Tag: News

Climategate goes American: NOAA, GISS and the mystery of the vanishing weather stations

For those who haven’t seen it, here’s a link to US weatherman John Coleman’s magisterial demolition of the Great AGW Scam. I particularly recommend part 4 because that’s the one with all the meat. It shows how temperature readings have been manipulated at the two key climate data centres in the United States – the NASA Goddard Science and Space Institute at Columbia University in New York and the NOAA National Climate Data Center in Ashville, North Carolina. (Hat tip: Platosays) This is a scandal to rank with Climategate. What it shows is that, just like in Britain at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) temperature data records have been grotesquely distorted by activist scientists in order to exaggerate the appearance of late 20th century global warming. They achieved this – with an insouciant disregard for scientific integrity which quite beggars belief – through the simple expedient of ignoring most of those weather station sited in higher, colder places and using mainly ones in warmer spots. Then, they averaged out the temperature readings given by the warmer stations to give a global average. Et voila: exactly the scary “climate change” they needed to persuade bodies like the IPCC that AGW was a clear and present danger requiring urgent pan-governmental action. The man who spotted all this is a computer programmer called EM Smith – aka the Chiefio. You can read the full report at his excellent blog. In the 70s, the Chiefio discovered, GISS and NOAA took their temperature data from 6,000 weather stations around the world. By 1990, though, this figure had mysteriously dropped to 1500. Even more mysteriously this 75 per cent reduction in the number of stations used had a clear bias against those at higher latitudes and elevations. Here’s an excellent example of this: Bolivia.

Notice that nice rosy red over the top of Bolivia? Bolivia is that country near, but not on, the coast just about half way up the Pacific Ocean side. It has a patch of high cold Andes Mountains where most of the population live.

One Small Problem with the anomally map. There has not been any thermometer data for Bolivia in GHCN since 1990. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Nothing. Empty Set. So just how can it be so Hot Hot Hot! in Bolivia if there is NO data from the last 20 years? Easy. GIStemp “makes it up” from “nearby” thermometers up to 1200 km away. So what is within 1200 km of Bolivia? The beaches of Chili, Peru and the Amazon Jungle. Not exactly the same as snow capped peaks and high cold desert, but hey, you gotta make do with what you have, you know?

Meteorologist Joseph D’Aleo has also been on the case. You can find a link to his superb analysis of the scandal at Watts Up With That. (Sorry: I would give you a more direct link to his pdf file but I can’t work out how to do it)

In Canada the number of stations dropped from 600 to 35 in 2009. The percentage of stations in the lower elevations (below 300 feet) tripled and those at higher elevations above 3000 feet were reduced in half. Canada’s semi-permanent depicted warmth comes from interpolating from more southerly locations to fill northerly vacant grid boxes, even as a pure average of the available stations shows a COOLING. Just 1 thermometer remains for everything north of latitude 65N – that station is Eureka. Eureka according to Wikipedia has been described as “The Garden Spot of the Arctic” .

You know what this means, don’t you? It means the ragbag of eco-loons, politicians and technocrats pushing AGW can no longer plausibly deploy their main excuse about Climategate – that it was all a little local difficulty of no great importance because the HadCrut temperature data sets were independently confirmed by those at GISS and NOAA. What this story demonstrates, as many of us suspected all along, is that not just the British temperature records but those in the US too have been hijacked by political activists. I need hardly say that this breaking scandal has been almost completely ignored by the MSM. Not unpredictably, the director of one of the two institutions implicated in this – Dr James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies – has issued a (very carefully worded – which makes you wonder what he’s not telling us) denial of any skullduggery.

“NASA has not been involved in any manipulation of climate data used in the annual GISS global temperature analysis.”

The idea that a man of Dr Hansen’s radical persuasion should be running an organisation as important as GISS is looking increasingly absurd. To get an idea how absurd, think Tony Benn in charge of Britain’s defence policy, or – let’s get really weird – imagine if Ed Balls were in charge of Education or Gordon Brown were running the country. More on Hansen’s activist sympathies in another blog.Source by James Delingpole

Earthquakes didn't kill Haitians – Underdevelopment did

Environmentalists campaigned against urban development that could have saved many Haitians

Written by Phelim McAleer, Not Evil Just Wrong producer

It is only a matter of time before Environmentalists and some scientists blame the Haiti earthquake and its massive death toll on Global Warming. They have already laid the groundwork with this Sept 2009 article in the UK Guardian newspaper. According to Professor Bill McGuire, director of the Benfield Hazard Research Center, at University College London an upcoming scientific conference would show how “global warming threatens the planet in a new and unexpected way – by triggering earthquakes, tsunamis, avalanches and volcanic eruptions.” Despite these claims the earthquake in Haiti was not caused by Global Warming.

And the death and destruction was not because Haitians had made a pact with the devil.

The reason so many people died in Haiti is because its people live in poorly built houses and have not benefited from development which brings with it cities and houses which can withstand earthquakes.

But guess who are the most active opponents of cities and modern concrete housing?

The environmental movement, sees cities and growing urbanization as “unsustainable” and something that must be stopped. Mark Fenn, the head of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Madagascar, believes development, in the form of jobs and prosperity, will be a negative for some of the world’s most impoverished people. These environmentalists view development as an evil – destroying indigenous cultures. As the millionaire Hollywood actor Ed Begley Jr. says they may be poor, but they seem happy and development might threaten this happiness.
For Begley rampant child mortality and horrible deaths in inadequate houses during earthquakes are small prices for others to pay as long we can visit them on eco-holidays.

Environmentalists call this sustainable development but the only thing sustained is poverty. In the face of this massive earthquake it has meant visiting death and destruction on some of the poorest people on the planet. Shame on environmentalists, and shame on Ed Begley Jr.

Climategate book released!

Climategate: The Crutape Letters, written by Steven Mosher and Tom Fuller has just been released:

The Climategate scandal covered from beginning to end–from ‘Hide the Decline’ to the current day. Written by two authors who were on the scene–Steven Mosher and Tom Fuller–Climategate takes you behind that scene and shows what happened and why. For those who have heard that the emails were taken out of context–we provide that context and show it is worse when context is provided. For those who have heard that this is a tempest in a teacup–we show why it will swamp the conventional wisdom on climate change. And for those who have heard that this scandal is just ‘boys being boys’–well, boy. It’s as seamy as what happened on Wall Street.

Mosher, widely known, as a “lukewarmer” is perhaps the one man outside of the Motley CRU, The Hockey Team, and the whistle blower/hacker to receive the file, and recognize the game-changing importance of what he was reading. Mosher’s story was told in vivid detail a couple of days ago by Steve McIntyre. Tom Fuller is a writer and self-described “liberal skeptic”, and was perhaps the first journalist to cover the Climategate story in detail as it was breaking. So, one is a liberal and the other is a “lukewarmer”, so it’s hard to dismiss them out-of-hand as right-wing ideologues. Undoubtedly, Joe Romm and others will smear them anyway – it’s what the alarmists do when they’re desperate. Hat tip: Many thanks to Steven Mosher for the heads up.
Source

The North-West Passage has been open more often than you think

From The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley A kind reader has sent us the following historical update on the history of the North-West Passage – Regarding the North-West Passage, since the 1942 expedition by Henry Larsen the passage has been navigated on a number of occasions, several times by unaided yachts without icebreaker assistance. This is in contrast with sensationalist news in 2007 that the passage had been open “for the first time in history.” In 1977 the Belgian sailor Willy de Roos and his steel ketch Willywaw became the third yacht to go through, largely single-handed. By 2003, only 20 yachts had ever completed the North-West Passage. Of these 14 made it through in one season, and fewer than 10 (including Norwegian Blue), without ice breaker assistance. The first and until now, only British yacht to have completed the Passage was Rick Thomas’ Northanger. He sailed her East to West, wintering in Inuvik in 1988. He was closely followed by David Scott Cowper in his converted British lifeboat Mabel E Holland. It took David 4 seasons to complete his transit, having suffered three consecutive bad ice years. On 18 July 2003, Richard & Andrew Wood, father and son, with Zoe Birchenough sailed Norwegian Blue into the Bering Strait which marks the entrance to the North-West Passage. Exactly two months later, in what proved to be a very difficult ice year and without ice breaker assistance, she sailed into the Davis Strait to become the first British yacht to transit the Northwest Passage from West to East. She also became the only British vessel to have completed the North-West Passage in one season. The Norwegian Blue crew were happy to have spent the last few weeks of their time on ice in the company of Eric Brossier’s Vagabond and his fantastic crew. Of a record seven attempts at the North-West Passage in 2003, Vagabond & Norwegian Blue were the only two yachts to successfully complete their transit. Both were fortunate enough to have been in the right place for the one day of the year the ice opened in Larsen Sound & Franklin Strait, traditionally the most difficult part of the North-West Passage. On 10 October 2003, having set out from New Zealand only five months earlier, Zoe & Andrew sailed Norwegian Blue into St Mary’s Harbour in the Isles of Scilly, having covered over half the globe via one of the world’s most challenging and difficult sea routes – the North-West Passage. Here, as in many other areas of “global warming” propaganda, a little straightforward history such as that which our kind reader has sent us is enough to set the record straight and nail the lie.Source

Penetrating the Smog: How the EPA and the Media Distort Climate Science

As a scientist, I have long been troubled by the way the mainstream media covers science in general and the environment in particular. Long before “global warming” became a watchword and Al Gore started burning tens of thousands of gallons in aviation fuel to lecture people around the world about their profligate energy use, journalists routinely butchered scientifically-focused stories so badly that it would make a high school physics teacher cringe. While many people have been shocked to learn how close the ties between leading global warming alarmists and some environmental reporters are, the only surprise for many of us in the scientific community is that it has taken this long to reveal those connections. For the truth is that global warming coverage in the mainstream media is merely a symptom of a larger disease. Global_Warming_polar_bear The latest boil to burst forth upon the body of environmental journalism began to fester on Thursday, January 7, when the USEPA announced that it was proposing the latest, greatest and most-badly- needed-ever smog standard. (Officially the pollutant is “ground-level ozone”, but we’ll stick with “smog” for convenience). Mainstream media outlets everywhere fell over themselves to heap praise on the EPA for imposing a standard that administrator Lisa Jackson described as “long overdue.” This lead, from the Chicago Tribune’s lead environmental reporter/head Sierra Club cheerleader Michael Hawthorne’s January 8 story, was typical:

“Chicago and other urban areas across the U.S. would need to clamp down harder on air pollution under tough smog limits proposed Thursday by the Obama administration, which scrapped a George W. Bush-era rule that ignored the latest scientific advice.”

“Latest scientific advice” is, of course, code for “scientific consensus”, a phrase that has become all the rage. A funny thing this “consensus”; when it comes to global warming, or the new smog standard, or a host of other environmental topics, consensus: a) doesn’t matter, and b) doesn’t exist. Jackson’s EPA wants to lower the smog standard for the fourth time since the agency was created. The original Clean Air Act set a standard of 120 parts per billion. It was lowered under the Clinton administration to 80 parts per billion and again, under President Bush, to 75 parts per billion. These Clinton and Bush reductions share a couple of common characteristics: EPA did not pick the lowest proposed number in either case, and the costs associated with each of these new standards played a role in the agency’s final decision. Where these two actions differed was in the reaction of the mainstream media. The Clinton-era reduction was hailed as an environmental triumph. The Bush-era reduction, notwithstanding the fact that it was more stringent than the Clinton-era standard, was decried as an environmental disaster. The EPA’s sin under President Bush is that the agency did not pick an even lower number, like 70 or even 65 parts per billion. That’s the kind of number that the EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) wanted to see, and it’s CASAC that provides the media’s basis for claiming that George W. Bush “ignored the latest scientific advice.” In a January 7 press release, USEPA cited CASAC prominently. So you might be wondering: what is CASAC, this purportedly “independent” advisory panel that speaks with the voice of “consensus”? Who are the scientists on this committee? There are seven scientists on CASAC, four of whom have absolutely no qualifications, by either education or experience, to opine on the potential health effects of smog. The other three have spent their lives in academia, performing research – much of it publicly funded – designed to discover new and ever more horrendous ways that minute amounts of air pollutants can cause illness and death. ozone-pollution-smog The three CASAC members who sport public health credentials are: Dr. Jonathan Samet, who has spent most of his career doing research, much of it publicly-funded, about second-hand smoke and who is an advisor to the American Lung Association, which, in turn is one of the biggest organizations to lobby for – no surprise – tighter smog standards; Dr. Helen Suh MacIntosh, whose credentials include a stint on the web as the answer lady at treehugger.com; and Dr. Joseph Brain, a Harvard professor who has spent his professional career studying the effects of minute amounts of things that we breathe and why they are bad for you. Given the make-up of CASAC it is hardly surprising that they would recommend using the lowest proposed number. Had someone thrown out 50 parts per billion, or 20 parts per billion, there’s no doubt that such a number would have become the “latest scientific advice” instead. The reason CASAC didn’t pick 50 or 20 or some lower number is that EPA hasn’t proposed such a number – yet. Eventually, they will. The definition of “clean air” is an always moving, ever-shrinking target. This is known within the EPA as “job security”. According to the EPA, the “scientific community, industry, public interest groups, the general public and the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee” all get to play a role whenever the agency sets new standards. This is the way EPA approached the issue under President Bush, President Clinton and every president before them. But now, under President Obama, the agency has effectively handed that authority over to a group of seven scientists, four of whom know nothing about public health and three of whom have spent their careers wearing the kind of academic blinders that leave them unable to perform any sort of reasonable risk vs. reward analysis. It’s every bit as remarkable, and outrageous, as it would have been if President Bush had turned the process over to the American Petroleum Institute. One of the biggest reasons that CASAC and groups like the American Lung Association want the new standard involves asthma. Many believe that alarming increases in childhood and other forms of asthma over the last thirty years are related to increasing rate of smog formation in big cities. Hang on. Did I say “increasing rates” of smog formation? Seems I had this darn graph flipped upside down. According to USEPA monitoring data, smog has been reduced by an average of twenty five per cent in big cities over the last thirty years. If we really want to help kids breathe better, perhaps the best solution is to raise the standard, not lower it. And the consequences of all of this nonsense? It will be expensive, and you and your kids will pay the price down the road, long after Obama has left office. Which is, in a way, what makes this move so devilishly brilliant. The president has written yet another I.O.U., one that helps restore his “green” credibility (which was so damaged after the “Hopenhagen” fiasco), and the bill for implementing this utopian vision won’t come due until long after he returns to community organizing.Source by Rich Trzupek

Temperatures drop, alarmism heats up

This is a strange time for the promoters of apocalyptic global warming – oops, they now prefer “climate change” since the Earth hasn’t been warming for a while – to assail skeptics (like me) as Sun columnist Tom Schaller did this week. (See “Climate skeptics are denying facts, not ‘theories'” on this page Jan 5.) He says “deniers” are caught up in absurdities and self-delusions.

It’s weird timing because, much to the dismay of the believers that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are causing what will quickly be cataclysmic warming that must be thwarted by any means possible (even though there is really nothing that can effectively reverse such a climate change if it is under way), the reality is we are in the grip of exceedingly cold temperatures throughout most of the Northern Hemisphere.

This is the so-called Gore Effect in hyper-overdrive. The Gore Effect is the phenomenon of chilly weather, up to and including blizzards, uncannily striking an area either shortly before, during or shortly after the former vice president makes an appearance there to drone on before enthusiastic true believers about how the “Earth has a fever” and all that rot.

To help understand that it is alarmists, not deniers, who are caught up in absurdities and self-delusions, consider some news headlines from recent days: “Over 1,200 new cold and snow records set in the last week in U.S.”; “Britain braced for heaviest snowfall in fifty years”; “World under arctic siege”; “Winter could be worst for 25 years in U.S.A.”; ” Vermont sets all-time record for one snowstorm”; “Miami shivers from coldest weather in decade”; “Seoul buried under heaviest snowfall in 70 years.”

This is just a brief sampling of such headlines. It could easily continue through the rest of my allotted space here. The point is we are not warming, we are now cooling – which in the absurd thinking of die-hard alarmists means global warming is the cause of this abnormal cooling.

The assertion of such nonsense in the face of what can be seen and felt by normal human beings no doubt helps stoke the palpable lack of interest they now have in the issue. The BBC managed, for example, to have five of its correspondents speculate on the important things the world faces in 2010, and there was a single, buried mention of climate matters. This would have been unthinkable just a few months ago.

Professor Schaller dismisses the importance of the leaked e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the U.K. that revealed the efforts of leading climate-alarmist scientists to fiddle with data and stifle dissenting peer opinions (the Climategate scandal) saying deniers are misrepresenting the e-mails, which show nothing more than “a legitimate disagreement among scientists.” Most of Big Media would agree with that, having fervently embraced the global warming religion.

On this newspaper’s editorial page, we often read predictions of impending calamity unless we adopt the prescriptions of the alarmists, massively taxing carbon emissions, drastically curtailing the use of fossil fuels and otherwise shackling our already troubled world economy to address global warming, uh, climate change.

In a letter to Mr. Schaller, a listener of mine, a physicist, said this: “Climategate doesn’t prove that man-made climate warming doesn’t exist. But I’m pretty sure that is not the points that most make, and even if some make it, is that the viewpoint you should address? Shouldn’t you address the most valid point rather than the weakest ones? The main point is that Climategate undercuts the supposed strength of the case made that man-made climate warming is proved.”

Most people aren’t very much aware that climate changes naturally, sometimes quite drastically. What the well-funded proponents of climate alarmism have found most helpful is that the people can therefore be persuaded that natural change is actually unnatural and is caused by human activity.

So here we are, plagued by a severe winter, much like the ones in the 1970s that helped an earlier generation of alarmist scientists peddle the doomsday scenario of an impending ice age. I do believe there’s a greater danger to humanity from that possibility than from any warming trend. Bundle up.

Ron Smith can be heard weekdays, 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., on 1090 WBAL-AM and WBAL .com. His column appears Fridays in The Baltimore Sun. His e-mail is rsmith@wbal.com.

Source

Over 1200 new cold and snow records set in the last week in the USA, more in progress

From the “weather is not c..c..cl..climate” department, cold and snow hits hard. Meanwhile, Hot Weather Convinces Media of Climate Change; Cold Weather Ignored.

click for source data

And it heads far south too. A hard freeze warning has been issued for the Miami and Fort Lauderdale area: And lest somebody say that this cold event isn’t significant, I’ll let the NWS do the talking here: Longest Stretch of Cold Weather in 15 to 25 Years Possible This Week …Longest Stretch of Much Below Normal Temperatures in 15 to 25 Years Possible… Temperatures are expected to remain much below normal over all of south Florida this week, with the possibility of even colder temperatures this upcoming weekend. For detailed information on expected temperatures, please follow the indicated links for our textual and graphical forecasts. For freeze/wind chill watches and warnings, please check our hazards page. It is not unheard of to have freezing or near-freezing temperatures in south Florida each winter. In fact, inland areas south and west of Lake Okeechobee experience freezing temperatures at least once a year on average. Over the metro and coastal areas of south Florida, freezing temperatures are less frequent, but even in these areas freezing temperatures have occurred about every 5 to 10 years on average. Temperatures drop to at least 35 about every 1 to 2 years in the Naples area, and about every 2 years in the outlying areas of southeast Florida. For the urban areas of Miami/Fort Lauderdale, temperatures drop to at least 35 degrees about 2 to 3 times a decade, At West Palm Beach, the average is about every 1 to 2 years. What is more noteworthy about the current cold snap is the duration of the event. Typical south Florida cold snaps last about 2-3 days before winds switch to an easterly direction and blow warmer Atlantic air across the region. However, our current weather pattern is what is referred to as a “blocking pattern”. This means that weather systems that typically move from west to east at fairly regular intervals are instead remaining in place for several days. A strong low pressure system over northern New England and eastern Canada is being “blocked” by a large high pressure system near Greenland. This in turn is creating a stationary high pressure system over the western U.S. and Canada. The result of this blocked flow is an uninterrupted and prolonged flow of air from the Arctic region of Canada southward over the eastern two-thirds of the country, including Florida. Temperatures have dropped to below 50 degrees for three consecutive mornings over almost all of south Florida, with temperatures dropping to 45 or lower from Collier County east to Palm Beach County and points north. The latest forecast calls for lows to drop below 45 degrees over all of south Florida through Thursday morning. This would give 6 consecutive days of sub-50 and/or 45 degree-or-lower temperatures. Following are the dates of the last time we had at least 6 consecutive days of low temperatures below 50 degrees in southeast Florida: Miami and Fort Lauderdale: January 2001 Record is 13 days in Miami (January – February 1940) and 12 days in Fort Lauderdale in January 1956 West Palm Beach: January 2003 Record for West Palm Beach is 12 days set in December 2000-January 2001 and January 1956. Following are the dates of the last time we had 6 consecutive days of low temperatures of 45 degrees or lower in Naples; Naples: December 1989 Record for Naples is 8 days in January 1977. Following are the dates of the last time we had 5 consecutive days of low temperatures of 40 degrees or lower in Moore Haven; Moore Haven: January 24-28, 2001. Record for Moore Haven is 9 days from December 31, 2000 to January 8, 2001. Therefore, it’s been at least 7 years since we’ve had a prolonged stretch of temperatures in the 40s and 30s, with some areas going back as far as 21 years! Taking into account the daily average temperature, it’s possible that we’ll have up to 5 consecutive days of temperatures averaging at least 10-15 degrees below normal. For most of south Florida, the last time we had a stretch that cold was in 1995, with some areas going back to the mid to late 1980s. Here’s a sampling of headlines around the world: Temps Plunge to Record as Cold Snap Freezes North, East States
 Seoul buried in heaviest snowfall in 70 years
Vermont sets ‘all-time record for one snowstorm’
Iowa temps ‘a solid 30 degrees below normal’
Power goes out at Reagan National outside DC
Seoul buried in heaviest snowfall in 70 years
Peru’s mountain people ‘face extinction because of cold conditions’…
Beijing – coldest in 40 years
World copes with Arctic weatherWinter Could Be Worst in 25 Years for USA
Britain braced for heaviest snowfall in 50-years
GAS SUPPLIES RUNNING OUT IN UK
Miami shivers from coldest weather in decade
Northern Sweden on the way to 50 degrees below zero

Source

Love it! Wear it! Stick it! Merchandise now available

You asked for it, begged for it, and probably always dreamed about it.

Now you can proudly show your love for all things truly green. Buy yourself the coolest t-shirt in town and a bunch for your friends and family too. And don’t forget to wear them while you crash your next local alarmist gathering.

Grab your shirts, stickers, hats, and even a clock, then send the pictures to us. We will publish your best CO2-loving portraits on this site. Al Gore is having nightmares already.

Here’s a small sample of the Green Goods:

To order yours, click here. We thank you all for the amazing support and readership. Keep exhaling!

Justin

Cold Kills

Much is made of the deaths worldwide when caused by heat. However, just as many, if not more, die from cold weather. From the September 2007 edition of Discover magazine, Bjorn Lomborg writes:

While 35,000 dead is a terrifyingly large number, all deaths imageshould in principle be treated with equal concern. Yet this is not happening. When 2,000 people died from heat in the United Kingdom, it produced a public outcry that is still heard. However, the BBC recently ran a very quiet story telling us that deaths caused by cold weather in England and Wales for the past years have hovered around 25,000 each winter, casually adding that the winters of 1998–2000 saw about 47,000 cold deaths each year. … It is remarkable that a single heat-death episode of 35,000 from many countries can get everyone up in arms, whereas cold deaths of 25,000 to 50,000 a year in just a single country pass almost unnoticed.

So as to not let these deaths go unnoticed, check out these headlines:

The amount of carbon in the atmosphere hasn’t dropped. It has continued to rise. Yet the world is experiencing record cold and snow. In the last week, America alone set 1200 new records for cold and snow. More will die because of cold temperatures, but we are supposed to surrender our property to stop warming predicted by climate models that didn’t see this cold coming. Do you see now why I question the whole global warming climate change climate instability movement? Photo Credit: D Sharon PruittSource by Duane Lester