BS: Where's the Global Warming

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 17 Feb 10 - 11:41 PM

Sawz:

Your confusions are myriad, and legend.

FIrst: The Earth in its place in the universe is a SYSTEM. It takes in heat, it gives off heat. The system works between tolerable limits--it only gets so far below freezing and only goes so close to boiling, on its surface. The normal cycle adds energy and ALSO lets off energy. Sheesh.

Second, you seem to think that investing in green industries is a bad thing. Why would that be?

Don't try to tell me you think making money is unethical!!! All your truest bluest heros are rolling in it.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 17 Feb 10 - 11:26 PM

Generation Investment Management LLP (GIM) is a London-based investment management firm with an investment style that blends traditional equity research with a focus on sustainability factors, including social and environmental responsibility and corporate governance.

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore is chairman of Generation, and David Blood â€" previously chief executive of Goldman Sachs Asset Management â€" is CEO. The pair has given the company its nickname, "Blood and Gore."

Generation Investment Management LLP is authorized and regulated by the Financial Services Authority in the UK.

Generation has built a global research platform to integrate sustainability research into fundamental equity analysis. The firm focuses on the economic, environmental, social, and governance risks and opportunities that can materially affect a company's ability to sustain profitability and deliver returns.

The November 2004 press release announcing the launch of the firm included the following quote from Gore:

    I'm delighted to join David Blood in founding this firm. The issue of sustainability has always been a passion of mine. Helping to establish the competitive business advantages of sustainability in an investment context with this exceptional team is a very exciting challenge.

    Transparency, innovation, eco-efficiency, investing in the community, nurturing and motivating employees, managing long-term risks, and embracing long-term opportunities are integral parts of a company's enduring capability to create value. Business leaders who align their business strategy and technical development with sustainability and social accountability will deliver superior long-term results to shareholders.

Generation began investing client money in April 2005, and has offices in London, New York and Sydney. The firm currently employs 36 people. Generation's Advisory Board, convened by Gore, helps set Generation's long-term thematic research agenda into global sustainability and renewable energy issues. Past areas of focus have included climate change, poverty and development, ecosystem services and biodiversity, water scarcity, pandemics, demographics and migration, and urbanization.

In November 2007, Generation and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) announced a global collaboration to "find, fund and accelerate green business, technology and policy solutions with the greatest potential to help solve the current climate crisis." As part of the collaboration, prominent KPCB Partner John Doerr joined Generation's Advisory Board.

Online commentators and think-tank policy analysts have suggested that Al Gore has created a conflict of interest by working with GIM and simultaneously being the spokesperson for action on global warming. The Competitive Enterprise Institute believes that the government policies Gore advocated to the U.S. Senate in January 2009 "will make him and his friends extremely wealthy at the expense of consumers." Such criticism over this alleged conflict of interest has been made as early as March 2007.

GIM also owns a 10% stake in the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), CCX in turn owns half of European Climate Exchange. This gives Al Gore a financial bias towards promoting global warming control through the issuing of carbon credits.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 17 Feb 10 - 11:23 PM

"There is NO source of energy that does not ( eventually) end in heat pollution."

I agree. The bad pollution I was referring to is the toxic kind.

See where I said "The world is going to heat up anyway due to heat pollution. Energy=heat."

Unless you can capture heat and turn it into electricity at 100% efficiency there is going to be a net gain of heat.

KP: your math is beyond me so I will bow to your authority on that.

No matter where the heat ends up it is still heat. How much warming have we seen so far per year?

We had better be looking far ahead at the overarching problem of the ultimate heating of the earth from any sort of energy use.

LH: "I would like to see some honesty in our media" I would like to see some honesty from the UN, IPCC and politicians instead of scare tactics."

Amos: You need to get deprogrammed Pop. Here is a start

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Feb 10 - 07:38 PM

It's no use explaining it, Amos...Phil Jones has 'admitted' that he overstated his case. ☺

Nothing counts if Bruce can find one vague counterexample.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 17 Feb 10 - 06:20 PM

Here's an analysis of warming versus solar activity for those who buy the "variable sun" pucky.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 17 Feb 10 - 06:19 PM

From the Journal of Geophysical Research:

An observationally based energy balance for the Earth since 1950

D. M. Murphy
Chemical Sciences Division, Earth System Research Laboratory, NOAA, Boulder, Colorado, USA

S. Solomon
Chemical Sciences Division, Earth System Research Laboratory, NOAA, Boulder, Colorado, USA

R. W. Portmann
Chemical Sciences Division, Earth System Research Laboratory, NOAA, Boulder, Colorado, USA

K. H. Rosenlof
Chemical Sciences Division, Earth System Research Laboratory, NOAA, Boulder, Colorado, USA

P. M. Forster
School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

T. Wong
NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia, USA

We examine the Earth's energy balance since 1950, identifying results that can be obtained without using global climate models. Important terms that can be constrained using only measurements and radiative transfer models are ocean heat content, radiative forcing by long-lived trace gases, and radiative forcing from volcanic eruptions.

We explicitly consider the emission of energy by a warming Earth by using correlations between surface temperature and satellite radiant flux data and show that this term is already quite significant. About 20% of the integrated positive forcing by greenhouse gases and solar radiation since 1950 has been radiated to space. Only about 10% of the positive forcing (about 1/3 of the net forcing) has gone into heating the Earth, almost all into the oceans. About 20% of the positive forcing has been balanced by volcanic aerosols, and the remaining 50% is mainly attributable to tropospheric aerosols.

After accounting for the measured terms, the residual forcing between 1970 and 2000 due to direct and indirect forcing by aerosols as well as semidirect forcing from greenhouse gases and any unknown mechanism can be estimated as -1.1 ± 0.4 W m-2 (1σ). This is consistent with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's best estimates but rules out very large negative forcings from aerosol indirect effects. Further, the data imply an increase from the 1950s to the 1980s followed by constant or slightly declining aerosol forcing into the 1990s, consistent with estimates of trends in global sulfate emissions. An apparent increase in residual forcing in the late 1990s is discussed.

And here's a bit more on global patterns.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 17 Feb 10 - 06:15 PM

Start with this graph.

Here's one hockey stick for you

Here's another although it is graphed in colors instead of shapes.

Here's another.

You need to smarten up on this.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 17 Feb 10 - 06:08 PM

I submit that you are a partner in fatuousness, LH, and for all the apparent reasonableness of your screed you do not know the facts about planetary climate change and are ignoring the hockey-stick curve in the temperature graphs.

Do a little more research and cite your sources.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Feb 10 - 05:54 PM

"If you believe the problem has been misanalyzed or misdiagnosed or a wrong remedy suggested, what are YOU doing about it?"

Say what, Amos? What exactly would you expect him to do about it? He's just a person expressing an opinion, one which differs from yours in some respect. Like anyone, he is continuing to defend his own opinion (a natural tendency in all humsns), just as are you continuing to defend yours. That's all there is to it.

I hardly think either you or he are in a position to do anything significant about global warming, Amos. ;-) You're talking about it, period. People like to talk. It strengthens their sense of identity, specially when they are defending an opinion they hold, and it is the source of most of the really long threads on this forum. If we were all to cease doing it, think of the energy we'd save! ;-) On the other hand, think of the bottled-up frustration of not expressing ourselves.

It's a trade-off.

Now, I find it quite interesting that there was a lengthy historical warming period on planeet Earth from the later 1800s into the early 20th century...until 1940 or '41 (don't remember year which it was, but it was one of those 2). Then a lenthy cooling period set in. And it lasted until 1975.

Yet our industrial civilization was unquestionably increasing its output of activity (and CO2 emissions) throughout that period...1940-1975.

Yet the Earth was in a cooling phase for those 35 years...during a steady and exponential increase of industrial activity on this planet.

So why didn't global warming continue during those 35 years, and why did it become global cooling instead...to an extent that there were scare stories in the media in the mid-70s about the danger of "a new ice age" due to several decades of global cooling? Why was there global cooling during those 35 years of steady industrial expansion?

I'll tell you why. Because the Sun was in a lower period of solar activity and was sending less energy our way, that's why.

The Sun's output of solar energy began increasing after the mid-70's and has done so until quite recently. The clear result of that has been about 35 years of global warming, driven by the Sun.

To deny this is bad science. It's very bad science to deny it. To pretend that it is carbon emissions which have driven the recent decades of global warming is very bad science which is not supported by the existing scientific evidence over a longer period of time, but by a very vociferous political lobby that is pretty much controlling the world mainstream media at present and is suppressing those opinions in the science community which do not support the sanctioned view of CO2-driven global warming.

Why are they doing it? Why are they promoting a theory based on clearly faulty science? I'm not sure why they're doing it, but I suspect they have both financial and political reasons for doing so, and very substantial ones.

Have we been experiencing global warming since 1975? Yes! But not for the reasons that are being touted in our media. Do we need to make adjustments to deal with this global warming? Yes!

Is it a good idea to reduce our industrial emissions? Yes, obviously it is...but not in order to reduce global warming. We should reduce our industrial emissions, because it is better for us and the planet to have CLEAN AIR rather than polluted air!

I would like to see some honesty in our media about the real reasons for what is going on and why, when it comes to global warming. We are being told lies and half-truths, and I'd really like to know why? Who stands to gain from doing it?

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: GUEST,KP
Date: 17 Feb 10 - 05:44 PM

Bruce
My 'back of a spreadsheet' (who uses envelopes these days?) says that 0.023 degrees is the most you'd ever get if all the energy went into the atmosphere. And clearly some goes into the sea - think of all that cooling water that gets pumped out. So I don't think a 2.3 degree rise a century is anywhere near a real case - just a theoretical top limit. The other thing, (and its late here and I'd need to think this through clearly when I'm awake) is that using renewables such as solar/tidal you are just capturing and concentrating energy that was coming to the earth anyway from solar radiation. So I'm not sure you'd get a net warming from those sources that you do from a fossil fuel plant. I'm not sure about nuclear - I think a nuclear plant just concentrates the decay that's already going on?!

There really are some fascinating discussions on this 'music forum'!
KP

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 17 Feb 10 - 05:21 PM

It is inaccurate because it is a calumny against an indefinite generalization; in fact, Gore has repeatedly made suggestions as to remedies to global warming using the best data available to him.

If you believe the problem has been misanalyzed or misdiagnosed or a wrong remedy suggested, what are YOU doing about it?

Sheesh.

Aside from carping at me, that is.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: beardedbruce
Date: 17 Feb 10 - 05:15 PM

"THis is a fatuuous, uncharitable and inaccurate remark"

How is it inaccurate?

What has been proposed DOES NOT DEAL with global warming- it merely reduces the effect of ONE greenhouse gas ( CO2), often at the cost of increasing others to a higher level ( water vapor and methane, for example). It does NOT even look at helping those affected by clkimate change, or even reduction of other pollutants.

and I take YOUR treatment of those you oppose as a guide, so "fatuuous," and "uncharitable" are not valid criticsm.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: beardedbruce
Date: 17 Feb 10 - 05:11 PM

0.023 degrees ( present rate of energy production- and you expect it to NOT increase??) a year times 100 years is 2.3 degrees- and ALL the CO2 reduction would not stop it. Look at the numbers the Goreistas have put forward- a single degree speels the death of all civilization ( to them)

A pity that the sun is a variable star, and will ( often, from past records (ie, the dinosaurs et al) )warm things up MOPRE than the greenhouse effect, without any help from man.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 17 Feb 10 - 01:20 PM

Permafrost line recedes 130 km in 50 years
February 17, 2010 Permafrost line recedes 130 km in 50 years

The southern limit of permanently frozen ground, or permafrost, is now 130 kilometers further north than it was 50 years ago in the James Bay region, according to two researchers from the Department of Biology at Université Laval. In a recent issue of the scientific journal Permafrost and Periglacial Processes, Serge Payette and Simon Thibault suggest that, if the trend continues, permafrost in the region will completely disappear in the near future.

The researchers measured the retreat of the permafrost border by observing hummocks known as "palsas," which form naturally over ice contained in the soil of northern peat bogs. Conditions in these mounds are conducive to the development of distinct vegetation -- lichen, shrubs, and black spruce -- that make them easy to spot in the field.

In an initial survey in 2004, the researchers examined seven bogs located between the 51st and 53rd parallels. They noted at that time that only two of the bogs contained palsas, whereas aerial photos taken in 1957 showed palsas present in all of the bogs. A second assessment in 2005 revealed that the number of palsas present in these two bogs had decreased over the course of one year by 86% and 90% respectively.

Helicopter flyovers between the 51st and 55th parallels also revealed that the palsas are in an advanced state of deterioration over the entire James Bay area.

While climate change is the most probable explanation for this phenomenon, the lack of long term climatic data for the area makes it impossible for the researchers to officially confirm this. Professor Payette notes, however, that the average annual temperature of the northern sites he has studied for over 20 years has increased by 2 degrees Celsius. "If this trend keeps up, what is left of the palsas in the James Bay bogs will disappear altogether in the near future, and it is likely that the permafrost will suffer the same fate," concludes the researcher affiliated to the Centre d'études nordiques.

Provided by Universite Laval

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 17 Feb 10 - 01:15 PM

the present bunch of Goreistas is NOT looking at solving any problem, just gaining control and ( political) power.

THis is a fatuuous, uncharitable and inaccurate remark.



A

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: GUEST,KP
Date: 17 Feb 10 - 12:56 PM

Bruce, Sawzaw

I was intrigued by the idea that the direct heat from all our power stations will eventually warm the atmosphere even without worrying about C02. As a chemistry/physics guy I like these little puzzles!

So I dug out a few numbers to see.

The total power output of all the world's power stations is 4000GW. (1GW is a billion watts, or 1 billion joules per second)

So if all that power was converted to heat and it all went into the atmosphere, then in a year the heat output would be

1 billion X 365 X 24 X 3600 or 1.26 E^20 joules (thats 1.26 followed by 18 zero's!)

But the energy needed to raise 1g of air by 1 degree C is 1.012 Joules, and there are about 5.36 E^15 tonnes of air in the atmosphere. So the heat needed to raise the whole atmosphere by 1 degree (its heat capacity) is about 5.42 E^21 Joules (1.012 X 1 million to get from grams to tonnes, and multiply by the weight in tonnes).

So I reckon the heat from all the world's power stations in a year would raise the temperature of the atmosphere by at most 0.023 degrees - thats at least 10 times less than the predicted carbon dioxide related warming. You can double it by 2030 if you can believe the various projections for the increased energy demands by then. And in practice the warming would be less than my quick calculation as much of the residual heat from power stations goes into the sea not the air, and the sea has a much higher heat capacity than the atmosphere.

Sawzaw, your comment at 6.24pm above that you are in favour of 'solar, wing, hydro, nuclear energy, anything that does not pollute' I think is still valid. I think I agree with Bruce about the need for sensible adaptive measures as well - there are quite sensible people who buy/build houses on flood-plains and then complain when they get wet every winter!

hope this is clear and not too 'lecturing' :)

KP

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: beardedbruce
Date: 16 Feb 10 - 01:00 PM

Sawz,

"I am skeptical that mankind can reverse whatever global warming there is. Even if it could be reversed, we are doomed anyway because the problem is more and more people using more and more energy which is creating more and more heat, regardless of the efficiency and cleanliness of the energy source. The world is going to heat up anyway due to heat pollution. Energy=heat."

ABSOLUTELY! which, upon consideration, reflects upon
"I am all for solar, wing, hydro, nuclear energy, anything that does not pollute."

There is NO source of energy that does not ( eventually) end in heat pollution. See the laws of thermodynamics.




"There are actually people trying to figure out how to make a giant solar shade in space to shield us from the Sun. Who is going to have control over that?"

The question that the proponants do not want you to consider- after all, if I control that, are you going to argue with me about what I want to do ( at the risk of having sunlight cut off from your country) ?


There may well be climactic shifts in progress- but the present bunch of Goreistas is NOT looking at solving any problem, just gaining control and ( political) power.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: beardedbruce
Date: 16 Feb 10 - 09:57 AM

The certainty that it is man-made warming that can be prevented, and thus the ignoring of ANY steps to accomadate what I believe is real but not preventable climate changes is my major gripe with most of the Goreistas.



------------------------------------------------------
'Warming' meltdown


Climate 'consensus' cracks up
Last Updated: 5:50 AM, February 16, 2010

Posted: 12:58 AM, February 16, 2010

    Climate alarmists conjured a world where nothing was certain but death, taxes and catastrophic global warming. They used this presumed scientific certainty as a bludgeon against the skeptics they deemed "deniers" -- a word meant to have the noxious whiff of Holocaust denial.
                    
All in the cause of hustling the world into a grand carbon-rationing scheme. Any questions about the evidence for the cataclysmic projections, any concerns about the costs and benefits were trumped by that fearsome scientific "consensus," which had "settled" the important questions.              

A funny thing happened to this "consensus" on the way to its inevitable triumph, though: Its propagators have been forced to admit fallibility.
                 
For the cause of genuine science, this is a small step forward; for the cause of climate alarmism, it's a giant leap backward. The rush to "save the planet" can't accommodate any doubt, or it loses the panicked momentum necessary for a retooling of modern economic life.
                 
Phil Jones is the director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, a key "consensus" institution that has recently been caught up in an e-mail scandal revealing a mind-set of global-warming advocacy rather than dispassionate inquiry.
                 
Asked by the BBC what it means when scientists say "the debate on climate change is over," the keeper of the flame sounded chastened. "I don't believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this," Jones said. "This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the . . . past as well."
                 
Jones discussed the highly contentious "medieval warming period." If global temperatures were warmer than today back in 800-1300 AD -- about 1,000 years before Henry Ford's assembly lines began spitting out cars -- it suggests that natural factors have a large hand in climate change, a concession that climate alarmists are loath to make.
                 
Jones said we don't know if the warming in this period was global in extent since paleoclimatic records are sketchy. If it was, and if temperatures were higher than now, "then obviously the late 20th century warmth would not be unprecedented."
                    
Jones also noted that there's been no statistically significant warming since 1995, although the cooling since 2002 hasn't been statistically significant, either.
                    
All of this is like a cardinal of the Catholic Church saying the evidence for apostolic succession is still open to debate.
                    
The other main organ of the climate "consensus" is the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It won the Nobel Peace Prize for its 2007 report -- which turns out to have been so riddled with errors it could have been researched on Wikipedia.
                    
It said Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, warned that global warming could reduce crop yields in Africa by 50 percent by 2020, and linked warming to the increased economic cost of natural disasters -- all nonsense.

These aren't random errors. As former head of the IPCC, the British scientist Robert Watson notes, "The mistakes all appear to have gone in the direction of making it seem like climate change is more serious by overstating the impact."

Too many creators and guardians of the "consensus" desperately wanted to believe in it. As self-proclaimed defenders of science, they should have brushed up on their Enlightenment. "Doubt is not a pleasant mental state," said Voltaire, "but certainty is a ridiculous one."

The latest revelations don't disprove the warming of the 20th century or mean that carbon emissions played no role. But by highlighting the uncertainty of the paleoclimatic data and the models on which alarmism has been built, they constitute a shattering blow to the case for radical, immediate action.
                 
In The Boston Globe, MIT climate scientist Kerry Emanuel marshals a new argument for fighting warming: "We do not have the luxury of waiting for scientific certainty, which will never come." Really? That's not what we were told even a few months ago -- before climate alarmism acknowledged doubt.

Climate alarmists conjured a world where nothing was certain but death, taxes and catastrophic global warming. They used this presumed scientific certainty as a bludgeon against the skeptics they deemed "deniers" -- a word meant to have the noxious whiff of Holocaust denial.

All in the cause of hustling the world into a grand carbon-rationing scheme. Any questions about the evidence for the cataclysmic projections, any concerns about the costs and benefits were trumped by that fearsome scientific "consensus," which had "settled" the important questions.


Jones: Key climatologist softening claims.

A funny thing happened to this "consensus" on the way to its inevitable triumph, though: Its propagators have been forced to admit fallibility.

For the cause of genuine science, this is a small step forward; for the cause of climate alarmism, it's a giant leap backward. The rush to "save the planet" can't accommodate any doubt, or it loses the panicked momentum necessary for a retooling of modern economic life.

Phil Jones is the director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, a key "consensus" institution that has recently been caught up in an e-mail scandal revealing a mind-set of global-warming advocacy rather than dispassionate inquiry.

Asked by the BBC what it means when scientists say "the debate on climate change is over," the keeper of the flame sounded chastened. "I don't believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this," Jones said. "This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the . . . past as well."

Jones discussed the highly contentious "medieval warming period." If global temperatures were warmer than today back in 800-1300 AD -- about 1,000 years before Henry Ford's assembly lines began spitting out cars -- it suggests that natural factors have a large hand in climate change, a concession that climate alarmists are loath to make.

Jones said we don't know if the warming in this period was global in extent since paleoclimatic records are sketchy. If it was, and if temperatures were higher than now, "then obviously the late 20th century warmth would not be unprecedented."

Jones also noted that there's been no statistically significant warming since 1995, although the cooling since 2002 hasn't been statistically significant, either.

All of this is like a cardinal of the Catholic Church saying the evidence for apostolic succession is still open to debate.

The other main organ of the climate "consensus" is the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It won the Nobel Peace Prize for its 2007 report -- which turns out to have been so riddled with errors it could have been researched on Wikipedia.

It said Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, warned that global warming could reduce crop yields in Africa by 50 percent by 2020, and linked warming to the increased economic cost of natural disasters -- all nonsense.

These aren't random errors. As former head of the IPCC, the British scientist Robert Watson notes, "The mistakes all appear to have gone in the direction of making it seem like climate change is more serious by overstating the impact."

Too many creators and guardians of the "consensus" desperately wanted to believe in it. As self-proclaimed defenders of science, they should have brushed up on their Enlightenment. "Doubt is not a pleasant mental state," said Voltaire, "but certainty is a ridiculous one."

The latest revelations don't disprove the warming of the 20th century or mean that carbon emissions played no role. But by highlighting the uncertainty of the paleoclimatic data and the models on which alarmism has been built, they constitute a shattering blow to the case for radical, immediate action.

In The Boston Globe, MIT climate scientist Kerry Emanuel marshals a new argument for fighting warming: "We do not have the luxury of waiting for scientific certainty, which will never come." Really? That's not what we were told even a few months ago -- before climate alarmism acknowledged doubt.




Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/warming_meltdown_iD1hypJAstOrvovafbIbGK#ixzz0fi7Vk24m

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 16 Feb 10 - 12:46 AM

When I say I am sort of neutral, I mean I don't see what all of the fuss is about.

I don't see why be should spend spend spend while the world economy is so shaky to fix a problem that may not even be a problem or a problem that we may not be able to fix anyway.

What has the United Nations ever fixed anyway?

Someone is going to profit from the spending. Who?

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 06:24 PM

BB: My opinion.

I don't want to sound like I am flip flopping but I believe there is a degree or so of global warming and it "may" have been be caused by man.

However it has been over hyped to the point that people are polarized over the issue.

One group is the saviors that feel they are justified in fudging the numbers to bring action before it is too late:
"Dr Murari Lal, 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."

Another group has profit as their motive. Al Gore, Pachauri and some others stand to make billions off of the efforts to reverse global warming. They may actually believe in it.

Others are on the bandwagon with them. They believe they are the vanguard of humankind and must save the non believers from themselves.

Some countries want reparations from the industrial countries for causing global warming that they claim threaten them.

Then there are the actual non believers who are enraged and feel they must push back against what they believe to be a scam. Some of them might have a profit motive by gathering anti-warming followers and telling them what they want to hear.

I am sort of neutral but I believe people need to know the truth, not some PR campaign.

I am skeptical that mankind can reverse whatever global warming there is. Even if it could be reversed, we are doomed anyway because the problem is more and more people using more and more energy which is creating more and more heat, regardless of the efficiency and cleanliness of the energy source. The world is going to heat up anyway due to heat pollution. Energy=heat.

I attempt to point out and make people aware of the inconsistencies in the alarmist's evidence. I could probably poke some holes in the skeptics evidence but it is the alarmist's "evidence" that is constantly thrust in my face.

There are actually people trying to figure out how to make a giant solar shade in space to shield us from the Sun. Who is going to have control over that?

I am all for solar, wing, hydro, nuclear energy, anything that does not pollute. pollution is bad. I am not sure that carbon capture is workable like gasohol. Gasohol was a feel good idea that consumes more fossil fuel that it produces. A net loss. A boon doggle. They are destroying the rain forest in Brazil to make room for more soybean production for biodiesel to save the atmosphere.

I believe oil and natural gas should be used as a bridge to green power sources.

I am not calling anybody stupid or mean. People are entitled to their own opinion just as I am entitled to my opinion.

Just examine all the information from both sides in order to form an opinion.

Seems to me it is about money and power more than anything else.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 07:47 AM

THE GREAT CLIMATE CHANGE RETREAT



A key scientist has conceded that there has been no "statistically significant" rise since 1995

Monday February 15,2010

By Ed Price

THERE has been no global warming for 15 years, a key scientist admitted yesterday in a major U-turn.


Professor Phil Jones, who is at the centre of the "Climategate" affair, conceded that there has been no "statistically significant" rise in temperatures since 1995.

The admission comes as new research casts serious doubt on temperature records collected around the world and used to support the global warming theory.

Researchers said yesterday that warming recorded by weather stations was often caused by local factors rather than global change.

The revelations will be seized upon by sceptics as fresh evidence that the science of global warming is flawed and climate change is not man-made.

The Daily Express has led the way in exposing flaws in the arguments supporting global warming.

Last month we revealed how the UN's International Panel on Climate Change was forced to admit its key claim that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 was "speculation" lifted from a 1999 magazine article. The influential IPCC then admitted it had got the key claim wrong and announced a review.


The Daily Express has also published a dossier listing 100 reasons why global warming was part of a natural cycle and not man-made.

Yesterday it emerged that Professor Jones, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, had admitted he has trouble "keeping track" of the information.

Colleagues have expressed concern that the reason he has refused Freedom of Information requests for the data is that he has lost some of the crucial papers.

   SEARCH UK NEWS for:      

Professor Jones also conceded for the first time that the world may have been warmer in medieval times than now. Sceptics have long argued the world was warmer between 800 and 1300AD because of high temperatures in northern countries.

Climate change advocates have always said these temperatures cannot be compared to present day global warming figures because they only apply to one specific zone.

But Professor Jones said: "There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia.

"For it to be global in extent, the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the southern hemisphere. There are very few climatic records for these latter two regions.

"Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today, then obviously the late 20th century warmth would not be unprecedented." Professor Jones first came under scrutiny when he stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit in which leaked emails were said to show scientists were manipulating data.

Researchers were accused of deliberately removing a "blip" in findings between 1920 and 1940, which showed an increase in the Earth's temperature.

John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama and a former lead author on the IPCC, said: "The apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development."

Ross McKitrick, of the University of Guelph, Canada, who was invited to review the IPCC's last report said: "We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the IPCC's climate data are contaminated with surface effects from industrialisation and data quality problems. These add up to a large warming bias."

http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/158214

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 07:45 AM

MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: The professor's amazing climate change retreat

Last updated at 11:16 PM on 13th February 2010
Add to My Stories
Data: Professor Phil Jones admitted his record keeping is 'not as good as it should be'
Untold billions of pounds have been spent on turning the world green and also on financing the dubious trade in carbon credits.

Countless gallons of aviation fuel have been consumed carrying experts, lobbyists and politicians to apocalyptic conferences on global warming.
Every government on Earth has changed its policy, hundreds of academic institutions, entire school curricula and the priorities of broadcasters and newspapers all over the world have been altered – all to serve the new doctrine that man is overheating the planet and must undertake heroic and costly changes to save the world from drowning as the icecaps melt.
You might have thought that all this was based upon well-founded, highly competent research and that those involved had good reason for their blazing, hot-eyed certainty and their fierce intolerance of dissent.
But, thanks to the row over leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit, we now learn that this body's director, Phil Jones, works in a disorganised fashion amid chaos and mess.
Interviewed by the highly sympathetic BBC, which still insists on describing the leaked emails as 'stolen', Professor Jones has conceded that he 'did not do a thorough job' of keeping track of his own records.

His colleagues recall that his office was 'often surrounded by jumbled piles of papers'.
Even more strikingly, he also sounds much less ebullient about the basic theory, admitting that there is little difference between global warming rates in the Nineties and in two previous periods since 1860 and accepting that from 1995 to now there has been no statistically significant warming.
He also leaves open the possibility, long resisted by climate change activists, that the 'Medieval Warm Period' from 800 to 1300 AD, and thought by many experts to be warmer than the present period, could have encompassed the entire globe.

This is an amazing retreat, since if it was both global and warmer, the green movement's argument that our current position is 'unprecedented' would collapse.
It is quite reasonable to suggest that human activity may have had some effect on climate.

There is no doubt that careless and greedy exploitation has done much damage to the planet.

But in the light of the 'Climategate' revelations, it is time for governments, academics and their media cheerleaders to be more modest in their claims and to treat sceptics with far more courtesy.
The question is not settled.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1250813/MAIL-ON-SUNDAY-COMMENT-The-professors-amazing-climate-change-retreat.html#ixzz0fblT0uG0

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 07:44 AM

From The Sunday Times February 14, 2010

World may not be warming, say scientistsJonathan Leake
273 Comments
Recommend? (276)
The United Nations climate panel faces a new challenge with scientists casting doubt on its claim that global temperatures are rising inexorably because of human pollution.

In its last assessment the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the evidence that the world was warming was "unequivocal".

It warned that greenhouse gases had already heated the world by 0.7C and that there could be 5C-6C more warming by 2100, with devastating impacts on humanity and wildlife. However, new research, including work by British scientists, is casting doubt on such claims. Some even suggest the world may not be warming much at all.

"The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change," said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.

Related Links
Member of climate inquiry panel resigns
Science chief demands climate change honesty
The doubts of Christy and a number of other researchers focus on the thousands of weather stations around the world, which have been used to collect temperature data over the past 150 years.

These stations, they believe, have been seriously compromised by factors such as urbanisation, changes in land use and, in many cases, being moved from site to site.

Christy has published research papers looking at these effects in three different regions: east Africa, and the American states of California and Alabama.

"The story is the same for each one," he said. "The popular data sets show a lot of warming but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development."

The IPCC faces similar criticisms from Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph, Canada, who was invited by the panel to review its last report.

The experience turned him into a strong critic and he has since published a research paper questioning its methods.

"We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the IPCC's climate data are contaminated with surface effects from industrialisation and data quality problems. These add up to a large warming bias," he said.

Such warnings are supported by a study of US weather stations co-written by Anthony Watts, an American meteorologist and climate change sceptic.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7026317.ece

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 06 Feb 10 - 01:13 PM

mailonline:

ANOTHER climate change blunder: First it's melting glaciers, now natural disaster claim is debunked

25th January 2010

....Experts appointed by the United Nations said rising temperatures were to blame for an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods.

But it has emerged that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change based the statement, made in 2007, on an unpublished report that had not been properly reviewed by other scientists.

The report's author has since withdrawn the claim, saying there is not enough evidence to link climate change to worsening natural disasters, and criticised the use of his data as 'completely misleading'.

The latest revelation means more embarrassment for the climate change lobby because worsening natural disasters were a central plank of arguments at the recent UN climate summit in Copenhagen. Barack Obama used the claims when he said last autumn: 'More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent.

Climate change minister Ed Miliband has claimed that floods such as those which devastated parts of Cumbria last year could be widespread if global warming goes unchecked.

He said last month: 'Events in Cumbria give a foretaste of the kind of weather runaway climate change could bring. Abroad, the melting of the Himalayan glaciers that feed the great rivers of south Asia could put millions of people at risk of drought.'

The IPCC's 2007 report said the world had 'suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s', suggesting global warming was to blame.

But the claim was taken from a then unpublished report by Robert Muir-Wood, head of research at London-based consultancy Risk Management Solutions.

When Dr Muir-Wood released the report he added the caveat: 'We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses [damage caused by natural disasters].'

The IPCC said it would investigate the false claim and could withdraw it.

Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chairman of the IPCC, said: 'We are re-assessing the evidence and will publish a report on natural disasters and extreme weather with the latest findings.'

Dr Muir-Wood attacked the way his evidence was used. He said: 'The idea that catastrophes are rising in cost partly because of climate change is completely misleading. We could not tell if it was just an association or cause and effect. 'Also, our study included 2004 and 2005 which was when there were some major hurricanes. If you took those years away then the significance of climate change vanished.'

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 06 Feb 10 - 11:56 AM

Express.co.uk Saturday February 6,2010:


MET OFFICE BLASTED FOR 'BIASED SUPPORT OF CLIMATE THEORY'

THE Met Office was last night accused of being too heavily biased in support of arguments suggesting global warming is man-made.

Critics said the taxpayer funded body had no right to enter such a politically charged arena in the wake of an on-going row embroiling climate change scientists at the University of East Anglia.

A leaked email scandal at the university, which suggested that data which did not support theories of man-made global warming had deliberately been withheld, prompted the Met Office to issue a statement in support of the global warming camp.

It also called on scientists to sign up to a petition in support of the climate change science.

Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, who claims man-made climate change has been exaggerated, said the petition showed the Met Office was rattled. Dr Peiser said: "They have come out on one side and are paying the price. They have been far too heavily biased and have not been objective."

Earlier this week Professor Julia Slingo, Chief Scientist at the Met Office, urged the public to believe the science supporting the theory that man is behind global warming.

She stressed that carbon dioxide levels were rising and that the gas's impact on temperature had been known about since the 19th century.

The United Nations' climate change chief yesterday vowed not to quit, despite a high-profile error in an international report on man-made global warming.

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said there remained a "huge volume" of science backing the theory that human activity is to blame for changes in global temperatures.

The IPCC was last month forced to apologise for an incorrect claim in its 2007 report that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035.

A journalist for Science magazine has claimed that Dr Pachauri was told of the issue last year but took no action ahead of the Copenhagen summit on global warming.

Greenpeace UK director John Sauven yesterday said that the error put Pachauri's position in question.

There has been an increase in the number of British people who are sceptical about climate change, a poll commissioned by BBC News has suggested.

It showed that 25 per cent of those questioned did not think global warming was happening, an increase of 10 per cent since November.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 05 Feb 10 - 11:45 AM

The Dutch environment minister, Jaqueline Cramer, on Wednesday demanded a thorough investigation into the 2007 report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change after a Dutch magazine uncovered it incorrectly states 55 percent of the country lies below sea level. The the Dutch national bureau for environmental analysis has taken responsibility for the incorrect figure cited by the IPCC. Only 26 percent of the Netherlands is really below sea level.

When Cramer heard of that blunder she wrote a letter to the IPCC, saying she was "not amused" there were mistakes in the scientific report she bases the Dutch environmental policies on. Now she is confronted with errors in the data about her own country. "This can't happen again," the minister told reporters in The Hague on Wednesday. "The public trust in science and politics has been badly damaged."

So peer review is worth what?

Recently, one mistake after the other has surfaced in the IPCC reports. De Telegraaf reported yesterday that temperature measurements have turned out to be no longer comparable with earlier ones because thousands of weather stations in open, colder areas have been removed. Dates for disappearing glaciers were also changed - 2035 became 2350 - and anecdotes in a mountain-climbers magazine were promoted to scientific sources.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 04 Feb 10 - 04:58 PM

...Dr Pachauri blamed Dr Lal, saying his team had failed to apply IPCC procedures.

It was an accusation rebutted angrily by Dr Lal. 'We as authors followed them to the letter,' he said. 'Had we received information that undermined the claim, we would have included it.'

However, an analysis of those 500-plus formal review comments, to be published tomorrow by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the new body founded by former Chancellor Nigel Lawson, suggests that when reviewers did raise issues that called the claim into question, Dr Lal and his colleagues simply ignored them.>

For example, Hayley Fowler of Newcastle University, suggested that their draft did not mention that Himalayan glaciers in the Karakoram range are growing rapidly, citing a paper published in the influential journal Nature.

In their response, the IPCC authors said, bizarrely, that they were 'unable to get hold of the suggested references', but would 'consider' this in their final version. They failed to do so.

The Japanese government commented that the draft did not clarify what it meant by stating that the likelihood of the glaciers disappearing by 2035 was 'very high'. 'What is the confidence level?' it asked.

The authors' response said 'appropriate revisions and editing made'. But the final version was identical to their draft.

Last week, Professor Georg Kaser, a glacier expert from Austria, who was lead author of a different chapter in the IPCC report, said when he became aware of the 2035 claim a few months before the report was published, he wrote to Dr Lal, urging him to withdraw it as patently untrue.

Dr Lal claimed he never received this letter. 'He didn't contact me or any of the other authors of the chapter,' he said.

The damage to the IPCC's reputation, already tarnished by last year's 'Warmergate' leaked email scandal, is likely to be considerable.

Benny Peiser, the GWPF's director, said the affair suggested the IPCC review process was 'skewed by a bias towards alarmist assessments'.

Environmentalist Alton Byers said the panel's credibility had been damaged. 'They've done sloppy work,' he said. 'We need better research on the ground, not unreliable predictions derived from computer models.'

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 04 Feb 10 - 04:15 PM

Mailonline

24th January 2010

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..........

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 31 Jan 10 - 10:03 PM

The Information Commissioner's office said University of East Anglia researchers breached the Freedom of Information Act when handling requests from climate change skeptics.

MAILONLINE 28th January 2010

...The revelation comes after a string of embarrassing blunders and gaffes for climate scientists and will fuel concerns that key researchers are too secretive and too arrogant.

It will pile pressure on the director of the university's climate change unit, Professor Phil Jones, who has stood aside while an investigation is carried out, and make it harder for him to return.

The ruling followed a complaint from retired engineer David Holland-66, whose Freedom of Information-requests were ignored.

Last night Mr Holland welcomed the watchdog's decision but said it was disappointing the researchers would not be prosecuted.

'All we are trying to do is make the scientists follow their own professional rules by being open, transparent and honest,' he said. 'We are not trying to show that human beings don't affect the climate, but to show that the science is not settled.'

Scientists at the University of East Anglia were encouraged to delete emails concerning claims that man-made emissions were causing global warming....

9:41 AM 2/2/2005, Phil Jones wrote:

Mike,
I presume congratulations are in order - so congrats etc !

Just sent loads of station data to Scott. Make sure he documents everything better this time ! And don't leave stuff lying around on ftp sites - you never know who is trawling them.

The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone.

Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to enquiries within 20 days? - our does ! The UK works on precedents, so the first request will test it. We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind.

Tom Wigley has sent me a worried email when he heard about it - thought people could ask him for his model code. He has retired officially from UEA so he can hide behind that. IPR should be relevant here, but I can see me getting into an argument with someone at UEA who'll say we must adhere to it !

Are you planning a complete reworking of your paleo series? Like to be involved if you are.

Had a quick look at Ch 6 on paleo of AR4. The MWP side bar references Briffa, Bradley, Mann, Jones, Crowley, Hughes, Diaz - oh and Lamb ! Looks OK, but I can't see it getting past all the stages in its present form. MM and SB get dismissed. All the right emphasis is there, but the wording on occasions will be crucial. I expect this to be the main contentious issue in AR4. I expect (hope) that the MSU one will fade away.

It seems the more the CCSP (the thing Tom Karl is organizing) looks into Christy and Spencer's series, the more problems/issues they are finding. I might be on the NRC review panel, so will keep you informed.

Rob van Dorland is an LA on the Radiative Forcing chapter, so he's a paleo expert by GRL statndards.

Cheers
Phil

May 29, Phil Jones wrote to Michael Mann, with the subject heading "IPCC & FOI":

    Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He's not in at the moment - minor family crisis.

    Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don't have his new email address.

    We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 29 Jan 10 - 09:15 PM

"didn't do any research", they just "took a look at papers", that they got 12 "people around the table" and "just kind of winged it."

...Although the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has a peer review process, their peer review process does not comply with the OMB and EPA policies for highly influential scientific assessments in many important respects, including, without limitation, non-compliance in the provision of data to reviewers and transparency. Had the EPA actually carried out the examination of IPCC peer review policy that is required prior to EPA use, it would undoubtedly have identified these and other shortcomings.

Further, the peer review process of the TSD itself failed to comply with relevant OMB Guidelines....

....Shortly after the NRC 2006 report, I asked Gerald North, Chairman of the NRC2006 panel in an online colloquy whether they had carried out any due diligence to determine whether these proxies had been used as follows:

The NRC Panel stated that strip-bark tree forms, such as found in bristlecones and foxtails, should be avoided in temperature reconstructions and that these proxies were used by Mann et al. Did the Panel carry out any due diligence to determine whether these proxies were used in any of the other studies illustrated in the NRC spaghetti graph?

North in effect admitted that no such due diligence was carried out, stating that they did not "dissect" the studies illustrated in this graphic to determine whether they had used the strip bark proxies whose avoidance had been recommended, while inconsistently confirming that strip bark forms should not be used as follows:

There was much discussion of this matter during our deliberations. We did not dissect each and every study in the report to see which trees were used... The strip-bark forms in the bristlecones do seem to be influenced by the recent rise in CO2 and are therefore not suitable for use in the reconstructions over the last 150 years.

In an seminar at Texas A&M University shortly thereafter that was placed online1, North described operating procedures of the NRC 2006 panel by saying that they "didn't do any research", that they just "took a look at papers", that they got 12 "people around the table" and "just kind of winged it." He said that's "what you do in these sorts of expert panels"..[Read more here]

A clip of North’s remarks is online here

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 29 Jan 10 - 08:55 PM

Ask Amos a question and he takes off like a big ass bird.

In August, the Met Office had forecast a mild winter. Last summer, the BBC had again been embarrassed: Thanks to the forecasts it had received from the UK Met, the BBC had warned its audience of an "odds-on barbecue summer" that instead was cool and rainy.

Nationalpost.com January 17, 2010:

The British Broadcasting Corporation has put its weather forecasting contract out to tender â€" the first time since its radio broadcasts began in 1923 â€" after taking heat from the public for a string of embarrassingly inaccurate long-range weather forecasts. The UK Met Office, the government-owned meteorological department that has had the BBC contract for almost 90 years, is a partner with the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University of Climategate fame. CRU and the UK Met Office jointly provide the climate change data that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change relies on.

The BBC’s decision comes amid one of the fiercest winters in decades that has left the country unprepared for the snow-related chaos it has seen. In August, the Met Office had forecast a mild winter. Last summer, the BBC had again been embarrassed: Thanks to the forecasts it had received from the UK Met, the BBC had warned its audience of an "odds-on barbecue summer" that instead was cool and rainy. In both cases, the BBC has faced outrage from a public that had been misled by the information the BBBC had provided it.

Many blame the UK Met Office’s abysmal forecasts record on a climate change bias. The BBC’s own climate correspondent, Paul Hudson, who for a decade had been a UK Met forecaster, believes the UK Met’s problem could stem from flawed computer models at its Hadley Centre, which provides data to the IPCC.   

“Could it be that the Hadley supercomputer had developed a warm bias?â€쳌 he wrote for the BBC yesterday, elaborating on a troubling possibility that has implications for the climate change debate. Last week, on the same subject, he wrote: “Experts I have spoken to tell me that this certainly is possible with such computer models. And if this is the case, what are the implications for the Hadley centre's predictions for future global temperatures? Could they be affected by such a warm bias? If global temperatures were to fall in years to come would the computer model be capable of forecasting this?â€쳌

The UK Met has also lost contracts to private sector firms in the UK that depend on accurate long-range forecasts, among them Marks & Spencer and Tesco.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 28 Jan 10 - 11:29 PM

CNSNEWS January 26, 2010

Ben Pile, co-author of Climate Resistance, noted that an assertion in the same IPCC report that climate change could contribute to reducing rain-based crop yield in Africa by 50 percent by 2020 had originated from a report by another advocacy organization, the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD).

The IPCC report in the spotlight was one of four released in a series of high-profile events during 2007, and together known as the Fourth Assessment Report. It was six years in the making, and the IPCC said in publicity material at the time that it was the work of more than 2,500 scientific expert reviewers, more than 800 contributing authors and 450 lead authors from more than 130 countries.

The Fourth Assessment Report has been used to guide governments in determining climate policies affecting hundreds of millions of people, and by advocacy groups in pressing governments to do more. The IPCC is currently working on its Fifth Assessment Report, and on Jan. 15 opened nominations for authors and reviewers. It is due to be finalized in 2014.

The reliance of peer-reviewed material – material that has been scrutinized by other experts in the same scientific field – is aimed at minimizing the likelihood that unsound assertions can make their way into IPCC reports.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 28 Jan 10 - 11:07 PM

National Geographic News
June 20, 2008

Arctic warming has become so dramatic that the North Pole may melt this summer, report scientists studying the effects of climate change in the field.

"We're actually projecting this year that the North Pole may be free of ice for the first time [in history]," David Barber, of the University of Manitoba, told National Geographic News aboard the C.C.G.S. Amundsen, a Canadian research icebreaker.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: GUEST,KP
Date: 28 Jan 10 - 05:41 PM

HI all,
Glad to see everyone is still going at this thread...

Here is a most unusual thing, an article that actually takes a balanced look at the various arguments around AGW, from a reasonably authoritative source - Chemical Engineering News published by the American Chemical Society.

Global Warming And Climate Change - Believers, Deniers and Doubters

Interesting comment near the end about how the impact of methane may have been underestimated. Methane stopped increasing in 1998 just as (as some would say) temperatures seemed to level off. hmm...

cheers KP

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 27 Jan 10 - 09:57 PM

The Sunday Times January 24, 2010
UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters

THE United Nations climate science panel faces new controversy for wrongly linking global warming to an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods.

It based the claims on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny â€" and ignored warnings from scientific advisers that the evidence supporting the link too weak. The report's own authors later withdrew the claim because they felt the evidence was not strong enough.

The claim by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that global warming is already affecting the severity and frequency of global disasters, has since become embedded in political and public debate. It was central to discussions at last month's Copenhagen climate summit, including a demand by developing countries for compensation of $100 billion (£62 billion) from the rich nations blamed for creating the most emissions.

Ed Miliband, the energy and climate change minister, has suggested British and overseas floods â€" such as those in Bangladesh in 2007 â€" could be linked to global warming. Barack Obama, the US president, said last autumn: "More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent."

Last month Gordon Brown, the prime minister, told the Commons that the financial agreement at Copenhagen "must address the great injustice that . . . those hit first and hardest by climate change are those that have done least harm".

The latest criticism of the IPCC comes a week after reports in The Sunday Times forced it to retract claims in its benchmark 2007 report that the Himalayan glaciers would be largely melted by 2035. It turned out that the bogus claim had been lifted from a news report published in 1999 by New Scientist magazine.

The new controversy also goes back to the IPCC's 2007 report in which a separate section warned that the world had "suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s".

It suggested a part of this increase was due to global warming and cited the unpublished report, saying: "One study has found that while the dominant signal remains that of the significant increases in the values of exposure at risk, once losses are normalised for exposure, there still remains an underlying rising trend."

The Sunday Times has since found that the scientific paper on which the IPCC based its claim had not been peer reviewed, nor published, at the time the climate body issued its report.

When the paper was eventually published, in 2008, it had a new caveat. It said: "We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses."

Despite this change the IPCC did not issue a clarification ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit last month. It has also emerged that at least two scientific reviewers who checked drafts of the IPCC report urged greater caution in proposing a link between climate change and disaster impacts â€" but were ignored.

The claim will now be re-examined and could be withdrawn. Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, a climatologist at the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, who is vice-chair of the IPCC, said: "We are reassessing the evidence and will publish a report on natural disasters and extreme weather with the latest findings. Despite recent events the IPCC process is still very rigorous and scientific."

The academic paper at the centre of the latest questions was written in 2006 by Robert Muir-Wood, head of research at Risk Management Solutions, a London consultancy, who later became a contributing author to the section of the IPCC's 2007 report dealing with climate change impacts. He is widely respected as an expert on disaster impacts. Read more

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 27 Jan 10 - 09:05 PM

Recent Ignored Research Findings In Climate Science – An Illustration Of A Broken Scientific Method

This weblog lists three research findings that are in the peer reviewed literature, but have been completely ignored by the IPCC and CCSP climate assessment communities, nor have been refuted in the literature. These are just three examples of the level to which the scientific method has sunk to in climate science.

    * Observations of the spatial distribution of aerosols in the atmosphere in the lower latitudes, shows that the aerosol effect on atmospheric circulations, as a result of their alteration in the heating of regions of the atmosphere, is 60 times greater than due to the heating effect of the human addition of well-mixed greenhouse gases [from Matsui and Pielke, 2006];
    * A conservative estimate of the warm bias in the construction of a global average surface temperature trend resulting from measuring the air temperature near the ground is around 0.21°C per decade (with the nighttime minimum temperature contributing a large part of this bias). Since land covers about 29% of the Earth's surface, the warm bias due to this influence explains about 30% of the IPCC estimate of global warming. In other words, consideration of the bias in temperature would reduce the IPCC trend to about 0.14°C per decade; still a warming, but not as large as indicated [based on Lin et al 2007];
    * The radiative temperature of the Earth is used by the IPCC and CCSP to represent the portion of the radiation emitted at the top of the atmosphere which originates at the Earth's surface. However, the outgoing long wave radiation is proportional to the fourth power of T [T4], from Stefan-Boltzman's Law, not temperature by itself. A 1C increase in the polar latitudes in the winter, for example, would have much less of an effect on the change of long wave emission than a 1C increase in the tropics. The spatial distribution matters, but this important distinction has been ignored. A more appropriate measure of radiatively significant surface changes would be to evaluate the change of the global average of T4 with time. [Pielke et al 2007].

Until, and unless the climate science community returns to the proper scientific method of examining the climate system, policymakers will continue to be fed erroneous information. Only poor policy decisions can result due to this failure.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 27 Jan 10 - 08:56 PM

Table of Contents 2
  
  Examples of [IPCC} Errors:
  
  A 10-fold exaggeration in the effect of Melting ice-sheets on sea-level rise..3
  
  A 20-fold exaggeration of the climatic effects of rising CO2 concentrations...5
  
  The Attribution Question......................................................6
  
  References....................................................................6
  
  Some of the Errors in Al Gore's Movie.........................................7

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 27 Jan 10 - 08:51 PM

Bill: You ask for an opinion and you make an ad hominem attack on the opinion.

I am sorry if I have violated any of your rules about posting things here.

Where is your analysis of what was posted as opposed to whom posted it and how it was posted?

If you would read my postings a little further you would see that I am not denying global warming exists.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 27 Jan 10 - 08:35 PM

And Amos, since you are so well ventillated now, here is the info on a weather station 75 miles from the first one. Quite an anomaly here.

Hostile remarks? You the king of hostility accusing others of being hostile? BTW where and why did those 4500 stations go and why?

Site Curator/Contact, Phone number: Orland Water Users Association [phone]
Date and time of survey: 5/12/2007 11:30AM PST
Name of person doing the site survey: Anthony Watts
Surveyor contact email or phone number: 530-899-8434 [e-mail]
Reported Coordinates and Elevation of site: 39.8 N 122.2 W
Measured GPS Coordinates of site: 39.74529N 122.20027W
Measured Elevation 247 feet

Google Earth Link:

Site description and known history: Traditional Stevenson Screen with wooden legs. Mercury max/min thermometers. Site in operation over 100 years, at present location since 1951, possibly longer.
Curator notes: curator says they just received 100 year service award from NWS Sacramento

Site surveyor notes: Well placed site except for small orange tree about 18-20 feet NE of shelter which will grow and possibly influence shelter.

Closest bias is concrete water flume about 4 feet wide about 10 feet W of shelter and is very old concrete structure, curator says possibly turn of century. Station shelter has been repainted with semi-gloss latex paint several times. Note pictures of paint chips. Other bias is to NW, heavy equipment lot and building about 200 feet away.

Shelter and instruments in good condition, shelter clean and functional.

GISS Plot

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Jan 10 - 04:15 PM

"Now you object"..." I don't object to hearing your opinion. I dispute some of its content!

As to: "The IPCC produces key scientific material...."etc... Yes, they DO produce such material. YOU keep posting stuff claiming to show that certain members **OF** the IPCC are overzealous and may have fudged 'some' data...etc.

You didn't bother to cite your source for "The IPCC produces key scientific material ...", but it wasn't hard to find. It is from a talk by Dr. Pachauri, in 2007 at the Nobel award to Gore. You have said that you do not trust Dr. Pachauri's conclusions or his use of data. I wouldn't imagine you would agree with such a wide-sweeping statement which, out of context, feels like a pretty self-serving statement about his own group. I'm not going to believe everything self-serving Bill Gates says about Microsoft, but they do do a lot of high quality stuff! The IPCC **IS** more than Pachauri....

You continue to try to discredit an entire scientific hypothesis by making references to claimed problems with some of its adherents. There are classic logical fallacies associated with that type of reasoning.
Several of us who have debated you here have posted data and links to data that support the overall idea that global climate change, including incremental warming, is happening, and that human activity is partially responsible, and that we should take measures to combat it.

If you wish to directly dispute this, I'll listen...but ad hominem remarks about individuals don't accomplish this.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 27 Jan 10 - 04:00 PM

Sawz:

OK--go ahead and subtract the Marysville survey data. Recompute the curve based on the data from the hundreds of other stations.

You sound a tad desperate; your main stock in trade keeps coming up as destructive commentary, hostile remarks, and nullification.

Sigh.

What constructive remarks can you offer?


A

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 27 Jan 10 - 03:42 PM

Amos: Why did GISS / NOAA reduce the number of weather stations from 6,000 to 1500? Did they drop the ones reading higher tempertures or was it the lower reading stations?

Weather Station Survey:

Weather Station/Climate Station Site Survey Form
Site Name: Marysville
NASA GISS Site Numerical ID: 425745000030
Site Address: Near 9th and B streets, 1 block east next to RR tracks, 107 9th St, Marysville, CA
Site Curator/Contact, Phone number: Marysville Fire Station, [phone]
Date and time of survey: 5/25/07 1:20PM PST
Name of person doing the site survey: Anthony Watts
Surveyor contact email or phone number: 530-899-8434
Reported Coordinates and Elevation of site: 39.1 N 121.6 W
Measured GPS Coordinates of site: 39.14577N 121.58585W
Measured Elevation 68 feet
Google Earth Link:

Site description and known history: The site uses an MMTS sensor installed by Sacramento NWS office. The sensor IR shield is placed in a small patch of soil in a planter box on the rear patio. The placement is within 6 feet of a parking space (see pictures) and within 6 feet of an electronics container housing cell phone transmission equipment. The electronics container/portabuilding was placed about 2 years ago along with the cell phone tower whose base is galvanized steel and about 8 feet away.

Curator notes: The entire rear area used to be grass field but was converted to parking lot about 20-25 years ago, the sensor IR shield was moved to its current location when the cell tower was erected. Their used to be a Stevenson Screen shelter at this location but was switched to MMTS.

Site surveyor notes: This is probably the worst temperature measuring location ever seen by this observer in his 30 year history as a meteorologist. The sensor is essentially in the corner of a large parking lot, vehicles with hot radiators can park within 6 feet of the sensor, the sensor itself is with 6 feet of the building housing cell phone electronics, and the cell phone tower base about 8 feet away is of galvanized steel and could be felt reflecting the heat of the sun.

Worse, the sensor is located within 10 feet of the exhaust fan of the air conditioning units for the cell phone porta-building, and hot air from these units could be felt in the vicinity of the sensor. The sensor is within 25 feet of the main building where firefighters quarters are, and they indicate they use a propane fueled barbeque grill on the patio within about 10 feet of the sensor once or twice a week.

It is the opinion of the site surveyor that the data produced by this station is biased in so many ways that it is essentially useless and should be removed from the USHCN list.

GISS Plot

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 27 Jan 10 - 02:56 PM

The Times of India 27 January 2010

The hits to IPCC and R K Pachauri just don't seem to stop. In the latest embarrassment to the Nobel-winning body, British daily 'Telegraph' has published details on IPCC's dire prediction regarding the huge depletion of Amazon forests, which was based on unverified reports.

The daily said the IPCC forecast about the loss of Amazon forests because of "even a slight reduction in precipitation" came from a journal that was not peer-reviewed. Coming after the disclosure, and acknowledgement, that its warning of 'meltdown' of Himalayan glaciers by 2035 was based on speculation, the latest expose will further undercut IPCC's credibility.

According to the article, Pachauri is under fire for setting a death-date for the Amazon forests. With this, Pachauri's "robust and solid" monitoring system for preparing the IPCC assessment report has been completely shorn of respectability.

In its report, the Telegraph suggests that IPCC did not independently research the claims. It says the claims were lifted off a report done by the WWF, an advocacy group.

According to the British paper, the two 'expert' authors of the WWF cited in the IPCC report are, in fact, not Amazon specialists. One, Dr P F Moore, is a policy analyst while the other, Andy Rowell, is a freelance journalist and a green activist.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Amos
Date: 27 Jan 10 - 12:52 PM

Sawz:

The LiveScience.com site had the graph up under the heading "Global Land-Ocean Temperature Index" and linked to an article entitled "Past Decade the Warmest Since 1880". The link worked when I first posted it.

The graph is here: http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?s=environment&c=news&l=on&pic=warmest-decade-100123-02.jpg∩=Except+for+a+leveling+off+between+the+1940s+and+1970s%2C+Earth%27s+surface+temperatures+have+increased+since+1880.+The+last+decade+has+brought+the+temperatures+to+the+highest+levels+ever+recorded.+The+graph+shows+global+annual+surface+temperatures+relative+to+1951-1980+mean+temperatures.+As+shown+by+the+red+line%2C+long-term+trends+are+more+apparent+when+temperatures+are+averaged+over+a+five+year+period.+Credit%3A+NASA%2FGISS&title=

THe article is here: http://www.livescience.com/environment/warmest-decade-100123.html

Or, if you prefer, here.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 27 Jan 10 - 12:37 PM

Bill: I posted it with no comments but you asked for a comment.

Now you object. Evidently your goal is to be nasty with your whoever said rebuttals and feign indignation with whomever disagrees with you.

"The IPCC produces key scientific material that is of the highest relevance to policymaking, and is agreed word-by-word by all governments, from the most skeptical to the most confident. This difficult process is made possible by the tremendous strength of the underlying scientific and technical material included in the IPCC reports."

Where is the tremendous strength?

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: pdq
Date: 27 Jan 10 - 10:25 AM

...for Ed T, et al, on the origin of the myth of Global Warming:

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way. ~ Bertrand Russell

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Jan 10 - 10:14 AM

"...form my own opinion without someone else's spin."

If you are having an ongoing debate, however, it is useful to know what the other guy's opinion is.

and... *sigh*

"...the IPCC's world renowned, universally agreed to, absolutely unquestionable, Nobel prize winning, no longer open to debate, bulletproof report."

I don't detect a wee bit of sarcasm there, do I? Who suggested that ANY report has ANY such status? The question is not whether you can find 'some' discrepancies , or whether some spokesman has a bad attitude (even if his agency is on the right track). The question is whether the overall situation being touted IS real!
The IPCC is not the only group saying that the problem is real, and the evidence that there is a problem does not depend on one graph or one over-zealous spokeman's say-so.
I do not have the time to personally evaluate every compilation of data and the computer software programs that produce it...but there are those who do, and it is STILL the case that most of the capable scientists who do the research and ARE capable of sorting the wheat from the chaff' in the complex data and reports OF the data, say that there is, indeed, a problem.

Wolfgang's remark is relevant about one researcher thinking that... "...IPCC is controlled by scientists who step out of their roles as advisers and become politicians themselves overselling basically sound data.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 26 Jan 10 - 11:14 PM

Amos: I don't see a danged thing at the page you linked to.

If you want to see something really interesting, here is a time lapse image of CO2 in the atmosphere for the entire year of 2008.

I found it at NOAA. It was a slow loading 22mb file so I shrunk it down to 7mb.

you can actually see all the CO2 concentrations worldwide and where they come from, then swirling all around the world and changing from season to season.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Sawzaw
Date: 26 Jan 10 - 10:34 PM

Sorry Bill. I didn't mean to overwhelm you but I sort of like to read things and form my own opinion without someone else's spin.

All that being said, I believe it to be another glaring discrepancy in the IPCC's world renowned, universally agreed to, absolutely unquestionable, Nobel prize winning, no longer open to debate, bulletproof report.

But you can decide for yourself. Please do.

Subject: RE: BS: Where's the Global Warming
From: Donuel
Date: 26 Jan 10 - 10:15 PM

Hey AMos, Ed jus called you stupid    he he ;<}

OH I get it now. nevermind.