Look just because some people want to talk about something other than the new solar theory….
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The Solar Series: I Background | II: The notch filter | III: The delay (you are here) | IV: A new solar force? | V: Modeling the escaping heat. | VI: The solar climate model | VII — Hindcasting | VIII — Predictions UPDATE: July 21 Thanks to Bernie Hutchins, David found a problem with the code, which means the notch no longer guarantees a delay. The delay still likely exists (see the other evidence in the references below) but this post, particularly figure 2 needs correction and updating. – Jo Strap yourself in. The Notch in the Earth’s response to incoming solar energy means that every 11 years (roughly) the solar energy peaks, and at the same time the climate’s response to the extra energy changes. What on Earth is going on? The thing about notch filters that is hard for anyone who isn’t an electrical engineer to understand is that it appears to start working before “the event” it is filtering out. This is obvious in the step response graph. That’s Figure 2 – which shows what happens where there is a sudden step up in solar radiation (the brown line). The blue line shows the temperature response, which paradoxically starts to “rise” before the step up even occurs. This makes no sense, of course. Electronic engineers know that a [non-causal] notch filter always means a delay. Something triggers the filter before the event begins and the notch filter responds after a delay. By mathematical inference David shows that there There is some empirical support for this from Lockwood and Froehlich’s paper, and also from Usokin, Archibald, Solheim, Soon, and Moffa-Sanchez. The solar model also has a low pass filter, as well as the notch-delay combo. All the little flickering short rises and falls in solar radiation would not show up in Earth’s temperature. A low pass filter blends or smooths these short term cycles as the energy is absorbed by systems like the oceans. Only longer sustained changes in radiation make a difference, as heat either accumulates or dissipates over longer periods. The transfer function suggests (loosely) that changes lasting less than about 3 years make less and less impact on temperatures. — Jo Building the Model Part 1: Deducing the DelayDr David Evans, 16 June 2014, David Evans’ Notch-Delay Solar Theory and Model Home We are building the solar model that would account for the recent global warming if it was associated almost entirely with solar radiation (notice that we didn’t say “caused”), and had no dependence on carbon dioxide. Here we assemble the first three parts of the model, a notch filter, a delay filter, and a low pass filter. 1 The NotchIn the previous post on exploring the data, we found that the most prominent feature in the empirical transfer function was the notch, which filters out the 11-year “hum” from the Sun. The notch is a very curious fact. Solar radiation warms the Earth, providing nearly all the heat as incoming radiation—visible light, UV, infrared, and so on. So we’d expect the extra radiation from the Sun every 11 years to produce corresponding peaks in temperature here on Earth. Yet it doesn’t. We have chosen to investigate what happens if the recent global warming was associated almost entirely with changes in solar radiation and has no dependence on carbon dioxide — the “solar assumption”. Obviously the solar assumption cannot be entirely true, and it is later discarded in the development of the solar model. It is only needed for finding the approximate parameters for the model, and it does not ultimately impact on whether the model is appropriate or not. This parallels the original development of the carbon dioxide theory, which temporarily assumed that carbon dioxide caused almost all of the global warming since 1800 — the “carbon dioxide assumption” — in order that the parameters of the carbon dioxide model could be found by curve-fitting it to the measured temperatures. Using the solar assumption we curve-fitted a notch model to the measured temperatures, to find the approximate size and shape of the natural notch filter. It is more instructive to show the notch filter we eventually found by curve fitting the entire solar model (which contains a notch filter) to the measured temperatures, because that way we can build up the model’s transfer function piece by piece so that it matches the empirical transfer function. (The two notch filters are basically similar except for a different overall amplitude multiplier, that is, a vertical shift in the transfer function diagram.)
 Figure 1: The transfer function of the notch filter in the solar model. Uses the P0 set of parameter values for the solar model, which are the rounded off versions of the parameters later determined to best fit the observed temperatures.
Ok, it’s notch shaped, and the notch is at 11 years, as we’d expect. (We are only concerned with the amplitudes, because we cannot adequately detect the phases of the sinusoids in the climate datasets.) But what is much more interesting becomes apparent when the notch filter is portrayed in the time domain, as the step response. The step response of a system is what the output does when the input instantaneously steps up by one unit.
 Figure 2: The step response of the notch filter in the solar model, corresponding to the transfer function in Figure 1. It is non-causal, that is, the response starts before the stimulus!
Notice that the step response starts several years before the step-up, which violates causality — it is impossible. In our universe, a response can only come after the corresponding stimulus. The non-causality of the step response of the notch filter in Figure 2 is not a fluke: in any electronic notch filter without an accompanying delay, the step response is blatantly non-causal. Notch filters by themselves are intrinsically non-causal. 2 The DelayHow we know there is a delay When engineers design a filter whose transfer response has the desired shape of amplitude, but which is non-causal and therefore impossible, they simply include a delay with the filter. Adding a delay does not change the amplitude of the transfer function of the filter, it only changes the phase of the transfer function. The delay shifts the entire amplitude part of the step response to the right in diagrams such as Figure 2, without changing its shape, as if the time axis were replaced with a new time axis. For example, the step response of the combination of the notch filter in Figure 2 and a 7 year delay is the blue line in Figure 2 shifted 7 years to the right. Just imagine sliding the blue line 7 years to the right — the dagger of the notch would move from year 0 to year 7. (Notice this would almost but not quite make the response causal, because the response would almost be zero before the stimulus begins. A delay of about 8 or 9 years would be sufficient to make it causal and therefore possible.) Keep reading → The Solar Series: I Background | II: The notch filter (you are here) | III: The delay | IV: A new solar force? | V: Modeling the escaping heat. | VI: The solar climate model | VII — Hindcasting | VIII — Predictions This is the first of many posts. It is primarily about the entirely new discovery of a notch filter, which electrical engineers will immediately recognize, but few others will know. Notch filters are used in electronics to filter out a hum or noise. You will have some at home, but everyone seems to have missed the largest notch filter running on the planet. This post is also about the broad outline of the new solar model. It’s a O-D (zero-dimensional) model. Its strength lies in its simplicity — it’s a top down approach. That solves a lot of problems the larger ambitious GCMs create — they are a bottom up approach, and effectively drown in the noise and uncertainty. This model does not even attempt to predict regional or seasonal effects at this stage. First things first — we need to figure out the main drivers of the global climate. Here David explains why sinusoids are such powerful tools. Some of the most important graphs here are in frequencies — that’s where we non-EE’s (Electrical Engineers) will have to concentrate. Pay attention to the logarithmic scale on the bottom. 1,000 year cycles are on the left, and 1 year cycles are on the right. There is a lot to cover. As you read, good skeptics will be thinking of criticisms and questioning assumptions. That’s all excellent, please bear in mind we have asked many of these at length already (like, is it fair to assume linearity?) and this is a short introductory article. There is a lot to discuss. We assume, but only temporarily, that the Sun’s radiation might be associated with all the warming (note I didn’t say “cause”). This assumption is used for the investigation and then dropped and tested. It parallels what CO2 driven models do — they assumed CO2 caused all the warming. They just got stuck on the “testing” step. Also, David used Fourier analysis to investigate the datasets and find the filters, then used those filters he discovered to build a model. This two stage approach means skeptics may spot red flags that are relevant to one stage, but made irrelevant by the second stage. I’m flagging this at the start in the hope that we generate more constructive criticism. No time? — skip to Figure 5 and 6 for the most important action! Look at the spike down at 11 years. See how it happens in all the datasets. (Figure 6 was the moment when Bob Carter sat up dead straight in his chair). — Jo ——————————————————————————————————– Discovering the NotchDr David Evans, 15 June 2014, David Evans’ Notch-Delay Solar Theory and Model Home The carbon dioxide theory is clearly inadequate, as readers here know only all too well. So we wondered if the changes in the Sun might be causing some of the recent global warming. That is, the global warming over the last few decades, maybe back to 1800 or so. Solar radiation and temperature The best and most obvious solar datasets are those for total solar irradiance (TSI), or the total energy from the sun at all electromagnetic frequencies — mainly visible light, but also UV and some infrared. These datasets estimate the total energy from the Sun falling upon the plane that is at the average distance of the Earth from the Sun (1 AU, or astronomical unit). This TSI data is thus deseasonalized, so it cannot tell us anything about what is happening on time scales of less than a year or at frequencies greater than one cycle per year (this will become important later). TSI is measured in Watts per square meter (W/m2). The temperature we are most interested in is the one for our immediate environment, the “global average surface air temperature”, namely air temperatures at or near the surface averaged across the entire planet. When we use “temperature” without qualification in these posts, we mean this temperature. “Global warming” is the rise in this temperature. The initial aim of this project is to answer this question: If the recent global warming was associated almost entirely with solar radiation, and had no dependence on CO2, what solar model would account for it? Let’s build that solar modelWe are envisaging some sort of black box, whose input is TSI and whose output is temperature. The climate system is approximately linear for small perturbations such as have occurred since the end of the last ice age. It is common in climate modeling to assume that the climate system is linear. The climate system is also “invariant”, which just means that its properties do not change significantly with time. So we assume that the climate system is linear and invariant, at least for the last few hundred years (and presumably as far back as the end of the last ice age). The way to analyze a linear and invariant system is with sinusoids (aka sine waves). A sinusoid has a frequency, an amplitude, and a phase. Sinusoids are special for linear invariant systems, because:
Lots of systems are linear and invariant, such as free space for electromagnetic fluctuations, which is why sinusoids and Fourier analysis are so ubiquitous in our analysis of the universe. While Fourier analysis can also be used for mere curve fitting, its true significance and power is that sinusoids are eigenfunctions of all linear invariant systems. So let’s analyze the TSI and temperature datasets in the frequency domain. That is, we will recast them as sums of sinusoids.* Keep reading → June 15th, 2014 | Tags: Evans (David), Fourier analysis, Solar Model | Category: Global Warming |  Print This Post | | More action coming very soon, in the meantime, a space for all the things that are not the solar model… (UPDATE: It’s posted!) Behind the scenes a major advance has been quietly churning. It is something I have barely even hinted at. (Oh how I wanted to!)You may have noticed my other half Dr David Evans has been quiet — it’s not because he’s moved out of the climate debate, instead a strange combination of factors has pulled him full time into climate research. Things have been very busy here. He’s discovered something extraordinary, and like all real science, it’s been a roller-coaster where the theory appeared to collapse, and we nearly gave up, but then a new insight would turn out to be more valuable than the version that went before. Other times it all seemed so obvious in hindsight we wondered why no one had done this before. But the answer is that there is a very unusual combination of factors at work — how many people have Ivy League experience in Fourier maths, and electrical circuits and have worked as a professional modeler, software developer, and have an interest in the finer details and theory of the climate debate? Who of the people with this background would also be prepared to spend months working unpaid to investigate a non-CO2 climate theory? Dr David Evans is an electrical engineer and mathematician, who earned six university degrees over ten years, including a PhD from Stanford University in electrical engineering (digital signal processing): PhD. (E.E), M.S. (E.E.), M.S. (Stats) [at Stanford], B.E. (Hons, University Medal), M.A. (Applied Math), B.Sc.[University of Sydney]. His specialty is in Fourier analysis and signal processing. He trained with Professor Ronald Bracewell late of Stanford University. David has worked in the climate industry, consulting full-time for the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005, and part-time for the Department of Climate Change from 2008 to 2010. He was the lead modeler analyzing the carbon in Australia’s biosphere for Kyoto accounting purposes, and developed the world-leading carbon accounting model FullCAM that Australia uses in the land use change and forestry sector. For the last 18 months David pursued an idea, and developed something the climate debate has needed, but failed to do achieve after 30 years, despite billions of dollars in funding. He’s taken sophisticated silicon-chip maths and applied it to the climate system — analyzing the system as a black box to discover the filters and parts. He has built a working O-D model with 15,000 lines of code. In order to develop the model he had to produce a more advanced method of Fourier analysis (which on its own is an achievement and will be useful in many other fields). We’ll be releasing the results of this independent work over the next week amongst other posts. Make no mistake, this is not like anything I have seen or read about. It fits, like all good science does, into a coherent theory that matches the data and connects many other papers. The jigsaw is coming together. Over the last six months we’ve been quietly circulating this work amongst scientists we admire and seeking feedback. We want more, and open science is the only way to go. I will boldly predict that many papers will spring from this work and its implications, but for the moment we see no reason to wait for two unpaid reviewers and an editor (with little knowledge of the details) to delay or prevaricate on its release. Historically this is how real science is done, one well-trained passionate researcher pursues a creative idea that breaks the current paradigm, then sets the theory free for everyone to test and review. This work — should it stand the test of time — will be held up as an example of where independent research can succeed over the grand failure of expensive government funded and bureaucratically-driven science. I’ll be announcing the releases through facebook, twitter and via emails — so please update your details or register for emails if you are not already. Know that I’m the only one who sends emails the register, I do not sell emails nor send spam. I have not been using the list for the last six months but will start as we release these most important articles I’ve ever published. As they say, bring your popcorn. Get ready to concentrate. : -) I Background (You are here) | II: The notch filter | III: The delay | IV: A new solar force? | V: Modeling the escaping heat. | VI: The solar climate model | VII — Hindcasting | VIII — Predictions |
The Project—An IntroductionDr David Evans, 14 June 2014, David Evans’ Notch-Delay Solar Theory and Model Home We’ve been working on this for a year and a half, gradually building up the pieces bit by bit, gradually filling in a picture that is now almost complete. We’ve been bursting to tell the world about it for months, but always noting it would be better if developed and tested before it went public. (How long is a piece of string?) The big danger is that an inadequately explained or prepared alternative explanation of how the climate works will not be given proper consideration, and thereafter will be ignored as “debunked”. There is never a perfect time, but we’ve reached the point where the theory will be tested and developed better by open review. It’s time to set it free…We will be serializing the project as a series of posts, one every day or two. The broad outline of the project, without revealing the major ingredients just yet, is as follows. We explore some climate datasets and find something interesting, which provides a clue to building up a solar model. We think we have deduced the nature of the indirect solar force that largely influences temperature here on Earth. We get a physical model with physical interpretations (that is, not just curve fitting), working models, and decent fit to observed data. Both the CO2 model and the new solar model are viable explanations of the global warming of the last century. Any linear mix (e.g. 60% CO2, 40% solar) also fits the observed temperatures. On the performance of the models over the last century, we cannot tell which is correct. However, over the next decade the models predict dramatically different things: the CO2 model of course predicts warming, while the solar model predicts a sharp fall in temperature very soon. We don’t have to wait to determine whether it is the CO2 or solar model that is more correct. The answer lies in the changes in the height of the water vapor emissions layer, because the influences of CO2 and the indirect solar force are different. From this we are able to determine the cause of global warming and the maximum extent to which the recent global warming was due to CO2. We also clear up a few theoretical befuddlements about the influence of CO2 that may have caused warmists to overestimate the potency of rising CO2. The fans of the CO2 dominant models are not going to be happy. It seems the climate is an 80-20 sort of thing, where there is a dominant influence responsible for 80% of climate change and a tail of 20% of other factors. It turns out that the CO2 concentration is not the 80% factor, but in the 20% tail. An indirect solar influence seems to be the main factor. All the data, model, and computations are in a single Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. It runs on any pc with Excel 2007 or later; it runs at least partly (and maybe fully) on any Mac with Office 2011 or later. This is completely open science—every bit of data and every computation is open for inspection. We will be releasing this towards the end of the series of blog posts. There is a big paper with all of the above in rigorous detail. It runs to about 170 pages. There is some groundwork to discuss before it is all released. This should produce a more productive discussion. This has been a long circuitous personal journey. From originally being involved in Fourier research in Silicon Valley, I moved to the climate world with the assumption that CO2 was the major climate driver. I became aware the evidence was gradually reversing sometime after 2003, and by 2006 had become skeptical. Now, completing the circle, I’m bringing my original passion for Fourier research back to the climate. I’ve vowed to leave this debate on several occasions but part of the reason I keep being pulled back towards climate is because Joanne, who runs this blog, is my wife. Yes, a strange combination of factors are at work. This project was funded almost entirely by us out of our family savings, with help from donations by readers of Joanne’s blog. (Again, thank you! Without your support and encouragement we wouldn’t have done this.) As well as being 18 months of very full time work, there were months of preparatory research, and years of learning and planning. There are no conflicts of interest to declare. In particular we have no investments in fossil fuels, shorts on renewables, or any investments in the energy sector. There are no government grants or salaries to declare (unlike many supporters of the CO2 theory). We receive modest donations, occasional speaking fees and fees for writing articles, but no other income from climate activities. Please visit the climate page of my website, at http://sciencespeak.com/climate.html. There is even a page there for the attacks and smears of the warmists. And now there is a page for the project, which includes links to all the articles on this blog with summaries: http://sciencespeak.com/climate-nd-solar.html. You can help make more of this independent research, coding, and open source discovery possible with a donation through joannenova.com.au. It’s not a new way of funding scientific discovery; it’s the way most of the biggest advances in science have always been done, though not so much in this era of government funded science since WWII. The world spends almost a billion dollars a day on mitigating CO2 emissions. This project potentially could help make those funds available for more productive uses. Monckton of Brenchley comments at #37David Evans’ ground-breaking work is a devastating new approach to the climate question. I have been lucky enough to observe the development of this project, and am full of admiration for both Jo and David for their dedication to carrying out a breathtaking research project with no financial reward, simply because it so desperately needed to be done. Let this be the last nail in the coffin of climate extremism. I hope that, as a result of this work, David will be properly recognized by the Australian Government, which – unlike its unlamented predecessor – is open to the possibility that influences other than Man are the principal drivers of the climate. David’s work is heroic in its scale, formidable in its ingenuity, and – as far as a mere layman can judge – very likely to be broadly correct. One should not minimize the courage of David and Jo in persisting unrewarded for so long in what was and is a genuine search for the truth, starting not from any preconception but from that curiosity that is the mainspring of all true science. I wish this project well and congratulate its justifiably proud parents on its birth. — Thank you Christopher— says Jo. (Monckton stayed with us in March 2013 and was one of the first to see the developing model. We all got quite caught up in the excitement.) Notch-delay solar project home page, including links to all the articles on this blog, with summaries. Remember how Curtin University, in Perth Australia, put up a sacred Nobel Wall? We had so much fun with it. The mural deified a climate saint — Prof Richard Warrick — one of the numberless thousands who helped the IPCC win a peace prize for generating no peace. It appears the University was embarrassed about people pointing out that the mural implied Prof Warrick had earned a Nobel Peace Prize while the Nobel committee said he hadn’t. Curtin University not only changed the web pages, but the mural has been removed. I would have thought they might just change the wording, but the whole climate theme is gone. Possibly the University felt some pain being mocked for the religious overtones. Call this a small win. Thanks to AndrewWA who alerted me in comments. It shows sometimes it is worth sending polite letters, getting those embarassing photographs and writing those blogs. This mural below has been replaced with another mural entirely (see below).  The former mural on Curtin Universities wall. As for the web pages, the official Curtin page was corrected. The bio page has evaporated? (I can’t see it at all, can you?)
I was all so meaningless in the first place: a fuss about a scientist not-winning a non-science prize? As I wrote then: Keep reading →  Caleb Rossiter No dissent over any point allowed. There shall be no other God than Carbon Reduction and the holy climate models! The religious climate cult followers have shunned a long term member for the sin of saying the unthinkable. Caleb Rossiter, masters in Mathematics, was a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies for 23 years until last month when he wrote these heinous lines in the Wall St Journal: “I started to suspect that the climate-change data were dubious a decade ago while teaching statistics. Computer models used by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to determine the cause of the six-tenths of one degree Fahrenheit rise in global temperature from 1980 to 2000 could not statistically separate fossil-fueled and natural trends.” Furthermore, he out-greened the greens by actually caring about life expectancy of Africans.
June 13th, 2014 | Tags: Bullying, Coercion, Sacked, Witch hunt | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | In an interview with Ezra Levant on Sun News Canada, Marc Morano (Climate Depot) says: ‘I am jealous of the leadership of Canada & Australia. It is so sad being in America’ – ‘The rest of the world is abandoning carbon pricing as the U.S. is jumping right in’ It’s like two junior partners of the Anglosphere are rejecting the senior partner” — Ezra Levant
Marc Morano talks about the nations winding back their carbon schemes and “laughing at us”. “Germany is going to more coal. Spain is abandoning green jobs, Europe is showing a lot of sense in this”. Keep reading → Apparently, on May 31, Australia’s targets for emissions cuts tripled overnight.Who knew? Answer: Christine Milne and Julia Gillard.Australia was aiming for a 5% cut by 2020, but it’s now become a cut of 18% by 2020. The Clean Energy Act of 2011 set that savage goal as a default target that popped into existence if the current government had not jumped through some arbitrary hoop — in this case by setting an emissions cap. Most likely this is a non-event — presumably the current government can wipe out the carbon legislation after July 1, which depends on Clive Palmer, a coal magnate. (UPDATE: Last night Palmer said he’ll repeal the carbon tax). But even so, I wonder if there is a sting in the cost? Are there contracts that are tied to the target, so that compensation for removing it automatically tripled as well? And if the tripling of the target is meaningless, why would anyone advertise their deception in sneaking it in? Could it be Milne and Gillard see themselves as Gods come to save us (damn those stupid voters!). Milne seems positively pleased she was able to trick Australians. The voters may have voted to remove the carbon tax but Gillard and Milne wouldn’t be stopped by the mere wishes of the people. The pair could have explained their “achievement” before the election couldn’t they? Instead, they saved it up til after it was triggered.
How’s that for open and transparent government? Are we insuring against a government failure or a voter failure?
It’s all so easy being a ruler. Just say the word and those emissions vanish. Pff! But hey, if we have to cut emissions nearly 20% by 2020 we better start building those nuclear plants today. I’m sure Milne would be pleased… Keep reading → UPDATED, Ken has now finished the full tally of comparisons and the adjustments to minima increase trends by 47% . (Headline changed from 60% to 50% to reflect the shift.) See the new details of the last few stations at KensKingdom. Billions of dollars, climate models, predictions, and hundreds of press releases depend on the BOM records of Australian temperatures. There were so many inconsistencies, inexplicable adjustments and errors that we put in a Senate request for the ANAO to audit the records. In response, to dodge the audit, the BOM dumped its HQ (“high quality”) dataset entirely, and established a new “best practise” ACORN dataset. Independent volunteer auditors have been going through the ACORN records — thanks especially to Ken Stewart who is publishing his findings on his site as he works through the set. He’s analyzed 84 out of 104 sites, and finds that ACORN is just as bad as the HQ set. At Kenskingdom he shows that so far, the adjustments used to create the official Australian temperature record increase the warming trend by13% for maxima and a whopping 66% for minima. (Note the caveats in the conclusions below.) The raw Australian data suggest the nation warmed by 0.6 °C over the last century. The BOM adjustments lift that to 1.05 °C. The BOM wants the Australian public to think it is impartial, neutral and honestSome adjustments are necessary. Perhaps these are, but the BOM does not explain on a station by station basis why they are justified. The BOM also claim their adjustments are neutral but a simple comparison with the raw records shows the adjustments themselves create a large part of the warming trend. The first time around a bias in adjustments could have been inadvertent. But after critics pointed out the inexplicable bias, and the dataset was redone, the BOM issued a carefully crafted wording, that was too-clever-by-half. For the old HQ set, the BOM said the adjustments were neutral. But contrary to what the head of the BOM said, Ken Stewart found they increased the trend by 40%. Dr David Jones, Head of Climate Monitoring and Prediction, National Climate Centre, Bureau of Meteorology, stated clearly that the adjustments made “a near zero impact on the all Australian temperature”. For the new ACORN set, the official CAWCR Technical Report No. 04 carefully wordsmiths their position on adjustments so it is technically true, but misleading at the same time: “There is an approximate balance between positive and negative adjustments for maximum temperature but a weak tendency towards a predominance of negative adjustments (54% compared with 46% positive) for minimum temperature.” The number of positive versus negative adjustments is not what matters. What matters is the change to the trend. The size of the positive adjustments is a lot larger than the negative ones. It’s not balanced at all. A few examples of unexplained adjustments: Ken Stewart has analyzed 83 ACORN sites of the total 104 sites.
 Figure 4:
The average difference between raw and adjusted records shows a strange pattern (see Figure 5 below). Apparently the thermometers before 1971 were recording temperatures that were overestimating temperatures. Generally the better modern thermometers after that were underestimating the temperatures. What bad luck! In addition, the urban population grew, cities retained heat, and airports got more traffic and larger tarmacs. It makes sense (if you are bonkers) that those thermometers near hotter bigger buildings and more bitumen would shift from a “warm bias” to a “cold bias” right? Really… Keep reading → June 11th, 2014 | Tags: Adjustments to data, Australian temperatures, BOM, Stewart (Ken) | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | The Australian PM wants Britain to join an anti-carbon pricing alliance with Canada, NZ and IndiaTony Abbott, Australian PM, has been shaking hands with Stephen Harper, Canadian PM, saying “it’s like a family”. They are both skeptical of schemes that aim to change the weather through fake markets which don’t do much to reduce emissions, but do enrich financial houses, lawyers and bureaucrats. Harper has applauded Abbott before, now Abbott is returning the favor. The message is aimed at David Cameron, British PM, who has been quite the friend of the greens — leaving a legacy of “collectivist, bat killing, bird chomping, property-rights-destroying wind farms”, as James Delingpole would say. But Cameron got savaged by the UKIP skeptics in the recent elections. Signing up with Obama won’t solve that headache. Obama, meanwhile, is trying to swing momentum back to costly climate action with his aim to bypass congress and use an executive order to enforce a 30% cut in US emissions by 2030. He’s on his own. Even the Chinese are watering down expectations (see below). New Zealand abandoned Kyoto II and tied themselves to the lowest value carbon credits there are. Sydney Morning Herald has the video
June 10th, 2014 | Tags: Australian Politics, Obama, UK | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | Who would have thought? Antarctic volcanoes are hot after all. Having a volcano under an icesheet makes a difference, and some of the sea level rise blamed on CO2 is more likely to be because 1,000 °C lava is not far from sub-zero ice. Right now, according to scientist Dustin Schroeder and co, it is as if the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctic is sitting on a “stovetop burner”.[1] Only last week I wondered if West Antarctic volcanoes had something to do with the Antarctic warming and pointed out this strange coincidence below where almost all the warming seems to occur over the volcanic area which is part of the hot “Pacific rim of fire”. I also wondered why some parts of the media don’t seem to mention the volcanoes. Wait and see if this story gets picked up. So far, Fox, and Business Insider have it.
 West Antarctica is melting. East Antarctica is not really. Could it be CO2, or is it volcanoes?
The actual Watts of heat are not large: 0.1 W/m2, but applied to the base of the glacier, may create a lubricant layer of meltwater. From the press release: Major West Antarctic glacier melting from geothermal sourcesThwaites Glacier, the large, rapidly changing outlet of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, is not only being eroded by the ocean, it’s being melted from below by geothermal heat, researchers at the Institute for Geophysics at The University of Texas at Austin (UTIG) report in the current edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The findings significantly change the understanding of conditions beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet where accurate information has previously been unobtainable.
June 10th, 2014 | Tags: Antarctica, Evidence, Volcano | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | Most of the results reported in peer reviewed literature in medicine are mere artefacts of poor methodology, despite being done to more exacting standards than climate studies. There are calls in the medical literature for all data to be made public and for higher P values to be required. (Yes please say skeptics everywhere). Miller and Young recommend that observational studies don’t be taken at all seriously until they are replicated at least once. That would have ruled out the original HockeyStick two times over. Even the absolute best medical papers are wrong 20% of the time, but mere observational studies (like climate research) failed 80 – 100% of the time. These studies of papers demonstrate why anyone who waves the “Peer Review” red flag is in denial of the evidence — “Peer Review” is not part of the scientific method. It’s a form of argument from authority. A fallacy of reasoning is still a fallacy, no matter how many times it is repeated. Those who claim it is essential or rigorous are not scientists, no matter what their government-given title says. GEN, Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News, May 1, 2014, Point of View Are Medical Articles True on Health, Disease?Sadly, Not as Often as You Might ThinkS. Stanley Young | Henry I. Miller, M.D  How many ways can a reported result fail? Science works only when experiments are reproducible. If an experiment cannot be replicated, both the scientific enterprise and those who depend upon its results are in trouble. Driven by the realization that experiments surprisingly often do not replicate, the issue of claims in scientific papers is receiving increasing scrutiny. Given that biomedical research is one of the most important goals of the scientific enterprise, it is especially important to know how well the claims that result from clinical studies hold up. Observational studies are mere “data mining” they say, while RCT (randomized controlled trials) are the gold standard. Neither was producing very useful results but observational studies were especially poor. By its nature, most climate studies are observational. Observational studies could be replicated 0% of the time. Young and Karr1 found 12 articles in prominent journals in which 52 claims coming from observational studies were tested in randomized clinical trials. Many of the RCTs were quite large, and most were run in factorial designs, e.g., vitamin D and calcium individually and together, along with a placebo group. Remarkably, none of the claims replicated in the direction claimed in the observational studies; in five instances there was actually statistical significance in the opposite direction. Ioannidis looked at highly cited (supposedly the most important papers) and found that RCT’s were replicated 67% of the time (which is still a 37% failure rate) but observational studies only replicated one time in 6 (16%). He remarked that this was not good enough: Keep reading → June 9th, 2014 | Tags: Peer Review | Category: Global Warming, Logic & Reason, Science | Print This Post | | Whatever you do, don’t let those skeptics speak:  Cartoonist accidentally captures intellectual depth of greens Adrian Raeside ,Victoria Times Colonist on June 4, 2014 Paul McRae was not impressed. Me, meh. It’s another dying publication which just alienated the half sane readers who haven’t already left. Bravo, eh. They whittle away at their base til they will only have teenage low-self-esteem green fans and a few old hippie die-hards left. Not a good business model.
There’s a fascinating study out this week suggesting that if we fast for three or four days a couple of times a year we can regenerate white blood stem cells. Fasting cuts down the number of white blood cells during the fast, but afterwards they recover, and then some. This new result comes from both mice and phase I clinical human trials. Probably in paleolithic times, famine or at least hungry days were a part of nearly everyone’s life. Many different philosophies and religions have fasting traditions. Apparently our genes are selected to deal with that, and being short of food makes the immune system do a kind of efficiency sweep. Perhaps access to unnaturally continuous food stops our stem cells from reactivating? Something to think about from Killjoy Jo. 😉 Yes, fasting is not exactly fun, but nor is cancer. For what it’s worth, the hard part of a fast is usually the start. Obviously, consult your doc, do your own research, etc.
University of Southern California Fasting triggers stem cell regeneration of damaged, old immune system
In the first evidence of a natural intervention triggering stem cell-based regeneration of an organ or system, a study in the June 5 issue of the Cell Stem Cell shows that cycles of prolonged fasting not only protect against immune system damage — a major side effect of chemotherapy — but also induce immune system regeneration, shifting stem cells from a dormant state to a state of self-renewal. In both mice and a Phase 1 human clinical trial, long periods of not eating significantly lowered white blood cell counts. In mice, fasting cycles then “flipped a regenerative switch,” changing the signaling pathways for hematopoietic stem cells, which are responsible for the generation of blood and immune systems, the research showed. The study has major implications for healthier aging, in which immune system decline contributes to increased susceptibility to disease as people age. By outlining how prolonged fasting cycles — periods of no food for two to four days at a time over the course of six months — kill older and damaged immune cells and generate new ones, the research also has implications for chemotherapy tolerance and for those with a wide range of immune system deficiencies, including autoimmunity disorders. Keep reading → June 8th, 2014 | Tags: Calorie Restriction, Cancer, Stem cells | Category: Health, Stem Cells | Print This Post | | The new Lowy Poll has got some commentators arguing that climate fear is rising in Australia. What the survey actually shows is that 55% of Australian don’t want to spend money fighting climate change. The Lowy poll asked loaded questions, didn’t ask people to rank their concerns, and showed nearly everyone was critically worried about nearly everything. Was there a point? Predictably, one small uptick is portrayed to pretend the climate religion is gaining momentum again. The SMH leaps to say the climate of dread is heating up (they wish):
How important is a 5 point shift? The survey was of 1,000 adults in Feb 2014. The margin of error is 3.1%. Peter Hannam doesn’t mention that the level of concern is 22 points down on the high that was recorded in 2006 when 68% of people thought climate change was a “critical threat”. Nor does he mention that more than 40% of Australians think nearly everything in the survey is a critical threat. These threats are not prioritized. The Lowy institute didn’t ask people to rank their concerns. Peter Hannam could have given SMH readers the full perspective on the news- but evidently chose not too. His title is Environment Editor, not Climate Activist, though that might be more honest. The SMH also gave space to The Climate Institute which predictably pushed the scare factor too. Did they contact any skeptics? If they’d asked me I would have said that almost every other survey shows the long slow decline of a belief in man-made global warming. On the internet, people are just not looking. A CSIRO survey showed 53% of Australians don’t think humans are causing climate change, and 80% of Australians chose not to voluntarily pay money for “the environment”, and in 2013 only 16% of all Australians were “very worried”. The reason the Lowy survey shows something so different, is thanks to the loaded question design, and lack of options for half the population. Are you super worried, a bit worried, or not worried – yet? (You will be!)The Lowy Institute claim their annual Poll has “challenged preconceived notions about Australians’ views”. Shame their poll results have not challenged their own preconceived views. In Table 13 they assume climate change is a “problem” and something we have to deal with. The options are three shades of alarm. Skeptics are not people who’ve made a different choice, but merely alarmists who haven’t realized it yet. The weakest answer allowed is “until we are sure that global warming is really a problem we should not take any steps that would have economic costs”. It’s just a matter of time, right? Respondents are pretty good at figuring out what the surveyors want them to say. In the long run, I daresay it will surprise the Lowy team when they realize the skeptics were right.
As well as not starting with a loaded question, a neutral survey would offer a 3 or even 5 point scale with pro-action choices, neutral and skeptical options. Other groups that have done this — like the recent UK survey, showed fully 62% of UK citizens don’t believe in man-made climate. That survey was one of the first to ask very specific and useful questions and offer a simple Agree/Disagree/Neutral choice. It also showed that educated high income respondents were more likely to be skeptical than manual workers and less skilled respondents. The Lowy Institute could have asked whether the real problem with global warming is that climate models don’t work, predictions are wrong, and scientists have been exaggerating. Just having that option there would shift all the other response rates wouldn’t it rather? Even so, 45% of people chose “significant” costs , while 55% chose low or no cost, or don’t know. What does significant mean? Even in the halycon days of climate fears in 2008, at least 52% of Australians were not willing to spend anything over $10 a month on climate change. (That was from the Lowy Institute poll of 2008). Everything is critical!In table 11 climate change is ranked When even the least feared option is perceived as an “important threat” by 75% of respondents, you know this is blunt instrument.  Table 11 (Click to enlarge) In table 12 (below) about half the population will say “yes” when asked if something (anything) is a critical threat and are also not asked to choose between threats. Given the error in the response rate, this makes a fair bit of the table fairly uninsightful. The top two threats are probably significantly perceived as more threatening, and the bottom one less, but this is not as useful as forcing people to choose. When they do, climate change universally ends up near the bottom of the list. Only 3% of Americans name the environment as the top issue. In the recent CSIRO survey Australians ranked climate change as 14th out of 16 concerns. Did the Lowy institute really want to find out what Australians think? They say they are non-partisan, but on climate change they aren’t hearing the voices of half of Australia. Keep reading →
The high seas catch is worth a mere $16 billion and is only 1% of all fish caught. But it follows that either hungry people will have to pay a bit more for their fish, or fishermen will switch to take more fish from the low seas. Either that, or hungry people can just eat more rice, right? And it’s not like anyone cares about the protein content of poor people’s diets is it? (Look who made a hyperbolic fuss about a potential 5% reduction in the mineral content of rice by 2050.) Lets think for a minute about how anyone would make a global oceanic ban work? Since people only catch deep sea fish for fun, I suppose we just ask them to stop, right. Or not. Anyone smell a global bureaucracy coming to guard the oceans from fisherpeople? It would need full time satellites, custom boat-spotting image-recognition software, lots of coastguards, helicopters and maybe an aircraft carrier. They could set up offices in Geneva. The UN would love it. The fake market gets us into trouble every time If we pay people to not catch some deep sea fish, pretty soon every man and his swimming dog will be not-catching all kinds of fish. There will be a whole industry of people who could’ve caught fish but didn’t. Except the cynic in me knows how this is really done. Just like in Peter Spencer’s case with the monster value of carbon-credits on farms, there is no need to compensate the farmers or fishermen. Governments just legislate that fishermen are banned from the high seas. Then the government helps themselves to the carbon credits, while the fishermen get nothing and go broke. And we all know where the money ends up. In most cases the government was already broke, the carbon credits are worthless, and the banks still make a motza. I would have commented on the carbon price, the feedbacks and assumptions but this is an orphan press release as far as I can tell. See the reference*.
June 6th, 2014 | Tags: Carbon Credits, Carbon Market, Oceans | Category: Academia, Big-Government, Global Warming | Print This Post | | John Cook’s 97% consensus paper was never going to tell us anything about climate science, so it does seem somewhat pointless to analyze the entrails. It was always a marketing ploy. If it had been done well it might have been useful as a proxy for government funding in science. But it wasn’t, so all we’re left with is some insight about the state of academic competence. Finding a consensus should have been easy. After all, billions of dollars of funding has gone to find some evidence (any evidence) that CO2 causes a crisis, and entire research departments have been set up to produce papers to discuss that. And if they didn’t find evidence (they didn’t), they could still write papers discussing the bias of instruments, the error bars, the adjustments, and so on and so forth. What are the chances that hordes of scientists would not find anything to publish? In that environment, how hard would it be to find “a consensus” among government funded officially approved climate scientists? A gift project, you would think, for any half-capable data-cruncher who can read and spell. Which is why it’s all the more amazing that the Cook 97% consensus paper managed to get so much so wrong:
We shouldn’t blame John Cook entirely though. Surely the standards here are a reflection of those at the University of Queensland, and the University of WA (where he is doing his PhD). Isn’t his supervisor Prof Lewandowsky? Keep reading → June 6th, 2014 | Tags: Consensus, Cook (John), SkepticalScience (debunking) | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | How many people will die in order to reduce world temperatures by possibly, maybe, something a lot less than 0.05 F? Commiserations to the people of the USA. Obama said almost nothing about climate change in the 2012 election campaign. Ain’t that the way? He can’t persuade the people to take the medicine they don’t need. Congress won’t pass it, so he’s going around the voters entirely and doing it through EPA regulations. Rothbard and Rucker look at the toll of Obama’s EPA plan to slash CO2 emissions by a pointless 30%:
What’s the point of electing a congress if the President rules by executive order ? “Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., went so far as to describe it as an unconstitutional power grab.” — Jo ——————————————————
EPA’s next wave of job-killing CO2 regulations Unleashing EPA bureaucrats on American livelihoods, living standards and libertiesDavid Rothbard and Craig Rucker [CFACT] Supported by nothing but assumptions, faulty computer models and outright falsifications of what is actually happening on our planet, President Obama, his Environmental Protection Agency and their allies have issued more economy-crushing rules that they say will prevent dangerous manmade climate change . Under the latest EPA regulatory onslaught (645 pages of new rules, released June 2), by 2030 states must slash carbon dioxide emissions by 30% below 2005 levels. The new rules supposedly give states “flexibility” in deciding how to meet the mandates. However, many will have little choice but to impose costly cap-tax-and-trade regimes like the ones Congress has wisely and repeatedly refused to enact. Others will be forced to close perfectly good, highly reliable coal-fueled power plants that currently provide affordable electricity for millions of families, factories, hospitals, schools and businesses. The adverse impacts will be enormous. The rules will further hobble a US economy that actually shrank by 1% during the first quarter of 2014, following a pathetic 1.9% total annual growth in 2013. They are on top of $1.9 trillion per year (one-eighth of our total economy) that businesses and families already pay to comply with federal rules. A U.S. Chamber of Commerce study calculates that the new regulations will cost our economy another $51 billion annually, result in 224,000 more lost jobs every year, and cost every American household $3,400 per year in higher prices for energy, food and other necessities. Poor, middle class and minority families – and those already dependent on unemployment and welfare – will be impacted worst. Those in a dozen states that depend on coal to generate 30-95% of their electricity will be hit especially hard. Millions of Americans will endure a lower quality of life and be unable to heat or cool their homes properly, pay their rent or mortgage, or save for college and retirement. They will suffer from greater stress, worse sleep deprivation, higher incidences of depression and alcohol, drug, spousal and child abuse, and more heart attacks and strokes. As Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) points out, “A lot of people on the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum are going to die.” EPA ignores all of this. It also ignores the fact that, based to the agency’s own data, shutting down every coal-fired power plant in the USA would reduce the alleged increase in global temperatures by a mere 0.05 degrees F by 2100! President Obama nevertheless says the costly regulations are needed to reduce “carbon pollution” that he claims is making “extreme weather events” like Superstorm Sandy “more common and more devastating.” The rules will also prevent up to 100,000 asthma attacks and 2,100 heart attacks in their first year alone, while also curbing sea level rise, forest fires and other supposed impacts from “climate disruption,” according to ridiculous talking points provided by EPA boss Gina McCarthy. As part of a nationwide White House campaign to promote and justify the regulations, the American Lung Association echoed the health claims. The Natural Resources Defense Council said the rules will “drive innovation and investment” in green technology, creating “hundreds of thousands” of new jobs. Bear in mind, the ALA received over $20 million from the EPA between 2001 and 2010. NRDC spends nearly $100 million per year (2012 IRS data) advancing its radical agenda. Both are part of a $13.4-billion-per-year U.S. Big Green industry that includes the Sierra Club and Sierra Club Foundation ($145 million per year), National Audubon Society ($96 million), Environmental Defense Fund ($112 million annually), Greenpeace USA and Greenpeace Fund ($46 million), and numerous other special interest groups dedicated to slashing fossil fuel use and reducing our living standards. All are tax-exempt. Keep reading → June 5th, 2014 | Tags: US Politics | Category: Big-Government, Global Warming, Politics | Print This Post | | |
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Did you know you can change the weather by not eating deep sea fish? Me neither. But apparently fish and other marine life in the high seas contain 
We also know that while 
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