didn’t make it into the final report.

It appears that editors “didn’t follow through carefully enough on what review editors commented,” said Shapiro.

The IAC faulted the IPCC for making this type of mistake in several places, noting that the report includes several statements that are assigned high levels of confidence, Shapiro told the U.N., despite a lack of sufficient evidence behind them.

“We found in the summary for policymakers that there were two kinds of errors that came up—one is the kind where they place high confidence in something where there is very little evidence. The other is the kind where you make a statement...with no substantive value, in our judgment.”

Revising and tightening up the complex and lengthy review policy would help to address these issues.

Noted climate skeptic Don Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, agreed that this type of issue was a problem. “The IPCC report is filled with statements of ‘90% certainty’ without even saying 90% of what or providing any basis for such statements. Yet those pronouncements of certainty were used over and over as though that had been scientifically proven somehow,” he told FoxNews.com.

The IAC called for the IPCC to completely revise top leadership, including limiting the duration of people in top positions and “electing a small executive committee to act on its behalf,” one that even included non-scientists. This would lend it credibility, Shapiro said.

Questions have arisen about conflicts of interest among top leadership at the IPCC, notably chair Pachauri, who sits on the boards of numerous other climate-related groups. Shapiro stressed that this important issue was one the group did not investigate—“we didn’t consider it our charge to investigate that issue,” he replied.

Easterbrook thinks this suggestion may not go far enough.

“The IAC report makes several recommendations to fortify IPCC’s management structure, including establishing an executive committee to act on the panel’s behalf and ensure that an ongoing decision-making capability is maintained. This would be a step in the right direction, but if such an executive committee is made up of the same old political cronies, nothing will change,” he told FoxNews.com.

The IAC took issue with the IPCC’s use of so-called gray literature as well, papers from unpublished or non-peer-reviewed sources. Such material is explicitly against policy, yet authors of the IPCC’s reports do not follow the guidelines for evaluating such sources, explained the IAC.

The group recommended that these guidelines be made more specific—including adding guidelines on what types of literature are unacceptable—and strictly enforced to ensure that unpublished and non-peer-reviewed literature is appropriately flagged.

The Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit group that supports the concept of manmade global warming, agreed with the IAC’s report, calling it “a great opportunity to strengthen” the group, but not a wholesale call to rework the agency.

“It’s a substantial tune up, but not a replacement with a new vehicle,” Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy for the UCS, told FoxNews.com. “All the recommendations I’ve seen are really spot on. We’ll see what happens when the IPCC meets in October.”

The IAC’s assessment will be used at the Oct. 5 meeting that marks the beginning of the IPCC’s effort to put out the next report.

“The IPCC has been successful overall, but fundamental changes are needed,” Shapiro said.

See story here.

By Dr. Tim Ball Canada Free Press

Recently Kerry Emanuel said, “Why would anybody ask weather forecasters about their opinion on climate? I think it is because there is a hope that I don’t think is justified that ordinary people will confuse weather forecasters with climate scientists.”

Emanuel is a professor of meteorology at MIT with a specialization in atmospheric convection and hurricanes. He is a meteorologist not a climatologist and many weather forecasters are meteorologists. Indeed, his specialty is even more narrow than that required by weather forecasters.

Dr. Emanuel served on the deliberately biased Lord Oxburgh committee investigating Climategate. He argued that hurricane activity would increase with global warming, but is reportedly rethinking that position. His comments were part of a 10-minute documentary about the apparently different views of media meteorologists and climatologists. He also said, “Weather forecasters are in a unique position. I mean if they actually did study the problem, if they actually took the time to really understand it rather than just go to the blogosphere to get their favourite views and rebroadcast them, then I think they could do a lot of good in the world and I think there are some who are doing that to be fair.” Dr. Emanuel served on the deliberately biased Lord Oxburgh committee investigating Climategate, the leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU). He’s a co-author with Michael Mann and dismissed the leaks as “the well-funded “public relations campaign” to drown out or distort the message of climate science, which he links to “interests where billions, even trillions are at stake “This “machine has been highly successful in branding climate scientists as a bunch of sandal-wearing, fruit-juice drinking leftist radicals engaged in a massive conspiracy to return us to agrarian society. “Emanuel’s comments are breathtaking in their naivete, arrogance and ignorance. They’re made without challenge by mainstream media because they don’t know what is wrong with them.

Meteorology Before Climatology

The confusion is between, meteorology, weather and climate and is largely the result of how they evolved historically. Aristotle wrote a book titled Meteorology that was concerned with processes and phenomenon of the atmosphere. The intent was to understand mechanisms for weather forecasting. This declined until the 19th century when development of instruments such as the thermometer and barometer combined with a desire to measure and understand the constituents of the atmosphere. An early example was discovery of oxygen independently by Scheele in 1773 and Priestley in 1774. Physics became more dominant so that by the beginning of the 20th century it dominated meteorology. In Canada for example, to become a government weather forecaster a Masters degree in Physics was required. After which, a brief in–house course taught weather forecasting. There was virtually no climate instruction. The pattern was similar around the world.

Even today few people know about climatology or the difference between weather and climate. When I began public speaking I started talks with a definition of climatology. First I told how, when speaking about the weather to a class studying the Fur Trade, the teacher introduced me as a climatologist. Immediately a hand went up and the young student wanted to know how many mountains I’d climbed. People laughed because it was obviously wrong, but most didn’t know the correct answer. Mark Twain knew the difference when he said climate is what you expect, weather is what you get, but for most, the weather, meteorology as physics of the atmosphere, had taken over. 

Climate is derived from the Greek word klimat that refers to the angle of the Sun or inclination. They understood how this created three different climate regions, cold, temperate and hot. These were average conditions because climate is the average weather over time or in a region. The angle of the sun is a major factor in determining the climate, but it is only one of a myriad of factors. When Sir Francis Drake set out for the west coast of North America he expected to find a climate similar to that in England because it was equal in latitude so the sun’s angle was similar. They didn’t know how the ocean currents transported vast amounts of heat toward the Pole to alter the pattern of climate in Western Europe.

There was a brief flurry of interest in climate at the end of the 19th century as the concept of climatic determinism was embedded in environmental determinism. It held that people were a product of the climatic region in which they were born and lived. It reached an extreme with Ellsworth Huntington and publications like Civilization and Climate in 1915. His work evolved from Friedrich Ratzel’s Anthropogeographie published in two volumes published (1882 and 1891). All this provided an intellectual framework for white supremacy in Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

Ironically, during the war Hubert Lamb working as a meteorologist and gradually became aware of changing climate in historic times. He wanted to improve the forecasts and spent time studying historical records and by 1972 had established the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia. He wrote, “When the Climatic Research Unit was founded, it was clear that the first need was to establish the facts of the past record of the natural climate in times before any side effects of human activities could well be important.” Only one other climate research establishment in the world at the time was Reid Bryson’s Center for Climatic Research at Madison, Wisconsin. CRU had insufficient funds because nobody was interested in climate at that time. 

A major problem was the growth of specialization in academia, but climate is a generalist topic. It’s the average weather that is the product of a multitude of factors from cosmic radiation from deep space, to geothermal heat from within the Earth, and everything in between. Meteorology is a subset of the weather like oceanography and each of these have subsets. One of them involves the specialized tropical convection and hurricane research of Emanuel. He only studies one piece of a very complex puzzle. It explains why he incorrectly predicted increased hurricane activity due to global warming.  As Henri Poincare said, “Science is built of facts the way a house is built of bricks; but an accumulation of facts is no more science than a pile of bricks is a house.” Someone also said about economists that. “They try to predict the tide by measuring one wave.” Climate science does the same thing and Emanuel sides with the argument that the one wave is CO2.

See post here.

--------------

Interview on Climate Change Issues
by Kim Greenhouse on August 23, 2010

Joe D’Aleo joins us to discuss Surface Temperatures: A Policy Driven Deception, a new report that he co-wrote with Anthony Watts. Joe separates fact from fiction about CO2 and outlines its benefits and functions. Join us and learn how the EPA declared CO2 a toxin based on an analysis by a team with an agenda to control carbon and how we use energy and energy sources. Listen to this one hour interview here.

If this keeps up, no one’s going to trust any scientists.

The global-warming establishment took a body blow this week, as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change received a stunning rebuke from a top-notch independent investigation.

For two decades, the IPCC has spearheaded efforts to convince the world’s governments that man-made carbon emissions pose a threat to the global temperature equilibrium—and to civilization itself. IPCC reports, collated from the work of hundreds of climate scientists and bureaucrats, are widely cited as evidence for the urgent need for drastic action to “save the planet.”

Pachauri: UN big scored great grants for silly science.

But the prestigious InterAcademy Council, an independent association of “the best scientists and engineers worldwide” (as the group’s own Web site puts it) formed in 2000 to give “high-quality advice to international bodies,” has finished a thorough review of IPCC practices—and found them badly wanting.

For example, the IPCC’s much-vaunted Fourth Assessment Report claimed in 2007 that Himalayan glaciers were rapidly melting, and would possibly be gone by the year 2035. The claim was actually false—yet the IPCC cited it as proof of man-made global warming.

Then there’s the IPCC’s earlier prediction in 2007—which it claimed to have “high confidence” in—that global warming could lead to a 50 percent reduction in the rain-fed agricultural capacity of Africa.

Such a dramatic decrease in food production in an already poor continent would be a terrifying prospect, and undoubtedly lead to the starvation of millions. But the InterAcademy Council investigation found that this IPCC claim was also based on weak evidence.

Overall, the IAC slammed the IPCC for reporting “high confidence in some statements for which there is little evidence. Furthermore, by making vague statements that were difficult to refute, authors were able to attach ‘high confidence’ to the statements.” The critics note “many such statements that are not supported sufficiently in the literature, not put into perspective or not expressed clearly.

Some IPCC practices can only be called shoddy. As The Wall Street Journal reported, “Some scientists invited by the IPCC to review the 2007 report before it was published questioned the Himalayan claim. But those challenges ‘were not adequately considered,’ the InterAcademy Council’s investigation said, and the projection was included in the final report.”

Yet the Himalayan claim wasn’t based on peer-reviewed scientific data, or on any data—but on spec ulation in a phone interview by a single scientist.

Was science even a real concern for the IPCC? In January, the Sunday Times of London reported that, based in large part on the fraudulent glacier story, “[IPCC Chairman] Rajendra Pachauri’s Energy and Resources Institute, based in New Delhi, was awarded up to 310,000 pounds by the Carnegie Corp. . . . and the lion’s share of a 2.5 million pound EU grant funded by European taxpayers.”

Thus, the Times concluded, “EU taxpayers are funding research into a scientific claim about glaciers that any ice researcher should immediately recognize as bogus.”

All this comes on top of last year’s revelation of the “Climategate” e-mails, which revealed equally shoddy practices (and efforts to suppress criticism) by scientists at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia—perhaps the single most important source of data that supposedly proved the most alarming claims of global warming.

Al Gore and many other warming alarmists have insisted that “the debate is over”—that the science was “settled.” That claim is now in shreds—though the grants are still flowing, and advocates still hope Congress will pass some version of the economically ruinous “cap and trade” anti-warming bill.

What does the best evidence now tell us? That man-made global warming is a mere hypothesis that has been inflated by both exaggeration and downright malfeasance, fueled by the awarding of fat grants and salaries to any scientist who’ll produce the “right” results.

The warming “scientific” community, the Climategate emails reveal, is a tight clique of like-minded scientists and bureaucrats who give each other jobs, publish each other’s papers—and conspire to shut out any point of view that threatens to derail their gravy train.

Such behavior is perhaps to be expected from politicians and government functionaries. From scientists, it’s a travesty.

In the end, grievous harm will have been done not just to individual scientists’ reputations, but to the once-sterling reputation of science itself. For that, we will all suffer.

Matt Patterson is editor of Green Watch, a publication of the Capital Research Center

By Chris Horner, Planet Gore

Judge Paul Peatross has ruled that Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli cannot access the University of Virginia’s records in his inquiry into Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann’s claims made to obtain research funding. Judge Peatross’s ruling protects the University, Mann, and the Department of Environmental Sciences - at least for now.

I attended the hearing a week ago Friday, when the parties argued the University’s motion to dismiss. Beforehand, Peatross, in place of the vacationing chief judge, cited his wife’s 1982 degree in environmental science from UVA and asked counsel whether they believed it disqualified him from hearing the University’s motion.

That fact, apparently, was relevant. Okay.

But the fact that the judge’s wife previously worked in the Department of Environmental Sciences - the very department that stood to suffer had he ruled in favor of the attorney general - was somehow not worth disclosing to counsel. I learned of this only after the hearing from Ms. Peatross’s former coworkers, who were astonished that her husband would decide such a matter given his seeming lack of objectivity.

Also not worth disclosing was that Ms. Peatross’s relationships go much deeper, for she produced a book edited by the department’s then-chairman during Mann’s alleged hijinks, and, it appears, at least two of his papers. Yet the fact that she has a degree from the department merited consideration in determining the judge’s suitability to hear the case. And only that.

Amazing.

Charlottesville, where I live, is a company town - with UVA the company - as is surrounding Albemarle County. An adverse ruling leading to the release of Mann’s documents was the biggest possible black eye for a university that zealously promotes its prestige derived, in part, from Thomas Jefferson’s having founded it. It’s a history the school’s lawyers rather sadly invoked in their brief. They argued that, while some people are subject to laws, others simply cannot suffer the indignity.

It’s on Jefferson’s headstone, no doubt.  But while that particular argument of “academic freedom” did not prevail, the University did manage to avoid letting the taxpayer discover whether the university, through Mann, engaged in fraud. Again, this is for now, as Attorney General Cuccinelli, according to press reports, intends to press on with a new civil investigative demand. It was not a complete victory for the university, but, if you attended argument and/or read the briefs, you know such an outcome was not a consideration.

However that turns out, this series of events gives the appearance of the judge’s failure to disclose. Indeed, it seems to rise to the level of a basis for the judge to recuse himself, instead of asking counsel, in his presence, whether they thought he was biased. The last thing our institutions of government need is more reason to question their operation. This is unfortunate and could easily have been avoided. See post here.

By Dr. Benny Peiser, GWPF

IPCCs mandate is to be policy relevant, not policy prescriptive. However IPCC spokespersons have not always adhered to this mandate. Straying into advocacy can only hurt IPCC’s credibility. Likewise, while IPCC leaders are expected to speak publicly about the assessment reports, they should be careful in this context to avoid personal opinions. --InterAcademy Council, 30 August 2010

The GWPF calls upon the IPCC to accept the key recommendations and implement them without delay. Otherwise there can be no confidence in the outcome of the current Fifth Assessment Report which is expected to be finalised by 2014. --Nigel Lawson, 30 August 2010

I interpret the IAC review as an indirect call for Dr Pachauri to step down. That is what it says between the lines, whether or not he understands it. It is clearly a very, very strong criticism of his management and of him personally. The problem is that many in the international community regard him as damaged goods. --Benny Peiser, Daily Mail, 31 August 2010

The rap across the knuckles is deserved. It should have triggered the resignation of Dr Pachauri but he insists he wants to stay on to implement any necessary changes in procedure. Yet his - and the IPCC’s - credibility have been tarnished by this affair. We have argued that a conservative case for preserving the planet’s scarce resources should support much of the action demanded by concerned scientists, regardless of whether the case for man-made global warming can be proved. But it becomes difficult to keep an open mind on such issues if the findings of a purportedly scientific document cannot be trusted. --Editorial, The Daily Telegraph, 31 August 2010

IPCC told to stop lobbying and restrict role to explaining climate science
By Stephen Adams and Robert Winnett, UK Telegraph

An independent investigation into the UN’s climate change body has warned it to stop lobbying and to restrict its role to explaining the science behind any changes in global temperature.

Harold Shapiro, a Princeton University professor and chair of the committee that conducted the review, said that a report by an IPCC working group “contains many statements that were assigned high confidence but for which there is little evidence.”

Professor Shapiro said the IPCC’s response to errors when they were subsequently revealed was “slow and inadequate.”

Asked about the Himalayan glaciers error, Professor Shapiro said, “At least in our judgment, it came from just not paying close enough attention to what [peer] reviewers said about that example.”

He added that there was concern about the U.N. climate panel’s lack of a conflict of interest policy, as is standard in most Government departments and international bodies.

The report called for development of a “rigorous conflict of interest policy” and made detailed suggestions on what should be disclosed. Mr Pachauri has previously acted as an adviser to green energy companies.

“It’s hard to see how the United Nations can both follow the advice of this committee and keep Rajendra Pachauri on board as head,” said Roger Pielke Jr., a professor at the University of Colorado.

Editor’s Note: The IAC’s full report Climate Change Assessments, Review of the Processes & Procedures of the IPCC is available here.

UN climate experts ‘overstated dangers’: Keep your noses out of politics, scientists told
Daily Mail, 31 August 2010, Fiona Macrae

UN climate change experts have been accused of making ‘imprecise and vague’ statements and over-egging the evidence.

A scathing report into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change called for it to avoid politics and stick instead to predictions based on solid science.

The probe, by representatives of the Royal Society and foreign scientific academies, took a thinly-veiled swipe at Rajendra Pachauri, the panel’s chairman for the past eight years.

It recommended a new leader be appointed to bring a ‘fresh approach’ with the term of office cut from 12 years to six.

The IPCC is important because its reports are used by governments to set environmental policy.

The review, which focused on the day-to-day running of the panel, rather than its science, was commissioned after the UN body was accused of making glaring mistakes.

These included the claim that the Himalayan glaciers would vanish within 25 years - and that 55 per cent of the Netherlands was prone to flooding because it was below sea level.

An email scandal involving experts at the University of East Anglia had already fuelled fears that global warming was being exaggerated.

The report demanded a more rigorous conflict of interest policy and said executives should have formal qualifications.

It said: ‘Because the IPCC chair is both the leader and the face of the organisation, he or she must have strong credentials (including high professional standing in an area covered by IPCC assessments), international stature, a broad vision, strong leadership skills, considerable management experience at a senior level, and experience relevant to the assessment task.’ [...]

Dr Benny Peiser, Director of The Global Warming Policy Foundation, said: ‘I interpret the review as an indirect call for Dr Pachauri to step down. That is what it says between the lines, whether or not he understands it.

‘It is clearly a very, very strong criticism of his management and of him personally. The problem is that many in the international community regard him as damaged goods.’

The investigation said the IPCC’s mandate calls for it to be ‘policy relevant’ without ‘straying into advocacy’ which would hurt its credibility.

The scientists charged with writing the IPCC assessments were criticised for saying they were ‘highly confident’ about statements without having the evidence.

Editor’s Note: More UK media coverage of the IAC Report can be found here:

The Sun: UN ‘lacks Solid Evidence’ in Climate Warnings

Daily Express: Climate Change Lies Are Exposed

BBC News: Stricter controls urged for the UN’s climate body

The Times: Climate chief under pressure to quit after report on glacier blunder

The Guardian: Rajendra Pachauri, head of UN climate change body, under pressure to resign

The Independent: IPCC feels the heat as it is told to get its facts right about global warming

----------

ClimateGate new probe - “Another Whitewash when really the whole climate spin machine must be closed down”.

Piers Corbyn astrophysicist of WeatherAction long-range forecasters today (31 Aug) lambasted the findings of the new ClimateGate probe by the InterAcademy Council (of the world’s top science academies) for ‘dereliction of duty’:

“The IAC recommend a timid re-organisation of the furniture when what the world needs is the total dismemberment of UN Climate games (the IPCC), the application of evidence-based science and an independent probe into the role of the media in propagating fiction in the name of science”.

“Let’s get real. The IAC just wants to re-arrange the deck-chairs on the Titanic when really the ‘Ship of Lies’ - the UN Climate Committee (the IPCC) is doomed.

“They point out the IPCC is riddled with conflicts of interest and that Key scientific claims on which the IPCC rest its case (eg concerning Himalayan glaciers) are in fact fiction. Yet they do not call into question the main alarmist findings of the IPCC 2007 report and indeed say it has ‘served society well’!!

“This is a disgraceful dereliction of their duty. Imagine if all the test flights of a new aeroplane had ended in crashes would a committee of scientists of integrity honestly say “Let it fly!”?

“The IPCC must be closed down and replaced by the application of evidence-based science for the good of the world. The UN should invest in predicting and preparing for extreme weather events.  We can predict them but the UN and Governments are not interested. They put self-serving ideology ahead of saving lives.

“The world needs a probe into the supine role of the media in propagating climate falsity and hysteria and consistently misrepresenting naturally caused - and often predicted (by solar activity) - extreme weather events and changes as if they are caused by mankind’s CO2.

“The theory of Man-made Global Warming & Climate Change is failed science based on fraudulent data. All the dire predictions of the IPCC since 2000 have failed. The world is cooling not warming. There is no evidence in 600, 600,000 or 600million years of data that changes in CO2 levels in the real atmosphere drive world temperatures or change climate; indeed it is temperatures which generally drive CO2 levels.

Back in October Tony asked me to help with a big idea.  Searching Norwegian climate site Rimfrost (www.rimfrost.no) Tony had found many climate stations all over the world with a cooling trend in temperatures over at least the last thirty years - which is significant in climate terms.  You see Tony had a grand vision of a website with blue dots on a map representing these “cooling stations”, where clicking on the dots brought up a graph of the data and the wonderful cooling trend.  Would this not persuade people to look again at the notion of worldwide global warming?

Figure 1. Map showing stations on Tony’s “Cooling List” - stations which appear to have a cooling trend (>30 years) to present (data source: www.rimfrost.no Oct-Dec 2009; Earth image source: Dave Pape)

I asked Tony how many stations he had in mind. “Oh two hundred or so...” He suggested breaking it down into bite-sized chunks and sending me sets of ten at a time.  I was to compare the data with that on the GISS site and/or those of national met agencies where available to verify the source, and produce graphs to a standard template.

We were concerned that this could be seen as ‘cherrypicking’ nonetheless it was an attractive idea.  In many cases it was not just cherrypicking the stations, but also the start dates of each cooling trend.  Despite these reservations we decided to go ahead, although ultimately we have not completed the project, partly for these reasons, but also because it is a case where the journey became more important than the destination and it is worth sharing.

The first 10 (Set 1) of Tony’s target stations, which at this point I should say seemed to be a randomly chosen set, were:

Brazil - Curitiba (1885 to 2009) Cooling 1955 to 2009
Canada - Edmonton (1881-2009) Cooling from 1886 to 2009
Chile - Puerto Montt (1951-2009) Cooling from 1955
China - Jiuquan (1934-2009) Cooling all years
Russia - Kandalaska (1913-2009) Cooling 1933-2009
Iceland - Haell (1931-2009) Cooling all years
India - Amritsar (1948-2009) Cooling all years
Morocco - Casablanca (1925-2009) Cooling all years
Adelaide - Australia (1881-2008) Cooling all years
Abilene, Texas - USA (1886-2009) Cooling 1933-2009

The comparisons in many cases were not straightforward.  While many matched GISS data, some of the graphs in Rimfrost used unadjusted data, others homogenised data.  For some such as Kandalaska, there was a close but not exact match to either GISS data set.  The data for Haell was clearly from the Icelandic Met Office, but I could find no match for Edmonton to any GISS series or data from Environment Canada (although having looked at Canadian data further since I am not entirely surprised). The first set took much longer than we had anticipated; however, I drew the graphs to a template and prepared to start on Set 2.

Tony also wanted a ‘spaghetti’ graph for the anomaly data of the first set, and this is where it got most interesting.  In fact we were blown away by what the graph looked like.  Taking these ten locations from across the globe and superimposing the anomaly data produced a sine wave-like pattern (Figure 2, below, enlarged here) with distinct cooling from the early 1940s to mid-1970s followed by warming to present; for many of the locations the older data was warmer, or at least as warm as present.  Now I had seen this before with many individual stations, but it really impressed me to see the pattern matching from such far-flung locations.

Figure 2. “Spaghetti graph” (enlarged here) of anomalies for the ten stations in Set 1

But in the meantime there were other developments.  Tony knew I was interested in putting the GHCN v2.mean temperature data from stations all over the world into a database.  As usual, this exceeded my own knowledge and capabilities, but I had made a start and was learning as I went along.  Tony, whose contacts and connections never cease to amaze me, put me in touch with a computer professional, database, web and mapping expert who was well known to commenters on The Air Vent, Climate Audit and WUWT as KevinUK.  Kevin was also keen to put climate data into a database.

By now this was the end of November.  Kevin and I rapidly established a good rapport by email and voip and, with really only a few pointers to GHCN and GISS datafiles from me (and probably lots of hindrance), he rapidly built a fully functional database.  Not only that but he set about writing software to plot graphs and calculate trends from the data and put the whole lot on an interactive map - and all this in a period of about 6 weeks.  It is still a work in progress, fixing glitches and preparing Version 2.0; for more information see blog post Mapping Global Warming and the website itself.

See much, much more on Verity’s post here.

The headlines report the way the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been lying and some, myself included, are calling for an end to this snakes’ nest of global deception.

I keep waiting for some environmental group to announce that the Earth is running out of oxygen. It’s the kind of huge lie that environmentalists of every description engage in. There’s plenty of oxygen and, despite the latest lies about carbon dioxide (CO2), the great oceans of the world are not turning into reservoirs of acidity. Together these two gases are the basis for all life on Earth.

If you remember nothing else, remember that any reference by anyone to “greenhouse gas emissions” involves the lie that they influence the weather or the world’s climate.

Since 1988, when the United Nations created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the vast global warming hoax existed for two purposes, the enrich those involved and to impose a one world government. The effort required mobilizing the leaders of nations to spread the word that the planet was dramatically warming and that carbon dioxide was the cause.

One has to marvel at the audacity of this scam. There were so many parties that had to be involved that it boggles the mind to consider that a mere handful of alleged “climate scientists” who created the computer models and provided the falsified data were able to corrupt so many real scientists into collaborating. The prospect of vast amounts of governmental and foundation funding made the process easier.

The scientists who spoke out against it were labeled “deniers”, but they were the truth-tellers and it took years of effort, culminating in four international conferences to debunk the global warming hoax. It was not, however, until November 2009 with the leak of the conspirator’s emails that the truth became widespread.

This evil scheme was supported and continues to be supported by many world leaders. President Obama traveled to Copenhagen in December 2009 to participate in a UN conference that was intended to impose one-world government and more recently the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, made mention of “climate change”, the code words that replaced global warming.

The IPCC was so successful that at its height in 2007 it shared a Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore. This prize is now so worthless that future recipients may not wish to be so honored.

Yes, there is climate change. There has, for 4.5 billion years of the Earth’s existence, always been climate change. There have been ice ages, magnetic reversals, volcanic activity, tsunamis, earthquakes and a host of other natural events.

To suggest, however, that climate change is influenced by too much carbon dioxide lacks all scientific merit. There simply isn’t enough CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere to have any impact.

The single most powerful determinant of the Earth’s climate was and is the Sun.

Putting aside the United Nations’ never-ending effort to exert authority over all the nations and all the peoples of the world, global warming was about an audacious scheme to monetize carbon dioxide; to sell “carbon credits” and, by doing so, enrich those who were behind the scheme.

Recently, Patrick Hennigsen, the editor of 21st Century Wire, penned a commentary, “The Great Collapse of the Chicago Climate Exchange”, an excellent analysis of how the bottom fell out of the scheme to buy, sell, and trade “carbon credits” based on the fraudulent claim that “greenhouse gas emissions” had to be reduced worldwide to avoid global warming.

Hennigsen noted that Reuters had reported that the Intercontinental Exchange, Inc, the operating body of the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), “will be scaling back major operations (in August), a move that includes massive layoffs. This is likely due to the complete market free-fall of their only product…carbon emissions.  “In May and June 2008, the carbon credits were trading at $5.58 and $7.78 respectively” until it finally dawned on investors that they were utterly worthless.

“Unlike most real markets,” wrote Hennigsen, “the carbon market was created by banks and governments so that new investment opportunities could seamlessly dovetail with specific government policies. It’s a fantasy casino based on a doctrine of pure science fiction.”

The U.S. has thrown billions at so-called “climate research” since 1988 and has passed laws intended to reduce CO2 emissions. There is no scientific merit, nor any justification for the many limits imposed on the American consumer. The quest, for example, of ever-cleaner automobile exhausts has resulted in more expensive cars and more dangerous ones as their weight had to be successively reduced to meet the mandates.

The current governmental craze for “clean” energy alternatives such as wind and solar power will only serve to drive up the cost of electricity without significantly adding any new sources capable of meeting the nation’s growing needs. Only government subsidies and mandates keep these projects alive as opposed to coal-fired, natural gas, and nuclear plants.

The original investors such as Al Gore have long since gotten out of the carbon credits market, having known in advance about legislation and policy before the general public. What they did not anticipate, however, was the natural cooling of the Earth since 1998 as the Sun entered one of its predictable cycles of low activity.

There is no global warming. What warming occurred was entirely natural, a response to the end of a previous period of cooling that ended around 1850.

A lot of people should be sent to jail for engaging in this fraud, but they will not. The victims remain as does the drumbeat of lies about greenhouse gas emissions or claims of ocean acidification.

Every flood, hurricane, or other natural event will continue to be blamed on “climate change” until eventually even the compliant mainstream media finally stop publishing lies. See post here.

WUWT provided a primer on cloud feedbacks on June 12th, 2009, followed by Willis Eschenbach’s “thermostat hypothesis” also recently published. This new paper by Spencer and Braswell is in the same theme as these.

As clouds rise above the ITCZ, cloud tops create a reflective albedo, automatically limiting incoming solar radiation
On the diagnosis of radiative feedback in the presence of unknown radiative forcing

Roy W. Spencer and William D. Braswell
Received 12 October 2009; revised 29 March 2010; accepted 12 April 2010; published 24 August 2010.

Abstract: The impact of time‐varying radiative forcing on the diagnosis of radiative feedback from satellite observations of the Earth is explored. Phase space plots of variations in global average temperature versus radiative flux reveal linear striations and spiral patterns in both satellite measurements and in output from coupled climate models. A simple forcing feedback model is used to demonstrate that the linear striations represent radiative feedback upon nonradiatively forced temperature variations, while the spiral patterns are the result of time‐varying radiative forcing generated internal to the climate system. Only in the idealized special case of instantaneous and then constant radiative forcing, a situation that probably never occurs either naturally or anthropogenically, can feedback be observed in the presence of unknown radiative forcing. This is true whether the unknown radiative forcing is generated internal or external to the climate system. In the general case, a mixture of both unknown radiative and nonradiative forcings can be expected, and the challenge for feedback diagnosis is to extract the signal of feedback upon nonradiatively forced temperature change in the presence of the noise generated by unknown time‐varying radiative forcing. These results underscore the need for more accurate methods of diagnosing feedback from satellite data and for quantitatively relating those feedbacks to long‐term climate sensitivity.

Citation: Spencer, R. W., and W. D. Braswell (2010), On the diagnosis of radiative feedback in the presence of unknown radiative forcing, J. Geophys. Res., 115, D16109, doi:10.1029/2009JD013371.

Our JGR Paper on Feedbacks is Published

by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

After years of re-submissions and re-writes - always to accommodate a single hostile reviewer - our latest paper on feedbacks has finally been published by Journal of Geophysical Research (JGR).

Entitled ”On the Diagnosis of Feedback in the Presence of Unknown Radiative Forcing”, this paper puts meat on the central claim of my most recent book: that climate researchers have mixed up cause and effect when observing cloud and temperature changes. As a result, the climate system has given the illusion of positive cloud feedback.

Positive cloud feedback amplifies global warming in all the climate models now used by the IPCC to forecast global warming. But if cloud feedback is sufficiently negative, then manmade global warming becomes a non-issue.

While the paper does not actually use the words “cause” or “effect”, this accurately describes the basic issue, and is how I talk about the issue in the book. I wrote the book because I found that non-specialists understood cause-versus-effect better than the climate experts did!

This paper supersedes our previous Journal of Climate paper, entitled “Potential Biases in Feedback Diagnosis from Observational Data: A Simple Model Demonstration”, which I now believe did not adequately demonstrate the existence of a problem in diagnosing feedbacks in the climate system.

The new article shows much more evidence to support the case: from satellite data, a simple climate model, and from the IPCC AR4 climate models themselves. Read more here.

The Discovery Channel abruptly entered headlines Wednesday afternoon for an awful reason: a hostage crisis at the network’s headquarters in Silver Spring, Md., involving an armed gunman, who the Web quickly identified as James Jay Lee, 40, of San Diego (hat tip: The Business Insider). The latest report is that the suspect has now taken several hostages and is potentially strapped with explosives. As the situation continues to unfold, Surge Desk lists what is known about Lee so far.

1. He Wrote A Lengthy, Rambling Manifesto

In the document, Lee accused humans of being the “most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures around.” It was posted at his website, www.savetheplanetprotest.com, which has crashed because of server overload. It can still be accessed via Google Cache.

2. He’s Been Arrested Outside Discovery Channel HQ Before

In early 2008, Lee was arrested by Montgomery County Police on charges of littering and disorderly conduct for throwing money to attract a crowd outside the channel’s headquarters, DCist reports. The blog also noted that “Lee appears to have spent thousands of dollars in advertising his protest plans in publications such as the Express,” a free D.C.-area newspaper, “and hiring homeless people to beef up his presence.”

3. He Went to Extraordinary Lengths to Protest the Channel

Elaborating on the DCist’s claims that Lee spent significant money to stage bizarre protests in front of the network, the Maryland County Newspapers Online Gazette reported back in 2008 that:

Lee was arrested with about $21,000 in cash in the duffel bag he had with him at the protest, Meng testified. Johnson told Lee that he would get his bag of money back. Lee said he had sold several inherited properties in Maui, Hawaii, where he lived prior to moving to San Diego, to pay for the protest, including about $30,000 for full-page advertisements in newspapers. Lee said he had one property left, worth about $200,000, and had plans to give it away in a ‘’save the planet contest.”

Here’s video footage of Lee’s “money toss” back in 2008, via the Village Voice:

4. He Was Allegedly Influenced by Al Gore’s Film, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’

Fox News anchor Shep Smith reported this afternoon that Lee experienced an “awakening” after seeing the former vice president’s film about global warming.

5. He Was Sentenced to a Mental Institution

...For his previous Discovery Channel protest stunts, but never served time, instead being granted probation after 14 days in jail, TMZ reports

See more here. Read another take on the mainstream media discomfort reporting on enviromilitants.

It’s not been easy being green since the revelations of Climategate and mounting evidence that the science behind man’s influence on climate change is far from accurate, let alone settled. No wonder then that many greens chose to vent their frustration at skeptics and blame their ideological opponents for their troubles.

In the past decade, leaders of the global warming movement have won international fame and acclaim, including Nobel prizes and Oscars. They have been feted by celebrities and world leaders alike as a supportive press looked on and wrote glowing tomes about their wisdom and importance. Politicians and businesses were cowed into submission by the mighty green machine and eagerly adorned themselves with a green mantle to appeal to voters and consumers.

Despite this support and for no want of funding, time and again the green agenda stumbled and failed to achieve action. Despite regular and desperate cries of alarm that the conference du jour represented mankind’s ‘last hope’, nothing meaningful happens. The Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997, but few industrialized western nations have come close to meeting their emission reduction targets. Since Kyoto there have been significant failures in Bali, Copenhagen, Bonn and next up is Cancun. There is no reason to suspect that the outcome will be different there.

The green movement is a conglomerate of many disparate causes, but one thing most agree on is that skeptics are to blame for any failure. According to greens, these ‘fringe’ people who oppose the theory that man influences climate are powerful enough to stop the entire world from taking action. In fact, this is just a lazy excuse to absolve themselves of blame for their own incompetence and ineffectiveness.

In the United States, Democrats have controlled the White House and both houses of Congress since 2008 with outright majorities, yet the ‘vital’ climate bill failed to pass. Democrats blame Republicans, but had the Democrats had the courage of their political convictions they could have passed any legislation they pleased, just as they did with health care reform. The climate bill failed because Democrats needed the political cover of a bipartisan vote and when they failed to get it, they simply walked away and in the process demonstrated that alarmist talk about global doom if the bill failed was so much hot air.

Al Gore this week blogged about the Koch brothers who have funded right-leaning causes to the tune of $100 million. The inference is that the Koch’s blocked climate change legislation by funding skeptics. Yet Al Gore and his Alliance for Climate Protection have outspent the Koch’’s by a factor of 3 to 1. If it was just a question of money, Gore and his followers would have won a long time ago, so why haven’t they?

In large part, Gore must blame his own conspicuous consumption. Ordinary people looked at his mansions, his boat and the globe-trotting in private planes and limos and wondered how he could be so extravagant if there truly were a ‘climate crisis.’ Greens may blame skeptics for pointing out Gore’s hypocrisy, but it was his own decision to not lead by example and leave himself open to criticism. 

A common argument against skeptics is that they are ‘flat-earthers’, the people who denied the Earth was round. This is a flawed view; the fact is it is the other way around. Those who believe in mans affect on global temperatures today are the ones who would think the Earth flat, for they are the followers of the popular consensus. It was skeptics that stood against the perceived wisdom of the day to teach the world that the ground they stood on was a sphere, a reminder that skeptics are vital to progress.

The inconvenient truth is that greens have failed to convince the world that man’s activity affects climate. They have tried bullying and emotional blackmail without success. It’s easy to blame those who disagree with them, but the failure to make progress on an issue they claim vital to man’s survival is entirely theirs.

Greens outspent skeptics, they had the ear of the political class, effectively demonized and even silenced opponents and still it was not enough to convince the world that anything was wrong with the weather. It’s hard to think of any movement in history that enjoyed the funding, support and momentum that the greens once had and yet achieved so little.

Now the momentum is gone, shattered by the revelations that climate science is little more than guesswork and bad statistical analysis. Celebrities are moving on to other, more fashionable causes and soon the only people left to rail against skeptics will be the ones with reputations or fortunes so heavily vested in their global warming theory that they can never retreat.

It’s not much of an end for ‘the greatest scam in history’, but it is the end. See post and comments here.

BANGOR - In the year 2050, people will shake their heads in amazement when they read in history books that, back in 2010, some people thought mankind could “save the planet” by carbon-restricting legislation.

A generation from now, people will all see how we today were misled by scientists and journalists who pursued an agenda. It ended up by starving prosperous countries of needed energy supplies. A whole generation suffered unnecessarily from a sort of mass hysteria.

Science has been corrupted. That’s nothing new, but perhaps never before has it happened on the present scale. The National Academy of Sciences, until recently a respected congregation of the nation’s best minds, has published in a recent Proceedings a “blacklist” of climate researchers who have doubts about, or disagree with, the majority who believe that humankind is responsible for the recent warming of our planet.

This publication strives to diminish the reputations and credentials of “skeptics” or “deniers.” How shameful. Some believe this is a desperate attempt to counteract the growing doubt regarding “global warming,” now dubbed “anthropogenic climate change.” Can such an official act of defamation exist in the scientific establishment today? Unfortunately, yes.

This comes on the heels of several months of cascading revelations regarding data-doctoring and destruction, peer-review subversion, evasion of freedom of information requests, and outright fabrications perpetrated by the leaders of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) who crafted their reports on which many of our politicians base their support of carbon-restricting legislation (see Climategate, Amazongate, Himalayagate, etc.).

Little of this has been reported in our media. Recently the main actors in “Climategate” have been “cleared” of any wrongdoing in pathetic whitewashes of their actions.

Imagine an official review that didn’t go into the accuracy of the scientific findings, or in which none of the “doubters” was interviewed. Ah, but millions in research grants were at stake. Are you surprised?

There is an agenda, set up decades ago by the United Nations, with a mission to convict the Western World of despoiling the planet. The plan was and remains that of engineering a redistribution of wealth to poorer countries, while bringing ever more power and control to central governments.

What better way than to indict our “excessive” production of CO2, a minor greenhouse gas that is necessary for all life on Earth? This was demonstrated dramatically in Copenhagen last December. There was outrage in the African delegations when carbon-restricting mandates on developed nations failed adoption.

Be reminded that the global mean temperature has increased only 0.7 degrees C in the last century, which many believe is part of a natural cycle. We have historical evidence, long before CO2 levels rose, of the Roman optimum (warm), Dark Ages (cool), the Medieval Warm Period and the “Little Ice Age” ( approximately from the mid-15th to mid-19th centuries). And it’s noteworthy that higher CO2 levels have always followed temperature increases.

One of the most powerful criticisms is that while the truth of a scientific postulate is judged by observed fact in the real world, many of the alarmists’ predictions are derived from computerized models which may share false premises (and desired outcomes).

Apocalyptic scenarios may garner more public support for large governmental research grants than assurances that the world and its complex weather systems will somehow get along without help or hindrance from us - as they always have.

We learn about those who insist that something must be done now to save the planet, yet we never learn from our left-leaning media about the thousands of well-qualified scientists, including many distinguished names, who protest that the science is dubious.

Ignored is a petition to the U.S. government, signed by more than 31,000 well-qualified scientists, protesting that AGW is based on flawed ideas and that the use of hydrocarbons is not changing the climate.

Despite the revelations of scientific corruption, many who object are, often as not, vilified as far-out fringe types not worthy of serious attention.

The skeptics are smeared as funded by “big oil,” whether it is true or not, ignoring the fact that government grants dwarf all other support for research.

Here in north-central Maine, our only daily newspaper feeds us a steady diet of climate alarm, rarely publishing skeptical opinions other than an occasional letter.

The Portland Press Herald is commendable for its support of a lively debate on this important subject, so essential to an informed electorate. Thanks, and keep it up. See post here. 

"Avatar” is returning to theaters - this time in an even lengthier form - but the movie’s creator seems intent on once again mocking the very people that have made his success possible.

“Titanic” film director James Cameron quickly went for the oft-traversed intellectual low road of ad hominem attacks, recently attacking skeptics of global warming as those of piggish DNA.

“I think they’re swine,” said Cameron to the American Renewable Energy Day Summit in Aspen Sunday night. Laughingly, Cameron piggishly proclaimed “swine” just moments after receiving eco-ovations from the environmental Aspen crowd.

Why? He had praised a documentary that extolled the evils of a proposed hydropower project in Brazil that would ostensibly “displace a large tribal community,” therefore violating even more sacred limousine liberal codes: group identity and the hatred of capitalism.

Hydropower is “clean” by most mainstream standards, so go figure.

Hypocrisy is not the only feature of the global warming alarmist agenda. James Cameron should have read my previous Daily Caller column to avoid a trap so simple that even a Na’vi wouldn’t take the bait. Think of it this way: sticks and stones may break my bones but the global warming alarmist “Pure Anger” approach will never hurt me:

“Pure Anger” Approach” - This occurrence is an emotional, visceral display that shows skeptics are winning the day. It’s a common feature of debate - a citizen dares to question the validity of the global warming religiosity and is called a “flat-earther” or some other pejorative name. Dr. Cohen’s advice for the Pure Anger approach is to simply ignore it and revel in the fact that it is the surest sign that global warming advocates are losing the debate.

It’s not the first time that Cameron has taken the anger approach on the topic of AGP. Last March, Mr. Cameron extended the environmentalist “Appeal to Authority” by claiming that he wanted to “call those deniers out into the street at high noon and shoot it out with those boneheads.” Per Daily Caller, the “Appeal to Authority” is:

“Appeal to Authority” - This seems to be the first line of defense for global warming advocates. They often appeal to their authority by citing ‘irrefutable evidence,’ ‘consensus’ and such to assert authority and stifle debate. Recently, 31,000 climate scientists have signed the Petition Project. Also, top international climate scientists recently sent the United Nations a petition that challenges the UN’s global warming agenda. Settled science? Hardly.

Director Cameron put the offer of a high-noon street debate on the table and an exchange of sorts was in the works for months. Proponents and skeptics were scheduled to duke it out in the realm of ideas and science. The
“bonehead high-noon shootout at the Global Warming corral” (as Daily Caller’s Jim Treacher alludes to as well) was to be a ringing success.

But alas, and all too predictably, James Cameron scheduled, re-scheduled, obfuscated and eventually cancelled the “shootout.”

What a shame as a Western-themed discussion would have made for a much better movie than a stereotypical three-hour leftist treatise presentation on azure-pigmented, capitalism-loathing, earth-worshiping, technology-disparaging aliens from a distant planet.

Tim Daniel is a small business owner and entrepreneur who currently lives in San Diego, California with his wife and lovely cat. He is editor in chief of the southern California-based Left Coast Rebel blog.
Read more here. See how Cameron tried to stop the building of a clean hydroelectric power plant in the Amazon here. See Noel Sheppard’s story with emails that belie Cameron’s story about why the debate was cancelled here.

Left leaning Hollywood has long bought into mad-made global warming and the environmental agenda requiring great sacrifice for all of us, even as they continue to enjoy their lavish lifestyles. Leonardo DiCaprio, who we all enjoyed in Titanic even went as far as to produce a movie “The 11th Hour” to push the idea we were destoying the planet by breathing and driving and heating and cooling our homes.

Above we see him in a recent press photo. Suggestions about what he was demonstrating with his hand included the amount of real science in his movie, the number of people who paid to see it, the size of one of his body parts.

A 100-square-mile block of ice 600 feet thick has calved off one of the largest ocean-bordering glaciers in Greenland. The Arctic hasn’t lost a chunk of ice that large since 1962.

Animated here.

“In the early morning hours of Aug. 5, an ice island four times the size of Manhattan was born in northern Greenland,” oceanographer Andreas Muenchow of University of Delaware said in a press release Aug. 6. “The freshwater stored in this ice island could keep the Delaware or Hudson rivers flowing for more than two years. It could also keep all U.S. public tap water flowing for 120 days.”

Petermann Glacier is located about 600 miles south of the North Pole. Muenchow and a team of scientists have been studying it since 2003. They had been expecting the glacier to calve, but this piece is much larger than anyone had anticipated.

The glacier lost about one-quarter of its 43-mile-long floating ice-shelf.

The new chunk will enter Nares Straight, an ocean channel between Canada and Greenland, float towards Newfoundland and Labrador, and ultimately end up in the Atlantic Ocean.

The massive calving of the ice-shelf is likely part of a natural cycle for Petermann Glacier rather than a dramatic change that has never been seen before, Muenchow said. “Petermann Glacier has stayed about the same size over the last century,” Muenchow said. “Well, up until yesterday.”

Enlarged here.

Read More.

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Bob Copeland’s North of the Notch Studio

Welcome to Bob Copeland’s world in the White Mountains of New Hampshire! Since retiring from Channel 5 in Boston after 36 years of keeping New Englanders one step ahead of the next snowstorm, Bob has built a retirement home and an art studio right in the middle of snow country!

Gallery I - Recent Paintings contains many of Bob’s oil and pastel impressions of New Hampshire’s North Country including Franconia Notch, Cannon Mountain, Mt. Lafayette, Mt. Washington and the other Presidentials.

Gallery II - Abstractions from Nature features Bob’s macro photography. Here you will find some very abstract images, the subjects of which you may have difficulty identifying.

Gallery III - Atmospheric Abstractions features Bob’s weather photography and his unique ability to capture clouds and storms at just the right moment…

Weather Maps Order a custom weather map hand drawn by Bob for any date you choose since 1900.

These colorful collector’s items are identical to the maps Bob used on Channel 5 prior to the introduction of computer graphics! An ideal gift for the family “weather nut” - choose the date of a memorable event like “The Blizzard of ‘78.” Or what about your wedding anniversary or your sweetheart’s birthday, or the day grandpa knocked over the outhouse with his F-250!

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Our Climate IPHONE APPM

Paul at Aeris Systems has just successfully launched this ipad App: now available for 99 cents ..

If you want another enthusiastic review by our good friend, Lubos Motl, here it is ...

Please share and spread this information as widely as you possibly know ...we need to make sure the public is better educated on this issue and it has been far too too long for UN IPCC and all the Climategate “scientists” to keep dominating the discussion and attention ... See the new “Our Climate” App by Aeris on for iphone with itunes here.

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NOTE: Heartland has the presentations and powerpoints posted for the Heartland ICCC IV.  If you could not go, there is plenty to see there. Please remember the goldmine of videos and PPTs at the Heartland ICCC proceeding sites for 2008 NYC here, 2009 NYC here and 2009 DC here. Here is a PPT I gave at the Heartland Instutute ICCC Meeting in 2008 and here is the follow up in 2009. Here is an abbreviated PPT in two parts I presented at a UK conference last month: Part 1, Part 2.

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See C3 Headlines excellent collection of graphs and charts that show AGW is nonsense here.

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GlobalWarming: The Other Side

See John Coleman’s one-hour special on KUSI Global Warming, the Other Side here. See his part II Global Warming Meltdown here. NEW: See his latest interview with Anthony Watts here. See his latest interview with Dr Fred Singer here. See his very revealing story on Roger Revelle here. See his powerful interview with E.M. Smith here.  See his other videos here.

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The Early Weather Channel Days and a Discussion of Global Warming
By Joe D’Aleo and Andre Bernier

Here more of an interview, I did with TV Meteorologist Andre Bernier of FOX 8 in Cleveland on Weatherjazz, who was a student of mine at Lyndon State College, and who by luck of the draw, was one of two on-camera meteorologists who did the first half hour of the Weather Channel (along with Bruce Edwards) on May 2, 1982. We talked about both the early days of the Weather Channel and global warming. The audio is here. See also episode 21 on November 10, 2009, when we talked about the upcoming winter.

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See Climate Theater with a collection of the best climate skeptic films and documentaries here. See additonal scientific youtubes here.

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750 Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of “Man-Made” Global Warming Alarm

“The following papers support skepticism of “man-made” global warming or the environmental or economic effects of. Addendums, comments, corrections, erratum, replies, responses and submitted papers are not included in the peer-reviewed paper count. These are included as references in defense of various papers. There are many more listings than just the 750 papers. Ordering of the papers is alphabetical by title except for the Hockey Stick, Cosmic Rays and Solar sections which are chronological. This list will be updated and corrected as necessary.”

Author added a nice quote from an RC commenter,
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told by AGW voices that there are NO qualified skeptics or peer reviewed/published work by them. Including right here by RC regulars. In truth there is serious work and questions raised by significant work by very qualified skeptics which has been peer reviewed and published. It should be at least a bit disturbing for this type of denial to have been perpetrated with such a chorus. It’s one thing to engage and refute. But it’s not right to misrepresent as not even existing the counter viewpoints. I fully recognize the adversarial environment between the two opposing camps which RC and CA/WUWT represent, but the the perpetual declaration that there is no legitimate rejection of AGW is out of line.” - John H., comment at RealClimate.org

Minor Victory - on a side note with the help of Bill Hughes the publisher of the journal Energy & Environment, we successfully got Scopus to remove the trade journal listing and properly list E&E as a peer-reviewed journal. That now gives two credible sources indexing E&E as peer-reviewed - EBSCO and Scopus. This helps tremendously, especially when referencing MM’s papers in E&E and all the rest (roughly 15% of the list).

See still more annotated here.

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Many more papers are catalogued at Pete’s Place here.

The science and economics of global warming are not too complicated for the average person to consider and make up his or her own mind. We urge you to do that. Go here and view some of the articles linked under “What’s New” or “A Primer on Global Warming.” Or go here and read about the new report from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), which comprehensively rebuts the claims of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Go here for the sources for the factual statements in the ads.

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Available now some items that will gore your alarmist friends (part of the proceeds go to support Icecap) SOME NEW ITEMS:

See full size display here.

And “My carbon footprints are bigger than yours and plants love me for it” items here and here

See sister sites:

Coleman’s Corner here.

Science and Public Policy Institute here.

Intellicast Dr. Dewpoint Library here.

RedNeck Engineer Energy and Innovation here.

Weather/Climate and Health here.

The Weather Wiz here. See how they have added THE WIZ SCHOOL (UPPER LEFT) to their website. An excellent educational tool for teachers at all class levels.