Global warming?

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.

A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.

Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.

TheMercenary;505040 wrote:

statistics, lies, and statistics.

smoothmoniker;505716 wrote:

Pretty sure it's not magnetic field that influences the spin of the water, I think it has something to do with the angle off-axis of your location against the equator.

glatt;505773 wrote:

the little nozzle thingies

xoxoxoBruce;506541 wrote:

Yup, a plot to sell air conditioners, when we'll really need these.

glatt;506547 wrote:

Some of those are actually a pretty good idea. I've been known to wear a wool glove on my mouse hand when it's in the low 60s in my house and I'm surfing around. Otherwise, my mouse hand turns ice cold.

xoxoxoBruce;506552 wrote:

That's crazy talk. :eek:

Clodfobble;505693 wrote:

I had a dream last night that the magnetic poles finally reversed (we're way overdue) and all our electronics broke. I have kind of nerdy dreams.

glatt;506540 wrote:

yup. that proves it. it was all a fraud.

HungLikeJesus;506603 wrote:

Oh, I agree with glatt. My hands lose function at that temperature. And my thermostats are set for 56°.

glatt wrote:

Raking leaves in the snow doesn't really work.

dar512 wrote:

People think we're nuts because we keep it at 65°.

Pico and ME;506848 wrote:

They're forcasting a mild winter this year for my neck of the woods.

Pico and ME;506844 wrote:

Ive been keeping ours at 65. There was some grumbling about it at first, but now everyone seems accustomed to it. And the boys still run around in short sleeves and shorts!?! I do push it up to 70 on occasion when I have a lot of work to do around the house...I cant function very well when I'm chilled and doing housework when I'm all layered up is difficult.

xoxoxoBruce;506920 wrote:

What? You drop it to 65 when you're relaxing and up to 70 when you're working/active. Shouldn't that work the other way 'round? :confused:

Scientists: Pace of Climate Change Exceeds Estimates


CHICAGO, Feb. 14 -- The pace of global warming is likely to be much faster than recent predictions, because industrial greenhouse gas emissions have increased more quickly than expected and higher temperatures are triggering self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms in global ecosystems, scientists said Saturday.
"We are basically looking now at a future climate that's beyond anything we've considered seriously in climate model simulations," Christopher Field, founding director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, said at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Former astronaut speaks out on global warming

By Associated Press | Sunday, February 15, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Around the Nation
SANTA FE, N.M. - Former astronaut Harrison Schmitt, who walked on the moon and once served New Mexico in the U.S. Senate, doesn’t believe that humans are causing global warming.

"I don’t think the human effect is significant compared to the natural effect," said Schmitt, who is among 70 skeptics scheduled to speak next month at the International Conference on Climate Change in New York.

Schmitt contends that scientists "are being intimidated" if they disagree with the idea that burning fossil fuels has increased carbon dioxide levels, temperatures and sea levels.

"They’ve seen too many of their colleagues lose grant funding when they haven’t gone along with the so-called political consensus that we’re in a human-caused global warming," Schmitt said.

Dan Williams, publisher with the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, which is hosting the climate change conference, said he invited Schmitt after reading about his resignation from The Planetary Society, a nonprofit dedicated to space exploration.

Schmitt resigned after the group blamed global warming on human activity. In his resignation letter, the 74-year-old geologist argued that the "global warming scare is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making."

Williams said Heartland is skeptical about the crisis that people are proclaiming in global warming.

"Not that the planet hasn’t warmed. We know it has or we’d all still be in the Ice Age," he said. "But it has not reached a crisis proportion and, even among us skeptics, there’s disagreement about how much man has been responsible for that warming."

Schmitt said historical documents indicate average temperatures have risen by 1 degree per century since around 1400 A.D., and the rise in carbon dioxide is because of the temperature rise.

Schmitt also said geological evidence indicates changes in sea level have been going on for thousands of years. He said smaller changes are related to changes in the elevation of land masses — for example, the Great Lakes are rising because the earth’s crust is rebounding from being depressed by glaciers.

Schmitt, who grew up in Silver City and now lives in Albuquerque, has a science degree from the California Institute of Technology. He also studied geology at the University of Oslo in Norway and took a doctorate in geology from Harvard University in 1964.

In 1972, he was one of the last men to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 17 mission.

Schmitt said he’s heartened that the upcoming conference is made up of scientists who haven’t been manipulated by politics.

Of the global warming debate, he said: "It’s one of the few times you’ve seen a sizable portion of scientists who ought to be objective take a political position and it’s coloring their objectivity."

henry quirk;528526 wrote:

http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/38574742.html

WASHINGTON - A new US military report has come under scrutiny for asserting that the scientific data on what is causing global warming is "contradictory" - a position one leading specialist said indicates the government still hasn't fully embraced the urgency of climate change.

The report, titled Joint Operating Environment 2008, states that "the impact of global warming and its potential to cause natural disasters and other harmful phenomena such as rising sea levels has become a prominent - and controversial - national and international concern. Some argue that there will be more and greater storms and natural disasters, others that there will be fewer."
It adds: "In many respects, scientific conclusions about the causes and potential effects of global warming are contradictory."

Sharon Burke, a former Pentagon and State Department official who is now a specialist at the Center for a New American Security, said the report was factually "wrong" and "out of line," saying that there is a wide consensus that human activity, namely the production of greenhouse gases, is responsible for global warming.
Other specialists had similar reactions when they read the report.
"It's very wrong," said Kerry Emanuel, a professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose work was cited in the military report. "The jury is not out" on what is causing global warming, he added. "I don't know where that statement came from, but it's pretty bizarre."

PRINCETON, NJ -- Although a majority of Americans believe the seriousness of global warming is either correctly portrayed in the news or underestimated, a record-high 41% now say it is exaggerated. This represents the highest level of public skepticism about mainstream reporting on global warming seen in more than a decade of Gallup polling on the subject.
Bottom Line

Americans generally believe global warming is real. That sets the U.S. public apart from the global-warming skeptics who assembled this week in New York City to try to debunk the science behind climate change. At the same time, with only 34% of Americans saying they worry "a great deal" about the problem, most Americans do not view the issue in the same dire terms as the many prominent leaders advancing global warming as an issue.

piercehawkeye45;544645 wrote:

These two past cold years could have nothing to do with this, huh?

classicman;544558 wrote:

Increased Number Think Global Warming Is “Exaggerated”

Got that right!

Actually the article is pretty good. Shows some long term info.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The northeastern U.S. coast is likely to see the world's biggest sea level rise from man-made global warming, a new study predicts.

However much the oceans rise by the end of the century, add an extra 8 inches or so for New York, Boston and other spots along the coast from the mid-Atlantic to New England. That's because of predicted changes in ocean currents, according to a study based on computer models published online Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience.

An extra 8 inches — on top of a possible 2 or 3 feet of sea rise globally by 2100 — is a big deal, especially when nor'easters and hurricanes hit, experts said.

"It's not just waterfront homes and wetlands that are at stake here," said Donald Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, who wasn't part of the study. "Those kind of rises in sea level when placed on top of the storm surges we see today, put in jeopardy lots of infrastructure, including the New York subway system."

For years, scientists have talked about rising sea levels due to global warming — both from warm water expanding and the melt of ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica. Predictions for the average worldwide sea rise keep changing along with the rate of ice melt. Recently, more scientists are saying the situation has worsened so that a 3-foot rise in sea level by 2100 is becoming a common theme.

But the oceans won't rise at the same rate everywhere, said study author Jianjun Yin of the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies at Florida State University. It will be "greater and faster" for the Northeast, with Boston one of the worst hit among major cities, he said. So, if it's 3 feet, add another 8 inches for that region.

The explanation involves complicated ocean currents. Computer models forecast that as climate change continues, there will be a slowdown of the great ocean conveyor belt. That system moves heat energy in warm currents from the tropics to the North Atlantic and pushes the cooler, saltier water down, moving it farther south around Africa and into the Pacific. As the conveyor belt slows, so will the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic current. Those two fast-running currents have kept the Northeast's sea level unusually low because of a combination of physics and geography, Yin said.

Slow down the conveyor belt 33 to 43 percent as predicted by computer models, and the Northeast sea level rises faster, Yin said.

So far, the conveyor belt has not yet noticeably slowed.

'Still Sun' baffling astronomers

The Sun is the dimmest it has been for nearly a century.

There are no sunspots, very few solar flares - and our nearest star is the quietest it has been for a very long time.

The observations are baffling astronomers, who are due to study new pictures of the Sun, taken from space, at the UK National Astronomy Meeting.

The Sun normally undergoes an 11-year cycle of activity. At its peak, it has a tumultuous boiling atmosphere that spits out flares and planet-sized chunks of super-hot gas. This is followed by a calmer period.

Last year, it was expected that it would have been hotting up after a quiet spell. But instead it hit a 50-year year low in solar wind pressure, a 55-year low in radio emissions, and a 100-year low in sunspot activity.

According to Prof Louise Hara of University College London, it is unclear why this is happening or when the Sun is likely to become more active again.

"There's no sign of us coming out of it yet," she told BBC News.

"At the moment, there are scientific papers coming out suggesting that we'll be going into a normal period of activity soon.

"Others are suggesting we'll be going into another minimum period - this is a big scientific debate at the moment."

It appears that global warming is a figment of the imagination propagated by a warming
bias in the temperature measurements.

QUOTE: we found that 89 percent of the stations - nearly 9 of every 10 - fail to meet the
National Weather Service's own siting requirements that stations must be 30 meters (about
100 feet) or more away from an artificial heating or radiating/ reflecting heat source.


QUOTE: The conclusion is inescapable: The US temperature record is unreliable.


The errors in the record exceed by a wide margin the purported rise in temperature of 0.7º
C (about 1.2º F) during the twentieth century. Consequently, this record should not be
cited as evidence of any trend in temperature that may have occurred across the US during
the past century.


QUOTE: Since the US record is thought to be "the best in the world," it follows that the
global database is likely similarly compromised and unreliable.


Executive Summary


Global warming is one of the most serious issues of our times. Some experts claim the rise
in temperature during the past century was "unprecedented" and proof that immediate action
to reduce human greenhouse gas emissions must begin.


Other experts say the warming was very modest and the case for action has yet to be made.


The reliability of data used to document temperature trends is of great importance in this
debate. We can't know for sure if global warming is a problem if we can't trust the data.


The official record of temperatures in the continental United States comes from a network
of 1,221 climate-monitoring stations overseen by the National Weather Service, a
department of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).


Until now, no one had ever conducted a comprehensive review of the quality of the
measurement environment of those stations.


During the past few years I recruited a team of more than 650 volunteers to visually
inspect and photographicallydocument more than 860 of these temperature stations.


We were shocked by what we found.

The earth's atmosphere has actually cooled by 0.13° Celsius since 1979 according to highly accurate satellite-based atmospheric temperature measurements. By contrast, computer climate models predicted that the globe should have warmed by an easily detectable 0.4° C over the last fifteen years.

The scientific evidence argues against the existence of a greenhouse crisis, against the notion that realistic policies could achieve any meaningful climatic impact, and against the claim that we must act now if we are to reduce the greenhouse threat.

Current computer climate models are incapable of coupling the oceans and atmosphere; misrepresent the role of sea ice, snow caps, localized storms, and biological systems; and fail to account accurately for the effects of clouds.

Temperature records reveal that predictive models are off by a factor of two when applied retroactively in projecting the change in global temperature for this century.

Accuracy in land-based measurements of global temperatures is frustrated by the dearth of stations, frequent station relocations, and changes in how ocean-going ships make measurements.

Although all of the greenhouse computer models predict that the greatest warming will occur in the Arctic region of the Northern Hemisphere, temperature records indicate that the Arctic has actually cooled by 0.88° C over the past fifty years.

Corrective environmental policies would have a minuscule impact on the climate. According to its own projections, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's own plan would spare the earth only a few hundredths of a degree of warming by middle of the next century.

Dr. John Christy, professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Alabama at Huntsville said: "I remember as a college student at the first Earth Day being told it was a certainty that by the year 2000, the world would be starving and out of energy. Such doomsday prophecies grabbed headlines, but have proven to be completely false." "Similar pronouncements today about catastrophes due to human-induced climate change," he continued, "sound all too familiar and all too exaggerated to me as someone who actually produces and analyzes climate information."

The media, of course, like the exaggerated claims. Most are based on computer models that purport to predict future climates. But computer models are lousy at predicting climate because water vapor and cloud effects cause changes that computers fail to predict. In the mid-1970s, computer models told us we should prepare for global cooling.

Why don't we hear about this part of the global warming argument? "It's the money!" said Dr. Baliunas. "Twenty-five billion dollars in government funding has been spent since 1990 to research global warming. If scientists and researchers were coming out releasing reports that global warming has little to do with man, and most to do with just how the planet works, there wouldn't be as much money to study it."

And even advocates of Kyoto admit that if all the nations signed the Kyoto agreement and obeyed it, global temperatures would still increase. The difference by 2050 would be less than a tenth of a degree. The fuss over Kyoto is absurd. Even if Kyoto would have an impact, do you think all the signers are going to honor what they signed? China is predicted to out-emit us in five to 10 years. India will soon follow.

Eighty percent of the world's energy comes from fossil fuels. Kyoto would decimate just about every Third World country's economy.

study out of NASA which determined that "not all the large changes seen in Arctic climate in recent years are a result of long-term trends associated with global warming."

Goes quite counter to all the recent media reports, as well as assertions by Nobel Laureate Al Gore, that low ice conditions in the Arctic are all the fault of that despicable -- albeit essential to life and naturally occurring! -- gas carbon dioxide.

Of course, it's quite unlikely many climate alarmists will even hear about this study, for today's green media wouldn't want to do anything that destroys their illusion that there's a scientific consensus regarding this matter.

The current scientific community has refuted all the panicked predictions quoted in his article. World weather changes are cyclical and cannot be thwarted by any efforts or sacrifices of man. We are actually entering a cooling cycle.

Only 34% Now Believe Global Warming Caused By Human Activity
We are down to the lunatic fringe. Most normal adults hold the shockingly controversial opinion that Global Warming is caused by normal planetary temperature cycles.
Just one-out-of-three voters (34%) now believe global warming is caused by human activity, the lowest finding yet in Rasmussen Reports national surveying. However, a plurality (48%) of the Political Class believes humans are to blame.

Forty-eight percent (48%) of all likely voters attribute climate change to long-term planetary trends, while seven percent (7%) blame some other reason. Eleven percent (11%) aren’t sure.
These numbers reflect a reversal from a year ago when 47% blamed human activity while 34% said long-term planetary trends.

That is a shift of a whopping 14% in one year.

Over the past several years, it appeared that our society was doomed to succumb to what Weather Channel founder John Coleman has described as "the greatest scam in history": anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming (AGW). For two decades there has been an incessant drumbeat of propaganda attributing every weather-related event to an increase in carbon dioxide caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

Satellite data from NASA shows no increase in average global temperature since 1998, a year when El Niño caused a worldwide spike having nothing to do with carbon dioxide. Alarmists contend this is just a pause in a continuous rise in temperatures and that it will begin to increase again. Ironically that is the same argument that the warming skeptics have been using for years. There was warming for the first 40 years of the 20th century — until the very time CO2 began to climb significantly — and then came cooling, which sparked concerns in the '70s about a looming Ice Age. Then rising temperatures resumed until 1998 and now we're back on a cooling trend. This fits well with a general planetary warm up, but is in conflict with climate forcing by CO2 that calls for a continuous upward temperature movement.


This was evidenced by a 2007 Oxford-style debate in New York sponsored by National Public Radio, a more difficult venue being hard to imagine for warming skeptics, or "deniers" as they were popularly referred to. The issue under debate was "Global Warming Is Not a Crisis." Prior to the debate about 30 percent of the audience agreed with the motion, and 57 percent were against, with 13 percent undecided. After the debate 46 percent agreed, while 42 percent were opposed with 12 percent apparently still unsure, a swing of 19 percent of those with an opinion toward the climate-realist position.

sugarpop;559566 wrote:

There is no way you will convince me that the earth has actually cooled. There is too much evidence to the contrary.

we are supposed to be concerned over was less than 1°C for the entire 20th century, meaning minor errors in measurements can contribute significantly to an apparent warming trend.
With 650 volunteers, more than 860 of the National Weather Service's 1,221 climate-monitoring stations were inspected and photographically documented. Of these, 89 percent did not meet the Weather Service's own requirements of being 30 meters away from artificial heating or reflecting sources such as pavements or building.

sugarpop;559582 wrote:

you can't convince me

classicman;559592 wrote:

Whew - you just bounce around like a ball don't you?

classicman;559364 wrote:

Not fully? Thats an understatement. I don know that we have really even scratched the surface (pun intended).

Well put Bullitt.

New analysis has indicated that contrary to the belief that there is large-scale melting of ice over most of Antarctica, ice is actually
expanding in a large portion of the continent.

Antarctica has 90 per cent of the Earth's ice and 80 per cent of its fresh water. Extensive melting of Antarctic ice sheets would be required to raise sea levels substantially, and ice is melting in parts of west Antarctica.

The destabilization of the Wilkins ice shelf generated international headlines this month.

However, according to a report in the Australian, the picture is very different in east Antarctica, which includes the territory claimed by Australia.

East Antarctica is four times the size of west Antarctica and parts of it are cooling. The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research report noted that the South Pole had shown "significant cooling in recent decades".

According to Australian Antarctic Division glaciology program head Ian Allison, sea ice losses in west Antarctica over the past 30 years had been more than offset by increases in the Ross Sea region, just one sector of east Antarctica.

"Sea ice conditions have remained stable in Antarctica generally," Dr Allison said.

The melting of sea ice - fast ice and pack ice - does not cause sea levels to rise because the ice is in the water.

Sea levels may rise with losses from freshwater ice sheets on the polar caps.

In Antarctica, these losses are in the form of icebergs calved from ice shelves formed by glacial movements on the mainland.

Dr Allison said there was not any evidence of significant change in the mass of ice shelves in east Antarctica nor any indication that its ice cap was melting.

"The only significant calvings in Antarctica have been in the west," he said.

Ice core drilling in the fast ice off Australia's Davis Station in East Antarctica by the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-Operative Research Centre shows that last year, the ice had a maximum thickness of 1.89m, its densest in 10 years.

The average thickness of the ice at Davis since the 1950s is 1.67m.

A paper to be published soon by the British Antarctic Survey in the journal Geophysical Research Letters is expected to confirm that over the past 30 years, the area of sea ice around the continent has expanded.

sugarpop;559607 wrote:

My mind is made up because of the evidence. There are mountains of it, and scientists have been collecting it for decades.

sugarpop;559609 wrote:

Why? Because I brought up the health aspect of the issue? I always do that ...

sugarpop;559609 wrote:

Frankly I prefer the term "climate change," because that is something people can relate to. You can't deny the climate is changing.

classicman;559636 wrote:

There are as many mountains of data the say the opposite and more scientists than ever are changing their minds and altering their opinions.
Decades don't mean shit. ( see posts of BAD DATA) Three or four decades ago it was global COOLING that was the issue and some scientists were predicting another ice age by 2050.

Seems as though it happens when your arguments are refuted with facts that don't support your opinions. just sayin.

The alarmists prefer it too, its a nice broad term that allows for a lot of wiggle room.

Aliantha;559648 wrote:

Maybe a little, maybe a lot. According to further information not contained in that report, part of the reason for the wind changes in antarctica are due to the hole in the ozone layer over Australia. If we believe that man caused the hole, then we have to agree that mankind has a hand in this issue.

eta: personally I think the hole in the ozone layer was caused by women in the 80's using too much hairspray for their big hairdo's.

sugarpop;559818 wrote:

I posted an article in response to the claim that global warming isn't real.

Washington, DC -- UK's Lord Christopher Monckton, a former science advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, claimed House Democrats have refused to allow him to appear alongside former Vice President Al Gore at a high profile global warming hearing on Friday April 24, 2009 at 10am in Washington. Monckton told Climate Depot that the Democrats rescinded his scheduled joint appearance at the House Energy and Commerce hearing on Friday. Monckton said he was informed that he would not be allowed to testify alongside Gore when his plane landed from England Thursday afternoon.

“The House Democrats don't want Gore humiliated, so they slammed the door of the Capitol in my face,” Monckton told Climate Depot in an exclusive interview. “They are cowards.”

Update: More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims

Outpouring of Skeptical Scientists Continues as 59 Scientists Added to Senate Report

‘The *science has, quite simply, gone awry’

Washington, DC: Fifty-nine additional scientists from around the world have been added to the U.S. Senate Minority Report of dissenting scientists, pushing the total to over 700 skeptical international scientists – a dramatic increase from the original 650 scientists featured in the initial December 11, 2008 release. The 59 additional scientists added to the 255-page Senate Minority report since the initial release 13 ½ weeks ago represents an average of over four skeptical scientists a week. This updated report – which includes yet another former UN IPCC scientist – represents an additional 300 (and growing) scientists and climate researchers since the initial report’s release in December 2007.

The over 700 dissenting scientists are now more than 13 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media-hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers. The 59 additional scientists hail from all over the world, including Japan, Italy, UK, Czech Republic, Canada, Netherlands, the U.S. and many are affiliated with prestigious institutions including, NASA, U.S. Navy, U.S. Defense Department, Energy Department, U.S. Air Force, the Philosophical Society of Washington (the oldest scientific society in Washington), Princeton University, Tulane University, American University, Oregon State University, U.S. Naval Academy and EPA.

The explosion of skeptical scientific voices is accelerating unabated in 2009. A March 14, 2009 article in the Australian revealed that Japanese scientists are now at the forefront of rejecting man-made climate fears prompted by the UN IPCC.

Prominent Japanese Geologist Dr. Shigenori Maruyama, a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences who has authored more than 125 scientific publications, said in March 2009 that “there was widespread skepticism among his colleagues about the IPCC's fourth and latest assessment report that most of the observed global temperature increase since the mid-20th century ‘is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” Maruyama noted that when this question was raised at a Japan Geoscience Union symposium last year, ‘the result showed 90 per cent of the participants do not believe the IPCC report.” [Also See: The prestigious International Geological Congress, dubbed the geologists' equivalent of the Olympic Games, was held in Norway in August 2008 and prominently featured the voices of scientists skeptical of man-made global warming fears. [ See: Skeptical scientists overwhelm conference: '2/3 of presenters and question-askers were hostile to, even dismissive of, the UN IPCC' & see full reports here & here –More analyses of recent developments see report’s introduction here. ]

“I do not find the supposed scientific consensus among my colleagues,” noted Earth Scientist Dr. Javier Cuadros on March 3, 2009. Cuadros, of the UK Natural History Museum, specializes in Clay Mineralogy and has published more than 30 scientific papers.

Award-Winning Princeton University Physicist Dr. Robert H. Austin, who has published 170 scientific papers and was elected a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, lamented the current fears over global warming.

“Unfortunately, Climate Science has become Political Science…It is tragic that some perhaps well-meaning but politically motivated scientists who should know better have whipped up a global frenzy about a phenomena which is statistically questionable at best,” Austin told the minority staff on the Environment and Public Works Committee on March 2, 2009.

Excerpt: Morano couldn’t help laughing at Romm’s unrelentingly silly exaggerations. Indeed, after coming out hurling pejoratives and 41 words of utter nonsense early in the opening round, you’d expect Romm to drop the hyperbole and smug manner and put up his intellectual dukes once Morano began scoring point after rational point. But while Marc calmly cited contrarian scientists and the perils of fraudulently inspired policy, Joe continued to make extraordinary claims, including that wind power produces more new jobs than coal mining, as though oblivious that they fuel 2 versus 50 percent of America’s energy, respectively. And so it went -- virtually every cogent point made by Morano was met not with reasoned retort but rather polemical blather and name calling. And from Dr. Joseph J. Romm -- one the alarmists’ most revered minds. Watching them squabble, it’s impossible to ignore just how many times Romm put his hysterical size 10 in his mouth as Morano calmly cleaned his clock. But let’s give the guy kudos for showing up – for that alone distinguishes him as unique to his breed. […] Perhaps he actually meant that one-third of dry land will be reduced to desert by 2100. Of course, that would still be horrible news because ……. Wait a minute, according to the US Geological Survey, approximately one-third of the Earth's land surface already is desert. So Romm is either predicting no change whatsoever or a complete Terradeformation in a time-span even Star-Trek engineers would be proud of. Unless, of course, he hasn’t given it much thought at all but hopes the media and most citizens will continue to ignore what truth hides beneath the shocking imagery.

sugarpop;559892 wrote:

I don't think climate change is all due to "evil mankind" classic, but I DO think we play a pretty big part in what is going on.

xoxoxoBruce;560444 wrote:

Destructive?

Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate
For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming. ...

But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.

“The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied,” the experts wrote in an internal report compiled for the coalition in 1995.

Throughout the 1990s, when the coalition conducted a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign challenging the merits of an international agreement, policy makers and pundits were fiercely debating whether humans could dangerously warm the planet. Today, with general agreement on the basics of warming, the debate has largely moved on to the question of how extensively to respond to rising temperatures.

“They didn’t have to win the argument to succeed,” Mr. Monbiot said, “only to cause as much confusion as possible.”

tw;560452 wrote:

I'm only an asshat But politics is more important than reality. Any good extremist, like me, knows that lying is acceptable. If being an asshat is being honest (a threat to wacko extremists, like me, who routinely lie) then thank you classic. To keep people ignorant, wackos like me hype confusion,
To promote my political agenda for the destruction of mankind. And still I would instead believe Wingnut News.

The latest findings, from a study of Antarctica by the British Antarctic Survey and Nasa, reveal that pollution is saving the planet from global warming. Wal, who'd ha' thunk it? Unfortunately, interfering environmentalist busybodies, by banning CFCs and other pollutants, are hastening the advance of global warming. Eventually the hole in the ozone layer will close and the Antarctic will heat up. Simultaneously, according to a study in Nature, the atmosphere will clear, reducing plants' capacity to absorb carbon dioxide. This would appear to be what is vulgarly known as an own goal.

Without any supporting evidence, Walsh pronounces the "scientific case is clear" and then proceeds to a conclusion. What is the "scientific case" Walsh believes is "clear"? Does Walsh realize there are more than 31,000 US scientists (over 9,000 with PhD's), including preeminent physicists and atmospheric scientists, who, based on their scientific expertise in disciplines related to climate and climate change science strongly disagree with climate alarmists' claims upon which the EPA relies?

there are more than 31,000 US scientists (over 9,000 with PhD's), including preeminent physicists and atmospheric scientists, who, based on their scientific expertise in disciplines related to climate and climate change science strongly disagree with climate alarmists' claims upon which the EPA relies?

Redux;560486 wrote:

Damn...this crazy ass myth is still circulating?

xoxoxoBruce;560556 wrote:

Tsk tsk, you've got to get over thinking everyone else is evil.

Redux;560613 wrote:

Hmmmmm....I wonder if PhD in cellar science is acceptable......hell, why not? They dont ask for any documentation of one's credentials.

"Ian Plimer's stated view of climate science is that a vast number of extremely well respected scientists and a whole range of specialist disciplines have fallen prey to delusional self interest and become nothing more than unthinking ideologues," he says.

"Plausible to conspiracy theorists, perhaps, but hardly a sane world view – and insulting to all those genuinely committed to real science."

An overwhelming majority of the world's climate scientists are convinced the planet is now warming as a result of human activity, mainly the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and gas.

Most of these scientists are concerned with recent changes to the Earth's atmosphere and how the planet can be expected to respond to rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases such as methane.

Professor Plimer believes the IPCC has neglected historical evidence of past climate changes, which are recorded in the rocks.

"When we look at the history of climate changes, not one has been driven by carbon dioxide," he says.

"Climate always changes, as do sea levels, as does life (on Earth) and we are living in times that are not extraordinary. The only way you can have the view that humans change climate is if you ignore history."

“Start with science,” Plimer says. “Ignore faith. Science is evidence, not belief.” And then he starts with his history of the planet, beginning at the beginning and ending far into the future.

“The world’s climate has always changed and always will,” he says. “The speed and amount of modern climate change is neither unprecedented nor dangerous. The temperature range observed in the 20th century is in the range of normal variability.”

This sounds heretical. Don’t the world’s eminent scientists agree that humans are burning fossil fuels at an unprecedented rate, that this combustion is releasing carbon dioxide at a similarly unprecedented rate, and that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas? Won’t human-made global warming cause wild and unpredictable weather, melt polar icecaps and fry polar bears? Aren’t Pacific Islanders going to be flooded out of house and home? Won’t there be malarial mosquitoes up and down the high latitudes? Aren’t we doomed?

Plimer weaves the Mercedes through the traffic on the way to his next appointment. “Methane is the most potent greenhouse gas,” he says before answering. “The effect of driving a diesel car 10,000 kilometres is equivalent to the amount of methane a cow produces in a day.”

Professor Plimer challenges concepts as fundamental as carbon dioxide causing climate change, saying they are overly simplistic.

IAN PLIMER: Especially as the carbon dioxide content now is at the lowest point it's been since the beginning of time. The planet really has a very low carbon dioxide content.

And the only logical conclusion you can make is that carbon dioxide has nothing to do with climate change; it will follow climate change, especially a warming, but it does not drive it.

NANCE HAXTON: Well, you're certainly standing up in the face of what seems like a mountain of scientific evidence. How do you contradict that?

IAN PLIMER: What's the evidence? There is a hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide create global warming.

And I've tested that hypothesis about 80 times. It is wrong. And every time you test it is wrong.

What I have done is to try to open people's minds in this book by looking at how the earth works, how the ice sheets work, how the oceans work, how the atmosphere works, how the solar system works, how the sun works.

Plimer does not dispute the dramatic flux of climate change but he fundamentally disputes most of the assumptions and projections being made about the current causes, mostly led by atmospheric scientists.

"To reduce modern climate change to one variable, CO2, or a small proportion of one variable - human-induced CO2 - is not science. To try to predict the future based on just one variable (CO2) in extraordinarily complex natural systems is folly. Yet when astronomers have the temerity to show that climate is driven by solar activities rather than CO2 emissions, they are dismissed as dinosaurs undertaking the methods of old-fashioned science."

(He argues that) the hypothesis that human activity can create global warming is extraordinary because it is contrary to validated knowledge from solar physics, astronomy, history, archeology and geology.

"But evidence no longer matters. And any contrary work published in peer-reviewed journals is just ignored. We are told that the science on human-induced global warming is settled. Yet the claim by some scientists that the threat of human-induced global warming is 90 per cent certain (or even 99 per cent) is a figure of speech. It has no mathematical or evidential basis."

Heaven and Earth is an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence.

Over climate change, citizens face an apparently acute dilemma. The question of the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on the Earth's future is by far the most important issue our generation faces. Yet those of us who are not trained scientists are in no position to make independent judgments on the fundamental scientific issues for ourselves.

This dilemma is relatively easy to resolve. In regard to the science of climate change, as Clive Hamilton has put it, the only decision citizens have to make is not what to believe but who. We can place our trust either in the tens of thousands of climate scientists whose work has been published in the relevant scientific journals and summarised by the IPCC, or in the few dozen pseudo-sceptics who dismiss mainstream climate science as a politically correct, rent-seeking hoax.

TheMercenary;560614 wrote:

You're right about that, hell they let you in here. Any simpleton should be awarded entry.

classicman;560616 wrote:

Here ya go Redux. I'm sorry if one of my previous links was "out of date."
..

classicman;560616 wrote:

Here ya go Redux.

“The speed and amount of modern climate change is neither unprecedented nor dangerous. The temperature range observed in the 20th century is in the range of normal variability.”

tw;560629 wrote:

Which should we believe? A source cited by my extremist poltical agenda?

Lying is my nature. Lying about the speed and amount of climate change comes from outright, intentional, and blatant lying. Extremism. Lying. Is there a connection?

Maybe torture also was not promoted by the same extremists? Maybe Saddam did conspire with bin Laden & I? My extremism and intentional lying are still alive and well.

This is not about global warming. This is about what my extremist poltical agenda - lie. Eliminate those lies and nobody disputes the problem called global warming.

tw;560629 wrote:

Meanwhile classicman has dug long and deep to find someone who will deny what reams of data show.

xoxoxoBruce;560930 wrote:

How anyone can think we are totally responsible is beyond me.

classicman;560635 wrote:

Didn't have to dig at all -
First hits on a google search. ""Global warming" hoax. Try it yourself

But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.

“The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied,” the experts wrote in an internal report compiled for the coalition in 1995.

Today, with general agreement on the basics of warming, the debate has largely moved on to the question of how extensively to respond to rising temperatures. ...
“They didn’t have to win the argument to succeed,” Mr. Monbiot said, “only to cause as much confusion as possible.”

Lying is my nature. Lying about the speed and amount of climate change comes from outright, intentional, and blatant lying. Extremism. Lying. Is there a connection?

tw;561101 wrote:

Meanwhile the consenus is almost unanamous. Global warning is created by man.

Aliantha;561156 wrote:

BULLSHIT! Where in the world can you find any data suggesting that scientists are in any way unanimous about if and how much human habitation has contributed to global warming?

Are you stupid that you'd post such a thing and expect to be taken seriously? Come ON tw! Get real!!!

There is no concensus. That's why the issue is so contentious.

Aliantha;561156 wrote:

BULLSHIT! Where in the world can you find any data suggesting that scientists are in any way unanimous about if and how much human habitation has contributed to global warming?

The latest findings, from a study of Antarctica by the British Antarctic Survey and Nasa, reveal that pollution is saving the planet from global warming.

Aliantha;561156 wrote:

BULLSHIT! Where in the world can you find any data suggesting that scientists are in any way unanimous about if and how much human habitation has contributed to global warming?

Are you stupid...

classicman;561239 wrote:

There is much dissent in the community and more scientists are leaning away from the "Its all mans fault" theories.

tw;561101 wrote:

Meanwhile the consenus is almost unanamous. Global warning is created by man.

Aliantha;561156 wrote:

BULLSHIT! Where in the world can you find any data suggesting that scientists are in any way unanimous about if and how much human habitation has contributed to global warming?

Are you stupid that you'd post such a thing and expect to be taken seriously? Come ON tw! Get real!!!

There is no concensus. That's why the issue is so contentious.

Redux;561176 wrote:

Consensus doesnt mean unanimous......it means a majority opinion.

There is consensus among the thousands of scientists who contributed to the IPCC.

There is consensus among the member scientists of 30+ National Academies of Sciences around the world that have taken a position on global warming.

There is consensus among the member scientists of numerous scientific bodies like the World Meteorological Association , the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics and dozens of other international and/or national scientific bodies.

That is not to say that in all of those instances that there are not minority opinions within those associations or scientific bodies

In terms of official positions of such national and international scientific associations, bodies and organizations....where they have taken a formal position, it is near unanimous in support of the finding that anthropogenic GHG emissions contribute to climate change or global warming.

With the release of the revised statement by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in 2007, no remaining scientific body of national or international standing is known to reject the basic findings of human influence on recent climate change.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change

Redux;561176 wrote:

With the release of the revised statement by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in 2007, no remaining scientific body of national or international standing is known to reject the basic findings of human influence on recent climate change.

Redux;561326 wrote:

Does anyone really believe, or is there any hard science, that spewing millions of metric tons of GHG from fossil fuels (primarily automobiles and power plants) into the atmosphere every year is healthy for the environment...or even neutral in its impact?

TheMercenary;561338 wrote:

Get China and India on board then give us a call.

Redux;561343 wrote:

I am of the opinion that the US should demonstrate that it is a world leader in much the same manner as it did with the environmental movement of the 1970s.

Or we can be petulant and cast blame and point fingers with a "you first" attitude and pretend our hands are clean despite the fact that we are responsible for more than 20% of worldwide GHG emissions.

The pollution leader was China, followed by the United States, which past data show is the leader in emissions per person in carbon dioxide output. And although several developed countries slightly reduced output in 2007, the U.S. churned out more.

China’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Highlight The Need for New Technologies And An International Commitment to Reduce Emissions
China is building new coal-based electric generation at an astounding pace. The rapid growth in the use of coal in that country highlights the importance of developing and deploying “climate-friendly” technologies, including advanced coal technologies, which can be exported to developing countries. In addition, China’s aggressive use of coal demonstrates why it is so critical that all major emitters of greenhouse gases (GHGs) commit to reducing emissions in order to reduce overall global GHG emissions.
•
In 2007, China built one new coal-based electric generating unit about every two and half days on average, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
•
In 2007, China built just over 100 gigawatts (GW) of new power generating capacity. While it took 110 years (from 1882-1993) for the total power generating capacity in the United States to reach a little over 800 GW, China will have reached the same number in 7 to 8 years, if the country’s current growth pace continues.
•
The current demand for coal in China exceeds 2 billion tons per year, which is twice the current demand for coal in the United States.
•
IEA predicts that global energy-related CO2 emissions will increase 57 percent between 2005 and 2030, with developing countries accounting for more than 75 percent of this projected increase.
•
Between 2005 and 2030, China and India alone are expected to account for 56 percent of the worldwide increase in CO2 emissions.
•
China’s GHG emissions have risen 80 percent since 1990, and emissions are projected to rise another 65 percent by 2020.

TheMercenary;561347 wrote:

In which case we would play right into the hands of those who wish us to spend billions of our GDP while they do nothing.

TheMercenary;561353 wrote:

Hardly alarmist at all. Basic economics 101. People like you stick your head in the sand anytime someone points out the contributions of China and India to the global warming problems and their lack of restrictions combined with unregulated growth.

Redux;561354 wrote:

The same alarmist "basic economics 101" argument that was utterly and completely baseless in the 70s?

And, if you want to make it personal, "people like you" have no concept of the meaning of leadership by example. You are much better and it is much easier to just point fingers.

Redux;561354 wrote:

The same alarmist "basic economics 101" argument that was utterly and completely baseless in the 70s?

classicman;561367 wrote:

Kinda like the global cooling that "all the scientists" told us about back then.

The supposed "global cooling" consensus among scientists in the 1970s — frequently offered by global-warming skeptics as proof that climatologists can't make up their minds — is a myth, according to a survey of the scientific literature of the era.
...

But Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center surveyed dozens of peer-reviewed scientific articles from 1965 to 1979 and found that only seven supported global cooling, while 44 predicted warming. Peterson says 20 others were neutral in their assessments of climate trends.

The study reports, "There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age.

"A review of the literature suggests that, to the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists' thinking about the most important forces shaping Earth's climate on human time scales."

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2008-02-20-global-cooling_N.htm

The study reports, "There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age.

xoxoxoBruce;560930 wrote:

How anyone can think we are totally responsible is beyond me.:rolleyes:

tw;561101 wrote:

Even their own scientists said the facts are irrefutible. And they still challenged gobal warming by only trying to confuse the issue. Confused issues work especially well on those who know only because they are told how to think. Meanwhile the consenus is almost unanamous. Global warning is created by man. Only question left is how much and how destructive. Extremists fear such questions. It threatens a political agenda which include doing anything necessary (even torture) to protect *OUR* oil.

Redux;561326 wrote:

Ali and Bruce....I agree that there is no consensus that human activity is the sole or primary cause of global warming.

xoxoxoBruce;561390 wrote:

Which was my point, but tw has been telling us it's all our fault... doing the wacko extremist Chicken Little thing... complete bullshit, or should I say chickenshit.

Aliantha;561473 wrote:

I think plenty of people are working on changing our habits at a personal level, which will only have the effect of forcing corporate responsibility sooner or later.

In the grand scheme of things, we're making changes at a remarkable rate. Possibly too slowly for some peoples liking, but change in any case. There is a limit to what people can be expected to be responsible for because ultimately, most people owe their loyalty to their family and will do what's best for them. Most people can't afford the green technologies out there, nor can most companies at the moment, but as more people come on board, these things will become more affordable for average people. It's always been the same formula.

New technology = expensive. Not affordable or cost effective
developing technology = less expensive. Affordable only to the wealthy.
developed technology = affordable
old technology = cheap

The issue we're facing now is the the old technology being fossil fuel as an energy source is about to become more expensive therefor forcing us to look to new technology which in turn will bring the price down.

It's just going to take time, and yodelling about it constantly isn't going to make it happen any faster.

Just like climate change, it's a natural progression. Regardless of what anyone believes now, we will be powering up with alternative energy sources before most of us kick the bucket. Well before I should expect.

Aliantha;561529 wrote:

Well, with any luck and a bit of hard work, that regression will be repaired. I personally believe it's happening as we speak anyway; in small ways by individuals who realize that the buck stops with them.

TheMercenary;561338 wrote:

Get China and India on board then give us a call.

Redux;561459 wrote:

There have been extremist posts on both sides here.

Which, IMO, still begs the question:
[INDENT]Does anyone really believe, or is there any hard science to suggest, that spewing millions of metric tons of GHG from fossil fuels (primarily automobiles and power plants) into the atmosphere every year is healthy for the environment...or even neutral in its impact?[/INDENT]
So what should we do about it? Nothing....just wait until the science is 100% irrefutable?

We certainly can start with a more honest discussion at every level.

TheMercenary;561338 wrote:

Get China and India on board then give us a call.

TheMercenary;561347 wrote:

In which case we would play right into the hands of those who wish us to spend billions of our GDP while they do nothing. China is second only to the US and will surpass it in the next few years. They emit 16% of GHG. They would love nothing more than to have us spend ourselves into the third world while they have no such restrictions. Add India to the mix and the two of them emit more than the US. They are among the most rapidly growing economies in the world.

http://www.unep.org/cpi/briefs/2008March14.doc#ReutersFactBOXWhy



http://articles.latimes.com/2008/sep/26/nation/na-warming26



http://www.eei.org/ourissues/TheEnvironment/Climate/Documents/InternationalTechPieceGlobalClimateChange.pdf

sugarpop;561814 wrote:

Great. Let's go ahead and destroy ourselves because someone else doesn't care? That is just stupid. That's like saying, you'll quit smoking when everyone else quits, even though you know it might kill you or make your life miserable in some other way.

Redux;561527 wrote:

Ali.....From your examples, the natural progression towards energy conservation and alternative energy sources has been encouraged and supported with government policies and actions for which Australia should be applauded.

And as I noted, in the US, the policies and actions of the last eight years resulted in more of a regression.....eight wasted years, IMO.

sugarpop;561816 wrote:

If we invent/build the technology to help curb the effects, then we can sell it to the rest of the world.

sugarpop;561816 wrote:

That's ridiculous. If we invent/build the technology to help curb the effects, then we can sell it to the rest of the world. I don't care what you may think, I KNOW we can get ourselves off of damaging technology like coal and oil and move to completely clean and green technology to generate all the power we need, both for cars and for buildings.

sugarpop;561816 wrote:

That's ridiculous. If we invent/build the technology to help curb the effects, then we can sell it to the rest of the world. I don't care what you may think, I KNOW we can get ourselves off of damaging technology like coal and oil and move to completely clean and green technology to generate all the power we need, both for cars and for buildings.

TheMercenary;561990 wrote:

Pure fantasy. The powerful lobbyist of this country and group we have in Congress have ruined the political process. Nothing like that will ever happen in your lifetime.

Now, the lobbyist have ruined the political process, somehow preventing any action on GHG emissions - you forget that friends of big oil are no longer in the WH or the majority of Congress...

Redux;562096 wrote:

First, its the US shouldnt act on GHG emissions until China does first....strike one.

Then, your econ 101 theory-the resulting innovation would be an economic deterrent.....strike two

Now, the lobbyist have ruined the political process, somehow preventing any action on GHG emissions - you forget that friends of big oil are no longer in the WH or the majority of Congress.....STRIKE THREE!!!!!

Undertoad;562097 wrote:

BALL ONE

and proof the batter shouldn't be the one calling balls and strikes

TheMercenary;562106 wrote:

Yet you choose to ignore the facts I posted about the contributions of China and India to the worlds problems. You are among those partisans that would love to see us spend ourselves into the third world cleaning up our emissions while these "emerging countries" have to do absolutely nothing. You fail. Again.

Redux;562109 wrote:

Right...my goal is to make the US a third world country rather than demonstrate leadership.

Undertoad;562107 wrote:

I think next we will see how the numbers change once power changes.

ETA: donations to Ds up more than 100% from 2006 to 2008. Q.E.D.

This paper assesses the prospects for implementing greenhouse gas controls in the United States. One basic fact frames the analysis. Namely, controls stringent enough to actually stop global climate change would as yet still cost more than the damage expected from climate change. Although a modest level of emission control could yield more benefits than costs, even modest controls face formidable political challenges. The opponents of emission controls hold great organizational advantages over the proponents. To be sure, a strong surge of public sentiment might politically overwhelm all these objections and barriers. But public support for emission controls is too tepid for that to be likely any time soon. Moreover, overcoming these domestic problems, could it be done, would be only the first step toward a viable international control regime, without which national controls would be futile. And the anarchic nature of the international system makes global environmental agreements notoriously difficult to reach, to sustain, and to enforce.

Forces operating beyond the narrow arena of national and international environmental policy will also heavily influence the prospects for emission controls. Several likely trends suggest that these prospects are ebbing rather than rising. Predictable national security and fiscal policy challenges may well out-compete the climate issue for both public attention and economic resources. At the same time, the emerging globalization of the natural gas market will spark new conflicts between the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and that of decreasing America's dependence on foreign energy.

Other factors, though, have been cited as reasons for hoping that this unfavorable tide could be stemmed and even reversed. One of these, a possible disruption of Persian Gulf energy supplies would—on closer investigation—have quite unfavorable implications for the prospects of U.S. emission controls. Other factors could indeed enhance the prospects for emission controls, e.g., a large, favorable partisan shift, important scientific breakthroughs, or diplomatic pressure from Europe. Although these possibilities cannot be ruled out, they are too speculative to form the basis for an adequate strategy for managing climate policy. The realistic political response is simply to admit that the current and likely future political constellation of forces is unfavorable to the implementation of all but modest emission controls and to adjust the goals of climate policy to match the political realities. An explicitly Fabian strategy would eliminate the benefit-cost problem because gradually slowing the growth of emissions would cost far less than Kyoto-like rapid emission reductions. And such a policy could also be shaped to achieve non-climate benefits. Concretely, linking mandatory emission controls to a plan for "tax shift" promises political and economic advantages. And emission controls may actually confer useful diplomatic benefits on the United States.

Research and insights taken from the field of political economy suggest that institutions limit the extent to which efficient policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are likely to be adopted. High transaction costs among nations, as well as domestic constraints like voter xenophobia and distrust of markets in the United States and ineffective legal and economic institutions in China, discourage international agreement. The United States must focus on limiting economic harm from adopting poorly designed policies and developing strategies for adaptation or technology-driven geoengineering. Most importantly, the lessons of political economy must become central to the study of climate policy, including a healthy exchange of views between political economists and climate modelers.

Resident Fellow
Lee Lane
Ideas drawn from the works of Douglass North and those of other political economists suggest that institutions limit the extent to which efficient policies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are likely to be adopted. Most analyses of the costs of making steep GHG emission cuts conflict with these realities. Problems arise at both the international level and within nations.

Internationally, no third party institutions exist to enforce agreements, and nations differ widely in their interest in restricting GHG emissions. Therefore, high transaction costs will attend efforts to reach and maintain broad GHG controls. So far, those transaction costs have blocked agreement, and there seems little reason to expect that these constraints will soon vanish.

Institutional constraints also exist within key nations. In the United States, widespread voter xenophobia and distrust of markets contribute to adoption of cost-ineffective policy tools, and legislators' incentives to serve constituency interests further supports adoption of regulatory and subsidy programs that greatly increase costs of mitigation. China's legal and economic institutions could not currently apply an effective GHG cap-and-trade or carbon tax. These kinds of GHG controls require the full rule of law, market prices for energy, and market discipline for major industries. In China, the prospects for such a transformation remain highly uncertain.

The most likely course for future climate policy is drift and fragmentation. Some countries, including the US, may adopt GHG limits. One key question is whether this country will be able to make policy changes to limit the economic harm from adopting poorly designed policies. A second is whether it will be able to develop options for adapting to climate change or finding means that prevent warming despite continuing GHG emissions.

Exploring these options will require a new, broader focus for climate policy analysis. To achieve this wider view, the lessons of political economy must become central to the study of climate policy. An initial step toward this goal would be to encourage a systematic exchange of views between the climate modeling community and leading scholars in the traditions of political economy and institutional economics. . . .

TheMercenary;562115 wrote:

A more realistic assessment.


http://www.earthscape.org/pmain/sites/cpc.html

Redux;562118 wrote:

We've been down this road before and I agree that there is not unanimity among the scientific community.

Because you find one assessment you like, doesnt change the consensus....and you still cannot identify one credible national/international scientific body that would support your position.

But the problem here is the instantaneous cost that firms have to shell out in order to continue doing business in the year after the cap is established. Estimated costs for U.S. utilities alone—not counting greenhouse gas emitters in manufacturing or other sectors—are in the range of $40 billion per year using current permit prices as they are being traded in the European market. Not only will businesses scream bloody murder, the public will also, since most of that cost will immediately hit consumers’ wallets as the prices of energy, goods, and services rise and keep rising every year as the cap tightens. Not only will costs of everything increase, but the impact will be highly regressive, landing harder on the poorest of the population, who spend a greater percentage of their household income on energy than do the wealthier. Finally, there is the politically unacceptable transfer of wealth from coal states to natural-gas states such as California, where incomes are considerably higher.

Redux;562121 wrote:

And you still cannot identify one credible national/international scientific body that would support your position!

Redux;562120 wrote:

LOL......the joke is on you, dude.

No contradiction.

To wait to act until there is unanimity is shortsighted and an appeasement to the oil industry that we saw for the last eight years.

TheMercenary;562122 wrote:

A good discussion in this link shows the proposals and how they work.

This is a quote to the portion that makes my point:


http://www.american.com/archive/2009/march-2009/that-first-step-is-a-doozy

Redux;562114 wrote:

Donations generally increase in presidential election years as opposed to off years.

Undertoad;562127 wrote:

The R donations didn't more than double. Spin it like a top baby!

Redux;562126 wrote:

That "research" is among the arguments that purposely misrepresent one particular MIT study and the authors of the research are outraged at the blatant misrepresentation.

[INDENT]

"It's just wrong," said John Reilly, an energy, environmental and agricultural economist at M.I.T. and one of the authors of the report. "It's wrong in so many ways it's hard to begin.
[/INDENT]

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/mar/30/house-republicans/GOP-full-of-hot-air-about-Obamas-light-switch-tax/

TheMercenary;562131 wrote:

"He said, she said".

Redux;562128 wrote:

The spin is to suggest that the oil/gas lobby has as much influence now as it did during the Bush/Republican majority years...which is how I interpreted Merc's "fantasy because of lobbyists" remark.

Undertoad;562130 wrote:

And next year it'll be 38% like it was last time Ds were fully incumbent... and despite the fact that the oil industries are in hard red states TX, OK and AK.

TheMercenary;562133 wrote:

The only thing that changes in Washington is who are the whores in Congress going to get their next contribution from and which whores are in charge. Politics does not change.

Redux;562136 wrote:

So now ..its they are all "whores" argument....LOL.

and having little impact on legislation enacted before the next election.

Undertoad;562139 wrote:

Donations given now to affect legislation now will count as donations on the 2010 cycle... BALL TWO

Undertoad;562146 wrote:

PASSED with up to 30% tax credits for the industry... that will allow them to maintain their oligopoly.

I believe that is a BALK and the pitch count remains.

Undertoad;562146 wrote:

I believe that is a BALK and the pitch count remains.

TheMercenary;561990 wrote:

Pure fantasy. The powerful lobbyist of this country and group we have in Congress have ruined the political process. Nothing like that will ever happen in your lifetime.

piercehawkeye45;562995 wrote:

Sugarpop...you might be interested in this site. Its a competition between 20 colleges to create the most efficient and attractive solar powered house.

http://www.solardecathlon.org/

US Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Tuesday the Obama administration wanted to paint roofs an energy-reflecting white, as he took part in a climate change symposium in London.

But he warned there was no silver bullet for tackling climate change, and said a range of measures should be introduced, including painting flat roofs white.

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You worry a lot about the environment and do everything you can to reduce your carbon footprint -- the emissions of greenhouse gases that drive dangerous climate change.
So you always prefer to take the train or the bus rather than a plane, and avoid using a car whenever you can, faithful to the belief that this inflicts less harm to the planet.

Well, there could be a nasty surprise in store for you, for taking public transport may not be as green as you automatically think, says a new US study.

Its authors point out an array of factors that are often unknown to the public.

These are hidden or displaced emissions that ramp up the simple "tailpipe" tally, which is based on how much carbon is spewed out by the fossil fuels used to make a trip.

Environmental engineers Mikhail Chester and Arpad Horvath at the University of California at Davis say that when these costs are included, a more complex and challenging picture emerges.

In some circumstances, for instance, it could be more eco-friendly to drive into a city -- even in an SUV, the bete noire of green groups -- rather than take a suburban train. It depends on seat occupancy and the underlying carbon cost of the mode of transport.

"We are encouraging people to look at not the average ranking of modes, because there is a different basket of configurations that determine the outcome," Chester told AFP in a phone interview.

"There's no overall solution that's the same all the time."

The pair give an example of how the use of oil, gas or coal to generate electricity to power trains can skew the picture.

Boston has a metro system with high energy efficiency. The trouble is, 82 percent of the energy to drive it comes from dirty fossil fuels.

By comparison, San Francisco's local railway is less energy-efficient than Boston's. But it turns out to be rather greener, as only 49 percent of the electricity is derived from fossils.

The paper points out that the "tailpipe" quotient does not include emissions that come from building transport infrastructure -- railways, airport terminals, roads and so on -- nor the emissions that come from maintaining this infrastructure over its operational lifetime.

These often-unacknowledged factors add substantially to the global-warming burden.

In fact, they add 63 percent to the "tailpipe" emissions of a car, 31 percent to those of a plane, and 55 percent to those of a train.

And another big variable that may be overlooked in green thinking is seat occupancy.

A saloon (sedan) car or even an 4x4 that is fully occupied may be responsible for less greenhouse gas per kilometer travelled per person than a suburban train that is a quarter full, the researchers calculate.

"Government policy has historically relied on energy and emission analysis of automobiles, buses, trains and aircraft at their tailpipe, ignoring vehicle production and maintenance, infrastructure provision and fuel production requirements to support these modes," they say.

So getting a complete view of the ultimate environmental cost of the type of transport, over its entire lifespan, should help decision-makers to make smarter investments.

For travelling distances up to, say, 1,000 kilometres (600 miles), "we can ask questions as to whether it's better to invest in a long-distance railway, improving the air corridor or boosting car occupancy," said Chester.

The paper appears in Environmental Research Letters, a publication of Britain's Institute of Physics.

The calculations are based on US technology and lifestyles.

It used 2005 models of the Toyota Camry saloon, Chevrolet Trailblazer SUV and Ford F-150 to calibrate automobile performance; the light transit systems in the San Francisco Bay Area and Boston as the models for the metro and commuter lines; and the Embraer 145, Boeing 737 and Boeing 747 as the benchmarks for short-, medium- and long-haul aircraft.

Boston has a metro system with high energy efficiency. The trouble is, 82 percent of the energy to drive it comes from dirty fossil fuels.

By comparison, San Francisco's local railway is less energy-efficient than Boston's. But it turns out to be rather greener, as only 49 percent of the electricity is derived from fossils.

A saloon (sedan) car or even an 4x4 that is fully occupied may be responsible for less greenhouse gas per kilometer travelled per person than a suburban train that is a quarter full, the researchers calculate.

ZenGum;571880 wrote:

The comments thread got pretty savage on their methodology.

ZenGum;571884 wrote:

but it gets more varied on the next 5 pages.

Beestie;568763 wrote:

But I only want to reflect heat when the average outdoor temp is higher than 72 degrees.

What about the other half of the year when I want the extra heat from the sun?

TheMercenary;571873 wrote:

I think it has more to do with taking into account all the aspects of running rail. Anyone who has ridden on Amtrack can tell you it hardly seems "carbon neutral", whatever the hell that is to those who want to sensationalize it.

classicman;572074 wrote:

What about the "efficiency" of the train when its almost empty?

classicman;572074 wrote:

What about the "efficiency" of the train when its almost empty?

Happy Monkey;572123 wrote:

First, when making the decision between taking the train or driving, ...

WASHINGTON — Badly outnumbered and months behind in the debate on energy and climate change, House Republicans plan to introduce an energy bill on Wednesday as an alternative to the Democratic plan barreling toward a House vote this month.

The Republican proposal, drafted by a group led by Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, leans heavily on nuclear power, setting a goal of building 100 reactors over the next 20 years. No new nuclear plants have been ordered in the United States since 1978 because of the high cost of construction and uncertainty about regulatory approval.

The bill also provides incentives for increased oil and gas production on public and private lands and offshore. It would also authorize oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, a focus of 30 years of controversy in Congress.

The Republican measure does not include any mandatory cap on emissions of heat-trapping gases, relying instead on nuclear energy, natural gas and renewable fuels like wind, solar and biomass power to reduce production of the gases, which have been linked to global warming.

“This is an alternative that takes us in the direction of energy independence and a clean environment without the national energy tax being offered by the Democrats,” Mr. Pence said.

At forums around the country, he said, people expressed a desire for more energy from domestic sources and concern about rising fuel prices. “A minority in Congress plus the American people equals a majority,” he said.

Republican officials said they were intending to offer the proposal, known as the American Energy Act, as a substitute for the bill sponsored by Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, both Democrats. The Waxman-Markey bill has been through hundreds of hours of public hearings and committee deliberations and passed the Energy and Commerce Committee last month on a 33-to-25 vote.

The Democratic measure will be considered by other House committees in coming days, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California has made it clear that the bill is on a fast track to a vote in the full House before the July 4 Congressional recess. Committee leaders have been warned not to tinker too much with the substance of the 946-page bill, a product of extensive talks to win support from a number of Democrats worried about energy costs and job losses in their states.

Republican aides said they were hoping their bill would lure some of those Democrats away and give Republicans something to support, rather than simply opposing the Democratic plan.

The Democratic measure will be considered by other House committees in coming days, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California has
made it clear that the bill is on a fast track ~
Committee leaders ~ warned not to tinker...

glatt;572543 wrote:

Why not both the carrot and the stick instead of just one or the other?

The Republican measure does not include any mandatory cap on emissions of heat-trapping gases, relying instead on nuclear energy, natural gas and renewable fuels like wind, solar and biomass power to reduce production of the gases, which have been linked to global warming.

ZenGum;572631 wrote:

Psst. Natural gas is a fossil fuel, burning it releases fossil carbon, which blah blah blah .... pass it on to the Rs, will ya?

ZenGum;572639 wrote:

True, but that's a bit like saying it's better to be shot with a .22 than a .38.

Beestie;572633 wrote:

While true, its quite a bit better than petroleum-based fuels.

Natural gas versus gasoline as a vehicle fuel:
[LIST]
[*]Reduces carbon monoxide emissions 90%-97%
[*]Reduces carbon dioxide emissions 25%
[*]Reduces nitrogen oxide emissions 35%-60%
[*]Potentially reduces non-methane hydrocarbon emissions 50%-75%
[*]Emits fewer toxic and carcinogenic pollutants
[*]Emits little or no particulate matter
[*]Eliminates evaporative emissions
[/LIST] From here.

WASHINGTON – One contributor to global warming — bigger than coal mines, landfills and sewage treatment plants — is being left out of efforts by the Obama administration and House Democrats to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Belching from the nation's 170 million cattle, sheep and pigs produces about one-quarter of the methane released in the U.S. each year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. That makes the hoofed critters the largest source of the heat-trapping gas.

In part because of an adept farm lobby campaign that equates government regulation with a cow tax, the gas that farm animals pass is exempt from legislation being considered by Congress to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

The EPA under President Barack Obama has said it has no plans to regulate the gas, even though the agency recently included methane among six greenhouse gases it believes are endangering human health and welfare.

~snip~

House aides and EPA officials say that controlling such emissions is unworkable. Cow burps make up about 2 percent of all the climate-altering pollution in the U.S.
But allies of farmers in Congress say the reluctance to step in the cow tax debate has a lot to do with the outcry from the agriculture industry and moderate Democrats from rural states whose votes are needed to pass the bill.

"I think they realized that if you are a Democrat in an agricultural state, a red state, that this is radioactive and I think that is why they have tried scrupulously to reaffirm that they don't have any intention of doing this," said Sen. John Thune, R-S.D. He is sponsoring a bill that would bar the EPA from requiring farmers to get permits for cattle burps.

The Farm Bureau quickly did the math and figured farms would have to pay about $175 for each dairy cow, $87.50 per head of beef cattle and $20 for each hog to purchase permits for emissions.

The cow tax was born.

Steve Fielding recently asked the Obama administration to reassure him on the science of man-made global warming. When the administration proved unhelpful, Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation.

If you haven't heard of this politician, it's because he's a member of the Australian Senate. As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Joanne Simpson Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled.

The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.

Dr. Ian Plimer, a well-known Australian geologist published "Heaven and Earth," a damning critique of the "evidence" underpinning man-made global warming. So compelling is it that Paul Sheehan, a noted Australian columnist -- and ardent global warming believer -- in April humbly pronounced it "an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence."

A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.

By Michelle Malkin • June 26, 2009 12:30 AM My syndicated column below slams the EPA for suppressing inconvenient truths about Obama’s politicized global warming agenda. As I blogged early Wednesday afternoon, the Competitive Enterprise Institute released e-mails detailing how eco-bureaucrats stifled a senior researcher who challenged the agency’s reliance on outdated data to support its greenhouse gas “public endangerment” finding.

Breaking late tonight, CEI has released the draft version of the censored study that the EPA doesn’t want you to see. You can read the entire 98-page document here.

Here is the preface, which begins, “We have become increasingly concerned that EPA and many other agencies and countries have paid too little attention to the science of global warming. EPA and others have tended to accept the findings reached by outside groups…as being correct without a careful and critical examination of their conclusions and documentation.” No wonder they tried to shut up senior researcher Alan Carlin (click on image for full-size):



***

EPA’s game of global warming hide-and-seek
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2009

The Obama administration doesn’t want to hear inconvenient truths about global warming. And they don’t want you to hear them, either. As Democrats rush on Friday to pass a $4 trillion-dollar, thousand-page “cap and trade” bill that no one has read, environmental bureaucrats are stifling voices that threaten their political agenda.

The free market-based Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington (where I served as a journalism fellow in 1995) obtained a set of internal e-mails exposing Team Obama’s willful and reckless disregard for data that undermine the illusion of “consensus.” In March, Alan Carlin, a senior research analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency, asked agency officials to distribute his analysis on the health effects of greenhouse gases. EPA has proposed a public health “endangerment finding” covering CO2 and five other gases that would trigger costly, extensive new regulations of motor vehicles. The open comment period on the ruling ended this week. But Carlin’s study didn’t fit the blame-human-activity narrative, so it didn’t make the cut.

On March 12, Carlin’s director, Al McGartland, forbade him from having “any direct communication” with anyone outside his office about his study. “There should be no meetings, emails, written statements, phone calls, etc.” On March 16, Carlin urged his superiors to forward his work to EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, which runs the agency’s climate change program. A day later, McGartland dismissed Carlin and showed his true, politicized colors:

“The time for such discussion of fundamental issues has passed for this round. The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision… I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.”

Contrary comments, in other words, would interfere with the “process” of ramming the EPA’s endangerment finding through. Truth-in-science took a backseat to protecting eco-bureaucrats from “a very negative impact.”

In another follow-up e-mail, McGartland warned Carlin to drop the subject altogether: “With the endangerment finding nearly final, you need to move on to other issues and subjects. I don’t want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research etc, at least until we see what EPA is going to do with Climate.”

But, of course, the e-mails show that EPA had already predetermined what it was going to do – “move forward on endangerment.” Which underscores the fact that the open public comment period was all for show. In her message to the public about the radical greenhouse gas rules, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson requested “comment on the data on which the proposed findings are based, the methodology used in obtaining and analyzing the data, and the major legal interpretations and policy considerations underlying the proposed findings.” Ms. Jackson, meet Mr. Carlin.

The EPA now justifies the suppression of the study because economist Carlin (a 35-year veteran of the agency who also holds a B.S. in physics) “is an individual who is not a scientist.” Neither is Al Gore. Nor is environmental czar Carol Browner. Nor is cap-and-trade shepherd Nancy Pelosi. Carlin’s analysis incorporated peer-reviewed studies and, as he informed his colleagues, “significant new research” related to the proposed endangerment finding. According to those who have seen his study, it spotlights EPA’s reliance on out-of-date research, uncritical recycling of United Nations data, and omission of new developments, including a continued decline in global temperatures and a new consensus that future hurricane behavior won’t be different than in the past.

But the message from his superiors was clear: La-la-la, we can’t hear you.

In April, President Obama declared that “the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over.” Another day, another broken promise. Will Carlin meet the same fate as inspectors general who have been fired or “retired” by the Obama administration for blowing the whistle and defying political orthodoxy? Or will he, too, be yet another casualty of the Hope and Change steamroller? The bodies are piling up.

Washington, D.C., June 26, 2009—The Competitive Enterprise Institute is today making public an internal study on climate science which was suppressed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Internal EPA email messages, released by CEI earlier in the week, indicate that the report was kept under wraps and its author silenced because of pressure to support the Administration’s agenda of regulating carbon dioxide.
The report finds that EPA, by adopting the United Nations’ 2007 “Fourth Assessment” report, is relying on outdated research and is ignoring major new developments. Those developments include a continued decline in global temperatures, a new consensus that future hurricanes will not be more frequent or intense, and new findings that water vapor will moderate, rather than exacerbate, temperature.

New data also indicate that ocean cycles are probably the most important single factor in explaining temperature fluctuations, though solar cycles may play a role as well, and that reliable satellite data undercut the likelihood of endangerment from greenhouse gases. All of this demonstrates EPA should independently analyze the science, rather than just adopt the conclusions of outside organizations.

The released report is a draft version, prepared under EPA’s unusually short internal review schedule, and thus may contain inaccuracies which were corrected in the final report.

“While we hoped that EPA would release the final report, we’re tired of waiting for this agency to become transparent, even though its Administrator has been talking transparency since she took office. So we are releasing a draft version of the report ourselves, today,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman.

Alan Carlin is the economist and 38 year veteran at the Environmental Protection Agency whose report was stonewalled internally and so was not considered (or so he was told) in their decision to regulate CO2 as a pollutant. I spoke with him for an hour this evening. (A background interview with an anonymous source in the EPA that corroborates what Carlin says below can be found here.)

At the end of the hour, the last question I asked him was what had motivated him to come forward with an almost 100-page report written in 4 days detailing the problems with the scientific claims for global warming as given by the IPCC (an early draft can be found at http://cei.org/cei_files/fm/active/0/DOC062509-004.pdf). The report was not transmitted internally, and the emails released by CEI on Tuesday suggest to me that this may have been because the report did not support the previously determined conclusions desired by the new Administration.

In Carlin's personal view "The bottom line is whether or not the IPCC is wrong or right about the significance of increasing levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in increasing global temperatures--it is amazing how few people have asked that question. What's happening in Australia (where a Senator Fielding is holding a 'mini-debate' with skeptical scientists and administration advocates of an Australian cap and trade policy) is fantastic--why can't we do that here? Models, good or bad, don't prove or disprove a scientific hypothesis about the real world. I'm dreadfully concerned that we may be taking an ineffective and extremely costly action, and after six years of working on climate change I might be able to help--but I'm not allowed to."

Carlin got his first degree in physics, before he turned to economics and remembers lunching occasionally with the celebrated physicist Richard Feynman while at Caltech, who told him that if you attempt to compare observations with a hypothesis and the observations don't fit, you can either change the hypothesis or ascertain if the observations are wrong. Carlin is convinced that observations of climate do not match the hypothesis that human-generated greenhouse gases are producing significant global warming in the real world. He adds ruefully that if the NIPCC report recently released by the Heartland Institute had been available in March, when he wrote his report, it might have saved him a lot of time assuming that it covers many of the same points.

Carlin's main concern seems to be that the Endangerment Finding (an official declaration by the EPA that CO2 is a danger to public health and welfare) may actually turn out to be a time bomb that may explode in the EPA, echoing the reasoning of our anonymous source as reported earlier today. As I wrote then, the EPA does not want to regulate CO2 under the Clean Air act without legislation limiting their regulation to the largest emitters. If the proposed new cap and trade legislation (which removes EPA's ability to use the Clean Air Act to regulate global warming gases) is not forthcoming, Carlin worries that it may well be very difficult for the EPA to carry out its mandate. His report was an attempt to have the EPA reconsider the science (which Carlin considers bad science), as despite the respectable trappings that cloak the IPCC and their reports, their hypotheses fail many observational tests in his view.

Carlin has been transferred off all climate-related work, but is not at all bitter. He says that from a civil service point of view, his boss 'absolutely has the right' to give him new work assignments. "I still have a phone, I can still talk to people in my office," he says.

Carlin hastens to add that he did not turn over to the Competitive Enterprise Institute the emails that were published. "But when a reporter called Tuesday and asked me to verify them it became evident that CEI had them."

Carlin also assisted in the organization of a series of seminars with notable scientists in the field of climate science, including some notable skeptics as well as ardent "warmists." They were attended by an average of maybe 30 or 40 employees--but those employees only rarely included members of the workgroup that eventually would be charged with writing the proposed endangerment document.

Later we will discuss the science that Carlin wanted to present to the EPA. For now, he's another whistleblower who actually wanted to help the organisation that shut him out and moved him off the case.

Is this really how we want to run things?

If global climate change was a more normal political issue, Lomborg would be classed as a centrist, a moderate who is trying to bring political consensus on positive action to address climate change. But global climate change is not normal, and his views, instead of bringing praise from both sides, have brought criticism. But more about that later.

Make Fossil Fuels More Expensive, or Green Fuels Irresistible?

“I love this thought—it comes from the Breakthrough Institute. Basically, the idea is that everyone seems to be trying to make fossil fuels so expensive that we won’t use them. But that’s never going to happen. So why don’t we try to make green energy so cheap that everyone will want to use it?”

After three books and the creation of the Copenhagen Consensus Center (which looks at prioritizing the problems the world faces and organising an intelligent response to them) Lomborg's goals for the next five years are fairly simple, and familiar, which is slightly depressing as it means there hasn't been much progress since they were expounded in his 2007 book, Cool It. “My main point is to make sure that we don’t just do something that makes us feel good, but that we do something that actually does good."

"There is a lot of conversation right now about what we should do about global warming, and promises of cutting CO2 by 20%, 40%, 80% abound. The problem in many ways is, it’s not going to happen. We have tried this many times and we have not done so, and just promising to do so is not going to fix the problem. So I hope to get people to realize sooner rather than later that if you’re actually going to make this happen, we need to make sure that we do much more of the smart things to deal with climate change, instead of promising things that won’t happen. We should try to make sure that we invest in research and development, so that we actually get new opportunities, so that we get even cheaper solar panels, that will actually make it possible to cut carbon emissions dramatically by the end of this century.”

Should We Rush to Judgment or Invest in the Future?

"The risk is that instead of making better solar panels, better windmills, better ocean generating systems, so that everybody can afford to buy them, including the Chinese, and will want to buy them, there’s huge pressure to buy existing technology and put it up today. Using existing solar panels makes us feel good, it makes for great photo ops, but actually does very little to make sure we will cut our future emissions. My favourite example is Germany, which has put up the most solar panels in the world and, there’s nothing wrong with Germany doing that, but it’s a very expensive way of generating very little energy and essentially Germany is going to be paying about $150 billion to postpone global warming by the end of the century by one hour. I don’t see the logic of that argument. Instead of paying that amount of money to make Germans feel good about themselves, we should be paying to get better solar panels so that everyone, including India, will want to put up cheap, available solar panels by, say, 2030.”

"We should spend vastly more on research and development. The depressing thing is that everybody talks about green energy, but everybody thinks that means putting up windmills. Putting up very specific windmills. My point is if you actually want to do good, it’s not about putting up windmills that are, even now, inefficient, it’s about putting up windmills in the future that are so efficient that everybody will want one. That is actually a lot cheaper than what many people are arguing that we should be doing right now, and that kind of research and development is much cheaper and much more efficient in the long run. What the Copenhagen Consensus showed was that with every dollar you invest in very quick CO2 cuts, you probably do less than a dollar’s worth of good and if you take into account what kind of policy measures come up, it might be as low as 4 cents for every dollar, whereas if you invest in research and development that is bringing better technology for the future, you can end up doing as much as $16 worth of good for every dollar invested. My basic point is that I’d much rather do $16 worth of good rather than 4 cents.”

Part 2 of this interview covers Lomborg's opinions on American politics regarding climate change and his feelings towards those who are on the other side of the fence. It can be found here.

Electric Cars Will Not Decrease Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Says Federal Study
Thursday, June 25, 2009

The stimulus law enacted in February promoted the purchase of plug-in electric cars by the federal government and the broader market, but a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released this month says that the use of plug-in electric vehicles will not by itself decrease greenhouse gas emissions.

To do that, the report argues, the United States would have to switch from coal-burning plants to lower-emission sources to generate electricity such as nuclear power.

“If you are using coal fired power plants and half the country’s electricity comes from coal powered plants, are you just trading one greenhouse gas emitter for another?”
Mark Gaffigan, co-author of the GAO report and a specialist in energy issues told CNSNews.com.

The report found that the adoption of plug-in cars could result in benefits, including reduced petroleum consumption and dependency.

But it concedes that in regions of the country heavily reliant on coal for power generation, electric plug-in vehicles will not result in a decrease in green house gas emissions.

“Reduction in CO2 emissions depend on generating electricity used to charge the vehicles from lower-emission sources of energy,” GAO reported.

“For plug-ins to reach their full potential, electricity would need to be generated from lower-emission fuels such as nuclear and renewable energy rather than the fossil fuels--coal and natural gas--used most often to generate electricity today.”

In an attempt to encourage the development and manufacturing of “plug-in” electric vehicles, the government has allocated $300 million from the economic stimulus funding to the General Services Administration (GSA) to acquire fuel-efficient vehicles. These funds must be spent by 2011.

The GAO report pointed out that the stimulus law also establishes a tax credit for consumers for the purchase of plug-in cars--up to $2,500 for two-wheeled, three-wheeled, and low-speed plug-in cars.

But the report cites results from a study showing that “if plug-in hybrids reached 56 percent of the cars on the road by 2030, they would require an increased electricity production, much of which would likely come from additional coal plants.”

The government watchdog said that adjustments would need to be made, such as building new nuclear plants and developing technology so that fossil fuel plants will be equipped to capture and store carbon dioxide (CO2).

“However, new nuclear plants and renewable energy sources can be controversial and expensive,” the report noted.

While not a mandate, goals within President Obama’s executive order (No. 13423) encourage the integration of plug-in hybrid cars into federal vehicle fleets. The GAO report, while remaining supportive of the goal, pointed out the difficulties in achieving plug-in integration.

“Developing policy or incentives to encourage consumers to buy plug-ins only in regions with low-carbon energy sources could be difficult and may not correspond with manufacturers’ business plans,” reported the GAO.

Another impediment to the success of plug-in cars, is the high cost of lithium-ion batteries. The GAO report noted that in order for plug-in cars to be cost effective they must be relatively inexpensive compared to gas.

“Research suggests that for plug-ins to be cost-effective relative to gasoline vehicles the price of batteries must come down significantly and gasoline prices must be high relative to electricity,” the report said.

Gaffigan told CNSNews.com that $2 billion of the Recovery Act funds are being expended for grants to manufacture plug-in batteries, and the money is not limited to lithium-ion batteries.

But Gaffigan also explained that this particular impediment would not go away just because the government threw a lot of money at it.

“At the end of the day, if gasoline is still relatively cheap compared to the other alternatives, there is just not going to be that kind of motivation for the market place to develop something else,” Gaffigan told CNSNews.com.

Furthermore, foreign dependency on lithium could take the place of dependency on petroleum.

“The United States has supplies of lithium, but if demand for lithium exceeded domestic supplies, or if lithium from overseas is less expensive, the United States could substitute reliance on one foreign resource (oil) for another (lithium),” warned the GAO.

“Yes, it is a very real possibility,” Gaffigan confirmed when CNSNews.com asked about the possibility of lithium dependency.

To make matters worse, while lithium-ion batteries are attractive because they produce insignificant levels of toxic waste, the extraction of lithium could have harmful environmental consequences.

“Extracting lithium from locations where it is abundant, such as South America, could pose environmental challenges that would damage the ecosystems in this area,” the GAO report pointed out.

“Research suggests that for plug-ins to be cost-effective relative to gasoline vehicles the price of batteries must come down significantly and gasoline prices must be high relative to electricity,” the report said.

Gaffigan told CNSNews.com that $2 billion of the Recovery Act funds are being expended for grants to manufacture plug-in batteries, and the money is not limited to lithium-ion batteries.

But Gaffigan also explained that this particular impediment would not go away just because the government threw a lot of money at it.

TheMercenary;578692 wrote:

Be sure of one thing. The power companies will ensure that any battery developed will need to be recharged regularly and replaced even more regularly. Currently the Prius Batteries are around $15,000 to replace (quoted by my local Toyota dealer). And eventually they all will need to be replaced. The whole electric car thing is a joke if they don't make them last a very long time and go a long way on a single charge.

sugarpop;578785 wrote:

I really wish you would stop spreading lies. They are nowhere near $15,000.

Prius replacement batteries are less than $3000, and they have an 8 year warranty on them. The battery packs used in all Prius models are expected to last the life of the car with very little to no degradation in power capability.
http://consumerguideauto.howstuffworks.com/hybrid-batteries-none-the-worse-for-wear-cga.htm

We noted back in September that Toyota had dropped the price of a new pack a few hundred dollars to $2,299 for model years 2001-2003 and $2,588 for model years 2004-2008. On the Toyota Open Road blog, editor Jon Thompson has written a post on the strength of the Prius batteries after all these years, with at least one example reaching over 400,000 miles of service
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2009/01/01/toyota-if-you-need-them-prius-replacement-batteries-are-no-bi/


The new prices for the packs are $2,299 for the 2000-2003 model years and $2,588 for the 2004-2008 model years. This is down from a previous price of $2,985 for either model. Toyota said that "technology and volume related advancements" were responsible for the price decrease. ...Toyota is considering - "studying the business case for," as the release puts it - remanufacturing Prius batteries right here in North America as as way to make them even cheaper in the future. http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/09/24/buying-prius-replacement-batteries-just-got-cheaper/

Clodfobble;578836 wrote:

Or perhaps he could tell you were -->this<-- close to buying a bigass truck with a much higher profit margin, and all you needed was a little justification to push you over the edge.

The Last Straw

If you think these failed states look bad now, wait until the climate changes.
BY STEPHAN FARIS

Hopelessly overcrowded, crippled by poverty, teeming with Islamist militancy, careless with its nukes&#8212;it sometimes seems as if Pakistan can&#8217;t get any more terrifying. But forget about the Taliban: The country's troubles today pale compared with what it might face 25 years from now. When it comes to the stability of one of the world's most volatile regions, it's the fate of the Himalayan glaciers that should be keeping us awake at night.

In the mountainous area of Kashmir along and around Pakistan's contested border with India lies what might become the epicenter of the problem. Since the separation of the two countries 62 years ago, the argument over whether Kashmir belongs to Muslim Pakistan or secular India has never ceased. Since 1998, when both countries tested nuclear weapons, the conflict has taken on the added risk of escalating into cataclysm. Another increasingly important factor will soon heighten the tension: Ninety percent of Pakistan's agricultural irrigation depends on rivers that originate in Kashmir. "This water issue between India and Pakistan is the key," Mohammad Yusuf Tarigami, a parliamentarian from Kashmir, told me. "Much more than any other political or religious concern."

TheMercenary;578833 wrote:

Not according to the sales person we spoke with 2 months ago. That is the figure he quoted us. Of course that did include labor and all the other BS charges the dealer puts on new car repairs.

Who Else Will Challenge Gore's 'Truth'?
By PHELIM MCALEER
Posted 10/14/2009 06:15 PM ET


Last week at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Wisconsin, former Vice President Al Gore took questions from journalists about global warming for the first time in years. I attended to ask him about factual errors in his movie, "An Inconvenient Truth."

You wouldn't know it from the sparse media coverage, but the British High Court found so many errors in Gore's movie in 2007 that British schools no longer can show the film without the equivalent of a health warning.

I asked Gore if he intends to correct the record. He dodged the question, and the so-called reporters defended his right to be evasive by shutting off my mic.

The encounter was disappointing but not surprising. I served years of hard time as a liberal journalist in Europe and learned that covering the environmental beat meant toeing the line of extremism &#8212; no inconvenient questions allowed.

But it is now time for journalists, and the consumers and businesses that will pay the ultimate price, to start questioning the conventional wisdom about global warming and exposing its true cost. If alarmists like Al Gore get their way, millions of American families will watch as their dreams of a prosperous and pleasant future disappear.

The evidence of environmentalism run amok abounds in Europe. Spain believed the spin that environmental regulation can create "green jobs" and boost the economy. Now the country has 18% unemployment. Britain could suffer blackouts because of policies that require the country to replace coal with fuels like solar and wind power that aren't readily available or reliable.

Unfortunately for Americans, many of the lawmakers who represent them in Congress seem unwilling to learn from Europe's mistakes.

The Senate is now considering a bill that Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., co-authored to create a European-style "cap and trade" system for carbon dioxide emissions, and he just won the endorsement of a key swing senator. International pressure on the United States to adopt such legislation also will increase in December at climate talks in Copenhagen.

That's bad news for taxpayers. The Obama administration reluctantly admitted last month that cap-and-trade would cost the average American family $1,761 a year.

That is a rosy prediction. A Heritage Foundation analysis pegs the cost at an average of $2,979 a year and as much as $4,600 a year by 2035. Jobs will disappear, energy prices will skyrocket, and the American Dream will become an unattainable fantasy for many.

Wealthy environmental elites like Ed Begley Jr., who is featured in our documentary "Not Evil Just Wrong," think that is just fine. They love to tell everyone how "happy" people are in the Third World, where poverty, disease and premature deaths are common. But if they really loved it, they would move themselves and their families to Fiji and burn all of their passports.

Instead, environmentalists live comfortably, flying around the world telling other people they should forsake air travel and drive cars that cost as much as many people pay for a place to live. All the while, the environmentalists try to scare people with stories about dying polar bears and lemurs.

Their hysteria knows no bounds. The British government is now spending nearly $10 million to air ads that feature an animated puppy drowning, a rabbit crying and a carbon monster spewing soot from the sky.

The ad is so laughable that even the journal Nature mocked it. But Britain wouldn't be spending that kind of money unless it expected a return on the investment in the form of new converts to the false doctrine of global warming.

That's why it's so important for journalists who inform the public to ask tough questions, both about the science behind global warming and the financial impact on consumers and businesses.

Americans had better hope their country's journalists start grilling Gore and his colleagues. Otherwise, more people will be misled, and the country will be feeling Europe's green-induced economic pains for years.

covering the environmental beat meant toeing the line of extremism &#8212; no inconvenient questions allowed.

consumers and businesses ~ will pay the ultimate price, ~ If alarmists like Al Gore get their way, millions of American families will watch as their dreams of a prosperous and pleasant future disappear.

wrote:

The Government&#8217;s decision to show the film in secondary schools had come under attack from Stewart Dim-mock, a school governor in Kent and a member of political group the New Party, who accused the Government of brainwashing children.
The first mistake made by Mr Gore, said Mr Justice Burton in his written judgment, was in talking about the potential devastation wrought by a rise in sea levels caused by the melting of ice caps.
The claim that sea levels could rise by 20ft &#8220;in the near future&#8221; was dismissed as &#8220;distinctly alarmist&#8221;. Such a rise would take place &#8220;only after, and over, millennia&#8221;.
Mr Justice Burton added: &#8220;The ar-mageddon scenario he predicts, inso-far as it suggests that sea level rises of seven metres might occur in the immediate future, is not in line with the scientific consensus.&#8221;
A claim that atolls in the Pacific had already been evacuated was supported by &#8220;no evidence&#8221;, while to suggest that two graphs showing carbon dioxide levels and temperatures over the last 650,000 years were an &#8220;exact fit&#8221; overstated the case.
Mr Gore&#8217;s suggestion that the Gulf Stream, that warms up the Atlantic ocean, would shut down was contradicted by the International Panel on Climate Change&#8217;s assessment that it was &#8220;very unlikely&#8221; to happen.
The drying of Lake Chad, the loss of Mount Kilimanjaro&#8217;s snows and Hurricane Katrina were all blamed by Mr Gore on climate change but the judge said the scientific community had been unable to find evidence to prove there was a direct link.
The drying of Lake Chad, the judge said, was &#8220;far more likely to result from other factors, such as population increase and overgrazing, and regional climate variability&#8221;. The melting of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro was &#8220;mainly attributable to human-induced climate change&#8221;.
The judge also said there was no proof to support a claim that polar bears were drowning while searching for icy habitats melted by global warming. The only drowned polar bears the court was aware of were four that died following a storm.
Similarly, the judge took issue with the former Vice-President of the United States for attributing coral bleaching to climate change. Separating the direct impacts of climate change and other factors was difficult, the judgment concluded. Despite finding nine significant errors the judge said many of the claims made by the film were fully backed up by the weight of science. He identified &#8220;four main scientific hypotheses, each of which is very well supported by research published in respected, peer-reviewed journals and accords with the latest conclusions of the IPCC&#8221;.
In particular, he agreed with the main thrust of Mr Gore&#8217;s arguments: &#8220;That climate change is mainly attributable to man-made emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide (&#8216;greenhouse gases&#8217;).&#8221;
The other three main points accepted by the judge were that global temperatures are rising and are likely to continue to rise, that climate change will cause serious damage if left unchecked, and that it is entirely possible for governments and individuals to reduce its impacts. &#8212; A High Court judge since 1998, Sir Michael Burton, 60, was president of the Employment Appeal Tribunal from 2002 to 2005. He stood in local elections for Labour in Kensington and Chelsea in 1971; Stratford upon Avon in the General Election in 1974; and for the SDP in Greater London Council elections in 1981. Educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, his wife died in 1992 leaving him to bring up four daughters

classicman;601309 wrote:

Will you pay my $1700 as well then? Remember there are an awful lot of people who will not be able to pay their $1700 and that will leave those with the ability to do so, the full brunt of the cost..

TheMercenary;601247 wrote:

Interesting...

...That's bad news for taxpayers. The Obama administration reluctantly admitted last month that cap-and-trade would cost the average American family $1,761 a year.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=509026

plthijinx;601313 wrote:

From the Houston Chronicle

and ice cores from the artic and antartic

wrote:

The recent completion of drilling at Vostok station in East Antarctica has allowed the extension of the ice record of atmospheric composition and climate to the past four glacial–interglacial cycles. The succession of changes through each climate cycle and termination was similar, and atmospheric and climate properties oscillated between stable bounds.Interglacial periods differed in temporal evolution and duration. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane correlate well with Antarctic air-temperature throughout the record. Present-day atmospheric burdens of these two important greenhouse gases seem to have been unprecedented during the past 420,000 years.

wrote:

The overall correlation between our CO2 andCH4 records and the Antarctic isotopic temperature 5,9,16 is remarkable (r2 ¼ 0:71 and 0.73 for CO2 and CH4, respectively). This high correlation indicates that CO2 and CH4 may have contributed to the glacial–interglacial changes over this entire period by amplifying the orbital forcing along with albedo, and possibly other changes15,16. We have calculatedthe direct radiative forcing corresponding to the CO2, CH4 and N2O changes16. The largest CO2 change, which occurs between
stages 10 and 9, implies a direct radiative warming of DTrad ¼ 0:75 8C. Adding the effects of CH4 and N2O at this termination increases the forcing to 0.95 8C (here we assume that N2O varies with climate as during termination I37). This initial forcing is amplified by positive feedbacks associated with water vapour, sea ice, and possibly clouds (although in a different way for a ‘doubled CO2’ situation than for a glacial climate38). The total glacial–interglacial forcing is important (,3Wm&#61485;2), representing 80% of that corresponding to the difference between a ‘doubled CO2’ world and modern CO2 climate. Results from various climate simulations 39,40 make it reasonable to ssume that greenhouse gases have, at a global scale, contributed significantly (possibly about half, that is, 2–3 8C) to the globally averaged glacial–interglacial temperature change.

classicman;601457 wrote:

That certainly sounds definitive.

xoxoxoBruce;601469 wrote:

If all the knowledgeable people had a "high degree of certainty", but that's just not true.
We've hashed all the political and monetary factors involved in why certain scientists take the stands they do.

We've listened to, "the sky is falling" predictions that didn't come true, so often, we're skeptical. Add that the proffered solutions always seem to make a few connected people a shitload of money, doesn't help.

Granted, it's logical to conserve resources, try to keep the air and water healthy. And working on reducing our dependency on foreign interests is always the smartest thing to do.

SamIam;601395 wrote:

I don’t know where your graph came from.

classicman;601562 wrote:

Redux - where are the cow farts on that chart of yours?

tw;601497 wrote:

It's typical of graphs edited by a political agenda. Another example of what happens when White House lawyers rewrite the science.

Actual Vostok graphs demonstrate a scary problem. Jinx picture conveniently eliminates the last 100 years.

classicman;601562 wrote:

Redux - where are the cow farts on that chart of yours?

wrote:

MALE (Reuters) – The Maldivian president and ministers held the world's first underwater cabinet meeting on Saturday, in a symbolic cry for help over rising sea levels that threaten the tropical archipelago's existence.
…Clad in black diving suits and masks, Nasheed, 11 ministers the vice president and cabinet secretary dove 3.8 meters (12 feet, 8 inches) to gather at tables under the crystalline waters that draw thousands of tourists to $1,000-a-night luxury resorts.
As black-and-white striped Humbug Damselfish darted around a backdrop of white coral, Nasheed gestured with his hands to start the 30-minute meeting, state TV showed.
"We are trying to send our message to let the world know what is happening and what will happen to the Maldives if climate change isn't checked," a dripping Nasheed told reporters as soon as he re-emerged from the water.
The archipelago nation off the tip of India, best-known for luxury tropical hideaways and unspoiled beaches, is among the most threatened by rising seas. If U.N. predictions are correct, most of the low-lying Maldives will be submerged by 2100.
"SOS" MESSAGE
Nasheed and the ministers used a white plastic slate and waterproof pencils to sign an "SOS" message from the Maldives during the 30-minute meeting.
"We must unite in a world war effort to halt further temperature rises," the message said. "Climate change is happening and it threatens the rights and security of everyone on Earth."
World leaders will meet in Copenhagen to hammer out a successor agreement to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, and industrialized nations want all countries to impose sharp emissions cuts.
"We have to have a better deal. We should be able to come out with an amicable understanding that everyone survives. If Maldives can't be saved today, we do not feel that there is much of a chance for the rest of the world," he said.

Spexxvet;601572 wrote:

Is it considered man-made CO2 if the reason for all the cow farts is that man has increased the cow population so that it has more cows and cow-like substances to consume? Would there be fewer cow farts if the natural order of cows and cow predators kept cow populations low?

Redux;601570 wrote:

"Sigh"....a tired old diversionary tactic to ignore the fact that the US alone spews more than 5 billion metric tons of man-made CO2 emissions into the atmosphere every year and that those emissions levels are neither natural nor sustainable and will only further degrade the atmosphere and the environment unless action is taken.

Sorry, I'm not playing that game.

Study: Arctic Ice Will Melt in 10 Years
British Explorers Return from North Pole with Ice Data Suggesting it Will Soon Disappear in Summer Months

The North Pole will turn into an open sea during summer within a decade, according to data released by a team of explorers who trekked through the Arctic for three months.

CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports that the explorers walked - and swam - 280 miles across the Arctic ice of the Beaufort Sea, north of Alaska, drilling hundreds of ice samples as they went.

The Catlin Arctic Survey team, led by explorer Pen Hadow, measured the thickness of the ice as it sledged through the northern part of the Beaufort Sea earlier this year during their research project. Their findings show that most of the ice in the region is first-year ice that is only around six feet deep and will melt next summer. The region has traditionally contained, thicker multiyear ice which does not melt as rapidly.

wrote:

Polar bears are a potentially endangered species living in the circumpolar north. They are animals which know no boundaries. They pad across the ice from Russia to Alaska, from Canada to Greenland and onto Norway's Svalbard archipelago. Biologists estimate that there are 20,000 to 25,000 bears with about sixty percent of those living in Canada.

The main threat to polar bears today is the loss of their icy habitat due to climate change. Polar bears depend on the sea ice for hunting, breeding, and in some cases to den. The summer ice loss in the Arctic is now equal to an area the size of Alaska, Texas, and the state of Washington combined.

At the most recent meeting of the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group(Copenhagen, 2009), scientists reported that of the 19 subpopulations of polar bears, eight are declining, three are stable, one is increasing, and seven have insufficient data on which to base a decision—this is a change from five that were declining in 2005, five that were stable, and two that were increasing. During the meeting, delegates renewed their conclusion from previous meetings that the greatest conservation challenge to the polar bear is ecological change in the Arctic related to climate warming.

On May 14, 2008, the U.S. Department of the Interior reclassified the polar bear as a Threatened Species under the Endangered Species Act, citing concerns about sea ice loss. Russia lists the polar bear as a species of concern.

wrote:

A Vancouver Province newspaper editorial criticizing the U.S. government for proposing polar bears as a possible threatened species has the scientists it quoted crying foul. Calling the US decision “a classic case of blinkered thinking,” the Province claims that Mitchell Taylor, manager of wildlife research for the Nunavut government, has been quoted as saying that, except for Hudson Bay, "polar bears appear to be overabundant."
…Contacted by DeSmog readers, however, Taylor said [he was] misquoted in the Province editorial.
“I don't even know what "overabundant" means,” said Taylor. “There are some populations that appear to be at levels where problem-bear issues are at or approaching unacceptable levels. I have said that in various interviews. I think it is pretty clear what the (Province) author’s perspective is on climate change and polar bears. I guess this is freedom of the press in action.”

wrote:

FC: Do you think that the current level of harvest is having a significant effect on polar bears overall and more specifically on certain sub-populations of the animals?

MT: The harvest rates are usually intended to keep the population at current levels so even a sustainable harvest would have a stabilizing effect on a population. If you are asking if I think that some populations are declining because of over harvest, I think that probably Kane Basin numbers are stable even though it is over-hunted. Kane Basin seems to be a sink for polar bears right now. The harvest in western Hudson Bay has recently been reduced and the population is thought to be stable or increasing slowly. I’m not exactly sure what’s happening with harvests in the Southern Beaufort Sea, but this population appears to have been badly stressed by the recent arctic warming. The most recent data for the other populations indicates they are sustaining current harvest levels except for Baffin Bay. In Baffin Bay the research data suggests a significant decline in population numbers, but local hunters report that numbers are stable or even increased.

wrote:

FC: We hear of sea ice decline but is it due to human-caused global warming?

MT: From what I have read, the arctic sea ice declines have been mainly due to natural causes although some authors have ascribed some fraction of it to CO2 without being specific about the mechanism. The arctic warming mechanism identified in the IPCC suite of climate models is atmospheric warming due to increased CO2 levels, not an unusual influx of warm Pacific surface water and unusually strong offshore winds in the eastern Siberia and Alaskan area which is what actually caused what is being called the “Arctic Warming Period”.

NOTHING makes me more skeptical than this sort of "look here, don't look there" behavior.

Or we can just bury our heads and keep debating

Undertoad;601761 wrote:

I'm sorry. NOTHING, I mean NOTHING makes me more skeptical than people who say "the debate is over".

Firstly, in science the debate is NEVER over. If the debate is over, it's not science.

Secondly, of COURSE the debate is not over.

From what I have read, the arctic sea ice declines have been mainly due... snip

He pretty much states that he is not a climate specialist, but he has a different theory as to what is causing the arctic warming.

Undertoad;601761 wrote:

I'm sorry. NOTHING, I mean NOTHING makes me more skeptical than people who say "the debate is over".

Firstly, in science the debate is NEVER over. If the debate is over, it's not science.

Secondly, of COURSE the debate is not over.

Isn't the question important enough to make a definitive exploration of the subject?

xoxoxoBruce;601772 wrote:

That's precisely why the debate is not over. ;)

xoxoxoBruce;601780 wrote:

... So, while attempting to accomplish conservation and cleanliness, the investigation and debate about how we interact with the earth/climate, and it's effect, should continue.
There will probably always be more we don't know, than we do know. More knowledge is gooder.

There is no reason not to act in an economically sustainable manner and in way that stimulates new energy technologies and improved energy efficiencies....other than the objections of the affected industries with an investment in the status quo.

SamIam;601793 wrote:

snip~ We could forget the entire climate debate and begin to make the change over to renewable energy simply as a matter of national security. Look at the price in lives and money spent on wars in the Middle East so that we can have secure access to petroleum. ~ snip

Redux;601784 wrote:

One thing we do know, with a very high degree of certainty and as near unanimity as can be achieved, is that spewing billions of metric tons of man-made CO2 (from autos and coal-fired power plants) into the environment every year has NO positive impact.

I have yet to see an argument for not acting now, other than "lets debate it more" even though we know there is nothing positive that can said about the excessive man-made CO2 emissions.

Undertoad;601805 wrote:

The positive impact is elsewhere in the equation: to allow us to live, in numbers, in comfort, and to move around as necessary to drive the economy and improve the standard of living of the entire world.

Here are two of them:

Weakening the economy could prevent the massive projection of power, intelligence, influence and will, that will be necessary to get China, India, and Russia to go along with the plan.

There may not be enough general political will to embrace an environmental project aimed at helping something highly abstract, especially during a recession with a deep budget deficit and other big budget items on the table.

Redux;601830 wrote:

And we can only accomplish that by a further reliance on fossil fuels and, if we want to be solely reliant on US oil, by drilling in sensitive environmental areas, which will still not meet US demand?

There is no evidence that reducing (not eliminating) our reliance on fossil fuels by reasonable amounts over a period of time (20+ yrs) would weaken the economy....unless you believe the "sky is falling" oil industry and free market crowd

Another weak argument....much like the arguments made decades ago about the tough environmental laws that were enacted (they cost too much, they will make the US less competitive....). In fact, the economy became more diverse and innovative and thus stronger.

Undertoad;601849 wrote:

Another day, another Redux straw man.

Undertoad;601849 wrote:

Well I took Econ 101 so I understand that artificially limiting supply raises prices. If that means I'm part of the "free market crowd" then I guess I am outside the group of people whom you will listen to. Pity.

Redux;601860 wrote:

Bullshit....This discussion is littered with straw men...and from my perspective, it comes more from the other side.

Then on to your pretty chart ...and then onto your econ 101 thesis. Straw men, both.

You evidently choose one path (correct me if i am wrong)..."keep on truckin" as is until we are absolutely certain that we have to change our production and consumption habits, just tinker around the edges, and/or just leave it to the affected industries to make that decision in the best interest of consumers and the country. I choose the other....its time to find "a better way" now both for our long term economic security and long term environmental protection.

I agree my way is harder and probably riskier in the short term...but IMO, we have to stop thinking short term. The greater long term risk is postponing any comprehensive action and just sliding by.

Wikipedia wrote:

The logical fallacy of false dilemma (also called false dichotomy, the either-or fallacy) involves a situation in which only two alternatives are considered, when in fact there are other options. Closely related are failing to consider a range of options and the tendency to think in extremes, called black-and-white thinking.

Undertoad;601881 wrote:

If you need help on the basics you can always attend a class.

tw;601870 wrote:

Global warming does exist. Exceeds anything the earth has ever seen. Only remaining question is how severe that problem is.

Redux;601894 wrote:

the Democrats in Congress on the tax reform in 84 that broadened the tax base.

Undertoad;602016 wrote:

Well everybody has their narratives. But if the oil embargo is the entire explanation for a bad economy, then A) apparently the Econ 101 supply curve is useful and important after all, as limiting supply raised prices; and B) why are you in favor of having an artificial, self-imposed embargo every year for twenty years?

SamIam;602065 wrote:

Ya know, I have this sneaking suspicion that we are not going to find any common ground on this one - well maybe with Bruce, but everyone else is pretty polarized. We've has 346 posts so far, and MY mind hasn't been changed. Just saying.

OK proceed as before and you tell 'em Redux!

SamIam;602065 wrote:

Ya know, I have this sneaking suspicion that we are not going to find any common ground on this one - well maybe with Bruce... snip

Redux;601367 wrote:

SO what's new.....conservative and libertarian groups (AEI, CEI...) dont like the idea of government intervention, even in protecting the environment and encouraging and stimulating the development of alternative energy.

I'm not one who believes CO2 emissions cause global warming...I do believe that anthropogenic emissions of CO2 (automobiles, power plants, etc) may contribute to global warming and certainly do contribute to environmental degradation...and being the second largest contributor, we should reduce those emissions.

IMO, it is much like the screaming of doomsday scenarios by libertarians and industry groups back in the 70s when the series of comprehensive new environmental laws were enacted...clear air act, clear water act, safe drinking water act, hazardous waste disposal act, toxic substances control act.

[INDENT]"All this government intervention and regulation will cost the consumers $millions...it will make the US less competitive....blah blah blah"[/INDENT]

In fact, the reverse happened....those environmental laws stimulated innovation with no pain to the consumers and made the US the leader in environmental management initiatives, with US companies exporting those innovations all over the world...and doing a pretty damned good job of cleaning up the environment at the same time.

[QUOTE]Originally Posted by Redux View Post
SO what's new.....conservative and libertarian groups (AEI, CEI...) dont like the idea of government intervention, even in protecting the environment and encouraging and stimulating the development of alternative energy.

TheMercenary;602201 wrote:

Still BS. You made a broad sweeping statement and it is false. If you want to narrow it down to those two organizations as your example I agree with you.

wrote:

You would have to go back at least 15 million years to find carbon dioxide levels on Earth as high as they are today, a UCLA scientist and colleagues report Oct. 8 in the online edition of the journal Science.

"The last time carbon dioxide levels were apparently as high as they are today — and were sustained at those levels — global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they are today, the sea level was approximately 75 to 120 feet higher than today, there was no permanent sea ice cap in the Arctic and very little ice on Antarctica and Greenland," said the paper's lead author, Aradhna Tripati, a UCLA assistant professor in the department of Earth and space sciences and the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.

"Carbon dioxide is a potent greenhouse gas, and geological observations that we now have for the last 20 million years lend strong support to the idea that carbon dioxide is an important agent for driving climate change throughout Earth's history," she said.

Undertoad;602274 wrote:

The other methods of measurement don't completely agree with the instrumental record, but all agree on warming for the last 130-160 years.

Undertoad;602282 wrote:

Well Sam was sad with the level of polarization, so it occurred to me that we can find agreement. Here we are all in agreement. Step 1.

xoxoxoBruce;602355 wrote:

Copenhagen? Where they do all that fornicating?

classicman;602440 wrote:

It is rather warm out today.

Spexxvet;602443 wrote:

Warmer than average for the date - head for high ground!;)

Spexxvet;602280 wrote:

So what next? Take action? Do nothing?

Pew Research wrote:

There has been a sharp decline over the past year in the percentage of Americans who say there is solid evidence that global temperatures are rising. And fewer also see global warming as a very serious problem &#8211; 35% say that today, down from 44% in April 2008.

Undertoad;602695 wrote:

Presented without bias

http://people-press.org/report/556/global-warming

xoxoxoBruce;602627 wrote:

SamIam, don't fill in your chinks with rice, they'll be leaking again an hour later.:lol2:

Yeah, yeah, I'm bad. Don't even bother.

Undertoad;602851 wrote:

and you realize... aw crap, this is where all our shit is being made.

glatt;602857 wrote:

The latest is drywall. Make sure you don't buy drywall made in China. They are putting the waste into the drywall and selling it to us.

Undertoad;602851 wrote:

There is no part of the river not coated in shipping barges, and you realize... aw crap, this is where all our shit is being made.

xoxoxoBruce;602946 wrote:

There's been tons of pictures on the net, and shows on TV, showing the pollution and it's effects on the people. Thank walmart.

At a gleaming new research center outside Beijing, about 250 engineers and researchers from the ENN Group are trying to figure out how to make energy use less damaging to the world's climate....

...The private company is part of a growing drive by China to work out a way to check the rapid growth of its massive emissions of greenhouse gases. Seeking to transform an economy heavily dependent upon coal for electric power and industrial production, the government has closed down old cement and coal plants, subsidized row upon row of new wind turbines and taken other measures...


Among members of the U.S. Congress and negotiators preparing for a December climate summit in Copenhagen, China is often considered an obstacle because it has not committed to imposing a ceiling on its emissions of the gases that most scientists blame for climate change. China produces the most carbon emissions in the world, and the output is likely to continue growing for two decades. When President Hu Jintao pledged at the United Nations last month to lower the country's carbon intensity "by a notable margin," that was regarded as a step forward.

Yet, in visible and less visible ways, China has begun to address its emissions problem. The steps are driven in part by the parochial concern that climate change could worsen the flooding that plagues the country's low-lying coastal regions, including Shanghai, and cause water shortages in western areas as glaciers in the Himalayas melt away.

But China has also begun to see energy efficiency and renewable energy as ingredients for the type of modern economy it wants to build, in part because it would make the nation's energy sources more secure...

...Still, China has taken significant steps in the past five years. It removed subsidies for motor fuel, which now costs more than it does in the United States; its fuel-efficiency standard for new urban vehicles is 36.7 miles per gallon, a level the United States will not reach for seven years. It has set high efficiency standards for new coal plants; the United States has none. It has set new energy-efficiency standards for buildings. It has targeted its 1,000 top emitters of greenhouse gases to boost energy efficiency by 20 percent. And it has shut down many older, inefficient industrial boilers and power plants...

...Nonetheless, the government has set ambitious targets for renewable energy, which is supposed to account for 15 percent of the country's fuel mix by 2020, and for tree planting, to boost forest cover to 20 percent of China's land mass by the end of next year. China plans to quadruple its nuclear power; by the end of next year, it may have 18 nuclear energy plants under construction, half of the world's total under construction....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/23/AR2009102304075.html

classicman;602852 wrote:

I'd guess there are some pics just like them somewhere from the U.S.

Redux;602983 wrote:

And, IMO, we should lead by example.

Or we can continue to pass the buck to China, and perhaps, over the longer term, let China becoming more of an innovator of cleaner, more efficient energy technologies and reap the benefits worldwide.

Undertoad;603024 wrote:

We are.


Funny thing about innovation... the Chinese will soon have the safest, most innovative nuclear power facilities in the world.

But the two major players building them are the US company Westinghouse and the French company Areva. Due to regulations the US hasn't built a plant in 30 years, but GE and Westinghouse are still major players.

(The economy for nuclear changed slightly under the B*sh administration when the B*sh DOE offered grants to recover high initial costs to build a nuke plant. They threw money at the problem, and several new plants will be built soon. But that's a temporary and expensive fix.)

OMB reviewed 107 major Federal rulemakings finalized over the previous ten years (October 1, 1992 to September 30, 2002). The estimated total annual quantified benefits of these rules range from $146 billion to $230 billion, while the estimated total annual quantified costs range from $36 billion to $42 billion. The majority of the quantified benefits are attributable to a handful of clean-air rules issued by EPA pursuant to the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act. (Chapter I)

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/inforeg/2003_cost-ben_final_rpt.pdf

Undertoad;603024 wrote:

But the two major players building them are the US company Westinghouse and the French company Areva.

morethanpretty;603029 wrote:

UT - try looking for superfund sites. Here is a link from EPA

TheMercenary;603190 wrote:

As long as China can get us to spend billions of dollars to make changes in our system while they don't have to do anything other than continue to build a new coal fired plant a week with no control they are good to go and we are screwed. They take the long view.

SamIam;610236 wrote:

Russian hackers have also proved that Sarah Palin is an Islamic terrorist. :eek:

TheMercenary;610211 wrote:

I wouldn't be surprised by any of that.

SamIam;610392 wrote:

I'm fine with reliable evidence, but "Russian hackers" just don't get it for me. :rolleyes:

Undertoad;610208 wrote:

Major, major global warming news today.

Does this mean warming is not happening? I still think it is, based on the measurements other than instrumental. If we go back to this chart from Wikipedia, I think it's the black line that's suspect, that's the instrumental line, which comes from that data:
The other measurements show warming too, just not as wickedly ramped up.

xoxoxoBruce;610400 wrote:

... what meaningful things we can do about it, if anything, and which remedies are just feel good wastes of time/money?

How many horsepower does it take to maintain 50 MPH? Somewhere between two and ten horsepower.

Undertoad;610432 wrote:

My lawnmower's engine is like 7HP, so if I hook it up to an axle, and drive on a flat road, I can eventually do 50? Cooool

Undertoad;610452 wrote:

What if I start by going down a hill?

Undertoad;610465 wrote:

Y'know what's funny though. If you had like 8 actual horses, hitched up, you still couldn't go faster than one horse's power.

ZenGum;610473 wrote:

TW, what's your reason for not taking hydrogen seriously as a fuel?

ZenGum;610440 wrote:

Stick to the evidence and reasoned argument based on it.

Undertoad;610465 wrote:

Y'know what's funny though. If you had like 8 actual horses, hitched up, you still couldn't go faster than one horse's power.

xoxoxoBruce;610564 wrote:

Weren't these hackers making public the evidence behind the official reasoned argument? Are you saying we don't want the evidence, we can't handle the evidence?....

A group of Russian hackers broke into systems at a Climate Research lab in East Anglia. Today they released 162 megs of [COLOR="RoyalBlue"]data[/COLOR], [COLOR="royalblue"]code[/COLOR], and emails. One of the lab directors has said the documents are genuine.

Hydrogen (ie water) has no energy...

Electronic files that were stolen from a prominent climate research center and made public last week provide a rare glimpse into the behind-the-scenes battle to shape the public perception of global warming.

While few U.S. politicians bother to question whether humans are changing the world's climate -- nearly three years ago the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded the evidence was unequivocal -- public debate persists. And the newly disclosed private exchanges among climate scientists at Britain's Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia reveal an intellectual circle that appears to feel very much under attack, and eager to punish its enemies.

A group of Russian hackers broke into systems at a Climate Research lab in East Anglia. Today they released 162 megs of data, code, and emails. One of the lab directors has said the documents are genuine.

xoxoxoBruce;610572 wrote:

Taking UT at his word... and I have no colleagues.

Michael E. Mann, who directs the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, said in a telephone interview from Paris that skeptics are "taking these words totally out of context to make something trivial appear nefarious."

In one e-mail from 1999, the center's director, Phil Jones, alludes to one of Mann's articles in the journal Nature and writes, "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

[COLOR="Red"](skeptics point to this e-mail and scream...."see...they are fudging data")[/COLOR]

Mann said the "trick" Jones referred to was placing a chart of proxy temperature records, which ended in 1980, next to a line showing the temperature record collected by instruments from that time onward. "It's hardly anything you would call a trick," Mann said, adding that both charts were differentiated and clearly marked.

But Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said this and other exchanges show researchers have colluded to establish the scientific consensus that humans are causing climate change.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/20/AR2009112004093.html?hpid=sec-nation

TheMercenary;610617 wrote:

It could be read as a possible concerted effort to deceive via coercion rather than putting all the data out in the public scientific community and allow it to be peer reviewed by any interested party.

ZenGum;610586 wrote:

There is a difference, in that with hydrogen, we put the energy in there deliberately, but with the others it was there already, but ... so what?

ZenGum;610832 wrote:

...and using "oil shale" ... bloody filthy.

ZenGum;610747 wrote:

is enough to convince you it is all a fraud,

tw;610476 wrote:

No horse has overdrive.

Undertoad;610208 wrote:

Major, major global warming news today.

A group of Russian hackers broke into systems at a Climate Research lab in East Anglia. Today they released 162 megs of data, code, and emails. One of the lab directors has said the documents are genuine.

So far only the emails have been documented by people getting into it all, and they seem to indicate that the environmental scientists there have engaged in quite a bit of FRAUD.

= manipulated evidence;
= had doubts about warming;
= suppressed evidence;
= expressed violent fantasies about GW skeptic scientists;
= attempted to disguise the Medieval Warm Period by framing it out in time;
= discussed how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process

Does this mean warming is not happening? I still think it is, based on the measurements other than instrumental. If we go back to this chart from Wikipedia, I think it's the black line that's suspect, that's the instrumental line, which comes from that data:



The other measurements show warming too, just not as wickedly ramped up.

spudcon;611797 wrote:

Why doesn't anyone want to show the temperature charts from 2000 onward?

spudcon;611797 wrote:

Why doesn't anyone want to show the temperature charts from 2000 onward? Here's what Ive been finding.

classicman;611810 wrote:

perhaps because it doesn't support their theories. On the other hand. The change in temps seems more erratic in the last few decades...
<shrug>

What did we find? First, the station histories are unremarkable. There are no reasons for any large corrections. But we were astonished to find that strong adjustments have indeed been made.

About half the adjustments actually created a warming trend where none existed; the other half greatly exaggerated existing warming. All the adjustments increased or even created a warming trend, with only one (Dunedin) going the other way and slightly reducing the original trend.

The shocking truth is that the oldest readings have been cranked way down and later readings artificially lifted to give a false impression of warming, as documented below. There is nothing in the station histories to warrant these adjustments and to date Dr Salinger and NIWA have not revealed why they did this.

One station, Hokitika, had its early temperatures reduced by a huge 1.3°C, creating strong warming from a mild cooling, yet there&#8217;s no apparent reason for it.

We have discovered that the warming in New Zealand over the past 156 years was indeed man-made, but it had nothing to do with emissions of CO2&#8212;it was created by man-made adjustments of the temperature. It&#8217;s a disgrace.

Undertoad;612593 wrote:

A climate scientist in NZ has been found to have adjusted temps up. How: people got the actual, raw data and compared it to what he was publishing as NZ's climate history - and found the data to have been heavily massaged.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/uh-oh-raw-data-in-new-zealand-tells-a-different-story-than-the-official-one/

NIWA&#8217;s analysis of measured temperatures uses internationally accepted techniques, including making adjustments for changes such as movement of measurement sites. For example, in Wellington, early temperature measurements were made near sea level, but in 1928 the measurement site was moved from Thorndon (3 metres above sea level) to Kelburn (125 m above sea level). The Kelburn site is on average 0.8°C cooler than Thorndon, because of the extra height above sea level.

Such site differences are significant and must be accounted for when analysing long-term changes in temperature. The Climate Science Coalition has not done this.

NIWA climate scientists have previously explained to members of the Coalition why such corrections must be made. NIWA&#8217;s Chief Climate Scientist, Dr David Wratt, says he&#8217;s very disappointed that the Coalition continue to ignore such advice and therefore to present misleading analyses.

NIWA scientists are committed to providing robust information to help all New Zealanders make good decisions.

http://www.niwa.co.nz/news-and-publications/news/all/niwa-confirms-temperature-rise

Redux;612856 wrote:

At the very least, it is reasonable to see both sides before jumping

Griff;612893 wrote:

I wonder what the lay of the land is at the two sites

when countries with lables of "developing" get a pass.

ZenGum;613259 wrote:

China? India? Watch the news, man.

ZenGum;613259 wrote:

. . . taking a large amount of energy that had been locked up as chemical (or nuclear) energy, and releasing it to turn into heat. That warms the atmosphere. While a warmer atmosphere will emit more heat to space (ceteris paribus), it is less than 100% pass through and so this alone would/should/will/already-has cause(d) warming.

ZenGum;613282 wrote:

Is the LA Times okay for you?
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-climate-china27-2009nov27,0,3694292.story

Worth noting the correction paragraph about "carbon intensity" rather than overall emissions, though.

The climatologists at the center of the leaked email and document scandal have taken the line that it is all much ado about nothing. Yes, the wording of their messages was unfortunate, but they insist this in no way undermines the underlying science. They're ignoring the damage they've done to public confidence in the arbiters of climate science.

"What they've done is search through stolen personal emails&#8212;confidential between colleagues who often speak in a language they understand and is often foreign to the outside world," Penn State's Michael Mann told Reuters Wednesday. Mr. Mann added that this has made "something innocent into something nefarious."

View Full Image

Associated Press

The Australian Antarctic research station Casey, where scientists study the effects of climate change.
Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, from which the emails were lifted, is singing from the same climate hymnal. "My colleagues and I accept that some of the published emails do not read well. I regret any upset or confusion caused as a result. Some were clearly written in the heat of the moment, others use colloquialisms frequently used between close colleagues," he said this week.

We don't doubt that Mr. Jones would have phrased his emails differently if he expected them to end up in the newspaper. He's right that it doesn't look good that his May 2008 email to Mr. Mann regarding the U.N.'s Fourth Assessment Report said "Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?" Mr. Mann says he didn't delete any such emails, but the point is that Mr. Jones wanted them hidden.

The furor over these documents is not about tone, colloquialisms or whether climatologists are nice people. The real issue is what the messages say about the way the much-ballyhooed scientific consensus on global warming was arrived at, and how a single view of warming and its causes is being enforced. The impression left by the correspondence among Messrs. Mann and Jones and others is that the climate-tracking game has been rigged from the start.

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA&#8217;s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals &#8212; stored on paper and magnetic tape &#8212; were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

The admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU&#8217;s director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data.

Certainly also possibly has superimposed nature changing rate, but also has certain uncertainty.

"the worst scientific scandal of our generation".

With no disrespect to sausages and laws, Bismarck’s most famous aphorism clearly requires updating. “Scientific research” is bidding furiously to make the global shortlist of things one should not see being made.
Understandably so. Sciences at the cutting edge of statistics and public policy can make blood sports seem genteel. Scientists aggressively promoting pet hypotheses often relish the opportunity to marginalise and neutralise rival theories and exponents.

The malice, mischief and Machiavellian manoeuvrings revealed in the illegally hacked megabytes of emails from the University of East Anglia’s prestigious Climate Research Unit, for example, offers a useful paradigm of contemporary scientific conflict. Science may be objective; scientists emphatically are not. This episode illustrates what too many universities, professional societies, and research funders have irresponsibly allowed their scientists to become. Shame on them all.
The source of that shame is a toxic mix of institutional laziness and complacency. Too many scientists in academia, industry and government are allowed to get away with concealing or withholding vital information about their data, research methodologies and results. That is unacceptable and must change.

Only recently in America, for example, have academic pharmaceutical researchers been required to disclose certain financial conflicts of interest they might have. On issues of the greatest importance for public policy, science researchers less transparent than they should be. That behaviour undermines science, policy and public trust.
Dubbed “climate-gate” by global warming sceptics, the most outrageous East Anglia email excerpts appear to suggest respected scientists misleadingly manipulated data and suppressed legitimate argument in peer-reviewed journals.

These claims are forcefully denied, but the correspondents do little to enhance confidence in either the integrity or the professionalism of the university’s climatologists. What is more, there are no denials around the researchers’ repeated efforts to avoid meaningful compliance with several requests under the UK Freedom of Information Act to gain access to their working methods. Indeed, researchers were asked to delete and destroy emails. Secrecy, not privacy, is at the rotten heart of this bad behavior by ostensibly good scientists.

Why should research funding institutions and taxpayers fund scientists who deliberately delay, obfuscate and deny open access to their research?
Why should scientific journals publish peer-reviewed research where the submitting scientists have not made every reasonable effort to make their work – raw data & sophisticated computer simulations – as transparent and accessible as possible?
Why should responsible policymakers in America, Europe, Asia and Latin America make decisions affecting people’s health, wealth and future based on opaque and inaccessible science?

But the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is &#8211; what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide? The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programmes, always to point in only the one desired direction &#8211; to lower past temperatures and to "adjust" recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming. This comes up so often (not least in the documents relating to computer data in the Harry Read Me file) that it becomes the most disturbing single element of the entire story. This is what Mr McIntyre caught Dr Hansen doing with his GISS temperature record last year (after which Hansen was forced to revise his record), and two further shocking examples have now come to light from Australia and New Zealand.

Why should research funding institutions and taxpayers fund scientists who deliberately delay, obfuscate and deny open access to their research?
Why should scientific journals publish peer-reviewed research where the submitting scientists have not made every reasonable effort to make their work &#8211; raw data & sophisticated computer simulations &#8211; as transparent and accessible as possible?
Why should responsible policymakers in America, Europe, Asia and Latin America make decisions affecting people&#8217;s health, wealth and future based on opaque and inaccessible science?

India would however accept international verification of reductions if supported by financing and technology transfers.

China has been the chief beneficiary of the U.N.&#8217;s Clean Development Mechanism, or CDM, which under the Kyoto Protocol set up a system of credits which can be sold and traded, and which are used by companies to offset their own emissions. Some 60% of all globally traded carbon credits originate from China projects.

China&#8217;s climate-change regulators have approved 2,232 CDM projects this year through October &#8211; but only 663 of those, or just under 30%, have received final approval by the U.N. to issue credits.

The basic idea is that companies in rich countries, to reach their own greenhouse gas quotas back home, pay for carbon abatement projects that wouldn&#8217;t have gotten built otherwise in poor countries.

"What the world is waiting for now is exactly what will be the American commitments to reduce their emissions," Hedegaard said and added the world also wanted to know "what kind of financial contributions would come from the American side."

"There, President Obama could be very helpful if he has something in his pocket ... when he comes to Copenhagen. I think it would be very useful."

As the world's leading oil producer, Saudi Arabia has previously fought attempts to agree curbs on emissions, and has also argued that it should receive financial compensation for "lost" revenue, given that constraints on emissions might restrict oil sales.

Undertoad;614880 wrote:

Speaking as an [COLOR="White"]unemployed[/COLOR] American, my opening bid is we will clean us up, and the rest of you can go fuck yourselves raw.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- A federal probe of tainted Chinese drywall has broadened because a small number of homeowners are reporting that American-made drywall is causing some of the same problems: a sickening, sulfurous stench and corroded pipes and wiring.

"We are not limited in the scope of our investigation to just Chinese drywall," said Scott Wolfson, spokesman for the Consumer Products Safety Commission, which is conducting the largest investigation in its history after thousands of homeowners complained and filed lawsuits.

The vast majority of complaints still center on China-made gypsum board imported during the recent U.S. housing boom, when domestic building materials were in short supply. And the commission's investigation is focused mainly on the imported drywall, Wolfson said.

But sporadic reports are surfacing from owners of homes built with American drywall, and the symptoms they report are similar to those reported with the Chinese drywall: a rotten-egg odor that makes occupants sick, corrosion of copper pipes, and ruined TVs and air conditioners.

"We've got a huge problem here, and we just need help," said George Brincku, 48, who bought his southwest Florida house in 2004 and almost immediately began noticing the odd smell, the corrosion of wires and headaches.

When he saw reports about Chinese drywall, he assumed that was the problem with his house - until he called the contractor who installed it.

"I have all 100 percent American-made drywall," Brincku said.

He sent samples to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which found that the wallboard from Brincku's home contained 50 percent gypsum and 50 percent cellulose, an organic compound. Drywall should contain mostly gypsum.

Researchers do not know for certain what causes the chemical reactions, but an MIT scientist said the mixture of gypsum and cellulose in Brincku's wallboard, combined with the humid atmosphere in Florida, was releasing sulfurous gases, causing corrosion of copper, brass and silver.

"The only solution is removal of the drywall," Thomas Eagar, an MIT professor of materials engineering, wrote in his report. He did not return a call from The Associated Press.

Most of the drywall in Brincku's home was made by Charlotte, N.C.-based National Gypsum, which said its own testing found the material from the house contained just 4 percent cellulose.

Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedges

But this crowd gathering here is far worse than just a bunch of hand-wringing Hamlets dithering in Denmark.

Some 40,000 tons of carbon will be spewed getting this crowd together and keeping them in comfort.

That is the daily amount of carbon dioxide produced by 30 of the world's smaller countries, according to UN statistics.

Here is how the story now known as ClimateGate broke: On Nov. 17, an unknown person somehow gained access to a huge cache of emails and data files from the University of East Anglia's climate research unit (CRU) and put them on the Internet. The hacker posted links to the data on prominent climate-skeptic blogs, just weeks before the Dec. 7 start of the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen. Then, the documents were distributed with the ominous preface: "We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents."

The approximately 1,000 emails and 3,000 documents purportedly showed that an elite cabal of climatologists had massaged decades of data to fool the world into believing in the myth of anthropogenic climate change. (The perpetrators offered no explanation why the scientists might want to do this. My best guess: All climatologists secretly despise GDP growth.) The scientists had apparently altered the world's biggest record of global surface temperature readings, trashed discordant evidence, and publicly humiliated climatologists who reached differing conclusions.

Climate blogs went wild. The British press soon glommed onto the story with characteristic maniacal glee. One typical post by James Delingpole in the Daily Telegraph, for instance, read: "If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth ... has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed."

Within a day, the story caught on across the Atlantic -- particularly in the right-wing press. Blogger Matt Drudge banged the drum with headlines declaring a "climate cult." Glenn Beck and other Fox News anchors devoted hours to the story. And on Thursday, two members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (one the head of right-wing outfit Pajamas Media, which sent Joe the Plumber to cover the Middle East peace process) demanded that Al Gore -- whose Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth featured the work of some of the climatologists embroiled in the scandal -- give his award back.

The truth, climate scientists insist, is that the data does nothing to disprove the overwhelming evidence that global warming exists and is caused by humans -- evidenced in multiple data pools and corroborated by thousands of studies. Spencer Weart, a physicist who specializes in the atmosphere and wrote The Discovery of Global Warming, explains, citing glacier and polar cap readings: "Even if you threw out every study from every scientist at East Anglia, it wouldn't change anything. There's 15 different ways to prove without doubt that the world has gotten very warm."

Michael MacCracken, climate-change scientist and former director of the Office of the U.S. Global Change Research Program and now at the Climate Institute in Washington D.C., told Foreign Policy, simply, "I don't think there is any doubt." Yesterday, Climate, among the most respected journals in the field, concurred: "Nothing in the emails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real -- or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the emails."

Still, the CRU emails revealed some entirely unprofessional and possibly illegal behavior, including on the part of the CRU's director, Phil Jones, who has been one of the world's most influential climatologists. The East Anglia scientist asked some staff members to delete emails, which they apparently did; now there is no way to know what data or analysis they contained. He seems to have attempted to keep certain contradictory papers out of a forthcoming report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (They made it in.) And the emails raise questions about the integrity of the world's largest dataset of historical temperature numbers.

The leaking of the ClimateGate cache does mean the scientific community has some questions to answer. But its media footprint has been far greater than the evidence called for -- and that has unfortunate consequences. The scandal has cast a wide spectrum of doubt on climate scientists in general, even those far removed from any accusation of wrongdoing. And it has revealed the extent to which many climate scientists already feel they are forever playing defense.

Many of the climate researchers I contacted for this story seemed so wearied by the whole thing they could barely summon the energy to explain or comment on the incident. For, more than anything, the emails evince Jones and others scientists' almost desperate desire to keep the wagons circled -- not because the science is shaky, but because they feel the field is under siege. Indeed, in the past 20 or 30 years, climate change has become not just a scientific interest, but a lightening-rod political issue.

In 1988, NASA scientist Jim Hansen published one of the first major papers modeling how hot the Earth might get, testifying on Capitol Hill and stirring debate in labs and lecture halls. By 1995, a group of scientists had started vocally dissenting from the emerging consensus on its anthropogenic causes, signing the Leipzig Declaration, which stated: "There does not exist today a general scientific consensus about the importance of greenhouse warming from rising levels of carbon dioxide. On the contrary, most scientists now accept the fact that actual observations from earth satellites show no climate warming whatsoever." (The latter point has since been proven false.) The declaration, down to its pompous name, was meant to be a political statement -- and it helped turn lab-bound climate scientists into political actors on a global stage.

Later that year, the debate turned nasty when the physicist Frederick Seitz took to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal to accuse other climate researchers of colluding to bolster the case for anthropogenic global warming in IPCC reports. "In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community, including service as president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society," he wrote, damningly, "I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report."

"Then, it was like the siege," says Weart, with "the scientific community rising up against him." Other scientists discredited Seitz by revealing he was on the payroll of tobacco companies while arguing against the carcinogenic effects of second-hand smoke. The dialogue never got any nicer. "In the early emails" -- from the early 1990s -- "I saw rather little political response," Weart says. "[The CRU scientists] were mostly busy criticizing each other. Then as you go forward, you find this increasing frustration and increasing anger as you get towards the present."

And, particularly within the past 10 years, climatologists have faced increasing harassment: constant haranguing emails and hate mail; picketing at conventions; skeptical and inquisitive calls from Capitol Hill and think tanks and blogs; repeated Freedom of Information Act requests for datasets; even death threats. In turn, "scandals" accusing various scientists of falsifying data or colluding for political reasons have ever since arisen at critical decision-making moments, such as during governmental debates on policies like cap-and-trade.

The same thing is happening now, MacCracken says, "because we're getting close to actually doing something significant. And there's a lot of people who seem somehow resistant to change. So if you don't like the message then you go after the messenger. This has been going on for quite some time."

The troubling takeaway is not about the nature of climate change, the science, or the treaties, or even the scandal. It's about the white-hot political pressure bearing down upon this small community of scientific specialists. It seems probable that Jones and his colleagues believed internecine scientific disputes might be used as a cudgel by politically motivated skeptics. His defensiveness, in such a heated and politicized milieu, seems understandable if not defensible. But ultimately, it can't be good for anyone on Earth.

Many of you are too young to remember, but in 1975 our government pushed "the coming ice age."

Random House dutifully printed "THE WEATHER CONSPIRACY … coming of the New Ice Age." This may be the only book ever written by 18 authors. All 18 lived just a short sled ride from Washington, D.C. Newsweek fell in line and did a cover issue warning us of global cooling on April 28, 1975. And The New York Times, Aug. 14, 1976, reported "many signs that Earth may be headed for another ice age."

OK, you say, that's media. But what did our rational scientists say?

In 1974, the National Science Board announced: "During the last 20 to 30 years, world temperature has fallen, irregularly at first but more sharply over the last decade. Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end…leading into the next ice age."

You can't blame these scientists for sucking up to the fed's mantra du jour. Scientists live off grants. Remember how Galileo recanted his preaching about the earth revolving around the sun? He, of course, was about to be barbecued by his leaders. Today's scientists merely lose their cash flow. Threats work.

In 2002 I stood in a room of the Smithsonian. One entire wall charted the cooling of our globe over the last 60 million years. This was no straight line. The curve had two steep dips followed by leveling. There were no significant warming periods. Smithsonian scientists inscribed it across some 20 feet of plaster, with timelines.

Last year, I went back. That fresco is painted over. The same curve hides behind smoked glass, shrunk to three feet but showing the same cooling trend. Hey, why should the Smithsonian put its tax-free status at risk? If the politicians decide to whip up public fear in a different direction, get with it, oh ye subsidized servants. Downplay that embarrassing old chart and maybe nobody will notice.

Sorry, I noticed.

It's the job of elected officials to whip up panic. They then get re-elected. Their supporters fall in line.

It's the science scandal of the year. A thousand e-mails and 2,000 other documents were swiped from the server of Britain's Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University and posted on the Web. Many were truly embarrassing to the writers, while others have been quoted out of context and falsely used as "proof" that global warming is "a hoax."

But in one e-mail, a top "warmist" researcher admits it's a "travesty" that "we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment." (Emphasis added.) Further, "any consideration of geoengineering [is] quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not!"

"Geoengineering," as in the Waxman-Markey "cap and trade" bill that passed the House and that the conservative Heritage Foundation estimates will lop $9.4 trillion off the economy? The one that President Barack Obama plans to support at next week's U.N. Climate Change Conference? Yes, that "geoengineering."

As it happens, the writer of that October 2009 e-mail--Kevin Trenberth, a lead author of the warmist bible, the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report--told Congress two years ago that evidence for manmade warming is "unequivocal." He claimed "the planet is running a 'fever' and the prognosis is that it is apt to get much worse."

But Trenberth's "lack of warming at the moment" has been going on at least a decade. "There has been no [surface-measured] warming since 1997 and no statistically significant warming since 1995," observes MIT meteorologist Richard Lindzen. "According to satellite data, global warming stopped about 10 years ago and there's no way to know whether it's happening now," says Roy Spencer, former NASA senior scientist for climate studies.

piercehawkeye45;615712 wrote:

Article responding to the recent climate change events

"Geoengineering," as in the Waxman-Markey "cap and trade" bill that passed the House and that the conservative Heritage Foundation estimates will lop $9.4 trillion off the economy? The one that President Barack Obama plans to support at next week's U.N. Climate Change Conference? Yes, that "geoengineering."

jinx wrote:

Damage control. Pretty weak at that.

piercehawkeye45;615742 wrote:

Classic, money means its a conspiracy, and a big one. Not only would they have to fake multiple sets of raw data, they would also have have a more or less global consensus on this.

Also Classic, for your second link, its pure crap.

classicman;615744 wrote:

Not really - the basic raw data needs to be fucked with and thats about it.

Opinions are like assholes ...

Jinx wrote:

Raw data? In that article full of boo-hooing and political rock throwing ("it's the right-winger's fault, they're suck jerkheads!")

Saying there's 15 ways to prove the earth is getting warmer and that the cause is 'almost certainly' humans isn't raw data.

piercehawkeye45;615764 wrote:

All I've seen are argument flaws and trying to disprove a single person from the entire panel.

But Trenberth's "lack of warming at the moment" has been going on at least a decade. "There has been no [surface-measured] warming since 1997 and no statistically significant warming since 1995," observes MIT meteorologist Richard Lindzen. "According to satellite data, global warming stopped about 10 years ago and there's no way to know whether it's happening now," says Roy Spencer, former NASA senior scientist for climate studies.

xoxoxoBruce wrote:

Because he's the "hockey stick graph" creator, that so much of their argument is based on.

piercehawkeye45;616526 wrote:

Most of their sources derived from one person? Maybe its true but the sources page on even one IPCC section has at least 25-50 peer review scholarly sources.

xoxoxoBruce;616639 wrote:

No, not derived from one person. His hockey stick graph gave them the target to aim for, when tailoring the results of their data, when creating their computer models, when writing their grant requests.

Jinx wrote:

Damage control. Pretty weak at that.

Zen wrote:

This being the only habitable planet we know of or can feasibly reach, running potentially disastrous experiments on it would seem very stupid.

COPENHAGEN &#8212; Ray Weiss looks at the chanting protesters, harried delegates and the 20,000 other people gathered here for a global warming summit and wonders: What's the fuss all about?

Weiss, a geochemist who studies atmospheric pollution at San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography, says the numbers at the core of the debate in Copenhagen are flawed.

Specifically, he says the cuts that countries including the USA are proposing in greenhouse gas emissions are difficult to measure and highly susceptible to manipulation by government officials and companies.

"I don't see the point in doing all this if the numbers are so far off," Weiss said, shaking his head as he watched conference attendees hurry by Thursday. "When you hear politicians tell you that they can measure these things, just because they passed a deal in Copenhagen, I think you should take that with a few grains of salt."

Most of the summit's attention has focused on exactly how much countries will commit to cutting emissions of gases that data suggest are causing the earth to warm. Yet some scientists, legal experts and delegates say the hardest part of any deal in Copenhagen will be measuring &#8212; and then enforcing &#8212; whatever politicians decide.

Those two issues are "the iceberg on which the entire conference could founder," says Peter Goldmark, a program director for the Environmental Defense Fund, a non-profit group.

The Obama administration has proposed a 17% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, compared with levels in 2005. Most European countries have offered more ambitious cuts, while China has pushed a target that would allow its carbon dioxide output to continue to grow with its economy, though at a slower pace.

In a study last year, Weiss and colleagues took air samples and found that levels of nitrogen trifluoride, an industrial gas 17,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide as an atmospheric warming agent, were four times above what industry estimates had suggested.

He says monitoring equipment must be significantly upgraded around the world to prevent similar fudging of data if a deal is reached in Copenhagen.

Todd Stern, a lead negotiator for the U.S. delegation, says he's pushing for a system that, after Copenhagen, "allows countries to look at each other and get confidence that everybody is doing what they said they were doing."

However, governments in India and China &#8212; which is the world's biggest carbon emitter &#8212; have resisted draft proposals that would allow for international verification of data.

classicman;616735 wrote:

so........ you are saying that perhaps the data overstated how extensive the warming was but not that there is global warming? :eyebrow:

classicman;616750 wrote:

What is the cause? We have no idea, and these people make their living off trying to tell us the answer.

Is it possible that this warming which is now admittedly not as extreme as originally thought may be from some natural occurrences?

Do we, the entire human race need to act immediately on an assumption that it is our fault?

Is it true that some glaciers in other areas are actually growing?

piercehawkeye45;616881 wrote:

...We need to decide whether we want to make decisions based on what is 50% likely to happen, 90%, worst-case? How we can legitimately prevent or adapt to these changes or consequences?

If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It's not about our analysis ... It's about our response.

Then we should shoot somebody in the face with bird shot.

SamIam;617036 wrote:

Temperatures were higher 100,000 or more years ago, but guess what? That climate did not support the life forms we see today.

xoxoxoBruce;616930 wrote:

We don't even know if we can make a significant difference in the grand scheme of things.
Alternative, sustainable, energy sources, is a no brainer to me. Not for climate change, for the self centered, take care of us, fuck them foreigners, national security. If it helps prevent climate change, that's a plus.

All the other stuff, I want to see cost/benefit before I'm onboard.

SamIam;617036 wrote:

That climate did not support the life forms we see today.

Undertoad;617097 wrote:

Don't worry. The human species has multiplied its natural carrying capacity by many times over in the last 100 years.

wrote:

At the same time, an alarming trend towards overpopulation has slowed, and the curve now says we aren't going to grow infinitely.

wrote:

(Which is good for AGW proponents who want to hurt man's natural carrying capacity by taxing energy. That includes energy for agriculture...)

Undertoad;617097 wrote:

Don't worry. The human species has multiplied its natural carrying capacity by many times over in the last 100 years.

At the same time, an alarming trend towards overpopulation has slowed, and the curve now says we aren't going to grow infinitely.

(Which is good for AGW proponents who want to hurt man's natural carrying capacity by taxing energy. That includes energy for agriculture...)

Now the hurtful question: will an increase in global temperature increase or decrease the amount of arable land on the planet?

I don't know, but it's a tough one innit? Every climate change will have its positives and its negatives, and it's not fair to the question to just focus on the negatives.

The reality is that cost estimates for climate legislation are as unreliable as the models predicting climate change. What comes out of the computer is a function of what politicians type in. A better indicator might be what other countries are already experiencing. Britain's Taxpayer Alliance estimates the average family there is paying nearly $1,300 a year in green taxes for carbon-cutting programs in effect only a few years.

Americans should know that those Members who vote for this climate bill are voting for what is likely to be the biggest tax in American history. Even Democrats can't repeal that reality.

A new study published in the journal Geology shows that if carbon dioxide emissions reach extreme levels, the changes in the world’s oceans might result in lobsters 50 percent bigger than normal. Lobsters can take carbon from the water and use it to build their exoskeletons, says marine geologist Justin Ries, who oversaw the study. The theory, he tells NPR’s Guy Raz, is that lobsters are able to convert the extra carbon into material for building up their shells.

Ries and colleagues grew 18 different species of economically and ecologically important marine calcifiers (animals that make shells out of calcium carbonate) at various levels of CO2 predicted to occur over the next several centuries, the UNC statement explained. "When CO2 combines with water, it produces carbonic acid, raising the overall amount of carbon in seawater but reducing the amount of the carbonate ion used by organisms in their calcification."

Seven species (crabs, lobsters, shrimp, red and green calcifying algae, limpets and temperate urchins) calcified at a higher rate and increased in mass under elevated CO2. Ten types of organisms (including oysters, scallops, temperate corals and tube worms) had reduced calcification under elevated CO2, with several (hard and soft clams, conchs, periwinkles, whelks and tropical urchins) seeing their shells dissolve. One species (mussels) showed no response.

TheMercenary;617149 wrote:

Cap and trade will not work.

By JIM DWYER
Published: December 12, 2009
The average New Yorker uses one-half to one-third the electricity of other Americans. Our carbon footprints are just 29 percent of people who live outside the five boroughs, and City Hall has practical plans to reduce even that amount by nearly a third over the next two decades. No wonder that this month, in a talk at the New York Academy of Science, Rohit Aggarwalat, the mayor&#8217;s chief adviser on sustainability, said the city was &#8220;the most environmentally efficient society in the United States.&#8221;

So it makes perfect sense that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is going to Copenhagen on Monday and Tuesday to address the international conference on climate change: his administration is working to head off problems that will not emerge until long after he is gone.

A strong case can be made that when it comes to energy and climate issues, Mr. Bloomberg is the most visionary public official in the country.

And a strong argument can also be made that on a personal level, he ranks among the worst individual polluters ever to hold public office.

Mr. Bloomberg owns a helicopter and two jets, both Falcon 900s. He flies everywhere on private jets, by far the least efficient form of transportation on or above the earth. He takes his jet to Bermuda many weekends. He has flown around the globe on it. He uses it to go to Washington. He is planning to get to Copenhagen for the climate conference by private jet, too.

The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists.

Their predictions – based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans – challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply cherished beliefs, such as the claim that the North Pole will be free of ice in
summer by 2013.

According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this.

They say that their research shows that much of the warming was caused by oceanic cycles when they were in a ‘warm mode’ as opposed to the present ‘cold mode’.

This challenge to the widespread view that the planet is on the brink of an irreversible catastrophe is all the greater because the scientists could never be described as global warming ‘deniers’ or sceptics.

Prof Latif, who leads a research team at the renowned Leibniz Institute at Germany’s Kiel University, has developed new methods for measuring ocean temperatures 3,000ft beneath the surface, where the cooling and warming cycles start.

He and his colleagues predicted the new cooling trend in a paper published in 2008 and warned of it again at an IPCC conference in Geneva last September.

Last night he told The Mail on Sunday: ‘A significant share of the warming we saw from 1980 to 2000 and at earlier periods in the 20th Century was due to these cycles – perhaps as much as 50 per cent.

'They have now gone into reverse, so winters like this one will become much more likely. Summers will also probably be cooler, and all this may well last two decades or longer.

‘The extreme retreats that we have seen in glaciers and sea ice will come to a halt. For the time being, global warming has paused, and there may well be some cooling.’

As Europe, Asia and North America froze last week, conventional wisdom insisted that this was merely a ‘blip’ of no long-term significance.

Though record lows were experienced as far south as Cuba, where the daily maximum on beaches normally used for winter bathing was just 4.5C, the BBC assured viewers that the big chill was merely short-term ‘weather’ that had nothing to do with ‘climate’, which was still warming.

The work of Prof Latif and the other scientists refutes that view.

classicman;625711 wrote:

Link

Here we go again. This sounds eerily like what they were saying back in the '70's.

Happy Monkey;625723 wrote:

Back in the '70s when a few scientists got headlines claiming an ice age, when the consensus was for warming?

They say that their research shows that much of the warming was caused by oceanic cycles when they were in a ‘warm mode’ as opposed to the present ‘cold mode’.

tw wrote:

Reality - the numbers - global warming is a serious man made problem. We just do not know how serious the problem is.

Prof Tsonis wrote:

When he published his work in the highly respected journal Geophysical Research Letters, he was deluged with &#8216;hate emails&#8217;.
He added: &#8216;People were accusing me of wanting to destroy the climate, yet all I&#8217;m interested in is the truth.&#8217;
He said he also received hate mail from climate change skeptics, accusing him of not going far enough to attack the theory of man-made warming.

classicman;625754 wrote:

When he published his work ..., he was deluged with ‘hate emails’.

Tsonis wrote:

No. In fact it appears that the (average) global temperature has at least leveled off if not decreasing.

Tsonis wrote:

If the overall warming is due to anthropogenic sources (and not some unknown very low-frequency feature of our climate system), then a break will indicate that at this point the natural variability signal is stronger than the anthropogenic signal.

"People were accusing me of wanting to destroy the climate, yet all I&#8217;m interested in is the truth."

classicman;625856 wrote:

LA Nina lasts 9-12 months. What percentage of time is that compared to your 600,000 year time span? How would that show up on a graph? Would it even be visible?

tw;625815 wrote:

....Global cooling is not why his paper got published. Only its new mathematics earned its publication. Only details &#8211; its non-linear mathematical theory - made his paper worthy of publication. Despite its mathematics, his simulation could not explain or predict a sudden and massive climate change from 600,000 years of normal temperature variations.....

...Tsonis&#8217; paper is about non-linear mathematics in weather simulations &#8211; not about a conclusion from an unproven simulation...

Redux;625967 wrote:

I certainly dont see how it makes the current overwhelming consensus among climate scientists ~snip~

Count me in the corner that says put the politics and extremists aside...send Gore (and the environmental doomsayers) and Inhofe (and the industry naysayers) to their respective corners with a "time out" and a STFU.

classicman;626033 wrote:

The overwhelming consensus in the '70's was the exact opposite - Where would we be now if we had listened then? Keep in mind that they wanted us to pour MORE Co2 out.

classicman;626033 wrote:

The overwhelming consensus in the '70's was the exact opposite -

classicman;626033 wrote:

The overwhelming consensus in the '70's was the exact opposite.

Could the [cold] winters of the late 1970s be the signal that
we were returning to yet another ice age? According to many
outspoken climate scientists in the late 1970s, the answer was
absolutely yes—and we needed action now to cope with the
coming changes . . . However, some scientists were skeptical,
and they pointed to a future of global warming, not cooling,
resulting from a continued build up of greenhouse gases.
These scientists were in the minority at the time.

According to Horner (2007), the massive funding of
climate change research was prompted by “ ‘consensus’
panic over ‘global cooling’.” This was “three decades
ago—when the media were fanning frenzy about global
cooling” (Will 2008) or, as Will (2004) succinctly put it,
“the fashionable panic was about global cooling.” “So,
before we take global warming as a scientific truth, we
should note that the opposite theory was once scientific
verity” (Bray 1991).

“Just think how far we have come!” Henley said. “Back in
the 1970s, all the climate scientists believed an ice age was
coming. They thought the world was getting colder. But once
the notion of global warming was raised, they immediately
recognized the advantages. Global warming creates a crisis,
a call to action. A crisis needs to be studied, it needs to be
funded . . .”

Thirty years ago there was much scientific discussion
among those who believed that humans inf luenced
the . . . reflectivity [which would] cool the earth, more
than . . . increasing carbon dioxide, causing warming. Back
then, the “coolers” had the upper hand because, indeed, the
planet was cooling . . . But nature quickly shifted gears . . .
Needless to say, the abrupt shift in the climate caused almost
as abrupt a shift in the balance of scientists who predictably
followed the temperature.

Yet only about 25 or so years ago, orthodox scientific opinion
was that the world was in a phase of global cooling. Much the
same evidence that was deployed to support the hypothesis
of global cooling is now brought into play to bolster that of
global warming — heat waves, cold spells, unusual types
of weather.

xoxoxoBruce;626086 wrote:

You don't need a weatherman to see which way the funds flow.

xoxoxoBruce;626117 wrote:

Get the fuck outta here. You know goddamn funding is political.

xoxoxoBruce;626130 wrote:

No. and I won't lower myself to either.

xoxoxoBruce;626132 wrote:

And don't forget it.

xoxoxoBruce;626086 wrote:

From Monkey's pdf;

Happy Monkey;625727 wrote:

I'm not sure when I'll manage to watch an hour and a half video, but page one of a Google search isn't promising.

Shawnee123;626260 wrote:

Oh, yeah. Huh?

classicman;625961 wrote:

I'm not sure that tree rings are going to be as accurate as we may need. When I think about the mechanical instruments we were using just 40 or 50 years ago, I start to scratch my head about the fractions of a degree raise. Just sayin'

Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn't been verified

The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.

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&#8217;s chapter on Asia, said: &#8216;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.

&#8216;It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.&#8217;

The claim that Himalayan glaciers are set to disappear by 2035 rests on two 1999 magazine interviews with glaciologist Syed Hasnain, which were then recycled without any further investigation in a 2005 report by the environmental campaign group WWF.

It was this report that Dr Lal and his team cited as their source.

The WWF article also contained a basic error in its arithmetic. A claim that one glacier was retreating at the alarming rate of 134 metres a year should in fact have said 23 metres &#8211; the authors had divided the total loss measured over 121 years by 21, not 121.

Last Friday, the WWF website posted a humiliating statement recognising the claim as &#8216;unsound&#8217;, and saying it &#8216;regrets any confusion caused&#8217;.

Dr Lal said: &#8216;We knew the WWF report with the 2035 date was &#8220;grey literature&#8221; [material not published in a peer-reviewed journal]. But it was never picked up by any of the authors in our working group, nor by any of the more than 500 external reviewers, by the governments to which it was sent, or by the final IPCC review editors.&#8217;

In fact, the 2035 melting date seems to have been plucked from thin air.

Professor Graham Cogley, a glacier expert at Trent University in Canada, who began to raise doubts in scientific circles last year, said the claim multiplies the rate at which glaciers have been seen to melt by a factor of about 25.

&#8216;My educated guess is that there will be somewhat less ice in 2035 than there is now,&#8217; he said.
Raj Pachauri

Forced to apologize: Chairman of the IPCC Raj Pachauri

&#8216;But there is no way the glaciers will be close to disappearing. It doesn&#8217;t seem to me that exaggerating the problem&#8217;s seriousness is going to help solve it.&#8217;

Copenhagen Summit Turned Junket?
(CBS) Few would argue with the U.S. having a presence at the Copenhagen Climate Summit. But wait until you hear what we found about how many in Congress got all-expense paid trips to Denmark on your dime.

Cameras spotted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the summit. She called the shots on who got to go.

They were joined by 18 colleagues: Democrats: Waxman, Miller, Markey, Gordon, Levin, Blumenauer, DeGette, Inslee, Ryan, Butterfield, Cleaver, Giffords, and Republicans: Barton, Upton, Moore Capito, Sullivan, Blackburn and Sensenbrenner.

That's not the half of it. But finding out more was a bit like trying to get the keys to Ft. Knox. Many referred us to Speaker Pelosi who wouldn't agree to an interview. Her office said it "will comply with disclosure requirements" but wouldn't give us cost estimates or even tell us where they all stayed.

"They're going because it's the biggest party of the year," Sen. Inhofe said. "The worst thing that happened there is they ran out of caviar."

Our investigation found that the congressional delegation was so large, it needed three military jets: two 737's and a Gulfstream Five -- up to 64 passengers -- traveling in luxurious comfort.

Along with those who flew commercial, we counted at least 101 Congress-related attendees. All for a summit that failed to deliver a global climate deal.

As a perk, some took spouses, since they could snag an open seat on a military jet or share a room at no extra cost to taxpayers.

Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense, wasn't against a U.S. presence. But he said, "Every penny counts. Congress should be shaking the couch cushions looking for change, rather than spending cash for everybody to go to Copenhagen."

Nobody we asked would defend the super-sized Congressional presence on camera. One Democrat said it showed the world the U.S. is serious about climate change.

And all those attendees who went to the summit rather than hooking up by teleconference? They produced enough climate-stunting carbon dioxide to fill 10,000 Olympic swimming pools

China Leading Race to Make Clean Energy

China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world&#8217;s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year.

China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world&#8217;s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants.

These efforts to dominate the global manufacture of renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/business/energy-environment/31renew.html?hp

classicman;631108 wrote:

I read that same article. Doesn't look good for the West does it?

Redux;631111 wrote:

That is why I have said repeatedly to get the extremists on both sides out of the discussion

TheMercenary;631168 wrote:

The United Nations' expert panel on climate change based claims about ice disappearing from the world's mountain tops on a student's dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.]

TheMercenary;631333 wrote:

Someone please call Al Gore. We need a new internet.

In a scientific paper, each statement of fact will have a reference to the study that substantiated it. Typically a scientific paper will have dozens of references, perhaps fifty, whilst a larger document, such as this report, may have many hundred. Of these, some may be non-peer reviewed, e.g. personal communications between scientists, abstracts from conferences, unpublished data, etc. Theses are given a form of peer-review (I know my doctoral thesis was) and are legitimate references, indeed in my field the theses of one of the earlier scientists was practically required reading. Remember that Nobel prize winning work has been published in theses before.

The point is that none of these more "questionable" references are alone used to support a conclusion, they are merely part of a larger web of information. It seems people are overly keen to seek error here.

Frankly, I'm a scientist that is more sceptical about the political agenda of both climate change advocates and sceptics than the science around the subject. As far as I can tell, the science is largely sound, whilst my faith in the good intentions of politicians is not.
Dr. Philip Thomas

tw;631311 wrote:

Global warming is a problem created by man...

Last week the Information Commissioner's Office &#8211; the body that administers the Freedom of Information Act &#8211; said the University of East Anglia had flouted the rules in its handling of an FOI request in May 2008.

Days after receiving the request for information from the British climate change sceptic David Holland, Jones asked Prof Mike Mann of Pennsylvania State University in the United States: "Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re AR4? Keith will do likewise.

"Can you also email Gene [Eugene Wahl, a paleoclimatologist in Boulder, Colorado] and get him to do the same ... We will be getting Caspar [Ammann, also from Boulder] to do the same."

The University of East Anglia says that no emails were deleted following this exchange.

The Bay Area just had its foggiest May in 50 years. And thanks to global warming, it's about to get even foggier.

That's the conclusion of several state researchers, whose soon-to-be-published study predicts that even with average temperatures on the rise, the mercury won't be soaring everywhere.

"There'll be winners and losers," says Robert Bornstein, a meteorology professor at San Jose State University. "Global warming is warming the interior part of California, but it leads to a reverse reaction of more fog along the coast."

The sight of Golden Gate Bridge towering above the fog will become increasing rare as climate change warms San Francisco bay, scientists have found.

The coastal fog along the Californian coast has declined by a third over the past 100 years &#8211; the equivalent of three hours cover a day, new research shows.
And it is not just bad for scenery, the reduction in the cooling effect of the fog could damage the health of the huge Redwood Forests nearby.

"Since 1901, the average number of hours of fog along the coast in summer has dropped from 56 per cent to 42 per cent, which is a loss of about three hours per day," said the study leader Dr James Johnstone at the University of California.

All right, I'm going to try to explain both sides of the Global Warming debate. I'll try to be as middle-of-the-road as possible, so spare me any over-arching partisan stuff. Well, enjoy:

Global Warming

In the last few years, the fight over climate change has been reaching a fevered pitch. While many believe that Al Gore's 2006 An Inconvenient Truth was the first time that Global Warming hit the main stream, it was in popular culture before that. Even games like Civilization II, made in the late 90s contained climate change.

Yet, An Inconvenient Truth has stayed as the standard bearer for those who believe in Global Warming, so I will examine some of the claims made therein.

An Inconvenient Truth

First up, the former Vice President claims that the world's glaciers are melting. Well, are they? Yes. It cannot be argued that some glaciers are indeed melting. However, the question of why has not been definitively answered. In fact, looking at the future scientists are not even sure that this trend will continue. What cannot be argued however is that Al Gore over-sensationalized this aspect of his documentary. Whether this was to fool people or to relate how important climate change is is anyone's guess.

Second, polar bears are dying. Al Gore is sure to get emotions running high with his artistic rendering of a polar bear swimming to a single, small block of ice that breaks when the bear finally reaches it. Climate change is killing polar bears faster than they can reproduce and it will only get worse, he claims. So, has the population of polar bears gone down in recent years? Absolutely not. But if the ice caps do indeed melt, then many polar bears will die. For now, however, they're on the rise.

Third, how quickly temperatures will change and how fast glaciers will melt. In this one, Mr. Gore warned of the impending screwed-ness of the world if we didn't stop our over-use of resources that were hurting the environment. Is what he said a possibility? Yes. But no study shows nearly the rate of ice melting as Al Gore predicted. Ranges for his level of apocalypse could be centuries in the coming, not a decade.

Is the Earth Warming?

This, of course, is the trickiest question of them all. Al Gore tried to tackle it, saying that it is at an almost unbelievable amount. The "hockey stick" graph has become synonymous with Global Warming, but is it true? Well, it depends. Without a doubt, Al Gore's predictions have been very, very wrong over the last few years. His fear-mongering about a temperature explosion has clouded real research and has made all climate change believers look like radicals.

So, Al Gore's wrong, but is the world's temperatures rising? Once again, this is a difficult question to answer. Take this absolutely accurate graph. Using a trend line that uses decades to come up with a figure, temperatures on average have risen. But look at this equally accurate graph. If you base the trend line on shorter amounts of time, then yes, temperatures have been going down over the last several years.

To have perspective, one must look at graphs spanning much longer times. As this graph shows, the recent rise in temperatures looks right at home. Whether it is or not, however, is still up for debate.

Incorrect Arguments From Both Sides

Well, I won't be the first to say this and I won't be the last: people who do not believe in climate change are not evil (necessarily). With data that is as skewed, unknown, and opinionated as this, anyone who says that those against Climate Change are "deniers" are dead wrong. I'm looking at you crazy liberals.

On the other side, those who say that people could not possibly change the environment are also wrong. An explosive example is the testing of the first nuclear weapon... Scientists actually thought that a single bomb could ignite the atmosphere. That would raise world temperature more than half a degree or two. With 6.5 Billion people on earth, we can change anything we want.

Well, that's it for part one. Please stay tuned for part, two, where I will cover Climate Gate, intense weather, and CO2.

busterb;637812 wrote:

Hey Al. How about sending me firewood. This f@#king golbal warming shit has about used my wood up.

In private e-mails obtained by The Washington Times, climate scientists at the National Academy of Sciences say they are tired of "being treated like political pawns" and need to fight back in kind. Their strategy includes forming a nonprofit group to organize researchers and use their donations to challenge critics by running a back-page ad in the New York Times.

"Sounds like this group wants to step up the warfare, continue to circle the wagons, continue to appeal to their own authority, etc.," said Judith A. Curry, a climate scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "Surprising, since these strategies haven't worked well for them at all so far."

She said scientists should downplay their catastrophic predictions, which she said are premature, and instead shore up and defend their research. She said scientists and institutions that have been pushing for policy changes "need to push the disconnect button for now," because it will be difficult to take action until public confidence in the science is restored.

In his e-mail, Mr. Woodwell acknowledged that he is advocating taking "an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach" but said scientists have had their "classical reasonableness" turned against them.

"We are dealing with an opposition that is not going to yield to facts or appeals from people who hold themselves in high regard and think their assertions and data are obvious truths," he wrote.

wrote:

NEW DELHI &#8211; For nearly 30 years, India and Bangladesh have argued over control of a tiny rock island in the Bay of Bengal. Now rising sea levels have resolved the dispute for them: the island's gone.

New Moore Island in the Sunderbans has been completely submerged, said oceanographer Sugata Hazra, a professor at Jadavpur University in Calcutta. Its disappearance has been confirmed by satellite imagery and sea patrols, he said.

"What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming," said Hazra.

"What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming," said Hazra.

glatt;642997 wrote:

The true story is that the island was a sand/mud bar that was created after a big storm a few decades ago. It was as tall as 2 meters at one point, but has been slowly eroding over time. The water rose a couple centimeters during that period, but it's the erosion, not the rising waters, that wiped this island away. Sand bars move.

Undertoad;643052 wrote:

That was the first thing that struck me, that he's saying the ocean waters are rising 5mm a year for the last ten years. [COLOR=black] Nobody in GW is making that claim[/COLOR]. They are saying more like 2mm. So the Bay of Bombay has now risen, according to him, 30mm higher than the rest of the world. ORLY?

morethanpretty;643754 wrote:

Real cause of global warming:
PiratesVsTemp[/IMG]

Published: April 14 2010 19:51

A key piece of evidence in climate change science was slammed as “exaggerated” on Wednesday by the UK’s leading statistician, in a vindication of claims that global warming sceptics have been making for years.

Professor David Hand, president of the Royal Statistical Society, said that a graph shaped like an ice hockey stick that has been used to represent the recent rise in global temperatures had been compiled using “inappropriate” methods.

“It used a particular statistical technique that exaggerated the effect [of recent warming],” he said.

The criticism came as part of a report published on Wednesday that found the scientists behind the “Climategate” e-mail scandal had behaved “honestly and fairly” and showed “no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice”.

The e-mails were hacked last autumn from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. They caused a storm, as they appeared to show scientists manipulating and concealing data.

Although Wednesday’s report – commissioned by UEA with advice from the Royal Society, the UK’s prestigious national science academy – exonerated the unit’s scientists, it criticized climate experts for failures in handling statistics.

“It is very surprising that research in an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close collaboration with professional statisticians,” the report concluded.

The hockey stick graph was a key part of the scandal. In the e-mails, UEA’s Professor Phil Jones referred to a “trick” to “hide the decline” in temperatures suggested by certain sources of data. A similar trick was used in the hockey stick graph.

The UEA scientists said that “trick” merely referred to a scientific technique – an explanation accepted by some skeptics, including Lord Lawson, former Tory chancellor.

Prof Hand said his criticisms should not be seen as invalidating climate science. He pointed out that although the hockey stick graph – which dates from a study led by US climate scientist Michael Mann in 1998 – exaggerates some effects, the underlying data show a clear warming signal.

xoxoxoBruce;648961 wrote:

I don't think there has ever been a question that it's warming up.

Undertoad;649011 wrote:

I heard a lot of people last fall attempting to slow down (i.e., harm) the global economy by enacting cap and trade due to the (now discredited) hockey stick graph.

The astrophysicist Milutin Milankovitch first proposed that cyclical variations in certain elements of Earth-Sun geometry can cause major changes in Earth's climate. The main variables are eccentricity, obliquity, and precession. Eccentricity refers to the changing shape of Earth's orbit around the Sun, which varies from nearly circular to elliptical over a cycle of about 100,000 years. Obliquity refers to the angle at which Earth's axis is tilted with respect to the plane of its orbit, varying between 22.1 degrees and 24.5 degrees over a 41,000-year cycle. And precession is the gradual change in the direction Earth's axis is pointing, which completes a cycle every 21,000 years.

"Because there are several components of orbital variability, each with lower frequency components of amplitude modulation, there is the potential for unusual interactions between them on long timescales of tens of millions of years," Zachos said. "What we found at 23 million years ago is a rare congruence of a low point in Earth's eccentricity and a period of minimal variation in obliquity."



The result of this rare congruence was a period of about 200,000 years when there was unusually low variability in the planet's climate, with reduced extremes of seasonal warmth and coldness. Earth's orbit was nearly circular, so its distance from the Sun stayed about the same throughout the year. In addition, the tilt of Earth's axis, which gives rise to the seasons, varied less than usual. In other words, the tilt doesn't always vary between the same extremes in its 41,000-year cycles; the obliquity cycle itself varies in amplitude over a longer period of about 1.25 million years. Similarly, the eccentricity cycle peaks every 400,000 years.



The combination of a low-amplitude "node" in the obliquity cycle and a minimum in eccentricity would have caused only several degrees difference in summer temperatures at the poles, but it was probably enough to allow the Antarctic ice sheet to expand, Zachos said.

piercehawkeye45;648974 wrote:

On what level? There is very little dispute among the scientific community about it but there are a lot of people who still don't believe the Earth is warming. I heard a lot of people this winter taking shots at global warming because their isolated area was supposedly colder than usual.

xoxoxoBruce;649300 wrote:

What they don't believe, is the scenarios of disaster and doom. The scientists pulling a tw, acting like they must be obeyed, doesn't help their case. Anyone that disputes it, won't get funding.

Scientists agree that global temperatures are rising, and so are levels of carbon dioxide. But the immediate impact of human activity on natural climate cycles&#8212;from ice-sheet dynamics to wind and ocean currents&#8212;remains unclear.

~~~~~~

Much of the current controversy over climate change centers on efforts to reconstruct past temperatures using what is known as "proxy" data from tree rings, harvest records, sea beds and lake sediments. Unlike ice cores, which contain telltale gases and particles from ages ago, the proxy data offer only indirect or fragmentary evidence of climate trends.
~~~~~~~
"Unfortunately many of our proxies have significant errors and are prone to be a slave to assumptions," says climatologist John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, who has often criticized the IPCC. His research, using temperature readings from NOAA and NASA satellites, has undermined arguments that the atmosphere is warming at an unusual rate.

The ice-core data from Antarctica is "terribly important," Dr. Christy says. "We really need to know what the climate did before we can answer why it did what it did. If it happened before, it will happen again, and probably worse."
~~~~~~
To ensure accuracy, 27 independent laboratories will analyze the ice cores during the next three years. They expect to analyze 40 different trace chemicals related to climate, some in levels down to parts per quadrillion.

At every stage, the scientists must be able to prove that the ice cores haven't been contaminated. They must also make sure the samples stay at minus-20 degrees Celsius or so throughout their 8,000-mile journey to Colorado. Otherwise, the key gases will dissipate.

"Its credibility is of crucial importance," said Thomas Stocker at the University of Bern in Switzerland, a co-chairman of the United Nations working group that assesses data for the IPCC.

classicman;659824 wrote:

Link
Really informative and interesting article.

An underwater ridge could explain why a major glacier in the Antarctic is melting more quickly than ever before, according to a new study.

Scientists used a robot submarine to make a 3D map of the ocean under the ice shelf at the end of the Pine Island Glacier in western Antarctica.

They discovered that the ice was no longer resting on a subsea ridge that had slowed the glacier's slide until the early 1970s.

The discovery means that the glacier's more rapid melting in recent years could be due to the flow of warmer sea water beneath it rather than climate change, as had previously been believed.

Adrian Jenkins, of the British Antarctic Survey, said the study raised 'new questions about whether the current loss of ice from Pine Island Glacier is caused by recent climate change or is a continuation of a longer-term process that began when the glacier disconnected from the ridge'.

Loss of contact with the subsea ridge meant that ice was flowing faster and also thawing more as sea water just above freezing flowed into an ever bigger cavity that now extended 30 km beyond the ridge.

Antarctica is key to predicting the rise in sea levels - it has enough ice to raise sea levels by 187 ft if it all melted.

West Antarctica's thaw accounts for 10 per cent of the recent rise in sea levels, with the Pine Island glacier melting far more quickly in recent decades.
Satellite photographs in the early 1970s had shown a bump on the surface of the ice shelf, indicating the subsea ridge.

That bump has vanished and the submarine found the ridge was now up to 100 metres below the ice shelf.

'We found something very unexpected,' said co-author Pierre Dutrieux, from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

'Acoustic instruments on the submarine told us that there was a ridge at the bottom of the ocean, sitting transverse to the flow of ice.'

'Some decades ago, the glacier was sitting on this ridge and the friction of the ridge was restraining the flow of the glacier,' he explained.

'When the glacier became detached from the ridge, the ice flow was able to accelerate significantly.'

Dutrieux said the ice may have started thinning because of some as yet-unknown mechanism linked to climate change, blamed mainly on mankind's use of fossil fuels.

'It could be a shift in the wind, due to a change in climate, that pushed more warm water under the shelf,' he said.

Dr Dutrieux said: 'We now know that there is relatively warm water beneath this floating ice so this warm water could have been able to melt the base of the ice shelf.

'Another process leading to the ice becoming detached from the ridge could have been a change in the water properties that was grinding the shelf from beneath.'

The U.N. panel of climate scientists projected in 2007 that world sea levels could rise by between 7-24 inches by 2100, excluding risks of faster melting in Antarctica and Greenland.

The study was published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Pie;659852 wrote:

<Looks at link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704655004575114010457906340.html>

Well, there's your problem!

But not only did British investigators clear the East Anglia scientist at the center of it all, Phil Jones, of scientific impropriety and dishonesty in April, an investigation at Penn State cleared PSU climatologist Michael Mann of “falsifying or suppressing data, intending to delete or conceal e-mails and information, and misusing privileged or confidential information” in February.

xoxoxoBruce;666504 wrote:

Yeah, cleared by their peers... their colleagues... their associates...

xoxoxoBruce;666504 wrote:

Yeah, cleared by their peers... their colleagues... their associates...

Climate change isn't a threat. CO2 isn't a significant factor. But the action we're proposing to take on climate mitigation will devastate our Western economies and impoverish a whole generation.

Over the last hundred years, mean global temperatures have increased by 0.7 of a degree Centigrade. That's all. The whole climate scare is all about a fraction of a degree. According to Professor Phil Jones of the infamous Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, there has been no significant warming for the last 15 years.

And the slight warming we have seen is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term natural climate cycles. We had the Roman Optimum (warm); the Dark Ages (cool); the Medieval Warm Period; and the Little Ice Age (when they had ice-fairs on the River Thames in London). Over the last couple of centuries, we've been moving into what seems to be a new 21st Century Optimum. It's rightly called an "Optimum." Generally speaking, human societies do better in warmer weather.

When I raised this with the European Commission, they told me that recent changes were so sharp and rapid that they must be man-made. But 12,000 years ago in the Younger Dryas cold climate period, at the beginning of the current Interglacial, we saw temperature change at 10 times that rate. And there wasn't an SUV to be seen.

When I was at Cambridge in the 1960s, everyone knew that climate was cyclical and was driven largely by astronomical cycles. And there is good evidence that recent decades have also seen warming on Mars and elsewhere in the solar system - pointing to a solar cause.

But the Warmists have the bizarre idea that only CO2 matters. Certainly CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but it's not even the most important one. That's water vapor, and there's nothing we can do about it (as long as the wind blows over the ocean).

I'm horrified that the Environmental Protection Agency has declared CO2 a pollutant. They might as well declare oxygen a pollutant. We are a carbon-based life form, and CO2 is vital to the whole biosphere. Higher levels of atmospheric CO2 drive increased bio-mass formation and improved crop yields.

Al Gore is excited by a correlation between mean temperatures and CO2 levels over the past 600,000 years. He's right about the correlation, but he doesn't mention that the temperature graph leads the CO2 graph by several hundred years. The inescapable conclusion is that temperature drives CO2 - not vice versa.

Over the longer term, the correlation breaks down entirely. Current atmospheric CO2 levels are quite low in geo-historical terms. They have been 10 times as high in the past - and that was during an ice age. There is no tipping point. There is no runaway global warming.

But the Warmists have the bizarre idea that only CO2 matters.

Readers of both earlier reports need to know that both institutions receive tens of millions in federal global warming research funding (which can be confirmed by perusing the grant histories of Messrs. Jones or Mann, compiled from public sources, that are available online at freerepublic.com). Any admission of substantial scientific misbehavior would likely result in a significant loss of funding.

It's impossible to find anything wrong if you really aren't looking. In a famous email of May 29, 2008, Phil Jones, director of East Anglia's CRU, wrote to Mr. Mann, under the subject line "IPCC & FOI," "Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re AR4 [the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report]? Keith will do likewise . . . can you also email Gene [Wahl, an employee of the U.S. Department of Commerce] to do the same . . . We will be getting Caspar [Amman, of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research] to do likewise."

Mr. Jones emailed later that he had "deleted loads of emails" so that anyone who might bring a Freedom of Information Act request would get very little. According to New Scientist writer Fred Pearce, "Russell and his team never asked Jones or his colleagues whether they had actually done this."

The Russell report states that "On the allegation of withholding temperature data, we find that the CRU was not in a position to withhold access to such data." Really? Here's what CRU director Jones wrote to Australian scientist Warrick Hughes in February 2005: "We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it[?]"

classicman;679619 wrote:

A high-level inquiry into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found there was “little evidence” for its claims about global warming.

Lamplighter;679679 wrote:

People who believe there is no such a thing as global warming
will start buying property on low-lying coastlines, while the believers will start selling.

classicman;679691 wrote:

Evidence that contradicts the ruling belief system is held to extraordinary standards, while evidence that entrenches it is uncritically accepted. -Carl Sagan

classicman;679703 wrote:

you got it backwards ...

toranokaze;679734 wrote:

Classic what does CO2 do in the atmosphere?

toranokaze;679734 wrote:

Classic what does CO2 do in the atmosphere?

Lamplighter;679776 wrote:

Global warming post of the Beast ;)

With scientific data piling up showing that the world has reached its hottest-ever point in recorded history, global-warming skeptics are facing a high-profile defection from their ranks. Bjorn Lomborg, author of the influential tract "The Skeptical Environmentalist," has reversed course on the urgency of global warming, and is now calling for action on "a challenge humanity must confront."

classicman;679796 wrote:

You calling me a beast? Hardly...

Happy Monkey;679700 wrote:

Ruling belief system: global warming is a hoax.

Extraordinary standards: 100% of all scientists (and people who can be quoted as if they were scientists) must agree, or there isn't consensus.
Uncritically accepted: the occasional study that can be (sometimes mis)interpreted as casting doubt.

With scientific data piling up showing that the world has reached its hottest-ever point in recorded history, global-warming skeptics are facing a high-profile defection from their ranks.

What does CO2 do in the atmosphere?

Undertoad;679792 wrote:

Attacking the science is the correct approach.
Attacking the believers, on either side, is not.

classicman;679807 wrote:

This part is backwards.

Who said 100% must equal consensus?

Occasional study that can be (sometimes mis)interpreted ...

My OPINION - You are in the "ruling belief system" not the other way around.

I'm discussing the attitude

Undertoad;679839 wrote:

Discuss the science.

BTW science doesn't give a shit about consensus. That's not how science works. Science is evidence one way or the other followed by more evidence one way ot the other.

The truth isn't affected by our human beliefs and there are plenty of times when the 100% "consensus" has turned out to be 100% wrong. That's in recent history too: Stomach ulcers can't possibly be caused by a virus. Magnetism can't possibly be important to radiology. The list goes on.

If a post on GW is contains either the words "denier" or "warmist" it is really talking about people and not science. At that point it is just game-playing and can be ignored.

xoxoxoBruce;679841 wrote:

The politics of research is hard to separate from the science, in the results.

xoxoxoBruce;679816 wrote:

Is there really a question that it's warming up? After all, it's been warming up for the last 12,000 years.

I thought the questions are;
Why?
How hot will it get?
How much of it is our fault?
Can we really do much about it?
Is the massive expense worth any effect we can produce?

"The Skeptical Environmentalist," published in 2001, argued that many key preoccupations of the environmental movement, including pollution control and biodiversity, were either overblown as threats or amenable to relatively simple technological fixes. Lomborg argued that the governments spending billions to curb carbon emissions would be better off diverting those resources to initiatives such as AIDS research, anti-malaria programs and other kinds of humanitarian aid.
...
Lomborg's essential argument was: Yes, global warming is real and human behavior is the main reason for it, but the world has far more important things to worry about.

Oh, how times have changed.

In a book to be published this year, Lomborg calls global warming "undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today" and calls for the world's governments to invest tens of billions of dollars annually to fight climate change.

classicman;679794 wrote:

How technical an answer do you want?

toranokaze;679891 wrote:

Technical affluent , under 5000 words, 20 sources max.

Raw data would be appreciated.

toranokaze;679891 wrote:

Technical affluent , under 5000 words, 20 sources max.

Raw data would be appreciated.

This graph, based on the comparison of atmospheric samples contained in ice cores and more recent direct
measurements, provides evidence that atmospheric CO2 has increased since the Industrial Revolution. (Source: NOAA)

Global sea level rose about 17 centimeters (6.7 inches) in the last century.
The rate in the last decade, however, is nearly double that of the last century.

Both the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice has declined rapidly over the last several decades.

Glaciers are retreating almost everywhere around the world — including in the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, Alaska and Africa

The oceans have absorbed much of this increased heat, with the top 700 meters (about 2,300 feet) of ocean showing warming of 0.302 degrees

Global sea level rose about 17 centimeters (6.7 inches) in the last century.
The rate in the last decade, however, is nearly double that of the last century.

Both the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice has declined rapidly over the last several decades.

Glaciers are retreating almost everywhere around the world &#8212; including in the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, Alaska and Africa

(co2 image)

Undertoad;679962 wrote:

The extent and thickness of Antarctic sea ice increased in the same time frame, although over the last decade it decreased. This stuff is hard.

Undertoad;679962 wrote:

Here is why that's bad news. To reduce co2 production to 1950 levels would mean cutting to about a third of 2010's global energy usage. But it's worse than that. The energy usage of 1950 supported 2.5 Billion people; the 2010 level supports 7 Billion people. So to return to 1950 quickly will mean tremendous amounts of poverty and death, as well as global warfare over disappearing resources.

The warming "scientific" community, the Climategate emails reveal, is a tight clique of like-minded scientists and bureaucrats who give each other jobs, publish each other's papers -- and conspire to shut out any point of view that threatens to derail their gravy train.

Such behavior is perhaps to be expected from politicians and government functionaries. From scientists, it's a travesty.

IPCC assessments have been instrumental in informing national and international climate policy options (e.g., Hulme and Mahony, 2010) as well as in raising public awareness of climate change, which earned the IPCC a share of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.2 However, amidst an increasingly intense public debate over the science, impact, and cost of climate change, the IPCC has come under heightened scrutiny about its neutrality toward specific climate policies (e.g., Pielke, 2007) and the accuracy and balance of its reports (e.g., PBL, 2010). The scrutiny reached a pinnacle in early 2010 when errors, including a highly publicized mistake in the melting rate of
Himalayan glaciers, were discovered in the Fourth Assessment Report. The revelation of errors came on the heels of another highly publicized controversy in which the unauthorized release of email exchanges between prominent climate scientists at the University of East Anglia and elsewhere, many of whom had contributed to IPCC assessments, purported to show attempts to misrepresent some climate data (e.g., Oxburgh et al., 2010). Although many scientists noted that neither the leaked emails nor the IPCC errors undermined the principal scientific findings regarding human contributions to climate change (Gleick et al., 2010), public opinion polls in the United States and United Kingdom showed that public confidence in climate science has waned (e.g., BBC, 2010; Jasanoff, 2010; Jowit, 2010).

Spexxvet;679865 wrote:

The money spent to counter global warming is like the money you spend on insurance - you may never need to use it, but if the shit hits the fan you're glad you paid the premiums all those years.

We've got to stop discussing global warming as if it's a contest between: Is global warming the end of the world, or is it a hoax perpetrated in the American people? It's neither. I think in some ways, the fact that the Guardian made it look like I flip-flopped is because it's so hard for anyone to see the world through any other prism than "It's either black or white -- it's a hoax or it's the end of the world."

It seems like we're still debating if the world is round or flat. I mean, come on, its round. But the real question for Christopher Columbus was: How do I best get to the West Indies? And that's the real issue: How do we plot a course to get from A to B. That's what this book is all about. It's about finding the smartest ways to get to that point

classicman;680107 wrote:

and no sooner does it seem like ... oh nevermind. . . probably just another "denier" pissing in the wind.


Read more:

SamIam;681081 wrote:

The man who wrote that story is Matt Peterson who serves as a mouthpiece for the ultra conservative Capitol Research Center.

Nuff said. :eyebrow:

Funding
According to MediaTransparency, CRC has received 182 grants between 1985 and 2003 totaling $7,778,153, its most generous contributors being Sarah Scaife Foundation, Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, among others.

Pico and ME;680578 wrote:

That was a bullshit article Classic. (Biting my tongue, biting my tongue).

The White House wants the public to start using the term "global climate disruption" in place of "global warming" -- fearing the latter term oversimplifies the problem and makes it sound less dangerous than it really is.

Happy Monkey;683032 wrote:

Perhaps the new terminology will cut down a bit on the midwinter calls of "where's the global warming now?"

In a few brief hours, we are told, the snowy superfortresses will be above us again, bomb bays bulging with blizzard. It may be that in the next hours and days we have to step up our de-icing, our gritting and our shovelling. So let me seize this brief gap in the aerial bombardment to pose a question that is bugging me.

Pico and ME;701379 wrote:

I googled it. You can too.

Shawnee123;701382 wrote:

But, but, Pico, I thought you were an EXPERT! ;)

Other scientists and observers, a minority compared to those who believe the warming trend is something ominous, say it is simply the latest shift in the cyclical patterns of a planet's life.

The average surface temperature has warmed one degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degrees Celsius) during the last century, according to the National Research Council.

A new theory to explain global warming was revealed at a meeting at the University of Leicester. The controversial theory has nothing to do with burning fossil fuels and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. According to Vladimir Shaidurov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the apparent rise in average global temperature recorded by scientists over the last hundred years or so could be due to atmospheric changes that are not connected to human emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of natural gas and oil. Shaidurov explained how changes in the amount of ice crystals at high altitude could damage the layer of thin, high altitude clouds found in the mesosphere that reduce the amount of warming solar radiation reaching the earth's surface.

The Tunguska Event, sometimes known as the Tungus Meteorite is thought to have resulted from an asteroid or comet entering the earth's atmosphere and exploding. The event released as much energy as fifteen one-megaton atomic bombs. As well as blasting an enormous amount of dust into the atmosphere, felling 60 million trees over an area of more than 2000 square kilometres. Shaidurov suggests that this explosion would have caused "considerable stirring of the high layers of atmosphere and change its structure." Such meteoric disruption was the trigger for the subsequent rise in global temperatures.

Many natural gases and some of those released by conventional power stations, vehicle and aircraft exhausts act as greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide, natural gas, or methane, and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are all potent greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide and methane are found naturally in the atmosphere, but it is the gradual rise in levels of these gases since the industrial revolution, and in particular the beginning of the twentieth century, that scientists have blamed for the gradual rise in recorded global temperature. Attempts to reverse global warming, such as the Kyoto Protocol, have centred on controlling and even reducing CO2 emissions.

However, the most potent greenhouse gas is water, explains Shaidurov and it is this compound on which his study focuses. According to Shaidurov, only small changes in the atmospheric levels of water, in the form of vapour and ice crystals can contribute to significant changes to the temperature of the earth's surface, which far outweighs the effects of carbon dioxide and other gases released by human activities. Just a rise of 1% of water vapour could raise the global average temperature of Earth's surface more then 4 degrees Celsius.

The role of water vapour in controlling our planet's temperature was hinted at almost 150 years ago by Irish scientist John Tyndall. Tyndall, who also provided an explanation as to why the sky is blue, explained the problem: "The strongest radiant heat absorber, is the most important gas controlling Earth's temperature. Without water vapour, he wrote, the Earth's surface would be 'held fast in the iron grip of frost'." Thin clouds at high altitude allow sunlight to reach the earth's surface, but reflect back radiated heat, acting as an insulating greenhouse layer.

As such, Shaidurov has concluded that only an enormous natural phenomenon, such as an asteroid or comet impact or airburst, could seriously disturb atmospheric water levels, destroying persistent so-called 'silver', or noctilucent, clouds composed of ice crystals in the high altitude mesosphere (50 to 85km). The Tunguska Event was just such an event, and coincides with the period of time during which global temperatures appear to have been rising the most steadily - the twentieth century. There are many hypothetical mechanisms of how this mesosphere catastrophe might have occurred, and future research is needed to provide a definitive answer.

Coign wrote:

The problem is the computer models cannot prove or disprove climate change is man-made. And it is not even that they need to prove if it is happening or not, it it proving that carbon dioxide, the stuff that makes plants grow, is the cause of it.

Until we know it is happening, and more importantly know what it is causing it, anything we do to slow/halt/reverse it is just an unnecessary tax/control against an economy that does not have the money to spend.

Coign;740136 wrote:

My point is we are doing damage to our economy, our rights, and social structure in the attempt to fix something that most likely doesn't even need fixing.

Coign;740136 wrote:

My point is we are doing damage to our economy, our rights, and social structure in the attempt to fix something that most likely doesn't even need fixing.

Undertoad;679839 wrote:

If a post on GW is contains either the words "denier" or "warmist" it is really talking about people and not science. At that point it is just game-playing and can be ignored.

Coign;740136 wrote:

My point is we are doing damage to our economy, our rights, and social structure in the attempt to fix something that most likely doesn't even need fixing.

It is the equivalent of Dark Age medicine. We know a fraction of what we need to, yet we are bleeding ourselves out in hopes that it will cure us.

My offered solution, is quit trying to fix it until you know what it is you are trying to fix. You are causing way more damage than you are pretending to solve.

By itself, as we always say, one hot year doesn't prove anything. The fact that every one of the twelve hottest years on record has come since 1997 is a little harder to wave away. 2010 was also the wettest year ever, corresponding to the expectation that higher heat means more water vapour. More countries set national high-temperature records in 2010 than ever before, including the biggest one, Russia. Arctic sea ice in December was at its lowest level ever, temperatures across a broad swathe of northern Canada have been 20 C higher than normal for the past month, the record temperatures are coming despite the lowest levels of solar activity in a century and a La Nina effect that should be making Canada colder rather than warmer, and so on. It is of course possible that global warming plateaued this year; it's also possible that it plateaued this morning. One can always hope! For now, though, this is the basic shape of things:

The George Will "global warming has ended" moment shows up as that little dip towards the end, before it returns to trend. So, what effect will the new data have on that meme? Quite possibly none. People who tried to cast doubt on global warming in 2009 based on a few years one could isolate so that they didn't show a discernible trend will now no doubt respond that a couple of very hot years don't prove anything. Which underlines how often the conclusions one draws from data are determined by a combination of the hypotheses you're framing, and at what point you start looking.

Various criticisms of the methodology and probity of the temperature records have been made, though much more often in the blogosphere than in the scientific literature. Erring on the side of extra caution is not a bad idea, and various efforts are underway to develop, corroborate and better to underpin the work on temperature records that has been done to date. One such effort is the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature programme, which Dr Muller heads. ...

Rather than look at carefully (and similarly) selected subsets of the data it would look at everything available, just as astrophysicists frequently seek to survey the whole sky. Rather than using the judgement of climate scientists to make sense of the data records and what needed to be done to them, it would use well designed computer algorithms. Put together under the aegis of Novim, a non-profit group that runs environmental studies, the team gathered up a bit over half a million dollars - including $100,000 from a fund set up by Bill Gates and $150,000 from the Koch foundation, whose animosity towards action on climate change made the Berkeley project look yet more suspicious to some climate-change activists - and got to work. ...

The results look very like what the other three teams have seen. ... The earth has warmed by about 0.7 C since 1957, just as the other teams claimed. Adjustments made to the data on a site-by-site basis which have had some suspicious sceptics hopping mad seem to have made no appreciable difference. ...


Dr Muller also, more controversially, reported on results that pertain to a specific point made by climate sceptics; that the temperature record is contaminated because many of the stations used to compile it are in inappropriately located. This idea is particularly associated with Anthony Watts, a former television weatherman who runs an extremely popular website catering largely to a climate-sceptic crowd. Mr Watts has led an impressive crowdsourcing movement devoted to checking out the meteorological stations that generate climate data in America. This has found that a really surprising number of the instruments concerned are not sited in the way that they should be, being inappropriately close to buildings, tarmac and other things that could cause problems. ...

The Berkeley team compared the data from the American sites Mr Watts thought were worst situated and the sites he thought best. It found no statistically significant difference in the trends measured in the two different categories, though the warming trend in the better sites is slightly stronger.

This analysis echoes one carried out last year by scientists at NOAA, which when looking at a subset of Mr Watts's data found much the same thing. The Berkeley team's result, though, is perhaps more striking, in that Mr Watts had made all his data available to Mr Muller and his colleagues, a step he seems now rather to regret.

Impressed by the Berkeley set up, Mr Watts wrote in a post published March 6th:

[quote]I'm prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong. I'm taking this bold step because the method has promise. So let's not pay attention to the little yippers who want to tear it down before they even see the results. I haven't seen the global result, nobody has, not even the home team, but the method isn't the madness that we've seen from NOAA, NCDC, GISS, and CRU, and, there aren't any monetary strings attached to the result that I can tell. ... That lack of strings attached to funding, plus the broad mix of people involved especially those who have previous experience in handling large data sets gives me greater confidence in the result being closer to a bona fide ground truth than anything we've seen yet.