Category Archives: AGW

Hitler on Climate Change

Posted on February 15, 2010 | 1 comment

In case you have missed it,  the You Tube “Hitler on Climate Change” is pretty funny.  Click here to watch.

Cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, ClimateGate, Environment, IPCC

Weakness of the AGW Theory-Part 4. Atmospheric IR Absorption is Self Regulating

Posted on February 14, 2010 | Leave a comment

According to Dr Ferenc  Miskolczi, increases in CO2 levels have not increased the global average IR (longwaves) absorbing power of the atmosphere.

He adds:

Our atmosphere, with its infinite degree of freedom, is able to maintain its global average infrared absorption at an optimal level. In technical terms, this “greenhouse constant” is the total infrared optical thickness of the atmosphere, and its theoretical value is 1.87. Despite the 30 per cent increase of CO2 in the last 61 years, this value has not changed. The atmosphere is not increasing its absorption power as was predicted by the IPCC.

In theoretical radiative transfer, the absorbing power of infrared active gases are measured by the total infrared optical depth (TIOD). This dimensionless quantity is the negative natural logarithm of the ratio of the absorbed surface upward radiation by the atmosphere to the total emitted surface upward radiation.

With relatively simply computations, we show that in the last 61 years, despite the 30 percent increase in the atmospheric CO2 concentration, the cumulative greenhouse effect of all atmospheric greenhouse gases has not been changed – that is, the atmospheric TIOD is constant.

According to the most plausible explanation of the above fact, the equilibrium atmospheric H2O content is constrained with the theoretical optimal TIOD.

To read the complete posting , click here.

For other postings on AGW Theory weakness click here.

Cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, Climate Models, Environment, Global Temperatures, IPCC

CRU’s Jones says Global Warming Science NOT Settled

Posted on February 14, 2010 | Leave a comment

BBC put questions to Dr Phil Jones, former head of the East Anglia University Climate Research Unit (CRU) about his views regarding global warming and Climategate.   The questions and his responses can be read in detail by clicking here.

Al Gore should probably wrap his head in duct tape before reading the following Jones’ response:

Q – –When scientists say “the debate on climate change is over”, what exactly do they mean – and what don’t they mean?

A–It would be supposition on my behalf to know whether all scientists who say the debate is over are saying that for the same reason. I don’t believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well.

So,  Jones says neither he nor the vast majority of climate scientist think the climate change debate is over.   I just heard a boom.  Somebody did not tape his head  to prevent it from exploding.

For those who believe that CO2 is driving global warming,  Jones offers this:

Q–Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?

A–Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different (see numbers below).

I have also included the trend over the period 1975 to 2009, which has a very similar trend to the period 1975-1998.

So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other.

Here are the trends and significances for each period:

Period Length Trend

(Degrees C per decade)

 Significance
1860-1880 21 0.163 Yes
1910-1940 31 0.15 Yes
1975-1998 24 0.166 Yes
1975-2009 35 0.161 Yes

Jones added the period 1975-2009 to the first three periods from the BBC questionnaire.  He says that the periods are not statistically different from each other (which could probably be deduced without a statistical analysis).  It would seem to put into question any significant effect of  the increase in anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere after WWII .

And he does respond to the hockey stick temperature chart that eliminated the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) from history with this equivocation:

Q–There is a debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was global or not. If it were to be conclusively shown that it was a global phenomenon, would you accept that this would undermine the premise that mean surface atmospheric temperatures during the latter part of the 20th Century were unprecedented?

A–There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia. For it to be global in extent the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern Hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.

Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today (based on an equivalent coverage over the NH and SH) then obviously the late-20th century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm that today, then current warmth would be unprecedented.

We know from the instrumental temperature record that the two hemispheres do not always follow one another. We cannot, therefore, make the assumption that temperatures in the global average will be similar to those in the northern hemisphere.

Ok,  Jones seems certain that there was a MWP in the Northern hemisphere.  But he doesn’t know if there was one in the Southern Hemisphere at the same time.   If the evidence was that the Northern Hemisphere temperatures were high  and  there was no data contradictory evidence,  why was the MWP removed from the hockey stick chart?

He still seems to be in some degree of hot water over his actions around  the Freedom of Information Act .

Q–Why did you ask a colleague to delete all e-mails relating to the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC?

A–This was an e-mail sent out of frustration at one FOI request that was asking for the e-mail correspondence between the lead authors on chapter six of the Working Group One Report of the IPCC. This is one of the issues that the Independent Review will look at.

Oh my,  he just got mad and we need to forgive him.  I believe he did his best to deny anyone, by any means  access to his data.  See all the Climategate emails to learn how hard he fought any release.

Dr Jones says he never tried to subvert the process of peer review, but again, reading the Climategate email it surely looks like he and the members of his cabal did.

There are other postings on this topic that you might want to look into.  If so click here and here.

Cbdakota.

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Posted in AGW, Climate Models, ClimateGate, Environment, Global Temperatures, IPCC

Is Ethanol Fuel Causing Starvation?

Posted on February 11, 2010 | 3 comments

Is the corn used to produce ethanol motor fuel causing a massive increase in undernourished people in the  world?   A posting in the Energy Tribune suggests that using corn to produce ethanol is doing just that.  Their posting is based upon an Earth Policy Institute study which states that the grain consumed for the production of ethanol in 2009  was enough to feed 330 million people for one year at average world consumption.

I am always made a little uneasy by Organizations that can come up with numbers of starving people or homeless people or people without insurance.  Often they are advocates of something just as World Wildlife Fund is, among other things, a creator of lots of  global warming “facts”. There is a comment that follows the posting in the Energy Tribune that makes some pretty good sense too, about why you might want to question the total numbers of people that could have used the corn for food.

However,  the concept that the supported price of ethanol fuel can outbid food uses for the available corn seems very logical; thus it seems likely to have some effect on the amount of corn that was not available for food use. I expect the various interest groups will begin to battle this out and we will learn more in time. Some excerpts from the Energy Tribune blog follows:

The US, says the think tank:

is far and away the world’s leading grain exporter, exporting more than Argentina, Australia, Canada, and Russia combined. In a globalized food economy, increased demand for food to fuel American vehicles puts additional pressure on world food supplies.

From an agricultural vantage point, the automotive hunger for crop-based fuels is insatiable. The Earth Policy Institute has noted that even if the entire US grain crop were converted to ethanol (leaving no domestic crop to make bread, rice, pasta, or feed the animals from which we get meat, milk, and eggs), it would satisfy at most 18 percent of US automotive fuel needs.

When the growing demand for corn for ethanol helped to push world grain prices to record highs between late 2006 and 2008, people in low-income grain-importing countries were hit the hardest. The unprecedented spike in food prices drove up the number of hungry people in the world to over 1 billion for the first time in 2009. Though the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression has recently brought food prices down from their peak, they still remain well above their long-term average levels.

The full posting, including graphs can be read by clicking here.  Be sure to read the interesting comment (probably  by an etoh fuel advocate) at the end of the posting.

Cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, Alternative Energy, Electric Vehicles, Environment

Boss and Galileo Discuss Cap and Trade

Posted on February 11, 2010 | Leave a comment

The Boss called in his science advisor, Galileo.  The Boss says “Galileo, I am being asked to limit carbon dioxide (CO2) atmospheric emissions resulting from the use of fossil fuels.   Should I do it; put in a plan to cutback fossil fuel use?  I know I can trust you because you, like your namesake think rationally not just go along with the crowd.”

Galileo responds “You have to decide based on (a) what we know or (b) what climate computers forecast the world will be like in 50 to 100 years if you don’t do something now.”

The Boss says “What’s the difference between what we know now and the computer forecasts?”

“Well Boss”  Galileo replied “you know that those who want you to cut back fossil fuel use say that the CO2 increase in the atmosphere will result in an unacceptable increase in global temperature, flooding resulting from ice melt, droughts in some parts of the world and excessive rains in others.  Plus famine, war, pestilence and death”

“How do they know these things will happen?” asked the Boss.

“It’s the computers, Boss.”

“OK, then tell me what you meant about what we know now.”

Galileo said “Well despite a continuing increase in atmospheric CO2, the global temperatures have not risen in over ten years and the ocean temperatures have declined since 2003 when the Argo Buoy system was put into service.  The Argo buoys are the only credible ocean temperature measurements.   Sea level rise has been steady for hundreds of years and in fact there has been a slight decrease in the rate of rise recently. Further more, the most recent studies have decoupled CO2 rise and violent weather.  Much of the 4 Horses of the Apocalypse talk is based on un-peer reviewed papers by  organizations like World Wildlife Fund that are advocates of the man-made global warming theory.”

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

“But surely the computers must have forecast this as I have heard of these  projections for 20 years,  even before I became Boss”

“ Boss, these climate computers are not skillful.”

“Skillful, what does that mean?”

“That is a way of saying they are unable to make accurate forecasts.  This is because the globe’s climate is so complex and the computer programmers and the scientist that provide technical data do not fully understanding its complexity.  So they backcast and add constants (fudge factors, speaking technically) to model the past.  But this is only of limited success when trying to predict the climate in the future.  It is my understanding they mostly fiddle with the output until it gives the desired outcome that matches their predisposition.”

“My, my  that doesn’t seem ligit.”

“Well Boss,  you can see why they do this.  The people are unlikely to agree to draconian laws that kill their economies.  But if you tell them that the computer says that in 50 to 100 years from now things will be pretty bad here on Earth if they don’t.  Even though these computers are woeful at making accurate predictions, the advocates of man-made global warming pretend they are believable else the whole man-made global warming industry would collapse.”

“So Galileo tell me what you think we should do.”

“First I want you to know that I believe the globe is warming and has been since the last Ice Age.  But the warming by and large is due to natural forces  and does not seem to present any danger of getting out of hand.  Right now, for example, the total global ice is increasing, ocean temperatures are on the decline,.  I don’t believe we know enough to potentially destroy our economy by restricting the use of fossil fuels.”

“Well said, but maybe the climate computers will be able to predict the future.”

“I have some thoughts on that , Boss.  Perhaps more powerful computers and increased knowledge of how the climate works will someday yield accurate forecasts.  But how can we know when that happens?   I believe climate forecasts must be accurate for 20 or more years into the future. I would have all the best computer programmers and climate scientists set up from 1 to 5 computers, let them make projections for climate in 20 years hence.  If any of them are found to make accurate projections after 20 years, then lets use that program to make decisions. It is likely that continuing development of this science will produce new candidates for this test.  Every 5 years new entries should be put into this program and we can wait for that computer program’s projection demonstration after 20 years.  With out demonstrated performance accuracy,  we never should  allow computer climate forecasts set policy.”

“In the meantime, we can work on improved  energy technologies.  We will  encourage this effort, but  we should not force unproven, unreliable and costly technologies on the public.”

“Thanks Galileo.”

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Posted in AGW, Alternative Energy, cap and trade, Climate Models, ClimateGate, Environment, Global Temperatures, IPCC, Ocean heat content, Sea Ice

MINISTRY OF CLIMATE CHANGE PROPAGANDA

Posted on February 10, 2010 | Leave a comment

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced the creation of a new agency that they say will be “one-stop shopping into the world of climate information.”   Rather than that,  it is likely that the agency will continue the “science is settled” version of the church of AGW.

Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) editorialized about this new agency saying:  “Hoaxes: Despite failures at Copenhagen, the fraud of the IPCC and the farce of Climate-gate, the administration wants an agency to monitor climate change. Why must we fund one-stop shopping for climate charlatans?”

In spite of the Climategate scandals and the many errors in the IPCC Annual Report 4 on climate change, the Obama administration continues to push for legislation that will reduce US CO2 emission by 17% by 2020.

The IBD adds

“Undaunted by facts, U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern gave the U.N. notice on Jan. 26 that this country, ignoring observable data that the globe is cooling, the will of the American people and the failure of Copenhagen, is still committing itself to a 17% emissions cut in carbon dioxide and other gases by 2020 from 2005 levels.

This is an absurd policy based on fraudulent data that will doom the American economy and American workers to Third World status without denting global temperatures by a fraction of a degree.”

Not only can we expect disinformation from this new Agency but it also continues the Obama Administrations build up of government workers while it cannot figure out how to create jobs in the private sector.

To read the complete IBD posting, click here.

Cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, cap and trade, Climate Models, ClimateGate, Environment, Global Temperatures, IPCC, Ocean heat content, sun and climate

Can You Believe The Historic Temperature Data?

Posted on February 2, 2010 | Leave a comment

If you read this blog, Climate Change Sanity, you know that I believe the only global temperature data you can depend on are those made by the Satellites.    A new study of global temperature measurements by Joseph D’Aleo and Anthony Watts titled “Surface Temperature Records: Policy Driven Deception?” is available on the SPPI website.   After you read this report I suspect that you will agree that only the Satellite data is reliable.   I have taken the liberty to lift some of this PDF for this blog.   First:

QUESTION OF GLOBAL TEMPERATURE

Recent revelations from the Climategate emails, originating from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia showed how all the data centers, most notably NOAA and NASA, conspired in the manipulation of global temperature records to suggest that temperatures in the 20th century rose faster than, in reality, they actually did.

This has inspired climate researchers worldwide to take a hard look at the data proffered by comparing it to the original data and to other data sources. This report compiles some of the initial alarming findings.

There has clearly been some cyclical warming in recent decades, most notably 1979 to 1998. However, the global surface-station data is seriously compromised. First, there is a major station dropout and increase in missing data in stations that remained which occurred suddenly around 1990; about the time the global warming issue was being elevated to importance in political and environmental circles. A clear bias was found towards removing cooler higher elevation, higher latitude, and rural stations during this culling process though leaving their data in the base periods from which ‘averages’ and anomalies are computed.

The data also suffers contamination by urbanization and other local factors such as land-use/land-cover changes and improper siting. There are uncertainties in ocean temperatures; no small issue, as oceans cover 71% of the earth’s surface.

These factors all lead to significant uncertainty and a tendency for overestimation of century-scale temperature trends. A conclusion from all findings suggest that global data bases are seriously flawed and can no longer be trusted to assess climate trends or rankings or validate model forecasts. And, consequently, such surface data should be ignored for decision making.

THE GLOBAL DATA CENTERS

Five organizations publish global temperature data. Two – Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) – are satellite datasets. The three terrestrial institutions – NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), and the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) – all depend on data supplied by ground stations via NOAA.

And D’Aleo and Watts summarize their findings in the following 15 points:

1. Instrumental temperature data for the pre-satellite era (1850-1980) have been so widely, systematically, and unidirectionally tampered with that it cannot be credibly asserted there has been any significant “global warming” in the 20th century.

2. All terrestrial surface-temperature databases exhibit very serious problems that render them useless for determining accurate long-term temperature trends.

3. All of the problems have skewed the data so as greatly to overstate observed warming both regionally and globally.

4. Global terrestrial temperature data are gravely compromised because more than three-quarters of the 6,000 stations that once existed are no longer reporting.

5. There has been a severe bias towards removing higher-altitude, higher-latitude, and rural stations, leading to a further serious overstatement of warming.

6. Contamination by urbanization, changes in land use, improper siting, and inadequately-calibrated instrument upgrades further overstates warming.

7. Numerous peer-reviewed papers in recent years have shown the overstatement of observed longer term warming is 30-50% from heat-island contamination alone.

8. Cherry-picking of observing sites combined with interpolation to vacant data grids may make heat-island bias greater than 50% of 20th-century warming.

9. In the oceans, data are missing and uncertainties are substantial. Comprehensive coverage has only been available since 2003, and shows no warming.

10. Satellite temperature monitoring has provided an alternative to terrestrial stations in compiling the global lower-troposphere temperature record. Their findings are increasingly diverging from the station-based constructions in a manner consistent with evidence of a warm bias in the surface temperature record.

11. NOAA and NASA, along with CRU, were the driving forces behind the systematic hyping of 20th-century “global warming”.

12. Changes have been made to alter the historical record to mask cyclical changes that could be readily explained by natural factors like multidecadal ocean and solar changes.

13. Global terrestrial data bases are seriously flawed and can no longer be trusted to assess climate trends or VALIDATE model forecasts.

14. An inclusive external assessment is essential of the surface temperature record of CRU, GISS and NCDC “chaired and paneled by mutually agreed to climate scientists who do not have a vested interest in the outcome of the evaluations.”

15. Reliance on the global data by both the UNIPCC and the US GCRP/CCSP also requires a full investigation and audit.

These contentions are fully backed up in their report which can be access by clicking here.

Cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, Climate Models, ClimateGate, Environment, Global Temperatures, IPCC, Ocean heat content

SEC Wants Corporations to Explain How They are Alleviating Global Warming

Posted on January 31, 2010 | 2 comments

First it was the EPA moving forward to set-up regulations for controlling CO2 emissions.  And now,  another Executive Branch Commission is planning to make another end run around Congress by setting up a standard that every corporation must meet . This standard will require the corporation to explain how they are going to alleviate global warming.  This was a proposal by the Security and Exchange Commision to be discussed on Wednesday last  week.  Representatives Joe Barton and Greg Walden sent a letter to Chairman Shapiro asking for an explanation and rationale for this proposed rule.   They ask what statutory authority allows them to to this.  And as there is no Federal law on the subject of global warming, how does a corporation’s actions relate to  an investors safety and security?   So far  there is no response by the SEC, best I can determine. To read their full challenge to such rule making click here.

Cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, cap and trade, Environment

AGW Implodes-US Media Silent

Posted on January 31, 2010 | 1 comment

In my  24 January blog, IPCC-The “fools gold” Standard?-UPDATED, I said that the US media were largely silent about the crumbling AGW theory.    The posting “Global warming science implodes overseas: American media silent”  in The American Thinker blog, explores the US media silence.   To read their posting, click here.

Its always nice to see confirmation.

Cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, cap and trade, ClimateGate, Environment, IPCC

IPCC-The “fools gold” Standard?-UPDATED

Posted on January 24, 2010 | 2 comments

The Warmers say the IPCC climate report No. 4, is the “gold standard” for the global warming science and there can be no further argument. Now that report is suffering from two new revelation, which further damage its credibility.

In the past week, the IPCC found it necessary to disavow the glacier section of the report.  When issued in 2007,  the report said that the Himalayan glaciers would likely be completely  melted by 2035.  They were forced to admit that there was no scientific foundation for that  assertion.   And now we learn that the lead author of that section has this to say according to the Mailonline:

“Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research. In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.

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

That pretty much speaks for itself.  Read more of the Mailonline report here.

How many times have we heard from Al Gore, President Obama, Gordon Brown, Hugo Chavez, etc. about how global warming is causing natural disasters such as, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, etc.? Their proof  was the  2007 IPCC report.

The support for this assertion was a not peer-reviewed, unpublished paper.  From the Timesonline:

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

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

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

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

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

To read more of the Timesonline report click here.

So the “gold standard “ seems to be the “fools gold standard”.

It has long been known that anything that conflicted with the theory of man-made global warming was never seriously considered by the authors of the IPCC report. Further use of less than scientifically veted but supportive to the AGW theory were used.  However, the media, in a show of complicity, never investigated.

UPDATE 01/25/10

Late yesterday, WattsUpWithThat posted “The scandal deepens–IPCC AR4 riddled with non peer reviewed WWF papers.”  Watts says:

“Well it turns out that the WWF is cited all over the IPCC AR4 report, and as you know, WWF does not produce peer reviewed science, they produce opinion papers in line with their vision. Yet IPCC’s rules are such that they are supposed to rely on peer reviewed science only. It appears they’ve violated that rule dozens of times, all under Pachauri’s watch.  A new posting authored by Donna Laframboise, the creator of NOconsensus.org (Toronto, Canada) shows what one can find in just one day of looking.http://nofrakkingconsensus.blogspot.com/2010/01/more-dodgy-citations-in-nobel-winning.html “

END OF UPDATE

Note that the discoveries of the IPCC deceptions are coming from the British Media and NOT the American Media.  At my local barbershop, a home of skeptism,  most have never heard of Climategate as there is only minimal reporting by our media.  Not that there are not many ripe targets for investigation such as our equivalents of the British CRU— The GISS and NOAA.

Cbdakota

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Posted in AGW, cap and trade, Climate Models, ClimateGate, Environment, Global Temperatures