Daily Archives: June 14, 2011

Scottish Sceptic on the warmists’ dilemma

The dilemma of a warmist
Posted on June 14, 2011 by Scottish Sceptic

For years we were told: “nothing other than manmade warming can explain the late 20th century rise in temperature”. To which the sensible sceptic asked: “what about natural variation”. To which the alarmist replied: “there is no such thing” or if they were more informed “the hockey stick proves that natural variation is too small and could not affect global temperature”.

Now of course it hasn’t warmed for over a decade and there’s only so long that you can hide such an obvious fact before even the most gullible start asking: why? So how do they explain this?

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Roger Pielke Sr. with an update on ocean heat content

2011 Update Of The Comparison Of Upper Ocean Heat Content Changes With The GISS Model Predictions
UPDATE: Bob Tisdale has posted on this also (see GISS OHC Model Trends: One Question Answered, Another Uncovered]


source: http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/

On February 9, 2009 I posted

Update On A Comparison Of Upper Ocean Heat Content Changes With The GISS Model Predictions

Bob Tisdale has alerted me to an error in my computation of ocean heat content in Joules from that post where I used a conversion from Watts per meter squared to Joules per decade with respect to the upper ocean that was missing a multiplier of 0.7 to account for the fractional area of the ocean with respect to the total heating of the climate system in Joules.

I am reposting the relevant part of the 2009 post with the correction and updating this post with the latest information. It has now been at least since 2003 that there has not be significant heating of the upper ocean. (Roger Pielke Sr.)

Breaking hockey sticks

Climate helped drive Vikings from Greenland

For the first time temperatures over the last 5,600 years have been reassembled from the inhabited area of Greenland. (Other estimates were from ice-cores that are far inland.) (Jo Nova)

New Refutation of Mann’s ‘Hockey Stick’ Science: Medieval Warming Prosperity Collapsed Due To Devastation of Rapid Climate Cooling

Read here. In peer-reviewed research published by the influential Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), scientists reconstructed 5,600 years of climate conditions in Greenland. This new reconstruction confirmed the warm and optimum climate conditions of the Medieval Warming and the rapid onset of the frigid Little Ice Age. (C3 Headlines)

Hmm… whether human actions can and will alter climate is debatable but at lest moving on from CO2 is a start

Soot, smog curbs quick way to combat warming: U.N. study

Tighter limits on soot and smog provide a quick and easy way to fight global warming while protecting human health and raising crop output, a U.N. study said on Tuesday.

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About that wonderful carbon market…

Energy firms fear “tremendous decline” in CO2 price

The Europe Union’s carbon market could be flooded with excess pollution permits over the next decade, deflating prices and undermining investment in green energy, five EU energy companies warned on Tuesday. (Reuters)

UK business lobby wants CO2 tax cut for industry

British energy intensive businesses must be exempted from paying a carbon tax to avoid putting them at a competitive disadvantage, the head of Britain’s largest business lobby, CBI, said on Tuesday. (Reuters)

Safe? Who cares? It’s expensive and unnecessary, in fact, pointless.

Shell says must explain CO2 storage better

Oil giant Shell says that it is working to explain to Canadians that underground carbon storage is safe, following rejection in the Netherlands. (Reuters)

There is no value in this nonsense.

CAGW scammers coming up with evermore ridiculous claims down-under

Column – Global warming saves lives, so why don’t they say so?

AGAIN I must ask: if global warming is so clear a threat, why all these deceits?

You see, the Gillard Government and its paid alarmists this week stooped to even more despicable lows to panic you.

Take Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery, who used to claim we’d never again get dam-filling rains and that Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide could run out of water by … oops, already.

This week he was at it again, insisting global warming was already drowning some of our islands.

“There are islands in the Torres Strait that are already being evacuated and are feeling the impacts,” he claimed.

Oh, really, Tim? Which ones? When?

In fact, sea levels have dropped over the past few years. (Andrew Bolt Blog)

Carbon [dioxide] farce down-under

Gillard’s “signature issue” is putting a tax on “climate changing carbon” (she means carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use) and said issue is killing her political career and her party’s chance of reelection any time in the next decade (century?).

Voters desert Prime Minister Julia Gillard over carbon tax
By Phillip Hudson

ONLY 30 per cent of voters are satisfied with Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s performance, according to the latest Newspoll.

And Labor’s core support is lower today than it was when Kevin Rudd was axed as PM almost a year ago.

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The gas part is OK, it’s the government intervention that will screw everything up

A Bill To Make Soros Richer

Rules: A bill encouraging the use of natural-gas-powered vehicles will give the EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gases while rewarding the Democratic left’s patron saint.

We like natural gas. It’s the cleanest-burning fossil fuel, the U.S. has lots of it and, thanks to technologies such as hydraulic fracturing (aka “fracking”), we can get even more of it from the vast shale formations that dot the country.

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Bachmann calls EPA “job-killing organization” but I don’t think that’s near strong enough

Bachmann: Hit EPA regulations with ‘mother of all repeal bills’
By Ben Geman

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), the newly minted White House contender, used Monday night’s GOP debate to call for clipping the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) wings.

Bachmann called for limiting government’s scope by passing the “mother of all repeal bills” to target “job-killing regulations.”

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Terence Corcoran kicks off Junk Science Week with EWG the obvious choice

Junk Science Week: Lipstick, apples & sperm counts
By Terence Corcoran

Apples contaminated by pesticides. Lipstick filled with heavy metals. Carcinogens in the water. Sperm counts that don’t add up. Welcome to our 13th annual Junk Science Week event, dedicated to exposing the scientists, NGOs, activists, politicians, journalists, media outlets, cranks and quacks who manipulate science data to achieve their objectives. Our standard definition is that junk science occurs when scientific facts are distorted, risk is exaggerated and the science adapted and warped by politics and ideology to serve another agenda.

We could make junk science a daily feature, given the frequency with which the media makes a killing off scientists and activists who claim that one thing or another may be killing us. On Monday, the big-name news organizations quickly spread a public relations release from the Washington-based Environmental Working Group (EWG) portraying apples as a health risk: “Apples top list for pesticide contamination,” said CBS News in a typical headline.

The EWG is a professional scaremongering outfit that runs a number of lucrative fundraising campaigns (cosmetics, food, energy, resources) that spread alarm and then ask for donations to keep up the fight. (Financial Post)

Dubious pesticide claim du jour

My immediate problem is that they are talking about fat-soluble compounds in a small group of Spanish women but don’t seem to account of mothers’ body mass or lifestyle. Were the smaller infants merely the progeny of smaller or leaner women or perhaps field workers whose activity levels during pregnancy led to increased wasting (the more body fat lost during pregnancy the higher will be serum levels of fat-soluble compounds…)? I’m sure we’ll hear “further study (and grants) required”.

Prenatal pesticide exposure tied to birth size

Exposure to even moderate amounts of certain pesticides during pregnancy may affect infants’ birth size, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that among nearly 500 newborns whose umbilical cord blood was tested for pesticide residues, those with higher levels tended to be smaller at birth. (Reuters Health)

This will upset antivaxxers and immunity freeloaders but too bad

Those who refuse to contribute to society’s immunity and who actively corrupt its effectiveness simply don’t deserve the protection of that immunity.

Immunity: when it’s smart to go with the herd
With once rare infectious diseases making a worrying comeback, we must stop permitting parents’ ‘philosophical exemptions’
Henry Miller and Gilbert Ross
guardian.co.uk, Monday 13 June 2011 21.00 BST

Infectious diseases that used to claim the lives of one in six children before their fifth year are making an alarming comeback in the US. The culprits are parents who should know better – and the politicians who bend over backwards to accommodate them.

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CO2 Science Volume 14 Number 24: 15 June 2011

New Major Report
Estimates of Global Food Production in the Year 2050 — Will We Produce Enough to Adequately Feed the World?: Government leaders and policy makers should take notice of the findings of this important new analysis of the world food situation; for doing what climate alarmists claim is needed to fight global warming will surely consign earth’s human population to a world of woe, while doing next to nothing in terms of altering the current warm phase of the planet’s surface temperature.

Sixth International Conference on Climate Change
The 2011 Sixth International Conference on Climate change, organized by the Heartland Institute, will take place in Washington DC, June 30- July 1 at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. We encourage you to attend this event that is co-sponsored by our Center. Details on registering can be obtained by clicking here.

Editorial
Is There a Need for a More Sustainable Agriculture?: Read on … and decide for yourself.

Journal Reviews
Rainfall in Zimbabwe: How did it vary over the 20th century?

The Medieval Warm Period at Lake Joux, Swiss Jura Mountains: How does its peak temperature compare with that of the Current Warm Period?

Coralline Algal Growth Reveals History of North Atlantic Climate: And it indicates that the supposedly record heat of the late 1990s/early 2000s may well have been eclipsed in … guess when?

Global Warming and the Survival Rate of Juvenile Hokkaido Chum Salmon: How does the former impact the latter?

Tropical Reef Corals Responding to Warming: Are they dying out or moving on (as in poleward)?

Surviving Global Warming by Migrating Mere Meters … or Even Millimeters: It can be done.

Ocean Acidification Database
The latest addition of peer-reviewed data archived to our database of marine organism responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment is Great Spider Crab [Hyas araneus]. To access the entire database, click here.

Plant Growth Database
Our latest results of plant growth responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment obtained from experiments described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature are: Alfalfa (Sanz-Saez et al., 2010) and Cottonwood(Tissue and Lewis, 2010).

Medieval Warm Period Project
Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 983 individual scientists from 566 research institutions in 43 different countries … and counting! This issue’s Medieval Warm Period Record comes from Lake Skardtjorna, Western Spitsbergen, Svalbard, Norway. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project’s database, click here.

World Temperatures Database
Back by popular demand and upgraded to allow patrons more choices to plot and view the data, we reintroduce the World Temperatures section of our website. Here, users may plot temperatures for the entire globe or regions of the globe. A newly added feature allows patrons the ability to plot up to six independent datasets on the same graph. Try it today. World Temperatures Database.

Major Report
Carbon Dioxide and Earth’s Future: Pursuing the Prudent Path: Ten of the more ominous model-based predictions of what will occur in response to continued business-as-usual anthropogenic CO2 emissions are compared against real-world observations. (co2science.org)

“Least stupid” is not the same as “smart”

Least stupid approach is still stupid
Terry McCran

THE Productivity Commission report did not prove the carbon tax was good policy, far less that Australia must implement it.

All it did was show that if we are intent on attacking the foundation of our prosperity, the carbon tax and/or an emissions trading scheme would be the least stupid way of doing it. (Herald Sun)