Daily Archives: March 21, 2011

They’re starting to get it, a bit…

Granted, they start in error with the PC statement that “global warming is clearly affecting plants and animals” – no it isn’t, only local conditions can do that and there’s no evidence plants and/or animals generally are being affected by the globe’s estimated 0.5-1.0 °C warming since the Little Ice Age.

They really bomb with ”Yes, global warming is happening. Yes, it is caused by human activities. And yes, we’ve clearly shown that species are impacted by global warming on a global scale” but at least they recover somewhat with “However, research funding is limited, and the scientists feel it should be directed more toward studies on species adaptations and conservation of compromised species rather than trying to figure what percent of each species’ decline is due to rising greenhouse gases. One reason is that, from the perspective of wildlife, it doesn’t matter what proportion of climate-change impacts are caused by humans. ”A changing climate is a changing climate, irrespective of its cause,” write the scientists.”

They are a long way from realizing “global warming” is irrelevant to all intent and purpose but… baby steps

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Energy, political restrictions and narrowing options

Pump prices may put Obama in peril

Political opposition to use his position restricting production against him in 2012

Consumers’ pain at the gas pump will likely be shared by President Obama at the polls in 2012 and could cost him a second term unless energy prices take a drastic turn for the better in the next 18 months.

“Energy prices should be the Achilles’ heel for Obama,” said Scott Wheeler, executive director of a conservative political action committee.

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Prestige? Commercial opportunities? Not from CCS

Slow progress for Scottish carbon capture

Scottish Power risks being overtaken by US companies in the race to build the first full-scale demonstration of carbon-capture and storage (CCS) at Longannet in Fife, experts have warned.

They blame Government delays for the threatened loss of prestige and commercial opportunities that would accompany a global first in this technology. (Herald)

Sorry fellas but undertaking CCS is the dumbest, costliest activity in Christendom, save actually attempting carbon constraint in the first place.

Throwing a FiT and other turbine tribulations

Throwing a FiT

The eco-dream of renewable energy is turning into a nightmare as the true cost of subsidizing solar and wind generation becomes clear.

The UK is the latest government to slash solar subsidies for large-scale projects, from 30p per KWh to 8.5p.  In USD at today’s currency rates that’s a reduction from $0.49 to $0.14.  Already large-scale producers are complaining they will not be able to continue ‘investing’ in solar projects.  And by investing they mean sucking the life from the economy and taxpayers.

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There isn’t much stratospheric H2O but now there might be a little more of it

One part per million may not sound much but given there is so little to begin with the trend may be significant – if it’s real – and if it’s sustained

Stratospheric water vapor increase at Colorado site

Water vapor in the atmosphere is responsible for a significant portion of the greenhouse effect, and even small changes in the upper troposphere or lower stratosphere can have a large effect on climate. A new analysis of balloon-borne water vapor measurements using frost point hygrometers over Boulder, Colorado, shows that stratospheric water vapor has increased over the past 30 years. Hurst et al. break the long measurement record into four discrete time periods and determined the water vapor trends in each period for five 2-kilometer-thick stratospheric layers 16 km to 26 km above the ground.

They find that, on average, stratospheric water vapor increased by about 1 part per million by volume (27 percent) over the past 30 years, though there were many shorter-term variations in the record. Water vapor levels increased during 1980 to 1989 and 1990 to 2000, decreased from 2001 to 2005, and then increased again after 2005. The authors find that, at most, 30 percent of the observed water vapor increases can be attributed to greater amounts of methane oxidation in the stratosphere. The 2001 to 2005 decrease in midlatitude water vapor has been linked to observations of anomalously low tropopause temperatures in the tropics, but, to date, no connection between the observed water vapor increases and tropical tropopause temperatures has been found despite ongoing efforts.

Source:
Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres, doi:10.1029/2010JD015065, 2011
http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2010JD015065

Did we say next week? We meant 50 years or so

Snows of Kilimanjaro defy global warming predictions

AMHERST – If there is a poster child for global warming, it may be the vanishing snows of Kilimanjaro, which were predicted to disappear as early as 2015 in a widely-publicized report a decade ago.

However, the famed snowcap is stubbornly persisting on the African peak and may not fully vanish for another 50 years, according to a University of Massachusetts scientist who had a hand in the prediction.

The 2001 forecast was indirectly part of key evidence for global warming offered during the 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” which warned of the threats of rising global temperatures. In it, former vice president Al Gore stated, “Within a decade, there will be no more snows of Kilimanjaro” due to warming temperatures.

“Unfortunately, we made the prediction. I wish we hadn’t,” says Douglas R. Hardy, a UMass geoscientist who was among 11 co-authors of the paper in the journal Science that sparked the pessimistic Kilimanjaro forecast. “None of us had much history working on that mountain, and we didn’t understand a lot of the complicated processes on the peak like we do now.” (Stan Freeman, MassLive.com)

Lord Deben propagandizes; heat waves will wave and snails that live in hot springs die of warm weather… or something

Climate change doubters are endangering our common future

THE battle against climate change in Europe is led from the Right. David Cameron, Conservative Prime Minister in Britain, President Nicolas Sarkozy in France, and Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany. All of them have bipartisan support from opposition centre-Left and Labour parties.

If there is an issue, it is not about the reality of global warming but the best way to tackle it. We are all signed up to cutting our emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, and we have to do between 25 per cent and 30 per cent by the end of this decade. (The Australian)

Deadly heatwaves will be more frequent in coming decades, say scientists

‘Mega-heatwaves’ like the one estimated to have killed tens of thousands in western Europe in 2003 will become up to 10 times more likely over the next 40 years, a study suggests

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Could be a bleak year for climate alarmists

NOAA Forecasts “Well Above 50%” Chance That La Nina Will Continue Until Next Year

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Steven Goddard

This is a complete disaster for alarmists.

Stay tuned for the next update (by April 9th, or earlier) to see where the MEI will be heading next. While La Niña conditions are guaranteed well into 2011, it remains to be seen whether it will indeed last into 2012, as discussed seven months ago on this page. I believe the odds for a two-year event remain well above 50%, notwithstanding the possibility of temporary weakening during boreal summer. During the next few months, the MEI may very well stay stronger than Niño 3.4 since the latter is not normalized to account for weaker variability during this time of year.

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/klaus.wolter/MEI/

(Steven Goddard, Real Science)

Jo Nova on why we must argue the science and the decline in the IPCC

Yes, it IS about the science

Behind-the-scenes I’ve heard the line this “isn’t about the science”. I said that myself back in 2007: it’s not about the science, it’s about power and money. But it’s a dangerous meme. In the long run, it IS about the science.

Many new folk are appearing on the anti-carbon tax team, and here’s the weird thing for we seasoned skeptics, some of these oppose the tax, yet “believe” the science (?!) “It’s too hard” they say. They seem to think if we just beat the tax, we can ignore the reason the tax is supposedly there in the first place.

The science is the whole official reason for the tax, and if we don’t force the crowds to notice the corruption, the cheating, and the way science is exploited, then we are asking to be bludgeoned with it again. We are letting the most outrageous scam-meisters leave the room with their reputations intact and asking to be victims of the next invented crisis.

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Oops! “Missing heat” problem just got worse

Ocean Heat Content Adjustments: Follow-up and More Missing Heat

Guest post by Craig Loehle

On June 2, 2009 at WUWT in Anomalous Spike in Ocean Heat Content I commented on what looked like a data discontinuity in ocean heat content data. In this follow-up post, I show that the recent update to the OHC data at NOAA adjusts the recent data down, as I suggested nearly 2 years ago (though I doubt I had anything to do with it). The original post is in italics followed by my update plus an update on trends. (WUWT)

Image links to change notification: Changes to heat content estimates are due to three factors 1. Changes due to data additions and data quality control, both at NODC and by originators. Substantial quality control has been carried out by the Argo community on the profiling floats, mainly to correct pressure offsets. A substantial amount of data for recent years has been added to the analysis. 2. Changes due to switch of our base climatology. The website and 2009 paper used an interim (L09) climatology (between WOA05 and WOA09) incorporating XBT corrections and a mean of five decadal climatologies to remove temporal bias. These changes were formally completed with additional data and quality control in WOA09. 3. Changes due to revised XBT bias calculations. With additional XBT and CTD data, the bias calculations were improved. This is an ongoing process, but as we receive less new data from earlier time periods, this recalculation will mostly affect more recent years.

Global SST Update through mid-March 2011

It has been awhile since I provided an update to the global average sea surface temperature plot, shown below through yesterday (March 17, 2011). (Roy W Spencer)

Roger Pielke Sr. comments on some real climate science

Comments On The Paper “Was there A Basis For Anticipating The 2010 Russian Heat wave?” By Dole Et Al 2011

There is a new paper that makes an important finding regarding the causes of the 2010 Russian heat wave (h/t to Attribution and the Russian heat wave).

The paper is

Dole, R., M. Hoerling, J. Perlwitz, J. Eischeid, P. Pegion, T. Zhang, X.-W. Quan, and D. Murray (2011), Was there a basis for anticipating the 2010 Russian heat wave? Geophys. Res. Lett., doi:10.1029/2010GL046582, in press.


New Paper “A Dampened Land Use Change Climate Response Towards The Tropics” By Van Der Molen Et Al 2011

There is a new paper that further examines the role of land use change on the climate. It is

M.K. van der Molen, B.J.J.M. van den Hurk and W. Hazeleger (2011): A dampened land use change climate response towards the tropics. Climate Dynamics, open access, online first, DOI: 10.1007/s00382-011-1018-0. (pielkeclimatesci)