Climate Change and environment

The Greens Are Not Vulcans
A environmental theory that proposes a cause of global warming unrelated to greenhouse gasses is undergoing something of a renaissance at CERN, the world’s most important research facility for questions involving things that are very small and very fast. As the WSJ reports:
[There is] another possible factor in climate change: charged subatomic particles from outer space, or “cosmic rays,” whose atmospheric levels appear to rise and fall with the weakness or strength of solar winds that deflect them from the earth. These shifts might significantly impact the type and quantity of clouds covering the earth, providing a clue to one of the least-understood but most important questions about climate…
At the Franco-Swiss home of the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, scientists have been shooting simulated cosmic rays into a cloud chamber to isolate and measure their contribution to cloud formation. CERN’s researchers reported last month that in the conditions they’ve observed so far, these rays appear to be enhancing the formation rates of pre-cloud seeds by up to a factor of 10. Current climate models do not consider any impact of cosmic rays on clouds.
In the politically charged atmosphere of climate change science and policy, research on cosmic rays has been attacked from many sides, including the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Bert Bolin, then the head of the IPCC, attacked the authors of the research because he thought no responsible scientists would pursue lines of research that questioned climate orthodoxy: “I find the move from this pair scientifically extremely naïve and irresponsible.”
Via Meadia, readers will be shocked to hear, does not know whether cosmic rays have anything to do with rates of cloud formation. We know nothing about the motives of the researchers involved. But clearly the question is of sufficient interest to get the world’s largest particle accelerator involved.
Perhaps the conclusions will bolster the position that human activity is driving the world’s temperatures higher. Perhaps they will lead climate scientists to tweak their computer models in ways that change the debate. Most likely, the results of this experiment will open up some new questions and generate new hypotheses requiring more tests.
Climate science involves the study of a bafflingly complex system in which an untold number of variables interact in ways that are extremely difficult to model or predict. The science is very young; its conclusions may change in quite significant ways.
Most greens don’t want that to be true because they want the world to adopt drastic policy changes now. But the political reality is that those changes are both expensive and difficult (or even, realistically speaking) impossible to make given the limits of human institutions and political behavior. Any whisper of uncertainty or debate about the conclusions of climate science undermines the case for radical action now, so the green movement paints itself into a corner: it hypes the science it likes, and fights the science that might threaten its agenda.
While there are plenty of individual greens who are cautious in their policy advice and responsible in their use of evidence, the movement as a whole is driven by emotion. Most greens are not Vulcans, dispassionately calculating the best course of action by the dictates of reason. They are angry, frightened, committed true believers on a mission from Gaia, and many have a deep view that capitalism itself is a kind of cancer — uncontrolled growth that will sooner or later kill us all. (Sherri Tepper’s science fiction in which life-affirming, grounded, caring ecologically minded people frequently of the female persuasion overcome various male/science/capitalist/cancerous growth affirming death cults on planets around the galaxy portrays this core mindset pretty well.)
This is religion, not science, romanticism not reason. Add to that significant economic interests in subsidized industries (alternative power generation, ethanol, firms hoping to benefit from carbon trading) and one sees that the green movement as a whole is driven by anything but disinterested regard for the fruit of scientific research.
Disentangling that morass of commercial profit seeking and apocalyptic hyperventilation from the core of rational inquiry and thoughtful concern that the best environmental thinkers bring to bear is what the world badly needs. Again, I am left hoping that the press will stop colluding with the fanatics and the hustlers so that the actual results, however tentative, of this vital line of scientific research can receive the careful and considered reflection they deserve.
Posted in Environment, Politics, Quick Takes




POWERLINE BLOG
Climate Confusion I
Posted: 04 Sep 2011 07:01 PM PDT
There are a couple of comments from recent posts of mine on climate that deserve to be bumped up here and discussed on the front page. I’ll just treat one of them right now. Concerning my post on Climate McCarthyism this morning, mike259259 writes:
Every major scientific group concurs [with the “consensus’ view]. The National Academy of Sciences published a report last year reaching a firm conclusion: “Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for—and in many cases is already affecting—a broad range of human and natural systems.”
http://reason.com/archives/2011/09/01/the-conservative-reversal-on-s
The extremists are the ones who ignore the science because it disagrees with their predetermined conclusions. It’s usually liberals that do this, but on AGW it’s conservatives.
Now, a lot can be said (some of the other commenters have already done so) about the perniciousness of scientific “consensus,” or the ways in which the NAS and other scientific bodies hedge quite a bit when you get into the details inside the full reports, but leaving all this aside it should be noted that there are no more than a handful of people who dispute that summary statement. I suspect Roy Spencer could sign off on it (as indeed MIT’s “skeptic” Richard Lindzen signed on to a previous NAS report that said essentially the same thing). Indeed, it is completely compatible with the summary sentence from Spencer that I quoted in my original post: ““Even the IPCC admits the biggest uncertainty in how much human-caused climate change we will see is the degree to which cloud feedback [temperature change => cloud change] will magnify (or reduce) the weak direct warming tendency from more CO2 in the atmosphere.”
These two statements are compatible because the entire scientific argument is about how much warming we might experience in the future on the current trajectory of increased greenhouse gas levels, and what effects it might have. When the “official” IPCC studies all project a range from about 1.5 degrees (which would be no big deal) to 4.5 degrees (which would be a big deal), with no probability assessments for any point in the range, then it is impossible to say there is a formal “consensus” on catastrophe. What Spencer (among many others) is saying is that we are far from having an adequate grasp of the all important feedback effects of the weak forcing of greenhouse gases. (Keep in mind that greenhouse gas forcing is not linear: that is, all of the models show that if a doubling of greenhouse gases would produce a temperature rise of X, a tripling would not produce a temperature rise of 2X; probably more like 1.5X or less. It is the slope of that curve that is the nub of the whole matter. And if X turns out to be a fairly low number, then we’ve got yet another overblown eco-crisis.)
Now, as to mike259259’s second point that conservatives are anti-science, well, at least two things come to mind. Which ideology is it that throws a hissy fit over genetically modified organisms and childhood vaccinations? Or files lawsuits to stop de-listings of recovered species (like the gray wolf) even after the government’s science advisory bodies say “the science” says they should be de-listed? Who’s not respecting science now?
But rather than stopping with the simple observation that ideology or politics drives acceptance or rejection of certain domains of science, it is worth pressing on to ask why liberals dislike some kind of science, and conservatives other kinds. Liberals in the case of childhood vaccinations and GM organisms dislike certain forms of authority (especially private sector, for-profit authority—does anyone think the liberal outcry against GM foods would be as loud if it were a government lab rather than Monsanto that was leading these innovations?).
Conservatives have a symmetrical view, about which I have been trying to persuade liberal environmentalists (but I repeat myself) who will listen: even if catastrophic global warming were proved, we do not consent to being governed by Al Gore. Actually I can amend this: especially if catastrophic global warming were proved true, we do not wish to be governed by Al Gore. Putting environmentalists in charge of dealing with the serious effects of global warming would be like putting Barney Frank in charge of fixing the housing bubble. (Oh, wait. . .)
Mike259259 would be correct to say that it is a non sequitur to reason back from rightly not wishing to be governed by the left to concluding that global warming must therefore be false, and conservative science and policy skeptics ought to be more clear and rigorous about their reasoning. But conservatives are certainly right to be skeptical about the same crowd of apocalyptics who have been wrong or mostly wrong about every past eco-scare, a point Steve Chapman makes in a recent column where he makes much the same critique of conservatives as mike 259259. And the credulity with which the climate campaigners snap up every possible unfounded sign of doom (aliens might get mad at us–seriously??) actually does more to discredit their cause than any ostensible simple-mindedness from Rick Perry.
It gets even worse on the policy side. Consider Bjorn Lomborg, who does not dispute a single bit of the “consensus” view of global warming, but merely argues quite compellingly that the climate campaign’s remedy—carbon constraints and green energy—fail every conceivable economic test, a view he holds in common with most prominent economists who study this subject closely, such as Yale’s William Nordhaus, Richard Tol of the University of Hamburg, and a couple other folks whose names I can’t remember at Oxford and Cambridge. For this clarity the head of the IPCC compares Lomborg to Hitler. Lomborg gets singled out for this treatment–and pies in the face, etc–merely because he is the most visible. Again—who is ignoring science now (in this case “consensus” social science)? The closemindedness of the climate campaign to any kind of reasonable criticism of scientific uncertainty or to any alternative policy analysis has inflicted more damage that all of the skeptic efforts. As Walter Russell Mead says, the global warming crusade has had the most incompetent and self-destructive leadership of any social/political movement ever.





By Dean Nelson, New Delhi and Richard Alleyne 6:00AM GMT 27 Jan 2011
206 Comments
Researchers have discovered that contrary to popular belief half of the ice flows in the Karakoram range of the mountains are actually growing rather than shrinking.
The discovery adds a new twist to the row over whether global warming is causing the world's highest mountain range to lose its ice cover.
It further challenges claims made in a 2007 report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the glaciers would be gone by 2035.
Although the head of the panel Dr Rajendra Pachauri later admitted the claim was an error gleaned from unchecked research, he maintained that global warming was melting the glaciers at "a rapid rate", threatening floods throughout north India.
The new study by scientists at the Universities of California and Potsdam has found that half of the glaciers in the Karakoram range, in the northwestern Himlaya, are in fact advancing and that global warming is not the deciding factor in whether a glacier survives or melts.
RELATED ARTICLES
Himalayan glaciers spell trouble for climate scientists 27 Jan 2011
Climate change: the top conspiracy theories 27 Jan 2011
Dr Bodo Bookhagen, Dirk Scherler and Manfred Strecker studied 286 glaciers between the Hindu Kush on the Afghan-Pakistan border to Bhutan, taking in six areas.



'Incredible' 43,000-year-old find in Colorado

A trove of unusual fossils holds clues to an "ancient global warming event," Nov 21 2010 Did car pollution cause that global warming event too?



Obama incompetence on oil spill continues

Day 68: Why isn’t the A-Whale in the Gulf yet?
Share
POSTED AT 1:30 PM ON JUNE 27, 2010 BY ED MORRISSEY
PRINTER-FRIENDLY

The A-Whale bills itself as the largest open-water oil skimmer in the world, and it’s at least very impressive. Originally an oil and ore tanker, the ship’s owners recently refitted the ship to do exactly the kind of work that the US so desperately needs in the Gulf of Mexico, and to do it on a vastly larger scale than current operations can handle. According to the ship’s project manager, the entire American effort in 66 days has skimmed off 600,000 barrels of oil. The ship’s owners claim that A-Whale can skim 500,000 barrels a day.

So where is the A-Whale now? In the Gulf? Not yet. It’s on its way there after being tied to a dock in Norfolk, Virginia, and won’t be allowed to join the cleanup effort until the Coast Guard and the EPA figure out whether it meets their standards (h/t Deb Singer on Twitter):

After making a brief stop in Norfolk for refueling, U.S. Coast Guard inspections and an all-out publicity blitz intended to drum up public support, a giant tanker billed as the world’s largest oil skimming vessel set sail Friday for the Gulf of Mexico where it hopes to assist in the oil-cleanup effort.

The Taiwanese-owned, Liberian-flagged ship dubbed the “A Whale” stands 10 stories high, stretches 1,115 feet in length and has a nearly 200-foot beam. It displaces more water than an aircraft carrier. …

But a number of hurdles stand in his way. TMT officials said the company does not yet have government approval to assist in the cleanup or a contract with BP to perform the work.

That’s part of the reason the ship was tied to pier at the Virginia Port Authority’s Norfolk International Terminals Friday morning. TMT and its public-relations agency invited scores of media, elected officials and maritime industry executives to an hour-long presentation about how the ship could provide an immediate boost to clean-up efforts in the Gulf.

TMT also paid to fly in Edward Overton, a professor emeritus of environmental sciences at Louisiana State University, to get a look at the massive skimmer.

Overton blasted BP and the federal government for a lack of effort and coordination in their dual oil-spill response and made a plea to the government to allow the A Whale to join the cleanup operation.

To be clear, the A-Whale has not yet been tested on the scale needed in this cleanup. Limited testing, the ship’s owners say, have proven the concept of their new skimming technique. They have already begun plans for a B-Whale to do the same work, but until someone gets the ship into the game, no one will know for certain whether it can operate at the full, advertised capacity.

However, the answer to that should be so what? We badly need increased skimming capacity. Even if this ship only ever gets one load of oil skimmed, that’s a potential 500,000 barrels of oil out of the Gulf, or an advance of 66 days at present rate. While the Coast Guard needs to ensure seaworthiness, the EPA’s regulatory hurdles are in this case ridiculous. We’re already in the worst-case scenario. Even if the A-Whale doesn’t skim a single barrel of oil, they can hardly make the situation worse than it is right now.

This, by the way, is Day 68 of the Gulf crisis. The A-Whale didn’t get refitted on Day 66; this work had to have been done over months, if not years. Shouldn’t the government have known about the existence of this ship two months ago, and been working on certifying it immediately? The A-Whale shouldn’t have had to stop at Norfolk at all to get the nation’s attention, but should have been hired to steam directly to the Gulf and get to work immediately. It’s indicative of a crisis management team that is spending more time worrying about regulations and red tape than cleaning up the mess, just as we saw with Packgen’s boom.

Heartland Conference Establishes Post-Climategate Consensus
By Marc Sheppard

“New scientific discoveries are casting doubt on how much of the warming of the twentieth century was natural and how much was man-made, and governments around the world are beginning to confront the astronomical cost of reducing emissions. Economists, meanwhile, are calculating that the cost of slowing or stopping global warming exceeds the social benefits.”

So spoke Senator James Inhofe on the Senate floor on May 17th, reading into the record the mission statement of the climate conference he was scheduled to be speaking at that very moment. Rather than addressing the Monday lunch session of Heartland’s Fourth International Conference on Climate Change, the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works remained in Washington, responding to the prior week’s Kerry-Lieberman “climate bill” proposal.

The Oklahoma Republican, who had assured attendees of last year’s ICCC on Capitol Hill that no cap-and-tax bill would ever pass the Senate, now stood before C-SPAN’s cameras doing what only one major news organization – Fox -- had done before him: acknowledging the existence and significance of the 700-plus scientists, economists, policymakers, and concerned citizens gathering some 600 miles away in Chicago. And their collective objective to “build public awareness of the global warming ‘realism’ movement,” so that “sound science and economics, rather than exaggeration and hype” might “determine what actions, if any, are taken to address the problem of climate change.”

Had the mainstream media acted responsibly, then every word spoken at the first major post-Climategate climate colloquium would have indeed built public awareness of the implausibility of manmade global warming and, consequently, any job-killing legislation, treaties or regulations designed to “control” it. But ours is an agenda-driven MSM – brazenly toting water for a president and Hill Democrats shamelessly rolling out the Gulf-coast disaster crash-cart to reanimate their flat-lined “climate” bill.

Mine is the task of summarizing – to the best of my ability -- the current state of climate reality, as espoused before me one month ago by no less than the greatest minds analyzing the subject today. And yours is the opportunity to quickly absorb the collective wisdom of over 75 experts speaking at 5 plenary and 20 breakout sessions, and countless marvelous conversations, all spread over 3 days. And to discover or affirm the myriad inconvenient truths behind the “global warming” hype.

Let’s begin with arguably the most significant but unquestionably the most conference-ubiquitous.

Currents and Current Cooling

For years now, alarmists have arrogantly ignored the cooling we’ve experienced worldwide since 1999, continuing their demands that we sacrifice everything – jobs, money, comfort, progress and ultimately, freedom -- to halt fictitious “runaway global warming.” Such unfounded hysteria seems all the more inane after hearing the unvarnished truth from the experts at ICCC-4, beginning with their predictions that the global cooling will likely continue for the next few decades.

Geologist Don Easterbrook was one of many attending scientists attributing natural climate variations to solar irradiance and deep ocean currents. His ICCC-4 announced paper, The Looming Threat of Global Cooling, noted the undeniable link between the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) shifting to its warm mode in 1915 and 1977 and global warming resulting both times. Conversely, in 1945 and 1999 the PDO moved to its cool mode and the globe cooled right along, despite a rapid increase in atmospheric CO2 during the period. What’s more, climate changes in the geologic record show a regular pattern of alternate warming and cooling with a 25-30 year period for the past 500 years. Easterbrook thereby concludes that we should “expect global cooling for the next 2-3 decades that will be far more damaging than global warming would have been.”



Based on the present cycle, the astrophysicist expects “the beginning of the new Little Ice Age epoch approximately in 2014.”

Hurricane specialist William Gray also brought along some mighty convincing charts proving that most of the warming experienced in the past thousand years can be attributed to deep ocean circulations, strengthened and weakened by century-scale salinity variations. While the relationship of Sea Surface Temperatures to evaporation, rainfall and wind patterns, albedo and, ultimately, air temperature is complex and beyond the scope of this article, suffice it to say that this translates to ocean – not carbon -- driven global temperatures.

Gray believes the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a result of a multi-century slowdown of the Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC), similar to that experienced in the 20th century and corresponded to similar warming. Conversely, the Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of stronger than average MOC, as we are beginning to see today. Gray, too, predicts that strengthening ocean currents portend global cooling over the next few decades, even as carbon dioxide levels continue to climb.

So how is it that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center just declared this year’s January-May period the warmest on record?

“If we torture the data long enough, it will confess”

AT readers are no doubt well aware that, thanks in large part to the efforts of WUWT’s indefatigable Anthony Watts, we’ve known for years that over 90% of American stations misreport temperature data by between 1ºC and 5ºC. Furthermore, “smoothing” adjustments to “homogenize” station data to that of surrounding stations and dismissal of the biasing phenomenon known as the Urban Heat Island Effect have grossly exaggerated 20th-century warming.

Not coincidentally, Dr. Craig Loehle concluded that after subtracting UHIE and other measurement artifacts, a 59 year natural cycle of warming and cooling remains. And while that cycle matches that of the PDO to a tee, the MSM respond as though only “deniers” could possibly suggest a link.

But last November we learned just how far ideologues at England’s Climate Research Unit were willing to go when glaring evidence that its scientists had doctored climate data to remove previous warm periods from the history books while exaggerating modern warming and suppressing modern cooling surfaced.

And further investigation uncovered by a team lead by ICCC-4 presenter Joe D’Aleo revealed that the two primary U.S. sources of global temperature have also been manipulating land-based instrumental readings. NOAA has been strategically deleting cherry-picked, cooler-reporting weather observation stations from the temperature data and NASA has intentionally replaced the dropped NOAA readings with those of stations located in much warmer locales.



Fig 2. From ICECAP’S Joe D’Aleo. As NOAA’s Global Historical Climatology Network selectively dropped its US Station count from 5000 in 1990 to 1500 in 2007, reported temperatures rose inversely. Nothing to see here.

And that’s just the beginning. As D’Aleo explained, “homogenization and other adjustments blend the good with the bad, usually cooling off early warm periods, producing a warming where none existed.” For instance, NOAA removed UHIE adjustments from US Data in 2007, which “changed a cooling trend since 1940 to a warming trend.”

This section’s heading is a quote from Ronald Coase, fittingly cited by D’Aleo during his presentation. For more details on why Joe concludes that “the surface data and models should not have been used for decision making by the EPA or the congress,” and that any proclamations of “warmest months,” “warmest years,” or “warmest” anything are utterly meaningless, see my January report here.

Of course, the instrumental data manipulated by the US agencies is accepted as gospel by climate agencies worldwide.

Accordingly, atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer believes that the decline Phil Jones wrote about using the “trick” to hide was not only the post-1979 temperature drop calculated by his proxy records, but also that in the actual CRU/NOAA/NASA instrumental readings, which he and his co-conspirators set out to manipulate before splicing them to the pre-1980 proxy series. In other words, there has been no actual warming since 1979. Singer – who presented much evidence against post-1979 warming, including satellite data -- emailed Michael Mann and asked why the proxy data ended in 1979 and received a reply that there were “no suitable records.” Nonsense, declares Dr. Singer - “We need more proxy data for 1979-1997!”

At the event’s opening night dinner, realist-hero Steve McIntyre drew no small amount of ire from the crowd when he refused to call CRU’s trickery “fraud.” “Academic misconduct,” he labeled it, stating that in academic circles the level of non-disclosure of adverse data we saw was perhaps perfectly acceptable. Geologist and former astronaut Harrison Schmitt grabbed the mike to retort that “this is science, and if you want to play that game (tricks, non-disclosure, etc) then you can go somewhere else.” To which more than a few in attendance, including your humble correspondent, yelled loudly: “To Jail!”

Climate Depot’s Marc Morano sided with the astronaut. Not Use Term Fraud? Hell No!

It is so nice to have the light of day and stench of corruption coming from people like Michael Mann and Pachauri and Phil Jones and the upper echelon of U.N. scientists. We should be rejoicing that their entire careers are getting pissed on at the moment and justifiably so.

Lord Monckton agreed - “So when Steve McIntyre says we shouldn’t use words like fraud --- Yes we should when it’s plain and evident.”

Monckton later called for the abolishment of the IPCC -- “if only because of their appalling prose style.”

That line drew enormous laughter. But there’s nothing comical about the malfeasance of the U.N.’s climate panel, its complicit agencies both here and abroad, or the efforts afoot to whitewash their conspiracy to defraud.

Ugly Models + Inverted Feedback Loops = Inflated Climate Sensitivity

As Easterbrook noted, computer models are the only basis for claiming CO2 is causing global warming. But IPCC models predicted 1ºF warming from 2000 to 2010, yet there’s been no warming beyond the 1998 level. So the models have been proven wrong.

And ICCC-4 was teeming with scientists uniquely qualified to explain the errors of the modelers’ ways.

As you probably know, IPCC modelers have declared probable climate sensitivity (the amount of warming to be expected by a doubling of atmospheric CO2, a likelihood this century) to be 3ºC. But they attribute 2/3 of that figure to positive feedback from clouds. William Gray explained why he believes clouds actually provide 0.5ºC of negative feedback for a total climate sensitivity of 0.5ºC.

Indeed, the designation of clouds as negative rather than positive feedback has been a lesson taught by Dr. Roy Spencer and MIT’s Dr. Richard Lindzen for years. As Spencer explained, were warming due only to CO2, it would be a non-issue. The IPCC modelers derive their “catastrophic” warming predictions from algorithms whereby CO2-caused warming causes a decrease in clouds, which lets in more sunlight and leads to more warming. In truth, says Spencer, quite the opposite is true -- weak warming increases clouds, letting in less sunlight and leading to less warming. In fact, Spencer believes that a full 75-80% of warming could be due to cloudiness changes due to PDO. In other words, most of past warming is likely natural and climate sensitivity is likely closer to 0.5ºC.

Lindzen fundamentally agrees with the 0.5ºC figure, noting that a doubling of CO2, by itself, contributes only about 1ºC to greenhouse warming:

We see that all the models are characterized by positive feedback factors (associated with amplifying the effect of changes in CO2), while the satellite data implies that the feedback should be negative. Only with positive feedbacks from water vapor and clouds does one get the large warmings that are associated with alarm. What the satellite data seems to show is that these positive feedbacks are model artifacts.

In a uniquely fascinating lecture, frequent WUWT contributor Willis Eschenbach outlined his hypothesis that temperatures are kept within a narrow and fixed range by a governing mechanism of clouds and thunderstorms set by the physics of the wind, the waves and the ocean – but not CO2 forcing. And past IPCC expert reviewer Tom V. Segalstad also insisted that clouds are the real thermostat, with far more temperature regulating power than CO2.



Fig 3. From SPPI. For almost nine years, the trend in global temperatures has been falling. The IPCC’s predicted equilibrium warming path (pink region) bears no relation to the global cooling that has been observed in the 21st century to date. Note the very sharp peak in global temperature in early 2010, caused by a strong El Niño Southern Oscillation. Source: SPPI global temperature index.

Geologist Ian Plimer exposed yet another problem with IPCC models -- they completely ignore the role of volcanoes in their analysis. Both terrestrial, which expel heat, water vapor and CO2, and submarine, which add heat and gases to the oceans and also increase its CO2, play no part whatsoever in IPCC predictions.

And yet, the models are programmed to specifically predict the effects of atmospheric trace gases, focusing on one in particular -- despite being wrong not only in theory, but also in practice. Put simply by Lindzen, who first noticed the discrepancy between the models’ predictions and the observed reality, “all models are exaggerating warming.”

Physicist David Douglass revealed his comparisons of actual tropical temperature trends with 22 Model Predictions from 1958-2004. The models did not fare well -- only 2 of the 22 matched observations. He also cited his Geophysical Research Letters-published collaboration with Pearson and Singer in 2004 which challenged the a hot spot 7-8km over the tropics IPCC models predicted would develop between 1979-2004.

Environmental economist Ross McKitrick pointed out that it was on pages 764-765 of AR4 WG1 report that IPCC authors wrongly predicted a concentrated, rapid warming expected in the tropical troposphere: McKitrick allowed a quote from a 2005 paper [PDF] by Barnett et al put the IPCC’s error into perspective:

If the Christy et al. (2000) analysis is closer to the “true” tropospheric temperature change over the satellite era, then we do not understand the factors that influence observed lapse rate variability on multi-decadal timescales, and climate models cannot reproduce the “observed” differential warming.

Concludes McKitrick, “you have to decide whether you believe models or data – you can’t believe both.” Of course, given recent revelations, it’s becoming more and more difficult to believe either. So you may find Douglass’s take-away the more compelling -- “how can you trust models to predict the future if they can’t explain the past?”

Great question -- in any other science you most certainly would not. But, as Douglass indicated: “In climatology, if you come up with something that disagrees with the hypothesis, the models are always correct, and there’s something wrong with your data.”

And Lindzen certainly agreed:

More sophisticated data is being analyzed with the aim of supporting rather than testing models (validation rather than testing). The aim is to support rather than question the models. That certainly has been my experience during service with both the IPCC and the National Climate Assessment Program. It is also evident in the recent scandal concerning Himalayan glaciers [, which Marc will be addressing approximately 600 words from now.]

The MIT atmospheric guru concluded that:

Models cannot be tested by comparing models with models. Attribution cannot be based on the ability or lack thereof of faulty models to simulate a small portion of the record. Models are simply not basic physics.


Any wonder why J. Scott Armstrong found that of 89 relevant forecasting principles, the IPCC authors violated no less than 72 of them?

We Heart CO2

Armstrong also noted that when Svante Arrhenius first proposed the “CO2 causes warming” theory in the early-1900s, the Swedish Nobel Prize winner expected the effects to be beneficial. And many agree.

A century later in a Chicago hotel conference room, H. Leighton Steward inventoried many of the benefits of increased CO2, including a general greening of the planet, an enhanced capacity of ecosystems and habitats and an increase in productivity per farm acre. This in turn will help prevent conversion of pristine land to farm land and thereby lead to more food for an expanding population.

Robert Ferguson of SPPI also examined the alarmist-ignored physiological benefits rising atmospheric CO2 and unrelated higher temperatures afford plant-life, and that it “is essential for meeting future food needs and conserving land for nature.” But rather than being marked for distinction, as claimed by alarmists, animal life will actually thrive in warmer, CO2 enriched environments, through enhanced species proliferation and diversity.

During his lecture on solar activity, astrophysicist Willie Soon touched upon the impact of rising CO2 in the oceans and displayed the results of a study by Dr. Justin Ries of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. It seems that increasing the CO2 in the habitats of the shellfish studied increased their growth sevenfold!

And yet, last year the EPA classified the essential trace gas as a pollutant in its incongruous endangerment finding.

The sheer senselessness of that declaration elicited separate unorchestrated yet identically preambled rebuttals from Soon, Steward, Singer, and Schmitt that “CO2 is not an air pollutant,” with Soon adding that “it is food for plants and marine life!” and Steward that “without CO2 there would be no life on Earth.”




Fig 4. From H. Leighton Steward. In a reversal of alarmist hype, Antarctica Ice Core Analysis depicts CO2 levels rising in response to warmer temperatures.

Steward offered one of many reminders I heard that climate history indicates CO2 is a lagging indicator in climate change. In fact, an Antarctica Ice Core Analysis chart clearly showed the several hundred year lag of CO2’s response to prior temperature change.

Regarding those recent theoretical claims of impending marine species extinctions due to increases in the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration, Craig Idso analyzed the results of no less than 568 separate studies and concluded that such alarming predictions “have no basis in empirical reality.” Furthermore, “[t]hose who continue to portray CO2-induced ocean acidification as a megadisaster-in-the-making are not grounded in the real world data.”

Ian Plimer showed that we’ve had up to 30% CO2 in oceans in the past with no acidification due to the buffering power of rocks, adding that the evidence is written in stone.

Tom V. Segalstad agrees, asserting that all reported pH anomalies “are within natural variations.” Segalstad walked us through a number of formulae concluding that the oceans’ carbonate systems are one of many pH buffers maintaining equilibrium. And according to Stumm & Morgan, 1970: “Together these add up to almost an ‘infinite buffer capacity.’"

And, as we need the carbohydrates from the plants that need the gas, Segalstad declares CO2 to be “The gas of life.”

The Norwegian geophysicist concluded that: “Regulation, taxation and control of CO2, the basics of life, is betraying the Universal Declarations of Human Rights.”

Global Flooding – The Alarmists’ Paper Tiger

One of the most infamous post-climategate IPCC scandals was branded “Glaciergate.” The term refers to an AR4 warning that unchecked climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035, which was found to be lifted from an erroneous World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report and misrepresented as peer-reviewed science. IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri attempted to parry this “mistake” by accusing the accusers at the Indian environment ministry of “arrogance” and practicing “voodoo science” in issuing a report [PDF] disputing the IPCC. But one in his own ranks, Dr Murari Lal, the coordinating lead author of the chapter making the claim, later admitted he knew all along that it “did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.” As, apparently, had Pachauri (whom Monckton later referred to as “Casey Jones,” in recognition of his field of expertise -- railroad engineering), who continued to lie about it for months so as not to sully the exalted AR4 immediately prior to Copenhagen.

Madhav Khandekar cited Glaciergate as “a clear example how IPCC’s lack of oversight and ineptness can lead to an alarmist science with NO merit.” Khandekar notes that in reality, Himalayan glaciers aren’t melting any faster than glaciers elsewhere, and the two major Himalayan glaciers, Gangotri and Siachen, appear quite stable at present. And he presented facts which suggest that, contrary to ubiquitous visuals of pacific islands and coastal cities under meters of water, glacier melt worldwide may contribute about 105 mm to sea level rise (SLR) over next 110 years. Add thermal expansion from even 1ºC over the next 100 years (remember -- Lindzen, Spencer et al suggest 0.5C and others suggest continued cooling) for an additional 100 mm and we’re talking in the neighborhood of 22 cm over the next 100 years.

Not much to be alarmed about, particularly considering that, as emphasized by marine geologist Bob Carter, even that high-end figure represents no meaningful change over the 10-20 cm / century experienced over the past 150 years. Carter showed us a chart of IPCC predicted eustatic (worldwide) SLR from 1990-2100 which presents an over-the-top apex of 0.77 meters. But Carter sees little value in eustatic forecasts anyway. And he’s not alone. Quoting Singer et al., NIPCC, 2008, p. 51:

Even assuming that this statistic can be estimated accurately, it has little practical policy value. Local relative sea-level (LRSL) change is all that counts for purposes of coastal planning, and this is highly variable worldwide, depending upon the differing rates at which particular coasts are undergoing tectonic uplift or subsidence.

And it’s exactly these LRSLs the always engaging Dr. Carter addressed in his presentation.

Carter displayed a chart of eustatic SLR since the Last Glacial Maximum, showing the total rise since 18,000 years BP (before present) to be about 120 meters. The curve is quite steep as continental ice sheets melted (10,000 years BP the rate of rise was 2 m/century) and levels off to a nearly constant rate of rise in the past several millennia. Ian Plimer added that materials found from retreating ice show that we’ve had SL changes of at least 1.5km in the past.

Message to warmists: As with climate, SLR rates are in continual flux and are never cause for alarm, but rather adaptation.

But these global averages comprised many extreme local variations. Using his native Australia as an example, Bob showed many examples of areas where sea level was once (5000 ybp) many meters higher than it is today. Moving to Scandinavia, strandline deposits of mollusk shells signify that the shoreline was over 30 meters lower 5000 ypb due to icecap uplift.

So there are different LRSL curves all over the world, hence Bob’s closing words: In using IPCC advice to set their policies on SLR, national governments are negligent and fail utterly to fulfil their duties to care for their people. Bob added in an email he sent me days later: “It betrays frightening ignorance that many governments and local authorities are, nonetheless, introducing new coastal planning regulations that are exclusively predicated upon the IPCC’s eustatic sea-level forecasts.”

Of course, others conveniently exploit their local topography.



Fig. 5. From Nils-Axel Mörner. Maldavian cabinet underwater photo-op was all wet.

Perhaps the most famous hysterical response to SLR was this recent photo of the Maldivian president and ministers donning SCUBA gear to hold the world's first underwater cabinet meeting as a “symbolic cry for help over rising sea levels that threaten the tropical archipelago's existence.” A stirring visual indeed – but pure baloney says paleogeophysicist Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, who reported the results of his highly detailed sea-level study of the area. It turns out that not only has SL been stable there over the past 30 years, but current levels are significantly lower than they were in the 17th century. Similar results were found in other IPCC “warning” areas like Bangladesh, Venice, and NW Europe – no significant SLR in as many as 50 years. What Mörner did find in all of these areas was a tendency for the IPCC to misrepresent coastal erosion as SLR.

Flooding is, after all, the ultimate weapon of the alarmists. Sure, there’s the AGW-hurricane canard, but as Steward reminded us -- global hurricane activity is at a 30 year low and violent tornadoes (F3-F5) have been trending downward since 1975

As Mörner observes: “Without a flooding concept there is not much of a threat left in IPCC.”

The tiger has lost its teeth.

Social Justice – U.N. Style

Marc Morano fittingly declared carbon-based economies “one of the greatest liberators of mankind in the history of our planet,” and hailed carbon-based energy for “allow[ing] unprecedented 20th Century advances.” The same industrial age that warmists blame for all the planet’s ills actually advanced life on Earth from its previous state of “nasty, brutish and short.”

Appearing on Fox News last December, Morano referred to "a new form of colonialism,” where you have “the white wealthy western world telling 1.6 billion people in developing world -- predominantly of color -- that they have to have their economies managed, their energy managed all because of climate fears."

Julian Morris foresees corollaries of a direr nature, fearing that greenie concerns over technology could affect the very thing they’re most concerned about – widespread starvation. But not for the reasons the greens advertise.

A little background is in order.

The U.N. is seeking what amounts to a wealthy-nations tax, asking developed countries to pony up 2% of their GDP for a U.N.-policed fund purported to help “developing” nations mitigate and adapt to climate change. The rationale? Developed nations owe a “climate debt” to the less fortunate “victims” of their greed. Of course, having come this far in this admittedly lengthy essay, you already know that progress has had no bearing on climate change, so spending billions to reduce CO2 emissions will reduce neither those emissions nor global temperatures. And that the ravages of climate change (SLR, hurricanes, etc) are hysterical hogwash.

For a detailed explanation of how climate change is the problem to the U.N.’s solution of international wealth redistribution, see my expose -- IPCC: International Pack of Climate Crooks.

The problems driving Morris’ concern all stem from the unintended consequences of green “scare stories,” and he offered Rachel Carson’s bogus indictment of DDT in Silent Spring, responsible for the death of millions from malaria, as an example. The previous day, Indur Goklany had warned of a brewing crisis when he discussed his study that found death and disease from biofuel production more likely to be real than those estimated due to GW.

As we learned from Soon, Steward, Singer, Schmitt, Ferguson, Idso and Segalstad (to name a few), a warmer, carbon richer world would in fact be a better world. Carbon is not a threat to any nation, developed or otherwise.

On the other hand -- malnutrition, diarrhea, AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and lack of access to fresh water are real threats to third-world nations and it’s the very technology the warmists seek to impede that’s best suited to cure these diseases and bring these people out of poverty.

Concludes Morris – by imposing “climate control” remedies in the third-world, more people actually will therefore die from “climate related” problems.

Which Morris humanely labels as “twisted thinking and morally repugnant.”

Which brings us to ……

All the President’s Mendacity

In his disturbingly unfocused oil-spill response speech last Tuesday, in which he appeared more concerned with capping emissions than capping the black mud spewing into the Gulf, Obama referred to the House cap-and-tax bill as one “that finally makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy for America's businesses.”

This is patently preposterous and betrays an egregious lack of executive grasp.

Obama would have learned much from CEI’s Chris Horner’s segment, in which he quoted a Center for Data Analysis (CDA) analysis that projects a nationwide renewable electricity standard would:

+ Raise electricity prices by 36 percent for households and 60 percent for industry;
+ Cut national income (GDP) by $5.2 trillion between 2012 and 2035;
+ Cut household income by $2,400 per year for a family of four;
+ Reduce employment by >1,000,000 jobs; and
+ Add more than $10,000 to a family of four’s share of the national debt by 2035

The president mentioned “America’s addiction to oil” twice, a term borrowed from his Republican predecessor. But as Hon. George Allen of American Energy Freedom Center declared, “Americans are not addicted to oil, they’re addicted to freedom.” The former VA senator added that “a free, prosperous and sovereign country needs to be able to defend, feed, and fuel itself” and that “America has more energy sources than any other in the world (oil, coal, and natural gas), yet our government sees those resources as a curse (any other would see it as a blessing).”

Obama also claimed that “as we recover from this recession, the transition to clean energy has the potential to grow our economy and create millions of good, middle-class jobs - but only if we accelerate that transition.”

Any guesses why he neglected to suggest we “think of what’s happening in countries like Spain and Japan, where they are making real investments in renewable energy,” as he did in January of last year?

Dr. Gabriel Calzada returned to ICCC to explain that as bad as Spain’s “green economy” was when last we met in Washington, it’s actually decayed further since. The Spanish economist revealed that last year’s devastating 18 percent “green unemployment” had now exceeded an astounding 20 percent. That’s because the country spent 28.6 Billion Euros to create 50,200 green jobs (that’s over 570,000 euros per green job) and – get this – for every green job created 2.2 jobs were lost. And the majority of these “green” jobs are temporary in nature, further decimating the Spanish workforce as they sunset. And while the government continues to pump more money into inadequate power sources, energy prices skyrocket, driving industry to cheaper ground, and the job market to even lower levels.

In 2009, Spain’s public aid to renewables cost more than the whole national electricity production as the unitary cost of renewable energies reached 3 times the cost of other energies. That rate deficit reached 4.6 Billion Euros, which forced public aid to renewables to reach 6 Billion Euros.

Horner referred to this as an “unsustainable bubble” requiring “constant infusion,” pointing out that such subsidies directly and indirectly trade manufacturing jobs for primarily “temporary installation jobs.”

As Minnesota State Senator Mike Jungbauer noted, renewable energy standards are actually mandates which constrict access to efficient, inexpensive base-load power and pass all costs on to the consumer. And, as both the reductions and standards are hopelessly “unattainable,” they do nothing to help achieve “energy independence.”

And then there’s the matter of cap-and-tax itself, a subject of much chatter at ICCC-4.

Hans Labohm laid out the real numbers behind Obama’s ludicrous goal of “slashing US carbon dioxide emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.” Aided by the calculations of American economist Paul Driessen, the Dutch economist estimated that such a reduction would return the US to emission levels last seen in 1905 (a similar study [PDF] by the American Enterprise Institute puts the emissions number at a billion metric tons, last seen in 1910). But America’s 1905 population was 84 million, as compared to 308 million today, so per-capita emissions would need to be reduced to the levels of the horse-and-buggy days of 1862.

And in a futile attempt to achieve that insane goal, we’d need to endure additional layers of environmental regulation, higher energy prices (for business and consumers), loss of international competiveness, regular blackouts, walk out of (energy-intensive) industries to countries with less burdensome regulation, waves of lay-offs, energy poverty, and an overall decline of living standards. Of course, AT readers know damned well such suffering would be for naught.

Chip Knappenberger estimated that by century’s end, the plan will result in global temperatures being one-fifth of one degree Fahrenheit less than they would otherwise be -- which is “a scientifically meaningless reduction.”

But here’s what’s truly amazing, says Labohm (my emphasis): “According to the models of the climate alarmists, the current proposals to reduce CO2 emissions will have no detectable effect on worldwide temperatures.”

In other words – All pain, no gain.

What a year it has been. We are the consensus now.

So began Lord Christopher Monckton’s conference-ender. Monckton’s masterful closing remarks have become an ICCC tradition, in which he movingly congeals the many truths learned in the prior sessions. Once again, he did not disappoint.

Monckton identified in Hadley data 3 recent and remarkably similar periods of rapid warming -- 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-2001. The first two were obviously not CO2 related as average atmospheric CO2 (ACO2) for the periods were 290 and 310 ppmv, respectively. They both did, however, correspond to the PDO of the time (as noted above by Easterbrook.) The third, which as Monckton points out “accounts for almost all of the warming that has occurred since 1950 and we are told by the IPCC was chiefly caused by us – does have a rational explanation.”



Fig 6. From Christopher Monckton. Three post-LIA rapid-warming periods betray warming’s natural drivers.

It, too, corresponds with the PDO (Earth to GHG crazies – anything?). But Monckton found more. It’s a 2005 paper by Pinker et al. depicting a satellite-detected global brightening (an increase in the flux of solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface) from 1983-2001 due to a decrease in clouds. What’s truly remarkable is that the brightening for that 18 year period (2.9 Watts per square meter) represented nearly twice the IPCC’s estimate of the total anthropogenic influence on the climate in the 256 years between 1750 and 2005 (1.6 Watts per square meter). Please read and consider the previous sentence until you hear an “aha” somewhere in your vicinity before proceeding.

Monckton was the final of many at this year’s conference to display Willie Soon’s 2009 graph of temperature v. solar irradiation (1880-2009) in China which appears to remove any doubt remaining of correlation.



Fig 7. From Willie Soon. 130 years of Solar Irradiance (red) and mean surface temperature (blue). Alarmists: No link here.

To recap – the U.N.’s top-dollar experts are presented with the occurrence of three all-but-identical rapid warming bursts since the end of the LIA. The first 2 are obviously naturally occurring as they align perfectly with PDO and solar irradiance, but not with ACO2. The third DOES correspond to rising ACO2, but also to PDO and solar activity. So to what does the IPCC attribute the third burst?

Why, CO2, of course.



Fig 8. From Hans Labohm. World temperatures falling whilst CO2 keeps rising

Let’s consider the evidence.

The globe has been cooling for 12 (perhaps 31) years while atmospheric CO2 levels have risen 6 (perhaps 15) percent (Fig 8). Meanwhile, temperatures since the LIA ended align perfectly with PDO (Fig 1) and TSI (Fig 7). Over the past 20,000 years, increases in CO2 levels have followed periods of warming, not caused them (Fig 4). Any jury deliberating on such evidence would undoubtedly return a verdict of CO2 not guilty. But climate scientists in the UK and US tampered with the jury of public opinion when they (as compiled by Ian Plimer):

o Constructed a climate history that suppressed the MWP or the LIA, a major argument of CO2 advocates.
o Doctored climate data to show increase global warming and suppress global cooling.
o Hid or deleted data that didn’t support their beliefs.
o Took over journal editorial boards to suppress opposing views.
o Suppressed the research of scientists who didn’t agree with them
o Reviewed their own publications and claimed only “peer reviewed” papers were valid

Alarmists also got caught grossly exaggerating the effects of climate change. Contrary to the 20 feet once predicted by Al Gore, SLR is likely to remain at the same 18-22 cm per century average rate it’s been for eons and vary from location to location. Claims of impending marine species extinctions due to increases in the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration are utter nonsense, as are those of disappearing polar and glacial ice. As for the latest craze – killer storms -- global hurricane activity is actually at a 30 year low and violent tornadoes have been trending downward for even longer than that.

Fossil Fuels (Coal, Natural Gas and Petroleum) provide 84% of the Nation’s energy, “Green” energy sources (Biomass, Geothermal, Wind, Solar, and Hydroelectric) account for just over 7% and nuclear almost 9%. There is no magic path to “Green jobs” or a “Green economy.” The ongoing disintegration of the EU should be proof enough of that.

Sounds like game, set and match to me.

And yet, left-leaning policy makers throughout the world would have us surrender all that mankind has achieved, “flinging us back to the Stone Age, but without even the right to light fires in our caves” as Monckton describes it. That even a small percentage of the population is willing to do so despite the overwhelming evidence that we are being conned by a well-organized and well-funded eco-socialist movement is nothing short of staggering.

That Obama and the Democrats plan to exploit public outrage over the entirely unrelated BP disaster to muster votes for this larceny of our freedom is downright vulgar.

Says Monckton: “At a time of grave economic hardship it is the height not only of folly but of cruelty to spend any more money whatsoever on trying to mitigate global bloody warming.” This was a rare moment of understatement from his Lordship. Given the new consensus -- any time would be the wrong time to spend any money mitigating global warming.

New consensus? Granted, not yet the collective position of the vocal scientific majority, but Monckton hit it right on the head:

“In the end the truth is the center of every lasting consensus.”

And the truth has become glaringly obvious.

23 Comments on "Heartland Conference Establishes Post-Climategate Consensus"

Recent Articles

* Is Obama's BP Shakedown an Impeachable Offense?
* Mike Pence and the Winning Back of America
* Endless Zeros
* The Jews and the Bloody-Minded Professors
* Journalism's Worst Enemy in the World
* The Reason for Constitutional Rights
* Now He Tells Us!
* Why Israel and the U.S. Are in Crisis
* Heartland Conference Establishes Post-Climategate Consensus
* When Bad Rabbis Happen to a Good People

Blog Posts

* Obama's Grudge Against the British
* Misery Index - The need to rebuild America
* Rahmbo criticizes BP's Hayward for yachting while Obama golfs
* World silent as 12 Kurds die in Turkish bombings
* Where's the Navy?
* A life lesson from baseball
* Diversity and Its Discontents in Krygyzstan
* U.S. Taxpayers and Soros Underwrite Those who Honor Turkey
* How to fight the next Gaza bound flotilla
* Clarice's Pieces

Monthly © American Thinker 2010




cap and scam
Cap and Scam
By David Harsanyi
Were you aware that Americans have a collective obligation to stop kicking challenges to the next generation and join the White House in supporting "sweeping" and "transformative" legislation? I thought so.

These days, there are few higher callings in Washington than pretending to save the environment. Authoritative "leadership" is sorely needed in this area -- and quickly, before the three-cornered-hat-wearing Visigoths storm Washington's barricades this midterm election.


RECEIVE NEWS ALERTS

SIGN UP
David Harsanyi RealClearPolitics
Washington Joe Lieberman
[+] More
Reporting for duty are John Kerry and Joe Lieberman, armed with a new cap-and-trade "energy" bill -- christened the Newspeak-esque "American Power Act" -- that is so inclusive it nearly secured the support of a single radical right-winger (as if there were any other kind) in Republican Lindsey Graham, before he had a temper tantrum.

Praising the legislation, President Barack Obama made his customary case, twinning the fictitious economic benefits of statism with freshman-class utopianism, claiming that "we will put Americans to work in new jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced -- jobs building solar panels and wind turbines; constructing fuel-efficient cars and buildings; and developing the new energy technologies that will lead to even more jobs, more savings and a cleaner, safer planet in the bargain."

Like most parents, I, too, hope my children one day toil in a nonproductive factory assembling taxpayer-subsidized wind turbines rather than turn to imported Canadian fossil fuels and constructive high-income professions. Unlike profits, you see, dreams never can be outsourced.

We are only in the "discussion draft" phase of the bill -- entailing tons of discussions on how to entice Western Democrats and circumvent Republicans -- which would make efficient energy more expensive, put non-energies on the dole and slap a layer of crony capitalism on the entire energy industry.

And seeing as we never waste a crisis, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has given cap-and-trade supporters another hammer to add to the debate. Though, as Newsweek summed it up, "considering that the Kerry-Lieberman bill contains a little something for everyone, it's likely to pass."

A little something for everyone except you, that is. The fabricated cap-and-trade "market" is a well-documented concoction of rent-seeking corporations that will work diligently with Washington to ensure taxpayers always foot the bill. As the legislation stands now, oil companies would also have to pay emissions allowances -- outside the cap-and-trade market -- which are nothing more than another gas tax.

This bill not only is loaded with obvious costs but also features underlying protectionist expenses that would benefit the usual industries (agriculture and steel) and, of course, unions. For example, the legislation would force nations "that have not taken action to limit emissions to pay a comparable amount" -- in other words, to pay for having the good sense not to engage in slow-motion economic suicide. (Hey, I thought we weren't supposed to impose our values on other nations.)

What do we expect from these countries and ourselves? The bill would mandate we reduce emissions by 83 percent by 2050. Roll up your sleeves, because we all will be doing organic farming. Or, as Pat Michaels of the Cato Institute points out, we "will allow the average American the carbon dioxide emissions of the average citizen back in 1867, a mere 39 years from today."

Though an energy breakthrough could make all this possible -- and that would be wonderful -- solar panels, carbon sequestration and the fertile imaginations of political opportunists who make demands before they have solutions will not.

And remember, these legislators were supposed to be the grown-ups.



Reach columnist David Harsanyi at dharsanyi@denverpost.com.

It is fraud, not science
he Climategate Chronicle
How the Science of Global Warming Was Compromised

By Axel Bojanowski


Photo Gallery: 14 Photos
Getty Images
To what extent is climate change actually occuring? Late last year, climate researchers were accused of exaggerating study results. SPIEGEL ONLINE has since analyzed the hacked "Climategate" e-mails and provided insights into one of the most unprecedented spats in recent scientific history.

Is our planet warming up by 1 degree Celsius, 2 degrees, or more? Is climate change entirely man made? And what can be done to counteract it? There are myriad possible answers to these questions, as well as scientific studies, measurements, debates and plans of action. Even most skeptics now concede that mankind -- with its factories, heating systems and cars -- contributes to the warming up of our atmosphere.

But the consequences of climate change are still hotly contested. It was therefore something of a political bombshell when unknown hackers stole more than 1,000 e-mails written by British climate researchers, and published some of them on the Internet. A scandal of gigantic proportions seemed about to break, and the media dubbed the affair "Climategate" in reference to the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of US President Richard Nixon. Critics claimed the e-mails would show that climate change predictions were based on unsound calculations.
Although a British parliamentary inquiry soon confirmed that this was definitely not a conspiracy, the leaked correspondence provided in-depth insight into the mechanisms, fronts and battles within the climate-research community. SPIEGEL ONLINE has analyzed the more than 1,000 Climategate e-mails spanning a period of 15 years, e-mails that are freely available over the Internet and which, when printed out, fill five thick files. What emerges is that leading researchers have been subjected to sometimes brutal attacks by outsiders and become bogged down in a bitter and far-reaching trench war that has also sucked in the media, environmental groups and politicians.

SPIEGEL ONLINE reveals how the war between climate researchers and climate skeptics broke out, the tricks the two sides used to outmaneuver each other and how the conflict could be resolved.
CLIMATE
Big John and Amy - 3/26/10 Hour 2

Answer these questions-

The new Kerry-Lieberman climate bill mandates a 17% reduction in US carbon dioxide emissions by 2020. It first targets power plants that provide reliable, affordable electricity for American homes, schools, hospitals, offices and factories. Six years later, it further hobbles the manufacturing sector itself.

Like the House-passed climate bill, Kerry-Lieberman also requires an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050. Once population growth and transportation, communication and electrification technologies are taken into account, this translates into requiring US emission levels last seen around 1870!

House Speaker Pelosi says “every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory,” to ensure that America achieves these emission mandates. This means replacing what is left of our free-market economy with an intrusive Green Nanny State, compelling us to switch to unreliable wind and solar power, and imposing skyrocketing energy costs on every company and citizen.

Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency is implementing its own draconian energy restrictions, in case Congress does not enact punitive legislation.

It’s time to ask these politicians some fundamental questions.

1) Even slashing carbon dioxide emissions to 80% below 2005 levels would reduce projected global average temperatures in 2050 by barely 0.2 degrees F, according to a study that used the UN’s own climate models. That’s because China, India and other developing countries are building new coal-fired power plants every week, even as the United States and Europe shackle their economies and send more jobs overseas. How do you justify such destructive, punitive, meaningless legislation?

2) Reflecting agreement with thousands of scientists, most Americans now say climate change is natural, not manmade. Fully 75% are unwilling to spend more than $100 per year in higher energy bills to “stabilize” Earth’s unpredictable climate. What provision of the Constitution, your oath of office or your duty to the overall health and welfare of this nation permits you to ignore the will of the people, the mounting evidence that “climate disasters” are the product of computer models, manipulated data and falsified UN reports, and the job-killing impacts of the laws and regulations you seek to impose?

3) If carbon dioxide is causing “runaway global warming,” why have average global temperatures not risen since 1995, and why have they been COOLING for the past five years – even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have continued to rise to levels unprecedented in the modern era?

4) What properties does manmade carbon dioxide have that enable it to replace the complex natural forces that clearly caused the Ice Ages, Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age, Dust Bowl, ice-free Arctic seas in 1822 and 1922, Alaska’s 100 degree F temperature record in 1915, and all the other climate and weather changes and anomalies, blessings and disasters that our planet has experienced during its long geologic and recorded history?

5) What physical or chemical properties does manmade carbon dioxide have that would enable it to overturn the laws of thermodynamics – and cause temperatures in Antarctica to rise 85 degrees F, from an average of minus 50 F to plus 35 F year-round (or 48 degrees C, from -46 C to +2 C), to melt that continent’s vast ice masses, raise sea levels 20 feet or more, and flood coastal cities?

6) Precisely what chemical, physical and thermodynamic processes would drastic carbon dioxide reductions alter, and how? Precisely what weather and climate improvements would those reductions achieve? Precisely how will CO2 reductions stabilize planetary temperature, climate and weather systems that have been turbulent, unpredictable and anything but stable throughout Earth’s history?

7) Is there ANY direct physical observation or evidence that would falsify your climate crisis thesis, and cause you to admit human greenhouse gas emissions are not causing a planetary climate disaster? Or do you think everything that happens confirms your climate disaster hypothesis: warmer or colder, wetter or drier, more snow and ice or less, more hurricanes and tornadoes or cyclical periods with few such storms?

8) Replacing hydrocarbons with unreliable, subsidized “green” energy will require millions of acres of land for wind turbines, solar panels and transmission lines – plus hundreds of millions of tons of steel, copper, concrete, fiberglass and rare earth minerals for all those facilities.

Do you support delaying wind, solar and transmission projects for years, to protect the rights and property of local communities and private landowners? Or do you favor regulatory edicts and eminent domain actions, so that government can seize people’s property and expedite construction of these projects?

Do you support opening US public lands for renewed exploration and development, so that we can produce these raw materials and create American jobs? Or do you intend to keep US lands off limits, and force us to depend on imports for renewable energy, too?

Do you support relaxing environmental study, endangered species and other laws, to fast-track approval of these projects, despite their obvious impacts on wildlife and habitats? Or do you want them subjected to the same rules that have stymied thousands of other energy projects, so that renewable energy projects cannot be built, either – and we have massive blackouts?

9) Over 1.5 billion people in Africa, Asia and Latin America still do not have electricity, for even a light bulb or tiny refrigerator. Millions die every year from diseases that would be largely eradicated with electricity for refrigeration, sanitation, modern hospitals, and industries that generate greater health and prosperity. How can you justify using taxpayer money to finance UN and environmental activist programs that claim global warming is the biggest threat they face, and they need to get by on wind and solar power, and give up their dreams of better lives, because YOU are worried about global warming? Doesn’t that violate their most basic human rights to improved living standards, and even life itself?

10) If you’re so sure about your data and conclusions – and intend to use climate disaster claims to justify sending our energy costs skyrocketing, killing millions of factory jobs, controlling our lives, and totally overhauling our energy, economic and social structure – why do you refuse to allow fair, open and balanced congressional hearings and debates on climate science and economics? Why do you refuse to debate skeptical experts in a public forum, or even answer questions that challenge your alarmist thinking? Why do you refuse to require that scientists who get taxpayer money for their research must share and discuss climate data, computer codes, methodologies and analyses?

11) How much money and campaign help have you gotten from companies and activist groups that benefit from renewable energy mandates and subsidies, carbon offset and trading schemes, coal mining and oil leasing bans, and other provisions of climate and energy legislation?

12) What if you vote for these job-killing, anti-growth, anti-poor, anti-human-rights “climate disaster prevention” laws – and it turns our you are WRONG on the science or economics? What will you do? Give up your congressional seat, home, pension and worldly wealth – and pledge yourself and your children to an austere life of service to the people you have harmed? Or just say, “Oh I’m so sorry,” and then pass more intrusive, oppressive laws, before retiring to collect a nice government pension – while millions freeze jobless in the dark?

13) If you can’t or won’t answer these questions, then why do you think you have a right to tell anyone on this planet that we have a “climate crisis,” and dictate how they must live their lives – especially when you’ve done so little to slash your own taxpayer-funded air travel, staff, and home and office energy use?


* FEBRUARY 16, 2010

The Continuing Climate Meltdown
More embarrassments for the U.N. and 'settled' science.
*
Wall Street Journal

It has been a bad—make that dreadful—few weeks for what used to be called the "settled science" of global warming, and especially for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that is supposed to be its gold standard.

First it turns out that the Himalayan glaciers are not going to melt anytime soon, notwithstanding dire U.N. predictions. Next came news that an IPCC claim that global warming could destroy 40% of the Amazon was based on a report by an environmental pressure group. Other IPCC sources of scholarly note have included a mountaineering magazine and a student paper.

Since the climategate email story broke in November, the standard defense is that while the scandal may have revealed some all-too-human behavior by a handful of leading climatologists, it made no difference to the underlying science. We think the science is still disputable. But there's no doubt that climategate has spurred at least some reporters to scrutinize the IPCC's headline-grabbing claims in a way they had rarely done previously.

View Full Image
climate
Associated Press

The Himalayas
climate
climate

Take the rain forest claim. In its 2007 report, the IPCC wrote that "up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation; this means that the tropical vegetation, hydrology and climate system in South America could change very rapidly to another steady state."

But as Jonathan Leake of London's Sunday Times reported last month, those claims were based on a report from the World Wildlife Fund, which in turn had fundamentally misrepresented a study in the journal Nature. The Nature study, Mr. Leake writes, "did not assess rainfall but in fact looked at the impact on the forest of human activity such as logging and burning."

The IPCC has relied on World Wildlife Fund studies regarding the "transformation of natural coastal areas," the "destruction of more mangroves," "glacial lake outbursts causing mudflows and avalanches," changes in the ecosystem of the "Mesoamerican reef," and so on. The Wildlife Fund is a green lobby that believes in global warming, and its "research" reflects its advocacy, not the scientific method.

The IPCC has also cited a study by British climatologist Nigel Arnell claiming that global warming could deplete water resources for as many as 4.5 billion people by the year 2085. But as our Anne Jolis reported in our European edition, the IPCC neglected to include Mr. Arnell's corollary finding, which is that global warming could also increase water resources for as many as six billion people.

The IPCC report made aggressive claims that "extreme weather-related events" had led to "rapidly rising costs." Never mind that the link between global warming and storms like Hurricane Katrina remains tenuous at best. More astonishing (or, maybe, not so astonishing) is that the IPCC again based its assertion on a single study that was not peer-reviewed. In fact, nobody can reliably establish a quantifiable connection between global warming and increased disaster-related costs. In Holland, there's even a minor uproar over the report's claim that 55% of the country is below sea level. It's 26%.

Meanwhile, one of the scientists at the center of the climategate fiasco has called into question other issues that the climate lobby has claimed are indisputable. Phil Jones, who stepped down as head of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit amid the climate email scandal, told the BBC that the world may well have been warmer during medieval times than it is now.

This raises doubts about how much our current warming is man-made as opposed to merely another of the natural climate shifts that have taken place over the centuries. Mr. Jones also told the BBC there has been no "statistically significant" warming over the past 15 years, though he considers this to be temporary.
***

All of this matters because the IPCC has been advertised as the last and definitive word on climate science. Its reports are the basis on which Al Gore, President Obama and others have claimed that climate ruin is inevitable unless the world reorganizes its economies with huge new taxes on carbon. Now we are discovering the U.N. reports are sloppy political documents intended to drive the climate lobby's regulatory agenda.

The lesson of climategate and now the IPCC's shoddy sourcing is that the claims of the global warming lobby need far more rigorous scrutiny.