Amid record cold, U.N. uses 'long-term' mantra

I've already mentioned that there are two different realities going on with respect to the climate. There's the one we're all experiencing--replete with cold, snow, ice, cool summers, etc.--and then there's the one with which the "experts" keep scaring us to death--ice is melting, Earth is warming, we're all doomed...doOMED...DOOMED!

Apart from the ice-melt scare tactic, which I've written about many times in the GASP! series and in other posts on this blog, alarmists have another trick that they're using to convince you we're still warming amidst all the cold--"long term trends," which I've also blogged about on here.

The problem with their "long term trend" is academic--it's a statistical faux pas that they're refusing to adequately describe for the layman masses. In short, they're using statistics (that any decent scientist would reject) to paint a supporting picture, and this phenomenon is something that is NOT new to science. Crooked and mistaken scientists and researchers have used data unscrupulously for decades (about as long as the "long term trend.").

Arctic ice volume lowest ever as globe warms: U.N. | Environment | Reuters:

GENEVA (Reuters) - Ice volume around the Arctic region hit the lowest level ever recorded this year as climate extremes brought death and devastation to many parts of the world, the U.N. weather agency WMO said on Tuesday.

Although the world's average temperature in 2008 was, at 14.3 degrees Celsius (57.7 degrees Fahrenheit), by a fraction of a degree the coolest so far this century, the direction toward a warmer climate remained steady, it reported.

"What is happening in the Arctic is one of the key indicators of global warming," Michel Jarraud, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), said. "The overall trend is still upwards."

What they predicted; what actually happened

Similar to the wrong-headed, dire hurricane predictions over the past few years (where AGW was going to dissolve the coastline through high-powered cyclones), NOAA forecasters (also fueled by the global warming frenzy) forecasted a "warm winter" just a few months ago...

Warm Winter Predicted For United States:

ScienceDaily (Oct. 11, 2007) — NOAA forecasters are calling for above-average temperatures over most of the country and a continuation of drier-than-average conditions across already drought-stricken parts of the Southwest and Southeast in its winter outlook for the United States, announced at the 2007-2008 Winter Fuels Outlook Conference in Washington, D.C October 9, 2007.

Now, let's review a small sample of what actually happened (because the winter harshness was extensive):

NOAA: Coolest Winter Since 2001 for U.S., Globe :

The average temperature across both the contiguous U.S. and the globe during climatological winter (December 2007-February 2008) was the coolest since 2001, according to scientists at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. In terms of winter precipitation, Pacific storms, bringing heavy precipitation to large parts of the West, produced high snowpack that will provide welcome runoff this spring.

• Now, reputations fall like dominoes
• Arctic = Melting; North Da-ka-ka-kota = FREEZING
• Iowa snow 22 inches ABOVE NORMAL
• Recent climate-related headlines

Surprise, surprise! Global warming completely reversed in one year. The climate CHANGES all the time--go figure! It’s not “climate change”…it’s the changing climate. The climate can not be expressed as a flat-line graph; it goes up and down and has done so for 4.5 billion years. Notice this piece about snow cover at the bottom:

While there has been little trend in snow cover extent during the winter season since records began in the late 1960s, spring snow cover extent has been sharply lower in the past two decades as global temperatures have increased.

What they’re letting out of the bag here (reluctantly) is that all the hoopla about “loss of snow cover and ice” is based on a baseline measurement range that is not yet 50 years in width. Do you realize how SHORT that period of time is when stacked against the Earth’s estimated life of 4.5 billion years???!!! Any medical research with such shady statistics would be laughed at roundly by scientists, and no treatments would ever result from such garbage research.

As Newsbusters correctly points out:

Hmmm. These guys can't accurately predict climate conditions two months out, but we should radically alter our economy based on their forecasts decades into the future?

Skeptical scientist profile: Dr. John Brignell

I've been wanting to do this for sometime, because I've linked to Dr. Brignell's warmlist page a countless number of times.

From his CV:

Professor Emeritus (ESD)

John Brignell was educated at Stationers’ Company’s School and began his career as an apprentice at STC. He studied at Northampton Engineering College (which became The City University, London) and took the degrees of BSc(Eng) and PhD of London University. He joined the staff at Northampton and was successively Research Assistant, Research Fellow and Lecturer. He worked in a number of areas including dielectric liquids and computer aided measurement, co-authoring a book "Laboratory on-line computing" in 1975. He was for ten years Reader in Electronics at The City University and held the Chair in Industrial Instrumentation at Southampton for twenty years from 1980. He has researched and written extensively in the area of sensors and their applications, and in 1994 co-authored a book with Neil White on "Intelligent sensor systems". He had an extensive private consultancy practice for many years and has advised some of the larger international companies, as well as many small ones in the UK, on all aspects of industrial instrumentation. He pioneered the use of a number of technologies in sensing, such as thick film, and latterly turned his attention to the considerable possibilities of micro-engineering. He was elected Fellow of IOP, InstMC, IEE and RSA. In 1994 he was awarded the Callendar Silver Medal by InstMC. He served on the ISAT Committee of IoP from its inception and was the founding chairman of the first joint professional group of the IEE (J1), having served on both its predecessors (E1 and C11).

What Dr. Brignell has done is simple genius--keep a linked list of actual media stories and articles that purport to show the horrors--both past, present, and future--associated with manmade global warming and climate change.

Simply reading the mass of links is mind-boggling; in my opinion, visiting this one page is all that one needs to do to understand how stupid this global warming hoax is.

Dr. Brignell goes further with his entire Number Watch site--he's showing us how the media can misbehave when using numbers and statistics. Thank you, Dr. Brignell, for being brave enough to stick your neck out in this politically correct environment. As he says:

Number Watch - All about the scares, scams, junk, panics, and flummery cooked up by the media, politicians, bureaucrats, so-called scientists and others who try to confuse you with wrong numbers.

Wilkins Ice Shelf: Old, Inaccurate News

In the event you didn’t HEAR the ASS-ociated Press when they published this SAME STORY a few weeks ago, here it is again—the Wilkins Ice Shelf fear piece. Make sure you digest this along with the “swine” flu fear mongering that’s rampant in the news right now. Speaking of the swine flu, I wonder when the first lunatic will come out and say that global warming is the cause. I’m sure we won’t have to wait for long.

This particular article, however, is chock full of little delights that are ripe for analysis and digestion. First, just as with the previous article, they fail to mention that the EASTERN ANTARCTIC’S ICE HAS GROWN, such that the total continental ice has increased, even with this western portion breaking up (this is what happens in the spring and summer anyway).

Next, they’re finally admitting HERE FOR THE FIRST TIME that this ice breaking and melting WILL NOT raise sea levels. Yay! Let’s hear it for small victories.

Last, they’re admitting that all this scrutiny of the ice has been made possible by these new satellite images—as he says ‘for the first time…we can see the demise of the ice shelf.’ What that tells me is that the previous billions of years in Earth’s history could have had this situation occur and we wouldn’t have known about it. So should we just accept, given this one time in the billions of years of Earth’s history in which we happen to be paying attention, that it is a first occurrence?!? Again, this question is elementary for any first-year statistics student in college. The answer is no, you should not accept such an assertion.

Antarctic Ice Shelf Beginning to Break Up

BERLIN — Massive ice chunks are crumbling away from a shelf in the western Antarctic Peninsula, researchers said Wednesday, warning that 1,300 square miles of ice — an area larger than Rhode Island — was in danger of breaking off in coming weeks.

The Wilkins Ice Shelf had been stable for most of the last century, but began retreating in the 1990s. Researchers believe it was held in place by an ice bridge linking Charcot Island to the Antarctic mainland.

***

"There is little doubt that these changes are the result of atmospheric warming," said David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey.

The falling away of Antarctic ice shelves does not, in itself, raise sea levels, since the ice was already floating in the sea.

***

Researchers said the quality and frequency of the ESA satellite images have allowed them to analyze the Wilkins shelf breakup far more effectively than any previous event.

"For the first time, I think, we can really begin to see the processes that have brought about the demise of the ice shelf," Vaughan said.

Climategate: UEA to "release data"

One problem, of course. They cannot release the RAW DATA, because it was destroyed. All they have are their manipulated figures--as in manipulated to "hide" cooling using a "trick."

The U-turn by the university follows a week of controversy after the emergence of hundreds of leaked emails, "stolen" by hackers and published online, triggered claims that the academics had massaged statistics.

In a statement welcomed by climate change sceptics, the university said it would make all the data accessible as soon as possible, once its Climatic Research Unit (CRU) had negotiated its release from a range of non-publication agreements.

[From Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row - Telegraph]

Speaking of Bad Computer Models

I was just having a discussion with a global warming believer about climate computer models in the comments of an earlier blog post (see Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit); this is a timely story. Remember, models don't mean a damn thing if they're programmed wrong or are fed bad data: Garbage-in equals garbage-out. That's why computer models that predict hurricane strength and likely landfall locations are filled with uncertainty until just before the storms make landfall. And a hurricane--complicated though it is--pales compared to the complexity of the worldwide climate. This is also why we still can't accurately forecast local weather more than 5-days out (and those forecasts are often wrong). Plus, a computer model--just like statistics--can be made to paint any picture in the hands of a clever, devious scientist.

Computer models that predict climatic warming due to manmade gas emissions are WRONG, and given the political environment today, likely VERY BIASED and therefore UNBELIEVABLE.

A BBC weather forecaster has suggested that the Met Office's super-computer has a 'warm bias' which has stopped it predicting bitterly cold spells like the one we have just endured.

Paul Hudson said the error may have crept into the computer's climate model as a result of successive years of milder weather.

His claim was rejected by the Met Office but other experts said there could be flaws in the system, which was first developed 50 years ago.

[From Met Office computer accused of 'warm bias' by BBC weatherman | Mail Online]

2009 to be among warmest? What about 2008 prediction?

Wow! Read the article's headline below from Reuters. Now follow this link and read last year's headline that originated from the same British scientists--the headline is nearly identical. The prediction in the January 2008 article was that 2008 was going to be "one of the hottest on record." It wasn't. Another failed climate prediction. Now, "British scientists" say it will be one of the hottest in 2009; if they just keep repeating it every year, they're bound to be right eventually, LOL!

Now let's look at the problems with this, as we've done countless times on this blog. You can read about the statistical problems throughout this blog (search: statistics), but it's quite easy to summarize. Just scrutinize the term "long term average."

They define "long term" as the period of 1961 to 1990. The Earth's age is 4.5 billion years. So a period of thirty years is "long term" compared with the age of the planet? No scientist worth their weight would ever make such a proclamation. This is truly JUNK SCIENCE.

LONDON (Reuters) - Next year is set to be one of the top-five warmest on record, British climate scientists said on Tuesday.

The average global temperature for 2009 is expected to be more than 0.4 degrees celsius above the long-term average, despite the continued cooling of huge areas of the Pacific Ocean, a phenomenon known as La Nina.

That would make it the warmest year since 2005, according to researchers at the Met Office, who say there is also a growing probability of record temperatures after next year.

Currently the warmest year on record is 1998, which saw average temperatures of 14.52 degrees celsius - well above the 1961-1990 long-term average of 14 degrees celsius.

[From 2009 to be one of warmest years on record: researchers | Environment | Reuters]