On Climate, Comedy, Copyrights, and Cinematography

30 07 2009

The good news: there’s new and exciting opportunities opening themselves to us.The bad news; some people are hilariously unquestioning.

comedy-climate-cinema

It has been an even more entertaining than usual couple of days in the alarmosphere. I’d been traveling the last week, doing TV station work and station surveys. While on the road I discovered through an email that I was the subject of a YouTube Video called “Climate Crock of the Week”.

The video was about my surfacestations.org project and was titled “What’s up with Watts?”. It was sad and funny at the same time, and as is typically the case with our old friends it was directed at me personally, far more than it tried substance. Equally typically, and sadly, what substance it tried turned out to be wrong. I continued on my travels, my friend Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. posted an opinion on it last week to address some of the issues.

Little did I know bizarro land awaited upon my return home.

Sitting down Saturday night, to watch the video again, detecting through its exquisite subtleties and nuance, I couldn’t help but laugh, because once again I noticed that everything reported in it was just wrong.

In fact, it probably was the worst job of fact-finding I had ever seen, which as WUWT readers know, is a bold assessment. I’ve been involved in broadcast TV news for 25 years, and have seen some really bad work from greenhorns fresh out of reporters school. This video reminded me of those. It was as if whoever put it together had never researched it, but just strung together a bunch of graphics, video, photos, and a monotone voice-over track with ad hominems liberally sprinkled for seasoning. I figured it was probably just an overzealous college student out to save the world and this was some college project. It had that air of  radical burningman quality about it.

Curiosity piqued, I inquired into just who is this climate Solon? To my surprise, he turned out to be an “independent film producer” working out of his house in Midland, MI under the name “Greenman Studio”, one Peter Sinclair, a proud graduate of Al Gore’s Climate Camp. I still figured him to be a kid and imagined his mom was yelling down into the basement “Peter that’s too loud, turn it down!”.

I also wondered if it was the same “Green Man” that had once prompted surfacestations volunteer Gary Boden to create this nifty patch: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 352 Comments »

Categories : Announcements

Sea level rise by 2100, “nailed”! Between 7 and 82 centimeters

30 07 2009

New predictions for sea level rise

Sea level graph from the University of Colorado is shown below:

uc_seallevel_2009r2

University of Bristol Press release issued 26 July 2009

Fossil coral data and temperature records derived from ice-core measurements have been used to place better constraints on future sea level rise, and to test sea level projections.

The results are published today in Nature Geoscience and predict that the amount of sea level rise by the end of this century will be between 7- 82 cm – depending on the amount of warming that occurs – a figure similar to that projected by the IPCC report of 2007.

Placing limits on the amount of sea level rise over the next century is one of the most pressing challenges for climate scientists. The uncertainties around different methods to achieve accurate predictions are highly contentious because the response of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets to warming is not well understood.

Dr Mark Siddall from the Earth Sciences Department at the University of Bristol, together with colleagues from Switzerland and the US, used fossil coral data and temperature records derived from ice-core measurements to reconstruct sea level fluctuations in response to changing climate for the past 22,000 years, a period that covers the transition from glacial maximum to the warm Holocene interglacial period. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 138 Comments »

Categories : sea level

Interesting article on thermometer placement

30 07 2009

How to properly place your outdoor thermometer

04:52 PM PDT on Wednesday, July 29, 2009

By TRAVIS PITTMAN / KING5.com

excerpts:

SEATTLE – With temperatures in the Puget Sound region breaking records this week, many people are playing a watching and waiting game – waiting to see when the thermometer outside their home will reach triple digits.

…

Below is a photo of a thermometer sent to KING 5 News Tuesday afternoon by a viewer in Oso, east of Arlington. It clearly shows the temperature reading 116 degrees. You can also clearly tell the sun is reflecting off it and it’s mounted right next to a building.

source: KING 5 Viewer Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 64 Comments »

Categories : weather_stations

American Chemical Society members revolting against their editor for pro AGW views

30 07 2009

Scientists seek to remove climate fear promoting editor and ‘trade him to New York Times or Washington Post’
http://www.lhup.edu/chemistry/images/acs_logo_4c%201%20.jpg
An outpouring of skeptical scientists who are members of the American Chemical Society (ACS) are revolting against the group’s editor-in-chief — with some demanding he be removed — after an editorial appeared claiming “the science of anthropogenic climate change is becoming increasingly well established.”

The editorial claimed the “consensus” view was growing “increasingly difficult to challenge, despite the efforts of diehard climate-change deniers.” The editor now admits he is “startled” by the negative reaction from the group’s scientific members. The American Chemical Society bills itself as the “world’s largest scientific society.”

The June 22, 2009 editorial in Chemical and Engineering News by editor in chief Rudy Baum, is facing widespread blowback and condemnation from American Chemical Society member scientists. Baum concluded his editorial by stating that “deniers” are attempting to “derail meaningful efforts to respond to global climate change.”

Dozens of letters from ACS members were published on July 27, 2009 castigating Baum, with some scientists calling for his replacement as editor-in-chief.

The editorial was met with a swift, passionate and scientific rebuke from Baum’s colleagues. Virtually all of the letters published on July 27 in castigated Baum’s climate science views. Scientists rebuked Baum’s use of the word “deniers” because of the terms “association with Holocaust deniers.” In addition, the scientists called Baum’s editorial: “disgusting”; “a disgrace”; “filled with misinformation”; “unworthy of a scientific periodical” and “pap.”

One outraged ACS member wrote to Baum: “When all is said and done, and you and your kind are proven wrong (again), you will have moved on to be an unthinking urn for another rat pleading catastrophe. You will be removed. I promise.”

Baum ’startled’ by scientists reaction. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 216 Comments »

Categories : Science, climate_change

Which is the bigger threat: PHA’s or GHG’s ?

29 07 2009

This makes a lot of sense if you are a rational thinking person. I thought I’d alert WUWT readers to it. Below is a table from the front page of Spaceweather.com today, operated by NOAA and Dr. Tony Phillips.

Spaceweather-NEA-table

And this week, we saw what can happen when PHA’s come calling:

jupiter-impact-hst

So in light of that, I thought this article was rather interesting.

Death from the Skies = Boring, Sweat from GHGs = Sexy [Jonah Goldberg]

Published at The Corner, part of NRO

From a longtime reader:

Dear Jonah,

I thoroughly enjoyed your article today, and not just because you touched on an area where I worked – at least tangentially – for over a decade.  You are right, virtually nobody is doing the leg work on keeping track of all the debris and potentially nasty sized rocks out there compared to the number of people shrieking about our impending slightly warmer earth.  The big reason is that it isn’t very sexy work, unlike being a proponent of Anthropocentric Global Warming (AGW).  If you work on space debris, minor planet orbits and earth crossing orbits about the best you can hope for is getting to name a new rock nobody else saw, or maybe getting your name in the paper while being misquoted by some reporter who doesn’t have a clue about what preliminary results or margin of error means when he says that your recently discovered rock will destroy the earth in 2029.

By comparison if you use your computer model to predict that according to your model the earth might possibly warm by somewhere between 0.9 and 3.5 degrees Celsius by the year 2100 you get to hang out with Al Gore and Bono and morally scold the ignorant proles for driving their SUVs to pick up the kids from daycare as you jet off to Switzerland for another speaking engagement.  Of course there is one other distinction.  The guy cataloging rocks is actually doing science, and that’s hard work. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 152 Comments »

Categories : Science, climate_change, space

Employment slump at NHC

29 07 2009

Bob Tisdale writes in with:

What Do You Suppose They’ve Been Doing At The National Hurricane Center This Summer?

http://i27.tinypic.com/im1m2r.gif
Source: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/

Bocce maybe? Horseshoes?

UPDATE – Ryan Maue of Florida State University writes in comments: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 130 Comments »

Categories : hurricanes

Global Warming to Threaten California Fruits and Nuts?

28 07 2009

I found this press release on the UC Davis website interesting, because it discusses something new to me, “winter chill”. I found it interesting. But immediately, I thought of this study on irrigation by Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama, Huntsville.

Irrigation most likely to blame for Central California warming

Given that the UC Davis researchers seem to have only looked at temperature records to establish trends, it looks like they may have missed a significant contributor to the trends – increased humidity due to irrigation. – Anthony

From UC Davis News: Warming Climate Threatens California Fruit and Nut Production

July 21, 2009

Photo: cherry

No more cherry picking?

Winter chill, a vital climatic trigger for many tree crops, is likely to decrease by more than 50 percent during this century as global climate warms, making California no longer suitable for growing many fruit and nut crops, according to a team of researchers from the University of California, Davis, and the University of Washington.

In some parts of California’s agriculturally rich Central Valley, winter chill has already declined by nearly 30 percent, the researchers found.

“Depending on the pace of winter chill decline, the consequences for California’s fruit and nut industries could be devastating,” said Minghua Zhang, a professor of environmental and resource science at UC Davis.

Also collaborating on the study were Eike Luedeling, a postdoctoral fellow in UC Davis’ Department of Plant Sciences and UC Davis graduate Evan H. Girvetz, who is now a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Washington, Seattle. Their study  appears July 22 in the online journal PLoS ONE.

The study is the first to map winter chill projections for all of California, which is home to nearly 3 million acres of fruit and nut trees that require chilling. The combined production value of these crops was $7.8 billion in 2007, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 117 Comments »

Categories : Agriculture, climate_change

NASA now saying that a Dalton Minimum repeat is possible

28 07 2009

Guest Post by David Archibald

NASA’s David Hathaway has adjusted his expectations of Solar Cycle 24 downwards. He is quoted in the New York Times here Specifically, he said:

” Still, something like the Dalton Minimum — two solar cycles in the early 1800s that peaked at about an average of 50 sunspots — lies in the realm of the possible.”

NASA has caught up with my prediction in early 2006 of a Dalton Minimum repeat, so for a brief, shining moment of three years, I have had a better track record in predicting solar activity than NASA.

Hathaway-NYT

The graphic above is modified from a paper I published in March, 2006.  Even based on our understanding of solar – climate relationship at the time, it was evident the range of Solar Cycle 24 amplitude predictions would result in a 2°C range in temperature.  The climate science community was oblivious to this, despite billions being spent.  To borrow a term from the leftist lexicon, the predictions above Badalyan are now discredited elements. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 460 Comments »

Categories : Science, solar

Met Office forecasting ability questioned by the Beeb.

28 07 2009

Not only does the Met Office/Hadley Climate Center have trouble with pesky “moles” this week, they are now finding a staunch ally, the BBC, is questioning their forecasting ability. One wonders if they will improve using “deep black”, the 1.2 megawatt supercomputer they just purchased.

Met Office cools summer forecast

By Roger Harrabin
BBC environment analyst

excerpts:

You will need a brolly on holiday in the UK in August – the Met Office is issuing a revised forecast for more unsettled weather well into the month.

It is a far cry from the “barbecue summer” it predicted back in April.

The news will raise questions about the Met Office’s ability to make reliable seasonal forecasts.

…

It did indeed stress at the time of the summer forecast in April that the odds of a scorching summer were 65%. It explains that it coined the phrase “barbecue summer” to help journalists’ headlines. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 87 Comments »

Categories : forecasting, weather

Met Office / Hadley CRU discovers the mole

28 07 2009

In case you are just joining us, here is some background on the story below. I know the identity of the mole. The ball is now in CRU’s court. Steve McIntyre reports below and throws down the gauntlet.

Met Office/CRU Finds the Mole

by Steve McIntyre on July 28th, 2009

More news on the Met Office/CRU molehunt.

Late yesterday (Eastern time), I learned that the Met Office/CRU had identified the mole. They are now aware that there has in fact been a breach of security. They have confirmed that I am in fact in possession of CRU temperature data, data so sensitive that, according to the UK Met Office, my being in possession of this data would, “damage the trust that scientists have in those scientists who happen to be employed in the public sector”, interfere with the “effective conduct of international relations”, “hamper the ability to protect and promote United Kingdom interests through international relations” and “seriously affect the relationship between the United Kingdom and other Countries and Institutions.” Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 167 Comments »

Categories : climate data, politics

Statement on Arctic Climate Change from the President of the Royal Society

28 07 2009

The Royal Society

While we are on the subject of the APS and their consideration of their stance on climate, this statement came to me today via Philip Bratby in comments. I thought it presicent and worthwhile sharing, since once again there is great concern in the alarmosphere about the levels of Arctic sea ice this summer.

‘It will, without doubt, have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice, has been during the last two years greatly abated. This affords ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened, and give us leave to hope that the Arctic Seas may at this time be more accessible than they have been for centuries past, and that discoveries may now be made in them, not only interesting to the advancement of science, but also to the future intercourse of mankind and the commerce of distant nations.’ Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 139 Comments »

Categories : Arctic, Science

American Physical Society reviewing its climate stance

27 07 2009

WUWT readers may recall that my posting in July 2008 on some of the angst going on within APS over a paper from Christopher Monckton ruffled a few feathers. The paper,  Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered, was reviewed by APS and this odd disclaimer then placed on it:

The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions.

What was odd, is that APS invited Monckton to submit, so to then place a disclaimer was quite unusual. However there is good news; they may be changing their tune on climate change issues. Today we have this from Luboš Motl:

APS is reviewing its statements on climate change

APS_logo_denied

Click to find out why

Climate alarmism is a particularly embarrassing attitude for professional institutions that should represent disciplines with very high intellectual standards because climate alarmism is associated with extremely poor intellectual (and ethical) standards, besides other negative characteristics.

The American Physical Society (APS) was therefore embarrassed on November 18th, 2007 when its bodies approved an alarmist statement that was much more constructive and issue-oriented than the statements of many institutions outside physics but it was still a scientists’ variation of the same blinded, biased, irrational hysteria. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 110 Comments »

Categories : Science

Why regression analysis fails to capture the aftereffects of El Nino events

27 07 2009

In a study in the Journal of Geophysical Research a paper, Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature,  researchers Chris de Freitas, John McLean, and Bob Carter find that the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a key indicator of global atmospheric temperatures seven months later.  By their analysis they have shown that natural forces related to ocean heat cycles are the dominant influence on climate. See the WUWT post on it here and the original paper here.

This guest post by Bob Tisdale is a response of interest to both critics and supporters of the paper and  illustrates how the multiyear processes of an El Nino event such as occurred in 1998 are missed. – Anthony

Regression Analyses Do Not Capture The Multiyear Aftereffects Of Significant El Nino Events

Guest post by Bob Tisdale

INTRODUCTION

This post illustrates why regression analyses do not capture the multiyear aftereffects of significant El Nino events. To emphasize this, I’ve provided a detailed explanation of the processes that take place before, during, and after those significant El Nino events, using graphics and videos from earlier posts.

EXAMPLE OF RESULTS FROM A REGRESSION ANALYSIS

Regression analyses are used by climatologists to determine and illustrate the impact on global temperature of one or more variables, such as ENSO, Solar Irradiance, and Volcanic Aerosols. Figure 1 shows the results of one such study. It is a multi-cell illustration of “Surface Temperature Variability Components” from Lean and Rind (2008) “How Natural and Anthropogenic Influences Alter Global and Regional Surface Temperatures: 1889 to 2006” [GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 35, L18701, doi:10.1029/2008GL034864, 2008].
Link to Paper:
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2008/2008_Lean_Rind.pdf
http://i32.tinypic.com/2lmw477.png
Figure 1 Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 162 Comments »

Categories : ENSO, oceans

Lindzen on Climate Hysteria

26 07 2009

http://thebsreport.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/climate.jpg?w=509&h=347

Resisting climate hysteria

by Richard S. Lindzen on Quadrant Online

July 26, 2009

A Case Against Precipitous Climate Action

The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well. Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced to the chagrin of overrun villages. Since the beginning of the 19th Century these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we don’t fully understand either the advance or the retreat. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 271 Comments »

Categories : climate_change

“Deep Cool” – the Mole within Hadley CRU

26 07 2009

As some WUWT readers may have learned from reading Climate Audit, an anonymous source deep within Hadley CRU has provided Steve McIntyre a copy of a data file he has been seeking but has had his FOI requests to Hadley seeking the same file, rebuked.

I’ve seen the data. As I posted last night on Climate Audit:

You know, not everyone in every organization believes in everything the organization does. This is why we have leaks in the White House and people like “Deep Throat” that provide evidential tidbits with guidance like “follow the money”.

Steve has shared this data and the source with me, as a way of verification, and I can vouch for both the validity of the data and of the source ip address. It truly comes from deep within the organization. – Anthony

While the CRU data file is not the most current, it is the most current one the mole could produce for us. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 154 Comments »

Categories : Announcements

July 24th issue of Science: Study shows clouds may exacerbate global warming with positive feedback, but there’s a caveat in the Science summary

25 07 2009

This study is being listed as proof by some of the usual alarmist types that the issue of cloud feedback is settled. Before accepting that, read this from the summary in the June 24th issue of Science by Richard A. Kerr:

The first reliable analysis of cloud behavior over past decades suggests—but falls short of proving—that clouds are strongly amplifying global warming. If that’s true, then almost all climate models have got it wrong. On page 460, climate researchers consider the two best, long-term records of cloud behavior over a rectangle of ocean that nearly spans the subtropics between Hawaii and Mexico. In a warming episode that started around 1976, ship-based data showed that cloud cover—especially low-altitude cloud layers—decreased in the study area as ocean temperatures rose and atmospheric pressure fell. One interpretation, the researchers say, is that the warming ocean was transferring heat to the overlying atmosphere, thinning out the low-lying clouds to let in more sunlight that further warmed the ocean. That’s a positive or amplifying feedback. During a cooling event in the late 1990s, both data sets recorded just the opposite changes—exactly what would happen if the same amplifying process were operating in reverse.

Here’s the press release. I’ve looked at a few news writeups on it, and the caution listed in Science about it not being proven  seems to be off the reporting radar. We’ll need further studies on a global scale, and not just one patch of ocean, before the question can be fully answered.  – Anthony

http://www.physorg.com/newman/gfx/news/hires/consultingwi.jpg

This image shows unique cloud patterns over the Pacific Ocean of the coast of Baja California, an area of great interest to Amy Clement and Robert Burgman of the University of Miami and Joel Norris of Scripps Oceanography, as they study the role of low-level clouds in climate change. Credit: NASA

From Physorg.com

The role of clouds in climate change has been a major question for decades. As the earth warms under increasing greenhouse gases, it is not known whether clouds will dissipate, letting in more of the sun’s heat energy and making the earth warm even faster, or whether cloud cover will increase, blocking the Sun’s rays and actually slowing down global warming.

In a study published in the July 24 issue of Science, researchers Amy Clement and Robert Burgman from the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and Joel Norris from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego begin to unravel this mystery. Using observational data collected over the last 50 years and complex climate models, the team has established that low-level stratiform appear to dissipate as the ocean warms, indicating that changes in these clouds may enhance the warming of the planet. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 129 Comments »

Categories : Science, climate_change, modeling

The 30 day Southern Oscillation Index is at +12 – will El Niño fade again next month?

25 07 2009
click for larger image

click for larger image

Here is what the current SST map looks like:

clickable global map of SST anomalies

From Nine News in Australia:

The Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) is calculated from the monthly or seasonal fluctuations in the air pressure difference between Tahiti and Darwin.

A strongly and consistently positive SOI pattern (e.g. consistently above about +6 over a two month period) is related to a high probability of above the long-term average (median) rainfall for many areas of Australia, especially areas of eastern Australia (including northern Tasmania) – La Niña. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 36 Comments »

Categories : ENSO

NYC may miss 90°F for second time in history

25 07 2009

More from the “weather is not climate” department. While our economy cools, so do apparently our cities. Cincinnati has a similar problem, and does Traverse City, and the cool weather doesn’t “play in Peoria“.

Taken by themselves it doesn’t mean much, but it is interesting.

http://newyorkfun.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/central-park-picture.jpg?w=510&h=363

NYC's Central Park

NOUS41 KOKX 240847
PNSOKX
CTZ005>012-NJZ002>006-011-NYZ067>081-251000-

PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW YORK NY
444 AM EDT FRI JUL 24 2009

…UNUSUALLY COOL JULY FOR CENTRAL PARK…

FOR SOME PERSPECTIVE…HERE ARE THE TOP TEN COOLEST JULYS ON RECORD
SINCE 1869 FOR CENTRAL PARK IN NEW YORK CITY: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 117 Comments »

Categories : weather

More on Hadley’s hiding behind the curtain

25 07 2009

CRU Refuses Data Once Again

by Steve McIntyre on July 24th, 2009

Let me review the request situation for readers. There are two institutions involved in the present round of FOI/EIR requests: CRU and the Met Office. Phil Jones of CRU collects station data and sends his “value added” version to the Met Office, who publish the HadCRU combined land-and-ocean index and also distribute the CRUTEM series online.

I requested a copy of the “value added” version from the Met Office (marion.archer at metoffice.uk.gov) which has been refused for excuses provided in my last post. On June 25, 2009, learning that Phil Jones had sent a copy of the station data to Peter Webster of Georgia Tech, I sent a new FOI request to CRU ( david.palmer at uea.ac.uk) requesting the data in the form sent to Peter Webster. This too was refused today.

We now have a new excuse to add to our collection of excuses – each excuse seemingly more ridiculous than the previous one.

My most recent request was as follows:

Dear Mr Palmer,

Pursuant to the Environmental Information Regulations, I hereby request a copy of any digital version of the CRUTEM station data set that has been sent from CRU to Peter Webster and/or any other person at Georgia Tech between January 1, 2007 and Jun 25, 2009.

Thank you for your attention,

Stephen McIntyre

The full response was as follows. (I’ve included full address particulars for readers that may wish to follow up): Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 62 Comments »

Categories : climate data, politics

Offline

24 07 2009

I’m traveling again today, as I have been all week, so postings and comments for the next 48 hours will likely be delayed. Volunteer moderators please note.  – Anthony


Comments : 13 Comments »

Categories : Announcements

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