Climate Nazis Threaten Climate Skeptics

Posted on April 24, 2017 by eburke93

Another example of what the Democrat-Progressive Left in the U.S. has become:

Seven bullets were fired towards Dr. John Christie’s office at the U. of Alabama, Huntsville by a climate terrorist. Apparently some left-wing thugs think the only way to “settle” scientific disagreements is with violence and intimidation. It’s a sad day for science.

Seven gunshots were fired into the National Space Science and Technology Center at University of Alabama Huntsville over the weekend – same weekend as the “March for Science.”

Read about it here:

http://www.drroyspencer.com/

Obama’s Phony Climate Claims

Posted on January 5, 2016 by eburke93

“How is it that the White House links changes in hurricanes today to global warming when the WMO, NOAA and IPCC cannot?” –Chris Landsea, Science and Operations Officer, NOAA’s National Hurricane Center

Screen shot of Chris Landsea’s Tweet, May 30, 2015. “Christopher W. Landsea is the Science and Operations Officer at NOAA’s National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami. Dr. Landsea received his Bachelor’s Degree in Atmospheric Science from the University of California Los Angeles (1987) and his Master’s Degree and Doctorate in Atmospheric Science from Colorado State University (1991, 1994).” Source: NOAA

Miami Herald May 27, 2015:

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest: “But what the preponderance of scientific evidence tells us is that climate change is having an impact on more violent and more frequent storms.”

The Truth: There have been fewer tropical cyclones over the last several years. According to Dr. Ryan Maue “5-year running sum of number of global tropical cyclones (1970-2015) Stuck at 400 — lowest in this 45-year record.” Meteorologists call it a “hurricane drought.” A category 3 or higher has not hit the US since 2005 (Wilma) – the longest period since records have been kept, this despite the doomsday predictions and an increase in atmospheric CO2 since 2005.

The climate models President Obama and the EPA rely on for policy decisions do not accurately predict global warming and the extreme weather that is supposed to follow. It is madness to rely on them for policy. Why should political agendas trump actual climate data, which show the models to be wrong?

“The discrepancy between models and observations is not a new issue… just one that is becoming more glaring over time.” –Roy Spencer

“Dr. Roy Spencer was Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, where he and Dr. John Christy received NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for their global temperature monitoring work with satellites. Dr. Spencer’s work with NASA continues as the U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite.

“Dr. Spencer’s research has been entirely supported by U.S. government agencies: NASA, NOAA, and DOE. He has never been asked by any oil company to perform any kind of service. Not even Exxon-Mobil.”–Source: http://www.drroyspencer.com/about/

“I think that the immediate efforts to try to link climate change with disaster are in many ways counter-productive.” —Roger Pielke, Jr.

Dr. Pielke is a Professor in the Environmental Studies Program and a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado. “In 2012 Roger was awarded an honorary doctorate from Linköping University in Sweden and was also awarded the Public Service Award of the Geological Society of America. Roger also received the Eduard Brückner Prize in Munich, Germany in 2006 for outstanding achievement in interdisciplinary climate research. Before joining the faculty of the University of Colorado, from 1993-2001 Roger was a Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.” Source: http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/about_us/meet_us/roger_pielke/

Fart Control: Boycott Ben & Jerry’s – Save the Planet

Posted on July 29, 2015 by eburke93

It comes as no surprise to some of us that Ben & Jerry’s spreads false propaganda about the environment. For instance, they have a fun “fact” sheet that claims there will be 40% more Category 4 and 5 hurricanes in the future due to climate change. I would like some genius at B&J’s to explain why there has been an unusual absence of Atlantic hurricanes (meteorologists call it a hurricane drought) in the past few years and why a Category 3 or higher has not hit the US since 2005 (Wilma) – the longest period since records have been kept. These are facts that contradict the doomsday predictions despite an increase in atmospheric CO2 since 2005. Tornadoes counts have also been running below “normal” the past couple of years, opposite global warming claims. The scary predictions have so far been wrong.

Lost in translation!

The climate models, which are used as the basis for the push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, are far from good predictors. They have diverged so far from actual climate data (models have predicted far more warming than actual historical measurements show) that Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama (who pioneered the measurement of Earth temperatures from satellites) had this to say: “We might forgive these modelers if their forecasts had not been so consistently and spectacularly wrong. From the beginning of climate modeling in the 1980s, these forecasts have, on average, always overstated the degree to which the Earth is warming compared with what we see in the real climate.”

Bernie Sanders for President! Support Fart Control – Boycott Ben & Jerry’s

The folks at Ben and Jerry’s have been very vocal about the need for Congress to enact laws that place caps on greenhouse gas emissions. This has given me an idea that I am sure Ben & Jerry’s will be in favor of. It is well known that milk cows emit enormous amounts of methane, a dangerous greenhouse gas. Therefore, I have asked Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont (where B&J’s is headquartered), to introduce a bill into Congress that would place a cap on ice cream production and consumption. In the meantime committed environmentalists should all do their part to save the Earth by cutting back on their ice cream consumption.

BOYCOT BIG ICE CREAM!

You might also want to contact Ben and Jerry’s and ask them what they are doing to keep cow methane from polluting the environment. Perhaps President Obama and Pope Francis should join forces with Bernie Sanders in this important cause. I will contact them now. You should too. Frotho Canutus

Senator Snowball Fights Global Warming

Posted on January 29, 2014 by eburke93

I sent the following letter to the self-avowed socialist, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, when I noticed the irony of a picture posted on his official website. The picture showed some happy revelers in Washington DC having a rare snowball fight in front of the Capitol building during a snowstorm. It may have been an old photo, but of course DC has had snow this year and temperatures well below average as have much of the rest of the country. Bernie Sanders is one of the leading voices in the crusade to end humanity’s use of fossil fuels to prevent global warming. (I don’t know what he thinks will replace fossil fuels anytime soon since “green” energies like wind and solar still only supply less than 5% of all U.S. Energy).

Funny thing is – a few minutes after I emailed my letter to Senator Snowball I could no longer find the photo on his website. Coincidence?

The letter:

Dear Senator Sanders:

I love the photo posted on your website of the snowball fight in front of the Capitol. It’s proof of catastrophic man-made global warming! Quick – we need to legislate more taxes and regulations on coal, propane, oil and natural gas so that we make it more expensive for people to heat their homes or do anything for that matter since everything we do and buy or consume requires energy.

Of course, I’m being sarcastic, because the Earth has not had any statistically significant warming now for about 17 years despite the run up of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. The climate scientists’ assumption that CO2 raises temps X amount in a complex climate system are wrong. We know this to be true because the results have been coming in and the climate model predictions do not match actual temperature data as the graph here shows. (Shown below.)

http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-73-models-vs-obs-20N-20S-MT-5-yr-means1.png

Please do not allow President Obama to squander taxpayer $$ on climate schemes that will do little to prevent global warming or cooling. The climate has always warmed and cooled in the past. It’s better to spend our $$ adapting to climate change regardless of what drives the change. We have to be smarter about where we build. The oceans have been rising for thousands of years – duh!

I have heard that China is building a Thorium nuclear reactor, which may be safer and produces little nuclear waste. The only reason the US used plutonium and uranium reactors was because we used those same materials to build bombs. Perhaps Thorium reactors could solve some of our energy problems. Will you look into it? That could be real progress.

This graph was created last year by Dr. Roy Spencer, a climate scientist at the University of Alabama, Huntsville. It shows IPCC climate model predictions vs. actual temperature data. The thick black line is the average of the climate model predictions. The divergence between the models and reality is growing, because the models are flawed and are predicting too much warming. No catastrophic global warming in the real world! In fact global temps have been flat for about 17 years now.

Frotho

How Much Is Earth’s Climate Determined By The Sun?

Posted on January 17, 2014 by eburke93

Below are quotes from various scientific papers and authors. Some of their findings lend support to the idea that global climate variations correlate in some manner with the Sun’s energy output. This begs the question: has mankind’s effect on the climate been overstated?

(Note: Sources are cited at the end of each quote.)

The Sun (Photo: NASA)

“Current concern over ‘greenhouse’ warming and possible human influence upon global climate has been countered by claims that recent advances in solar theory demonstrate a greater role than previously thought for solar forcing in recent climate change. This is still disputed for this century, but new evidence from a range of palaeoenvironmental indicators lends strong support to the notion that not only the long-term (105 to 103 years) climate changes of the Pleistocene but also short-term (101 to 102 years) climate changes in the Holocene may derive in large or small part from solar variability.” (Palaeoenvironmental evidence for solar forcing of Holocene climate: linkages to solar science, Frank M. Chambers, Michael I. Ogle, Jeffrey J. Blackford, Progress in Physical Geography, December 2013: http://ppg.sagepub.com/content/23/2/181.abstract)

The Maunder Minimum (A.D. 1645–1715)

“Early records of sunspots indicate that the Sun went through a period of inactivity in the late 17th century. Very few sunspots were seen on the Sun from about 1645 to 1715. Although the observations were not as extensive as in later years, the Sun was in fact well observed during this time and this lack of sunspots is well documented. This period of solar inactivity also corresponds to a climatic period called the “Little Ice Age” when rivers that are normally ice-free froze and snow fields remained year-round at lower altitudes. There is evidence that the Sun has had similar periods of inactivity in the more distant past. The connection between solar activity and terrestrial climate is an area of on-going research.” (NASA: http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml)

“Therefore, the variation of GCR (galactic cosmic ray) flux associated with the multidecadal cycles of solar magnetic field seem to be causally related to the significant and widespread climate changes at least during the Maunder Minimum.” (Synchronized Northern Hemisphere climate change and solar magnetic cycles during the Maunder Minimum, Yasuhiko T. Yamaguchi, Yasuhiko T. Yamaguchia, Hiroko Miyaharad, Kenjiro Shoe, and Takeshi Nakatsukaf, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, November 30, 2010: http://www.pnas.org/content/107/48/20697.abstract)

The Current Solar Cycle: Cycle 24

“We are currently over five years into (solar) Cycle 24. The current predicted and observed size makes this the smallest sunspot cycle since Cycle 14 which had a maximum of 64.2 in February of 1906.” (From NASA’s website, updated January 2, 2014: http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml)

“The incipient cycle 24 will probably mark the end of the Modern Maximum, with the Sun switching to a state of less strong activity.” (Solar Cycle Prediction, Kristóf Petrovay, December 27, 2010. Link provided by NASA website: http://solarphysics.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrsp-2010-6/)

If we are entering another period of low solar activity, will it usher in a new “little ice age?

“It has been decades since parts of the Midwest experienced a deep freeze like the one expected to arrive Sunday, with potential record-low temperatures heightening fears of frostbite and hypothermia even in a region where residents are accustomed to bundling up.” (Carson Walker, Associated Press, January 4, 2014:)

The 3 graphs below show the monthly averaged sunspot numbers from 1750 to the present. Note the downward trend of sunspot activity after the peak of Solar Cycle 19 around 1957.

“The solar cycle modulation of cosmic rays (Section 3.8) leaves its imprint in the concentration of the radioisotopes 14C in tree rings and 10Be in ice cores (Section 3.9). The connection between solar activity and radioisotope concentrations is complicated by the transport and storage of these radioisotopes. Nonetheless, estimates of solar activity levels over time-scales much longer than the 400-year sunspot record can be obtained (see Usoskin, 2008, for a review). These reconstructions of solar activity reveal Grand Minima like the Maunder Minimum as well as Grand Maxima similar to the last half of the 20th century. The reconstructions suggest that the Sun spends about 1/6th of its current life in a Grand Minimum phase and about 1/10th in a Grand Maximum.” (The Solar Cycle, David H. Hathaway, March 2, 2010: http://solarphysics.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrsp-2010-1/fulltext.html)

“After reviewing evidence in both the latest global data (HadCRUT4) and the longest instrumental record, Central England Temperature, a revised picture is emerging that gives a consistent attribution for each multidecadal episode of warming and cooling in recent history, and suggests that the anthropogenic global warming trends might have been overestimated by a factor of two in the second half of the 20th century.” (Using data to attribute episodes of warming and cooling in instrumental records, Ka-Kit Tung and Jiansong Zhou, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, February 5, 2013: http://www.pnas.org/content/110/6/2058.short)

“Different records of solar activity (Wolf and group sunspot number, data on cosmogenic isotopes, historic data) were analyzed by means of modern statistical methods, including one especially developed for this purpose. It was confirmed that two long-term variations in solar activity – the cycles of Gleissberg and Suess – can be distinguished at least during the last millennium. The results also show that the century-type cycle of Gleissberg has a wide frequency band with a double structure consisting of 50–80 years and 90–140 year periodicities. The structure of the Suess cycle is less complex showing a variation with a period of 170–260 years. Strong variability in Gleissberg and Suess frequency bands was found in northern hemisphere temperature multiproxy that confirms the existence of a long-term relationship between solar activity and terrestial climate.” (Long-Period Cycles of the Sun’s Activity Recorded in Direct Solar Data and Proxies, M.G. Ogurtsov, Yu.A. Nagovitsyn, G.E. Kocharov, H. Jungner, Solar Physics, December 2002: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1022411209257)

The Suess Cycle

Is the Sun about due to enter into another bicentennial minimum?

“One periodicity that arises in many radiocarbon studies of solar activity has a well defined period of about 210 years. This is often referred to as the Suess or de Vries Cycle (Suess, 1980).” (The Solar Cycle, David H. Hathaway, March 2, 2010: http://solarphysics.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrsp-2010-1/fulltext.html)

“The Earth as a planet will henceforward have negative balance in the energy budget which will result in the temperature drop in approximately 2014. Due to increase of albedo and decrease of the greenhouse gases atmospheric concentration the absorbed portion of solar energy and the influence of the greenhouse effect will additionally decline. The influence of the consecutive chain of feedback effects which can lead to additional drop of temperature will surpass the influence of the TSI (Total Solar Irradiance) decrease. The onset of the deep bicentennial minimum of TSI is expected in 2042±11, that of the 19th Little Ice Age in the past 7500 years – in 2055±11.” (Bicentennial Decrease of the Total Solar Irradiance Leads to Unbalanced Thermal Budget of the Earth and the Little Ice Age, 2012, Habibullo I. Abdussamatov.)

The dotted blue lines on the 2nd graph below show Dr. Abdussamatov’s prediction of lower solar activity. If this is correct it may trigger another “Little Ice Age” similar to the one experienced in Europe from 1645-1710 A.D.

It sure will be interesting to see if Dr. Abdussamatov’s “prediction” comes true.

What if the Earth begins to cool again?

Let us hope that the world is prepared for a colder climate if that’s where we are heading. The Obama administration is basing it energy policy on an opposite scenario in which the Earth continues to warm due to man’s burning of fossil fuels. Many countries around the world have also formulated policies based on an assumption of continued warming, but some, like Australia, have begun to rethink their policies in light of the fact that global warming halted sometime around 1998 and contrary to the most widely accepted predictions.

“The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only 7 years of data and it isn’t statistically significant.” — Phil Jones: July 5, 2005. Dr. Jones is Director of the Climatic Research Unit and a Professor in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia. His work was featured prominently in both the 2001 and 2007 IPCC reports.

“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.” — Kevin Trenberth, 2009. Dr. Trenberth was a lead author of the 1995, 2001, and 2007 IPCC Scientific Assessment of Climate Change and is head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder Colorado.

“Average global temperatures hit a record high in 1998 — and then the warming stalled…..Although there have been jumps and dips, average atmospheric temperatures have risen little since 1998, in seeming defiance of projections of climate models and the ever-increasing emissions of greenhouse gases.”
— Jeff Tollefson, writing in Nature, the “International Weekly Journal of Science,” January 15, 2014

“William Herschel (1801) was the first to report correlation between a level of sunspot activity and a climate after his discovery of inverse interrelation between a wheat price and a level of cyclic variations of solar activity before and during Dalton minimum. When the Sun’s surface was covered with sunspots, the wheat prices were going down. When the number of sunspots dropped the prices went up. He supposed that variations of wheat prices are the consequence of the corresponding climate changes. However, he could not explain the physical nature of this phenomenon. Later Eddy (1976) was discovered interconnection between clearly determined periods of significant variations of the sunspot activity level during the last millennium and corresponding deep climatic changes in both phase and amplitude. During each of the eighteen deep minima of solar activity (of Maunder type) with a bicentennial cycle found in the preceding 7.5 millennia, deep cooling was observed, while during the periods of high maxima – global warming (Borisenkov, 1988). Recent studies (Bal, et al. 2011; McPhaden, et al. 2011) confirm our results (Abdussamatov, 2009a, b) concerning a common action of eleven-year and bicentennial cyclic variations of the total solar irradiance (TSI) (with some time-lag) on the change of state of the surface and subsurface layers (with the depth of tens and hundreds of meters) in the tropical part of the Pacific Ocean accompanied with appearance of warm or cold water (the cycles of La Niña or El Niño phenomena) which affects the climate change as well. Observed characteristics of El Niño during the last 31 years have been changing in the opposite direction with regard to predictions of the climatic models assuming predominant influence of the greenhouse gases.”

“Since the Sun is now approaching the phase of decrease of bicentennial luminosity on the basis of observed accelerating drop in both the 11-year and bicentennial components of TSI from early 90s, we can forecast its further decline similar to a so called Maunder minimum….Hence, we can expect the onset of a deep bicentennial minimum of TSI in approximately 2042±11 and of the 19th deep minimum of global temperature in the past 7500 years – in 2055±11 (Fig. 4). In the nearest future we will observe a transition (between global warming and global cooling) period of unstable climate changes with the global temperature fluctuating around its maximum value reached in 1998-2005. After the maximum of solar cycle 24, from approximately 2014 we can expect the start of the next bicentennial cycle of deep cooling with a Little Ice Age in 2055±11. Thus, long-term variations of TSI (with account for their direct and secondary, based on feedback effects, influence) are the main fundamental cause of climate changes since variations of the Earth climate is mainly determined by a long-term imbalance between the energy of solar radiation entering the upper layers of the Earth’s atmosphere and the total energy emitted from the Earth back to space.” (Bicentennial Decrease of the Total Solar Irradiance Leads to Unbalanced Thermal Budget of the Earth and the Little Ice Age, 2012, Habibullo I. Abdussamatov.)

“The ~200-year solar cycle (de Vries cycle) is commonly believed to be one of the most intense solar cycles.

“The quasi-200-year variations revealed in the palaeoclimatic reconstructions correlate well (R2=0.58–0.94) with solar activity variations (Δ14C variations). The quasi-200-year climatic variations have also been detected in climate-linked processes in Asia, Europe, North and South America, Australia, and the Arctic and Antarctica. The results obtained point to a pronounced influence of solar activity on global climatic processes.

“Analysis has shown that climate response to the long-term global solar forcing has a regional character. An appreciable delay in the climate response to the solar signal can occur (up to 150 years).” (The influence of the de Vries (~200-year) solar cycle on climate variations: Results from the Central Asian Mountains and their global link, O.M. Raspopov, V.A. Dergachev , J. Esper, O.V. Kozyreva, D. Frank, M. Ogurtsov, T. Kolström, X. Shao, 2006 http://www.issw.ch/info/mitarbeitende/frank/Raspopov_etal_PPP_2008.pdf)

The Obama administration is actively working to artificially increase the price of fossil fuel production and consumption. One example of this is that the Environmental Protection Agency has been increasing regulations on coal-fired power plants and has made compliance so costly that many of these plants will simply cease to operate. If the world is about to enter a prolonged period of cooling, the Obama administration’s energy policies, which will necessarily lead to higher energy prices and fewer energy choices, will turn out to be one of the biggest policy blunders in modern history. Raising the price of energy during a time of increasing demand will have deadly consequences, especially for those at the bottom of the economic ladder.

Frotho

What Happened to Global Warming? Part II

Posted on January 7, 2014 by eburke93

“Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers in the preceeding generation . . . As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” — Richard Feynman (1918-1988), Nobel-prize-winning physicist.

Are carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases we humans have been adding to the atmosphere really the cause of global warming? If so, why has the world stopped warming over the past 17 years despite the continuing buildup of greenhouse gasses? Climate reality has not lived up to the scary predictions of Al Gore, James Hansen, IPCC and other climate change/global warming propagandists.

Here’s what climate scientist Kevin Trenberth admitted in an email to colleagues in 2009: “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.” Dr. Trenberth was a lead author of the 1995, 2001, and 2007 IPCC Scientific Assessment of Climate Change and is head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder Colorado.**

Last year, John Christy, a climate scientist at the University of Alabama, constructed the following graph which clearly shows how the Earth has not warmed anything like the IPCC’s climate models have predicted. The thick red and blue lines near the bottom of the graph represent actual temperature data. The solid black line is the average of 44 predictive models. Obviously, the models are grossly overestimating global warming. In fact, the models’ average has overestimated warming by about 3 times.

(Graph: John Christy and DrRoySpencer.com)

So why would any government formulate energy policies based on conclusions drawn from these severely flawed models? Well, that’s what the Obama Administration is doing and what other developed countries like Australia, Germany, Spain and Japan have already done. Now some of those countries are beginning to regret it.

The Earth’s recent climate history seems to indicate that our planet is not as sensitive to greenhouse gasses as we have been led to believe and that natural variability plays a much larger role in determining global and regional climates.

Why should we blindly accept the policies of the environmentalists and their accomplices in government who claim the burning of fossil fuels is the main reason for global warming?* Should we allow them to put coal and natural gas companies out of business and put our energy supplies at risk? The Environmental Left’s desire to tax and regulate energy production and energy consumption for the purpose of “saving” the planet will make everything we do and everything we buy more expensive. Should we allow this to happen? Can the poor and the middle class afford to pay for these misguided “green” schemes? Is the planet really on the verge of environmental destruction and in need of being “saved?”

Why shouldn’t we be skeptical about the climate science that is presented to policy makers and the public? We should be and here’s a quote from the late climate scientist Stephen Schneider (1945-2010) to remind us why:

“On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”

Stephen Schneider spent a lot of time and energy trying to explain that this quote was taken out of context and twisted by his critics, but I think most people with average intelligence do not need an explanation. Schneider’s original meaning is quite clear.

In fairness, the link to Schneider’s ex post facto explanation can be seen here.

Forget about climate science for two seconds – In general, skepticism is a healthy defense against the flaws of human nature. So the next time you hear a news story confidently reporting that mankind is destroying the global climate by burning fossil fuels, you may want to ask yourself – are the producers of the story offering up a scary story in order to strike a balance “between being effective and being honest?”

*Since there has been no significant global warming in the past 17 years or so the propagandists have had a tough time convincing the public that global warming is a problem and that mankind has something to do with it. Instead, they have resorted to pointing to severe weather and call it “climate change.”

Frotho

Note: The author of this piece would like to explain his position on man-made global warming: He believes that global and regional climates have always been changing, are changing now, and will always change regardless of what the human race does. The Earth’s climate is always changing. It changed in the past without man’s help. The tiny population of hunter-gatherers that lived 11,000 years ago were not burning massive amounts of fossil fuels and therefore were not responsible for ending the last Ice Age. The shift on Earth from a glacial period to a warmer interglacial period, which we are still in, was caused by natural events. The Sun has cycles, the Earth has cycles. These cycles are natural. Man’s burning of fossil fuels does contribute to a greenhouse effect, but the effect is probably not as catastrophic as we have been lead to believe. The climate and temperature trends we are able to identify are caused mostly by natural forces. Although mankind has some impact on the Earth’s climate, our burning of fossil fuels does not override the natural forces that largely determine it.

Archaeologists working in my native state of New Jersey are well aware that the Atlantic coastline extended much farther east in times of old. They tell us that much archaeological evidence from ancient Indian sites along the coast has been lost to the rising ocean. This has been going on for a long time, a lot longer than man has been burning fossil fuels. With the strides we have made in science and technology we are now able to measure the sea levels with great accuracy. Since the data shows that the sea levels are still rising, it’s imperative that we develop a more sensible approach to development along our coasts. Since the probability is very high that development directly along our low lying coasts will suffer destruction from the rising waters it is totally irresponsible to ask federal taxpayers to foot any part of the bill to rebuild along these areas after destruction from rising waters occurs. Why should a waitress in land locked Nebraska be asked to fork over part of her paycheck in order to subsidize the rebuilding of million dollar summer homes overlooking the Atlantic Ocean? Let the fat cats pay 100% of the cost to rebuild their own homes.

Why “Global Warming” has been replaced by “Climate Change”

That our scientific instruments have not measured any statistically significant global warming for about 17 years now is a fact. Things have levelled out a bit. Unfortunately, IPCC climate scientists do not understand the climate system sufficiently enough to say exactly why. If they did, then some of the climate models represented in the figure above that we have been asked to rely on for policy decisions would have predicted this leveling off of temperatures. But the fact is they did not. This probably means that one or more assumptions that climate scientists have built into these models are just plain wrong.

If the warming trend resumes, the term “global warming” will regain its popularity and it will be blamed on the burning of coal, oil and natural gas. If the Earth enters another natural cooling phase, we might look back and give thanks for any bit of warming we may have contributed to. And if a decades long cooling trend manifests itself, then the climate scientists who claimed that “the science is settled” should have their funding severely trimmed and the IPCC should be completely disbanded.

Since carbon fuels and the energy they provide are in large measure responsible for powering an economy that has brought us so many incredible benefits, we should be extremely wary of those who want to artificially raise the cost of energy by imposing taxes and regulation on it. Some environmental extremists favor politicians who promise to tax and regulate fossil fuels like coal and natural gas and make them so expensive that businesses and people cannot afford to use them. In fact, this is the plan that President Obama has already begun to implement and it is extremely dangerous.

Carbon to the Rescue

“Carbon to the Rescue” was the title of a great Wall Street Journal piece that touched on these points.The Journal piece pointed to a story in the news recently about a ship carrying eco-tourists and climate scientists that set out on a summer expedition to the Antarctic to report on how the climate there had changed since Sir Douglas Mawson explored the region 100 years ago. On Christmas day last the ship carrying the eco-tourists became stranded when shifting winds surrounded the vessel with ice and blizzard like conditions. The ice was so thick that the Chinese ice breaker initially sent to rescue the stranded ship had to turn back and eventually became stuck itself. Finally after waiting helplessly for over a week the 52 eco-tourists and climate scientists were rescued. The helicopters and ships that participated in the rescue were not powered by windmills and solar energy. Instead it was “carbon to the rescue.” The Wall Street Journal pointed out that, “In an earlier age, explorers who so badly underestimated the expanse of polar ice would surely have perished.” How true. Maybe fossil fuels are not so evil after all.

Hopefully the irony in this story will help open some eyes to the fact that fossil fuels are immensely beneficial. The Environmental Left’s War on Fossil Fuels is really a war on modern society itself and could have catastrophic consequences particularly if our power grids are not sufficiently equipped to supply the energy needed to heat our homes, power our cities, and run our hospitals. Obama’s EPA is already forcing coal-fired power plants to close and they have no workable plans that will immediately replace that lost energy. It’s a very dangerous situation. It’s time we begin to demand a more sane approach to our energy policies from our leaders.

**Kevin Trenberth’s full email from 2009 reads:

Hi all

Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low. This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather).

Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s global energy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 19-27, doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [1][PDF] (A PDF of the published version can be obtained from the author.)

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. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.

That said there is a LOT of nonsense about the PDO. People like CPC are tracking PDO on a monthly basis but it is highly correlated with ENSO. Most of what they are seeing is the change in ENSO not real PDO. It surely isn’t decadal. The PDO is already reversing with the switch to El Nino. The PDO index became positive in September for first time since Sept 2007.see[2]http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/GODAS/ocean_briefing_gif/global_ocean_monitoring_c urrent.ppt

Kevin

Christmas in the Antarctic: Climate Irony

Posted on December 26, 2013 by eburke93

Chris Turney, a professor of climate science at the University of New South Wales in Australia is currently leading a summer expedition to the Antarctic for scientific research. But the expedition is on hold for the time being because the ship carrying the climate adventurer has been completely surrounded and frozen in place by the sea ice.

Chris has been updating his Twitter followers on the progress of the mission but yesterday, Christmas Day he sent out this tweet: “Stuck in ice. All well. Relief expt’d 30 hrs. Science continuing.”

Professor Turney’s University web page says that, “Working with climate models, Chris is using these reconstructions to look into the mechanisms, timing and impact of extreme change in the past and future at regional and global scales.” Knowing that the professor works with models makes us wonder what he thinks the reasons are that the IPCC climate models did not predict the lack of global warming over the past 16 years or so.

We wish Professor Turney and his crew a safe and speedy rescue.

Frotho Canutus

See Professor Turney’s Tweets here. See a video of the view from the stranded ship here:

U.S. Tornado & Hurricane Activity in 2013 Defying Climate Alarmists

Posted on November 4, 2013 by eburke93

AP Photo: Providence Rhode Island 1938

The mainstream media has been dutifully repeating the claim that “climate change” (which has mostly replaced the term “global warming”)* will lead to more frequent and more extreme weather events. Their fundamental argument is that man-made greenhouse gas emissions, which are accumulating in the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels, will cause an increase in extreme weather events such as hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires and the like. Unfortunately, Mother Nature is not cooperating with their faulty theories.

1. “So far, 2013 is on pace to be a record low tornado year.” (Link to source)

2. According to NOAA, “There have been no major hurricanes thus far in 2013” and “Tropical cyclone activity through the end of October was about 70 percent below the 1981-2010 average.” (Link to source)

NOAA Graph showing 2013 Tornado Activity (black line) vs. data from 1954-2007

The NOAA graph at left shows tornado activity so far in 2013 (black line) to be at its lowest observed level when compared with data gathered from 1954 – 2007.

In addition, not a single major hurricane, defined as a Category 3 storm or higher has made landfall in the United States in over eight years. This is by far the longest hurricane “drought” on record.

Therefore, I would like to know why the Obama administration is bent on putting in place climate change policies that will put hard-working people in the energy industry out of work and increase everyone’s monthly energy bills – all because of a policy based on false predictions and scare tactics.

Tell your Congressman that we don’t want damaging and expensive climate policies that will have little effect on climate trends. Our environmental policies must be formulated with wisdom and reason and must be based only on the facts. One important fact is that the climate models, which some want us to base our climate policy on, have failed to predict the lack of global warming in the last 15 years or so. Formulating policies based on models that don’t work is nothing short of foolish.

*Perhaps the term “global warming” has not been used much lately because measurements show that Earth’s surface temperatures have not risen for approximately 16 years despite the fact that there is far more CO2 in the atmosphere now than 16 years ago.

Al Gore – Still Getting It Wrong

Posted on May 4, 2013 by eburke93

Photo Credit: NOAA

Al Gore and the other Climate Alarmists have been telling us for years that the release of greenhouse gases will bring more frequent and powerful storms. So, while yes, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has been on the increase, what does the data actually show? Why… it shows that 2012-2013 tornado frequency is lower than it has been for decades, and as Anthony Watts points out on his website, it’s been over 7 1/2 years since a category 3 hurricane has made landfall on the United States. When will the folks in academia and media stop treating AlGore and others like him as sagacious climate heroes?

According to the May 1st post by Harold Brooks at NOAA: “The 12-month period from May 2012 to April 2013 was remarkable for the absence of tornado activity and tornado impacts in the United States.”

What’s really remarkable is that people still take Al Gore seriously. There is so much that we still don’t understand about the Earth’s climate system. Oh, and did I mention the globe has not gotten any warmer for about 15 years running. Forget about a tax on carbon – we cannot let the Green Lobby run our lives and ruin our economy.

Link to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s tornado info here.

Frotho

Is Global Warming to blame for all this snow?

Posted on April 24, 2013 by eburke93

Every now and then I see a story in the media that some climate expert has speculated that the latest monster snow storms are being caused by man-made global warming. They go on to explain that it may seem counter intuitive, but that the global warming is causing more moisture to accumulate in some parts of the Earth’s atmosphere and that when the temperature is sufficiently cold this moisture is dumped in the form of snow. That seems to make sense.

So, if I understand their argument correctly – even if our winters are warmer because of all the CO2 we are dumping into the atmosphere, we still might get plenty of snow. I get it.

Here’s the problem: It’s just speculation. No one really knows for sure how a warmer Earth will distribute the Earth’s moisture. If there is someone out there who does know – please contact me.

Here is another problem: The recent snowfall (April 2013) in America’s heartland has been accompanied by record cold temperatures, not warmer ones. This fact flies in the face of the recent explanations we have heard. Now, weather in one region of our country does not prove anything regarding global climate trends. But I think it is still fair to point this out, because when a climate person speculates about what causes a massive super storm, he or she is only discussing a regional weather event as it pertains to global trends.

The Washington Post is reporting today (April 23, 2013) “Record-shattering April cold and snow stun Rockies, north central U.S.”

The Post article goes on to say that, “Amazingly, 91.9 percent of the Upper Midwest has snow on the ground as of today. Snow cover in the previous 10 years on this date hasn’t even come close to reaching this extent (ranging from 19 percent to much lower).”

Commenting on the temperatures the Post article continues,

“Through the Rockies and into the Upper Midwest, it’s not just been the snow but also the cold forcing residents to do a double take when gazing at the calendar.”

“Kelsch notes the mercury dipped to 20 this morning in Boulder, its third record low this month. Boulder’s average temperature this month (through yesterday) is just 41.4 making it one of the city’s coldest Aprils on record.”

“Today’s early afternoon temperatures were 20-40 degrees colder than normal through the Plains into Texas.”

So while we’ve heard a lot of speculation lately from climate experts who tell us that global warming may result in more snowfall, recent events in the Rockies and Upper Midwest prove that colder temperatures may also result in more snow.

Frotho

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/04/23/record-shattering-cold-and-snow-stun-rockies-north-central-u-s/

Higher Revolution:

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Tag Archives: global warming

Climate Nazis Threaten Climate Skeptics

Obama’s Phony Climate Claims

“How is it that the White House links changes in hurricanes today to global warming when the WMO, NOAA and IPCC cannot?” –Chris Landsea, Science and Operations Officer, NOAA’s National Hurricane Center

Fart Control: Boycott Ben & Jerry’s – Save the Planet

Senator Snowball Fights Global Warming

How Much Is Earth’s Climate Determined By The Sun?

What Happened to Global Warming? Part II

Christmas in the Antarctic: Climate Irony

U.S. Tornado & Hurricane Activity in 2013 Defying Climate Alarmists

1. “So far, 2013 is on pace to be a record low tornado year.” (Link to source)

2. According to NOAA, “There have been no major hurricanes thus far in 2013” and “Tropical cyclone activity through the end of October was about 70 percent below the 1981-2010 average.” (Link to source)

Al Gore – Still Getting It Wrong

Is Global Warming to blame for all this snow?