Antarctic Sea Ice Sets Another Record

Forbes

James Taylor

Editor’s note:  An update from the author has been added to this article on September 20, 2012.

Antarctic sea ice set another record this past week, with the most amount of ice ever recorded on day 256 of the calendar year (September 12 of this leap year). Please, nobody tell the mainstream media or they might have to retract some stories and admit they are misrepresenting scientific data.

National Public Radio (NPR) published an article on its website last month claiming, “Ten years ago, a piece of ice the size of Rhode Island disintegrated and melted in the waters off Antarctica. Two other massive ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula had suffered similar fates a few years before. The events became poster children for the effects of global warming. … There’s no question that unusually warm air triggered the final demise of these huge chunks of ice.”

NPR failed to mention anywhere in its article that Antarctic sea ice has been growing since satellites first began measuring the ice 33 years ago and the sea ice has been above the 33-year average throughout 2012.

Indeed, none of the mainstream media are covering this important story. A Google News search of the terms Antarctic, sea ice and record turns up not a single article on the Antarctic sea ice record. Amusingly, page after page of Google News results for Antarctic sea ice record show links to news articles breathlessly spreading fear and warning of calamity because Arctic sea ice recently set a 33-year low.

Sea ice around one pole is shrinking while sea ice around another pole is growing. This sure sounds like a global warming crisis to me.

Update:  To provide more perspective on global warming and Antarctica, I would like to update this column with some additional information:

As meteorologist Anthony Watts explains, new data show ice mass is accumulating on the Antarctic continent as well as in the ocean surrounding Antarctica. The new data contradict an assertion by global warming alarmists that the expanding Antarctic sea ice is coming at the expense of a decline in Antarctic continental ice.

The new data also add context to sensationalist media stories about declining ice in small portions of Antarctica, such as portions of West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula (see here, for example). The mainstream media frequently publish stories focusing on ice loss in these two areas, yet the media stories rarely if ever mention that ice is accumulating over the larger area of East Antarctica and that the continent as a whole is gaining snow and ice mass.

Interestingly, a new NASA study finds Antarctica once supported vegetation similar to that of present-day Iceland.

“The southward movements of rain bands associated with a warmer climate in the high-latitude southern hemisphere made the margins of Antarctica less like a polar desert, and more like present-day Iceland,” a co-author of the NASA study reports.

NASA's ingenious moon simulator that helped prepare Apollo astronauts to land where no one had gone before

Daily Mail
James Nye

How do you prepare to land a space craft on the surface of a moon that no one has ever gone to before?

One answer to that question lay in the development of NASA's Lunar Orbit and Let-Down Approach Simulator (LOLA), which at the time set back the space agency $2 million.

The high-tech simulator was designed to represent the view an Apollo astronaut would see if they were looking at the lunar surface just prior to establishing orbit of the moon.

Project LOLA or the Lunar Orbit and Landing Approach was a simulator built at
Langley Research Center to study problems related to landing on the lunar surface.
It was a complex project that cost nearly $2 million dollars.

The pilot of the LOLA was sat atop a gantry staring at a detailed visual encounter with the lunar surface.

The machine was built to boast a cockpit, a closed-circuit television system and four large murals or scale models which represented portions of the lunar surface as seen from various altitudes.

The would-be astronaut in the cockpit simulator would have seen the cratered lunar surface track past him on a revolving conveyor-belt which was supposed to accustom him to the visual clues a pilot would see upon arrival at the moon.

Built at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, the LOLA was one of many projects dedicated to proving the success of the ambitious Apollo program announced by President Kennedy in 1961.

Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Jim Lovell would have sat in
this early simulator while they accustomed themselves to the surface of the moon

The lunar surface for the simulator is laid out to be attached
to the high rise board at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia

Comprising the Lunar Landing Research Facility and conceived in 1962 the gigantic centre was designed to help develop techniques to land the rocket powered lunar module onto the moon's surface.

With only one-sixth of the Earth's gravity experienced on the moon, piloting any craft to the surface would be unlike any other atmospheric descent before.

Another issue NASA scientists anticipated was the harsh light and glare created by the lack of an atmosphere and the simulator was tweaked to allow the astronaut pilots to experience these conditions.

The simulator was designed to provide a pilot with a detailed visual
encounter with the lunar surface - here is the mock-up moon before it's cratered face is added

The surface of the simulators moon was perfectly detailed owing to the
precise maps NASA had produced for the ambitious Apollo program announced in 1961

Here a scientist at the Langley Research Center in Hampton,
Virginia applies the finishing touches to the surface of the moon

A stock image of the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia -
clearly visible are planetariums where the moon simulators were based

A brilliant sun shines above the Apollo 12 base on the Moon's
surface as one of the astronauts walks away from the lunar module Intrepid

In theory the LOLA was brilliant, unfortunately though the device was not practical because after Apollo 11 in July 1969, NASA realised that there were no inherent problems in anticipating the lunar surface or landing.

Described by author James Hansen in his book, 'Spaceflight Revolution - NASA Langley Research Center from Sputnik to Apollo', as no more than a fairground ride, the LOLA was discontinued soon after Neil Armstrong planted the American flag on the moon before the 1960s were finished.

Fraudulent Normalization of Chemtrails Continues

Zengardner

Here’s the latest installment of an escalating disinformation campaign to “acclimate” the populace to the aerial spraying program under way for years in many parts of the world.

An increasing number of articles with supposed scientists conjecturing “what if” scenarios where a whited sky by metallic particles “might” help mitigate global warming have appeared lately. This is also the second time the Daily Mail has published a chemtrail admission article claiming these spreading consistent chemical trails are some kind of natural phenomenon due to commercial jets and atmospheric conditions.

They’ve never done this before the aerial bombardment of chemtrails started in the mid-90′s. I supposed they’ll blame it on “climate change” next, and wrap it up in a nice self-reinforcing package of pseudo-scientific BS.

For those of us well aware of this ongoing poisoning of our skies this tripe is enough to make you sick, as lying, paid-off so called scientists lay out their lying propaganda without compunction.

The transatlantic jet trails visible from space: How ‘contrails’ can stay in the sky for up to 14 hours

(Daily Mail) Like a giant game of crosses without the naughts, these incredible jet engine trails can be seen criss-crossing the Atlantic from space.

NASA’s Terra satellite captured these two amazing images of aircraft trails, or ‘contrails’ as they are known, spreading across the sky off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
The spectacular effect forms in the wake of passing aircraft due to the extra particles and water vapor contained in their exhaust.

NASA said these it has observed these clusters of contrails lasting as long as 14 hours, though most get a shorter lifespan of four to six hours.

Climate scientists are fascinated by long-lived, spreading contrails
because they reflect sunlight and trap infrared radiation.

A contrail in an otherwise clear sky reduces the amount of solar radiation that reaches Earth’s surface, while increasing the amount of infrared radiation absorbed by the atmosphere.
These opposing effects make it difficult for scientists to pin down the exact effect contrails have on climate.

‘Overall, contrails create additional cirrus cloud cover,’ said Patrick Minnis, a senior scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center.

‘Current estimates indicate that contrails have a small warming effect, but the extent of the additional coverage and the amount of warming remain quite uncertain.’  Source

This mind-numbing statement tells the tale: “Scientists are fascinated by long-lived spreading contrails”. Really? Where were they before? How about reading the many patents filed for just such aerosol compounds designed to do just that or a quick perusal of “What In the World Are They Spraying?”. (here and here)

What’s absurd is the treatment of the world’s population as complete morons. Worse yet is they get away with it. Why? People can’t bring themselves to think their government would do such a thing without their knowledge, so an alternate explanation is happily received. Apparently cause and effect aren’t our concern.

It’s absurd. It’s all become absurd.

May the wake up hit as many as it can. Let’s keep freedom of spirit ringing by speaking Truth.
And sharing in love.

Love, Zen
www.zengardner.com

Global Warming's Killer: Critical Thinking

American Thinker
Russell  Cook

Is there any issue more dependent on widespread lapses in critical thinking than the idea of man-caused global warming?

Nothing wrecks an argument faster than a question revealing a gaping hole in that argument's fundamental premise.  Notice the abundantly obvious derailment in this example:
"We need to do something about the proliferation of ghosts causing an unprecedented number of people to have nightmares lately.  This problem leads to widespread sleeplessness, which in turn leads to a downturn in work productivity and overall economic hardship, and you are a cold-hearted capitalist pig if you deny the need for workers to be healthy."

Any critical thinker will yell, "What?! Prove ghosts exist before you start calling me names!"
The so-called global warming crisis has gotten away with an equally preposterous premise -- that human activity drives climate change --  for nearly two decades, because that premise at least sounded plausible.  After all, humans do damage the environment to some extent in various ways, and the weather does seem a bit weird lately, so maybe it's possible that our greenhouse gas emissions have a detrimental effect.  Plus, reporters tell us that scientists are saying this is so.

Overlooked by many is the very thing that's kept the issue alive all this time.  No different from in a ponzi scheme, the public must never lose confidence in the idea that this issue is a problem in need of a solution.  The moment anything approaching a majority of people starts asking tough questions about skeptic scientists expressing legitimate opposition, the entire issue goes into a fatal tailspin, taking down all those who unquestioningly defend the idea.

Think about all the assertions we've heard and what happens when anybody starts asking critical questions using information that's easier than ever to find on the internet.

Even at the height of winter in the northern hemisphere, we're told the Arctic ice cap is melting and that polar bears drown when swimming through too much open water.  Yet polar bear populations are increasing, online Arctic weather station feeds closest to the ice cap routinely show freezing temps in all but the warmest summer months, and this particular winter, Arctic Sea Ice Extent has returned to levels very close to the 1979-2000 average.
The media has been implying that extreme weather is more frequent, yet blaring headlines from long ago are easily found on weather appearing to be just as extreme, if not worse.

We're told that the dry warm winter in the U.S. this time around indicates global warming, yet horrible cold temperatures in Europe this same winter aren't called a similar indicator.

Many express anguish over ocean acidification, yet these same people never mention the irrefutable fact that oceans are alkaline and that it would thus take some kind of herculean phenomenon just to push them into a pure neutral pH balance, long before they ever become even mildly acidic.

Prominent NASA personnel who criticized NASA's alarmist narratives on global warming in a recent WSJ letter are said to be politically driven, yet NASA climate scientist James Hansen is routinely seen being arrested at civil disobedience global warming rallies organized by far-left enviro-activists.

The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that "everything that we look at and take into account in our assessments has to carry credibility of peer-reviewed publications, we don't settle for anything less."  Yet people who meticulously sift through IPCC reports are finding out that in its 2007 report alone, over 5,500 such publications were non-peer-reviewed.

And on and on.  Critical thinking is eventually deadly to the idea of man-caused global warming.  It's a death by a thousand cuts.

50 Former Astronauts and Scientists Denounce NASA Stance on Global Warming

PolicyMic

A group of nearly 50 very prominent NASA scientists and astronauts has issued a public letter to current NASA administrator Charles Bolden, Jr., requesting that NASA stop supporting unsubstantiated claims of manmade global warming.
The letter reads in part:

"We, the undersigned, respectfully request that NASA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) refrain from including unproven remarks in public releases and websites. We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data. With hundreds of well-known climate scientists and tens of thousands of other scientists publicly declaring their disbelief in the catastrophic forecasts, coming particularly from the GISS leadership, it is clear that the science is NOT settled."

The letter goes on to say: "The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements."

Co-signers of the letter include Dr. Christopher C. Kraft, former Director of Johnson Space Center for 24 years and the man responsible for saving the crew of Apollo 13, along with several Apollo astronauts and scientists. The “tens of thousands of other scientists” to which the letter refers can be found at the site petitionproject.org. Presently the petition has over 31,000 signatures of scientists, of which over 9,000 are PhDs. Several other prominent climate scientists who reject the concept of manmade global warming or its consequences are also listed within Wikipedia.

This comes on the heels of a Wall Street Journal report that explains how some urban planning commissions are preventing the construction of single family homes in favor of ultra-dense housing complexes that pack more than 30 families into a square acre of space over fears of global warming. Yale University professor Karen Seto, who was interviewed on the subject as an attendee of the Planet Under Pressure 2012 conference in London stated, “We certainly don’t want them [ordinary people] strolling about the entire countryside. We want them to save land for nature by living closely [together].”

Given that the UN’s Agenda 21 has the goal of essentially reducing global standards of living in order to prevent manmade climate change, the warning by these NASA scientists over unsettled science should give everyone pause. The Climategate emails revealed that the computer models used by the CRU, NASA and other institutions which support the reduction of living standards to abate global warming, are based in large part on proxy data which has been manipulated to support the theory of manmade global warming in a very unscrupulous manner by the scientists involved.

[Flashback] NASA Scientist: Persistent Contrails Cause Global Warming

Zen Gardner

Buried under years of misinformation and refusal to acknowledge the existence of deliberately planted aerosols known as persistent contrails or “chemtrails” is an article published in 1997 entitled:

Those Hazy Jet Trails May Heat Up The Debate About Global Warming

Published in the Christian Science Monitor, this article is a bombshell. (emphasis mine)

BOSTON — Patrick Minnis studies satellite images of aircraft contrails and thinks of climate change. Those pretty patterns in the sky may not be as benign as they look. They may be inducing enough extra cloudiness over heavily traveled Northern Hemisphere regions to significantly warm the ground below.

“When we look up at the sky or down from a satellite, it’s possible we are viewing a cloud that would not have been there if it hadn’t been for a jet aircraft,” Dr. Minnis says. Sketchy contrail statistics gleaned from satellite images had suggested jet trails would be climatically insignificant. Minnis says “we know better than that [now].”

Satellite analysts had not connected sharply defined contrails seen in some images with cirrus clouds seen subsequently in other images covering other areas.

Minnis – an atmospheric scientist at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. – has made that connection. He took part in a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) field experiment in May 1996.

Infrared images taken every 15 minutes by the GOES-8 weather satellite enabled him to track distinctive contrails for six hours or more.

It gets better.

You’ll never hear this from a scientist today. I don’t know if he’s spoken any more about “persistent contrails” since this time, but that’s supposed to be his job. He’s still listed as the Principal Investigator on the NASA Langley Cloud and Radiation Group home page. I would sure like to talk to him.

At a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Baltimore last May, Minnis told how he followed a 100-kilometer-long, oval contrail made by a NASA DC-8 research aircraft. The contrail formed cirrus – covering 4,000 square kilometers (1,500 square miles) at its peak.

A Figure 8 contrail apparently produced over south Texas or Mexico by an unknown aircraft grew to a size of 20,000 square kilometers as it drifted over the Gulf of Mexico.
Minnis calls such observations solid evidence that contrails can cause cirrus coverage far beyond that of the young contrails that are easily identified.

Millions of people see this effect everyday. He doesn’t mention why jet craft are doing ovals and a figure 8, but at least he states that. Just the configurations these pilots fly prove it’s an aerosol program.

Enter the Climate Impact of “Persistent Contrails”

Brian Toon, who is with the University of Colorado at Boulder, and is project scientist for the field study, notes that this points up the need to assess the area of the earth covered by contrails and figure out what’s happening to the climate.

Recent research has found what Minnis calls a strong correlation between contrail frequency and fuel usage over the United States. In 1992, 93 percent of aircraft fuel was burned in the Northern Hemisphere – 70 percent of it between 60 and 30 degrees north latitude. The 1992 statistics could indicate where the climate impact will lie. It could be anything from a mild nighttime warming to a climatic big deal.

Minnis notes, for example, that average cloudiness over the United States has increased 5 percent in the three decades since jet travel began to intensify. He explained that, if the increase is all due to contrails – a big if – we’re looking at a potential warming from the contrails that would amount to one-third to two-thirds as much warming as we already have from the buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide during the past century.
No one knows how much of the increased cloudiness to pin on contrail cirrus. But any significant fraction that is due to contrails would be of climatic concern.

Here comes…..

Clouds can cool the planet by reflecting sunshine back into space, or warm it by trapping outgoing heat. Contrails form cirrus clouds with the type of structures and  at levels in the upper atmosphere that make them climate warmers.

Thar She Blows!

There goes the global warming reason–shot to hell where it belongs. For these bought-off fake scientists to ramble on about cooling the earth by putting up highly toxic reflective metallic particles by the millions of tons–which they have already done and continue to do–is not just fraudulently ludicrous, it is insanely criminal.
The article finishes out–excerpts:

Warmists confirmed as cheats, liars, fakers; Pope still Catholic; etc

Editor's Note:  This editorial is not so gracious in its reporting of 'Fakegate', but contains an excellent comparison of climate-gate coverage to the Heartland email release.

Telegraph
James Delingpole

Peter Gleick (right) recoils from the Spear of Truth

I wonder how the BBC environment correspondent Richard Black would report it if the Climatic Research Unit's Phil Jones were suddenly to confess that everything he'd said in the last two decades about the anthropogenic warming threat was total rubbish. I'm guessing something like: "Hero climate scientist announces glorious discovery: world saved, research at CRU now shows!"

I wonder how the New York Times, or the Guardian environment pages or Huffington Post would report it if NASA's James Hansen were to burst in with a machine gun and grenades at the next Heartland climate sceptics' conference and wipe out half the delegates. "NASA expert helps solve global overpopulation problem!", probably.

If you think I'm joking consider how all the above-mentioned organs responded to the story of Fakegate, in which climate activist Peter Gleick engaged in identity theft and used a forged document in order to smear the Heartland institute with a pack of lies. The way they covered it, you'd think the real villain of the piece was not Gleick but Heartland. One liberal commentator went so far as to suggest that the person who had faked the one (and only) incriminating document was none other than Heartland's president Joe Bast. Some kind of sinister, false-flag operation to make the environmental movement look bad, I suppose. (Yeah, like it needs any help on that score).

Anyway, now Anthony Watts reports that the forged document has been submitted to forensic analysis and that the most likely culprit turns out to be – as Steven Mosher suspected weeks ago – none other than Peter Gleick. Well quelle surprise and whoulda thunk?! Gleick denies it. Well of course he would. Looks kind of embarrassing, doesn't it, when your cause is so desperate that the only dirt you can manage to get on your opposition is dirt you've manufactured yourself?

After Climategate Donna Laframboise asked in a Tweet:

To those minimizing ClimateGate: How badly do people have to behave? What line must they cross before you’ll stop excusing them?

And after Gleickgate/Fakegate she asked a similar question. Just how badly does the alarmist/warmist camp have to behave before their amen corner in their liberal MSM finally concedes that their behaviour is beyond the pale?

The answer, I fear, is more badly than you could possibly imagine. Climatism (as Steve Goreham calls it) has very little to do with science, if indeed it ever did. Rather it's the new global religion and as with all religions it's really not about evidence but about faith. And when you're filled with zeal of religious conviction, what crime is there that you wouldn't commit to spread your wondrous, right and noble creed?

As a perfect example of this blind faith in action, Jo Nova compares and contrasts the coverage of two stories – Climategate and Fakegate – by our old friend Richard Black of the BBC.

On ClimateGate, Black waited until after he had a spokesman from the CRU to comment, and having confirmed the emails were from the CRU, Black quoted exactly none of them. On FakeGate, Black posted so quickly that he had to rewrite it after Heartland replied, which happened in the first 24 hours.

With ClimateGate, Black ignored the emails that were effectively public property in the first place and turned out to be real. With Fakegate, Black either detailed or linked to quotes that turned out to be nonexistent (at least, I presume that’s what he needed to “re-work”, where is the original stored?).

That Bogus Greenhouse Gas Whatchamacallit Effect

Climate Change Dispatch
John O'Sullivan

Apparently, NASA scientist James Hansen
thinks burning coal isn't bad enough without
the threat of catastrophic anthropogenic
global warming.

Red-faced global warming policymakers are now back tracking as independent experts increasingly discredit the cornerstone of climatology: the greenhouse gas effect (GHE).

One such whistleblower is Dr. Pierre R Latour who explains adroitly below how his NASA colleague, septuagenarian Dr. James Hansen, concocted a mythical 33°C [91.4°F] atmospheric greenhouse gas global warming phenomenon.

NASA's global warming guru, Dr. James Hansen, will go down in history as climate science's Bernie Madoff for his pivotal role in touting the GHE hypothesis. This is no imprudent comparison - just “follow the money” as they say. It was Hansen’s now legendary doomsaying pronouncements to the U.S. Congress in 1981 that spawned a hundred billion dollar, thirty-year government Ponzi scheme (Madoff scammed ‘only’ $50 billion).
None who sat on that congressional committee appear to have been aware that in 1951 the American Meteorological Society (AMS) had already condemned the GHE to the trashcan of failed theories.

When Cooking the Numbers Ain’t Ok

Now retired, former DuPont and NASA Chemical Engineer, Latour is unconstrained in his opinion,” The 33°C are whatchamacallits. This greenhouse gas effect does not exist.”

Dr. Latour is one of many experts old enough to remember that in 1981 James Hansen stated the average thermal T (temperature) at Earth’s surface is 15°C (ok) and Earth radiates to space at -18°C (ok). From that he declared the difference 15° - (-18°) = 33°C (arithmetic ok) to be the famous greenhouse gas effect.

This is not ‘ok’ to more astute analysts critical of Hansen’s number fudging. They say Hansen’s math is very seriously awry because there is no physics to connect these two dissimilar numbers.

Latour recounts his altogether more conventional if less alarmist explanation for what is actually happening with our climate. Apologies to those of you not of a scientific or engineer disposition but hereon in is where we need to get somewhat technical.

The professional engineer registered in Texas and California and from Houston clarifies, “Thermal T is a point property of matter, a scalar measure of its kinetic energy of atomic and molecular motion. It’s what thermometers measure and it decreases with altitude. The rate of thermal energy transfer by conduction or convection between hot Th and cold Tc is proportional to (Th – Tc).”

Dr. Latour then explains that radiation t is a point property of massless radiation, EMR, a directional vector measure of its energy transmission rate per area or intensity, w/m², according to the Stefan-Boltzmann law. It is measured by pyrometers and spectrometers.

False Atmospheric Heating Assumptions of Climate Scientists

Solar radiation t increases with altitude. Black bodies are defined to be those that absorb and radiate with the same intensity and corresponding t. Real, colorful bodies reflect, scatter, absorb, convert and emit radiant energy according to the nature of the incident radiation direction, spectrum and body matter reflectivity, absorptivity, emissivity and view factors. The rate of EMR energy transfer from a hot body, th, is Q, w = 5.67Ae(th + 273)⁴. But it may not be absorbed by all bodies that intercept it, as GHG theory assumes. In particular, hotter radiating bodies do not absorb colder radiation and reemit it more intensely, as GHG back-radiation theory assumes.

Climate FAIL from A to Z presented at Durban

Watts Up With That

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Anthony Watts

This might be a bit overzealous per Morano’s unique writing style, but compared to some of the stuff we’ve seen from warmists, pretty mild. Lots of useful links and notes – Anthony

By Marc Morano  –  Climate Depot

Below is the Introduction to the report. Full report is available here. (PDF)

INTRODUCTION:
Many of the proponents of man-made global warming are now claiming that climate change is worse than they predicted. According to an October 18, 2011 Daily Climate article, global warming activists claim that the “evidence builds that scientists underplay climate impacts” and “if anything, global climate disruption is likely to be significantly worse than has been suggested.”


But this exclusive Climate Depot exhaustive A-Z Climate Reality Check report on the scientific reality of the failure of man-made global warming shatters any such illusions that the climate is “worse than we thought.” As the real world evidence mounts that global warming claims are failing, the climate activists have ramped up predictions of future climate change impacts to declare that it “worse than we thought.” But a prediction or projection of 50-100 years into the future is not “evidence.” Recent scientific data and developments reveal that Mother Nature is playing a cruel joke on the promoters of man-made climate fears.

The scientific reality is that on virtually every claim — from A-Z — the claims of the promoters of man-made climate fears are failing, and in many instances the claims are moving in the opposite direction. The global warming movement is suffering the scientific death of a thousand cuts. This Climate Depot special report categorizes and indexes the full range of climate developments in a handy A-Z reference guide. The A-Z report includes key facts, peer-reviewed studies and the latest data and developments with links for further reading, on an exhaustive range of man-made global warming claims.


The Antarctic sea ice extent has been at or near record extent in the past few summers and the ice is expanding, the Arctic has rebounded in recent years since the low point in 2007, polar bears are thriving, sea level is not showing acceleration and is actuallydropping, Cholera and Malaria are failing to follow global warming predictions, MountKilimanjaro melt fears are being made a mockery by gains in snow cover, globaltemperatures have been holding steady for a decade or more and many scientists are predicting global cooling is ahead, deaths due to extreme weather are radically declining,global tropical cyclone activity is near historic lows, the frequency of major U.S. hurricanes has declined, the oceans are missing their predicted heat content, big tornados have dramatically declined since the 1970s, droughts are not historically unusual nor caused by mankind, there is no evidence we are currently having unusual weather,scandals continue to rock the climate fear movement, the UN IPCC has been exposed as being a hotbed of environmental activists, former Vice President Al Gore is now under siege by his fellow global warming activists for attempting to link every bad weather event to man-made global warming and scientists from around the world continue to dissent from man-made climate fears at a rapid pace.

Climate Depot’s new A-Z report reveals that the great man-made global warming catastrophe that was predicted – has been cancelled.

In addition to the scientific collapse of anthropogenic global warming fears, the political collapse has been just as stunning. President Obama has been criticized by former Vice President Al Gore for failing to do enough when it comes to climate change legislation. The now defunct and “scientifically meaningless” Congressional climate bill failedbecause the Democrats realized it was political suicide. The new political expediency in Washington is global warming skepticism. The UN global warming treaty process lay in shambles. See: Democrat Walter Russell Mead analyzes Gore: Gore steered the green movement ‘into a tsunami of defeat that…will loom as one of the greatest failures of civil society in all time.’

Proponents of anthropogenic climate change have been reduced to making outlandish claims of a mythical 97% or 98% consensus. See: Global Warming: A ’98% Consensus Of Nothing’: ‘Only shameless activists or statistically ignorant claim that survey of 77 anonymous scientists’ is proof of 98% ‘consensus’. Once esteemed science groups like the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) have now corrupted and have used taxpayer money to lobby for the passage of climate bills. See: Ralph Cicerone’s Shame: NAS Urges Carbon Tax, Becomes Advocacy Group — ‘political appointees heading politicized scientific institutions that are virtually 100% dependent on gov’t funding’ & NAS Pres. Ralph Cicerone Turns Science Org. into political advocacy group: $6 million NAS study is used to lobby for global warming bill & MIT’s Richard Lindzen: ‘Cicerone of NAS is saying that regardless of evidence the answer is predetermined. If gov’t wants carbon control, that is the answer that the NAS will provide’

Movement ‘was bound to fail’

UN trapped in climate turmoil

CFACT
Dennis Avery

Durban Skyline

The man-made warming activists at the UN are trapped in turmoil over how to deal with the earth’s lack of warming since 1998. A couple of weeks ago, the UN climate panel circulated a draft statement that would have admitted we’re unlikely to have any further earth-warming for the next 30 years “because climate change signals are expected to be relatively small compared to natural climate variability.”

The BBC’s environmental reporter Richard Black reported that he’d received a copy of that draft. Black said he expected member governments to reject the statement, however, because it would embarrass the first-world governments’ green energy subsidies and taxes agenda. It would also have finally killed the world’s climate-terror campaign.

In fact, NASA and the U.S. Solar Observatory had already told us months ago to expect moderate global cooling for the next three decades due to a quiet period on the sun, and a consequent cooling of the Pacific Ocean’s huge heat mass.

Searching for a way out of the non-warming trap, one of the Intergovernmental Panel’s lead science authors announced that the climate computers had always correctly predicted non-warming lulls like ours. (We just missed that clause in the UN’s earlier press releases about the soon-to-be parboiled planet.)

“Looking at a single, noisy 10-year period is cherry picking, and does not provide reliable information about the presence or absence of human effects on climate,” wrote Ben Santer, in the November 17 Journal of Geophysical Research (Atmospheres) online. Santer said that “tropospheric temperature records must be at least 17 years long to discriminate between internal climate noise and the signal of human caused changes.”

What’s magic about 17 years instead of 15? From their point of view, it would give the alarmists at least two more years of “grace” before they had to admit the giant computer models are a total failure. That might be enough time to re-elect Obama.

But wait. Horses were about to be changed once more. The next day, November 18th, the IPCC decided not to admit we will have no global warming for the next 30 years. Instead, they announced that the real danger to humanity was not warming at all, but “extreme weather.”

The UN IPCC and its compliant followers will apparently rely on the mainstream media to keep headlining every small weather “disaster” in the world—and there are always lots of those. They’ll somehow all be blamed on too much CO2. Thus green taxes and subsidies can go forward as planned. It seems not to matter that there’s even less evidence for an “extreme weather” scare than for the “long-term global warming disaster” that lasted just 22 years and caused no harm.

When I think of “extreme weather,” I think of the century-long drought that desiccated the entire western two-thirds of America for virtually the whole period between 1200 and 1300 AD. That extreme drought starved the Anasazi Indian culture out of the San Juan Basin of the Colorado River. Simultaneously, it collapsed the only city Native Americans ever built—at Cahokia, just east of today’s St. Louis, Missouri. Cahokia had perhaps 40,000 people, about double the population of London at that time—until the drought destroyed their corn crops.

Folks, that was extreme weather.

Dennis T. Avery, a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., is an environmental economist. He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years. Readers may write to him at PO Box 202 Churchville, VA 2442; email to cgfi@hughes.net or visit us at www.cgfi.org

Climategate (Part II)

The Weekly Standard
Steven F. Hayward

The conventional wisdom about blockbuster movie sequels is that the second acts are seldom as good as the originals. The exceptions, like The Godfather: Part II or The Empire Strikes Back, succeed because they build a bigger backstory and add dimensions to the original characters. The sudden release last week of another 5,000 emails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of East Anglia University​—​ground zero of “Climategate I” in 2009​—​immediately raised the question of whether this would be one of those rare exceptions or Revenge of the Nerds II. 

PHIL ‘HIDE THE DECLINE’ JONES, LEFT, 

AND MICHAEL ‘HOCKEY STICK’ MANN

Before anyone had time to get very far into this vast archive, the climate campaigners were ready with their critical review: Nothing worth seeing here. Out of context! Cherry picking! “This is just trivia, it’s a diversion,” climate researcher Joel Smith told Politico. On the other side, Anthony Watts, proprietor of the invaluable WattsUpWithThat.com skeptic website, had the kind of memorable line fit for a movie poster. With a hat tip to the famous Seinfeld episode, Watts wrote: “They’re real, and they’re spectacular!” An extended review of this massive new cache will take months and could easily require a book-length treatment. But reading even a few dozen of the newly leaked emails makes clear that Watts and other longtime critics of the climate cabal are going to be vindicated.

Climategate I, the release of a few thousand emails and documents from the CRU in November 2009, revealed that the united-front clubbiness of the leading climate scientists was just a display for public consumption. The science of climate change was not “settled.” There was no consensus about the extent and causes of global warming; in their private emails, the scientists expressed serious doubts and disagreements on some major issues. In particular, the email exchanges showed that they were far from agreement about a key part of the global warming narrative​—​the famous “hockey stick” graph that purported to demonstrate that the last 30 years were the warmest of the last millennium and which made the “medieval warm period,” an especially problematic phenomenon for the climate campaign, simply go away. (See my “Scientists Behaving Badly,” The Weekly Standard, December 14, 2009.) Leading scientists in the inner circle expressed significant doubts and uncertainty about the hockey stick and several other global warming claims about which we are repeatedly told there exists an ironclad consensus among scientists. (Many of the new emails make this point even more powerfully.) On the merits, the 2009 emails showed that the case for certainty about climate change was grossly overstated.

More damning than the substantive disagreement was the attitude the CRU circle displayed toward dissenters, skeptics, and science journals that did not strictly adhere to the party line. Dissenting articles were blocked from publication or review by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), requests for raw data were rebuffed, and Freedom of Information Act requests were stonewalled. National science panels were stacked, and qualified dissenters such as NASA prize-winner John Christy were tolerated as “token skeptics.” The CRU circle was in high dudgeon over the small handful of skeptics who insisted on looking over their shoulder, revealing the climate science community to be thin-skinned and in-secure about its enterprise​—​a sign that something is likely amiss. Even if there was no unequivocal “smoking gun” of fraud or wrongdoing, the glimpse deep inside the climate science community was devastating. As I wrote at the time (“In Denial,” March 15, 2010), Climategate did for the global warming controversy what the Pentagon Papers did for the Vietnam war 40 years ago: It changed the narrative decisively.

The new batch of emails, over 5,300 in all (compared with about 1,000 in the 2009 release), contains a number of fresh embarrassments and huge red flags for the same lovable bunch of insider scientists. It stars the same cast, starting with the Godfather of the CRU, Phil “hide the decline” Jones, and featuring Michael “hockey stick” Mann once again in his supporting role as the Fredo of climate science, blustering along despite the misgivings and doubts of many of his peers. Beyond the purely human element, the new cache offers ample confirmation of the rank politicization of climate science and rampant cronyism that ought to trouble even firm believers in catastrophic climate change.

In fact, the emails display candid glimpses of concern inside the CRU circle. Peter Thorne of NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration), who earned his Ph.D. in climate science at East Anglia in 2001, wrote Phil Jones in a 2005 message, “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.” An appeal to “context,” which the climate campaigners say is crucial to understanding why excerpts such as this one are unimportant, does quite the opposite, and only points to the problems the climate change campaigners have brought upon themselves by their tribalism.

This exchange between Thorne and Jones, along with numerous similar threads in the new cache, is concerned with what should and shouldn’t be included in a chapter of the IPCC’s 2007 fourth assessment report​—​a chapter for which Jones was the coordinating lead author along with another key Climategate figure, Kevin Trenberth. The complete chapter (if you’re keeping score at home, it’s Chapter 3 of Working Group I, “Observations: Surface and Atmospheric Climate Change”) lists 10 “lead authors” and 66 “contributing authors” in addition to Jones and Trenberth. One of Jones’s emails from 2004 displays how explicitly political the process of assembling the IPCC report is: “We have a very mixed bag of LAs [lead authors] in our chapter. Being the basic atmos obs. one, we’ve picked up number of people from developing countries so IPCC can claim good geographic representation. This has made our task harder as CLAs [contributing lead authors] as we are working with about 50% good people who can write reasonable assessments and 50% who probably can’t.”

The final chapter was amended along lines Thorne recommended, but several other objections and contrary observations (one in particular from Roger Pielke Jr. about extreme weather events that has been subsequently vindicated) were scornfully dismissed. And appeals to context avoid the question: Is this “science-by-committee” a sensible way to sort out contentious scientific issues that hold immense public policy implications? Perhaps a politicized, semi-chaotic process like the IPCC is unavoidable in a subject as wide-ranging and complex as climate change; future historians of science can debate the issue. But the high stakes involved ought to compel a maximum of open debate and transparency. Instead, the IPCC process places a premium on gatekeepers and arbiters who control what goes in and what doesn’t, and it is exactly in its exercise of the gatekeeping function that the CRU circle has shredded its credibility and trustworthiness. 

One thing that emerges from the new emails is that, while a large number of scientists are working on separate, detailed nodes of climate-related issues (the reason for dozens of authors for every IPCC report chapter), the circle of scientists who control the syntheses that go into IPCC reports and the national climate reports that the U.S. and other governments occasionally produce is quite small and partial to particular outcomes of these periodic assessments. The way the process works in practice casts a shadow over one of the favorite claims of the climate campaign​—​namely, that there exists a firm “consensus” about catastrophic future warming among thousands of scientists. This so-called consensus reflects only the views of a much smaller subset of gatekeepers.

Leaked Emails Raise Questions About NYT’s ClimateGate Coverage

Commentary
Alana Goodman

A new batch of stolen emails from the East Anglia climate research center was released last week. Anthony Watts and JunkScience are doing some of the best up-to-the-minute blog coverage, and if you feel like digging through the 5,000+ emails, EcoWho has compiled them into a handy search engine.

The most striking take-away from the emails is how obsessed the climatologists seemed to be with media coverage – almost as if they were public relations associates as opposed to scientists. The extent of cooperation between the climate researchers and some friendly news outlets is also fascinating. (David Rose has an excellent article exploring the connections between East Anglia and the BBC.)

One New York Times writer, Andy Revkin, pops up numerous times in the emails. During the time the conversations took place, Revkin was a supposedly objective reporter on the environmental beat for the Times. He became an opinion blogger for the paper after leaving the news section at the end of 2009, which seems to be a better fit after reading some of his emails.

In one 2006 exchange between Revkin and the scientists, the reporter makes his disdain for Sen. James Inhofe – and “a big chunk” of the American public – clear, while promoting his book on the Arctic:

[Sen. Inhofe] still speaks to and for a big chunk of America — people whose understanding of science and engagement with such issues is so slight that they happily sit in pre-conceived positions. [T]hat might be one reason he doesn’t like [my] book, which is devoid of easily-attacked spin and scare tactics and lets the science point the way itself. [I]‘m just trying to be sure that folks like all of you take an extra couple seconds to use Inhofe against himself and forward the blog/book link to a few people who might not be aware of this book — the first on Arctic and global climate change for all readers 10 and up — and of Inhofe’s moves.

At the time, Inhofe had been critical of Revkin’s book, which promoted the theory of human-caused climate change, and said it undermined his objectivity as a reporter. Revkin responded to the senator publicly, though in a much less condescending manner. But the snideness in this private email isn’t nearly as bad as the fact that Revkin – at the time, an allegedly objective, neutral environmental reporter for the New York Times – seemed to be asking his highly ideological sources to back him up in this fight against Inhofe and other skeptics.

In another email, Revkin and climate scientist Michael Schlesinger appear to muse about how much better the world would be if only Al Gore had won the 2000 election.

“[H]ad the 5-to-4 ‘hanging-chad’ decision of the U.S. Supreme Court swung the other way, the U.S. would have confronted the challenges of human-induced climate change these past 6 years, rather than deny and avoid them,” Schlessinger wrote to Revkin in the 2007 email. “And, we would not now be mired in Iraq.”

“[A] very very very poignant and true point, [M]ichael,” responded Revkin. “[I] have a song called “a very fine line” that explores all those facets of life like that.” (In addition to his journalistic talents, Revkin is also a musician.)

In other emails, Revkin is dismissive of climate change skeptics, people who probably should have been an integral part of his beat. “[W]hat’s amusing, in a way, is how the ‘skeptics’ jump on a cold patch as evidence of global cooling but attack enviros for highlighting warming trends,” he wrote in February 2008.

Environmental Advocates Use Racism to Dismiss Global Warming Skeptics

Reduced to desperate measures, proponents of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) have resorted to formally identifying those who are skeptical of the global warming science as conservative white males.  

One inherent shortfall of the study is that it inadvertently celebrates the intelligence of conservative white males and denigrates every other race, gender and political background (including my own). 

Recently, mainstream media began the slow, tacit admission that global warming hasn't manifested in the way it was so definitively predicted 10 years ago.   This admission was presented last month through a recent study suggesting that Çhina's sulfur emissions were to blame for the lack of global warming.   Blaming China wasn't enough, so scientists scrambled to present the following two additional excuses for the foiled predictions of the past 10 years:

Volcanoes Now Blamed for Lack of Global Warming

Aerosols Blamed for Lack of Global Warming

Ironically, the aerosols article also blames the burning of fossil fuels for offsetting the effect of global warming.  Fossil fuels were initially blamed for global warming.

To understand how a group pushing human induced climate change could be reduced to conducting such a bizarre survey involving the socio-economic class of those who question the science of AGW, one has to look at the way they handle adverse information.

On a local level, anyone can make this discovery for themselves.  For example, If you have a group of environmentalists in your area that refer to global warming as one of the reasons for great ideas like localization, cleaning up the eco-sphere or reducing automobile exhaust, introduce some of the contradictory information involving climate change and see how they react to you. Pay close attention to the way they try to dismiss you or shape the argument away from what you present in support of recent conventional climate research. See if they actually answer your questions or address the specific points you present. Turning over this rock may involve an ugly discovery underneath.

An article describing this study indicates a comparison between conservative white males and the rest of the population.  Race, gender and political affiliation aside, the survey comes up with 39% "denying there's a scientific consensus".  White male conservatives boast a portion that is as high as 59%.  Not only does the scientific consensus of global warming have nothing to do with the science of global warming, the AGW movement is notorious for suppressing skeptical scientists.   The question should be, "Who is aware of the skeptical scientists being suppressed?"

The AGW climate scientists' tendency to suppress alternate views was revealed earlier through the hacked emails of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU).  Suppression was one red flag in addition to suggestions for "hiding the decline" of global temperatures and refusing requests to see the original data. 

Since this incident occurred in November of 2009, East Anglia's CRU hired a PR firm to help with their public image after the email scandal.  This is an unusual move by a research department because the science is expected to hold up to public scrutiny on its own.

In what is commonly called the "third party technique" among PR professionals, panels were put together on three occasions to examine the hacked emails.  The idea was to reassure the public that the inquiry was indeed independent and trustworthy.  All three "blue ribbon panels" exonerated East Anglia's CRU by downplaying the erroneous activity and declaring that none of the relevant data was affected.   Unfortunately for East Anglia, it appears that their PR department had a hand in this process.

Common sense would have the AGW movement take its blows, distance itself from the scientists involved with East Anglia, and allow newer cleaner research to emerge.  Instead, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change seemed hell bent on protecting the research called into question with the hacked emails. 

For some reason, the AGW movement thought that the best tactics were to further corrupt the peer review process, 'conspiracy bait' those who question the severity of CO2's warming effects and chime together with the mantra of "scientific consensus".   In the short run, this strategy seemed to work, especially when the establishment joins in with the motivation of another market bubble - carbon derivative scams.  Banks love human-driven climate change.  Anthropogenic global warming enjoys the privilege of mainstream acceptance.   When contradictory information slips by, the story is typically interspersed with statements reaffirming "the reality of anthropogenic global warming".  Sometimes, the information is revealed in such a vague manner, one begins to wonder what the initial purpose of the story was supposed to be. 

But the recent avalanche of contradictory information and discrediting scandals seem to be overwhelming the self aggrandizing orthodoxy that is AGW.

NASA Data Pit Scientific Method Against Climate Astrology

 Forbes
 James Taylor
 

The Scientific Method is a beautiful thing. By requiring that scientific hypotheses be testable and subject to objective verification, the Scientific Method distinguishes the pursuit of objective knowledge (science) from faith-based principles and circular logic. The Scientific Method was instrumental in pulling Western Civilization out of the Dark Ages. Yet 1,000 years later, regarding one of the most scientifically and politically important issues of modern times, the Scientific Method is being sacrificed on the altar of Climate Astrology.

The Scientific Method is simple and straightforward. If you formulate a hypothesis, make predictions according to that hypothesis, and then identify facts or results that would objectively disprove the hypothesis, you are practicing science. If you leave out any of these steps, and most importantly if you leave out the final step, you are not practicing science.

To qualify as science, the scientist who formulates a hypothesis must as rigorously as possible test the hypothesis. Moreover, he or she must welcome and encourage other scientists to rigorously test the hypothesis as well. If the hypothesis fails, this is not a discredit to the scientist who formed the hypothesis. To the contrary, scientific knowledge advances because scientists are able to narrow the list of potential hypotheses that may be true.


The Scientific Method was in full display last week when the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing published the results of an important study conducted by Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite. With access to NASA satellite data measuring the amount of heat escaping the earth’s atmosphere into space, Spencer compared the NASA satellite data to the amount of heat loss predicted by computer models relied upon by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in support of IPCC’s assertion that humans are causing a global warming crisis. Spencer found that the NASA satellite data reveal more heat is escaping into space than IPCC computer models have predicted.

Spencer’s discovery confirms prior heat-loss data reported by another set of NASA satellite instruments. Together, the NASA satellite instruments provide a 25-year record of real-world atmospheric conditions contradicting IPCC computer model predictions.

According to the Scientific Method, when real-world facts contradict a postulated hypothesis, the hypothesis fails. In this case, the failure of IPCC computer models to accurately predict atmospheric heat loss provided strong evidence that the IPCC computer models are based on faulty assumptions.

Rather than celebrating the advancement of knowledge provided by the NASA data and Spencer’s study, government employee “scientists” with a dog in the global warming fight viciously attacked Spencer and chastised the media for reporting this important scientific discovery.

Gavin Schmidt, a vigorous champion of the IPCC computer models and a government employee at NASA’s Goddard Institute (in a different branch of NASA than Spencer), protested the attention given to the NASA data by telling the press, “Climate sensitivity is not constrained by the last two decades of imperfect satellite data.”

This is a truly remarkable statement. Schmidt would have us believe that when 25 years of objective NASA satellite data contradict IPCC computer model predictions, we are supposed to ignore the real-world data and believe the discredited computer models instead. What are we supposed to do, pretend that the laws of physics have gone on a 25-year vacation?

Schmidt’s comments to the press are illustrative of a person whose taxpayer-funded paycheck is dependent upon the continuation of a failed global warming hypothesis. So long as the federal government operates under the assumption that we must study and address dangerous global warming, Schmidt’s job is secure. On the other hand, when scientists like Dr. Spencer report objective facts that falsify key components of global warming predictions, Schmidt’s government-provided paycheck is jeopardized and Schmidt lashes out.

Schmidt’s attempted denial of the NASA satellite facts is merely another example of global warming activists promoting faith-based principles and circular logic in contradiction of the Scientific Method.

When it rains a lot, we are told this proves humans are creating a global warming crisis. When it doesn’t rain a lot, we are told this, too, proves humans are creating a global warming crisis. When temperatures are hot, we are told this proves humans are creating a global warming crisis. When temperatures are cold, we are told this, too, proves humans are creating a global warming crisis. In short, global warming activists have presented a theory for which they identify no set of facts or circumstances that could possibly disprove their theory – not even 25 years of objective NASA satellite data that directly contradict what their computer models say should be happening.

The faith-based circular logic of Schmidt and other global warming activists may be a lot of things, but it is not science. Some have described it as religion, but that is doing a disservice to religion. Religion dictates that when a self-professed prophet’s predictions fail to come true, that person is identified as a false prophet.

A more accurate description of the factual denial practiced by Schmidt regarding the NASA satellite data is Climate Astrology. Astrologers, after all, make all sorts of vague predictions such that anything that later occurs can be alleged to have been predicted in advance. “This could be the moment to take a relationship one stage further” is to National Enquirer astrology what “the null hypothesis should be that all weather events are affected by global warming” is to Climate Astrology. Ironically, Kevin Trenberth, the same government employee “scientist” who said “the null hypothesis should be that all weather events are affected by global warming” is the same government employee who lashed out against the Spencer-reported NASA satellite data by telling the press, “I cannot believe it got published.”

Jeane Dixon famously spent decades making astrology predictions in the pages of the National Enquirer. Many of Dixon’s astrological predictions were so vague that they could not be disproven.

For the astrology predictions that could be objectively compared to real-world events, most were proven false. Roy Spencer’s study of NASA satellite data was deservingly published in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. Look for Schmidt and Trenberth’s Climate Astrology to soon appear in the pages of National Enquirer.

James M. Taylor is senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News.