Weekend Open Thread

Hansen is back at it!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/climate-change-is-here–and-worse-than-we-thought/2012/08/03/6ae604c2-dd90-11e1-8e43-4a3c4375504a_story.html?wpisrc=emailtoafriend
All the ‘extreme weather’ is caused by ‘climate change’.
He really said, “It’s worse than we thought.”
Can an expert from the Climate Realist community submit a forceful refutation? Dr. Christy?
/Mr Lynn

Another science writer bites the dust, caught out by fabricating Bob Dylan quotes for his book on creativity:
“The Fall Of A Hipster Intellectual ”
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100174768/jonah-lehrer-the-fall-of-a-hipster-intellectual/
Let’s look up his AGW views…yep, just what the doctor (of popular delusions) ordered, via a quick Google search:
“Lehrer published a comment on his blog, The Frontal Cortex, where he denied that he was implicitly questioning science and scientific methods in any way. In the same blog comment, Lehrer stated that he was not questioning fundamental scientific theories such as the theory of evolution by natural selection and global warming by calling them “two of the most robust and widely tested theories of modern science”.
And a history of pushing post-normal science:
“If Lehrer didn’t really mean that belief in a given scientific claim is always a matter of choice, why did he say it?”

A little hiatus for the next 2 weeks at notrickszone so I’ll repost a comment of mine, a bit of news from Germany I stumbled across today…
Desertec, the idea of producing solar electricity for Europe in the Sahara, founded by the Club Of Rome and today accompanied by the industry consortium DII, with members like Siemens, Eon and RWE, is basically dead, writes Der Stern in its print edition.
E-on reacted defiantly, pledging their unwavering allegiance to desertec.
(German:)
http://www.welt.de/newsticker/news3/article108419446/E-on-bekennt-sich-zu-Desertec.html
Der Stern BTW, are 100% warmist Hamburgers and pro-renewables at any price. They write that Desertec/DII applied for 1.5 bn EUR subsidies to be paid by the German electricity user so they can continue with a 600 MW solar plant in Morocco. (using some statistical tricks to make it appear as if the electricity produced down there does anything good for the German consumer. Of course it would be consumed in Morocco and Spain)
Looks pretty bad for them.
They have one interesting number. Even given the high insolation in Morocco, the price for a produced solar-thermal kWh would be 22 Eurocents. End consumer price in Morocco is 4 Eurocents. (“subsidized” writes Der Stern, but they don’t qualify that.)
In shady Germany, production of one PV kWh is already cheaper than 22 Eurocents… (current FIT for new installations is max. 20.76 Eurocents).
So it looks like the ever cheaper silicon PV panels have destroyed the economic basis of the Desertec technology.

For your listening enjoyment……
At 12 years old Sungha Jung, from South Korea, plays “Hotel California”. You will be pleasantly surprised how good it is:

Paul Vaughan says:
August 4, 2012 at 1:09 pm
I can taste the cracking of the code of ENSO itself, which is the final obstacle to decisively defeating mainstream misconception, but revelation comes on its own schedule
As Richard Feynman once said: “the easiest one to fool is oneself”.

Paul Vaughan
I’m sure you would stand a lot more chance of support if you could explain what the h*ck your fascinating graphs are about, in common ordinary English. They really do look fascinating but you keep shooting yourself in the foot with cryptic comments.
I am aware that certain topics here get more or less short-changed, in substantial part because they generate polarized opinions with small and diminishing amounts of factual information. I am also aware that the prime aching heartrending current need is to reclaim the integrity (and the basic science) that has been lost in Climate Science, and that in this sense, although I’ve seen unacceptable prejudice on “both” sides, EU, AO, LENR, etc really does not matter so much right now, although the proper appraisal of such subjects does belong to Science in the future – when integrity is restored.
I apologize for my own cryptic abbreviations, but those who need to understand will I trust do so. I do not want to fan the flames of topics that are, now, largely OT with regard to what Anthony and mods can cope with.
Yet I also believe that this currently necessary limit to WUWT is a limit to the breadth of its science, that I sincerely and passionately hope will, in the future, when integrity is restored, be relaxed again, and more supportive relations re-established with such as Tallbloke – which is maybe where your work would fit better for now.

Smokey says:
August 4, 2012 at 12:45 pm
Dear Smokey,
Re: Click 2
I HATE FLIES!!!! AND MOSQUITOS!!! I wish them dead, dead, DEAD!!!
http://bugasalt.com/
No financial interest, etc.

I’ve seen a limerick posted so here’s a poem from my wife, Susan, with some of her own musings on CAGW… You’ll love it!
I’m Confused!
Now, I know that science says that global warming
is exacerbated at the hand of man
burning fossil fuels; such pitfalls cause the rising
temperature, and this is set to damn
the planet’s verdant future for poor children
who will never see a polar bear or snow.
But before I bend to conscience-pricking preaching,
there’s a few nit-picking things I need to know.
Just how is it the forecast for tomorrow
does not reflect the findings of today?
Weathermen leave summer picnics drowned in sorrow
with promises of gold, all swept away
in a flood of wishy-washy information
in shades of grey in should-have-been blue skies.
Could this be why my mind wraps round the notion
that a hundred year prediction could be lies?
So, should I spend my cash on pricy panels
that heat my home with solar energy,
thus saving our endangered, furry mammals
when the shine of sun eludes the likes of me?
And what about those planet-saving turbines
embracing wind with should-be-spinning blades,
outdone by the power of singing wind chimes
with the odd turn killing birds and bats in spades?
Should I sell my car and favour walking
without a carbon footprint to digress
from that trail of ‘Save Our Ailing World From Dying’
in the name of green, pollutant-free progress?
Now science says that nature’s out there plotting
to drop a bovine bomb, to be aware
that cows’ behinds are capable of killing –
but what if all these finds are mere hot air?
And how is it that temperatures at night time
can drop from thirty-one down to thirteen,
when in one hundred years a minor rising
of two degrees will cause the earth to scream?
Please help me, for I want to understand this
threat to every species we hold dear –
I want to know that all extorted taxes
are going to a cause that’s crystal clear.

Paul Vaughan says:
August 4, 2012 at 1:09 pm
I have robustly detected a subharmonic of the terrestrial polar motion signal in southern ocean & southeast pacific SSTs………………
================
I knew someone would.

Babsy says:
August 4, 2012 at 2:37 pm
http://bugasalt.com/
No financial interest, etc.
I foresee a PETA market for little, tiny trauma kits…

Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
August 4, 2012 at 12:54 pm
Very pleasantly surprised Gene.
As it’s open thread, can anyone point me to a free replacement for Flash & PDF reader that integrate with Firefox on WinDoze?
Google doesn’t seem to be a great help. 🙁
DaveE.

David A. Evans says:
August 4, 2012 at 3:21 pm
As it’s open thread, can anyone point me to a free replacement for Flash & PDF reader that integrate with Firefox on WinDoze?
—————————————————————————
Hi David,
Can’t help with Flash but for a PDF Reader try Foxit Reader. There’s another free program I use called PDFill which creates PDF documents by setting itself up as a “Printer”. Both work really well. I’m running them under XP.
Regards,
Lodger

One of the stupidest pieces of climate alarmism reaches one of the stupidest net outlets:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/climate-change-blame-extreme-heat-nasa-scientist-205959260.html

I often think that things are potentially worse than people realise. Not slow climate change but the potential for abrupt and non linear change. Changes in temperature of 10’s of degrees in places in as little as a decade. A report was published a decade ago by the US National Academy of Sciences – Abrupt climate change: inevitable surprises – that describes this as the new climate paradigm. But it is a paradigm that is making slow progress despite support in scientific literature, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the Royal Society…
So where might some of these surprises come from? To quote AR4 section 3.4.4.1. ‘In summary, although there is independent evidence for decadal changes in TOA radiative fluxes over the last two decades, the evidence is equivocal. Changes in the planetary and tropical TOA radiative fluxes are consistent with independent global ocean heat-storage data, and are expected to be dominated by changes in cloud radiative forcing. To the extent that they are real, they may simply reflect natural low-frequency variability of the climate system.’ The earlier satellite data is most reliably ERBS and ISCCP-FD. It shows cooling in the infrared and warming in the short wave – that (if real) must arise as a result of change in cloud cover.
Here is a relationship from Wong et al (2006) – Reexamination of the Observed Decadal Variability of the Earth Radiation Budget. Using Altitude-Corrected ERBE/ERBS Nonscanner WFOV Data – between ocean heat content from sea level measurements and net ERBS data.
It is a pretty good fit. But it is all just data and as good as the instruments and modelling.
We also have CERES – clouds and Earth’s radiant energy system – measuring Earth’s radiant energy out in reflected sw and emitted lw with unprecedented accuracy. It shows that there is some missing energy that should be there in the Earth system when considering the lack of tropospheric warming last decade. Again the big change is in SW. The interannual changes are largely related to ENSO and might provide one clue as to a source of ‘low frequency variability of the climate system.’
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view&current=CERES-BAMS-2008-with-trend-lines1.gif
More recent work is identifying abrupt climate changes working through the El Niño Southern Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, the Southern Annular Mode, the Artic Oscillation, the Indian Ocean Dipole and other measures of ocean and atmospheric states. These are measurements of sea surface temperature and atmospheric pressure over more than 100 years which show evidence for abrupt change to new climate conditions that persist for up to a few decades before shifting again. Global rainfall and flood records likewise show evidence for abrupt shifts and regimes that persist for decades. In Australia, less frequent flooding from early last century to the mid 1940’s, more frequent flooding to the late 1970’s and again a low rainfall regime to recent times.
Anastasios Tsonis, of the Atmospheric Sciences Group at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and colleagues used a mathematical network approach to analyse abrupt climate change on decadal timescales. Ocean and atmospheric indices – in this case the El Niño Southern Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation and the North Pacific Oscillation – can be thought of as chaotic oscillators that capture the major modes of climate variability. Tsonis and colleagues calculated the ‘distance’ between the indices. It was found that they would synchronise at certain times and then shift into a new state.
It is no coincidence that shifts in ocean and atmospheric indices occur at the same time as changes in the trajectory of global surface temperature. Our ‘interest is to understand – first the natural variability of climate – and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,’ Tsonis said.
‘While in the observations such breaks in temperature trend are clearly superimposed upon a century time-scale warming presumably due to anthropogenic forcing, those breaks result in significant departures from that warming over time periods spanning multiple decades. Using a new measure of coupling strength, this update shows that these climate modes have recently synchronized, with synchronization peaking in the year 2001/02. This synchronization has been followed by an increase in coupling. This suggests that the climate system may well have shifted again, with a consequent break in the global mean temperature trend from the post 1976/77 warming to a new period (indeterminate length) of roughly constant global mean temperature.’ (Swanson et al 2009 – Has the climate recently shifted)
Muller’s simple superposition of CO2 with temperature is too simple. ‘Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. Albert Einstein

Did anyone notice the stuff on the Eocene warming, indicating that the Antarctic was tropical and never fell below 10 degrees C even during the winter? Long time ago of course, but some interesting stuff nevertheless. Not least of which, there appears to have been very little temperature gradient between the Equator and the poles, and despite there being no polar ice, there was still plenty of land about. WUWT?

Bill Tuttle says:August 4, 2012 at 3:06 pm
… I foresee a PETA market for little, tiny trauma kits…
It’s already there. Frogs’ Legs with Rice don’t just happen by themselves, you know. Little, tiny, pairs of crutches, how sad.

Smokey politically correct? No. Spot on. Yes.

clipe says:
August 4, 2012 at 2:03 pm
Time to keep an eye on Ernesto?
Tracking #Ernesto, 91L off Southeast Florida, and #Florence in the eastern Atlantic.
Number of days since last Hurricane Landfall in US: 342 (Irene), in Florida: 2476 (Wilma)

Re Hansen in the Washington Post today (see my post above at August 4, 2012 at 12:14 pm), I am serious: It is way past time for Climate Realists to respond forcefully to every bit of CAGW nonsense that the likes of James Hansen can get published by just picking up the phone. Everything that Hansen said can be refuted, with chapter and verse, but it has to be someone with credentials (like Lindzen, or Christy) or it will get ignored. Time to stop letting these arrant falsehoods go unanswered.
/Mr Lynn

Charley

Smokey
#9 is really hit something deep. Jesse Owens running in front of Hitler, right in front of his sight, is the most important moment in the history of the Olympics. It was so profound. Today would that not have been seen because the Olympic committee would have been so politically correct they wouldn’t have allowed that location?

Smokey,
What a list! Made my day.
But 18 is the capper. Did anyone else notice that there’s TWO belly laughs on that page. Sure, the prediction of the ice age is hilarious, but….
In smaller print, top centre, it says….
“After detente; Why we can’t beat the Soviets”
ROFLMAO

I so totally agree with this…
http://www.paulnathan.biz/commentaries/132-mid-year-review-2012.html
Economically the road back to health is clear. The following steps should be taken.
Tax Reform
We need a complete overhaul of our tax system. Reduce rates to something like a dual rate of 10 and 25% and eliminate all deductions. If done correctly we could end up with a revenue neutral tax that is simple and understandable for everyone. There would be greater incentives to produce and earn money resulting in increased revenue and growth. The mere act of simplifying the tax code would save billions in unnecessary preparation charges and work hours wasted. The elimination of deductions, loop holes, subsidies, and corporate welfare is estimated to increase collections in excess of a trillion dollars a year! Just this change alone would do wonders to get America back on sound fiscal footing.
Budget Cuts
Cutting government waste and duplication is imperative. There are agencies, especially regulatory agencies, which overlap and even conflict with one another. These counter-productive redundancies must be eliminated. In addition, government wages and benefits should be in line with those in the private sector. Many bureaucrats are paid 50 to100% more than what they’d get for doing the same job in the private sector. And many of those jobs can be trimmed or reduced. We don’t have to “fire policemen, teachers, and firefighters.” We simply need to streamline government. Massive budget cuts aren’t even necessary, just reasonable ones.
The best way to accomplish this is to provide block grants to the states for health, education, welfare, safety concerns, etc. These tasks should not be the province of the federal government. States have proved to be much more efficient at providing such essential services (and balancing their budgets) than the federal government has. Block grants to states would mean a smaller, less expensive federal government, with smaller deficits.
Reform Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security
We need to means test social security and raise the retirement age. Healthcare should be returned to the private sector, where competition and individual choice rule rather than special interests and government. Low cost efficiencies have totally disappeared over the years as healthcare has moved out of the free market and into government bureaucracies. We need insurance that is individually based and determined, instead of by employers or government. Today, losing your job means losing your healthcare. That is a national disgrace, and needs to be one of the first things healthcare reform remedies.
Defense Spending
We should reduce troops overseas. End our subsidies to the rest of the world by handing them back the responsibility of defending themselves. This includes eliminating subsidies to the IMF, World Bank, and United Nations; which yield the American citizen almost nothing.
Monetary Policy
The best thing either Obama or Romney could do after winning the Presidency, is to announce the reappointment of Ben Bernanke to the Fed. This would go a long way in creating certainty and continuity which is badly needed in today’s world. I know of no one better to bring consistency to monetary policy or to employ his exit strategy when the time comes – and it will come. No matter what you think of Mr. Bernanke, the dollar is stable and inflation is low.
A year ago, when Bernanke was being accused of creating inflation and trashing the dollar, I went on the record as saying he was not inflating; and that if inflation (which was running at 4% rates at that time) came down to 2% in the next year as predicted by the Chairman, then he would be owed an apology from those who accused him of irresponsibly causing massive inflation. Bernanke’s assessment that the inflation would be “transitory” was correct. Those that predicted runaway inflation, higher interest rates, and a falling dollar were dead wrong. Instead of the inflationary inferno he was accused of creating, Bernanke has made the world a safer place. He was instrumental in preventing a depression in this country and possibly even monetary collapse.
Today the dollar is strong and inflation is under control and it worries me greatly who the next Fed Chairman will be given the poor judgment of conservatives regarding monetary policy. Had we followed their advice of tight money America would look a lot like Europe today. The EU has imposed exactly the kind of rigid monetary policies many conservatives are calling for here in the US. It is the wrong prescription.
And I want to be considered for Pamela’s VP choice when she runs.

Goldie says:
August 4, 2012 at 4:40 pm
=====================
Check The Reference Frame (blog by Luboš Motl)

NFNYC @ 12:30
You don’t need a Lehrer, Mon, to tell which way the lies blow.
===================

Mass grave in London reveals how volcano caused global catastrophe
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/aug/05/medieval-volcano-disaster-london-graves

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/08/04/climate-change-real-scientist.html
The CBC says its real again.

Mr. Watts why don’t you have a thread, and have everyone submit a list, of the things that simply can not be happening in the realtime world around us, and there be CO2/MannMayde Globul Warming?
For instance just off the top of my head, here’s a few:
Why hasn’t the entire infrared astronomy field ever trotted out all the photos of the sky, 100, 50, 25, 10 years ago, -and today? Obviously if magic gas is a real force of nature, there must by definition be more infrared in the atmosphere.
Why hasn’t the optical astronomy field, with their fastidious, patient, once-in-a-lifetime career shot and generally serious, purposeful nerd population,
simply trotted out the photographs of the sky, with ever rising STAR TWINKLE:: the effect of the stars wavering when heat convects upward, caused by ever warmer air in the blanket around us?
Why hasn’t one word come from the entire military structure of the free world as temperature gradient averages out to the tropopause and beyond cause slight, nevertheless mathematically recorded bias increase, in the thermally reactive components of high performance flight/instrumentation-only flight craft electronics? Tsk tsk tsk,..
Thanks

So is this gonna be the official live thread Sunday Night for …

Curiosity closes in on Mars for high-stakes descent
“The $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory rover is closing in on the Red Planet for a white-knuckle descent to the surface using an untried “sky crane” technique to ensure a pinpoint landing on the floor of Gale Crater.

That is the story at Cnet (there are many more all over the place. Continuing …

“After slowing to around 1,000 mph, the craft will deploy a huge supersonic parachute, the heat shield will be jettisoned, and a sophisticated radar altimeter will begin sounding the surface. After the craft slows to less than 200 mph, the parachute will be jettisoned and Curiosity, bolted to the belly of a rocket-powered descent stage, will fall free for the final drop to the surface.
Unlike past landers, Curiosity’s jet pack doesn’t have legs. Instead, it will act like a flying crane, lowering the rover directly to the surface on the end of a 25-foot-long bridle as the “sky crane” slowly descends. When the flight computer senses “weight on wheels,” the bridle will be cut and Curiosity will be ready for initial tests and checkout.
Touchdown is expected at 10:17 p.m. PDT Sunday, but it will take radio signals confirming the event 13.8 minutes to cross the 154-million-mile gulf between Earth and Mars. That translates to 10:31 p.m. “Earth-received time.””

This is a really risky mission!

David A. Evans says:
August 4, 2012 at 3:21 pm
As it’s open thread, can anyone point me to a free replacement for Flash & PDF reader that integrate with Firefox on WinDoze?
============================================================
Take a look here http://www.techsupportalert.com/
Gizmo is always my first port of call when I need a free utility. Dip into the ‘Editor’s Choice’ option. You’ll find good reviews and criticisms of each of the selections.

Keith Pearson, formerly bikermailman, Anonymous no longer says:
August 4, 2012 at 7:48 pm
Came across that recently, and it does in fact look fun! Having had recent surgery and big bills to pay, I’m going to have to let this one wait til next year. The $30 fly gun looks extrememly satisfying, but my $.99 flyswatter will have to suffice. It does make me think about some old cartoon, maybe Popeye, where he’s trying to nap, the fly won’t leave him alone, and he winds up so frustrated he uses the shotgun. Doesn’t kill the fly of course, but his house is in shambles. Have felt that frustrated many times myself.
I had rats in my detached garage (80m²) last year, being in france my neighbour offered to bring his shotgun down and shoot them for me. My imagination just went wild as I saw this guy firing at everything that moved and missing.

Neville says
The graph shows all the models for the next 300 years, so where will that dangerous SLR come from I wonder? Can anyone tell me please?
———
Sure. The paper you linked to takes into account only 2 factors: melting at the edges of ice sheets and accumulation of snow in the interior. It does not take into account increased rates of glacier outflow.
As for sea level rise land ice melt is only part of the reason for sea level rise. The most important factor is thermal expansion of water.

And an authoritative summary of ground-based radiation measurements.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/publications/annrpt23/chapter3_2.htm
Includes direct and diffuse solar, areosols, infrared etc.

Mr Lynn says:
August 4, 2012 at 12:14 pm
Hansen is back at it!
“By James E. Hansen, Published: August 4
When I testified before the Senate in the hot summer of 1988 , I warned of the kind of future that climate change would bring to us and our planet. I painted a grim picture of the consequences of steadily increasing temperatures, driven by mankind’s use of fossil fuels.”
If global temperatures are increasing over a time interval, it is out of the methods of science to predict global temperatures for the future, without the knowledge of the physical mechanism of increasing or decreasing global temperatures. Each disregard of this limit of physics is not a method of science and/or a fallacious argument, which includes in the case of an authority the fallacy Argumentum ad verecundiam (Appeal to authority). ‘The Appeal to Authority uses admiration of a famous person to try and win support for an assertion.’.
Independent from this argument it needs not much logic to conclude that with increased global temperatures the processes driven by a higher heat must change in its effects. It seems to be intelligent to take the consequences in the adaptability as humans ever have done.
A further disregard of the methods of science is to take the old fashion dept phantom, people have controlled by kings, religions, and governments for many millennia, and mix it into a prediction of an authority, without any valid scientific argument.
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/agw_poll.jpg
In a new analysis of the past six decades of global temperatures, which will be published Monday, my colleagues and I have revealed a stunning increase in the frequency of extremely hot summers, with deeply troubling ramifications for not only our future but also for our present.
To understand the nature of global temperatures it is necessary and possible to analyse the reconstructed and measured temperatures for the time interval of about 1 million years or for the time interval of about 10 ky to present. This is inalienable because a supposed linear increased temperature of 6 decades can be a phase of a oscillating function of centuries or millennia. From this it is not possible to extrapolate time interval of temperature into the future.
This is not a climate model or a prediction but actual observations of weather events and temperatures that have happened.
No Sir. You do say two times a word on prediction and future.
Our analysis shows that it is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change.
No Sir. Your analysis shows simple that you think there is an connection between high global temperatures and effects from that level. But that is not a new recognition. That’s what wrong is, that your analyse shell show that‘global warming will increase’ something, because this suggests a knowledge about the future, but this is not analysed.
our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change.
That is not the point in climate science. The point in climate science is to explain the cause for the analysable global temperature periods from many kiloyears to month. Periods which are well known since Bond have analysed the frequencies after Fourier’s method with an example of about 1 period per 1800 years. But it seems that there are 2 periods in 1800 years, and the temperature reconstruction from Zorita et al. fit with Bonds data. There are 13 increasing temperature phases over 11.000 years but as you can see, there are also phases of decreasing temperatures after high global temperature levels
:
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/bond_vs_zorita2.gif
This may show that an analysis of your chosen time interval of 6 decades with an increasing phase is not useful to make predictions to the future. You cannot rule out from the scientific point of view that the natural period of 1800 years, or better 900 years, occurs in a new decreasing phase of the global temperature.
To whom it may concern, analysed solar tides can be simulated from 3000 BC until 3000 CE. The pattern of some solar tide functions indicate, it fits with Bond et al. and Zorita et al. and lower temperatures in the next decades to 2040 CE..
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/bond_vs_zorita3.gif
V.

***
Blade says:
August 5, 2012 at 1:05 am
***
For those that can get it, the Science Channel will start coverage @ 10PM EST Monday for the “show”.

Chill to the contemporary jazz stylings of the legendary Jackson Jeffery Jackson. Silly but very funny.

“”The Arctic Row group is going to be stuck for several days near Barrow as they have run into some unexpected “weather” as I suggested before they started.””
Strange. Barrow webcam shows calm sea. Not even an iceberg in site!
http://seaice.alaska.edu/gi/observatories/barrow_webcam

mfo says:
August 5, 2012 at 2:29 am
“Not new. But why no one should give money to the WWF.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/wwf-helps-industry-more-than-environment-a-835712.html
“Feri, an environmental activist, calls this form of conservation “racist and neocolonial,” and notes: “There has never been forest without people here.” ”
Oi. Spiegel declares WWF class enemy. That took a while. Slow learners as usual on the left.
Half of the canned fish in my local supermarket have the dreaded panda logo on them. Obviously the producers pay the panda. So I switched from mackerel and salmon to herring. Won’t ever support Julian Huxley’s nightmare orgs if I can legally avoid it.

James “Chicken Little” Hansen is waving his hands in the air again with more cargo cult science predictions of doom and gloom. What happened to your last prediction Hansen? Still waiting for Manhattan to be under water by over ten years ago. Hansen is not a scientist – he is an activists and he should be fired by NASA.
He continues to lie with his boldly fallacious claims that every bit of natural climate variable is evidence that man is causing “climate change”. He provides no evidence of this, just nonsensical stories about imaginary dice. Even if we were to trust him on his statistical analysis of current weather data and his conclusions on any short term trends he observed – this information would only be showing that “climate change” happens, it does not follow from this that the change is unusual, extreme, or caused by man. He is truly worthy of a Lysenko reward for his mendacious claims and activist scaremongering.
It is really getting tiresome to hear clowns like him define “climate change” as man made and ignore the accept fact that climate change is a naturally caused state that has been happening on this planet for over 4/5 billion years. At no point in history has climate ever not been changing.
There is no ideal steady state for climate. It changes. The question is not does it change but what causes that change. It has been changing for 3.5 billion years without our help – if he wants to float some doomsday theory that the natural causes have suddenly ceased to work and climate now dances according to man’s pitifully small addition of CO2 to the atmosphere, then he had better offer actual evidence.
Instead he offers us the self evident fact that climate changes and makes the fallacious claim that this proves man is causing it. His claim has no evidence of fact and is no different from other doomsday prophesies from the past. He should open up some temple full of virgins to be sacrificed to the gods – wait that is exactly what he is doing but instead of demanding that us peasants place food at his god’s alter to control weather, he is asking the peasants to not use carbon based fuels and pay some tax on them when we do.
Bah humbug. Time to fire Hansen and banish him to some street corner with a sign and flyers where he can preach his prophesies with the same status of any other lunatic..
His half baked activist junk science peers like Mr. Weaver at U Vic can also join him on the street corner.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/climate-change-is-here–and-worse-than-we-thought/2012/08/03/6ae604c2-dd90-11e1-8e43-4a3c4375504a_allComments.html?ctab=all_&&wp_login_redirect=0
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/08/05/heatwaves-proof-of-global-warming-says-nasa-scientist
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/08/04/climate-change-real-scientist.html

Reblogged this on thewordpressghost and commented:
Everyone,
This is a great idea, and a wonderful illustration.
Catch up with Watts next week! Anthony writes a lot of well thought out articles on the illusionary ‘science’ of global warming.
Ghost.

Philip Bradley says:
August 4, 2012 at 9:36 pm
Mass grave in London reveals how volcano caused global catastrophe
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/aug/05/medieval-volcano-disaster-london-graves
No. Because the reconstructed temperature function (A. Moberg et al.) correlates with the solar tide function, a volcano cannot caused the cool global climate around 1310 AD:
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/moberg_1150_1400.gif
V.

DirkH says:
August 5, 2012 at 8:56 am

mfo says:
August 5, 2012 at 2:29 am

Not new. But why no one should give money to the WWF.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/wwf-helps-industry-more-than-environment-a-835712.html
“Feri, an environmental activist, calls this form of conservation “racist and neocolonial,” and notes: “There has never been forest without people here.”

Oi. Spiegel declares WWF class enemy. That took a while. Slow learners as usual on the left.
Half of the canned fish in my local supermarket have the dreaded panda logo on them. Obviously the producers pay the panda. So I switched from mackerel and salmon to herring. Won’t ever support Julian Huxley’s nightmare orgs if I can legally avoid it.

In the video mfo linked, Greenpiss & Fiends of the Earth were criticising WWF.
With the amounts GP are getting from the EU through REDD to protect parts of the Amazon rainforest from logging they were never in danger from logging, they have a damned nerve!
The Fiends of the Earth are similarly scamming huge sums from the EU.
DaveE.

Re: Smokey, #14:
JPL, Boeing, Lockheed Martin – Please don’t do this tonight!
(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_orkXxp0bhEA/TD0XOEoMBfI/AAAAAAAAe_M/xRCsoLn0TnM/s1600/100714-graph-9.gif)

[Snip. You are not learning. Move on to another subject, and leave out host out of it. ~dbs, mod.]

Re Smokey’s link to the map of coal fired power plants to be closed because of new EPA regulations, IER has updated their map for 2012 to include a total of 34.7 gigawatts of generation capacity to be taken off line.

Climate scientists are allowed to be personally attacked, to be defamed, smeared, being called liars and fraudsters on this blog thread after thread.
But if a climate scientist asks for evidence for assertions made on this blog, including concerning his own person, he is getting snipped from an allegedly “Open Thread” by the moderation.
[Reply: As explained, you were snipped for attacking our host. Any more comments on this issue will be deleted. ~dbs, mod.]

For fun, Google “global warming worse than thought”… 5.5 million results and counting!

cms says: August 5, 2012 at 2:33 pm
I am very interested in a graph I created on WoodForTrees and what others may make of it. Any ideas
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/isolate:60/mean:12/scale:0.2/plot/hadcrut3vgl/isolate:60/mean:12/from:1958
Surely does look like CO2 follows temperature, don’t it. But since there’s this 800 year lag, perhaps it’s just belatedly following the Medieval Warm Period temps.
Which would mean, wait for it, current CO2 is a proxy for MWP temperatures, which means, (and climate scientists all over the world will be glad to hear) that you no longer have to go to Antarctica to get MWP info, you can just go to Hawaii. Life is good.
Seriously, though, it looks like CO2 lags about 7 to 9 months at mid-transition. Anything we can do with this?

Jan P Perlwitz says:
August 5, 2012 at 2:21 pm

Climate scientists are allowed to be personally attacked, to be defamed, smeared, being called liars and fraudsters on this blog thread after thread.
But if a climate scientist asks for evidence for assertions made on this blog, including concerning his own person, he is getting snipped from an allegedly “Open Thread” by the moderation.

On the other hand…
If a climate psientist is asked to provide proof of his assertions via FOI, he just blocks the request?
Just asking.
Incidentally. I’ve asked this question before…
Just which paper published has proved the assertion that CO2 drives temperature?
(This is assuming that temperature is even a good proxy for energy gain.)
DaveE.

cms says:
August 5, 2012 at 2:33 pm
Very interesting! I had not previously seen evidence that atmospheric CO2 concentrations lagged the annual temperature cycle. Thanks!
Could I ask you and others posting here to use graphing line colors other than the red/green pair? Or perhaps to use graph lines that are differentiated by dashed vs solid lines? Red/Green color blindness is the most common form, afflicting about 7% of the adult male population and less than 1% of women.
Nice work – Thanks again!
MtK

One minute in Ernesto becomes tumescent. Me too by the way.

Need to know: where are some photos of Weepy Bill McKibben weeping ?

David A. Evans, you wrote:

On the other hand…
If a climate psientist is asked to provide proof of his assertions via FOI, he just blocks the request?

I’m not aware that the Freedom of Information Act gives anyone the right to request from any climate scientist to provide proof of his/her assertions. The FOIA give the right to request certain information, which is documented and archived, from a federal agency, if the climate scientist works for this agency:
http://www.foia.gov/about.html
What does this have to do with what I said, anyway?

Incidentally. I’ve asked this question before…
Just which paper published has proved the assertion that CO2 drives temperature?

And probably not as incidentally, you, and actually you, have already been answered this:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-global-warming.htm
There is not just one paper. There is a whole bunch of papers that provide the evidence for different aspects of the causal link between carbon dioxide in atmosphere and temperature as effect.
What exactly are you saying hasn’t been proven? That CO2 is a radiatively active gas, which absorbs and emits longwave radiation? That it changes the radiation and energy balance in the atmosphere and at the surface, because it is radiatively active? Or that the change in the energy balance due to CO2 causes a change in the temperature distribution in the atmosphere and in the other climate components, e.g., the oceans?

@davidmhoffer:
I see in your comment only a list of assertions w/o any evidence or proof of sources. These are certainly some of the talking points that you tell each other in your false skeptic universe to confirm each other, about all the evil climate scientists and their sinister doings.

Smokey wrote:

CO2 lags temperature on all time scales, from months to hundreds of millennia. Thanks for providing additional evidence.

using this link http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/879/co2lagkz2.png for the time scale of months.
If one looks at the description of the figure, one can see it doesn’t show the time-series of the CO2-level, but the time series of the year-to-year change of the CO2 level. The long-term trend in the CO2 has been removed in the figure due to this method. The figure doesn’t show how CO2 lags the temperature. Instead, it shows that the yearly CO2 change lags the temperature.
That there was a close correlation between CO2 and temperature, CO2 always lagging temperature is valid for Smokey, unless it isn’t. When it is convenient for Smokey, something else is valid for him, as in this comment:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/29/headlines-over-solar-cycle-25-and-potential-cooling/#comment-879463
where he uses following figure.
http://members.shaw.ca/sch25/FOS/GlobalTroposphereTemperaturesAverage.jpg
CO2 goes up, but “no warming since 1997” according to Smokey. Wasn’t the CO2 supposed to follow the temperature trend in recent decades, as Smokey asserted in this thread here?
What are people called again who are holding to contradicting views at the same time?

Lucy Skywalker says:
August 5, 2012 at 1:56 am
….An interesting and neutral article from Grauniad???? WUWT?
_________________________
Lucy here is another one.
Heist of the century: university corruption and the financial crisis Monday 21 May 2012
University corruption used in a Grauniad title??? I think I am going to faint!

LOL
I predicted that Perlwitz would choose not to do the reading suggested, and he quickly proved my prediction to be correct. And it is SO hard to find these things…. because the results of a congressional investigation are really hard to look up. The “most powerful tree in the world” comment on CA is SO hard to find. Not to mention that the analysis is done in excutiating detail. As for the “hide the decline” debacle, there are so many instances on the internet that go into microscopic detail that one runs into them when looking for something else. If someone else wants to post links, by all means. I’ve just finished a debate with a sanctimonious pompous arrogant twit on another thread, and he didn’t bother to read a single one of them. Even triumphantly posted arguments that, had he read them, he would have realized were already refuted by the information and links I’d posted already. I’ve not interest in helping those determined to wallow in their own ignorance to do their own homework. When I started my own personal research in the questions regarding climate science, all I got was ignorance and snark to my questions. The tougher the question, the more ignorant and snarky. So I struggled through AR4 WG1 on my own, going nuts trying to verify all the vague assertions by running down the reference papers, a great number of which were behind paywalls at the time.
I did my homework Dr Perlwitz, and I did it without and help from you and your ilk. When I reached out, you pi$$ed all over me. So now I’ve told you WHAT to look for and I’ve told you WHERE to look for it. If you cannot get off your lazy butt and look into it yourself like I looked into all of the work of those I now accuse, that’s your problem, not mine.

Smokey wrote:

Perlwitz doesn’t like the chart I linked to, so here is one with a little longer baseline [27 years].

So what? The trends are still filtered out. The figure still doesn’t show the time series of the absolute values. Smokey claims a) “no global warming since 1997” and b) CO2 follows the temperature with a lag of a few months. Thus, there shouldn’t have been any CO2 increase for at least a decade now, if the CO2 in the atmosphere was controlled by the temperature. But the CO2 data look like this:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1985
They look like this, because the CO2 increase in the atmosphere is primarily due to anthropogenic emissions, but not due to natural sources. It is not coming from the oceans. Nature is a net sink for CO2. Otherwise, the CO2 mixing ratio in the atmosphere would already be above 500 ppm due to anthropogenic emissions.

Perlwitz also doesn’t like the Shaw chart [he has to be the unhappiest commenter here]. So to make him happy I’ll post the Hadcrut3 chart. It won’t make him happy. But it further debunks the CO2=CAGW belief system.

Only in Smokey fantasy is anthropogenically caused global warming refuted by a non-robust negative trend over such a short time period of 10 years. I have a picture for Smokey too:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=47
Look the first eight of the last ten years can be seen there too.

Jan P Perlwitz says:
August 5, 2012 at 7:28 pm
Try Search “James Hansen debunked” you should have approximately 39.000 articles.
It is not a fallacy of logic to make a statement of specific truth.
Indeed, Mr Hansen IS a disgrace to science.
http://www.soros.org/resources/articles_publications/publications/annual_20070731/a_complete.pdf
Pages 123 and 143 politicization of science ($720,000)
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/09/26/nasa-s-hansen-mentioned-soros-foundations-annual-report

Gunga Din says: @ August 5, 2012 at 4:56 pm
…..Take two bottles of a carbonated beverage. Open both of them. Put one in the refrigerator, one on the kitchen counter. After a few hours, check to see which one has the most “fizz” left.
More gases, including CO2, will dissolve and remain dissolved in colder water than in warmer water. It takes time to warm or cool the oceans.
_________________________
Another Soda Pop experiment:
Take a plastic bottle of Soda (one no one in the house likes) and set it aside for two years. Open it and see how much ‘fizz’ is left compared to a brand new bottle. – Proof that Gases can “migrate” through solids.

Smokey says: @ August 5, 2012 at 6:40 pm
It gets tedious trying to educate someone with such a closed mind. No doubt that is the result of feeding at the public trough for so many years. You start to believe the runaway global warming nonsense you’re constantly emitting.
============================
More like he believes in his pay check. see my comment @ link
I very much doubt most of these ‘scientists’ actually believe the bafflegab they publish. Given the article stating academics admit that they would discriminate against openly conservative colleagues….In decisions ranging from paper reviews to hiring, I think we are running into the Hegelian Dialectic that is commonly found on left leaning campuses.
Hegel accepted as real only that which existed in the mind. Objective phenomena and events were of no consequence. This also explains why there is such an emphasis placed on ‘The Consensus of 97% of Climate Scientists.’ To those steeped in the Hegelian Dialectic the conflict of the thesis (CAGW) with its antithesis (natural) has already been resolved the synthesis reached and it is time to move on to the social/economic implementation. This is also why we are “Denialists” in their minds. We are not only “Denying the Science” but worse we are denying their entire philosophy by insisting on the importance of real world data in decision making.
This is why no amount of real world data penetrates. Reality is only what they want it to be.(Except of course for that all important pay check)

………….who dare not turn his head for fear some dreadful fiend doth close behind him tread…
Well I may not run as fast as I did in Mexico 68 but if I met a Poley bear you would be amazed how fast I can still go if push comes to shove.
Kindest Regards

Heartfelt congratulations to NASA and the US for the successful landing of Curiosity! Amazing technology and technique.

Smokey wrote:

Here is the long term trend from the LIA. Notice that the trend is not accelerating. That means only one thing: the 40% rise in CO2 has not caused any measurable warming.

Smokey commits another logical fallacy. He shows the temperature time series at a single location of the globe, the Central England temperatures. This is not a suitable data set to empirically or logically refute statements about the global temperature anomaly trend. Large variability due to weather can mask the warming signal, which is seen in the globally averaged temperature anomaly, in temperature time series at single locations. Also, not just the variability due to weather is a problem at single locations, the trend itself can not be seen as representative for the global temperature anomaly trend. Even if there is a global warming trend, which refers to the global temperature anomaly, there does not need to be a warming signal at each location of the globe. There even could be a cooling at some individual locations, while the globally averaged temperature is increasing. Global warming does not mean globally uniform warming.

@Jan, CET is almost identical to Northern Hemisphere temperature record. At least during the 20th century, the leading mode of temperature variation were changes in North Atlantic and Pacific SST going up and down in 30-year cycle, which overwhelmed rather weaker variations in the Southern hemisphere. So it is a good assumption, that CET represents NH well and fairly well the whole “global” record.
Second, “it is a single location of the globe” argument is funny. Is not the CO2 and the alleged “greenhouse effect” the same all over the globe, also above Central England?

@Gerald Machnee August 5, 2012 at 11:10 am
“” They are not reporting ice and wind – they are expecting it.
They are anchored two miles from Barrow, but cannot make progress into the head wind.””
Accurate weather report. Webcam shows increased wave action on the beach and the odd white horse out to sea. Wind at 14mph from the north would be a tailwind methinks. Visibility is deteriorating.

Jan P Perlwitz says:
August 5, 2012 at 8:11 pm
They look like this, because the CO2 increase in the atmosphere is primarily due to anthropogenic emissions, but not due to natural sources. It is not coming from the oceans. Nature is a net sink for CO2.

Please be precise in your terminology. CO2 levels in the atmosphere change due to a imbalance between the rate of emission (i.e. sources) and the rate of absorption (i.e. sinks). The sources include natural processes such as cellular respiration, fires, out-gassing, demineralization, etc. with a small contribution (est. 4%) from anthropogenic processes. The sinks include natural processes such as photosynthesis, dissolution, mineralization, etc. The equilibrium position will be controlled by Henry’s law, which states that the solubility of CO2 is an exponential function of the inverse absolute temperature.
http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/1605/ggccebro/chapter1.html

Jan P Perlwitz says:
August 6, 2012 at 12:10 am
Smokey commits another logical fallacy. He shows the temperature time series at a single location of the globe…

Yet, earlier you pointed to proof of AGW that is based on an ideal water-corrected difference spectrum corresponding to a narrow band of wavelengths collected over a small portion of the Earth. You are committing the same logic error. You must integrate the entire incoming and outgoing radiation spectra (without correction) over the entire geometry of the earth to start to prove your point. After all, reduction in emission intensity from one region could be off-set by an increase in emission intensity from another (e.g. the poles).

Graeme No. 3 says:
Jim, Muller lives in the USA; they still use ℉ there.
What he has shown over 250 years is an rise of 0.057 ℃ per decade, or 0.6 ℃ per century.
When Prof. Akasofu calculated a rise of 0.6 ℃ for both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he was dismissed as a sceptic.
The only thing is that Muller finds a rapid rise since 1979. This is partly because he used the old trick of starting at a cold period, and partly because he used the official “figures” which have been “adjusted” upwards. This enables him to claim “unprecedented” warming caused by CO2. Had he started the recent trend in 1950 (to allow for a 60 year cycle) the rise would have appeared far less.
As far as I can see, Muller is trying to position himself as “the white knight” of AGW. He is smart enough to see that Mann, Jones, Hansen etc. are discredited (and to give him credit, probably disgusted with them) and wants to do papers as they should have been done (see that he has released code and data). His problem is his reliance on the corrupted temperatures.
So it is most unlikely we will see a 1 ℃ rise in the next 100 years, and with the sun “taking a holiday” more likely we will see a drop in temperature. The World would certainly agree with you that warming is good.
Nope. The BEST study used Celsius. It found 2.5C warming since 1750.

Perlwitz occasionally appears to insult people. I suggest this remedy:
http://oi47.tinypic.com/165bx2.jpg

Dr Perlwitz;
CA and/or this site.
search for “hide the decline”
Pick one Dr Perlwitz. Self education or self imposed ignorance.