Thursday night, Steve and Ross will be presented with the Julian Simon Memorial Award at CEI’s annual dinner. The dinner will be held on Thursday, June 17, 2010, at the Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.
Let me offer my sincere congratulations to Steve and Ross for their hard work and well deserved award.
There is a by invitation only congressional briefing from noon to 1:30PM that same day. People with interest may be able to attend by contacting Myron Ebell at the email address given below.
Two important figures at the heart of the ClimateGate e-mails, Canadians Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, will provide key information on the remarkable revelations in thousands of e-mails and files that were leaked from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit in November last year.
They will show examples from the e-mails and related sources that reveal a core group of scientists manipulating the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) process in order to keep policymakers in the dark about major uncertainties and problems in climate science. They will also show how the inquiries set up in the aftermath of ClimateGate have been rigged and misdirected so as to whitewash the scandal and protect the climate establishment from genuine external scrutiny.
Much of ClimateGate involves research initially called into doubt by the analysis of Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick. The scientists involved in the scandal saw McIntyre and McKitrick as major threats to global warming orthodoxy and to their own credibility. Consequently, they are mentioned more than 150 times in the ClimateGate e-mails.
McIntyre and McKitrick are most famous for demolishing the infamous “hockey stick”—the graph promoted by the IPCC as proof that global temperatures had been stable for nine hundred years until increasing rapidly in the twentieth century. Their debunking of the hockey stick was confirmed in 2006 by a panel of professionals statisticians convened by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Their exploits have been recounted in a new book by A. W. Montford, The Hockey Stick Illusion, which reads like a detective thriller.
Before laws regulating energy use are enacted that could well cost trillions of dollars, it is crucial to understand the extent to which the alleged scientific consensus supporting global warming alarmism has been discredited by ClimateGate and related scandals. Join us for a discussion featuring two of the people at the center of the storm.
Stephen McIntyre is the editor and founder of Climate Audit, one of the web’s most popular and compelling climate science blogs as well as one of the best sources for expert analysis of the continuing ClimateGate and related scandals. Before becoming interested in the scientific debate over global warming, Mr. McIntyre worked for thirty years in a variety of roles in the minerals exploration business in Canada, including as President of Northwest Exploration Co. Ltd. He holds a B. A. in mathematics from the University of Toronto and earned another degree in philosophy, politics, and economics from Oxford University. Since the hockey stick scandal, Mr. McIntyre has continued to use his statistical expertise to analyze temperature data and has uncovered a number of other significant mistakes in official claims, which have proved highly embarrassing to U. S. government agencies and several leading climate scientists.
Ross McKitrick is Professor of Economics at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada and a Senior Fellow of the Fraser Institute. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia. Professor McKitrick has published a wide range of internationally-recognized studies on the economic analysis of pollution policy, economic growth and air pollution trends, the health effects of air pollution, statistical methods in climatology, the measurement of global warming, and other topics. His 2003 co-authored book, Taken By Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming, won the Donner Prize for the best book on Canadian public policy. His newest book, Economic Analysis of Environmental Policy, will be published later this year. Professor McKitrick’s willingness to question conventional thinking on environmental issues and global warming dogma has had an impact around the world. He has made over 100 invited academic presentations in Canada, the U.S., and Europe, and has testified before the U. S. Congress and the Canadian Parliament.
Myron Ebell
Director, Energy and Global Warming Policy
Competitive Enterprise Institute
1899 L Street, N. W., Twelfth Floor
Washington, D. C., 20036, USA
E-mail: mebell@cei.org
“There is not enough carbon based fuel on the planet to increase the atmospheric concentration of CO2 by a factor of 4!”
+++
“CO2 by a factor of 4!? can you cite me the calculation?”
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Yes.
http://ujdigispace.uj.ac.za:8080/dspace/bitstream/10210/3094/1/Nel%20.pdf
Willem Nel, PhD Thesis, Geography Department, University of Johannesburg. Probably the highest the CO2 level can be elevated is about 540 ppm and that is based on doubling the total discoveries to date of oil, natural gas and coal.
The problem is peak energy, not peak oil. The estimate that the global population will peak in 2050 matches the energy peak. It will fall to its present level about 2100. By then all carbon fuels will have peaked, peak coal coming about 2070 long after peak uranium, oil and gas.
Nel W.P., Cooper C.J. 2009. “Implications of fossil fuel constraints on economic growth and global warming”, Energy Policy, 37(1), pp. 166–180.
Nel, W.P. [D], Cooper, C.J. [L] 2008. “A Critical Review of IEA’s Oil Demand Forecast for China”, Energy Policy, 36(3), pp. 1096-1106.
http://ujlink.uj.ac.za/search~S1?/anel+w/anel+w/1%2C11%2C13%2CB/frameset&FF=anel+willem+p&1%2C1%2C/indexsort=-
Pssst, hey, “C02”: Call the distance traveled on each day D (km), and the time spent on day 1 to travel that distance T (hrs.). On the 2nd day, at half the speed it will take twice as long to travel that same distance, so 2T (hrs.) To get the average speed you add up the total distance to get 2D, and the total time to get 3T, or 2D/3T, or 2/3 x D/T. In this case, we know that T = D/20, because at 20kmh it takes 1 hr. to go 20 k. Now, plug D/20 in in place of T, and you get the average of 2/3 x D/D/20, which = 40/3 kmh =
13 1/3 kmh. Simple algebra, really. Perhaps you didn’t get that far in school.
Congratulations to Ross and Steve… and to us! If it weren’t for these two gentleman, climatism would have utterly triumphed. They demonstrate that the sceintific method, so painfully assembled over 400 years, is still alive.
M&M serve to offset the pollen sniffing rantings of David Suzuki.
Congratulations to M&M, and all the rest contributing over the years!
Now, dont expect any Nobel Peace Price. That price is politicized, and the commitee, filled up with …politicians, seems to sit for 3 years at a time.
Here is the commitee mebers from the period when Al Gore got the price;
All politicians;
Mjøs, Ole Danbolt Christian People’s Party
Furre, Berger Ragnar Socialist Left Party
Five, Kaci Kullman Conservative
Rønbeck, Sissel Labour
Ytterhorn, Inger-Marie Progress Party
But the other Nobels are possible of course!
They are based on merits within Physics, economics, etc, and is in Stockholm, not in Norway.
CO2 says:
June 15, 2010 at 4:02 am
This is hilarious! Coming here to WUWT trying to teach grownups algebra!
And getting it wrong! hohoho!
If you come back, please come as H2O, not CO2. That will give you more credibility.
CO2 says:
June 14, 2010 at 6:24 pm
If you ride a bicycle over a given distance one day at 20 kmh and another day at 10 kmh, your average speed is 7.5 kmh. Did you ride at 7.5 kmh on either day? No you didn’t but the average is still a valid statistical value for use in a different context.
AndiC says:
June 14, 2010 at 7:47 pm
…I know CO2 later corrected that to 15Kmh, but I suspect CO2 belongs to teh hockey-stick statistical society
Isn’t the correct calculation 13.3 Kmh??? Or has my schoolboy math let me down?
CO2 says:
Yes it has; 20+10=30 divide by 2 equals 15. Somewhere you lost 1.7 kmh
Hockey-stick tatistical Society? Quelle imagination. Have you read any of the subsequent debunking of the hockey-stick? Perhaps not, you don’t read opposite arguments, do you? Try for a change, it’s good to have knowledge from both sides.
——
Pardon me Mr C. You say “over a given distance”, presumably the same distance both days. It makes no difference in the result what that distance is, so let us say that it is 20 km. On the first day it takes one hour; on the second it takes two.
Average Speed = (total distance) / (total time) = (20+20)/(10+20) = 40/3 ≈ 13.3 km/hr
Your error is a classic groaner, which I often use in class (I am a professor of mathematics) to illustrate the counterintuitive nature of averaging, even in the simplest cases. This illustrates the importance of mathematical training for anyone pretending to understand climate issues. M&M has proven themselves quite adept in this regard, and have repeatedly caught so-called “climate experts” either fudging the statistics or simply bumbling the math at a grade-school like this. Indeed, there is a pretty good case that global temperature averages, as calculated by CRU, NOAA etc, are simply meaningless in a physical sense — and that is before considering the ridiculous manner in which the process by which they are derived is tampered with to support predetermined conclusions. In my view M&M richly deserve broader recognition than this award, but the CEI’s recognition is worthwhile for its own sake; they are proven contributors toward cutting through climate BS.
As for the earlier business about CEI’s statement about CO2: Check out the science on this. The natural conclusion from literally thousands of peer-reviewed studies on the matter clearly demonstrate that, from the perspective of the biosphere, the current levels of CO2 are TOO LOW. Plant health, crop production, resilience to disease and pests, etc all appear to be optimized, for the majority of plants, somewhere between 800 and 1500 ppm — two to four times as much as the atmosphere holds today. As far as I know the CEI has not “denied” the greenhouse effect but approach it as anyone knowing the basics would: its effect is logarithmic (ie diminishes rapidly as a function of increased CO2), CO2 infrared absorption covers only a tiny part of the spectrum, and its theoretical effect on instrumental readings is tiny — the doom and gloom projections you see rely not on 100 year old established physics about infrared absorption, but upon still unproven hypothetical amplifiers of that effect, which are increasingly being regarded by genuine climate experts as the fictional nonsense that they are.
Smokey says:
“June 15, 2010 at 4:22 am
John A says @3:49 am [ … ],
John A, trenchant comments. Those of us who have followed CA for the past 5 years know of the unflagging effort you have personally put into opposing the cabal of the folks who have both front feet in the government/NGO grant trough. Thanks.”
I, too, wish to recognise John A for all the assistance (and wise comments!) he provided at CA
Ken Hall says:
June 15, 2010 at 2:01 am
“The CO2 produced from burning the methane is pumped into the greenhouses at an atmospheric concentration 4 times greater than what is in the normal outdoor atmosphere. His yield increased 4 fold since he increased the CO2.”
“There is not enough carbon based fuel on the planet to increase the atmospheric concentration of CO2 by a factor of 4!”
“There is no danger of there being too much Anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere.”
“Oh and have you seen the Arctic ice lately? (since 2007) The Antarctic ice is also at record high levels.”
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“The CO2 produced from burning the methane is pumped into the greenhouses at an atmospheric concentration 4 times greater than what is in the normal outdoor atmosphere. His yield increased 4 fold since he increased the CO2.”
I am aware that under experimental conditions increased CO2 helps plant growth. The plants were inside tents, which keeps insects out. Outside, in the open, the situation is different. Insects are even more attracted to certain plants than they normally are causing devastation to the plants. The reason is that the plant produces more of a certain substance that the insects eat.
Your example of a person who uses hyperbaric CO2 under enclosed conditions does not necessarily contradict the pros and cons of increased CO2 mentioned by AGW people.
Even if CO2 were to increase ALL plants growth in open ground it’s benefits would canceled for the following reasons:
1. Increased growth due to increasing a SINGLE substance that plants consume would automatically increase the plants needs for the OTHER substances that it uses such as water and fertilizer or soil fertility. This would create a bottleneck effect that would cancel out any other benefits for plants do not live on CO2 alone.
You cannot assume that will automatically happen in the natural world or can be made to happen in the human domain. You would need more rain then we get now for forests and crops. As far as crops are concerned you cannot substitute insufficient rain water with aquifer waters for long due to the fact that they are being depleted throughout the World including the USA.
2. As far as soil fertility is concerned, it is not going to go up out of thin air in the forests. In croplands you would need more fertilizer to provide the larger more productive plants with the food they need. Artificial fertilizer is made from natural gas and any major increase in its consumption will hasten the arrival of “Peak Gas” (within a century or less?).
These two things, water and fertilizer, are bottlenecks that will prevent growth of plants in the open land assuming that CO2 increases their growth without any unintended ill effects.
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“As for the Sahara? Have you seen the parts of the Sahara that are now turning green with vegetation? That does not get on the news either for some strange reason.”
Since I do believe that CO2 insulates heat in our atmosphere to the degree that physicists have determined it is obvious that expansion in deserts will not be that good for plant growth except for certain types of deserts if cactus turns one on.
As for the Sahara turning green, it is known that 5,000 years ago it was lush with vegetation. The remains of hunter-gatherers have been found there. HOWEVER, When the Sahara was green, large ares below it that were green before as well as today were desert themselves. It is thought that a decrease in temperature turned the Sahara into a desert, not directly of course, but by affecting the rain patterns. If this seems counterintuitive please see the Wikipedia article linked below.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara#Climate_history
FURTHERMORE, the Sahara is EXPANDING SOUTH into what used to be farmland contributing to the famines there and NORTH into the southern fringes of Spain. So, if it is turning green in certain places but expanding in others the obvious conclusion is that the desert IS SHIFTING POSITION, most probably to what it was 5,000 years ago when WARMER TEMPERATURES sucked in moisture from the ocean and created monsoon conditions with cooler rain (see Wikipedia article linked above).
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“There is not enough carbon based fuel on the planet to increase the atmospheric concentration of CO2 by a factor of 4!”
I’m not sure whether there is enough “carbon based fuel” or not but the issue is moot because there is plenty of carbon based BIOMASS to accomplish a fourfold increase and more as well. Then you have the production of Methane in the Siberian thawing permafrost. For an interesting, amusing and very graphic video on the subject of Siberian Methane (as well as Alaskan) please see:
This permafrost melt is due to increased temperatures in Siberia of course.
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“There is no danger of there being too much Anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere.”
Which means what exactly? That CO2, and while we’re at it, Methane has no heat insulating abilities (greenhouse effect)? Why then did Physicists figure out otherwise and did so before Global Warming was an issue?
How about the “The Sun Is Guilty!”. Other than the fact that Astrophysicists know that the fluctuations in the Sun are not enough to create the temperature rises that have been very noticeable since the 1980’s, and definitely not the Ice Ages throughout Geological time, is the fact that increases in the Sun’s energy output would be distributed equally throughout the Earth. Instead, our current situation is that of a concentration of temperature in the Arctic region about three times greater than the rest of the world.
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“Oh and have you seen the Arctic ice lately? (since 2007) The Antarctic ice is also at record high levels.”
That reminds me of the old joke about the drunk who’s looking for his keys at night under the street lamp. Why was he looking there when he lost it somewhere else? Because the light was better.
Have you looked at the Arctic THICKNESS images which indicate a continued reduction in ice thickness since 2007? It actually lost multiyear ice through the WINTER of 2009 (September) to 2010 (March).
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20100406_Figure6.png
Yes, I’m aware about the claims that it is thicker than those Satellite maps project. But there are two points to be made about that.
First, there have been on site explorations by icebreakers and persons walking the ice. The crew of the Amundsen, in September of 2009, reported going through hundreds of miles of 20 inch thick rotten ice until they finally discovered a multiyear ice floe 10 miles wide. Within five minutes it disintegrated before their very eyes as ocean waves pounded it. The satellites cannot determine the state of disintegration of the ice.
Second, the thinning of the Arctic Ice Cap has been steady and consistent ever since the 1980’s with the possible exception of the winter of 2008 to 2009 where it could have been slightly thinner or thicker.
If the submarine data does actually indicate a thicker ice cap at present then it would be interesting to take 30 years of submarine measurements and compare them with the satellite measurements for the same time period. Even if there is a consistent discrepancy between the two, the trends of both should be that of thinning.
I can only smile and smile. With pride for Steve, Ross and all those out there involved. The fingering and smudging of the data now crystal clear for all to see. Thank you.
Bruce Cockburn. Mark Steyn. Doug Flutie (er, oops, the reverse. First American-born player to be inducted into the Canadian Sports Hall of fame). Michael J. Fox. Pamela Anderson. Monty Hall. David Frum. Christopher Plumber. About half the American network news anchors (apparently American Broadcasters feel the Canadian/”midwestern” accent is particularly easy on the ears). Etc. A big chunk of the team of NASA engineers behind the Apollo project (who were acquired when the Canadian Avro Arrow project was cancelled and suddenly a large crack team of aerospace engineers was put out of work). Etc.
CO2 erroneously proposes the following analogy:
“If you ride a bicycle over a given distance one day at 20 kmh and another day at 10 kmh, your average speed is [15] kmh. Did you ride at [15] kmh on either day? No you didn’t but the average is still a valid statistical value for use in a different context.”
(note: CO2’s “correction” has been included, in “[]”)
So now let us correctly address CO2’s analogy. That is: what is the kinetic energy of the system (i.e. 1/2 * m * V^2)?
Since the mass remains the same, CO2 effectively asserts that 10^2 + 20^2 = 2 * 15^2 (and thus asserts that 500 = 450). This is clearly a false statement.
Similarly, a surface radiates energy according to the Stefan–Boltzmann law (which exhibits a T^4 dependence). Thus CO2’s argument amounts to the assertion that (A^4 + B^4) = (0.5*(A+B))^4 (the reader is free to insert CO2’s “10”, “20” and “15” into this relationship, to confirm it’s falsehood).
Since we observe that different regions are at different local temperatures, they radiate at different rates (and thus the Earth is clearly not a black body).
Let me be quite clear about this — the Earth does not have “a temperature” (singular).
CO2 has gone strangely silent. Perhaps he/she is beavering away over some primary school maths books.
Sincere congratulations to McIntyre and McKitrick.
WOW, I guess Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick are really hitting the Climate Conmen where it hurts, they are even attacking Dr Judith Curry!
“…But that specific timing issue of the blogs, while important to Curry’s effort to paint McIntyre as some sort of (mostly innocent) victim of attacks by blogging scientists, is irrelevant to the bigger issue, which Curry has backwards. Curry seems to think that the blogosphere is the only place that matters. McIntyre started his attacks in 2003, long before RC was set up. And if you believe that ExxonMobil money wasn’t connected to the McIntyre-McItrick attack on the hockey stick, read this long Deep Climate piece or a very good summary by DeSmogBlog. (And no, being connected to oil money doesn’t inherently invalidate the attacks, but it does kind of scramble Curry’s narrative.)“
http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/24/my-response-to-dr-judith-currys-unconstructive-essay/
I just very briefly skimmed the article but I still think I need a shower.
CO2 and Villabolo: Way, way too late to the party. Grade school understanding of the science gets you a fail. Can we help you find your way back out?
So there is no published rebuttal aside from CO2’s debunked averaging theory?
The bicycling example I like to use has the same trick, but it’s something I formulated when I thinking black thoughts about bicycling over hills.
Suppose I normally ride at 20 km/h, but there’s a hill that’s 1 km up and 1 km down. I can only ride up at 10 km/h. How fast do I have to ride down to keep my average speed at 20 km/h?
Carsten Arnholm’s site is worth a look for his space images and how to make an observatory in your back yard with a purchased garden shed and adapting the roof so it rolls sideways!
Great site Carsten
http://arnholm.org/astro/
Click on Observatory under the Equipment Heading for the garden shed observatory details.
Gail Combs: Thanks for the links. WOW, OH WOW, how unhinged the “consensus” folks have become because of the troublesome truth of M&M. It is absolutely hilarious! They need to turn in their sheepskins!
Their names will go down in history as honourable. That’s more than anyone can say about thelikes of Hansen, Jones, Schmidt and his Goreable.
Does anyone know where I can get the records of the temperature stations that used to be included in theUSHCN, but are now no longer included?
Rick Werme
Light speed won’t do it. You’re shot at the top of the hill, used your whole 1/10 hour already.
James Hansen recently was awarded $250,000 by the Heinz Foundation — his hands are literally red with ketchup money!
And Lonnie and Ellen Thompson recently were given $1M by the David Dan Foundation — I have no clue what Dan’s agenda is. Wiki says he’s a successful businessman.
So let’s hope CEI comes up with at least $2M for Steve and Ross!
Arrghh….Gail ! Why did you point me to Deep Climate and DeSmogBlog? Now I feel dirty, too.
Deep Climate apparently thinks that Coby Beck and Tim Lambert know something about climate science…pathetic. I also find it amusing (and indeed, quite biased) when a site directs readers to these sorts of sites, and to Real Climate, without also directing readers to “the opposition”.
I take such actions as public admission that the robustness of their “science” is based on concealing opposing views. Thus is the life of a True Believer… Note how they scream “kill the heretics!”…
Science is not done in a vacuum, it is not done without challenge, and it is not done by popular vote.
“The notion of being globally ‘‘hotter’’ or ‘‘colder’’ for out-of-equilibrium systems
is not altogether without merit. Miami in January, with temperatures
ranging from 20 to 30C, say, is certainly warmer than Toronto at, say, 15
to 5C. However, this ranking of relative warmth is not based on averages,
but on the ranges in respective temperature fields.”
This is the part that interests me the most.