The Great Global Cooling/Warming Thread

[hutch]

WoodDragon Quote

I'm quite happy to go on the record as believing that the current catastrophic Queensland flooding has been made much worse than it might otherwise have been, by the warming that we've had even just to date. The oceans temperatures off Australia are an enormous heat engine that is driving the evaporation of the water in the present El Niño/La Niña-Southern Oscillation cycle responsible for the rain. If we keep warming the planet, ocean temperaures with themselves warm even further, and instead of this type of flooding happening evern century or so, it could happen every decade or two. Can we really deal with that?

Every Century or so? I think not....you didn't do your homework here.....It might be time for a retraction......

In 1972, Hugh Lunn interviewed the director of the Bureau of Meteorology in Queensland, Arch Shields, and was warned that one day Brisbane would be hit by floods as it had been hit before:

 

We mounted many flights of stairs to his new eyrie where he pulled out handfuls of dusty files. They showed that

anyone who talks about a "one-in-a-hundred-year" flood in Brisbane is wrong

.

Between 1840 and 1900 (60 years) Brisbane had been hit by three floods much bigger than 1974—two of them within a fortnight of each other—and another three at least as big.

"So?" I said.

"Well," Shields said, "I knew that sort of meteorological event would certainly recur. The only question was when."

Shields spoke with a candour one rarely gets from senior public servants whose usual thought is to first protect the publicity rights of their minister. In one month in 1893, four different cyclones about the same size as Wanda had dropped their water on Brisbane. On just one day the city got an unbelievable Australian record rainfall of almost a metre (35 inches 71 points) in 24 hours compared with the 14 inches in 24 hours which set off the 1974 flood. (In 1974 the bureau used feet and inches.)

In three days 72 inches fell: the height of a tall man.

On February 5, 1893 the Brisbane River reached its highest ever level of 31 feet 2 inches, 10 feet above the 1974 flood. Brisbane in 1893 was a small city of only 90,000, but still 10,000 of them were made homeless and 35 drowned. Two Queensland navy ships, the Elamang and the gunboat Paluma, were washed into the Botanic Gardens in the city and were left high and dry lying on their sides, immovable. There are photos of people walking around these ships scratching their heads.

Not to worry. Exactly a fortnight later the fourth cyclone arrived lifting the river level back up to 30 feet 4 inches and washing the two ships out into Moreton Bay. "In the 1893 floods," Shields said, "many river areas of Brisbane had not been built on. If such an event came today the damage would be colossal. It would be beyond comprehension. It would make cyclone Althea look like a minor skirmish."

Without consulting his political masters, Shields observed in The Australian of January 29, 1974 that, "from a hydrologist's point of view a lot of Brisbane people have built homes in the river and the creeks rather than on them". He said he felt this was because "the Somerset Dam above Brisbane had created misplaced confidence" (Wivenhoe had not yet been built).

In the four decades since, Queenslanders were spared such floods and thought this was the new normal....

Meanwhile, residents downstream from the Wivenhoe dam accuse the operators of not preparing for the wetter conditions of a La Nina, and causing the floods through mismanagement.

 

http://blogs.news.co...about_brisbane/

The Australian's reporter who won a Walkley Award for best newspaper feature writing for his coverage of the 1974 Brisbane flood, recalls a forecaster whose warning proved prescient in 2011

AFTER Cyclone Althea devastated Townsville on Christmas Day 1971 The Australian assigned photographer David May and myself to cover the aftermath.

There, on Magnetic Island, we found Sister Steptoe and daughter, who together at the height of the storm dragged a bleeding man into a toilet block where Steptoe, a nursing sister, stitched up his wounds on the lavatory floor.

It was the nearest building that was still standing. I was now the cyclone reporter and so a month later, in January 1972, I was sent to interview the director of the Bureau of Meteorology in Queensland, Arch Shields, a tall angular man with a face like a hawk. He was bald with a semi-circle of white hair that, 40 years ago, was a shibboleth for great knowledge.

Shields turned reluctantly away from some glowing weather radar machines and visibly grimaced.

He was a high-ranking civil servant who during World War II had been senior forecaster for planning operations with the First Tactical Air Force. I was a 30-year-old inquisitive journalist with long hair, mutton-chop sideburns and wearing a blanket-checked suit with flared trousers, wide Thai silk tie and platform shoes. Just the type government officials and hotel receptionists instantly recognised and disliked.

Even so, as we eyeballed one another, Shields made it clear that when it came to civil servants, he was the facer card in the pack. He wasn't at all worried about a journalist cross-examining him, but he also didn't enjoy anyone wasting his time. "Why are you writing about cyclones?" he frowned. "Why don't you write about the huge flood that's going to demolish Brisbane one of these days?"

Rejecting the scoop of the decade, I decided Shields was a mildly paranoid weather forecaster perhaps hit by one too many thunderstorms. Hadn't I been born and bred in Brisbane? Neither my mother, Olive, nor my father, Fred, had ever mentioned the danger of drowning inside the bar of the Regatta Hotel. Not from water anyway.

So I explained that my editor wanted a story on cyclones "and if the editor wants cyclones, you give him cyclones".

Shields shrugged his shoulders as if I were making a mistake and started talking cyclones. He learned to track cyclones while predicting the weather for Australian bombers in Timor and Darwin.

Back when only a very small percentage of Australians went to university he had a science degree, so after the war he became senior forecaster in Brisbane, rising to the top job of director in 1959.

Thus I was a bit surprised to find he knew so little about Brisbane.

Or so I thought until almost exactly two years later when Cyclone Wanda brought the Australia Day 1974 flood upon the city. By the time the Park Royal Motor Inn (now the Royal on the Park) foyer in the city was under muddy water and the 10th row of seats at the Milton Tennis Courts was part of the Brisbane River, I was out looking for Arch Shields.

I rushed to the Weather Bureau on Wickham Terrace where we'd spoken two years earlier, only to find it shut. Luckily there was a sign on a piece of cardboard: they'd moved to the Commonwealth Centre in the CBD where the basement was now flooded.

Shields was cut off by the floods too (he lived on a hill in the western Brisbane suburb of Brookfield), but the government had sent a boat for him.

When he arrived I was standing waiting. "Well, how did you know?" I asked accusingly, as if it was his fault that I hadn't believed him and missed the scoop. We mounted many flights of stairs to his new eyrie where he pulled out handfuls of dusty files.

They showed that anyone who talks about a "one-in-a-hundred-year" flood in Brisbane is wrong.

Between 1840 and 1900 (60 years) Brisbane had been hit by three floods much bigger than 1974 -- two of them within a fortnight of each other -- and another three at least as big.

"So?" I said.

"Well," Shields said, "I knew that sort of meteorological event would certainly recur. The only question was when."

Shields spoke with a candour one rarely gets from senior public servants whose usual thought is to first protect the publicity rights of their minister. In one month in 1893, four different cyclones about the same size as Wanda had dropped their water on Brisbane. On just one day the city got an unbelievable Australian record rainfall of almost a metre (35 inches 71 points) in 24 hours compared with the 14 inches in 24 hours which set off the 1974 flood. (In 1974 the bureau used feet and inches.)

In three days 72 inches fell: the height of a tall man.

On February 5, 1893 the Brisbane River reached its highest ever level of 31 feet 2 inches, 10 feet above the 1974 flood. Brisbane in 1893 was a small city of only 90,000, but still 10,000 of them were made homeless and 35 drowned. Two Queensland navy ships, the Elamang and the gunboat Paluma, were washed into the Botanic Gardens in the city and were left high and dry lying on their sides, immovable. There are photos of people walking around these ships scratching their heads.

Not to worry. Exactly a fortnight later the fourth cyclone arrived lifting the river level back up to 30 feet 4 inches and washing the two ships out into Moreton Bay. "In the 1893 floods," Shields said, "many river areas of Brisbane had not been built on. If such an event came today the damage would be colossal. It would be beyond comprehension. It would make cyclone Althea look like a minor skirmish."

Without consulting his political masters, Shields observed in The Australian of January 29, 1974 that, "from a hydrologist's point of view a lot of Brisbane people have built homes in the river and the creeks rather than on them". He said he felt this was because "the Somerset Dam above Brisbane had created misplaced confidence" (Wivenhoe had not yet been built).

SHIELDS said Brisbane flooding came first from its creeks if rain fell on the city itself. Then floodwaters arrived from the Stanley River, the Brisbane Valley, the Bremer River through Ipswich and from other creeks to the west of the city, and finally from the swelling Brisbane River.

Increased development with asphalt, houses, roofs and concreting was greatly increasing the speed of runoff. He predicted that the proposed Wivenhoe Dam would "have to be managed properly" if it was to cut flooding.

"Dams are a problem for a river like the Brisbane because politicians want to keep them full so people can water their lawns," Shields said. Then he added gravely, with that clarity of expression which goes with speaking your mind, "Full dams hold no water."

He said the Wivenhoe Dam, due for completion 10 years hence, would stop a flood of 1893 proportion "but 20-foot [6m] floods like this one will still be possible".

Shields ended the interview by saying Brisbane had to be careful what it did next. "If we were to develop another cyclonic disturbance within a week we would be in for a much bigger flood . . . the weather is very unsettled over inland Queensland."

Within 24 hours Shields was in the middle of a bitter argument with local government and state politicians and police who wanted to shut the Somerset Dam gates to allow floodwaters to fall quickly so people could return to their homes and offices and start cleaning.

Shields argued vehemently that that would be a potentially deadly mistake: Somerset Dam had to be emptied even if it meant floodwaters staying where they were for an extra two days. The catchment was saturated.

If another cyclone were to dump its load in the catchment above a full Somerset Dam "water would go 20 feet over the top, gouge out the sides, and you could lose the dam". He told me this had happened in the US and Italy.

But Shields lost the argument. When it was announced that the Somerset Dam gates would be closed to hold back the remaining floodwaters the Brisbane Telegraph front page splash headlined: DAM THE FLOOD!

Just a week later, another huge cyclone came down the Queensland coast, wandering all over the place like a balloon full of air let go, and just missed Brisbane.

Shields told me: "Two degrees west and we might have lost Somerset Dam." I asked him how big a flood could Brisbane get? He grimaced once again.

". . . The chance of the maximum possible flood is so rare there is not much point in trying to frighten people by going into details. Meteorological records, like sporting records, will continue to be broken. We haven't seen the worst flood yet."

That was why it was important not to put any structures in the river that would slow down floodwaters -- because the river was the water's only way out. "A flooded river slopes quite dramatically upwards towards its source from the mouth and anything slowing the river causes higher flooding upstream." He said even bridges were a problem.

Yet, since then, Brisbane has been rebadged the River City and citizens have been urged to "embrace the river". And we did too, with two walking bridges, a cycle bridge, a green bridge, a railway bridge, plus traffic bridges.

Ignoring all the lessons of 1974, the state government several years ago promoted a developer's plan to extend the central business district 70 metres out over the river to add eight or nine high-rise buildings and even an Olympic pool. Only public protests led by architectural professor Peter Skinner saw this massive development stopped in 2008.

The river has been ever-so-slowly lined on both sides with private jetties and pontoons sticking out. A floating restaurant was anchored to the northern side.

A kilometre-long floating concrete walkway was built to connect New Farm to the city, and new steel ferry terminals built. Last month the Brisbane River smashed them all.

Television cameras recorded part of the floating restaurant smashing into a bridge. One witness counted 200 pontoons in an hour rushing towards the mouth, hitting bridges. A tugboat captain, under orders from no one, set sail to intercept and guide a 300m section of the concrete-and-steel walkway safely beneath two giant bridges -- one only recently constructed -- into Moreton Bay.

It turned out that instead of Brisbane embracing the river; the river had embraced Brisbane.

Guessing cyclones: During cyclones and floods, Shields would stay in his weather bureau office for at least three days and nights watching, warning and waiting. His son Russell told me recently, "When he finally got home he was physically and mentally exhausted. He had some strong ideas and used scientific fact to support his arguments, not emotions as did most of his detractors."

From the 40s to the 70s,when Shields was forecasting, weathermen had to make a lot of guesses about cyclones.

They did not have constant infrared satellite images at night. So Shields considered big visible cyclones (such as this month's Yasi) easier to deal with than small ones because people could more easily be warned.

Shields told The Australian: "A lot of people want to see cyclones that telegraph their punches. They like to see confirmation of our warning. They want wind and rain and a surging sea. But with Cyclone Ada, which struck the Whitsunday Islands in January 1970 killing 13 people, none of these signs were present before she struck.

"Ada was small, but like a little bantam she sneaked in from behind and gave a hell of a punch. We had it on radar and warned it was coming but the signs were absent and this made it very hard for locals to believe. Most of the people who died were caught out in boats. These are the most dangerous cyclones. They are tricky customers and no two are the same.

"Take the cyclone that hit Hayman Island in 1963. We got a report from a ship that it was there, so we issued a cyclone warning. We got no more information on it at all but kept on prognosticating it southwest.

"By 9pm. we reckoned it should have been getting pretty close to Hayman. But they reported southeast winds of 15 knots, the bar slightly rising, with no evidence of any swell around. I queried this but he replied: 'There's not a cyclone within a bull's roar of here, mate. As a matter of fact, I'm just about to go to bed'."

Shields had replied: "I wouldn't be too sure if I were you. There's something out there. We never wipe a cyclone out until it's gone. And the last time it was seen it was heading directly for you, so you'd better be warned."

The man replied: "No, she's right, I've been in a lot of cyclones in the Caribbean."

Shields put down his glasses: "He knew all about cyclones," he said with irony. "Then it started to blow. And they sent two of their boats out from the jetty to take shelter at Hook Island. Luckily they didn't have crew for the third one because they never saw those two boats or the crews again.

"When you see the graph for that cyclone it is unbelievable. The barometer dropped two-and-a-half inches in half an hour and it wouldn't have covered more than 50 miles (80km) altogether. If we'd have relied on the information we had, we would have cancelled the cyclone warning 24 hours earlier.

"A computer would have wiped it off. So that's the difference between a human brain and a mechanical brain. The human knows there's no reason for a cyclone to suddenly disappear."

Shields died in 1995. He is survived by his widow Marjorie and his four children, Russell, Margot, Sandra and Louise. Marjorie Shields, now 93, had to be evacuated from her retirement village in Taringa during the Brisbane floods last month.

"Dad would be shaking his head," Margot McNee (nee Shields) told me, "because mum certainly didn't check the flood level prior to moving in there 15 years ago."

 

http://www.theaustra...6-1226004260668

[Magicdirt]

In a stanza from one of those articles from Hutch there is an interesting turn of phrase.

"It was the nearest building that was still standing. I was now the cyclone reporter and so a month later, in January 1972, I was sent to interview the director of the Bureau of Meteorology in Queensland, Arch Shields, a tall angular man with a face like a hawk. He was bald with a semi-circle of white hair that, 40 years ago, was a shibboleth for great knowledge."

Shibboleth ?

This is a masonic "secret" word of recognition and is generally thought to be devoid of any real meaning, to see it used in that context is intriguing to say the least. It's almost like a long distance butt kiss to any other masons who may read it.

Like saying "Hey everyone I'm a mason now too"

Maybe that's how you win a Wakely award, secret handshakes anyone ?

[hutch]

[Legba]

Carbon Tax Propulsion.

[synchromesh]

 

[hutch]

Thanks for sharing mate....just the laugh I needed....

[synchromesh]

Welcome.

[hutch]

 

House Passes Luetkemeyer Amendment to Halt TaxpayerFinancing of UN Climate Panel

02/19/11

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In a major victory for American taxpayers, the Houseof Representatives today passed a budget amendment offered by U.S. Rep. BlaineLuetkemeyer (MO-9) that would prohibit $13 million in taxpayer dollars fromgoing to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),an organization fraught with waste and engaged in dubious science.

The amendment, which is identical to a separate bill sponsored by Luetkemeyer,was passed in a direct challenge to the president's request to fund the IPCC,which has provided information that purports to support the administration'scall for job-killing cap-and-tax legislation. Luetkemeyer's amendment wasone of 19 amendments highlighted this week by the Council for Citizens AgainstGovernment Waste, the nation's largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organizationdedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.

"The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an entity thatis fraught with waste and fraud, and engaged in dubious science, which is thelast thing hard-working American taxpayers should be paying for at a time of out-of-controlspending and historic debt, which is why I am extremely pleased that myamendment passed," Luetkemeyer said. "It is time for Washington to combat thisyear's record budget deficit and fast-growing national debt. This amendment ispart of that effort."

The IPCC advises governments around the world on climate change, and supportersof cap-and-tax legislation have used questionable findings by the IPCC asreason to support onerous legislation. Criticism of this scienceintensified over the last two years when emails publicly released from auniversity in England showed that leading global scientists intentionallymanipulated climate data and suppressed legitimate arguments in peer-reviewedjournals. Researchers were asked to delete and destroy emails so that asmall number of climate alarmists could continue to advance their environmentalagenda.

More than 700 acclaimed international scientists have challenged the claimsmade by the IPCC. These 700-plus dissenting scientists are affiliatedwith institutions like the U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense, the U.S. AirForce and Navy, NASA, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

 

"The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an entity that is fraught with waste and fraud, and engaged in dubious science,

And we are being led by some on this forum to believe in these scientists....But it is slowly collapsing around their ears so they will just bully us into believing their religion...

[nabraxas]

Luetkemeyer is a member of the Knights of Columbus, the Eldon Chamber of Commerce, the Farm Bureau, the National Rifle Association, and attends St. Lawrence Catholic Church.

He attended Lincoln University in Jefferson City and graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in political science and with a minor in business administration.

So if this upstanding republican says "The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an entity that is fraught with waste and fraud, and engaged in dubious science" then it must be true

[hutch]

So if this upstanding republican says "The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an entity that is fraught with waste and fraud, and engaged in dubious science" then it must be true

 

Leaving aside your attempt to slur the republican (which does not throw any weight behind your argument), he does have a fair bit of clout.....and has cost the IPCC dearly in funding....IMO it is the first of many blows that will see the slow collapse of the IPCC...many other countries are looking for out clauses and quick....It's not just me, just watch...I didn't write it I just put it up there and I give you my opinion on it.....

I see no one has been game to tackle the 850 peer reviewed documents that refute AGW....apart from a bit of character assassination here and there regarding the authors...

Maybe Slybacon could put up a poll and ask...Do you think the IPCC is fraught with waste and fraud? I would love to see how given that evidence anyone could say no....but I bet there is....

[Slybacon]

House Votes to Defund U.N. Climate Change Panel that Missouri Congressman Calls ‘Nefarious’

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

By Chris Neefus

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/house-...ate-change-pane

Glaciers and icebergs in Greenland, as seen in August 2005. (AP File Photo/John McConnico)

(CNSNews.com) - The House of Representatives has voted to defund a United Nations climate change panel after the Republican who introduced the proposal said the body had “whipped up a global frenzy” over climate change because its members were politically motivated.

“It is tragic that some perhaps well-meaning but politically motivated scientists who should know better have whipped up a global frenzy about a phenomenon which is statistically questionable at best,” Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo.) said on the House floor late Saturday night.

Luetkemeyer introduced the amendment to the Full Year Continuing Appropriations Act, a bill that will fund the federal government for the balance of the year. His amendment prohibits any of the money the government plans to spend this year from supporting the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the U.N. body that reports on climate change science.

The amendment -- which passed on a 244-179 vote, with nine Democrats joining the majority -- would add a section to the end of the spending bill that says, “None of the funds made available by this Act may be used for contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).”

Luetkemeyer accused the U.N. IPCC of giving incorrect information.

“This group has been in the headlines for their activities with regard to how they are trying to tinker with the data that they put out,” Luetkemeyer said. “(W)hy would we want to fund a group of folks who are nefarious and give us incorrect information? It’s beyond me.”

During debate, however, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Energy & Commerce Committee, challenged Luetkemeyer’s characterization of the panel and called the IPCC an “extraordinarily sound” and “nonpartisan” organization.

“This institution is a nonpartisan and technically extraordinarily sound organization,” Waxman said on the floor. “The Republican majority has already voted to prevent EPA from using funds to regulate greenhouse gases. Now we’re being asked to de-fund the work of international scientists to learn about the threat. The assumption seems to be that there is no threat, and therefore let’s not study it. I think that is not a wise assumption.”

Waxman pointed out that several of the scientists have won the Nobel Prize for their activities.

“I used to think that people from Missouri were the ‘show-me’ state,” he continued, referring to Luetkemeyer’s home state. “Now I gather what this gentleman from Missouri is suggesting is, I don’t want to know about it. And I don’t think that’s what the position ought to be of the United States Congress. Let’s learn the facts, and then decide what to do about it, and not stop trying to learn what the science is behind the global threats.”

House Republicans, however, have targeted the IPCC because the group, which releases a semi-annual assessment of the climate and the threats to populations around the globe, has admitted to a series of factual errors in its reports.

Some of the contributing scientists were also caught up in a scandal, widely known as “Climategate,” in which leaked e-mails showed a group of scientists seemingly hiding requests for the raw data they used to reach their conclusions.

After his amendment passed, Luetkemeyer released a statement, saying, “The (IPCC) is an entity that is fraught with waste and fraud, and engaged in dubious science, which is the last thing hard-working American taxpayers should be paying for at a time of out-of-control spending and historic debt, which is why I am extremely pleased that my amendment passed.”

The amendment is one of many that the Republican-controlled House has passed that may or may not survive the Democrat-controlled Senate and ultimately land on President Obama’s desk for a signature.

The bill Congress is considering is known as a “continuing resolution” or “C.R.” because it largely continues funding the government at the previous budgeted levels, save for any amendments made. A C.R. is currently under consideration because Democrats failed to present or have a vote on an official budget for Fiscal Year 2011.

Instead, they produced a C.R. that expires on March 4, by which time Congress will need to have passed the new C.R. needed for the balance of the year.

Edited February 28, 2011 by Slybacon

[nabraxas]

February 28, 2011

The Big Melt: Greenland Lost More Than a France-Sized Area of Ice Last Year

A longer-than-usual melt season in 2010 proved a record-setter in Greenland. Melting started early, and lasted longer than usual, and in all, melting lasted 50 days longer than average. This map image shows last year compared to number of melts days on average between 1979 and 2009.

NASA's Earth Observatory puts it in context:

The long melt season primarily affected southern and western Greenland, where communities experienced their warmest year on record. After a warm, dry winter, temperatures were particularly high in the spring, getting the melt season off to a strong start. The early melting set the tone for the rest of the season, leading to more melting all the way into mid-September.

Marco Tedesco is the City College of New York professor and researcher in the Cryospheric Processes Laboratory responsible for the research. In his post on the record-setting melt, he notes:

The increasing melting trend over Greenland can be observed from the figure. Over the past 30 years, the area subject to melting in Greenland has been increasing at a rate of ~ 17,000 Km2/year.

This is equivalent to adding a melt-region the size of Washington State every ten years. Or, in alternative, this means that an area of the size of France melted in 2010 which was not melting in 1979.

So, in fact, our headline understates the facts. Greenland is losing a France-sized area of ice more than it was losing 30 years ago. (That seemed a little cumbersome for a headline.) It's worth noting here that an incredible amount of water is stored in Greenland's ice sheet. The ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica are the biggest sea level threats, as they're land-based, so when they melt, it adds water volume to the ocean. (As opposed to ice caps, which are already floating on the sea and don't really have any impact on sea levels when they melt. Though there are other troubling impacts.)

Three miles thick in some parts, there's enough ice on Greenland that, if it were all to melt, sea levels would rise about 20 feet. Current models don't anticipate that happening anytime soon—not this century, at least—but then again, the melt is fast exceeding pretty much all models have predicted thus far.

http://www.good.is/post/greenland-ice-melt-sets-new-record/

[nabraxas]

What caused the colossal snowfalls that buried much of the USA this winter, setting snow records in New York City and Chicago? One group of scientists blames. .. global warming.

Counterintuitive though it may be, "heavy snowstorms are not inconsistent with a warming planet," says Jeff Masters, director of meteorology for the Weather Underground, a private weather service.

The announcement was made at a news conference on Tuesday in Washington, D.C., by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a non-profit environmental group. It was not published in a peer-reviewed study in an academic journal.

"The old adage, 'It's too cold to snow,' has some truth to it," said Masters. "A colder atmosphere holds less moisture, limiting the snowfall that can occur."

At one point this winter, 49 of the 50 U.S. states were partly or completely snow-covered. Only Florida was snow-free.

Yet, while the USA endured unusually heavy snow this winter, thousands of miles north in the Arctic, temperatures were at near-record high levels, according to Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo.

Additionally and more importantly, Serreze says, the area of the Arctic Ocean covered with ice dropped to record low levels for December, January and February.

And there's the rub:

Not only does less sea ice mean more moisture in the atmosphere, says Serreze, it can also lead to the "negative" phase of the Arctic Oscillation (AO), an atmospheric circulation pattern in polar regions.

During a negative phase of the AO, when atmospheric pressure is higher than average in the Arctic, wind patterns bring warmer-than-average temperatures to the Arctic, while colder air spills down into the USA and Europe.

"It's still cutting-edge research and there's no smoking gun, but there's evidence that with less sea ice, you put a lot of heat from the ocean into the atmosphere, and the circulation of the atmosphere responds to that," Serreze says. "We've seen a tendency for autumns with low sea-ice cover to be followed by a negative Arctic Oscillation."

But hold the horn. Just last year, a report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Science Investigators (CSI) team found no evidence — no human "fingerprints" — to implicate man-made climate change in the snowstorms that walloped the mid-Atlantic during the winter of 2009-10.

"If global warming was the culprit, the team would have expected to find a gradual increase in heavy snowstorms in the mid-Atlantic region as temperatures rose during the past century," the report stated. "But historical analysis revealed no such increase in snowfall. Nor did the CSI team find any indication of an upward trend in winter precipitation along the Eastern Seaboard."

Another dissenting voice comes from Roger Pielke, Sr., a researcher at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences in Boulder, who says that climate variability and change can occur from natural effects (for example, from the sun and volcanoes) as well as from a diverse set of human-related causes (besides carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases), which include aerosols and land use/land cover change.

"The natural variability of the climate is also larger and more diverse than reported in the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) reports" he says.

The IPCC, a United Nations science group, claimed in 2007 that most of the increase in average global temperatures since the mid-20th century is "very likely" due to the increase in human greenhouse gas concentrations.

"The recent extreme cold and snowy weather shows that we understand the climate system less than was reported in the 2007 IPCC reports," Pielke adds.

However, Masters counters that "if the climate continues to warm we should expect an increase in heavy snowstorms for a few decades. But eventually, he says, with winters getting shorter, we may reach the point where it's too warm to snow heavily.

"In fact, as the Earth gets warmer and more moisture gets absorbed into the atmosphere, we are steadily loading the dice in favor of more extreme storms in all seasons, capable of causing greater impacts on society."

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2011-03-01-snow-cold-global-warming_N.htm

[Sheather]

Sup holmes! I found a document (The second I looked at in an archive) that happens to be published from the Oxford University Press. It is titled "The role of the sun in climate change" and is 288 pages long. I skipped down to page 222 to look at summarisation of the information, and found these little tidbits.

The four arguments against solar forcing of climate are:

• Insufficient changes in solar brightness

• Correlation breakdowns and sign changes

• Terrestrial changes that often occur before changes in the envelope

of solar activity and indicate that long-term solar forcing is not influencing

climate change

• The lack of solar terrestrial theories to account for any postulated

long-term changes

These arguments have led many to believe the sun plays no role in climate

change. We now turn to the reasons for maintaining a positive view.

And...

The arguments favoring a solar role in climatic change can be summarized

as follows:

• Changes in solar brightness on the 11-year time scale are firmly established

from satellite measurements. Presumably, there must be

some nonzero 11-year climate response to this forcing.

• Discoveries have shown some correlations between solar activity and

a large number of meteorological and related variables.

• Terrestrial temperature changes on time scales of decades to centuries

display correlations with changes in solar-cycle length, sunspot

structure, solar rotation, and other variables.

• Changes in sunspot decay rates (and hence sunspot structure) and in

the solar rotation rate may be explained by changes in solarconvective

velocities and patterns suggesting changes in the solar

constant.

• Variations in solar-cycle length and terrestrial temperatures parallel

each other since at least A.D. 1300. Observations of stellar-cycle

lengths and stellar activity support associating short cycle lengths

with a brighter star.

The last 50 pages are appendixes. If people express an interest I can upload and link it to you here.

[hutch]

Remember just how much power this guy has within the IPCC....

If Pachauri really said this, he must be dismissed as a fool and rank alarmist who utterly discredits the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change he leads:

 

Given that human actions are increasingly interfering with the delicate balance of nature, natural disasters such as floods,

earthquakes and tsunamis will occur more frequently

, said Dr Rajendra K Pachauri, director general of TERI, and the chief of the inter-governmental panel on Climate Change.

Addressing students at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham on the sixteenth Institution Day Celebrations here on Friday, he lauded the efforts of the administration, pertaining to their green drive.

"Unless we live in harmony with nature, unless we are able to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels and adopt renewable energy sources and until we change our life styles, the world will increasingly become unfit for human habitation," he said, adding that our ancestors put their emphasis on ethics and social morality and had less comforts perhaps but more fresh air and water.

 

http://blogs.news.co...hquakes_report/

What a clown....

[unseen4ce]

www.abd.org.uk/links/gwt.htm This site has many links, a great resource.

Astrophysicist, specialising in heliology; Piers Corbyn.

First on Qld floods then AGW in general. He has been very accurate in predicting the european winter being unusually cold while the mainstream media (MET) was predicting a warm winter.

 

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFVQluPDV8c

Lord Monckton has also had further wins against a university in the US, a prof was disgraced after attacking him, and he won a debate at Oxford, he also has new vids, as well as a vid on his latest visit, in Cancun.

[hutch]

www.abd.org.uk/links/gwt.htm This site has many links, a great resource.

Astrophysicist, specialising in heliology; Piers Corbyn.

First on Qld floods then AGW in general. He has been very accurate in predicting the european winter being unusually cold while the mainstream media (MET) was predicting a warm winter.

 

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFVQluPDV8c

Lord Monckton has also had further wins against a university in the US, a prof was disgraced after attacking him, and he won a debate at Oxford, he also has new vids, as well as a vid on his latest visit, in Cancun.

 

Great link....thanks for that one....makes for some good reading...

[hutch]

Some highlights for me from Piers...the mans a genius...

"failed science based on flawed data"

"It's all happened before"

"World temps drive carbon dioxide levels not the other way around"

Who has the runs on the board? Piers Corbyn or the IPCC?

[hutch]

http://www.informath.org/media/a42.htm

How Scientific Is Climate Science?

What is arguably the most important reason to doubt global warming can be explained in plain English.By DOUGLAS J. KEENAN

For years, some researchers have argued that the evidence for global warming is not nearly as strong as has been officially claimed. The details of the arguments are often technical. As a result, policy makers and other people outside the debate have relied on the pronouncements of a group of climate scientists. I think that is unnecessary. I believe that what is arguably the most important reason to doubt global warming can be explained in terms that most people can understand.

Figure 1. Global temperatures.Significance

Consider the graph of global temperatures in Figure 1, which uses data from NASA. At first, it might seem obvious that the graph shows an increase in temperatures. In fact the story is more involved, as we will now see.

Imagine tossing a coin ten times. If the coin came up Heads each time, we would have very significant evidence that the coin was not a fair coin. Suppose instead that the coin was tossed only three times. If the coin came up Heads each time, we would not have significant evidence that the coin was unfair: getting Heads three times can reasonably occur just by chance.

Figure 2. Coin tosses: H, T, H (left); T, H, T (mid); H, T, T (right).In Figure 2, each graph has three segments, one segment for each toss of a coin. If the coin came up Heads, then the segment slopes upward; if it came up Tails, then the segment slopes downward. In Figure 2, the graph on the left illustrates tossing Heads, Tails, Heads; the middle graph illustrates Tails, Heads, Tails; and the last graph illustrates Heads, Tails, Tails.

Figure 3. Coin tosses: H, H, H.

Now consider Figure 3. At first, it might seem obvious that the graph shows an increase. This graph, however, illustrates Heads, Heads, Heads. Three Heads is not significant evidence for anything other than random chance occurring. A statistician would say that although the graph shows an increase, the increase is "not significant".

Suppose that instead of tossing coins, we roll ordinary six-sided dice. If a die comes up 1, a line segment is drawn sloping downward; if it comes up 6, a segment is drawn sloping upward; and if it comes up 2, 3, 4, or 5, a segment is drawn straight across. We will roll each die three times. Some examples are given in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Dice rolls: 3, 6, 3 (left); 1, 5, 2 (mid); 4, 6, 1 (right).Next consider Figure 5, which corresponds to rolling 6 three times. This outcome will occur by chance just once out of 216 times, and so gives significant evidence that the die is not rolling randomly. That is, the increase shown in Figure 5 is significant.

Figure 5. Dice rolls: 6, 6, 6.

Note that Figure 3 and Figure 5 look identical. In Figure 3, the increase is not significant; yet in Figure 5, the increase is significant. These examples illustrate that we cannot determine whether a line shows a significant increase just by looking at it. Rather, we must know something about the process that generated the line. In practice, the process might be very complicated, which can make the determination difficult.

Consider again the graph of global temperatures in Figure 1. We cannot tell if global temperatures are significantly increasing just by looking at the graph. Moreover, the process that generates global temperatures—Earth's climate system—is extremely complicated. Hence determining whether there is a significant increase is likely to be difficult.

Time series

This brings us to the statistical concept of a time series, which is any series of measurements taken at regular time intervals. Examples include prices on the New York Stock Exchange at the close of each business day, the maximum temperature in London each day, and the total wheat harvest in Canada each year. Another example is the average global temperature each year.

In the analysis of time series, a basic question is how to determine whether a given series is significantly increasing (or decreasing). The mathematics of time-series analysis gives us some methods to answer that question. The first thing to do is to state what we believe we know about the time series. For example, we might state that we believe the series goes up one step whenever a certain coin comes up Heads, and that the series comprises three upward steps, as in Figure 3. Next, we do some computations based on what we have stated. For example, we compute that the probability of a coin coming up Heads three times in a row is ½ × ½ × ½ = ⅛, i.e. a 12.5% probability of occurring randomly. From that, we conclude that the three upward steps in the coin-toss time series can be reasonably attributed to chance, and thus that the increase shown in Figure 3 is not significant.

Similarly, in order to determine if the global temperature series is significantly increasing, we must first state what we know about the temperature series. What do we know about the series? Not enough to do viable time-series analysis, unfortunately. What we must do, then, is make some assumptions about the series, and then do our analysis and computations based on those assumptions. This is the way that is advocated by time-series analysts. As long as the assumptions are reasonable, we can be confident that the conclusions drawn from our analysis are reasonable.

The IPCC assumption

The primary body advising governments on global warming is the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC's most-recent report on the scientific basis for global warming was published in 2007. Chapter 3 considers the global temperature series illustrated in Figure 1. The chapter's principle conclusion is that the increase in global temperatures is extremely significant.

To draw that conclusion, the IPCC makes an assumption about the global temperature series, known as the "AR1" assumption (this is from the statistical concept of "first-order autoregression"). The assumption implies, among other things, that only the current value in a time series has a direct effect on the next value. For the global temperature series, it means that this year's temperature affects next year's, but that the temperatures in previous years do not. Thus, the assumption made by the IPCC seems intuitively unrealistic.

There are standard checks to (partially) test whether a time series conforms to a given statistical assumption. If a series does not conform, then any conclusions based on that assumption must be considered unfounded. For example, if the significance of the increase in Figure 5 were computed assuming that the probability of a line segment sloping upward were one in two, instead of one in six, then that would lead to an incorrect conclusion. The need for such checks is taught in all introductory courses in time series. The IPCC chapter, however, does not report doing such checks. The lack of such checks by the IPCC is serious incompetence.

In fact, standard checks show that the global temperature series does not conform to the assumption made by the IPCC; one such check is discussed in a separate section below. Thus, the principal conclusion of a major chapter of the IPCC report was based on an assumption that is insupportable. More generally, the IPCC has failed to demonstrate that global temperatures are significantly increasing.

These problems are not unique to the IPCC, either. The U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP), which advises Congress, published its report on temperature changes in 2006. That report relies on the same insupportable assumption as the IPCC chapter.

None of this is opinion. This is factual and indisputable. And it applies to any warming—whether attributable to humans or to nature. Until research to choose an appropriate assumption is done, no conclusion about the significance of temperature changes can be drawn.

Mr. Keenan previously did mathematical research and financial trading on Wall Street and in the City of London; since 1995, he has been studying independently. He supports environmentalism and energy security.

 

An insupportable assumption

 

 

Figure 6. Sunlight intensity (inverted) and global ice volume.Changes

Over many millennia, the most important fluctuations in Earth's climate have been those related to the ice ages. The ice ages are caused by natural variations in Earth's orbit around the sun. Those variations in the orbit alter the intensity of summertime sunlight. Some relevant data is presented in Figure 6: the black line represents the amount of ice globally and the green line represents the intensity of summertime sunlight in the Northern Hemisphere (where the effects are greatest). Notice, though, that the similarity between the two lines is very weak.

Figure 7. Sunlight intensity (inverted) and changes in global ice volume.Why is the similarity so weak? To understand what is happening, we have to consider the changes in the amount of ice globally. For example, if the amount of ice at different times were 17, 15, 14, 19, …, then subtracting adjacent amounts gives the changes: 2, 1, −5, …. The black line in Figure 7 shows the changes in the amount of ice, while the green line, as before, shows the intensity of summertime sunlight. Now the similarity between the two lines is strong. This is excellent evidence that the ice ages are indeed caused by orbital variations. (There is other evidence as well.)

A connection between ice ages and orbital variations was first proposed by the Serbian astrophysicist Milutin Milankovitch, in 1920. Data on the amount of ice during past millennia, though, only became available in 1976. Yet it was not until 2006 that scientists considered the changes in the amount of ice. That is, it took 30 years for scientists to think to do the subtraction needed to draw the black line in Figure 7. During those three decades, scientists analyzing Milankovitch's proposed connection based their studies on graphs like Figure 6, and they considered a variety of ideas to try to explain the weak similarity between the two lines.

Alternative assumptions

For global temperatures, if we analyze the changes, instead of the temperatures themselves, then there is an obvious alternative to the IPCC assumption. Is the alternative assumption better than the assumption used by the IPCC? One common method of comparing assumptions is to use what statisticians call "AICc" (Akaike Information Criterion with correction). This method shows that the alternative is so much better than the IPCC assumption, that we conclude the IPCC assumption is insupportable. In other words, the IPCC made the same mistake as the scientists who worked for 30 years to verify Milankovitch's proposal: failing to consider the changes in a series.

Under the alternative assumption, the increase in global temperatures is not significant. We do not know, however, whether the alternative assumption itself is reasonable—other assumptions might be even better. Determining how viable the alternative assumption is would require study. There have been studies that consider other assumptions and thereby reach different conclusions about the temperature data. The IPCC report nods toward such studies, but without acknowledging that the soundness of its conclusions rests upon its choice of assumption—or that the choice requires difficult research.

Technical details for this essay are at www.informath.org/media/a41/b8.pdf.

[hutch]

Slowly the fraud falls apart...

IPCC junk (generalist) science is well and truly busted by the specialists in their fields.

A group of international scientists find that carbon dioxide is a coolant, the calculations in the greenhouse gas theory are wrong and humans are not killing the planet.

It may have taken the Climategate controversy to prompt a growing band of specialist scientists to come forward and work together to help climatologists get themselves out of an almighty mess. But at last we know for sure that the doomsaying equations behind "man-made global warming" were fudged, the physics was misapplied and group thinking perpetuated gross errors.

Yes, the greenhouse effect has now been proven to be a fabrication. That mythical concept called 'back radiation' whereby heat was supposed to be recycled in the atmosphere and its effects worsened by the dreaded burning of fossil fuels is contradicted. In reality it's now been shown that the atmosphere acts like a coolant of Earth's surface, which, otherwise, would have a temperature of 121 Degrees Celsius, or 394 Kelvin (K).

A team of dedicated international experts, known as the 'Slayers,' all highly qualified in their respective fields, spent the past year deliberating over the deep-rooted errors in the calculations employed in the greenhouse gas theory. Their findings are devastating to all those who claim carbon dioxide and the 'greenhouse effect' heats our atmosphere.

The standard argument of a clique of climatologists associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is as follows:

· A warm body (the earth) radiates heat to a cool body (the atmosphere)

· The cool body "back-radiates" (IPCC term) heat to the warm body.

· This process continues perpetually, with heat flowing round and round in a continuous cycle.

· The result of this perpetual process is that the warm body becomes warmer.

This is the so-called greenhouse effect (GHE) which has been put under the microscope by a team of professors of physics, mathematics, astrophysics, chemistry and biology who joined forces to test the claims of a discredited clique of IPCC government funded climatologists.

This group of 20+ specialist scientists has given the infant (and generalist) science of climatology a much-need shake up. Indeed, the 'Slayers' say a monumental paradigm shift is now very much under way.

Below, in simplified form, we examine in three parts how their brilliant analysis has eviscerated one of the most costly and mistaken theories of modern science.

Part One: Coolant Carbon Dioxide

In a recent ground breaking paper Professor Nasif Nahle proved that carbon dioxide (CO2) actually works as a coolant when it interacts with water vapor in the atmosphere to induce the air temperature to cool not a warm.

Physicist, Joe Postma, in his epic debunk further describes the correct application of the laws of thermodynamics to address how the thermal capacity (or conductivity) works with the 'coolant' CO2. As Postma tells us,

"Carbon dioxide and other atmospheric gases merely serve to make the atmosphere cooler in daytime, warmer at nighttime. This is what empirical evidence tells us. "

He asks us to think of how this interpretation differs from what the uneducated and pseudo scientists say that is "the greenhouse effect makes the planet warmer than it should be." But we know that in truth what we actually observe is somewhat entirely different.

In the future, says Joe, people will declare: "The atmosphere keeps the planet from getting too hot in the daytime, and too cold at night time".

Just that simple realization alone kills the so-called 'blanket' analogy of greenhouse gas theorists stone dead.

Step Two: How the IPCC Picked Wrong Numbers from the Get-go

Now we address the IPCC's biggest mistake. They started off with a flawed number, and then have to invent lots of other unreal processes and mechanisms to make the real Earth's average temperature coincide with their numbers. It may be 'good enough' for government work but falls far short of robustness when you're planning on restructuring the whole world's economy!

Professor Nasif Nahle points out that error in IPCC models:

"It's quite simple. The flux of power on the top of the atmosphere is 1368 W/m^2; however, they [iPCC] say it is 341 W/m^2."

Without an atmosphere, the Earth would be receiving a flux of 1368 W/m^2 of solar power (394K under the zenith facing the Sun). With the atmosphere, it receives and absorbs 718 W/m^2 (335K) on its surface.

Postma, a recent addition to the team sums up how much getting those first numbers right matters:

"We all agree that the atmosphere has an "atmosphere effect." But what is of interest to us is how this effect changes if the properties of the atmosphere changes (a little)."

In this excellent paper geologist, Timothy Casey, gives a calculation for how much temperature variation will be caused by changes in CO2. It tells us:

"If carbon dioxide produced the backradiation claimed by Arrhenius, thermal conductivity measurements of carbon dioxide would be so suppressed by the backradiation of heat conducted into this material, that the correspondingly steep temperature gradient would yield a negative thermal conductivity of carbon dioxide."

What Casey shows is that in reality, a 10,000ppm increase in carbon dioxide could, at most, reduce the conductivity of air by a measly one percent and given the actual difference between the thermal conductivities of carbon dioxide (0.0168) and zero grade air (0.0260), a 10,000ppm increase in carbon dioxide would lower the thermal conductivity of zero grade air by 0.36 percent.

Casey finds,

"That would represent a 0.36 percent increase in thermal gradient, or a surface warming of 0.18 percent and a ceiling cooling of 0.18 percent of the total difference in temperature between the top and bottom of the affected air mass. In the case of a tropospheric carbon dioxide increase of 10,000ppm, that would correspond to a warming of 0.125ºC, or one eighth of a degree Celsius at the earth's surface."

"However, even if this wasn't a negligible enough effect, Casey finds the proverbial doublingof CO2 would only contribute a change of 0.004C at the surface".

Step Three: Exposing the Idiocy

Groupthink is 'Step Three' in our explanation of how climatology got itself into such a muddle. Here's a perfect example of scientific idiocy displayed by someone who ought to know better. Postma shows how a reality disconnect by one such theorist makes a mockery of IPCC numbers when applied to the real world. He explains,

"Yesterday a professor tried to tell me that a blackbody (BB) would heat itself up if its radiation would shine back on it - if it was surrounded completely by a perfect mirror.

I told him that all that would happen is you'd get a standing electromagnetic wave between the BB and the mirror, with a frequency spectrum and flux density equal to that of the BB - there'd be no spontaneous increase of temperature. 50C is 50C and there's no way to get more than 50C, from 50C. The only way to get more than 50C is to bring in some outside work or something hotter than 50C."

Postma then enlightened the perplexed professor that it's impossible to make candles or insulation warm itself by its own radiation. "If we could make a candle burn hotter by reflecting it's light back onto it, that would have been discovered long ago."

The Slayers thus ask us to put it all in terms of radiation and conduction being analogous modes of heat transfer. Then it becomes plainly obvious and ridiculous.

Like his learned colleagues Postma suggests climatologists apply a little more common sense and joined up thinking; their heat transport equations should properly be addressed in terms of conduction such that radiation and conduction are simply MODES of heat transfer. If an object can heat itself via its own, or "colder" radiation, then it should also be able to heat itself by conducting with itself, or conducting with a cold body.

"An object conducting with itself to make itself hotter? What the heck does that even mean? An object conducting with a colder one and thereby becoming hotter? I don't think so," insists Postma.

Thus when we start to accept that conduction and radiation are analogous modes of heat transfer, then it dawns on us all that the laws work the same way with both of them.

Therefore, by working through this 'Three Step Greenhouse Effect Debunk' we are left with only one conclusion: IPCC junk (generalist) science is well and truly busted by the specialists in their fields.

http://johnosullivan....com/35681.html

 

[synchromesh]

 

[hutch]

This seems like a hell of a big number? And I think their right....

http://www.petitionproject.org/

31,487 American scientists have signed this petition,

including 9,029 with PhDs

[Slybacon]

^^^ it's a shame this thread doesn't have contributions from both sides anymore. It loses its effectiveness. Thanks for posting guys.

[Halcyon Daze]

31,487 American scientists have signed this petition,

including 9,029 with PhDs

 

Wow, this one "takes-the-cake"!

This has got to be one of the *STUPIDEST* things I have ever read, and I'm trained in Science.

What a bunch of easily convinced suckers some people are. I feel really sorry for you guyz, I honestly do. LOL

[hutch]

Wow, this one "takes-the-cake"!

This has got to be one of the *STUPIDEST* things I have ever read, and I'm trained in Science.

What a bunch of easily convinced suckers some people are. I feel really sorry for you guyz, I honestly do. LOL

 

Welcome....