During last night’s Republican presidential debate, Jon Huntsman doubled down on Al Gorism, claiming skeptics of “global climate disruption” (that’s the White House’s term) are making “comments that fly in the face of what 98 out of 100 climate scientists have said.” Just as moderator John Harris of Politico asked Rick Perry to name some of the scientists he agrees with, Harris should have asked Huntsman just what the “98 out of 100 climate scientists” believe.

In the “survey” to which Huntsman alluded, scientists were invited to participate in a two-question online survey. Despite what Huntsman said, not even 100 climate scientists chose to participate. The two questions were simple: 1. Have global temperatures risen during the past 200 years? and 2. Are humans a significant contributing factor to this?

Forgetting for the moment that only shameless activists or the most statistically and scientifically ignorant of persons would claim that a survey sample of only 77 scientists volunteering to participate in a survey is indicative of what the entire climate science community believes, the questions and answers themselves tell us nothing.

To illustrate, I will answer the survey:

Q1. “When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?”

James Taylor Answer: Risen

Q2. “Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?”
James Taylor Answer: Yes

Regarding the first question, in the early 1800s the world was in the grips of the Little Ice Age, which brought about the planet’s coldest temperatures since the last ice age epoch ended roughly 10,000 years ago. The answer to Question 1 is not only “risen,” but more appropriately (and sarcastically) “Duh!” (And it’s a good thing the answer is “risen.” Only the most zealous and delusional of global warming activists would argue the Little Ice Age brought about beneficial climate conditions.)

Regarding the second question, is human activity a significant contributing factor? Notice how the question did not say “sole factor,” “majority factor,” or even “primary contributing factor.” Rather, the term is merely “significant contributing factor.” More precisely, if human activity is not a “significant” contributing factor then it must be an “insignificant” contributing factor. What is the threshold between “significant” and “insignificant”? Five percent? Ten Percent? The threshold of “insignificance” is certainly no higher than that.

So, are humans responsible for at least 10 percent or so of recent global warming? In other words, are humans responsible for roughly - and merely - 0.06 degrees Celsius of warming during the past century? Most global warming “skeptics” certainly believe that!

The real question is, “So what?”

From the assertion that humans may have caused roughly 0.06 degrees of warming during the past century, it does not necessarily follow, as Huntsman and his fellow alarmists would have us believe, that humans are creating a global warming crisis. Nor does it necessarily follow that we must wreck our economy to fight it. I suspect that even the most sensitive of plant and animal species will not notice a 0.06 degree increase in temperature, especially when such a miniscule temperature increase is spread out over the course of a century.

So then, just what do “98 out of 100 climate scientists” believe? Nothing of significance, unless you like to misrepresent meaningless surveys to score cheap political points.

Read here. Santer et al. 2011 research supposedly determines that at least 17 years of data is required to “measure” humans’ impact on the climate. Not 15 years, not 16, not 18, not 19, not 20, but most assuredly, their cherry-picked 17-year span is the new gold-standard.

“Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature.”

Soooo, what does 17 years of HadCRUT global temperatures and CO2 levels look like versus the previous ‘C3’ 15-year data plot? Good question!

Enlarged

Using 17 years (204 months) worth of data through the end of July 2011, the plot on the left reveals that global warming since August 1994 is rather modest and non-existent since 1998.

The linear trend from this 17-year span indicates that global temperatures will be only 0.85°C higher by January 1, 2100. The light blue fitted curve suggests that global temperatures are actually moving towards a cooling period, not a warming. The grey fitted curve for CO2 keeps to a linear path ("business as usual") it has long had.

Let’s identify what human CO2 impacts (past, present and future) have had on the climate per this 17-year period:

This 17-year gold-standard, blessed by the holier than thou team of Santer et cohorts, basically confirms that human CO2 emissions have had little, if any, impact on global temperatures.

This 17-year span confirms that climate models based on the myopic CO2-"science" are spectacularly wrong.

This 17-year span confirms that future global warming will at most be modest.

This 17-year data confirms what skeptics have been saying for the last 17 years: runaway positive feedback is a fantasy and future global warming is unlikely to be catastrophic.

Since this outcome is probably not what Santer et al. expected from looking at the most recent 17-year span, maybe they ought to retract their study for a major revision. It would seem the 17-year span might need to be changed - damn that pesky empirical evidence!

And btw, ‘Dr. B.S. Violence’ should apologize to everyone for wasting taxpayer money on what 69% of Americans already know.

Note to readers: The linear trend that produces 0.85C by 2100 is not a prediction. Actual global temperatures may be higher or lower. No one knows for sure. Most importantly, as this 17-year evidence indicates, current climate models are completely clueless as to future temperatures.

From a land use, economic, environmental or raw materials perspective, wind is unsustainable

President Obama and a chorus of environmentalists, politicians, corporate executives and bureaucrats are perennially bullish on wind power as the bellwether of our “clean energy economy of the future.”

In reality, wind energy may well be the least sustainable and least eco-friendly of all electricity options. Its shortcomings are legion, but the biggest ones can be grouped into eight categories.

Land. As American humorist and philosopher Will Rogers observed, “They ain’t making any more of it.” Wind turbine installations impact vast amounts of land, far more than traditional power plants.

Arizona’s Palo Verde nuclear plant generates 3,750 megwatts of electricity from a 4,000-acre site. The 600-MW John Turk ultra-supercritical coal-fired power plant in Arkansas covers part of 2,900 acres; two 600-MW coal-fired units in India use just 600 acres. Gas-fired units like Calpine’s 560-MW Fox Energy Center in Wisconsin require several hundred acres. All generate reliable power 90-95% of the year.

By contrast, the 600-MW Fowler Ridge wind installation (355 turbines) spans 50,000 acres of farm country along Indiana’s I-65 corridor. The 782-MW Roscoe project in Texas (627 turbines) sprawls across 100,000 acres. Oregon’s Shepherds Flat project (338 gigantic 2.5 MW turbines) covers nearly 80,000 wildlife and scenic acres along the Columbia River Gorge, for a “rated capacity” of 845 MW.

The Chokecherry-Sierra Madre project will blanket some 320,000 acres of sage grouse habitat and BLM land in Wyoming with 1,000 monstrous 3-MW turbines, to generate zero to 3,000 MW of intermittent power. That’s eight times the size of Washington, DC, to get an average annual output one-fourth of what Palo Verde generates 90% of the time. But C-SM has already received preliminary approval from BLM.

To replace just 20% of the United States’ 995,000 MW of total installed generating capacity, we would need to blanket an area the size of Kansas with wind turbines, and then add nearly a thousand 600-MW gas-fired backup generators...and thousands of miles of new high voltage transmission lines.

Raw materials. Wind turbine installations require vast amounts of steel, copper, rare earth metals, fiberglass, concrete, rebar and other materials for the turbines, towers and bases.

A single 1.7 MW wind turbine, like 315 of the Fowler Ridge units, involves some 365 tons of materials for the turbine assembly and tower, plus nearly 1100 tons of concrete and rebar for the foundation. Bigger units require substantially more materials. Grand total for the entire Fowler wind installation: some 515,000 tons; for Roscoe, 752,000 tons; for Shepherds Flat, 575,000 tons; for Chokecherry, perhaps 2,000,000 tons. Offshore installations need far more raw materials.

To all that must be added millions of tons of steel, copper, concrete and rebar for thousands of miles of transmission lines - and still more for mostly gas-fired generators to back up every megawatt of wind power and generate electricity the 17 hours of each average day that the wind doesn’t blow.

Money. Taxpayers and consumers must provide perpetual subsidies to prop up wind projects, which cannot survive without steady infusions of cash via feed-in tariffs, tax breaks and direct payments.

Transmission lines cost $1.0 million to $2.5 million per mile. Landowners get $2,000+ a year per turbine, plus royalties on all energy produced from the turbine, plus payments for every foot of access road and transmission lines. However, taxpayers pay more, while the landowners’ neighbors suffer property devaluation, scenic disruption, noise, health problems and interference with crop spraying, but no monetary compensation. Direct federal wind energy subsidies to help cover this totaled $5 billion in FY 2010; state support added billions more; still more billions were added to consumers’ electric bills.

The Other People’s Money well is running dry. The “manmade catastrophic climate change” thesis behind the wind energy campaign is in shambles. Voters and consumers are understandably fed up.

Energy. Mining, quarrying, drilling, milling, refining, smelting and manufacturing operations make the production of metals, concrete, fiberglass and resins, turbines, and heavy equipment to do all of the above very energy-intensive. Ditto for transporting and installing turbines, towers, backups and transmission lines. That takes real energy: abundant, reliable, affordable - not what comes from wind turbines.

In fact, it probably requires more energy to manufacture, haul and install these monstrous Cuisinarts of the air and their transmission systems than they will generate in their lifetimes. However, no cradle-to-grave analysis has ever been conducted, for the energy inputs or pollution outputs. We need one now.

Health. Whereas environmentalists garner scary headlines over wildly speculative claims about health dangers from hydraulic fracturing (to extract abundant natural gas for wind turbine backup generators), they ignore and dismiss a growing body of evidence that wind turbines cause significant health problems.

Principal health issues are associated with noise - not just annoying audible noise, but inaudible, low-frequency “infrasound” that causes headache, dizziness, “deep nervous fatigue” and symptoms akin to seasickness. “Wind turbine syndrome” also includes irritability, depression, and concentration and sleep problems. Others include “shadow flicker” or “strobe effect” from whirling blades, which can trigger seizures in epileptics, “vibroacoustic” effects on the heart and lungs, and non-lethal harm to animals. Serious lung, heart, cancer and other problems have been documented from rare earth mining, smelting and manufacturing in China, under its less rigorous health, workplace and environmental regulations.

To date, however, very few health assessments have been required or conducted prior to permit approval, even for major wind turbine installations. Perhaps the trial lawyers’ guild could redress that oversight.

Environment. Raptors, bats and other beautiful flying creatures continue to be sliced and diced by wind turbines. Thankfully, the Bureau of Land Management has included an “avian radar system” to track the slaughter within its 500-square-mile Chokecherry region - and banned mining among the turbines.

Wind turbines are supposed to reduce pollution and carbon dioxide emissions. But because backup generators must repeatedly surge to full power and back to standby, as wind speed rises and falls, they operate inefficiently, use more fuel and emit more - much like cars forced to stop repeatedly on freeways.

Jobs. The myth of “green jobs” is hitting the brick wall of reality. While the turbines are installed in the USA and EU, the far more numerous mining and manufacturing jobs are in China, where they are hardly “green.” As Spanish and Scottish analysts have documented, the “green” installer and maintenance jobs cost up to $750,000 apiece - and kill 2.2 to 3.7 traditional jobs for every “eco-friendly” job created.

Electricity costs and reliability. Even huge subsidies cannot cure wind power’s biggest defects: its electricity costs far more than coal, gas or nuclear alternatives - and its intermittent nature wreaks havoc on power grids and consumers. The problem is worst on hot summer afternoons, when demand is highest and breezes are minimal. Unable to compete against cheap Chinese and Indian electricity and labor, energy-intensive industries increasingly face the prospect of sending operations and jobs overseas. Bayer Chemical’s warning that it may have to close its German facilities is just the tip of the iceberg.

When it comes to wind, Nat King Cole might have sung: “Unsustainable that’s what you are, unsustainable though near or far. Unsustainable in every way, and forever more that’s how you’ll stay.” Maybe not forever, but certainly for the foreseeable future, especially compared to increasingly abundant natural gas.

So take a hint from Spoon’s lively tune and “cut out the middleman.” Forge a direct relationship with energy you can afford, energy that works nearly 24/7/365, energy that causes the least ecological damage and is far more sustainable than wind power: the hydrocarbon, hydroelectric and nuclear power that have sustained our society and brought unprecedented health, prosperity and living standards to billions.

Then help the planet’s least fortunate people to do likewise.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.

How to go out with a bang - score points for censorship - a poseur for honor!
By Joanne Nova

An editor has resigned after committing the dastardliest of crimes: He helped publish a skeptical paper in a peer-reviewed journal. God-forbid, imagine a paper being reviewed only by people who have some sympathies with your results? It’s unthinkable. We all know that Nature and Science, for example, dutifully send all the papers by alarmists to at least one skeptical reviewer, and since 97% of 77 climate scientists are alarmists, that means the other two scientists who aren’t, are very busy people.  (75 of 77 climate scientists “agree” that the world is going to hell because of CO2). And who knows where they found that third skeptic?

Naturally, lots of journal editors have resigned when they’ve realized that, accidentally, they’ve only sent alarmist papers to alarmist reviewers.

As if we needed reminding about how bizarre, unbalanced, and unscientific is the creed of climate. Normally, if egregious mistakes are found, a paper would be retracted. If “normal” mistakes are found, those who found them could publish something called a “reply”. This resignation appears to be a first. Wagner chucked his job without even so much as phoning Spencer or Braswell, which makes you wonder if it was all a bit convenient.

To the editors who are thinking of resigning from peer-reviewed journals, or finishing up as presidents of Science Associations, or winding up their position at a government funded institution, instead of just resigning, why not go out with a bang? You too, could quit, and leave a blockbuster-press-release-for-the-cause, pretending that (insert spurious reason) provoked you into going.

See, it’s really handy - Roy Spencer and William Braswell have a paper out there that’s peer reviewed, but very difficult to answer, Wolfgang Wagner has provided the perfect reply: That paper was so bad that the editor of the journal quit because it was published. See, no one needs to discuss the evidence in it now; they can just pour scorn, and talk about the editor resigning, case closed, it’s obviously a crap paper you know. Brilliant!

*Me. Of course, I’ve got no evidence, or even a hint that Mr Wagner was thinking of resigning anyway, but if he wasn’t and he really did resign over this, it’s all the more pathetic - like a cult victim sacrifice. In which case we ought be feeling sorry for poor old Wagner, who has been got too, excommunicated from his peer group for accidentally letting through an evil paper.

The former editor’s reasons:

…In other words, the problem I see with the paper by Spencer and Braswell is not that it declared a minority view (which was later unfortunately much exaggerated by the public media) but that it essentially ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents. This latter point was missed in the review process, explaining why I perceive this paper to be fundamentally flawed and therefore wrongly accepted by the journal.

Roy Spencer replies:

But the paper WAS precisely addressing the scientific arguments made by our opponents, and showing why they are wrong! That was the paper’s starting point! We dealt with specifics, numbers, calculations…while our critics only use generalities and talking points. There is no contest, as far as I can see, in this debate. If you have some physics or radiative transfer background, read the evidence we present, the paper we were responding to, and decide for yourself.

Normally, if people think something is wrong with a paper they just write a reply…

If some scientists would like do demonstrate in their own peer-reviewed paper where *anything* we wrote was incorrect, they should submit a paper for publication. Instead, it appears the IPCC gatekeepers have once again put pressure on a journal for daring to publish anything that might hurt the IPCC’s politically immovable position that climate change is almost entirely human-caused. I can see no other explanation for an editor resigning in such a situation.

But the problem with Spencer and Braswell might be the way others are using their paper:

I would also like to personally protest against how the authors and like-minded climate sceptics have much exaggerated the paper’s conclusions in public statements”

Perhaps the real problem wasn’t the scientific credence this paper lends to skeptics (since there are hundreds of paper on that list) but that this one paper made the mistake of generating headlines around the world.

Unfortunately, their campaign [Spencer and Braswell’s campaign to publicize the availability of their paper] apparently was very successful as witnessed by the over 56,000 downloads of the full paper within only one month after its publication.

Skeptics, this tactic will only work if we allow it to dull the impact of the real meaning of Spencer and Braswell. Go forth and comment, on news articles and other sites, make sure everyone knows that the Global Warming Thought Police are desperate to stop people talking about the evidence.

That paper:

Spencer, R.W.; Braswell, W.D. On the misdiagnosis of surface temperature feedbacks from variations in Earth’s radiant energy balance. Remote Sens. 2011, 3, 1603-1613.

Thanks to Alec Rawls on WUWT for one of the quotes from the editor.

Disko Troop on WUWT says:

I see this as a more carefully worded resignation than some are seeing. The contradictions are deliberate. He is saying that he did his job, the respected peer reviewers did theirs, but that he is being forced to deny this fact by agencies or persons beyond his control. His response is to resign rather than retract what he sees as a perfectly justifiable publication of Spencers Observations. The net result will be another 56,000 people downloading the paper to see what the fuss is about . Team fail. Link.

See Roger Pielke Sr.’s long review of the Hatchet Job On John Christy and Roy Spencer By Kevin Trenberth, John Abraham and Peter Gleick. Also see Bishop Hill’s report on Santer’s attack on the UAH data shows that it is a coordinated effort to destroy all evidence they can’t control, so it will not have to be considered by the next IPCC which has already announced its findings will show climate change is far warse than previously thought before any scientists convened. Also in Powerline Blog, Steven Hayward reponds here to Climate McCarthyism.

It is not Wagner but Trenberth who should resign for this paper, his plagurism with a paper for the AMS, the disaster that was the IPPC AR4 which he played a key role and his abuse of science that has tarnished the NCAR reputation. Steve Goddard suggests the whole IPCC should resign for the debacle that was AR4. He also writes about the Hatred and Bigotry displayed in the BBC coverage of the resignation here in Different Religion - Same Hatred And Bigotry.

Minnesotans for Global Warming video - Drill, Baby Drill

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UPDATE: Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. weighs in with his opinions on this debacle here

ICECAP NOTES:  See more on Bishop Hill here. As a measure of how damaging the dark side of the climate change issues regards a paper, is the speed and volume of the attack. Spencer/Braswell (and CERN) papers must be scaring the daylight out of the climate criminals because NPD climate modeller Trenberth and lightweights Abraham and Gleick have gone on the attack too here. Stsve Goddard Will JGR’s Editor Resign This Week? JGR is about to publish an article by alarmist Andrew Dessler , which almost certainly has not been peer-reviewed by any skeptics. The new, higher standard in climate science established by Wagner will demand that JGR’s editor step down - if this is the case.

September 2nd, 2011 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

SCORE:
IPCC :1
Scientific Progress: 0

It has been brought to my attention that as a result of all the hoopla over our paper published in Remote Sensing recently, that the Editor-in-Chief, Wolfgang Wagner, has resigned. His editorial explaining his decision appears here.

First, I want to state that I firmly stand behind everything that was written in that paper.

But let’s look at the core reason for the Editor-in-Chief’s resignation, in his own words, because I want to strenuously object to it:

…In other words, the problem I see with the paper by Spencer and Braswell is not that it declared a minority view (which was later unfortunately much exaggerated by the public media) but that it essentially ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents. This latter point was missed in the review process, explaining why I perceive this paper to be fundamentally flawed and therefore wrongly accepted by the journal

But the paper WAS precisely addressing the scientific arguments made by our opponents, and showing why they are wrong! That was the paper’s starting point! We dealt with specifics, numbers, calculations…while our critics only use generalities and talking points. There is no contest, as far as I can see, in this debate. If you have some physics or radiative transfer background, read the evidence we present, the paper we were responding to, and decide for yourself.

If some scientists would like do demonstrate in their own peer-reviewed paper where *anything* we wrote was incorrect, they should submit a paper for publication. Instead, it appears the IPCC gatekeepers have once again put pressure on a journal for daring to publish anything that might hurt the IPCC’s politically immovable position that climate change is almost entirely human-caused. I can see no other explanation for an editor resigning in such a situation.

People who are not involved in scientific research need to understand that the vast majority of scientific opinions spread by the media recently as a result of the fallout over our paper were not even the result of other scientists reading our paper. It was obvious from the statements made to the press.

Kudos to Kerry Emanuel at MIT, and a couple other climate scientists, who actually read the paper before passing judgment.

I’m also told that RetractionWatch has a new post on the subject. Their reporter told me this morning that this was highly unusual, to have an editor-in-chief resign over a paper that was not retracted.

Apparently, peer review is now carried out by reporters calling scientists on the phone and asking their opinion on something most of them do not even do research on. A sad day for science.