A new paper has appeared (thanks to Timo Hämeranta for alerting us to it!) [also to Marcel Crok to alerting me to the typo in the original posting]. Urban, Nathan M., and Klaus Keller, 2009. Complementary observational constraints on climate sensitivity. Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L04708, doi:10.1029/2008GL036457, February 25, 2009. in press, which provides further discussion of this question.

The abstract of this paper reads:

“A persistent feature of empirical climate sensitivity estimates is their heavy tailed probability distribution indicating a sizeable probability of high sensitivities. Previous studies make general claims that this upper heavy tail is an unavoidable feature of (i) the Earth system, or of (ii) limitations in our observational capabilities. Here we show that reducing the uncertainty about (i) oceanic heat uptake and (ii) aerosol climate forcing can - in principle - cut off this heavy upper tail of climate sensitivity estimates. Observations of oceanic heat uptake result in a negatively correlated joint likelihood function of climate sensitivity and ocean vertical diffusivity. This correlation is opposite to the positive correlation resulting from observations of surface air temperatures. As a result, the two observational constraints can rule out complementary regions in the climate sensitivity-vertical diffusivity space, and cut off the heavy upper tail of the marginal climate sensitivity estimate”.

A key statement in the text of their paper reads:

“Surface temperature observations permit high climate sensitivities if there is substantial unrealized “warming in the pipeline” from the oceans. However, complementary ocean heat observations can be used to test this and can potentially rule out large ocean warming. Ocean heat observations are compatible with high sensitivities if there is substantial surface warming which is penetrating poorly into the oceans. Again, complementary surface temperature observations can test this, and can potentially rule out large surface warming.”

By “unrealized warming in the pipeline”, they mean heat that is being stored within the ocean, which can subsequently be released into the ocean atmosphere. It is erroneous to consider this heat as “unrealized warming”, if the Joules of heat are actually being stored in the ocean. The heat is “realized”; it would just not be entering the atmosphere yet. As discussed in the Physics Today paper Pielke Sr., R.A., 2008: A broader view of the role of humans in the climate system. Physics Today, 61, Vol. 11, 54-55, there has been no heating of the upper ocean since mid-2003. Moreover, there has been no heating within the troposphere (e.g. see Figure 7 of the RSS MSU data).

Thus, there is no “warming in the pipeline” using the author’s terminology, nor any heating within the atmosphere! Perhaps the heating that was observed prior to 2003 will begin again, however, it is scientifically incorrect to report that there is any heat that has not yet been realized within the climate system.
The answer to the question posted in this weblog “Is There Climate Heating In “The Pipeline”? is NO. Read more here.

Tornadoes have been in the news in recent weeks in places like Oklahoma and Georgia. They mark the start of the spring severe weather season. This year should again be more active than recent decades, given less snowcover in the north and a weaker La Nina, the number of storms is likely to fall short of 2008.

Last year had a jump in the number of tornadoes thanks to the strong La Nina of the winter and early spring. La Ninas produce a stronger contrast from north to south feeding spring storms and severe weather. Heavy record snows last year maintained the cold north and strong contrast and led to enhanced activity and flooding. A preliminary count of 1690 storms will be reduced when final analysis in storm reports is completed as some storms are counted multiple times.

See larger image here.

In the following NSSL analysis you can see the early season activity last year and again this year characteristic of La Ninas. Las year June was especially active as the storms fed off the contrast and wet grounds from snowmelt and heavy winter and early spring precipitation.

The march of the season - climatology of tornadoes normally follows this depiction (source here)

Some of the monthly data shows this tendency for an early season peak in the south and later in the north as the jet stream lifts northwards.

We don’t yet have a number of strong tornadoes (F3+) for 2008 but there was likely a spike in those much as there was in the strong cold PDO La Ninas of the 1950s to 1970s most notably 1973/74.

Read more with links on Intellicast here.

Friends,

Your attempt to convince people that humans are causing a global warming crisis would be more credible if you were more honest in your depictions.

You claim, “The list of speakers and the free-market think tanks co-sponsoring the conference provides a reasonably comprehensive guide to the most active of the remaining global warming skeptics.” This attempt to mislead your readers about the large number of scientists who are skeptical of a human-induced global warming crisis makes one wonder about your commitment to truth and honesty.

As an organizer of the conference, I have had so many impeccably credentialed scientists ask to speak that I have had to beat them off with a stick. Of the more than 100 speakers at last year’s conference, we have been able to invite less than half of them back because we have had so many inquiries from scientists who we could not fit on last year’s agenda. Still other highly credentialed scientists are waiting in the wings for 2010 because we haven’t been able to fit them into the 2008 or 2009 program. And even then, we will only be able to invite a minority of them because there are way too many scientists to fit on the agenda.

Moreover, these are some of the most brilliant minds in science speaking out against the so-called global warming crisis. Among the speakers at next week’s conference are scientists from Harvard, MIT, NASA, NOAA, etc. etc.

If the science is on your side, then you shouldn’t feel the need to deliberately misrepresent the nature of your opposition and their scientific arguments. If you encourage a fair, open, and respectful discussion, the truth will eventually prevail.

James M. Taylor
Senior Fellow, Environment Policy
The Heartland Institute

This letter is in reponse to “Heartland event provides ‘comprehensive guide to the most active of the remaining global warming skeptics” - by alarmist Center for Media and Democracy. This shell organization is another group paid to discredit the growing number of scientists and growing body of science that shows the so called consensus carbon dioxide theory has failed and natural variability is driving climate. They typically do so by claiming the number of skeptics is small (they are large possibly even the silent majority of real scientists) and with ad hominem attacks on the scientists and organizations, often without any degree of truth. They usually ignore the science where they are vulnerable choosing to refer it to a higher authority like the IPCC.

See the Heartland ICCC Conference this weekend March 8-10 in NYC here. Not too late to register. Read the Environment and Climate Newsletter here.

Thousands of protesters rally on the West Lawn of the Capitol on Monday to demand that President Obama and Congress pass bold climate and energy legislation this year that can dramatically reduce carbon emissions and create millions of green jobs. 

Driving snow froze the hopes of organizers of “the biggest global warming protest in history” Monday in Washington. With the government on a two-hour snow delay and the speaker of the House unable to attend because her flight was grounded by inclement weather, shivering protestors gathered on the west front of the Capitol, the latest victims of a climatological phenomenon known by the scientific community as the Gore Effect. 

The Gore Effect was first noticed during a January 2004 global warming rally in New York City, held during one of the coldest days in the city’s history. Since then, evidence has mounted of a correlation between global warming activism and severely cold weather.  A year ago a congressional media briefing on the Bingaman/Specter Climate Bill was cancelled due to a cold snap. In October 2008 London saw the first snow since 1922 while the House of Commons debated the Climate Change Bill. That same month Al Gore’s appearance at Harvard University coincided with low temperatures that challenged 125-year records. Tellingly, the average global temperature for each of the 366 days in 2008 was below the average for Jan. 24, 2006, the date Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” was released at the Sundance Film Festival. 

Critics claim the Gore Effect is mere coincidence, though one could also argue that coincidence is also the basis for the anthropogenic theory of climate change. Alternative theories, e.g., citing the influence of sun spot activity, have gained increasing credence as scientists have noted global warming in recent years on other planets, which presumably have been human-free.

Significant data issues have also arisen, such as the recent discovery of a chunk of Arctic sea ice the size of California that satellites had missed (but which in all probability had been known to polar bears).  Back in Washington, a small contingent of demonstrators marched to the nearby Capitol Power Plant, where organizers led the crowd in a chorus of “We Shall Overcome.” NASA’s Dr. James Hansen, a leading global warming alarmist, has called such coal-fired plants “factories of death,” but the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which sponsored a “Celebrate Coal!” counter-demonstration nearby, pointed out that getting rid of coal-fired plants would raise electric rates, eliminate three million jobs, and, according to a Johns Hopkins University study, result in 150,000 premature deaths annually. Meanwhile the crowd sang on, as the solar panels meant to power the speaker system were covered in snow.  If nothing else, the Gore Effect proves that God has a sense of humor.  Read story here.

Calhoun and Hansen, that is.  Jim Calhoun’s recent outburst has garnered scorn all over the nation because as an employee of the State of Connecticut, he makes 1.6 million dollars, thoughhe brings in 12 million.  Because he is a government employee, someone asked him, since we are in tough times, if he should have his salary slashed.  Yet HE TOOK A MARGINALLY PROFITABLE PROGRAM FOR THE STATE AND BY IT MAKING SO MUCH MONEY NOW, FUELS OTHER STATE PROGRAMS. And just for the record, how many sports in state schools operate at a loss on the taxpayer’s dime?  I suspect the same kind of clowns that are demanding to know what Paterno makes (they got it thrown back in their face, as they could not create the class envy that this guy asking him was trying to, and apparently succeeded in doing).

Now how is it, a man making that after we subtract his salary, and not even look at all the charities he has raised money for, still is in charge of a program that is making over 10 million dollars for Connecticut, arguably paying the salaries of others who may not be helping the state out of the red, and we see him attacked, but not JIM HANSEN. The same kind of ilk that takes apart Calhoun gives Hansen, a federal government employee, who ironically enough is trying to send this country deeper into debt by his proclamations. He gets a free pass with his outrageous and factually debatable, if not simply deceptive, assertions.

And you think this global warming debate is about science, Give me a break. If it was, it would be as Al Gore says, a done deal...the opposite way that they see things. When you see the media the way they are and look at the facts you can see the common thread in all of this is a political agenda.  Sports, weather, news, you name it, the same kind of thing is going on.  They are both named Jim, both working for “government entities”.  One has earned what he has done in sport, and by being profitable to a tune of over 10 million dollars, assuming the state authorities used it correctly, helped many around him. The other… you be the judge. See PDF here.

One of the criticisms of global warming predictions is that models cannot even reproduce climate for which we already have detailed records. So last spring, when climate scientists at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Science and the Max Planck Institute of Meteorology managed—finally—to use their supercomputer to recreate the climate of the past half-century, there was much anticipation of what their predictions would be for the next half. What they said was that global temperatures would continue to fall for at least another decade, perhaps longer.

When I wrote last year that this 20-year intermission in upward temperature trends bruised the credibility of global warming scientists and alarmist environmentalists, several of them wrote me to say they had never predicted steadily rising temperatures. No, no, they insisted, all along they had expected periods—even some long ones—in which temperatures would retreat before surging ahead again. So the currently cooling fit right in with what they had been predicting all along.

This, of course, was revisionist hogwash—if only because the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claimed there was no doubt that disastrous manmade warming was already upon us. The IPCC further predicted temperatures this decade would rise 0.3C and by similar amounts every decade through 2100.

I had been fully prepared for the alarmists to take credit for the cooling once it became undeniable. What I had not predicted was the hubris and intellectual dishonesty that permitted the warmers to insist they knew all along of facts contrary to their theories, but believed those facts reinforced, rather than undermined, the validity of their earlier claims.

Now, a similarly Orwellian doublethink is happening over Arctic sea ice. Since last fall, Arctic ice has been expanding faster than at any time since satellite records became available in 1979. The ice cap is now only a fraction smaller than in 1980—when it was at its largest.

Not only has this news not received much reporting, but the fact that ice sensors in the North have been malfunctioning, which has very likely led to a further underestimating of the amount of ice around the pole, has set off another we-never-claimed-it-was-an-emergency moment among greenies. Read much more here.

As I see it, the most important single item in President Obama’s budget is his commitment to a cap-and-trade plan (to limit and reduce carbon emissions). It represents nothing less than an absolutely breath-taking attempt at reengineering the entire American economy. The White House expects the system will begin generating revenue for the government in 2012. By auctioning off carbon permits, the White expects the plan to bring some $80 billion a year between from 2012 to 2019.

1) What this is, of course, is a de facto business tax that will get passed along to workers and consumers. (Not to mention the impact on economic growth.) And not a small tax, at that. Over that same period, the White House expects regular corporate taxes to bring in some $3.8 trillion dollars. So the cap-and-trade auction impose an additional 20 percent tax or cost above that level. And remember that we already have the second highest corporate tax rate in the world.

2) Of that $80 billion, $15 billion would go toward “clean” energy investment. The rest would pay for his Making Work Pay tax credits. So what we have is, in essence, an enormous wealth transfer from job creators to consumers.

3) Let me also go back to something I wrote last summer:

Here is what William Pizer, an economist at Resources for the Future and a lead author on the most recent report from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said at a symposium earlier this week here in Washington: “As an economist, I am skeptical that [dealing with climate change] is going to make money. You’ll have new industries, but they’ll be doing what old industries did but a higher net cost.... You’ll be depleting other industries.”

Of course, many economists will recognize “the green is good for growth” trap that Obama and Clinton have stumbled into. It’s just a modern iteration of the famous “broken windows fallacy” where people mistake the shifting of wealth and resources for the creation of new wealth and resources.

Pizer went on to say that calls for dramatic reductions in carbon emissions - the Democrats want 80 percent, John McCain 65 percent - were also unrealistic unless there was “some event” that really galvanized public opinion. Instead, what he predicted was a modest price on carbon via a cap-and-trade plan, a greater push for efficiency, and more regulation of energy-intensive industries.  Read more here.

Meanwhile Australia’s government on Thursday came under renewed pressure to delay plans for carbon trading, with the nation’s leading industry body saying the global downturn made a 2010 start unrealistic. The Australian Industry Group, which represents manufacturing, engineering and construction firms, said the scheme should be delayed until 2012 because of the financial downturn. Read more here.

And California’s Cap-and-Trade plan is already killing jobs as noted here. You would think Boxer and Pelosi would know better since that is their home state. Environmental lobbiests (4 for every member of congress) are getting whatever they want from this bunch. See here how Boxer plots to thwart GOP filibuster on climate bill here.

The global warming hoax didn’t happen over night. It is generally dated from an appearance before Congress by Dr. James E. Hansen in 1988 predicting a dramatic rise in the Earth’s temperature based on the increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. At that time, Dr. Hansen, Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, warned that steps had to be taken quickly to reduce CO2 emissions.

Ever since then, Hansen has been active in his effort to convince everyone that he’s right and condemning anyone an opposing point of view. “The science is settled” has been the mantra of men like Hansen and, of course, the bilious Albert Gore of “An Inconvenient Truth” fame.

The background music has been supplied by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that has merrily falsified alleged scientific data to advance the hoax while the UN Kyoto Protocol imposed limits on CO2 emissions. Most of the nations that signed it have largely ignored it, discovering that it harms their economies. The U.S. avoided signing, but Americans have elected a President who is utterly devoted to this “solution” to a problem that does not exist.

In ”Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know”, co-authors, Patrick J. Michaels and Robert C. Balling, Jr., the former a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and the latter a professor of the climatology program in the School of Geographical Sciences at Arizona State University, lay out just how the actual science has been deliberately distorted and politicized.

Two factors have been at work. One is money. Much of the funding for climate research comes from the U.S. government. To get that funding, the science has to fit the political agenda of whatever administration was in power. The second factor is media coverage of the issue. Journalism thrives on bad news and, after gleefully reporting a coming ice age in the 1970s they embraced an apocalyptic global warming and the vocal environmental movement in the 1980s.

Despite the fact that the Earth, based on weather satellite data, is now ten years into a distinct cooling cycle, the mainstream media continues to embrace global warming as real along with the cries to end the use of coal for the generation of electricity. Coal, one of the most abundant and inexpensive sources of energy in America, accounts for just over fifty percent of all the electricity Americans use daily.

“Climate of Extremes” points out that “As virtually all global warming science is a publicly funded enterprise, political dynamics must in part be involved. At the simplest level, global warming is just one of many scientific issues competing for funding. AIDS and cancer, for example, are competitors.”

There is an additional factor that cannot be ignored. “The reward structure in academia - promotion, tenure, and salary - is based on the quality and quantity of peer-reviewed research. The requisite level and number of publications for tenure is virtually impossible to achieve without substantial public funding.” In short, environmental extremism was very good for the careers of those who kept attributing everything from allegedly endangered polar bears to the shrinking snow cover on Mount Kilimanjaro to global warming while warning against it.

Thanks to the ardent efforts of countless environmental organizations, global warming had been totally integrated into the thinking of those inside the Beltway so that millions of taxpayer dollars, then and now as part of the stimulus package have been spent to prove what the actual science demonstrates is bogus. We have all been lied to by a shameless confederation of scientists, their professional publications, their formal organizations, and politicians seeking to use this big scare to advance their careers and agendas. The problem for all of them is that the real science does not support global warming and never did. Real scientists, branded dissenters, skeptics, and deniers, held true to the principles of science, knowing that it would eventually end this vast and terrible hoax. Read full essay here.