New paper finds natural ocean oscillations explain southwest US drought & half of the warming of the latter 20th century

A paper published today in Climate Dynamics finds the natural Atlantic multi-decadal oscillation (AMO) was responsible for half of the warming of the Southwestern US during the late 20th century. 

According to the authors, "We find that in the early twentieth century the warming was dominated by a positive phase of the Atlantic multi-decadal oscillation (AMO) with minor contributions from increasing solar irradiance and concentration of greenhouse gases. The late twentieth century warming was about equally influenced by increasing concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs) and a positive phase of the AMO. The current southwestern US drought is associated with a near maximum AMO index occurring nearly simultaneously with a minimum in the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) index. A similar situation occurred in mid-1950s when precipitation reached its minimum within the instrumental records." 

The authors also find, "the current climate models have not been able to predict the behavior of the AMO and PDO indices. The regression model does support the climate models (CMIP3 and CMIP5 AOGCMs) projections of a much warmer and drier southwestern US only if the AMO changes its 1,000 years cyclic behavior and instead continues to rise close to its 1975–2000 rate. If the AMO continues its quasi-cyclic behavior the US SW temperature should remain stable and the precipitation should significantly increase during the next few decades."

Climate Dynamics

September 2013,

Open Access

Imprint of the Atlantic multi-decadal oscillation and Pacific decadal oscillation on southwestern US climate: past, present, and future

• Petr Chylek, 


• Manvendra K. Dubey, 


• Glen Lesins, 


• Jiangnan Li, 


• Nicolas Hengartner

Full paper available here as open access:

Download PDF (933 KB) View Article

Abstract

The surface air temperature increase in the southwestern United States was much larger during the last few decades than the increase in the global mean. While the global temperature increased by about 0.5 °C from 1975 to 2000, the southwestern US temperature increased by about 2 °C. If such an enhanced warming persisted for the next few decades, the southwestern US would suffer devastating consequences. To identify major drivers of southwestern climate change we perform a multiple-linear regression of the past 100 years of the southwestern US temperature and precipitation. We find that in the early twentieth century the warming was dominated by a positive phase of the Atlantic multi-decadal oscillation (AMO) with minor contributions from increasing solar irradiance and concentration of greenhouse gases. The late twentieth century warming was about equally influenced by increasing concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs) and a positive phase of the AMO. The current southwestern US drought is associated with a near maximum AMO index occurring nearly simultaneously with a minimum in the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) index. A similar situation occurred in mid-1950s when precipitation reached its minimum within the instrumental records. If future atmospheric concentrations of GHGs increase according to the IPCC scenarios (Solomon et al. in Climate change 2007: working group I. The Physical Science Basis, Cambridge, 996 pp, 2007), climate models project a fast rate of southwestern warming accompanied by devastating droughts (Seager et al. in Science 316:1181–1184, 2007; Williams et al. in Nat Clim Chang, 2012). However, the current climate models have not been able to predict the behavior of the AMO and PDO indices. The regression model does support the climate models (CMIP3 and CMIP5 AOGCMs) projections of a much warmer and drier southwestern US only if the AMO changes its 1,000 years cyclic behavior and instead continues to rise close to its 1975–2000 rate. If the AMO continues its quasi-cyclic behavior the US SW temperature should remain stable and the precipitation should significantly increase during the next few decades.

Related: Sunspot integral and ocean oscillations explain 96% of climate change

Read More

Report: Rising oil & gas production is adding $1,200 per year in discretionary income to average US family

Finally, the warmist claim that climate skeptics benefit from the oil industry finally has some merit! lol

U.S. energy lifting economy more than expected

Tim Mullaney, USA TODAY12:03 a.m. EDT September 4, 2013

Rising U.S. oil and natural gas production is having a bigger impact on the U.S. economy than estimated a couple years ago, according to a leading economic consulting firm.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• New energy sources account for 2.1 million jobs, report says


• Natural gas production up 58%, prices down by three-fourths since 2007


• Jobs include drilling, transport, and some manufacturing, especially in chemicals

Newly found sources of domestic oil and natural gas are having an even bigger impact on the economy than first projected, adding more than $1,200 last year to the discretionary income of the average U.S. family, a new study says.

The explosion in domestic energy production now supports 1.2 million jobs, directly or indirectly, says consulting firm IHS, in a study released Wednesday. That number will grow to 3.3 million by 2020, and new energy's contribution to U.S. families' disposable incomes will hit $2,000 per household per year by 2015, said IHS.

IHS' numbers are larger than findings by other economists, which also point to a major impact from shale oil and gas. The introduction of technologies like hydraulic fracking and horizontal drilling, which made it practical to recover previously unused oil reserves, has helped drive a 58% increase in natural gas reserves since 2007, cut the price of natural gas by nearly three-fourths, and sparked more than $120 billion in U.S.-based investment last year, IHS said. Its study was partly financed by a number of energy and manufacturing industry groups.

"Anyone who doubts the reality of this is not paying attention,'' said John Larson, vice president of IHS and co-leader of a team of 13 contributors from the firm's energy, economics and manufacturing-industry consulting groups. "You're seeing the production numbers in both gas and oil to support it.''

The biggest impact on many U.S. households is lower electricity and heating bills, accounting for about 75% of the average household's gains, Larson said. About $800 of that represents lower prices for natural gas-fueled heat and cooking, and $100 to $150 is from electricity rates lower than they otherwise would be, he said.

Government data back up most of this analysis. Residential natural-gas prices, which vary widely by state, have fallen between 12% and 32% since 2008, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Electricity prices, however, have risen slightly on average. IHS' numbers were based on assumptions about what households would have spent if U.S. natural gas prices stayed near 2008 levels, Larson said.

Natural gas prices in much of Europe are three times U.S. levels, and Asian prices are even higher, reflecting the lack of new supplies there, he said.
Cheaper electricity also shows up in the price of other manufactured goods, and some families get a paycheck from producing oil and gas, or working for companies that ship petroleum or make supplies for drilling and pipelines, he said.

Earlier, IHS had only estimated the impact of new gas supplies, without attempting to quantify the effects of new oil supplies pouring out of places such as North Dakota and the Eagle Ford shale in Texas. In December 2011, it had said the shale gas industry was supporting 600,000 jobs by 2010.

Moody's Analytics, another leading economics consulting firm, estimates that 1 million of the 2.7 million jobs gained in the U.S. between 2002 and 2012 were related to shale oil and gas drilling, Moody's economist Chris Lafakis said.

Growth in shale-related employment since 2008 was almost four times as much as Moody's forecast in 2009, and is growing twice as fast as the overall economy despite a hiring lull caused by lower natural gas prices, Lafakis said.

'It's difficult to overstate the shale revolution's profound contributions to the US. economy,'' Lafakis said.

More domestic production is also slashing crude oil imports, which fell 19% in the first half of this year, according to the Census Bureau. That shaved $31.6 billion off the nation's trade deficit.

In 2011, U.S. oil and gas companies added almost 3.8 billion barrels of crude oil and related reserves, an increase of 15%, the biggest jump since the U.S. Energy Information Administration began publishing proved reserves estimates in 1977, the government said last month.

Read More

New paper appears to corroborate Spencer & Braswell's paper on misdiagnosis of climate feedbacks

A paper published today in Theoretical and Applied Climatology appears to corroborate Spencer & Braswell's 2011 paper concluding that "atmospheric feedback diagnosis of the climate system remains an unsolved problem, due primarily to the inability to distinguish between radiative forcing and radiative feedback in satellite radiative budget observations." 



The new paper also finds a problem of misdiagnosis of climate feedbacks due to "noise" from natural variation, stating, "we see that the [natural] non-feedback variation plays the most significant role in distorting the curve in the lagged correlation graph, thus obscuring the exact value of climate feedback" and "The estimated noise levels in both CERES (>13 %) and climate models (11–28 %) are found to be far above the critical level (~5 %) that begins to misrepresent climate feedback." Spencer & Braswell had suggested that the misdiagnosis of climate feedback meant that the "missing heat" at the heart of global warming theory had instead been lost to space:

Climate models get energy balance wrong, make too hot forecasts of global warming 

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (July 26, 2011) — Data from NASA’s Terra satellite shows that when the climate warms, Earth’s atmosphere is apparently more efficient at releasing energy to space than models used to forecast climate change have been programmed to “believe.” 

The result is climate forecasts that are warming substantially faster than the atmosphere, says Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist in the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. 

The previously unexplained differences between model-based forecasts of rapid global warming and meteorological data showing a slower rate of warming have been the source of often contentious debate and controversy for more than two decades. 

In research published this week in the journal “Remote Sensing” http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/3/8/1603/pdf, Spencer and UA Huntsville’s Dr. Danny Braswell compared what a half dozen climate models say the atmosphere should do to satellite data showing what the atmosphere actually did during the 18 months before and after warming events between 2000 and 2011. 

“The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show,” Spencer said. “There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans.” 

Not only does the atmosphere release more energy than previously thought, it starts releasing it earlier in a warming cycle. The models forecast that the climate should continue to absorb solar energy until a warming event peaks. Instead, the satellite data shows the climate system starting to shed energy more than three months before the typical warming event reaches its peak. 

“At the peak, satellites show energy being lost while climate models show energy still being gained,” Spencer said. 

This is the first time scientists have looked at radiative balances during the months before and after these transient temperature peaks. 

Applied to long-term climate change, the research might indicate that the climate is less sensitive to warming due to increased carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere than climate modelers have theorized. A major underpinning of global warming theory is that the slight warming caused by enhanced greenhouse gases should change cloud cover in ways that cause additional warming, which would be a positive feedback cycle. 

Instead, the natural ebb and flow of clouds, solar radiation, heat rising from the oceans and a myriad of other factors added to the different time lags in which they impact the atmosphere might make it impossible to isolate or accurately identify which piece of Earth’s changing climate is feedback from manmade greenhouse gases. 

“There are simply too many variables to reliably gauge the right number for that,” Spencer said. “The main finding from this research is that there is no solution to the problem of measuring atmospheric feedback, due mostly to our inability to distinguish between radiative forcing and radiative feedback in our observations.”

Paper published today:

Theoretical and Applied Climatology

September 2013

Influence of non-feedback variations of radiation on the determination of climate feedback

• Yong-Sang Choi, 


• Heeje Cho, 


• Chang-Hoi Ho, 


• Richard S. Lindzen, 


• Seon Ki Park, 


• Xing Yu

Recent studies have estimated the magnitude of climate feedback based on the correlation between time variations in outgoing radiation flux and sea surface temperature (SST). This study investigates the influence of the natural non-feedback variation (noise) of the flux occurring independently of SST on the determination of climate feedback. The observed global monthly radiation flux is used from the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) for the period 2000–2008. In the observations, the time lag correlation of radiation and SST shows a distorted curve with low statistical significance for shortwave radiation while a significant maximum at zero lag for longwave radiation over the tropics. This observational feature is explained by simulations with an idealized energy balance model where we see that the [natural] non-feedback variation plays the most significant role in distorting the curve in the lagged correlation graph, thus obscuring the exact value of climate feedback. We also demonstrate that the climate feedback from the tropical longwave radiation in the CERES data is not significantly affected by the noise. We further estimate the standard deviation of radiative forcings (mainly from the noise) relative to that of the non-radiative forcings, i.e., the noise level from the observations and atmosphere–ocean coupled climate model simulations in the framework of the simple model. The estimated noise levels in both CERES (>13 %) and climate models (11–28 %) are found to be far above the critical level (~5 %) that begins to misrepresent climate feedback.

Read More

New paper boosts Svensmark's theory of cosmoclimatology; 'unexpected magic by cosmic rays in cloud formation'

"The result boosts our theory that cosmic rays coming from the Galaxy are directly involved in the Earth's weather and climate," says Henrik Svensmark, lead author of the new report.

Simulating what could happen in the atmosphere, the DTU’s SKY2 experiment shows molecular clusters (red dots) failing to grow enough to provide significant numbers of “cloud condensation nuclei” (CCN) of more than 50 nanometres in diameter. This is what existing theories predict. But when the air in the chamber is exposed to ionizing rays that simulate the effect of cosmic rays, the clusters (blue dots) grow much more vigorously to the sizes suitable for helping water droplets to form and make clouds. (A nanometre is a millionth of a millimetre.) (Credit: DTU)

Unexpected Magic by Cosmic Rays in Cloud Formation

Sep. 4, 2013 — Back in 1996 Danish physicists suggested that cosmic rays, energetic particles from space, are important in the formation of clouds. Since then, experiments in Copenhagen and elsewhere have demonstrated that cosmic rays actually help small clusters of molecules to form. But the cosmic-ray/cloud hypothesis seemed to run into a problem when numerical simulations of the prevailing chemical theory pointed to a failure of growth.

Fortunately the chemical theory could also be tested experimentally, as was done with SKY2, the chamber of which holds 8 cubic metres of air and traces of other gases. One series of experiments confirmed the unfavourable prediction that the new clusters would fail to grow sufficiently to be influential for clouds. But another series of experiments, using ionizing rays, gave a very different result, as can be seen in the accompanying figure.

The reactions going on in the air over our heads mostly involve commonplace molecules. During daylight hours, ultraviolet rays from the Sun encourage sulphur dioxide to react with ozone and water vapour to make sulphuric acid. The clusters of interest for cloud formation consist mainly of sulphuric acid and water molecules clumped together in very large numbers and they grow with the aid of other molecules.

Atmospheric chemists have assumed that when the clusters have gathered up the day's yield, they stop growing, and only a small fraction can become large enough to be meteorologically relevant. Yet in the SKY2 experiment, with natural cosmic rays and gamma-rays keeping the air in the chamber ionized, no such interruption occurs. This result suggests that another chemical process seems to be supplying the extra molecules needed to keep the clusters growing.

"The result boosts our theory that cosmic rays coming from the Galaxy are directly involved in the Earth's weather and climate," says Henrik Svensmark, lead author of the new report. "In experiments over many years, we have shown that ionizing rays help to form small molecular clusters. Critics have argued that the clusters cannot grow large enough to affect cloud formation significantly. But our current research, of which the reported SKY2 experiment forms just one part, contradicts their conventional view. Now we want to close in on the details of the unexpected chemistry occurring in the air, at the end of the long journey that brought the cosmic rays here from exploded stars."

Prof. Svensmark and his team are in the Center for Sun-Climate Research at the Danish National Space Institute, DTU Space. His co-authors are Martin B. Enghoff and Jens Olaf Pepke Pedersen. In their paper they acknowledge important theoretical contributions to this line of research, notably from Nicolai Bork of the University of Helsinki.

The above story is based on materials provided by Technical University of Denmark (DTU).

Journal Reference:
Henrik Svensmark, Martin B. Enghoff, Jens Olaf Pepke Pedersen. Response of cloud condensation nuclei () to changes in ion-nucleation. Physics Letters A, 2013; 377 (37): 2343 DOI: 10.1016/j.physleta.2013.07.004

Response of cloud condensation nuclei (>50 nm) to changes in ion-nucleation

• Henrik Svensmark^, , 


• Martin B. Enghoff, 


• Jens Olaf Pepke Pedersen

• National Space Institute, Technical University of Denmark, Elektrovej, Bygning 327, 2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark

Highlights

•

Measures the effect of ionization on the formation of large clusters (>50 nm).

•

Clusters produced by ionization all grow up to diameters larger than 50 nm.

•

Experimental results contrast previous modeling and theory.

---

Abstract

In experiments where ultraviolet light produces aerosols from trace amounts of ozone, sulfur dioxide, and water vapor, the relative increase in aerosols produced by ionization by gamma sources is constant from nucleation to diameters larger than 50 nm, appropriate for cloud condensation nuclei. This result contradicts both ion-free control experiments and also theoretical models that predict a decline in the response at larger particle sizes. This unpredicted experimental finding points to a process not included in current theoretical models, possibly an ion-induced formation of sulfuric acid in small clusters.

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the SKY2 experiment.

Fig. 2. During a typical experimental run, number densities of aerosol particles of increasing diameter were observed as a function of time. Left panel: 3–10 nm (black), 10–20 nm (purple), 20–30 nm (dark blue). Middle panel: 30–40 nm (light blue), 40–50 nm (green), 50–60 nm (yellow). Right panel: 60–68 nm (red). At ≈19.2 days the gamma sources were opened to increase the ionization as described in the text, and an increase in aerosol density began immediately in the 3–10 nm curve (black). Subsequently the increase in number densities slowly propagated down to the larger aerosol sizes, as shown by the slanting arrow. Note that the number of particles in the first bin (3–10 nm) is relatively low because of a lower sensitivity of the instrument to the smallest aerosols. Black curves are an average over 67.5 minutes.

Fig. 3. Steady state response to a change in nucleation as a function of particle diameter, normalized to the particle number before two types of perturbation. (a) Ion-induced increase in nucleation. Blue circles are the experimental results averaged over five runs. The red curve is a typical result of a numerical simulation of the experimental situation using a standard numerical aerosol model. Notice that the expected response from the modeling decreases strongly with particle diameter in contrast with the experimental results. A much better agreement is seen with a numerical simulation in the black curve, where the concentration of sulfuric acid is held constant. (b) Control experiment where the increase in particle concentration is done by injection of H₂SO₄–water ultra-fine aerosols (≈6–8 nm) under constant UV intensity and trace gas concentrations, and no gamma source ionization. Notice that in this case the response (red circles) diminishes as aerosol size increases. Error bars are ±1-σ errors.

Related: The Other Climate Theory

Read More

Stop denying climate science and ACT! (before people realize it’s a scam)

Stop denying climate science and ACT! (before people realize it’s a scam)

By Paul Driessen, September 2, 2013

The full-court press is on. Alarmist scientists, politicians, pressure groups, newspapers, ministers, rabbis and bureaucrats want Americans to “stop stalling” on climate change. They demand that we embrace “revenue-neutral” carbon taxes and carbon dioxide regulations, before it’s “too late” to prevent “catastrophic” global warming, “monster” storms and rising seas that will “inundate our coastal cities.”

Anyone dissenting from this “call to action” is a climate change “denier”—a pejorative devised to vilify and silence anyone who rejects this agenda, by linking our views to Holocaust denial. What nonsense.

All of us “deniers” know climate change is real and has been throughout Earth’s many cycles of warming and cooling, storms and droughts, ice ages and little ice ages. Striations (scratches) on a chunk of Niagara Escarpment limestone that I dug out a mile from my boyhood home memorialize stones dragged by the last glacier that buried Wisconsin under a mile of ice. Countless climate changes have buffeted our Earth.

What we deny are assertions that human carbon dioxide emissions have replaced the myriad of complex, interrelated planetary, solar and cosmic forces that caused previous climate reverberations, and that what we are experiencing now is unprecedented and likely to be catastrophic.

Not one of the alarmist claims is supported by actual observations or scientificevidence. Even worse, the claims are getting more ridiculous with every passing day: “children aren’t going to know what snow is,” crime is rising, oceans won’t smell the same, and storms are getting worse—because of global warming. 

Contrary to the hype and hysteria, our planet stopped warming 16 years ago

Contrary to the hype and hysteria, our planet stopped warming 16 years ago, even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continued to climb. That prompted climate catastrophists to start talking about “climate change” and blame every “extreme weather” event on CO2 emissions.

As I have pointed out before, far from being a “dangerous pollutant” (as President Obama and EPA keep saying), carbon dioxide makes all life on Earth possible. It makes food crops and other plants grow faster and better, loads them with more nutrients, helps them survive droughts, and makes our planet greener.

This trace gas has almost nothing to do with planetary warming or climate change. But it’s worth noting that the United States has slashed its CO2 emissions more than almost any other country—sending them back to where they were 30 years ago, thanks to the environmentalists’ latest target: fracking! And the daily human contribution of CO2 to our atmosphere is equivalent to a penny out of $1 million!

CO2 levels have “soared” to 400 ppm (0.04% of Earth’s atmosphere) not because of the USA or other developed countries—but because China, India and dozens of other countries are working desperately to lift billions of people out of abject poverty. To do that, they need fossil fuels, which provide 80% of the energy that makes modern civilization and living standards possible—and these countries are not going to slash their hydrocarbon use. To suggest otherwise reflects callous contempt for the needs of families that want to take their rightful places among Earth’s healthy and prosperous people.

No one would suggest that the absence of extreme weather events over a particular time period is due to humans. However, recent history certainly contradicts incessant claims that our weather is getting worse. In fact, no category 3 or higher hurricane has struck the United States in eight years, the longest such stretch since the Civil War. With only a couple of exceptions earlier this summer, the US is enjoying its longest respite from major tornadoes in decades. We are also witnessing the highest AugustArctic sea ice extent since 2006, amid the coldest summer on record at the North Pole;record August lows for Alert and Eureka, in Nunavut, BC; and record highs for the extent of August sea ice in Antarctica.

Equally fascinating, most of the record high temperatures that the alarmists are trumpeting beat the previous records, mostly set in the 1930s, by mere hundredths of a degree. Yet, somehow that’s news.

As to oceans inundating coastal communities, Topex Poseidon satellites show virtuallyno rise in sea levels between 1993 and 2001, and the EU’s Envisat satellites show no rise from 2003 through 2011. The steady 2-3 mm per year rise in sea level, it turns out, is because scientists “adjust” the raw data (always upward, never down, for some reason). But even 200-300 mm (8-12 inches) per century, or by the year 2100, is a far cry from the 3-20 feet that President Obama and former VP Al Gore have warned us about. Even Mr. Obama was off a few years when he said June 2008 was “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow.” But it’s one more climate cataclysm that we can erase from our worry list—especially compared to the 400 feet that the world’s oceans have risen since the end of the last ice age.

(Mr. Gore is also famous for misinforming his 2009 “Tonight Show” audience that the Earth’s interior is “really hot, several million degrees”—the core is actually 9,000 degrees F—and for refusing to debate anyone on climate change or even take audience questions that he has not preapproved. Perhaps in his defense, Nobel Laureate Gore managed only a C+ and a D in the only science courses he ever took.)

If it’s “weird weather” you seek, just peruse Richard Keene’s fascinating weather guides, Skywatch East and Skywatch West, for numerous examples of wild and wacky weather in the USA. For more examples, check out the Tri-State Twister and Children’s Blizzard, or consult the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change 2011 interim report, Climate Change Reconsidered. You will be amazed at how different the facts are from the fallacies, fibs and fear mongering you find in the “mainstream media.”

No tax that penalizes people and businesses for using fossil fuels is “revenue neutral.”

One final point. No tax that penalizes people and businesses for using fossil fuels is “revenue neutral.” Any such tax or regulation kills profits and jobs, turns full-time jobs into part-timers, and adversely affects people’s health and well-being. Millions of families cannot heat and cool their homes properly, pay their rent, mortgage or other bills, take vacations, or save for retirement. The increasing stress results in sleep deprivation, poor nutrition, more commuting, higher incidences of depression and alcohol, drug, spousal and child abuse, lower life expectancies and higher suicide rates. Climate taxes and regulations also force us to spend billions subsidizing environment unfriendly biofuels, wind and solar energy.

That’s an intolerably high price to pay, for “protection” from illusory and exaggerated climate dangers.

Climate alarmists are trying to sucker, snooker and stampede us into taking “immediate action” on job and economy-strangling taxes and restrictions, before more people catch on to what’s really happening. This protection racket is one more example of passing a law, so that we can find out what’s in it. We simply cannot afford to let science continue being coopted to serve anti-hydrocarbon political agendas.

Demands that we “stop stalling” on “catastrophic manmade climate change” have nothing to do with preventing warming and cooling, storms and droughts that have been “real” since time immemorial. They have everything to do with regulating and restricting the use of hydrocarbons that provide 80% of the energy that makes modern civilization and living standards possible. They have everything to do with giving politicians, bureaucrats and pressure groups more money and more control over our lives and economy—but with no accountability for the lies, mistakes, job losses, ill health and deaths that are inevitable as US living standards deteriorate, and Third World lives remain destitute and desperate.

Computer models and scary predictions are not evidence

Computer models and scary predictions are not evidence. Basing energy and economic decisions on climate models is akin to betting your life’s savings on a computer model that focuses on middle linebackers and ignores quarterbacks and offensive lines, in predicting the Buffalo Bills will win the 2014 and 2015 Super Bowls—and when the prediction falls flat insisting that the Bills really did win, and reality must be “adjusted” to make it conform with the predictions.

Climate “deniers” and rationalists should support Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) and other politicians and scientists who are under constant attack by climate alarmists, for daring to dissent from approved orthodoxy. Their vigilance and determination are all that stand between energy and economic sanity—and America heading down the same destructive path that Europe has trod for the past two decades.

Read More

If you still believe in 'climate change' read this…

By James Delingpole Environment Last updated: September 3rd, 2013

348 Comments Comment on this article

Put him in the Special Punishment wing. He's earned it

If any business were to submit a prospectus as patently false and deliberately dishonest as the ones used to advance the cause of the global warming industry, its directors would all be in prison by now. (C Jeff Randall)

Does that mean Ed Davey should have followed Chris Huhne into the slammer for his claim to Andrew Neil on BBC Daily Politics the other day that in "a recent analysis of 12,000 climate papers…of the scientists who expressed a view 97 per cent said that climate change was happening and that it was human-made activity."?

Not quite, unfortunately, because nothing Davey has said there is technically untrue. A better candidate for prison, actually, would be whoever tweets under the name @BarackObama. When he Tweeted: "Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous" he was promulgating a demonstrable untruth.

No one has ever doubted that climate changes.

Pretty much everyone – probably more than 97 per cent, even – agrees that there is a degree of anthropogenic input, even it's just the barely measurable contribution of beef cattle farts or the heat produced by cities.

But the dangerous bit? No one has come even close to demonstrating it, there is no reliable evidence for it, and very few scientists – certainly far, far fewer than 97 per cent of them – would ever stake their reputations on such a tendentious claim.

The background to all this – and the "97 per cent of climate scientists say…." meme – is expertly covered in a new paper for the Global Warming Policy Foundation by Andrew Montford.

In a sane world it wouldn't have needed writing. An obscure green political activist called John Cook and a few of his eco-cronies produced a pseudo-scientific paper so riddled with flaws that it ought to have been tossed straight in the bin. Instead, it was bigged up by a compliant mainstream media, a desperate and propaganda-hungry green industry, and by the US President as a vitally significant meta-analysis offering indisputable proof of the scientific "consensus" on "climate change."

Montford concludes:

The consensus as described by the survey is virtually meaningless and tells us nothing about the current state of scientific opinion beyond the trivial observation that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and that human activities have warmed the planet to some unspecified extent. The survey methodology therefore fails to address the key points that are in dispute in the global warming debate."

So how do the bastards go on getting away with it? Jamie Whyte provides a fascinating, erudite and original answer in his new paper for the Institute of Economic Affairs – Quack Policy.

(And for a summary of the lefty reaction so far, see here)

In it, he exposes the "rhetorical bluster" used, inter alia, by the climate alarmist establishment to make their case sound stronger and more trustworthily "scientific" than it really is. He is especially sceptical of those who try to advance their cause with the weasel phrase "evidence-based" policy.

"They are partial in their accounting for costs and benefits; they ignore substitution effects; they pretend that mathematical precision is evidence; they confound risk and uncertainty; and they exaggerate the certainty warranted by the available evidence. Having committed such errors, they obscure them with grandiose irrelevancies about peer-reviewed publication, consensus among scientists and the proclamations of official scientific committees."

For Whyte – an economist as well as a philosopher – the fundamental flaw in the warmist argument is its failure to a use a realistic discount rate.

None of the projected disastrous effects of climate change exists in the present but only in an imaginary future (which may never come to pass: these are only unverifiable computer model "projections", remember). So we ought, when considering our expensive prevention/mitigation policies, factor in the key point that "future generations" are going to be richer than we are and therefore better able to pay for any problems that "climate change" may cause them.

But the alarmists cannot afford to admit this, for to do so would be fatally to weaken their case that the time for action is now and that any delay will be fatal. Their emphasis on their imminence of catastrophe is designed to preclude rational analysis, so as to railroad through policies before more temperate heads notice their flaws.

In order to give this catastrophism more credibility, alarmists are wont to appeal to the authority of the "consensus.' (Which is why, of course, the warmist establishment made such a meal of the Cook paper above).

Again, Whyte finds a fatal flaw in this line of argument:

The climate models that predict AGW have not been tested and they are not mere entailments of well-known physics and chemistry. Why, then, do scientists have such high levels of confidence in them? In other words, if a scientific consensus really does exist, this is what needs to be explained. It cannot explain itself, nor justify itself.

Good point. And I'd love to hear a convincing answer to this from the numerous well-known scientists who have used their prestige or their celebrity or their presumed expertise to help push the great climate change scare. I'm thinking here of everyone from Lord Winston and Sir Paul Nurse to science-background celebs such as Ben Goldacre, Simon Singh and Dara O'Briain, all of whom on various occasions have purported to know that "climate change" is a major problem because apparently there is some kind of "consensus" among scientists.

Whyte elucidates further:

We do not have confidence in the predictions of physics because physicists say we should. Rather, our confidence is founded on the extraordinary success of physics. Physical theory does not merely allow us to anticipate the existence and location of previously unobserved planets or the speed at which little trolleys will travel across school science laboratories; it allows us to build televisions, space ships, microwave ovens and so on. Physicists inherit their credibility from physics, not vice versa. That is why their special credibility is restricted to physicists.

Those who build climate models are scientists. But their branch of science has no success with which to impress us, neither in its predictions nor in its applications. In the absence of such success, their assertions of confidence should carry little weight. Especially when such assertions are predictable even in the absence of proper grounds for confidence.

Whyte is right. The idea that the catastrophic climate change industry can derive any authority from real science is an insult to real science.

By way of further confirmation, you might care to read this superb recent essay from Dr Richard Lindzen, which you can reach via Watts Up With That?. He argues that mainstream climate science is currently akin to Lysenkoism and that its adherents have more in common with religious zealots than scrupulous seekers-after-truth.

“Global climate alarmism has been costly to society, and it has the potential to be vastly more costly. It has also been damaging to science, as scientists adjust both data and even theory to accommodate politically correct positions. How can one escape from the Iron Triangle when it produces flawed science that is immensely influential and is forcing catastrophic public policy?”

Right, snivelling, mendacious, corrupt, shrivelled-and-syphilitic-membered, pseudo-scientific, rabid climate trolls. Let's be hearing your pitiful excuses….

Read More

New paper finds cold weather increases heart attacks, no relationship between air pollution & heart attacks

Correlation between weekly incidence of AMI [Acute Myocardial Infarcts] and minimal temperature. (Credit: Image courtesy of European Society of Cardiology)

Cold Weather Produces More Heart Attacks, Researchers Find



Sep. 1, 2013 — Cold weather leads to more heart attacks, according to research presented at ESC Congress 2013 today by Professor Marc Claeys from Belgium. The multifactorial study of nearly 16,000 patients found no relationship between heart attacks and air pollution.



Professor Claeys said: "Air pollution and temperature changes are the most frequently reported environmental triggers for acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Epidemiologic studies have focused mainly on one environmental condition, but most environmental triggers are related to each other and may attenuate or reinforce the triggering effect of a single environmental factor."He added: "Better knowledge of the impact of environment on AMI will help medical care providers and policy makers to optimise prevention strategies for a target risk population." The present study evaluated the independent environmental triggers of AMI in a multifactorial nationwide environmental model. Weekly counts of AMI patients that underwent primary percutaneous coronary intervention (pPCI) during 2006-2009 in 32 Belgian PCI centres were extracted from the national PCI database.



AMI counts were correlated with average weekly meteorological data obtained from daily measurements in 73 meteorological sites, equally distributed in Belgium. The following meteorological measures were investigated: air pollution expressed as particulate matter both less than 10µM (PM10) and less than 2.5µM (PM2.5), black smoke, temperature and relative humidity.



During the study period a total of 15,964 AMI patients (mean age 63 years, 24.8% female) were admitted with a weekly average admission rate of 77 +/- 11 patients. Time series and univariate analysis revealed a significant positive correlation between AMI and air pollution and an inverse correlation between AMI and temperature.



Multivariate analysis showed that only temperature was significantly correlated with AMI, which increased by 7% for each 10°C decrease in minimal temperature (odds ratio [OR]=1.07, 95% confidence interval [CI]=1.04-1.11), and that there was no significant effect of air pollution (OR=1.01, 95%CI=1.00-1.02).



Professor Claeys said: "Additional analysis showed that the triggering effect of low temperature was also present outside the winter period. Apparently, smaller differences in temperature between indoor and outdoor can also precipitate AMI. In addition, below a minimal temperature of 10°C there is no additional effect of temperature decrease on the occurrence of AMIs." (see figure 1)



He added: "A potential mechanism to explain the increased risk of coronary events associated with decreasing temperature is the stimulation of cold receptors in the skin and therefore the sympathetic nervous system, leading to a rise in catecholamine levels. Moreover, increased platelet aggregation and blood viscosity during cold exposure promotes thrombosis and clot formation."



Professor Claeys concluded: "In a global environmental model, low temperature is by far the most important environmental trigger for AMI, whereas air pollution has a negligible effect. People at risk of AMI (for example elderly patients with diabetes and hypertension) can minimise their risk by avoiding big changes in temperature. This means wearing suitable clothes when going from the warm indoors to the colder outdoors, even beyond winter time."

Read More