Dr. Richard Keen
"Predicting and managing extreme weather events” by Lubchenco and Karl is a collection of the usual bromides one would expect from the duo. I’ll chip in with a few comments on some gems that are within the L&K article.
“The public holds a record-low opinion of government. The integrity of the scientific process is being questioned”
True. Do they wonder why?
“Last year, new records were set in the US for...”
No kidding. Records are made to be broken, and a year without records would be more worthy of note.
“We at NOAA were able to predict most of the weather- and climate-related extreme events, but our capacity to continue to
do so is seriously threatened by downward pressure on our budgets.”
Easy - shift the funds from meaningless and failed attempts to predict climate to what NOAA does best (and most usefully), forecasting
weather and severe events. The combined efforts of the Weather Service and other agencies has measurably saved tens of thousands of
lives over recent decades; the billions spent on climate have saved none.
“The number of events that produced on the order of $1 billion or more in damages in 2011 is the largest since tracking of that statistic
began in 1980, even after damages are adjusted for inflation. There are likely a number of contributing factors, including upward trends
in population and infrastructure, migration to vulnerable areas, and climate change.”
It seems the studies by the Pielkes and others rules out climate change as a factor, leaving inflation, population, and infrastructure
as the sole factors in the increasing value of disasters.
“Weather- and climate-related disasters in the US claimed more than 1000 lives in 2011, almost double the yearly average.”
Many meteorological variables vary interannually by a factor of two or more, so this statistic, while sad, fails to be impressive.
The IPCC “says that we can expect more of many kinds of extremeevents”, all likely or even “virtually certain”.
The key word here is “virtual”, since in the real world of meteorological data, none of these five events is showing a clear increase over historical values.
“one essential key to meeting those challenges is critical environmental intelligence. Just like the intelligence of the security world”
Only if the intelligence is good. WMDs anyone?
“overall, the percentage of the country affected by extreme heat, cold, rainfall, soil moisture, or soil dryness in a given year has
trended upward in recent decades. The index has been high in the past, but the increase from about 1970 to the present day is steady and
pronounced.”
So, current high values are due to “climate change”, but the previous high values were normal. Finding a trend since 1950 or 1970, during a
period when the PDO, AMO et al. cycled warmer, is a cheap way to demonstrate AGW. But I’ll give L&K credit for posting the data that
shows no change over 100+ years.
“Figure 3. Climate models are increasingly able to capture region-scale features.”
If you consider a forecast that’s 5 to 10 degrees higher than observed a good call, then the models are OK.
“Figure 4.Experts’ level of physical understanding”. Apparently they do think a 10 degree error is OK, since they place heat waves high in their level of understanding.
Again, I’ll give L&K credit for including data that puts the lie to many of their claims.
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See also Dr Craig Loehle’s analysis on WUWT Climate Change Impacts In The USA is Already [NOT] Happening.
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Dr Richard Lindzen did a great job testifying at the House of Commons, here’s the key summary:
Stated briefly, I will simply try to clarify what the debate over climate change is really about. It most certainly is not about whether climate is changing: it always is. It is not about whether CO2 is increasing: it clearly is. It is not about whether the increase in CO2, by itself, will lead to some warming: it should. The debate is simply over the matter of how much warming the increase in CO2 can lead to, and the connection of such warming to the innumerable claimed catastrophes. The evidence is that the increase in CO2 will lead to very little warming, and that the connection of this minimal warming (or even significant warming) to the purported catastrophes is also minimal. The arguments on which the catastrophic claims are made are extremely weak - and commonly acknowledged as such. They are sometimes overtly dishonest.
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Mark Albright and Ken Schlicte report
Climate Impacts Group has stated:
There is good reason to expect warming to continue as a result of climate change, with a likely warming rate of about 0.5°F (0.27°C)/decade.
And yet we have experienced cooling over the past 20 years (1992-2012) of -1.0 to -1.5 deg F at undeveloped and rural farmland sites in the Pacific Northwest.
Rural:
Hanford (khms):
10 yrs (1992-2001) mean (deg F): 54.4
10 yrs (2002-2011) mean 53.7 -0.7
5 yrs (2007-2011) mean 53.0 -1.4
Farmland:
Corvallis agrimet:
10 yrs (1992-2001) mean (deg F): 52.8
10 yrs (2002-2011) mean 52.3 -0.5
5 yrs (2007-2011) mean 51.7 -1.1
Farmland:
Forest Grove agrimet:
10 yrs (1992-2001) mean (deg F): 52.9
10 yrs (2002-2011) mean 52.4 -0.5
5 yrs (2007-2011) mean 51.8 -1.1
Farmland:
Eugene (keug):
10 yrs (1992-2001) mean (deg F): 52.9
10 yrs (2002-2011) mean 52.5 -0.4
5 yrs (2007-2011) mean 51.9 -1.0
Urban:
Portland (kpdx):
10 yrs (1992-2001) mean (deg F): 54.6
10 yrs (2002-2011) mean 54.4 -0.2
5 yrs (2007-2011) mean 53.7 -0.9
Urban:
Salem (ksle):
10 yrs (1992-2001) mean temperature (deg F): 53.4
10 yrs (2002-2011) mean temperature: 53.2 -0.2
5 yrs (2007-2011) mean temperature: 52.9 -0.5
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See the Galileo Movement here. Visit Then click on the blue text: “9.2.12 Evidence of Political Fraud - Malcolm Roberts”
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Climatologists vs. Weather Forecasters
Climatologists believe in man made global warming, because without it they receive little funding or recognition. They can make predictions 100 years in the future, and change them every few months.
Weather forecasters don’t believe in man made global warming, because their job depends on being continuously accurate and telling the truth.
a survey conducted by George Mason University in 2010* that found 63% of weathercasters believe global warming is due mainly to natural causes compared to just 31% who think it’s mostly a result of human causes. Some 27 percent of weathercasters referred to global warming as “a scam.”
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A catalog of collected papers from SPPI has just been updated through February 2011 and posted on our website. Papers cover many aspects of the energy/environment and science/policy arena. Click on the PDF file to open the catalog, and then click on the link to any particular paper to open its PDF for reading or printing. Many of the papers have a Summary for Policy Makers, convenient for highly busy readers.
The sets of papers once called “BlogWatch” , “ScareWatch” and “Commentary and Essays” have been replaced with postings at the SPPI Blog. The SPPI Blog has a pretty good search engines for key words.
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See John Coleman’s excellent video summary ”There is NO Significant Global Warming” on KUSI Coleman’s corner. No one communicates better to the public.
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See Dr. Doug Hoyt’s Greenhouse Scorecard on Warwick Hughes site here.
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From Jack Black’s Climate Change Dictionary
PEER REVIEW: The act of banding together a group of like-minded academics with a funding conflict of interest, for the purpose of squeezing out any research voices that threaten the multi-million dollar government grant gravy train.
SETTLED SCIENCE: Betrayal of the scientific method for politics or money or both.
DENIER: Anyone who suspects the truth.
CLIMATE CHANGE: What has been happening for billions of years, but should now be flogged to produce ‘panic for profit.’
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE: Leftist Nutcase Prize, unrelated to “Peace” in any meaningful way.
DATA, EVIDENCE: Unnecessary details. If anyone asks for this, see “DENIER,” above.
CLIMATE SCIENTIST: A person skilled in spouting obscure, scientific-sounding jargon that has the effect of deflecting requests for “DATA” by “DENIERS.’ Also skilled at affecting an aura of “Smartest Person in the Room” to buffalo gullible legislators and journalists.
JUNK SCIENCE: The use of invalid scientific evidence resulting in findings of causation which simply cannot be justified or understood from the standpoint of the current state of credible scientific or medical knowledge
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Speaking of junk science, see Lubos Motl’s excellent point by point counter to the John Cook 104 talking points document attacking the skeptical science here.
NOTE: Heartland has the presentations and powerpoints posted for the Heartland ICCC IV. If you could not go, there is plenty to see there. 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.
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See C3 Headlines excellent collection of graphs and charts that show AGW is nonsense here.
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See Climate Theater with a collection of the best climate skeptic films and documentaries here. See additonal scientific youtubes here.
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900+ Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of “Man-Made” Global Warming Alarm and here a list of 1000 stories suggesting global cooling has begun.
“The above papers support skepticism of “man-made” global warming or the environmental or economic effects of. Addendums, comments, corrections, erratum, replies, responses and submitted papers are not included in the peer-reviewed paper count. These are included as references in defense of various papers. There are many more listings than just the 900-1000 papers. Ordering of the papers is alphabetical by title except for the Hockey Stick, Cosmic Rays and Solar sections which are chronological. This list will be updated and corrected as necessary.”
The less intelligent alarmists have written a paper allegedly connecting the scientists to Exxon Mobil. Here is the detailed response from some of the featured scientists. Note that though this continues to be a knee jerk reaction by some of the followers, there is no funding of skeptic causes by big oil BUT Exxon has funded Stanford warmists to the tune of $100 million and BP UC Berkeley to $500,000,000. Climategate emails showed CRU/Hadley soliciting oil dollars and receiving $23,000,000 in funding.
See still more annotated here.
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Many more papers are catalogued at Pete’s Place here.
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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See the ICECAP Amazon Book store. Icecap benefits with small commission for your purchases via this link.
Also available now some items that will gore your alarmist friends (part of the proceeds go to support Icecap):
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:
WeatherBell Analytics here.
Website of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) here.
Coleman’s Corner here.
Science and Public Policy Institute here.
Intellicast Dr. Dewpoint Library here.
RedNeck Engineer Energy and Innovation here.
The Weather Wiz here. See how they have added THE WIZ SCHOOL (UPPER LEFT) to their website. An excellent educational tool for teachers at all class levels. “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel” - Socrates (470--399 BC)