In David Archibald’s post over at WUWT Premonitions of the Fall (in temperature) there was a comment from Dr Tim Ball that seemed worth giving a bit of separate life.

Hubert Lamb, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia (Image source: http://www.aip.org click for link)

The full comment is here but I’ve excerpted most of it:

The IPCC has frozen climate science progress since its inception. Lamb knew what was going to happen as he recorded in his autobiography (1997). He created the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) because

“...it was clear that the first and greatest need was to establish the facts of the past record of the natural climate in times before any side effects of human activities could well be important.”

Lamb foresaw the potential architect for this diversion in the person of Tom Wigley who took over as director of the CRU. In my discussions with Lamb he said he felt his lack of computer skills was limiting. He hired Wigley to fill that gap at the CRU. He learned quickly it was a mistake. Here are his comments from the autobiography.

“The research project which I put forward to the Rockefeller Foundation was awarded a handsome grant, but it sadly came to grief over an understandable difference of scientific judgment between me and the scientists, Dr Tom Wigley, whom we appointed to take charge of the research.”

“The scheme had been to extract the information given in the wealth of descriptive reports of the nature of individual past seasons...”

“My plan was that these reports should be entered on maps of the reported weather character that prevailed in the individual seasons...”

The loss of this project underscores the problems Lamb anticipated because it is from such studies, Lamb recreated without the Rockefeller money, which is the basis for the material in Archibalds comments and Libby and Pandalfi’s predictions.

Lamb identified the problem with Wigley’s appointment and ultimately with the IPCC.

“My immediate successor, Professor Tom Wigley, was chiefly interested in the prospects of world climates being changed as result of human activities, primarily through the burning up of wood, coal, oil and gas reserves...”

“After only a few years almost all the work on historical reconstruction of past climate and weather situations, which first made the Unit well known, was abandoned.”

Wigley was instrumental in the application of computer models but as Lamb knew they were only to be as good as the data on which they were built. They were and continue to be a disaster, while Lamb’s work and the studies it engendered proves prescient.

The predictions Libby and Pandolfi made are based on Lamb’s work with midlatitude cyclonic and wind patterns. Wind remains one of the essentially overlooked components in climate studies. Hans Jelbring recognized this, but like any who knew and dared question what the IPCC were doing were subjected to attacks typical of politics rather than the open discourse essential to science.

As a result of this comment, I found myself reading parts of Lamb’s book: Lamb, Hubert H. (1977). Climatic History and the Future. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (at least what I could read in the extended preview). Chapter 19 Manmade Climatic Changes is worth a look. It flows beautifully and is hiughly readable - the mark of a good communicator.  It is also refreshingly devoid of bias - in fact it feels almost strange to read such a text, clearly written by a consummate scientist, but completely even-handed in his reporting.  We might imagine he regularly rotates in his grave at the current state of writing in climate “science”.

I note his plan was to enter historical data on maps and I rather think that maps presenting Anthony’s Surface Stations Data and/or all the historic reports gathered by TonyB might be rather more true to Lamb’s original intentions than the adjusted, highly homogenised data currently presented to serve the political purpose that so disappointed Lamb.

At the Heartland Conference in Chicago this morning, four of the forty-nine signers of the March letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden (discussed at WUWT) appeared to discuss their reasons for signing that letter and to announce a second letter responding to NASA’s response. The text of that letter is reproduced below:

May 11, 2012

The Honorable Charles Bolden, Jr.  
NASA Administrator

NASA Headquarters

Washington, D.C. 20546-0001

Dear Charlie: 

In our letter of March 28, 2012, we, the undersigned, respectfully requested that NASA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) refrain from including unproven remarks in public releases and websites.

On April 11th, Dr. Waleed Abdalati responded, holding that: “As an agency, NASA does not draw conclusions and issue ‘claims’ about research findings.”

Eight days later, at a senate hearing, Dr. Abdalati, did just that, concluding that Sea-Level rise within the next 87 years projects within a range of 0.2 meters to 2 meters, with lower ranges less likely while “the highest values are based on warmest of the temperature scenarios commonly considered for the remainder of the 21st century.” Abdalati added: “The consequences of a 1 meter rise in sea level by the end of this century would be very significant in terms of human well-being and economics, and potentially global socio-political stability.”

The range and imprecision of this conclusion is astounding!

“Commonly considered?’ Is this science by poll?  If hard data points to a provable rise, it should be stated with its probability.  Can you imagine one of your predecessors, Dr. Thomas Paine, declaring, “Our Apollo 11 Lunar Lander’s target is the Sea of Tranquility, but we may make final descent within a range that includes Crater Clavius”?

We are not trying to stifle discourse, but undisciplined commentary, lacking in precision, is wholly inappropriate when NASA’s name and reputation is attached.

This letter should end the discussion, as a protracted discourse on this topic is not in NASA’s interest, but a commitment from you to equal or exceed the agency’s reputation for careful reliance upon rigorous science and accurate data most certainly is!

Join us, please, in encouraging your colleagues to achieve the level of excellence the world has come to expect from America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration! 

Waiting to do so is not an option!

[signed 41]

PS Waiting to send was not an option either –we have fewer signatures than the first, as not everyone was reachable and only one opted out.

/s/ Jack Barneburg, Jack – JSC, Space Shuttle Structures, Engineering Directorate, 34 years

/s/ Larry Bell – JSC, Mgr. Shuttle Cargo Engineering, Crew Syst. Div. 32 years

/s/ Jerry C. Bostick – JSC, Director of Mission Support, 23 years

/s/ Dr. Phillip K. Chapman – JSC, Scientist – astronaut, 5 years

/s/ Michael F. Collins, JSC, Chief, Flight Design and Dynamics Div., MOD, 41 years

/s/ Dr. Kenneth Cox – JSC, Chief Flight Dynamics Div., Engr. Directorate, 40 years

/s/ Walter Cunningham – JSC, Astronaut, Apollo 7, 8 years

/s/ Dr. Donald M. Curry – JSC, Mgr. Shuttle Leading Edge, Thermal Protection Sys., Engr. Dir., 44 years

/s/ Leroy Day – Hdq. Deputy Director, Space Shuttle Program, 19 years

/s/Charles F. Deiterich – JSC, Mgr., Flight Operations Integration, MOD, 30 years

/s/ Dr. Harold Doiron – JSC, Chairman, Shuttle Pogo Prevention Panel, 16 years

/s/ Grace Germany – JSC, Program Analyst, 35 years

/s/ Richard Gordon – JSC, Astronaut, Gemini Xi, Apollo 12, 9 years

/s/ Gerald D. Griffin – JSC, Apollo Flight Director, and Director of Johnson Space Center, 22 years

/s/ Thomas M. Grubbs – JSC, Chief, Aircraft Maintenance and Engineering Branch, 31 years

/s/ David W. Heath – JSC, Reentry Specialist, MOD, 30 years

/s/ Miguel A. Hernandez, Jr. PE – JSC, Flight crew training and operations, 14 years

/s/ Enoch Jones – JSC, Mgr. SE&I, Shuttle Program Office, 26 years

/s/ Dr. Joseph Kerwin – JSC, Astronaut, Skylab 2, Director of Space and Life Sciences, 22 years

/s/ Jack Knight – JSC, Chief, Advanced Operations and Development Div., MOD, 40 years

/s/ Dr. Christopher C. Kraft – JSC, Apollo Flight Director and Director of Johnson Space Center, 24 years

/s/ Paul C. Kramer – JSC, Ass’t. for Planning Aeroscience and Flight Mechanics Div., Egr. Dir., 34 years

/s/ Dr. Lubert Leger – JSC, Ass’t. Chief Materials Div., Engr. Directorate, 30 years

/s/ Dr. Humbolt C. Mandell – JSC, Mgr. Shuttle Program Control and Advance Programs, 40 years

/s/ Donald K. McCutchen – JSC, Project Engineer – Space Shuttle and ISS Program Offices, 33 years

/s/ Richard McFarland – ARC, Mgr. Tech development VMS & Motion Simulators, 28 years

/s/ Thomas L. (Tom) Moser – Hdq. Dep. Assoc. Admin. & Director, Space Station Program, 28 years

/s/ Dr. George Mueller – Hdq., Assoc. Adm., Office of Space Flight, 6 years

/s/ James Peacock – JSC, Apollo and Shuttle Program Office, 21 years

/s/ Alex Pope – JSC, Aerospace Engineer, Engr. Directorate, 44 years

/s/ Joseph E. Rogers – JSC, Chief, Structures and Dynamics Branch, Engr. Directorate,40 years

/s/ Bernard J. Rosenbaum – JSC, Chief Engineer, Propulsion and Power Div., Engr. Dir., 48 years

/s/ James R. Roundtree – JSC, Sim. Dev. Branch Chief, Systems Dev. Div., Mission Support Dir., 26 years

/s/ Dr. Harrison (Jack) Schmitt – JSC, Astronaut Apollo 17, 10 years

/s/ Kenneth Suit – JSC, Ass’t Mgr., Systems Integration, Space Shuttle, 37 years

/s/ Robert F. Thompson – JSC, Program Manager, Space Shuttle, 44 years

/s/ Frank Van Renesselaer – Hdq.– Dir. Expendable Equipment (Ext. Tank, Solid Boosters, & Shuttle Upper Stages), 20 years

/s/ James Visentine – JSC Materials Branch, Engr. Directorate, 30 years

/s/ Manfred (Dutch) von Ehrenfried – JSC, Flight Controller; Mercury, Gemini & Apollo, MOD, 10 years

/s/ Al Worden – JSC, Astronaut, Apollo 15, 9 years

/s/ Thomas (Tom) Wysmuller – ARC, GSFC, Hdq. - Meteorologist, 5 years

And here is my blog about that power source.

JOHN COLEMAN’S BLOG
May 21, 2012

THORIUM will power the world.  That is the bumper sticker of the future.

The ugly debate about energy has gone on and on.  It is costing us billions of dollars.  It is beginning to cripple our nation.  I have been looking for a source of abundant, cheap electric power that short cuts the raging, highly destructive debate; a source all sides can support.  I think I have found it. It is thorium. 

Thorium is nothing new.  It was successfully demonstrated in the 1960s.  I am not the only one to find it; there are now 100s, maybe even thousands of scientists, promoting it. But it has largely been forgotten and overlooked ever since the military/industrial complex and their political and bureaucratic servants dumped it 50 years ago.

I am asking for all sides in the climate change, global warming, carbon dioxide, carbon footprint debate to consider supporting thorium.  It is green; it produces no “greenhouse gasses”, no particulate pollution, leaves little waste and produces no risk of explosion, radiation or pollution in the atmosphere or ocean.  It is cheap; an abundant resource found in the desert salts and rocks in virtually every country on Earth.  It is relatively cheap and simple to use.

I see every reason why, despite their huge, continuing differences on other issues, that thorium power can be accepted and promoted by all sides.  I think Richard Lindzen and Michael Mann, Joe Bast and Peter Glieck, Fred Singer and James Hansen, Lord Monckton and Al Gore, Roger Pielke and Joe Romm should all set aside their debate long enough to help get the move to thorium electric power generation rolling.

I have just finished my first television report on thorium.  It is about five minutes long; a true monster of a long “package” by television news standards.  Yet Steve Cohen, the News Director of KUSI-TV, gave his full support and approval and cleared it for telecast on Monday, May 21st.  It has now been posted on the KUSI website.

After you have watched, please, do a little internet digging of your own. The Thorium Alliance.com website is a good place to look.

It will take a mountain of enthusiasm from a broad range of well positioned people to move the politicians and bureaucrats to back thorium.  It would also be great if a major supplier of generating stations would climb aboard.  I fear it is going to take a lot of political donations to move our Congress.  And, I don’t think this can move forward without Congress.

If you interested enough to learn about thorium power here and now, read on:

Is Thorium the Biggest Energy Breakthrough Since Fire? Possibly
By William Pentland, Contributor

For the past several months, a friend of mine has been telling me about the potentially game-changing implications of an obscure (at least to me) metal named Thorium after the Norse god of thunder, Thor.

It seems like he is not the only person who believes thorium, a naturally-occurring, slightly radioactive metal discovered in 1828 by the Swedish chemist Jons Jakob Berzelius, could provide the world with an ultra-safe, ultra-cheap source of nuclear power.

Last week, scores of thorium boosters gathered in the United Kingdom to launch a new advocacy organization, the Weinberg Foundation, which plans to push the promise of thorium nuclear energy into the mainstream political discussion of clean energy and climate change. The message they’re sending is that thorium is the anti-dote to the world’s most pressing energy and environmental challenges.

So what is the big deal about thorium? In 2006, writing in the magazine Cosmos, Tim Dean summarized perhaps the most optimistic scenario for what a Thorium-powered nuclear world would be like:

What if we could build a nuclear reactor that offered no possibility of a meltdown, generated its power inexpensively, created no weapons-grade by-products, and burnt up existing high-level waste as well as old nuclear weapon stockpiles? And what if the waste produced by such a reactor was radioactive for a mere few hundred years rather than tens of thousands? It may sound too good to be true, but such a reactor is indeed possible, and a number of teams around the world are now working to make it a reality. What makes this incredible reactor so different is its fuel source: thorium.

A clutch of companies and countries are aggressively pursuing Dean’s dream of a thorium-powered world.

Lightbridge Corporation, a pioneering nuclear-energy start-up company based in McLean, VA, is developing the Radkowsky Thorium Reactor in collaboration with Russian researchers. In 2009, Areva, the French nuclear engineering conglomerate, recruited Lightbridge for a project assessing the use of thorium fuel in Areva’s next-generation EPR reactor, advanced class of 1,600+ MW nuclear reactors being built in Olkiluoto, Finland and Flamanville, France.

In China, the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited and a clutch of Chinese outfits began an effort in mid-2009 to use thorium as fuel in nuclear reactors in Qinshan, China.

Thorium is more abundant than uranium in the Earth’s crust. The world has an estimated 4.4 million tons of total known and estimated Thorium resources, according to the International Atomic Energy Association’s 2007 Red Book.

The most common source of thorium is the rare earth phosphate mineral, monazite. World monazite resources are estimated to be about 12 million tons, two-thirds of which are in India.  Idaho also boasts a large vein deposit of thorium and rare earth metals.

Thorium can be used as a nuclear fuel through breeding to fissile uranium-233.  For those technically-inclined readers, here is a link to a geek-friendly explanation of what that means.

I have no idea whether thorium is the panacea many people claims it is likely to be, but I believe we’ll be hearing more about it in the years to come.

The entire article is on the Forbes website.

There is more to come.  Let’s get focused on this concept and try to see it through. It could save our modern, high technology way of life.

John Coleman
jcoleman@kusi.com

In doing so, the EU Commission is supporting the German government which wants to reduce solar subsidies by up to 30 percent, a plan which has met with resistance in the Upper House of the German Parliament.

The expansion and especially the maturity of renewable energy such as solar and wind power have grown much faster than expected, the strategy paper points out. The cost of photovoltaic systems, for instance, had fallen by 48 percent in the last five years. The cost for the construction of offshore wind farms had decreased by 12 percent since 2008. In light of these developments, member states would have to make their programmes more flexible to phase them out.

At the expense of taxpayers

If green subsidy programmes are too rigid, there is a risk that producers would be over-compensated and the cost of developing renewable energy would become intolerable, the paper warns. The sharp decline in the cost of many new green energy sources together with the strong expansion of solar and wind energy had driven the cost for consumers and, in some cases, for taxpayers sharply higher. For many people, energy costs were already too high, especially in light of the difficult economic situation today. The price for renewable energy such as solar and wind power would therefore have to be left entirely to the forces of the free market and as quickly as possible.

However, the Commission does not intend to abolish all forms of renewable subsidies. The development of newer green energy sources, such as geothermal or novel solar thermal power plants, that are not yet commercially viable should be encouraged even beyond the year 2020.

Harmonisation of green subsidies among member states

In its strategy paper, the Commission also calls for the harmonisation of national subsidy and support programmes. The Commission has been criticising the coexistence of different support systems for some time. This dicrepancy has led to the inefficient use of renewable energy within the EU given that they have often been developed in countries where they are simply inappropriate. Instead of subsidising the expansion of solar energy in Northern Europe, for example, the Commission wants these nations to finance their expansion in sunny countries like Greece. The paper specifically mentions the so-called Helios Project in Greece. Energy generated in such projects could then be counted towards the renewable targets which Northern Europeans have signed up.

Until now, the German government has opposed any such Europe-wide plan because it would put in question Germany’s Renewable Energy Law (EEG) in which the feed-in tariff for renewable energy is set out. Not a single German party is currently prepared to agree to such a plan.

Translation Benny Peiser

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 19 May 2012

Icecap Note: The administration and the media in the pockets of the enviromental extremists ignore the realities off the major problems in Europe with Green energy...one of the reasons for economic turmoil there. The Obama administration used initially Spain as the model for green economy with its heavy subsidy of wind and solar. The subsidies of these inefficient sources drove up energy costs so much that industry relocated its factories to India and China and unemployment soared to a world high 25.5%.  Not a single fossil fuel plant could be closed because energy from them was needed to maintain power and CO2 emissions INCREASED 50% because they were being used in less efficient back up mode. A similar situation was found in Denmark, Italy, the UK and Germany although Germany came to its senses and is building fossil fuel plants and France built nuclear power. The UK’s new energy minister has a much more balanced view on energy sources than the extremist Chris Huhne. Energy costs have skyrocketed in the UK and over 25% of the households in Wales are in energy poverty.

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Renewable energy stocks in decline
By Kenneth Green

For those tracking the ongoing pop-pop-popping of the renewabubble, The Hockey Schtick has a post worth printing out and putting on the wall:


Enlarged

The RENIXX Index of the 30 largest renewable energy companies in the world is trading at an all-time low today and has lost over 90% of its value since 2008. A partial listing of green energy companies that have already filed bankruptcy or are teetering on the brink is below. Many of these companies were financed by taxpayers.

Filed Bankruptcy:

o Solyndra
o Beacon Power
o Ener1
o Range Fuels
o Solar Trust of America
o Spectrawatt
o Evergreen Solar
o Eastern Energy
o Unisolar
o Bright Automotive
o Olson’s Crop Service
o Energy Conversion Devices
o Sovello
o Siag
o Solon
o Q-Cells
o Mountain Plaza

Teetering on the Brink:

o Abound Solar
o A123 Systems
o Brightsource Energy
o Fisker Automotive
o First Solar
o Nevada Geothermal
o SunPower
o Nordex
o The Bard Group
o Amonix
o NRG Energy
o Alterra Power
o Enel Green Power
o Sunpower Corp

The Congressional Research Service estimates that since 2008 the federal government has spent nearly $70 billion on “climate change activities.”

Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe presented the new CRS report on the Senate Floor Thursday to make the point that the Obama administration has been focused on “green” defense projects to the detriment of the military.

The report revealed that from fiscal years 2008 through 2012 the federal government spent $68.4 billion to combat climate change. The Department of Defense also spent $4 billion of its budget, the report adds, on climate change and energy efficiency activities in that same time period.

Inhofe, the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, argued that the expenditures are foolish at a time when the military is facing “devastating cuts.”

“[E]veryone agrees that energy efficiency in the military is a worthy goal,” he said. “In fact, I have been a strong supporter of some of DoD’s alternative energy solutions that are affordable and make sense, including their initiatives on non-algal bio-fuels and natural gas. But forcing our military to take money away from core programs in order to invest in unproven technologies as part of a failed cap-and-trade agenda is not only wrong, it’s reckless.”

Inhofe, who believes climate change is an unproven scientific theory at best and a hoax at worst, expressed concern about recent statements by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta expressing the department’s focus on making and keeping the military “green.”

Panetta’s comments came just two weeks prior to the Senate Armed Services Committee’s markup of the current Defense Authorization bill. During that markup, Inhofe said he plans to “put the spotlight on President Obama forcing his costly green agenda on DoD while [Obama] is gutting the defense budget.” He added his intention to introduce amendments to stop the administration’s green military plans.

Inhofe noted “drastic” cuts in personnel, brigade combat teams, tactical fighters, and airlift aircraft DoD has undergone in the last four years, along with the cancellation or postponement of specialized ship and aircraft construction.

“hich would you rather have? Would you rather spend $4 billion on Air Force Base solar panels, or would you rather have 28 new F-22s or 30 F-25s or modernized C-130s?” asked. “ould you rather have $64.8 billion spent on pointless global warming efforts or would you rather have more funds put towards modernizing our fleet of ships, aircraft and ground vehicles to improve the safety of our troops and help defend our nation against the legitimate threats that we face?”

According to Inhofe, Panetta’s focus on greening the military was a direct order from the White House -an order he should disobey.

“President Obama can write press releases for his lackeys but Secretary Panetta has an important job to do and doesn’t have time to be pandering to President Obama’s global warming fantasies or his ongoing war on affordable energy. He has a real war to win,” Inhofe concluded.

“As President Obama’s war on affordable energy wages on there are real threats out there, and, contrary to Secretary Panetta’s remarks, man-made catastrophic global warming isn’t one of them,” Inhofe said.

The Oklahoma senator added that Panetta’s green focus reveals the administration’s true feelings about energy development.

“Secretary Panetta’s commitment of a billion dollars for alternative fuels makes clear that, despite President Obama’s recent change in rhetoric for his re-election campaign, he remains fully determined to implement his all-out attack on traditional American energy development - and the military is one place where he can force it to happen,” he said. Link.

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

See Larry Bell’s coverage of Panetta under fire in his weekly Forbes story here.

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

The President repeats his now famous crotch salute to the flag in a military ceremony.

By Caroline May, The Daily Caller

The Congressional Research Service estimates that since 2008 the federal government has spent nearly $70 billion on “climate change activities.”

Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe presented the new CRS report on the Senate Floor Thursday to make the point that the Obama administration has been focused on “green” defense projects to the detriment of the military.

The report revealed that from fiscal years 2008 through 2012 the federal government spent $68.4 billion to combat climate change. The Department of Defense also spent $4 billion of its budget, the report adds, on climate change and energy efficiency activities in that same time period.

Inhofe, the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, argued that the expenditures are foolish at a time when the military is facing “devastating cuts.”

“[E]veryone agrees that energy efficiency in the military is a worthy goal,” he said. “In fact, I have been a strong supporter of some of DoD’s alternative energy solutions that are affordable and make sense, including their initiatives on non-algal bio-fuels and natural gas. But forcing our military to take money away from core programs in order to invest in unproven technologies as part of a failed cap-and-trade agenda is not only wrong, it’s reckless.”

Inhofe, who believes climate change is an unproven scientific theory at best and a hoax at worst, expressed concern about recent statements by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta expressing the department’s focus on making and keeping the military “green.”

Panetta’s comments came just two weeks prior to the Senate Armed Services Committee’s markup of the current Defense Authorization bill. During that markup, Inhofe said he plans to “put the spotlight on President Obama forcing his costly green agenda on DoD while [Obama] is gutting the defense budget.” He added his intention to introduce amendments to stop the administration’s green military plans.

Inhofe noted “drastic” cuts in personnel, brigade combat teams, tactical fighters, and airlift aircraft DoD has undergone in the last four years, along with the cancellation or postponement of specialized ship and aircraft construction.

“hich would you rather have? Would you rather spend $4 billion on Air Force Base solar panels, or would you rather have 28 new F-22s or 30 F-25s or modernized C-130s?” asked. “ould you rather have $64.8 billion spent on pointless global warming efforts or would you rather have more funds put towards modernizing our fleet of ships, aircraft and ground vehicles to improve the safety of our troops and help defend our nation against the legitimate threats that we face?”

According to Inhofe, Panetta’s focus on greening the military was a direct order from the White House -an order he should disobey.

“President Obama can write press releases for his lackeys but Secretary Panetta has an important job to do and doesn’t have time to be pandering to President Obama’s global warming fantasies or his ongoing war on affordable energy. He has a real war to win,” Inhofe concluded.

“As President Obama’s war on affordable energy wages on there are real threats out there, and, contrary to Secretary Panetta’s remarks, man-made catastrophic global warming isn’t one of them,” Inhofe said.

The Oklahoma senator added that Panetta’s green focus reveals the administration’s true feelings about energy development.

“Secretary Panetta’s commitment of a billion dollars for alternative fuels makes clear that, despite President Obama’s recent change in rhetoric for his re-election campaign, he remains fully determined to implement his all-out attack on traditional American energy development - and the military is one place where he can force it to happen,” he said. Link.

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

The President repeats his now famous crotch salute to the flag in a military ceremony.

Congratulations to Nicola Scafetta, who has just published another major paper on the relationship between planetary cycles and solar activity variation. This new paper explores a viable physical mechanism which potentially explains the now well known correlations the solar-planetary community has been discovering and documenting here at the Talkshop and elsewhere on the net (see the blog roll). Nicola has been successful in drawing together several of these discoveries and underpinning them with a coherent physical theory. Bravo Nicola! A landmark moment in the development of knowledge about our solar system. I’ll keep this post at the top of the blog while discussion develops.

Does the Sun work as a nuclear fusion amplifier of planetary tidal forcing? A proposal for a physical mechanism based on the mass-luminosity relation.

Nicola Scafetta, 2012
Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 81–82, 27–40

Abstract

Numerous empirical evidences suggest that planetary tides may influence solar activity. In particular, it has been shown that: (1) the well-known 11-year Schwabe sunspot number cycle is constrained between the spring tidal period of Jupiter and Saturn, 9.93 year, and the tidal orbital period of Jupiter, 11.86 year, and a model based on these cycles can reconstruct solar dynamics at multiple time scales (Scafetta, in press); (2) a measure of the alignment of Venus, Earth and Jupiter reveals quasi 11.07-year cycles that are well correlated to the 11-year Schwabe solar cycles; and (3) there exists a 11.08 year cyclical recurrence in the solar jerk-shock vector, which is induced mostly by Mercury and Venus. However, Newtonian classical physics has failed to explain the phenomenon. Only by means of a significant nuclear fusion amplification of the tidal gravitational potential energy dissipated in the Sun, may planetary tides produce irradiance output oscillations with a sufficient magnitude to influence solar dynamo processes. Here we explain how a first order magnification factor can be roughly calculated using an adaptation of the well-known mass-luminosity relation for main-sequence stars similar to the Sun. This strategy yields a conversion factor between the solar luminosity and the potential gravitational power associated to the mass lost by nuclear fusion: the average estimated amplification factor is A=4.25×10^6. We use this magnification factor to evaluate the theoretical luminosity oscillations that planetary tides may potentially stimulate inside the solar core by making its nuclear fusion rate oscillate. By converting the power related to this energy into solar irradiance units at 1 AU we find that the tidal oscillations may be able to theoretically induce an oscillating luminosity increase from 0.05 - 0.65 W/m2 to 0.25 - 1.63 W/m2, which is a range compatible with the ACRIM satellite observed total solar irradiance fluctuations. In conclusion, the Sun, by means of its nuclear active core, may be working as a great amplifier of the small planetary tidal energy dissipated in it. The amplified signal should be sufficiently energetic to synchronize solar dynamics with the planetary frequencies and activate internal resonance mechanisms, which then generate and interfere with the solar dynamo cycle to shape solar dynamics, as further explained in Scafetta (in press). A section is devoted to explain how the traditional objections to the planetary theory of solar variation can be rebutted.

Enlarged.

Enlarged

From the conclusion:

The tidal movement consistently and continuously squeezes and stretches the entire Sun from the center to the surface. The solar mass can be moved and mixed by
gravitational tidal forces also because of the fluid nature of the solar plasma. However, even in this case only a tiny fraction of the gravitational tidal energy can be released as heat to the Sun (see Eq. (18)), and nothing would be expected to happen if only released tidal gravitational energy is involved in the process, as Newtonian classical physics would predict.  However, a planetary tidal massaging of the solar core should continuously release additional heat to it and also favor plasma fuel mixing. Consequently, the Sun’s nuclear fusion rate should be slightly increased by tidal work and should oscillate with the tidal oscillations. In Section 3.3 we have proposed a methodology to evaluate a nuclear amplification function (Eq. (32)) to convert the gravitational potential power released in the core by tidal work into solar luminosity. The strategy is based on the fact that nuclear fusion inside a solar core is kept active by gravitational forces that continuously compress the core and very slowly release additional gravitational energy to it, as the hydrogen fuses into helium. Without gravitational work, no fusion activity would occur either because the two phenomena are strongly coupled (Carroll and Ostlie, 2007).

The preliminary results of this paper suggest that for better understanding solar activity, the physical interaction between the planets and the Sun cannot be dismissed, as done until now. Future research should better address the nature of these couplings, which could also be used to better forecast solar activity and climate change (Scafetta, 2010, in press). In fact, planetary dynamics can be rigorously predicted.

The full paper is available here.

Closely related papers:

Be sure to visit Nicola Scafetta’s website, where papers and a summary of his work are presented.

Scafetta N., 2012. Multi-scale harmonic model for solar and climate cyclical variation throughout the Holocene based on Jupiter - Saturn tidal frequencies plus the 11-year solar dynamo cycle. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 80, 296 - 311. 

Tallbloke Scafetta jstides files

Scafetta N., 2012. Testing an astronomically based decadal-scale empirical harmonic climate model versus the IPCC (2007) general circulation climate models. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 80, 124 - 137.

Scafetta N., 2012. A shared frequency set between the historical mid-latitude aurora records and the global surface temperature. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 74, 145 - 163.

Scafetta N., 2010. Empirical evidence for a celestial origin of the climate oscillations and its implications Original Research Article, Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 72, 951 - 970.

Scafetta N., 2009. Empirical analysis of the solar contribution to global mean air surface temperature change Original Research Article, Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 71, 1916 - 1923.

Enlarged

So there you have it. We can expect more IPCC openness any day now…

More on this here

“The snowpack that helps provide water for California cities and farms could shrink by two-thirds because of climate change, according to new research submitted to the state’s Energy Commission.

Higher temperatures appear likely to wipe out a third of the Golden State’s snowpack by 2050 and two-thirds by the end of the century, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography found.

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This is no doubt model based. Scripps was one of the premier institutions and sources of reliable information in the days when Jerome Namias, a real meteorologist/climatologist was Director. Now like so many othere institutions, they have been bought off by government grants and publish alarmist nonsense. Somerville, an IPCC lead author is in charge and I knew Jermoe Namias and Somerville is no Namias.

Snowfall has everything to do with ENSO and the PDO in the west. Last year they set a record for snow which lingered into th summer. This year the action was further north. La Ninas when strong in a cold PDO can be prolific as in 1950/51 and 2010/11.

Do you see any declining trend in snowpack in the Donner summit data?

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Over 1000 papers support skeptic arguments against AGW
The following papers support skeptic arguments against Anthropogenic Climate Change (ACC), Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) or ACC/AGW Alarm.

ACC/AGW Alarm: (defined), “concern relating to a perceived negative environmental or socio-economic effect of ACC/AGW, usually exaggerated as catastrophic.”

In preparation for an upcoming talk, have updated the figure above to the start of the 2012 hurricane season, which will begin with a record-long stretch of no intense hurricane landfalls still continuing. (In most browsers you can click on the figure for a larger view.) The long stretch with no intense hurricane landfalls has surely shaped expectations, setting the stage for all sorts of animal spirits to be in play. Oh, to be a commodities trader this summer.

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More at The US Intense Hurricane Drought

In the meantime, Dr. Ryan Maue has reconstituted his Tropical page. This page, which was once at Florida State, is now here. Bookmark it. The graphs are telling.

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Figure: Historical North Atlantic tropical storm and major hurricane frequency since 1970 from the HURDAT best-track dataset. Since 1970, there have been 465 tropical storms including 102 major hurricanes (22%). Since 1995, the ratio is slightly higher (26%) or 64 major hurricanes out of a total of 250 storms.

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Figure: Historical North Atlantic tropical storm Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) since 1970 from the HURDAT best-track dataset. It is clear from the ACE metric that the active-era since 1995 in the Atlantic is well described with a marked step increase. This is partially due to a preponderance of long-lived Cape Verde origin major hurricanes that have higher intensity and longer duration which means more ACE. ACE is the convolution or sum of the reported wind speed squared (in knots) over the lifetime of the storm.

Historical Tropical Cyclone Activity Graphics

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Figure: Global Hurricane Frequency (all & major) - 12-month running sums. The top time series is the number of global tropical cyclones that reached at least hurricane-force (maximum lifetime wind speed exceeds 64-knots). The bottom time series is the number of global tropical cyclones that reached major hurricane strength (96-knots+). Adapted from Maue (2011) GRL.


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Figure: Last 4-decades of Global and Northern Hemisphere Accumulated Cyclone Energy: 24 month running sums. Note that the year indicated represents the value of ACE through the previous 24-months for the Northern Hemisphere (bottom line/gray boxes) and the entire global (top line/blue boxes). The area in between represents the Southern Hemisphere total ACE.

Global tropical cyclone power dissipation index


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Figure: Global and Northern Hemisphere Power Dissipation Index (Emanuel 2005) 1970-2011: 24 month running sums. Note that the year indicated represents the value of PDI through the previous 24-months for the Northern Hemisphere (bottom line/gray boxes) and the entire global (top line/blue boxes). The area in between represents the Southern Hemisphere total PDI. Power dissipation and Accumulated Cyclone Energy are analogous for running-sum time series - correlation > 0.97. 1970-2011 monthly PDI Data File (Maue, 2010 GRL)

The Heartland Institute today announced a finalized schedule for the Seventh International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC-7), taking place in Chicago on May 21-23. Speaking at dinner Monday night will be Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who holds a Ph.D. in economics and has been a vocal critic of climate change alarmism.

Breakfast on Tuesday, May 22 will feature a panel discussion by two Apollo astronauts - Harrison Schmitt (Apollo 17) and Walter Cunningham (Apollo 7) - as well as two former NASA engineers. They will discuss why they signed a letter with dozens of other NASA alumni warning the agency that its promotion of “unproven and unsupported remarks” on global warming is damaging NASA’s reputation.

At lunch on Tuesday, May 22, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) vice-chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, will deliver a speech and take questions from the audience. Sensenbrenner’s committee has jurisdiction over the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, NASA, NOAA, and several other federal agencies.

See more details below, or here to view a full schedule.

What: Seventh International Conference on Climate Change.

Theme: Real Science, Real Choices

Where: Hilton Chicago, 720 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL

When: Monday, May 21 - Wednesday, May 23, 2012, overlapping the NATO Summit also taking place in Chicago, on May 19-21.

Media: Open to all media. Request here.

The Heartland Institute will be joined by dozens of think tank cosponsors and hundreds of scientists who understand the need for a real debate about the causes, consequences, and policy implications of climate change.

This year’s theme is “Real Science, Real Choices.” Each of 11 panel discussions and eight keynote/meal presentations will address a particular issue or aspect of the climate change debate. Check out the schedule page often for regular updates on the conference.

Some highlights of the conference include:

Some keynote addresses:

Joe Bastardi of WeatherBELL: Global Sea Ice, Accumulated Cyclone Energy, and How it Explains the Climate

Roger Helmer, Member of the European Parliament (MEP), Great Britain

Sebastian Lüning, author, Die kalte Sonne (The Cold Sun): The Medieval Warm Period within the Context of Millennial Scale Climate Cycles

Brian Sussman, author, Eco-Tyranny and Climategate: Global Whining

Titles of some of the 11 panel discussions:

Climate History and Physics
Extreme Weather Events
Attribution: What Causes Climate Change?
Measuring Climate Change and its Impacts
Limits of Renewable Energy
Social and Economic Factors

Visit the conference web site for full information, including promotional videos, speaker bios, schedule, logistical information, and more.

Attendance Information

ICCC-7 is open to the public. [http://climateconference.heartland.org/general-registration/]Registration is required]].

Deadline to register is May 18. More information is available at the [http://climateconference.heartland.org/]conference Web site]].

For media credentials, here or contact Tammy Nash at tnash@heartland.org or 312/377-4000. For more information about The Heartland Institute, visit our Web site or contact Jim Lakely at jlakely@heartland.org or 312/377-4000.

For those of you who cannot join us be sure to follow the live stream via our website here. Get Twitter updates of the conference by following @HeartlandInst and the hashtag #ICCC7.

Mortensen grew roses (Rosa ‘Mercedes’ in growth chambers with atmospheric CO2 maintained at 330 ppm and 1,000 ppm. The plants increased their dry weight by 21% thanks to the extra CO2. Mortensen also grew two varieties of African violets in these chambers, and their dry weights increased by 40.8 and 58.3% given elevated CO2. The violets increased the number of plants producing flowers, the elevated CO2 decreased the number of days to flowering by a full week, and the number of flowers and flowerbuds more than doubled in the chambers with elevated CO2. Maybe you prefer mums instead of orchids, roses, or violets? You guessed it - Mortensen grew two variety of mums as well, and the elevated CO2 caused them to increase their dry weight by 27.8% and 67.1%.

We could go on and on - Mortensen grew lettuce, cucumbers, tomato, moss, ivy, and other flowers, and the CO2 effect on dry weight ranged from 21.4% for the roses to 74.0% for the lettuce. More reasons for happiness, more reasons to give flowers, and more reasons to welcome higher levels of CO2.

References:

Mortensen, L.M. 1985. Nitrogen oxides produced during CO2 enrichment. I. Effects on different greenhouse plants. The New Phytologist, 101, 103-108.

Norikane, A., T. Takamura, M. Morokuma, and M. Tanaka. 2010. In vitro growth and single-leaf photosynthetic response of Cymbidium plantlets to super-elevated CO2 under cold cathode fluorescent lamps. Plant Cell Reports, 29, 273–283.

Could the Nova Glikson “GreaaSt Debate” be it? Surely not, you think, but debates in “climate science” are high stakes affairs, where branded climate scientists will not publicly debate well known skeptics. They know they can’t win. Instead, the closest thing we get to a real debate is a kind of debate by proxy. The heavyweights on the establishment side pretend to be above it all, but of course, they are only an email away from the man on the front line.

What started as a single pair of “Yes”, then “No” articles that started on Quadrant become a five part saga lasting more than a month. I’ve compiled it all into a PDF which can be printed or read from start to finish, and might be just the thing for fence sitters who like to read. Some people really hanker after the “back-and-forwards” answer and question format. For those that missed it, two years on, the Great Debate still remains a rare example where two opponents actually drilled down to the points that matter.

To Andrew Glickson’s credit, he did not knock back the challenge with the usual “I only debate real climate scientists” - which automatically rules out most of the competition and leaves them debating other government funded establishment “thinkers” who also haven’t disagreed with the meme and been sacked, sabotaged or retired out of frustration.

Dr Glikson is a paleoclimatologist who works at Australian National University along with Will Steffen and the Climate Institute. I’m a blogger with questions he can’t answer. He’s connected via email with most of the team of so called expert climate scientists in Australia. I’m widely read and networked with people who don’t take anyone’s word for it.

When a science theory is monopolistically funded, the normal competition in science is hobbled. So the internet becomes the front line: where the ruling establishment meets free wits.

As it happens the online format is arguably the most powerful method for getting to the truth. There are no limits on space or time, both sides can use as many graphs and references as they want, and can “phone a friend” ad lib. It doesn’t depend on “showmanship”, nor on an ambush, and everyone has infinite right of reply.

It came about because Dr Andrew Glikson requested space for a one off article on Quadrant and the editor, Michael Connor, agreed, and then approached me to write a reply. The debate went through five rounds (one round, possibly the key point, came out in comments).  Dr Glikson asked to reply the sixth time. I welcomed it, but two years later, it still hasn’t arrived.

Glikson Vs Nova: The Great Climate Debate PDF.

If I can only post one exchange to sum it up - this was in my final reply, summing up the paleoclimatic evidence Dr Glikson had put forwards.

Dr Andrew Glikson: Studies from 3 million to 500 million years ago show that when volcanoes blow up or asteroids hit, CO2 levels rise and animals die

Jo Nova: Yes. That’d be because both those events are God-awful, destructive things that dump mountains of ash in the atmosphere. The ash cools the planet. Cold times are horrid for life on earth. Animals die en masse. Tsunamis, dust and lava are none too friendly either. The CO2 effect is a mere rider of correlation, and correlation is not causation.

We know (as I’ve said before) that colder oceans suck CO2 out of the atmosphere. We would be shocked (shocked!) if the geological record didn’t show a correlation between temperature and CO2. Temperature drives CO2.

Read the caption on Figure 1. “Dating errors are typically less than plus/minus 1 Myr.” We’re hunting for an effect that ought to happen in days, weeks and months, with some result within decades, and the graph we’re looking at resolves things to plus or minus one million years. We’re searching for nanotubes in a hay stack, and we’ve only got our bifocals.

David R. Legates

Although he has rarely been willing to discuss or debate energy or environmental issues with those who do not share his views, environmentalist David Suzuki frequently
challenges them on other grounds.  In his recent article, “Religious Right is wrong about climate change,” Suzuki claims that some US and Canadian scientists hold religious views that are anti-science. 

Suzuki asserts that some climate scientists - including me, by name - put “misguided beliefs above rational thought.” His implicit assumption is that conservative Christian views are irrational and incompatible with science, and that I have replaced Almighty God with the “almighty dollar,” believing the economy matters more than the environment.

As a coauthor of the Cornwall Alliance’s Renewed Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Examination of the Theology, Science and Economics of Global Warming, which forms the basis for the Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming that Suzuki criticizes, I know the Cornwall Alliance fully and carefully integrates scientific, economic, ethical and theological reasoning to support its conclusions. There’s nothing at all irrational about it - unless you consider religion irrational per se.
However, Suzuki is correct regarding one aspect of my belief: the economy does matter as much as the environment. Good environmental stewardship requires sound financial footing - and improving and safeguarding human health and welfare requires maintaining a strong, vibrant, innovative economy that can sustain continued environmental progress.

When a country is in dire need of food, clothing, shelter and other necessities for life, it cannot possibly be concerned with environmental issues. The poor people of India pour untreated sewage into the Ganges River - and then draw their drinking and “cleaning” water from it. So poor that they’re desperate simply for survival, they cannot possibly concern themselves with environmental stewardship. Only when economic improvements allow technological advancements to increase the quality of life, provide ample food and clothing, house citizens, provide clean drinking water, and treat and eradicate diseases can a thus wealthier society turn its attention to caring for the environment.

That is precisely what has happened in more developed nations. As the United States and Canada advanced economically, we developed technologies and policies that increased our quality and length of life. In turn, this has led us to be more proactive with our environmental stewardship.

We emit far less pollution and waste today, both per person and per unit of production, than we did fifty years ago. We feed more people with every parcel of land, we get more energy from every drop of oil, we are more efficient at everything we do, and we are much better stewards of our environment. But none of that could have occurred without a strong and developing economy.

Unfortunately, some so-called environmentalists wish to keep Africa and other developing nations in perpetual underdevelopment. They pay them off to be “environmentally conscious,” by giving them handouts - food and monetary aid - to keep them alive and perhaps have little solar panels on their huts. But they also ensure that those poor families never prosper or become middle class - so as to perpetuate environmentalist notions of “noble natives,” supposedly “at one” with their environment and living a “sustainable” existence.

Equally harmful, much of that money is lost to corruption, while the people are forced to continue living in a state of poverty, disease, malnutrition and deprivation, as technologies that could enhance their length and quality of life are denied to them. Among the technologies denied are modern seeds, fertilizers, and high-tech, high-yield farming methods to increase food supplies; natural gas and electricity to heat homes and cook food, instead of cutting down forests and burning wood, thereby degrading indoor air quality and causing lethal lung infections; refrigeration so that people do not have to choose between eating spoiled food and going hungry; and the use of insecticides, including the powerful insect repellant DDT, to spare them from the agonizing illness and death brought on by malaria.

Each of these enhancements requires plentiful, dependable, affordable energy. Yet in the name of “saving the planet” or “preventing cataclysmic climate change,” environmentalists like Suzuki deny developing countries the modern technologies and energy they need to improve their lives and environment - thereby perpetuating high infant mortality, significantly shortened life spans, and greatly decreased quality of life.

Climate alarmism is the rationale for these deadly policies - and that is where political ideology mixes with the new religion of environmentalism. Overstated or non-existent threats to the environment, along with impractical or imaginary ways to prevent the purported threats, are the new scripture on which the adherents develop their theologies and policies for directing and micromanaging the course of human events. Unfortunately, these eco-religionists never encounter (or intentionally avert their eyes from) the misery and devastation that their policies dramatically inflict on the world’s poorest people.  That is because they are too concerned with “saving the planet.”

Back in North America, some wish to have energy rationed or be made increasingly expensive, creating artificial fuel poverty for millions.  Such policies will make food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and medical care - in short, everything - more expensive and scarce, create more unemployed workers, push many people back into conditions of poverty and deprivation, and gravely impair human health and welfare.  This strategy will not save the planet, as they hope, because one of its first casualties will be environmental stewardship. History and human nature both testify that, forced by economic limits to choose between a cleaner environment and food on the table, people always choose food.

In the Parable of the Talents, Jesus told of a master who gave one of his servants a single talent, and then condemned him for hiding it in the earth and not putting it to use. Often we think of the talent only as money or ability, but it really stands for every resource - including natural resources. How will the Master of all creation judge us if we hide our resources in the earth, and then on Judgment Day say, “Behold, you have what is yours”?

If we do not use the resources God has set before us in the earth to care for those in need, our Creator will likely condemn us, saying: “You kept buried what I gave you, instead of using and investing it. You failed to employ my gifts to care for the poor, the hungry, the sick, and those who were dying from disease. You have been worthless, irresponsible stewards of my creation.” We would deserve the same fate as the servant the master called “wicked and lazy.”

I fail to understand how anyone thinking rationally can argue that poverty and economic hardship will enhance environmental stewardship, or that the planet is more important than the people who live on it.  PDF
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David R. Legates is a Professor of Climatology at the University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware, USA.  He is a Christian and a senior fellow of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.

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Climate alarmist James Hansen has long predicted the catastrophic tipping point of global temperatures from human CO2 emissions. His predictions include the seas will soon be boiling and a significant increase of extreme weather events, due to the excessive warming of the tropical atmosphere.

The excessive warming of the atmosphere over the Tropics is referred to as the AGW ‘hotspot’ and is the key signature of anthropogenic (by CO2 greenhouse gas) global warming.

Actual temperature measurements of the tropical atmosphere, as shown above, clearly indicate that the catastrophic ‘hotspot’ does not exist. Additionally, empirical evidence has the tropical atmosphere cooling over the last 15 years, at a -1.2 degree rate by year 2100, which is exact opposite predicted by IPCC climate models and the “experts,” such as James Hansen.

Conclusion: Bill McKibben’s infamous connect-the-dots global warming is a propaganda farce at best. The AGW signature tropical ‘hotspot’ does not factually exist; ergo, trillions of tons of human CO2 emissions has not caused a hotspot, boiling oceans or extreme weather events

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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.

Update: See Dr. Lindzen’s reponse to critics of his testimony.

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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)

But scientist Basil Beamish noticed that in the Climate Commission report they only show the trend of the number of hot days from 1970-2011. There is data for Sydney, measured at Observatory Hill, back to 1890.

Dr Beamish noticed that if you use all of the hot days data back to 1890 it is clear there is a different long-term pattern in play (see blue line in chart). In fact the year with the greatest number of hot days for Sydney is 1926 (12 days) and this has not been beaten since.

But instead of reporting on the long term trend for Sydney as measured at Observatory Hill from 1890, Professor Flannery has chosen to just focus on Western Sydney and in particular use only the data for Parramatta North (see red line in chart). This data set begins in 1970, which was a low point in the hot days cycle. By choosing Parramatta and beginning in 1970, Professor Flannery can make the upward trend in hot days look dramatic.

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Parramatta is further inland than the Observatory Hill site and so the summers are warmer and the winter’s colder. But if there were data for Parramatta back to 1890 it would almost certainly show the same pattern as Observatory Hill. Indeed it was almost certainly hotter in Parramatta, in Western Sydney, in 1926 than anytime since.

Once again the observational data does not support the nonsense claims made by Australia’s Climate Commissioner, Professor Flannery.

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See also this post in the UK telegraph about this Hansen like climate fairy tale leader.
FIVE years ago, Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery predicted that the nation’s dams would never be full again and major Australian cities would need desalination plants to cater for our water needs.

Yesterday, in his latest report, he said “climate change cannot be ruled out” as a factor in recent two year flooding rains, which led to some of those dams overflowing. Sounds like the UK Met Office. 

Indeed, the entire environmentalist movement consists of holocaust deniers, who continue to refuse to look at or admit the existence of the carnage they have created and continue to perpetuate worldwide.

So let’s look at the record.

Some of the worst atrocities can be laid at the feet of the population control ideologues such as Paul Ehrlich and his co-thinkers who argued - in direct contradiction to historical fact - that human well-being is inversely proportional to human numbers. As a result of their agitation, since 1966 U.S. foreign aid and World Bank loans to Third World countries have been made contingent upon those nations implementing population control programs. In consequence, over the past four decades, in scores of countries spanning the globe from India to Peru, tens of millions of women have been rounded up and subjected to involuntary sterilizations or abortions, often under very unsafe conditions, with innumerable victims suffering severe health effects or dying afterwards.

Ehrlich also called for the United States to create a Bureau of Population and Environment which would have the power to issue or deny permits to Americans to have children. While rejected here, this idea was adopted by the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, who were convinced of the necessity of such measures by the writings of the Club of Rome after these were plagiarized and republished in China under the name of one of its top officials. Thus was born China’s infamous “one-child policy,” which has involved not only hundreds of millions of involuntary abortions and forced sterilizations, but infanticide and the killing of “llegal children” on a mass scale.

The anti-technology wing of the antihuman movement also has its share of human extermination to account for. The pesticide DDT was first employed by the U.S. Army to stop a typhus epidemic in Naples which had been created by the retreating Germans through their destruction of that city’s sanitation system. Subsequently, Allied forces used it in all theaters to save millions of diseased-ravaged victims of Axis tyranny, and after the war employed it to wipe out malaria in the American south, southern Europe, and much of south Asia and Latin America. The benefits of these campaigns were unprecedented. As the National Academy of Sciences put it in a 1970 report:

To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT. It has contributed to the great increase of agricultural productivity, while sparing countless humanity from a host of diseases, most notably perhaps, scrub typhus and malaria. Indeed, it is estimated that in little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million deaths due to malaria that would otherwise have been inevitable.

But the role of DDT in saving half a billion lives did not positively impress everyone. On the contrary, as Alexander King, the co-founder of the Club of Rome put it in his 1990 biography, “my chief quarrel with DDT in hindsight is that it has greatly added to the population problem.” Of course, such reasoning would carry little appeal to the American public. Much better ammunition was provided by Rachel Carson, who in her 1962 book, Silent Spring, had made an eloquent case that DDT was endangering bird populations. This was false. In fact, by eliminating their insect parasites and infection agents, DDT was helping bird numbers to grow significantly.  No matter. Using Carson’s book and even more wild writing by Ehrlich (who in a 1969 Ramparts article predicted that pesticides would cause all life in the Earth’s oceans to die by 1979), a massive propaganda campaign was launched to ban DDT.

In 1971, the newly formed Environmental Protection Agency responded by holding seven months of investigative hearings on the subject, gathering testimony from 125 witnesses. At the end of this process, Judge Edmund Sweeney issued his verdict: “The uses of DDT under the registration involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds, or other wildlife. … DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man.” No matter. EPA administrator William Ruckelshaus (who would later go on to be a board member of the Draper Fund, a leading population control group), chose to overrule Sweeney and ban the use of DDT in the United States. Subsequently, the U.S. Agency for International Development adopted regulations preventing it from funding international projects that used DDT. Together with similar decisions enacted in Europe, this effectively banned the use of DDT in many Third World countries. By some estimates, the malaria death toll in Africa alone resulting from these restrictions has exceeded 100 million people, with 3 million additional deaths added to the toll every year.

The harm done by the EPA, itself a creation of the environmental movement, has not been limited to stopping DDT. It is no coincidence that U.S. oil production, which had been growing at a rate of 3 percent per year through the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, peaked in 1971, immediately after the EPA’s creation, and has been declining ever since. In 1971, the U.S. produced 9.6 million barrels of oil per day (mpd).  Today we are down to 5.6 mpd. Had we continued without environmentalist interference with our previous 3 percent per year growth in the period since - as the rest of the non-OPEC world actually did - we would today be producing 35 mpd, and the world economy would not be groaning under the extremely regressive tax represented by $100 per barrel oil prices. The environmentalist campaign against nuclear power has made its promise for plentiful, cheap electricity impossible as well.

The genocidal effect of such support for energy price-rigging should not be underestimated. Increasing the price of energy increases the price of all other products. It is one thing to pay $100 per barrel for oil in a nation like the USA which has an average income of $45,000 per year. It is quite another to pay it in a Third World country with an average income of $1500 per year. An oil price stiff enough to cause recession in the advanced sector can cause mass starvation among the world’s poor.

European greens also have much horror to account for, notably through their campaign against genetically modified crops. Hundreds of millions of people in the Third World today suffer from nutritional deficiencies resulting from their cereal-dominated diets. This can now readily be rectified by employing genetically enhanced plants, such as golden rice, which is rich in vitamin A.  Other genetically modified crops offer protection against iron or other vitamin deficiency diseases, dramatically increased yields, self-fertilization, and drought or insect resistance. But as a result of political pressure from the green parties, the European Union has banned the import of crops from countries that employ such strains, thereby blackmailing many governments into forbidding their use. In consequence, millions of people are being unnecessarily blinded, crippled, starved, or killed every year.

Taken together, these campaigns to deny billions of people the means to a decent existence have racked up a death toll exceeding that achieved by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or any of the other tyrants whose crimes fill the sordid pages of human history.  It is ironic that the perpetrators of this holocaust have chosen to affix the term “deniers” to those who refuse to endorse their proposal to radically expand it via a global program of mass human sacrifice for the purpose of weather control. In fact it is they, who call upon us to harden our hearts to “the inconvenient truth” that allegedly requires such suffering, who are the real new deniers; deniers not just of a past holocaust that rightfully commands our grief, but a present one, whose desperate victims still plead for our action.

Dr. Robert Zubrin is president of Pioneer Astronautics, a Senior Fellow with the Center for Security Policy, and the author of “Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil”. His newest book, “Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism” has just been published by Encounter Books.

See how PSU Ethics Professor Donald Brown and Michael Mann is guilty as charged here. Also Bill Nye the science guy.

NOAA’s extreme weather expert, Martin Hoerling, slammed Hansen on Andy Revkin’s blog yesterday.

“Over the next several decades, the Western United States and the semi-arid region from North Dakota to Texas will develop semi-permanent drought, with rain, when it does come, occurring in extreme events with heavy flooding. Economic losses would be incalculable. More and more of the Midwest would be a dust bowl. California’s Central Valley could no longer be irrigated. Food prices would rise to unprecedented levels.”

He doesnt define “several decades,” but a reasonable assumption is that he refers to a period from today through mid-century. I am unaware of any projection for “semi-permanent” drought in this time frame over the expansive region of the Central Great Plains. He implies the drought will be due to a lack of rain (except for the brief, and ineffective downpours). I am unaware of indications, from model projections, for a material decline in mean rainfall. Indeed, that region has seen a general increase in rainfall over the long term during most seasons (certainly no material decline). Also, for the warm season when evaporative loss is especially effective, the climate of the central Great Plains has not become materially warmer (perhaps even cooled) since 1900. In other words, climate conditions in the growing season of the Central Great Plains are today not materially different from those existing 100 years ago. This observational fact belies the expectations from climate simulations and, in truth, our science lacks a good explanation for this discrepancy.

The Hansen piece is policy more than it is science, to be sure, and one can read it for the former. But facts should, and do, matter to some. The vision of a Midwest Dustbowl is a scary one, and the author appears intent to instill fear rather than reason.

The article makes these additional assertions:

“The global warming signal is now louder than the noise of random weather…

This is patently false. Take temperature over the U.S. as an example. The variability of daily temperature over the U.S. is much larger than the anthropogenic warming signal at the time scales of local weather. Depending on season and location, the disparity is at least a factor of 5 to 10.

I think that a more scientifically justifiable statement, at least for the U.S. and extratropical land areas is that daily weather noise continues to drum out the siren call of climate change on local, weather scales.

Hansen goes on to assert that:

“Extremely hot summers have increased noticeably. We can say with high confidence that the recent heat waves in Texas and Russia, and the one in Europe in 2003, which killed tens of thousands, were not natural events - they were caused by human-induced climate change.”

Published scientific studies on the Russian heat wave indicate this claim to be false. Our own study on the Texas heat wave and drought, submitted this week to the Journal of Climate, likewise shows that that event was not caused by human-induced climate change. These are not de novoevents, but upon scientific scrutiny, one finds both the Russian and Texas extreme events to be part of the physics of what has driven variability in those regions over the past century. This is not to say that climate change didn’t contribute to those cases, but their intensity owes to natural, not human, causes.

Enlarged

The closing comment by Hansen is then all the more ironic, though not surprising knowing he often writes from passion and not reason:

“The science of the situation is clear - it’s time for the politics to follow.”

Let me borrow from a recent excellent piece in New Scientist by tornado expert Dr. Harold Brooks regarding the global warming and tornado debate, and state:

“Those who continue to talk in certain terms of how local weather extremes are the result of human climate change are failing to heed all the available evidence.”

Varied Views on Extreme Weather in a Warming Climate - NYTimes.com

Steve Goddard also shows here how In 1999, Hansen himself said that he didn’t see much happening in the US.

Empirical evidence does not lend much support to the notion that climate is headed precipitately toward more extreme heat and drought. The drought of 1999 covered a smaller area than the 1988 drought, when the Mississippi almost dried up. And 1988 was a temporary inconvenience as compared with repeated droughts during the 1930s “Dust Bowl” that caused an exodus from the prairies, as chronicled in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.

Enlarged

Steve goes on to show “Need your climate adjusted? - call Dr. James Hansen at GISS. Below is a chronology of the destruction of the data for Hansen’s political cause.”

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Earth Day predictions of 1970. The reason you shouldn’t believe Hansen’s dire NYT projections
Ihatethemedia.com

Ignore them. They’ll be wrong. We’re confident in saying that because they’ve always been wrong. And always will be.

Need proof? Here are some of the hilarious, spectacularly wrong predictions made on the occasion of Earth Day 1970.

“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.” Kenneth Watt, ecologist

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” George Wald, Harvard Biologist

“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.” Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist

“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.” New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist BTW, the real ‘denialist’ Erlich claims his projections were correct

“By...[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.” Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.” Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day

“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions...By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.” Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University

“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support...the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution...by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half...” Life Magazine, January 1970

“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.” Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

Stanford’s Paul Ehrlich announces that the sky is falling: “Air pollution...is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones.” Martin Litton, Sierra Club director

“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate...that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, ‘Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, ‘I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’” Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.” Sen. Gaylord Nelson

“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.” Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

Keep these predictions in mind when you hear the same predictions made today. They’ve been making the same predictions for 42 years. And they’re going to continue making them until...well...forever.

Here we are, 42 years later and the economy sucks, but the ecology’s fine. In fact this planet is doing a lot better than the planet on which those green lunatics live.

You’ll also enjoy (or hate) our article, 25 Global Warming Debunking Videos Al Gore Doesn’t Want You To See.

The comment was in response to my comment pointing to an article stating that the Arctic was a net sink for methane.

The problem with both articles is that they both bow to the “Group Think” prevalent in the climate research community. Both articles clearly assume that global warming is a problem that is, or will, exacerbate methane release in the polar regions, leading to catastrophe. Each approaches the science as if unprecedented global warming were a proven fact, where, as we know, no additional warming has occurred in the last decade and a half, and previous warm periods within the last millennium have exceeded the current one.

The article that this author cited, All About Frozen Ground, by Kevin Schaefer of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, at least admitted that the Arctic is a net sink for methane, then warns that if the permafrost melts, this will release methane that will increase global warming. The logical disconnect is not addressed. Why is the Arctic a net sink? Because warming and additional CO2 is increasing biological activity, the plants growing in the tundra are growing faster and bigger, and the tree line is moving northward, storing additional carbon. There is no explanation of when or how this process might reverse.

The article cited by SpaceScience (behind a paywall) has only the abstract available, but which begins with the word “Uncertainty.”

“Uncertainty in the future atmospheric burden of methane, a potent greenhouse gas1, represents an important challenge to the development of realistic climate projections. The Arctic is home to large reservoirs of methane, in the form of permafrost soils and methane hydrates2, which are vulnerable to destabilization in a warming climate. Furthermore, methane is produced in the surface ocean3 and the surface waters of the Arctic Ocean are supersaturated with respect to methane4, 5. However, the fate of this oceanic methane is uncertain.”

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UK “Drought Forecast” for Christmas Evaporates Within 26 Days!
Climate Realist blog

“Before” BBC Link

“After” BBC Link

There are 90,000 samples from which Callendar selected a few. Notice they also change the slope of the trend, to show a steady rise from 1750.

Results were required to prove the IPCC claim.

“Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values determined from ice cores spanning many thousands of years.”

Ernst-Georg Beck confirmed Jaworowski’s work.

Modern greenhouse hypothesis is based on the work of G.S. Callendar and C.D. Keeling, following S. Arrhenius, as latterly popularized by the IPCC. Review of available literature raise the question if these authors have systematically discarded a large number of valid technical papers and older atmospheric CO2 determinations because they did not fit their hypothesis? Obviously they use only a few carefully selected values from the older literature, invariably choosing results that are consistent with the hypothesis of an induced rise of CO2 in air caused by the burning of fossil fuel.

Ice cores provide the historic record and Mauna Loa the recent. Both were designed to produce a smooth linking curve of increasing CO2.

Initially, Antarctic ice cores were ‘proof’ of CO2 creating temperature increase and low pre-industrial levels. Then we learned temperature increase preceded CO2 increase and levels were similar to today. The former was widely accepted and contradicted the major assumption of the hypothesis, so recently Shakun et al tried, unsuccessfully, to reassert the claim. The latter claim was contradicted by Jaworowski but essentially ignored.

“The basis of most of the IPCC conclusions on anthropogenic causes and on projections of climatic change is the assumption of low level of CO2 in the pre-industrial atmosphere. This assumption, based on glaciological studies, is false.”

In climate science, vehemence of personal attacks are directly proportional to the truth of the claim and qualifications of the author. Jaworowski’s attacks were nasty and unrelenting.

Glaciers, develop when snowfall survives summer melt and layers accumulate. Gradually snow changes to ice from heat and pressure of additional layers. This creates two larger layers divided by the firn-ice transition. On top is the brittle layer where cracks (crevasses) form and below the plastic layer where ice flows and annual layers blend and are deformed. In an understatement Wikipedia says,

“Dating the air with respect to the ice it is trapped in is problematic.”

and

“Trapping depth varies with climatic conditions, so the air-ice age difference could vary between 2500 and 6000 years.”

Dating errors, critical in climate science, occur with different methods.

“Five different dating methods have been used for Vostok cores, with differences such as 300 years at 100 m depth, 600yr at 200 m, 7000yr at 400 m, 5000yr at 800 m, 6000yr at 1600 m, and 5000yr at 1934 m.”

How much climate change occurs in 5- 6000 years?

Other problems with the ice cores include meltwater moving through the ice; Bacteria in the ice releasing gases even in 500,000-year-old ice at great depth; and contamination and losses during drilling and core recovery process. Jaworowski wrote,

“Until 1985, the published CO2 readings from the air bubbles in the pre-industrial ice ranged from 160 to about 700 ppmv, and occasionally even up to 2,450 ppmv. After 1985, high readings disappeared from the publications.”

Beck found,

“Since 1812, the CO2 concentration in northern hemispheric air has fluctuated exhibiting three high level maxima around 1825, 1857 and 1942 the latter showing more than 400 ppm.”

Here is his plot comparing 19th century readings with ice core and Mauna Loa data.

Enlarged

The ice core record is shown as a smooth curve achieved by eliminating extreme readings and applying a 70 year smoothing average. Eliminating variability is done with the Mauna Loa and all current atmospheric readings, which can vary up to 600 ppm in the course of a day. Information is lost with smoothing. Elimination of high readings prior to smoothing makes loss greater. Statistician William Briggs says you never smooth a time series.

Beck explained that Charles Keeling established Mauna Loa readings using the lowest afternoon measures. Beck notes

“Mauna Loa does not represent the typical atmospheric CO2 on different global locations but is typical only for this volcano at a maritime location in about 4000 m altitude at that latitude.”

Keeling’s son now operates the facility and,

“owns the global monopoly of calibration of all CO2 measurements.”

He’s also co-author of the IPCC reports based on his readings.

Another CO2 measurement provides evidence of smoothing effects and artificially low readings. Stomata, small openings on leaves, vary directly with atmospheric CO2 levels. Stomata records compared with ice core record for a 2000-year period illustrates the issue.

Stomata readings are higher with greater variability as Jaworowski and Beck assert.

Pre-industrial CO2 level was not lower than current levels and both are low in the entire geologic record. Climate models assume pre-industrial levels were lower and CO2 increase causes temperature increase. IPCC predictions are consistently wrong because falsified data and incorrect assumptions produce inaccurate results, but that was their goal.

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See also how Hansen and IPCC projections measure uop relative to other non AGW (CO2 driven) projections here.

A new paper by Stephen Po-Chedley and Quang Fu (2012) (hereafter PCF) was sent to us at the end of April 2012 in page-proof form as an article to appear soon in the Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology. The topic of the paper is an analysis of a single satellite’s impact on the rarely-used, multi-satellite deep-layer global temperature of the mid-troposphere or TMT. Some of you have been waiting for our response, but this was delayed by the fact that one of us (J. Christy) was out of the country when the UW press release was issued and just returned on Tuesday the 8th.

There are numerous incorrect and misleading assumptions in this paper. Neither one of us was aware of the paper until it was sent to us by Po-Chedley two weeks ago, so the paper was written and reviewed in complete absence of the authors of the dataset itself. In some cases this might be a normal activity, but in a situation where complicated algorithms are involved, it is clear that PCF did not have a sufficient understanding of the construction methodology.

By way of summary, here are our main conclusions regarding the new PCF paper:

1) the authors’ methodology is qualitative and irreproducible

2) the author’s are uninformed on the complexity of the UAH satellite merging algorithm

3) the authors use the RSS (Remotes Sensing Systems) satellite dataset as “verification” for their proposed UAH NOAA-9 calibration target adjustment for TMT, but barely mention that their TLT (lower tropospheric) results are insignificant and that trends are essentially identical between UAH and RSS without any adjustment in the NOAA-9 calibration coefficient

4) the authors neglected the main TMT differences among the datasets - and instead try to explain the UAH v. RSS trend difference by only two years of NOAA-9 data, while missing all of the publications which document other issues such as RSS problems with applying the diurnal correction.

The paper specifically claims to show that a calibration target coefficient of one satellite, NOAA-9, should be a value different than that calculated directly from empirical data in UAH’s version of the dataset. With an adjustment to the time series guesstimated by PCF, this increases the UAH overall global trend by +0.042 C/decade. Their new UAH trend, being +0.042 warmer, then becomes the same as the TMT trend from RSS. This, they conclude, indicates a verification of their exercise.

More importantly, with regard to the most publicized UAH dataset, the temperature of the lower troposphere (TLT), there was no similar analysis done by PCF - an indication that their re-calculations would not support their desired outcome for this dataset, as we shall demonstrate below.

All of this will soon be moot, anyway. Since last year we have been working on v6.0 of the UAH datasets which should be ready with the tropospheric temperature datasets before summer is out. These will include (1) a new, more defensible objective empirical calculation to correct for the drift of the satellites through the diurnal cycle, and (2) a new hot calibration target effective emissivity adjustment which results in better agreement between simultaneously operating satellites at the calibration step, making the post-calibration hot-target adjustment PCF criticizes unnecessary. So, since our new v6.0 dataset is close to completion and submission for publication, we have chosen this venue to document PCF’s misinformation in a rather informal, but reproducible, way rather than bother to submit a journal rebuttal addressing the older dataset. However, to show that version 5.4 of our datasets was credible, we discuss these issues below.

The Lower Tropospheric Temperatures (TLT)

We shall return to TMT below, but most of the research and popular use of the UAH datasets have focused on the lower tropospheric temperature, or TLT (surface to about 300 hPa, i.e. without stratospheric impact). Thus, we shall begin our discussion with TLT because it is rightly seen as a more useful variable because it documents the bulk heat content of the troposphere with very little influence from the stratosphere. And [this is important in the TMT discussion] the same hot-target coefficients for NOAA-9 were used in TLT as in TMT.

PCF focused on the deep layer TMT, i.e. temperature of the surface to about 75 hPa, which includes quite a bit of signal above 300 hPa. As such, TMT includes a good portion of the lower stratosphere - a key weakness when utilizing radiosondes which went through significant changes and adjustments during this time. [This was a period when many stations converted to the Vaisala 80 radiosonde which introduced temperature shifts throughout the atmosphere (Christy and Norris 2004).]

As indicated in their paper, it seems PCF’s goal was to explain the differences in trend between RSS and UAH, but the history of this effort has always been to find error with UAH’s products rather than in other products (as we shall see below). With us shut out of the peer-review cycle it is easy to assume an underlying bias of the authors.

Lord Kelvin told us that “All science is numbers”, so here are some numbers. First, let’s look at the “global” trends of UAH and RSS for TLT (70S to 82.5N) for Jan 1979 to Apr 2012:

+0.137 C/decade UAH LT (70S-82.5N)
+0.134 C/decade RSS LT (70S-82.5N)

These trends are, for all practical purposes, identical. This, however, hides the fact that there are indeed differences between the two time series that, for one reason or another, are balanced out when calculating the linear trend over the entire 30+ year period. As several papers have documented (see Christy et al. 2011, or C11, for the list – by the way, C11 was not cited by PCF) the evidence indicates RSS contains a spurious warming in the 1990’s then a spurious cooling from around 2002 onward (note that the RSS temperature anomaly for last month, April, 2012, was 0.08C cooler than our UAH anomaly).

This behavior arises, we believe, from an over-correction of the drift of the satellites by RSS (in the 1990’s the satellites drifted to cooler times of day, so the correction must add warming, and in the 2000’s the satellites drifted to warmer times of day so a correction is needed to cool things down.) These corrections are needed (except for the Aqua satellite operating since 2002, which has no diurnal drift and which we use as an anchor in the UAH dataset) but if not of the right magnitude they will easily affect the trend.

In a single paragraph, PCF admit that the UAH TLT time series has no significant hot-target relationship with radiosonde comparisons (which for TLT are more robust) over the NOAA-9 period. However, they then utilize circular reasoning to claim that since RSS and UAH have a bit of disagreement in that 2-year period, and RSS must be correct, that then means UAH has a problem. So, this type of logic, as stated by PCF, points to their bias - assume that RSS is correct which then implies UAH is the problem. This requires one to ignore the many publications that show the opposite.

Note too that in their press release, PCF claim that observations and models now are closer together for this key parameter (temperature of the bulk troposphere) if one artificially increases the trend in UAH data. This is a questionable claim as evidence shows TLT for CMIP3 and CMIP5 models averages about +0.26C/decade (beginning in 1979) whereas UAH *and* RSS datasets are slightly below +0.14C/decade, about a factor of 2 difference between models and observations. We shall let the reader decide if the PCF press-release claim is accurate.

The key point for the discussion here (and below) is that TLT uses the same hot-target coefficients as TMT, yet we see no problem related to it for the many evaluation studies we have published. Indeed this was the specific result found in Christy and Norris 2004 - again, work not cited by PCF.

The Mid-Tropospheric Temperature (TMT)

About 12 years ago we discovered that even though two different satellites were looking at the same globe at the same time, there were differences in their measurements beyond a simple bias (time-invariant offset). We learned that these were related to the variations in the temperature of the instrument itself. If the instrument warmed or cooled (differing solar angles as it orbited or drifted), so did the calculated temperature. We used the thermistors embedded in the hot-target plate to track the instrument temperature, hence the metric is often called the “hot target temperature coefficient.”

To compensate for this error, we devised a method to calculate a coefficient that when multiplied by the hot target temperature would remove this variation for each satellite. Note that the coefficients were calculated from the satellite data, they were not estimated in an ad hoc fashion.

The calculation of this coefficient depends on a number of things, (a) the magnitude of the already-removed satellite drift correction (i.e. diurnal correction), (b) the way the inter-satellite differences are smoothed, and (c) the sequence in which the satellites are merged.

Since UAH and RSS perform these processes differently, the coefficients so calculated will be different. Again recall that the UAH (and RSS) coefficients are calculated from a system of equations, they are not invented. The coefficients are calculated to produce the largest decrease in inter-satellite error characteristics in each dataset.

To make a long story short, PCF focused on the 26-month period of NOAA-9 operation, basically 1985-86. They then used radiosondes over this period to estimate the hot-target coefficient as +0.048 rather than UAH’s calculated value of +0.0986. [Note, the language in PCF is confusing, as we cannot tell if they conclude our coefficient is too high by 0.051 or should actually be 0.051. We shall assume they believe our coefficient is too high by 0.051 to give them the benefit of the doubt.]

Recall, radiosondes were having significant shifts with the levels monitored by TMT primarily with the switch to Vaisala 80 sondes, and so over small, 26-month periods, just about any result might be expected. [We reproduced PCF’s Fig. 2 using only US VIZ sondes (which had no instrument changes in the 26-month period and span the globe from the western tropical Pacific to Alaska to the Caribbean Sea) and found an explained variance of less than 4% - an insignificant value.]

Another problematic aspect of PCF’s methodology is that when looking at the merged time series, one does not see just NOAA-9’s influence, but the impact of all of the other satellites which provided data during 1985-86, i.e. NOAA-6, -7 and -8 as well. So, it is improper to assume one may pick out NOAA-9’s impact individually from the merged satellite series.

That PCF had little understanding of the UAH algorithm is demonstrated by the following simple test. We substituted the PCF value of +0.048 directly into our code. The increase in trend over our v5.4 TMT dataset was only +0.022 C/decade for 1979-2009 (not 0.042), and +0.019 C/decade for 1979-2012.

To put it another way, PCF overestimated the impact of the NOAA-9 coefficient by a factor of about 2 when they artificially reconstructed our dataset using 0.048 as the NOAA-9 coefficient. In fact, if we use an implausible target coefficient of zero, we still can’t return a trend difference greater than +0.037C/decade. Thus PCF have incorrectly assumed something about the construction methodology of our time series that gave them a result which is demonstrated here to be faulty.

In addition, by changing the coefficient to +0.048 in an ad hoc fashion, they create greater errors in NOAA-9’s comparisons to other satellites. Had they contacted us at any point about this, we would have helped them to understand the techniques. [There were 4 emails from Po-Chedley in Aug and Sep 2011, but this dealt with very basic facts about the dataset, not the construction methodology. Incidently, these emails were exchanged well after C11 was published.]

PCF brought in a third dataset, STAR, but this one uses the same diurnal corrections and sequential merging methodology as RSS, so it is not a truly independent test. As shown in C11, STAR is clearly the outlier for overall trend values due to a different method of debiasing the various satellite data and a differing treatment of the fundamental brightness temperature calibration.

We have additional information regarding UAH’s relatively low error statistics. Using radiosondes to evaluate microwave temperatures requires great care. In our tests, we concentrated on sondes which had documented characteristics and a high degree of consistency such as the US VIZ and Australian sondes. These comparisons have been published a number of times, but most recently updated in C11.

Here are the comparisons for the US VIZ radiosonde network (stretching from the western tropical Pacific to Alaska down across the conterminous US and to the Caribbean.) As you can see, UAH MT provides the lowest error magnitudes and highest reproducibility of the three data sets. Similar results were found for the Australian comparisons.

For data through April 2012 we have the following global TMT trends: UAH +0.045, RSS +0.079 and STAR +0.124C/decade. So, RSS, in the middle, is closer to UAH than STAR, yet PCF chose to examine UAH as the “problem” dataset. Had PCF wanted to pick some low-hanging fruit regarding the differences between UAH, RSS and STAR, they would have (a) looked at the diurnal differences between UAH and RSS (see publications) or (b) looked at a simple time series of differences between the three datasets (below). One thing that pops out is a spurious upward shift in STAR TMT relative to UAH and RSS of about +0.06C on precisely 1 Jan 2001 - an obvious beginning-of-year glitch. Why not look there?

The Bottom Line

In conclusion, we believe that the result in PCF was a rather uninformed attempt to find fault with the UAH global temperature dataset, using an ad hoc adjustment to a single, short-lived satellite while overlooking the greater problems which have been documented (published or as demonstrated in the figure above) regarding the other datasets.

And think about this. If PCF is correct that we should be using a revised NOAA-9 coefficient, and since we use the same coefficient in both TMT and TLT, then the near perfect agreement currently between RSS and UAH for TLT will disappear; our TLT trend will become warmer, and then RSS will have the lowest warming trend of all the satellite datasets. The authors of the new study cannot have it both ways, claiming their new adjustment brings RSS and UAH closer together for TMT (a seldom used temperature index), but then driving the UAH and RSS trends for TLT farther apart, leaving RSS with essentially the same warming trend that UAH had before.

Since it is now within 3 months of the publication cutoff for research to be included in the IPCC AR5, one is tempted to conclude that PCF will be well-received by the Lead Authors (some of whom are closely associated with the RSS dataset) without critical evaluation such as briefly performed here. However, we cannot predict what the AR5 outcome will be or, for that matter, what waning influence the IPCC might still exert.

That PCF brushed aside the fact that the UAH and RSS trends for the LOWER troposphere are essentially identical (for which the UAH NOAA-9 coefficient is the same) seems to us to be a diversionary tactic we have seen before: create a strawman problem which will allow the next IPCC report to make a dismissive statement about the validity of an uncooperative dataset with a minimum of evidence. We hope that rationality instead prevails.

References

Christy, J.R. and W. B. Norris, 2004: What may we conclude about global tropospheric temperature trends? Geophys. Res. Lett. 31, No. 6.

Christy, J.R., R.W. Spencer and W.B Norris (deceased), 2011: The role of remote sensing in monitoring global bulk tropospheric temperatures. Int. J. Remote Sens. 32, 671-685, DOI:10.1080/01431161.2010.517803.

Po-Chedley, S. and Q. Fu, 2012: A bias in the midtropospheric channel warm target factor on the NOAA-9 Microwave Sounding Unit. J. Atmos. Oceanic Tech. DOI: 10.1175/JTECH-D-11-00147.1.

By John R. Christy and Roy W. Spencer
University of Alabama in Huntsville

A new paper by Stephen Po-Chedley and Quang Fu (2012) (hereafter PCF) was sent to us at the end of April 2012 in page-proof form as an article to appear soon in the Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology. The topic of the paper is an analysis of a single satellite’s impact on the rarely-used, multi-satellite deep-layer global temperature of the mid-troposphere or TMT. Some of you have been waiting for our response, but this was delayed by the fact that one of us (J. Christy) was out of the country when the UW press release was issued and just returned on Tuesday the 8th.

There are numerous incorrect and misleading assumptions in this paper. Neither one of us was aware of the paper until it was sent to us by Po-Chedley two weeks ago, so the paper was written and reviewed in complete absence of the authors of the dataset itself. In some cases this might be a normal activity, but in a situation where complicated algorithms are involved, it is clear that PCF did not have a sufficient understanding of the construction methodology.

By way of summary, here are our main conclusions regarding the new PCF paper:

1) the authors’ methodology is qualitative and irreproducible

2) the author’s are uninformed on the complexity of the UAH satellite merging algorithm

3) the authors use the RSS (Remotes Sensing Systems) satellite dataset as “verification” for their proposed UAH NOAA-9 calibration target adjustment for TMT, but barely mention that their TLT (lower tropospheric) results are insignificant and that trends are essentially identical between UAH and RSS without any adjustment in the NOAA-9 calibration coefficient

4) the authors neglected the main TMT differences among the datasets - and instead try to explain the UAH v. RSS trend difference by only two years of NOAA-9 data, while missing all of the publications which document other issues such as RSS problems with applying the diurnal correction.

The paper specifically claims to show that a calibration target coefficient of one satellite, NOAA-9, should be a value different than that calculated directly from empirical data in UAH’s version of the dataset. With an adjustment to the time series guesstimated by PCF, this increases the UAH overall global trend by +0.042 C/decade. Their new UAH trend, being +0.042 warmer, then becomes the same as the TMT trend from RSS. This, they conclude, indicates a verification of their exercise.

More importantly, with regard to the most publicized UAH dataset, the temperature of the lower troposphere (TLT), there was no similar analysis done by PCF - an indication that their re-calculations would not support their desired outcome for this dataset, as we shall demonstrate below.

All of this will soon be moot, anyway. Since last year we have been working on v6.0 of the UAH datasets which should be ready with the tropospheric temperature datasets before summer is out. These will include (1) a new, more defensible objective empirical calculation to correct for the drift of the satellites through the diurnal cycle, and (2) a new hot calibration target effective emissivity adjustment which results in better agreement between simultaneously operating satellites at the calibration step, making the post-calibration hot-target adjustment PCF criticizes unnecessary. So, since our new v6.0 dataset is close to completion and submission for publication, we have chosen this venue to document PCF’s misinformation in a rather informal, but reproducible, way rather than bother to submit a journal rebuttal addressing the older dataset. However, to show that version 5.4 of our datasets was credible, we discuss these issues below.

The Lower Tropospheric Temperatures (TLT)

We shall return to TMT below, but most of the research and popular use of the UAH datasets have focused on the lower tropospheric temperature, or TLT (surface to about 300 hPa, i.e. without stratospheric impact). Thus, we shall begin our discussion with TLT because it is rightly seen as a more useful variable because it documents the bulk heat content of the troposphere with very little influence from the stratosphere. And [this is important in the TMT discussion] the same hot-target coefficients for NOAA-9 were used in TLT as in TMT.

PCF focused on the deep layer TMT, i.e. temperature of the surface to about 75 hPa, which includes quite a bit of signal above 300 hPa. As such, TMT includes a good portion of the lower stratosphere - a key weakness when utilizing radiosondes which went through significant changes and adjustments during this time. [This was a period when many stations converted to the Vaisala 80 radiosonde which introduced temperature shifts throughout the atmosphere (Christy and Norris 2004).]

As indicated in their paper, it seems PCF’s goal was to explain the differences in trend between RSS and UAH, but the history of this effort has always been to find error with UAH’s products rather than in other products (as we shall see below). With us shut out of the peer-review cycle it is easy to assume an underlying bias of the authors.

Lord Kelvin told us that “All science is numbers”, so here are some numbers. First, let’s look at the “global” trends of UAH and RSS for TLT (70S to 82.5N) for Jan 1979 to Apr 2012:

+0.137 C/decade UAH LT (70S-82.5N)
+0.134 C/decade RSS LT (70S-82.5N)

These trends are, for all practical purposes, identical. This, however, hides the fact that there are indeed differences between the two time series that, for one reason or another, are balanced out when calculating the linear trend over the entire 30+ year period. As several papers have documented (see Christy et al. 2011, or C11, for the list – by the way, C11 was not cited by PCF) the evidence indicates RSS contains a spurious warming in the 1990’s then a spurious cooling from around 2002 onward (note that the RSS temperature anomaly for last month, April, 2012, was 0.08C cooler than our UAH anomaly).

This behavior arises, we believe, from an over-correction of the drift of the satellites by RSS (in the 1990’s the satellites drifted to cooler times of day, so the correction must add warming, and in the 2000’s the satellites drifted to warmer times of day so a correction is needed to cool things down.) These corrections are needed (except for the Aqua satellite operating since 2002, which has no diurnal drift and which we use as an anchor in the UAH dataset) but if not of the right magnitude they will easily affect the trend.

In a single paragraph, PCF admit that the UAH TLT time series has no significant hot-target relationship with radiosonde comparisons (which for TLT are more robust) over the NOAA-9 period. However, they then utilize circular reasoning to claim that since RSS and UAH have a bit of disagreement in that 2-year period, and RSS must be correct, that then means UAH has a problem. So, this type of logic, as stated by PCF, points to their bias - assume that RSS is correct which then implies UAH is the problem. This requires one to ignore the many publications that show the opposite.

Note too that in their press release, PCF claim that observations and models now are closer together for this key parameter (temperature of the bulk troposphere) if one artificially increases the trend in UAH data. This is a questionable claim as evidence shows TLT for CMIP3 and CMIP5 models averages about +0.26C/decade (beginning in 1979) whereas UAH *and* RSS datasets are slightly below +0.14C/decade, about a factor of 2 difference between models and observations. We shall let the reader decide if the PCF press-release claim is accurate.

The key point for the discussion here (and below) is that TLT uses the same hot-target coefficients as TMT, yet we see no problem related to it for the many evaluation studies we have published. Indeed this was the specific result found in Christy and Norris 2004 - again, work not cited by PCF.

The Mid-Tropospheric Temperature (TMT)

About 12 years ago we discovered that even though two different satellites were looking at the same globe at the same time, there were differences in their measurements beyond a simple bias (time-invariant offset). We learned that these were related to the variations in the temperature of the instrument itself. If the instrument warmed or cooled (differing solar angles as it orbited or drifted), so did the calculated temperature. We used the thermistors embedded in the hot-target plate to track the instrument temperature, hence the metric is often called the “hot target temperature coefficient.”

To compensate for this error, we devised a method to calculate a coefficient that when multiplied by the hot target temperature would remove this variation for each satellite. Note that the coefficients were calculated from the satellite data, they were not estimated in an ad hoc fashion.

The calculation of this coefficient depends on a number of things, (a) the magnitude of the already-removed satellite drift correction (i.e. diurnal correction), (b) the way the inter-satellite differences are smoothed, and (c) the sequence in which the satellites are merged.

Since UAH and RSS perform these processes differently, the coefficients so calculated will be different. Again recall that the UAH (and RSS) coefficients are calculated from a system of equations, they are not invented. The coefficients are calculated to produce the largest decrease in inter-satellite error characteristics in each dataset.

To make a long story short, PCF focused on the 26-month period of NOAA-9 operation, basically 1985-86. They then used radiosondes over this period to estimate the hot-target coefficient as +0.048 rather than UAH’s calculated value of +0.0986. [Note, the language in PCF is confusing, as we cannot tell if they conclude our coefficient is too high by 0.051 or should actually be 0.051. We shall assume they believe our coefficient is too high by 0.051 to give them the benefit of the doubt.]

Recall, radiosondes were having significant shifts with the levels monitored by TMT primarily with the switch to Vaisala 80 sondes, and so over small, 26-month periods, just about any result might be expected. [We reproduced PCF’s Fig. 2 using only US VIZ sondes (which had no instrument changes in the 26-month period and span the globe from the western tropical Pacific to Alaska to the Caribbean Sea) and found an explained variance of less than 4% - an insignificant value.]

Another problematic aspect of PCF’s methodology is that when looking at the merged time series, one does not see just NOAA-9’s influence, but the impact of all of the other satellites which provided data during 1985-86, i.e. NOAA-6, -7 and -8 as well. So, it is improper to assume one may pick out NOAA-9’s impact individually from the merged satellite series.

That PCF had little understanding of the UAH algorithm is demonstrated by the following simple test. We substituted the PCF value of +0.048 directly into our code. The increase in trend over our v5.4 TMT dataset was only +0.022 C/decade for 1979-2009 (not 0.042), and +0.019 C/decade for 1979-2012.

To put it another way, PCF overestimated the impact of the NOAA-9 coefficient by a factor of about 2 when they artificially reconstructed our dataset using 0.048 as the NOAA-9 coefficient. In fact, if we use an implausible target coefficient of zero, we still can’t return a trend difference greater than +0.037C/decade. Thus PCF have incorrectly assumed something about the construction methodology of our time series that gave them a result which is demonstrated here to be faulty.

In addition, by changing the coefficient to +0.048 in an ad hoc fashion, they create greater errors in NOAA-9’s comparisons to other satellites. Had they contacted us at any point about this, we would have helped them to understand the techniques. [There were 4 emails from Po-Chedley in Aug and Sep 2011, but this dealt with very basic facts about the dataset, not the construction methodology. Incidently, these emails were exchanged well after C11 was published.]

PCF brought in a third dataset, STAR, but this one uses the same diurnal corrections and sequential merging methodology as RSS, so it is not a truly independent test. As shown in C11, STAR is clearly the outlier for overall trend values due to a different method of debiasing the various satellite data and a differing treatment of the fundamental brightness temperature calibration.

We have additional information regarding UAH’s relatively low error statistics. Using radiosondes to evaluate microwave temperatures requires great care. In our tests, we concentrated on sondes which had documented characteristics and a high degree of consistency such as the US VIZ and Australian sondes. These comparisons have been published a number of times, but most recently updated in C11.

Here are the comparisons for the US VIZ radiosonde network (stretching from the western tropical Pacific to Alaska down across the conterminous US and to the Caribbean.) As you can see, UAH MT provides the lowest error magnitudes and highest reproducibility of the three data sets. Similar results were found for the Australian comparisons.

For data through April 2012 we have the following global TMT trends: UAH +0.045, RSS +0.079 and STAR +0.124C/decade. So, RSS, in the middle, is closer to UAH than STAR, yet PCF chose to examine UAH as the “problem” dataset. Had PCF wanted to pick some low-hanging fruit regarding the differences between UAH, RSS and STAR, they would have (a) looked at the diurnal differences between UAH and RSS (see publications) or (b) looked at a simple time series of differences between the three datasets (below). One thing that pops out is a spurious upward shift in STAR TMT relative to UAH and RSS of about +0.06C on precisely 1 Jan 2001 - an obvious beginning-of-year glitch. Why not look there?

The Bottom Line

In conclusion, we believe that the result in PCF was a rather uninformed attempt to find fault with the UAH global temperature dataset, using an ad hoc adjustment to a single, short-lived satellite while overlooking the greater problems which have been documented (published or as demonstrated in the figure above) regarding the other datasets.

And think about this. If PCF is correct that we should be using a revised NOAA-9 coefficient, and since we use the same coefficient in both TMT and TLT, then the near perfect agreement currently between RSS and UAH for TLT will disappear; our TLT trend will become warmer, and then RSS will have the lowest warming trend of all the satellite datasets. The authors of the new study cannot have it both ways, claiming their new adjustment brings RSS and UAH closer together for TMT (a seldom used temperature index), but then driving the UAH and RSS trends for TLT farther apart, leaving RSS with essentially the same warming trend that UAH had before.

Since it is now within 3 months of the publication cutoff for research to be included in the IPCC AR5, one is tempted to conclude that PCF will be well-received by the Lead Authors (some of whom are closely associated with the RSS dataset) without critical evaluation such as briefly performed here. However, we cannot predict what the AR5 outcome will be or, for that matter, what waning influence the IPCC might still exert.

That PCF brushed aside the fact that the UAH and RSS trends for the LOWER troposphere are essentially identical (for which the UAH NOAA-9 coefficient is the same) seems to us to be a diversionary tactic we have seen before: create a strawman problem which will allow the next IPCC report to make a dismissive statement about the validity of an uncooperative dataset with a minimum of evidence. We hope that rationality instead prevails.

References

Christy, J.R. and W. B. Norris, 2004: What may we conclude about global tropospheric temperature trends? Geophys. Res. Lett. 31, No. 6.

Christy, J.R., R.W. Spencer and W.B Norris (deceased), 2011: The role of remote sensing in monitoring global bulk tropospheric temperatures. Int. J. Remote Sens. 32, 671-685, DOI:10.1080/01431161.2010.517803.

Po-Chedley, S. and Q. Fu, 2012: A bias in the midtropospheric channel warm target factor on the NOAA-9 Microwave Sounding Unit. J. Atmos. Oceanic Tech. DOI: 10.1175/JTECH-D-11-00147.1.