On Thursday Japan successfully launched the NASA-built Global Precipitation Measurement Core Observatory (GPM), designed to track the climate’s rain and snowfall.
This Earth observation satellite will supplement TRMM, which has been tracking rainfall in the tropics since 1997.
You can’t make this stuff up: Global warming activists organize a petition to ban a column by Charles Krauthammer that criticized global warming science and the activists who try to stuff it down our throats.
These activists don’t seem capable of addressing any of the actual facts that Krauthammer mentions in his column, facts that readers of this webpage already know in great detail. No, the debate tactic of today’s global warming fascists is simply to tell their opponents to “Shut up!” Who needs facts when you can silence your opponents?
In related news, CNN and at least one of its anchors have declared that the debate over global warming is over and that they no longer consider the skeptical view worth covering.
Debate is such an inconvenient thing.
Several massive countersuits have now been filed against global warming scientist Michael Mann after he failed to pursue his own lawsuit againsts Canadian climate scientist Timothy Ball.
I am slightly unsure I trust this particular story, but decided to post it anyway as it is quite intriguing if true. If true, it suggests the tide has definitely turned in the battle over climate science — between honest scientists and the political activists who claim to be scientists (by which I am referring to Michael Mann).
Posted from Rome, Italy.
The uncertainty of science: NOAA’s official prediction for this winter was as bad as monkeys working on typewriters.
“Not one of our better forecasts,” admits Mike Halpert, the Climate Prediction Center’s acting director. The center grades itself on what it calls the Heidke skill score, which ranges from 100 (perfection) to -50 (monkeys throwing darts would have done better). October’s forecast for the three-month period of November through January came in at -22. Truth be told, the September prediction for October-December was slightly worse, at -23. The main cause in both cases was the same: Underestimating the mammoth December cold wave, which brought snow to Dallas and chilled partiers in Times Square on New Year’s Eve.
But don’t worry. These guys know exactly what’s going to happen to the climate in a hundred years.
Torches, masks, and violent threats: The KKK used it (an almost entirely Democratic Party organization), and now environmentalists are running with it.
Where the big money really is in climate science: Governments spent $359 billion in 2012, about the same as 2011, on their effort to stop global warming.
Global investment in climate change plateaued at USD $359 billion in 2012, roughly the same as the previous year, according to a new Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) study, “The Global Landscape of Climate Finance 2013.” Once again the figure falls far short of what’s needed. The International Energy Agency projects that an additional investment of USD 5 trillion is required by 2020 for clean energy alone, to limit warming to two degrees Celsius. However, the gap is likely wider: The World Bank projects we are on a path to four degree Celsius warming, suggesting that efforts to scale up finance are falling further and further behind.
I include the quote above to make it clear that the source is very much a supporter of the human-caused global warming scenario. And while the article also details the large amounts of money invested in fossil fuels, it is important to recognize the difference. The money for stopping global warming is almost entirely used for fake research or public relations propaganda efforts or to support government regulatory agencies. The money for fossil fuels is money used to invest in actual energy production.
Michael Mann doesn’t like people calling him a fraud for torturing and manipulating the climate data to create the false illusion that the climate is warming. And so, he is trying to shut down any criticism or analysis of his very poorly done science by using the power of government to enforce his will.
Two quotes from the article that are of interest:
Here is the point at which we need a little primer on libel laws, which hinge on the differentiation between facts and opinion. It is libel to maliciously fabricate facts about someone. (It is not libel to erroneously report a false fact, so long as you did so with good faith reason to believe that it was true, though you are required to issue a correction.) But you are free to give whatever evaluation of the facts you like, including a negative evaluation of another person’s ideas, thinking method, and character. It is legal for me, for example, to say that Michael Mann is a liar, if I don’t believe that his erroneous scientific conclusions are the product of honest error. It is also legal for me to say that he is a coward and a liar, for hiding behind libel laws in an attempt to suppress criticism.
These are all reasons that the lawsuit should have been summarily thrown out. It goes beyond the legitimate scope of libel and defamation laws and constitutes an attempt to suppress opinions that are considered politically correct.
And this:
In other words, Steyn’s evaluation of Mann’s scientific claims can be legally suppressed because Steyn dares to question the conclusions of established scientific institutions connected to the government. On this basis, the DC Superior Court arrives at the preposterous conclusion that it is a violation of Mann’s rights to “question his intellect and reasoning.” That’s an awfully nice prerogative to be granted by government: an exemption against any challenge to your reasoning.
I said before that I don’t know how the rest of us skeptics escaped being sued along with Steyn. Now we know. Mann is attempting to establish a precedent for climate censorship. If he wins this suit, then we’re all targets.
And global warming activists like Mann call me a “denier?”
Environmentalists register opposition to a new commercial spaceport in Florida.
Opponents of the plan to carve out about 200 acres from the 140,000-acre (57,000-hectare) Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge cite concerns over protecting the refuge’s water, seashore, plants and wildlife, which include 18 federally listed endangered species. “It’s a very pristine, natural area. It’s clear water … very unique. You don’t have that anywhere else in Florida,” said Ted Forsgren with Coastal Conservation Association of Florida, which strongly opposes the project.
The environmentalists also cite the possibility that access to the refuge will become reduced because it will be closed during launches.
These objections are bogus. The reason this refuge even exists is because of the Kennedy Space Center. When the space center was created in the 1960s Congress also set aside the area around it as a wildlife refuge. Nothing could be built there anyway because of the need to create a buffer from the rocket launchpads. In the ensuing half century the wildlife has prospered, despite the launches. And access to the refuge has always been restricted in a variety of ways because of the space center. A new commercial launch facility won’t change any of this significantly.
“95% of all climate models agree: The observations must be wrong.”
I’m seeing a lot of wrangling over the recent (15+ year) pause in global average warming…when did it start, is it a full pause, shouldn’t we be taking the longer view, etc. These are all interesting exercises, but they miss the most important point: the climate models that governments base policy decisions on have failed miserably.
I’ve updated our comparison of 90 climate models versus observations for global average surface temperatures through 2013, and we still see that >95% of the models have over-forecast the warming trend since 1979, whether we use their own surface temperature dataset (HadCRUT4), or our satellite dataset of lower tropospheric temperatures (UAH).
When 90 different climate model predictions are compared with the actual data, all but two vastly overestimate the amount of heating that has occurred since 1979. In other words, these models are wrong, they are undependable, and they shouldn’t be used to decide policy by any politician.
More global warming fraud: A close review of the sources cited in the studies that claimed a 97% scientific consensus supporting global warming has found that claim to be false.
Instead of a 97% consensus, the review found that only 1 to 3% supported global warming. Quite a difference, eh?
The review’s press release nicely summarizes the incompetence or downright dishonesty of three of these consensus studies:
The Oreskes (2004) study claimed 75% consensus and a “remarkable lack of disagreement” by the other 25% of the abstracts she reviewed. Peiser (2005) re-ran her survey and found major discrepancies. Only 1.2% or 13 scientists out of 1,117 agreed with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) view that human activity is the main cause of global warming since 1950. Peiser found that 34 scientists rejected or doubted the alleged ‘consensus’ position outright and 44 claimed natural factors as more influential. At least 470 papers expressed no position on Anthropogenic (human-caused) Global Warming (AGW) whatsoever.
Doran & Zimmerman (2009) only assessed 79 scientists out of 3,146 respondents. Many scientists sent them emails protesting the survey design.
The recent Cook et al (2013) began with the broadest possible ‘consensus’ definition – rendering the idea of ‘consensus’ meaningless. Only 0.54% (or 64 scientists) explicitly agreed. Though Cook’s graphics on The Consensus Project website focus on fossil fuels, his study used the 1996 Houghton declaration which includes other human factors like agriculture and land-use change. Some 7983 scientists or 67% of the ~12,000 papers in the Cook study had no position on climate change. Many scientists publicly denounced Cook for wrongly assessing their work as supporting AGW when it does not.
Based on my experience talking to climate scientists as well as reading innumerable papers, I have always thought that the 97% consensus claim was weak or fishy. Now we not only have proof, we have evidence that the claim was based on lies.
Data tampering to create the illusion of global warming by James Hansen and NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies.
The evidence shows that the data was adjusted to cool the past so that the present looks hotter. The question is: Why were these adjustments made? I can think of no justification, other than fraud and political manipulation.
I am not making this up: Scientists claim that global warming will cause big waves that will exhaust fish!
Anthony Watts does a nice job of tearing apart this truly bad research. As he says, “This is what passes for science now; it looks like a high school science fair project.” He also digs down to check their claim that global warming will cause bigger waves and finds it baseless.
But then, when did most global warming advocates ever care that much about actual data?
