Hurricane Irene and Computer Modeling

We all know how 'really smart' consensus scientists are telling us that we're at doom's door with respect to climate change; they use really sophisticated computer models to predict that in 18 months to 7 years to 8 years to 1000 years (all depends on the alarmist idiot to whom you listen), we're all going to be swimming in melted ice water, because we keep burning fossil fuels--the byproduct of which heats up the planet (they say).

Now consider something more manageable--a single storm, with FAR FEWER variables than an entire climate system. Computer models can't even get a single storm right. And hurricane season predictions have been even less accurate. So, are you going to believe stupid models, because models are only as good as the people who create them. The entire climate of the planet is FAR MORE COMPLEX than a single hurricane. And if someone has an agenda to support their theory, it's very easy to design the model to do whatever you want it to.

Instead of admitting that they screwed up on the intensity and overhyped the devastation and doom with respect to Hurricane Irene (which the media did in spades, by the way), the alarmists have already started blaming global warming for Irene (which was a creme puff of a storm unlike its predicted 'catastrophic intensity'). Saw that one coming from a mile away!

While forecasters have gotten better at estimating the trajectories of storms because the winds propelling them, known as steering currents, have gotten easier to predict with computer models, projecting intensity is driven by dozens of variables that make modeling more difficult, Clark said.

[From Irene Forecasters Missed Storm’s Intensity While Correctly Predicting Path - Bloomberg]

AGW Scientist: Prove Global Warming DOESN'T Exist!

In another climate science attempt to turn acceptable statistical practices in science upside-down, they now want to use a reverse null hypothesis on us 'skeptics.' What would Carl Sagan say?

Trenberth is the Climategate scientist who wrote the email stating: "The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t." That statement--strictly violating the stipulations in Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit--brings a whole host of other questions that I won't get into at this time very deeply. Questions like: "Didn't you guys say that the cooling is being caused by the warming?" (or) "I thought you guys said the El Nino and La Nina effects are masking global warming?" In fact, Trenberth is bluntly stating the truth to his colleagues; Mother Nature is NOT following their template, and they have no real explanation why. They've so fallen in love with their pet theory that they're attempting to dodge-and-parry any legitimate criticism to protect this politically-correct, pseudo-religious climate zealotry.

Now, he wants to reverse long-honored scientific principles, such that "deniers" and "skeptics" must PROVE that global warming DOES NOT exist, instead of he and his colleagues having to prove that it DOES EXIST. Bizarre huh? Scientists who are so enamored with their pet theories that they're willing to toss scientific convention aside in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Proves what I've said all along. Global warming is BS and it's being propped up by liberal dopes who KNOW it's BS for the sake of advancing socialism and harming capitalism.

What Eschenbach focuses on, though, is Trenberth’s absurd demand that the “null hypothesis” on AGW theory be reversed. That is, instead of having to prove AGW exists, what people should now be required to prove that it doesn’t exist. (!)

***

Eschenbach goes on to offer a long list of things climate ’scientists’ should do if they’re ever to be taken seriously again:

Stop avoiding public discussion and debate of your work.
Stop secretly moving the pea under the walnut shells.
Enough with the scary scenarios, already.
Speak out against scientific malfeasance whenever and wherever you see it.
Stop re-asserting the innocence of you and your friends.
STOP HIDING THINGS!!!

[From Warmists: 'We can't win the game, so let's change the rules' – Telegraph Blogs]

Statistician Slams 'Hockey Stick' Graph

Speaks for itself...I've written many times about the statistical manipulations used to exaggerate and CREATE warming when there is none. You've all been scammed and fed a lie.

A key piece of evidence in climate change science was slammed as “exaggerated” on Wednesday by the UK’s leading statistician, in a vindication of claims that global warming sceptics have been making for years.

Professor David Hand, president of the Royal Statistical Society, said that a graph shaped like an ice hockey stick that has been used to represent the recent rise in global temperatures had been compiled using “inappropriate” methods.

“It used a particular statistical technique that exaggerated the effect [of recent warming],” he said.

The criticism came as part of a report published on Wednesday that found the scientists behind the “Climategate” e-mail scandal had behaved “honestly and fairly” and showed “no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice”.

[From FT.com / Global Economy - Global warming graph attacked by study]

Al Gore Emerges From Hiding (sort of)

Al Gore has been keeping a low-profile ever since the mounting climate scandals that occurred before and after Copenhagen, where he was embarrassed by a typical alarmist exaggeration that was, once again, exposed as a lie by climate skeptics (a.k.a., "deniers"). He's been challenged for years to debate credible authorities and scientists on CO2's role in climate warming, but he usually manages to elude any forum that isn't tightly controlled by his thugs and political operatives.

He was shredded by Apple's stock holders just the other day for his global warming orthodoxy in the face of all these scandals, even though he was reelected to Apple's board (no surprise there...Apple is run by left-leaning folks out on the Left Coast).

So, feeling the need to respond to all the criticism, what does Al Gore do? He writes an OP-ED piece for the liberal New York Times, of course. Since no one can answer him directly in an opinion piece, I will take this opportunity to respond to his bullshit (trite and repetitive) below, point-by-point. And there's no way I could do a better job than some of the great skeptical scientists out there. But here goes...

But unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, the crisis is still growing because we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere — as if it were an open sewer.

[From Op-Ed Contributor - We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change - NYTimes.com]

Just two mistakes? Careful scientific work? Carbon is global warming pollution that's making our atmosphere into a sewer? Sorry, Al, but you're ignoring the mound of scandals recently revealed. There weren't just a few mistakes. There were many, along with multiple instances of unethical scientific practices.

But the scientific enterprise will never be completely free of mistakes. What is important is that the overwhelming consensus on global warming remains unchanged.

Hey, thanks for finally admitting that there are mistakes and errors in the evidence that, according to you, proves "thuh duh-bate is over." What's important to examine is the nature of these "mistakes." These aren't just mistakes; they're blatant attempts to politicize a supposedly scientific report by scattering it with "evidence" that amounts to nothing more than propaganda and fear.

There's that word consensus again. That's Al Gore's (and many alarmists') favorite tactic of deflection when attempting to avoid debate. But the 'overwhelming consensus' is a lie. Even if it was true, consensus opinion has nothing to do with real science, as history has shown us again and again. The maverick in science (like Galileo) is usually proved correct when confronting the consensus's foregone conclusion.

And furthermore (if there were a consensus), does anyone out there REALLY believe this group of politically-connected believers remains UNCHANGED? The so-called consensus is running for the hills because of all the scrutiny. On the contrary, the "consensus" is QUITE changed, Al.

[The panel's scientists] probably underestimated the range of sea-level rise in this century...

That's not what this article just said. Scientists have just withdrawn some of the estimates of supposed human-induced sea-rising. More fallout from the scandals, because now people are paying attention and not just accepting what these climate fear mongers say anymore.

For example, January was seen as unusually cold in much of the United States. Yet from a global perspective, it was the second-hottest January since surface temperatures were first measured 130 years ago.

Actually, the idiots said this January was the warmest on-record...not second warmest (get your facts straight, Al). Temperature records of 130 years should be, to any scientist, a problem when discerning longterm climate patterns and using them to make predictions. First, how accurate were the records of 130 years ago? They're not even accurate today (see reasons why here). Second, it's a statistical no-no to look at such a small range of time (130 years) to pronounce climate doom, considering the climate history of Earth spans of 4.5-billion years.

Similarly, even though climate deniers have speciously argued for several years that there has been no warming in the last decade, scientists confirmed last month that the last 10 years were the hottest decade since modern records have been kept.

Really? Did the alarmist scientists confirm this assertion the same way they've unethically confirmed everything else related to global warming? We can see that they're track record of unethical behavior runs deep and goes back at least 10 years.

Since we've already inserted the obligatory, debate-avoiding word consensus, let's make sure we use the Holocaust-doubting, ad hominem rejoinder and call us climate skeptics "deniers." Yes, a certain subset of alarmist scientists did just, laughably, make the claim that 2000 through 2009 was the warmest decade "on-record." However, disgraced IPCC scientist Phil Jones (CRU scandal) recently admitted that there has been no warming in 15 years, and he even--FINALLY--admitted that there was probably a global medieval warm period and even other earlier periods of global warming in Earth's history that preceded the industrial age. Therefore, the Earth has warmed in the distant past for reasons other than those extolled by you, Al, oh great 'creator of Internet.'

...yet scientists have long pointed out that warmer global temperatures have been increasing the rate of evaporation from the oceans, putting significantly more moisture into the atmosphere — thus causing heavier downfalls of both rain and snow in particular regions, including the Northeastern United States.

This is the warming-causes-cooling-and-warming tactic used in climate revisionism, and not ALL scientists have agreed with this. There are many problems with this assertion, but let's just take one that flies in the face of something Al just said a few paragraphs ago. If increased evaporation due to warming has caused all this darn record snow (and record freezing cold), rain, and tropical cyclones we've seen, wouldn't that increased evaporation also prevent the seas from rising? (Which, itself, has already been debunked.) The problem is that you and your ilk have long used empirical evidence when it suits your propaganda needs (i.e., supposed empirical weather events that you associate with climate warming). When antithetical weather appears, you either claim that La Nina is involved (that's masking warming) or you ridiculously claim that the cold weather is being caused by warming. That's what I call climate revisionism. It's called "global warming"...not "regional warming, when it suits my theory."

Here is what scientists have found is happening to our climate: man-made global-warming pollution traps heat from the sun and increases atmospheric temperatures. These pollutants — especially carbon dioxide — have been increasing rapidly with the growth in the burning of coal, oil, natural gas and forests, and temperatures have increased over the same period. Almost all of the ice-covered regions of the Earth are melting — and seas are rising. Hurricanes are predicted to grow stronger and more destructive, though their number is expected to decrease. Droughts are getting longer and deeper in many mid-continent regions, even as the severity of flooding increases. The seasonal predictability of rainfall and temperatures is being disrupted, posing serious threats to agriculture. The rate of species extinction is accelerating to dangerous levels.

But Al...is there a such thing as a 'saturation point'? Is there a point where increasing CO2 no longer makes a difference (i.e., holds in no more heat)? There are scientists (you haven't talked with) who agree that there is such a physical state in the atmosphere. The fact is that there is no evidence that current CO2 levels (rising though they are) are contributing to warming. Even the IPCC's erroneous, award-winning report only allots that CO2 is "probably" causing observed warming. "Probably" in science DOES NOT cut it. CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas STILL, even in its presently increasing concentration. Also, our data show that tropospheric warming (i.e., in the atmosphere) has not occurred (increasing CO2 has not warmed this part of the atmosphere as predicted); all of the "warming" has been attributed to the surface level, and the temperature collection methods at the surface are problematic.

CO2 is a 'pollutant'? You're exhaling it right now with your big, fat head, Al. That means you're contaminating my atmosphere! Never mind that plants MUST HAVE CO2 to provide us with O2; even grade school science students can understand photosynthesis.

Extinctions have NOT accelerated. The last part of this bullshit paragraph falls back onto the same trite fear tactics. See the GASP! series and warmlist if you want to scare yourself to death; you can read about the THOUSANDS of ills attributed to manmade warming. Once you read them all, you'll start giggling to yourself if you have half a brain, because it's obvious how much of an overreach it all is.

The common denominator of Al's proselytizing is FEAR. Everything he writes or states is DRIPPING with fear. If you need to hear more fear on animals, read our Animal Death Watch series too.

So, where has Al Gore been? Well, just read the articles. Welcome back, Al. We DID NOT miss your stupid crap.

Al Gore won a Nobel Prize and an Oscar for his film, An Inconvenient Truth. But in the last three months, as global warming has gone from a scientific near-certitude to the subject of satire, Gore -- the public face of global warming -- has been silent on the topic.

The former vice president apparently finds it inconvenient even to answer calls to testify before the U.S. Senate. You can call him Al . . . but he won't call back.

[From FOXNews.com - You Can Call Him Al ... But Al Won't Call You Back]

Al Gore has been found. The former vice president and green guru has been MIA since the end of December, but he cropped up to be abused at the Apple stockholders meeting in Cupertino, Calif. Gore has been missing conveniently during the same period where climate scientists have come under increased scrutiny for bogus claims, doctored science and use of propaganda. Gore, the Nobel Peace Prize and Oscar winner was last seen on CBS in late December. While the TV outlets have been running archival footage of the climate advocate, he hasn’t been interviewed on air throughout the controversy.

He’s still been on the receiving end of many jokes during that time. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., said on Twitter: “It's going to keep snowing in D.C. until Al Gore cries ‘uncle.’” GOP Sen. James Inhofe’s grandkids built an igloo on the National Mall, naming it “Al Gore’s New Home.”

Now even Apple shareholders are unhappy with the Goreacle, delivering “harsh comments about former Vice President Al Gore’s record,” according to CNET. One shareholder said Gore shouldn’t be reelected to the Apple board, saying Gore “has become a laughingstock. The glaciers have not melted,” reported CNET. Gore didn’t respond directly, but his spot in the front row indicates his hibernation may be ending.

[From FOXNews.com - Why So Silent, Mr. Gore?]

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]

It's the Sun, Stupid (again)

You needn't be a climatologist to understand the statistical problems with manmade global warming theory. To say the last 200 years are the warmest in Earth's history (or equally disturbing assertions such as this decade is the warmest ever--laughable), it means you have to accept THEIR baseline--the level or range considered to be 'normal' that can then be used to show dramatic shifts--either up or down--in the data. Remember, the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and humans have existed for a "gnat's length" comparatively. The Industrial Revolution--the genesis of the blame period that lasts until present day--was just about 200 years ago.

Finally, to acquire the baseline of normalcy, data (of which 150 years worth has now been deleted by the CRU at East Anglia) must be manipulated to account for numerous variables. So, they take 30 years of satellite observations, tree ring data, current day temperatures, and so on (each with their own potential measurement problems or SOURCES OF ERROR) and use computer models to produce the baseline of 200 years through which they claim to show we humans, through our modern ways, are heating the Earth to the breaking point. Never mind that they can IN NO WAY account for all the variables in the complex climate system. We can't even do it now with 100% certainty when predicting a hurricane's landfall point; we can only supply a probable range. We can't even accurately predict weather five days out, even with our technology and arrogant so-called 'brainpower.'

But the climate alarmist-scientist establishment doesn't want you to remember the Medieval Warm Period. They once produced graphs for the IPCC that omitted this period and tried to dream of ways to extricate it from history. You see...the Medieval Warm Period, where life really prospered before the follow-on mini ice age, is an INCOVENIENT TRUTH to climate alarmists.

The Sun. We are currently in a cooling trend on Earth that is measurable. The Sun, consequently, has some of the lowest measureable activity in recent history. Coincidence? That's hard to swallow.

The paper highlights a few scientists, including Professor Henrik Svensmark, a physicist at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen, who said the recent warming period was caused by solar activity.

Svensmark said that the last time the world experienced such high temperatures, during the medieval warming period, the Sun and the Earth were in a similar cycle.

Professor Nils-Axel Morner, a geologist from Stockholm University, said sea-level rise has also been exaggerated by the "climate alarmists" using computer models.

He said observational data from lake sediments, coast lines and trees show sea levels have remained stable.

[From Global Warming Caused by Solar Radiation, Argue Some Scientists - Biology | Astronomy | Chemistry | Physics - FOXNews.com]

Sleeping Sun Baffles Dimwits

The quiet sun may be baffling astronomers, but the climate change believers (ahem…fear mongers) among them haven’t been baffled into changing their silly stances on the climate. Yes, the sun has cooled, as has the solar system. And so has our climate. For the past 11 years the global mean temperature on Earth has cooled gradually, mirroring the quiescence of solar energy. If you believe the baseline established by climate psychos (and that 1998 was our ‘hottest’ year), this hard data can’t be ignored, though everyone seems to be doing just that.

Empirical evidence since Hurricane Katrina has accumulated to the point of generating no end of revisionist statements from alarmist camps—from La Nina’s “masking” of warming to this article’s assertion: The sun’s cooling is also masking Earth’s warming, not contributing to the observed cooling. Hurricanes have simply dropped off the radar in comparison to the predictions blasted by Gore and others like him. We’ve had two record winters in a row, with snow storms continuing into this April. The ice melts heralded as ‘horrible’ in the Arctic and Antarctic were exposed as the fear tactics that they are.

This is quite silly to behold, but I guess few seem willing to think their way out of this paper bag into which the media and their manipulators have scooped them. Too many goofy looking, ugly, expensive light bulbs need to be sold. Obama’s dumb, expensive, intrusive climate plans need to be enacted. Scientific and political reputations must be salvaged. Many doubting scientists continue to keep quiet rather than risk evisceration by their colleagues. Too much rests on the continuation of this lie for anyone to admit they are wrong.

I’m sorry to tell this chap what he’s ignoring—the Earth’s global temperature “rise” has already reversed (for more than a decade), and the empirical evidence (and scientific data) continues trumpeting a tune that he prefers not to hear: There is NO GLOBAL WARMING AS A RESULT OF CO2. There never was and there never will be.

'Quiet Sun' baffling astronomers

Last year, it was expected that it would have been hotting up after a quiet spell. But instead it hit a 50-year year low in solar wind pressure, a 55-year low in radio emissions, and a 100-year low in sunspot activity.

According to Prof Louise Hara of University College London, it is unclear why this is happening or when the Sun is likely to become more active again.

***

"Others are suggesting we'll be going into another minimum period - this is a big scientific debate at the moment."

***

In the mid-17th Century, a quiet spell - known as the Maunder Minimum - lasted 70 years, and led to a "mini ice-age".

This has resulted in some people suggesting that a similar cooling might offset the impact of climate change.

***

He added that the current slight dimming of the Sun is not going to reverse the rise in global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

"What we are seeing is consistent with a global temperature rise, not that the Sun is coming to our aid."

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]

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."

Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit

This is a fantastic web site and so poignant. Every global warming cultist should read this from top-to-bottom, so that they can learn about REAL SCIENCE from a REAL SCIENTIST - Carl Sagan. Al Gore is a nitnoid dufus...he is NOT a scientist. I bet he couldn't discuss anything scientific using his OWN BRAIN for more than a few seconds; he's a PowerPoint goober who has been brainwashed by environmentally-biased, politically-steered scientists and, as a politician, has recognized a boondoggle - a personal moneymaker (he owns a carbon-credit business, makes a movie, and gives silly briefings to earn millions). In short, a high school science student knows more about science than does Al Gore. So why do you give him so much cred, alarmists? Because you want to drink the Kool-aid, that's why.

Another great thing: Carl Sagan was a great scientist but also very liberal; your liberal, alarmist friends will hate you for pointing out what he said!

Some great points from Sagan (emphasized bullets are mine):

• Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the facts
• Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view
• Arguments from authority carry little weight (in science there are no "authorities") [This is the oft-sited 'consensus']
• Spin more than one hypothesis - don't simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy
• Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours
• Quantify, wherever possible
• If there is a chain of argument every link in the chain must work
• "Occam's razor" - if there are two hypothesis that explain the data equally well choose the simpler
• Ask whether the hypothesis can, at least in principle, be falsified (shown to be false by some unambiguous test). In other words, is it testable? Can others duplicate the experiment and get the same result?

And in the 'common fallacies of logic and rhetoric' department (emphasis and comments are mine again):

• Weasel words - for example, use of euphemisms for war such as "police action" to get around limitations on Presidential powers. "An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public" [How about substituting "climate change" for "global warming" when it was clear warming was not going on?]
• Short-term v. long-term - a subset of excluded middle ("why pursue fundamental science when we have so huge a budget deficit?") [For example, using a 30-year period of accurate observation to extrapolate temperatures for 4.5 billion years...]
• Suppressed evidence or half-truths [For example, ignoring the scientific facts of the last 10 years...]

Operation Clambake presents: Baloney Detection Kit

To hear and see it all broken down for you in more layman's terms, please see the posts on Penn and Teller and George Carlin.

Revised Hurricane Season

Okay, I respect Dr. Gray for his global warming skepticism, but what he's doing here with the hurricane forecast is just revisionism--which is what the global warming phonies do (climate revisionism). When your predictions are going south, just find a way to make them right by revising what you said initially. Then you can never be wrong. In the case of global warming, you can still believe in the BS because it’s just “being masked” by cooling. LOL!

One thing is certain: The global warming alarmists will love this new forecast, because if it pans out they’ll be able to claim that this is more empirical evidence of global warming (while they ignore or denigrate contrary empirical evidence).

Contrary empirical evidence? When alarmists tell us that we can't use a mean temperature drop over one season (or even over the past ten years) to say that global warming is nonexistent, that's called dismissing empirical evidence. However, note how quickly they see a single cyclone or group of tornados (or anything else deemed anomalous) and claim that global warming was the cause? If they site empirical data, it's okay. If we realists do it, they say that we can't claim that against "the long-term average." "Long-term" in this case means the statistically non-significant period of roughly thirty years between 1970 and 2000. We've addressed how statistically stupid that is on here many times.

Colorado State Team Increases Hurricane Predictions:

The hurricane research team at Colorado State University increased the number of storms expected to form in the Atlantic Tuesday, predicting a total of 17 named storms.

The revised predictions were made based on warm sea surface temperatures and low sea level pressure over the tropical Atlantic Ocean in June and July as well as an active early season in the deep tropics, the university reported on its Web site.

Five named storms have already been observed this season, as Edouard hits Texas with high winds and a rising surf.

The team, formed by William Gray, whose predictions have not been accurate in recent years, predicted the six-month hurricane season would produce 15 storms, of which eight would be hurricanes, Reuters reported.

GASP!: Ice “hanging by a thread!”

Before I do the usual work of ripping this fear piece apart with fact, scientific reasoning, and cold logic, please notice the hysteria and hyperbole of the headline itself. We see these stories every few weeks in the environmentally-ignorant, agenda-driven media. Here was a similar piece where we saw that ice melts in the Arctic are "receding like mad." Then we always see antithetical stories where the ice isn’t as bad as once thought, and then we see counter-stories from the media believers that proclaim “newly-formed ice” isn’t as good as “old ice.” And on it goes...the usual media fear templates that are on the circular conveyor: ice is melting, hurricanes are strengthening, floods are growing, fire is raging, animals are going extinct, tornados are forming, diseases are expanding, and on it goes. FEAR, DOOM, DOOM, DOOOOOOMMM!!!! And it’s all a bunch of baloney. You can read the extensive list of silly “global warming results” on the warmlist; check that list out and ask yourself if the media’s campaign is ridiculous or not. The GASP! series illustrates the extent of the media’s propaganda campaign too—check it out.

And the common thread connecting ice stories is that these glaciers and ice fields are being monitored for changes by satellites year-to-year, and how long have satellites been circling (or stationary) up there, compared to the age of the Earth? Are we making inane proclamations based on statistically-flawed comparisons?

Our “measurements” of ice obtained from satellites compared to records of the same ice over a statistically-acceptable length of time are truly impossible to verify as incontrovertible; the baseline of time is too small compared to the Earth’s total age. In other words, WE’RE INCORRECTLY MAKING ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT THE EARTH BASED ON A RIDICULOUSLY TINY SPAN OF TIME. Satellites have been used for 40 or so years, and satellites that are good enough to “measure” ice have been up there for how long? I’d wager far less than 40 years.

A good analogy to what they’re doing would be to observe a single nanosecond of one year, noticing that at that exact nanosecond the wind changed from 5 mph to 10 mph, and then concluding that our world will obviously be destroyed by this scary doubling in wind speed, if the “trend in acceleration” continues unabated!!! For you alarmist psychos who aren’t savvy enough to follow the allegory, I’m saying that a nanosecond taken out of a year as a period of observation is STATISTICALLY TOO DAMN SMALL to draw silly, far reaching conclusions; a nanosecond is one-billionth of a second, and there are a hell of a lot of nanoseconds in a day, much less a year (5.256 x 10^14 nanoseconds in one year to be exact). Well, taking 30 years of observations (even if they can be shown to be absolutely accurate and unassailable) out of the 4.5 billion years that the Earth has existed (meaning that you’re missing 150 million similar periods of observation), and making bold climate proclamations of doom based on that very small span (30 years out of 4.5 billion years) is similarly retarded. I can’t understand for the life of me how someone in the media hasn’t caught on to this silliness yet, though some have in a few places.

Notice how they make the claim that the ice has been stable “most of the last century.” Really? We see it breaking up now with satellites, but we know with certainty the same ice NOT OBSERVED BY SATELLITES was stable for the last century? Are you laughing yet? You should be...

My guess is that they know about the statistical and scientific problems with their claims, but the myth and boondoggle must be propped up at all costs. Too many reputations are at stake now after all the prophecies of doom, as is the money and power to be acquired from dealing with this new “crisis.” Government and political hacks need crises to remain relevant; they want us to believe that we can’t get by without them and their intercession in our lives.

Antarctic ice shelf 'hanging by thread': European scientists

New evidence has emerged that a large plate of floating ice shelf attached to Antarctica is breaking up, in a troubling sign of global warming, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Thursday.

Images taken by its Envisat remote-sensing satellite show that Wilkins Ice Shelf is "hanging by its last thread" to Charcot Island, one of the plate's key anchors to the Antarctic peninsula, ESA said in a press release.

"Since the connection to the island... helps stabilise the ice shelf, it is likely the breakup of the bridge will put the remainder of the ice shelf at risk," it said.

Wilkins Ice Shelf had been stable for most of the last century, covering around 16,000 square kilometres (6,000 square miles), or about the size of Northern Ireland, before it began to retreat in the 1990s.

Since then several large areas have broken away, and two big breakoffs this year left only a narrow ice bridge about 2.7 kilometres (1.7 miles) wide to connect the shelf to Charcot and nearby Latady Island.

GASP! Swim to the North Pole this summer!

I’m wondering if any of the sheep out there are digging into the guts of this article and exposing the stupidity of it, instead of just accepting the media’s incessant Chicken Little routine. When I first saw this article, I said, “really?” Then as I began to read it, I realized it was more of the same drivel we’ve been seeing for years on "manmade" climate change, though the hysteria level is definitely being stretched to new heights.

First of all, melting ice? I’ve covered that subject here on quite a few occasions.

Why are the histrionics of alarmists reaching epic proportions? Because they’re losing the programming battle. The battle to indoctrinate the masses into believing there’s manmade global warming is becoming Custer’s fiasco at Little Big Horn, and deniers like me are the stubborn Native Americans. So the claims become more and more shrill and preposterous as time goes by. Also, look at where this newspaper is published; it’s in the U.K., and a recent poll showed just what Britons are thinking about the scam of global warming. So, the headline is designed to jolt us deniers and embolden the alarmists into screaming, “See, I told you so.” But let’s go further and fight hyperbole with cold logic.

Never mind the wheezing headline, which is so very misleading. Check the VERY FIRST SENTENCE in the article. Ice is melting at the North Pole for “THE FIRST TIME IN HUMAN HISTORY?” Really? I wonder if any layman out there can find the huge problem with this first claim before I even pour out my thoughts. If one examines the article and reads my past posts here on melting ice then one can see some of the issues, and you needn’t be a climatologist or scientist to understand. Any time a ridiculous claim like this is made by someone, one should always first ask, “What is the baseline?” By that I mean that there must be some standard or starting point by which they’re making a comparison. Statistically, there should be an average or mean level of ice over a given period, and the longer the period used for the baseline, the more accurate the assertion will be once a comparison is made. They’ve been visually “measuring” the ice at the poles since we’ve had satellites, which, as you know, have been in stationary orbit above the poles since Lucy first learned to walk upright (yes, mockery definitely intended). I posted already on the statistical stupidity of taking a 30-year period of the Earth’s 4.5 billion year history as a baseline and making stupid climate pronouncements based on that VERY, VERY SMALL period of time. Heck, it would still be a stupid comparison if we used only the years comprising human history (from the Paleolithic – 2.5 million years ago), which is a brief moment in the Earth’s total history. Using a 30-year period as a baseline would be a statistical no-no to any real scientist or statistician, unless those professionals need to KEEP the $1.7B in federal climate research grants coming in! My assertion is that polar ice has melted and reformed at least thousands of times in the history of the Earth, and I mean FAR BEFORE the Industrial Revolution.

Next, when you picture all the ice at the North Pole melting (which is implied by this article’s headline), what do you think? They did use the word “entirely,” which I take to mean ALL OF IT. I pictured that you could swim or boat literally up to the very pole—the very top of the Earth and grin up at the North Star. Or do they just mean melting in that general vicinity? Check the graphic and notice how they say that “melting ice COULD match last year’s record.” Monkeys COULD also fly out of my butt. The word "could" in these fear-mongering articles should always set off an alarm in your brain, because it also implies that it "could not" happen. Again, review some of the failed predictions on climate change we've had recently, including the dire hurricane forecasts that have failed to transpire, even though Al Gore predicted that Hurricane Katrina was directly caused by global warming; if we're still warming...where have all the hurricanes been over the past three years? Oh, I know...cyclones and hurricanes have been hitting other continents--JUST AS THEY ALWAYS HAVE!

They let slip another fact. All the ice that they alarmingly reported in previous years as having melted REFORMED LAST YEAR DURING A RECORD-SETTING WINTER! I think the reasoning is that because it’s “new ice” it will melt faster in the summer than “old ice.” So this is another “scary” prediction on climate change, and we’ve seen a lot of those predictions over the past year—most of which turned out to be CRAP! I’m now making a prediction...many or most of these manmade climate change predictions WILL ALSO TURN OUT TO BE CRAP. Let’s see what happens to the polar ice at the end of this summer and then what happens next winter, when some climatologists say the Earth will be very cold due to the masking of global warming by La Nina (another farcical assertion). Remember Galileo's opponents! They devised elaborate models to explain the movements of the heavens to counter the "denier's" theory that the Sun was the center of the known universe...not the Earth. Was the maverick correct, or was the consensus?

So, let’s say that the ice is going to melt all the way up to the North Pole at 90 degrees North latitude. Can we really say it’s the FIRST TIME EVER IN HUMAN HISTORY or that it’s even a bad thing if it does happen? Remember the Little Climate Optimum—an inconvenient truth that alarmists want you to forget. Our vast history is littered with climate changes and shifts, and all of them came BEFORE THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.

Exclusive: No ice at the North Pole | Independent

It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.

The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic – and worrying – examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90 degrees north may well have melted away by the summer.

"From the viewpoint of science, the North Pole is just another point on the globe, but symbolically it is hugely important. There is supposed to be ice at the North Pole, not open water," said Mark Serreze of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.

If it happens, it raises the prospect of the Arctic nations being able to exploit the valuable oil and mineral deposits below these a bed which have until now been impossible to extract because of the thick sea ice above.

Seasoned polar scientists believe the chances of a totally ice-free North Pole this summer are greater than 50:50 because the normally thick ice formed over many years at the Pole has been blown away and replaced by huge swathes of thinner ice formed over a single year.

This one-year ice is highly vulnerable to melting during the summer months and satellite data coming in over recent weeks shows that the rate of melting is faster than last year, when there was an all-time record loss of summer sea ice at the Arctic.

EPA scientists pressured to bias their results

Still question whether politics is currently corrupting science? A usual tactic often employed by these political elements is to recognize the truth and then claim the opposite: here, the NYT is telling us that politics is corrupting science, EXCEPT that the boogeyman is portrayed as CONSERVATIVE politics that is choosing to ignore “consensus science.” (Funny, because, right now, conservative elites are jumping on the bandwagon just like liberals.)

As a non-consensus scientist, let me state this fact:

There is NO SUCH THING AS CONSENSUS IN SCIENCE! Science DOES NOT work like an L.A. street gang. (Google “Galileo” or Google “Darwin” to read about mavericks who resisted the consensus—and were RIGHT!)

This article couldn't be more poignant at pointing out how politics is currently attempting to corrupt science for its own ends; right now, the lie of manmade global warming has become the centerpiece of worldwide climate politics and environmental movements (not climate science). It's surprising to see the AP publishing this rather frank admission, when they have been guilty of propagandizing this issue themselves for years.

Basically, these EPA scientists are saying, through a survey instrument (which they were initially told not to answer), that federal politicians have been trying to coax and intimidate certain results or answers out of the scientists, so that the politicians would be free to scream “consensus science” when confronted with debate and argument over proposed U.S. and U.N. environmental policies—policies that will cost you money and will increase the power of the politicians involved. In the process, many scientists have begun to wake up and realize that they're corrupting an institution that they've been charged with protecting—the unbiased, untainted scientific search for truth.

REAL climate science is currently under attack. Radical political and environmental elements have seized an opportunity in the theory of human-induced climate change—a theory that, regardless of the way it's portrayed by Al Gore and the media, is still not proven beyond scientific doubt. On the contrary, there are many problems

Scrutiny is happening

Meteorologists still can’t even accurately predict the basic weather five days in advance right now, but yet we’re going to listen to politically-connected “scientists” who predict we’ll be swimming with the fishes in 50 to 100 years because of man’s activities and believe them? Give me A FREAKIN’ BREAK! This doesn’t even pass the moron test; never mind all the problems with the faulty science and math behind this farce that has become AGW.

Climate panel on the hot seat - The Washington Times:

In a 2001 report, the IPCC published an image commonly referred to as the "hockey stick." This graph showed relatively stable temperatures from A.D. 1000 to 1900, with temperatures rising steeply from 1900 to 2000. The IPCC and public figures, such as former Vice President Al Gore, have used the hockey stick to support the conclusion that human energy use over the last 100 years has caused unprecedented rise global warming.

However, several studies cast doubt on the accuracy of the hockey stick, and in 2006 Congress requested an independent analysis of it. A panel of statisticians chaired by Edward J. Wegman, of George Mason University, found significant problems with the methods of statistical analysis used by the researchers and with the IPCC's peer review process. For example, the researchers who created the hockey stick used the wrong time scale to establish the mean temperature to compare with recorded temperatures of the last century. Because the mean temperature was low, the recent temperature rise seemed unusual and dramatic. This error was not discovered in part because statisticians were never consulted.

And more media scrutiny from the great Steven Milloy at junkscience.com.

FOXNews.com - Junk Science: The Washington Post-er Child for Climate Bias - Opinion:

Eilperin’s March 10 article (WaPo) entitled "Carbon Output Must Near Zero to Avert Danger, New Studies Say" has the same sort of journalistic objectivity one might expect from totalitarian state-controlled media.

With nary a critical word about the computer models used to project increases in global temperature, Eilperin touted two new model-dependent studies that "suggest that both industrialized and developing nations must wean themselves off fossil fuels by as early as mid-century in order to prevent warming that could change precipitation patterns and dry up sources of water worldwide."

So why would any rational person assume that they can be used to predict future climate or serve as a basis for developing national energy policy? As reported in this column last December, global climate models uniformly predict significantly warmer atmospheric temperatures than have actually occurred.

2008 to be among hottest?

See? They've got it all figured out. Even though we've had a bitter-assed cold, record-setting winter so far, the media wants you to remember--it's going to be hot this summer!

Notice how they call this winter "cool" instead of what has been...freakin' COLD!

Britain: 2008 may be among hottest years - USATODAY.com:

LONDON — This year is forecast to be among the top 10 hottest years on record, Britain's weather office said Thursday, despite a strong cooling effect predicted from the tropical weather phenomenon known as La Nina.

The global surface temperature in 2008 will rise 0.67 degrees above what climate scientists call the long-term average of 57.2 degrees, the Met Office said. The average is derived by calculating the mean of surface temperatures registered globally between 1961 and 1990.

Here's something else that should concern you. Alarmist scientists are basing their predictions on an average derived between 1961 and 1990 (roughly 30 years). The Earth is believed to be 4.5 billion years old (4,500,000,000). If you do the math, we're basing our average temperature on a range that is .000000006 % of the Earth's total estimated age (if you divide 4.5 billion by 30 you get 150 millions similar periods that were NEVER MEASURED). That's a lot of lost time in the Earth's history to ignore when you're telling the world that our awful, modern existence is killing the Earth.

I hope statisticians are freaking out when they read that. In other words, our "average" (measured over 30 years) DOES NOT accurately represent the average over the Earth's history, and that doesn't even address the problems associated with the actual temperature measurements since 1961. There are all sorts of scientific problems associated with this "theory."