Frozen in Time
Nov 01, 2009
Monckton on Glenn Beck video now available

By Anthony Watts, Watts Up With That

In case you missed it live, Christopher Monckton spent an entire hour on the Glenn Beck program Friday on the topic of global warming, skepticism, and the Copenhagen Treaty. Joining them was John Bolton, former US Ambassador to the UN.

To see the proposed Copenhagen Treaty, see this essay on the subject here.

Parts 1-7 of the hour long video are below. YouTube has time limits on clips, so it is broken up into parts 1-7.

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ICECAP NOTE: Here Monckton addresses a Tea Party in Houston, Texas in front of 14,000 Americans on November 2, 2009. You have to love that hat.

If you have the stomach for it, watch Katie clueless Couric interview hoaxster Gore on CBS here . When the low solar effect kicks in and the cold PDO/La Nina dominated cold era really kicks in, maybe Madoff will have another former millionaire as company to discuss the good lives they enjoyed at the expense of the many good people they hurt. In a surprise, ABC’a Diane Sawyer Hits Gore on Profits From Global Warming, Plays Glenn Beck Attack

Gore appeared again this morning on Morning Joe on MSNBC hawking his new book and restating all the points proven wrong. He did get a question about whether his investment organization receiving a big chunk of money from the stimulus program was improper but he escaped it by stating it just made sense he would invest in any effort that he cared so much about. Of course that was our tax dollars he was investing without our permission. There was no follow up. He was asked about the loss of jobs that would result across the northern states, and Gore replied with the Green Job lie.

The interviewers have not done their homework that would have told them the ‘green jobs’ claim was disproved in Spain, Denmark, Germany and the UK. In Spain for example, for every green job created through heavily subsidized alternative energy projects, 2.2 real jobs were lost when companies feeling the steep increase in energy prices, laid off workers, or exported jobs and/or operations to places like India or China. For every 10 green jobs, only 1 was permanent. Unemployed reached 18.1%, highest in the European Union.

We are beginning to see it in the US. One example is in Maine, where the state is promising 300 new jobs for one wind project heavily subsidized by stimulus dollars. Looking in detail at the plans, most of those jobs are temporary during the construction phase with only 6 permanent, including some night watchmen/security probably at minimum wage. Given the proven unreliability of wind in windy Europe when energy is needed the most, you might as well burn those dollars for all the good they will do. Maine’s Governor Balducci’s pet project will gain him a 7 figure job in an energy project just as Obama advisor Cass Sustein did after Harvard let him go (he became a consultant for the same wind company in Maine for $2.5M/year for one day of his time per week before Obama snatched him up.)

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NY Times excuses Gore’s climate profiteering

The New York Times and reporter John Broder get partial credit for spotlighting Al Gore’s climate profiteering on the front-page of today’s paper.
Unfortunately the article offers really lame justifications for Gore’s self-serving alarmism.

Gore only responded to the Times in an e-mail: Mr. Gore says that he is simply putting his money where his mouth is.

“Do you think there is something wrong with being active in business in this country?” Mr. Gore said. “I am proud of it. I am proud of it.” In an e-mail message this week, he said his investment activities were consistent with his public advocacy over decades. Or is it that he’s putting his mouth where his money is?

Don’t forget that Al Gore testified before the House last spring that he has no profit motive. As reported by Broder: “But at the hearing in April, he was challenged by Ms. Blackburn, who echoed some of the criticism of Mr. Gore that has swirled in conservative blogs and radio talk shows. She noted that Mr. Gore is a partner at Kleiner Perkins, which has hundreds of millions of dollars invested in firms that could benefit from any legislation that limits carbon dioxide emissions.”

“I believe that the transition to a green economy is good for our economy and good for all of us, and I have invested in it,” Mr. Gore said, adding that he had put “every penny” he has made from his investments into the Alliance for Climate Protection.

“And, Congresswoman,” he added, “if you believe that the reason I have been working on this issue for 30 years is because of greed, you don’t know me.”

It was apparently “a bridge too far” for Broder to notice that Gore’s House testimony is entirely inconsistent with Gore’s e-mail to the Times. Readers of this blog will recall that it was this Steve Milloy column in Human Events that prompted Rep. Marsha Blackburn to ask Gore about his profiteering. But rather than saying he was “putting his money where his mouth was,” Gore chose to dissemble, if not outright lie, to Congress.

And let’s not forget about Gore’s feigned ignorance before Congress of his relationship with Goldman Sachs. See post and comments here.

And let’s not forget the GORE EFFECT, where cold and snow follow him wherever he appears.

GORE EFFECT LIVES

Gore is spending much of his time in the United States, hawking his new book and lobbying for Cap-and-Trade. Well Mother nature has again taken note. Here is how October ended up temperature wise. Virtually every part of the United States was below normal temperaturewise, with some record early snows. Temperature anomalies are displayed in degrees celsius so multiply by 1.8 to get degrees fahrenheit.

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See larger image here.

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Sunspotless Days 2009 Now Top Ten

Sunspotless days this year have reached 237 today, moving 2009 into the top 10 of the most spotless day years. We are just 29 days short of 2008 which had 265 days, enough to rank 4th highest. For the solar minimum, we have reached 748 days, three times the number of recent cycle minima. Note 2007 was 20th.

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Enlarged here.

Oct 31, 2009
An Expensive Urban Legend

By Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

About.com describes an “urban legend” as an apocryphal (of questionable authenticity), secondhand story, told as true and just plausible enough to be believed, about some horrific… series of events...it’s likely to be framed as a cautionary tale. Whether factual or not, an urban legend is meant to be believed. In lieu of evidence, however, the teller of an urban legend is apt to rely on skillful storytelling and reference to putatively trustworthy sources.

I contend that the belief in human-caused global warming as a dangerous event, either now or in the future, has most of the characteristics of an urban legend. Like other urban legends, it is based upon an element of truth. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas whose concentration in the atmosphere is increasing, and since greenhouse gases warm the lower atmosphere, more CO2 can be expected, at least theoretically, to result in some level of warming.

But skillful storytelling has elevated the danger from a theoretical one to one of near-certainty. The actual scientific basis for the plausible hypothesis that humans could be responsible for most recent warming is contained in the cautious scientific language of many scientific papers. Unfortunately, most of the uncertainties and caveats are then minimized with artfully designed prose contained in the Summary for Policymakers (SP) portion of the report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This Summary was clearly meant to instill maximum alarm from a minimum amount of direct evidence.

Next, politicians seized upon the SP, further simplifying and extrapolating its claims to the level of a “climate crisis”. Other politicians embellished the tale even more by claiming they “saw” global warming in Greenland as if it was a sighting of Sasquatch, or that they felt it when they fly in airplanes.

Just as the tales of marauding colonies of alligators living in New York City sewers are based upon some kernel of truth, so too is the science behind anthropogenic global warming. But there is a big difference between reports of people finding pet alligators that have escaped their owners, versus city workers having their limbs torn off by roving colonies of subterranean monsters.

In the case of global warming, the “putatively trustworthy sources” would be the consensus of the world’s scientists. The scientific consensus, after all, says that global warming is...is what? Is happening? Is severe? Is manmade? Is going to burn the Earth up if we do not act? It turns out that those who claim consensus either do not explicitly state what that consensus is about, or they make up something that supports their preconceived notions.

If the consensus is that the presence of humans on Earth has some influence on the climate system, then I would have to even include myself in that consensus. After all, the same thing can be said of the presence of trees on Earth, and hopefully we have at least the same rights as trees do. But too often the consensus is some vague, fill-in-the-blank, implied assumption where the definition of “climate change” includes the phrase “humans are evil”.

It is a peculiar development that scientific truth is now decided through voting. A relatively recent survey of 77 climate scientists who do climate research found that 97.4% agreed that humans have a “significant” effect on climate. But the way the survey question was phrased borders on meaninglessness. To a scientist, “significant” often means non-zero. The survey results would have been quite different if the question was “Do you believe that natural cycles in the climate system have been sufficiently researched to exclude them as a potential cause of most of our recent warming?”

And it is also a good bet that 100% of those scientists surveyed were funded by the government only after they submitted research proposals which implicitly or explicitly stated they believed in anthropogenic global warming to begin with. If you submit a research proposal to look for alternative explanations for global warming (say, natural climate cycles), it is virtually guaranteed you will not get funded. Is it any wonder that scientists who are required to accept the current scientific orthodoxy in order to receive continued funding, then later agree with that orthodoxy when surveyed? Well, duh.

In my experience, the public has the mistaken impression that a lot of climate research has gone into the search for alternative explanations for warming. They are astounded when I tell them that virtually no research has been performed into the possibility that warming is just part of a natural cycle generated within the climate system itself.

Too often the consensus is implied to be that global warming is so serious that we must do something now in the form of public policy to avert global catastrophe. What? You don’t believe that there are alligators in New York City sewer system? How can you be so unconcerned about the welfare of city workers that have to risk their lives by going down there every day? What are you, some kind of Holocaust-denying, Neanderthal flat-Earther?

It makes complete sense that in this modern era of scientific advances and inventions that we would so readily embrace a compelling tale of global catastrophe resulting from our own excesses. It’s not a new genre of storytelling, of course, as there were many B-movies in the 1950s whose horror themes were influenced by scientists’ development of the atomic bomb.

Our modern equivalent is the 2004 movie, “Day After Tomorrow”, in which all kinds of physically impossible climatic events occur in a matter of days. In one scene, super-cold stratospheric air descends to the Earth’s surface, instantly freezing everything in its path. The meteorological truth, however, is just the opposite. If you were to bring stratospheric air down to the surface, heating by compression would make it warmer than the surrounding air, not colder.

I’m sure it is just coincidence that “Day After Tomorrow” was directed by Roland Emmerich, who also directed the 1996 movie “Independence Day,” in which an alien invasion nearly exterminates humanity. After all, what’s the difference? Aliens purposely killing off humans, or humans accidentally killing off humans? Either way, we all die.

But a global warming catastrophe is so much more believable. After all, climate change does happen, right? So why not claim that ALL climate change is now the result of human activity? And while we are at it, let’s re-write climate history so that we get rid of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice age, with a new ingenious hockey stick-shaped reconstruction of past temperatures that makes it look like climate never changed until the 20th Century? How cool would that be?

The IPCC thought it was way cool...until it was debunked, after which it was quietly downgraded in the IPCC reports from the poster child for anthropogenic global warming, to one possible interpretation of past climate.

And let’s even go further and suppose that the climate system is so precariously balanced that our injection of a little bit of that evil plant food, carbon dioxide, pushes our world over the edge, past all kinds of imaginary tipping points, with the Greenland ice sheet melting away, and swarms of earthquakes being the price of our indiscretions.

In December, hundreds of bureaucrats from around the world will once again assemble, this time in Copenhagen, in their attempts to forge a new international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. And as has been the case with every other UN meeting of its type, the participants simply assume that the urban legend is true. Indeed, these politicians and governmental representatives need it to be true. Their careers and political power now depend upon it.

And the fact that they hold their meetings in all of the best tourist destinations in the world, enjoying the finest exotic foods, suggests that they do not expect to ever have to be personally inconvenienced by whatever restrictions they try to impose on the rest of humanity.

If you present these people with evidence that the global warming crisis might well be a false alarm, you are rewarded with hostility and insults, rather than expressions of relief. The same can be said for most lay believers of the urban legend. I say “most” because I once encountered a true believer who said he hoped my research into the possibility that climate change is mostly natural will eventually be proved correct.

Unfortunately, just as we are irresistibly drawn to disasters - either real ones on the evening news, or ones we pay to watch in movie theaters - the urban legend of a climate crisis will persist, being believed by those whose politics and worldviews depend upon it. Only when they finally realize what a new treaty will cost them in loss of freedoms and standard of living will those who oppose our continuing use of carbon-based energy begin to lose their religion.
See post here.

Oct 31, 2009
Ministers to warn: Exposure to fluorescents may cause skin cancer

By Dan Even

The inter-ministerial committee on carcinogenic materials has decided to issue a warning on the use of energy-saving fluorescent lamps because of the risk of skin cancer due to the radiation they emit.

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The committee, which advises the Health Ministry, prepared a warning that was recently relayed to the Department of Public Health at the ministry. It calls on Israelis to keep reasonable distance from the spiral-shaped compact fluorescent lamps if exposure to them is longer than one hour per day. 

The committee explained that its warning is based on the fact that the lightbulbs emit ultraviolet (UV) rays similar to those of the sun, and therefore increase the risk of skin cancer. According to the recommendation, the lamps should be affixed to ceilings at a distance of more than 30 centimeters from the room’s occupants, and should not be used as permanent lighting on desks or walls close to a person’s body, and in rooms where the residents spend many hours of the day.

Moreover, the recommendation is to install fluorescent lamps with a lampshade. Research has shown that a cover surrounding the lamp absorbs part of the emitted UV.

The warning was adopted following reports from Britain about the risks posed by the lamps. A position paper issued by the British Health Protection Agency a year ago stated that the bulbs may emit UV rays that under certain conditions may expose people to higher amounts of radiation than the recommended level.

The British agency also called on the European Union to consider limiting the distribution of these lamps, whose popularity has increased because of their significantly lower electricity consumption. The same agency did stress, however, that it does not recommend an absolute ban of these bulbs in homes, saying that according to the tests it conducted, the amount of UV radiation emitted from a lamp onto a surface two centimeters away is similar to that emitted by the sun on a hot summer day.

Research carried out in Israel has shown that radiation from the lamps also increases the risk of breast and prostate cancers. Research by the University of Haifa’s Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management, published two years ago, concluded that in Israeli towns whose streets are lit with fluorescent lamps there are more breast cancer cases.

In response to this report the Health Ministry said that the committee’s recommendation was presented and is now being discussed.  See more here.

See here why LEDs are a smarter alternative to flourescent bulbs which contain toxic mercury in addition to emitting UV light and here how congress will prevent you from using incandescent bulbs in the future despite the mercury and other risks with their forced flourescent alternative. 

Oct 29, 2009
Winter Sets In But the Agenda Driven Hype Continues Despite the Numbers

By Ken Schlichte

Update: See the story about the snowstorm as it moved to Wyoming and Colorado here. The storm was heaviest October storm in Denver in at least a decade. Boulder had over 20” and Black Hawk over 40”. See here how up to 4 feet fell in the mountain foothills near Denver.

The October 28 Seattle Times included the following two articles, Early Season Storm Sweeps Dust, Snow Across West, in the link here ,

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and Storm Dumps Snow on Rockies, Plains, More Forecast, in the link here.  These two articles illustrate the same early season cold weather and heavy snow conditions shown in the Scottsbluff, Nebraska photo, courtesy of Gordon Fulks.

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Note see also this story today.
In contrast to these cold weather articles, the October 28 Seattle Times also included another article suggesting that global temperatures will be about 7 degrees warmer by the end of the 21st century.  Turmoil from Climate Change Poses Security Risks, in the link here, includes the following statements,

“At the current increasing rate of global carbon dioxide pollution, average world temperatures at the end of this century will likely be about 7 degrees higher than at the end of the 20th century, and seas would be expected to rise by as much as 2 feet, according to a consensus of scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  The security implications of global warming were center stage Wednesday at a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing, one of a series of sessions in advance of voting on the climate bill, possibly as early as next week.”

UN Leader Hopes US Will Act Soon on Global Warming, in the October 26 Seattle Times link here, begins as follows,

“Just six weeks before a key meeting on climate change, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Monday he’s hopeful the U.S. Senate will pass a significant bill to limit carbon emissions.  With deep divisions in Congress on how to deal with climate change, a bill is not likely before the end of the year. However, Ban told a news conference he still thinks the U.S. can come up with an ambitious measure that will encourage other nations to act on carbon emissions.”

It appears that the deep divisions in Congress on dealing with climate change have encouraged the writing of the article above suggesting that a consensus of scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that global temperatures will be about 7 degrees warmer by the end of the 21st century unless “global carbon dioxide pollution” is reduced.  These exaggerated temperature increase predictions are even larger than those on page 17 of Impacts of Climate Change on Washington’s Economy,

“Scientists expect the Pacific Northwest to continue to warm approximately 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit each decade over the next several decades, a rate of warming more than three times faster than the warming experienced during the twentieth century.” Impacts of Climate Change on Washington’s Economy was produced in 2006 by the Climate Leadership Initiative at the University of Oregon for the Washington Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development and the Washington Department of Ecology.

It is worth noting that, in spite of the exaggerated temperature increase predictions above, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center indicates that annual temperatures in the contiguous United States trended downward at a rate of 0.78 degrees F per decade from 1998 to 2008 and that annual temperatures in Washington trended downward at a rate of 1.09 degrees F per decade from 1998 to 2008.

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See larger image here. Data source NOAA NCDC.

Here is NOAA CPC temperature anomalies for the United States for October 2009 through the 27th. Will update in 4 days for month.

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Enlarged here.

Oct 28, 2009
Global Warming or Global Cooling: Does Air Temperature Really Matter?

By William DiPuccio

Despite a consensus among scientists on the use of ocean heat as a robust measure for anthropogenic global warming (AGW), air temperature continues to be employed as the icon of global climate projections.  In a recent AP article by Seth Borenstein, “Statisticians reject global cooling”, the Associated Press “gave temperature data to four independent statisticians and asked them to look for trends, without telling them what the numbers represented. The experts found no true temperature declines over time.”

A lot of mercury and red alcohol has been spilled over the last several years dissecting the reliability of near-surface temperature measurements.  The controversy has spawned high profile blogs dedicated to the scrutiny of surface station reliability and the analysis of climate statistics .  The exercise has proven to be fruitful in many cases, discovering systemic weaknesses in the network of surface stations, exposing sloppy calculations, and raising legitimate questions about the algorithms used to adjust raw data.  Though satellite air temperature measurements do not suffer from these limitations, our observations extend back only 30 years.

The use of air temperature as an index of global warmth has weak scientific support, except, perhaps, on a multi-decadal or century time-scale.  Climate scientists agree that 80% - 90% of the heat in earth’s climate system is stored in the oceans.  For any given area on the ocean’s surface, the upper 2.6 meters of water has the same heat capacity as the entire atmosphere above it!  Air temperature may not register accumulated ocean heat from year to year.  Since this heat is not always at the ocean’s surface, there may be long lags in air temperature response time.  But eventually, as the ocean heats or cools, air temperature is sure to follow.  Accordingly, the findings represented in Borenstein’s article are no surprise and do little to support or damage the case for AGW. 

Hype generated by scientists and activists over short-term changes in global air temperature (up or down) has diverted us from the real question:  Is heat accumulating in the world’s oceans?  Many climate scientists, including those at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and the British Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Change, are being rather disingenuous in their use of air temperature.  They advocate ocean heat as a climate metric in research articles (including AR4 - the most recent IPCC report), but then use air temperature as a metric when discussing AGW with the public.  Presumably, from a marketing perspective, the man on the street cannot connect with “Joules of accumulated heat” absorbed by the ocean. 

So what does ocean heat tell us about the progress of global warming?  That’s the elephant in the living room that proponents of AGW aren’t talking about - at least not lately.  Writing in 2005, NASA scientists James Hansen, Josh Willis, Gavin Schmidt, et. al. suggested that their model projections of global warming had been verified by a solid decade of increasing ocean heat (1993 to 2003).  This was regarded as confirmation of the AGW hypothesis (see “Earth’s Energy Imbalance:  Confirmation and Implications”, Science, 3 June 2005, 1431-35). 

But by mid-2003 warming ceased rather abruptly and, by all appearances, not one Joule of energy has been added to the ocean for over 6 years.  According to some analysts there has been a slight cooling, even as CO2 levels continue to rise.  Advocates of AGW have dismissed this as natural variability.  But the implications are clear.  If the climate system is not accumulating heat, the hypothesis may be false.

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See large image here.

The current trend also raises some pointed questions.  If climate change is now dominated by CO2 induced warming, what mechanism is responsible for the current cessation of warming?  The immediate cause is well known:  The periodic cooling and warming of ocean waters called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO).  But the underlying causes of the PDO itself are not well understood, which is also true for much of the variability in our climate system.

If we cannot explain the causes behind natural variability, then how can we project future climate trends?  Moreover, how can we be sure that the prior warming trend was anthropogenic rather than natural?  After all, we cannot eliminate from consideration causes we do not understand.  Borenstein’s article proceeds on the assumption that if there is warming, it must be anthropogenic, and it must be from CO2.  The question of attribution - the most difficult scientific question of all - is never raised. 

At the very least, the flattening of ocean heat over the last 6 years should raise cautionary flags and provoke a re-examination of climate model projections.  If CO2 induced warming is so easily overwhelmed by natural variability, then perhaps the threat of “runaway warming” and climate “tipping points” has been overstated.  Despite the sophistication of our efforts, perhaps our ignorance exceeds our knowledge.

Unfortunately, climate scientists who continue to hide behind the metric of air temperature are dodging the hard questions.  Repeated efforts to confront them on the issue of ocean heat have met with silence (see Roger Pielke’s article here).  Now that heat accumulation has stopped (and maybe even reversed), the tables have turned.  The same criterion used to confirm Anthropogenic Global Warming, is now challenging its legitimacy. See full post with citations here.

Bill DiPuccio was a weather forecaster and instructor for the U.S. Navy, and a Meteorological/Radiosonde Technician for the National Weather Service.  More recently, he served as head of the science department for St. Nicholas Orthodox School in Akron, Ohio (closed in 2006).  He continues to write science curriculum, publish articles, and conduct science camps.

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