Climate change is not the fault of man. It's Mother Nature's way. And sucking greenhouse gases from the atmosphere is too limited a solution. We have to be prepared for fire or ice, for fry or freeze. We have to be prepared for change.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
No rise of CO2 fraction over past 160 years
Research just published in Geophysical Research Letters
To assess whether the airborne fraction is indeed increasing, Wolfgang Knorr of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol reanalyzed available atmospheric carbon dioxide and emissions data since 1850 and considers the uncertainties in the data. In contradiction to some recent studies, he finds that the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide has not increased either during the past 150 years or during the most recent five decades
To assess whether the airborne fraction is indeed increasing, Wolfgang Knorr of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol reanalyzed available atmospheric carbon dioxide and emissions data since 1850 and considers the uncertainties in the data. In contradiction to some recent studies, he finds that the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide has not increased either during the past 150 years or during the most recent five decades
Is the airborne fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions increasing?
Department of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
Several recent studies have highlighted the possibility that the oceans and terrestrial ecosystems have started loosing part of their ability to sequester a large proportion of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions. This is an important claim, because so far only about 40% of those emissions have stayed in the atmosphere, which has prevented additional climate change. This study re-examines the available atmospheric CO2 and emissions data including their uncertainties. It is shown that with those uncertainties, the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, i.e. close to and not significantly different from zero. The analysis further shows that the statistical model of a constant airborne fraction agrees best with the available data if emissions from land use change are scaled down to 82% or less of their original estimates. Despite the predictions of coupled climate-carbon cycle models, no trend in the airborne fraction can be found.
Received 18 August 2009; accepted 23 September 2009; published 7 November 2009.
Citation: (2009), Is the airborne fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions increasing?, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L21710, doi:10.1029/2009GL040613.
There are also serious concerns about the Siple ice core data in the graph above, which was artificially adjusted to match up with the Mauna Loa data. See the prior Hockey Schtick post The Other Hockey Schtick (CO2 Levels)
More Data Massaging
From The Air Vent: CRU #2, Why We Look At Data and Code and CRU #3 The Next Step
CRU "selected" only 1643 of the 4495 surface stations available to produce the hockey stick temperature graph below
Read more about the data at the above link. Seems to confirm the CRU email from Phil Jones to Michael Mann, Malcolm Hughes and others, Mar 11, 2003, which stated: “Even with the instrumental record, the early and late 20th century warming periods are only significant locally at between 10-20% of grid boxes.” Begs the question, were the stations that showed significant 20th century warming (probably those biased by urban heat island effect) selected in order to produce the hockey stick graph?
CRU "selected" only 1643 of the 4495 surface stations available to produce the hockey stick temperature graph below
This "selected" instrumental record was "Mike's Nature Trick" grafted onto the tree-ring proxies to "hide the decline" in the tree ring proxies to produce the infamous Mann Hockey Stick.
The Air Vent has graphed the "raw" data from all 4495 surface stations below. Lo and behold, no hockey stick.
Read more about the data at the above link. Seems to confirm the CRU email from Phil Jones to Michael Mann, Malcolm Hughes and others, Mar 11, 2003, which stated: “Even with the instrumental record, the early and late 20th century warming periods are only significant locally at between 10-20% of grid boxes.” Begs the question, were the stations that showed significant 20th century warming (probably those biased by urban heat island effect) selected in order to produce the hockey stick graph?
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Antarctic Ice Extent: Growing During 30 Yr Satellite Era
From CO2science.org,
How has the sea ice that surrounds Antarctica varied over the period for which there exist comprehensive satellite data? In what follows, we review what has been learned about the subject -- in the order in which it was learned -- starting with the very first year of the current millennium.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Reexamining The Anthropogenic Global Warming Issue
From the Air Vent: By Leonard Weinstein, ScD
The following is an effort to reduce the AGW issue to a minimum number of necessary claims to support or reject. When I read of “thousands of supporting papers” on the issue, I would like to hear what these papers show that refutes the following.Read more at the link above
Equatorial Warm Water Volume: No Trend Over 30 Years
From the NOAA website:
"A convenient index of equatorial Pacific heat content is the integrated warm water volume (WWV) above the 20°C isotherm between 5°N-5°S, 120°E to 80°W Meinen and McPhaden (2000). We have derived monthly WWV values from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology Research Center (BMRC) Ocean Analyses (Smith, 1995) which are based primarily on TAO/TRITON mooring data and ship-of-opportunity XBT data (http://www.bom.gov.au/bmrc/ocean/results/climocan.htm). Monthly anomalies are computed by removing a mean seasonal cycle for a base period of 1980-2002."Note the strong El Nino spike in 1998 in the Pacific, but no overall trend over 30 years.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Fact-Based Climate Debate by IPCC Reviewer
Fact-based climate debate
By Lee C. Gerhard, IPCC Expert Reviewer
It is crucial that scientists are factually accurate when they do speak out, that they ignore media hype and maintain a clinical detachment from social or other agendas. There are facts and data that are ignored in the maelstrom of social and economic agendas swirling about Copenhagen.
Greenhouse gases and their effects are well-known. Here are some of things we know:
• The most effective greenhouse gas is water vapor, comprising approximately 95 percent of the total greenhouse effect.
• Carbon dioxide concentration has been continually rising for nearly 100 years. It continues to rise, but carbon dioxide concentrations at present are near the lowest in geologic history.
• Temperature change correlation with carbon dioxide levels is not statistically significant.
• There are no data that definitively relate carbon dioxide levels to temperature changes.
• The greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide logarithmically declines with increasing concentration. At present levels, any additional carbon dioxide can have very little effect.
Friday, December 25, 2009
A 148 Yr "Unfettered" Land Temperature Record
Many rural weather stations around the globe do not show warming in the 20th century, presumably due to lack of the urban heat island effect. Here is a good example with an almost uninterrupted 148 year land temperature record, apparently not "adjusted," not moved, and in a rural location not subject to surrounding urban heat effect, from an Australian weather station "NEWCASTLE NOBBYS SIGNAL STATION AWS" Go to the site to graph the latest data.
Information on the station site.
Information on the station site.
A CRU email from Phil Jones to Michael Mann, Malcolm Hughes and others, Mar 11, 2003, stated: “Even with the instrumental record, the early and late 20th century warming periods are only significant locally at between 10-20% of grid boxes.” [http://www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/emails.php?eid=296&filename=1047390562.txt]
Read more here.
Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week
As noted at CO2science.org , Eden, D.N and Page, M.J. 1998. Palaeoclimatic implications of a storm erosion record from late Holocene lake sediments, North Island, New Zealand. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 139: 37-58.
Sediment cores from Lake Tutira, North Island, New Zealand (~39.23°S, 176.9°E) were analyzed to reconstruct a history of major storms for this region over the past 2,000 years. Results indicated six well-defined and "clearly distinguishable" storm periods of the pre-instrumental era, which are reproduced in the figure below. A seventh period based on data presented in Table 1 of the authors' paper has also been added to indicate comparable storms of the modern era.
Sediment cores from Lake Tutira, North Island, New Zealand (~39.23°S, 176.9°E) were analyzed to reconstruct a history of major storms for this region over the past 2,000 years. Results indicated six well-defined and "clearly distinguishable" storm periods of the pre-instrumental era, which are reproduced in the figure below. A seventh period based on data presented in Table 1 of the authors' paper has also been added to indicate comparable storms of the modern era.
Global Sea Level Decrease over last 6 Years
Using the Pacific Marine Atlas program to plot data from the ARGO global network of 3222 free drifting ocean floats with GPS (data first became available from this program in 2004-see float locations below) shows a slight downtrend in Sea Height over the past six years ( Jan 2004 - November 2009) using data from the entire network:
The ARGO Float Network
(Prior to the use of satellites and GPS, sea levels were determined with error prone methods such as use of wooden poles stuck in mud of the sea floor along coastlines, subject to sinkage into the mud, rotting poles, tilting of poles, and shift of tectonic plates, which may account for some of the uptrend in older data.)
The ARGO Float Network
Temperature (from the surface to 100 dbar depth) data from the same network also shows no trend over the past 6 years (graph below). Needless to say, the oceans represent 75% of the earth's surface and are not subject to urban heat effects that distort the land-based temperature record. The oceans also hold ~100 times the amount of heat held by the atmosphere.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Billon$ of Conflict$ of Intere$t by Head of IPCC
From The Telegraph (UK):
The head of the UN's climate change panel - Dr Rajendra Pachauri - is accused of making a fortune from his links with 'carbon trading' companies. No one in the world exercised more influence on the events leading up to the Copenhagen conference on global warming than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mastermind of its latest report in 2007. Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics he has no qualifications in climate science at all. What has also almost entirely escaped attention, however, is how Dr Pachauri has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations.
Read more at the link above
The head of the UN's climate change panel - Dr Rajendra Pachauri - is accused of making a fortune from his links with 'carbon trading' companies. No one in the world exercised more influence on the events leading up to the Copenhagen conference on global warming than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mastermind of its latest report in 2007. Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics he has no qualifications in climate science at all. What has also almost entirely escaped attention, however, is how Dr Pachauri has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations.
Read more at the link above
Climategate: What the e-mail really means
From Climategate: What e-mail really means
"The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't," said Kevin Trenberth, one of the world's preeminent climate scientists and lead author of the 2001 and 2007 IPCC reports.
Trenberth's statement is compelling on its own, but the subsequent discussion is even more illuminating. Later in the same e-mail thread, fellow climate scientist Tom Wigley replies that he does not agree with Trenberth's assertion. Trenberth then responds to Wigley, clarifying and expounding upon his earlier claims: "How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter. We are not close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty!"Read more at the link above
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Study: CFCs, cosmic rays major culprits for global warming
WATERLOO, Ont. (Monday, Dec. 21, 2009) - Cosmic rays and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), both already implicated in depleting the Earth's ozone layer, are also responsible for changes in the global climate, a University of Waterloo scientist reports in a new peer-reviewed paper. In his paper, Qing-Bin Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy, shows how CFCs - compounds once widely used as refrigerants - and cosmic rays - energy particles originating in outer space - are mostly to blame for climate change, rather than carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. His paper, derived from observations of satellite, ground-based and balloon measurements as well as an innovative use of an established mechanism, was published online in the prestigious journal Physics Reports. Press release here.
The paper, published Dec. 3 in Physics Reports, is available online at: dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physrep.2009.12.002.
Paleoclimate Proxies Redux
From the September 2009 SCIENCE publication, Kaufman et al “Recent Warming Reverses Long-Term Arctic Cooling,” the abstract reads,
The paper, however, does not make any effort to point out that it is the tree-ring proxies alone which account for the dramatic, unpresedented spike upward in the 20th century. Fortunately, a corrected (10/09) spreadsheet containing all 23 proxies is available from the authors. I have subdivided the 23 proxies into the four categories of Ice core isotopes, Varves, Sediments, and Tree Rings. The flawed tree-ring data (including The Most Influential Tree in the World [and see below]) is shown in light blue. The 10 period moving average of each category is shown in the same color as each category.
Moreover, Steve McIntyre pointed out that Kaufman used the Tiljander tree-ring data flipped upside down (a la Michael Mann) and Kaufman has admitted doing so in the Corrigendum. Kaufman also admits flipping upside down one of the Varves series in the Corrigendum. The new Kaufman graph incorporating numerous corrections (but still including the flawed tree-ring data) appears in the Corrigendum as follows:
The temperature history of the first millennium C.E. is sparsely documented, especially in the Arctic. We present a synthesis of decadally resolved proxy temperature records from poleward of 60°N covering the past 2000 years, which indicates that a pervasive cooling in progress 2000 years ago continued through the Middle Ages and into the Little Ice Age. A 2000-year transient climate simulation with the Community Climate System Model shows the same temperature sensitivity to changes in insolation as does our proxy reconstruction, supporting the inference that this long-term trend was caused by the steady orbitally driven reduction in summer insolation. The cooling trend was reversed during the 20th century, with four of the five warmest decades of our 2000-year-long reconstruction occurring between 1950 and 2000.
The paper, however, does not make any effort to point out that it is the tree-ring proxies alone which account for the dramatic, unpresedented spike upward in the 20th century. Fortunately, a corrected (10/09) spreadsheet containing all 23 proxies is available from the authors. I have subdivided the 23 proxies into the four categories of Ice core isotopes, Varves, Sediments, and Tree Rings. The flawed tree-ring data (including The Most Influential Tree in the World [and see below]) is shown in light blue. The 10 period moving average of each category is shown in the same color as each category.
Instead of making it clear that (highly suspect) tree-ring data was alone distoring the average of the 23 proxies, the lead author of the paper stated to BBC News "The 20th Century stands out in strong contrast to the cooling that should have continued. The last half-century was the warmest of the 2,000-year temperature record, and the last 10 years have been especially dramatic." The BBC News in turn ran the alarmist headline Arctic 'warmest in 2,000 years' with the graph below (a simple average of all 23 proxies):
Moreover, Steve McIntyre pointed out that Kaufman used the Tiljander tree-ring data flipped upside down (a la Michael Mann) and Kaufman has admitted doing so in the Corrigendum. Kaufman also admits flipping upside down one of the Varves series in the Corrigendum. The new Kaufman graph incorporating numerous corrections (but still including the flawed tree-ring data) appears in the Corrigendum as follows:
With these corrections, the arctic is apparently the same temperature as 2000 years ago. Still waiting for the corrected headlines from the BBC and other mainstream media that loved the original headline. Tick...tock...(queue crickets)...
Here is a prime example of the flawed Briffa tree-ring data using "The Most Influential Tree in the World":
Monday, December 21, 2009
Global Warming or A Lot of Hot Air?
Segments from the Fox News Special "Global Warming or A Lot of Hot Air?" specifically relating to Climategate:
Trouble over tree rings
Excellent summary of the climategate battles regarding tree ring proxies of temperature from a prominent Canadian Newspaper, The National Post.
Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2365992#ixzz0aLC9W0Sh
In the thousands of emails released last month in what is now known as Climategate, the greatest battles took place over scientists' attempts to reconstruct a credible temperature record for the last couple of thousand years. Have they failed? What the Climategate emails provide is at least one incontrovertible answer: They certainly have not succeeded.
In a post-Copenhagen world, climate history is not merely a matter of getting the record straight, or a trivial part of the global warming science. In a Climategate email in April of this year, Steve Colman, professor of Geological Science at the University of Minnesota Duluth, told scores of climate scientists "most people seem to accept that past history is the only way to assess what the climate can actually do (e. g., how fast it can change). However, I think that the fact that reconstructed history provides the only calibration or test of models (beyond verification of modern simulations) is under-appreciated."
Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2365992#ixzz0aLC9W0Sh
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Unusually High Activity of the Sun in the 20th Century
"According to our reconstruction, the level of solar activity over the past 70 years has been exceptional, and the previous period of equally high activity occurred more than 8000 years ago." Read the October 2004 Nature paper here.
And also see Muscheler, R., Joos, F., Beer, J., Mueller, S.A., Vonmoos, M., Snowball, I., 2007. Solar activity during the last 1000 yr inferred from radionuclide records for the reconstruction below:
Saturday, December 19, 2009
NASA: Quiet Sun Means Cooling
NASA Press Release 12-16-09:
NASA SHOWS QUIET SUN MEANS COOLING OF EARTH'S UPPER ATMOSPHERE
HAMPTON, Va. -- New measurements from a NASA satellite show a dramatic
cooling in the upper atmosphere that correlates with the declining
phase of the current solar cycle. For the first time, researchers can
show a timely link between the Sun and the climate of Earth's
thermosphere, the region above 100 km (roughly 60 miles), an
essential step in making accurate predictions of climate change in
the high atmosphere.
NASA SHOWS QUIET SUN MEANS COOLING OF EARTH'S UPPER ATMOSPHERE
HAMPTON, Va. -- New measurements from a NASA satellite show a dramatic
cooling in the upper atmosphere that correlates with the declining
phase of the current solar cycle. For the first time, researchers can
show a timely link between the Sun and the climate of Earth's
thermosphere, the region above 100 km (roughly 60 miles), an
essential step in making accurate predictions of climate change in
the high atmosphere.
The Other Hockey Schtick {CO2 Levels}
Problem: Ice core data on CO2 levels doesn't match modern infrared absorption measurements from Mauna Loa.
Solution: As noted here, "an ad hoc assumption, not supported by any factual evidence, solved the problem: The average age of air was arbitrarily decreed to be exactly 83 years younger than the ice in which it was trapped (Jaworowski 1994 & 1992)." I have added the red arrow to illustrate the arbitrary data shift of 83 years to match up ice core data with modern measurements of CO2 at Mauna Loa, an active volcano with elevated levels of CO2.
Solution: As noted here, "an ad hoc assumption, not supported by any factual evidence, solved the problem: The average age of air was arbitrarily decreed to be exactly 83 years younger than the ice in which it was trapped (Jaworowski 1994 & 1992)." I have added the red arrow to illustrate the arbitrary data shift of 83 years to match up ice core data with modern measurements of CO2 at Mauna Loa, an active volcano with elevated levels of CO2.
read more at the link above
2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-tree ring proxies
In the original paper cited below, Loehle notes “The data show the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and Little Ice Age (LIA) quite clearly.” The plot also shows that the MWP was much warmer than the 20th century. The paper states "The series ends with a downtick because the last set of points are averages that include the cool decades of the 1960s and 1970s.” and “It is clear that the 1995-year reconstruction shown here does not match the famous hockey stick shape.”
Following the publication of the first article, problems including setting the temperature base year in some cases to 1950 and others to 2000, smoothing errors, and other errors were discovered. Therefore, Loehle and McCulloch published a correction of the original paper, with improved confidence intervals. The corrected series below is very similar to the original, although for data reasons, the last point now represents the 29-year average temperature centered on 1935.
The second paper states, “The corrected data continue to show the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and Little Ice Age (LIA) quite clearly. The confidence intervals “indicate that the MWP was significantly warmer than the bimillennial average during most of approximately 820 – 1040 AD, at the 5% level (2-tailed). Likewise, the LIA was significantly cooler than the bimillennial average during most of approximately 1440-1740 AD.”
From:
Loehle, C. 2007. A 2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-tree ring proxies. Energy and Environment, 18, 1049-1058.
Loehle, C. and J.H. McCulloch. 2008. Correction to: A 2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-tree ring proxies. Energy and Environment, 19, 93-100.
Following the publication of the first article, problems including setting the temperature base year in some cases to 1950 and others to 2000, smoothing errors, and other errors were discovered. Therefore, Loehle and McCulloch published a correction of the original paper, with improved confidence intervals. The corrected series below is very similar to the original, although for data reasons, the last point now represents the 29-year average temperature centered on 1935.
The second paper states, “The corrected data continue to show the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and Little Ice Age (LIA) quite clearly. The confidence intervals “indicate that the MWP was significantly warmer than the bimillennial average during most of approximately 820 – 1040 AD, at the 5% level (2-tailed). Likewise, the LIA was significantly cooler than the bimillennial average during most of approximately 1440-1740 AD.”
From:
Loehle, C. 2007. A 2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-tree ring proxies. Energy and Environment, 18, 1049-1058.
Loehle, C. and J.H. McCulloch. 2008. Correction to: A 2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-tree ring proxies. Energy and Environment, 19, 93-100.
Negative Feedbacks Dominate Climate
AGW computer models claim that increased atmospheric CO2 will produce amplified, positive feedbacks on temperature, whereas observation and the historical record show that negative feedbacks dominate climate change. See the August 2009 paper by Richard Lindzen here.
Geophysical, archaeological, and historical evidence support a solar-output model for climate change
Read the paper here. From the paper: Solar activity model v. Sea Level Deviation and historical correlates:
22 Greenhouse Gas Climate Models v. Actual Satellite Observations
Read the 2008 paper here. From the abstract: "model results and temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being separated by more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean. " & "modelled and observed trends have opposite signs" & "These conclusions contrast strongly with those of recent publications based on essentially the same data" and in the Conclusions:
The difference in CO2 sensitivity between satellite observations and the models is a factor of about 3!
U.S. Land v. Sea Surface Temperatures
The corrected temperature record for the contiguous US is shown above (Hansen 2008). After correction, the highest temperature ever recorded in the US since 1880 was in 1934. There is no steady rise as predicted by greenhouse gas theory, but evidence of periodic oscillation of about 70 years, with a previous peak around 1933. Plotted below is the behavior of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (Mantua 2007) over the same period, showing the same periodic behavior. For a current graph of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), see the widget on the right side above.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
How to Manufacture a Climate Consensus
From the Wall Street Journal
The East Anglia emails are just the tip of the iceberg. I should know.
By PATRICK J. MICHAELS
Few people understand the real significance of Climategate, the now-famous hacking of emails from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU). Most see the contents as demonstrating some arbitrary manipulating of various climate data sources in order to fit preconceived hypotheses (true), or as stonewalling and requesting colleagues to destroy emails to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the face of potential or actual Freedom of Information requests (also true).
But there's something much, much worse going on—a silencing of climate scientists, akin to filtering what goes in the bible, that will have consequences for public policy, including the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) recent categorization of carbon dioxide as a "pollutant."
The bible I'm referring to, of course, is the refereed scientific literature. It's our canon, and it's all we have really had to go on in climate science (until the Internet has so rudely interrupted). When scientists make putative compendia of that literature, such as is done by the U.N. climate change panel every six years, the writers assume that the peer-reviewed literature is a true and unbiased sample of the state of climate science.
That can no longer be the case. The alliance of scientists at East Anglia, Penn State and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (in Boulder, Colo.) has done its best to bias it.
For the rest of the story, click on the link above
The East Anglia emails are just the tip of the iceberg. I should know.
By PATRICK J. MICHAELS
Few people understand the real significance of Climategate, the now-famous hacking of emails from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU). Most see the contents as demonstrating some arbitrary manipulating of various climate data sources in order to fit preconceived hypotheses (true), or as stonewalling and requesting colleagues to destroy emails to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the face of potential or actual Freedom of Information requests (also true).
But there's something much, much worse going on—a silencing of climate scientists, akin to filtering what goes in the bible, that will have consequences for public policy, including the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) recent categorization of carbon dioxide as a "pollutant."
The bible I'm referring to, of course, is the refereed scientific literature. It's our canon, and it's all we have really had to go on in climate science (until the Internet has so rudely interrupted). When scientists make putative compendia of that literature, such as is done by the U.N. climate change panel every six years, the writers assume that the peer-reviewed literature is a true and unbiased sample of the state of climate science.
That can no longer be the case. The alliance of scientists at East Anglia, Penn State and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (in Boulder, Colo.) has done its best to bias it.
For the rest of the story, click on the link above
Climate Change Is Nature's Way
It's our good luck one of Earth's many ice ages ended 12,000 years ago.
Climate change activists are right. We are in for walloping shifts in the planet's climate. Catastrophic shifts. But the activists are wrong about the reason. Very wrong. And the prescription for a solution—a $27 trillion solution—is likely to be even more wrong. Why?
Fallacies from the Copenhagen Opening Session
From Wattsupwiththat.com:
"here is what Pachauri invited the audience in Copenhagen to believe.
1. Pachauri asked us to believe that the IPCC’s documents were “peer-reviewed”. Then he revealed the truth by saying that it was the authors of the IPCC’s climate assessments who decided whether the reviewers’ comments were acceptable. That – whatever else it is – is not peer review.
2. Pachauri said that greenhouse gases had increased by 70% between 1970 and 2004. This figure was simply nonsense. I have seen this technique used time and again by climate liars. They insert an outrageous statement early in their presentations, see whether anyone reacts and, if no one reacts, they know they will get away with the rest of the lies. I did my best not to react. I wanted to hear, and write down, the rest of the lies.
3. Next came the bogus graph, which is featured three times, large and in full color, in the IPCC’s 2007 climate assessment report. The graph is bogus not only because it relies on the made-up data from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia but also because it is overlain by four separate trend-lines, each with a start-date carefully selected to give the entirely false impression that the rate of warming over the past 150 years has itself been accelerating, especially between 1975 and 1998. The truth, however – neatly obscured by an ingenious rescaling of the graph and the superimposition of the four bogus trend lines on it – is that from 1860-1880 and again from 1910-1940 the warming rate was exactly the same as the warming rate from 1975-1998.
click to enlarge
4. Pachauri said that there had been an “acceleration” in sea-level rise from 1993. He did not say, however, that in 1993 the method of measuring sea-level rise had switched from tide-gages to satellite altimetry against a reference geoid. The apparent increase in the rate of sea-level rise is purely an artefact of this change in the method of measurement.
5. Pachauri said that Arctic temperatures would rise twice as fast as global temperatures over the next 100 years. However, he failed to point out that the Arctic was actually 1-2 Celsius degrees warmer than the present in the 1930s and early 1940s. It has become substantially cooler than it was then.
For more, click on the link at top
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Sea Surface Temp Anomalies 1854 - present
From the NOAA website, the ERSST PDO Index of reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies from 1854 to 2009, plotted with a 10 year moving average, shows the "40's blip" and declining ocean temperatures over the past 20 years.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Sea Surface Temperatures (SST)
From Interdecadal Changes of SST Normals During 1871-2000, yet again, sea surface temps were warmer at the turn of the 19th century than 20th, and show the 40's "blip." Note SST=sea surface temperatures are a far better proxy to global temperature changes than e.g. tree rings, which are dependent upon numerous (and more important than temperature) factors such as precipitation, and are considered more accurate than the land thermometer record (which is dependent upon urban heat, relocation, gaps, and other defects).
From NPR 2008: The Mystery of Global Warming's Missing Heat
Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them.
This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record. But Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.
In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.
As reported by Not Evil Just Wrong Monday:
In several recent interviews the former vice president said that the Climategate emails were "sound and fury signifying nothing...the most recent one is more than 10 years old."
However the reality is that the most recent email from Climategate is less than two months old.
1.35 Million Years of Sea Surface Temperatures
Once again, another proxy of temperature, planktonic foraminiferal magnesium/calcium ratios, shows global warming over the past 1.35 million years as much or more than today. Recent warming per this proxy begins before the 19th century's increased CO2, and then essentially leveled off and shows no correlation with CO2 levels in the distant past or present.
100 Reasons why climate change is Natural, not Man-Made
HERE are the top 100 reasons, released in a dossier issued by the European Foundation, why climate change is natural and not man-made:
1) There is “no real scientific proof” that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from man’s activity.
2) Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 percent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the earth during geological history.
3) Warmer periods of the Earth’s history came around 800 years before rises in CO2 levels.
HERE are the top 100 reasons, released in a dossier issued by the European Foundation, why climate change is natural and not man-made:
1) There is “no real scientific proof” that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from man’s activity.
2) Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 percent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the earth during geological history.
3) Warmer periods of the Earth’s history came around 800 years before rises in CO2 levels.
2) Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 percent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the earth during geological history.
3) Warmer periods of the Earth’s history came around 800 years before rises in CO2 levels.
"AN ORCHESTRATED LITANY OF LIES"
COMMENTS ON THE RECENT STATEMENT BY THE CLIMATE COMMITTEE OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF NEW ZEALAND
CLIMATE STATEMENT "AN ORCHESTRATED LITANY OF LIES"
CLIMATE STATEMENT "AN ORCHESTRATED LITANY OF LIES"
| Veteran Wellington climate consultant, Dr Vincent Gray, expert reviewer of all four IPCC Assessment Reports, explains why he has resigned his longtime membership of the Royal Society of New Zealand in protest at the inaccuracies in a report on climate change issued on 12 July by the Society's Climate Committee. Dr Vincent Gray INTRODUCTION As an Expert Reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for eighteen years, that is to say, from the very beginning. I have submitted thousands of comments to all of the Reports. My comments on the Fourth IPCC Report, all 1,898 of them, are to be found at IPCC (2007) and my opinions of the IPCC are in Gray (2008b) I am therefore very familiar with the arguments presented by the IPCC, many of which have now been copied by the Royal Society of New Zealand, and the responses to them. I will first comment on the Introduction to make absolutely clear what the evidence is for climate change and anthropogenic (human-induced) causes. The climate has always changed and always will. No evidence whatsoever for a human contribution to the climate is given in their following statement. Their Summary is as follows: The globe is warming This statement is a lie. The globe is currently cooling. According to the CSSP Report (Karl et al 2007), there are currently nine authorities currently involved in providing a dataset of monthly global temperature anomalies. They are |
Another Inconvenient Truth
As reported in The Times of London, Mr Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years.
In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”
However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast. “It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.” Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.
Ben Wilson commented: "There is a 75 per cent chance that Al Gore, during the summer months, could be completely fact-free within five to seven years.”
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Ice Cores IV: Temperature increases CO2, not vice versa
From Wikipedia, "Ice Cores" entry
"recent work has tended to show that during deglaciations CO2 increases lags temperature increases by 600 +/- 400 years [9]. Beryllium-10 concentrations are linked to cosmic ray intensity which can be a proxy for solar strength."
"recent work has tended to show that during deglaciations CO2 increases lags temperature increases by 600 +/- 400 years [9]. Beryllium-10 concentrations are linked to cosmic ray intensity which can be a proxy for solar strength."
How to Make Your Own Hockey Schtick
From the Iowahawk Blog, step by step instructions on how to recreate the flawed Mann-like hockey stick in EXCEL
UK's Daily Mail Newspaper Excellent Summary of Climategate
The claim was both simple and terrifying: that temperatures on planet Earth are now ‘likely the highest in at least the past 1,300 years’.
As its authors from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) must have expected, it made headlines around the world.
Yet some of the scientists who helped to draft it, The Mail on Sunday can reveal, harboured uncomfortable doubts.
In the words of one, David Rind from the US space agency Nasa, it ‘looks like there were years around 1000AD that could have been just as warm’.
Read more here
More fishy "Adjustments" to Temperature Data
From the Statistics & Other Things Blog comes this analysis of the adjustments to the GHCN/CRU data set, documenting efforts to decrease temperatures in the 18th century and steadily increase temperature "adjustments" in the 19th century.
see also adjustments by NOAA to raw temperature data:
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Ice Cores III: Solar vs. Temp Proxies 160,000 Years
from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0010/001065/106523E.pdf
Global Warming on 5 Other Planets
From National Geographic:
“Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.“
From MIT on Pluto
“the average surface temperature of the nitrogen ice on Pluto has increased slightly less than 2 degrees Celsius over the past 14 years.”
Since Pluto is moving further away from the Sun and continuing to warm despite that fact, it indicates that something doesn’t fit into “Solar Constant” dismissal theories.
From Space.com on Jupiter:
“The latest images could provide evidence that Jupiter is in the midst of a global change that can modify temperatures by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit on different parts of the globe.”
From MIT on Triton:
“At least since 1989, Triton has been undergoing a period of global warming. Percentage-wise, it’s a very large increase,” said Elliot, professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and director of the Wallace Astrophysical Observatory. The 5 percent increase on the absolute temperature scale from about minus-392 degrees Fahrenheit to about minus-389 degrees Fahrenheit would be like the Earth experiencing a jump of about 22 degrees Fahrenheit.”
“Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.“
From MIT on Pluto
“the average surface temperature of the nitrogen ice on Pluto has increased slightly less than 2 degrees Celsius over the past 14 years.”
Since Pluto is moving further away from the Sun and continuing to warm despite that fact, it indicates that something doesn’t fit into “Solar Constant” dismissal theories.
From Space.com on Jupiter:
“The latest images could provide evidence that Jupiter is in the midst of a global change that can modify temperatures by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit on different parts of the globe.”
From MIT on Triton:
“At least since 1989, Triton has been undergoing a period of global warming. Percentage-wise, it’s a very large increase,” said Elliot, professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and director of the Wallace Astrophysical Observatory. The 5 percent increase on the absolute temperature scale from about minus-392 degrees Fahrenheit to about minus-389 degrees Fahrenheit would be like the Earth experiencing a jump of about 22 degrees Fahrenheit.”
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