From The Senate EPW Jim Inhofe Press Office, well worth your time to watch.
Dr. John Christy, Alabama’s State Climatologist, Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville testified before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works hearing on global warming and stated:
“During the heat wave of late June and early July, high temperature extremes became newsworthy. Claims that there were thousands of records broken each day and that “this is what global warming looks like” got a lot of attention.
However, these headlines were not based on climate science. As shown in Figure 1.3 of my testimony it is scientifically more accurate to say that this is what Mother Nature looks like, since events even worse than these have happened in the past before greenhouse gases were increasing like they are today.
Now, it gives some people great comfort to offer a quick and easy answer when the weather strays from the average rather than to struggle with the real truth, which is, we don’t know enough about the climate to even predict events like this.
A climatologist looking at this heat wave would not be alarmed because the number of daily high temperature records set in the most recent decade was only about half the number set in the 1930s as shown in my written testimony. I suppose most people have forgotten that Oklahoma set a new record low temperature just last year of 31 below. And in the past two years, towns from Alaska to my home state of California established records for snowfall. The recent anomalous weather can’t be blamed on carbon dioxide.
See also his written testimony here
joeldshore
As I continue reading the voluminous climate writings of Dr. Hubert H. Lamb, paying particular attention to studies covering the last 20,000 years, I don’t find any place for the simplistic CO2 driven anthropogenic global warming concept. Dr. Lamb, founder of the CRU, presents hundreds of peer-reviewed studies that establish a global, warmer Medieval Warm Period, a Little Ice Age, and a current warming period not nearly as warm as the six preceding. Unlike Mann, Dr. Lamb cites many temperature reconstruction studies, including tree rings, that refute Mann’s Hockey Stick decades before Mann tortured it from cherry picked samples. Lamb showed incontrovertibley that current warming was in no way unprecedented. In fact, since the end of the Ice Age each warming period has not reached the warmth of its predecessor. Sea level was higher 8,000 years ago, over 11,000 years prior to the Little Ice Age were warmer than the present, glaciers retreated farther during the Medieval Warm Period than now, and US temperatures were much warmer during the 1930’s. As Anthony Watts’ new study shows, current warming is primarily man-made as a result of poor thermometer siting and unwarranted temperature record adjustments. Drs. Pielke Sr. and Jr. have interesting comments concerning the inadequacy of Richard Muller’s BEST work (as does Dr. Mann), and that Anthony Watts’ study is a game changer.
Climate science finally shows signs of rationality.
Excellent testimony by John Christy – thank you John.
Dr. Christy says at 6:34 of his video presentation:
“As someone who has lived in Africa, I can say that without energy, life is brutal and short. So this is the goal of poor countries – to access energy.
So I’ll close with this unpleasant thought:
Demanding a reduction in worldwide CO2 emissions, without affordable reliable alternatives, means reducing the hope for prosperity of our fellow world citizens, who are struggling to escape their impoverished condition.”
___________________
I used to assume that the radical enviros shared my humanitarian values. I now conclude that this assumption is, in all probability, FALSE
The radical enviros are anti-human and consistently oppose moves to increase supplies of economic energy that will improve the wellbeing of humankind. This explains their apparently nonsensical opposition to oil and gas pipelines, hydraulic fracturing, the Canadian oilsands, etc. and their seemingly irrational support for inefficient, ineffective and environmentally destructive wind and solar power schemes.
The radical enviros stance is NOT primarily about the environment – that is a smokescreen – their objective is to increase energy costs, cause energy starvation and even to reduce human population on a global scale. Their seemingly nonsensical positions are all consistent with this theme and are also consistent with their following statements.
(h/t to Wayne for the following quotations)
”My three goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with its full complement of species, returning throughout the world.”
David Foreman,
co-founder of Earth First!
”A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”
Ted Turner,
Founder of CNN and major UN donor
”The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet.”
Jeremy Rifkin,
Greenhouse Crisis Foundation
”Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”
Paul Ehrlich,
Professor of Population Studies,
Author: “Population Bomb”, “Ecoscience”
”The big threat to the planet is people: there are too many, doing too well economically and burning too much oil.”
Sir James Lovelock,
BBC Interview
”We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination… So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts… Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
Stephen Schneider,
Stanford Professor of Climatology,
Lead author of many IPCC reports
”Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.”
Sir John Houghton,
First chairman of the IPCC
”It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”
Paul Watson,
Co-founder of Greenpeace
”Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.”
David Brower,
First Executive Director of the Sierra Club
”We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.”
Timothy Wirth,
President of the UN Foundation
”No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
Christine Stewart,
former Canadian Minister of the Environment
”The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.”
Emeritus Professor Daniel Botkin
”Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
Maurice Strong,
Founder of the UN Environmental Program
”A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-Development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.”
Paul Ehrlich,
Professor of Population Studies,
Author: “Population Bomb”, “Ecoscience”
”If I were reincarnated I would wish to return to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”
Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh,
husband of Queen Elizabeth II,
Patron of the Patron of the World Wildlife Foundation
”The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization we have in the US. We have to stop these third World countries right where they are.”
Michael Oppenheimer
Environmental Defense Fund
”Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty, reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control.”
Professor Maurice King
”Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable.”
Maurice Strong,
Rio Earth Summit
”Complex technology of any sort is an assault on the human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it.”
Amory Lovins,
Rocky Mountain Institute
”I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. it played an important part in balancing ecosystems.”
John Davis,
Editor of Earth First! Journal
**********************************
William McClenney 10:27 p.m.
re Gordian knot
Alexander solved the conundrum with a swift stroke of his sword
who will be our Alexander?
joeldshore says Total Nonsense on August 1, 2012 at 8:40 pm
Joel – you are repeating lies from warmist websites as if they were true.
Considerable political noise resulted from minor differences in the results between RSS and UAH (Christy and Spencer) analyses of the same satellite data to obtain atmospheric temperatures. Yes, these differences have largely been resolved, No they were not that material, not even at the time. It was largely political noise by the warmists to try to discredit the UAH work, and that noise was false.
Furthermore, to claim that Mann’s hockey stick is valid flies in the face of all the credible work done on it, from the initial work of Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick to the North and Wegman Commission reports.
Many of us already knew that Mann was false long before Steve McIntyre dissected Mann’s flawed mathematical analysis, because we knew that one pal-reviewed study (MBH98) does not eliminate from the historic record both the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and the Little Ice Age (LIA).
Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon complied the extensive technical literature supporting the existence of the MWP and LIA, and were vilified by the usual odious subjects. An unbiased reading of the literature leads to only one conclusion – the MWP and LIA were real and significant.
You are hanging out with a bad crowd Joel. Try reading more, and thinking for yourself.
Mosher is heavily invested in BEST and he counters any criticism direct or indirect with often evasive assertions and a refusal to discuss the data and methods BEST uses.
I’ve yet to see any statement of how BEST is different and better than HADCRUT and GISSTEMP. Except that it uses x thousand more stations, which is irrelevant.
“Allan MacRae says:
August 1, 2012 at 11:41 pm
Excellent testimony by John Christy – thank you John.”
How does one make the list of quotes in Allan Macrae’s post above go viral?
Allan MacRae list of quotes above are powerful, especially when strung together in a single post. I have been in agreement with the thought of the greenies anti-humanness.
Thanks for the post.
One thing in common that all global warming alarmists share: they are really bad liars. Their lies and fraudulent studies are all too easily taken apart. IPCC has outlived its failed propagandist purpose and should be put down, like a diseased cow.
Question: is Michael Mann’s canuckophobia caused by his subconscious desire to kill his own hockey stick chart? Since Canadians are really good at ice hockey–is Mann’s recent public conflicts with Canadians Steve McIntyre, Ross McKitrick, Tim Ball, and Mark Steyn simply an unconscious cry for help? Poor Mann, all that pressure and stress must be suffocating. I hope Mann really sues Steyn, so that Mann can finally be put out of his suffering.
Treeman;
Bob Carter will do. http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/2011/03/bob-carters-ten-little-facts-about-global-warming/
What you need is pols willing to listen.
@William Howard McClenney says: August 1, 2012 at 10:27 pm
The “Precautionary Principle” is rather absolute on this point. The most common articulation of the precautionary principle is the Wingspread Statement on the Precautionary Principle, a consensus document drafted and adopted by a group of environmental activists and academics in January 1998.
/////////////////////////////////
Adopted on behalf of WHOM? I don’t recall them consulting me. What authority, pray, does any groups of “environmental activists” have in the world of science? What role does an agenda have in science?
As has been shown, the cost of applying the precautionary principle in the case of CAGW is likely to be many multiples that of dealing with CAGW. Were it even happening.
I remember when record cold temperatures were set in the USA a few years back. Warmists reminded us, quite rightly, that the USA was a very small part of the world. Yet the heat wave managed to elevate the USA into an important indicator of what GLOBAL WARMING looks like. Funny that. 😉
By the same token a heatwave in the US does not mean AGW is right. Did I mention anything about the recent east European winter and excess cold weather deaths? Oh, never mind.
Dr Christy: ‘If we must legislate we should base it on observed measurements and not on models.’ BUT ‘When it comes to legislation or regulatory actions there is nothing that we can do to alter what the climate is going to do.’
Any chance that the New York Times could be talked into running Dr. Christy’s testimony as an op-ed? Doesn’t fit their agenda, I know. But they ran Muller’s self-flagellation. Fair is fair.
/Mr Lynn
Well, you could send the quotes in an email to ten people, telling each of the ten to send it to ten more, and so on, and if they don’t, Michael Mann will sue them. /sarc
/Mr Lynn
Boxer’s gratuitous rudeness and crudeness know no bounds.
Why, Oh why does none of this seem to get into the mainstream media? I have been waiting to read about Anthony’s brilliant work on surface temperature stations in the USA and of NOAA’s massaging of what was already corrupted data.
Allan Macrae (h/t to Wayne for the following quotations)
”My three goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with its full complement of species, returning throughout the world.”
David Foreman,
co-founder of Earth First! Etc Etc
—————-
Thanks for this devastating and incriminating series of quotes from guilty people. Can you povide us with some clues as to how to source and reference them? This could just prove a valuable wake up call for some useful idiots I know! Thanks
Please take a few minutes and blog/pass this link, and other A. Watts links, on to other blogs – “while it’s hot!”
Hopefully .. With Christie and Spencer heading up a Satelite Operation, and now Watts establishing a protocol to produce a reasonably accurate temperature metric from thermometer data, .. this whole b.s. of Global Warming histeria can be put to rest for good.
Anthony .. I sure hope that you and your collegues are planning on doing a global exercise like your recent paper. I’m sure that once you get the TOBS adjustments out of the way, along with ironing out a few other kinks, that finally, a reasonable land/sea based temp metric can be had that we can all believe in. Maybe .. after your paper is published, you and et al., should apply for a Federal Grant to complete the exercise on a global scale.
joeldshore says:
August 1, 2012 at 8:40 pm
the difference is they didn’t know they were wrong and plunge on ahead knowing full well that the work they did would cost untold damage to economies and life the world over. Mann and others had an agenda and ignored data that didn’t fit that agenda to the detriment of the world economy.
Boxer is in charge of this circus. Someone should take her apart publicly and repeatedly for her statement about 97% of climate scientists supporting her view and that of the IPCC. That figure needs to exposed for what it is; a repeated invention based upon the views of very few scientists (about 75, I seem to recall) who dared to respond to an extremely misleading question. Those 75, became the 97% of all climate scientists. The other thousands to tens of thousands knew better than to respond. Please hammer this number all of the time, not just when it appears from the mouths of naifs and babes (and I am not calling sen. Boxer a babe, but a naif).
viejecita says:
August 1, 2012 at 7:27 pm
Great video
Thank you very much for bringing it so fast.
Am going to try and send it everywhere, saying that I got it here, and hope someone listens here in Spain, and gets us out of the anti- CO2 programs.
Lo pondré en mi blog, que nadie lee, together with Allan McRae post, translated, with the envoros goals. It seems relevant to me, so many sentences drawing a unmistakable picture of totalitarism. Si quieres difundirlo… Cheers
typo above : Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon compiled …
David Ball said:
It is, really? So, could you please give me a link to the code for the UAH analysis? The fact is that while Mann has released all of his code for his more recent PNAS paper (so much so that even McIntyre can’t find anything to complain about in that regard) and most everything for his earlier work, Spencer and Christy haven’t released any publicly. Not one little tiny piece. (They did allow RSS to see a small piece of their code, although the word in the grapevine is that it apparently took a fair bit of work on RSS’s part to get it.)
If the fundamental difference between Spencer & Christy and Mann regards access to their code, Mann wins hands-down.
Day By Day said:
That is exactly what he is doing by advocating a policy of doing nothing to mitigate our grand experiment on the Earth’s climate system (and ocean chemistry).
Allan MacRae says:
Your statements are wrong from start to finish. First of all, I am not repeating anything from anywhere. I linked to a comment of mine on a different thread here where I actually presented calculations that I did myself of what the trend is over various time periods with the current version of the UAH LT data and I compared that to the trend claimed at the time in Spencer and Christys papers. By doing this, I can not only determine how their claimed trend has changied over time but I can also say what part of that change is due to changes in their algorithm and what part is due to having a longer data record. (Why nobody else had done this is puzzling to me…It is not hard to do.)
And, contrary to what you claimed, the differences were very material. THey allowed Spencer and Christy to claim (and many others to repeat) that the satellite record showed cooling not warming in the troposphere, whereas we now know from the current UAH and RSS LT records that it shows warming at about the same rate (within uncertainties) as the surface record.
REPLY to Poptech
Exactly. Mr. Mosher knows my email, and has my telephone number, and mailing address, and so far he hasn’t been able to bring himself to communicate his concerns to me directly, but instead chooses these potshots everywhere.
The project was worked on for a year before we released, a number of people looked at it at various stages. Dr. John Christy was in fact the one who suggested we should put a note in about TOBS at the end, saying we will continue to investigate it it, because he knew it would be an important consideration. I concurred. We also knew that to do it right, the TOBS comparison couldn’t simply rely on the “trust us” data from NCDC. Christy had already been through that with his study of irrigation effects in California and had to resort to the original data on B91 forms to disentangle the issue.
What we are finding so far suggests NCDC’s TOBS times (we have the master file for all stations) don’t match what the observers actually do. That’s a discrepancy that we need to resolve before we can truly measure the effect along with siting.
Mr. Mosher would do well to note this comparison.
1. When The Team gets criticized on a technical point, they typically dismiss it with a wave of the hand, saying “it doesn’t matter”. Upside down proxies and lat/lon conflations are good examples.
2. When we get criticized on a technical point, we stop and work on it to address the issue as best we can.
Whining won’t help #2 go any faster.
– Anthony