Tag: environmentalism

Cooking the climate numbers in Australia

4:59 pm

A comparison of the raw climate data with the adjusted numbers released by Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology shows that the adjustments have routinely turned the trends from cooling to warming.

This is the same finding that Steven Goddard and others in the U.S. found when they did the same comparison of NASA and NOAA numbers. In every case the adjustments either cooled the past or warmed the present in order to accentuate the appearance of a warming trend, sometimes in complete contradiction of numbers that had been accepted by scientists for decades.

So, does this mean the climate isn’t warming? No. What it means is we haven’t the slightest idea what’s happening, since the data has now been corrupted so badly that it is almost meaningless.

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Scientists baffled by unknown source of CFCs

1:10 pm

The uncertainty of science: Scientists have found that, despite their complete ban since 2007, one type of ozone-depleting CFCs are still being pumped into the atmosphere from some unknown source.

Carbon tetrachloride (CCl4), which was once used in applications such as dry cleaning and as a fire-extinguishing agent, was regulated in 1987 under the Montreal Protocol along with other chlorofluorocarbons that destroy ozone and contribute to the ozone hole over Antarctica. Parties to the Montreal Protocol reported zero new CCl4 emissions between 2007-2012.

However, the new research shows worldwide emissions of CCl4 average 39 kilotons (about 43,000 U.S. tons) per year, approximately 30 percent of peak emissions prior to the international treaty going into effect. “We are not supposed to be seeing this at all,” said Qing Liang, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study published online in the Aug. 18 issue of Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. “It is now apparent there are either unidentified industrial leakages, large emissions from contaminated sites, or unknown CCl4 sources.”

That there seems to be an unknown source of CFCs suggests strongly that the entire theory of CFCs destroying the ozone layer is faulty. If CFCs were being produced naturally in the past then the ozone layer should not exist based on this theory. That it does exist says the CFCs are not harmful to it and were banned unnecessarily.

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“A real Nobel Laureate takes pity on a fake Nobel Laureate.”

4:34 pm

Mark Steyn takes a look a one of Michael Mann’s many false claims and tears it to shreds, while also making Paul Krugman look somewhat foolish at the same time.

Michael Mann, a bad scientist who created the discredited hockey stick graph that supposedly proved global warming, is suing Steyn and others for daring to criticize him. In the process Steyn and others are finding ample material for making a great deal of fun of Mann while also finding more examples of his dishonesty and fraudulent behavior.

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Michael Mann’s court suit under attack

10:17 am

Good news: Groups from across the political spectrum are expressing their opposition to Michael Mann’s court suit against his critics.

On Monday, The Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press — along with 26 other groups including The Washington Post, Bloomberg and Fox News — filed an “amici curiae,” or “friend of the court,” brief with the D.C. Court of Appeals. An amici curiae is a brief submitted to a court to raise additional points of view to sway a court’s decision.

“While Mann essentially claims that he can silence critics because he is ‘right,’ the judicial system should not be the arbiter of either scientific truth or correct public policy,” the brief states, adding that “a participant in the ‘rough-and-tumble’ of public debate should not be able to use a lawsuit like this to silence his critics, regardless of whether one agrees with Mann or defendants.”

Just as Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg said it, I will say it also: Michael Mann is a fraud. He has no idea what it means to be a scientist, and should have been fired by his university after his climategate emails were uncovered. Instead, his university’s investigation was a whitewash and as much a fraud as Mann is.

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The loss of skepticism in science

3:19 pm

In April I taped a half hour television interview with George Noory for his subscription-based video show, Beyond Belief. Below is a clip from that interview, where I describe the terrible state of climate research, and how politics is destroying the very heart of what science stands for. Too many people are no longer open-minded. Rather than relay on the data they push their theories instead.

Robert Zimmerman discusses the truth about climate change with George Noory!

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The sun continues its ramp down

10:44 am

On Monday NOAA posted its monthly update of the solar cycle, showing the sunspot activity for the Sun in June. As I do every month, I am posting it here, below the fold, with annotations to give it context.

The decline in sunspots continued for the fourth month in a row, increasing the likelihood that the peak of solar maximum has finally come and gone and that we now seeing the beginning of the ramp down to solar minimum. This resulting solar maximum comes close to matching the science community’s final prediction (indicated by the red line), though that prediction was not detailed enough to include the distinct and unusual double peak for this maximum.
» Read more

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Plastic bags do not kill birds and fill the oceans

9:49 am

Another environmental claim turns out to be vastly exaggerated: The scientist who claimed that islands of plastic bags were filling the oceans has found that his claim was bogus.

The scientist whose findings environmentalists used to shame us into bringing our own reusable bags to the grocery store now says that his estimate of one million tons of plastic floating in the ocean may have been off by a factor of perhaps 143. His latest estimate ranges from 7,000 to 35,000 tons, and even most of that has biodegraded into granules. …

Also doubtful: The environmentalist claim that 1.5 million marine animals choke to death each year on plastic bags that ran away from home for a life at sea. They’ve revised their estimates downward to 6.6 percent of that, but even the new figure has no empirical support.

But remember, Barack Obama says the science is settled, and that anyone who questions him or expresses any doubt is the equivalent of a Holocaust denier.

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OCO-2 in orbit

9:16 am

Second time’s the charm: A Delta 2 rocket successfully launched the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2 (OCO-2) into orbit on Wednesday, five years after the first OCO was lost at launch when its Taurus XL rocket fell into the ocean.

The Earth-observing satellite is designed to globally track the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

I have to note that if the science of climate change was so “settled,” as President Barack Obama keeps insisting, why did we then spend half a billion dollars on this satellite? Wouldn’t it make more sense to drop the research and focus entirely on saving the planet?

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Global warming scientists find another cute species to use for political purposes.

5:47 pm

The fantasy land of global warming science: Despite a stable and robust population for emperor penguins, combined with a new record in Antarctica this very week for the size of its icecap, scientists today issued a report demanding that this species be declared endangered because global warming will make them all die.

Global warming will cut Antarctica’s 600,000-strong emperor penguin population by at least a fifth by 2100 as the sea ice on which the birds breed becomes less secure, a study said on Sunday. The report urged governments to list the birds as endangered, even though populations in 45 known colonies were likely to rise slightly by 2050 before declining. Such a listing could impose restrictions on tourism and fishing companies.

It’s insane. It is as if facts have no relevance. For example, the recommendation of the report is based entirely on computer models, the same models that have failed 100% to predict anything in the past twenty years. Moreover, the report admits the emperor penguin population is stable and large and is likely to increase in the next three decades.

But who cares! We have to save these cutsy penguins, so let’s make them endangered so they can be used as a political weapon against any disagreement about global warming!

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South Pole ice cap sets new record

11:26 am

The uncertainty of science: The Antarctic ice cap set a record for size this past week.

The sea ice coverage around Antarctica over the weekend marked a record high, with the ice surrounding the continent measuring at 2.07 million square kilometers, according to an environmentalist and author who says the ice there has actually been increasing since 1979 despite continued warnings of global warming.

The article notes how global warming climate scientists conveniently insist that the growing south pole ice cap and the extended cold temperatures there are irrelevant to their theirs. A real scientist, however, would dismiss no data, as to do so skews the results.

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More evidence of data tampering at NOAA

2:47 pm

A close analysis of NOAA climate data from just one randomly picked Texas rural location reveals significant data tampering to make the climate appear to be growing warming.

In other words, the adjustments have added an astonishing 1.35C to the annual temperature for 2013. Note also that I have included the same figures for 1934, which show that the adjustment has reduced temperatures that year by 0.91C. So, the net effect of the adjustments between 1934 and 2013 has been to add 2.26C of warming. ,,,

So what possible justification can USHCN [the climate data center at NOAA] have for making such large adjustments? Their usual answer is TOBS, or Time of Observation Bias, which arises because temperatures are now monitored in the early morning rather than the late afternoon, which tended to be the practice before. But by their own admittance, TOBS adjustments should only account for about 0.2C.

What about station location? Has this changed? Well, not since 1949 according to the official Station Metadata. Luling is a small town of about 5000 people, and the station is situated at the Foundation Farm, 0.7 miles outside town. In other words, a fairly rural site, that should not need adjusting for urban influences.

It is plain that these adjustments made are not justifiable in any way. It is also clear that the number of “Estimated” measurements made are not justified either, as the real data is there, present and correct.

In doing this analysis, the author, Paul Homewood, does something that Steven Goddard of the Real Science website, the man who broke this story, doesn’t do very often: He carefully illustrates the full raw dataset and shows us how he isolates the raw data from the estimated and adjusted numbers. Goddard generally only shows his results, which means we have to trust his analysis. Homewood therefore approaches Goddard’s results skeptically, and thus acts to check his work to see if it is accurate and correct. He finds that it is.

This is science at its best.

I should also note that I found Homewood’s analysis because Steven Goddard posted a link on his own webpage. As a true scientist, Goddard does not fear a close look at his work. He welcomes it.

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Another global warming computer model bites the dust.

9:59 am

The uncertainty of science: Despite predicting ten years ago that the global temperature would rise significantly, actual temperatures have dropped in the ensuing decade.

But don’t worry, these climate scientists really do know what’s going to happen. Just give them lots of money, silence their critics, and they guarantee they will fake the data to make sure their predictions are right!

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EPA “loses” emails like the IRS.

1:24 pm

Transparency! Subpoenaed emails at the EPA have been lost because of a hard drive crash.

The hearing also included a bit of deja vu for the committee when members grilled [EPA Administrator Gina] McCarthy on lost emails from a hard-drive crash (the same issue that wiped out emails from IRS employee Lois Lerner). In this case, the emails in question were from retired EPA employee Philip North, who was involved in the agency’s decision to begin the process of preemptively vetoing the Pebble Mine project in Alaska.

North, who declined an interview request by the committee, is retired, and committee staff say they have been unable to track him down. According to a committee aide, North’s hard drive crashed in 2010—which was around the same time that the committee is investigating the agency’s discussions of a potential veto—and the emails were not backed up.

This is all crap. The only way these emails get lost is if the people involved intentionally “lost” them.

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The scandal of fiddled global warming data.

10:28 am

The mainstream press finally notices: The scandal of fiddled global warming data.

Goddard shows how, in recent years, NOAA’s US Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) has been “adjusting” its record by replacing real temperatures with data “fabricated” by computer models. The effect of this has been to downgrade earlier temperatures and to exaggerate those from recent decades, to give the impression that the Earth has been warming up much more than is justified by the actual data. In several posts headed “Data tampering at USHCN/GISS”, Goddard compares the currently published temperature graphs with those based only on temperatures measured at the time. These show that the US has actually been cooling since the Thirties, the hottest decade on record; whereas the latest graph, nearly half of it based on “fabricated” data, shows it to have been warming at a rate equivalent to more than 3 degrees centigrade per century.

I reported on Steve Goddard’s work back in January. Though these mainstream journalists are very slow in getting the story, it is good that some of them are finally waking up.

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For the past four years the glaciers in Glacier National Park have stopped shrinking.

10:00 pm

The uncertainty of science: For the past four years the glaciers in Glacier National Park have stopped shrinking.

“We had this sort of pause,” Fagre said of shrinking at Sperry Glacier and, by extrapolation, other glaciers. “They pretty much got as much snow as they needed.” Sperry covered 0.86 square kilometers in 2005, 0.83 in 2009 and 0.82 in 2013, illustrating the “pause” in its retreat as there was a 0.03 square kilometer loss from 2005 to 2009, but only 0.01 in the last four years, from 2009 to 2013, Fagre said.

The article spends a lot of time talking about how the shrinkage is about to resume and the glaciers are certain to disappear, but this pause in glacier shrinkage corresponds nicely with the 17 plus year pause in warming that has been going on.

And then there’s this: Great moments in climate forecasting.

And this, also from Steve Goddard: In 1971 the world’s top climate scientists said fossil fuels would cause an ice age by 2020.

I especially like the quote from the last article, where these experts say that there is “no need to worry about the carbon dioxide fuel-burning puts in the atmosphere.” These are the same experts who have have spent the past three decades since 1988 telling us that CO2-caused global warming was going to kill us all.

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The proposed SpaceX spaceport in Brownsville, Texas, has passed its final federal environmental review.

4:42 pm

The proposed SpaceX spaceport in Brownsville, Texas, has passed its final federal environmental review.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which had raised concerns about possible impact on habitat for some endangered species, ultimately concluded that “the project is not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of any listed or proposed to be listed species nor adversely modify piping plover critical habitat.”

But wildlife officials don’t expect the project to be harmless: Two individual cats, either from the endangered ocelot or jaguarondi species, could be lost as a result of the project in spite of efforts to avoid just that with measures such as posting warning signs along the road leading to the launch site. And federal wildlife officials also anticipate that more than 7 miles of beachfront used by nesting sea turtles could be disturbed by security patrols, though driving is already permitted on the beach.

I think every American should read these two paragraphs to gain an understanding of how ridiculous these environmental regulations sometimes are. This report appears to be junk and an enormous waste of effort and time.

The bottom line is to consider what has happened in Florida. The government established a wildlife preserve surrounding the Kennedy Space Center and the wildlife has been flourishing there for more than a half century. Because a launchpad is used so infrequently (12 times a year is what SpaceX proposes for Brownsville), it inflicts very little harm on the environment.

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