Climate experts Tom Harris and Bob Carter have written another fine essay - this one examining the battle between two Democratic Senators. Sheldon Whitehouse of seaside Rhode Island is blaming Joe Manchin’s coal producing and using state of West Virginia for causing “dangerous manmade global warming” that Mr. Whitehouse says will cause widespread flooding and destruction in coastal communities.

As Harris and Carter make clear, global warming ended 18 years ago, the alleged connection between carbon dioxide emissions and climate change has been wildly exaggerated, ice packs are not melting, and humans have no control over the natural forces that actually do control sea levels. Senator Manchin, they suggest, should resist Senator Whitehouse’s nonsensical demand that West Virginians sacrifice their livelihoods and living standards in a vain and King Canute-like attempt to stop the seas from rising.

Thank you for posting their informative article, quoting from it, and forwarding it to your friends and colleagues.

Best regards,

Paul Driessen

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Whitehouse is misguided on sea level rise: seacoasts won’t be flooded due to coal burning

Tom Harris & Bob Carter

It must have taken the patience of Job for West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin to participate in Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s climate change tour of the Ocean State on October 10. Whitehouse promised Manchin that he would go to West Virginia to learn about the coal industry if Manchin would come to Rhode Island to view the supposed effects of global warming on sea-level.

It is important to put the concerns of the two senators in perspective.

On the one hand, Manchin is fighting for the survival of West Virginia’s coal sector, his state’s most important industry, the source of 95% of its electricity, and the foundation for thousands of jobs in dozens of communities. The state’s use of abundant, domestically mined coal gives West Virginia the 7th lowest electricity costs in America - at about one-half the price in California, New York, Rhode Island and several other states.

But West Virginia’s coal sector is under siege from increasingly damaging Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules. Those rules have meant total coal production in West Virginia declined 9% between 2012 and 2013, a period during which 17% of the Mountain State’s coal mines closed, and coal employment decreased 6.4% for a loss of 3,457 jobs already. Even before the EPA’s new Clean Power Plan regulations, which Whitehouse promotes, come into force, the EPA and Obama Administration’s “war on coal” has already cost West Virginia billions of dollars.

Senator Manchin, in other words, is concerned about the immediate, real-world impacts of climate change regulations on real people, families and businesses in his state.

Senator Whitehouse has a different perspective and is apparently not concerned about the cost of EPA emission regulations. Rhode Island gets none of its electricity from coal, having chosen less-carbon-intensive natural gas as its preferred source of power.

As a result, the state has the 7th highest electricity prices in the continental United States. The impact of these high prices on hospitals, schools, churches, businesses and families is significant.

The White House, of course, shares Senator Whitehouse’s perspective. Neither seems worried that, under the EPA rules, electricity prices will “necessarily skyrocket,” as Obama put it when describing his energy plans as Democratic candidate for president in 2008.

Mr. Whitehouse is, however, worried about the hypothetical future impact of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from coal-fired power stations on “global temperatures.” He believes this will cause “dangerous” sea-level rise along Rhode Island’s coast. Mr. Whitehouse does not hide the fact that, because of these beliefs, he sees his mission as “more or less” to put the coal industry out of business.

If it were known with a high degree of probability that dangerous human-caused sea-level rise was right around the corner, then Mr. Manchin might have reason to sacrifice his constituents’ livelihoods to help save Rhode Islanders from being submerged. But this is not the case.

The September 2013 report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change states: “Sea-level rise is not accelerating. The global average sea-level continues to increase at its long-term rate of 1 to 2 mm/year [0.04-0.08 inches/year] globally” or four to eight inches over the next century.

As it happens, sea-level rise on the coast of Rhode Island is slightly faster than the global rate about a tenth of an inch per year in Newport, for example or ten inches over the next 100 years. Nonetheless, such a slow rate of rise is relatively easy to adapt to, and certainly not worth ruining West Virginia’s economy on the off-chance that it would make any difference to coastal conditions in Rhode Island.

Bear in mind that sea levels have already risen nearly 400 feet since the end of the last Pleistocene Era ice age some 12,000 years ago.

The conflict between the two senators arises because of Mr. Whitehouse’s outmoded belief that rapid CO2-driven global warming is occurring. This, he believes, will cause accelerated glacial melting, the ocean volume to expand, and global sea-level to rise quickly. That in turn would subject low-lying coastal areas of Rhode Island to increasingly intense peak-tide or storm-surge flooding.

Drastically reducing our CO2 emissions is necessary to avoid this looming crisis, he asserts.

However, every step in Whitehouse’s chain of reasoning is either wrong or misleading and based on computer models that falsely assume rising atmospheric CO2 levels will cause rapid global warming. In reality, no global (atmospheric) warming has occurred for the last 18 years, even though CO2 levels have risen 9% during this time.

Neither has there been significant ocean warming since at least 2003. As a consequence, the ocean is not expanding and cannot be causing extra sea-level rise. In fact, the global rate of sea-level rise has actually decreased over the last decade.

The only way the sort of sea-level rise feared by Mr. Whitehouse is possible is if massive quantities of the Antarctic and Greenland ice-caps melted. Not only did that not happen even during the two-degree warmer Holocene Optimum, five to nine thousands years ago, but both the Greenland and Antarctic ice fields have been expanding in recent years.

Moreover, rates of modern sea-level change are controlled by the volume of water in the ocean (which is dependant on worldwide volumes of land ice at any given time), by dynamic oceanographic features such as movements in major ocean currents, and by the uplift or subsidence of the solid earth beneath any measuring station. Humans control none of these factors.

Senator Whitehouse should recognize that Rhode Island’s coastal management problems are his own state’s responsibility, not those of West Virginians.  As sea-level continues its natural slow rise along Rhode Island’s coast, flooding due to peak tides and storm surges will continue much as it has for the past century. The way to cope with any small increase in the magnitude of these events is to apply and strengthen current strategies that increase coastal resilience.

In his June 4, 2008 speech on winning the Democratic primaries, President Obama said, “If we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that, generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment...when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

Senator Whitehouse may still believe this pious dream. However, Senator Manchin must resist the nonsensical demand that West Virginians sacrifice their livelihoods and living standards in a vain and King Canute-like attempt to stop the seas from rising.

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Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition (www.ClimateScienceInternational.org). Bob Carter is former professor and head of the School of Earth Sciences at James Cook University in Australia.

Antarctica_NASA Photo

The Austrian online Kronen Zeitung here has an article about something most German-language media outlets have been too red-faced to report on: The sudden growth in polar sea ice.

The Kronen Zeitung opens with:

A huge growth in ice at the poles has surprised scientists and is casting questions. Is global warming taking a break? [...] For the prophets of climate change the new figures pose questions: “At the poles of Mother Earth, in complete contradiction to prognoses of a complete polar melt, there is an ice growth like one not seen in decades.”

Almost the entire mainstream media has been quiet about this development. So it is refreshing to see that some media are reporting the “good” news that the planet is not warming alarmingly.

Antarctic ice growth “problem for penguins”

The Kronen Zeitung reports that Antarctic sea ice is growing at an average annual rate of 16,500 square kilometers since 2007. The case is pretty much the same for Arctic sea ice, the online Austrian daily reports.

The Kronen Zeitung also writes that the rapidly growing sea ice surrounding Antarctica is a “huge problem” for penguins, who need open water.

“Climate science turned on its head”

Moreover, the Kronen Zeitung mentions the surprise of the National Snow and Ice data Centre (NSIDC) in Colorado concerning the growth in the Arctic:

Scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder (Colorado) in any case have to admit that instead of a global warming, a global cooling is taking place. [...]

At the moment this development appears to have turned climate science on its head globally.”

The Kronen Zeitung then explains how the climate models have failed in that they predicted the very opposite to happen and that some scientists even desperately claimed that the measurements were wrong.

Max Planck scientists: “colder winters and cooler summers”

To explain what is happening, Kronen Zeitung turned to Professor Anastasios Tsonis of the University of Wisconsin. Tsonis says there are many factors at play. “Currents, winds, precipitation and foremost the upper and lower water layers.”

At the end of its article, Kronen Zeitung explains how the recent slowdown in overall solar activity may be playing a major role on the climate.

For years few sunspots could be observed. Colder winters and cooler summers could once again be the consequences, Max-Planck scientists say.”

Reported or not, the polar sea ice is there, and it cannot be ignored.

Hat-tip: Die kalte Sonne.

- See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2014/10/15/austrian-daily-reports-huge-ice-growth-surprises-climate-scientists-like-one-not-seen-in-decades/#sthash.bVU563Yc.dpuf

Gordon,

Well done by all three of you and greatly appreciated the efforts all three of you went to shedding some light of fact on a fictional landscape. I was delighted (and a bit shocked) you were able to negotiate the alarmists going first in the presentations. That is usually an iron-clad rule the politically virulent rarely yield. It must have been traumatic for them to have to sit and listen to reality without being able to pull out the usual inventory mantras of sophistic non-sense to obscure facts. The presentations by Dr. Easterbrook, Dr. Morner and you, if compared to the recent travesty of clown science at the Hammer Museum, hopefully clarifies and separates the critical issues to a few more folks. Wonderful!
DMM

Here is the link to the video of this event.

Gordon Fulks wrote:

Dear All,

The debate went very well, because we had real scientists on our side and the best the other side could muster were two professional propagandists and one weak correspondence-school meteorologist.  Since our opponents were heavily into the 97% nonsense, I asked where were their 97 PhD scientists to counter the three of us?  The audience easily saw through the attempts of the other side to exaggerate their own credentials and support. 

I made sure that those supporting Global Warming went first, because they were the proponents, and we were the opponents.  That gave us a clear target, not the nebulous nonsense we usually face.  And it was not difficult to anticipate what they would say, because none of our opponents were the least bit sophisticated.  The first alarmist to speak was Kyle Dittmer, a hydrologist pretending to be a meteorologist.  He sounded like the inept scientist he is, never doing more than vaguely addressing the supposed link between man’s CO2 releases and ‘climate change.’ I’m sure that the audience recognized Dittmer’s weakness.

The succeeding presentations from the other alarmists got worse not better.  Their former Greenpeace organizer, Ryan Rittenhouse, lectured the audience about “confirmation bias,” suggesting that it was something we were guilty of and he was not.  That was ludicrous on the face of it because of his total lack of any scientific credentials.  But he was completely convinced of his righteousness because 97% of scientists and peer-reviewed papers agreed with him!  Furthermore, Michael Mann’s ‘Hockey Stick’ had to be correct, because the UN IPCC keeps using it!

Then came the witch Daphne Wysham.  Her very first words were a personal attack on Professor Morner that she must have retrieved off the Internet.  Then she continued with attacks on Fred Singer, Joe Bast, and the Heartland Institute over Naomi Oreskes’ tobacco allegations and Koch brothers financing.  Her only discussion of the actual topic were references to an “unequivocal consensus,” quotes from Skeptical Science, and a harangue about coal-fired power plant ‘carbon pollution’!

Our presentations were far different, because they were filled with the logic and evidence of science.  Don Easterbrook spoke first for us and second overall.  His very effective technique is to present a great deal of the data that show what is really going on.  People instantly realize that they are listening to a professor who surely knows his field very well.  Morner sounded a little more eccentric, with his Swedish accent, sense of humor, and concentration on a single topic: seal level.  But he was hugely credible too.  I batted cleanup and was ready for the sort of nonsense and hatred that Wysham spewed.  In fact, all I had to do was to take apart some of her specifics in the three minute rebuttal at the beginning of my remarks and then launch into my prepared text.  I went back to prepared remarks to make sure that I did not forget something important in the fifteen minutes we were allotted.

Were we successful?  I think that we were very successful.  One of the best indications was a compliment from the head librarian who thought that we had been very “educational.” Since that is my entire strategy, it must have worked.  But let me be sure to give credit where due.  Our opponents were so bad as to help us enormously.

Although we did not have time for questions during the program, I stayed until we had to vacate the room to answer the many good questions that people had.  They wanted to discuss the science.  The other side slunk away, except for Rittenhouse who was so annoyed that he is still throwing insults our way days later.

Many thanks to Professors Don Easterbrook and Nils Axel Morner for their participation.  They both did a great job that made all the difference.

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Global Placebo Effect: Windmills, taxes, solar panels - slowed global warming before they were built.

New Global Placebo Effect (GPE) announced by Baroness Verma in the UK.

It’s a scientific breakthrough. Global warming may be stopped by the mere thought of trying to reduce CO2, even if that thought fails to bring down actual CO2 levels.

The central dilemma: CO2 levels have been rising “faster than expected” for the last twenty years, yet global warming has been rising “slower than expected” for almost as long.

Matt Ridley was questioning Baroness Sandip Verma at the House of Lords this week. He pointed out to the peers that even the IPCC admits there is “hiatus” that modelers can’t explain. Verma responded: “It [global warming] may have slowed down, but that is a good thing. It could well be that some of the measures we are taking today is helping that to occur.” [Source: Dailymail]

Verma raises the intriguing possibility that windmills and solar panels that were built after 2005 have managed to keep global temperatures constant starting from ten years before they were constructed.

What’s even more remarkable is that none of these projects or activities have reduced global CO2 levels. It follows then, that the mere thought of building windmills is enough to change the weather.

Furthermore, it’s well known that more expensive placebo’s are more effective. Hence the final-final copy of the latest IPCC report—issued on Friday after the leak, the draft, and the redraft—will explain that they are 95% certain that if we spend $2 billion dollars a day on renewable energy (instead of just $1 billion) there will be no more category five storms, seas will stop rising, and goats will stop shrinking.

This morning, the UK Prime Minister David Cameron offered to give The Royal Society 350 billion pounds to research the new GPE. Sir Paul Nurse promised to start experiments straight away—beginning by asking seven million British school students to do a coloring in competition on emissions reduction every Monday in 2015 to see how much global temperatures can be reduced compared to other days of the week.

The University of East Anglia announced they will simultaneously set up a new division to monitor Mondays on HadCRUT and also on their Global Climate Models. We don’t know whether models are subject to the placebo effect, but we suspect they might be said a spokesman.  The project is due to start in January. Nature has already accepted their paper.

But Dr Roy Spencer was skeptical, and suggested that the correlation may work the other way in models.  “The more money we spend on models that predict warming, the less warming we seem to get” said Spencer.

Filed under: satirical press.

Anyone in the weather business knows how difficult forecasting can be at times..... especially a seasonal forecast.

It is even more difficult to get a correct winter forecast several years in a row and yet one company has done that.

WeatherBELL Analytics is a fairly new company.

It was started just a few years ago by Joe Bastardi, former hurricane and long range forecaster for Accuweather.... and Joe D’Aleo, the first Director of Meteorology for The Weather Channel.

They have pretty much nailed the winter forecast in most areas the last several winters.

For example...last winter, while NOAA had 5% of the U.S. with below normal temperatures in their forecast, WeatherBELL was talking cold over much of the country with extreme cold in some areas and that is exactly what happened.

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Subscribers to WeatherBELL have received the updated winter forecast this morning. This will eventually be posted on their home page which is free.....click HERE

Here is what they say for this winter.....

It will be between a normal winter and the epic winters of the 1970s.

The core of the coldest weather as far as departure from normal temperatures will be from Pierre, SD to Kansas City to St. Louis to Louisville to Cincinnati to Charleston, WV with temperatures for the winter averaging 4 to 6 degrees below normal.

Last winter in Louisville our temps averaged 4 degrees below normal.... so they are saying it will be colder this winter than last.

They have about 60% of the country averaging more than 2 degrees below normal.

As far as snow, with the cold and forecast storm track.... they have the area that will average the most with respect to above normal amounts from Memphis to Paducah and Bowling Green to Louisville, Lexington and Cincinnati to Pittsburgh to Syracuse.

WeatherBELL has over 90% of the country with normal to above normal snowfall.

If the WeatherBELL forecast is correct for Louisville, the winter will not be quite as cold as the ones in the late 1970’s, but it could be close. Snow amounts with this forecast should top 20 inches and more than 30 inches is certainly a possibility which would lead to a top ten snowiest winter ever.

This will be very interesting to see how it develops. From their past record on what they have done with seasonal forecasts, hurricane predictions and other major weather events.... I trust their forecasts because they have a very high accuracy rate.

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Though not the official forecast (which our clients pay for), this is along the lines of what the most similar years tells us for this upcoming winter 2014/15.

This was Weatherbell’s July forecast for the winter versus the actual.

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"Long-lost” satellite images shed new light on global sea i...enormous holes found in the Arctic ice back in the 1960’s...Antarctica sea ice reached record highs and lows just two years apart

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Discussion

Overview

NASA launched the first of seven Nimbus spacecraft to study Earth from space in August 1964 and fifty years later experts at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado are recovering long-lost images from old Nimbus data tapes and black-and-white film. The preliminary findings from long-lost images from the 1960’s have produced some big surprises with respect to global sea ice. In much the same way archeologists dig up artifacts that can rewrite history, these long-lost satellite images have to potential to rewrite our knowledge of ever-changing global sea ice cycles.

The Nimbus program

Fifty years ago NASA launched the first in a series of Earth-observing satellites that revolutionized how scientists study Earth’s weather systems, environment and atmosphere. The Nimbus satellites were a series of seven Earth-observation satellites launched over a 14-year time period from 1964 to 1978, one of which did not achieve orbit. In total, the satellites provided Earth observations for 30 years and collectively carried a total of 33 instruments, including ozone mappers, the Coastal Zone Color Scanner instrument and microwave and infrared radiometers. The Nimbus series were the first meteorological satellites to provide day and night local area coverage every 24-hours, repeated at the same time daily. This “sun-synchronous” orbit became the norm for satellites in subsequent years. Nimbus were also the first satellites to provide day and nighttime pictures of intense hurricanes as viewed from space which initiated the use of satellite technology to provide hurricane warnings (example image above).

Nimbus satellite observations were transmitted as an analog signal and then burned onto film and stored in canisters labeled only by orbit number (i.e., no indication of geography). The only way to retrieve this imagery data into useable format was to scan all of it which meant 250,000 images. Now the satellite imagery data is completely digital and can be managed and manipulated by scientists in order to get a look at the past. Preliminary work with the newly-digitized satellite data has been performed on the 1964-1969 time period and now the year 1970 is being analyzed.

Global Sea Ice

In terms of global sea ice, our current satellite data records are quite good for a little more than the past 30 years or so. Pushing it back another 15 or 20 years could be crucial in the understanding of global sea ice cycles which have been occurring throughout history. Indeed, early findings have been quite surprising with respect to both the Arctic and Antarctica sea ice extent. According to NASA scientists, while there was more ice compared to today, there have been “enormous holes” found in the Arctic ice that “we didn’t expect and can’t explain” in a decade considered to be colder-than-normal (i.e., the 1960’s). The Antarctica sea ice extent findings are perhaps even more amazing. Using these long-lost satellite images, it appears that the Antarctica sea ice extent reached record high levels in 1964 only to be followed by record low amounts just two years later in 1966, and the earliest maximum sea ice extent was seen in 1969. As is often the case with more data, it often leads to more questions than answers. The IPCC had sea ice data in the 1990 report from NOAA.

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Video discussion on this by NASA scientists:

Steve Goddard presents more proof that the ice periodically shrinks and the arctic warms in this very long collection of media reports from scientists.