Take Examiner.com’s First Annual Survey on Global Warming

31 10 2009

This is an interesting survey that cuts across a number of lines and held beliefs. I believe it to be worthwhile to participate in this survey. – Anthony
Survey
Guest post by Tom Fuller

If you are tired of having everybody trying to tell you what you think, and especially if what you think isn’t what’s being reported, I heartily encourage you to take this survey. I will be doing the analysis for free and for fun over the next few weeks, and I hope that we will be able to break new ground on the debate over global warming. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 104 Comments »

Categories : Opinion

A real hockey stick

31 10 2009

In the past decade, since the release of the flawed 1998 study by Michael Mann, now known as MBH 98, the phrase “hockey stick” has been used to describe a certain shape of a graph. It has also become synonymous with poor data selection and  bad statistical procedure.

Yet again and again we see climate studies pushing this hockey stick shape as a way of saying we are “living in the worst time period of the data”.

Here, without statistics, without bristlecone pines, inverted lake sediments, midge larvae carcasses, larch trees in Yamal, or convoluted never before seen statistical methods, I present a directly measured data set that produces a real “hockey stick” shape.

real_hockey_stick

Graph: It's worse than we thought

The data is directly measured and not a proxy, the plot is real. There’s no data adjustment or statistical manipulation. Care to know what it is? Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 75 Comments »

Categories : economy-health

An idea I can get behind – regulate [as in capture waste gas and recycle] methane first

31 10 2009

UPDATE: Some readers took exception to my title, and I can see why now. I regret my choice of wording for the title. “Regulate its escape into the atmosphere” is where I was going. “Regulate” from my perspective in engineering things and making things work is different than what others might think. I wasn’t implying legislation. Recycling and recovery systems is what was in my mind.  Gas regulator valves and all that. This passage from the story below was my focus: “Since we already know how to capture methane from animals, landfills, and sewage treatment plants at fairly low cost, targeting methane makes sense,”.

I’ve amended the title [in brackets] -Anthony

…

According to the 2007 IPCC AR4 Methane has a “global warming potential” of 25 times that of CO2 over 100 years. Here’s a CH4 budget pie chart. Note that there are several sources where we can manage methane without affecting energy creation. Starting on Methane, rather than CO2, is an idea that I could get behind because it can be recycled and used for many things.

http://oceanlink.island.net/ONews/ONews7/images/methane%20sources%20-%20EPA.gif

A new paper from Drew Shindell from NASA JPL prompted Roger Pielke Jr. to write:

For years my father has been arguing that:

. . . attempts to “control” the climate system, and to prevent a “dangerous intervention” into the climate system by humans that focuses just on CO2 and a few other greenhouse gases will necessarily be significantly incomplete, unless all of the other first order climate forcings are considered.

His views are now being robustly vindicated as a quiet revolution is occurring in climate science. Here is how PhysOrg reports on a study out today in Science by NASA’s Drew Shindell and others:

According to Shindell, the new findings underscore the importance of devising multi-pronged strategies to address climate change rather than focusing exclusively on carbon dioxide. “Our calculations suggest that all the non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gases together have a net impact that rivals the warming caused by carbon dioxide.”

In particular, the study reinforces the idea that proposals to reduce methane may be an easier place for policy makers to start climate change agreements. “Since we already know how to capture methane from animals, landfills, and sewage treatment plants at fairly low cost, targeting methane makes sense,” said Michael MacCracken, chief scientist for the Climate Institute in Washington, D.C.

This research also provides regulators insight into how certain pollution mitigation strategies might simultaneously affect climate and air quality. Reductions of carbon monoxide, for example, would have positive effects for both climate and the public’s health, while reducing nitrogen oxide could have a positive impact on health but a negative impact on the climate.

“The bottom line is that the chemistry of the atmosphere can get hideously complicated,” said Schmidt. “Sorting out what affects climate and what affects air quality isn’t simple, but we’re making progress.”

Of note, Shindell et al. cautiously suggest that the entire framework of international climate policy may be based on an overly-simplistic view of the human effect on climate, by focusing on carbon dioxide equivalencies in radiative forcing (i.e.,g “global warming potential” or GWP), from their Science paper out today (emphasis added): Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 151 Comments »

Categories : Climate News, Methane

Previously Unknown Volcanic Eruption Helped Trigger Cold Decade

30 10 2009

From the University of California, San Diego Press Release

Photo of Mt. Pinatubo

The previously unknown eruption in 1809 was larger than the Mt. Pinatubo eruption. Credit: USGS

A team of chemists from the U.S. and France has found compelling evidence of a previously undocumented large volcanic eruption that occurred exactly 200 years ago, in 1809.

The discovery, published online this week in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters, offers an explanation as to why the decade from 1810 to 1819 is regarded by scientists as the coldest on record for the past 500 years.

“We’ve never seen any evidence of this eruption in Greenland that corresponds to a simultaneous explosion recorded in Antarctica before in the glacial record,” said Mark Thiemens, Dean of the Division of Physical Sciences at UC San Diego and one of the co-authors of the study. “But if you look at the size of the signal we found in the ice cores, it had to be huge. It was bigger than the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, which killed hundreds of people and affected climate around the world.” Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 109 Comments »

Categories : vulcanism

Monckton on Glenn Beck video now available

30 10 2009

In case you missed it live, Christopher Monckton spent an entire hour on the Glenn Beck program today on the topic of global warming, skepticism, and the Copenhagen Treaty.

Monckton_on_Glenn_Beck

The video is now available.

Watch it below. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 247 Comments »

Categories : Alarmism, media

Met Office Climate Official on Arctic Ice Forecasts: “The danger is they can be accused of scaremongering.”

30 10 2009

I’ve been very critical of statements made by Dr. Mark Serreze of the National Snow and Ice Data Center. It seems that I’m not the only one critical of his statements to the press. – Anthony

Excerpts from The Times, UK story:

Exaggerated claims undermine drive to cut emissions, scientists warn
Mark Henderson, Science Editor

Images from 2001and 2007 indicating a big decline in Arctic ice

Images from 2001, top, and 2007 from Philip's Universal Atlas of the World indicated a big decline in Arctic ice, used as proof of climate change

Exaggerated and inaccurate claims about the threat from global warming risk undermining efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions and contain climate change, senior scientists have told The Times.

Environmental lobbyists, politicians, researchers and journalists who distort climate science to support an agenda erode public understanding and play into the hands of sceptics, according to experts including a former government chief scientist.

Excessive statements about the decline of Arctic sea ice, severe weather events and the probability of extreme warming in the next century detract from the credibility of robust findings about climate change, they said.

Such claims can easily be rebutted by critics of global warming science to cast doubt on the whole field. They also confuse the public about what has been established as fact, and what is conjecture.

The experts all believe that global warming is a real phenomenon with serious consequences, and that action to curb emissions is urgently needed.

They fear, however, that the contribution of natural climate variations towards events such as storms, melting ice and heatwaves is too often overlooked, and that possible scenarios about future warming are misleadingly presented as fact.

…

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 84 Comments »

Categories : Alarmism, Arctic

Monckton on Glenn Beck Today

30 10 2009

http://anhonestclimatedebate.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/monckton.jpg?w=128&h=198You won’t want to miss Lord Christopher Monckton (Former advisor to UK Prime Minister Thatcher) on Glenn Beck  – Today Friday, October 30th!

Monckton as many WUWT readers know, is a prominent skeptic and has been making presentations around the USA at college campuses, similar to what Al Gore does. Monckton recently criticized the Copenhagen Treaty and the potential for President Obama to sign it as possibly ceding US sovereignty to the UN on the issue.

Times below:

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 180 Comments »

Categories : Announcements

Yamal treering proxy temperature reconstructions don’t match local thermometer records

30 10 2009

Circling Yamal 3 – facing the thermometers

Guest post by Lucy Skywalker

Let’s look closely and compare local thermometer records (GISS) with the Twelve Trees, upon whose treerings depend all the IPCC claims of “unprecedented recent temperature rise”.
For my earlier Yamal work, see here and here. For the original Hockey Stick story, see here and here.

Half the Hockey Stick graphs depend on bristlecone pine temperature proxies, whose worthlessness has already been exposed. They were kept because the other HS graphs, which depend on Briffa’s Yamal larch treering series, could not be disproved. We now find that Briffa calibrated centuries of temperature records on the strength of 12 trees and one rogue outlier in particular. Such a small sample is scandalous; the non-release of this information for 9 years is scandalous; the use of this undisclosed data as crucial evidence for several more official HS graphs is scandalous. And not properly comparing treering evidence with local thermometers is the mother of all scandals.

I checked out the NASA GISS page for all thermometer records in the vicinity of Yamal and the Polar Urals, in “raw”, “combined”, and “homogenized” varieties. Here are their locations (white). The Siberian larch treering samples in question come from Yamal and Taimyr. Salehard and Dudinka have populations of around 20,000; Pecora around 50,000; Surgut around 100,000; all the rest are officially “rural” sites. Some are long records, some are short.

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 167 Comments »

Categories : paleoclimatology

Minnesota Public Radio can’t handle comments on climate change

29 10 2009

Like Others Of Its Ilk, The Minnesota Public Radio Censors Comments On Its Climate Blog

Guest Post by Bob Tisdale

MPR_Capture

Click to visit website

This morning while checking blogs with the phrase “sea surface temperature” I happened on the Minnesota Public Radio Updraft © climate change blog. Meteorologist Paul Huttner authored a post there titled “Could 2010 be the hottest year ever?” Link:
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/updraft/archive/2009/10/could_2010_be_the_hottest_year.shtml

The post begins with, “The numbers are in, and it looks like the “global cooling” theory just melted away.” It has the requisite link to the typical news release (Seth Borenstein’s (AP) article “Statistics experts reject global cooling claims”) and a two-year-old GISS Annual Global Temperature Anomaly Graph, even though a graph of current data would have better helped his cause. But what struck me and caused me to comment there was, first, Huttner’s use of the Climate Change Attribution graph…
http://i39.tinypic.com/2s0o2uo.jpg
…which he wrongly attributes to Kerry Emanuel, and, second, his projection that 2010 could be the warmest on record while hinting that ENSO would ultimately be responsible for it.

I felt obligated to advise him of his error in attribution of the graph and of the fact that the Climate Change Attribution graph uses outdated TSI data. I also reinforced the ENSO-global climate link over the past decade by quoting from Knight et al (2009), but noting that Knight et al make an error in their assumption that the relationship between ENSO and global temperature is linear. Here’s what I wrote: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 74 Comments »

Categories : Alarmism, media

Al Gore still addicted to nonexistent hurricane-climate link in new book

29 10 2009

Gore 2.0, now with Pacific Hurricanes, coming to a book store near you. Gore plans to hawk it on David Letterman next Tuesday night. One more reason not to watch Dave anymore. One can always hope though. Maybe he’ll feature Gore as a “stupid human trick”.

Al doesn’t seem to learn when it comes to visuals. Or maybe he just thinks that he’s obligated to put a picture of a hurricane on the front cover to keep the theme of AIT going. Either way. Any imagined link between hurricanes and global warming has evaporated.

FSU-ACE_vs_GISS-oceantemp4

My prediction:  sales will be a fraction of AIT, and it probably won’t make the NYT bestsellers list. People are tired of the yap, as indicated by recent polls.

Here’s what he has to say about it on his blog (note: he doesn’t take comments)

From the Press Release: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 77 Comments »

Categories : Climate News

Arizona gets some interesting new minimum high records

29 10 2009

From the “weather is not climate department”….whether it is cold or snow, long lived records keep falling, and recently in large numbers.

Today, new “minimum high” records fell in a traditionally warm southwest state.

Flagstaff, and Prescott, Williams, and Winslow Arizona all significantly bested the old records set on this date. Here’s the outlook map from the NWS Flagstaff:

flagstaff_forecast

Forecast map from NWS Flagstaff, AZ

And here is the NWS record event report: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 72 Comments »

Categories : records, weather

Vaclav Klaus gets opt-out, EU clears hurdle to Lisbon treaty

29 10 2009

from
BBC NEWS
EU clears hurdle to Lisbon treaty

File:Vaclav Klaus headshot.jpg

Vaclav Klaus

EU leaders meeting in Brussels have agreed a deal designed to win Czech backing of the Lisbon Treaty, clearing a major hurdle to its ratification.

The Czechs were granted an opt-out from the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, similar to that of the UK and Poland.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus was satisfied with the concession, Czech PM Jan Fischer told reporters in Brussels.

But EU leaders failed to agree on funding for a climate change pact to help developing nations.

Ratification deal

“The road to ratification stands open,” said Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, whose country holds the EU’s rotating presidency.

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 67 Comments »

Categories : Climate News

Live Feed: Senate EPW Committee Climate Hearings

29 10 2009

Click video window below to Watch Live:

Senate EPW Committee Climate Hearings — All Day Thursday

Senate_live_feed


Comments : 31 Comments »

Categories : Climate News

IPCC Climatologist: “It would ruin the US economy and it wouldn’t save the climate either”

29 10 2009
BILLINGS-  As debate over climate change legislation heats up on Capitol Hill, the Director of the University of Montana’s Climate Change Studies Program, and a co-author of a Nobel Prize winning report, says cap and trade legislation could ruin the US economy.

During a Wednesday morning interview with statewide radio talk show host Aaron Flint on “Voices of Montana,” Dr. Steve Running said any climate change solution needs to involve all nations. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 71 Comments »

Categories : Climate News

North Carolina sea levels rising 3mm a year? UC sea level data says differently

29 10 2009

Below: North Carolina’s Albemarle Sound.

Note marker at 36N -76W.

Albemarle-Pamlico-35N76W

Image from Google Earth

First the Press Release from the University of Pennsylvania:

North Carolina Sea Levels Rising Three Times Faster Than in Previous 500 Years, Penn Study Says
October 28, 2009

PHILADELPHIA –- An international team of environmental scientists led by the University of Pennsylvania has shown that sea-level rise, at least in North Carolina, is accelerating. Researchers found 20th-century sea-level rise to be three times higher than the rate of sea-level rise during the last 500 years. In addition, this jump appears to occur between 1879 and 1915, a time of industrial change that may provide a direct link to human-induced climate change.

The results appear in the current issue of the journal Geology.

The rate of relative sea-level rise, or RSLR, during the 20th century was 3 to 3.3 millimeters per year, higher than the usual rate of one per year. Furthermore, the acceleration appears consistent with other studies from the Atlantic coast, though the magnitude of the acceleration in North Carolina is larger than at sites farther north along the U.S. and Canadian Atlantic coast and may be indicative of a latitudinal trend related to the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 131 Comments »

Categories : sea level

Asteroid explosion over Indonesia

28 10 2009

From NASA’s Spaceweather.com

INDONESIAN ASTEROID: Picture this: A 10-meter wide asteroid hits Earth and explodes in the atmosphere with the energy of a small atomic bomb. Frightened by thunderous sounds and shaking walls, people rush out of their homes, thinking that an earthquake is in progress. All they see is a twisting trail of debris in the mid-day sky:

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 75 Comments »

Categories : space

Tornados and global warming link – “just not there”

28 10 2009

We’ve contended many times before that severe weather and global warming are not linked. Here’s a new essay on the issue.

Tornado Hunter

The "Tornado Hunter" from XKCD - click for original

From CO2 Science

Tornados — Summary

Climate alarmists typically claim that global warming will lead to both more frequent and more intense stormy weather; and in terms of their ferocity, tornados rank pretty high on the scale of societal concern. Nevertheless, they have mostly been studied, in this regard, together with several other types of storms, as is the case with the majority of the papers discussed in this summary.

In a major review of “temporal fluctuations in weather and climate extremes that cause economic and human health impacts” — as they titled their study of the subject — Kunkel et al. (1999) analyzed empirical data related to historical trends of several different types of extreme weather events and their societal impacts. This work revealed, in their words, that “most measures of the economic impacts of weather and climate extremes over the past several decades reveal increasing losses.” However, they found that “trends in most related weather and climate extremes do not show comparable increases with time,” suggesting that “increasing losses are primarily due to increasing vulnerability arising from a variety of societal changes, including a growing population in higher risk coastal areas and large cities, more property subject to damage, and lifestyle and demographic changes subjecting lives and property to greater exposure.” Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 34 Comments »

Categories : Alarmism, tornadoes, weather

The “Statisticians: ‘Global Cooling’ a Myth” story

28 10 2009

By William M. Briggs, professional statistician

Your statistical model!

“J’accuse! A statistician may prove anything with his nefarious methods. He may even say a negative number is positive! You cannot trust anything he says.”

Sigh. Unfortunately, this oft-hurled charge is all too true. I and my fellow statisticians must bear its sad burden, knowing it is caused by our more zealous brethren (and sisthren). But, you know, it really isn’t their fault, for they are victims of loving not wisely but too well their own creations.

First, a fact. It is true that, based on the observed satellite data, average global temperatures since about 1998 have not continued the rough year-by-year increase that had been noticed in the decade or so before that date. The temperatures since about 1998 have increased in some years, but more often have they decreased. For example, last year was cooler than the year before last. These statements, barring unknown errors in the measurement of that data, are taken as true by everybody, even statisticians.

Th AP gave this data—concealing its source—to “several independent statisticians” who said they “found no true temperature declines over time” (link) Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 132 Comments »

Categories : Uncategorized

The Sun Defines the Climate – an essay from Russia

28 10 2009

Habibullo Abdussamatov, Dr. Sc. – Head of Space research laboratory of the Pulkovo Observatory, Head of the Russian/Ukrainian joint project Astrometria – has a few things to say about solar activity and climate. Thanks to Russ Steele of NCWatch

Russ1__550x348

Total Solar Irradiance over time in watts per square Variation in the TSI during the period 1978 to 2008 (heavy line) and its bicentennial component (dash line), revealed by us. Distinct short-term upward excursions are caused by the passage of faculae on the solar disk, and downward excursions by the passage of sunspot groups.

Key Excerpts:

Observations of the Sun show that as for the increase in temperature, carbon dioxide is “not guilty” and as for what lies ahead in the upcoming decades, it is not catastrophic warming, but a global, and very prolonged, temperature drop.

[...] Over the past decade, global temperature on the Earth has not increased; global warming has ceased, and already there are signs of the future deep temperature drop. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 209 Comments »

Categories : Science, solar

UK Met Office backpedals on Arctic Ice – “…unlikely that the Arctic will experience ice-free summers by 2020.”

28 10 2009

But they do say that “first ice-free summer expected to occur between 2060 and 2080″. By then there will be nobody that remembers this forecast.

Yet on the same day, bumbling Arctic explorer Pen Hadow says in a UK Telegraph interview:

“To all intents and purposes the Arctic will be ice free in a decade. I do find the implications of this happening in my lifetime quite shocking.“.

Gosh, who to believe? Somebody that fakes biotelemetry data or somebody that won’t hand over climate data for replication studies?

From a Met Office press release on October 15th

Arctic sea-ice

The extent of Arctic sea ice has been decreasing since the late 1970s. In 2007 it decreased dramatically in a single year, reaching an all-time low. At the time it was widely reported that this was caused by man-made climate change and that the rate of decline of summer sea ice was increasing.

Modelling of Arctic sea ice by the Met Office Hadley Centre climate model shows that ice invariably recovers from extreme events, and that the long-term trend of reduction is robust — with the first ice-free summer expected to occur between 2060 and 2080. It is unlikely that the Arctic will experience ice-free summers by 2020. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 96 Comments »

Categories : Uncategorized

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