Watts Up With That?

From SIDC (Solar Influences Data analysis Center): http://sidc.oma.be/products/quieta/

START OF ALL QUIET ALERT ………………….. The SIDC – RWC
Belgium expects quiet Space Weather conditions for the next 48 hours or until further notice. This implies that: * the solar X-ray output is expected to remain below C-class level, * the K_p index is expected to remain below 5, * the high-energy proton fluxes are expected to remain below the event threshold.

They should have also added…”Have a nice weekend!”

The monthly sunspot numbers are low, really low:

200801  2008.041     3.4 *   4.2 *
200802  2008.123     2.1 *
200803  2008.205     9.3 *
200804  2008.287     2.9 *
200805  2008.372     2.9 *
200806  2008.454     3.1 *
200807  2008.539     0.5 *

And the 10.7CM radio flux is holding below 67.

h/t to Barry Hearn

This was a bit of a surprise, hat tip to Bucko36 – Anthony

In Science, Ignorance is Not Bliss

By Physicist Walter Cunningham, NASA Apollo 7 Astronaut in July/August 2008 Issue of Launch Magazine. http://launchmagonline.com/index.php/Viewpoint/In-Science-Ignorance-is-not-Bliss.html

Cunningham writes:

“NASA should be at the forefront in the collection of scientific evidence and debunking the current hysteria over human-caused” warming

“[James] Hansen is a political activist who spreads fear even when NASA’s own data contradict him.”

BIO Note: Physicist Walter Cunningham, an award-winning NASA Apollo 7 Astronaut, was the recipient of the NASA Exceptional Service Medal and Navy Astronaut Wings, the 1969 Haley Astronautics Award and named to Named to the International Space Hall of Fame. Cunningham is a member of the American Geophysical Union and fellow of the American Astronautical Society.  He also worked as a scientist for the RAND Corporation prior to joining NASA. While with RAND, he worked on classified defense studies and problems of the earth’s magnetosphere.  He has accumulated more than 4,500 hours of flying time, including more than 3,400 in jet aircraft and 263 hours in space.

For Complete bio see: http://www.waltercunningham.com/introduction.htm

Excerpts:

It doesn’t help that NASA scientist James Hansen was one of the early alarmists claiming humans caused global warming. Hansen is a political activist who spreads fear even when NASA’s own data contradict him. [...] NASA should be at the forefront in the collection of scientific evidence and debunking the current hysteria over human-caused, or Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). Unfortunately, it is becoming just another agency caught up in the politics of global warming, or worse, politicized science. Advocacy is replacing objective evaluation of data, while scientific data is being ignored in favor of emotions and politics. [...]  I do see hopeful signs that some true believers are beginning to harbor doubts about AGW. Let’s hope that NASA can focus the global warming discussion back on scientific evidence before we perpetrate an economic disaster on ourselves.

[...] The fearmongers of global warming base their case on the correlation between CO2 and global temperature, even though we cannot be sure which is cause and which is effect. Historically, temperature increases have preceded high CO2 levels, and there have been periods when atmospheric CO2 levels were as much as 16 times what they are now, periods characterized not by warming but by glaciation. You might have to go back half a million years to match our current level of atmospheric CO2, but you only have to go back to the Medieval Warming Period, from the 10th to the 14th Century, to find an intense global warming episode, followed immediately by the drastic cooling of the Little Ice Age. Neither of these events were caused by variations in CO2 levels. Even though CO2 is a relatively minor constituent of “greenhouse gases,” alarmists have made it the whipping boy for global warming (probably because they know how fruitless it would be to propose controlling other principal constituents, H2O, CH4, and N2O). Since human activity does contribute a tiny portion of atmospheric CO2, they blame us for global warming.

[...] The reality is that atmospheric CO2 has a minimal impact on greenhouse gases and world temperature. Water vapor is responsible for 95 percent of the greenhouse effect. CO2 contributes just 3.6 percent, with human activity responsible for only 3.2 percent of that. That is why some studies claim CO2 levels are largely irrelevant to global warming. Without the greenhouse effect to keep our world warm, the planet would have an average temperature of minus 18 degrees Celsius. Because we do have it, the temperature is a comfortable plus 15 degrees Celsius. Based on the seasonal and geographic distribution of any projected warming, a good case can be made that a warmer average temperature would be even more beneficial for humans.

Full Text at link below:

http://launchmagonline.com/index.php/Viewpoint/In-Science-Ignorance-is-not-Bliss.html

Foreword: As you may recall, I was invited to speak at NCDC (National Climatic Data Center) back in April about the surfacestations project by Climate Reference Network chief scientist Dr. Gary Baker. It was a good visit, and I appreciated Dr. Baker’s good humor, candor and straightforward no-nonsense scientific approach to surface measurements.

While I was there, I met with Dr. Tom Karl, as well as Dr. Peterson. During that meeting with Dr. Karl I had no hint of the type of rhetoric used in this document which is now in preparation, but Peterson was clearly trying to convince me on his position, in fact he had asked to be added to my visit schedule specifically so that he could put on his presentation for me.

To say the least, I’m shocked that NCDC’s leadership has changed from being the nation’s record keeper of weather and climatic data, to being what appears to me now as an advocacy group. The draft document reads more like a news article in many places than it does a scientific document, and unlike a scientific document, it has a number of what I would call “emotionally based graphics” in it that have nothing to do with the science.

Dr. Roger Pielke does a good job of summarizing the issue, and his commentary is below. He also clearly points out a conflict of interest. From my perspective, this is bureaucracy at its very worst.

In the meantime public comments are invited, due by August 14th, and readers of this forums may want to avail themselves of that opportunity. Here is the link for public comments

A guest post by Dr. Roger Pielke:

The Draft report Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States has been released. There is an announcement of the Public Review Draft of the Unified Synthesis Product Global Climate Change in the United States. Public comments are due by August 14 2008 [Climate Science readers are urged to submit comments].

This US Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) report is Co-Chaired by Thomas R. Karl, Jerry Melillo, and Thomas C. Peterson with the Senior Editor and Synthesis Team Coordinator Susan J. Hassol. These are the same individuals who have led past CCSP reports (e.g. see and see), with Tom Karl and Tom Peterson deliberately excluding scientific perspectives that differ from their viewpoints (i.e. see). Susan Hassol was writer of the HBO Special “To Hot Not to Handle”. This HBO show clearly had a specific perspective on the climate change issue, and lacked a balanced perspective. The HBO Executive Producer was Ms. Laurie David.

A clear real conflict of interest is obvious.

As a result, this report continues the biased narrow perspective of the earlier CCSP reports, as has been reported on a number of times on Climate Science and in other communications (e.g. see and see). As just one example of the bias, the Karl et al report starts with the text Read the rest of this entry »