In dropping out of the U. S. Climate Action Partnership, BP America, Conoco Phillips, and Caterpillar are recognizing that cap-and-trade legislation is dead in the U. S. Congress and that global warming alarmism is collapsing rapidly. We hope that other major corporations will soon see the light and drop their support for cap-and-trade and other energy-rationing legislation.
These announcements are most welcome, but they do not mean that we can relax our efforts to defeat and roll back energy-rationing legislation and regulations. Many policies and proposals that would raise energy prices through the roof for American consumers and destroy millions of jobs in energy-intensive industries still pose a huge threat. These include the EPA’s decision to regulate greenhouse gas emissions using the Clean Air Act, environmental pressure group efforts to use the Endangered Species Act to stop energy production and new power plants, the higher fuel economy standards for new passenger vehicles enacted in 2007, presidential executive orders, and bills in Congress to require more renewable electricity, higher energy efficiency standards for buildings, and low carbon transportation fuel standards.
----------------------
The People’s Network beats the Media Monoliths and the Government Propaganda Machine
Carbon-Sense Coalition
The climate consensus promoted by Big Business, Big Government, Big Media and Big Academia has come unstuck. The shoddy work and partisan promotion by IPCC and its cronies has been exposed, the romantic idea of powering the world with sunbeams and sea breezes has collided with engineering reality, and the public has caught a whiff of the true meaning of green politics - taxes, ration cards and big brother controlling every aspect of our lives.
But it has not been mainstream media illuminating the dark corners of the global warming castle - it is the fast moving people’s media - the internet and the blogosphere. Independent thinkers, retired scientists, amateur detectives and ordinary voters are spreading information and changing public opinion.
As Matt Ridley of The Spectator notes:
“Despite 20 years of being told they were not just factually but morally wrong, of being compared to Holocaust deniers, of being told they deserved to be tried for crimes against humanity, of being avoided at parties, climate sceptics seem to be growing in number and confidence by the day. What is the difference?
“In a word, the internet. The ‘climate consensus’ may hold the establishment—the universities, the media, big business, government—but it is losing the jungles of the web. After all, getting research grants, doing pieces to camera and advising boards takes time. The very ostracism the sceptics suffered has left them free to do their digging untroubled by grant applications and invitations to Stockholm.”
See here how this people’s network had beaten the multi billion dollar scam campaign.
Like Tom-Toms in the jungle, each picking up and repeating the message with the speed of sound, so do our supporters grab every message and send it in spreading circles of communication at the speed of light.
Read also “Climate Change in Tatters” by Dr. Muriel Newman here.
------------------------------
Fuelling Future Famines
This generation of pampered westerners is the first tribe in the history of the world that seems determined to destroy its ability to produce food. The history of the human race has always been a battle for protein in the face of the continual challenge of natural climate change. Nothing has changed for this generation, except the wildfire spread of a destructive new religion that requires the sacrifice of food producers on a global warming altar.
Food creation needs solar energy, land, carbon dioxide and water. All four food resources are under threat. Eons ago, long before ancient humans learned to use the magic warmth locked in coal, millions of woolly mammoths were snap frozen in the icy wastes of Siberia. They are still being dug out of the ice today.
In the last few weeks, in a mild repeat of this past climate disaster, massive snowstorms have killed millions of domestic animals in Mongolia and China. The capacity to produce and distribute food has been decimated across the top of the world from Northern Europe and Russia to North America. When orange groves in Florida are damaged and Texas gets six snowstorms in a few weeks it is obvious that nature is damaging the world food supply.
Solar energy produces all of our food. Those who follow the sun are already recording a dramatic change in sunspots, which tend to reflect solar energy. This seems to indicate that the current frigid conditions affecting the Northern Hemisphere may not be an isolated weather event but may be a harbinger of natural climate change.
Global warming has never been a problem for mankind. But global cooling is a killer. Australia can feed itself and is a major food supplier to the world – beef, mutton, cereals, sugar, dairy products, pork, chicken, eggs, seafood, nuts, legumes, fruit, vegetables, beer and wine.
However green extremists, supported by foolish politicians, are gnawing at the foundations of Australia’s food chain. And the biggest threat today is Climate Change Policies. Land is an essential ingredient to most food production. All over Australia, uncontrolled regrowth of eucalypt scrub is silently reclaiming our vast grazing lands, the source of the lowest cost beef and mutton in the world. Generations of graziers have created and maintain these grasslands against the ever present threat of capture by woody weeds. Now their hands are tied and their land is being stolen by global warming politics. The suffocating scrub will soon pass the tipping point, beyond which grasslands are destroyed and the land is no longer capable of food production.
Land sterilisation is also occurring via the stealth of Wild Rivers, World Heritage and other lock-away-land policies. Even more food producing land is lost by policies that subsidise people to grow carbon forests in the stupid belief that this will somehow improve the climate by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Trees, grasses, sub-soil critters, grazing animals and carnivores are all part of the same carbon cycle. If one life form gets to monopolise land and carbon resources, it is detrimental to other life.
Still more stupid are market destroying policies that use government mandates and subsidies to convert food producing land to growing ethanol for cars. This has already caused massive dislocations to markets for corn, sugar, soybeans and palm oils. Forcing people to convert food into motor fuel is not a sensible policy and always adds to food shortages.
Carbon dioxide is the breath of life for all food production. Imagine the stupidity of trying to capture this harmless will-o-the-wisp in order to bury it in carbon cemeteries. Luckily for our food capacity, this suicidal policy of carbon capture and burial is unlikely to succeed.
Finally, let’s look at water, the life blood of all food production. Australia probably has access to more water per head of population than most countries in the world. However, decades of government mis-management have made us more vulnerable to every drought. Many government policies have encouraged the waste of water resources. There are huge unused water resources across the north from the Fitzroy River in the West to the Flinders River in Cape York. Most of this water is untapped and unused because of government anti-development and land sterilisation policies.
In the south, other silly government policies have supplied water for “free” to the cities. Anything free is wasted. Because of urban demand, food producers are now being denied water at any price, but there is no real price rationing in the cities. When natural climate change in the Northern Hemisphere is combined with political climate change in our southern food baskets, the real crisis creeping up on the world is not global warming caused by industry, but global famine caused by politicians. As Genghis Khan said wisely “Only a foolish horse fights with his feed bag”.
------------------------------
Climate Warnings from the Sun
Carbon-Sense Coalition
As of the end of January, the cumulative number of spotless days (days without sunspots) in the transition into solar cycle 24 now stands at 774. The number of spotless days is clamping down quickly. There were only 3 spotless days in January, 2010.
Solar minimums end rather abruptly. It appears very likely that the final number for this solar minimum will come close to 800. The transitions into the recent Solar Cycles (SC16-23) covering the past 7 decades averaged 362 cumulative spotless days. Therefore it is becoming obvious that the sun has undergone a state change.
The Average Magnetic Planetary Index (Ap index) is a proxy measurement for the intensity of solar magnetic activity as it alters the geomagnetic field on Earth. It has been referred to as the common yardstick for solar magnetic activity. An Ap index of “4” was the lowest recorded monthly value since measurements began in January 1932. In October and November 2009, this index record was broken with values of “3”. Then in December the index sunk even lower establishing a new record with a reading of “2”. Now in January of this year the Ap index is back up to “3”.
This solar minimum is rather unusual. If we define a period of quiet sun as those months that produced an Ap index of 6 or less and compare the total number of quiet months within each solar minimum, then the results would be:
Minimum Preceding Solar Cycle Number of Months with Ap Index of 6 or less
SC17 11 months
SC18 2 months
SC19 2 months
SC20 5 months
SC21 0 months
SC22 0 months
SC23 3 months
SC24 25 months and counting
NOAA has a different count here
Enlarged here.
If you choose the smoothed value and 9 as the threshold for low average value, we have gone 49 months at or below 9.
Isn’t it interesting that the Northern Hemisphere is experiencing some of the coldest, snowiest weather in decades at the same time the sun’s magnetic field produced 25 quiet months? But history has shown that when the sun gets extremely quiet such as during the Maunder and Sporer Minimums, the world experiences great cold periods referred to as the Little Ice Ages.
Congratulations to Washington D.C., Baltimore and Philadelphia in smashing your all time seasonal snow record. Who will be next? Icecap guess: Dallas, Texas.
James Marusek
See post here.
By Roger Harrabin, BBC
Phil Jones is director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA), which has been at the centre of the row over hacked e-mails. The BBC’s environment analyst Roger Harrabin put questions to Professor Jones, including several gathered from climate sceptics. The questions were put to Professor Jones with the co-operation of UEA’s press office.
---------------------------------
A - Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?
An initial point to make is that in the responses to these questions I’ve assumed that when you talk about the global temperature record, you mean the record that combines the estimates from land regions with those from the marine regions of the world. CRU produces the land component, with the Met Office Hadley Centre producing the marine component.
Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different (see numbers below). I have also included the trend over the period 1975 to 2009, which has a very similar trend to the period 1975-1998. So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other. Here are the trends and significances for each period:
Period Length Trend
(Degrees C per decade) Significance
1860-1880 21 0.163 Yes
1910-1940 31 0.15 Yes
1975-1998 24 0.166 Yes
1975-2009 35 0.161 Yes
B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.
C - Do you agree that from January 2002 to the present there has been statistically significant global cooling?
No. This period is even shorter than 1995-2009. The trend this time is negative (-0.12C per decade), but this trend is not statistically significant.
D - Do you agree that natural influences could have contributed significantly to the global warming observed from 1975-1998, and, if so, please could you specify each natural influence and express its radiative forcing over the period in Watts per square metre.
This area is slightly outside my area of expertise. When considering changes over this period we need to consider all possible factors (so human and natural influences as well as natural internal variability of the climate system). Natural influences (from volcanoes and the Sun) over this period could have contributed to the change over this period. Volcanic influences from the two large eruptions (El Chichon in 1982 and Pinatubo in 1991) would exert a negative influence. Solar influence was about flat over this period. Combining only these two natural influences, therefore, we might have expected some cooling over this period.
E - How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?
I’m 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 - there’s evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.
F - Sceptics of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) suggest that the official surface record paints a different story from the actual station records. To restore trust, should we start again with new quality control on input data in total transparency?
First, I am assuming again that you are referring to the surface record from both land and marine regions of the world, although in this answer as you specifically say “station” records, I will emphasise the land regions. There is more than one “official” surface temperature record, based on actual land station records. There is the one we have developed in CRU, but there are also the series developed at NCDC and GISS. Although we all use very similar station datasets, we each employ different ways of assessing the quality of the individual series and different ways of developing gridded products. The GISS data and their program are freely available for people to experiment with. The agreement between the three series is very good.
Large numbers of the CRU e-mails were posted on the web . Given the web-based availability of the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN), which is used by both NCDC and GISS, anyone else can develop their own global temperature record from land stations. Through the Met Office we have released (as of 29 January 2010) 80% of the station data that enters the CRU analysis (CRUTEM3). The graphic in the link here shows that the global land temperature series from these 80% of stations (red line) replicates the analysis based on all 100% of stations (black line). The locations of the 80% of stations are shown on the next link in red. The stations we have yet to get agreement to release are shown in grey.
I accept that some have had their trust in science shaken and this needs the Met Office to release more of the data beyond the 80% released so far. Before all the furor broke we had begun discussions with the Met Office for an updated set of station temperatures. With any new station dataset we will make sure we will be able to release all the station temperature data and give source details for all the series.
G - There is a debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was global or not. If it were to be conclusively shown that it was a global phenomenon, would you accept that this would undermine the premise that mean surface atmospheric temperatures during the latter part of the 20th Century were unprecedented?
There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia. For it to be global in extent the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern Hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.
Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today (based on an equivalent coverage over the NH and SH) then obviously the late-20th century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm that today, then current warmth would be unprecedented. We know from the instrumental temperature record that the two hemispheres do not always follow one another. We cannot, therefore, make the assumption that temperatures in the global average will be similar to those in the northern hemisphere.
H - If you agree that there were similar periods of warming since 1850 to the current period, and that the MWP is under debate, what factors convince you that recent warming has been largely man-made?
The fact that we can’t explain the warming from the 1950s by solar and volcanic forcing - see my answer to your question D.
I - Would it be reasonable looking at the same scientific evidence to take the view that recent warming is not predominantly manmade?
No - see again my answer to D.
J - Are there lessons to be learned for society or scientists about the way we see uncertainty and risk?
Yes - as stated by Sir John Beddington - the government chief scientist. And this doesn’t just apply to climate science.
K - How much faith do you have - and should we have - in the Yamal tree ring data from Siberia? Should we trust the science behind the palaeoclimate record?
First, we would all accept that palaeoclimatic data are considerably less certain than the instrumental data. However, we must use what data are available in order to look at the last 1,000 years. I believe that our current interpretation of the Yamal tree-ring data in Siberia is sound. Yamal is just one series that enters some of the millennial long reconstructions that are available. My colleague Keith Briffa has responded to suggestions that there is something amiss with the Yamal tree-ring data. Here is his response.
L - Can you confirm that the IPCC rules were changed so lead authors could add references to any scientific paper which did not meet the 16 December 2005 deadline but was in press on 24 July 2006, so long as it was published in 2006? If this is the case, who made the decision and why?
No answer. Question should be put to IPCC.
M - What advice did you seek in handling FOI requests?
The university’s policy and guidelines on FOI and the Environmental Information Regulations are on our website and the information policy and compliance manager (IPCM) takes responsibility for co-ordinating responses to requests within that framework. We also have colleagues in each unit and faculty who are trained in FOI to help in gathering information and assessing any possible exceptions or exemptions. I worked with those colleagues and the IPCM to handle the requests with responses going from the IPCM. He also liaises with the Information Commissioner’s Office where necessary and did so on several occasions in relation to requests made to CRU. Where appropriate he also consulted with other colleagues in the university on specific issues.
N - When scientists say “the debate on climate change is over”, what exactly do they mean - and what don’t they mean?
It would be supposition on my behalf to know whether all scientists who say the debate is over are saying that for the same reason. I don’t believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well.
O - Can you tell us about your working life over the past decades in climate science. Paint a picture about the debate with your allies and scientific rivals etc.
I have been at CRU since November 1976. Up until 1994, my working life was almost totally in research. Since 1994, I have become more involved in teaching and student supervision both at the postgraduate and undergraduate level. I became a Professor in 1998 and the director of the Climatic Research Unit in 2004 (I was joint director from 1998). I am most well known for being involved in the publication of a series of papers (from 1982 to 2006) that have developed a gridded dataset of land-based temperature records. These are only a part of the work I do, as I have been involved in about 270 peer-reviewed publications on many different aspects of climate research. Over the years at scientific meetings, I’ve met many people and had numerous discussions with them. I work with a number of different groups of people on different subjects, and some of these groups come together to undertake collaborative pieces of work. We have lively debates about the work we’re doing together.
P - The “Climategate” stolen emails were published in November. How has your life been since then?
My life has been awful since that time, but I have discussed this once (in the Sunday Times) and have no wish to go over it again. I am trying to continue my research and supervise the CRU staff and students who I am responsible for.
Q - Let’s talk about the e-mails now: In the e-mails you refer to a “trick” which your critics say suggests you conspired to trick the public? You also mentioned “hiding the decline” (in temperatures). Why did you say these things?
This remark has nothing to do with any “decline” in observed instrumental temperatures. The remark referred to a well-known observation, in a particular set of tree-ring data, that I had used in a figure to represent large-scale summer temperature changes over the last 600 years. The phrase ‘hide the decline’ was shorthand for providing a composite representation of long-term temperature changes made up of recent instrumental data and earlier tree-ring based evidence, where it was absolutely necessary to remove the incorrect impression given by the tree rings that temperatures between about 1960 and 1999 (when the email was written) were not rising, as our instrumental data clearly showed they were. This “divergence” is well known in the tree-ring literature and “trick” did not refer to any intention to deceive - but rather “a convenient way of achieving something”, in this case joining the earlier valid part of the tree-ring record with the recent, more reliable instrumental record.
I was justified in curtailing the tree-ring reconstruction in the mid-20th Century because these particular data were not valid after that time - an issue which was later directly discussed in the 2007 IPCC AR4 Report. The misinterpretation of the remark stems from its being quoted out of context. The 1999 WMO report wanted just the three curves, without the split between the proxy part of the reconstruction and the last few years of instrumental data that brought the series up to the end of 1999. Only one of the three curves was based solely on tree-ring data. The e-mail was sent to a few colleagues pointing out their data was being used in the WMO Annual Statement in 1999. I was pointing out to them how the lines were physically drawn. This e-mail was not written for a general audience. If it had been I would have explained what I had done in much more detail.
R - Why did you ask a colleague to delete all e-mails relating to the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC?
This was an e-mail sent out of frustration at one FOI request that was asking for the e-mail correspondence between the lead authors on chapter six of the Working Group One Report of the IPCC. This is one of the issues which the Independent Review will look at.
S - The e-mails suggest you were trying to subvert the process of peer review and to influence editors in their decisions about which papers to publish. Do you accept that?
I do not accept that I was trying to subvert the peer-review process and unfairly influence editors in their decisions. I undertook all the reviews I made in good faith and sent them back to the editors. In some e-mails I questioned the peer-review process with respect to what I believed were poor papers that had appeared. Isn’t this called freedom of speech? On some occasions I joined with others to submit a response to some of these papers. Since the beginning of 2005 I have reviewed 43 papers. I take my reviewing seriously and in 2006 I was given an editor’s award from Geophysical Research Letters for conscientious and constructive reviewing.
T - Where do you draw the line on the handling of data? What is at odds with acceptable scientific practice? Do you accept that you crossed the line?
No answer. Matter for the independent review.
U - Now, on to the fallout from “Climategate”, as it has become known. You had a leading role in a part of the IPCC, Working Group I. Do you accept that credibility in the IPCC has been damaged - partly as a result of your actions? Does the IPCC need reform to gain public trust?
Some have said that the credibility in the IPCC has been damaged, partly due to the misleading and selective release of particular e-mails. I wish people would spend as much time reading my scientific papers as they do reading my e-mails. The IPCC does need to reassure people about the quality of its assessments.
V - If you have confidence in your science why didn’t you come out fighting like the UK government’s drugs adviser David Nutt when he was criticised?
No answer.
W - Finally, a personal question: Do you expect to return as director of the Climatic Research Unit? What is next for you?
No answer.
See an SPPI post on this Most Important Interview here.
See the Indur Golkany take on this momentous mement on WUWT here.
By Suzanne Goldenberg, UK Guardian
Carbon dioxide is “essentially harmless” to human beings and good for plants. So now will you stop worrying about global warming?
Utah’s House of Representatives apparently has at least. Officially the most Republican state in America, its political masters have adopted a resolution condemning “climate alarmists”, and disputing any scientific basis for global warming.
The measure, which passed by 56-17, has no legal force, though it was predictably claimed by climate change sceptics as a great victory in the wake of the controversy caused by a mistake over Himalayan glaciers in the UN’s landmark report on global warming.
But it does offer a view of state politicians’ concerns in Utah which is a major oil and coal producing state.
The original version of the bill dismissed climate science as a “well organised and ongoing effort to manipulate and incorporate “tricks” related to global temperature data in order to produce a global warming outcome”. It accused those seeking action on climate change of riding a “gravy train” and their efforts would “ultimately lock billions of human beings into long-term poverty”.
In the heat of the debate, the representative Mike Noel said environmentalists were part of a vast conspiracy to destroy the American way of life and control world population through forced sterilisation and abortion.
By the time the final version of the bill came to a vote, cooler heats apparently prevailed. The bill dropped the word “conspiracy”, and described climate science as “questionable” rather than “flawed”.
However, it insisted – against all evidence – that the hockey stick graph of changing temperatures was discredited. It also called on the federal government’s Environmental Protection Agency to order an immediate halt in its moves to regulate greenhouse gas emissions “until a full and independent investigation of climate data and global warming science can be substantiated”.
As Noel explained: “Sometimes ... we need to have the courage to do nothing.”
Read more here.
Predictably, environmental professors at BYU and the University of Utah sent letters denouncing the action fearing that would endanger the grant gravy train they have been riding at our expense in recent years. To which we reply - reality has set in fellows. Find another this time honest job.