We won the battle, lost the war – let’s win the war

Battle of Guadalcanal 1942 – click to enlarge

It’s true that science offers no support to the warmsters, and their narrative has been a dismal failure in the halls of science, but those fraudsters have more or less triumphed in the battle for the corridors of power. However, we can be of good heart, since we will eventually win the war: truth always defeats ignorance. Always. Continue Reading →

Visits: 280

This Claytons global warming

The global warming you have when you have no global warming

“The drink you have when you’re not having a drink”

Like the sham whisky peddled in the 1970s and 80s, today’s fashionable narrative of global warming satisfies no one.

Climate realists and sceptics, knowing the facts, are frustrated by witless political surrender to counterfeit science, while climate agitators declare a crisis just to make something happen, since there’s no public belief, no political commitment and—fundamentally disturbing—no warming.

Yes, we have not been warming (well, nothing you could call a crisis …).

Continue Reading →

Visits: 259

The war on meat

“the anti-meat message risks destroying the very environment it claims to be protecting”

• Guest post •

— by Barry Brill, Chairman of the NZ Climate Science Coalition

Meat — farming animals for food is undeniably good for the environment (click to enlarge; DROOL).

For most of this century, we have been bombarded by news articles preaching that vegetarians now have a corner on ‘food morality’ and that meat-eating is to be banished in a more environmentally-conscious future.  The notion is that God never intended the human race to be omnivores and that our ancestors just took a wrong turning back there on the savannah. Continue Reading →

Visits: 398

Tiresome climate propaganda

Here’s a (lightly improved) op-ed I submitted to the Herald a month ago with no acknowledgement. Prof Geoff Duffy describes scientific properties of greenhouse gases that raise significant doubt about the wisdom of mitigating our emissions of any gas. How odd that these fully informed colleagues make no argument against his criticisms, preferring an ineffectual allegation of being “wrong about many [unspecified] aspects of science.” So I ask you, lady and gentlemen: what aspects and how is he wrong? — RT

The letter Our impact on climate very clear, of 8 Oct 2018 (right), by Prof Dave Frame and seven other local climate scientists, gives misleading information about greenhouse gases.

Seeing a letter over those scholarly signatures sparks interest in the pending illumination. But, sadly, Frame et al. (or Frame ‘n Pals) recite the tiresome propaganda of the IPCC without demur and tip-toe around the scientific points made so well by our friend Dr Geoff Duffy.

They present sentences arranged to resemble a logical argument that are in fact unconnected. Each one tells part of the truth, so it’s not wrong, but it neither contributes to an argument nor supports the next sentence.

Any connection between them rests only on our gullibility. Continue Reading →

Visits: 955

Climate game over?

— By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

Judge Alsup, in the California global warming trial, has accepted the amicus curiae brief from my eight distinguished colleagues and me. The brief now becomes an official part of the court documents. The judge may yet ask all parties to respond to it. Continue Reading →

Visits: 1058

The elementary error of physics that caused the global warming scare

They said the science was settled. Well, it wasn’t.

— By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

This will be a long posting, but it will not be found uninteresting.

Global warming on trial: Global warming goes on trial at 8.00 am this Wednesday, 21 March 2018, in Court 8 on the 19th floor of the Federal Building at 450 Golden Gate Avenue, San Francisco. Court 8 is the largest of the courtrooms in the Federal District Court of Northern California. They’re clearly expecting a crowd. The 8 am start, rather than the usual 10 am, is because the judge in the case is an early bird. Continue Reading →

Visits: 1123

Unpacking climate alarm

Auckland Harbour – little change

The Prime Minister says combating climate change will be the defining characteristic of her term of office. Ms Ardern sees this question as being more urgent than all other economic, environmental and social issues – even the alleviation of child poverty, to which she is headily committed. How did this topic gain this ascendancy? Continue Reading →

Visits: 1275

Why James Lovelock changed his mind on climate change

Only two years after The Revenge of Gaia

From a sparkling interview by James Delingpole in the Spectator. Do read it.

Climate change was so serious a threat, he told the Guardian in 2010, that democracy might have to be ‘put on hold’.

Within two years he’d had a remarkable change of heart. ‘All right, I made a mistake,’ he told the cable channel MSNBC. He still believed —and continues to believe — that manmade carbon dioxide is a problem that needs addressing. But we’ve plenty of time to do something about it before any dangerous effects are felt, and in any case, the cures being advanced by green zealots are often worse than the disease itself.

One of his main bugbears is biomass, such as the woodchips from old oak forests in the US, which are shipped across the Atlantic to be burned for electricity at the Drax power station: ‘This is one of the most monstrous examples of green absurdity that I know of. It’s wicked!’

He said, by the way, the answer’s nuclear.

Visits: 262

Jack Tame – The picture: ‘climate-changed hurricanes’ is dead wrong

CYGNSS Hurricane Mission. Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System satellite orbiting over a hurricane. They’re very big, hurricanes.

No, Jack. There’s no evidence to support your outrage this morning. Your description of the problem is simplistic — indeed, it’s raw scare-mongering. Above all, it’s dead wrong.

You make major mistakes but I’ll be charitable and assume you are unaware of the truth, though it’s a bad thing for a journalist. Continue Reading →

Visits: 671

Does Reisinger have any evidence?

Methane – CH4

 

Dr Andy Reisinger wrote an opinion piece in today’s Herald. Here are some answers.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that global methane emissions are responsible for more than 40 per cent of the total warming effect so far of all human activities. … Our livestock sector is making the concentration of methane in the atmosphere higher than it would be otherwise, and this results in the world becoming warmer than it would be otherwise.

Continue Reading →

Visits: 181

Analysis says nature causes climate change

Source: Neutral Fact Finder Points to Melting Glaciers as the Cause of Global Warming, Rising Sea Levels and Rising CO2 in Atmosphere

NEWS PROVIDED BY
Kelleher & Associates Environmental Mgmt LLC
Jan 10, 2017, 10:00 ET

 

SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — The following is the opinion of Kelleher & Associates Environmental Mgmt LLC regarding rising CO2 levels and Global Warming and their interrelationship with fast melting glaciers:

Dear President Elect Trump, NOAA, EPA and interested parties: Continue Reading →

Visits: 365

Fallacy of “carbon” footprint

CO2 molecule

CO2 model: colourless, odourless gas vital to life.

The carbon dioxide molecule itself reveals that what activists call a “carbon footprint” is a fallacy.

For 30 years our emissions of carbon dioxide have been reviled for the dangerous warming CO2 is believed to exert on the climate. Activists abbreviate its name to “carbon”, call it pollution and claim to calculate “carbon footprints” for all manner of activities, products and lifestyles. They say these carbon footprints will cause environmental destruction through global warming in the far future. Continue Reading →

Visits: 729

If even one climate model was accurate we wouldn’t need another

On the Helix Facebook page yesterday, Richard Betts writes about High-End Climate Impacts and Extremes.

He claims “the chances are that global warming will exceed the 2°C “guardrail” that the EU and UN aim to stay below,” and doesn’t disagree with alarmist interpretations of the scale and effects of man-made global warming, such as the possibility of 6°C warming. But “science” says little about our future climate. Continue Reading →

Visits: 76

Fatal deficiencies destroy scientific case for climate catastrophe

snow flake

As a member of the NZ Climate Science Coalition, I am frequently privy to learned conversations. Occasionally I publish excerpts, suitably altered to preserve privacy. The conversation below emerged sedately over several weeks and expertly defines the fatal deficiencies in the believers’ case for alarm. It deserves a big audience. Continue Reading →

Visits: 502

Recycling burps and farts

Sheep

Sheep.

• Guest post •

— by Viv Forbes, Chairman of Carbon Sense

5th August 2015

Yesterday morning, before the frost had left the grass, I was sitting quietly beside my fashionably-green wood-burning heater reading the latest explanation in “The Green Gospel” on why the Arctic ice had not yet melted. Suddenly Flora burst into the room like an Arctic Blizzard with a look on her face that said I was in big trouble. Continue Reading →

Visits: 78

Yes, Dr Hansen says our oceans will boil

The man is dangerous

This loony scientist-turned-climate-activist is reckless with science and his unfounded claims of peril are a threat to public order. Even his followers cannot believe he really said the oceans will boil, but here is the evidence. Should you not believe my biased sceptical transcript, just read his lips.

James Hansen: The Runaway Greenhouse Effect   (video posted Jan 10, 2012)

At 1:55 (the link goes straight there) Hansen poses the question:

Dr James Hansen

What is the runaway greenhouse effect?

Which he answers concisely and unambiguously:

That means once the planet gets warmer and warmer then the oceans begin to evaporate, and water vapour is a very strong greenhouse gas, even more powerful than carbon dioxide, so you can get to a situation where it just… the oceans will begin to boil and the planet becomes so hot that the ocean ends up in the atmosphere and that happened to Venus. That’s why Venus no longer has carbon in its surface. It’s atmosphere is made up of… basically of carbon dioxide because it had a runaway greenhouse effect.

Continue Reading →

Visits: 459

New paper suggests no warming in NZ in past 100 years

The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition today issued a press release:

New Zealand may not have warmed at all in the past 100 years, according to a peer-reviewed paper published in the international science journal, Environmental Modeling & Assessment. The paper, A Reanalysis of Long-Term Surface Air Temperature Trends in New Zealand, by New Zealand authors Chris De Freitas, Bob Dedekind and Barry Brill, covering the period 1909-2009, shows an increase of 0.28+/-0.29 °C/century, compared with the current official NIWA seven-station series (7SS) showing an increase of nearly 1 °C/century. Continue Reading →

Visits: 88

de Freitas temperature study reaches top 5% of 3.67M scientific papers

Confirms Salinger’s Trojan Horse (see below)

Altmetric ranking

Altmetric ranking for de Freitas et al in January. Current Altmetric ranking (click SCORE IN CONTEXT on SUMMARY tab then click a category for details). Click to enlarge.

I am delighted to report that A Reanalysis of Long-Term Surface Air Temperature Trends in New Zealand (de Freitas, Dedekind & Brill, 2014) is top-ranked by Altmetric.

Altmetric has tracked 20 articles from EMA, the journal our authors used, and our paper tops them all. More significantly, it ranks in the top 5% of all 3,671,975 articles ever tracked by Altmetric, and in the top 8% of 102,471 articles published around the same time. It’s an outstanding result. Continue Reading →

Visits: 114

What the media aren’t telling you about climate change

From our friends at Daily Media Review comes this revealing story of how the IPCC itself announced that we can expect no dangerous warming from our CO2 emissions. – RT

By Daily Media Review
24/06/15

The mainstream media love to lecture us daily about the coming apocalypse as a result of catastrophic climate change, but are we being told the complete story?

There is little dispute amongst the scientific community about the warming effect of CO2. Both those who accept and those who reject the climate change hypothesis agree on this—they even agree as to how much warming CO2 is capable of causing. But according to the International Panel on Climate Change, CO2 only accounts for half of the expected warming in the computer models. Continue Reading →

Visits: 222

Prof Michael Kelly censures Royal Society

Prof Mike Kelly

Dr Mike Kelly, Kiwi physicist, elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1993, has been Prince Philip Professor of Technology at Cambridge University since 2002.

RS scientists ‘jeopardise their integrity’

Professor Michael Kelly has published a stinging indictment in the Daily Mail of the performance of the Royal Society. Refusing to mince his words, he says that the Royal Society scientists have adopted a role of ‘lobbying’ and in doing so ‘they jeopardise their purpose and integrity.’ Continue Reading →

Visits: 241

Lopsided science or skewed news—you choose

an Argo buoy

An Argo buoy held by Dana Swift, University of Washington.

The NZ Herald reports that one of the world’s leading oceanographers, Professor Dean Roemmich, is in New Zealand to examine data from the Argo floats.

The Herald reporter directing the public perception of climate science, Jamie Morton, claims:

Hundreds of robotic instruments deployed across the South Pacific have begun to reveal dramatic new insights into the impact of climate change upon oceans in our corner of the world. (emphasis added)

Continue Reading →

Visits: 118

HotWhopper wrong on ocean heat

a turbulent ocean

 

After reading Bob Tisdale at WUWT I made my first visit yesterday to HotWhopper to examine a post on ocean heat content. (Though this doesn’t concern the report from our Commissioner for the Environment, it addresses the fundamental science, so please bear with me.) Miriam O’Brien (a.k.a. Sou) writes:

The oceans absorb more than 90% of the extra energy that’s being built up in the system.

This caught my attention as lying at the centre of her argument. But we need to ask where the heat comes from and how it gets into the ocean.

As we know, the oceans warm from the direct heat of the sun. The hypothesis (and it’s still only an hypothesis, it’s not yet a theory) that the oceans also warm from the effects of man-made global warming depends on heat energy reaching them by radiation from atmospheric gases (the so-called greenhouse gases).

Trouble is, physics is against it. Continue Reading →

Visits: 233

Anthropogenic Global Warming and the Scientific Method

• Guest post •

Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) alarm has been with us for a good while now. The matter seems to become more contentious rather than less. Unhappily, as a result of the mediocre quality of science education, many people do not know how to evaluate either a scientific hypothesis in general or AGW in particular — and irrespective of whatever anyone might think, because of how it is framed and evaluated, AGW is no more than a hypothesis. Continue Reading →

Visits: 90

The dark art of falling albedo

Ruapehu eruption 2007

A story on Mother Jones last July by John Vidal described the world’s highest glacier, Khumbu, turning visibly darker as particles of fine dust, blown by fierce winds, settled on the bright, fresh snow. “One-week-old snow was turning black and brown before my eyes,” said American geologist Ulyana Horodyskyj. Unfortunately she lacked the presence of mind to make a photographic record of this startling event. Continue Reading →

Visits: 88

David Evans devises solar model to tame climate chaos

Jo Nova and David Evans reveal astounding new work

Will this be the magic bullet to destroy climate ignorance?

This from Jo Nova (note her lack of arrogance):

Behind the scenes, for 18 months, Dr David Evans (my other half) has been quietly working full time on climate research. The Fourier expert with six degrees who studied at Stanford has discovered something extraordinary using silicon-chip maths on the climate system. (Electrical engineers are really going to like this new approach.) This is real science laid bare. Continue Reading →

Visits: 732

New paper says CO2 not a greenhouse gas after all

Promoted from comments

This would change everything

Bulaman said “Bula. Check the latest over at Chiefio’s” so we did. The Chiefio says:

It looks like the only thing with black body radiation is a real black body and that transparent things, like gasses, are not quite the same. In particular, CO2 likes to heat up instead of emit a photon. Continue Reading →

Visits: 105

Students desire knowledge

student wanting knowledge

and they will find it

Amid all the world-wide signs of a major sea-change in climate thinking (yes, that’s a pun) comes the encouraging news that New Zealand university students prefer the truth over activist drivel. Why did we ever doubt them? Continue Reading →

Visits: 308

The boring climate

Why you won’t see headlines as climate science enters the doldrums

Posted on November 4, 2013, at Watts Up With That

Guest post by Dr. Robert G. Brown, Physics Department of Duke University (elevated from a comment on a WUWT thread: RSS Reaches Santer’s 17 Years).

This (17 years) is a non-event, just as 15 and 16 years were non-events. Non-events do not make headlines. Other non-events of the year are one of the fewest numbers of tornadoes (especially when corrected for under-reporting in the radar-free past) in at least the recent past (if not the remote past), the lowest number of Atlantic hurricanes since I was 2 years old (I’m 58), the continuation of the longest stretch in recorded history without a category 3 or higher hurricane making landfall in the US (in fact, I don’t recall there being a category 3 hurricane in the North Atlantic this year, although one of the ones that spun out far from land might have gotten there for a few hours). Continue Reading →

Visits: 198

IPCC hides lies beneath science

caption

The IPCC deceives us

Barry Brill reveals a serial deception by the IPCC we need to wake up to. Why? Because the alarm peddled by this UN body relies on a simple, easily confirmed falsehood. The IPCC claims we should adhere to a 30-year observation period it has never itself respected. It implies that we should believe the IPCC that it’s been warming and disbelieve the temperature data that it hasn’t been warming. The IPCC’s parent body, the WMO, says that a far shorter period is quite all right (why won’t they correct the IPCC?). We cannot trust the IPCC, so we must take decisions regarding the expected future climate completely out of their insincere, incompetent hands.

Under pressure at a media conference following release of its Summary for Policymakers, AR5 WG1 Co-Chair Thomas Stocker is reported to have said that “climate trends should not be considered for periods less than 30 years.”

Some have seen this as the beginning of an IPCC ploy to continue ignoring the 16-year-old temperature standstill for many years into the future. But even the IPCC must know that any such red herring is dead in the water: Continue Reading →

Visits: 75

Heated climate debate continues

Professor Bob Carter

It can’t be over yet. When people are still being fired for not believing in global warming, it’s far from over. The war continues.

Professor Bob Carter (an expatriate Kiwi) lost his job the other day at James Cook University (JCU) in Townsville. He had worked there for 31 loyal years, his professional life devoted to stratigraphy, understanding events in the deep past recorded in ocean sediments, and teaching.

Significantly, because it led to his dismissal, Bob made an honourable name for himself and earned a world-wide reputation for remaining faithful to scientific principles while analysing the outrageous predictions from global warming alarmists. He was never afraid to speak out against the alarmists and their dubious claims. Continue Reading →

Visits: 137

Relationship between greenhouse gases and global temperature

From the GWPF comes this link to NoTricksZone who has a video of an outstanding presentation (opens in a new tab) three days ago by Professor Murry Salby.

The video begins in German, but after only 41 seconds shifts permanently to English (and later American), so don’t be dismayed. Stick with it.

The German professor, in his words of welcome, describes Professor Salby, from Macquarie University in Sydney:

He is known all over the world as one of the few specialists who really have a view over the whole area of climate development. Despite his long relationship with the most renowned climate institutes, he has preserved his own critical and constructive reasoning, which in some parts is in real contradiction to the official expert opinion and also [opposes] the assessment of the IPCC.

Continue Reading →

Visits: 188

Strike three for TVNZ

Sorry, I’ve been trying to post this for a week. – Richard Treadgold

Wrong, but no apology

TVNZ now admits to me that its press release was wrong in claiming that Dr Renwick blamed the recent drought on global warming.

But TVNZ don’t apologise to us or the New Zealand public — or even to Dr Renwick. The Corporate Affairs Department is entirely absorbed in explaining their mistake, rather than caring that they made it.

That’s the third strike against these public relations masters.

Un – be – lievable. Continue Reading →

Visits: 37

Measure, for measures are better

A guess is no help to knowing

A paper published in Nature on 10 February 2013 could destroy the global warming scare.

It’s called Atmospheric verification of anthropogenic CO2 emission trends and the Abstract is available on our side of the paywall, along with the Supplementary Information. However, I’ve also obtained a copy of the paper (800 KB) and it’s fascinating. There’s a larger version (3 MB), not so heavily compressed and less murky. Continue Reading →

Visits: 161

Warmists finally admit temperature is not warming

caption

At The Daily Blog two weeks ago Renowden complained (emphasis mine):

What we object to, Andy, is not the obvious behaviour of the surface temperature record, but your continued conflation of temperature with warming. Stop claiming that “warming has stopped”, and we can move on to talk about ice melt, rapid Arctic warming, and the impact on northern hemisphere weather patterns instead of indulging in silly semantics.

At last! How wonderful. For years we’ve been saying it’s not warming — the readings aren’t going up! Can’t you see that? We suffered these stupid explanations that there’s no stasis, we still have warming, in fact (some said) warming has accelerated. Continue Reading →

Visits: 91

Climate doctrine crushed

It’s early to say it, but I’ll say it early — Willis Eschenbach has achieved an earth-shaking breakthrough that’ll have him hailed a hero for years to come.

His fame will live on long after he has gone. He hasn’t merely found that carbon dioxide doesn’t control the temperature. He’s provided a reason to discard the very notion that any single forcing controls the surface temperature. The climate is a complex system.

His achievement is a triumph.

caption

Continue Reading →

Visits: 144

Anthropogenic ocean heating Part 1

Skeptical Science offside

Introduction

Anthropogenic attribution to sea level rise and ocean heat accumulation relies on there being a verified mechanism or process by which rising anthropogenic greenhouse gas (aGHG) emissions impute heat to the ocean. John Cook’s Skeptical Science has been promoting one such posited mechanism in particular as explaining the accumulation of heat in the ocean over the last 40 years or so, the most prominent example being How Increasing Carbon Dioxide Heats The Ocean, posted in 2011 by Rob Painting. That post adapts a 2006 Real Climate article by Professor Peter Minnett, Why greenhouse gases heat the ocean, where an enhanced ocean surface insulation effect was posited.

Go to full article

…with attractive formatting and with all the references provided as working links.

NOTE: to easily get back here to comment, press the Back button or first load the article in a new tab and swap between them.

You can read the whole article here, but it lacks most of the formatting (which aids understanding) and all of the links (which are provided to assist understanding and to justify what is said). I apologise for any inconvenience this causes, but it takes a long time to convert the word document into the particular html format required by WordPress and to copy each link. So I haven’t done it yet. I’ve converted it to a “standalone” html page so you have access to the links. – RT

UPDATE 21 March 2021

This series destroys the IPCC narrative on ocean warming—there’s no reason to think that human emissions warm the oceans at all, and certainly not dangerously. I notice Richard Cumming’s full Part 1 article includes links to his Part 2 and Part 3, but they should be here, too, so here are all of them together:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

– RT.

Continue Reading →

Visits: 158

No evidence no reason for complacency

Chris de Freitas is a proper scientist with a wonderful sense of humour — just wait until you see his conclusion! His articles are easy to read and I always read them.


Regrettably, the Herald has turned comments off, but that’s why blogs exist — leave your comments here where influential people will see them!


Newspapers

This is an adopted article.

Chris de Freitas: Science proves alarmist global warming claims nothing but hot air

Several aspects of Jim Salinger’s op-ed “Climate hurtling towards a hothouse Earth” Herald 24/5/13 are quite misleading. It is true most climate scientists would agree that rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to fossil fuel use could affect global climate. The basic physics is there to support this view. But there is no evidence that the putative change would be large or damaging. Output from computer models is not evidence unless model performance has been validated. So far, it has not. Continue Reading →

Visits: 127

Strike two for TVNZ

caption

A few days ago I reported on TVNZ’s naughty porky after James Renwick’s March interview. I have since been in correspondence with TVNZ and have news.

In their reply TVNZ have made an amazing error. Like a careless schoolboy failing to read the exam directions, someone didn’t read my letter properly. They’ve given a response that annoys me and will surely displease senior managers. Continue Reading →

Visits: 98

GWPF, RS talk climate change

Barriers coming down?

Press Release 22/05/13

Global Warming Policy Foundation Invites Royal Society Fellows For Climate Change Discussion

London, 22 May: In response to a suggestion by Sir Paul Nurse, the President of the Royal Society, the Global Warming Policy Foundation has invited five climate scientists and Fellows of the Royal Society to discuss the current state of climate science and its wider implications.

In a letter to Lord Lawson, the GWPF chairman, Sir Paul stated that the Royal Society “would be happy to put the GWPF in touch with people who can offer the Foundation informed scientific advice.”

Sir Paul suggested that the GWPF should contact five of their Fellows: Sir Brian Hoskins; Prof John Mitchell; Prof Tim Palmer; Prof John Shepherd and Prof Eric Wolff.

The GWPF has now invited the five climate scientists to a meeting with a team of members of the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council and independent scientists and has proposed a two-part agenda:

1. The science of global warming, with special reference to (a) the climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide and (b) the extent of natural variability;

2. The conduct and professional standards of those involved in the relevant scientific inquiry and official advisory process.

“I hope the Fellows of the Royal Society will be happy to meet with our team of scientists so that something positive can come out of Sir Paul’s recommendation,” said Dr Benny Peiser, the Director of the GWPF.

via Press Release: GWPF Invites Royal Society Fellows For Climate Change Discussion.

I like it when they talk to us.

Visits: 120

The incredibly elusive absolute surface air temperature

Dr James Hansen

Yesterday, Dr Vincent Gray sent out his Climate Truth Newsletter (no. 310). In it he adverts to an outrageous admission of common sense by James Hansen. Years ago, Hansen admitted on his GISS web page that there’s no agreement among scientists on what constitutes an acceptable surface air temperature.

Sensationally, he also said that it’s IMPOSSIBLE to obtain a scientifically meaningful surface air temperature (SAT).

Now, with Hansen’s resignation from NASA, Gavin Schmidt has rushed in to take charge of these surprising admissions. Curiously, I see that Schmidt’s description is “NASA Official,” where Hansen was the “Responsible NASA Official.” Significant, interesting or irrelevant? Speculation might be endless…

The link above to the previous version of the page at the Wayback Machine is from 15 October, 2008, but that page is marked as last updated on 12 July, 2005. There are three more words in the body text of the current version than on the old page; I conclude they’re essentially identical.

These comments asserting the impossibility of determining the SAT put a disturbing slant on Hansen’s alarmism based on the SAT during the last 20 years of the 20th Century. Continue Reading →

Visits: 50

The science is settled: no warming

Published at Quadrant Online on March 26, 2013

The planet is no longer warming. The brief warming episode of the late 20th century completed its course in the mid 1990s, and is now extinct. These are now uncontroversial statements. They are based on hard data which has been available for many years on the websites of many official agencies. But somehow those agencies found ways to interpret the data differently, and to continually sidestep the elephant in the room.

Continue Reading →

Visits: 85

Climate system as heat engine

Here’s an interesting reflection on the climate system which at a stroke highlights the complexity of climate and puts to one side (at least for a moment) the belief that it must have a single controller, such as a minor atmospheric gas.

Dr Vincent Gray explained today:

The idea that the Earth has a “radiation budget” is inherently wrong.

The climate is a heat engine. The energy comes in from the sun. The exhaust goes out to space.

The exhaust must be less than the input because in between some work must be done. This would include maintenance of all living creatures plus erosion and other changes in the surface.

A scientist comments that the concept of a budget is both sound and useful, even if not strictly applicable all of the time. The energy budget approach is at the heart of modern climatology and is not controversial.

I wonder if any papers have addressed the total work done by the climate system? Continue Reading →

Visits: 383

The unstoppable MWP

It crops up repeatedly: but there was no medieval warm period (MWP), therefore the modern warming is unprecedented.

The CO2 Science web site has a long-running project to examine records all over the world concerning temperatures in the medieval period. Their overview page makes a great introduction to the project. They cite material from hundreds of scientists and institutions. Really quite impressive.

So when will the warmists stop saying there was no medieval warm period?

Visits: 749

Frame on methane GWP

Here’s good news for all those who despair at the defects and sheer incompetence (it seems) in the calculation of the Global Warming Potential of methane: it’s about to get a high-level airing. I emailed Professor David Frame a few days ago. Prof Frame is Director of the NZ Climate Change Research Institute at the Victoria University of Wellington, taking over from Martin Manning in October last year. He’s given us a prompt and encouraging response. – h/t Barry Brill

30/06/2012 12:21 pm

Dear Professor Frame,

Your opinion piece in the Dominion of 22 June makes good reading, thank you. I was especially struck by Tom Schelling’s remark describing the EU’s emissions targets as indicating its insincerity.

But I write concerning your comment following the post. There’s been much discussion at the Climate Conversation Group about the calculation of GWP for methane, what it should be and what might be done to make it more reasonable. Set too high, it is a considerable impost on NZ farming, which as you know is among the world’s most efficient. You say:

Shorter-lived gases (such as methane) are not obviously as important for the overall properties of climate change as is commonly thought, and the way we count them – or rather the way the folks who came up with Kyoto ended up counting them – masks this by giving them high emphasis. [Unwarrantedly high emphasis in my view, but that would be another article, which is a bit more technical to write.]

Now, Dave, this is like the aroma of frying bacon to a hungry man. Continue Reading →

Visits: 95

Pine beetle doom-sayers barking up the wrong tree

The turbulent science that blames humanity for climate change marks itself with smoke and mirrors. Opportunities to settle the truth are somehow sidelined. Tricks are employed to obscure the truth. When direct measurements show a negative temperature trend, indirect methods are sought to show the desired warming.
 
Then it is that we hear that polar ice is disappearing, polar bears are in peril, coral reefs are bleaching, there’s more rainfall, less rainfall, seasons are being disrupted, extinctions are occurring, glaciers are retreating, there’s more extreme weather, and on and on.
 
But these events, where true, and they often are simply untrue, are influenced by factors other than warming, so the believers also use slippery reasoning to pretend they’re caused by warming. We’re fed stories of disaster that could only be true if the temperature were going up, but it’s propaganda: when the science fails, the believers resort to misdirection. Even if it were warming, so what? What’s the cause? Believers never address the cause of warming – though that’s essential if we’re trying to stop the warming – because by now everyone thinks it’s themselves.
 
Rather than taking tales of alarm at face value, we try to investigate them. So to the humble North American Mountain pine beetle…

pine beetle

The Mountain Pine Beetle is tiny — about 5 mm long (same as the word “tiny”), but it packs a mighty punch: it can flatten forests.

The little beetles make interesting reading in the light of claims that the current outbreak in parts of the USA and Canada is caused by global warming.

Those claims are frivolous. Epidemics have been observed since Europeans arrived in America, long before the recent warming. In any case, the current epidemic is waning and could be over. Continue Reading →

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Climate warrior’s only sword is science

Steve McIntyre

New pinnacle for climate sceptics

Steve McIntyre reaches new heights in his resolute scrutiny of climate science and raises the bar for fellow sceptics. For the lead author of a new paper has acknowledged McIntyre’s work in identifying an error so serious it may alter the paper’s results and has certainly forced a delay in its publication.

But note that although McIntyre “also” identified “this data processing issue”, he wasn’t first – the team beat him to it.

Anthony at WUWT describes the story and Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit is the story. Here’s the letter to Steve from the paper’s senior author, David Karoly. Continue Reading →

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