Global Warming Follies

The end?

tjgavin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 02:47:54 +0000

I know it’s really, really bad form to include an entire news story in a blog. But this piece from the London Times is the best and most accessible explanation of the current situation I have read in the last week. I hope you will read the whole story because it’s important that we all understand how a few ideologues can push a world population to the brink.

The great climate change science scandal
Leaked emails have revealed the unwillingness of climate change scientists to engage in a proper debate with the sceptics who doubt global warming

Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor

The storm began with just four cryptic words. “A miracle has happened,” announced a contributor to Climate Audit, a website devoted to criticising the science of climate change.“RC” said nothing more — but included a web link that took anyone who clicked on it to another site, Real Climate.

There, on the morning of November 17, they found a treasure trove: a thousand or so emails sent or received by Professor Phil Jones, director of the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.

Jones is a key player in the science of climate change. His department’s databases on global temperature changes and its measurements have been crucial in building the case for global warming.

What those emails suggested, however, was that Jones and some colleagues may have become so convinced of their case that they crossed the line from objective research into active campaigning.

In one, Jones boasted of using statistical “tricks” to obliterate apparent declines in global temperature. In another he advocated deleting data rather than handing them to climate sceptics. And in a third he proposed organised boycotts of journals that had the temerity to publish papers that undermined the message.

It was a powerful and controversial mix — far too powerful for some. Real Climate is a website designed for scientists who share Jones’s belief in man-made climate change. Within hours the file had been stripped from the site.

Several hours later, however, it reappeared — this time on an obscure Russian server. Soon it had been copied to a host of other servers, first in Saudi Arabia and Turkey and then Europe and America.

What’s more, the anonymous poster was determined not to be stymied again. He or she posted comments on climate-sceptic blogs, detailing a dozen of the best emails and offering web links to the rest. Jones’s statistical tricks were now public property.

Steve McIntyre, a prominent climate sceptic, was amazed. “Words failed me,” he said. Another, Patrick Michaels, declared: “This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud.”

Inevitably, the affair became nicknamed Climategate. For the scientists, campaigners and politicians trying to rouse the world to action on climate change the revelations could hardly have come at a worse time. Next month global leaders will assemble in Copenhagen to seek limits on carbon emissions. The last thing they need is renewed doubts about the validity of the science.

The scandal has also had a huge personal and professional impact on the scientists. “These have been the worst few days of my professional life,” said Jones. He had to call on the police for protection after receiving anonymous phone calls and personal threats.

Why should a few emails sent to and from a single research scientist at a middle-ranking university have so much impact? And most importantly, what does it tell us about the quality of the research underlying the science of climate change?

THE hacking scandal is not an isolated event. Instead it is the latest round of a long-running battle over climate science that goes back to 1990.

That was when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — the group of scientists that advises governments worldwide — published its first set of reports warning that the Earth faced deadly danger from climate change. A centrepiece of that report was a set of data showing how the temperature of the northern hemisphere was rising rapidly.

The problem was that the same figures showed that it had all happened before. The so-called medieval warm period of about 1,000 years ago saw Britain covered in vineyards and Viking farmers tending cows in Greenland. For any good scientist this raised a big question: was the recent warming linked to humans burning fossil fuels or was it part of a natural cycle?

The researchers set to work and in 1999 a group led by Professor Michael Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University, came up with new numbers showing that the medieval warm period was not so important after all.

Some bits of the Atlantic may have been warm for a while, but the records suggested that the Pacific had been rather chilly over the same period — so on average there was little change.

Plotted out, Mann’s data turned into the famous “hockey stick” graph. It showed northern hemisphere temperatures as staying flat for hundreds of years and then rising steeply from 1900 until now. The implication was that this rise would continue, with potentially deadly consequences for humanity.

That vision of continents being hit by droughts and floods while the Arctic melts away has turned a scientific debate into a highly emotional and political one. The language used by “warmists” and sceptics alike has become increasingly polarised.

George Monbiot, widely respected as a writer on green issues, has branded doubters “climate deniers”, a phrase uncomfortably close to holocaust denial. Sceptics, particularly in America, have suggested that scientists who believe in climate change are part of a global left-wing conspiracy to divert billions of dollars into green technology.

A more cogent criticism is that there has been a reluctance to acknowledge dissent on the question of climate science. Al Gore, the former US vice-president turned green campaigner, has described the climate debate as “settled”. Yet the science, say critics, has not been tested to the limit. This is why the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia is so significant.

Its researchers have built up records of how temperatures have changed over thousands of years. Perhaps the most important is the land and sea temperature record for the world since the mid-19th century. This is the database that shows the “unequivocal” rise of 0.8C over the last 157 years on which Mann’s hockey stick and much else in climate science depend.

Some critics believe that the unit’s findings need to be treated with more caution, because all the published data have been “corrected” — meaning they have been altered to compensate for possible anomalies in the way they were taken. Such changes are normal; what’s controversial is how they are done. This is compounded by the unwillingness of the unit to release the original raw data.

David Holland, an engineer from Northampton, is one of a number of sceptics who believe the unit has got this process wrong. When he submitted a request for the figures under freedom of information laws he was refused because it was “not in the public interest”.

Others who made similar requests were turned down because they were not academics, among them McIntyre, a Canadian who runs the Climate Audit website.

A genuine academic, Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph in Canada, also tried. He said: “I was rejected for an entirely different reason. The [unit] told me they had obtained the data under confidentiality agreements and so could not supply them. This was odd because they had already supplied some of them to other academics, but only those who support the idea of climate change.”

IT was against this background that the emails were leaked last week, reinforcing suspicions that scientific objectivity has been sacrificed. There is unease even among researchers who strongly support the idea that humans are changing the climate. Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said: “Over the last decade there has been a very political battle between the climate sceptics and activist scientists.

“It seems to me that the scientists have lost touch with what they were up to. They saw themselves as in a battle with the sceptics rather than advancing scientific knowledge.”

Professor Mike Hulme, a fellow researcher of Jones at the University of East Anglia and author of Why We Disagree About Climate Change, said: “The attitudes revealed in the emails do not look good. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organisation within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science.”

There could, however, be another reason why the unit rejected requests to see its data.

This weekend it emerged that the unit has thrown away much of the data. Tucked away on its website is this statement: “Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites … We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (ie, quality controlled and homogenised) data.”

If true, it is extraordinary. It means that the data on which a large part of the world’s understanding of climate change is based can never be revisited or checked. Pielke said: “Can this be serious? It is now impossible to create a new temperature index from scratch. [The unit] is basically saying, ‘Trust us’.”

WHERE does this leave the climate debate? While the overwhelming belief of scientists is that the world is getting warmer and that humanity is responsible, sceptical voices are increasing.

Lord Lawson, the Tory former chancellor, announced last week the creation of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think tank, to “bring reason, integrity and balance to a debate that has become seriously unbalanced, irrationally alarmist, and all too often depressingly intolerant”.

Lawson said: “Climate change is not being properly debated because all the political parties are on the same side, and there is an intolerance towards anybody who wants to debate it. It has turned climate change from being a political issue into a secular religion.”

The public are understandably confused. A recent poll showed that 41% accept as scientific fact that global warming is taking place and is largely man-made, while 32% believe the link is unproven and 15% said the world is not warming.

This weekend many of Jones’s colleagues were standing by him. Tim Lenton, professor of earth system science at UEA, said: “We wouldn’t have anything like the understanding of climate change that we do were it not for the work of Phil Jones and his colleagues. They have spent decades putting together the historical temperature record and it is good work.”

The problem is that, after the past week, both sceptics and the public will require even more convincing of that.

Posted in Common Sense

Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’?

tjgavin — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:06:20 +0000

The GW alarmists appear to have unwittingly confirmed our suspicions: their emails to one another demonstrate that they manipulate data and conspire to keep “skeptics” from being heard.

This from the London Telegraph’s James Delingpole:

If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet…

When you read some of those files – including 1079 emails and 72 documents – you realise just why the boffins at Hadley CRU might have preferred to keep them confidential. As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest:

Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.

Here’s a gem of an email about data manipulation:

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.

“Trick?” “Hide?” That’s right. They admit tricking you to hide an apparent temperature decline. Why? Because it doesn’t fit the argument. What temperature decline you might ask? Why the one they have suppressed and the one that the media ignores.

Here’s another email talking about the lack of rising temperatures:

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.

So here are these neutral scientists (Youknow. The one’s that only follow the evidence.) doubting the evidence because it doesn’t fit the argument.

But surly these revered scientists wouldn’t try to hide the facts illegally? Not so fast:

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?

Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.

Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.

We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

But surely these colleagues only disagree on the facts. They’re generally good people and not driven by petty personal gripes? Think again:

One of the alleged emails has a gentle gloat over the death in 2004 of John L Daly (one of the first climate change sceptics, founder of the Still Waiting For Greenhouse site), commenting:

“In an odd way this is cheering news.”

The death of a colleague is “cheering news”? So much for these “worlds leading climate scientists”. I would feel horrible gloating over the death of a competitor. But apparently not these guys.

The nail in the coffin? Here’s hoping so. They’ve tricked us enough.

Link

Posted in Follies

But we were so SURE!

tjgavin — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:45:57 +0000

For ten years there has been no rise in global temperatures despite a rise in greenhouse gases. The press has managed to ignore that fact in its reporting of all of the things GW supposedly causes. Now it seems that Der Spiegel for one is beginning to deal with that inconvenient truth.

Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time-Out
By Gerald Traufetter

Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents…

The planet’s temperature curve rose sharply for almost 30 years, as global temperatures increased by an average of 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.25 degrees Fahrenheit) from the 1970s to the late 1990s. “At present, however, the warming is taking a break,” confirms meteorologist Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in the northern German city of Kiel. Latif, one of Germany’s best-known climatologists, says that the temperature curve has reached a plateau. “There can be no argument about that,” he says. “We have to face that fact.”

“Face that fact”? I’d say it’s about time.

Link

Posted in Common Sense

From the “Global warming causes…” files

tjgavin — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:22:16 +0000

Hard to believe the things this monster can do:

‘Climate change pushes poor women to prostitution, dangerous work’

The effects of climate change have driven women in communities in coastal areas in poor countries like the Philippines into dangerous work, and sometimes even the flesh trade, a United Nations official said.

They keep saying stupid things like this so they must think its working. What do you think? Do you beilieve it?

Link

Posted in Follies

And now for something REALLY funny

tjgavin — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:31:14 +0000

Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara warned on Wednesday the 2016 Olympics could be the last Games, with global warming an immediate threat to mankind.

Oh those silly Japanese…

Link

Posted in Follies

Hyperbole as policy

tjgavin — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 03:17:12 +0000

Can you say “desperate’?

UNITED NATIONS (CNN) — President Obama joined other world leaders Tuesday in calling for immediate and substantive steps to combat climate change, saying failure to act now would bring “irreversible catastrophe.”

As the world gets cooler the rhetoric gets more desperate.

Link

Posted in Common Sense

A Meteorologist’s Skeptical Take on Global Warming

tjgavin — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 18:51:06 +0000

Matt Rogers is a meteorologist for the Washington Post, an unusual place to find a sceptic of “Global Warming”. Yet, nonetheless, there he is giving ten reasons he thinks it’s wise to question the “concensus” on GW.

But first he starts by setting the stage with how difficult the topic is:

…I frequently say that weather forecasting is a humbling endeavor, and I have learned to respect its challenges. From this perspective, you might be able to better understand why I wince when hearing pronouncements such as “the science is settled”, “the debate is over”, or even the “the temperature in the 2050s is projected to be…” I realize that forecasting climate and weather are different, but both involve a large number of moving parts.

With respect for the topic and the state of the science he lists his top ten reasons, David Letterman style, for questioning the orthodox view:

(10) Hurricanes: …Since the 1990s, this activity has been decreasing, which goes against what we were told to expect on a warming planet.

(9) Ice Caps: In 2007, the Northern Hemisphere reached a record low in ice coverage and the Northwest Passage was opened. …What you were not told was that the data that triggered this record is only available back to the late 1970s.

(8) El Niño: …we are now about to complete an entire decade without a strong El Niño event (three occurred in the 1980s-1990s). So the more recent 2007 IPCC report backtracked from Hansen’s prediction, noting that there were too many uncertainties to understand how El Niño will behave with climate change.

(7) Climate Models: To be blunt, the computer models that policy-makers are using to make key decisions failed to collectively inform us of the flat global land-sea temperatures seen in the 2000s…

(6) CO2 (Carbon Dioxide): …Over the summer, CO2 reached almost .04% of our total atmosphere as reported here. Because CO2 is but a sliver of our atmosphere, it is known as a “trace gas.” We all agree that it is increasing, but is there a chance that our estimate of its influence on the Greenhouse Effect is overblown given its small atmospheric ratio?

(5) Global Temperatures: …Three of four major datasets that track global estimates show 1998 as the warmest year on record with temperatures flat or falling since then.

(4) Solar Issue: …The second half of the twentieth century (when we saw lots of warming) was during a major solar maximum period- which is now ending. Total solar irradiance has been steady or sinking similar to our global temperatures over much of this past decade…

(3) But what about…? …”But what about all this crazy weather we’ve been having lately?” …Very few statistics are available that correctly show an increase in these “crazy” events.

(2) Silencing Dissent: …several times during debates individuals have told me I should not question the “settled science” due to the moral imperative of “saving the planet”. As with a religious debate, I’m told that my disagreement means I do not “care enough” and even if correct, I should not question the science. This frightens me.

(1) Pullback: Does climate change hysteria represent another bubble waiting to burst? From the perspective of the alarmism and the saturation of the message, the answer could be yes. I believe that when our science or economic experts tend to be incorrect, it usually involves predictions that have underperformed expectations (Y2K, SARS, oil supply, etc). Can we think of any other expert-given, consensus-based, long-term predictions that have verified correctly? Not one comes to mind.

All are good but I like No. 1 the best. Because that, my friends, describes hubris.

Link

Posted in Common Sense

Kids cause GW (2)

tjgavin — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:39:16 +0000

The attack on kids as culprits in “global warming” goes on.

Contraception is almost five times cheaper as a means of preventing climate change than conventional green technologies, according to research by the London School of Economics.

…The report, Fewer Emitters, Lower Emissions, Less Cost, concludes that family planning should be seen as one of the primary method of emission reduction…

Preventing kids should be the “PRIMARY method of emission reduction”! Not having kids is five times more effective than green technologies!

I thought we needed “cap and trade” to save the planet. What happened to reusable grocery bags? What about hybrid cars and riding your bike to work? Recycling? Is Algore’s carbon offset venture just a feel good scam? It would appear so.

Turns out the only thing we need to do is remove humans, at least in great numbers, from the Earth. Who needed them anyway? (You might want to ask the Europeans what happens to societies with declining populations.)

The Kyoto Protocal called for a 5% reduction in emissions over a five year period. The U.S. Senate unaninously refused to approve it and President Clinton refused to sign it because of it’s severe effect on the U.S. economy. But now we’re being told that that was chicken feed. Now it’s so bad that nearly nothing we can do short of living a caveman-like existence will work:

The research is published on the day that the Government’s climate change advisers, the Climate Change Committee, warned households and industry that a planned 80 percent reduction in emmissions are likely to prove insufficient.

Because the true believers have the ears of our politicians, we can expect them to react to such dire predictions. How long before suggested contraception use becomes mandatory sterilization in pursuit of the gospel of “Climate Change”? Don’t bet that it’s too far off.

If you plan to have children do it now before you’re told you can’t.

Link

Posted in Follies

Don’t you just hope they keep talking?

tjgavin — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:04:09 +0000

Detroit, Mich. – Michigan just experienced its coldest July on record; global temperatures haven’t risen in more than a decade; Great Lakes water levels have resumed their 30-year cyclical rise (contrary to a decade of media scare stories that they were drying up due to global warming), and polls show that climate change doesn’t even make a list of Michigan voters’ top-ten concerns.

Yet in an interview with the Detroit News Monday, Senator Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.) – recently appointed to the Senate Energy Committee – made clear that fighting the climate crisis is her top priority.

“Climate change is very real,” she confessed as she embraced cap and trade’s massive tax increase on Michigan industry – at the same time claiming, against all the evidence, that it would not lead to an increase in manufacturing costs or energy prices. “Global warming creates volatility. I feel it when I’m flying. The storms are more volatile. We are paying the price in more hurricanes and tornadoes.”

And there are sea monsters in Lake Michigan. I can feel them when I’m boating.

Link

Posted in Follies

Kids cause global warming!

tjgavin — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 16:08:26 +0000

Here’s a neat way for the zero population kooks to support their cause. Blame kids for global warming. (Emphasis added)

For people who are looking for ways to reduce their “carbon footprint,” here’s one radical idea that could have a big long-term impact, some scientists say: Have fewer kids.

A study by statisticians at Oregon State University concluded that in the United States, the carbon legacy and greenhouse gas impact of an extra child is almost 20 times more important than some of the other environment-friendly practices people might employ during their entire lives – things like driving a high mileage car, recycling, or using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs.

Those of you planning to have children are just being selfish when it comes to saving the planet. You really should think of the carbon consequences before you reproduce. Do you really need that “extra” child? Don’t forget that the “extra” children you make today could commit the mortal environmental sin of having “extra” children themselves. This time we really do need to “think of the children”.

Reproductive choices haven’t gained as much attention in the consideration of human impact to the Earth, Murtaugh said. When an individual produces a child – and that child potentially produces more descendants in the future – the effect on the environment can be many times the impact produced by a person during their lifetime.

“Many people are unaware of the power of exponential population growth,” Murtaugh said. “Future growth amplifies the consequences of people’s reproductive choices today, the same way that compound interest amplifies a bank balance.”

BTW, I’m not sure what constitues an “extra” child in the United States. I know in China it’s more than one. ( I wonder if we can get carbon credits for every abortion.)

Here’s another concern: my mother had three boys. I guess two of us have to go. If you have siblings you may want to start thinking which of you are “extra”. That could become important down the road.

Not to worry though, they really aren’t suggesting a law or anything like that.

The researchers note that they are not advocating government controls or intervention on population issues, but say they simply want to make people aware of the environmental consequences of their reproductive choices.

Thank goodness! But, you know that will come next. These people really will stop at nothing.

Link

Posted in Follies