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By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM
Last winter with a strong El Nino, we had one of the coldest winters (in places like parts of the southeast United States and parts of Siberia, the coldest ever). It was warm though in Canada and the arctic (relative to normal) indicative of strong blocking high pressure.
Enlarged here.
The super El Nino in 1997/98 was very different in most places. It was cold in northwest Russia but much warmer in most other areas it was cold last winter.
Enlarged here.
Why the big difference?
2009/10 was the strongest El Nino since 1997/98 but clearly not as strong as that super event. In many ways, it was more like the El Ninos of the last cold Pacific (PDO) era from 1947 to 1977). The El Ninos were stronger in the warm PDO phase from 1978 to 1998. Wolter’s Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI) shows the big red El Nino spikes of the warm period and the moderate spike of 2002/02 and 2009/10 now in the cold PDO Phase.
Enlarged here.
Another very key difference was the solar - the 2009/10 El Nino was during the later part of the ultra-long solar minimum between cycles 23 and 24. 1997/98 winter was much further into a rebound after a much briefer and less deep solar minimum.
Enlarged here.
Drew Shindell, NASA modeller who works with James Hansen showed here in a paper in Science (2001) how low solar periods with reduced ultraviolet leads to less ozone chemistry warming in high altitudes over low and mid latitudes. This apparently allows for cooling and expansion of the polar vortex and more blocking in high latitudes (a negative NAO/AO).
Here Shindell shows the difference between the Maunder Minimum temperatures of 1680 and those of much more active sun period 1780. You clearly see the negative NAO and AO and a cold winter in the continents in the low sun period.
Enlarged here.
Writing in Environmental Research Letters (2010), Mike Lockwood et al. have verified that solar activity does seem to have a direct correlation with Earth’s climate by influencing North Atlantic blocking (NAO) as Shindell has shown.
Last winter had a record negative AO/NAO for the winter season, beating out 1976/77 at the end of the last quieter sun period.
Enlarged here.
Labitzke (2001), Baldwin and Dunkerton (2004) and others have shown a tendency for stratospheric warming events in low solar easterly QBO winters (like 2009/10, 1976/77, 1965/66). More on the sun here and here.
Another factor in the anomalous AO was the prior spring high latitude volcanoes in Alaska (Redoubt) and Russia (Sarychev). Oman etal (2003) found high latitude volcanoes lead to enhance winter time high latitude blocking.
A correlation of the AO (reversed colors to show cold (blues) and warm (reds) for a negative value show the pattern last winter very well.
Enlarged here.
Indeed if we do what Shindell did and subtract the temperatures during the latest low solar El Nino and that of 1997/98 we fit the pattern of 2009/10 and in the correlation to a tee.
Enlarged here.
Thus last winter was largely anomalous because the El Nino came along in a year of high latitude volcanoes and in a very quiet sun which led to record high latitude blocking. If indeed we are in quieter sun era, future El Ninos will be more like 2009/10 than 1997/98. They will be less frequent and mainly weaker than they were in the warm Pacific phase.
Enlarged here.
This past summer, El Nino has given way to a strong La Nina and the sun is slowly rebounding. The effects of Redoubt and Sarychev are likely faded but Iceland’s volcano last year MIGHT be having some effect (blocking continues above normal in the higher latitudes). PDF here.
What will that mean for this upcoming winter? An early look was here.
Updated Outlook for the United States for 2010/11 Winter
Update: Hear an interview episode #034 with Andre Bernier of FOX 8 Cleveland on his WeatherJazz site here. FOX8’s Dick Goddard Winter Outlook appears here. Also go to the WBZ TV 4 web site and see the video of the Winter Outlook - which included interviews with Joe Bastardi and Joe D’Aleo
A reversal back to a pattern seen in 2007/08 and 2008/09. Composite of all the winters with similar conditions - La Nina, cold PDO, warm AMO, low solar, westerly QBO yields the following temperature anomalies for December through February.
Enlarged here.
Looks like very cold air will build due to large blocking high presure off the Aleutians making for a very cold winter (more like 2007/08 and 2008/09) in Alaska, Canada and the northern and western United States. The southeast will be warmer this year after a very cold El Nino winter last year. However, there could be a cold frosty outbreak reaching down to Florida, just not the continuous chill.
Storms will tracks along the boundary of the cold air with storms entering the west coast or dropping down from Canada. Many will move up the St. Lawrence Valley bringing snow to the Great Lakes and northern New York State and New England and rain starting as snow or ice further south. Some will run into cold high pressure and be forced to develop off the southern New England coast. They are more likely to mean snow and ICE further south.
The October ‘Chiclone’ from space. Northern branch systems like this are symptoms of what’s ahead.
Other storms will track out of the Gulf up the Appalachians and these often will do the same, with a secondary storm off the southern New England coast with similar results. The further south these storms develop the more snow wilol fall Boston south. The Mid-Atlantic states where records fell last year will see much less snow but could see some ice. Northern ski areas should do very well, not so much the southern ski areas.
Enlarged here.
You can see the precipitation matching the storm tracks below.
Enlarged here.
The degree and location of blocking high pressure in the Atlantic will determine how much cold and snow in Europe and Asia. South America looks like a cool summer - dry in Argentina. No significant anomalies elsewhere.
Atlantic through the AMO drives the apparent “Global Warming”By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM
The North Atlantic undergoes a multidecadal oscillation appropriately called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation or AMO. It is officially the mean sea surface temperature anomaly from the equator to 70 degrees North. It went above the longer term mean in 1995. The AMO has a long term cycle of about 60-70 years.
Enlarged here.
When the AMO is positive (warm) the Northern Hemisphere is warmer than normal on an annual basis across the continents. When it is cold, it is colder. The positive state is associated with a warmer arctic and Greenland and more summer hurricanes in the Atlantic Basin.
Correlation of annual temperatures with the AMO. Yellows to reds are positive and blues negative correlations with the AMO state. Enlarged here.
This can be also seen in the satellite derived temperatures for the Northern Hemisphere (north of 20N). There is little continuous trend since 1979. Most of the warming is in the 1995 transition from AMO negative to positive. Note the temperatures in the tropics reflect the ENSO state but has no perceived trend. There is also no trend in the Southern Hemisphere. The only significant departure was with the volcanic cooling also seen in the Northern Hemisphere after Pinatubo in 1991-1994.
UAH Satellite temperatures by latitude zone - Northern Hemisphere poleward of 20N, tropics, 20N to 20S, Southern Hemisphere poleward of 20S. Enlarged here.
The AMO tracks to the solar irradiance with a lag of about 8-9 years. This suggests the current warm AMO state will end by around 2015. Northern Hemispheric temperature will take a leg down. With the cooling of the Pacific now and more La Ninas, look for net cooling especially in the tropics until then.
See more here.
By Dr. William Briggs
“And thy response shall be: ‘Nothing hear our prayer’,” said the high priest of the Church of Science.
“Nothing hear our prayer,” intoned the congregation.
“For we shall be a light unto the world.”
“Nothing hear our prayer.”
“And that light shall illuminate only what we say it shall illuminate.”
“Nothing hear our prayer.”
“What we say goes.”
“Nothing hear our prayer.”
“And even when we’re wrong, we’re right.”
“Nothing hear our prayer.”
There exists a strain of criticism that suggests science is just “another way of knowing”, and that “science” is no different than any other religious belief system. It has its dogmas, myths, rituals. This criticism is misguided and ultimately wrong, but it’s not hard to see how it arises.
Many people are like the terrified villager in the movie Young Frankenstein who, upon learning that scientist and grandson of Baron von Frankenstein Gene Wilder moved to town, said “All those scientists are the same. They say they’re working for us. But what they really want is to rule the world!.” In my case this is, of course, literally true. But it isn’t so for most scientists, whose biggest ambition is to have all their grants funded and to get out of teaching Freshman Science 101.
Another reason people don’t trust scientists is they are perpetually patting themselves on the back. They often sound like the congregation above. I was reminded of this when reading a rambling and often self-contradictory editorial by Richard C. J. Somerville “How much should the public know about climate science?” in the journal Climatic Change (DOI 10.1007/s10584-010-9938-y). Somerville displays a typical scientific ego:
Science has its own high standards. It does not work by unqualified people making claims on television or the Internet. It works by expert scientists doing research and publishing it in carefully reviewed research journals. Other scientists examine the research and repeat it and extend it. Valid results are confirmed, and wrong ones are exposed and abandoned. Science is self-correcting. People who are not experts, who are not trained and experienced in this field, who do not do research and publish it following standard scientific practice, are not doing science. When they claim that they are the real experts, they are just plain wrong.
In reality there are only beliefs that are true, those that are false, those that are uncertain, and those that are nonsensical. There do not exist scientific truths, scientific falsities, scientific uncertainties. Saying that a truth has been proved scientifically is no different than saying that a truth has been proved - period. The only usefulness in the word “science” lies in its categorizing certain branches of investigation. “Scientist” is a job description, not an imprimatur.
It matters not one bit how one reveals a truth, whether the person who discovers it wears a white coat, or whether the discoverer discusses his truth on television or on the pages of a journal. This is obvious: what’s true is true, what’s false is false. A person with a credential does make a truth truer, nor a falsehood falser. Just as a person without a credential does not make a truth falser, nor a falsehood truer.
Somerville, like many before him, often tout that “Science is self-correcting.” To which we can say, “Oh yeah? How do you know?” Many scientists made false statements before Somerville, so what makes him sure that what he believes now won’t be proven wrong by the scientists that come after him? It is human nature - a commonplace in science - to believe that wherever you stand is the pinnacle. After all, whenever we look up we are blinded by the light of our own knowledge. All we can see clearly is that who came before us were not as high on the mountain as they thought they were.
It is true that, through history, knowledge has increased, but it is not necessary that it always should. This is because is also true that falsehood has, at times, increased. If Somerville believes he has a truth that bears emphasis, it would be better for him to lay out the evidence which he believes prove his truth (he only provides guesses of the future). He should not rely on the fallacy that what he believes is true because he is a scientist.
See post and comments here. H/T Marc Morano and Willie Soon.
By Willie Soon, Robert Carter and David Legates
This is a response to “Why Can’t We Innovate Our Way To A Carbon-Free Energy Future?”, a “Perspective” by Bjorn Lomborg that ran in this space a week ago.
Bjorn Lomborg, author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist” and “Cool It,” is right about the need to focus on critical health and economic priorities. But he is wrong about human carbon dioxide emissions causing what is now being called “global climate disruption.”
By demonizing the gas of life, in league with Al Gore and Bill Gates, Lomborg commits several serious scientific errors. As independent scientists, with broad training in mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology and geography, we know CO2 is not a pollutant, and the notion of “carbon-free” or “zero-carbon” energy is inherently harmful and anti-scientific.
If nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, helium or any other nontoxic gas is pumped into a chamber containing air and a growing plant, the response is barely measurable. By contrast, if more CO2 is added, the plant and its root system benefit enormously, displaying enhanced growth and more efficient use of available water and nutrients.
Far from having detrimental effects, carbon dioxide has decidedly beneficial impacts on plants, aquatic and terrestrial alike, and a new study connects enhanced plant productivity to greater bird species diversity in China. How, therefore, can anyone conclude that human carbon dioxide is a pollutant that must be eradicated?
These facts erect a formidable barrier for “zero-carbon” advocates. By insisting that no human CO2 should be emitted, they are promoting continued suboptimal growth of food plant species in the face of impending global food shortages — and poorer functioning and less diversity in the global ecosystem.
Zero-carbon activists respond to these facts by asserting that human CO2 emissions cause “dangerous global warming.” They are wrong about this, too.
If rising atmospheric CO2 levels drive global temperatures upward, as they insist, why is Earth not suffering from the dangerous “fever” that Al Gore predicted? Instead, after mild warming at the end of the twentieth century, global temperatures have leveled off for the past decade, amid steadily rising carbon dioxide levels.
Lomborg’s claim that we need to “cure” so-called “unchecked climate change” is thus fallacious and contradicted by reality. Reducing human CO2 emissions will likely have no measurable cooling effect on planetary temperatures.
His insistence that we prioritize expenditures is spot-on when applied to genuine environmental and societal problems. However, it is irrelevant when the problems are mythical - or devised to advance ideological agendas. Moreover, even if human impacts on the global climate can actually be measured at some future date, humans currently lack the scientific and engineering understanding and capability to deliberately “manage” Earth’s constantly changing climate for the better.
Most certain of all, atmospheric carbon dioxide is not the “climate control knob” that anti-hydrocarbon alarmists assert, and it is irresponsible for Lomborg to claim his socio-political agenda will provide a low-cost solution for the global warming “problem.”
The scientific reality is that even the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been unable to demonstrate a cause-and-effect scientific connection between rising human CO2 emissions and dangerous warming. To support global limits on CO2 emissions, in the absence of real-world data showing clear cause and effect, is scientific and policy incompetence on the highest order.
Imagine a drug company seeking FDA approval for a new drug, based on an analysis that says simply: “Our supercomputers say the drug is safe and effective. We have no clinical data to support this, but can think of no reason actual results would contradict what our computers predict. Moreover, failure to license the drug will be disastrous for patients suffering from the targeted disease.” Failing to demand actual dose-and-response studies, before licensing the drug, would be gross negligence on FDA’s part.
Between 2007 and 2009, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions dropped approximately 10%, to their lowest level since 1995, largely because of reduced energy consumption during the recession. Similar CO2 emission reductions occurred in Britain, Germany, France and Japan.
Have their climates gotten better or less dangerous? Are they now a better place, for having a lower intensity carbon energy diet? Have global temperatures been statistically unchanged since 1995 because, or in spite of, Chinese and Indian carbon dioxide emissions increasing far more than the aforementioned countries reduced theirs?
These are practical, not rhetorical questions. As far as we can see, the only direct effect of decreasing CO2 levels via expensive renewable energy programs has been to cost more American and European jobs than would otherwise have been the case during the global economic recession.
The central issue is not whether rising CO2 levels will cause a warmer planet. The fundamental concern is whether globally warmer temperatures are factually worse (or better) for human societies - and more (or less) damaging to the environment - than colder temperatures (like those experienced during the ice ages and Little Ice Age).
Bjorn Lomborg, Al Gore and Bill Gates need to consider the likelihood that, driven by changes in solar activity and ocean circulation, Earth will cool significantly over coming decades. Damaging the global economy with ineffectual carbon dioxide controls, in a futile quest to “stop global warming,” looks stupid now.
Viewed later, with hindsight, it will be judged outrageously irresponsible.
• Soon studies sun-climate connections at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
• Carter is an emeritus fellow of the Institute of Public Affairs and chief science advisor to the International Climate Science Coalition.
• Legates is a hydroclimatologist at the University of Delaware and serves as the state climatologist of Delaware.
Read more here.
By James Tonkowich
What will happen to jobs, living standards and families under restrictive energy policies?
Pennsylvania is lucky. Even amid this prolonged recession and depressingly high unemployment (9.5% in PA), families and businesses in the Keystone State are still paying just 9.4 cents a kilowatt hour for electricity.
That’s due in large part to the fact that Pennsylvania gets 53% of its electricity from coal. A lot of people vilify that black rock. But just think how much easier it is to cool our homes and cook our food at this price - or operate a factory, farm, office, store, hospital, school, church...or government agency.
Of course, 9.4 cents per kilowatt hour might seem like a lot to pay, compared to Indiana (where people pay only 7.1 cents), Kentucky (where electricity costs just 6.3 cents), or West Virginia (where it’s a rock-bottom 5.6 cents a kWh).
But just think how much harder all that would be if we lived in California, which generates just 1% of its electricity with coal, and people pay 13 cents per kWh; in Rhode Island, which gets no electricity from coal, and they shell out 16 cents a kWh; or just across the Delaware River in New Jersey, where families and businesses have to cough up 14.9 cents per kWh, largely because the state uses coal to produce just 15% of its job-creating electricity.
California already has its own cap-tax-and-trade global warming law, renewable energy mandates that get tougher and costlier every year, and programs that spend billions of taxpayer dollars subsidizing major wind and solar energy initiatives. The once-Golden State also has the second highest unemployment rate in America (12.4%), a budget deficit of almost $20 billion, and some $500 billion in unfunded pension liabilities for government workers! It ranks 49th out of 50 among states for “business friendliness.”
Its burdensome rules are justified by assertions that they prevent climate change caused by rising CO2 levels. I’m no scientist, but thousands of scientists disagree. Last year’s leaked emails by top US and British alarmist researchers show that the science of global warming has become politicized to the point that scientists who disagree, or remain unconvinced, are condemned as heretics - and alarmists are actually manipulating thermometer data and computer models to get the “climate crisis” results they want. That is dishonest and wrong.
Moreover, even California’s total contribution to the planet’s carbon dioxide levels is tiny. Pennsylvania’s is smaller still. Even if the Golden State or Keystone State totally eliminated its CO2 emissions, China’s and India’s emissions would completely replace those painful, job-killing reductions in just a few months.
[SPPI Note: For a listing of SPPI state climate and mitigation profile reports, see here].
Sample from Penn report:
“During the past 5 years, global emissions of CO2 from human activity have increased at an average rate of 3.5%/yr (EIA, 2007a), meaning that the annual increase of anthropogenic global CO2 emissions is 3.5 times greater than Pennsylvania’s total emissions. This means that even a complete cessation of all CO2 emissions in Pennsylvania will be completely subsumed by global emissions growth in less than 4 month’s time! In fact, China alone adds about 2.3 Pennsylvania’s-worth of new emissions to its emissions’ total each and every year.” ]
According to some climate experts, even if the entire United States cut its CO2 emissions by 83% by 2050, as required by pending congressional legislation - that would, at most, reduce global temperature increases by a mere 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century.
Worse, that 83% reduction would send CO2 emissions all the way back to 1910 levels (1870 levels, if you consider population and technology changes since 1900). So we’re talking about truly painful cutbacks, and real pain at the pump, electric meter and bank account.
California’s actions are already forcing companies to lay off workers. A federal law would do the same on a national scale. Millions of workers would lose their jobs, as energy prices skyrocketed and we are forced to switch from fossil fuels that provide 85% of our energy, and replace them with expensive wind and solar power that requires huge subsidies, works only 30% of the time, on average, and currently provides just 1% of America’s energy.
Does anyone honestly think we can cap-tax-and-trade, regulate, litigate and otherwise penalize oil, natural gas and coal use - and not cause serious, even massive, harm to Pennsylvania’s economy? To the economies of the other 26 states that rely on coal for 47-98% of the electricity that generates their jobs, opportunities, prosperity and modern living standards?
States like Arkansas (47%), Colorado (65%), Illinois (48%), Indiana (95%), Kentucky (94%), Missouri (81%), North Dakota (91%), Ohio (85%), West Virginia (98%) and Wisconsin (66%), to name just a few. Penalizing coal use would cost millions of American jobs, and increase families’ energy and overall cost-of-living by thousands of dollars a year, according to studies by the Brookings Institute, Heritage Foundation, Congressional Budget Office and other analysts.
As a theologian and former pastor, I embrace God’s command to be wise stewards of His creation, to care for the Earth and our fellow human beings. We are not to waste the resources with which He has blessed us, but we are to use them for our benefit.
We are also supposed to prevent or solve environmental problems. However, we are given the wisdom to make sure the problems are real, serious and imminent, before we spend billions trying to solve them - and before we create new problems that impact the environment in new ways and hurt families still more.
Increasing energy, food and transportation costs, and sending millions into unemployment lines, in the middle of a recession, is certainly an example of creating new problems. So is installing thousands of wind turbines that cover millions of acres, require vast raw materials and kill thousands of birds, to produce electricity that is too expensive and unreliable to power modern factories, shops, homes, hospitals, schools and cities.
We need to think this through very carefully, before we enact costly policies that threaten to do much more harm than good.
The Rev. Dr. James Tonkowich, a former pastor, is a senior fellow of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.
See post here.
The Wall Street Journal, 18 October 2010
What happens when environmental fashion collides with a state’s desperate need for jobs and economic growth? That question will be put to the test when Californians vote November 2 on a ballot measure that would suspend the Golden State’s cap-and-trade law until its unemployment rate falls below 5.5%. Today the rate is 12.4%.
Proposition 23 is the number one national target of the green movement this election year. With the failure of cap and tax in Congress, the greens are trying to hold onto this remnant of their anticarbon crusade. Both sides are spending heavily, and the polls show a close vote.
California’s climate change law (known as AB 32) mandates a 30% cut in carbon emissions from cars, trucks, utilities, agriculture and other businesses by 2020, with a web of new taxes and regulations that take effect in 2012. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger sees AB 32 as his crowning achievement and is assailing supporters of Proposition 23 as “black oil hearts [who are] spending millions and millions of dollars” to promote their own “self-serving greed.”
In reality, dozens of industries support the initiative, and Arnold never mentions that much of the money to defeat Proposition 23 also comes from energy companies. Alternative energy investors realize that without new taxes on carbon energy and mandates for “renewables” like wind and solar, so-called clean energy sources can’t compete.
When AB 32 was signed in 2006, the California economy was flying high, the state unemployment rate was under 5%, and cap and trade seemed a fashionable luxury the state could afford. Not anymore. Today there are 2.5 million unemployed Californians and the state’s finances are a wreck. AB 32 would make all of this worse.
A 2009 study commissioned by the California Small Business Roundtable found that when fully implemented AB 32 would cost the state more than one million jobs and “result in a higher cost to California households of $3,857 per year.” That’s more than the typical California family pays each year in federal income tax. A new study by the Pacific Research Institute predicts job losses of 150,000 by 2012 and 1.3 million by 2020.
Environmentalists counter that “green jobs” will save the day, as if a million Californians will make windmills and solar panels. California already leads the nation in regulations and subsidies to boost alternative energy, and it still has the third highest jobless rate in the nation.
Voters are also told the law would reduce the state’s carbon footprint and save the planet from global warming. Except it can’t and it won’t. No single state -even one the size of California - can reduce global emissions by unilaterally taxing and regulating.
Even the California Air Resources Board, which supports AB 32, acknowledged this when it said in March that “California acting alone cannot reduce emissions sufficiently to change the course of climate change worldwide.” The real objective, they said, is to set an example to move federal and international climate change legislation. But given that so many Democrats are now campaigning against cap and tax around the country, it’s highly unlikely that Congress or many states will follow California.
The state’s own fiscal auditors admitted earlier this year that there will be economic “leakage” to other states and nations from AB 32, and that California’s economy “will likely be adversely affected in the near term by implementing climate-related policies that are not adopted elsewhere.”
Most of this economic pain will be borne, not by wealthy liberals in Santa Barbara and San Francisco, but by middle class and poor Californians who work in industries whose costs will rise. No wonder a recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that Hispanics are the group most opposed to AB 32. They seem to understand they will be first in line to get laid off when the law starts to bite.
With so much at stake, Prop. 23 ought to be a major issue in this year’s election campaign. Democratic candidates Jerry Brown (Governor) and Senator Barbara Boxer both oppose Prop. 23, but GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman is a fence-sitter. She calls cap and tax a job killer but favors only a one-year suspension. GOP Senate candidate Carly Fiorina is a full-throated supporter of the initiative. With her usual charm, Ms. Boxer accuses her of being “in the pocket of big oil” and “dirty coal.”
Proposition 23 faces an uphill fight against green moneyed interests, but its passage would give California a regulatory reprieve and save tens of thousands of jobs. If it fails, Nevadans and Chinese will rejoice. Read more here.
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Hypocrite James Cameron gives $1M to fight Proposition 23
Ann & Phelim, Not EVil Just Wrong
James Cameron is still hiding and refusing to debate Global warming. But that doesn’t stop him from wanting to tell the rest of what to do. Last March Cameron said he wanted to call the “deniers” out to a high noon debate and he even invited me to a debate in Aspen. Cameron kept putting barriers in the way, but even when I agreed to all his conditions he bailed out at the last minute.
He may be scared to debate, but he is not scared to spend money so that others can hear about his opinions. And he is not afraid to spend money to tell the rest of us we have to live with less. Cameron has just given $1M to help defeat California’s Prop23 which will overturn the Global Warming Bill. If Cameron succeeds and Prop 23 is defeated energy bills will go up - prices will increase and yet more jobs will flee the state.
Cameron has already told us that we are “going to have to live with less” but it seems that living for less is just for us and not for him. Nothing has or will change in James Cameron’s lifestyle. To see just how much of a “Prop 23 hypocrite” James Cameron is watch the video.
By Gabriel Calzada
Professor of applied environmental economics in Spain, president and founder of the classical liberal think tank Instituto Juan de Mariana, lead author of a 2009 study detailing the economic costs of Spain’s experiment with the green economy.
Barring voter intervention, Californians will soon suffer under full-blown European-style energy policies. These include mandated greenhouse gas emission reductions of a sort achieved to date only through economic collapse, and fantastic mandates for renewable energy that so far have caused economic hardship elsewhere.
Oddly, despite these policies having been tried throughout Western Europe at great cost and for no discernible environmental benefit, Californians are told their laws are the “world’s first”.
It is not because policies similar to those in Assembly Bill 32 have yet to be tried that you hear no shining examples of their success. The “world’s first” pretense is likely employed to avoid discussing the harm the policies have already caused elsewhere.
A similarly odd phrase, “California must be a leader,” is now invoked against Proposition 23, the Nov. 2 ballot measure to delay these policies until the state’s economy significantly recovers.
Yet while promoting similar steps at the national level, President Barack Obama had serially directed Americans to examine several European experiments in orchestrating the “green economy.” Chief among his examples was Spain. Whether or not related to what I and two other researchers found after taking this advice, Mr. Obama no longer directs Americans to gaze at our economic wonder.
In Spain we found that the economy, in fact, lost a net 2.2 jobs for every “green job” the state claimed credit for, just in an opportunity cost. That is, the private sector creates jobs much more efficiently than the state - less expensively and dedicated to produce goods and services that people really demand. We found the private section would have created that many more “real” jobs had the money not been removed and put toward politically divined ends. Think “stimulus jobs.”
A Power Point presentation leaked from the Spain’s socialist Zapatero government earlier this year actually suggests that the loss in terms of jobs is currently even higher.
In Spain we also found that green jobs mostly (9 out of 10) were temporary. That is, they are principally installation jobs. In Italy, researchers found that 4.8 jobs were lost for each green job created.
In Germany - another example frequently cited by Mr. Obama - researchers with the state-funded think tank RWI-Essen concluded that “Germany’s promotion of renewable energies is ... a cautionary tale of massively expensive environmental and energy policy that is devoid of economic and environmental benefits.”
Therefore, the claims that green-economy policies will create jobs are at once inherently true and patently false. They are true in that, of course, any time the state mandates that something be done, someone must be employed to do it.
Assume a state mandates a certain percentage of electricity come from particular sources - say, windmills, or running on treadmills - or transportation be of a certain variety - hybrid vehicles, or horse-drawn. No one disputes that this will create jobs in the windmill/treadmill installation and buggy-whip industries.
On net, however, green-economy mandates are job killers. In addition to jobs lost through opportunity cost, jobs are lost from the tougher economic environment for manufacturing in places with green-energy mandates. These make energy prices “necessarily skyrocket,” to quote President Obama about cap and trade. For California, this would culminate years of creeping, heavy-handed mandates mimicking Europe.
For example, at least one European steel maker, Spain’s Acerinox, exported its growth to South Africa, and to Kentucky, where it added 175 manufacturing jobs because, according to its then-CEO, it was uneconomic to invest in manufacturing facilities under the cap-and-trade, renewable energy mandates and other green economy schemes Spain adopted.
Rather unlike Europe, however, Californians are engaged in a debate over whether to re-take control of policies that many feel their political class has demonstrated an inability to handle responsibly. While opponents of this want to focus attention on the identity of employers who support Prop. 23, what are their own interests? Do their obvious financial stakes not indicate they stand to benefit from the very predictable outcome of AB32? When the state robs Peter to pay Paul, it can count on Paul’s enthusiastic support. That is surely the case here.
With this referendum California’s voters have a privilege not available to those in other areas subjected to the state-imposed green economy. The outcome is now up to them. But it should be determined on the basis of facts, not misleading talking points. And the facts are pretty clear of how these policies have worked out where they have been tried. Read more here.
See also this Bloomberg post of the failure of the solar subsidies in Spain.
By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM
Grant Foster has written a book titled “Noise: Lies, Damned Lies, and Denial of Global Warming”. In it Foster, who posts as Tamino, challenges evidence that has been presented to challenge the dominant role of CO2 in climate change. Included in his rants are challenges to some of my graphs and one of Joanne Nova. He never requested or received permission to use my graphs and he cherry picked the charts used to make the case I was cherry picking. In my posting on correlations a few years ago, I did correlations over the entire period of record AND the last decade. Foster argued correlations over short period of a few years are not valid as noise in the climate system can disturb the very clear correlation seen in the longer term.
Let us look at the long term. We use the USHCN version 2 here (data is normalized relative to the entire period of record). In the version 2, NCDC removed the UHI adjustment which has introduced a warming trend not in the version 1.
Enlarged here.
The correlation varies in multidecadal fashion - tied to multidecadal variations in the Pacific (PDO).
From 1910 to 1940, the correlation (Pearson coefficient r)) was +0.44. In the period from 1940 to 1979 (40 years - not exactly short-term noise), the correlation turned negative (-0.33). From 1979 to 1998, it turned positive (+0.35). From 1999 to 2009, it turned negative (-0.27). The number of years positive equaled the number of years negative. That hardly makes a strong case for man-made CO2 induced warming.
If you look at the changes in USHCN from version 1 to 2 you see, version 2 after the removal of the UHI has increased the warming since 1940 of about 0.25F. The older version would show even more negative correlations in the cooling periods and lower positive in the warming periods.
Enlarged here.
Dr. Ed Long, formerly of NASA, did this analysis for SPPI for representative rural stations (raw NCDC) in the lower 48 states. The running mean shows the 1930s peak and a lower recent maximum. There is a slight long term trend (not statistically significant) up only because the record starts at the cold period and ends at the end of the warm period.
Enlarged here.
He then did the same for an equal number of urban stations. Here the trend is nearly 1 degree Celsius per century.
Enlarged here.
Note that instead of adjusting the urban data to remove the UHI contamination, the NOAA algorithms including homogenization have instead made the rural stations more like the urban producing a warming of 0.75C and a reduced warm blip in the 1930s and an exaggerated one near 2000!
Enlarged here.
This alternating pattern was also seen by L.B. Klyashtorin and A.A. Lyubushin (2003 paper in Energy & Environment) where they compared world fuel consumption to global temperatures.
Enlarged here.
Their correlations would also change if the data was not ‘blended’ and otherwise modified to enhance the hockey stick look as we see with the Hadley from 2001 compared to 2009 (after Loehle).
Enlarged here.
Even in the manipulated data, the 60 year cycle is evident. These cycles suggest other factors like ocean and solar cycles which match these ups and downs are really the dominant climate drivers.
Given that in the 110 years of record during which World Fuel Consumption and CO2 has increased, 55 years warmed and 55 years cooled, a 50% prediction skill. I don’t gamble but I follow sports and hear the occasional ad from a so-called sports betting guru that promises to give you the bettors edge by predicting what teams are best bets to win and beat the spread. What if one of these guys said he was right 50% of the time. Would you part with your money for his forecast system? The CO2 driven models are a failure (despite efforts by NASA scientists to defend them in the most Science article).
See post here. See also the cycles in this post here.
Greens Target Churches - Cornwall Alliance Sounds Warning on TV’s Glenn BeckBy Dr. Calvin Beisner, Cornwall Alliance
Cornwall Alliance Founder and National Spokesman Dr. Cal Beisner announced initial release of Cornwall’s Resisting the Green Dragon 12-lecture DVD series on Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck” Friday.”
Resisting the Green Dragon full promo from Cornwall Alliance on Vimeo.
Beisner was a guest with Beck along with WallBuilders President David Barton to discuss how the Green movement infiltrates churches, targeting children and youth especially. Conversation focused on Sunday school and group study curriculum produced by a group calling itself GreenFaith, supported by the Tides Foundation, a liberal organization closely linked with financier George Soros, who has also supported the efforts of Jim Wallis and Sojourners to promote Leftist notions of social justice, wealth redistribution, and wealth equalization.
Beck, Barton, and Beisner discussed the ways in which GreenFaith’s curriculum, “Let There Be . . . Stuff?” promoted unbiblical ideas as if they were Biblical, such as saying, “When we drink, we owe a debt to the earth’s great waters” - not, as Christians would say, to God who made the great waters. “We opened our hearts to creation,” Beisner quoted the curriculum saying - not to Jesus Christ.
Beisner pointed out that the curriculum seeks to frighten young people by alarmist claims that the “stuff” we produce and consume is “poisoning us,” despite the fact that the vast majority of things produced aren’t poisonous, those that are poisonous are safe when properly used, and the steady increases in human health and life expectancy over the 250 years since the start of the Industrial Revolution indicate that the benefits of industrialization and production outweigh the risks to humanity.
Barton explained how environmentalism reverses the priorities of the Biblical, Judeo-Christian hierarchy of creation. While the Bible presents a hierarchy starting with inanimate Earth and rising through plants, fish, birds, and animals to man as the highest of God’s creatures, with the others intended to serve humanity as well as display God’s glorious power and wisdom, environmentalism puts man at the bottom and works its way up to Earth, the preservation of which becomes the highest priority.
In response to Beck’s asking why the Greens were so vigorously targeting churches and synagogues, Barton and Beisner pointed out that conservative, Bible-based religious groups have consistently been the most skeptical American population segment of Progressivism in general and of environmentalist claims of crises and catastrophes in particular. As a result, the Left has recognized the importance of getting more conservative religious groups to endorse its ideas and policies.
Beisner explained that Resisting the Green Dragon provides a Biblically faithful alternative to the often pagan, New Age, Eastern pantheist, or secular atheist views of the Green movement.
The lecture series is now available and can be ordered here, where visitors can also sign up for a free 12-minute preview video.
Beck’s program airs at 5 p.m. Eastern time (2 p.m. Pacific time) on Fox News Channel in most markets. The Friday programs often are repeated once or twice over the weekend. Viewers should check listings to confirm air times in their areas.
Landmark Documents from the Cornwall Alliance
An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming (2009) and Prominent Signers
World Climate Report
How much evidence will it take to quiet the claim that hurricanes are increasing in frequency due to global warming?
Global Warming crusaders are particularly fond of promoting the idea that we are having a profound impact on hurricane activity - they seem to never let an event go unclaimed. At World Climate Report (WCR), we have reviewed dozens of papers from the leading scientific journals presenting scant evidence to support a strong link between global warming and hurricane activity, and we hope you never get bored with these essays.
The literature never sleeps, and yet another major article has appeared recently in a leading journal with results well-suited for our never-ending review of this subject. The authors are Wang, Yang, Ding, Murakami, and Huang - you guessed it, from China, Japan, and the University of Hawaii. The authors report that the research was supported financially by NASA, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Ocean University of China, and the Korea Meteorological Administration Research and Development Program. We once again see that many organizations are seriously interested in trends in hurricane activity around the world.
Indeed, Wang et al. begin their article noting “The impact of the rising sea surface temperature (SST) on tropical cyclone (TC) activity is one of the great societal and scientific concerns. With the observed warming of the tropics of around 0.5C over the past 4 to 5 decades, detecting the observed change in the TC activity may shed light on the impact of the global warming on TC activity. Recent studies of the trends in the existing records of hurricane intensity have resulted in a vigorous debate in academic circles. Much of the debates centered on uncertainties of the hurricane intensity records.” Once again, we see scientists acknowledging that yet another “vigorous debate” is ongoing in the climate change world, despite the popular claim that “the debate is over” when it comes to the science of global warming (possibly the most laughable claim we encounter).
The Wang et al. team wanted to assemble tropical cyclone (TC) activity at the global scale noting that “previous studies of the variability of TC activity have mostly dealt with total numbers in individual basins.” They further note “Revealing the coherent global pattern of TC variability is particularly enlightening for understanding primary mechanisms driving the global TC variation.” Wang et al. gathered records for all hurricane ocean basins, and they ultimately chose the period 1965 to 2008 noting “To diminish the number of missing cyclones, we chose the period of examination starting from 1965 when satellite monitoring of weather events became available.”
If you simply glance at their figure below (Figure 1), you see our interest in their work - there is clearly no trend whatsoever in global tropical cyclone activity. In their own words, we learn “Note also that the global storm days do not show any trend over the past 44 years.” We noted!
They further note that the western North Pacific and Southern Hemisphere ocean tropical cyclone “activities, which dominate the global TC activity, have no trend.” They find that the number of storm days is related to global teleconnections, particularly El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and not to the overall state of global temperatures. They state that “variability of the global total storm days is primarily driven by the ENSO and PDO. Note that the global total has a large amplitude variation with a minimum of 460 days in 1977 TC year and a maximum of 929 days in 1996 TC year. Strong TC activity is seen in 1990s (1990-1997), which is mainly attributed to the changes in the WNP [western North Pacific]and SHO [Southern Hemisphere oceans] TC activity. This decade‐long highly active period concurs with the unprecedented prolonged ENSO event of 1990-1994 and the strongest El Nino episode of 1997 during the last century. The large fluctuation in global storms days is a surprise because the annual number of TC genesis has been thought to be stable owing to the storm‐induced feedback that tends to limit the global number of cyclones that can form each year.”
Figure 1. (enlarged here) Time series of the total annual number of tropical storm days during each TC year for the global domain (GL), western North Pacific (WNP), North Atlantic (NAT), and SH ocean (SHO), and Indo‐Pacific Warm Pool (IPWP, 17.5S-10N, 70E -140E). The left‐hand side tick marks are for individual basins (region) and the right hand side are for the global total. The mean numbers and standard deviations, maximum, and minimum are shown in the legend (from Wang et al., 2010).
They finish up concluding
“Over the period of 1965-2008, the global TC activity, as measured by storm days, shows a large amplitude fluctuation regulated by the ENSO and PDO, but has no trend, suggesting that the rising temperature so far has not yet an impact on the global total number of storm days.”
Just imagine if this international team of hurricane scientists had found an upward trend in hurricane activity? They would probably be grand marshals of the Rose Bowl parade, they would need agents to handle their international appearances, and their results would have been featured on 1,000s of websites and news stories the world over. Had they found a substantial decrease, they would have been attacked as puppets of fossil fuel companies and co-conspirators in the oil spill in the Gulf. But they found no trend whatsoever, so they remain in limbo and find themselves only being featured in places like World Climate Report. Stay tuned for more results on the hurricane front - the literature on this subject never ends!
Reference:
Wang, B., Y. Yang, Q.‐H. Ding, H. Murakami, and F. Huang, 2010. Climate control of the global tropical storm days (1965-2008). Geophysical Research Letters, 37, L07704, doi:10.1029/2010GL042487.
See post here.
Matches this from Dr. Ryan Maue, FSU
Figure: Global and Northern Hemisphere Accumulated Cyclone Energy: 24 month running sum (enlarged here) through September 30, 2010. Note that the year indicated represents the value of ACE through the previous 24-months for the Northern Hemisphere (bottom line/gray boxes) and the entire global (top line/light blue boxes). The area in between represents the Southern Hemisphere total ACE.
By Neil Midgley, UK Telegraph
The BBC has been repeatedly accused of bias in its reporting of climate change issues.
Last year one of its reporters, Paul Hudson, was criticised for not reporting on some of the highly controversial “Climategate” leaked emails from the University of East Anglia, even though he had been in possession of them for some time.
Climate change sceptics have also accused the BBC of not properly reporting “Glaciergate”, when a study from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) saying that glaciers would melt by 2035 was discredited.
Climate change sceptics have accused the BBC of not adequately reporting the discrediting of a study which said that glaciers would melt by 2035 Photo: GETTY
But the BBC’s new editorial guidelines, published yesterday after an extensive consultation that considered over 1,600 submissions by members of the public, say expressly for the first time that scientific issues fall within the corporation’s obligation to be impartial.
“The BBC must be inclusive, consider the broad perspective, and ensure that the existence of a range of views is appropriately reflected,” said BBC trustee Alison Hastings.
“In addition the new guideline extends the definition of ‘controversial’ subjects beyond those of public policy and political or industrial controversy to include controversy within religion, science, finance, culture, ethics and other matters.”
However James Delingpole, a prominent climate change sceptic, yesterday said that he predicted little movement in the BBC’s environmental stories. “It’s highly unlikely that they’ll be more balanced in their coverage,” he said. “It’s a whole cultural thing at the BBC - that people who don’t believe are just ‘flat earthers’. Whenever they invite dissenters like me on to debates, they surround us with ‘warmists’. On Any Questions, for example, Jonathan Dimbleby does his best to be impartial, but this is a man with a wind turbine in his garden.”
In 2007, a BBC Trust report called Safeguarding Impartiality in the 21st Century said: “Climate change is another subject where dissenters can be unpopular...The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus. But these dissenters (or even sceptics) will still be heard, as they should, because it is not the BBC’s role to close down this debate.” See post here.
See also the Telegraph’s James Delingpole’s excellent recap of the Ward and Williams radio debacle in Australia. Ward was the PR director of the Royal Society and now pit bull for Lord Stern’s pathetic Grantham society.
From Desperate Housewives to Desperate Climate LiarsBy Alan Caruba
Not long ago, the Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, Harold Lewis, caused quite a stir in science circles when he resigned from the American Physical Society. Physics is an exacting science, bound by immutable laws that are true throughout our universe.
It was not widely reported to the general public, but Lewis who had been a member of the American Physical Society for 67 years, made his reason quite clear after having received an APS statement supporting global warming.
“It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the Climategate documents, which lay it bare.”
“I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientists, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientists.”
Anthony Watts, one of the leaders of the movement to dispute and debunk the global warming hoax, called Lewis’ resignation letter comparable to the day that Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door, thus setting off the Reformation.
The Climategate emails that were leaked in November 2009 revealed that a small group of conspirators, otherwise acclaimed climate scientists, had colluded to provide bogus science to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to support global warming claims. They had also made significant efforts to keep any challenge by other scientists from being published in respected science journals.
The entire global warming fraud has tainted groups like the American Physical Society and the American Meteorological Society among others that lent their prestige and support to it.
This brings us to an opinion editorial by Michael E. Mann that was published in The Washington Post on October 8 titled, almost comically, “Get the anti-science bent out of politics.” Mann gained notoriety among climate scientists for his “hockey stick” graph that alleged a steep rise in the Earth’s temperatures while ignoring other critical factors in its long history such as the medieval warm period. It wasn’t science. It was propaganda, a deliberate falsehood.
The global warming hoax would not have lasted as long as it did if governments all over the world didn’t throw millions of public funds toward so-called climate change science that was, in reality, simply a huge windfall of money for any scientist who wanted to cash in on it. And many did.
What has Mann worried is that, if Republicans gain control of Congress or even just the House, he is going to be hauled before Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) who will be the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Mann believes that a “hostile investigation of climate science” will ensue.
He’s wrong. What will ensue will be an investigation of the manipulation of science for the purpose of advancing political agendas hostile to the welfare of the nation.
Right now, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is threatening to regulate carbon dioxide, the gas blamed for “causing” global warming if the Senate does not pass the hideous Cap-and-Trade Act, the greatest increase in taxes in the history of the nation.
Desperately, Mann says, “My employer, Penn State University, exonerated me after a thorough investigation of my e-mails in the East Anglia archive.” Yeah, sure, we can be completely confident that Penn State University is going to investigate itself after it and Mann benefited from hundreds of thousands of dollars in climate science funding.
Decrying the potential House investigation and one by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (the University of Virginia was a previous employer), Mann declared there had been “a twenty-year assault on climate research, questioning basic science and promoting doubt where there is none.” None? When a relative handful of internationally renowned climate scientists stood their ground against the Climategate hucksters and the likes of Al Gore, they were labeled “deniers” and calls to jail or execute them were common.
Like any trapped rat, Mann repeated the global warming mantra that ‘The basic physics and chemistry of how carbon dioxide and other human-produced greenhouse gases trap heat in the lower atmosphere have been understood for nearly two centuries. Overloading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is heating the planet, shrinking the Arctic ice cap, melting glaciers, and raising sea levels.”
All this is FALSE. The Earth has been COOLING for the whole of this decade, Arctic ice is growing, glaciers are not melting, and sea levels are not dramatically rising. But Mann was not through; he claimed that “scientists are in broad agreement on the reality of these changes and their near-certain link to human activity.”
For the past four years, leading climate and other scientists from around the world have attended the unreported or under-reported international climate change conferences sponsored by The Heartland Institute of Chicago, publishing data and holding seminars that reveal the true science that undermines the lies put forth by Mann and his fellow conspirators.
Desperately Mann said “the attacks against the science must stop. They are not good-faith questioning of scientific research. They are anti-science.”
The central methodology of science is to question hypotheses and to test them in order to determine their accuracy. The “science” of the climate hucksters has utterly failed and, in point of fact, their efforts have been “anti-science” as they strove to foist a political agenda on the world that enriched themselves, their universities, and those who invested in the carbon credit exchanges created to enrich others.
How ironic and how pathetic it is to read Mann’s closing statement that “My fellow scientists and I must be ready to stand up to blatant abuse from politicians who seek to mislead and distract the public.”
Why then are President Obama, former Vice President Al Gore, and others of their ilk still talking about “climate change”, the new code words for global warming? The answer is to mislead and distract the public. Read more here.
Submitted by Doug L. Hoffman, Resilient Earth
Any competent researcher involved with the science behind climate change will admit that CO2 is far from the only influence on global climate. It has long been known that short-lived greenhouse gases and black-carbon aerosols have contributed to past climate warming. Though the IPCC and their fellow travelers have tried to place the blame for global warming on human CO2 emissions, decades of lies and erroneous predictions have discredited that notion. For anyone still clinging to the CO2 hypothesis, a short perspective article on the uncertainty surrounding climate change in Nature Geoscience has put paid to that notion. It states that not only did other factors account for 65% of the radiative forcing usually attributed to carbon dioxide, but that it is impossible to accurately determine climate sensitivity given the state of climate science.
In “Short-lived uncertainty?” Joyce E. Penner et al. note that several short-lived atmospheric pollutants - such as methane, tropospheric ozone precursors and black-carbon aerosols - contribute to atmospheric warming while others, particularly scattering aerosols, cool the climate. Figuring out exactly how great the impacts of these other forcings are can radically change the way historical climate change is interpreted. So great is the uncertainty that the IPCC’s future climate predictions, which are all based on biased assumptions about climate sensitivity, are most certainly untrustworthy. As stated in the article:
It is at present impossible to accurately determine climate sensitivity (defined as the equilibrium warming in response to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations) from past records, partly because carbon dioxide and short-lived species have increased together over the industrial era. Warming over the past 100 years is consistent with high climate sensitivity to atmospheric carbon dioxide combined with a large cooling effect from short-lived aerosol pollutants, but it could equally be attributed to a low climate sensitivity coupled with a small effect from aerosols. These two possibilities lead to very different projections for future climate change.
All truthful climate researchers know these facts, yet publicly the party line is that catastrophic changes are in the offing and CO2 emissions are to blame. The perspective authors argue that only by significantly changing the amounts of these other pollutants and carefully measuring the impact on global climate over a period of several decades will science be able to figure out what is going on. “Following this strategy, we will then be able to disentangle the warming and cooling contributions from carbon dioxide and short-lived pollutants, hence placing much tighter constraints on climate sensitivity, and therefore on future climate projections,” they state. See chart below, enlarged here.
And they said it was all carbon dioxide’s fault.
Most of the factors under discussion have relatively short lifetimes in the atmosphere, several less than two months. We do know how the relative influences of these various substances (referred to by climate scientists as “species") may change in a warming climate. It is also not clear how to reduce short-lived species under present conditions but the uncertainties in atmospheric chemistry and physics must be resolved if Earth’s environmental system is to be understood. Again quoting from the paper:
Of the short-lived species, methane, tropospheric ozone and black carbon are key contributors to global warming, augmenting the radiative forcing of carbon dioxide by 65%. Others - such as sulphate, nitrate and organic aerosols - cause a negative radiative forcing, offsetting a fraction of the warming owing to carbon dioxide. Yet other short-lived species, such as nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds, can modify the abundance of both the climate-warming and climate-cooling compounds, and thereby affect climate change.
Quantifying the combined impact of short-lived species on Earth’s radiative forcing is complex. Short-lived pollutants - particularly those with an atmospheric lifetime of less than two months - tend to be poorly mixed, and concentrate close to their sources. This uneven distribution, combined with physical and chemical heterogeneities in the atmosphere, means that the impact of short-lived species on radiative forcing can vary by more than a factor of ten with location or time of emission. The situation is further complicated by nonlinear chemical reactions between short-lived species in polluted areas, as well as by the interactions of clouds with aerosols and ozone. These processes add further uncertainty to the estimates of radiative forcing.
Unfortunately, climate models neither accurately deal with local effects of these pollutants nor are the complex interactions among these substances understood. That not withstanding, the report is clear - CO2 does not account for even a majority of the warming seen over the past century. If other species accounted for 65% of historical warming that leaves only 35% for carbon dioxide. This, strangely enough, is in line with calculations based strictly on known atmospheric physics, calculations not biased by the IPCC’s hypothetical and bastardized “feedbacks.”
Of course, the real reason for the feedbacks was to allow almost all global warming to be attributed to CO2. This, in turn, would open the door for radical social and economic policies, allowing them to be enacted in the name of saving the world from global warming. The plain truth is that even climate scientists know that the IPCC case was a political witch’s brew concocted by UN bureaucrats, NGOs, grant money hungry scientists and fringe activists.
Now, after three decades of sturm und drang over climate policy, the truth has emerged - scientists have no idea of how Earth’s climate will change in the future because they don’t know why it changed in the past. Furthermore, it will take decades of additional study to gain a useful understand climate change. To do this, climate scientists will need further funding. Too bad the climate science community squandered any public trust it may have had by trying to frighten people with a lie.
Be safe, enjoy the interglacial and stay skeptical. Read full post here.
Mea culpa
Submitted by Doug L. Hoffman on Tue, 10/12/2010 - 16:58
I may well have misinterpreted the authors’ meaning and overestimated the reduction of CO2 driven forcing. Please note that I post two or three columns a week, reviewing data from dozens of papers -I’m bound to make an occasional error in interpretation. Not that this error was a gross one, I had the impact correct and was within an order of magnitude 
My misinterpretation does not change the fact that CO2 can only be held accountable for 60% or less of the past century’s warming. Ramanathan et al., reported “Regionally, particularly in the tropics and subtropics with highly absorbing particles during the dry season, anthropogenic aerosols can decrease the average solar radiation absorbed by the surface by as much as 15 to 35W m2 and can increase the atmospheric heating, within the lowest 3 kilometers of the atmosphere, by as much as 60 to 100% (see “Aerosols, Climate, and the Hydrological Cycle,” in Science).
Even NASA has admitted that aerosols are more potent than previously suspected. A study led by Drew Shindell of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies says that, in the high latitudes the impact of aerosols (sulfates and black carbon) may account for 45% or more of the observed warming which has occurred in at the poles over the past three decades.
Also note that these changes are not accounted for by the IPCC findings. The IPCC rated the confidence in aerosol forcing very low, with very wide error bars, so they didn’t get included in the models. That is why these papers are noteworthy - they provide new numbers that were suspected by some, but not confirmed.
Icecap Note: Whatsmore, this totally ignores the other external and internal global factors like solar, ocean multidecadal cycles related to variations in the thermohaline circulation or ocean gyres.
UK Daily Mail Reporter
Council chiefs have sparked outrage after proposing residents dig themselves out of the snow as Britain braces itself for another winter of Arctic conditions.
As long-range forecasts suggest the country will be hit by blizzards and temperatures plummeting to -20C, bosses at Camden Council prepared to hand out spades. But their solution to the bitter weather has been slammed by those who remember the headache of last year’s gritting crisis which brought widespread disruption and left people trapped in their homes.
Dig yourself out: Residents attempt to shovel ice from the road in Hartley Wintney, in Hampshire, in January. This winter is expected to bring similar conditions
The north London council’s proposal involves a ‘self-help’ scheme in which people can ring and request a shovel. The authority plans to give out more than 2,000 spades to community centres and groups, shopkeepers and families to help clear clogged-up roads and pavements.
Eleanor Botwright, director of Castlehaven Community Centre, said: ‘It is not quite dig your own grave but it is a double-edged sword. ‘In some instances I am sure it will be helpful but if people pay their council tax, that is supposed to be used for that. ‘And what happens to the weak and the frail or people with buggies?’
Tony Hillier, chairman of the Heath and Hampstead Society, added: ‘I think it is a daft idea. All the shovels will be stolen. ‘More grit bins everywhere is what is needed - that would be much more sensible.’
Camden council insisted shovels would not replace gritting on roads and pavements. The authority’s proposals came as experts warned the coming months could bring a repeat of last year’s bitterly cold winter which proved to be the coldest for 31 years.
Transport chaos on the scale seen in January and February when blizzard conditions paralysed the road and rail networks is also feared if the long-range forecast proves accurate.
Positive Weather Solutions, which correctly predicted last summer’s washout and the previous Big Freeze, has forecast a bleak couple of months with temperatures near last year’s low of -22.3C in Altnaharra, Scotland. According to forecasts, December will see unsettled weather, chiefly affecting the higher ground across the eastern and north-eastern side of the country, and it could well herald a White Christmas.
Meanwhile January will deliver a cold and bright start with some sharp frosts at night. Sleet and snow showers are predicted to become increasingly widespread, with the potential to cause disruption - particularly in eastern and upland regions. The wintry weather is set to continue into February which is forecast to be a bitterly cold month. Forecasters expect the beginning of 2011 to be besieged by disruptive snowfalls across the country, echoing the sub-zero temperatures which saw parts of Britain struggling under up to 12 inches of snow earlier this year.
Icecap forecast. Enlarged here.
A spokesman for Camden council said: ‘Following last year’s harsh winter, Camden council is looking at helping local people take responsibility for clearing snow from their own frontages. ‘Although the plans are still in the early stages of development, the idea will be to offer community groups snow shovels and practical advice so that they can help keep footways clear of snow.
‘This will not replace the council gritting roads and pavements, the council will always aim to do this but unfortunately we can never keep all non-priority footways clear of snow, owing to the limited resources we have available.’ See post here.
The solar cycle looks very similar to that of the late 1700s and early 1800s which featured colder and snowier winters and global cooling. See what the sun may be saying about the future climate here.
By Dr. Vincent Gray, NZClimate truth Newsletter
It is with the deepest regret that I announce the death of my friend Ernst-Georg Beck. Here are extracts from this memorium.
Dr. Tim Ball said “Ernst-Georg Beck was a scholar and gentleman in every sense of the term”.
I was saddened to hear that Ernst Georg Beck died after a battle with cancer. I was flattered when he asked me to review one of his early papers on the historic pattern of atmospheric CO2 and its relationship to global warming. I was struck by the precision, detail and perceptiveness of his work and urged its publication. I also warned him about the personal attacks and unscientific challenges he could expect. On 6 November 2009 he wrote to me, “In Germany the situation is comparable to the times of medieval inquisition.”
Fortunately, he was not deterred. His friend Edgar Gartner explained Ernst’s contribution in his obituary. “Due to his immense specialized knowledge and his methodical severity Ernst very promptly noticed numerous inconsistencies in the statements of the Intergovernmental Penal on Climate Change IPCC. He considered the warming of the earth’s atmosphere as a result of a rise of the carbon dioxide content of the air of approximately 0.03 to 0.04 percent as impossible. And it doubted that the curve of the CO2 increase noted on the Hawaii volcano Mauna Loa since 1957/58 could be extrapolated linear back to the 19th century.”
A key claim of the hypothesis known as anthropogenic global warming (AGW), is that human activities and particularly industry, are producing CO2 that is causing warming and climate change. There were critical points they had to establish to prove their case. As they did with almost all issues, they created the data they needed by manipulating modern and historic records or creating computer-generated results that became ‘real’ data.
They had to show that,
• Increases in atmospheric CO2 caused temperature increase in the historic record.
• Current levels are unusually high relative to the historic record.
• Current levels are much higher than pre-industrial levels.
• The differences between pre-industrial and current atmospheric levels are due to human additions of CO2 to the atmosphere.
Beck’s work showed the fallacy of these claims.
It’s an axiom that the more someone is personally attacked and vilified, the higher likelihood their work is valid. We also know from the leaked emails the extent to which official climate science, controlled by the CRU people who also controlled the IPCC, worked to block publication of research that falsified their claims. One journal, Energy and Environment (E and E) showed integrity and courage led by its editor Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, but was attacked by the CRU gang. On 28 October 2009 Phil Jones wrote to Hull University trying to stop Boehmer-Christiansen using her affiliation with that Institute. “You are probably aware of this, but the journal Sonja edits is at the very bottom of almost all climate scientists lists of journals to read.” Ironically, this is likely true because they didn’t want to read the truth. E and E published McIntrye and McKitrick’s first exposure of the hockey stick and Beck’s first major work on the 19th century record.
Ernst Georg Beck was a scholar and gentleman in every sense of the term. His friend wrote, “They tried to denounce Ernst Georg Beck in the Internet as naive amateur and data counterfeiter. Unfortunately, Ernst could hardly defend himself in the last months because of its progressive illness.” His work, determination and ethics were all directed at answering questions in the skeptical method that is true science; the antithesis of the efforts of all those who challenged and tried to block or denigrate him. Thank you Ernst.
Ernst Georg Beck indeed was a scholar and gentleman in every sense of the term. His friend wrote, “They tried to denounce Ernst Georg Beck in the Internet as naive amateur and data counterfeiter. Unfortunately, Ernst could hardly defend himself in the last months because of its progressive illness.” His work, determination and ethics were all directed at answering questions in the skeptical method that is true science; the antithesis of the efforts of all those who challenged and tried to block or denigrate him. Thank you Ernst.
Enlarged here.
He drew attention to the fact that more than 90,000 measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide were published in peer reviewed journals before 1958. Some of the authors were winners of Nobel prizes. He even published the original papers on the Internet. Yet all of these papers have been suppressed by the IPCC. They have also deliberately distorted their own measurements by rejecting any figures that do not suit their theory as “noise”.
This behaviour is so scandalous that few people are able to believe that supposedly qualified scientists would behave this way, to the extent that Beck has been vilified for telling the truth
I never met him, but he was one of my Email contacts who shared my vision that the colossal fraud of “Climate Change” has to be exposed.
