Twenty-year hiatus in rising temperatures has climate scientists puzzled

DEBATE about the reality of a two-decade pause in global warming and what it means has made its way from the sceptical fringe to the mainstream.

In a lengthy article this week, The Economist magazine said if climate scientists were credit-rating agencies, then climate sensitivity - the way climate reacts to changes in carbon-dioxide levels - would be on negative watch but not yet downgraded.

Another paper published by leading climate scientist James Hansen, the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, says the lower than expected temperature rise between 2000 and the present could be explained by increased emissions from burning coal.

For Hansen the pause is a fact, but it's good news that probably won't last.

International Panel on Climate Change chairman Rajendra Pachauri recently told The Weekend Australian the hiatus would have to last 30 to 40 years "at least" to break the long-term warming trend.

But the fact that global surface temperatures have not followed the expected global warming pattern is now widely accepted.


read more
http://www.telegraph.co.u...uld-be-worried-about.html
- Doppleganger

When will the Summer Arctic be Nearly Sea Ice Free? James E. Overland,1,3 and Muyin Wang 2 1Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, NOAA, Seattle, WA

The observed rapid loss of thick, multi-year sea ice over the last seven years and September 2012 Arctic sea ice extent reduction of 49 % relative to the 1979-2000 climatology are inconsistent with projections of a nearly sea ice free summer Arctic from model estimates of 2070 and beyond made just a few years ago. Three recent approaches to predictions in the scientific literature are: 1) extrapolation of sea ice volume data, 2) assuming several more rapid loss events such as 2007 and 2012, and 3) climate model projections. Time horizons for a nearly sea ice free summer for these three approaches are roughly 2020 or earlier, 2030, and 2040 or later. Loss estimates from models are based on a subset of the most rapid ensemble members. It is not possible to clearly choose one approach over another as this depends on the relative weights given to data versus models. Observations and citations support the conclusion that most Global Climate Models results in the CMIP5 archive are too conservative in their sea ice projections. Recent data and expert opinion should be considered in addition to model results to advance the very likely timing for future sea ice loss to the first half of the 21st century, with a possibility of major loss within a decade or two. 1. Introduction
The large observed shifts in the current Arctic environment represent major indicators of regional and global climate change. Whether a nearly sea ice free Arctic occurs in the first or second half of the 21st century is of great economic, social, and wildlife management interest. There is a gap in understanding however, in how to reconcile what is currently happening with sea ice in the Arctic and climate model projections of Arctic sea ice loss. September 2012 showed a reduction in sea ice extent of 49 % relative to the 1979-2000 baseline of 7.0 M km2 (Figure 1 and 2a). Further, the extent of thick multiyear sea ice has been reduced by the same percentage (roughly a reduction from 4 M km2 for 2000 through 2005 to 2 M km2 in 2012; Kwok and Untersteiner, 2011-updated, Comiso 2012). It is difficult to reconcile this current rate of loss with climate model projection dates of summer sea ice loss of 2070 (IPCC 2007) or 2100 (Boe et al. 2009a) made just a few years ago. The question, however, is not as straight forward as simply comparing data timeseries with model results. Global Climate Models (GCMs) are often run several times, referred to as ensemble members, with slightly different initial conditions to simulate a possible range of natural variability in addition to steady increasing greenhouse gas forcing. Data, in contrast, is a single realization of a range of possible climate states. Observations confound signal (global warming forcing) and noise (natural variability). Thus it is not completely valid to compare the ensemble mean of a model or several models, which could be considered the expected value of the climate state, with the single data realization. A better approach is to look at the range of ensemble members and to determine if the data timeseries could be considered a possible member of the population of ensemble members. Unfortunately, there are seldom enough ensemble members to test this hypothesis. The science question becomes: is the observed rapid loss of sea ice in the real world consistent with model ensemble members with the fastest rate of loss? Multiple Groups (AMAP, WCRP, various national programs), as well as the climate research community and the general public, are interested in this question for adaptation planning and as a popular indicator of climate change. When will the summer Arctic be nearly sea ice free? A first issue is the phrase, gnearly.h It is expected that some sea ice will remain as a refuge north of the Canadian Archipelago and Greenland at the end of summer. Thus the practical limit for sea ice loss is arbitrary, but several sources have converged on 1.0 M km2 as a minimum transition point. There are three scientific approaches to the posed question in the scientific literature. The first is based on extrapolation of sea ice volume data. The second considers that it will take several more rapid loss events such as the losses in 2007 and 2012 to reach the minimum. The third approach is to base predictions on fast track model ensemble member projections. We refer to the three approaches as, trendsetters, stochasters, and modelers. Time horizons for summer sea ice loss of these three approaches turns out to be roughly 2020, 2030, and 2040, as discussed below. At present it is not possible to completely choose one approach over another, as it depends on the weight given to data, understanding of Arctic change processes, and the use and purpose of model projections. The next sections address these three approaches. 2. Trendsetters
Two groups are most active in this approach which extrapolates sea ice volume (Schweiger et al. 2011, Maslowski 2012). Their main points are that sea ice volume is decreasing at a rate that is faster than sea ice extent, and that volume is a better variable than extent to use for sea ice loss. Schweiger and Zhangfs group uses the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS), which assimilates sea ice concentration and sea surface temperature and hindcasts using NCEP Reanalyses into a high resolution sea ice model. PIOMAS results have recently been confirmed by satellite ice thickness measurements (Laxon et al. 2013). PIOMAS monthly averaged ice volume for September 2012 was 3,400 km3 (Figure 2b). This value is 72% lower than the mean over 1979-2012 and 2.0 standard deviations below the 1979-2012 trend line. September 2012 ice volume was about 800 km3 less than the prior minimum in September 2011. In contrast to the dramatic reduction in 2012 sea ice extent, the 2011 to 2012 change in sea ice volume was similar to the volume losses that occurred in the previous two years. The long term trend is about -3.1x103 km3 decade-1. While the PIOMAS team does not directly extrapolate, the already major volume loss of 70-80 % and recent losses suggest that extrapolation into the future from the current volume amount shows that Arctic sea ice is vulnerable within the next decade. Monthly mean Arctic sea ice volumes from the NAME model and recent satellite estimates show sea ice volume changed little during the 1980s through the mid-1990s (Maslowski et al. 2012). After 1995 one can estimate a negative trend of -1.1x103 km3 yr-1 from combined model and most recent observational estimates for October.November 1996.2007. Given this estimated trend and the volume estimate for October.November of 2007 at less than 9,000 km3, one can project a nearly ice-free summer Arctic Ocean before 2020 (Maslowski et al. 2012). 3. Stochasters
In the recent half decade young, melt-prone sea ice has come to dominate the Arctic sea ice pack which supports the arguments of the trendsetters. However, the paper of Kay et al. (2011) suggests that there can be a modifying influence from natural variability especially for the timing of sea ice loss. They show a widening of the distribution of possible ten and twenty year trends in sea ice extent in the Community Climate System Model 4.0 (CCSM4) model due to increased vulnerability of sea ice to large meteorological or oceanic events. Kay et al. (2011, their Figure 3) show that over a future 20 year period, sea ice loss can vary over a range of 0-80 %. Both CCSM3 and CCSM4 models show rapid ice loss events with different timing in different ensemble members (Holland et al 2006, Vavrus et al. 2012). The key argument of the Stochasters is that it will take several rapid loss events such as occurred in 2007 and 2012 to reach the 1.0 M km2 sea ice extent threshold. If we select the 5 yr interval that occurred between the 2007 and 2012 sea ice loss events as an expected value, then three more events puts a nearly sea ice free timing at 2028. Serreze (2011) states that we should be looking at sea ice-free summers only a few decades from now. Holland et al. (2006) and Wang and Overland (2009, 2012) show a large range of timing of sea ice loss for different ensemble members of the same GCM. Based on a subset of available GCMs, Wang and Overland (2012) estimated the time for a nearly sea ice free summer Arctic to be reached starting from a value of 4.5 M km2 (the observed 2007 value) ranged from 14 years to 36 years with a median of 28 years based on individual ensemble members, which puts the loss event in the 2030s with a large range Given that most sea ice trends in models are slower than observed trends for 1979-2011 (Stroeve, et al. 2012, their Figure 3, see next section), we should select a value at the earlier end of this range, i.e. 2030
Stochasters are further supported by recent papers that suggest that there is no tipping point associated with sea ice loss, again based on modeling studies (Amstrup et al. 2010, Armour et al. 2011, Ridley et al. 2011). Tietsche et al. (2011) suggest that anomalous loss of Arctic sea ice during a single summer is reversible, as the ice.albedo feedback is alleviated by large]scale recovery mechanisms. That is, continued sea ice loss requires continued increases in green house gases. However, consensus is not universal, as adequately representing cloud feedbacks in GCMs may be placing too much faith in them (Lenton 2012). Thus it is suggested that the stochasters would require 20 years or more after 2007 or around 2030 with a wide range of uncertainty to have several rapid ice loss events occur and to reach nearly sea ice free conditions. While not unreasonable, stochasters is the most ad hoc of the three approaches. 4. Modelers GCMs are major quantitative tools available to provide future climate projections based on physical laws that control the dynamic and thermodynamic processes of the atmosphere, ocean, land and sea ice. Recently, modeling groups around the world have improved their GCMs and made their results available to the wider scientific community through the archive at the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI). This constitutes the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) following the successful third phase (CMIP3). Typically, results from more than twenty models are available. All models show loss of sea ice as greenhouse gas concentrations increase and that Arctic warms faster than lower latitudes. Multiple models simulations are particularly useful in assessing uncertainty due to differences in model structure, natural variability, and different greenhouse gas emission scenarios (Hodson et al. 2012).
A first major difficulty is the wide spread of model hindcast results; they vary by model, location, variable and evaluation metric (Figure 3, Overland et al. 2011, Kwok 2011). Figure 3 is based on the high greenhouse gas emission RCP8.5 scenario (Moss et al. 2010). A second major difficulty is that 80 % of 56 CMIP5 ensemble members have trends for 1979-2011 that are of less magnitude than the two standard deviation bound for the observations (Stroeve et al. 2012, their Figure 3). Thus, there is no ideal all purpose model for the Arctic. It is difficult to pin down the reasons for these two difficulties (Walsh et al. 2008). For example DeWeaver et al. (2008) , Eisenman et al. (2008), Hodson et al. (2012) and Holland et al. (2012) note that the Arctic radiation budget results from complex balances and tradeoffs between sea ice amounts, albedo parameterization, and cloud properties. Another issue is that real world Arctic conditions (sea ice, snow cover) are evolving substantially faster than ensemble means of models (Stroeve et al. 2012, Dirksen et al. 2012). The time series of the grand mean of CMIP5 ensemble members based on the high greenhouse gas emission RCP8.5 scenario for September sea ice (yellow line in Figure 3) never reaches the nearly sea ice free definition of 1.0 M km2 by 2100. Winton (2011) shows that climate models underestimate the sensitivity of Arctic sea ice cover to global temperature change. Further, Boe et al. (2009b) conclude that GCMsf Arctic response to anthropogenic forcing is generally too small. Thus there is ground to consider that models provide a range of projections based on their individual assumptions, rather than providing a collective definitive Arctic climate prediction.
Pavlova et al. (2011) note that the multi-model ensemble mean is closer to the data curve for the late 20th and early 21st centuries for CMIP5 relative to CMIP3 results. However the spread of hindcasts and future trajectories remains large in CMIP5 models (Figure 3, also see Figure 1 in Massonnet et al. 2012). Boe et al. (2010), Hodson et al. (2012) and Massonnet et al. (2012), among others, note that the rate of sea ice loss in models depends on the amount of sea ice present. Thus there is concern with projections from models that do not simulate the amount of observed sea ice near the end of the 20th century. There are four major evaluations of sea ice projections in the set of CMIP5 GCMs: Pavlova et al. (2011), Stroeve et al. (2012), Wang and Overland (2012), and Massonnet et al. (2012), and one detailed review for the CCSM4 model (Vavrus et al 2012) and the EC-Earth model (Koenigk et al 2012). The median value for each year of all available CMIP5 ensemble members (blue line in Figure 3) reaches the nearly sea ice free condition near 2060 based on a nearly sea ice free definition of 1.0 M km2. But given the large observed rate of sea ice loss, we are primarly interested in those model ensemble members with the most rapid sea ice loss. The ensemble members of seven models which track closely to recent observed sea ice extents (Wang and Overland 2012) had their earliest nearly sea ice free dates occurring in 2027, 2033, 2035, 2045, 2048, 2049, and 2060, with a mean of 2042. Some individual ensemble members in Figure 3 reach the nearly sea ice free threshold at earlier dates, but many of these ensemble members start with unrealistic low sea ice extents for the late 20th century. Several of the ensemble members of CCSM4 reach the sea ice loss threshold near 2060; this was ten years later than their previous model CCSM3.The EC-Earth model also becomes nearly sea ice free near 2060, but the authors suggest shifting this to 2040 based on the modelfs overestimate of the amount of sea ice in the twentieth century. Thus we put the early limit for sea ice loss based on GCM projections near 2040
This paper should not be used as an argument against further modeling, but quite the opposite. The Arctic community needs credible quantitative climate projections with multiple ensemble members. As noted above, the spread in Figure 3 is not only due to sea ice physics but is related to treatment of clouds, radiation, and atmospheric and ocean dynamics. For the next round of model results, CMIP6, the major goal should be reduction of model uncertainty. Perhaps more model intercomparisons would be a way forward, rather than results provided from a large number of modeling centers produced under short time schedules. 5. Discussion and conclusions We have investigated three approaches to predicting 21st century summer Arctic sea ice loss as represented by trendsetters, stochasters, and modelers. At present it is not possible to completely choose one approach over another, as all approaches have strengths and weaknesses. Models are quantitative, based on physical understanding, and can provide estimates of uncertainty. They all predict an eventual sea ice free Arctic based on increases in greenhouse gas forcing. Modelersf projections for a nearly sea ice free Arctic summer, are mostly in the range of 2030-2060 or later, with a composite of earliest removals near 2040. Yet it is not clear that the observed rapid sea ice loss is represented in the range of model GCM results. Extrapolating current sea ice volume trends seems to capture the influence of the recent rapid loss of multi-year sea ice, yet it will be hard to remove the last sea ice near the North Pole; in 2007 removal of this sea ice required a strong atmospheric and sea ice advection event (Zhang et al. 2008).
Direct extrapolation of sea ice volume, by trendsetters, gives loss projections of 2016 (Maslowski et al 2012, Peter Wadhams 2012, personal communication), which may be minimizing the potential effects of year to year variability. Stochasters acknowledge current conditions and the range of projections suggested by model results, yet point to the lack of being able to forecast the next rapid sea ice loss event. They are saved in part as it will possibly take several such events to reach the nearly sea ice free threshold, thus adding some averaging to the final date prediction (hence stochastic). Observations and citations in this article support the conclusion that current rapid Arctic change, especially loss of multiyear sea ice, is likely out of sample for most CMIP5 models. Thus time horizons for summer sea ice loss of these three approaches turns out to be roughly 2020, 2030, and 2040 respectively for trendsetters, stochasters, and modelers. Predictions depend on the weight given to data, understanding of Arctic change processes, and the use of model projections. It is reasonable to conclude Arctic sea ice loss is very likely to occur in the first rather than the second half of the 21st Century, with a possibility of loss within a decade or two. The title of this paper is certainly one of the major questions of interest to Arctic and non-Arctic science and management communities. Large shifts in the Arctic environment represent major observed indicators of global climate change. Available evidence suggests that scientists have been conservative in their climate projections, with a late bias in dates for change (Brysse et al. 2012). Ignoring the rate of observed loss of multi-year Arctic sea ice in favor of multi-model results primarily from GCMs may be a further example. The possibility of a nearly sea ice free Arctic within the next three decades, in addition to the precautionary principle, supports the Duarte et al. (2012) conclusion that society should start managing for the reality of climate change in the Arctic.
Acknowledgment. The work is supported by NOAA Arctic Research Project of the Climate Program Office and by the Office of Naval Research, Code 322. Impetus for this article came
Accepted Article

The Overwhelming Judgment of Science Rejects Obama's Global Warming Claims


President Barack Obama in his second inauguration address called for new action to “respond to the threat of climate change.” Taking advantage of the bully pulpit and a huge national audience, Obama mustered his best possible arguments in a brief case for why addressing global warming is supposedly necessary. Unfortunately for global warming alarmists, Obama’s case was exceptionally flimsy. Then again, Obama did not have much to work with, as the overall case for global warming alarmism is exceptionally flimsy.

Obama presented his argument as follows: “Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.”
Given a fresh canvas on which to work, Obama sought the most compelling examples of an asserted global warming crisis. He chose wildfires, drought and powerful storms. At the same time, he urged us to defer to the “overwhelming judgment of science” on these matters.

President Obama, I agree we should strongly consider the overwhelming judgment of science. Let’s apply the overwhelming judgment of science to your three cherry-picked examples and see what the science reveals.

Leading off the Obama “Big Three” is wildfires. What does the overwhelming judgment of science reveal?

The National Interagency Fire Center reports the number of annual wildfires in the United States has been declining for more than 30 years. In fact, the “overwhelming judgment of science” reveals the number of wildfires rose from the 1950s through the 1970s, as global temperatures declined, and has been declining ever since, as global temperatures have modestly warmed.

The really interesting part about wildfires in the United States is a recent increase in the number of acres burned per wildfire after the federal government reversed a decades-long policy of putting out as many wildfires as quickly as possible. In the 1990s, environmentalists and federal forest officials reported forests had become overgrown as a result of firefighters putting out too many natural fires too quickly. Since then, firefighters are responding to fewer forest fires and letting more acres burn. As a result, even though wildfires occur less frequently as our planet warms and as soil moisture improves (more on that coming right up), our global warming Alarmist in Chief presents the misleading assertion that global warming rather than a change in federal wildfire policy is causing a recent increase in acres burned due to wildfires.

Next in Obama’s “Big Three” of asserted global warming crises is drought. What does the “overwhelming judgment of science” reveal?

U.S. and global soil moisture improved throughout the 20th century as our planet warmed in its recovery from the Little Ice Age. According to the Global Soil Moisture Data Bank, global soil moisture increased throughout the 20th century at almost all sites. Moreover, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that 20th century droughts were quite mild when compared to droughts in previous centuries. This “overwhelming scientific judgment of science” was confirmed in November when a study published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature found “there has been little change in drought over the past 60 years.”

Finally, the President asserts that global warming is causing more powerful storms. This assertion is particularly fictitious. NOAA reports a long-term decline in strong tornadoes striking the United States. The National Hurricane Center reports that the past 40 years have seen the fewest major hurricane strikes since at least the mid-1800s. Even Hurricane Sandy reminds us that the U.S. Northeast has experienced only one major hurricane strike since 1960, but experienced six major hurricane strikes during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, when global temperatures were cooler.

Clearly, the “overwhelming judgment of science” contradicts President Obama and global warming alarmists. This is a good thing.

Now let’s play a game of “pretend.”

Let’s pretend that none of the overwhelming scientific evidence presented above actually existed. Let’s pretend that science supported rather than contradicted President Obama’s assertions. The question is, what would Obama have us do to solve the problem?

Obama’s solution is to impose still more economy-killing carbon dioxide restrictions on the U.S. economy. This makes about as much sense as losing your car keys in Boston but insisting on searching for them in Los Angeles. True, global carbon dioxide emissions have risen more than 33 percent since the year 2000. However, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions have declined during that time and will continue to decline for the foreseeable future. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that during 2012 alone, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions declined by 8 percent compared to 2011.

China by far emits more carbon dioxide than any other nation and Chinese emissions are growing rapidly. China alone accounts for 75 percent of the global increase in carbon dioxide emissions since 2000. If the United States completely eliminated all of its carbon dioxide emissions today (something that is impossible to do), the only thing we would accomplish would be to delay by about five years an equal increase in Chinese emissions. And China has repeatedly and emphatically insisted it will not agree to any restrictions on its carbon dioxide emissions.

Thankfully, President Obama, the “overwhelming judgment of science” shows the asserted global warming crisis exists solely in the minds of global warming alarmists.

Second Coldest Start To Spring In US Historyhttp://stevengoddard.word...-to-spring-in-us-history/

ICSC MEDIA RELEASE - ICSC CALLS FOR OPEN DEBATE ABOUT THE CAUSES OF CLIMATE CHANGE
http://www.climatescience...ntent&view=article&id=792

Attention: News Editors, Political, Science and Environment Reporters
CANADIAN GOVERNMENT SHOULD IGNORE GREENHOUSE GAS IMPACTS IN ENERGY POLICY FORMULATION
Pretending that climate science is settled, as authors of new open letter do, deceives the public

Ottawa, Canada, May 9, 2013: "Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver should reject the pleas of twelve climate scientists, economists and policy experts who signed an open letter urging him to make greenhouse gas impacts “a central consideration” of Canada’s hydrocarbon resources development,” said Tom Harris, executive director of the Ottawa-based International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC). “Energy plans should be restricted to addressing only the environmental concerns we know to be real, such as air, land and water pollution. The linkage between energy usage and climate is far too tenuous to be included in any serious national discussions about energy.”

“It is utter nonsense to say, as the open letter signers did, that ‘the responsibility for preventing dangerous climate change rests with today’s policymakers,’” said ICSC Science Advisory Board member, Dr. Tim Ball, former University of Winnipeg climatology professor. “We can’t even properly forecast global climate, let alone control it. The open letter’s advocacy of “avoiding 2?C of global warming” by altering our energy policy is ridiculous when cooling is more probable, and may have already started.”

“Spending billions of dollars to reduce Canada’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in a vain attempt to stop non-existent global warming is a tragic waste of our resources,” continued Ball. “By all means, we should work to control real pollution, but CO2, the greenhouse gas most under attack by climate campaigners, is a benefit to the environment, its rise resulting in more crop yield and a densification of forests.”

Speaking about the primary basis of the climate alarm, the forecasts of computerized climate models, applied mathematics professor and ICSC science advisor Dr. Chris Essex of the University of Western Ontario explained, “They can't predict the future because they are not comprehensive implementations of known physics. They are empirically based models of the type that would be used in an engineering problem, but without the empirical validation that must be done for engineering.”

“Many people, including people with PhDs, are very weak on this issue,” asserted Essex. "The big policy questions are beyond the best models we can currently make. Climate is far from a simple solved scientific problem, despite rampant proclamations and simplistic analogies suggesting otherwise. Policymakers, not to mention academics, must come to terms with that."

“Climate change appears to be driven primarily by natural variability,” said former Environment Canada Research Scientist and ICSC science advisor Dr. Madhav L. Khandekar. “The Earth has not warmed in last 16 years, despite about 250 billion tonnes of CO2 put out by human activity worldwide. Regardless, the net effect of any possible future warming and rising CO2 is most likely to be beneficial to humans, plants and wildlife.”

The real concern is possible global cooling, something that could have a disastrous effect on Canada, Khandekar, a contributing author to the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, warns. “Since the start of the new millennium, winters have become colder and snowier in Europe and North America. Winters in South America and South Africa have also become colder,” Khandekar explained. “North America may also quite likely see even colder winters in the next few years if forecasts of dropping solar activity prove to be correct.”

“The dozen academics who just signed the open letter to Minister Oliver are right about one thing: we do need a ‘serious debate about climate change and energy in this country,’” said Harris. “ICSC also encourages the Government to convene open, unbiased hearings into the state of modern climate science, inviting experts of all reputable points of view to testify. Only then will the public come to appreciate the vast uncertainty in this, arguably the most complex science ever tackled.”

The ICSC is a non-partisan group of scientists, economists and energy and policy experts who are working to promote better understanding of climate science and related policy worldwide. We aim to help create an environment in which a more rational, open discussion about climate issues emerges, thereby moving the debate away from implementation of costly and ineffectual “climate control” measures. Instead, ICSC encourages effective planning for, and adaptation to, inevitable natural climate variability, and continuing scientific research into the causes and impacts of climate change.

ICSC also focuses on publicizing the repercussions of misguided plans to “solve the climate crisis”. This includes, but is not limited to, “carbon” sequestration as well as the dangerous impacts of attempts to replace conventional energy supplies with wind turbines, solar power, most biofuels and other ineffective and expensive energy sources.

ICSC MEDIA RELEASE - ICSC CALLS FOR OPEN DEBATE ABOUT THE CAUSES OF CLIMATE CHANGE
http://www.climatescience...ntent&view=article&id=792

Attention: News Editors, Political, Science and Environment Reporters
CANADIAN GOVERNMENT SHOULD IGNORE GREENHOUSE GAS IMPACTS IN ENERGY POLICY FORMULATION
Pretending that climate science is settled, as authors of new open letter do, deceives the public

Ottawa, Canada, May 9, 2013: "Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver should reject the pleas of twelve climate scientists, economists and policy experts who signed an open letter urging him to make greenhouse gas impacts “a central consideration” of Canada’s hydrocarbon resources development,” said Tom Harris, executive director of the Ottawa-based International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC). “Energy plans should be restricted to addressing only the environmental concerns we know to be real, such as air, land and water pollution. The linkage between energy usage and climate is far too tenuous to be included in any serious national discussions about energy.”

“It is utter nonsense to say, as the open letter signers did, that ‘the responsibility for preventing dangerous climate change rests with today’s policymakers,’” said ICSC Science Advisory Board member, Dr. Tim Ball, former University of Winnipeg climatology professor. “We can’t even properly forecast global climate, let alone control it. The open letter’s advocacy of “avoiding 2?C of global warming” by altering our energy policy is ridiculous when cooling is more probable, and may have already started.”

“Spending billions of dollars to reduce Canada’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in a vain attempt to stop non-existent global warming is a tragic waste of our resources,” continued Ball. “By all means, we should work to control real pollution, but CO2, the greenhouse gas most under attack by climate campaigners, is a benefit to the environment, its rise resulting in more crop yield and a densification of forests.”

Speaking about the primary basis of the climate alarm, the forecasts of computerized climate models, applied mathematics professor and ICSC science advisor Dr. Chris Essex of the University of Western Ontario explained, “They can't predict the future because they are not comprehensive implementations of known physics. They are empirically based models of the type that would be used in an engineering problem, but without the empirical validation that must be done for engineering.”

“Many people, including people with PhDs, are very weak on this issue,” asserted Essex. "The big policy questions are beyond the best models we can currently make. Climate is far from a simple solved scientific problem, despite rampant proclamations and simplistic analogies suggesting otherwise. Policymakers, not to mention academics, must come to terms with that."

“Climate change appears to be driven primarily by natural variability,” said former Environment Canada Research Scientist and ICSC science advisor Dr. Madhav L. Khandekar. “The Earth has not warmed in last 16 years, despite about 250 billion tonnes of CO2 put out by human activity worldwide. Regardless, the net effect of any possible future warming and rising CO2 is most likely to be beneficial to humans, plants and wildlife.”

The real concern is possible global cooling, something that could have a disastrous effect on Canada, Khandekar, a contributing author to the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, warns. “Since the start of the new millennium, winters have become colder and snowier in Europe and North America. Winters in South America and South Africa have also become colder,” Khandekar explained. “North America may also quite likely see even colder winters in the next few years if forecasts of dropping solar activity prove to be correct.”

“The dozen academics who just signed the open letter to Minister Oliver are right about one thing: we do need a ‘serious debate about climate change and energy in this country,’” said Harris. “ICSC also encourages the Government to convene open, unbiased hearings into the state of modern climate science, inviting experts of all reputable points of view to testify. Only then will the public come to appreciate the vast uncertainty in this, arguably the most complex science ever tackled.”

The ICSC is a non-partisan group of scientists, economists and energy and policy experts who are working to promote better understanding of climate science and related policy worldwide. We aim to help create an environment in which a more rational, open discussion about climate issues emerges, thereby moving the debate away from implementation of costly and ineffectual “climate control” measures. Instead, ICSC encourages effective planning for, and adaptation to, inevitable natural climate variability, and continuing scientific research into the causes and impacts of climate change.

ICSC also focuses on publicizing the repercussions of misguided plans to “solve the climate crisis”. This includes, but is not limited to, “carbon” sequestration as well as the dangerous impacts of attempts to replace conventional energy supplies with wind turbines, solar power, most biofuels and other ineffective and expensive energy sources.
- Doppleganger

I love how Tom Harris is very very old and will be dead soon

In their desperation to find even a tiny shred of peer-reviewed science to challenge the volumes of research from around the world about human-caused climate change, deniers have often held up Willie Soon's work.

Dr. Soon, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, is known for studies that purportedly show that the sun, and not CO2 emissions from human activity, is the main factor in climate change, and that climate change in the 20th century wasn't that unusual to begin with. He has also argued that mercury emissions from burning coal are no big deal.

Now, in response to a Greenpeace investigation, Dr. Soon has admitted that U.S. oil and coal companies, including ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, Koch Industries, and the world's largest coal-burning utility, Southern Company, have contributed more than $1 million over the past decade to his research. According to Greenpeace, every grant Dr. Soon has received since 2002 has been from oil or coal interests. This despite the fact that he once told a U.S. Senate hearing that he had not been hired by, employed by, or received grants from any organization "that had taken advocacy positions with respect to the Kyoto protocol or the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change."

Dr. Soon has also been affiliated with a number of industry front groups, including the coal-funded Greening Earth Society, and Koch-Exxon-Scaife-funded groups including the George C. Marshall Institute, the Science and Public Policy Institute, the Center for Science and Public Policy, the Heartland Institute, and Canada's Fraser Institute.

Correspondence uncovered by Greenpeace also found that Dr. Soon led a plan in 2003 to undermine the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fourth Assessment Report years before it was even released in 2007.

It's not news that the fossil fuel industry has funded an ongoing campaign of doubt and misinformation about the effects of its products and about the dangers of climate change -- people and organizations from science historian Naomi Oreskes (author of Merchants of Doubt) to Greenpeace have been exposing these efforts for years. From hiring trolls and front groups to post comments on websites, submit letters to editors, and write opinion columns to sponsoring "scientific" research and holding conferences, it's all been well documented. (The same tactics have also been used by the tobacco industry.)

The latest revelation is a bit of an embarrassment for oil giant Exxon, though. The world's largest oil company had admitted that it funded these efforts but promised in 2008 it would stop giving money to groups that lobbied against the need to find clean energy sources.

It's also an embarrassment for those who, in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence, deny the existence of climate change -- or admit that it's happening but say we can't and shouldn't do anything about it. Of course, they will continue to repeat the same discredited points about "climategate" and medieval warm periods and CO2 as plant food, and they'll continue to take the advice of industry shills like Tom Harris to bombard the media with opinion articles and letters to editors and to post numerous comments under online articles.
Some rightly point out that we should look at the science and not at who is paying for the research. So what about Dr. Soon's science? Well, let's consider one paper that Dr. Soon published with colleague Sallie Baliunas, which attempted to discredit the work of Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University. Three editors of the publication that ran the study resigned in protest, including incoming editor-in-chief Hans von Storch. He said "the conclusions [were] not supported by the evidence presented in the paper." Greenpeace notes also that 13 of the scientists cited in the paper published rebuttals stating that Dr. Soon and Dr. Baliunas had misinterpreted their work.

After all their digging, deniers have only been able to find a few minor errors in the volumes of peer-reviewed science about climate change, and have had to rely on manufactured scandals and conspiracy theories to bolster their arguments. It only takes a bit of investigating to poke holes in the scant bits of research that have attempted to discredit real climate science. Let's stop wasting our time on deniers. It would be better spent trying to resolve the serious problems we have created.

Dr. Soon, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, is known for studies that purportedly show that the sun, and not CO2 emissions from human activity, is the main factor in climate change, and that climate change in the 20th century wasn't that unusual to begin with. He has also argued that mercury emissions from burning coal are no big deal.


- the_cause2000

Something that I've been saying in this forum for a while now.


As for funding researchers, you don't have to look no further than government funded researchers who are the forcing the "Man made Global warming myth" into the mainstream media. The more they rubber-stamp the government pre ordained conclusion to find new ways to tax us all to death, based on this myth, they'll continue to rig the numbers to come up with more funding.

http://video.zita.be/vide...dle_Documentary_Film.aspx

Something that I've been saying in this forum for a while now.


As for funding researchers, you don't have to look no further than government funded researchers who are the forcing the "Man made Global warming myth" into the mainstream media. The more they rubber-stamp the government pre ordained conclusion to find new ways to tax us all to death, based on this myth, they'll continue to rig the numbers to come up with more funding.

http://video.zita.be/vide...dle_Documentary_Film.aspx
- Doppleganger

so are you also funded by coal groups like ol Soony

Oh, Sun News, eh. Mmmm K.

Oh, Sun News, eh. Mmmm K.
- Not_Yan

There is at least two sides to every story, you get one from the CBC/CTV and the other from SUN NEWS.

There is at least two sides to every story, you get one from the CBC/CTV and the other from SUN NEWS.
- Doppleganger

thanks phil collins

Coming soon to Ontario.

Wind turbines are seen off the coast of Barbate, southern Spain on August 30, 2006. Spain's wind turbine manufacturers are laying off workers and farmers who installed solar panels are facing ruin as austerity policies afflict the long-coddled green energy sector.

Spain's wind turbine manufacturers are laying off workers and farmers who installed solar panels are facing ruin as austerity policies afflict the long-coddled green energy sector.

Further cuts are expected this summer.

State subsidies to clean energy producers have already fallen by between 12 and 40 percent on average in recent years, industry analysts say.

They could fall by another 10-20 percent in a new energy sector reform expected mid-July, according to the Spanish media.

"The punishment meted out to renewable energies in the past five years amounts to more than six billion euros ($8 billion)," said Sergio Otto, secretary general of the business group Renewables Foundation.

"In the wind turbine industry alone we have lost 20,000 jobs and in the solar energy sector it's probably more," he said.

At the heart of the problem is a deficit of more than 26 billion euros in Spain's energy market, built up by subsidies to cover the gap between the cost of producing electricity and the price charged to consumers.

"We are still singling out renewable energies as the main guilty parties for this deficit," Otto complained.

In the middle of the last decade when the economy was enjoying strong growth, Spain put a cap on the price of green energies and provided "fairly generous" subsidies, said Carlos Garcia Suarez, expert in the sector at the IE Business School.

The state aid boosted the appetite of investors and led to a "boom" in wind and, later, solar energies, making Spain a world leader in the industry, Suarez said.

"Not only have the subsidies come down but new projects have been explicitly banned, which is pretty unusual," he said.

The retroactive nature of some cuts even threw into question Spain's reliability for investors, Suarez said.

Indeed, several investment funds that bet on the sector are now taking Spain to international arbitration.

There is "political pressure", too, from the United States where some of the funds are based and the Spanish government is uncertain how to resolve the matter, he said.

"We gave excessive subsidies," said Rodrigo Izurzun, energy specialist at Ecologists in Action, an association which also criticised the radical change in policy since the economic crisis hit Spain in 2008.

"The current policy is harmful because the sector was maturing and close to becoming competitive without any aid but has suddenly totally collapsed," Izurzun said.

"That is without mentioning what the impact is in terms of braking the fight against climate change."

Investors in wind turbines no longer believe the outlook is attractive, said Heikki Willstedt Mesa, director of energy policy at the wind turbine association AEE.

"We have sued in the Spanish courts," said Miguel Angel Martinez-Aroca, president of Anpier, which groups Spanish solar energy producers. The sector is "barely surviving after so many cuts", he said.

His association has launched a campaign to highlight the unknown victims of the new austerity regime: people who put their savings into solar panels counting on the subsidies to make them profitable and, for example, to help finance their retirement.

"There are 55,000 individuals, small savers, many farmers and breeders, professionals, families and small businesses who simply believed what the state told them, which was to invest in solar energy," Martinez-Aroca said.

"Then we were ruined," he said, denouncing a "swindle and deception by the state" which lowered payments for such panels by 40 percent.

The consequences are far reaching.

"The solar energy sector's debt to banks with is now 20 billion euros," Martinez-Aroca said.

Spain's banks are hardly in a state to withstand the blow; they have already had to take more than 41 billion euros from a European credit line to recapitalise balance sheets laden with bad loans since a 2008 property market crash.


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013...ter-green-energy.html#jCp

so sad that money is more important than the lives of babies

Last decade warmest on record, says UN report
More frequent climate extremes linked to warming temperatures



Related Stories

B.C. farmers noticing altered seasons, weather extremes
Calgary floods spotlight cities' costly failure to plan for climate change

External Links

World Meteorological Organization
Simon Fraser University: Adaptation to Climate Change team

(Note:CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external links.)

The first decade of the 21st century was the world's warmest in 160 years and was marked by a number of extreme climate events, a United Nations agency has found.

A new report by the World Meteorological Organization says that in the period between 2001 and 2010, global warming accelerated since the 1970s and broke more countries' temperature records than ever before.

The report, released on Wednesday, says the period was the "warmest decade on record since modern meteorological records began around the year 1850."

Average land and ocean surface temperatures from 2001 to 2010 rose above the previous decade and were almost a half-degree above the 1961-90 global average.

Canada's average temperature rose by 1.3 degrees during that period, making it the country's warmest decade, according to the agency.

While the warming trend in Canada has been most evident in northern regions, many climate scientists say they're not surprised to hear the UN agency is linking the global warming trend to a worldwide increase in extreme weather.

"We'll definitely see climate impacts, and we are already seeing climate impacts now and as an ongoing issue, unfortunately," said Deborah Harford of the Adaptation to Climate Change think-tank at Simon Fraser University.

"All across Canada, people are experiencing everything from major rainstorms to major flooding and drought."
Unprecedented era

The World Meteorological Organization report says the decade ending in 2010 was an unprecedented era of climate extremes, as shown by heat waves in Europe and Russia, droughts in the Amazon Basin, Australia and East Africa, and huge storms such as Cyclone Nargis in Asia and Hurricane Katrina in the United States.

Data from 139 nations show that droughts such as those in Australia, East Africa and the Amazon Basin affected the most people worldwide.

However, it was the hugely destructive and deadly floods such as those in Pakistan, Australia, Africa, India and Eastern Europe that were the most frequent extreme weather events.

"Climate change has reshaped the behaviour of climate extremes," said Omar Baddour, the World Meteorological Organization's co-ordinator.

Experts say a decade is about the minimum length of time to study when it comes to spotting climate change. From 1971 to 2010, global temperatures rose by an average rate of 0.17 degrees per decade. But going back to 1880, the average increase was .062 degrees per decade.

The pace also picked up in recent decades. Average temperatures were 0.21 degrees warmer this past decade than from 1991 to 2000, which were in turn 0.14 degrees warmer than from 1981 to 1990.

The agency was quick to note that while natural climate variability may account for some of the extreme weather, human factors cannot be ignored.

"Many of these events and trends can be explained by the natural variability of the climate system. Rising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, however, are also affecting the climate," the report's summary states in part.

"Detecting the respective roles being played by climate variability and human-induced climate change is one of the key challenges facing researchers today."
No lull in global warming, says official

Natural cycles between atmosphere and oceans make some years cooler than others, but during the past decade there was no major event associated with El Nino, the phenomenon characterized by unusually warm temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean.

Much of the decade was affected by the cooling La Nina, which comes from unusually cool temperatures there, or neutral conditions.

Given those circumstances, World Meteorological Organization secretary general Michel Jarraud said the data doesn't support the notion among some in the scientific community of a slowdown, or lull, in the pace of planetary warming in recent years.

"The last decade was the warmest, by a significant margin," he said. "If anything we should not talk about the plateau, we should talk about the acceleration."

Jarraud said the data show warming accelerated between 1971 and 2010, with the past two decades increasing at rates never seen before amid rising concentrations of industrial gases that trap heat in the atmosphere like a greenhouse.

By the end of 2010, the report shows, atmospheric concentrations of some of the chief warming gases from fossil fuel burning and other human actions were far higher than at the start of the industrial era in 1750.

Carbon dioxide concentrations measured in the air around the world rose 39 per cent since then; methane rose 158 per cent; and nitrous oxide was up 20 per cent.

Regardless of what is causing the warming trend, environmental groups say the report paints a clearer picture of a warming world.

"It really pushes back on some of the skeptics who say, 'Well, you can't count one hot year as climate change.' What we're seeing is an overall trend, and the study really highlights that quite clearly," said Gillian McEachern, campaigns director with Environmental Defence in Ottawa.
Food supply threatened, Canadian report warns

A report from Simon Fraser's Adaptation to Climate Change team, also released on Wednesday, warns that climate change is threatening water supplies and could lead to shortages of local or regional products such as British Columbia wild salmon and western Canadian beef and grain.

Changing weather patterns could alter the conditions that favour the production of ice wine, maple sugar and, further afield, fruits and vegetables that are imported from California, the report added.

"Climate change is already here, and adapting to this new reality is critical in the years ahead, particularly as agriculture and the global food supply are impacted by the fact that water is becoming increasingly scarce at home and abroad," Harford said in a release.

"Here in British Columbia and Canada, there's no question that our food supply is going to change, and change quickly in the coming years."

The World Meteorological Organization says its report doesn't provide immediate solutions, as more study and data are required.

"A decade is the minimum possible time frame for detecting temperature changes," the report states in part.

"Assessing trends in extreme weather and climate events requires an even longer time frame because, by definition, these events do not occur frequently."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/po...erfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Basically supports the fact that any warming has little to do with anything humans are doing

"Many of these events and trends can be explained by the natural variability of the climate system. Rising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, however, are also affecting the climate," the report's summary states in part.

"Detecting the respective roles being played by climate variability and human-induced climate change is one of the key challenges facing researchers today."
No lull in global warming, says official

Natural cycles between atmosphere and oceans make some years cooler than others, but during the past decade there was no major event associated with El Nino, the phenomenon characterized by unusually warm temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean.


http://news.nationalgeographic.com
Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says

Earth is currently experiencing rapid warming, which the vast majority of climate scientists says is due to humans pumping huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Mars, too, appears to be enjoying more mild and balmy temperatures.

In 2005 data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide "ice caps" near Mars's south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.

Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.

"The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars," he said.

Solar Cycles

Abdussamatov believes that changes in the sun's heat output can account for almost all the climate changes we see on both planets.

Mars and Earth, for instance, have experienced periodic ice ages throughout their histories.

"Man-made greenhouse warming has made a small contribution to the warming seen on Earth in recent years, but it cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance," Abdussamatov said.

By studying fluctuations in the warmth of the sun, Abdussamatov believes he can see a pattern that fits with the ups and downs in climate we see on Earth and Mars.



Article:
Sun Blamed for Warming of Earth and Other Worlds



Earth is heating up lately, but so are Mars, Pluto and other worlds in our solar system, leading some scientists to speculate that a change in the sun’s activity is the common thread linking all these baking events.

Others argue that such claims are misleading and create the false impression that rapid global warming, as Earth is experiencing, is a natural phenomenon.

While evidence suggests fluctuations in solar activity can affect climate on Earth, and that it has done so in the past, the majority of climate scientists and astrophysicists agree that the sun is not to blame for the current and historically sudden uptick in global temperatures on Earth, which seems to be mostly a mess created by our own species.

Wobbly Mars

Habibullo Abdussamatov, the head of space research at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, recently linked the attenuation of ice caps on Mars to fluctuations in the sun's output. Abdussamatov also blamed solar fluctuations for Earth’s current global warming trend. His initial comments were published online by National Geographic News.

“Man-made greenhouse warming has [made a] small contribution [to] the warming on Earth in recent years, but [it] cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance,” Abdussamatov told LiveScience in an email interview last week. “The considerable heating and cooling on the Earth and on Mars always will be practically parallel."

But Abdussamatov’s critics say the Red Planet’s recent thawing is more likely due to natural variations in the planet’s orbit and tilt. On Earth, these wobbles, known as Milankovitch cycles, are thought to contribute to the onset and disappearance ice ages.

“It’s believed that what drives climate change on Mars are orbital variations,” said Jeffrey Plaut, a project scientist for NASA’s Mars Odyssey mission. “The Earth also goes through orbital variations similar to that of Mars.”

As for Abdussamatov’s claim that solar fluctuations are causing Earth’s current global warming, Charles Long, a climate physicist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratories in Washington, says the idea is nonsense.

“That’s nuts,” Long said in a telephone interview. “It doesn’t make physical sense that that’s the case.”

In 2005, Long’s team published a study in the journal Science showing that Earth experienced a period of “solar global dimming” from 1960 to 1990, during which time solar radiation hitting our planet’s surface decreased. Then from the mid-1990’s onward, the trend reversed and Earth experienced a “solar brightening.”

These changes were not likely driven by fluctuations in the output of the Sun, Long explained, but rather increases in atmospheric clouds or aerosols that reflected solar radiation back into space.

Other warming worlds

Others have pointed out anomalous warming on other worlds in our solar system.

Benny Peiser, a social anthropologist at Liverpool John Moores University who monitors studies and news reports of asteroids, global warming and other potentially apocalyptic topics, recently quoted in his daily electronic newsletter the following from a blog called Strata-Sphere:

“Global warming on Neptune's moon Triton as well as Jupiter and Pluto, and now Mars has some [scientists] scratching their heads over what could possibly be in common with the warming of all these planets … Could there be something in common with all the planets in our solar system that might cause them all to warm at the same time?”

Peiser included quotes from recent news articles that take up other aspects of the idea.

“I think it is an intriguing coincidence that warming trends have been observed on a number of very diverse planetary bodies in our solar system,” Peiser said in an email interview. “Perhaps this is just a fluke.”

In fact, scientists have alternative explanations for the anomalous warming on each of these other planetary bodies.

The warming on Triton, for example, could be the result of an extreme southern summer on the moon, a season that occurs every few hundred years, as well as possible changes in the makeup of surface ice that caused it to absorb more of the Sun’s heat.

Researchers credited Pluto’s warming to possible eruptive activity and a delayed thawing from its last close approach to the Sun in 1989.

And the recent storm activity on Jupiter is being blamed on a recurring climatic cycle that churns up material from the gas giant’s interior and lofts it to the surface, where it is heated by the Sun.

Sun does vary

The radiation output of the Sun does fluctuate over the course of its 11-year solar cycle. But the change is only about one-tenth of 1 percent—not substantial enough to affect Earth’s climate in dramatic ways, and certainly not enough to be the sole culprit of our planet’s current warming trend, scientists say.

“The small measured changes in solar output and variations from one decade to the next are only on the order of a fraction of a percent, and if you do the calculations not even large enough to really provide a detectable signal in the surface temperature record,” said Penn State meteorologist Michael Mann.

The link between solar activity and global warming is just another scapegoat for human-caused warming, Mann told LiveScience.

“Solar activity continues to be one of the last bastions of contrarians,” Mann said. “People who don’t accept the existence of anthropogenic climate change still try to point to solar activity.”

The Maunder Minimum

This is not to say that solar fluctuations never influence Earth’s climate in substantial ways. During a 75-year period beginning in 1645, astronomers detected almost no sunspot activity on the Sun. Called the “Maunder Minimum,” this event coincided with the coldest part of the Little Ice Age, a 350-year cold spell that gripped much of Europe and North America.

Recent studies have cast doubt on this relationship, however. New estimates of the total change in the brightness of the Sun during the Maunder Minimum suggest it was only fractions of a percent, and perhaps not enough to create the global cooling commonly attributed to it.

“The situation is pretty ambiguous,” said David Rind, a senior climate researcher at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who has modeled the Maunder Minimum.

Based on current estimates, even if another Maunder Minimum were to occur, it might result in an average temperature decrease of about 2 degrees Fahrenheit, Rind said.

This would still not be enough to counteract warming of between 2 to 12 degrees Fahrenheit from greenhouse gases by 2100, as predicted by the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

Global Warming Fanatics and Three Good Reasons Not to Trust Them
Added by Graham Noble on June 11, 2013.
Saved under Climate Change, Commentary, Environment, Environmental, Global Warming, Graham Noble, Political Right, Politics, Science, U.S.


The ‘environmentalist’ movement has been trying, for many years, to shut down the capitalist system, force us all onto collective farms and make us ride around in horse-drawn buggies: That is their political agenda, which is more commonly known as Communism. It should be pointed out that this idea didn’t work out too well in China, the Soviet Union, Cambodia or any other nation on Earth that has attempted it. Nevertheless, the global warming hoax is part of this agenda.

“Global warming”, or “climate change” – depending on what it’s proponents believe is the most effective label at the time – is their rallying cry. Alarm-ism is a trade-mark of the extreme Left; it is a well-established tactic that can be found in the writings and propaganda of many prominent Progressives, Socialists and Nazis. Examples can be found on an almost daily basis; we are constantly being warned by the Left that terrible things will happen, if we refuse to bend to their will. Global warming zealots have little credibility and here are just 3 of the many compelling reasons not to trust them (in no particular order of importance):

1. Al Gore – the champion of the global warming movement – is not only a hypocrite, but he also lacks any scientific knowledge, whatsoever. Mr. Gore is estimated to have amassed a personal fortune of more than $100 million dollars since he began his crusade to save the planet. Travelling around in private jets and limousines does not strike this writer as environmentally conscious, and the carbon footprint of his luxury Tennessee mansion did nothing to enhance his image as guardian of the natural world: According to the Nashville Electric Service, Gore’s mansion consumed more electricity in one month than the average household uses in a year. His combined expenditure on electricity and natural gas for the year 2006? Almost $30,000, according to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. To be fair, Mr. Gore did make substantial modifications to his palace, after word of this got around. The property was later cited as one of the most energy-efficient homes in the country. Clearly, however, the improvements were a cynical attempt to salvage his reputation.

How much does Gore know about the science behind the theory of man-made global warming? Very little indeed, it appears. During a November, 2009 appearance on NBC’s “Tonight Show”, Gore said “People think about geothermal energy – when they think about it at all – in terms of the hot water bubbling up in some places, but two kilometers or so down in most places there are these incredibly hot rocks, ’cause the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees…” Whilst geophysicists differ slightly in their claims, regarding temperature of the Earth and Sun, it is generally accepted that – while the center of the Sun may be around 10 million degrees – the star’s surface temperature is approximately 6000 degrees Celsius. The center of the Earth – some 4000 miles down – is around 5000 degrees and, two kilometers down, the temperature is around 30-60 degrees warmer than the surface, according to the geothermal gradient, which is a measure of the increase in temperature with depth.

In addition to his total lack of scientific knowledge, Gore has, on more than one occasion, engaged in deliberate deception and distortion of fact, in order to advance his extremist agenda. According to a 2007 judgment in the High Court in London, England, Gore’s documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth”, contained 9 errors. The Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI) actually identified 35 errors. In defending the documentary, Gore’s “environment advisor,” Kalee Kreider, stated that the documentary contained “thousands and thousands of facts.” As pointed out by the SPPI, if just 2000 facts had been presented in the 93-minute documentary, it would have amounted to more than one fact every three seconds.

In the documentary, Gore claims that sea-levels will rise around 6 meters (20 feet), although he does not give a specific time-frame for this. In discussing this point, Kreider cited figures from the SPPI which estimate a rise in sea-levels of 59cm (23.2 inches) by the year 2100. Obviously, 23.2 inches is considerably less than Gore’s claim of 20 feet. In the interest of brevity, this article does not list every false claim made in the documentary, but a little research by those with an interest in the truth will turn up numerous examples of how Mr. Gore’s climate change facts are not quite correct – or downright dishonest.

When Australian filmmaker Chris Tangey captured an incredible firestorm on video, Gore attempted to obtain the footage for inclusion in his documentary, as a demonstration of the dire effects of global warming. Tangey refused to allow him to use the footage, because the firestorm had begun from a man-made fire – it was not a natural phenomenon and had nothing to do with climate change. There are several other documented instances of Gore citing scientific “evidence” of global warming, only for the actual scientists who conducted the research to come out with accusations that Gore deliberately misquoted their findings, which did not originally prove any warming trends.

2. In 2009, the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) was exposed as having edited the results of a study to hide the fact that they had been unable to prove a rise in temperatures, as a result of “man-made” global warming. A hacker dumped a huge cache of their confidential emails onto the internet. British newspaper The Daily Telegraph – in which the term “Climategate” was coined – reported extensively on the now widely distributed emails. As reported in that newspaper, some of the excerpts from the emails passed between the institutions so-called “scientists” reveal a deliberate attempt to conceal the results of the research, which did not prove the conclusions they had been hoping for. Just a few examples – as reproduced in journalist James Delingpole’s Telegraph blog – include:

“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”

“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.”

“Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.”

3. Despite claims by global warming alarmists that the “debate is over”, “the science is settled” and that there is a “consensus” among scientists that global warming is real, there are countless scientific studies that have contradicted this theory. A minimal amount of research will locate such studies, conducted by individuals and institutions as highly credentialed and respected as any of those who are trying to prove the existence of global warming. Recently, the New York Times – normally a strong supporter of the global warming lobby – revealed that a scientific study shows a slower rise in temperature on the Earth’s surface over the past 15 years than over the previous 20 years. The Times then attempted to brush this off by suggesting that the rate of global warming is erratic.

This is the usual tactic of global warming fanatics – and is why there are many reasons not to trust them: Despite their claims that the science is “settled”, whenever a study throws doubt on their theory, they then turn around and use the excuse that climate science is not, after all, an exact science. In doing so, they are admitting that the science is not, therefore, “settled”.

In truth, global warming happens; it is natural. global cooling also happens; and, back in the 1970’s, we were being told that global cooling was an existential threat, just as we are told today that global warming is. A cursory look into the makeup and funding of institutions that push the global warming theory will reveal deep-rooted political connections. Ultra-wealthy George Soros, who is well-known as the money behind extreme Left-wing “news” organizations such as Media Matters for America, also pours millions into the climate change lobby. That is a connection too obvious to miss.

The demonization of those who refuse to buy the global warming hype is classic Left-wing strategy. The word “deniers” has become fashionable; a deliberate attempt to equate the “skeptics” with Holocaust “deniers”. The truth, however, is that the science is nowhere near “settled” on global warming, and the string of proven lies, inaccurate statements and outright deceptions put out by the fanatics leaves them with little credibility and should give us all plenty of reasons not to trust them.

Written by Graham J Noble

- AGalchenyuk27

ya seriously

also, so much rain in toronto the other day unbelievable the damage we are causing

Oh, Sun News, right.

Eastern Canada swelters as heat wave raises health concerns

http://www.cbc.ca/news/ca...17/canada-heat-waves.html