As 2010 draws to a close, do you remember hearing any good news from the mainstream media about climate? Like maybe a headline proclaiming "Record Low 2009 and 2010 Cyclonic Activity Reported: Global Warming Theorists Perplexed"? Or "NASA Studies Report Oceans Entering New Cooling Phase: Alarmists Fear Climate Science Budgets in Peril"? Or even anything bad that isn't blamed on anthropogenic (man-made) global warming--of course other than what is attributed to George W. Bush? (Conveniently, the term "AGW" covers both.)
Remember all the media brouhaha about global warming causing hurricanes that commenced following the devastating U.S. 2004 season? Opportunities to capitalize on those disasters were certainly not lost on some U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change officials. A special press conference called by IPCC spokesman Kevin Trenberth announced "Experts warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense activity."
But there was a problem. Christopher Landsea, a top U.S. expert on the subject, repeatedly notified the IPCC that no research had been conducted to support that claim--not in the Atlantic basin, or in any other basin. After receiving no replies, he publicly resigned from all IPCC activities. And while the press conference received tumultuous global media coverage, Mother Nature didn't pay much attention. Subsequent hurricane seasons returned to average patterns noted historically over the past 150 years, before exhibiting recent record lows with no 2010 U.S. landfalls.
Much global warming alarm centers upon concerns that melting glaciers will cause a disastrous sea level rise. A globally viewed December 2005 BBC feature alarmingly reported that two massive glaciers in eastern Greenland, Kangderlugssuaq and Helheim, were melting, with water "racing to the sea." Commentators urgently warned that continued recession would be catastrophic.
Helheim's "erratic" behavior reported then was recently recounted again in a dramatic Nov. 13 New York Times article titled "As Glaciers Melt, Science Seeks Data on Rising Seas." Reporters somehow failed to notice that only 18 months later, and despite slightly warmer temperatures, the melting rate of both glaciers not only slowed down and stopped, but actually reversed. Satellite images revealed that by August 2006 Helheim had advanced beyond its 1933 boundary.
According to two separate NASA studies, one conducted by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the other by the Langley Research Center, the oceans now appear to be heading into another natural periodic cooling phase within a typical 55- to 70-year dipolar warm/cool pattern. Although Greenland has recently been experiencing a slight warming trend, satellite measurements show that the ice cap has been accumulating snow growth at a rate of about 2.1 inches per year. Temperatures only recently began to exceed those of the 1930s and 1940s when many glaciers were probably smaller than now. (We can't be certain, because satellites didn't exist to measure them.)
A recent study conducted by U.S. and Dutch scientists that appeared in the journal Nature Geoscience concluded that previous estimates of Greenland and West Antarctica ice melt rate losses may have been exaggerated by double. Earlier projections apparently failed to account for rebounding changes in the Earth's crust following the last Ice Age (referred to as "glacial isostatic adjustment").
Nils-Axel Morner, head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden, argues that any concerns regarding rising sea levels are unfounded. "So all this talk that sea level rising, this comes from the computer modeling, not from observations. ... The new level, which has been stable, has not changed in the last 35 years. ... But they [IPCC] need a rise, because if there is no rise, there is no death threat ... if you want a grant for a research project in climatology, it is written into the document that there 'must' be a focus on global warming. ... That is really bad, because you start asking for the answer you want to get."
Studies by the International Union for Quaternary Research conclude that some ocean levels have even fallen in recent decades. The Indian Ocean, for example, was higher between 1900 and 1970 than it has been since.
Other world climate alarm bells chimed when it was reported in the media that September 2007 satellite images revealed that the Northwest Passage--a sea route between the U.K. and Asia across the top of the Arctic Circle--had opened up for the first time in recorded history. (This "recorded history" dates back only to 1979 when satellite monitoring first began, and it should also be noted that the sea route froze again just a few months later (winter 2007-2008).
The Northwest Passage has certainly opened up before. Diary entries of a sailor named Roald Amundson confirm clear passage in 1903, as do those of a Royal Canadian Mounted Police Arctic patrol crew that made regular trips through there in the early 1940s. And in February 2009 it was discovered that scientists had previously been underestimating the re-growth of Arctic sea ice by an area larger than the state of California (twice as large as New Zealand). The errors were attributed to faulty sensors on the ice.
But these aren't the sorts of observations that most people generally receive from the media. Instead, they present sensational statements and dramatic images that leave lasting impressions of calving glaciers, drowning polar bears and all manner of other man-caused climate calamities.
Many intentionally target impressionable young minds and sensitive big hearts with messages of fear and guilt. Take, for example, a children's book called The North Pole Was Here, authored by New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin. It warns kids that some day it may be "easier to sail than stand on the North Pole in summer." Imagine such images through their visualization: How warm it must be to melt that pole way up north. Poor Santa! And Rudolph! Of course it's mostly their parents' fault because of the nasty CO2 they produce driving them to school in SUVs.
Lots of grown-ups are sensitive people with big hearts too. Don't we all deserve more from the seemingly infinite media echo chamber of alarmism than those windy speculations, snow jobs and projections established on theoretical thin ice?
[This message has been edited by avengador1 (edited 12-29-2010).]
Originally posted by Arns85GT:You mean spewing milliions of cubic yards of carbon gases into the atmosphere creates Global Cooling? Well, who'd a thunk.
I think you are creating some confusion here.
Volcanic emissions include carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and dust. The immediate and short-term effect of a large volcanic eruption is global cooling. That's because the volcanic dust goes into the atmosphere and reflects sunlight away from the earth. There is also a cooling effect from the sulfur dioxide, which reacts in the atmosphere to form the visible brownish haze known as "smog", which also reflects sunlight away from the earth.
The carbon dioxide that volcanoes emit contributes to the greenhouse or warming effect. Just like carbon dioxide from human activities. In the immediate aftermath of a volcanic eruption, the global cooling effects of volcanic dust and smog outweigh the warming effect from the volcanic carbon dioxide. But the volcanic dust and smog are soon washed out of the atmosphere by rain and so the global cooling episode after a large volcanic eruption rapidly comes to an end. Rapidly, in terms of the geologic time scale. The volcanic carbon dioxide, however, remains in the atmosphere long after the volcanic dust and smog are precipitated out.
So as I understand it, it is incorrect to say that the carbon emissions from volcanic eruptions has a cooling effect. It's the volcanic dust and smog that causes the global cooling after an eruption--and that's only a short-term effect.
Year in and year out, the amount of carbon dioxide emissions from human activities far outweighs any volcanic carbon dioxide.
So there is nothing in that statement (at the top) about volcanic gases that runs counter to the reality of AGW.
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 12-29-2010).]
Volcanic emissions include carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and dust. The immediate and short-term effect of a large volcanic eruption is global cooling. That's because the volcanic dust goes into the atmosphere and reflects sunlight away from the earth. There is also a cooling effect from the sulfur dioxide, which reacts in the atmosphere to form the visible brownish haze known as "smog", which also reflects sunlight away from the earth.
Yeah I know
quote
The carbon dioxide that volcanoes emit contributes to the greenhouse or warming effect. Just like carbon dioxide from human activities.
This is pure bunk.
quote
So as I understand it, it is incorrect to say that the carbon emissions from volcanic eruptions has a cooling effect. It's the volcanic dust and smog that causes the global cooling after an eruption--and that's only a short-term effect.
No arguement. CO2 doesn't affect heating and cooling to any degree at all.
quote
Year in and year out, the amount of carbon dioxide emissions from human activities far outweighs any volcanic carbon dioxide.
So there is nothing in that statement (at the top) about volcanic gases that runs counter to the reality of AGW.
This is pure bunk. CO2 follows heat (as heat creates more plant life), and does not create it. It is the result of increased activity in nature, but please remember, human actiivity is a very small fraction of ocean generated CO2 in any case. If you look back a few pages in this thread it is all laid out. Humans contribute a mere fraction of total CO2 and it does not create Global Warming. That propaganda is a scam. It is a lie. It is pure bunk. It is a smoke screen for the uneducated and uninformed and people like Al Gore and the UN use the lie as a means to take your money.
Uh oh! newf's "vast majority of scientists" (or whatever he likes to call it) is not 2500, or "thousands", but...75. And that's after cherrypicking and gnat-straining until they found their "majority". Wow.
How do we know there’s a scientific consensus on climate change? Pundits and the press tell us so. And how do the pundits and the press know? Until recently, they typically pointed to the number 2500 – that’s the number of scientists associated with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Those 2500, the pundits and the press believed, had endorsed the IPCC position.
To their embarrassment, most of the pundits and press discovered that they were mistaken – those 2500 scientists hadn’t endorsed the IPCC’s conclusions, they had merely reviewed some part or other of the IPCC’s mammoth studies. To add to their embarrassment, many of those reviewers from within the IPCC establishment actually disagreed with the IPCC’s conclusions, sometimes vehemently.
The upshot? The punditry looked for and recently found an alternate number to tout — “97% of the world’s climate scientists” accept the consensus, articles in the Washington Post and elsewhere have begun to claim.
This number will prove a new embarrassment to the pundits and press who use it. The number stems from a 2009 online survey of 10,257 earth scientists, conducted by two researchers at the University of Illinois. The survey results must have deeply disappointed the researchers – in the end, they chose to highlight the views of a subgroup of just 77 scientists, 75 of whom thought humans contributed to climate change. The ratio 75/77 produces the 97% figure that pundits now tout.
The two researchers started by altogether excluding from their survey the thousands of scientists most likely to think that the Sun, or planetary movements, might have something to do with climate on Earth – out were the solar scientists, space scientists, cosmologists, physicists, meteorologists and astronomers. That left the 10,257 scientists in disciplines like geology, oceanography, paleontology, and geochemistry that were somehow deemed more worthy of being included in the consensus. The two researchers also decided that scientific accomplishment should not be a factor in who could answer – those surveyed were determined by their place of employment (an academic or a governmental institution). Neither was academic qualification a factor – about 1,000 of those surveyed did not have a PhD, some didn’t even have a master’s diploma.
To encourage a high participation among these remaining disciplines, the two researchers decided on a quickie survey that would take less than two minutes to complete, and would be done online, saving the respondents the hassle of mailing a reply. Nevertheless, most didn’t consider the quickie survey worthy of response –just 3146, or 30.7%, answered the two questions on the survey:
1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?
The questions were actually non-questions. From my discussions with literally hundreds of skeptical scientists over the past few years, I know of none who claims that the planet hasn’t warmed since the 1700s, and almost none who think that humans haven’t contributed in some way to the recent warming – quite apart from carbon dioxide emissions, few would doubt that the creation of cities and the clearing of forests for agricultural lands have affected the climate. When pressed for a figure, global warming skeptics might say that human are responsible for 10% or 15% of the warming; some skeptics place the upper bound of man’s contribution at 35%. The skeptics only deny that humans played a dominant role in Earth’s warming.
Surprisingly, just 90% of those who responded to the first question believed that temperatures had risen – I would have expected a figure closer to 100%, since Earth was in the Little Ice Age in the centuries immediately preceding 1800. But perhaps some of the responders interpreted the question to include the past 1000 years, when Earth was in the Medieval Warm Period, generally thought to be warmer than today.
As for the second question, 82% of the earth scientists replied that that human activity had significantly contributed to the warming. Here the vagueness of the question comes into play. Since skeptics believe that human activity been a contributing factor, their answer would have turned on whether they consider a 10% or 15% or 35% increase to be a significant contributing factor. Some would, some wouldn’t.
In any case, the two researchers must have feared that an 82% figure would fall short of a convincing consensus – almost one in five wasn’t blaming humans for global warming — so they looked for subsets that would yield a higher percentage. They found it – almost — in those whose recent published peer-reviewed research fell primarily in the climate change field. But the percentage still fell short of the researchers’ ideal. So they made another cut, allowing only the research conducted by those earth scientists who identified themselves as climate scientists.
Once all these cuts were made, 75 out of 77 scientists of unknown qualifications were left endorsing the global warming orthodoxy. The two researchers were then satisfied with their findings. Are you?
Wait a minute so which arguement are we going with today? Climate Change is happening or not? If it's happening (even if you believe it's not due to human activity) don't you think it might be a good idea to research it???
Cherry picking again? No context?
How much is this of the total R&D budget for 2011? Less than 2% or so? I'm sure you can correct me if that's wrong. Really does that sound like a lot to research the climate, its changes and the effects? Half of the R&D budget is in defense R&D so don't worry about it I'm sure there's no wasting going on there.
Care to show hmmmm say ExxonMobils budget for 2010 and see if that amount of money compares?? We can all cherrypick if we want.
[This message has been edited by newf (edited 01-10-2011).]
The argument that colder continental temperatures is caused by warmer ocean waters is somewhat iffy. There is a high pressure area over the North Pole pushing arctic air southward. Nothing to do with warmer oceans.
Wait a minute so which arguement are we going with today? Climate Change is happening or not? If it's happening (even if you believe it's not due to human activity) don't you think it might be a good idea to research it???
Cherry picking again? No context?
How much is this of the total R&D budget for 2011? Less than 2% or so? I'm sure you can correct me if that's wrong. Really does that sound like a lot to research the climate, its changes and the effects? Half of the R&D budget is in defense R&D so don't worry about it I'm sure there's no wasting going on there.
Care to show hmmmm say ExxonMobils budget for 2010 and see if that amount of money compares?? We can all cherrypick if we want.
Newf, your arguments have gone from bad to ridiculous. I won't even bother to reply.
NASA's leading "scientist", and global warming arm-waver, has some very interesting things to say about this country and China. Why are we still employing this anti-American nutbag?
NASA's Hansen prefers rule by decree to fight 'global warming'
By Patrick J. Michaels -The Washington Times6:01 p.m., Monday, January 17, 2011
November's election made it quite clear that the people of the United States do not want to radically change our society in the name of global warming. Pretty much every close House race went to the Republicans, while the Democrats won all the Senate squeakers. The difference? The House on June 26, 2009, passed a bill limiting carbon-dioxide emissions and getting into just about every aspect of our lives. The Senate did nothing of the sort.
The nation's most prominent publicly funded climatologist is officially angry about this, blaming democracy and citing the Chinese government as the "best hope" to save the world from global warming. He also wants an economic boycott of the U.S. sufficient to bend us to China's will.
NASA laboratory head James Hansen's anti-democracy rants were published while he was on a November junket in China, but they didn't get much attention until recently. On Jan. 12, the hyperprolific blogger Marc Morano put them on his Climate Depot site, and within hours, the post went viral. In a former life, Mr. Morano was chief global-warming researcher for Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican.
According to Mr. Hansen, compared to China, we are "the barbarians" with a "fossil-money- 'democracy' that now rules the roost," making it impossible to legislate effectively on climate change. Unlike us, the Chinese are enlightened, unfettered by pesky elections. Here's what he blogged on Nov. 24:
"I have the impression that Chinese leadership takes a long view, perhaps because of the long history of their culture, in contrast to the West with its short election cycles. At the same time, China has the capacity to implement policy decisions rapidly. The leaders seem to seek the best technical information and do not brand as a hoax that which is inconvenient."
Has this guy ever heard of the Gang of Four? Or the Cultural Revolution, which killed those who were inconvenient? Or the Great Leap Forward, which used the best technical information to determine that a steel mill in every backyard was a good idea?
Mr. Hansen has another idea to circumvent our democracy. Because Congress is not likely to pass any legislation making carbon-based energy prohibitively expensive, he proposed, in the South China Morning Post, that China lead a boycott of our economy:
"After agreement with other nations, e.g., the European Union, China and these nations could impose rising internal carbon fees. Existing rules of the World Trade Organization would allow collection of a rising border duty on products from all nations that do not have an equivalent internal carbon fee or tax.
"The United States then would be forced to make a choice. It could either address its fossil-fuel addiction ... or ... accept continual descent into second-rate and third-rate economic well-being."
The WTO, in fact, has not "ruled" that it can impose environmental tariffs of any kind, much less those of such magnitude that they would destroy the world's largest economy.
Mr. Hansen is just dreaming here. But that's not surprising. He has been very creative over the years.
In 1988, he reportedly told Bob Reiss, author of yet another apocalyptic screed, "The Coming Storm," that in the next 20 years, "The West Side Highway [in Manhattan] will be under water" and, "There will be more police cars" in New York because "well, you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up."
Well, there are more cops and less crime, and the West Side is high and dry. One out of three isn't bad for baseball, but it is horrendous for science.
In 1988, he testified in front of Congress, showing the temperature forecast for coming decades. He had three emission scenarios: One was labeled "A," which he called "business as usual." It actually underestimated the growth in greenhouse-gas emissions since then. Even with that error, which should have enhanced global warming more than he predicted, observed temperatures fell far short. He predicted 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.3 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming. This was an overestimate of more than 40 of what was observed between then and now.
How about his scenario "B," which assumes "decreasing trace gas growth rates?" That one overestimates warming by a bit less than 40 percent (37 percent, to be artificially exact). Scenario "C" is irrelevant, as it assumed massive cuts in emissions beginning in 1988.
His forecasts of climatic change for nearly the last quarter-century are fantasy, as is his notion that dictators are better than democracy and that our country should be bullied into submission.
Patrick J. Michaels is senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and author of "Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don't Want You to Know" (Cato Institute, 2009).
NASA's leading "scientist", and global warming arm-waver, has some very interesting things to say about this country and China. Why are we still employing this anti-American nutbag?
NASA's Hansen prefers rule by decree to fight 'global warming'
By Patrick J. Michaels -The Washington Times6:01 p.m., Monday, January 17, 2011
November's election made it quite clear that the people of the United States do not want to radically change our society in the name of global warming. Pretty much every close House race went to the Republicans, while the Democrats won all the Senate squeakers. The difference? The House on June 26, 2009, passed a bill limiting carbon-dioxide emissions and getting into just about every aspect of our lives. The Senate did nothing of the sort.
The nation's most prominent publicly funded climatologist is officially angry about this, blaming democracy and citing the Chinese government as the "best hope" to save the world from global warming. He also wants an economic boycott of the U.S. sufficient to bend us to China's will.
NASA laboratory head James Hansen's anti-democracy rants were published while he was on a November junket in China, but they didn't get much attention until recently. On Jan. 12, the hyperprolific blogger Marc Morano put them on his Climate Depot site, and within hours, the post went viral. In a former life, Mr. Morano was chief global-warming researcher for Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican.
According to Mr. Hansen, compared to China, we are "the barbarians" with a "fossil-money- 'democracy' that now rules the roost," making it impossible to legislate effectively on climate change. Unlike us, the Chinese are enlightened, unfettered by pesky elections. Here's what he blogged on Nov. 24:
"I have the impression that Chinese leadership takes a long view, perhaps because of the long history of their culture, in contrast to the West with its short election cycles. At the same time, China has the capacity to implement policy decisions rapidly. The leaders seem to seek the best technical information and do not brand as a hoax that which is inconvenient."
Has this guy ever heard of the Gang of Four? Or the Cultural Revolution, which killed those who were inconvenient? Or the Great Leap Forward, which used the best technical information to determine that a steel mill in every backyard was a good idea?
Mr. Hansen has another idea to circumvent our democracy. Because Congress is not likely to pass any legislation making carbon-based energy prohibitively expensive, he proposed, in the South China Morning Post, that China lead a boycott of our economy:
"After agreement with other nations, e.g., the European Union, China and these nations could impose rising internal carbon fees. Existing rules of the World Trade Organization would allow collection of a rising border duty on products from all nations that do not have an equivalent internal carbon fee or tax.
"The United States then would be forced to make a choice. It could either address its fossil-fuel addiction ... or ... accept continual descent into second-rate and third-rate economic well-being."
The WTO, in fact, has not "ruled" that it can impose environmental tariffs of any kind, much less those of such magnitude that they would destroy the world's largest economy.
Mr. Hansen is just dreaming here. But that's not surprising. He has been very creative over the years.
In 1988, he reportedly told Bob Reiss, author of yet another apocalyptic screed, "The Coming Storm," that in the next 20 years, "The West Side Highway [in Manhattan] will be under water" and, "There will be more police cars" in New York because "well, you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up."
Well, there are more cops and less crime, and the West Side is high and dry. One out of three isn't bad for baseball, but it is horrendous for science.
In 1988, he testified in front of Congress, showing the temperature forecast for coming decades. He had three emission scenarios: One was labeled "A," which he called "business as usual." It actually underestimated the growth in greenhouse-gas emissions since then. Even with that error, which should have enhanced global warming more than he predicted, observed temperatures fell far short. He predicted 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.3 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming. This was an overestimate of more than 40 of what was observed between then and now.
How about his scenario "B," which assumes "decreasing trace gas growth rates?" That one overestimates warming by a bit less than 40 percent (37 percent, to be artificially exact). Scenario "C" is irrelevant, as it assumed massive cuts in emissions beginning in 1988.
His forecasts of climatic change for nearly the last quarter-century are fantasy, as is his notion that dictators are better than democracy and that our country should be bullied into submission.
Patrick J. Michaels is senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and author of "Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don't Want You to Know" (Cato Institute, 2009).
Hmmmmmm where to begin?
First, I never realized the past election was actually a refurendum on climate change as the article seems to suggest. What a crock!
Second, the fact that James Hansen seems to have noticed that the ability of China to quickly implement policy and see the benefits longer range because of their political system. How this is somehow evidence that he wants to circumvent democracy seems like a leap but if this changes the science of Climate Change somehow I'd love to see how. Has he been quoted as saying that indeed he is proposing a trade ban or is this more twisting of words by a climate denier blogger I wonder?
Thirdly has he not updated any of his findings or research since 1988? Or is this more cherry-picked and editted BS?
I'm also confused at this line in the article "Even with that error, which should have enhanced global warming more than he predicted, observed temperatures fell far short. He predicted 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.3 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming. This was an overestimate of more than 40 of what was observed between then and now." Ummmmm..40 what????
Oh, just as a matter of interest concerning the author:
On July 27, 2006 ABC News reported that a Colorado energy cooperative, the Intermountain Rural Electric Association, had given Michaels $100,000. An Associated Press report said that the donations had been made after Michaels had "told Western business leaders ... that he was running out of money for his analyses of other scientists' global warming research" and noted that the cooperative had a vested interest in opposing mandatory carbon dioxide caps, a situation that raised conflict of interest concerns.
According to Fred Pearce, fossil fuel companies have helped fund Michaels' projects, including his World Climate Report, published every year since 1994, and his "advocacy science consulting firm", New Hope Environmental Services.
[This message has been edited by newf (edited 01-18-2011).]
As reported at The New American on January 13 (Who's Afraid of Global Warming?) the alarmist media have been trying to breathe more oxygen into the anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming (AGW) cadaver by hyping recent statements from NASA and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) that "2010 tied with 2005 as the warmest year of the global surface temperature record, beginning in 1880."
"If the warming trend continues, as is expected, if greenhouse gases continue to increase, the 2010 record will not stand for long," said James Hansen, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, in a statement released on January 12. The similar, but more extensive, NOAA statement can be see here.
Predictably, the usual media chorus seized on the NASA/NOAA press releases as proof that human emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases (GHG) are causing the reported global temperature increase. An editorial for the Scripps Howard News Service on January 14 opined: NOAA's temperature graph shows temperatures well below the 20th century global average from 1880 until the end of the 1930s when the average annual temperature began fluctuating between slightly above and slightly below the 57-degree benchmark. But since 1980 the trend has been incrementally, if unevenly, upward.
Most climatologists attribute the gradual warming to the buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere although there are some scientists who say the change is part of a long-term cyclical variation.
Similar reports appeared in TIME/CNN (here), the New York Times (here), NPR (here), Reuters (here), Yahoo News (here), AOLnews (here), the BBC (here) and USA Today (here).
A report by the Associated Press science writer Randolph Schmid that simply regurgitated the NOAA/NASA press releases was run by hundreds of newspapers and websites, including CBS (here), ABC (here), and NBC (here).
The reliably left-leaning, tax-supported National Public Radio (NPR), always a strong voice for AGW alarmism, wound up its piece with this bit of CO2 fright peddling, as well as kudos the doomsayers whom it called "the world's most respected climate scientists":
And as for the long-term global trend? David Easterling from the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., says that's our doing. Global warming is driven by our growing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
And, yes, that's the same conclusion you heard from the world's most respected climate scientists in 2010, 2009 and 2008. The story on global warming isn't changing.
Concerning those "hottest year" claims - and the "respected climate scientists"
There are good reasons for skepticism regarding the recent NOAA/NASA releases. Here are a couple of questions that deserve to be asked:
1) Even if one assumes the NOAA/NASA data are valid and accurate, do they support the headlines and story claims that the global temperatures are being driven by human GHG emissions and that they portend calamity of apocalyptic proportions - unless?
2) Is there cause to suspect the veracity of the NOAA/NASA data?
Marc Morano at Climate Depot, ever ready with a rapid response, has put together an extensive analysis examining the "hottest year" media blitz from a number of angles and providing links to critical comments by climate experts and web sites. Morano writes:
This is pure politics, not science. The "hottest year" claims confirm the case for political science overtaking climate science. The "hottest year" claim depends on minute fractions of a degree difference between years. Even NASA's James Hansen, the leading proponent of man-made global warming in the U.S., conceded the "hottest year" rankings are essentially meaningless. Hansen explained that 2010 differed from 2005 by less than 2 hundredths of a degree F (that's 0.018F). "It's not particularly important whether 2010, 2005, or 1998 was the hottest year on record," Hansen admitted on January 13. According to NASA, none of agencies tasked with keeping the global temperature data agree with each other. "Rankings of individual years often differ in the most closely watched temperature analyses - from GISS, NCDC, and the UK Met Office - a situation that can generate confusion."
If there is confusion in the matter, it is Hansen and his colleagues at NASA's GISS and NOAA who are greatly responsible. In a January 14 commentary at WattsUpWithThat.com, meteorologist Dr. Ryan Maue of Florida State University ridiculed the "hottest year" rankings and Hansen's admission that it "was not particularly important" which year was declared the "hottest."
Dr. Maue examines the NASA press release and then taunts Hansen:
"Well, then stop issuing press releases which tout the rankings, which are subject to change ex post facto."
Indeed, the AGW alarmists are not content to pull this PR stunt only once per year, they issue releases and hold press conferences on this manufactured "news" multiple times per year.
Meteorologist Art Horn take the NOAA "hottest year" claims to task at the climate web site ICECAP, commenting:
If NOAA was truly objective in their analysis of this 130 year period of temperature they would acknowledge that 130 years of record in the long history of climate is insignificant to the extreme. The reason they do not give this record its true historical context is because their statement is really political. Their true message is that global warming is causing the warm weather and that we need to abandon fossil fuels and somehow change to "renewable" energy sources....
"If one takes a serious, adult look at the variability of weather and climate over time you find amazing events," Horn continued. "In the winter of 1249 it was so warm in England that people did not need winter clothes. They walked about in summer dress. It was so warm people thought the seasons had changed. There was no frost in England the entire winter. Can you imagine what NOAA would say if that happened next year? But it did happen, 762 years ago and burning fossil fuels had nothing to do with it. In the winter of 1717 there was so much snow in Massachusetts in late February and early March, single story houses were buried."
Richard S. Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is another of the many eminent climate scientists that challenge the NASA/NOAA's alarmist "hottest year" propaganda stunts, based as they are on "tenths of a degree" from questionable records.
"Global warming enthusiasts have responded to the absence of warming in recent years by arguing that the past decade has been the warmest on record," Dr Lindzen noted, in an op-ed for The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va. "We are still speaking of tenths of a degree, and the records themselves have come into question. Since we are, according to these records, in a relatively warm period, it is not surprising that the past decade was the warmest on record. This in no way contradicts the absence of increasing temperatures for over a decade."
Lindzen continued:
One may ask why there has been the astounding upsurge in alarmism in the past four years. When an issue like global warming is around for more than 20 years, numerous agendas are developed to exploit the issue. The interests of the environmental movement in acquiring more power, influence and donations are reasonably clear. So, too, are the interests of bureaucrats for whom control of carbon dioxide is a dream come true. After all, carbon dioxide is a product of breathing itself.
Polls show public support for costly and intrusive government "remedies" for climate change has plummeted, apparently causing the AGW alarmists to resort to ever more desperate measures. Professor Lindzen notes:
For those committed to the more venal agendas, the need to act soon, before the public appreciates the situation, is real indeed. However, the need to courageously resist hysteria is equally clear. Wasting resources on symbolically fighting ever-present climate change is no substitute for prudence.
Also worth noting, Lord Christopher Monckton provides a point-by-point analysis of a typical 2010-as-the-hottest-year news story, the article chosen being one from The Australian, here.
The AGW Data Fraud Problem However, as noted above, aside from the problem of unjustified alarmist "spin" applied to the temperature statistics and the failure — by NASA, NOAA, and the media — to present those statistics in the proper time-span context, there is the even deeper problem concerning the veracity of the statistics themselves.
Over the past 14 months since the "Climategate" e-mails scandal broke, the public has become much more aware of the fraud, deception, lies, stonewalling, conspiracy, and destruction of evidence employed by some of (in NPR's words) "the world's most respected climate scientists." The three official "inquiries" into Climategate conducted thus far have been incredibly biased in favor of the accused, providing Phil Jones, Michael Mann and other scientists and institutions at the center of the scandal with cover to claim vindication. (See: Were the "Climategate" Inquiries Whitewashed?)
In his quote excerpted above, Professor Lindzen notes that "the records themselves have come into question." The records he is referring to are the official temperature records that are cited by the AGW alarmists as evidence that governments must assume vast new powers to tax, regulate, control, re-engineer, and regiment society, in order to save us from a supposed climate Armageddon.
One of the biggest stories over the past couple of years that the major media have missed completely — or intentionally suppressed — is the news that the temperature data used by NOAA, NASA, Britain's University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (UEA-CRU), and others in their apocalyptic scenarios are hopelessly corrupted and incapable of providing any meaningful in-put for policy decisions, especially decisions to impose radical greenhouse gas "mitigation" measures. We have this "from the horse's mouth," so to speak, in the form of Climategate emails from the UEA-CRU.
In one of the e-mails, Ian "Harry" Harris, the CRU programmer lamented about "[The] hopeless state of their (CRU) database. No uniform data integrity, it's just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they're found."
In another expression of exasperation at the total disarray of the data, Harris wrote:
Aarrggghhh! There truly is no end in sight. This whole project is SUCH A MESS. No wonder I needed therapy!!
CRU's star member, Dr. Phil Jones, in a moment of candor, confessed to the BBC that "his surface temperature data are in such disarray they probably cannot be verified or replicated."
Can't be verified or replicated? Then you have no science! And certainly no "overwhelming evidence" — as the media alarmists are fond of putting it — to justify draconian policies.
Meteorologists Joseph D'Aleo and Anthony Watts point out that:
This reflects on both NOAA and NASA in the United States. Phil Jones also admits that "Almost all the data we have in the CRU archive is exactly the same as in the GHCN archive used by the NOAA National Climatic Data Center."
In a policy paper entitled Surface Temperature Records: Policy-Driven Deception?, published in August 2010 by the Science & Public Policy Institute (SPPI), D'Aleo and Watts write:
Around 1990, NOAA/NCDC's GHCN dataset lost more than three-quarters of the climate measuring stations around the world. It can be shown that country by country, they lost stations with a bias towards higher-latitude, higher-altitude and rural locations, all of which had a tendency to be cooler. The remaining climate monitoring stations were increasingly near the sea, at lower elevations, and at airports near larger cities. This data were then used to determine the global average temperature and to initialize climate models. Interestingly, the very same often colder stations that have been deleted from the world climate network were retained for computing the average-temperature in the base periods, further increasing the potential bias towards overstatement of the warming.
To make sure the reader did not miss this astounding point, we reiterate and emphasize: More than 75 percent of the weather stations around the globe have been inexplicably "lost."
And it just so happens, that most of the "lost" weather stations happen to be, conveniently, ones from the colder areas — from the higher altitudes, the higher latitudes, and rural areas — providing an automatic exaggerated temperature rise that more than accounts for the reported "global warming" of recent decades.
Joseph D'Aleo has followed up that report with another important SPPI paper, Why NOAA and NASA Proclamations Should Be Ignored, issued January 14, after the releases of the NOAA and NASA statements.
Many important studies and articles detailing the serious problems surrounding the weather stations, satellites, and data used by the major alarmist institutions have shed light on this growing scandal. They include:
Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt?, by Dr. David Evans, formerly a researcher and modeler for the Australian Department of Climate Change, and;
Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?, by broadcast meteorologist Anthony Watts;
Some additional resources on this huge development include the following articles from a variety of independent web sites:
Correct the Corrections: The GISS Urban Adjustment
NOAA/NCDC: GHCN - The Global Analysis
"Satellite-gate" NOAA data 10-15° high
NOAA & NCDC Pursue Goal of 'Warmest Year Ever' For 2010 - Release Newly Fabricated Global Temperatures
US Government in Massive New Global Warming Scandal - NOAA Disgraced
Hansen's "Hottest Year Ever" Is Primarily Based On Fabricated Data
Global Warming and James Hansen's Hacks
Rural US Sites Show No Temperature Increase Since 1900
Very little of this explosive information, however, has found its way into the major media, which appear to wish to remain invincibly ignorant of the facts — and, apparently, prefer to keep their audiences ignorant of these inconvenient truths as well.
The new Congress is promising thorough investigations into Climategate and many other aspects of global warming "science" that are being used to drive radical political agendas. This is absolutely necessary, since Congress has provided funds directly to NOAA, NASA and other offending agencies, and has provided more funds indirectly through other federal departments (EPA, Commerce, Energy, State, Transportation, etc.). All told, the global warming alarmist establishment has received tens of billions of dollars from the American taxpayers, funding which the alarmists have used to lobby and propagandize for more money and more power. If taxpayers hope to overcome the lobbying and propaganda advantages enjoyed by the alarmists and halt the programs pushing for more statist "solutions," they must press both the House and Senate to thoroughly investigate the corrupt climate establishment and cease funding for its authoritarian agenda.
...yea, hottest since 1980...talk about using a small set of sample data.
For something this big, should they actually not be using a much larger scale to compare temperature data? Wait I forget, if they use data collected about the climate since the beginning of time, they would have no point to make...
This is pure politics, not science. The "hottest year" claims confirm the case for political science overtaking climate science. The "hottest year" claim depends on minute fractions of a degree difference between years.
...yea, hottest since 1980...talk about using a small set of sample data.
For something this big, should they actually not be using a much larger scale to compare temperature data? Wait I forget, if they use data collected about the climate since the beginning of time, they would have no point to make...
I assume you meant 1880 which is admittedly still a small scale but shows the recent continued trend none the less.
But a trend which goes back to the 1700's, which they don't tell you. Recovery from the "little ice age", a lengthy period of unusual COLD.
I have become a fan of the co-founder of Greenpeace, Dr. Patrick Moore. Ordered his book. This guys has been pushing environmental issues for years. We all care about it, but how it is approached is the key in order to arrive at sensible solutions. Don't know if he has been covered here before.
Just wondering if you actually read the articles or just the headline. Here is another opinion from the same website about the same study, now you may want to read past the headline and see what the reporter has to say. Better yet I wonder what the scientists have concluded as I see no link to the actual research paper.
Just wondering if you actually read the articles or just the headline.
Of course. Here are some facts from the article I posted:
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.
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. Their report, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, found the key factor affecting their advance or retreat is the amount of debris – rocks and mud – strewn on their surface, not the general nature of climate change. ... In contrast, more than 50 per cent of observed glaciers in the Karakoram region in the northwestern Himalaya are advancing or stable. "Our study shows that there is no uniform response of Himalayan glaciers to climate change and highlights the importance of debris cover for understanding glacier retreat, an effect that has so far been neglected in predictions of future water availability or global sea level," the authors concluded. Dr Bookhagen said their report had shown "there is no stereotypical Himalayan glacier" in contrast to the UN's climate change report which, he said, "lumps all Himalayan glaciers together."
Of course. Here are some facts from the article I posted:
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.
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. Their report, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, found the key factor affecting their advance or retreat is the amount of debris – rocks and mud – strewn on their surface, not the general nature of climate change. ... In contrast, more than 50 per cent of observed glaciers in the Karakoram region in the northwestern Himalaya are advancing or stable. "Our study shows that there is no uniform response of Himalayan glaciers to climate change and highlights the importance of debris cover for understanding glacier retreat, an effect that has so far been neglected in predictions of future water availability or global sea level," the authors concluded. Dr Bookhagen said their report had shown "there is no stereotypical Himalayan glacier" in contrast to the UN's climate change report which, he said, "lumps all Himalayan glaciers together."
I see, so you just continue to cherry-pick a article for "facts" to suit your own opinion. I thought your position was all research scientists were corrupt? Read the article I posted about the same study that shows another take on it. Let's see the actual study and look at it.
Seeing as how we are still in the recovery from the last ice age, it is entirely logical that some glaciers would be still retreating. If you took the time to look at the data from Antarctica, you would see the ice is growing at the pole.
So, while you can point to some ice fields growing while others retreat, it in no way supports the premise that there is any unusual Global Warming and that whatever warming is occurring is man made.
Once again here is a list of growing ice fields/glaciers
Seeing as how we are still in the recovery from the last ice age, it is entirely logical that some glaciers would be still retreating. If you took the time to look at the data from Antarctica, you would see the ice is growing at the pole.
So, while you can point to some ice fields growing while others retreat, it in no way supports the premise that there is any unusual Global Warming and that whatever warming is occurring is man made.
Once again here is a list of growing ice fields/glaciers
I really don't see how you have in any way successfully argued that Mankind is causing the weather to change.
To the contrary in fact.
Arn
Still believe the earth is cooling, hey?
We've covered glacier retreat and growth before Arn and you supplied the exact same list on page 36. I'll go back and find the scientific response to the glacier growth and retreat facts and c&p if you'd like.
I have news for you man, I'M not the one arguing the fact that man made Climate Change is happening, the vast majority of climate Scientists are showing it by their studies and research, I choose to take their word over internet experts like yourself who claim the artic ice is rebounding or sunspots are the cause of everything when the science shows otherwise.
Do I think the Science is "settled"? No, I don't think good science ever is. Do I think Science understands a 100% the intricacies of Climate and mans effects on it? No but I think the more it gets studied the more we know and can learn from it.
BTW Arn most of your links are dead ends. If you would like to read about the studied glaciers though you can go here http://www.geo.uzh.ch/microsite/wgms/
[This message has been edited by newf (edited 01-27-2011).]
At any given time the earth is either warming or cooling. It is not static. Moreover it goes up and down frequently.
We started a cooling trend in 2001 right after the peak of the warming trend in 2000.
As for " the vast majority of climate Scientists are showing it by their studies and research," that was the lie told by the IPCC and East Anglia University, and Al Gore. It just isn't true. It was a lie then and a lie now. You are believing a lie.
Sure the climate is changing, and as I said before, islands are not sinking into the sea, polar bears are not drowning and starving, and record hurricane activity not occurring. The predictions have not come true. Surely you can see that.
At any given time the earth is either warming or cooling. It is not static. Moreover it goes up and down frequently.
We started a cooling trend in 2001 right after the peak of the warming trend in 2000.
As for " the vast majority of climate Scientists are showing it by their studies and research," that was the lie told by the IPCC and East Anglia University, and Al Gore. It just isn't true. It was a lie then and a lie now. You are believing a lie.
Sure the climate is changing, and as I said before, islands are not sinking into the sea, polar bears are not drowning and starving, and record hurricane activity not occurring. The predictions have not come true. Surely you can see that.
Arn
I wish someone would show me these dire predictions that the scientists keep making. Now not the media or pundits, the SCIENTISTS.
Cooling since 2001? After the hottest year on record and a continued increasing trend????
I will say something you did say that is correct is this statement "At any given time the earth is either warming or cooling. It is not static."
BTW if you trust any of the scientists where do you get your data???
[This message has been edited by newf (edited 01-27-2011).]
I see, so you just continue to cherry-pick a article for "facts" to suit your own opinion.
No, I posted an article talking about a published, scientific paper about glaciers.
quote
I thought your position was all research scientists were corrupt?
You thought wrong. *SOME* are for the purposes of getting further research grants, and it seems very prevalent in the global warming arena.
quote
Read the article I posted about the same study that shows another take on it. Let's see the actual study and look at it.
Which is SPIN. The article I posted was about a new paper. The article you posted was someone's *opinion* about that paper, possibly someone with an agenda. I'll have to look into that.
I wish someone would show me these dire predictions that the scientists keep making. Now not the media or pundits, the SCIENTISTS.
Cooling since 2001? After the hottest year on record and a continued increasing trend????
I will say something you did say that is correct is this statement "At any given time the earth is either warming or cooling. It is not static."
BTW if you trust any of the scientists where do you get your data???
I guess you missed what I said.
As for " the vast majority of climate Scientists are showing it by their studies and research," that was the lie told by the IPCC and East Anglia University, and Al Gore. It just isn't true. It was a lie then and a lie now. You are believing a lie.
Sure the climate is changing, and as I said before, islands are not sinking into the sea, polar bears are not drowning and starving, and record hurricane activity not occurring. The predictions have not come true. Surely you can see that.
So the famous "majority" of scientists proclaimed rising oceans, islands disappearing, polar bears starving to death, record hurricanes and you simply ignore the fact that none of these things have occurred and you still want to argue that it is I who have to prove something?
Well, why don't you prove that your Global Warming scientist friends HAVE TOLD THE TRUTH AND THEIR PREDICTIONS OF IMPENDING DOOM ARE TRUE? I don't have a thing to prove. I am simply stating the obvious. Those famous scientists you quote are full of you know what.
Which is SPIN. The article I posted was about a new paper. The article you posted was someone's *opinion* about that paper, possibly someone with an agenda. I'll have to look into that.
That is hilarious. So 2 responses to the same paper from the same site and the one you agree with is fact and the one that doesn't agree with your opinion is SPIN. Basically sums up almost every arguement I've seen you have on this site.
