Ending the global-warming argument

Leftist resort to the courts is sign of desperation
 
THE WASHINGTON TIMES March 17, 2011

Leftists are rushing to the judiciary as a refuge against efforts to undermine their global-warming tax schemes. In the current economic environment, the idea of massive hikes in the price of gasoline and other sources of energy has become radioactive. In response, the attorneys general of California, Connecticut, Iowa, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont are hoping activist judges will enact policies that elected, accountable representatives are increasingly afraid to touch.

Congress moved this week to overturn an Environmental Protection Agency ruling meant to bring about carbon-dioxide rationing. At the same time, the seven left-leaning states argued in a brief to the Supreme Court that they have the right to sue out-of-state corporations as "public nuisances" for their crime of emitting a harmless, colorless gas that's essential for life on this planet.

According to the complaint, carbon-dioxide emissions from various power plants around the country "increase smog and heat-related mortality"; "raise sea levels, thereby inundating low-lying property such as much of New York City's infrastructure"; "lower water levels in the Great Lakes, harming commercial shipping and hydropower production in New York"; and "make it impossible for several species of hardwood trees to survive in Vermont, Connecticut, New York and Rhode Island." It goes on to claim "even one degree of global warming will double the number of heat-related deaths in New York City, to 700 per year."

Never mind that none of these calamities have actually happened, or that if they did, there would be no link to the companies under legal assault. Never mind that if the power companies were to cease operations, it's likely heat-related deaths from the lack of air conditioning would be far more real than the casualties from these imaginary catastrophes. Still, it's enough for the '60s-era radicals who traded their tie-dyed T-shirts for judicial robes that someone claiming to be a scientist says it's true. That includes people like Pennsylvania State University Prof. Michael E. Mann, who created the famous hockey-stick graph that served as the centerpiece of Al Gore's Oscar-winning global-warming infomercial, "An Inconvenient Truth."


Ever since the Climategate e-mail scandal exposed how Mr. Mann's graph used "a trick" to "hide the decline" in global temperatures, public support also has declined for the fable that cosmic irritation at mankind's exhalations has made things hotter by an imperceptible one-third of one degree over the course of a decade. In 2000, media-driven climate hysteria peaked with 72 percent of those surveyed by Gallup indicating they were worried about global warming. That number fell to 51 percent in a Gallup poll released Monday, with four in 10 Americans saying the seriousness of global warming was being exaggerated.


Lawmakers sense this skepticism in their constituents and can no longer get away with pursuing policies that sacrifice jobs and economic prosperity on the pagan altar of warmism. The House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 34-19 on Tuesday to adopt the "Energy Tax Prevention Act" which denies the EPA any authority to regulate water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane and other naturally occurring gases as if they were actual pollutants. On Tuesday, Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, promised a vote on the Senate version of the bill introduced by Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican, and his 43 co-sponsors, only to retreat the next day when it became apparent Mr. Inhofe had more support than expected.

It's time for the Supreme Court to put the states' bogus argument on ice.

Greenpeace: Germany could use wind power which is "usually switched off" to replace nuclear

No explanation is provided in the article below why Germany has "a lot of surplus wind power we could add which are usually switched off," but it probably relates to the fact that wind power is highly intermittent and unreliable, unlike the nuclear and coal plants "run flat out most of the time."

Snap [Hoax] Analysis: World to warm if Japan panic spreads


LONDON (Reuters) 3/16/11- Global warming will intensify if leading carbon emitter China drops the world's most ambitious nuclear power building program and Germany shuts down its nuclear plants amid panic over Japan's atomic energy crisis.

Wednesday's decision by the world's biggest coal burner and largest climate-warming carbon emitter to suspend approvals for new nuclear plants follows a decision by Europe's biggest carbon emitter Germany to shut seven nuclear plants.
...
The head of Greenpeace International's renewable division said the closure of the nuclear plants would have no carbon impact because Germany's coal plants already run flat out most of the time.

"They are usually running 24/7 anyway so an increase in output is almost impossible," Sven Teske said.

"We do have a lot of surplus wind power we could add which are usually switched off," he said, adding that more energy efficiency and a little more gas-fired production could fill in the gap.

Researcher's "findings show how easily huge, complex areas of the planet and their effect on climate can be misunderstood"

Could climate science possibly be unsettled?

Study looks at prehistoric climate change

EDMONTON, Alberta, March 15 (UPI) -- Canadian researchers say the impact of peatlands on prehistoric climate change has been overestimated but they could affect the current global warming trend.

University of Alberta researchers say northern peatlands, a boggy mixture of dead organic material and water covering more than 1.5 million square miles, sequester carbon in the form of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. As old peat is buried and begins to decompose it emits large amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, a university release said Tuesday.

The largest northern peatlands are located in the subarctic regions of Canada and Russia.

University researchers studied radiocarbon dates of ancient peatlands to examine how they first colonized northern regions at the end of the last ice age, a period of rapid global warming. Atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane rose dramatically 10,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age, and scientists believed that northern peatlands were a large, if not the principle, source of the dramatic increase in atmospheric methane.

But the research showed peatlands did not colonize the north until 500 to 1,000 years after the abrupt increases in atmospheric methane, suggesting other sources, such as tropical wetlands, were the main cause.

The researchers said their findings show how easily huge, complex areas of the planet and their effect on climate can be misunderstood.
____________________________________________________ 

Compare to a study published less than 5 years ago:

October 13, 2006 Mongabay.com

New research says that methane released from peat bogs at the end of the past ice age worsen global warming. The study warns that a similar event could worsen climate change by causing a rapid shift in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.

A news release from UCLA appears below.

Rapid Growth of Huge Northern Bog Complex May Have Helped Kick-Start Past Global Warming
Methane gas released by peat bogs in the northern-most third of the globe probably helped fuel the last major round of global warming, which drew the ice age to a close between 11,000 and 12,000 years ago, UCLA and Russian Academy of Sciences scientists have concluded...

400,000 birds killed per year by American wind turbines, but they don't make the cover of Time

WSJ.com Notable & Quotable 3/15/11
Raffi Khatchadourian on the BP oil spill in the New Yorker, March 14:

It is possible to fight a forest fire and not be distracted by how the calamity was caused, and whether the cause taints the integrity of the people who deal with it. But oil spills are saturated in blame and political confusion—and opportunity. There is a sense that they are not accidents but accidents waiting to happen, and thus acts of greed. As a result, oil-soaked birds and fish come to symbolize a reviled industry's heedless behavior. Every year, as many as four hundred thousand birds are killed in America by electricity-generating wind turbines, but they do not make the cover of Time.

Also in Notable & Quotable today,
Juan Williams on the latest scandal at NPR, his former employer. 

Former NPR commentator Juan Williams writing in the New York Post, March 15:

The recent videotape showing NPR chief fund-raiser Ron Schiller . . . is just an open microphone on what I've been hearing from NPR top executives and editors for years. They're willing to do anything in service to any liberal with money, and then they'll turn around and in self-righteous indignation claim that they have cleaner hands than anybody in the news business who accepts advertising or expresses a point of view. 

Ron Schiller's performance on videotape—which included lecturing two young men pretending to be Muslims on how to select wine—is a "South Park"-worthy caricature of the American liberal as an effete, Volvo-driving, wine-sipping, NPR-listening dunderhead.

NPR's many outstanding journalists are caught in a game where they are trying to please a leadership that doesn't want to hear stories that contradict the official point of view. . . . This just confirms my belief that it is time for our government to get out of the business of funding NPR. The idea, to me, of government-funded media doesn't fit the United States.

Carbon Dioxide and Democracy

WSJ.com REVIEW & OUTLOOK MARCH 15, 2011

Carbon and Democracy
Congress gets ready to overrule the EPA on cap and trade rules.

Get a load of this. Some Members of Congress actually think that Congress should have a say in whether or not the government regulates carbon [dioxide]. Some of them even want to have a debate about it first. Don't these yahoos understand that democratic consent doesn't apply to the Environmental Protection Agency?

Yesterday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee began debating a bill that would prohibit the EPA from abusing the clean air laws of the 1970s to impose the climate regulations that Congress has refused to pass despite President Obama's entreaties. As EPA chief Lisa Jackson put it with her customary reserve at a hearing last week, the measure "would presume to overrule the scientific community on the scientific finding that carbon pollution endangers Americans' health and well-being. Politicians overruling scientists on a scientific question . . ."

We'll spare you the rest, though Ms. Jackson mentioned "science" a few more times in case anyone didn't get the drift. But the real presumption is that an unaccountable bureaucracy should use its self-assigned powers to make inherently political choices that will be a colossal drag on economic growth.

The bill, which the committee will likely approve today and the House will likely pass later this spring, would restore the plain regulatory meaning that "pollutant" held for decades until the EPA decided in 2009 that all of a sudden it also applied to carbon [dioxide]. John Dingell helped write the Clean Air Act and its 1990 revision, and the Michigan Democrat has repeatedly said that neither was ever meant to address climate.

Other critics of the EPA's carbon agenda include Senate Democrats like West Virginia's Jay Rockefeller and Ohio's Sherrod Brown, neither of whom is otherwise known for business sympathies. But they understand that the EPA is about to unleash an economy-wide deluge of new rules and mandates that is already costly and destructive, and it has barely begun.

Mr. Rockefeller is sponsoring a Senate bill that would freeze regulation for two years, but the House bill is a better approach because it is a permanent solution. The EPA's carbon putsch has been arbitrary, politically driven and frequently illegal, and it won't be any less reckless two years from now.

Whatever Ms. Jackson's appeals to "science," as if democracy doesn't matter, her conception of an autonomous regulatory state should offend any elected politician. The harm the EPA is inflicting is bad enough, but let's start with such basics as the rule of law and representative government.

WSJ: Japan Does Not Face Another Chernobyl

The containment structures appear to be working, and the latest reactor designs aren't vulnerable to the coolant problem at issue here.

By WILLIAM TUCKER  WSJ.com  3/14/11

Even while thousands of people are reported dead or missing, whole neighborhoods lie in ruins, and gas and oil fires rage out of control, press coverage of the Japanese earthquake has quickly settled on the troubles at two nuclear reactors as the center of the catastrophe.

Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass.), a longtime opponent of nuclear power, has warned of "another Chernobyl" and predicted "the same thing could happen here." In response, he has called for an immediate suspension of licensing procedures for the Westinghouse AP1000, a "Generation III" reactor that has been laboring through design review at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for seven years.

Before we respond with such panic, though, it would be useful to review exactly what is happening in Japan and what we have to fear from it.

The core of a nuclear reactor operates at about 550 degrees Fahrenheit, well below the temperature of a coal furnace and only slightly hotter than a kitchen oven. If anything unusual occurs, the control rods immediately drop, shutting off the nuclear reaction. You can't have a "runaway reactor," nor can a reactor explode like a nuclear bomb. A commercial reactor is to a bomb what Vaseline is to napalm. Although both are made from petroleum jelly, only one of them has potentially explosive material.

Once the reactor has shut down, there remains "decay heat" from traces of other radioactive isotopes. This can take more than a week to cool down, and the rods must be continually bathed in cooling waters to keep them from overheating.

On all Generation II reactors—the ones currently in operation—the cooling water is circulated by electric pumps. The new Generation III reactors such as the AP1000 have a simplified "passive" cooling system where the water circulates by natural convection with no pumping required.

WSJ: Nuclear Overreactions: Modern life requires learning from disasters, not fleeing all risk

WSJ.com REVIEW & OUTLOOK MARCH 14, 2011

Nuclear Overreactions
Modern life requires learning from disasters, not fleeing all risk.

After a once-in-300-years earthquake, the Japanese have been keeping cool amid the chaos, organizing an enormous relief and rescue operation, and generally earning the world's admiration. We wish we could say the same for the reaction in the U.S., where the troubles at Japan's nuclear reactors have produced an overreaction about the risks of modern life and technology.

Part of the problem is the lack of media proportion about the disaster itself. The quake and tsunami have killed hundreds, and probably thousands, with tens of billions of dollars in damage. The energy released by the quake off Sendei is equivalent to about 336 megatons of TNT, or 100 more megatons than last year's quake in Chile and thousands of times the yield of the nuclear explosion at Hiroshima. The scale of the tragedy is epic.

Yet the bulk of U.S. media coverage has focused on a nuclear accident whose damage has so far been limited and contained to the plant sites. In simple human terms, the natural destruction of Earth and sea have far surpassed any errors committed by man.

Given the incomplete news reports, it is impossible to say how much worse the nuclear damage will be. Unlike the Soviets at Chernobyl, the Japanese have been taking sensible precautions like evacuating people near the plants and handing out iodine pills even if they may never be needed. These precautions increase public worry, but better to take them even if they prove to be unnecessary.

We will have plenty of time to dissect events at the reactors and the safety lessons going forward. William Tucker provides some useful context nearby, and one crucial point is that the containment walls seem to have held. These walls are designed to withstand quakes and explosions, and it is good news if they have done so. The crisis seems to have been triggered by the failure of diesel generators that provided electricity to cool the reactors once they were shut down. Mr. Tucker explains that this weakness has been corrected in new nuclear plant designs.

WSJ: EPA tangles with a new critic: labor

Several unions with strong influence in key states are demanding that the EPA soften new regulations

WSJ.com MARCH 14, 2011  By STEPHEN POWER

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration's environmental agenda, long a target of American business, is beginning to take fire from some of the Democratic Party's most reliable supporters: Labor unions.

Several unions with strong influence in key states are demanding that the Environmental Protection Agency soften new regulations aimed at pollution associated with coal-fired power plants. Their contention: Roughly half a dozen rules expected to roll out within the next two years could put thousands of jobs in jeopardy and damage the party's 2012 election prospects.

"If the EPA issues regulations that cost jobs in Pennsylvania and Ohio, the Republicans will blast the President with it over and over," says Stewart Acuff, chief of staff to the president of the Utility Workers Union of America. "Not just the President. Every Democratic [lawmaker] from those states."

A range of American companies that depend on fossil fuel—from coal and oil firms to manufacturers—have complained about the Obama EPA, one reason the administration has had tense relations with business. In meetings in recent days, representatives of electric power utilities that rely heavily on coal-fired plants, and some large unions, have taken their concerns to the White House. The companies and the unions have said a new regulation targeting mercury and other toxic pollutants, due to be proposed this week, could lead to higher electric bills, billions of dollars in new costs and the closing of plants that employ thousands of workers.

Now that labor unions are joining the chorus, the pressure on the agency is intensifying. Some Democrats, worried about potential job losses in industrial states, are already urging the EPA to slow down its push to combat climate change.

Hansen 1998: "the forces that drive long-term climate change are not known with accuracy sufficient to define future climate change"

"In 1988, James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute, brought "global warming" to the public's attention for the first time when he testified before the Senate that he was "99 percent certain...the (human-caused) greenhouse effect...is changing our climate now." ....
"By 1998, James Hansen had changed his tune, writing "the forces that drive long-term climate change are not known with accuracy sufficient to define future climate change."

"A study in Science on October 2, 1998 refutes the claim that the current warming could only be caused by human activities. It showed that 12,500 years ago global temperature rose by more than 20 degrees in approximately 50 years. This natural change was more than 10 times the "catastrophic" warming environmentalists claim only humans could be causing and it occurred in half the time."

The Post and Courier - Aug 23, 1999

Climate change causes bountiful and threatened salmon

Take your pick:

1. Bountiful Alaska salmon harvest forecast for 2011    Sun, Mar 6 2011    By Yereth Rosen

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - The 2011 Alaska commercial salmon harvest is forecast to be one of the largest since statehood -- but that doesn't mean prices will be coming down any time soon, a state fish and game official said on Sunday.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game forecasts that 203 million fish will be caught this year, the fifth largest haul since statehood, thanks to a combination of good environmental conditions over the past few years as well as careful management by the state.

The harvest of pink salmon, the cheapest and most plentiful of the five varieties of Alaska salmon, will be especially large, totaling 133.7 million fish, according to the forecast.

The commercial pink salmon catch is expected to be 25 percent higher than the 2010 total.

The commercial catch of high-priced sockeye salmon, also called red salmon, is expected to total 45 million fish, an 11 percent increase over the 2010 sockeye harvest, according to the forecast.

"Probably the biggest influence of all is general conditions in the ocean for providing food, and those seem to have been favorable," Geron Bruce, deputy director of commercial fisheries for the department, told Reuters.

But an abundance of Alaska salmon does not necessarily translate to lower prices, Bruce said.

Prices depend on international market forces, including general economic conditions and production from competing salmon suppliers, he said. He noted that the 2010 Alaska salmon harvest was large and, at the same time, fetched high prices.

"Cheap prices, I don't know about that. The salmon market's pretty strong," he said. Overall, Bruce said he's expecting another good year again for Alaska fishermen.

The 2011 forecast does not include complete projections for catches of high-priced Chinook salmon, also referred to as kings.

Information needed to complete those projections depends on terms yet to be set by the international Pacific Salmon Commission.

The total Alaska commercial Chinook salmon catch statewide in 2010 was 378,000 fish, according to the department.

The record commercial salmon catch was in 2005, with 221.9 million salmon harvested commercially, according to Alaska Department of Fish and Game records.

2. Dams, pollution and overharvesting aren't the only things threatening Pacific salmon populations 3/12/11.

Climate change may be taking its toll as well.

Scientists testifying in front of an international government panel investigating the decline of sockeye salmon in British Columbia's Fraser River said nearly half the returning salmon die before they get to the spawning beds.

And the scientists blame the death rate on warmer water temperatures. The Fraser River's temperature has increased by about two degrees in the past few decades, and according to researchers, that's enough to change the timing of the fish's spawning migration.

Scott Hinch, an aquatic biologist at the University of British Columbia, said the warmer water doesn't kill the fish directly, but it does increase their stress load. For instance, salmon use more energy to swim and get oxygen when in warmer water, and this extra exertion could lead to exhaustion and cardiac arrest.

Warmer water also promotes disease growth – bacteria, viruses, fungi – which can affect the salmon.

Pete Rand of the Wild Salmon Center in Portland, who was not at the inquiry, said the climate concern is not unique to sockeye in the Fraser River. He said all Pacific salmon, from California up to Alaska, are at risk.

In California and Oregon, "the very southern part of their range, they are very sensitive to increases in water temperature," he said. "Many of the rivers will likely exceed tolerated levels."

But Harry Morse, a spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Game, said it would be difficult to point to just climate change as the chief factor in salmon decline.

"There was a national science panel that looked at the Delta situation, and a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration panel and a Pacific Fish Management Committee, and they have all said there is a cornucopia of 40-plus factors that deal with the decline in salmon," he said. "None of them are putting high emphasis on climate change. There are just so many thing happening in California, with the redistribution of water and dams."

He also said that the Fraser River situation isn't as cut and dried as some scientists would make it.

"There are lots of opinions on the Fraser," he said. "Not everyone agrees with each other."

Website: www.CaliforniaWatch.org

Wall St. Journal: Venture capital avoiding 'green-tech' or bets on cap & trade

A Leading Indicator Turns Up
More venture capital, less venture politics

WSJ.com REVIEW & OUTLOOK 3/12/11: With little growth in the labor force, slow growth in GDP and the government running a $223 billion February deficit, it may be hard to get optimistic about the economy. But we're happy to note that one important indicator is rising.

Venture Capitalist Al Gore

The Wall Street Journal's latest ranking of America's top 50 venture-capital-backed companies includes only two green technology businesses, down from five in 2010. The survey, compiled by our corporate cousins at VentureSource, measures which technology start-ups are attracting the most money and talent.

This year's top start-ups include companies pursuing treatments for cancer, glaucoma and bacterial infections, one firm developing incisionless surgery techniques, plus a range of companies creating online publishing tools, software and hardware for mobile communications and new data-storage technologies. No "green-tech" companies joined the list this year, though solar-cell maker Suniva and Recycle Rewards, which partners with cities to increase recycling, remain from last year's top 50.

Gone from this year's list are companies like Solyndra, a favorite of President Obama that received a $535 million federal loan guarantee but had a harder time attracting customers for its pricey solar panels. The money-losing company scrapped plans for an initial public offering last year.


Fewer politically favored companies means that venture capital is affirming its traditional role of funding companies based on breakthrough technology or quality management, rather than betting on politicians to pass cap and trade or taxpayer subsidies. The venture industry's future can be as exciting as its past if investments go to businesses designed to serve consumers, not political agendas.

New material posted on the NIPCC website

Eurasian Arctic Temperatures of the Past 115 Years (8 Mar 2011)

A portion of the earth that is supposed to (1) be the first place on the planet to exhibit anthropogenic-induced global warming, and to (2) exhibit that warming most strongly, shows no net warming whatsoever over the last eight decades of the 20th century. ... Read More

Earth’s Thermal Sensitivity to a Doubling of Atmospheric CO2 (8 Mar 2011)

Lindzen and Choi report that all eleven models employed by the IPCC “agree as to positive feedback,” but they find that they all disagree - and disagree “very sharply” - with the real-world observations that they (Lindzen and Choi) utilized, which imply that negative feedback actually prevails. And the presence of that negative feedback reduces the CO2-induced propensity for warming to the extent that their analysis of the real-world observational data only yields a mean SST increase “of ~0.5°C for a doubling of CO2" ... Read More

The Resiliency of a Tropical Eastern-Pacific Coral Reef (8 Mar 2011)

Despite recurrent natural disturbances, “live coral cover in 2004 was as high as that existing before 1982 at La Azufrada” ... Read More

Global Warming and Wildfires (8 Mar 2011)

In spite of evidence from prior centuries that global warming may indeed have had a tendency to promote wildfires on a global basis (since global cooling had a tendency to reduce them), technological developments during the industrial age appear to have overpowered this natural tendency to the point that man has become a dominant factor for good in actually leading to a decrease in global wildfires over the past century and a half ... Read More

Surviving the Unprecedented Climate Change of the IPCC (8 Mar 2011)

Norwegian, Swedish and UK researchers urge “some caution in assuming broad-scale extinctions of species will occur due solely to climate changes of the magnitude and rate predicted for the next century,” while noting that “the fossil record indicates remarkable biotic resilience to wide amplitude fluctuations in climate” ... Read More

The Relative Merit of Multiple Climate Models (8 Mar 2011)

Not even a model’s close replication of past reality insures that its projections of future reality will prove equally accurate ... Read More

The Case Against Climate Envelope Models of Species Range Shifts (8 Mar 2011)

What three researchers learned from some Canadian conifers ... Read More

Tropospheric Humidity and CO2-Induced Global Warming (9 Mar 2011)

“Negative trends in q as found in the NCEP data would imply that long-term water vapor feedback is negative - that it would reduce rather than amplify the response of the climate system to external forcing such as that from increasing atmospheric CO2" ... Read More

Warming-Induced Vegetative Change in the Swedish Scandes (9 Mar 2011)

“Continued modest warming over the present century will likely be beneficial to alpine biodiversity, geological stability, resilience, sustainable reindeer husbandry and aesthetic landscape qualities,” which outlook is a far, far cry from the “pushed off the planet” scenario supported by the IPCC and derived from highly-discredited climate envelope models of plant redistributions in response to the future climate changes ... Read More

Global Warming and Malaria: Does the Former Promote the Latter? (9 Mar 2011)

“Future changes in climate may alter the prevalence and incidence of the disease, but obsessive emphasis on ‘global warming’ as a dominant parameter is indefensible” ... Read More

The Late-1980 Extratropical Warming of the Northern Hemisphere (9 Mar 2011)

Is it well described by climate models? ... and was it anthropogenic induced? ... Read More

The Top-of-the-Atmosphere Radiation Budget: Model Simulations vs. Direct Measurements over the Tropics (9 Mar 2011)

“None of the models simulates the overall ‘net radiative heating’ signature of the earth’s radiative budget over the time period from 1985-2000". ... Read More

The Green(leaf)ing of the Earth Continues (9 Mar 2011)

Over the period of time when the earth experienced a warming that (1) occurred at a rate that the IPCC contends was unprecedented over the past millennium or two, and that (2) took the planet to a level of warmth that the IPCC also considers to have been unprecedented over the past millennium or two, the Leaf Area Index of the planet’s vegetation increased ... Read More

GM Volt review: Sweater and gloves required when driving in cold

Sweater, gloves required when driving Volt in cold: Magazine


The potential popularity of electric vehicles has always been tempered in cold climates, like here in Canada, because of the concerns that freezing temperatures will reduce the range of an EV’s batteries.

And now a long-term test report of the Chevrolet Volt, in the U.S. magazine Motor Trend, confirms that fear and also suggests you may have to keep your winter clothes on while driving the plug-in electric hybrid during colder days.

The magazine found that the Volt uses up a “considerable” amount of battery range to heat up its cabin on colder days, reducing its range to well below 30 miles (48 kms) before draining the battery and reverting to its gas generator to recharge the batteries and power its electric motor — much lower than the optimal 64 km estimate.

Based on using an aftermarket internal thermometer, the magazine also found that the Volt’s climate control system does more than just portion out the air temperature to what is set on the climate control.

Using an external thermometer, the Volt’s heater was set to 24 degrees Celsius, but the cabin temperature was closer to 18C. However, the footwell temperature reached about 28.4C.

Apparently, a warm footwell plus heated seats is Chevrolet’s strategy to make Volt drivers feel warm.

The result led to the review calling the Chevy EV as “a sweater and gloves commuter car for northern-tier Volt owners.”

Climate researchers: Russian heat wave was natural

but they add the obligatory acknowledgement to the faith of anthropogenic global warming...

WASHINGTON (AP) 3/9/11— Global warming isn't directly to blame for last summer's deadly — and extraordinary — heat wave in Russia, researchers said in a report Wednesday that came with a climate warning.

"We may be on the cusp of a period in which the probability of such events increases rapidly, due primarily to the influence of projected increases in greenhouse gas concentrations," said the team led by Randall Dole and Martin Hoerling of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

It was the warmest July since at least 1880 in western Russia. The heat wave led to an increase in deaths in the region, as well as drought, widespread fires, increased air pollution and severe crop damage. Also affected by the warming were Belarus, Ukraine and the Baltic nations.

The extreme heat raised questions about links to global warming — the rising temperatures worldwide that most atmospheric scientists attribute to greenhouse gases being pumped into the air by industrial and other processes over the last century or so.

The intense heat wave in Russia "was mainly due to natural internal atmospheric variability," the scientists reported in a paper to be published in Geophysical Research Letters.

The cause in this case, they said, was a strong and long-lived blocking pattern that prevented movement of weather systems. Blocking patterns occur when the high-level jet stream directing the movement of weather develops a sharp wave pattern. This forces storms to move around an area while conditions there stagnate.

"Similar atmospheric patterns have occurred with prior heat waves in this region," although those have been less severe, Dole and Hoerling said.

There are indications the blocking pattern forcing storms to move also affected subsequent flooding in Pakistan, they said.

"To be sure, it was a rare event. But rare events happen and rarity alone doesn't imply cause," Dole said at a briefing.

It's important to study the causes of events such as this heat wave because they have global economic impacts, Hoerling said. The heat wave reduced Russian grain yields about 40 percent, resulting in a decline in the world's grain supply.

Hoerling said researchers were surprised to find that the region hadn't experienced the rising temperatures that have impacted much of the planet.

"While the globe as a whole, on an annual basis, is warming, there can be important regional differences," Hoerling said. The 1930s remain the warmest decade on record for western Russia, unlike the planet as a whole, for which the past 10 years have been the warmest on record, he said.

The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found evidence that global warming contributed to heat waves in other areas and probably is to cause stronger and more frequent heat waves in future.

Hoerling heads the climate attribution team at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory and Dole is deputy director of the physical sciences division of the lab.

Out-Manned: Over 950 scientists show the fallacy of Mann's hockey stick graph

A paper published today in the journal Paleoceanography adds to the overwhelming evidence published by over 950 scientists that the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was as hot or hotter than the present, and contrary to the claims of Michael Mann, the MWP was a global -not local- phenomenon. The paper finds mean annual sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the Gulf of Mexico during the MWP were similar to near-modern SSTs, and that the SSTs were significantly cooler than the present during the Little Ice Age. Modern global warming began well before industrialization as a natural recovery from the nadir of the Little Ice Age. By mere coincidence, the global thermometer record begins at the end of the Little Ice Age and reflects recovery from these unusually cold temperatures during the current interglacial.

Famous quote from Michael Mann: "...it would be nice to "contain" the putative 'MWP'," after which he used Mann-made statistics to produce the alarmist and thoroughly discredited hockey stick graph with the MWP "contained," flattened, and beaten to a pulp.

Merging late Holocene molecular organic and foraminiferal-based geochemical records of sea surface temperature in the Gulf of Mexico

Abstract: A molecular organic geochemical proxy (TEX86) for sea surface temperature (SST) is compared with a foraminifera-based SST proxy (Mg/Ca) in a decadal-resolution marine sedimentary record spanning the last 1000 years from the Gulf of Mexico. We assess the relative strengths of the organic and inorganic paleoceanographic techniques for reconstructing high-resolution SST variability during recent climate events, including the Little Ice Age (LIA) and the Medieval Warm Period (MWP). SST estimates based on the molecular organic proxy TEX86 show a similar magnitude and pattern of SST variability to foraminiferal Mg/Ca-SST estimates but with some important differences. For instance, both proxies show a cooling (1°C–2°C) of Gulf of Mexico SSTs during the LIA. During the MWP, however, Mg/Ca-SSTs are similar to near-modern SSTs, while TEX86 indicates SSTs that were cooler than modern. Using the respective SST calibrations for each proxy results in TEX86-SST estimates that are 2°C–4°C warmer than Mg/Ca-SST throughout the 1000 year record. We interpret the TEX86-SST as a summer-weighted SST signal from the upper mixed layer, whereas the Mg/Ca-SST better reflects the mean annual SST. Downcore differences in the SST estimates between the two proxies (ΔT = TEX86 − Mg/Ca) are interpreted in the context of varying seasonality and/or changing water column temperature gradients.

Testimony of Dr. John Christy at House Subcommittee on Energy and Power Hearing

Written Statement of John R. Christy The University of Alabama in Huntsville

Subcommittee on Energy and Power Committee on Energy and Commerce
8 March 2011

I am John R. Christy, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science, Alabama’s State Climatologist and Director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. I have served as a Lead Author and Contributing Author of IPCC assessments. It is a privilege for me to offer my view of climate change based on my experience as a climate scientist. My research area might be best described as building climate datasets from scratch to advance our understanding of what the climate is doing and why. This often involves weeks and months of tedious examination of paper records and digitization of data for use computational analysis. I have used traditional surface observations as well as measurements from balloons and satellites to document the climate story. Many of my datasets are used to test hypotheses of climate variability and change. In the following I will address six issues that are part of the discussion of climate change today, some of which will be assisted by the datasets I have built and published.

EXTREME EVENTS
Recently it has become popular to try and attribute certain extreme events to human causation. The Earth, however, is very large, the weather is very dynamic, especially at local scales, so that extreme events of one type or another will occur somewhere on the planet in every year. Since there are innumerable ways to define an extreme event (i.e. record high/low temperatures, number of days of a certain quantity, precipitation over 1, 2, 10 … days, snowfall amounts, etc.) this essentially requires there to be numerous “extreme events” in every year. The following assess some of the recent “extreme events” and explanations that have been offered as to their cause.

Australia

The tragic flooding in the second half of 2010 in NE Australia was examined in two ways, (1) in terms of financial costs and (2) in terms of climate history. First, when one normalizes the flood costs year by year, meaning if one could imagine that the infrastructure now in place was unchanging during the entire study period, the analysis shows there are no long-term trends in damages. In an update of Crompton and McAneney (2008) of normalized disaster losses in Australia which includes an estimate for 2010, they show absolutely no trend since 1966. Secondly, regarding the recent Australian flooding as a physical event in the context climate history (with the estimated 2010 maximum river height added to the chart below) one sees a relative lull in flooding events after 1900. Only four events reached the moderate category in the past 110 years, while 14 such events were recorded in the 60 years before 1900. Indeed, the recent flood magnitude had been exceeded six times in the last 170 years, twice by almost double the level of flooding as observed in 2010. Such history charts indicate that severe flooding is an extreme event that has occurred from natural, unforced variability. There is also a suggestion that emergency releases of water from the Wivenhoe Dam upstream of Brisbane caused “more than 80 per cent of the flood in the Brisbane River. … Without this unprecedented and massive release ... the flooding in Brisbane would have been minimal.” (The Australian 18 Jan 2011.) (See http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/02/flood-disasters-and-human-caused.html where Roger Pielke Jr. discusses extreme events and supplies some of the information used here.)

England Floods

Svensson et al. 2006 discuss the possibility of detecting trends in river floods, noting that much of the findings relate to “changes in atmospheric circulation patterns” such as the North Atlantic Oscillation (i.e. natural, unforced variability) which affects England. For the Thames River, there has been no trend in floods since records began in 1880 (their Fig. 5), though multi-decadal variability indicates a lull in flooding events from 1965 to 1990. The authors caution that analyzing flooding events that start during this lull will create a false positive trend with respect to the full climate record. Flooding events on the Thames since 1990 are similar to, but generally slightly less than those experienced prior to 1940. One wonders that if there are no long-term increases in flood events in England, how could a single event (Fall 2000) be pinned on human causation as in Pall et al. 2011, while previous, similar events obviously could not? Indeed, on a remarkable point of fact, Pall et al. 2011 did not even examine the actual history of flood data in England to understand where the 2000 event might have fit. As best I can tell, this study compared models with models. Indeed, studies that use climate models to make claims about precipitation events might benefit from the study by Stephens et al. 2010 whose title sums up the issue, “The dreary state of precipitation in global models.” In mainland Europe as well, there is a similar lack of increased flooding (Barredo 2009). Looking at a large, global sample, Svensson et al. found the following.

A recent study of trends in long time series of annual maximum river flows at 195 gauging stations worldwide suggests that the majority of these flow records (70%) do not exhibit any statistically significant trends. Trends in the remaining records are almost evenly split between having a positive and a negative direction.
Russia and Pakistan

An unusual weather situation developed in the summer of 2010 in which Russia experienced a very long stretch of high temperatures while a basin in Pakistan was inundated with flooding rains. NOAA examined the weather pattern and issued this statement indicating this extreme event was a part of the natural cycle of variability (i.e. natural, unforced variability) and unrelated to greenhouse gas forcing. "...greenhouse gas forcing fails to explain the 2010 heat wave over western Russia. The natural process of atmospheric blocking, and the climate impacts induced by such blocking, are the principal cause for this heat wave. It is not known whether, or to what extent, greenhouse gas emissions may affect the frequency or intensity of blocking during summer. It is important to note that observations reveal no trend in a daily frequency of July blocking over the period since 1948, nor is there an appreciable trend in the absolute values of upper tropospheric summertime heights over western Russia for the period since 1900. The indications are that the current blocking event is intrinsic to the natural variability of summer climate in this region, a region which has a climatological vulnerability to blocking and associated heat waves (e.g., 1960, 1972, 1988)."

Snowfall in the United States

Snowfall in the eastern US reached record levels in 2009-10 and 2010-11 in some locations. NOAA’s Climate Scene Investigators committee issued the following statement regarding this, indicating again that natural, unforced variability explains the events. Specifically, they wanted to know if human-induced global warming could have caused the snowstorms due to the fact that a warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor. The CSI Team’s analysis indicates that’s not likely. They found no evidence — no human “fingerprints” — to implicate our involvement in the snowstorms. If global warming was the culprit, the team would have expected to find a gradual increase in heavy snowstorms in the mid-Atlantic region as temperatures rose during the past century. But historical analysis revealed no such increase in snowfall.
In some of my own studies I have looked closely at the snowfall records of the Sierra Nevada mountains, which includes data not part of the national archive. Long- term trends in snowfall (and thus water resources) in this part of California are essentially zero, indicating no change in this valuable resource to the state (Christy and Hnilo, 2010.)

Looking at a long record of weather patterns

A project which seeks to generate consistent and systematic weather maps back to
1871 (20th Century Reanalyisis Project, http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/20thC_Rean/) has taken a look at the three major indices which are often related to extreme events. As Dr. Gill Campo of the University of Colorado, leader of the study, noted to the Wall Street Journal (10 Feb 2011) that “… we were surprised that none of the three major indices of climate variability that we used show a trend of increased circulation going back to 1871.” (The three indices were the Pacific Walker Circulation, the North Atlantic Oscillation and the Pacific-North America Oscillation, Compo et al. 2011.) In other words, there appears to be no supporting evidence over this period that human factors have influenced the major circulation patterns which drive the larger-scale extreme events. Again we point to natural, unforced variability as the dominant feature of events that have transpired in the past 140 years. What this means today should be considered a warning – that the climate system has always had within itself the capability of causing devastating events and these will certainly continue with or without human influence. Thus, societies should plan for their infrastructure projects to be able to withstand the worst that we already know has occurred, and to recognize, in such a dynamical system, that even worse events should be expected. In other words, the set of the measured extreme events of the small climate history we have, since about 1880, does not represent the full range of extreme events that the climate system can actually generate. The most recent 130 years is simply our current era’s small sample of the long history of climate. There will certainly be events in this coming century that exceed the magnitude of extremes measured in the past 130 years in many locations. To put it another way, a large percentage of the worst extremes over the period 1880 to 2100 will occur after 2011 simply by statistical probability without any appeal to human forcing at all. Going further, one would assume that about
10 percent of the record extremes that occur over a thousand-year period ending in 2100 should occur in the 21st century. Are we prepared to deal with events even worse than we’ve seen so far? Spending resources on creating resiliency to these sure-to-come extremes, particularly drought/flood extremes, seems rather prudent to me.

A sample study of why extreme events are poor metrics for global changes


In the examples above, we don’t see alarming increases in extreme events, but we
must certainly be ready for more to come as part of nature’s variability. I want to
illustrate how one might use extreme events to conclude (improperly I believe) that the weather in the USA is becoming less extreme and/or colder. For each of the 50 states, there are records kept for the extreme high and low temperatures back to the late 19th century. In examining the years in which these extremes occurred (and depending on how one deals with “repeats” of events) we find about 80 percent of the states recorded their hottest temperature prior to 1955. And, about 60 percent of the states experienced their record cold temperatures prior to that date too. One could conclude, if they were so inclined, that the climate of the US is becoming less extreme because the occurrence of state extremes of hot and cold has diminished dramatically since 1955. Since 100 of anything is a fairly large sample (2 values for each of 50 states), this on the surface seems a reasonable conclusion. Then, one might look at the more recent record of extremes and learn that no state has achieved a record high temperature in the last 15 years (though one state has tied theirs.) However, five states have observed their all-time record low temperature in these past 15 years (plus one tie.) This includes last month’s record low of 31°F below zero in Oklahoma, breaking their previous record by a rather remarkable 4°F. If one were so inclined, one could conclude that the weather that people worry about (extreme cold) is getting worse in the US. (Note: this lowering of absolute cold temperature records is nowhere forecast in climate model projections, nor is a significant drop in the occurrence of extreme high temperature records.) I am not using these statistics to prove the weather in the US is becoming less extreme and/or colder. My point is that extreme events are poor metrics to use for detecting climate change. Indeed, because of their rarity (by definition) using extreme events to bolster a claim about any type of climate change (warming or cooling) runs the risk of setting up the classic “non-falsifiable hypothesis.” For example, we were told by the IPCC that “milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms” (TAR WG2, 15.2.4.1.2.4). After the winters of 2009-10 and 2010-11, we are told the opposite by advocates of the IPCC position, “Climate Change Makes Major Snowstorms More Likely” (http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/climate-change-makes-snowstorms-more-likely-0506.html).

The non-falsifiable hypotheses works this way, “whatever happens is consistent with my hypothesis.” In other words, there is no event that would “falsify” the hypothesis. As such, these assertions cannot be considered science or in anyway informative since the hypothesis’ fundamental prediction is “anything may happen.” In the example above if winters become milder or they become snowier, the hypothesis stands. This is not science. As noted above, there are innumerable types of events that can be defined as extreme events – so for the enterprising individual (unencumbered by the scientific method), weather statistics can supply an almost unlimited set of targets in which to discover a “useful” extreme event. Thus, when such an individual observes an unusual event, it may be tempting to define it as a once-for-all extreme metric to “prove” a point about climate change. This works both ways with extremes. If one were prescient enough to have predicted in 1996 that over the next 15 years, five states would break record cold temperatures while zero states would break record high temperatures as evidence for cooling, would that prove CO2 emissions have no impact on climate? No. Extreme events happen, and their causes are intricately tied to semi-unstable dynamical situations that can occur out of an environment of natural, unforced variability. Science checks hypotheses (assertions) by testing specific, falsifiable predictions implied by those hypotheses. The predictions are to be made in a manner that, as much as possible, is blind to the data against which the prediction is evaluated. It is the testable predictions from hypotheses, derived from climate model output, that run into trouble. Before going on, the main point here is that extreme events do not lend themselves as being rigorous metrics for convicting human emissions of being guilty of causing them.

THE UNDERLYING TEMPERATURE TREND

As noted earlier, my main research projects deal with building climate datasets from scratch to document what the climate has done and to test assertions and hypotheses about climate change.
In 1994, Nature magazine published a study of mine in which we estimated the underlying rate at which the world was warming by removing the impacts of volcanoes and El Niños (Christy and McNider 1994.) This was important to do because in that particular 15-year period (1979-1993) there were some significant volcanic cooling episodes and strong El Niños that convoluted what would have been the underlying trend. The result of that study indicated the underlying trend for 1979-1993 was +0.09 °C/decade which at the time was one third the rate of warming that should have been occurring according to estimates by climate model simulations.

Above: update of Christy and McNider 1994: Top curve: Monthly global atmospheric temperature anomalies 1979-2010 (TLT). 2nd: (SST) the influence of tropical sea surface temperature variations on the global temperature. 3rd: (TLT-SST) global temperature anomalies without the SST influence. 4th (VOL) The effect of volcanic cooling on global temperatures (El Chichon 1982 and Mt. Pinatubo 1991). Bottom: (TLT-SST-VOL) underlying trend once SST and VOL effects are removed. The average underlying trend of TLT-SST-VOL generated from several parametric variations of the criteria used in these experiments was +0.09 °C/decade. Lines are separated by 1°C. I have repeated that study for this testimony with data which now cover 32 years as shown above (1979-2010.) In an interesting result, the new underlying trend remains a modest +0.09 C/decade for the global tropospheric temperature, which is still only one third of the average rate the climate models project for the current era (+0.26°C/decade.)

There is no evidence of acceleration in this trend. This evidence strongly suggests that climate model simulations on average are simply too sensitive to increasing greenhouse gases and thus overstate the warming of the climate system (see below under climate sensitivity.) This is an example of a model simulation (i.e. hypothesis) which can provide a “prediction” to test: that “prediction” being the rate at which the Earth’s atmosphere should be warming in the current era. In this case, the model-average rate of warming fails the test (see next.)

PATTERNS OF WARMING

Through the years there have been a number of publications which have specifically targeted two aspects of temperature change in which observations and models can be compared. The results of both comparisons suggest there are significant problems with the way climate models represent the processes which govern the atmospheric temperature. In the first aspect of temperature change, we have shown that the pattern of change at the surface does indeed show warming over land. However, in very detailed analyses of localized areas in the US and Africa we found that this warming is dominated by increases in nighttime temperatures, with little change in daytime temperatures. This pattern of warming is a classic signature of surface development (land cover and land use change) by human activities. The facts that (a) the daytime temperatures do not show significant warming in these studies and (b) the daytime temperature is much more representative of the deep atmospheric temperature where the warming due to the enhanced greenhouse effect should be evident, lead us to conclude that much of the surface temperature warming is related to surface development around the thermometer sites. This type of surface development interacts with complexities of the nighttime boundary layer which leads to warming not related to greenhouse warming (Christy et al. 2006, 2009, see also Walters et al. 2007, Pielke, Sr. 2008.)

The second set of studies investigates one of the clearest signatures or fingerprints of greenhouse gas warming as depicted in climate models. This signature consists of a region of the tropical upper atmosphere which in models is shown to warm at least twice as fast as the surface rate of warming. We, and others, have tested this specific signature, i.e. this hypothesis, against several observational datasets and conclude that this pervasive result from climate models has not been detected in the real atmosphere. In addition, the global upper atmosphere is also depicted in models to warm at a rate faster than the surface. Again, we did not find this to be true in observations (Klotzbach et al. 2010.)
The following are quotes from three of the recent papers which come to essentially the same conclusion as earlier work published in Christy et al. 2007 and Douglass et al. 2007. Table 2 displays the new per decade linear trend calculations [of difference between global surface and troposphere using model amplification factor] … over land and ocean. All trends are significant[ly different] at the 95% level. Klotzbach et al. 2010. [Our] result is inconsistent with model projections which show that significant amplification of the modeled surface trends occurs in the modeled tropospheric trends. Christy et al. 2010. Over the interval 1979-2009, model-projected temperature trends are two to four times larger than observed trends in both the lower and mid-troposphere and the differences are statistically significant at the 99% level. McKitrick et al 2010.

Again we note that these (and other) studies have taken “predictions” from climate model simulations (model outputs are simply hypotheses), have tested these predictions against observations, and found significant differences.

CLIMATE SENSITIVITY AND FEEDBACKS

One of the most misunderstood and contentious issues in climate science surrounds the notion of climate sensitivity. Climate sensitivity is a basic variable that seeks to quantify the temperature response of the Earth to a particular forcing, for example answering the question, how much warming can be expected if the warming effect of doubling CO2 acts on the planet? The temperature used in this formulation is nearly always the surface temperature, which is a rather poor metric to serve as a proxy for the total heat content of the climate system, but that is the convention in use today. In any case, it is fairly well agreed that the surface temperature will rise about 1°C as a modest response to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 if the rest of the component processes of the climate system remain independent of this response. This is where the issue becomes uncertain: the complexity and interrelatedness of the various components of the climate system (e.g. clouds) mean they will not sit by independently while CO2 warms the planet a little, but will get into the act too. The fundamental issue in this debate is whether the net response of these interrelated actors will add to the basic CO2 warming (i.e. positive feedbacks) or subtract from the basic CO2 warming (i.e. negative feedbacks.)

Since climate models project a temperature rise on the order of 3 °C for a doubling of CO2, it is clear that in the models, positive feedbacks come into play to increase the temperature over and above the warming effect of CO2 alone, which is only about 1°C. However, given such observational results as noted earlier (i.e. warming rates of models being about three times that of observations) one can hypothesize that there must be negative feedbacks in the real world that counteract the positive feedbacks which dominate model processes.
My colleague at UAHuntsville, Dr. Roy Spencer, has searched tediously for a way to calculate climate sensitivity from satellite observations which at the same time would reveal the net response of the feedbacks which is so uncertain today. NASA and NOAA have placed in orbit some terrific assets to answer questions like this. Unfortunately, the best observations to address this issue are only about 10 years in length, which prevents us from directly calculating the sensitivity to 100 years of increasing CO2. However, the climate sensitivity over shorter periods to natural, unforced variability can be assessed, and this is what Dr. Spencer has done. To put it simply, Spencer tracks large global temperature changes over periods of several weeks. It turns out the global temperature rises and falls by many tenths of a degree over such periods. Spencer is able to measure the amount of heat that accumulates in (departs from) the climate system as the temperature rises (falls) with temperature changes. When all of the math is done, he finds the real climate system is dominated by negative feedbacks (probably related to cloud variations) that work against changes in temperature once that temperature change has occurred. When this same analysis is applied to climate model output (i.e. apples to apples comparisons), the result is very different, with all models showing positive feedbacks, i.e. helping a warming impulse to warm the atmosphere even more (see figure below.) Thus, the observations and models are again inconsistent. On this time scale in which feedbacks can be assessed, Spencer sees a significant difference between the way the real Earth processes heat and the way models do. This difference is very likely found in the way models treat cloudiness, precipitation and/or heat deposition into the ocean. This appears to offer a strong clue as to why climate models tend to overstate the warming rate of the global atmosphere.
Below: Climate feedback parameter from observations (blue, top line) and IPCC AR4 model simulations (other lines, derived from results in Spencer and Braswell 2010.) Model parameters cluster in a grouping that indicates considerably more sensitivity to forcing than indicated by observations.

The bottom line of this on-going research is that over time periods for which we are able to determine climate sensitivity, the evidence suggests that all models are characterized by feedback processes that are more positive than feedback processes measured in nature.

CONSENSUS SCIENCE

The term “consensus science” will often be appealed to in arguments about climate change. This is a form of “argument from authority.” Consensus, however, is a political notion, not a scientific notion. As I testified to the Inter-Academy Council last June, the IPCC and other similar Assessments do not represent for me a consensus of much more than the consensus of those who already agree with a particular consensus. The content of these reports is actually under the control of a relatively small number of individuals - I often refer to them as the “climate establishment” – who through the years, in my opinion, came to act as gatekeepers of scientific opinion and information, rather than brokers. The voices of those of us who object to various statements and emphases
in these assessments are by-in-large dismissed rather than acknowledged.

I’ve often stated that climate science is a “murky science.” We do not have laboratory methods of testing our hypotheses as many other sciences do. As a result, opinion, arguments from authority, dramatic press releases, and notions of consensus tend to pass for science in our field when they should not.
I noticed the House has passed an amendment to de-fund the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC.) I have a proposal here. If the IPCC activity is ultimately funded by US taxpayers, then I propose that ten percent of the funds be allocated to a group of well-credentialed scientists with help from individuals
experienced in creating verifiable reports, to produce an assessment that expresses alternative hypotheses that have been (in their view) marginalized, misrepresented or minimized in previous IPCC reports. We know from climategate emails and many other sources of information that the IPCC has had problems with those who take different positions on climate change. Topics to be addresses in this assessment, for example, would include (a) evidence for a low climate sensitivity to increasing greenhouse gases, (b) the role and importance of natural, unforced variability, (c) a rigorous evaluation of climate model output, (d) a thorough discussion of uncertainty, (e) a focus on metrics that most directly relate to the rate of accumulation of heat in the climate system (which, for example, the problematic surface temperature record does not represent), (f) analysis of the many consequences, including benefits, that result from CO2 increases, and (g) the importance that accessible energy has to human health and welfare. What this proposal seeks to accomplish is to provide to the congress and other policymakers a parallel, scientifically-based assessment regarding the state of climate science which addresses issues which here-to-for have been un- or under-represented by previous tax-payer funded, government-directed climate reports.

IMPACT OF EMISSION CONTROL MEASURES
The evidence above suggests that climate models overestimate the response of temperature to greenhouse gas increases. Even so, using these climate model simulations we calculate that the impact of legislative actions being considered on the global temperature is essentially imperceptible. These actions will not result in a measurable climate effect that can be attributable or predictable with any level of confidence, especially at the regional level.

When I testified before the Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations subcommittee in 2006 I provided information on an imaginary world in which 1,000 1.4 gW nuclear power plants would be built and operated by 2020. This, of course, will not happen. Even so, this Herculean effort would result in at most a 10 percent reduction in global CO2 emissions, and thus exert a tiny impact on whatever the climate is going to do. Indeed, with these most recent estimates of climate sensitivity, the impact of these emission control measures will be even tinier since the climate system doesn’t seem to be very sensitive to CO2 emissions. (Note: we have not considered the many positive benefits of higher concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere, especially for the biological world, nor the tremendous boost to human health, welfare, and security provided by affordable, carbon-based energy. As someone who has lived in a developing country, I can assure the subcommittee that without energy, life is brutal and short.) Coal use, which generates a major portion of CO2 emissions, will continue to rise as indicated by the Energy Information Administration’s chart below. Developing countries in Asia already burn more than twice the coal that North America does, and that discrepancy will continue to expand. The fact our legislative actions will be inconsequential in the grand scheme of things can be seen by noting that these actions attempt to bend the blue, North American curve, which is already fairly flat, down a little. So, downward adjustments to North American coal use will have virtually no effect on global CO2 emissions (or the climate), no matter how sensitive one thinks the climate system might be to the extra CO2 we are putting back into the atmosphere.

Thus, if the country deems it necessary to de-carbonize civilization’s main energy sources, sound and indeed compelling reasons beyond human-induced climate change need to be offered. Climate change alone is a weak leg on which to stand for such a massive undertaking. (I’ll not address the fact there is really no demonstrated technology except nuclear that can replace large portions of the carbon-based energy production.)

Thank you for this opportunity to offer my views on climate change.

References

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Syst. Sci., 9, 97-104.
Christy, J.R. and J.J. Hnilo, 2010: Changes in snowfall in the southern Sierra Nevada of
California since 1916. Energy & Env., 21, 223-234.
Christy, J.R., W.B. Norris and R.T. McNider, 2009: Surface temperature variations in
East Africa and possible causes. J. Clim. 22, DOI: 10.1175/2008JCLI2726.1.
Christy, J. R., W. B. Norris, R. W. Spencer, and J. J. Hnilo, 2007: Tropospheric temperature change since 1979 from tropical radiosonde and satellite measurements, J. Geophys. Res., 112, D06102, doi:10.1029/2005JD006881.
Christy, J.R., W.B. Norris, K. Redmond and K. Gallo, 2006: Methodology and results of
calculating central California surface temperature trends: Evidence of human- induced climate change? J. Climate, 19, 548-563.
Christy, J.R. and R.T. McNider, 1994: Satellite greenhouse signal? Nature, 367, 325. Compo, G.P. et al. 2011. Review Article: The Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project. Q.
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Crompton, R. and J. McAneney, 2008: The cost of natural disasters in Australia: the case
for disaster risk reduction. Australian J. Emerg. Manag., 23, 43-46. Douglass, D.H., J.R. Christy, B.D. Pearson and S.F. Singer, 2007: A comparison of
tropical temperature trends with model predictions. International J. Climatology, DOI: 10.1002/joc.1651.
Klotzbach, P. J., R. A. Pielke Sr., R. A. Pielke Jr., J. R. Christy, and R. T. McNider
(2009), An alternative explanation for differential temperature trends at the
surface and in the lower troposphere, J. Geophys. Res., 114, D21102, doi:10.1029/2009JD011841.
Pall, P., T. Aina, D. A. Stone, P. A. Stott, T. Nozawa, A. G. J. Hilberts, D. Lohmann and
M. R. Allen, 2011: , Nature.
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surface temperature feedback in the stable nocturnal boundary layer. Geophys. Res. Lett. doi:10.1029/2007GL029505.

Scientists drill through 2 kilometers of Greenland ice, find butterflies & lush forests

DNA reveals Greenland's lush past 
Armies of insects once crawled through lush forests in a region of Greenland now covered by more than 2,000m of ice. 

DNA extracted from ice cores shows that moths and butterflies were living in forests of spruce and pine in the area between 450,000 and 800,000 years ago.

Researchers writing in Science magazine say the specimens could represent the oldest pure DNA samples ever obtained.

The ice cores also suggest that the ice sheet is more resistant to warming than previously thought, the scientists say.

"We have shown for the first time that southern Greenland, which is currently hidden under more than 2km of ice, was once very different to the Greenland we see today," said Professor Eske Willerslev from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and one of the authors of the paper.

"What we've learned is that this part of the world was significantly warmer than most people thought," added Professor Martin Sharp from the University of Alberta, Canada, and a co-author of the Science paper.

Ice-locker

The ancient boreal forests were thought to cover southern Greenland during a period of increased global temperatures, known as an interglacial.

Temperatures at the time were probably between 10C in summer and -17C in winter.

When the temperatures dropped again 450,000 years ago, the forests and their inhabitants were covered by the advancing ice, effectively freezing them in time.

Studies suggest that even during the last interglacial (116,000-130,000 years ago), when temperatures were thought to be 5C warmer than today [why didn't this cause Hansen's "tipping point," "arctic amplification," or an "arctic death spiral" from accelerating albedo loss predicted by alarmists today for warming of 3C or less?] , the ice persevered, keeping the delicate samples entombed and free from contamination and decay.

At the time the ice is estimated to have been between 1,000 and 1,500m thick.

"If our data is correct, then this means that the southern Greenland ice cap is more stable than previously thought," said Professor Willerslev. "This may have implications for how the ice sheets respond to global warming."

Research by Australian scientists has suggested that a 3C rise in global temperatures would be enough to trigger the melting of the Greenland ice sheet.

In 2006, research conducted by researchers at Nasa suggested that the rate of melting of the giant ice sheet had tripled since 2004.

While in February 2006, researchers found that Greenland's glaciers were moving much faster than before, meaning that more of its ice was entering the sea.

And in 1996, Greenland was losing about 100 cubic km per year in mass from its ice sheet; by 2005, this had increased to about 220 cubic km.

A complete melt of the ice sheet would cause a global sea level rise of about 7m; but the current picture indicates that while some regions are thinning, others are apparently getting thicker.

Plant-life

The new results were obtained from the sediment rich bottom of ice cores.

The 2km-long Dye 3 core was drilled in south-central Greenland, whilst the 3km-long Greenland Ice Core Project (GRIP) core was taken from the summit of the Greenland ice sheet.

Samples from other glaciers, such as the John Evans Glacier on Ellesmere Island, in northern Canada, were used as a control, to verify the age of the samples and to confirm that the DNA was from plants that grew in southern Greenland, rather than from plant matter carried by wind or water from elsewhere in the world.

Although the ice contained only a handful of pollen grains and no fossils, the researchers were able to extract DNA from the organic matter held in the silt.

Comparisons with modern species show that the area was populated by diverse forests made up of alders, spruce, pine and members of the yew family.

Living in the trees and on the forest floor was a wide variety of life including beetles, flies, spiders, butterflies and moths.

The discovery pushes forward the date when the last forests were known to exist in Greenland by nearly two million years.

Previously, the youngest fossil evidence of a native forest in the region came from fossils found in the Kap Kobenhavn Formation in northern Greenland. There, the fossils date from around 2.4m years ago.

The study paves the way for scientists to probe beneath the ice in other parts of the world.

"Given that 10% of the Earth's terrestrial surface is covered by thick ice sheets, it could open up a world of new discoveries," said Dr Enrico Cappellini of the University of York, UK.

Story from BBC NEWS, found by Global Hot Air