Review of “The Really Inconvenient Truths” By Iain Murray, Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2008. 323 pp., $27.95

In The Australian July 18, scientist David Evans - a self-described, former global warming alarmist who previously developed Australia’s carbon accounting model - admitted that evidence is shaky on how carbon affects global warming. In fact, Evans wrote, the current global warming trend actually ended in 2001. He cited ice core data from six previous global warming cycles over the last 500,000 years. The data revealed that temperatures rose 800 years before any significant increases occurred in atmospheric carbon levels. A former recipient of political support, generous funding and professional satisfaction for his advocacy of global-warming intervention, Evans essentially blew the whistle on what he now believes is a fraud perpetrated on the public by many of the world’s governments.

Similarly, in The Really Inconvenient Truths, author Iain Murray, a Competitive Enterprise Institute environmental analyst and senior fellow, critically examines many of the broad, environmental notions now accepted as fact. He explores how these false notions have led to questionable regulations and policies to “save” the environment which have actually endangered more species, caused more human fatalities and squandered more energy. He reveals how environmentalism, used as an anti-capitalism tool, has employed faulty data and politically engineered studies to restrict personal freedom, increase government control and spending, reduce or limit economic growth and curtail free enterprise. The liberal, environmental movement is thus masquerading as a benevolent protector of natural resources, Murray writes, with a quasi-religious moral superiority toward environmental sacred cows and view of man as a guilty interloper who disrupts nature.

The book’s subtitle, Seven Environmental Catastrophes Liberals Don’t Want You to Know About Because They Helped Cause Them, provides a framework for a detailed examination of the effects of sacred-cow environmental projects such as the ban on DDT and the promotion of ethanol. He also explores the cover-up of the polluting effect of contraceptives and abortion drugs, the failure of ill-advised forestry management policies and the bankruptcy of the endangered species act. Read more here.

Five years after the worst blackout in North American history, the country’s largest utilities say the U.S. power system faces the prospect of even bigger and more damaging outages. The specific flaws that led to 50 million people losing power in 2003 have largely been addressed, they say, but even bigger problems loom. Excess generating capacity in the system is shrinking, for example, and power-plant construction has slowed as costs to build and operate plants have soared.

At the same time, it is estimated that electricity use will increase 29 percent between 2006 to 2030 - much of it driven by residential growth, according to a government report issued in June. “I’m really not a ‘Chicken Little’ player, but I worry that no one seems to be focusing in on this,” said Michael Morris, chairman, president and chief executive of American Electric Power, which runs the nation’s largest electricity transmission system. Industry experts back Morris and say there is even more resistance to building new plants because of the debate over climate change and opposition to new transmission lines. The blocking of two coal-fired plants in Kansas is one example of the resistance.

“The level of excess capacity has shrunk to a level barely within the planning toleration of the industry,” said Marc Chupka, with the Brattle Group, an energy consultant. The blackout five years ago today shut off power to vast swaths of the Northeast and Midwest for as much as four days. Rolling blackouts continued in Ontario for a week. The outages caused as much as $10 billion in damages to the U.S. economy.

Rick Sergel, president of the North American Electric Reliability Corp., the agency that oversees the nation’s power grid, said, “We’re to the point where we need every possible resource: renewables, demand response and energy efficiency, nuclear, clean coal - you name it, we need it. And we especially need the transmission lines that will bring the power generated by these new resources to consumers.”

Construction of coal-fired generating plants has almost stopped, and new nuclear plants are years away, if they are approved at all, said Arshad Mansoor, vice president of power delivery and use for the Electric Power Research Institute. Better efficiency will go only so far, he said. Morris, of American Electric Power, sees a potentially dire situation ahead, including the sort of power rationing that occurred in South Africa. “It would ruin the economy,” Morris said.

Our own observatory at Armagh is one of the oldest in the world and has been observing solar cycles for more than 200 years. What this work has shown is that, over all of this time, short and intense cycles coincide with global warmth and long and weak cycles coincide with cooling. Most recently, this pattern continued in the 1980s and 1990s when cycles 21 and 22 were short (less than 10 years) and intense and it was notably hot. But all this now looks set to change.

Cycle 23, which hasn’t finished yet, looks like it will be long (at least 12 to 13 years) and cycle 24, which has still to start, looks like it will be exceptionally weak.

See larger image here.

Based on the past Armagh measurements, this suggests that over the next two decades, global temperatures may fall by about 2 degrees C - that is, to a level lower than any we have seen in the last 100 years. Of course, nothing in science is certain. Perhaps (though I doubt it) Armagh’s old measurements are wrong or perhaps there are now other factors, such as CO2 emissions, which may change things somewhat.

However, temperatures have already fallen by about 0.5 degrees C over the past 12 months and, if this is only the start of it, it would be a serious concern. Northern Ireland is not noted for extreme warmth at the best of times and has much more to fear from cold weather than it does from hot. We really need to be sure what is going to happen before spending too much money on combating global warming. We may need all the money we can save just to help us keep warm.

All three staff meteorologists at KLTV, the ABC affiliate broadcasting to the Tyler-Longview-Jacksonville area of Northeast Texas, joined forces last November to deliver an on-air rebuttal of the idea that humans are changing the earth’s climate. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, representing the work of hundreds of scientists from 130 countries, had declared eight months earlier that warming of the atmosphere was “unequivocal” and that greenhouse gases from human activities were “very likely” the cause of most of the warming since the mid-20th century.

The three KLTV weathercasters - appearing in a Nov. 8 story by a station news reporter - let it be known, however, that they were unconvinced. Meteorologist Grant Dade: “Is the Earth warming? Yes, I think it is. But is man causing that? No. It’s a simple climate cycle our climate goes through over thousands of years.” One of his KLTV colleagues said Earth “will not be warming anymore” in 20 to 30 years. The station’s third weathercaster suggested that increased attention to manmade climate change was being driven by scientists who want “grant money.”

Such skeptical pronouncements are not confined to broadcast meteorologists working in smaller media markets. Indeed, they appear to many to be fairly common among TV meteorologists and weathercasters, more the rule than the exception. John Coleman, founder of The Weather Channel and now a weathercaster for San Diego’s independent KUSI, argues forcefully (pdf) that manmade global warming is “the greatest scam in history” - a quote that was included in the KLTV story, with no countering viewpoints offered. Active in a recent Heartland Institute “skeptic’s conference” on climate change in New York City, Coleman is one of the most highly visible weathercasters championing the views of climate skeptics.

Neil Frank, the 25-year director of the National Hurricane Center, recently retired after 21 years as chief meteorologist at Houston’s CBS affiliate, KHOU, where he sometimes made skeptical remarks about anthropogenic climate change. Frank in 2006 told The Washington Post that it is “a hoax” and that greenhouse emissions actually may help what he called “a carbon dioxide-starved world.”

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported in May that despite some broadcast meteorologists’ belief that long term climate change is not their area of expertise, Minneapolis forecasters are still speaking out on the issue and “most of them are landing on the side of the skeptics.”

Read more here.

Icecap Note: The answer to the writer’s question is that they look at real data, know how poorly even short term models perform, tend to be objective and more outspoken and are not being paid grant money to think one way. The AMS’s actions to try and pressure them to accept the alarmist position and make them evangelists for their main constituency, the academic community where grants pay the bills is a sin against science. It is an abdication of their role as a once great and truly scientific organization. They have become just another advocacy group. It fact advocacy is one of their organization’s goals, I guess replacing good science. Good for you TV mets stand up for the truth or at lest for your right to make up your own mind.

The purpose of this report is to examine the science behind climate change so as to better understand the issue at hand, and thus, to be able to make an informed decision on how to handle the issue. The primary aim here is to examine climate change from a perspective not often heard in media or government channels; that of climate change being a natural phenomenon, not the result of man-made carbon emissions.

The “Science” of Consensus

When addressing the issue of climate change, it is important to understand that climatic change is an important field of study in science. However, it is not an exact science, like all sciences. Our understanding of the climatic sciences is always changing, just as our understanding of all sciences changes. If our understanding of science does not change, we would still think that the Earth was flat and the Sun revolved around our little planet. When these great achievements in science were first discovered, the scientists who discovered them were attacked, denounced, or even imprisoned.

There is an enormous political, social and economic interest in a scientific consensus, because it determines our understanding of our environment and all that is in it, including humanity, itself. A challenge to a perceived consensus is a challenge to all the powers in human society, as it can take a person’s understanding of the world we live in, and flip it upside down. This encourages people to think “outside the box,” fosters creativity and to be critical thinkers. This can ultimately threaten any power structure, as people may come to understand the forces that seek to control our lives. A consensus is an amazing tool in the hands of elites to control and manipulate people. And challenging a consensus is an amazing tool for people to remain free and independent thinkers.

Trying to fight and stop a natural phenomenon is possibly one of the most ignorant and dangerous things humanity has ever engaged in. How would history view a civilization that tried to reverse the spinning of the Earth, or the blowing of wind? It is a recipe for the fall of a civilization.

Much of the people in the world have been riled up with predictions of a catastrophic end to mankind and the world unless we don’t do something about so-called “man-made” climate change. Ironically enough, our refusal to adapt to a changing world, and instead a determination to fight it with our efforts to “go green” and “carbon neutral” may, in fact, cause the catastrophic end of our civilization. And sadly, in this instance, it would undeniably be a man-made disaster. Read this full analysis here.

For all the recent coverage of the pollution surrounding Beijing’s Olympic Games, global warming has gotten relatively little attention, whether on the nightly news or on the campaign trail. While the majority of Americans still say they consider climate change a serious issue, a new poll suggests public concern over the issue has ebbed since last year.

According to a survey [PDF] from ABC News, Planet Green and Stanford University, fewer than half—47 percent—of Americans consider global warming an important issue to them personally, down from 52 percent in April 2007. Although a vast majority still think the planet is warming—8 in 10 respondents—that figure is also down from last year, having dropped 4 percentage points. Furthermore, in an open-ended question, the number of respondents who called global warming the biggest environmental challenge facing the world fell 8 points from 2007 and currently hovers at 25 percent.

That dimmer media spotlight could explain respondents’ lack of knowledge about how John McCain and Barack Obama measure up on global warming. About 8 in 10 respondents said they knew little or nothing about the candidates’ positions on the issue. Respondents split evenly when pollsters asked whether government-led or market-based solutions would do a better job of reducing global warming, but they did favor government measures such as a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions.

Americans appear to be holding themselves responsible as well for the energy crisis. About 7 in 10 respondents said they’re attempting to reduce their carbon footprint, by driving less, using less electricity and recycling.

But despite the overwhelming consensus that global warming is indeed occurring, doubt over the science behind the issue is still lingers strongly in people’s minds. Only 30 percent of ABC News respondents said they trust what scientists have to say about the environment “completely” or “a lot,” with 39 percent saying they trust them “a moderate amount” and 30 percent saying they do not trust them. On top of that, nearly 60 percent of respondents said there is “a lot of disagreement” within the scientific community as to how dangerous climate change is. Read more here.

Of course ABC did not report the finding that only 38% felt the media like ABC provided accurate information.

Fashioning itself after Real Climate, Grumbine Science blog posted a blog on the recent Washington Examiner story I authored complaining about the lack of a label for the MSU, mention of the Willis paper on Argo buoys showing a slight cooling like the other data bases since 2003 which he and commenters claimed was later found to be in error, questioning how the graph of temperature looked and the significance of the cooling. I attempted to respond several times on the blog to the blogger and commenters questions or complaints but the moderator refused to post my responses so here they are.

The article referenced was a newspaper story and not a scientific paper or post. It was meant for readers who ride the Washington DC metro not scientists or wannabes that haunt the blogs. The data in the plot was UAH MSU. It was mentioned in the original submitted text and appeared in the original legend which was removed at the request of the Examiner for space reasons. I also had Hadley CRT3 data plotted but a previewer suggested the graphic was too complicated for the reader and I simplified it back to the one UAH MSU, shown to be the best available global measure of global lower tropospheric temperatures.

The CO2 line was not smoothed but the monthly “seasonally adjusted CO2 values” most commonly used to avoid the annual saw-tooth pattern which has to be explained. By the way the correlation of the monthly CO2 with the monthly Hadley data since 2002 was a negative 0.42 and with the UAH MSU a negative 0.31. 6 going on 7 years of cooling (about 0.3F in both data sets) is not insignificant especially given the corresponding 3.5% rise in CO2. We had a similar disconnect from the mid 1930s to the late 1970s during the post war boom years when CO2 rose as temperatures fell. This on again, off again correlation suggests CO2 is not the primary driver of climate change.

Man clearly plays a role through urbanization, land use changes and there are errors in the station data due to poor siting, improper adjustments for siting changes and for new instrument biases that go uncorrected for. Ocean measurement methods changed over time and introduced more uncertainty and 70% of the globe is ocean. Not less than 6 peer review papers have estimated exaggeration of the warming from these factors to be 30-50% The rest of the changes can be explained by variations of the solar cycles and multidecadal cycles in the ocean especially the Pacific that produce relative frequency and strength changes in El Ninos and La Ninas. We will post a new story on these other factors this week on Icecap.

Surely some of the temperature decline is the flip of the Pacific to its cold mode helping induce a strong La Nina. In the cold mode, La Ninas are favored over El Ninos which tend to be briefer and usually weaker. This should lead to a continued net decline for the next few decades in temperatures. Many solar scientists believe that the sun now in its 12th year of cycle 23 should help accelerate that.

As for the ARGO data the Willis references you posted are old. The reference I referred to was a 2008 paper:  Willis J. K., D. P. Chambers, R. S. Nerem (2008), Assessing the globally averaged sea level budget on seasonal to interannual timescales, J. Geophys. Res., 113, C06015, doi:10.1029/2007JC004517. This paoer received a mention here on an NPR interview.  Roger Pielke Sr. covered this new paper and had an interesting exchange with Willis on this Climate Science section.  Roger has suggested ocean heat content as future reliable measure of global change that avoids all the “issues” with land base stations. This is something we believe makes sense.

By the way we have been asked why we at Icecap don’t allow comments. I assure you if I were retired or we were getting huge contributions like Real Climate with their blank checks from Fenton Communications and I could devote full time to Icecap we would. It is a full-time job policing and monitoring and responding on an open blog. I have to make a living mainly from other consulting and forecasting jobs. What I get from Icecap is supplemental. I am a one man show on Icecap. I get contributed articles and stories from members and other bloggers. I have posted all 2112 stores and read and where possible answered thousands of emails. It is nearly midnight and a typical day and I am posting a last story. It is a labor of love and I believe vital importance to present alternative viewpoints on global warming for you to evaluate to balance the one sided coverage in the mainstream media. I don’t personally agree with every study or paper presented to me. I filter out many that are too extreme but allow some that though not in the mainstream other scientists I have trust in give some credence. It is a judgement call as on any blog or paper or magazine. End of rant.

HAS global warming stopped? The question alone is enough to provoke scorn from the mainstream scientific community and from the Government, which says the earth has never been hotter. But tell that to a new army of sceptics who have mushroomed on internet blog sites and elsewhere in recent months to challenge some of the most basic assumptions and claims of climate change science.

Their claims are provocative and contentious but they are also attracting attention, so much so that mainstream scientists are being forced to respond.

The bloggers and others make several key claims. They say the way of measuring the world’s temperature is frighteningly imprecise and open to manipulation. They argue that far from becoming hotter, the world’s temperatures have cooled in the past decade, contrary to the overwhelming impression conveyed by scientists and politicians.

As such, they say there should be far greater scepticism towards the apocalyptic predictions about climate change. Even widely accepted claims, such as that made by Climate Change Minister Penny Wong that “the 12 hottest years in history have all been in the last 13 years”, are being openly challenged.

“She is just plain wrong,” says Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of the Institute of Public Affairs. “It’s not a question of debate. What about the medieval warming period? The historical record shows they were growing wine in England, for goodness sake; come on. It is not disputed by anyone that the Vikings arrived in Greenland in AD900 and it was warmer than Greenland is now. What Penny Wong is doing is being selective and saying that is a long time ago.”

But selective use of facts and data is fast becoming an art form on both sides of the climate change debate now that real money is at stake as the West ponders concrete schemes to reduce carbon emissions. So what is the validity of some of the key claims being made by these new blogger sceptics?

Their first claim is that the most basic aspect of climate change science - the measurement of global warming - is flawed, imprecise and open to manipulation. See more here.