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This is a glorious NASA image from The Earth Observatory. The Himalayan Mountains in Southern China on Christmas Day, 2009. If you’d like a large version, you can soak in 4Mb of detail. I’ve posted it just because it’s captivating and we are so fortunate (for all NASA’s failings) that we can marvel at a view like this. Note the scale (bottom right). These are rivers of ice one kilometer wide “unnamed”. Imagine what it would take to melt this ice? 7 out of 10 based on 3 ratings […] April 8th, 2010 | Tags: Himalaya, NASA | Category: AGW socio-political, Global Warming |  Print This Post | |
Green Left Weekly has attacked the lone voice of reason at the Australian ABC (Chairman Maurice Newman), and demanded he be removed, all because Newman dared to suggest to ABC reporters that they might want to present both sides of the story. How scandalous! Green Left is an Australian magazine that’s been in publication since 1990. In 2005, it apparently won an award as “Australia’s most popular political site”. How times have changed. The story: “ABC chair pressures journo’s on climate change” Green Left effectively claims that Newman is a nasty man who’s trying to “influence” journalists. So what does the Green Left team think it’s trying to do… err, influence journalists? The single point that sucks the moral foundations out from under Green Left is that Newman is not trying to suppress anyone, but the greenies sure are. Only a few weeks ago, they were claiming to fight for free speech in Brunswick, Melbourne, and a few days ago, for free-speech at Sydney University. When Barkly Square Management confines them to just one stall “in a dead location”, that’s an attack on freedom of speech, but when the ABC chairman suggests reporters interview scientists on […] April 6th, 2010 | Tags: Greenleft, Newman (Maurice) | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | Watch out people. Greenpeace resorts to threats. Even The Guardian called it a “car crash”. In their own words: “We need to hit them where it hurts most, by any means necessary: through the power of our votes, our taxes, our wallets, and more.” “‘We must break the law to make the laws we need: laws that are supposed to protect society, and protect our future. Until our laws do that, screw being climate lobbyists. Screw being climate activists. It’s not working. We need an army of climate outlaws.’ “The proper channels have failed. It’s time for mass civil disobedience to cut off the financial oxygen from denial and skepticism. “If you’re one of those who believe that this is not just necessary but also possible, speak to us. Let’s talk about what that mass civil disobedience is going to look like. “If you’re one of those who have spent their lives undermining progressive climate legislation, bankrolling junk science, fueling spurious debates around false solutions, and cattle-prodding democratically-elected governments into submission, then hear this: “We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work. “And we be many, but you be few.” So the […] April 5th, 2010 | Tags: Bullying, Greenpeace | Category: AGW socio-political, Global Warming | Print This Post | | Mark Gillar who writes the Hootville Gazette has taken the initiative and arranged a set of radio interviews with the who’s who of skeptics, like Lord Monckton, Patrick Michaels, Ann McElhinney, Marc Morano, Chris Horner, Steve Milloy, Joseph D’Aleo, and yours truly. The first one starts tomorrow morning (US time). You can e-mail or phone in questions. Some details are below, but most are on the Global Cooling Radio site and, of course, details may change in the future, so check in at his site. Lord Christopher Monckton Date: April 3, 2010 Time: 10:00 am Central DST To Listen: Visit our BlogTalkRadio Page Call 646-727-3170 to ask a question./p> OR email to ask in advance [email protected] 10 out of 10 based on 2 ratings […] April 2nd, 2010 | Tags: Radio Interviews | Category: AGW socio-political, Global Warming | Print This Post | | The UK Parliamentary Committee was always going to be a whitewash. They put no skeptics on the committee; they interviewed no skeptics; they didn’t ask Steven McIntyre to speak. The chairman was the “impartial” Phil Willis, who had already made up his mind in January and announced it in the Telegraph: “There are a significant number of climate change deniers, who are basically using the UEA emails to support the case this is poor science that has been changed or at worst manipulated. We do not believe this is healthy and therefore we want to call in the UEA so the public can see what they are saying” It’s no wonder the committee made a spin-like press release with wishy-washy weasel words. What’s amazing is that under the spin, they can’t help but bust all of modern climate science. The UK report: [press release] “The focus on Professor Jones and CRU has been largely misplaced. On the accusations relating to Professor Jones’s refusal to share raw data and computer codes, the Committee considers that his actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community but that those practices need to change.
April 2nd, 2010 | Tags: ClimateGate, UK Parliamentary Inquiry | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | The London Science Museum has abandoned it’s fort like barricade–the “NoDebateCorral” and many skeptics are rejoicing that the formerly Gung Ho institute seems to have done a major about-face. I remain highly skeptical of their new “skepticality”. Remember, this is the same museum that was blatantly telling you the UK taxpayer which policy you were supposed to vote (and pay) for:
Note the claim about “seeing the evidence”. I have seen the light! This is the team that only last October launched the Proveit Exhibition to “help” Copenhagen. They were not even remotely equivocal then about their political aims and beliefs: ““The Copenhagen conference is a crucial opportunity to find an international solution to the threat of climate change and to transform the way we generate and consume energy… Dr Vicky Carroll, Prove It! Project Leader and Curator of Science at the Science Museum said: “Scientific evidence shows that climate change is happening. We need to tackle it urgently. Prove it! allows visitors to explore the evidence for climate change in the Science Museum and online, get to grips with the Copenhagen conference, and make their view count.”’ See that phrase: Make their view count? They were […] March 28th, 2010 | Tags: Museum, Science Communication, UK | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | Picasso-Brain-Strikes-the-Climate-Debate: Can’t think. Can’t reason. Stephan Lewandowsky’s ABC article on climate change was headlined “Opinion Versus Evidence“. Then with dead-pan delivery, he lists the “evidence” but it’s all … opinions. The question of “delusion” is looming. I mean really, is this a cry for help? There are not many laws of reason that Stephan leaves unbroken. He appeals to authority, attacks the “man”, and talks about everything bar the evidence on climate change. Is he serious? “Trust me” he says, the world is warming because AIDS is real, mass-murderer Ivan Milat was guilty, Lord Monckton is only a non-voting member of the House of Lords, a few skeptics are burko, 97% of paid climate scientists agree that we ought to be worried and keep paying them, and someone has discussed the actual money that climate scientists earn (how could they) and to top it off, the IPCC report is 3000 pages long (!). Not to mention that Google Scholar (“I’m so technical”) finds lots of hits (thanks to Vice President Al Gore who arranged for the US Government to pay billions of dollars to his favorite researchers, and who also is on the Google advisory team), plus the world […] March 26th, 2010 | Tags: JoNova's Favourites, Lewandowsky (Stephan), Satire & Parody | Category: AGW socio-political, Global Warming, Logic & Reason | Print This Post | | Record-breaking rain means huge Australian arid-land lakes are visible from space. Australia has one of the most unpredictable rainfall patterns in the world, and this is one of those unpredictable years. For the past few months, the repeated downfalls have left large pools of water lying in arid lands in Western Queensland. It’s great news for farmers. The water will, over the next year, flow south through the Darling River system, restoring parched watercourses, swamps, and dams. The Darling River system flows from Queensland through New South Wales and into South Australia. Earlier this month, the Bureau of Meteorology announced that the rains were “exceptional”: The most remarkable aspect of this event was the area covered by the heavy rainfall and the total volume of rainfall that fell. Daily totals exceeded 100 mm over 1.7% of Australia on 1 March and 1.9% on 2 March. The latter is the largest area of 100 mm-plus daily totals on a single day in the Australian meteorological record, breaking the previous record of 1.7% set on 22 December 1956. 28 February was the wettest day on record for the Northern Territory with an NT-wide average of 29.23 mm, while 2 March set […] Ken Stewart has scanned the trend maps at BOM (Bureau of Meteorology), and his point is spot on. As soon as I saw the neat joint six page advertising pamphlet for the climate-theory-backed-by-bankers, I wondered what happened to the first 60 years of last century, and Ken found it. Did the BOM forget they have hundreds of data points from back then? Did they forget to use their own Website, where you can pick-a-trend, any-trend, and choose the one with err…more convenient results? Or is it the case that their collective mission is not necessarily to provide Australians with the most complete and appropriate information available, but with what the bureaucracy needs them to know? And what they need them to know, apparently, is the carefully censored version of the truth that will keep government ministers happy (Let us tax them more!), keep department heads smiling (Let the climate cash cow continue!), and last, but not least, help staff feel good (We’re sure we’re helping the environment!). Why censor half their own data? The trend map page works exquisitely well (I am happy to praise the BOM Web site team). Compare these two trend maps: Australian Rainfall Trends 1960-2009 […] March 22nd, 2010 | Tags: Australian rainfall, BOM, CSIRO, Evidence, Graphs, Hadley, Stewart (Ken), Temperature trends | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | |
What a surprise: The free-market-that-is-not-free leaps from one scandal to the next. In a real free market where salesmen sell something real, and buyers buy something they want, people can’t get away with cheating, or not for long. If someone sold you a bulk carrier of coal, and it turned up empty, you’d notice. 10 out of 10 based on 3 ratings […] March 19th, 2010 | Tags: Carbon Credits, Carbon Market, Corruption (markets), EU Carbon Market, Fiat Currency, Fiat Currency (Problems With) | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | Frank Lansner has done some excellent follow-up on the missing “decline” in temperatures from 1940 to 1975, and things get even more interesting. Recall that the original “hide the decline” statement comes from the ClimateGate emails and refers to “hiding” the tree ring data that shows a decline in temperatures after 1960. It’s known as the “divergence problem” because tree rings diverge from the measured temperatures. But Frank shows that the peer reviewed data supports the original graphs and that measured temperature did decline from 1960 onwards, sharply. But in the GISS version of that time-period, temperatures from the cold 1970’s period were repeatedly “adjusted” years after the event, and progressively got warmer. The most mysterious period is from 1958 to 1978, when a steep 0.3C decline that was initially recorded in the Northern Hemisphere. Years later that was reduced so far it became a mild warming, against the detailed corroborating evidence from raobcore data. Raobcore measurements are balloon measures. They started in 1958, twenty years before satellites. But when satellites began, the two different methods tie together very neatly–telling us that both of them are accurate, reliable tools. 10 out of 10 based on 4 ratings […] March 18th, 2010 | Tags: 1945-1975, Evidence, GISS, Hansen (James), Lansner (Frank), Northern Hemisphere Temperatures | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | Human emissions of carbon dioxide began a sharp rise from 1945. But, temperatures, it seems, may have plummeted over half the globe during the next few decades. Just how large or how insignificant was that decline? Frank Lansner has found an historical graph of northern hemisphere temperatures from the mid 70’s, and it shows a serious decline in temperatures from 1940 to 1975. It’s a decline so large that it wipes out the gains made in the first half of the century, and brings temperatures right back to what they were circa 1910. The graph was not peer reviewed, but presumably it was based on the best information available at the time. In any case, if all the global records are not available to check, it’s impossible to know how accurate or not this graph is. The decline apparently recorded was a whopping 0.5°C. But, three decades later, by the time Brohan and the CRU graphed temperatures in 2006 from the same old time period, the data had been adjusted (surprise), so that what was a fall of 0.5°C had become just a drop of 0.15°C. Seventy percent of the cooling was gone. Maybe they had good reasons for making […] March 17th, 2010 | Tags: 1945-1975, Divergence (Tree rings), Evidence, Ice Age Scare, Lansner (Frank), Northern Hemisphere Temperatures | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | Six months ago, Deutsche Bank was overcome with concern about the planet—bless its soul–and launched this 70 ft. vision of climate doom opposite Madison Square Gardens, New York. You can feel relieved. The bank paid for the carbon credits (no doubt through one of its own funds), so the 40,960 low-energy light-emitting diodes are “carbon-neutral.” Kevin Parker for Deutsche Asset Management said: “We hope with this sign that it is going to foster a sense of urgency about the problem, raise public awareness, create a need for education and really spur a call for action” Spurring action indeed. “Sign Copenhagen; Sign Cap N Trade; Give us that $2 trillion dollar market based on meaningless paper permits, and funded by consumers everywhere. Please!” In a more candid moment, Parker said: “Well, what we’d like to see is a price on carbon. That is absolutely foremost in everyone’s minds involved in the climate change debate. The governments around the world have to get on with regulations…” Yes, the real agenda is the legislation: forced payments from citizens. We all know we aren’t going to see the Deutsche Bank Top-Soil Clock coming […] This is yet another example of things that don’t add up in the world of GISS temperatures in Australia. Previously, we’ve discussed Gladstone and Darwin. Ken Stewart has been doing some homework, and you can see all the graphs on his blog. Essentially, the Bureau of Met in Australia provides data for Mt. Isa that shows a warming trend of about 0.5 degrees of warming over a century. GISS takes this, adjusts it carefully to “homogenize urban data with rural data”, and gets an answer of 1.1 degrees. (Ironically among other things, “homogenisation” is supposed to compensate for the Urban Heat Island Effect, which would artificially inflate the trend in urban centers.) To give you an idea of scale, the nearest station is at Cloncurry, 106km east (where a flat trend of 0.05 or so appears in the graph). But, there are other trends that are warmer in other stations. Averaging the five nearest rural stations gives about 0.6 degrees; averaging the nearest ten stations gives between 0.6 and 0.88 degrees. Mt Isa and surrounds with temperature trends 10 out of 10 based on 4 ratings […] March 13th, 2010 | Tags: Adjustments to data, Australian temperatures, Evidence, GISS, Global Temperatures, Surface Records, Temperature trends | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | Today the Chairman of “our ABC” (it’s paid for by Australian taxpayers) said the unthinkable. It’s not that he said man-made global warming was a scam, and he didn’t announce that carbon wasn’t a pollutant; he just asked for journalists to listen to other points of view. “At the ABC, I believe we must re-energise the spirit of enquiry. Be dynamic and challenging, to look for contrary points of view, to ensure that the maverick voice will not be silenced.” In a speech to senior ABC staff, he said that climate change was an example of “group-think”, and that they should listen perhaps “to other points of view that may be sceptical.” Contrary views on climate change have not been tolerated and those who express them have been labelled and mocked. I’ve been around long enough to know that consensus and conventional wisdom doesn’t always serve you well and that unless you leave some room for an alternative point of view you are likely to go down a wrong track… These innocuous non-judgemental lines are too far from the doctrine. Christine Milne of the Australian Greens responded, and in the true spirit of an open democracy and a free press, […] March 11th, 2010 | Tags: ABC, Greens | Category: AGW socio-political, Global Warming | Print This Post | | Robyn Williams is Australia’s science communication guru in the sense that he’s one of the few in our country who’s been making a living at it with a regular radio program (or two) for decades. He’s been doing this so long, he was proclaimed a National Living Treasure, and that was twenty-three years ago. He’s posted his thoughts on the climate debate at ABC unleashed, Climate Change Science: The Evidence is Clear. He’s been passionately defending science for years, sharing curious points, and explaining how things work. And yet in the upside down world in which we live in 2010–after all these years, he (and nearly everyone else in our profession) has lost sight of the most important things in science, and somehow ended up defending science-the-bureaucracy, instead of science-the-philosophy. It sounds like I’m splitting hairs, but instead, I’m exposing a grievous flaw. It sounds like I’m splitting hairs, but instead, I’m exposing a grievous flaw. For science-the-bureaucracy is not science at all; it’s just another cluster of committees, each run by six or ten people who discuss articles published in niche magazines owned by mega-conglomerate financial houses and ultimately controlled by a few editors who print articles reviewed by […] March 10th, 2010 | Tags: ABC, Science Communication, Williams (Robyn) | Category: AGW socio-political, Global Warming | Print This Post | | How do you tell a scientist from a non-scientist? Where does science end, and propaganda, politics, and opinion begin? You only need to know one thing: … … Straight away, this sorts the wheat from the weeds. We don’t learn about the natural world by calling people names or hiding data. We don’t learn by chucking out measurements in favor of opinions. We don’t learn by suppressing discussions, or setting up fake rules about which bits of paper count or which people have a licence to speak. A transparent, competitive system where all views are welcome is the fastest way to advance humanity. The Royal Society is the oldest scientific association in the world. Its motto is essentially, Take No One’s Word For It. In other words, assume nothing; look at the data. When results come in that don’t fit the theory, a scientist chucks out his theory. A non-scientist has “faith”, he “believes” or assumes his theory is right, and tries to make the measurements fit. When measurements disagree, he ignores the awkward news, and “corrects”, or statistically alters, the data–always in the direction that keeps his theory alive. March 9th, 2010 | Tags: Science, Scientific Method, The Skeptics Handbook II | Category: AGW socio-political, Global Warming, Logic & Reason, The Skeptics Handbook | Spanish Translation – The Skeptics Handbook I I am delighted to announce that finally, after drafts have been sent between three continents, the Spanish translation is ready to share. With over 330 million native speakers of Spanish, I expect it will be one of the most popular of all the translations. Download the 1.2Mb emailable version. Thanks especially to Víctor González García in Mexico, who did most of the work and coordination, and with editing help from Pepe Salama in Spain. Please send links to this page or to Pepe’s blog page to your Spanish speaking friends, so they can download copies from either site. And consider PePe’s page as the main home for discussion of the Handbook in Spanish. There is a larger 7Mb version here for printing. All translations and versions are available on this page. Volunteers have translated the first Skeptics Handbook into German, French, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, Turkish, Portuguese, Danish, Japanese, Balkan and Spanish. The second Skeptics Handbook is available in French and Turkish. 10 out of 10 based on 3 ratings […] March 7th, 2010 | Tags: The Skeptics Handbook, Translations | Category: AGW socio-political, Global Warming, The Skeptics Handbook | Print This Post | | Richard North has picked up the ABC Drum article “The Money Trail”, and wonders about the total value of financial contributions towards carbon related research or PR from the UK and EU. I’ve wondered the same thing. Indeed, I tried to find answers for other nations and to add to the USA figures I put into Climate Money, but rapidly discovered, as he has, that it’s a hideously complex task. It’s a Ph.D size project, and there are no grants available to fund this kind of Ph.D. Five times the cost of the Manhattan Project Spending is hugely fragmented, between several departments of state, including DEFRA and DECC, with contributions from government agencies and quangos, including the Carbon Trust. Then there are the devolved governments, the regional development agencies and local authorities, plus a very considerable input from the European Union, through the Framework research programme and also via direct contacts issued by the various Commission DGs. Among the big spenders, though, are the seven UK research councils, which collectively dispense billions into the research community each year. You might think that each of these would be able to pinpoint the amount dispensed on climate research, but that it very […] March 6th, 2010 | Tags: Climate Money | Category: AGW socio-political, Global Warming | Print This Post | | Turkish Translation Skeptics Handbook II Once again, marvel at the worldwide grassroots network of volunteers. E-mail all your Turkish friends. Click on the image above to see the Turkish Skeptics Handbook II. The first Skeptics Handbook in Turkish was announced in August (and had a rather interesting synopsis of the Turkish situation vis a vis climate change at the time). 10 out of 10 based on 3 ratings March 5th, 2010 | Tags: The Skeptics Handbook II, Translations | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | |
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