Walport the soothsayer

Bishop Hill
Listen to this interview with chief scientific adviser Sir Mark Walport in which he describes the relationship between extreme weather and climate change (link below).

...we know that, statistically, in those parts of the world where there is rain there will be more rain, we know that as water levels rise there will be more flooding...

This is, not to put too fine a point on it, unmitigated tosh. We "know" nothing about future rainfall. We have a hypothesis coming out of a very iffy set of computer models. This sort of claim, made without even the merest hint of uncertainty, is why people are so suspicious of the utterances of chief scientific advisers."

No Warming – Just Natural Cycles Masked By NOAA/NASA Data Tampering

Real Science
"By tampering with the data, NOAA and NASA destroy the ability of scientists to see what is actually going on with the climate."

Unsettling the “Settled Science” of Climate Change

Guido Fawkes

"The committee for Energy and Climate Change must be in line for an award. Its performance this week was exceptional.
The mental level of Yeo’s committee is – well, the climate debate is so rancorous let’s try for decorum.
Suffice it to say that John Robertson’s questioning would have been a credit to a clever dugong. Albert Owen nearly grasped the idea that that a Greenpeace activist in charge of an IPCC Chapter might lack objectivity. And Tim Yeo’s chairing was as good as a golf club captain in a Saturday night lock-in.
The committee had just received three mainstream climate workers and now, to say they had looked at all sides, they had three sceptics.
No doubt their sceptical remarks are contentious, their facts arguable and their conclusions unusual – but the three of them certainly gave the lie to the claim that “the science is settled”.

Weather expert accuses Met Office of 'warm bias' in getting annual predictions wrong 13 out of the last 14 years

Daily Mail
"The Met Office has got every annual global forecast so far this century wrong, bar one, a BBC weatherman said. Paul Hudson, a forecaster for BBC's regional programme Look North, said the Met Office's predictions had been wrong for 13 years out of the last 14, and said the incorrect predictions had all been 'on the warm side' rather than too cold. ....Climate change sceptic Professor Richard Lindzen yesterday told MPs that whatever they were doing to counteract 'climate change', the only difference it would make would be to the country's economy. He said: 'Whatever the UK is deciding to do vis-a-vis climate will have no impact on your climate. It will have a profound impact on your economy. 'So you are making a decision to take a problem which might not be a problem, take actions which you know will create problems and feel you have done the right thing.'

Global Sea Ice is 560,000 sq km above normal.

sunshine hours
"Global Sea Ice is 560,000 sq km above normal. Antarctic Sea Ice is at record levels for this day and on track to possibly break the record for highest minimum. Arctic Sea Ice has just crossed the one standard deviation line for the first time this year."

The ‘Pause’ of Global Warming Risks Destroying The Reputation Of Science

WUWT
"Global temperatures have not risen for 17 years. The pause now threatens to expose how much scientists sold their souls for cash and fame, warns emeritus professor Garth Paltridge, former chief research scientist with the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research."

NASA and NOAA Confirm Global Temperature Standstill Continues

GWPF
"In a joint press conference NOAA and NASA have just released data for the global surface temperature for 2013. In summary they both show that the ‘pause’ in global surface temperature that began in 1997, according to some estimates, continues.
Statistically speaking there has been no significant trend in global temperatures over this period. All these years fall within the error bars of 0.1 deg C. The trend is less than this and is statistically insignificant. There is no statistical case for representing the post-1997 data as anything other than a constant line. The graphs presented at the press conference omitted those error bars.
When asked for an explanation for the ‘pause’ by reporters Dr Gavin Schmidt of NASA and Dr Thomas Karl of NOAA spoke of contributions from volcanoes, pollution, a quiet Sun and natural variability. In other words, they don’t know.

U.S. temperatures, 1973-2013: A alternative view

Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
"Steve Goddard recently posted some results from his analysis of the official U.S. surface temperatures (USHCN, from NOAA) suggesting spurious warming occurring around 1998. I also showed evidence of this back in 2012.
Steve’s post reminded me that it’s been over a year since I’ve updated the U.S.-average Integrated Surface Hourly (ISH) temperature data, using my Population Density Adjusted Temperature (PDAT) algorithm that corrects for changing urban heat island (UHI) effects. This is still an unpublished method, and so should be considered more of a sanity check on the official NOAA USHCN product. But it does support Steve’s contention that there’s something funny going on in the USHCN data."

Just Hit The NOAA Motherlode

Real Science
"Bottom line is that there is clearly a huge error in the USHCN adjustments which has added a non-existent one degree hockey stick warming to the official US temperature record, and I now know just where to look for it in their code. .............Bottom line is that the NCDC US temperature record is completely broken, and meaningless. Adjustments that used to go flat after 1990, now go up exponentially. Adjustments which are documented as positive, are implemented as negative."

CET, taking a dump

E.M.Smith
"About 1/3 to 1/4 C from the “normal” line and dropping like a stone. Looks like the “modern optimum” is rapidly headed back to “typical English weather” with the potential to overshoot into “Damn Cold” Real Soon Now. The recent ‘warm lobe’ is not significant in size or duration compared to the past ‘cold lobes’. All in all, normal random walk ranges, IMHO."

How the American Meteorological Society Justified Publishing Half Truths

WUWT
"It is absolutely appalling that you defend “omitting substantial amounts of information” by simply characterizing her work as a “review” paper. In fact her interpretation was not a review, but was the first time such an analyses was introduced into the peer reviewed literature. Based on false credibility, the manipulated sections of this “review” paper were then erroneously repeated in other papers by our top climate scientists."

If The Present Refuse To Get Warmer, Then The Past Must Become Cooler

Real Science
"In USHCN V1, older temperatures were considered good, but recent temperatures were adjusted upwards by about 0.5F. After 1990, no further adjustments were considered necessary. ......That wasn’t getting the global warming marketing job done, so in USHCN V2 they did the exact opposite. Older temperatures are now cooled, with a hockey stick of adjustments after 1996. The total adjustment is now about 1.5 degrees F, 300% of the V1 adjustments. ......"

Hiding The Decline With The NCDC Teeter-Totter

Real Science
"US daily temperature data shows cooling since 1920. ......The final adjusted data released by USHCN shows warming since 1920 .............The accomplish this marvelous feat through a series of adjustment steps, each one cooling the past. ......What could possibly go wrong with a group of global warming activists successively cooling the past to turn a cooling trend into a strong warming trend?"

Is a mini ice age on the way? Scientists warn the Sun has 'gone to sleep' and say it could cause temperatures to plunge

Daily Mail
"The Sun's activity is at its lowest for 100 years, scientists have warned. They say the conditions are eerily similar to those before the Maunder Minimum, a time in 1645 when a mini ice age hit, Freezing London's River Thames. Researcher believe the solar lull could cause major changes, and say there is a 20% chance it could lead to 'major changes' in temperatures. ..............Mike Lockwood University of Reading says that the lower temperatures could affect the global jetstream, causing weather systems to collapse. 'We estimate within 40 years there a 10-20% probability we will be back in Maunder Minimum territory,' he said. Last year Nasa warned 'something unexpected' is happening on the Sun' This year was supposed to be the year of 'solar maximum,' the peak of the 11-year sunspot cycle. But as this image reveals, solar activity is relatively low. ..."

Obama Crony Capitalism and Green Tech Failures

ClimateChangeDispatch
"As part of President Obama’s “war on coal” and fossil fuels in general, his administration has provided more than $100 billion to so called “green tech” or “clean tech” companies, most of which have gone bankrupt or somehow “disappeared” the money. ......The money wasted on “green energy” could have been better spent on other things such as finding a cure for cancer. Or the government could have saved us all money by not spending it at all. The real question is “where did all that money go?” Is it parked in some off-shore bank accounts? "

Open Letter to Jon Stewart – The Daily Show

WUWT
"...Looking at this realistically, if the climate models cannot explain the current slowdown or halt in global surface warming, then they cannot be used to explain the warming that had occurred from the mid-1970s to the late-1990s. In turn, they have little value as tools for making predictions of future climate. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the sad reality of the state of climate science today."

Flooding chaos is down to David Cameron, not climate change

Christopher Booker,Telegraph
" From those record-breaking blizzards and -35C (-31F) temperatures ravaging North America to the mini-disaster of the floods across large parts of my county of Somerset, the big story of the week was the weather (or “climate”). And nothing said about this was sillier or more alarming than David Cameron’s claim in the Commons that “I very much suspect” that such “abnormal weather events” were linked to “climate change”. Almost instantly, he was slapped down even by one of the normally rabid warmists of the Met Office, who said there was “no evidence” that these storms were made “more intense” by climate change. Mr Cameron was equally contradicted by the latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which repeatedly found little evidence that climate change of the type it believes in could be blamed for recent hurricanes, floods, heatwaves or droughts across the world. What was terrifying about Mr Cameron’s casual comment, in view of the colossally damaging policies such beliefs have led his government to pursue, was that he has clearly made not the slightest effort to examine the scientific evidence."

The five global implications of shale oil and gas

energy post
"Innovation is involved in unlocking these resources, and so it will take time to bring them to market in countries that lock themselves out of the free flow of investment and ideas, or that do not allow for competition at home. The large scale commercial production of oil and natural gas from shale itself may be new, but there is nothing new about this principle in the history of our industry – or, if one thinks about it, the history of any industry."

The IPCC discards its models

WUWT
Implications
The table of temperature projections is the heart and soul of each voluminous IPCC Assessment Report. Climate alarm stands or falls on the credibility of that table.
Despite its customary obscurantism and spin, the IPCC has now admitted that:

• a number of its CMIP5 models seriously exaggerate future warming;

• the climate sensitivity range used for the modeled projections is too high;

• internal variability^[4] is expected to significantly offset warming (for some decades);

• scientists cannot quantify the influence of sensitivity or of internal variability beyond about 2035; and

• consequently, the modeled temperature projections are unreliable.

These admissions severely dent the authority of the IPCC. But their manner of reacting to this situation will do even greater damage to the Panel’s credibility. The Stockholm meeting decided against the obvious course of excluding the faulty models to obtain an ensemble of reliable simulations. Instead, it decided to:

• replace the table of modeled projections by an assessed table which met the “expert” opinion of participants (the majority of whom were non-climatologists);

• publish assessments/projections which have not been subject to any form of review or comment;

• apply arbitrary and swingeing (33%) adjustments to figures which pretend to tolerances of hundredths of a degree Celsius;

• tolerate non-robust (only 50:50 confidence^[5]) projections covering the next 60 years, even when they know those projections to be wrong;

• disguise its own puzzlement and internal disputation beneath a threadbare cloak of increased certainty and consensus."

Time Magazine Goes Both Ways On The Polar Vortex

Real Science
"In 1974, Time Magazine blamed the cold polar vortex on global cooling. ....Forty years later, Time Magazine blames the cold polar vortex on global warming "

98 per cent of US reports don’t mention the ice-trapped passengers were global warmists

Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun (Australia)
"... The Russian ship, Akademic Shokalskiy, was stranded in the ice while on a climate change research expedition, yet nearly 98 percent of network news reports about the stranded researchers failed to mention their mission at all… In fact, rather than point out the mission was to find evidence of climate change, the networks often referred to the stranded people as “passengers,” “trackers” and even “tourists,” without a word about climate change or global warming…"

Polar Vortex: Freeze To Hit 48 States

SkyNews
"A whirlpool of freezing, dense air known as a "polar vortex" has pummelled parts of the US with potentially record low temperatures and high snowfall. More than a foot of snow has been dumped on a large part of the Midwest, forcing officials to close schools in Chicago, St Louis and Milwaukee on Monday. Temperatures as low as -35C (-31F) are forecast for Fargo, North Dakota, while Madison, Wisconsin, will experience -29C (-21F) and even Chicago and Minneapolis could drop to -27C (-15F). With the wind chill factor, those temperatures could plummet into the -50s and -60s centigrade."

Who is behind the ship of fools?

Spectator
"As Chris Turney and his colleagues make their way home from their failed adventure, the next question is: who is going to be paying for their folly? It certainly isn’t the general public. The efforts by Turney and his co-leader Chris Fogwill to crowd-fund money have been an embarrassing failure. They were seeking to raise $49,000 in this way – a small fraction of the $1.5 million overall costs – but they managed to raise a mere $1,000 from 22 people. Not even the promise of a signed copy of Turney’s book, 1912: the year the World Discovered Antarctica was enough to tempt donors into action: not a single one chose to receive the book.
British taxpayers, needless to say, have dipped in their toes. One of the sponsors is the University of Exeter, Professor Turney’s previous employer. The university is fast on its way to taking over from the University of East Anglia as the global warming lobby’s chief mouthpiece. Universities claim to have fallen on hard times but there seems to be no lack of money when it comes to broadcasting the global warming lobby’s case: ...."

Not just the ice that’s sadly thick

Christopher Booker, Telegraph
" What a wonderful parable of group-think has been the story of those 52 green zealots, “adventure tourists” and journalists from the BBC and The Guardian who were trapped in ice up to 10ft thick last week, until they were removed – to the safety of Chinese and Australian ice-breakers – from a Russian ship still stuck off the coast of Antarctica. Led by a “climate scientist”, who brought along his wife and children for the ride, this purported to be a “scientific expedition” to find out why the sea-ice around Antarctica was being melted by climate change. The more we learn about this adventure, the more bizarre it becomes. These “scientists” seemed blissfully unaware that there has recently been more sea-ice round Antarctica than at any time since satellite records began in 1979, currently 1.5 million square kilometres more than its 30-year average (see the Cryosphere Today and Watts Up With That websites). Having hired a ship with only minimal ice protection, they were oblivious to forecasts last October that this year’s ice, even in mid-summer, would be dangerously thick."

So many of my predictions - about the EU and energy - have been correct

Christopher Booker of The Sunday Telegraph
" More than once this year, as I have continued to report on some of this column’s favourite themes, I have thought back to the days, long ago, when my satirical “Way of the World” column in The Daily Telegraph was illustrated by a cartoonist just starting on the paper called Matthew Pritchett. Already, young Matt was showing signs of why he was later to become a national treasure. But one drawing in particular, in 1989, was based on an item in which I mocked the way, even then, the BBC was regularly entertaining us with scary documentaries about how global warming would bring about the end of the world.
I suggested to Matt a picture of the prophetess Cassandra standing amid the smoking ruins of Troy, holding up a placard reading: “Remember, folks, you heard it here first”. The point about Cassandra’s dire predictions, of course, was that no one ever believed them until they turned out to be true – a fate too often shared, alas, by this column."

Polar chief slams Antarctic cruise

SkyNews (Australia)
"The head of France's polar science institute has voiced fury at the misadventures of a Russian ship trapped in Antarctic ice, deriding what he called a tourists' trip that had diverted resources from real science. In an interview with AFP, Yves Frenot, director of the French Polar Institute, said he had no issue at all with rescuing those aboard the stricken vessel. He said the trip itself was a 'pseudo-scientific expedition' that, because it had run into difficulties, had drained resources from the French, Chinese and Australian scientific missions in Antarctica." H/T NotricksZone

Damning French Analysis Of Turney’s Expedition: Debacle Was Caused More By “An Obvious Amateurism”

NoTricksZone
"The French website Contrepoints (Counterpoints) has an excellent general summary on how the Turney Expedition course of events unfolded in an article titled: Akademik Shokalskiy: the time to ask questions. Turney really does appear to be in a lot of hot water."

'Polar vortex' grips the US in coldest temperatures in decades

Telegraph
" Around 140 million people, slightly less than half of the American population, were set to face subzero conditions as the aptly-named winter storm Hercules overran the northern US and threatened to push into the usually balmy Deep South. In Minnesota the temperature was predicted to reach -31F (-35C) but meteorologists warned that accompanying wind chill could make it feel twice as cold, bringing frostbite to exposed skin within minutes. Eleven people have died in weather-related incidents in the last week, including a 71-year-old woman with Alzheimer's who wandered away from her home in upstate New York and was found frozen to death in woods only 100 yards away. American football fans were layering up for what is expected to be the coldest game in recorded history when the Green Bay Packers take the field against the San Francisco 49ers in -51F (-46C) conditions on Sunday."

Veteran explorer claims tourists stranded for eight days in Antarctica had lives needlessly risked by planners opting for budget ship that cannot break ice

Daily Mail
"Robert Headland, of Cambridge University’s Scott Polar Research Institute, blamed the team for not investing in a ship suitable to the ‘easily predictable’ sea ice. Mr Headland, who has completed successful missions to where the ship was going, said: ‘The expedition was hopelessly optimistic in trying to carry out this mission on the cheap and has needlessly taken many risks. ‘The team were in an area where it is common for ice to suddenly build up and instead of using an icebreaker, they used an ice-strengthened ship, which is totally unsuitable.’

Global warming’s greatest teaching moment gone to waste

Catallaxy Files
"Australia is in the midst of the greatest teaching moment on global warming possibly since this entire business began. Our team of scientists getting frost bite while frozen in, even with technologies today that did not exist a century ago when Douglas Mawson made the same journey. Yet this is not the way it is being reported, although I was pleased to see that Andrew Bolt has made it onto Powerline Picks. But the deep deep scandal, that ought to be one of the most instructive moments in this long and sad saga, is going to waste. And it is worse that I could have thought. ....."

Antarctic Clown Convention HAD to Know The Ice Was Thick Way Back in October

sunshine hours
"The bunch of clowns on the MV Akademik Shokalskiy had to have known the ice was highest it has ever been. And the BBC propaganda arm still claims the voyage was to study “melting ice”.

Now that the ‘Ship of Fools’ is safe in Antarctica, tough questions need to be asked

WUWT
"Since the Guardian reporters shown above probably won’t do anything but complain about beds and lack of milkshakes (that video has now been “disappeared”) while writing glowing reports about the “adventure” of it all, it will be left to others to ask the tough questions. Now that they are on their way to Casey Station in Antarctica, Andrew Bolt starts off with these questions. I have a few of my own."

Questions about this ice-bound ship of warmist fools

Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun (Australia)
"There are more questions, of course, but let’s start with just these. They would help us to understand how the global warming scare has been created in defiance of the objective facts."

Skeptical view makes Australian front page: climate madness, dishonesty, fraud, deception, lies and exploitation says Maurice Newman

JoNova (Australia)
“From the UN down, the climate change delusion is a gigantic money tree. It is a tyranny that, despite its pretensions, favours the rich and politically powerful at the expense of the poor and powerless. But the madness of the crowds is waning and, as Mackay writes of the perpetrators: “Punishment is sure to overtake them sooner or later.” We can only hope it comes before most of us descend into serfdom."