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...

Friday 31 May 2013

Arid regions of the world are 11% greener thanks to CO2

JoNova (Australia)
"Thanks to satellites we know the world has “greened up” since 1980, but we were not sure how much of that was due to the fertilizing effect of CO2. To solve that, one group suggests we need to look in warm arid environments where water is the predominant limiting factor. These are the areas which ought to show whether CO2 was really helping plants grow, because when there is more CO2 it enables plants to use water more efficiently for photosynthesis. In places where there is already a lot of water, it won’t make as much difference. So Donohue et al. did that, studying regions with a low level of rainfall. They found that the fertilization effect is real and significant and that the cover in these arid zones increased 11% from 1982 – 2010 and CO2 played a significant role."

Thursday 30 May 2013

Spring set to be coldest for 50 years with average temperature of just 6C

Daily Mail
"Britain is on track for the coldest spring for 50 years with an average temperature of just 6C, the Met Office said today. Although the country basked in a relatively warm Bank Holiday weekend, freezing conditions in March and April have dragged the average down. Provisional figures suggest Britain has had the chilliest spring since 1962, and the fifth coldest since records began in 1910."

New paper finds rainforests prospered & increased diversity during extreme global warming in the past

The Hockey Schtick
"A new paper published in the Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Science finds South American rainforests thrived during three extreme global warming events in the past, each with temperatures much warmer than the present. "According to the fossil record, rainforests prospered under these hothouse conditions and diversity increased." "When carbon dioxide concentrations double, trees use much less water, which is further evidence that tropical forests may prove resilient to climate change."

Wednesday 29 May 2013

Tim Yeo: humans may not be to blame for global warming

Telegraph
" Asked on Tuesday night whether it was better to take action to mitigate the effects of climate change than to prevent it in the first place, he said: “The first thing to say is it does not represent any threat to the survival of the planet. None at all. The planet has survived much bigger changes than any climate change that is happening now. He went on: “Although I think the evidence that the climate is changing is now overwhelming, the causes are not absolutely clear. There could be natural causes, natural phases that are taking place.”

Tim Yeo: We Are All Climate Sceptics Now

GWPF
"Humans May Not Be Responsible For Global Warming Says Committee Chairman"

Climate Change: we really don't need to waste all this money

Telegraph
""Don't just do something: stand there!" Ronald Reagan was fond of telling overactive functionaries. The same rules apply to the climate change industry: trillions of dollars squandered, vast forces mobilised, public anxieties worked up to fever pitch – all to no useful purpose whatsoever."

Hansen falsified: His extreme sea level rise projections are drowning in hubris

WUWT
"After yesterday’s tongue-in-cheek mention of Obama’s healing the planet (and sea level rise with it) here’s the real lowdown on the current knowledge. It seems that all the science that Hansen uses to base his 5-6 meter sea level rise has now been overturned by more recent scientific findings. Basically, there is no longer any valid scientific backing for Hansen’s extreme sea level rise projections."

Have we dramatically overestimated the effects of global warming? New research claims 6C rise is 'unlikely' - but says 2C rise is 'very likely'

Daily Mail
"The paper, published in Nature Climate Change today, found that exceeding 6 degrees warming was now unlikely while exceeding 2 degrees is very likely for business-as-usual emissions."
This is the warmist camp...

Tuesday 28 May 2013

China's coal-to-liquid gambit

Quadrant Online
"During World War II, one Russian physicist realised that the United States was working on an atomic bomb when articles about high energy nuclear reactions disappeared from the physics journals he subscribed to. As an interested observer of coal-to-liquids (CTL) developments, I got the same feeling when reading the programme for the World CTL Conference 2013 held in Shanghai on 16th April. There was almost nothing about China’s CTL projects. We all know that China has building coal-fired power stations at the rate of one a week. They are also building a number of CTL projects. ...............With the EPA in the United States hell bent on closing down existing coal-fired power stations using carbon dioxide emissions as the excuse, getting funding for a new coal-burning facility of any sort in that country is going to be a difficult sell. The consequence of that is that the United States is denying itself its largest potential source of liquid transport fuels commercially viable with current oil prices and technology"

The 97% consensus paper is starting to fall apart

WUWT
"Two developments suggest that Cook et al 2013 Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature may be soon be headed for “retraction watch”, since serious problems with the data are becoming evident, which when accounted for bring the 97% consensus figure into question."

97% Study Falsely Classifies Scientists' Papers, according to the scientists that published them

Popular Technology.net
"To get to the truth, I emailed a sample of scientists whose papers were used in the study and asked them if the categorization by Cook et al. (2013) is an accurate representation of their paper. Their responses are eye opening and evidence that the Cook et al. (2013) team falsely classified scientists' papers as "endorsing AGW", apparently believing to know more about the papers than their authors."

Monday 27 May 2013

Germany Now Recording Coldest Spring In 40 Years! “…Climate Experts Running Out Of Arguments…”!

NoTricksZone
"Today the online Augsburger Allgemeine reports that the statistics for the 2013 German meteorological spring (March-April-May) have been 95% tabulated and show that this year’s German spring is the “coldest in in decades“. The Chiemgau24 news site reports that it is the coldest spring in 40 years."

Sunday 26 May 2013

Revealed: The EU's great green U-turn on policy that is sending energy bills soaring across the continent

Daily Mail
"The European Union is quietly taking steps to shred the ‘green agenda’ responsible for rocketing energy bills across the continent. It is now urging members to restore Europe’s competitiveness by ‘fracking’ for cheap natural gas from shale, instead of pushing ‘renewable’ energy subsidies which cost consumers billions of pounds. The policy shift was unveiled last week at a Brussels summit attended by David Cameron. ......The EU’s about-turn has been prompted by news that electricity prices in Europe have risen by 40 per cent since 2005, while those in the US have fallen by 10 per cent. The main reason for America’s cheap energy is its booming shale gas industry. Many EU nations – including Britain – have their own vast reserves of shale gas, but fierce opposition from green activists has stalled efforts to extract it. But after last week’s summit, EU leaders issued a statement saying ‘the supply of affordable and sustainable energy to our economies is crucial’. They added that the EU would support ‘systematic recourse to on-shore and off-shore indigenous resources’ – a reference to shale."

Max Planck Institute For Meteorology: “Prognoses Confirm Model Forecasts” Warming Postponed “Hundreds Of Years”

NoTricksZone
"Now that global temperatures have not risen in 15 years, a number of scientists find themselves having great difficulty coming to terms with that new reality."

Why I think we're wasting billions on global warming, by top British climate scientist

Daily Mail
"The MoS has campaigned tirelessly against the folly of Britain’s eco-obsessed energy policy. Now comes a game-changing intervention... from an expert respected by the green fanatics themselves"

Saturday 25 May 2013

New paper shows no correlation between CO2 and Greenland temperatures over past 7,200 years

The Hockey Schtick
"A recent paper published in Quaternary Science Reviews shows no rational nor consistent relationship between CO2 levels and July air temperatures in West Greenland over the past 7,200 years. The authors also find "summer temperatures were 2-3°C warmer than present" between 6,000 and 4,000 years ago."

The EU U-turn over energy

Christopher Booker,Telegraph
"In March, we are now told (although it was reported here at the time), Britain came within hours of running out of gas and facing enormous power cuts. Meanwhile, almost wholly unnoticed by the British media, there were signs last week of a mighty earthquake beginning to take place in the EU’s energy policy. For 20 years, as we know, this has been hijacked by the EU’s fixation with climate change. But at Wednesday’s meeting of the European Council, there were, at last, indications that many countries now recognise that the EU’s bid to lead the world in “de-carbonising” is leading the European economy towards meltdown. They have finally cottoned on to the fact that, in recent years, while energy prices in Europe have been doubling, those in the US, thanks to the shale gas revolution, have halved."

Friday 24 May 2013

The global solar cartel is making solar energy even more uncompetitive

The Hockey Schtick
" Call it tragicomic that the only way for the U.S. and EU to achieve their green objectives is to embrace China's model of state-managed capitalism. But the story is also a parable of how the cronyism inherent in the renewable-energy industry can clash with environmental goals.
American and European panel makers, notably the Bonn-based SolarWorld, have lobbied heavily for tariffs, but the solar-energy producers and installers rightly complain that this will raise their costs. Higher panel prices will raise consumer prices for solar power, which is still uncompetitive despite huge subsidies."

Thursday 23 May 2013

Antarctic Sea Ice Extent Set A 2nd Daily Record in a row on May 21

sunshine hours
"Antarctic Sea Ice Extent set a 2nd daily record in a row on May 22 (day 141 of 2013). That is the 10th daily record for the year."

Wednesday 22 May 2013

Climate change caused the Oklahoma tornado? Crikey, these people are getting desperate!

Telegraph
"For Senator Boxer to try to exploit this misery and tragedy in order to foist on the American people yet another tax they don't want and don't need is politics of the lowest and most dishonest kind. Let's be clear. There is no scientific evidence whatsoever that the Oklahoma tornado was anything other than a natural event of the kind that has plagued Tornado Alley since time immemorial. Tornadoes were ripping up and down that part of the Great Plains long before it was settled by humans and will continue to do so long after those humans have vanished. As Roy Spencer noted last year, the severity of tornadoes in recent years has been decreasing NOT increasing. The same is true of hurricanes. But of course that was never going to stop one or two alarmist opportunists – among them New York's Mayor Bloomberg and a Democrat senator called Barbara Boxer (now where have we heard her name before?) trying to pin last year's devastating Hurricane Sandy on their old friend "extreme weather" – aka "climate change."

Farewell: Climate catastrophe and CO2 delusion in free fall - worldwide!

The Hockey Schtick

Therefore - it's time for a fact check:

(1)

Temperature: For 15 years, the end of global warming

In the English-speaking media, the openly for several years, such as: "Global warming nonsense gets a true cold shoulder" writes The Daily Telegraph [2] Or, "Forget global warming" subtitled Daily Mail [3].
Now the skeptical debate has also reached the media in Germany [4], for example, writes Der Spiegel [5] :
".... But already got around that the climate has recently developed differently than predicted: For 15 years, increased warming ., the upward trend in the average global temperature has not continued since 1998, 'The stoppage has led to the assumption global warming has ceased ', admits NASA. "

Or elsewhere [6]: "It's Official: There is no global warming." ..............................


"The world is a little warmer., The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases. Plants grow better than before because of this increased content of CO2., The sea level is rising at a barely measurable rate. Climatic disasters are not worse than before. The animal kingdom is the growth of a single species harassed, namely us, but this has nothing to do with global warming. And these are the reasons that there is a climate of skepticism. " ........................



Quote of the week – misplaced priorities

WUWT
"One of the most shocking stories to come out of the Oklahoma tornado this week is this one. The mind reels that in the middle of tornado alley, in a place where a previous F5 tornado devastated the town in 1999, no safe room existed in the school. .....
"Spending millions of dollar on no skill climate projections is poor policy compared with grants to communities for school tornado shelters." - Roger A. Pielke Sr

Tuesday 21 May 2013

Can Tornadoes Be Prevented By Stealing Taxpayer Money To Fund Green Energy Scams?

Real Science

Apparently not.

President Obama’s Taxpayer-Backed Green Energy Failures
  1. Evergreen Solar ($25 million)*
  2. SpectraWatt ($500,000)*
  3. Solyndra ($535 million)*
  4. Beacon Power ($43 million)*
  5. Nevada Geothermal ($98.5 million)
  6. SunPower ($1.2 billion)
  7. First Solar ($1.46 billion)
  8. Babcock and Brown ($178 million)
  9. EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1 ($118.5 million)*
  10. Amonix ($5.9 million)
  11. Fisker Automotive ($529 million)
  12. Abound Solar ($400 million)*
  13. A123 Systems ($279 million)*
  14. Willard and Kelsey Solar Group ($700,981)*
  15. Johnson Controls ($299 million)
  16. Brightsource ($1.6 billion)
  17. ECOtality ($126.2 million)
  18. Raser Technologies ($33 million)*
  19. Energy Conversion Devices ($13.3 million)*
  20. Mountain Plaza, Inc. ($2 million)*
  21. Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Company ($10 million)*
  22. Range Fuels ($80 million)*
  23. Thompson River Power ($6.5 million)*
  24. Stirling Energy Systems ($7 million)*
  25. Azure Dynamics ($5.4 million)*
  26. GreenVolts ($500,000)
  27. Vestas ($50 million)
  28. LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power ($151 million)
  29. Nordic Windpower ($16 million)*
  30. Navistar ($39 million)
  31. Satcon ($3 million)*
  32. Konarka Technologies Inc. ($20 million)*
  33. Mascoma Corp. ($100 million)

Stunning ignorance on display from Senator Barbara Boxer over Oklahoma tornado outbreak

WUWT
"Tell us, what could any tax, law, edict, or protest have done to stop yesterday’s tornado outbreak? And what makes this one somehow different from the F5 Oklahoma city tornado of 1999 that also hit the city of Moore? What made this somehow AGW enhanced or different from the F5 tornado that destroyed the Oklahoma city of Snyder in 1905, or the 1955 Great Plains tornado outbreak which produced an F5 F5 striking Blackwell, Oklahoma, killing 20 with another F5 from the same storm strikes Udall, KS, killing 80? Tell us you Canutian meteorological geniuses, how could you have changed the outcome yesterday? For those who live in the real world, reference these from NOAA: ...."
1975 : Tornado Outbreaks Blamed On Global Cooling (Real Science)

Monday 20 May 2013

New paper finds computer models are inconsistent with temperature reconstructions of the past millennium

The Hockey Schtick
"A new paper published in Climate of the Past finds that computer model simulations of past climate are not consistent with reconstructed temperatures of past climate. Thus, either the model simulations are erroneous or the temperature reconstructions erroneous, or both."

Bees, pesticides, more green lies

Telegraph
"Have we been here before? You bet we have, from at least Silent Spring (1962) onwards. We've seen it involve everything from DDT to the snail darter, the spotted owl to the polar bear and fracking. The odd detail changes but the basic story is always the same: man is bad, capitalism is evil, let's ban another vital element in the Western industrial economy. Below, for those who are interested, I'm running a guest post by Paul Driessen which covers the bee crisis from a rather more informed and less hysterical perspective. Enjoy!..."

Saturday 18 May 2013

Hansen, not Farage, gets off Scot free

Christopher Booker,Telegraph
" There was something quaintly retro about the way Friday’s Today programme wheeled on that old veteran, Dr James Hansen, to explain why the failure of global temperatures to rise in 16 years doesn’t mean that the world is not in the grip of runaway global warming. Hansen is the former Nasa scientist turned climate activist who, in 2008, flew over from America to defend a bunch of fellow-activists against a criminal charge of vandalising the Kingsnorth coal-fired power station, on the grounds that this one power plant (now closed) would alone be responsible for the extinction of “400 species”. So relentless was his determination on Friday to refute the lies of the “deniers” that even his interviewer, Sarah Montague, normally bang on BBC message, didn’t really seem to have her heart in egging him on to put over the party line. She seemed much more at home minutes later in persistently trying to trick a bemused Nigel Farage into somehow showing himself to be a racist, for having to be rescued by police from an Edinburgh pub where he was being threatened with near-lynching by a screaming mob of rabidly anti-English Scottish nationalists."

Spiegel Trashes John Cook’s Survey. Man’s Impact “Remains Hotly Disputed”…Only 10% Have Faith In Models

NoTricksZone
"German flagship news magazine Spiegel Online today has an article authored by Axel Bojanowski which takes a close look at the recent John Cook survey. German alarmists like the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research hailed it as proof that climate science was settled and done. But Spiegel draws a different a totally conclusion."

Thursday 16 May 2013

Fishy temperature proxy

WUWT
"‘Fish thermometer’ reveals long-standing, global impact of climate change....... Me, I think it is just that the fish go where the food is, and cold water upwelling tends to make more food available. From NOAA: The ecological effects of upwelling are quite diverse, but two impacts are especially noteworthy. First, upwelling brings up cold, nutrient-rich waters to the surface, which encourage seaweed growth and support blooms of phytoplankton. The phytoplankton blooms form the ultimate energy base for large animal populations higher in the food chain, including fish, marine mammals and seabirds."

Look at this other drowning island, the Global Mail writer insisted. So I did…

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
" I wondered how that Kiribati-is-drowning meme squared with satellite time-lapse pictures showing no such thing. Indeed, recent studies show no cause for alarm: Climate scientists have expressed surprise at findings that many low-lying Pacific islands are growing, not sinking."

Cook’s fallacy “97% consensus” study is a marketing ploy some journalists will fall for

JoNova(Australia)
"What does a study of 20 years of abstracts tell us about the global climate? Nothing. But it says quite a lot about the way government funding influences the scientific process. John Cook, a blogger who runs the site with the ambush title “SkepticalScience” (which unskeptically defends the mainstream position), has tried to revive the put-down and smear strategy against the thousands of scientists who disagree. The new paper confounds climate research with financial forces, is based on the wrong assumptions, uses fallacious reasoning, wasn’t independent, and confuses a consensus of climate scientists for a scientific consensus, not that a consensus proves anything anyway, if it existed. Given the monopolistic funding of climate science in the last 20 years, the results he finds are entirely predictable."

1933 in 2013: Obama urges public to attack Senate opponents of EPA nominee for being ‘climate deniers’

Junk Science
"What a difference 80 years doesn’t make.. Obama tweeted:
Seven senators blocking #Gina4EPA are also climate deniers. Fed up? Call them out: OFA.BO/KnJqB8 — Barack Obama (@BarackObama) May 15, 2013"

97.1% Of Scientists Agree That The Climate Can’t Change Without Human Intervention

Real Science
But..."The climate was stable for the last 4.6 billion years – prior to humans increasing atmospheric CO2 by 0.0001 mole fraction."

Australia’s ABC comes round to what we said on WUWT years ago

WUWT
"And as I and others have pointed out, the sea level scare is just another money making enterprise, as evidenced by the increase in airport expansion, among other things."

Wednesday 15 May 2013

Are we really in May? Britain hit by SNOW as 65mph winds sweep across the country and a month's worth of rain falls in just 24 hours

Daily Mail
"It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas - so it's rather odd that we find ourselves in mid-May. Snow fell across parts of Britain last night while another area had a month’s rain in just 24 hours as winds of up to 65mph battered the country’s coastlines in unusual weather for the month. Up to 3in of snow fell in Princetown in Dartmoor, Devon, Rhayader in Powys, and Newcastle-on-Clun in Shropshire - while Pembrey, Carmarthenshire, had 3in of rain in the 24 hours until 7am today."

New paper finds potential sea level rise from Greenland is about 66% less than previously estimated

The Hockey Schtick
"A new paper published in Nature finds the upper limit to sea level rise by 2100 from the Greenland ice sheet is about 66% less than previously predicted. The paper follows another from last week demonstrating the upper limit of sea level rise by 2100 from the Antarctic ice sheet is about 70% less than IPCC predictions. These new papers demonstrate IPCC predictions of sea level rise from both Greenland and Antarctica have been greatly exaggerated. Furthermore, the new estimates of these upper limits may themselves be exaggerated, since they are based upon models with high sensitivity to CO2, which has also been debunked by several recent papers."

Fuzzy math: In a new soon to be published paper, John Cook claims ‘consensus’ on 32.6% of scientific papers that endorse AGW

WUWT
"You have to wonder how somebody can write (let alone read) the claims made here in the press release by Cook with a straight face. It gives a window into the sort of things we can expect from his borked survey he recently foisted on climate websites which seems destined to either fail, or get spun into even stranger claims."
-------------------------------
What Consensus? Two-thirds of climate studies (8,000) from 1991-2011 take no position on cause of global warming (Junk Science)

£20m countryside solar farm 'cack-handed and opportunistic'

Telegraph
" Mr Rhys Jones said that the scheme, which would be Britain's largest solar farm and power between 4,500 and 5,400 homes, was part of a "mad series" of schemes by the Government and accused ministers of "riding roughshod" over localism. Plans for the 94-acre site in Suffolk have been submitted to Babergh District Council and are under discussion by its planning committee. Hive Energy, the company behind the scheme, said it would help meet the Government's targets on renewable energy and produce the equivalent power of 12 wind farms. But Mr Rhys Jones, who lives two miles away from the proposed site in Tattingstone, in Suffolk, said: "It could never be called part of a greener future for the countryside. "It is part of a mad series of schemes introduced by a Government struggling with an energy policy. The Government is riding roughshod over localism. "Filling an area the size of 50 football pitches - which is open to view on three sides from public rights of way - with 72,000 three-metre high plastic panels simply cannot be a sensible way to use our best-quality agricultural land in a highly-attractive landscape. "The proposals are cack-handed and opportunistic - the area should not be the developer's first choice to install the solar farm. "This is not a nimby reaction. The area is heavily used for leisure and recreation and very close to Alton Water. "There are brownfield sites five miles away that would be better suited. I am totally opposed to it. I hope the council sees sense and opposes it."

Tuesday 14 May 2013

The Guardian’s Suzanne Goldenberg takes a fossil fueled trip to a remote Alaskan village to tell us recent global warming caused it to sink – but that’s not the cause

WUWT
"Some days you just have to laugh at these clowns. The Guardian’s Suzanne Goldenberg seems to be in a clown class by herself when it comes to totally botching a story. I suspect her emotions got the better of her. For example, what are the odds that this photo was staged? ........Goldenberg of course thought nothing of those chunks of old concrete the child was standing on, preferring to blame global warming instead. She probably had to, since it is likely she made the pitch to Guardian editors based on that. I can’t imagine her getting funding for the trip to document some “Thermokarst Slumping”. Yeah that’ll fly. No we need climate refugees."

Weather: a wet May makes hay, but what will snow do?

Telegraph
" In another twist to a year of bizarre weather patterns, the Met Office warned parts of the South West and Wales could witness rare scattered flurries, while other Northern areas reported snow on Monday. Britain is expected to shiver through one of the coldest May days in years, with daytime temperatures 10C colder than usual. While higher ground areas face "wintry" hail, sleet and snow on Tuesday night, forecasters said it is unlikely to settle. In Scotland snow is still on the mountains. A month's worth of rain is also due to fall in the same areas, as well as the Midlands, while the rest of the country faces colder than usual conditions. In the south, temperatures will struggle above 6C (42.8F) while in the east and north it will also be cooler than usual at between 10C (50F) to 12C (53.6F)."

Carbon dioxide in atmosphere did not break 400 ppm at Hawaii site

LA Times
"Carbon dioxide measurements in the Earth's atmosphere did not break the symbolic milestone of 400 parts per million at a Hawaiian observatory last week, according to a revised reading from the nation's climate observers. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) revised its May 9 reading at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii, saying it remained fractions of a point below the level of 400 ppm, at 399.89." (h/t Climate Depot)

Monday 13 May 2013

Met Office Hadley Centre and Climatic Research Unit HadCRUT4 and CRUTEM4 Temperature Data Sets Adjusted/Corrected/Updated… Can You Guess The Impact?

WUWT
"...and it seems like the impact of each adjustment/correction/update is to increase the appearance of recent warming. The move from HadCRUT3 to HadCRUT4 was particularly troubling, i.e.; ..."

Ten Years Later – The New Normal Of Climate Science Fraud

Real Science
"After the 2003 European heatwave, climate experts told us that was the new normal. ........The new normal is actually for climate scientists to constantly change their theory in order to track the most recent weather pattern."

Sunday 12 May 2013

Still waiting for spring in Minnesota

WUWT
"Minnesota, like much of the country (as reported at WUWT here) is currently undergoing its own ‘little ice age’ with record late season snows (18″ in southeastern MN a week ago) and cold, and near record ice out dates on the State’s lakes. Lakes in the southern third of the State saw ice outs approaching new records and many lakes in the northern half of the state are still ice covered today.
“Lake Minnetonka” in the Mpls/St. Paul area finally saw ice out on May 2nd, which easily could have been extended to May 5th or 6th had the 18″ snowstorm moved about 40 miles to the West. The Freshwater Society history shows 134 years of ice out dates for Lake Minnetonka, going back to the mid 1800′s. Median ice out for Lake Minnetonka over the last 150+ years is April 14th. Only 3 years – 1856, 1857 and 1859 – saw later ice out dates than 2013."

Is this what the beginning of glaciation looks like?

WUWT
"While ice fishing is still going on in some parts of Minnesota, other parts are having what looks like glacier advance in the back yards that is damaging some homes. As for climate change worries, you can always figure out ways to keep cool, but getting out of the way of an advancing glacier is no easy task as this video shows. Watch this video of what happens in an “ice out” from the nearby lake Mille Lacs, you can actually watch the ice advance. In a matter of minutes the wind pushes the ice about 15 feet from the shore to the doors and windows of lakeside homes. While this isn’t the same mechanism as ice-age type glaciation, it is fascinating to watch."

Saturday 11 May 2013

The Scare Story of 1881

Donna Laframboise (Canada)
"Back in the 19th century, newspapers declared that something had “gone wrong” with the climate. The public was told that the telegraph system might cause the destruction of the human race. .......The concern back then involved the effect an expanding telegraph system might have on – you guessed it – the climate. The article says that if there were “sufficient electrical connection by wires around the earth” with the Earth itself, the planet’s polarity could be reversed. The result would be a “sudden melting of the vast ice fields” followed by a “glacial flood” that would wipe out the human race. "

Mauna Loa hits 400 PPM of CO2, alarmists wail and gnash teeth, Earth survives

WUWT
"...Since the world hasn’t ended (just like what happened with Y2K) we can now go forward from here. T-shirts saying “I survived 400 PPM” will be made available if there’s enough interest in comments."

A mean study of Australian temperature

WUWT
"...Conclusion
There is a systematic error using minimum and maximum recording thermometers. This is a consequence of the “one-way” temperature recording where, for example, a 10 minute 10C fluctuation in temperature would give a 0.50C increase in mean temperature rather than the properly weighted 0.010C change. This preliminary analysis shows that around the Australian coast the mean temperature has been overestimated by 0.6 0C. If this is the general case throughout the year then the overall Australian temperature has been over estimated. There is clearly a need to re-examine the reported Australian temperature record in the light of this analysis rather than the seemingly endless reworking of minimum and maximum temperature by adjustments. If the mean land temperatures are overstated from averaging minimum and maximum temperatures and the air temperatures over the oceans are measured mean values then the blending of the two data sets creates a systematic distortion. Computer models tuned by back-casting to reported measurements will in turn overstate feedback effects. This could be particularly the case for regional modelling and consequent projections."

Strange weather is normal

Christopher Booker,Telegraph
"...... It is true that for some years the hawthorn did flower very much earlier than normal (in 2010 I saw it in Somerset on April 25). This prompted environmental journalists who know little about nature to hail it as one of the proofs, along with primroses in December, that the world was in the grip of runaway warming. But since nature has since returned to its former patterns (last year’s hawthorn didn’t come into flower until May 22), they have gone strangely quiet about such things.
The new party line, as we know, is to promote their cult by going on about anything that can be called an “extreme weather event”, as if such things never happened before, so that any unusual flood, drought or snowfall can be seen as further proof of warming that otherwise remains largely invisible.
I was lately reading the diary entries by Pepys and Evelyn, noting the plethora of “extreme weather events” in the 17th century, when scarcely a year went by when they could not describe some flood, drought, storm or blizzard as being “unknown in the memory of man”. But the 17th century, of course, was the height of the Little Ice Age, when the world was colder than it had been in 13,000 years. Those environmental zealots so eager to blame any aberration in our weather on man-made warming seem to know as little of history as they do of nature."

Harrison H. Schmitt and William Happer: In Defense of Carbon Dioxide

WSJ
"Of all of the world's chemical compounds, none has a worse reputation than carbon dioxide. Thanks to the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control of energy production, the conventional wisdom about carbon dioxide is that it is a dangerous pollutant. That's simply not the case. Contrary to what some would have us believe, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the increasing population on the planet by increasing agricultural productivity.
The cessation of observed global warming for the past decade or so has shown how exaggerated NASA's and most other computer predictions of human-caused warming have been—and how little correlation warming has with concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. As many scientists have pointed out, variations in global temperature correlate much better with solar activity and with complicated cycles of the oceans and atmosphere. There isn't the slightest evidence that more carbon dioxide has caused more extreme weather.
The current levels of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere, approaching 400 parts per million, are low by the standards of geological and plant evolutionary history. Levels were 3,000 ppm, or more, until the Paleogene period (beginning about 65 million years ago). For most plants, and for the animals and humans that use them, more carbon dioxide, far from being a "pollutant" in need of reduction, would be a benefit. This is already widely recognized by operators of commercial greenhouses, who artificially increase the carbon dioxide levels to 1,000 ppm or more to improve the growth and quality of their plants."

Relax! Celebrate 400 PPM Of CO2! ‘The Earth has had many-times-higher levels of CO2 in the past.

Climate Depot
"Americans should welcome the 400 ppm threshold. This means that plants are going to be happy, and this means that global-warming fearmongers are going to be proven wrong’

Thursday 9 May 2013

Britain can’t afford to surrender to the greens on shale gas

Spectator
"Whatever the power of Big Oil in the past, it has been eclipsed by ‘Big Green’. The green lobby is in control of the Department for Energy (to the Treasury’s dismay), its objectives are enshrined in law, it dominates the EU, and it is institutionalised in Whitehall via the Climate Change Committee. These state bodies are egged on by powerful environmental NGOs, which are heavily financed by the EU (WWF receives €600,000 and Friends of the Earth Europe €1.2 million) and our government (we pay WWF £4.1 million) to create the semblance of popular support. These NGOs can deploy any uncorroborated scare story in their war against fossil fuels. ..........The green lobby has changed tack and adopted three separate arguments to put us off exploiting our shale gas potential. First it asserts that there isn’t much there anyway, and what may be there will be impossible to extract technically, economically and socially. When the PM received a briefing on shale, Cuadrilla was excluded. The select committee instead had to listen to an array of bodies from the Committee on Climate Change to the WWF — none best known for their geological expertise. We would not ask British Gas how to protect pandas, so why we are consulting WWF about shale beats me."

More ‘ice free Arctic’ claims – we’ve heard it all before

WUWT
"From the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, something we’ve heard before. For example this claim from 2008. Gotta love the use of props to show how climate tipping points work: ..."

Wednesday 8 May 2013

DWD German Weather Service Misleads Public By Using Prominent, Deceptive Logo At Its Website!

NoTricksZone
"Worse, only the section from about 1975 to 2006 is shown – the only section that shows real warming from the entire 120-year long chart. The rest is ignored! "

A Climate of Suspicion and Distrust

Daily Mail

Tuesday 7 May 2013

The worlds biggest solar PV seller was worth $13bn: now bankrupt

JoNova (Australia)
"How is the hallowed Green tech industry working out for China? Not so well. Shi Zhengrong was called a “hero of the environment” by Time Magazine. He was a billionaire who ran the worlds largest seller of solar PV cells. But the glory days of 2008 – 2011 are gone. Another bubble bursts. Wiped out in two years. How fast was this fall? "

Monday 6 May 2013

Arctic Sea Ice 2013 – Where is the Death Spiral?

sunshine hours
"If someone claims Arctic Sea Ice is in a death spiral, you can mention that right now 2013 is the 7th lowest and not the lowest. And that 2013 has even more ice than 1989 at this point in the year. Lowest 7 = 2006 2004 2011 2007 1989 2005 2013 And that Extent is within one standard deviation of the 1981 – 2010 mean. And only 340,000 sq km below the mean which is about 2.5%."

By Land and By Sea

WUWT
"Now, I don’t know the answer to these questions either. However, in this modern world there’s a term called a “WAG”, which means a wild-assed guess. However, scientists don’t provide those. Instead, there is a refined version called a “SWAG”, or a scientific wild-assed guess. So here’s my SWAG about what we’re seeing here. I think at least some of this is the effect of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or PDO."

81% Of The US Below Normal Temperatures In 2013

Real Science
And also read this too.... Quietest Year On Record For US Forest Fires

Sunday 5 May 2013

Lewandowsky et al 2013: surveying Peter to report on Paul

WUWT
"What matters however, is not whether or not Lewandowsky contacted skeptics but what came of such contact. The whole point of contacting the bloggers was to get surveys posted on their websites to ensure skeptic participation. This never took place. Through the noise, the question of non-sampling of skeptics remained unresolved‡. ......Conclusion: A number of things can now be confirmed. The authors of Lewandowsky et al 2013 did not survey skeptical blogs. The websites that carried the survey have neither a broad readership, nor represented skeptical readers and commenters. The authors did not survey any readers at the website Skepticalscience, but represent their data and findings as though they did. Lastly, the authors’ calculations in assessing survey exposure, which they base on the same Skepticalscience, are shown to be wrong. ......"

First time since records began in Arkansas that it snowed in May!

IceAgeNow
"For the first time since written weather history began in Arkansas (1819), snow has fallen in the month of May. This snow has set records for the latest snowfall and latest measurable snowfall in the state. The previous latest snowfall ever recorded was on April 30, 1903 at Harrison, Gravette and Fayetteville. This was not measurable. The previous latest measurable snowfall was 0.2 inches at Corning on April 24, 1910." (h/t Climate Depot)

Saturday 4 May 2013

Still waiting for warming

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
"In Russia, one of the world’s leading solar physicists, Habibullo Abdussamatov, says the planet is well on the way to another deep freeze. Abdussamatov is the head of space research at the Russian Academy of Sciences Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in St Petersburg, and director of the Russian segment of the International Space Station. In an interview with Principia Scientific International, Abdussamatov said results of research from the ISS had indicated a decline in total solar irradiance, which was having a dramatic effect on the global climate. Data indicated the onset of a mini ice age. The view from Russia is that solar activity, not carbon dioxide emissions, has driven global temperatures. Abdussamatov ... said the lack of any warming for the past 17 years was a result of the decline of the total solar irradiance… Abdussamatov said a new “little ice age” would start this or next year and hit a low around 2040, with a deep freeze that would last for the rest of the century."

New paper finds another non-hockey-stick in Tibet

The Hockey Schtick
"A paper published today in Global and Planetary Change reconstructs temperatures in Tibet over the past 501 years and finds temperatures in the 1940's through 1980's were warmer than at the end of the record in the year 2000. In addition, the authors reconstruct precipitation and show that there is nothing unprecedented, unusual, or unnatural regarding present levels of precipitation, with the end of the record not being particularly wet or dry, that "dry periods were reconstructed for 1718-1725, 1766-1770 and 1920-1933, whereas 1782-1788 and 1979-1985 were wet periods."

Open Letter to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)

WUWT
"..A question: The WMO recommends that the base years used for anomalies be updated every 10 years. Many organizations, such as NOAA, comply with that recommendation. They now use 1981 to 2010 as the base years for anomalies for many of their datasets. Is there any reason you continue to use 1961-1990, other than to make the temperature anomaly map look warmer? Also, the non-linear color-coded scaling of the contour intervals is very awkward."

Thursday 2 May 2013

Antarctic Sea Ice Day 121 Update

sunshine hours
"As you know, Antarctic Sea Ice Extent hit a maximum record in September 2012. And since that news item finally received a little bit of publicity the AGW cult has come up with a few explanations for why ice is growing in the Antarctic. For the heck of it I thought I would graph Antarctic Sea Ice Extent for the 121st day of each year. After I did that I had one obvious question. Why, if Antarctic Sea Ice has been growing for 30 years, has it taken them so damned long to even admit it, let alone come up with such a weak-ass explanation that all sane people laugh at?"

Wednesday 1 May 2013

Fourier Analysis reveals six natural cycles driving temperatures, no man-made effect: predicts cooling

JoNova(Australia)
"Lüdecke, Hempelmann, and Weiss found that the temperature variation can be explained with six superimposed natural cycles. With only six cycles they can closely recreate the 240 year central European thermometer record. There is little “non-cyclical” signal left, suggesting that CO2 has a minor or insignificant effect. .."

An open letter to David Attenborough

Quadrant Online (Australia)
"ATTENTION: Sir David Attenborough Dear Sir David, I have written to you previously to congratulate you on the excellence of your wildlife documentaries. There is no doubt that your dedication and professionalism have brought pleasure, information and awareness to millions of viewers around the world. On a more critical note, I expressed to you my concern about public comments you have made about catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW). ....I provided ample documented evidence to show that: (a) Carbon dioxide has never driven global temperature over geologic time; (b) The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) process and findings cannot be trusted; (c) The broader scientific and political communities are now seriously questioning the alarmist message of CAGW."

The lights may stay on, but the economy may go out

Bishop Hill
"Peter Atherton, the head of utilities research at UK broker Liberum Capital has issued an extraordinarily damning assessment of UK energy policy. The good news is that he reckons the lights may not go out. The bad news is that he thinks that this will be because of a "huge spike" in energy prices. This will of course extinguish much of the UK economy."

Record Cold in Interior Alaska – heading into the USA, agriculture at risk

WUWT
"As with the Lower 48 states, spring is late and cold here in central Alaska. Fairbanks reported a record low of 2 degrees F above zero Sunday, breaking the previous record of 8 from 1924. Here in Anchorage, looks like we are around 3 – 4 weeks late with ice of local lakes and snow off the ground. Winter was not particularly hard, but it all changed with a very cold April. And at this point it does not appear things will be warming up soon. So much for man-made global warming due to carbon dioxide emissions." ......Here is a complete list of record lows for Alaska in the past 7 days, 996 new record lows were set'

New paper finds another amplification mechanism by which the Sun controls climate

The Hockey Schtick
"A paper published today in the Journal of Climate finds tiny variations in solar activity over 11-year solar cycles have greatly amplified effects upon climate via changes in the Arctic Oscillation, North Pacific sea surface temperatures & sea level pressure, and via changes in stratospheric ozone from solar UV. The authors find the Arctic Oscillation evolves from a negative mode a few years before solar maximums to a positive mode at and following solar maximums. The IPCC claims the tiny variations in solar activity during solar cycles cannot affect climate, but this paper and many others demonstrate solar activity has greatly amplified effects upon climate via ocean oscillations, atmospheric oscillations such as the Madden-Julian oscillation and Quasi-biennial oscillation, stratospheric ozone, and sunshine hours/clouds."