Deke Arndt of NCDC

“shifts in seasonality now on display are in line with the warming the United States has xperienced in recent years”

Note to Deke Arndt: 1990s winters were warmer

January 1, 2012 (enlarged)

According to NOAA/NCDC, 1994, 1996, 1991, 1997, 1990, 1995, 1998, 1992, and 1999 all had warmer winter temperatures than the winter of 2010-2011 (years ordered from coolest to warmest).

In fact the average winter temperature for the contiguous United States in 1992 was 36.90 degrees F, as compared to 32.15 degrees F in 2011 and 31.12 degrees in 2010. So we are talking about recent winters being about 5 degrees cooler. It was even warmer in 1999 and 2000: it cooled nearly 6 degrees F from 2000 to 2010. Yet these people want us to believe it is actually getting warmer.

Here is the table NCDC produces (enlarged):

Notice the trendline. This is 20 years of US winters and the trend is DOWN. What drugs are climate scientists taking?

What do you expect from an agency run by an oceanogrpaher from OSU who thought the salmon fisheries decline since 1977 was due to AGW when other scientists at that and nearby universities said it was the PDO. Indeed since the PDO flipped in the late 1990s and 2000s, the salmon fisheries due to cold water have flourished.

By Kirk Myers

With the advent of the new year, perhaps it’s a good time to once again expose the global warming narrative for what it actually is: fact-free alarmist fear-mongering - scientific fraud, to be exact - designed to shut down fossil-fuel industries, enrich carbon traders, soak taxpayers and reduce affluent western societies to a state of pre-industrial poverty - all the while purporting to save the world from what turns out to be an imaginary man-made bogeyman.

The body of evidence discrediting the global warming-turned - “climate change” theory (yes, it’s only a theory) is growing exponentially as it smacks head-on with observational and empirical facts that undermine the entire manufactured edifice of anthropogenic global warming (AGW).

Take a look at the views of some of the experts, including a few candid assessments by die-hard True Believers, who reveal just how little evidence exists to keep alive the theoretical Global Warming Godzilla that lumbered onto the scene in the late 1980s.

First, here are a few statements from within the ranks of the global warming camp that expose the fraudulent science they themselves are disseminating:

Dr. Phil Jones - No statistically significant warming for 15 years

From the Daily Mail: “Professor [Phil] Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now - suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon… And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.”

NASA GSS - no sign of global warming in North America

From Strata-sphere.com: “In response to a freedom of information request, NASA’s GISS was required to produce a series of emails, which in turn revealed that (a) NASA admits the current warm period is not historically different from the period around 1921-1950, and (b) that there has been no sign of global warming in North America or the US. How is global warming possible when it is not ‘global’?”

Dr. Phil Jones, Climate Research Unit

From a ClimateGate email: “With their LIA [Little Ice Age] being 1300 -1900 and their MWP [Medieval Warm Period] 800 -1300, there appears (at my quick first reading) no discussion of synchroneity of the cool/warm periods. Even with the instrumental record, the early and late 20th century warming periods are only significant locally at between 10-20% of grid boxes.”

Professor Richard Muller - 70% of measuring stations poorly sited

Reports Ken Haapala (via WattsUpWithThat.com): “Professor Muller presented himself as a former skeptic [to the House National Resources Committee], but he couched his skepticism as questioning the quality of the land-based surface measurements . . . According to him 70% of measuring stations in the US are poorly sited with a possible error of 2 to 5 degrees C. He evaded the real issue: that most skeptics realize that temperatures have risen, but question that human emissions of carbon dioxide are the principal cause of global warming.”

“Muller failed to mention that . . . he questioned the human influence on global warming; that his calculations of temperatures show no warming for the past ten years; that he has suggested that the cause for the pause in warming is a change in ocean oscillations, and that there is a disconnect between land surface data and atmospheric data.”

An admission: Medieval Warm Period at least as warm as today

From Strata-sphere.com: “The real killer is the global temperature itself, which has been cooling since 2000, and not showing any warming since 1995 - according to Dr Phil Jones, previous head of CRU. In addition, Jones admitted there is no data to overturn the long held scientific theory that the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was as warm or warmer than today. Jones admits lack of data in other regions was used by Mann and others to make up the idea the MWP was cooler, but lack of data is not the same thing as proxies showing cooler temps!:

NASA GISS - 10 warmest years spread throughout last century

From Strata-sphere.com: “In fact, NASA GISS is on record noting that the ten warmest years are spread throughout the last century and are all statistically tied for warmest year. Because of the margin of error in global indexes, there is no way to determine which of the following years are warmer than the others.

“For the earlier period these are the warmest years in the top ten: 1921, 1931, 1934, 1938, 1939 - 5 all told. For the latter it is: 1990, 1998, 1999, 2006 - which is 4. And then there is the outlier 1953. These all have a temperature index that is statistically the same - and it proves there is not ‘significant’ warming, which blows the AGW theory right out of the water.”

While consensus scientists are stuck in defense mode, credentialed and respected skeptics around the globe have taken no time out in their efforts to expose the soft underbelly of the alarmist scientific data churned out by manipulated climate models.

Professor Terry Mills - Warming just as likely to be caused by random fluctuations

From the Herald Sun in Australia: “Terry Mills, professor of applied statistics and econometrics at Loughborough University, looked at the same data as the IPCC. He found that the warming trend it reported over the past 30 years or so was just as likely to be due to random fluctuations as to the impacts of greenhouse gases. Mill’s findings are to be published in Climatic Change, an environmental journal.”

John Christy, professor, UAH - Land temperature records unreliable

“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,’ said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.

From the Herald Sun: “The doubts of Christy and a number of other researchers focus on the thousands of weather stations around the world, which have been used to collect temperature data over the past 150 years. These stations, they believe, have been seriously compromised by factors such as urbanisation, changes in land use and, in many cases, being moved from site to site . . . .”

Joe D’Aleo and Dr. Don Easterbrook - No link between CO2 and temperature changes

“During the past century, global climates have consisted of two cool periods (1880-1915 and 1945 to 1977) and two warm periods (1915 to 1945 and 1977 to 1998). In 1977, the PDO [Pacific Decadal Oscillation] switched abruptly from its cool mode, where it had been since about 1945, into its warm mode and global climate shifted from cool to warm.

“This rapid switch from cool to warm has become known as “The Great Pacific Climatic Shift” (Figure 1). Atmospheric CO2 showed no unusual changes across this sudden climate shift and was clearly not responsible for it. Similarly, the global warming from ~1915 to ~1945 could not have been caused by increased atmospheric CO2 because that time preceded the rapid rise of CO2, and when CO2 began to increase rapidly after 1945, 30 years of global cooling occurred (1945-1977).”

Only one global warming period in 500 years matches rising CO2

“Only one out of all of the global warming periods in the past 500 years occurred at the same time as rising CO2 (1977–1998). About 96% of the warm periods in the past 500 years could not possibly have been caused by rise of CO2. The inescapable conclusion of this is that CO2 is not the cause of global warming.

Two ocean oscillations drive climate shifts

:The PDO leads the way [in climate shifts] and its effect is later amplified by the AMO [Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation). Each time this has occurred in the past century, global temperatures have remained cool for about 30 years. Thus, the current sea surface temperatures not only explain why we have had global cooling for the past 10 years, but also assure that cool temperatures will continue for several more decades.

“The cool phase of the PDO is now entrenched and ‘global warming’ (the term used for warming from 1977 to 1998) is over.”

Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov, Pulkovo Observatory - Warns of deep temperature drop

From WorldNetDaily: “The earth is no longer threatened by the catastrophic global warming forecast by some scientists; warming passed its peak in 1998 - 2005, while the value of the TSI by July-September of last year had already declined by 0.47 watts per square meter,” Abdussamatov wrote. “Consequently, we should fear a deep temperature drop, but not catastrophic global warming. Humanity must survive the serious economic, social, demographic and political consequences of a global temperature drop, which will directly affect the national interests of almost all countries and more than 80% of the population of the Earth.”

Dr. George Kukla - Changes in orbit responsible for climate change

From Climate Realists.com and Helium.com: “George Kukla, 77, retired professor of paleoclimatology at Columbia University and researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory responds, “The only thing to worry about global warming is the damage that can be done by worrying. Why are some scientists worried? Perhaps because they feel that to stop worrying may mean to stop being paid.”

“I feel we’re on pretty solid ground in interpreting orbit around the sun as the primary driving force behind Ice Age glaciation,” he says. “The relationship is just too clear and consistent to allow reasonable doubt. It’s either that, or climate drives orbit, and that just doesn’t make sense.”

Earth on the brink of an Ice Age?

Pravda Science Report, via IceAgeNow: “The AGW theory is based on data that is drawn from a ridiculously narrow span of time and it demonstrates a wanton disregard for the ‘big picture’ of long-term climate change. The data from paleoclimatology, including ice cores, sea sediments, geology, paleobotany and zoology, indicate that we are on the verge of entering another Ice Age, and the data also shows that severe and lasting climate change can occur within only a few years.

“While concern over the dubious threat of Anthropogenic Global Warming continues to distract the attention of people throughout the world, the very real threat of the approaching and inevitable Ice Age, which will render large parts of the Northern Hemisphere uninhabitable, is being foolishly ignored.”

Michael Crichton - There is no human-caused global warming

In his book, “State of Fear,” Michael Crichton offers his assessment of the scientific evidence for global warming. His conclusion: There is no human-caused global warming.

Crichton is correct, writes Donald Miller: “Most of the rise in temperature in the 20th century occurred before 1940, before CO2 levels started rising. Temperatures fell 0.3F from 1940 to 1970 while CO2 levels rose, from 310 to 325 ppmv . .  . .”

“The temperature of the planet’s upper atmosphere (which the theory of global warming predicts should warm first), as measured by satellites, beginning in 1979, and weather balloons, has remained unchanged over the last 25 years despite a rise in atmospheric CO2 levels to 370 ppmv [now near 390 ppm].”

Weather Channel founder says global warming science is rigged

Writes Weather Channel founder John Coleman: “Any person who spends a decade at a university obtaining a PHD in Meteorology and becomes a research scientist, more likely than not, becomes a part of that single minded culture . . . These scientists know that if they do research and results are in no way alarming, their research will gather dust on the shelf and their research careers will languish.

“But if they do research that sounds alarms, they will become well known and respected and receive scholarly awards and, very importantly, more research dollars will come flooding their way. . . It was easy for them to manipulate the data to come up with the results they wanted to make headlines and at the same time drive their environmental agendas.”

“The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril. It is all a scam, the result of bad science.”

Temperatures rose four times as fast in 18th century

From David Archibald: “After the invention of thermometers, records started to be kept . . . A number of interesting things can be seen in this record, including the depths of the Little Ice Age in the late 17th century when the Thames regularly froze over, and the Dalton Minimum which was the last time the Thames froze over in the City of London.”

“What is also interesting is the 2.2F temperature rise from 7.8F in 1696 to 10.0F in 1732. This is a 2.2F rise is 36 years. By comparison, the world has seen a 0.6F rise over the 100 years of the 20th century. That temperature rise in the early 18th century was four times as large and three times as fast as the rise in the 20th century.”

* * *

These represent only small fraction of the many facts that rip away at the theological underpinnings of the global warming gospel. Awaiting any inquisitive person is a virtual Mother Lode of informed analysis and scientific data, available at the touch of a keyboard, impeaching the tenets of the AGW doctrine and challenging the certitude of the True Disciples - formerly practicing scientists - who are now engaged in a desperate effort to defend and preserve their revered scripture.

University of Maryland physics professor Robert Parks gets to the heart of the matter:

“In science, refuting an accepted belief is celebrated as an advance in knowledge; in religion it is condemned as heresy.”

EPA mercury rules for electricity generating units are based on false science and economics

Craig Rucker

The Environmental Protection Agency clams its “final proposed” Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) rules will eliminate toxic pollution from electrical generating units, bring up to $140 billion in annual health benefits, and prevent thousands of premature deaths yearly - all for “only” $11 billion a year in compliance costs.

This may be true in the virtual reality of EPA computer models, linear extrapolations, cherry-picked health studies and statistics, government press releases and agency-generated public comments. However, in the real world inhabited by families, employers and other energy users, the new rules will bring few benefits, but will impose extensive costs that the agency chose to minimize or ignore in its analysis.

Emissions of mercury and other air toxics from power plants have been declining steadily for decades, as older generating units have been replaced with more efficient, less polluting systems or retrofitted with better pollution control technologies. While a few older plants still violate EPA’s draconian proposed rules - the new rules are not based on credible scientific and epidemiological studies.

As independent natural scientist Dr. Willie Soon and CFACT policy advisor Paul Driessen pointed out in their Wall Street Journal and Investor’s Business Daily articles, and in Dr. Soon’s 85-page critique of EPA’s draft rules, US power plants account for only 0.5% of the mercury in US air. Thus, even if EPA’s new rules eventually do eliminate 90% of mercury from power plant emission streams, that’s still only 90% of 0.5% - ie, almost zero reduction. The rest of the mercury in US air comes from natural and foreign sources, such as forest fires, Chinese power plants and the cremation of human remains (from tooth fillings that contain mercury and silver).

EPA fails to recognize that mercury is abundant in the earth’s crust. It is absorbed by trees through their roots - and released into the atmosphere when the trees are burned in forest fires, fireplaces and wood-burning stoves. In fact, US forest fires annually emit as much mercury as all US coal-burning electrical power plants. Mercury and other “pollutants” are also released by geysers, volcanoes and subsea vents, which tap directly into subsurface rock formations containing these substances.

The agency compounds these errors by claiming fish contain dangerous levels of mercury that threatens the health and mental acuity of babies and children. In making this claim, the agency commits four more grievous errors. First, it ignores the fact that selenium in fish tissue is strongly attracted to mercury molecules and thus protects people against buildups of methylmercury, mercury’s more toxic form.

Second, EPA based its toxicity claims on a study of Faroe Islanders, who eat few fruits and vegetables, but feast on pilot whale meat and blubber that is high in mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) - but very low in selenium. Third, it ignored a 17-year Seychelles Islands evaluation, which found “no measurable cognitive or behavioral effects” in children who eat five to twelve servings of fish per week.

Fourth, it used computer models to generate linear extrapolations from known or assumed toxic levels down to much lower levels. Not only is this method contrary to sound science and epidemiology; it resulted in politicized “safety” levels that are twice as restrictive as Canadian and World Health Organization mercury standards, three times more restrictive than US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, and four times tougher than US Food and Drug Administration recommendations.  No wonder the Centers for Disease Control says blood mercury levels in US women and children are already well below excessively “safe” levels set by EPA.

Simply put, EPA grossly exaggerated the health benefits of its proposed mercury rules - and then claimed additional mercury benefits based on double counting of reductions in particulate matter. It also ignored the adverse effects that its rules will inflict. Not only is EPA’s anti-mercury campaign scaring mothers and children into not eating nutritious fish that is rich in Omega-3 fatty acids. It is also raising electricity heating, air conditioning and food costs, impairing electrical reliability, costing jobs, and thereby harming the health and welfare of countless Americans.

Energy analyst Roger Bezdek has calculated that utilities will have to spend $130 billion to retrofit older plants - and another $30 billion a year to operate, maintain and power the energy-intensive pollution control equipment they will be forced to install. Moreover, under its MACT rules, EPA intends to micromanage every aspect of power plant operations. It will now cite companies for violations even if emissions fully comply with air quality standards, if operators merely deviate from new agency “work practice standards” and “operational guidelines,” even under unusual weather conditions or equipment malfunctions that are beyond the operators’ control.

While it is true that older power plants are more significant sources of toxic air emissions, those plants are mostly in key manufacturing states that burn coal to generate 48-98% of their electricity. Many utility companies cannot justify those huge costs - and thus plan to close dozens of units, representing tens of thousands of megawatts - enough to electrify tens of millions of homes and small businesses. Illinois alone will lose nearly 3,500 MW of reliable, affordable, baseload electricity - with little to replace it.

Electricity consumers could pay at least 20% more in many states within a few years. According to the Chicago Tribune, Illinois families and businesses will pay 40-60% more. That will severely affect business investment, production and hiring - and family plans to repair cars and homes, save for college and retirement, take vacations, or have health physicals or surgery.

Chicago public schools will have to pay an additional $2.7 million annually for electricity by 2014, says the Tribune. Hospitals, factories and other major electricity users will also be hard hit. Many poor and minority families will find it increasingly hard to afford proper heating and air conditioning. Further job losses and economic stress will lead to further reductions in living standards and nutrition, more foreclosures and homelessness, and additional drug, alcohol, spousal and child abuse.

The very reliability of America’s electricity grid could be at risk, if multiple power plants shut down. Brownouts, blackouts and power interruptions will affect factory production lines, hospital, school, farm and office operations, employment, and the quality of food, products and services.

The impact on people’s health and welfare is patently obvious. But EPA considered none of this.

EPA insists there was strong public support for its rules. However, its rules were clearly based on false, biased or even fraudulent information. Furthermore, EPA itself generated much of that public support.

The agency recruited, guided and financed activist groups that promoted its rulemaking. Over the past decade, it gave nearly $4 billion to the American Lung Association and other advocacy organizations and various “environmental justice” groups, according to a Heritage Foundation study. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and members of her staff also visited historically black and other colleges - giving speeches about “toxic emissions,” providing templates for scare-mongering posters and postcards, and making it easy for students to send pro-rulemaking comments via click-and-submit buttons on websites.

This EPA action does nothing to improve environmental quality or human health. In fact, by advancing President Obama’s goal of shutting down power plants and raising electricity costs, it impairs job creation, economic recovery, and public health and welfare. It is intrusive government at its worst.

It is a massive power grab that threatens to give EPA nearly unfettered power over the electrical power we need to support our livelihoods and living standards.

Congress, states, utility companies, affected industries, school districts and hospitals, and families and citizen groups should immediately take action to postpone the MACT rules’ implementation. Otherwise, their harmful impacts will be felt long and hard in states that depend on coal for their electricity.

Craig Rucker is CEO of the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow.