FoS CliSci Summary

Climate Science Newsletter

Crowd sourcing

A unique effort to assemble a large number of paleo-temperature graphs on all time scales was made earlier on the WUWT Paleoclimate Reference Page and is now continuing with a recent posting (March 30th).

—————————

Fixing the Marcott mess

Recent issues of CliSci have dealt with the Marcott-Shakun 2013 paper in Science which was attempting to revive the Mann hockeystick just in time for the deadline for papers in AR5. There are so many things wrong with the methods and data handling of this paper that Roger Pielke Jr judges that it   “appears to skirt awfully close to crossing the line into research misconduct, as defined by the NRC.”

* On Roger Pielke Jr’s blog he analyses the missteps by the authors and suggests some remedies.

Further developments on Real Climate (Gavin Schmidt) and on ClimateAudit (Steve McIntyre) are covered HERE .

FromWUWT April 2nd:

* Steve McIntyre explores this question along with the bigger question about the core top redating which created the Marcottian uptick:

Q. Why did RealClimate publish the Marcott FAQ on Easter Sunday?

A. Because if they’d waited until Monday, everyone would have thought it was an April Fools’ joke.

——  The Marcott spike, proxy data and resolution issues

WUWT reader Nancy Green (not our Canadian ski racer/Senator) discusses in a post the interesting observation that the Marcott late 20th century warming spike in the high resolution period of modern observations can not be compared with the absence of such spikes in the low resolution data of the Holocene.

She writes:  “Marcott tells us almost nothing about how the past compares with today, because of the resolution problem. Marcott recognizes this in their FAQ. The probability function is specific to the resolution. Thus, you cannot infer the probability function for a high resolution series from a low resolution series, because you cannot infer a high resolution signal from a low resolution signal. The result is nonsense.”

—— “Warmist” blogger  Grant Foster ( aka Tamino) picks up more high spikes in his aria *

Does he actually agree or disagree with Marcott?  For anyone still interested, the plot thickens on Nancy Green’s post of April 7th.

* The Magic Flute”, Act 1, but Nancy’s Pamina does not consent

————————

Solar Cycle Update

The latest update on SC 24  is at <http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/ssn_predict_l.gif>

————————

“It’s getting colder, because it’s getting warmer”

You may have read about this piece of twisted logic that attempts to explain the harsh winter of 2013 to Europeans. Both British and German Warmist academics are making these explanations in the press and Germany’s PIK says: “The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research now sees the harsh winters as being a consequence of global warming, which now causes icy winds in the Arctic to find their way unobstructed to Europe because of climate change.”

Pierre Gosselin in his NoTricksZone blog reviews the claim and provides some counter arguments.

———————

On Thin Ice

Arctic Ice cover also gets some attention from Dr Tim Ball, in one of the regular monographs on his website, entitled “Thinning Arctic Ice; More Al Gore Aided and Abetted Misinformation?”.  Starting off by exploring the salesmanship methods of Al Gore’s campaign of misinformation, building on the preconceptions held by an uninformed public, the piece develops into a good overview of the history of sea ice measurement and of the forces that govern its development in thickness and areal extent. Suffice it to say that the only mention of CO2 is in connection to AlGore.

————-

A wind-driven Arctic Sea ice reduction

Piers Corbyn provides an annotated  Arctic Sea ice graph which puts a different light on the media stories of the past winter.

———————

Dr Benny Peiser to address 10th Annual Friends of Science Luncheon

Benny Peiser is well known to sceptics worldwide for his regular CCNet compendium of Climate News, now incorporated into the structure of the Global Warming Policy Foundation of which he is a Director.  He will address FoS’  Tenth Annual Luncheon on May 14th with the topic “To Eat or Heat: Europe’s Policy Fiasco”,  in Calgary’s Metropolitan Conference Centre.

Here’s the full announcement with a Ticket Order Form on Page Two:

<http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FoS_Luncheon_2013.pdf>

Benny says of his Canadian visit: “My main aim is to warn Canadians about the European fiasco and its disastrous economic and social consequences.”  In view of the continuing counterproductive subsidies, taxes, carbon trading and alternative energy schemes still practised (and even newly proposed) in various parts of this country, his message is as topical as it was years ago.  In the UK and Germany the consequences have been proven dire and have indeed led to situations of energy poverty: Eat or Heat.

————-

ICSC video on Oil Sands facts, presumed Climate consequences and Keystone XL

On WUWT, Tom Harris of the International Climate Science Coalition has written a post under the title “Smart messaging needed to avoid pipeline lobbying failure” to highlight the  climate aspects of oil sand development as they are misused by opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline project. He takes aim at the wobbly position of the Alberta Government (through its NYT ad) that refuses to come clean on the climate/CO2 issue, thereby inflicting unnecessary damage on its own argument.

The post includes a link to his 15 minute video on the subject.

The Alberta government has repeatedly said that it takes its climate science from the authoritative IPCC and not from any independent dissenters. It is shooting itself in the foot by doing so.

Breaking News:  Following on the heels of Premier Redford’s April 9th trip to Washington, the ICSC issued this media release.

afj~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Previous issues of CliSci are at http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=562