Hansen unhinged on G-8 failure – “Waxman-Markey bill, a monstrous absurdity”

9 07 2009

From the Huffington Post, Dr. Hansen is more than a little upset over the failure of G-8 to produce any meaningful CO2 cuts. Once again he tries to take the “representing himself as a private citizen” tact while at the same time citing his NASA credentials.

I call BS on that. His opinion would not be sought if he were not a NASA climate scientist. He cannot separate himself from NASA and climate science and the policy springing from it any more that President Obama could write an essay now as a private citizen.  Further, Jim, you started it in 1988 with your address before congress. Don’t insult our intelligence by saying you have been acting as a private citizen either then or now.

That being said, we do agree on one thing: “the Waxman-Markey bill, a monstrous absurdity” – Anthony Watts

Dr. James Hansen

Dr. James Hansen

Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies Posted: July 9, 2009 10:33 AM

G-8 Failure Reflects U.S. Failure on Climate Change

Jim Hansen is director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, but he writes on this policy-related topic as a private citizen.

It didn’t take long for the counterfeit climate bill known as Waxman-Markey to push back against President Obama’s agenda. As the president was arriving in Italy for his first Group of Eight summit, the New York Times was reporting that efforts to close ranks on global warming between the G-8 and the emerging economies had already tanked:

The world’s major industrial nations and emerging powers failed to agree Wednesday on significant cuts in heat-trapping gases by 2050, unraveling an effort to build a global consensus to fight climate change, according to people following the talks.

Of course, emission targets in 2050 have limited practical meaning — present leaders will be dead or doddering by then — so these differences may be patched up. The important point is that other nations are unlikely to make real concessions on emissions if the United States is not addressing the climate matter seriously. Read the rest of this entry »





G-8 Summit drops CO2 targets, keeps 2 degree temperature goal

8 07 2009

Legislating temperature limits to 2°C will surely be more effective than legislating alcohol. Right?

Prohibition Repeal Poster

Developing Nations Rebuff G-8 on Curbing Pollutants

By PETER BAKER New York Times

L’AQUILA, Italy — The world’s major industrial nations and newly emerging powers failed to agree Wednesday on specific cuts in heat-trapping gases by 2050, undercutting an effort to build a global consensus to fight climate change, according to people following the talks.

As President Obama arrived for three days of meetings, negotiators for the world’s 17 leading polluters dropped a proposal to cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by mid-century, and emissions from the most advanced economies by 80 percent. But both the G-8 and the developing countries agreed to set a goal of stopping world temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels. Read the rest of this entry »





Greenpeace defaces Mount Rushmore

8 07 2009

More civil disobedience and vandalism along the thinking of Dr. James Hansen of NASA GISS, who advocates such things.

From Ecorazzi and Treehugger

greenpeace

Greenpeace took a unique approach today and sent several climbers up Mt. Rushmore in the middle of the night to deploy a giant 75lb sixty-five feet high by thirty-five feet wide banner calling for Climate Action. Featuring an unfinished portrait of the President, it read “America honors leaders not politicians: Stop Global Warming.” The demonstration came as President Obama meets other G8 leaders in l’Aquila, Italy today to discuss the global warming crisis in the lead-up to UN climate treaty negotiations in Copenhagen this December.

The banner managed to stay up on Mt. Rushmore for about an hour before being cut at around 1:17 PM est. Greenpeace was quick to point out that they respect American monuments and the banner was not installed in any way detrimental to the carvings on Mt. Rushmore. For more information, jump to the official Greenpeace posting on the event here. Read the rest of this entry »





The Medieval Warm Period linked to the success of Machu Picchu, Inca Empire

8 07 2009

According to Wikipedia,  the Medieval Warm Period was a time of warm weather around AD 800-1300 during the European Medieval period. Initial research on the MWP and the following Little Ice Age (LIA) was largely done in Europe, where the phenomenon was most obvious and clearly documented. It was initially believed that the temperature changes were global. However, this view has been questioned; the 2001 IPCC report summarises this research, saying

“…current evidence does not support globally synchronous periods of anomalous cold or warmth over this time frame, and the conventional terms of ‘Little Ice Age’ and ‘Medieval Warm Period’ appear to have limited utility in describing trends in hemispheric or global mean temperature changes in past centuries”.

Of course, there’s many researchers, such as Michael Mann and his thoroughly discredited “hockey stick”  that  try mightily to make the MWP disappear.

MWP-hockey-warming_graph

News flash to IPCC.  Now a scientist has linked the MWP to success of the Inca civilization in the southern hemisphere. It is not going away any time soon, it is spreading.

The new study is called “Putting the Rise of the Inca within a Climatic and Land Management Context” and was prepared by Alex Chepstow-Lusty, an English paleo-biologist working for the French Institute of Andean Studies, in Lima. Link to paper (PDF) is here (h/t to WUWT reader Corey)

Here is the abstract:

The rapid expansion of the Inca from the Cuzco area of highland Peru produced the largest empire in the New World between ca. AD 1400–1532. Although this meteoric rise may in part be due to the adoption of innovative societal strategies, supported by a large labour  force and standing army, we argue that this would not have been possible without increased crop productivity, which was linked to more favourable climatic conditions. A multi-proxy, high-resolution 1200-year lake sediment record was analysed at Marcacocha, 12 km north of Ollantaytambo, in the heartland of the Inca Empire. This record reveals a period of sustained aridity that began from AD 880,  followed by increased warming from AD 1100 that lasted beyond the arrival of the Spanish in AD 1532. These increasingly warmer conditions allowed the Inca and their predecessors the opportunity to exploit higher altitudes from AD 1150, by constructing agricultural terraces that employed glacial-fed irrigation, in combination with deliberate agroforestry techniques. There may be some important lessons to be learnt today from these strategies for sustainable rural development in the Andes in the light of future climate uncertainty.

Here is a news article about it that talks of the findings. (h/t to WUWT reader “cotwome”) - Anthony

Huayna Picchu towers above the ruins of Machu Picchu

Opportunity knocks, again, in the Andes

by Nicholas Asheshov
The last time global warming came to the Andes it produced the Inca Empire.  A team of English and U.S. scientists has analyzed pollen, seeds and isotopes in core samples taken from the deep mud of a small lake not far from Machu Picchu and their report says that “the success of the Inca was underpinned by a period of warming that lasted more than four centuries.”

The four centuries coincided directly with the rise of this startling, hyper-productive culture that at its zenith was bigger than the Ming Dynasty China and the Ottoman Emachu_picchu_globempire, the two most powerful contemporaries of the Inca.

“This period of increased temperatures,” the scientists say, “allowed the Inca and their predecessors to expand, from AD 1150 onwards, their agricultural zones by moving up the mountains to build a massive system of terraces fed frequently by glacial water, as well as planting trees to reduce erosion and increase soil fertility. Read the rest of this entry »





Climate projections: Past performance no guarantee of future skill?

7 07 2009

crystal_ball2

Forecasting accuracy of Global Climate Models is something that has been at the very heart of the global warming debate for some time. Leif Svalgaard turned me on to this paper in GRL today:

Reifen, C., and R. Toumi (2009), Climate projections: Past performance no guarantee of future skill?, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L13704, doi:10.1029/2009GL038082.

PDF available here

It makes a very interesting point about the “stationarity” of climate feedback strengths. In a nutshell, it says that climate models break down after a time because both forcings and feedbacks don’t remain static, and the program can’t predict such changes.

Gavin Schmidt of NASA GISS says something similar in a recent interview:

The problem with climate prediction and projections going out to 2030 and 2050 is that we don’t anticipate that they can be tested in the way you can test a weather forecast. It takes about 20 years to evaluate because there is so much unforced variability in the system which we can’t predict — the chaotic component of the climate system — which is not predictable beyond two weeks, even theoretically. That is something that we can’t really get a handle on.

From Edge: THE PHYSICS THAT WE KNOW: A Conversation With Gavin Schmidt [with video]

Some excerpts from the paper: Read the rest of this entry »





Gore and Nazis

7 07 2009

Gore / Nazis – two words I thought I’d never see together, and never wanted to. Yet here it is in a story in the Times Online. Surprisingly, Hollywood has been exploiting this linkage for years. I suppose the appearance of a proof of Godwins Law was inevitable, given how long the global warming discussion and Gore have gone on.

Does anyone else besides me get the impression that Al Gore is really reaching now? At the end of this post, Mr. Gore listed only two possible future questions, I’m sure our readers can fill in some of the missing ones. – Anthony

Addendum: I wonder, did Gore get paid for this speaking engagement “sponsored by The Times” and if so, is The Times responsible for creating this “news” where there would be none otherwise?  – Anthony

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE:
Times_Gore-Nazi-headlineTimes_Gore-switched-headlineGore-nazi-thetimes-before-after
The Times : before and after – click for larger images – thanks to Kate for the 3rd one

Apparently reacting to criticism, The Times has changed the title of the article to remove the word Nazi, and the title takes an entirely different meaning. See the before and after screencaps above. (thanks to Bishop Hill) There is no mention of why. But they forgot to change the base HTML which still has the original title.Times_Gore-Nazi-html-source

At right  is The Times story headline now and the HTML source of the page showing the original title intact. Click thumbnails.

Here below is my original link to the story, unchanged:

Al Gore likens fight against climate change to battle with Nazis

Al Gore at The Times World Forum On Enterprise & The Environment at Keble College, Oxford

by:  Ben Webster, Environment Editor and Robin Pagnamenta, Energy Editor

Al Gore today compared the battle against climate change with the struggle against the Nazis.The former US Vice President said the world lacked the political will to act and invoked the spirit of Winston Churchill by encouraging leaders to unite their nations to fight climate change.

He also accused politicians around the world of exploiting ignorance about the dangers of global warming to avoid difficult decisions.

Speaking in Oxford at the Smith School World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment, sponsored by The Times, Mr Gore said: “Winston Churchill aroused this nation in heroic fashion to save civilisation in World War II.” Read the rest of this entry »





UAH global temperature anomaly – hitting the slopes

7 07 2009

Mathematician Luboš Motl takes on the new UAH data (source here) and some current thinking about slopes in global climate by adding his own perspective and analysis. Be sure to visit his blog and leave some comments for him – Anthony

UAH: June 2009: anomaly near zero

Global mean temperature according to UAH MSU for the first 8.5 years i.e. 102 months of this century. Linear regression gives a cooling trend by a hefty -1.45 °C per century in this interval. So if someone tells you that the trend is "of course" positive as long as we omit the year 1998, you may be very certain that he or she is not telling you the truth.

UAH MSU has officially released their June 2009 data. This time, they’re faster than RSS MSU. The anomaly was +0.001 °C, meaning that the global temperature was essentially equal to the average June temperature since 1979. June 2009 actually belonged to the cooler half of the Junes since 1979.

Global warming is supposed to exist and to be bad. Sometimes, we hear that global warming causes cooling. In this case, global warming causes global averageness. In all three cases, it is bad news. The three main enemies of environmentalism are warm weather, cool weather, and average weather. Read the rest of this entry »





UAH Global Temperature Anomaly for June 09 ~ ZERO

3 07 2009

[Updated] UAH, straight from the source, Dr. Roy Spencer who announced it on his blog today.

The was a lot of speculation last year that our global temperature would recover from the huge drops last spring. While there has been some recovery, the overall global temperature trend since 1999 has been the subject of much debate. What is not debatable is that the current global temperature anomaly, as determined by a leading authority on global satellite temperature measurements, says we have no departure from “normal” this month. Given the U.S. Senate is about to vote upon the most complex and costly plan to regulate greenhouse gases, while the EPA suppresses earlier versions of the chart shown below from a senior analyst, this should give some pause to those who are rational thinkers. For those that see only dogma, I expect this will be greeted with jeers. – Anthony

Click for larger image

June 2009 Global Temperature Anomaly Update: 0.00 deg. C

Dr. Roy Spencer

July 3rd, 2009

YR MON GLOBE   NH   SH   TROPICS
2009   1   0.304   0.443   0.165   -0.036
2009   2   0.347   0.678   0.016   0.051
2009   3   0.206   0.310   0.103   -0.149
2009   4   0.090   0.124   0.056   -0.014
2009   5   0.045   0.046   0.044   -0.166
2009   6   0.001   0.032   -0.030   -0.003

1979-2009 Graph (Spencer) Read the rest of this entry »





Bubkes II – RC’s “rush hour”

2 07 2009

Like Waxman-Markey, where 300+ pages get added at 3:09AM that nobody has time to read or fully evaluate, Real Climate gets on the “hurry up bandwagon” in regards to climate change perception. Dr. Pielke takes them to task again. I ask “What’s the rush?” – Anthony

With sincere apologies to "Big Daddy" Roth

With sincere apologies to "Big Daddy" Roth

Response By Roger A. Pielke Sr. To The Real Climate Weblog “More Bubkes”

Filed under: Climate Science Misconceptions, Climate Science Reporting — Roger Pielke Sr. @ 9:11 am

Real Climate has posted a response titled “More bubkes” to my weblog of July 30 2009 titled  Real Climate’s Misinformation. First, it is clear they are (deliberately?) misinterpreting what I wrote on the weblog. Embedded in the personal attack comments that Real Climate permits be posted, there are several that recognize that the error in the original Real Climate post was their statement

Some aspects of climate change are progressing faster than was expected a few years ago”.

As I documented in my weblog of June 30 2009, their statement is clearly and documentably false (and is not a “wild allegation”).

They present a set of observational evidence regarding the longer term trends, and I have no disagreement with them on this. Indeed, in the past I posted a weblog that supported the retrospective skill of the GISS model in simulating upper ocean heat content increases at least until the last few years;

Comparison of Model and Observations Of Upper Ocean Heat Content.

I wrote in that weblog Read the rest of this entry »





Message in the CLOUD for Warmists: The end is near?

1 07 2009

You’ve probably all heard of Svensmark and the Galactic Cosmic Ray (GCR) to cloud cover modulation theory by now. Lot’s of warmists say it is “discredited”. However, CERN in Switzerland isn’t following that thinking, and after getting some encouraging results in the CLOUD06 experiment, they have funded a much larger and more comprehensive CLOUD09 experiment. I figure if it is “discredited”, a bunch of smart guys and gals like CERN wouldn’t be ramping up the investigation. There’s also word now of a new correlation:

Kirkby_slide_siberianclimate

Correlation recently reported between solar/GCR variability and temperature in Siberia from glacial ice core, 30 yr lag (ie. ocean currents may be part of response)

I get so many tips now it is hard to choose, but this one is a gem. If you look at nothing else this month, please take the time to download the slide show from CERN’s Jasper Kirkby at the end of this article.

He does a superb job of tying it all together. I found Kirkby’s slide show quite interesting, and I’ve grabbed some slides for our WUWT readers. He proposes a GCR to cloud droplet mechanism, which to me, makes sense meteorologically. He also touches on the possibility that the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) may have been shifted due to GCR modulation during the LIA/Maunder Minimum. This ties in with Willis Eschenbach’s theories of the ITCZ being a “thermostatic mechanism” for the planet with some amplification effects. – Anthony

Norm Potter writes in Tips and Notes for WUWT with this-

The end is near for the warmists, I suspect. This month, Jasper Kirkby of CERN explained the Centre’s CLOUD experiment, which is moving forward:

“The current understanding of climate change in the industrial age is that it is predominantly caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases, with relatively small natural contributions due to solar irradiance and volcanoes. However, palaeoclimatic reconstructions show that the climate has frequently varied on 100-year time scales during the Holocene (last 10 kyr) by amounts comparable to the present warming – and yet the mechanism or mechanisms are not understood. Some of these reconstructions show clear associations with solar variability, which is recorded in the light radio-isotope archives that measure past variations of cosmic ray intensity. However, despite the increasing evidence of its importance, solar-climate variability is likely to remain controversial until a physical mechanism is established.

“Estimated changes of solar irradiance on these time scales appear to be too small to account for the climate observations. This raises the question of whether cosmic rays may directly affect the climate, providing an effective indirect solar forcing mechanism. Indeed recent satellite observations – although disputed – suggest that cosmic rays may affect clouds. This talk presents an overview of the palaeoclimatic evidence for solar/cosmic ray forcing of the climate, and reviews the possible physical mechanisms. These will be investigated in the CLOUD experiment which begins to take data at the CERN PS later this year.”

I found this side on page 29 to be plausible from a meteorological standpoint: Read the rest of this entry »





Tropical Tropospheric Amplification – an invitation to review this new paper

30 06 2009

The Amplification Invitation

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

The ITCZ from space. Source: NASA Earth Observatory. Click for larger image

Tropical: the ITCZ from space. Source: NASA Earth Observatory. Click for larger image

A while ago I started studying the question of the amplification of the tropical tropospheric temperature with respect to the surface. After months of research bore fruit, I started writing a paper. My intention was to have it published in a peer-reviewed journal. I finished the writing about a week ago.

During that time, I also wrote and published The Temperature Hypothesis here on WUWT. This got me to thinking about science, and about how we establish scientific facts. In climate science, the peer review process is badly broken. Among other problems, it is often an “old boy” system where very poor work is waved through. In common with other sciences, turnaround of ideas in journals takes weeks. Under pressure to publish, journals often do only the most cursory examination of the papers.

Upon reflection, I have decided to try a different way to examine the truth content of my paper. This is to invite all of the authors whose work I discuss, and other interested scientists of all stripes, to comment on the paper and on whether they can find any flaws in it. To facilitate the process I have provided all of the code and data that I used to do the analysis.

To make this process work will require cooperation. First, I ask for science and science only. No discussions of motives. No ad homs. No generalizations to larger spheres. No asides. No disrespect, we can be gentlemen and gentlewomen. No comments on politics, CO2, or AGW, no snowball earth. This thread has one purpose only, to establish whether my ideas stand: to either attack and destroy the ideas I put forth in the paper below, or to provide evidence and data to support the ideas I put forth below. Read the rest of this entry »





An Australian look at USHCN: 20th century trend is largely if not entirely an artefact arising from the “corrections”

28 06 2009
click for larger image

click for larger image

From environmentalist Jennifer Marohasy’s blog in Australia, please pay her a visit here – Anthony

There has been criticism of the potential for official weather stations in the USA to record artificially high temperatures because of the changing environments in which they exist, for example, new asphalt, new building or new air conditioning outlets.   Meteorologist, Anthony Watts, has documented evidence of the problem and Canadian academic, Ross McKitrick, has attempted to calculate just how artificially elevated temperatures might be as a consequence.

A reader of this blog, Michael Hammer, recently studied the official data from the US official weather stations and in particular how it is adjusted after it has been collected.   Mr Hammer concludes that the temperature rise profile claimed by the US government is largely if not entirely an artefact of the adjustments applied after the raw data is collected from the weather stations.

Does the US Temperature Record Support Global Warming?
By Michael Hammer

IN the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) collects, analyses and publishes temperature data for the United States.   As part of the analysis process, NOAA applies several adjustments to the raw data.

If we consider, the above graph, which shows, their plot of the raw data  (dark pink) and the adjusted data (pale pink), it is obvious that the adjustments have little impact on data from early in the 20th century but adjust later temperature readings upwards by an increasing amount.  This means that the adjustments will create an apparent warming trend over the 20th century.  [Click on the above chart for a better larger view, this chart can also be viewed at http://cdiac.ornl.gov/epubs/ndp/ushcn/ndp019.html .]

NOAA state that they adjust the raw data for five factors.  The magnitude of the adjustments are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2.  Form of individual corrections applied by NOAA. The black line is the adjustment for time of observation.  The red line is for a change in maximum/minimum thermometers used.  The yellow line is for changes in station siting. The pale blue line is for filling in missing data from individual station records. The purple line is for UHI effects (this correction is now removed).  [Click on the chart for a better larger view or visit the same website as for Figure 1.] Read the rest of this entry »





Source inside EPA confirms claims of science being ignored, suppressed, by top EPA management

25 06 2009

This story is a joint effort between the San Francisco Examiner Environmental Policy blogger Thomas Fuller  and WUWT.

Thomas_Fuller_Examiner

click for the Examiner story

Here is what started it all. An email as part of a package of emails posted as public comment in the EPA endangerment finding by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) who  caught EPA administration red-handed in concealment of internal dissent as well as apparently proceeding with plans in advance of public comment.

From this PDF circulated by CEI, here is the most pertinent email:

McGartland-Carlin-epa-memo

click for a larger image

Yesterday, Thomas Fuller, who writes for the Examiner in San Francisco, noted as many other WUWT readers did, a comment from “anonymous” posted on the WUWT thread “The EPA suppresses dissent and opinion, and apparently decides issues in advance of public comment”

“anonymous” wrote:

Read the rest of this entry »





Eco group calls for volunteers to “Get Arrested with James Hansen to stop MTR!”

22 06 2009

That headline is NOT a typo, that’s what they say:

Arrested_with_Jimbo

Screencap from the website this morning - click for larger image

If there was even any doubt about Hansen changing from scientist to advocate, that doubt is now shattered.

Meanwhile, amazingly, James Hansen has agreed to a debate. Hansen is going to debate with Don Blankenship of Massey coal company. Read the rest of this entry »





The climate science elephant footprint in the room

17 06 2009

Even though written from a biased perspective, with comments such as “raving from a fringe minority”, this article speaks clearly to things like the absurdity of the Catlin Artic Ice Survey. It used tremendous amounts of fuel (and left fuel depots on the ice yet to be retrieved) compared the the simple flyover in a DC-3 by German researchers at the Wegener Institute to measure ice thickness.

Then there’s the new “Deep Black” supercomputer being installed by the UK Met Office that will use 1.2 megawatts of power to run climate models.

That’s enough to power a small city

Yet there’s “no shame” in any of this as long as its being done to “save the earth”. Even though Mr. Brook is on the other side of the argument from me, I’m glad to see I’m not the only one that wonders about these “do as I say, not as I do” things. – Anthony


Ignoring the Elephant in the Room:
The Carbon Footprint of Climate Change Research

by Ryan K. Brook from ARCTIC VOL. 62, NO. 1 (JUNE 2009) P. 253–255

http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic62-2-253.pdf
Despite some ongoing raving from a fringe minority of attention seekers and professional refuters funded by the oil companies, most scientists now accept that climate change is a reality and that human activity is the root cause (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007; Jacques et al., 2008). Many scientists have worked tirelessly to ensure the science is solid, and each new study contributes to understanding the big picture. In all of this, scientists should be immensely proud. Global efforts to convince the general public that climate change is a reality and that our collective actions need to change have been much less successful. Perhaps this failure stems from the misguided notion that climate change is really only an environmental issue, not a social problem. Read the rest of this entry »





Bob Tisdale on NCDC’s USCGRP report

17 06 2009

The USGCRP Report “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States” Fails To Acknowledge the Multiyear Effects of ENSO on Global Temperature

Guest post by Bob Tisdale

The USGCRP report “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States” was released today. Link to report:
http://downloads.globalchange.gov/usimpacts/pdfs/climate-impacts-report.pdf

As noted in the title, it fails to address the multiyear effects of El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events on global temperature.

Other than explosive volcanic eruptions, El Nino-Southern Oscillation events have the greatest impacts on global climate on annual and multiyear bases. The year-to-year global temperature impacts of ENSO events are clearly visible in a comparative time-series graph, Figure 1. Also visible are the overriding effects of the 1982 El Chichon and 1991 Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruptions.
http://i44.tinypic.com/144ag5f.jpg
Figure 1 Read the rest of this entry »