Watts Up With That?

Pen Hadow extracts drill from an ice hole in this undated photo. Source: Catlin expedition first report

Note: One of the many integrity issues with Catlin is that none of their photos can be dated. Even embedded EXIF information (including date/time done by most digital cameras in use today) has been removed from gallery photos on the website. For all we know this photo above they included in their just released report could have been taken during training. The high photographic angle suggests the photographer was standing on something, but what? Further, no raw data is offered in their first report, we are expected to take it on faith I suppose. Given their admittedly fraudulent biometric readings, and lack of candor on their ice radar, how can we trust anything they publish? So far for a “science” mission I remain unimpressed with the effort or the transparency. – Anthony

Catlin Report Confirms that Satellite Data is Accurate

Catlin just came out with their first ice report (PDF)

The ice thickness measurements that Pen and the team have been able to phone in imply that they are travelling over predominantly thick first‐year ice. Satellite imagery of the area, especially passive microwave imagery (e.g. AMSR and QuikScat data), indicates the area is indeed covered primarily with first‐year ice and a scattering of multi‐year ice floes.

The report summary is :

The results collected in the first month of the Catlin Arctic Survey point to an unexpected lack of thicker Multiyear Ice. Read the rest of this entry »

A guest post by John Coleman, founder of The Weather Channel, and Chief Meteorologist of KUSI-TV in San Diego. See his previous challenge published here called “An Open Letter to Environmentalists“

Note from Anthony: I know John from way back. He’s a true pioneer in meteorology. I shared a table with him and Joe D’Aleo at the ICCC in New York in March, and I was there when you made his now famous challenge to Al Gore. Here he makes another. One of the biggest issue in my mind (that John touches on indirectly) is the logarithmic effect of CO2. Yes is causes warming, but beyond a point it’s effect diminishes.

Even Gavin Schmidt (NASA GISS) admits the amount of forcing in the 20th century due to CO2 is uncertain:

“One such question is the percentage of 20th Century warming that can be attributed to CO₂ increases. This appears straightforward, but it might be rather surprising to readers that this has neither an obvious definition, nor a precise answer. I will therefore try to explain why.”

[he goes on to cite modeling, forcings etc. here]

“In summary, I hope I’ve shown that there is too much ambiguity in any exact percentage attribution for it to be particularly relevant, though I don’t suppose that will stop it being discussed.”

In my mind, if you can’t quantify it, either by first order principles, by measurement, or by modeling, then saying “there’s too much ambiguity for it to be relevant” certainly does not help the argument. To imply then that we understand the atmosphere well enough to model the outcome and to publish scenarios that predict the future of global temperature based on CO2 level in our atmosphere, certainly then would be, “derived ambiguity”.

Global Warming and the Price of a Gallon of Gas
by John Coleman

You may want to give credit where credit is due to Al Gore and his global warming campaign the next time you fill your car with gasoline, because there is a direct connection between Global Warming and four dollar a gallon gas. 

It is shocking, but true, to learn that the entire Global Warming frenzy is based on the environmentalist’s attack on fossil fuels, particularly gasoline.  All this big time science, international meetings, thick research papers, dire threats for the future; all of it, comes down to their claim that the carbon dioxide in the exhaust from your car and in the smoke stacks from our power plants is destroying the climate of planet Earth.  What an amazing fraud; what a scam.

The future of our civilization lies in the balance. 

That’s the battle cry of the High Priest of Global Warming Al Gore and his fellow, agenda driven disciples as they predict a calamitous outcome from anthropogenic global warming.  According to Mr. Gore the polar ice caps will collapse and melt and sea levels will rise 20 feet inundating the coastal cities making 100 million of us refugees.  Vice President Gore tells us numerous Pacific islands will be totally submerged and uninhabitable.  He tells us global warming will disrupt the circulation of the ocean waters, dramatically changing climates, throwing the world food supply into chaos. He tells us global warming will turn hurricanes into super storms, produce droughts, wipe out the polar bears and result in bleaching of coral reefs. He tells us tropical diseases will spread to mid latitudes and heat waves will kill tens of thousands.  He preaches to us that we must change our lives and eliminate fossil fuels or face the dire consequences. 

The future of our civilization is in the balance.

With a preacher’s zeal, Mr. Gore sets out to strike terror into us and our children and make us feel we are all complicit in the potential demise of the planet.

Here is my rebuttal.
Read the rest of this entry »

From Slashdot.org The Wall Street Journal has a sobering piece describing the research of
medical scholar John Ioannidis, who showed that in many peer-reviewed research
papers ‘most
published research findings are wrong.’ The article continues: ‘These flawed
findings, for the most part, stem not from fraud or formal misconduct, but from
more mundane misbehavior: miscalculation, poor study design or self-serving data
analysis. [...] To root out mistakes, scientists rely on each other to be
vigilant. Even so, findings too rarely are checked by others or independently
replicated. Retractions, while more common, are still relatively infrequent.
Findings that have been refuted can linger in the scientific literature for
years to be cited unwittingly by other researchers, compounding the errors.’