Those of you who still believe that the ClimateGate scandal was just a bunch of emails in England should read this article. James Hansen of GISS appears to have systematically adjusted the historical temperature record to remove a cold patch in the ‘70s in order to exaggerate the rise since. The amount of change of 0.6 degrees is for one decade is close to the measured change for the whole century. This is vividly seen in these three snapshots of his data being modified (below, enlarged here):

Watch how the cooling trend of the 1960’s to 1970’s is steadily adjusted up so that 0.3 degrees cooler gradually becomes 0.03 warmer (notice the red and blue horizontal lines in the graphs above).

Mathews Graph 1976: 1955 - 1965 was around 0.3C warmer than 1970’s

Hansen/GISS 1980: 1955 - 1965 was around 0.1C warmer than 1970’s

Hansen/GISS 1987: 1955 - 1965 was around 0.05C warmer than 1970’s

Hansen/GISS 2007: 1955 - 1965 was around 0.03C cooler than 1970’s

Here is what we had thought was the historic temperature, back in the mid-1970s before the deception began. Note how much warmer the ‘30s and ‘40s looked then, and how in the charts above it shrinks in significance (below, enlarged here):

The article goes on to explain how weather balloon data created the prior temperature record, and is considered very accurate. It also matches very closely to satellite data, which started in 1979. Significantly, satellite data has diverged from the surface temperature data, showing less warming, pointing to the deception.

The whole AGW edifice is built on surface temperature from three sources: Hansen's GISS, the UK’s HadCRUt and the NOAA. The GISS data is now seen to be manipulated; the HadCRUt data is suspect since it is from the main sources of the ClimateGate emails; and NOAA is even warmer than both of them, suggesting manipulation there too.

Much of the rest of climate science is built on data which is now suspect. What is now seen as Garbage In, Garbage Out had been Garbage In, Gospel Out. See post here.

NOAA’s State of the Climate report for the winter season (December through February) anthe month of February, state that temperatures were below normal for the contiguous United States. The winter season was wetter than normal; however precipitation in February alone was slightly below average.

Based on data going back to 1895, the monthly analyses, prepared by scientists at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., are part of the climate services that NOAA provides to businesses, communities and governments so they may make informed decisions to safeguard their social and economic well-being.

U.S. Temperature Highlights

High resolution (Credit: NOAA)

For the winter season, 63 (appears based on number of divisions not area) percent of the country experienced below normal temperatures. In contrast to this national trend, Maine experienced the third warmest winter. February’s average temperature was 32.4 degrees F, which is 2.2 degrees below the long-term average.

Cold air in the wake of several reinforcing Arctic air masses dominated much of the United States during February, creating temperatures that were much-below average in the Deep South and below average in the Plains and mid-Atlantic states. Both the South and Southeast climate regions experienced their seventh coldest February on record. Meanwhile, warmer-than-average temperatures dominated the Northwest and Northeast climate regions. Florida had its fourth coldest February, Louisiana its fifth coldest, and Alabama, Georgia and Texas each had their sixth coldest. It was the seventh coldest February in Arkansas, while both Mississippi and South Carolina experienced their eighth coldest.

U.S. Precipitation Highlights

High resolution (Credit: NOAA)

Precipitation for the winter season was above average while it averaged slightly below the long term mean for the month of February. The season-long wet spell was notable for the Southeast, as Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina each had their eighth wettest winter. Precipitation was also much above normal for South Dakota, Virginia, New Jersey and Maryland. Wyoming and Idaho experienced their eighth and ninth driest winters, respectively.
Regionally, the active weather pattern in the South, Southwest, and Northeast created above normal precipitation for the month. The Northwest, West North Central, East North Central, and Central climate regions each had below-normal February precipitation. On the state level, New Mexico experienced its seventh wettest February on record. Conversely, Idaho had its seventh driest, and Wyoming its eighth driest.

Other Highlights

Major snowstorms on Feb. 4-7 and Feb. 9-11 plagued the Atlantic states. These storms ranked as Category Three (major) and Two (significant) storms respectively on the Northeast Snow Impacts Scale (NESIS). Combined and treated as one storm, they would become only the third Category Five (extreme) storm (the most extreme category) of the NESIS record. A third storm, also ranking as a Category Three on the NESIS scale, occurred across southern New England on Feb. 23-28. February 2010 is the first month during the NESIS period of record, since 1956, to place three storms of Category Two or greater.

Several seasonal snowfall records were set: (previous record)
Baltimore: 79.9 inches (62.5 inches, 1995-96)
Washington (Dulles): 72.8 inches (61.9 inches, 1995-96)
Washington (National): 55.9 inches (54.4 inches, 1898-1899)
Wilmington, Del.: 66.7 inches (55.9 inches, 1995-96)
Philadelphia: 71.6 inches (65.5 inches, 1995-96)
Atlantic City, N.J.: 49.9 inches (46.9 inches, 1966-67)

In several eastern cities, February was the snowiest month on record: (previous record)
Washington (Dulles): 46.1 inches (34.9 inches, February 2003)
Central Park, N.Y.: 36.9 inches (30.5 inches, March 1896)
Pittsburgh: 48.7 inches (40.2 inches, January 1978)

Background information on this winter’s snowstorms and the links to climate change is available online here.

Anyone who has studied the history of science knows that scientists are not immune to the non-rational dynamics of the herd.

A December 18 Washington Post poll, released on the final day of the ill-fated Copenhagen climate summit, reported “four in ten Americans now saying that they place little or no trust in what scientists have to say about the environment.” Nor is the poll an outlier. Several recent polls have found “climate change” skepticism rising faster than sea levels on Planet Algore (not to be confused with Planet Earth, where sea levels remain relatively stable).

Many of the doubt-inducing climate scientists and their media acolytes attribute this rising skepticism to the stupidity of Americans, philistines unable to appreciate that there is “a scientific consensus on climate change.” One of the benefits of the recent Climategate scandal, which revealed leading climate scientists manipulating data, methods, and peer review to exaggerate the evidence of significant global warming, may be to permanently deflate the rhetorical value of the phrase “scientific consensus.”

Even without the scandal, the very idea of scientific consensus should give us pause. “Consensus,” according to Merriam-Webster, means both “general agreement” and “group solidarity in sentiment and belief.” That pretty much sums up the dilemma. We want to know whether a scientific consensus is based on solid evidence and sound reasoning, or social pressure and groupthink.

Anyone who has studied the history of science knows that scientists are not immune to the non-rational dynamics of the herd. Many false ideas enjoyed consensus opinion at one time. Indeed, the “power of the paradigm” often shapes the thinking of scientists so strongly that they become unable to accurately summarize, let alone evaluate, radical alternatives. Question the paradigm, and some respond with dogmatic fanaticism.

We shouldn’t, of course, forget the other side of the coin. There are always cranks and conspiracy theorists. No matter how well founded a scientific consensus, there’s someone somewhere - easily accessible online - that thinks it’s all hokum. Sometimes these folks turn out to be right. But often, they’re just cranks whose counsel is best disregarded.

So what’s a non-scientist citizen, without the time to study the scientific details, to do? How is the ordinary citizen to distinguish, as Andrew Coyne puts it, “between genuine authority and mere received wisdom? Conversely, how do we tell crankish imperviousness to evidence from legitimate skepticism?” Are we obligated to trust whatever we’re told is based on a scientific consensus unless we can study the science ourselves? When can you doubt a consensus? When should you doubt it?

Your best bet is to look at the process that produced, maintains, and communicates the ostensible consensus. I don’t know of any exhaustive list of signs of suspicion, but, using climate change as a test study, I propose this checklist as a rough-and-ready list of signs for when to consider doubting a scientific “consensus,” whatever the subject. One of these signs may be enough to give pause. If they start to pile up, then it’s wise to be suspicious.

(1) When different claims get bundled together.

Usually, in scientific disputes, there is more than one claim at issue. With global warming, there’s the claim that our planet, on average, is getting warmer. There’s also the claim that human emissions are the main cause of it, that it’s going to be catastrophic, and that we have to transform civilization to deal with it. These are all different assertions with different bases of evidence. Evidence for warming, for instance, isn’t evidence for the cause of that warming. All the polar bears could drown, the glaciers melt, the sea levels rise 20 feet, Newfoundland become a popular place to tan, and that wouldn’t tell us a thing about what caused the warming. This is a matter of logic, not scientific evidence. The effect is not the same as the cause.

There’s a lot more agreement about (1) a modest warming trend since about 1850 than there is about (2) the cause of that trend. There’s even less agreement about (3) the dangers of that trend, or of (4) what to do about it. But these four propositions are frequently bundled together, so that if you doubt one, you’re labeled a climate change “skeptic” or “denier.” That’s just plain intellectually dishonest. When well-established claims are fused with separate, more controversial claims, and the entire conglomeration is covered with the label “consensus,” you have reason for doubt.

(2) When ad hominem attacks against dissenters predominate.

Personal attacks are common in any dispute simply because we’re human. It’s easier to insult than to the follow the thread of an argument. And just because someone makes an ad hominem argument, it doesn’t mean that their conclusion is wrong. But when the personal attacks are the first out of the gate, and when they seem to be growing in intensity and frequency, don your skeptic’s cap and look more closely at the evidence.

When it comes to climate change, ad hominems are all but ubiquitous. They are even smuggled into the way the debate is described. The common label “denier” is one example. Without actually making the argument, this label is supposed to call to mind the assertion of the “great climate scientist” Ellen Goodman: “I would like to say we’re at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let’s just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers.”

There’s an old legal proverb: If you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. If you have the law on your side, argue the law. If you have neither, attack the witness. When proponents of a scientific consensus lead with an attack on the witness, rather than on the arguments and evidence, be suspicious.

(3) When scientists are pressured to toe the party line.

The famous Lysenko affair in the former Soviet Union is often cited as an example of politics trumping good science. It’s a good example, but it’s often used to imply that such a thing could only happen in a totalitarian culture, that is, when all-powerful elites can control the flow of information. But this misses the almost equally powerful conspiracy of agreement, in which interlocking assumptions and interests combine to give the appearance of objectivity where none exists. For propaganda purposes, this voluntary conspiracy is even more powerful than a literal conspiracy by a dictatorial power, precisely because it looks like people have come to their position by a fair and independent evaluation of the evidence.

Tenure, job promotions, government grants, media accolades, social respectability, Wikipedia entries, and vanity can do what gulags do, only more subtly. Alexis de Tocqueville warned of the power of the majority in American society to erect “formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.” He could have been writing about climate science.

Climategate, and the dishonorable response to its revelations by some official scientific bodies, show that scientists are under pressure to toe the orthodox party line on climate change, and receive many benefits for doing so. That’s another reason for suspicion.

(4) When publishing and peer review in the discipline is cliquish.

Though it has its limits, the peer-review process is meant to provide checks and balances, to weed out bad and misleading work, and to bring some measure of objectivity to scientific research. At its best, it can do that. But when the same few people review and approve each other’s work, you invariably get conflicts of interest. This weakens the case for the supposed consensus, and becomes, instead, another reason to be suspicious. Nerds who follow the climate debate blogosphere have known for years about the cliquish nature of publishing and peer review in climate science (see here, for example).

(5) When dissenting opinions are excluded from the relevant peer-reviewed literature not because of weak evidence or bad arguments but as part of a strategy to marginalize dissent.

Besides mere cliquishness, the “peer review” process in climate science has, in some cases, been consciously, deliberately subverted to prevent dissenting views from being published. Again, denizens of the climate blogosphere have known about these problems for years, but Climategate revealed some of the gory details for the broader public. And again, this gives the lay public a reason to doubt the consensus.

(6) When the actual peer-reviewed literature is misrepresented.

Because of the rhetorical force of the idea of peer review, there’s the temptation to misrepresent it. We’ve been told for years that the peer-reviewed literature is virtually unanimous in its support for human-induced climate change. In Science, Naomi Oreskes even produced a “study” of the relevant literature supposedly showing “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change.” In fact, there are plenty of dissenting papers in the literature, and this despite mounting evidence that the peer-review deck was stacked against them. The Climategate scandal also underscored this: The climate scientists at the center of the controversy complained in their emails about dissenting papers that managed to survive the peer-review booby traps they helped maintain, and fantasized about torpedoing a respected climate science journal with the temerity to publish a dissenting article.

(7) When consensus is declared hurriedly or before it even exists.

A well-rooted scientific consensus, like a mature oak, usually needs time to emerge. Scientists around the world have to do research, publish articles, read about other research, repeat experiments (where possible), have open debates, make their data and methods available, evaluate arguments, look at the trends, and so forth, before they eventually come to agreement. When scientists rush to declare a consensus, particularly when they claim a consensus that has yet to form, this should give any reasonable person pause.

In 1992, former Vice President Al Gore reassured his listeners, “Only an insignificant fraction of scientists deny the global warming crisis. The time for debate is over. The science is settled.” In the real 1992, however, Gallup “reported that 53% of scientists actively involved in global climate research did not believe global warming had occurred; 30% weren’t sure; and only 17% believed global warming had begun. Even a Greenpeace poll showed 47% of climatologists didn’t think a runaway greenhouse effect was imminent; only 36% thought it possible and a mere 13% thought it probable.” Seventeen years later, in 2009, Gore apparently determined that he needed to revise his own revisionist history, asserting that the scientific debate over human-induced climate change had raged until as late as 1999, but now there was true consensus. Of course, 2009 is when Climategate broke, reminding us that what had smelled funny before might indeed be a little rotten.

(8) When the subject matter seems, by its nature, to resist consensus.

It makes sense that chemists over time may come to unanimous conclusions about the results of some chemical reaction, since they can replicate the results over and over in their own labs. They can see the connection between the conditions and its effects. It’s easily testable. But many of the things under consideration in climate science are not like that. The evidence is scattered and hard to keep track of; it’s often indirect, imbedded in history and requiring all sorts of assumptions. You can’t rerun past climate to test it, as you can with chemistry experiments. And the headline-grabbing conclusions of climate scientists are based on complex computer models that climate scientists themselves concede do not accurately model the underlying reality, and receive their input, not from the data, but from the scientists interpreting the data. This isn’t the sort of scientific endeavor on which a wide, well-established consensus is easily rendered. In fact, if there really were a consensus on all the various claims surrounding climate science, that would be really suspicious. A fortiori, the claim of consensus is a bit suspicious as well.

(9) When “scientists say” or “science says” is a common locution.

In Newsweek’s April 28, 1975, issue, science editor Peter Gwynne claimed that “scientists are almost unanimous” that global cooling was underway. Now we are told, “Scientists say global warming will lead to the extinction of plant and animal species, the flooding of coastal areas from rising seas, more extreme weather, more drought and diseases spreading more widely.” “Scientists say” is hopelessly ambiguous. Your mind should immediately wonder: “Which ones?”

Other times this vague company of scientists becomes “SCIENCE,” as when we’re told “what science says is required to avoid catastrophic climate change.” “Science says” is an inherently weasely claim. “Science,” after all, is an abstract noun. It can’t say anything. Whenever you see that locution used to imply a consensus, it should trigger your baloney detector.

(10) When it is being used to justify dramatic political or economic policies.

Imagine hundreds of world leaders and nongovernmental organizations, science groups, and United Nations functionaries gathered for a meeting heralded as the most important conference since World War II, in which “the future of the world’is being decided."” These officials seem to agree that institutions of “global governance” need to be established to reorder the world economy and massively restrict energy resources. Large numbers of them applaud wildly when socialist dictators denounce capitalism. Strange philosophical and metaphysical activism surrounds the gathering. And we are told by our president that all of this is based, not on fiction, but on science - that is, a scientific consensus that human activities, particularly greenhouse gas emissions, are leading to catastrophic climate change.

We don’t have to imagine that scenario, of course. It happened in Copenhagen, in December. Now, none of this disproves the hypothesis of catastrophic, human induced climate change. But it does describe an atmosphere that would be highly conducive to misrepresentation. And at the very least, when policy consequences, which claim to be based on science, are so profound, the evidence ought to be rock solid. “Extraordinary claims,” the late Carl Sagan often said, “require extraordinary evidence.” When the megaphones of consensus insist that there’s no time, that we have to move, MOVE, MOVE!, you have a right to be suspicious.

(11) When the “consensus” is maintained by an army of water-carrying journalists who defend it with uncritical and partisan zeal, and seem intent on helping certain scientists with their messaging rather than reporting on the field as objectively as possible.

Do I really need to elaborate on this point?

(12) When we keep being told that there’s a scientific consensus.

A scientific consensus should be based on scientific evidence. But a consensus is not itself the evidence. And with really well-established scientific theories, you never hear about consensus. No one talks about the consensus that the planets orbit the sun, that the hydrogen molecule is lighter than the oxygen molecule, that salt is sodium chloride, that light travels about 186,000 miles per second in a vacuum, that bacteria sometimes cause illness, or that blood carries oxygen to our organs. The very fact that we hear so much about a consensus on catastrophic, human-induced climate change is perhaps enough by itself to justify suspicion.

To adapt that old legal aphorism, when you’ve got decisive scientific evidence on your side, you argue the evidence. When you’ve got great arguments, you make the arguments. When you don’t have decisive evidence or great arguments, you claim consensus. Download story here.

Jay Richards frequently writes for the Enterprise Blog and is a contributing editor of THE AMERICAN.

Walter E. Williams, Washington Times, Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Stephen Dinan’s Washington Times article “Climate Scientist to Fight Back at Skeptics,” (March 5, 2010) tells of a forthcoming campaign that one global warmer said needs to be “an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach” to gut the credibility of skeptics. “Climate scientists at the National Academy of Sciences say they are tired of ‘being treated like political pawns’ and need to fight back...” Part of their strategy is to form a nonprofit organization and use donations to run newspaper ads to criticize critics. Stanford professor and environmentalist Paul Ehrlich, in one of the e-mails obtained by the Washington Times said, “Most of our colleagues don’t seem to grasp that we’re not in a gentlepersons’ debate, we’re in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules.”

Professor Thomas Sowell’s most recent book, “Intellectuals and Society,” has a quote from Eric Hoffer, “One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputation.” Environmentalist Professor Paul Ehrlich, who’s giving advice to the warmers, is an excellent example of Hoffer’s observation. Ehrlich in his widely read 1968 book, “The Population Bomb,” predicted, “The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the only answer.” Ehrlich also predicted the earth’s then-5 billion population would starve back to 2 billion people by 2025. In 1969, Dr. Ehrlich warned Britain’s Institute of Biology, “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” Despite these asinine predictions, Ehrlich has won no less than 16 awards, including the 1980 Crafoord Prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ highest award.

Stanford University professor and environmentalist activist Stephen H. Schneider is another scientist involved in the warmer retaliation. In a 1989 Discover Magazine interview, Professor Schneider said, “We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”

Former Colorado Sen. Tim Wirth, now president of the United Nations Foundation, in 1990 said, “We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we’ll be doing the right thing, in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”

Environmental activist predictions have been dead wrong. In National Wildlife (July 1975), Nigel Calder warned, “… the threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind.” In the same issue, C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization warned, “The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed.”

George Woodwell’s, founder of the Woods Hole Research Center, comments suggest that the warmers are gearing up for a big propaganda push. In one of his e-mails, Woodwell said that researchers have been ceding too much ground. He criticized Pennsylvania State University for their academic investigation of Professor Michael Mann, who wrote many of the e-mails leaked from the Britain’s now disgraced Climate Research Unit. Stephen Dinan’s Washington Times article reports, “In his e-mail, Mr. Woodwell acknowledged that he is advocating taking ‘an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach’ but said scientists have had their ‘classical reasonableness’ turned against them,” adding, “‘We are dealing with an opposition that is not going to yield to facts or appeals from people who hold themselves in high regard and think their assertions and data are obvious truths.’”

Fortunately, for the American people, Sen. James M. Inhofe, R- Okla., is considering asking the Justice Department to investigate whether climate scientists who receive taxpayer-funded grants have falsified data. He has identified 17 taxpayer-supported scientists who have been major players in the global warming conspiracy. 

Here is an opinion piece by Judith Curry in Physics Today “Can scientists rebuild the public trust in climate science?.”

By Dr. Roy Spencer

INTRODUCTION
My last few posts have described a new method for quantifying the average Urban Heat Island (UHI) warming effect as a function of population density, using thousands of pairs of temperature measuring stations within 150 km of each other. The results supported previous work which had shown that UHI warming increases logarithmically with population, with the greatest rate of warming occurring at the lowest population densities as population density increases.

Nightlights enlarged here.

But how does this help us determine whether global warming trends have been spuriously inflated by such effects remaining in the leading surface temperature datasets, like those produced by Phil Jones (CRU) and Jim Hansen (NASA/GISS)?

While my quantifying the UHI effect is an interesting exercise, the existence of such an effect spatially (with distance between stations) does not necessarily prove that there has been a spurious warming in the thermometer measurements at those stations over time. The reason why it doesn’t is that, to the extent that the population density of each thermometer site does not change over time, then various levels of UHI contamination at different thermometer sites would probably have little influence on long-term temperature trends. Urbanized locations would indeed be warmer on average, but “global warming” would affect them in about the same way as the more rural locations.

This hypothetical situation seems unlikely, though, since population does indeed increase over time. If we had sufficient truly-rural stations to rely on, we could just throw all the other UHI-contaminated data away. Unfortunately, there are very few long-term records from thermometers that have not experienced some sort of change in their exposure...usually the addition of manmade structures and surfaces that lead to spurious warming.

Thus, we are forced to use data from sites with at least some level of UHI contamination. So the question becomes, how does one adjust for such effects?

As the provider of the officially-blessed GHCN temperature dataset that both Hansen and Jones depend upon, NOAA has chosen a rather painstaking approach where the long-term temperature records from individual thermometer sites have undergone homogeneity “corrections” to their data, mainly based upon (presumably spurious) abrupt temperature changes over time. The coming and going of some stations over the years further complicates the construction of temperature records back 100 years or more.

All of these problems (among others) have led to a hodgepodge of complex adjustments.

A SIMPLER TECHNIQUE TO LOOK FOR SPURIOUS WARMING

I like simplicity of analysis - whenever possible, anyway. Complexity in data analysis should only be added when it is required to elucidate something that is not obvious from a simpler analysis. And it turns out that a simple analysis of publicly available raw (not adjusted) temperature data from NOAA/NESDIS NOAA/NCDC, combined with high-resolution population density data for those temperature monitoring sites, shows clear evidence of UHI warming contaminating the GHCN data for the United States.

I will restrict the analysis to 1973 and later since (1) this is the primary period of warming allegedly due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions; (2) the period having the largest number of monitoring sites has been since 1973; and (3) a relatively short 37-year record maximizes the number of continuously operating stations, avoiding the need to handle transitions as older stations stop operating and newer ones are added.

Similar to my previous posts, for each U.S. station I average together four temperature measurements per day (00, 06, 12, and 18 UTC) to get a daily average temperature (GHCN uses daily max/min data). There must be at least 20 days of such data for a monthly average to be computed. I then include only those stations having at least 90% complete monthly data from 1973 through 2009. Annual cycles in temperature and anomalies are computed from each station separately.

I then compute multi-station average anomalies in 5×5 deg. latitude/longitude boxes, and then compare the temperature trends for the represented regions to those in the CRUTem3 (Phil Jones’) dataset for the same regions. But to determine whether the CRUTem3 dataset has any spurious trends, I further divide my averages into 4 population density classes: 0 to 25; 25 to 100; 100 to 400; and greater than 400 persons per sq. km. The population density data is at a nominal 1 km resolution, available for 1990 and 2000…I use the 2000 data.

All of these restrictions then result in thirteen 24 to 26 5-deg grid boxes over the U.S. having all population classes represented over the 37-year period of record. In comparison, the entire U.S. covers about 40 grid boxes in the CRUTem3 dataset. While the following results are therefore for a regional subset (at least 60%) of the U.S., we will see that the CRUTem3 temperature variations for the entire U.S. do not change substantially when all 31 40 grids are included in the CRUTem3 averaging.

EVIDENCE OF A LARGE SPURIOUS WARMING TREND IN THE U.S. GHCN DATA

The following chart shows yearly area-averaged temperature anomalies from 1973 through 2009 for the 24 to 26 5-deg. grid squares over the U.S. having all four population classes represented (as well as a CRUTem3 average temperature measurement). All anomalies have been recomputed relative to the 30-year period, 1973-2002. (below, enlarged here.

The heavy red line is from the CRUTem3 dataset, and so might be considered one of the “official” estimates. The heavy blue curve is the lowest population class. (The other 3 population classes clutter the figure too much to show, but we will soon see those results in a more useful form.)

Significantly, the warming trend in the lowest population class is only 47% of the CRUTem3 trend, a factor of two difference.

Also interesting is that in the CRUTem3 data, 1998 and 2006 would be the two warmest years during this period of record. But in the lowest population class data, the two warmest years are 1987 and 1990. When the CRUTem3 data for the whole U.S. are analyzed (the lighter red line) the two warmest years are swapped, 2006 is 1st and then 1998 2nd.

From looking at the warmest years in the CRUTem3 data, one gets the impression that each new high-temperature year supersedes the previous one in intensity. But the low-population stations show just the opposite: the intensity of the warmest years is actually decreasing over time.

To get a better idea of how the calculated warming trend depends upon population density for all 4 classes, the following graph shows - just like the spatial UHI effect on temperatures I have previously reported on - that the warming trend goes down nonlinearly as population density of the stations decrease. In fact, extrapolation of these results to zero population density might produce little warming at all! (below, enlarged here. )

This is a very significant result. It suggests the possibility that there has been essentially no warming in the U.S. since the 1970s.

Also, note that the highest population class actually exhibits slightly more warming than that seen in the CRUTem3 dataset. This provides additional confidence that the effects demonstrated here are real.

Finally, the next graph shows the difference between the lowest population density class results seen in the first graph above. This provides a better idea of which years contribute to the large difference in warming trends. (below, enlarged here. )

Taken together, I believe these results provide powerful and direct evidence that the GHCN data still has a substantial spurious warming component, at least for the period (since 1973) and region (U.S.) addressed here.

There is a clear need for new, independent analyses of the global temperature data…the raw data, that is. As I have mentioned before, we need independent groups doing new and independent global temperature analyses - not international committees of Nobel laureates passing down opinions on tablets of stone.

But, as always, the analysis presented above is meant more for stimulating thought and discussion, and does not equal a peer-reviewed paper. Caveat emptor. See full post and more here.

McIntyre accused by University of Queensland Prof of CRU break in
Watts Up With That from Andrew Bolt’s blog at the Herald Sun

Professor John Quiggin complains of smears by sceptics:

In recent years, science and scientific institutions have come under increasingly vociferous attack, with accusations of fraud, incompetence and even aspirations to world domination becoming commonplace. Scientists have been constrained in fighting back by the fact that they are ethically constrained to be honest, whereas their opponents lie without any compunction.

Ethically unconstrained, Professor John Quiggin smears a sceptic:

writing my previous post on the “Climategate” break-in to the University of East Anglia computer system, I remained unclear about who was actually responsible for the break-in theft of the emails, which were then selectively quoted to promote a bogus allegation of scientific fraud. Looking over the evidence that is now available, I think there is enough to point to Steven McIntyre as the person, along with the actual hacker or leaker, who bears primary moral responsibility for the crime.

So, to sum up, McIntyre organised the campaign which led to the creation of the file, obtained information from the CRU file system by means he declined to reveal, received the stolen emails shortly after the theft and made dishonest and defamatory use of the stolen information. Whether or not he was directly involved in the theft, or merely created the opportunity and benefited from the proceeds is impossible to determine, and essentially irrelevant.

OK professor, let’s see your evidence beyond this missive.

Somebody needs to educate Quiggin on the CRU ftp security blunder that was “the mole”. He doesn’t get it, and then proceeds to use that as “evidence” against McIntyre. It’s comical.

Here’s Professor Quiggin’s page at the University of Queensland.

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Climate Realists reports here: Sad news: George Monbiot, the high priest of the AGW cult, is feeling frustrated and depressed. He is oppressed by the realisation that, as the politicians phrase it, he is not getting his message across. And this blog, at least in a small way, bears some part of the responsibility. From his pontifical throne in the Vatican of global warming - The Guardian - he has issued an anathema. Quoting from a recent anti-AGW scam posting by me, he observes: “The attack on climate scientists is now widening to an all-out war on science.” Don’t get carried away, George. It is only an all-out war on bogus science, such as the global warming superstition you champion.

Paul Erlich, the master of exagerration and the epitome of a false prophet was given the platform by Nature and in his op ed he begins “The integrity of climate research has taken a very public battering in recent months. Scientists must now emphasize the science, while acknowledging that they are in a street fight. Climate scientists are on the defensive, knocked off balance by a re-energized community of global-warming deniers who, by dominating the media agenda, are sowing doubts about the fundamental science. Most researchers find themselves completely out of their league in this kind of battle because it’s only superficially about the science. The real goal is to stoke the angry fires of talk radio, cable news, the blogosphere and the like, all of which feed off of contrarian story lines and seldom make the time to assess facts and weigh evidence. Civility, honesty, fact and perspective are irrelevant.

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ABC News in Australia reports an Independent body to review UN climate panel

United Nations chief Ban Ki-Moon has announced a respected international body will conduct an independent review of UN climate science after a global warming report was found to have errors. But Mr Ban says the errors should not affect the conclusion that human activities are changing the climate and that greenhouse gas emissions should be cut urgently. “The threat posed by climate change is real, and nothing that has been alleged or revealed in the media recently alters the fundamental scientific consensus on climate change,” he said. The verdict is in before the jury is even assembled.

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Concerns raised over Institute of Physics climate submission to Parliament

A statement submitted by the Institute of Physics (IOP) to a parliamentary inquiry on climate change continues to draw criticism, with one senior physicist saying that it is “not worthy” of the organization. Others have complained that the statement appears to play into the hands of climate “sceptics”, as it criticizes scientists for withholding climate data when requested using the UK’s Freedom of Information Act. The IOP, which owns the company that publishes physicsworld.com, has responded by making it clear that it believes in man-made climate change and that its submission was criticizing instead the practices of the climate scientists at the centre of the inquiry. See the IOP page and comments here. See Watts Up With That coverage and comments here.

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And in this fairytale story from down under, AUSTRALIA’s two leading scientific agencies released a report today showing Australia has warmed significantly over the past 50 years, and stating categorically that “climate change is real”. The State of the Climate snapshot, drawn together by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology partly in response to recent attacks on the science underpinning climate change, shows that Australia’s mean temperature has increased 0.7 degrees since 1960. No mention of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, Great Pacific Climate Shift, the historic solar cycle or Warwick Hughes’ analysis of rural stations (with no UHI) all of which remain standing in contradiction of this.

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At a briefing on Capitol Hill yesterday, Stanford University communication professor Jon Krosnick presented his ‘analysis’ estimating the impact of “ClimateGate” on public perceptions of climate change and of climate scientists. The briefing was co-sponsored by the high priests of the church of AGW in the The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Meteorological Society (AMS), and the American Statistical Association (ASA).  You missed nothing if you were not able to attend.

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Ands finally in It’s Gettin’ Hot in Here: The Big Battle Over Climate Science in Discover Magazine, the king of the fraudsters, Michael Mann is grilled.
On Tom Nelson’s Blog

[Q] Who might have done the hacking?
[Michael Mann] It appears to have been extremely well orchestrated, a very professional job. There also appears to have been a well-organized PR campaign that was all ready to go at the time these e-mails were released. And that campaign, involving all sorts of organizations that have lobbied against climate change legislation, has led some people to conclude that this is connected to a larger campaign by special interests to attack the science of climate change, to prevent policy action from being taken to deal with the problem.
...
[Q] Judith Curry has been an outspoken critic of your work and of a lot of climate researchers in general.
[Mann] Did you ask Judith to turn over her e-mails from the past three years? Once she does that, then she’s in a position to judge other scientists. Until she does that, she is not in a position to be talking about other scientists. Glass houses. Look, I’ll just say this. I’ve received e-mails from Judith that she would not want to be made public.
...
[Q] What is the worst-case scenario? Are we talking about the risk of our demise as a species?
[Mann] That’s what scares me, yeah.  yeah and maybe the other shoe to drop

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Cold Mid-Latitude Winter May have Implications on Hurricane Season
By Joseph D’Aleo, March 13, 2010

The blocking high pressure in the Polar Regions that dominated the winter and produced the record low arctic oscillation and a bitter winter in Mid-Latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere had effects further south that could have implications this hurricane season (below, enlarged here).

This pushed the subtropical high south of normal and made it weaker than normal. Winds were less than normal and cloudiness and precipitation were suppressed in the subtropics.

Mean winter pressure (above, enlarged here) - less than normal with center south of normal .

Mean winter surface winds (above, enlarged here) were weaker than normal through lower subtropics leading to less mixing of water and the development of a shallow pool of warm surface water and less upwelling of cold water off Africa from normal stronger northerly winds.

Also with the high pressure suppressed south of normal, cloudiness (above, enlarged here) was suppressed due to subsidence which further allowed more sunshine to warm the water (below, enlarged here).

Also last season tropical activity was suppressed by El Nino. Tropical storms are a heat compensation mechanism, removing excess tropical ocean heat built up through the summer and peaking in the late summer and early fall and transporting that heat north in the form of sensible and latent heat in tropical storms. Less heat was removed last season than in an active season.

The big question is whether El Nino hangs on long enough to affect this season. Seasons after El Nino years tend to see a big rebound in activity (below, enlarged here).

Most ENSO models suggests it dies this summer. However westerly wind bursts continue to maintain a suppressed thermocline in the central Pacific with Kelvin waves that carry warm water east. Looks like at least one more El Nino bounce though with the warmest water more towards the central Pacific. El Ninos as you know and as we saw last summer, tend to reduce Atlantic activity and landfall threat by increasing the shear in the Atlantic basin.

Longer term, a negative PDO mode (temporarily weakened by El Nino), should ensure the next major ENSO event is La Nina perhaps later this year. See post here.

By Peter Berkowitz, Wall Street Journal

Last fall, emails revealed that scientists at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England and colleagues in the U.S. and around the globe deliberately distorted data to support dire global warming scenarios and sought to block scholars with a different view from getting published. What does this scandal say generally about the intellectual habits and norms at our universities?

This is a legitimate question, because our universities, which above all should be cultivating intellectual virtue, are in their day-to-day operations fostering the opposite. Fashionable ideas, the convenience of professors, and the bureaucratic structures of academic life combine to encourage students and faculty alike to defend arguments for which they lack vital information. They pretend to knowledge they don’t possess and invoke the authority of rank and status instead of reasoned debate.

Consider the undergraduate curriculum. Over the last several decades, departments have watered down the requirements needed to complete a major, while core curricula have been hollowed out or abandoned. Only a handful of the nation’s leading universities - Columbia and the University of Chicago at the forefront - insist that all undergraduates must read a common set of books and become conversant with the main ideas and events that shaped Western history and the larger world.

There are no good pedagogical reasons for abandoning the core. Professors and administrators argue that students need and deserve the freedom to shape their own course of study. But how can students who do not know the basics make intelligent decisions about the books they should read and the perspectives they should master?

The real reasons for releasing students from rigorous departmental requirements and fixed core courses are quite different. One is that professors prefer to teach boutique classes focusing on their narrow areas of specialization. In addition, they believe that dropping requirements will lure more students to their departments, which translates into more faculty slots for like-minded colleagues. By far, though, the most important reason is that faculty generally reject the common sense idea that there is a basic body of knowledge that all students should learn. This is consistent with the popular campus dogma that all morals and cultures are relative and that objective knowledge is impossible.

The deplorable but predictable result is that professors constantly call upon students to engage in discussions and write papers in the absence of fundamental background knowledge. Good students quickly absorb the curriculum’s unwritten lesson—cutting corners and vigorously pressing strong but unsubstantiated opinions is the path to intellectual achievement.

The production of scholarship also fosters intellectual vice. Take the peer review process, which because of its supposed impartiality and objectivity is intended to distinguish the work of scholars from that of journalists and commercial authors.

Academic journals typically adopt a double blind system, concealing the names of both authors and reviewers. But any competent scholar can determine an article’s approach or analytical framework within the first few paragraphs. Scholars are likely to have colleagues and graduate students they support and whose careers they wish to advance. A few may even have colleagues whose careers, along with those of their graduate students, they would like to tarnish or destroy. There is no check to prevent them from benefiting their friends by providing preferential treatment for their orientation and similarly punishing their enemies.

That’s because the peer review process violates a fundamental principle of fairness. We don’t allow judges to be parties to a controversy they are adjudicating, and don’t permit athletes to umpire games in which they are playing. In both cases the concern is that their interest in the outcome will bias their judgment and corrupt their integrity. So why should we expect scholars, especially operating under the cloak of anonymity, to fairly and honorably evaluate the work of allies and rivals?

Some university presses exacerbate the problem. Harvard University Press tells a reviewer the name of a book manuscript’s author but withholds the reviewer’s identity from the author. It would be hard to design a system that provided reviewers more opportunity to reward friends and punish enemies.

Harvard Press assumes that its editors will detect and avoid conflicts of interest. But if reviewers are in the same scholarly field as, or in a field related to that of, the author - and why would they be asked for an evaluation if they weren’t? - then the reviewer will always have a conflict of interest.

Then there is the abuse of confidentiality and the overreliance on arguments from authority in hiring, promotion and tenure decisions. Owing to the premium the academy places on specialization, most university departments today contain several fields, and within them several subfields. Thus departmental colleagues are regularly asked to evaluate scholarly work in which they have little more expertise than the man or woman on the street.

Often unable to form independent professional judgments—but unwilling to recuse themselves from important personnel decisions—faculty members routinely rely on confidential letters of evaluation from scholars at other universities. Once again, these letters are written—and solicited—by scholars who are irreducibly interested parties.

There are no easy fixes to this state of affairs. Worse, our universities don’t recognize they have a problem. Instead, professors and university administrators are inclined to indignantly dismiss concerns about the curriculum, peer review, and hiring, promotion and tenure decisions as cynically calling into question their good character. But these concerns are actually rooted in the democratic conviction that professors and university administrators are not cut from finer cloth than their fellow citizens.

Our universities shape young men’s and women’s sensibilities, and our professors are supposed to serve as guardians of authoritative knowledge and exemplars of serious and systematic inquiry. Yet our campuses are home today to a toxic confluence of fashionable ideas that undermine the very notion of intellectual virtue, and to flawed educational practices and procedures that give intellectual vice ample room to flourish.

Just look at Climategate.

By Gordon J. Fulks, PhD

I just tried to find University of East Anglia researcher Keith Briffa on Wikipedia, and he was no where to be found!  This cached page was available through Yahoo:

It sugests that he must have been removed because of his association with ClimateGate.  Apparently Wikipedia does not want to make it easy to research the principle players in this scandal and learn the details of their involvement.

It is a scandal in itself when a supposedly neutral reference is so deliberately obstructive and biased. Or is it what some have speculated that Keith is the Email Whistleblower?

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In U.S., Many Environmental Issues at 20-Year-Low Concern
By Charles Clover, Timesonline

Worry about all eight measures tested is down from last year
by Jeffrey M. Jones

PRINCETON, NJ—Americans are less worried about each of eight specific environmental problems than they were a year ago, and on all but global warming and maintenance of the nation’s fresh water supply, concern is the lowest Gallup has measured. Americans worry most about drinking-water pollution and least about global warming (below list enlarged here).

Over time, Americans’ concerns about environmental problems have generally declined. After this year’s drop, for six of the eight items, the percentage who worry “a great deal” is at the lowest point Gallup has measured, which in some cases dates to 1989. The two exceptions are global warming (low point was 24% in 1997) and maintenance of the nation’s fresh water supply for household needs (35% in 2001). See more here.

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Grandaddy of green, James Lovelock, warms to eco-sceptics
By Charles Clover, Timesonline

Just occasionally you find yourself at an event where there is a sense of history in the air. So it was the other night at the Royal Society, when a small gathering of luminaries turned up to hear that extraordinary nonagenarian, the scientist James Lovelock.

They had all come: David MacKay, chief scientist at the Department of Energy and Climate Change; Michael Green, Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge; Michael Wilson, producer of the James Bond movies; Chris Rapley, director of the Science Museum; and more. You knew why they had answered the Isaac Newton Institute’s invitation. They wanted to learn where one of the most interesting minds in science stood in the climate debate.

Lovelock has been intimately involved in three of the defining environmental controversies of the past 60 years. He invented an instrument that made it possible to detect the presence of toxic pollutants in the fat of Antarctic penguins - at roughly the same time as Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, her hugely influential book about pollution. In the 1970s the same instrument, his electron capture detector, was used to detect the presence of chlorofluorocarbons - CFCs - in the atmosphere. Although Lovelock mistakenly pronounced these chemicals as no conceivable toxic hazard, the scientists F Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina later won the Nobel prize in chemistry for proving they were destroying the ozone layer.

Then, in 1979, Lovelock published the book-length version of his Gaia theory, which postulates that the Earth functions as a kind of super-organism, with millions of species regulating its temperature. Despite initial scepticism from the Darwinists, who refused to believe that individual organisms could act in harmony, the Gaia theory has been widely accepted and now underlies most atmospheric science.

What, I wondered, would be the great man’s view on the latest twists in the atmospheric story - the Climategate emails and the sloppy science revealed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)? To my surprise, he immediately professed his admiration for the climate-change sceptics.

“I think you have to accept that the sceptics have kept us sane - some of them, anyway,” he said. “They have been a breath of fresh air. They have kept us from regarding the science of climate change as a religion. It had gone too far that way. There is a role for sceptics in science. They shouldn’t be brushed aside. It is clear that the angel side wasn’t without sin.”

As we were ushered in to dinner, I couldn’t help wrestling with the irony that the so-called “prophet of climate change”, whose Gaia theory is regarded in some quarters as a faith in itself, was actively cheering on those who would knock science from its pedestal.

Lovelock places great emphasis on proof. The climate change projections by the Meteorological Office’s Hadley Centre - a key contributor to the IPCC consensus - should be taken seriously, he said. But he is concerned that the projections are relying on computer models based primarily on atmospheric physics, because models of that kind have let us down before. Similar models, for example, failed to detect the hole in the ozone layer;

it was eventually found by Joe Farman using a spectrometer.

How, asks Lovelock, can we predict the climate 40 years ahead when there is so much that we don’t know? Surely we should base any assumptions on things we can measure, such as a rise in sea levels. After all, surface temperatures go up and down, but the rise in sea levels reflects both melting ice and thermal expansion. The IPCC, he feels, underestimates the extent to which sea levels are rising.

Do mankind’s emissions matter? Yes, they undoubtedly do.

No one should be complacent about the fact that within the next 20 years we’ll have added nearly a trillion tons of carbon to the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. When a geological accident produced a similar carbon rise 55m years ago, it turned up the heat more than 5C. And now? Well, the effect of man-made carbon is unpredictable. Temperatures might go down at first, rather than up, he warns.

How should we be spending our money to prevent possible disaster? In Britain, says Lovelock, we need sea walls and more nuclear power. Heretical stuff, when you consider the vast amount that Europe plans to spend on wind turbines.

“What would you bet will happen this century?” a mathematician asked him. Lovelock predicted a temperature rise in the middle range of current projections - about 1C-2C - which we could live with. Ah, but hadn’t he also said there was a chance that temperature rises could threaten human civilisation within the lifetime of our grandchildren?

He had. In the end, his message was that we should have more respect for uncertainties and learn to live with possibilities rather than striving for the 95% probabilities that climate scientists have been trying to provide. We don’t know what’s going to happen and we don’t know if we can avert disaster - although we should try. His sage advice: enjoy life while you can.

See post and comments here.

By Kirk Myers, Seminole County Environmental Examiner

Several researchers are claiming in a study published last week that rising greenhouse emissions will raise global temperatures by 6.7 to 8.0 degrees by 2100, even if the earth’s climate enters another “Little Ice Age.”

Huh?

In their paper published in the journal of Geophysical Research Letters, Georg Fuelner and Stefan Ramstorf of the Potsdam Institute claim that a long-lasting decline in solar activity - similar to the period from 1300 to 1850 known as the Little Ice Age - would cut only 0.5 degrees from the projected rise in global temperatures this century.

Give Fuelner and Ramstorf credit for not going out on a limb with their prediction. Their forecasting prowess covers only the next 90 years. (A few recently humbled meteorologists at the MET Office in Britain would kill to have such predictive powers.)

Where does such nonsense come from?

According to the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) crowd (e.g., government-paid shills like NASA’s James Hansen, “Hockey Stick” Penn State Professor Michael Mann, and disgraced former Climate Research Unit Director Phil Jones), CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels are being trapped in the atmosphere where they act as a temperature-forcing agent. As CO2 levels continue to rise, the planet will eventually face runaway global warming.

However, there is a problem with their “catastrophic climate change” theory: hard, empirical evidence does not exist to support it.

CO2: forced warming

Let’s start at the beginning. CO2 molecules capture a small portion of surface energy and transfer this energy to other gas molecules in the atmosphere. Some of this energy escapes into space and the rest finds its way back to the surface, where it is eventually re-radiated, beginning the cycle again. Note that CO2 doesn’t actually retain energy. It acts only to transfer captured energy to other molecules in the atmosphere through collisions. In short, the greenhouse effect of CO2, even at concentrations well below current levels, is energy-limited and not concentration-limited.

According to Dr. Pierre Latour, a chemical and process-control engineer, a tripling of CO2 from current levels (approximately 385 parts per million) would not produce any additional warming. In an editorial published in the February issue of Hyrdocarbon Processing magazine, he writes: “CO2 only absorbs and emits specific spectral wavelengths (14.77 microns) that constitute a tiny fraction of solar radiation energy in earth’s atmosphere. The first 50 ppm [parts per million] of CO2 absorbs about half of this tiny energy, [and] each additional 50 ppm absorbs half of the remaining tiny fraction, so at the current 380 ppm, there are almost no absorbable photons left. CO2 could triple to 1,000 ppm, with no additional discernable absorption-emission [warming].”

In other words, all the long-wave radiation that can be absorbed by CO2 is eventually absorbed. So no additional warming is possible. The process is analogous to adding blankets to a bed on a cold night. Adding one extra blanket will have a big effect. But adding more and more extra blankets will have a progressively smaller effect until there is not effect at all.

Some climate scientists claim that water vapor amplifies the radiative “forcing” of man-made CO2 - creating a sort of magic “multiplier effect” that raises surface temperatures. But where’s the proof? There isn’t any. Climate models lack the computational power to accurately simulate clouds and cloud variations. In fact, as recent studies have shown, clouds may act to suppress any warming triggered by greenhouse gases.

Hundreds of thousands of radiosonde measurements have failed to find a pattern of upper trophospheric heating predicted by the models. Global temperatures flat-lined in the late 1990s and have been declining slightly since 2002. The IPCC models predicted a steady upward trend, not a decline. Ergo, their predictions are faulty.over a 10-year period, a pittance compared to the riches heaped on taxpayer-funded scientists by governments and foundations.

Creative computer models

The belief in runaway CO2-induced warming is based solely on computer models that have been manipulated over time to produce a desired political conclusion: ergo, a world being warmed by mankind. It is a theory unsupported by solid scientific evidence.

As Dr. William Gray, professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University, writes: “ll the global General Circulation Models (GCMs) which predict future global temperature change for a doubling of CO2 are badly flawed. They do not realistically handle the changes in upper tropospheric water vapor and cloudiness . . . They should never have been used to establish government climate policy.”

Gray also observes that models “failed to account for the weak global cooling over the last decade,” so how can they be expected to make long-range predictions? “t is also important to note that the GCM groups do not make official shorter-range global temperature forecasts of one to 0 years, which could accurately be verified. If they won’t do this, why should we believe their forecasts at 50 to 100 years? “Any experienced meteorologist or climate scientist who would actually believes a long range climate model should really have their head examined. They are living in a dream world,” he concludes.

Dr. Willie Soon, a solar and climate scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, challenges the rubber-stamped theory that blames CO2 emissions for global warming while disregarding the sun’s influence on climate. “The sun, of course, with its light energy output is probably the only true external driver of the earth’s climate system . . . There is no other force on earth that would supply that amount of energy for the air to move around, for the ocean currents to move around and for the trees to grow,” Soon explains.

The theory that increasing CO2 levels lead to warming is false, according to Soon. In fact, the process is exactly reversed: Increases in CO2 follow, rather than precede, warmer climate periods, he says. “Published papers [analyzing ice core data] clearly, clearly show that it is always temperature that rises first by at least several hundred years . . . then the CO2 curve response follows. It is a very clear scientific consensus on this issue,” Soon says.

Politicized IPPC research

Nevertheless, the AGW camp, including the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), claims the “sence is settled” and it continues to finger human-generated CO2 as the principal cause of global warming. There seems to be more “political science” at work than actual science, Soon laments.

“Those [AGW] views are promoted by political bodies . . . and there appears to be a corrupted process, in my opinion, of the bodies, here science and scientists are . . . misusing [data] in a lot of ways. This is all becoming a war of words instead of a war of evidence and science,” Soon says.

Dr. David Legates, associate professor of Climatology in the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Delaware, accuses IPPC policymakers of rigging the findings in “working group” science documents so they match the conclusions in the IPPC Assessment Report’s “Summary for Policymakers.”

“In many cases, they [policymakers] go back to scientists and say, “Can you change this science document to match our summary? We want to beef this up. We want to make it look worse.” That’s not the way science is done,” Legates says.

The impact of the sun and ocean currents on climate is simply ignored in the IPCC climate models. CO2, a plant food, is the default climate-change scapegoat blamed for everything from “acne” to “longer allergy seasons” by scientists trolling for their next research grant.

Billions of dollars are pouring into the study of man-made global warming. It is the Mother Lode that keeps the grant money flowing. If the theory were given the proper burial it deserves, research dollars would dry up, forcing scientists to hunt for other sources of funding. As a result, the theory is defended with wolf-pack determination by scientists who stand to lose the most, including their reputations.

A favorite canard of global warming alarmists-turned-conspiracy theorists is the claim that AGW skeptics and their climate blogs are funded by corporate interests, especially “big oil.” But the reverse is actually true. The truly big money is pouring into climate-change research. The U.S. government has spent $79 billion since 1989 on climate research and technology, 3,500 times the amount contributed to skeptics, according to Joanne Nova, a science writer who runs the Web site JoNova. “The money buys a bandwagon of support, a repetitive rain of press releases, and includes PR departments of institutions like NOAA, NASA, the Climate Change Science Program and the Climate Change Technology Program. The $79 billion figure does not include money from other western governments, private industry, and is not adjusted for inflation. In other words, it could be a lot bigger,” Nova says.

By comparison, the skeptics’ camp is largely self-funded. Greepeace, after conducting its own investigation, discovered that Exxon funneled $23 million to so-called skeptics.

CO2: a plant nutrient

CO2 is not the global menace described by climate-change scaremongers. It is an essential planetary nutrient. “The move to label it as a pollutant is simply preposterous,” writes physical science and mathematics professor Richard F. Yada physical . “The notion would be laughable if it were not so tragically real.”
Rising CO2 levels will not lead to runaway global warming and may very well provide a nutritional boost to agriculture, according to Dr. S. Fred Singer, professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia.

“The observational evidence . . . suggests that any warming from the growth of greenhouse gases is likely to be minor, difficult to detect above the natural fluctuations of the climate, and therefore inconsequential. In addition, the impacts of warming and of higher CO2 levels are likely to be beneficial for human activities and especially for agriculture,” Singer writes.

But many climate researchers continue to peddle CO2 horror stories supported by a mish-mash of inaccurate, incomplete and misleading analyses that fall apart under close examination. The CO2 fantasy is driven by both money and a profound hatred of “polluters,” those nasty industrial capitalists on a mission to destroy Mother Earth through their relentless efforts to raise mankind’s standard of living. It is a falsehood that deserves a place alongside a belief in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.

Breaking news update: This BBC headline just came across the Examiner.com news desk: “Climate change makes birds shrink in North America.” You can’t make this stuff up. See Kirk’s post here.

It looks as if the tottering IPCC has just made its biggest mistake yet. Twenty-four hours after the announcement of an “independent” inquiry into certain aspects of its activities it is possible to make a considered assessment of its significance. By any reasoned analysis, it is not only a whitewash but one in which the paint is spread so thinly as to be transparent.

First, who appointed this review body? Those two iconic standard bearers of climate science objectivity, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and IPCC head (still!) Rajendra Pachauri. There is nothing like being judge in your own cause - it secures a less damaging verdict. Ban Ki-moon is the clown who, on a visit to the Arctic last September, despairingly proclaimed that “100 billion tons” of polar ice were melting each year, when the sea-ice around him had just extended itself by half a million square kilometres more than at the same time the previous year. Pachauri, among many other solecisms, is also the buffoon who denounced criticism of the IPCC’s absurd claims about melting Himalayan glaciers as “voodoo science”.

Then there is the review’s terms of reference. It has four remits: to analyse the IPCC process, including links with other UN agencies; to review use of non-peer reviewed sources and data quality control; to assess how procedures handle “the full range of scientific views” and to review IPCC communications with the public and the media. So, most of its activity will relate to reorganisation of the IPCC’s propaganda operation and how it can be beefed up.

Nowhere are there proposals for it to revisit, in depth, the IPCC’s 3,000-page 2007 report and repudiate the vast range of inaccuracies and downright fabrications it contains. Instead, the review panel has to report by August so that its meaningless conclusions on a variety of irrelevant issues can be used to sanitise the IPCC’s next report, to be prepared at a meeting in October.

As for the personnel, the review will be conducted by the Inter-Academy Council and headed by its co-chairman Professor Robbert Dijkgraaf, who recently broadcast on Dutch radio a complacent statement about the “consensus” on climate science. The Inter-Academy Council is a representative body for a number of national academies of science, most of which are committed to the climate change cause.

So, a very obvious whitewash and presumably very satisfactory to the IPCC camp. Nevertheless, I repeat, it is probably the most serious mistake the AGW fanatics have so far made. This is because they have seriously underestimated the amount of trouble they are in. Any competent political spin doctor (and the AGW scam is pure politics, not science) would have told them that, as things stand in 2010, they had one last chance - and only one chance - to salvage their bogus crusade.

That was to allow a genuinely independent investigation, including highly qualified sceptics, to analyse the 2007 report and expose all its fallacies - which are already in the public domain in any case. They could then have apologised, sacked Pachauri (which they will probably do anyway) and prepared an equally mendacious but more sophisticated report, jettisoning the more extravagant scare-mongering for the time being, and so clawed back wavering support among the public.

Instead, they have opted for a very obvious whitewash, discredited from the day of its launch, that will provoke hilarity and increased scepticism when it reports. After that, there will be no road back. We should be grateful that the arrogance and over-confidence engendered by their longstanding immunity from challenge (but not any more) prompted the AGW fraudsters to create so inadequate a smokescreen.

This investigation is very good news for sceptics - not because it will denounce any significant flaws in the AGW imposture, but because it will not. AGW credulity is already a minority faith; but there is a further constituency of waverers, ready to break off like a melting iceberg from the main floe, whose final defection will mean the AGW movement is deprived of critical mass. This pathetic attempt at a cover-up could well be the catalyst for that decisive departure. Think about it and be glad.

Keeping the public looped in on what scientists are discovering has never been easy. For one thing, the traditional explainers - journalists - can distort, hype, or oversimplify the latest breakthroughs. But the need to communicate science broadly and clearly has never been more urgent.

Understanding science helps people know “where the truth speakers are on an issue” such as climate change, says Robert Semper, the executive associate director of the Exploratorium, a hands-on science center in San Francisco.

“The more educated and knowledgeable the public is about science ... the more responsible they can be when it comes time for voting or expressing opinions about public policy,” adds Leslie Fink, a public affairs specialist at the National Science Foundation in Washington.

The importance of getting the word out has science organizations scrambling to explore new channels, from souped up websites to asking Hollywood for help.

The current climate-change furor has become the poster child for what happens when there’s a communications gap between scientists and the public. The vast majority of scientists see compelling evidence that the world’s climate is about to change significantly, and that the change is largely driven by human activity. Yet polls show public opinion becoming more skeptical about climate change.

Contributing to that swing have been efforts by skeptics to point out flaws in specific portions of the landmark 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and question whether other findings might have been manipulated. An usually snowy winter in parts of the United States has also brought scorn from critics, who ask, “Where is the global warming?” (Data tell another story: Worldwide, last January was one of the warmest on record, and the decade 2000-2009 was the hottest on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization.)

The result has been a “corrosion” of public confidence in climate science, says Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). That “damage,” he says, “has spilled over into other fields of science.”

At the same time, traditional news media outlets have been cutting back on science writers. In 2008, CNN dismantled its entire science reporting staff. While few newsroom cuts have targeted science coverage so directly, countless examples of thinning ranks - including ABC News announcing in February that it will shed about 25 percent of its news division - have displaced many specialist reporters.

“Professional journalism has been cut to the bone. And the first people to go are science journalists,” says Bora Zivkovic, who writes the science blog “A Blog Around the Clock” from Chapel Hill, N.C., and serves as online community manager for PLoS One, a peer-reviewed science journal. With fewer authorities in the media, “scientists have to take that over,” he says. Mr. Zivkovic spoke as part of a panel on how to better communicate science at the annual convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego last month.

One effort, announced at the meeting, will recruit Hollywood to help scientists tell their stories. NAS and the University of Southern California will team up to draw on USC’s expertise in film, TV, websites, and video games. The partnership will be the first between a federal agency and a film school.

“Entertainment media has been pretty much untapped as far as science literacy goes,” Dr. Fink says. A huge portion of the public doesn’t go to science museums or watch science programming on TV, she says. “Those are the eyeballs we’re trying to capture.”

Feature films such as “Apollo 13” and “Contact” show that movies can be both box-office successes and inspire careers in science, says Elizabeth Daley, dean of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, whose graduates are used to winning Oscars, not Nobel Prizes. She hopes the program will provide screenwriters, producers, and directors with knowledgeable science sources to advise them.

The short cartoon within the 1993 film “Jurassic Park” that showed how one might clone dinosaurs provides a terrific example of what could be produced, Dr. Daley says. “It’s a very clear, simple explanation of DNA that people can understand.” As news outlets scale back science coverage, the Exploratorium’s Dr. Semper says that “nonprofits are actually becoming the intermediary between science and the public more than in the past.”

Semper’s center has reached out directly to scientists to help them tell their stories online. For example, the Exploratorium’s online feature “Ice Stories” was the result of giving polar scientists cameras and blogs to report back on what they learned in the field. Young scientists in particular are “very excited about talking about their work to the public,” he says.

Some might look for today’s Carl Sagan, the scientist who popularized astronomy through books and TV shows decades ago. Dr. Sagan had a way of engaging people by explaining the wonder of space - a very positive message, Semper says.

Today’s climate story is often framed as a sober warning, not as an exciting adventure. Some of that is by necessity. “It’s important for the public to know that scientists are coming across this evidence [of climate change] - it’s real evidence - that there may be some disagreements among the details but that doesn’t negate the entire picture,” Semper says. But the effort to better understanding earth’s climate is also exciting, a message that has been lost, he says. “The scientific questions are absolutely fascinating.”

Universities have stepped up their communication efforts as well. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., the paper-and-ink campus newspaper is long gone. But in September, the MIT News Office unveiled a new website aimed not just at the college community but at readers around the world, says Nathaniel Nickerson, editorial director of the news office. Five full-time science writers don’t try to “hype” the work of MIT scientists, he says. Instead, as journalists would do, they seek sources outside MIT to critique the research. The new website is attracting 350,000 to 400,000 unique visitors per month, Mr. Nickerson says, more than expected and accomplished “without any marketing whatsoever.”

Even the US government has joined in with a new site called climate.gov, aimed at being a reliable source of data and facts on climate change. “It’s clear that there’s been an insufficient job of communicating climate information to the public,” says Jane Lubchenco, the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which runs the website. “I think much more needs to be done to communicate to policymakers and citizens everywhere how important this issue is, what’s at stake, and what the opportunities are for addressing climate change.”

Scientists must learn that in the online era, sharing with the public is now a two-way conversation, not a one-way broadcast, blogger Zivkovic says. “Talking ‘one to many’ is now seen as talking down,” he says. Scientists today also need to know how to produce compelling videos and still images that explain their work. “We don’t need one Sagan,” Zivkovic says. “We need several hundred of them, each in a different place.”

A new NASA-funded study has concluded that Amazon rain forests were remarkably unaffected in the face of once-in-a-century drought in 2005, neither dying nor thriving, contrary to a previously published report and claims by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“We found no big differences in the greenness level of these forests between drought and non-drought years, which suggests that these forests may be more tolerant of droughts than we previously thought,” said Arindam Samanta, the study’s lead author from Boston University.

The comprehensive study published in the current issue of the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters used the latest version of the NASA MODIS satellite data to measure the greenness of these vast pristine forests over the past decade.

A study published in the journal Science in 2007 claimed that these forests actually thrive from drought because of more sunshine under cloud-less skies typical of drought conditions. The new study found that those results were flawed and not reproducible.

Canopy of the Amazon rain forest. A new study has concluded that Amazon rain forests were remarkably unaffected in the face of once-in-a-century drought in 2005, neither dying nor thriving, contrary to a previously published report and claims by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“This new study brings some clarity to our muddled understanding of how these forests, with their rich source of biodiversity, would fare in the future in the face of twin pressures from logging and changing climate,” said Boston University Prof. Ranga Myneni, senior author of the new study.

The IPCC is under scrutiny for various data inaccuracies, including its claim—based on a flawed World Wildlife Fund study—that up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically and be replaced by savannas from even a slight reduction in rainfall.

“Our results certainly do not indicate such extreme sensitivity to reductions in rainfall,” said Sangram Ganguly, an author on the new study, from the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute affiliated with NASA Ames Research Center in California.

“The way that the WWF report calculated this 40% was totally wrong, while [the new] calculations are by far more reliable and correct,” said Dr. Jose Marengo, a Brazilian National Institute for Space Research climate scientist and member of the IPCC. See report here.

Journal Reference: Samanta et al. Amazon forests did not green-up during the 2005 drought. Geophysical Research Letters, 2010; 37 (5): L05401 DOI: 10.1029/2009GL042154

The Obama administration is poised to ban offshore oil drilling on the outer continental shelf until 2012 or beyond. Meanwhile, Russia is making a bold strategic leap to begin drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. While the United States attempts to shift gears to alternative fuels to battle the purported evils of carbon emissions, Russia will erect oil derricks off the Cuban coast.

Offshore oil production makes economic sense. It creates jobs and helps fulfill America’s vast energy needs. It contributes to the gross domestic product and does not increase the trade deficit. Higher oil supply helps keep a lid on rising prices, and greater American production gives the United States more influence over the global market.

Drilling is also wildly popular with the public. A Pew Research Center poll from February showed 63 percent support for offshore drilling for oil and natural gas. Americans understand the fundamental points: The oil is there, and we need it. If we don’t drill it out, we have to buy it from other countries. Last year, the U.S. government even helped Brazil underwrite offshore drilling in the Tupi oil field near Rio de Janeiro. The current price of oil makes drilling economically feasible, so why not let the private sector go ahead and get our oil?

The Obama administration, however, views energy policy through green eyeshades. Every aspect of its approach to energy is subordinated to radical environmental concerns. This unprecedented lack of balance is placing offshore oil resources off-limits. The O Force would prefer the country shift its energy production to alternative sources, such as nuclear, solar and wind power. In theory, there’s nothing wrong with that, in the long run, assuming technology can catch up to demand. But we have not yet reached the green utopia, we won’t get there anytime soon, and America needs more oil now.

Russia more sensibly views energy primarily as a strategic resource. Energy is critical to Russia’s economy, as fuel and as a source of profit through export. Russia also has used energy as a coercive diplomatic tool, shutting off natural gas piped to Eastern Europe in the middle of winter to make a point about how dependent the countries are that do business with the Russians.

Now Russia is using oil exploration to establish a new presence in the Western Hemisphere. It recently concluded four contracts securing oil-exploration rights in Cuba’s economic zone in the Gulf of Mexico. A Russian-Cuban joint partnership will exploit oil found in the deep waters of the Gulf.

Cuba has rights to the area in which drilling will be conducted under an agreement the Carter administration recognized. From Russia’s perspective, this is another way to gain leverage inside what traditionally has been America’s sphere of influence. It may not be as dramatic as the Soviet Union attempting to use Cuba as a missile platform, but in the energy wars, the message is the same. Russia is projecting power into the Western Hemisphere while the United States retreats. The world will not tolerate a superpower that acts like a sidekick much longer.

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British ads banned over climate change claims
by Staff Writers, London (AFP) March 17, 2010

Britain’s advertising watchdog has banned two government adverts for overstating the threat from climate change, it said on Wednesday.
The adverts used nursery rhymes including “Jack and Jill” to highlight the impact of global warming, but the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said they exaggerated the risk.

“Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. There was none as extreme weather due to climate change had caused a drought,” read the copyline on one of the ads.

“Extreme weather conditions such as flooding, heat waves and storms will become more frequent and intense,” warned the advert, commissioned by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

The second advert read: “Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub—a necessary course of action due to flash flooding caused by climate change.”
“Climate change is happening. Temperature and sea levels are rising. Extreme weather events such as storms, floods and heat waves will become more frequent and intense,” it said.

And it warned: “If we carry on at this rate, life in 25 years could be very different.” The adverts were part of a DECC campaign last year which attracted 939 complaints.

Upholding the complaints, the ASA said that forecasts by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “involved uncertainties” that the adverts failed to reflect. Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband downplayed the problem raised by the ASA. “The science tells us that it is more than 90 percent likely that there will be more extreme weather events if we don’t act. In any future campaign, as requested by the ASA, we will make clear the nature of this prediction.

“We will continue to provide public information about the dangers of climate change,” he added. See PDF.

This is yet another example of things that don’t add up in the world of GISS temperatures in Australia. Previously, we’ve discussed Gladstone and Darwin.

Ken Stewart has been doing some homework, and you can see all the graphs on his blog. Essentially, the Bureau of Met in Australia provides data for Mt. Isa that shows a warming trend of about 0.5 degrees of warming over a century. GISS takes this, adjusts it carefully to “homogenize urban data with rural data”, and gets an answer of 1.1 degrees. (Ironically among other things, “homogenisation” is supposed to compensate for the Urban Heat Island Effect, which would artificially inflate the trend in urban centers.)

Enlarged here.

To give you an idea of scale, the nearest station is at Cloncurry, 106km east (where a flat trend of 0.05 or so appears in the graph). But, there are other trends that are warmer in other stations. Averaging the five nearest rural stations gives about 0.6 degrees; averaging the nearest ten stations gives between 0.6 and 0.88 degrees.

But, they increase the slope of the trendline from less than 0.5 to more than 1.1 degrees Celsius per 102 years by lowering the earlier data by 0.3C. They say they do this because they homogenise urban data for discontinuities caused by station shifts, Urban Heat Island (UHI), etc., by their stated method: “...[U]rban stations are adjusted so that their long-term trend matches that of the mean of neighboring rural stations. Urban stations without nearby rural stations are dropped.”

The Mt Isa Graph (enlarged here.)

The Giss (red) line shows a steeper warming trend, because earlier data is adjusted down.

But in the end, the temperatures don’t fit linear trends very well. In Bourketown, for example, there was a rise, but it was mostly during 1945 - 1988, and in the last twenty years, as Ken points out, there has been a significant fall.

Burketown 327km north east (enlarged here.)

By themselves, these minor revisions wouldnt be worth getting excited about, but the fact that they keep occurring and that they are so blatant and always in a warmer direction surely becomes too many nails in the coffin.

One can only assume that the people “adjusting” never thought anybody would check. And if billions of dollars were not on the table, probably nobody would have.

Thanks to Ken Stewart for his dedication. Read more and see comments here.

This posting is a little bit different for me.  First, the motivation. In looking at the GISS anomaly maps, Turkey is always roasting. There was something about that that just seemed wrong. It ought to have been a more random event; who was Hot Hot Hot and who was not.

So I took a look at the dT/dt report and and noticed that there was a clear “kink” in the data. It was running along flat, then about 1991 - 1995 it popped up and then continued running fairly flat with some rise. Odd, that ‘step function’. CO2 does not do a step function. Airports don’t do a step function. UHI does not do a step function…

(For folks new to this: dT/yr is the “sum of the changes of temperature, month now vs the same month that last had valid data, for each year”. An anomaly process similar to First Differences. Then dT is the running total of those changes, or the total change, the “Delta Temperature” to date.)

Click here to enlarge

Notice that the dT line is the “cumulative” dT/yr. Notice also that right around 1990 the dT/yr goes very small in range. The volatility just leaves it. So we see that dT is running along at a lower value, and dT/yr is dead flat for a couple of years, THEN about 1994 dT/yr pops up and dT starts a run for the moon. So what happened between 1990 and 1994?

The Great Dying Of Thermometers took out a lot of thermometers. Further, a bunch of old “modification flags” end and some new ones begin. Turkey had a fairly large number of thermometers, but that number plunges. Still, it’s a bit large for really seeing exactly what happens thermometer by thermometer. Looking at the temperature data directly, there were a lot of overlapping adds and drops.

So their is a bit of ‘feathering’ or ‘blending’ of the dropping, adding, and changing. I believe that is why when you look at the dT/yr right about 1989 - 1993 it goes to very small volatility, even though a large number of thermometers leave the record (or perhaps, because of it). Eventually we are left with a lot of new Modification Flag thermometers and very few of the older consistent record.

What is a “Modification Flag”? It is an indication that SOMETHING about that data record is different and that it needs different handling than the prior record. It could be a new thermometer at that location, or it could be a new Time Of Observation (changed procedures) or it might be simply that the thermometers and the TOBS are the same, but some “post processing” is different. A different QA method tossing out “outliers” or a different “TOBS adjustment” or just about anything. Basically, it means “Something that matters changed”. I’d say so…

Now look again at the dT/yr line. Notice anything? Run your eye along the peaks at about the 1.3 C level just above the 1 C line. Notice the consistent peaks? Now run your eye along the -1 C line. Notice the consistent peaks starting before 1970? Now run your eye along at about -0.5 C. Notice how much more area is in the down spikes before 1990 when compared with after? Something started to slightly clip the lower excursions in the ‘80s, but that 1990 change substantially eliminates them and strongly dampens or blunts any more than about -0.75 C and reduces the number significantly.

Don’t know what it was, but it happens at the same time the Mod Flags change. And we’ve seen this in Canada (as the Smith Effect at Fort Smith) and I’ve seen it in dozens of other cases around the planet. The “warmth” is from clipping of the cold spikes, and it has onset with the Mod Flag change.

Read more about Turkey and Mauritius here.

UPDATE: Also note this peer reviewed paper: Murat Turke, Utku M. Sumer, Gonul Kilic, State Meteorological Service, Department of Research, Climate Change Unit, 06120 Kalaba-Ankara, Turkey

ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study is to investigate the variations and trends in the long-term annual mean air temperatures by using graphical and statistical time-series methods. The study covers a 63-year period starting from 1930 and uses temperature records from 85 climate stations. First, spatial distributions of the annual mean temperatures and coefficients of variation are studied in order to show normal conditions of the long-term annual mean temperatures. Then variations and trends observed in the annual mean temperatures are investigated using temperature data from 71 climate stations and regional mean
series. Various non-parametric tests are used to detect abrupt changes and trends in the long-term mean temperatures of both geographical regions within Turkey and individual stations. The analyses indicate some noticeable variations and significant trends in the long-term annual mean temperatures. Among the geographical regions, only Eastern Anatolia appears to show similar behaviour to the global warming trends, except in the last 5 years. All the coastal regions, however, are characterized by cooling trends in the last two decades. Considering the results of the statistical tests applied to the 71 individual stations data, it could be concluded that annual mean temperatures are generally dominated by a cooling tendency in Turkey. The coldest years of the temperature records of the majority of the stations were 1933 and 1992, respectively.

See in Digging in the Clay here much more, including this before and after map of the stations.

Maps showing station temperature trends for (top) all stations active during 1880 to 2010 and (bottom) for stations active after 1990

From the GISS site, their MAP shows loads of HOT.

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Germany - Not Warming

This is an interesting little graph. It shows the “change of temperatures in a year”, that is the dT/yr, and the cumulative change over the life of all the thermometers, dT. What surprised me most when I made it was that it was so flat that the two lines were on top of each other. I had to make the dT/yr line semitransparent to make it readable. (Click here for a really big version).

I was so surprised at the 1850 to date flatness that I extended it back to 1750 just to see if they were still stable in the far past. Yup. 260 years, flat. First off, this is interesting because the Germans are generally known for being real sticklers about issues of precision and quality. Not the sort of folks to cut corners on where or how temperatures are to be measured.

Secondly, because other countries in the same general area do have warming trends in their data. And then there is poor Turkey, burning up in comparison. All of which argues for instrument error as much more likely than CO2. At least, I can’t think of any way for CO2 to “Give Germany a pass”.
And yet Germany has a strong “Green” movement that is highly vocal about “Global Warming” and has policies promoting the various forms of carbon reduction. One can only guess that the politicians there don’t look at their own temperatures much.

But this did give me an idea on how to fix “Global Warming”. For any country who’s change of temperature over time is within a small fraction of flat, give them a complete “free ride” on all the Carbon Cap & Trade, CO2 Sequestration, Light Bulb Police, you name it. Declare them a “Guilt Free Zone”. Somehow I think we would find Global Warming evaporate in a tide of precision and calibration.

In that spirit, I hereby declare Germany a “Carbon Guilt-Free Zone”. See post here.

E.M. also calls attention to this post by Boballab on Costa Rica Warming which he shows to be an artifact of using anomalies from stations with different characteristics entering and exiting a region during the last century here. As PDF here.

Where the climate change debate is concerned, the temptation to use military metaphors is sometimes irresistible. Until recently, the vastly superior forces of the IPCC and its allies in the scientific establishment have prevailed against the guerrilla warfare of the sceptics, who have sometimes done localised damage but never threatened the monolith. However, as a series of weaknesses in their campaign have become increasingly public, those who are currently in the scientific mainstream are being forced to conduct a more vigorous defence of their position. But the various groups of dissenting and sceptical irregulars, though they have gained ground, are far from having won the war. Both camps are now digging in for the long haul. Whether there will ever be a decisive victory for one side or the other is doubtful, but for now the battlefield is at least more even.

Without belabouring the metaphor any further, what has reduced the seemingly unstoppable impetus of the climate change policy brigade? The answer is really two-fold: a failure to achieve meaningful agreement in Copenhagen, which had been billed as the make-or-break summit, and a series of revelations about the workings of the IPCC panel which raise serious questions about credibility. Taken together, the resultant loss in policy-making momentum may never be regained. The consequence is likely to be that any meaningful post-Kyoto agreement might have to be negotiated in light of considerably more evidence than we currently have, which is surely no bad thing.

When faced with criticism - much of it both legitimate and measured, although it must be admitted that some of it became quite personal and vitriolic – the climate change establishment closed ranks and condescendingly dismissed all the points raised. Dissenters were routinely said to be in the pay of the oil industry (despite the fact that companies have little to fear from the policies mooted) or disparaged as flat-Earthers or even village idiots. They framed the debate (while seeking to close it down) as between “scientists” on one hand and “sceptics” on the other (fortunately, the term “denier” is now less frequently heard), with the implicit assumption that no scientist could possibly disagree with the mainstream view. Ad hominem slurs were common.

Human nature being what it is, this failure to acknowledge the credibility of any criticism riled many sceptics so much that, when evidence of sloppiness, closed-mindedness and downright obstruction among key climate scientists started to appear, quite a few went straight for the jugular. Claims that the various revelations totally discredit the AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) hypothesis and the work of the IPCC are wide of the mark but, in such a highly partisan and polarised debate, understandable.

In fact, the various “gates” paint an unflattering picture of arrogance and unscientific behaviour within the influential clique of scientists and policymakers central to the IPCC process. A little humility and acceptance of the faults would not be amiss and would very likely enhance the IPCC’s reputation. Instead, there are the beginnings of a full-blown counterattack and the setting up of an “independent” enquiry which promises to be anything but.

The problems (or faults, or mistakes, call them what you will) which have been publicised do not in themselves undermine the AGW hypothesis, but taken together they do call into question the supposedly objective nature of the massive assessment reports which the IPCC publishes periodically (the fourth, and most recent, AR4, in 2007). Discounting for now evidence which either conflicts with AGW or supports alternative hypotheses, climategate and its ilk hint at a process where scientific open-mindedness comes a distant second to the search for evidence which supports what has come to be seen as a self-evident truth, that humans are disrupting climate.

The leaking of emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, which will inevitably continue to be referred to as climategate, showed the defensiveness of the key scientists responsible for collating the global temperature record. While we should not place too much weight on particular words or expressions (after all, who does not at some time or another regret committing some things to email?) there appears to have been a clear attempt to withhold data, together with non-compliance with the Freedom of Information Act.

While requests for data from people known to be critical of your work must be very annoying, good science has nothing to fear from open questioning of results. But the exact temperature record is not really the key issue, average temperature being sensitive to the means used to derive it. Nevertheless, hiding the raw data can only give rise to suspicions about how selectively it might have been used.

In many ways a more worrying incident was the inclusion of a statement in AR4 that Himalayan glaciers were set to disappear by 2035. This conclusion was questioned, in particular by the Indian government, which published an independent report coming to very different conclusions (and which was dismissed as “voodoo science” by Rajendra Pachauri, current head of the IPCC).

It turned out that the quote had come from a non-peer reviewed WWF report and had no basis in reality. In itself a small thing, but it gives cause for concern that the authors of the chapter in question could include such a reference. Were they simply slapdash, or were they happy to include anything, however tenuous, which supported their case?

There was too much publicity for these and other concerns (including being selective with cut-off dates to ensure inclusion of the ‘right’ papers and exclusion of the ‘wrong’ ones) simply to be ignored. The UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, has asked the InterAcademy Council (comprising various national academies of science) “to conduct an independent review of the IPCC’s processes and procedures to further strengthen the quality of the Panel’s reports on climate change”.

Doubtless there will be a few minor slaps on the wrist over procedure. Pachauri himself may be sacrificed, given his rather intemperate way with critics. But the IPCC juggernaut itself will lumber on unchanged, with the same mission: to assemble evidence that our species is the major driver of climate change.

The IAC investigation is the defensive part of the campaign, but the climate establishment is also back on the offensive. Take, for example, a recent article in the UK Times (We climate scientist are not ecofanatics) by Sir John Houghton, first head of IPCC’s working group 1, in which he said that the IPCC was actually being too cautious in its conclusions. It is worthwhile looking at a few quotes:

“The IPCC is too big an organisation to be captured by an ideological cabal or fall foul of group-think”, which simply shows a staggering lack of understanding of human behaviour.

“The IPCC process also makes it impossible for green propaganda to be slipped in”. Such as a WWF report?

“But scientists are now faced by powerful lobbies who are working to distort and discredit the science behind climate change”. The belief that if people do not believe you, they cannot be honest.

Quite frankly, if that is going to be the nature of the debate, we are in for a long period of trench warfare. Time to invent the rhetorical equivalent of the tank.

GlobalWarming: The Other Side

See John Coleman’s one-hour special on KUSI Global Warming, the Other Side here. See his part II Global Warming Meltdown here. NEW: See his latest interview with Anthony Watts here. See his latest interview with Dr Fred Singer here. See his very revealing story on Roger Revelle here. See his powerful interview with E.M. Smith here.  See his other videos here.

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The Early Weather Channel Days and a Discussion of Global Warming
By Joe D’Aleo and Andre Bernier

Here more of an interview, I did with TV Meteorologist Andre Bernier of FOX 8 in Cleveland on Weatherjazz, who was a student of mine at Lyndon State College, and who by luck of the draw, was one of two on-camera meteorologists who did the first half hour of the Weather Channel (along with Bruce Edwards) on May 2, 1982. We talked about both the early days of the Weather Channel and global warming. The audio is here. See also episode 21 on November 10, 2009, when we talked about the upcoming winter.

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Climategate 2.0 - The NASA Files: It’s The Data, Not The Globe, That’s Cooked (Part 1)
To the activist judges and activist journalists we know, add the activist scientists we don’t. Bill Whittle talks to bestselling author Christopher C. Horner, author of Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed. See it here.

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Monckton’s Sydney Australia lecture and Q&A videos here courtesy of Dr. Bob Carter.

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Henk Tennekes - He Was right After All

Read all about this skeptic pioneer - who faced the wrath of the warmers but is now being vindicated here.

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Here is a series of radio interviews by Kim Greenhouse on It’s Rainmaking Time:

Sea Level Not Rising
by Kim Greenhouse on February 22, 2010

Geologist and author Dr. Nils-Axel Morner tells us what’s really happening with sea levels, and why the truth really needs to be known. Perhaps the most graphically disturbing piece of information in the climate arena is the assertion that sea levels will rise to a catastrophic degrees. An Inconvenient Truth scared many people, and the sea level issue continues to worry them. The imagery from the movie is still etched in our minds and hearts. Imagery is powerful even if it is untrue. It lingers in the subconscious mind, where it can affect our ability to think critically and receive whole-systems information. We must be vigilant to prevent this.

In this show, Dr. Nils-Axel Morner clarifies many misconceptions about rising sea levels and offers a comprehensive understanding of this subject. Dr Morner is highly qualified to speak on the matter. He was the former President of International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA). Under his charge, when INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, after deliberations and discussions at several international meetings, declared a possible sea level change of +5 cm plus or minus 15cm by the year 2100, it was based on a huge amount of world-wide data gathered by scientists from different parts of the globe. 26 Feb 10 - Dr Nils-Axel Morner, geologist, physicist, and one-time expert reviewer for the IPCC, announced this week that, contrary to IPCC claims, sea levels are not rising. 

“Sea level is not changing in any way, “ said Dr Morner in an hour-long interview with Kim Greenhouse of “It’s Rainmaking Time.”

Dr. Morner, who received his PhD in geology in 1969, is one of the greatest - if not the greatest - experts on sea levels in the world today. He has worked with sea level problems for 40 years in areas scattered all over the globe. There is no change, says Morner. There is absolutely no sea-level rise in Tuvalo, there is no change here, and there is zero sea-level rise in Bangladesh. If anything, sea levels have lowered in Bangladesh.

We do not need to fear sea-level rise, says Morner. However, “we should have a fear of those people who fooled us.”

Rethinking Wind Power
By Kim Greenhouse, It’s Rainmaking Time, February 5, 2010

In this show, guest Lawrence Dwight, Jr. of Dwight Investment Counsel gives us valuable insight into true energy independence and the economics of wind power. We tend to perceive it as an exciting, cost-effective, sustainable energy solution for the future. It seems very alluring. But is it really as great as we’ve been told?

The details suggest that wind power may not be as affordable or efficient as we thought. Of course everything has its place, but where does wind power fit in? How does it work? And who benefits from using it? Tune in to find out! Go here.

The Art of Weather
By Kim Greenhouse on January 11, 2010

When I learned about a meteorologist who was teaching educational weather programs at elementary, middle, and high schools, I became very excited! Voted the best weatherman in Palm Beach, Art Horn was a weather anchor for 25 years. He spoke at the first International Climate Change Conference in New York in 2008. Now he teaches a popular program about weather that informs audiences about the realities and myths of climate change.

Art founded the program “The Art of Weather” and writes online for The Energy Tribune, Pajamas Media, and China Daily. He received an Emmy nomination and a Telly award for a documentary he produced called “Hurricane: Direct Hit”.  Join us for an enlightening interview that is sure to broaden your perspectives on climate change! Click here for more and streaming audio interview.

An Inquiry About Polar Bears With Dr. Mitch Taylor
By Kim Greenhouse on January 8, 2010

We have heard plenty about diminishing polar bear populations and the loss of their habitats due to melting sea ice. I thought it was about time that we defined an initial frame of reference for polar bears in order to empower personal inquiry into their status. Dr. Mitch Taylor has 30 years of professional experience studying polar bears firsthand in the field. Consider this segment an introduction to polar bears through one man’s professional life amongst them.

Now more than ever, anyone doing this kind of work is worth listening to and learning from. Mitch Taylor’s perspective is refreshing and rare. How many people do you know that have lived such a life? Spend some time with us and learn about these beautiful animals that many of us have come to love. No matter how much confusion and conflict may surround the concept of climate, one thing is for sure: many of us are concerned about our friends, the polar bears. Click here to hear interview.

The International Climate Change Treaty at Copenhagen
By Kim Greenhouse on December 9, 2009

Lord Viscount Monckton of Brenchley joins us live from the Copenhagen Climate Conference to reveal the legal underbelly of this event, and to share his take on the entire new international power deal being sealed in Denmark. The focus of this conference is the introduction of one of the most critical International Frameworks outside of the Lisbon Treaty, the EU and the New Call for a World Banking System and Currency.

If you want to hear the single most controversial figure in the Climate Change arena - one who is well-grounded in the evolution of the IPCC and the Science itself, who understands and has read the new legal framework which is about to be signed - please tune in. He is with SPPI. Here the interview here.

CO2: The Breath of Life or A Dangerous Pollutant?
By Kim Greenhouse on December 15, 2009

On December 7th, 2009 - Day 1 of the Copenhagen Climate Conference - the EPA declared that carbon dioxide (CO2) is now a pollutant. I thought that we had better get to the seed of the matter right away and explore scientific facts about CO2. Instead of focusing on the declarations of major stakeholders in the new industrial complex, I wanted to learn how CO2 affects Nature. What I discovered may startle you.

I personally believed that carbon dioxide was a pollutant. For many years, that has been the official story: that CO2 is the root cause of “Global Warming”. However, Nature apparently views it as “the breath of life”.

I reached out to someone who has studied CO2 for many years in order to get a clear perspective. On the spur of the moment, I called Sherwood Idso, the president of The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide & Global Change, who graciously granted me an interview on short notice. I’m glad I did it! His many years of experience and multi-disciplinary expertise were very enlightening. Listen and see what you think. See CO2Science. Here interview here.

A True Inquiry Into Climate & Weather, Part 2: The Plot Thickens
By Kim Greenhouse on November 14, 2009

The plot really does thicken as we continue our inquiry into climate and weather. The verifiable data offered in this interview is both fascinating and disturbing. Astrophysicist Dr. Willie Soon (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and climatologist Dr. David Legates (University of Delaware) brief us on key scientific data that cannot be overlooked or dismissed.

I deeply appreciate the gift of real knowledge that these men have brought us. Speaking with clarity, passion, and openness, they identify numerous factors that leave the average activist and global warming advocate with a totally different understanding of what is really occurring. They display a rare courage in standing up for the integrity of verifiable science as they continue to speak truth to power against vicious attacks.

Have a listen. See what you come up with and ask the questions that need to be asked. If addressed improperly, this incredibly complex up-and-coming piece of inquiry could lead humanity to shocking and chilling new discoveries about climate that will overshadow global politics and outweigh any ideology.

A True Inquiry Into Climate & Weather, Part 1: A Hot Potato
By Kim Greenhouse on October 25, 2009

This broadcast segment addresses the urgent need for verifiable facts about climate and weather that have been unable to make their way in a cohesive, understandable way to the public. The first in a multi-part series, this show features Bob Felix, author of Not by Fire, But By Ice and Magnetic Reversals & Evolutionary Leaps. Bob has spent considerable time researching climate, extinctions, magnetic reversals and ice ages. His books present staggering evidence of global cooling that suggests an ice age could begin at any moment (i.e. NOW!).

As I prepared for this interview, I came across two other individuals that I felt would contribute greatly to the discussion. Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo (of http://icecap.us) and climatologist Dr. Tim Ball join us to provide a broader perspective on climate change and explain what’s missing from the established climate dialogues. The information these men bring to bear will shake you to your very foundations!

Well-meaning politicians must open their field of receptivity to improve their understanding of climate in a larger context - one that is devoid of political and economic survival, peer pressure, fear of marginalization, and fear of losing their positions. As a result, a gross body of distortion and misinformation exists about the climate dangers we are truly facing.

The truth is that very few of us understand climate or weather. Most of us have taken a blind faith approach to researching these subjects. Unfortunately, this will be to the great detriment of all of humanity. In order to adequately prepare for coming changes, we need a different framework to quickly and properly understand weather and climate. Get ready to learn things you have never known before about weather, climate, and the business of climate change! Listen here.

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The Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI) - a DC think tank - has produced a science-based critique of a recent film produced by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The SPPI paper is entitled Acid Test: The
Global Challenge of Ocean Acidification - A New Propaganda Film by the National Resources Defense Council Fails the Acid Test of Real World Data. Walter Starck has written this story “Observations on Growth of Reef Corals and Sea Grass Around Shallow Water Geothermal Vents in Papua New Guinea” supporting the SPPI findings.

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Fourth International Conference on Climate Change on May 16-18, 2010, Chicago, Illinois.

Make plans now to attend ICCC-4, an international conference on climate change calling attention to new scientific research on the causes and consequences of climate change, and to economic analysis of the cost and effectiveness of proposals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

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75% of American Meteorological Society Broadcasters Reject IPCC Man-made Climate Claims
By Bill Murray, Weather Historian, Alabamawx.com

A survey of weathercasters’ feelings on global warming was published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. It had some interesting findings. There were 121 respondents. 94% of the respondents had at least one of the three major seals.

Television meteorologists are the official scientists for most television stations. The overwhelming majority felt comfortable in that role for their stations. The majority agreed that the role of discussing climate change did fall to them.

The eyebrow raising responses:

“Respond to this IPCC conclusion: “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.” Only 35% agreed or strongly agreed. 34% disagreed or strongly disagreed.

“Most of the warming since 1950 is likely human induced.” A full 50% disagreed or strongly disagreed. 25% were neutral on this question. Only 8% strongly agreed.

“Global climate models are reliable in their predictions for a warming of the planet.” Only 3% strongly agreed and another 16% agreed. A full 62% disagreed or strongly disagreed.

“Respond to one TV weathercaster’s Quote saying “Global warming is a scam.” Responses were mixed. The largest percentage was neutral, at 26%. A total of 45% disagreed (23%) or strongly disagreed (22%). 19% of the respondents agreed with this statement and 10% strongly agreed.

The amount of uncertainty found in this survey tells that even the most educated and motivated communicators are still uncertain about the truth on this issue. Interesting article.

The entire text can be found here.

ICECAP NOTE: The broadcasters asked for more materials such as powerpoints and graphics which they could use to better study and present climate change.

Here is an excellent very detailed time-line and forensic analysis on climate-gatedone by an Australian physicist.

Here is an excellent source of short videos by the top scientists to provide an alternative to the dogma from COMET and Heidi Cullen and Climate Central and sadly The Weather Channel.  KUSI’s Coleman’s Corner has four videos by Dr. Richard Lindzen, Dr. Willie Soon, John Coleman and Joe D’Aleo here.

Please remember the goldmine of videos and PPTs at the Heartland ICCC proceeding sites for 2008 NYC here, 2009 NYC here and 2009 DC here. Here is a PPT I gave at the Heartland Instutute ICCC Meeting in 2008 and here is the follow up in 2009. Here is an abbreviated PPT in two parts I presented at a UK conference last month: Part 1, Part 2.

Excellent libraries of stories and papers and reviews can be found at Climate Science weblog by Roger Pielke Sr., CO2 Science site with the Idsos, Watts Up With That with Anthony Watts and Friends, World Climate Report, SPPI compiled by Bob Ferguson, Climate Audit by Steve McIntyre and Friends of Science with Tim Ball and others. This is just a few web sources.

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See Climate Theater with a collection of the best climate skeptic films and documentaries here. See additonal scientific youtubes here. Note that many more are coming, in part thanks to your donations.

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See 500 Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of “Man-Made” Global Warming here. See more here and still more annotated here.

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The science and economics of global warming are not too complicated for the average person to consider and make up his or her own mind. We urge you to do that. Go here and view some of the articles linked under “What’s New” or “A Primer on Global Warming.” Or go here and read about the new report from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), which comprehensively rebuts the claims of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Go here for the sources for the factual statements in the ads.

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Available now some items that will gore your alarmist friends (part of the proceeds go to support Icecap) SOME NEW ITEMS:

See full size display here.

And “My carbon footprints are bigger than yours and plants love me for it” items here and here

See sister sites:

Science and Public Policy Institute here.

Intellicast Dr. Dewpoint Library here.

RedNeck Engineer Energy and Innovation here.

Weather/Climate and Health here.

The Weather Wiz here. See how they have added THE WIZ SCHOOL (UPPER LEFT) to their website. An excellent educational tool.

Growing Wisdom - a wonderful site on gardening, one of my favorite hobbies, when I had a home with sunshine and time in summer to garden.