Dan Kahan, the Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law & Professor of Psychology at Yale Law School, is a member of the Cultural Cognition Project, an interdisciplinary team of scholars who use empirical methods to examine the impact of group values on perceptions of risk and related facts. Much to his surprise, his testing revealed that Tea Party members have higher “science comprehension “ than do “not teaparty members”. The chart below shows this result:
While the IPCC doesn’t have an answer for why there has been no statistical increase in global temperatures for going on 17 years, they don’t think the Sun has been a significant factor. They generalize that volcanoes, deep ocean warming, and particulate matter in the atmosphere may be the cause.
Copy of Woodcutting by TheGuardian.com by Duncan Clark
The IPCC has issued the 2013 report on global Climate change. The skeptic community has effectively challenged the IPCC primary positions. This post will provide a broad selection of those challenges for the reader to examine. Each of the 18 entries will give you the title, a brief synopsis, and the link to that document.
The IPCC failed on two major issues. Their failed to explain why global temperatures have not increased in the past 16 years despite a continued growth of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). The second issue is that of climate sensitivity. They did say that in the past, they had overestimated climate sensitivity but did not tell us what they now believe it to be. This posting will also cover climate model performance and should the IPCC be discontinued.
GLOBAL TEMPERATURES
The Non-Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) has issued their 2013 report “Climate Change Reconsidered II-Physical Science”. This report, a Summary for Policy Makers (SMP), challenges the data within the IPCC’s SMP scheduled for release this month.
Let’s contrasts the two reports. The NIPCC science is empirical data based. The IPCC also includes empirical data but their methodology relies heavily on computer based guesses projections, the scientific conclusion are revised to satisfy political objectives and the IPCC is not home to scientists that want to submit studies that contradict the message that global warming is man-made. NIPCC says this about the IPCC: “The hypothesis implicit in all IPCC writings, though rarely explicitly stated, is that dangerous global warming is resulting, or will result, from human-related greenhouse gas emissions.” They start with a conclusion and look for studies that support the conclusion. That’s not the the scientific method.
Paraphrasing Hamlet, “Is it better to mitigate CO2 emissions from sources such as fossil fuels or adapt to global changes that might happen if emissions were not regulated? Ah that’s the question.”
If you are a skeptic you may think that you are winning the science battle with the warmers. You probably have always thought that in the end you would win that battle and that would settle things. You were half right, you are winning the science battle but you have not yet deterred the politicians. The science has never mattered much to them. The warmer’s programs to combat “global warming” are really the only things that matter to them. Whether it is Cap & Trade, Carbon tax, or some other scheme, they are for it. They tell you they are doing this for your own good. But in fact most of them want greater control of your life and they can do it through taxes and regulations that are at the heart of these schemes.
The hype around the soon to be released UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) does make me a little ill. The last such report was issued in 2007 and it does not seem that the assemblers of the report have learned much in that time. It is not that they have completely ignored reality but just mostly ignored it.
This is a reblog.
Can not improve on this one. Once again the “extreme” weather brigade are ill-informed or purposely deceptive. Your guess.
cbdakota
The Poudre River in Fort Collins drains more than 500 square miles of mountains and empties through a narrow canyon.
The Big Thompson River in Loveland drains more than 500 square miles of mountains and empties through a narrow canyon.
The St. Vrain River, Lefthand Creek and Boulder Creek drain more than 500 square miles of mountains and empty through narrow canyons.
Upslope winds force humid air from the plains up into the mountains. The air expands, cools and drops below its dew point. Rain falls and floods occur.
In 1976, the Big Thompson drainage received 14 inches of rain in four hours and produced one of America’s most deadly floods. This week’s rains have been nowhere near that intense.
In 1997, Spring Creek in Fort Collins received 10 inches of rain in four hours, and produced a flood with killed five people. Again, that rainfall was much more intense than this…
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Posted in AGW, Climate Alarmism, Climate Models, Storms/hurricanes, Tornados
In 2012 the Governor of the State of Delaware, Jack Markel, entered into a long-term contract with Bloom Energy. The contract obligated Bloom to begin manufacturing their “Bloom Boxes” in the closed Chrysler Assembly plant. Delaware was obligated to subsidize Bloom to the tune of the difference of the cost of the electricity produced by Bloom Boxes and the cost of open market electricity. That subsidy rose from $0.67 in October 2012 to $3.83 for September 2013, a 570% increase, where it increases each ratepayers month’s bill. Delaware has mandated a requirement to buy renewable energy produced electricity that grows to 25% of the total energy used in the State by 2025. The open market electricity price has been dropping due to the increased availability of natural gas from fracking operations around the Nation. The natural gas is becoming the major source of energy for producing electricity. Natural gas is not considered a “renewable” form of energy. But the State passed an exception to their renewable energy law that allows Bloom Box energy to be called “renewable” even though these boxes use natural gas as their energy source. The irony here is that the electricity produced using natural gas the standard way, the electricity is much less expensive than electricity produced by Bloom Boxes. But remember, the State has a law that demands the use of “renewable” energy produced electricity.
The National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its State of the Climate in 2012: Highlights on August 2. The report says:
Many of the events that made 2012 such an interesting year are part of the long-term trends we see in a changing and varying climate—carbon levels are climbing, sea levels are rising, Arctic sea ice is melting, and our planet as a whole is becoming a warmer place,” said acting NOAA Administrator Kathryn D. Sullivan, Ph.D.
The report itemizes those things from which they have developed the theme that the planet is becoming a warmer place. The first on the list was this one:
Warm temperature trends continue near Earth’s surface: Four major independent datasets show 2012 was among the 10 warmest years on record, ranking either 8th or 9th, depending upon the dataset used. The United States and Argentina had their warmest year on record.
Now you are forgiven if you interpret that item as saying that the Earth is getting warmer, and indeed most of the media jumped to that conclusion. But what are the facts? Look at the HadCrut* temperature chart for the period from 1998 to 2012 that NOAA made this claim:
Posted in AGW, Climate Alarmism, Climate Models, CO2, CRU Temps, Global Temperatures, Media Bias, Sea Ice, Sea Level
Climate Change Sanity 