Hockey Schtick

The anthropogenic global warming theory is based upon the notion that increasing ‘greenhouse gases’ will increase infrared ‘back-radiation’ to the earth to [supposedly] warm the planet. The theory also claims that increases in the minor ‘greenhouse gas’ carbon dioxide will cause increases in the major ‘greenhouse gas’ water vapor to amplify the infrared ‘back-radiation’ and global warming. A study published online yesterday in The Journal of Climate, however, finds that contrary to the global warming theory, infrared ‘back-radiation’ from greenhouse gases has declined over the past 14 years in the US Southern Great Plains in winter, summer, and autumn. If the anthropogenic global warming theory was correct, the infrared ‘back-radiation’ should have instead increased year-round over the past 14 years along with the steady rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Long-Term Trends in Downwelling Spectral Infrared Radiance over the U.S. Southern Great Plains
Journal of Climate
P. Jonathan Gero, Space Science and Engineering Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin
David D. Turner, NOAA / National Severe Storms Laboratory, Norman, Oklahoma and Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin

Abstract: A trend analysis was applied to a 14-year time series of downwelling spectral infrared radiance observations from the Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (AERI) located at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) site in the U.S. Southern Great Plains. The highly accurate calibration of the AERI instrument, performed every 10 minutes, ensures that any statistically significant trend in the observed data over this time can be attributed to changes in the atmospheric properties and composition, and not to changes in the sensitivity or responsivity of the instrument. The measured infrared spectra, numbering over 800,000, were classified as clear-sky, thin cloud, and thick cloud scenes using a neural network method. The AERI data record demonstrates that the downwelling infrared radiance is decreasing over this 14-year time period in the winter, summer, and autumn seasons but is increasing in the spring; these trends are statistically significant and are primarily due to long-term change in the cloudiness above the site.

The AERI data also show many statistically significant trends on annual, seasonal, and diurnal time scales, with different trend signatures identified in the separate scene classifications. Given the decadal time span of the dataset, effects from natural variability should be considered in drawing broader conclusions. Nevertheless, this data set has high value due to the ability to infer possible mechanisms for any trends from the observations themselves, and to test the performance of climate models.

See post here.

By Chris Horner, the Daily Caller

Lee Casey and David Rivkin had a piece in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, “Climate Change heads to the Supreme Court.” The subhead - “Green activists hope to force electric utilities and many others to pay ‘public nuisance’ claims for emitting carbon dioxide” - sets forth the basics of the case, which will be argued Tuesday to determine whether courts can assign individual liability for individual contributions to climate change (really), on the grounds of common law nuisance.

There are several cases in the federal judicial circuits confronting similar claims, from utilities causing or contributing to global warming to oil companies causing or making Hurricane Katrina worse. Imagine if this practice is unleashed.

The Casey/Rivkin piece hits the right notes but also provides context for the next few days’ worth of marches, stories, human interest items and editorials in the establishment press. For example, Washington is presently being swarmed for four days by Al Gore, Van Jones and the left-liberal greenosphere.

History also suggests that there will be media activism in the coming days. In “Red Hot Lies” I detail this practice, opening with when SCOTUS argument loomed in 2006 in another global warming case, Massachusetts v. EPA. The Washington Post “hurled a three-pronged assault of brow-furrowing at the Supreme Court in the days before argument in the important Massachusetts v. EPA case, including heart-wrenching tales of ski resorts in peril,” and an op-ed by Al Gore’s cinematic collaborator Laurie David. The Post also published an unsigned editorial warning the justices that the Georgetown cocktail set was watching them closely on this one and would sure hate to get mean about things.

Whatever their impact on this 5-4 opinion (in which I and two colleagues represented the “skeptic” scientists in their amicus brief to the Court), that case directly led to the extant, looming regulatory train wreck of EPA trying to seize economic regulatory authority through an administrative version of the failed cap-and-trade legislation.

That scheme is so bad that even Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) expressly cited it as a threat to regulated interests that were insufficiently rolling over and accepting cap and trade.

We have the slim Mass. v. EPA majority to thank for that unfolding disaster. They revised the Clean Air Act from how it was written and interpreted for 35 years into a vehicle for ideologues in their push to “fundamentally transform America.”

With next week’s case, things could get worse. Yet the administration is taking a curious line in Tuesday’s argument. It is arguing the substance, but has declined to address whether the “political question” doctrine assigns responsibility for this matter to the political branches. Laurence Tribe, of all people, made a compelling case that, under our Constitution, global warming-related issues should be decided by the political branches. That is, until by order of the Obama administration, he didn’t.

Team Obama wants the Court to step aside in this particular mess, arguing in essence that we’re handling it, but they don’t want a ruling that will impede the trial bar and activist courts from interfering in future cases should the EPA enterprise go down in flames. They want the Court only to rule that Congress has addressed this, as five justices ruled the Clean Air Act is really a global warming regime, and EPA is proceeding on the authority we conjured from the emanations and penumbras of that law

Their reasoning is transparent and alarming. The administration wants to hold the threat of a global warming industry over the heads of Congress and the regulated economy, to coerce them into folding up their resistance against EPA’s backdoor power grab. The administration seems to believe that, without such threats to get the productive sector of the economy to surrender and settle, it cannot enshrine any such regime politically. That’s instructive.

It is also the sort of cynicism and abuse of government and power we have come to expect from the left-liberals - the environmentalists specifically - and the Obama administration. But that by no means makes it right.

So next week’s case is of extreme importance. As Justice Scalia indicated in his enlightening Mass. v. EPA dissent, we always face the prospect of five justices who want a particular outcome and will labor to get there. As he concluded:

The Court’s alarm over global warming may or may not be justified, but it ought not distort the outcome of this litigation...No matter how important the underlying policy issues at stake, this Court has no business substituting its own desired outcome for the reasoned judgment of the responsible agency.

But here you see the reason for media activism and enviro acting-out in coming days. Remember that when you hear the noise machine cranking up. It’s only an attempt to pressure the judiciary. Read post here.

Chris Horner is a senior fellow at The Competitive Enterprise Institute.

IBD Editoriial

Junk Science: Five years ago, the U.N. predicted that by 2010 some 50 million people would be fleeing climate change, rising seas, mega-hurricanes and so on. Instead, no islands have sunk and their populations are booming.

It’s been said that when you make a prediction and provide a date, never give a number, and if you give a number, never provide a date. That way you can always claim to be right, even when you are wrong, and that it just hasn’t happened yet.

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) made that mistake in 2005 when it produced a map showing areas to be impacted by the effects of climate change. These areas would produce 50 million “climate refugees” driven out by rising sea levels, increased frequency and ferocity of hurricanes, disruptions in food production, etc.

As related by blogger Gavin Atkins, who unearthed the forgotten prophecy of doom, some of these areas have conducted censuses and if they are facing any problems at all, it’s caused by their rapid and sustained population growth. If anybody is leaving any of the danger zones, it’s because they are getting too crowded.

For example, the latest census report shows that the population of the Solomon Islands near Australia has passed a half-million, up 100,009 in the last decade. The Seychelles, in the Indian Ocean, has seen its population rise from 81,755 in 2002 to 88,311.

The Bahamas, a favorite vacation spot for those rich capitalists plundering the earth, has added more than 50,000 people. China’s six fastest-growing cities are in the middle of one of UNEP’s climate change-affected danger zones, as are many U.S. coastal cities. At last report there was no mass migration inland. Apparently these endangered populations didn’t get the memo.

In 2005, Britain’s Guardian reported the refugee prediction by Janos Bogardi of the Institute for Environment and Human Security at the United Nations University in Bonn. He spoke of “well-founded fears that the number of people fleeing untenable environmental conditions may grow exponentially as the world experiences the effects of climate change.” Well-founded?

The article noted that New Zealand had agreed to accept the 11,600 inhabitants of the low-lying Pacific island state Tuvalu if rising sea levels swamp the country. At last report, Tuvalu is alive and well and above water.

Apocalyptic changes forecast by climate change alarmists, according to Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Morner, former head of the International Commission on Sea Level Change, are not in the cards. Despite fluctuations down as well as up, “the sea is not rising,” he says. “It hasn’t risen in 50 years.” If there is any rise this century it will “not be more than 10 cm (four inches), with an uncertainty of plus or minus 10 cm.”

Hurricane frequency and intensity are a natural cyclical phenomena, made worse only by growing numbers rushing to the coasts, not fleeing from them. Chalk up this latest fear-mongering next to the myth of Himalayan glaciers that were supposed to vanish by 2035.

If there is any disruption in food supplies, it’s caused by rising food prices ironically caused by increased demand for biofuels to save the earth, and the diversion of cropland and even the clear-cutting of sacred rainforests to produce them.

The endless fraud perpetrated by the climate hucksters knows no bounds. Neither does the inaccuracy of climate models that cannot predict the past. Yet they keep trying, like the cartoon prophet carrying the sign predicting the world will end tomorrow.

Read more of this spot on editorial here.