Global cooling?
But, but, polar bears, rising oceans, melting ice, oh my:
The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years. The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century. Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.
For those alarmists still stuck in the alarmist convenient “science” of the 20th century, this is the inconvenient scientific truth of this century … no warming despite the fact that man-made CO2 levels have gone up. As David Rose remarks, “the ‘supposed’ consensus” is apparently wrong.
I’m sure you understand why this temperature data was released last week with little “fanfare”. Had it been the opposite finding, we’d have been treated to a parade of alarmists again claiming that we need to tax ourselves back to the stone age in order to save the planet.
Oh, and remember that big, hot, yellow thing that hangs in the sky that I have mentioned repeatedly should be factored in to the “science” of global warming vs. being ignored? Henrik Svensmark, Denmark’s National Space Institute seems to feel the same way:
World temperatures may end up a lot cooler than now for 50 years or more. It will take a long battle to convince some climate scientists that the sun is important. It may well be that the sun is going to demonstrate this on its own, without the need for their help.
So alarmists can’t ignore this anymore. They can’t fall back on consensus, because consensus isn’t science. In fact, right now, given the new data, it is their reputations on the line, not that of the skeptics:
If temperatures continue to stay flat or start to cool again, the divergence between the models and recorded data will eventually become so great that the whole scientific community will question the current theories. The real issue is whether the model itself is accurate.
And, of course, indications are (many indications are) that they’re not. For instance:
The responsible thing to do would be to accept the fact that the models may have severe shortcomings when it comes to the influence of the sun,’ said Professor Curry. As for the warming pause, she said that many scientists ‘are not surprised’.
he argued it is becoming evident that factors other than CO2 play an important role in rising or falling warmth, such as the 60-year water temperature cycles in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
‘They have insufficiently been appreciated in terms of global climate,’ said Prof Curry. When both oceans were cold in the past, such as from 1940 to 1970, the climate cooled. The Pacific cycle ‘flipped’ back from warm to cold mode in 2008 and the Atlantic is also thought likely to flip in the next few years .
Pal Brekke, senior adviser at the Norwegian Space Centre, said some scientists found the importance of water cycles difficult to accept, because doing so means admitting that the oceans – not CO2 – caused much of the global warming between 1970 and 1997.
One of the other indicators was to be found in the Lysenkoish conformity that was imposed on this branch of science by alarmists.
Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.
This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.
Certainly dissenting scientists weren’t sent to actual gulags but attempts were to made banish them to academic gulags with their credentials in tatters.
16 scientists wrote the above two paragraphs and then reveal what drove this breech of the scientific method was, as we’ve mentioned before, pretty mundane and fairly obvious if you just took the time to look:
Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word "incontrovertible" from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question "cui bono?" Or the modern update, "Follow the money."
Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.
These 16 scientists also give a little political advice that should be heeded:
Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to "decarbonize" the world’s economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.
No compelling scientific argument?
See above.
For 15 years the earth has not been warming even while man-made CO2 levels have risen.
That’s scientific fact and it is time the alarmist crowd began dealing straight with the public using facts.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Obama’s Climate Change Plan: Barter away your Grandchildren’s money, legislate away yours
Todd Stern, the Obama administration’s “Special Envoy for Climate Change”, held a quick press conference in Durban, South Africa where a UN conference on climate change is being held. He first made it a point to deny that the US was taking a “time out” until 2020. He then said a couple of things which should make clear the administration’s agenda.
First, without a viable alternative for fossil fuel to this point, the intent of the administration is to increase prices on those fuels that will ensure they’re “priced the way they ought to be”. Stern:
You need to use less energy through efficiency and to develop renewable energy sources more and more to the point that they get to what’s called grid parity, so that standing on their own they actually become sources of energy that can compete with sources like coal and so forth, fossil fuels.
And it is a very good thing to have those fossil fuel sources priced the way they ought to be, to have a price on carbon. That’s what we were trying to do with our legislation, it didn’t pass, but that kind of legislation obviously is in place in Europe, and hopefully it will come into place more and more.’
Now remember, this is from the administration that has claimed the mantle of champion of the middle class. Yet its plan is to price much of the middle class into energy poverty if it can ever get its legislation passed. And for those that will try to argue that it’s a plan for the future when there are, arguendo, viable alternatives, that’s nonsense. “It didn’t pass” tells you all you need to know about that claim.
Secondly, this administration has bought into the 100 billion (a year) dollar fund that the “rich countries” are supposed to fund to help the “poor countries” (like China and India). Stern:
We will also be working hard to ramp up the funding that is supposed to reach a 100 billion dollars a year by 2020. There’s a ton of work to be done in the years. We have been doing a lot of work on this, this year, and we will be continuing to do that as are many other countries. And all at the same time, if we get the kind of roadmap that countries have called for — the EU has called for, that the U.S. supports — for preparing for and negotiating a future regime, whether it ends up being legally binding or not, we don’t know yet, but we are strongly committed to a promptly starting process to move forward on that.
Tell your grandkids to start saving up, because the Obama administration is getting ready to shackle them and their future earnings to a global redistribution scheme based in fraudulent science (regardless of what Sen. Barbara “Ma’am” Boxer claims).
As with health care reform, there is no popular support in the US for this sort of nonsense, yet your enlightened rulers certainly believe they know better – just ask them. And they intend to push their ideological agenda instead of doing the will of the people. As for you little people, just suck it up and learn to appreciate (and pay for) their enlightened rule, OK?
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Arab science? "Study" links women, cars, virginity, pornography and homosexuality
Here we go, a perfect example of the state of science (and higher education) among certain of the Arab Muslim states:
Repealing a ban on women drivers in Saudi Arabia would result in ‘no more virgins’, the country’s religious council has warned.
A ‘scientific’ report claims relaxing the ban would also see more Saudis – both men and women – turn to homosexuality and pornography.
The startling conclusions were drawn by Muslim scholars at the Majlis al-Ifta’ al-A’ala, Saudi Arabia’s highest religious council, working in conjunction with Kamal Subhi, a former professor at the King Fahd University.
“Scientific”? Sounds like the global warming alarmists.
This is the perversion of science and academia. Not that we don’t see our share of it here. I mean in some places you can take seminars on “The Simpsons” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and get college credits. But that’s just the usual absurdity to be found in US universities, where useless degrees cost an arm and a leg and those who produce them brag about what they do.
This is the coupling of a religion with “science” and finding exactly what the religion – or their flavor of it – demands they find. It is used as a tool of oppression.
Science? This is about as scientific as applying leaches for a cure, and rooted in about the same century.
Their report assessed the possible impact of repealing the ban in Saudi Arabia, the only country in the world where women are not allowed behind the wheel.
It was delivered to all 150 members of the Shura Council, the country’s legislative body.
Who, I’m sure, all nodded to each other sagely and were just thrilled to have “science” on their side as the all male body decided women should remain in their place – in the cave, er, tent, er, well, out of sight. Because it is clear they can’t control themselves if they drive:
In the report Professor Subhi described sitting in a coffee shop in an unnamed Arab state.
‘All the women were looking at me,’ he wrote. ‘One made a gesture that made it clear she was available… this is what happens when women are allowed to drive.’
And, of course, the repercussions of allowing that would be horrible:
The report warns that allowing women to drive would ‘provoke a surge in prostitution, pornography, homosexuality and divorce’.
Within ten years of the ban being lifted, the report’s authors claim, there would be ‘no more virgins’ in the Islamic kingdom.
By the way, my bet is the “gesture” the old goat got had nothing to do with “availability”.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
It is “global warming week” and the press will be full of it
Why? Because there’s a UN meeting beginning in Durbin, South Africa on “climate change” and the propaganda will be freely flowing.
A new round of United Nations climate talks is getting under way in Durban, South Africa, Monday. And domestic struggles here in the United States are hampering the global talks.
The United States is second only to China in emitting gases that cause global warming. Despite a presidential pledge to reduce emissions two years ago, we’re spewing more carbon dioxide than ever into the atmosphere.
That’s putting a crimp on the 20-year-long struggle to develop a meaningful climate treaty.
Really? That’s what’s putting a crimp on it? Or is the unquestioned acceptance of the premise “emitting gases” causes “global warming” perhaps the problem when it appears the “science” is falling apart?
What is interesting to me is to watch those who unquestionably accept this premise ignore the profound problems the “science” that supports this nonsense has shown.
Christopher Booker does a good job of distilling the problem, here speaking of the UK government:
To grasp the almost suicidal state of unreality our Government has been driven into by the obsession with global warming, it is necessary to put together the two sides to an overall picture – each vividly highlighted by events of recent days.
On one hand there is the utterly lamentable state of the science which underpins it all, illuminated yet again by “Climategate 2.0”, the latest release of emails between the leading scientists who for years have been at the heart of the warming scare (which I return to below). On the other hand, we see the damage done by the political consequences of this scare, which will directly impinge, in various ways, on all our lives.
Like driving up energy costs to a point that energy poverty will be a common problem. Booker has another nice body slam to the “premise” later on in his article:
While our Government remains trapped in its green dreamworld, similar horror stories pile up on every side, from that UBS report on the astronomically costly fiasco of the EU’s carbon-trading scheme, to our own Government’s “carbon floor price”, in effect a tax on CO2 emissions rising yearly from 2013. This alone will eventually be enough to double the cost of our electricity, and drive a further swathe of what remains of UK industry abroad, because we are the only country in the world to have devised something so idiotic.
All this madness ultimately rests on a blind faith in the threat of man-made global warming, which no one has done more to promote than the scientists whose private emails were again last week leaked onto the internet.
It is still not generally appreciated that the significance of these Climategate emails is that their authors, such as Michael Mann, are no ordinary scientists: they are a little group of fanatical insiders who have, for years, done more than anyone else to drive the warming scare, through their influence at the heart of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And what is most striking about the picture that emerges from these emails is just how questionable the work of these men appears.
That’s entirely true if you actually read through the released emails. What you read isn’t science, it is “scientists” tailoring their “science” to fit a political agenda in order to keep the grant gravy train rolling. The deniers, in this particular horror show, are the true believers who have, on faith, accepted the “premise” and refuse to question it or examine the evidence which argues strongly against it.
To be clear, the whole debate revolves around “climate sensitivity” to CO2. Those on the side of man-made global warming claim the environment is highly sensitive to CO2. The so-called “deniers” claim it isn’t at all. And for those who’ve followed the debate, the real science seems to support the so-called “deniers”.
The climate may be less sensitive to carbon dioxide than we thought – and temperature rises this century could be smaller than expected. That’s the surprise result of a new analysis of the last ice age. However, the finding comes from considering just one climate model, and unless it can be replicated using other models, researchers are dubious that it is genuine.
As more greenhouse gases enter the atmosphere, more heat is trapped and temperatures go up – but by how much? The best estimates say that if the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubles, temperatures will rise by 3 °C. This is the "climate sensitivity".
But the 3 °C figure is only an estimate. In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the climate sensitivity could be anywhere between 2 and 4.5 °C. That means the temperature rise from a given release of carbon dioxide is still uncertain.
But you wouldn’t know that by listening to the alarmists (and much of the press) who continue to claim the science is settled. And that’s in the face of this:
The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record, the U.S.Department of Energy calculated, a sign of how feeble the world’s efforts are at slowing man-made global warming.
The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.
… Prof Curry said, the project’s research data show there has been no increase in world temperatures since the end of the Nineties – a fact confirmed by a new analysis that The Mail on Sunday has obtained.
‘There is no scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped,’ she said. ‘To say that there is detracts from the credibility of the data, which is very unfortunate.’
[…]
… [S]he added, in the wake of the unexpected global warming standstill, many climate scientists who had previously rejected sceptics’ arguments were now taking them much more seriously.
They were finally addressing questions such as the influence of clouds, natural temperature cycles and solar radiation – as they should have done, she said, a long time ago.
But the true believers gathering in Durbin SA? Still reject the fact that the so-called “science” of global warming is under fierce and sustained attack and is being found to be increasingly wanting in both substance and fact.
And I don’t know about you but it seems incredible to me that, as Prof. Curry notes, scientists are “finally addressing” the influence of “clouds, natural temperature cycles and solar radiation”.
Finally!? How in the world could “science” not have included those originally? How could they have somehow been factored out?
That’s actually an easy question to answer.
Because including them wouldn’t have given the “scientists” in question the results necessary to support the “premise” cooked up by those pushing the man-made global warming agenda. And that, of course, meant an end to the grant money of multi billions of dollars.
Meanwhile in Durbin this week, the real deniers are going to be busily trying to trade away your ability to purchase cheap and plentiful energy through various schemes which will advance their agenda and put the rest of humanity in an unrecoverable energy deficit.
Delegates at the conference will also be hammering out the details of a plan to administer the Green Climate Fund, money that is to help poor countries deal with climate change.
The fund is expected to grow over the next eight years to eventually distribute about $100 billion a year. However, it is still unclear where all of that money will come from and how it will be distributed.
In addition to the usual international development funds from the West, proposals include a carbon surcharge on international shipping and on air tickets, as well as a levy on international financial transactions.
This is what junk science tied to a political agenda brings. And, as usual, you’ll be levied to pay the bill they agree on with your money and your way of life.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Climategate 2.0
As of today, FOIA.org released another 7zip file—which can be obtained here—containing 5000 unencypted, and an additional 250,000 encrypted, climate change emails from all the usual suspects we remember from Climategate. FOIA.org says they don’t plan on releasing the encryption keys for the remaining emails yet, but the 5,000 unencrypted emails are…interesting.
More background is available from Pajamas Media and the links they provide. But the good stuff is in the emails themselves.
One quick take-away: Michael Mann’s temperature results may be…questionable.
<4241> Wilson:
I thought I’d play around with some randomly generated time-series and see if I could ‘reconstruct’ northern hemisphere temperatures.
[...] The reconstructions clearly show a ‘hockey-stick’ trend. I guess this is precisely the phenomenon that Macintyre has been going on about.
That would seem to be a pretty big vulnerability in the "hockey stick".
And the IPCC process seems…really questionable.
<1939> Thorne/MetO:
Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these further if necessary [...]
<3066> Thorne:
I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.
<4755> Overpeck:
The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s included and what is left out.
<1104> Wanner/NCCR:
In my [IPCC-TAR] review [...] I crit[i]cized [...] the Mann hockey[s]tick [...] My review was classified “unsignificant” even I inquired several times. Now the internationally well known newspaper SPIEGEL got the information about these early statements because I expressed my opinion in several talks, mainly in Germany, in 2002 and 2003. I just refused to give an exclusive interview to SPIEGEL because I will not cause damage for climate science.
<0414> Coe:
Hence the AR4 Section 2.7.1.1.2 dismissal of the ACRIM composite to be instrumental rather than solar in origin is a bit controversial. Similarly IPCC in their discussion on solar RF since the Maunder Minimum are very dependent on the paper by Wang et al (which I have been unable to access) in the decision to reduce the solar RF significantly despite the many papers to the contrary in the ISSI workshop. All this leaves the IPCC almost entirely dependent on CO2 for the explanation of current global temperatures as in Fig 2.23. since methane CFCs and aerosols are not increasing.
<2009> Briffa:
I find myself in the strange position of being very skeptical of the quality of all present reconstructions, yet sounding like a pro greenhouse zealot here!
But, remember, the science is settled!
<0310> Warren:
The results for 400 ppm stabilization look odd in many cases [...] As it stands we’ll have to delete the results from the paper if it is to be published.
<1682> Wils:
[2007] What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multidecadal natural fluctuation? They’ll kill us probably [...]
<2267> Wilson:
Although I agree that GHGs are important in the 19th/20th century (especially since the 1970s), if the weighting of solar forcing was stronger in the models, surely this would diminish the significance of GHGs.
[...] it seems to me that by weighting the solar irradiance more strongly in the models, then much of the 19th to mid 20th century warming can be explained from the sun alone.<5315> Jenkins/MetO:
would you agree that there is no convincing evidence for kilimanjaro glacier melt being due to recent warming (let alone man-made warming)?
<2292> Jones:
[tropical glaciers] There is a small problem though with their retreat. They have retreated a lot in the last 20 years yet the MSU2LT data would suggest that temperatures haven’t increased at these levels.
<1788> Jones:
There shouldn’t be someone else at UEA with different views [from "recent extreme weather is due to global warming"] – at least not a climatologist.
<4693> Crowley:
I am not convinced that the “truth” is always worth reaching if it is at the cost of damaged personal relationships
<2733> Crowley:
Phil, thanks for your thoughts – guarantee there will be no dirty laundry in the open.
<2095> Steig:
He’s skeptical that the warming is as great as we show in East Antarctica — he thinks the “right” answer is more like our detrended results in the supplementary text. I cannot argue he is wrong.
<4470> Norwegian Meteorological Institute:
In Norway and Spitsbergen, it is possible to explain most of the warming after the 1960s by changes in the atmospheric circulation. The warming prior to 1940 cannot be explained in this way.
<4944> Haimberger:
It is interesting to see the lower tropospheric warming minimum in the tropics in all three plots, which I cannot explain. I believe it is spurious but it is remarkably robust against my adjustment efforts.
You know what else is remarkably robust against adjustment efforts? Reality.
~
Dale Franks
Google+ Profile
Twitter Feed
The Deniers rear their ugly heads again
Researchers at CERN, the big European physics laboratory, have released some interesting findings that, if true,would cast doubt on a fundamental conclusion made by Einstein’s theory of relativity.
From 2009 through 2011, the massive OPERA detector buried in a mountain in Gran Sasso, Italy, recorded particles called neutrinos generated at CERN arriving a smidge too soon, faster than light can move in a vacuum. If the finding is confirmed by further experiments, it would throw more than a century of physics into chaos.
For over a century, since Albert Einstein published the Special Theory of Relativity (SRT)—buttressed further in 1916 by the General Theory—it has been settled science that the speed of is nature’s ultimate speed limit. As an object approaches the speed of light, its mass increases. At the speed of light—were it possible to reach it—the object’s mass would be infinite. That would require, of course, an infinite amount of energy to propel the object. Hence, moving faster than the speed of light is a physical impossibility.
Since 1905, through direct experimentation, mathematical modeling, and, later, measurements taken during the space program, as well as computer models, science has time and time again proved that the Special Theory of Relativity does, in fact, accurately model the way the universe works. The entire foundation of modern physics is built upon SRT. It has been proven correct over and over again. Clearly, SRT is settled science. An attempt to overturn it is, essentially, an attempt to overturn the entire body of physics that has been so painstakingly established over the past century.
Obviously, SRT is true. Its conclusions are beyond questioning. Again, the science is settled, and there is almost universal scientific consensus about the truth of SRT.
Since that is so, one wonders what purpose the experiments at CERN might be. SRT needs no further validation, so there must be other motives. Who is funding this experimentation? Why are they so interested in denying SRT? If SRT is overturned, the implications throw cosmology in general into disarray. Out would go the Big Bang theory. Is this new experiment real science, or is it just another ploy of Big Plasma to overturn the settled view of cosmology?
These "scientists" at CERN say that more experimentation is needed to validate these results. But, they are so clearly wrong, it’s difficult to see what purpose further experimentation along these lines would serve. This transparent attempt to return physics to the limited and primitive world of physical experimentation, rather than the modern use of sophisticated mathematical models, is deeply subversive.
Now, there are calls for trying to replicate this experiment—at US taxpayer expense—at the Fermilab, here in the US. I see no reason to risk the scientific integrity of our premier physics laboratory pursuing the dreams of these SRT deniers at CERN.
SRT’s proof is incontrovertible, and any attempt to prove otherwise is a perversion of science. The science is settled. Consensus is almost universal. So, let’s not pursue these silly, pointless experiments. The important thing to remember about science is that, once you question the received wisdom proven repeatedly in the past, the result is chaos. It is vitally important that we do not throw all of modern physics and cosmology into disarray over some odd experimental results that really have no real-world application.
That would just be silly.
~
Dale Franks
Google+ Profile
Twitter Feed
The Gorical’s “24 Hours of Reality” spots
Some interesting stuff here in the "lets look under the rock and see what’s there” sort of interesting. Here’s Al Gore’s pitch:
DENIAL HITS THE FAN from The Climate Reality Project on Vimeo.
The Making of Reality (Spots) from The Climate Reality Project on Vimeo.
I have great interest in this simply because of the approach. It’s all about "fake scientists" and who paid for that "fake science". Note Gore’s premise. It’s reality, you can’t deny it. That’s simply another version of "scientific consensus makes this indisputable". This seems to be an attempt to try to demonize and discredit those who disagree and actually have produced scientific work to back their positions. He won’t answer the objections, he’s going to tell you who he claims they work for and (like the cigarette reference) why they should be ignored.
If the vid doesn’t show up for you, the links are below them. I’ve copied their embed codes, but it may or may not show up depending on your browser. Take a look and tell us what you think.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Al Gore plans 24 hour assault on climate skeptics
Well this should be fun:
"24 Hours of Reality" will broadcast a presentation by Al Gore every hour for 24 hours across 24 different time zones from Wednesday to Thursday, with the aim of convincing climate change deniers and driving action against global warming among households, schools and businesses.
The campaign also asks people to hand over control of their social networking accounts on Facebook and Twitter to it for 24 hours to deliver Gore’s message.
"There will be 200 new slides arguing the connection between more extreme weather and climate change," Trewin Restorick, chief executive of the event’s UK partner Global Action Plan, told Reuters on Monday.
"There will be a full-on assault on climate skeptics, exploring where they get their funding from."
Remember, much of Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth” has been shown to be nonsense. So this is sort of a make or break moment for Gore, I suppose. He’s either cleaned up his act and is prepared, with his new slide show, to actually present scientific fact and argument, or we’re going to be treated to “An Inconvenient Truth 2.0”.
I’m guessing 2.0.
Concern about climate change in the United States, the world’s second biggest emitter, has fallen steadily to 48 percent in 2011, from 62 percent in 2007, an opinion poll showed in August.
Obviously the economy figures into some of those numbers (by displacement if nothing else – whatever we have to do to get it rolling again and that puts such concerns in a lower priority), but this is a trend that began before the economic collapse. It should be interesting to see his “double down” presentation and the argument and debate that follows.
The exposition and conclusion he presents concerning funding should also be interesting. Sounds more like a political assault than a scientific one. We’ll see.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Irene–hurricane of hype?
What a weekend. Hurricane Irene, the most hyped hurricane since Katrina, lived up to its billing … as a category 3 hurricane. In other words, it did what you’d expect a cat 3 to do. But if you listened too the press and government officials, this was a mega-storm, a storm that was the “harbinger of a change in climate” as the NY Times breathlessly claimed.
Instead it turned out to be a pretty ordinary hurricane that did indeed do some damage, but no more than a normal cat 3 (although it did make landfall twice) and it unfortunately killed some people, but mostly in freak accidents. Finally, it blew out, downgraded to a tropical storm, before it ever reached New York City.
However the spectacle created on-shore by the approach of the hurricane was something to behold. It had to be at least category 6. We have a president with plummeting poll numbers taking “command” at the National Hurricane Center. And we have the press out and about, trying to make the storm much more than it was:
For the television reporter, clad in his red cagoule emblazoned with the CNN logo, it was a dramatic on-air moment, broadcasting live from Long Island, New York during a hurricane that also threatened Manhattan.
“We are in, right, now…the right eye wall, no doubt about that…there you see the surf,” he said breathlessly. “That tells a story right there.”
Stumbling and apparently buffeted by ferocious gusts, he took shelter next to a building. “This is our protection from the wind,” he explained. “It’s been truly remarkable to watch the power of the ocean here.”
The surf may have told a story but so too did the sight behind the reporter of people chatting and ambling along the sea front and just goofing around. There was a man in a t-shirt, a woman waving her arms and then walking backwards. Then someone on a bicycle glided past.
So much for Irene the storm. What was all the hype about?
A couple things seem apparent. Politically the storm was seen as a, forgive the word choice, windfall. It was something which would allow the government to prove its worth, to demonstrate the lessons it had learned since Katrina (funny that this is the first hurricane since Katrina on which this could be “demonstrated”). It also gave the president national face time (speech), a way to demonstrate leadership (without risk) and hopefully a surge in the polls. The compliant press was glad to go along:
The White House sent out 25 Irene emails to the press on Saturday alone.
There were photographs of President Barack Obama touring disaster centres and footage of him asking sombre, pertinent questions. With his poll ratings plummeting, Obama needed to project an aura of seriousness and command. He was all too aware that the political fortunes of his predecessor George W Bush never recovered after the Hurricane Katrina disaster of 2005.
The press mostly reported the message the White House had carefully crafted: “Obama takes charge” read the headline of one wire service story.
Instead, it all turned out, it seems, to have been a giant over-reaction. We’ve handled numerous cat 3 (and higher) hurricanes throughout our history without all the governmental drama and dire warnings. One can only factor sinking poll numbers into this particular event to have it make any sense.
Then there was the global warning crowd who seems bent on using any weather event as a “harbinger” of things to come because of wicked, evil humans and their carbon drenched lifestyles. And they end up trying to use a fairly ordinary cat 3 hurricane as their example. But, of course, the hurricane seasons of the past few years have been a bit of a disappointment to those types, hasn’t it? Fewer storms and of a lesser intensity. You know your theory is bankrupt when you’re reduced to hyping a cat 3 as Justin Gillis did in the New York Times:
The scale of Hurricane Irene, which could cause more extensive damage along the Eastern Seaboard than any storm in decades, is reviving an old question: are hurricanes getting worse because of human-induced climate change?
The simple answer to the question seems to be – “no”.
But that doesn’t stop the alarmists from using this occasion to tar the skeptical side with ad hominem attacks instead of facts.
Paul Krugman publishes pure fiction:
In fact, if you follow climate science at all you know that the main development over the past few years has been growing concern that projections of future climate are underestimating the likely amount of warming. Warnings that we may face civilization-threatening temperature change by the end of the century, once considered outlandish, are now coming out of mainstream research groups.
And, of course Al Gore is reduced to calling skeptics the equivalent of racists.
Back to Krugman though. As I’ve followed it, climate science seems to be saying exactly the opposite of is assertion seems to be true. A) it seems most scientists are becoming more aware of how much we don’t know about the climate (certainly not enough to be drawing the conclusions being drawn), B) the CERN study seems to put “broken” on the alarmist modeling which has driven the AGW crowd’s argument (I won’t dignify it with the word “theory”) and C) if anything, science now sees the possibility of a cooling trend, not a warming trend.
But you have to actually “follow climate science” to know that.
Meanwhile in Australia, a study is coming out that links mental illness to climate change:
RATES of mental illnesses including depression and post-traumatic stress will increase as a result of climate change, a report to be released today says.
The paper, prepared for the Climate Institute, says loss of social cohesion in the wake of severe weather events related to climate change could be linked to increased rates of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress and substance abuse.
As many as one in five people reported ”emotional injury, stress and despair” in the wake of these events.
Yeah, is the “emotional injury” a result of “climate change” or having your house, which shouldn’t have been built in a flood plane to begin with, washed away in a flood? Obviously people are going to be emotionally injured when they lose their house. But the same could be said about them if it burned down because of a grease fire.
These examples provide a look at two groups desperately casting around for favorable examples and coverage for themselves and their agendas. Politicians who’ve now decided the new normal for weather events is to have a media event, and the AGW crowd who will use anything, absolutely anything, no matter how absurd, to try to revive their dying assertions.
Welcome to the hurricane of hype.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
CERN: ‘Climate models will need to be substantially revised’
The findings by CERN which have finally been published in Nature magazine, are fairly explicit about the validity of current AGW models. They will need to be “substantially revised”.
Why?
Because the findings substantiate the fact that the sun plays the major role in changes in our climate and not the human factors claimed by warmists. It’s all about the sun, clouds, cosmic rays and nucleation.
CERN conducted a CLOUD ("Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets") experiment to test a theory at odds with current warmist theories about cloud origins. As it turns out, the findings provide:
… support for a "heliocentric" rather than "anthropogenic" approach to climate change: the sun plays a large role in modulating the quantity of cosmic rays reaching the upper atmosphere of the Earth.
Who knew that big yellow hot thing that hangs in the sky each day would play a major role in our climate?
Prior to publication of the Nature article, it had been assumed the findings were negative to warmist theories when the head of CERN (director-general Rolf-Dieter Heuer) warned his scientists to just provide the facts and not interpret them.
Here’s how CERN presented the data via lead physicist Jasper Kirkby:
"Ion-induced nucleation will manifest itself as a steady production of new particles that is difficult to isolate in atmospheric observations because of other sources of variability but is nevertheless taking place and could be quite large when averaged globally over the troposphere."
Kirkby is quoted in the accompanying CERN press release:
"We’ve found that cosmic rays significantly enhance the formation of aerosol particles in the mid troposphere and above. These aerosols can eventually grow into the seeds for clouds. However, we’ve found that the vapours previously thought to account for all aerosol formation in the lower atmosphere can only account for a small fraction of the observations – even with the enhancement of cosmic rays."
[…]
"[I]t is clear that the treatment of aerosol formation in climate models will need to be substantially revised, since all models assume that nucleation is caused by these vapours [sulphuric acid and ammonia] and water alone.
Here is another unknown finally known. Yet the scientists on the warmist side tried to claim they had all the information they needed to build their models and make their wild claims. However, as more and more real science comes it, it becomes clearer and clearer that their science falls at best in the “junk science” category and their claims are unsubstantiated assertions. As we’re finding out, they’re certainly not backed by science.
So, what should be taken from this? A) the climate models are junk. Most observers have known this for quite some time. They are incomplete, their forcing data are all out of whack, and they not only can’t forecast the future, they can’t reproduce the past. B) We’re really just now beginning to understand the climate and its dynamics. And, unsurprisingly for most, despite the warmists attempts to ignore it, the sun plays a major role in determining temperature on earth.
Seems like common sense to me. So why has it taken so long to finally surface?
As with all such things, follow the money.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO