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Paul Driessen
Congress and the White House should work together to end the antiquated ban on exporting domestically produced crude oil. Numerous studies underscore the benefits of doing so and conclude that oil exports would create jobs, generate real prosperity, and help sustain domestic production while keeping prices low, rather than causing oil shortages and price hikes.
Once again, it is private investment and innovation… on private lands… that are primarily responsible for this incredible turnaround in US oil and gas production and global oil prices. It all happened in spite of our federal legislators and regulators, underscoring once again why it is so important to promote our free enterprise system, and rein in our overzealous, anti-energy government.
Thank you for reposting my article, quoting from it, and forwarding it to your friends and colleagues.
Best regards,
Paul
Jobs, prosperity and security via oil exports
Ending the antiquated ban on oil exports will also spur US production and keep oil prices low
Paul Driessen
The midterm elections underscore how much Americans value energy, job and economic revival and how much they want less Washington control of their lives, livelihoods, and dreams for their children and grandchildren. They also reflect the waning influence of radical Obama and Steyer climate change and anti-energy environmentalist elites. If ever there was a time to end the ban on oil exports, it’s now.
With U.S. demand for oil products falling, production rising, and myriad studies making a strong case for selling American crude abroad, the president and Congress should terminate the ban as soon as possible.
The nation’s demand for crude oil fell by 3.5% in September versus the same month a year ago. Gasoline demand fell by 3.0% because of efficiency gains in cars and trucks, coupled with a still weak economy, abominable 62.8% labor force participation rate, and too many people forced to work part-time, for lower wages and fewer benefits.
Meanwhile, U.S. crude oil production soared in September, climbing to its highest level in 29 years - and demolishing claims that we are rapidly exhausting Earth’s petroleum. During September, the United States produced 8.8 million barrels of oil per day - an increase of nearly 14% over the previous year and 58% since 2005. In fact, the United States has now replaced Saudi Arabia as the world’s #1 oil producer.
The International Energy Agency predicts that U.S. oil production will likely exceed 9 million barrels per day by the end of the year, with imported energy liquids reaching a remarkable low of 21% of our consumption in 2015, compared to 60% in 2006. Hydraulic fracturing played the key role in this.
That brings us to the price component of Economics 101. Declining demand and rising supplies tend to drive prices down, and indeed crude prices plunged 28% from $105 per barrel in January to $76 in November 2014. Prices for gasoline, heating oil and other petroleum-related commodities also dropped significantly. That’s a huge boon to consumers, from families to refiners to petrochemical makers.
The AAA motorists club estimates that every one-cent decline in the pump price of gasoline feeds an extra $1 billion into the USA economy. The 71-cent drop per gallon has injected $71 billion in actual stimulus money, adding much-needed disposable income to households whose budgets have been pinched by higher taxes and rising costs for food, clothing and healthcare.
Interestingly, the lower crude oil prices have occurred during a time of political unrest. In the past, crude prices have tended to climb rapidly when armies were on the march. Today, however, oil production in the United States and Canada appears to have ended the connection between military clashes and prices. Despite ISIS butchery in Syria and Iraq, Israel-Palestinian dissension, disputes over the South China Sea, Russia’s incursions into Ukraine, Islamist murders and kidnappings in Nigeria, and saber-rattling in North Korea, the global price of crude oil has declined steadily all year.
Increased U.S. oil and natural gas production have also nearly single-handedly lifted America’s economy out of its recessionary doldrums. A U.S. Department of Energy report found that the number of oil and natural gas jobs grew 40 times faster than jobs in the rest of the economy from 2007 to 2012. Imagine how bad the Obama economy would be if it weren’t for the oil and gas industry that the President, his radical voter base and most of his cabinet secretaries still despise.
Since 2012, the good news has continued. In the booming Marcellus Shale region of Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, the number of labor hours worked rose by 40% from 2012 to 2013, marking a new all-time high. (New York could also share in this job and revenue bonanza, but its political elites continue to block any and all fracking, severely hurting blue collar and farm families in western NY State.)
Numbers like these make it easy to see the benefits of U.S. oil and natural gas production for the economy. Adding crude oil exports into the mix would multiply the benefits.
A recent study by the economic analysis firm IHS Global concludes that allowing crude oil exports would lower gasoline prices by an additional 8 cents per gallon and support an additional 964,000 jobs in 2018. Moreover, it said, repealing the ban on exports would benefit all 50 states, not just those that actively produce oil and natural gas. The National Economic Research Associates (NERA) says eliminating the oil export ban would create high-paying jobs for almost 400,000 unemployed American workers, while the Brookings Institution calculates that ending the ban would boost America’s GDP by some $1.8 trillion!
A U.S. Government Accountability Office echoed these analyses. The GAO’s federal auditors found that oil exports would lower energy prices for U.S. consumers, incentivize more domestic oil production, boost the economy, and lower the U.S. trade deficit by further reducing the need for foreign oil imports. The GAO also advised federal agencies to reexamine the size of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve “in view of changing market conditions,” including America’s new position as a global energy superpower. Though the GAO didn’t mention it, opening federally controlled onshore and offshore lands to leasing, drilling and fracking would also work wonders.
Being energy-rich also gives America more leverage internationally. Consider the impact that crude oil and natural gas exports could have on Russia’s territorial ambitions. Up to half of Mr. Putin’s budget was fueled by energy exports in 2012. If U.S. energy supplies could be exported to our allies in Eastern Europe, until they can launch their own fracking revolutions, Russia’s ability to use energy exports as a political weapon would be constrained, and Putin’s financial strength diminished.
Japan, South Korea and other Asian economies are also hungering to import American crude.
Some major oil and gas users worry that even limited exports of U.S. crude would reduce supplies and send prices back up. Petrochemical and other manufacturers have created jobs and profited mightily from hydraulic fracturing, soaring domestic production, and sharply lower energy and feedstock prices, so one can understand their fears. However, lifting the ban on crude oil exports will create new markets and convince more voters and politicians to support opening more areas to environmentally sound drilling and fracking, and thereby fostering further exploration and production that will help keep prices low.
Biofuel producers might also oppose ending the ban. The surge in oil and gas production makes it even harder to defend spending billions of taxpayer and consumer dollars on fuels that require some 40 million acres of farmland, plus vast amounts of water, fertilizer, pesticides and fossil fuel energy to produce. Their claims that biofuels help prevent climate change have become just as tedious and untenable. Global temperatures haven’t budged in 18 years, it’s more than nine years since a Category 3-5 hurricane made U.S. landfall, and any actual human influences on the global climate are not even detectable amid natural climate blips and fluctuations. It’s time to end biofuel mandates and subsidies, and focus on fossil fuels.
The U.S. prohibition on crude oil exports is a relic of the 1970s. It was enacted in response to the Arab Oil Embargo and gasoline lines that snaked through the streets of major U.S. cities. Those days are gone.
Today’s technologies are increasing the nation’s global strength and standing. Just imagine the jobs, security and prosperity we would enjoy if more states permitted fracking, and federal overseers issued Keystone pipeline permits and started allowing real energy production on lands they now keep off limits.
If oil and natural gas exports were allowed, the United States could exert its new energy influence throughout the world without firing a shot. This is a superb opportunity for a newly Republican and bipartisan Congress - and for a President who up to now has been more ideological and defiant than most American citizens can accept. Congress and President Obama should speed oil leasing and exports now.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (http://www.cfact.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power Black death and Cracking Big Green: To save the world from the save-the-Earth money machine.
Big Money was spent trying to prop up support for the falsified CAGW hypothesis during the US Half Term elections. At the head of the list, Liberal Tom Steyer donated $58 million to Political Action Committees (PACs).
The California billionaire and climate-change activist gave $16 million more to his NextGen Climate Action Committee in the first two weeks of October, bringing to $57.6 million his aggregate donations to his organization. Despite the donated Billions, the US voters turned their collective backs on the Alarmist candidates.
The “whackos are inconsolable in their grief” and are spewing out hate language including “denier” - the hateful reference to the holocaust. The Alarmists had previously lost the scientific argument and now find they have also lost the political argument....hence the hatred.
Astrophysicist Dr Gordon Fulks believes “that we most effectively discredit that term by turning it back on those who use it against us.
Who are the Deniers?
by Dr Gordon J Fulks
Global Warmers are forever calling those of us who disagree with them ‘Deniers.’ This thinly veiled reference to the Holocaust and the murder of six million people is far from appropriate. Do Skeptics deny the Holocaust and the science? Of course not, but it brings up an interesting question:
Who denies natural climate change?
Who denies the importance of variable solar irradiance and the possible importance of solar modulation of galactic cosmic rays?
Who denies that our Sun is a variable star?
Who denies that our oceans contain the vast majority of mobile heat on this planet and therefore dominate our climate, year to year and decade to decade?
Who denies the importance of natural ocean cycles like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), discovered by researchers studying salmon?
Who denies clear cyclical variations in our climate, easily traceable to ocean cycles?
Who denies that our recent warming commenced about 1830, long before significant burning of fossil fuels?
Who denies that ice core data clearly show that recent warming is consistent with previous warm periods, like the Medieval, Roman, and Minoan?
Who denies that CO2 lags temperature in the ice core data by as much as 800 years and hence is a product of climate change not a cause?
Who denies 150 years of chemical measurements of atmospheric CO2 that suggest that ice core reconstructions of past CO2 concentrations are low by 60 ppm?
Who denies that the global temperature went down for three decades after World War II, despite significant increases in human emissions of CO2 due to industrialization?
Who denies that water vapor is the primary greenhouse gas and by far the dominant climate gas, not CO2?
Who denies that increasing CO2 is a substantial benefit to plants and therefore helps us feed the seven billion people on this planet?
Who denies that our oceans are alkaline not acidic and can never turn acidic because of buffering?
Who denies that the EPA’s three “Lines of Evidence” supporting their Endangerment Finding on CO2 are all fatally flawed?
Who denies the leveling off of the Global Temperature for the past 15 years?
Who denies that the ‘Hotspot’ (required by Global Warming theory) does not exist in the tropical troposphere?
Who denies that all 73 computerized climate models are epic failures?
Who denies that theories which fail validation tests are dead?
Who denies the supremacy of evidence over theory?
Who denies the supremacy of logic and evidence over authority and consensus?
Who denies that Extreme Weather has always been with us and cannot be traced to CO2?
Who denies that the Climategate e-mails showed fundamental cheating by those scientists promoting Global Warming?
Who denies that many prominent scientists oppose climate hysteria?
In short, who denies both the science and the scientific method?
UPDATE SUNDAY MORNING:
Note from Joe Bast
I just finished watching John Coleman on CNN… he was magnificent. The host was as ignorant and insulting in his opening remarks as you would expect, but John forcefully and intelligent set him straight and refused to be bullied. He was given plenty of time to make his case, made it clear he was speaking as a scientist, mentioned the 31,000 scientists who signed the Oregon Petition, and patiently explained why so much scientific research seems to support the man-made global warming hypothesis.
My only nit-pick was John’s statement early in the interview that “climate change doesn’t exist.” Of course it does....it’s “man-made global warming” or “catastrophic climate change” that don’t exist, haven’t been proven, or aren’t a problem we need to devote billions (or trillions) of dollars addressing. But nobody performs with 100% perfection in front of a camera, and John was amazingly good, the perfect spokesperson for our cause.
John was followed by a much shorter interview with the current CEO of the Weather Channel who was surprisingly (perhaps) low-key, did not attack John, and made little attempt to argue the science.
Congratulations, John! Let’s work to make sure millions of people see this clip.
John Coleman, the founder of The Weather Channel and a long-time friend of The Heartland Institute, wrote an open letter to UCLA’s Hammer Museum last month, demanding it open up a climate change discussion to the “skeptic” point of view. That letter got a lot of attention, and Coleman has been making the rounds of media outlets this week.
On Monday, he was seen by two million viewers on “The Kelly File” with Megyn Kelly on the Fox News Channel. Later that night, Coleman was a guest on “Coast to Coast AM,” which for decades has been the most popular overnight radio program in North America with three million listeners.
So tune in to CNN at 11 a.m. ET on Sunday, Nov. 2 to watch Coleman on “Reliable Sources” talk about the media’s complicity in perpetuating an unscientific panic about man’s influence on the climate. Coleman tells us the conversation (taped on Friday for broadcast Sunday morning) focused on The Weather Channel’s response to Coleman’s Monday appearance on “The Kelly File.”
Coleman says the host “didn’t know what hit him,” and, “I assure you, this is not your average TV interview.”
Don’t miss it! Watch CNN’s “Reliable Sources” on Sunday morning.
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By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM
HLN Weekly
The Winter of 2013-14 was wild over North America.
Most forecasters including NOAA, the media and public, were caught by surprise. The arctic air pushed the grid to the brink of failure and led to supply issues and resulting price spikes for other sources of energy stressing homeowners and businesses. Look for a repeat this winter despite NOAA and Department of Energy forecasts of a warmer winter and no repeat of the polar vortex.
I, and most all meteorologists, have a high regard for the work of our forecaster brethren at the National Weather Service. NOAA has done some great research on factors affecting longer term weather and they do a commendable job with medium range forecasts.
The government forecasters do a have a blind spot, however, with seasonal forecasts. Part of the reason, a former NOAA Climate Prediction Center Director once told me in 2003, was due to pressure from academia only to use El Ninos and La Ninas with an politically driven adjustment for long term warming trends (ignoring the fact they have been non-existent for almost two decades).
In September I was invited to a meeting at a large company in Toronto that advises many organizations on how to manage their way through energy market fluctuations and supply disruptions. They had heard that we at Weatherbell (in July of 2013) had projected a historically cold winter for 2013/14. That is in comparison to Environment Canada (Canadian Government weather service) prediction in late November 2013 that last winter would be warm in Toronto and the Great Lakes.
Remember how cold last winter was for us here in New Hampshire??? It was even worst in Toronto and most large US cities around the Great Lakes. They wanted to know how Weatherbell got it right when both the Canadian & US Government forecasts were so wrong.
Our research at Weatherbell had identified a pool of warm water that had developed in the central Pacific during the super La Nina of 2010/11 and slowly drifted with the wind driven currents into the Gulf of Alaska. A similar warm pool formation and movement occurred, during the brutal winters of the 1916-1918 period, 1976-1978 and again in 2002-2004. Indeed it was the coldest December to March in Chicago in the entire record from 1872 beating out the previous record cold. Vermont in the deep snow, had its coldest March ever, beating out 1916.
Unlike government forecasters that have to contend with toting the party line on Global Warming by academia and politicians, private sector forecasters investigate the relationship of many factors, major multidecadal cycles in the Pacific and Atlantic, variances on the sun, the winds in the high atmosphere that flip back and forth, soil moisture, snow cover in winter, volcanic eruptions, and unusual features like that warm pool. We study the past intensively to forecast the future. At Weatherbell we have 3400 clients that depend on us and they will tell you we usually get it right.
We had promised a cool, spring and summer, an erratic fall this year and have advised our clients since early this year this upcoming winter will be another hard winter characterized by lots of snow. It should be cold over much of the country but focused in the east
NOAA meanwhile has again forecast a warm winter especially west and northeast. They have it cooler in the south, mainly because they see clouds and a southern storm track with the average of all El Ninos. They have expanded the cold to the southeast and will likely expand it to the north but not enough. They have had a clear warm bias in the past dozen years. A public information officer from NOAA in the DC area has heard many complaints from local and regional offices about that warm bias.
El Ninos come in more than one flavor. El Ninos displaced towards the central tropical Pacific. Are cold to very cold here in the east. We told our clients this will be one of the cold ones like the ones in 1968/69, 1976/77, 1977/78, 1993/94, 2002/03, 2003/04, 2009/10. Because of some of the other factors, there will be a period of four to six weeks of intense cold midwinter.
Snow will fall in the east this weekend! Snow will be heavy into February in much of the country. But fortunately, most of the similar years had winter end early. When the snow melts in March, milder weather follows in March and April. We all will be ready for it. Meanwhile prepare for the worst.
Did you know that Argon, an inert “noble gas” element, one of the basic building blocks of nature, is the fourth most plentiful substance in our atmosphere? It’s true. There’s more Argon in our atmosphere than anything other than molecular Nitrogen and Oxygen, and then Water.
So now the science deniers in the Obama EPA are banning Argon.
In chemistry, a “noble gas” is one of the elements on the periodic table that is usually listed on the far right side*, which represents an element whose electron configurations are ‘full.’ What this means is that these elements don’t really react much. They don’t even usually form molecules**, rather just preferring to float around as lone atoms. They don’t react, they don’t corrode, they don’t do anything really.
Think about the difference between Hydrogen and Helium. Hydrogen is a strongly reactive gas, explosive in the right conditions, as we saw in the Hindenburg disaster. Helium however is a noble gas, and is perfectly safe, unlike Hydrogen. Argon is another noble gas, about as reactive as Helium.
I guess the Obama folks never took Chemistry in school, spending all their time in racist studies courses, and so don’t know what ‘inert’ means. However they have their work cut out for them trying to ban 1% of the global atmosphere.
*I guess someone told the EPA that Argon is a far right Koch element.
**When noble gases do form molecules, they are created artificially, with the heaviest noble gases like Xenon, and are highly reactive. For example XeF₄ must be kept in special containers of Nickel, and will spontaneously react with any water, including in the air, so can only be used it completely dry environments. This illustrates just how difficult it is to get a noble gas into a molecule. Even if you cram it in there, it’ll try to get out.
Environmental Protection Agency
Office of Pesticide Programs
Supporting document to docket# EPA-HQ-OPP-2014-0558
Listing of 72 chemical substances proposed for removal from the currently approved inert ingredient list.
My locally saved file: EPA-HQ-OPP-2014-0558-0002 (PDF)
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As a commenter said, “Wish the EPA would ban jackasses...then they would all have to “find” a secure place to live.”
Another atmospheric scientist bemused:
“It is the theater of the absurd. As we now know, the enviros are now writing many of EPA’s rules. Unfortunately, knowledge of any science is not a prerequisite. Unfortunately, it is not a requirement for being a lawyer or judge either. However, you have to look at it through the eyes of an enviro. The concentration of Ar in the atmosphere is 9,400 ppm and the concentration of CO2 is 400 ppm and we know that is bad. So anything at 9400 ppm must be bad!”
By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM
Hudson Litchfield News
In 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle that his cap-and-trade proposal to control greenhouse gas emissions would mean higher energy prices for Americans.
“Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket,” Obama said.
As president, Obama never got his cap-and-trade proposal through Congress. Instead, Obama has been using the Environmental Protection Agency to achieve his energy policy goals. And this winter, New Englanders will bear the brunt of Obama’s skyrocketing electricity rates.
Residents of the northeast spent as much last winter as they did in all of 2012. Most residents of Massachusetts and much of New Hampshire can expect to pay 30-50 percent more for electricity this winter.
Dan Dolan of the New England Power Generators Association said the rising winter prices are a side effect of New England wanting more electricity from gas, and less from other sources, without moving ahead to build more pipeline capacity into the region.
“We had a nuclear plant in Vermont, Vermont Yankee, that’s retiring, a coal plant in Massachusetts, Salem Harbor, that’s retiring, and with that, it’s basic economics: Fewer plants, less supply to meet demand, and there’s a price response” in the form of higher rates, Dolan said.
National Grid, Massachusetts’s biggest utility, said it needs to seek a 37 percent rate hike for the six months beginning November 1. In New Hampshire, the Public Utilities Commission already has granted an average 47-percent rate increase to Liberty Utilities.
The reason for the sharp increases: tight supplies of natural gas in New England, despite booming production of the fuel nationwide.
New England’s dependence on natural gas for electricity production has increased dramatically in recent years as ever more stringent environmental regulations have forced coal and oil-fueled power plants to shut down. Coal now produces just 1 percent of New England’s electricity and oil has fallen off the grid altogether.
Fortunately, Public Service of New Hampshire their rates will remain relatively. PSNH, the largest utility in the state, has a large scale clean coal fired power plant that saved its customers over $100 million last year and may well do that again this year. Coal is what is keeping the lights on at an affordable level.
The legacy of last year’s brutal winter has natural gas inventories starting 10.7% less than last year at this time and 11.4% below the five-year (2009-13) average.
John Kerry and Obama believe they have the answer ‘green energy’. “The solution is staring us in the face. It’s very simple: clean energy,” Kerry said, noting the prospects for creating millions of jobs worldwide in the sector. Total malarkey. The data shows that those investments have brought few benefits, and produce much harm.
European studies have found that expensive, unreliable wind and solar power kills two to four jobs for each “renewable” energy job this heavily subsidized industry creates, and only 10% of renewable jobs were permanent. In Spain, unemployment soared to 27.5% after heavy subsidization caused energy prices to skyrocket driving industry to China and India.
EU Energy Commissioner Gunther Oettinger recently said European energy policies must change, from being climate driven to being driven by the needs of industry, and job preservation. He could have included families, because millions of European households can no longer afford to heat their homes properly, due to soaring energy prices.
Cold with high energy cost is deadly. Increased winter deaths were associated with respiratory and circulatory diseases and influenza, and affects mainly the poor and elderly. Many have to choose between heating and eating. In the UK alone over 35,000 excess winter deaths have been recorded in each winter since 1998 as the climate cooled. Many residents of Europe are in energy poverty.
Prime Minister David Cameron has ordered ministers to ditch the ‘green crap’ blamed for driving up energy bills, hurting the poor and making business uncompetitive.
The US instead of learning from the EU’s mistakes is intending to follow their example. The poor and middle class are the ones that will be hurt the most.
In Europe, including Spain, the governments stopped the subsidies. Germany is building 24 coal plants and reinstating nuclear power as brownouts and blackouts cause electricity prices to skyrocket and industry to move. 600,000 Germans had their power turned off because they could not afford to pay their bills.
We were told by the Director of Pennsylvania Power and Light that their reliability study forecasts even gas producer Pennsylvania will have rolling blackouts this winter if it is cold. NY and New England will be much worse off.
We forecast in July 2013 an historic winter last year even as NOAA predicted widespread warmth. NOAA forecasts warmth again this year, but there is strong evidence an even colder winter will follow in the east and south. The US winters have cooled for 25 years at an accelerating rate according to NOAA’s own data.
This bleak probability will expose an egregious error in government climate and energy policy that will cost much pain and many lives.
The environmental movement and our politicians, which have promoted this “green energy” debacle, should be held primarily responsible for this unfolding tragedy.
See rebuttal on the scientific method and consensus here.
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Britain Announces Emergency Measures To Prevent Winter Blackouts
Anthony Watts / 6 hours ago October 28, 2014
MODIS_UK_SnowFrom the GWPF: Cold Winter Could Cause Britain’s Lights To Go Out
Emergency measures to prevent blackouts ths winter have been unveiled by National Grid after Britain’s spare power capacity fell to just 4 per cent. Emily Gosden, The Daily Telegraph, 27 October 2014
The capacity crunch has been predicted for about seven years. Everyone seems to have seen this coming except the people in charge. Andrew Orlowski, The Register, 10 June 2014
National Grid has warned that there has been a significant increase in the risk of electricity shortages and brownouts this winter after fires and faults knocked out a large chunk of Britain’s shrinking power station coverage. The grid operator admitted that in the event of Britain experiencing the coldest snap in 20 years, a 5 per cent chance, then electricity supplies would not be able to meet demand during two weeks in January. Tim Webb, The Times, 27 October 2014
The UK government will set out Second World War-style measures to keep the lights on and avert power cuts as a “last resort”. The price to Britons will be high. Factories will be asked to “voluntarily” shut down to save energy at peak times for homes, while others will be paid to provide their own backup power should they have a spare generator or two lying around. Andrew Orlowski, The Register, 10 June 2014
By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM PDF
In the last local weekly, a letter to the editor called Contrary to the Scientific Method questioned a column I wrote showing how empirical data falsifies AGW. He implied the so called 97% consensus and the many papers published on global warming instead prove the theory, and this constitutes the ‘scientific method’ and trumps the data I presented.
See Richard Tol’s ravaging attck on Cook’s 97% ERL paper here. He concludes:
In sum, one of the most visible climate papers of recent years is not sound. Whereas previous critique could be interpreted as a lack of competence (Tol, 2014a), the later data release suggests that Cook et al., perhaps inadvertently, worked towards a given answer. This reflects badly on the authors, referees, editors and publisher. It also weakens the activists and politicians who cite Cook et al. in support of their position.
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD
The scientific method does not involve a poll or vote by scientists (that is in the realm of politics where you vote on a law), but validation of a theory with facts, which is what I have done for four decades and in my local posts.
The famous Cornell Nobel prize winning Physicist Richard Feynman explained the scientific method.
“In general, we look for a new law by the following process. First, we guess it (audience laughter), no, don’t laugh, that’s really true. Then we compute the consequences of the guess, to see what, if this is right, if this law we guess is right, to see what it would imply and then we compare the computation results to nature, or we say compare to experiment or experience, compare it directly with observations to see if it works.
If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are who made the guess, or what his name is.. If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.”
The way you validate or invalidate a theory in the scientific method is with empirical evidence. In many of my posts, I showed empirical evidence that falsify virtually every claim made based on the theory.
CONSENSUS
As for the 97% consensus claim, that was shown wrong here and here. In fact in a recent Forbes article, it was reported only 36 percent of earth scientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies. By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem. The survey results show earth scientists and engineers hold similar views as meteorologists. Two recent surveys of meteorologists (summarized here and here) revealed similar skepticism of alarmist global warming claims.
Michael Crichton, famous author often about claims of a consensus.
Enlarged
Crichton continued “Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world.
In science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”
PEER REVIEW PAPERS PROVE IT MUST BE RIGHT
Thousands of papers listed supporting global warming is no surprise given the $165B given to universities and researchers (Universities, NOAA, NASA, national labs) to produce papers focusing on what would happen IF the climate models were right. Even with that, there were 1350 peer review papers questioning global warming and1000 papers believing cooling has begun.
Scientists are aware of the failures too and now have proposed 54 excuses as to why their models have failed.
The real scientific method would have them throw out the theory and come up with a new one. But the fat cats in government, industry, environmental groups and universities that have benefited from this public scare would have too much too lose so they hang on.
We will pay the price this winter - especially the poor and middle class, reeling from the ACA and the other bad national and state energy and environmental policies already implemented.
James Taylor, Forbes
It is becoming clear that not only do many scientists dispute the asserted global warming crisis, but these skeptical scientists may indeed form a scientific consensus.
Don’t look now, but maybe a scientific consensus exists concerning global warming after all. Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies. By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem.
The survey results show geoscientists (also known as earth scientists) and engineers hold similar views as meteorologists. Two recent surveys of meteorologists (summarized here and here) revealed similar skepticism of alarmist global warming claims.
According to the newly published survey of geoscientists and engineers, merely 36 percent of respondents fit the “Comply with Kyoto” model. The scientists in this group “express the strong belief that climate change is happening, that it is not a normal cycle of nature, and humans are the main or central cause.”
The authors of the survey report, however, note that the overwhelming majority of scientists fall within four other models, each of which is skeptical of alarmist global warming claims.
The survey finds that 24 percent of the scientist respondents fit the “Nature Is Overwhelming” model. “In their diagnostic framing, they believe that changes to the climate are natural, normal cycles of the Earth.” Moreover, “they strongly disagree that climate change poses any significant public risk and see no impact on their personal lives.”
Another group of scientists fit the “Fatalists” model. These scientists, comprising 17 percent of the respondents, “diagnose climate change as both human and naturally caused. ‘Fatalists’ consider climate change to be a smaller public risk with little impact on their personal life. They are skeptical that the scientific debate is settled regarding the IPCC modeling.” These scientists are likely to ask, “How can anyone take action if research is biased?”
The next largest group of scientists, comprising 10 percent of respondents, fit the “Economic Responsibility” model. These scientists “diagnose climate change as being natural or human caused. More than any other group, they underscore that the ‘real’ cause of climate change is unknown as nature is forever changing and uncontrollable. Similar to the ‘nature is overwhelming’ adherents, they disagree that climate change poses any significant public risk and see no impact on their personal life. They are also less likely to believe that the scientific debate is settled and that the IPCC modeling is accurate. In their prognostic framing, they point to the harm the Kyoto Protocol and all regulation will do to the economy.”
The final group of scientists, comprising 5 percent of the respondents, fit the “Regulation Activists” model. These scientists “diagnose climate change as being both human and naturally caused, posing a moderate public risk, with only slight impact on their personal life.” Moreover, “They are also skeptical with regard to the scientific debate being settled and are the most indecisive whether IPCC modeling is accurate.”
Taken together, these four skeptical groups numerically blow away the 36 percent of scientists who believe global warming is human caused and a serious concern.
One interesting aspect of this new survey is the unmistakably alarmist bent of the survey takers. They frequently use terms such as “denier” to describe scientists who are skeptical of an asserted global warming crisis, and they refer to skeptical scientists as “speaking against climate science” rather than “speaking against asserted climate projections.” Accordingly, alarmists will have a hard time arguing the survey is biased or somehow connected to the ‘vast right-wing climate denial machine.”
Another interesting aspect of this new survey is that it reports on the beliefs of scientists themselves rather than bureaucrats who often publish alarmist statements without polling their member scientists. We now have meteorologists, geoscientists and engineers all reporting that they are skeptics of an asserted global warming crisis, yet the bureaucrats of these organizations frequently suck up to the media and suck up to government grant providers by trying to tell us the opposite of what their scientist members actually believe.
People who look behind the self-serving statements by global warming alarmists about an alleged “consensus” have always known that no such alarmist consensus exists among scientists. Now that we have access to hard surveys of scientists themselves, it is becoming clear that not only do many scientists dispute the asserted global warming crisis, but these skeptical scientists may indeed form a scientific consensus.
The U.N’s solution to its Intergovenmental Panel on Climate Change-proclaimed threat is to send prosperous nations back to the developing stage, redistribute their unfair wealth, and set the clock back to pre-Industrial times, which were presumably kinder to the environment and all of its creatures.
This strategy would be brilliant, were it not for a few contradictions worth pondering.
Going back to the early 1970s, the dominant U.N. theme held that developed countries enjoyed disproportionate benefits and huge wealth while at the same time causing environmental damage.
A weeklong U.N.-sponsored seminar at Founex, France then produced a fool’s bargain. It established a nonbinding understanding that developing countries would agree to avoid environmental problems caused by too much development in exchange for compensation from developed nations.
Unfortunately the agreement failed to recognize ravaging social, economic and environmental consequences of too little development. As societies get wealthier, they can afford to invest in cleaner technologies which simultaneously lift people out of hopeless poverty.
IPCC promulgated alarmism over rising global temperatures which began in the late 1970s following three decades of cooling provided political leverage to enact even more crippling anti-development policies.
As Cato Institute senior fellow and UCLA professor emeritus of international studies Deepak Lal observes in his book “Poverty and Progress: Realities and Myths about Global Poverty”: “The greatest threat to the alleviation of the structural poverty of the Third World is the continuing campaign by western governments, egged on by some climate scientists and green activists, to curb greenhouse emissions, primarily the CO2 from burning fossil fuels.”
Lul observes that it is mankind’s use of mineral energy stored in nature’s gift of fossil fuels accompanying the Industrial Revolution which “allowed the ascent from structural poverty which had scarred humankind for millennia. To put a limit on the use of fossil fuels without adequate economically viable alternatives is to condemn the Third World to perpetual structural poverty.”
But that’s exactly what our current White House administration is doing. Speaking on Aug. 6 at the East-West Center in Honolulu, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry referred to climate change as “the biggest challenge… we face right now,” ranking “right up there” with “terrorism, epidemics, poverty, [and] the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”
Kerry later advised African leaders to stop creating new farms and focus upon what they already have because “Certain agricultural processes can actually release carbon pollution.”
Considering that satellite measurements show that global mean temperatures have been flat over at least the past 18 years, perhaps leaders of energy-starved African and other Third World populations might be more appropriately counseled and assisted to address more urgent pollution and energy issues.
Like, for example, the circumstance that about 2.8 billion people worldwide must heat and cook with smoky open fires fueled by animal dung, wood, charcoal or coal. And the cruel fact that at least 1.2 billion lack access to electricity essential for refrigeration, including more than 300 million people in India and 550 million Africans.
Meanwhile, an Obama executive order requiring federal agencies to take climate change into account in preparing international development, loan and investment programs will deny assistance for many projects in energy-impoverished nations which would offer the most benefit. Included are vital state-of-art gas-fired plants in Ghana and coal-fired plants in South Africa which could take advantage of abundant local resources.
Support is available however for wind, solar and biofuel projects which will at best allow a few people in remote areas to have intermittently operating light bulbs. Such limited, unreliable and costly electricity won’t be nearly sufficient to support factories, shops, schools, or hospitals essential for a healthier, more prosperous future.
Obama justified his policies to Johannesburg, South Africa students, explaining that: “if everybody has got a car and everybody has got air conditioning and everybody has got a big house, well, the planet will boil over - unless we find new ways of producing energy.”
Yes, and while they wait for that to happen, a majority of the millions who continue to die each year from lung pollution and intestinal water and food infection diseases will be women who prepare meals along with highly vulnerable children and elderly. And unlike hypothetical events projected to occur hundreds of years in the future based upon provably failed theoretical IPCC climate computer models, this man-caused crisis is immediate, real and preventable.
President Obama recently stated before a U.N. Assembly that climate change is the “one issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other.” In pursuing initiatives based upon scary U.N. voodoo science he is obviously committed to make that prophesy come true. That defining contour is a foreign policy noose which is strangling Third World access to 21st century opportunities.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) and the graduate program in space architecture. He is author of “Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax,” and his professional aerospace work has been featured on the History Channel and the Discovery Channel-Canada
A paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters notes
“Though there is speculation to associate global warming with [the intensity of Haiyan], existing research indicate that we have been in a warming hiatus period, with the hiatus attributed to the La Nina-like multi-decadal phenomenon. It is thus intriguing to understand why Haiyan can occur during hiatus.”
Although typhoon Haiyan was, according to the Philippine Atmospheric Administration, the seventh strongest storm to hit the Philippines, Typhoon Sening, which hit during the low-CO2 1970’s ice age scare, was the strongest storm recorded.
According to the paper, the “La Nina-like multi-decadal” “hiatus” “suggests that as the western Pacific manifestation of the La Nina-like phenomenon is to pile up warm subsurface water to the west, the western North Pacific experienced evident subsurface warming and created a very favorable ocean pre-condition for Haiyan.”
However, multi-decadal La Nina-like and E...Warming (also known as the cold PDO):
I. - I. Lin*, Iam-Fei Pun and Chun-Chi Lien
With the extra-ordinary intensity of 170 kts, super-typhoon Haiyan devastated the Philippines in November 2013. This intensity is among the highest ever observed for tropical cyclones (TCs) globally, 35 kts well above the threshold of the existing highest category of 5. Though there is speculation to associate global warming with such intensity, existing research indicate that we have been in a warming hiatus period, with the hiatus attributed to the La Nina-like multi-decadal phenomenon. It is thus intriguing to understand why Haiyan can occur during hiatus. It is suggested that as the western Pacific manifestation of the La Nina-like phenomenon is to pile up warm subsurface water to the west, the western North Pacific experienced evident subsurface warming and created a very favorable ocean pre-condition for Haiyan. Together with its fast traveling speed, the air-sea flux supply was 158% as compared to normal for intensification.”
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See this rare debate at University of Northern Iowa “Climate Instability: Interpretations of Scientific Evidence” Dr. Jerry Schnoor of the University of Iowa presented the case for the theory of man-made warming and Steve Goreham argued the case for climate change driven by natural causes.
On September 23, a group of liberal activists, socialists and “journalists” from MSNBC and The Nation will join UN delegates in deciding the future of the world’s environmental policy. Predictably, no skeptics or moderates will be joining this huddle of hubris. While the media are quick to hype the forum, they’re not so quick to point out just how laughable some of the attendees are.
“The global warming movement has morphed into a coalition of ‘climate cause deniers.’ They deny the hundreds of causes and variables of climate change and pretend CO2 is the ‘control knob’ overriding all the others,” Marc Morano, Publisher of Climate Depot and producer of upcoming global warming documentary ‘Climate Hustle’ told the Media Research Center.
And the list of high-profile participants in this climate forum shows it’s nothing but an exercise in left-wing groupthink.
Naomi Klein: Best-selling Author Sees Capitalism As The Enemy of Progress
Yes, she’s called out conservative groups by name for opposing “wealth redistribution” (shocking!) But Klein is so fundamentally unserious that she cited an isolated incident of a plane getting stuck on softening tarmac as evidence for climate change and then excoriated the passengers on that flight for continuing their journey home and apparently exacerbating the problem. But a quick internet search reveals that even the BBC, which nobody can accuse of being skeptical about climate change, explained away such phenomena as commonly occurring in temperatures as low as 86 degrees.
Ronan Farrow: Farrow’s claim to fame begins and ends with possibly (but not definitely) being the son of Frank Sinatra. On July 29, Farrow devoted a segment to the question of whether or not emoji, a version of emoticons popular on smartphones, are racist because of their lack of racial diversity. Hard-nosed journalism!
Al Gore: Despite being something of a deity to climate change alarmists, Gore saw no problem in selling his floundering Current TV network to terror-friendly and oil-funded Al Jazeera, owned by the emir of Qatar. Gore described Al Jazeera, which threw a birthday party for a convicted terrorist in 2008, as “feisty and relatively independent.” Apparently his love of the environment and his country was less than his love of $500 million.
Norman Lear: the rabidly liberal founder of People for the American Way and the man who gave us “Meathead” has been an outspoken opponent of evangelical Christians, the “religious right” and conservatives in general.
Jeffrey Sachs: Soros Crony, Columbia Professor
According to Sachs, more typhoons will happen unless liberal energy policies are adopted, and those who disagree have “blood on their hands.”
Ted Turner: the rabidly liberal creator of CNN, and former husband to Jane Fonda, is attending on behalf of the UN’s own foundation. Turner, in an interview with Fortune Magazine on December 9, advocated for a one child policy in the United States, saying that the world population, citing overpopulation as a significant cause of climate change. He also said that if we don’t address global warming, within a few decades “most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals.”
Rajendra Pachauri: as the chairperson of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, he admitted in early 2013 that there had been a 17-year plateau in global temperatures. He has also been accused of conflicts of interest and working for grant money to the extent that the head of Greenpeace UK called for Pachauri to resign from his then-current position as head of the IPCC.
According to the UN website, the purpose of the United Nations Private Sector Forum 2014 is “to bring the voice of the private sector to inter-governmental debates on key topics.”
“The Climate Summit will serve as a public platform for leaders at the highest level all Member States, business, finance, civil society and local leaders to:
“Catalyze ambitious action on the ground to reduce emissions and strengthen climate resilience”
“Mobilize political will for an ambitious global legal agreement by 2015 that limits the world to a less than 2-degree Celsius rise in global temperature.”
“Green” billionaire Tom Steyer, an emerging bankroller for the left, and disgraced scientist James Hansen have promised to be in attendance for a march in New York City scheduled for September 21. The march’s organizers promise that the “People’s Climate March”
The following is a list of some of the other notable liberal activists, in order of their placement on the UN’s participant list:
The crowd funding website Kickstarter,
Lyn Lear, Norman’s wife, representing the Lear Family Foundation
Wesley Clark, former democratic presidential contender, in attendance representing Wesley Clark Associates
The Environmental Defense Fund
Greenpeace
Internews
Natural Resources Defense Council, the group led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Oxfam America
Oxfam International
Rockefeller Foundation
Ted Turner, rabidly liberal creator of CNN and former husband to Jane Fonda, is attending on behalf of the UN’s own foundation
World Resources Institute
WWF Global Climate and Energy Initiative
A second delegate from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in addition to Rajendra Pachauri.
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Not at the rally but one of the puppetmasters behind the whole socialist, antic capitalist, anti energy agendas is George Soros.
A group of wealthy businessmen with ties to the Obama political machine has put out an email blast asking Americans to submit public comments to the EPA in favor of the president’s “aggressive plan to tackle climate change.”
The new EPA rules would slap strict regulations on power plants through a plan critics say would result in millions of lost jobs and force consumers to pay more for their electricity. The EPA is accepting comments from the public through Dec. 1.
Organizing for Action, funded by billionaire investor George Soros, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes and other progressive rainmakers, asks recipients of the email to “Stand with the President” by submitting a public comment to the EPA before the deadline passes.
Please take a minute and send a comment AGAINST shutting down fossil fuels while your lights are still on The EPA’s public comment period for the new rules has been extended through Dec. 1. To make a public comment click here.
Read more.
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By Jane Ryan and Sam Ikin
Updated 17 Sep 2014, 6:45amWed 17 Sep 2014, 6:45am
Scientists say the extent of Antarctic sea ice cover is at its highest level since records began.
Satellite imagery reveals an area of about 20 million square kilometers covered by sea ice around the Antarctic continent.
Jan Lieser from the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) said the discovery was made two days ago.
“This is an area covered by sea ice which we’ve never seen from space before,” he said.
“Thirty-five years ago the first satellites went up which were reliably telling us what area, two dimensional area, of sea ice was covered and we’ve never seen that before, that much area.
“That is roughly double the size of the Antarctic continent and about three times the size of Australia.”
The formation of sea ice around Antarctica every year is one of the biggest seasonal events on Earth.
The ice is generated in what scientists refer to as “sea ice factories” or polynia - areas of the ocean surface where currents and wind patterns combine to generate sea ice.
Antarctic sea ice covers record area. PHOTO: An area about three times the size of Australia, in the Antarctic region, is now covered by sea ice. (British Antarctic Survey) Satellite image showing Antarctic sea ice
PHOTO: A satellite image of Antarctica showing sea ice extent. The red line is the average for September. (Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC)
“As soon as sea ice is produced in these polynias it is actually transported away from that so more sea ice can be produced,” Dr Lieser said.
Record Antarctic sea ice:
Antarctic sea ice covers 19.619 million sq km.
Maximum area recorded on September 12, 2014.
Third year in a row a record has been reached.
There has been a 1.5 per cent increase each decade since records began in 1979.
Increase believed to be linked to strong westerly winds.
As the area covered in sea ice expands scientists have said the ice on the continent of Antarctica which is not over the ocean continues to deplete.
CEO of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC, Tony Worby, said the warming atmosphere is leading to greater sea ice coverage by changing wind patterns.
“The extent of sea ice is driven by the winds around Antarctica, and we believe that they’re increasing in strength and part of that is around the depletion of ozone,” he said.
ICECAP NOTE: An examination of the zonal winds at the surface (yellows and reds westerly, blues easterly) show no apparent correlation to expanded ice cover.
Enlarged
He said changes to sea ice levels could have implications for the entire Antarctic ecosystem.
“So the sea ice is a very important habitat for krill in particular and for the reproduction of krill and that forms one of the absolute staples of the diet for many species in the Antarctic.”
While the Antarctic ecosystem braces for change, the world’s Antarctic research vessels will also have to contend with treacherous conditions in the months ahead.
From Spencer Adkins:
New National Science Foundation Grant Supports (SUBVERTS) The Nation’s TV Weathercasters As Local Climate Educators
PRINCETON, N.J. The nation’s television weathercasters will have better tools to keep their viewers informed about the local consequences of climate change, thanks to a $3 million National Science Foundation grant awarded to George Mason University and Climate Central, a non-profit science and journalism organization.
The three-year grant Taking to Scale a Proven Climate Education Method by TV Weathercasters: Climate Matters will expand Climate Central’s current efforts to produce and deliver localized TV-ready climate science content and professional development opportunities to TV meteorologists around the country.
“We found in our prior NSF-funded research that TV weathercasters can be highly effective climate educators” said the lead investigator for the project, Dr. Edward Maibach of George Mason University. “We also found that there are many TV weathercasters around the country who are eager to inform their viewers about the local weather impacts of climate change.”
More than 150 weathercasters are participating in the program, called Climate Matters. The goal of the current grant is to add an additional 200 weathercasters to the project, although all of the nation’s approximately 1,300 weathercasters will be invited to participate.
We will make every effort to make sure they do not succeed. Maibach is no scientist but was recruited by the AMS which was frustrated that the TV mets who are the connection the science has to the public tended to be skeptical because they knew that a lot of the warming is in the cities and have ben around long enough to have seen cycles and extremes in weather. The AMS/GMU/CC/TWC climate mafia is working hard to convert the non-believers. The AMS has required all seal holders and CBMs to take special climate workshops where they are schooled on the greenhouse scam. The tests they take have climate questions. They have to parrot back the falsehoods they are taught. The young people have been brainwashed/greenwashed in the universities. Why?? The $165B since 1995 has bought a lot of compliance. Universities have been ‘purified’ by eliminating or silencing skeptics. AS one former TV met said you need only to look at the definition of bribery: Bribery is an act of giving money or gift giving that alters the behavior of the recipient, where the gift is of a dishonest nature. Bribery constitutes a crime and is defined by Black’s Law Dictionary as the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an official or other person in charge of a public or legal duty. AMS represents the Academic community, which gets the lion’s share of the government and enviro booty. They have a lot to lose if the movement were to fail. It will fail and we with your support will take back our science.
Globally August Was Coldest In Five Years, Second Coldest In Ten Years
By Steve Goddard
Contrary to the spectacular “hottest August ever” lies being propagated by NASA GISS and NOAA ahead of Obama’s climate conference - August was the coldest in five years and the second coldest in 10 years, according to far more accurate NASA satellite data.
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Joe D’Aleo, CCM Hudson Litchfield News
Summer passed quietly. Concord had just three 90F days this year (one 90F, one 91F and one 92F, all in July) and the average for June to August was half a degree below normal. Concord had as many as 29 days at or above 90F (1955) and as few as zero (5 times, the most recent 1996). For the central and eastern U.S., it was the cool summer we at WeatherBELL.com had forecast back in January. It followed a brutal winter and cold spring.
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We warned as early as June 2013, that last winter would be an historic one and it was for the Great Lakes region (Chicago had its coldest December to March in its entire record back to 1872 and Detroit its snowiest winter since 1880). Ice on the Great Lakes was the greatest since they have been tracking it and was still seen in June on Lake Superior. For Concord, the winter averaged 3.1 F below normal, the 29th coldest in 146 years. March in Concord was 7.4 below normal, the fourth coldest March on record. All the colder March years were in the 1800s.
With all the climate factors aligning, next winter in the east and southeast should be even colder than last year. Plan accordingly. Come join us at Weatherbell.com to see the details.
Meanwhile The National Climate Data Center (NCDC) and the media has ignored the cold and headlined how the months have globally been the warmest ever. What gives? What if I told you NCDC (which supplies all the global data centers with the data they do their analysis with) has been ‘tinkering’ with the data to fit the politically correct story (budgets depend on it you know).
Back in 1990, NCDC introduced a data set for US (US Historical Climate Network USHCN), that was regarded by all to be the best in the world. It showed the warming in the 1920s and 1930s that peaked around 1940, a cooling trend that went through to the late 1970s followed by a rise similar to the early century that continued until the late 1990s. NASA’s James Hansen who first publicly proclaimed global warming in 1988, admitted in 1999 on the NASA GISS temperature site “The U.S. has warmed during the past century, but the warming hardly exceeds year-to-year variability. Indeed in the U.S., the warmest decade was the 1930s and the warmest year was 1934.”
This US data set was a problem for the politicians and NCDC. The U.S. temperature record was at odds with the reported Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN) trend, which showed the second 60 year cycle peak considerably higher (0.5C) than the one near 1940, and a much weaker cooling trend mid century. The reason was the US had an correction for the urban heat island effect designed by NCDC’s own Tom Karl. The global data had no such adjustment. Most of the global stations were cities and this urban warming, we are all familiar with contaminated the data in a big way.
This inconvenient fact did not delight the politicians, hoping to use global warming to impose taxes, gain control over our energy sector and build support for more global governance under the UN. In 2008, NCDC resolved the discrepancy by removing the urban heat island adjustment in the US data and suddenly 1934 instead of being 1.1F warmer than 1998 was 0.1F colder. Though the 60 year cycle, tied to the ocean multidecadal cycles was still evident, the new trend was more like the global.
They also added a new step where they blend (homogenize) stations together which has the effect of taking some of that urban warming and having it appear in the rural stations. Most striking in the new data sets is a major cooling of the early part of the record - not easily explained by either the urban or homogenization steps - which makes it appear that there has been an increasing temperature trend.
It seems other meteorological services around the world are playing the same games.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has been accused of manipulating historic temperature records to fit a predetermined view of global warming. Researcher Jennifer Marohasy claims the adjusted records resemble “propaganda” rather than science. Dr Marohasy analyzed raw data from dozens of locations across Australia and matched it against the new data used by the BOM showing that temperatures were progressively warming. In many cases, Dr Marohasy said, temperature trends had changed from slight cooling to dramatic warming over 100 years.
I could show you literally hundreds of examples of this reversal of trends in the data in the US and throughout the world (see this for Iceland).
Meanwhile, this tampering has now made its way down from the national to the state level. NCDC made yet another change this spring to how it calculates past state wide average temperatures. If you downloaded from NCDC the Maine state average annual temperature plot in March, you would have seen no real long-term trend for annual temperatures (-0.03C/decade) since 1895. 1913 was the warmest year - almost 46F for the annual average. The annual mean was 41.2F. 2012 was second warmest year, just short of 45F.
This spring after NCDC announced a new and better version of their state data. I downloaded the new Maine annual temperatures and found a remarkably different story. 1913 was cooled to 41F (almost 5F lower) and the average cooled to 40F. 2012 was now the warmest year, over 3F warmer than 1913. The long-term trend jumped to +0.23F/decade, the highest of any state.
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Michael Crichton, MD, PhD and author of State of Fear warned, in 2003
“I have been asked to talk about what I consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and I have a fundamental answer. The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.”
When you hear NOAA (not your trustworthy local office but the Climate Data Group in Asheville) and the media and political campaign ads make claims about August and seasons globally being the warmest ever and how big oil is to blame, please keep this in mind. It is not big oil, it is big money that feeds the ideological monster that continues to turn some of our universities into centers of mediocrity and threatens our nation’s energy security and (as a consequence) our lives. 
...or 19 years, according to a key statistical paper.
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley |
The Great Pause has now persisted for 17 years 11 months. Indeed, to three decimal places on a per-decade basis, there has been no global warming for 18 full years. Professor Ross McKitrick, however, has upped the ante with a new statistical paper to say there has been no global warming for 19 years.
Whichever value one adopts, it is becoming harder and harder to maintain that we face a “climate crisis” caused by our past and present sins of emission.
Taking the least-squares linear-regression trend on Remote Sensing Systems’ satellite-based monthly global mean lower-troposphere temperature dataset, there has been no global warming - none at all - for at least 215 months.
This is the longest continuous period without any warming in the global instrumental temperature record since the satellites first watched in 1979. It has endured for half the satellite temperature record. Yet the Great Pause coincides with a continuing, rapid increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Figure 1. Enlarged. The monthly global mean lower-troposphere temperature anomalies (dark blue) and trend (thick bright blue line), October 1996 to August 2014, showing no trend for 17 years 11 months.
The hiatus period of 17 years 11 months, or 215 months, is the farthest back one can go in the RSS satellite temperature record and still show a sub-zero trend.
Yet the length of the Great Pause in global warming, significant though it now is, is of less importance than the ever-growing discrepancy between the temperature trends predicted by models and the far less exciting real-world temperature change that has been observed.
The First Assessment Report predicted that global temperature would rise by 1.0 [0.7, 1.5] C to 2025, equivalent to 2.8 [1.9, 4.2] C per century. The executive summary asked, “How much confidence do we have in our predictions” IPCC pointed out some uncertainties (clouds, oceans, etc.), but concluded:
“Nevertheless, ...we have substantial confidence that models can predict at least the broad-scale features of climate change… There are similarities between results from the coupled models using simple representations of the ocean and those using more sophisticated descriptions, and our understanding of such differences as do occur gives us some confidence in the results.”
That “substantial confidence” was substantial over-confidence. A quarter-century after 1990, the outturn to date expressed as the least-squares linear-regression trend on the mean of the RSS and UAH monthly global mean surface temperature anomalies is 0.34 C, equivalent to just 1.4 C/century, or exactly half of the central estimate in IPCC (1990) and well below even the least estimate (Fig. 2).
Figure 2. Enlarged.
Near-term projections of warming at a rate equivalent to 2.8 [1.9, 4.2] K/century , made with “substantial confidence” in IPCC (1990), January 1990 to August 2014 (orange region and red trend line), vs. observed anomalies (dark blue) and trend (bright blue) at less than 1.4 K/century equivalent, taken as the mean of the RSS and UAH satellite monthly mean lower-troposphere temperature anomalies.
The Great Pause is a growing embarrassment to those who had told us with “substantial confidence” that the science was settled and the debate over. Nature had other ideas. Though more than two dozen more or less implausible excuses for the Pause are appearing in nervous reviewed journals, the possibility that the Pause is occurring because the computer models are simply wrong about the sensitivity of temperature to manmade greenhouse gases can no longer be dismissed.
Remarkably, even the IPCC’s latest and much reduced near-term global-warming projections are also excessive (Fig. 3).
Figure 3. Enlarged.
Predicted temperature change, January 2005 to August 2014, at a rate equivalent to 1.7 [1.0, 2.3] C/century (orange zone with thick red best-estimate trend line), compared with the observed anomalies (dark blue) and zero real-world trend (bright blue), taken as the average of the RSS and UAH satellite lower-troposphere temperature anomalies.
In 1990, the IPCC’s central estimate of near-term warming was higher by two-thirds than it is today. Then it was 2.8 C/century equivalent. Now it is just 1.7 C equivalent and, as Fig. 3 shows, even that is proving to be a substantial exaggeration.
On the RSS satellite data, there has been no global warming statistically distinguishable from zero for more than 26 years. None of the models predicted that, in effect, there would be no global warming for a quarter of a century.
The Great Pause may well come to an end by this winter. An El Nino event is underway and would normally peak during the northern-hemisphere winter. There is too little information to say how much temporary warming it will cause, but a new wave of warm water has emerged in recent days, so one should not yet write off this El Nino as a non-event. The temperature spikes caused by the El Ninos of 1998, 2007, and 2010 are clearly visible in Figs. 1-3.
El Ninos occur about every three or four years, though no one is entirely sure what triggers them. They cause a temporary spike in temperature, often followed by a sharp drop during the la Nina phase, as can be seen in 1999, 2008, and 2011-2012, where there was a “double-dip” La Nina that is one of the excuses for the Pause.
The ratio of El Ninos to La Ninas tends to fall during the 30-year negative or cooling phases of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the latest of which began in late 2001. So, though the Pause may pause or even shorten for a few months at the turn of the year, it may well resume late in 2015 . Either way, it is ever clearer that global warming has not been happening at anything like the rate predicted by the climate models, and is not at all likely to occur even at the much-reduced rate now predicted. There could be as little as 1C global warming this century, not the 3-4 C predicted by the IPCC.
Key facts about global temperature
The RSS satellite dataset shows no global warming at all for 215 months from October 1996 to August 2014. That is more than half the 428-month satellite record.
The fastest measured centennial warming rate was in Central England from 1663-1762, at 0.9 C/century before the industrial revolution. It was not our fault.
The global warming trend since 1900 is equivalent to 0.8 C per century. This is well within natural variability and may not have much to do with us.
The fastest measured warming trend lasting ten years or more occurred over the 40 years from 1694-1733 in Central England. It was equivalent to 4.3 C per century.
Since 1950, when a human influence on global temperature first became theoretically possible, the global warming trend has been equivalent to below 1.2 C per century.
The fastest warming rate lasting ten years or more since 1950 occurred over the 33 years from 1974 to 2006. It was equivalent to 2.0 C per century.
In 1990, the IPCC’s mid-range prediction of near-term warming was equivalent to 2.8 C per century, higher by two-thirds than its current prediction of 1.7 /century.
The global warming trend since 1990, when the IPCC wrote its first report, is equivalent to below 1.4 C per century half of what the IPCC had then predicted. Though the IPCC has cut its near-term warming prediction, it has not cut its high-end business as usual centennial warming prediction of 4.8 C warming to 2100. The IPCC;s predicted 4.8 C warming by 2100 is well over twice the greatest rate of warming lasting more than ten years that has been measured since 1950.
The IPCC’s 4.8 C by 2100 prediction is almost four times the observed real-world warming trend since we might in theory have begun influencing it in 1950. From 1 April 2001 to 1 July 2014, the warming trend on the mean of the 5 global-temperature datasets is nil. No warming for 13 years 4 months. Recent extreme weather cannot be blamed on global warming, because there has not been any global warming. It is as simple as that.
Technical note
Our latest topical graph shows the RSS dataset for the 214 months October 1996 to August 2014 - just over half the 428-month satellite record.
Terrestrial temperatures are measured by thermometers. Thermometers correctly sited in rural areas away from manmade heat sources show warming rates appreciably below those that are published. The satellite datasets are based on measurements made by the most accurate thermometers available platinum resistance thermometers, which not only measure temperature at various altitudes above the Earth’s surface via microwave sounding units but also constantly calibrate themselves by measuring via spaceward mirrors the known temperature of the cosmic background radiation, which is 1% of the freezing point of water, or just 2.73 degrees above absolute zero. It was by measuring minuscule variations in the cosmic background radiation that the NASA anisotropy probe determined the age of the Universe: 13.82 billion years.
The graph is accurate. The data are lifted monthly straight from the RSS website. A computer algorithm reads them down from the text file, takes their mean and plots them automatically using an advanced routine that automatically adjusts the aspect ratio of the data window at both axes so as to show the data at maximum scale, for clarity.
The latest monthly data point is visually inspected to ensure that it has been correctly positioned. The light blue trend line plotted across the dark blue spline-curve that shows the actual data is determined by the method of least-squares linear regression, which calculates the y-intercept and slope of the line via two well-established and functionally identical equations that are compared with one another to ensure no discrepancy between them. The IPCC and most other agencies use linear regression to determine global temperature trends. Professor Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia recommends it in one of the Climategate emails. The method is appropriate because global temperature records exhibit little auto-regression.
Dr Stephen Farish, Professor of Epidemiological Statistics at the University of Melbourne, kindly verified the reliability of the algorithm that determines the trend on the graph and the correlation coefficient, which is very low because, though the data are highly variable, the trend is flat.
Other statistical methods might be used. A paper by Professor Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph, Canada, published at the end of August 2014, estimated that at that date there had been 19 years without any global warming.
Anthony Watts, WUWT
Yesterday we posted on BoM’s bomb on station temperature trend fiddling. where BoM claimed the trend difference was a result of a station move. Apparently, BoM can’t even keep track of their own station histories! Today, Dr. Jennifer Marohasy writes: Who’s going to be sacked for making-up global warming at Rutherglen?
She writes: HEADS need to start rolling at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. The senior management have tried to cover-up serious tampering that has occurred with the temperatures at an experimental farm near Rutherglen in Victoria. Retired scientist Dr Bill Johnston used to run experiments there. He, and many others, can vouch for the fact that the weather station at Rutherglen, providing data to the Bureau of Meteorology since November 1912, has never been moved. Senior management at the Bureau are claiming the weather station could have been moved in 1966 and/or 1974 and that this could be a justification for artificially dropping the temperatures by 1.8 degree Celsius back in 1913.
rutherglen_station_plot_raw_homogenized enlarged
The temperature record at Rutherglen has been corrupted by managers at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
Surely its time for heads to roll!
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The unhomogenized/raw mean annual minimum temperature trend for Rutherglen for the 100-year period from January 1913 through to December 2013 shows a slight cooling trend of 0.35 degree C per 100 years. After homogenization there is a warming trend of 1.73 degree C per 100 years. This warming trend is essentially achieved by progressively dropping down the temperatures from 1973 back through to 1913. For the year of 1913 the difference between the raw temperature and the ACORN-SAT temperature is a massive 1.8 degree C.
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In the case of Rutherglen the Bureau has just let the algorithms keep jumping down the temperatures from 1973. To repeat the biggest change between the raw and the new values is in 1913 when the temperature has been jumped down a massive 1.8 degree C.In doing this homogenization a warming trend is created when none previously existed.
The Bureau has tried to justify all of this to Graham Lloyd at The Australian newspaper by stating that there must have been a site move, its flagging the years 1966 and 1974. But the biggest adjustment was made in 1913! In fact as Bill Johnston explains in today’s newspaper, the site never has moved.
Surely someone should be sacked for this blatant corruption of what was a perfectly good temperature record.
More here.
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Icecap Note:
Ironically the changes in the United also had the biggest change was in 1913. Here in Maine, temperatures cooled by an unbelievable 5F in 1913 after the latest changes made this spring. That early record cooling ensure, the annual temperatures will rank among the warmest every year. The only common player in both countries changes was Tom Peterson of NCDC who engineered GHCN and USHCN and also was on the consulting committee advising/directing Australia on their updated data set.
Maine state annual temperatures up until 2013 enlarged
Maine state annual temperatures up until 2013 after latest adjustment this spring to USHCN data enlarged
