Courtesy Alan Caruba, enlarged here.

SPPI Blog reprint of No Tricks Zone story

Not only does this show total desperation by the AGW crowd, but exposes again the media’s complete collapse.

The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the German media are now in full panic mode. They can no longer get their stories straight.

Desperate to stem the flood of doubt now sweeping Germany, as the country is gripped by its harshest December in 100 years, including record snowfalls in Potsdam, the hyper-alarmist PIK and the German media are now throwing all they’ve got to explain away the embarrassing cold.

For years they preached endlessly that Germany would be experiencing balmy, southern European-type winters. Snow indeed had been relegated to the history books. The tables have since turned.

Everybody had predicted a brutal winter

Back in late summer and fall, meteorologists like Piers Corbyn, Joe Bastardi, and other German private forecasters, were all predicting cold winters ahead. Even Russian and Polish scientists had forecast the possibility of the harshest winter in a 1000 years. But the PIK and Met Office climatologists scoffed. The Met Office in England even went so far as to forecast a mild and wet winter, again.

So far, Scandinavia, the United Kingdom and Germany have experienced one of the worst Decembers on record, if not the worst.

PIK suddenly sees the writing on the wall

By early November even the climate scientists at the notoriously dogmatic PIK eventually recognized the writing on the wall, and so scrambled to fabricate a cartoonish “new study” that suddenly predicted cold winters would be likely for Europe, and claimed it was consistent with global warming. Their models had just uncovered it.

The media blitz - conflicting stories

The heavy snows and extreme cold hit as expected. The public was caught off guard and demanded an explanation. And so the propaganda machinery switched into high gear. FOCUS online, two days ago on Tuesday, had the title Colder Winters Because of Global Warming. Der Spiegel and other major news outlets, along with radio and TV, all joined in spreading the PIK Soviet-like propaganda - all reporting this sudden new discovery by PIK. Focus wrote:

Global warming could bring Europe colder winters. This is the finding of study conducted by climatologists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. In a computer model, they calculated how the disappearance of sea ice in the Barents and Kara Seas influenced the climate in the northern continental regions. If much ice melts north of Norway and Russia, as it did in the icy winter of 2005/06, then the exposed water releases heat into the Arctic air and thus heats the lower atmospheric layers. As a result, large-scale changes in air currents could occur so that polar winds make their way to Europe and North Asia, whereby the probability of cold winters triples.”

Emphasis added. They aren’t sure amd are simply floating this out. The study’s lead author Vladimir Petuchov then adds a line, which I think will become infamous down the road:

Hard winters do not refute global warming, instead they more so confirm it.”

So, according to their latest climate models, global warming will lead to colder European winters. The probability of the such is 3 times higher. Now enters Stefan Rahmstorf.

No no...stop! Warming leads to warmer colder winters!

Meanwhile Stefan Rahmstorf is watching the back door. No matter what happens, they’ll all be able to say “We were right”. Also on Tuesday, the online Die Welt quotes Rahmstorf, also from the PIK, in an article titled: Hard Winter Not a Sign of Climate Change. (Petuchov to the contrary said that it was).

“We will certainly have to anticipate milder winters rather than cold ones.”

Die Welt then adds:

“PIK scientist Prof. Stephan Rahmstorf also points out that the “cold’ winters have gotten warmer.”

Stop right here. These guys can’t even get their stories straight! One PIK scientist says we’ll get warmer winters, while the other one says we’ll get colder ones. Well, which is it? Rahmstorf seems to be saying we’ll get colder winters that will be warmer. Oh, now I get it...global warming will now lead to warmer colder winters!

It was all recently discovered by their climate models

Dr. Peter Werner, also of the PIK, said on NDR Radio (also on Tuesday) that their climate models just recently uncovered the Kara Sea phenomena, claiming it’s all consistent with man-made climate change.

Tuesday was a busy press release day for the alarmists in Potsdam. It also appears to have been a very chaotic one too.

Conclusion

So what can we conclude from all this?  Jared Olar of Echo-Pilot.com here says it best:

The natural sciences have terms for that kind of hypothesis. ‘Unfalsifiable’ is one of them. ‘Unscientific’ is another. An idea may be true, but if it is incapable of being ‘falsified’ or proven wrong, then whatever else that idea is, it certainly isn’t science.” Read more here.

By Viv Forbes, Carbon Sense Coalition

One of the fastest growing industries in the world is based on a pyramid of frauds and its inevitable collapse will be worse than the sub-prime crash.

The Global Warming Industry is now fed by billions of dollars from western taxpayers and consumers.  It is based on the unproven and now discredited claim that man’s production of carbon dioxide causes dangerous global warming.

The basic fraud is this:

There is no evidence that carbon dioxide controls world temperature - just a theory and the manipulated results from a handful of giant computer models that very few people have checked or understand.

But there is clear evidence from historical records of atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature that carbon dioxide does not control temperature. Rather the reverse - as solar or volcanic heat warms the oceans, the waters expel carbon dioxide. Global warming causes an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, not the reverse.

Moreover, every day provides more evidence that current temperatures are not unusually high. Over the past 2000 years there have been two previous eras of warming ("the golden ages") separated by two mini ice ages ("the dark ages"). Both the Roman Warming and the Medieval Warming were warmer than today and there was no human industry causing that warming.

The next fraud, invoked as the first fraud started to falter, is the claim that carbon dioxide is a pollutant in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is the food for all plants and thus the food source for all life on earth. It is not poisonous at any level likely to be experienced in the atmosphere and there is clear evidence that more carbon dioxide makes plants grow faster and bigger, and makes them more tolerant of drought, heat and salinity. Current levels are below those optimal for life.

A related scientific fraud is the claim that grazing animals increase atmospheric carbon. Any competent biologist can debunk this fraud by explaining the carbon food cycle.

Built on these frauds are the fraud-riddled carbon credit and carbon trading empires. The revelations of massive fraud in European carbon credits and the collapse of carbon trading on the Chicago Climate Exchange are harbingers of crises yet to surface. Carbon credits have no intrinsic value – they are dependent on political support, and this will always evaporate in time.

The next level of fraud is the alternate energy industry. Despite decades of subsidies and tax breaks the wind/solar power industry cannot survive unless the handouts continue, and their coal competitors are taxed heavily. To call these activities “industries” is a fraud – they are corporate mendicants.

Finally, those who waste millions on projects designed to prove the feasibility of burying carbon dioxide are committing a fraud on taxpayers and shareholders. There are no benefits of burying atmospheric plant food from any source. With zero benefits and huge costs CCS can never be “economic” and it is fraudulent to pretend it can ever be otherwise.

The global warming industry is a huge pyramid of financial and political fraud resting on a quasi-scientific foundation of quicksand.

Read more and see relevant links in this PDF.
Icecap Note: Lets make 2011 the year we destroy this monster and expose the frauds like those quoted in the misguided story below. We must work hard to communicate the truth as you can see the alarmists are swinging back and plan another assault to protect their agenda and enormous financial gains. One of the arguments they will use and which will be reported unquestioned in the mainstream media is that we are a handful of people who are funded by big oil. That is patently false. The alarmists have benefited hugely from oil money - Climategate revealed the Hadley Center received $23 million from oil and alternative energy companies, big bad Exxon gave $100 million to Stanford and BP $500 million to UC Berkeley. In all our government has provided $79B, yes billion to the build up the global warming ‘industry’ the past 20 years and support its political and financial agendas. I have spoken to many big name scientists who used to get funding for their work, but since they have taken a stand against AGW or even just challenged one aspect of it, their funding has been cut off, despite prolific past peer review success. Please help us by donating to Icecap, buying books or items posted or being active in your community. If you are interested in getting involved, please feel free to contact me at jsdaleo@yahoo.com. Merry Christmas from the Icecap staff.

By Lauren Morello, E&E reporter

Climate science isn’t just about carbon dioxide anymore.

An increasing number of scientists who spend their days crunching numbers, running computer models or collecting samples are looking to develop another skill: transforming themselves into “deadly communications ninjas of climate science.”

That was evident last week at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting in San Francisco, which included a special emphasis this year on the getting the word out on climate change—and getting ahead of climate skeptics who dismiss the idea that the climate is changing and human activities are driving the shift.

At one session, journalist Chris Mooney exhorted more than 200 scientists packed into a stuffy conference room to commence their “ninja training.” Their model? According to Mooney, it’s the “highly trained, well-paid, talented communicators who are committed to winning the issue in the media in a way scientists aren’t willing to yet”—in other words, the skeptics.

Lost in Translation

Consultant Susan Joy Hassol specializes in helping researchers talk about their findings in plain English. She’s helped scientists write several major U.S. and international climate reports.

Along the way, she’s compiled a list of more than 100 terms that mean one thing to scientists and something very different to the man on the street. Many of the examples on the list make scientists chuckle, Hassol says, but there’s another common reaction: “The scientists do see themselves in it.”

He and other experts laid out the ground rules: Don’t expect to convince everyone that you’re right. Do expect to spend less time in the lab and more time dealing with questions from journalists, the public and lawmakers. And don’t be surprised by an uptick in harsh or just plain nasty e-mails from critics.

Take the examples offered by Michael Oppenheimer, who directs the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at Princeton University. His lecture on scientists’ role in public policy included a smattering of the messages he’s received. One began with this greeting: “First of all, I must say you look like Bozo the clown.” Another, with the subject line “Commie maggot,” read: “Commie maggot, die slow, die hard.”

“Those are the nice ones,” Oppenheimer said, in jest.

But the tone linking many of the talks and workshops in San Francisco wasn’t self-pity. It was tough love, mixed with practical advice on speaking plain English (see table).

‘Calm the tone of the debate’

“Charlie Brown just keeps coming back trying to kick the football,” said Walt Meier, a research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. “He doesn’t punch out Lucy. He just keeps trying to kick the ball. I think that’s what we need to do.”

Meier believes that scientists often err by refusing to engage those who don’t agree with them.

“From a scientist’s perspective, the sense is, ‘We’re the experts. You guys don’t have an understanding of the details of science, so why should you be put on equal footing?’” he said. “But a lot of people [who disagree with mainstream climate science] are very passionate and intelligent—and when they get ignored, the sense is, whether or not it’s true, ‘the scientists think we’re idiots.’”

Meier now spends some of his free time responding to blog posts that are critical of NSIDC data or other aspects of climate science. While it might not always change minds, “I think it does help calm the tone of the debate,” he said. “And it can stir up good questions.”

Climate scientist Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University also counseled his colleagues not to shy away from critics, drawing on lessons he’s learned defending himself against sustained attacks on his work from skeptics, including congressional Republicans and Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R).

After the release last fall of e-mails stolen from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, for example, Mann published an op-ed in The Washington Post rebutting claims that the messages undermined the fundamental conclusions of climate science. He credits that piece, in part, for spurring an editorial echoing that view in the journal Nature.

“When scientists fight back, there may be others who are watching who are willing to take a stronger stance,” he said.

That doesn’t mean that reaching out to the public is a natural fit for researchers who may feel uncomfortable translating their work for laypeople or concerned that their colleagues will perceive them as hogging the limelight. There’s also no guarantee that such efforts will sway public opinion.

Recent polls offer conflicting portraits of how climate change is perceived by the general public.

The Pew Research Center for People and the Press released results last year that showed a 14-point drop between 2008 and 2009 in the number of Americans who believe there is “solid evidence for global warming,” from 71 to 57 percent. That number rose slightly this year, to 59 percent, but don’t mistake that for a rebound, said Pew’s director of survey research, Scott Keeter.

Dealing with the partisan split

Pew’s polling also shows deep splits on climate between Republicans—who tend to doubt climate change is real or believe that, if it’s real, human activities aren’t driving it—and Democrats—who tend to believe human activities are warming the planet.

“I think if I were a scientist, I’d say, ‘We need to do good work to figure out how to deal with global warming—but we also need to figure out how to communicate better with the public,’” Keeter said.

Meanwhile, Stanford University’s Jon Krosnick has arrived at a very different conclusion. His surveys show “large, and sometimes huge, majorities” of Americans who believe that humans are influencing the climate and the government should act to limit warming.

In August, for example, Krosnick reported that more than 70 percent of Americans in Florida, Maine and Massachusetts say they support government limits on greenhouse gases and think a rise in the world’s temperature is caused “mostly or partly” by human activity—results that mimic conclusions of national surveys he’s conducted.

“There’s a lot of worry, a lot of handwringing, a lot of soul-searching going on among the natural science community saying, ‘We are failing. We need to find a better way to communicate [with the public],’” Krosnick said. “You can imagine that these folks have something to offer, but I think it’s a mistake to say they’ve been failing.”

Scientists would do better to focus their outreach on lawmakers rather than the general public, he said.

“What I’m talking about is what leads a legislator to vote for a bill, to co-sponsor a bill,” he said. “That’s a whole set of issues I just don’t hear the natural science community thinking about or talking about.”

See post here.