Guest post by David Middleton
I ran into this gem on Real Clear Energy this morning…
The article cites terrifying new reports commissioned by the World Bank and the CIA and then launches into a graphical cornucopia of nonsense.
The Five Charts of Doom
“1. Most of Greenland’s top ice layer melted in four days” (The World Bank)
I previously addressed this “chart” here: 2012: The Year Greenland Melted (AKA Alarmists Gone Wild).
The “melt” is based on measurements of albedo. These measurements date all the way back to the year 2000.
The “normal” summer melt season albedo minimum at 2500-3200m is in the range of 0.79-0.82. This year, it briefly dropped to just below 0.74.
So… We have barely a decade’s worth of data and no idea if the modern melt rates and albedo changes are anomalous relative to the early 20th century Arctic warming, Medieval Warm Period or any of the other millennial-scale Holocene warming periods.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that unless some alarmist can tell me what the albedo was in 1899, 1127, 1143 and 1939, during the vast majority of the Holocene or during the Sangamonian, my response is, “Very interesting. Now, move along, there’s nothing more to see here.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/29/warming-island-greenland-sea-regional-climate-and-arctic-sea-ice-reconstruction/
(After Alley, 2000)
(NGRIP)
2. America just had its worst drought in over 50 years (The World Bank)
They chose the U.S. Drought Monitor “map” to support the World Bank’s claim that the U.S. just had its worst drought in 50 years… The U.S. Drought Monitor only has a 12-year record length. If they had only bothered to look at the historical drought trend (or lack thereof) they would have found that we just had the worst drought in a bit over 10 years (not 50) and that droughts of this severity occur about once every 8 years.
The drought of 2012 was pretty bad, about as bad as the droughts of 2000-2001, 1988, 1981, 1963, 1940, 1925, 1917 and 1910… But not nearly as bad as the protracted droughts of 1953-1956 and 1933-1936. And there is no increasing trend of drought severity or decreasing trend in precipitation over the last 117 years.
3. Coral reefs are doomed (The World Bank)
This one is really funny!
The Mesozoic Era atmospheric CO2 was pretty well always 2 to 4 times the level at which the World Bank cartoon indicates that coral reefs will dissolve, yet the Mesozoic Era was full of coral reefs.
For that matter, the modern Great Barrier Reef also seems to like a CO2-enriched diet…
A recent paper in Geology (Ries et al., 2009) found an unexpected relationship between CO2 and marine calcifers. 18 benthic species were selected to represent a wide variety of taxa: “crustacea, cnidaria, echinoidea, rhodophyta, chlorophyta, gastropoda, bivalvia, annelida.” They were tested under four CO2/Ωaragonite scenarios:
409 ppm (Modern day)
606 ppm (2x Pre-industrial)
903 ppm (3x Pre-industrial)
2856 ppm (10x Pre-industrial)
The effects on calcification rates for all 18 species were either negligible or positive up to 606 ppm CO2. Corals, in particular seemed to like more CO2 in their diets…
4. Wildfires are multiplying (NRC report for the CIA)
Are Colorado’s wildfires caused by global warming?
The wildfires devastating Colorado have been linked to a streak of unusually hot weather, but that does not necessarily mean that global warming is the culprit.
By Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer / June 28, 2012
[…]
“You can’t say it’s climate change just because it’s an extreme condition,” said Colorado state climatologist Nolan Doesken. So far, Doesken told LiveScience, the spring of 2012 looks much like the spring of 1910, when warm temperatures hit early. That year, he said, was a bad one for fires.
[…]
The immediate driver of these fires is a lack of moisture and a ridge of heat that has settled over the central United States, said New Jersey state climatologist Dave Robinson, who also directs the Global Snow Lab at Rutgers University. After record snowpack last year, the Rocky Mountains did a 180 this year, Robinson said, seeing little moisture and early snowmelt.
“March and April are supposed to be your snowy months [in Colorado], and they weren’t,” Robinson told LiveScience. “Thus, the fire danger.”
Meanwhile, a high-pressure system in the central part of the country is preventing cloud formation and allowing the sun to bake the ground, heating things up. On Tuesday (June 26) alone, 251 daily heat records were broken across the nation, according to the National Climatic Data Center. In the past week, more than 1,000 new daily heat records were put on the books.
[…]
“Some would say there is a pattern, because we have had several years with exceptionally large fires over western states, particularly the Southwestern states, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Colorado in particular,” Doesken said. “Others would say, no, not enough data points yet to show that.”
This year has been extreme in terms of heat and dryness, he said, as was 2002 (a record-breaking year for fires in Colorado). So far, 2012’s weather looks very similar to the weather of 1910. That year, spring was warm and dry, which fed into a hellish fire season. Among the blazes was the Great Fire of 1910, also known as “the Big Burn,” which destroyed 3 million acres of forest in Washington, Idaho and Montana.
[…]
More recently, an analysis of 1,500 years of fire and tree-ring data revealed that a combination of climate change and human forest use could explain modern “megafires,” the kind that destroy large swaths of forest.
[…]
The modern climate is virtually identical to the Medieval Warm Period, yet the wildfires seem to be worse and humans may be somewhat responsible (just not in the way Warmists would like)…
[…]
Ancient Fires
The researchers combined previously collected fire data from Ponderosa Pine forests in the southwest United States during the Little Ice Age (from 1600 to the mid-1800s) with climate data derived from existing tree rings to determine the annual fire activity 1,500 years ago.
They discovered that this time period, the Medieval Warm Period, was no different from the Little Ice Age in terms of what drives frequent low-severity surface fires: year-to-year drought patterns.
“It’s true that global warming is increasing the magnitude of the droughts we’re facing, but droughts were even more severe during the Medieval Warm Period,” Roos said. “It turns out that what’s driving the frequency of surface fires is having a couple wet years that allow grasses to grow continuously across the forest floor and then a dry year in which they can burn. We found a really strong statistical relationship between two or more wet years followed by a dry year, which produced lots of fires.”
Changing Climate
The researchers found that even when ancient climates varied from each other — one hotter and drier and the other cooler and wetter — the frequencies of year-to-year weather patterns that drive fire activity were similar. Furthermore, the findings implicate as the increase in megafires is caused not only modern climate change, but also human activity over the last century, the researchers said.
These human activities include livestock grazing and firefighting, which combine to create more dense forests with accumulated fuels that make them more vulnerable than ever to extreme droughts, and these droughts bring on huge wildfires that wreak havoc on even the tops of trees.
[…]
The modern warming (AGW in Warmisteese) began in ca. 1600 AD, at the nadir of the Little Ice Age.
Capitalism might be adding 0.1 to 0.3 °C worth of extra warming relative to what would have happened in a globally Third World; but our primary contributions to the change in wildfire patterns are land-use change and firefighting (and arson)… Not greenhouse gases.
The weather this year is “extreme.” According to NOAA’s Climate Extremes Index, the spring of 2012 set a new heat wave record. The previous record heat wave was 1910, the first year of the time series. The “anomaly” is the fact that it took over 100 years to set a new record. In a random time series, the 1910 record should have been broken 5 times by 2012. There is no correlation between climate change and extreme weather events.
The following chart is adapted from NOAA’s Climate Extremes Index…
The NOAA CEI has no trend (Slope = R-squared = 0.0081). Using the same reference period as the Hadley Centre and East Anglia CRU (1961-1990), we can see that the CEI exceeded natural variability (2 standard deviations) during eight years from 1910-1954 and eight years from 1977-2011. The CEI is just for the contiguous USA and only goes back to 1910.
However, a recent paper coauthored by Gilbert Compo, of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) also found no evidence that climate change was causing any increase in the atmospheric circulation patterns that would be indicative of such an increase.
According to Compo, “In the climate models, the extremes get more extreme as we move into a doubled CO2 world in 100 years. So we were surprised that none of the three major indices of climate variability that we used show a trend of increased circulation going back to 1871.”
Not only is there no statistically meaningful correlation between the climate changes of the last 40 years and extreme weather events, there’s also no evidence that the recent climate changes are unusual and no evidence that extreme weather events were less common when the climate was significantly cooler than it currently is.
These charts have enabled me to worry less about the CIA’s wild fire map.
5. Civil wars on the rise
This is even funnier than the coral reef cartoon! Wikipedia’s List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll seems to indicate that the climates of the past were a lot more hazardous than the climates of the post-Cold War era.
I suppose one could argue that the frequency of wars is on the rise, they’re just smaller wars. A Malthusian would probably say that the world population has grown so large that 10-12% death tolls are now unachievable.
Articles like this one make me think of the old Eddie Murphy Saturday Night Live skit, “The mind is a terrible thing…”
Any and all sarcasm and humor were purely intentional.
When will people learn that global warming is inversely proportional to the number of pirates? I have graphs. Won’t anyone think of the children and start a trade school for pirates to help stop global warming?
The panic is full blown, tempting to list 5 groups of con artists who are doomed if the scam freezes up. Lets see, Bankers, policy advisors, NGO’s, media fear mongers, politicians (all the fully committed ones) Greenpeace, WWF, and so on.
The shrieking will hit a crescendo very soon, look for peak freaking, this is the normal behaviour of liars when called on their lies, tell more, louder and wilder fabrications.
And then bargaining, excuses and blame the victim.
Thanks David way too funny, better archive this stuff as it strikes me that,the move to seize the internet is the next logical act. Otherwise the wisdom of throwing their greed and gullibility open for all to see, escapes me. Where the out? Can’t say we never said that if the wayback machine is still intact.
Here is the antidote to all AGW nonsense:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/MidSummer-MidWinter.htm
Summers never get hotter, but winters are getting less cold.
Ideal.
It seems obvious that doom sells, newspapers, magazines, TV, movies, it does’nt matter. We need to come up with a doom scenario for too low a CO2 level. Like maybe all the plants start to die. Make a movie. Call it “The Day Before Yesterday” or something. Put some zombies in it, make up some charts, computer models, what have you. We need to fight fire with fire!! Come on guys, be creative. Get some grants, make up some junk science and win this war of ignorance.
Damn it, I thought that gruenelande meant the snow was green back during the medieval warming period. How could that land be green from medieval warming? Snow was green back then. Just ask the Vikings who were in the Das Neues Welt a half of a millenium before Columbo.
They should have gone for 10 charts. Then they could have been a perfect 10 for 10 – wrong.
Tropical storm (not hurricane) Sandy and the alarmist jamboree in Doha has precipitated a lot of nonsense on ‘climate change’ like the article above.
This one is from Aljazeera.
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/general/2012/11/20121124122118422197.html
And how about this advert at the top of WUWT today:
http://psa-i.openx.com/bde/bde7a7ca-0fae-4a47-86e3-51c93579b618/ad2/ad232bebcb2a64f3676cc3b54b4a4422.jpg
“Most of Greenland’s top ice layer melted in 4 days” Just how much ice melted and what was the temperature? Looks like a heck of a lot of melting in a very short time. This skeer ought to fail on a casual review of the amount of energy required to melt that amount of ice in 4 days.
Are “charts” the post-modern incarnation of the narrative fallacy, the shaman-witch-homeopath key to success? Read Tukey on chart-junk. Read Popper on falsification.
It’s funny how Boreal forest fires have been decreasing since the end of the Little Ice Age. I wonder why they don’t like to trumpet such news. It’s always going for the “It’s worse than we thought!” angle.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2307/3237261/abstract
RSB:
I’ll be happy to start such a school; having been boarded twice by pirates I count myself an expert on them.
I’ll let you know soon where the IPCC, the World Bank and the CIA should send the money.
But where did the winter go? I didn’t realise it was the 1st. of April already.
Seriously, where do they find people daft enough to write stuff like that? I’m worried that the World Bank actually believes this rubbish.
Jim G@1.38 I have it, we can hype the vague correlation between Chinese CO2 output over time and the flattening, then slight drop in the temperature data (I hesitate to say global temp).
My thesis,Chinese CO2 = cooling effect. Western CO2=warming effect.
And in homage to the UN, we are all going to freeze if we do not match the Chinese CO2 output.
Take it from there, endless possibilities.
This quote from the linked WSJ article reveals the source of the entire problem: “In the climate models, the extremes get more extreme as we move into a doubled CO2 world in 100 years,” [said] atmospheric scientist Gilbert Compo, [a climate modeler] at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “So we were surprised that none of the three major indices of climate variability that we used show a trend of increased circulation going back to 1871.”
Climate modelers believe their climate models. They really believe that “model response” = climate response; implying that if it happens in the model, it must happen in the climate, even if the climate response is actually far below the physical resolution of the model.
Modelers can sustain this remarkable view because they never propagate model errors through their projections. Published projections never show physically valid error bars. They show ‘model variability‘ and represent that as predictive uncertainty. It’s not. Climate modelers seem to have no concept of physical error or its propagation. They seem to have no grasp on the meaning of model error or resolution, on the uncertainty of their projections, or, finally, on the inability of their models to predict anything at all about climate. With their own internally peculiar and non-physical standards of merit, climate modelers have hermetically sealed climate modeling away from the rest of physics. In their hands, climate modeling is not science. It’s a liberal art with math.
Hence, modelers are certain, are sincere in their beliefs, have infected policy-makers with their naivete, are “surprised” when their models fail, and are highly valuable stooges for the ideological, the venal, and the just plain corrupt.
Atlantic’s readers will be convinced by this. It’s preposterous. And effective.
Where did all the water go after the massive Greenland melt? We should have see a massive rise in the seas. London, New York and many more harbor cities should have flooded. Could it possibly be that the media didn’t report the disasters?
I’m betting the World Bank executives involved in this publication are looking for a slice of carbon credits and are dismayed that the reality is no closer now than years ago.
The “Explanation of the US Drought Monitor”, http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/classify.htm, proclaims proudly “Drought Monitor: State-of-the-Art Blend of Science and Subjectivity”.
There is probably much more subjectivity than science. I still don’t know how they define drought and how they measure it.
Pet peeve:
The only reason the CIA puts out information, is to monitor its effect.
That said, I will now try to digest the post.
Thanks, David. This is emergency mode time for CAGW acolytes.
Well, they are right about one thing – I am very very worried – about the stupidity of their 5 charts about climate change.
Thanks David,
Such a lot of s**t shovelled in such a short time. Impressive.
From time to time I get to shovel the real stuff, and find that it helps to restore normality in the face of all this nonsense. Breath of fresh air …
There’s a pdf version in my dropbox:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/90071372/MiddletononAtlanticArticle-28-11-2012.pdf
Hope that’s ok.
My position, that AGW is a social disorder, is underscored by this ridiculous Atlantic article.
The problem is that this sort of dsfunctinoal thinking leads people to seek blame whentheir beliefs fail to work out, not reapprasial and progress. The believers will blame skeptics for the failure of AGW, or alternatively, for nearly any weather that is not a pleasant day. Think of druids in the Holy roman empire
john robertson says: My thesis,Chinese CO2 = cooling effect. Western CO2=warming effect.
Well done JR because, damn it, I missed the bleeding obvious. Between you and me now that you have pointed it out I’m seeking a Chinese company that will export their CO2 in granulated form so I can sell it to Atlantic readers and become rich. I’m not going to miss this gravy train! Pssst wanna buy a harbour bridge?
Don’t know about pirates but I do know that the brightest kids come from homes with 2 toilets (bathrooms) so howzabout that third toilet I have to sell you catastrophists?
As one wit put it these people come from the Homer Simpson School of Philosophy-
“Facts are meaningless, They can be used to prove anything.” (Homer Simpson, et al, The Age of Computer Modelling Graphics and Animation)
That World Bank report was written by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics.
http://climatechange.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/Turn_Down_the_heat_Why_a_4_degree_centrigrade_warmer_world_must_be_avoided.pdf
According to the following site, Greenpeace had a hand in that report:
“The only surprise in 2012 was that the report by the World Bank was prepared by a former director of Greenpeace (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics 2012).”
http://www.voxeu.org/article/global-climate-talks-if-17th-you-don-t-succeed
One of the people who runs the Potsdam Institute is Hans Schellnhuber. Notrickszone has done a good job of keeping track of him:
Link
And for some historical trivia, the World Bank was mainly the creation of Harry Dexter White:
Link
Harry Dexter White was also identified as a communist spy according to the NSA:
http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/venona/1944/29apr_white.pdf
(I’m sure White had the preservation of the Constitution, free markets, and liberty in mind when he created the World Bank…) /sarc
NYT Updated: Nov. 26, 2012
“Warnings from the scientific community are becoming louder, as an increasing body of science points to rising dangers from the ongoing buildup of human-related greenhouse gases — produced mainly by the burning of fossil fuels and forests.”
“Global emissions of carbon dioxide jumped by the largest amount on record in 2010, upending the notion that the brief decline during the recession might persist through the recovery. The increase solidified a trend of ever-rising emissions that scientists fear will make it difficult, if not impossible, to forestall severe climate change in coming decades.”
The Age of Cognitive Dissonance, confabulation and post-modern constructs.
May you live in interesting times.
More on the World Bank, originally from The Green Left Weekly apparently:
http://rabble.ca/news/2012/11/why-world-bank-should-take-its-own-advice-climate-change
Here’s a graph of the water level at Lake McConaughy in western Nebraska. A real drought is reflected in the levels of around the year 2000. Last year the reservoir was nearly refilled by a big inflow.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/freezing-weather-warning-flooding-172256736.html
anyone else pick the problem with this article.
where’s the ‘climate change’??
this is going to be fun in 10years time when millions of Brits want to be sentenced to life in Queensland. hahaha
regards
Thanks David for an excellent post, but you forgot to mention the CO2 produced by these morons jetting off to various exotic destinations to formulate and discuss these idiotic theories!
The Atlantic is owned by David G Bradley who bought it from Mort Zuckerman in 1999. Bradley is a board member of the New American Foundation which promotes the CAGW scare with articles such as, ‘Climate Change Kills 400,000 a Year, New Report Reveals’ and ‘Hertsgaard: Why Aren’t Parents Protecting Their Kids From Climate Change?’.
http://newamerica.net/about/board
According to its website, The New America Foundation “invests in outstanding individuals whose ability to communicate to wide and influential audiences can change the country’s policy discourse in critical areas, bringing promising new ideas and debates to the fore”.
It is very well funded by the likes of The Ford Foundation, Google, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Eric and Wendy Schmidt and many others and it takes “a venture capital approach”.
http://newamerica.net/about/funding
It also houses the influential Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget which published the following in September this year: “Still, the idea of a carbon tax or cap-and-trade remains out there as a way to both curb GHGs and raise revenue….Many economists on the left and right advocate taxing more of what is bad and less of what is good, such as taxing carbon or congestion. Policymakers looking to raise revenue may find such taxes palatable alongside a comprehensive reform of the tax code.”
http://crfb.org/blogs/crs-carbon-tax-would-take-chunk-out-deficit
http://crfb.org/about-us
Bradley also serves on the board of the Council on Foreign Relations which is alarmist about CAGW. Its latest report on Doha states: “Delegates by and large remain seized by the challenge of global climate change, which threatens intensifying damages primarily in the future but requires strong action to curb emissions now.”
Another article consisting of interviews includes:”The Doha Conference should be seen as an opportunity for enhancing economic sectors during crises by linking climate-resilient economy and low-carbon development.”
http://www.cfr.org/about/people/board_of_directors.html
The CAGW scare and money are always linked.
Hay.
Wut.
How yew no wichwun uh thim bore holes is caluh…braydid.
Caws this’n’s’uHWuNi’MuHDriLLIN, BoY, now GIT BACK! Git BACK! This heeyur BATTERY DRILL is TOO HEAVY tuh COME OWT HEEYUR & FETCH mor BORE HOLES!
But damn it, we have spent a lot of time and grant money to show what is really happening and nobody seems to want to understand and it is just not right that these deniers keep coming up with more reasons why the stuff we produce is all wrong using facts they say are correct and everything.
/sarc off
How do you know which one is the global warmer? She’s the one telling her friends at lunch she “heard there was more infrared light in the atmosphere, but here’s no way to check, so they are going to talk to people in Africa, and get them to stop having families, until we have the instruments and stuff to find out they shouldn’t be breeding.”
Thanks for your post David M.
One can understand nonsense from Potsdam and all the other scare stories from the usual sources. But what is behind this total corruption of science that prevents any serious challenge from the MSM? I don’t mean the activist scientists and the ‘take us back to the Stone Age’ environmentalists and scientifically challenged politicians but the major players in the world who are below the radar but in control.
I re-read John Costello’s excellent analysis of Climategate today at La Voisier.com and, for any competent reader, scientific or arts educated, the whole CAGW fraud should have been exposed immediately and possible prosecutions should have followed. Yet here we are 3 years later landed with the same energy policies etc which are set to destroy our Western economies.
Please can some of our computer literate rationalists find out the real power behind this scam.
Maurizio ?
I have a question for a specialized, well educated PHd in real science. If carbon and oxygen are the second and fourth most common elements in the universe, or say the planet earth, what then are the:
1. Approximate volume of carbon and oxygen molecules on earth
2. What is the percentage then being realized by coal plants etc.
3. Why does that insignificant amount of release heat the earth
How’s that for inquiring minds?
Thanks for help. I will bet the number of molecules being released by coal plants in relation to the total number is in the order of magnitude of -20 exponentially.
I guess it is anything to sell magazines. Perhaps the Atlantic has begun to employ staff from the National Inquirer. Next they will be seeing the face of some saint in the satellite cloud patterns.
If current warming is “unprecedented”, why do the forest fire records for Vancouver Island show that the climate 6000 years ago was much different in the Pacific Northwest than today? Why was the Pacific Northwest much dryer 6000 years ago? How can today’s climate change be unprecedented, when there was huge climate change long before CO2?
How do we know that human beings don’t owe their very existence to our ability to adapt to past climate change? How do we know that without climate change, the human species would have long ago gone extinct? Does it not seem more likely that if climate did not change, there would be less evolutionary advantage in intelligence? Perhaps the Giant Sloth or the Saber Tooth Tiger would have long ago displaced humans from the planet, had it not been for climate change.
http://cgrg.geog.uvic.ca/abstracts/GavinHoloceneThe.html
Approximately 20% of the sites have not burned for over 6000 years; these are on low fire-susceptibility landforms (i.e., north aspects and low terraces), which burned mainly in the early Holocene.
David Larsen says:
November 28, 2012 at 5:03 pm
If carbon and oxygen are the second and fourth most common elements in the universe, or say the planet earth, what then are the:
================
FACT: By weight Human Beings are 66% carbon pollution:
http://chemistry.about.com/cs/howthingswork/f/blabundant.htm
The most abundant element in the human body is oxygen, making up about 65% of the weight of each person. Carbon is the second more abundant element, making up 18% of the body.
the math:
C = 12 molecular weight
O = 16 molecular weight
C=18% by weight
O2=36%/12*18 = 48% by weight
CO2 = 18% + 48% = 66% by weight.
While a lot of people are making fun of what looks like them to completely incompetent science, I see the World Bank entering the debate in the manner they have as one of the most alarming changes to world politics regarding CAGW that we have seen since Kyoto itself.
Ask yourself: Why would the World Bank commission such a study? For what purpose is the World Bank suddenly studying climate when we supposedly already have a world body doing that, namely the United Nations IPCC?
By positioning itself as an authority on climate change, the World Bank can eliminate and additional discussion of the science. When the World Bank meets with the finance ministers of major governments and presents their “science”, do you think that a room full of financial experts are even going to start questioning the science?
Why do you think that the IPCC was not invited to Doha?
They’re irrelevant, that’s why. The purpose of the World Bank is:
“The World Bank’s official goal is the reduction of poverty. According to the World Bank’s Articles of Agreement (as amended effective 16 February 1989), all of its decisions must be guided by a commitment to promote foreign investment, international trade, and facilitate capital investment.”
And what is the goal of the CAGW movement (the REAL goal)?
********************************
“One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”
~ Ottmar Edenhofer, Co-Chair, UN/IPCC WG-3
*******************************
Read the World Bank’s mission statement again in the context of that quote. What better venue to advance the cause than a room full of the most powerful financial decision makers on the planet, and not an engineer or physicist among them. No one to call bullsh*t on the World Bank’s bullsh*t. The game now is to achieve the massive transfer of wealth that the World Bank and the IPCC envisioned, but behind the closed doors of meetings of the world’s financial leaders.
This is a dangerous turn of events. Doha is now just a side show, the real game is elsewhere.
Fortunately China will tell them in no uncertain terms to go to h*ll and Russia also. Japan and Canada are very likely to stick to their positions that if countries like China and Russia aren’t going to do their fair share, then neither will they, and so the dominoes shall fall in a row with any luck at all.
If at some point you Americans wake up and retake your long worn mantle as leader of the free world, I for one would appreciate it. I’m just not comfortable with all that stands between the naked power grab of the World Bank and the UN/IPCC being China and Russia.
RSB says:
November 28, 2012 at 1:22 pm
When will people learn that global warming is inversely proportional to the number of pirates? I have graphs. Won’t anyone think of the children and start a trade school for pirates to help stop global warming?
=====================================================================
I think you’ve got it wrong. The warming stopped 15 or so years ago yet the number of pirates promoting it has increased.
Add this to the list of pre-CAGW fires:
Star Date ‘Black Sunday’, September 24th, 1950
The afternoon sky hazed-over, the sun turned red, and the sky went dark as night. We lived in western Pennsylvania about 65 miles NNE of Pittsburgh, PA. Cousin Ethel (now age 94) was so taken by the darkening sky that she saved newspaper clippings in daughter Pat’s baby book. With the scant details from those, finding additional information via the “web” is quite easy. Our dark-sky/red-sun event was caused by a number of large fires in northern B.C. and Alberta, 2,000 miles to the west (& north). Scars show on satellite images today.
Another tale:
http://the-red-thread.net/dark-day.html
Search with: Alberta fires 1950; one of many hits
http://www.canada.com/news/1950+monster+fire+burned+into+history/4823685/story.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Good post, David – Thanks!
You’re right:
I can see Jesus in that Wildfire graphic.
Or maybe it’s Charles Manson…
Dear David
I’ve asked many CAGW people to explain me the missing heat from CO2 (from their quack theory) according to Figure 5 above.
The problem I have with this is, that pre-holocene CO2 values were at ~180 ppm (Vostok ice core) increasing to ~280 ppm at the holocene optimum ~8000 years ago, “causing” a warming of ~20 degC [Fig. 5] (Vostok ~9 degC) by a deltaCO2 of ~100 ppm.
My question to CAGW people was:
If an increase of 100 ppm CO2 at the beginning of the holocene caused such a huge temperature increase of ~20 degC (~9 degC), then where the hell is the missing increase in temperature nowadays with another CO2 increase of ~110 ppm from preindustrial 280 ppm to 390 ppm?
Aren’t there some 20 degC missing? At least 10 degC… or 5 degC?
Until today none of them was able to answer my question.
Thanks for your article and your attention.
davidmhoffer says:
November 28, 2012 at 6:09 pm
“If at some point you Americans wake up and retake your long worn mantle as leader of the free world, I for one would appreciate it. I’m just not comfortable with all that stands between the naked power grab of the World Bank and the UN/IPCC being China and Russia.”
====================
“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.”
Winston Churchill
———-
We will, and God help those that doubt it.
davidmhoffer says:
November 28, 2012 at 6:09 pm
It is a creeping takeover by ideologues and unelected bureaucrats, who being generally constrained in democracies have turned to unelected world bodies.
Jim G says:
November 28, 2012 at 1:38 pm
It seems obvious that doom sells, newspapers, magazines, TV, movies, it does’nt matter. We need to come up with a doom scenario for too low a CO2 level….
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You can use this paper, it is even from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Kansas. Carbon starvation in glacial trees recovered from the La Brea tar pits, southern California
That should be enought to scare you witless since most of our food plants are C3 like trees.
oldseadog says: @ November 28, 2012 at 2:25 pm
… I’m worried that the World Bank actually believes this rubbish.
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NAH, the World bank has been in on the scam from the start.
Maurice Strong, Chore of the First Earth Summit in 1972 and later Kyoto was a senior World Bank Advisor. Robert Watson works for the World Bank and was Head of IPCC before Patchy. Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after ‘Danish text’ leak: Developing countries react furiously to leaked draft agreement that would hand more power to rich nations, sideline the UN’s negotiating role… The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank
“Against stupidity, the Gods themselves are helpless.”
OT, but is there some strange weather going on in the arctic?
The sea ice page is showing a sharp reversal in sea ice expansion on several of the graphs. Can’t blame warming because it doesn’t much matter if we’re talking -20 or -15, either way the ice should be growing not shrinking. I surmise that something else is happening to shrink it (which ought to be fun to point out to warmists once we know what it is).
oldseadog says:
November 28, 2012 at 2:25 pm
Seriously, where do they find people daft enough to write stuff like that? I’m worried that the World Bank actually believes this rubbish.
This is the tip of the iceberg as far as rubbish that people believe, very sadly.
davidmhoffer says: November 28, 2012 at 8:18 pm
OT, but is there some strange weather going on in the arctic?
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I have been wondering about that myself. I have been doing some research and can only conclude that it is the Doha effect. Also known as the annual COP anomaly.
“About David Middleton
I have been a geoscientist in the evil oil and gas industry for almost 30 years. ”
So David, with such a wealth of experience, why can’t you plot a 100y running mean without getting the result to plot 50y too late? Does not look good while lambasting other for scientific and mathematical illiteracy.
Your Warming Island reconstruction is very informative and would make the point even better if you got your runny means correctly aligned.
u.k.(us) says: “If at some point you Americans wake up and retake your long worn mantle as leader of the free world … We will, and God help those that doubt it.
Good, but get a bloody move on ‘cos you are leaving your run awful late.
“About David Middleton
I have been a geoscientist in the evil oil and gas industry for almost 30 years. ”
The NOAA CEI has no trend (Slope = R-squared = 0.0081).
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/NOAA_CEI.png
So why are you fitting a “linear trend” to data that is anything but linear and has a predominant cyclic nature. Surely someone with your experience knows the result depends on where you start and has no objective meaning.
Is that the best analysis you can offer with 30y of experience ?
What is much more to the point in that graph is that, whatever this index really represents, the longer term changes are correlated to temperature . It is very interesting to note that since 1998 the extreme weather has been reducing notably.
In the context of criticising the Atlantic article, why would this recent reduction in “extreme weather” in the US be “very,very worrying”. Looks like the opposite to me.
We Brits feel left out. What about the fact that we’ve just lived through The Worst Flooding Ever In The History Of Human Civilisation Or At Least For Sixty Years? We’re dooomed too!
Seriously, a good post. The truly terrifying thing is that this rubbish continues to splatter all over the media, misinforming the public, and no scientifically literate correction of it ever appears other than on the better climate websites like this one. It is this complete, unacknowledged disconnect between propaganda and reality which will destroy our civilisation, not AGW.
So much propaganda for Warmistas to peddle …. so little time…
But what’s climate got to do with it? Just 9 days the University of Oslo research suggests number of countries at war will fall from one in six to one in 12 in 2050. It is to be published in the International Studies Quarterly.
I ask you WUWT???
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/the-future-of-war-is-looking-bleak-8344462.html
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-11/20/world-peace-in-2050
The next time someone tells you that water conflicts will increase due to global warming you point them to the evidence that shows water scarcity has triggered mostly resilient peace treaties, even among hostile neighbors. However, never mind the evidence, feel the width of the lies and speculation.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0016-7398.2002.00056.x/abstract;jsessionid=09C0B0B75044DCFA92FDC4FE1455D989.d03t02
There is a direct relationship between the number of televisions globally and the CO2 in the atmosphere. Clearly increasing CO2 cannot cause televisions, so we must assume televisions cause CO2.
We should ban television.
@Jeff Alberts says:
November 28, 2012 at 6:56 pm
“I can see Jesus in that Wildfire graphic.
Or maybe it’s Charles Manson…”
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You need your eyes checked, Jeff. Clearly it’s Elvis.
.
.
The power and money grab via “climate change” is back on. Gotta pay for bread and circuses for the masses somehow.
Arctic permafrost is melting faster than predicted
We may be closer to a major climate TIPPING POINT than we knew. Earth’s permafrost – frozen soil that covers nearly a quarter of the northern hemisphere and traps vast amounts of carbon – may be melting faster than thought and releasing more potent greenhouse gasses.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released a report yesterday reviewing the most up-to-date research on Arctic permafrost. It claims temperature projections due in 2014 from the International Panel on Climate Change are “likely to be biased on the low side” because the IPCC does not take into account the positive feedback cycle of permafrost melting and releasing greenhouse gases.
@ Carter, you forgot to add a /sarc tag to your comment. Seriously, no one with half a brain could believe that pseudoscientific scaremongering nonsense.
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
GGood article. Good references for future reference.
What the hell is the world bank having to do with this when it should have been monitoring the banking to see that didn’t screw up? Mind you looking at the standard of the work here as you say, perhaps if they had their eye on the ball the screw up would have been even bigger.
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The modern climate is virtually identical to the Medieval Warm Period, yet the wildfires seem to be worse and humans may be somewhat responsible (just not in the way Warmists would like)…
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Got alot of warming to go to get to the same conditions in Greenland as they were when the Vikings were living there 1000 yrs ago. So unless some other regional areas are decidedly warmer now than then, that statement prb’ly isn’t true (yet).
That “Wars” chart is clearly showing GOOD NEWS. Total conflicts are down!
You really shouldn’t miss the youtube of Dave Roberts extrapolating a 12 C rise by 2300. Can anyone take seriously a forecast of the earth’s temperature 288 years in the future? This pretty much defies my imagination..
@ Carter. Here are a few WUWT posts on permafrost to ally your concerns:
Dr T G Watkins says:
November 28, 2012 at 4:55 pm
…. Please can some of our computer literate rationalists find out the real power behind this scam.
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Try the Fabian Society and the London School of Economics both founded by the Webbs with the clear intent of remaking the world. The stained-glass window designed by another founding member, George Bernard Shaw, is pretty blunt about the Fabian Society goals. As he is in his political writings.
The Fabian Window was hung at LSE in 2005 at a ceremony over which Tony Blair presided. The window shows beneath the line Remould it nearer to the heart’s desire Shaw and Webb striking the earth with hammers. Behind them is a shield with a wolf in a sheepskin. Under them is the masses kneeling and praying to a stack of books on socialism.
From the New World Encyclopedia: Organizing knowledge for happiness, prosperity and world peace (gag)
WIKI
LSE is a real ‘Good Ole Boys Club’ for world leaders (see the long list at the bottom of the page) even Gaddafi’s son went there. (Tony Blair helped Saif Gaddafi with his PhD thesis.)
Please, someone take my money and save me from global warming! Here, here it is, every last penny, just please don’t let me burn up in the fires!
davidmhoffer says:
November 28, 2012 at 6:09 pm
While a lot of people are making fun of what looks like them to completely incompetent science, I see the World Bank entering the debate in the manner they have as one of the most alarming changes to world politics regarding CAGW that we have seen since Kyoto itself.
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Do not forget Robert Watson worked for the World Bank when he was the IPCC chair.
Ferdberple: Thanks for your response. My question in inquiry is what are the total amounts of carbon and oxygen on the earth and what is the total percentage in relation to total amount being released by coal plants? The ratio of total carbon from coal plants to total carbon and oxygen within and on the earth are on the order of -20 in scientific notation or greater. In other words, the amount released by coal plants, let’s say, is virtually nothing in relation to all the carbon and oxygen already on the earth. In other words, there is no correlation, no greenhouse from some of the most common elements in/on the earth. Not statistics, real math and science.
Just saw a headline that Britain forecast for coldest winter in 100 years. But it must be the warm-cold they are talking about. 😉
davidmhoffer says:
November 28, 2012 at 8:18 pm
OT, but is there some strange weather going on in the arctic?
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SWAG – Ice breakers??? I read somewhere on WUWT recently they were going to try fall/winter passage of the Arctic sea and that means ice breakers.
One wonders how much of the Ice decrease over the last fifty years is thanks to improved ice breaker technology/ship passages. When you think of it there is quite a bit of traffic up there and that usually means breaking up the ice. I can find nothing about the number of trips/ships in the Arctic vs time.
map of Arctic shipping routes
Sort of like the disease blamed on CAGW that was caused by the biologist studying the (Frogs?)
MonktonofOz says:
November 28, 2012 at 11:16 pm
u.k.(us) says: “If at some point you Americans wake up and retake your long worn mantle as leader of the free world … We will, and God help those that doubt it.
Good, but get a bloody move on ‘cos you are leaving your run awful late.
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Most countries do a crash and burn after 200 years or so (the parasites become to much of a burden). The USA is over 200 years old….
petermue says:
November 28, 2012 at 7:02 pm
My question to CAGW people was: If an increase of 100 ppm CO2 at the beginning of the holocene caused such a huge temperature increase of ~20 degC (~9 degC), then where the hell is the missing increase in temperature nowadays with another CO2 increase of ~110 ppm from preindustrial 280 ppm to 390 ppm? Aren’t there some 20 degC missing? At least 10 degC… or 5 degC?
Until today none of them was able to answer my question.
Did one of them answer it today? Maybe I’m overlooking something, but I don’t see it. Anyway, I’ll give you an answer, even though I’m a skeptic.
Scientists do not claim that the temperature increase from the bottom of the Younger Dryas was caused by an increase of CO2. They claim that the Younger Dryas was caused by something special. Last I looked, the cause or causes were still in dispute. One of the contenders was an asteroid strike.
You say “CAGW people” rather than “scientists,” so you dodge the accusation of supposing that scientists are stupid. Too bad, I strongly suspect you deserve it. I’m not aware of any CAGW people who make the claim you think they make.
Gail Combs says:
November 29, 2012 at 9:08 am
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Ah, Bob Watson, more often than not on the BBC, which is too slow to learn and stop the ‘non-substantiated’ journalism.
Only 3 months ago:
“Sir Bob is among the most respected scientists in the world on climate change policy……Prof Sir Bob Watson said that any hope of restricting the average temperature rise to 2C was “out the window” …..He said that the rise could be as high as 5C – with dire consequences. “
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19348194
millions of us pay our license money to be truthfully informed, not to be served the extremist propaganda.
I used the linear regression to demonstrate the lack of a trend. I could have used a polynomial trend line and been criticized for over-fitting.
I would have thought that the notation of the similarity of the early to the late 20th century, in terms of climatic extremes did demonstrate the cyclical nature.
Chalk that up to expediency. Plotting a 100-yr moving average trend line takes less time than calculating a centered rolling average.
This is why.
This is why we fight,
and when we die,
we will die with our arms unbound.
This is why.
From “This is why we fight” by the Decemberists
Lots and lots of proxy and partial but “alarming” change here – but where are the global temp data? Where are the satellite measurements? – data that actually test the correlation of CO2 rise and temperatures? Why is this elementary hypothesis test missing? Hmmmmm?
Another inconvenient Truth, perhaps?
Gail Combs says: Most countries do a crash and burn after 200 years or so (the parasites become to much of a burden). The USA is over 200 years old….
My morning coffee suddenly tastes bitter. If we take GC’s comment and stir in Margaret Thatcher’s “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money” and add fiscal cliffs they all both bring us to some nearby point in history.
For proof that the USA and Europe are both in financial messes thanks to incompetent, bureaucratic and weak management look at the GDP vs. spending figures where the US is only two positions “better” than acknowledged basket case Greece. When a visiting communist businessman criticises the EU as being “too socialist” you know our western so-called leaders have failed their trusting citizens.
Official from WUWT, northern hemispheric temperatures are precedented in the last 2000 years:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/Ljungqvist_HadCRUT3.png
This winter could be Britain’s “coldest winter in 100 years”: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/9710681/Britain-prepares-for-ice-and-snow-in-cold-snap.html
But, The Great Freeze of ’63” 49 years ago was the coldest since 1740, meaning this coming winter could be the coldest not just in 100 years, but in 272 years. Must be “climate confusion”, I guess.
Very “precedented” according to Christiansen and Ljungqvist, 2012
For those that wonder why the World Bank is throwing its hat in the ring I have a theory and its very conspiratorial so I like it a lot. As people may have noticed coming off the gold standard to a totally unbacked print at will currency has been a disaster for the world.
I believe that in the coming years we will have a global currency (of some sort) but backed up by allowance to release carbon. Carbon is a lot more abundant than gold so I expect that we will all be very rich soon – sarc