The Global Warming Lie

[KALSTER]

"damned lies and statisitcs" - CO2 levels have risen at a constant rate... whilst "global" temps have fluctuated wildly.. depending on how much value you attached to the earlier readings, given the approach taken to acquire them...

We are talking about climate here, i.e. average temperatures over decades, not years.

the same models which had to be""tweaked"?.... those models?

Tweaked how, and for what purpose? To increase accuracy of course. Do you expect them to build a perfect model with the first go?

[Anakha56]

So it looks like the green camp has taken a damaging blow:

http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_bri ... mning.html

A major story is breaking in climate science, after hackers posted a 61 megabyte data file on a Russian server that appears to be confidential emails and climate data hacked from the UK Met Office Hadley Centre.

The data raises major questions about the role of scientists in what appears to be a deliberate conspiracy to mislead the public:

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@virginia.edu, mhughes@ltrr.arizona.edu
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@uea.ac.uk,t.osborn@uea.ac.uk



Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim's got a diagram here we'll send that either later today or
first thing tomorrow.
I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps
to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from
1961 for Keith's to hide the decline. Mike's series got the annual
land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land
N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999
for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with
data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers
Phil

Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090 +44 (0) 1603 592090
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk

If there's an innocent explanation, I'll be interested in hearing it.

http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_bri ... -real.html

http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_bri ... -this.html

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andr ... ey_hacked/

Hackers have broken into the data base of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit - one of the world’s leading alarmist centres - and put the files they stole on the Internet, on the grounds that the science is too important to be kept under wraps.

The ethics of this are dubious, to say the least. But the files suggest, on a very preliminary glance, some other very dubious practices, too, and a lot of collusion - sometimes called “peer review”. Or even conspiracy.

A warning, of course. We can only say with a 90 per cent confidence interval that these emails are real.

(ALTERNATIVE link to the files. And another link.)

UPDATE

Ethics alert! (my bolding - and I’ve update this post with the full alleged email, now):

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@XXXX, mhughes@XXXX
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@XXX.osborn@XXXX

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,

Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow.

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.

Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers
Phil

Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone XXXX
School of Environmental Sciences Fax XXXX
University of East Anglia
Norwich
.

Nice. This could be fun.

UPDATE 2

Surely these emails can’t be genuine. Surely the world’s most prominent alarmist scientists aren’t secretly exchanging emails like this, admitting privately they can’t find the warming they’ve been so loudly predicting?:


From: Kevin Trenberth
To: Michael Mann
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:57:37 -0600
Cc: Stephen H Schneider , Myles Allen , peter stott , “Philip D. Jones” , Benjamin Santer , Tom Wigley , Thomas R Karl , Gavin Schmidt , James Hansen , Michael Oppenheimer

Hi all

Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming ? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low.

This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather).

Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s global energy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 19-27, doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [1][PDF] (A PDF of the published version can be obtained from the author.)
***

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.***

This has to be a forgery, surely. Because if it isn’t, we’re about to see the unpicking of a huge scandal.

I mean, the media will follow this up, right? In the meantime, use with care.

Oh boy. More reading material if you follow the links...

These models that were tweaked and "improved"...

[rustypup]

We are talking about climate here, i.e. average temperatures over decades, not years.

are you aware of the methodologies used to gather the temp data?... i'm curious.

[KALSTER]

We are talking about climate here, i.e. average temperatures over decades, not years.

are you aware of the methodologies used to gather the temp data?... i'm curious.

Yes I am. The thing is, all four major methods show warming trends. Even if you completely disregard GISS and HADCRU, you still get more or less the same result. In fact, satellite RSS data show the biggest warming trend of the lot. If you look at the GISS temp data, the elimination of some ground stations doesn't affect the trends to any significant amount. Watts and his crew of deniers even went out of their way to assess the ground stations used by GISS temp and came up with a list of "approved" stations. The thing is, when the data from these stations were plotted they got virtually the same graph as before.

Anakha56:

That is what I mean. Laypeople read something they don't understand, form their own uninformed conclusions and then start running in circles, screaming and flailing their arms in the air.

Kindly watch THIS Youtube video. In fact, I highly recommend his whole series as a short hand rebuttal of deniers' claims.

[KALSTER]

Another Youtube blogger I would highly recommend is Greenman3610's videos found HERE.

[Anakha56]

Climate change chief says sorry for hot air claim over melting glaciers

The head of the UN's climate change body has been forced to make a humiliating apology over claims the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within 25 years.

Last week it emerged there was no evidence for the warning from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

After a global outcry, Dr Rajendra Pachauri - chairman of the IPCC - has issued an unprecedented apology.

The alarmist claim appeared two years ago in an influential report. At the time the IPCC insisted the document contained the latest and most detailed evidence yet of the risks of man-made climate change.

Dr Pachauri even dismissed the report's detractors for using 'voodoo science'.

But in fact the claim was originally made by scientist Syed Hasnain, from Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, who has since admitted the comment was 'pure speculation'.

Dr Pachauri said in a statement: 'In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly.

'The chair, vice-chairs, and co-chairs of the IPCC regret the poor application of well-established IPCC procedures in this instance.'

The apology is a major blow to the IPCC which was set up to provide political leaders with clear, independent advice on climate change.

It follows the 'Climategate' email row in which scientists at the University of East Anglia appeared to have manipulated data to strengthen the case for man-made climate change.

The claim appeared in chapter ten of the 938-page IPCC Fourth Assessment Report on the impacts of climate change, which stated: 'Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate.'

In IPCC jargon, 'very high' means a greater than 90 per cent chance.

But rather than being based on a peer-reviewed, published scientific study, the claim was taken from a 2005 report by the charity WWF.

The WWF, in turn, lifted the statement from a 1999 news story in New Scientist based on a phone interview with Dr Hasnain.

The glaciers claim has been questioned by a growing number of critics in recent months. In the autumn, India's environment minister Jairam Ramesh accused the IPCC of being 'alarmist' over its predictions. Dr Pachauri defended his report - and accused the Indian minister of relying on 'voodoo science'.

Many are surprised it has taken so long for the IPCC report to be debunked.

Most of the Himalayan glaciers are hundreds of feet thick and could not melt quickly enough to vanish within 25 years. The fastest-melting glaciers are vanishing at a rate of two or three feet every year.

Dr Benny Peiser, of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, said: 'The time has come to completely overhaul the structure and workings of the IPCC.

'Until it accepts to undergo a root and branch reform, it will continue to haemorrhage credibility.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ciers.html

Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn't been verified

The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.

Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.

‘It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.’
Glacier

Dr Lal’s admission will only add to the mounting furore over the melting glaciers assertion, which the IPCC was last week forced to withdraw because it has no scientific foundation.

According to the IPCC’s statement of principles, its role is ‘to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis, scientific, technical and socio-economic information – IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy’.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ified.html

Science chief John Beddington calls for honesty on climate change

The impact of global warming has been exaggerated by some scientists and there is an urgent need for more honest disclosure of the uncertainty of predictions about the rate of climate change, according to the Government’s chief scientific adviser.

John Beddington was speaking to The Times in the wake of an admission by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that it grossly overstated the rate at which Himalayan glaciers were receding.

Professor Beddington said that climate scientists should be less hostile to sceptics who questioned man-made global warming. He condemned scientists who refused to publish the data underpinning their reports.

He said that public confidence in climate science would be improved if there were more openness about its uncertainties, even if that meant admitting that sceptics had been right on some hotly-disputed issues.

He said: “I don’t think it’s healthy to dismiss proper scepticism. Science grows and improves in the light of criticism. There is a fundamental uncertainty about climate change prediction that can’t be changed.”

He said that the false claim in the IPCC’s 2007 report that the glaciers would disappear by 2035 had exposed a wider problem with the way that some evidence was presented.

“Certain unqualified statements have been unfortunate. We have a problem in communicating uncertainty. There’s definitely an issue there. If there wasn’t, there wouldn’t be the level of scepticism. All of these predictions have to be caveated by saying, ‘There’s a level of uncertainty about that’.”

Professor Beddington said that particular caution was needed when communicating predictions about climate change made with the help of computer models.

“It’s unchallengeable that CO2 traps heat and warms the Earth and that burning fossil fuels shoves billions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. But where you can get challenges is on the speed of change.

“When you get into large-scale climate modelling there are quite substantial uncertainties. On the rate of change and the local effects, there are uncertainties both in terms of empirical evidence and the climate models themselves.”

He said that it was wrong for scientists to refuse to disclose their data to their critics: “I think, wherever possible, we should try to ensure there is openness and that source material is available for the whole scientific community.”

He added: “There is a danger that people can manipulate the data, but the benefits from being open far outweigh that danger.”

Phil Jones, the director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and a contributor to the IPCC’s reports, has been forced to stand down while an investigation takes place into leaked e-mails allegedly showing that he attempted to conceal data.

In response to one request for data Professor Jones wrote: “We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”

Professor Beddington said that uncertainty about some aspects of climate science should not be used as an excuse for inaction: “Some people ask why we should act when scientists say they are only 90 per cent certain about the problem. But would you get on a plane that had a 10 per cent chance of landing?”

Mike Hulme, Professor of Climate Change at the University of East Anglia, said: “Climate scientists get kudos from working on an issue in the public eye but with that kudos comes responsibility. Being open with data is part of that responsibility.”

He criticised Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, for his dismissive response last November to research suggesting that the UN body had overstated the threat to the glaciers. Mr Pachauri described it as “voodoo science”.

Professor Hulme said: “Pachauri’s choice of words has not been good. The question of whether he is the right person to lead the IPCC is for the 193 countries who make up its governing body. It’s a political decision.”

Blowing hot and cold

Glaciers

The IPCC says its statement on melting glaciers was based on a report it misquoted by WWF, a lobby group, which took its information from a report in New Scientist based on an interview with a glaciologist who claims he was misquoted. Most glaciologists say that the Himalayan glaciers are so thick that they would take hundreds of years to melt

Sea levels

The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research says sea levels could rise by 6ft by 2100, a prediction based on the 7in rise in sea levels from 1881-2001, which it attributed to a 0.7C rise in temperatures. It assumed a rise of 6.4C by 2100 would melt the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets.

UK Climate Projections, published last year by the Government, predicted a rise of one to two feet by 2095

Arctic sea ice

Cambridge University’s Polar Ocean Physics Group has claimed that sea ice will have disappeared from the North Pole in summer by 2020. However, in the past two summers the total area of sea ice in the Arctic has grown substantially

Global temperatures

The Met Office predicts that this year is “more likely than not” to be the world’s warmest year on record. It claims the El Niño effect will join forces with the warming effect of manmade greenhouse gases.

Some scientists say that there is a warming bias in Met Office long-range forecasts which has resulted in it regularly overstating the warming trend.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/e ... 003622.ece

Now the IPCC sexed up the Amazonian danger, too

First it was the bogus claim that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035. Then it was the false claim of rising damage costs allegedly caused by global warming, the myth of the vanishing water supplies and the largely unsupported assertion that African agriculture.faced decimation.

Now yet another scare claim in the IPCC’s 2007 report collapses on closer inspection.

This time ithe dodgy claim is this:

Up to 40%of theAmazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation; this means that the tropical vegetation, hydrology and climate system in South America could change very rapidly to another steady state, not necessarily producing gradual changes between the current and the future situation (Rowell and Moore, 2000). It is more probable that forests will be replaced by ecosystems that have more resistance to multiple stresses caused by temperature increase, droughts and fires, such as tropical savannas.

In fact, as Richard North points out:

At first sight, the reference looks kosher enough but, following it through, one sees:
Rowell, A. and P.F. Moore, 2000: Global Review of Forest Fires. WWF/IUCN, Gland, Switzerland, 66 pp. http://www.iucn.org/themes/fcp/publicat ... _fires.pdf.

This, then appears to be another WWF report, carried out in conjunction with the IUCN – The International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The link given is no longer active, but the report is on the IUCN website here. Furthermore, the IUCN along with WWF is another advocacy group and the report is not peer-reviewed. According to IPCC rules, it should not have been used as a primary source.

In fact, neither of the authors is even a scientist, and one is a green campaigner and journalist. Nor can North find any support in the WWF document for the IPCC’s claim that 40 per cent of the Amazonian forest is threatened - or at least no legitimate support.

How closely was the IPCC’s 2007 report really checked? Why did it include such wild scare-claims, many based on unchecked statements by activist groups? How corrupted by politics and cash is the IPCC?

UPDATE

On the other hand, the US National Climatic Data Center rejects claims that poor siting of its weather stations - many in areas grown more urban - caused a bias to higher temperatures over time. I’m hoping someone with expertise in this will check this paper’s claims, because this bit puzzles me:

Moreover, the sign of the bias is counterintuitive to photographic documentation of poor exposure because associated instrument changes have led to an artificial negative ("cool") bias in maximum temperatures and only a slight positive ("warm") bias in minimum temperatures.

It seems to say that poor siting hasn’t caused a warming bias, because other instrument changes caused a cooling one.

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andr ... anger_too/

Just clubbing the topic with a dead tree .

[Anakha56]

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/201 ... mpaign=rss

Estimate of CO2-temperature feedback suggests lower impact
By John Timmer | Last updated January 27, 2010 6:03 PM

It's fairly easy to calculate the direct impact of adding more greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere, since that involves basic radiative physics. But, as we mentioned previously, the climate isn't a static system, and changing the temperature induces all sorts of changes that can feed back into the climate. One of these is CO2 itself, as shifts in temperatures can induce alterations in its concentration in the atmosphere. A new paper in today's Nature suggests that this feedback is unlikely to be as large as some of the worst-case estimates.

Estimating feedbacks is notoriously tricky business. Many of them take decades to reach a steady state, and our instrumental record is quite short. For longer time scales, researchers have to rely on temperature reconstructions from proxies, which have their own uncertainties, and only extend for about 1,000 years with any accuracy. Ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica allow us to go longer still, but that record is dominated by the glacial cycle, which is unlikely to be directly relevant to our current situation—in glacial cycles, changes are driven by orbital variations, and the feedbacks from the gain or loss of giant ice sheets are enormous.

So, for better or for worse, the new paper focuses on the previous millennium, specifically the period from 1050 to 1800. That period eliminates earlier times, when the proxy temperature reconstructions are still considered a bit unreliable, and stops before industrialization started having a large impact on the atmosphere's composition. Still, the authors note that the human population was quite significant during this period, and could have driven significant changes in the atmosphere via land use. The estimates for this impact, however, are considered very speculative, so they were not examined as part of the primary analysis.

That analysis gathered a number of proxy temperature reconstructions available in the literature, and used CO2 data from ice cores. The authors recognized that the proxy reconstructions involve a variety of assumptions: the period used for calibration, constraints for amplitude or absolute value of temperature changes, etc. So, to deal with that, they simply ran their analysis once for each possible combination of calibration and smoothing, producing almost 230,000 runs in all.

Obviously, those different runs produced different results, but the authors used them to generate a statistical measure of the most likely feedback on CO2 levels, and to estimate the confidence interval for these measures. For the entire period, the median feedback comes in at 7.7 parts-per-million for each degree (C) of temperature change. The likely range is anywhere between 1.7 to 21.4 ppm per degree.

Earlier estimates had run as high as 200ppm/°C, so that's quite good news in that sense. However, negative values are also unlikely based on this analysis, so there's no indication that some temperature-activated carbon sequestration mechanism (like accelerated plant growth) will help stabilize the climate, at least in the near term.

One caveat to the results came when the authors split the analysis period roughly in half, so that the earlier portion (1050-1549) covered a relatively warm period, while the later one included the Little Ice Age. The warm period was characterized by a lower mean (4.3 ppm/°C) and smaller variation, but the value changed suddenly at the onset of the Little Ice Age, which raised the mean to 16.1 ppm/°C and increased the range of values. All of which suggests that the feedback value may be sensitive to the precise conditions.

I could go on for a while listing other potential caveats—the authors are extremely conservative, and their list of potential confounders is quite long. Their conclusions are bit mixed, as well. They start by saying that their results, combined with a few other recent studies, suggest "reduced possibilities for unwelcome surprises within the next century." But they follow that with a long list of factors that could produce unwelcome surprises in the presence of rapidly rising CO2 levels. So, the take home is a bit of a mixed bag.

To provide one of my own, this seems to represent a solid initial effort, and the analysis performed here will produce better results when provided with less uncertain data regarding ice core measurements, temperature proxies, and the like. Better yet, the news appears to be good: under the conditions that prevailed during the last millennium, increasing temperatures add more CO2 to the atmosphere, but not the sorts of massive quantities that would make this a major feedback. The most significant uncertainties result from the fact that those conditions no longer prevail.

[StarBound]

What effect does radio/microwaves have on this?

[jee]

http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/1 ... rting.html

[Anakha56]

http://www.dailytech.com/Dropping+Water ... e17553.htm

Dropping Water Vapor Levels are Naturally Negating Carbon's Warming Effects

Mother Earth appears to be solving the carbon-based warming "problem" for us

The U.S. is currently considering legislation that would enact steep restrictions on carbon emissions. Already burdened from high insurance costs, high taxes, and a struggling economy, Congress is asking Americans to shoulder another load -- an estimated cost of $1,600 per citizen per year to fight warming. And internationally climate change proponents have suggested other major lifestyle restrictions, such as bans on meat consumption and air travel.

Recently there has been a rash of incidents in which climate alarmists have been embarrassingly caught falsifying data or exaggerating facts and figures. James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, a leading climatology center, was found to have several curiously increased sets of temperature data in his studies, which he claimed were the result of a pesky Y2K bug. At England's East Anglia University, emails leaked from the prestigious Climate Research Unit that revealed that the university's researchers intentionally falsified data temperature data and suppressed scientists who criticized warming. The incident led to the center's director and prominent warming advocated, Phil Jones, to "temporarily" step down.

And most recently Rajendra Pachauri, an Indian official who was curiously appointed head of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) despite not having any formal climate training, was forced to retract statements in a 2007 report which has been used by countries worldwide as a basis for the need to adopting sweeping emissions restrictions. Mr. Pachauri, who won the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Al Gore, for his warming work, is now being pressured to resign.

Despite the apparent bias of many climate researchers, they do have one thing right; carbon levels have risen notably over the twentieth century from about 300 ppm to 375 ppm. While still far from the estimated levels of around 3,000 ppm during the time of the dinosaurs (appr. 150 MYA), the rising levels do mark a legitimate trend. However, there is increasing evidence that the rising carbon, contrary to alarmist reports is actually having remarkably little effect on global temperatures.

A new study authored by Susan Solomon, lead author of the study and a researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colo. could explain why atmospheric carbon is not contributing to warming significantly. According to the study, as carbon levels have risen, the cold air at high altitudes over the tropics has actually grown colder. The lower temperatures at this "coldest point" have caused global water vapor levels to drop, even as carbon levels rise.

Water vapor helps trap heat, and is a far the strongest of the major greenhouse gases, contributing 36–72 percent of the greenhouse effect. However more atmospheric carbon has actually decreased water vapor levels. Thus rather than a "doomsday" cycle of runaway warming, Mother Earth appears surprisingly tolerant of carbon, decreasing atmospheric levels of water vapor -- a more effective greenhouse gas -- to compensate.

Describes Professor Solomon, "There is slow warming that has taken place over the last 100 years. But from one decade to another, there can be fluctuations in the warming trend."

The study was published in the prestigious journal Science.

The new research could help explain why despite tremendously higher carbon levels, the planet was not inhospitable hundreds of millions of years ago. By lowering water vapor levels, the planet might have been able to compensate, at least partially, for atmospheric carbon levels nearly 10 times higher than today's.

Admittedly the picture is still not clear about how our planet reacts to changes in atmospheric composition. Other factors may also be at play in helping the Earth balance temperatures, including ocean currents and solar activity. Ironically, no global warming model appears to accurately consider changing water vapor levels, and few offer decent consideration to solar activity. Thus much of the model based research used to predict warming is likely badly flawed.

Despite the fact that current evidence points to a minimum role of carbon in affecting our planet's climate, the expensive movement to ban or restrict carbon globally retains significant momentum. It remains to be seen whether politicians choose to consider the latest unbiased research, or instead forge ahead on a crusade against the rather weak greenhouse gas.

[rustypup]

The warmist response to Climategate — the discovery of the thoroughly corrupt practices of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) — was that the tainted CRU dataset was just one of four independent data sets. You know. So really there’s no big deal.

Thanks to a FOIA request, the document production of which I am presently plowing through — and before that, thanks to the great work of Steve McIntyre, and particularly in their recent, comprehensive work, Joseph D’Aleo and Anthony Watts — we know that NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) passed no one’s test for credibility. Not even NASA’s.

In fact, CRU’s former head, Phil Jones, even told his buddies that while people may think his dataset — which required all of those “fudge factors” (their words) — is troubled, “GISS is inferior” to CRU.

[Stuart]

Americans are losing faith in global warming

The ever-controversial topic has become increasingly politicized in recent years, with thousands of different theories and statistics circulating at any given moment. It is in this polarized environment that Americans form their opinions of climate change, and its importance as a legitimate threat to the future of life on our planet. Here we look at how these views have shifted over the last decade, and where Americans stand today on the issue of climate change.

[doo_much]

Seeing as the media fanfare and cost of COP 17 is upon us, time to bring this thread back.

Nice (long) read by Ivo Vegter. (For sceptics/denialists)

More 'Climate Science' e-mails leaked

Climate Change is casuing all the freaky weather - says the IPCC

Carbon credits? Nope, this time around...

[Anakha56]

The myth that is renewable energy...

http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/colu ... ble-energy

The myth of renewable energy
By Dawn Stover | 22 November 2011

"Clean." "Green." What do those words mean? When President Obama talks about "clean energy," some people think of "clean coal" and low-carbon nuclear power, while others envision shiny solar panels and wind turbines. And when politicians tout "green jobs," they might just as easily be talking about employment at General Motors as at Greenpeace. "Clean" and "green" are wide open to interpretation and misappropriation; that's why they're so often mentioned in quotation marks. Not so for renewable energy, however.

Somehow, people across the entire enviro-political spectrum seem to have reached a tacit, near-unanimous agreement about what renewable means: It's an energy category that includes solar, wind, water, biomass, and geothermal power. As the US Energy Department explains it to kids: "Renewable energy comes from things that won't run out -- wind, water, sunlight, plants, and more. These are things we can reuse over and over again. … Non-renewable energy comes from things that will run out one day -- oil, coal, natural gas, and uranium."

Renewable energy sounds so much more natural and believable than a perpetual-motion machine, but there's one big problem: Unless you're planning to live without electricity and motorized transportation, you need more than just wind, water, sunlight, and plants for energy. You need raw materials, real estate, and other things that will run out one day. You need stuff that has to be mined, drilled, transported, and bulldozed -- not simply harvested or farmed. You need non-renewable resources:

...

Follow the link for further reading...

[KALSTER]

Good article.

[doo_much]

Andrew Kenny at it again - compliments of BusinessDay.

Carbon dioxide is a weak greenhouse gas, whose only significant absorption band is already saturated at its peak. Basic physics shows it can never have a serious effect on global temperatures and observation of the past shows that it never has had. carbon dioxide is now about 390 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere, which is extraordinarily low in the life of the planet, probably dangerously low for the green plants on which we depend.

As always = click the link for more.

[KALSTER]

This guy seems to be a bit of a moron.

[hamin_aus]

Kenny is a consulting engineer with degrees in physics and mechanical engineering.

Right.
As a mechanical engineer he's totally unbiased about the effect that carbon dioxide and heavy industry is having on the climate...
He's also qualified to write an article refuting popular climate change theory, what with his degrees in physics and mech eng. All key subjects in the field of climate change.

I do like how he meanders off course every paragraph or so to bash the WWF, GreenPeace and the IPCC. I'm surprised he didnt mention OWS.
He doesn't sound butthurt at all. And there's no hint of bias or an agenda in his article.

I think at the end of the day we all need to just stop being gullible. The earth has been here for at least 6000 years and will be around for much, much longer than any of us will be alive - so who cares.

[doo_much]

This guy seems to be a bit of a moron.

I disagree. He's actually quite an intelligent guy in person. Nice as well.

I think at the end of the day we all need to just stop being gullible.

That's a tall order, right there...

[KALSTER]

All I see is yet another list of denier propaganda topics, most of which are plain wrong or shows an ignorance of climate science, like the point that CO2 is a weak greenhouse gas. Yes it is weaker than, say, water vapour, but that is not the only thing to consider. It is the whole carbon cycle that has to be taken account of, which makes it a climate forcing agent of note.

Kenny is a consulting engineer with degrees in physics and mechanical engineering.

Impressive enough, though no guarantee of competence in climate science. Neither is being a nice guy I'm afraid.


Thing is though, I don't think summits like these are going to do anything of note in any case. If we are the cause of the current warming trend, then there is nothing of consequence we can or will do about it. China, India and other developing countries are only now slowly catching up to European and especially American CO2 etc production and will not let them be told they can't develop at the pace they want to. All that remains now is to see how bad it is going to turn out to be.

[GreyWolf]

All that remains now is to see how bad it is going to turn out to be.

I, for one, am ready for the upcoming zombie apocalypse...

[KALSTER]

All that remains now is to see how bad it is going to turn out to be.

I, for one, am ready for the upcoming zombie apocalypse...

I've got my cricket bat ready.

[RuadRauFlessa]

Atmospheric CO2 levels haven't been this high for at least 15 million years.

How in the name of Zeus **** can you justify that statement. I can't see any structures or technology with the capability to do atmospheric composition tests dating back 15 million years.

Yes the climate is changing... If it wasn't I'd be worried.

[GreyWolf]

How in the name of Zeus **** can you justify that statement. I can't see any structures or technology with the capability to do atmospheric composition tests dating back 15 million years.

Arctic ice core samples. Fossils. etc.

[RuadRauFlessa]

Ok... point conceded. Well then it would still stand to reason that the climate would change. Like I said I would be worried if it did not.