Climategate

"Carbon (Dioxide) trading is now the fastest growing commodities market on earth.....And here’s the great thing about it. Unlike traditional commodities markets, which will eventually involve delivery to someone in physical form, the carbon (dioxide) market is based on lack of delivery of an invisible substance to no-one. Since the market revolves around creating carbon (dioxide) credits, or finding carbon (dioxide) reduction projects whose benefits can then be sold to those with a surplus of emissions, it is entirely intangible." (Telegraph)

This blog has been tracking the 'Global Warming Scam' for over ten years now. There are a very large number of articles being published in blogs and more in the MSM who are waking up to the fact the public refuse to be conned any more and are objecting to the 'green madness' of governments and the artificially high price of energy. This blog will now be concentrating on the major stories as we move to the pragmatic view of 'not if, but when' and how the situation is managed back to reality. To quote Professor Lindzen, "a lot of people are going to look pretty silly"


PS: If you have arrived here on a page link, then click on the HOME link...

Tuesday 31 December 2013

Expedition On The Cheap? Did Organizers Recklessly, Negligently Put Lives And Property At Risk?

NoTricksZone
"With the MS Akademik Shokalskiy research vessel firmly embedded in ice and costs of the mammoth rescue effort mounting, the “scientific” Australasian Antarctic Expedition (AAE) led by Professor Chris Turney has morphed into a debacle that has put dozens of lives and property at risk. In under-estimating the world’s harshest environment and through slipshod planning and short cuts taken in a bid to keep costs down, expedition organizers may have recklessly and negligently put the lives of the 74 passengers in jeopardy."

Monday 30 December 2013

Warmists trapped by irony off Antarctica

Andrew Bolt Herald Sun (Australia)
"First difference. Where Mawson found a bay with clear water, Turney found a bay choked with ice, forcing his ship to stop some 70 km short of where Mawson landed: ..."

The Antarctic ‘research’ fiasco – ‘would you, could you, in a boat’?

WUWT
"Now, with such a fantastic failure in full world view, questions are going to start being asked. For example, with advanced tools at their disposal (that Mawson never had) such as near real-time satellite imaging of Antarctic sea ice, GPS navigation, on-board Internet, radar, and satellite communications, one wonders how these folks managed to get themselves stuck at all. Was it simple incompetence of ignoring the signs and data at their disposal combined with “full steam ahead” fever? Even the captain of the Aurora Australis had the good sense to turn back knowing he’d reached the limits of the ship on his rescue attempt. Or, was it some sort of publicity stunt to draw attention? If it was the latter, it has backfired mightily. One might argue that with photos like the one below, this whole “Spirit of Mawson” research expedition, is little more than a media stunt."

Saving the Antarctic scientists, er media, er, activists, er tourists trapped by sea ice

WUWT
"There’s quite an ongoing worldwide fascination over the So much sea ice in Antarctica that a research vessel gets stuck, in summer! episode with the ship Akademik Shokalskiy we first reported on WUWT."

Global warming scientists forced to admit defeat... because of too much ice: Stranded Antarctic ship's crew will be rescued by helicopter

Daily Mail
"They went in search evidence of the world’s melting ice caps, but instead a team of climate scientists have been forced to abandon their mission … because the Antarctic ice is thicker than usual at this time of year. The scientists have been stuck aboard the stricken MV Akademik Schokalskiy since Christmas Day, with repeated sea rescue attempts being abandoned as icebreaking ships failed to reach them. Now that effort has been ditched, with experts admitting the ice is just too thick. Instead the crew have built an icy helipad, with plans afoot to rescue the 74-strong team by helicopter."

Third icebreaker abandons rescue of climate scientists boat in Antarctica, media fog, obscure, don’t say “climate”

JoNova (Australia)
"A month ago the mission of the $1.5m expedition was “to answer questions about climate change”. Now the ABC describes the Australasian expedition as “a Russian ship stuck in sea ice in Antarctica.” The BBC has a reporter on board, and it only took 8 hours for the news to reach the BBC feed. Who is spinning the message to neutralize an embarrassing story then? Let there be no doubt, the mission was to document and record scientific changes in Antarctica and to broadcast that to the world. Most scientific missions don’t have a dedicated media team, but this one named a staff of five journalists. There is a journalist and a documentary maker from the Guardian as well as a senior producer from the Science Unit at the BBC world service. (See the media list.) If they’d discovered less sea ice, fewer penguins, or big cracks, we know the images would be all over the mass media and it would be evidence for “climate change”.

Wind farms handed £5 million to switch off turbines as thousands of homes left without power

Telegraph
" Wind farm companies were paid almost £5 million to switch off their turbines while storms lashed the UK over the festive period and tens of thousands of homes were left without power, according to figures published today. The ‘constraint payments’, which ultimately come from household bills, were payable when the National Grid was unable to cope with the extra power produced during the recent bout of stormy weather or usage was low. More than £4.8 million has been paid out to wind farm companies since December 15, according to figures compiled from official data, almost as much as was handed over in the whole of 2012. The total included more than £1.2 million during the first of the recent storms, on December 19, followed by nearly £800,000 on Christmas Eve, more than £400,000 on Christmas Day and nearly £300,000 last Friday. The money was paid to switch off turbines over a period when winds of up to 100mph hit Britain, with the storms leading to a spate of deaths, travel chaos for millions of people trying to get home for Christmas and power cuts for thousands of homes."

Thursday 26 December 2013

Welcome to the frozone

WUWT
"Extreme negative temperatures out-number extreme positive temperatures on the planet today, with a spread of over 100ÂșC. Eagle airport in upper Alaska on the Yukon River is one such example: ..."

£30million for wind turbines that don't work when it's windy: Cost is £25million higher than last year and paid for by household bills

Daily Mail
"Wind farms have been paid a record £30million this year to stand idle in bad weather. The cash, which comes from household bills, is paid when the National Grid is unable to cope with the extra power produced during high winds, or during periods of low demand. The ‘constraint payments’ have reached £30,424,169 this year, compared with last year’s £5million."

Saturday 21 December 2013

In Light of Decreased Global Temperatures, It's Time to Take a Look at the Global Warming Spending Racket

NewsBusters
" Since the planet has been getting cooler, not warmer since 1998, the media should be asking questions about the opportunity cost of the investments Western governments have been making. Since it is now evident there is a large and growing disparity between climate model predictions and actual scientific observations, it’s pretty clear the federal government’s spending priorities have been misplaced. Astronomers have taking note of a calm solar cycle that translates into fewer sunspots. “It is the weakest cycle the sun has been in for all the space age, for 50 years,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association physicist Doug Biesecker has told members of the press. This could be a major contributing factor behind cooler temperatures that have been recorded recently. A group of German scientists are now forecasting a cooling trend that will persist for the duration of the 21st Century as a result of decreased solar activity. This is what Donald Easterbook, a retired geologist from Western Washington University, anticipates 25 to 30 years of global cooling. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), and sun spot activity over the past century strongly correlate with previous warming and coolings, Easterbook explains. The recent shift of the PDO back into a cool phase is “right on schedule,” Easterbook points out in a Dec. 2008 paper for the American Geophysical Union. Contrary to what high profile U.S. government officials have said, historical records show that cooling phases tend to be more dangerous and destabilizing to vulnerable populations. Food shortages and civic turmoil have been linked to global cooling, not global warming, Morano reports on his web site. By denying developing countries access to cheap, affordable energy in form of fossil fuels, environmentalists and their allies in the U.N., are putting these populations in a more comprised position. The draft version of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s Fifth Assessment (AR5), which is already on the Internet, is narrowly focused on the human contribution to global warming and its potential after effects. Updated scientific research now shows that these assumptions are well off the mark. It’s time for members of the press to taking a harder look at the impact of global warming policies as opposed to global warming, per se."

Thursday 19 December 2013

If Manmade Greenhouse Gases Are Responsible for the Warming of the Global Oceans…

WUWT
"…then why do the vertical mean temperature anomalies (NODC 0-2000 meter data) of the Pacific Ocean as a whole and of the North Atlantic fail to show any warming over the past decade, a period when ARGO floats have measured subsurface temperatures, providing reasonably complete coverage of the global oceans? See Figure 1. Or, in other words, why is the warming of the global oceans (0-2000 meters) over the past 10 years limited to the Indian and South Atlantic Oceans, when carbon dioxide is said to be a well-mixed greenhouse gas, meaning all ocean basins should be warming? ......Or, to look at it in yet another way, we’re being told that, while surface temperatures are no longer warming, the oceans to depth continue to warm…yet the warming is not occurring in the largest ocean basin, the Pacific, and the North Atlantic is showing evidence of cooling."

Tropics Go Wintery! … Northern Thailand Declared Cold Disaster Zone … Snow In Vietnam … In Turkey “Animals Literally Freeze Where They Stand”!

NoTricksZone
"A flurry of Middle Eastern and Asian news websites are reporting on “unusual” cold sweeping across vast areas of Asia and the Middle East. ...It’s strange how NASA likes to focus on one single region (Siberia), and inflates temperature data there for evidence of warming, and neglects the rest of the planet."

Jerusalem breaks 134-year-old snowfall record

IceAgeNow
"The storm that began this past weekend and lasted four days broke the Jerusalem snowfall record since 1879,” says this news website. “The snow piled up to a height of 40 to 60 centimeters (16 to 23½ inches), and an especially great quantity of snow fell in the mountains of northern Israel, reaching a height of 70 centimeters (28 inches).”

Saturday 14 December 2013

4,000 windmills produce no more than one proper power station

Christopher Booker,Telegraph
"Considering that the Government wants us to spend £100 billion on building thousands more wind turbines as the centre of its energy policy, it is rather important to know just how much value we are getting for our money. ...... Despite costing us billions, all those wind farms combined produced on average only 2.2GW: no more than a single coal-fired power plant. And for that we paid their developers £1.3 billion in subsidies through our energy bills, equating to £58 for every household in the land.
The world’s largest offshore wind farm, the London Array in the Thames estuary, opened last summer by David Cameron, cost £2.2 billion to build, to generate on average – thanks to the wind’s intermittency – just 200 megawatts (MW), for which we pay £175 million a year in subsidies. Meanwhile Europe’s largest gas-fired power station, opened in 2012 at Pembroke, cost £1 billion, to produce 2,000MW or 10 times as much – without a penny of subsidy. In other words, it can generate almost as much power as all the wind farms put together, at less than half the price, even allowing for the cost of the gas. And, unlike them, it can do so reliably, whenever it is needed. Slowly, we are waking up to the fact that wind turbines are by far the most inefficient, expensive and unreliable means of generating electricity ever devised. And that to centre our entire national energy policy on building 10,000 more of them in the next six years is one of the most dangerous political follies in Britain’s history."

Friday 13 December 2013

Sun's Current Solar Activity Cycle Is Weakest in a Century

Space.com / Climate Depot
""None of us alive have ever seen such a weak cycle. So we will learn something," Leif Svalgaard of Stanford University told reporters here today (Dec. 11) at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union."

Over 2000 cold and snow records set in the USA this past week

WUWT
"Quite an imbalance in weather records this week. Even the AGU fall meeting in San Francisco where the best and brightest global warming scientists were meeting was surrounded by record (such as 25F in San Jose Dec 9th) and near record setting low temperatures, though the irony was lost on many of them. ......In other cold and snowy news, the Egyptian capital of Cairo sees snowfall for the first time in 112 YEARS"

Pathetic press release from House Democrats disappears the testimony of Christy and Pielke

WUWT
"Ah, politics, the stench of spin is strong here. Note the picture below. Left to right are Dr. John Christy, Dr. David Titley, and Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.. In the text, Christy and Pielke don’t even exist, because, well, this was “A Factual Look at the Relationship between Climate and Weather.” and we can’t have factual testimony we don’t like in the press release, can we? Really, if you are going to disappear people in your press releases, at least be savvy enough to use a photo only showing your man giving testimony. Idiots."

Thursday 12 December 2013

Antarctica: Record Cold And Growing Ice Chills Global Warming Theories

GWPF
"The big news from Antarctica these days is the record low temperature of -135.8 degrees Fahrenheit, which is the coldest temperature ever recorded on the planet. What seems to be going unreported, is that on top of the record cold in Antarctica, the southern ice sheet is growing at a pace faster than Global Warming theories can account for."

Monday 9 December 2013

Wind turbines policy is all at sea

Christopher Booker,Telegraph
" Using official data from the UK and Denmark, Prof Hughes showed that we have now been building turbines long enough to see that, due to wear and tear on their mechanisms and blades, the amount of electricity they generate very dramatically falls over the years; so that a turbine that initially produces on average at 25 per cent of its “capacity” can degrade over 15 years to produce less than 5 per cent. With offshore turbines, the effects of weather and salt corrosion are so damaging that output falls from 45 per cent to barely 12 per cent. This means, as Prof Hughes observes, that either we will have to build many more turbines than the Government is allowing for, to comply with our EU requirement to generate 32 per cent of our electricity from renewables by 2020; or, within a decade, we will have to pay tens of billions of pounds more for most of those turbines to be replaced. I gather that Prof Hughes showed his research to David MacKay, the chief scientific adviser to the Department of Energy and Climate Change, who could not dispute his findings. So DECC is fully aware of this devastating flaw in its projections, but presses on with its insane policy regardless."

Axe carbon tax to keep lights on and cut energy bills, says ScottishPower chief

Telegraph
" Britain's unilateral carbon tax should be scrapped before it causes blackouts, pushes up household bills and makes the UK uncompetitive, ScottishPower argues. Keith Anderson, chief corporate officer, warns that the “carbon price floor” (CPF), which taxes companies for burning fossil fuels, will make Britain’s remaining coal plants “largely uneconomic by around the middle of the decade”. With Britain’s spare power margin already forecast to fall as low as 2pc by 2015, the carbon tax will force more closures and “threatens to make us even more vulnerable to the risk of blackouts”, he warns. Writing in Monday’s Telegraph, Mr Anderson also calls for a review of Britain’s £12bn programme to install “smart” electricity and gas meters in every home, suggesting costs should be cut to reduce the impact on consumer bills. Several coal-fired power plants have already shut this year under EU rules to help curb acid rain and pollution. About a dozen plants remain operational and provide about 40pc of UK power; ScottishPower’s own Longannet coal plant powers about one-quarter of Scottish homes."

Saturday 7 December 2013

SHAMEFUL: Obama to Give Wind Farms 30-Year Pass on Eagle Deaths

sunshine hours
" Slaughtering Eagles will soon be legal thanks to Obama. This is Shameful. “The Obama administration is about to approve a rule that will ensure the death of golden and bald eagles for the next 30 more years. Hundreds of thousands of birds die each year flying into the deadly turbine blades atop the soaring towers that compose wind farms. The rule will give wind farms thirty year permits for the “non purposeful take of eagles-that is where the take is associated with but not the purpose of, the activity.’’ The take of eagles is also a euphemism for the slaughter of them.”

More than 1000 cold snowy records set in US, one small media outlet covers it

JoNova(Australia)
"I guess it is winter. In a cold snap last week nearly 1,400 records were broken in the US. 886 places recorded the lowest maximum, 325 recorded the coldest minimum, and 127 places recorded the highest snowfall. .......A search for news of cold records set in US from Nov 26 to Nov 30 turns up one story in the Christian Science Monitor and pretty much no where else (did I miss some?). When 1,000 heat records fell in a week USA today covered it. They don’t seem to have mentioned the cold records, but we might wonder whether that’s an editorial bias, or (I think more likely) that no official climate or meteorological group issued a press release."

UN $315 billion CDM carbon market comatose after Warsaw. It may last years

JoNova (Australia)
"Each CDM was worth 20 euros in 2008. Now they are selling for 50c. ....Norway’s government is sending $30m of taxpayer funds to buy CDM credits. Lucky UK Taxpayers are tossing in 50 million pounds. Do I read this correctly — of the 50 million, only 33 is going to buy of the credits, the other 17million is going to train people on getting through UN red tape. Those compliance costs… really? And people call this a “free” market."

The Best the IPCC Can Do

Quadrant Online
"The new video aims to present the strongest evidence that the IPCC can muster that dangerous global warming is occurring, and requires an urgent response. It starts by asserting that “the scientific evidence [for human-caused dangerous warming] is stronger than ever” and “human influence on the climate system is clear”. Given the general absence of evidence for dangerous global warming after 25 years of focused research, the expenditure of breathtaking amounts of money, and at a time when there has been no warming for at least 17 years, such a nonsensical statement should prompt derision."

A Theory Ready for Extinction

Quadrant Online
"Don't worry too much over those warmist predictions that millions of species will soon be lost to climate change. Judging by their methods it is the doomsayers who are the real dodos."

The Effects Of Environmentalist and Climate Alarmist Crying Wolf Begin To Appear

WUWT
"Suzuki doesn’t realize he‘s the cause of the failure as a major player in the group who exploited environmentalism and climate for a political agenda. Initially most listened and tried to accommodate, but gradually the lies, deceptions and propaganda were exposed. The age of eco-bullying is ending. Typically Suzuki blamed others for the damage to the environment and climate but now he blames them for not listening to him. He forgets that when you point a finger at someone three are pointing back at you."

Saturday 30 November 2013

Europe Climate Policy Blows Engine…”Giant Failure” … Scientists “Failed Tricking Their Way Past Democracy” … Mood Of Resignation

NoTricksZone
"The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) has written a blistering criticism of Hans Schellnhuber’s WBGU and climate activists’ efforts to impose a green authoritarian society over the rest of the world. They overshot and missed the curve."

U.N. milks 'warming' claim to spend half-trillion-plus

Climate Change Dispatch
"No mention was made at the joint press conference of the accumulating scientific evidence that global warming theories are based on faulty scientific research or that the Obama administration has lost billions of taxpayer dollars pursuing “green energy” projects that have failed to prove economically viable."

Britain's bill for climate aid rises to £4.5 billion

Telegraph
" Growing numbers of Tory backbenchers are now calling for the Government to withdraw from expensive climate change and carbon emission commitments. Japan’s decision to sharply reduce its carbon emission goals and Australia’s scrapping of a tax on high carbon emitters has increased the pressure. Lord Lawson of Blaby, the former Conservative chancellor and a climate change sceptic, criticised the EU for using its wider budget to provide climate aid. He said: “This is a complete waste of taxpayers’ money. It will achieve no useful purpose at a time when people are already hard pressed.” Douglas Carswell, Tory MP for Clacton, said the decision was unjustifiable. He said: “We’re spending money that we don’t have to solve a problem that doesn’t exist at the behest of people we didn’t elect. “The problem is because the decision makers in the EU are not properly accountable. They are making decisions that not only affect how billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money will be spent, but will directly impact the heating costs people in my constituency will face over winter.” He added: “The rethinks that have happened in Japan and Australia and elsewhere desperately need to happen here as well.” Jacob Rees-Mogg, Conservative MP for North East Somerset, said: “We shouldn’t be wasting money in this way. “Every penny of money that comes from the British government is paid for by taxpayers and we are supposed to be in an age of austerity. "We are cutting back on things like children’s services but then you are spending £4.5 billion on climate change aid which won’t make a blind bit of good anyway.”

The secret society of warmists

Christopher Booker,Telegraph
"As one present put it, “it was like talking to members of a cult”. What particularly struck the GWPF team was their opposite numbers’ refusal to discuss the policy implications of their beliefs, even though Hoskins is a leading member of the “independent” committee which advises the Government on its increasingly disastrous and futile “low carbon” energy policy. In short, the meeting seemed perfectly to exemplify the real mess we are in, where the officially approved scientists who advise our politicians are so sure they are right that it is impossible to have any serious dialogue with them."

Saturday 23 November 2013

Study: Greenland Ice Sheet was smaller 3000-5000 years ago than today

WUWT
"Clues in the Arctic fossil record suggest that 3-5,000 years ago, the ice sheet was the smallest it has been in the past 10,000 years"

Austrian Meteorologists Stupefied Into Silence! Data From Alps Show Marked Cooling Over Last 2-3 Decades!

NoTricksZone
"Evaluated data from the Austrian ZAMG meteorological institute now unmistakably show that the Alps have been cooling over the last 20 years and longer, “at some places massively“ thus crassly contradicting all the loud claims, projections, and model sceanrios made earlier by global warming scientists."

Wednesday 20 November 2013

The 97 Percent Figure on Global Warming the Media Won't Tell You About

Climate Change Dispatch
"There’s a magic number the news media likes to cite whenever the United Nations releases a new report on Global Warming. The public is constantly told that 97 percent of scientific experts agree that human activity is responsible for dangerous levels of global warming. Therefore, the U.S., and other western nations, must dramatically reshape public policy with an eye toward reducing fossil fuels. But it doesn’t take a lot of investigation to take down that 97 percent figure and expose the gamesmanship and duplicity advanced under the cover of “science.” Lawrence Solomon, executive director of Energy Probe and author of The Deniers, carefully explains how dishonest researchers cooked the books: ..."

Germany Joins Japan, Canada, Australia In Abandoning Useless Fight Against Climate Change…Actions Speak Louder!

NoTricksZone
"And when you examine its current activities, one thing stands clear: Germany is no longer taking the futile fight against climate change seriously and has abandoned its efforts to fight nature, likely having realized that the climate is going to change naturally anyway and there’s nothing you can do about it – except adapt. Thus in most respects, Germany has de facto joined the ranks of Japan, Australia and Canada."

Cowtan & Way off course

WUWT
"In short, even if their imaginative data reconstructions were justifiable (which, as Dr. Whitehouse indicated, they were not), they made nothing like enough difference to allow us to be 95% confident that any global warming at all had occurred during The Pause."

Tuesday 19 November 2013

Resist green tax suicide like the brave Poles

Christopher Booker,Telegraph

"Wholly predictable last week was the ghoulish eagerness of the warmists (including David Cameron) to blame the Philippines typhoon disaster on “man-made climate change”. Those sceptics who actually consult the evidence wearily pointed out that in recent years tropical storm activity, including Pacific typhoons, has been less intense than for decades; and that Asia was hit by even worse typhoons in the past, notably in the late 17th century, at the height of the “Little Ice Age” when the world was much colder than it is now.
Meanwhile, in Warsaw, 10,000 officials and climate activists are gathered under the auspices of the UN, in yet another desperate attempt to agree that we must all be taxed and regulated into further reducing our “carbon emissions”. An innovation this time, however, was a 50,000-strong mass demonstration nearby, in support of a “counter-conference” sponsored by Solidarity and other Polish groups, to protest at how the UN’s bogus science is being used to “deceive the world”. As the country that relies more on coal for its electricity than any other in Europe, Poland is leading the way in resisting the pressure for the EU to commit economic suicide by raising its insane “carbon-reduction targets” even higher — pressure led by our own Government.
When can we hope to see 50,000 people turning out in Britain to protest that we have the most idiotically self-destructive energy and “climate” policies in the world?"

London Bankers abandon trading — 70% of jobs gone: “it’s over” says Executive

JoNova (Australia)
"At least someone once thought London was the home of carbon finance. Now, not so much. According to the Financial Times, JP Morgan has scaled down their carbon trading team, Morgan Stanley traders are now “part time”, Barclays sold theirs last year, Deutsche Bank closed the office, and UBS shut its climate change advisory panel. Then there is a slew of smaller fish, EcoSecurities, Camco Clean Energy, Nedbank, Sindacatum, and TFS Green."

On Cowtan and Way (2013) “Coverage bias in the HadCRUT4 temperature series and its impact on recent temperature trends”

WUWT

"The datasets produced by Cowtan and Way (2013) do not appear to provide polar amplification for the period of 1979 to 2004, because the HADCRUT4 data warmed faster than the Cowtan and Way (2013) data before 2005. See the discussions of Figures 3, 4 and 5.
Increasing polar-amplified warming in the Arctic does not help climate models, which show poor polar amplification results. Refer to the discussions of Figures 7, 8 and 9.
And due to the differences in the spatial patterns of warming and cooling, using lower troposphere temperatures to infill surface temperature data appears questionable.
As I was writing this post, Judith Curry also published the post Uncertainty in Arctic temperatures. It’s definitely worth reading in light of Cowtan and Way (2013)."

Monday 11 November 2013

Australia says “No” to UN wish list of billions – will “not support socialism masquerading as environmentalism”

JoNova (Australia)
"The UN wants $100 billion from wealthier countries (about $2.4 billion from Australians or $100 a person). The Australian government has produced a position statement for the Warsaw UNFCCC conference. It is unusually brutal. I don’t think I remember seeing the phrase about socialism “masquerading as environmentalism” in an official statement before. (I’m sure readers will correct me). It’s good to see some recognition that the science has become less clear, and that it may become more so. Essentially, the new Australian government ‘s message to the UN is: we are reducing CO2, but we’re not giving you a cent. Furthermore, if the science becomes muddier, we might drop it. We don’t think this UN meeting is remotely important and we have better things to do. And when it comes to wealth transfer through the UN the answer is No. Thank. You."

Sunday 10 November 2013

Storms and global warming

Bishop Hill
"The landfall of supertyphoon Haiyan has led to a predictable upsurge in attempts by unscrupulous environmentalists to turn the drama into a political opportunity. ........Meanwhile, we learn of this 2004 paleoclimate reconstruction of hurricane landfalls in South-eastern China. The conclusions seem to contradict the wild claims of the drama greens more than somewhat: 'Remarkably, the two periods of most frequent typhoon strikes in Guangdong (AD 1660–1680, 1850–1880) coincide with two of the coldest and driest periods in northern and central China during the Little Ice Age.'

IPCC Author Stars in Sleazy, Fake Nobel Ad Campaign

Donna Laframboise (Canada)
"A poster featuring a photo of Pulwarty declares: “From a prized education at York to a Nobel Peace Prize.” A detailed, in house article about the ad campaign declares that Pulwarty is a “Nobel Laureate.” (Back in 2008, another York U publication described him as “York’s first alumnus to become a Nobel laureate.”) ......But this is nonsense. In 2007, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to an individual (Al Gore) and to an organization (the IPCC). Please note that Peace Prizes have nothing to do with scientific merit. Gore – who received dismal grades in college science courses (a D and a C+) – would never have won one otherwise. Over the years, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, and UN peacekeeping forces have also received the Peace Prize. Just as this didn’t transform every peacekeeping soldier into a Nobel laureate, the approximately 9,000 people who’ve helped the IPCC write reports over the past 25 years didn’t become nobelists, either. When you win a Nobel Prize you receive a personal telephone call from a Nobel official – and a cheque for a significant amount of money. Al Gore got the telephone call and the cheque. Roger Pulwarty did not. The NobelPrize.org website lists the names of every individual who can legitimately claim to have won a Peace Prize. Gore’s name appears there. Pulwarty’s doesn’t."

For advice on ignoring snow, ask Sir Mark Walport

Christopher Booker,Telegraph
" Sir Mark Walport, the Government’s chief scientific adviser, told a committee of MPs that the reason why the number of people in Britain who disbelieve in man-made global warming has quadrupled since 2005 is because their fuel bills have risen. As an immunologist who self-evidently knows even less about climate science than the assorted biologists and “surface chemists” who previously held this pointless post, Sir Mark clearly hasn’t noticed the global warming piling up outside his window in our recent record-breakingly cold winters. This is a man who was quick to endorse that report for the BBC Trust by the snail expert Steve Jones, calling for the BBC to show not less bias on climate issues but more. I was also pleased to see Sir Mark telling the MPs that he “intensely dislikes” the use of the term “warmist”, because it suggests that “there is some kind of a cult around warmism”. He might do better to switch to a new career as a stand-up comedian, although I doubt whether this would match his present salary of £165,000 a year."

BjĂžrn Lomborg on Haiyan/Yolanda

WUWT
"It is phenomenal. Climate campaigners like [John] Vidal in Guardian keeps arguing that the terrible typhoon Haiyan shows we need to do more about global warming. Yet, even *after* Haiyan, the Accumulated Cyclone Energy of all cyclones in the Western North Pacific is below normal (99%, http://models.weatherbell.com/tropical.php). The global ACE is at 74%."
Comment: BjĂžrn Lomborg is a warmist pretending to be a critic - he goes on to say "Again, it is likely that global warming will make cyclones somewhat stronger, though likely also somewhat fewer." So what is his proof of this ? he then says " And because of increasing damages from global warming,..."

Media/Climate Activists ‘Hype False Claims’ About Typhoon Haiyan As Scientists Reject Climate Link – Claim of ‘strongest storm ever’ refuted – Climate Depot Special Report

Climate Depot Special Report
"Meteorologist Dr. Ryan Maue: 'Over past 1,000 years, Philippines have been hit by 10-20 thousand tropical cyclones. Don't be so arrogant to believe man caused Haiyan.'

Wednesday 6 November 2013

The oldest ice core – Finding a 1.5 million-year record of Earth’s climate

WUWT

"How far into the past can ice-core records go? Scientists have now identified regions in Antarctica they say could store information about Earth’s climate and greenhouse gases extending as far back as 1.5 million years, almost twice as old as the oldest ice core drilled to date. The results are published in Climate of the Past, an open access journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU)."

Antarctic Sea Ice Sets A New Record For October

NALPKT
"According to NSIDC, Antarctic sea ice extent during October was the highest on record for that month. The latest daily figures for 4th Nov show this trend continuing."

From the comments:
CO2 is a “trace gas” in air, insignificant by definition. It absorbs 1/7th as much IR, heat energy, from sunlight as water vapor which has 188 times as many molecules capturing 1200 times as much heat making 99.9% of all “global warming.” CO2 does only 0.1% of it. For this we should destroy our economy?
The Medieval Warming from 800 AD to 1300 AD Micheal Mann erased to make his “hockey stick” was several degrees warmer than anything “global warmers” fear. It was 500 years of great abundance for the world.
The Vostock Ice Core data analysis show CO2 increases follow temperature increases by 800 years 19 times in 450,000 years. That makes temperature change cause and CO2 change effect; not the other way around.
Carbon combustion generates 80% of our energy. Control and taxing of carbon would give the elected ruling class more power and money than anything since the Magna Carta of 1215 AD."

Sunday 3 November 2013

New IPCC Leak – Working Group 2′s Summary for Policymakers

Climate Change Dispatch
"An anonymous person has sent me a copy of the final draft of the Summary for Policymakers for that section. Dated four days ago, the IPCC believes this document should remain secret. I think the public has a right to examine it. It’s important to be able to compare what IPCC personnel have written in this draft to what the final, non-draft version will say when it’s released to much fanfare next March."

Developers Dismiss Sea Level Rise Claims – Plan To Build 30 New Luxury Hotels In The Maldives – Nasheed’s Cash Machine

NoTricksZone
"Whatever is really behind all the rising sea level scare stories, huge commercial investors are obviously dismissing them. If anything, these scare stories are providing lots of publicity for the islands’ tourism industry. Already more than 1 million tourists are flocking to the islands every year and, Kulke writes, Nasheed says the islands can handle many more."

Thursday 31 October 2013

'Green Dave’ Cameron as much to blame as 'Red Ed’ Miliband for energy crisis

Christopher Booker,Telegraph
"But what few people yet realise is how far this catastrophic mess we are in was not only predictable, but has also been quite deliberately brought about, through the Government’s own policies. Their central aim, though never openly explained, has been twofold. One leg has been to build, by 2020, some 30,000 wind turbines, so ludicrously expensive that we must pay double or treble the market rate for the power they so inefficiently produce. The other leg is that, to make this seem competitive, we should also eventually be made to pay twice the going rate for all other forms of electricity: hence the “carbon tax” on coal and gas, and the colossal price we are to pay for power from Hinkley Point and other new nuclear power stations (four times the cost of nuclear, estimated by a Royal Academy of Engineering study only nine years ago)."

Wednesday 30 October 2013

Keenan does AR5

Bishop Hill
"Doug Keenan has written a critique of the IPCC's handling of statistics in AR5. Suffice it to say he is not impressed."

New review paper finds Medieval and Roman Warm Periods were worldwide and warmer than the present

The Hockey Schtick
" We now have substantial evidence that throughout portions of both the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods, SSTs in the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool were essentially equivalent to those of "the late twentieth century," indicating - once again - that there is nothing unusual, unnatural or unprecedented about current air temperatures in this critically important region of the globe. "

Commonsense Climate Science and Forecasting after AR5

WUWT
"In the AR5 Summary for Policymakers the IPCC glossed over the developing cooling trend in global temperatures and so lost the last vestige of its scientific credibility and any claim to be a source of useful guidance on future climate trends for policymakers. .....The entire vast UN and Government sponsored AGW behemoth with its endless labyrinthine conferences and gigantic schemes for UN global control over the World and National economies is a prime example of the disasters Eisenhower warned against in 1961.......In plain English this means that they have no idea what the climate sensitivity is and that therefore that the politicians have no empirical scientific basis for their economically destructive climate and energy policies. ....."

Tuesday 29 October 2013

IPCC Adjusts Model-Predicted Near-Term Warming Downwards

WUWT
"This is another post that illustrates and discusses just how poorly climate models simulate one of the most important climate variables: global surface temperatures. .....The answer to both questions is, the CLIMATE MODELS CANNOT SIMULATE the multidecadal variations that exist in the surface temperature record....
And it’s well known by the public that the models used by the IPCC are tuned to the upswing that started in the mid-1970s (see Mauritsen, et al. (2012) Tuning the Climate of a Global Model [paywalled]. A preprint edition is here.), while failing to consider the impacts of naturally occurring multidecadal periods of no warming on their long-term (to 2100) prognostications.
Last, as far as I know, the IPCC did not lower their long-term prognostications based on their lower short-term predictions."

How we pay UN bureaucrats to adapt to climate change in comfort

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)

How embarrassing. Our former Labor government was one of the few stupid enough to squander our money on the United Nations’ Green Climate Fund:

Here’s a list of the countries who are both rich and improvident enough to squander their taxpayers’ money on the Green Climate Fund. It’s the usual suspects, my condolences to their citizens who are paying for this:
Australia, $513,000
Denmark, $608,000
Finland, $648,000
France, $326,000
Japan, $500,000
Germany, $1,053,000
South Korea, $2,099,000
Netherlands, $286,000
Sweden, $752,000
UK, $770,000
TOTAL, $7,555,000
The Koreans put in two megabucks … but then, they also negotiated a deal where the Green Climate Fund is headquartered in Seoul. So no tears for them, they’ll make out like bandits.
We were told we had to give this small fortune to the UN to help the poor: ..."


Obama's 'social cost of carbon' is at odds with science & ignores 'social benefits of carbon'

The Hockey Schtick

The Obama administration's latest, greatest weapon to prosecute its war on global warming is something called the "social cost of carbon." It is an instrument honed on ill-founded climate alarm and is readily blunted in the face of the best science.
The social cost of carbon is supposed to be a complete accounting of the market externalities, both positive and negative, resulting from carbon dioxide emissions released by burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, or natural gas.
But as its name implies, the government's accounting of the social cost of carbon focuses almost entirely on conjured "costs" while ignoring proven "benefits" of carbon dioxide emissions."

Sat imagery of Bushfires in New South Wales, Australia

WUWT
 From the comments: "Much of Australia’s fire problem caused by loony green laws. Also, the eucalyptus trees there are a pyromaniac’s wet dream. .......62 fires, 287,000 acres total, just a bit larger than the RIM fire (Yosemite) at 257,314. Australia is NOT going up in flames, despite what the media babblers babble. ....What the greens have done is ensure that forests can burn as they used to before they were ‘managed’. It is nothing to do with climate change and all to do with not clearing brush and trying to extinguish every small fire. The result is literally a tinderbox forest just set up for occasional firestorms. .....'The ocean is enveloped in smoke, and it is not visible from any great distance in shore. Bombala, Berry, Kiama, Pambula, and Wynham all complain of the devastation done by high winds and devouring bush fires'.(No, this not a report on the recent fires in NSW by the ABC or Sydney Morning Herald. It is a report from September 14th, 1895) .....Greenies who on the one hand act in council to ban/restrict/resist fire management and clearing, and on the other hand blame global warming should be held responsible for fire damage and be jailed when someone dies in the fires."

It’s Back Again To The Global Cooling Headlines Of The 1970s … Climate Science Now Clearly In Total Confusion, Chaos!

NoTricksZone
"If anything has become clear since the release of the IPCC 5th Assessment Report released last month, it is that climate science has collapsed into a state of complete confusion. It is very clear that they now have no idea where the climate is headed and never before has the science found itself in such a state of open dispute."

Monday 28 October 2013

BBC – Real risk of a Maunder minimum ‘Little Ice Age’

WUWT
"Following analysis of the data, Professor Lockwood believes solar activity is now falling more rapidly than at any time in the last 10,000 years. He found 24 different occasions in the last 10,000 years when the sun was in exactly the same state as it is now – and the present decline is faster than any of those 24. Based on his findings he’s raised the risk of a new Maunder minimum from less than 10% just a few years ago to 25-30%."

The UK Saint Jude’s Day Storm – just another fall storm in a long line of many

WUWT
"Neither the storm of 2002 or this year’s come anywhere close to the Burn’s Day storm of 1990, or the Great Storm of 1987."

Global warming gets nearly twice as much taxpayer money as border security

Daily Caller
"The White House reported to House Republicans that there are 18 federal agencies engaged in global warming activities in 2013, funding a wide range of programs, including scientific research, international climate assistance, incentivizing renewable energy technology and subsidies to renewable energy producers. Global warming spending is estimated to cost $22.2 billion this year, and $21.4 billion next year. At the same time, the federal government will spend nearly $12 billion on customs and border enforcement this year."

Nearly $1 billion a day to change the climate… the invisible vested elephant in the room

JoNova (Australia)
"Here’s a stark statistic that came out last week in a new report: The Climate Industry draws in nearly $1 billion dollars a day. But here’s an ominous combination: … it openly admits that taxpayer money is its “engine-room”. Reading between the lines below, this industry is almost completely dependent on domestic policies that funnel money from citizens to itself, and tilts the playing field — without those policies, it can’t attract much private money. That is, it can only get money at least partially by coercion, people won’t give it money purely voluntarily. These same groups want even more — they want the public to take the risks too. What could possibly go wrong? .....OK. I scoff, but most of the people working in this — the accountants, marketers, lawyers, the odd engineer– are doing a hard day’s work. But in the end, together, this generates the most highly leveraged kind of lobbying machine. Without government policies hoping to change the weather, the industry collapses. That is not like big-oil. If the government stopped subsidizing car manufacturers, people would just import cars from overseas. If the government made the outrageous move of banning all new fossil-fuel cars, everyone would just keep driving their old one. Modern cars don’t need government subsidies to work, and big-oil doesn’t need government policies to sell oil — but windmills and solar panels certainly do."

Friday 25 October 2013

Claim: Last 100 years may be warmest in 120,000 years in the Arctic, but not so fast

WUWT
"Of course the uncritical MSM is already trumpeting this story without question, with the usual bent that the posited current warmth is a bad thing. What really bugs me (besides the fact the press release can’t even bother to mention the title of the study) is the use of the word “unprecedented” in the title of the press release. Obviously this isn’t true, because it had to be warm enough, long enough, back then to give these mosses a chance to get a foothold and grow. If the warmth today was “unprecedented” they’d find nothing in the way of previous life forms under the receding ice."

Wednesday 23 October 2013

Gosh, what could possibly be responsible for the shocking rise in energy prices?

Telegraph
"Today's big story has been Scottish and Southern Electricity's announcement that its energy prices are to rise three times faster than the rate of inflation. Gosh: and why could that be, I wonder? What fascinates me is the concerted efforts made by both the Coalition and Labour to pretend that it has nothing to do with the cost of implementing the lunatic green policies to which LibLabCon remain wedded in defiance of economic and scientific reality."

Warmists burn a billion a day

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
"What that cash could do if spent on something worthwhile:
The world invested almost a billion dollars a day in limiting global warming last year, but the total figure – $359 billion – was slightly down on last year, and barely half the $700 billion per year that the World Economic Forum has said is needed to tackle climate change.

Fuddites

E M Smith
"FUD is Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. A term applied to the IBM strategy used to push folks away from perfectly reasonable alternative products. Luddites were folks opposed to progress. I’m coining a new term, Fuddites, to describe the attitude of the Global Warming Cabal. This posting just explains it. ......FUD is generally a strategic attempt to influence perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false information. An individual firm, for example, might use FUD to invite unfavorable opinions and speculation about a competitor’s product; to increase the general estimation of switching costs among current customers; or to maintain leverage over a current business partner who could potentially become a rival."

Monday 21 October 2013

Andrew O’Keefe misleads the Channel Seven audience about global warming and the fires

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
"Channel Seven host Andrew O’Keefe is a global warming alarmist who seems to think having the right attitude means not having to bother with things like research."

Hottest September Ever in records going back 0.000003% of Earths history!

JoNova (Australia)

We are tying ourselves in knots over 150 year old records (or even less) when:
  1. These are just short Australian records, not long global ones. Even in the 1800′s Australia recorded heatwaves of 50+ degrees.
  2. The world was similarly warm 1,000 years ago, definitely warmer 7,000 years ago, and a lot warmer 120,000 years ago.
  3. The world has been warmer for most of the last 500 million years.
  4. Satellites are more reliable, have better coverage, and don’t have dubious inexplicable adjustments. They show it was not a record angry summer, nor the hottest year we’ve had.

Fires not due to climate change: expert

Climate Change Dispatch
"Linking the bushfire disaster in NSW to climate change is "an absolute nonsense" and reducing fuel loads in the Australian bush is urgently needed, a leading scientist says. Retired Monash University researcher David Packham says global warming is a gradual process which doesn't explain major bushfires."

The Oceanic Central Heating Effect

WUWT
"In my previous essay We Must Get Rid of the Carboniferous Warm Period I discussed the role of the polar seas around Antarctica in generating the cold dense oxygenated marine water that dominates the abyssal ocean depths of our modern world. I now want to discuss the role of shallow tropical seas in generating warm dense oxygen-poor marine water and how this fundamental and often overlooked process explains the presence of abyssal ocean warm water and high atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration during previous geological times, in particular the Cretaceous period."

Antarctic Sea Ice Didn’t Get The Memo That It Was Supposed To Melt

WUWT
"By WUWT Regular Just The Facts Per the graph above, Antarctic Sea Ice Extent has remained above the 1981 – 2010 “normal” range for much of the last three months and the current positive Antarctic Sea Ice Extent anomaly appears quite large for a planet supposedly on the verge of Dangerous Warming. Furthermore, in 2013 we had the third most expansive Southern Sea Ice Area measured to date; ..."

Saturday 19 October 2013

'Mini-nukes’ beat monster wind farms on every count

Christopher Booker,Telegraph
"As the shambles of Britain’s energy policy and soaring bills continues to make shock headlines, many in the south-west of England are staring in angry amazement at plans by foreign-owned firms to build two of the largest offshore wind farms in the world just off their coastlines. ......The combined contribution of these two gigantic wind farms, at a capital cost of £7.6 billion and earning subsidies of £620 million a year, will average 750MW – less than that of the single unsubsidised gas-fired power station recently built in Plymouth at a capital cost of £1 billion. ....Two American firms, backed by the US Department of Energy, are now well advanced in developing factory-built “mini-nuclear power plants”, wholly safe and offering a mouthwatering range of advantages over their competitors. The mPower company in North Carolina is developing a two-reactor nuclear power station covering just 40 acres, but capable of generating 360MW round the clock: more than would be produced by the Navitus Bay wind farm at less than two-thirds of the price, and occupying only one 1,200th of the same area. These could be installed on old power station sites next to the grid, and the company tells me that they should be commercially available within nine or 10 years, much sooner than that monster at Hinkley Point. .... And anyone worried about the safety of siting these mini-reactors conveniently near to cities should remember that for 50 years, Rolls-Royce has been running a small nuclear reactor right next to Derby County football ground. As yet, not a single death has been reported."

Monday 14 October 2013

Maybe That IPCC 95% Certainty Was Correct After All

Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
"So, about 95% (actually, 96.7%) of the climate models warm faster than the observations. While they said they were 95% certain that most of the warming since the 1950s was due to human greenhouse gas emissions, what they meant to say was that they are 95% sure their climate models are warming too much.
Honest mistake. Don’t you think? Maybe?"

Sunday 13 October 2013

Review paper finds the Medieval Warm Period was worldwide and warmer than the present

The Hockey Schtick
"A new review paper from SPPI and CO2 Science concludes "that earth's current level of warmth need not be attributed to the current high level of the air's CO2 content; for the peak warmth of the global Medieval Warm Period was even greater than it has been over the past couple of decades, and at a time when the air's CO2 concentration was approximately 100 ppm less than it is today, which suggests that whatever phenomenon was responsible for the warmth of the Medieval Warm Period could also be responsible for the [current warm period]."

Petermann Glacier Has Grown 3km Since 2010

Real Science
"In 2010, our friends got hysterical about a block of ice which calved off the Petermann Glacier in Greenland. Since then, the glacier has grown 3km."

It’s showdown time for our insane 'green’ energy policy

Christopher Booker,Telegraph
Politicians are complaining about rises in fuel bills that are largely the result of their own actions
" What the BBC and everyone else seemed to miss was the small print in which National Grid insisted that the lights wouldn’t be going out, because it now has “the tools” to cover any shortfall. One reason for its confidence was the story reported here before, of how National Grid has been quietly signing up thousands of diesel generators, linked by computers to the grid, which can be automatically switched on at a moment’s notice to cover for any power shortage. And their main purpose, although National Grid tries to deny it, is to make up for the unreliability of that ever-increasing number of heavily subsidised wind farms the Government wants to see built, in its efforts to “de-carbonise” our electricity supply.
Although National Grid may try to keep quiet about it, the companies piling in to sign up for this scheme – attracted by the colossal sums it is offering to build up its “Short Term Operating Reserve” – make no secret on their websites and planning applications of the fact that it is designed to cover for the disastrous intermittencies of wind power. Even National Grid admits that, within six years, it hopes to have expanded its emergency reserve from 3.5GW to 8GW, equivalent to the output of four large conventional power plants. This is why firms such as Green Frog, Fulcrum Power and Power Balancing Services are pouring millions into building “mini-power stations” – container parks full of diesel generators – to qualify for “availability payments” so lavish that, in proportion, that they make the subsidy bonanza enjoyed by wind-farm operators look like chicken feed."

Friday 11 October 2013

Precedented Warming in Antarctica

sunshine hours
"Warmists like to claim warming in every part of the world is unprecedented. This paper says just the opposite. Warming has been more dramatic in the 1700s and 1800s than today."

Thursday 10 October 2013

It Is Worse Than It Seems!

Real Science
"Seth Borenstein, who originally warned us about the 2012 ice-free Arctic, says that temperatures are going to go off scale around noon on July 23, 2047. .......There is no basis for alarm, and no basis for claiming that temperatures are going “off scale.” These people are complete frauds. The models have failed miserably and are not an excuse for acceptable science."

NYTimes goes skeptic on end-of-climate-by-2047 study: Based on models with ‘acknowledged problems’ and uncertain accuracy

Climate Depot
"The NYTimes reports: If greenhouse emissions continue their steady escalation, temperatures across most of the earth will rise to levels with no recorded precedent by the middle of this century, researchers said Wednesday. Scientists from the University of Hawaii at Manoa calculated that by 2047, plus or minus five years, the average temperatures in each...." For the full and latest scare story from the warmists the Daily Mail has it here. Anything to keep the gravy train going....

Wednesday 9 October 2013

The IPCC AR5 – First impressions

Award-winning Israeli Astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shaviv
"My main conclusion is that this report is to a large extent a rehash of the AR4 report. However, given the lack of any new evidence pointing to humans and the increasing discrepancy between the alarmist models and predictions, the IPCC authors are bluntly making more ridiculous claims as they attempt to fill in the gap between their models and reality. ......A second important aspect of the present report is that the IPCC is still doing its best to avoid the evidence that the sun has a large effect on climate. They of course will never admit this quantifiable effect because it would completely tear down the line of argumentation for a mostly manmade global warming of a very sensitive climate." (h/t Climate Depot)

Just Making Stuff Up As They Go Along

Real Science
"You really can’t make this stuff up. Global warming theory has always assumed polar amplification, and now some climate buffoons are claiming the exact opposite."

Monday 7 October 2013

Washington Times: Climate due to water cycle not carbon dioxide

JoNova also on WUWT
"Yet, the IPCC and today’s climate modelers propose that the “flea” wags “the dog.” The flea, of course, is carbon dioxide, and the dog, is the water cycle. The theory of man-made warming assumes a positive feedback from water vapor, forced by human emissions of greenhouse gases. .......Geologic evidence from past ice ages shows that atmospheric carbon dioxide increases follow, rather than precede, global temperature increases. As the oceans warm, they release CO2 into the atmosphere. Climate change is dominated by changes in the water cycle, driven by solar and gravitational forces, and carbon dioxide appears to play only a minor role."

Sunday 6 October 2013

Climate change 'scientists’ are just another pressure group

Christopher Booker,Telegraph
"Some years back, when I was researching a detailed history of the alarm over global warming, few things surprised me more than to discover just how wildly misleading was the picture given to the world of the IPCC as a genuinely scientific body, dispassionately assessing current knowledge of all the factors shaping our climate. The IPCC was set up in 1988 by a small group of scientists who were already wholly convinced that rising CO2 levels were the prime factor in causing global temperatures to rise. ... Since then the IPCC and its five major reports have essentially been shaped by a surprisingly small, close-knit group of scientists, all similarly dedicated to the cause. They have been determined not just to assemble all the evidence they could find to support their theory, however dubious it might be (as in the case of that notorious “hockey stick” graph); but, as we saw from the Climategate emails, to deride or ignore any that contradicted it. In years to come this will be looked back on as the most astonishing example in history of how the prestige of “science” can be used to promote a particular belief system, in this case with the aid of those skewed computer models that can be seen ever more clearly not to accord with the observed evidence."

The climate alarmists have lost the debate: it's time we stopped indulging their poisonous fantasy

Telegraph
"The story so far: with the release of its Fifth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has proved beyond reasonable doubt that it cannot be taken seriously. Here are a few reasons why: IPCC lead author Dr Richard Lindzen has accused it of having "sunk to a level of hilarious incoherence." Nigel Lawson has called it "not science but mumbo jumbo". The Global Warming Policy Foundation's Dr David Whitehouse has described the IPCC's panel as "evasive and inaccurate" in the way it tried dodge the key issue of the 15-year (at least) pause in global warming; Donna Laframboise notes that is either riddled with errors or horribly politically manipulated – or both; Paul Matthews has found a very silly graph; Steve McIntyre has exposed how the IPCC appears deliberately to have tried to obfuscate the unhelpful discrepancy between its models and the real world data; and at Bishop Hill the excellent Katabasis has unearthed another gem: that, in jarring contrast to the alarmist message being put out at IPCC press conferences and in the Summary For Policymakers, the body of the report tells a different story – that almost all the scary scenarios we've been warned about this last two decades (from permafrost melt to ice sheet collapse) are now been graded by scientists somewhere between "low confidence" to "exceptionally unlikely;" and this latest from the Mighty Booker. And there's plenty more where that came from."

Saturday 5 October 2013

Coverage of Extreme Events in the IPCC AR5

Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog
" There is really not much more to be said here -- the data says what it says, and what it says is so unavoidably obvious that the IPCC has recognized it in its consensus. Of course, I have no doubts that claims will still be made associating floods, drought, hurricanes and tornadoes with human-caused climate change -- Zombie science -- but I am declaring victory in this debate. Climate campaigners would do their movement a favor by getting themselves on the right side of the evidence."

IPCC more confident about greater uncertainty

The Hockey Schtick
"According to an article published today in Science, "Last week's fifth assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) might appear to suggest that, in spite of decades of intensive study, scientists haven't made one whit of progress on the biggest question in climate: By how much will a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels warm the world? But in fact, climate scientists have greatly tightened constraints on their traditional estimate of how sensitive climate may be to added greenhouse gases." In what universe does widening the range of CO2 climate sensitivity from 2-4.5C in the last IPCC report to 1.5-4.5C in the new report constitute "greatly tightened constraints"?

Friday 4 October 2013

IPCC snaps the link between wild weather and global warming

Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun (Australia)
"I’ve noted in an earlier post that the latest IPCC report concedes there is little evidence to link global warming to extreme weather events and even admits its past warnings of more droughts were “overstated”. The report is like watching global warming alarmists swallow a chill pill. "

The climate change fanatics have hijacked the debate

Express
"YOU may not have noticed it (if you’re normal you surely changed channels fast) but last week saw a so-called conference by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in Stockholm. I say “so-called” because before it sat a communiquĂ© was issued declaring exactly the conclusion it would come to. This is not science. True science constantly probes, doubts, tests, investigates, examines and welcomes dissent. The IPCC did not invite one single person who did not agree with its pre-decided obsession. Nasty facts (such as the world ain’t getter warmer after all) were swept into oblivion. Most of the attendees were not scientists at all but fanatics, what dear David likes to call swivel-eyed loons. The chairman Rajenda Pachauri is an Indian railway engineer. Even those with a science degree were mainly not climatologists but from other and irrelevant branches of that vast subject. But career-long students of climatology are the only ones worth listening to on this ultra-vague subject – and they seem to be split down the middle. It used to be that you spent staggering sums of public money when something had been proved beyond a scintilla of doubt. Now these sums are being spent on fashionable theories. What really took the cherry was the bland assertion that although Earth’s surface temperatures were not rising there could well be such dangerous warmings in the deepest parts of the ocean. Where we don’t have any monitors. So that’s all right then. Fat budgets all round and who needs real evidence? Certainly not the IPCC."

The IPCC’s Totally Bogus 1871 Adventure

Real Science
"According to the IPCC, temperatures were cold in 1871, sea level was much lower, glaciers were content and the climate was much more stable. All of this utter nonsense – nothing more than well financed superstition. The same mindless superstition which infected academics in 1871."

Thursday 3 October 2013

Latest IPCC trick: widening uncertainty bands to make models look ok

Climate Depot
"'The observations would appear to be well inside the extremely large grey bands which did not appear in the AR4 and which have the rather interesting feature of showing zero uncertainty in 1990. So, the question is: What are those bands?'

Helping the IPCC with decadal trend graphs

The Hockey Schtick
"The IPCC AR5 has a new "decadal average" graph designed to hide the statistically insignificant global warming over the past 20 years. Since nobody wants to be accused of cherry-picking starting dates and using a decadal average instead of a decadal trend line, let's graph the decadal linear trends for each starting year since 1988. This paints a quite different picture than the IPCC decadal average graph, showing a clear halt in "decadal average" and "decadal trend" global warming starting at the beginning of the 21st century."

Wednesday 2 October 2013

Art Horn: IPCC Is Very Confident That They Are Not Sure

GWPF
"What they are saying is that they are 95% sure that humans are the dominant cause of global warming but that they are so unsure of how the climate system reacts to increases in carbon dioxide, they can’t give us an “estimate” of how much global warming it causes. Yea, that inspires confidence for sure. Based on that “high level of confidence” we should abandon what works (fossil fuels) and gamble our future and prosperity on so called “renewables” that can’t survive without massive government support."

IPCC: Fixing the Facts

Climate Audit
"The new IPCC graphic no longer cites an AR4 figure. Instead of the envelope presented in AR4, they now show a spaghetti graph of CMIP3 runs, .......None of this portion of the IPCC assessment is drawn from peer-reviewed material. Nor is it consistent with the documents sent to external reviewers."

Kill the IPCC says Judith Curry. After decades and billions there is nothing to show for it.

JoNova (Australia)
"Kill the IPCC: After decades and billions spent, the climate body still fails to prove humans behind warming .......The IPCC is in a state of permanent paradigm paralysis. It is the problem, not the solution .......In its latest report released Friday, after several decades and expenditures in the bazillions, the IPCC still has not provided a convincing argument for how much warming in the 20th century has been caused by humans."

Tuesday 1 October 2013

Why Climate Science is Fallible

WUWT
"Peer review is a highly unreliable process that produces nothing but opinion. A study conducted in 2010 concluded that reviewers agree “at a rate barely exceeding what would be expected by chance.” Furthermore, the peer review process may be, and usually is, cynically manipulated. Scientists aggregate in social cliques that facilitate orthodoxy and suppress dissent. When manuscripts are submitted for review authors are commonly asked to suggest reviewers. Invariably these tend to be acquaintances holding the same views. Thus peer review often amounts to pal review. Neither does peer review detect fraud. In 2011, Tilburg University in the Netherlands suspended psychologist Diederik Stapel for publishing at least 55 scientific research papers based on fabricated data."

EPA mandates that new coal plants prevent nonexistent climate problem with unavailable solution

Junk Science
"And just why did EPA ever think they needed a nonexistent solution in the first place? Very simply, because the IPCC told them so…even though their own internal study on the matter concluded otherwise."

Monday 30 September 2013

MIT scientist ridicules IPCC climate change report, calls findings 'hilarious incoherence'

Daily Mail
Not all experts agree with the latest United Nations report on global warming, some are even amused by its findings. A climate scientist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has come out blasting the report for blaming humans for a global warming trend that appears to have cooled in recent decades – and then glossing over the warming slowdown. ‘I think that the latest IPCC report has truly sunk to level of hilarious incoherence,’ Dr. Richard Lindzen told Climate Depot – a site known for questioning the theory of global warming. Dr Linzen’s amusement from the lack of correlation between predictions and actual conditions. ‘They are proclaiming increased confidence in their models as the discrepancies between their models and observations increase,’ Dr Linzen continued. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change asserted in the report that it is 95 per cent sure humans’ use of fossil fuels is the cause of global warming.The report also provided what Dr Linzen felt was a shoddy explanation for the lack of warming over the past 17 years. ‘Their excuse for the absence of warming over the past 17 years is that the heat is hiding in the deep ocean,’ the amused scientist said. ‘However, this is simply an admission that the models fail to simulate the exchanges of heat between the surface layers and the deeper oceans.’ This slapdash explanation for the lack of warming, Dr Linzen stressed, is proof the IPCC knows little about what is actually happening. ‘They now, somewhat obscurely, admit that their crucial assumption was totally unjustified,’ said the amused scientist. Dr Linzen’s derision of the IPCC report comes amid evidence that warming hasn’t occurred over the past 17 years, and that polar ice caps are even expanding. Despite strong evidence that global warming may be on hold, the IPCC still insisted that the report’s findings should alarm anyone denying the theory.

Physicist explains why increased CO2 has a trivial effect upon climate

The Hockey Schtick
"...In fact, the IPCC has numerous fundamental problems. The sun is about 4.5 billion years old and while we have been observing it for thousands of years, we have only in the last few years had the tools available to study it seriously. Now that we have the tools, every few months a new discovery is made and our superficial understanding of the sun takes one baby-step towards maturity. The IPCC may wish upon a star that our nearby star does not contribute significantly to our climate, but that is so fanciful that even Disney would not buy it. "

IPCC AR5 full final report released – full access here

WUWT
" From the comments: The IPCC AR5 is pure pseudoscience intended to provide information to justify political actions; i.e.Lysenkoism.

IPCC in denial. “Just-so” excuses use ocean heat to hide their failure.

JoNova (Australia)
"In answer to the excuse du jour: “The Ocean ate my Global Warming”. Now that the plateau in temperatures has lasted for 15 years, everyone, even IPCC lead authors, can see the “90% certain” models were 98% wrong. So the IPCC now claims the heat went into the deep abyss, which they didn’t predict, can’t measure accurately, and, even by the best estimates we have, has not been anywhere near enough warming to explain the missing energy. They predicted the surface air temperature would increase, but they didn’t. (The 1990 IPCC predictions about temperatures were so wrong the trends have come in below their lowest possible estimate.) They predicted the oceans would warm more than twice as much as they actually have (as best as we can tell). They did not predict the air temperature would level out for 15 years, and the oceans would suddenly start producing “natural cooling”.

Sunday 29 September 2013

Inconvenient truths quietly brushed aside

Christopher Booker,Telegraph
"When the BBC and Channel 4 News crank their spin machines into action, as they did last week in trying to plug the latest attempt by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to flog the dying horse of the global-warming scare, one wonders: do they actually do any homework, or do they just recycle a pile of old clichĂ©s in the hope that their audience will be fooled? In light of the IPCC’s last-minute removal from its new report of any reference to the 15-year “pause” in rising global temperatures, it was nevertheless entertaining to hear that the latest consequence of global warming is that we here in Britain can now expect “cooler” temperatures for years to come."

Analysis: UN IPCC Hides The Decline:

Climate Depot
"‘They are comparing a statistically insignificant amount of warming since 1998, with three decades of cooling. The result is to make this small trend sound much more significant than it is’ – ‘By this dodgy use of statistics and the 1998 red herring, they have also tried to distract attention from the clear fact that temperatures really have flatlined since 2001′

Sir David King, the UK's extreme weathervane

Quadrant Online
"King continues to promote the silly notion that we can somehow regulate atmospheric carbon dioxide and control the Earth’s climate by reducing the extremely low levels of carbon dioxide produced by human activity. Was he aware of, or did he choose to ignore, the 97% input of carbon dioxide from natural processes such as ocean venting, decomposition of organic matter and volcanism. Sir David might get a shock if he finds out how much carbon dioxide and methane is produced by termites."

Why the IPCC should never be taken seriously

Quadrant Online
"In summary, many uncertainties emerge from a careful assessment of claims that a danger exists of ever increasing temperatures. No substance can be established for that claim because no definitive causal correlation can be established between past changes in temperatures and in atmospheric concentrations of CO2. "

Just How Incompetent Is NOAA?

Real Science
"NOAA shows that 2012 was the most extreme weather year in US history, despite the fact that there was little extreme weather last year – other than Sandy which isn’t included in the index. According to their fake index, 2012 was almost three times as extreme as the very extreme year of 1936. Their claim is almost entirely based on very mild temperatures during the winter and spring of 2012. which they are trying to pass off as “extreme.”

UN IPCC claim: ‘Since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia’ — Real Science Rebuttal: ‘The IPCC has now abandoned any attempt to base their claims on facts. Historical data shows that the climate has gotten better since the 1950s’

Climate Depot
"US droughts were the worst in the 1950s Violent tornadoes are down since the 1950s Major hurricane landfalls peaked in the 1950s, and are down to historic lows in the current decade Record daily temperatures have declined in the US since Here is what newspapers had to say about the UN IPCC 'normal' weather in 1950: ..."
Real Science

Saturday 28 September 2013

IPCC more sure about less

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
"On the IPCC report… A significant mistake may have been made. Doug Keenan writes to the Met Office Chief Scientist about this problem: ....and
... Brilliant take, from Professor Ross McKitrick: SPM in a nutshell: Since we started in 1990 we were right about the Arctic, wrong about the Antarctic, wrong about the tropical troposphere, wrong about the surface, wrong about hurricanes, wrong about the Himalayas, wrong about sensitivity, clueless on clouds and useless on regional trends. And on that basis we’re 95% confident we’re right.

Models Fail: Land versus Sea Surface Warming Rates

WUWT
"In Climate Models Fail, using a number of different datasets, I illustrated how the climate models used by the IPCC for their 5th Assessment Report could not simulate climate variables such as surface temperatures (land surface air, sea surface and combined land+sea surface), precipitation and sea ice area. There’s another splendid way to present the model failings (that wasn’t presented in the book): by comparing the warming rates of global land surface air temperatures with the warming rates of global sea surface temperatures. It’s astounding that the models perform so poorly."

Vahrenholt’s UN IPCC-Science Critical Book ‘The Neglected Sun’ Soars To No. 1 At Amazon UK!

NoTricksZone
"The UN IPCC AR5 completely neglected discussing the reason why we have climate to begin with: THE SUN. There’s a reason why they did."

It's not as bad as we thought - but global warming is still a disaster, warn UN experts

Daily Mail

’97% consensus’ apparently doesn’t exist at the IPCC

WUWT
"Consensus? What Consensus? You’d think they’d be able to agree on this most important number. They did for AR4. ....Yet, they are 95% certain."

MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen Rips UN IPCC Report:

Climate Depot
It is quite amazing to see the contortions the IPCC has to go through in order to keep the international climate agenda going’ "I think that the latest IPCC report has truly sunk to level of hilarious incoherence. They are proclaiming increased confidence in their models as the discrepancies between their models and observations increase."

Friday 27 September 2013

IPCC Fails To Come Clean Over Global Temperature Standstill

WUWT
"The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is criticising the IPCC for its deliberate attempt to obscure the reality of an ongoing temperature standstill and its failure to come clean about the failure of its models. The IPCC has decided to discount the global warming standstill since 1997 as irrelevant and has deleted from its final document its original acknowledgement (in its 7 June draft) that climate models have failed to ’reproduce the observed reduction in surface warming trend over the last 10-15 years.’ Not only has the IPCC failed to predict the ongoing temperature standstill, its climate models actually predicted accelerated warming due to the increase of CO2 emissions."

Climate change is on ice: UN scientists reveal the world's barely got any hotter in the last 15 years - but say they are now 95% certain man is to blame for global warming

Daily Mail
"UN scientists said today they are '95 per cent' certain that climate change is man made, but still could not explain why the world has barely got any hotter in the last 15 years. .......Temperature rises have dropped from 0.12°C per decade since 1951 to just 0.05°C per decade since 1998. This slowdown has been seized upon by climate sceptics who claim carbon dioxide is not as damaging as has been suggested. IPCC scientists, however, believe the pause is temporary and a return to 'substantial warming' is expected in coming decades. The report only made a brief mention of the issue, stressing that short-term records are sensitive to natural variability. ......But there are concerns about the computer models used to calculate the data. Professor Peter Wadhams, professor of Ocean Physics at the University of Cambridge, said: 'There are serious deficiencies in the modelling."

IPCC report: very confident our gasses weren’t so bad

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
" Bottom line: the IPCC’s latest report is even more confident that man is to blame for, er, less global warming than you were once told to expect. And, yes, there has been an unexpected pause in warming of the atmosphere, with the IPCC blaming the deep ocean for hiding the missing heat where it can’t easily be found. The full report won’t be released until Monday while you are sold the more heavily politicised Summary for Policy Makers. .."

IPCC: “We don’t need no stinking climate sensitivity!”

Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
"The newly-released Summary for Policymakers of the IPCC’s Working Group I for the AR5 report reveals a dogged attempt to salvage the IPCC’s credibility amidst mounting evidence that it has gone overboard in its attempts to scare the global public over the last quarter century. The recent ~15 year lull in warming is hardly mentioned at all (nothing to see here, move along). A best estimate for climate sensitivity — unarguably THE most important climate change variable — is no longer provided, due to mounting contradictory evidence on whether the climate system really cares very much about whether there are 2, or 3, or 4, parts of CO2 per 10,000 parts atmosphere. ...."

Reactions to IPCC AR5 Summary for Policy Makers

WUWT
"My first reaction was: That IPCC had a golden opportunity, and blew it due to being unable to adapt to reality."

Thoughts on the SPM

Bishop Hill
"Ducking, diving, bobbing and weaving are the general themes of the Summary for Policymakers, just released this morning. ....The general theme of obscurantism runs across the document. Whereas in previous years the temperature records have been shown unadulterated, now we have presentation of a single figure for each decade; surely an attempt to mislead rather than inform. And the pause is only addressed with handwaving arguments and vague allusions to ocean heat."

Desperate times in climate alarmism

WUWT
"The Real Climate Change Deniers are the alarmists who deny that natural forces still dominate weather and climate events, and refuse to acknowledge that thousands of scientists do not agree with IPCC proclamations and prescriptions."

Sorry IPCC – How You Portrayed the Global Temperature Plateau is Comical at Best

WUWT
"They’re still misleading the public. Everyone knows (well, many of us know) their models can’t simulate the natural processes that cause surface temperatures to warm over multidecadal timeframes, yet they insist on continuing this myth."

We need to cool things down over climate change

Telegraph
"Rather than issuing prophecies of doom, policy-makers must start afresh, with a serious, realistic conversation with the public about what is happening, and what is to be done. In particular, it is far from clear that taking an axe to advanced economies will do anything to make matters better, not least since the developing world will not deny itself prosperity in the name of environmental extremism. Instead of issuing quixotic calls for a complete decarbonisation of the economy, politicians should foster investment in innovations that can wean us off fossil fuels without damaging growth, and research sensible, cost-effective ways to adapt to a changing climate. The last thing the planet needs is more hot air."

Is this the evidence all those green taxes are cash down the drain? The world's hardly got any hotter in the past 15 years!

Daily Mail
"Global warming has been put on ice, the world’s leading experts are expected to confirm today. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is set to reveal world temperatures have barely risen in the past 15 years, despite growing amounts of greenhouse gases being pumped into the atmosphere. Critics say this shows carbon dioxide is not as damaging as had been claimed. Indeed, the report is expected to admit that computer models of climate change were too pessimistic."

Tuesday 24 September 2013

Hans von Storch On Warming Pause: “…Fellow Scientists Are Very Hard-Pressed For An Explanation”

NoTricksZone
"SWR German Public radio had a segment today featuring the warmist director at Germany’s Ministry of Environment, Harry Lehmann, climate scientist Hans von Storch and Spiegel science reporter Axel Bojanowski."

95 per cent of intelligent people know the new IPCC report is utter drivel

Telegraph
"........ If there is one overriding prerequisite of every new IPCC Assessment report, it's to sound even more scary and urgent and certain than its predecessor. .......As Christopher Booker and others have often noted, the IPCC's reports are essentially political artefacts rather than scientific ones. This is why some governments – including Germany's and Belgium's – have been manoeuvring behind the scenes to have the new IPCC report "sexed up". The scientific reality – that global warming has paused for 15 years; that climate sensitivity appears to be far smaller than the scaremongering computer models predicted – cannot be allowed to derail all the expensive and intrusive programmes (from wind farms to green investment banks to hideous, flickery, dull low energy light bulbs) which have been introduced in order to "combat climate change."

IPCC AR5 Admits They Have No Clue What Caused the 15 Year Pause in Warming

sunshine hours

From the leaked AR5 Summary:
“The observed reduction in warming trend over the period 1998–2012 as compared to the period 1951–1 2012, is due in roughly equal measure to a cooling contribution from internal variability and a reduced trend in radiative forcing (medium confidence). The reduced trend in radiative forcing is primarily due to volcanic eruptions and the downward phase of the current solar cycle. However, there is low confidence in quantifying the role of changes in radiative forcing in causing this reduced warming trend. {Box 9.2; 10.3.1; Box 10.2}”
Translation: It was the sun. Or super secret volcanoes. Or something.

Monday 23 September 2013

Not waving, but drowning

Bishop Hill
"A couple of journalists seem to have shown some interest in Nic Lewis's critique about the UKCP09 climate projections. This may explain why the Met Office has suddenly issued a response a week after Nic's report came out: ......"