The CLIMATE SCEPTICS Blog

It's all downhill from here.

2012-01-27T22:04:00.005+11:00

Professor Ole Humlum has released his data (link in title above) for the calendar year 2011. Note that the graph above shows that, according to Hadley CRUT temperatures have been falling for 10 years.

Also note that for those same ten years, atmospheric CO2 has been rising.

More evidence that the man-made CO2 emissions cause runaway global warming hypothesis has been busted.

How to be a Really Good Climate Change Alarmist

2012-01-27T21:41:00.001+11:00

Guest Post by Anthony Cox

IPCC's James Hansen - Criminal

1: Be Condescending.

You are allowed to look down your nose at anyone who disagrees with you because you are SAVING THE PLANET! And, therefore, anyone who disagrees with you must be inferior because they don’t care about SAVING THE PLANET! You can be condescending in 2 ways; firstly, you can be avuncular and take the approach that you are dealing with people who are TOO STUPID to see your superiority and so must be guided gently but firmly into a proper subservient position. Or you can impersonate a dominatrix and whip and berate the idiots who disagree with you. For those who want to perfect this latter technique a few visits to the Open Mind and Deltoid blogs will bring you up to speed.

2: Be insulting.

Hansen again - What a Criminal...

Insults are allowed. And justified. Against those who disagree with you; because those who disagree with you are getting in the way of SAVING THE PLANET! Use comparisons; compare deniers to creationists, or tobacco addicts, or tobacco producers or anything to do with tobacco. You can say deniers are lackeys of big oil; or big coal; or big anything; except Big W, which doesn’t work. Use sesquipedalianisms; ‘Meme’ is good because Richard Dawkins uses it and he hates creationists and deniers; but be careful because so does Ian Plimer. Dunning-Kruger is also good but it can have blow-back, as can agnotology. Be personal; call Lord Monckton ‘monkey’ or ‘popeye’; it will reflect well on you; and it doesn’t matter what their qualifications are if, like Lindzen, Christy, McKitrick, they disagree with AGW and SAVING THE PLANET because their qualifications might as well have come out of a Cornflakes packet.

3: Exaggerate.

This is allowed because you are SAVING THE PLANET! And the means justifies the end; and all the best alarmists do it; you can “offer up scary scenarios” as Steven Schneider suggested; or you can “shock people” as Pachauri advises. Flannery wants to tell people “we’re ruining Earth”, which is very good, considering he must have got that information straight from the Earth since he can talk to Gaia. Hansen thinks we’ll end up like Venus and Professor Mike Sandiford compares humans to atomic bombs. So really the sky is the limit, fill it with exaggerations before they turn it the colour of rusty nails with geo-engineering projects to reduce CO2 levels.

4: Be hypocritical.

Hypocrisy doesn’t count when you are SAVING THE PLANET! So, you can advocate arresting and prosecuting those nasty ‘deniers’ while you get regularly arrested yourself like Professor Hansen does. Or you can produce as much CO2 as you like as you deliver the message of reducing CO2, as Al Gore does in one of his many mansions, or as the fine people who fly everywhere to the conferences on how to SAVE THE PLANET do. If that isn’t enough for you why don’t you preach about rising sea levels while living by the sea, as Greg Combet, Al Gore, Kevin Rudd and our Cate Blanchet do? Double standards only apply to those who don’t believe in SAVING THE PLANET! Then there is the option of making a buck out of SAVING THE PLANET! Invest in solar panels, wind farms, get a grant; being virtuous has never been so lucrative!

The Abuse of Kids

5: Use children.

Don’t be afraid to exploit children because you are SAVING THE PLANET! For the children. So, show images of blowing the kids up, running them down, hanging them and drowning them. Make them scared, or angry. They’ll get over being used, when they grow up and realise you were SAVING THE PLANET!

6: Be misanthropic.

Don’t stop at exploiting kids, hate everyone; after all you are SAVING THE PLANET from the evil humans who produce CO2; and guess what, all humans produce CO2! Become like Judge Death. Judge Death figured out the best way of controlling crime was to get rid of humans who after all were the people who committed crime. It’s the same with AGW; humans cause it so the solution is: get rid of the humans! Except for yourself, of course, and a few other superior people who think exactly like you.

7: Be ignorant (1);

as in ignore every problem with the science supporting AGW. The evidence is in so what does it matter if it looks like Swiss cheese, it’s still settled and any problem can be either fixed by fiddling with the computers or the data. AGW is the orthodoxy now and since time memorial all orthodoxies were the source of truth. Just remember the 4 humours of Hippocratic medicine; today it is the 4 catastrophes of AGW so just talk about the death and destruction which is going to happen unless you are allowed to SAVE THE PLANET! And also remember the emails were stolen, were taken out of context and don’t change the fact that the science is settled.

8: Be ignorant (2);

as in ignore every problem and expense with the ‘solutions’ to AGW. It doesn’t matter that people want to dump iron into the ocean or change the refractive index of the sky; these are worthwhile projects because they will SAVE THE PLANET! And it doesn’t matter that the total global amount of electricity from wind and solar power could not heat Al Gore’s mansion; these are new and exciting technologies and will improve if more money is given; to you; and it is not true that concentrating solar was invented by Archimedes or we have had the age of wind and it was called the 1800’s. Wind and solar will provide power 24/7; everywhere, not just on the space station; as long as more money is given; to you. And a few banks. And $2 companies based in the Bahamas.

9: Worship the UN and the IPCC.

Genuflect. As a devout Alarmist you know the UN and IPCC are not just bureaucracies. Or corrupt. Or dominated by failed nation states. These vicious rumours are from disgruntled deniers who want to stop the UN and IPCC from SAVING THE PLANET! In fact the UN and IPCC are the source of all wisdom and information about AGW. Given this exalted position they should be running the world. It is not just you who says this. Bob Brown does as well so it must be true.

10: Don’t worry about Cognitive dissonance.

It is not something you, or any other believer in AGW, suffer from. While it is true 99% of Green voters, the best AGW believers, live in cities and enjoy a lifestyle nonpareil in human history and will therefore be the ones who suffer most if cheap and abundant power is lost, this will not happen because wind and solar work; and the power will stay on even if all the dirty, disgusting coal and gas power is closed down; as it should be; and don’t even mention nuclear.

Consensus? What Consensus?

2012-01-27T14:35:00.001+11:00

16 Scientists have written an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal:

A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about "global warming." Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.

This blog has previously written of Nobel Prize winner Ivar Giaever's resignation from the American Physical Society (link & link.) The scientists write: "I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring."

In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the "pollutant" carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific "heretics" is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.
Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.

The article continues by mentioning the inconvenient truth that all the IPCC projections have greatly exaggerated the warming. As previously mentioned in these pages, this lack of warming has caused the alarmists to alter their rhetoric from (Man-made) Global Warming to Climate Change. This has also confused some to falsely call us Climate Change deniers. In fact, the alarmists tried to hide Climate Change by suppressing the LIA and MWP.

The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

Well worth a read - here.

The 16 are:
Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.

The case against CO2 - IPCC must be wrong.

2012-01-23T10:52:00.001+11:00

No explanation needed. CO2 is innocent. IPCC guilty of deception.

h/t Jim H

Official - Antarctica Cooling - Did MSM report this?

2012-01-20T08:51:00.001+11:00

Here is something that you won't hear on the ABC or read in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Antarctica is cooling.

Pierre Gosselin via his Blog NoTricksZone reports on the press release from Alfred Wegener Institute Antarctic Neumayer-Station III.

Alfred Wegener Institute Neumayer Station III: Antarctic Cooling Over The Last 30 Years!

Annual mean temperature for the years 1982 to 2011 measured at the Neumayer-Station (all graphics come from the Alfred Wegener Institute)
It’s official: the Alfred Wegener Institute Antarctic Neumayer-Station III is a meteorological observation station that’s been measuring air temperature and other magnitudes in Antarctica for 30 years, which is the period of time used to define climate for a region. The results are clear and indisputable.

M. Gosselin notes that they avoid saying that it has got cooler but report that it has not got warmer.

According to Director Gert König-Langlo:
We check the stability of the measurement system on a regular basis using calibration thermometers.
At the station the annual mean temperature over the last 30 years was minus 16°C. The year 1996 with a mean temperature of minus 14.3°C was the warmest of the last 30 years and the year 2000 was the coldest with a mean temperature of minus 17.8° Celsius.”
With all the concern over global warming gripping Europe, you’d think this would be all over the news. Nope! Not a peep of this cooling trend has appeared anywhere in the German news as far as I can tell. Unfortunately, the AWI did not offer any explanation as to why they have measured cooling.

Not a peep in the Australian press either as far as TCS blog can tell.

Read more at NoTrickZone.

Global Temperatures in a crash

2012-01-20T06:46:00.001+11:00

From Ice-cap.

Joe Bastardi of Weatherbell Analytics writes:

When the PDO turned cold, most of the meteorological and climate community understood that the pattern was turning very similar the last time of the PDO reversal, the 1950s, and it was a matter of time before the global temperatures, which have leveled off, would start falling in the same herby jerky fashion they had risen when the PDO turned warm at the end of the 1970s. I am not going to rehash the sordid details of how the AGW crowd simply ignores the major drivers of a cyclical nature. We all know that. Nor am I going to question them as to why they believe a trace gas like CO2 (needed for life on the planet) with a specific gravity of 1.5 as compared to the atmospheres 1.0, was going to mix with air in a way to affect the earth’s temperatures. Instead I am going to drive home points I have been making since 2007 and are now dramatically validating.
The La Ninas of 2008-09 and now this one had rapid mid level temperature drops that followed their onset and this years was nothing short of the most dramatic mid tropospheric drop since the start of the millennium. It is much more plausible to believe that rapid cooling in the mid levels would have an effect at leading to extremes, rather than what the warmingistas claim, which of course is anything that happens. In any case, one very interesting level that cooled to record cold levels was 400 mb, the very levels that the so called trapping hot spots were going to show up because of CO2...again a neat trick since somehow CO2 was going to defy the laws of Gravity, since, as mentioned above, its specific gravity is higher than the atmosphere (of course even if it was, it a) has not been proven to cause warming and b) man’s contribution is so tiny as to render it a non item anyway in climate considerations.
However first came the flip in the PDO, seen nicely here on the Multivariate Enso Index chart, which clearly illustrates the colder Pacific when the earth was colder, the start of the warming period coinciding with the satellite era, and now.

Now from the AMSU site, the amazing one year drop in temperature, the orange tan line being after the El Nino of 2009/10, the purplish line this past year and one can see the green this year… we are near record cold levels again.

Peer-reviewed: Natural, Predicable Climate Change.

2012-01-14T22:49:00.002+11:00

Nicola Scafetta: Link

An extensively peer-reviewed study published last December in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics indicates that observed climate changes since 1850 are linked to cyclical, predictable, naturally occurring events in Earth’s solar system with little or no help from us. The research was conducted by Nicola Scafetta, a scientist at Duke University and at the Active Cavity Radiometer Solar Irradiance Monitor Lab (ACRIM), which is associated with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. It takes issue with methodologies applied by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) using “general circulation climate models” (GCMs) that, by ignoring these important influences, are found to fail to reproduce the observed decadal and multi-decadal climatic cycles.

The IPCC models fail to incorporate climate modulating effects of solar changes such as cloud-forming influences of cosmic rays throughout periods of reduced sunspot activity.

More clouds tend to make conditions cooler, while fewer often cause warming.

At least 50-70% of observed 20th century warming might be associated with increased solar activity witnessed since the “Maunder Minimum” of the last 17th century.

From natural observation, I think that I could confirm that - More clouds tend to make conditions cooler, while fewer often cause warming.

Is this the latest science?

Dr. Scafetta’s study applies an astronomically-based model that reconstructs and correlates known warming and cooling phases with decadal and multi-decadal cycles associated with influences of planetary motions, most particularly those of Jupiter and Saturn. This “astronomical harmonics model” was used to address various cycles lasting 9.1, 10-10.5, 20-21, and 60-62 year-long periods. The 9.1-year cycle was shown to be likely related to decadal solar/lunar tidal oscillations, while those of ten years and longer duration relate to planetary movements about the Sun that may have solar influences that modulate electromagnetic properties of Earth’s upper atmosphere which can regulate the cloud system.

It's Good News Week! Alarmists losing...

2012-01-14T14:29:00.004+11:00

Three Stories today.

The First: James Taylor writing for Forbes Magazine in answer to a previous piece by Peter Gleick. I love his headline where he calls the Alarmists "The Deniers."

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Please, Global Warming Alarmists, Stop Denying Climate Change - And Science

Gleick’s global warming beliefs are misguided and unsupported by sound science, but I nevertheless empathize with his pain and frustration that few people seem to agree with him. A person of thinner skin than me might be offended by Gleick’s frustration-induced rant, but I believe the best remedy is truth and understanding. Accordingly, I understand Gleick’s pain and I will present some truths that might ease Gleick’s anguish if he listens to them with an open heart and mind.

Gleick sets the tone for his blog post in the very first sentence, where he begins his column by stating, “The Earth’s climate continued to change during 2011….” Here, in the first eight words of his column, Gleick unwittingly reveals one of the primary reasons why he is so wrong in his dire warnings of a human-induced global warming crisis. Gleick and his fellow global warming alarmists are the ultimate climate change deniers.

Read more at Forbes here.

The Second story is a real winner. Dr David Whitehouse had a win. He won a bet. (From The Observatory)

In December 2007 I wrote what I thought was quite a straightforward article for the New Statesman pointing out that it was curious that when so many voices were telling us that global warming was out of control, and that the global warming effect dwarfed natural fluctuations, the global annual average temperature hadn’t increased for many years. I wasn’t promoting any particular point of view just describing the data. The New Statesman jumped at it.

David writes that it created a storm of comments and a fuss in the office of The New Statesman. It reached the BBC's radio programme on numbers and statistics -"More or Less."

Almost at the last minute the programme-makers came up with the idea of a bet. It was for £100 that, using the HadCrut3 data set, there would be no new record set by 2011. It was made between climatologist James Annan and myself. His work involves analysing climatic data and validating climate models. He accepted enthusiastically as he has a perchant for taking on 'sceptics.' The presenter said that if the global temperature didn’t go up in the next few years, “there would be some explaining to do.”
Later today, January 13^th, “More or Less” returns to the bet, which I am pleased to say I won, though I note that this bet, or its conclusion, is not yet mentioned on Annan’s Wikipedia entry despite his other climate bet being discussed.

Read also James Delingpole's comments on Annan and Paul Ehrlich here
Dr David Whitehouse is an astronomer, former BBC science correspondent, and the author of The Sun: A Biography (John Wiley & Sons)

Third: Emeritus Professor Donald J Easterbrook of Western Washington University believes Earth is in a cooling period. (Link)

Easterbrook has studied climate change from the ice ages to the present day. His focus is in studying the movements of glaciers from climate change, as well as doing isotopic analysis of the elements found in ice cores.

He believes the Earth is currently in a cooling period. He continues to research climate change with an international team of over 50 members, including solar physicists, atmospheric physicists and glacial geologists. He is the author of eight books and more than 150 journal publications, including “Evidence-Based Climate,” which was published in September 2011.

Easterbrook: "The whole issue of climate change rests with data. My whole approach is to look at the data. Unfortunately, a lot of politics has gotten involved with the sciences that relate to climate change, specifically because there are huge amounts of money involved, like hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars. There’s a huge amount of power.

Climate change is being used as a lever to try to push for a world government. This is being done in international conferences sponsored by the United Nations that meet every year. The last one was just in Durban. So, unfortunately because of that, there is a lot of rhetoric and a lot of selective media coverage.
My message is look at the data and make up your own mind. My opinion versus somebody else’s opinion is something that you can argue about all day. If you look at the data, the data will tell you way more than anything anybody’s opinion will. I have worked with a lot of data that relates to the changing of climate. The data is very clear."

(h/t Marc Morano)

CO2 will defer Ice Age: BBC reports - Falsely?

2012-01-11T00:31:00.006+11:00

Benny Peiser's CCNet published a paper (HERE) ESSAY: ON THE CAUSE OF ICE-AGES By Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe.

The renewal of ice-age conditions would render a large fraction of the world's major food-growing areas inoperable, and so would inevitably lead to the extinction of most of the present human population.
Since bolide impacts cannot be called up to order, we must look to a sustained greenhouse effect to maintain the present advantageous world climate.

This was reported by Popular Science: Human CO2 Emissions Could Avert the Next Ice Age

Earth could be entering a new Ice Age within the next millennium, but the deep freeze could be averted by warming from increased carbon dioxide emissions. Humans could be thwarting the next glacial inception, a new study says.

Also reported by The American Interest: Global Warming To Save The Planet?

....an international team of scientists headed by Cambridge University researcher Luke Skinner projects that sometime in the next 1500 years a devastating new Ice Age will descend on Planet Earth. As in past Ice Ages, glaciers would cover much of the northern hemisphere, many species would face extinction and the productivity of the biosphere would diminish as fertile farmlands went under the ice.

But, the scientists say, that won’t happen now, thanks to man’s new best friend: greenhouse gasses. Rising levels of CO2 will offset the natural forces leading to a new Ice Age, saving civilization from its greatest test yet.

Even the alarmist BBC got in on the action: Carbon emissions 'will defer Ice Age'
The Beeb's report is by Richard Black. (Does that name ring your alarm bells or should that be your alarmist bells?)

Human emissions of carbon dioxide will defer the next Ice Age, say scientists.
The last Ice Age ended about 11,500 years ago, and when the next one should begin has not been entirely clear.
Researchers used data on the Earth's orbit and other things to find the historical warm interglacial period that looks most like the current one.
In the journal Nature Geoscience, they write that the next Ice Age would begin within 1,500 years - but emissions have been so high that it will not.

The important point that you have to accept with the above reports is the falsified hypothesis that CO2 causes runaway global warming. As this blog has persistently pointed out, warming comes first and then the rise in CO2 follows, with a lag of ~800 years (see eg here and here) At the moment we are around 800 years from the end of the medieval warm period (MWP)

Steve Goddard at Real Science points out:

That would be a real travesty if we delayed the next ice age, but there are a a couple of minor problems.
They have no idea what they are talking about.
There was an ice age during the Ordovician – with atmospheric CO2 10X the current (unprecedented) level.
CO2 levels were much higher for almost all of modern geologic history. The only thing unprecedented is the ignorance of the experts.

Czech Physicist Luboš Motl also has panned the idea here.

It's refreshing to see that CO2 is sometimes getting good press. You really don't want the temperatures to drop by 10 °C. On the other hand, all the other "details" that are being written about these questions are preposterous beyond imagination.

It's being said that the warm era between two ice ages is usually around 11,000 years (whatever is the exact definition of the boundaries) but we have already enjoyed over 11,500 years since the last ice age so a new ice age is overdue.

CO2 will only be modified due to the human activity for a few centuries which is much shorter than the time needed for the ice age cycles to collect several Celsius degrees – that requires thousands or tens of thousands of years.

In particular, we will probably run out of fossil fuels in less than 300 years. I am being generous here; my expectation would be lower. At the peak, there will be some concentration which may be anywhere between 600 and 2000 ppm. I don't know how far the mankind will get. I am just sure that once the concentration will reach 1000 ppm, people will already be realizing very well that there's nothing wrong about such elevated concentrations and they will be able to understand that 2000 ppm isn't a problem, either.

Gillard's Carbon-Suicide Tax

2012-01-07T07:58:00.006+11:00

Gotyas!

James Delingpole is a writer, journalist and broadcaster who is right about everything. Writing in the UK Telegraph, James describes Julia Gillard's crazy, economy-killing tax on vital-to-life carbon dioxide as "Julia Gillard's carbon suicide tax."

James' column is headed:

Ha ha Warmist losers. For you the war is over

and he writes:

One of my resolutions this year is to write as little as possible about global warming. Not only will it make my wife much happier but it will also free me up to talk about more important things such as monetary collapse, hyperinflation and the imminent end of Western civilisation. Oh and also there's hardly much need for my input on climate change any more. That's because, basically, my side has won.

Here's how The Financial Times recently put it:
To the relief of many of the country’s biggest manufacturers and industries, there has been a distinct shift in the government’s tone on green issues. Even Steve Hilton, Mr Cameron’s chief policy adviser, and the man credited with coining the phrase “vote blue, go green”, appears to have had some serious second thoughts. “There is a clear disintegration of the green consensus,” says Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a critic of many climate policies. “We’re still at the stage of rhetoric rather than really strong rollback of policies, but it normally starts with the rhetoric before you start with policies.”

After some discussion about UK policy advisor Steve Hilton, he continues:

As you'll know by now, I'm not usually Mister Optimist. So what the hell am I doing crowing about victory in the climate wars when clearly there remains so much work to be done? We-e-ll: I think Benny Peiser nailed it in that quote above. Sure there are still heaps and heaps of really bad global-warming-related policies which remain on the statute books, notably such as the Climate Change Act in Britain, Julia Gillard's carbon suicide tax in Australia, and all those swingeing environmental laws which are wreaking such economic havoc in greentard US states like California. As far as the battle of ideas is concerned, though, the Warmists are on the run.

Read more - UK Telegraph HERE

UPDATE:

Donna Lafromboise says that she is proud to be a Canadian (LINK) Her rationale?

First our leaders said ‘no’ to Kyoto. Then they stood up to green bullies.

Oh that Ms Gillard stood up to green bullies. Most say that she needs their votes to maintain government. TCS blog says that is equine excrement. Bob Brown (no relation) would never vote with Tony Abbot's Liberals in "green" or "leftie" areas. PM Gillard can pan the Greens and still be assured of their votes.

JULIA - STAND UP to the GREEN BULLIES!

Green Peace Founder Patrick Moore on Wind Farms

2012-01-07T05:22:00.003+11:00


Larry Pickering

As reported by Climate Realists:

RIDGETOWN - Southwestern Ontario's flourishing wind energy industry came under fire Wednesday from the co-founder of Greenpeace.

Dr. Patrick Moore told more than 1,000 area farmers the industry destroys more jobs than it creates, and causes energy prices to climb for all users.

“The industry is a destroyer of wealth and negative to the economy,'' said Moore, speaking at the 19th annual Southwest Agricultural Conference at Ridgetown campus of the University of Guelph.

Moore, who now refers to himself as the “sensible environmentalist,'' said the solar bubble has burst and thinks the wind bubble is about to burst.

“I'm happy for the farmers who are receiving royalties for allowing the wind towers to be built on their farms,'' he said. “They deserve it — but the cost to consumers will continue to climb — partly because of rate increases and partly due to tax increases.''

“They are ridiculously expensive and don't work half the time,'' he said. “And no matter how many are built, they won’t replace coal, gas or hydro or nuclear plants, because they are continuous and wind is not always reliable.''

Moore told his audience the wind energy industry in Spain has resulted in a 30% unemployment rate among people under the age of 30.

Read More at Climate Realists

Analysis of the BOM Annual Report.

2012-01-06T11:51:00.003+11:00

The Bureau of Meteorology 2011 Annual Report. (LINK)

Guest post by Anthony Cox

What is going on with science information in this nation? It is this information from the BOM and CSIRO which provides justification for the introduction of the various anti global warming policies. So how reliable is this information from our two premier scientific research institutions?

In its 2011 report the BOM says:

“Australia was the only continent to record cooling and the nation’s 10-year average trend was still up”

This is a statement which is misleading in what it doesn’t say. For instance, the 10 year average temperature trend, based on the BOM’s own data, from January 2002 to December 2011, is this:

Clearly, the trend is down over this period regardless of whether this 10 year period is warmer than the preceding 10 year period.

In respect of Australia being the only continent to experience cooling over 2011, how then to explain this:

Image: Global Average Temperature [GAT] from land and satellites.

As can be seen the trend in the Global Average Temperature [GAT] is clearly down and that in 2011 GAT fell markedly. This down trend is clear in both the land based temperature [green] and the satellite temperature [purple]. How can Australia have been the only continent to cool in 2011 when GAT shows the whole world cooled?

The BOM is also reported as saying:

“Ocean temperatures – the warmest on record over the past two years – had actually assisted Australia’s heavy rainfall and cooler temperatures”

The clear implication from this is that the ocean is warming; it is not:

Image: Sea surface temperature graph.

As can be seen there was a spike in the world’s sea surface temperature in 2009-2011, which is consistent with the BOM statement, but what is also plain is that the overall trend in sea surface temperature, over the last 10 years is down, further contradicting global warming.

It would appear that the only damage that global warming is causing is to the reputations of Australia’s scientific institutions.

IPCC's GCMs Seriously Fail - Peer reviewed paper

2012-01-06T07:42:00.001+11:00

A new paper published by the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar Terrestrial Physics, authored by Nicola Scafetta, 2012: Testing an astronomically based decadal-scale empirical harmonic climate model versus the IPCC (2007) general circulation models. Entire paper available here.

From the Abstract:
We compare the performance of a recently proposed empirical climate model based on astronomical harmonics against all CMIP3 available general circulation climate models (GCM) used by the IPCC (2007) to interpret the 20th century global surface temperature. The proposed astronomical empirical climate model assumes that the climate is resonating with, or synchronized to a set of natural harmonics that, in previous works (Scafetta, 2010b, 2011b), have been associated to the solar system planetary motion, which is mostly determined by Jupiter and Saturn. We show that the GCMs fail to reproduce the major decadal and multidecadal oscillations found in the global surface temperature record from 1850 to 2011.

From the conclusion:

The scientific method requires that a physical model fulfils two conditions: it has to reconstruct and predict (or forecast) physical observations. Herein, we have found that the GCMs used by the IPCC (2007) seriously fail to properly reconstruct even the large multidecadal oscillations found in the global surface temperature which have a climatic meaning. Consequently, the IPCC projections for the 21st century cannot be trusted.

From Dr Pierre Gosselin - No Trick Zone:

It’s not a secret that the IPCC models are all rigged to make CO2 look like the culprit for the last 150 years of warming. We say this because we now know their models completely ignore, or selectively distort, the potency of an array of drivers and amplification mechanisms.
In the paper, according to the abstract, Scafetta compares the performance of a recently proposed empirical climate model based on astronomical harmonics against all CMIP3 available general circulation climate models (GCM) used by the IPCC (2007) and finds that the climate appears to be resonating with, or is synchronized to, a set of natural harmonics that have been associated to the solar system planetary motion.

h/t Pierre Gosselin and Notrickzone.

Heatwaves in New York and South Eastern Australia.

2012-01-05T11:01:00.006+11:00

Ed Kohn wrote a book titled "Hot Time in the Old Town."

NPR review:

During the summer of 1896, a 10-day heat wave killed nearly 1,500 people, many of them tenement-dwellers, across New York City. Many thousands of people were crammed into tenements on the Lower East Side, with no air conditioning, little circulating air and no running water.

"This was 10 days [with temperatures reaching] 90 degrees at street level and 90 percent humidity, with temperatures not even dropping at night," Kohn says. "No wind — so at night there was absolutely no relief whatsoever."

Meanwhile, also in 1896, in South Eastern Australia, widespread heatwaves killed 437 including 47 in Bourke, New South Wales. (http://www.disasters.ema.gov.au/ )

There must have been many jet flights and a multitude of SUVs warming the atmosphere in 1896.

Atmospheric greenhouse effect and its climatic impact are based on meritless conjectures

2012-01-05T09:50:00.002+11:00

Paper published in Natural Science vol 3 No 12 December 2011 - here.

Author(s)

Gerhard Kramm, Ralph Dlugi

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we scrutinize two completely different explanations of the so-called atmospheric greenhouse effect:

First, the explanation of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) quantifying this effect by two characteristic temperatures, secondly, the explanation of Ramanathan et al. [1] that is mainly based on an energy-flux budget for the Earth-atmosphere system. Both explanations are related to the global scale.

In addition, we debate the meaning of climate, climate change, climate variability and climate variation to outline in which way the atmospheric greenhouse effect might be responsible for climate change and climate variability, respectively. In doing so, we distinguish between two different branches of climatology, namely 1) physical climatology in which the boundary conditions of the Earth-atmosphere system play the dominant role and 2) statistical climatology that is dealing with the statistical description of fortuitous weather events which had been happening in climate periods; each of them usually comprises 30 years.

Based on our findings, we argue that 1) the so-called atmospheric greenhouse effect cannot be proved by the statistical description of fortuitous weather events that took place in a climate period, 2) the description by AMS and W?MO has to be discarded because of physical reasons, 3) energy-flux budgets for the Earth-atmosphere system do not provide tangible evidence that the atmospheric greenhouse effect does exist. Because of this lack of tangible evidence it is time to acknowledge that the atmospheric greenhouse effect and especially its climatic impact are based on meritless conjectures.

RSS Satellite Data Shows No Arctic Warming For Seven Years

2012-01-05T07:42:00.000+11:00

http://www.remss.com/

From Steven Goddard's Real Science

Even the Warmists Don’t Believe In Global Warming

2012-01-04T20:20:00.002+11:00

Image from Ole Humlum.

50 Scientists Eh?; Even the Warmists Don’t Believe In Global Warming

Drew Cline, Union leader

A group called Carbon Solutions New England has circulated a petition that it says was signed by 50 scientists urging the Republican presidential candidates and all other candidates for public office “to acknowledge the overwhelming balance of evidence for the underlying causes of climate change, to support appropriate responses to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases, and to develop local and statewide strategies to adapt to near-term changes in climate.”

The petition lists recent temperature and weather trends, such as warmer autumns and winters and more storms, and asserts such indisputably rigorous scientific assessments as: “These shifts in New Hampshire’s climate are clearly connected to changes in global climate.”

To respond with equal scientific authority: No, they’re not.

That is, some seem to be, others might not be, but where is the proof of a connection to human behavior? They provide none.

It is a funny little bit of propaganda made all the more humorous by its labeling as “scientists” a historian, a sociologist, two political scientists, a professor of health economics, several civil engineers, two medical doctors, and some Ph.D. candidates.

Nothing says “We are serious scientists; heed our doomsday predictions!” quite like the overstating of credentials. If they’ll overstate their credentials, then why wouldn’t they overstate the connection between recent weather events and human behavior?

Nonetheless, the petition got written up in The Hill, which lent it some undue legitimacy. Voters ought to ignore it.

Original Forbes story HERE; Icecap rebuttal HERE.

Climate Alarmists wrong again - Peer reviewed paper

2012-01-04T11:05:00.003+11:00

Although the "Team" of Climate Alarmists have predicted that man-made CO2-induced warming (AGW) has

accelerated significantly over the 20th century; is
unprecedented with respect to the past millenium and
should be greatly amplified in the earth's polar regions

These Indian Researchers show that all three of these claims are false.

What was learned
In the words of the four Indian researchers, "the estimated surface air temperature at the core site revealed a significant warming of 2.7°C with a warming of ~0.6°C per century for the past 470 years."

What it means
Climate alarmists have long predicted that CO2-induced global warming -- which they claim has (1) accelerated significantly over the course of the 20th century and is (2) unprecedented with respect to the past millennium or more -- should be (3) greatly amplified in earth's polar regions. However, Thamban et al.'s results clearly indicate that all three of these climate-alarmist claims are false in regard to this portion of the planet's southern polar region.

Reference
Naik, S.S., Thamban, M., Laluraj, C.M., Redkar, B.L. and Chaturvedi, A. 2001. A century of climate variability in central Dronning Maud Land, East Antarctica, and its relation to Southern Annual Mode and El Nino Southern Oscillation. Journal of Geophysical Research 115: 10.1029/2009JD013268.

Read More at CO2 Science here.

IPCC GCMs questioned - Peer reviewed paper

2012-01-04T10:52:00.001+11:00

El nino: Image NASA

The researchers, Khider et al, found that although the "Team" stated that "climate models forced by increased greenhouse gas concentrations can be used to "simulate changes in ENSO variability... Khider et al's research indicated that "we don't even have the means for determining which of the similarly-divergent scenarios of current state-of-the-art climate model simulations is correct, or how close or how far from reality they each may be..."

Reference
Khider, D., Stott, L.D., Emile-Geay, J., Thunell, R. and Hammond, D.E. 2011. Assessing El Niño Southern Oscillation variability during the past millennium. Paleoceanography 26: 10.1029/2011PA002139.

What was learned
The five researchers state that their results indicate that "the strength/frequency of ENSO, as inferred from the spread of the δ¹⁸O distributions, during the MCA and during the LIA was not statistically distinguishable and was comparable to that of the 20th century," but they write that their results suggest that "ENSO during the MCA was skewed toward stronger/more frequent La Niña than El Niño," an observation that they note is "consistent with the medieval megadroughts documented from sites in western North America." On the other hand, they note that a coral record from the central Pacific (Cobb et al., 2003) suggests that the LIA was characterized by an increase in the strength/frequency of ENSO events compared to the MCA and the 20th century. And they acknowledge that whereas the MCA was skewed toward "stronger/more frequent La Niña than El Niño" in their reconstruction, they indicate that the studies of Moy et al. (2002) and Conroy et al. (2008) "show an increase in the frequency of El Niño events during this time period."

What it means
With such discrepancies as these existing among real-world reconstructions of the effects of mean global temperature on the ratio of El Niños to La Niñas, it would appear that we don't even have the means for determining which of the similarly-divergent scenarios of current state-of-the-art climate model simulations is correct, or how close or how far from reality they each may be, which surely does not make for a solid foundation for divining what a future warmer world might be like with respect to "the leading mode of interannual climate variability in the global climate system," which sure sounds like something one would want to get right.

For non scientists like me, MCA is the Medieval Climate Anomoly refered to on this blog as the MWP or Medieval warming period.

For more details, refer to CO2 Science here.

Legless and Powerless in the Global Storms?

2012-01-04T02:07:00.006+11:00

Will Tony Abbott leave us

Legless and Powerless in the Global Storms?

by Viv Forbes & Helpers

A print-ready copy of this issue of "Carbon Sense" can be downloaded from:

http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/legless-in-storms.pdf

2 January 2012

Climate Alarmism has clearly peaked and is sliding into oblivion.

Their “science” has collapsed and the public is losing their alarm.

But all the toxic laws passed during the mania now have to be repealed.

That is where the danger now lurks - the danger of complacency and the seductive sirens of the vested interests.

Please pass this on.

Some at the big end of town are worried that Mr Abbott may keep his solemn promise to repeal the carbon tax. No doubt they and their smart lawyers fear losing the clever green schemes that rely on ripping off tax payers, consumers and other businesses.

Australia’s wealth and jobs have always rested on three legs – mining and farming, making and processing things, and rich foreigners; in short, resources, manufacturing, and money from tourists and investors.

The Gillard carbon tax will white-ant all three legs.

Mining and farming rely on draglines, dozers, scrapers, trains, trucks, bulk carriers, tractors, generators, pumps and machines of all kinds. All need cheap reliable energy. Their energy comes from diesel fuel or coal powered electricity. A tax on carbon will sap their energy and reduce their ability to generate jobs and national wealth.

Our processing and manufacturing industries rely on cheap electricity produced from our marvellous deposits of coal and natural gas. Greens have demonised these national assets and their carbon tax will undermine all Australian industries. Investors always look ahead. Already the threat of a carbon tax has reduced the asset value of every base load power station in Australia. Already one of the biggest, running on Victorian brown coal, is reporting financial stress and may close. We cannot run steel works, refineries or big cities on sunbeams and sea breezes.
See: http://www.theage.com.au/national/carbon-tax-puts-heat-on-loy-yang-20111219-1p2kf.html

Australia is remote from most of the world, and tourists must travel vast distances to get here. They need planes, trains, ships, buses and cars, all powered by carbon energy from petrol, diesel or gas. The carbon tax will strike at the heart of this industry. Harassed by the carbon footprint harpies, tourists may choose to stay home and go camping in their own backyards.

Finally, Australia is leading the world with the most onerous and widely applied carbon tax. This is already deterring the foreign investors who for generations have risked their savings to create businesses and jobs in Australia. Even now, the threat of a carbon tax is increasing capital shortage and debt stress in Australia.

There is no good news in the carbon tax story – no climate benefits, no real jobs and more costs for consumers. And it is white-anting the three legs supporting the Australian economy.

Unlike the big end of town, thinking Australians are worried that Mr Abbott may renege on his solemn promise to repeal the carbon tax.

That would really leave Australia powerless and legless in the global storms.

Saving the Suckers of the South Pacific

- withdraw from Kyoto

Australia and New Zealand should follow Canada and immediately withdraw from the failed Kyoto Protocol.

With Canada deciding to cut and run, no country in the Americas bears Kyoto liabilities. And with the announcement by Japan that it will not renew its membership, there will be no Kyoto bunnies in Asia. It is time for the two lonely suckers in the South Pacific to also withdraw.

Kyoto has achieved nothing useful. Some countries such as Russia achieved fraudulent cuts by retrospectively choosing their base year to take advantage of the plant closures that followed the Soviet collapse. Others evaded real cuts by paying for often phantom cuts in other countries. Australia used larceny to seize carbon credits by banning regrowth clearing on private farmland. New Zealand is sacrificing their forestry industry on the Kyoto altar.

Europe's worship of Kyoto has led them into their current fiscal mess. Believing they are gods who can control the climate by demonising carbon, they have spent a fortune on green energy, carbon trading and international junkets that has exacerbated their deficits and now condemns their industry and consumers to expensive and unreliable energy.

The future for Australia and New Zealand lies around the vibrant Pacific, not in the backwater of Old Europe. We should immediately abandon Kyoto, cease wasting money on the IPCC, abolish all climate change bureaucracies and repeal all carbon tax and trade legislation.

The money saved should be used to develop appropriate infrastructure to cope with the inevitable natural disasters whenever they occur.

SWindle Power

Wind energy is a great con:
Not Clean
Not Green
Not Cheap
Each turbine requires large amounts of steel and concrete, plus a spiderweb of roads and transmission lines to connect each turbine to the grid. And because wind energy is so dilute, large areas of countryside are plastered and disfigured by bird-killing whirling sabres. What little power is produced is unreliable, unpredictable and nowhere near the capacity of the turbine. This is an enormous waste of community resources for a lot of environmental damage and no climate benefits.
The only thing SWindle Power does efficiently is harvest subsidies from taxpayers and electricity consumers.

Fake! Fake! Fake! Fake! IPCC's case collapses!

2012-01-03T08:56:00.001+11:00

"They are real -- and they're spectacular."

Fred Singer, writing for American Thinker:

In discussing the recent release of some 5,000 Climategate e-mails, blogger Anthony Watts uses the clever headline "They are real -- and they're spectacular." He credits Jerry Seinfeld as the source. Following his example, I choose the headline "Fake! Fake! Fake! Fake!" -- also taken from a Seinfeld episode -- in discussing the surface temperatures generally reported for the latter part of the 20^th century; they form the science basis for prosperity-killing international climate policy.
Here I am using the word "fake" as an adjective, and not as a verb. I mean to say that the scientific conclusions derived from such temperatures are not real, but I don't imply that the values themselves have been purposefully altered or adjusted. We simply don't have any information to support such an accusation.

Fred says that the most reported temperatures are from land based thermometers whereas oceans comprise 71% of the earth's surface. The recent BEST temperatures (see HERE and HERE) were also only land-based from "poorly situated" weather stations.

While we can applaud the fact that the BEST results agree with other analyses of weather station data, we still need to explain why they don't agree with atmospheric trends that are close to zero, or with ocean data that show no appreciable warming.
As a first step, the BEST data are ideally suited for a number of internal checks. For example, one would like to see if the number of stations changed appreciably between 1970 and 2000, and if their "demographics" changed -- which might lead to the formation of artificial trends.
There are many other such tests that can be performed. They might help us discover why land surface data disagree with all other data; thereby, we may get a better handle on whether the planet is really warming. We note here that the BEST results do not show any warming trend in the 21^st century -- even though carbon dioxide levels have been rising more rapidly than before.

Mr Singer writes: "But if there is no warming between 1978 and 2000, then IPCC's case collapses -- and so do all policies built on the IPCC conclusion."

2012 Global Warming Report Card

2012-01-03T07:02:00.002+11:00

Image: Real Science.

AT Real Science, Steve Goddard has produces the 2012 Global Warming Report Card:

The massive bulk of evidence indicates that nothing is wrong, and that Hansen, Mann and the rest of the hockey team are not being honest with us.

Temperatures are below Hansen’s zero emissions after 2000 Scenario C
Global temperatures are declining this century
Sea level has been declining for several years, and is lower now than it was in 2003
Arctic ice extent and area is the highest for the date since 2005
Temperatures in western Greenland last year were the coldest since 1996
Temperatures in Antarctica have been declining for 30 years
Antarctic ice has been increasing for 30 years
Winter snow extent is increasing, and has been near record highs in recent years
Temperatures in Texas show no increase since 1895
Drought in Australia is at historic lows
Drought in the US is well below the mean
Severe tornadoes are on the decline in the US
US hurricane strikes are on the decline
Intense hurricanes are on the decline
Polar Bear populations have tripled
Yellowstone Grizzly Bear populations have tripled
USHCN raw thermometer data shows that the US has been cooling since 1895
The ten deadliest floods in history all occurred with CO2 below 350 ppm
The deadliest US hurricane, the most powerful US hurricane, and the deadliest US tornado all occurred with CO2 below 350 ppm

Let’s put this scam to bed in 2012. It has nothing to do with science, and everything to do with money and politics.

For all the graphs and links go to Real Science.

Energy Makes Christmas - make that life - great. Are you listening, Julia?

2012-01-01T03:13:00.003+11:00

As we enter 2012, the year that the Green Gillard Government will introduce an unnecessary punitive tax on vital-to-life carbon dioxide, perhaps PM Gillard, de facto PM Bob Brown and members of the rag-tag assortment of sell-out independents and craven back bench Labor Members should take some notice of Marita Noon, the Executive Director of Energy Makes America Great.

Our cheap energy, mainly coal-powered energy, has helped make Australia great, but the above motley-crew has threatened Australia's future with their tax on carbon dioxide - virtually a tax on every aspect of our lives - a tax that will start in 2012.

Marita Noon writes:

One of the big traits of Christmas is the entire multi-generational family gathered around the table. Back in the day of the picture perfect holiday, travel meant hitching up the horse and wagon. Today, to accomplish this, family members often have to travel great distances to get to the site of the big meal. Christmas is reported as one of the busiest travel seasons—whether by auto or air. But even before the travel takes place, energy is a big part of the picture.
The travel has to be planned. Air travel takes a visit to one’s favorite travel website. Travel by land often requires a Mapquest search for the best route. Both need energy to function. Then when the actual travel takes place, regardless of the method or distance, fuel is needed to make the trip possible.

Don't forget the power for the Christmas lighting.

We have to buy groceries from the supermarket. Think of the energy involved at the grocers for lighting and refrigeration. Think of the costs of transportation. And then there is the cooking of the
turkey/ham/pork.... Electric knife to cut the joints, refrigeration for the ice cream, cream, custard...

Let's not forget the cold beer and champagne. Oh, of course, then there is the dishwasher.

Some of this was mine; some from Ms Marita Noon. However Ms Noon concludes:

One you start thinking about it, you can see myriad other ways that energy makes your Christmas the picture-perfect event of which you’ve dreamed. Maybe your digital camera was used, your computer to view the shots, your printer to print out copies for everyone.

You get the picture.

When you come to the table and bow your head to give thanks for the family, friends and food—don’t forget the energy that made it all possible.

The Correlation between CO2 and Temperature

2011-12-31T16:37:00.003+11:00

Dr. Clark's prepared statement, including slides shown (added by Tom Harris), before the Senate Standing Committee on Energy, The Environment, and Natural Resources. Uploaded by International Climate Science Coalition, http://www.climatesciencecoalition.org.

You can watch all the testimonies and Q&As formatted as individual YouTube videos at the following URL: http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=612

What are you doing New Year's Eve?

2011-12-31T06:26:00.001+11:00

Backed by the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, the Canadian-born vocalist Diana Krall fills up the tempo of the song with holiday cheer. Her sound so intimate that you might swear the sexy singer is crooning exclusively for you at midnight on Christmas Eve. Krall excels with an approach mastered long ago: elegant delivery that gives extra polish to a very familiar global favorite. This segment takes you through a Diane Krall performance of "What Are You Doing New Years Eve". Credits: http://www.dianakrall.com

What are YOU doing? Most interesting comment will win a year's subscription to this blog.

Urban Heat Island causes 56% of warming: Peer- reviewed

2011-12-30T09:02:00.001+11:00

UHI - Image NASA

A new paper by Kim, M K and Kim, S published in the Journal of Atmospheric Environment (LINK)
reports that UHI accounts for 0.77ºC over the last 55years whilst Greenhouse warming only accounts for 0.60ºC; that is UHI accounts for 56% of the warming against 44% for GHG warming.

Quantitative estimates of warming by urbanization in South Korea over the past 55 years (1954–2008) Original Research Article
Atmospheric Environment, Volume 45, Issue 32, October 2011, Pages 5778-5783
Maeng-Ki Kim, Seonae Kim

► The quantitative estimation of the urban warming based on the Empirical Orthogonal Function.
► Urban warming of 0.77 °C for 55 years over South Korea.
► Greenhouse warming of 0.60 °C for 55 years over South Korea.
► Urban warming of about 56% of total temperature increase for 55 years

The ABC's Alarmism strikes again - incorrect and misleading.

2011-12-29T11:46:00.009+11:00

Purves: Tell him he's dreaming, son!

On the 7:30 report, the ABC report on Robert Purves is tagged:

In his first television profile, multimillionaire mover and shaker Robert Purves steps into the spotlight to support the science on climate change.

The video includes comments from GAIA worshipper and Part Time Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery. Tim is a hypocrite. The Australian of 5^th March 2010 quoted Tim Flannery's estimate of a 60 metre sea-level rise and yet he lives just above sea-level on the Hawkesbury.

Robert Purves is a multimillionaire who is throwing his money into the Climate Alarmist Black Hole. The Monthly describes him as one of Australia’s Patrons of Climate Change Activism.

As well as being a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists and supporting the core global team running Earth Hour, he has given millions of dollars to the WWF, Purves has also funded Sustainable Business Australia, The Climate Group, the Climate Action Network Australia, the Copenhagen Climate Council and Clean Up Australia. He funds the Total Environment Centre and its Green Capital program and the list goes on. His connection with Professor Tim - Few people realise that Purves substantially funded the writing and extensive promotion of Tim Flannery’s book The Weather Makers.

Readers of this blog know that The Weather Makers has been exposed as a sloppy unscientific work by Dr Wes Allen's The Weather Makers Re-examined.

The Weather Makers is shown to contain

23 misinterpretations,
28 contradictory statements,
31 untraceable or suspect sources,
45 failures to reflect uncertainty,
66 over-simplifications or factual errors,
78 exaggerations and over a hundred unsupported dogmatic statements, many of them quite outlandish.

Is Greenland in danger as Purves and the ABC alarmists say? If Greenland was truly melting, wouldn't Professor Tim have changed his residence?

Map of Greenland from the 13th edition of The Times Atlas of the World (left) and a mosaic of MODIS satellite images of the same area acquired on the 14th and 15th August 2011 (UK Telegraph Image)

Earlier this year, the publishers of The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World tried to suggest incorrectly that Greenland lost 15% of its permanent ice cover. They had to scramble to correct this when a group of concerned scientists refuted their claim. (UK Telegraph)

We are extremely puzzled by this statement and the claim that ‘For the first time, the new edition of The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World has had to erase 15 per cent of Greenland’s once permanent ice cover – turning an area the size of the United Kingdom and Ireland ‘green’ and ice-free’. We write to point out that a 15 per cent decrease in permanent ice cover since the publication of the previous atlas 12 years is both incorrect and misleading.

Stephen Wilde on Climate Realists writes:

In order to ascertain whether there is a global warming or cooling trend it is necessary to wait several years and then compare the volume and intensity of the cold polar air masses as a whole between the dates chosen. In this case I have chosen the years 2007 and 2011.

It is obvious to me that the isotherms have moved equatorward both over land and oceans and that the intensity of cold where it is most readily generated has increased, especially over the Greenland icecap and Northern Russia.

Surely "our" alarmist ABC is also both incorrect and misleading.

h/t Bev and Rae

'Organised Hypocrisy' at Durban COP17

2011-12-29T09:47:00.000+11:00

From Real Clear Science.com.
December 28, 2011

Image: Wikipedia

'Organized Hypocrisy' at Durban Climate Talks

By Lee Lane

"Organized hypocrisy" saved the recent UN climate talks in Durban South Africa. The phrase refers to a common feature of diplomacy. Statesmen often tacitly agree to pretend to believe each other’s duplicities. The fiction saves all involved from the inconveniences that would result were the lack of agreement to break into the open.
Thus, in the accord reached at the talks, the so-called Durban Platform, each of the major players achieved its most prized goal. Success was possible, though, only because the Platform strictly avoided mandating costly steps to lower the output of greenhouse gases.

Instead, countries agreed:

To launch a process to develop a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties, through a subsidiary body under the Convention hereby established and to be known as the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action.

That so much verbal sludge was needed even to describe the form of the hoped for future deal, speaks volumes about the discord that lurks beneath the surface.

Mr Lane describes the hypocrisy of reporting that China and India have pledged to cut their GHG emissions when in fact their only commitment is to agree to further talks. The United States won the right to do no more than whatever the Asian powers might accept. In future, the United States, in rejecting demands that it make GHG cuts, will be better able to defend itself by pointing to the derelictions of China and India.

Read More at Real Clear Science.

Lee Lane is a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute. Before joining Hudson, he was a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of Strategic Choices for Bush Administration Climate Policy, published by AEI Press.

Warm is Better - Peer-Reviewed Paper

2011-12-28T12:35:00.003+11:00

CO2 Science reports a peer reviewed paper published in the International Journal of Environment Research which shows that the alarmists are wrong again. Warm is better than cold - an increase in temperature leads to a decrease in the mortality rate.

What was learned
Wichmann et al. found -- during the warm half of the year (April-September) -- that a rise in temperature actually had an inverse or protective effect with respect to CVD mortality (a 1% decrease in death in response to a 1°C increase in apparent temperature), which finding is rather unusual but has also been observed in Dublin, Ireland, as reported by Baccini et al. (2008, 2011), while they found no association with RD and CBD mortality. And at the other end of the thermal spectrum, during the cold half of the year, all three associations were inverse or protective, which finding, according to the researchers, is "consistent with other studies (Eurowinter Group, 1997; Nafstad et al., 2001; Braga et al., 2002; O'Neill et al., 2003; Analitis et al., 2008)."

What it means
Whereas climate alarmists continue to emphasize the primarily negative impact of summer heat waves on human death rates in low- and mid-latitude regions of the earth, essentially neglecting to report what happens there during winter cold spells, Wichmann et al.'s summer results tell a dramatically different story that is likely typical of higher latitudes. And they additionally portray what tends to happen nearly everywhere in winter, noting that during that cold part of the year "only protective effects [of warming] were observed," as may readily be seen to also be the case throughout the world by perusing the materials we have archived in our Subject Index under the general heading of Health Effects (Temperature -- Hot vs. Cold Weather), where the number of warming-induced deaths avoided in winter significantly over compensates for the number of deaths caused by an equivalent warming in summer.

Reference
Wichmann, J., Anderson, Z.J., Ketzel, M., Ellermann, T. and Loft, S. 2011. Apparent temperature and cause-specific mortality in Copenhagen, Denmark: A case-crossover analysis. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 8: 3712-3727

Read more at CO2 science HERE.

The Alarmist Sleight-of-hand Shell Game

2011-12-27T08:55:00.002+11:00

Russell Cook has written for Anthony Watts' Watts up With That - see The End is Near for Faith in AGW

When the public learns about huge faults in the skeptic scientist accusation, combined with the faults in the IPCC, the result may send AGW into total collapse.

Russell's latest piece appeared on JunkScience on Christmas Eve.

Monumental fault in manmade global warming notion hiding in plain sight

I don’t mean promoters of the issue comically spinning failed predictions for more frequent hurricanes and warmer snow-less winters into covering any hot/cold/wet/dry extremes. Or Al Gore’s Texas-sized carbon footprint undermining demands for ours to to be minuscule. Sure, the IPCC also has appearance problems as a supposedly ‘unbiased’ organization, caught red-handed with assessments authored by people in environmentalist groups, and its own “ClimateGate” scientists behaving badly doesn’t help, either.
We have an arguably more far reaching problem – one that imperils the issue itself, and the mainstream media’s basic integrity.

Russell continues by adding that "This plain-sight problem is invisible.." by anyone accepting the flawed science of the CONsensus.

This monumental problem only becomes evident when we point to skeptic scientists claiming human activity is not a significant part of global warming. The immediate, predictable diatribe is, “Skeptics are few in number, don’t have published papers to their credit, and are on the payroll of big coal & oil.” The problem fades out of sight again when no one challenges those assertions.

Try asking instead, “You can prove any of that?”, and watch what happens.

If the response is that anyone defending skeptic scientists is an ignorant, mind-numbed talk radio listener / right-wing blog reader / Fox News zealot, or is a person who won’t give up their SUV to save the planet, then you see the problem plain as day. This is a sleight-of-hand shell game to ensure the public never thinks there may be legitimate scientific opposition criticism.

A second opinion ought to be welcomed, especially if it’s good news that the little warming we do see is a natural process.

Regular Readers of this blog will be aware that we are critical of the Main Stream Media (MSM) and how they have forsaken journalistic scepticism for climate alarmism advocacy. Russell points to Al Gore's discredited Movie - "An Inconvenient Truth" and his following book as an example of how the MSM have failed in their duty of even-handed reporting.

Identical words from the same memos in Gore’s Senate office as much as four years prior to Gelbspan, the man he credits with discovering them – a huge red flag if there ever was one. And not a word about this contradiction in the mainstream media. Had reporters taken just a few hours of their time to talk to a now-former employee of that coal organization – as I did just recently – they would have been told that these specific memos were a rejected proposal for the PR campaign, and were never actually implemented, thus they would not have been seen by other fossil fuel company executives. There was no industry directive to “reposition global warming”, period.

Legitimate scientific criticism could wipe out the so-called global warming crisis. What’s been the response for twenty years? Don’t debate skeptic scientists, assassinate their character – but hide the evidence proving their corruption.

The monumental fault in global warming is right there in plain sight, and the mainstream media either can’t spot it or offers strangely vague answers when I try to alert them about it. This issue showcases a genuine divide of inexcusable proportions: We have 1% of the media elite who have committed journalistic malfeasance for over twenty years, and we are the 99% who no longer trust them! Expose this problem for all to see, and we knock down not only the politics of global warming, we also potentially put news reporting back to the way it should be done, telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Russell Cook’s collection of writings on this issue can be seen at “The ’96-to-present smear of skeptic scientists,” and you can follow him on Twitter at QuestionAGW

h/t Marc Morano and Climate Depot

The MWP WAS a Global Phenomenon

2011-12-26T09:07:00.002+11:00

The findings of Neukom et al. go a long ways towards demonstrating that:

Reconstructed mean summer SSA temperatures. Adapted from Neukom et al. (2011).

the Medieval Warm Period was a global phenomenon that was comprised of even warmer intervals than the warmest portion of the Current Warm Period, and that
the greater warmth of the Medieval Warm Period occurred when there was far less CO₂ in the air than there is nowadays, which facts clearly demonstrate that the planet's current -- but not unprecedented -- degree of warmth need not be CO₂-induced.

Reference
Neukom, R., Luterbacher, J., Villalba, R., Kuttel, M., Frank, D., Jones, P.D., Grosjean, M., Wanner, H., Aravena, J.-C., Black, D.E., Christie, D.A., D'Arrigo, R., Lara, A., Morales, M., Soliz-Gamboa, C., Srur, A., Urritia, R. and von Gunten, L. 2011. Multiproxy summer and winter surface air temperature field reconstructions for southern South America covering the past centuries. Climate Dynamics 37: 35-51.

In order to know how unusual, unprecedented or unnatural the global warming of the 20th century was, it is necessary to do what the eighteen authors of this important paper did, so as to be able, as they describe it, "to put the recent warming into a larger temporal and spatial context."
Working with 22 of the best climate proxies they could find that stretched far enough back in time, Neukom et al. (2011) reconstructed a mean austral summer (December-February) temperature history for the period AD 900-1995 for the terrestrial area of the planet located between 20°S and 55°S and between 30°W and 80°W -- a region they call Southern South America (SSA) -- noting that their results "represent the first seasonal sub-continental-scale climate field reconstructions of the Southern Hemisphere going so far back in time."

Read more HERE.

Harsh Political Reality exposes MSM Alarmism

2011-12-26T08:45:00.000+11:00

From the New York Times by Justin Gillis:

New York Times Photo

Harsh Political Reality Slows Climate Studies Despite Extreme Year

At the end of one of the most bizarre weather years in American history, climate research stands at a crossroads.

Scientists say they could, in theory, do a much better job of answering the question “Did global warming have anything to do with it?” after extreme weather events like the drought in Texas and the floods in New England.

and later in the article:

This year, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tried to push through a reorganization that would have provided better climate forecasts to businesses, citizens and local governments, Republicans in the House blocked it.
The idea had originated in the Bush administration, was strongly endorsed by an outside review panel and would have cost no extra money. But the House Republicans, many of whom reject the overwhelming scientific consensus about the causes of global warming, labeled the plan an attempt by the Obama administration to start a “propaganda” arm on climate.

You can tell that the author is coming from the Alarmist side when he uses phrases such as "reject the overwhelming scientific consensus.."

Jane Lubchenco, the director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said her agency had been deluged with information requests regarding future climate risks.

Ken Schlichte writes:

This article incorrectly suggested that climate change was responsible for this year’s Texas drought. The rejection of a climate change “propaganda” arm headed by NOAA’s Jane Lubchenco distributing this type of climate change misinformation is appropriate. The NOAA National Climatic Data Center figures below indicate the following:

The Texas annual temperature trend from 1895 through 2010 was perfectly flat.
The Texas annual temperatures trended downward at a rate of 1.19 degrees F per decade from 1998 through 2010.

The 2011 Texas drought was produced by extreme weather conditions, not by climate change.

Texas

Some of the following data are preliminary and have not been quality controlled.
For official data, please contact the NCDC Climate Services and Monitoring Division at ncdc.orders@noaa.gov.
Annual 1895 - 2010 Data Values:

Annual 1901 - 2000 Average = 65.04 degF
Annual 1895 - 2010 Trend = 0.00 degF / Decade

Annual Temperature
Texas

Some of the following data are preliminary and have not been quality controlled.
For official data, please contact the NCDC Climate Services and Monitoring Division at ncdc.orders@noaa.gov.

Annual 1998 - 2010 Data Values:

Annual 1998 - 2010 Average = 65.78 degF
Annual 1998 - 2010 Trend = -1.19 degF / Decade

Ken Schlichte is an expert forest soil scientist in western Washington.

Merry Christmas from all at NCTCS

2011-12-25T05:14:00.002+11:00

Image: Donna Laframboise

Erroneous and ill-informed SMH

2011-12-24T14:40:00.003+11:00

Jo Nova wrote a piece critically analysing "Paul Biegler's some words of wisdom in The Age" and one of the comment referred to a Sydney Morning Herald essay.

December 23, 2011 at 5:02 pm · Reply
This article in the Sydney Morning Herald to-day is just as erroneous and ill-informed.

“No turning back to the dark ages” by Trevor Danos.

A quote: ” …where modelling can challenge consensus.” ??? – Are not we told that ‘modelling is the consensus.’

Another quote: “The opinions of Lord Monckton and the radio shock jocks might be loud but they are ill-informed, grossly biased and at odds with the weight of science.” !!!!

Funny that Danos says that he admires Galileo who was in a similar position to the sceptics. As you know, Galileo believed in the Sun being the centre of Earth's orbit when the prevailing incorrect theory was that all the planets and the Sun were in orbit around the Earth. He was made to recant and was held under house arrest for the remainder of his life.

He says "we learn to admire the rational, objective methodology of science together with science's other virtues - an open mind to new ideas, a rejection of dogma and authoritarianism, a correction of error without concealment and an encouragement of collective action and collaboration."

As the Climategate e-mails show there has been none of this from the Climategate CRU.

He says: "Empirical studies are being openly and shrilly derided." Ferenc Miskolczi's peer-reviewed papers come to mind and the shrill derision they have brought including The Australian Government who HERE on their website said; "Miskolczi’s paper was not published in a high impact peer-reviewed journal."

First, science has lost some of its purity and has become conflated (and confused) with technology or philosophy or both. This situation is further aggravated when scientists enter policy debates and write policies for governments.

He has hit the nail on the head here. The problem with the Climategate CRU is that they have been messing in politics.

Finally, there have been regrettable instances of scientific fraud or scientists not conducting themselves with integrity.
We need no more proof of that than the Climategate e-mails.

The catastrophe of the climate change debates is that the community of science researchers has reached consensus......

As Josh puts it so well, in his balloon cartoon, consensus has degenerated into CON.

http://www.cartoonsbyjosh.com/

Must be Santa

2011-12-24T11:44:00.000+11:00

Who's got a beard that's long and white? Must be Santa.

h/t Dale S - Just Grounds

UAH Satellite data vs IPCC Climate Models

2011-12-22T09:23:00.002+11:00

Reason.com blog reported that

The end of November 2011 completes 33 years of satellite-based global temperature data, according to John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center (ESSC) at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. Globally averaged, Earth’s atmosphere has warmed about 0.45 Celsius (about 0.82° F) during the almost one-third of a century that sensors aboard NOAA and NASA satellites have measured the temperature of oxygen molecules in the air.
This is at the lower end of computer model projections of how much the atmosphere should have warmed due to the effects of extra greenhouse gases since the first Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) went into service in Earth orbit in late November 1978, according to satellite data processed and archived at UAHuntsville’s ESSC.
“While 0.45 degrees C of warming is noticeable in climate terms, it isn’t obvious that it represents an impending disaster,” said Christy. “The climate models produce some aspects of the weather reasonably well, but they have yet to demonstrate an ability to confidently predict climate change in upper air temperatures.”

That release caused a barrage from the AGW Alarmists. John Christy and Roy Spencer responded:

John
Earlier this week we reported on the latest monthly global temperature update, as we do every month, which is distributed to dozens of news outlets. With 33 years of satellite data now in the hopper (essentially a third of a century) we decided to comment on the long-term character, noting that the overall temperature trend of the bulk troposphere is less than that of the IPCC AR4 climate model projections for the same period. This has been noted in several publications, and to us is not a new or unusual statement.
Suggesting that the actual climate is at odds with model projections does not sit well with those who desire that climate model output be granted high credibility.

I was alerted to this (Washington Post) blog post within which are, what I can only call, “myths” about the UAH lower tropospheric dataset and model simulations. I’m unfamiliar with the author (Andrew Freedman) but the piece was clearly designed to present a series of assertions about the UAH data and model evaluation, to which we were not asked to respond. Without such a knowledgeable response from the expert creators of the UAH dataset, the mythology of the post may be preserved.

The first issue I want to address deals the relationship between temperature trends of observations versus model output. I often see such posts refer to an old CCSP document (2006) which, as I’ve reported in congressional testimony, was not very accurate to begin with, but which has been superseded and contradicted by several more recent publications.
These publications specifically document the fact that bulk atmospheric temperatures in the climate system are warming at only 1/2 to 1/4 the rate of the IPCC AR4 model trends. Indeed actual upper air temperatures are warming the same or less than the observed surface temperatures (most obvious in the tropics) which is in clear and significant contradiction to model projections, which suggest warming should be amplified with altitude.

The blog post even indicates one of its quoted scientists, Ben Santer, agrees that the upper air is warming less than the surface – a result with which no model agrees. So, the model vs. observational issue was not presented accurately in the post. This has been addressed in the peer reviewed literature by us and others (Christy et al. 2007, 2010, 2011, McKitrick et al. 2010, Klotzbach et al. 2009, 2010.)

Then, some people find comfort in simply denigrating the uncooperative UAH data (about which there have been many validation studies.) We were the first to develop a microwave-based global temperature product. We have sought to produce the most accurate representation of the real world possible with these data – there is no premium in generating problematic data. When problems with various instruments or processes are discovered, we characterize, fix and publish the information. That adjustments are required through time is obvious as no one can predict when an instrument might run into problems, and the development of such a dataset from satellites was uncharted territory before we developed the first methods.

The Freedman blog post is completely wrong when it states that “when the problems are fixed, the trend always goes up.” Indeed, there have been a number of corrections that adjusted for spurious warming, leading to a reduction in the warming trend. That the scientists quoted in the post didn’t mention this says something about their bias.

Read more HERE.

Roy also replied - addressing comments made by Ben Santer in the Washington Post blog:

People who claim (like Roy Spencer did) that it is “impossible” to separate human from natural influences on climate are seriously misinformed,” he wrote via email. “They are ignoring several decades of relevant research and literature. They are embracing ignorance.” “Many dozens of scientific studies have identified a human “fingerprint” in observations of surface and lower tropospheric temperature change,” Santer stated.

In my opinion, the supposed “fingerprint” evidence of human-caused warming continues to be one of the great pseudo-scientific frauds of the global warming debate. There is no way to distinguish warming caused by increasing carbon dioxide from warming caused by a more humid atmosphere responding to (say) naturally warming oceans responding to a slight decrease in maritime cloud cover (see, for example, “Oceanic Influences on Recent continental Warming“).

Cold is bad; Warm is good - New Study

2011-12-21T04:35:00.000+11:00

From CO2 Science:

Image From: The London Bridge Experience

What was learned
The seven scientists were able to demonstrate, in their words, that "climate change was the ultimate cause, and climate-driven economic downturn was the direct cause, of large-scale human crises in pre-industrial Europe and the Northern Hemisphere." In addition, they say it was cooling that triggered the chain of negative responses in variables pertaining to physical and human systems. Initially, for example, they found that agricultural production "decreased or stagnated in a cold climate and increased rapidly in a mild climate at the multi-decadal timescale," while the time course of crisis development was such that "bio-productivity, agricultural production and food supply per capita (FSPC) sectors responded to temperature change immediately, whereas the social disturbance, war, migration, nutritional status, epidemics, famine and population sectors responded to the drop in FSPC with a 5- to 30-year time lag." Thus, the dark ages they delineated by these means were AD 1212-1381 (the Crisis of Late Middle Ages) and AD 1568-1665 (the GCSC), whereas the golden ages were the 10th to 12th centuries (the High Middle Ages), the late-14th to early 16th centuries (the Renaissance), and the late-17th to 18th centuries (the Enlightenment).

What it means
Several centuries of European and Northern Hemispheric data reveal that warming and warmth beget human wellness, while cooling and cold produce human misery.

Reference
Zhang, D.D., Lee, H.F., Wang, C., Li, B., Pei, Q., Zhang, J. and An, Y. 2011a. The causality analysis of climate change and large-scale human crisis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA: 10.1073/pnas.1104268108.

Read More: CO2 Science.

Jingle Bells (Australian) - Colin Buchanan

2011-12-20T13:44:00.001+11:00

Spin: 2011 to be Perth's hottest year ever

2011-12-20T10:24:00.006+11:00

Narelle Towie writing in Perth Now (link) writes:

METEOROLOGISTS say 2011 will be Perth's hottest year in history - our third consecutive hottest year since records began.
Perth's mean daily maximum temperature from January to November was 25.3C, topping the 2010 record of 24.9C, according to the WA Bureau of Meteorology.
"When we factor in the seven-day forecast, for us not to break the record we would have to have average temperatures of less than 20.7C (this month) and we really don't think that is going to happen," bureau weather services manager Neil Bennett said.

Analyst Chris Gilham doesn't agree.

Chris Gilham analyses the data:

They're so keen to promote global warming they can't even wait a couple of weeks till 2011 is finished! Perth's had 10mm above the annual average rainfall and what have seemed showery, cool to mild conditions throughout spring and now into summer, with a little burst of heat at the beginning of December hitting 37.6C. Even Christmas Day looks like it'll probably be less than 30C. Hooray!

The BoM's Monthly Weather Review is at http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/mwr/. This is based on observations from all available years of data at all WA stations with a temperature record longer than 30 years.

Below are WA's monthly readings so far for 2011:

Jan - 29.7C - 1C above average
Feb - 27.9C - 0.9C below average
Mar - 25.3C - 1.3C below average
Apr - 23.1C - 0.1C below average
May - 18C - 0.9C below average
Jun - 15.5C - 0.4C below average
Jul - 15.9C - 1C above average
Aug - 17.6C - 1.1C above average
Sep - 19.6C - 0.1C above average
Oct - 23.4C - 0.2C above average

i.e. the long-term average of the 10 months from Jan to Oct in WA is 21.66C, but this year it was 21.60C. Rounded, WA was .1C cooler than the historic average from January to October. If all of WA is regarded as a climate change guinea pig, the poor little thing is getting chilly. My monitoring of 32 sites across WA found temps fell about .14C in November, so I think the guinea pig might need a blanket. In essence, northern and inland WA has been more below average than the South-West coastal strip has been above average.

OK, much of the Sunday Times story is about Perth, not WA. The BoM states that Perth temperatures spiked in the 1970s and have continued to climb each year, particularly over the past decade and consistent with climate change.

Perth's temperature history began in 1897 atop Mt Eliza (elevation 61m) with the establishment of station 9034 (Perth Regional Office). In 1963 the station was moved about 300m and in 1967 it was relocated about two kilometres to inner city Wellington St, East Perth (elevation 19m). Station 9034 was closed in 1992 and the Stevenson Screen was moved four kilometres north to establish the Perth Metro station in Mt Lawley (9225), with the 9034 historic record adjusted for baseline equivalence for both the Perth Metro and Perth Airport stations. The 9034 temperature chart is:

There's that spike in the 1970s and Perth temperatures increasing by about .7C after the thermometer was moved from the top of Mt Eliza in West Perth to Wellington St in East Perth. It's sort of like Perth's very own hockey stick.

It's worth noting that the only known direct temperature comparison between West Perth and East Perth is within records of the 11 year mean from 1897 to 1907 on Mt Eliza at 63.9F (17.72C) and the same 11 year mean at Perth Gardens (elevation unknown but at Supreme Court Gardens near the Swan River and about the same elevation as Wellington St) at 64.9F (18.27C). That's almost 0.6C warmer at the lower elevation in the same city and the same weather day by day, a similar shift to the Wellington St increase in the chart above.

This is BoM HQ data so obviously the appropriate adjustments have been made to counter the effect of the two kilometre relocation. Hmmm.

OK, Perth Metro in Mt Lawley became the source of Perth's daily weather records as of 1994, covering the past couple of decades of below average rainfall during which almost all of Perth's historic record maxima have been broken. Let's have a look at the three different stations that have recorded the temperatures of "Perth" since 1897:

Thanks to the colder inland minima getting colder (low rainfall and little nighttime cloud cover), Perth's mean temperature has been stable and even dropped a tiny bit over the past 20 years. Yes, it looks like the maxima have been getting hotter over recent years but maybe the Sunday Times opening sentence would be a bit more accurate if it read:

"METEOROLOGISTS say 2011 will be Mt Lawley's hottest year in history - the suburb's third consecutive hottest year since records began in 1994."

As for Perth Airport's High Quality temperature record, this is 9034 data (Perth Regional - Mt Eliza/Wellington St) from before 1992 adjusted to be equivalent with Perth Airport after 1993, as is apparent in the chart below drawn from GISS data.

Like Mt Lawley, Perth Airport temps haven't gone anywhere since Wellington St closed.

Most Perth people would probably rate any day at 40C or more as "hot". It might be relevant to note that throughout 2011 since January 1, there has been only one day which snuck above 40C at Perth Metro - 40.4C on Jan 29. If the BoM's forecast continues to the new year, Perth might have only one day above 40C in 2011. This isn't a rarity but it's interesting looking back at previous years and the number of days that exceeded 40C.

Mt Lawley
2011 - 1
2010 - 6
2009 - 2
2008 - 3
2007 - 6
2006 - 1
2005 - 1
2004 - 4
2003 - 5
2002 - 2
2001 - 0
2000 - 2
1999 - 0
1998 - 4
1997 - 6
1996 - 3
1995 - 1
1994 - 3

Changeover and temps based on Perth Airport
1993 - 2
1992 - 1

Wellington St
1991 - 6
1990 - 2
1989 - 3
1988 - 3
1987 - 1
1986 - 1
1985 - 5
1984 - 4
1983 - 0
1982 - 2
1981 - 2
1980 - 3
1979 - 3
1978 - 5
1977 - 4
1976 - 1
1975 - 2
1974 - 3
1973 - 3
1972 - 3
1971 - 2
1970 - 2
1969 - 3
1968 - 6

Mt Eliza
1967 - 1
1966 - 0
1965 - 4
1964 - 2
1963 - 0
1962 - 5
1961 - 6
1960 - 0
1959 - 3
1958 - 0
1957 - 0
1956 - 4
1955 - 1
1954 - 0
1953 - 0
1952 - 1
1951 - 1
1950 - 5
1949 - 2
1948 - 1
1947 - 0
1946 - 0
1945 - 2
1944 - 0
1943 - 0
1942 - 1
1941 - 0
1940 - 2
1939 - 2
1938 - 0
1937 - 1
1936 - 1
1935 - 4
1934 - 2
1933 - 4
1932 - 1
1931 - 1
1930 - 3
1929 - 1
1928 - 0
1927 - 1
1926 - 1
1925 - 0
1924 - 1
1923 - 2
1922 - 1
1921 - 4
1920 - 2
1919 - 0
1918 - 1
1917 - 0
1916 - 0
1915 - 2
1914 - 1
1913 - 1
1912 - 3
1911 - 0
1910 - 0
1909 - 0
1908 - 1
1907 - 0
1906 - 2
1905 - 0
1904 - 2
1903 - 1
1902 - 0
1901 - 1
1900 - 2
1899 - 0
1898 - 4
1897 - 2

Since 1994, Mt Lawley averages 2.77 days per year above 40C
From 1967 to 1991, Wellington St averaged 2.87 days per year above 40C
From 1897 to 1966, Mt Eliza averaged 1.35 days per year above 40C

If these "hot" days in Perth have increased since 1897/1966 because of climate change and not location change, then it must be accepted that due to climate change Perth has had less annual "hot" days in the last 20 years than it endured from 1967 to 1991. So far in 2011 it looks like "Perth" will have less "hot" days than the annual average for all years since records began.

And to save you counting, Perth has had 218 days at or above 40C since 1897.

As for Perth's unseasonal December thunderstorm rain (the wettest December day in 65 years) being caused by sea temperatures rising 1C in the past 50 years, it's worth checking the BoM's SEAFRAME monitoring of sea air temperatures since 1991, particularly the three WA locations of Esperance, Hillarys and Broome which haven't budged an inch for 20 years ... http://www.waclimate.net/sea/sea-air-temperatures.html

For more detail about the temperature recording history of "Perth", see http://www.waclimate.net/perth-bom-history.html

Kim Jong-il dies

2011-12-20T08:41:00.000+11:00

Larry Pickering:

Kim Jong very Il

Chinese coal Companies Combine?

2011-12-20T08:20:00.001+11:00

Image: Wikipedia

Businesss Spectator reports:

Yancoal Australia, Gloucester Coal

Yanzhou Coal has reportedly engaged Gloucester Coal in preliminary discussions about a merger that could create Australia’s largest independent coal producer, valued at $8 billion. The Financial Review has learned that Yanzhou’s local arm, Yancoal Australia, is speaking to Gloucester about a possible backdoor listing of its Hunter Valley Coal assets. This could be crucial to satisfying its agreement with the Australian government to list at least 30 per cent of its local assets by the end of next year, an agreement struck over the $3.2 billion purchase of Felix Resources.

If a merger proposal is agreed upon and put to shareholders, it brings about the interesting scenario where a Chinese firm is on either end of the transaction – Yanzhou Coal on the bidder's side and Hong Kong’s Noble Group on the Gloucester side, with 65 per cent of the target.

It marks a historic period in the history of Australian coal. New Hope is in the middle of a sales process, right on the back of Peabody Energy’s purchase of Macarthur Coal. Meanwhile, the $5.1 billion merger of equals between Whitehaven Coal and Aston Resources is expected to make the largest independent coal producer, unless of course this deal gets up.

Man for Manne - Carter makes sense.

2011-12-19T14:24:00.003+11:00


Wanted (by NCTCS)

On ABC's the Drum, Professor Bob Carter addresses a piece by Professor Robert Manne:

Warming denialism is in the political eye of the beholder

Robert Manne commences his essay on the human-caused global warming that he presumes to be dangerous with the statement: "For several decades I have engaged in ideological disputes".
And therein lies the problem, for ideology is the business of politics whereas global warming is the business of science.

Bob writes that, despite what Manne says, science is apolitical. Manne promises to "outline the bare bones of that argument"

There is therefore nothing new, and much that is both old and discredited, in the list of hypothetical warming scares that Manne presents, so why is he so mystified that public opinion remains unmoved? Mystified, what's more, to the degree that a large part of his article is devoted to trying to account for the public's perceived recalcitrance about warming alarmism. Well, according to Manne the explanation goes like this.
The fault lies with "an army of climate change denialists", scattered worldwide, who are funded by the fossil fuel industries to serve their selfish and devious ends (which, obviously, include the provision of cheap and convenient energy of all types to consumers: how naughty is that).

Gee, here we are, running a fledgling political party on a pittance. PLEASE, Robert Manne, can you get those imagined fossil fuel funding folk to fork out finances our way!

Not content with thereby having assassinated the characters of hundreds of highly qualified and meritorious scientists around the world, Manne concludes by turning his attention once more to the obstinately recalcitrant public. His intended triumphant, but actually lame, conclusion is that
Citizens of the consumer society are unwilling to risk the loss of any of their comforts. However they wish to feel good about themselves. The climate change denialists... offer them the alibi for doing nothing they so desperately need.
Well, as someone who presumably counts as both a citizen and a reprehensible denialist, you can sure count me in on that. For as Lord Monckton so memorably put it, the correct response to a non-problem – which is what the threat of dangerous human-related global warming has turned out to be - is indeed to have the courage to do nothing.

Bob wonders why Manne and other similar commentators cannot understand that science is based upon evidence, not opinion.

But some time ago now, the penny dropped for me. That penny is the fact that most big environmental scares, including especially the global warming one, are not about science, nor even about the environment. Rather, they are about politics.
And that is an art that is undeniably practised with great skill by both the IPCC and by Latrobe University's Professor of Politics, Robert Manne.

Bring the costly AGW scare to an end - Monckton

2011-12-17T06:57:00.000+11:00

From Marc Morano – Climate Depot

Making the police state work for you

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley in London

Now that six policemen from the Norfolk and Metropolitan forces have invaded the home and “borrowed” the computers of “Tallbloke”, the first blogger in the UK to reveal the existence of the 5000 Climategate 2.0 emails, you may ask why the British police seem so much more interested in tracking down and punishing the whistle-blower/“thief” than in dealing with the many crimes by crooked IPCC “scientists” that the emails expose.

There is a good reason why the police have gone after the whistle-blower and yet have not moved against those whose far more serious crimes the emails he released expose. Though the University of East Anglia has complained to the police about the “thief”, no one has complained about the climate crooks whose crimes the University seems so zealous to conceal.

Until now, those of us who have dared to question how much “global warming” a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration this century may cause have been altogether too nice to lodge a criminal complaint with our local police precinct. That must now change. This note proposes a way forward.

What offenses have been committed? Serious frauds, that's what. Some of the most prominent Climategate emailers appear, on the face of the evidence in the emails, to be engaged with each other and with others in an elaborate series of connected deceptions calculated to enrich themselves and their associates, impoverish everyone else and destroy key industries and national economies wholesale by systematically and often greatly exaggerating the supposed threat and costs of anthropogenic “global warming”, the certainty of the science that underlies the IPCC's claims, and the effectiveness of the various methods proposed for the attempted mitigation of anthropogenic “global warming”, while correspondingly understating the benefits of that warming and the costs of its attempted mitigation.

So, why don't the police go and feel their collars rather than picking on the blameless “Tallbloke”? Not least because the police are by no means as expert in understanding the ins and outs of climate physics and economics as we are. They simply don't get the significance of the emails because no one has ever explained it to them.

The true significance of “hide the decline”, for instance, is not at all evident on a superficial reading of the emails. The police will not, therefore, read the emails with our eyes, unless we help them to understand their shocking significance.

If we explain to the police how the various frauds evident in the Climategate emails work, and how they are connected to each other and to additional frauds designed artificially and dishonestly to magnify the supposed threat of “global warming” in the IPCC's documents and to minimize the egregiously disproportionate cost of trying to make “global warming” go away, they will understand and – more importantly – they will act, for that is what the law requires them to do.

In many jurisdictions, fraud is a common-law offense: that of obtaining a pecuniary advantage for oneself, or inflicting a pecuniary disadvantage upon another, by deception. The twin tests are money gain or loss, and deception.

In the United Kingdom, the Fraud Act 2006 has given fraud a very detailed, statutory definition, which may be summarized as the obtaining of a temporary or permanent gain (whether by keeping what one has or by getting what one does not have) or the infliction upon another of a temporary or permanent loss (whether by not getting what one might get or by parting with what one has), the gain or loss being in money or other real or personal property (including things in action or other intangible property), with the intent either of obtaining a gain for the offender or for another or of causing loss to another or of exposing another to a risk of loss, whether by dishonestly making an untrue or misleading express or implied representation that the offender knows is or may be untrue or misleading; or by dishonestly failing to disclose to another person information which the offender is under a legal duty to disclose; or by dishonestly (by act or omission) abusing a position in which he is expected to safeguard, or not to act against, the financial interest of another person.

In some jurisdictions, “serious fraud” is defined as a fraud that either involves offenders in a position of public trust or very substantial sums of money or both. The connected frauds revealed in the Climategate emails involve both.

The test for money gain or loss is automatically passed by all of the connected frauds that have led to the exaggerated claims of the IPCC and its supporters: for the massive loss to taxpayers and to users of gasoline and electricity, to name but many, is already well documented.

Each fraud that we allege, therefore, must be a clear, demonstrable instance of a specific deception by an identifiable person that contributes to the overall deception. Some examples –

Suppose, for instance, that a particular graph appearing thrice in the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report uses a bogus statistical technique so as falsely to demonstrate that the Earth is warming ever faster and that we are to blame. That may be a mistake. However, if a report by a competent statistician demonstrates that the technique is indeed bogus, and if, say, a lead author of the Fourth Assessment Report is asked to have the error corrected but refuses to do so and instead writes attempting to justify the false graph on deceptive and erroneous grounds, then that lead author may be guilty of fraud. It is then open to any citizen of his or her nation to go to the police and make a complaint. The deception lies in the willingness of the lead author to leave the erroneous graph uncorrected, knowing that it conveys incorrect information calculated falsely to exaggerate the influence of Man on the climate. The perpetrator's omission to act as a reasonable lead author would act is fraud.

Suppose that the lead author of an IPCC chapter admits that he allowed a flagrantly incorrect value to appear in the Fourth Assessment Report because “I wanted to influence governments”, and suppose that notwithstanding the objections of the “reviewers” the erroneous value was printed, and suppose that for several months the IPCC, at the highest levels, tried to conceal the deception. That is fraud.

Suppose that a politician has gotten rich by preaching about “global warming” in an unduly alarmist way. Suppose that in a widely-publicized presentation he shows details of an experiment that was not conducted in the purported fashion and did not, therefore, confirm the official story-line to the degree he was suggesting. That is plainly a deception. It is fraud.

Suppose that a senior official of an international meteorological organization is filmed saying that global mean surface temperature trends should be taken over 30 years, and that his interlocutor politely points out that those 30 years largely coincided with the warming phase of the great ocean oscillations and that, therefore, the trends should be taken over 60 years so as to remove the exaggeration by including the cooling phase as well. Suppose that the official then tells his interlocutor that he does not wish to be lectured, and then makes a false complaint to the UNFCCC secretariat that he has been harassed. In isolation the episode is insignificant. But in the context of the wider series of connected frauds by this and other organizations, the official has furthered or attempted to further the deception by initially attempting to conceal the fact that the 30 years in question fell largely in the warming phase of a natural ocean oscillation and then, upon being challenged, by making a false allegation against his interlocutor. The official's misconduct – in the wider context – is not merely gross unprofessionalism. It is fraud.

Suppose the keeper of a global temperature record, on receiving requests to supply the data and methods underlying the compilation of that record, refuses to comply, corresponds with other “scientists” about how to avoid complying with freedom-of-information requests, and thereby succeeds in concealing for many years several fundamental defects in the keeping and processing of the data. In isolation the episode may be put down to mere incompetence combined with an understandable desire to avoid a deserved professional humiliation. However, in the context of the wider series of connected frauds, a jury might well find such an episode to constitute fraud, in that a false air of reliability and respectability has been created so as to give the IPCC process a specious air of scientific integrity.

Notice how each such episode – in isolation – might well provoke little more than a shrug of the shoulders from the prosecuting authorities, because they do not realize how the fraud fits into the grander scheme of those who are by a multitude of related artifices and deceptions driving the climate scare beyond all scientific justification. However, look at the frauds I have described, but this time look at them not in isolation but together. It is only then that the sheer, breathtaking, arrogant enormity of the overall scheme of deception becomes visible to those who have not observed it before.

Next steps: I have begun drafting a memorandum for the prosecuting authorities, together with all evidence necessary to establish not only the existence of numerous specific instances of scientific or economic fraud in relation to the official “global warming” storyline but also the connections between these instances, and the overall scheme of deception that the individual artifices appear calculated to reinforce. In each instance, the perpetrators of the fraud will be named and their roles described.

Once the report has been completed, it will be reviewed carefully by experienced criminal lawyers in each of the national jurisdictions in which the perpetrators reside. The report will then be submitted to the prosecuting authorities in each jurisdiction, with a complaint lodged by lawyers acting for citizens of that jurisdiction against perpetrators there. No complaints can be lodged against the IPCC or the UNFCCC, for they are beyond any national jurisdiction. However, individual “scientists” can be brought to book in the countries where they normally reside.

Here is how you can help. If you consider any specific aspect of “global warming” science to contain an element of fraud as defined and illustrated here, then please – in strictest confidence – get in touch and let me have as much detail as possible. Be specific. Name names. Give details. If you can, supply or point me to backup evidence.

Since the information you will be supplying to me is in contemplation of criminal proceedings, it is privileged and no libel suit would succeed even in the unlikely event that the perpetrators discovered you had contacted me. Your details will be kept confidential, and will not appear in the report or be passed to any authorities.

Don't be coy. It is all too easy to fall for the line now being ever-more-anxiously peddled by some of the more notorious fraudsters – that science cannot thrive in an atmosphere where scientists who publish honest research in good faith can find themselves having to answer charges in a criminal court.

Let one thing be quite clear: the test for the felony that is fraud is a high one. The lawyers who will be reading the memorandum when it is complete will not allow any element of the fraud to go forward as a complaint to the prosecuting authorities unless there is a clear, prima-facie case that wilful deception has occurred. Honest science is not under attack here: only dishonest science. And a dishonest scientist can no more claim immunity from prosecution than anyone else.

Don't hang back. This is your chance to make the police state work not for Them but you, and to bring this costly scare to an end.

Howard launches manual against the AGW scam.

2011-12-16T11:27:00.000+11:00

The former Prime Minister, John Howard has launched a book which argues the theory of human-induced global warming is a scam.

The book, 'How to Get Expelled From School' from the respected geologist Professor Ian Plimer, rejects the questionable scientific opinion on climate change.

Listen to the interview on the ABC's AM here.

Carbon Dioxide has Zero Effect on Warming

2011-12-16T11:03:00.001+11:00

Piers Corbyn

Ottawa has pulled out of the 1997 anti-global warming Kyoto Protocol, saying the treaty is “not working.” Piers Corbyn, the founder of the Weather Action Foundation, says Canada is doing the right thing.
According to Corbyn, the solar activity – not carbon dioxide – is behind climate change.
“I don’t believe in man-made climate change because there is no evidence for it. In fact, carbon dioxide is controlled by world temperatures rather than the other way around,” he told RT. “Climate change is going on, and the key aspects of the big, very extreme events that happened in the last 18 months were predicted by us, the Weather Action, using solar activity.
“Carbon dioxide has zero effect, I repeat: zero effect, no effect whatsoever.”

Earth's current cool period: New Scientist

2011-12-16T10:52:00.001+11:00

New Scientist Magazine reports that we are currently in a cool period (see graph above.) I wonder have they shared this knowledge with the Alarmists at the IPCC?

See more at New Scientist here

Hyperwarming climate could turn Earth's poles green

We may trigger hyperwarming that transforms the planet into a hothouse with tropical temperatures and lush forests close to the poles.

Stand by for hyperalarmism!

The Green Gillard Government's "Clean Energy" Future (2)

2011-12-16T07:15:00.000+11:00

The German Solar Industry is collapsing - See German solar firms go from boom to bust
The Green Gillard Government, when bludgeoning through it's "Clean, Green Energy" Carbon dioxide tax promised jobs and more jobs. As has been pointed out before, the Spanish study showed that for every two "green" energy jobs created, five normal jobs were lost.

Now Terence Corcoran in the Financial Times writes

The parallel-energy universe known as renewables, a place where dollars and economic theory know no bounds and make no sense, looks increasingly like a bubble set to collapse. Or, as I wrote here back in March of 2010: “That eerie hissing you hear may well be the air beginning to seep out of the green energy bubble. The sound is similar to the pfffffft and sshhhhsssssp noises we heard in the early days of the dot-com bubble collapse or the subprime mortgage meltdown.”

The loss of political backing, massive overexpansion under the subsidy push, plus the realization that renewable energy comes with bazillion-dollar costs to consumers and/or taxpayers, all spell trouble for solar, wind, biofuels and other green-energy sources.

Also at risk of taking a hit, internationally and in Canada, are some of the venture capitalists and financial heavyweights who have been riding the global climate-change scare for every dollar of subsidy they can get out of it. News reports note that Solon, which has been slashing costs and staff for months, faced a bank deadline and now needs creditor protection on a $375-million loan from Deutsche Bank AG, the global banking giant. Deutsche Bank in recent years promoted green energy as a hot product, launching an international campaign warning of pending climate catastrophe if governments didn’t provide feed-in tariffs and other subsidies and guarantees to renewable-energy firms, to which Deutsche Bank would lend money.

The German Green Energy meltdown follows the crash of Solyndra in the United States and the accompanying political scandal re the funding of that solar-energy company. Even so, as late as Wednesday the renewable-energy lobbyists were pressing for extensions of subsidies.

The subsidized industries are making the usual arguments that their operations create jobs and provide clean energy. The slow wind-down of Kyoto and the long outlook for Durban climate policy adds to the sense that being green is no longer easy.
The economic case for these jobs is undermined by numerous reports and studies that show the cost of the tax breaks and subsidies destroys at least as many jobs as are gained.

Let's all pray that our Green Gillard Governemtn has a re-think before the introduction of the killer carbon tax next July.

IPCC Wrong Again - How many is that now?

2011-12-15T17:50:00.000+11:00

CO2 Science reports: Climate Model Failures in the Southeast Pacific Ocean

Peru Coast. Image NASA

Background
Climate in the Southeast Pacific (SEP) near the coast of Peru and Chile, in the words of the authors, "is controlled by complex upper-ocean, marine boundary layer and land processes and their interactions," and they say that variations in this system have "significant impacts on global climate," citing Ma et al. (1996), Miller (1977), Gordon et al. (2000) and Xie (2004). However, they write that "it is well known that coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models tend to have systematic errors in the SEP region, including a warm bias in sea surface temperature and too little cloud cover," as demonstrated by Mechoso et al. (1995), Ma et al. (1996), Gordon et al. (2000), McAvaney et al. (2001), Kiehl and Gent (2004), Large and Danabasoglu (2006), Wittenberg et al. (2006) and Lin (2007). And even though these biases have what they call "important impacts" on the simulation of earth's radiation budget and climate sensitivity, they say that "it is still uncertain" whether a similar bias is evident in most state-of-the-art coupled general circulation models [CGCMs] and to what extent the sea surface temperature [SST] biases are model dependent."

What it means
With such yet-unresolved problems associated with nearly all of the CGCMs that were employed in the preparation of the IPCC's AR4 Report and that pertain to processes that are said to have important impacts on earth's climate sensitivity, it is no wonder that the projections of those models are greeted with a solid dose of skepticism by those who realize that it is the height of folly to use the output of such imperfect models as the reason for wanting to entirely restructure the way mankind acquires the energy that makes possible our current level of industrial and technological development.

Reference
Zheng, Y., Shinoda, T., Lin, J.-L. and Kiladis, G.N. 2011. Sea surface temperature biases under the stratus cloud deck in the Southeast Pacific Ocean in 19 IPCC AR4 coupled general circulation models. Journal of Climate 24: 4139-4164.

See More at CO2 Science.

Questions for a recalcitrant Prime Minister.

2011-12-15T15:31:00.002+11:00

The Prime Minister has laughed about it with that faked laugh of hers, but never has she answered what has become known as "The Andrew Bolt Question:" How much will the carbon tax reduce global temperatures?

On WorldNetDaily Leighton Steward has a few more questions that should be answered by our recalcitrant Prime Minister and her Green Gillard Government Gang; the gang that are forcing an unwanted carbon (dioxide) tax on Australia.

Leighton's questions:

Why can't warming alarmists (and therefore our government) produce a single legitimate example of empirical evidence to support the man-made global-warming hypothesis?
Why has Earth been warming for 300 years when man has only emitted measurable amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere for the last 150 years?
Why did Earth cool for 500 years before the recent 300 year warming and warm for several hundred years before that when even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says CO2 levels did not change?
Why was the Medieval Warm Period, a thousand years ago, warmer than today even though the CO2 level was 38 percent lower than today?
Why did many of Earth's major glaciers in the Alps, Asia, New Zealand and Patagonia begin to retreat nearly half a century before the Industrial Revolution and man's CO2 emissions?
Of the last five interglacials, going back 400,000 years, why is our current interglacial the coolest of the five even though Earth's CO2 level is about 35 percent higher?
Why has our current 10,000-year-long Holocene epoch been warmer than today for 50 percent of the time when CO2 levels were about 35 percent lower than today?
Why are correlations of Earth's temperature with natural factors such as sunspot numbers, solar cycle lengths, solar magnetic variations and changes in major ocean currents all better than the correlation of Earth's temperature with CO2 levels?

Surely just a little to ask before introducing a tax that will hurt Australia's economy. Canada has worked out that a Kyoto commitment will be a large hit their economy:

Ottawa's decision to opt out of Kyoto - which it labelled an "impediment" to effective global action - means it won't be slugged $14 billion in penalties for not achieving its 2012 emission reduction targets.

Image: Larry Pickering

GREG COMBET:

Well, climate change is a very difficult problem and of course the science is telling us that we need to make significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and that is why, of course, Australia has legislated its carbon price mechanism so that we can make cuts in our emissions at least cost to our economy and at least cost to households.

The Science is telling us, Greg? What science? Can you answer the above 8 questions? Can you at least answer question 1:

Can you produce a single legitimate example of empirical evidence to support the man-made global-warming hypothesis?

Albert Einstein once said, “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” A hypothesis only has to be falsified once! The man-made global warming hypothesis has been falsified number of times.

If the data don't show it, make up your own.

2011-12-14T16:55:00.001+11:00

Dr. Ann Maest is a managing scientist at Straus Consulting, and she’s the go to expert on all things groundwater. In the press release announcing her reappointment to the National Academy of Sciences, they mention that she is focused on the environmental effects of mining and petroleum extraction and production, and, more recently, on the effects of climate change on water quality.
Maest is in high demand as an expert for those looking to stop oil and mineral exploration. (From Wizbang)

The following is an outtake from Joe Berlinger's movie Crude. At the March 4, 2007, lunch meeting between plaintiffs' lead U.S. lawyer Steven Donziger and plaintiffs' U.S. consultants Charles Champ, Ann Maest and Richard Kamp, they reveal the truth about plaintiffs' lack of evidence and their intent to manipulate the Ecuadorian court. Maest tells Donziger that they need evidence of groundwater contamination, because plaintiffs did not submit any. Maest admits that, "Right now all the reports are saying it's just at the pits and the stations, and nothing has spread anywhere at all." Donziger responds, "Hold on a second, you know, this is Ecuador. ... You can say whatever you want, and at the end of the day, there's a thousand people around the courthouse. You're going to get what you want. Sorry, but it's true." Donziger continues, "Because at the end of the day, this is all for the court just a bunch of smoke and mirrors and bulls**t. It really is. We have enough, to get money, to win." View more outtakes at YouTube.com/TexacoEcuador. For more information about the Ecuador lawsuit, visit Chevron.com/Ecuador.

h/t Peter Laux

Last Chances at Durban Prices

2011-12-14T07:38:00.004+11:00

It's like the old doomsayers waving banners that said: "The end of the world is nigh."

Asian Correspondent Gavin Atkins points out

An updated history of last chances to save the world

Back in 1992, the Rio Earth Summit was promoted as the last chance to save the planet.
But then, so was Johannesburg in 2002.

But that was before the Bali climate conference became the last chance to save the world in 2007.

And let’s not forget Poznan in 2008 which was the last chance to save the world according to the World Wildlife Fund.

And who could forget the last chance to save the world at Copenhagen, as proposed to us by the UK’s leading expert on climate change, Sir Nicholas Stern.

But now it’s official. This year’s Durban Conference, the United Nation’s Convention on Climate Change, known as COP 17, is once again the last chance to save the world:

Churches claim Durban conference is mankind’s last chance
Rev. Dr. Olav Fyske Tveit, who leads the World Council of Churches, says the upcoming climate conference in South Africa is mankind’s ‘last opportunity’ to address climate change.

In the Alarmist rag, The Guardian Alok Jha also thinks that "the end of world (is) really nigh."

All too real are the human-caused threats born of climate change, excess pollution, depletion of natural resources and the madness of nuclear weapons. We tinker with our genes and atoms at our own peril. Nanotechnology, synthetic biology and genetic modification offer much potential in giving us better food to eat, safer drugs and a cleaner world, but they could also go wrong if misapplied or if we charge on without due care.

Martin Rees, Britain's astronomer royal and former president of the Royal Society, warned in his 2003 book, Our Final Century?, that the odds of human civilisation surviving beyond 2100 are no more than 50%, given the easy access to technologies that could have global impacts, such as biological terrorism, or the potential adverse impacts of molecular nanotechnology.

Sea Level rise during 20th Century only 100mm

2011-12-14T05:40:00.000+11:00

Playa de la Victoria Beach, Cadiz. Image: Damian Corrigan

New Study: Sea level rose only 100mm during 20th century

A paper published today in the Journal of Geophysical Research reconstructs sea level observations over the 129 year period from 1880 to 2009 along the coast of southern Spain and finds the 20th century sea level rise to be only 1 mm per year, equivalent to 4 inches per century.

JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 116, C12003, 10 PP., 2011
doi:10.1029/2011JC007558

The long sea level record at Cadiz (southern Spain) from 1880 to 2009

Marta Marcos et al

Mean sea level observations from an historical tide gauge located in Cadiz (Southern Spain) spanning the period 1880–1924 were recovered from national archives. Daily sea level averages stored in handwritten log books were digitized, quality controlled, and referred to the same benchmark. A careful analysis of all the high precision leveling surveys available in the area of the tide gauge enabled the establishment of a common datum with a modern record starting in 1961 from another tide gauge located only 2.5 km apart, with accuracy better than 5 mm. As a result, a consistent daily mean sea level record from 1880 to 2009 was constructed. The 20th century relative mean sea level rise in Cadiz is 0.7 ± 0.1 mm yr⁻¹, which becomes 1.0 ± 0.2 mm yr⁻¹ once corrected for vertical land movement with high precision GPS data, in agreement with nearby records. The analysis of the seasonal sea level cycle indicated that the amplitude of the annual cycle has increased during the 20th century. This work evidences the significance of sea level data rescue for present-day climate research.

From Hockey Shtick post here

Fake Footage to prop up Fake Global Warming Hoax

2011-12-14T05:22:00.000+11:00

Fake Snow: Image BBC

It was recently revealed that senior BBC journalist Roger Harrabin accepted £15,000 in grants from the University of East Anglia, which was at the heart of the ‘Climategate’ scandal, and then reported on the story without declaring this interest to viewers.

Now the same BBC has been caught out using fake "frozen wilderness" footage to prop up a documentary promoting the falsified AGW hoax. Sir David Attenborough filmed a key scene from the BBC series "Frozen Planet" in a zoo using fake snow.

From the UK Daily Mirror:

No ONE wants to criticise Sir David Attenborough, given the amazing television he has made and the work he’s done to preserve wildlife and educate us about the way we are destroying the planet.
But in the case of Polar Beargate, he would be better to recognise that what he and the BBC did was duplicitous and simply apologise.
The dodgy footage was the most touching scene in Episode Five of Frozen Planet – watched by some eight million trusting viewers.

Attenborough’s voiceover for the footage sighed in wonder: “On these slopes beneath the snow, new lives are beginning.
“The cubs are born blind and tiny. In two more months polar bear families will emerge on the snowy slopes all around the Arctic... but for now they lie protected within their icy cocoons.”

Durban - where the wheels almost fell off

2011-12-14T05:00:00.000+11:00

Two big decisions came out of Durban.

Image: Wikipedia

Canada backed out of the Kyoto Agreement
Delegates decided to keep snouts in the trough for a few more years

1: Canada Exits Kyoto Climate Agreement

Canada is withdrawing from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol agreement on climate change, with Environment Minister Peter Kent arguing that the framework doesn't represent the way forward for Canada or the world.
Kent is quoted by the AP as saying:

"The Kyoto Protocol does not cover the world's largest two emitters, United States and China, and therefore cannot work. It's now clear that Kyoto is not the path forward to a global solution to climate change. If anything it's an impediment."

2: Delegates decided to keep snouts in the trough for a few more years
As Terry McCrann writes in the Herald Sun

THE great climate gravy train rolls on and Julia Gillard and Bob Brown's great big carbon tax just got bigger. Much bigger.
Phew. The dedicated delegates had to sacrifice a weekend, stay up all night and pump out even more carbon dioxide, but they were able to pull victory right out of the jaws of disaster, figuratively at five minutes after midnight.
There they were facing the end of their world, their cosy world of riding the climate gravy train from one annual two-week conference in a resort city, to the next, and all the points through the year in-between.
Always, always, being prepared to make the tough choices: which resort city, and indeed, north or south?
Faced with going down in history as the free-lunchers that betrayed not just this generation of climate change main-chancers, but the next free-lunching generation and indeed the generation after that, they resolutely put their snouts - sorry, their shoulders - to the wheel and ground out a deal.

Success! Simply put, they ensured that the great climate gravy train would NOT come to a shuddering stop in Durban. It was given a new head of steam to roll on to Qatar next year and who knows where else right through to at least 2015.

IPCC, Climategate CRU again proven wrong

2011-12-13T08:25:00.001+11:00

Link to Bulletin

Below there is a link to a Chinese Science Bulletin.

This October 2011 issue has the Special topic of

Climate Change over the Past Millenium in China

Despite the IPCC and the Climategate CRU deliberately trying to suppress the Medieval Warm Period, these Chinese papers confirm their existence.

Modern meteorological observation networks can provide quantitative data on climate change only for the last 100 years. This is not long enough to research long-term regularities and mechanisms of climate change. To study climate change, an approach that has become important is to analyze proxy data. Tree rings are useful for research on millennium climate change because of their accurate dating, high resolution, continuous sequence and diverse indicators such as tree-ring width, density and stable isotopes. Moreover, the geographical distribution of tree-ring samples is wide and has a certain degree of spatial coverage; a tree-ring climate network for a certain density can be established through dendroclimatological study in different regions. Cover shows living tree-ring samples being taken in Wulan and Dulan, in the northeastern Tibetan Plateau. Archaeological wood samples of juniper trees are also collected from tombs and combined with data from living trees. Using the entire chronology, a time series of temperature change for the last 2485 years is reconstructed and new regularities of long-term climate change in this region are revealed (see the article by LIU Yu et al. on page 2986).

	2985	ZHOU XiuJi

		The characteristics and regularities of the climate change over the past millennium in China
		Research on global climate change has been at the frontier of the contemporary sciences. Discussion and debate about climate warming in the recent century has attracted the attention of the world. Debate has focused on whether the greenhouse effect produced by human activities is a major factor responsible for modern climate warming and whether the warming trend will persist in the future.
		2011 Vol. 56 (28-29): 2985-2985 [Abstract] ( 90 ) [HTML 1KB] [PDF 377KB] ( 287 )

	2986	LIU Yu, CAI QiuFang, SONG HuiMing, AN ZhiSheng, Hans W. LINDERHOLM

		Amplitudes, rates, periodicities and causes of temperature variations in the past 2485 years and future trends over the central-eastern Tibetan Plateau
		Amplitudes, rates, periodicities, causes and future trends of temperature variations based on tree rings for the past 2485 years on the central-eastern Tibetan Plateau were analyzed. The results showed that extreme climatic events on the Plateau, such as the Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age and 20th Century Warming appeared synchronously with those in other places worldwide. The largest amplitude and rate of temperature change occurred during the Eastern Jin Event (343-425 AD), and not in the late 20th century. There were significant cycles of 1324 a, 800 a, 199 a, 110 a and 2-3 a in the 2485-year temperature series. The 1324 a, 800 a, 199 a and 110 a cycles are associated with solar activity, which greatly affects the Earth surface temperature. The long-term trends (>1000 a) of temperature were controlled by the millennium-scale cycle, and amplitudes were dominated by multi-century cycles. Moreover, cold intervals corresponded to sunspot minimums. The prediction indicated that the temperature will decrease in the future until to 2068 AD and then increase again.
		2011 Vol. 56 (28-29): 2986-2994 [Abstract] ( 318 ) [HTML 1KB] [PDF 749KB] ( 917 )

Santa Baby, Bring Me Coal

2011-12-12T20:05:00.004+11:00

Writes Katie Kieffer in TownHall.com

I want a coal plant for Christmas, and not because I’m a naughty girl. I want lots of coal so I can power up the high-tech toys Santa is bringing me, including an electronic robot maid that cooks and cleans, a 32-meter-wide TV and a modern, coal-fired steam locomotive that allows me to bypass the TSA Grope Squad when I travel cross-country.
OK, so Santa probably won’t be sending a full-size, coal-fired train down my chimney. But, like many of you, I may be getting small electronics of Christmas (or Hanukkah). As millions of us ring in the New Year by adding new gadgets to the power grid, we need to make sure we have ample electricity to fire up our cutting-edge iPads, TVs, sound systems and smartphones. Americans get almost half of their electricity from coal. I think coal is a wonderful source of energy and we need to continue producing it.
This month, the EPA is expected to announce a set of new smog regulations that will clamp down on power companies. “Not so fast,” cautions the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NAERC)—a panel of volunteer industry experts that the government designates to ensure and improve reliability in the electric power grid.

Katie says that President Obama maintains that Americans can wean themselves from coal and oil. Environmental activists are "fighting hard for new regulations that will quickly force the coal industry out of business."

New rules from the EPA that require coal plants to dramatically reduce emissions are causing job losses, coal plants shutting down and the loss of billions of dollars.

NAERC warns that the EPA’s strict regulations will cause up to 600 large power plants across the country to shut down for months while they adopt the new rules and will force numerous older plants to shut down indefinitely because they won’t be able to afford compliance. The result will be power blackouts across the country plus additional power grid instability in drought-prone areas like Texas due to new EPA cooling water rules.

So, the government’s own designated industry experts are warning us that the EPA’s smog rules will have big costs: Soaring energy prices, frequent blackouts and job loss. And the EPA can hardly cite the “public health dangers” of greenhouse gases with a straight face when internal government probes reveal that the EPA has altered, withheld and distorted its scientific findings in order to sell the notion that greenhouse gas emissions harm humans.

The EPA has no alternate plan for the replacement of coal. Like here in Australia the technology has got cleaner over the years.

The wealthier a country becomes, the cleaner it becomes. This month, the Global Carbon Project released a study showing that developing countries like India and China account for the majority (57 percent) of global greenhouse emissions.

Only rich economies can afford to develop the latest clean technology. Before we can afford the costs associated with developing the supposedly cleaner technology behind solar and wind, we need to revive our rapidly deteriorating economy. And by “revive,” I mean continue developing fuels like coal that will prevent power blackouts, create jobs and lower the cost of energy. Minimal smog is a small price to pay for a safe and reliable power grid and a healthy, growing economy

Santa baby, there's one thing I really do need, the deed, to a coal mine, Santa baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight.

Katie Kieffer is a conservative multimedia personality, writer and public speaker who runs KatieKieffer.com.

International Climate Science Coalition Rejects Durban Agreement to set New Greenhouse Gas Emission Targets

2011-12-12T14:18:00.003+11:00

ICSC MEDIA RELEASE ON DURBAN CLIMATE CONFERENCE AGREEMENTS
Attention: News Editors, Political, Science and Environment Reporters

International Climate Science Coalition Rejects Durban Agreement to set New Greenhouse Gas Emission Targets

No “Climate Debt” is owed to developing countries

Ottawa, Canada, December 11, 2011: “Developed nations are not guilty of causing the climate change that developing nations claim they are suffering,” said Tom Harris, executive director of ICSC which is headquartered in Ottawa, Canada. “Climate changes all the time—both warming and cooling—due to natural causes, and there is nothing that we can do to stop it. However, to the degree possible, and considering our economic circumstances, developed nations still have a moral obligation to devote a proportion of their foreign aid to helping the world’s most vulnerable people adapt to natural climate events.”

ICSC chief science advisor, Professor Bob Carter of James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, and author of the best selling book, “Climate: the Counter Consensus” says, “Science has yet to provide unambiguous evidence that problematic, or even measurable, human-caused global warming is occurring. Consequently, any agreements—Durban, Cancun, Copenhagen or Kyoto—to reduce humanity’s greenhouse gas [GHG] emissions are utterly futile. Governments need to recognize that the really dangerous climate hazards are natural events and change, and to prepare more fully to adapt to them when they occur.”

New Zealand-based Terry Dunleavy, ICSC founding chairman and strategic advisor, expands on this point: “The UN’s nonsensical attempts to ‘stop climate change’ have diverted world attention, and hundreds of billions of dollars, away from helping those already being hurt by natural climate variation and weather-related events. The health and wellbeing of people suffering today is infinitely more important than the remote possibility that our GHG emissions might threaten those yet to be born.”
"We urge citizens from across the political spectrum to take a more mature perspective, one that is based on real science, engineering and economics, not political correctness,” asserts ICSC energy issues advisor, Bryan Leyland of Auckland, New Zealand. “Whether you are socialist or capitalist, industrialist or environmentalist, no one wants to pour money down the drain. Yet, that is exactly what is happening as a result of the global warming scare. Expensive and ineffective alternative energy projects such as wind turbines and solar cells are receiving massive government support, in the belief that they will reduce GHG emissions which are wrongly blamed as a cause of dangerous global warming. Meanwhile, the conventional power sources that we rely on for our very survival, let alone the economic progress we need to create a better world, are deliberately starved of support. This is a very dangerous situation.”

ICSC science advisor Professor Ole Humlum, of the Institute of Geosciences, University of Oslo, explains, "Today’s climate debate is essentially about the relative influence of human-produced carbon dioxide (CO₂) versus natural climate variations. In my mind, there is no doubt that the data available clearly show that the natural variations are the dominant of these two factors, including during the last few years. The net temperature effect of our CO₂ emissions appears to be insignificant.”

Mr. Harris concluded: “As is well demonstrated by the Nongovernmental International Climate Panel on Climate Change [www.nipccreport.org], warming alarmism is a not based on a correct interpretation of the science. The climate scare has largely been fuelled by computer-generated misrepresentations that bear little relationship to modern climate or to its observed history.”
As nearly all independent observers have now concluded, a new approach is needed to address climate change. The best (indeed, self-evident) Plan B is that nations should prepare for and adapt to the onset of damaging climate-related events and change as and when they occur.

Cartoons by Josh

2011-12-11T08:54:00.001+11:00

Al Gore's Inconvenient (hidden) truth.

Al Gore Says: "One thing that kind of jumps out at you is -do they ever fit together? The relationship is very complicated."

The complication is that Al tries to show that the rise in temperature is caused by the rise in CO2 when in fact it is the reverse is true. This is shown by the graphs Al uses.

The November AMO index goes negative, first time since 1996

2011-12-11T08:15:00.002+11:00

Joe D’Aleo reports via email that

the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) Index

has gone negative for this past month,

see the graph below:

Source:http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/correlation/amon.us.data
This is the first time the November value has been negative since about 1996. It appears the down cycle has started. This portends a cooler period, especially winters.

Posted on December 9, 2011 by Anthony Watts

Carbon Tax drives Rates Rise.

2011-12-09T11:53:00.000+11:00

Will you be compensated for the rise in council rates?

Vikki Campion in the Daily Telegraph reports:

Suburban surcharge - carbon tax hits ratepayers

THE carbon tax will hit ratepayers from July next year with councils lumping a surcharge on the annual rates bill.
Councils have long warned they would be forced to lift rates because of the tax but the impost has come earlier than expected - from July 1, 2012.

Independent economic regulator IPART has granted permission to every council in NSW a 0.4 per cent surcharge on top of the 3.2 per cent accounted for in productivity testing and local government cost index.

The IPART documents admit there was "considerable uncertainty about how quickly the carbon price will flow into various prices in the economy".
A breakdown of council expenses over this year reveals the biggest costs for local governments has been fuel from high oil prices and the steep costs of renewable energy schemes mandated by federal and state governments.

In total, it will mean a rate increase of more than 9 per cent over three years, including an increase of more than 3 per cent last year.

No warming signal found in study of frozen ground changes over past ~ 20 years

2011-12-09T09:31:00.002+11:00

TiZeta

From Hockey Shtick:

A paper published today in Environmental Research Letters examines a 71 year history of seasonally frozen ground changes in Eurasia. The paper finds freeze depths decreased (indicative of warming) between the late 1960's to early 1990's, but that "from that point forward, likely through at least 2008, no change is evident." The paper finds the observed changes linked to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), a natural climate cycle, rather than the uncorrelated steady rise in 'greenhouse gases.'

ABSTRACT

In recent decades, significant changes have occurred in high-latitude areas, particularly to the cryosphere. Sea ice extent and thickness have declined. In land areas, glaciers and ice sheets are experiencing negative mass balance changes, and there is substantial regional snow cover variability. Subsurface changes are also occurring in northern soils. This study focuses on these changes in the soil thermal regime, specifically the seasonally frozen ground region of Eurasia. We use a database of soil temperatures at 423 stations and estimate the maximum annual soil freezing depth at the 387 sites located on seasonally frozen ground. Evaluating seasonal freeze depth at these sites for 1930–2000 reveals a statistically significant trend of −4.5 cm/decade and a net change of −31.9 cm. Interdecadal variability is also evident such that there was no trend until the late 1960s, after which seasonal freeze depths decreased significantly until the early 1990s. From that point forward, likely through at least 2008, no change is evident. These changes in the soil thermal regime are most closely linked with the freezing index, but also mean annual air temperatures and snow depth. Antecedent conditions from the previous warm season do not appear to play a large role in affecting the subsequent cold season's seasonal freeze depths. The strong decrease in seasonal freeze depths during the 1970s to 1990s was likely the result of strong atmospheric forcing from the North Atlantic Oscillation during that time period.

Environmental Research Letters Volume 6 Number 4
Oliver W Frauenfeld and Tingjun Zhang 2011 Environ. Res. Lett. 6 044024 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/6/4/044024

h/t Marc Morano.

Will Tim Ball be our wrecking Ball?

2011-12-08T14:17:00.002+11:00

photo-illustration by John O'Sullivan

Upcoming trial- Mann v Ball

See LINK John O'Sullivan in Climate Change Despatch.

Facing each other is Plaintiff, Dr. Michael Mann (he of ‘hockey stick’ graph infamy) representing so-called UN ‘consensus’ climate science. Mann claims his work proves humans are dangerously warming the planet.

Defendant, retired Canadian climatologist, Dr. Timothy Ball believes Mann was a key player in the Climategate scandal and has hidden his dodgy tree-ring data for over 13 years to cover up fakery in the numbers. Mann and his ilk are not only responsible for scaring the bejesus out of our kids but of being a part of a bigger plot involving population control and wealth re-distribution; none of which is good for your family or mine.

See also: Tim: They're trampling on the truth
Tim Ball Interviewed

Sky-diving for Scientific Truth

2011-12-07T16:57:00.000+11:00

Lord Monckton gives the thumbs up

At Durban COP17, Lord Christopher Monckton and CFACT director Craig Rucker with Climate Depot's Marc Morano jump into history to tell the world that the science is not settled; there is no consensus.

Pachauri - the Green Monster

2011-12-07T03:58:00.004+11:00

Cartoons by Josh

Donna Laframboise reveals that Pachauri once again has gone outside the supposed impartiality of his role as the IPCC head and is an advocate for the green campaign.

But here's the part in the press release that makes my main point:

Dr. RK Pachauri, Chancellor, TERI University had a special video-recorded message for the participants encouraging them to be the torch bearers of the green campaign. [bold in the original, italics added]

This isn't a matter of putting words into anyone's mouth. It isn't a matter of interpretation.

This press release was issued by an educational institution that Pachauri heads. It reveals that, during his day job, Pachauri encourages people to be green torch bearers.

Since this man also chairs the IPCC - a body that is supposed to be impartial with respect to environmental questions - this is totally improper.

The IPCC, therefore, is not a scientific organization. It is not committed to keeping an open mind.

Rather, for the past decade it has been led by someone who is busily raising the next generation of green torch bearers.

Donna has previously released a great book exposing the IPCC's lack of objectivity. The Delinquent Teenager - available HERE.

Read Donna's whole post on No Frakking Consensus - Pachauri's Green Torchbearers.

Global warming a hoax for political gain - Professor Larry Bell

2011-12-06T16:45:00.000+11:00

AP Photo/Discovery Channel/BBC

Michele Dagan writing in the Palm Beach Daily News:

Presenting the antithesis to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, college professor Larry Bell describes the global warming crisis as something that was manufactured for political gain.
“The climate issue is one of politics, not of science,” Bell said.
Author of Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax, Bell was the opening speaker Thursday for the Palm Beach Round Table’s 2011-12 season.

Contrast this with the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry who cancelled a presentation by the Oregon's chapter of the American Meteorological Society at the last minute. (Oregonlive.com report by Scott Learn)

Steve Pierce, president of the Oregon chapter, emailed a response late Monday: "The Oregon Chapter of the American Meteorological Society is disappointed that the
November 29th meeting on global warming will not continue as originally planned. While we understand that OMSI has reservations related to our meeting's topic on global warming, our chapter has not taken a stance on this issue."

Gordon Fulks, a local physicist, was one of the scheduled speakers. He said the society tried to round up speakers with opposing viewpoints to join the panel, but they refused.

The presentation would have come with disclaimers beforehand that neither OMSI nor the American Meteorological Society endorsed the panel's view, Fulks said.

This might turn you on your head

2011-12-06T13:25:00.001+11:00

For what it's worth, Spero News reports that

Spectacular magnetic pole reversal coming soon

Scientists understand that Earth's magnetic field has flipped its polarity many times over the millennia. In other words, if you were alive about 800,000 years ago, and facing what we call north with a magnetic compass in your hand, the needle would point to 'south.' This is because a magnetic compass is calibrated based on Earth's poles. The N-S markings of a compass would be 180 degrees wrong if the polarity of today's magnetic field were reversed. Many doomsday theorists have tried to take this natural geological occurrence and suggest it could lead to Earth's destruction. But would there be any dramatic effects?

The answer, from the geologic and fossil records we have from hundreds of past magnetic polarity reversals, seems to be 'no.'

Reversals are the rule, not the exception. Earth has settled in the last 20 million years into a pattern of a pole reversal about every 200,000 to 300,000 years, although it has been more than twice that long since the last reversal. A reversal happens over hundreds or thousands of years, and it is not exactly a clean back flip. Magnetic fields morph and push and pull at one another, with multiple poles emerging at odd latitudes throughout the process.

Scientists estimate reversals have happened at least hundreds of times over the past three billion years. And while reversals have happened more frequently in "recent" years, when dinosaurs walked Earth a reversal was more likely to happen only about every one million years.