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Sunday, December 30, 2007

Global Temperaturers 2,500 BC - 2007 AD

75 major temperature swings in past 4,500 years per Harris-Mann study.

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Heat Island Effect

Website link of weather station sites with photographs of locations

Friday, December 28, 2007

Long Range Weather Trends

Harris-Mann Climatologists

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Antarctic Trek Snowed Out by "Storm of the Century" Twenty years-worth of snow in ten days

28 Dec 07

A Philadelphia main line entrepreneur who set out with a partner on a trek across the Antarctic to the South Pole had to abandon his effort after days of crippling snow made the situation too dangerous.

After Todd Carmichael's partner became injured shortly after the 700 mile trek began on November 28th, he had a decision to make: should he leave on the rescue plane with his partner or stay? Carmichael decided to stay: "I put a good five days into it and got a day and a half lead over the world record, and then the storm of the century. For the next 10 days, I walked completely blinded in a white out. It's a continent that receives about an eighth of an inch of snow each year. And I got 24 inches in 10 days."

That's about 20 years of snow all in one shot. Add to that the fact Carmichael was pulling a sled of gear weighing 250 pounds, he lost 25 pounds during his odyssey.

See entire article by KYW Newsradio's Michelle Durham
Thanks to Ed Allison for this link

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

A New Low in Climate Science: The Hockey Stick

The `Hockey Stick': A New Low in Climate Science

by John L. Daly

The evidence from the `exhibits' is overwhelming. From all corners of the world, the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age clearly shows up in a variety of proxy indicators, proxies more representative of temperature than the inadequate tree rings used by Michael Mann.

What is disquieting about the `Hockey Stick' is not Mann's presentation of it originally. As with any paper, it would sink into oblivion if found to be flawed in any way. Rather it was the reaction of the greenhouse industry to it - the chorus of approval, the complete lack of critical evaluation of the theory, the blind acceptance of evidence which was so flimsy. The industry embraced the theory for one reason and one reason only - it told them exactly what they wanted to hear.

Proponents of the `Hockey Stick' should recall George Orwell's `Nineteen Eighty-Four', a black SF drama in which his fictional totalitarian regime used `memory holes' to re-invent past history [22]. In this age of instant communication, there is no `memory hole' big enough to overturn the historical truth about the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age.

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

More Evidence for No Net Warming the Last 70 Years

By meteorologist Joseph D’Aleo, CCM

25 Dec 07

Data from 1221 climate stations shows little (0.21F) in the way of net warming since the last cyclical peak in 1930.
CO2 Science has been doing a weekly plot of climate stations showing the cyclical nature of the changes and the lack of warming in most stations. This month the station is Binghamton, NY, which actually has shown a cooling of 2.67F over the period.

Joseph D’Aleo was the first Director of Meteorology at The Weather Channel and former chairman of the American Meteorological Society’s Committee on Weather Analysis and Forecasting

Monday, December 24, 2007

co2 Parts per Million Measurements from Mauna Loa Observatory

Keep in mind that the unit of measure is ppmv (parts per million by volume). It is clear that CO2 is a very small portion of the atmosphere. Among the so called greenhouse gases, it is a very distant second to H2O. And yet, some people portray CO2 as if it had almost mythical powers of dominating climate around the globe.

While temperatures have gone up and down, the parts per milion by volume increased from 315 to 375 between 1960 and 2003....that's parts per MILLLION!

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Man-Made Global Warming: 10 Questions

by Pat Sajak

Posted: 12/20/2007

The subject of man-made global warming is almost impossible to discuss without a descent into virulent name-calling (especially on the Internet, where anonymity breeds a special kind of vicious reaction to almost any social or political question), but I’ll try anyway. I consider myself to be relatively well-read on the matter, and I’ve still come down on the skeptical side, because there are aspects of the issue that don’t make a lot of sense to me. Though I confess to have written none-too-reverentially on the subject, I want to try to put all that aside and ask ten serious questions to which I have been unable to find definitive answers:

1. What is the perfect temperature?

If we are to embark on a lifestyle-altering quest to lower the temperature (or at least minimize its rise), what is our goal? I don’t ask this flippantly. Can we demonstrate that one setting on the global thermostat is preferable over another? If so, what is it, and how do we get there? And, once there, how do we maintain it? Will we ever have to “heat things up” again if it drops below that point?

2. Just what is the average temperature of the earth?

At any one time there are temperature extremes all over the planet. How do we come up with an average, and how do those variations fit in with our desire to slow global warming?

3. What factors have led to global warming in the past, and how do we know they aren’t the causes of the current warming trend?

Again, I don’t ask this in a judgmental way. There is no argument that warming cycles (or cooling, for that matter) have been a part of earth’s history. Why are we so sure this one is different?

4. Why is there such a strong effort to stifle discussion and dissent?

I’m always troubled by arguments that begin, “Everybody agrees...” or “Everyone knows...” In fact, there is a good deal of dissent in the scientific world about the theory of man-made global warming. A large (and growing) segment of those who study such things are questioning some of the basic premises of the theory. Why should there be anything wrong with that? Again, this is a big deal, and we should have the best information and opinion from the best minds.

5. Why are there such dramatically different warnings about the effects of man-made global warming?

Predictions of 20-foot rises in ocean levels have given way to talk of a few inches over time. In many cases, those predictions are less than the rises of the past few centuries. Whatever the case, why the scare tactics?

6. Are there potential benefits to global warming?

Again, I don’t ask this mockingly. Would a warmer climate in some areas actually improve living conditions? Would such improvement (health, crop production, lifestyle) balance any negative impact from the phenomenon?

7. Should such drastic changes in public policy be based on a “what if?” proposition?

There are some who say we can’t afford to wait, and, even if there’s some doubt, we should move ahead with altering the way we live. While there are good arguments for changing some of our environmental policies, should they be based on “what it?”

8. What will be the impact on the people of the world if we change the way we live based on man-made global warming concerns?

Nothing happens in a vacuum; there are always unintended consequences to our actions. For example, if we were to dramatically reduce our need for international oil, what happens to the economies of the Middle East and the populations that rely on oil income? There are thousands of other implications, some good and some bad. What are they? Shouldn’t we be thinking about them and talking about them?

9. How will we measure our successes?

Is the measuring stick going to be temperature, sea level, number of annual hurricanes, rainfall, or a combination of all those things? Again, do we have a goal in mind? What happens when we get there?

10. How has this movement gained such momentum?

We’ve faced environmental issues throughout our history, but it’s difficult to remember one which has gained such “status” in such a short time. To a skeptic, there seems to be a religious fervor that makes one wary. A gradual “ramping down” of the dire predictions has not led to a diminution of the doomsday rhetoric. Are these warning signs that the movement has become more of an activist cause than a scientific reality?

Just asking.

Mr. Sajak is the host of "Wheel of Fortune" and PatSajak.com.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Holes in Global-Warming Theory Put Mitigation Effort at Risk

• NEW STATESMAN --

12/19/07

Has global warming stopped? The Earth's temperatures have held steady since 2001, says a veteran science writer, a pattern that raises questions about the intense efforts under way to stem the impact of greenhouse gases.

What is indisputable, says David Whitehouse on the Web site of the New Statesman, a generally left-leaning British weekly, is that the amount of gases such as carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere has been increasing steadily for decades as humans burn more fossil fuels.

Scientists believe those gases absorb outgoing infrared radiation from the Earth's surface, causing heat to be retained. In principle, that produces the greenhouse effect that is the fundamental theory behind global warming.

The world's temperatures rose sharply from 1980 to 1998 but have leveled off since then, according to Mr. Whitehouse's reading of U.S. and United Kingdom government statistics. In other words, he says, global warming has ceased.

While scientists have proposed a variety of theories for the recent plateau in temperature, those explanations are inadequate, says Mr. Whitehouse, who spent 18 years covering the sciences at the British Broadcasting Corporation and holds a doctorate in astrophysics. The working hypothesis of global warming remains a good one, says Mr. Whitehouse, but it doesn't fully explain what is occurring in the Earth's atmosphere. "Something else is happening and it is vital that we find out what" or risk wasting billions of dollars on the wrong solutions.

Mr. Whitehouse's observations didn't go over well with many New Statesman readers. While a few posted comments to the Web site applauding his skepticism, others said factors such as melting glaciers and rising sea levels had to be taken into account. They also criticized Mr. Whitehouse for drawing conclusions based on a short time frame.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Heat From Earth's Magma Contributing To Melting Of Greenland Ice

ScienceDaily (2007-12-18) -- Scientists have discovered what they think may be another reason why Greenland's ice is melting: a thin spot in Earth's crust is enabling underground magma to heat the ice. They have found at least one "hotspot" in the northeast corner of Greenland -- just below a site where an ice stream was recently discovered.

The researchers don't yet know how warm the hotspot is. But if it is warm enough to melt the ice above it even a little, it could be lubricating the base of the ice sheet and enabling the ice to slide more rapidly out to sea. “The behavior of the great ice sheets is an important barometer of global climate change,” said Ralph von Frese, leader of the project and a professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University. “However, to effectively separate and quantify human impacts on climate change, we must understand the natural impacts, too.

“Crustal heat flow is still one of the unknowns -- and it's a fairly significant one, according to our preliminary results.” Timothy Leftwich, von Frese's former student and now a postdoctoral engineer at the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets at the University of Kansas, presented the study's early results on Thursday, December 13, 2007, at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. von Frese's team combined gravity measurements of the area taken by a Naval Research Laboratory aircraft with airborne radar measurements taken by research partners at the University of Kansas. The combined map revealed changes in mass beneath the Earth's crust, and the topography of the crust where it meets the ice sheet.

Below the crust is the mantle, the partially molten rocky layer that surrounds the Earth's core. The crust varies in thickness, but is usually tens of miles thick. Even so, the mantle is so hot that temperatures just a few miles deep in the crust reach hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit, von Frese explained. “Where the crust is thicker, things are cooler, and where it's thinner, things are warmer. And under a big place like Greenland or Antarctica , natural variations in the crust will make some parts of the ice sheet warmer than others,” he said.

The ice thickness, the temperature at the base of the ice, and ground topography all contribute to the forming of an ice stream -- a river of ice that flows within a larger ice sheet. In recent years, Greenland ice streams have been carrying ice out to sea faster, and ice cover on the island has been diminishing. Once the ice reaches the sea, it melts, and global sea levels rise.
“The complete melting of these continental ice sheets would put much of Florida, as well as New Orleans, New York City and other important coastal population centers, under water,” von Frese said.

The ice sheet in northeast Greenland is especially worrisome to scientists. It had no known ice streams until 1991, when satellites spied one for the first time. Dubbed the Northeastern Greenland Ice Stream, it carries ice nearly 400 miles, from the deepest interior of the island out to the Greenland Sea. “Ice streams have to have some reason for being there. And it's pretty surprising to suddenly see one in the middle of an ice sheet,” von Frese said. The newly discovered hotspot is just below the ice stream, and could have caused it to form, the researchers concluded. But what caused the hotspot to form? “It could be that there's a volcano down there,” he said. “But we think it's probably just the way the heat is being distributed by the rock topography at the base of the ice.”

Collaborator Kees van der Veen began working on the project when he was a visiting associate professor of geological sciences and research scientist at Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State. He is now at the University of Kansas. “Recent observations indicate that the Greenland Ice Sheet is much more active than we ever believed,” van der Veen said. “There have been rapid changes in outlet glaciers, for example. Such behavior is critically linked to conditions at the ice bed. Geothermal heat is an important factor, but until now, our models have not included spatial variations in heat, such as this hotspot. “Our map is the first attempt at quantifying spatial variations in geo-heat under Greenland -- and it explains why the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream is where it is,” van der Veen added.

To measure actual temperatures beneath the ice, scientists must drill boreholes down to the base of the ice sheet-- a mile or more below the ice surface. The effort and expense make such measurements few and far between, especially in remote areas of northeast Greenland.
For now, the researchers are combining theories of how heat flows through the mantle and crust with the gravity and radar data, to understand how the hotspot is influencing the ice.
Once they finish searching the rest of Greenland for other hotspots, they hope to turn their attention to Antarctica.

This research was funded by the National Science Foundation.
Adapted from materials provided by Ohio State University.

Monday, December 17, 2007

Global Warming Lies Create a Climate of Crisis

Alan Caruba
MichNews.com

Dec 17, 2007

The United Nations conference in Bali, attended by some 10,000 participants and observers, is likely to make future generations conclude that ours was deranged to be discussing how humans could have any affect whatever on the climate. They will, in retrospect, agree that the global warming theory was a lie whose agenda was to retard anything that might extend and enhance life on earth.

The Protocol is based entirely on a lie that predicts dramatic and imminent global warming. Global warmers insist that carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced, but carbon dioxide does not cause climate change. Climatologists will tell you that any rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not precede, but follows warming cycles.

The science is well known, but hucksters like the odious Al Gore and those behind the original Kyoto Protocol, with the media as accessories, have created a climate of crisis.

It’s a very good thing that our Senate voted unanimously in 1997 against binding America to the United Nations Kyoto Protocol on Climate Control and that both the Clinton and Bush Administrations refused to act on the proposed limits. The reason for the Senate resolution was to avoid “serious harm to the economy of the United States.”

A November 30 Bloomberg News article by Kristian Rix and Mathew Carr reported that Japan, Spain, and Italy face as much as $33 billion in fines as the result of having agreed to reduce so-called “greenhouse gas” emissions and failed. These three nations are deemed the “worst performers among 36 nations that agreed to curb carbon dioxide gases that cause climate change.”

Among the nations exempt from the Kyoto Protocol are China and India, both of whom represent two of the six billion people on planet Earth. The idea that limits on carbon dioxide emissions could be achieved without their participation is idiotic.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) plays a minor role in determining the Earth’s climate but at the same time plays an essential role in the maintenance of all of the Earth’s vegetation, whether it takes the form of crops, jungles, forests, and just someone’s front lawn. Without CO2 all animal life, including our own dies because of its dependence on food crops.

The Earth’s atmosphere is composed of 78% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.038% carbon dioxide, and trace amounts of other gases, including water vapor. We call this “air” and, humans depend on the oxygen content for life. At the same time all six billion of us individually exhale about two pounds of carbon dioxide every day. By contrast, Nature emits about 30 times more CO2 than humans. The oceans of the world absorb and release CO2 all the time. This is Nature’s balance that maintains all life, animal and vegetable, on earth.

Consider now how many schools, hospitals, bridges, roads, and other benefits to their citizens that $33 billion represents to Japan, Spain, and Italy. Such fines will be transferred to the coffers of the United Nations for having failed to curb CO2 emissions that are actually a benefit to the Earth!

An entirely bogus system of “carbon credits” has been created to transfer huge amounts of money from industrialized nations accused of producing too much CO2 to those nations that, for lack of development—failed economies—will garner funding as they “sell” their excess credits. The same system would allow various industries to sell the same worthless credits to those—primarily producers and users of energy—deemed to be major CO2 “polluters.”

Even though the U.S. Supreme Court has fallen prey to the lie that CO2 represents a form of “pollution” and should be regulated, the known science renders this decision an egregious juridical error

The Earth, over billions of years, has gone through cycles of warming and cooling that are well established. It has gone through periods when the CO2 content in the atmosphere was far higher than today. The latest cooling period is called the mini-ice age and lasted from around 1300 to 1850. The Earth has been warming naturally since then.

There is no dramatic warming occurring. Predictions of this are based on totally flawed computer models, none of which can begin to approximate the sheer chaos and complexity of the Earth’s weather system.

These computer models, put forth by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control, have been repeatedly revealed to be inaccurate to the point of deliberate deception. The constant assertion that there is a “consensus” among scientists that global warming is caused by humans is yet another part of the lie.

As the anti-capitalist forces meet in Bali, the rest of us must demand that we shall not be penalized and threatened by limits imposed on industries and agriculture around the world.

The people of the world must not submit to a lie of global warming that is intended to deprive them of the future benefits that energy use, improved transportation, technological innovations, and the expanded production of food portends.

----------------------------------------
Alan Caruba writes a weekly column, “Warning Signs”, posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com.
He also maintains a blog at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com.
© Alan Caruba, December 2007 Copyright© MichNews.com. All Rights Reserved.

Friday, December 14, 2007

Pope Condemns the Climate Change Prophets of Doom

Pope Benedict XVI warns the climate change prophets of doom that any solutions to climate change must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology. The leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics suggested that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering.

Extra Sunshine Blamed for Part of Arctic Meltdown

Friday, December 14, 2007

By Andrea Thompson

National Snow and Ice Data Center

Aug. 29: The long-desired Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific, which opened up this year for the first time in history.

SAN FRANCISCO — Clouds were likely a culprit in this summer's record Arctic meltdown which temporarily opened up the fabled Northwest Passage, scientists announced Wednesday.
While Earth's rising temperatures fueled by global warming are certainly a factor in the Arctic melt, unusual weather patterns this summer also influenced how much of the sea ice melted.
One result of these patterns was a decrease in cloud cover, scientists said today at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union, which would have allowed more sunlight to penetrate Earth's atmosphere and warm the Arctic ocean waters.

New data from NASA satellites observing the western Arctic, where most of the ice loss occurred, showed a 16 percent decrease in cloud coverage this summer compared to 2006.
"There's been quite dramatic reductions of cloudiness this summer," said study member Graeme Stephens of Colorado State University.

The amount of sunlight from these clearer skies would have been enough to heat ocean waters by 4 degrees Fahrenheit (2.4 degrees Celsius), or enough to melt 1 foot (0.3 meters) of sea ice, the scientists said.

White House Responds 'You're Wrong' to Gore Charges That U.S. Blocking Bali Climate Talks
E.U. Threatens to Boycott U.S.-Led Climate Talks if Emissions Deal Not Struck
Pope Condemns Global Warming Prophets
Study: Part of Global-Warming Model May Be Wrong

"Clouds are conspiring, they're playing a role in this," said study author Jennifer Kay, a post-doctoral research fellow at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

Kay says the result of this work highlights the importance of the influence of weather pattern variability on an already stressed-out Arctic system.

"As Arctic sea ice thins, its extent is more sensitive to year-to-year variability in weather and cloud patterns," Kay said. "Our data show that clearer skies this summer allowed more of the sun's energy to melt the vulnerably thin sea ice and heat the ocean surface."

Copyright © 2007 Imaginova Corp. All Rights Reserved.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Will Al Gore Make Peace With Reality?

Thursday, December 13, 2007
By Steven Milloy

Accepting his share of the Nobel Peace prize this week, Al Gore said that ". . . we have begun to wage war on the Earth itself. It is time to make peace with the planet."

A new study published this week, however, provides more evidence that Mr. Gore is, in fact, at war with reality and that he would do well to make peace with the science.

Climate scientists reported in the December issue of the International Journal of Climatology, published by Britain's Royal Meteorological Society, that observed temperature changes measured over the last 30 years don't match well with temperatures predicted by the mathematical climate models relied on by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The global-warming hypothesis is based on climate models that suppose that temperature trends in the troposphere, the lowest part of the atmosphere, should be 2-3 times greater than trends in surface temperatures.

As noted in 2000 by the National Academy of Sciences, however, this notion conflicts with real-life observations indicating that the Earth's surface is warming more quickly than the middle and upper parts of the troposphere, defined as between 1 to 6 miles in altitude.

The new study — authored by David Douglass (University of Rochester), John Christy (University of Alabama-Huntsville), Benjamin Pearson (also University of Rochester) and S. Fred Singer (University of Virginia) — compared all 10 available observational data sets with the major models used by the IPCC.

Douglass et al. report in the new study that observational data are in drastic disagreement with the climate models.

The models predict significantly warmer atmospheric temperatures than have actually occurred, despite that "the last 25 years constitute a period of more complete and accurate observations and more realistic modeling efforts."

"We suggest, therefore, that projections of future climate based on these models be viewed with much caution," they concluded.

Caution, unfortunately, is the last thing on the minds of Al Gore and co-Nobelist IPCC, who rely on their suspect climate models to predict that average global temperature will rise anywhere from 2 degrees Fahrenheit to 12 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, depending on the level of global greenhouse-gas emissions.

But it's tough to take such predictions seriously when the global-warming hypothesis and the models that rely on it are flatly contradicted by 30 years of reality.

Another entity that needs to come to grips with what constitutes yet another fatal flaw in the global-warming hypothesis is the U.S. Congress.

Just last week the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee voted 11-8, largely along party lines, to send the so-called "Lieberman-Warner bill" for consideration by the full Senate.
The goal of Lieberman-Warner is to slash U.S .greenhouse gas emissions by 70 percent by 2050. It would attempt to achieve this goal through a so-called cap-and-trade mechanism that would place increasingly stringent limits on industrial emissions of greenhouse gases.
Lieberman-Warner is a recipe for social and economic disaster, according to testimony offered in November by Dr. Margo Thorning, chief economist for the American Council on Capital Formation.

While population and economic growth are projected to result in a 30 percent increase in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, Lieberman-Warner would require that the emissions level be 55 percent lower than the 2030 projection. "Sharp cutbacks in energy use would be necessary to close the 55 percent gap," Thorning testified. Thorning pointed out to the Senate that during 1990-2000, per capita U.S. greenhouse gas emissions fell by 0.8 percent and are projected to decline by 0.6 percent during 2000-2012, thanks primarily to increased a long-term trend in energy efficiency.

But Lieberman-Warner would require per capita emissions to fall by 50 percent during 2000-2030. "The technologies simply do not exist to reduce emissions over the next 17 years by the amounts mandated in [Lieberman-Warner] without severely reducing the growth in the U.S. economy and in employment," said Thorning.

Other Senate testimony by the consulting firm CRA International projected that Lieberman-Warner would eventually cause an annual economic loss of $1 trillion. To provide context, current annual Social security outlays are about $600 billion.

The bill was also projected to result in a net loss of 1.5 million to 3.4 million jobs by 2020, throttling the fantasy that "going Green" will create more jobs.

The Congressional Budget Office and economists such as former Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan, supply-sider Arthur Laffer and Harvard's Greg Mankiw have all condemned cap-and-trade as dangerous to the economy — yet like Al Gore, Lieberman-Warner marches on, oblivious to reality.

One co-author of the new study, John Christy, said in a media release that, "We have good reason [based on our study] to believe that the current climate models greatly overestimate the effects of greenhouse gases."

Co-author Fred Singer added, "Our research demonstrates that the ongoing rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide has only a minor influence on climate change. We must conclude, therefore, that attempts to control carbon dioxide emissions are ineffective and pointless — but very costly."
As the science continues to roll in against greenhouse-gas panic, Al Gore just keeps getting shriller in hopes of pushing the Green-whipped, Democrat-controlled Congress toward economy-killing regulation.

Though it's hard to see how Gore will ever bring himself to make peace with the real inconvenient truth, we must nevertheless demand a reality check from our elected representatives.

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and DemandDebate.com. He is a junk science expert and advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

New Study Increases Concerns About Climate Model Reliability

ScienceDaily (Dec. 12, 2007) — A new study comparing the composite output of 22 leading global climate models with actual climate data finds that the models do an unsatisfactory job of mimicking climate change in key portions of the atmosphere.

This research, published online in the Royal Meteorological Society's International Journal of Climatology, raises new concerns about the reliability of models used to forecast global warming.
"The usual discussion is whether the climate model forecasts of Earth's climate 100 years or so into the future are realistic," said the lead author, Dr. David H. Douglass from the University of Rochester. "Here we have something more fundamental: Can the models accurately explain the climate from the recent past? "It seems that the answer is no."

Scientists from Rochester, the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and the University of Virginia compared the climate change "forecasts" from the 22 most widely-cited global circulation models with tropical temperature data collected by surface, satellite and balloon sensors. The models predicted that the lower atmosphere should warm significantly more than it actually did.

"Models are very consistent in forecasting a significant difference between climate trends at the surface and in the troposphere, the layer of atmosphere between the surface and the stratosphere," said Dr. John Christy, director of UAH's Earth System Science Center. "The models forecast that the troposphere should be warming more than the surface and that this trend should be especially pronounced in the tropics.

"When we look at actual climate data, however, we do not see accelerated warming in the tropical troposphere. Instead, the lower and middle atmosphere are warming the same or less than the surface. For those layers of the atmosphere, the warming trend we see in the tropics is typically less than half of what the models forecast."

The 22 climate models used in this study are the same models used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), which recently shared a Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore.

The atmospheric temperature data were from two versions of data collected by sensors aboard NOAA satellites since late 1979, plus several sets of temperature data gathered twice a day at dozens of points in the tropics by thermometers carried into the atmosphere by helium balloons. The surface data were from three datasets.

After years of rigorous analysis and testing, the high degree of agreement between the various atmospheric data sets gives an equally high level of confidence in the basic accuracy of the climate data.

"The last 25 years constitute a period of more complete and accurate observations, and more realistic modeling efforts," said Dr. Fred Singer from the University of Virginia. "Nonetheless, the models are seen to disagree with the observations. We suggest, therefore, that projections of future climate based on these models should be viewed with much caution."

The findings of this study contrast strongly with those of a recent study that used 19 of the same climate models and similar climate datasets. That study concluded that any difference between model forecasts and atmospheric climate data is probably due to errors in the data.
"The question was, what would the models 'forecast' for upper air climate change over the past 25 years and how would that forecast compare to reality?" said Christy. "To answer that we needed climate model results that matched the actual surface temperature changes during that same time. If the models got the surface trend right but the tropospheric trend wrong, then we could pinpoint a potential problem in the models.

"As it turned out, the average of all of the climate models forecasts came out almost like the actual surface trend in the tropics. That meant we could do a very robust test of their reproduction of the lower atmosphere.

"Instead of averaging the model forecasts to get a result whose surface trends match reality, the earlier study looked at the widely scattered range of results from all of the model runs combined. Many of the models had surface trends that were quite different from the actual trend," Christy said. "Nonetheless, that study concluded that since both the surface and upper atmosphere trends were somewhere in that broad range of model results, any disagreement between the climate data and the models was probably due to faulty data.

"We think our experiment is more robust and provides more meaningful results."

Adapted from materials provided by Wiley-Blackwell.

Nitrous Oxide From Ocean Microbes Could be Adding to Global Warming

Nitrous Oxide From Ocean Microbes Could Be Adding To Global Warming
ScienceDaily (Dec. 12, 2007) — A large amount of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide is produced by bacteria in the oxygen poor parts of the ocean using nitrites according to Dr Mark Trimmer of Queen Mary, University of London.

Dr Trimmer looked at nitrous oxide production in the Arabian Sea, which accounts for up to 18 % of global ocean emissions. He found that the gas is primarily produced by bacteria trying to make nitrogen gas.
"A third of the 'denitrification' that happens in the world's oceans occurs in the Arabian Sea (an area equivalent to France and Germany combined)" said Dr Trimmer. "Oxygen levels decrease as you go deeper into the sea. At around 130 metres there is what we call an oxygen minimum zone where oxygen is low or non-existent. Bacteria that produce nitrous oxide do well at this depth."
Gas produced at this depth could escape to the atmosphere. Nitrous oxide is a powerful greenhouse gas some 300 times more so than carbon dioxide, it also attacks the ozone layer and causes acid rain.
"Recent reports suggest increased export of organic material from the surface layers of the ocean under increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. This could cause an expansion of the oxygen minimum zones of the world triggering ever greater emissions of nitrous oxide."
Adapted from materials provided by Society for General Microbiology.

Arctic Sea Ice Re-Freezing at Record Pace

12 Dec 07

Some 58,000 square miles of ice formed per day for 10 days in late October and early November, a new record.

The record melting of Arctic sea ice this summer was widely viewed as a harbinger of global warming, though unusual wind patterns played a role and many factors affecting fluctuations in Arctic ice are poorly understood by scientists.

Still, so much ice melted that the fabled Northwest passage opened for the first time in history (not true), and the melting broke a record, set just two years ago that at the time was seen as unprecedented and worrying.

http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/arctic-sea-ice-47121205

Thanks to Michael Jenkins for this link

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Study: Divorce hurts environment

Associated Press

December 4, 2007

Divorce can be bad for the environment.

In countries around the world, divorce rates have been rising — and each time a family dissolves, the result is two new households. "That really has a big impact in terms of the environment," said Jianguo Liu, an ecologist at Michigan State University whose analysis of the environmental effect of divorce appears in this week's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

More households means more use of land, water and energy, three critical resources, Mr. Liu explained. Households with fewer people simply are not as efficient as those with more people sharing, he explained. A household uses the same amount of heat or air conditioning whether there are two or four persons living there. A refrigerator uses the same power whether there is one person home or several. Two persons living apart run two dishwashers, instead of just one.
Mr. Liu, who researches the relationship of ecology with social sciences, said people seem surprised by his findings at first, and then consider it simple. "A lot of things become simple after the research is done," he said. Some extra energy or water use may not sound significant, but it adds up.

The U.S., for example, had 16.5 million households headed by a divorced person in 2005 and more than 60 million households headed by a married person. Per person, divorced households spent more per person per month for electricity compared with a married household, as multiple people can be watching the same television, listening to the same radio, cooking on the same stove or eating under the same lights. That means some $6.9 billion in extra utility costs per year, Mr. Liu calculated, plus an added $3.6 billion for water, in addition to such costs as land use. And it isn't just in the U.S.

Mr. Liu looked at 11 other countries including Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Greece, Mexico and South Africa between 1998 and 2002. In the 11, if divorced households had combined to have the same average household size as married households, there could have been a million fewer households using energy and water in these countries. "People have been talking about how to protect the environment and combat climate change, but divorce is an overlooked factor that needs to be considered," Mr. Liu said. He stressed that he isn't condemning divorce: "Some people really need to get divorces." But, he added, "one way to be more environmentally friendly is to live with other people, and that will reduce the impact."

But married people should not get smug: Savings also apply to people living together, and Shaker communities or hippie communes would have been even more efficient.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

It's the Sun, Stupid

Thursday, November 29, 2007
By Steven Milloy

When the international global warming alarm-ocracy gathers for its annual convention on the balmy island of Bali next week, is there any chance that the delegates will look up at the big yellow ball in the sky and ask, “Could it be the Sun, stupid?”New research suggests that would be a great question for them to consider.

A recent study from the Journal of Geophysical Research (November 2007) reports that the sun may have contributed 50 percent or more of the global warming thought to have occurred since 1900. Researchers from Duke University and the U.S. Army Research Office report that climate appears to be insensitive to solar variation if you accept the global temperature trend for the past 1,000 years as represented by the so-called “hockey stick” graph — which claims to show essentially unchanging temperatures between from 1000 to 1900 and then a sharp uptick from 1900 to the present. But the hockey stick-graph has been relegated to the ash heap of global warming history.

Even the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) no longer mentions the graph in its reports. The researchers instead used a temperature reconstruction developed by Stockholm University researcher Ander Moberg and others that shows more variation in pre-industrial temperatures. Using Moberg’s reconstruction, the researchers found that “the climate is very sensitive to solar changes and a significant fraction of the global warming that occurred during the last century should be solar induced.”

The researchers conclude that the current large-scale computer models — which, by the way, don’t work as they don’t even accurately reproduce historical temperature trends — could be significantly improved by adding sun-climate coupling mechanisms. Unfortunately, the reconsideration of the climate models isn’t on the agenda at Bali. Another interesting bit of data comes by way of the Solar Science blog, which on Nov. 15 spotlighted a letter in the Green County Daily World (Indiana) that starts out, “Each morning I turn on my computer and check to see how the sun is doing. Lately I am greeted with the message ‘The sun is blank — no sunspots.’” The letter goes on to state that, “We are at the verge of the next sunspot cycle, solar cycle 24. How intense will this cycle be? Why is this question important? Because the sun is a major force controlling natural climate change on Earth…” “For the past few months, the actual sunspot numbers have been below [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s] lower predicted threshold, approaching zero,” according to the letter, leading some to conclude that we may be headed into another “solar minimum” period. The solar minimum, known as the Maunder Minimum, corresponds to the temperature depths of the Little Ice Age, a period of global cooling lasting from the 14th century to the 19th century.

As you can see from this graph of solar activity since the mid-18th century, low sunspot activity matches up nicely with well-known Little Ice Age climatic events like George Washington’s Christmas-night 1776 crossing of the ice-strewn Delaware River and Napoleon Bonaparte’s retreat from Moscow in the horrifically-cold winter of 1812-1813. The letter writer goes on to mention that not too long ago the Mississippi River froze solid above St. Louis, permitting westward wagon trains to cross in the winter and that you can still see old two-story houses in Wisconsin with second floor doors that allowed inhabitants to exit their homes in the middle of winter when snow depths reached 8-feet and more. If sunspot activity continues to be so markedly low, then we should prepare for the possibility of a significant global cooling trend that could reduce agricultural yields and bring on the sort of food shortages that occurred during the Little Ice Age.

There’s also a new study out this week claiming that the expansion of above-ground tree vegetation in Europe has absorbed 126 million tons of carbon, equivalent to 11 percent of the region’s carbon emissions. While this seems like a positive development — at least for those bent on removing carbon from the atmosphere in order to reduce global temperature — it may actually backfire in terms of preventing global warming.

As reported in this column last April, forests in northern regions actually contribute to global warming through the albedo effect. Researchers estimated that this effect may contribute as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit to regional temperatures. So while expanding European forests may take more carbon out of the atmosphere — a dubious proposition for reducing global warming — the forests will also be absorbing more sunlight producing a net effect of warmer temperatures.

Finally, let’s not forget about last year’s experimental validation of the sun’s impact on cloud cover. That research indicated that climatic impact of sun-influenced cloud cover during the 20th century could be as much as seven times greater than the alleged effect of 200 years worth of manmade carbon dioxide. So while the global warming crowd parties in Bali amid its plotting and planning to subjugate western economies to global government based on a dubious hypothesis about trace levels of invisible manmade gases acting as some sort of atmospheric thermostat, the sun will be there shining down on their folly. Would it be too much to ask for someone to look upwards and see the light?

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and DemandDebate.com. He is a junk science expert and advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

U.N. Climate Distractions

Wednesday, November 21, 2007
By Steven Milloy

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) just issued the final installment of its year-long scare-the-pants-off-the public assessment of global warming.
It should come as no surprise that, according to the U.N., 257 years of western development and progress has placed the Earth in imminent danger of utter disaster and that the only way to save the planet is to drink the U.N. Kool-Aid and knuckle under to global government-directed energy rationing and economic planning.

Oh, and did I mention that the U.N. says we only have seven years to end the growth of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and 40 years to stop them entirely if we are to avoid killing as many as one-fourth of the planet’s species?

I’d be scared too, if I didn’t know that this is the very same U.N. that just admitted to inflating the African AIDS epidemic -- thereby maximizing the public panic feeding its fundraising efforts -- and the very same U.N. that presided over the corrupt oil-for-food program which gave Saddam Hussein as much as $20 billion in kickbacks while delivering food unfit for human consumption to hungry Iraqis.

What we need to do is peer through the U.N.’s frantic efforts to distract us with a multitude of dire predictions of climatic Armageddon and focus on the core issue of the global warming debate -- only then does it become obvious why the U.N.’s claims call for extreme skepticism.

That key issue, of course, is whether or not manmade CO2 emissions drive global temperature. In its shockingly brief and superficial treatment of this crucial issue, the U.N. states, in relevant part, that, “Most of the observed increase in globally-averaged temperatures, since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years averaged over every continent (except Antarctica)."

This glib statement overlooks that fact that from 1940 to 1975 globally-averaged temperature declined (giving rise to a much-hyped scare about a looming ice age) while manmade CO2 emissions increased. Global temperature has fallen since 1998 despite ever-increasing CO2 emissions. So for 27 of the last 50 years, globally-averaged temperatures have declined while CO2 emissions have increased.

If there’s a cause-and-effect relationship between CO2 and temperature in the last 50 years at all, it seems to be slightly in the opposite direction from what the U.N. claims. And if we are experiencing manmade global warming, someone should tell Antarctica to get with the program.
The U.N. also says that, "Atmospheric concentrations of CO2… exceed by far the natural range over the 650,000 years." Readers, apparently, are supposed to let their imaginations run away with them as to the implications of this statement. What the U.N. left out is that the relationship between CO2 and temperature over the last 650,000 years is precisely opposite of what it has led the public to believe with statements like the preceding one.

Increased atmospheric concentrations of CO2 actually lag global temperature increases anywhere from 800-2,000 years according to the Antarctic ice core record that covers the 650,000-year span of time. Note to readers: A video debate on this point produced by me can be viewed by clicking here.

A new temperature reconstruction for the past 2,000 years created by Craig Loehle of the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement indicates that, 1,000 years ago, globally averaged temperature was about 0.3 degrees Celsius warmer than the current temperature. Since that climatic "heat wave" obviously wasn’t caused by coal-fired power plants and SUVs, the current temperature is quite within natural variability, further deflating the UN’s rash conclusion about the warming of the past 50 years.

There's also the matter of the quality of the temperature records relied on by the U.N.
In his project entitled, "How Not to Measure Temperature," meteorologist Anthony Watts travels the U.S. inspecting stations at which temperature data are recorded by NASA. In the recently released Part 34 of his series, Watts found that the Klamath Falls, Ore., station was located amid acres of heat-trapping asphalt and exposed to huge amounts of waste heat from electric power conversion. Watts says the location of the temperature station seems to have been chosen for the convenience of the observer rather than the integrity of the temperature reading.

It's not hard to imagine how the upward bias in temperature readings from this and similarly situated stations around the world has raised serious questions about the validity of official temperature records and, consequently, their use in the global warming debate. So when the U.N. claims to have divined a global warming trend averaging 0.75 degrees Celsius per century regardless of its cause, it’s useful to keep in mind that NASA alarmist James Hansen says that the margin of error around the average global temperature is plus/minus 0.7 degrees Celsius.
So we can’t possibly have all that much confidence in what the U.N. claims to be happening global temperature-wise.

Don’t be distracted by the alarmist arm-waving and sideshows about the North Pole melting, polar bears drowning and the myriad other supposed catastrophes mentioned in the same breath as man-made CO2 emissions and global warming. There's no evidence that man-made CO2 emissions have created any environmental problem and certainly no scientific justification for handing the keys of the American economy over to the U.N.

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and DemandDebate.com. He is a junk science expert and advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

The High Cost of the Global Warming Scam

Another great article by Phillip Brennan
13 Nov 07

"It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global warming; it is a scam."

John Coleman, meteorologist and founder of The Weather Channel.

Coleman is the latest expert to declare that global warming is a hoax, yet its advocates in Congress and among Democratic candidates for their party's presidential nomination are promising to saddle the American people with laws designed to stop something that is not happening: laws that will have many of us in the poor house.

According to The Washington Post, the Democrats' current global warming proposals "will require a wholesale transformation of the nation's economy and society."
The Post reported that Democrat presidential candidates' climate proposals would "cost billions of dollars," and detailed exactly what the American people will face when it comes to cap-and-trade proposals. Others hiked the price tag into the trillions of dollars.

The Post went on to point out that energy expert Tracy Terry's analysis of a recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology study showed that "under the scenario of an 80-percent reduction in emissions from 1990 levels, by 2015 Americans could be paying 30 percent more for natural gas in their homes and even more for electricity.

"At the same time, the cost of coal could quadruple and crude oil prices could rise by an additional $24 a barrel."

The Wall Street Journal recently warned that: "These new climate proposals come at a time when a "winter-heating crisis looms. As fuel prices surge to new records, lawmakers are trying to limit a potential crisis that could leave many of the Northeast's poor without adequate heating this winter."

"The Free Enterprise Education Institute think tank forecasts an economic contraction that will cost each U.S. Family $10,800 by 2020. ‘‘Cap-and-trade systems or carbon taxes are likely to be popular only until real people lose real jobs as their consequence,' Greenspan writes."
If the global warming fanatics have their way, you'll be paying a lot to finance a hoax, a scam, and a covert scheme to impose socialism on the U.S. and the rest of the world.

See entire article by Phillip Brennan: http://www.newsmax.com/brennan/Brennan_global_warming/2007/11/13/49093.html

Monday, October 29, 2007

Economics of Hybrids

For most U.S. consumers, they're still a money-losing proposition

By MIKE SPECTOR

October 29, 2007

It's getting a lot easier to buy a hybrid -- but not necessarily cheaper.
Amid heightening concerns over America's proclaimed oil addiction, skyrocketing fuel prices and global climate change, auto companies are making more gasoline-electric hybrid cars and giving consumers more choices than ever before.

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But marketplace dynamics in the U.S. -- including higher prices charged by the car companies, dwindling tax credits given to fuel-efficient cars and low gasoline taxes -- haven't yet allowed a hybrid or other more-efficient vehicle to become an economical choice for many consumers.
In Europe, by contrast, several countries offer significant tax breaks to people who buy more-efficient vehicles. And high fuel taxes also are propelling Europeans to invest in a more-efficient ride.

Mild or Full

There are several hybrids on the market now, using different technologies. But basically, a hybrid consists of a traditional internal-combustion engine paired with an electric motor. The electric motor gets its power from a storage battery, which is replenished by a recharging system within the car's powertrain. Electric motors boost power to the gas engine, allowing manufacturers to install smaller -- and thus more-efficient -- motors in these cars. Most hybrids sport four-cylinder engines as opposed to the six- or eight-cylinder motors found in many vehicles.

There are essentially two types of hybrids on the mass market today, often dubbed "mild" or "full" hybrids, each with fuel-sipping and emission-curbing features. A mild hybrid shuts off the engine at a full stop; uses regenerative braking, which utilizes dissipated energy from braking to recharge the battery; and uses the electric motor to help power the gas engine.

A full hybrid does all of those things, but adds another big fuel-saving feature: electric-only driving, in which a vehicle runs on the electric engine alone at low speeds. That's why hybrids get better mileage in city driving than high-speed highway cruising. The laws of physics still apply, so you shouldn't expect a hybrid SUV to get incredible mileage. But it will get better mileage than its gasoline counterpart.

Hybrids are currently the most popular green vehicle choice in the U.S. In the first seven months of this year, new hybrid-vehicle registrations nationwide rose 49% from the year-earlier period to 215,997, according to R.L. Polk & Co., an automotive-research firm in Southfield, Mich. Hybrids make up about 2% of the U.S. light-vehicle market.

Taxing Issue

Economics are still getting in the way of greater adoption, however. One reason is the tax system. Americans get a tax break for buying hybrids -- the starting amount varies by model -- but the more hybrids an auto maker sells, the smaller the tax break becomes on any hybrid models from that maker. After a manufacturer sells its 60,000th hybrid, the tax break starts to phase out. Buyers can claim the full credit during the calendar quarter after the quarter in which the manufacturer reaches the 60,000 limit. Then, the credit is sliced in half. It is reduced by half again after another six months. Six months after that, the credit disappears.

Toyota Motor Corp.'s popular Prius, for instance, once garnered a $3,150 credit. But Toyota sold its 60,000th hybrid in the second quarter of 2006. So starting Oct. 1 of last year, the credit dwindled, and today it's gone. That means consumers no longer get the tax break for buying a Prius, or hybrid versions of some of the Japanese auto maker's other models: the Camry, Lexus GS 450h, Lexus RX 400h SUV, Highlander SUV and the Lexus LS 600h L sedan.

Honda Motor Co.'s credits also will decline soon as the Japanese auto maker has just recently exceeded the sales cap. Other hybrids from General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. should retain their full credits for some time amid lower sales volumes.

In Europe, by contrast, several countries offer significant tax breaks. In Belgium, for example, drivers get 15% of a car's price back -- maxing out at €3,280 ($4,640) -- if the vehicle emits less than 105 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association. Cars that emit between 105 grams and 115 grams get a 3% break; vehicles emitting more than 115 grams don't get anything. Europeans also face high fuel taxes, encouraging them to buy more-efficient cars. And diesel is specifically taxed at a lower rate -- diesel engines are about 30% more efficient than their gasoline-powered counterparts because of the higher energy content in diesel fuel and the more-efficient combustion process in the engine. Diesel autos make up about half of the European market, compared with about 1% in the U.S.

Recouping the Premium

Even taking a tax credit into account, U.S. consumers have to pay more when buying a hybrid because the vehicles use a lot of expensive technology. Between large battery packs and complex transmissions that join gasoline engines with electric motors, hybrids can cost anywhere from $2,000 to $7,000 more than comparable nonhybrid cars.

Take GM's Saturn VUE Greenline sport-utility vehicle, which sells for $1,300 more than its gasoline-engine only counterpart after factoring in a tax credit, according to Edmunds.com, an auto-research firm. (This and other specific comparisons are for 2007 models.) It would take nearly five years to recoup that premium in savings at the pump with gas around $2.79 a gallon, according to Edmunds, assuming you drove about 15,000 miles a year. If higher taxes increased gas prices to about $6 a gallon -- roughly the price in Europe -- it would take about two years.

The VUE Greenline gets about 27 miles per gallon in combined city and highway driving, a good uptick from the four-cylinder, front-wheel drive gasoline-engine version, which gets about 23 mpg.

Toyota's Prius, which gets a leading 46 mpg combined but no longer qualifies for the tax credit, costs over $7,000 more than the auto maker's compact Corolla. It would take nearly 18 years to recoup the premium, or more than twice the time you might expect to own it. Even with a more favorable comparison to the less-efficient Camry sedan -- which costs about $4,200 more -- Prius owners would still need about 6.5 years to get their money back in fuel savings.

That means the Prius isn't necessarily an economical buy despite its superior mileage. "If you want to save money on fuel, just buy a car with better gas mileage," says Jeremy Anwyl, chief executive of Edmunds.

Emphasis on Performance

Some hybrids are geared more toward performance than efficiency. The prime example is the Lexus LS 600h L sedan, which has a V8 engine in its hybrid drivetrain. The car, priced at more than $100,000, marks Lexus' attempt to market a super-luxury car with added hybrid cachet for wealthy consumers who have a green streak. The sedan gets just 21 mpg in combined city/highway driving, better than a comparable BMW model but a bit worse than the less-expensive Lexus GS 450h.

Auto dealers say consumers had unrealistic expectations about the economics of hybrids two years or so ago, but have adjusted and now tend to buy the vehicles to make a statement.
Earl Hesterberg, chief executive of Houston-based Group 1 Automotive Inc., a large nationwide dealership chain, says a typical reaction from hybrid buyers used to be: "Hey, this thing really does still use fuel." But now consumers are more educated, he says. "The majority of people just want to feel better about themselves and that they're trying to make some effort to be more green, be more socially responsible, reduce their carbon footprint."

Maintenance Costs

One long-term consideration when buying a hybrid is the relatively untested maintenance history of battery packs. If a hybrid battery fails, it will be quite expensive to replace -- likely at least $5,000 and perhaps as high as $10,000 depending on the drivetrain's complexity, says Jack Nerad, editorial director of auto research firm Kelley Blue Book.

Fortunately, hybrids have experienced few, if any, major repair problems over the past few years. And while consumers may consider these vehicles new, they've actually been in production for a while, giving manufacturers time to refine them. The first Prius hit the road in 1997 in Japan and came to the U.S. in 2000.

Most hybrids come with long warranties on their powertrain technologies -- eight years or 100,000 miles for the Prius -- that cover potential foul-ups. Still, after the warranties end, it's unclear what problems might crop up in an expensive battery pack. There's no experience with this since few, if any, people have owned a Prius for more than eight years.

A spokesman for Toyota says the company placed extended warranties on the Prius to address just such uncertainty but adds that issues with the vehicles' batteries have been "virtually nonexistent." He says the company actually expects Prius batteries to live well beyond the eight-year warranty.

Other Factors

Auto makers are gradually pushing toward electric plug-in hybrids, which will allow drivers to recharge a battery with a traditional outlet and go much further on electric power alone. Such cars could be a "game changer" that eventually displaces conventional hybrids, says Mike Jackson, chief executive of AutoNation Inc., of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., a nationwide dealership chain.

Another fuel-saver on the horizon: diesel.

Many Americans think of diesel engines as noisy and dirty, but the introduction of cleaner diesel fuel in the U.S. that can meet tough emissions standards promises less pollution and wider use. Auto makers are ramping up plans to put diesels in light-duty pickup trucks and passenger cars. And auto companies eventually may employ diesel-hybrids to really boost fuel economy.

--Mr. Spector is a staff reporter in The Wall Street Journal's Detroit bureau

Thursday, October 4, 2007

CNN weatherman considers Gore's An Inconvenient Truth fiction

David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Published: Thursday October 4, 2007
'CNN weatherman considers Gore's An Inconvenient Truth fiction'

CNN reported on Thursday that a British judge has called Al Gore's Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth unfit for schools "because it is politically biased and contains scientific inaccuracies and sentimental mush." British schools may now have to preface any showing of the film with a warning.

CNN meteorologist Rob Marciano responded to this story by applauding and saying,"Finally, finally," before commenting sarcastically that "the Oscars, they give out awards for fictional films as well."

Marciano said he objected in particular to the film's claim that global warming causes stronger hurricanes, noting that the current hurricane season has only been average.

Although the number of named storms this season has not been unusual, USA Today pointed out last month that "the first two hurricanes in the Atlantic this season reached the highest Category 5 level, the first time that's happened since record-keeping began in 1851." In addition, three storms this year shattered records for speed of intensification, leading concerned weather bloggers to suggest that the possible effects of global warming on hurricanes demand far more intensive study.

From CNN's American Morning, broadcast on October 4, 2007.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Al Gore Inconvienced by British Courts

Inaccuracies in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth

The decision by the government to distribute Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth has been the subject of a legal action by New Party member Stewart Dimmock. The Court found that the film was misleading in nine respects and that the Guidance Notes drafted by the Education Secretary’s advisors served only to exacerbate the political propaganda in the film.

In order for the film to be shown, the Government must first amend their Guidance Notes to Teachers to make clear that 1.) The Film is a political work and promotes only one side of the argument. 2.) If teachers present the Film without making this plain they may be in breach of section 406 of the Education Act 1996 and guilty of political indoctrination. 3.) Nine inaccuracies have to be specifically drawn to the attention of school children.

The inaccuracies are:

The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Government’s expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.

The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.

The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that it was “not possible” to attribute one-off events to global warming.

The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that this was not the case.

The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.

The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant’s evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.

The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching. The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.

The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.

The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.

Not all of the inaccuracies in the film were fully considered by the court as the judge requested a sample on which to consider the case. Professor Carter's witness statement (reproduced below) lists 20 inaccuracies in the film.

Additional Links
Full transcript of the court case
Professor Carter's witness statement
Lord Monckton's witness statement

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Runaway Climate Captured?

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

By Steven Milloy

Runaway global warming, the climate alarmist fantasy let loose on the public, has not yet been captured, but it certainly appears to have at least been cornered by new data from researchers at the University of Alabama-Huntsville (UAH).

In a study published in the American Geophysical Union's Geophysical Research Letters on Aug. 9, the UAH researchers provide more real-world evidence of the atmosphere's self-regulating nature. If this particular self-regulatory mechanism is confirmed by additional research, it will represent yet another deal-breaker for the scientific hypothesis that has propped up climate alarmism thus far.

Global warmers claim that increasing levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases are raising global temperatures. But even if this claim was true — and there is ample reason to be skeptical — greenhouse gases by themselves could only warm the planet by so much.

One of the oft-cited predictions of potential warming is that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels from pre-industrial levels — from 280 to 560 parts per million — would alone cause average global temperature to increase by about 1.2 degrees Centigrade.

But such a modest warming by itself is unlikely to cause catastrophic climate change. At a current atmospheric carbon dioxide level of 380 parts per million, we have already observed about half that predicted temperature change without experiencing any climatic chaos.

Full-page Junk Science Archive
/**/

Recognizing the ho-hum nature of such a temperature change, the alarmist camp moved on to hypothesize that even this slight warming will cause irreversible changes in the atmosphere that, in turn, will cause more warming. These alleged "positive feedback" cycles supposedly will build upon each other to cause runaway global warming, according to the alarmists.
Existing climate models, for example, assume that a warmer atmosphere will cause an increase in high-altitude cirrus clouds — a positive feedback into the climate system since cirrus clouds trap outgoing radiation emitted by the Earth.

When you feed the above-mentioned warming scenario — the doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels causing 1.2 degrees Centigrade of warming — into a climate model that has been turbo-charged with positive feedback, the resulting estimated warming increases by 250 percent to 3 degrees Centigrade.

Many have questioned the validity of the hypothetical positive feedback mechanism. Massachusetts Institute of Technology atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen, for example, proposed in 2001 an explanation called the "iris effect" for why amplified warming has never materialized.

Based on a limited set of data, Lindzen hypothesized that cirrus clouds and associated moisture actually work in opposition to surface temperature changes. When the Earth's surface warms, Lindzen supposed, the clouds open up to allow heat to escape. A cooling surface, in turn, causes clouds to close and trap heat.

This elegant atmospheric self-regulatory mechanism was soon attacked for being based on limited data and the inability of other researchers to be able to identify the iris effect in other cloud and temperature data sets.

But the new research from the University of Alabama-Huntsville supports the validity of the iris effect.

Analyzing six years of data from four instruments aboard three NASA and NOAA satellites, the UAH researchers tracked precipitation amounts, air and sea surface temperatures, high- and low-altitude cloud cover, reflected sunlight and infrared energy escaping out to space.
Rather than the hypothesized positive feedback of the climate models, the UAH data actually shows a strong negative feedback. As the tropical atmosphere warms, cirrus clouds decrease, allowing infrared heat to escape from the atmosphere to outer space.

"To give an idea of how strong this enhanced cooling mechanism is, if it was operating on global warming, it would reduce [climate model-based] estimates of future warming by 75 percent," said UAH researcher Roy Spencer in a media release.

"The role of clouds in global warming is widely agreed to be pretty uncertain," Spencer said. "Right now, all climate models predict that clouds will amplify warming. I'm betting that if the climate models' 'clouds' were made to behave the way we see these clouds behave in nature, it would substantially reduce the amount of climate change the models predict for the coming decades."

If you think about it for a moment, none of this should be surprising. As explained in greater detail at JunkScience.com, if positive feedback from warming was really a dominant climatic effect, then it should be very easy to identify by considering an unusual recent weather event — the 1997-98 El Niño event which caused temperatures to spike to the highest level since the 1930s.

But since the Earth cooled almost as abruptly as it warmed, we can only assume that no positive feedback occurred. Our El Niño experience indicates that the Earth is not precariously perched upon some critical temperature threshold beyond which a whole new type of physics takes over and runaway global warming becomes a self-perpetuating nightmare.

The seasonal heating of the hemispheres — quite a severe annual warming event — is also worthy of mention. Average surface temperature in the northern hemisphere, for example, warms by 3.8 degrees Centigrade from January to July every year without triggering any self-perpetuating positive feedback.

It is, therefore, somewhat difficult to view ongoing global temperature change — amounting to an estimated 0.6 plus or minus 0.2 degrees Centigrade over the past 120 years — as being dangerous.

No doubt the iris effect will require more research to confirm its existence. But at least real-world data encourage such research. That's a lot more than can be said for the imaginary notion of runaway climate and the climate models that are rigged to make-believe it exists.

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and DemandDebate.com. He is a junk science expert and advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Monday, September 3, 2007

The Year the Global Warming Hoax Died

Alan Caruba

MichNews.com

Sep 3, 2007

When did the global warming hoax die? Historians are likely to pinpoint 2007. It will take another decade to insure it cannot be revived, but the avalanche of scientific studies and the cumulative impact of scientists who have publicly joined those who debunked the lies on which it has been based will be noted as the tipping point.

It took some forty years to unmask the Piltdown Man hoax that began in 1912 alleging that the skull of an ancient ancestor of man had been found in England. Any number of British anthropologists unwittingly contributed to the hoax by confirming the authenticity of the skull until it was found that the jaw of an orangutan had been cunningly attached. The unmasking of “global warming” has taken less than half that time.

The hoax has mainly been a creation of the United Nations Environmental Program and took off in earnest with the 1992 Earth Summit. It culminated in 1997 with the Kyoto Climate Control Protocol, an agreement to reduce the generation of carbon dioxide, a “greenhouse” gas (CO2) said to be the cause of an accelerated warming of the earth. By 2005, 140 nations had ratified the pact, agreeing to reduce CO2 emissions. Notably exempt from the pact were nations such as China and India. Few, if any, nations have ever met the limits that require reductions in CO2 production, attributed to the use of so-called “fossil fuels” such as oil, natural gas, and coal.

The United States refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and, at one point, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a resolution rejecting it. This has not kept the U.S. from spending billions on so-called “climate research” intended to address climate change with the aim of reducing or capturing CO2 emissions. Had that money been devoted to maintenance of the nation’s infrastructure, tragic events such as the collapse of the Minnesota bridge over the Mississippi might have been averted.

In August, it was revealed that NASA scientists had corrected an error that resulted in 1934 replacing 1998 as the warmest year on record in the U.S. Repeatedly the data put forth to justify the global warming hoax has been debunked.

As Dr. David Wojick recently noted, “The real significance is that such a small correction can make such a big difference. The reason is that the much touted warming of the last three decades is merely a return to earlier warm times, after an equally long period of cooling…There is no way this pattern constitutes a warming trend…In short, there is no evidence for human-induced global warming in the U.S. temperature record.”

“Anthropogenic (man-made) global warming bites the dust,” declared astronomer Dr. Ian Wilson after reviewing a new study that has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research authored by a Brookhaven National Lab scientist Stephen Schwartz. A former Harvard physicist, Dr. Lubos Motl, said the new study has reduced global warming fear-mongers to “playing the children’s game to scare each other.”

The new research concludes that the Earth’s climate is only about one-third as sensitive to carbon dioxide as a series of reports by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has asserted for years. The IPCC reports have been increasingly dismissed as deliberate distortions of data that amount to little more than propaganda to advance the “global warming” hoax.

Having testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, paleoclimate scientist, Bob Carter, noted in a June 18, 2007 essay that global warming has stopped. There has been little, if any, global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 17 percent. Thus, the connection between CO2 and “global warming”, the key to the claims that it is occurring and will increase has been proven wrong.

Dr. Roy Spencer, another critic of the global warming hoax, has noted that “At least 80 percent of the Earth’s natural greenhouse effect is due to water vapor and clouds, and those are largely under the control of precipitation systems.” The computer models used by advocates of global warming have been unable to include the actions and impact of clouds, thus rendering them seriously flawed.

Prior to and during 2007, one research study after another revealed that the central premise of “global warming” lacks any scientific merit. One by Dr. Tim Patterson concluded that, “The earth temperature does respond to the solar cycle as confirmed by numerous studies.” The solar cycle is known to be about eleven years in length and reflects increased or decreased sunspot (magnetic storms) activity. It is the Sun that largely determines the Earth’s temperature, which is never the same throughout the planet, given seasonal and solar changes.

In 2007, meteorologist Anthony Watts who led a team of researchers revealed that, “The U.S. National Climate Data Center is in the middle of a scandal. Their global observing network, the heart and soul of surface weather measurement, is a disaster.” It had been discovered that many of the measuring stations were placed in locations such as on hot black asphalt, next to trash burn barrels, beside heat exhaust vents, and even attached to hot chimneys and above outdoor grills!

Determining the Earth’s temperature, says Bjarne Andresen, a professor at The Niels Borh Institute, University of Copenhagen, collaborated with two other professors to write an article in Science Daily, saying, “It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of the Earth.” Indeed, “differences in temperature drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate.”

In May 2007, Dr. Reid Bryson, the founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at the University of Wisconsin dismissed fears of increased man-made CO2 in the atmosphere. He called the “global warming” argument “absurd.” As to any increase in the Earth’s temperature, he said, “Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting carbon dioxide in the air.”

On August 15, 2007, meteorologist Joseph D’Aleo, the first Director of Meteorology at The Weather Channel and former chairman of the American Meteorological Society’s Committee on Weather Analysis and Forecasting, said, “If the atmosphere was a 100 story building, our annual anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 contribution today would be equivalent to the linoleum on the first floor.”

There will be dying gasps to this hoax, not the least of which is a planned $100 million media blitz by Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection, but the public is already far more concerned about instability in the Middle East, the forthcoming national elections, and shocks to the U.S. economy to accord such an effort much credibility.

Hoaxes have a life of their own and “global warming” is now coming to an end. Mark 2007 as the year it began to seriously bleed to death.

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Alan Caruba writes a weekly column, “Warning Signs”, posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com.
His latest book, “Right Answers: Separating Fact from Fantasy”, is published by Merril Press.

© Alan Caruba, September 2007

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Atlantic Panic Debunked

Thursday, August 16, 2007
By Steven Milloy

Climate alarmists gleefully surfed a 2005 Nature study that claimed greenhouse gas emissions would slow Atlantic Ocean circulation and cause a mini ice age in Europe. Their ride now seems headed for a gnarly wipeout.

An international team of researchers just reported in the journal Science (Aug. 17) that the intensity of the Atlantic circulation may vary by as much as a factor of 8 in a single year. The decrease in Atlantic circulation claimed in the Nature study falls well within this variation and so is likely part of a natural yearly trend, according to the new study.

The media release for the 2005 Nature study ominously read, “The ocean currents that help to maintain Northern Europe's relatively clement climate are weakening, according to a new survey carried out in the Atlantic Ocean. The new data shows that the system of currents that moves warm waters north and returns cooler waters to more southerly latitudes has weakened by 30 percent since 1957.”

Researchers aboard a 2004 voyage led by the UK National Oceanography Centre’s Harry Bryden surveyed the strength of currents at various depths at latitude of 25 degrees north. Although Bryden found no change to the Gulf Stream — the northward flow of warm water near the surface — he reported a 50 percent reduction in the amount of cold, deep waters flowing southwards and a 50 percent increase in the amount of water recirculating within subtropical regions without reaching higher latitudes. These changes, according to Bryden, showed that less water is completing a full circuit of the entire Atlantic current system.

The Nature study spawned a tidal wave of scary headlines around the world that December, including “Scientists Say Slow Atlantic Currents Could Mean a Colder Europe” (New York Times); “Fears of Big Freeze as Scientists Detect Slower Gulf Stream” (The Independent, UK); “Shifting Currents Renew Fears of Freezing” (The Gazette, Montreal); “Europe Faces Feal Day After Tomorrow” (Courier Mail, Australia); and “Ocean Flow Findings Indicate Harsher Winters for Europe” (Press Trust of India).

Even the anti-Kyoto Protocol, non-alarmist magazine The Economist fell for the Atlantic Panic.
“Dr. Bryden’s data indicate that what [geologic] history and the [climate] models describe may actually be happening at the moment to currents in the north Atlantic … Dr. Bryden’s result is about as robust as can be expected … Dr. Bryden’s finding … provides a reason to think more clearly about the whole issue of climate change.”

Nine months later, in an editorial entitled, “The Heat Is On” (Sept. 9, 2006), The Economist moved squarely into the alarmist camp. “The uncertainty surrounding climate change argues for action, not inaction. America should lead the way,” is how the editorial opened. “Mr. Bush has got two years left in the job. He would like to be remembered as a straight shooter who did the right thing. Tackling climate change would be one way to do that,” is how the article closed.
Bryden’s line of thinking also found its way into the most recent report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — a report that includes him as one of its reviewers. Although the report didn’t endorse Bryden’s claimed magnitude for the Atlantic slowdown, it did conclude that such a slowdown was “very likely” during the 21st century.
But now Bryden’s finding has been exposed as a nothing burger — although this should have come as no surprise.

Bryden worked with only very limited oceanic data — five sets of ship-based temperature and salinity measurements from the north Atlantic collected during research cruises between 1957 and 2004. His prediction of a much larger slowdown of the Atlantic current than made by climate model simulations is the sort of extreme outlier result that often occurs with the use of incomplete and inadequate data.

In contrast, the new result is based on bottom pressure, temperature and salinity data for the full water column on either side of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge collected continuously since March 2004. The ocean-interior measurements were complemented by sea cable and satellite measurements of the northward flow of the Gulf Stream and surface-driven wind transport, respectively. What a difference high-quality data makes.

Even though Bryden wisely backed off his alarmist claims by mid-2006 after reviewing a year’s worth of the new measurements, his retraction garnered virtually no media attention. The New Scientist’s “No New Ice Age for Western Europe” (Nov. 4, 2006), New Zealand National Business Review’s “Scientists Debunk Gulf Stream Failure Scenario” (Jan. 26, 2007) and a passing mention on National Public Radio (Jan. 29, 2007), hardly begin to undo the media hysteria launched in December 2005.

Despite the new Atlantic data, however, there is still much uncertainty about the variation in Atlantic current. A recent study in the Journal of Climate estimated that it will take several decades of data to detect trends in Atlantic circulation. A news article accompanying the new Science study observed, “Similarly, it will take decades of monitoring to determine which (if any) of the models analyzed by the IPCC most accurately reflects reality.”

Several decades, you say? But we’re being stampeded into global warming regulation now. The Atlantic Panic underscores our limited knowledge of how the climate system functions. Does it really make sense to regulate first and ask questions later?

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and DemandDebate.com. He is a junk science expert, an advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Thursday, August 9, 2007

1998 was NOT the warmest year in the millenium!

Hot news: NASA quietly fixes flawed temperature data; 1998 was NOT the warmest year in the millenium

By Michelle Malkin • August 9, 2007 10:02 PM

Mind the gap.

Some big environmental news that you haven’t heard much about: NASA has revised much-publicized US temperature data that have been used to claim 1998 as a record-breaking hottest year in the millenium. Michael Asher at DailyTech reports:

My earlier column this week detailed the work of a volunteer team to assess problems with US
temperature data used for climate modeling. One of these people is Steve McIntyre, who operates the site climateaudit.org. While inspecting historical temperature graphs, he noticed a strange discontinuity, or “jump” in many locations, all occurring around the time of January, 2000.

These graphs were created by NASA’s Reto Ruedy and James Hansen (who shot to fame when he accused the administration of trying to censor his views on climate change). Hansen refused to provide [McIntyre ]with the algorithm used to generate graph data, so McKintyre reverse-engineered it. The result appeared to be a Y2K bug in the handling of the raw data.
[McIntyre] notified the pair of the bug; Ruedy replied and acknowledged the problem as an “oversight” that would be fixed in the next data refresh.

NASA has now silently released corrected figures, and the changes are truly astounding. The warmest year on record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place. 1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II. Anthony Watts has put the new data in chart form, along with a more detailed summary of the events.

The effect of the correction on global temperatures is minor (some 1-2% less warming than originally thought), but the effect on the US global warming propaganda machine could be huge.
Then again– maybe not. I strongly suspect this story will receive little to no attention from the mainstream media.

McIntyre’s blog is down at the moment. (*Update*: It’s down because his work has gotten some major media attention…no, not from the MSM, but from Rush Limbaugh.) His work on this is extraordinary and hopefully the website will be back up. (Another update: McIntyre also debunked the famous “hockey stick” analysis linking human activity to global warming, which turned out to be an artifact of poor mathematics.) In the meantime, see Anthony Watts, who walks you through McIntyre’s findings and adds some helpful charts:

Steve McIntyre, of Toronto operates www.climateaudit.org and began to investigate the data and the methods used to arrive at the results that were graphed by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).

What he discovered was truly amazing. Since NASA does not fully publish the computer source code and formulae used to calculate the trends in the graph, nor the correction used to arrive at the “corrected” data. He had to reverse engineer the process by comparing the raw data and the processed data.

Here is one of his first posts where he begins to understand what is happening. “This imparts an upward discontinuity of a deg C in wintertime and 0.8 deg C annually. I checked the monthly data and determined that the discontinuity occurred on January 2000 - and, to that extent, appears to be a Y2K problem. I presume that this is a programming error.”

He further refines his argument showing the distribution of the error, and the problems with the USHCN temperature data. He also sends an email to NASA GISS advising of the problem.
He finally publishes it here, stating that NASA made a correction not only on their own web page, attributing the discovery to McIntyre, but NASA also issued a corrected set of temperature anomaly data which you can see here.

Bottom line:
According to the new data published by NASA, 1998 is no longer the hottest year ever. 1934 is. Four of the top 10 years of US CONUS high temperature deviations are now from the 1930s: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939, while only 3 of the top 10 are from the last 10 years (1998, 2006, 1999). Several years (2000, 2002, 2003, 2004) fell well down the leaderboard, behind even 1900. (World rankings of temperature are calculated separately.)

In other words: Four of the top ten are in the 1930’s, before mainstream scientists believe humans had any discernible impact on temperatures.

Noel Sheppard wonders: “As global warming is such a key issue being debated all around this country and on Capitol Hill, wouldn’t such a change by the agency responsible for calculating such things be important to disseminate? When this correction was made by Hansen’s team at the GISS, shouldn’t it have been reported? In fact, it is quite disgraceful that it wasn’t, as it suggests that a government agency is actually participating in a fraud against the American people by withholding information crucial to a major policy issue now facing the nation. Think this will be Newsweek’s next cover-story? No, I don’t either.”

***

More reax on the James Hansen factor:
Ace: “So James Hansen, who claimed Bush was politicizing Global Warming, refused to provide his algorithms to other researchers so they could simply check his work, hiding his own errors from them and distorting the science he claims to care about oh-so-much until some persistent researchers went to the great trouble of reconstructing his algorithms themselves. Fire him. Immediately.”

Bryan Preston at Hot Air: “The discontinuity in the data should have been a serious red flag for Hansen et al, but what we’re probably seeing here is the effect of personality and agenda on the scientific process. They assumed they were right, and either discounted or didn’t even notice the discontinuity that occurred at 2000. When I say that personality had an effect, here’s what I mean by that. After Hansen became the most famous “silenced” scientist since Galileo and particularly since he was battling Bush, he became a titan to the vast majority of the people I worked with in the earth science field at NASA (an admittedly small slice of that field, but also the top couple of echelons of it at the Goddard Space Flight Center). Questioning him in any way invited hostile stares and could limit a career. When I say that agenda played a role, if you ever manage to get onto the GSFC and find yourself outside any of the couple of earth science buildings, take note of the bumper stickers on most of the cars. They’re faded and pealing and say in big, bold letters “Dean for President.”

Small Dead Animals has more.
From Rush’s show earlier today, with a sharp tie-in to Newsweek’s alarmist cover this week on global warming:

So Steve McIntyre, who lives in Toronto, began to investigate the data and the methods used to arrive at the results that were graphed by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. What he discovered was amazing. NASA doesn’t fully publish computer source code and formula they use to calculate the trends and the graph I have here nor the correction used to arrive at the correct data. So we had to reverse engineer the process by comparing the raw data and the processed data. And the bottom line is, that 1998 is no longer — you can say NASA made a reporting error or did they make a reporting error? Did they do this on purpose? How long have they known that it was erroneous and haven’t corrected it? But the bottom line of this is that 1998 is no longer the hottest year on record. Four of the top ten hottest years on record are from the 30s: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939 while only three of the top ten warmest years on record are from the last ten years, ‘98, 2006 and 1999. Well, you might say, “So what? What does this matter, Rush?”

Well, when 1934 was the hottest year on record, and NASA may know about it and doesn’t correct the data, and when a guy named James Hansen involved in all this, who is a political activist, then you have to figure there is a reason why they want 1998 continue to be reported as the warmest year on record. And voila, from a soon-to-be released Reuters story, “A study forecasts that global warming will set in with a vengeance after 2009, with at least half of the five following years expected to be hotter than 1998, which was the warmest year on record.” So ladies and gentlemen, what do we have here? We have proof of man-made global warming. The man-made global warming is inside NASA. The man-made global warming is in the scientific community with false data. This is irresponsible. This is supposedly scientific data. It is unchallengeable. It is inarguable. And it’s bogus. I don’t know how long they’ve known it. I don’t know if they intend to correct it or not. I doubt you’ll hear anything about this, other than this program. The Drive-By Media, this is not going to interest them. “Oh, Rush, irrelevant footnote. Everybody knows that global warm is happening out there.” All right, well, you see how this works.

…Newsweek has this story, current issue, that is the most irresponsible, one sided, no science in it, where they go after the global warming deniers. The use of the term deniers, global warming is on purpose. Holocaust deniers and so forth. It has gotten so bad here, I tell you what the Newsweek thing means. It means we are winning the debate…

My Rant

The claim that climate change is direct result of man's energy consumption is simply unproven and politically motivated. While they propound lies that certain lightbulbs or cars will destroy the earth and raise ocean levels as much as 20 feet within the next century, fascists, like Al Gore, fly around in their Gulfstream jets and live in homes that use 22 times the energy of an average American's home! Their propaganda is outrageous and potentially catastrophic for the economies of United States, the developed world and developing world.

The proof of global warming or man's influence on climate change is not settled science. Just consider the source of the big lie: the proselytizing hypocritical high priest of the pagan environmental religion Al Gore or the other Kool-Aid drinking climateers from the left such as Learjet liberals, Hollywood high school drop-outs, billonaire elitists, the left-leaning mainstream media, the United Nations, academia, environmental radicals, socialists, other anti-capitalists and so called "researchers", "experts" and/or "scientists" whose paychecks depend upon the apparent existence of the "issue".

United States energy conservation and independence is a worthy goal that should be supported by Republicans, the Democrat Party, true Democrats, Independents and environmentalists. Energy independence is a major national security concern. However, lying to our people, implementing the cap & trade boondoggle which will crush our economy or doing anything that will cause the United States to transfer an portion of its sovereignty to the United Nations is idiotic. Not in my name!
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