By David Rothbard, CFACT
There was nothing special about the temperature of the Earth in 2014. In fact, there has been no meaningful warming since last century.
This is true no matter what set of temperature data you examine.
However, when you examine the data recorded from satellites, the flaws in the warming narrative become even clearer.
Satellites are considered by many to be the best available source of temperature data. Local measurements are subject to many sorts of errors. Temperature stations tend to be located near population centers where they are subject to the urban heat island effect. Weather balloons, temperature stations and buoys leave huge gaps in coverage. Climate researchers then fill in the their best guesses as to what temperature should be for the huge areas where no readings exist. This creates opportunity for honest error - or worse.
Satellites, on the other hand, record temperatures over the entire Earth. Their coverage is more complete and the data they yield is much more difficult to manipulate.
The graph above shows us that there has been no meaningful warming since the 1990’s. Today’s school children have never lived in a warming world.
The graph below shows how badly 33 UN IPCC climate models fare when compared against actual measurements. Keep in mind that the earlier period, when the models and temperatures appear to line up, is from before the models were created.
Hindsight we know is 20/20.
After the models were created, and we were told told the whole thing was settled, global temperatures inconveniently remained cooler than projected.
Go ahead, examine the data for yourself. Compare it to the computer model projections.
That’s what the warming crowd fears most.
The Obama administration’s top environment regulator, after visiting Aspen’s X Games on Thursday, said neither falling oil prices nor Congress will block economic gains to be made by addressing climate change.
But in Colorado, a potentially devastating shift from snow to slush has begun.
“That’s why we’re here. People here do know the climate has changed. It’s been a notable change in how much snow is falling,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy said in a Denver Post phone interview. “If we don’t take action now, that change will be a lot more extreme.”
Surging oil supplies and falling prices will not delay a transition away from fossil fuels in favor of renewable wind and solar energy, McCarthy said. “The work we’re doing with states, to think through our clean-power plan to regulate pollution from power plants, will really provide opportunities for significant investment in renewable energy,” she said.
In Colorado, she stood by Aspen Mountain’s Silver Queen Gondola with Aspen Skiing Co. chief Mike Kaplan and warned that shorter winters and poor snow will hurt business. “Aspen could resemble Amarillo by 2100,” McCarthy said, according to her prepared remarks.
Icecap Note: Amarillo had 12 - 14” of snow this week.
EPA officials calculated that snow-related recreation contributes $67 billion a year to the U.S. economy, supporting 900,000 jobs.
Snowboard stars Gretchen Bleiler and Alex Deibold joined McCarthy at Aspen. The EPA has partnered with the nonprofit Protect Our Winters to enlist athletes and ski industry officials as advocates for climate-change action.
Please contact Bruce Finley: 303-954-1700, bfinley@denverpost.com or twitter.com/finleybruce and tell him where he is going wrong.
Icecap Notes:
2007/08 set all time snow record for much of North America from Alaska to Oregon to Utah and Colorado and Wisconsin to New England.
4 of the top 5 snowiest years for the hemisphere have occurred since 2007/08.
In the eastern US, major metros and ski areas have seen more major snowstorms this decade than any decade since record taking began in the 1950s.
By Anthony Sadar
Questioning global warming is no longer tolerated.
After hearing Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy speak at this month’s annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society in Phoenix, Arizona, I realized that the United States is truly in a world of trouble from too much pollution - not the “carbon” kind, but the ideological kind.
Ms. McCarthy’s presentation consisted of not only the typical derision of skeptics of man-made climate change and the distortion of climate reality, but included a rather delusional self-assessment.
Early in her talk, as usual, Ms. McCarthy denigrated any challengers to the so-called settled science of anthropogenic global warming as akin to “flat earth” believers. She went on to claim that our biggest danger is in not taking action to stop an evident climate catastrophe.
Ms. McCarthy declared that “science” is under attack as it has never been before and elaborated that there is an “all-out attack on science in D.C. right now.” Part of her solution is for scientists to be “more vocal,” supposedly to help her in the fight to save the planet.
For her part, Ms. McCarthy claimed that politics has “nothing zero” to do with her assessment of the science behind climate change. However, by all appearances, politics has everything to do with the issue. Much of her career has been closely tied to politics - apparently the kind aligned with statism - especially as an active state and federal bureaucrat.
Ms. McCarthy’s position of authority and her enthusiastic personal commitment and demeanor demands our attention, or perhaps, even our subservience. Make no mistake, the Obama administration is practically a driving force in climate science at the present time. The feds set the tone and those who are still honestly unconvinced of a looming disaster (aka “deniers") will not be tolerated. On the other hand, a fountain of federal funding is flowing for projects to evaluate weather and climate data with respect to how it proves that humans are altering the atmosphere. The compliant expectation of continued global warming is still the modus operandi in the atmospheric science field, even though, in spite of confident climate outlooks and a slight increase of global average temperature in 2014, readings have essentially leveled off for more than a decade and a half.
Studies in heat-related stress are in, studies in cold-related stress are out, regardless of the fact that fatalities from cold snaps can beat fatalities from hot spells by a wide margin.
There are many experienced atmospheric science practitioners like myself who have a different perspective, represent no corporate interests and are not connected with fossil fuel industries (except to enjoy the comfortable benefits afforded by modern energy sources). In my deliberations with numerous environmental professionals, so many have expressed some doubt (most much doubt) that humans are largely responsible for long-term global climate change.
Yet, the marching orders from the president with his administration’s rhetoric and the new Climate Action Plan are to promote and finance dubious renewable energy and carbon sequestration projects while warring against purportedly evil, but reliable, abundant, cheap, poverty-alleviating, job-creating and job-sustaining fossil fuels. Mother Earth must be defended at all costs - her children, not so much.
Forget the ethereal nature of long-range global climate predictions. The administration seems to have found a solid, scary problem to hype, “solve,” and leave as a legacy. Besides, Ms. McCarthy reminded the meteorological society audience that President Obama has claimed “climate change is a moral issue.” Moral for sure, because unfortunately, if the administration’s command and control of climate science persists, in years to come we’ll discover too late that the legacy was one of expanding poverty, contracting liberty and misdirecting science.
Anthony J. Sadar, a Certified Consulting Meteorologist, is author of “In Global Warming We Trust: A Heretic’s Guide to Climate Science” (Telescope Books, 2012).