At 19.4 degrees, February 2010 was the second coldest February of record here (since 1983), missing February 1989’s 18.2 by just over one degree.

• There were three less-than-impressive daily record lows in the 0 to -3 range. But there were other more impressive records:

• 17 consecutive days with daily max temperatures at or below 32F tied a record set in December 1983.

• 22 days with daily max temperatures at or below 32F tied the January 1988 record (and exceeds it if you consider that February is a short month).

• The monthly maximum of 40F tied December 1983 for the lowest monthly max on record.

And the biggie record....

• The three-month winter average (December-February) of 20.2F is, by almost one degree, the coldest winter on record here (28 winters). History of the past five winters: 2005-06 - coldest winter since 1997-98. 2006-07 - coldest winter since 1992-93; last snow drift melted July 6. 2007-08 - coldest winter on record, beat 83-84 by 0.7 degrees. 2008-09 - near normal. 2009-10 - coldest winter, beat 07-08 by 0.9 degrees.

For comparison here’s my ten coldest months: Dec-09 16.5 Dec-83 17.2 Feb-89 18.2 Dec-90 18.5 Jan-85 18.7 Jan-07 18.8 Jan-88 19.1 Dec-07 19.4 Feb-10 19.4 Jan-08 19.7 Note that five of the cold months occurred during 1983-1990 (8 years), None during 1991-2005 (15 years), And five during 2007-2010 (4 years). The season’s snow stands at 140.5 inches, the fourth greatest end-of-February total (after 2007, 1987, and 1998). February 28th is the normal mid-point of our snow season, with, on average, 100 inches by February and another 100 inches in March and the other “spring” months (including June).

A series of cold winters at one location may not seem too important, but the story is the same across much of the country (and both hemispheres of the planet). On an annual basis, Coal Creek correlates with the entire state of Colorado With a correlation R = 0.95. The IPCC projects Colorado, the Rocky Mountains, and the Intermountain West to have the greatest warming in the “lower 48” states - about 4C, or 7F, over this century (see IPCC fig-11-8-3). According to the IPCC models, greenhouse gas warming should be greatest over continental interiors and in the middle troposphere, so Coal Creek Canyon is an ideal “global warming” monitoring site. Annual and winter temperatures here in the Rockies show that the new century’s projected warming is off to a shaky start. Here is a graph of winter temperatures since 1983 with various trend lines and curves fit to the data. The linear trend has winter temperatures cooling by 1.1F per century, but with a R-squared of 0.0021 this trend line is hardly significant. The 2nd- and 3rd-order trend line fits have higher correlations and more impressive downturns in recent years, and the five-year running mean also shows a recent decline. However, the best fit is with my favorite non-linear trend line shown in the second graph.

Enlarged here.

Enlarged here.

Enlarged here.

This piece has many inaccuracies, and in my view, is not a positive contribution to the global warming debate for the reasons I present in my rebuttal of various Emanuel statements. 

Emanuel “...compelling strands of scientific evidence that have led almost all climate scientists to conclude that mankind is altering climate in potentially dangerous ways.”

Gray:  A high percentage of meteorologists and/or climate scientists do not agree that the climate changes we have seen are mostly man-made. Thousands of us think that the larger part of the climate changes we have observed over the last century are of natural origin.  I believe that most of the changes that have been observed are due to multi-decadal and multi-century changes in deep global ocean currents.  Such changes have yet to be properly incorporated into the global models or into most climate modeler’s physical reasoning processes.  Over 31 thousand American scientists have recently signed a petition advising the US not to sign any fossil fuel reduction treaty.

Many scientists believe that a slightly warmer CO2 gas induced world, would be, in general, more beneficial for humanity.  The small changes in climate we have seen so far and the changes we will likely see in the next number of decades are not potentially dangerous.  It has been noted that vegetation growth is enhanced by higher CO2 levels.

Emanuel “...the surface temperature of the Earth is roughly 60 F higher than it would otherwise be thanks to a few greenhouse gasses that collectively make up only about 3 percent of the mass of our atmosphere.”

Gray: The globe’s greenhouse gas induced higher temperatures are due almost exclusively to water vapor (the overwelling greenhouse gas) not much at all due to CO2 and methane.  It is the variation of atmospheric water vapor (particularly in the upper troposphere) that is of dominant importance to the greenhouse gas warming question.  It is likely that increases in CO2 and other minor greenhouse gases will lead to small reductions in upper tropospheric water vapor which will bring about greater loss of infrared radiation energy flux to space.  Increases in CO2 and lesser greenhouse gases should (due to their influence on upper level water vapor) lead to little global temperature increase.  Such conditions appear to be presently occurring.  During the last decade and a half when CO2 amounts have risen there has been an increased (not decreased) infrared radiation flux to space.  Little or no global warming has occurred in the last decade.

Emanuel “...in the absence of any feedbacks except for temperature itself, doubling carbon dioxide would increase the global average surface temperature by about 1.8 F.”

Gray:  You can’t at the outset eliminate water vapor and cloud feedback and consider only temperature feedback and expect to have a realistic explanation of CO2’s future influence on global temperature.  Water vapor and cloud feedback changes can negate most or all the lesser greenhouse gas influences on global temperature.

Emanuel “...the rate of rise of surface temperature is consistent with predictions of human-caused global warming that date back to the 19th century and is larger than any natural change we have been able to discern for at least the past 1,000 years.”

Gray: this is pure ‘off-the-wall’ assertion that the global warmers want to believe in because they do not want to consider other causes of climate change which would negate their human-induced warming hypothesis.  The global warming community has yet to come to grips with the powerful potential climate altering influences of multi-decadal and multi-century changes in the globe’s deep ocean circulations.  The Medieval warm period and the early Holocene warm period are believed to have been warmer than today’s temperatures.  Some natural processes brought about these changes.  Why could these same natural processes not be acting today?

Emanuel “...current models predict that a doubling of carbon dioxide should result in global mean temperature increases of anywhere from 2.5 to 7.5 F.”

Gray: All the global General Circulation Models (GCMs) which predict future global temperature change for a doubling of CO2 are badly flawed.  They do not realistically handle the changes in upper tropospheric water vapor and cloudiness.  They give unrealistically high upper-tropospheric moisture and temperature condition for CO2 doubling.  Model global warming estimates for a doubling of CO2 are thought by thousands of us to be many times larger than what will likely occur.  The GCMs are not yet simulating the fundamental influence of the multi-decadal and multi-century scale variations of the ocean’s deep circulation patterns. 

It should be noted that the GCMs have failed to account for the weak global cooling over the last decade.  It is also important to note that the GCM groups do not make official shorter range global temperature forecasts of 1 to 10 years which could accurately be verified.  If they won’t do this why should we believe their forecasts at 50-100 years?  Any experienced meteorologist or climate scientist who would actually believe a long range climate model should really have their head examined.  They are living in a dream world.

Emanuel “...models...represent our best efforts to objectively predict climate; everything else is mere opinion and speculation.”

Gray:  As discussed above, the global GCM climate models are likely our worst (not best) guide to the future.  The physics and numerical coding within the global climate models will never be able to replicate the overly complex global atmosphere-ocean environment and its continuing changes.  Especially so with the need for integrations over hundreds of thousands of time steps.  Increases in future measurement detail accuracy and future increases in computer power will likely never be sufficient to make skillful long range climate modeling a possibility.  Climate prediction skill should be considered and will likely continue to be about as reliable as long range stock prediction.

Our only guide to the future climate rests with the study of past observations of the globe together with judicious physical reasoning of the primary process which in the past have influenced climate change.

Emanuel “That they are uncertain cuts both ways; things might not turn out as badly as the models now suggest, but with equal probability, they could turn out worse.’

Gray: Ridiculous.  The global models have grossly errored on the side of too much global warming though their assumptions of unrealistic positive water vapor feed-back loop and lack of consideration of deep ocean currents.  There is absolutely no way the models could have underplayed the role of human-induced CO2 increases on global warming.

Emanuel “We do not have the luxury of waiting for scientific certainty, which will never come, nor does it do anyone any good to assassinate science, the messenger.”

Gray: Living in an academic ‘ivory tower’ relieves Emanuel of having to face up to the hard economic and social realities of reducing fossil fuel usage.  Following Emanuel’s logic we should move to implement the Cap-and-Trade bill presently before Congress, agree to international standards to implement fossil fuel restrictions and follow UN-global government dictates.  I wonder if Emanuel has factored in the ensuing much higher costs of renewable energy and the resulting significant lowering of the global population’s standard of living, which large fossil fuel reductions would bring.  I wonder if Emanuel realizes the effects these changes would have on the increased poverty and starvation within 3rd world countries.  And has he considered how little the environment would really improve if such human sacrifices for nature were made?

We should all feel an obligation to assassinate ‘faulty’ science wherever we see it, including the blind belief (without evidence except the faulty models) that humans are largely responsible for climate change.

Emanuel “We might begin by mustering the courage to confront the problem of climate change in an honest and open way.”

Gray: Emanuel needs to make a better effort to follow his own advice.  His Op/Ed piece is one-sided and is less than an honest and fair representation of the global warming controversy.

Read both Emanuel’s op ed and Gray’s response here.

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

Climate science survives scandal
Big Pond News

Climate science is alive and well despite the scandal of leaked emails in Britain and ‘glitches’ in a report by the UN climate change panel, top scientists say.
‘There’s consensus that action is justified, indeed imperative to reduce the problem of a really serious long-term global effect on the climate,’ said Lord Martin Rees, president of the British academy of science, the Royal Society.

‘My personal take is the key bit of evidence is the rise in CO2 concentration plus simple physics. If we had no data other than that, that would be enough,’ Rees told reporters on Friday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Climate change sceptics seized on a leak of thousands of emails and other documents from researchers at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Britain, which appeared to show scientists saying global warming was not as serious as previously thought. That scandal, dubbed Climategate, came just weeks before UN talks on climate change in Copenhagen in December.

Several weeks after the talks, another scandal rocked the world of climate science, when the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was accused of basing a report about ice disappearing from the world’s mountain peaks on a student essay and an article in a mountaineering magazine.

But scientists weren’t out for the count; they just can’t, ethically, ‘go into the gutter’ the way the media have in attacking the science world over the leaks, said Jerry North of Texas AM University. ‘It’s easy vilify scientists but scientists cannot go into the gutter and turn the attacks the other way. ‘But the climate science paradigm is in fact quite healthy. We just have a lot of challenges about how we communicate,’ said North.

Scientists may be good at crunching numbers and data, but they’re bad at doing their own public relations, said Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences. ‘There are a lot of smart people working on climate change right now, but we’re not doing a good job of translating what we’re learning to the public,’ said Cicerone.

‘Instead when we have a major snowstorm on the east coast of the US, jokes are proliferating about how wrong all this global warming stuff was. And yet you turn on your television and look at the winter Olympics in Canada and you find no snow...’

Icecap note: The Rees and Cicerone’s and North’s are in denial. They are exampls of what is wrong with science today. They have damaged their credibility and that of their once great societies and universities by their words and actions. The physics and science they claim is so well established is not there and the entire movement, driven by those with big money and other agendas is built on the foundation of an unproven hypothosis.

Perhaps someone should ask workers at the Met Office to take a rain check on their optimism. After predicting just a 20 per cent chance of a colder than average winter, they were left embarrassed again when official figures revealed it was the coldest for more than 30 years. Temperatures in December, January and February struggled to stay above zero, with the UK’s average a chilly 1.5C (35F), making it the deepest freeze since 1978-79.

Mothers tow children on their sledges in Hampshire, in January. The Met Office has confirmed that 2009/10 winter was the coldest since 1978/79

Two surfers negotiate a freak 30ft wave in Porthleven, Cornwall

And in Scotland and Northern Ireland it was the coldest winter since 1962-63. Altnaharra in northern Scotland recorded the lowest temperature of -22C (-8F) on the morning of January 8. The previous day brought England’s lows, of -17.6C (0.32F) in Woodford on the edge of Manchester and -17.7C (0.14F) in Benson, Oxfordshire.

The figures - released yesterday to mark the first day of spring - sharply contrast with the forecast of the Met Office last autumn. Its ‘long-range’ predictions for the winter, said there was a 50 per cent chance of it being mild and just a 20 per cent risk of it being colder than the average temperature of 3.7C (39F). In mid-December the forecast was revised to say there was a 45 per cent chance that January and February would be colder than average.
In January, as Britain was warned to expect a ‘windchill Saturday’, with blasts of wind forcing daytime temperatures as low as -10C, a senior Met Office official admitted it should have done better.

Crocuses in bloom on the first day of March in Hyde Park, London instead of Daffodils, a month behind schedule.

Asked on BBC TV: ‘Why didn’t you see this coming?’, Keith Groves replied: ‘I’m disappointed that our seasonal forecasts didn’t give a prediction or stronger probability of a colder winter.’ It was also forced to defend its long-range forecasting last autumn, when the much-feted ‘barbecue summer’ proved to be a washout.

And last night the Met Office was on the back foot again. Spokesman John Hammond said: ‘You have got to bear in mind that it is a relatively new forecast. Only 20 years ago you would be looking at a one or two-day forecast and questioning its accuracy. Now we take those for granted. ‘Given our geographical position we are very much at a crossroads of weather patterns and that makes it more challenging, but that is part of the game. We will continue to do the research and make sure [forecasts] improve in the future.’

Even the flowers are testament to the chill. While daffodils would usually have been in full bloom at yesterday’s St David’s Day celebrations, the classic sign of spring has been delayed.

Daffodils in Ewenny, Bridgend did not grow in time for St David’s Day yesterday due to consistent freezing temperatures

See post and more here. See real reason for the winter cold here.

Baltic Sea ice traps passenger and cargo ships
BBC News

A number of ships, including ferries with thousands of passengers on board, have become stuck in ice in the Baltic Sea, officials say. The vessels are grounded in the waters between Stockholm and the Aland Islands, Radio Sweden reports.

Many of the vessels are not likely to be freed for hours, Swedish maritime authorities were quoted as saying by the AFP news agency. It is reportedly the worst Baltic freeze for 15 years.

Both Sweden and Finland have deployed ice breakers in the area to help the stranded vessels. “The ice wouldn’t usually be a problem for the merchant ships, the problem now is that it’s very windy, about 20 metres per second,” Jonas Lindvall, controller of the ice breaking unit at the Swedish maritime authorities, told Radio Sweden. “That means that the ice is moving rapidly, there are lots of ridges with ice that’s making it problematic for the ships, so they need help from the ice breakers,” the controller said.

Four Viking Line ferries - which regularly shuttle thousands of passengers between Finland and Sweden - are among the vessels stuck. Unconfirmed reports say the ferries collided with each other when they tried to manoeuvre in packs of ice.  See post here.

Update: See here how worst snow since March 8 brings Barcelona to a complete collapse

By Anthony Watts, Watts Up With That

I’ve been away from WUWT this weekend for recovery from a cold plus family time as we have visitors, so I’m just now getting back to regular posting.  Recently on the web there has been a lot of activity and discussions around the issue of the dropping of climatic weather stations aka “the march of the thermometers” as Joe D’Aleo and I reported in this compendium report on issues with surface temperature records.

Most of the station dropout issue covered in that report is based on the hard work of E. M. Smith, aka “chiefio, who has been aggressively working through the data bias issues that develop when thermometers have been dropped from the Global Historical Climate Network. My contribution to the study of the dropout issue was essentially zero, as I focused on contributing what I’ve been studying for the past three years, the USHCN. USHCN has had a few station dropout issues, mostly due to closure, but nothing compared to the magnitude of what has happened in the GHCN.

That said, the GHCN station dropout Smith has been working on is a significant event, going from an inventory of 7000 stations worldwide to about 1000 now, and with lopsided spatial coverage of the globe. According to Smith, there’s also been an affinity for retaining airport stations over other kinds of stations. His count shows 92% of GHCN stations in the USA are sited at airports, with about 41% worldwide.

The dropout issue has been known for quite some time. In this post there is a video that WUWT contributor John Goetz made in March 2008 that shows the global station dropout issue over time. You might want to hit the pause button at time 1:06 to see what recent global inventory looks like.

The question that is being debated is how that dropout affects the outcome of absolutes, averages, and trends. Some say that while the data bias issues show up in absolutes and averaging, it doesn’t effect trends at all when anomaly methods are applied.

Over at Lucia’s Blackboard blog there have been a couple of posts on the issue that raise some questions on methods.  I’d like to thank both Lucia Liljegren and Zeke Hausfather for exploring the issue in an “open source” way. All the methods and code used have been posted there at Lucia’s blog which enables a number of people to have a look at and replicate the issue independently. That’s good.

E.M Smith at “chiefio” has completed a very detailed response to the issues raised there and elsewhere. You can read his essay here. His essay is lengthy, I recommend giving yourself more than a few minutes to take it all in. Joe D’Aleo and I will have more to say on this issue also. See post here.

Icecap Note: See also this post here.

See the number of missing months increase (enlarged here) with a strong bias towards the colder months.

See also this one on Alert station in Canada and GISS.
------------------------

Follow the Money

Enough is enough.

It’s about time that someone once and for all puts the lie to the recurrent charges that the AGW skeptical community is supported by “Big Oil”, or is populated by “flat-earthers”, or by those who in the past have been complicit with “the tobacco lobby”. These transparently pejorative statements are frequent inclusions in postings and commentary by AGW proponents , sometimes by less committed followers of the AGW controversy and even by some posters who are intellectually inclined to side with the skeptics. There are rarely any substantiating statements to support these allegations which in the absence of any formal repudiation by those so categorized, take on a life of their own like so many urban myths that populate the blogosphere.

The facts are that quite the opposite is the case. For example, let’s take “Big Oil”. BP has contributed over $500 Million to UC Berkeley, one of the Bay Area’s centers of AGW support, for its Energy Biosciences Institute. 

Stanford University has received $225 Million from ExxonMobil, Toyota and Schlumberger for its Global Climate and Energy Project.  That money will be combined with a $50 Million donation from alumnus Jay Precourt whose career as an oil engineer included such companies as Hamilton Oil and Tejas Gas Corp. The new entity will be named the Precourt Center for Energy Efficiency. See here.

Compare these numbers with a total of ~$6.4 Million over a 4-year period between 2002-2005 provided to non-academic and presumably more conservative think tanks by ExxonMobile according to data acquired by EDF (hardly an unbiased source). See here.

As for individuals active in the promotion of AGW, Susan Solomon, a Phd from Stanford and a lead author of the 2007 IPC Report was a recipient of the 2004 Blue Planet Prize, a 50 Million Yen (~$460,000) cash award from the Asahi Glass Foundation , see here. Other high profile figures such as James Hansen and Michael Mann have received six-figure amounts from organizations such as the Theresa Heinz Foundation and the Dan David Foundation. It seems as though being a staunch proponent of AGW is a very rewarding position to have.

These are just a fractional example of the money that has flowed from the private sector to individuals and academic institutions friendly to the notion of anthropogenic influences on the environment. Over the past 10 years Government funding to such organizations has been conservatively estimated at well over $50 Billion.

Compare these enormous sums of money with the amounts that are received by prominent and well qualified members of the skeptical community. I know from personal association that external funding for such sites as WUWT and icecap is in the low five figures and comes almost exclusively from individual donations from those who access these sites.  It would seem that the thinly veiled assertions from those expressing an alarmist position that people who adopt a more skeptical attitude are somehow insincere and must be doing it for the money. Since this is patently untrue, I submit that such accusations are more likely to be evidence of projection than of fiscal reality and they are more designed to obfuscate than enlighten the debate. 

See more here. 

By Lewis Page, The Register

Macdonald says that glaciers on land at the Equator means solid pack ice at sea in the tropics, too.

“Climate modeling has long predicted that if sea ice were ever to develop within 30 degrees latitude of the equator, the whole ocean would rapidly freeze over,” he says. “So our result implies quite strongly that ice would have been found at all latitudes during the Sturtian glaciation.”

Enlarged here.

Even on Snowball Earth, however, it’s thought that there must have been “refugia” where liquid surface water and at least occasional sunlight remained, as proto-animal life above the bacterial level is believed to have arisen and survived at around the time of the first, Sturtian snowballing. Macdonald considers that the big freeze may actually have stimulated early, primitive life to get its act together and begin the long process which has led to the present-day biosphere.

“The fossil record suggests that all of the major eukaryotic [other than microbial] groups, with the possible exception of animals, existed before the Sturtian glaciation,” says the prof. “The questions that arise from this are: If a snowball Earth existed, how did these eukaryotes survive? Did the Sturtian snowball Earth stimulate evolution and the origin of animals?”

“From an evolutionary perspective,” he adds, “it’s not always a bad thing for life on Earth to face severe stress.”

Macdonald and his colleagues aren’t sure what triggered the Sturtian snowball effect, but note that a lot of lava came to the earth’s surface at around that point, suggesting that the big chill could have been kicked off by volcanic dust darkening the skies.

The Harvard team publish their results this week in hefty boffinry mag Science.

Global warming may be normal at this point in glacial cycle
By Lewis Page, The Register

German and Russian scientists say that it is normal for an interglacial period like the one just ending to finish with one or more brief - in geological terms - spells of warming before the glaciers return.

According to boffins based at the Helmholtz-Zentrum für Umweltforschung (UFZ) and at the Russian Academy of Sciences, in the Earth’s history thus far there have been eras where the glaciers covered much of Europe, lasting about 100,000 years. These are separated by warmer interglacial periods lasting around 10,000 years. We are currently at the end of an interglacial era called the Holocene.

The scientists, looking into the last interglacial period - the Eemian - which ended around 115,000 years ago, say they have found that that it ended with “significant climate fluctuations” before the rule of the glaciers returned.

The scientists got their results by examining ancient lake sediments exposed by modern open-cast mining in Russia and Germany. They believe that the end of the Eemian interglacial epoch saw “possibly at least two” warming events, according to a statement issued by the UFZ.

“The observed instability with the proven occurrence of short warming events during the transition from the last interglacial to the last glacial epoch could be, when viewed carefully, a general, naturally occurring characteristic of such transition phases,” concludes UFZ boffin Dr Tatjana Boettger.

Boettger and her fellow researchers say that the Eemian ice-free period wound up with sudden - in these terms - warming spells and serious changes in vegetation. Then the glaciers surged south, at their high tide 21,000 years ago reaching as far as Berlin.

This Weichselian Glacial era ended around 15,000 years ago, leading to the conditions which have been seen for all of human history with the ice caps confined to the polar regions. The UFZ says that this Holocene era reached its “highest point so far around 6000 years ago” and that we might now expect to see sudden warmings and changes as at the end of the Eemian - followed by a slow descent into another freezing glacial era.

“Detailed studies of these phenomena are important for understanding the current controversial discussed climate trend so that we can assess the human contribution to climate change with more certainty,” comments Dr Frank W Junge of the Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Saxon Academy of Sciences, SAW) in Leipzig.

The profs’ paper Instability of climate and vegetation dynamics in Central and Eastern Europe during the final stage of the Last Interglacial (Eemian, Mikulino) and Early Glaciation can be read here (subscriber link).

By Steve Goddard Guest Post on Watts Up With That

Snow blankets New York City. Photo: Del Mundo, New York Daily News

Now that we have reached the end of the meteorological winter (December-February,) Rutgers University Global Snow Lab numbers (1967-2010) show that the just completed decade (2001-2010) had the snowiest Northern Hemisphere winters on record.  The just completed winter was also the second snowiest on record, exceeded only by 1978.  Average winter snow extent during the past decade was greater than 45,500,000 km2, beating out the 1960s by about 70,000 km2, and beating out the 1990s by nearly 1,000,000 km2.  The bar chart below (enlarged here) shows average winter snow extent for each decade going back to the late 1960s.

Here are a few interesting facts.

Average winter snow extent has increased since the 1990s, by nearly the area of Texas and California combined.

Three of the four snowiest winters in the Rutgers record occurred during the last decade - the top four winters are (in order) 1978, 2010, 2008, 2003. The third week of February, 2010 had the second highest weekly extent (52,170,000 m2) out of the 2,229 week record.

The bar graph below (enlarged here) shows winter data for each year in the Rutgers database, color coded by decade.  The yellow line shows the mean winter snow extent through the period.  Note that the past decade only had two winters below 45 million km2.  The 1990s had seven winters below the 45 million km2, the 1980s had five winters below 45 million km2, and the 1970s had four winters below 45 million km2.  This indicates that the past decade not only had the most snowfall, but it also had the most consistently high snowfall, year over year.

It appears that AGW claims of the demise of snowfall have been exaggerated.  And so far things are not looking very good for the climate model predictions of declining snowfall in the 21st century.

Many regions of the Northern Hemisphere have seen record snowfall this winter, including Washington D.C, Moscow, China, and Korea.  Dr. Hansen’s office at Columbia University has seen record snowfall, and Al Gore has ineptly described the record snow: “Just as it’s important not to miss the forest for the trees, neither should we miss the climate for the snowstorm,”

A decade long record across the entire Northern Hemisphere is not appropriately described as a “snowstorm.” See post and comments here.

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

The Global Average Urban Heat Island Effect in 2000 Estimated from Station Temperatures, Population
By Dr. Roy Spencer

ABSTRACT
Global hourly surface temperature observations and 1 km resolution population density data for the year 2000 are used together to quantify the average urban heat island (UHI) effect. While the rate of warming with population increase is the greatest at the lowest population densities, some warming continues with population increases even for densely populated cities. Statistics like those presented here could be used to correct the surface temperature record for spurious warming caused by the UHI effect, providing better estimates of temperature trends.

METHOD
Using NOAA’s International Surface Hourly (ISH) weather data from around the world during 2000, I computed daily, monthly, and then 1-year average temperatures for each weather station. For a station to be used, a daily average temperature computation required the 4 synoptic temperature observations at 00, 06, 12, and 18 UTC; a monthly average required at least 20 good days per month; and a yearly average required all 12 months.

For each of those weather station locations I also stored the average population density from the 1 km gridded global population density data archived at the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC).

Enlarged here.

All station pairs within 150 km of each other had their 1-year average difference in temperature related to their difference in population. Averaging of these station pairs’ results was done in 10 population bins each for Station1 and Station2, with bin boundaries at 0, 20, 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400, and 50000 persons per sq. km.

Because some stations are located next to large water bodies, I used an old USAF 1/6 deg lat/lon percent water coverage dataset to ensure that there was no more than a 20% difference in the percent water coverage between the two stations in each match-up. (I believe this water coverage dataset is no longer publicly available).

Elevation effects were estimated by regressing station pair temperature differences against station elevation differences, which yielded a cooling rate of 5.4 deg. C per km increase in station elevation. Then, all station temperatures were adjusted to sea level (0 km elevation) with this relationship.

After all screening, a total of 10,307 unique station pairs were accepted for analysis from 2000.

RESULTS & DISCUSSION
The following graph shows the average rate of warming with population density increase (vertical axis), as a function of the average populations of the station pairs. Each data point represents a population bin average for the intersection of a higher population station with its lower-population station mate.

Enlarged here.

Using the data in the above graph, we can now compute average cumulative warming from a population density of zero, the results of which are shown in the next graph. [Note that this step would be unnecessary if every populated station location had a zero-population station nearby. In that case, it would be much easier to compute the average warming associated with a population density increase.]

Enlarged here.

This graph shows that the most rapid rate of warming with population increase is at the lowest population densities. The non-linear relationship is not a new discovery, as it has been noted by previous researchers who found an approximate logarithmic dependence of warming on population.

Significantly, this means that monitoring long-term warming at more rural stations could have greater spurious warming than monitoring in the cities. For instance, a population increase from 0 to 20 people per sq. km gives a warming of +0.22 deg C, but for a densely populated location having 1,000 people per sq. km, it takes an additional 1,500 people (to 2,500 people per sq. km) to get the same 0.22 deg. C warming. (Of course, if one can find stations whose environment has not changed at all, that would be the preferred situation.)

Since this analysis used only 1 year of data, other years could be examined to see how robust the above relationship is. Also, since there are gridded population data for 1990, 2000, and 2010 (estimated), one could examine whether there is any indication of the temperature-population relationship changing over time.

This is the type of information which I can envision being used to adjust station temperatures throughout the historical record, even as stations come, go, and move. As mentioned above, the elevation adjustment for individual stations can be done fairly easily, and the population adjustments could then be done without having to inter-calibrate stations.

Such adjustments help to maximize the number of stations used in temperature trend analysis, rather than simply throwing the data out. Note that the philosophy here is not to provide the best adjustments for each station individually, but to do adjustments for spurious effects which, when averaged over all stations, will remove the effect when averaged over all stations. This ensures simplicity and reproducibility of the analysis. Read this and much more at Roy’s blog here.

By Marlo Lewis

That’s the topic of this week’s National Journal energy blog. In my contribution, I argue that EPA has been playing a mischievous game that endangers democracy, and that Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s legislation to veto the agency’s endangerment finding would remove this threat.

In a February 22 letter to Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson warns that enactment of the Murkowski legislation would scuttle the joint EPA/National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) greenhouse gas/fuel economy rulemaking, which in turn would compel the struggling auto industry to operate under a “patchwork quilt” of state-level fuel-economy regulations.

Ms. Jackson neglects to mention that the patchwork threat exists only because she, reversing Bush EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson’s decision, granted California a waiver to implement its own GHG/fuel economy program. Had Jackson reaffirmed Johnson’s denial, there would be no danger of a patchwork, hence no ostensible need for the joint EPA/NHTSA rulemaking to avert it.

As my blog post explains, EPA should not have approved the waiver in the first place. The California GHG/fuel economy program violates the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, which prohibits states from adopting laws or regulations “related to” fuel economy. Worse, the waiver creates a reverse right of preemption whereby states may nullify federal law within their borders - an affront to the Supremacy Clause.

Specifically, the waiver would allow California, and other states opting into the California program, to nullify within their boundaries the reformed national fuel economy program that Congress enacted in the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA). That leads straight to a patchwork of state-by-state compliance regimes inimical to a healthy auto industry.

The game EPA is playing is a classic case of bureaucratic self-dealing.

First, EPA endangers the U.S. auto industry by authorizing states to flout federal law and the Constitution. Then, EPA proposes to avert disaster via a rulemaking that just happens to put EPA in the driver’s seat in regulating fuel economy - a power Congress never delegated to EPA when it enacted and amended the Clean Air Act.

Nor is that all. The joint GHG/fuel economy regulation will compel EPA to regulate CO2 from stationary sources - another power Congress never delegated to EPA. By expanding its control over the transport sector, EPA will then have to expand its control over manufacturing, power generation, and much of the commercial and residential sectors, too, because all emit CO2.

In addition, the motor vehicle GHG rule sets the stage for EPA to “tailor,” that is amend, the Clean Air Act so that the agency can delay imposing pre-construction and operating permit requirements on small business, which would surely ignite a political backlash.

So thanks to the endangerment finding, EPA not only gets to play in NHTSA’s fuel-economy sandbox, and extend its tentacles throughout the economy, it also gets to play lawmaker, violating the separation of powers.

In light of all the new powers EPA now expects to wield, it is hardly surprising that EPA never made the strong case against Clean Air Act regulation of CO2 in Massachusetts v. EPA. Here’s what EPA should have argued:

EPA cannot regulate GHG emissions from new motor vehicles under Sec. 202 of the Clean Air Act without regulating CO2 under the Act as a whole. 
Applying the Act as a whole to CO2 leads ineluctably to “absurd results” that contravene congressional intent. Therefore, Congress could not have intended for EPA to regulate GHG emissions under Sec. 202.

Did EPA throw the fight in the 11th round? I dunno, but losing the Massachusetts case was surely sweet victory to those in the agency who long to regulate America into a “clean energy future”. The Massachusetts decision laid the groundwork for EPA to deal itself into a position to bypass the people’s elected representatives, impose its will on the auto industry, and, in time, dictate national climate and energy policy.

What happens if Congress enacts Sen. Murkowski’s resolution, nixes the endangerment finding, and mothballs the GHG/fuel economy rule? The authority to make law and national policy returns to where the framers of the Constitution intended - the people’s elected representatives. See more here.

By Joseph D’Aleo

Our recent SPPI paper covered the many issues with the data including station dropout, missing data, bad siting (largely the result of the modernization), instrument biases, and then the adjustments which dozens of peer review papers show are important and many show could account for up to 50% of the claimed warming since 1900. See this response to NOAA and the EPA that includes that here.

The station dropout issue is not new. I wrote about it in the 1990s in the first generation Intellicast blog and this story in 2001 by former NOAA, NASA scientist and later chief scientist at Raytheon, Dr. Doug Hoyt put it this way “support for this idea comes from the fact that 135 stations in the USSR ceased observing at the end of 1989. Subsequently there appeared to be a warming in the USSR but this warming is not supported by pressure observations. Thus, it appears half or more of the reported global warming from ground observations is arising from this change in station coverage. It is possible that as much as 0.2 C of the 0.25 C warming for 1979-1999 can be explained by this change in stations, although more study is required to refine this number.”

PEER REVIEW SUPPORT FOR SURFACE DATA ISSUES

When the satellites were first launched, their temperature readings were in better agreement with the surface station data. There has been increasing divergence over time which can be seen below (derived from Klotzbach, et al 2009). In the first plot, we see the temperature anomalies as computed from the satellites and assessed by UAH and RSS and the station based land surface anomalies from NOAA/(NCDC). That increased divergence is clear from the figure below (enlarged here).

The Klotzbach paper finds that the divergence between surface and lower-tropospheric trends is consistent with evidence of a warm bias in the surface temperature record but not in the satellite data (below, enlarged here).

NOAA annual land temperatures minus annual UAH lower troposphere (blue line) and NOAA annual land temperatures minus annual RSS lower troposphere (green line) differences over the period from 1979 to 2008

Klotzbach et. al. described an ‘amplification’ factor for the lower troposphere as suggested by Santer et al (2005) and Santer et al (2008) due to greenhouse gas trapping relative to the warming at the surface. Santer refers to the effect as “tropospheric amplification of surface warming”.  This effect is a characteristic of all of the models used in the UNIPCC and the USGRCP “ensemble” of models by Karl, et.al. (2006) which was the source for Karl et al (2009) which in turn was relied upon by EPA in its recent Endangerment Finding.( Federal Register / Vol. 74, No. 239 / Tuesday, December 15, 2009 / Rules and Regulations at 66510 )

As John Christy describes it “The amplification factor is a direct calculation from model simulations that show over 30 year periods that the upper air warms at a faster rate than the surface - generally 1.2 times faster for global averages.  This is the so-called “lapse rate feedback” in which the lapse rate seeks to move toward the moist adiabat as the surface temperature rises.  In models, the convective adjustment is quite rigid, so this vertical response in models is forced to happen.  The real world is much less rigid and has ways to allow heat to escape rather than be retained as models show.” This latter effect has been documented by Chou and Lindzen (2005) and Lindzen and Choi (2009) .

The amplification factor was calculated from the mean and median of the 19 GCMs that were in the CCSP SAP 1.1 report (Karl et al, 2006).  A fuller discussion of how the amplification factor was calculated is available in the Klotzbach paper here.

The ensemble model forecast curve (upper curve) in figure (below, enlarged here). was calculated by multiplying the NOAA NCDC surface temperature for each year by the amplification factor, since this would yield the model projected tropospheric temperature. The lower curves are the actual UAH and RSS lower tropospheric satellite temperatures.

The total divergence of the observed NOAA temperature and satellite temperature difference from the model forecast trends is depicted in the figure (below, enlarged here).

These figures strongly suggest that instead of atmospheric warming from greenhouse effects dominating, surface based warming due to factors such as urbanization and land use changes are driving the observed changes. Since these surface changes are not adjusted for, neither trends from the surface networks nor forecasts from the models can be considered reliable.

This is why the NOAA and NASA press releases should be ignored. The surface based data sets have become seriously flawed and they and the climate models can no longer be trusted for climate trend assessment.

By THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The greatest scandal connected to global warming is not exaggeration, fraud or destruction of data to conceal the weakness of the argument. It is those who are personally profiting from promoting this fantasy at the expense of the rest of us.

Al Gore is the most visible beneficiary. The world’s greatest climate-change fear-monger has amassed millions in book sales and speaking fees. His science-fiction movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” won an Academy Award for best documentary and 21 other film awards. He was co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his “efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Gore was laying his own foundations. As he was whipping up hysteria over climate change, he cannily invested in “green” firms that stood to profit in the hundreds of millions of dollars (if not more) from increased government regulations and sweetheart deals from connected politicians and bureaucrats. The multimillionaire climate dilettante was given a free pass by reporters, who refused to ask him hard questions about the degree to which he was profiting from the panic he was causing.

With the global-warming story line unraveling, the New York Times allowed Mr. Gore to run what amounted to an unpaid advertisement for his brand of climate-change hysteria. This screed, published Saturday, reiterated his claim that the world faces an “unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.” That’s pretty good rhetoric for the person with the largest carbon footprint in the world.

Mr. Gore is not the only one profiting from climate fraud. Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace prize with Mr. Gore, is also the director general of the Energy and Resources Institute. The New Delhi-based research group has received substantial financial grants to examine the issue of the world’s vanishing glaciers, a purported crisis that was highlighted in the 2007 IPCC climate-change report. The glaciology unit is headed by Syed Hasnain, who in 1999 claimed that Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035, which became a noted scare quote in the IPCC report.

A more detailed study found that glacial melt was far less pronounced and widespread than claimed by the global-warming proponents. Mr. Pachauri denounced this skepticism as “voodoo science.” However, in January, Murari Lal, who wrote the glacier section of the 2007 IPCC report, admitted that the alarmist claims were not backed by peer-reviewed science but had been included in the report for a political purpose, which was to “impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.” No word on whether Mr. Pachauri will return his institute’s grant money, but we doubt it.

The greatest potential profits are possible in the ill-defined “carbon trading” industry, currently valued at $126 billion. The trade in carbon emission credits - a key aspect of the beleaguered “cap-and-trade” energy bill now stalled in Congress - will make quick fortunes for the “carbon brokers” assisting companies with reducing their carbon footprints. But because carbon quotas and the acceptable means of measuring them will be determined by the government, this will benefit those who combine presumed expertise with political access, which in the Obama administration means the climate-change alarmists.

Mr. Gore is heavily involved in this scam through Generation Investment Management LLP, which he chairs, and Mr. Pachauri also has been accused of making millions from carbon trading. The dubious science of cap-and-trade and its productivity-killing implications make the bill unlikely to be passed in an election year, but any moves toward this framework will enhance the fortunes of these and other well-connected adherents to the global-warming cult at the expense of businesses and private citizens.

Given the clear conflicts of interest of those who both promote and profit from climate-change alarmism, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize should be rescinded.

It is increasingly clear that the leak of the internal emails and documents of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in November has done for the climate change debate what the Pentagon Papers did for the Vietnam war debate 40 years ago - changed the narrative decisively. Additional revelations of unethical behavior, errors, and serial exaggeration in climate science are rolling out on an almost daily basis, and there is good reason to expect more.

The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), hitherto the gold standard in climate science, is under fire for shoddy work and facing calls for a serious shakeup. The U.S. Climate Action Partnership, the self-serving coalition of environmentalists and big business hoping to create a carbon cartel, is falling apart in the wake of the collapse of any prospect of enacting cap and trade in Congress. Meanwhile, the climate campaign’s fallback plan to have the EPA regulate greenhouse gas emissions through the cumbersome Clean Air Act is generating bipartisan opposition. The British media - even the left-leaning, climate alarmists of the Guardian and BBC - are turning on the climate campaign with a vengeance. The somnolent American media, which have done as poor a job reporting about climate change as they did on John Edwards, have largely averted their gaze from the inconvenient meltdown of the climate campaign, but the rock solid edifice in the newsrooms is cracking. Al Gore was conspicuously missing in action before surfacing with a long article in the New York Times on February 28, reiterating his familiar parade of horribles: The sea level will rise! Monster storms! Climate refugees in the hundreds of millions! Political chaos the world over! It was the rhetorical equivalent of stamping his feet and saying ‘It is too so!’ In a sign of how dramatic the reversal of fortune has been for the climate campaign, it is now James Inhofe, the leading climate skeptic in the Senate, who is eager to have Gore testify before Congress.

The body blows to the climate campaign did not end with the Climategate emails. The IPCC - which has produced four omnibus assessments of climate science since 1992 - has issued several embarrassing retractions from its most recent 2007 report, starting with the claim that Himalayan glaciers were in danger of melting as soon as 2035. That such an outlandish claim would be so readily accepted is a sign of the credulity of the climate campaign and the media: Even if extreme global warming occurred over the next century, the one genuine scientific study available estimated that the huge ice fields of the Himalayas would take more than 300 years to melt - a prediction any beginning chemistry student could confirm with a calculator. (The actual evidence is mixed: Some Himalayan glaciers are currently expanding.) The source for the melt-by-2035 claim turned out to be not a peer-reviewed scientific assessment, but a report from an advocacy group, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which in turn lifted the figure from a popular magazine article in India whose author later disavowed his offhand speculation.

But what made this first retraction noteworthy was the way in which it underscored the thuggishness of the climate establishment. The IPCC’s chairman, Rajendra Pachauri (an economist and former railroad engineer who is routinely described as a ‘climate scientist’, initially said that critics of the Himalayan glacier melt prediction were engaging in “voodoo science,” though it later turned out that Pachauri had been informed of the error in early December- in advance of the U.N.’s climate change conference in Copenhagen - but failed to disclose it. He’s invoking the Charlie Rangel defense: It was my staff’s fault.

The Himalayan retraction has touched off a cascade of further retractions and corrections, though the IPCC and other organs of climate alarmism are issuing their corrections sotto voce, hoping the media won’t take notice. The IPCC’s assessment that 40 percent of the Amazonian rain forest was at risk of destruction from climate change was also revealed to be without scientific foundation; the WWF was again the source. The Daily Telegraph identified 20 more claims of ruin in the IPCC’s 2007 report that are based on reports from advocacy groups such as Greenpeace rather than peer-reviewed research, including claims that African agricultural production would be cut in half, estimates of coral reef degradation, and the scale of glacier melt in the Alps and the Andes. Numerous other claims were sourced to unpublished student papers and dissertations, or to misstated or distorted research.

Peer reviewers in the formal IPCC process had flagged many of these errors and distortions during the writing of the 2007 report but were ignored. For example, the IPCC claimed that the world is experiencing rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather related events brought on by climate change. But the underlying paper, when finally published in 2008, expressly contradicted this, saying, “We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses.” Perhaps the most embarrassing walkback was the claim that 55 percent of the Netherlands was below sea level, and therefore gravely threatened by rising sea levels. The correct number is 26 percent, which Dutch scientists say they tried to tell the IPCC before the 2007 report was published, to no avail. And in any case, a paper published last year in Nature Geoscience predicting a 21st-century sea level rise of up to 32 inches has been withdrawn, with the authors acknowledging mistaken methodology and admitting “we can no longer draw firm conclusions regarding 21st century sea level rise from this study without further work.” The IPCC ignored several published studies casting doubt on its sea level rise estimates.

This central pillar of the climate campaign is unlikely to survive much longer, and each repetition of the “science-is-settled” mantra inflicts more damage on the credibility of the climate science community. The scientist at the center of the Climategate scandal at East Anglia University, Phil ("hide the decline") Jones dealt the science-is-settled narrative a huge blow with his candid admission in a BBC interview that his surface temperature data are in such disarray they probably cannot be verified or replicated, that the medieval warm period may have been as warm as today, and that he agrees that there has been no statistically significant global warming for the last 15 years- all three points that climate campaigners have been bitterly contesting. And Jones specifically disavowed the “science-is-settled” slogan.

Read much more here.

Environmentalists pressure the insurance industry.

Copenhagen was a flop. Congress’s cap-and-trade bill is stalled. The EPA has delayed its climate rules. If you think this means American business is escaping the threat of carbon restraints, think again.

Most of the climate debate focuses on Washington. This misses a more clever and committed force - environmental groups that impose their agenda on companies via pressure, legal threat and sympathetic regulators. A textbook example has been quietly unfolding in the insurance sector. The question is whether governors will stand by to let green activists effectively regulate their businesses.

Since the beginning of the climate debate, environmental lobbies such as Ceres (a coalition of activists and investors that pressures companies to go green) have expressed particular interest in insurers. Rather than nitpick every company to adopt climate-change policies, these organizations realized it would be more efficient to target a gatekeeper. Everybody needs insurance. If insurers could be bludgeoned into requiring policyholders adopt carbon-mitigation practices as a requirement for insurance, the activists would have imposed their will widely and quickly.

Enter the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, the professional body for state regulators. Unlike, say, the National Governors Association, NAIC has a quasi-regulatory role. Insurance is complex, and the association develops model bills for state legislatures to vote on. This has at times been beneficial, but NAIC’S structure also means activist commissioners can drive its agenda.

No surprise then when several commissioners - with the prodding of outside green groups - several years ago dragged NAIC into the climate debate. It began innocently enough, with a task force charged with producing a “white paper.”

Yet under the direction of members such as Wisconsin Insurance Commissioner Sean Dilweg and Pennsylvania Commissioner Joel Ario - both climate crusaders - the task force turned itself into a national climate regulator. In particular, in unveiled its “Climate Risk Disclosure Survey,” a document insurers must complete and make public. This survey was not put forward for legislative approval, but rather presented as something state commissioners must issue unilaterally.

Among the questions: Does the company have a plan to assess, reduce or mitigate its emissions in its operations or organizations? Summarize steps the company has taken to encourage policyholders to reduce the losses caused by climate change-influenced events. Has the company considered the impact of climate change on its investment portfolio?

The survey - already issued in some states - flows from the tenuous position that climate change poses grave risks to business. As such it is designed to coerce insurers to adopt and require climate policies, or risk financial and legal fallout.

It’s also crafted to pressure insurers to shift their sizable investment portfolios away from, say, Exxon, and into the sort of “socially responsible” investments ballyhooed by Ceres. Companies that refuse will be prime targets for trial lawyers who claim they have failed to protect investors. It is, in effect, regulation via public and legal pressure.

The survey itself was crafted by the environmental lobby, using NAIC as its vehicle. Industry groups were amazed and horrified to see Ceres present at task force meetings, designing the survey language. It came out that the Rockefeller Family Fund - an ideologically green foundation - had provided grant money to fund “research assistance” for NAIC’s climate task force. Since when do state regulators require financial assistance from an outside advocacy organization?

Industry associations such as the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies have pushed back, and managed to have the survey cut to eight questions from its initial 23. The financial threshold of insurers that must take part is also higher, though will still encompass an estimated 70% of the industry by market share.

When I called the industry association CEO Chuck Chamness to ask him about this fight, he expressed the general frustration: “We are a good, green industry. What we don’t believe is that our industry should be made into an environmental traffic cop. If there is a need to change business behavior, go directly to the industry in question and regulate it. Don’t use us as leverage.”

Some states have already caught on to this end run around governors and legislatures. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels was the first to object, directing his insurance department to refrain from administering the survey. Officials in Mississippi and Missouri have followed suit; Rhode Island says the survey won’t be mandatory.

Activists groups have meanwhile sought to further spin this victory. Ceres went to Washington last year and made the argument to new Obama Securities and Exchange Commissioner Mary Schapiro that if even state insurance regulators were willing to act, surely so must the SEC? In January the agency issued new regulation requiring publicly listed companies to disclose their “climate risks” to investors.

Thus does an unaccountable political body, advised by unaccountable green groups, fundamentally rewrite the rules of business. Many state governors and politicians remain in the dark about this back door power grab. If they want a say in how their states enforce climate policy on the business community, they might want to intervene soon. 

"The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot,” according to a Commerce Department report published by the Washington Post. Writes the Post: “Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers. . . all point to a radical change in climate conditions and . . . unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone . . . Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones . . . while at many points well-known glaciers have entirely disappeared.”

More evidence of human-caused global warming? Hardly.

The above report of runaway Arctic warming is from a Washington Post story published Nov. 2, 1922 and bears an uncanny resemblance to the tales of global warming splattered across the front pages of today’s newspapers. It is one of many historical accounts published during the past 140 years describing climate changes and often predicting catastrophic cooling or warming.

Here are excerpts from a few of those accounts, appearing as early as 1870:

“The climate of New-York and the contiguous Atlantic seaboard has long been a study of great interest. We have just experienced a remarkable instance of its peculiarity. The Hudson River, by a singular freak of temperature, has thrown off its icy mantle and opened its waters to navigation.” - New York Times, Jan. 2, 1870

“Is our climate changing? The succession of temperate summers and open winters through several years, culminating last winter in the almost total failure of the ice crop throughout the valley of the Hudson, makes the question pertinent. The older inhabitants tell us that the winters are not as cold now as when they were young, and we have all observed a marked diminution of the average cold even in this last decade.” - New York Times, June 23, 1890

“The question is again being discussed whether recent and long-continued observations do not point to the advent of a second glacial period, when the countries now basking in the fostering warmth of a tropical sun will ultimately give way to the perennial frost and snow of the polar regions.” - New York Times, Feb. 24, 1895

Professor Gregory of Yale University stated that “another world ice-epoch is due.” He was the American representative to the Pan-Pacific Science Congress and warned that North America would disappear as far south as the Great Lakes, and huge parts of Asia and Europe would be “wiped out.” - Chicago Tribune, Aug. 9, 1923

“The discoveries of changes in the sun’s heat and southward advance of glaciers in recent years have given rise to the conjectures of the possible advent of a new ice age” - Time Magazine, Sept. 10, 1923

Headline: “America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776; Temperature Line Records a 25-year Rise” - New York Times, March 27, 1933

“America is believed by Weather Bureau scientists to be on the verge of a change of climate, with a return to increasing rains and deeper snows and the colder winters of grandfather’s day."- Associated Press, Dec. 15, 1934

Warming Arctic Climate Melting Glaciers Faster, Raising Ocean Level, Scientist Says - “A mysterious warming of the climate is slowly manifesting itself in the Arctic, engendering a “serious international problem,” Dr. Hans Ahlmann, noted Swedish geophysicist, said today. - New York Times, May 30, 1937

“Greenland’s polar climate has moderated so consistntly that communities of hunters have evolved into fishing villages. Sea mammals, vanishing from the west coast, have been replaced by codfish and other fish species in the area’s southern waters.” - New York Times, Aug. 29, 1954

“An analysis of weather records from Little America shows a steady warming of climate over the last half century. The rise in average temperature at the Antarctic outpost has been about five degrees Fahrenheit.” - New York Times, May 31, 1958

“Several thousand scientists of many nations have recently been climbing mountains, digging tunnels in glaciers, journeying to the Antarctic, camping on floating Arctic ice. Their object has been to solve a fascinating riddle: what is happening to the world’s ice? - New York Times, Dec. 7, 1958

“After a week of discussions on the causes of climate change, an assembly of specialists from several continents seems to have reached unanimous agreement on only one point: it is getting colder.” - New York Times, Jan. 30, 1961

“Like an outrigger canoe riding before a huge comber, the earth with its inhabitants is caught on the downslope of an immense climatic wave that is plunging us toward another Ice Age.” - Los Angeles Times, Dec. 23, 1962

“Col. Bernt Balchen, polar explorer and flier, is circulating a paper among polar specialists proposing that the Arctic pack ice is thinning and that the ocean at the North Pole may become an open sea within a decade or two.” - New York Times, Feb. 20, 1969

“By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half ...” - Life magazine, January 1970

“In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.” - Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day, 1970

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind. We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.” - Barry Commoner (Washington University), Earth Day, 1970

Because of increased dust, cloud cover and water vapor, “the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born.” - Newsweek magazine, Jan. 26, 1970

“The United States and the Soviet Union are mounting large-scale investigations to determine why the Arctic climate is becoming more frigid, why parts of the Arctic sea ice have recently become ominously thicker and whether the extent of that ice cover contributes to the onset of ice ages.” - New York Times, July 18, 1970

“In the next 50 years, fine dust that humans discharge into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel will screen out so much of the sun’s rays that the Earth’s average temperature could fall by six degrees. Sustained emissions over five to 10 years, could be sufficient to trigger an ice age.” - Washington Post, July 9, 1971

“It’s already getting colder. Some midsummer day, perhaps not too far in the future, a hard, killing frost will sweep down on the wheat fields of Saskatchewan, the Dakotas and the Russian steppes. . . .” - Los Angles Times, Oct. 24, 1971

“An international team of specialists has concluded from eight indexes of climate that there is no end in sight to the cooling trend of the last 30 years, at least in the Northern Hemisphere.” - New York Times, Jan. 5, 1978

“A poll of climate specialists in seven countries has found a consensus that there will be no catastrophic changes in the climate by the end of the century. But the specialists were almost equally divided on whether there would be a warming, a cooling or no change at all.” - New York Times, Feb. 18, 1978

“A global warming trend could bring heat waves, dust-dry farmland and disease, the experts said… Under this scenario, the resort town of Ocean City, Md., will lose 39 feet of shoreline by 2000 and a total of 85 feet within the next 25 years.” - San Jose Mercury News, June 11, 1986

“Global warming could force Americans to build 86 more power plants—at a cost of $110 billion—to keep all their air conditioners running 20 years from now, a new study says...Using computer models, researchers concluded that global warming would raise average annual temperatures nationwide two degrees by 2010, and the drain on power would require the building of 86 new midsize power plants - Associated Press, May 15, 1989

“New York will probably be like Florida 15 years from now.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept. 17, 1989 (actually Florida was more like New York 20 years later)

“[By] 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots . . . [By 1996] The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers . . . The Mexican police will round up illegal American migrants surging into Mexico seeking work as field hands.” - “Dead Heat: The Race Against the Greenhouse Effect,” Michael Oppenheimer and Robert H. Boyle, 1990.

“It appears that we have a very good case for suggesting that the El Ninos are going to become more frequent, and they’re going to become more intense and in a few years, or a decade or so, we’ll go into a permanent El Nino. So instead of having cool water periods for a year or two, we’ll have El Nino upon El Nino, and that will become the norm. And you’ll have an El Nino, that instead of lasting 18 months, lasts 18 years,” according to Dr. Russ Schnell, a scientist doing atmospheric research at Mauna Loa Observatory. - BBC, Nov. 7, 1997 (followed immediately in late 1998 by three straight years of La Nina)

“Scientists are warning that some of the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within ten years because of global warming. A build-up of greenhouse gases is blamed for the meltdown, which could lead to drought and flooding in the region affecting millions of people.”—The Birmingham Post in England, July 26, 1999

“This year (2007) is likely to be the warmest year on record globally, beating the current record set in 1998.” - ScienceDaily, Jan. 5, 2007

Arctic warming has become so dramatic that the North Pole may melt this summer (2008), report scientists studying the effects of climate change in the field. “We’re actually projecting this year that the North Pole may be free of ice for the first time [in history],” David Barber, of the University of Manitoba, told National Geographic News aboard the C.C.G.S. Amundsen, a Canadian research icebreaker. - National Geographic News, June 20, 2008

“So the climate will continue to change, even if we make maximum effort to slow the growth of carbon dioxide. Arctic sea ice will melt away in the summer season within the next few decades. Mountain glaciers, providing fresh water for rivers that supply hundreds of millions of people, will disappear - practically all of the glaciers could be gone within 50 years. . . Clearly, if we burn all fossil fuels, we will destroy the planet we know . . . We would set the planet on a course to the ice-free state, with sea level 75 metres higher. Climatic disasters would occur continually.” Dr. James Hansen (NASA GISS), The Observer, Feb. 15, 2009.

Climate change? Yes, there has been plenty of that during the past 140 years. Despite warnings by “experts of the day” of approaching climate disasters, mankind somehow managed to survive. A decade or so from now, after earth’s climate changes once again, those who are old enough will recall with amusement the time, early in the 21st century, when the world went crazy over an imaginary threat called “global warming.”

Kirk Myers is one of the few environmental reporters who is bothering to look at actual data - not reading from the guidelines provided by the Society of Environmental Journalists. We applaud him for his boldness.

Barack Obama promised many things on his way into office. Key among these was transparency and a vow to banish lobbyists from insider roles in the policy process.

Using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Competitive Enterprise Institute has confirmed that both promises are being aggressively violated.

In 2008 and 2009, Mr. Obama told Americans on no fewer than eight occasions to “think about what’s happening in countries like Spain [and] Germany” to see his model for successful “green jobs” policies, and what we should expect here.

Some Spanish academics and experts on that country’s wind- and solar-energy policies and outcomes took Mr. Obama up on his invitation, revealing Spain’s policies to be economic and employment disasters. The political embarrassment to the administration was obvious, with White House spokesman Robert Gibbs asked about the Spanish study at a press conference, and the president hurriedly substituted Denmark for Spain in his stump speech.

Team Obama was not amused, and they decided to do something about it. The crew that campaigned on change pulled out the oldest plan in the book - attack the messenger. The U.S. government’s response to foreign academics, assessing the impact in their own country of that foreign government’s policies, was to come after them in a move that internal e-mails say was unprecedented. They also show it was coordinated with the lobbyists for “Big Wind” and the left-wing Center for American Progress (CAP).

What emerged was an ideological hodgepodge of curious and unsupported claims published under the name of two young non-economist wind advocates. These taxpayer-funded employees offered green dogma in oddly strident terms and, along the way, a senior Obama political appointee may well have misled Congress.

Congress was naturally curious about how the administration would end up attacking foreign academics, so Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Republican, asked how these unprecedented offensives were launched, given that National Renewable Energy Lab and the Energy Department immediately offered conflicting statements to the media and a congressional oversight office.

Mr. Sensenbrenner asked for details from Cathy Zoi, assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy at the Department of Energy (DOE) and until recently, the CEO of Al Gore’s climate-advocacy group. She dodged four pointed questions.

However, the documents we uncovered reveal that her office was fully aware of the answers to these questions, but elected to keep the information to itself.

What transpired is difficult to discern with precision, as DOE continues to withhold numerous responsive documents. But it is clear that senior staff in Ms. Zoi’s office, and another under her authority, were told by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) of its concern over the foreign economic analysis because of the media and policymaker attention it was receiving.

The questions raised about green jobs also threatened the vast increase in Department of Energy spending to pursue green jobs. The Obama administration has poured cash into renewable-energy efficiency and renewable energy with abandon. One such program at the department has grown from a budget of $1.7 billion in 2008 to $18 billion in 2009.

What is clear is that the Department of Energy then worked with Center for American Progress and the industry lobby AWEA to produce an attack that would serve all their interests.

That may not be all because we have appealed energy’s decision to withhold numerous documents. Incredibly, it refuses to release documents exchanged between it and the pressure group CAP and lobbyist AWEA on the grounds that these are “inter-agency memoranda.”

So, lobbyists and lavishly funded political advocacy groups are, for purposes of secrecy, mere extensions of the Obama administration. Transparency in the Age of Obama means so transparent, you can’t see it.  See also this post from James Delinpole on grren jobs.

Chris Horner is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author of the best-selling “Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed” (Regnery, 2008).

And from Lucianne’s coverage of Chris’s story this comment on connecting the dots.

Here are some dots:

• The biggest producer of wind turbines in the US is General Electric. Most of these devices are manufactured overseas. The 1.5 MW machines are produced principally in Salzbergen Germany and Nobeljas, Spain. A more powerful 2.5 MW gearless version will be made by GE in China.

• GE also produces electric motors and recently acquired AstroPower the largest US producer of solar cells.

• The CEO and Chairman of GE is Jeffrey Immelt.

• A Year ago Immelt was named to President Obama’s Economic Advisory Board.

• President Obama is pushing hard for alternative enery resources and has allocated massive funding to support such technology as as wind turbines, electric automobiles and solar power.

• One hears scant mention of Immelt’s activities and the failure of wind-farm programs in Spain on business media programs like CNBC, or MSM news/talk shows like MSNBC.

• GE owns NBC Universal.

These are just some dots.

Now, •-•-•-•-•-•-• connect them.

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

Solar Industry Learns Lessons in Spanish Sun
By Elisabeth Rosenthal, New York Times

Two years ago, this gritty mining city hosted a brief 21st-century gold rush. Long famous for coal, Puertollano discovered another energy source it had overlooked: the relentless, scorching sun.  Two years ago, this gritty mining city hosted a brief 21st-century gold rush. Long famous for coal, Puertollano discovered another energy source it had overlooked: the relentless, scorching sun. Puertollano, a mining center, has wooed the solar industry. Armed with generous incentives from the Spanish government to jump-start a national solar energy industry, the city set out to replace its failing coal economy by attracting solar companies, with a campaign slogan: “The Sun Moves Us.”

Soon, Puertollano, home to the Museum of the Mining Industry, had two enormous solar power plants, factories making solar panels and silicon wafers, and clean energy research institutes. Half the solar power installed globally in 2008 was installed in Spain.

Farmers sold land for solar plants. Boutiques opened. And people from all over the world, seeing business opportunities, moved to the city, which had suffered from 20 percent unemployment and a population exodus.

But as low-quality, poorly designed solar plants sprang up on Spain’s plateaus, Spanish officials came to realize that they would have to subsidize many of them indefinitely, and that the industry they had created might never produce efficient green energy on its own.

In September the government abruptly changed course, cutting payments and capping solar construction. Puertollano’s brief boom turned bust. Factories and stores shut, thousands of workers lost jobs, foreign companies. Read more here.

8 Mar 10 - “Almost all of the ice-covered regions of the Earth are melting - and seas are rising,” said Al Gore in an op-ed piece in the New York Times on February 27. Both parts of Gore’s statement are false. Never mind that Mr. Gore makes only passing reference to the IPCC’s fraudulent claims that the Himalayan glaciers will all melt by 2035. ("A flawed overestimate,” he explains.)

Never mind that Mr. Gore dismisses the IPCC’s fraudulent claims that the oceans are rising precipitously. ("Partly inaccurate,” he huffs.) Never mind that Mr. Gore completely ignores the admission by the CRU’s disgraced former director Phil Jones that global temperatures have essentially remained unchanged for the past 15 years. I’ll let someone else dissect Gore’s lawyering comments, and concentrate on just the one sentence about melting ice, because neither part of that sentence is true. Contrary to Gore’s assertions, almost all of the ice-covered regions of the Earth are growing, not melting - and the seas are not rising.

Let’s look at the facts.

If you click on the words “are melting” in Gore’s article, you’re taken to a paper by Michael Zemp at the University of Zurich. Mr. Zemp begins his paper by warning that “glaciers around the globe continue to melt at high rates.” However, if you bother to actually read the paper, you learn that Zemp’s conclusion is based on measurements of “more than 80 glaciers.” Considering that the Himalayas boast more than 15,000 glaciers, a study of “more than 80 glaciers” hardly seems sufficient to warrant such a catastrophic pronouncement.  Especially when you learn that of those 80 glaciers, several are growing.

Growing. Not melting. “In Norway, many maritime glaciers were able to gain mass,” Zemp concedes. ("Able to gain mass” means growing.) In North America, Zemp also concedes, “some positive values were reported from the North Cascade Mountains and the Juneau Ice Field.” ("Displaying positive values” means growing.) Remember, we’re still coming out of the last ice age. Ice is supposed to melt as we come out of an ice age. The ice has been melting for 11,000 years. Why should today be any different? I’m guessing that most Canadians and Northern Europeans are very happy that the ice has been melting.

Unfortunately, that millenniums-long melting trend now appears to be changing. No matter how assiduously Mr. Gore tries to ignore it, almost all of the ice-covered regions of the Earth are now gaining mass. (Or, displaying positive values, if you will.) For starters, let’s look at those Himalayan glaciers. In a great article, entitled “World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown,” Jonathan Leake and Chris Hastings show that the IPCC’s fraudulent claims were based on “speculation” and “not supported by any formal research.”

As a matter of fact, many Himalayan glaciers are growing. In a defiant act of political incorrectness, some 230 glaciers in the western Himalayas - including Mount Everest, K2 and Nanga Parbat - are actually growing.  “These are the biggest mid-latitude glaciers in the world,” says John Shroder of the University of Nebraska-Omaha. “And all of them are either holding still, or advancing.”

And get this. Eighty seven of the glaciers have surged forward since the 1960s. So much for Mr. Gore’s “more than 80 glaciers.” (I don’t know how many Himalayan glaciers are being monitored, but my guess would be fewer than a thousand, so it’s possible that hundreds more are growing. There aren’t enough glaciologists in the world to monitor them all.) But we don’t need to look to the Himalayas for growing glaciers. Glaciers are growing in the United States. Yes, glaciers are growing in the United States.

Look at Washington State. The Nisqually Glacier on Mt. Rainier is growing. The Emmons Glacier on Mt. Rainier is growing. Glaciers on Glacier Peak in northern Washington are growing. And Crater Glacier on Mt. Saint Helens is now larger than it was before the 1980 eruption. (I don’t think all of the glaciers in Washington or Alaska are being monitored either.) Or look at California. All seven glaciers on California’s Mount Shasta are growing. This includes three-mile-long Whitney glacier, the state’s largest. Three of Mount Shasta’s glaciers have doubled in size since 1950.

Or look at Alaska. Glaciers are growing in Alaska for the first time in 250 years. In May of last year, Alaska’s Hubbard Glacier was advancing at the rate of seven feet (two meters) per day - more than half-a-mile per year. And in Icy Bay, at least three glaciers advanced a third of a mile (one-half kilometer) in one year. Oh, by the way. The Juneau Icefield, with its “positive values,” covers 1,505 square miles (3,900 sq km) and is the fifth-largest ice field in the Western Hemisphere. Rather interesting to know that Gore’s own source admits that the fifth-largest ice field in the Western Hemisphere is growing, don’t you think?

But this mere handful of growing glaciers is just an anomaly, the erstwhile Mr. Gore would have you believe. Well, let’s look at a few other countries. Perito Moreno Glacier, the largest glacier in Argentina, is growing. Pio XI Glacier, the largest glacier in Chile, is growing. Glaciers are growing on Mt. Logan, the tallest mountain in Canada. Glaciers are growing on Mt. Blanc, the tallest mountain in France.

Glaciers are growing in Norway, says the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE). And the last time I checked, all 50 glaciers in New Zealand were growing.  But this is nothing. These glaciers are babies when you look at our planet’s largest ice masses, namely, the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. Contrary to what you may have heard, both of those huge ice sheets are growing.

In 2007, Antarctica set a new record for most ice extent since 1979, says meteorologist Joe D’Aleo. While the Antarctic Peninsula area has warmed in recent years, and ice near it diminished during the summer, the interior of Antarctica has been colder and the ice extent greater.  Antarctic sea ice is also increasing. According to Australian Antarctic Division glaciology program head Ian Allison, sea ice losses in west Antarctica over the past 30 years have been more than offset by increases in the Ross Sea region, just one sector of east Antarctica.

The Antarctic Peninsula, where the ice has been melting, is only about 1/50th the size of east Antarctica, where the ice has been growing. Saying that all of Antarctica is melting is like looking at the climate of Oregon and saying that this applies to the entire United States. There was not any evidence of significant change in the mass of ice shelves in east Antarctica nor any indication that its ice cap was melting, says Dr. Allison. “The only significant calvings in Antarctica have been in the west.” And he cautioned that calvings of the magnitude seen recently in west Antarctica might not be unusual. “A paper to be published soon by the British Antarctic Survey in the journal Geophysical Research Letters is expected to confirm that over the past 30 years, the area of sea ice around the continent has expanded.”

What about Greenland? Greenland’s ice-cap has thickened slightly in recent years despite wide predictions of a thaw triggered by global warming, said a team of scientists in October 2005.  The 3,000-meter (9,842-feet) thick ice-cap is a key concern in debates about climate change because a total melt would raise world sea levels by about 7 meters.

But satellite measurements show that more snow is falling and thickening the ice-cap, especially at high altitudes, according to the report in the journal Science. Te overall ice thickness changes are approximately plus 5 cm (1.9 inches) per year or 54 cm (21.26 inches) over 11 years, according to the experts at Norwegian, Russian and U.S. institutes led by Ola Johannessen at the Mohn Sverdrup center for Global Ocean Studies and Operational Oceanography in Norway. Not overwhelming growth, certainly, but a far cry from the catastrophic melting that we’ve been lead to believe. 

Think about that. The Antarctic Ice Sheet is almost twice as big as the contiguous United States. Put the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets together, and they’re one hundred times bigger than all of the rest of the world’s glaciers combined. More than 90 percent of the world’s glaciers are growing, in other words, and all we hear about are the ones that are shrinking.

But if so many of the world’s glaciers are growing, how can sea levels remain the same? They can’t. The sea level models are wrong. During the last ice age, sea levels stood some 370 feet (100 meters) lower than today. That’s where all of the moisture came from to create those two-mile-high sheets of ice that covered so much of the north. And just as the ice has been melting for 11,000 years, so too were sea levels rising during those same years.

But the rising has stopped. Forget those IPCC claims. Sea levels are not rising, says Dr. Nils-Axel Morner, one-time expert reviewer for the IPCC.  Dr. Morner, who received his PhD in geology in 1969, is one of the greatest - if not the greatest - sea level experts in the world today. He has worked with sea level problems for 40 years in areas scattered all over the globe. “There is no change,” says Morner. “Sea level is not changing in any way.” “There is absolutely no sea-level rise in Tuvalo,” Morner insists. “There is no change here, and there is zero sea-level rise in Bangladesh. If anything, sea levels have lowered in Bangladesh.” “We do not need to fear sea-level rise,” says Morner. “(But) we should have a fear of those people who fooled us.”

So there you have it. More falsehoods from Al Gore, the multimillionaire businessman who some say is set to become the world’s first carbon billionaire.
Our glaciers are growing, not melting - and the seas are not rising. I agree with Dr. Morner, but I’d make it a tad stronger. We should have a fear of those people who have conned us.See post and more here.

On June 23, 1988, a young and previously unknown NASA computer modeller, James Hansen, appeared before a United States Congressional hearing on climate change. On that occasion, Dr. Hansen used a graph to convince his listeners that late 20th century warming was taking place at an accelerated rate, which, it being a scorching summer’s day in Washington, a glance out of the window appeared to confirm.

He wrote later in justification, in the Washington Post (February 11, 1989), that “the evidence for an increasing greenhouse effect is now sufficiently strong that it would have been irresponsible if I had not attempted to alert political leaders”.

Hansen’s testimony was taken up as a lead news story, and within days the great majority of the American public believed that a climate apocalypse was at hand, and the global warming hare was off and running. Thereby, Dr. Hansen became transformed into the climate media star who is shortly going to wow the ingenues in the Adelaide Festival audience.

Fifteen years later, in the Scientific American in March, 2004, Hansen came to write that “Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been appropriate at one time, when the public and decision-makers were relatively unaware of the global warming issue. Now, however, the need is for demonstrably objective climate forcing scenarios consistent with what is realistic”.

This conversion to honesty came too late, however, for in the intervening years thousands of other climate scientists had meanwhile climbed onto the Hansenist funding gravy-train. Currently, global warming alarmism is fuelled by an estimated worldwide expenditure on related research and greenhouse bureaucracy of more than US$10 billion annually.

Scientists and bureaucrats being only too human, the power of such sums of money to corrupt not only the politics of greenhouse, but even the scientific process itself, should not be underestimated. In recognition of these events, the term Hansenism is now sometimes used to describe the climate hysteria which had, until recently, gripped western media sources and political, business and public opinion in a deadly grasp.

Histories of science contain an account of the ideological control of Soviet biology during the mid-20th century by plant scientist Trofim Lysenko, who by 1940 had risen to be Director of the influential Institute of Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Lysenko and his supporters rejected the “dangerous Western concepts” of Mendelian genetics and Darwinian evolution. They preferred the Lamarckian view of the inheritance of acquired characteristics; for instance, that cows could be trained to give more milk and their offspring would then inherit this trait.

Whilst this was not an unreasonable hypothesis to erect in the early 19th century, by the 1930s the idea had been tested in many ways and was known to be wrong. Requiring its application to agricultural and allied biological research in the USSR was disastrous, not least in the vicious persecution of scientists that took place, and the legacy of this sad episode still disadvantages Soviet biology today.

Lysenkoism grew from four main roots:
• a necessity to demonstrate the practical relevance of science to the needs of society;
• the amassing of evidence to show the “correctness” of the concept as a substitute for causal proof;
• noble cause corruption, whereby data are manipulated to support a cause which is seen as a higher truth; and
• ideological zeal, such that dissidents are silenced as “enemies of the truth”.

See full SPPI essay here.

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. 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.

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

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.

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

Climategate 2.0 - The NASA Files: It’s The Data, Not The Globe, That’s Cooked (Part 1)
To the activist judges and activist journalists we know, add the activist scientists we don’t. Bill Whittle talks to bestselling author Christopher C. Horner, author of Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed. See it here.

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

Monckton’s Sydney Australia lecture and Q&A videos here courtesy of Dr. Bob Carter.

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

Henk Tennekes - He Was right After All

Read all about this skeptic pioneer - who faced the wrath of the warmers but is now being vindicated here.

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

Here is a series of radio interviews by Kim Greenhouse on It’s Rainmaking Time:

Sea Level Not Rising
by Kim Greenhouse on February 22, 2010

Geologist and author Dr. Nils-Axel Morner tells us what’s really happening with sea levels, and why the truth really needs to be known. Perhaps the most graphically disturbing piece of information in the climate arena is the assertion that sea levels will rise to a catastrophic degrees. An Inconvenient Truth scared many people, and the sea level issue continues to worry them. The imagery from the movie is still etched in our minds and hearts. Imagery is powerful even if it is untrue. It lingers in the subconscious mind, where it can affect our ability to think critically and receive whole-systems information. We must be vigilant to prevent this.

In this show, Dr. Nils-Axel Morner clarifies many misconceptions about rising sea levels and offers a comprehensive understanding of this subject. Dr Morner is highly qualified to speak on the matter. He was the former President of International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA). Under his charge, when INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, after deliberations and discussions at several international meetings, declared a possible sea level change of +5 cm plus or minus 15cm by the year 2100, it was based on a huge amount of world-wide data gathered by scientists from different parts of the globe. 26 Feb 10 - Dr Nils-Axel Morner, geologist, physicist, and one-time expert reviewer for the IPCC, announced this week that, contrary to IPCC claims, sea levels are not rising. 

“Sea level is not changing in any way, “ said Dr Morner in an hour-long interview with Kim Greenhouse of “It’s Rainmaking Time.”

Dr. Morner, who received his PhD in geology in 1969, is one of the greatest - if not the greatest - experts on sea levels in the world today. He has worked with sea level problems for 40 years in areas scattered all over the globe. There is no change, says Morner. There is absolutely no sea-level rise in Tuvalo, there is no change here, and there is zero sea-level rise in Bangladesh. If anything, sea levels have lowered in Bangladesh.

We do not need to fear sea-level rise, says Morner. However, “we should have a fear of those people who fooled us.”

Rethinking Wind Power
By Kim Greenhouse, It’s Rainmaking Time, February 5, 2010

In this show, guest Lawrence Dwight, Jr. of Dwight Investment Counsel gives us valuable insight into true energy independence and the economics of wind power. We tend to perceive it as an exciting, cost-effective, sustainable energy solution for the future. It seems very alluring. But is it really as great as we’ve been told?

The details suggest that wind power may not be as affordable or efficient as we thought. Of course everything has its place, but where does wind power fit in? How does it work? And who benefits from using it? Tune in to find out! Go here.

The Art of Weather
By Kim Greenhouse on January 11, 2010

When I learned about a meteorologist who was teaching educational weather programs at elementary, middle, and high schools, I became very excited! Voted the best weatherman in Palm Beach, Art Horn was a weather anchor for 25 years. He spoke at the first International Climate Change Conference in New York in 2008. Now he teaches a popular program about weather that informs audiences about the realities and myths of climate change.

Art founded the program “The Art of Weather” and writes online for The Energy Tribune, Pajamas Media, and China Daily. He received an Emmy nomination and a Telly award for a documentary he produced called “Hurricane: Direct Hit”.  Join us for an enlightening interview that is sure to broaden your perspectives on climate change! Click here for more and streaming audio interview.

An Inquiry About Polar Bears With Dr. Mitch Taylor
By Kim Greenhouse on January 8, 2010

We have heard plenty about diminishing polar bear populations and the loss of their habitats due to melting sea ice. I thought it was about time that we defined an initial frame of reference for polar bears in order to empower personal inquiry into their status. Dr. Mitch Taylor has 30 years of professional experience studying polar bears firsthand in the field. Consider this segment an introduction to polar bears through one man’s professional life amongst them.

Now more than ever, anyone doing this kind of work is worth listening to and learning from. Mitch Taylor’s perspective is refreshing and rare. How many people do you know that have lived such a life? Spend some time with us and learn about these beautiful animals that many of us have come to love. No matter how much confusion and conflict may surround the concept of climate, one thing is for sure: many of us are concerned about our friends, the polar bears. Click here to hear interview.

The International Climate Change Treaty at Copenhagen
By Kim Greenhouse on December 9, 2009

Lord Viscount Monckton of Brenchley joins us live from the Copenhagen Climate Conference to reveal the legal underbelly of this event, and to share his take on the entire new international power deal being sealed in Denmark. The focus of this conference is the introduction of one of the most critical International Frameworks outside of the Lisbon Treaty, the EU and the New Call for a World Banking System and Currency.

If you want to hear the single most controversial figure in the Climate Change arena - one who is well-grounded in the evolution of the IPCC and the Science itself, who understands and has read the new legal framework which is about to be signed - please tune in. He is with SPPI. Here the interview here.

CO2: The Breath of Life or A Dangerous Pollutant?
By Kim Greenhouse on December 15, 2009

On December 7th, 2009 - Day 1 of the Copenhagen Climate Conference - the EPA declared that carbon dioxide (CO2) is now a pollutant. I thought that we had better get to the seed of the matter right away and explore scientific facts about CO2. Instead of focusing on the declarations of major stakeholders in the new industrial complex, I wanted to learn how CO2 affects Nature. What I discovered may startle you.

I personally believed that carbon dioxide was a pollutant. For many years, that has been the official story: that CO2 is the root cause of “Global Warming”. However, Nature apparently views it as “the breath of life”.

I reached out to someone who has studied CO2 for many years in order to get a clear perspective. On the spur of the moment, I called Sherwood Idso, the president of The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide & Global Change, who graciously granted me an interview on short notice. I’m glad I did it! His many years of experience and multi-disciplinary expertise were very enlightening. Listen and see what you think. See CO2Science. Here interview here.

A True Inquiry Into Climate & Weather, Part 2: The Plot Thickens
By Kim Greenhouse on November 14, 2009

The plot really does thicken as we continue our inquiry into climate and weather. The verifiable data offered in this interview is both fascinating and disturbing. Astrophysicist Dr. Willie Soon (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and climatologist Dr. David Legates (University of Delaware) brief us on key scientific data that cannot be overlooked or dismissed.

I deeply appreciate the gift of real knowledge that these men have brought us. Speaking with clarity, passion, and openness, they identify numerous factors that leave the average activist and global warming advocate with a totally different understanding of what is really occurring. They display a rare courage in standing up for the integrity of verifiable science as they continue to speak truth to power against vicious attacks.

Have a listen. See what you come up with and ask the questions that need to be asked. If addressed improperly, this incredibly complex up-and-coming piece of inquiry could lead humanity to shocking and chilling new discoveries about climate that will overshadow global politics and outweigh any ideology.

A True Inquiry Into Climate & Weather, Part 1: A Hot Potato
By Kim Greenhouse on October 25, 2009

This broadcast segment addresses the urgent need for verifiable facts about climate and weather that have been unable to make their way in a cohesive, understandable way to the public. The first in a multi-part series, this show features Bob Felix, author of Not by Fire, But By Ice and Magnetic Reversals & Evolutionary Leaps. Bob has spent considerable time researching climate, extinctions, magnetic reversals and ice ages. His books present staggering evidence of global cooling that suggests an ice age could begin at any moment (i.e. NOW!).

As I prepared for this interview, I came across two other individuals that I felt would contribute greatly to the discussion. Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo (of http://icecap.us) and climatologist Dr. Tim Ball join us to provide a broader perspective on climate change and explain what’s missing from the established climate dialogues. The information these men bring to bear will shake you to your very foundations!

Well-meaning politicians must open their field of receptivity to improve their understanding of climate in a larger context - one that is devoid of political and economic survival, peer pressure, fear of marginalization, and fear of losing their positions. As a result, a gross body of distortion and misinformation exists about the climate dangers we are truly facing.

The truth is that very few of us understand climate or weather. Most of us have taken a blind faith approach to researching these subjects. Unfortunately, this will be to the great detriment of all of humanity. In order to adequately prepare for coming changes, we need a different framework to quickly and properly understand weather and climate. Get ready to learn things you have never known before about weather, climate, and the business of climate change! Listen here.

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

The Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI) - a DC think tank - has produced a science-based critique of a recent film produced by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The SPPI paper is entitled Acid Test: The
Global Challenge of Ocean Acidification - A New Propaganda Film by the National Resources Defense Council Fails the Acid Test of Real World Data

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

Fourth International Conference on Climate Change on May 16-18, 2010, Chicago, Illinois.

Make plans now to attend ICCC-4, an international conference on climate change calling attention to new scientific research on the causes and consequences of climate change, and to economic analysis of the cost and effectiveness of proposals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

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

75% of American Meteorological Society Broadcasters Reject IPCC Man-made Climate Claims
By Bill Murray, Weather Historian, Alabamawx.com

A survey of weathercasters’ feelings on global warming was published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. It had some interesting findings. There were 121 respondents. 94% of the respondents had at least one of the three major seals.

Television meteorologists are the official scientists for most television stations. The overwhelming majority felt comfortable in that role for their stations. The majority agreed that the role of discussing climate change did fall to them.

The eyebrow raising responses:

“Respond to this IPCC conclusion: “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.” Only 35% agreed or strongly agreed. 34% disagreed or strongly disagreed.

“Most of the warming since 1950 is likely human induced.” A full 50% disagreed or strongly disagreed. 25% were neutral on this question. Only 8% strongly agreed.

“Global climate models are reliable in their predictions for a warming of the planet.” Only 3% strongly agreed and another 16% agreed. A full 62% disagreed or strongly disagreed.

“Respond to one TV weathercaster’s Quote saying “Global warming is a scam.” Responses were mixed. The largest percentage was neutral, at 26%. A total of 45% disagreed (23%) or strongly disagreed (22%). 19% of the respondents agreed with this statement and 10% strongly agreed.

The amount of uncertainty found in this survey tells that even the most educated and motivated communicators are still uncertain about the truth on this issue. Interesting article.

The entire text can be found here.

ICECAP NOTE: The broadcasters asked for more materials such as powerpoints and graphics which they could use to better study and present climate change.

Here is an excellent very detailed time-line and forensic analysis on climate-gatedone by an Australian physicist.

Here is an excellent source of short videos by the top scientists to provide an alternative to the dogma from COMET and Heidi Cullen and Climate Central and sadly The Weather Channel.  KUSI’s Coleman’s Corner has four videos by Dr. Richard Lindzen, Dr. Willie Soon, John Coleman and Joe D’Aleo here.

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.

Excellent libraries of stories and papers and reviews can be found at Climate Science weblog by Roger Pielke Sr., CO2 Science site with the Idsos, Watts Up With That with Anthony Watts and Friends, World Climate Report, SPPI compiled by Bob Ferguson, Climate Audit by Steve McIntyre and Friends of Science with Tim Ball and others. This is just a few web sources.

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

See Climate Theater with a collection of the best climate skeptic films and documentaries here. See additonal scientific youtubes here. Note that many more are coming, in part thanks to your donations.

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

See 500 Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of “Man-Made” Global Warming here. See more here and still more annotated 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.

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

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:

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.