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By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM, Weatherbell.com
The Huffington Post has yet another error filled story today featuring Michael Mann who is touring the world on a two year sabbatical to try and restore histarnished reputation after climategate and the hockey stick debacle. Let’s play the liberal media’s favorite game of fact checking.
Low-lying island nations threatened by rising sea levels this century could see the disastrous consequences of climate change far sooner than expected, according to one of the world’s leading climate scientists.
In the wake of last month’s discovery that the extent of Arctic sea ice coverage hit a record low this year, climate scientist Michael Mann told the Guardian that “Island nations that have considered the possibility of evacuation at some point, like Tuvalu, may have to be contending those sort of decisions within the matter of a decade or so.”
Mann, who is the director of Pennsylvania State University’s Earth System Science Center, said that current melting trends show sea ice is “declining faster than the models predict.”
FACT CHECK: The melting is to be expected and parallels the melting that took place the last time the Atlantic Multidecadal oscillation was in its warm mode. Also unlike what Mann says, NASA reported a long lasting, unusually strong arctic storm helped compact the ice. The last minimum in 2007 occurred when an unusual wind pattern forced ice to exit the arctic to the Atlantic.
“The models have typically predicted that will not happen for decades but the measurements that are coming in tell us it is already happening so once again we are decades ahead of schedule,” Mann told the Guardian.
This year’s record melting, which occurred under more “normal” conditions than the previous record set in 2007, left Arctic sea ice at a minimum “nearly 50 percent lower than the average ... for the years 1979-2000,” according to Climate Central.
Rapidly decreasing sea ice suggests that the melting of polar ice sheets may occur more rapidly than previously predicted. Mann explained to the Guardian that “we [will] really start to see sea level rises accelerate,” as the Greenland and the west Antarctic ice sheets disappear. Unlike with the melting of sea ice, these ice sheets would introduce vast quantities of water into the world’s oceans, making them “critical from the standpoint of sea level rise,” according to Mann.
FACT CHECK: Greenland had a warm spell in June coinciding with near record summer blocking. But the melt was minor surface melt and very brief and entirely overplayed in the media. The entire ice sheet did not melt as portrayed but a thin layer of slush developed as surface daytime temperatures reached the middle 30s in July. It is forecast to be -51F this week.
Enlarged
Richard Alley, no skeptic and a colleague of Mann at PSU has this Greenland analysis long term.
The ongoing rise in average global temperatures, which has accelerated Arctic ice melt, has been largely attributed to the burning of fossil fuels and the resultant increase in greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.
FACT CHECK: No rise in temperatures the last 15 years even as CO2 has risen over 8% and human emissions from fossil fuels by almost 20%
For the most vulnerable island nations, like the Maldives, Kiribati, the Torres Strait Islands and many others, rising seas will bring significant coastal erosion and saltwater contamination of limited freshwater supplies. Environmental group Oceana recently noted that nations dependent upon the sea will face food security threats as greater temperatures and atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide increase ocean acidity and put marine life at risk.
FACT CHECK: Sea level rises began leveling off the last half of the 19th century and have been flattening even more in recent years
And the promised changes at Tuvalu have been undetected for decades.
Despite the increasingly clear picture painted by scientific observations and climate modeling, “There’s a huge gap between what is understood by the scientific community and what is known by the public,” according to NASA scientist James Hansen. Recent polling suggests that as much as 35 percent of the U.S. population and 37 percent of the British public remain unconvinced of the scientific reality of climate change.
Well the public smells a con game that Hansen and Mann and the climate clowns at climate central are playing.
And of course, no mention of the new record high ice extent for the Southern Hemisphere.
The story as a whole gets a full 4 Pinocchio’s. But then again most political and environmental stories in the HUFFPO start with at least 3, right up there with the WAPO.
By: Alex Guillen Politico
October 1, 2012 04:29 AM EDT
Never fear, former White House climate adviser Carol Browner assured environmentalists Thursday night. President Barack Obama has a big to-do list when it comes to their issues in a second term. Another reason to vote Romney
What exactly is on that list? Browner didn’t say in her pitch to a constituency that has had a sometimes fraught relationship with Obama. But she said environmentalists face a clear choice in November.
“We know there’s more work to do to defend the progress we’ve made. We’ve achieved a remarkable amount in 50 years,” Browner said on a campaign conference call, referring to Thursday’s 50th anniversary of the publication of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring.” Oh sure, likethe banning of the harmless DDT than has led to the death of tens of millions of Africans due to Malaria that had been controlled and the return of the bedbug infestation in the US that had been eradicated.
“But the decisions we make in the next four will have a lasting impact on generations to come,” she added.
Browner had plenty to say about the administration’s achievements: investing in clean energy, securing new fuel economy standards, proposing rules limiting emissions from new power plants.
Browner, a former Environmental Protection Agency administrator who is now at the Center for American Progress, also assured environmentally minded supporters that the president will remain faithful to their issues.
“I can tell you, having spent two years in the White House with the president, that this is not a fad. The president believes deeply in these issues,” she said. “At every turn he has looked at what are the tools available to him to really help build a clean-energy future for this country and has been committed throughout his first four years in office, and there’s no doubt in my mind this will be a big part of his to-do list and he will remain committed in the next four years.”
Browner also addressed the contrast between Obama and Mitt Romney when it comes to climate change, an issue that was largely absent from the campaign until Obama dedicated part of his convention night acceptance speech to stress that “climate change is not a hoax” and is “a threat to our children’s future.”
“The president has laid out a set of aggressive goals and is committed to [continuing] to build on the progress that he has made to date,” Browner said. “President Obama knows that it is critical to address the global issue of climate change and has made historic progress in working to reduce carbon pollution.”
Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan, she added, are wishy-washy at best when it comes to climate change science and have “pledged to prevent EPA from reducing carbon pollution that causes global warming.”
Obama has racked up endorsements from a host of environmental groups but has also had to overcome green voters’ unhappiness about failures like the death of cap-and-trade legislation in Congress and a White House-ordered delay in proposing new ozone standards. And though it wasn’t mentioned on the call, a central issue with environmental voters is the Keystone XL pipeline.
Greens were temporarily buoyed when Obama put off making a final decision on the pipeline until after the election, but they weren’t as happy that he has since embraced Keystone’s Southern portion, which will carry crude oil from Oklahoma to refineries in Texas. That inflamed worries that he will ultimately approve the full Keystone pipeline from Canada, allowing it to carry tar sands crude oil that environmentalists have labeled a threat to the Earth’s climate.
“Everybody, even the environmentalists, knows he’s going to approve it right after the election,” former Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader said last week in an interview with POLITICO.
Willie Soon and David R. Legates
Towards a Global Carbon Regulatory Trading Scheme
In December 2009, lawmakers and representatives from around the world, along with scientists, numerous journalists, and various celebrities flew to Copenhagen, Denmark. For the most part, their goal was to promote a regulatory scheme aimed at controlling human carbon emissions by declaring the element a tradable commodity and establishing laws and regulations to govern the trade.
The proposed regulations were premised on the flawed notion, articulated by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),[1] that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations will change climate dramatically and thereby cause major ecological and economic damage.
While many scientists, including us, have observed some changes in climate, the hypothesized dangerous consequences of rising atmospheric CO2 are too speculative for responsible regulatory policy. In analyzing climate policy, decision makers should be cognizant of three key considerations regarding the impact of projected rises in atmospheric CO2: (1) policy choices likely will have no measurable effect on the occurrence of severe weather; (2) positive effects on ecosystems and biodiversity are likely and should be weighed against the negatives; and (3) carbon trading schemes (such as the one touted in Copenhagen) are unlikely to lead to a reduction in atmospheric CO2.
Given these considerations, policy makers must carefully consider their objectives and the potential impacts, both positive and negative, of carbon emission control. If climate change regulation proceeds unchecked, it will likely produce policy that is out of touch with both the real world and objective science and will likely impose large costs on society that benefit only a small cadre of “climate entrepreneurs” and provide no meaningful effect on the Earth’s climate.
Consideration #1: Policy Makers Must Judge Humanity’s Ability to Control Global and Regional Climate Change.
It is true that a plethora of researchers have studied changing patterns in local, regional, and global temperatures, as well as rainfall, animal and plant life, and sea levels, and that many have drawn the conclusion that rising greenhouse gases (GHGs) are, to some degree, to blame for observed and/or forecasted changes in the climate. Policy makers, however, should not jump to conclusions. They have a responsibility to carefully consider the limitations of these studies and the impacts of factors other than manmade CO2. It would be wrong to attribute all observed impacts to climate change - even more so to GHGs - and even further to levels which could be controlled by humans. Herein lies our first consideration for policy makers: that rising atmospheric CO2 will not produce adverse weather and changes to climate beyond what will occur due to natural variation.
Policy makers should consider that the IPCC’s assumptions regarding future harm from rising atmospheric CO2 are contradicted by evidence, especially recent data that suggests the “global warming” narrative of climate change is seriously flawed. For example, the latest global temperature and ocean heat-content data[2] are both at odds with the claims of disastrous consequences. While researchers often select time periods to support their dangerous-warming hypothesis, it is now apparent that forecasts of continued surface and atmospheric warming and oceanic heat accumulation have been at odds with the observations for the last decade.[3] Similarly, computer modelers are having difficulty explaining the significant discrepancies between the increases in ocean heat content predicted on the basis of the dangerous CO2 hypothesis, and the observed ocean heat content data.[4]
Similar caution should be exercised when determining whether causes other than GHGs may be responsible for observed effects. Arctic temperature data from coastal stations in Greenland and averages over the Arctic Pacific, North Atlantic, Greenland-Iceland, and the entire circum-Arctic are noted to be at odds with this dangerous manmade warming hypothesis.[5] Such data indicates abrupt warming and cooling every few decades that fit well with natural fluctuations in solar activity.[6] By contrast, the steady rise in atmospheric CO2 concentrations over the past century, including especially the last fifty years, does not explain the variability in surface temperatures in and around the Arctic, further suggesting that the effect may be caused by something other than GHGs.[7] Similarly, evidence of warming in cities has indicated that warming and hydrological changes result directly from the “heat island effect” of urbanization and changing landscape cover, rather than from atmospheric CO2 concentration.[8] Consequentially, policy makers would be wise to also consider alternative causes for the observed effects.
While some researchers, including us, argue that factors other than GHGs are responsible for observed climate changes, many do not. Policy makers need not accept either camp’s findings, but should be aware of these alternative views and give them due consideration when making their decisions.
Policy makers also need to reconcile scientists’ failure to find a CO2 greenhouse-warming signal despite extensive and objective scouring of climate records from around the globe over the last century.[9] We and other scientists have reached a very simple conclusion: atmospheric CO2 is not an important driver of weather and climate.[10] This hypothesis lies in very sharp contrast to the speculations from computer climate models, which are predicated on a strong relationship between atmospheric CO2 and air temperature.[11] Such findings indicate that simulated computer modeling may be inherently limited in its ability to make accurate predictions regarding a system as complex as the global climate. This is not to suggest that computer research is a trivial pursuit; but rather, that it is not developed enough to generate reliable prognoses for policy making.
Policy makers owe it to their constituents to make informed decisions weighing all of the observed climate data rather than relying on outputs from the artificial worlds of computer climate models.
Consideration #2: Policy Makers Must Weigh Both Potential Benefits and Potential Costs of a Changing Climate.
Commentators and political activists often negatively characterize climate change as an unnatural process that is bound only to bring disaster. Unfortunately, some of these characterizations have become embodied in law through judicial decisions and legislative actions, which have caused a misunderstanding about the nature of climate change.[12] To avoid these shortcomings in the next round of climate change action, reasonable policy makers should reject the notion that a changing climate is completely one-sided. Instead, they should use the best scientific data available to weigh the potential positive effects of climate change against the negative effects and costs of policy intervention to determine which course of action to take. Thus, in evaluating the chemical and biological influences of rising atmospheric CO2, special attention should be paid to our second consideration for policy makers: that the negative effects on ecosystems and biodiversity of increases in atmospheric CO2 must be properly weighed against the benefits.
Policy makers must be careful to avoid the mistakes of turning scientifically inaccurate definitions into laws and regulations. In 2007, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court held that greenhouse gases fit within the Clean Air Act’s capacious definition of “air pollutant,"[13] creating a legal definition that does not match the science. Rather than being an “air pollutant,” atmospheric CO2 is the basic building block for all photosynthetic organisms: green plants, fresh- and ocean-water algae and photosynthetic bacteria.[14] It forms the basis of most food chains and is vital t o biological life. Legal definitions at odds with science make it difficult to enact sensible policy.
Imprecise language can also lead to exaggerations about the potential dangers of CO2 that could cause policy makers to misjudge the urgency of the situation. For example, today’s level of atmospheric CO2 - about 390 ppm (0.039 percent or the equivalent of about four cents in $100) - is not “dangerously high” from the perspective of photosynthetic organisms.[15] In fact, 390 ppm is far below the nutrient saturation level for these organisms and below the optimal level for growth.[16] This means more CO2 could enhance some critical ecosystems; yet few scientists, politicians, or “climate entrepreneurs” consider the positive benefits to these plants under elevated CO2 levels. Furthermore, some marine organisms may actually grow better and be more productive as a result of ocean acidification caused by dissolving CO2 in seawater.[17] As a consequence, some of the fast biological responses - most likely involving the positive synergistic interactions among changes in temperature, solar radiation, and bicarbonate - are likely to stimulate marine life and food production in the world’s oceans. Biologist and oceanographer Dr. Debora Iglesias-Rodriguez, summarized her findings on this topic this way:
Increased CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere is causing some microscopic ocean plants to produce greater amounts of calcium carbonate - with potentially wide-ranging implications for predicting the cycling of carbon in the oceans and global climate modeling… Our research has also revealed that, over the past 220 years, [single-celled algae and phytoplankton] have increased the mass of calcium carbonate they each produce by around 40 percent. These results are in agreement with previous observations that [single-celled algae and phytoplankton] are abundant throughout past periods of ocean acidification, such as that which occurred roughly 55 million years ago.[18]
An examination of the procedures used in studies that come to contrary findings regarding the effects of CO2 on marine organisms[19] reveals that they have inappropriately claimed to examine the ocean acidification issue by adding hydrochloric acid to seawater, rather than taking the trouble to bubble CO2 through the water to more faithfully simulate natural conditions. The former procedure of adding acids or bases directly to the water bypasses the key involvement of CO2 with the carbonate and bicarbonate geochemical cycling in the ocean, which is why it generates an opposite conclusion from studies that properly bubble CO2 through water. It is clear that there will be both losers and winners in relation to ocean acidification; as such, relying exclusively on negative effects would be a poor recipe for a well-informed policy making.[20]
Recently, some ecologists and geologists have cautioned about the dangers of carbon myopia - of seeing and examining only the alleged dangers of rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere while ignoring the potential harmful effects of managing for CO2. Moreover, Putz and Redford cautioned that carbon-based conservation can be bad for biodiversity and harmful to both plants and animals.[21] They note that carbon-based discrimination will adversely affect non-arboreal plants, result in shorter tree species, and put non-forested ecosystems at risk[22] and that “tree planting among carbon investors could create perverse incentives leading to major biodiversity losses."[23]
Apart from a few species required for pollination and seed dispersal, “most vertebrates and invertebrates are superfluous, if not nuisances, in forests managed for carbon,” Putz and Redford conclude.[24] That means incentives to sustain and preserve those species will be limited, if not actually prove detrimental, when policy makers focus exclusively on reducing atmospheric CO2.
Clearly, there will be winners and losers in a changing climate, but policy makers must weigh the costs of the negatives (with the costs of trying to maintain status quo) against the positives. Not all biological, chemical, and ecological responses to rising atmospheric CO2 portend doom and gloom. Policy makers should focus their discussions on balancing the pros and cons, rather than pursuing a one-sided strategy of CO2 reduction.
Consideration #3: Policy Makers Must Recognize the Possibility that Carbon Trading Schemes May Not Lead to a Reduction in Atmospheric CO2.
Recent failures of carbon emission trading, both in the Chicago Climate Exchange and in the E.U. Emission Trading Market, confirm the simple but harsh reality that carbon trading is an artificial and unworkable system that will likely cause more harm than good, since there are simply too many potential cheaters, too many opportunities to cheat and get away with it, and too many opportunities to make big profits by cheating. Professor Roger Pielke Jr. has critically remarked that “very complex policies full of accounting tricks, political pork and policy misdirection"[25] are now being devised to create the false promise of an international climate-solution. Even Science magazine reluctantly agreed on October 23, 2009 that:
The accounting now used for assessing compliance with carbon limits in the Kyoto Protocol and in climate legislation contains a far reaching but fixable flaw that will severely undermine greenhouse reduction goals… For example, the clearing of long-established forests to burn wood or to grow energy crops is counted as 100 percent reduction in energy emissions, despite causing large releases of carbon.[26]
This leads to our third consideration for policy makers: that carbon trading will not lead directly to a reduction in atmospheric CO2.
There is a dangerous paralysis creeping into our modern era as a consequence of unscientific carbon myopia. This paralysis is illustrated by the nightmare of carbon budget accounting, where the offset of carbon dioxide emissions can be achieved through additional storage and protection of carbon pools located in human settlements. Human settlements store carbon in natural pools such as vegetation and soil as well as in anthropogenic pools. Anthropogenic carbon pools encompass buildings, printed materials, landfills, clothing and living organisms.[27]
Those who have not followed the trading price of carbon emissions at the Chicago Climate Exchange will be intrigued to learn that carbon began trading at the modest price of $1 per metric ton in January 2004. [28] Prices then fluctuated wildly, reaching a peak value of $7 per metric ton in May/June 2008.[29] However, as public interest waned (most likely due, in part, to a lack of correlation between the extreme scenarios that have been posited and observations in the real world), the trading price of carbon emissions fluctuated around a low of $0.10 to 0.20 per metric ton between October and December of 2009.[30]
An initial investor in carbon emission reductions back in January 2004 has now lost 90 percent of his or her original investment on what has amounted to a tax on a gaseous atmospheric component that is essential for all life and on the hydrocarbon energy that powers 85 percent of the U.S. economy. Speculators who entered the carbon market on May 30, 2008 have lost 98.6 percent of their investments.
In a similar fashion, trading at the E.U. Emission Trading Market has collapsed. Trading peaked around 30 Euro in April 2006, dropped to less than 1 Euro in February 2007, and eventually reached 0.03 in December 2007[31 ]a fall to 0.1 percent of its peak value. Ironically, at least part of the reason for the fall was that too many carbon emission credits were allocated relative to actual emissions. Moreover, E.U. emissions have actually increased over the same time period by 10 to 54 percent in some countries during this first phase of the E.U. carbon trading experiment.[32] For example, emissions as of the end of 2007 for both Greece and Ireland were 25 percent above their 1990 levels; Portugal’s emissions were 38 percent above and Spain’s were 54 percent above.[33] These, of course, are the very outcomes that carbon trading was supposed to prevent.
The second phase of E.U. trading also is not promising, as new hurdles and questions have arisen. This is exemplified by the September 2009 decision of the European Court ruling against the European Commission’s plan to cut emission quotas for Poland and Estonia. The court held that the two countries could not be compelled against their will to abide by lower emission quotas imposed by the European Commission subsequent to the acceptance of the Kyoto Protocol.[34]
As further proof of the disconnect between the world imagined by the politicians and scientists who rushed to Copenhagen and the real world in which we live, the Australian government is proposing to trade carbon under its own emission trading scheme, at a set price of A$10 per ton per year, until July 2012, at which time the cost and price will be dictated by market forces.[35] We are willing to bet that its value will be much less than A$10 by December 2012 if a free market is allowed to prevail.
Given the problems associated with carbon trading systems namely the potential and opportunity for cheating to occur and the precipitous drop in value that has been observed in carbon credit policymakers should carefully consider the negatives before enacting carbon trading systems.
Conclusion
Prudent policy makers should not get swept up by the shortsightedness of the alarmist media coverage of human-induced global warming. Rather, given the potential costs and impacts, they should be suspicious that advocates have subverted science to further their own causes.[36] Understandably the extent of uncertainty regarding the role and impact of rising atmospheric CO2 may come as a shock to those swept up by the fanaticism. Given the uncertainty involved, policy makers should consider the scientific data carefully.
Decision makers should consider the following questions: Do we really want a future based on the grievous misunderstanding engendered by carbon myopia? Can humanity really afford to ignore the real harm that would be caused by adhering to these fallacies about carbon? We must have the courage to stand against climate alarmism and stand for rational stewardship and for reliable, affordable energy. We urge political leaders of the world to do the right thing and to reject any deal that would tax or restrict carbon emissions. Only in that way can they protect the jobs, health, welfare, economic opportunities, environmental quality, living standards, and civil rights that depend so critically on hydrocarbon energy.
SPPI BLOG from the Washington Times
The turmoil in the Middle East ...the Federal Reserve’s decision to further devalue the U.S. dollar through a third round of “quantitative easing” (QE3), and rising oil prices are combining to create a toxic economic brew that could send the global economy into recession.
That was the assessment of International Energy Agency chief economist Fatih Birol. “I see the [oil] prices today, in this economic context, as unbearable for consumers,” said Birol on Friday. “High prices together with other factors could push the global economy back into recession.”
However, in some ways, Mr. Obama should be claiming credit. As Obama Energy Secretary Steven Chu told the Wall Street Journal back in 2008, the goal all along has been to explode U.S. gas prices to the $6 to $8 a gallon prices found in Europe. “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” Mr. Chu said.
Mr. Birol’s comments come as U.S. oil prices hit a four-month high on Friday:
Since late June, the price of crude oil has climbed about 25 percent, fueling a 16-cent increase in the average price of regular gasoline and adding to the economic headwinds facing President Obama in the final weeks of the election campaign.
Industry experts believe that President Barack Obama may use the Middle East uprisings and soaring fuel costs to justify tapping the nation’s 700 million barrel emergency Strategic Petroleum Reserve, similar to what Mr. Obama did last year to no lasting effect.
But it was the Federal Reserve’s decision to pump $40 billion so-called “stimulus” dollars a month into the U.S. economy in the form of buying mortgage-backed securities that ultimately may prove to be the match that lit the economic powder keg. As the value of the U.S. dollar goes down, oil prices go up. That means slower economic growth and higher consumer prices.
As Reuters explains, the confluence of all these economic factors is producing a chain reaction of higher consumer prices, plunging industrial production, and soaring gas prices:
Highlighting the risk to the economy from surging oil prices, a jump in gasoline costs pushed up U.S. consumer prices in August at the fastest pace in more than three years and squeezed spending on other items, threatening to slow economic growth.
Industrial production dropped 1.2 percent in August, the biggest decline since March 2009. The consumer price index increased 0.6 percent, the first rise in five months and the biggest since June 2009.
Gasoline prices, which also recorded their largest increase since June 2009, accounted for about 80 percent of the rise in consumer inflation last month, the Labor Department said.
Whether Mr. Obama can duct tape the looming economic collapse long enough to win reelection remains to be seen.
However, in some ways, Mr. Obama should be claiming credit. As Obama Energy Secretary Steven Chu told theWall Street Journal back in 2008, the goal all along has been to explode U.S. gas prices to the $6 to $8 a gallon prices found in Europe. “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” Mr. Chu said.
Through its mismanagement of the Middle East crisis and endless rounds of “quantitative easing” (and the concomitant currency devaluation such “stimulus” brings), the Obama Administration has almost reached its goal of European-style gas prices.
On Friday, a gallon of regular gas in the Bronx cost nearly $5 a gallon.
This is part of the Obama’s administration war on coal and fossil fuels. The ideologues from the colleges with no real world experience are convinced this will spark an explosion in wind and solar. Democrat Rep. Markey reacted to the passage of the bi-partisan “no to the ban on coal” bill in the house (which Reid widely regarded as the worst Senate Majority Leader in memory, refuses to take to a vote in the senate by claiming republicans were responsible for the lack of progress of renewables. He and his party have not done their homework as usual.
A large chunk of the $800 billion in stimulus dollars went to companies and ventures that has biggest supporters and bundlers Many of these ventures went bankrupt costing taxpayers billions. Although his crony capitalists walked off with millions in their pockets.
- Amonix Solar: FAIL! manufacturing plant in North Las Vegas, subsidized by more than $20 million in federal tax credits and grants given by Obama Administration, has closed its 214,000 square foot facility a year after it opened.
- Solar Trust of America: FAIL! - Filed Bankruptcy in Oakland, CA, April 3, 2012
- Bright Source: FAIL! - Bright Source warned Obama’s Energy Department officials in March 2011 that delays in approving a $1.6 billion U.S. loan guarantee would embarrass the White House and force the solar-energy company to close. Lost Billions of dollars but Getting More Money To Keep Trying. Can you say, “This isn’t working?”
- Solyndra: FAIL! - Obama gave Solyndra $500,000,000 in taxpayer money and Solyndra shut its doors and laid off 1100 workers in August 2011 After Billions in Losses due to failure to make a solar product that works!
- LSP Energy: FAIL! - LSPEnergy LP filed bankruptcy protection and a sale of its assets in Feb 2012
- Energy Conversion Devices: FAIL! - On February 14, 2012 Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. and its subsidiaries filed for bankruptcy
- Abound Solar: FAIL! - Abound Solar received a $400 million loan guarantee from Barack Obama announced in June, 2012 that it would file for bankruptcy
- SunPower: FAIL! - SunPower stopped producing solar cells last year at near bankruptcy restructured only with help of, get this, oil giant TOTAL who owns 60% stake. Irony! Still struggling…
- Beacon Power: FAIL! – Beacon Power Corp filed for bankruptcy Oct 2011 just a year after Obama approved $43 million loan Government loan guarantees
- Ecotality: FAIL! - ECOtality, a San Francisco green-tech company that never earned any money on the verge of bankruptcy after receiving roughly $115 million in two loan guarantees from Obama
- A123 Solar: FAIL! -A123 received $279 million from taxpayers thanks to President Obama’s Department of Energy loan guarantees and after Solyndra bankruptcy is getting another $500M from Obama and it has lost $400M
- UniSolar: FAIL! - Uni-Solar filed for Ch 11 bankruptcy in June 20 this year laid off hundreds got more Obama money still failing but still in business
- Azure Dynamics: FAIL! - Azure Dynamics files for bankruptcy in June wasting millions in Obama “Stimulus” and tax credits. Azure Dynamics LLC filed for bankruptcy protection in Canada and the US. Azure laid off 120 of its 160 employees in Oak Park; Boston; Vancouver, British Columbia; and the UK.
- Evergreen Solar: FAIL! - Evergreen Solar received $527 Million in Taxpayer money from Obama filed bankruptcy
- Ener1: FAIL! received more than $100 million in government funding from the Obama administration filed for bankruptcy January 2012
Obama’s ads claim Romney while with Bain transferred jobs overseas but most all of his funded corporations including GM, which has 2/3rds of their workers overseas. Most of the companies that benefited from stimulus bought materials manufactured overseas, improving employment in China and India. Obama touts GM as creating jobs at home and curses Boeing for outsourcing. This is explained by the “chosen one’s” definition of outsourcing. Boeing was guilty of outsourcing jobs to a ‘right to work’ state, and GM pays its bloated union wages by outsourcing to China, Mexico, etc. The administration has rebuked GM’s requests to allow them to manage their own company. GM sales are not doing well in the US. Temporary layoffs have been made for plants that produce the Chevy Volt, which has been dismal failure. Most of the sales have been forced sales to the military or government agencies or by companies like GE closely allied to the President.
Obama has been a failure in every business venture his administration has tried to mange and yet he wants to now is about to begin the takeover and management of 1/6 of the economy in the health care industry.
The administration in their campaign claims to be all about the middle class yet proposes to institute a carbon tax in a second term. This was described in a NYT editorial. This is would increase the gasoline price by $3 to at least the $7 target set by energy secretary Chu in his first term. Obama has promised his environmental supporters he will have more flexibility to institute his green agenda if he gets a second term, even though it has failed miserably in Europe with heavy investment in wind and solar. Of course as prices rise, the administration would blame big oil for price gouging and maybe attempt takeover of the energy sector like they did for the health and auto.
Wind has been around since the 80s – 1880s and solar the 90s -1890s. Had they been cost effective they would be a bigger part of the energy mix as President Carter pushed for. Still less than 3% of our needs come from wind and solar. WHY?
They found out in Europe where they heavily subsidized both that both are undependable and extremely costly. The sun doesn’t always shine, the wind doesn’t always blow.
Energy costs skyrocketed, and companies shut down or relocated factories overseas. Spain lost 2.2 real jobs for every green job created and only 1 in 10 green jobs was permanent. Spain has an unemployment rate of 25.5% and they stopped the subsidies. Italy lost 3.4 jobs for every green job created.
Denmark, the top wind country has the highest energy costs of any country in Europe.
Britain found wind was undependable delivering only 0.5% of their electricity needs during December 2010, the second coldest December since 1659 in the Little Ice Age. Over 25 of the population is in energy poverty in Wales – having to choose between and heating and eating. Europe is rushing back into fossil fuels to the environmentalists frustration.
Carbon taxes failed in Europe and Australia. They would drive gasoline prices up an additional $3 a gallon here in the US and increase home heating and cooling costs. It would be a very regressive tax, affecting the low and middle class the most.
All this nonsense to try and reduce a beneficial gas, CO2 that has greatly helped vegetation. Even in this droughty, hot summer, crop losses were small compared to 1988 when losses topped $80B (2009USD). The extremes of weather in the last two years are consistent with the second strongest La Nina and a very cold Pacific PDO.
BTW, increased energy and food costs have a domino effect on the prices of all goods and services, reduce disposable income, with most effect for low and middle classes. Already the median middle class household income is down over 4.8% in the last 3 years which is worse than the 2.6% decline in the recession that preceded it.
Americans, you have just over 40 days to awaken from your hypnotic haze.
Joe Bastardi has done on air combat with Bill Nye the Science guy who came to the gun battle with a knife and was clearly the loser. You would think ‘the science guy’ would know anything about climate but clearly he does not. You wonder how much he really knows about other science topics. Here is a post from our friends led by Calvin Beisner at the Cornwall Alliance:
What’s the message from Bill Nye “The Science Guy” to parents? Forget about God’s instructions in Deuteronomy 6 to teach your children about Him and His works. Leave your kids’ minds to us scientists!
Recently on CNN’s Newsroom the popular science teacher expressed frustration that the United States isn’t doing enough to fight global warming.
Nye insists that “tens of thousands of scientists...are very concerned” about catastrophic, anthropogenic global warming (CAGW), while “a few people...are...drawing attention to the idea that uncertainty is the same as doubt.”
“We in the science education community chip away at this problem all the time,” Nye said.
Nye and his fellow alarmists have a lot of chipping to do.
One hopes he’s just unaware, not dishonestly concealing the fact, that over 31,000 scientists have signed a petition saying, “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”
Drawing what he calls a “disturbing” analogy between skepticism of CAGW and skepticism of evolution, Nye simply defines anyone who questions this view as benighted. “We have an enormous population of people in the United States who don’t believe in evolution, the fundamental idea in all of life science,” he said on Newsroom.
How defensible does Nye think that is? “It would be like saying I don’t believe in earthquakes or something.”
In a recent YouTube video that went viral, Nye equated belief in evolution with scientific literacy:
I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world that’s completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that’s fine. But don’t make your kids do it because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future.
“Because we need them”? Who are “we,” and what gives them the right to demand control of our children’s minds?
Ironically, in 2011 Nye received the “In Praise of Reason” award from the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, a program of the Center for Inquiry, which purports to be dedicated to “promoting and defending science, reason, and free inquiry in all aspects of human interest” (emphasis added).
If Nye has felt frustrated about convincing Americans of either CAGW or evolution, he should take heart. Help is on its way.
As we told you recently, the educational bureaucracies that dominate our public schools are in advanced stages of developing “Next Generation Science Standards” (NGSS) that will indoctrinate students with a secular, atheistic worldview and belief in both evolution and CAGW.
That’s why the Cornwall Alliance is gearing up to prepare environmental stewardship curriculum for grades K 12 curriculum that will be firmly rooted in Biblical worldview, theology, and ethics, coupled with excellent science and economics, first for Christian schools, then for public and secular private schools. Will you help us with your generous donation today?
The need has never been more urgent.
NGSS’s flagship product, A Framework for K12 Science Education, will expand and solidify the anti-Christian worldview already reigning in America’s public schools.
Let me give you just one example. The Bible clearly teaches that people are supposed to fill and rule the earth to enhance its fruitfulness, beauty, and safety which implies that they can and should have an impact for good on the natural world.
But the NGSS says, “Human activities now cause land erosion and soil movement ... [and] [a]ir and water pollution ...with damaging effects on other species and on human health.” Well, yes, sometimes. But the standards never mention that we can also improve on nature, as the long-term rise in human life expectancy that started with the Industrial Revolution and continues even now demonstrates.
The assumption is clear: what people do is bad. A draft of performance expectations says, “Things that people do to live comfortably can affect the world around them. But they can make choices that reduce their impacts on the land, water, air, and other living things...” If their impacts were good, why would they want to reduce them?
As World magazine environment reporter Daniel James Devine reports, “High school students will be taught that fossil and DNA discoveries support common ancestry, and that one species can evolve into two. Not only will they learn that human activities have increased ‘the frequency and intensity’ of natural hazards like ‘floods, droughts, forest fires, [and] landslides,’ they’ll study the ‘feasibility of geoengineering’ projects to slow global climate change.”
Rather than letting our children’s minds be taken captive by the world, we want to help them learn to “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).
UPDATE: Note from Anthony. Joe Romm’s head exploded on Climate Progress (no surprise) and then Media Matters, exposed today as the Pravda like propaganda arm of the Obama administration and the group that provides the daily talking points for the liberal media followed suit. Here is what Anthony reports:
Media matters has gone ballistic on me.
Most of the complaints I’ve seen haven’t much to do with the content of what I said (though MM touches on it a bit) but mostly over the fact that I was allowed to speak at all. PBS and NYT, WAPO, HUFFPO are expected not to have any dissent to their messaging.
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By Spencer Michels
It was about 105 degrees in Chico, Calif., about three hours north of Sacramento, when we arrived at the offices of one of the nation’s most read climate skeptics. Actually, Anthony Watts calls himself a pragmatic skeptic when it comes to global warming. Watts is a former television meteorologist, who has been studying climate change for years. He doesn’t claim to be a scientist; he attended Purdue. He’s the author of a blog, Watts Up with That?, which he calls the world’s most viewed site on global warming. For a story I was working on for the PBS NewsHour, Watts wasrecommended by the Heartland Institute, a conservative, Chicago-based non-profit that is one the leading groups that doubt that climate change—if it exists—is attributable to human activities.
Watts doesn’t come across as a true believer or a fanatic. For one thing, he has built a business that caters to television stations and individuals who want accurate weather information and need displays to show their viewers. He has developed an array of high tech devices to disseminate weather data and put it on screens. He has several TV stations around the country as clients.
But Watts’ reputation doesn’t come from his business - IntelliWeather -- but rather from his outspoken views on climate change. He says he’s been gathering data for years, and he’s analyzed it along with some academics. He used to think somewhat along the same lines as Richard Muller, the University
of California physicist who recently declared he was no longer a skeptic on climate change. Muller had analyzed two centuries worth of temperature data and decided his former skepticism was misplaced: yes, the earth has been warming, and the reason is that humans are producing carbon dioxide that is hastening the warming the planet.
Watts doesn’t buy Muller’s analysis, since, he believes, it is based on faulty data. The big problem, as Watts sees it, is that the stations where temperatures are gathered are too close to urban developments where heat is
soaked up and distorts the readings. So it looks like the earth is warming though it may not be, he says. Read a transcript below.
SPENCER MICHELS: So let’s start out with the basic idea that there’s this debate in this country over global warming. There’s some people who call it a complete hoax and there are some people who completely embrace it and so forth. Where do you stand in that spectrum?
ANTHONY WATTS: Well, I at one time was very much embracing the whole concept that we had a real problem, we had to do something about it. Back in 1988 James Hanson actually was the impetus for that for me in his presentation before Congress. But as I learned more and more about the issue, I discovered that maybe it’s not as bad as it’s made out to be. Some of it is hype, but there’s also some data that has not been explored and there’s been some investigations that need to be done that haven’t been done. And so now I’m in the camp of we have some global warming. No doubt about it, but itmay not be as bad as we originally thought because there are other contributing factors.
SPENCER MICHELS: What’s the thing that bothers you the most about people who say there’s lots of global warming?
ANTHONY WATTS: They want to change policy. They want to apply taxes and these kinds of things may not be the actual solution for making a change to our society.
SPENCER MICHELS: What are you saying? That they’re biased essentially or motivated by something else? What?
ANTHONY WATTS: There’s a term that was used to describe this. It’s called noble cause corruption. And actually I was a victim of that at one time, where you’re so fervent you’re in your belief that you have to do something.
You’re saving the planet, you’re making a difference, you’re making things better that you’re so focused on this goal of fixing it or changing it that you kind of forget to look along the path to make sure that you haven’t
missed some things.
I started looking into the idea that weather stations have been slowly encroached upon by urbanization and sighting issues over the last century. Meaning that our urbanization affected the temperature. And this was
something that was very clear if you looked at the temperature records. But what wasn’t clear is how it affected the trend of temperatures. And so that’s been something that I’ve been investigating. Anyone who’s ever stood
next to a building in the summertime at night, a brick building that’s been out in the summer sun, you stand next to it at nigh,t you can feel the heat radiating off of it. That’s a heat sync effect. And over the last 100 years
our country, in fact the world, has changed. We’ve gone from having mostly a rural agrarian society to one that is more urban and city based and as a result the infrastructure has increased. We’ve got more freeways, you know more airports, we’ve got more buildings. Got more streets, all these things.
Those are all heat syncs. During the day, solar insulation hits these objects and these surfaces and it stores heat in these objects. At night it releases that heat. Now if you are measuring temperature in a city that went
from having uh maybe 10% of um, non-permeable surface to you know maybe 90% over 100 years, that’s a heat sync effect and that should show up in the record. The problem is, is that it’s been such a slow subtle change over the last 100 years. It’s not easy to detect and that’s been the challenge and that’s what I’ve been working on.
SPENCER MICHELS: Well in a way you’re saying that the records aren’t accurate, the data isn’t accurate.
ANTHONY WATTS: I’m saying that the data might be biased by these influences to a percentage. Yes, we have some global warming, it’s clear the temperature has gone up in the last 100 years. But what percentage of that
is from carbon dioxide? And what percentage of that is from changes in the local and measurement environment?
SPENCER MICHELS: I want to go back to what we were talking about a little bit earlier, the idea that there is, there are people who are sort of invested in promoting the fact that there is global warming. There’s money
involved and grants. Is that what you were saying? Maybe explain that.
ANTHONY WATTS: Well global warming had become essentially a business in its own right. There are NGOs, there are organizations, there are whole divisions of universities that have set up to study this, this factor, and
so there’s lots of money involved and then so I think that there’s a tendency to want to keep that going and not really look at what might be different.
SPENCER MICHELS: Now Dr. Muller at the University of California Berkeley had similar concerns. Went back and looked at the data, took much more data than anybody else had, and concluded, well maybe there was some problems, but basically the conclusions were right. There is global warming and it comes from carbon dioxide which is meant, made by man. Do you buy that?
ANTHONY WATTS: Unfortunately he has not succeeded in terms of how science views, you know, a successful inquiry. His papers have not passed peer review. They had some problems. Some of the problems I identified, others have identified problems as well, for example, he goes much further back, back to about 1750 in terms of temperature. Well from my own studies, I know that temperature really wasn’t validated and homogenized where everything’s measured the same way until the weather bureau came into being about in 1890. Prior to that thermometers were hung in and exposed to the atmosphere all kinds of different ways. Some were hung under the shade of trees, somewhere on the north side of houses, some were out in the open in the sun, and so the temperature fluctuations that we got from those readings prior to 1890 was quite broad and I don’t believe that provided representative signal because the exposure’s all wrong. And Dr. Muller did not take any of that into account.
SPENCER MICHELS: His conclusion though is that basically global warming exists and that the scientists, no matter what the problems were, were pretty much right on.
ANTHONY WATTS: I agree with him that global warming exists. However, the ability to attribute the percentage of global warming to CO2 versus other man-made influences is still an open question.
SPENCER MICHELS: I want to ask you a little bit about attitudes towards this among the public. We talked to a public opinion specialist at Stanford who says there’s been 80 percent belief in global warming and man-made global warming consistently over at least the last 15 years in this country. Do you buy his theory?
ANTHONY WATTS: Well I look at a number of opinion polls. You’ll find a lot of them on my blog and that we’ve covered. And depending on how you ask the question we’ll sometimes give you a different answer. My view is, is that the view of global warming peaked about at the time that Al Gore came out with his movie, An Inconvenient Truth. But ever since then other factors have kicked in. Climate Gate for example. And it has become less of an issue, in fact you hardly see politicians talking about it anymore, or pushing it as an issue. What’s been happening now it’s just become a regulation issue. It’s gotten away from the political arena and into the bureaucratic regulation arena. And so people I believe based on the polls I’ve seen, aren’t quite as believing as they used to be. And I think the trend is downward.
SPENCER MICHELS: What do you think is the upshot of your attitude toward this? Should the Congress, should the American public say, you know nothing’s been proven yet. We should wait. Or should we go ahead with trying to solve what many people consider a really scary problem?
ANTHONY WATTS: Hmm....You mentioned a really scary problem and I think that’s part of the issues. Some people don’t respond well to scare tactics and there have been some scare tactics used by some of the proponents on the other side of the issue. And that’’s where the overselling of it comes in. But this is a slow problem and it requires a slow solution I believe. For example, our infrastructure for electricity and so forth and highways didn’t happen in 5 years or 10 years. It happened over a century. We can’t just rip all that up or change it in the space off five, 10 or 15 years because it’ll be catastrophic to our economy. We need a slow change solution, one that is a solution that changes over time at about the same rate as climate change.
More efficient technologies, new technologies, the use of more nuclear for example. There’s a nuclear type of a reactor that’s more safe called a, a liquid thorium reactor that China is jumping on right now. And we should be looking into things like that.
SPENCER MICHELS: Has this issue, I know you think it’s been oversold and scare tactics have been used. Do you think it’s become too politicized?
ANTHONY WATTS: Oh, it’s definitely become too politicized. In fact, some of the scientists who are the leaders in the issue have become for lack of a better word, political tools on the issue.
SPENCER MICHELS: One final question, do you consider yourself a skeptic when it comes to global warming?
ANTHONY WATTS: I would call myself a pragmatic skeptic. Yes, we need to make some changes on our energy technology but more efficient technology’s a good thing. For example, I have solar power on my own, you know, I have done energy reductions in my office and in my home to make things more efficient. So I think those are good things. Those are good messages that we should be embracing. But at the same time I think that some of the issues have been oversold, may have been oversold, because they allow for more regulation to take place. And so the people that like more regulation use global warming as a tool, as a means to an end. And so as a result, we might be getting more regulation and more taxes that really aren’t rooted in science, but more in politics.
WMO RELEASE
Death Valley, Calif. now holds the record for the hottest temperature ever recorded in the world with a maximum temperature of 134 degrees. This temperature was not recorded this past summer, but nearly 100 years ago on July 10, 1913. So, how can it be a new all-time record?
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released information on Thursday showing that the now previous all-time world record of 136 degrees on September 13, 1922 in El Azizia, Libya has been ruled invalid.
The investigation that discredited the previous record was conducted with the support of the Libyan National Meteorological Centre for the WMO Commission of Climatology World Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes.
Several factors were cited in ruling the previous record as invalid, including:
- Problematical instrumentation.
- An inexperienced weather observer.
- The observation site was over an asphalt-like material that was not representative of the native desert soil.
- Poor matching of the extreme temperature reading to other nearby locations that were cooler.
- Poor matching to subsequent temperatures recorded at the site.
Death Valley: The “Hot” Facts
The Badwater Ultramarathon is run in the brutal heat of Death Valley each year.
One hundred thirty-four degrees seems incomprehensible. This is 13 degrees hotter than the hottest temperatures measured in the Plains states during the “Dust Bowl” of the 1930s and 12 degrees hotter than the all-time record high at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport.
In an average year Death Valley sees triple-digit heat from mid-May through early October. Highs in the 110s are common from mid-June through early September. Morning lows in the upper 80s or low 90s are frequent from mid-July through mid-August.
(FORECAST: Death Valley)
The summer of 1996 featured daytime highs over 120 degrees for forty days. Five years later, the valley sizzled in a stretch of 154 consecutive days of triple-digit heat, a roughly five-month stretch!
Those are just air temperatures. How hot can ground temperatures get? Try an incredible 201 degrees, measured at Furnace Creek on July 15, 1972. Yep...11 degrees from the boiling point of water! The maximum air temperature measured that day was 128 degrees.
Why is this Valley so Hot?
Elevation: Furnace Creek, home of the Death Valley Nat’l Park Visitor’s Center, is roughly 190 feet below sea-level. Since air warms as it moves down, that extra elevation plunge adds extra heat.
It’s a Desert: Only 2.26” of precipitation falls each year in the valley. The average evaporation rate: 150” a year. In some years (1953, 1929), no rain or snow fell. Most Pacific storm systems have the lion’s share of their moisture taken away by four mountain ranges to the west of Death Valley. Their wettest month, February, averages only 0.49” of precipitation. Amazingly, despite this desert environment, there have been destructive floods.
On August 15, 2004, torrential rain, by valley standards, sent walls of floodwater up to 8 to 10 feet deep through parts of Death Valley National Park in the late evening hours.
Miles of roads were washed out and closed for months. Cars were swept away and buried. Two people were killed near Zabriskie Point. The park was closed for nine days. Other destructive floods occurred in 1984 and 1976, among other years.
CLIMATE WIRE BUSINESS: Bad snow year may just be the start of the ski industry’s climate headaches
ASPEN, Colo.—The ski industry is one business that is facing the prospect of tough sledding in the years just ahead. According to a survey taken by the National Ski Areas Association, warm weather and low snowfall last winter dropped visitors to ski resorts by almost 16 percent, the sharpest decline in more than 30 years. The survey concluded that the experience may have just been “an abrupt reminder of the whims of the weather,” but it also noted there was the possibility that “long-term climate change” was a factor.
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WINTER SEASON SNOW TREND in the Northern hemisphere trend has been up since 1967. 4 of the top 5 years have occurred in the last decade.
The ranks: #1 1977/78, #2 2009/10, #3 2010/11 #4 2007/08 and #5 2002/03. Last year ranked among the top 50% snowiest even with the drop in the US.
Despite the snow drought in much of the lower 48 last winter, record snows fell in Alaska, Anchorage had the snowiest winter on record
For the US, the number of major impact snowstorms is UP. We already have had 8 this decade - just 3 years in. The 60 year cycle is clear.
In 2007, the Union of Concerned Scientists warned ski areas that snow would be a problem for them in the future. That very winter set all types of records for snow coast to coast, only to be exceeded by 2009/10 and 2010/11.
In 2008, RFK Jr, environmentalist bemoaned that children in places like DC would never again know the joys of sledding and winter sports. The very next year all-time snow records were set for the region.
Update: See the “Boy who cried warming” here.
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Submitted by Nick Sundt on Fri, 09/07/2012 - 09:33
In this video from the BBC, Alan Thorpe of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) explains how declining Arctic sea ice and warming north Atlantic sea surface temperatures are contributing to shifts in the atmosphere that are disrupting summer weather in the U.K.
According to the BBC: “The summer of 2012 was the second wettest in the UK since records began - and the wettest summer in 100 years - according to the Met Office. The bad weather could be blamed in part on the path of the jet stream being further south than usual. Alan Thorpe of the European Weather Centre explained the early stages of research into the link between melting ice in the Arctic and the UK’s poor summer. “ The findings are further evidence that the warming of northern ocean waters and the closely linked decline in Arctic sea ice already are resulting in substantial disruption of weather patterns in the northern mid-latitudes in North America, Europe and Asia.
See video here.
In a statement issued by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) (Arctic sea-ice and poor summer weather, 7 September 2012), ECM
“We suspect that declining Arctic sea-ice cover in summer has an association with lower pressure over the UK if there are also higher than normal sea-surface temperatures in the north-west Atlantic. In these circumstances we expect there to be an increased risk of the north- having relatively poor summer weather - wet, cool and windy. This is part of a long-term and large-scale pattern called the Arctic Oscillation that means the UK’s weather can be affected by events far remote from our shores.
The Arctic Oscillation is associated with changes to the position of the jet stream such that during this summer the UK and was in the path of a series of storms. However, there are many other factors that determine our summer weather and the year-to-year and decade-to-decade variability is large. This is why at ECMWF we use what is called ensemble prediction where the range of possibilities is explored by performing 51 parallel forecasts starting from slightly different conditions.”
Yes all true, but greenhouse gases have nothing to do with the arctic changes. They are driven by cycles in the oceans.
See how the arctic ice and temperatures vary in tandem with the Atlantic 60 year cycle.
Enlarged
See how actually both the Pacific and Atlantic cycles tie to arctic ice and temperatures
Enlarged
See why the arctic changes could be explained by natural variability here.
Former President Jimmy Carter will address the Democratic Party convention via a televised address, but former Vice President Al Gore and candidate for President will be no where in sight.
The leading advocate for global warning will be conspicuous in his absence, but that doesn’t mean that the greatest hoax of modern times will not be mentioned. It has been a consistent theme of the Obama administration, particularly to justify the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to attack the energy and business sectors of the nation’s economy.
As this is being written, the morning of the start of the Democratic Party convention, one wonders if the tired, thoroughly debunked claims that carbon dioxide (CO2) is causing a warming that does not exist and that humans are also causing it will be mentioned.
On the night that Obama had won his primary victory over Hillary Clinton’s bid to be the party’s presidential candidate, among his promises and claims, he said, “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” You cannot get more absurd than that. It would translate into the administration’s push for cap-and-trade legislation (regarding CO2 emissions) that was rejected by a Democrat-controlled Senate.
Obama’s claim did not go unnoticed by Mitt Romney who, during his acceptance speech, said, “President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.” The global warming hustlers were apoplectic in their denunciations of Romney, but his promise received a standing ovation.
The administration has become famous for the billions wasted on so-called green jobs, green energy, and controlling greenhouse gases. It is essential to understand that CO2 has never caused any of the warming cycles the Earth has been through over 4.5 billion years. It shows up after climate cycle change occurs. Moreover, the oceans that cover 71% of the Earth surface both stores and releases CO2.
Prior to Earth Day in 2011, a Gallup poll revealed just how Americans felt about various environmental issues. Asked about a variety of concerns, the respondents rated global warming dead last with 48% saying they were either not much or not at all concerned about it.
June 11, 1986 - Milwaukee Sentinal
The decades of apocalyptic claims and warnings have given way to reality. There have been no massive famines, no complete melting of the north or south poles, no increase in natural phenomenon such as hurricanes, no mass extinctions of various species. By 1998, the planet began a new cooling cycle, one that panicked the perpetrators of the global warming myth.
In 2009, the leak of emails between the researchers whose deliberately false “data” was the basis for global warming claims revealed that the cabal behind the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports were plotting to suppress the truth. The leak would become known as “Climategate.”
Just prior to the Democratic Party convention, President Obama issued yet another Executive Order, this one calling for “investment”, i.e., more spending, on cogeneration plants in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by deploying “cleaner and more efficient energy production in the country by working around political resistance to climate change and ‘green’ energy legislation on Capitol Hill.”
In reality, you cannot “save” energy. You can only use less of it and the Obama administration has done everything in its power to ensure that there will be less by deterring the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada- estimated to generate 20,000 new jobs - and by waging a war on coal. Coal mines and coal-fired plants are being closed. Oil continues to be discovered in the U.S. but not on federally controlled lands, nor can it be explored and extracted offshore where billions of barrels exist.
In effect, the Obama administration has been the most anti-energy administration in recent times while, at the same time, wasting billions on solar energy companies that have gone bankrupt and on wind power which, combined, represent less than 3% of the electricity generated nationwide and which would not exist were they were not, like ethanol, completely dependent on government mandates and subsidies.
It will be interesting to see how many of the convention speakers make any reference to global warming, carbon dioxide, or the real sources of energy, coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power..
Throwing a bone to the environmentalists, it is likely that President Obama will make a passing reference to global warming and energy, but it is not likely that the “planet will begin to heal” as it grows colder in a completely natural cooling cycle that threatens to tip over into a new ice age.
There are real problems to be addressed, high unemployment, a lagging “recovery”, a fiscal crisis that will occur on January 1st unless Congress acts to extend tax cuts and puts off a massive sequestration of funding to defense and other sectors. In the end, it is likely we will be told that the last four years were all George W. Bush’s fault.
Dr Ryan Maue, Weatherbell.com
See Ryan’s model pge on weathrbell.com.
Hurricane expert Dr. Ryan Maue pulls no punches when it comes to putting John Abraham of the Climate Science Rapid Response Team in his place:
Here’s what Abraham has to say at Discovery News:
But wind speeds don’t tell the whole story, said John Abraham, a thermal scientist at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn. The size of a storm, the amount of rain it dumps, and the size of the wave surges it produces also determine how damaging a hurricane will be, even though the category scale doesn’t take those details into account.
“The hurricanes that really matter, that cause damage, are increasing,” Abraham said. “What scientists have been saying would happen for decades is now happening. There’s an economic cost to not doing anything about this problem.”
Umm, no, when you look at the frequency and accumulated energy in hurricanes at Dr. Ryan Maue’s Tropical web page, you find it trending down:
Historical Tropical Cyclone Activity Graphics
Figure: Global Hurricane Frequency (all & major) - 12-month running sums. The top time series is the number of global tropical cyclones that reached at least hurricane-force (maximum lifetime wind speed exceeds 64-knots). The bottom time series is the number of global tropical cyclones that reached major hurricane strength (96-knots+). Adapted from Maue (2011) GRL.
Figure: Last 4-decades of Global and Northern Hemisphere Accumulated Cyclone Energy: 24 month running sums. 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/blue boxes). The area in between represents the Southern Hemisphere total ACE. 1970- July 2012 monthly ACE Data File (Maue, 2010, 2011 GRL) [--] 1970-2011 global tropical cyclone frequency monthly Data File
Dr. Patrick Michaels points out last Friday in this excellent essay on hurricanes:
It’s been 2,535 days since the last Category 3 storm, Wilma in 2005, hit the beach. That’s the longest period - by far - in the record that goes back to 1900.
Quite a drought. He adds:
Aren’t there more whoppers - the powerful Category 4 and 5 monsters that will mow down pretty much anything in their path? As is the case with much severe weather, we simply see more than we did prior to satellites and (in the case of hurricanes) long-range aircraft reconnaissance. As the National Hurricane Center’s Chris Landsea (with whom I have published on tropical cyclones) has shown, if you assume the technology before satellites, the number of big storms that would be detected now is simply unchanged from the past.
There’s a pretty good example of this spinning in the remote Atlantic right now, which is Hurricane Kirk, far away from shipping channels, land, and nosy airplanes. Kirk is compact enough that it would likely have been completely missed fifty years ago. If it spins up into a Category 4 (which is currently not forecast), that would be another biggie that would have gotten away, back in the day.
There’s another reason that the increase in frequency is more apparent than real: “shorties”. That’s what Landsea calls the ephemeral tropical whirls of little consequence that are now named as storms more because of our detection technology than anything else. There’s also probably an overlay of institutional risk aversion in play, as it is now recognized that seemingly harmless thunderstorm clusters over the ocean can spawn decent floods when they hit land.
There is another driver for an increase in Atlantic hurricane frequency that isn’t operating elsewhere. In 1995, a sudden shift in the distribution of North Atlantic temperatures increased hurricane frequency. Landsea predicted - at the time - that the Atlantic would soon fire up from its hurricane doldrums of the previous two decades, which it did. This type of shift has occurred repeatedly in the last century, both before and during (modest) global warming from greenhouse gases.
The influence of technology on storm reporting is something I’ve talked about in great detail before:
Why it seems that severe weather is “getting worse” when the data shows otherwise – a historical perspective
Abraham is clueless. Freelance writer Emily Sohn, judging by some of her other articles, might well fit into the label Maue applies to the hurricane story.
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Wacko Enviro professor says snow will vanish from Australia by 2020
ENVIRONMENTAL researchers say the end of Australia’s ski culture is in sight, despite Victoria and NSW experiencing one of their best snow seasons in almost a decade.
People were still shredding up powder last weekend at some of Australia’s top ski resorts, but Griffith associate professor Catherine Pickering says snow is rapidly disappearing because of global warming and by 2020 Australia may not have any left.
“We’ve predicted by 2020 to lose something like 60 per cent of the snow cover of the Australian Alps,” Professor Pickering, from the Griffith School of Environment, said.
“Unfortunately because our current emissions and our current rises in temperatures are at the high end of the predictions, it’s definitely coming to us sooner and faster.”
Professor Pickering researched the effects of declining snow cover and hotter summers on the Australian Alps and says this year’s better than average season has been a one-off combination of La Nina and a cold snap.
“We’ll still occasionally have good years, but they’ll become less frequent,” she said. “A poor year in the past will be a good year now.”
The research covered all Victoria and NSW ski resorts and Professor Pickering says the alpine region is most threatened by climate change, with an increasing threat to endemic and endangered mountain species as well as plants because of early thaws.
Ski resorts will have to rely heavily on snow machines, she said, which was not sustainable.
“Ski resorts will have to increase snow making ...which is limiting in cost and water,” she said. “Because we don’t have very high mountains . . . we don’t have large water catchments above our resorts. In a few years, the amount of water that ski resorts will need to make snow is going to exceed the amount of water that’s used by Canberra.”
Professor Pickering said because of rising costs and diminishing snow coverage, Australian skiers would go overseas to Europe or the US.
Italian ski instructor Rene Crazzolara, who spends seven months a year at Thredbo, NSW, says Australia’s poor seasons are not to do with global warming, but our low altitude when compared with European terrain: “Europe has generally better skiing because it has higher mountains. It’s not global warming, it’s altitude.”
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Rene is exactly right. Australian snow is more variable because the terrain is not like the Alps. However, Pickering is going to be dead wrong because we have entered the cold PDO mode likely to last another 15 -20 years. The cold PDO favors more La Ninas and cold, snowy winters. It is the same mistake the alarmists made in the northern hemisphere a decade ago promising snow would be a rare commodity endangering the winter sports industry. 4 of the top 5 snowiest years on record have occurred in the last decade.
by: Peter Lilley, The Australian
BRITAIN embarked on a hugely ambitious policy to decarbonise its economy with virtually no scrutiny of the costs. Now those costs are starting to hit families and firms.
When challenged, the government bases its claim that the benefits to the world exceed the costs to British taxpayers on the Stern review on The Economics of Climate Change—on which Australia’s Garnaut review was modelled.
Yet the Stern review has now been shown to be fundamentally flawed—leaving all three parties that have defended this policy with a huge dilemma.
Their defence of climate change policy rests on two pillars—scientific and economic.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “settled the science”. It is a slightly shaky pillar since the Council of National Science Academies criticised the IPCC “for emphasizing the negative impacts of climate change, reporting high confidence in some statements for which there is little evidence”.
Nonetheless, the science has a solid basis. Having studied physics at Cambridge, I accept that without greenhouse gases this planet would be a frozen barren rock. The direct effect of doubling the concentration of carbon dioxide will be to raise the global temperature by 1C—amplified by feedbacks about whose size and even direction there is more uncertainty.
I take the IPCC assessment of the science as given so as to focus on my main concern, which has always been about the equally crucial economic questions: how much is it worth, and how much will it cost, to restrict carbon dioxide emissions and temperature increases?
The economic pillar was always far flimsier since it relied on Stern—a government economist, commissioned by the government, who produced the answer the government needed. Moreover, Stern’s key conclusion—that the benefits of reducing emissions would be five to 20 times the cost—flatly contradicts the IPCC, which concluded: “costs and benefits are broadly comparable in magnitude” so it could not establish “an emissions pathway or stabilisation level where benefits exceed costs”. Most environmental economists whose work Stern supposedly reviewed reached conclusions closer to the IPCC.
Nonetheless, Labour ministers and their Conservative/Lib Dem successors cling with increasing desperation to Stern: albeit like the proverbial drunk—more for support than illumination.
To provide that illumination I have undertaken a detailed study—What is Wrong with Stern? The Failings of the Stern Review—published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
Stern reaches conclusions far removed from those of most environmental economists by combining statistical sophistry and verbal virtuosity. For example:
- Comparing a part with the whole. Stern compares the benefit of preventing global warming entirely with the cost of avoiding part of potential global warming by preventing carbon emissions exceeding twice their pre-industrial level.
- Describing future centuries as “now”. Stern claims global warming will cut GDP by least 5 per cent “now and forever”. Yet even on his worst projection, the cumulative losses from global warming over this century are below the costs of mitigation.
- Inconsistent discounting of costs and benefits. Stern discounts benefits of curbing emissions at an ultra-low rate (not revealed in his 700-page report). But he effectively uses the normal market rate to discount the cost of decarbonising the economy—the return forgone on alternative investments. So his estimated cost of avoiding climate change is understated relative to the benefits by between 2 1/2 and five times.
- Strange ethics. Stern condemns those who reject his low discount rate as “unethical” and “lacking concern for future generations” as if global warming threatens humanity with extinction or immiseration. Such a fate is an implausible consequence of a few degrees of warming, costly though that could be, given that mankind flourishes in latitudes whose average temperatures differ by 20C and seasonal extremes vary by 80C. Even in Stern’s worst case, people in 2200 will be seven times richer than today if we do nothing to curb emissions. Why should our generation, not least developing countries (the main source of emissions growth), make sacrifices to make future generations richer still?
- Cherry-picking unreliable studies. A World Bank study shows that Stern’s forecasts of storm damage to infrastructure, based on non-peer-reviewed and alarmist literature, are up to 100 times too large.
- Ignoring adaptation. He cites a study showing a 4C rise could cut yields of one crop variety by 70 per cent but assumes farmers will not switch to another variety whose yields would actually increase—a fact he withholds.
In short, Stern selected and manipulated evidence to back a policy—creating policy-based evidence when what we need is evidence-based policy.
Government economists privately recognise that Stern’s economics are no longer defensible. They fall back on Harvard economist Martin Weitzman’s suggestion that “Stern may be right for the wrong reasons”. Weitzman says: if there is a finite possibility, however small, of an infinitely bad outcome (human extinction) then virtually any cost is justified to prevent it. Paradoxically, using this thesis to rescue Stern’s conclusions means abandoning their scientific pillar—the IPCC’s claim (shared by Stern) that “the science is certain” and climate sensitivity can be derived from known “laws of physics and chemistry”. Instead, Weitzman assumes that neither scientific laws nor empirical studies can set any upper limit on the size of the greenhouse effect.
However, if climate sensitivity is as high as Weitzman’s theory requires to put mankind’s survival at risk, its impact must have been largely concealed by natural variations even before the pause in warming this century. So it should soon become obvious as those fluctuations revert to the mean, giving plenty of time to respond.
There may be a case for a modest, gradual approach to climate change rather than Stern’s crash program. But ministers can no longer rely on the discredited Stern review to defend an unaffordable policy.
Peter Lilley is a British Conservative Party MP
Climate Models That Predict More Droughts Win Further Scientific Support
By Hristio Boytchev, Published: August 13The Washington Post
The United States will suffer a series of severe droughts in the next two decades, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. Moreover, global warming will play an increasingly important role in their abundance and severity, claims Aiguo Dai, the study’s author and newly appointed Associate Professor at the University at Albany, Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences beginning September 1st.
His findings bolster conclusions from climate models used by researchers around the globe that have predicted severe and widespread droughts in coming decades over many land areas. Those models had been questioned because they did not fully reflect actual drought patterns when they were applied to conditions in the past. However, using a statistical method with data about sea surface temperatures, Dai, a climate researcher at the federally funded National Center for Atmospheric Research, found that the model accurately portrayed historic climate events.
“We can now be more confident that the models are correct,” Dai said, “but unfortunately, their predictions are dire.”
In the United States, the main culprit currently is a cold cycle in the surface temperature of the eastern Pacific Ocean. It decreases precipitation, especially over the western part of the country. “We had a similar situation in the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s,” said Dai, who works at the research center’s headquarters in Boulder, Colo.
While current models cannot predict the severity of a drought in a given year, they can assess its probability. “Considering the current trend, I was not surprised by the 2012 drought,” Dai said.
The Pacific cycle is expected to last for the next one or two decades, bringing more aridity. On top of that comes climate change. “Global warming has a subtle effect on drought at the moment,” Dai said, “but by the end of the cold cycle, global warming might take over and continue to cause dryness.”
While the variations in sea temperatures primarily influence precipitation, global warming is expected to bring droughts by increasing evaporation over land. Additionally, Dai predicts more dryness in South America, Southern Europe and Africa.
“The similarity between the observed droughts and the projections from climate models here is striking,” said Peter Cox, a professor of climate system dynamics at Britain’s University of Exeter, who was not involved in Dai’s research. He said he also agrees that the latest models suggest increasing drought to be consistent with man-made climate change.
ICECAP NOTE: The AGW role is nonsense. and he only has it half right (the Atlantic AMO is also important - probably more so).
By Roger Pielke Sr., Climate Science
The American Meteorological Society has released its Statement
Climate Change - An Information Statement of the American Meteorological Society
where its stated intent starts with
The following is an AMS Information Statement intended to provide a trustworthy, objective, and scientifically up-to-date explanation of scientific issues of concern to the public at large.
Unfortunately, the Statement then goes on to write [highlight added]
It is clear from extensive scientific evidence that the dominant cause of the rapid change in climate of the past half century is human-induced increases in the amount of atmospheric greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide (CO2), chlorofluorocarbons, methane, and nitrous oxide. The most important of these over the long term is CO2, whose concentration in the atmosphere is rising principally as a result of fossil-fuel combustion and deforestation.
The new AMS Statement on Climate Change focus on primarily CO2 has already been refuted as documented in the National Research Council Report
National Research Council, 2005: Radiative forcing of climate change: Expanding the concept and addressing uncertainties. Committee on Radiative Forcing Effects on Climate Change, Climate Research Committee, Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, Division on Earth and Life Studies, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., 208 pp.
and summarized in the American Geophysical Union EOS article
Pielke Sr., R., K. Beven, G. Brasseur, J. Calvert, M. Chahine, R. Dickerson, D. Entekhabi, E. Foufoula-Georgiou, H. Gupta, V. Gupta, W. Krajewski, E. Philip Krider, W. K.M. Lau, J. McDonnell, W. Rossow, J. Schaake, J. Smith, S. Sorooshian, and E. Wood, 2009: Climate change: The need to consider human forcings besides greenhouse gases. Eos, Vol. 90, No. 45, 10 November 2009, 413. Copyright (2009) American Geophysical Union.
where specific evidence was presented that clearly shows that the assumption of the dominance of increased atmospheric concentration of CO2 on altering climate is wrong. In the EOS article we documented that the only non-rejected hypothesis (of the three listed) is
Although the natural causes of climate variations and changes are undoubtedly important, the human influences are significant and involve a diverse range of first-order climate forcings, including, but not limited to, the human input of carbon dioxide (CO2). Most, if not all, of these human influences on regional and global climate will continue to be of concern during the coming decades.
We wrote in the article that
In addition to greenhouse gas emissions, other first-order human climate forcings are important to understanding the future behavior of Earth’s climate. These forcings are spatially heterogeneous and include the effect of aerosols on clouds and associated precipitation [e.g., Rosenfeld et al., 2008], the influence of aerosol deposition (e.g., black carbon (soot) [Flanner et al. 2007] and reactive nitrogen [Galloway et al., 2004]), and the role of changes in land use/land cover [e.g., Takata et al., 2009]. Among their effects is their role in altering atmospheric and ocean circulation features away from what they would be in the natural climate system [NRC, 2005]. As with CO2, the lengths of time that they affect the climate are estimated to be on multidecadal time scales and longer.
The American Meteorological Society itself has a 2010 Statement that contradictions their new Statement on Climate Change. That Statement is titled
Inadvertent Weather Modification - An Information Statement of the American Meteorological Society
Inadvertent weather modification is defined in the Statement as
Inadvertent weather modification is the unintended consequence of an act, either on purpose or accidentally, that results in changes in the weather.
Inadvertant weather modification is clearly part of “climate change”.
The Statement on Inadvertent Weather Modification starts with the text
This statement highlights the causes and possible effects of inadvertent weather modification1 at local and regional scales due to aerosol2 and gas emissions3 and to changes in land use. The known effects can have unanticipated and often undesirable socioeconomic consequences. This statement assesses the impacts of inadvertent weather modification and suggests potential respective actions.
and concludes with
These research efforts on unintended weather modification should be recognized as addressing parts of the broader question of climate variability and change, which crosses geopolitical boundaries. As was the case with acid rain and stratospheric ozone depletion, national and international frameworks should be developed for addressing the related environmental and ethical issues for inadvertent weather modification.
It is clear that in the new AMS Statement on Climate Change they decided to ignore the Inadvertent Weather Modification Statement by the same society! We were precluded from not headlining the Inadvertent Weather Modification Statement as being on climate, but the last paragraph clearly shows it is very much relevant (and broadens quite significantly) what should in the AMS Statement. I am a Fellow of the AMS, and I am very disappointed that the writers of the Statement on Climate Change did not have the courtesy, nor the perspective, to include what was reported in AMS Statement on Inadvertant Weather Modification.
As a final note on the AMS Statement on Climate Change, they also write
climate models have demonstrated skill in reproducing past climates.
Readers of my weblog should know this is an erroneous claim as documented in the peer-reviewed papers that have been summarized most recently in the post
CMIP5 Climate Model Runs - A Scientifically Flawed Approach
I summarize in the post the requirements to make a claim such as “climate models have demonstrated skill in reproducing past climates”, with the text
The first requirement of the CMIP5 runs, before they should even be spending time and money on projections, is that they must skillfully (and shown with quantitative analyses) to replicate the statistics of the current climate, and replicate the changes in climate statistics over this time period. However, peer-reviewed studies that have quantitatively examined this issue using hindcast runs show large problems even with respect to current model statistics, much less their change over time.
I concluded that post with the text with respect to the evidence from the peer-reviewed papers that
These studies, and I am certain more will follow, show that the multi-decadal climate models are not even skillfully simulating current climate statistics, as are needed by the impacts communities, much less CHANGES in climate statistics. At some point, this waste of money to make regional climate predictions decades from now is going to be widely recognized.
It is clear that the new AMS Statement Climate Change is more advocacy by the leadership of the Society, than a balanced presentation of this subject. When evidence contradicts their advocacy role, they conveniently just ignore it.
Judy Curry also has an excellent post titled
AMS Statement on Climate Change
in which I agree with her conclusion where she wrote
“My strong objections to this type of statement by professional societies has been voiced previously. This statement is worse than the previous AMS statements....In other words, consensus statements get parroted without any actual intellectual examination. In this case, what is the point of the AMS statement. Apparently, to ‘inform the public’ on this controversial issue by appealing to the ‘authority’ of the society.
These Statements (including the one I participated on) are not voted on by the members of the society, nor are the committee members’ names made public. This, along with the absence of an open on-line debate, make this process a sad commentary on a professional society (the American Meteorological Society) which has otherwise done so much for science.
By Tom a. Nelson, Nelson Blogspot
Fraudster Michael Mann: “it’s part of a trend, Katrina, the record season of 2005 was part of a trend towards more destructive storms”
On the Green Front - Dr. Joseph Romm and Dr. Michael Mann - 08/15/12 at On the Green Front
Mann at the 40:40 mark: “One of the more robust predictions is that in the Atlantic, hurricane intensities have increased and they will likely continue to increase, and so, it’s part of a trend, Katrina, the record season of 2005 was part of a trend towards more destructive storms..”
Accumulated Cyclone Energy Index (Maue) shows the activity is actually at the lowest level in over 32 years. Don’t expect these climate politically driven, ‘self proclaimed experts’ to ever get it right.
See also this detailed PJM post on Michael Mann - The ghost of climate past here.
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German National Weather Service: “No Significant Trend To More Drought In Europe...Dryness La Nina -Related”
By P Gosselin on 17. August 2012
In layman’s terms, that means: Forget the man-made global warming poppycock!
There’s been a lot of bed-wetting going on about “increasing” extreme weather events like droughts, floods, heat, tornadoes and dry periods.
All because of climate change? Not so, says the German Weather Service DWD (surprisingly)!
Precipitation over much of Europe over 2011 was 80% or less than normal levels.
The DWD posted 2 days ago an unusually level-headed, sober expert report on what’s behind the dry period that Europe has been experiencing over the last 2 year and half.
Their findings are a real cold water deluge on all the alarmist claims we’ve been hearing in the media over the last weeks.
The DWD’s conclusion: “There’s no long-term significant trend. The suspect is a two-year La Nima impact in connection with a positive North Atlantic Oscillation”. Hat-tip: Meteorologist K.E. Puls.
What follows is a translation of their German summary (my emphasis):
Summary
The dry period of winter 2011/12 and spring 2012 was as a whole not so strongly pronounced like in the spring and autumn of a year earlier (for the previous year, see Trachte et al. 2012), but it can be ranked as local and extreme. Wide areas of Europe were impacted, and to different extents and at different time periods. Over the Iberian Peninsula, this period of drought began in December 2011 and then spread to Western, Central and Southern Europe by March. Heavy precipitation in Western Europe then ended the period of low precipitation. However, ground moisture in April and May remained generally very low, thus causing the hydrological drought to extend over the entire spring of 2012. Over the long-term, since the beginning of the 20th century, there is no significant general trend to more dryness in Europe. However, there are indications that in certain smaller regions dryness and periods of strong precipitation have tended to become more extreme over the last 35 years, foremost the Iberian Peninsula during the winter.
The main meteorological cause of the drought, as is the case for last spring and in fall 2011, is the widespread and stronger high pressure influence in these regions. After examining the corresponding data and some new investigations of the literature, there’s a strong suspicion that a two-year long La Nina (i.e. two La Nina-events in row) were the main cause in all these cases - in connection with a positive North Atlantic Oscillation.”
The text speaks for itself. We are dealing with natural causes. Moreover the authors add:
Record drought for 2012 hardly took place. For example in Uccle (Belgium), where the data-sets begin in the 19th century, even during the dry March-2012 the monthly precipitation amount and the number of days of precipitation was considerably higher than the record low of 1993. In Germany, the spring of 2012 was the 6th driest since the beginning of the 20th century.”
The DWD presents other long-term (non)trends:
Data-sets from region’s middle for individual seasons (See Fig. 9 for winter and spring) do not show any clear trend for any region. Instead we see more ‘or less pronounced year-to-year variability.”
Good to see there are a few meteorologists left at the German National Weather Service who are still sober and have not yet become all drugged up with the global warming cult religion. I wonder if they’ll be allowed to issue reports in the future.