Joe's Blog

No Rest For Weather Weary: Expect More Extremes After Oklahoma Tornado

2013-05-22T18:00:00-05:00

Weatherbell Analytics on Forbes

After a slow start to severe weather season, Monday’s devastating tornado that hit Oklahoma reminds us how costly and destructive the change of seasons can be in the United States. Following one of the coldest March/April stretches in several decades, which caught most of the energy market by surprise, April and the first half of May produced significantly fewer tornadoes than normal. The cold air that overwhelmed the country in March and April resulted in huge natural gas withdrawals, drove prices up some 30% and served as the mitigating factor for thunderstorm development.

The March global temperature anomaly shows severe cold stretching from Alaska to Florida, as seen below.

Enlarged

As we progressed through May however, warm/moist air from the Gulf of Mexico has finally begun to surge north, creating boundaries between air masses with vastly different characteristics. More tornadoes occur in the U.S. than any other place on earth as a result of this classic setup.

A deep low-pressure system centered over the Dakotas draped a strong cold-front through the plains pulling extremely moist and unstable air from the Gulf of Mexico.

CAPE (Convective Available Potential Energy), a metric of thunderstorm potential, saw extreme values ahead of the frontal boundary especially over Oklahoma during Monday’s tornado outbreak.

Enlarged

Another main ingredient for tornadogenesis was a strong upper-level jet streak from the southwest, which meant turning winds with height or vertical shear. So far during the spring, Gulf of Mexico moisture and favorable jet stream configurations were almost entirely absent, instead replaced with a cold, persistent northwesterly flow from snowcovered Canada.

Enlarged

The result was was explosive supercell thunderstorm development, as seen in the animation below.

Damage from Monday’s severe weather outbreak is already being estimated to approach $2 billion. With more severe weather on the way, it is inevitable that we will see more damage and life-threatening situations. But on the heels of devastation like this week’s tornado, it is also important to remember that weather like this has always occurred and the current trend is similar to the climate cycle of the 1950s, with a cold Pacific and warm Atlantic. However, with an expanding population and greater suburban and rural development, more people and structures are in the path of deadly storms in the US than in the past.

It is critical to always be alert to the potential of severe weather. Businesses with enterprise alerting systems, which warn decision makers of certain weather events (ex. tornado watch or blizzard warning), can take action to protect physical assets and human life. Alerting systems can also be used by businesses to direct operations to limit financial hardship and in some cases, garner financial profit by avoiding shutdowns or outages.

It doesn’t look like hurricane season is going to provide a respite from extreme weather. Joe Bastardi has warned for years that we would enter a period of climactic hardship as a result of the cold PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) and warm AMO (Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation). Similar to the 1950s, the United States should experience heightened risk for landfalling hurricanes and higher likelihood of summer heat/drought. We have experienced tremendous heat and drought the last several years. Our summer forecasts calls for the heat to be less of an issue this year, as it should be centered over the Rockies and Texas. We expect a more normal temperature/precipitation profile for the Eastern half of the United States. However, tropical cyclone development should be above normal this year.

We expect an above normal ACE (Accumulated Cyclone Energy), a more meaningful measure of the total energy of tropical systems. The Atlantic sea surface temperature (SST) profile is similar to 2005, which was the most active Atlantic tropical season on record. The water temperatures in the deep tropics are substantially above normal, which should provide extra “fuel” for tropical cyclone development. With no sign of an El Nino, there will be little in the way of upper air shear to tear apart any storms that may form. And similar to the 1950′s, the overall climactic pattern should steer the storms towards the US coastline. Our official forecast can be seen in the chart below. This year’s activity will have far reaching impacts across the energy and insurance markets.

Enlarged

ICECAP NOTE: While the positive AMO (warm Atlantic) and negative PDO (cold Pacific) leads to enhanced Atlantic activty and landfall threat for the east, the cold Pacific (negative PDO) leads to more intense (E3-E5) tornadoes. Come join us at Weatherbell.com for more.

Enlarged

Protect the Poor, Prevent Prostitution: Don’t Fight Global Warming!

2013-05-22T16:10:00-05:00

E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation

One doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee of (wouldn’t you know it?) California, six other congresswomen (D-CA/CA/USVI/NY/MN/IL), and five congressmen (D-MN/GA/AZ/CA/NY) have introduced House Congressional Resolution 36, calling America to fight “climate change,” aka global warming (of which there’s been none for over 16 years now), to prevent women from becoming prostitutes.

No, your eyes didn’t fool you. The resolution claims that poor women are “vulnerable to situations such as sex work, transactional sex, and early marriage that put them at risk for HIV, STIs, unplanned pregnancy, and poor reproductive health.” “Sex work” and “transactional sex” are euphemisms for prostitution.

Ignore in passing that it’s not “sex work” and “transactional sex” per se but the associated risks they bring that bother the resolution’s sponsors. I guess the prostitution would be okay with them if it just weren’t for those nasty side effects.

The irony of the resolution comes from a fact hidden in plain sight: According to the “the world’s most authoritative scientific effort to understand and address changes in the Earth’s climate,” the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), poverty will shrink more with global warming than without it, not just for the wealthy West but also for the developing Rest.

Why? Because IPCC’s warming scenarios are based on its economic forecasts. More economic growth, according to its models, causes more warming; less growth, less warming.

And we’re not talking about tiny changes at the margin - lifting people from abject poverty to slightly more tolerable poverty. We’re talking about lifting people from grinding, life-shortening poverty into a standard of living that meets or surpasses that of today’s industrialized countries.

Surprised? Not if you’ve been following IPCC Working Group III, which studies warming’s impacts, or the Stern Report, a British government effort to forecast economic impact of warming through this century. (Neither IPCC nor Stern, by the way, is known for understating the risks from global warming.)

Let’s put some hard numbers to the discussion.

IPCC offers various scenarios for warming, each based on a scenario for economic development. Under its coolest “B1,” according to which the world keeps global warming down to 3.8F by 2100 after subtracting losses caused by the warming, developing nations’ gross domestic product (GDP) per capita rises from $900 in 1990 to $39,400 in 2100. Under its warmest scenario, “A1F1,” with high economic growth depending on lots of fossil fuel use and consequently lots of carbon dioxide emissions, the world warms by 7.2F by 2100 and developing nations� GDP per capita rises, after subtracting for losses from warming, to $61,500, which is about one-fourth higher than America’s today.

Economist Indur Goklany, who has been studying the economic effects of both global warming and climate policy for over two decades, lays out all the likely scenarios in “Is Climate Change the Number One Threat to Humanity?” in the peer-reviewed journal Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change. One figure, reproduced here, sums up the story.

Enlarged

“Net GDP per capita, 1990-2200, after accounting for the upper bound estimates of losses due to global warming for four major IPCC emission and climate scenarios. For 2100 and 2200, the scenarios are arranged from the warmest (A1FI) on the left to the coolest (B1) on the right. The average global temperature increase from 1990 to 2085 for the scenarios are as follows: 4 C for AIFI, 3.3 C for A2, 2.4 C for B2, and 2.1 C for B1. For context, in 2006, GDP per capita for industrialized countries was $19,300; the United States, $30,100; and developing countries, $1,500.” Source: Goklany, “Is Climate Change the Number One Threat to Humanity?” pre-publication draft.

So, if poverty drives women into prostitution, and if Congresswoman Lee and her colleagues don’t want that result, they should submit an entirely different resolution: “Protect the Poor, Prevent Prostitution: Don’t Fight Global Warming!”

E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., is founder and national spokesman of The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.

E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation

One doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Why? Because IPCC’s warming scenarios are based on its economic forecasts. More economic growth, according to its models, causes more warming; less growth, less warming.

Let’s put some hard numbers to the discussion.

IPCC offers various scenarios for warming, each based on a scenario for economic development. Under its coolest - “B1,” according to which the world keeps global warming down to 3.8F by 2100 after subtracting losses caused by the warming, developing nations’ gross domestic product (GDP) per capita rises from $900 in 1990 to $39,400 in 2100. Under its warmest scenario, “A1F1,” with high economic growth depending on lots of fossil fuel use and consequently lots of carbon dioxide emissions, the world warms by 7.2F by 2100 and developing nations� GDP per capita rises, after subtracting for losses from warming, to $61,500, which is about one-fourth higher than America’s today.

Enlarged

In 1975 Deadly Tornadoes Based on Global Cooling

2013-05-21T19:31:00-05:00

The tragic deaths in Oklahoma will be used be Global Warming attacks as prima facie evidence that Global Warming is real and the government needs to do something about it. That will mean, of course, a loss of freedoms and more taxes to pay.

History and facts can be irritating to people who have an agenda to feed. These agenda pushers feed on ignorance. The less people know, the easier they are to control.
In 1975, an article was published that blamed Global Cooling for weird and destructive weather.

“There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production � with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

“The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April [1974], in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

“To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century
of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”

The last paragraph of the article is predictable. The government was called on to do something. One proposal was to melt the Arctic ice cap:

“Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.”

From the April 28, 1975 issue of NEWSWEEK magazine.

US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse From Rhode Island’s AGW Rant. Boxer chimes in.

2013-05-21T15:22:00-05:00

Icecap Note: He is not alone. Today, Senator Boxer rang the bell. Morano Statement: “U.S. Senators Boxer and Whitehouse and other global warming activists have descended into buffoonery trying to exploit a natural disaster in Oklahoma. Have you no sense of decency, Senators? At long last, have you left no sense of decency or understanding of science?”

MA Senate wannabe Deadwood Markey and NH Senator Shaheen have been pushing the AGW green (watermelon - green on the outside red on the inside). if they get their way, energy prices will skyrocket and brownouts and blackouts will become common. And $4 gasoline and heating oil will seem like the ‘good old days’. Europe bought the enviro agenda and it almost destroyed their economy with unemployment in Spain rising to 27% and tens of thousands dying all across Europe from 5 brutally cold winters while energy prices rose to levels that made it impossible for them to pay for food and energy. All for the idea that CO2 is behind every extreme weather event even though temperatures have not risen and sea level rises have slowed not accelerated. Scientists in Europe are said to be shocked or dumbfounded that the climate is not following their models. The enviros are in retreat in Europe but on the rise in the US where the demagogue party assumes you have not heard about the failures in Europe or that the Obama green agenda has been a dismal failure at job creation despite the huge subsidies (just as we saw in Europe) has adopted the idea to blame severe weather - explainable entirely by natural cycles - on ‘carbon pollution’.

US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse From Rhode Island Provides Erroneous Information To American Public in Global Warming Rant
Anthony Watts, WattsUpWithThat

First, I’m sure I speak for everyone at WUWT (and Icecap) when I say that our hearts go out to all the families in Oklahoma affected by the weather tragedy there today.

In the video here US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse states that:

“When cyclones tear up Oklahoma and hurricanes swamp Alabama and wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, the rest of the country, for billions of dollars to recover. And the damage that your polluters and deniers are doing doesn’t just hit Oklahoma and Alabama and Texas.”

California’s anti-coal agenda is adverse to human health and welfare

2013-05-20T23:44:00-05:00

“Excessive energy costs have helped obliterate the state’s manufacturing base” Wall Street Journal, 03/ 29/ 2013

Coal based energy is a key factor in global socio-economic development, transforming agrarian societies to modern industrial ones. This societal transformation, driven by the accumulation of income and wealth, eliminates many contagious diseases, reduces child mortality, and lengthens adult life expectancy. Throughout the world, rapid emergence from poverty has proceeded as countries develop electricity networks based on coal. These systems are capable of achieving massive economies of scale that provide large amounts of power at low cost, stimulating technological change, spurring productivity growth and raising living standards. It is no coincidence that coal provides over 40% of the world’s electricity. Consumers prefer low-cost and reliable power. Proponents of so-called “carbon-free” energy (e.g. wind) argue that their low market shares are the result of market distortions, such as the absence of a market price for environmental externalities. The fundamental reason for these low market shares, however, is that such intermittent sources are considerably more expensive than coal. To promote inherently uncompetitive technologies, some governments have resorted to subsidies and production mandates. These policies not only increase government spending but also impose hidden efficiency costs on the economy that silently erode our standard of living. Consumers end up paying more for energy and getting less. Spending that once went for education and housing is diverted to energy expenditures. Manufacturers also pay more for energy and they pass these higher costs on to consumers who end up paying even more for goods and services. Consumers are then forced to cut back again. The result is a compounding of efficiency losses throughout the entire economy.

California is the poster child of how an extreme anti-coal agenda is adverse to human health and welfare. California has disdained the nation’s most affordable and reliable source of electric power in favor of unreliable and expensive non-dispatchable sources such as wind and solar. Not surprisingly, California’s baseload electricity supply is now at risk and costs are dramatically on the rise. The urban legend that California’s energy policies are somehow superior to those of other states is being unmasked as the social and economic predicament of the state’s families and businesses becomes ever more apparent.

The Rhetoric

The Reality of California

“Energy policies in the state of California are very advanced compared to the rest of the nation,” California Council on Science and Technology, 2012

THE FACTS

Electric rates 40% above the national average

12 million people eligible for LIHEAP

700,000 manufacturing jobs lost since 2000

Budget deficit of $25 billion in 2011

Negative net worth of $127 billion in 2013

More children in poverty than Nebraska has people

Electricity Prices: California vs. the U.S. (Enlarged)

“...(an) important factor that is pushing manufacturing jobs out of California is the rising cost of electricity, caused by the states ill-conceived energy policies… What is already unreasonable will only become more so with the new mandates” POWER Magazine

(Enlarged)

Based on a set of speculative computer models and despite rising electricity prices, one of the nation’s highest unemployment levels and severe questions about grid reliability, California has nevertheless has proceeded with AB 32, the so-called “Global Warming Solutions Act”. This cap and trade program seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the end of this decade. that is in just seven years. While the impact of this excessive legislation has yet to be determined, the California Manufacturing and Technology Association has estimated that AB 32 will cost consumers $135 billion by 2020 almost two-and-a-half times the annual funds spent on K12 education. AB 32 will lower the states 2020 GSP by $153 billion a loss of 5.6%. California will have 262,000 fewer jobs in 2020 because of AB 32 and energy expenses for the average family will increase $2,500 per year. AB 32 will reduce state and local tax revenues by over $7.4 billion annually an amount exceeding 10 years of funding for the Children’s Medical Services Program. The energy facts of life are catching up to the “Golden State”.

California�s Electricity Rates in Perspective (Enlarged)

“CPUC has approved nearly every renewable contract filed by the utilities, even when they rate poorly on least-cost, best-fit criteria.” California Division of Ratepayer Advocates

“The “Rate Impact Bomb” is lingering on the horizon”
CPUC Commissioner Michel Florio

California’s Electricity Rates and Manufacturing Jobs (Enlarged)

“Manufacturing jobs provide benefits to workers with higher overall compensation than other sectors, and to the economy through innovation that boosts our nation’s standard of living,” U.S. Department of Commerce, 2012

In a departure from historical reality, California’s political agenda views energy as a social problem. Policymakers are implementing an energy plan that is adverse to human health and welfare. Reliance on untested, unverified and idealized computer models is steadily destroying the future of the state raising rates, driving industry away, increasing unemployment, putting more people into poverty and placing both energy security and reliability at risk. After the deregulation debacle in the mid-90s they should know better. That earlier academic exercise cost consumers hundreds of billions of dollars, destroyed jobs and ousted Gov. Gray Davis through voter recall. In a critique of the state’s latest experimental foray into energy, California’s Independent Oversight Agency the “Little Hoover Commission” concluded the state has not done a legitimate cost-benefit analysis and warned of a “rate impact bomb” by 2016. That’s when consumers will have to start fully paying for the massive array of costly renewable projects the CPUC so cavalierly approved the last few years. And this time, reifying the results of esoteric computerized scenarios is taking an even greater human toll. The impacts of the drastically escalating rates associated with these ill conceived anti-coal policies are real, not hypothetical abstractions. Over 1.7 million Californians are unemployed. And the problem is not going away California is regarded as the worst state in the Union for business a reputation that may haunt for decades:

Best and Worst States for Business 2012

“California’s climate change regulations will discourage energy intensive industries from locating in the state, and existing industry will have an incentive to relocate outside of the state” Boston Consulting Group, 6/21/2012

Californians will pay a heavy price for ignoring our most abundant and affordable energy resource. Clean coal technologies work and are continually evolving. In many other states, and in other parts of the world, emissions have steadily declined, while electricity from coal generation has significantly increased. Rhetoric and political posturing do not produce one kWh of electricity. Clean coal does and California should recognize this fact before it’s too late.

“...millions of Californians could soon experience power outages. As the state derives more of its electricity from renewables, it needs more “peak” gas-fired plants that can ramp up to meet demand when the sun isn’t shining and wind isn’t blowing”. The Wall Street Journal, 03/29/2013

California is the poster child of how an extreme anti-coal agenda is adverse to human health and welfare. California has disdained the nation’s most affordable and reliable source of electric power in favor of unreliable and expensive non-dispatchable sources such as wind and solar. Not surprisingly, California’s baseload electricity supply is now at risk and costs are dramatically on the rise. The urban legend that California’s energy policies are somehow superior to those of other states is being unmasked as the social and economic predicament of the state�s families and businesses becomes ever more apparent.

The Rhetoric

The Reality of California

“Energy policies in the state of California are very advanced compared to the rest of the nation,” California Council on Science and Technology, 2012

THE FACTS

Electric rates 40% above the national average

12 million people eligible for LIHEAP

700,000 manufacturing jobs lost since 2000

Budget deficit of $25 billion in 2011

Negative net worth of $127 billion in 2013

More children in poverty than Nebraska has people

Electricity Prices: California vs. the U.S. (Enlarged)

(Enlarged)

California�s Electricity Rates in Perspective (Enlarged)

California’s Electricity Rates and Manufacturing Jobs (Enlarged)

In a departure from historical reality, California’s political agenda views energy as a social problem. Policymakers are implementing an energy plan that is adverse to human health and welfare. Reliance on untested, unverified and idealized computer models is steadily destroying the future of the state raising rates, driving industry away, increasing unemployment, putting more people into poverty and placing both energy security and reliability at risk. After the deregulation debacle in the mid-90s they should know better. That earlier academic exercise cost consumers hundreds of billions of dollars, destroyed jobs and ousted Gov. Gray Davis through voter recall. In a critique of the state’s latest experimental foray into energy, California’s Independent Oversight Agency the �Little Hoover Commission” concluded the state has not done a legitimate cost-benefit analysis and warned of a “rate impact bomb” by 2016. That’s when consumers will have to start fully paying for the massive array of costly renewable projects the CPUC so cavalierly approved the last few years. And this time, reifying the results of esoteric computerized scenarios is taking an even greater human toll. The impacts of the drastically escalating rates associated with these ill conceived anti-coal policies are real, not hypothetical abstractions. Over 1.7 million Californians are unemployed. And the problem is not going away California is regarded as the worst state in the Union for business a reputation that may haunt for decades:

Best and Worst States for Business 2012

Like the IRS, the EPA plays favorites

2013-05-16T17:40:00-05:00

The Competitive Enterprise Institute announces a Congressional Staff and Media Briefing on EPA’s FOIA Scandals: “Richard Windsor,” Gina McCarthy, and the Abuse of Power with Chris Horner, Author of The Liberal War on Transparency and Senior Fellow, CEI, Monday, May 20th, 3 to 4 PM EDT Senate Dirksen Office Building

EPA’s FOIA Scandals:"Richard Windsor,” Gina McCarthy, and the Abuse of Power

The Obama Administration and in particular the Environmental Protection Agency have stonewalled a number of Freedom of Information Act requests by the Competitive Enterprise Institute that seek to make public more details in the form of public records of the Administration’s global warming agenda, war on coal, carbon tax plans, and other anti-affordable energy policies. In the past two years, CEI has filed a number of lawsuits to force the Obama Administration to comply with the law. Chris Horner will discuss what these FOIAs have discovered so far, including:

1. The use for official business by Administrator Lisa Jackson of an alias e-mail account under the name of “Richard Windsor”

2. The use for official business of private e-mail accounts by high EPA officials, prompting resignations

3. Ongoing attempts to conceal information by heavily redacting documents for impermissible reasons under FOIA, seeking to delay and deny access to information

4. Revelation of uncomfortably close relationships with officers of environmental pressure groups, and admitted efforts to conceal this

5. FOIA fee waiver requests are regularly denied to groups deemed unfriendly to this agenda, particularly CEI (which denials are overturned on appeal with equal regularity), but routinely granted to environmental pressure groups

6. The involvement of Gina McCarthy, Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation for the past four years and nominated to be EPA Administrator, in the Richard Windsor scandal and other attempts to evade federal openness and transparency laws and policies.

Chris Horner

Christopher C. Horner, J.D., is a counsel and senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He is also director of litigation at the American Tradition Institute. Mr. Horner is the author of four books, most recently The Liberal War on Transparency, published in 2012 by Threshold Editions, a division of Simon and Shuster. He has filed many Freedom of Information Act requests to a number of federal agencies during the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama administrations.

-----------

by Anthony Watts
From the WSJ (h/t to Chris Horner)

The Washington Examiner reported Tuesday that the EPA under Ms. Jackson has a history of favoring groups that share the agency’s political agenda. “Conservative groups seeking information from the Environmental Protection Agency have been routinely hindered by fees normally waived for media and watchdog groups, while fees for more than 90 percent of requests from green groups were waived,” according to the report.

Government agencies like the EPA typically waive so-called Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request fees for groups disseminating information for public benefit, but it’s up to the agency to decide whether a fee-waiver is justified. At the EPA, fees were waived for liberal environmental groups like Greenpeace and EarthJustice almost always. Meanwhile, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank, “had its requests denied 93 percent of the time. One request was denied because CEI failed to express its intent to disseminate the information to the general public. The rest were denied because the agency said CEI ‘failed to demonstrate that the release of the information requested significantly increases the public understanding of government operations or activities.’”

This is important because the White House and Democrats have increasingly used regulators at the EPA to advance a green agenda that they can’t get through Congress.

Full story here

Meanwhile Pierre Gosselin writes that in Germany, something similar is going on:

If we ever needed help, it’s now…

We have a powerful Ministry now directing its full might and resources against people only because they have a different opinion. Chilling to say the least.

2. The use for official business of private e-mail accounts by high EPA officials, prompting resignations

3. Ongoing attempts to conceal information by heavily redacting documents for impermissible reasons under FOIA, seeking to delay and deny access to information

4. Revelation of uncomfortably close relationships with officers of environmental pressure groups, and admitted efforts to conceal this

by Anthony Watts
From the WSJ (h/t to Chris Horner)

This is important because the White House and Democrats have increasingly used regulators at the EPA to advance a green agenda that they can’t get through Congress.

Full story here

Meanwhile Pierre Gosselin writes that in Germany, something similar is going on:

If we ever needed help, it’s now…

We have a powerful Ministry now directing its full might and resources against people only because they have a different opinion. Chilling to say the least.

NCDC on April and January to April

2013-05-16T12:10:00-05:00

Climate Highlights - April

The April average temperature for the contiguous U.S. was 49.7F, which was 1.4F below the 20th century average. April 2013 ranked as the 23rd coolest such month on record and marked the coolest April since 1997 when the monthly average temperature for the contiguous U.S. was 48.0F.

Enlarged

The central U.S. was much cooler than average during April. North Dakota had its coldest April on record with a statewide average temperature of 31.0F, 9.9F below average. Six additional states - South Dakota,Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, and Wisconsin - each had a top ten cold April. Below-average temperatures were also present for the Northern and Central Rockies, the Southern Plains, and the Mississippi River Valley.

Near and above-average temperatures were present along the U.S. East Coast and in parts of the West.California had its 12th warmest April on record with a statewide temperature 3.7F above average.

The April average precipitation for the contiguous U.S. was 2.90 inches, 0.47 inch above average, and tied with 1953 as the 19th wettest April on record.

Enlarged

The Northwest, Midwest, and the Southeast were wetter than average. Iowa and Michigan both had their wettest April on record. The Iowa statewide average precipitation total of 6.71 inches was 3.76 inches above average; the Michigan precipitation total of 5.97 inches was 3.29 inches above average. Additionally,Tennessee, Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin each had one of the ten wettest Aprils on record.

The wet conditions in the central U.S. resulted in several rivers in Illinois, Iowa, and Michigan reaching record high levels, with widespread flooding observed. The Mississippi River at St. Louis also reached flood stage after dropping to near-record low levels at the beginning of the year.

Below-average precipitation was observed in the Southwest and Northwest. New Mexico had its 12th driest April, while Connecticut and Rhode Island had their sixth and 11th driest April, respectively.

Alaska was much cooler than average during April, with a statewide average temperature 5.8F below the 1971-2000 average. This was the 7th coldest April in the 96-year period of record for the state, and the coldest April since 1985. The average temperature in Fairbanks was 14.5F below normal and the coldest April on record for the city.

According to the April 30 U.S. Drought Monitor report, 46.9 percent of the contiguous U.S. was experiencing moderate-to-exceptional drought, smaller than the 51.9 percent at the beginning of the month. Drought conditions continued to improve across the Southeast, Midwest, and along the northern and eastern periphery of the core drought areas of the Great Plains. Drought conditions worsened for parts of the Southwest, and drought continued for much of the Great Plains and Mountain West.

Several storms impacted the U.S. bringing record-breaking, late-season snowfall to central United States. According to data from the Rutgers Global Snow Lab, the April snow cover extent for the contiguous U.S. was approximately 480,000 square miles, 209,000 square miles above the 1981-2010 average and the 5thlargest April snow cover extent in the 47-year period of record. However, dismal snowpack continued in parts of the West, with only 18 percent of normal snowpack reported in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

On a local basis, over three times as many record cold highs and lows occurred than record warm highs and lows. Approximately 3,430 record low temperatures and about 4,050 record cool daily high temperatureswere tied or broken. In comparison, approximately 690 record warm daily high temperature records and 1,570 record warm daily low temperatures were tied or broken.

March/April was the coldest since 1996 and 33rd coldest out of 119 years.

Enlarged

Climate Highlights - year-to-date (January - April)

The average temperature for the contiguous U.S. for the year-to-date period was 39.3�F, which was near the long-term average. Near to below-average temperatures were present from the Rockies, through the Plains and into the Ohio Valley. Near to above-average temperatures were observed in the West and the Northeast.

The nationally-averaged precipitation total for the year-to-date period was 8.94 inches, 0.13 inch below average.

Enlarged

Wetter-than-average conditions stretched from the Great Lakes, along the Mississippi River Valley, and into the Southeast. Michigan and Wisconsin each had their wettest January-April, with precipitation totals 5.26 inches and 3.62 inches above average, respectively. Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, and Illinois also had a top ten wettest year-to-date period.

Much of the western and northeastern U.S. was drier than average during January-April. In the West,California had its driest year-to-date with a statewide precipitation total of 3.59 inches, 9.49 inches below average. Oregon, Nevada, and Idaho each had one of their ten driest year-to-date periods. In the Northeast,Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont also had a top ten dry January-April.

The year-to-date USCEI was near-average. Despite the near-average USCEI, the extremes in 1-day precipitation totals and the component that examines the spatial extent of drought were both much above average.

Are wind turbines killing off the whooping crane population?; Goats hired, camels targeted

2013-05-13T11:31:00-05:00

Guest post by Caleb Shaw

I am having trouble getting to the bottom of a serious issue, (or a serious issue for a bird lover like myself.) It may well be that wind turbines are killing endangered birds, and may lead to the extinction of the California Condor and the Whooping Crane.

Because wind turbines involve a great deal of capital, (not merely the big-bucks of fat-cats, but also and especially the political capital surrounding the save-the-world idea of Global Warming,) the bullying of media-warping power politics seems to be involved. You can’t get a straight answer to a simple question.

All I want to know is whether or not the population of whooping crane has fallen by over a hundred, since wind turbines were erected in their flyways.

I think it may well have happened, but because the government would get bad press if such was “a fact,” the facts get muddled. The government is on record as saying wind turbines are good, and has invested huge amounts of taxpayer’s money in erecting them. They will downplay bad news. One way to downplay is to change the way of counting whooping cranes. For 61 years an aerial count was used. Now a new “hierarchical distance sampling” is used, and gives a number with an absurd degree of uncertainty. .

What is the degree of uncertainty? “Plus or minus 61 whooping cranes.” That could be as much as a half of the total population. It is a failure to give an honest questioner an honest answer.

261 would not be good news, but would indicate the population was at least holding steady, however, if you subtract 61 from the positive direction and go 61 in the other direction, you have 139 whooping cranes, which is an environmental disaster.

It also would be a political inconvenience, and a business inconvenience to all fat cats who have invested huge amounts of money into the enormous, towering, and very ugly turbines.

However I always thought true environmentalists didn’t care about what was inconvenient for politicians, and inconvenient for fat cats, and instead cared about what was inconvenient for whooping cranes.

When you can’t even get the data that matters, not even from the Environmental Protection Agency, it starts to look like environmentalists have been bought out by, and have sold out to, fat cats and politicians. I always thought that was the one thing that environmentalists never, ever would do.

I figured environmentalists needed to be warned. Therefore I left the following comment, (actually a sort of letter-to-the-editor,) at the environmentalist website Wind Turbine Syndrome, on the post.

“I have linked to your story in a post at my obscure website. I have also left links to your post when I comment at other websites.

The problem is that environmentalists have overused the sympathy of the public, because some less-than-altruistic environmentalists have raised the alarm, but have done so for reasons that involve political and even business interests. By allowing such people to infiltrate our ranks we have dug a grave for ourselves, because we are now like the little boy who cried wolf. When we raise the alarm, the public rolls their eyes and doesn’t listen.

An example of such a false alarm may well be the “snail darter,” which is a small fish which lives in a California delta. Because California’s climate has included both copious rainfalls and withering droughts, the delta has varied hugely, and the little fish has evolved to cope with tremendous variations. However the environmentalists involved made it sound like the slightest bit of irrigation in America’s richest farmland, (which has the longest growing season,) could wipe the obscure minnow out, by reducing the water in the delta.

While there are good arguments on both sides, the uproar made environmentalists look bad for two reasons. First, it made them look like they cared more for a few hundred minnows than feeding hundreds of thousands of Americans. Second, it made them look like liars, when it turned out that particular minnow had survived horrific historic droughts when the delta was practically dry. Once environmentalists have been made to look bad in this manner, the public is slow to forgive the stain on their reputation.

The whooping crane population was down to around 21 in 1941. It was only due to the work of altruistic environmentalists, who worked hand in hand with Washington DC, that the population bounced back to over 200. It is a triumph, and shows environmentalism at its best.

We need to return to that goodness, but we cannot do so with people who abuse environmentalism in our ranks. We are like a beautiful garden, but our ranks contain some rank weeds.

Some of our members are merely young, and need the guidance of older and wiser members. However others are rather obviously more interested in money, quick profits, and power politics than anything that has to do with keeping nature in balance, and beautiful creatures alive.

None of us much likes to be disagreeable, but we had better disagree with these people, who are actually fakes and phonies. In the most polite manner possible, we need to bring up the truth and demand the facts, and confront them. They are corrupting a beautiful thing, and if we don’t stand up for what environmentalism stands for, we are standing by as a sewer pipe pollutes a beautiful river, but in this case the river is environmentalism itself.

-------------
Shepherd or Shoot Goats in the Name of Climate Change

By Steve Goreham
Originally published in The Washington Times.

O’Hare airport will finally get its goats. The Department of Aviation of the City of Chicago has awarded a contract to a private firm to provide 25 goats to munch vegetation at the city’s airport. These “green lawn mowers” will help reduce carbon dioxide emissions to sustain the planet.

Last fall, when the project was bid, Amy Malick, head of sustainability at the Department of Aviation, commented on the planned use of goats in hard-to-mow areas, “They may have steep slopes, very hard to get to with heavy machinery, and those machines also emit pollution. They’re burning fossil fuel. So as a sustainability initiative we’re looking to bring in animals that do not have emissions associated with them, at least to the same extent that heavy machinery would.”

A shepherd will herd the goats across 120 acres at four different sites on airport property. The 25 fuzzy critters are expected to clear vegetation each day from a square at least sixteen feet on a side.

Chicago is not the first city to employ animals to reduce airport vegetation. Sheep are used at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and goats are used at San Francisco International. Seattle-Tacoma International Airport deployed goats as early as 2008, but stopped because “it was not cost effective.” How can a guy with a lawn mower be as cost effective as a herd of goats?

A single one-way Boeing 747 flight from Chicago to London emits about 200 tons of carbon dioxide, or about 5,000 times the annual emissions from a gasoline-powered lawn mower of a homeowner. It appears that emissions savings from O’Hare goats will be relatively small. But what about methane emissions from the herd?

On the other side of the world, about 10,000 miles from Chicago, the government of Australia has a different solution for global warming. More than a million wild camels, called “feral” camels, roam the outback of Australia. They munch up the foliage and emit methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from both the nose end and the tail end. Each camel produces more than one ton of CO2-equivalent emissions per year. Feral goats are also part of this severe climate problem.

But the enlightened Australian government passed the Carbon Farming Initiative Act in December of 2011. The act calls for “The reduction of methane emissions through the management, in a humane manner, of feral goats, feral deer, feral pigs, or feral camels.” “Management” companies are now flying over the outback, shooting goats and camels from helicopters, and earning carbon credits. Maybe the Aussies should use goats instead of lawn mowers at airports?

So goats are both grazed and shot to reduce those evil carbon dioxide emissions. It’s all part of this mad, mad, mad world of Climatism.

Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the new book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.

Still waiting for spring in Minnesota…ice invades lake homes

2013-05-12T19:35:00-05:00

Even though we all know “weather is not climate,” that rarely stops CAGW’s fiercest proponents, so we might as well have a little fun with it as well. This weekend is the 2013 Minnesota State Fishing Opener. And the joke around these parts is the most important equipment a fisherman needs this year is… an ice auger.

Minnesota, like much of the country (as reported at WUWT here) is currently undergoing its own little ice age with record late season snows (18” in southeastern MN a week ago) and cold, and near record ice out dates on the State’s lakes. Lakes in the southern third of the State saw ice outs approaching new records and many lakes in the northern half of the state are still ice covered today.

“Lake Minnetonka” in the Mpls/St. Paul area finally saw ice out on May 2nd, which easily could have been extended to May 5th or 6th had the 18” snowstorm moved about 40 miles to the West. The Freshwater Society history shows 134 years of ice out dates for Lake Minnetonka, going back to the mid 1800′s. Median ice out for Lake Minnetonka over the last 150+ years is April 14th. Only 3 years 1856, 1857 and 1859 saw later ice out dates than 2013.

Enlarged

The story is more fun as you travel to central and northern Minnesota. Outdoors writer and photographer Ron Hustvedt wote today in a story in the Star Tribune:

In 30-plus years of fishing the mythical Minnesota walleye opener, I can safely say I’ve never seen ice on my favorite lakes this late in the season. It’s been close a few years but never like this and, according to the record books, only a time or two like this in the last century.

The picture above isn’t just a random ice auger shot its real, from earlier today.

Please do not try this at home, these guys intimately knew the area, were well outfitted with life preservers and safety gear, and never ventured into areas more than a few feet deep.

Enlarged

In another story, from Thursday, the Star Tribune’s Doug Smith notes:

Some of Minnesota’s most popular fishing lakes are expected to be iced in on Saturday’s fishing opener, an occurrence not seen in perhaps 60 years. Ice reportedly is still 2 feet thick on some northern lakes, and.... major lakes from Lake Mille Lacs north .... still could be mostly ice-covered Saturday. “There will be substantial ice cover on the northern third of the state,” said Henry Drewes, Department of Natural Resources regional fisheries manager in Bemidji. “It will not be gone by Saturday. This is certainly the most significant late-season ice cover I have seen in my 25 years with the DNR.”

Some great live pictures from MN lake webcams at http://www.mnlakecams.com

Oh, and it was snowing earlier today in Duluth, MN. On May 11th.

And here’s what you really came to see a live, active “glacier”, a moving wall of ice, a ‘little ice age’ right here, right now, in Minnesota today …

Enlarged

In Canada, ice flows from Lake Ochre and other lakes has come ashore and destroyed vacation homes.

Enlarged

Minnesota, like much of the country (as reported at WUWT here) is currently undergoing its own little ice age with record late season snows (18” in southeastern MN a week ago) and cold, and near record ice out dates on the State�s lakes. Lakes in the southern third of the State saw ice outs approaching new records and many lakes in the northern half of the state are still ice covered today.

The story is more fun as you travel to central and northern Minnesota. Outdoors writer and photographer Ron Hustvedt wote today in a story in the Star Tribune:

The picture above isn’t just a random ice auger shot - its real, from earlier today.

Please do not try this at home � these guys intimately knew the area, were well outfitted with life preservers and safety gear, and never ventured into areas more than a few feet deep.

In another story, from Thursday, the Star Tribune’s Doug Smith notes:

Some of Minnesota’s most popular fishing lakes are expected to be iced in on Saturday’s fishing opener - an occurrence not seen in perhaps 60 years. Ice reportedly is still 2 feet thick on some northern lakes, and ... major lakes from Lake Mille Lacs north .... still could be mostly ice-covered Saturday. “There will be substantial ice cover on the northern third of the state,” said Henry Drewes, Department of Natural Resources regional fisheries manager in Bemidji. “It will not be gone by Saturday. This is certainly the most significant late-season ice cover I have seen in my 25 years with the DNR.”

Some great live pictures from MN lake webcams at http://www.mnlakecams.com

Oh, and it was snowing earlier today in Duluth, MN. On May 11th.

And here’s what you really came to see a live, active “glacier”, a moving wall of ice, a ‘little ice age’ right here, right now, in Minnesota today …

In Canada, ice flows from Lake Ochre and other lakes has come ashore and destroyed vacation homes.

Is cooling worse than we thought??

2013-05-11T19:39:00-05:00

Icecap Update: Please see the winter summary by Icecap Meteorologist Art Horn as published on the Energy Tribune.

At Weatherbell.com we try to show people the ‘why’ before the ‘what’. My father taught me that if you are right, then you should have the reason why first, and not excuses for being wrong later. From where I stand, the reasons why we are right are clear. But the barrage of excuses coming from the other side is growing shriller with each passing day. But the idea that people spouting the CO2 idea are being driven from the field in spite of the overwhelming evidence against them is nonsense. When facts don’t matter, it’s not the facts that will force them to quit. This is well beyond science.

Any rational person can see what is going on and can say that in the least there is enough doubt to stop the madness that demonizes those that disagree. In reality, their point has been driven from the field.

What I am doing here is giving you the ‘why’ before the ‘what’. What I’m amazed at is how people can keep seeing things that are opposite of what they claimed would happen 5 years ago, simply change the terminology, and then say the things they say. That kind of mentality is one that does not accept any answer except the one they think it should be. So the fight is not on a level of a normal argument. The arguing is with people who believe they possess the “truth” and that anything short of their “truth” cannot be tolerated.

But we must smile and fight with facts. Debunk, and try not to demean.

In any case the following link will be very helpful in trying to get my point across, and I am going to use mixing ratios to show some of this. See.

Here is why this should be simple. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. So what is the source of energy to the Earth? Answer: the sun. If outgoing radiation equals incoming, then there is no trapping and all this hullabaloo is a moot point. Since that is the case, the game should be over.

However if you want to start confusing the issue, you assign major importance to very minor items, control the language, and then you can control the perception.

The fact is that the Earth has been warming since the very cold period of the 1700s (Little Ice Age). It just so happened sunspots were in the tank, and it was cold. When sunspot activity increased, the Earth responded by getting warmer. Should be simple, right? The link to the oceans in the overall rise that has occurred is obvious in the graph below (from the outstanding site: Climate4you.

Figure 1: CO2 concentration and global temperature.Enlarged

The cumulative effect of the warm AMO and PDO added heat to the atmosphere, so temps rose from the late 1970s to around 2000. After the air absorbed the heat, it leveled off, the PDO flipped, and we started trending down.

Simply using the PDO, as seen in the chart below from Wikipedia, shows an almost direct correlation:

The warm years from the late 1970s to a bit beyond 2000, the latest downturn can be seen as well. The Pacific is much larger than the Atlantic, but the Atlantic turned warm in the mid-1990s so it is still not fully onboard with the cooling. But when it does turn, chances are global temps will respond as one would expect knowing the heat capacity of the ocean is 1000 times that of the atmosphere. This chart alone should cast doubt, if not slay, the CO2 dragon being a major climate factor, if any at all. It’s simply too small to do what these people spouting this agenda-driven idea say it will.

Figure 2: Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). Enlarged

Again the overall rise of the past 200 years is easily explained by sunspots, which is why a lot of people are nervous about cooling. After all, if you are claiming the sun caused the warming, and you take it away, and the oceans flip to their negative phase, and a couple of volcanoes blow to boot, then there is real trouble. Hence the triple crown of cooling, which I showed on national TV 4 years ago when explaining why the cooling would commence, and by 2030 temperatures would return to levels seen in the late 1970s.

As for CO2, the rise may be due in part to a lag that FOLLOWS warming, and doesn’t cause it. Since the 1950s, the only time CO2 was correlated was when the oceans warmed. This is not brain surgery.

There is science and pseudo-science. Science comes up with an idea like the oceans are causing warming, and when they cool, the air cools. Pseudo-science says: well CO2 is adding to this, but how much? IT’S A QUESTION THAT CAN NEVER BE ANSWERED. Does the question then become: Would we already be heading into a mini ice age were it not for CO2 saving us? How do you answer that? Untold amounts of money are being thrown at a question that isn’t even something of consideration.

Now here is the problem. Temps have been dropping as you can see...not a lot, but some. But what should be very disturbing for planners and people looking forward is that the Relative Humidity is dropping. That means the wet bulb has dropped more than the temperatures. So far so good.

Figure 3: 300 mb (top); 600 mb (middle) 1000 mb (bottom). Enlarged” title="Enlarged">Enlarged

Why is the RH dropping? Think about it. A cooling Pacific, especially in the tropics, means less water vapor available to the system. So we get the initial temperature drop off because of the the cooling Pacific, primarily in the tropics, is no longer adding to the warmth of the air. But the RH is dropping too.

Where it’s dry, it does warm up and the large dry land areas do warm in the summer season, until such the entire earth/ocean system adjusts (the AMO flips to cold too). But the drop of RH, seen above in the chart is a big hint!

Notice how at this time, the 1000 mb is lagging. Eventually, though, the transport of moisture from the lagging low levels will cool the mid levels (increased moisture leading to temperatures falling toward the wet bulb), leading to more instability and more cloudiness. Until a balance is reached, the earths temps will cool. Perhaps faster.

A look at the skew T and the mixing ratio relationship to temperature really makes my point about why this is a distortion of temps and not warming. By distortion I mean its obviously warmer in the northern areas, but THE COOLING IN THE TROPICAL AREAS, EVEN THOUGH MUCH SMALLER, CARRIES FAR GREATER WEIGHT TO THE WEATHER AND CLIMATE .

A way to think about it like 2 people that weigh the same, but one may have more mass in one part of the body than the other.

An example of this can be seen when one looks at what it takes to change the mixing ratio 2g/kg at 30c, vs -20C.

Look at how the mixing ratios increase dramatically with higher temps. In other words, suppose we lower the temps 1C at 30C (from Wikipedia chart).

Enlarged

Doing so, we would change the mixing ratio by about 2g/kg. Now how much of a rise at -20C would we need to offset that? At -20C the mixing ratio is about 0.7 g/kg. To move up 2g to 2.7 g/kg, we would have to raise the temp about 15C.

The changes in temperatures in the tropics have a much greater overall impact on the climate than those in the arctic. It is, if you will, easy to warm cold, dry air, but to cool warm tropical air is harder. So if the earth’s temp is about steady, or falling off a bit as we saw in the graph above, and the arctic is still warm, the compensating drop in the tropics means more to the earths climate than the same movement of temps in the arctic It becomes a predictor of what has to happen as the PDO continues cold and the AMO turns cold.. the warmer northern polar regions will cool. A degree is not a degree when it comes to the climate system. A one degree movement up and down where wet bulb temperatures are 80 have far greater effects on the system than a 1 degree change where its near 0. That is the message behind the mixing ratio example above.

Now let me ask you this question, in terms of the climate system, which is far more important: the tropical oceans and the air masses around them, or what is going on in the Arctic?

Again this is simply saying there is a natural large-scale thermostat called the ocean. The warmer the ocean, the more it drives the whole climate system.

The slight cooling while RH is dropping is a sign of bigger things to come. This means the wet bulbs are falling faster than the actual temps. It is a predictor of future temperature falls (it’s worse than we thought). For usually when the RH falls, the temperatures rise. In this case, temps are already falling with the RH falling too!

At the very least I expect temperatures by 2030 to return to where they were in the late 1970s, which was the end of the last cold PDO phase and, by the way, the start of the satellite era: the most objective form of measurements.

Is the cooling worse than I thought? We are going to find out in the coming decades.

WWU faculty continue attack on Easterbrook with more misinformation

2013-05-10T16:46:01-05:00

After a vicious character assassination attack on Dr. Don Easterbrook by the Geology Dept at Western Washington University (WWU) following his testimony at a Washington State Senate hearing, the attack continues this week from other WWU faculty (see )

In the latest attack, John Hardy, a retired professor of Huxley Environmental College at WWU characterizes the Easterbroook data as “selective half-truths chosen to support a pre-conceived idea, i.e. that humans are not having significant effects on the Earth’s climate.”

Hardy states: “yes it is true that there have been multiple periods of warning over the past 10,000 to 15,000 years (since the last ice age). And, yes, at times it was warmer than the present. Yes, this happened before the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuel. What the author fails to explain (but surely knows) is that these warming periods are largely the natural result of the Milankovich Cycle, i.e. changes in the orbital configuration and distance between the Earth and sun that determines how much solar energy and consequent heat the Earth receives.” Two things are apparent in this statement: (1) Hardy doesn’t understand the basis for Milankovitch cycles, they involve much more than the distance between the Earth and sun, and (2) he didn’t look at Easterbrook’s data (see below). Milankovitch cycles are very, very slow, taking tens of thousands of years and could not possibly be responsible for the sudden, abrupt climate shifts of 20-30 years shown in Easterbrook’s data.

Figure 1 Two periods of global warming this century. Enlarged

Figure 2. Twenty periods of warming in the past 500 years.Enlarged

Figure 1 shows two periods of 20-30 year global warming this century, separated by a 30 year cool period. The first warming period (1915-1945) occurring before CO2 emissions began to soar after 1945 so it cannot have been caused by rising CO2. From 1945 to 1977, while CO2 emissions were soaring, the climate cooled, just the opposite of what should have happened if CO2 causes global warming. Thus, CO2 has little or no effect on climate.

Figure 2 shows 20 periods of global warming, each averaging 27 years, in the past 5 centuries. All of these occurred prior to significant increase in CO2 so could not possibly have been caused by CO2. Nor could they have been caused by Milankovitch cycles, which take many thousands of years. Thus, Hardy’s conclusion is demonstrably false.

Hardy states: “Past global temperature variations are also related to natural variations in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Global temperature rose five degrees Celsius 56 million years ago in response to a massive injection of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from volcanic activity.” Temperatures were indeed warmer 56 million years ago, but there has never been any evidence to support the idea that they were due to increased CO2 from volcanic activity. Volcanic eruptions typically cause global cooling, not warming, and last only a few years. The Eocene warm period lasted for tens of millions of years so could not be due volcanic eruptions.

Hardy states: “Today, burning of fossil fuel is releasing greenhouse gases to the atmosphere at 10 times that rate. Indeed, it is the speed of today’’s human-caused temperature increase that is more troubling than the absolute magnitude, because adjusting to rapid climate change will be difficult. For example, the natural warming since the last ice age 18,000 years ago to about 1850 (the beginning of the industrial revolution) was about 5 degrees Fahrenheit or less than 0.0003 degrees per year. The average global temperature increase from 1850 until now has been almost 2 degrees Fahrenheit, or 0.0122 degrees per year - a rate 41 times faster than the pre industrial warming.” This statement is truly astonishing! Hardy apparently (1) did not look at the Easterbrook data (see Fig. 3 below) and (2) apparently knows nothing about temperatures since the last Ice Age.

Figure 3 Temperatures from Greenland ice cores. Enlarged

From 18,000 to about 10,000 years ago, temperatures warmed and cooled as much as 20F in a single century. Virtually all of the warming from the last Ice Age to recent times occurred abruptly in a very short period of time about 10,000 years ago at rates of tens of degrees per century. It didn’t rise slowly over 18,000 years and to calculate an average over that whole period would not even be considered by any real scientist! Thus, Hardy’s conclusion that temperatures over that time period rose “"less than 0.0003 degrees per year” is totally absurd. And to conclude that warming since 1850 has occurred at “a rate 41 times faster than the preindustrial warming” is so ridiculous (just look at Fig. 3) that it is hard to imagine any real scientist reaching such a conclusion

Hardy states that temperature records for Bellingham show that average February temperatures rose 5F from the 1920s to the 1990s. This number is highly suspect since the 1930s were warmer than the past decade and the temperature change is therefore much smaller.

Hardy states: “Dr. Easterbook correctly notes that carbon dioxide makes up only a small percentage of our atmosphere. This does not mean it is irrelevant, in fact it shows just how powerful a greenhouse gas it is.” CO2 makes up only 0.039% of the atmosphere, has increased only 0.008% during the most recent period of warming, and accounts for only 3.5% of the greenhouse gas effect. To conclude that this proves “just how powerful a greenhouse gas it is” can only be arrived at by first assuming CO2 is the cause of warming. Since we know that CO2 cannot cause more than about 0.1 degree of warming, that assumption is not plausible and his conclusion is meaningless.

Hardy states that CO2 “has increased by 37 percent since the beginning of the industrial revolution.” But that is meaningless--if you double nothing, you still have nothing! But even more important, water vapor accounts for about 95% of the greenhouse effect and in order to make their climate models work, computer modelers include a large water vapor factor based on the assumption that water vapor increases in lock step with rising CO2. Harding claims that water vapor “is now increasing due to increased ocean evaporation from the warming itself.” But is this really true? Figure 4 (below) shows atmospheric water vapor since 1948 at various level of the atmosphere and water vapor is not only not increasing, it is actually declining, thus making all of the model predictions worthless.

Figure 4. Atmospheric water vapor since 1948. Enlarged

Hardy states that “The probability that the level of coherence between.CO2 concentration and temperature is due to chance alone is about 2 out of 1 million.” In other words, he claims that there is good correlation between temperature and CO2 and that the odds of that being coincidence is only 2 out of 1 million. But is there really a good correlation between CO2 and temperature? Figure 5 shows that there is no correlation at all between CO2 and temperature! One wonders how any person calling himself a scientist could construe otherwise!

Enlarged

What we can conclude about all of this is that this could have been a real discussion of climate issues, but Hardy’s article contains no data and all of his unsupported assertions are contradicted by Easterbrook’s data.

Another case of an environmentalist acting as if he understood climate and attacking a true scientist who used and correctly interpreted real data. Hardy just dug the hole deepeer for WWU and the Bellingham Herald. Another example of the sorry state of the University systems and journalism today

----------

Comments to the Bellingham Herald from Dr Gordon Fulks

This Op-Ed from WWU Professor Hardy is worthy of the climate cult and of his twelve colleagues in the Geology Department who attacked Professor Easterbrook but unworthy of a scientist. Science is more than a good story, more than a tall tale. Hardy should know that and should understand some basic climate science.

For instance, his claim about “rapidly increasing exponential trend in warming from 1880 to 2011” is beyond ludicrous. “Exponential”? Does he understand what exponential means?? ‘Exponential growth’ means growth in proportion to its current value. For a very simple explanation see Wikipedia. In this context it would mean that our temperature has been rising far faster than linearly over the previous 130 years. No honest data come anywhere close to showing that. Even the very corrupted surface station data from Global Warming Guru James Hansen at NASA GISS show a roughly linear increase with pauses from the 1940’s to the 1970’s and again after 1998. Hansen even admitted recently that there has been no warming for the last fifteen years.

If we limit ourselves to HONEST temperature records, there is still less indication of warming and certainly nothing coming anywhere close to exponential. What temperature records can be considered honest? Only the satellite records from 1979, because they are almost global in nature and are analyzed by two teams, one skeptical and one alarmist. These show very similar results with an overall warming trend of only about +0.14 degrees C per decade. But the warming is far from uniform, with all occurring up to 1998 and not after and with most in the Northern Hemisphere and not in the Southern Hemisphere or Tropics. The latest global anomaly value reported for April 2013 is a mere 0.1 C above the 30 year average.

To maintain that the Global Temperature Anomaly is rising exponentially is just plain stupidity or politics. But I repeat myself!

As to the previous warm periods being caused by ‘Milankovitch Cycles,’ Professor Hardy also has no clue. Yes, these orbital cycles produce our remarkably repetitive ice age events of roughly 90,000 years of cold followed by 10,000 years of warmth. But these are all very long cycles that have nothing to do with the shorter cycles of warmth that we have seen in the Holocene ‘Climate Optimum’ that we are presently enjoying. The present ‘Modern Warm Period’ was preceded by the Medieval, Roman, and Minoan Warm periods, all during this interglacial ‘Holocene.’ All have occurred at roughly 1,000+ year intervals and all have had roughly the same 200 year ramp up followed by a two hundred year decline. We do not know what caused these, but the Grand Maximum of solar cycles coincident with the present warm period suggests a solar origin. With another Maunder Minimum likely in our future, our present warm period may well disappear over 200 years, as the earlier ones did.

If Hardy had listened to the famous alarmist James Hansen (an astrophysicist like me), he might have learned what real effect Milankovitch Cycles have had over the last 10,000 years: the gradual decline of the average global temperature as we sink toward the next Ice Age. This is very apparent in the Greenland ice core temperature reconstructions (see Alley, RB NOAA Paleoclimatology). What is physically happening is that the earth’s closest approach to the Sun has shifted from the Northern to Southern Hemisphere summer. That has caused the gradual temperature decline because of the much larger land area in the Northern Hemisphere.

I could go on about Professor Hardy’s support for the Freon-Ozone Hole hoax, but we will save that for another time. The examples I have given show that this WWU professor is woefully ignorant, like too many professors in the Geology Department!

WWU and the taxpayers who support them clearly need to find a way to clone Professor Don Easterbrook and to disown those professors who do not know their stuff.

Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
La Center, WA USA

Figure 2. Twenty periods of warming in the past 500 years.Enlarged

Figure 3 Temperatures from Greenland ice cores. Enlarged

Figure 4. Atmospheric water vapor since 1948. Enlarged

----------

Comments to the Bellingham Herald from Dr Gordon Fulks

To maintain that the Global Temperature Anomaly is rising exponentially is just plain stupidity or politics. But I repeat myself!

WWU and the taxpayers who support them clearly need to find a way to clone Professor Don Easterbrook and to disown those professors who do not know their stuff.

Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
La Center, WA USA

The Inaugural Golden Fleece Award

2013-05-10T13:02:02-05:00

The Carbon Sense Coalition has awarded its Inaugural Golden Fleece Award to Kevin Rudd and coal industry leaders for “flagrant fleecing of community savings in futile ‘research’ on Carbon Capture & Sequestration, a costly and complex process designed to capture and bury carbon dioxide gas produced by burning carbon fuels such as coal, oil and gas”.

It is obviously possible, in an engineering sense, to collect, separate, compress, pump and pipe gases, so new “research” is largely a waste of money. Engineers know how to do these things, and their likely costs. But only foolish green zealots would think of spending billions to bury a harmless, invisible, life-supporting gas in hopes of cooling the climate some time in the century ahead.

About 2.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide are produced for every tonne of coal burnt in a power station. To capture, compress and bury it could take at least 30% of the electricity produced, greatly increasing the cost of the limited amount of electricity left for sale, more coal used, increased electricity costs, for ZERO measurable benefits.

We have come to expect stupidity from politicians, but coal industry leaders who agreed to waste money on this should be sued by shareholders for negligence. Maybe they were just drooling at all the extra coal they would sell in order to produce the same electricity.

Kevin Rudd wins this award for “a Flagrant Fleece of $400 million taken from tax payers to fund the fatuous Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute.” There is little to show for the millions already spent except a lot of receipts for high class salaries, consultants, travel, entertainment and “operational expenses”.

Pumping gases underground is sensible if it brings real benefits such as using waste gases to drive oil recovery from declining oil fields

Normally, however, CCS will just produce more expensive electricity

This result is not needed as politicians have already invented dozens of ways of doing just that.

Viv Forbes, Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition

In Defense of Carbon Dioxide

2013-05-09T18:55:00-05:00

NOAA practices advocacy science with major errors / lies about CO2 in official release

Carbon Dioxide at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory reaches new milestone: Tops 400 ppm

May 10, 2013

Contact: John Ewald, 240-429-6127

On May 9, the daily mean concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Mauna Loa, Hawaii, surpassed 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time since measurements began in 1958. Independent measurements made by both NOAA and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography have been approaching this level during the past week. It marks an important milestone because Mauna Loa, as the oldest continuous carbon dioxide (CO2) measurement station in the world, is the primary global benchmark site for monitoring the increase of this potent heat trapping gas.nonsense

Carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning and other human activities is the most significant greenhouse gas (GHG) contributing to climate change. Its concentration has increased every year since scientists started making measurements on the slopes of the Mauna Loa volcano more than five decades ago. The rate of increase has accelerated since the measurements started, from about 0.7 ppm per year in the late 1950s to 2.1 ppm per year during the last 10 years.

“That increase is not a surprise to scientists,” said NOAA senior scientist Pieter Tans, with the Global Monitoring Division of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo. “The evidence is conclusive that the strong growth of global CO2 emissions from the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas is driving the acceleration.”

Before the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, global average CO2 was about 280 ppm. During the last 800,000 years, CO2 fluctuated between about 180 ppm during ice ages and 280 ppm during interglacial warm periods. Today’s rate of increase is more than 100 times faster than the increase that occurred when the last ice age ended.

NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. Thursday, levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa surpassed 400 parts per million for the first time since measurements began in 1958. Pre-industrial carbon dioxide levels were 280 parts per million.

It was researcher Charles David Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, who began measuring carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa in 1958, initiating now what is known as the “Keeling Curve.” His son, Ralph Keeling, also a geochemist at Scripps, has continued the Scripps measurement record since his father’s death in 2005.

“There’s no stopping CO2 from reaching 400 ppm,” said Ralph Keeling. “That’s now a done deal. But what happens from here on still matters to climate, and it’s still under our control. It mainly comes down to how much we continue to rely on fossil fuels for energy.”

NOAA scientists with the Global Monitoring Division have made around-the-clock measurements there since 1974. Having two programs independently measure the greenhouse gas provides confidence that the measurements are correct.

Moreover, similar increases of CO2 are seen all over the world by many international scientists. NOAA, for example, which runs a global, cooperative air sampling network, reported last year that all Arctic sites in its network reached 400 ppm for the first time. These high values were a prelude to what is now being observed at Mauna Loa, a site in the subtropics, this year. Sites in the Southern Hemisphere will follow during the next few years. The increase in the Northern Hemisphere is always a little ahead of the Southern Hemisphere because most of the emissions driving the CO2 increase take place in the north.

Once emitted, CO2 added to the atmosphere and oceans remains for thousands of years.more nonsense. Tom Segalstad has shown many papers found the lifetime is just 5-7 years. Thus, climate changes forced by CO2 depend primarily on cumulative emissions, making it progressively more and more difficult to avoid further substantial climate change. Direct chemical measurements (90,000) in Europe showed CO2 was higher in the 1940s and 1800s than it is currently.

See compilation of replies in Climate Depot Special Report “CO2 nears 400ppm. Relax it is not global warming end times but only a big yawn”

---------

In Defense of Carbon Dioxide

The demonized chemical compound is a boon to plant life and has little correlation with global temperature.

By HARRISON H. SCHMITT AND WILLIAM HAPPER

Of all of the world’s chemical compounds, none has a worse reputation than carbon dioxide. Thanks to the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control of energy production, the conventional wisdom about carbon dioxide is that it is a dangerous pollutant. That’s simply not the case. Contrary to what some would have us believe, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the increasing population on the planet by increasing agricultural productivity.

The cessation of observed global warming for the past decade or so has shown how exaggerated NASA’s and most other computer predictions of human-caused warming have been-and how little correlation warming has with concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. As many scientists have pointed out, variations in global temperature correlate much better with solar activity and with complicated cycles of the oceans and atmosphere. There isn’t the slightest evidence that more carbon dioxide has caused more extreme weather.

The current levels of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere, approaching 400 parts per million, are low by the standards of geological and plant evolutionary history. Levels were 3,000 ppm, or more, until the Paleogene period (beginning about 65 million years ago). For most plants, and for the animals and humans that use them, more carbon dioxide, far from being a “pollutant” in need of reduction, would be a benefit. This is already widely recognized by operators of commercial greenhouses, who artificially increase the carbon dioxide levels to 1,000 ppm or more to improve the growth and quality of their plants.

Using energy from sunlight - together with the catalytic action of an ancient enzyme called rubisco, the most abundant protein on earth - plants convert carbon dioxide from the air into carbohydrates and other useful molecules. Rubisco catalyzes the attachment of a carbon-dioxide molecule to another five-carbon molecule to make two three-carbon molecules, which are subsequently converted into carbohydrates. (Since the useful product from the carbon dioxide capture consists of three-carbon molecules, plants that use this simple process are called C3 plants.) C3 plants, such as wheat, rice, soybeans, cotton and many forage crops, evolved when there was much more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than today. So these agricultural staples are actually undernourished in carbon dioxide relative to their original design.

Corbis

At the current low levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, rubisco in C3 plants can be fooled into substituting oxygen molecules for carbon-dioxide molecules. But this substitution reduces the efficiency of photosynthesis, especially at high temperatures. To get around the problem, a small number of plants have evolved a way to enrich the carbon-dioxide concentration around the rubisco enzyme, and to suppress the oxygen concentration. Called C4 plants because they utilize a molecule with four carbons, plants that use this evolutionary trick include sugar cane, corn and other tropical plants.

Although C4 plants evolved to cope with low levels of carbon dioxide, the workaround comes at a price, since it takes additional chemical energy. With high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, C4 plants are not as productive as C3 plants, which do not have the overhead costs of the carbon-dioxide enrichment system.

That’s hardly all that goes into making the case for the benefits of carbon dioxide. Right now, at our current low levels of carbon dioxide, plants are paying a heavy price in water usage. Whether plants are C3 or C4, the way they get carbon dioxide from the air is the same: The plant leaves have little holes, or stomata, through which carbon dioxide molecules can diffuse into the moist interior for use in the plant’s photosynthetic cycles.

The density of water molecules within the leaf is typically 60 times greater than the density of carbon dioxide in the air, and the diffusion rate of the water molecule is greater than that of the carbon dioxide molecule.

So depending on the relative humidity and temperature, 100 or more water molecules diffuse out of the leaf for every molecule of carbon dioxide that diffuses in. And not every carbon dioxide molecule that diffuses into a leaf gets incorporated into a carbohydrate. As a result, plants require many hundreds of grams of water to produce one gram of plant biomass, largely carbohydrate.

Driven by the need to conserve water, plants produce fewer stomata openings in their leaves when there is more carbon dioxide in the air. This decreases the amount of water that the plant is forced to transpire and allows the plant to withstand dry conditions better.

Crop yields in recent dry years were less affected by drought than crops of the dust bowl droughts of the 1930s, when there was less carbon dioxide. Nowadays, in an age of rising population and scarcities of food and water in some regions, it’s a wonder that humanitarians aren’t clamoring for more atmospheric carbon dioxide. Instead, some are denouncing it.

We know that carbon dioxide has been a much larger fraction of the earth’s atmosphere than it is today, and the geological record shows that life flourished on land and in the oceans during those times. The incredible list of supposed horrors that increasing carbon dioxide will bring the world is pure belief disguised as science.

A version of this appeared in the WSJ. Mr. Schmitt, an adjunct professor of engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was an Apollo 17 astronaut and a former U.S. senator from New Mexico. Mr. Happer is a professor of physics at Princeton University and a former director of the office of energy research at the U.S. Department of Energy.

----------

The once great New York Times in denial on Benghazi is also carrying the water for the liar enviros and psuedo scientists with Justin Gillis’s continuing series of liar stories on CO2 impact here. Justin claims CO2 is the highest it has even been in the history of the earth. As you can see numerous studies have shown we are near the LOWEST levels in history. We need to push for higher CO2 to maximize crop production and drought resistance, and minimize water needs.

Enlarged

It also shows no convincing evidence of being associated with temperature changes.

Enlarged

Please bring back Andy Revkin, Gillis is clueless and NYT go back to covering ‘all the news thats fit to print’ accurately and in an unbiased way or you deserve to fail. And NOAA get back to covering weather and stop your advocacy science. Management nonsense is why employees on the front line gave management in NWS such low grades in survey.

The Department of Energy Spends $11 Million Per Job

2013-05-09T15:17:00-05:00

Without much fanfare, the Department of Energy (DOE) recently updated the list of loan guarantee projects on its website. Unlike in 2008, when Barack Obama pledged to create 5 million jobs over 10 years by directing taxpayer funds toward renewable energy projects, there were no press conferences or stump speeches. But the data are nonetheless revealing: for the over $26 billion spent since 2009, DOE Section 1703 and 1705 loan guarantees have created only 2,298 permanent jobs for a cost of over $11.45 million per job.

Enlarged

EU May Roll Back Costly Climate & Green Energy Policies

2013-05-08T14:24:02-05:00

EurActiv, 8 May 2013

EU leaders will grapple with controversial issues including shale gas development and climate change mitigation at an energy summit on 22 May, documents obtained by EurActiv show. Competitiveness, in the EU energy policy context, translates into a re-thinking of the Union’s climate policies.

As agreed at the 14 to 15 March summit, EU leaders will meet to discuss how to lower energy prices and so improve the Union’s industrial competitiveness.

According to the draft guidelines for the summit conclusions, prepared by the services of Council President Herman Van Rompuy, the EU heads of state intend to focus on “key aspects” of energy policy aimed at boosting growth, productivity and employment to help overcome the effects of the economic crisis.

“High energy prices and costs hamper European competitiveness,” the document says. It invites discussion on how Europe could stay competitive globally and bring down energy prices at a time when Europe is facing massive investment shortfalls in energy infrastructure and generation capacity.

Van Rompuy’s services also call on the EU leaders to discuss ways of further increasing energy efficiency, developing “indigenous resources” and facilitating investment. The Commission will be tasked with developing a “predictable climate and energy policy framework post 2020”.

Re-thinking climate policies

An analysis of energy-price costs in member states will be requested from the EU executive by the end of 2014, highlighting the EU’s competitiveness with its global counterparts.

Competitiveness, in the EU energy policy context, translates into a re-thinking of the Union’s climate policies.

Recently, the powerful employers’ group BusinessEurope called on European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso to radically shift the EU’s energy policy away from climate change mitigation towards cost-competitiveness and security of supply. [more]

The Draft Conclusions say that the EU’s goal is to ensure ‘a level playing field for business and industry”, so they can compete in the global marketplace, having regard inter alia to the impact of carbon leakage”.

“Carbon leakage” is jargon for the relocation of European businesses abroad because of the comparative advantage they may gain from looser climate regimes.

Shale gas

Leaders are also expected to task the Commission to assess a “more systematic recourse to indigenous sources of energy, both conventional and unconventional”.

Unconventional sources usually refers to shale gas, which many believe has triggered an industrial revival in the USA, but is viewed with suspicion by several EU countries.

Regarding conventional resources, several EU countries are exploring offshore fields for gas and oil, their industrial partners being companies from the USA or Israel. The Commission has rarely played a part in these ventures.

Full story

----------

Secret IPCC Shenanigans: Met Office Battles To Suppress Details
The Register, 8 May 2013

Andrew Orlowski

David Holland Takes On The IPCC’s Lack Of Transparency

Can the Internet help climate scientists? Not everyone thinks so.

“The Internet is a double-edged sword,” Met Office scientist Peter Stott told a London courtroom last week. “There’s a whole cacophony of voices on blogs, people with different opinions and people very motivated to dig around. But not in the ‘big picture’ details, frankly. That is not helpful to getting an overall balanced assessment.”

Stott had just been asked whether widespread online participation in the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment-of-the-science process might improve it. The open source software development principle, that “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”, came to mind.

The occasion was an Information Tribunal appeal brought by one-man information Inquisition David Holland. The retired Mancunian engineer’s previous enquiries were seen by many as the catalyst for the famous “Climategate” email leaks.

“My interest in this was never to do with climate. I’m trained as an engineer, and I know the scientific method,” Holland told El Reg in 2011, when he had sought access to large amounts of information from the British climate-science establishment and was denied. Holland’s FOI requests set off a catastrophic sequence of prevarication and obstruction by the responding scientists, which ultimately appears to have triggered the Climategate leaks and massive discomfort for all the researchers involved.

Now it’s the turn of Peter Stott of the Met Office to come under Holland’s microscope.

I actually felt a bit of human sympathy for Stott; you can bet he would have rather been somewhere else, and it transpires that Holland didn’t actually want him there at all. Holland had wanted to cross-examine the head of the UK delegation to the IPCC, a Department of Environment and Climate Change official called David Warrilow, head of climate science and international evidence.

The procedural questions under the spotlight are Warrilow’s bailiwick, not Stott’s, but Holland was refused his man. Stott, we learned, had been pressganged into appearing by the Met Office’s lawyers. Stott also had to defend his and allied organisations’ refusal to disclose material on a basis as we shall see that’s highly questionable. No intelligent person should have to waste his own time, or anyone else’s time, defending the indefensible.

And the mere presence of a Met scientist is a bit of a red herring, as it’s really the IPCC that is on trial; the case for the defence is being organised by the Treasury solicitor, paid for by you.

Judge Anisa Dhanji was not impressed by the defence’s refusal to find someone so very germane to the case to stand up to cross-examination, and demanded that a written statement by Warrilow be included in the record.

So. Here we all were. Why was this happening, exactly? Read more.

EurActiv, 8 May 2013

As agreed at the 14 to 15 March summit, EU leaders will meet to discuss how to lower energy prices and so improve the Union’s industrial competitiveness.

Re-thinking climate policies

An analysis of energy-price costs in member states will be requested from the EU executive by the end of 2014, highlighting the EU’s competitiveness with its global counterparts.

Competitiveness, in the EU energy policy context, translates into a re-thinking of the Union’s climate policies.

“Carbon leakage” is jargon for the relocation of European businesses abroad because of the comparative advantage they may gain from looser climate regimes.

Shale gas

Leaders are also expected to task the Commission to assess a “more systematic recourse to indigenous sources of energy, both conventional and unconventional”.

Unconventional sources usually refers to shale gas, which many believe has triggered an industrial revival in the USA, but is viewed with suspicion by several EU countries.

Full story

----------

Secret IPCC Shenanigans: Met Office Battles To Suppress Details
The Register, 8 May 2013

Andrew Orlowski

David Holland Takes On The IPCC’s Lack Of Transparency

Can the Internet help climate scientists? Not everyone thinks so.

Now it’s the turn of Peter Stott of the Met Office to come under Holland’s microscope.

The procedural questions under the spotlight are Warrilow’s bailiwick, not Stott’s, but Holland was refused his man. Stott, we learned, had been pressganged into appearing by the Met Office�s lawyers. Stott also had to defend his and allied organisations’ refusal to disclose material on a basis as we shall see that’s highly questionable. No intelligent person should have to waste his own time, or anyone else’s time, defending the indefensible.

And the mere presence of a Met scientist is a bit of a red herring, as it’s really the IPCC that is on trial; the case for the defence is being organised by the Treasury solicitor, paid for by you.

Judge Anisa Dhanji was not impressed by the defence�s refusal to find someone so very germane to the case to stand up to cross-examination, and demanded that a written statement by Warrilow be included in the record.

So. Here we all were. Why was this happening, exactly? Read more.

Coming Ice Age…According To Leading Experts, Global Mean Temperature Has Dropped 1C Since 1990!

2013-05-08T11:40:01-05:00

By P Gosselin on 21. April 2013

Climate science/renewable energy critic Rainer Hoffmann has researched the literature on mean global surface temperature.

Stunningly, he shows that something is not right with the figures coming from the world’s leading climate experts. The figures tell us the mean global surface temperature has dropped 1C over the last 25 years. At that rate, we’ll be in an ice age by the year 2100!

Page 1 of Hoffmann’s two-page pdf file shows literature that says the mean global temperature in 1990 was 15.5C. Page 2 shows the literature that says it is now only 14.5C.

Here’s a chronology of the global mean surface temperature figures from the leading experts over the last 25 years:

1988: 15.4C
Der Spiegel, based on (untampered) data from NASA (see chart below, enlarged here).

1990: 15.5C
According to James Hansen and 5 other leading scientists; they too claimed the global mean surface temperature was 15.5C. Also Prof. Christian Schonwiese claimed the same in his book ‘Klima im Wandel’, pages 73, 74 and 136. 15.5C is also the figure given by a 1992 German government report, based on satellite data.

2004: 14.5C
14 years later, the temperature mysteriously drops to 14.5C, according to professors Hans Schellnhuber and Stefan Rahmstorf in their book: “Der Klimawandel”, 1st edition, 2006, p 37, based on surface station data from the Hadley Center.

2007: 14.5C
And also according to the Holy Climate Bible, the IPCC WG1 AR4 (page 6 of bmbf.de/pub/IPCC2007.pdf).

2010: 14.5C
Reconfirmed by Professors Schellnhuber and Rahmstorf in their book: Der Klimawandel, 7th edition, 2012, page 37, (see chart below, enlarged here) based on surface station data.

2012: 14.5C
Also given by Prof Mojib Latif, March 20, 2012.

Read much more here.

Don Easterbrook and Gordon Fulks on the WWU affair - Data, Dogma, and Discovery

2013-05-05T19:08:00-05:00

by KIM GREENHOUSE on MAY 6, 2013
in ACADEMIA, ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Don Easterbrook

Dr. Don Easterbrook returns to the show after recently testifying before the Senate Energy, Environment & Telecommunications Committee in Olympia, Washington. His testimony supported by 50 years of work in climate change and jam-packed with verifiable facts that stand to alter the picture many have ingested about climate and weather offered mind-blowing insights about the difference between data and dogma. An honest comparison of Dr. Easterbrook’s information with the propaganda about climate change will inspire even the most ardent climate change environmentalist to take note. Dr. Easterbrook was subsequently attacked by his own institution (among others), who ran character assassination pieces in Associated Press to frame him as a quack.

After producing over 30 segments on climate change, it is clear that the facts are totally accessible, understandable, and cannot be manipulated to suit a political agenda. Join us as we invite Dr. Don Easterbrook and astrophysicist Dr. Gordon Fulks to discuss recent events and lay out important, current information supporting a whole systems approach to climate change clarity.

LISTEN TO THIS MP3. A must hear.

-----------

Ignoratio elenchi

By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM

The former Weather Channel stuck to its knitting and provided a needed service and quality information. But under brain dead NBC Universal leadership it has become a laughing stock. Outside of a Sandy like event, ratings are in the tank and deserve to be there. Al Roker assigned part-time to lighten up the boring coverage of a network that can’t decide whether its National Geographic light or a legitimate real-time information source, when asked about global warming said “ I have just two words for you “Superstorm Sandy”. I need just one word for you Al why global warming is even in the lexicon “$100B”. Governments and leftist enviro groups and individuals have bought the scientists and their organizations.

This video says it all.

Stu Ostro used to be a meteorologist with a balanced view on natural climate change. Then Heidi Cullen became his supervisor and NBC Universal his boss. He appears in this feature blaming arctic warming (5 months after it froze over) for the “long, cold winter”. He used Jennifer Francis from Rutgers who had done papers connecting the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation warming to reduction of ice in the arctic. She blamed climate change for that warming and the arctic for the weather. I served on the AMS council with her. I credit her for recognizing the already known connection of the ocean temperatures in the Atlantic with arctic warming and ice. I challenge her to make the connection with CO2. See how AMO cycles even as CO2 rises.

Neither noted that the ice reduction was in the summer and the ice returned by October and the snow started in February and continued into May. That is what Aristotle called an Ignoratio elenchi, an irrelevant conclusion or fallacy of presenting an argument that may or may not be logically valid, but fails nonetheless to address the issue in question.

The word ‘oscillation’ got lost in their thinking. The IARC at the University of Alaska Fairbanks showed how the cycle in the Atlantic leads to warming and cooling and reduction and recovery of arctic ice historically.

See in this piece how natural factors lead to these cyclical changes in ice and temperatures. The bottom line is that the warm Atlantic causes a reduction of arctic ice in summer and increased high latitude blocking which leads to colder winters in Eurasia and North America. Atmospheric CO2 is irrelevant.

As Joe Bastardi posted on weatherbell.com, look at the pattern in March to May the clueless Ostro and Frances claimed was so unusual and due to climate change but back in the 1950s when the oceans were in the same phase of their 60 to 70 year cycles. 500mb is on the left and surface temperatures the right.

TWC has some credible people too...like Tom Niziol, formerly of NWS in BUF and Tom Moore and few others behind the scenes but the number dwindles.

And as for allegedly the warm arctic regions, take a look at Fairbanks, Alaska since the fall. For the secon stright year, brutal cold.

Unprecedented May snowstorm

2013-05-03T12:35:00-05:00

Joseph D’Aleo, CCM

It’s May, time to mow the lawn.

H/T Meteorologist Andre Bernier

Here is a time lapse of 15 inches of snow falling overnight.

All time record snowstorm winds down today after setting May Records from Minnesota to Arkansas.

NWS WEATHER PREDICTION CENTER COLLEGE PARK MD
400 AM CDT FRI MAY 03 2013

...UNPRECEDENTED MAY WINTER STORM BEGINNING TO TAPER OFF FROM THE
MIDDLE MISSISSIPPI RIVER VALLEY NORTHWARD INTO THE UPPER MIDWEST…

...IOWA…
CHARITON 12.0
BRITT 11.0
FOREST CITY 2 NNE 11.0
ST ANSGAR 10.9
ALGONA 5 NE 10.5
MONA 10.0
ALLERTON 4 S 10.0
NORTHWOOD 9.7
MASON CITY 9.5
CHARLES CITY COOP 9.0
GARNER 8.5
GRUNDY CENTER 8.0
INDIANOLA 0.8 SSW 8.0
WHITTEMORE 3 NNW 7.3
DUMONT 7.0
MANLEY 3 WSW 7.0
SCHLESWIG 0.4 NE 7.0
OSAGE 7.0
HUMESTON 7.0
RICEVILLE 7.0
DES MOINES INTL 6.9
RINGSTED 6.5
ALTOONA 1 ESE 6.5
SIOUX RAPIDS 4 E 6.2
PARKERSBURG 6.0
FORT DODGE 5.5
NEWTON 3 WNW 5.5
ION 5.5
WEST AMES 5.3
NASHUA 5.1
JOHNSTON 5.0
ELMA 4.9
IOWA FALLS 1 ESE 4.5
MADRID 4.2

...KANSAS…
TRAER 2.5 NNW 5.3
SHARON SPRINGS 10 S 5.1
MANNING 4 NW 5.0
SCOTT CITY 10.7 ENE 5.0
GOODLAND 12.1 NW 4.5
STILLWELL 1 N 3.0
GARDEN CITY 3.0
OVERLAND PARK 2.5
DUNLAP 2.0
LAKIN 2.0
ST. FRANCIS 12 NNW 2.0
ULYSSES 2.0
TOPEKA 7 SW 1.0

...MICHIGAN…
BESSEMER 1 E 13.0
IRONWOOD 11.0
ONTONAGON 6 ESE 6.0
HERMAN 3.2
ISHPEMING 2.7

...MINNESOTA…
BLOOMING PRAIRIE 18.0
GOODHUE 17.5
DODGE CENTER 17.2
RICE LAKE 17.0
ROCHESTER 2.5 W 16.6
BYRON 6 S 16.0
ELLENDALE 15.8
OWATONNA 2 E 15.5
DODGE CENTER 15.4
ZUMBROTA 15.1
ELLENDALE 15.0
OAK CENTER 15.0
CLAREMENT 2.5 SSE 14.9
ROCHESTER 2 SW 14.8
SEELEY 14.2
HAYFIELD 7 WSW 14.0
MAPLE SPRINGS 1 S 14.0
ROCHESTER 14.0
RED WING 13.5
NERSTRAND 4 E 13.4
ELGIN 2 SSW 13.1
SPRING VALLEY 3E 12.9
EYOTA 5 SW 12.0
CHATFIELD 9 ESE 11.9
ELBA 5 SW 11.0
ST CHARLES 5N 11.0
MANTORVILLE 2 ESE 9.0
OSTRANDER 8.5

...MISSOURI… ...MISSOURI…
WARRENSBURG 7S 6.0
CHILLICOTHE 3E 6.0
MILAN 1.2 SW 6.0
PRINCETON 1.5 NE 5.5
BRAYMER 5.5
TRENTON 1.4 N 4.5
CARTHAGE .8 S 4.4
STOCKTON 4.0
UNIONVILLE 4.0
CENTERVIEW 3W 4.0
LOWRY CITY 4.0
NEOSHO 4.0
SE ODESSA 4.0
AURORA 3.5
GARDEN CITY 3.1
CENTERVIEW 3 WSW 3.0
N WINSTON 3.0
CARTHAGE 3.0
SARCOXIE 3W 3.0
BROOKFIELD 10 N 3.0
PINEVILLE 2NNW 3.0
APPLETON CITY 3.0
LEES SUMMIT 2.7
GRAIN VALLEY 2.5
KANSAS CITY 11 SSE 2.5
CEDAR SPRINGS 2.5
WARRENSBURG 7 WNW 2.5
INDEPENDENCE 2.0
PATTONSBURG 2.0
VIBBARD 2.0
HALLTOWN 1W 2.0
ASH GROVE 2.0
GALLATIN 1.5
WINSTON 1.5
SPRINGFIELD 0.6

...WISCONSIN…
STOCKHOLM 3 NE 17.7
MELLEN 19 SW 17.0
RICE LAKE 17.0
ASHLAND 16.3
CAMERON 1 NE 16.0
MENOMONIE 16.0
ELLSWORTH 6 WSW 16.0
HAYWARD 8 S 16.0
MELLEN 2 NW 16.0
STONE LAKE 2 NW 15.5
COLFAX 15.5
BALDWIN 14.7
CHETEK 2 SE 14.3
BARRON 14.0
GRAND VIEW 14.0
MAIDEN ROCK 3 NNW 14.0
RICE LAKE 5 NE 14.0
SPRING VALLEY 3 NW 14.0
ARKANSAS 4 NW 13.5
ELK MOUND 1 NE 13.4
LADYSMITH 2 WNW 12.9
RIVER FALLS 1 SSW 11.0
CORNUCOPIA 10.0
EAU CLAIRE 9.3
NW PRESCOTT 7.8

...ARKANSAS…
DECATUR 2.6 E 5.0
GRAVATTE 3.5
MAYSVILLE 3.0
WEST GENTRY 3.0
BELLA VISTA 2.5
PRARIE GROVE 1 NE 2.0
BEAVER LAKE 1.8
BEAVER 1 S 1.2
SPRINGDALE 1.0
CENTERTON 1.0
CAVE SPRINGS 1.0
WINSLOW 7 NE 1.0
EUREKA SPRINGS 0.8
FAYETTEVILLE 0.5

...OKLAHOMA…
WEST SILOAM SPRINGS 6 W 1.5
MUSE 4 N 1.0
WESTVILLE 1.0

...COLORADO…
BUCKHORN MOUNTAIN 1 E 28.2
PINGREE PARK 3 WNW 24.0
STOVE PRAIRIE 2 WNW 23.0
ESTES PARK 1.8 S 19.4
LIVERMORE 9.9 WSW 19.0
CAMERON PASS 1 NNW 18.0
FORT COLLINS 2 ENE 16.0
TRAIL RIDGE 5 N 16.0
BRECKENRIDGE 2 SSE 15.3
GLEN HAVEN 1.6 NE 15.0
DRAKE 5.3 WNW 14.5
NEDERLAND 4 ENE 14.5
WARD 5 NE 14.5
BOULDER 2 SSW 8.0
DENVER 3 SE 5.0

...NEBRASKA…
DALTON 0.4 SE 8.5
LODGEPOLE 8.1 N 5.7
GERING 10.1 S 5.0
SCOTTSBLUFF 2.7 WNW 4.2
BAYARD 13.5 NNE 4.0
ELLSWORTH 4.0
OMAHA 3.3
BELLEVUE 3.1
ARTHUR 3.0
BENKELMAN 3.0
MULLEN 3.0
VALLEY 3.0
ELKHORN 2.7
VALLEY 1 N 2.4
COLERIDGE 2.0

...SOUTH DAKOTA…
BERESFORD 2 S 6.0
HARTFORD 0.5 N 2.1
SIOUX FALLS 3.4 ESE 2.0

...WYOMING…
WARREN AFB 20.6 WSW 22.3
LANDER 5.7 SW 18.7
CHEYENNE 15 W 15.0
CARPENTER 3.9 NNE 12.0
WHEATLAND 20.0 SW 9.1
PINE BLUFFS 0.8 SW 9.0
SOUTH GREELEY 6.2 SW 9.0
BURNS 6 WNW 8.5
HILLSDALE 0.1 N 8.5
LA GRANGE 4.4 ESE 8.1
YODER 6.5 SSE 7.5
LARAMIE 1 N 6.0

-----------------

ALL-TIME MINNESOTA MAY SNOWFALL RECORD?
At 7 AM Thursday, the cooperative observer in Dodge Center, MN reported 15.4 inches. If this record is confirmed by the Minnesota State Climate Extremes committee, it would surpass the May daily snowfall record for the state of Minnesota. This record currently stands at 12 inches in St Cloud (May 17, 1890), Windom (May 8, 1938), and 8 miles north of Leonard (May 3, 1954).

-----------

RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DES MOINES IA 110 AM CDT THU MAY 02 2013

..RECORD DAILY MAXIMUM SNOWFALL SET AT DES MOINES IA FOR MAY 2ND

A RECORD SNOWFALL OF 3.4 INCHES FELL AT DES MOINES IA ON THURSDAY. THIS BREAKS THE OLD RECORD OF TRACE SET IN 1976.

THE 3.4 INCHES OF SNOW ALSO IS THE HIGHEST SINGLE DAY MAY SNOW TOTAL FOR DES MOINES. THE PREVIOUS RECORD WAS 1.2 INCHES SET ON MAY 3, 1907.

THE TOTAL FOR THE STORM WAS 6.9 INCHES. THIS IS ALSO THE HIGHEST AMOUNT OF SNOW EVER RECEIVED IN THE MONTH OF MAY FOR DES MOINES. THE PREVIOUS RECORD WAS 1.3 INCHES SET DURING MAY OF 1907.

-------------

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE LA CROSSE WI 807 PM CDT THU MAY 2 2013

..UNPRECEDENTED SNOWFALL FOR ROCHESTER MINNESOTA

WHAT A STORM FOR THE RECORD BOOKS. THE INFORMATION BELOW SHOWCASES HOW THIS SNOWSTORM RANKS FROM A MAY PERSPECTIVE...AND ALSO THE ENTIRE CALENDAR YEAR.

THE 13.9 INCHES...THROUGH 730 PM...BREAKS THE FOLLOWING RECORDS…

...DAILY RECORD SNOWFALL FOR MAY 2ND / 0.7 INCHES IN 1954 /

...DAILY RECORD SNOWFALL FOR MONTH OF MAY / 1.2 INCHES MAY 5 1944/

...MAY MONTHLY SNOWFALL TOTAL / 2.0 INCHES MAY 1944 /

IT CURRENTLY RANKS AS SIXTH GREATEST ALL-TIME DAILY SNOWFALL. THIS WILL LIKELY RISE ONCE THE OFFICIAL SNOW TOTAL IS REPORTED.

ALL-TIME 1-DAY SNOWFALL RECORDS
ROCHESTER MINNESOTA
1886-2013

RANK SNOWFALL YEAR
---- ------------- -------
1 19.8 INCHES 3/18/2005
2 15.4 INCHES 1/22/1982
3 15.0 INCHES 12/11/2010
4 14.0 INCHES 3/30/1934
4/20/1893
6 13.9 INCHES 5/02/2013
7 13.5 INCHES 2/27/1893
8 13.0 INCHES 4/26/1988
9 12.0 INCHES 11/30/1934

TO PUT THIS SNOWSTORM IN ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE...TODAYS SNOWFALL IN ROCHESTER SHATTERS THE COMBINED TOTAL FOR ALL PREVIOUS MAY MEASURABLE SNOW EVENTS. SINCE 1886...THERE WERE 10 MEASURABLE MAY EVENTS...FOR A TOTAL OF 4.3 INCHES. TODAYS SNOWFALL IS OVER 3 TIMES THAT.

Global Warming and the Politicians’ Dream Scenario

2013-05-03T01:44:00-05:00

The great dream of progressive politicians is to find a problem whose prescribed solution appears to require unending increases in taxation or political control preferably both with production of no measurable improvement. Ideally, the situation would be one in which the perception is opposite to reality i.e., where the “solution” actually worsens the true situation.

Sounds crazy? Who would do anything this nutty? Answer: we would. And to “fix” what problem? Answer: Global Warming. Since the 1990s the Greenies have been pounding the government-control/taxation drum for lessening carbon-dioxide emissions, on the premise that CO2 is a “greenhouse gas” that increases the earth’s surface-temperature by trapping the heat of the sun.

For a time, in the 1990s, warming appeared to be happening. Former Vice-president Al Gore built an entire new career (and a considerable fortune) on the theory that CO2 causes warming. He preached a message of advancing doom, claiming it was “settled science."” He chose data selectively and omitted important facts like the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods, when temperatures went up several degrees. He also neglected to mention the Little Ice Age (AD 1450-1850), when glaciers advanced, canals froze, and global temperatures plunged. Dr. Gore’s famous “hockey stick” graph of global temperatures vs. time ignores these salient periods, which were caused by entirely natural events beyond man’s control.
Although one would scarcely realize it from current news reports, the fact is that the climate has not warmed over the past 15 years. Instead, global cooling appears to be the new climate-dynamic.

To illustrate this, I present as evidence a chronology of world-wide climate-events over the past year, compiled by Geoffrey Pohanka. (http://isthereglobalcooling.com/ ) Mr. Pohanka argues that we are now in a period of global cooling, but I’ll let the reader draw his own conclusions from the data presented.

Feb. 2012: Europe and the Far East in the deep freeze. Coldest temperatures in Germany in 26 years; over 300 die from hypothermia and storm-caused accidents. Biggest Rome snowstorm since 1986. Three weeks of record cold in Europe: temperatures 25 C below normal; coldest February in 26 years; one of ten coldest in last 150 years. China temperatures hit -50 C. Coldest winter in memory freezes 40% of Mongolian livestock. Temperatures down to -50 C.

March 2012: Warm first quarter in eastern USA, but Oregon and Washington have all-time record snowfalls. Second largest ice extent on record in Bering Sea. Record cold in Tasmania, Australia. Huge snowfall in China kills 90,000 livestock and impacts 25,000 people.

April 2012: Sydney, Australia has coldest April 10th in 80 years.

May 2012: UK has coldest May in 200 years.

June 2012: Sweden has one of its coldest Junes since records began in 1789. Rare cold in New Zealand. Argentina frosts lead to agriculture crisis. Seattle has third coldest June in history.

July 2012: Emergency in Argentina due to cold; a dozen people freeze to death in Chile. Tasmania has record low temperatures.

August 2012: South Africa has snow in all 9 provinces for first time in recorded history.

September 2012: Extent of Antarctic sea ice is the largest ever recorded on Sept 12.

October 2012: Record cold grips part of Australia; earliest snow in a century. Surprise snow hits central Germany. Heavy snow catches Muscovites unprepared. For only the second time in recorded history all Austrian provinces have snow in October.

November 2012: Early cold snap kills 14 in Poland. Hurricane Sandy causes record snowfall in Appalachians. Three tourists die from cold on Great Wall of China due to early snow. Winter hits early on three continents. Record snow around USA, including Northeast. Globe seized by record cold: UK faces coldest winter in 100 years; Arctic sees record refreeze; snow in New Zealand.

December 2012: UK had coldest autumn since 1993. European deep-freeze kills hundreds. Record snow in Norway. Severe cooling grips Eastern Europe: over 600 die from cold; dozens die in Poland cold-snap. State of emergency declared in Ukraine due to huge snows; 37 dead in 24 hours. Russia faces strongest winter in decades: -50 C temperatures; people freezing to death; over 125 dead so far; snow up to 16 feet deep. Motorists near Moscow trapped for days on highway during snowstorm, backup extends 125 miles. State of emergency declared in Siberia; -60 F temperatures. Massive cold front grips Asia; northern India cold wave kills 25. USA has the most snow cover in ten years. Record snow in Minneapolis. December 2012 had largest Northern Hemisphere snow cover ever recorded.

January 2013: Asia gripped with record cold: hundreds dead; Bangladesh has coldest temperatures since 1960s. Russia buried under snow. Over 300 die from brutal cold in Eastern Europe. 29 die from cold in Mexico. Bermuda has record daily low temperature.

February 2013: New England snow is record. German winter temperatures are dropping at rate of 6 C per century. Alps cooling since 2000, according to peer-reviewed literature. Heaviest snowfall in a century hits Moscow. All-time low Northern Hemisphere temperature of -96 F recorded in Oymyakon, Siberia. Japan has heaviest winter snow in recorded history. Germany has darkest winter in 43 years.

March 2013: Winter 2012 to 13, November-February, ranked 4th largest snow in history; #2 for Northern hemisphere. December ‘12 had most December snow ever. Arctic sea ice largest in a decade. UK in deep freeze: deaths from cold mounting; coldest spring since 1963; UK gas rationing as shortages mount with coldest weather in 50 years. Second coldest March in USA since 1969. Calcutta has coldest day in 100 years and record low March temperatures. Berlin has coldest March in 100 years. Germany’s coldest spring on record: late March temp of -33 C is coldest March temperature in over 100 years. Climate models fail to predict brutally cold European temperatures. Thousands of animals buried alive in Ireland by snow drifts.

Never heard of most of this? If you live in the Eastern USA, where most of our news originates, that’s not surprising. It’s unlikely that most of what’s summarized above will have reached the USA’s liberal controlled mainstream media. Record-setting cold and snow do not fit the global warming storyline being peddled by liberal politicians and their media lapdogs. Thus, the average man-on-the-street will disbelieve these extreme-weather reports if he sees them. He still thinks we’re all going to roast and drown in rising oceans unless we pay all we have to the government.

The “chattering classes” in the USA express dismay over the lack of climate-interest shown by China, India and Russia. Those reports for the past year give a good indication of why they’re not down with the warming struggle: they’re freezing to death and they’re up to their hips in snow. Why would they want to cool things down any more?

Yet our own political leaders from both major parties continue to push ruinously expensive “cures” for the humanity-threatening problem of “anthropogenic warming.” Our president has already implemented his war on coal that will make the price of electricity “skyrocket” (his own term). He wants to do the same for the gasoline we need for our cars. He refuses to allow exploitation of our newly realized reserves of oil and natural gas that would give us energy security for a century or more.

All this is in the name of protecting the climate by controlling carbon-dioxide emissions. On that premise, we are pouring billions into absurd industries which will have absolutely no effect on climate, but will waste fortunes that our people need to live indeed, to survive. Much of the world already knows that the earth is cooling, not warming, but our Leader is charging ahead with plans to sacrifice our economy on the Altar of Climate. What he cannot obtain by law he will execute by executive order and Cabinet regulations.

The inmates are running the asylum here. We must stop them before we’re all broke, pedaling rickshaws, and freezing to death in the dark. Global warming is the greatest hoax in history.

Lack of access to fossil fuels causing millions of premature deaths amongst the poorest

2013-05-03T00:25:01-05:00

Hockey Schtick

A new paper published in Environmental Research Letters finds that lack of access to modern fossil fuels is responsible for millions of premature deaths amongst the poorest of the planet, and that “improved access to modern cooking fuels alone can avert between 0.6 and 1.8 million premature deaths annually in 2030 and enhance well being substantially.” The environmental left wants to raise the price and restrict supply of fossil fuels via taxation and drilling limitations, further restricting modern energy access to the poor, increasing social injustice and the premature deaths that result.

Pathways to achieve universal household access to modern energy by 2030

OPEN ACCESS

Full text PDF (1.72 MB)

A lack of access to modern energy impacts health and welfare and impedes development for billions of people. Growing concern about these impacts has mobilized the international community to set new targets for universal modern energy access. However, analyses exploring pathways to achieve these targets and quantifying the potential costs and benefits are limited. Here, we use two modelling frameworks to analyse investments and consequences of achieving total rural electrification and universal access to clean-combusting cooking fuels and stoves by 2030. Our analysis indicates that these targets can be achieved with additional investment of US $65 to 86 billion per year until 2030 combined with dedicated policies. Only a combination of policies that lowers costs for modern cooking fuels and stoves, along with more rapid electrification, can enable the realization of these goals. Our results demonstrate the critical importance of accounting for varying demands and affordability across heterogeneous household groups in both analysis and policy setting. While the investments required are significant, improved access to modern cooking fuels alone can avert between 0.6 and 1.8 million premature deaths annually in 2030 and enhance well being substantially.

Read about the collapse of the green movement in Europe here.

Hockey Schtick

Pathways to achieve universal household access to modern energy by 2030

OPEN ACCESS

Full text PDF (1.72 MB)

Read about the collapse of the green movement in Europe here.