By Tony Newbery, Harmless Sky, 24 October 2010
Do you remember the heady days of the general election campaign, back in April when all three party leaders vied with each other to assure a troubled nation that, if they were elected, our devastated economy would be restored to robust health by the creation of ‘green jobs’? Figures of hundreds-of thousands, and even millions, were bandied about. Terms like ‘energy efficiency’, ‘energy security’, ‘de-carbonisation’, ‘low carbon economy’ and ‘green industrial revolution’ were duly trotted out. But those of us who were watching carefully noticed that these initiatives were only mentioned in passing, and the politicians seemed relieved when they could move on to other parts of the policy agenda.
It’s true that Nick Clegg’s commitment to this bright new world shone through rather more convincingly than the others, but then he could not have seriously expected to become deputy prime minister in a coalition with the Tories a few weeks later.
On Wednesday, George Osborne delivered his much heralded statement on spending cuts to a packed House of Commons and a nervous nation. It quite soon became clear that a ‘statement’ was not quite what all this was about. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was in fact delivering a budget, and one on a scale that dwarfs the usual annual event of that name. The sums of money he was juggling were huge, and the consequences of his strategy failing far more perilous.
So how have the heady aspirations that revolve around all that is most green and sustainable fed through into the cold reality of economic planning for the next five years? Here are the relevant passages from the Chancellor’s speech; they won’t take long to read.
Long term investment in the capacity of our transport, our science, our green energy will all help move Britain from its decade long dependence on one sector of the economy in one part of the country - and the ruin that has led to.
... when money is short we should ruthlessly prioritise those areas of public spending which are most likely to support economic growth, including investments in our transport and green energy infrastructure, our science base and the skills and education of our citizens.
Do the references to ‘greenness’ herald major initiatives that will transform the economy, the energy infrastructure of the country and the way that we live? Or are they just necessary platitudes to stave off trouble with the more environmentally minded half of the coalition? The answer becomes all too clear when Mr Osborne gets down to specifics.
Britain is a world leader in scientific research. And that is vital to our future economic success. That is why I am proposing that we do not cut the cash going to the science budget. It will be protected at 4.6 billion pounds a year.
Building on the Wakeham Review of science spending, we have found that within the science budget significant savings of 324 million pounds can be found through efficiency.
If these are implemented, then with this relatively protected settlement I am confident that our country’s scientific output can increase over the next four years. We will also: invest 220 million pounds in the UK centre for Medical Research and Innovation at St Pancras; fund the molecular biology lab in Cambridge; the Animal Health Institute in Pirbright; and the Diamond synchrotron in Oxford.
Research and technological innovation will also help us with one of the greatest scientific challenges of our times - climate change - and it will support new jobs in low-carbon industries.
So today, even in these straightened times, we commit public capital funding of up to 1 billion pounds to one of the world’s first commercial scale carbon capture and storage demonstration projects.
We will also invest over 200 million pounds in the development of off-shore wind technology and manufacturing at port sites.
Yesterday, protestors scaled the Treasury urging us to proceed with our idea for a Green Investment Bank.
Mr Speaker, it’s the first time anyone has protested in favour of a bank. We will go ahead. I have set aside in this Spending Review 1 billion pounds of funding for that Bank, but I hope much more will be raised from the private sector and the proceeds of future government asset sales.
The aim of all these investments is for Britain to be a leader of the new green economy. Creating jobs, saving energy costs, reducing carbon emissions.
We will also introduce incentives to help families reduce their bills. We will introduce a funded Renewable Heat Incentive.
Our Green Deal will encourage home energy efficiency at no upfront cost to home-owners and allow us to phase out the Warm Front programme.
Overall, the total resource settlement for the Department for Energy and Climate Change will fall by an average 5% a year - but there will be a large increase in capital spending, partly to meet unavoidable commitments we’ve been left on nuclear decommissioning.
DEFRA will deliver resource savings of an average 8% a year - but we will fund a major improvement in our flood defences and coastal erosion management that will provide better protection for 145,000 homes.
When you strip out the window dressing, what is left amounts to this:
The science budget is to be frozen at 4.6bn a year, with the forlorn hope that efficiency savings will allow research effort to help combat climate change and support new green jobs will grow nonetheless. Taking inflation into account, this looks like a year-on-year reduction in spending on scientific research even though the chancellor goes on to say that research is just what we need at the moment. It sounds as though business as usual with a tightened belt is the new order of the day for scientists.
Four research projects will attract 220 million pounds. None have anything to do with green energy or climate change.
The apparent pledge of 1 billion pounds for ‘commercial scale carbon capture and storage demonstration projects’ is hedged with the weasel words ‘up to’. If I was a green activist that would worry me.
Allocating 200 million pounds to offshore wind infrastructure is no more than tossing loose change to the crowd. It may be significant that this is likely to be spent in the North East, an electorally very sensitive area for both Liberals and Conservatives.
Just 1 billion pounds has been ‘set aside’ - those weasel words again - for the green bank that is supposed to finance the green energy revolution, with a pious hope that something will turn up from the private sector or asset sales. To put this in context, 30 billion pounds was allocated to transport infrastructure in other parts of the speech.
To qualify for the Warm Front scheme, you needed to be on benefits, which isn’t very fashionable at the moment so it’s being dumped, which seems a pity as it helped those on low incomes, and the especially the elderly, with insulation and new efficient heating systems.
The new Green Deal doesn’t arrive until 2012. It is a government sponsored mortgage scheme that allows people to borrow money from the government to make their homes more energy efficient. Repayments are made via utility bills over twenty-five years. The likely take-up rate is anyone’s guess, and Chris Huhne’s Department of Energy and Climate Change press release, suggesting that the new scheme will create a quarter-of-a-million new jobs by 2030 makes amusing reading. Significantly, the Chancellor did not mention Huhne’s job creation claim in his speech.
If the government is serious about a green energy revolution, then one might expect that DECC would have escaped the axe. Instead it faces a cut which is magnified by the fact that much of the department’s budget is consumed by nuclear decommissioning liabilities incurred decades ago. DECC are to receive further help with this, but no mention of more money for green projects.
DEFRA, the ancestral home of climate alarmism, faces an even more swinging cut. Those who remember the havoc caused to new housing unwisely built on flood planes over the last few years, and the last government’s neglect of coastal defences, will not be surprised that there is an allocation - albeit an unspecified amount - to address these problems.
With major statements on the economy from government, it is often days before the true impact emerges, so I’ve been keeping an eye on the media to see what priority the green revolution would receive in interviews with the main protagonists.
First up was a rather worried looking Danny Alexander on Newsnight. In response to a series of taunting questions from Jeremy Paxman about the half-million jobs in the public sector that will be lost as a result of the cuts - with maybe another half-million to come -, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury reeled off a list of ways in which the government would help the private sector grow and provide new jobs: supporting the creation of small businesses, tax breaks for businesses, a ‘falling path’ for corporation tax, supporting exports ... All this, claimed an increasingly flustered Danny, would create two million new jobs in the private sector. Only when a persistent Paxo asked whether the people of Swansea would have to get on their bikes to look for work when the Passport Office there closes did the chief secretary remember the Green Bank, and suggest that might be able to help. His tormentor didn’t let up, “Your finding an awful lot from a single billion, aren’t you’, he sneered. Alexander insisted that a lot more than that would go into the bank from asset sales, but he looked as though he was trying to convince himself rather than the audience. He certainly wasn’t suggesting that the 1 billion ‘set asside’ for the bank was a realistic sum.
The next morning George Osborne was interviewed at length by the ever astute and well-informed Evan Davis on the Today programme. The green revolution got very short shrift when the Chancellor said that capital going into transport infrastructure and green investment would help us through the bad times. No specifics were offered, and no follow-up question was asked by the interviewer.
The Chancellor’s statement seems to contain just enough greenwash to keep the Liberals quiet, and with other measures that are already in place, will allow the claim that this is the ‘greenest government ever’ to be wheeled out when necessary. But the real situation is far more worrying. The only thing that is worse than a full-blown green revolution that would have an enormous impact on the cost of energy and the competitiveness of industry is a half-blown green revolution that is heading nowhere and cannot be halted because of the momentum that it has gained.
For the moment, the glorious prospect of us all having a windmill at the bottom of our garden - and probably a solar panel where the sun don’t shine too - now seems to exist only in the realms of political rhetoric.
Read more here. H/T Benny Peiser.
Climate Realists
When Piers Corbyn mentioned to me recently that several MP’s were going to attend the second anniversary of the ”Climate Fools Day” rally held at the Houses of Parliament on the 27th October, I had to pinch myself. Two years have nearly passed since the signing of the UK “Climate Change Bill” and wow have attitudes to “deniers” changed, all of a sudden we (flatearthers, and anything else the misinformed public want to call us) have become a group of people politicians want to take more seriously.
There has been a lot of talk in the UK about public spending “cuts” recently , and we could now be part of a review that could save billions if not trillions world wide. But first things first, we hope the MP’s who attend the “Climate Fools Day” meeting come away with some basic scientific facts about “Man Made” climate change and spread the news through their various constituencies that the sky is not, and never has been, falling!
This will mean that MP’s rather then having a strategy of trying to win votes by saving mankind from certain death by CO2, can now can go out and win votes about what they can save on “green tax” outlined below by Christopher Booker, who will ALSO be attending the meeting.
For more information on “Climate Fools Day” see comments from Piers here, more to follow very soon and note, there are still some seats available, contact Piers direct for more information.
Click the following link to read Spending review: The ‘cuts’ that mean public spending soars by Christopher Booker.
By Michael D. Lemonick, Scientific American
In trying to understand the Judith Curry phenomenon, it is tempting to default to one of two comfortable and familiar story lines.
For most of her career, Curry, who heads the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has been known for her work on hurricanes, Arctic ice dynamics and other climate-related topics. But over the past year or so she has become better known for something that annoys, even infuriates, many of her scientific colleagues. Curry has been engaging actively with the climate change skeptic community, largely by participating on outsider blogs such as Climate Audit, the Air Vent and the Blackboard. Along the way, she has come to question how climatologists react to those who question the science, no matter how well established it is. Although many of the skeptics recycle critiques that have long since been disproved, others, she believes, bring up valid points - and by lumping the good with the bad, climate researchers not only miss out on a chance to improve their science, they come across to the public as haughty. “Yes, there’s a lot of crankology out there,” Curry says. “But not all of it is. If only 1 percent of it or 10 percent of what the skeptics say is right, that is time well spent because we have just been too encumbered by groupthink.”
She reserves her harshest criticism for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). For most climate scientists the major reports issued by the United Nations-sponsored body every five years or so constitute the consensus on climate science. Few scientists would claim the IPCC is perfect, but Curry thinks it needs thoroughgoing reform. She accuses it of “corruption.” “I’m not going to just spout off and endorse the IPCC,” she says, “because I think I don’t have confidence in the process.”
Whispered discreetly at conferences or in meeting rooms, these claims might be accepted as part of the frequently contentious process of a still evolving area of science. Stated publicly on some of the same Web sites that broke the so-called Climategate e-mails last fall, they are considered by many to be a betrayal, earning Curry epithets from her colleagues ranging from “naive” to “bizarre” to “nasty” to worse.
All of which sets up the two competing story lines, which are, on the surface at least, equally plausible. The first paints Curry as a peacemaker - someone who might be able to restore some civility to the debate and edge the public toward meaningful action. By frankly acknowledging mistakes and encouraging her colleagues to treat skeptics with respect, she hopes to bring about a meeting of the minds.
The alternative version paints her as a dupe - someone whose well-meaning efforts have only poured fuel on the fire. By this account, engaging with the skeptics is pointless because they cannot be won over. They have gone beyond the pale, taking their arguments to the public and distributing e-mails hacked from personal computer accounts rather than trying to work things out at conferences and in journal papers.
Which of these stories is more accurate would not matter much if the field of science in question was cosmology, say, or paleontology, or some other area without any actual impact on people’s lives. Climate science obviously is not like that. The experts broadly agree that it will take massive changes in agriculture, energy production, and more to avert a potential disaster.
In this context, figuring out how to shape the public debate is a matter of survival. If people and governments are going to take serious action, it pretty much has to be now, because any delay will make efforts to stave off major climate change much more expensive and difficult to achieve. But the COP15 climate negotiations in Copenhagen last December ended in a watered-down policy document, with no legally binding commitments for countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Following Copenhagen, the U.S. Senate was unable to pass even a modest “cap and trade” bill that would have mandated reductions. And in the wake of Climategate a year ago and widespread attacks on the IPCC and on climate science in general, the public may be more confused than ever about what to think. Is Curry making things worse or better?
Read much more.
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Note from Dr. Vincent Gray on this surprising story and another admission in the November issue below:
Dear Folks
I have been a subscriber to the “Scientific American” for as long as I can remember. I have been bitterly disappointed at there persistent embrace of the climate change fraud and the publicity they have given to its promoters. I have still kept subscribing for the occasional genuine scientific articles. I just received the issue for November 2010 and I almost fell off my chair at two of their articles. They now admit for the first time the sceptics might be right and they invite discussion on their website.
The first article, page 8 entitled “Fudge Factor” tells of a scientist who always found the results which fitted theory when they did not, how this sort of thing happens all too frequently and includes a sentence questioning whether proxy temperatures measured from tree rings are not an example..
The second article, page 58 has a full page photograph of Judith Curry, Climate Heretic who has been consorting with the likes of Chris Landsea, Roger Pielke Sr, Steven McIntyre and Pat Michaels, who has doubts about the entire IPCC process. I had noticed her intelligent letters on the various blogs. There is a diagram showing how ridiculous the Hockey Stick becomes when you put in the uncertainties.
I have only just finished reading this so I have not so far commented, but I thought you should know that when a magazine like the “Scientific American” permits free discussion on climate change it must mean the beginning of the end.
Cheers
Vincent Gray
Dr Gray then sent a comment which was posted:
“The proposition that the average temperature of the earth’s surface is warming because of increased emissions of human-produced greenhouse gases
cannot be tested by any known scientific procedure. It is impossible to position temperature sensors randomly over the earth’s surface (including the 71% of ocean, and all the deserts, forests, and icecaps) and maintain it in constant condition long enough to tell if any average is increasing. Even if this were done the difference between the temperature during day and night is so great that no rational average can be derived.
Measurements at weather stations are quite unsuitable since they are not positioned representatively and they only measure maximum and minimum once a day, from which no average can be derived. They also constantly change in number, location and surroundings. Recent studies show that most of the
current stations are unable to measure temperature to better than a degree or two.The assumptions of climate models are absurd. They assume the earth is flat, that the sun shines with equal intensity day and night, and the earth is in equilibrium, with the energy received equal to that emitted.
Half of the time there is no sun, where the temperature regime is quite different from the day. No part of the earth ever is in energy equilibrium, neither is there any eidence of an overall “balance”. It is unsurprising that such models are incapable of predicting future climate behavior, even if this could be measured satisfactorily.
There are no representative measurements of the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide over any land surface, where “greenhouse warming” is supposed to happen. After twenty years of study, and as expert reviewer to the IPCC from the very beginning, I can only conclude that the whole affair is a gigantic fraud”.
By Steven Milloy, Human Events
The New York Times’ editorial writers have apparently spent the last 11 months in a Rip Van Winkle-like state of unconsciousness when it comes to climate change.
Monday’s lead editorial, “In Climate Denial Again,” railed about the 19 of 20 or so Republican Senate candidates who do not “accept the scientific consensus that humans are largely responsible for global warming.” The Times contrasted those deniers with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2007 report, the group’s “most definitive statement on the human contribution to climate change,” and a 2000 promise by George W. Bush to cap carbon dioxide emissions.
But nowhere in the editorial did the Times recall Climategate or the other related global warming-related “gates” that the November 2009 scandal touched off - all of which, no doubt, helped make skeptics of 95% of Republican Senate candidates. So here’s a quick recap of what happened over the past year to the legendary scientific “consensus” on global warming.
Last November, a host of private and candid e-mails between climate alarmist-scientists stored at the University of East Anglia (UK) somehow made its way into the public domain and history. Like a shot heard around the world, the e-mails instantaneously validated what the climate skeptics had been saying for more than a decade about the alarmists - that they had cooked the books on global warming science and then conspired to silence and belittle their critics.
Most famously, the e-mails revealed that the alarmist community was aware and, indeed, even proud of the scientific fraud known as the “hockey stick” - a graph purporting to show that global temperatures had been stable over the last millennium and then had spiked upwards during the 20th Century, impliedly due to human activities. All this was expressed in an e-mail that featured the infamous Climategate phrase “Mike’s trick… to hide the decline.”
As it turns out, the reason a “trick” was needed to “hide the decline” was that, in reality, the hockey stick data used to show global temperatures spiking during the 20th Century actually showed a decline in the later part of the 20th Century - the precise opposite phenomena that the alarmists claimed to have occurred. But the inconvenient data was intentionally deleted and replaced with other, more cooperative data.
This fraud is what prompted Virginia Atty. Gen. Ken Cuccinelli to launch an investigation into whether Virginia taxpayers were defrauded by hockey stick inventor and former University of Virginia researcher Michael Mann.
Perhaps the real significance of Climategate is that it opened the floodgates of pent-up global skepticism. Climategate was followed in rapid succession by glacier-gate, rainforest-gate, Pachauri-gate and NASA-gate.
Glacier-gate exposed the much-repeated and IPCC-official falsehood that global warming was going to cause the disappearance of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035. This myth was used by Sen. John Kerry to whip up frenzy about Himalayan melting leading to regional water shortages and, ultimately, war between India and Pakistan.
As it turns out though, there never was any scientific study or evidence that the glaciers were going anywhere soon. The IPCC claim about the glaciers was based on a mere 1998 telephone interview with an obscure Indian scientist that was reported in the New Scientist magazine, which by the way, is not anywhere close to a peer-reviewed science journal.
Amazon-gate involved another IPCC claim that global warming was going to destroy 40% of the Amazon rainforest. Once again the sourcing of the factoid was dubious. It came from a report put together by the World Wildlife Fund, a radical green activist group. The report had not been independently peer-reviewed or validated.
Glacier-gate and Amazon-gate opened up the IPCC and its chief Rajendra Pachauri to a great deal of criticism and made Pachauri vulnerable to inquiries about his various conflicts of interest.
Though he positioned himself as the impartial head of the Nobel Peace prize winning IPCC, in reality Pachauri has had ties to many energy companies, including companies that planned on profiting from carbon trading. Reminiscent of another major UN scandal - oil-for-food - Pachauri-gate helps explain how glacier-gate and Amazon-gate happened.
The still ongoing NASA-gate involves the systematic distortion of global temperature readings by the U.S. government. As revealed by a team of skeptics riding the Climategate wave, NASA researchers were exposed as improperly manipulating temperature data to produce claims such as “2005 was the warmest year on record.”
The researchers showed how NASA had been gradually trimming the number of temperature stations (from about 6,000 in the 1970s to about 1,000 now) and then averaging temperature data in such a way as to produce synthetically warmer temperatures. The 2005-warmest-temperature-claim was, in fact, based on a temperature “data base” that had no original temperature data.
A fascinating aspect the past year’s meltdown in climate alarmism is that most of the facts underlying the developments weren’t newly discovered - at least to climate skeptics.
Glacier-gate, for example, was flagged at my web site JunkScience.com in 1998 when the claim was first made. The hockey stick had been publicly exposed and debunked in 2006, including in congressional hearings and by the National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council. NASA’s skewing of temperature data was also a familiar topic of concern among skeptics.
Climategate was the straw that broke the alarmists’ back. The rapid-fire succession of glacier-gate, Amazon-gate and Pachauri-gate left global warming alarmism reeling. It now seems that the deniers are those who insist that Climategate and its progeny have not smashed the public confidence in the 50-year-old climate alarmism hypothesis.
But there is one lesson in physical science that the New York Times and its fellow alarmists will learn when they wake up from their stupor of denial - it takes a lot less time to pop a bubble that it does to create one. Read post here.
By Matthew Daly (CP)
WASHINGTON A federal judge ordered the Obama administration on Wednesday to review whether polar bears, at risk because of global warming, are endangered under U.S. law.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan wants the Interior Department to clarify a decision by the administration of former President George W. Bush that polar bears were merely threatened rather than in imminent danger of extinction.
Sullivan’s request, made at a hearing Wednesday in federal court, keeps in place the 2008 declaration by the Bush administration.
Former Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said in May 2008 that the bears were on the way to extinction because of the rapid disappearance of the Arctic Sea ice upon which they depend. But he stopped short of declaring them endangered, which had it been declared would have increased protections for the bear and make oil and gas exploration more difficult.
Scientists predict sea ice will continue to melt because of global warming.
Along with the listing, Kempthorne created a “special rule” stating that the Endangered Species Act would not be used to set climate policy or limit greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to global warming and melting ice in the Arctic Ocean.
The Obama administration upheld the Bush-era policy, declaring that the endangered species law cannot be used to regulate greenhouse gases emitted by sources outside of the polar bears’ habitat. If the bears are found to be endangered, however, that could open the door to using the Endangered Species Act to regulate greenhouse gases.
Sullivan said he would issue a written order shortly, but said Wednesday that the government is likely to have about 30 days to explain how it arrived at its decision.
A lawyer for an environmental group called Sullivan’s action “good news for the bear,” adding that the popular animal’s fate was now in the hands of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.
“The court is not accepting the Fish and Wildlife Service argument that extinction must be imminent before the bear is listed as endangered,” said Kassie Siegel, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, an Arizona-based group that challenged the polar bear listing.
Reed Hopper, an attorney for the California-based Pacific Legal Foundation, which opposes protections for the bears, called the ruling disappointing.
“We would have liked to have the case decided earlier,” Hopper said, noting that legal challenges have lingered in the courts for two years and probably will be delayed at least several more months. Hopper’s group has filed a separate challenge to the polar bear listing, calling the bear a “thriving species” that now numbers about 25,000 from Alaska to Greenland, the highest total in history.
The bear’s threatened status is due mainly to projections about declining Arctic sea ice, rather than a current decline in bear populations, Hopper said.
A spokeswoman for Salazar would not comment Wednesday. A Fish and Wildlife Service official referred calls to the Justice Department, which also refused to comment.
See how locals in Nunavit do not see the polar bears as threatened here. Mitch Taylor, polar bear expert has found populations at record high levels and tried to get the word conveyed to decision makers here. But nevermind, our government knows best.
World Climate Report
No global warming presentation is complete without some pictures of snowpacks and glaciers melting away in alpine environments. The world is warming and the warmth is melting snow and ice in mountainous areas - seeing is believing, and finding pictures of melting snow is rather easy (just wait until spring every year)!
We conducted a search on the internet for “Global warming and snowpack” and nearly 70,000 sites appear with nearly all of them insisting that snowpacks the world over are being devastated by ongoing warming. The Technical Summary of the IPCC states:
“Decreases in snowpack have been documented in several regions worldwide based upon annual time series of mountain snow water equivalent and snow depth. Mountain snow can be sensitive to small changes in temperature, particularly in temperate climatic zones where the transition from rain to snow is generally closely associated with the altitude of the freezing level. Declines in mountain snowpack in western North America and in the Swiss Alps are largest at lower, warmer elevations. Mountain snow water equivalent has declined since 1950 at 75% of the stations monitored in western North America. Mountain snow depth has also declined in the Alps and in southeastern Australia. Direct observations of snow depth are too limited to determine changes in the Andes, but temperature measurements suggest that the altitude where snow occurs (above the snow line) has probably risen in mountainous regions of South America.”
The IPCC is widely cited by the websites - clearly there is a consensus that snowpacks are declining, and who can argue with a consensus?
As with so many other variables, the observations of snowpacks are limited in time (rarely longer than 50 years), and the short records make any trends difficult to assess. A long-term record extending more than 100 years would be useful, and you guessed it, one has appeared recently in the scientific literature.
The paper of interest appeared in Theoretical and Applied Climatology and was produced by eight Chinese scientists all with the Chinese Academy of Sciences; their work was funded by “the Major State Basic Research Development Program of China and the Knowledge Innovation Project of Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Self-determination Project of State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences and the National Natural Science Foundations of China (apparently, the Chinese are very interested in their snowpacks). Liu et al. note in their introduction that “As a sensitive indicator of climate change, snow is a vital water resource in western China. Previous studies have suggested that an increase in the spring snow cover days on the Tibetan Plateau (TP) is closely associated with the variation in the East Asian summer monsoon”. This caught our eye - who would ever suggest that any increase in snow cover days is possible given all the hype about global warming and snowpacks all over the world. We suspected this would be interesting.
Liu et al. are in the tree ring business, and this time, they turned their attention of alpine fir trees (see below) growing in the Mt. Gongga area in the south-eastern fringe of the Tibetan Plateau (think south-central China). They found 20 different trees growing just over 11,000 feet and they extracted two or three cores from each tree. For each annual growth ring, they accurately measured both the width of the ring and the level of a carbon isotope in the cells that make up each ring. Both of these ring measurements were found to be highly related to temperature and precipitation of the area; obviously, temperature and precipitation are highly related to snowpack - you see where this is going.
Alpine fir trees (Abies fabri) used in the Liu et al. (2010) study
Liu et al. had snowpack data for their study area from 1988 to 2004, and as seen below, the tree ring measurements were relatively good at predicting variance in the snowpack measurements. As you look at the figure below, ask yourself if there is any evidence of a decline in snowpack in western China. Oh no, there is evidence of a decline, and we are amazed this finding hasn’t been reported already throughout the world. We suspect the reason why is because the tree rings allow for a reconstruction of snowpack extending back to 1890, and the longer term data tell a completely different story.
Figure 1. Observed and modeled snowpack in western China, 1988-2004 (from Liu et al., 2010)
The graph below certainly makes the downward trend from 1988 to 2004 look a whole lot differently, doesn’t it? Liu et al. describe the patterns noting “The most notable features of the reconstruction are the higher snow accumulation around 1990. The reconstruction also shows that the Gongga Mountain experienced some lower snow-depth episodes during 1910s, 1930s, 1950-1980, and later 1990s. The higher snow-depth intervals occurred during 1910s, 1940s, and the period around 1990 with the highest values during past 100 years. We defined extreme snowpack depth years as those years with values more than one standard deviation (plus or minus) from the average. Although there are several clusters of extreme years over the past century, the century is notable for the long period of snow-depth variations in a normal way except the higher snowpack depth values around 1990.”
Figure 2. Reconstructed snow depths in the Gongga Mountain over the period of 1890-2004.
The values of snow depth were transformed into the departure against the mean of 1890-2004. The thick line was smoothed to emphasize long-term fluctuations (from Kiu et al., 2010)
So, what we get here is a classic case of an apparent decline in snowpack from the late-1980s to the near-present, and someone might be tempted to suggest the decline is related to global warming. The Chinese scientists figured a way to reconstruct snowpack going back over 100 years, and that time series shows no evidence whatsoever of any downward trend (in fact, there appears to be a slight upward trend in the data).
So you thought snowpacks were declining everywhere in the world? Think again!
Reference:
Liu, X., L. Zhao, T. Chen, X. Shao, Q. Liu, S. Hou, D. Qin, and W. An. 2010. Combined tree-ring width and δ13C to reconstruct snowpack depth: A pilot study in the Gongga Mountain, west China. Theoretical and Applied Climatology, DOI 10.1007/s00704-010-0291-x.
See report here.
By Joseph A Olson, PE
There now appears to be a photo finish in the horse race for the ‘worst week in climate science history’ with that already infamous week of the Climate-Gate hacking, aka the “East Anglia Event Horizon”. The universal increase in knowledge has been devastating to the Royalist-Monopolist-Elitist Alliance hell bent on universal serfdom.
There was so much bad news that it can only be covered as bullet points with one common theme. What had been presented as an appeal to authority, i.e. scientific consensus, is now being presented as an appeal to the COMMON PEOPLE. A point that will be emphasized throughout this article.
The week included the Michael Mann open letter in the Washington Post, begging the COMMON PEOPLE to vote for Democrats. In his best Elmer Fudd impression, Mann complains that the “waskily wepublicans will wack Mann if elected”. Yes, two coats of Penn State whitewash might not hold up under serious Congressional science inquiry.
The Eco-snuff flick “No Pressure” by the lovely 10:10 Division of the Climate Action group brought universal stinging rebukes. First, the two largest sponsors withdrew their support. Then over 20,000 supporters requested to be removed for the 10:10 rolls as supporters.
A protege of the flawed UK Climate Research Unit and a lead author of the IPCC reports was recognized to have tampered with the New Zealand temperature records. This prompted the following statement from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research: “There is no ‘official’ or formal New Zealand temperature record.”
Rumpelstiltskin Spins Fiction to Fact
The term ‘counter-intuitive’ implies an honest presentation of fact, opposed to what was expected. When applied by the warmists, it is intended to have the same effect as ‘settled’ science. Merely by being ‘counter’ it is new, revolutionary evolution of thought to be embraced without question. This week’s coating of greenwash is easy to parse.
The Imperial College and Nature magazine have announced ‘break-thru’ review of solar data, and opposite of reason, is the claim that a ‘cooling Sun, warms the Earth’. This based on a three year study of solar output and Earth temperatures. The study included this quote:
“The idea that science might not have quite understood the Sun’s effect on Climate should not provide ammunition for Climate Change skeptics.”
Thankfully the Earth is NOT a thermal Yo-Yo and there is a three year lag-time for response, rendering this study useless. But at least they are now looking at the SUN as a possible climate factor. It is proper to utilize nursery rhyme analogies to emphasize the adolescent thoughts and actions of this most juvenile branch of science.
The November issues of ‘Popular Science’ and ‘Popular Mechanics’ arrived with virtually NO mention of human caused climate change. Popular Science had a half-page article on a new waste fat bio-fuel conversion process and Popular Mechanics had a two- page comparison of the electric Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf. Neither of these articles made any mention that bio-fuels or EV autos would be of saving the planet.
It has been almost one year since the Hadley hacking and neither Pop Science nor Pop Mechanics have made one mention of this epic, history-making event. But that subject is now going to be unavoidable after a few more of this week events.
It’s Waterloo for You Know Who
Facing mass revolt from its determined objective members, the Royal Society was forced to back off from the previous total endorsement of the ‘human caused climate’ FRAUD. The RS issued new guide lines which included the following statements:
“Lack of access to the latest knowledge about climate research is one of the primary reason[s] for the constant doubt and misinformation in the minds of COMMON PEOPLE”
Yes, COMMON PEOPLE are too stupid to neglect ALL information that is not filtered by the PROPER authority figure. The RS then amplified this statement urging mob rule to demand immediate action:
“COMMON PEOPLE armed with the right scientific knowledge would certainly exert pressure on their respective governments to take action on Climate Change.”
Yes, COMMON PEOPLE of the world rise up and demand to be placed in carbon shackles and chains. Adding to the UK woes, the BBC was forced to admit bias and issued the following statement:
“The BBC must be inclusive, consider the broad perspective and ensure that the existence of a range of views is appropriately reflected.”
While disgust for this arrogant royalist behavior is rising in the UK, a giant of American science dropped a bomb on the science monopolists of the western hemisphere. Dr. Hal Lewis, a 67-year member of the American Physical Society announced his resignation. His letter is an instant classic in the science freedom movement and too important to be paraphrased or used for bullet quotes. The Dr. Lewis letter is a must read.
Apparently the loss of such a distinguished member must have aroused the over 48,000 members of the APS and the leadership was forced to issue a reply. This reply is posted at ‘Watts Up With That’, along with a brilliant running commentary. Again, too important to paraphrase, but there is one APS statement that should give interested reader’s some insight:
“We know now that the existing APS Statement on Climate Change was developed literally over lunch by a few people, after the duly constituted Committee had signed off on a more moderate statement.”
Anthony Watts goes on to describe the rampant conflicts of interest of APS board members, the ‘green industry’ and government research funding. Expect mass resignations by this corrupt board and a reinstatement of dear Dr. Lewis with full honors. The speed of these events is staggering, and a full week has yet to pass.
It is time for the COMMON PEOPLE to rise up against the Royalist, Monopolists and Elitist Alliance. They have intentionally dumbed-down our schools, corrupted our governments, systematically lied through their puppet media and bankrupted us with fiat financing. It is time for universal freedom from these tyrants. Read more here.
By Olle Lundblad
Our excellent weather bureau in Sweden, the SMHI is providing us what seems to be one of the best temperature records of the last century. Not only does it cover nearly all Scandinavian territory but has also other virtues such as measurements taken twice a day at all stations and noted with one decimal point. The readings are available free of charge at SMHI.
The reason for using these figures to investigate trends is they are not adjusted or corrected in any way, so the result should be close to the real truth. Checking the whole of Scandinavia would be too much work and we have limited ourselves to 23 stations which we know personally, covering Sweden from south of Malmoe to Karesuando, way up north between Finland and Norway .The measurement period is the last century between 1900 and 1999. The annual mean of all stations have been added and divided by 23, forming the mean value for each year.
5 years are then put together divided by five forming a 5-year mean for the country .The result can be seen in figure 1 where each bar represents 5 years times 23 stations (totalling nearly 1.68 M readings) degrees C.
Figure 1900 to 1999 enlarged here. One hundred years of temp measurement. Each bar represents 5-year mean value for all 23 stations together.
The result varies considerably as can be expected. Sweden is a country with varying climatic conditions. Really interesting it is to find that the overall mean value 1900 - 1949 is 4.34 C and the same value for 1950 - 1999 is 4.39 C. So the difference is only 0.05 C.
The conclusion is quite clear: There has been no measurable temp increase during the last century here in Sweden. See post here.