An evening pause: This video release from NASA made the rounds a few weeks ago. It isn’t news, but it is cool. One important fact noted during this video is that the Earth’s cloud cover both warms and cools the planet. What wasn’t noted was that there is gigantic uncertainty about how much the clouds warm and cool, which is one of the main reasons no climate models have been even close to successfully predicting the climate.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
Below is NOAA’s monthly update of the solar cycle, posted by them on August 7. It shows the Sun’s sunspot activity in July, with annotations.
The graph above has been modified to show the predictions of the solar science community. The green curves show the community’s two original predictions from April 2007, with half the scientists predicting a very strong maximum and half predicting a weak one. The red curve is their revised May 2009 prediction.
As expected, there was a recovery in sunspot activity in July compared to June. Also as expected, the recovery was not significant, so that it appears, based on the past two months, as if the ramp down to solar minimum is accelerating so that solar minimum will occur sooner than expected, possibly as soon as two years.
I would not put much stock on that prediction, however. When sunspot activity first reached this level during the past solar cycle in late 2005, it still took three more years before solar minimum was reached. If this cycle matches the last, that would mean that this cycle, from minimum to minimum, will have lasted 10 years, making a short solar cycle though not one of the shortest. However, it is more likely that the ramp down will stretch out, as it usually does, gliding downward to solar minimum in a slow gentle curve that makes for a full cycle of about 11 years.
I’m glad the science is settled! Despite predictions more than a decade ago that the world was faced with increased extreme weather due to human-caused global warming, including more hurricanes that were more powerful, the United States has now set a record for the longest stretch ever recorded, 129 months, without a single major hurricane.
Good news if true: Reuters today reported that presidential candidate Donald Trump is considering nominating Oklahoma businessman Harold Hamm as energy secretary if he wins the election.
In addition to considering Hamm, who has also functioned as Trump’s informal energy adviser in recent months, the article also noted this:
Trump, who has yet to make any announcements about his prospective cabinet, has already surrounded himself with strong advocates of traditional energy sources like oil, gas, and coal and has promised to gut environmental regulations to boost drilling and mining if elected. He tapped U.S. Congressman Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, a climate skeptic and drilling advocate, to help draw up his campaign energy platform, and picked Indiana Governor Mike Pence, also a climate skeptic, as his running mate.
Both moves cheered the energy industry but alarmed environmental activists who say a Trump presidency would set back years of progress on issues like pollution and climate change. “Given that Hamm’s as close as we’ve got to a fracker-in-chief in this country, it would be an apropos pick for a president who thinks global warming is a hoax manufactured by the Chinese,” said leading environmental activist Bill McKibben.
I keep saying it: Should Trump win, the best way we can guarantee that he favors conservative values is if he is surrounded by conservatives. These moves suggest that that Trump is agreeable to this, though there is also possibly a bit of some crony capitalism going on here as well. While these guys will likely advocate for less environmental regulations, I also doubt that they will work to eliminate the gobs of corporate welfare the federal government presently hands out.
Image from Junk Science. I indicated the pause
The uncertainty of science: Scientists have developed a new computer climate model that does a better job of predicting the actual climate, until you get to the pause in warming during the past 18 years. The graph on the right, from the paper, shows the model’s prediction compared to the raw data. The two line up perfectly, until around 1998, when the pause or hiatus in global warming began. From that point, the model fails.
I especially like this quote from the press release, made by one of the paper’s two authors:
“Most of the difference between the raw data and new estimates is found during the recent 18 years since 1998,” said Xie. “Because of the hiatus, the raw data underestimate the greenhouse warming.” [emphasis mine]
Note how he reverses things. For him, the raw data is wrong, as it underestimates their perfect model of human-caused greenhouse warming. In reality, it is their model that has failed, as it fails to predict the pause in warming, showing that it must be missing important factors that are influencing the climate. Or as physicist Richard Feynmann so cogently put it,
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.”
Note also that this research paper, released today, recognizes the pause, which shows again that the claims by some scientists that the pause did not exist have not been convincing to other climate scientists. This in turn once again illustrates the overall uncertainty of this field of science.
Link here. As Glenn Reynolds notes
I’m inspired by Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Tex., who noticed something peculiar recently. It seems that EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, who spends a lot of time telling Americans that they need to drive less, fly less, and in general reduce their consumption of fossil fuels, also flies home to see her family in Boston “almost every weekend”; the head of the Clean Air Division, Janet McCabe, does the same, but she heads to Indianapolis. In air mileage alone, the Daily Caller News Foundation estimates that McCarthy surpasses the carbon footprint of an ordinary American. Smith has introduced a bill that wouldn’t target the EPA honchos’ personal travel, though: It provides, simply, that “None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to pay the cost of any officer or employee of the Environmental Protection Agency for official travel by airplane.”
This makes sense to me. We’re constantly told by the administration that “climate change” is a bigger threat than terrorism. And as even President Obama has noted, there’s a great power in setting an example: “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.”
Likewise, it’s hard to expect Americans to accept changes to their own lifestyles when the very people who are telling them that it’s a crisis aren’t acting like it’s a crisis. So I have a few suggestions to help bring home the importance of reduced carbon footprints at home and abroad:
Reynolds than goes on to suggest further restrictions on the fossil fuel use of the hoi poloi in Washington, including heavy taxes on fuel used by private jets, heavy taxes on coastal regions like liberal cities like New York, Boston, and Washington to prepare for sea rise, and the banning air-conditioning in the District of Columbia.
Obama makes a great point about setting the thermostat at 72 degrees. We should ban air conditioning in federal buildings. We won two world wars without air conditioning our federal employees. Nothing in their performance over the last 50 or 60 years suggests that A/C has improved things. Besides, The Washington Post informs us that A/C is sexist, and that Europeans think it’s stupid.
Makes sense to me!
Thank goodness these were peer reviewed! Two environmental papers, one claiming increased air pollution near fracking sites and the second claiming that the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill caused air contamination, have now both been retracted because of “crucial mistakes.”
According to the corresponding author of both papers, Kim Anderson at Oregon State University, the journal plans to publish new versions of both papers in the next few days. In the case of the fracking paper, the conclusions have been reversed — the original paper stated pollution levels exceeded limits set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for lifetime cancer risk, but the corrected data set the risks below EPA levels.
The fracking paper received some media attention when it was released, as it tapped into long-standing concerns about the environmental dangers of hydraulic fracturing (fracking), which extracts natural gas from the earth. A press release that accompanied the paper quoted Anderson as warning: “Air pollution from fracking operations may pose an under-recognized health hazard to people living near them.”
Both papers, published in Environmental Science and Technology, were retracted on the same day (June 29), both due to mistakes in reported levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), pollutants released from burning oil, gas, and other organic matter.
They say that the errors were due to an “honest spreadsheet error.”
On July 4th NOAA released its monthly update of the solar cycle, showing the Sun’s sunspot activity in June. It is annotated and posted below.
The graph above has been modified to show the predictions of the solar science community. The green curves show the community’s two original predictions from April 2007, with half the scientists predicting a very strong maximum and half predicting a weak one. The red curve is their revised May 2009 prediction.
Not surprisingly, the time periods with no sunspots in June, including a 12 day stretch that just ended today, is reflected by the graph’s precipitous drop in June.
What is significant to me is the speed with which this solar maximum seems to be ending. Normally, weak solar cycles are also long solar cycles. The Sun not only doesn’t get as active, but the ramp up and down is extended, as is the period of the solar minimum. This is what happened during the solar minimum from 2007 to 2010. It was longer than normal, which meant that the solar maximum occurred much later than predicted by the 2007 predictions of the solar science communities (shown in green).
This recent stretch of blank days however is now suggesting that the solar maximum is going to end much sooner than the later 2009 prediction (shown in red). Even more astonishing, the numbers in June aligned with the 2007 high prediction, which would make this one of the shortest solar maximums on record!
I don’t expect these low numbers to continue. I expect sunspot activity to recover and continue, with the minimum likely occurring after 2018. If it does come sooner, however, that will once again be evidence suggesting we are heading for a Grand Minimum, with no sunspots for decades.
Fascist California: The Oakland city council has voted to block coal shipments through its brand new marine terminal.
The Oakland city council voted unanimously to bar shipments of coal through a proposed marine terminal on Monday, setting the stage for a legal battle.
The prospect of train cars carrying millions of tons of coal mined in Utah through Oakland before heading to Asian markets has inflamed passions in the city. Opponents argue it will harm health and exacerbate climate change. Proponents say it will provide good jobs in an impoverished area.
And I say it is none of the damn business of these petty dictators to decide what and where stuff gets shipped, especially if it is legal product.
In response to a subpoena from the Democratic Attorney General of Massachusetts, Maura Healey, for 40 years of past correspondence between a think tank and Exxon, the think tank founder had this response: “F–k off, Fascist”.
Healey subpoenaed Exxon as part of a multi-state effort among liberal prosecutors to investigate the company for allegedly trying to cover up global warming science. Healey alleges the oil giant lied to shareholders and consumers about the risks of global warming in its communications and shareholder filings, according to a copy of the subpoena obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
She’s targeting CIP and other prominent conservative groups, like the Heritage Foundation and Americans for Prosperity (AFP), because of their supposed ties to Exxon. The only problem is, neither CIP nor AFP are funded by Exxon.
I think this response not only provides an accurate description of this liberal Democratic effort to squelch dissent, but is the correct response. It is clear that the Democratic Party has become the home for intolerant, hate-filled totalitarians who think it okay to silence debate and use the law to oppress those who disagree with them. It is also clear that more people have to tell them to go to hell.
NOAA today released its monthly update of the solar cycle, showing the Sun’s sunspot activity in May. It is annotated and posted below.
The graph above has been modified to show the predictions of the solar science community. The green curves show the community’s two original predictions from April 2007, with half the scientists predicting a very strong maximum and half predicting a weak one. The red curve is their revised May 2009 prediction.
Though sunspot activity increased in May, the increase was not significant. The ramp down from solar maximum continues to track the 2007 low prediction for this maximum.
Meanwhile, the Sun continues its first multi-day string of blank days since 2011, now up to 3 days with all indications suggesting it will continue at least one more day. This early blank string, combined with the relatively fast decline in sunspots in the past two years, suggests that the solar maximum is ending sooner than predicted by the 2009 prediction (the red curve above), and that the next minimum will possibly be longer as well.
The Democratic fascists in the California Senate have lost their bid to pass a law that would have made it a crime to express skepticism of human-caused global warming.
The bill only failed because the Senate did not take action before the end of its session, and could reappear agian.
Later this year, however, the same language could be reintroduced under a waiver of the rules or inserted into another bill as part of the gut-and-amend process.
And I fully expect these fascists to try again, especially considering this:
The measure was introduced amid a national push by Democrats and activist groups to use the legal system to prosecute climate change “fraud,” prompting a backlash from skeptics who have denounced the campaign as an assault on free speech. A coalition of 17 state attorneys general, including California Attorney General Kamala Harris, have joined forces to pursue climate change skeptics. At least four prosecutors reportedly have launched investigations into Exxon Mobil for climate change “fraud.”
Introduced by state Sen. Ben Allen, Santa Monica Democrat, S.B. 1161 had strong support from environmental groups, led by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Climate fascists: The California legislature is considering a bill that would make it illegal to express skepticism about human-caused global warming.
The bill declares that there is no legitimate disagreement on the causes and extent of climate change, stating that, “There is broad scientific consensus that anthropogenic global warming is occurring and changing the world’s climate patterns, and that the primary cause is the emission of greenhouse gases from the production and combustion of fossil fuels, such as coal, oil, and natural gas.”
What I find frightening about this is that the liberal Democrats who are writing and pushing this bill, with the full support of numerous liberal environmentalist groups, no longer feel the slightest shame about their oppressive and tyrannical preferences. They are now out in the open, suggesting that they sense a wide support for their actions. I fear that they are right.
The recent long and refreshing debate thread on the subject of climate change between myself and others on Behind the Black has prompted me to upload my bibliography of the research I did on climate change and the sun’s influence from 2002 to 2010.
This bibliography, which is quite long, can be found here. I have also added a link to it in the top menu just below the banner at the top of the page
Though I stopped adding new entries to this bibliography in 2010, my research has not ceased. I just don’t update the bibliography anymore.
I make it available partly as a reference to my readers, and partly as a document to show that I base my opinions on solid research. I might not be a climate scientist, but I have made sure that I have a solid understanding of the science before speaking publicly about it. I think it wise that more people do the same.
A federal court has ruled that the Obama White House was stonewalling in its refusal to turn over global warming documents requested under the Freedom of Information law
In this most recent case, the Competitive Enterprise Institute was trying to force the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to release documents backing up Director John C. Holdren’s finding that global warming was making winters colder — a claim disputed by climate scientists. Mr. Holdren’s staffers first claimed they couldn’t find many documents, then tried to hide their release, saying they were all internal or were similar to what was already public.
But each of those claims turned out not to be true. “At some point, the government’s inconsistent representations about the scope and completeness of its searches must give way to the truth-seeking function of the adversarial process, including the tools available through discovery. This case has crossed that threshold,” the judge wrote.
The judge also ruled that they will now proceed with “discovery”, in which the courts will force the administration to release documents, under penalty of contempt.
The article also notes that this is the third time the courts have been forced to go this route with the Obama administration. For some reason, they seem to be stonewalling a lot of Freedom of Information requests. And that doesn’t even include the stonewalling the IRS did in the Lois Lerner IRS scandal.
The uncertainty of science: A new review of Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth”, ten years later after its release, looks closely at the predictions the film made to see if they have come true, or were at least pointed in an accurate direction.
Guess what? The film’s predictions have turned out to be generally wrong. From predicting an ice-free Arctic to a snow-free Mt. Kilimanjaro to more extreme weather to a continuing warming as carbon dioxide increased, Gore’s predictions have each failed.
I especially like the last one, that as carbon dioxide rose the temperatures would rise in lockstep, as predicted by all climate models. The article notes that temperatures have not done so, that the global climate temperature has been practically unchanged since 1998, and backs up this point with a paper published by the science journal Nature.
The graph above is from that paper. The black line that rises above the red, blue, and gold lines is one of the more respected climate models. The other lines are from the actual data. As you can see, the climate model fails to predict the climate, meaning that the theory used to create it is incomplete or inaccurate.
This is not to say that the theory might not be true. Global warming, initiated by the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, might very well happen. The data shows however that the climate scientists touting this theory do not yet understand the Earth’s complex global climate well enough to prove their theory true. There are other factors influencing the climate they have not yet recognized, factors such as the Sun’s variability and the fact that CO2 by itself is a actually a trace gas and not the atmosphere’s chief global warming component, which is water.
The uncertainty of science: New data from satellites have confirmed that the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the past century is contributing to an expansion of plant life globally.
Researchers studying NASA satellite data on the Earth’s vegetation coverage have discovered that plants have significantly increased their leaf cover over the last 35 years to the point that new growth across the planet is equivalent to an area twice as large as the continental United States. According to the study, the largest contributor to this greening is the growing level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.
Using data collected from instruments such as NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer mounted on the AquaProbe satellite and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (such as that deployed on NOAA’s DSCOVR satellite), an international team of researchers has determined that CO2 fertilization explains fully 70 percent of the greening effect observed.
I love how the article repeatedly inserts several out-of-context comments about the dangers of global warming, even though everything in the story suggests that global warming might actually be beneficial.
On this anniversary of the first Earth Day in 1970, it behooves us to once again review the predictions of the environmental experts that even today the environmental movement relies on and continues to worship, men like Paul Ehrlich and David Brower, the first executive director of The Sierra Club.
The Daily Caller today provided us a list of the seven most significant predictions from that day, all of which turned out to be wrong. For example, Ehrlich repeatedly predicted that millions would starve in the coming decades:
Stanford professor Dr. Paul Ehrlich declared in April 1970 that mass starvation was imminent. His dire predictions failed to materialize as the number of people living in poverty has significantly declined and the amount of food per person has steadily increased, despite population growth. The world’s Gross Domestic Product per person has immeasurably grown despite increases in population.
Ehrlich is largely responsible for this view, having co-published “The Population Bomb” with The Sierra Club in 1968. The book made a number of claims including that millions of humans would starve to death in the 1970s and 1980s, mass famines would sweep England leading to the country’s demise, and that ecological destruction would devastate the planet causing the collapse of civilization.
Brower meanwhile revealed the tyrannical aspect of the environmental movement, stating that “[a]ll potential parents [should be] required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.” He went on to found Friends of the Earth and the League of Conservation Voters.
Ehrlich continues to push the same predictions, even though none of his past predictions have come true. But, then, what does that matter? Why should reality have anything to do with anything? It’s that he cares that matters!
Another reason to leave California: San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors has unanimously passed a local law that will require all new buildings, both commercial and residential, that are lower than 10 stories tall to install solar panels on their roofs.
San Francisco’s new regulations add to already existing Californian laws which require 15 percent of rooftops on buildings of 10 stories or less to be unshaded and solar ready. Under the new law, buildings must have either solar photovoltaic or solar water panels installed, or a mix of the two.
As part of a concerted effort to one day run the city entirely on renewables, the mayor set up a taskforce in 2011 to develop policies and programs that steer it in this direction. It hopes to achieve this goal by 2025.
1. This will add a significant cost to the construction of new buildings, guaranteeing that there will be a decline in construction of such buildings in San Francisco.
2. I am certain that the task force that the mayor set up in 2011 was dominated by individuals in the solar power industry, all of whom are going to benefit greatly by this new law. I would also not be surprised if I learned that they donated money to the mayor’s campaign fund.
3. This law, as well as the city’s plan to run itself entirely on renewables by 2025, are pure fantasies based on ideology that no law can dictate. They must evolve, based on the realities of economics and technological discovery. That San Francisco’s political leadership can’t understand this fundamental fact of life indicates that this city is going to bankrupt itself in the near future, especially since its population overwhelming agrees with the fantasies of their political leaders. Expect more stupid laws like this, and except the situation there to become increasingly oppressive as these ideologues increasingly impose their unworkable fantasies on everyone.
Your tax dollars at work! The U.S.’s largest solar power company, heavily subsidized by the federal government, now faces bankruptcy.
An SEC filing from TerraForm Global, a unit of SunEdison, claims “due to SunEdison’s liquidity difficulties, there is a substantial risk that SunEdison will soon seek bankruptcy protection.” Both SunEdison and TerraForm are delaying the filing of their annual financial report to the SEC.
News of SunEdison’s impending bankruptcy filing comes after the company’s shares fell 95 percent in the past 12 months, with shares now trading for less than $1 for the first time since the green energy company went public in 1995. SunEdison’s market value fell from $10 billion in July 2015 to around $400 million today.
The news also comes after the SEC announced it was launching an investigation into SunEdison’s disclosures to shareholders regarding the company’s liquidity. SEC enforcement officials “are looking into whether SunEdison overstated its liquidity last fall when it told investors it had more than $1 billion in cash,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
…The pro-labor union group Good Jobs First reported last year that SunEdison and its subsidiaries got nearly $650 million in subsidies and tax credits from the federal government since 2000. It was the 13th most heavily-subsidized company in America. This includes nearly $4.6 million in subsidies from the Department of Energy and Department of Treasury. Watchdog.org reported in October 2015 that SunEdison had gotten nearly $4.6 million from the Obama administration, including funding to build semi-conductors. A SunEdison bankruptcy could leave taxpayers on the hook for more than $2 billion.
But hey, what’s a few billion here or there, if the cause is worthwhile?
Fascists: Democratic attorney generals from 16 states announced today that they plan on investigating and prosecuting companies for fraud if they dare express any skepticism about global warming.
“The bottom line is simple: Climate change is real; it is a threat to all the people we represent,” [New York Attorney General Eric] Schneiderman said. “If there are companies, whether they’re utilities, whether they’re fossil fuel companies, committing fraud in an effort to maximize their short-term profits at the expense of the people we represent, we want to find out about it. We want to expose it and want to pursue them to the fullest extent of the law.”
The concept of dissent and debate increasingly appears completely foreign to liberal, leftwing politicians and activists. Disagree with them in any way, and they think that gives them the right to destroy you.
The uncertainty of science: New data, compiled from tree rings in Russia, suggests that a previously undetected little ice age occurred in the 6th and 7th centuries, caused by a combination of volcanoes and low sunspot counts.
This cold spell would have preceded the Medieval Warm Period centered around 1000 AD that was followed by the already known Little Ice Age centered around 1600 AD. Note that no fossil fuel regulations or carbon taxes were used in creating this cold period. Note also this description of the consequences of that cold period:
The poor climate may been one of many factors contributing to societal changes of the era, including widespread crop failures and famines in Central Asia that may have triggered migrations from the area to China and Eastern Europe, thus helping spread an episode of plague (depicted in this 15th century painting) that originated there.
Famine and plague, caused by extreme cold, illustrating starkly that cooling is a far greater threat to human survival than climate warming. Meanwhile, the Medieval Warm Period saw a flourishing of American Indian culture in the American southwest.
I have always wondered why our modern climate doom-sayers fear warming so much, when there is no data to justify that fear, and plenty of data to suggest otherwise.
Below the fold is Tuesday’s podcast of my appearance on the John Batchelor show. In addition to discussing Falcon Heavy, Ariane 6, and the question of rocket re-usability, I also lambasted the glacially slow pace of NASA’s Orion project, producing four capsules for a mere $17 billion in only 19 years! And speaking of glaciers, I also noted in the science segment the stonewalling at NOAA that prevents scientists from analyzing the rational behind their “adjustments” to their climate data, all of which cool the past and warm the present.
» Read more
The journal Science today posted this somewhat useful review of the positions that the presidential candidates have taken on a variety of science issues.
One must read this article while recognizing that Science is not trustworthy on many of these subjects. For one, its position is always for more funding. If a politician even suggests that the rate of budget increases should be trimmed, Science will frame that suggestion as if the politician wants to slash all spending for science.
For another, Science is quite biased and agenda-driven when it comes to climate change, and illustrates that bias in this article in its reporting on Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and his position on this subject. To quote:
Cruz has used his position as head of a Senate subcommittee that oversees climate research to question recent temperature trends. Last fall Cruz called climate change a “religion.” Voted no on a measure affirming that humans contribute to climate change. [emphasis mine]
The highlighted words above is a misstatement of what Cruz has said and serves to trivialize his position. He hasn’t questioned the “temperature trends”, which for almost two decades have been stalled. If anything, he has noted these trends as evidence that the theory of human-caused global warming has a problem. What he has questioned is the data that NOAA and NASA have been publishing. If anything, Cruz’s positions on the science of climate change have indicated that he has educated himself well on the subject, and has taken some thoughtful positions on it.
Nonetheless, this article is worth reviewing, as it reveals a great deal about the candidates. A close look for example at Rubio’s position on climate change reveals that he might not be consistent, and that his stated positions now might not match what he does should he become president.
No settled science here: Three hundred climate scientists have signed a letter demanding that NOAA stop stonewalling the Congressioinal investigation of the agency’s repeated adjustments to raw climate data so that the record shows increased warming, when there is none.
Of the 300 letter signers, 150 had doctorates in a related field. Signers also included: 25 climate or atmospheric scientists, 23 geologists, 18 meteorologists, 51 engineers, 74 physicists, 20 chemists and 12 economists. Additionally, one signer was a Nobel Prize winning physicist and two were astronauts.
Seems to me that this letter and the number of climate scientists willing to sign it alone demonstrates that the “97 percent consensus” on global warming is bogus. As for NOAA, the agency is legally in violation of the law by refusing to provide information requested by Congress. Moreover, what are they afraid of? If they haven’t been tampering with the data improperly, they should have no reason to resist the congressional investigation. That they are stonewalling it suggests that they are hiding something. It also suggests that they haven’t the faintest idea what the scientific method is, which requires total transparency so that others can check the results and make sure they are correct.
Steven Goddard has once again taken a close look at the climate data gathering at NOAA and NASA and found clear evidence of tampering.
He not only documents how the scientists at these agencies have adjusted the raw data to cool the past and warm the present to create the illusion of global warming, they have done so with a limited data base.
The bulk of the data tampering is being done by simply making temperatures up. If NOAA is missing data for a particular station in a particular month, they use a computer model to calculate what they think the temperature should have been.
Those calculations are then designed to support the theory of human caused global warming, caused by increased carbon dioxide.
Goddard doesn’t just tell us his opinions, he backs up his conclusions with detailed graphs and data.
Do I accept Goddard’s conclusions entirely? Maybe. The two questions I ask that none of the NOAA or NASA scientists have been willing to answer are these:
» Read more
The uncertainty of science: New data suggests that the burning of fossil fuels might actually act to cool the planet, not heat it as predicted by all global warming models.
Major theories about what causes temperatures to rise have been thrown into doubt after NASA found the Earth has cooled in areas of heavy industrialisation where more trees have been lost and more fossil fuel burning takes place. Environmentalists have long argued the burning of fossil fuels in power stations and for other uses is responsible for global warming and predicted temperature increases because of the high levels of carbon dioxide produced – which causes the global greenhouse effect.
While the findings did not dispute the effects of carbon dioxide on global warming, they found aerosols – also given off by burning fossil fuels – actually cool the local environment, at least temporarily.
Not surprisingly, some of the scientists who wrote this study, who also happen to be central to the tampering of global temperate data at NASA to create the illusion of more warming in the last century than the raw data indicates, immediately spun the result as proof that carbon dioxide is a greater threat for global warming than they previously thought. How they came to this conclusion is to me quite inexplicable, unless they really don’t care what results they get as long as they can say that humans are killing the planet.
The president of the National Association of Scholars has written a scathing letter to the National Academy of Sciences condemning the unopposed candidacy of Dr. Marcia K. McNutt, the present editor-in-chief of the journal Science, as president of the Academy.
Their complaint has to do with her policy at Science of censoring any dissenting opinions on a number of science subjects, including climate change.
Science [the journal] promotes the so-called consensus model of climate change and excludes any contrary views. This issue has become so polarized and polarizing that it is difficult to bring up, but at some point the scientific community will have to reckon with the dramatic discrepancies between current climate models and substantial parts of the empirical record. Recent evidence of Science bias on this issue is the June 26, 2015 article by Dr. Thomas R. Karl, “Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface warming hiatus”; the July 3, 2015 McNutt editorial, “The beyond-two-degree inferno”; the November 13, 2015 McNutt editorial, “Climate warning, 50 years later”; and the November 25, 2015 AAAS News Release, “AAAS Leads Coalition to Protest Climate Science Inquiry.”
Dr. McNutt’s position is, of course, consistent with the official position of the AAAS. But the attempt to declare that the “pause” in global warming was an illusion has not been accepted by several respected and well-informed scientists. One would not know this, however, from reading Science, which has declined to publish any dissenting views. One can be a strong supporter of the consensus model and yet be disturbed by the role which Science has played in this controversy. Dr. McNutt and the journal have acted more like partisan activists than like responsible stewards of scientific standards confronted with contentious claims and ambiguous evidence. The relevant documents and commentary regarding the Karl paper and McNutt editorials can be examined at https://www.nas.org/images/documents/Climate_Change.pdf. [emphasis mine]
The letter outlines two other areas where McNutt has appeared to play favorites in areas of scientific controversy, and thus questions the wisdom of allowing her to run unopposed for presidency of the National Academy of Sciences.
What is important about this letter is that indicates that there is an increasing pushback from scientists against the demands of orthodoxy. Rather than going along with the powers-that-be, the National Association of Scholars is stating its increasing distrust of the scientific integrity of those powers.
Posted from Sedona, Arizona.
On Sunday NOAA posted, as it does each month, its monthly update of the solar cycle, showing the Sun’s sunspot activity in November. And as I have done every month since 2010, I am posting it here, with annotations to give it context.
Though sunspot activity in November was just slightly higher than in October, the increase was so small that it is insignificant. Essentially, the overall decline in sunspot count continues, matching almost perfectly the ramp down predicted by the 2007 low prediction. Solar activity continues to be far weaker then anything seen in a century. Whether this suggests a coming Grand Minimum, however, is not known. Solar activity could continue to decline as we move into the next solar cycle, or it could recover. Our understanding of what causes the sunspot cycle remains somewhat fuzzy, which means our ability to predict what will happen next is as fuzzy..
The graph above has been modified to show the predictions of the solar science community. The green curves show the community’s two original predictions from April 2007, with half the scientists predicting a very strong maximum and half predicting a weak one. The red curve is their revised May 2009 prediction.
Why are people skeptical of the global warming fear-mongers? Because they do not practice what they preach, flying to huge unnecessary conferences and producing 23,000 times more carbon dioxide then an average American in a year.
Yes, these conferences are unnecessary.
It’s 2015. We have incredibly advanced telecommuting systems. All of the political and scientific work behind a climate conference is performed using such global computer networking, long before the conference is held. Climate confabs are an excuse for politicians to soak their taxpayers for luxury junkets to exotic vacation destinations, where they stay in five-star hotels and dine on the finest gourmet foods.
(Lunch at the Paris climate conference on Monday, according to Politico: special turnip soup, scallops in a climate-symbolic “modern” sauce, stuffed celery confit with veined spinach cream, and then a trilogy of freshwater trout roe caviar, vegetable jelly, and coltsfoot, plus Reblochon au jus scented with myyrh, caraway wood, and a salad of wild undergrowth and tree beans. And yes, of course there will be dessert – citrus compote and light cream with praline.)
Climate conferences are pricey photo ops with no valid purpose beyond influencing media coverage, a fact the grandees at the Paris event have emphasized with their insulting blather about how holding the conference will somehow “rebuke” the Islamic State.
The hilariously obvious truth that no one attending the event actually believes the apocalyptic predictions they dump on their constituents makes these conferences into the equivalent of a “safari” at Disney World – a chance to laugh, hang out with friends, and enjoy a little shiver of play-acting fear as animatronic wild animals lunge at your robot-piloted jungle cruise boat.
The article researches the carbon footprint of the Paris conference, and finds it to be quite significant. If these leftwing global warming activists (they are not scientists, as this conference has nothing to do with science and everything to do with politics) really believed their lies about how fossil fuels and global warming was going to destroy humanity, they would never agree to their periodic parties in five-star hotels in beautiful cities throughout the world.
